Longing makes the heart grow fonder, but I've always been a fan of hog-
tying my lovers to make sure they don't escape.

“Are you crazy?!”

I winced slightly at the violet unicorn mare’s question, which had been asked in none too pleasant of a tone. I was also quite cognizant of other faces in the cozy little suite above Sandy’s bar that were currently watching me with intent expressions, patiently awaiting my answer to the―admittedly fair―question. It was not the first time, nor the only variation, that Foxglove had asked me that question since initially confronting me outside the city. Whatever my response, I had a sneaking suspicion that it wouldn’t be the last time either.

“We can’t just kill him―” I began to insist once more, only to have the unicorn mechanic cut me off.

“I beg to differ!” Foxglove scoffed, “in fact, I’ll go down to the guard barracks right now and show you exactly how easily I can ‘just kill him’! My only regret is that I’ll only get to do it the one time!”

More concerning than the all-too-convincing note of jubilation in her voice at the prospect of killing Arginine, was the scattered murmurs of agreement that I heard from the other ponies in the room. I glanced around at them, the mercenary leaders and their seconds, and it was hard to blame them for being just as critical of my decision to spare Arginine’s life as my friends were. They’d all lost ponies―and griffons―in the battle; and each of them had figured out by now that the arrival of General Constance on the evening we’d reached the town hadn’t been a coincidence.

Mercenaries on my personal payroll or not, I was genuinely at risk of having a mutiny on my hooves if I handled this badly enough, “nopony’s killing him,” I repeated through gritted teeth, meeting Foxglove’s glare with my own and holding it, “he’s too valuable.”

Foxglove readied to retort, but I cut her off this time, “RG knows the layout, protocols, and systems of his stable,” I pointed out, then I glanced over at the gathered mercenary commanders, “and unless any of you managed to take any other prisoners…?” I knew the answer to that question before I’d asked it, of course. The stable ponies hadn’t made it very feasible to capture them alive with the way that they’d been fighting, even if any of our forces had been so inclined to give them an opportunity. It was something of a minor miracle that the ponies who’d found Arginine hadn’t simply killed him right out of hoof, “...I didn’t think so.

“I’m not saying that we give him free rein to wander around like before,” I conceded, turning back to Foxglove once more, “by all means, keep him under guard―hobble him, even!―but he lives. Got it?”

The mare snorted, but remained silent. I wouldn’t go as to say that I’d left her feeling at all mollified by agreeing to have somepony keeping an eye on him until everything was over and done with, but it was a step in the right direction that she was no longer ranting about executing him. That put her in about the same camp that Ramparts and Starlight were. It wasn’t ideal, and it was a far cry from what our relationships were like a week ago, but I’d have to settle for it for the time being. When all of this was over with, then I could work to smooth things over with everypony.

The mercenaries were another matter, “you guys got that too?”

Griselda spoke up first from where she was sitting on the far side of the room, running a rasp noisily over the tip of her recently replaced metal beak. Her old one had been shot off during the fighting. She paused in her filing, leveling her gaze at me, “nobody said anything about slumming it with traitors,” she said, then she shrugged, “but I can look past that...for some additional hazard pay.

“Our rate’s just gone up twenty-five percent. Up front; or we’re sitting out the rest of this brahmin shit.”

I saw the others nodding their heads in agreement, and I felt my gut starting to tie itself in a knot. They were already getting pretty much every cap that I had. There was no way that I could come up with anything approaching the amount that they were asking for, even just for the griffons. To say nothing if the other three groups asked for the same increase; and I couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t if I caved into the Razor Beaks.

Even with everything that Arginine could tell us about his stable, there was no way that my friends and I could manage on our own. We needed the guns and muscle that these groups provided. If they backed out...we lost. If I backed down and caved in, everypony died.

I slammed my hoof down and snarled at the griffon, “I told you at the outset how risky all of this was,” I reminded her, “if you want to turn feather and fly back east because you decided your crew can’t hack it, that’s your business. But if you think I’m paying you a cap more than the small fortune you’re already getting off me, you’ve been huffing too much of that high-altitude air, lady.”

My response earned my a very pointed sneer from the griffon hen, but it was Hemlock who responded next. Her tone wasn’t nearly as antagonistic as the griffon’s had been, but it was no less serious, “honey, none of us are out here because we fancy ourselves heroes. That’s your schtick. We risk our lives for caps. The higher the risk, the higher the price; and trolling around with a pony who’s looking to sell us out to his buddies represents a lot of risk,” she leaned back in the thickly cushioned recliner that she’d claimed and smirked, “so, yeah, we’re going to need a lot more caps too.”

My attention was drawn briefly to the sound of a door opening. I was just in time to catch Starlight Glimmer leaving the room. She hadn’t said anything, and I had no idea where she could be going at a time like this, but I didn’t have much time to dwell on the minor mystery either.

I felt my heart sinking. This couldn’t be how things ended. I refused to let it happen, “and where exactly are you going to spend any of those caps, huh? That army that surrounded us last night is just the first of many more that’re going to be coming. If you thought the fight this morning was tough, how hard do you think things are going to go when you’re trying to protect New Reino from an attack five times bigger?

“These aren’t White Hooves,” I insisted, “they’re not looking to launch a little in-and-out raid for food and slaves. These ponies are here to kill every last pony living on the surface. Every bottlecap on the planet won’t do you a lick of good when they succeed, will it?”

The griffon leaned in a little closer, her sneer turning upwards into a sadistic smile, “then I guess it’s a good thing we’re mostly griffons, isn’t it?” she clicked her metal beak at me and motioned with her talons towards her subordinates. The group headed for the door, “we’ll hang around town for another day or so,” she said over her shoulder, licking her metal beak, “taking advantage of the new buffet that opened up outside the walls. If you change your mind, let us know.”

With that, the griffons left.

Along with over a quarter of my ‘army’. The expressions on the faces of the other mercenary commanders suggested that I might lose even more by the time this meeting was over unless I could somehow come up with enough caps to satisfy them. Which wasn’t going to happen of course, “I told all of you right from the start what was at stake,” I reminded them pointedly, “and now you’ve seen for yourself that this stable isn’t playing around, and isn’t to be taken lightly.

“They’re on their way to Seaddle now. It’s only a matter of time before they’re at New Reino. We barely came out on top against a force that we outnumbered, and only because we managed to take them by complete surprise from all sides. You can’t honestly tell my that your groups have the numbers to stop them out in the open?”

The leadership of the Housecarls, Harlots, and Hecate all exchanged glances with one-another. Some of those faces were new, in fact, compared to who had been present in New Reino. The scarred stallion who had been leading the Housecarls had died in the fighting that morning, and Hemlock had a new mare with her whose shoulder was freshly bandaged. Keri, the zebra in charge of Hecate, was looking very...worn. More so than a couple hours of fighting would have explained, I thought.

Finally, Hemlock spoke up, “we get what you’re saying, sweetie,” she began, in a tone that wasn’t―quite―patronizing. Almost, “but the catbird wasn’t wrong: at the end of the day, we’re doing this for the caps. It’s not as shallow as you think though.

“It’s not as though we just sit on that money like a dragon horde,” she explained, “those caps are how we get guns, bullets, medicine, food, and bodies. Today, we lost a lot of those guns and bodies, and, technically, we haven’t actually started the job you hired us to do―which was to hit their stable. So, it’s safe to say that we’ll be losing even more ponies before everything’s over and done,” she held my gaze with a knowing look.

“That’s part of the job,” she shrugged, “we all know that. But if we can’t be sure that we’ll be able to at least replace everything we lose on a job with what we’ll be paid…well, then we start seeing ourselves getting whittled down to nothing. What good does it do to give the Wasteland a tomorrow if we don’t get one too?”

“You can’t honestly feel that way,” I said to the mare, “what about all of the mares, stallions, and foals out there that don’t deserve to be killed because of some stable’s crazy notion of perfection?”

“Honey, ponies die all the time,” Hemlock reminded me, rolling her eyes, “that’s how life works.”

“Well it shouldn’t!” I snapped, slamming my hoof on the floor, “and we have a chance to stop it! We have a chance to be better ponies and help others! Like how this world used to be!”

Keri snorted, “youthful ignorance. A naive heart loudly speaks, from an empty head.”

“Oh, Celestia, spare me from strange stallions who refuse to talk normal...” I sighed under my breath, “but nopony has every used ‘ignorant’, ‘naive’, and ‘empty headed’, to compliment somepony, so fuck you too, you striped asshole,” I flicked the zebra an upraised pinion, “but I’m being serious.

“Yeah, the world sucks. But I don’t suppose that anypony here has thought that maybe things would stop sucking if we all stopped making the same mistakes we’ve been making for two hundred years?”

“That sort of thing only works if everypony agrees to stop ‘making mistakes’ though, right?” the new leader of the Housecarls spoke up, an older blue earth pony whose coat had started to fade some years ago, “otherwise we’re opening ourselves up to being taken out by those who don’t agree to play by the same rules.

