"Too many ponies have opinions on things they know nothing about; and the more ignorant they are, the more opinions they have."

“Hello, Wasteland! The one and only DJ PON3 is back, once again, bringing all of my little ponies the truth, no matter how bad it hurts,” the distant Manehattan radio personality proclaimed through my pipbuck’s speakers as I listened to the news broadcast while perched on a cliff overlooking the stable that Jackboot, Foxglove, and I had found raided by Arginine’s stable half a year ago. Sweet, Celestia, had it really been so long since that day? “Fortunately,” the distant DJ went on, ignorant of my own idle musings, “most of what I have to share today won’t hurt all that much. I say that because our favorite Wasteland heroine, the Stable Dweller, is fresh on her way from removing one threat to dealing with another.

“You’d have thought that stopping Red Eye would be enough, but nope! I have gotten confirmed reports that she just blew up a nest full of mutant alicorns―with a genuine balefire bomb no less! Not only did she survive,” I heard more than a little relief in the stallion’s deep voice. If I didn’t know anymore, I’d have sworn that the Stable Dweller had an admirer, “but she’s not wasting any time in calling out the Pegasus Enclave on their shenanigans either. Word is that they’re getting extra ornery, and our little stable-born unicorn hero is having none of it.

“Stay tuned for updates, my little ponies, as we find out if the stubborn mare cleaning up Manehattan can finally get those turkeys off our case once and for all. In the meantime, here’s some Count Bison to put your minds at ease!”

As the DJ’s voice was replaced by the deep tenor of a bufalo two hundred years dead, I found myself letting out a long, resigned, sigh. My own little part of the Wasteland seemed so big to me sometimes that I often forgot that there was a whole wide world out there with problems of their own. Hearing some of these reports, I had to wonder if what I was dealing with was even the biggest threat to ponykind. Part of me even idly wondered if the ponies from Arginine’s stable would be up to the challenge of surviving in the Wasteland. Thus far, they’d only ambushed caravans and unsuspecting stables and a tribe of warriors already embroiled in anarchy.

Not exactly insurmountable threats.

I’d like to have seen General Constance contend with a hell hound as big as a house, or survive the wandering radiation storms of Old Reino―which, I supposed, no longer existed. I’d never met one of these ‘alicorns’ that DJ PON3 was talking about, but they didn’t sound like particularly pleasant types either; or pushovers, if a pony as tough as the Stable Dweller had needed a balefire bomb to put a stop to them.

Never mind The Grand Pegasus Enclave! They’d tear these stable ponies a new flank hole. Not that they gave two feathers about surface politics. At least, generally speaking. It seemed odd to me to hear that they were taking such an interest in Manehattan. I had to wonder what all of that was about…

Perhaps someday I’d find out. Right now though, I was a lot more interested in getting Ramparts’ latest report; which should be coming through―as I checked the time on my pipbuck―now.

“Ramparts to Windfall.”

These military types sure were punctual, I thought to myself with a smile, “Windfall here. How’re you doing, Ramps?”

“I’m fine, but you may finally be running out of luck. Constance’s force’s made camp earlier that usual tonight. There seemed to be a little confusion in the ranks as well. I don’t think anypony was expecting them to halt this early,” the courser informed me.

“What do you think it means?”

“I think they’re turning around,” he said bluntly, “Constance might be thinking of splitting her forces, but it’d be too much to hope that she’d make the same mistake twice. My guess is that they’re halting early to get some rest and then head back for Shady Saddles before dawn. These ponies move pretty fast for any army this size,” Ramparts remarked, sounding more than a little annoyed at the fact, “they could be back outside the town by the next morning at the earliest if they really feel like pushing themselves.”

It was my turn to sound annoyed now, “we’re still two days away from their stable,” I noted, “and that’s at the earliest too,” we’d been making decent time for a group of a hundred and fifty ponies, I had to admit, but we were still moving a good bit slower than our small group of friends had been able to manage. It turned out that an army―even a tiny one like ours―needed to carry a lot more baggage than simple Wasteland wanderers; and that weight was dragging us down.

I glanced at my pipbuck’s map and noted the location of Ramparts tag. I compared how far he was from Shady Saddles to how far away we were, and the distance that we had yet to go. What I was seeing wasn’t very comforting. If Constance wanted to, she could bypass Shady Saddles and catch our force before it had managed to reach her stable. Which meant that we couldn’t risk letting her know what we were up to quite yet.

On the other hoof, if we waited too long, Constance might simply decide that she was close enough to the town that razing it to the ground wouldn’t take up a significant amount of time before diverting to catch us. Our margin was going to be razor-thin on this.

Apparently, Ramparts was just as aware of this fact as I was, “my team and I was been discussing a plan to try and buy you some time. With luck, we’ll be able to slow them down quite a bit.”

I wasn't sure how much I liked the sound of that. Ramparts’ little reconnaissance group consisted of about a dozen ponies. They’d armed themselves to the withers for a team their size, to be sure, but I couldn’t see them lasting more than a few minutes if they were confronted directly with any significant forces from Constance’s army, “don’t do anything too reckless,” I cautioned, “you guys are a lot more valuable to us alive than dead.”

“Don’t worry,” the distant earth pony assured me, “we don’t intend to get ourselves into any trouble we don’t think we can get out of; but we’re not just going to sit here on our hooves and watch everything fall apart either. If we can buy you another day, we’re going to do it,” the stallion insisted.

Whatever reservations I might have been feeling despite all of his assurances, it wasn’t like I was in any sort of position to do anything to stop him. I just had to trust that the former Republic courser knew what he was doing, “alright,” I finally relented, “stay safe. Call in when they start moving again.”

“Will do. Good night; Ramparts out.”

With that, the frequency went silent once more, leaving me to sit on my outcropping while my mind continued to entertain worrisome scenarios where Ramparts plans went awry and got him killed. A tiny little part of me wondered if that concern was a sign of me already starting to become a ‘mom’. After all, Ramparts was a lot older and more experienced than I was in this sort of thing. If anypony should be worried about anypony, he should be the one concerned about me. After all, I was the mare who was about to storm a fortified stronghold that had already survived a balefire apocalypse.

Fortunately, brighter minds than mine had already been hard at work during this trip coming up with ways to address that. Foxglove, having spent her formative years in a stable herself, and been very thoroughly educated in said stable, had already come up with a number of possible ways to breach the Old World bunker. In fact, she had been practicing them for the last couple of hours on the systems of the stable that we were currently camped at. While the ponies that had once lived here might have had to open their fortified door to the Wasteland in order to avoid suffocation, their electronic security systems had remained completely intact.

As all of the stables were designed and constructed by the same company―Stable-Tec―the security architecture that was employed by all of the stables was largely identical, save for the off protocol or two. The violet unicorn was working with Homily and Moonbeam to find a way to use the hacking software of the Ministry of Awesome to create a universal override for stable locks. Arginine had also been involved in their development sessions, though his in-depth knowledge of the security side of things at his stable was limited.

Not having much to contribute to such a project at all, I’d instead taken myself out on ‘patrols’. While most of my time had indeed been spent genuinely scouting out the surrounding area for any signs that Arginine’s stable had posted sentry teams to act as an early warning system for their stable’s defense, a significant portion of it had also been spent on more introspective matters.

Specifically, I’d been wrestling with my relentlessly twirling moral compass.

Word had gotten around among the mercenaries that ‘The Wonderbolt’ no longer had the stomach for fighting. Which was a pretty big deal when one considered that my reputation in the Neighvada Valley had effectively been built upon that specific pillar: The Wonderbolt was likely the best fighter in this part of the Wasteland.

Everypony in the valley knew that I’d faced down the Steel Rangers largely alone and managed to make them blink―twice―something that the entire New Lunar Republican army hadn’t been able to manage in nearly two decades! Everypony had heard about how I’d also wiped out the Lancers. Homily, in her role as Miss Neighvada, had seemingly glossed over a few details in the telling of that story. Just as she’d bent a few facts regarding how Jackboot, Foxglove, and I had cleared out the shapeshifting monsters that had previously inhabited McMaren.

