War.

I’d trained all of my adult life for it, or at least the concept of it. That isn’t to say I knew what I was getting into, or what it would really be like. In addition to that, our skirmish in the valley wasn’t some brave new thing. We’d seen combat. Fought through pain just to get to Neighson.

But at the same time, it was so very different.

We’d had a chance to get our hooves beneath us once again at Neighson. Instead of a blind, weary trudge towards the next settlement, we’d stepped off rested, alert, and truly ready for the first time since the crash.

That battle was my first taste of a planned engagement. It brought back training, instinct, and I felt myself slipping back into the role of Squad Leader again. For real this time.

But that wasn’t my only role, and both of them were sorely tested that day. I became so very aware that there come times when my duties as a medic and as a leader come into conflict...

—Snap Roll’s Journal

I’d just taken flight from the recently cleared sniper roost. There was still an injured griffon down below, but with my bandaged shoulder currently acting as dead weight I was forced to admit that even with the flight advantage I had, there was a good chance I still couldn’t take him in a straight fight. Still, he wouldn’t be able to head back to the roost in his condition, so I could safely leave the anti-material rifle for later retrieval. My wings beat, and my thoughts were drawn back to the larger situation.

It occurred to me that I’d gotten “sucked in” to the immediate conflict. Those instincts had been exactly what kept me alive, but no amount of skill and luck would matter if things had ended up going poorly in the valley below. For the moment, my sense of the battlefield as a whole felt as dull as my leg, dead weight as I flew, forcing me to compensate. My only connections to the others, the radio and TFD, were silent even as gunshots continued down below. As such, when I say that I hadn’t heard from Tailwind in a while, my full meaning is that it felt more like missing a limb than simply not having an update.

The feeling of relief was absolutely palpable when Tailwind’s reply finally scrolled across my TFD’s display not half a minute later.

“Ranger’s good to go, we’re currently engaging. No contact with the hostiles from the West.”

It was short, sweet, and to the point. It was also the most welcome message I’d seen all day; things must have been going well if that was all she had to report.

As I flew, the battlefield gradually came into view. Quickly, I saw that Tailwind’s assessment of the Ranger’s status had been… modest. Between Fade’s position to the East and the appearance of the Ranger to the West, most of the remaining combatants had been outflanked or trapped. I saw the massive suit of power armoured pony crush one of the last firing positions with a sustained burst of minigun fire, before lowering her shoulder and charging. Fade was still stubbornly holding out behind a series of rocks, and Bernard and Crafter had clearly been busy — It took me the longest to spot them. They must have covered a good portion of the ground Tailwind and I had tracked beforehand, firing and moving around the edges of the firefight.

As I arrowed in behind the Ranger’s wake of destruction, I started to see more specifics. With the appearance of the Ranger, the tide had clearly turned — the first thing she’d hit had been their firebase, the main effort in keeping Fade’s head down. With it gone, the advancing groups suddenly found themselves without cover.

Crafter and Bernard were engaging a pair of ponies that had moved across the frozen river to get an angle on Fade. The griffon himself was in the process of taking full advantage of the covering fire he was getting. He leaned out of cover and unloaded on one of a pair of ponies just across the frozen creek bed. Blood and tissue painted the snow.

Of the Ranger, I saw that she had… well, she’d deliberately swept that position at knee height with her rotary cannon. One of the soldiers had managed to leap over the rock she’d been using as cover, but the Ranger’s fire had caught her partner. He was screaming in pain, thrashing four mutilated legs against the ground until a deliberately aimed ruby beam mercifully ended his suffering, flashing his body into a small pile of glowing pink dust.

Tail wasn’t with the Ranger, but she wasn’t far behind either.

Another exchange of rounds between Bernard’s fireteam and the remaining combatant across the river sent the last Red Eye pony to the ground. The engagement wasn’t nearly as flashy as the show put on by the others, but after those bullets were fired, a quiet settled across the battlefield.

The Ranger was still stomping around, presumably looking for targets, but as I coasted down, I saw friendly faces begin to poke their heads out to scan for anyone that was missed. Tailwind flagged me down, waving her hooves to catch my attention.

I adjusted course to land near Tailwind, keeping a large rock between myself and the contested area. Despite my best efforts, it wasn’t exactly a graceful landing. My injured leg weighing me down, I ended up ditching into the soft snow — I preferred the inelegance to potentially aggravating the already considerable injury. Managing to hobble over to the rock, I leaned against it as Tailwind galloped towards me.

Really, for being a medical pony I’ve gotta learn not to get shot so much…

Heedless of any remaining combatants, Tailwind sprinted to my side. She took one look at the blood soaked gauze wrapped around my shoulder and began a controlled freak out. “Skies above, Snap!” She cried as she dove into my bag for medical supplies. “Okay what do you need, just tell me what to do!”

