Lost in Dispatches

Master Engineer Kreme-Brulee and the directors of the Equestrian Air Navigation Company cordially invite the General Public to attend upon next week’s launching of the AS Great Equestrian, largest Skyliner in the world, at the Geordie Lamp Shipyards, Baltimare. Luncheon to follow.

Equestrian Air Navigation – by Royal Appointment. Praise Her Unconquered Sun!

A clipping of an announcement placed in the Baltimare Halcyon newspaper, one week before the CERN incident. This particular clipping is attached to a hoofwritten note: ‘Please Come, Son’.

Duplicated here by kind permission of the Mouscadet Family of Rainbow Falls, who hold the originals.

*

“The Europeans came first, and took without asking. In their arrogance, they thought of themselves as superiors, civilised and enlightened compared to us poor, misguided savages. Our ancestors bent knee and head in subjugation, when confronted with annihilation. We steeled ourselves, and in rafts and canoes crafted of words and prayer, salvaged the remnants of our culture from the white flood. The Creator wept for us, and wept even more for the evil in the hearts of men. We endured, and remain. Generations later, many of us have forgiven, but not forgotten, those times of tribulation.

But today, we are all of us threatened with destruction. An eradication as thorough and complete as to wipe all of us ‘poor, misguided, savages’ from the face of existence, so that not even one man and one woman might remain. Today, the creator weeps for all of us, as we raise our fists in rage at she who has perverted the warmth of His sun.

Peoples of the Nations, I implore you to cast off the evil within, the hatreds and scars of the past, and destroy the evil without. Without this resolve, all humanity will fall. This time, none must submit to those who declare themselves our betters.”

An address to the Assembly of First Nations by Author Sanipass, Mi’kmaq chieftain of the Eel River Bar Band of New Brunswick. Seven minutes after this televised address, the gathered representatives were overwhelmed by a PER potion-bombing attack. Sanipass himself is suspected to have been the original identity of ‘Loving Sun’, an infamous newfoal evangelist killed in the Battle of Millers Falls.

*

Hi sis! It’s Pinkie Pie here, but you totally knew it was me, didn’t you! Things are really super here in Canterlot now, and everypony’s working really hard to help those icky humans. You should awesomely come and visit me, wouldn’t that be amarezing! I knew I was a Meanie party-poo about Her Majesty’s plans, but I’m all happy-dappy Better Now. Everything Better. Everypony Better, yes! Please come. I miss you. Please come. Please. Rock Candy fun? Funfun! Yaaaaaaaay!

An unposted note liberated from the Solar Empire’s archives by the Blue Spy. The parchment sheet on which it is written has apparently been scrunched up and flattened out numerous times. Despite the erratic wording, the mouthwriting is methodical and almost mechanical. Analysis indicates splatter-pattern markings on the sheet to be tears. Scribbled in a linguistic scream across the whole of the page, in pink crayon, are the words ‘RUN AWAY!’

*

“The last invasion of the British Isles was in 1797, when a contingent of French Napoleonic troops landed at Carregwastad Head, here in Wales. A dismal failure, it was routed and broken within days, the invaders often being captured by local civilians without shots being fired. Local legend maintains that many of the soldiers, seeing Welsh housewifes approaching in their traditional attire of red cloaks and tall black hats, mistook them for reinforcements from the Grenadier Guards and laid down their arms in surrender…

...that’s what they taught us in school, and now I’m standing here on this ferry, watching as Carregwastad Head is swallowed by the Barrier, and I can’t cry! Mum, Dad, Samantha...Prince and Taliesin and David Lloyd George...they’re all gone. All Wales, all Britain, gone! And I can’t cry! Why can’t I cry!”

First entry in a lengthy collection of audio diaries, stored on an external hard-drive discovered hidden aboard train CPX-9782, the last railroad consist to successfully flee Nova Scotia.

*

“With my lovely blue streamlined engine ‘Mallard’, we drew away from Grantham. I accelerated up the bank to Stoke Summit, and passed Stoke Box at eighty-five.

Once over the top I gave ‘Mallard’ her head, and she just jumped to it like a live thing. Then, hundred-and-eight, hundred-and-nine, hundred-and-ten.

‘Go on old girl’, I thought. ‘You can do better than this’, so I nursed her, and shot through Little Bytham at a-hundred-and-twenty-three.

And in the next one-and-a-quarter miles, the needle crept up further. One-hundred-and-twenty-three an hour, hundred-and-twenty-four, hundred-and-twenty-five...
And then, for a quarter of a mile, while they tell me the folks in the car held their breaths, one-hundred-and-twenty-six miles per hour.

One-hundred-and-twenty-six!? That was the fastest speed a steam locomotive had ever been driven in the world…”

An interview with driver Joseph ‘Joe’ Duddington, the railwayman who in July 1938 set the world speed record for steam traction: 126mph.

This record still stood at the time of the Barrier’s conquest of Europe, during which Duddington’s ‘lovely blue streamlined engine’, preserved as a museum-piece, was ruthlessly destroyed along with countless other national treasures.

*

MISSING PONY REPORT

Identity: Young adult Pegasus mare, answers to the name of Lumina ‘Lightning’ Dust.

Cutie-Mark: Lightning bolt and three stars

Coat and Wings: Teal

Mane and Tail: Striped in alternating bronze and gold

Eyes: Gold

Last Seen: Flying south-east from Cloudsdale yesterday, possibly vectored towards Ponyville.

Please forward all sightings to the Cloudsdale Constabulary, 113 Light Materials Street, Cloudsdale.

A Missing Pony Report circulated in Cloudsdale the day after Commander Marcus Renee’s arrival in Ponyville. Due to the confusion prevalent at this time, a similar report forwarded to the Central Constabulary in Canterlot was lost in paperwork and not discovered for several months...

*

The direct distance between Halifax and Boston is 410 miles. A train travelling between these two points via Quebec, Montreal and Millers Falls must travel a distance three times as great (1230 miles approx).

Assuming that the Barrier has just consumed Halifax, and is advancing towards Boston at a walking speed of 3.5 miles per hour, calculate:

A: How much time will elapse before it reaches Boston

B: The minimum average speed such a train must maintain to remain ahead of it at all times

C (Bonus Question): Assuming that the train is stationary for 65% of the time (for various breakdowns, delays, fuel shortages and attacks), and can maintain an average speed of 17 mph at other times, how far ahead of the barrier will it arrive in Boston?

A hand-written exercise found scribbled down in a maths textbook that eventually came into the possession of the PHL (Ponies for Human Life) not long after the initial Battle of Boston. The correct answers are as follows:

A: 117 hours and 9 minutes – or 4 days, 21 hours and 9 minutes
B: 10.67mph
C: It won’t

Author's Notes:

Well, I'm back.

Hi there all. TB3 here, former co-author of TCB: The Other Side of the Spectrum. I've been away for some time now but I'm back for the final push, and hoping you all enjoy this contribution to the impressive beast that is the Spectrum-verse.

Cheers, and enjoy the ride!

Pilgrim's Progress

“We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock...the rock was landed on us!”

Malcolm X

“Johnny and me on a strange locomotive!
There’s no-one drivin’ but we still keep feeling the need.
It takes 24 hours to make 25 miles to the borderline,
We need speed!

Five hours later out of Stonehaven Prison!
The engines thunder but there ain’t nobody onboard...
And my heart’s still beatin’ like a hundred guns,
As the train leaps off and leaves the ground...

I wear a ball and chain,
I know it has my name!
Ain’t gonna wear it no more
On this runaway train!

Over the hill far away, with the rain pourin’ down!
On the Midnight Express! On a Highway to Hell!
No one can pray for me now,
On this runaway train!”

Runaway Train, Ian Cussick

NOWHERE, NEVERWHEN

The mare drifted in a void. She might have been here mere seconds, or eons before the teardrop that set off the Big Bang. There was nothing, and she was nothing. No sight or sound, or fear or emotion. No conscious thought, just consciousness...and the faintest sense of expectancy, of a primed machine waiting for someone to open up the throttle…

But that aside, there was nothing, and she was nothing. A big, fat...nothing.

“Is she just going to float there?”

And then she heard a voice, echoing as if at a great distance. Brash and scratchy, yet definitely feminine. And strangely familiar...like the voice of a friend she had yet to meet. If she had ever had friends…

“As compared to what?” another voice responded. Thoughtful, inquisitive, yet naively confused. “Dying?”

“Not dying silly-billy!” whooped another, and this one was like a party manifest in a singular wavelength of sound. “Flying!”

“Flying?” the academic tones paused for a second, as if scratching at an invisible brow. “Had we planned on that?”

The three of them squabbled for a second, and then were broken by new arrivals, approaching with a faint clip-clop of hooves that at the same time seemed loud enough to make stars ring in their orbits.

“So is this dear the poor wretch we expect to shoulder the burden?” said a refined, yet unaloof voice, before tutting softly. The distant conversation stirred a few faint neurons in the drifter’s ephemeral mind, and she stirred a body that wasn’t there.

‘What’s this? Am I...dead?”

“No!” bounced back the voice of liquid joy. “And we do expect you to do some serious living!”

“And why is that, La?” posited a fifth speaker, the notes warm, rustic and welcoming. “Shucks - coming here was your idea after all.”

“My idea? You mean OUR idea!”

“Girls, we made it very clear that we all believe in the exercise,” the educated speaker responded, a spark of frustration fraying under the calm surface of her words.

“The flying?” responded the brash one, the one who had spoken first.

“No Loy, though I imagine that's wonderful exercise,” answered the regal voice of elegant reason.

“Then what Gen?”

“The entire transference balance experiment darling. Trading the soldier for her.”

Traded? That felt...wrong. And yet the listening witness felt eerily calm.

‘Excuse me. How much longer is this going to go on for?’

But the voices were ignoring her, seemingly going into a conclave. Her self-awareness growing like a stubborn flame against the dark, the disembodied mind turned herself to listen.

“Remember guys”, the brainy one said. “One goes into an experiment knowing one could fail.”

“But one does not undertake an experiment presuming one HAS failed, Magic darling”, the regal one said, before her entire attitude shifted into mourning. “...even if we have already failed, our poor girls.”

“Can we get back to the flying?”

Flying. Yeah, that would do. As more and more portions of the mare’s mind flared and blazed with activity, the idea of flight seemed as natural to her as breathing. That was what she had been doing before this after all...flying, flying faster than she ever had before!

“I suggest she does some flying ASAP, or she’s going to pancake into the Atlantic.”

Atlantic? What’s… where’s… that? the mare wondered.

“Oh my”, said a sixth, final voice, yet one the mare felt had been there all the time. This one was gentle and soft as a caressing wing, and conjured up scents of flowers and… and animal dung? “I’d mean she’ll surely appreciate it if we can assist her.”

“Sure Ky...” agreed the countrified voice, before her tone turned stubborn. “But Em girl, perhaps we should have asked this mare before nappin’ her.”

“Hrm yes, Honesty. I imagine she had a greater interest in staying put than the Commander did.”

“I suppose she did...” acquiesced ‘Smartie Pants’. “But there was no point in asking if she’d like to help.”

“Well why the heck not!?”

“Because Loy, she doesn't know us.”

“She doesn't know of Harmony!? Oh dear, should we tell her?”

“No, Ky. She doesn’t know, and for good reason.”

“Ah...I see what you mean.”

The mare felt vaguely insulted, and yet at the same time ashamed. It was as if this place had stripped away every little lie she had ever crafted around herself, and now the unseen voices were holding up a mirror revealing what was left...something small, nasty and mean.

Then her ears perked...wait, she had ears! And she could feel, yes...definitely feel two wings spread proudly at her side. And there was a faint wind in her face, and far off, the sound of waves breaking on a shore.

“Yippee! Earth get ready, Lightning Dust is about to arrive!”

Earth? Lightning Dust? Was that her? She was...yes, she was Lightning Dust, the Best Flier in Equestria, and no-one else could even compare!

After that brief rush of ego and endorphins, she disdainfully turned her ear back towards her kidnappers. How dare they make her feel so small and insignificant, how dare...

...they weren’t even paying attention to her. ‘Listen to me dammit!’

“Em, sweetie. Shall we tell her when our counterparts and their girls will be arriving?”

“Would that change anything Gen?”

“Well darn! It might give her some comfort sugarcube!”

“Yes Honesty, at least that's something the two of us can agree on.”

“Hey! Is somepony...somebody meeting her here?”

“I'd certainly hope so. It does seem like a dreadful place to be stranded.”

“Ah, well, maybe we can leave something inside...”

“Inside where?”

“Inside...her.”

“Oh, I love this part! If she be worthy, let this mare possess the Power of Harmony!”

“Laughter,” the other five sighed in unison. “You are so random...”

Then there was a flash of light, and a rising warmth that suffused the mare from mane to fetlock, and then...

SBA-DOOSH!

...then Lightning Dust was roaring through a leaden sky like an arrow shot from a bow, a howling wind tearing at her wings as she ripped a full-blown storm asunder. She tried to scream, and rain drove back into her throat. Below and above she could only see dirty black and grey clouds flashing by, when she wasn’t blinded by the salty spray in her eyes. She tried to raise a hoof to wipe them clear, and tumbled wildly. Sky, storm and sanity blurred into a deadly vortex as she careened out of control.

The words ‘Death Spin!’ flashed in the young flier’s mind, and she automatically tried to twist herself out of it, body bent in a banana and one wing slightly raised in an attempt to curve into the wind. No use. She lifted both wings, felt them strain against velocity and wind speed, felt her tendons burn. Still she plummeted towards a quick splash and a deadly dash.

‘Gotta aerobrake! But at this speed...what if this rips my wings off!’ she realised, before a louder part of her mind screamed. ‘Better living as a ground pounder than dying a pegasi! Right?’

‘Right?!’

She tensed herself and flared her wings as wide as they could spread, their sudden resistance hitting her like a lash across her back and a hoof in her stomach. Loadbearing muscles and bones screamed in tune with her voice...

...but she was not dead, and the brake had allowed her to pull herself out of the swirling dive. Now she was in a glide, still getting knocked around by wild gusts, but in control.

‘Now, work the problem…’ she told herself, remembering Flight School. She was in stable flight, but hurting bad.

‘Test flight surfaces’. She cautiously attempted to bank her wings, and nearly stalled as fresh lines of pain dug like gouging claws either side of her spine.

‘Great, I’m down to steering with my hooves...can’t flap either.’

Okay, so she was gliding only, wings held rigid and only capable of keeping her up so long as she had momentum. Which meant she had to get down...and soon.

‘My headspeed is...what?’ she thought, and carefully listed to the air blasting past her slicked-back ears...yeah, about 250mph. Altitude...a thousand feet, thereabouts. And descending...slowly but surely.

‘Okay, so I’m dropping about forty feet a minute in this glide...but with this tailwind I’m not loosing speed. So I’ve got twenty, twenty-five minutes and ninety to a hundred miles to find a landing spot. Okay, easy...

...if I only knew where I was!’

She tried to keep calm and get her bearings. Pegasus senses were adapted to picking out fine details while flying or traveling at high speed…

...which would have been helpful if there were any fine details she could have used, thanks to this driving storm (seriously, what weather team was so deranged as to summon up this monster?) Weather had not been her forte at flight school, but even she knew that storms like this were once-in-a-century events. And not only was she being buffeted from side to side, but she was also suffering from a weird feeling of absence, a sense that she was lost in the worst way possible. Not quite fear, as that was the kind of emotion she associated with being a daredevil pony and soon-to-be Wonderbolt; fear was something to overcome and destroy..

No, this was the pain of slowly eroding confidence. Slow, rather slight, but noticeable. And when she lost that core of herself, well she’d not be Lightning Dust any more, just a useless frightened filly.

Where in Equestria am I?! she raged mentally, her anger at the idiot weather team mounting, and she assured herself she was going to beat the daylights out of whoever thought this was a good idea.

Focus, Lightning, she told herself. There has to be something!

She leaned ever so slightly into a side-slip, pitching downwards and sacrificing altitude in an attempt to descend below the fringes of the cloud ceiling. Jarring and bumping through the turbulence, she finally came into clear air and was able to catch her bearings; now she was travelling over a grey, heaving sea, flying parallel to an unfamiliar coastline that was about five miles off...

...and below her, there were ships...dozens, if not hundreds of them, a linear fleet of all sizes, travelling beam-to-beam and nose-to-tail, all headed in what her internal compass told her was south-south-west, directly opposite to her own travel.

Her eyes narrowed as she looked closer...some of these ships were colossal, and looked nothing like the sailing vessels and state-of-the-art paddle-steamers she often saw along Equestria’s coasts and waterways. Many of them didn’t even have smokestacks, and the majority were sleek, clad in metal, and forging into the waves with unbelievable speed and power...

...and yet strangely, she got the feeling that something else here was terribly wrong. The convoy had a look about it she could only describe as desperation, all manner of craft lashed together in an obvious attempt to keep moving, as if they were charging headlong into danger...or running away from it. And their decks were packed with… something. She couldn’t tell what they were, but they weren’t ponies. It was hard to make out anything else, given the thick coats and life preservers they all seemed to wear, but she could see small farms of livestock on some of the ships, and a shanty town of lashed-together wooden shacks on the largest vessel of all, one that she swore seemed to have a runaway for an upper deck.

‘Where on Equus am I? The Griffin Lands? And what’s with those ships?! Who made them?!’

Wary, she used her rear hooves to gently steer herself away towards the coast, tacking slowly sideways and trying to spot a cove or harbour in which she could ditch herself safely on water...she wasn’t risking a hard landing, not at this speed, especially after her last aerobrake nearly crippled her.