The point was that The Wonderbolt had a certain reputation. A reputation that had played no small part in why the Housecarls, Hecate, Harlots, and even the Razor Beaks, had been willing to sign on with my contract in the first place. Yeah, they had stayed because of the money, but I had serious doubts that they’d have even bothered to show up to the initial meeting in the first place if it hadn’t been for the fact that they knew a pony like me to be genuinely capable. That sort of thing went a long way with professional ponies who were used to having to deal with ignorant rich-types that made up the bulk of mercenary contract holders in New Reino.

It was refreshing to work with a pony who at least had some understanding of what were―and what were not―reasonable expectations where combat was concerned. Based on the reputation that I’d been building for myself, they’d regarded The Wonderbolt as being such a pony.

Now that was all being cast into doubt.

I could only surmise that somepony in the guard barracks back in Shady Saddles had overheard my conversation with Starlight and Foxglove about modifying my equipment to lower my lethality. Which had come on the heels of my controversial decision to spare the life of a known traitor that had lured Constance and her army to the town where we’d been staging, costing many of both the local defenders, and the very mercenaries I had hired, their lives. Frankly, the only reason that I’d been able to get away with doing that had been because of the massive amount of good will that my persona had garnered with the ponies of the valley. Without Miss Neighvada singing my praises for the last few months, I’d never have been able to get away with that.

However, it was looking like I’d effectively used up the last of my clout. All that was keeping the mercenaries here was the money they’d been promised once everything was complete; and even that might not be enough if I came across as making any more ‘reckless’ decisions. These ponies were used to doing all of the heavy-lifting while their employer sat back and filed their hooves, so my insistence in personally avoiding killing anypony wasn’t new to them; but it wasn’t something that they had expected from me personally.

Having so many ponies question that decision―to include a couple of my own close friends―was weighing pretty heavily on me. The only pony that I really had in my corner right now was Starlight Glimmer, and even the two of us weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on everything. She completely agreed with me that killing the ponies in Arginine’s stable wasn’t high up on her list of desires either; but she’d also made no secret of the fact that she intended to hit everypony there with the mother of all Reform Spells once we’d secured the facility. It frustrated even her that I was in opposition to that course of action too.

On the one hoof, I knew my own feelings. I might not have been able to completely explain them―which sure wasn’t helping matters―but that didn’t change how strong those feelings were: killing ponies and mind-wiping ponies were not how we were going to fix the Wasteland. There was a better way. I didn’t know what it was at the moment, but I knew deep down that it existed. My inability to articulate what that mysterious method was also frustrated Starlight.

It was starting to frustrate me too, in all honesty. If for no other reason than because my ignorance was causing me to doubt my newfound convictions. After all, if I didn’t know what the better alternative to killing was, then how could I genuinely be sure that there was one? I was just some young filly being confronted by hundreds of ponies who all held an opposing point of view. Logically, it was really hard to deny which of the two sides was most likely to be in the wrong.

Especially since my own opinions were based upon a ‘dream’ that I’d recently had. Mostly, anyway. Killing hadn’t been sitting right with me for a while now―perhaps even longer than I’d realized, it turned out. However, it had only been recently that I discovered the reason behind that feeling: I’d misinterpreted my own cutie mark. It hadn’t helped that saving certain ponies had often involved fighting and killing other ponies, leading to a rather confusing mixture of glee and guilt that I’d turned to alcohol to sort out. In hindsight, that hadn’t been the best solution, but even Jackboot hadn’t been the best teacher on those particular topics, it turned out.

The fact that I’d been wrong before also wasn’t doing much to help convince myself that I wasn’t wrong now. Maybe I was still an ignorant little filly who was too stupid and naive to accept that killing really was how problems as big as Arginine’s stable needed to be solved. After all, if just about every other pony in the world felt that way, then who was most likely to be wrong: the world, or me?

Even The Stable Dweller and The Security Mare seemed to feel that way. Those radio updates from the distant reaches of the rest of the Wasteland were rife with reports of those two contemporary heroines cleaving their way through one group of monsters and ponies to the next. I’d literally just sat through a broadcast announcing that The Stable Dweller had committed genocide! She was one of the most renowned ‘good ponies’ in the world, and was using weapons of mass destruction to fix the Wasteland.

Who was I to question a pony like her?

Yet, here I was, sitting alone―and simultaneously beneath the invisible gaze of five sets of pitying eyes―wrestling with my own conviction that The Stable Dweller may, in fact, have been wrong. Even thinking that felt tantamount to heresy, given the prevailing opinion of DJ PON3 and the residents of Manehattan and the obvious good that they all felt she was doing. But, even so, I couldn’t shake this newly entrenched idea that there was another way―a better way―that had been lost to time.

...or I was a complete nut-job and this was all just pregnancy hormones fucking with me.

I let out a frustrated groan and fell backwards, looking up at the dark overcast clouds. My hoof snaked out to my nearby saddlebags and I pulled out a box of Sugar Apple Bombs and began munching. The other thing that this pregnancy was doing to me was sending my metabolism into overdrive or something. I was constantly hungry these days. Starlight, being the only pony who’d experienced pregnancy in our group, had assured me this was largely normal. As were a few of my more outlandish cravings that even I was finding a little concerning.

I’d actually diverted from my flight earlier that day and hunted down a radroach. Didn’t even cook the thing. Just pounced on it, crushed it to death, ate it, and resumed my flight. Thinking back on it right now with a ―mostly―clear head, I felt a little nauseous; but at the time, it had been one of the tastiest things that I’d ever eaten in my life.

Kid, no offense, but the sooner you’re out of me, the better...and I wasn’t just saying that because my barding was starting to get really uncomfortable. It had been over a week since I’d even tried to wear my Wonderbolt barding, not since my confrontation with that group of White Hooves, but in that time it seemed that I’d gained enough girth that I had to noticeably suck in when trying to buckle a couple of the straps. It wasn’t uncomfortable―yet―but I had no doubts that would be changing in a few more weeks.

Which, of course, presumed that any of us were still alive in a few weeks.

On that note, it was probably a good idea to touch base with the ponies who’d been charged with saving the valley. Even if they weren’t doing it for entirely altruistic reasons, I thought with a bitter smirk as I took wing and glided down to the camp below.

I frowned as I saw the layout of our forces from above. While it might not have appeared so from the ground, there were some pretty clear divisions between the groups that were plainly visible from the air. All four of the mercenary factions, as well as a much smaller fifth ‘faction’ of Shady Saddles ponies who’d volunteered to come along with us, were all camped out in distinct little cliques, interacting as little as possible with one another. I might not have been an experienced tactical leader, but I felt like it wasn’t the best sign that the various parts of our army didn’t feel like at least trying to get to know one another.

With a flurry of wing-beats, I alit on the ground among the Harlots and looked around for Hemlock. She didn’t turn out to be particularly hard to find as it turned out. Or, rather, she didn’t she it particularly hard to find me, “good evening,” I heard the mare’s sultry tone from behind just a couple seconds after I landed, “and to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

I turned around and blinked, caught off my guard by the sight of the mare. While her normal attire of form-fitting black leather could be charitably described as ‘alluring’, what she was wearing right now was downright seductive; to the point that I found myself doing a quick mental confirmation about my own carnal leanings. At the very least, her sheer silken pink robe caused my words to catch for a few seconds before I finally managed to clear my throat and speak again, “just...getting a feel for how everypony is doing,” I began, wincing slightly at the slight heady tone of my voice, “you seem...relaxed.”

The unicorn mare’s bright eyes veritably sparkled with amusement as she gave her head a brief shake, sending her shimmering mane bouncing about her features, “just because we’re ‘in the field’, there’s no reason why we can’t still enjoy some of the comforts to which we’ve grown accustomed,” she insisted. There was a brief pause while she studied me intently, a smile tugging at her pursed lips, “come,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of her tent, “why don’t you come in and relax for a few minutes; let me touch up your mane for you. A general should look at least somewhat inspiring, no?”