I smiled at her attention, but the pain turned it into more of a grimace. “It nicked the bone in my shoulder… I’m gonna need you to set it in place before giving me a healing potion.” I winced as a minor movement renewed the grinding pain. I glanced into her wide eyes, brimming with concern. Why do I do this to her? I thought, before continuing to explain in a shaky voice. “I’ve taken a lot of Med-X lately… I really don’t want to get addicted to that stuff.” I let that sink in. It wasn’t going to be fun, but, in theory, it’d be gone once I downed the healing potion… I took a few deep breaths to prepare myself.

Tail carefully — daintily, even — unwrapped the bindings I’d made, giving a small gasp when she saw the wound. She placed the half-empty healing potion within easy reach, before pressing her hooves to either side of the wound. Despite her efforts, blood began to dribble from between her hooves. She looked me in the eyes, a very clear conflict between how much she wanted to help and how much she didn’t want to hurt me, expressed simply through her gaze.

Nodding, I tried in vain to mentally prepare for what she was about to do. She leaned in, began to press with her hooves.

What followed was… not, it saddens me to say, the most painful experience of my life. Though it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying.

Screaming in agony, my senses were sharp, undiluted by the dulling effects of Med-X. Tears ran down my face as I screwed my eyes shut. I’d figured I would remind myself it was for the best, that this was so much better than risking addiction… but had I known just how much it would hurt, I’d probably have had her hit me up with Med-X in a heartbeat.

I can’t say how long it was before I was coherent again. I might have passed out, but if I did, Tailwind didn’t comment, simply helping me drink the remainder of the healing potion as she gazed on with nothing but care in her bright, green eyes. The feeling of flesh and bone knitting themselves back together was (lamentably) a familiar feeling at that point. The usual itchy feeling permeated my shoulder as the magic did its work, with a tingle of it in my wing and flank. Hesitantly, I glanced away, beginning to gather my senses about me.

As I gradually became aware of my surroundings again, I looked up to see Crafter standing nearby, pistol levitating beside him while he was nearly out of breath. He must have come running at my scream. “You alright?” He asked in between heavy breaths of air.

Meeting his gaze, I gave him a pained, lopsided smile as I collapsed against Tailwind’s chest. “Ask me… later, Crafter. But good work out there.”

“Oh… okay,” he replied awkwardly, glancing away at the show of affection. He lowered the pistol, and started looking outwards — anywhere other than Tail and I.

Despite how good it felt leaning against my partner, there were po… well, people who needed me. Removing myself from the comfort of her chest, I gently took flight, fluttering across what had become quite a respectable battlefield with Tailwind in tow as we headed towards where Fade had made his impromptu stand. There was what sounded like an altercation between Fade and the Ranger, but I couldn’t make it out. There was the vaguely distorted sound of shouting coming from power armour external speakers, but the chill winds stole any meaning from the scattered snatches I heard.

A trio of bodies lay scattered around the immediate area Fade had taken cover in. I noted their locations, but aside from confirming that they wouldn’t be continuing the fight anytime soon, I had to prioritize my own people. As soon as I had a sense of how things had gone, and I started taking control of the scene. “Bernard, Crafter!” I called out, “I’m gonna need you two to watch for reinforcements from the West. There were two more over thattaway with a radio, and there’s a grounded griffon off to the North.”

The battle had been fought, but the area was far from secure. I briefly took flight again, headed towards where I’d heard Fade’s voice coming from. In my haste, I was nearly blindsided by the Steel Ranger as she rounded the corner, heading back towards where her comrades had fallen. She didn’t seem injured, and she certainly didn’t seem to want to talk about it. We would have to have words sooner or later, but I wasn’t going to push the issue when I still had troops to account for.

I came to a halt when I caught sight of Fade. By rights, he’d come away from everything looking better than I had. I was almost jealous. There were a pair of bodies at his feet, one with a head injury that seemed to correspond to the bloodstain upon the rock beside them.

Fade looked up, meeting my eyes for a moment. He hardly had a chance to even look uncomfortable before I all but overwhelmed him with hooves-on medical checks. I ran my eyes, then hooves over him, patting him down and periodically checking my hooves for blood. He’d taken a burst of rounds that clipped him along his left thigh, leaving four or five long, semi-healed gashes going across his leg. They still wept blood, but they weren’t complicated injuries. That, and he was clearly restraining himself from snapping at me for not asking if it was okay to touch him. I spoke as I worked, partially in an attempt to distract him from the invasion of space. “Nice work, Fade. Impromptu distraction, but it definitely did the trick. You hit anywhere I’m not seeing?” Not waiting for a response, I started pulling some of the more valuable magical bandage out of my pack and wrapping it around his wounds. Considering their placement, it was relatively easy to apply consistent pressure. I figured the wounds would finish healing just fine, if he let them.