Fifteen minutes later, she was beginning to feel nervous. Soon after breaking course from the strange fleet she’d passed over what looked to be a fishing town on a hilly peninsula, but wasn’t ready to try diving from her current altitude and coming in even hotter in an attempt to land there. Hugging the coastline took her high over marshes and woodlands, and she had spotted several more promising landing-sites.

But what else she saw frightened her even more. Towns and roadways as alien to her as Cloudsdale would be to a dirt-pony, all harsh angles and straight lines. At one point a larger city inland (a conurbation that dwarfed Canterlot in it’s sprawl) had drawn her eyes, and she spotted the blinking lights of what was definately a runway, only for a huge metal bird to launch off of it and pass in front of her in a scream of noise and acrid fumes. For a moment, she swore she saw pale, flat faces pressed against its portholes, felt herself shiver in fear, and tried to keep her nose up and press on to a safer spot.

‘Celestia...Luna. I know I’ve never spoken to you much before, but please, please, please get me out of this nightmare… I don’t know where I am!’

But her prayers had gone unanswered, and she had sunk lower and lower, dropping down from the broiling cloud-cover until she was only two hundred feet above the churning, hungry sea.

As the coastline veered away from her in a huge sweeping bay an unbelievable realisation began to dawn on her...she was going to die. Just a few miles ahead the shore curved round in an arc and blocked her path in yet another peninsula. Trees and fields filled her vision, and she was too weak and injured to try and turn back.

‘Losing altitude fast...course locked, won’t survive a dirt landing. That’s it - those fields are going to be my grave.’

She wanted to roar in rage, howl in fury at how unfair it was. Instead, she made a single choking sound, so pale and feeble as to not even be a sob. She felt cold, and horrified to realise that in this moment of finality, she had no dreams or desires or even regrets, just a pitiful hope that she’d die quickly and painlessly.

And then, as if nature itself was not willing to stop torturing her just yet, a gust of wind caught under her wings and carried her up another hundred feet, the sudden lift tearing hard at her already tender wings.

And then, tears pouring from her eyes, Lightning Dust soared over the protruding spear of land, and saw the light.

To be specific, she saw a lighthouse, rising sheer and defiant on a tiny islet in the mouth of a broad estuary, lamp blazing and flashing like a blinking eye. Churning water either side of it suggested a reef, and those hidden rocks were acting as a poor-mare’s breakwater, creating a tiny pocket of calmer water on the lee-side of the tower.

There, there was her landing site, the only option left to her.

Painfully, slowly, she struggled to configure her stiff, torn wings for landing. The waters of the estuary flashed below her, waves foaming around the rocks like saliva over teeth. The lighthouse loomed to her right as she made her final approach, an ominous grave marker if she didn’t pull this off.

‘Best Flier coming in hot, fast and broken...preparing to land,’ she thought, before tucking her legs in, extending her neck and closing her eyes.

Then, she snapped her wings shut, clenched her teeth against the pain, and transformed from a gliding body to a simple projectile with a streamlined snout. Sir Isaac Neighton’s laws of motion took over, gravity cocooned her in its hold, and she arced down into the water like a fish leaping a fall...

There was a splash, and a crash, and a terrible, infinite minute of water, waves and darkness all around. Her legs paddled furiously and she struggled for air whenever her head broke water, salt burning in her eyes and wings burning at her sides. She was mad and frenzied, a lone mare struggling off death and despair and failing...sinking, dying.

And then, ragged and screaming, she dragged herself onto a wooden jetty that extended from the side of the lighthouse. Her limbs ached as if she had just flown a marathon, and her throat, lungs and barrel seared as if she had bathed in acid.

She lay there for a long time, prostrate in the flashing glare of the lighthouse’s brilliant beacon, pinned in Celestia’s metaphoric gaze. The sense of shame and unworthiness she had felt earlier was back in full force...and she’s wasn’t sure why. She pulled herself into a miserable ball, a foolish action that screamed for a mother’s touch.

But the light felt warm on her soaking body, and finally she uncurled herself and rose to her rickety legs. Then, inch by shaking inch, her wings hanging limply at her sides, she dragged herself towards the lighthouse and trembled in fear and confusion.

There was the door, fifteen feet above her, and accessible only by a ridiculous vertical ladder.

Lightning Dust trembled for a moment, and then she screamed.

“Why! What kind of equine would build a ladder like that! Not even a mud pony could climb something that sheer!”

She stamped her hoof down on the jetty, feeling her joints jounce and grind, but needing the pain, craving it. Anything to keep the fire of righteous indignation burning.

“Why!” she howled again, and again, impotent screams hurled against the expressionless stone monolith, and against the injustice of everything. “All I wanted to do was fly over Ponyville, pull a Sonic Rainboom, and prove I’m better than the small-town hick who dumb-lucked into it as a filly! What did I do to deserve this!”

She pounded her hoof again.

“Why! Why-why-WHY!”

Then there was a snap, and the board collapsed beneath her final stamp, causing her hoof to drop through and painfully knocking her onto the jetty, her sobbing tears falling through the slatted gaps to the waves rolling below.

“It isn’t fair! It isn’t fair!”

Her flank tingled. Lightning glanced back towards it, and then felt her expression fall slack as she saw past her plot and out into the harbour...

A single, growling swell of water was rising just inshore of the reef, a surging wave pushing impossibly against the current, and churning straight in her direction.

Horrified, she couldn’t move, or even scream, as the wave swallowed the jetty, caught her, lifted her up, and hurled her into the air before exploding into a mountain of spray that shimmered brilliantly in the light of the lamp...

...for a single wondrous moment, she flew in a sky made of rainbows...

...and then momentum threw her straight at the door, straight through it, and straight into the foot of a spiral staircase, shaking and quivering and bleeding from fresh wounds. Splintered hunks of wood fell around her, their falls echoing dully in the enclosed space. The last broken plank plunked to the floor, and for a moment there was silence.

Then Lightning Dust threw back her head and screamed. Screamed with pain, screamed with fear and rage, and screamed with the sheer euphoric joy of still being alive. The shriek rose and resonated up the shaft of the building, until even the glass panes of the lamp-housing quivered in harmony with her tortured voice.

And so too did a plaque mounted beneath the beacon; dirty and dusty, but still readable, and humming softly in tune with the cries of a feckless, careless mare lost and far from home.

SHEARWATER AIRBASE, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

“Evacuee group one-eight-zero for Paris, Texas,” a tannoy announced into the cold night air, the words tinny and faint against the sound of several thousand frightened, milling voices. “Please proceed ASAP to the Volèe Airlines 747 now standing on ramp 46.”

Cabin Service Manager Ishmael Crane had the worst name in the world (thank you classics-obsessed parents), the worst complexion in the world (thank you a childhood diet of Big Turk candy bars and Big Mac burgers), and right now, in his opinion, the worst job in the world: telling desperate evacuees why they could not board the plane he was guarding.

Thank you, Your Royal Fucking Highness Celestia.

“Please!” he insisted, his breath steaming as he nervously gripped his granddad’s old hunting rifle, trying to remember to keep it held barrel-down. Most of the guns around had been grabbed up by the HLF, the PHL, or civilians desperate to survive, and it was all he had. So he kept the thing. “This flight is reserved for cultural salvage; it’s a cargo plane!”

He desperately tried to inject some humour. “Besides, the food onboard is even worse than the usual airline fare.”

The gun felt heavy in his hands, especially in the gaze of the small crowd that had gravitated towards him on the spotlit taxi-ramp, offshoots of countless people being marched, filed and directed out of the city ahead of the barrier. Even the jets gathered around, their engines idling, felt like judgemental giants looming large in the dark.

Behind him, other baggage-handlers were loading vases, paintings, carvings and furniture, trying their best to ignore the pitiful tableau in which he had been cast. Far above, even the moon hid her face behind the clouds, just as unable to look.

It was sleeting softly, a filmy shower of liquid ice settling out of the night sky and freezing over immediately into a slippery film on the zero-degree surface of the jetway.

“Why!” demanded one woman, her clothes torn and cradling a crying baby in her arms. “Why won’t you let us escape!”

“There’s enough flights for everyone!” Ishmael lied, nodding towards one of the dwindling number of passenger airliners, just as the tannoy buzzed again from a pole-mount.

“Passenger group eight-one-five for Sydney, Australia via LAX, please proceed to the Oceanic 777 on ramp 23…”

Words weren’t enough, not for a weeping child and a half-starved mother; both cold to the bone and looking on the verge of death. Ishmael remembered pictures of African children with that hollowed-out look, pictures that just a few years ago had been easily ignored with a few dollars donation towards some ‘worthy cause’; he’d never expected to see the third world come all the way to North America. The shame that accompanied those thoughts was heart-breaking.

So too was the plight of the desperate huddle he was trying to keep back from an old FedEx MD-11 that was being loaded with artworks and treasures from across the city.

“Please!” the woman begged. “The Barrier arrives the day after tomorrow!”

More people, desperate and harrowed, took up the chorus of pleas.

“We’ll die if we don’t get out!”

“Make room for us!”

“Windsor Flight 114 to Washington Dulles cleared for takeoff – be advised of 30 knot cross-winds and ice on the runway.”

“Let us on the plane you fucking dipshit!”

“Crew call for Viktor Navorski, Chuck Noland, Carl Hanratty and Captain Richard Phillips – please report immediately to FedEx Flight 88.”

“See!” Ishmael insisted, drawing attention. “That call was for this plane – it’s scheduled to go in less than thirty minutes. Please clear back so we can finish loading.”

“Load us! Take us now!”

“I can’t,” he pleaded in return, the gun in his hands coming up. “Please understand, you need to await calls to your own flights!”

Another lie. Halifax’s population had been reduced to almost nothing in the weeks preceding the barrier; these people were the last, the dregs that had been overlooked or refused to leave, now all of them clambering for a way from the area. But even then there was too many to get out entirely, even with every available plane pressed into service both here at Shearwater and up at Stanfield International. Ishmael doubted he even had a ticket to ride, though if push came to shove he’d try and outrun the damn barrier...these poor wretches would have to do the same.

Then one man strode forward and tried to wrench the gun out of his hands. Ishmael stepped back, whipped the barrel up and fired over the man’s head...or tried to, anyway. He got the safety off, but then the bullet jammed in the dirty barrel and the gun jerked back into his face, the butt smashing into his chest like a hammer-blow.

The crack of the misfire shattered the crowd instantly, just as quickly as it shattered Ishmael’s composure. Winded, he flopped back on his ass, back propped up by the van of irreplaceable treasures being hastily loaded onto the FedEx flight. His would-be-attacker, the man who had possibly come within seconds of death took two horrified steps back, gasped a few times, and then spat before turning and running after his family.

“Fucking bastard!”

Ishamel stayed down, too shocked to even wince as chips of asphalt pressed themselves gently into a fresh cut on the palm of his hand.

“Animal handlers to South Pacific Air Flight 121 immediately; dangerous wildlife loose onboard.”

He snorted a laugh; even the animals were trying to abandon ship. Behold the end of the human race, going down like the Titanic and fighting for a seat in a lifeboat.

And then, he heard the rapping trot of approaching hooves. Unable to rise his head he lolled sideways and found himself looking into a pair of large hazel eyes that had clearly seen far too much grief in a short amount of time...they were like polished stones set in the face of the pony to which they belonged, as hard, cold and bright as the twin combat shotguns mounted on her battle-harness. The letters PHL were stamped on her flak-vest...Ponies for Human Life.

“Ishmael Crane?” the earth pony mare said evenly, her gaze unflinching. He nodded in silent response, and she used her teeth to pull a photograph from her saddle-bag.

“This bitch flew into Halifax a week ago,” she said bluntly, having dropped it into his hand. “I’ve been told you talked to her.”

Ishmael slowly looked down at the photo – it was a cheap black-and-white instant Polaroid, but he didn’t need colour to recognise the subject – monochrome was a good match for her natural colouration, and her personality.

“The Pie girl?” he said at last, nodding his head. “Yeah, she spoke to me.”

The mare took a step forward and rested a forehoof on his cut hand, drawing a wince.

“Where is she!” she breathed softly, and dangerously.

“Shit!” he swore, feeling the pain for the first time. “Get your foot...whatever...off me!”

She pressed down and in; yanking a scream from him as she all but rammed her snout into his face and his hand into the ground.

“Where is Maud Pie!” she repeated, a shrill neigh edging her voice and her eyes blazing – up close he saw they were not just hazel, but instead seemed to have bright, bluebottle marbling around the edge of the irises.

“Inland!” he shrieked. “She jumped a train that was heading north, up towards Bathurst!”

“Why!”

“I don’t know! She was gabbling on about rocks, and leylines, and something about PMS deposits, or EMS, I don’t know - she said it was official PHL business! Now please get off my hand!”

She stepped back and recovered her photo, making a harsh whinnying sound. Then she directed her attention back at him, and the old hunting rifle that had jammed. She rested her hoof on the barrel, and with one push, bent it at ninety degrees.

“I saw what you tried to do...” she hissed venomously. “People are more important than any of this junk, you fucking traitor!”

The sight of Granddad Roland’s old Nitro Express reshaped into expressionist art angered Ishmael more than her insult crushed his ego, and he lashed back verbally.

“Rich words coming from somepony who defected to our side!”

She snarled, and this time her stomp smashed the gun’s butt into splinters. “I am NOT a damn geldo! Never was!”

Ishmael blinked, and looked askance at her. “Four legs, oversized eyes, mane, tail and a PHL uniform – the only thing you’re missing is one of those damn butt-tattoos. What are you, some newfoal that came out of the oven half-baked? That would be a first.”

The mare growled again, but when she spoke, her words were soft as poison dripped in the ear. “We met once before, when I was a kid – on a Trans American Air flight out of Boston. I remember that fucking dumb name of yours, and you’ll remember my Dad; he was your Union Rep, and he’d be very disappointed seeing you waving a gun at people you should be helping escape from the cud-munchers!”

The moment hung, and then Ishmael started. “Verity? Mike Carter’s little girl Verity!? But your whole family were with the Human Liberation Front! What the fuck happened to you!”

But the mare...Verity, didn’t answer. Instead she turned with a final hateful snort and stomped away into the dark.

For his part, Ishmael did not follow, or do much beyond breathe and stare into the dark after her. He only moved when he heard voices and sirens raise into screams, and small glass phials began to rain from the sky...

As he ran, he briefly trod on a stained-glass window that had been dropped by one of the fleeing baggage-handlers. The artwork had been salvaged from the airbase’s Faith Center, a tribute to nine crewmen killed in a fire aboard the HMCS Kootenay in 1969.

‘To be worthy of those who served before us,’ it read.

*

ONE MILE AWAY

“Potion Attack!” announced the trainmaster at Howard Avenue, hearing the alarms sounding up the hill at the airbase. He spun on his heel and ran across the tiny yard at the end of a shoreside spur-line. “Get ready to move, tout suite!”

His charge was eight short sidings that used to be used for transferring containers between road and rail. Now they held ramshackle consists of freight cars and passenger carriages that had been tied onto whatever motive-power was available. Dispatch papers in hand he ran down the yard, throwing switches and slamming his hand on the side of locomotives as people - soldiers, railroaders, bystanders and chancers all milled around him, desperately climbing on board the trains.

“We’re rolling now! Starting from track one and working through to eight! Run the trains as close together as you safely dare - make sure you’ve got lights and bells configured for street running, and set tail lights on the last vehicle of each train! The emergency radios, signal flares and track torpedoes are all in the maintenance shack, make sure every crew has a set!”

Someone grabbed him by the arm and he lurched to a halt. Glancing down he scowled.

“Not now Miss Jones!”

“You promised me an engine Monsieur Labiche/!” the young woman insisted, expression matching his own in grim determination. Her accent was British, and a grease top cap sat on her mousey brown hair. Despite her small frame, her grip was surprisingly steely.

That did not stop him from dragging her along behind him as he began handing out dispatch orders to conductors and engineers.

“One engine Paul, that’s all I need!” she persisted, jamming her foot against a rail and causing them both to stumble.

“There are NO SPARE ENGINES Tess!” he roared, not caring for her tone. “Can’t you hear the music! Pegasii are bombing the airbase, which means everything has gone to hell! Everything that can turn a wheel, goes now! I’ve not got time for your pet project!”

He pointed to a crew hanging onto the steps of their engine. “Frank! Will! Lash your loco up with Al Turner’s and drag the Grand Continental carriages out of track three. Press up to Moncton and then turn off down the coast line towards Maine. Pick up passengers wherever you can and get them into the US!”

“What about the military fuel tankers on Track 7?”

“Jean-Eric’s rostered on that consist with two AC4400 units. He’ll follow you straight on down to Boston.”

“Cancel that Paul!” came another call, from a heavyset man in fatigues, breathing roughly as he ran towards him. “We’ve got a special cargo stuck up the line in Truro; can you obtain us an engine to shift it ASAP?”

“Oui Colonel Hex, we can break Jean-Eric’s pair up, that leaves...”

“...a spare engine for me!” insisted Tess. “I’ve got a cargo that needs to be moved too!”

“No!” Labiche snapped. “That engine’s staying here on the fuel train, and you’re getting out of my hair! You can ride shotgun with Jean-Eric up to Truro – he’ll need a conductor. From Truro you’re on your own!”

“I don’t work for you Paul!” she shouted back.

His answer was cut off by a sudden scream of turbojet engines being pushed to the limits, and the three of them covered their ears as a 747 howled overhead, hard over and struggling to bank away inland.

“Merde!” Paul swore. “Is that the Volèe flight!? What are they doing!”

“Trying to escape!” Hex shouted, pointing at several tiny bodies that was harassing the jet, pegasai in blue uniforms swarming around the engines and ailerons. One attacker stood out, a lightning contrail blazing arrogantly behind her as she led the assault.