“What about the ponies you’ve met in your life makes you think that ponies will suddenly start acting as altruistic as you are?”

“Survival is ‘altruistic’ now?” I shot back, “exactly how long do you expect to live once Constance’s army really gets going? How about when a second army that big show’s up while the first one is still burning the valley down around us?” I glared at Hemlock, “how likely are all of you to see a ‘tomorrow’ then, huh?

“You don’t want to do this whole thing out of some sense of nobility or whatever for the innocent ponies of Neighvada, fine, whatever. But you have to still at least care about what’ll happen to yourselves, right? These stable ponies aren’t going just stay in the valley either, you know? Griselda may think she’ll be safe in Manehattan or wherever, but she’s wrong. In a month, or a year, maybe even a decade, Constance will show up at Manehattan’s doorstep with ten times the numbers they have now and that’ll be the end of everypony there.

“If you back out now you will all die,” I stated firmly, flashing a glare at the gathered equines, “and corpses can’t spend caps. But, if you see this thing through, then you might live long enough to spend those fortunes that I’m paying you to do this.”

The room was silent for a few moments. Briefly, I entertained the notion that my words had started to get through to the mercenaries, but then I saw them beginning to exchange glances with expressions that suggested to me that they actually weren’t very keen on staying around. If another of the groups left, the rest would follow, knowing full well that there’d simply be too few mercenaries left to have a hope of victory. They were just waiting to see which of them would be the first to back out.

I saw the elder leader of the Housecarls starting to stand up from the table when all eyes were suddenly drawn to the opening door and the pink mare walking through. Hovering in front of her, gripped in her cyan telekinetic aura, was a large canvas bag. The bored-looking unicorn tossed the sack onto the table, and it landed with the telltale jingle of caps. A lot of caps.

“There. Another fifty thousand caps,” Starlight grumbled, looking around at the mercenaries, “are we good now? Can we move on to actually planning things?”

The three groups of mercenaries, as well as myself, gawked at the small fortune that had just been thrown in front of us. Keri, looking skeptical, reached out and opened up the sack, spilling a few thousand caps out onto the table for all to see. The zebra looked briefly back at Starlight before nodding his head and sitting back down. The delegations from the Harlots and the Housecarls similarly followed suit, apparently more than satisfied by the presentation of the payment.

“Thanks, Starlight,” I heard myself say, still feeling a little stunned, and having no worldly idea of where the mare could possibly have gotten that kind of money. It had taken Jackboot the better part of a decade to tuck away the nestegg that he’d left me, and Starlight had managed to rival it in fifteen minutes? I had a few questions for her later, to be sure!

In the meantime though, it looked like we could get down to the business of figuring out how to fight the stable ponies.

“Alright then,” I said over a sigh of relief, “let’s get down to business…”

“Starlight!” I called out as I jogged after the mare once the planning meeting had concluded. The pink mare slowed and looked back at me as I caught up, “I just wanted to thank you for what you did back there. You might have just saved the world…”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” the unicorn quipped with a satisfied smirk, “but you’re welcome.”

“But, I do kind of wonder,” I began, nibbling at my lip in hesitation, “how did you―I mean where did you…?”

“The caps? I made them.”

I balked, “what could you have possibly done in fifteen minutes to earn fifty thousand caps?! I didn’t think there were that many caps in all of Shady Saddles!”

“I didn’t ‘earn’ them,” the mare corrected, “I said I made them,” she tapped her horn with her hoof.

“Wait...you can do that? You can just make money out of thin air?!”

“Of course not, that’d be stupid,” the unicorn snorted, causing me to frown at her in reproach. She moved on the explain what she had meant in more detail, “you can’t just ‘make’ things out of nothing using magic. The raw material would have to come from somewhere, and be pretty similar. So, making gold bits in Equestria would have been pretty impossible without already having a source of raw gold at hoof.

“But caps aren’t made out of gold. They’re made out of steel and paint,” she gestured around us at the structures of the town, “and there’s plenty of that lying around. So, I got a couple of gems from Marl to use as a catalyst for a mass transformation spell, collected some scrap steel from a junk vendor, and whipped up some caps,” she shrugged, “any unicorn who’d attended a magic school in Equestria could have done it.”

She thought for a brief moment, “which, now that I think about it, is probably really hard to come by these days…” she frowned, “I can only imagine how far magical research has been set back.”

“Wait, those caps were counterfeit?” the idea of paying the mercenaries in fake money wasn’t sitting well with either myself or a little orange earth pony in the back of my mind.

“What’s to counterfeit?” Starlight insisted, “they’re bottle caps! They are tiny little steel circles that exist to keep soda fizzy! I mean, I know that one mare’s trash is another mare’s treasure, but sheesh! I bet whoever first said that never knew it’d be taken so literally in the future,” she looked back down at me, “I’m not the one who told everypony to put a value on bottle caps; and you’re not about to tell me that it matters how anypony gets the things, are you? I mean, are they minted by a government somewhere or do ponies just dig through old ruins to get them?”

“Umm, well, I mean, I guess―”

“You’re not really about the criticize me for not digging through piles garbage to get a specific kind of trash that ponies are interested in, are you? I mean, if you’re really hung up on this, then I bet I can track down a Sparkle Cola bottling plant and find a bottle press that’ll turn bits of scrap steel and paint into bottle caps the ‘right’ way but…”

“Okay, okay! You made your point,” I huffed, “just...try not to collapse the Wasteland’s economy, alright?” Another thought then occurred to me, “wait, if you could have just whipped up as much money as you wanted at any time, then why didn’t you do that in New Reino?”

“When was I supposed to do that exactly?” the mare deadpanned, “was it after I thought you’d killed my daughter, or before you showed up with a quarter million caps, like, a day later?”

My jaw snapped shut. Oh. Right. I cleared my throat and looked away, “so, yeah, thanks for your help back there; and thanks for, you know, saving my life this morning too.”

“Eh...my daughter seems to like you a lot,” the pink unicorn shrugged, “I figured that she’d be pretty sad if you died,” I gaped at the unicorn, my brow furrowed in consternation as I tried to determine whether or not her decision to help had really been so shallow. Then I saw the mare’s lips curl for a brief moment before she started laughing, “I’m kidding! I mean, not about Moonbeam liking you; she does. But of course I was going to help you back there,” she cleared her throat and glanced around briefly before adding in a much quieter tone, “or should I say: help both of you,” she held my gaze with a knowing look.

I balked, mimicking her quick survey of our surroundings to ensure that nopony we had overheard what she’d said, “wha―? How―?” I stammered.

Starlight waved a hoof, urging me to settle down, “let’s just say that teleportation magic requires the unicorn using it to know exactly how many guests she’s taking with her, eh?” she winked, “trust me, nopony was more surprised than I was when I couldn’t get us out of there immediately. So, I have an idea who the lucky stallion is…”

I sighed, “yes, it’s Arginine’s. Before you ask; yes, I’ve told him about it―after he tried to, you know, get me killed.”

“I should hope so,” Starlight gave a mirthless chuckle, “there were easier ways to get out of foal-support payments even back in Equestria…” she was silent for a moment before adding in a more sympathetic tone, “and how do you feel about...you know?”

I swallowed, “I’m a little terrified, a little excited, and a whole lot of anxious.”

“That sounds about right,” Starlight snickered, then her expression took on a distant appearance, “I remember being so worried about how Sunburst would react. Which, admittedly was stupid of me. We might not have been strictly trying for a foal, but we certainly weren’t taking precautions either, if you know what I mean,” she nudged me in my side as she chuckled, “and, when I saw that he was just as happy as I was, I could focus on being properly worried about whether I’d be a good mother or not!”

This time there was a shadow that came over her eyes, and I knew that she was thinking about how things had turned out with Moonbeam. Sympathetically, I leaned into the older unicorn, “I think Moonbeam turned out pretty well, if you ask me,” I assured her, “and from everything she’s told me, she seems to feel like you did everything you could be expected under the circumstances.”

She took a deep breath and smiled wanly in appreciation of the sentiment that I was offering, “I did a lot wrong though,” she sighed, “I should have been a lot more careful while I was pregnant…”

“Well, I just threw myself into a battle this morning, and I’m going to be fighting a few more in the coming weeks,” I pointed out, “so it’s not like I can judge.”

“How did Arginine take the news?” Starlight asked, shifted the focus of the conversation back onto me.

“Pretty good, I guess,” I said, recalling the stallion’s reaction to the news after the battle had ended, “he said he was looking forward to seeing how our genes melded, or something like that.”

“Oh my,” the unicorn droled flatly, “it’s easy to see how a charmer like that managed to win you over…”

“Yeah, yeah,” I rolled my eyes, playfully shoving the larger unicorn mare. Then my own expression soured somewhat, “but as well as he took the news...I mean, I’m not really going to let him stay in my life right? He tried to have me executed!”

