Lady, I'm just a puppet like you. My stage is a little bigger, that's all.

The ground rushed beneath me, a blur of greens, grays, and blues as I soared over trees, mountains, and rivers respectively. If I reached out my hoof just a little, I could have smacked the canopies of those trees. I could hear their leaves rustling in my wake as the air cavitated around me. Above me, only the barest wisps of clouds were visible in the furthest reaches of an endless cerulean sky. To my left, a brilliant orb of light so intense that it hurt to look at directly, shown just above the distant mountaintops. Yet, despite its harsh glare when viewed dead-on, I found its light and warmth soothing and inviting.

It was beautiful. All of it. This whole world was precious and beautiful, and I wanted to keep flying above it for the rest of my life.

So, I would.

“You’re pretty fast,” I heard a pony ask from beside me, her voice sounding scratchy to my ears, but not unpleasant.

I peered to my right and saw that I was not as alone in this sky as I’d initially thought. A pegasus mare with a soothing blue coat and sporting a rainbow mane was keeping pace at my side. Her amethyst eyes held a subtly challenging glint in them, as though she was likely to invite me to compete against her in a race at any moment. Of course, I didn’t want to race. I just wanted to fly.

“I know,” after all, I was the fastest mare that I knew. I could cross the whole of the Neighvada Valley in hours if I felt like really pushing myself, and that was without the Gale Force. I’d be pretty worn out when I got to where I was going, but I’d be there.

“Wherever you’re going, it must be pretty important,” she observed.

“I’m not sure,” I responded, barely even registering how small and distant my own words sounded, “but I’ll know when I get there.”

“Oh?” the mare smiled, seemingly intrigued by my answer, “you’ll know when you’ve gotten to a place you didn’t know you were going to? How exactly does that work?”

I shrugged, “it’ll feel right.”

The blue mare nodded, “flying by your wits and instinct. I can appreciate that,” then her eyes adopted a sad quality, “I lived most of my life like that, in fact. Planning for today, and letting tomorrow tend to itself.

“It’s a dangerous recipe for most ponies,” she cautioned, “but if you’re skilled enough, and determined enough, you can still go pretty far like that.

“But skill and determination won’t carry you the whole way to your destination,” I glanced over at the mare, who had fixed me with her own intense violet gaze, “oh, you’ll feel like they can. That’s the danger of being awesome: you just blow through everything that the average pony thinks is really difficult. You start to think that everything in the world is easy, and that other ponies just won’t put in the effort.

“But the truth is that it’s you who stopped putting in the effort.”

She surged ahead of me with ease, coasting along on her backside like she might as well have been floating down a stream. She motioned for me to catch up. So I poured on a little more speed too. It wasn’t enough. The mare’s expression was growing impatient, and her urging for me to close the distance was growing more insistent. I pressed myself harder, working to coax even a little more speed out of my wings. Yet, every time I thought I’d pushed myself enough to catch her, she remained just out of reach.

“What’s wrong? Why can’t you keep up?” the mare demanded, annoyed at my failures.

“You’re too fast!” I gasped, still trying to muster another drop of speed out of my body which was insisting that it had reached its limit.

“I thought you were fast?”

“You’re faster,” I protested, though I didn’t let up yet. I wanted to beat her now, if only to drag her ego down a peg. Who did this mare think she was anyway? Yet, for all my efforts, I started to falter, and slowly began to lag further and further behind.

“No, I’m not,” the rainbow-maned mare insisted, “I’m old and worn out. My hayday is long behind me. You’re young, vibrant, powerful. You could fly circles around me if you really wanted to.”

“Obviously not,” I remarked dryly.

“I said you could if you wanted to,” the blue pegasus chided, pulling even further ahead of me, “you obviously don’t want to.”

I snarled and tried to redouble my efforts to match the other flier’s speed, but only found myself lagging even more, “yes, I do!”

“Oh?” the mare twirled lazily ahead of me, yet still somehow managed to maintain her breakneck pace that I simply was unable to match, “and why’s that?”

My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I tried to tell her that I wanted to beat her for the sake of proving that I was faster, but the words refused to form in my throat. My frustration mounted further as a result, and the distance between us continued to grow. Instead, I merely glared at the mare, who didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

“I asked you why you wanted to beat me,” she repeated in a sarcastic tone that let me know that she was well aware of my stymied efforts to respond, “I’m still waiting to hear an answer.”

Again I tried to speak, and once more my voice refused to come forth, leaving us to fly in silence a few moments longer. In the midsts of another piercing glare at the mare, I saw something taking shape in the distance. A beacon of some sort. A ray of light that was shining up from the ground. My mind was suddenly filled with overwhelming desire to reach that signal, for I knew it to be my ultimate destination.

This mare could race herself for all I cared. I had better things to do. With a final, dismissive, snort at the blue pegasus, I veered down and streaked towards my goal―

Only to be drawn up short by the other mare as she moved so fast it was as though she materialized in front of me. I suddenly found myself at a dead stop. Yet, at the same time, there was no indication that the mare had used any significant force to restrain me. She’d only held out a single slender hoof, which now rested upon my chest with only the softest hint of a touch.

I blinked in surprise, glancing between her face and the hoof that had brought me to a halt. I grunted in annoyance and went to smack aside her impeding hold on me. She was stopping me from getting to where I needed to be. My surprise and frustration compounded when I discovered that I was inexplicably unable to budge her hoof so much as a inch. Confused and annoyed, I elected to cut my losses and simply fly around her.

That was when I discovered that even my own wings weren’t moving anymore. I was paralyzed in the air, motionless, at the mercy of this strange multi-colored mare.

“You are skilled, Windfall; and you are determined,” she mare said. Her violet eyes held neither malice, nor ambivalence. Only pity; and I couldn’t understand. She was my antagonist, keeping me from where I needed to be. Why would she pity me?

“But that’s not enough. It’ll feel like it, believe me, but it’s not. I know because that’s how I was too,” she continued, “I was so fast, and so powerful, and so fearless,” she let out a deep sigh, “it carried me through most of my adult life. I came to see myself as indestructible…

“So, when the war came...I wasn’t worried in the slightest,” her lip curled up in a wan smile, yet her eyes remained pitying, “because I knew―I knew―that my awesomeness would be all that I needed to support my friends and help them succeed,” her smile shifted slightly as the haze of distant memory briefly glazed her eyes, “and we very nearly did,” she said in a near-whisper, “we came so close…”

She glanced over her shoulder at the beacon that was calling out to me, wearing that same sad smile. Then she looked back at me, “but I lacked what I needed to take me all the way, just like you do.”

“And what’s that?” I said, surprising even myself that I’d managed to speak aloud again.

“Heart,” she said, “my heart wasn’t in it. Because, deep down, I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing, the way that I was doing it.

“Sure, I wouldn’t back down from a fight―not even with a dragon big enough to eat me in one bite―but I never wanted to kill anything! But that was what you had to do in a war,” she shook her head, “and even from the beginning, I knew that I’d never be able to put my all into it, because I didn’t agree with how things were being done, and why they were being done that way.

“Killing and destruction? Was that really all we could have done to bargain with the zebras? Nothing else? Nothing at all?” she shook her head, “I didn’t believe that,” then she turned to me and leaned in close, placing her mouth next to my ear, saying in a whisper that was almost too soft to hear, “and neither do you.”

She pulled back again and glanced over her shoulder at the radiant light in the distance, “which is why you won’t make it as you are. You can’t go the distance.

“You don’t know the way…”

The pressure was so slight―almost delicate―but it was enough. My wings were still inexplicably paralyzed, refusing to move no matter what I tried to do.

I started falling. A wordless scream was expelled from my mouth as I plummeted out of the sky, heading towards the dense arboreal forest beneath me. My legs kicked and flailed, as though even without any feathers, they might yet somehow manage to bestow me the ability to cease falling. It was a desperate, vain, hope, and it proved predictably futile. Inevitably, I was swallowed up by the canopy below.

Leaves cut at me, branches lashed my body like vengeful whips. Every inch of my passing saw me brutally punished and beaten by the trees who seemed to be consciously affronted by this pegasus who had dared to trespass into their realm so suddenly and without invitation. One of those trees was apparently so offended, that they saw fit to beat me with a limb that was as wide around as I was. Every ounce of beath left me in that moment, ending my torrent of ‘oofs!’ and ‘ahs!’ as I’d received my thrashing.

My sudden silence allowed for the resounding ‘crack!’ of my wing shattering to be heard quite clearly for many miles around. Through the intense pain, I somehow managed to hang on to just enough awareness to recognize that my agony was not yet over. While that limb did indeed prove to represent the lower limit of the forest’s brutal canopy, it also marked the beginning of the last leg of my fall.