“Flying fuck, it’s Lightning Dust!”

Paul and Tess stared in mute horror as Hex grabbed a radio and began screaming for any pegasi support the PHL could sent their way.

“Duststorm is in play! I confirm, the First Lieutenant of the Wonderbolts is in play, and she’s going after an evacuee flight. All combat units respond now and defend that plane!”

But it was too late. Before he had even finished speaking, flames erupted from all four of the airliner’s engines and it began to fall, plunging towards the harbour.

“Pull up…” Paul pleaded under his breath. “Pull up...please…”

There was no hope. Seconds after the plane disappeared from their view there was a distant, flat boom as gallon upon gallon of aviation fuel burned off in a single pyrrhic explosion. Paul averted his gaze, and found his eyes alighting on Tess, who was gazing towards the crash-site with almost inhuman calm. How could she be so unaffected?

She met his eyes and guessed his thoughts.

“They’re dead Paul,” she said, rolling a crick out of one shoulder as she did. “No sense in crying over something that can’t be changed.”

“Do you ever cry Tess?” he muttered back. Having only known the girl for a few days, he found it unnerving how she only ever seemed to show emotion for the things that interested her. Everything else, from crashed planes to the plight of thousands, had as much luck of drawing a response out of her as Canute had in turning the tide: nil.

“Report.” Hex numbly spoke into his radio. “Control, please report status of the Air Volèe 747.”

[i[“She’s down Colonel,” came the muted answer. “Crashed into the suspension span of the Angus Macdonald bridge. From the way she went in, it looks like some of the Wonderbolts were physically steering her into the bridge.”

“Shit...that only leaves the Murry Mackey bridge connecting both sides of the city. If they take that out…” Hex spoke aloud, echoing internal fears. “Control, vector all fliers we have onto the remaining bridge. I’ll be there ASAP with ground support. It’s our primary line of retreat south when the barrier arrives, we cannot let it fall now!”

“Roger Colonel - what about Search and Rescue for possible survivors from the downed Volèe Heavy?”

Hex shook his head and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to block out the growing scent of flash-burned flesh and fuel. “Is there any point in even looking?”

The radio was silent for several seconds, before hissing out a soft acknowledgment. “Roger that Colonel.”

The transmission cut off with a apathetic ‘click’ and Hex glared in disgust towards the distant fire.

“We’re into the endgame now,” he said, a fatalistic note dancing around his words. “It’s going to start falling apart quickly.”

Paul nodded grimly, and then directed his attention back to his unwanted hang-on.

“Tess, I need everyone who’s got any train-handling experience to help me get as much done as possible in the shortest time...you’re from a railroading family and I trust you to know the meaning of duty - we keep the trains moving, no matter what. If you need to go to Dalhousie, then you’ll have to hitchhike your way on from Truro.”

He straightened the cap on her head and then pointed across the yard. “You’re on unit 9782. The engineer is Jean-Eric Voight. I’ll send you out first and the rest will follow on.”

He scribbled out a dispatch order, marking the waybill with the locomotive’s number and the prefix ‘CPX’ - Canadian Pacific Railway, Extra-Priority Working.

“The two of you are now responsible for train CPX-9782; light-power from here to Truro, and from there it’ll be under military control and you’ll be free to do your own thing. Show this waybill to any dispatcher from here to the border and they’ll try their best to fit the train into the schedules. Make sure you hand it over to whoevers takes responsibility for the train off you in Truro”

Tess took the slip from his hand, mouth momentarily opening to argue. Then she frowned moodily and ran off, a backpack hanging from her shoulders.

“Resourceful girl, or pain in the ass?” Colonel Hex asked.

“Both,” Paul answered. “She’s been round these yards for a week, trying to beg, borrow or steal an engine to shift some worthless consist out of the port at Dalhousie...”

He shook his head and glanced at Hex.

“Paperwork counts for little now I guess, but on whose orders am I releasing an engine into military service?”

Hicks answered immediately. “Commander Marcus Renee’s – he’s assembling everything we can put together in Boston – he says we’re going to draw the line there, whatever that means.”

Paul stared up at the moon for a second, feeling the rain settle on his face.

“At the rate it’s going, the barrier will reach Boston in seven days...and us in two. Ah well, c’est-la-vie.”

He turned to face the trains under his command and cupped his hands.

“That’s it, madams et monsieurs! Roll the trains!”

The iron horses replied with a chorus of air-horns, roaring their defiance into the unfriendly sky.

TWO DAYS UNTIL THE FALL OF HALIFAX: ONE WEEK UNTIL THE FIRST BATTLE OF BOSTON

*

“A week...how the HAY did we drop her a week into the past?”

“I...I don’t know . I mean, she was attempting a sonic rainboom, and there’s the mass effect differential, but I thought I’d accounted for all factors...”

“You did Em...hic...you did...sniff.”

“La...why are you sobbing?”

“I knew girls...I knew.”

“Laughter, what did you do!?”

“Pinkie’s Sense told me this had already happened, so I made it happen...poor Dust...sniff. Poor, poor Lightning Dust...”

CHAPTER ONE END

Author's Notes:

Chapter One down, who knows how many to go.

Feedback and opinions are always welcome, so feel free to take this apart to your hearts content - that's the only way I'm going to get better.

As an aside, every location described in the text is a real place. You can track Dust's flight from Boston all the way to Portland Harbour on Google Earth, and the events in Halifax as well.

A Tale of Three Cities

PART ONE: GRAVE NEW WORLD

“Under conditions of peace, the war-like attack themselves.”
‘Transformers: The Death of Optimus Prime’

“The shadow of the dome of pleasure,
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”
‘Kubla Khan’, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

BALTIMARE, EQUESTRIA

Baltimare had an air of carnival to it tonight: the entire city was decked with bunting and dressed up to honor the launch. The pegasi had even cooked up a nice, balmy anticyclone to put some real verve in the evening air, perhaps their own way of celebrating the end of the Crystal Empire War two months ago and putting an underscore on the peace celebrations.

It seemed that you could not go a block without encountering some parade, marching band, street party or spontaneous demonstration by ponies voicing gratitude and joy to Celestia’s Unconquered Sun.

You also could not go a block without encountering the newly-installed ‘security apparatus’, tall crystalline pillars planted on each street corner, their surfaces intricately engraved with arcane glyphs that glowed softly, projecting a luminescent field around the device. The pillars relayed news and weather information, monitored for criminal activity, and at night provided a soothing rainbow light to light up the streets; they even played music.

Ponies had protested at first, but the devices did make the city so much more photogenic, and proved extremely useful as the war in the Crystal Empire had pushed on into victory. And now it seemed they were here to stay.

‘Totem-proles’, ponies had begun calling them.

Sweetie Belle took it all in as she hung over the gunwale of a private sky-yacht, enjoying a freshly baked bun and the circus that the city below had become.

“Careful there, darling,” cautioned a mare’s voice, and Sweetie found herself carefully levitated away from the drop. Her hooves trod the air in futility as her captor came into view.

“Aww c’mon Fleur,” she squeaked. “I was being totes careful!”

“Then I believe you can be, uh, how do you young ones say, ‘totes’ safe at the same time,” announced the yacht’s approaching captain and owner, pausing to polish his monocle and glancing towards his wife. “See love, stuffy old Fancy Pants can ‘totes’ get down with the lingo of today!”

Fleur and Sweetie shared a brief moment of eye contact and exchanged several high-school musicals worth of embarrassment in a single glance, before sniggering together. They were both arrayed in flowing dresses, and as Fleur carefully lowered the filly onto the deck they each took a moment to primp their manes and hemlines. Fancy himself had been keeping track, and suspected that at this rate they’d wear out the fabric from sheer hoof-contact long before landing.

“You’re already with the times, Fancy. Don’t push yourself out of them. What do you think?” Fleur said, turning around once more so that he could see the full splendor of her attire; styled from pearlescent material with a few carefully selected accents in pink and lavender which, together with a tastefully reserved selection of gold jewellery, brought out and enhanced her natural grace and charm.

“Every inch the rival of a princess or queen, my love…” he said with total honesty. “I have noticed that the art of Rarity’s dresses is not so much their inherent beauty, but how they accentuate and reveal the beauty that was already there.”

“Oh! Oh! What about me Mr Pants!?” Sweetie chirped, and she attempted to adopt one of Fleur’s stock poses. “Will I be the Sweetie Belle of the ball?”

They had to admit, Rarity had gone all out in making her little sister look and feel as much a royal as any Canterlot debutante; the dress had been fashioned from silver and blue and was complemented by a jewel-studded headband that held her mane up in a simple but highly effective manner. Anyone could see that when Sweetie Belle grew up she would be a mare of singular beauty, but today she was downright adorable.

“If by ‘Sweetie Belle of da Ball’ you meanz the centre of attention then noe Sweets, that’s going to me,” a second filly interrupted in a rough Manehattanite drawl. “I look like a complete schmuck trussed up in this!”

Babs Seed was, for all intents and purposes, wearing a filly-fitted tuxedo. She had refused to wear “any frou-frou junk” and so Rarity, with exacting taste, had tailored her up something completely different. The fit and material was exquisite, and accompanied by a brocaded waistcoat in green and the cutest little pink bowtie (“I hope Octavia forgives me for borrowing her look”, Sweetie had heard Rarity muttering under her breath as she had measured, cut and sewn). Altogether, Babs looked exactly what she was; a no-holds barred tomcolt ready to take on the world with all four hooves, but as Rarity had said, “looking fabulous while doing so”.

“You look every inch a proper young mare unafraid of who she is, Barbara,” Fancy Pants said firmly, a perfectly-worded comment which seemed to gave Babs back a touch of her usual pizazz, and straightening up she proudly flicked a gold ring-piercing in the crest of one ear.

“Atta girl,” Fancy Pants smiled, before his attention flicked across to their starboard quarter. “Ah I believe we’re being called in to land.”

Sure enough, a pegasus sky-marshal was signalling them with a pair of flags. His own regular tuxedo exchanged for the cap, blazer and turtleneck expected of a valiant master navigator, Fancy Pants crossed to the yacht’s helm and spun the wheel, taking them out of a holding pattern and down the prescribed approach-corridor, which was marked out with colour-coded tufts of cloud; ever the gentlecolt he tipped the mare a courteous salute as they passed her by.

They descended steadily, moving out away from the city centre and towards the docks and jetties of the harbour, which backed onto a great bay that caught the evening light like a huge, placid mirror. Sweetie Belle herself had borrowed an old tripod camera from Featherweight before leaving Ponyville, and was snapping shots of everything she could. There was no consideration for colour, composition or presentation, but as with everything she did, the heart was there in spades.

Babs, for her part watched on, a little sadly. Scootaloo, Applebloom and Rarity were meant to be here with them as Fancy Pants’ invited guest and ‘plusses’, but for various reasons, had been unable to attend. Rarity had been called to Canterlot on royal business just before takeoff from Ponyville, Applebloom refused to leave the farm with her big sister still out peacekeeping in the Crystal Empire, and Scootaloo, well…

...poor, brave, lovely Scoots was held up in Ponyville General Hospital with a fever. For her part Babs hoped it was just the feather flu, but it felt like a lie...despite the name, no flu ever caused pegasi to actually moult their feathers. Both herself and Sweetie, Crusaders to the core, had wanted to stay, but Scootaloo herself had insisted they go to Baltimare.

“And be sure to bring me back plenty of happy memories…” she had said, face pale and struggling to not cough. “And any decent food you find - the stuff here tastes like it’s contracted out to Flim and Flam!”

She’d looked so small and frail in that huge hospital bed...with no-one but a kind pegasus nurse named Wildfire for company. Where was Rainbow Dash when her number-one fan was sick in hospital!? Off peacekeeping with Applejack, or running errands for Her Royal Flankness, like Rarity?

Babs resisted the urge to stomp a hoof. Instead she thought of what Fancy Pants had said and drew herself up, head high and developing young muscles coiled under her tuxedo. A young mare at one with herself, self-assured and certain.

Something was rotten in the State of Equestria, she was certain of that as well. It was great to see the war with the Crystal Empire ended, but still...something had changed, she was sure of it. It wasn’t anything big. It was just a sense of something shifting, ever so slightly. Her hosts seemed just as concerned, and hearing Fancy Pants muttering under his breath about “worrying paradigm shifts” was enough to put the fear in her.

“Oh my GOSH!” Sweetie suddenly outburst, her voice doing that cute squeaky thing it did whenever she got excited. “There it is!”

Her dark train of thought redirected into sunnier spurs, Babs turned to see where Sweetie was pointing, and let out an impressed whistle.

“Is that what your friend built Mr Fancy?”

“Indeed Barbara,” Fancy Pants said proudly. “That down there is Kreme-Brulee’s ‘Great Babe’.”

“I thought it was called the Great Equestrian?” Babs responded, and Fancy and Fleur chuckled together.

“It is m’dear, it is. More so... It is like a child to him. He has poured his heart and soul into it... And by Celestia, it shows!"

Babe or Equestrian, the craft moored up below at the Geordie Lamp Shipyards’ fitting-out dock certainly was Great. Babs was used to seeing skyliners flying over Manehatten, or even mooring with the tower atop the Equestria State Building, but this, this was what she suspected was called ‘a kwan-tom leap’.

“Quantum Babs, ‘quantum’,” Sweetie said smugly, and Babs, scowling, realised she had been thinking aloud.

“Thanks a-lot, dictionary mare...that sure is a mighty impressed chunk a’ steel thoughz.”

It was; at nearly seven hundred feet in length and eighty feet across the beams, and painted in a rich plum purple all over, the Great Equestrian was truly the largest moving object ever forged by hoof, horn or feather, and that was just the basic floating hull dimensions. Because thirty feet above the deck proper was the immense, rigid floatation bag that would allow the colossal skyliner to soar effortlessly between sea and sky, anchored to the hull by six immense girder-masts that also functioned as funnel uptakes to carry off exhaust from the engines.

And from figurehead to transom the entire craft had been elaborately sculpted and embellished, wood, gold, glass and brass cunningly fashioned into whorls and stars and curves. Altogether, the effect was a bold declaration that this impossible beast was a creature of the air.

Babs decided there and then that someday she’d build something like this; and sealed it with a promise to herself, though out of respect to her hosts she refrained from spit-shaking her own forehooves.

“Ah-ha!” Fleur said. “Fancy, I can see Kreme. He’s waving for us to set down at the small dock abaft of the ship. Turn to heading three-three-one and maintain angle of descent.”

“Ah-aye Chief Mate De Lis!” Fancy Pants acknowledged, and carefully swung the prow accordingly. Fleur herself, not a single hair out of place, levitated a mooring rope above her head and, with a skill that would get applause from Applejack, neatly lassooed a bollard just as the yacht’s keel kissed the surface of the water.

“Kreme old boy!” Fancy called out, his cap raised in greeting as he and Fleur ably set about making the boat secure. “Girls, this is my friend the Master Engineer and Architect, ‘Iron’ Kreme Bulee.”

The two fillies turned towards the rail expectantly, wondering what kind of pony could have single-hoofedly envisioned the Great Equestrian. A titan surely, one whose mind and limbs bestrode the world.

What they saw was a robust unicorn stallion who was clearly not as young as he had once been. His hide was gunmetal and his severely-cut jacket and vest was a dusty black. Indeed, he’d look like any other pony except for the brilliant light of intelligence in his gleaming eyes…

Well...that and the peppermint stick he was jauntily chewing on…

And the frankly oversized top-hat firmly planted atop his head.

“A pleasure, young ladies,” he said briskly, raising the Hat of Destiny briefly to reveal he was bald on top, but that he still possessed a thick set of cobalt-blue mutton-chop whiskers. Almost immediately his attention flashed over to the adult ponies.

“Fancy! Fleur! So good that both of you could be here...come right this way, I simply have to give you both a tour before all these tedious formalities kick off!”

Babs stared agape as he trotted past them with not a single backwards glance. “What in the hay did we do to dezerve that Sweetz...Sweetz?”

Where Babs had responded with vitriol, Sweetie Belle was regarding the elder stallion with what was definately sympathy...or even pity.

“Did you see how tired he looked…” she said quietly. “I’ve seen Rarity like that when her work overwhelms her, but I’ve never seen her look so…”

“So what?”

“So sad…” Sweetie Belle finished. “So very sad, and lonely.”

Babs blinked, and then looked back at the old buck with fresh eyes.

And she saw...as Kreme Brulee escorted the four of them around his immense creation, she saw that Sweetie Belle was right. Even as they marvelled at huge engines and mighty boilers (pre-charged with steam from shoreside plant, their furnaces not yet lit), she could see that the engineer’s constant little smile was frayed at the edge, a self-denying mask that hid a deep inner pain.

And yet, his pride was very real, and wholly justifiable. Everything about the Great Equestrian spoke of effort, artistic talent, and mechanical ingenuity poured into years of design and craft, expressed not just in huge girders and hull-plates that could have served as shields for giants, but tiny, thoughtful details, like the provision of hot water washbasins for every one of the crew cabins, and a separate laundry catering solely for cloud-based bedsheets and duvets any pegasi might have brought on board. This wasn't merely a factory-built passenger transport, it was a work of art, a labor of love.

But it was only when they reached the passenger decks did the full scope come into focus. Here were lounges, libraries, vast restaurants and broad, sunlit promenades outfitted in every decorative style to suit the tastes of the passengers. And beneath was the machinery of the ship, the vast interlocking organs that harnessed steam, water, gas and electricity as useful force, a secret industrial city working in unison to carry eighteen hundred fare-paying travellers in opulent comfort and perfect safety across the face of Equus. From the boilers to the captain's quarters, to the helm, to the prow, it was nothing short of a work of art.

“Mr Kreme,” a tiny voice suddenly piped up. “Why?”

