Who're you an' how the hell did you get in here? Wh-where are those jackass guards?

I passed the spyglass―which was really just a detached rifle scope―back to the griffon scout that had lent it to me, for the ‘bargain’ price of five caps for five minutes. For an additional ten caps, they had even been willing to point out all of the enemy sentry posts that they’d discovered so that I could make the most of my time with the scope. Apparently these services had not been included in the overall employment contract that I’d signed with the Razor Beaks. I made a mental note to track down my copy of said contract and find out what else I hadn’t actually paid them for. Presumably they were obligated to actually fight, but I wasn’t positive about that any longer...

Arginine’s stable rested at the far end of a narrow valley, nestled into a cliff face. At one time, there seemed to have been a small river or large stream of some sort that ran through here. Either balefire bombardments had reshaped the mountains and diverted it, or the valley’s newfound arid disposition had dried it up. I suspected that, back before the end of the war, there may have even been a waterfall concealing the stable entrance, given the terrain in question.

The layout made for quite the double-edged sword where tactics were concerned. On the one hoof, this small valley would be easy to defend with even a small force like ours. The narrow avenue of approach meant that even a few hundred defenders could effectively hold back a much larger attacking army, since any invader would only be able to maintain a narrow front in such confined quarters. On the other hoof, it also meant that we would be easily contained by little more than a token force if Constance decided, upon her return, that all she wanted to do was hem us in while she went on her crusade through Neighvada.

It would also make assaulting the stable itself quite difficult. Their sentries would see us coming from a mile away, and they might even be able to keep us at bay depending on what kind of forces they could send out of their stable to reinforce them. Getting close enough to catch them off guard wasn’t going to be very easy…

This morning had everypony―as well as zebra and griffon―getting an early start. There’d been a general sense of urgency hanging over us since leaving Shady Saddles, and a prevailing knowledge among those involved in the overall planning of our course of action that the margins we were playing with where the timetables were concerned were razor thin. General Constance’s force moved faster than we did. If we got her attention too early, she’d have caught us before we reached the stable. If we made our move too late, either Shady Saddles or Seaddle would pay the price.

As a result, we’d been cutting down on sleep during the night, and rest stops during the day. We’d covered ground more quickly, but now our forces were pretty fatigued, and I had my doubts that any of the mercenaries were going to be able to perform at their best. There had been no helping that though, as the alternative was either not making it to the stable at all, or arriving too late to do anypony any good.

To that end, Ramparts and his small picket of scouts were trying to do everything in their power to slow down Constance’s forces. I’d been more than a little apprehensive initially, but my nerves were somewhat soothed―marginally―when the courser laid out their plan of action to me in more detail. Rather than performing any direct harassing actions, like I’d feared, they were going to take more indirect approaches. Specifically, he and his team would set up small minefields in the path of Constance’s army.

They didn’t have a lot of the small, nominally buried, explosives on them, but his plan didn’t require all that many in the end. Ramparts’ ponies wouldn’t be setting up genuine expansive minefields, but rather just a couple of mines every mile or so. A force the size of the one marching back to Shady Saddles, comprised of ponies that large, would be hard-pressed not to trigger the mines. At which point, any rational commander would feel compelled to call a brief halt and deploy sapper elements to search for additional explosives.

Realistically, it would only take them an hour or two to realize that they hadn’t wandered into a serious hazard and then they’d resume their prior rapid pace. Then, a couple miles later, when they believed the threat had passed, they’d encounter another couple of mines emplaced by Ramparts and his team.

Even the courser wasn’t sure how effective such a ploy would be the second or third time. To that end, he was working to repurpose the group’s grenade supply into pseudo-mines so that they could build a far more robust minefield the third time, and hopefully play the first two off as feints and make Constance feel that she’d been suckered into ignoring a real minefield the third time. At that point, she might finally be paranoid enough to perform as detailed a sweep of the area ahead of them as she could.

With luck, they’d be able to achieve similar delays with further lone mines or idle pairs after that.

That was the plan, at any rate, and one that I was willing to approve―not that Ramparts exactly needed my permission. I was simply thrilled that it kept all of them out of harm’s way for the most part. It also had the potential to possibly delay Constance and her army by as much as a full day. Not that I intended in any way to rely on that. Our own forces continued at the forced-march pace we’d originally planned on and just take any time that Ramparts bought us to rest up and fortify our position once we’d successfully taken their stable.

Indeed, it turned out that we’d need those precious extra hours to breach the stable’s defenses. Arginine should be able to get us past the front door―which saved us a great deal of grief―but that was assuming that we could even make it that far in the first place.

The visible sentry posts notwithstanding, somewhere in there was a whole other army the size of Constance’s that was being trained up to be unleashed upon the Wasteland. Arginine insisted that that army wouldn’t be fully ‘combat capable’, since his stable had been forced to launch their assault many years prior to their originally planned date. Still, bodies with guns were bodies with guns, no matter how poorly drilled they might be; and in terrain like this, it wouldn’t take any sort of elite fighting force to bog us down.

Thus, it behooved us to have a well laid out plan of action. Realistically, we should have had this plan before even leaving Shady Saddles, and I’d intended for as much when we were heading there from New Reino. Obviously, events had forced us to undergo some rather significant changes in our timetables. So, we’d basically be drawing up our plan of attack right now, with only the bare reconnaissance that we’d felt confident we could do without being spotted by the stable’s defenders.

I could tell that the mercenary leaders weren’t thrilled about that particular notion, but there was no helping it. The longer we lingered in the mouth of the valley, the more we risked detection, and we didn’t have time to more carefully scout things out with Constance on the move. We’d just have to make it work, somehow...

While my thoughts were probably best served focusing exclusively on Arginine’s stable, I opted to avail myself to the opportunity to talk with Starlight Glimmer for a few minutes before the meeting was scheduled to begin. I’d had a few―if abbreviated―nights’ sleep to mull over my conversations with the mercenary leaders from earlier, and wanted to probe the brain of a pony who was in a position to be much better informed about the state of the world before the Wasteland, and hopefully put a lot of what I’d heard into perspective.

“What was life like before the Wasteland?”

The pink unicorn blinked in surprise and looked over to where I was hovering beside her, “well, that came a little out of nowhere. What brought this on?”

“I was talking with the mercenary leaders a while back,” I explained, “and some of them told me about how things used to be before the war. I heard from the new leader of the Housecarls―Yeoman―that ponies used to be really peaceful. Is that true?”

She thought for a moment and then nodded, “yeah, I guess. Certainly, before all the fighting with the zebras started. I mean, we had the Royal Guard and stuff, but they were hardly ever used for anything. Maybe the odd rogue dragon that strayed from their annual migration or a bugbear wandering into a town. Stuff like that.

“Certainly nopony walked around with guns―they hadn’t even been invented yet, for Celestia’s sake―or even knives or spears. So, yeah, I’d say things were pretty peaceful in that regard,” she concluded, adding, “thing’s weren’t perfect, in my opinion, mind you; but they were peaceful overall.”

“What about zebras and griffons?”

Starlight once again thought in silence for several long seconds before responding, “I don’t think I ever even met a zebra before the fighting started―and didn’t exactly get on ‘friendly’ terms with any after for that matter―so I couldn’t really tell you much about them. There was a lot of news and propaganda about what they were like during the war, but I doubt any of it was even close to accurate. It’s hard to hate any creature enough to kill them that’s not painted as an absolute monster, after all.

“Now, as for griffons, yeah, I met a couple of them in my life. As a general rule, they come across as rude, at the best of times,” she offered with a wry smirk, “they’re a lot more mellow when you’re tossing bits their way though. Don’t bother asking them for a ‘favor’, because they’ll probably just laugh in your face; but if you offer to pay, they’re practically your best friend...at least until you go broke. Then they’ve never heard of you,” she shrugged.

“Why do they act that way towards ponies? Was there some ancient war between us or something?”

“Oh, it’s not just ponies,” Starlight corrected me, “they’re like that with each other too.”

That meshed almost perfectly with what Griselda had told me. It wasn’t that I’d doubted the griffon’s word about what members of her own race were like, but it still didn’t hurt to have a first-hoof account from a source who wasn’t hearing it passed down through oral history. After all, if pony attitudes had changed so drastically in two centuries, why not griffon?

“I wonder why ponies have always been friendly with each other, but other races fought amongst themselves?” I mused out loud. The unicorn surprised me with an outburst of laughter, prompting me to gape at her, “what?”

“Oh, trust me: ponies weren’t always friendly with each other. Heck, we used to hate each other too, a really long time ago,” the pink mare said, “at least, that’s what we’re taught growing up.”

“What do you mean? What changed?”

“Well, the story goes that ponies used to be three distinct tribes: earth, unicorn, and pegasi. They didn’t live together or interact all that much. But...they did have something of a symbiotic relationship going on,” I flashed the mare a quizzical look and she happily elaborated, “much like they always have, pegasi lived almost exclusively in the clouds. It’s pretty hard to grow crops on those though. Similarly, it’s not easy for a farmer to grow a whole lot of food without favorable weather and rainfall.

“So, the two worked out a deal where the pegasi would keep the weather optimal for growing crops, in exchange for a cut of what the earth ponies harvested. They had something of an understanding, and by all accounts it seemed to work for them. For the most part.”

“What about the unicorns? How did they factor into things?”

“Things get kind of hazy there, honestly,” Starlight said, “the ‘official’ narrative is that the unicorns controlled the sun and moon going up and down, and so they received food from the earth ponies in exchange for making sure the days were the right length for growing crops. However, there’re parts of that story that don’t line up perfectly with other events.

“You see, the sun and moon didn’t get disrupted until Discord messed with them during his brief reign; and he appeared way after when all of this was supposed to be happening. So, while there was a period of time when unicorns were controlling the length of the day, it wouldn’t have been as far back as this story says it did. If I had to guess, I’d say that the unicorns were using more...manipulative tactics to get a cut of the food. That theory also explains why the tensions between the three started to grow over time.”

“Waitwaitwait,” I waved my hooves at the unicorn, my face scrunched up in consternation, “the unicorns raised the sun and the moon?”

“For a brief period of time, yes,” Starlight confirmed, “Celestia and Luna later took over the roles when they came along. The magic required to do so is pretty immense, and was causing unicorns to suffer from permanent magical burnout when they attempted it.”

I blinked at the mare in incredulous silence, “...pull the other one.”

“I’m being serious,” the pink unicorn insisted.

“Well, Celestia and Luna have been dead for two hundred years,” I pointed out, “so who’s been ‘raising’ the sun since then?” I jabbed a hoof at the overcast sky.

Starlight glanced upwards, silent for a long while, her blue eyes wide, as though just realising something that should have been obvious to her, “...I uh...hmm. I don’t know...are we sure they’re dead?”

“That’s what everypony says,” I informed her, “they died in the war and are now goddesses watching over the world; but unless you’re about to tell me that goddesses can use magic on the real world…” the unicorn didn’t respond, “so, yeah, I don’t buy it.”

The unicorn wasn’t acknowledging me anymore though, her attention fixated on the heavens as she mumbled to herself, “...could they have set up an artifact to maintain things? Maybe, but the matrix to sustain something like that for centuries would need to be the size of―” Starlight shook her head and frowned, “I wish I’d grabbed more books from that MAS hub. I’d need to run some numbers before I could give an answer,” she glanced up once more, “...unless they eventually fixed whatever it was that Discord broke at some point…?

“Whatever,” she shook her head and resumed her earlier explanation, “the point is that the earth ponies were in an arrangement with the other two tribes to give their food to pegasi and unicorns in exchange for ideal growing conditions. However, by all accounts, they weren’t very happy with this, and any time they threatened to back out, their fields would be hit with a freak frost or a supposedly overly long night until they relented.