And I would most certainly hit the ground with enough residual speed to break my neck as thoroughly as that tree had broken my wing. I shut my eyes tight, not finding myself willing to watch the ground rush up to bestow upon me its final farewell.

My surprise was total when I felt myself slowing down. My eyes snapped open now, my brain too curious to know how the very laws of physics had been so flaunted to remain ignorant of the source of my salvation. Yet, even seeing it, I wasn’t certain that I believed it all that much.

I had been caught, it seemed, and was currently being cradled in the limbs of: a giant, pink, butterfly. My stunned expression was frozen on my face as the massive insect glided on its immense wings and deposited me ever so gently upon the leaf-strewn forest floor. I stepped carefully, not certain that I wasn’t dead.

“Th...thank you?” I offered to the butterfly.

“You’re very welcome!” it replied in a sweet voice that sounded amazingly delicate for such a large bug. Then the creature lifted higher into the air again and ascended back into the canopy, vanishing from sight. I watched it leave in slack-jawed amazement.

Yet, the voice persisted, “my, you took quite the nasty fall! Are you sure you’re alright?”

I jumped with a start, my head snapping to look back in front of me. It hadn’t been the butterfly who had spoken, I quickly realized―after all, that would have just been silly!―but rather, it had been a demure looking yellow pegasus mare with her long silky pink mane brushed over the right side of her face. Her deep blue eyes were locked upon my left wing, which was bent at an obviously all too wrong angle.

My own gaze rested on the mangled limb, “I hurt my wing,” I offered dully, chiding my obvious statement. Flushing, I looked around for my saddlebags, “it’s fine. I’ve got a healing potion or something around here to fix it…” only I didn’t. My saddlebags were nowhere to be seen. Had they been caught up in the trees?

The yellow mare curled her nose at the mention of the purple liquid and shook her head, “good heavens! That stuff is just meant to be used for cuts and scrapes! Something like a broken wing needs more than that.”

“Oh,” I said, “well, I don’t have any Hydra, so―”

“Ugh!” how was it possible for that mare to look adorable while making a disgusted face, “that stuff’s more poison than medicine. Come, lay down,” she stepped over and guided me down until I was neatly crouched down on the ground with my legs tucked beneath me, “I’ll take care of it.

“You can’t just rush in and throw every random bottle of ‘medicine’ at an injury like this,” she chided me―if her delicate tone was even actually capable of ‘chiding’ anypony. She slipped off her own pink saddlebags and began to dig through them, retrieving some bandages and a few bottles of various ointments and salves, “you’ll risk doing more harm than good!”

“I mean, that’s what everypony does though,” I said defensively, “when somepony gets hurt, they drink a healing potion. I mean, for the really serious stuff you might need to see a doctor, but for regular, everyday, stuff like bullet wounds and cracked ribs, a healing potion seems to do the trick.”

The mare shook her head as she rolled up one of the bandages into a pad and poured a little of one of her elixirs onto it, “this might come as a shock to you, but bullet wounds are not ‘regular’ things,” her words sounded sad, almost defeated, “at least, they didn’t use to be,” she stepped over and reached out to touch my wing with the potion-infused pad.

I winced in anticipation of the pain such contact was likely to cause, but her touch was apparently so gentle that I felt no discomfort at all. I watched in amazement as the mare began to very carefully clean out the wound. She continued speaking as she did so, “once upon a time, ponies managed to go their whole lives without breaking bones or getting shot,” the yellow mare appeared to be trying to make light of her own words, but I saw her eyes misting almost instantly.

She sniffled and cleared her throat, “but that was a long time ago,” she took a deep breath and straightened herself up a little as she focused more intently on getting every last piece of debris out of my wound.

I found myself nodding in sympathy, “well, it’s how things are now, I guess,” I saw the mare wince and tried to follow my words with something a little more inspiring, “but I’m working on fixing that,” I insisted, “I’m making the Wasteland a better place.”

“Are you?” it was hard to tell if the pegasus was being politely inquisitive, or if she was dubious. Her words retained their sweet sound, yet I could see a hardness just behind her eyes that seemed so out of place among the mare’s otherwise soft features, “and how are you doing that?”

“I’m stopping the bad ponies,” I informed her, not sounding as sure of my words as I might have liked, “helping the good ones.”

“I see,” the mare said in a surprisingly short tone. She put away the pad and fetched a needle and some silk thread, “and it’s working?” she murmured around the hook-shaped steel barb in her teeth, “the world is becoming a better place?”

As had happened in the air only minutes earlier, I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came out. However, this time it wasn’t because my body was suddenly incapable of producing speech. It was a much simpler this time: I had been about to lie to her, and that didn’t feel like a very nice thing to do to a mare like her. I bit my lip and hesitated. Then, “I don’t think so,” I admitted reluctantly, “the Wasteland doesn’t feel any different.”

“I take it that means that you’ll stop doing what you’re doing,” the mare said as she took the needle to several deep gashes along my wing and began to very diligently sew the rent flesh together one stitch at a time.

“No! Of course not,” I frowned. How could I stop trying to help ponies?

“But I thought you said it wasn’t working,” the yellow pegasus reminded me, “why would you keep doing something that isn’t working?”

“Because doing nothing sure isn’t going to help!” I protested, feeling that much at least should be obvious to the mare.

“Well, of course it isn’t,” she agreed, putting away the remainder of her thread and taking out several thin wooden slats and more linen bandages. The mare applied the slats to the joints of my wing, gently arranging the distorted limb into a half-extended state. When she had attained the desired positioning, she started to encase my limb in the linen wraps, “but doing the wrong thing can often be worse than doing nothing at all.”

Just beyond the mare, I spied a copy of myself with a mangled wing. She had a vial of purple healing potion to her lips and was drinking it. Before my eyes, I saw her spasm and her mouth spread open in a agonizing silent scream as the wing twisted and bent under the influence of the potion that she―I―had just drunk. When it was over, the ivory pegasus looked in horror at the appendage that, while no longer ‘broken’, was clearly not something that would ever let her fly again.

“You can’t just act,” the mare continued, seemingly oblivious to the other little white flier with the mangled limb behind her. Indeed, when I looked back, I no longer saw my double either, “you have to make sure that you’re taking the right action.

“I didn’t hesitate to join my friends,” she continued. I wasn’t sure that she was necessarily talking about medical treatment anymore, “everypony was doing something to help, and I knew that I had to as well. I couldn’t bring myself to fight, but I believed that I could help in other ways.

“A war meant that there would be wounded. They’d need ponies to help them, and to care for them,” she said in a voice that was trembling now, her eyes awash in memory, “their bodies were broken...and so I fixed them,” she closed her eyes now and shook her head, “but that wasn’t what was going to actually help them.

“They’d go right back out, break again, and return...if they were lucky enough,” she swallowed, “I never took the time to take a step back and look at what I was doing. I was just acting. I was doing what I thought would help, and not paying attention to whether or not anything was actually getting better.

“...then it got worse,” she said in a whisper, “it wasn’t just their bodies anymore that couldn’t stand up to the fighting, it was their minds too. Again, I just acted and tried to repair the damage,” tears were streaming down her face now. All I wanted to do was reach out and take the mare into a comforting hug, but I found myself unable to move, just like with the other rainbow-maned flier.

“I wasn’t helping,” the mare insisted bitterly, “I was causing them even more pain and suffering by letting the war drag on longer, and longer. I was adding to the suffering,” the mare looked up and peered at me now through her tear-filled blue eyes, “just like you’re doing.”

Her words struck at my core, inflicting far more pain than those trees ever could have if I’d fallen miles through their branches. Once again I tried to respond, but I could say nothing. It seemed that this mare wasn’t done with me yet anyway, “you’re throwing potions at the wound, but you haven’t even bothered to look at what the injury is,” her eyes left me for a moment, looking beyond me. I turned my head and followed her gaze. It was faint, but I could see, for a brief, fleeting, moment, a faint light emanating from deep within the forest. In an instant, I recognized it as the beacon from earlier, and I knew that I had to get there.

The other mare appeared to be able to read my thoughts, “you won’t make it there as you are,” she insisted. The light vanished into the depths of the forest once more, “you don’t know what to do...”

I looked back at the mare, my mouth open and half a response formed on my lips. Those words died without form, as the pegasus was no longer there anymore. I looked around me in every direction, but could see no sign that she’d ever even been there. Well, no sign save for my bandaged wing anyway; which was now aching quite noticeably.

With an annoyed grunt, I turned around and began walking in the direction that I’d seen the light in, even as the yellow mare’s words echoed around in my skull. It didn’t matter what she’d said. I knew that I had to get there, and I was confident that I would, even if I had to walk the rest of the way. So I started walking deeper into the forest.