I frowned, running my wing through my mane. It had been touched up not too long ago in New Reino, but the couple weeks since then certainly hadn’t been kind to any part of me. Hemlock certainly seemed to have no problem keeping herself looking pristine out of the city though, “um, sure, I guess,” what could it hurt?

“Excellent! Lunette,” the mercenary leader called out to another nearby mare, “be a dear and bring by my bottle of Cheval Pierre, please?” she paused for another brief moment, looking me over once more, the adding, “and some soft cider as well,” the mare she’d been addressing bowed her head and trotted out of sight while Hemlock turned around and motioned with her tail for me to follow, “let’s go talk, shall we?”

The leader of the Harlots didn’t seem to travel like any mercenary that I’d ever encountered before, I found myself thinking as I stepped through into the palatial tent that served both as Hemlock’s private sleeping chamber as well as her ‘war room’ to coordinate with her fighters. Yet, even in that regard, it certainly had its own style about it, with the floor veritably completely covered in surprisingly soft and brightly colored pillows of all shapes and sizes. The mercenary leader claimed a lush pile of them for herself, pausing briefly to adjust her robe, before patting another pile nearby, “let’s get that barding off of you so that we can talk while all nice and relaxed, hm?”

I hesitated for a few moments, a little put off by the atmosphere of the tent’s interior. As though sensing my apprehension, the unicorn mare smiled pleasantly at me, “oh, come now; I promise I don’t bite,” she thought for a moment, “except for my fifth husband. But I only did that the one time, and only because I’d told him, ‘not in the mouth’,” the grin she flashed me revealed a great many teeth beneath her briefly vicious eyes before her features softed once more, “but somehow I don’t think that’ll be an issue with you,” she chuckled.

“Right…” I nodded absently, trying to puzzle out what she was talking about as I made my way over to the pile of cushions that she’d gestured to. As I settled down, I found myself eying her curiously, “are you...flirting with me?”

Hemlock blinked in mild surprise for a few seconds, just before she burst out laughing, “oh, goodness; I suppose it does sound like it, doesn’t it?” her laughter subsided and she produced an elegantly carved ivory hair brush, “sorry. I don’t mean anything by it; just a force of habit, I suppose,” I felt my tail begin to lift into the air, held aloft by the glowing magic of her horn’s telekinesis as she began to gently but firmly deal with the tangles that it had gathered since last being tended to, “when you’ve entertained clients for as long as I have, some things just tend to become habit.”

“So the ponies who hire you like it better when you talk like a...well, no offense,” I mumbled nervously, “but you kind of come off sounding like a prostitute sometimes.”

Again the mare paused briefly before being overtaken by yet another raucous boudt of laughter, “only ‘sometimes’? Dear me, I must be losing my edge after all these years!” she resumed brushing my tail, a grin spread across her face, “oh, you sweet little filly, I am a prostitute,” she said before shrugging, “or, to be more precise: I am a Madame, who oversees a staff of prostitutes.”

I blinked wordlessly at the mare, my eyes wide with shock. This only drew forth additional chortles from the mercenary leader, “come now; with a name like The Harlots, I didn’t think that we were being particularly subtle about things! Did you really not do any research into who you were hiring?”

A frown creased my features and I found myself looking away from her in mild embarrassment. She certainly had a good point there. I’d been nowhere near as attentive to what was going on around me as I should have been for a long while. That certainly needed to change; and better sooner than later, “Ramparts was in charge of recruitment,” I offered by way of a meek excuse, which even I acknowledged wasn’t a particularly good one, “and I never really bothered to look too closely at who mercenaries were,” I admitted, “I always figured they were just bigger groups of ponies like Jackboot and I were: ponies who did work killing other ponies for money.”

Hemlock nodded, “I suppose, as a general rule, that’s an acceptable―if rather broad―way of looking at ponies like us,” the mare said as her brush continued to diligently attend to my tail, “but some mercenary groups didn’t start as mercenary groups. Their origins were far more...organic than a bunch of ponies coming together to fight for caps. In the case of the Harlots, our group was founded about eighty years ago, by my grandmother.”

“Your grandmother started a mercenary company?” I didn’t bother to hide my genuine surprise, “why?”

“Well, strictly speaking, she didn’t,” Hemlock corrected, chuckling again at the look of confusion plainly visible upon my face; then she elaborated, “brothels have been the family business...well, probably since before the bombs fell, really. So far as I know, at any rate.

“As a result, my family has always had a pretty firm grasp of what makes for a successful business like ours. Believe it or not, there’s more to it than bringing together a few mares who are a bit more liberal with lifting their tails than most. Though, there certainly is that,” she said with a knowing wink, “but among those keys to success are having the right mares―and stallions, if you want to broaden the customer base―getting in with the right regulars, and having enough muscle on hoof to keep things civil.

“Trust me, nothing brings out the worst in ponies than seeing a pretty flank and wanting more of it than you’re allowed to have,” the mare’s expression soured briefly before warming once more, “usually, we can rely on the local security forces for most of the latter. But, there have been times when that very security wasn’t so...secure.

“During my grandmother’s time, New Reino entered a period of, shall we say: ‘deficient civility’. The local guardsponies started to prefer being paid in flesh rather than caps,” she grunted in disdain, “and to hear her tell things, they started to ratchet up the ‘price’ to the point that some of the guards all but moved in. It reached a point where the staff weren’t so much ‘working mares’ as they were the guards’ personal comfort mares.”

“That sounds like it must have been pretty bad,” I agreed, “how’d they get it to stop?”

“It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t happen overnight,” Hemlock acknowledged, “but my grandmother was a patient mare. She also knew how to manipulate ponies. You don’t last long as a Madame if you don’t,” she added with another wink, “and she knew that the only thing that guardponies liked better than dominating mares in bed, was proving to those mares why they deserved to. Specifically: proving how oh-so-good they were at ‘protecting’ them.

“Those stallions didn’t think anything of the house’s mares taking a sudden interest in learning about shooting, because to them it meant that they got to show off how ‘amazing’ they were. Same with the hoof-to-hoof and wrestling; especially when the mares made a big show of ‘losing’ those wrestling bouts,” a wicked smile spread across Hemlock’s features, “but you can still learn an awful lot from ‘losing’.”

That much I had to agree with, and I nodded knowingly. Jackboot had not been a patronizing teacher in my youth while showing me everything that he’d known about hoof-to-hoof combat. But, by studying everything that he was doing to win, I started to lose less and less soundly, until I could eventually hold my own against even the bigger, stronger, and more experienced earth pony stallion who’d raised me.

“When they felt they were ready, they threw the guardponies out. Not very gently either. As you can imagine, they didn’t like that very much and they tried to do something about it,” that vicious look was back in the unicorn’s eyes, “they very quickly learned that Tartarus hath no fury like a mare scorned. The mares didn’t have any more trouble after that; and my grandmother didn’t service any more guardponies until they’d paid enough in ‘back fees’ that she could have retired a very wealthy pony, even by New Reino standards.

“Instead, she invested that money into weapons, barding, and expert instructors to make sure that she and her mares were always able to do their own protecting. She also bought out brothels across the valley, and she made sure that they all adopted those practices too.

“When a pony applies for a position in one of my establishments, they spend just as much time being trained at a gun range as they do being trained in ‘bedroom etiquette’,” Hemlock smiled broadly as she reached up with the brush and began to work on my mane, “the New Reino guards don’t seem to mind all that much these days. The way they see it, they don’t need to worry about rowdy, horny, ponies causing too much trouble, since my mares can deal with them just as well―if not better―than the actual security forces. And in a place like New Reino, that basically cuts their workload by about half,” she chuckled, “and who doesn’t like to get paid the same amount for doing less work?”