It was Sweetie Belle, her interjection cutting off the maestro in the middle of an explanation to one of Fleur’s question. He looked down in surprise, face working in discomfort at the filly’s sudden demand.

“Why what, young mare?” he said at last, grudgingly extending a hoof in acknowledgement.

“Well, why all this?” Sweetie insisted, swinging a hoof around to take in the full scope of the ship’s Main Atrium, a vast vertical shaft cutting through several decks and connecting them with a vast, curving staircase. Every surface was carved, polished and painted to perfection, lending everything a sense of grace and dignity.

But what Sweetie Belle was specifically drawing attention to were the statues. They flanked the staircase at each landing, depicting ponies in various poses. Scholars holding aloft phials and laurel leaves (larus nobilis faust), workers rearing up wielding tools like titans, doctors and nurses tending to the sick and ailing. Teachers and sailors and weather-makers.

“But nowhere a soldier…” Sweetie said pointedly. “No weapons or armour. And in the middle of it is this…”

‘This’ was a colossal crystal statue at the centre of the atrium, positioned where everyone boarding the ship could not miss it. It depicted five ponies caught in the moment of a high-hoof bump; a pegasus, a stallion, a unicorn, a crystal pony, and a thestral.

And rearing beside them, joining in, were other creatures. Griffins, zebras, reindeer, buffalo and many more, all pressing a limb together in solidarity. Stepping back it even became apparent that the wide plinth on which they were standing was carved in the shape of a huge, coiled dragon, the wurm itself adding a single claw into the meeting of hooves, talons and paws, out of which arose a crystalline tree that ascended up and out through the rest of the atrium’s cavity, its boughs hung with light fixtures.

“That…” Kreme answered, his tone guarded. “Is ‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’. It sits in the very center of the ship, and cost us thirty thousand and twelve bits to commission. The artists in the Crystal Empire gouged us too at that...and I still don’t know what the tree represents - that part just grew by itself and we ran with it...”

“So what does the rest of it mean then?” Sweetie pressed, green eyes narrowing and tiny voice fluting as she enunciated the larger words. “Because, and please do correct me if I’m wrong, it seems apparent to oneself, that this entire ship is some grandiose demonstration of discontent against current international affairs.”

She smiled brightly and clopped her hooves together daintily. “Bravo, sir!”

Kreme-Brulee stared, and then began to laugh.

“An intelligent child, a remarkable child!”

He suddenly spun around, his coat-tails swishing behind him as he raised one hoof, as if desiring to join in with the statue.

“We’re coming out of a terrible war young mare, you know that much I’m sure.”

“Yessir!”

“It is my hope that it shall be the last we shall see for many lifetimes. But it is also my belief that there should not have been a war at all. King Sombra was but a monster, and monsters are but bogey-mares, phantoms that evaporate in the light. Did we really need to send armies and squadrons against his poor, enslaved, disturbed and starving chattel from over a millennium ago, as opposed to offering them shelter in an unfamiliar world? Was there not some better solution, some grand gesture of love and goodwill that would have burned away hate and shadow, allowing the Crystal Ponies to stand tall and proud without months of bloodshed? Yes, surely there was!”

He was getting worked up now, and almost bouncing with animated energy. Fancy Pants observed this with a look of understanding, while Fleur had to raise a hoof to hide her giggles. Babs herself was scowling, one perfectly-manicured hoof scratching at the tilework.

“And let us go back further. The Changeling Invasion of Canterlot was a terrible deed, but what example does it set to ponies for our Royal Guards to hunt down and butcher every hive they could… no, that's not what it means to be of Equestria! It's about extending an open hoof and giving before receiving; forgiving and befriending!”

He stuttered for a second and glanced at the statue. “I wanted a changeling to be among the Kith and Kin...but the board of directors thought it would be...’unpalatable’ to the passengers. But in everything else, this ship is my vision of Equestria’s truest self; a realm where peoples of all races might find work, peace, respect, and friendship, and family...”

On the last word he fell suddenly silent, and slowly his hoof drifted back down to the floor. The weight of years showed suddenly in his eyes as he nervously pulled a fresh peppermint stick from a leather pocket-case and popped it in his mouth.

“...that’s what it means to be a Great Equestrian,” he finished lamely. “Not a pony, a zebra, or what have you. A citizen of this great land of ours, committed to it’s ideals.”

He levitated out a silver fob-watch and consulted it. Babs briefly saw a photograph affixed inside the lid, but couldn’t make out the details.

“Well, there’s only an hour left until the launch,” Kreme sighed at last. “We’d best begin to move up on deck.”

As the small group began to trot back up the stairs, Babs paused and looked around one final time, her keen eyes scanning quickly over the ornamentation.

“Sweetz was right. No soldiers or fighters…” she said to herself.

And then, in her mind, she quietly added an addendum, one which shook her more than anything about the ship's decor.

“And not a single alicorn neither...”

*

Dusk was heeling into night, the sun reduced to a thin scarlet weal on the far horizon. A thin crescent moon coyly peeked from between clouds. The stars waited in hushed silence.

The Great Ship’s deck was cast in an almost total darkness, many hundreds of gathered nobles breathing in soft expectation. But on either side the shipyard was thronged with thousands of ponies bearing candles. Inland rose the dark shadowed skyline of the city, an onset of light fog dimming its radiance.

Babs and Sweetie Belle were seated in the front row of the dignitaries, flanked by Fancy Pants and Fleur...the latter and Sweetie holding hooves excitedly. Kreme-Brulee was sitting beside Fancy, and Babs could see a look of glowering distaste anchored into the cast of his eyes and the set of his jaw.

As for why he seemed so put out on this night of triumph...well, after the tirade in the Atrium she suspected it reflected his feelings towards the guest of honor who would tonight name the ship, and become its patron.

The guest who should be arriving any, moment, now...

Everypony waited, the hush ebbing and flowing like the soft wash of the incoming tide.

Then, a soft, warm and yet darkly solemn voice began to speak.

“To all of us, comes a gift. A spark, so fragile and precious. A finite moment, with its beginning and end ascertained, yet filled with infinite chance…”

A soft flurry of sparks at the ships’ prow coalesced into a dark figure, her wings and horn touched by moonlight, and stars flowing in her mane.

“From deep and sacred night was the first dawn born. From the shadow is the candle’s glow made illumine. Through the storm cloud breaks eternal hope. From darkness, comes life.”

Princess Luna, her teal eyes glistening with warmth, stepped up to the mainmast and regarded her gathered subjects. A slight smile played on her lips, and her voice was alive and bright, a song of distant stars and suns humming within it. Mysterious, joyous, potent.

“To all of us has come this gift, and tonight it comes again! Behold, the Starstrider, the Vassal of Joy! The Bringer of Gifts comes, bearing Life!”

She raised her hoof euphorically towards the darkened sky, and the trills in her voice burst into the jingle of a thousand sleigh-bells. Sweetie Belle and Babs bounced forward on their cushions, smiles threatening to split their faces.

“It’s him! It’s Sint Erklass!” Sweetie whispered, hooves clasped in joy. Bab’s leaned over and drew a hoof back to give her a quick jab in the shoulder. Silly Filly…

“Holey smokes!” she then gasped as a shadow ran across the face of the moon, drawing behind it a single vehicle. More and more voices raised in awe as it swooped towards the shipyards, coils of fog trailing in its wake. Camera flashes popped in the crowd as it landed, a wooden sleigh bearing a solemn zebra stallion enrobed in silk, and a pale reindeer doe draped in a silver-blue shawl. This was the Zebrican ambassador to the Court of the Adlaborn, and the Snow Maiden, high shaman of the Arctic Herds.

But all eyes were on the majestic reindeer buck in the traces, his mane and coat a blaze of russet and silver, his antlers proud and whorled, strung with bells and shimmering with all the colours of the aurora.

“Father of Hearthswarming, noble guests” Luna greeted them, bowing low in acknowledgement of one of the few beings known to dwarf even her own lifespan. “You honour Equestria with your presence.”

“Rise, dearest child of the Moon!” the champion of the north roared in laughter. “And to all children of Equestria, a very merry greeting to you this summers night. We come with a joyous gift!”

“Indeed,” smiled the Maiden. “A gift of life to a noble cause, bequeathed to us by allies dear.”

Luna rose and raised her wings, flowing through the scripted exchange without pause.

“Speak you true? Then please, do show all here, this gift you bear.”

The zebra trotted forward and held aloft a sealed pouch.

“Oft have I flown with the Reindeer King,
And to distant lands his gifts help bring.
O’er talus, jungle and desert blight
A thousand leagues in swiftest flight!
With the blessings of the dragon lord
A treasure from his mighty horde!”

He reared back and held his cargo aloft.

“This gift. my friends, we now proclaim.
Behold! A draught of living flame!”

Luna, Sint and the Maiden’s eyes all flashed in sync, each of them pouring forth a tiny bolt of magic. With a flash the bag disintegrated, leaving only its precious cargo cradled safely in the ambassador’s hooves.

It was a sealed reliquary wrought from silver and glass. And inside, wrapped around a scarlet fire-ruby, was an undulating coil of liquid gold.

“Wyrmfire!” Luna announced to the crowd. “Yes, my little ponies, tonight we shall launch and bless this worthy ship, in the presence of royal friends from distant lands, with no less than a gift of flame from the First-Born daughter of Spykoran, the Dragon Lord himself!”

The crowd roared, a crescendo so loud that Luna had to deploy the Royal Canterlot Voice to complete the ceremony.

“To each of us a gift of life, to each of us a light to guide us through sacred night…” she intoned cavernously, levitating the reliquary and stepping to the foot of the mainmast. “And so tonight we light the lamp of this vessel, and bestow upon it our blessing and grace.”

She carefully rose to her rear hooves and cradled the reliquary in her forelegs. There was a trill of magic, and the brilliant flicker of flame jumped out of the container to flit and dance playfully abound the tip of her horn.

“We stand here tonight on this magnificent ship, a true example of the greatness to which we aspire. And so, it is only meet and right that we bestow upon her a suitable name. It gives me the highest honour to proclaim the ship the Great Equestrian!”

She jabbed a hoof into the sky, and the flame on her horn leapt up in a vivid jet that seared the eyes, shooting up like a firework until it struck an empty lamp on the underside of the ship’s floatation bag. It swallowed the bolt of light, and then magnified it back into a golden radiance that shone down like a tiny sun on the crowds assembled on-deck and shoreside. And as it did, veins of light began to spread across the surface of the floatation bag, magical spells of levitation woven like filigree into the very fabric.

The ship swayed, lifting subtly out of the dock. The mooring ropes hummed softly as she tugged against them, eager to fly.

“May the sun and moon and heaven above bless her, and all who sail upon her…” Luna finished softly, suddenly whispering in the reverent hush that had fallen at the moment of ignition. The golden light was reflected in her eyes like the fire of distant stars.

The flicker of flame in the lamp pulsed, and then expanded massively, surging down conduits in the masts and below decks. Beneath their feet there was a powerful ‘whump’ as the boiler furnaces came alight.

“Cast off all lines!” ordered the ship’s captain, a elder buck with a flowing white mane and beard. “Let’s stretch her wings!”

And thirty thousand ponies exploded into cheers.

*

Of course, it would take hours to raise enough steam pressure for the ship to move under her own power, even with the boilers pre-warmed, but that only gave more time for everyone onboard to celebrate as the Great Equestrian ascended slowly, cautiously climbing above the skyline of Baltimare, seabirds and clouds playing around her in sportive joy.

Babs, bow-tie askew and collar loosened, wended her exhausted way below decks, a happy smile on her face and her stomach full of apple fritters. Above her head was the drum of countless hooves dancing on the promenade to the music of the superstar musician Billygoat Bridle, backed by a sixty-piece electric orchestra and a unicorn mix-mistress with a messy electric-blue mane. Even Princess Luna was on the dancefloor, enthusiastically (if somewhat disjointedly) throwing herself into the fray beside her subjects. No-one was safe.

Chuckling at that (and blushing from when the giddy princess had given “the latest of the most bold Crusaders!” a quick peck on the cheek), Babs finally came to the lip of the Atrium, and gazed down the stairs towards ‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’. The fire that permeated the ship’s enchanted subsystems was even causing the wondrous statue to light up, golden light shimmering from a million-and-one crystal facets. She could see the Captain posing proudly beside it for photographers, a scale model of the ship held in his hooves.

She sighed in quiet wonder.

And then her eyes narrowed. Below she could see someone else regarding the statue, a pony stallion clad in a dusty fedora and poncho, a single speck almost lost in the milling crowds . He was trotting round ‘Kith and Kin’ in a circle, examining each frozen figure with a scathing expression.

Babs shifted, suddenly feeling very uneasy, a single breath escaping her lips…

...and despite the murmur and hubbub of the thronging ponies, he heard her. There was no mistaking that twitch of the hat that indicated a perking of the ears, and then, slowly, as if expecting trouble, he had turned and looked straight at Babs, one pair of vivid green eyes staring into her own.

And then he smiled grimly, and mouthed four small words.

‘ITS ALL A LIE.’

Babs stepped back, and straight into a pair of legs. She gave a very filly-like shriek and spun round.

“Be careful young colt,” Kreme Brulee said, not unkindly, but absently. He was scanning around them, head rotating from side-to-side as if he was at a tennis match.

“Mr Kreme,” Babs said, suddenly non-plussed. “It’s me, Babs Seed, and I ain’t no colt.”

Kreme looked back in her direction and blinked several times as if trying to pull her into focus.

“Oh...yes...the other filly.”

Babs felt a scowl settle over her face and a growl rise in her gorge…

“Well done Kreme!” a pegasus stallion interrupted, one who Babs had been very briefly (and disinterestedly) introduced to: Mr Isneigh, the chairpony of Equestrian Air Navigation. “A Night to Remember!”

“Oh, thank you Spruce…” the engineer muttered, trying to brush the other stallion off, and not succeeding. “It was nothing.”

“Nothing!? Far from it old sport!” Isneigh enthused, his wings and mustache rising together. Babs, her anger stalled and plunging to the deck, had no option but to stay put and silent. “Securing Luna’s patronage for this project was a stroke of genius. It doesn’t matter now if Trans-Equus-Lines get that unwieldy monster of theirs off the drawing-boards; the only way they’ll do better than this is if they slap Celestia’s name on the damn thing!”

Kremes’ eye twitched, and suddenly his attention was back on Isneigh in full force.

“Spruce, I don’t give a single buck about the darn alicorns!” he seethed, and it looked to Babs as if he was getting several long months of repressed rage off of his chest. “If I knew then what I know now, I would never have let even Moonbutt sully my ship with her touch, let alone her thrice-damned warmonger sister!”

Babs expected Isneigh to respond with anger. When he instead scanned around in sudden fear and pulled Kreme into a silencing hug, she felt a frisson of terror run down her spine.

“Kreme, careful what you say…” she heard him plead. “Walls have ears!”

“You see!” Kreme responded, his words vicious but guarded in volume. “You know what’s going on, even if our pretty little moon-princess hasn’t cottoned on yet! They wanted to install those damn totem-proles on my ship Spruce, on my Great Babe, the only child I have left! Does this seem like Equestria, where we have to be so afraid? Watch our flanks in the presence of those abominable things?! Since the wedding, maybe even before then, our land, or something in Celestia, has shifted!"

'So I'm not the only one who’z noticed?' Babs thought to herself, curious about what he was going to say.

"We're turning into something else, something that isn't Equestria, and my Great Babe doesn't belong to whatever that is! It belongs to Equestria, or whatever of our Equestria is left after Celestia -"

Babs would never hear what he was about to say, for he was interrupted by a sharp bang…

...because at that moment, two decks down, ‘Kith and Kin Crowning Harmony’ had exploded.

The whole ship lurched to one side, throwing everyone to the deck. Lighting failed all through the Atrium, bulbs shattering and flickering. Smoke began to rise from several growing fires, and steam hissed from smashed conduits.

Frightened and trembling, her eyes stinging from the gathering fumes, Babs dragged herself to the broken rail. What she saw through the haze put a fear deeper than Discord or any Nightmare into her soul.

‘Kith and Kin Crowing Harmony’ had not simply shattered; it had swelled and burst into a frozen razor-edged holocaust, a crystalline death-flower eighty feet across. It filled the whole width of the Atrium’s lower deck, penetrating floors, ceilings and bulkheads...and…

...and…

...and ponies. Babs felt faint as she saw red splatters all across the deck, heard the dying wails of ponies impaled on crystal spikes and skewers. The crystal facets, that seconds ago had glowed in warm shades of orange, yellow, red, pink and purple, the colours of a sunset,, mirroring the atmosphere of the celebration above, were now.... Babs didn't know how to describe it, but something looked wrong. They flashed in colors that left her stomach churning like a storm at sea, sickly yellow and bruise-purple, lime-green and blood-red, and the shadows they cast seemed to...to deepen, somehow.

Though it was difficult to tell how many had changed to blood-red or how much of that colour was fresh, dripping down and splattering the walls, often from clumps of viscera and fur from poor unfortunate ponies, dyed so red by the blood that it was impossible to tell what color they had originally been.

...she saw the captain, lying on his side in a spreading pool. His model of the Great Equestrian lay beside him in the sanguine puddle, and so was the top half of his head.

It was still blinking.

She heard a scream, a rusty shriek that was terrifying and inequine, not simply a pony-cry but some evolutionary throwback, a racial memory from eons past when her mindless ancestors had chewed the grasslands like animals.

It was the scream of a dying horse.

And she was the one making it.

The roof tore apart, powerful magic ripping the steel like paper. Luna, a cobalt angel of mercy, flew in on shafts of moonlight, her wings pushing huge down blasts of air that crushed the fledgling fires in an instant. One eddy of wind caught Babs, and she staggered, lost her footing, and plunged over the edge.