“Admittedly, as far as ‘rocky relationships’ go, that’s a doozy,” Starlight agreed, “I considered breaking things off early on with Sunburst because he never emptied the kitchen trash on garbage day. I got past it eventually―and enchanted the kitchen trash so that it emptied itself―but this thing with Arginine does feel like it’s on a different level. Slightly.

“If you want my advice: I’m not sure that’s something that can be forgiven,” before I could respond, she went on, “I’m not saying you should kill him either,” she assured me, “if only because my Equestrian sensibilities still aren’t on board with the Wasteland’s preoccupation with executing ponies for every little thing.

“I could zap him with a reform spell, if you’d like?”

“He’s not a bad pony,” I informed the mare, “he just has...really extreme views about the world.”

“That’s putting it mildly,” Starlight snorted.

“My point is that he’s already trying to be a ‘good pony’; he’s just doing it in a really wrong way. We shouldn’t be trying to force him to ‘be good’. We should be convincing him that our way is the better one.”

“...isn’t ‘our way’ to kill all of the ponies from his stable? That sounds a lot like something he’d be against,” the unicorn noted.

“That’s not our way,” I countered, catching the pink mare by surprise.

“It’s not?”

“No,” I repeated, “we don’t have to kill all of them to ‘win’. We just have to take away what they need to fight: their stable. Once they can’t make more engineered ponies, then they can’t fulfill their mission to populate the world with their tailor-made ultimate pony or whatever. They’ll have no real choice but to give up.”

“They might not do that though,” Starlight pointed out, “they might keep killing ponies out of spite.”

“Maybe,” I shrugged, “and maybe they won’t. Arginine keeps insisting the ponies from his stable are super smart. That’ll be their chance to prove it,” admittedly, after having dealt―however briefly―with General Constance, I could understand why Starlight might have her doubts. All the more reason to keep Arginine around, honestly; he might be able to talk some sense into some of his brethren, “we have to give them that chance.”

“Says who?” the mare asked.

“Me,” I replied tersely, “because killing shouldn’t be how ponies solve problems.”

I noticed that the unicorn mare had stopped walking suddenly, and I turned around to find that she was staring at me with a look of surprise, “what?”

The mare blinked and then shook herself, an odd smile worming its way onto her lips, “nothing. It’s just...I didn’t expect to hear something like that from the same mare that pulled me out of my sleep tube. You know, the pegasus who didn’t seem to take a lot of prisoners?”

I recalled Starlight’s shock after the fight in the Seaddle outskirts when we’d been ambushed by gangers, and how affronted she’d been by the ease with which I’d killed ponies. Looking back, that day felt like it was part of a whole other lifetime. In a way, I suppose that was even accurate. I cracked a wan smile, “yeah, well, it turns out that even a feather-brain like me can learn something if it’s pounded into my head hard enough.”

“That’s actually pretty encouraging,” she said, smiling slightly more broadly a moment before her expression soured slightly, “but that doesn’t mean that letting all of those ponies off the hook for everything they’ve done is going to sit well with everypony. Forgiveness doesn’t mean amnesty. If the other Wasteland ponies―especially the citizens of Shady Saddles―see Arginine’s stable getting a pass after everything they’ve done, there will be more violence.

“Victims have a right to see those that wronged them punished, Windfall. I’m not saying that they need to die, obviously; but there’s a reason that reform spells were such a staple of Old Equestria. I mean, those spells were available at the local library of every little podunk town. That’s how much our system relied upon them.

“Knowing that there was no longer any way a pony could hurt another again for as long as they lived was how we kept otherwise good ponies from seeking revenge for things that happened to them. It kept our kind at peace for over a thousand years!”

“...until it didn’t,” I pointed out, earning a frown from the unicorn.

“I think a millennia is a pretty solid track record. We’d be lucky to see another run of peace like that, I think.”

“My point is that a reform spell doesn’t ‘solve’ the problem any more than killing a pony does,” I saw Starlight open her mouth as she made ready to counter my statement, and I cut her off with a pinion jabbing right in front of her face, “it’s reactionary. I remember how those Lancers were in Santa Mara after you zapped them all in the head with your spell. They were completely different ponies.”

“That was kind of the point,” the unicorn countered droly.

“And that’s my point! As different as they were, you might as well have killed all the violent, vindictive, assholes that held that town hostage and brought in a whole new group of wholesome, subservient, doormats and dressed them in the Lancer’s old barding. Yeah, that ‘solved’ the problem of ponies holding the town hostage, but that wasn’t the actual problem!

“The problem was that those Lancers became violent assholes in the first place,” I said, “if we can find a way to avoid that, then we don’t need to kill ponies or use reform spells; because there won’t ever be a need. At that point, we’ll see peace that lasts a lot longer than a thousand years.”

“And how exactly do we keep ponies from ever becoming ‘assholes’?” Starlight inquired, not bothering to hide her skepticism.

“How am I supposed to know? I’m a teenager; and, until recently, I was one of those violent assholes.”

“So this was all rhetorical.”

“This was pointing out that we need a better long term solution than murder or brainwashing,” I said flatly, “even if I don’t know what it is yet. But, I feel like if we let ourselves become reliant on one or both of those other things, then we won’t feel motivated to keep looking for that better solution.”

“Assuming it exists,” the unicorn pointed out.

“It exists,” I affirmed.

“How can you possibly know that?”

I bit my lip and hesitated for a moment before replying in a less self-assured tone, “because I had a dream about it.”

Starlight blinked at me in silence for several long moments, “was this dream during the time that you were drugged by Arginine?”

“...maybe.”

“Awesome,” the pink mare deadpanned, rolling her eyes, before walking off, “fine, I won’t zap your baby-daddy. Yet!”

I bowed my head and let out a low, frustrated, groan.

Okay, so maybe the concept that I knew there had to a better way of fixing the Wasteland because of some ponies that had come to me in a dream had sounded a lot better to me before I’d said it aloud, but I still couldn’t shake this feeling deep down that I was right. If for no other reason than because everything that I had experienced last night had felt much more intense than a mere ‘dream’. I’d had dreams before. Last night hadn’t been like any of those. Last night had been like...I don’t know, a lesson?

Too bad I hadn’t been able to grasp what exactly those visions of the statuettes in my possession had been trying to teach me. That didn’t mean that I hadn’t been left with some rather strong feelings in its aftermath though. The one that stood out the most was that the killing had to stop. No simple or easy feat by any stretch, of that I had no delusions. But I knew that it was step one on the path to the world’s recovery.

Of course, knowing a step and implementing it were two vastly different things, especially in this instance. Killing was practically a way of life in the Wasteland as a whole. It wasn’t going to stop overnight. Maybe not even in my lifetime―even assuming that went beyond a week, given our current circumstances. But, if I could just find someway to start the ball rolling...maybe that would be enough.

It was worth trying.

My pipbuck chirped, drawing me out of my reverie, and I glanced down at the device a moment before a familiar voice began emanating from the speakers, “Windfall, can you hear me?” Moonbeam asked. I cocked my head slightly, noting that there was noticeably more distortion in the synthesized voice than I was used to hearing from transmissions received on my pipbuck. Similarly, the frequency that the radio had tuned itself to in response to the call was one that was far outside the usual range that I was familiar with.

“Moonbeam? Yeah, I can hear you,” I frowned down at the device on my fetlock, “I thought Ramparts told us to avoid making calls like this?”

“This isn’t a broadcast in the clear,” the robopony assured me, “I’m tapping into your pipbuck through the MoA network that was designed to control the drones. It’s way off of Stable-Tec’s spectrum, and encrypted besides. Even if those stable ponies pick up the transmission, they’ll just hear static. I highly doubt they’ll be able to crack high level Ministry cyphers. This stuff was designed to keep the zebras from listening in to vital war-related communiques, so it’s pretty tough stuff.”

That abated my concerns a little, and should reassure Ramparts as well when he learned that we might have a way to safely and securely contact McMaren again. We might even be able to get a warning out to Seaddle if the former courser could come up with some ponies that could be specifically singled-out in the city to help fortify its defenses. We even had a strategy to give them that might help them win as well, providing they could come up with ponies who had the right skills and know-how.

“Well, in any case, it’s good to hear your voice. Is everything alright in McMaren?”

“From what I understand, we’re a lot better off than you guys are,” Moonbeam replied, “Homily’s ponies are redoubling their efforts to get the connection to the hangar established. She thinks that we’ll be able to get the drones operational and in the air in about three or four days at the latest.

“Once that happens, we’ll be ready to rain fucking Tartarus down on top of those bastards and end this thing,” I felt myself cringe at how satisfied the mare seemed to sound at the thought. Though, I doubt hers was anything like an outlying thought. I was sure that most of the ponies in McMaren were of a like mind, “in the meantime, I’m getting ready to head down to meet up with you guys and kick some flank.”