I walked, and walked, and walked. After I’d done all that, I walked some more. My frustration mounted with every passing hour. From the air, the beacon hadn’t looked nearly this far away. A few times, I had begun to doubt the direction of my travel, fearing that I’d wandered off course and had overshot my destination. Every time I hesitated and thought about turning back though, I would catch another glimpse of that light, looming tauntingly out of reach ahead of me. It looked so close every time, just past the next line of trees, and yet it never was.

It was like I was being toyed with.

Finally, in a fit of exasperation, I sat my haunches down in a huff at the base of a tree and resolved to take a short break. I didn’t honestly feel particularly tired by my journey thus far, but I did feel a little peckish. Of course, my saddlebags were still missing, and along with them any food that I normally carried with me.

My nose twitched. I sniffed reflexively and my eyes widened as I caught the the sign of something sweet nearby. It smelled a little like Sugar Apple Bombs, but so much more intense. Almost like it could have been a genuine…

I looked up and discovered the source of the enticing aroma: my chosen rest spot turned out to have been directly beneath an actual apple tree! I immediately stood up and reared onto my hind legs, stretching myself out as long as I could along the tree’s trunk. A grunt of annoyance escaped me as I realized that I was falling far short of being able to reach any of the tantalizing red fruit. My left wing still ached, and was sealed away within its cast, so flight was out of the question. Even leaping while wildly flailing my right wing in the hopes of attaining sufficient altitude wasn’t proving fruitful.

...I wasn’t sure how mad I was at my brain for that pun.

My next endeavor was to try climbing the tree. The trunk proved too wide around for me to get a good grip by wrapping it in my limbs though. Charging the tree and trying to outright run up the trunk only ever got me halfway there, and the landings were never very graceful. After landing on my back for what was either the sixth or seventh time―I hadn’t thought to keep a tally―I took a moment to simply lay there and come up with a better solution.

“Lan’ sakes,” I heard a mare chuckling from nearby. My gaze shifted to my right and I spied an orange mare sporting a stetson stepping into view from around the back of the tree that I had been failing at trying to climb, “you sure are a determined sort, ain’t’cha? Not so much big on brains, I reckon; but no shortage of spunk,” she propped herself up against the tree and looked down at me, “it’d be downright commendable, if’n it weren’t so funny t’watch!”

I felt my cheeks flush and very quickly righted myself, glaring balefully at the stubborn tree that was thus far refusing to let me have one of its apples, “I’m hungry,” I said plainly before bobbing my head at my splinted wing, “and I can’t fly.”

The mare snorted and craned her head to look around at her wingless earth pony back, “well, shoot,” she said in a feigned sigh of resignation, clicking her tongue, “Ah guess we’re both gonna starve then,” when she turned back around, she was still wearing her amused smirk from earlier.

“Well then how exactly do you suggest we―” even as I had started speaking, the mare took two steps away from the tree, cast a brief look back in its direction, cocked her hind leg, and delivered a deft kick to the base of the trunk. The action stunned me to silence as I watched the sight in bafflement, “...what was the point of that? You’ll have to hit it a lot harder if you’re trying to knock it―”

The mare held her hoof up in front of her muzzle just in time for one of the apples to land perfectly cupped by her sole. She glanced at me with one half-lidded emerald eye, a satisfied smirk on her face, and took a slow, deliberate, bite of the apple. She closed her eyes and sighed in appreciation as she partook of the crispy fruit, a dribble of sugary juice slipping down her chin. When she swallowed the bite, she looked back at me, “Ah’m sorry. You were sayin’?”

“How’d you do that?” I said flatly.

The mare popped the remainder of the apple into her mouth, scarfing it down with a few vigorous chews before swallowing, “do what?” she reared on her forelegs and once again delivered a sharp jab with her hind legs. Just as before, a single apple became dislodged and fell towards the ground, the green-eyed mare snapping it out of the air and devouring it ravenously before grinning at me, “that?”

“Yeah,” I growled bitterly, “that,” I stepped up closer to the tree and looked between it and the mare, “can you get one down for me too?”

“I can,” the mare nodded.

My features instantly brightened and I stood there, waiting patiently for her deliver another of her bucks to the apple tree and free up a morsel for me as well. However, it quickly became clear that the mare wasn’t making any move to do so. I frowned at the mare once more, “aren’t you going to…?”

“Nope,” she said simply.

My eyes narrowed, “why?”

“Well, as Granny Smith used to say: give a pony an apple, an’ll eat fer a day. Teach a pony to apple-buck, and they’ll eat fer a lifetime!”

“Apple-what?”

“No, apple-buck,” the mare corrected patiently, giving me a gentle pat on the head, “are yer ears stuffed up or som’it?

“Here, watch closely,” the mare instructed as she once more took up a position facing away from the tree, “apple-buckin’ comes down to three basic parts. Step one, is havin’ the proper posture. Square yer shoulders, set yer hips, and make sure your back is straight,” with every point, the orange mare made an exaggerated motion with the indicated part of her body.

“Step two, is to line up yer shot,” she turned her head nearly all the way around to look back over her shoulder at the tree, “ya wanna make sure ya get ‘er right inna middle. Too far to either side an’y’ll risk a ricochet,” the mare stretched out on of her hind legs and set it flat against the apex of the trunk’s curve, tapping the location gently.

“An’ step three, is making sure you buck it with jussss’ the right amount of pep,” she said in a cautionary tone, “too soft, an’ you’ll get nothin’,” she reared and let her hind hooves land on the trunk with an anemic sounding thunk, “too hard, and you risk breakin’ somethin’ important,” her eyes lingered on my splinted wing, “an’ Ah’m thinkin’ ya ain’t got many more limbs t’spare.”

I rolled my eyes. The earth pony moved aside and motioned for me to stand where she had been. I was a substantial bit shorter than the blond-maned mare, so I had to position myself a little closer to the tree. I went through the same exaggerated motions of ensuring that I had my body properly aligned with the tree, and sought out the right spot to hit it. Satisfied, I reared up on my forelegs as far as I could, coiling my legs in tight.

When I felt myself start to roll back towards the tree, I sprung out with as much force as I could, pumping every ounce of strength that I could muster into the double-kick, like I had done to so many enemies over the years. If my kicks were potent enough to pulverize skulls, then surely I could get a tree to quiver a little…

My hooves connected, and I felt the impact reverberate throughout my whole body. Yet, at that same moment, I also heard the sound of would splintering with thunderous clamour. Then the trunk gave way beneath my hind hooves. Bark snapped, and branches scratched at one another as the massive apple tree gave its death kneel and toppled behind me. I turned just in time to see it crash to the ground, a triumphant grin on my face.

I raced forward to claim my bounty, not even noticing the disappointed expression on the face of the orange mare standing next to me. It hardly mattered, after all; I had my apples! I reached a hoof through the tangle of boughs and leaves, retracting it reflexively in disgust. I looked at my hoof and stuck out my tongue, shaking away the smear of pulverized fruit that was more rotting leaves than apple at the moment. Instead, I continued to search through the tangled mess of branches for one that had survived the fall intact.

However, I soon discovered that none such examples existed. As impossible as it might have seemed, every apple had been mashed into the ground beneath the tree, crushed into dirt-flavored applesauce. I let out a frustrated groan and cupped my head in my hooves, “that’s not fair!” I protested, “I knocked the tree down! I should get at least one good apple out of that!”

“If ya jus’ wanted one good apple,” I heard the orange mare saying from where she’d remained standing behind me. I looked back at her, only now seeing her previous amused gaze tinged with remorse, “then why’d y’all knock down the whole tree?”

I looked around me at the destruction and shrugged, “I mean, I thought that instead of getting down one or two, this is how I could get them all at once.”

The mare continued to stare at me with those disappointed emerald eyes, “Ah never said you could only get down one with every buck,” she pointed out, “ya could’a had as many as ya wanted. Ya jus’ had to know how much force it took t’get what’ch’a wanted.”

“Oh,” I felt my stomach knot up in embarrassment as I carefully stepped away from the felled tree, “I didn’t know that.”

“S’alright,” the mare insisted, though she still didn’t sound like she was feeling alright. Nor did it seem like she was still looking at the fallen tree either, “Ah didn’ know either.

“My friends needed my help,” she went on, in a distant tone as she watched events play out that only she could see, “an’ it’ll be a cold day in Tartarus when Ah don’t give my all to helpin’ my friends when they ask fer it.

“But jus’ like with apple-buckin’, there’s such a thing as too much. Ah didn’ know that back then. Never occurred to me,” she bowed her head and closed her eyes, “Ah wasn’ tryin’ to get jus’ ‘a couple o’apples’ with what Ah was doin’. Ah was tryin’ to knock down the whole tree,” she looked up again, surveying the damage, “an’ all Ah ended up doin’ was makin’ things a big’ol’ mess.”