Babs saw her death, saw herself tumbling into that maw of crystal teeth.

And then somepony caught her, and she found herself being carried in two strong hooves, their owner’s wings beating on either side.

“Don’t look Babs…” Luna said, cradling her like a foal and levitating other injured ponies out of danger. “Don’t look.”

Babs shook for a second, and then began to howl, tears and cries tearing their way out of her soul as Luna flew up and out of the pit of Tartarus that seconds ago had been the Atrium.

*

“How...how did it happen?!" Fancy Pants was demanding as he held Babs and Sweetie in his forehooves. Fleur was a few feet away, using her magical dexterity to bandage other ponies with swathes of fabric torn from her dress.

“I...I don’t want to even contemplate it!” Kreme Brulee shuddered, doing his best to tie a tourniquet around a bloody stump that had previously been one of Spruce Isneigh’s wings. “Ponyplots, I need some elastic to tie this off!”

Fancy was holding the fillies so that they faced out over the city, away from the carnage, but Babs, her hooves shaking, undid her bowtie and held it up into Fancy’s eyeline so that he could see its’ elasticated strap.

“Give...give it…” she said shakily, and felt him stroke her mane comfortingly.

“Wonderful little filly, well done,” he said, and levitated it away. “Here Kreme, use this.”

There was a few seconds of quiet work, and then they heard the engineer cough.

“There. He’s still unconscious but he’ll not bleed out now.”

He came and stood beside them, trying to keep the red stains on his shirt out of their sight. Then, giving up, he tore off the offending article entirely and tossed it overboard.

Babs watched it flutter down towards the city like a flag of distress. She could still see ponies partying in the streets, unaware of the terror unfolding above them.

“You sir, j’accuse, I declare this your sin!” a distinctive voice cut through. “Some flaw of design brings this mess we are in!”

They all turned to see the zebra ambassador to the reindeer advancing along the deck towards them, his finery torn and his eyes blazing. Again he raised a hoof, pointing it at Kreme Brulee.

“For crimes against my nation, you have no blame,
But before pony-kind you must grovel in shame!
Your ‘Great Babe’ is lethal, a flying charnel!
For this grave disaster, you shall burn in-”

“How dare you!” someone squeaked, and Babs saw Sweetie Belle pull free of Fancy’s grasp and strut right up to the surprised dignitary. “How dare you! What do you know about anything?”

Babs looked away, and saw Kreme-Brulee had sat himself down beside her, his head hanging low. Trying her best to choke off further sobs, she reached out her tiny hoof and placed it in his own.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“Can you even put two and two together, let alone two hull plates...” Sweetie was railing, some mad edge of terror undercutting her words. “It wasn’t a boiler or engine that blew up, it was a statue, a crystal statue!”

She shivered and herself began to sob. “How can something so beautiful just...just hurt so many ponies?”

Then she began to weep, and fell against the ambassador, who uncertaintly began to try and comfort her.

“Yes indeed…” Fancy murmured, and then slowly looked at his old friend. “Kreme, who did you commission ‘Kith and Kin’ from?”

“It...it was done in the Crystal Empire…” the old unicorn whispered. “By their master artisans. The very power of the Crystal Heart was used as a focus to shape it…”

He gave a shuddering sob. “I thought it would help promote their artisans, help their economy until a suitable heir could be found to take on the crystal throne and stabilise their government...but for this to happen…”

He looked towards the prow of the ship, where Luna and the reindeer delegation were finalising triage on the worst injuries, vast energies swirling around horn, antler and cloak.

In between them and this part of the ship was the gaping hole the lunar diarch had ripped into the atrium, right under the ship’s main lamp. The light it cast flickered, as if the ship itself was struggling to stay airborne.

“...something has gone terribly wrong,” he finished, and the tears came in great unstable gouts.

“MY LITTLE PONIES,” a thundering voice resonated out of the sky, irreverently shattering the sense of numb horror. “PLEASE ATTEND CLOSELY!”

Babs looked, and felt her eyes widen. Down in the city below, a steady glow was rising, as every totem-prole began to shine with an iridescent light, projecting rainbow beams up into the sky…

...and throwing a colossal image of Princess Celestia, three thousand feet high, onto a cloud-bank, gazing across the city with a soft, kindly smile. In the distance, identical projections could be seen rising ascendant over Canterlot and Manehattan.

For a moment nothing moved except for the soft motion of the titan’s ethereal mane. Then it drew a breath and opened a colossal maw, huge enough to swallow the stricken Great Equestrian like a hay-dog.

“MY LITTLE PONIES, I BRING WONDERFUL NEWS!” it proclaimed. “THIS MORNING, IN THE HIGH-ENERGY-MAGIC-BUILDING AT MY SCHOOL FOR GIFTED UNICORNS, A PORTAL WAS OPENED TO ANOTHER WORLD!”

It paused to allow that to sink it. Babs suddenly felt very afraid, and drew closer to Fancy Pants. She didn’t like how the smile failed to reach her Monarch’s eyes. That feeling of something off intensified, though she couldn't quite grasp how or why. And Celestia's eyes seemed... Wrong, somehow. They didn't look happy, taking on an almost bruise-like color. This should have been great news, but at this moment in time, something was didn’t feel right, and a cold creeping fear spread across Babs’ spine. She wasn’t entirely sure it was because of the explosion, but somehow, she was not reassured.

“MYSELF AND OUR FINEST SCHOLARS HAVE SCRYED INTO THIS REALM. IT IS NAMED ‘EARTH’, AND IS INHABITED BY LIVING, SENTIENT CREATURES. THEY THINK AND FEEL AS WE DO, BUT UNFORTUNATELY THEY DO NOT KNOW HARMONY AS WE PONIES ALONE DO.”

Fancy must have felt something was amiss too, as he tightened his hug around Babs. She glanced towards Sweetie, and saw both she and the Zebra ambassador were staring up with slack jaws. But only one of them looked insulted.

“WE NOW KNOW THAT OUR OLD WORLD IS NOT A LONE BASTION, A STRANDED ISLAND IN THE SEA OF STARS, BUT PART OF A GREATER WHOLE. AND AS WE HAVE HERE AT HOME, IT IS SURELY EQUESTRIA’S DESTINY TO GO FORTH INTO THIS NEW WORLD, AND SHARE THE BLESSINGS OF MAGIC THAT WE EMBODY.

WE HAVE FACED MUCH STRIFE AS A NATION. THE TREACHERY OF THE CHANGELINGS, AND OUR RIGHTEOUS MARCH AGAINST KING SOMBRA HAVE STRUCK AT THE HEART OF OUR HARMONY. BUT NOW, WE FACE A NEW AGE, A TURNING POINT FOR EQUESTRIA AND EQUUS AS A WHOLE. AS SUCH, WE MUST BE RESOLUTE AND UNITED IN PURPOSE AND DRIVE, AND NOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE DIVIDED BY PETTY STRIFE AND DISCORD…”

“Oh no…” Fancy whispered. “No no no...my Princess, no!”

“AS SUCH, AS OF TODAY, BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST AND BIRTH, I HAVE EXERCISED MY CLAIM UPON THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE. I SPEAK TO YOU NOW FROM THEIR CAPITAL, WHERE MINUTES AGO I TOOK MY RIGHTFUL PLACE UPON THE CRYSTAL THRONE.”

Babs caught a horrified breath, and looked towards the smoking crater of the Atrium. No...no...it couldn’t be. She knew what Fancy Pants had to be thinking, and he had to be wrong.

“Sister, no!” She heard Luna cry, and saw the dusky alicorn leap off of the ship and hover in front of the illusive vision of Celestia, as if the one-way transmission could hear her. “This is not right! You know not what you do!”

“REJOICE, MY LITTLE PONIES! WE ARE NOW ONE, AND SHALL REMAIN ONE AS WE GO FORTH, AND MANIFEST OUR DESTINY ACROSS EQUUS AND EARTH ALIKE!”

The apparition smiled beatifically, every inch the wise, kind ruler who had forever guided Equestria, and forever would. But Babs knew better now.

‘It’s all a lie…’

“IN HARMONY’S NAME, I SWEAR IT.”

The image flickered, and then dissipated in a flurry of scintillating shards of light. They shimmered down like rainbow snow, falling across the city, and the drifting ship. The hovering Luna took off like a shot bolt, pushing hard in the direction of Canterlot.

“Celestia...you idiot mare!” she heard the Zebra ambassador roar, shaking a hoof at the sky with neither rhyme no reason, ancient tradition and custom forgotten in the heat of the moment. “The protocol for this is clear! Contact with other worlds requires a Conclave Concordia Maxima, a gathering of representatives from across Equus! What you’re committing is a declaration of imperialistic war!”

Other ponies across the ship were muttering amongst themselves, those who could put two-and-two together and connect the explosion with Celestia’s claim upon the Crystal Throne. She saw two mares, one of the musicians and the unicorn DJ, holding each other close and tight. They looked scared, and angry.

“This...this can’t happen!” Fancy Pants was repeating to himself, the former Prime Minister desperately clinging to some inner hope. “The ponies of Equestria won’t let this happen...we just need to sit down with the princess and have a talk...half an hour talking, that’s all it will take.”

But from the city below, Babs could hear other sounds rising in argument to his words. Shouts, cheers, whoops of joy...and the happy noises terrified her more than the transmission’s words had.

‘By Celestia’ - no, that was the wrong alicorn to swear by. ‘By Luna’, she thought, becoming one of the first ponies to swear by the newly returned princess, they're... Happy. They’re happy about having declared war again! Do they even know what's happened?!

The magical shards were still fluttering down from the sky, and she caught one in her hoof - the residual magic had coalesced into a tiny matrix, a solitary snowflake of atrophied energy.

She clutched it to her chest and hunched over, crying. She wanted this to not be true, she wanted to undo what she had seen, she wanted to bring those dead ponies back to life, and run straight to Scootaloo, hug her close and pour out all the feelings she felt for her…

...but most of all, she wanted Princess Celestia dead.

The Great Equestrian, her decks lined with the injured, and her bowels full of the dead, continued to drift aimlessly, all pressure vented and her boilers cold. It would be morning before pegasi squadrons arrived to tow her back to the docks, and a new sun would have risen over a changed Equestria.

A war dawn.

Babs missed all of that, passing out from emotional exhaustion seconds after catching the tumbling flake of magic.

The last she remembered was the sight of Luna accelerating away towards Canterlot, and the burst of moon and starlight released in the night princesses’ wake as she broke the sound barrier...

*

PART TWO: BATTLEFIELD DEARTH

“Victory! Over this land we will fight for our liberty!
Armed with the greatest of men and machinery!
This is the fight for our truth and our destiny!”
‘The Anthem’, Shiro Sagisu

“...the pure ‘accident’ - the accident caused by fate alone - is rare on the railway. Almost invariably human fallibility is responsible...It is in this contrast between trivial error and terrible consequence that the drama of the railway accident lies. Is it not the essential stuff of all great tragedy?”
‘Red For Danger’, LTC Rolt

HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA

Halifax was in flames as the trains fled, iron serpents writhing their way of of a burning nest.

“There! Pull up there!” Colonel Hex of the PHL/UN forces shouted, jumping to his feet inside the cab of locomotive 9782 and jabbing a finger forward, pointing past the windshield.

“You sure you want to jump off?” Jean-Eric, the elderly black engineer asked; a tone of caution in his voice. “The whole city’s lost, man. Don’t see no point staying unless you want to watch the world come undone.”

“I said I would lead the defence of the remaining bridge,” Hex, barrel-chested and muscled, if nearly two decades past his prime, said with conviction. His tac-vest practically bristled with weapons and ammunition. “And that’s what I meant. Let me just check here to see if there’s any troops left to rally.”

“Alright, if that’s what you want,” Jean shrugged, and with a quick motion of his hands idled the throttle and set the brakes. The whole cab jolted as he reined the power in, before they drew up with a shriek of metal, just before the rails ducked under the approach span of the broken Angus MacDonald bridge.

The two men leaned forward, scrying for any possible figures moving on the road-deck overhead. Behind them, Tess Jones was leaning cross-armed against the rear bulkhead, fiddling with the display of an old Ipad. Aside from the dim glow of the gauge-lights and the LCD Operation Displays, it was the only source of light in the cab. Music could dimly be heard from her earphones.

“Wait here for a moment,” Hex said at last, disappearing down the steps and out through the nose door.

“Alright, but we’ve only got minutes before the next train catches us in the ass!” Jean called after him. Tess, an old WW2 gas-mask hanging round her neck, slid into the conductor’s seat that the soldier had just vacated, her Ipad clutched close to her chest.

“You want me to run back and set detonators on the track?” she asked curtly. “Warn on-comers that we’re stopped here.”

“What’re detonators?”

The young Briton waved her hands as if groping for a synonym. “You know, warning caps – track torpedos.”

“Oh...not just yet. There’s a few minutes before anything catches up,” he hummed. “We’ve only got a few torpedos anyway and I’d rather not waste them less than five miles from where we started.”

Frowning, Tess watched from her window as the Colonel jumped down from the locomotive’s leading catwalk and sprinted off into dark smoke that was spreading in from the river. Out in the channel was the burning husk of the 747 that the Wonderbolts had brought down onto the bridge, and the fume of its grave was washing ashore in a deathly, silent wave. High above, rising clear above the blanket and the torn suspension span, was one of the bridge’s towers, navigation lights still twinkling atop their gothic throne of steel.

“Back at the yard, Paul said you and your family drove trains yourselves, over in the UK,” Jean said from his side of the cab, dark skin and grey hair painted in shadow, eyes glinting. He was a Caribbean-Canadian, and had been riding EMDs, Alcos and GE diesels before she had even been born. “Steam trains even. That true?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, barely acknowledging his attempts to open up a conversation and keeping her face pressed to the window, more interested in the view and her music. “Narrow gauge ones though, on a heritage line. Barely two feet between the rails.”

“Is that right?” he mused, keeping his own gaze directed out the back door on his side, watching out for the gleam of headlights in their rear. “Specialised stuff, or sounds like it anyway. That gig pay any good?”

To his surprise she gave a snide snort. “Not really, given I did it as an unpaid volunteer. Rest of my time I was a stewardess for Stena Line Ferries.”

Before he could pry further she straightened up. “Hex is coming back.”

The fumes blowing in from the river were thicker now, gathering over the tracks and around the engine: as Hex staggered back onboard it poured in with him.

“No one was left...” he wheezed, eyes streaming. “...any survivors from the defence garrison must have pushed on up towards the Mackay bridge. Roll em’.”

“Rollin’!” Jean acknowledged, advancing the throttle. From behind came a rising whine as forty-four-hundred horses sang at his touch, and the three of them swayed as 9782 stirred into motion, passing under the bridge and onwards.

“Keep eyes out behind for me girl’,” Jean called over. “I gotta watch the road ahead.”

“Got it.”

“And please turn that music off...hard to be alert with that stuff jammin’ your ears.”

Grunting, Tess tapped the Ipad and cut off a pulsing chain of guitar chords. Then, turning her seat to look back, she watched silently as downtown Halifax slid out of sight across the harbour. The heart of the city was a firestorm; a flaming ring of buildings clustered around the foot of Citadel Hill. Above it all arose Fort George, perched on the summit of the hill and watching on in silence, just as it had for nearly three centuries. She supposed the old structure would last out long enough to see at least one final sunrise, before the barrier arrived.

“Let me sit down...” Hex demanded gruffly, and she directed a withering gaze up at him.

“This is my seat, I’m the conductor,” she said curtly. “You’re a passenger who jumped on as we left the yard.”

“Hey!” Jean called out from his own seat. When neither of them stopped squabbling he slammed his fist on the whistle control, letting off a deafening roar from the air-horn mounted overhead, forcing their mouths shut and hands over their ears.

“Now SIMMER DOWN, the both of you!” he cussed as they turned their full attention to him. “You might be my conductor and you might be a colonel, but this is MY engine, MY home! You want me to drive you anywhere, you play by my rules.”

Hands raised in surrender, Tess moved to get up from the swivel-chair, and he jabbed a hand indicating for her to keep her ass in place.

“No-no, you stay there and be my eyes in the rear. Colonel, if you please.”

Rumbling obscenities to himself and coughing roughly, Hex relented and sat down on the floor, back against the rear wall. There had been a spare seat for a third crewman there at one point, but it had been stripped out in a salvage drive months ago.

The rest of the cab reflected that parity of maintenance: normally locomotives had their road-number painted somewhere distinct on one of the desktops or bulkheads, but this beast had so many parts cannibalised from her classmates fitted to keep her rolling that it seemed everywhere you looked there was a different set of digits marked, stamped or scrawled. About the only new addition was a gun-rack that some entrepreneur had mounted above the windscreen; it was currently being used to hold a bundled-up sleeping bag by its strap.

Thankfully, the scavengers hadn’t removed all of the creature comforts. The was a hotplate in here, and the chemical toilet in the nose compartment still worked, even if it stunk to hell. There was something even better though.

“Girl, the refrigerator mounted on the side of the conductor’s workdesk. Open it up.”

Tess obliged, revealing that the small space had been crammed full of bottled water.

“Now...” Jean continued, as if lecturing a child. “Offer one to the Colonel, if you would be so kind. Shit, a cough like that, sounds like the man’s about to etch his lungs raw.”

Muttering something obscene of her own she grabbed a bottle and tossed it at Hex, who returned her glare with compound interest.

“Colonel...” Jean chided, in the sing-song voice of a master who knew when his opponent had to fold.