“Then, one year, the winter went a little long. At first, the earth ponies thought that the pegasi were trying to intimidate them to get a larger share of food, but the pegasi professed their innocence, and claimed that the storms were getting harder to control. They, in turn, blamed the unicorns, believing that they were trying to develop weather-control magic to cut the pegasi out of the deal for food entirely. The unicorns too, insisted they weren’t doing anything.

“The winter never let up, lasting months longer than it should have. Unable to plant new crops where they lived, the earth ponies decided that they had no choice but to leave to find a milder climate. Some versions of the story suggest that the pegasi and unicorns believed the earth ponies had been behind everything somehow and were trying to get out of the deal, and so followed the earth ponies in secret. The common version insists that all three left their traditional homes and decided to migrate to new regions independently of one another.”

The unicorn flashed a wry look, “fascinatingly, all three groups just ‘happened’ to end up in the same region at the end of their respective migrations. The old dynamic was readopted and the inter-tribal resentments resumed. Shortly thereafter, so did the harsh weather.

“Now, accounts at this point get a little...simplistic,” Starlight sighed, “and it’s nearly impossible to find written accounts that survive from that time period. Most of the records of each tribe were left behind during their migrations, given its rather sudden and dire nature, and dedicated archives had yet to be built in their new homes to keep written accounts preserved. It’s mostly oral histories and songs, so a lot of details get glossed over.

“The long and the short of it are that some junior members of the tribes’ leadership learn that wendigos were behind the unnaturally harsh winter and worked together―earth pony, unicorn, and pegasi―to drive them away for good. The stories insist it was all done through ‘the magic of friendship’, but…” the unicorn shrugged, “it’s a story told to foals, so I’ve always thought that was intended to be a more easily understood explanation than what had actually happened.”

“So what did actually happen?” I asked, “according to you?”

Starlight shrugged, “who knows? Like I said: records from that time are vague at best. For all I know, it really was as simple as three ponies hugging it out in a cave,” her expression suggested that she considered this to be a dubious prospect, “but the point is that after the wendigos were driven off, the tribes soon all merged into a singular nation of ponies.

“Before that point, there is firm archeological evidence to suggest that the tribes did occasionally fight amongst each other. Who knows? Maybe the unicorns secured their food allotment as part of the terms of surrender after a war with the earth ponies?

“So, no, ponies weren’t ‘always’ friendly with each other. It took a near catastrophe that almost wiped our races out before we set aside the differences of our tribal roots,” Starlight concluded.

“Wow. That’s...interesting,” and it truly was. It certainly gave me a lot to think about too, where cooperation was concerned. I knew that having a common adversary could often bring opposing forces together. I’d even relied on exactly those circumstances a time or two. However, such alliances were often quite fragile, and always transient―evaporating at almost the instant that the mutual threat was vanquished. Obviously, prolonged cooperation needed something beyond just having a common foe.

Unless I could find a foe that was timeless and eternal to fight against that threatened every other being in the world...and was a lot less intangible and abstract than concepts like ‘violence’ or ‘hatred’...or wendigos.

I was about to press Starlight for more details on the new alliance of ponies that the three older tribes had created and how they’d accomplished it when I saw Foxglove approaching. Walking closely in her wake was a collared and hobbled Arginine. True to her word, the violet unicorn mare had kept the stallion under her direct supervision and very insistently iterated for me to keep my distance and not engage him in conversation on any topic that wasn’t either his stable or its defenses.

It...hurt, I had to admit that, being kept away from Arginine like this. I wanted to talk to him, and not in an official capacity as the mare who was leading an army to destroy his stable; but as somepony who’d worked closely with him for months, who’d fought at his side...as a friend. I needed to understand where we stood with each other. I needed to understand him, and why he’d done what he did.

I needed closier.

Foxglove wasn’t going to let me have it though. Ironically, because she cared about me too much. I, at the same time, both appreciated how far she was willing to go to protect me, and resented how little trust she seemed to have in me. I wasn’t a foal. In a lot of ways, I hadn’t been one for a long time. I was entitled to make my own mistakes and go on not learning from them as many times as I wanted to!

...Okay, so, admittedly, that wasn’t exactly the best argument I could have presented―which was why I hadn’t―but that didn’t make it any less true!

The worst part was that even Foxglove and I hadn’t gotten a lot of chances to talk for the last couple of days either. I wished that I could have said that our duties were keeping us apart, but that would have been a lie. Yes, while Foxglove was rather occupied during the evenings and breaks tinkering with weapons and equipment, trying to get as much stuff working at its best before our assault on the stable, that didn’t stop us from talking while we walked. Indeed, it wasn’t like I was too busy scouting ahead while we were on the move these days. She was just...sort of unapproachable and only gave me curt and distant replies any time I tried to start a conversation. At least, that was the impression that I got.

I suspected that it was because Arginine was always right at her side, and she just didn’t want the two of us to be nearby any more than was absolutely necessary. This upcoming meeting, it turned out, would be no exception.

“Hey, Foxy,” I greeted, waving at the pair and putting forth my best effort to wear a happy smile, “hey, RG.”

“Windfall,” the violet mare responded. The large stallion behind her was silent. He wasn’t even making eye contact with me. My smile faltered. I opened my mouth, craning my head around to try and place myself in the stallion’s line of sight, only for Foxglove to cut me off, “don’t bother,” she said, nearly sneering at the other pony, “I’ve warned him that I’ll blow his head off if he so much as looks at you.”

I balked, “wha-? Foxy, you’re not serious,” I looked at Arginine and insisted, “she’s not serious,” he didn’t respond.

“I am,” the unicorn mechanic confirmed, “and he knows it too. This is for your own good, Windfall, so drop it.”

Any further protest that I might have had was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the mercenary leaders and their lieutenants, “let’s get this pow-wow started,” Griselda growled, “the sooner it begins, the sooner it ends, and I’ve got some short-ribs waiting that are only going to get colder the longer this thing gets dragged out.”

I surprised myself by feeling a droplet of drool seep out of the corner of my mouth. Before anypony could see it, I quickly wiped it away with a pinion and took a deep breath in order to clear my head of all thoughts of roasting radroaches or grilled bloatsprite. For Celestia’s sake, I wasn’t even that big a fan of meat! I mean, yeah, I wouldn’t say no to a plate if that’s what was being served, but I’d never found myself actively pining for it before.

Kid, this better be your doing...

And, also, stop it!

“It’ll be quick,” I assured the griffon hen before looking over to Foxglove, “Foxy?”

The unicorn mare nodded and cleared her throat as several sheets of paper wrapped in the glowing green aura of her telekinesis floated out of her saddlebags and over to the representatives of the mercenary groups, “what you’re getting is the layout of the stable,” she informed them, “points of interest have been marked, and lines of advance have been color coded and assigned to each group.”

Griselda was sneering again, “I don’t see the Razor Beaks anywhere on this thing.”

This time, I spoke up, “your group will be keeping an eye out for Constance’s forces and any local patrols that might try to respond once we’re inside. Since we’ve got creatures that can fly on our side, we might as well keep them outside where they can use their wings to our advantage,” sensing the likely source of her irritation, I added, “you’ll get an equal cut of the loot, don’t worry.”

“If she really wants to throw herself down a few choke points, I’m willing to volunteer my girls to swap places with the Razor Beaks,” Hemlock chimed in, flashing the metal-beaked hen an insincere grin, “I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to lay around outside and work on my tan.”

The griffon adopted an icy smile of her own, “keep talking, cum-stocking, and I’ll show you some ‘points’ that you can choke on…” she held up her talons and leisurely stretched them out in front of the courtesan’s face. Hemlock’s expression didn’t waver.

“Anyway,” I interrupted, not particularly bothering to conceal my annoyance. The pair held each other’s gaze for a few additional seconds before returning their attention to Foxglove in almost perfect unison.

The violet mare resumed her briefing, “as I was saying, the assault groups are each tasked with seizing critical areas to ensure we get full control of the stable. The Housecarls will take the main reactor, the Harlots will seize the Overmare’s office and Security, and Hecate will go for the computer core. Meanwhile, we’ll,” Foxglove gesture between me, Starlight, and herself, “be taking the Shady Saddles ponies and going after their genetic sequencing equipment.”

“How reliable are these maps?” Yeoman asked, and I could see his eyes wandering briefly towards Arginine.

“There’s minimal deviation from the standard stable layout,” Foxglove assured the older earth pony, “structurally, it’s almost identical to how my own stable was, though there are a lot of differences in how the sections themselves are being used.”

“What kind of resistance are we talking about? Numbers, weapons, deployments?”

Foxglove flashed her gaze briefly to Arginine, her lips drawn in a tight line, “those numbers are...fuzzy,” she admitted, much to the obvious disgust of the mercenaries, “according to our source,” I silently glanced in her direction; what, she couldn’t even bring herself to use his name? “It’s likely that they’ve accelerated their production timetables. However, it’s impossible to know exactly how quickly they’ve done so. In theory, the stable houses an operating staff of just shy of five hundred-”

“What?!” “You’re not serious!” “Fuck that!”

“-which are mostly technicians!” Foxglove just about yelled in order to make herself heard above the din of outraged mercenaries. They subsequently quieted down to just shy of an annoyed murmur, “they should,” the unicorn stressed, with another brief glance at Arginine, “have only a ‘token’ security force, plus whatever patrol happens to be refitting between Wasteland sweeps. However,” she added by way of caveat, “we’ve also been advised that the stable’s usual posture might have changed in response to the same activities that have pressured them into accelerating their soldier production.”

“So we’re going to be fighting five hundred of those,” Yeoman jabbed a hoof at Arginine’s bulk, “inside a confined space that has choke points every thirty feet? ‘Technicians’ or not, that’s a pretty tall order,” his dour expression suggested that the pun hadn’t been intentional, or that commenting on it would be appreciated.

“We may not even have to fight most of them,” Foxglove said, “stable’s have lockdown protocols to help suppress riots and revolts and stuff. If we seize the Overmare’s office quick enough, we’ll be able to trap most of the stable’s population in the residential areas while we finish securing the reactor. With that and the Overmare’s office in our hooves, we can force a stable-wide surrender,” she insisted, “they can either give up, or we’ll just cut off power and airflow and finish things that way.”

I wasn’t sure if anypony noticed the horrified expression that flashed across my face before I was able to recompose myself. This was hardly an audience that was going to feel particularly compassionate towards Arginine’s stable, after all. Still, I was finding the idea of suffocating a few hundred trapped, helpless, ponies a little...disconcerting. My hope was for finding some way to resolve this without one side or the other committing genocide.

Unfortunately, the quite agreeable nods and expressions being shared by the mercenaries suggested that I was distinctly in the minority on that point.

I frankly refused to believe that this couldn’t all just be ended by destroying the stable’s capability to continue developing and producing their ‘perfect ponies’. Without their lab, and if we could destroy the data they’d spent the last two hundred years compiling, then they’d have no choice but to give up their crazy crusade and start living like normal ponies. Right?

I would have felt more sure of myself if I could have gotten Arginine’s opinion, but Foxglove wasn’t going to be letting that happen any time soon.

“What about getting in in the first place?” Hemlock ventured, “it’s my understanding that those underground bunkers are as tough as, well, bunkers. It’s not like they’re just going to open the door for us and roll out the red carpet.”

“Maybe you could show a little flank and see what happens,” the griffon chided.

Before Hemlock could issue her retort, Foxglove spoke up again, “we have the access codes to get in,” she assured everypony, “as long as we can get Windfall to the entrance with her pipbuck, I can get it open without any trouble.”

“We’re sure the codes you have will work?” Yeoman asked, “what if he’s equina-non-grata? He’s been gone for a long time.”

“The last his stable will have heard of him is how he captured me and brought me to General Constance,” I reminded the other mercenaries, “if anything, they’ll think he’s a damn hero,” a thought crossed my mind right then and there. I paused, looking briefly towards Foxglove. She wasn’t going to like it though, not one bit. However, I was almost positive that it was going to work.