The orange mare looked at me now, her emerald eyes drilling into me, “only, it weren’t buckin’ and trees. It were guns, an’ cannons, an’ missiles, an’ bombs, an’ power armor, an’ tanks,” she looked away from me, unable to hold my gaze in her shame. The mare trembled, “Ah weren’t thinkin’ o’what it was Ah was even tryin’a do!

“How’re ya suppose’ to know how hard to kick if’n ya don’t even know how many apples y’wanna shake down from the tree?!” she spat bitterly. The mare was silent for a long moment as she stood there, trembling in her grief, “...how big a gun d’ya gotta build to end a war?”

“I...I don’t know,” I admitted.

“THEN WHY’N TARNATION ARE YA KICKING SO HARD ALL THE DANG TIME!”

I hadn’t been prepared for that thunderous scream from the distraught earth pony. The force of it sent me scrambling back from her several steps, leaving me speechless as I gaped into her tear-streaked face. My mouth tried to move and form a rebuttal, but I couldn’t.

The mare continued, advancing on me, “ya, kick, an’ ya kick,” she spat, “ya buck so dang hard. Every. Time. Like you won’t ever need yer legs to buck again! An’ Ah get it,” her tone shifted abruptly, as though she were more aggravated with herself than she was with me, “Ah do―Ah really do! Ah understand not wantin’ to hold anythin’ back,” she was trembling again, fresh tears in her eyes, “‘cause yer afraid that if ya don’t go far enough―by even a hair―that all yer friends’ll pay the price.

“Yer so scared…” she said, her words cracking, “it don’t occur t’ya to think what happens when ya go too far,” she looked to the fallen tree, and I followed her gaze, “and what it’ll cost,” then the both of us seemed to become aware of a light in the distance. It held me, entranced, looking so close now that I could almost reach out and touch it.

“You won’t make it there as y’are,” I heard the mare say, though I couldn’t bring myself to tear my eyes from the light and look at her, “‘cause ya don’t even know how far you’ve gotta go…”

That last remark shocked my senses enough to cause me to look at her again, “but how am I supposed t―” only she wasn’t there anymore. Nor was the light when I tried to find it once again either. I hung my head and sighed. Figures. You’d think Ah’d be used to it by now.

I winced and swatted myself on the head a few times to knock the drawl out of me.

Then I shook myself and took a breath to focus myself and resumed walking in the direction that I’d seen the light in. I had to get there, no matter what. I couldn’t afford to let anything else distract me from getting―

“Freeze!” a very raspy and demanding voice barked from beyond the trees.

―Because of course something else was going to happen!

However, I very quickly discovered that I was not the target of the command. I crept further ahead cautiously, peering around a robust oak. What I saw, positively inflamed me. It was a merchant pony pulling her cart, and she’d apparently been set upon by a raider. The scraggly unicorn bandit was wearing what could only have described as barding in the loosest of terms, comprised of a mishmash of old tire parts and crudely shaped road signs. Similarly, the pistol floating beside him in his glowing telekinetic field had visible rust showing on the slide. I’d lay even odds if it was even capable of firing more than once before seizing up into a useless hunk of steel.

The caravan pony, an earth pony mare with a brilliant pink coat and an utterly unruly mane of fuschia curls, stood between the raider and her wares, completely defenseless it seemed. Neither of them appeared to be the least bit aware of me at the moment. I could very well have managed to bypass the whole affair, but I didn’t want to think about what would become of this unfortunate mare if I didn’t do something to help her. So, I resolved to intervene and started creeping carefully closer to the pair. With my wing splinted, I wasn’t going to be able to dash in there and dive upon the unicorn bandit from above, and having no weapons on me meant that I needed to be sure that I was right on top of him before he noticed me. His pistol might only work properly for the one shot, but if that shot hit me square in the head…

Fortunately, his attention seemed to be utterly consumed by the merchant that he had cornered, so I was rather easily about to sneak up to within just a couple yards of the unicorn stallion without any issues at all. Unfortunately, I had apparently failed to account for one thing when formulating this plan of mine, and that had been that the merchant was a few rounds short of a full magazine.

“Oh!” the pink earth pony mare exclaimed in an excited tone, waving her hoof wildly in my direction. Her baby blue eyes danced with excitement, “hi there! You’re just in time for―!”

The unicorn stallion wheeled around, gaping at me in surprise. Even as I let out a very unkind epithet under my breath, I wasted no time and lunged at my target. As close as I’d managed to get before having my presence revealed, I didn’t need my wings to cover that distance quickly. A single leap was all that it took to connect with the unicorn, tackling him to the ground.

A lifetime of experience took over now, as the two of us ended up with me strandling the stallion’s chest. I slammed my forehooves into his sternum, shocking his lungs and prompting him to expel every last gasp of breath that he’d had in him. The unicorn would only need a second to recover from this, but that was more than enough time for me to reach down and hook my fetlock around one of his hind legs. I let myself off him only slightly as I gave the leg and sharp yank, spinning the stunned stallion onto his stomach.

I fell upon his back now, slipping my forelegs around his neck, one of them across his trachea and the other pinned behind the base of his skull, clamping them together as I strangled the life out of him. I could already hear the unicorn gagging as he fought for breath. Failing that, he began rolling around frantically in an effort to dislodge me, but I refused to relent. I was out of his reach, and he only had seconds left before he lost consciousness. A minute after that, if I maintained the pressure, he’d be dead and then I―

My thoughts were interrupted by a blur of fuschia and pink as something leaped upon the both of us, “pony-pile!” Both my grip and my concentration were broken as the dense body of the earth pony mare I’d been trying to save bounced onto my own backside and wrapped me up in a strangle-hold of her own, “aww, I didn’t know you were a hugger! That’s so sweet!”

I watched, terrified, as the unicorn stallion scrambled away from us, now free from my grasp, and galloped away into the wilderness. I supposed that he could have done a lot worse to us, once he’d been freed, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to rally later and come back to seek his revenge on the two of us. He might even bring friends next time. With a irritated snarl, I fought free of the pink mare and hopped away from her before turning around and glaring at the merchant, “what is wrong with you?! I almost had him! Now he’s gotten away!”

The mare blinked at me a few times in seeming incomprehension. Then realization dawned upon her features, but it was immediately apparent that the conclusion that her mind had come to was not the one that it should have, given the situation, “geez, you’re right!” the mare sprang back up onto her hooves and hopped back over to her wagon, where she began to rummage around in it contents, “I didn’t even have a chance to give him his ‘Congratulations on Your First Mugging!’ celebratory cake!”

Then, quite contrary to my expectations, the mare did, in fact, produce a lavishly decorated cake from her cart. Equally baffling to me was the fact that it did have the words, ‘Congratulations on Your First Mugging!’ written across it in icing. More than that, below the message was an additional word: ‘Anzac’.

I glanced between the cake and the earth pony, “wait...is that...his name?!” I pointed at the last word.

“Yepperoonie!” the mare exclaimed, grinning broadly.

“You knew that pony?!” My brain was simply refusing to accept that any of what was happening made any sense whatsoever.

“Nope! Never met him before in my life!”

“But―wait, hold it,” I pressed my hoof to the bridge of my muzzle, feeling a headache coming on that was more intense than any of the hangovers that I could remember. I took a moment to try and arrange my thoughts for my next question, “how can you have a cake with his name on it if you’ve never met him before?” Then it occurred to me that actually wasn’t the most confounding thing about this situation that demanded an answer, “why would you congratulate a raider on mugging you?!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” the mare posed in what was the most serious tone I’d heard her use thus far, though it still contained more mirth than I could recall ever hearing in anypony’s voice, “did you see that poor pony? He was half-starved, poorly armored, barely armed; and yet, in spite of all of that, he was ready to risk his life just to get a few half-dented cans of Cram. Yuck!” the mare produced three cans of the ‘meat’ substance that was immediately familiar to any Wasteland denizen. Much like she’d described too, they had all clearly seen much better days. I wasn’t sure that I’d have trusted what was in them to still be edible after the abuse they’d suffered over the centuries.

“And for all he knew,” the mare went on, “I could have been some unicorn with disproportionately freaky telekinetic abilities that would let me twist his body around like a party balloon or turn his own blood into a sword to cut him to pieces with. Or maybe I could have even been a super-cybernetic security mare who could do all sorts of crazy flips with my super zebra cyber-legs before blasting him to atoms with a gun capable of blowing up the moon!” the mare exclaimed, rising onto her hindquarters and flipping around like I’d never seen anypony manage on the ground.

Finally, the mare came to a stop and settled back down on all fours, “that would be utterly terrifying; he’d never have had a chance!