Fade visibly relaxed when he had a chance to voice a reply. It seemed to distract him from the fact that I was touching him. “Didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped. Kopilad were more alert than I thought.” He nodded down at his leg, “Other than those nicks, I got a solid hit in the leg. Seemed to be through-and-through, so I splashed some of that potion on it. Healed up well enough.” He lifted his gaze to see over his cover, smiling as he caught sight of the pony he’d thoroughly perforated with LMG fire. “New arrivals up there were set on putting more holes in me, so I did what I could. Not sure if it was the best, but I wasn’t about to let some RE trollops get the best of me.” A grin spread across his beak as he leaned towards me. Before he spoke, I wouldn’t have made much of it, but taking in mind what he was about to say, I think it’s worth elaborating: He had this grin, somewhere between conspiratorial and shit-eating. Like he was truly proud of what he was about to tell me.

“Got one of them, too. Turned the jebač to mince; could probably spread some of him on toast.”

He said it so calmly it took a second for his words to even register, how not-okay what he’d just said was.

Fucking… wow. At least morale is… high? I don’t even know.

Not knowing quite how to respond to Fade’s… statement, I’ll call it… I simply didn’t. Finishing up his bandage, I moved on. In my haste, I assumed both the bodies lying near him were dead, and moved on to those I could help.

Now, I imagine it’s quite likely whoever ends up reading this is a wastelander. Or Red Eye. Or Ranger, or what have you. What I did next might seem odd.

But… I tried to help. I really did.

Those ponies we killed, and those we injured… well, Tailwind and I weren’t from the Frozen North. I mean, that’s obvious, but… it really showed, those next couple minutes. Sure, it was Red Eye ponies who’d shot us down, who’d killed Nosedive, Flaps and Aileron. But I guess for all my faults, I couldn’t hold them accountable, not as individuals. The wasteland had shown us a measure of grace, despite our heritage — despite what our society forced upon them every day of their lives. When I fought, there was no hate, just necessity. They were in our way, and they were hostile. The fight between Red Eye and the Steel Rangers had been going on for years. That hate was marrow deep for many, with the most personal kind of scars on both sides. No quarter asked, none given.

That wasn’t me.

I flapped away, beginning to scan the bodies for signs of life.

The closest was the mare immediately above Fade, splayed out on the rock. Her injury wasn’t large, but she’d been shot pretty cleanly in the chest. There was no exit wound, leading me to conclude she had serious internal injuries. I could only imagine what had led to her being there, but that wasn’t really my concern as I leaned down, putting my ear next to her muzzle. There was no hint of breath in my ear, so I rolled her onto her side, attempting to give her a shot at clearing her airway. When I checked again, there was still nothing against my cheek but the chill kiss of the Northern air. Unfortunate, but that was all the time I could spare for an unresponsive casualty.

Rising to my hooves, I spoke to Tailwind as I was already scanning for the next casualty. “She’s gone, Tail. Let’s move on.”

There were two more bodies in the immediate vicinity, the closest being a buck who’d lost both forelegs to what seemed to be a mine. We hardly had the medical supplies to even treat those wounds, so I merely confirmed a lack of vitals before moving on to the final casualty in this area.

The last was an earth pony stallion with a gut shot, only a few meters away. He was clearly injured, and was busy trying to use his hooves to keep his blood inside. Landing beside him, I kicked the feed mechanism on his battlesaddle, forcefully dislodging it from the assault rifle it fed. I wrapped a forehoof around the charging handle and ejected the chambered round. I tossed his ammo pouch into my saddlebags, along with the single round. I ran my hooves over him, finding a pistol, which was likewise discarded. All the while I could see the defeat in his eyes, the resignation. He thought I was looting him before putting a bullet in his head.

I think I surprised him when I spoke, calmly and surely. “Hey. If you wanna live, I need to know if you’re shot anywhere I can’t see. I also need to cut open your barding if I’m going to stop the bleeding, got it?”

He seemed incredulous, but the pain in his eyes ultimately won out. He didn’t indicate any other injuries, but he did nod in what I assumed to be acceptance, and I went to work.

I drew a combat knife — one of the very same that had graced the blade of a certain sickle once upon a time. Had to wonder at the irony of it being used for medical purposes. With the grip carefully held between my teeth, I cut away his winter wraps, leaving him some covering over his barrel but exposing his injured belly. He was a mess, the shot he took had made a particularly large hole in his gut. I didn’t see an exit wound, so the bullet was still inside. It would be a while before he bled out, but he needed medical attention. Despite the obvious injury, I ran my hooves over him just to be sure. He had a thready pulse, rapid breathing (though, part of that must have been my doing. I’m sure the last thing he expected was first aid), and his pupils were tiny. Multiple signs of shock, and it would kill him long before he bled out. Some shrapnel injuries, but they were superficial compared to the gunshot.

All things considered, he was keeping it together rather well.