“No, stay where you are,” I insisted.

“What? Why? It sounds like you’re going to need all the firepower you can get, and I’m literally designed to fight armies!”

I could hear the frustration through the radio, “we can’t know when and where General Constance’s main force will eventually catch up with us,” I told the synthetic mare, “we’ll need you in place and ready to control those drones at a moment’s notice. A thousand of you will be a lot more effective than one of you, right?” perhaps, I hoped, seeing such an overwhelming force descending on them would be enough to prompt the stable ponies to surrender with a minimum of bloodshed too.

The mare on the other end of the transmission audibly grumbled, which I found only slightly odd, seeing as how it was highly unlikely that the robopony―who had a transmitter built into her chassis―was actually saying any of this out loud where she was, “...fine. I’ll let you know the moment everything’s fully operational.”

“Good. Give Ramparts a call too and let him know what’s going on with our comms situation. We might be able to use it to get a warning to Seaddle after all.”

“Alright,” the mare said in a significantly more chipper tone at the prospect of being able to actively help with the war effort after all, “talk to you later. Tell Mom ‘hi’ for me, will ya?”

“Consider it done,” I glanced off in the direction that Starlight had departed in, wishing that I’d received this call about fifteen minutes earlier. Of course, I was sure to see the pink unicorn again in the near future, so I’d be able to pass the message on then, “later!”

My pipbuck went silent again as Moonbeam cut the transmission on her end. It was actually a great relief that we’d be able to communicate with McMaren and the others through the Ministry of Awesome’s old network. That gave us a lot of flexibility. After another moment’s thought, I cursed myself for not asking if there was any way that we could use the Ministry network to intercept and listen in on Constance’s communications. Ramparts was likely to be far more cognisant of that possibility than I was, so it would probably occur to him more immediately. Either way, I’d bring it up with him the next time I ran into the stallion.

In the interim, I had one other pressing concern that I wanted to have addressed before we left Shady Saddles that I didn’t want to put off any longer.

I cautiously nudged my way into the clinic, and was immediately hit with the drone of groans and pained whimpering of the dozens of ponies that were laying stroon about the small medical center’s waiting area upon every spare scrap of makeshift bedding that could be acquired. Save for an uncomfortably narrow walking path that allowed the nursing staff―augmented by another half dozen ponies who volunteered to help―to navigate their patients, every available patch of floor was taken up by a maimed mare or stallion. I could see that this was the same circumstance the existed down the hallway and through the open doors to the exam rooms.

It was impossible to know exactly how many ponies were currently in hear, but I did know that this was only a fraction of the total wounded. The buildings to either side of the clinic had been emptied out and converted into additional makeshift wards as well. Sandy’s bar had served as a temporary collection point for casualties during the fighting, but the injured ponies there had been moved later so that they could be closer to the clinic and the medical staff that was based there.

For many, there would be a long road to recovery, as it would surprise nopony that the battle had completely drained the small town’s meager medical facility of every last drop of healing potion. Stocks of Med-X were similarly non-existent any longer as well. Booze was the only analgesic left, and the blood-thinning effects of alcohol meant that it was too risky to give even it to many of the seriously wounded, for fear that they’d bleed out and die as a result. This meant that most of the town’s injured was left to wallow in pain, and nothing could be done for them.

A nurse noticed me enter, and I saw a brief look of resignation wash over her face as she initially mistook me for either another injured pony, or a loved one seeking additional medicine for a wounded family member. When she finally recognized who I was and realized that I wasn’t yet one more pony she would have to immediately disappointed in their time of need, she relaxed―a little―and even managed to gather up an expression that could almost be considered a smile. Though the bleakness of her eyes, which had seen far too much suffering in such a short period of time, betrayed the haggardness beneath the otherwise pleasant curl of her lips.

“Wonderbolt,” she greeted, and it was my turn to suppress a sour expression at the use of a title which no longer held any appeal for me, “what can I do for you?”

I’d already been feeling a little apprehensive about coming hear in the first place, and that feeling was only further compounded once I was directly confronted by the moaning around me. I felt so incredibly selfish, in the face of such blatant suffering, to even think of asking what I was about to; but I managed to press on anyway, “I...was hoping that I could speak with Doctor Lancet...if he has a moment? It’s not important,” I added hastily, “just...if he feels like he has time,” I swallowed, seeing the already ever so fragile smile on the nurse’s lips falter slightly.

Still, she eventually nodded and carefully picked her way around the shifting bodies on the floor towards the back of the clinic. I remained near the door, pointedly looking down at my hooves so that I didn’t need to look at the wounded. There was no way I could keep from hearing them, but I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to take seeing all of the blood that didn’t seem to want to stop oozing through their bandages which, by this point, were little more than boiled bedsheets and curtains that were being used for the upteenth time to try and stop the bleeding from wounds that were too big to suture closed with what was available to the tiny little clinic.

Idly, I found myself wondering how many of these ponies would ultimately recover. How many of them would even live through the night? I knew that a grave detail had been organized to bury the dead from both sides, and that they’d be at work for a couple days at least. I also knew―from overhearing some of Ramparts’ orders―that they were digging more graves than they had need of currently, ‘for later’.

“Windfall,” my head whipped up, and I found myself looking into the tired and drawn features of the black unicorn stallion who had thought that coming to Shady Saddles would mean escaping strife and turmoil. If he found the irony in any way amusing, there was no indication of it at the moment in his shadowed expression, “what do you need?”

I winced at the beleaguered tone that I was confident hadn’t been intended to come down on me so harshly. He was tired, overwhelmed, and had likely spent the morning tending to untold numbers of ponies who had already ultimately died under his desperate care. Now, while surrounded by scores of other dying ponies, he’d been sought out by yet one more seeking aid. I’d have left right then and there if I wouldn’t have felt somehow even worse for wasting his time by doing that.

“I’m sorry...it’s just...” I swallowed, feeling my right wing curving down around my belly and brushing softly against my abdomen, “with the drugging, and the hanging, and...everything...I want to know if…” I couldn’t quite get the last words out, wondering if there was even any longer a point to wearing the pendant or taking the pills he’d given me. After all, if everything that I’d been through in the last twenty-four hours had been enough to finally terminate my―

...to...to render the pendant moot. Then there were certainly ponies in this town who needed more than I did.

The physician pony’s expression softened then, “I understand. Come, let’s go to my office and look you two over, hm?”

Just hearing him include my unborn foal in his statement caused what felt like a physical wave of relief to wash over me. If he had enough hope to bother doing that, then surely it meant that he was confident, right? I followed the stallion gingerly as he led me through the throngs of bodies, finally coming to a halt in front of his ‘office’. Though the faded ‘JANITOR’ stenciling suggested that the room had originally been intended for an alternate purpose. Indeed, once we were inside, I could tell that the conversion to Doctor Lancet’s ‘office’ had been a rather recent and hurried thing. There wasn’t hardly anything in here except for a bedroll and a stack of hastily written patient files.

“Please, have a seat,” the unicorn said, gesturing to the sleeping mat. I did so as the stallion dug through the stack of files until he found the one that he was looking for and pulled it out. I noticed my name written across the top of it as he flipped the manila folder open and began to look it over and refresh his memory, “now, are you feeling any actual discomfort? Abdominal pains, cramping, dizziness?”

“No,” I shook my head, “nothing like that.”

“Hm. I assume that you have no idea what substance was given to you?” again, I shook my head, “Very well. A true sedative shouldn’t have been too traumatic for the fetus, but you did undergo a lot of physical trauma and stress from what I understand,” he noted, “so it wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look,” the stallion frowned, “unfortunately, I don’t have any more clean syringes to use to draw blood, and I’m loathe to try and reuse one without at least putting it through an autoclave...which Shady Saddles doesn’t have.

“It wouldn’t do to perform another blood test and find out everything’s still fine, only to end up giving you tetanus or hepatitis in the process,” he conjured up a mirthless smile. He then set the file down and took a deep breath, “but, there is one other option,” he informed me, “though I do warn you that it can feel a bit...invasive. It’s a spell that I developed as a form of exploratory telekinesis for use prior to a surgery, so that I’m not going in totally blind while trying to remove of tumor or repair a clot; that sort of thing.

“My patients have described it as ‘feeling like something is crawling around inside of them’. It is completely safe and doesn’t cause any harm or damage, I can assure you. I just wanted you to be aware that it might be uncomfortable to experience,” the stallion said, “I have used it on pregnant mares in the past, to confirm placental placement or proper fetal orientation immediately prior to birth, things like that; so it won’t upset your pregnancy either.

“It’s the only way I currently have to confirm for certain if your pregnancy is still viable. Though, even then, without bloodwork to look at your hormone levels, I can’t give you complete assurance that it’ll stay that way. You’ll need to go to...well, I guess New Reino is really your only option at the moment,” he finished after a brief moment’s thought, “if that sounds acceptable to you, we can begin whenever you’re ready.”