“So...why the mercenary stuff then?” I ventured, “I mean, I can understand wanting to be able to look after yourselves. In fact, I think that’s pretty awesome,” and that was quite true, “but what do you get out of taking up jobs like this?”

The other mare smiled warmly, “that was my mother’s idea. Grandmother was mostly just concerned about looking after her own, but Mother was a bit more outward-looking,” she waggled the brush at me, “but she wasn’t doing it out of the kindness of her heart either,” she resumed brushing, “she just realized that if more caravans made it to their destinations, the more ponies there would be for her and her mares to entice into their beds.

“She also briefly ran an ‘Escort via Escort’ business,” she continued, “where working mares would sign on with caravans to provide protection as well as something of a ‘turndown’ service,” she smiled, though there was a slight bitterness to it, “but it turned out that it was hard to keep a vigilant eye on the perimeter while sucking off the caravan. After a few spectacular failures in that regard, and far too many good mares being carried away by White Hooves and other raider groups, the Harlots adopted our current policy of: ‘tails tucked while out and about.’,” again she winked at me, “so, don’t worry about me trying anything with you or anypony else. Every Harlot here―including me―is staying celibate until we’re back in New Reino.

“After that, if you want to drop by and find out why ponies pay a thousand caps for an hour of my time…” she let the offer hang in the air.

A thousand caps for an hour? What could she possibly do that would incline ponies to pay that kind of money to―. You know what? It didn’t matter, “I like stallions,” I blurted, and immediately blushed.

“I can tell,” she chuckled, “and, personally, so do I―hence why I’ve had to many husbands. But, just because you ‘like’ stallions doesn’t mean that you can’t still ‘have fun’ with mares,” she shrugged and continued to brush at my mane, “but that’s fine. Maybe just to chat then?

“Another things that Madames like myself are good at is having a keen eye for capable mares,” Hemlock nodded, “and I can tell that you’re one to watch,” both of us glanced up at the sound of the front tent flap rustling. It was the mare from earlier, balancing a tray which contained a bottle of wine and two glasses, one of which was already filled with an amber fluid. The mercenary commander smiled broadly, “ah! Thank you, Lunette; I’ve made myself absolutely parched chatting off our guest’s ears!” she floated the tray over using her magic and set it down beside us, flashing another smirk in my direction as she poured out a glass of the white wine for herself, “I hope you’re ready for a second round!”

I felt my cheeks grow a little warmer beneath her sultry gaze. Objectively worth the caps she charged for her time or not, it was pretty easy to see how she was able to talk ponies into paying those sorts of amounts; Hemlock was very charismatic. She was also―my wavering heterosexuality was forced to concede―drop dead gorgeous. Barely even aware, I found myself nodding along with her as my wing reached out and took up my glass of cider and brought it to my lips.

The moment the liquid touched my pallette, I balked and gave the contents of the glass a sniff. This drew a chuckle from the unicorn mare, “no worries, dear, it’s soft cider. No alcohol,” she took a rather long sip from her own flute and let out a relaxed sigh before smiling warmly at me, “perfectly safe for baby.”

My face drained in surprise and I glanced with wide eyes at my belly. Even at Lancet’s estimated five months, I had been positive that I wasn’t showing―at least not noticeably. I’d noticed some places on my body that were a bit...fuller than they’d been a month or two ago, but there was no way that it should have been nearly as obvious to anypony else. Especially not anypony who hadn’t even known me a few months ago!

“How…?” I began in a tone that wasn’t―quite―suspicious of the mare.

Hemlock let out another bubbly laugh, “oh, please! After having three foals of my own, a mare can tell these sorts of things,” she beamed, taking another sip of her wine, “if it helps, it’s nothing that I saw, per say―you still have an enviously firm figure. But mares have a...posture...about them when they’re in a way,” she nodded knowingly.

“Congratulations,” she lifted her glass and peered over the rim with a questioning eye, “I hope?”

“Yeah―I mean...kinda. Maybe?” Hemlock quirked an intrigued eyebrow, “I’ve always wanted foals,” I clarified, “just not quite this early on,” I added with a shrug. Then, after a long pause and with a sour expression, “or in the way that it probably happened,” another questioning look from the Madame. I debated saying anything further at first. On the other hoof, a pony like her, in her line of work, would probably understand better than most. Even if nothing like it had ever happened to her, she was likely to know another mare that it had happened to.

“Given how far along Doc Lancet says I am, there’s only one pony that could be the father,” I cleared my throat and took a swallow of my drink. Too bad it didn’t have any liquor after all, honestly, “...and it wasn’t ‘consensual’,” I finished.

“I see,” the mirth was gone from Hemlock’s eyes now, replaced by a pitying expression of one who likely had heard such confessions before, “I’m sorry to hear that,” a humorless smirk tugged at her lips as she poured out a second glass of wine for herself, “it’s far too common of a story out here,” she agreed, “and I suppose it says something that even a mare as big and strong as the Wonderbolt has a page in it.

“If it helps,” she continued, taking another drink of wine, “you seem to be coping well.”

“Thank you,” silence hung between us over the bitter subject, until I finally cleared my throat and tried to direct things to more pleasant topics, “you said you had three foals? I have to admit, I’m a little surprised.”

“Why?” the unicorn mare’s face instantly brightened, thankful as well to be talking about a lighting subject, “I’ve had more husbands than there are days of the week. Surely it’s not so odd that I have something to remember a few of them by?”

“I just...I dunno; I figure that foals are something that pros―erm...mares in your profession,” I corrected, earning a chuckle from the Madame-slash-mercenary, “try to avoid. Since it cuts down on, you know...work?”

“You’d be surprised what some stallions fancy in the mares they take into their beds,” Hemlock winked. I was starting to feel like it was something of a tick with her, “but, generally, you’re right. However, like I mentioned, my grandmother was a wealthy mare; and my mother didn’t exactly squander the family fortune.

“I could have gone my whole life without doing a single thing to earn a cap for myself and just taken my cut from the other ponies in my employ,” Hemlock pointed out, “I could have, but I didn’t. At the urging of my mother, I did my ‘time in the trenches’, as it were. Her feelings was that, if I was going to be taking the reins, I should know what my mares were going through. Otherwise, I’d have frankly made a shite Madame.”

The shock was difficult to hide on my face, “your mother had you...sleeping with ponies?”

“She certainly didn’t force me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Hemlock corrected sternly, “it was merely a condition of taking over the family business. Otherwise, I would have been left to merely be a wealthy heiress living off of my ancestors’ stupendous quantity of wealth for the rest of my life,” the last was said in a tone that was quite obviously meant to be satire. Her previously jovial demeanor returned in an instant, “in the end, I figured that since I was going to be toying around with New Reino’s most eligible bachelors either way, I might as well be in a position to charge them absolutely ludicrous amounts of money for the privilege!”

“Fair enough, I suppose,” I admitted with an eyeroll. Then a thought occurred to me, “but why get married so many times?”

“Because, deep down, I suppose that I’m something of a romantic,” the mare sighed, a warm smile plastered across her lips as a glossy look came over her expression, “there’s just something ever so flattering about a young colt promising to ‘take me away from this life’ and spoil me rotten as his blushing bride,” she chuckled, “the marriage rarely lasted much past the honeymoon, which is when I finally let them know that I could buy and sell their family a dozen times over and bid them a fond farewell,” she batted her eyes as her features took on a flirtatious appearance, “but only after I made sure to give them a weekend that left them far too weak and drained to chase after me.

“I’m nothing if not a generous lover,” Hemlock had leaned in close by this point. So close, in fact, that all it would have taken to kiss her was only slightly extending my own lips. The sweet, fruity, bouquet of the wine that she’d been drinking mingled upon her warm breath, filling my nostrils and fighting with the already flowery aroma of her perfume. Her eyes burrowed into mine, her pupils wide and inviting in the dim light of her tent, quivering slightly as they traced subtly over my muzzle, like she was plotting out how best to land the kiss that was sitting on the precipice between us.