I figured if we could stabilize him and extract the bullet, a potion might mean he’d live. Considering it worthwhile, I pulled out an injector of Med-X. Tearing the disposable plastic cap off with my teeth, I jabbed him in the shoulder, through the fabric of his uniform. He reached out a bloody hoof, smearing crimson across my cheek. He was cringing at the sudden prick in his shoulder, but as the drug swam through his system, realization settled in. He even smiled and leaned back, relaxing in my hooves. His pulse had stabilized, and his breathing went back to normal. He wasn’t stable yet, but at least he wasn’t fading out on me anymore.

I didn’t want to use the potion unless we could stabilize him. We were low on medical supplies as it was.

Passing Tailwind a couple rolls of mundane bandage, I gave instructions. “He’s a priority one, we might be able to save him if we act fast.” She knelt down beside me, and I positioned her hooves where they’d do the most good. “Keep pressure on his wounds, see if you can get his saddle off so we have room to work. I’m going to triage the others.”

She nodded, tacitly accepting the plan. “Roger that, Chief,” she piped up as she tore open the first bandages and brought them to his belly. I didn’t stick around — she knew what she was doing. With a flap of wings, I was off. I’d seen the two on the opposite side of the river go down, and they were my next stop.

I barely stopped near the first of the pair — that was the stallion who’d caught a broadside from Fade. “Mince” was a bit of an exaggeration, but not entirely off. Even if he was breathing (which, upon inspection, he wasn’t), there was nothing I could do for that sort of massive trauma. His partner — a unicorn — was in the process of holding his forelegs to his neck, blood slowly dribbling from between them. His face was contorted in pain. I could definitely do something about that.

I didn’t fuck around with niceties, dropping in fast beside him. I kicked his rifle away, hopefully out of range of his magic. I patted him down, running my hooves anywhere a weapon could be concealed. Unicorns could be tricky — there was always the possibility of getting a knife out of somewhere without any obvious signs beyond the magic field. A quick check through his barding revealed a holstered pistol and — you guessed it — a short knife, hidden in a pocket. Both were likewise discarded before I moved to begin helping him.

I tried to make eye contact, get him to notice me. I could help with or without his co-operation, but that didn’t mean I wanted to. “Look at me, trooper. I’m here to help you, but your compliance would be most welcome.”

He didn’t seem to register my presence, simply muttering something about his mother as I checked his vitals.

He was cold to the touch, his pulse rapid, and his eyes unfocused. Thing was, though, when I moved his hooves… the bullet, evidently a pistol round from Crafter (which, in and of itself, was rather impressive) had only hit the flesh of his throat, practically a graze. It was bleeding a lot, but it wasn’t life threatening unless you count possible infection in a couple days. Simply put, he was overreacting. Similar symptoms, despite the disparity of injuries relative to his squadmate with the gut wound. Still, the shock could kill him just the same.

He fought me a little, mostly when I tried to move his hooves. I had to use a bit of force, but he wasn’t in the mood to put up much of a struggle, especially once I wrapped his neck in a magical pressure bandage. The gauze reddened, but stopped growing sooner rather than later as the magically-imbued fabric did its work.

Soon as the bleeding stopped, I hooked my forelegs around his shoulders. It wasn’t elegant, but I half-flew, half-dragged his body across the frozen river to the rocks near where Fade had held up in the firefight. I wanted to get back, but I looked him right in the eyes as I laid one of our blankets over his body. “We’re gonna help you, but I don’t wanna see the glow of that horn of yours, got it?” I gave him a grim look. I didn’t have any means of disabling his magic, short of disabling him, so I was hoping he would just go with it.

The fight was out of him. He nodded weakly, and I helped him into a recovery position before flying over to Tailwind again.

She was right where I’d left her, dutifully taking care of the buck with the gut shot when I landed beside her, still with her hooves putting pressure on his stomach. The bandages she had were soaked with blood. His battle saddle and its attached rifle had been removed, and was currently laying a few meters away. “I’m here,” I said, “How’s he doing?”

“Well, he isn’t dead,” She replied without a trace of humour, “He’s gonna bleed out unless he gets a healing potion.” There was concern in her tone.

“I know,” I said, digging out my surgical kit. “But it won’t do him any good in the long run if that bullet’s still in there.” I pulled out a pair of surgical tweezers, nodding to her. “I need you to spread the wound, let's see what we’re working with here…”

As we worked, the hiss of hydraulics and tread of a ton of pony against the frozen ground signalled the approach of the Steel Ranger we’d saved. After coming to a halt, she addressed me for the first time, voice modulated through the speakers built into the helmet. Even with the distortion, she was practically seething. “What the fuck are you doing?”

There was a hint of recognition, something familiar about her voice — but I couldn’t place it at the time. I was somewhat distracted, being hooves-deep in a pony’s insides at the time.