“It takes a really brave pony to risk that for Cram,” the mare pointed out. Then she added in a genuinely subdued tone, “or, you know, a really, really, desperate one who had no other option but to either risk getting shot trying to get some food, or starve to death,” even her mane looked depressed at that thought, and lost nearly all of its bounce.

I frowned at the mare and shook my head, “horseapples―”

The pink mare gaped at me, “Gasp! language!”

I blinked, “did...did you just say the word ‘gasp’, and not actually gasp?”

“It was an anomadapea,” the mare replied primly.

“An ona...anama...huh?” that pain on the bridge of my nose was back. I reached up and rubbed that point in my head, squinting hard in an effort to dispel it. This mare was going to drive me up a wall, “whatever. Anyway,” I took a breath and tried to pick up where I’d left off, casting a wary look at the strange pink earth pony, “that’s...crap?” the mare didn’t react, seeming to let that word pass by without comment, “if he was really that hungry, then why not go find his own food? Old ruins are rife with stuff like that.”

The pink mare nodded somberly, “well, when feral ghouls, monstrous radscorpions, and crazy robots lurk in every aisle, you don’t find a lot of eager shoppers. You should know better than anypony how dangerous it is out there in the Wasteland,” she pointed out before turning back to her cart and slipping herself through its yoke. The mare then began to trot bouncily through the forest, leaving me behind.

Not satisfied to let the argument end there, I cantered after the odd earth pony, pacing right along side of her, “yeah, it is dangerous out there,” I agreed, “and prospectors risk their lives every time they go into places like that. Are you telling me that they deserve to get robbed at gunpoint for all their work?”

“Of course not,” the mare rolled her eyes, “that’d be ridiculous! But it wouldn’t kill them to share a little of what they could spare.”

“So? That doesn’t mean they should have to.”

“You don’t have to save ponies,” the pink earth pony quipped, “but you still do.”

I balked slightly at that, but didn’t back down from my position, “that’s my choice. I don’t think anypony else should have to put their neck on the line for anypony else just because I do.”

“But you’d like for other ponies to do it, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but―”

“You even had your friend, Homily, ask for ponies to volunteer to help you.”

“Hey, that’s not the same as―”

Yet, the pink mare refused to let me have my piece. She wasn’t being mean about it, per say, but her tone did have a slight edge to it as I continued to protest, “you’re an important pony in the Valley. You’ve made yourself highly visible, and you aren’t shy about your opinions. Ponies like you get noticed and, whether you know it or not, ponies are listening to what you say.

“They’re taking your advice to heart,” I fell silent now, listening to the strange earth pony. There was a sort of bitter aspect to her words that I couldn’t quite understand given what she was saying about me. Shouldn’t it be a good thing that I was making a difference in Neighvada?

“It’s too bad that your advice was to kill other ponies, and not to try and help them.”

Again her remark dug at me, and I felt a little ashamed. Yet, I still didn’t back down, “just bad ponies like raiders and White Hooves and stuff,” I insisted.

The pink mare stopped abruptly, and I very nearly tripped over my own hooves doing so without warning as well. She wasn’t looking at me though. The mare was staring straight ahead of her. I followed her gaze and instantly felt myself tense. It was the unicorn raider from before! I coiled back, ready to launch myself at him and finish the fight between us that had been interrupted earlier―

―Then I noticed that he wasn’t alone. However, it was immediately obvious that his companions weren’t any sort of martial support. It was two ponies: a very pregnant earth pony mare and a young unicorn colt, barely little more than a foal. Both of them were huddled together, taking shelter within the confines of an overturned wagon. Even from where I was standing, I could see that the pair were visibly emaciated. The clothing they wore was more filth than fabric.

As I watched, the unicorn raider trudged slowly towards the cuddling pair. The mare was the first to react, raising her head up to look at the stallion, a silent, desperate, question held within her gaunt features. The raider bowed his head and shook it slowly from side to side. It was the answer that the mare had already known was coming. She’d just been holding out for the vain hope that she’d been mistaken. Beside her, the little colt began to cough, prompting his mother to bend her head down and gently nuzzle him.

Meanwhile, the stallion, glanced back at his now empty holster, his rusted excuse for a pistol having been lost during our tustle earlier. I could see the despair clear on his face. Yet, lying just beneath it, was the barest glint of determination. He didn’t yet know how he was going to do it, but he was going to provide for his family or die trying.

Even if that meant killing innocent ponies to do it…

“A really good friend of mine, who’s a lot smarter than me, called it ‘game theory’,” the pink mare said, standing next to me as we continued to watch the display, inexplicably remaining unnoticed by any of them, “but if you ask me, it’s a pretty lousy game. It’s no fun at all.

“He knows that there’s food in the ruins,” the pink pony said, nodding to the unicorn, “but he also knows that he’s no match for even a small bloatsprite. After almost two centuries, all of the easy to get food has already been gotten. All that’s left are the most dangerous parts that even the ponies who are really good at exploring have left until last because they were so dangerous. Going through the parts of an old city that haven’t already been looted is a death sentence for a pony like him.

“But he also knows that ponies like me have all sorts of things. Either food, or valuables that can be traded for food. And it’s way easier to ambush and rob a pony than it is to take on a horde of feral ghouls!”

The mare shrugged, “so, of course he was going to become a raider. He didn’t think he had any other choice.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” I protested.

“I never said it did,” she countered, “I just pointed out that he doesn’t have many better ways to help the ponies he cares about,” the mare glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, “and nopony is willing to help him,” then she frowned, “well, almost nopony…”

She turned back to the scene, and I resumed watching. As though on cue, another mare walked into view, seeming to materialize out of the aether. She was dressed in brahmin leather barding that was stained with what I recognized to be blood. I could also see the green smears of paint splattered across it. She was a Viper. The mare’s mouth was twisted into a sadistic little grin as she approached the unicorn stallion. Wordlessly, the mare produced a box of Fancy Buck Cakes and held it out to the stallion…

...along with a new rifle and a set of ‘fresh’ barding with those same green markings. He was being recruited into their gang, I realized. The stallion didn’t even hesitate. He took the gun and the barding, and was instantly transformed into one of their members, joined all around by other ponies dressed in Viper colors. They were all armed, and all of them eager as they ran out and descended upon another distant caravan, gunning down all of the ponies who were a part of it and taking their belongings.

It tore me up inside to simply stand there and watch all of that slaughter, but I couldn’t seem to move in order to do anything to stop it. All that I could do was look on and despair. The pink mare beside me didn’t look particularly pleased by the sight either, but she also simply stood motionless.

“When ponies are desperate, and they need help, they start to care less and less about the price that comes with it,” she said in a soft tone. Then she glanced at me, “you say you want to help ponies, but you would rather have killed him.”

I glared at the mare reproachfully for a moment, but wasn’t able to continue to meet her piercing blue gaze and eventually looked away, “I didn’t know,” I protested.

“The problem isn’t that you didn’t know,” the mare said, reaching out and gently patting me on the back, “it’s that you didn’t even try to find out.”

Her hoof shifted from my back and guided my face to once more look at the scene before us. Time had reverted, it seemed. I found that we were once more looking at the despondent unicorn stallion, having just had to break the news to his starving family that there would be no relief for any of them that day either. Again, a mare sauntered out of the darkness.

Only, this time, it was a mare I recognized instantly. It was me. I was dressed in my wonderbolt barding, but I wasn’t carrying any weapons. Instead, held in my mouth was a bindle bag. The two grown ponies turned to look at me with eyes full of suspicion and fear. My doppleganger stopped a short distance from them, not wanting to try their nerves too much, and deposited her small burden on the ground at her hooves. She undid the simple knot on the cloth sack and revealed an assortment of fresh foods, likely from one of the many farms around Seaddle, and a few vials of medicine.

The other me nudged the bounty closer to the unicorn stallion and then took a few steps back to help him feel more at ease. The pseudo-raider was still quite suspicious, and he didn’t take his eyes off the armored pegasus, but his horn started to glow and he floated the contents closer to them. After a cursory inspection of the goods, apparently concerned that there was some fowl trick at work, he wasted little time in passing the choice morsels to the mare and giving some of the medicine to his ailing son. All the while, the mare who wasn’t me simply sat on the outskirts of the scene and patiently watched.

When the stallion was satisfied that his family had been seen to, he turned his attention back to the armored mare and slowly approached her. The pink mare and myself, despite being so close to the raider that I could have reached out and touched him, remained completely unnoticed. Yet, we were able to hear the words that the two of them exchanged.

“Why?” the stallion croaked out, torn between his suspicion and his gratitude.

The not-me shrugged and smiled, “I’m the Wonderbolt. I’m here to help.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but hesitated. His eyes wandered back to his family briefly. When he spoke, it was without meeting the younger pegasus’ eyes, “I’m grateful. But…” it was only a temporary solution, the real me realized. A stop-gap. When the food and medicine ran out again, he’d go back to raiding. The next time that the two of us met, I wouldn’t be coming at him with a bag of food.