“Right―” I choked out and launched immediately into a small coughing fit, only realizing now that I’d actually been doing a fair bit of leaning in her direction. I reseated myself and tried―vainly―to act as though I wasn’t refolding my outstretched wings. I slammed back the rest of my drink and was both thankful and resentful that there was no alcohol in it. Something to take the edge off my nerves would certainly have been quite welcome right about now. On the other hoof, I was fairly positive that even a sip of booze was all that it would take to errode my wavering restraint and give myself over to this siren.

Damn was she good!

Hemlock was looking more than a little satisfied by my reaction. Though, for a brief instant, I imagined that I saw the slightest hint of disappointment that I hadn’t taken up her invitation, “and, as I mentioned before, I got a few foals out of the deal as well. Two colts, five and one; and a filly, who will be four next month,” a resigned smile set itself upon her muzzle, though there was an amused glint in her eyes, “and she’s every bit her mother’s daughter. She’s managed to make herself into quite the hostess already,” she chuckled, “she’ll be more of a heartbreaker than I ever was, mark my words!

“The boys aren’t doing so bad either,” she went on, her whole attitude seeming to shift in an instant as she began to talk about her foals. Anypony could have been completely forgiven for not even recognizing this mare as the same pony whose bedroom eyes were apparently the stuff of legend!

“Dandy is barely off the teet, of course; so not much personality there yet. But Beau is turning into the quintessential ‘big brother’, and not just for his siblings. He’s out to look after each and every one of his ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ too. He’ll make a fine second-in-command for Nightshade when she eventually takes over for me in...oh, we’ll say another fifteen years?” Hemlock tapped her chin pensively, “heh, by that time I may actually be looking to nab a real husband,” she poured out a third glass, “if only so I’ll have somepony around to pour my evening wine for me,” she added with a smile and another wink.

I was smiling too by now, listening to the mare talk about her family and gushing over her children. There was a brief flash of burning loss―an old wound that would never be quite healed―as I thought back over my own older brother, Holstein. About our family, back when it had been one. I’d wanted that for a long time; and listening to Hemlock now, it was refreshing to know that it was something that could happen for ponies.

My wing subconsciously curved itself along my stomach. While this might not have been the time or way I’d envisioned starting that sort of life...I was glad that it was going to happen someday; and I was looking forward to talking about my foal the way that Hemlock was now: with hope for the future.

A future that we were on our way to ensure.

“Thanks for that,” I said to the mare, drawing a curious look, “for reminding me that there’s still a little bit of light in the world. You’re whole family is pretty inspiring,” I went on, “they’ve had some bad stuff happen to them in the past, but they were made stronger for it. I’m hoping I can live up to that kind of thing myself,” I finally put down my empty glass and stood up, noting how my mane and tail shifted so fluidly with my movements. I ran a few pinions through my mane and smiled at the Madame, “and thanks for the brushing too. I’ll have to remember to come back here in a few days for another session.”

The mare crossed her hooves and rested her chin upon them, grinning up at me broadly as I set about putting my barding back on, “my ‘sessions’ run quite a high price, sweetie, and tend to leave my customers with very matted and sweaty manes and coats,” she chuckled with a waggle of her eyebrows as I was unable to keep myself from blushing, “but I certainly wouldn’t mind some more ‘girl talk’,” her eyes darted briefly to my belly, “and it’ll give me a chance to fill you with all sorts of horror stories about what you’ve got in store for you over the next six months!”

I grimaced, sticking out my tongue in mild disgust, “gee, thanks,” I shook my head and slipped from her tent. After a few cursory tugs on my barding’s straps, I flipped out my wings and alit into the air once more, angling in the direction of the next camp on my list.

Unlike the Harlots, I did know a little bit about the Housecarls. Most of it was hearsay and stereotypes regarding their reputation, so I was ready to take most of it with a salt-lick. Not that there was anything particularly bad about their reputation or anything. They were, however, known to be a fairly ‘irreverent’ bunch of ponies who did as much drinking and fucking as they did fighting.

Their area of focus was personal protection. Bodyguards and residential security for the rich and powerful. They rarely did all that much in the way of work that took them out into the wider Wasteland, unless they were escorting one of their employers on a trip, that is. Which, admittedly, made it a little odd that they’d have taken on this job. Either bodyguard work was slow, or the pay that I was offering was just that high.

As my hooves touched down at the outskirts of a raging bonfire surrounded by loudly carousing ponies, I figured that there was no reason I couldn’t get an answer to my question. I folded my wings to my sides and started looking around for either the Housecarls’ new leader or at least a pony who would know where they’d be. My arrival, unsurprisingly, had not gone unnoticed, and my attention ended up being drawn to the elderly mercenary leader as a result of several other ponies near him guestring in my direction while saying something to him. I crossed the short distance to the group of improvised benches that the ponies had created out of various crates and boxes they’d fished out of the nearby stable and inclined my head slightly towards the stallion.

“Wonderbolt,” the older pale blue earth pony greeted levely, returning the nod.

“...Sir,” horseapples, I’d never bothered to learn his name! In my defense, I’d had a lot of other things going on recently. Like nearly being executed.

“Yeoman,” he said, the hint of a smile tugging briefly at the corner of his lip. He waved a hoof at a pony near him and the stallion made room enough for me to be comfortably accommodate. I took the offered seat, “should I assume you have news for us?”

“No, not really,” I admitted. Somepony tried to pass me a bottle of Wild Pegasus, but I waved it aside and asked for a Sparkle Cola instead, “just making the rounds, you know? Trying to get an idea of where everypony is at.”

“I see,” the older stallion nodded, “anything in particular you wanted to know?”

“Nothing super important, I guess,” I said. A bottle of cola was passed my way and I popped the cap and took a sip, not feeling all too thirsty after the cider Hemlock had supplied me, “but I wouldn’t mind knowing a bit more about you and your ponies. I thought the Housecarls usually only took on bodyguard jobs. Isn’t something like this a bit out of your usual comfort zone? Not that I’m complaining,” I hastily added, “we needed all the ponies we can get for this, but I am kind of wondering. Are you branching out?”

“Something like that,” Yeoman sighed, his features pulling taught, “my nephew, Hird, the pony you and that courser of yours negotiated with in New Reino, was always a bit...hotheaded, I suppose. He’d had it in his head from a young age that he wanted to see our band ‘return to the glory of our ancestors’ or some such,” the stallion shook his head, “my brother-in-law would always tell him stories about how we were before the Wasteland. Most of them were just that though: stories. No truth to them, not really.

“Hird refused to see it that way,” he said, cringing, “he wanted a grand battle. Something he could brag about and use to make a name for himself and the Housecarls,” his old brown eyes darted to me, with a look that bordered on accusatory, “then your friend showed up with that story about a stable and the end of the world. You couldn’t have fed him a more perfect tail. He was hooked.”

I swallowed, looking away, “it wasn’t a ‘tail’,” I mumbled, “you have to know that by now.”

“Oh, aye,” Yeoman agreed in a gruff voice, “the threat sure is real enough, and Hird got the grand battle he always wanted. He just didn’t live to see the end of it and reap the ‘fame’,” he snarled. I got the impression, though, that it wasn’t precisely me or Ramparts that was truly angering the stallion, “stupid boy. Damn him and his father both.”

There was a brief pause, a ragged sigh, and then, “so that’s why we came in the first place. The only thing that’s keeping us staying is our own stubborn reputations. Not good business to quit a contract half done,” his lip quirked into a wry smirk, “worse business to be killed to a mare by humongous super-soldiers like those bastards were, the way I see it; but none of these ponies would follow me back home if I left anyway, so…” he shrugged and shook his head.

“I’m sorry about your nephew,” I said, not having to try very hard to sound genuinely sympathetic, “I didn’t know we’d be surprised like that.”