“Caring for the injured,” I retorted, not sparing the Ranger a glance. Instead, I returned to giving instructions to Tailwind. “Hold him down, I’m going for the bullet.” She did, putting gentle but firm hooves on his chest. Surgical tweezers in hoof, I delicately spread the opening of the wound. Blood was already beginning to pool. I would have to be quick.

Our mare-in-shining-armour didn’t seem to like my answer. “Caring for the injured?” She breathed, as if it were shocking to her. “Do you have any idea who these ponies are? What they’ve done to us?!” She was positively fuming at this point. “As the ranking Steel Ranger in this area, I order you to turn him over to me.”

Crafter had headed this way when the shouting started. In the wake of her booming voice, his sounded positively tiny as he spoke up. “Um… she brings up a good point. Why are we helping them? We just shot them up, after all…”

I glanced back at her, mostly because she was continuing to ruin my concentration. “I’m not spending our medical supplies to keep them alive just so you and yours can execute them back at Neighson,” I snarled, before turning to the very confused-looking Stablepony. “Crafter, it’s just the right thing to do,” I spoke more calmly, to him. “If you were in his position…” Tailing off, I left him with a pleading look. If anypony in our group could see my perspective, I hoped it would be him.

Without waiting for a response, I turned back to the pony bleeding at my hooves.

“Who said anything about Neighson…” The Ranger’s voice came as an approximation of a growl, low and seething with anger. I heard the mechanical whir of an autoloader as her minigun began to spin up to speed.

Things escalated quickly.

At the time, I hadn’t comprehended what exactly Bernard was doing, but after the dust settled and we had a chance to sort things out, I came to understand that he’d swapped ammo types in his hunting rifle to a series of blue-banded armour piercing rounds. I’d definitely have to ask him when he was intending of informing us of that particular purchase, but it certainly applied to the situation.

For my own part, instincts from medical courses came right back to me. Typically a combat medic should look after their own well-being first… but even in the military, to a healer, some things were just instinctive. I shouted, “No!” as I tried to dart forwards and shield him with my body.

Of course, there was one pony there who could anticipate those instincts. In a move much like what I’d done to murder a pony minutes before, Tail leaned forwards, catching me under my forelegs. She pushed hard with her wings, tackling me backwards into a snow drift, a few meters from our patient. “Don’t do it!” she shrieked over her shoulder.

I got my first proper look at the Ranger, then. The spinning rotary cannon on her right, and the nozzle-like contraption on her left. It hadn’t clicked, what that other weapon was. I guess part of me didn’t want to believe they actually used those.

It let out a pneumatic “whoosh,” and a jet of pressurized jelly burst forth from the nozzle, ignited by a pilot torch at the tip. Liquid flame washed over the snow, and the poor bastard who was already bleeding out.

The fire danced.

It clung to whatever it touched, burning, engulfing. It burnt through barding in an instant, clinging to flesh that charred and ignited too. Despite being hopped up on Med-X, he screamed. He screamed as his mane burned away. As his coat turned to ash, flesh was burnt through, muscle smouldered, as his fat boiled and popped. His cries were finally cut short as the air in his lungs superheated. The screams were replaced with the dull, hollow sound of his bones cracking and popping in the heat.

Memories rose. Ones I’d thought all but forgotten, buried. I could feel the heat of it all, smell it all, taste the heavy tang of burnt flesh on the roof of my mouth.

I’d felt that pain once. In a simulator. Smelt that smell before. It had been my flesh, then. I’d been a Skytank driver-in-training. The exit hatch had fused when we got hit, and the fuel tank had ruptured... They said it was a “fluke” of the system, that the experience had been as intense as it was. I requested transfer to Recce the day after. It was approved, no questions asked. Despite that... the mental scar had never really gone away.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

Tailwind was the one to tell me how things went from there, after the fact.

As soon as she fired, Bernard put a round through her right foreleg. Tail told me it managed to punch right through.

The Ranger cried out in pain, but barreled towards the rocks Fade had used for cover. She was limping, keeping some weight off her injured foreleg. Another round from Bernard, another thin hole in her leg, higher this time. She cried out in pain.

Tailwind had me backed into a snow drift, about as safe as I could be when she turned her rifle on the Ranger. She’d have opened fire too, if it wasn’t for probably the strangest thing I’ve ever heard.

Crafter, of all ponies, had decided to charge the Ranger, breaking into a full gallop. Her attention was distracted — she was lining up the cannon to hit Bernard where he lay some fifty meters or so away, bracing his rifle against a downed tree. Crafter’s horn lit, and a mote of light, bright as a Raptor’s miniature searchlight, appeared right on the tip of her helmet’s nose. It must have blinded, or at least surprised her, just long enough for Crafter to blindside her with a full body tackle. Unsteady, blinded, and blindsided by the impact, the Ranger toppled to her side, crushing deep into the snow.

It all happened in seconds.