My imposter seemed to have thought of that though, “I know, it won’t last forever. Tell you what: I know some ponies not far from here. They need some more hooves to help out. I’ll talk to them. As long as you’re willing to play nice, they’ll keep you and your family fed and safe.

“Deal?” the other pegasus held out her hoof to the raider.

The stallion gaped at the flier, caught off guard by the enormity of her offer. Yet, how could he say ‘no’? She was offering him everything that he could have ever asked for. She’d saved his family. He reached out and touched her hoof, “deal!”

An uncertain smile, feeling so foreign and unfamiliar to the unicorn’s features, started to take shape as he turned away from the armored mare and regarded his family. They were going to be fine, he realized, tears starting to run down his cheek. Tears, not of despair, but of joy, and relief.

I heard the mare next to me sniffling, and turned to look at her. She was wiping her own eyes, but it didn’t seem that she was being emotionally caught up in how heartwarming the scene playing out before us was, “I wanted to help ponies too, you know?” she said, her voice cracking. Her mane slowly began to flatten out and fall over her shoulders as she spoke, “my whole life, all I wanted was for everypony to be happy.”

“My friends needed my help keeping everypony happy, even when there was so much happening to be sad about. It was really hard,” she sniffed again, “but I knew I had to help everypony I could…”

“...I just hadn’t realized that it wasn’t just ponies who were suffering.”

I looked back at the raider family. Only, they weren’t unicorns and earth ponies anymore. They were zebras. The ruins around them were fresh, smoke still billowing around them from raging fires. An air raid siren blared in the distance. I could see flights of pegasi flashing by overhead in their black and purple power armor. Flashes of emerald and ruby light streaked down from the heavens, ravaging the town around us. The three terrified zebras huddled beneath their pitiful cover as torrents of lethal magical energy rained down, vaporizing their friends and comrades.

Then they were no longer zebras either. They transformed before my eyes into a trio of the lanky horses that were Hoplite’s race. Nor was it pegasi squadrons that were terrorizing them. A flight of dragons of all shapes and sizes strafed their homes, raking the surface with blazing columns of fire that seemed to melt the very stones of the buildings themselves.

“The whole world was suffering,” the pink mare was whispering, “and all I cared about were my fellow ponies. And why shouldn’t I have?” she offered in mock defense, “after all, I’m a pony. I should care more about my own kind than others, right?” the vision of the trio had them as zebras sheltering from pegasis warriors once again, “especially when those others are the enemy.

“Right?”

Time passed. The raid ended. The fires dwindled to nothing but embers. The coast clear, the zebra stallion ventured out from beneath their cover. He looked to the sky and glared, uttering something in a language that I didn’t understand, but still recognized it as an epithet from the raw anger in his voice. The stallion reached out and retrieved a rifle that had been carried by one of the town’s slain defenders. He checked to ensure it was loaded, cast one last look at his family, and then galloped off into the distance.

Towards the Equestrian front.

“You were at war,” I offered by way of trying to assuage the mare’s guilt, “you couldn’t be expected to help the enemy.”

“They’re not the enemy if they’re your friends,” the earth pony countered.

The scene reset once more. Only this time, there was no raid. The trio of zebras were walking down the street, which was pointedly not smoldering in any way. Then, something caught the stallion’s attention from the side. The three of them tensed up and cowered. In a few seconds, I saw what it was that they were looking at enter my field of view: a pair of ponies galloped up to them. However, these weren’t soldiers, I soon discovered. They were dressed in bright pink uniforms, wearing leg bands that brandished a trio of floating balloons. There were no weapons anywhere to be seen. Instead, they came trotting up with pastries and helium-filled floating balloon animals, passing them out to every zebra that they came across.

There were zebras who were less than receptive, yes, but it looked like many more were, if nothing more, quite perplexed by the intrusion into their town. As I watched, more and more of the pink uniformed ponies filtered into view and began striking up enthusiastic conversations with the striped residents. Everything seemed to be calm and pleasant.

“I could have advocated for cupcakes when everypony else was demanding that we send bombs,” the pink mare said bitterly, “but I didn’t. I was focused only on those that were most familiar to me.

“Which,” she sighed, “isn’t a good way to make friends at all,” she turned her head and glanced at me, “neither is killing.”

I shook my head, “I don’t do it because I like it,” I insisted, “raiders are dangerous. I need to get rid of them, for the good of everypony else!”

The mare sighed and bowed her head sadly, “killing a raider gets rid of a bad pony. Converting a raider gets rid of a bad pony and gains you a good one,” she flashed me a wan smile, “it seems pretty obvious to me which option is the better one.”

Something beeped, startling me and drawing the pink mare’s attention to her fetlock, where she was wearing a watch that I could have sworn had not been there just a second ago, “oop, my time’s up!” she sat up on her haunches and clopped her hooves together. Instantly, I flinched away as a blinding light suddenly appeared off to my right. I shaded my eyes with my fetlock and looked to see that the beacon drawing me had appeared once more. The pink mare didn’t seem to be particularly interested in it though. She was turning her cart around, preparing to leave.

I glanced between her and the light. Finally I asked her, “aren’t you going to tell me I can’t make it there or something?”

The mare’s lips spread out in a smile once again, her mane gaining back a small amount of it earlier bounce, “why bother? You seem to know that already.”

“Could you at least tell me what it is?”

Her smile broadened slightly, her eyes twinkling with amusement, “it’s not a ‘what’, Windfall. It’s a who,” she turned and started trotting away. As she faded from sight, I heard her last words floating out from the darkness, almost taunting me in a lyrical fashion, “and that’s why you won’t make it there as you aaaare!”

I snorted in annoyance. That hadn’t been very helpful. With a shake of my head, I turned to the light, which seemed so close now, and resumed walking towards it.

Indeed, it turned out that the source of that light had truly been very close now. In fact, I had only to venture beyond the next rise and I could see it as plain as day: a glowing ball of brilliant white light, formless, floating there in the middle of a glade. Relieved to have finally made it to my destination, I slowly started to approach the light. It was almost too bright to look at directly, but it gave off no heat whatsoever.

However, just I was close enough to almost touch it with my outstretched hoof, the light vanished. Though, I suppose that it might have been slightly more accurate to say that it simply ‘turned off’, for there was something left in its place. An object that, though so rudimentary and simple in its appearance, sent a shiver down to my very core. It was a terrifying object, and I began to back away from it, my mouth agape in wordless horror as I lost even the ability to scream and express the totality of my anguish.

Where the light had been, was now a steel sword, upraised, and floating in the air about a foot off the ground, balanced upon its pommel. I recognized it for what it was now. It was the most vile part of me. The source of my grief and the torment that my very soul went through each and every day: my cutie mark.

“...no” I finally managed to get out, so quiet that even I barely even heard it, “no!”

I turned and fled. However, I made it only half a step before I tripped over something on the ground and face-planted. I writhed there on the ground for a moment, trying to get my bearings. Then I froze when I saw what it was that had impeded my escape from the floating symbol of my despair: a...chaise lounge?

My brain was busy trying to fathom the existence of the dark stained oak and red leather piece of furniture that had materialized in my way when I became aware of the fact that I wasn’t alone in the clearing anymore. Something was nearby. I craned my head and found that there was indeed another pony here with me. It was a white unicorn mare with some of the most meticulously styled hair that I had ever seen in my life. It must have taken gallons of styling gel to get her deep violet mane and tail to maintain those twists and arches.

“Do watch your step, darling,” the unicorn said, as though only tangentially aware of my existence. She was currently standing in front of a rather large mirror, admiring herself as she floated in a sunflower yellow hat from beyond my line of sight and set it upon her head, “that’s my favorite fainting couch. I’d hate to see it mussed up too badly,” she used a length of sheer silk to bind the hat in place, her magic tying the ends into a neat bow just beneath her chin. Once that was done, she cast a reproachful look at our surroundings, “it’s bad enough that I had to drag it all the way out here in the first place.

“It’s not exactly patio furniture, you know!”

She turned away from the mirror and cast her appraising eyes upon me, a contemplative look upon her face. Her features were almost immediately creased by distraught frown lines, “oh, heavens, dear! You look an absolute sight! When’s the last time your coat even had a proper shampooing?”

“Sham-what-now?” I managed to reply, despite my mounting confusion.

The ivory unicorn shuddered, “oh, I’m so glad I didn’t survive the war. I simply would have died without access to hot showers and my Acqua Di Palomino!”