“So I gathered. You’ll pardon my frankness, but I’m in agreement with that fiery wrench wench of yours: best to gut that cur that ratted on us and not risk a repeat,” he shrugged, “by all means, wring him for all the information you can first, but the sooner he’s put down, the better for all of us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied tersely. Then I hurriedly changed the subject off of Arginine, “so...why have the Housecarls always focused on bodyguard work? I mean, I know there’s some good money in it, but a lot of groups keep their options open, client-wise.”

“S’cause it’s what we’ve always done,” the older stallion shrugged, “since long before the bombs fell, the Housecarls saw to the protection of ponies what could afford to pay our fees. ‘Course, back then we weren’t so much a mercenary company as a company company: Housecarl Protection Services Ltd. Best providers of asset and personal protection West of Ghastly Gorge!” the last was rattled off with an affectation that wouldn’t have been at all out of place during an advertising broadcast. Though the stallion’s eye roll as he recited the ancient slogan suggested that he wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic about his heritage as the feigned tone of the recitation might have made it seem.

“Truth of the matter,” the elder earth pony went on, grumbling, “was that things before and after the war couldn’t have been more different. Before the fighting, ‘security’ was all about the theater of it all. Well-dressed, intimidating, ponies standing on the sidelines in dapper suits and shades. Some of them might have known how to throw a punch, but mostly they were there just so that there was the idea of security. If shite actually hit the fan, well…” he barked out a dry laugh, “they’d probably have been using their client for cover!

“Then the war happened, and suddenly there was a need for more than mere theater. Zebra assassins and griffon wet teams were very real dangers; and it took more than a tailored suit and stoic expression to stop ‘em. Fortunately, there was also a sudden surplus of ponies in Equestria who were coming off their calvary stint and needed work. Who better to stop zebras and griffons than ponies who’d just spent three-odd years fighting against them?” Yeoman flashed a wry smirk, “in a matter of years, the atmosphere of the whole company had shifted. Classes on looking fierce were replaced by CQB firearm drills and krav yeeha training.”

Another short bark of mirthless laughter, “then the world ended and the whole paradigm had to change all over again. Now we fight off mutated monsters and other ponies mostly. Some of the theater wormed its way back in a bit. The bigger and badder you look, the less likely somepony is to try and start something,” his expression soured slightly, “though that also means that when somepony does start something, it’s probably because they think they’ve got the firepower to take you...or they’re drunk off their flank.

“At the end of the day,” Yeoman sighed, looking back my way, “we don’t branch out much on account of not seeing much practical reason to. City walls keep out most of the monsters, raiders, slavers, and gangs, sure; but they don’t do anything to hold back violent drunks, hired hitponies, or armed robbers looking to make a big score. Places like New Reino and Seaddle are teeming with ponies looking to hurt one-another. Doesn’t matter that they don’t paint their bodies or where matching leather jackets; they’re looking to make a ruckus either way.

“For ponies like us, that means we’ll always have paying work though, so I suppose it’s not all bad.”

I frowned and stared down at my Sparkle Cola, which I’d barely touched. The old pony had a point. Trade Caravans and other Wasteland travelers weren’t the only ponies who needed protecting. The Republic Guard couldn’t be everywhere in Seaddle at all times, and there were plenty of ponies looking to do harm to others even within the walls of a settlement. Ponies of means, like senators, casino barons, and merchant company owners, took advantage of their wealth and employed dedicated personal security details to keep them safe, even in their own homes.

The common pony didn’t have that luxury though.

Stopping the ponies from Arginine’s stable wasn’t going to do anything about that, though. Frankly, neither would have systematically hunting down every raider in the Wasteland, I admitted. There’s always be ponies looking to rob from the rich to give to themselves, and probably not shy away from hurting more than a few innocents along the way.

Though, there was something from Yeoman’s story that I found myself more interested in than the rest of it, “you said that, before the war, Housecarl ponies didn’t need to actually do much more than be there? That it was mostly show?”

“Security Theater, they called it, aye,” he nodded.

“Did ponies just not hurt each each other as much back then?”

“Beats me! You’d have to ask somepony who was there,” the old stallion replied with a sarcastic snort, “and I’m not that old, thank-you-very-much!”

“Right, no, sorry,” I mumbled, cringing slightly, “I just...it’d be nice to know what was so different about the world back then. Other than the whole no radiation, taint, and devastation thing, I mean.”

Yeoman shrugged, “I’m not an expert on ancient ponies,” he informed me, “I just know the history of our little company.”

I was barely listening now though, my mind racing with questions, and focusing on one mare in particular that I needed to direct them at, “thank you. For talking to me, I mean,” I said, putting down my mostly full bottle of soda and walking away from the bonfire and the mercenaries who were still intent of enjoying their evening.

Honestly, it was hard to digest what I’d just been told. The idea that the world had once been a place where somepony’s initial inclination wasn’t to hurt or kill another? It sounded more like a fantasy world than a history lesson. Though, that did align with what little of the old world that Starlight Glimmer had told me, I supposed. She’s insisted that ancient pony society had shied away from doling out lengthy prison sentences and death as a punishment, even for high crimes, in favor of magically altering their minds. Just like she’d done with the Lancers.

Even so, none of that had really suggested much in the way of how often serious crimes had actually been committed, just that punishment for them had been vastly different from what was done today. On the other hoof, surely if there had been enough lawbreaking back then, then a significant swath of the population would have been rendered as pacifistic as those Lancers had been. Ponies like that would have hardly made good soldiers, and to fight a war on the scale that ended the world would have required a lot of soldiers; not doormats.

If Yeoman’s grasp of the history of their company’s duties was accurate, and even ponies whose job it nominally was to be able to guard against violence barely had to know anything about actually fighting, then that did suggest that whatever crime rate existed in pre-war Equestria had to have been pretty low, and leaned towards the petty side. Again, it was conceptually hard to wrap my head around that notion. It was like the sort of fantasy world that I’d tried to envision in my youth that could exist once the Wasteland was ‘fixed’.

Obviously, it couldn’t have been all that idyllic. It eventually resulted in the Wasteland, after all.

Though, I supposed that the war hadn’t involved only ponies, had it? There’s been another belligerent too. Had their society undergone some radical shift during the war as well? I frowned. Even if we all survived the next week or so, a trip down to zebra territory wasn’t going to be in the cards for me any time soon, if I was hoping to track down a lot of sources for that kind of information..

―!

But maybe I had a source closer at hoof! I flipped out my wings and jumped into the air, making my way towards the Hecate camp.

The reception that I received upon arriving wasn’t quite as warm as the one that I’d gotten at the Harlots or Housecarl camps. That wasn’t to say that it was cold, per say, but the atmosphere was certainly a lot more...dour and subdued. Everypony also spoke with an odd accent that I couldn’t quite place. They did at least direct me towards their leader’s quarters without any reservations though. At least, they claimed that it was the tent for their leader. I found myself feeling a little skeptical about that as I approached.

Most commanders tended to situated themselves in or around the center of their companies, so that they could quickly get to any one element and issue orders. Keri’s tent wasn’t just on the outskirts of the Hecate encampment, it was almost a hundred meters away from the next nearest tent belonging to his company. I found myself wondering what kind of pony―er, zebra―wouldn’t want to be anywhere near their own company?

Was it some sort of prejudice between the zebra and the ponies that he commanded? That would have been hard to believe, since it was highly unlikely that even ponies who worked primarily for coin would follow a leader that they didn’t even want to sleep within earshot of―

“Can I help you?”

I jerked with a start...again. I really needed to stop letting ponies surprise me like that. I turned my head to the side and noticed that a mare had appeared from around the backside of the tent that I’d been told Keri stayed in. A striped mare. Though those striped appeared to be quite faded, and not with age, since she was obviously quite young. Older than I was, but still on the more youthful side of ‘adult’. There were also some features that were strikingly similar to the older mercenary leader I was here to see.

A sister, maybe?

“I was told that this is where Keri would be?” I ventured hesitantly.

“It is,” was the mare’s curt response.

There were several long moments of silence which ended when I finally let out a tired sigh and rolled my eye, “I want to talk with him. Is now a good time?”