It also had the bonus and giving Arginine and I the ability to talk again. Whether the mechanic and I would be on speaking terms an hour from now though, was another matter...

Sorry, Foxy, “in fact, that ties in directly to how we’re going to get past their lookouts. If everything goes right, they should even open the door for us and a team will be able to disable most of their stable prior to our initial assault.”

The four mercenary leaders were all looking at me now with expectant expressions. Which was good, because it meant that they were momentarily oblivious to Foxglove and Starlight’s looks of confused shock. I seized the initiative their surprise had bought me, “you see, they are also expecting Arginine to return, along with me. Once the two of us are inside, we can slip out of sight and disable their stable’s security protocols. The door will be open and the alarms will be off. There’s a good chance the two of us will even be able to initiate the lockdown before you make the breach. You’ll all be able to take the stable by complete surprise with barely any resistance.

“That last part can’t be guaranteed though,” I hastily amended, “which is why we didn’t include it in the plan we’ve laid out for you to follow. If Arginine and I can make it happen, it’ll be a nice bonus, but we don’t want you all to depend on it happening.”

If looks could kill, Foxglove’s emerald eyes would have liquified me like a disintegration ray. Thankfully, Starlight was quick enough on the draw to finally interject herself into the conversation before the violet mare could completely upend everything that I’d just tried to accomplish. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to thank her enough for that, “and nopony here needs to worry about whether Arginine can be trusted,” she said, “I’ll be casting a Reform Spell on him before we arrive. He won’t be capable of betraying us ever again.”

My stomach just about fell out of me. It was all I could do just to keep my face impassive. I might have overplayed my hand, I realized. Unfortunately, I was already in too deep, and countermanding what the pink unicorn had said would only reveal that I’d been the one deviating from the plan to begin with. We were a day out from the stable. Now was not the time to let our mercenary clients think that we didn’t have any idea what we were doing.

“Yup. That’s right,” I said, with only the slightest hint of strain in my voice, “he’ll be totally, one-hundred percent Reformed. Uh-huh,” oh, Arginine, I am so sorry!

Griselda frowned at the pink mare, “if you can do that, then why is he wearing that collar at all?” she gestured towards the stallion.

“Because a spell like that takes a lot of prep time,” Starlight told the griffon without missing a beat, “I’ve been putting the finishing touches on the artifact that I’ll need to cast it,” the explanation seemed to satisfy the griffon.

Foxglove finally found her voice again. I suspected that it must have taken the mare a monumental amount of self-control to keep her tone as level as she was, especially given the seething glare that she was still casting in mine and Starlight’s direction, “well...as you can see, there’s still a few things that we need to talk,” I could hear her teeth grinding on the word. It was very likely that there would be a lot more ‘yelling’ than there would be ‘talking’, “about. You should all get back to your companies and make sure they know what routes they’ll need to secure once they’re in the stable.

“We’ll let you know if the plan changes.”

I inwardly cringed at Foxglove’s tone during that last bit. Chances were good that she was about to do her level best to ‘change’ the plan that we’d just presented back to what it had originally been...all of two minutes ago.

The violet mechanic watched the mercenaries walk out of earshot, which took an uncomfortably long time, given that it wasn’t a gentile ‘chat’ that she didn’t want the others to overhear. On the bright side, this gave me plenty of time to brace myself before the unicorn started in on me, “WHAT IN THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED?!

“Did half your brain die of oxygen deprivation while you were dangling from that noose?! There is no way, in Celestia’s blighted Wasteland, that I’m going to let you and him go trotting into his stable all on your own! Not happening! Not. Happening.

“And you!” she turned on Starlight now, eliciting a cringe from the pink unicorn, “I don’t care if you ‘reform’ that waste of flesh back to his fucking foalhood; there is no way that what Windfall just proposed is going to happen!”

“Foxy-” I began, but to no avail.

“Oh, don’t you dare ‘Foxy’ me, Windfall,” she snapped, glaring daggers at me. I recoiled from her biting tone, but I could see in her eyes, beyond the anger, the wrenching pain that was being veiled by this outward rage. Yeah, she was pissed, of course, but it was because she was terrified, “how could you? We had a plan, and now you’re changing it all around at the last minute? And why? Just so you can put yourself into even more unnecessary danger?

“No, Windfall. I’ve watched you come close to death too many times because you went off and did something reckless on your own. Not this time. Not while we’re so close to finally being done with all of this!”

The mechanic took in a deep, ragged, breath and managed to grab a tenuous hold of herself once more, “the three of us are just going to sit here for a while, look like we’re deep in discussion, and in a few hours, I’m going to meet with the others and tell them that came up with a ‘better’ plan,” she glared at us once more, “the original plan,” she growled, daring either of us to say otherwise.

And who was I to ressit an opportunity like that, right?

“Foxy,” she whipped her gaze to me, but remained silent this time, allowing me to say my piece this time, “this really is the better plan,” I insisted, “they’ve got sentries outside the stable, not enough to fight us off for long, but enough to get a warning to their stable before we’re even at the door. With the valley as narrow as it is, the stable wouldn’t have to send all that many ponies out to stop us in our tracks. We might never make it inside before Constance catches us. Even if we do, it’ll be costly. Very costly,” I pointed out.

“If we do manage to make it inside, it’s not like they won’t know where we’re trying to get to. They know what parts of their stable are vital to defend just as well as you do.

“Yeah, it’s a fight that we’ll probably be able to win...eventually,” I stressed, “but they could draw the fight out for hours, maybe even a whole day. More than long enough for Constance to make it back here and pin us between her forces and the ponies in the stable. If that happens…”

“We knew that when we made the plan,” Foxglove countered defensively, though I’d seen her expression while I’d been laying out all of the ways that this could have gone wrong, “and we all agreed that we’d be able to secure the stable before that happened.”

“Only because we didn’t think that we had any other choice but to do it this way,” I pointed out, “but we do! Arginine and I can get in there without raising any alarms or suspicion. I heard General Constance specifically order Arginine to come back here! They’re expecting him,” I looked to Arginine for confirmation that Constance had passed along her instructions to him to the stable, but he was still avoiding my gaze, as per Foxglove’s instructions.

With an exasperated sigh, I glared at Foxglove and jerked my head in Arginine’s direction. The violet mare held my gaze defiantly for several long seconds before finally relenting, “fine...Arginine, you can answer her questions―but only answer her questions. The first bit of idle banter I hear out of your mouth, I’ll pop your head like a cyst.”

Yeah, because if there was one thing that Arginine had a reputation for, it was ‘small talk’, I thought, rolling my eyes before looking back at Arginine expectantly.

The stallion nodded, “the general did indeed send word to my stable alerting them to my imminent arrival, and that I would be bringing Miss Windfall’s body along for processing.”

“See? See?! We don’t need to bust down the stable’s front door; they’ll hold it wide open for the two of us while we just walk right in!”

“Leaving you and Arginine trapped, alone, inside their fucking headquarters,” Foxglove countered, “and I highly doubt that they’ll just let either of you run around in there unsupervised,” she shot a confirming look over to the stallion, who responded with a slight nod.

“They are also anticipating for Miss Windfall to be a corpse,” he added.

Even before the violet mechanic fixed me with another glare, I was cringing. I’d sort of hoped that Arginine would leave that part out. Though, I suppose that was a bit much to expect from Arginine, of all ponies, “excuse me?” Foxglove snarled.

“Okay, so maybe both of us won’t exactly be ‘walking’ around,” I hastily amended, trying my best not to fidget too much beneath the glare of both mares as Starlight found herself joining in as well, “but think about it: it’ll be super easy for me to sneak off without anypony noticing. How close of eye do you think they’re going to keep on a corpse, right?” I looked between both the mares and Arginine as well, looking for a little support from the stallion to help buttress my plan.

His aid proved once more to be somewhat...lacking, “it is highly probable that Miss Windfall will be taken almost immediately to be processed and vivisected so that the results of her body’s examination can be presented to the Omega Strain Planning Committee for consideration.”

Foxglove brought her hoof to her temple and began to massage it, “okay, so I figure we’ll wait another hour before letting the others know that the plan has ‘changed’,” she was looking at Starlight and pointedly avoiding my own defiant expression, “you tell Keri and Griselda, I’ll talk with Hemlock and Yeoman. If they ask why we’re doing things differently, tell them…” the mare fumbled briefly before giving a dismissive wave of her hoof, “that your brain-washing spell doesn’t work on Arginine after all. Make up some reason, it’s not likely either of them knows how unicorn magic works anyway.”

“Wha-? No!” I protested, “RG and I can pull this off! We made it work that one time they caught us,” I reminded the mares, “we can do it again.”

“You mean the time it turned into a running gun battle against a dozen ponies that we only barely survived?” Foxglove retorted, “Yeah, I’m sure doing the same thing, but this time while fighting off a few hundred ponies will work out just perfect…”

“That time we pulled a plan out of our flanks at the last minute,” I shot back, “this time RG and I will both know what’s coming and we can coordinate better. We can make this work!”

But Foxglove wasn’t hearing any of it, it seemed, “for fuck’s sake, Windfall, how dense can you possibly be?! It’s been three days since the last time you headed off alone with him only for him to try and have you killed! What could possibly have changed between now and then to make you think he won’t betray you―what would this be, the third or the fourth time?”

It wasn’t like the violet unicorn didn’t have a point, I was forced to concede. Objectively, I was being a moron. Considering that this little plan of mine would obviously call for the explosive collar around Arginine’s neck to be removed, it wasn’t like there would be any external threat to ensure his continued loyalty. There was literally nothing that any of us could do to keep him from betraying me in the end. If that happened, it wouldn’t just be my life that was at risk, but the lives of everypony in the whole valley, and maybe even beyond.

We would be hanging everything on Arginine’s word that he would cooperate. In the Wasteland, a pony’s mere word didn’t amount to all that much.

Of course, the Wasteland wasn’t likely to stop being the Wasteland any time soon if we continued to keep doing everything the way we had for the last two centuries. Things needed to change. Ponies needed to change.

And that was only going to happen if they were given a chance.

...or even third and fourth chances, I amended with an inward smirk.

Although, where Arginine was concerned, I did have one thing going for me that couldn’t be said of the average Wasteland resident. I stepped past Foxglove and Starlight and approached Arginine, sitting myself down right in front of him, “RG? I need you to help get me inside your stable. Then I need you to help me make it vulnerable so that everypony else can get in and stop it from making more soldiers and launching its attack on surface ponies.

“Will you help me do that?”

Arginine was silent for several long seconds as he stared down at me. Then, I thought that I saw the barest hint of a twitch at the corner of his mouth and he nodded, “I will.”

I looked over my shoulder at Foxglove and grinned, “there, see? We’re good. He won’t betray us.”

“Oh, please!” the mare spat, “you aren’t seriously just going to take his word for it, are you? Even you’re not that naive!”

Okay, now that was just hurtful, I thought with a frown, “Arginine has never―ever―lied to me, about anything,” I stated flatly, my gaze still leveled at the mechanic, “can you say that?” the mare balked for a moment, and I took advantage of her hesitation to return my attention to Arginine, “and why are you willing to help me stop your stable?”

“Witnessing the actions of General Constance, and comparing them to yours, has led me to conclude that―while perhaps physically and magically stronger than the ponies of the surface―the ponies of my stable are not truly ‘better’ than many examples I have encountered in Miss Windfall’s company,” he replied without hesitation, adding after a brief pause, “indeed, it occurs to me that our education curriculums may have engendered within us a sense of superiority that will cause us great friction with other races and beings in this world; perhaps inevitably leading us into another―even larger―war that spans the globe.

“Such an outcome would indeed run contrary to our stable’s established purpose. It would ultimately constitute failure,” he stared at Foxglove intently, “so if my stable is to fail in its objectives, than I would like to ensure that it does so with as little loss of life as possible.