I bit my lip, “you’re sure it’s safe?”

“It’s never caused any harm,” he once more assured me.

I swallowed and nodded, “okay. Let’s do that then,” I had to know, if only tentatively, if there was any point in even continuing to worry about it.

“Very well. If you’ll lie down, this should only take a minute.”

Without a word, I lowered myself down onto the thin sleeping mat and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible. I spent several awkward seconds fidgeting with my hooves as I tried to find someplace to put them that didn’t make me look as nervous as I was feeling; which ultimately only served to make me look even more nervous, I realized with a barely stifled groan. Doctor Lancet didn’t notice though, as he already had his eyes closed and his head bowed. His lips were pursed ever so slightly in concentration as his horn began to glow with a magical aura.

I wasn’t sure that I’d felt it at first. It was like a soft breeze that just barely touched my coat and feathers. As the seconds wore on though, I noticed the gentle increase in pressure, like being covered with a blanket. A blanket that was moving over my body. Suddenly I felt myself shiver and stiffen as that pressure passed from the outside of my coat to just beneath my skin. It was like I was itching everywhere, but on the inside.

“Sorry,” Lancet said in a distant tone, his eyes clenched as he continued to concentrate on what he was doing, “this is usually the most uncomfortable part. Once I’m past the nerves in your dermis, it should subside...there we are…”

As he was speaking, I could indeed feel the irritation almost instantly subside. Though I wasn’t confident that the sensation that replaced it was objectively ‘better’, in my opinion. While there was no longer a feeling of scratchy irritation, it instead felt like somepony was pressing down on all of my muscles in my chest and abdomen. It had all of the constriction of a cramp, but with none of the pain.

It only got more unsettling from there as I started to feel my guts themselves slowly and subtly begin to shift ever so slightly. It was like there was something crawling around inside of me, just as he’d described. The lack of any real pain did nothing to take away from unsettling nature of it all. To say nothing of the...conflicting sensations I began to feel once the Doctor’s telekinesis migrated from my gut to my nethers. My eyes went wide as a gasp escaped my lips.

“Oops, sorry, too far…” Lancet apologized. The pressure immediately receded from where only one other stallion had ever been and focused in the lower portion of my abdomen. I took a calming breath and focused on holding as still as possible, not sure if any movement on my part would interfere with...whatever it was that he was doing exactly.

“Placenta is attached…” the unicorn murmured softly, more than to himself than for my benefit, judging from the fact that I had to crane my head to be able to hear him, “blood is flowing…” his eyebrow quirked slightly in mild surprise, “movement. You’re further along than I initially thought,” the unicorn stallion let out a deep breath and I felt the sensation of pressure quickly recede. His horn lost its glow and his eyes opened, a slight smile on his muzzle, “it seems he’s quite the stubborn little fellow. If you keep to the regiment I set you on yesterday, everything should be fine.”

I blinked as my initial feelings of relief were quickly superseded by his choice of words, “‘he’? It’s a ‘he’? You can really tell that already?”

“You’re nearly five months along,” he said, picking up a pencil with his telekinesis as he updated some notes in my patient file, “that’s about the normal time the gender can be reliably identified. It’ll be a little longer yet to make a definitive determination of what breed of pony he’ll be. He’s not a pegasus, of that much I’m certain, but it’ll be another month or two before we’ll know if he’s a unicorn or an earth pony. Horns are one of the last bones to begin development.”

A frown creased my features, “five months?” I did some quick mental math in my head, “that can’t be right. It hasn’t even been half that yet!”

It was Doctor Lancet’s turn to frown, “then perhaps you’re mistaken about who the father is. Judging by the size of the fetus, it is in at least the fifth month of development. You can expect to deliver in about thirty weeks.”

“But…” the math just didn’t work out. On the other hoof, I wasn’t sure what further arguing the point was going to accomplish. It wasn’t like the stallion had any reason to lie to me, and if his examination had been anywhere near as thorough as it had felt, then it was hard to imagine that he might have been mistaken. But I was positive that the first time that I’d been intimate with a stallion had been that time with Arginine back in McMaren.

Nothing had certainly ever happened with Jackboot―not for lack of trying―and it wasn’t like I’d ever made any sort of habit out of throwing myself at any other stallions. Heck, the only stallion that I’d even kissed besides Arginine and Jackboot had been Cestus, and―

My eyes went wide.

Cestus. Whiplash’s son, and the pony that had abducted me. I’d been fooling around with him only because of how angry I was at finding Foxglove having her way with the stallion she new that I loved. It had been stupid and juvenile, and ultimately had proven nearly terminal. I’d never intended for things to go beyond kissing and groping, but my memories were still pretty hazy about what exactly had happened. He’d ultimately drugged me and hauled my unconscious body back to the White Hoof capital, but I supposed that I couldn’t be completely, one hundred percent, certain about what we might―and might not―have done before I went out.

Strictly speaking, it’s not like I’d even have had to be awake and aware for a stallion like Cestus to have done anything…

Oh, Celestia...had he? I mean, the conversation between him and Whiplash in their tent suggested that being another White Hof brood mare was the eventual fate that they had intended for me, so it wasn’t like there’d have been any great reservations felt by the stallion for ‘jumping the gun’ in that regard. He was certainly enough of a monster to have done that to an unconscious mare.

“Windfall, are you alright?”

I jerked slightly, having forgotten entirely about the doctor somehow. In that time, I’d apparently also curled up into a ball and surrounded myself protectively with my wings, my eyes wide open in shock. I swallowed and licked lips that felt suddenly chapped, “no. I’m not.

“Thank you, Doctor,” I added in a tone that sounded detached even to my own ears as I slowly stood back up and left his office.

My listlessness helped with my apprehension, at least, as I navigated my way back to the clinic’s exit through the persistently moaning wounded. My mind was elsewhere as I headed outside. Even though all of this would have had to have happened many months ago, back during what felt like a whole other lifetime, I felt myself overcome with a sense of violation and regret. It should have been bad enough that even my brief interaction with Cestus had resulted indirectly in the deaths of both my adoptive father and my birth mother within the span of a few minutes. It was a inescapable memory that would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Was I really now supposed to be doomed to retain a physical reminder of it all? I already had plenty of scars to attest to the decisions that I’d made―for better or worse. Even my most egregious ones, like the loss of my eye, had been incurred while helping ponies; I didn’t regret a loss like that. However, giving birth to a White Hoof spawn―the same one who’d taken my mother from me―was another thing entirely. How was I supposed to be able to look at a that foal and not be instantly bombarded with that grief all over again?

I jerked as I felt a slight weight around my neck. I looked down, noticing that I’d subconsciously wrapped a pinion around the little regeneration talisman. My unborn foal’s situation was still quite tenuous, I knew. If I removed the small gem and simply never took the pills that I’d be given, my body would sort itself out and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. If we survived, and especially if we won, I’d have plenty of opportunities to have foals again someday, at a time in my life when I was more prepared to be a mother too. It would even be a foal that was sired by a stallion I felt something besides loathing for.

...Of course, I’d just remember all of this every time I looked at them anyway. Nothing I did was ever going to erase the mistakes that I’d made in the past. Given their results, I was confident that I didn’t deserve to forget anyway.

My wing released the amulet and folded back to my side as I let out a defeated sigh. No, nothing would be accomplished by doing that, ultimately. I’d already made the decision―however right or wrong it may have been―to keep this foal, and I’d done it for reasons other than because of who I’d thought the father was. Cestus was a monster who received the death that he deserved for everything that he’d done in his life. Meanwhile, the foal in me hadn’t wronged anypony.

Enough ponies had died because of stupid things that I’d done in my past. I didn’t need to add another.

I looked around briefly, my gaze finding my next destination, and I walked off. There was something that I did need to do about this though...

The Shady Saddles Guard was not an organization that I’d dealt with much in the past. Jackboot had made a habit of avoiding contact with law enforcement organizations as much as was possible. Only recently had I discovered this was because of his desire to limit the possibility of incurring any undue attention that could lead to ponies with the authority to do so detaining him over some trivial matter and discovering his brand. Before that, I’d assumed that he just believed that all guard forces were abusive and corrupt; which had been an assumption that I’d more been projecting onto him as a result of my experiences with Golden Vision and the Seaddle ‘justice’ system.

After all, the Shady Saddles’ arm of the Guard was nominally part of the same New Lunar Republic military that governed most of Northern Neighvada. Or, rather, the military that once had governed it. The NLR wasn’t running much of anything these days since we’d made off with their prop monarch and Ebony Song had plunged Seaddle into chaos in his bid to retain power.

In any case, the Guard Barracks was one of the few structures of town that I’d never been inside before, other than private homes. That being said, I felt like it was probably not quite as busy as it seemed to be at this particular moment.