“He’s currently meditating. It’s very important that he not be disturbed under any circumstances,” the faintly striped mare insisted, a severe expression upon her face, “otherwise there could be serious spiritual repercussions.”

“Oh,” I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by all of that, but it seemed pretty clear that I wasn’t going to get to see him any time soon, “well, then do you have any idea when I could come back and―”

“One moment!” the mare’s demeanor shifted in an instant and a wicked glint flashed across her pink eyes. She veritably pranced to the entrance of the tent and poked her head in, “OH, DAAAADDDDYYYYY! YOU HAVE A VISITOR!”

Even I winced, my ears folding back reflexively from the intense volume of her yell, and I was in the opposite direction. I could only imagine what it had sounded like inside the tent!

...wait, had she said, ‘Daddy’?!

“From the smell of her, I’d say that the Chief Whore is sending over another ‘negotiator’,” the mare’s only slightly muffled voice continued. Shocked by the assumption, I surreptitiously sniffed at myself. Indeed, I did find that some of the perfume that had been saturating the air inside of Hemlock’s tent seemed to have adhered itself to me during the brushing that she’d given me. In fact, I wouldn’t have put it past the madame to be the sort who owned a brush that applied the scent as a feature.

It did smell pretty nice though, “whatever she’s offering, try to keep it in your robes this time. I swear to the spirits, if I wind up having to foalsit for another of your little ‘accidents’, I will castrate you myself...with a dull, rusty, spoon!”

She withdrew from the tent, wearing a deep frown and letting out an irritated sigh, “you’d think he’d have learned his lesson when I was dropped off at his doorstep, but nope!”

“Actually, I’m not―”

“Pfft! Duh!” the striped mare chortled, “I know who The Wonderbolt is; I’m not a moron. I just said that to make him squirm for a bit. Come on in,” she lifted the entrance flap with a hoof and nodded her head inside, “I’ll help you translate.”

I flashed the mare a quizzical look, “but he speaks ponish, doesn’t he?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

As we entered and I cast my gaze into the middle of the tent, my face immediately flushed a deep crimson. The older striped zebra stallion that I had met at the previous planning meetings was waiting for us, but not in any fashion that I had seen him previously. The zebra was languishing on his side, attired in a thick felt robe that had quite clearly been left open with deliberate care. Specifically, he had made an effort to draw attention to his framed and exposed stud-hood, which he was currently in the process of running a hoof along the length of, an almost eager smirk spread across his face.

To his credit, it took Keri less than a second to realize that he had indeed been misled by his daughter, and that I was clearly not a ‘negotiator’ sent by Hemlock to discuss...whatever it was that The Harlots ever discussed with Hecate. Almost immediately, the stallion flipped his robe over to cover himself and sat up more erect―more stiffly―...more properly, in order to greet us. As the confusion and the shock passed, he glared at the younger striped equine, “errant words spoken, employed in wicked earnest; dangerous habits,” he growled.

Then he looked in my direction and adopted an apologetic expression, “conduct improper, sincere regret aplenty; a new beginning?”

“Like I said,” the younger mare sighed, though she was wearing quite the satisfied expression on her face despite the admonishment I was pretty sure she’d just received, “I’ll translate. Unless you feel up to deciphering his bad poetry?”

I glanced between the two ponies, “wait, you mean that he always speaks like that?” I looked back to Keri, “why?”

The elder zebra frowned, but it was his daughter who supplied the answer, “because it’s his fetish.”

I balked once more, taking a reflexive step back towards the tent’s entrance, “his what?”

Keri glared daggers at the other mare who was unable to keep herself from chuckling as she explained further, “not that kind of fetish. A magical one! Kind of,” she thought for a moment, “insofar as zebras can do ‘magic’, at any rate,” she raised her hooves and flicked them in the air by way of forming quotes around the word, “speaking like this is something that he has to do all the time, for the rest of his life, otherwise the spirits won’t ever help him do stuff again. Along with a lot of other bad stuff that’ll happen to him.”

“The...spirits? You mean like ghosts and stuff?”

The younger mare was frowning along with her father this time too, “no, not like ghosts. Look, I doubt you came down here for a whole long spiel on zebra magic and shamanism, and I don’t want to waste the months it would take to even scratch the surface explaining it to a pony. Especially one who can’t even do pony magic―no offense.

“So let’s just say that the zebras can make deals with the forces of nature themselves to get the world to do what they want, and that if a zebra is very young and very stupid when they make those deals, it can make life really hard for them,” she inclined her head towards her father, “for example: let’s say a hormonal teenaged colt asks a spirit of fertility to make him an unrivaled sex god; and he thinks that having to forever speak in haiku is a fair trade; even if he knows nothing about haikus!”

“Seriously?” it was getting a little difficult for me to distinguish between when this mare was being genuine and when she was trying to have fun at her father’s expense. However, I saw no indication of reproach on the older zebra’s features.

“Seriously,” the mare deadpanned, “the downside is that if he slips up, even once, his testicles shrivel up and fall off.”

I started to laugh, if a little uncomfortably, at the part of this that simply had to be a joke, but neither of the others joined in. Instead, they both simply looked at me with completely stoic expressions and my laughter quickly petered out, “...oh,” I was quiet for a moment, “can he write normally at least?”

“Nope,” the mare said, and the stallion shook his head in confirmation. In fact, he was shaking his head for what seemed like an absurdly long time, “because that would count as trying to ‘cheat’ the spirit that he made the deal with; and he’d be censured,” she then seemed to notice the odd look that I was giving to her father as he continued to shake his head. Even he was looking a little annoyed by it by now, “yeah, he shakes and nods his head seventeen times just in case.

“Spirits are pretty fickle.

“Anyway, can we please get on with why you’re here? No offense, but I don’t feel like spending all evening in my Dad’s love shack,” the mare grimaced, shifting uncomfortably on the cushion she was sitting on, “for all I know, at least five of my siblings were conceived on this thing…”

“At least five?” I balked, “how many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“A dozen that I know about,” she said, rolling her eyes, “but who can be bothered to count anymore? He certainly isn’t keeping track,” she muttered, jabbing a hoof in her father’s direction. Still seeing my shocked expression she leaned over and said in what sounded like a well-rehearsed explanation that she’d heard several times, “fertility spirit; condoms are a cheeEEAat!” she sing-songed.

I was in the middle of awkwardly mouthing the younger mare’s last statement to myself as I tried to wrap my head around the concept when she started clopping her hooves in front of my face, “now, make. With. The. Point!”

“Right, right,” I shook away my earlier musings and took a cleansing breath before―finally―getting to the reason that I’d come here in the first place, “I’m actually here because I want to know more about how zebras were before the war,” I began, “I want to know if things were...well, peaceful and stuff.”

“...Seriously?” the mare’s face fell as a look of exasperation immediately washed over her.

“Well, yeah. I recently heard about how ancient ponies barely had need for real security forces before the war because there wasn’t a lot of violence. I was wondering if it was the same for zebras.”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because if ponies and zebras didn’t use to be such colossal assholes in the past, then maybe there’s a way to get us to stop being them now,” I reasoned, “I’m not saying I think we can go back to how things were overnight,” I added by way of caveat, “but it’d be nice to know that the possibility existed.”

The younger mare was wearing a decidedly dubious expression, “you came here for a lesson on how polite ancient zebras used to be?”

“Pretty much.”

“...Spirits, now I actually wish you were here to get plowed into these cushions,” the mare groaned, while leaving me sputtering. She sighed and fell back onto a collection of blankets in resignation and waved at her father, “fuck it! Hit her with a history lesson, Pops…”

The older stallion was looking at me now with a curious expression. After several long seconds, he finally spoke, “winged destruction, seeking ancient placid tails. A novel concept.”

“He thinks it’s weird the Death Machine of Neighvada wants to hear about super-happy-fun-times,” the younger mares said, still lying on her back.