“I do―and always have―seek to help ponykind.”

“Yeah, it was a total dick move for him to do what he did in Shady Saddles,” I shot a stern look at the larger stallion, “and you can bet he’ll be paying for that one for a long time,” I looked back to Foxglove, “but, believe it or not, he only did it because he was having something of a ‘crisis of faith’, specifically in me. We’re over it now, and he’s firmly in our corner.

“Trust me.”

But Foxglove was shaking her head again, “I…” there was hesitation now at least. I’d managed to make a dent in her resolve with what I’d provided thus far. With a little more prying, I should be able to get her to crack for good.

“Look, I get that you’re doing this because you really care about me, and not because you hate Arginine,” I caught her flashing a brief glare at the stallion, “well, mostly not because you hate Arginine,” I amended, “but my point is that I appreciate it―I really do!” I stepped closer to Foxglove and reached out with a wing, placing it gently on her shoulder and drawing her full attention back to me, “you’ve been watching out for me like some kind of annoying big sister that I never asked for!”

...Okay, admittedly that had sounded a little more complimentary in my head. I ignored the violet mare’s annoyed smirk and plowed onward, “but even if you were my sister, that doesn’t mean that you get to control me. I’m my own mare, living my own life. You’re not going to agree with every decision I make or risk that I take; but if you care about me―if you really care―then you’ll respect me enough to let me go through with them.

“By all means, try to talk me out of doing something stupid,” I qualified before the violet mare could say anything about that particularly contentious point, “and I won’t say ‘no’ if you swoop in at the last minute and save me from myself.

“But, at the end of the day, you don’t get to tell me―or anypony―what to do with their life. I trust Arginine. I understand why you don’t, but I do. Now, I’m asking you, as my friend, to let me do this.

“Let me try to end this with as few ponies dying as possible. Please. Too many have already died for this, so if there’s even a chance that stable can be taken down without a bloodbath, I need to at least try!”

Silence hung over the four of us for what began to feel like an eternity as Foxglove held her gaze on me. The only hopeful sign was that her expression was at least some shade of pensive; so she wasn’t going to just dismiss everything that I’d said right out of hoof. At this point, that was probably just about all that I could reasonably ask for, I supposed.

When she finally spoke, I felt my heart leap into my throat with dread and anticipation, “alright,” the only reason that I didn’t jump and holar with elation was because I was so overcome with surprise that the unicorn mechanic had actually relented in the end, “alright,” she said with a heavy sigh, “we’ll try your plan.

“But!” she added, jabbing her hoof in the middle of my chest just as my initial shock had worn off and I was about to start overtly celebrating, “but,” she repeated and I continued to rein in my enthusiasm, though it wasn’t easy, “I’m coming with you.”

Well, if her goal was to stifle my elation, Foxglove certainly succeeded, “what? How? You don’t exactly look the―”

“I’ve got a spell that should do the trick,” Starlight offered helpfully, levitating out one of her grimoires and flipping through the pages.

“Oh,” from the look on the faces of both unicorn mares, it was clear that this point was going to be non-negotiable too, “well, I guess an extra set of eyes can’t hurt, right?”

“And an extra gun if things go wrong,” Foxglove added curtly before shifting her attention to Starlight, “shall we go and work out the details on this spell of yours?” the three ponies turned to leave, but I piped up once more, looking anxiously at Starlight.

“Oh, and could you please not use your mind control magic on RG?” I pleaded, looking furtively between her and the stallion, “I kind of like him the way he is,” I added, suddenly feeling my cheeks flush a little despite myself, “his weirdness is growing on me.”

The pink unicorn mare smiled, “relax, I was just saying that for the benefit of the mercenaries,” she assured me before casting her own appraising look at Arginine, “besides, I genuinely don’t think that a Reform Spell would work on him anyway,” all three of us gave her a surprised look and she shrugged, “it mostly just erases malicious intent. Tall, dark, and wordy over here doesn’t have any malicious intent to erase.”

Starlight looked at Foxglove now, “like it or not, he’s not actually a ‘bad’ pony. At worst, he was misguided,” now she was looking at me, “but somepony went and put him on a better path before I could,” now her gaze went back to the stallion, “but whether he manages to stay on that path…” she let the warning hang in the air until Arginine gave an understanding nod of his head.

The violet mechanic rolled her eyes and shook her head in mild exasperation before fixing another glare on the stallion, “one hoof off of it, and he’ll lose it up to his neck,” she warned, shaking her eldritch lance in Arginine’s face as a reminder or her ire. He nodded his understanding at that as well. Then the three of them walked off to get Foxglove’s disguise set up, leaving me on my own.

“Well...that sure could have gone worse,” and I certainly hoped that tomorrow went considerably better.

Funny how I was a lot more confident about my hastily revised plan back when it was all a lot more academic in nature. Talking about how we were all just going to sort of ‘walk up to the gate’ sounded a lot easier and a lot less stressful back when we were just, you know, talking about it. When the moment finally came, it turned out that there was quite a lot of anxiety involved.

Which wouldn’t have been so bad except that it turned out ‘corpses’ did quite a lot of fidgeting when they were anxious.

“Miss Windfall, I do not mean to be overly critical of your acting skills,” Arginine murmured under his breath, addressing the lump of white fluff draped across his back that was doing a poor job or acting limp, “but your interpretation of a cadaver is rather atypical, and may soon draw unwanted attention.”

“Sorry,” I breathed out, trying to keep my lips from moving as much as possible, “my wings get twitchy when I’m nervous,” I suppressed an annoyed wince, “and I either ate something that’s not agreeing with me, or I swear the baby’s kicking.”

“It’s all in your head,” Foxglove’s voice descended from a form that looked absolutely nothing like the violet unicorn mare. Starlight had done quite a good job helping to set up the holographic harness, using her own knowledge of illusion magic to supplement the rig’s effects with spells of her own. The result was a far more convincing facsimile of a pony from Arginine’s stable than we could probably have pulled off with just the rig alone.

“You’re not far enough along for that to be happening,” then, after a momentary pause, “though, I suppose that you are nearly big enough. Mares in your family pack on the momma weight pretty quick, I assume?”

“Beats me,” I murmured in response, only barely managing to restrain myself from rubbing a hoof along my stomach self-consciously. I wasn’t getting that big, was I? I mean, yeah, my barding was getting more snug in some places, but Lancet had said I was only about a month along or something like that…

I forced myself to take a deep breath and push those thoughts from my mind. This was no time to be thinking about my waist size, I had a lot of bigger things to be worried about: like doing a better job at pretending to be dead before we got to the stable entrance, or I might accidentally blow our cover and make us all dead for real. As though on cue, I felt another of those sporadic and annoying little quivers from somewhere in my gut that made me wince.

A moment later, Arginine offered up an idea, “perhaps we can medicate her,” he suggested, “a suitable amount of Med-X would render Miss Windfall unconscious?”

I didn’t have to see the reaction on Foxglove’s holographic face to know that she wasn’t at all happy about that idea, “isn’t she supposed to be able to actually help once we get into your stable? How can she do that if she’s doped up?” then, she added in a low growl, “and how convenient that you want Windfall to be unconscious and defenseless when we’ll be split up inside your stable.”

In fairness, I wasn’t the biggest fan or Arginine’s plan either. Being taken into enemy strongholds unconscious had a history of not working out all that great for me or those around me. On the other hoof, I was much less a fan of getting us all killed, and I didn’t want to rest our fates on my ability to control my nervous belly twitches. Foxglove did raise a good point about my lack of usefulness was concerned though. It would take time for the Med-X to wear off, and every additional minute we languished in Arginine’s stable was another minute we risked being found out. Foxglove’s disguise was only going to last for so long, after all, even with Starlight’s enhancements.

Fortunately, Arginine had a counter-argument, “the medical facilities will have compounds that can swiftly counteract the effects of the Med-X,” he assured Foxglove, “and I have already given my assurances that I will bring no harm to either you or Miss Windfall. I agree that my stable’s ambitions must be thwarted.”

“That’s easy to say,” the mare stressed.

Sensing that another argument was about to break out on what I considered to be a settled matter, I swiftly interjected, “Arginine’s right, I can’t fake being dead well enough if I’m awake; and it’s not like there’s anything that we could do to stop Arginine from ratting us out once we’re inside if he really wanted to.”

“There was one thing, but you made me take it off his neck,” the mare growled, but said nothing more on the matter.

Arginine’s horn glowed as he withdrew a loaded syringe from his saddlebag and proceeded to inspect it, “I will awaken you once we are no longer observed,” he assured me, “I will then apprise you of our situation and we will make our way to the Overmare’s office from there.”

I winced as I felt the needed poke me in the flank, “got it. See you on the...other...side…”

As much as I trusted Arginine’s word, there was just a tiny little part of me that was surprised that my eyes fluttered open again. I was very clearly inside of the stable. There was no mistaking those light designed and that metal ceiling. The smell of alcohol and peroxide told me that I was in a room that used a lot of sterilized equipment. The feeling of cold steel beneath me was also quite familiar, reminding me of the dissection facility that Arginine had taken me to while I’d been unconscious once before.

At least this time I wasn’t strapped down.

What I couldn’t sense was anypony else around. At least, not at first. Then I heard the sound of keys being tapped at a computer terminal and glance to the side in time to see Arginine just stepping away from the computer. He was wearing a surgical gown with a matching mask dangling around his neck. In a moment of thoughtless panic, I bolted upright and hastily inspected myself. It took me all of a second to discover that I had not, in fact, been dissected and cut into manageable pieces for examination.

Though, I did note that there was a spot of soreness on my belly that I didn’t remember being there before. Probably just a consequence of how I’d been draped across Arginine’s back on the way here.

Sitting up also had the result of letting me catch sight of the bodies of two other engineered ponies that had been dragged over to one corner of the room. They were wearing identical surgical gowns and masks. I didn’t see any pools of blood expanding out from around their bodies or smeared along the floor. I looked back at Arginine and nodded my head towards the ponies.

“Pentobarbital,” he answered simply, which only prompted a quirked eyebrow from me, “I knocked them out. They will awake in a few hours, likely with little memory of what transpired,” he set about removing his gown and mask completely, revealing a brand new set of stable barding that he was now wearing. Was he also...showered?

“How long was I out?”

“It has only been about thirty minutes since we entered the stable,” Arginine assured me, as he passed me my concealed holster and compact forty-five from his own saddlebags. It was the only weapon that I had chosen to have brought along for myself, believing it was likely to draw the least suspicion if the ponies here looked through Arginine things upon arrival. Certainly it would be less suspicious than my Enclave energy-bolt-blasting power-hooves, “Miss Foxglove departed from here ten minutes earlier, once we had acquired a pipbuck for her use,” he nodded at the pair of dozing ponies, who I noticed were missing theirs, “she is making her way to Reactor Control as we speak. However, she will not be able to act until the Overmare’s office has been seized.”

“I mean, that should be easy, right?” I asked, “can’t you just...walk in?”

“Not quite in so many words,” the stallion frowned, “I can ask for a meeting, but there’s little guarantee that I would be granted one before Miss Starlight’s spell loses its effect.”

The was true, “so, what is the plan then?” It was not lost on me that having a next step all ironed out before making it this far would have been a really good idea.

“A slight variation on the original one: I will trigger a stable-wide lock-down, at which point Miss Foxglove will shut down the stable’s reactor.

“Okay, but I thought a lockdown could only be done from the Overmare’s office?”

“That is the most straightforward method, yes,” the stallion acknowledged, “but there are various automated systems that can trigger a similar event in response to dire emergencies. The two of us will endeavor to create one such emergency.”

“How?”

“With these,” the stallion retrieved a pair of compressed gas cylinders, “under normal and proper operation, a stable’s air purification system monitors the condition of the interior atmosphere for contaminants and screens them out appropriately. To that end, there are sensors placed all throughout the ventilation system that are monitoring for abnormalities so that the system can make adjustments.