Dozens of ponies, and not merely those in the Guard itself, were sorting through a veritable mountain of weapons and barding, looking over the equipment and sorting it into respective piles that represented its serviceability. While I was sure that they’d be able to make excellent use of most of the weaponry, I had to imagine that the barding would need to undergo substantial modification before the average pony could get much use out of it. Though, the raw material would certainly be of some value, I supposed.

It wasn’t any of these efforts that had brought me here though. While I’d never been here before, I did know a little about the building’s uses and purpose. Such as the fact that it served as not only the quarters for the town’s protectors, but also the repository for unsavory characters who were awaiting either trial or transport elsewhere. At the moment, there was only one of these ‘unsavory’ ponies being boarded; and they were who I had come here to see.

I made my way past the working ponies who were too busy to pay me much mind and descended to the basement. Here I found perhaps the only pony in the building not actively engaged in sorting equipment; a smokey gray earth pony dressed in the barding of a republican soldier. The armored stallion noticed me approaching and cracked a wry smile, “Wonderbolt,” he nodded before gesturing down the hall behind him, “she said you’d probably be dropping by. They’re in the back.”

‘They’? I suppressed a quizzical frown and instead nodded like I knew what he was talking about. I’d find out which ‘she’ he was referring to shortly; though the list of likely suspects that came to mind was quite short, “thanks.”

Sure enough, I didn’t have to go far to determine that the mare in question was Foxglove. She was standing directly in front of Arginine, who was secured behind the vertical steel bars of his cell. Manacles hobbled his forehooves still, and I spied a golden ring draped over both of the horns protruding from his forehead. The violet mare’s ear twitched at the sound of my approach and she glanced back over her shoulder, casting a level gaze in my direction.

“Took you long enough,” she said in an even tone that elicited a slight wince from me, “I figured you would have come straight here. Did you get lost?”

“There was something else I wanted to take care of,” I said evasively. Foxglove might know that Arginine and I had become intimate, but there wasn’t any possibility that she knew about my...other situation. Heck, I’d only found out shortly before being captured, and hadn’t had time to tell anypony. Of the two―or, rather, three now―ponies who knew about my ‘situation’, Doctor Lancet would certainly keep my confidence, and Arginine wasn’t the sort to volunteer personal information either. Starlight didn’t have a reason to go spreading the news either. Foxglove hadn’t reacted particularly well to my involvement with Arginine, and I was loath to see how she dealt with learning I was expecting.

“Why are you here?” I ventured carefully. Did the unicorn mare really not trust me to be alone with Arginine anymore? He was locked up, hobbled, and magically dampened. Surely she couldn’t actually be concerned that he’d find some way to harm me?

“Just putting the finishing touches on this piece of garbage here,” she sneered. I felt myself cringe slightly at how she’d chosen to refer to him, but I had to acknowledge that I couldn’t fault how she was feeling. Of all ponies, Foxglove wasn’t one to give her trust easily to begin with, and with the history of the sort of betrayals that she’d had to deal with, I could understand her hostility. That didn’t mean that I enjoyed seeing it up close and personal though. The mare stepped to the side and gestured at the stallion, “if you’re really hung up on bringing him with us, then he needs to be appropriately ‘dressed’ for the journey,” I didn’t like the biting tone of her voice.

I liked what I saw even less. I felt my jaw hang agape and my eye go wide as I spied the bomb collar clamped tightly around the stallion’s neck, “Foxglove, what the fuck?! Get that thing off of him right no―”

“Not on your life,” the violet mare snapped, her emerald eyes glaring deep into me, “which is why I’m doing all of this, by the way! This asshole nearly got you killed this morning. Now, I get that you’ve got a soft spot for your ‘coltfriend’, or whatever, and you don’t want to see him put to death―like he deserves,” she added in a none-too-subtle aside directed at the impassive stallion, “but I’m not just going to sit back and let him get another chance to finish the job.

“So from here on out, he’s going to be wearing that collar; and,” she stressed as her horn flared and a small device floated into view just before snapping around her fetlock, “I’m going to be the one with the detonator,” she waved her new bracelet under the gray stallion’s nose so that he got a clear look at it before returning her attention back to me, “if he so much as twitches in a way that I don’t like, I’m going to trigger his collar,” I opened my mouth to retort, but the mare didn’t seem to be quite finished with me yet, “and I don’t care if you don’t forgive me, or if you send me away, or whatever.

“I care about you too much to let you risk your life like this, Windfall,” Foxglove said, her tone become much more somber now, “I can’t stop you from fighting, and I won’t; but I’m just going to sit back and let ponies hurt you either, not when there’s something I can do to protect you.

“If you want him to come with us, then this is how it’s going to be. Not arguments.”

My jaw snapped shut as the violet unicorn mare held her gaze on me. It wasn’t malice, or even anger, that I saw in her deep green eyes, I realized. It was fear. She was worried for me. That was why she was doing this. I shifted my gaze briefly to Arginine to try and gauge how he felt about the situation. As usual, his face wasn’t particularly expressive, but he did nod his head slightly in acceptance. Perhaps wisely, he chose not to actually say anything out loud and risk further increasing Foxglove’s ire by agreeing that she was being perfectly prudent.

“Fine,” I finally said with a defeated sigh. If there was any consolation to be had, it was that I was confident that Arginine truly wouldn’t do anything to provoke Foxglove into making good on her very credible threat to end his life. Maybe, in time, I’d even be able to talk her down once the stallion had helped us defeat his stable once and for all.

In the meantime, I still had that matter to take care of, “the collar stays. Happy?” she nodded, but her expression was anything but jovial, “now, I’d like to talk to Arginine. Alone.”

“Nope.”

“Excuse me?”

The mare shook her head, “the last time you were alone with this freak, he foalnapped you. So, yeah, I’m not leaving you alone with him. Not ever again.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said flatly.

“Try me.”

“Fox―”

“Not. Happening,” she reasserted firmly, “besides, it’s not like there’s anything going on between the two of you that the rest of us don’t know about...anymore,” she added with an annoyed grunt, “no more keeping secrets from the rest of us, Windy,” she said, pointing an accusatory hoof at my chest, “we’re supposed to be your friends. How can we help you if you aren’t honest with us?”

An only half suppressed grumble escaped my throat as Arginine and I exchange another brief glance. Then my attention went back to the violet unicorn. Her expression left no doubt in my mind that she was being completely serious about her intentions, which didn’t bode particularly well for me. On the bright side, there was a good chance that what I was about to divulge wouldn’t prompt her to end Arginine’s life prematurely.

I took a deep breath and turned to face Arginine, “I just saw Doctor Lancet,” I began, “he told me that I’m fine―that we’re fine,” I amended, “and that it’s a colt…” a faint smile touched my lips for a brief moment before I nibbled at it deciding how exactly to break the other news, “but that it’s been at least five months.”

I swallowed and cleared my throat before continuing, “...it can’t be yours.”

Arginine was silent for a moment, considering. Then, finally, he nodded, “I understand.”

Foxglove, on the other hoof, didn’t quite; judging by her puzzled expression, “what are you two talking about? What isn’t his? Who’s a colt?” then, in an instant, her features morphed from confusion into abject surprise, “oh, fuck me sideways, you are not―! Windy?!” she looked me up and down with widened emerald eyes as if she was trying to decide if this was all some attempt at a joke at her expense.

“How?! When?!”

This time I didn’t make an attempt to mask my annoyed grumbling, “what do you mean ‘how’?” I grunted, “and I just said ‘when’.”

“Well then with who?!” the mare blinked, “Jackboot?” Something in her tone suggested to me that the mare was suddenly deeply upset that the rust-red stallion had already managed to get himself killed and deprive her of the opportunity.

“...Cestus,” I offered in a volume that was just about a whisper.

“Cestus?” the mare was briefly confused as she processed the name of the young stallion who’d we’d only dealt with for a few brief days several long months ago, “who’s Cest―oh,” recognition finally dawned on her and her ire quickly gave way to sympathy, “oh, Windy, he didn’t…” her hooves went to her mouth in shock. I could only look away in shame, “oh, Windy…I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” I think that was what I was supposed to say in response. It was hard to know, “but...yeah. Doc Lancet said I’m around five months along. It’s only been two since the first time RG and I...you know...so it can’t be his, like I thought,” I flashed an apologetic look at the stallion who still appeared otherwise nonplussed by the revelations thus far.

“And about five months ago was about when...well...you know…”

“Oh, Windy…” the mare moved over and wrapped me up in her hooves, leaning her chin atop my head. She didn’t say anything further; she simply held my to her chest. After a few seconds, I found myself reciprocating the embrace, encircling her with my wings, my eye shut tight as I simply felt her warmth against me.

I supposed if there was one mare in my life who would understand what I was feeling, it would be Foxglove. Her experiences in the Wasteland hadn’t been particularly pleasant before meeting us after all. Unlike me, however, her own years of abuses at the hooves of ponies like Tommyknocker hadn’t left her with any ‘reminders’ like I was about to have. In that regard, I wasn’t certain how much help she would be able to offer.