I opened my mouth to comment on her contradictory statement, but the unicorn didn’t seem to be of a mind to be interrupted quite yet. Her horn began glowing with soft blue light and I found myself lifted up into the air, plopping down in front of the mirror that she’d been admiring herself in a few seconds ago. She then procured an ivory brush and began to ruthlessly attack my coat, waging a total war upon every gnarl and errant hair. It was quite painful, actually. Yet, at the same time, it was immensely satisfying.

If there was a downside, it was that looking into the mirror gave me a clear view of the sword floating in the middle of the clearing. I averted my gaze, suddenly finding the ground at my hooves to be immensely more interesting that anything visible in the mirror. The mare seemed to be oblivious to my discomfort as she continued to speak, “don’t you worry you’re soon-to-be-pretty little head, darling!” she gushed, obviously quite enjoying being able to address what she saw as her own personal kind of crisis to be solved, “I have a patented nine step program that is guaranteed to transform any mare from drab to dazzling in no more than seven hours!”

I cocked my head, still avoiding looking in the mirror, as I tried to glance back at the unicorn skeptically, “seven ho―?”

“First,” she carried through, brushing my words aside with as much abandon as she was giving to my hide, “is obviously a vigorous brushing, which will be followed by a thorough rinse. Then an invigorating shampooing, followed by another rinse―this time with mineral water imported straight from the Yaket Mountains. A meticulous clipping to ensure that every hair is it’s proper length. A third rinsing. A second shampooing―with Acqua Di Palomino, of course! A fourth―and final―rinse. And, to cap it all off, we apply a thin patina of coconut oil to your coat.

“You’ll glisten like the undriven snow!” the mare positively gushed, “and then…” her tone took on a slightly more hesitant tone, “we can tackle your...mane,” she paused for a moment, “tell me, dear: are you entirely married to the short look? Vanity Mare magazine says that shoulder-length is all the rage these days. I have some mane weaves that we can try―”

“I like it short,” I informed the mare before she could get too deep into planning what to do with it, “it fits under my helmet better that way. And it doesn’t get in my eyes when I’m shooting.”

“Ah. Yes,” the mare responded in a stiff tone, as though she’d been asked to swallow something bitter, “well...I suppose there is something to be said for practicality over aesthetics,” she didn’t seem to sound very convinced of this though, “I had a friend who never appreciated artistic flourishes either, when she felt they got in the way of her flying.

“Of course,” the mare continued on as she resumed assaulting my coat with her brush, “she could have just changed her flying habits to something a little less...rugged. But what do I know about looking good,” she sighed, “I was just Equestria’s premier fashionista, after all…”

“Look, I appreciate all that you’re doing, really,” I said, trying to sooth the mare who currently held the integrity of my fur in her hooves. My eyes darted ever so briefly to the mirror before I averted them again, “I don’t suppose we could do this somewhere else?”

“What?” the mare sounded surprised, “but you worked so hard to get here! Why would you want to leave?”

“This wasn’t what I thought it was,” I offered in a meek tone, “I was wrong. I want to go.”

“Oh, come now,” the unicorn protested, “it can’t be all that bad…”

I shook my head vigorously, “I don’t want to be here. Look, I know I came all this way to meet you, but can we please go someplace else to talk about whatever it is we’re supposed to be talking about.”

The brushing paused for a moment, and I could see in the mirror that the mare was wearing an amused little smirk on her lips, “moi? Oh, darling, you didn’t come all this way to meet little old me!” the brush resumed assailing my back. I’d have protested if it didn’t feel so good.

“But that pink pony said I was meeting somepony here,” I said, “if it’s not you, then who am I here to find?”

Once again, there was a pause in the brushing. The unicorn was glancing off to the side at something I couldn’t see, “my, it seems that we have a guest. You two should get acquainted!”

I turned my head to follow the line of her gaze. Surely this is who I’d come all of this way to meet. Only, when I beheld who was approaching, I felt myself tense up reflexively. It wasn’t a pony who was coming my way, it was a hell hound! Frantically, I looked to the mare to warn her about the dangerous creature that was shambling towards us. Only, she wasn’t there. The unicorn with the purple mane was nowhere to be seen at all.

No, that wasn’t true. She just wasn’t anywhere near me. I did eventually spot her though, bound and on the ground at the towering hell hound’s feet. The large dark gray canine was glaring down at me, cracking the knuckles of his long, claw-tipped forepaws. He then reached up and straightened his steel spiked collar, “pretty pony is Rover’s now!” he declared in a scratchy voice, “you! Leave!” he jabbed a claw in the direction of the distant forest.

My lip curled back in a sneer, “the fuck I will! You let her go, right now!”

“No!” the canine snapped back. His right paw vanished from sight behind his back, emerging a second later gripping a long steel-tipped spear. The polearm held fast, he charged me.

Reflexively, my head jerked towards where my compact forty-five was usually sequestered. However, much like my saddlebags, the concealed holster was also conspicuously absent at the moment. My broken wing added yet an additional handicap to me in this fight as well, preventing me from simply flying out of range of any of the hell hound’s attacks. Instead, I was forced to dive out of the way of his first jab with the leaf-bladed weapon.

I spent nearly all of those first moments of the fight on the defensive. His weapon’s reach forced me to stay too far out of reach to manage to deliver any punches or kicks without the ability to simply fly around his strikes. All I could do was give more and more ground in an effort to keep from being hit. It was incredibly frustrating, and my gaze continually darted to the bound and gagged unicorn mare laying at the edge of the glade. There was simply no way for me to get to her like this―

My latest hop to the side was interrupted by my unexpected collision with something hard, but apparently not particularly heavy. Which was fortuitous, because that meant that it didn’t stop me completely from dodging my attacker’s latest lunge. It did, however, slow me up enough that the razor sharp blade managed to open up my shoulder. The cut wasn’t deep, but it did bleed pretty freely, and it hurt a lot.

With an enraged scream, I clamped down on one end of whatever I’d knocked over and swung it around in a desperate arc, hoping to catch the hound with it and at least get myself some room to maneuver while I came up with a better plan.

The sound of ringing metal echoed across the clearing. The canid’s spear was knocked from his grasp, flipping through the air until it was lost in the treeline. My eyes locked onto the now disarmed hell hound, my teeth clamping down more solidly around my own weapon of opportunity. I glanced down at it in order to get a better appreciation for what it was that I was working with, and I froze.

I was holding the sword. For the span of a heartbeat, I felt that knot of dread in my gut tighten, but it passed just as quickly, pushed from my mind by the knowledge that this detestable blade was the only way for me to vanquish the hound and rescue the mare that he’d taken prisoner. Her safety came before my own discomfort. So I renewed my resolve and launched my own attack upon the canine.

A few menacing flourishes had the fiend making his own awkward retreat, even as he swung with his massive clawed fingers in an effort to get at me. My lip curled in anticipation as I stumbled, dropping my guard for just a moment. Much to my delight, the hell hound fell for the feint and rushed me. A simple side-step at the last moment and a smack against his knee with the flat of my blade saw the canine crashing to the ground.

I wasted no time and leaped on him before he could get up, perched atop his chest. The sword clutched in my mouth was poised down at his throat, the tip resting against his pulsing jugular. All it would take for me to end his life was a deft twist of my own neck and the clearing would run red with his blood. The threat that he posed would be gone from the world forever.

All that I had to do was twist my neck…

My eye twitched to the side for a brief moment. We’d come down near the mirror, laying such that the two of us were framed perfectly in the reflective surface. I saw myself quite clearly then. The simple steel sword, so alike in appearance to the one emblazoned on my flank, was pointed down at the vanquished canine’s neck, held firm in the grip of my teeth. There I was: the monster-slayer. The killer.

Both of remained there, frozen in place, for what felt like an eternity, my blue eyes locked onto his wide, green-slitted pupils. Both of us were breathing hard from even that short boudt. I could see the understanding there, the realization that his life was in my hooves...er, mouth, rather. I saw the fear there too. He didn’t want to die. If I was being honest with myself, I didn’t want to kill him.

Did I really need to? Was his death going to solve anything that hadn’t already been resolved by this existing defeat? He wasn’t a threat anymore. Not to me, and not to the mare that he’d taken hostage. Sure, maybe he’d go on to try this with somepony again. Of course, maybe this moment of imminent death had shaken him enough that the next time he thought about taking on a pony...he’d remember this moment and think again.

It was worth giving him a chance, at least.

So, I removed the sword from his throat. Slowly, and with an eye to his nearby paws, ready to reconsider my action if it looked even for a moment like he was going to abuse my mercy. It seemed pretty clear though that he recognized his defeat, and he made no threatening movements as I backed off of him completely. The sword still in my mouth, held at the ready, I mumbled around the hilt, “goah!” I snarled, jerking my head towards the treeline, “weave!”