She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even unconscious. I managed to find my way out of those terrible memories, tearing my eyes away from the corpse. Of all things I expected to see, it certainly wasn’t, of all ponies, Crafter Odds standing victorious over a fallen Steel Ranger, his pistol pointed down at her head. The Ranger in question seemed resigned to slump over and give up the fight. Tailwind was in the air, her rifle trained on the downed Ranger.

Fade was conspicuously absent. It occurred to me then, that he could have been for some time. He wasn’t where I’d left him, and the mare that had been laying beside him was gone, too. He certainly hadn’t come running when he heard shooting.

Needless to say, that peculiar scene was what caused me to ask Tailwind to rationalize things to me after the fact.

The Ranger grumbled something about it “not being worth it,” and reached back with her good hoof, releasing the seals on her helmet. As the hunk of metal and circuitry fell from her head, a violet mane spilled forth, almost hiding her pale white coat.

Her voice finally clicked. That mare, back in Cheesequake’s office. Knight Frostfire, he’d called her… Which meant that she was newly transferred, and had lost her entire squad in the time since we’d seen her.

I flapped over, laying down a couple paces from her. That put my own head at eye level, propped up on a forehoof. It was then that I addressed her properly for the first time. My pose was relaxed, but there was no mistaking the threat of so many guns pointed her way. “So, what are we going to do with you, now that you went and did something like that?” I asked, shielding my dismay at her actions with an honest curiosity at why she’d be willing to risk personal harm just to finish off a wounded enemy.

She craned her neck back to glare at me. “Don’t patronize me. If I live, I’ll hunt and kill every one of those fuckers I see until the day I die. If you sympathize with Red Eye and his kin, I’ll kill you too.”

I raised my head and made a show of investigating my forehoof, as if it suddenly gained significance. “Sympathize is categorically the wrong word.” Glancing back, I made eye contact. “The Enclave,” I gestured towards the patch adorning the shoulder of my scout barding — not quite covered by the fur cloak, “Is not at war with Red Eye. At the very least, not formally. Tailwind and I are…” With an inclination of my head, I drew her attention to the mare very deliberately pointing a large energy weapon at her head, “Well, were scouts. It was, and still is our job to find out information about potential enemies of the Grand Pegasus Enclave, not start wars on its behalf. By the same token, we won’t shirk from engaging them if the need arises. They were blocking our path of advance, killing ponies who are, for the time being, our allies — yourself included. As they were hostile, we fought them without hesitation.

“That pony you killed was far too injured to be a threat, and he still had friends. They had an observation post set up, those ponies never took part in the fight. That means, they either fucked off at the first sign of fighting — and as such don’t know pegasi participated in the first place… or alternatively, they saw Tailwind and I giving medical treatment to their wounded comrades, a sign of decency that I’m sure would have been passed on to their superiors if and when they make it back.” I gave a soft sigh, making a conscious attempt to keep my anger in check. “A plan which your summary incineration of one of their friends has rather…” I made a show of searching for a proper simile for a moment, before glancing at Crafter — who still held the proverbial high ground, his pistol drawn and pointed at her temple.

“...Thrown a wrench into, as it were.”

Crafter looked pleased, giving me a smirk before turning his focus back to the angry, armoured mare beneath him.

Frostfire merely rolled her eyes. “So... what? You kill some of them, and you expect them to give you some sort ‘thank you’ because it wasn’t all of them?”

“As contradictory as it might seem to you,” I replied, “Giving aid to the injured — of both sides — is the duty of the victor.” I looked down at her. Her attitude was bringing out a spiteful side of me, especially after we saved her ass. “Something I doubt you’ve encountered with your dirty, desperate little wars down here.”

“That’s great,” Frostfire outright laughed, a note of what was almost mirth entered her voice, if not for the brittle undertone to it. “Must be nice still living in that idyllic paradise of yours. What, is war clean up there? Sanitary?” Seeming to get herself under control, she spoke low and deliberately. “If you take nothing else from all this, from the deaths of those I loved, fucking listen to me — Every single day out here is struggle. Them, or us,” She gestured with a hoof towards the burnt corpse, followed by the shattered armour and frozen corpses of her squad. “You leave one of them alive, all’s that’s gonna happen is you’re going to fight him tomorrow — more likely than not, he’ll try and put a bullet in your back or a collar around your neck.”

She spat in the snow.

“Let me up,” She finally said, her tone simply tired this time. “I won’t cause you more trouble. Just don’t touch my squad.” She kicked out a steel-shod hoof, catching a Red Eye corpse in the leg. “From them, it's all yours, whatever salvage you want.”

Crafter looked to me for direction.

I nodded. We weren’t about to kill her, after all… and she seemed to have cooled down, somewhat. That, and her words had me thinking. Considering their merit, if for no other reason than the weight of good ponies’ deaths lied with them.