“I want the world to be a better place,” I shot back reproachfully at the mare, “I’ve always wanted that. I used to think that meant killing all of the ponies and stuff that were ‘bad’, but…I feel like that’s not how it works. So I want to try something else.”

“What, you mean not killing at all?”

Her tone suggested that she was trying to be sarcastic. Which prompted her to peak up in mild surprise when my answer was anything but, “if I can avoid it, yeah. Killing…” I swallowed, my vision briefly clouding with an image of a dead mare laying next to the broken form of her infant foal, “you can’t take it back if you make a mistake, you know?

“My mistakes shouldn’t get innocent ponies killed. Nopony’s should.”

The younger striped mare, looking slightly cowed by my answer, didn’t have a response to this; but her father did, a sympathetic smile tugging at his lips, “youthful ignorance, new eyes see a simple world; blind to its layers.

“Life’s lessons are cruel, second chances a scarce find. The lucky grow wise,” the elder zebra nodded his head in his exaggerated fashion with his speech, “histories I know, divulged for the worthy few, of them you I count.”

And so, with his daughter chiming in any time his ‘poetry’ got a little too abstract, Keri started to relate to me what he knew about ancient zebra society before the war. According to him, their was actually quite a bit of tension that existed between zebras, because they divided themselves into many different tribes. Even today, with the trials that the modern zebras faced in their own version of the Wasteland back home, they still clung to those tribal identities. It turned out that, a lot of times, those differences turned violent.

At one time, there had been hundreds of tribes, basically consisting of large family groups. For the most part, they dealt with other family groups passively, interacting only occasionally to trade or perform marriages to bring in new blood and keep the gene pools from getting too stagnant. Sometimes those interactions went more violently though. Over time, either through multiple marriages, or because of outright conquests, those hundreds of tribes were whittled down to scores, and then dozens.

Today, there were ‘twelve and one’ tribes, as he insisted on describing it. Those tribes regarded one another with great animosity, Keri informed me, and waged nearly constant wars with each other to control what little of their nation remained.

Much to my disappointment, it sounded to me like there had never been a time that he knew of where zebras weren’t fighting amongst each other on some level. This was disheartening, to say the least. I was going to have a hard enough time trying to get ponies to stop going at each other’s throats, and there’d already been a time when they’d been like that! How was I even supposed to start getting zebras to play nice with other races, when they couldn’t stand their own kind?

Keri and his daughter were barely even able to describe to me what made all of their existing tribes so different from each other, boiling it down to stereotypes that didn’t quite make sense to me. It was all: “metal-headed Properolli”, and “daydreaming Zencordi”, and “sex-crazed Cannolis”, or whatever. Zebra’s used too many ‘i’s in their names, I decided; who could be bothered to keep it all straight?

While the information was far from what I’d have hoped for, I suppose that it would have been wrong to consider it a wasted effort to collect though. At the very least, it would help to prepare me for what I might come up against if my efforts to stop the violence in the Wasteland ever made it as far as the zebras. Doubtful, but optimism was in dreadfully short supply these days; so why not?

The griffons might provide a little more insight, I thought hopefully...

Wow...was I ever wrong!

“We do stuff for money,” Griselda said tersely as she idly gnawed on the rib bone of what I was depressingly sure had once belonged to one of the ponies that had attacked Shady Saddles. That, combined with the smell of seared pony flesh hanging in the air around the griffon’s camp, would have been more than enough to make me nauseous. However, I was unfortunately dealing with the rather unexpected element of finding the back of my mind reasoning that a nice, thick, slice of grilled meat wouldn’t go amiss right about now. If there was a saving grace, it was that only thoughts of radroaches made my mouth water, and not the slowly turning haunches I’d seen grilling outside the griffon leader’s quarters.

“Okay, I get that; but what about before the war?”

The griffon snapped her metal beak in irritation, “we did stuff for money then too,” she then snapped the rib she was holding in her talons and started sucking on one of the halves like a hard candy, “probably some sort of instinct or whatever. I hear a lot of birds like shiny things,” the hen shrugged.

I frowned, but refused to give up entirely quite yet, “okay, but did you at least ‘do stuff for money’ as a single group, or…?”

“Fuck no!” Griselda snorted in amusement, “we can barely stand each other. You put two griffons in a room together, you’ll end up with only one griffon by nightfall,” she made a long, wet, slurping sound before plucking the rib half out of her mouth and replacing it with the other one and made herself comfortable on top of a bundle of pastel hides, “probably the only reason that griffons haven’t died out by now is that, after getting in a good, hard, fuck, we’re too tired to try to kill each other. Usually,” she sniggered.

Then she seemed to think for a moment before adding, with a frown, “well, I guess there was this one time,” she said in a marginally annoyed tone, “we had some king or other than managed to get the whole flock on the same page for a while,” almost as though sensing my tentatively rising anticipation, she jabbed a claw in my direction, “but! It was only because he’d found this super shiny gold statue thing that all the other griffons really admired.

“Heck, supposedly a lot of other races admired it and came from all over to gawk at it. It made us feel important. Respected,” it was hard to tell with her mostly metal beak, but I was pretty sure that I caught sight of the barest hint of a whimsical expression. However, it vanished so quickly beneath another scowl that it was hard to be sure.

Her tone was anything but whimsical when she continued, “but then it disappeared, and so did all the visitors, and it was back to doing things for money. During your war with the zebras, those ‘things’ mostly involved killing; and most of that killing was directed towards ponies because zebras paid more.

“We’ve just sort of been carrying on doing it ever since,” she finished with another shrug.

Well, it certainly wasn’t an ideal history lesson, but it did at least offer me the briefest of insights into griffon thinking. Though, I had to wonder if it was really that easy, “so if I were to get my hooves on a big, gold, statue, I could become queen of the griffons?” I mused aloud, rubbing my chin thoughtfully, “that’d be cool.”

I knew that it couldn’t have been nearly that simple, but it certainly got Griselda’s attention as the hen turned and glared at me with baleful eyes, “it’s not that simple, you moron!” she didn’t even need any prompting to continue explaining to me where my assumption had erred, “never mind that a pony being the leader of griffons is beyond laughable, but anygriff who wanted to give themselves the title of king or queen and expect to be taken seriously would have to prove that they deserved it in the first place.”

“So how did that one old king do it?” I asked, “and why hasn’t any other griffon done it since?”

“Because the statue disappeared, you dumb fuck! I already told you that,” she snapped, “and ever since, no other creatures traveled to the griffon lands to admire it. Other races basically ignored us until they needed something,” the griffon’s lips beyond her metal beak pulled back in a sneer, “who’d ever want to rule over a race no other creature really even cares about? You understand now, moron?”

“I’m starting to,” and I was, “thanks.”

“Good,” the hen huffed bitterly, “now get out of here before I start charging you for this shit. You paid me to kill mutant ponies, not give you history lessons.”

In the end, I wasn’t so sure that all of my efforts that night had been worthwhile. While Hemlock’s story had been interesting, it didn’t exactly help our situation. Similarly with Yeoman, Keri, and Griselda. It was academically interesting to get even limited glimpses into what life had once been like in the world for the major races involved, but it again didn’t help anything in the here and now. Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how much anything I’d learned would ever be helpful even down the rode.

While―if Yeoman’s account was even accurate―it seemed that ponies were―nominally―capable of getting along peacefully, it didn’t seem like that was true for the other races. I wasn’t sure if I’d have either the time, or the sources, to ever learn what made ponies so fundamentally different from the other races; let alone how that knowledge could be effectively applied to any meaningful end.

Maybe the Wasteland had simply been inevitable and we were all eternally doomed no matter what we did.

Wasn’t that a cheery thought?

My pipbuck beeped.

I glanced down and felt myself tense up as I beheld Ramparts’ tag as being the indicated source of the transmission. Even before I opened up the frequency on my fetlock-mounted device, I had a pretty good idea of what the distant earth pony was calling to tell me, “I’m here, Ramps; what’s up?”

“Constance is turning around.”

Footnote:...

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