“...urhg. Thank you, Miss Jones,” Hex sullenly added, before twisting off the cap and swallowing gulp after gulp of the clean, chilled liquid. Tess knew for herself how good something so simple and basic could taste in a pinch, and managed a faint smile, keeping her attention on the rear window. She’d gotten a lungful of the same stuff that had done a number on Hex.

“You’re welcome.”

Then she waved to get Jean’s attention, and briefly nodded at the fridge.

“Er...can I have some too, please?”

“Go right ahead..” he permitted, before holding up an empty plastic cup. “Pour me a shot too would you?”

“Sure...” She caught the cup as he tossed it across the cab to her, and he grinned, spreading his lips in a white-toothed grin that gleamed like a thin crescent in the gloom.

“She, isn’t it so much better when we all get along? Isn’t friendship magic?”

“Did you just quote Twiligh....” she trailed off, staring in disbelief as he smirked, before throwing the cup back with a laugh. “Well fuck you too pony-tone!”

“Oh, so she can show emotion!” he replied, deflecting the cub with an arm, his own grin spreading. “Make a note in the Captain’s log Colonel, I just got T’Pol here to smile!”

Hex shook his head and nursed his bottle, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like ‘crazy civilians’. Tess and Jean shared a look and shrugged, their smiles matching.

“Takes one to know one.”

“True that.”

“Oh great; now they’re having a bonding moment,” Hex said to the uncaring ether.

“Well you’ll be shot of us soon,” Jean observed, easing the throttle back and nodding forward. “We just passed the Tufts Cove Power Plant and are coming up on Shannon Park. The Mackay bridge is just off to the east.”

Hex climbed to his feet and leaned in between the two of them. 9782’s headlights cast a thin cone of light on the rails ahead, throwing the surrounding landscape into pitch-black contrast, but the bridge could be seen outlined in spotlights off to the left, decks aglow with retreating vehicles that led, in an unbroken chain like fairy-lights, to a flyover bridge that spanned the rails ahead.

“That’s Highway 111, the Circumferential Highway. You want me to pull up underneath it to drop you off?”

“No, no...” Hex waved a hand. “Ease through and round the curve to Windmill Road. The forces defending the bridge are using it as a muster point.”

“Alright,” Jean said, and gave the throttle a brief tap. The locomotive hummed softly, rolling easily under the highway and out the other side. Ahead, a red flare spat fire in the dark, waved by a figure in fatigues.

“There they are...guarding the switchtrack.”

The brakes hissed, spitting air, and Jean eased them to pitch-perfect stop right ontop of a point where the line divided. The main track continued to curve away to the right, crossing Windmill Road on a simple bridge and into the night. From the junction a spur line bent off in the opposite direction, vanishing among dense trees and scrub.

“This is my stop...” Hex straightened up, popping joints in his back. “Thanks for the ride, and the water.”

He paused, gave one last glance around the cab, his eyes lingering on the weaponless gun-rack. Then he pointed at Tess.

“Come with me, quickly.”

She glanced at Jean, who was staring out the back of the cab, watching the line behind.

“Go on,” he waved. “But make it quick.”

Outside the air was cold, but restless, as if a weather front was pressing down on the city ahead of the Barrier. Tess scrambled down onto the trackside, shivered, and drew her oversized coat tighter around herself. At least this breeze kept the smell of burning away. Feet crunching in the ballast, she stalked down the line to where Hex was exchanging salutes and talking intently with a lone soldier who had flagged them down with the flare. Beating herself with her own arms for warmth she stalked past them and paused on the bridge, looking down on the floodlit length of Windmill Road, alive with troops and vehicles readying to flee the city. Civillians – people like herself, she guessed – were being hustled onto yellow school busses, while others queued endlessly, waiting for a place.

She looked back at 9782, idling powerfully in the dark, number-boards and headlights lit and cab windows aglow.

‘I’ve got my ride...do they?’

“Jones!” the Colonel called out, breaking her reverie and marching over to her, his arms swinging. “I’ve been informed that you’re a resourceful pain-in-the-ass. You’re going to need those skills I reckon.”

She opened her mouth to butt back and he silenced her. “Let me speak.”

He pointed out to the north-east. “The Barrier is coming, and it is going to kill everything in its way. It doesn’t care who you are or where you came from, it is programmed to eradicate us down to atoms and seed the earth with our dust.”

“I’ve seen the Barrier with my own eyes, Hex!” she spat back, hands deep in her pockets and shoulders slouching. “I was on one of the last ships to get out when Britain collapsed.”

“Good, then you know what it can do. You lost family or friends – don’t deny it, I can see it in your eyes.”

His hand swept around in an arc to point along the line. “Up at Truro, is something that might be able to stop all that, maybe even pay them back for everyone we’ve lost. It’s you and that engineer’s job to make sure it gets to Montreal safe.”

“But we were told...” she began to protest.

“...that you only had to get the locomotive to Truro and then that was it, I know. Well that’s all changed. I’ve just gotten Intel that the town’s being assaulted by the HLF's Thénardier Guards.”

“The Human Liberation Front?” she repeated, a sinking sense of where this was going sinking into her gut.

“Yeah,” Hex spat into the ballast and shook his head in disgust. “The Thénardiers are about the closest thing the deranged, imbecilic bigots have got to a proper special-forces unit; Truro’s the hub of Nova Scotia, and they’re trying to control all road and rail traffic passing through there to the rest of Canada.The bastards probably don’t even know what’s sitting right under their noses.”

Then he looked her in the eyes.

“Now, that cargo needs to be safely claimed and hauled to Montreal for analysis. Allied troops are holding the town and keeping it secured, but they’re going to have to stay put and hold the HLF off instead of taking over responsibility for the train. So, I need a train-crew to run that shipment right through to Montreal, and it’s going to take a cunning, resourceful, pain-in-the-ass to make it happen. Thankfully, I’m told there’s one standing right in front of me.”

He held something out to her.

“But if you’re not enough of a bullshitter and gambler to do all that on your own, I reckon you’re going to need this.”

She looked down. It was a handgun, jet-black and gleaming with precision-machined potency.

“I’m asking for your help, Miss Jones…” he stressed softly. “Help us to save what’s left of everything. Before there's nothing left."

“I...I don’t...”

He stared down at her, eyes dark, and opened his mouth to sp-

SWHA-THOOM!

Flames erupted into the sky back beyond the Circumferential Highway, painting the clouds red and gold. On the street below all of the floodlights died, leaving only the glow of headlights to illuminate the desperate evacuation preparations. Hex spun and swore massively.

“Mother Pus Bucket! That was the power plant!”

A train whistle blared nearby, and Tess felt a chill that ran deeper than any coat could warm. Hex had grabbed the soldier and was screaming at him.

“Get a unit over to the plant! Find who’s in command there and support them ASAP!”

He shoved the private down towards the convoy assembling on the darknened and began to stride after him, yelling back over his shoulder. “JONES! GO, NOW!”

Tess stood frozen, staring down the line. Again a locomotive roared.

“Jones!” Hex bellowed. “Move out, now!”

A third flat drone echoed around them.

“And tell your engineer to stop sounding off like that.”

“THAT’S NOT OUR TRAIN!” she screamed, the words spinning Hex around like a top.

“Oh, fuck!”

For a fourth time came the screaming drone of a horn, blowing loud, and approaching fast from behind. This time it was a sustained scream, a warbling cry that was suddenly strangled into silence…

And in its place arose the approaching clatter of wheels over rails.

“We’ve got to go, now!” Jean bellowed from 9872, body half-out of the window. “Get on!”

Hex grabbed Tess and clumsily dragged her towards the locomotive, forcing her onto the catwalk steps. “Go, go, fucking, go! Get to Truro, get the cargo, get it to safety!”

Tess felt the wheels spin beneath her as Eric juiced the traction motors. They churned on the slick rails, not gripping. Head lolling she found herself looking back down the length of the engine, and she realised they were still parked on the switchtrack, the padlocked manual lever that controlled the junction sticking up just behind Hex.

The roar of the unseen train coming up from behind was biblical. 9782’s prime mover gunned again, and she imagined the ‘Wheel Slip’ warning lights flashing maniacally in Jean’s face. With agonising slowness the locomotive began to creep forward.

“No time!” she shouted, pointing behind Hex. “Change the points! Throw the switch!”

Hex whipped round, saw where she was pointing, and his eyes flicked to the spur that curved away into blackness. Several more buildings on the adjacent street burst into flames.

“Shit!” he swore, throwing himself forward and grabbing hold of the switch with arms that once must have had muscles like steel ropes. Once. Hex was not a young man anymore, and his arms corded with sweat as he struggled against the padlock and chain. His head flicked to one side just as the approaching train thundered out from under the highway, headlights flaring demonically on the front of its quadruple-headed locomotive lashup.

Wheels snatching at last, 9782 cleared the switch, tail-end lit up by the oncoming storm’s gaze. Teeth netted and hands white-knuckled and shaking, Hex threw all of his weight into the lever...

THWEE-BANG!

...and fell flat on his ass as the train’s four locomotives rushed past into the spur, the lead engine’s cab windows smashed and stained with purple goop. Tess Jones stood between him and the screaming machines, chest heaving and her own hands clenched around the grip of the gun he had given her.

The shattered remains of the padlock lay at her feet.

Hair whipped up by the train’s slipstream, her face a frozen mask, Hex saw the young railwaywoman turn and stare up at the juggernaut they had diverted, its wheels shrieking sparks as it ground off the main and onto the branch line. A massive string of box-cars flashed past, their weight surging sideways on the curve.

He saw her mouth form words, inaudible over the cyclonic clatter and rush. Then, with unexpected passion, she scrambled over to kneel beside him.

“Where does that line go!? Where did I send them!?”

Hex’s mind flashed with answers, none of them pleasant.

“Wright’s Cove! It’s an old gypsum loading dock – the rails end on the waterfront.”

With a final rap of wheels on joints, the last vehicle in the train scudded past them. The two of them flung themselves around, sprawling in the dust to see what it was.

It was a passenger carriage, one of three added to the end of the train to carry military personnel.

But when the army consist had actually rolled, they had been full of evacuees.

The gangway door at this end was open. A man was standing in it, clutching a child and backlit by the carriage lights. The two of them were staring down at the tracks speeding underneath at over sixty miles an hour. Unable to jump, faces anguished, they looked up and back at their unwitting killers as the runaway train rushed out of sight round the curve, racing headlong to doomsday.

As they vanished into eternity, 9782 was revealed standing safe on the main line, grinding back to a halt. Jean, leaving the controls for the first time in an hour, scrambled down off of the locomotive and joined the two of them, frozen in place at the switch.

“That spur’s only a mile long, tops...” he said quietly. Hex looked slowly up and met his eyes. Tess, chest rising and falling with tense slowness, did not move, instead staring off along the rails as if willing the train to come back and try again...

They all knew it was a futile hope.

There was no flash, no sudden explosion. Instead, from far off, they heard a dull roar and a slow, undulating cacophony of metal crunching metal, boxcars and carriages ringing like bells as they plunged off the edge of the world.

On and on the sounds of horrible death banged, thundered and pounded, until at last they faded away into a series of dying echoes.

Hex felt Tess curl up under his hands, her hands clawing into the gravel. Her shoulders twitched. Maybe she was crying…

She wasn’t.

“MOTHERFUCKERS!” the girl screamed, rearing back onto her knees and balling her fists in rage, a primal scream tearing its way out of some depth of her soul. “MOTHERFUCKING PONIES!”

Then the fight went out of her, and she slumped into a slouch, her chest heaving and her head bowed. And yet, despite all expectations, she wasn’t crying.

“Your cargo, Hex...we’ll get it out,” she said softly. “One way or another...we’ll get it out.”

‘And make those animals pay...’ Hex imagined her finishing. ‘Pay for what they’ve done, pay for what they’ve made us do.’

He moved to help her up but she waved him away, instead pulling herself to her feet by grabbing hold of Jean’s arm.

“Go,” Hex urged as they all heard a sound like rolling thunder - hundreds of hooves pounding like hail over asphalt, and coming closer.

“Well, there’s no pegasai here at least...small mercies, they’re all focused on the airfield,” he muttered, looking to the sky for an instant, before snapping his head down and shoving both man and girl towards the engine. “GO! NOW!”

Jean-Eric practically threw himself back into the cab and began working the controls, unlocking the throttle and easing it slowly forward. 9782 thundered in response, twin plumes of diesel fumes towering from the exhaust manifolds. Tess, riding for a moment on the catwalk steps, watched the dirty grey columns of waste gas leaping off her mount, and then slowly tipped her head down to where a dusty, flame-shot cloud was rising out towards Wrights Cove.

“Here...” Hex said as he drifted past her, holding something bulky up. “You might need this again.”

Tess reached out on instinct, and caught the weight of the object in one hand. Hex threw a casual salute in her direction, and then disappeared beyond the dim light thrown by the locomotive’s lights.

Slowly, she made her way back to the cab, swaying and jumping with the motion of six sets of wheels rattling over every joint. She entered behind Jean’s seat and he looked in her direction.

“Hey? You alright?”

She didn’t answer, instead slumping down into the conductors seat…her seat, and flicked on an overhead light to see what Hex had handed over to her. It was his tactical combat vest, Kevlar-lined and studded with pockets. The handgun was holstered in one, and several spare clips of ammunition were neatly stored in others. The words ‘Colonel Ambrose Hex’ were lettered over one breast, and on the other was a white-on-blue image of a lyre surrounded by a laurel wreath. PHL: Ponies for Human Life.

“Ponies...” she murmured. “More fucking ponies. Those... Those fucking geldos, they've brought nothing but misery!"

For a second she cradled the vest in her hands, and then threw it into the corner. Jean looked over, trying to see through the wall into which her features had set.

He opened his mouth to say “you didn’t kill those people”, but then a flicker of light caught his eye off to one side of the line.

“Holy shit!”

The railroad was almost out of the city limits now, threading out through industrial buildings and small business. Like Windmill Road, these had all been used to marshal supplies and people that had to be moved out of the city...but now they were a single, holocaustic battleground.

More burning structures flashed into view on Tess’s side, and backlit by the flames they both saw rushing figures fleeing in all directions.

Some ran on two legs, and others ran on four.

“It’s the Salvation Army...” Jean growled, his amicable face contorting into a grim cast. “The rats running ahead of the storm.”

Tess matched his grimace, but then felt herself bounce in her seat as he eased the throttle down, reducing the power.

“What...what are you doing, why are you slowing down?”

“Wright Avenue and Akerley Boulevard are ahead, and we cross both of them on the level.”

“So what, if there’s anything in our way just ram it – this thing weighs what, half-a-million pounds?”

“Four-hundred-and-twenty-thousand, actually.”

“It’s still the size of a building!”

“Sure she is, but that’s not the problem. Right after Akerley the line splits into parallel sidings – I don’t want to take a yard switch on the fly and rip us right off the rails.”

Tess threw her hands up, and then jumped as a set of grade crossing lights flew past, lights and bells howling on emergency power.

“That was Wright...” Jean explained calmly. “Half a mile to Akerley, and then once through the yard we’re out and clear on the main.”

She didn’t answer, and instead was peering intently through the window, face flashing red and gold in the light of the fires flying past. “How fast do you dare go?”

“Thirty, twenty tops in the yard. Why do you ask?”

She turned, looked past his head, and then pointed out both sides.

“Do you reckon that’s any faster than THEM?”

He flicked his eyes off of the line ahead and saw where she pointed. Galloping figures were paralleling the train on either side, plate-armour shimmering like liquid gold as they jumped fences and pounded down access roads and parking lots. They could have been mindless animals, horses running wild across the urban plain. But in the flashing light it was possible to see intelligence in their eyes, and living, tangible malice.

War Horses. Equestrians.

Ponies.

“Go faster Jean...” she said, pushing herself off her seat and into the centre of the cab, as far as possible from windows.

“I already said...” he began to protest, only for something to smash against the side of the cab. Smears of viscous purple liquid spread over the windows. They'd need a hazmat suit to clean it off...or failing that, a storm.

“You might be the driver, but I’m the conductor....” she insisted, grabbing hold of the roof to steady herself. “I’m the train captain! And if our choices are either burning in a wreck or falling at their hooves then I’d rather burn.”

9782 lurched over a rough, neglected track joint and Tess’s Ipad, resting on the edge of the conductor’s workstation, tipped off onto the floor, the jolt unpausing its playlist and yanking the headphone jack out of the socket.

“It’s all up to you!
No one lives forever!
Been burnt in the hell,
By all those pigs out there.
It’s always been hell,
From when I was born.”

As the rough, violent, profane rhythm pounded in tempo to the thud of the rails, she saw him turn to look at the window, saw his reflection smeared a cartoonish purple by the goop flowing over the glass, and saw his jaw clench.

“THEY MAKE ME VIOLATE THEM!
No matter who they are!”

“Alright, let’s burn!” he shouted, and threw the throttle wide. 9782 leapt forward, wheels slamming into a rising tempo, faster-faster-faster as the music rocked, and the diesel motor behind them roared like a lion eternal, spinning all of its power into the traction motors. Flame and flank and fur on either side blurred into a living watercolour painted in light as the digital speedometer rose into the high 40s.

Tess, legs swaying as she rode with the motion of the living steel, looked to either side, saw they were overhauling the stampede, felt the roar of the engine and the song driving her on, and grinned wide. It was like being in a greyhound race, but charging along on a colossal steel bunny with an iron hide and cowcatcher teeth.

“I’ve missed this so much...” he heard her whisper. “You’d love this, Dad.”

More phials of potion broke against the walls of the engine, but in a desultory manner. And even as their speed climbed over fifty-five the numbers of ponies that they were overtaking did not seem to reduce.

“I don’t think it’s just us that they’re after!” he called out. “Looks to me like we’re in the back of the pack!”