“However, in the event that a contaminant is discovered affecting a significant portion of the stable, a lockdown event is triggered, sealing the stable into air-tight partitions to prevent further spread of the contaminant while the environmental systems work to purify all parts of the stable one after another until everything is back within acceptable parameters.

“My proposal is that I make my way to the environmental system control room, put the monitoring system through a maintenance cycle, which will briefly take the network of sensors offline, and then release the gas in these cylinders into the ventilation system. Once the sensors come back online, they will immediately detect what will by then have become a stable-wide contamination, and initiate a lockdown of the entire stable while it begins its purification protocol.

“At which time, Miss Foxglove can shut down the reactor and render the entire stable inert. Admittedly, this will hamper our own movement somewhat, but Miss Foxglove’s cutting tool should serve more than adequate for the purposes of allowing us to reunite and resume moving largely unfettered until we can let our comrades on the surface inside.”

“That...actually sounds like a really good plan,” I admitted, and not just because I had absolutely nothing. Though, I did find myself having one tiny concern, “but, won’t we be poisoned by whatever’s in those tanks too?”

“It’s just helium,” Arginine quipped, “aside from shifting all of our vocals ranges into falsetto, nopony will suffer any ill effects. However, as it will still be in quantities far in excess of the ranges the environmental system is programed to maintain, the protocol will classify it as a ‘contaminant’ and initiate a lockdown all the same.”

“Oh...well then, that’s not so bad. I think?” I didn’t know what the difference between either a true or a false doe was, but as long as the stable’s computer did and it wasn’t anything that would hurt us, it didn’t really matter, I guessed. Now our only concern was, “so how do we make it to where we need to release the gas and stuff?”

“I will simply walk there directly,” Arginine replied, gesturing at his stable barding, “as I am a genuine resident of this stable, I can move largely unfettered through most areas, including environmental control. It is not considered a restricted area, as there is nothing particularly hazardous within.

“You, however, will be taking an alternate route, to a different target.”

“Uh, what?”

Arginine gestured upwards towards the ceiling, and more specifically an air vent mounted into it near the wall, “the ventilation system will grant you unfettered movement within the stable, as well as a means to gain entry into any secure areas. To include the Overmare’s office. The appropriate map has been uploaded to your pipbuck.”

“But I thought you said we didn’t need the Overmare’s office to create a lockdown?”

“We do not,” Arginine conceded, “but the environmental lockdown will not last indefinitely, as it is not powered directly by the main reactor. It possesses a backup power supply, so that the stable would not suffocate during a power failure. Even with the reactor offline, it could continue removing the helium until the air was back to within normal tolerances and end the lockdown. Even with Miss Foxglove’s lance, it cannot be assured that we will be able to reach the Overmare’s office before the lockdown ends.

“You will need to be in position to act quickly and stop the Overmare from warning the stable, and especially General Constance, that more is amiss than a simple transient atmospheric anomaly. We must maintain the element of surprise until our forces are poised to seize complete control of the stable or our victory is at risk. Do you understand?”

I swallowed and slowly nodded my head. Arginine certainly had a way of putting things into perspective even if he was speaking in near-complete monotone. Though, even then I was still left with one qualm, “how tough is the Overmare anyway? Do you really think I could take them in a fight?”

Arginine regarded me for a moment, “in the event that a physical confrontation is ultimately required, I doubt you will have much issue. The Overmare is a member of the Epsilon Strain, and is significantly different from the Lambda’s like myself that you have encountered.

“However, I am quite confident that it will not be necessary,” the corners of the stallion’s much twitched ever so slightly in what, for any other pony, would have been a grin, “I have faith that you will prove yourself to be a much better pony than that.”

I very nearly kissed him for that, but I managed to remind myself that I was still supposed to be firmly of the mind that he wasn’t quite completely forgiven for that little betrayal of his in Shady Saddles. Still, if he kept up that kind of talk, I wasn’t certain of exactly how long I’d be able to hold back. Sure, yeah, that hadn’t exactly been legendary poetry or anything, but for Arginine that had probably been the next best thing to a sonnet!

In the end, I offered him a wry smirk and a, “thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. Hopefully she’ll be half as smart as you are and I can make her see reason,” I glanced up at the vent grate and sighed, “I bet nopony’s cleaned in there since this place was built. I’m going to come out the other side more dust bunny than pony…”

Arginine wisely said nothing and used his magic to open up the vent for me to flit up into, closing it behind me before he left the examination room himself.

The ventilation ducts were far from spacious, and I was firmly of the mind that it had very little to do my own broadening maternal circumference. The confines weren’t restrictive, per say, but they were far from pleasant for a pony who very much preferred to be able to spread her wings and fly around. The sooner I was out of here and where I needed to be, the better. To that end, I brought around my pipbuck and tabbed over to the map that Arginine said he’d provided.

It took me a minute to orient myself and make sense of all of the symbols on it. It was a three dimensional structure being rendered in just the two dimensions of my pipbuck’s screen with a lot of features that simply didn’t exist on most map layouts that I’d seen before: such as six-way intersections. In the end, I made a few wrong turns before I was finally able to get a firm grasp of how to interpret the map. Once I knew where I was going though, I made some pretty good time, only slowing down when I neared other vent grates that possessed blips in their proximity.

At one point, I was even forced to stop completely near one of the vents as there were a pair of ponies standing just below it, apparently having something of a conversation in the hallway. At first, I was far too fervent in my silent urgings for them to wander off somewhere so that I could continue on without being heard to care about whatever it was they were talking about; but, I couldn’t help but catch the contents of their conversation the longer they lingered.

“―look, I know the protein reserves are running low,” a mare was saying in what the months spent with Arginine had taught me was an exasperated tone, “and I know that your production facilities weren’t designed to operate at the levels we’re asking for, but every department’s timetable has been thrown out the stable door by recent events. You should hear the earful I’m getting from Strain Control over rolling out the Nu Strain five years ahead of schedule.

“All I can do is tell you what I need from your department to meet the new timetables that have been set,” she continued in a more conciliatory tone, “the Overmare wants the next batch out of their tanks and in the field by the end of the month. If your technicians can’t meet our demands, then that is an issue best brought up with the Overmare, not my department. Do we have an understanding, Mister Histone?”

“Yes, Miss Vitro,” the stallion that the first mare was speaking with responded, “and I apologize if I came off as being critical earlier, that was not my intent. I merely wanted to advise you of the likely event of a protein shortage so that you were not caught by surprise and could devise responses to such an event. Likewise, my department as well has submitted memorandums to the Overmare outlining our production caps and the reasons beyond our control for them.

“Fabrication is currently constructing additional culture vats, but as they too were given little notice, those new vats will not be ready in time to contribute to production for this batch. The estimate I have been given is three months until full scale culture production is possible at the levels you are requesting.”

“I understand, and I appreciate that clarification. My own apologies for my bruskness. These last few months have been...trying.”

“Indeed,” the stallion agreed, “in any event, the reason for my visit has concluded. Is there anything else you wish clarified?”

“No, Mister Histone, I believe that covers all matters of immediate concern between us. I need to make the necessary adjustments to the gestational pods. See you at the next inter-department briefing.”

“See you then, Miss Vitro.”

Finally the two ponies departed and I was free to move about freely again. I swear to Celestia, I could not believe that there was a whole stable of ponies that talked like Arginine. That was what they wanted to replace all of ponykind with?

I was just about to resume my course to the Overmare’s office when I paused in my movements, glancing at the vent grate. I hadn’t understood everything that they’d been talking about, but my brain managed to sift out enough of the pieces to figure out that the mare was in charge of making more ponies in this stable. My early conversations with Arginine had revealed that ponies in this stable were more ‘grown’ than ‘born’, and I had to admit that I was more than a little curious to see the process in action.

It wouldn’t be all that much of a diversion from our plan. Just a quick little detour into the next room to take a peek and then I’d head for the Overmare’s office again.

I carefully crawled my way down the appropriate vent, my eyes focused on the blips that had become suddenly much more plentiful. Like, a veritable solid bar of color plentiful. That the color in question was red only served to further heighten my apprehension.

My stomach quivered.

“Knock it off, kiddo,” I huffed, “I’m busy.”

Finally, I managed to worm my way quietly to one of the nearby vents and peer down into the room. I’m not entirely certain what I expected to see, but it certainly looked appropriately cold and sciency to be what Arginine had described. The room was pretty large, at least fifty yards across and half as wide. Row, upon row, upon row, of massive steel and glass cylinders were arranged in neat columns, fed by wires and tubes. Inside each of them was a tiny Arginine; or a female variant of him.

I would never get over how identical all of these ponies looked…

What did surprise me though was that none of the ponies in the tubes looked like young colts and fillies. They were all indeed quite well along as far as I could tell. It was admittedly difficult to get a firm estimate for their age, given how absurdly large they grew to be as adults; but if I assumed that Arginine was fully grown, then the ponies in those glass tubes had to be at least my age, give or take a year.

Which didn’t make sense, I thought with a frown and brought up my pipbuck. Looking through the maps on it, I found the layout for the entire stable and quickly thereafter the room I had to be in. There was only one other room that matched the dimensions that I could see, and it wasn’t far off from where I currently was. There were other large rooms too, but they were on different levels, and were identified on my map with labels that marked them as serving very different purposes, like manufacturing and such.

There just wasn’t any way that this stable could have been growing the ponies in those vats right now, such a short time after sending out their army. The same army that was presumably grown in those exact vats. I mean, it was possible that they only developed in those tubes until they were young adults, and then were raised normally, but this stable wasn’t nearly big enough for there to be thousands upon thousands of ponies living in it being trained up as soldiers.

I certainly hadn’t seen any younger ponies through the vents during my travels.

So how could they have pushed an army out the door so recently, and have ponies that looked like they were nearly fifteen years old in those tanks, and be talking like they were going to put another army out the door in just a few more weeks?

I may not be any sort of mathematical genius, but even I could see that those numbers just didn’t add up. In order to be growing armies as large as they were, and putting them in the field as often as they were, there should be dozens, if not hundreds, of vat rooms like this one with hundreds of ponies floating in them at various stages of developement. I briefly entertained the notion that the map I had was incomplete or had been redacted somehow, but I dismissed that idea almost immediately. There just wasn’t any way that the stable could be big enough for something like that.

I’d ventured into my share of derelict stables in my life while Jackboot and I had traipsed through the Neighvada Valley, and while they’d varied slightly in layout, most of them had been pretty consistent in size overall. For this stable to be housing the vast facilities I was imagining would require it to be larger than even the monstrosity that existed below Old Reino; and that ‘stable’ hadn’t been intentionally built at all.

Though, as nagging as that particular mystery was, it wasn’t actually my biggest personal concern. Though it definitely would have been to a slightly younger and much more action-minded me. I may not have known a whole lot about how the tubes growing those ponies worked exactly, but it didn’t take a pony with Foxglove’s level of technological knowhow to realize one thing about them: they were what was keeping the ponies in them alive. If those machines shut down, their inhabitants would almost certainly die. Of that, I had little doubt.

Which meant that I couldn’t go through with our plan.

Yeah, I know, this was basically me reaching the peak of my altruistic stupidity. The ponies growing in those tubes were obviously the next instalment of the armies that this stable was getting ready to launch on the Wasteland. Constance’s was going to be hard enough to defeat as it was without giving her reinforcements that would effectively double her strength of arms. If these ponies finished ‘growing up’ or whatever and got out of the stable, then the Neighvada Valley was doomed. Thousands would die. Tens of thousands more if they made it out towards Manehattan and the rest of the settled Wasteland.

Objectively, stopping those future soldiers before they became a threat was the smartest and most tactically sound move. Literally any other pony in my position wouldn’t hesitate to pull the plug, and I’d be hard-pressed to condemn them for it when they did.