Crafter hopped off, and Knight Frostfire rose from her place in the snow with a hiss of hydraulics and the rasp of steel-on-steel. She didn’t seem to be limping, despite the rounds surely still lodged in her leg. The auto-medical suite onboard Ranger armour outstripped even our own for user survivability, and I wasn’t surprised so much as impressed, now that I had a chance to see it in action. As she seemed true to her word, Bernard and Tailwind lowered their weapons.

Frostfire retrieved her helmet and walked over to her team leader — at least, I assumed that’s who it was. The one with the anti-material hole in his chest. I imagined she was mentally preparing a report of what had happened to send back to Neighson.

Quiet had finally settled back into the valley.

As if some cosmic force decided it wasn’t quite the time for things to end, the still air was broken by the crack of one final gunshot.

A fresh surge of adrenaline pumped through my veins. Hastily, I checked Tailwind, Crafter and Bernard. Each seemed fine, if just as confused as I was. The shot hadn’t come from any of them, and it hadn’t been aimed at them either.

My train of thought rapidly went to the stallion I’d left with the neck injury. I was immediately terrified that he’d found a weapon or something. Breaking into a gallop, I sprinted around the corner, only to be brought up short when I saw what had happened there.

What I found, almost made me wish he had found some sort of firearm… if only because it would have been simpler.

As I rounded the corner of Fade’s defensive rock pile, I came upon the griffon himself already in the process of holstering a smoking pistol. Before him was the cooling corpse of the pony I’d bandaged up, a hole right between his eyes and a fresh spray of blood on the snow beneath him. Beside Fade stood a mare with a green coat and a short, wild mane of slate blue and steel grey. She wasn’t wearing any barding, and was connected to the griffon by an impromptu rope leash, held in the griffon’s left talon. On her flank was an innocuous looking pair of watery swirls, feeding into each other in a fluid cycle. She seemed to be in the process of blowing a raspberry at the corpse when I came upon them.

Catching sight of me, Fade spoke up, perfectly calm. “You know you missed one, eh? Took care of it though. Good to see you’re all still alive. Heard some nasty business on the way out.”

“What the hell, Fade?” I cried out, “We just… just saved him, skies damn it.” My mind caught up to me, just a little, as I made eye contact with the mare he had in tow. She smiled, and gave me a calm wave of her hoof, as if we were neighbors back in the sky, rather than standing in the middle of a battlefield. She had deep turquoise eyes, like pools of water. She seemed… almost bored. I tore my gaze away, back to Fade. I had valid questions, and he’d be the one to answer them. “Who is that? Why is she tied up? And… why is she naked?”

Fade seemed to glance from me to her, to the dead stallion, and back again. Blinking, he raised a talon in a placating gesture, cleared his throat, and began.

“Alright, I’ll take this one at a time.” He pointed to the stallion with the new mouth in the center of his face, “He worked for Red Eye. Be it out of belief or for money, that is a group one can simply not negotiate with. They take the standing worth of Ponies as a whole and manage to devalue it further.” Stepping aside as if to showcase the mare behind him, he gestured to her. “Snap Roll, This is Ebb. Ebb, this is Snap Roll. For all intents she is our prisoner, and has agreed to give me information. The lack of vestments is due to the fact I had to tie her up, but had nothing to do it with at the time. Thus, I shredded her gear and improvised. later on I realized I did have rope, which turned out to be useful anyways as Ebb requested replacement garments in return for her cooperation. Then, I tied her up to ensure adherence to our arrangement and came back here to get aforementioned coverings and relay the information to the concerned parties — those being the Ranger over there and her Fort dwelling friends.” Setting his talon back down, he seemed to give that a second’s thought before nodding, content. “That about sums it up. Not sure what you thought it all pointed to.”

No negotiating with Red Eye? But you just-

“But that doesn’t-” I false-started, realizing there were actually more important things at hoof than puzzling out Fade’s logic. “Wait, information? What kind of information?” I looked back to the mare, wondering what she had in that completely unperforated head of hers… though now that I properly looked at her, she seemed to boast some nasty looking bruises. “What do you know?” I asked, far more cordially than the tone I’d just been using with Fade.

Ebb brought a forehoof to her chin in thought, “Well I guess I know a few things. Don’t know why’d you need me though, can’t y’all see what’s goin’ on from yer cloud house… stuff?” She emphasized the ‘cloud house’ bit by waggling her hooves in front of her.

I glared at Fade, simmering with irritation. My tone dropped back to roughly where it was before, this time spiced with a dash of deadpan. “You picked her for her wit, didn’t you?”

“It was a factor,” Fade replied, offering a desultory shrug. “Her capture was actually rather spontaneous. She literally fell into my lap and I just took advantage of the situation. You might not be aware of this, but Red Eye troops operating this far North is out of the ordinary. Means they found a way to bypass the Fort... Which is bad, by the way.”

“Well, that’s more than a little worrisome,” I replied to Fade’s assessment. Behind me, the others were filtering our way, more than a little interested in how events were going. Even Frostfire had come to see what was up, clanking slowly towards us. I called out to her, “Frostfire, you’ve got some sort of comms with Neighson, right? I think your superiors are gonna want to hear what Fade has to say.”