9782 screamed around a corner, canting to one side like a ship catching the wind. She jumped over another junction, and then put her head down and charged along another curve.

“Akerley Boulevard, just ahead!” Jean shouted, straining to be heard over the racing locomotive.

“Ride em’ Jean...” she said, pulling herself over to him and hanging onto the back of his chair. “Ride em cowboy!”

“We’re on first-name terms now are we, Tess?” he mused with blasé calm. “Well if we’re gonna burn, we’re going to go down spitting fire. Let’s show these geldos a real wonderbolt derby!”

“No need to think about it,
You do it or you die!
These aren’t tears,
Don’t let it trick on you!”

He shoved the throttle into notch eight, and with sparks flying from all wheels they erupted out of of the last corner and reached the grade-crossing...

...which was wide open and clear. Well, except for an entire platoon of ponies caught in the moment of crossing, having failed to stop, look and listen.

They amounted to a few quick thuds against the cowcatcher.

”I am hard as steel,
Get out of my way!
Pay back all at once
Suck away the tender part!”

Seconds later 9782 vaulted the switchtracks into the yard, sailing over them as if rolling on silk.

“We’re through, but I’ve gotta brake for the top curve into the swamps!” Jean shouted, forcing the throttle shut, past ‘idle’ and through into ‘dynamic’ braking. The lurch of counter-force threw Tess across the cab, and almost straight into her own seat. Holding onto the leather she jabbed the toe of her shoe onto the Ipad to cut short music, and then heard a scream of overtaxed electronics.

Spinning herself around she gazed back through her rear window and saw sparks flying from an immense bank of rheostats mounted high on the sides of the locomotive’s rear hood.

“You’re going to blow the dynamic grid!” she shouted. “Use the air!”

“I’m trying to not wear flats on all the wheels!” he yelled back, teeth gritted as he struggled to balance the dynamics with manual air-brakes. As the locomotive shook and screamed, threatening to tear herself apart, the speedometer dropped as fast as if it was wearing lead boots. “Right, I’ve got it, I’ve got it!”

“And something’s got us!”

“What!”

Tess did not answer, but instead pulled on her gas-mask and threw herself out the back-door. Jean spun in his seat, seeing her running down the catwalk and out of sight, one hand on the rail and the other toting the handgun Hex had burdened her with. It was a 9mm, sleek and utilitarian, he knew that much, but he’d never been one much for guns, so he wasn’t sure what model it was. Nor did he care. There were more important things to worry about...

All he knew for sure was that now his young conductor had a big gun.

Even brought down to running speed, the slipstream generated by the locomotive’s momentum was fierce. Standing on the rear of the engine Tess was also feeling the immense heat being blown out from the rheostat grid.

But her eyes were fixed solely back, watching the rails fly out from underneath...and a single pony in dull barding galloping along as fast as she could beside the line, doing her best to pace the lone engine...and outrun the entire herd of troops chasing after her.

They were blurs and streaks against the flaming industrial district, flowing like smoke along the road that paralleled the line....then they ran out of asphalt.

The mare, not slowing in the least, simply jumped the boundary fence in a single soaring leap and landed squarely on the tracks, hooves blurring in the ballast and thudding on the ties as she kept up her relentless charge.

Tess felt the weight of the handgun in her grasp, aimed it slowly at the chasing being. It was obvious that she was fleeing ahead of the Salvation Army, but that wasn’t important. The thing was a pony, and so she deserved to die.

But her finger hovered over the trigger, unable to snap shut.

A father and child, riding an express to hell...

And then the ‘beast’ looked up and was met with the sight of Tess aiming a gun in her face. And what flashed over her eyes...her freakishly human eyes, was not rage or sadness or even resignation.

It was betrayal. Naked rage at having been forsaken after having been pushed so far beyond her limits.

Tess lowered the gun in a moment of shock, and in that instant, the mare coiled herself and leapt, hurling herself up and at the catwalk.

She caught the handrail, with her teeth. Tess jumped back in shock as the mare hung there, whipping off of the back of the locomotive like a bizarre pennant.

“Thoot them thou thidiot!” she spat around the rail, before hooking her hooves onto the bar and pulling herself onto the deck, where she flopped like a fish snatched from the stream.

“Shoot them you idiot,” she repeated weakly.

Tess looked at the handgun, and then back at the pursuers. Could she? No, despite it all, she couldn’t. As she lowered the gun into a jacket pocket, the pony sagged limply onto the corrugated metal surface.

“Pathetic...”

But there was no need to shoot. The two of them slid sideways slightly as 9782 hit the top corner out of the yard, screaming her way out of the city and into open, wooded swampland. The burning ruin of Halifax began to dwindle into the distance as the powerful engine accelerated over a creek and out onto the single-track line to the north.

Leaving it all behind. The evacuees, the soldiers, the lost and the dammed. And the ponies too.

Holding onto the rail Tess glanced forward towards the cab, seeing Jean-Eric gazing back, his expression stern. Then she looked down at the mare, still lying limp on the deck, repeating six words over and over, until at last she passed out.

Dragging all eighty pounds of earth pony (plus gear) back to the cab was enough to wear down what goodwill had manifested within Tess. Finally however, she lugged the mare through the door and dropped her onto the gently rocking floor. Exhausted and beaten, Tess slumped into her chair, setting the handgun and both shotguns from the pony’s saddle down on her workstation. They had a decent armoury growing here, or so it seemed.

“Who is she?” Jean said at last. Like her, he seemed to be coming down from a severe case of emotional whiplash.

“I don’t know...” Tess sighed. “All she told me was one thing.”

“And what was that?”

“Celestia is a cock-loving whore...” she sighed, shaking her head, before kneeling down to pull up the barding and expose the pony’s blank behind. “And yet, somehow, she looks like a newfoal.”

Jean mimicked her action, rocking his attention flicking between her and the tracks ahead.

“There anything in her saddlebags with her name on?”

“Seriously? You want me to loot her possessions?” she replied with deadpan snark, before shrugging and obliging him. “Fine, might as well cap today off with petty larceny.”

One side of the saddleharness was stuffed with food, some of it canned, some of it fresh, almost all of it almost certainly looted, stolen or coerced. Everyone’s food was nowadays.

The other bag though was full of surprises. As she unfastened the catch on it stacks of printed material poured out.

“She carrying a library or something?” Jean blurted out in surprise, and it sure looked like it. There were handwritten diaries, old photo-albums, even some comic books!

Thoughtful, Jess picked out a loose wad of photos wrapped up in a scrap of paper. A smiling family, a grey mare with a purple mane staring blankly at the camera, an old city skyline.

“Wow, San Francisco…” she muttered. “Before the war, and the destruction of the bridges.”

And then, without much thought, she glanced at the scrap of paper in which the sheaf of pictures had been wrapped.

“Jean...I think we found our mare!”

It was a typewritten bulletin, a hastily-printed and distributed circular. Tess recognized it as following a pattern similar to HLF newsletters and the like - barebones, only bearing the hand-stamped HLF logo to distinguish it as anything even remotely official.

TO ALL HUMAN LIBERATION FRONT CELLS: SPECIAL ORDERS

Please be advised that VERITY CARTER (23), formerly of the Thenardier Guards, fell in combat on DECEMBER 20TH 2022, while infiltrating a PHL facility in New York.

As of February 2023, a newfoal claiming her name and identity has approached several of our leaders and heroes, seeking aid and comfort. Be advised that this creature is to be DESTROYED UPON SIGHT.

Verity Carter was a martyr for true humanity, fighting for our salvation from invaders, traitors, spies, and those horsefucking traitors of the PHL that call themselves the saviors of humanity. The animal standing in her place now is an affront to all reason and decency. If it approaches you, do not be deceived by its lies and arguments. Nothing remains of the woman that we once knew. It merely carries memories that it abuses to infiltrate and convert more and more of our people. Quite likely, it has already revealed many of our secrets to the PER and PHL, opening us up to infiltrators. In light of this threat, maintain constant vigilance and enhanced security measures.

Tess snorted at this singularly pathetic display of pretentiousness, which screamed "WE'RE RELEVANT!" to the point that it practically assaulted her eyes. So far as she was aware, the HLF did not have much in the way of secrets, unlike the PHL, who kept tight-lipped about nearly all of their activities. On top of that, the most common cause of death [besides ‘shot to death by PHL or civilians’, ‘death by bad rations’, ‘death by magic’, ‘suicide’, and ‘malnourishment’] for HLF was publicly known to be ponification, common enough that it would have been a miracle if they still had any secrets left to keep. Even a civilian like her knew that her self-proclaimed front of ‘liberators’ had reduced themselves to a group of egotistical, deluded braggarts.

Admittedly, braggarts with guns. Big guns at that, when they weren’t stolen surplus or homemade monstrosities that were as dangerous to the user as the people in front of them. Trying to stomp out the thought that the worst of these lunatics were right in her path, less than a day’s travel ahead, she read on to the end of the bulletin.

Our friend is dead. Honor her memory by killing what remains of her body before it can do lasting damage to our cause.

!!DESTROY THIS NEWFOAL UPON SIGHT!!

Crudely Xeroxed into place under the bottom line was a grayscale photo of the mare currently laying unconscious on the cab floor between them; it showed her being examined by a zebra of some description, her face contorted into a hateful grimace.

“Well, that’s a new trick…” Jean muttered after she read it aloud to him. “First time I’ve heard of a newfoal doing anything but smile, sing and shit rainbows about how wonderful Celestia is. What does that mean for us?”

Then he saw something flicker onto the windscreen, a tiny fleck that lingered for a moment before dissolving. Another sleeted into view.

Tess, oblivious, was massaging her eyes. “It means we’re out on our own, can’t go back, and know that ahead of us is a radical unit of the HLF, that somehow we’ve got to liberate an unknown cargo from. And whoop-di-doo, we’ve got some freak of a newfoal onboard that they’re gunning for.”

“There’s one more problem you forgot to list,” he added softly, before waving a hand forward, where snow was beginning to settle on the windscreen, falling flakes shining brilliant white in the headlights. And with every passing second the fall grew heavier, driving down onto them from the north-east.

“Winter’s coming.”

*

PART THREE: THE SHAPES OF WRATH

“Who knows what true loneliness is - not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”
Joseph Conrad

“Get down on your knees,
Get a good head on your shoulders!
If it’s for your guys, go to the end of the earth.

Do what you think,
Give it with dedication!
I’ll put out your misery.

You made a mess,
For Christ’s sake, this rotten world!
Shit out of luck, go with my vision.

Light up the fire,
Right on the power!
Weapon, I have it all.”
‘Red Fraction’, Black Lagoon

PORTLAND, MAINE

“Augh!” Lightning Dust screamed, waking with a burst of energy and flaring her wings on reflex.

Then the pain hit, and she screamed again. Her throat was beginning to feel like a griffon had hatched in her stomach and clawed its way up and out through her mouth.

Hacking, she reached out and grabbed a tin mug with her hooves. The water inside it was lukewarm, but drinkable, and went down with a wonderful soothing smoothness.

Then she paused, drew a blanket around herself, and called up into a huddled ball.

Stars...she had been dreaming of...a sea of stars, waving like corn in a breeze.

And then she had fallen out of that sky, and jolted awoke in shock. Finding herself still trapped here was not as much of a waking blessing as she would have liked.

The lighthouse had been abandoned years ago, or so it seemed. At some point she guessed somepony...or something had tried to make part of it into a private dwelling, and then for some reason given up. Half of the lower levels had been worked over, the stonework re-pointed and whitewashed, but further up all she had found was damp, mould and bird-droppings.

The lamp itself had been automated, running by itself on some kind of...mechanical talisman magic, or so she guessed. That had crushed any hopes of getting help from the keeper-pony, but it had given her one piece of insight.

The plaque. The writing had been a bit strange, but eventually she realised she was looking at a form of the standard alphabet, arranged to form words in plain Equestrian. Now she had a name for where she was.

Ram Island Ledge Lighthouse, in someplace named ‘Mane’ (though it had been spelt with an ‘i’, weird), wherever that was. It seemed she was slumming here under the good graces of some authority called the United States Coast Guard. Again, whoever they were.

She was grateful to them however for one other thing. Because there had been a watertight trunk in the lamp-room, labelled ‘SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT: FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY’.

Inside had been the blanket and mug, signal flares, and bottle after sealed bottle of clean water. She had some trouble working out how to crack open the translucent, squishy bottles, but finally she had drunk her fill.

Most of which she then threw up from the sheer shock of it hitting her empty stomach. Ah well, you win some, you lose some, she grudgingly admitted, feeling a little less certain than usual.

There had also been some kind of device, made of a hard, chitinous material and inset with buttons and dials. The word ‘Motorola’ was stamped on it, but that had been of no help in discerning its function.

And there was food. Several packets of hard tack biscuits and something labelled ‘jerky’. It had been hardy, leathery and salty, but it had filled her up and helped the water stay down.

And so she had eaten, drank and slept her fill, before turning to her final prize: a first-aid kit. That red cross may have lacked the usual four little pink hearts in the finials, but had been recognisable enough. It had yielded up bandages, antiseptic and some self-adhesive plasters, all of which she had used to patch herself up. Then, for the pain, there were some wonderful patches labelled ‘Fentanyl: High Concentration Painkiller. WARNING: 50 times more effective than equal quantity of Morphine. Do not exceed recommended dose’.

Things after that had been a little blurry, at least until she woke up with her eyes full of stars.

Now, she felt somewhat better. The pain in her wing roots was returning however, and she suspected that she may have popped a joint or two. If she had, almost certainly those dislocations would have locked in place by now, and sure enough her wings were stiff and hurt to move into any position other than held out and rigid.

‘Maybe another Fentanyl would help’, she had briefly mused, only to reject it out of sheer pride. She was Lightning Dust, she didn’t need drugs to overcome her problems.

Well, that and she wanted to keep her head clear. She kept the patches though, just in case. She might have not had the confidence to try and stitch up her worst injuries, but she had enough dexterity in her hooves to stitch the blanket into a basic bindle that she could slip around her barrel. Into it had gone the patches, water, and the last of the biscuits and jerky.

She’d need it for what she intended next: getting off this rock. From there she had to find her way back to Equestria. Her internal sense of place, was telling her that she was somewhere between the Tropic of Prancer and the Reindric Circle, so she had to be somewhere in Equus’s northern hemisphere, just like Equestria itself.

‘If you’re even on Equus’, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. ‘Does this honestly look anything like home? Look at the stars, look at the sea, look at the bucking sky. This weather is unnaturally natural, self-governing and untamed. None of the civilised races would stand for it.’

“Shut up!” she shouted back. “I’m going home! All I have to do is find a consulate, or embassy or something. I’m an Equestrian! I have rights beyond the common creatures darnit!”

‘Suit yourself’, the voice had answered with a twinkling shrug. ‘I’ll be here when you need me. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s a whole new world for a pony like you, one where you’re completely out of your depth! You don’t even know about th-

“Get of of here! I don’t need you…..” she answered, trying to ignore the fact that she was have a shouting match with voices in her mind. “I’m going home, and then I’m going to be a Wonderbolt. The greatest Wonderbolt! If surviving this doesn’t get me Breezie-Points on the application exam, then I’m a donkey!”

Then she had stomped her hoof and angrily stormed up to the zenith of the spiral staircase, her wings held out flat and twinging at every step.

“I know I’m right! I know I am. I am going HOME!”

From the galley around the upper works of the tower she had been able to see for miles. Inland, beyond the bay and its’ wooded islands, there was evidence of a city, its lights spluttering in the dark - perhaps the storm was giving them trouble with the power supply.

Out to sea, was the ever-flowing convoy of ships and boats. The emergency supplies had also gifted her a pair of binoculars, and with them she had finally been able to appraise herself of her passing neighbours.

Clumsily, wishing she had the dexterity of her pinions for this, she lifted the lenses to her eyes, aimed herself at the passing ships, and stared, crudely rolling the binoculars in her hooves to rub the focus dials.

The ships resolved out of darkness, coalescing from shadow into solid steel. There were other shapes, prowling the decks or gathered in huddles around small lamps and fires.

She focused on them, pegasai sharpness of vision enhanced by glass optics.

“There we go...” she purred as they came into the clear. “Show me what you ar-”.

Her voice didn’t trail off so much as hit a brick wall skull-first. After several moments she lowered the binoculars, her pupils now contracted into twin terrified pinpicks that were almost swallowed in the shocked, lunar landscape of her face.

Those weren’t ponies...they weren’t anything that belonged in nature.

The ever-present wind blew across her, ruffling her dirty, salt-licked mane. Its spider-web touch sent shivers down her spine, but no-where near as much as what she had just seen. It suddenly threw a whole new light on things.

She turned and looked at the door behind her; tall and broad enough to accommodate even a princess without having to duck. She spun back and tipped her head up at the rail around the galley, set well above her own eye-line. If she had wanted to, she could have stepped right under it and off the edge...

Compared to her, this place was grossly oversized. But not when compared to the creatures that must have built it.

She looked again through the binoculars, and felt that same doubt begin to gnaw its way into her heart and soul.

They walked on their hindlegs, and were taller than any pony. Those that were moving around did so with a lumbering, lanky motion, their long forelegs swinging at their sides. She could not see if they had fur or scales, because they were so bundled up in rags, coats and other clothes. A lot of them were carrying what looked like odd metal pipes feeding into boxes.

And instead of a proper face, above their necks they had a grey, leathery expanse of skin in which soulless flat eyes rested, unblinking. Some of them even had long, corrugated trunks that fed down into filter-packs...

Oh. Masks. Whatever they were, they were wearing gasmasks. Or ‘service respirators’, as one particularly unpleasant captain at Flight School had insisted the cadets call them.