“I don’t know what to say,” Foxglove said softly, her eyes closed, “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault.”

I frowned, “how do you figure that? None of us knew what Cestus was. Not even Jackboot.”

The mare shook her head, “I should have known better than to leave you alone like that. Especially because we didn’t know Cestus. I was...doing something stupid,” she said bitterly, “I should have been with you.”

My frown deepened further and I gently pushed myself away from the unicorn so that I could look into her face, “Foxglove, I’m not a filly; not even back then. You’re not my mother. You’re not responsible for me. I’ve been holding my own in the Wasteland for a long time,” I insisted, “Jackboot did right by me in that way, at the very least.

“I made a mistake, and these are the consequences. It wasn’t the first mistake I ever made, and probably won’t be the last. Celestia willing, I’ll live long enough to see these consequences through too,” I managed a wry smirk, “but it wasn’t your fault. You and Jackboot risked your lives to rescue me back then, and I’ll always be grateful for that.”

My smirk shifted into a more genuine smile now, “you’ve stuck with me the longest out of everypony I know, and that means a lot to me. I know that you care about me, and that you want to look out for me; but if you’re going to do that, you have to do it keeping in mind that I’m not your ‘responsibility’.

“I’m my own pony, and I’m going to live my own life,” I nodded my head in Arginine’s direction, “and I’m going to live that life with who I want,” I saw the scowl return to Foxglove’s face, but before she could rebuke me, I quickly added, “but you’re right: I can’t be completely reckless about it. Keeping a watchful eye on RG is a good idea. I don’t think it’s necessary, but I know it’ll make a lot of ponies feel better about bringing him along.

“So, okay. You can keep the collar on him,” I relented, though I’d be lying if I said that I felt completely comfortable about acquiescing on that point, “but only until his stable is dealt with. Once they’re no longer an issue, it comes off; okay?”

Foxglove was obviously no happier about that condition than I was about him wearing the collar in the first place, but she eventually accepted the compromise with a grunt and sharp jerk of her head, “fine. I still think he needs to be punished for what he did though.”

“Well, I’m the one he wronged,” I pointed out, “which means that I should be the one to decide if he does get punished, or how,” I finally broke the embrace that we were sharing entirely and squared off against the incarcerated stallion, “I didn’t die, so neither will he. That being said, I suppose he shouldn’t get off with only a slap on the fetlock either,” I rubbed my chin idly with a pinion and then smiled, “though, it does occur to me that I’m going to have a lot on my plate in another five-ish months.

“I could certainly use a lot of help on diaper duty…”

Arginine’s brow cocked ever so slightly.

As I ascended back out of the town’s jail, I emerged to find a familiar face among those who I’d seen sorting the weapons which had not been their just thirty minutes ago, “Ramparts,” I greeted, drawing the earth pony’s attention, “what are you doing here?” I asked as I watched the former courser picking through the pile of weapons that I presumed was meant to contain the most serviceable ones.

“PCCs and PCIs,” the republican soldier replied simply. When he saw my furrowed brow he smiled and further elaborated, “pre-combat checks and pre-combat inspections.”

“Combat?” I felt myself immediately tense up. Had General Constance already managed to get her forces turned around and on their way back here?!

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, seeming to have accurately guessed where my mind had initially gone to, “there’ve been no reports of the army’s location,” then he added with a grunt, “which is kind of the problem. We don’t have any eyes on where their forces are or which direction they’re going. We need that information, especially if we want to know how much time the group heading for their stable is going to have before they get pinned, if it comes to that.

“Without a way to maintain secure comms, there wasn’t any point in shadowing them though, because they’d be able to listen in on everything that was being passed back and forth anyway,” the earth pony stallion explained, “but with Homily and Moonbeam being able to tap into the Ministry of Awesome’s encrypted bands...well, now we can deliver intelligence reports without them knowing about it. Which means that there’s now a point to sending out a recon party.

“I’m going to be leading that party.”

“You’re not coming with us to their stable?” I found myself asking, audibly shocked.

Ramparts smiled at my reaction, “with the mercenaries, you’ve got all of the experienced hooves you need to knock over an undermared stable,” he assured me with a confident grin, “I’ll be more use to you keeping an eye on their main force.”

I glanced at the selection of weapons that he was pulling out, “that’s a lot of firepower for just ‘keeping an eye’ on a bunch of ponies,” I noted.

This evoked a small chuckle from the stallion, “it’s call force recon for a reason! No, but in all seriousness, this is more precautionary than anything. I’m only taking about a dozen ponies with me in total. We’re going to do everything we can to keep ourselves out of sight,” then he thought for a moment, “though, if we see an opportunity to thin their ranks by ambushing the odd picket or sentry…” the stallion flashed a ruthless smile and waggle his brows.

“Just...be careful, okay?” I said, though the warning was patently unnecessary. Ramparts understood just as well as anypony how little chance their small team would stand if they encountered any significant forces from that stable, no matter how many of the enemy’s weapons they were bringing along with them.

As uneasy as I was feeling about splitting up our group...again...I couldn’t really argue against the former courser’s logic. There would come a point, sooner or later, when Constance realized that the group she’d left to finish off Shady Saddles wasn’t following whatever schedule she’d left for them. Not long after that, she’d investigate to figure out what had gone wrong. She’d either turn her whole army around, or at the very least break off an even bigger piece to come back here and investigate what had happened.

That wouldn’t go well for Shady Saddles. Which meant that, while we wanted our assault on their stable to come as a surprise for the most part, it was a secret that we were going to eventually have to let slip. We needed Constance to come after us and bypass the town. Evacuating it would have been an ideal solution, but it wasn’t really an option without abandoning most of the wounded who simply couldn’t be moved safely.

The plan became marginally less risky if we had a means of keeping track of just how close that army was getting to us so we had time to prepare. Griselda and her griffons would prove to be an invaluable screening force when the inevitable battle was close at hoof, but having reports of the main body’s location while they were more than just a few miles out would be very helpful as well, as it would give us a lot longer to prepare our defenses than just an hour or two.

“I will be,” the earth pony assured me just before exchanging a brief look with Foxglove as well, “honestly, it’s you ponies I’m worried about. At least I know what that army’s going to be like. None of us know precisely what’s waiting for us at their stable.”

“We’re going to try and be as prepared as we can,” the violet unicorn affirmed, “I’ve identified some capable Housecarls and Razor Beaks; they’re making some modifications to our gear,” her expression soured slightly, “partially based on the changes that Arginine made to his energy rifle. I’m scrounging some spark batteries and Starlight says she can make a few passable targeting talismans. With luck, we’ll have some heavier firepower ready to go by the time we get to their stable.

“If they don’t open up, we should be able to burn our way through quick enough,” she then looked in my direction, “I’ve got your barding ready to go, by the way. I did a little more tweaking with the bracers. The output should be quite a bit higher now, so even those big bastards should go down in a hit or two.”

I winced as I remembered what a direct strike from one of those old energy bracers had done to a living pony when I’d struck them directly, “thanks, but...I’m actually curious if there’s a way to make them less lethal?”

“Excuse me?” the violet unicorn said, surprised.

Even Ramparts looked a little confounded by my request, “...you want to be less effective in battle?”

I shook my head, “no, I just want to be less lethal,” I stressed, “I don’t want to kill anypony I don’t have to anymore.”

“Usually war is one of those times when killing others is a ‘have to’ kind of deal,” Ramparts pointed out, “otherwise, the other pony is going to kill you or somepony else on your side.”

“I know that,” I said, feeling my resolve beginning to buckle beneath the scrutiny of two ponies whose opinions I genuinely respected quit a bit, but a little yellow pony with a pink mane in the back of my mind silently urged me onward, “but I want to know if there’s a way to modify my bracers so that they still take a pony out of the fight, but maybe not kill them outright? There’re are other ways to deal with ponies,” I pointed out, “Starlight’s used magic to freeze them before,” I looked to Foxglove, “I put Tommyknocker to sleep that one time using drugs,” then I found myself frowning unhappily, “Celestia knows I’ve been taken out of commission with drugs and magic often enough…

“I just need to know if there’s a way to do it for me?”

Foxglove sighed and shook her head, “no, Windfall, there’s nothing that I can do to your bracers that’ll let them do what you’re asking―”

“With my help there is!”

All three of us looked towards the barracks entrance, startled, to find Starlight Glimmer approaching. The pink unicorn mare was wearing a pleasantly bemused expression on her face as she looked at me. Her horn was glowing as she passed a small pouch over to a surprised Foxglove, “here’re the talismans that you wanted. They’ll probably only work for an hour or two though.

“Did I hear you right?” she asked, turning her full attention towards me now, “you want a non-lethal option for your weapons?”

“Yeah,” I cautiously confirmed, “you can really do something about that?”