She nodded, eyes downcast as she passed Tailwind what seemed to be a broadcasting antenna from one of her saddlebags. “Just use the daft one’s Pipbuck, should connect just fine,” she replied, monotone.

Her tone worried me, for her sake as much as anything else. I knew the signs of early onset combat stress disorder, and she was exhibiting more than enough of them. I wanted to sit down, talk to her about what happened… but unfortunately, we didn’t have anything like the time for that, and I was sure she wouldn’t have wanted to hear it from me anyhow.

At any rate, it buoyed my spirits to see Tailwind’s reaction to being passed a piece of Ranger comms tech. She daintily plucked it from Frostfire’s outstretched hoof before examining it from multiple different angles. Satisfied, she advanced on Crafter with a look in her eyes that said, “I’m going to need your foreleg again,” and it didn’t seem at all like a request. Fade moved over as well, and they all seemed to be getting around to informing the Rangers of the nature of what they faced.

With that out of the way, I turned to address our sole surviving captive. “And while informing them is a fairly high priority, there’s still a griffon off to the North. Unless I’m right out to lunch, he was more or less in command here, wasn’t he, Ebb?” I doubt she expected the question, but I had to confirm my suspicion before we wasted time hunting him.

Ebb quirked her head to the side, seemingly curious that my question was directed at her. "Heh, you can say that I guess. If fucking and yelling count as 'command.'" She snickered before continuing, "There was another prick with him, but that one left this morning — he was more or less the real boss." She gave a defeated shrug, seemingly at a loss as to what sort of embellishment I might be looking for.

Most of what she said made sense. The senior commander having left them in the care of a junior once the ambush position was in place. There was just one thing that didn't quite register the first time she said it…

"Fucking?" I asked, incredulous.

Ebb raised an eyebrow, "Yeah you know the sex thing? Ya'll do that up there still right?"

I could have facehoofed, but I just couldn't leave well enough alone. Something about the way she'd said it made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Trying to press past her attitude, I kept asking, a knot growing in the pit of my stomach at what her answer might be. "Well, yeah, but... like, a griffon, with ponies? And you, er, they... let him?"

For a fleeting moment, I caught a small twinge from her, almost a crack in the blasé attitude she was putting up. Like she was trying to steer from the subject. "Well, let him isn't exactly the words I'd use… He's got a temper and kinda has the authority to execute folks for sedition."

There it was. I can’t say it was right in front of me or anything, I don’t think it would be fair to myself to even have clued in on that one beforehand. That said, now I knew. What he’d called the mare I killed, the nature of their existence. I realized many of my assumptions had been premature, so based on my own experiences. Who’d have thought basic fucking dignity would have been a thing to take for granted, huh?

The way I see it, the choice that lay before me was no choice at all.

I looked her dead in the eyes, those pale blue orbs of hers. It occurred to me that she seemed young, so young for what she must have been doing for years by now. She was thin too, with her coat stretched almost tight over wiry muscle, like she’d been undernourished for virtually her entire life. She shifted awkwardly under my gaze, as if she thought she’d said something she shouldn’t have. Without another word, I turned on my heel, headed straight for our griffon companion.

“Fade,” I called, heedless of the fact that he seemed to still be in the process of wrapping up his conversation with Ranger command. Hell, maybe he’d gotten in contact with Cheesequake directly. Right then, I hardly cared. “Finish up, we’re heading out.”

Holding the antennae mic to one side of his head, he asked me curiously, “‘Out,’ is all well and good, but where exactly are we going?”

I gave him an aggressive grin as I replied, “To kill a griffon.”

Author's Notes:

Well, this has probably been the chapter with the most... interesting development cycle, with none of it related to the chapter itself. So I started an army leadership course this week (the same course, allowing for universe translation, that was Snap's most recent major career course, incidentally), and on top of that, over on Reddit this story managed to make it into the three stories that are up for prereaders to vote on for an EQD post. Given the competition that's up there, well... I'm fully expecting MN7 to win. But it would be a nice surprise to come back from the field to find that happened.

Anyways, I've been wanting to show this side of Snap for a long time now, and here it is. Big thanks to the editors/prereaders; Belmor and Kyler (writer of Stable Scout - go give it a read if you're lookin for some reading material! I've done some prereader work for him along the way, too).

Anyways, I hope this segment hasn't drawn on too long. I know timeline wise things are going quite slow, but I really do feel that there are stories worth telling within the nitty gritty little bits of a firefight. I'd love to hear what you think in the comments, as we head into the conclusion for this sub-arc. I've got a thick skin, and there's nothing better than seeing feedback on a chapter that forces me to think about something I maybe hadn't given as much thought to as I might've ought to.

Anyways, til next time, thanks for reading!