On the other hoof, also objectively, these tubed ponies were all technically innocents. They’d never even taken an actual breath before, let alone hurt or killed anypony. I couldn’t just end all of their lives before they’d even really begun because of what they might do in the future. No matter how much of a guarantee their actions were going to be if I left them to their own devices. After all, they were specifically being created to commit genocide. I had no delusions that any of them would balk at any order given to them by General Constance or another commander like her.

But they hadn’t done it yet!

They had to be given the chance―the choice―to be better than their ‘designers’ intended.

I had to give them that choice, to truly be better ponies.

We needed a new plan.

I grimaced as I thought about the conniption fit that Foxglove was going to throw when she found out why I couldn’t go through with an otherwise relatively straightforward, simple, and even marginally safe plan. Especially as this also wasn’t the first radical change I’d made to a previously agreed-upon plans without consulting anypony. Strictly speaking, I was well aware of how reckless and dangerous these abrupt changes were. Foxglove, Arginine, Starlight, and everypony else outside right now would have every right to despise me for doing this a second time. But...I couldn’t help it. The simple fact of the matter was that I didn’t know enough about what I was getting into before I’d agreed to any of our previous plans. I was winging it. Which was probably a bad call when dealing with combating absolute genocide.

Unfortunately, it was just something that everypony else was going to have to deal with, because I wasn’t going to stop one genocide by committing another. That wasn’t how we were going to save the Wasteland.

However, before I broke the news to the violet unicorn, I first needed to tell Arginine not to release the gas, and also confront him about why the stallion hadn’t told me about this in the first place. Maybe I didn’t know that I’d find a place like this in the stable, but he sure would have!

It didn’t take me long to trace out a new route through the ventilation system that took me to Environmental Control. Arginine was there, rigging up the compressed tanks of helium into the air circulation system, and a cursory glance confirmed that he was alone. So I smacked the vent grate open and hopped down, noticeably startling the stallion, who turned to stare at me with visibly surprised eyes.

“Was there an issue?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” I frowned at the stallion, glaring up at him. Of all the ponies in my life, he should have known better than anypony how hard I’d been trying to change my ways and the way that I was trying to approach making the Wasteland a better place. How much I wanted to avoid killing any more ponies―no matter who they were―than was absolutely and unavoidably necessary.

And, because of that, I had to know, “why didn’t you tell me? Did you think that I wouldn’t find out, or that I somehow wouldn’t care? Which was it?”

Arginine’s eyes again widened ever so slightly before his lips pulled themselves into a tight line, “I fully intended to tell you.”

I couldn’t hold back my skeptical snort, “uh, when exactly? After it was too late to do anything about it?”

“Of course not!” this time I was the one who was surprised, as this was perhaps the first time that I’d seen the stallion looking so visibly distressed. I guess maybe it made a certain amount of sense; this was his stable after all. Even if he no longer agreed with what they were doing, they were still sort of like his extended family. The thought of killing all of those ponies might have been affecting him more than I thought.

All the more reason that he should have said something about it, I felt, “then why keep it to yourself? You should have told me,” I insisted, “we could have worked something out; we still can!”

The stallion relaxed and recomposed himself, nodding his head, “that was my hope, certainly; and I am relieved to hear you voice such aloud. If my silence on the matter upset you, I apologize. I merely did not wish to burden you with the information. I felt that it would only serve to aggravate what is already an understandably stressful situation.”

Now I was confused, “um...I mean, how exactly were you expecting me to do anything about it if you didn’t tell me?”

“Assuming that we survive the next couple of days, there would still be plenty of time to discuss the situation and arrange to be at a location with suitable surgical facilities to perform the procedure.”

I blinked at the stallion in silence for several seconds, my face contorted as I tried to figure out what Arginine was talking about, “surgery? Procedure? What does that have to do with the army of ponies your stable is growing in vats?”

It was the stallion’s turn to be speechless for several seconds, “if the topic you were intending to discuss was indeed the maturation chambers, then I can confidently state that I have grossly misinterpreted what you had come here to talk to me about. I apologize.

“In which case: I did not tell you about the maturation chambers because I had already told you of them and how the ponies of my stable procreate. I was unaware that you had forgotten, and for that I apologize as well. I should have confirmed that you recalled that information.”

“Oh, no, I remembered alright,” I replied, “but I thought that you guys just used them until you were far along enough to breathe on your own and stuff and then you were raised like regular ponies! I didn’t know you stayed in them until you were whole adults!”

“It’s more efficient,” the stallion explained, “a hoofful of technicians can monitor hundreds of chambers, while attending to young foals requires significantly more ponies to care for them properly.”

“But what about teaching them how to speak and stuff?” I asked, “it can’t possibly be easier to potty train a thousand adults all at once.”

“While they are in the maturation chambers, their minds are held within a simulated environment where they receive the appropriate learning curriculum for the tasks that they will be expected to perform. What would take a conscious pony many years to master can be effectively ‘uploaded’ to our residents in weeks or months while they are developing.”

“Oh,” well, that hardly boded well. If they were already completely indoctrinated the moment they were born, getting them to change their minds would be an uphill fight, to say the least. I mean, yeah, I’d managed to bring Arginine around―eventually―but I’d be lying if I said that it’d been a simple matter. To say nothing about the, erm, ‘hiccups’ that we’d had along the way.

I didn’t know if I was up for doing that a thousand more times…

―wait a minute, “what exactly did you think I was here to talk about before?”

“Your pregnancy,” Arginine replied, “I was under the impression that you’d somehow discovered the results of the embryonic genetic testing that I’d taken the initiative to run while I had access to the stable’s systems.”

“You ran ‘tests’ on me while I was unconscious?” I didn’t bother to hide my ire at that thought, “maybe I let Foxglove take that collar off too soon…” I added under my breath, but loud enough for Arginine to hear. My reward was seeing the stallion look perceptibly abashed.

“...it seemed like an efficient use of time while you were regaining consciousness,” he mumbled hesitantly, “I merely wanted to rule out a possibility that the physician in Shady Saddles might not have considered regarding your pregnancy.”

I frowned at the stallion, “what are you talking about?”

“You are not five months pregnant. You are one month pregant.”

“Lancet seemed pretty sure of himself,” I countered, “and I find it hard to believe that he could make a pretty obvious mistake like that,” I may not have been an expert on the subject, but I felt like there was a pretty stark difference between the two that a doctor as good as Lancet was should have been able to identify easily, “besides, I may not know a whole lot about motherhood, but I do know that mares can’t feel a foal kicking at just one month,” I noted, jabbing a hoof at my belly.

“It is an understandable error for even the most skilled physician to make if they were not aware of a particular modification made to the genome of every pony in this stable: specifically that, prior to the physiological shock of our first true inspiration, our cellular division rates are hyper-acceler―” Arginine drew up short, likely having seen my eyes starting to glaze over. His lips creased and he sighed, “before we take our first breaths, we grow really quickly.

“Quickly enough,” he went on, “that a fetus that has been maturing for only a few weeks would look much more developed. Perhaps even as mature as an invalid―er, typical pony fetus of five or six months,” the stallion paused briefly, “so I sequenced your foal’s DNA,” by now, I suspected that my eyes were as wide as saucers as I put together everything that Arginine was saying right now with his side of the conversation from earlier. He nodded, “many of the gene sequences present were exact matches for one of the production strains on file with our stable.

“Specifically, our Lambda Strain.”

“...oh,” so, we were back to this again. You’d think that I’d have been prepared for Arginine to once more be the ‘confirmed’ father. I was not, “so...what was that earlier about ‘surgery’?” I swallowed, feeling myself growing increasingly more apprehensive, “is...is there something wrong? Like, are they a mutant or―?”

“No,” Arginine offered thankfully quickly, “nothing like that. Surprisingly, your and my genetic material seem to have arranged themselves benignly. The foal will likely not look typical for a surface pony, to be sure,” he gestured to himself and shrugged, “and they will need to be monitored closely for any unforeseen complications that might arise throughout their life; but I saw nothing immediately concerning.

“No, the surgery will be for you,” he explained, “as I mentioned earlier, the fetus will continue to grow at an accelerated rate until they draw their first breath. While it is possible that your body will recognize it as viable long before it can grow to any size that might cause you...issues,” I briefly entertained the image of myself with an absurdly distended belly housing an adult Arginine. I did not want that, no, “it is highly unlikely that your body will have prepared itself for the delivery of a foal in less than two months from the time of conception.

“It is far safer to perform a cesarean. Not unlike what was done for the zebra mare we took to Santa Mara. That was the procedure to which I was referring.”

“Oh. Okay,” my brain was still feeling a little distant and numb as it processed everything all over again. I was carrying Arginine’s foal, and it was growing super fast, and it was sounding like it was going to a bouncing baby pseudo-unicorn thing or whatever to raise in just a few more weeks.

Yeah, no, I was not ready for that kind of responsibility this soon! For fuck’s sake, I’d barely had a week to come to terms with the fact that I was even pregnant! Other mares that hadn’t been ‘planning’ a family got more notice than this! As I felt that knot of anxiety growing inside of me, I could suddenly understand why Arginine had decided that it was best to hold off on breaking the news to me until after I’d reconciled the genocide of an entire stable―which was still something that I needed to figure out how to deal with, by the way!

Celestia, help me! I am not equipped to deal with this kind of shit! I was barely an adult; I should not be deciding the fates of thousands of ponies all on my own!

In the back of my mind, I felt a little orange pony poking me and jabbing a hoof at Arginine.

...And maybe I didn’t have to, “RG, we need a new plan,” I said, drawing a breath and pushing every thought about my impending motherhood as far into the back of my head as possible. Like Arginine had told me: that was still weeks in the future. Constance and his stable were issues for right now, “we can’t―I can’t―just kill all of the ponies in those vats! Which is exactly what will happen when Foxglove shuts off the reactor, right?”

Arginine sighed and nodded, “the stable’s emergency power systems are not sufficient to sustain the maturation chambers, no. Without main power, their inhabitants will be dead in minutes and unrecoverable.”

I stared up at the stallion in equal parts wonder and revulsion, “and you were just going to let that happen? You were going to let a thousand ponies die? You were going to let me kill a thousand ponies with the flick of a switch?”

“There isn’t an alternative,” he insisted defensively, “this stable must be put out of commission in its entirety before General Constance arrives, otherwise she will attack in an effort to reclaim it.”

He had a point. Of course Arginine had a point, he was a smart pony. Still, “there has to be something we can do,” I insisted, refusing to commit myself to mass murder without exploring any and every other possible course of action.

“What if we let them out?” I ventured, as little as I like the idea. We’d be giving the stable another thousand ponies to work with, and possibly pinning our forces between two massive armies when it wasn’t even a guarantee that we’d be able to take on the one that already existed. I could also count on every mercenary out there running for New Reino the moment they found out what I did. If I was really lucky, they might not even shoot me right between the eyes before they left.

Though, given what Constance was likely to do to me once she found out that I survived her first attempt to kill me, getting shot dead quick and clean might actually be the best outcome that I could hope for.

The smart move was to execute the original plan that the three of us had come up with to stop this stable. It was the rational move. Every other pony in the Wasteland would probably have called it the ‘right’ one too. The Mare-Do Well, the Lone Ranger, the Stable Dweller...they’d all have done it, wouldn’t they? To save the Wasteland…

...but I wasn’t fighting for the Wasteland. Not really. Whether it was smart or not, I was actually aiming for something just a bit higher: I was trying to save ponykind. Even if the stakes I was about to gamble with were unconscionable.

“That is...not advisable,” Arginine cautioned.

I shook my head in resignation, “I don’t care if it’s not the ‘smart’ thing tactically; I’m not killing all of those ponies in their sleep. I won’t.”

“I was referring to more than that,” the stallion explained, “while it is clear that the education process can be modified and even halted prematurely, as evidenced by General Constance’s own early release, I have absolutely no idea how to make such a change to the systems involved. My specialty was genetics, not systems operations,” he shrugged.