Cautiously, the hell hound got back up onto his haunches and stood up. He looked at me with a suspicious glint for several long seconds, as though doubting my sincerity. However, apparently he decided not to question my motives too thoroughly. He reached up, swatted some dirt off of his red waist coat and slowly trudged off in the direction of the treeline. I let out a relieved sigh and placed the hilt down on the ground, letting the blade lay flat against my shoulder, at the ready in case he returned.

Then I remembered the mare and looked around for her―

“Well done, darling! Bravo!”

I just about flew up into the sky, despite my broken wing, as I heard the mare yelling from behind me. She popped into view, prancing around me in a celebratory fashion, apparently completely unharmed, and unrestrained. In fact, not a single strand of her mane even seemed the least bit out of place despite what must have surely been some rough handling to bind her like she had been. She came to a stop directly in front of me and leaned in, delivering two quick pecks to either side of my muzzle, much to my own embarrassment.

“You do make quite the dashing knight, I must admit,” she beamed. Then she looked off in the direction that the hell hound had gone, “thank you, Rover! You did very well too!”

“Pony owes Rover for this!” I heard him howl back, “tiny bird pony ruined Rover’s favorite vest!”

The mare scrunched up her nose in mild disgust, “that old rag? Puh-lease, darling, I’ll have a new and much more fabulous vest made for you by tomorrow. You’ll be the envy of every diamond dog in Equestria!”

This vow was met with grumbled mutterings that slowly faded out of earshot. Leaving me to gape at the mare with a mixture of rage and disbelief, “this was a setup?!”

“What?” the mare gasped, looking almost―almost―genuinely shocked at my accusation, “no―no!―of course not! It was a...motivational exercise, yes!” she grinned at me, batting her very full lashes at me innocently. Then she stepped up close to me and pressed her cheek against mine, forcing the two of us to look into the mirror again, “and, if you ask me, I think it did the trick.

“Don’t you?”

The image I saw in the mirror this time wasn’t the perfectly framed tableau like when I’d been straddling the hell h―er, the diamond dog. I didn’t see a wide view of myself and the alabaster unicorn. It was only me, and even then only a specific part of me. The mirror seemed to have been focused in on my cutie mark. I knew it well, of course, the upraised sword framed by a pair of white wings, resting over a red heart. I’d known it since I was a filly, for the portent of death and woe that it had been.

However, it wasn’t just my cutie mark that was visible. My shoulder had made it into frame as well. The one that I had rested the sword’s blade against. I stared at the image, my head slowly canting to the side as I really took in the image:

An upraised sword. Next to it was a white wing. Beneath that blade, were I to strip away my own flesh and muscle, would have been the approximate location of my own beating heart. The arrangement was, in a sense, a very real manifestation of my own cutie mark. My magically imbued destiny.

Yet, I hadn’t slain the diamond dog, had I? I’d fought him yes, and defeated him. But I had, in the end, spared his life, spilling not a single drop of his blood in the process. Which, was apparently a good thing, since I suspect that the mare would have been quite cross with me if I’d killed a being she appeared to be on equitable terms with for some reason.

I noticed something else too: how this scene contrasted with the one I’d seen earlier. The sword had been pointed down then, poised at the canine’s throat in preparation for the kill. Right now, it was upturned, in an orientation that I’d consciously made because―in the absence of a proper scabbard―this was the easiest way for me to have it at the ready quickly, by bending my head down and picking it up if I needed it to defend myself. This was a protective orientation, not an aggressive one.

“...it’s pointed up…” I heard myself say.

“Sometimes,” I heard the mare say from somewhere behind me, and no longer by my face, “we don’t need to change who we are to be satisfied,” I turned around and found that it wasn’t just the two of us anymore. The other four ponies that I’d encountered on my journey here were present as well, “we just need to change our perspective,” the unicorn said, smiling sweetly at me. Yet I could see that there was so much pain behind her pretty blue eyes.

“I lost that perspective,” she admitted, looking around at her companions, “I found that I didn’t like how the world looked anymore, and so I tried to change it,” she shook her head, “but I did it in all the wrong ways. I took all the things that I thought were ugly and wrong, and I hid them away. I locked them up so that nopony could get to them. But that didn’t actually solve any of the problems.

“It just made ponies forget where the problems had come from. Ponies forgot that there had once been a better way of doing things,” she looked between the others and sniffed, “We forgot that ponies―and all of the other creatures of the world―had once been able to work together, and that they could be better for that cooperation.”

Now her attention returned to me, “just like you, darling. You forgot about yourself, distracted by the world around you, and what you thought you had to be to survive in it. You sacrificed who you were,” she said in a mournful tone, “and that doesn’t help anypony. Least of all yourself.”

“I didn’t know,” I said meekly.

“I think you did,” the unicorn corrected me in a gentle tone. I knew she was right too. I’d always felt that something was...off. But I’d drowned out that protesting voice with alcohol and denial, “but you can’t deny who you are―who you really are―anymore, dear. You must embrace your destiny.”

“...I’m not going to make it though, am I?”

All five ponies were silent for a moment, exchanging looks with one another. Then the orange earth pony spoke up, “we honestly don’t know what the future has in store. That’s not our place.”

The blue pegasus with the rainbow mane chimed in, “all we can do is set you on the right path...”

“...and give you the tools you need,” her fellow yellow flier added.

“How you chose to use our advice...” the orange mare continued once more.

“...and who you help with it...” the pink bouncy mare added.

“...That’s ultimately up to you,” the white unicorn finished. All five of them beamed at one another, pleased with themselves for their successful execution of their coordinated speech.

I frowned at the group of mares, “but, you guys all kept talking about how I ‘couldn’t make it as I-’”

“As you were, yes darling,” the unicorn interrupted, still smiling, “but you're not the same mare you were last night, are you?”

“Well, not after all of this, I guess,” I admitted. Then her words fully penetrated my skull, “wait, what do you mean, ‘last night’?”

The mares began to look around at the scenery, feigning innocence. Eventually the orange earth pony spoke up, “well, ya’see...it’s sorta mornin’ already. Y’all’ll probably be waking up soon,” she winced now, biting her lip pensively, “y’all’re gonna want to prepare yourself too. Things kinda got ‘complicated’ while y’all were, uh, ‘out’.”

“How complicated?” I deadpanned before being overtaken by a wave of anxiety, “are they attacking?!”

“Not...quite…” the blue pegasus stressed. However, before she could elaborate, all five of the mares recoiled as a brilliant ball of light erupted into existence directly behind me. There were sounds too, distant and muffled. I turned to look into the light, which didn’t seem to actually affect my eyes in any way.

The yellow pegasus and pink earth ponies were at my side, looking into the light with me, “aww. Well, it looks like our time’s up,” the pink mare bemoaned before giving me a potent hug goodbye. My state of shock only permitted me to return it half-heartedly, but the mare didn’t remark on that if she minded.

I looked to the pegasus at my side, “how bad is it?”

She opened her mouth, as though to reply, but then seemed to lose her resolve. Instead, she looked between me and the light, and then gave me a brief hug as well. Then...I was alone in the clearing. The mares were gone, as was the furniture, and the sword. Even the trees were nowhere to be seen. All the remained was me…

...and the light.

I let out a deep sigh, “well...here it goes…”

I stepped through the light.

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t lying on a bed anymore. Nor was I even inside. Well, not in the same sort of permanent structured that I’d last remembered being in at any rate. This appeared to be the inside of some sort of tent.

Though, I had to admit that, for a tent, it was very nice. Clean, spacious, and constructed out of a synthetic fabric of some sort. So, clearly not a White Hoof or other tribal tent. Which was good. However, it was also a far cry from anything that any of the ponies in Shady Saddles would have had. Which was bad. Very, very, bad…

I moved to get up, and that was when I realized that I wasn’t a free mare any longer. Both my front and rear legs were bound together with shiny, brand new, steel hoofcuffs. My wings, too, were securely strapped to my sides by plastic-coated steel rope.

Only one group that I knew of could possibly have access to resources like this in such impeccable condition, and that was―

“Well, well, well,” I heard a young sounding voice say from the tent’s entrance, “my most unworthy adversary awakens!”

My head whipped around to the source, falling upon a rather peculiar sight. Though one that was no less dread-inducing for its oddness.

The mare―though her diminutive size more accurately suggested a filly―was attired in a suitably small set of white combat barding that had clearly been tailored to fit her. The barding matched her equally ivory mane, and her coat was a slate gray color that wasn’t even a shade different from Arginine’s. Her amber eyes were different though. They weren’t impassive in the slightest. To the contrary, they held a great deal of very apparent emotions within them.

Which only made my fear compound, because I saw within those eyes such a look of vicious triumph as I hadn’t seen since Cestus and Whiplash had had me in their clutches. This didn’t strike me as a passing coincidence either.

“Oh horseapples…”

Footnote: Level Up!
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