“Of course! I mean, not immediately,” the pink mare amended, “but if I can get my hooves on a couple of quality gems―and I mean, really good quality―and some silver of at least Bittania quality or better, I can make the changes you want. It won’t even be that hard.”

“Really?” that actually surprised me quite a bit. Mostly because I’d always come to regard Foxglove as the most technologically capable pony that I knew, and she’d seemed to be of the opinion that my request wasn’t possible to fulfill, “you know about engineering and stuff?”

“Oh, Celestia no!” Starlight chuckled, earning a perplexed look from me; but she elaborated before I could ask for clarification, “but I do know talismans!”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

The unicorn rolled her eyes and sighed, exchanging a sympathetic look with Foxglove, “Celestia save us from the ponies who don’t know anything about the very technology that keeps them alive, am I right?” the other mare barely suppressed a chortle of her own as Starlight dove into a more detailed explanation, reaching out with her levitation magic to snatch an energy rifle from the nearby pile. She brought the weapon up to her face and scrutinized the casing, slowly rotating it until she finally found what she appeared to be looking for, “ah ha!”

There were a few audible clicks and snaps, and suddenly a panel came off of the energy rifle. A second later, Starlight had extracted a glittering emerald that seemed to glow with a faint internal light. She held the jewel out to me so that I could get a better look at it, and I immediately noticed that the emerald was covered in silvery tracings of various runes that I couldn’t make any sense out of, “this is a talisman,” the mare began, “the heart of most pony technology. It’s responsible for shaping the raw mana being fed into it from a spark battery into a coherent spell.

“In this case,” her tone immediately took on a sour tone, “it’s a heat spell. A very potent one, that borders on outright incineration,” she sighed and replaced the emerald in the weapon, closing up the panel once more and tossing the weapon back onto the pile none too gently, “sometimes it even crosses that border. That’s why some ponies get turned into ash.”

“So what’s that got to do with my bracers?”

Starlight frowned, “it’s got everything to do with your bracers. Somewhere in them, they have a gem just like that emerald, and that emerald has a spell matrix carved into it. Making your bracers non-lethal is as easy as putting a new talisman in them with a different matrix.”

“Really? That’s it?” I looked between both Starlight and Foxglove, seeking confirmation from the violet unicorn mare.

The engineer looked a bit more skeptical though, “it’s not quite that easy,” she countered, “a talisman like that would have to be made, like Starlight said, from a really high-quality gemstone. Plus, the pony making it would also have to know the spell inside and out in order to make the runes to duplicate it. Just knowing the spell isn’t enough. You have to know the mana theory behind the spell,” she rolled her eyes, “not to mention being about to have it compensate for background leiline interferences and not be overly influenced by the users own aura.

“No offense,” she said to Starlight, gesturing at the sack that had just recently been delivered, “but making a bunch of knock-off targeting talismans is a lot different from creating the kind of matrix you’re talking about. There’s a reason that ponies in the Wasteland aren’t just stamping out new rifles. Heck, even the Rangers don’t have the resources to manufacture new tech like that, right?” she looked to Ramparts for confirmation.

“All of their gear looks like it’s two hundred years old,” the stallion confirmed, “just like everything the Republic uses. Mostly,” he added after a brief moment’s thought, “making new powder and lead firearms is quite a bit easier than making new magical energy weapons.”

The pink unicorn favored the other two ponies with a flat look, “...hi, I’m not sure we’ve been introduced; my name is Starlight Glimmer and I was born and raised in Equestria, where I literally spent decades in the best unicorn academies ever established, learning magic from the brightest minds of my generation.

“I then went on to invent a whole new branch of magic based entirely on cutie mark manipulation. Magic. Is. My. Life,” she jabbed a hoof at the wand on her flank for emphasis, “so, yeah, for me it’s exactly as easy as I make it sound. Heck, the hardest part is going to be figuring out what spell to use!

She sat down and withdrew the tomes and scrolls that she’d procured during our brief visit to the Ministry of Arcane Science Hub in Old Reino and started flipping through the pages as she muttered to herself, “it can’t be a simple sleep spell, because they’ll just wake up almost immediately from the sounds of battle. A petrification spell would leave them frozen in place, but they’ll probably just end up getting shot anyway because they’ll still look like they’re in the middle of attacking, or shooting, or whatever. Numbing magic might work,” she mused, “it’d be nearly impossible for them to move or fight without being able to feel their bodies…” she rubbed her chin as she contemplated her available options.

“I may ultimately have to go with a blend of spells,” she concluded in a somewhat reluctant tone, “that would make the matrix a lot more complex, as well as a lot more sensitive to even tiny fluctuations in energy flow,” she looked back at Foxglove, “are the bracers still tied in to her barding’s thrusters?” the violet unicorn nodded, prompting a grunt from Starlight, “surges from the engines and levitation systems would play havoc on a multi-spell talisman…” she continued to flip through the pages of her tomes, glancing between them in quick succession, “I need to find a singular spell that fits the bill―ah ha!”

Starlight Glimmer jabbed her hoof at the pages of one of her spell books before flipping around the hovering grimoire and shoving it into my face. Not that I had any luck making sense of the seemingly random assortment of glyphs and diagrams that filled the indicated pages, “anestogia comatatos!”

“Gazuntite” Ramparts quipped, earning a brief glare from the pink unicorn.

“It’s a spell that Equestrian doctors used to use in order to render a patient unconscious before surgical procedures,” Starlight explained, withdrawing the book in order to read off some of the spell’s attributes, “a pony under its effects ceases to respond to any outside stimuli whatsoever. No amount of pain or physical injury is capable of waking them up. Which makes sense, seeing as how the ponies it was being used on where about to be cut into and such.”

“How long does it last?” Ramparts asked, “some fights can last a good while.”

“Most surgeries last hours,” the unicorn noted as she scanned the page for a concrete answer to the stallion’s question, “here we go: it can either be deliberately ended with a counter-spell or it eventually fades after about twelve hours,” she glanced up at the earth pony with a smug smile, “I assume that’s long enough?”

“So you’re telling me that you can modify our weapons to knock out the enemy without hurting them at all?” Starlight had my full attention now, “that’s amazing! Especially if it’s not affected by armor the same way that energy weapons normally are, we could take their whole army out of the fight without anypony getting hurt at all. This is exactly what we need to―”

“Woah, woah!” the pink unicorn interrupted, bringing me to silence, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I mean, yeah, technically,” she stressed the qualifier, “given enough time and resources I could modify every energy weapon to fire a comatatos spell instead of an incineration spell, but that would take months.”

“What?”

“I can’t whip up something like that in the blink of an eye,” the unicorn insisted, “and a potent spell like this would take a lot out of even a unicorn like me,” she looked over the spell one more time, “I could cast something like this...maybe six times in a day? But it’s a lot harder to imbue a spell into a talisman than to cast it normally.

“Never mind the twenty-odd pounds of silver I’d need of Bittania quality or higher―and the gemstones,” she gestured at the rifles, “I can’t reuse any of the stones in those. Stripping them of their existing spell matrixes will damage them too much to be usable as weapons-grade talismans anymore.”

I frowned, looking over to Foxglove, “but you used to repurpose talismans for me all the time?”

“Not really,” the violet mare shook her head, “I wasn’t putting new spells onto them,” she corrected, “I was using the existing matrix, just splitting it into smaller pieces. Starlight’s right, we don’t have what’s needed to forge talismans for all these weapons. I’d be genuinely impressed if we found the two that your bracers would need.”

“Actually, I think I could do it with one,” the other mare mused, “especially if her barding is only going to have the single power source anyway,” she looked back to me, “though that would mean the spell would work on contact only, since the bracers wouldn’t actually be ‘projecting’ the spell anymore, like they do now. They’d be more like ‘spell applicators’.”

“I have to punch them asleep? I can deal with that,” I assured her, “do you think you can actually do it?”

“If I can get the materials,” Starlight said by way of a caveat, “I’ll go ahead and see what I can track down,” and with that, she nodded at the others and headed out of the barracks.

Not long after Starlight Glimmer was out of sight, Foxglove sighed, “and I’d better go touch base with the Housecarls and make sure we’re good on their front,” she flashed Ramparts a smile, “stay safe out there, alright?”

“I’ll make an effort,” the brown courser agreed. Then the violet mare was gone as well.

“And I guess I’ll―” I snapped my jaw shut, my eyes growing wide as a deep rumbling sound appeared to echo through the immediate area, drawing looks from Ramparts and a few other nearby ponies. I felt my cheek burning with embarrassment as I cleared my throat, “...go find some lunch,” I shook my head and trotted for the exit, “I guess both of us did miss breakfast after all…”

“‘Us’ who?” I heard a slightly perplexed Ramparts ask just before I left earshot and turned towards Sandy’s bar in search of nourishment, prompting a snigger from both of the mares.

Footnote:...

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