“We could ask somepony,” I offered, noting how unconvinced my own tone sounded about the viability of that particular plan. We were operating below the stable’s radar for the moment, but there was no telling how long that would last as is. Nabbing and interrogating other stable ponies only risked further discovery before we were ready to make our move. That was even assuming that whoever we grabbed would be willing to tell us.

Arginine was doubtful, “any technician that we might abduct is unlikely to reveal such information. And, while I could hypothetically merely go and ask a technician what the appropriate procedures are, anypony I might speak with would want to know why a genetic sampler like myself would need to know about the functioning of their equipment,” the stallion paused for a moment, thinking, and then, “although…”

I perked up. There was an ‘although’? That sounded promising!

“This is never going to work…” I grumbled as I crawled my way through the ventilation conduits towards my new destination.

Of course, given that the alternative was outright genocide, I was certainly willing to give Arginine’s suggestion a try, no matter how much of a longshot it was. That wasn’t to say that the plan didn’t have some merit. On the face of it, it sounded perfectly reasonable. It wasn’t until you drilled down into the details of what exactly needed to be done that you started to run into the various snags that could just as easily spell disaster for all of us as it could mean success.

Ultimately, Arginine had pointed out, all that we needed to do was render the stable useless for the inhabitants’ purposes. It didn’t necessarily have to be outright destroyed, just no longer able to produce their ‘superior’ pony specimens. Using our original plan of sabotaging their reactor was the easiest and most straightforward way to do that, but it wasn’t the only way. The gray stallion had pointed out that, just as vital to their plans as the physical infrastructure to create engineered ponies, was all of the research and genetic templates that had been gathered over the centuries.

Removing that electronic data would cripple them just as severely; at least in the short term. Recouping all of that data would be well within their means eventually, but in the interim it would stop them from producing any more armies to send out against the Wasteland. At least, any more beyond the one that was currently maturing in those vats. Fortunately, that force was still weeks away from being an issue, giving us some time to figure out how to handle them after General Constance was dealt with.

So, yeah, on the surface, it was a workable short-term solution to a pressing issue.

However, it was also a plan that was contingent upon the least technologically savvy member of our team being able to be talked through how to wipe the stable’s whole computer network by the stallion who knew how to navigate the local system, and the mare who knew how to irrevocably break it, in concert. After weathering Foxglove’s initial―and completely expected―ranting about this latest improvisation, after which she reluctant agreed to its feasibility, she had given a brief summary of the steps that I’d need to take in order to do what Arginine had in mind. She’d tried her best to put it in terms that even I could understand, but even as I crawled through the ductwork now, I had barely a notion of what a ‘root directory’, ‘registry keys’, or ‘complete disk reformat’ were.

Apparently this process was even going to be further complicated―again much to Foxglove’s chagrin―by the fact that a general system failure was unacceptable if I truly wanted the ponies in those tubes to remain unharmed. The stable’s computer network was integral to maintaining their life support systems, as well as the educational programing that was currently linked to their brains. At a minimum, those areas of the network had to be left intact. The violet mare had initially insisted that Arginine’s plan was unrealistic given the timetable that we were working against. According to the mechanically-inclined unicorn, it could realistically have taken her days to determine which parts of which systems were interconnected so that she could figure out what parts of the network had to be left alone to keep vital areas functional while still causing the sort of catastrophic data loss that we needed.

Only when Arginine proposed targeting the genetic research archives themselves and mostly avoiding other functions did Foxglove relent and agree to the plan. Though she did insist on the caveat that, should we run into any serious issue while trying this new plan, she wouldn’t hesitate to cripple the reactor itself and force an emergency evacuation of the stable that way. I’d be lying if I said that I was happy to hear that, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to do anything to stop her either. Besides, I fully realized how much of a risk I was taking, on many levels.

I had to try to avoid killing as many as I could while trying to end this whole thing, yeah but, ultimately, the lives of everypony in the Wasteland weren’t worth my own moral qualms. We’d try things my way, but if they didn’t work out…

...maybe just knowing that I’d tried would be enough to keep from retreating back into a whiskey bottle when all of this was over.

Two levels down―and one wrong turn―later I came to the room that Arginine had pointed out on the map. I crept carefully over the last few feet and peered through the grate. Several terminals were arranged around a large central column that was adorned with an uncountable number of blinking lights in all the colors of the rainbow. Bundled cables clung to the column like vines, looped around it in what, at first glance, looked almost haphazard, but the care with which the cords had been bound together betrayed their meticulous and careful placement.

Then my lips immediately twisted into an annoyed grimace as I beheld that the room wasn’t empty. One of the stable’s residents was seated down before one of the terminals mounted to the column manipulating the console with his telekinesis. His attention diverted between the readout on the screen and a thick bundle of papers floating at his side. Judging by how thick the portion of the bundle that appeared to yet be unconsulted appeared to be when compared to that which he’d folded aside, I had a sinking feeling that this stallion was going to be here for a long time.

I back away a short distance and whispered into my pipbuck, “RG, I’m at the computer control room place, but there’s a pony in it. He’s got a big―like, a really big―stack of papers with him. I don’t suppose that it’s possible he’s only going to do something with one or two of them and call it a day and leave?”

“That is likely Cobol,” Arginine’s voice crackled over the speaker, “his propensity to perform frequent redundant data entry audits is a regularly discussed phenomenon among the other residents.”

“You could have mentioned that your stable’s computer core was frequented by an obsessive compulsive tech before you floated this plan to us,” Foxglove growled over the channel.

“My apologies,” the stallion said, my ears picking up on the slight cool inflection of his tone, “I must have allowed myself to overlook topics of idle stable gossip while in the midsts of sabotaging my stable. In the future, I will endeavor to include any and all personality quirks of my stable’s residents. Shall I do so alphabetically? Abattoir hums to herself while performing dissections. Acerbic spends his nights painting in the cafeteria. Agar―”

“Alright!” I snapped, massaging my forehead with my hoof. Was Arginine actually getting snippy? Apparently this situation was just as stressful for him as it was the rest of us, “it doesn’t matter,” I insisted, hopefully silencing any further rebukes from Foxglove. I let out a slow breath, feeling that I already knew the answer to the question I was about to ask, “so, can I assume this stallion will be at this for a while?”

“Most likely,” Arginine said, “especially if this is only his first audit of the day.”

“‘First’?” I felt myself deflate at the implication.

“Of three...usually.”

Horseapples.

“I’m blowing the reactor,” Foxglove said in a resigned tone.

“No! Not yet,” I urged the mare in a tone that I hoped didn’t sound quite like pleading, “if it’s just one pony, I’m pretty sure I can subdue him without making too much of a ruckus. Once he’s down I’ll just lock the door and I shouldn’t have any further problems. Right, RG?”

“Cobol is well known in the stable for preferring his privacy. The door is likely already sealed under his personal authority.”

“There, see? I knock him out and then we’re free and clear to do all the computer stuff!”

“...fine. I’ll head somewhere I can be alone so I won’t be overheard walking you through everything.”

I let out a relieved sigh and closed the channel. Then I made my way back to the vent grate and peered back into the room. The lone stallion appeared largely oblivious to anything that wasn’t the terminal or his stack of papers. I’d be able to take him by complete surprise.

His head perked up at the sound of the vent grate being bucked aside and clattering to the metal stable floor, but that was all of the reaction that he was able to make before the engineered computer technician found himself wearing a new pegasus-shaped scarf around his neck. I locked the pasterns of my forelegs together around the stallion’s throat and held them as tight as I could. The stallion let out a choked off exclamation of surprise as he reared up on his hind legs in an attempt to throw me off. My wings fluttered as I used them to help maintain my own balance while my victim flailed and bucked wildly around the room. At some point, he abandoned his telekinetic hold upon the bundle of papers in his possession and they became scattered around the room.

Eventually, he seemed to lose his footing and collapsed hard on his side, eliciting a wince from myself as my right hind leg became pinned beneath the much larger pony’s bulk. I felt the tingling sensation of magic dancing over my body as the stallion tried to wrap me in his magic and fling me off, but I was holding on too tightly, and his own surprise was too much to allow for sufficient concentration to do so. A few seconds later, the tingling sensation abated. Not much longer after that, the stallion gave one last anemic quiver and then went limp.

I held my grip for a little while longer before loosening it only slightly. The stable pony didn’t move, though I did feel the slight vibration in his throat as his body took in breath once more. He was alive, but he’d hopefully be content to lie there long enough for me to do what I needed to.

I fluttered up to the terminal and brought up my pipbuck, “the tech’s down for the count and I’m at the terminal. Which of you guys want to walk me through how to do this?”

“I know what directories are involved,” Arginine responded initially.

Foxglove followed up a second later, “and I know the standard Stable-Tec commands to purge a system. First, we need to get you to the right screen…”

The stable-raised mare managed to guide me through the computer network. While her tone was patient enough, it wasn’t hard to catch the urgent undertone that suggested she was well aware that the three of us were working against the clock, and that none of us knew how much time remained on it. Any one of us could be discovered at any moment; at which point, the whole of the Neighvada Valley might be doomed to extinction.

So, you know, no pressure or anything.

“Dee...Eye...Are...Enter?” I carefully tapped the indicated keys and then gaped at the wall of text that flowed down the screen too quickly for me to read. It finally abated and I was left with a long list of files that barely even looked like words and started with letters near the end of the alphabet. At the bottom of the screen was a patiently blinking cursor, “now what?”

“Arginine?” Foxglove prompted.

“The genetic libraries will be with research and development: REDEV. With backups located in system recovery as well.”

“Alright,” the mare acknowledged, “Windfall? Type in: See. Dee. Space…” I carefully followed the violet mare’s instructions. Most of what we were doing wasn’t all that far over my head. I knew the basics of how to navigate through files, but Foxglove was having me use commands that took me a lot deeper than the usual directing headings that a terminal typically displayed. I’d also never erased data from a terminal before.

“Deltree? What does that even mean?” I said with a from, “this is a computer. There are no trees.”

“Just type it in, and then forward slash―”

“Is that the one that leans to the left?”

“Right.”

“...it says ‘sign tax error. Bad command.”

“Sign-what? Oh. Which slash did you use?”

“The left one, like you said.”

“I said the right one!”

“No, I asked if it was the left leaning one and you said that was right.”

“I meant that it’s the one that―you know what? Doesn’t matter. Type in the same thing but use the other slash this time,” Foxglove said with a resigned sigh.

I rolled my eyes but did as she instructed. This time I heard the telltale internal buzzing sound of a terminal working and the screen went blank, save for the cursor. The violet mare directed me to double-check my work by having me bring up the complete directory list once more and attempt to access the library I’d just removed. The terminal insisted that no such library existed in the system. I felt a piece of the massive ball of tension that had been welling up inside of me break off. Not all of it, since there was still a lot more to do, but I was relieved nonetheless to see signs of visible progress being made in disabling Arginine’s stable.

“Now to find that backup…”

Arginine was helpful enough to note a couple of additional files whose loss would be more than a little inconvenient to the stable once we cleared out the foundations of their ‘research’ over the last two centuries: specifically the schematics and design templates for the weapons and barding that the stable manufactured to equip their soldiers with. I wholeheartedly agreed that removing that kind of firepower from ponies like this would go a long way towards curbing their possible future activities, no matter how the confrontation with Constance’s forces turned out.

Once that was all over and done with, I was about to head back for the vent and regroup with the others when another directory caught my eye: STECORDERS.

My gaze lingered on the file. Arginine had shown me the recording from the former director of Stable-Tec that was purported to be the source for the stable’s mandate to replace the denizens of the Wasteland with ‘improved’ ponies. I’d been less than perfectly convinced at the time that what was little more than a sound bite of a despondent mare had been interpreted completely correctly. This looked like it could be my chance to find out once and for all what this stable was really supposed to do.

I opened the directory.

Inside was a file that I had not quite anticipated seeing. In that it was a file which did not seem to bare any of the hallmarks of an official Stable-Tec memorandum, as I’d seen in many abandoned stables in my past. This file was instead authored by the Ministry of Wartime Technology, courtesy of one: Director Caramel Apple. It looked like they were also listed as being this stable’s designated Overmare and that this whole place had been built for the purpose of fulfilling something called ‘Operation Overrun’.

There were more than a few technical terms used in the document that I hadn’t seen before, but the context made things pretty clear even to me. This stable was, by and large, fulfilling its exact purpose as outlined by the MWT: create armies and send them out to fight. Though, that wasn’t to say that I couldn’t see some clear distinctions in the original orders between what was intended, and what was happening now. Chief among them was that fact that Caramel Apple’s memorandum made it pretty clear that the armies being bred in this stable were intended to be thrown against the zebras, not other ponies.

The idea seemed to be that, should the stables become necessary in the event of a full balefire bombardment, that this stable would become a primary production facility for whole new pony armies. These armies would be grown, trained, equipped, and then sent out in a full assault against a zebra nation that was predicted to have also been severely ravaged by pony megaspells. In that way, the war could be definitively won in something akin to a ‘round two’.

It left a sick feeling in my gut to see that ponies back then were so intent on killing that they built a whole stable dedicated to making killer ponies. At least, I assumed that was the source of my nausea. It might have been my foal though.

Though, this did still leave the question about how the target of this stable’s activities had so dramatically shifted from wiping out zebras to targeting ponies. That seemed a little odd. Also, I didn’t come across anything in the memo about genetic alterations. In fact, there was some pretty clear mentions that nearly a hundred thousand embryos had been stored in the stable for the specific purpose of being grown and deployed.

I looked to the other documents in the directory for my answers.

The next file I opened provided most of them. Caramel Apple never made it to the stable. Their vertibuck was apparently shot down by a zebra special operations team outside of Dodge Junction a week before the bombs fell. The MWT never got around to selecting their replacement in time. An interim Overmare was selected based upon some sort of default Ministry hierarchy. A mare by the name of Moondancer got slotted in the position until a more suitable pony could be found, but that didn’t happen in time.

I found a letter as well, apparently authored by this Moondancer mare and addressed the Stable-Tec and the MWT both. It was dated two days after the bombs fell, and a note indicated that it was never successfully sent out due to a loss of communication with outside communications networks. However, it did explain a few of the changes that the stable had made.

In her―quite formally written―letter to Stable-Tec, Moondancer announced that she would, in fact, not be carrying out the directives of Operation Overrun. Not because of any sort of moral objection, I was a little disheartened to discover, but simply because she had not been present for any of the operational planning meetings and so didn’t know any of the invasion targets for the armies that were to be created.

Instead, she was going to use the resources in the stable to try and create something of a new ‘Think Tank’ that could examine the situation on the surface and make more reasoned decisions about how to proceed with becoming ‘better’, as Director Scootaloo had implored.

It looked like addendums had been made to this memo as well by the following stable Overmares, detailing the findings of the Think Tank and other operational changes. Curiously, none of them mentioned anything about exterminating the Wasteland of all of its pony inhabitants. Indeed, most of the Overmares seemed to be primarily concerned with finding a way to use the stable’s resources to help the ponies of the surface. Apparently, the stable’s residents had been sending out survey teams every couple of years to appraise the situation and monitor for changes.

Then I came across an entry announcing an end to those surveys, in the wake of a particularly disastrous expedition resulting in the deaths of all but one member. It seemed that they’d been ambushed by raiders and only a mare by the name of Gattaca had survived, if only barely.

The next entry was authored by an Overmare Gattaca, and it was here that I saw a distinct tonal shift in the stable’s directives. Slight, at first, but they gradually became much more pronounced up until the point where a decision was purportedly announced by the Think Tank that the situation on the surface was unsalvageable and extreme measures needed to be taken to effectively ‘reset’ everything in the Wasteland. Curiously, said Think Tank was dissolved a couple days later.

Entries after that remarked on initiatives to collect genetic material from the embryos still in storage and use it as the foundation for creating even tougher and stronger soldiers. Forays into the Wasteland for the purpose of collecting samples seemed to be a relatively more recent development, starting only in the last decade or so.

I sat back on my haunches, staring at the screen, and taking in everything that I’d just learned. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it all. Relief, that the stable’s initial purpose wasn’t ultimately realized and a second pony-zebra war waged on the tails of the first. Frustration, that a place like this with all of the knowledge and resources it had at its disposal had chosen to sit on the sidelines for decades without trying to actually help anypony on the surface. Revulsion, that a pony who’d had a bad day out in the Wasteland had used that as the foundation for starting a campaign of genocide.

Disappointment, that nopony since had chosen a different path other than wholesale slaughter.

It was depressing to think that the valley might actually have been better off if Caramel Apple had actually made it here and gone through with their original plan.

Not that any of this new information really changed all that much. The stable still had to be stopped. We’d removed their ability to create future improved generations, but that didn’t necessarily stop them from making more of the kinds of ponies they were creating now. Strictly speaking, they could still prove to be a pretty big military threat even without their genetic manipulation. As far as I could tell, they still had to have nearly all of those hundred thousand frozen embryos from the war ready to go, and we hadn’t touched their education equipment. The stable still had the infrastructure and resources to field an army that could easily overwhelm the Neighvada Valley and perhaps the wider Wasteland beyond.

We might still have to blow it up after all, I thought morosely.

It’s not like anything a pony like me could possibly say would talk them down from what they were planning. I was just an ‘invalid’ pony, after all. I wouldn’t be ‘smart enough’ to know what I was talking about. Arginine might be in a slightly better position, maybe, but I wasn’t hopeful that he’d have much luck, given how Constance had addressed him.

Nothing was going to convince these ponies to change their minds.

...Well, maybe there was one thing, I had a hopeful thought. Assuming that it even existed, that is.

I tapped at the keys and went back to the system directory.

THKTNK.

I downloaded the contents to my pipbuck, along with the files and memos from the previous directory. The ponies here might not listen to me, but they might at least be slightly more inclined to look at the records from their own ancestors.

Maybe.

It was worth taking that shot before we resorted to killing them all, I felt. I flitted up to the vent. Once inside, I opened up my pipbuck communicator once more, “RG, we can still lock down the stable without shutting down the power, right?”

“That is possible, yes; but it would be futile without seizing control of the Overmare’s office,” the stallion reminded me, “and it is unclear how long a true lockdown could be maintained even then. Fabrication has many tools that would prove more than capable of removing sealed doors.

“I you are unwilling to neutralize the reactor, my recommendation is for us to leave the stable and make our preparations to receive General Constance.”

A smart move, recommended by a smart pony. However, there was still something that I needed to try, “I’m going to try to talk down the Overmare. Maybe I can convince her to stop all of this.”

“Unlikely,” was Arginine’s assessment of my chances.

Foxglove was far more colorful in her objection, “are you out of your feathered mind, Windy?! That’s one of the first places that Security will try to get to once they realize that little environmental emergency isn’t real and they can’t reach the Overmare on comms! You’ll be trapped.

“If we’re not going to take their reactor offline, then we should leave while we still can.”

Another smart pony with the smart course of action. I smiled, “I learned some things about this stable’s history that the Overmare might not know. Maybe when she hears what I have to say, they’ll call the whole thing off.”

“You can’t honestly believe that!” the violet mare countered.

“I can hope,” I said, “I have to at least try, Foxy. I’m sorry. RG, I’ll let you know when I’m ready for the lockdown.”

“...As you wish.”

“I swear to Celestia, Windfall, if you get yourself killed…” was the other mare’s frustrated remark.

“It’ll work out,” maybe. Probably not, but...I could hope! “Once I have control, you two work on getting the front door open so we can get the mercs inside. If we move fast enough, we can still take the stable with minimal bloodshed. This’ll work.”

“It better.”

Two more levels up and a half dozen various turns―and one more wrong turn―later, and I had finally reached my destination. Tentatively, I peered down through the vent grate and looked around as best I could. I couldn’t see anypony in the room, but there was a blip within range, just beyond one of the doors leading out of the office.

I keyed in the transmitter of my pipbuck, “RG, I’m in position,” I said in a low whisper.

“Understood,” was the stallion’s reply, “Beginning maintenance cycle. The lockdown should commence in thirty seconds.”

This was going to be a long thirty seconds I very quickly realized. My gaze focused on the nearby blip beyond the door as I waited for sign of the impending lockdown, wondering idly if that would be one of the doors that would seal shut.

Then, suddenly, the blip started moving. I held my breath as the door slid open and the pony walked inside, looking around curiously, “hello? Is someone there?”

I got over my initial panic, wondering how somepony had figured out I was around, rather quickly once I noticed the pipbuck on their leg. I obviously would have shown up just as clearly on their Eyes Forward Sparkle as they did on mine. Fortunately, they possessed the same information limitation where elevation was concerned, so they couldn’t know that I was currently above them.

What took me a little longer to get over was my surprise at who had walked in. Or, at the very least, how different they looked from every other pony from their stable that I’d ever encountered―with the exception of Constance. However, in the general’s case, I’d gathered that the reason for her diminutive and youthful appearance had been that she was not a fully grown member of their stable, and would eventually look like all the rest over the course of time.

This pony, however, wasn’t in that same boat. She actually looked...normal. Well, normalish, I guess. Her coat was the same slate gray as Arginine’s, and her eyes were just as golden. Her mane wasn’t quite as white though, despite the bleaching brought on by her advanced age, for she was old too. If this was indeed the Overmare, I saw why Arginine hadn’t been concerned by my ability to best her in a physical fight. Honestly, she looked old enough that getting out of bed in the morning was probably a battle for her all in itself.

“Hello?” she continued, “I can see you one my―” she abruptly stopped talking as her voice...cracked? Her words had very suddenly gotten quite high pitched, which was quite obviously as surprising an event to her as it was to me, “what in the…?”

It was at that moment that yellow lights began to flash in the room and a klaxon sounded along with an automation message blasting it way across the stable’s intercom system, as well as my own pipbuck: “ALERT! ATMOSPHERIC CONTAMINATION DETECTED! STARTING EMERGENCY LOCKDOWN AND PURIFICATION PROTOCOLS. ALL RESIDENTS ARE ADVISED TO REMAIN WHERE THEY ARE UNTIL THE LOCKDOWN IS LIFTED!”

“Sweet Celestia,” the older mare sighed, still in the absurdly squeaky voice, “don’t tell me that Fabrication didn’t ventilate the foundry again...” she shook her head in resignation and headed for her desk, only to be brought up short with a startled yelp by the air vent falling to the floor in front of her, followed very shortly by a white pegasus.

I smiled at the surprised Overmare just before I leapt behind the desk, “Nope! You’ve been invaded by invalid surface ponies,” my voice, as well, was also substantially higher pitched to a comical degree. I started tapping at the keys on her consol, “don’t worry though, we don’t plan to be around for very long.

“Hey, Foxy, I’m at the computer, how do I...do the thing?”

“Security. Alerts. Lockdown. Activate,” the mare responded. A second later in the background, I heard the sound of something heavy and metallic slam down on the floor, “cutting my way to Arginine now. See you soon,” and she cut the signal.

Within moments, I’d followed her instructions and was rewarded with the computer informing me that a complete lockdown of the stable was in effect. The yellow lights immediately shifted to red, and another alert went out over the stable’s internal system further urging residents to remain where they were until security forces came for them.

“Mission accomplished,” I squeaked, letting out a long, relieved, sigh before I once more shifted my attention to the elderly grey unicorn mare who was still staring at me aghast. I leaned back in the chair and propped my hind hooves up on the desk, flashing her a grin, “and now that we have some privacy, you and me? We’re going to have a nice little chat...”

Footnote:...

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