Abashed, Dust began to sweep her line-of-sight in little arcs, scanning until she found an exception to that rule...there! Again she fiddled with the focusing tabs, and found herself looking at what must have been a mother and her foal. The two of them were huddled in the angle formed by two intersecting bulkheads, trying to keep out of the clutch of the elements. The mare had partially stripped off, and was trying to coax the filly into suckling at her pale teat.

Something in her expression caught Dusts’ attention, and she felt a certain sinister curiosity coaxing her on as she spied on the unknowing creature. The mane was lank and streaked with filth, but seemed to have once been a dull tan. Her skin was only lightly-furred, and had a pallid blue-ish complexion speckled with dirty spots, like an egg. Half-exposed as she was, she was shivering in the cold, and desperately trying to get the infant to feed. Her mouth, large, expressive and dark-lipped, was making pleading, begging shapes, silent to Dust at this range.

‘Kids...’ she sneered to herself. ‘I bucking hate kids. So needy and greedy, always hogging the attention...’

And then she saw the tears trickling out of the mare’s two sunken, glistening eyes, eyes dark as bruises; those same tears cutting silver tracks through the grime and dirt as they fell across her cheeks, saw the growing desperation with which she tried to rouse the infant…saw its open, sightless, dead eyes.

Dust felt her breathing stop, a horrid tightness clinging around her chest as realisation struck her a roundhouse buck across the face.

“Oh...squits, that’s... wrong...” the breath in her lungs seemed to just quit on her as she saw.

Unable to carry on intruding onto the pathetic little scene she began to hunt across the various ships, trying to find something to buoy her spirit. She saw some more of the creatures clustered in morbid silence around the guttering light of a tiny paraffin lamp, canvas shelters billowing around them in the storm. Some distance away two larger ones, stallions perhaps, were fighting one another for what looked like a chunk of bread. And at the stern of one ship several more were disposing of the dead overboard, but not before carefully stripping them of their clothes and possessions. Then, with a sad, painful finality, the naked corpses were consigned to the deep.

There was no hope here. Everything she saw was a story of misery, grief and despair, played out on a floating stage of rust, filth and rotting metal that Lightning's instincts told her belonged in the scrapyard. And yet, even as the horror of it all sunk into her all the way to the marrow, she found herself unable to look away. What was she seeing? What was happening here? Most importantly, why?!

Monsters, she decided at last. She was in a land of monsters. And they'd been... They were fleeing something, so that had to be running from something even worse.

And at that moment, she heard the whistle of wings turned into the wind, and felt her soul soar. She knew that sound, felt it resonate in her wings.

It was the sound of pegasi flying in formation. Dropping the binoculars, the ships forgotten, she scanned the open sky with her naked eyes.

A lone speck dropped out from the sky out over the bay, plunging into view from between the scudding grey clouds. Another followed, and then a dozen more, all tunnelling straight-down towards the ships like the tail of a hurricane reaching for the surface. More squadrons burst through from above, until it seemed like a huge, shadowy claw of fur and feathers was reaching down towards the ships, every squadron a razor-tipped talon ready to clench.

Dust, being Dust, didn’t see that, or notice the sinister purpose with which the fliers were descending towards the ships, or the panic their appearance caused on deck.

All she saw were ponies, and to hee, that was all that mattered.

“Yes!” she whooped, bounding up to perch on the lip of the rail, all four hooves bunched together and muscles coiling. She felt the wind on her face and gauged its flow over her damaged wings. Yeah, a good kick-off might just give her the lift she needed to reach those guys...

In that moment of confidence, she was herself again, and she felt her teeth clench into a cocky snarl.

“I’m going home!”

And with that she launched herself up and away from the lighthouse, all of her athletic strength released in a single dazzling burst. Barely noticing the crackling fire screaming in her back she tipped back in a tight backflip, caught the storm under her wings, and rode it.

It hurt, but it was good pain. Real and simple and honest, not those fake, weak emotional tremors. Once again she was stuck in the middle of this wild, indecent weather, but now she had the measure of it. All it took was a quick tip and a roll and she was tacking against the headwind, and angling down across the water towards the ships. The pegasai were swarming around them, so all she had to do was touch down somewhere out of the reach of those...things, and call for help.

“Hey!” she shouted, waving a hoof wildly. “Over here! On your right quarter, I’m over here!”

They ignored her, or didn’t hear. The screams were drowning out her words.

“Wait, what!?”

She could hear it now, rising in peaks and waves over howling sky and sea. As the pegasai dived and looped over the ships, the creatures on the deck were screaming in fear and rage.

Shocked, she almost lost herself to a sudden downdraught. She fell through a pocket of rough air and nearly went back into the drink, but managed to spin herself out and sideways, her own cries joining in the harmony as her damaged body was once again pushed beyond its limits.

She saw one of the ships flash under her, a black metal tube like a half-sunken whale. It was being towed by two smaller vessels, and seeing them she took her chance. Rolling in the airstream, she dropped in a perfect hoof-fall, hindlegs pointed straight down and forelegs tight at her side.

Dropping like a living thunderbolt from the sky, she caught hold of one of the two boat’s masts and hugged herself to it, her hooves finding a grip on the slick metal. There was a small crossbar here from which a flag flew, and it was enough for her to perch and orientate herself.

“Yes!” she shouted, crowing to the sky. “Now that is how a pro does it! Did you see that!”

“Holy shit!” someone screamed back. “It’s Lightning Dust!”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Dust answered, ego running ahead of her thoughts. “Ain’t no other like - hey!”

‘BAN-BAN-BAN-BANG!’

She threw herself off the mast at the deck below as something shot over her head with a screaming whistle that promised death. Her aim was slightly off however, and instead she plunged into an old wooden lifeboat that had been mounted on the vessel’s superstructure.

“What! What?” she blabbered, thrashing in the lifeboat’s weather-proofing tarpaulin, hating how familiar that word was becoming in her vocabulary. Her outreaching wing cracked against a spar and she hissed out a fresh shriek.

“She’s in the lifeboat!”

“I heard you, fuckwit! Shut up!”

More rat-a-tat bangs lashed out, and Dust gasped as holes tore through the wooden hull inches from her face. “Oh, no-no-no!” she prattled, rolling herself out of the tarps’ clutch and throwing herself out over the gunwale and onto the deck.

“Stay still and let me rape your face you goddamn merry-go-round toy!” a voice roared. “Where’d you go!”

Chest thumping, lungs gasping, Dust pressed herself to the deck and peeked under the gap between the bottom of the lifeboat and its cradle.

The banging bolts (arrows, spears?) were being fired at her from the other vessel towing the huge iron whale. But where her current ride was a wooden, lumbering beast, the craft running alongside was sleek and steely, a shark.

And two of the strange creatures were balancing on its deck, one crouched and pointing while the other stood tall, legs astride for stability and a silver weapon in either fore-paw. This one’s mane was tied back in a burgundy ponytail, and her teeth were exposed in a predatory snarl.

‘She honestly wants to kill me,’ Dust realised, the shock numb inside of her. ‘Well, that’s something new.’

Her blasé attitude was cut short when the one with the handheld thunderbolts suddenly stiffened and threw its forelegs out. “I’ve got the fucker! Die bitch!”

More blasts rang out and once again Dust rolled herself clear. Hooves racing she flung herself forward and into the cover provided by the boat’s wheelhouse.

“Tugboat Luna!” she heard the other creature yell. “You’ve got a pony onboard! Listen up man, Lightning Dust is hiding on the other side of your wheelhouse from us!”

“Luna?” Dust repeated, before the door she was pressed against flung open and a booted hoof kicked her right between the wings. The impact threw her down and almost into the water, but instead she struck the tugboat’s gunwale and flopped, wet, broken and howling, onto the deck, her face pressed into a soggy paper flyer.

‘‘Luna’: The World’s First Commercial Diesel Tugboat’, it read, the words running like mascara into black tears.

She felt the deck bounce as her attacker jumped down to her level. As she sobbed weakly, her cheek wet with trickling rivulets of water and ink, she saw the legs of a towering figure lurch into view. They bent into a crouch, and something took hold of her neck. Then she was lifted into the air, hanging as limp as a piñata, face-to-face with one of the bipeds for the first time.

Its skin was coffee-black, weathered and torn. A pair of sunglasses glinted green, hiding its eyes from view, but she saw its mouth pull open into a savage sneer.

“Well fuck me if it isn’t true!” it rumbled in a voice like an avalanche. “Lightning Dust?”

Caught in his glare, Dust could only nod fearfully.

“Girl, for all the shit you’ve pulled, this is going to feel so right!” the towering bulk said, and she felt something cold and metal press against the underside of her jaw.

“Why?” she gasped weakly, tears pouring from her eyes.

“Say that again?” he asked, suddenly stunned. “After years of crap; your whole damn race shittin’ over us, destroying our homes, turning us into those fuckin’ zombies, you ask why?!”

“Stop wasting time and kill the whorse Dutch!” she heard another voice shout from far off. “If you want to play with her, you’ve got to share.”

“Shuttya hole! Call up Fleet Control! Tell them we got a high-priority hostage!”

Lightning was too worn out to muster any response. Black voids were swimming at the edge of her vision. She was ready to go, ready for all this to end. Even if she couldn’t go home, she just wanted the pain to stop.

And then, as oblivion reached up to claim her, she heard the fragile tinkle of glass smashing, and the giant dropped her in surprise. She hit the deck hard, tried to pull herself up, and then collapsed into a sodden heap, barely able to move as voices erupted all around her.

“Oh, shit...POTIONEERS! TAKE COVER!”

“They’ve got the First Lieutenant! Cut em’ down and get her out!”

“Fucking killjoys! Come here and taste my guns you shitters!”

“Control! Control! This is the PT-617 and the Luna, towing the HMCS Onondaga! We’re under attack and have a priority hostage. Please send – oh shit! Shit shit SHIT! It’s on me! Get it off me!”

BANG!

“Sorry guys. I’ll follow you guys on soon...COME ON YOU FLYING CUNTFUCKS! You want the Lightning Dyke, you’ve gotta pay for her!”

What followed was a short, orgiastic stream of bangs and obscenities...that dwindled into howls, and then gurgles, and finally a silence dimly laced with the hush of waves and a distant, euphoric voice.

“Oh wow! This is GLORIOUS! I feel so light and bright...I’m full of joy! Full of joy! Your Majesty, you fill me with joy! You took away my pain YOU TOOK AWAY MY LOVELY HURTS. YOU TOOK AWAY MY MEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEEEEHEHEHEHEEHEE!”

The voice wobbled off into giggles, mad, exultant squeaks that rasped like nails on a chalk board, swinging from happy to some volatile combination of anger, sadness, and fear every other syllable, as she repeated that phrase, ‘you took away my me!’ incessantly, unable to stop, ecstatic one syllable, sobbing the next. And Lightning Dust, blind from exhaustion, cold and shattered, decided she hated those giggles more than the pain. That…. that’d been the angry mare, or whatever the equivalent for these things was, the one that had tried to kill her! That was… that wasn’t right. What could have made her into that?! It was like she’d become somepony completely different, but that…. there wasn’t any magic allowed like that, was there?! Why were ponies doing this?!

What was happening, who were these people?! What were these things?! What was any of this?!

And where the ‘fuck’ was she?

“Newfoal, identify yourself!” someone, a stallion, barked.

“Hello Master. I’m Revving Engine siiiiir, HOW CAN I seeeeeerve our majestic QUEEN-QUEEN-QUEEENIE!!”

“Answer me a few questions. What’s your speciality?”

“Combat-orientated…ready to PURGE and DESTROY...ready-ready for the mission…GIVE ME A CUTLASS AND I’LL FIGHT! I’m ready, I’m ready!”

“Riiight...and what do you think of our Queen?”

“Oh she’s wondrous, glorious...let me meet her, please...let me meet our Eternal Sun, but first GIVE ME BACK MY CUTLASSES! Then let me meet her, praise her, DDDDDIIIIE for her! LET ME DIE FOR HER! LET ME DIE!”

“Urgh...another mule. Just show me where the Lieutenant is, and then kill yourself, freak.”

“Yessir! Happily sir! She’s over there sir! How do you want me to die sir?”

“Stick yourself on the mast, jump into the engine, throw yourself overboard, I don’t care.”

“Yessir! I’’ll die-die-die! Thankyou sir! Thankyou for freeing meee-hehehehehheeeeeeeeee! SWEET RELEASE!”

A splash, and a bubbling rush that faded into nothing.

“This new formula’s the absolute dogs’ nads,” the male voice grunted. “We need slaves or soldiers, not these inbetween freaks that can’t accept their purification. We’re better off without them.”

“I mean, I like the idea behind this,” another male agreed. “Twilight Sparkle’s definitely on to something. Newfoals aren’t usually good for much besides those silly charges, so I appreciate having smarter ones. But this… this failure rate? It’s just… just awful!”

Lightning drew in a gasp, trembling.

“I know, right?” the first male asked. “We need more like that Focus Ray fella… He could’ve gone pretty far if not for the Blue Spy. But you’d think the potion would at least save the poor abominations, regardless of its balance of traits.”

He wasn’t sad that the mare had… oh Celestia, he’d ordered her to kill herself! And she’d welcomed it! Whatever had changed her… had…it had stolen her...stolen her very being.

Dust felt herself shake, unable to imagine having the core of herself ripped away...that wasn’t death, that was eradication...a living death beyond death, unparalleled in its terror.

“But no,” the second male said. “These latest ones even have to fight when they’re made perfect. Why do they have to do that? Aren’t they happier? It doesn’t make it easier for any of us.”

He wasn’t sad. No, he was disgusted. He’d had no sympathy whatsoever! Neither of them did!

“I can’t wait for them to get the next iteration of the formula tidied-up and out of beta, or at least find some way of controlling these new recruits. Then at least our horsepower shortages will be behind us, and all of Earth will open up ahead of us…”

There was a whistle of wings and the clop of four hooves neatly landing beside her.

“...and speaking of what’s in front of us.”

Lightning Dust felt the tip of a wing gently touch her face, and she recoiled, pulling herself tighter into a ball. The touch was, in these singular circumstances, somehow more terrifying than anything she could have experienced at that time.

“Oh Dusty. How did you get out here? It’s me girl, it’s Prism Flash...your little ‘Dashie’s’ dad...”

‘Prism Flash? Dashie? Who is that?...how does he know me...what’s going on….’

As Dust gave herself up to the darkness, she heard Prism murmur again, a hoof stroking her mane. From the venomous disgust of just a minute ago, he had jumped to a sickly-sweet, almost tender joy...

“It’s all right. You’re with us...you’re with us.”

...and that made her want to scream…

Monsters. Monsters, everywhere.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's Notes:

Chapter Two, for your consideration. Many thanks to everyone for the spirited response to Chapter One, but especial thanks to editors Redskin122004, Doctor Fluffy and Rush for helping me with support, advice and patience.

Once again, it's great to be back!

Bloodstained Sketches of a Small Town

“People killin’, people dyin’
Children hurt and you hear them cryin’
Can you practise what you preach
Or would you turn the other cheek?

Father, Father, Father help us
Send some guidance from above‘
Cause people got me, got me questionin’
Where is the love (Love)?

It just ain’t the same, old ways have changed
New days are strange, is the world insane?
If love and peace are so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don’t belong?”]
‘Where Is The Love?’ - The Black Eyed Peas

“...and you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don’t you? You think if Catherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs.”
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, ‘The Silence of the Lambs’

Truro, Nova Scotia.

A small town located where a river opened out into an estuary. To the Mi’kmaq natives who had been born of this land long before the white men came, this place was Wagobagtik, ‘end of water’s flow’.

Settled in the 1720s, founded in 1759, and incorporated as a town in 1875. Seat of Colchester county.

The site of a major interstate interchange and a rail junction. The ‘Hub’ of Nova Scotia.

And also, 3232 miles from CERN.

The Barrier did not appreciate any of this, nor did it appreciate the millions of other settlements that could have been anywhere from ramshackle collections of lean-tos to metropolises steeped in history. Methodically, unthinkingly, thoughtlessly, it slowly advanced over the tiny, shattered community. Razing it as a skilled reaper culls the harvest, leaving not one stalk standing.

Its light, in which the community had bathed its final hours, swallowed the University Farm in the center of town. Wood and stone burned like paper, the cinders of their ruin cascading across the Barrier like water flowing uphill.

And so did Truro, Wagobagtik, where the flow of the water ended, meet its own end.

Homes and houses were scrubbed clean, scrubbed away. The new lords of the Earth had no need for such shelter. Furniture, trinkets, family memories fell with them. Somewhere, people were running on foot from the Barrier

*

“You! Identify yourself!”

“Lieutenant Teresa Jones, HLF First English Battalion, and you’ll fucking salute me when you see my senior rank, soldier!”

“Uh, Yes ma'am! Master Sergeant Birch, Thenadier Guards.”

“At ease. I’ve got a priority captive for delivery to your commanding officer. That’s Colonel Galt, correct? Let my train through, sargeant.”

“Whoah, woah woah! I can’t do that ma’am’. You think we’re idiots or something? Colonel Galt’s orders are for all rail traffic to be held outside Truro until the brothers liberate the railyard from the horsefuckers.”

“Got my own orders right here. The Front took the northern shoreline in Halifax and the railyards there, directed me to get the captive into custody for interrogation and extermination. Here’s the waybill to prove it. Take one Canadian Pacific engine, light power express, direct to Colonel Dagney Galt in Truro.”

“Looks legit sarge, got the train-number and our stamp and everything. And...holy shit…”

“What is it?”

“Says here that the hostage is the Carter bitch!”

“Show me.”

“Pardon me soldier, but I’m a lieutenant and you’re a sargeant. You want to see, you ask nicely.”

“On whose authority?! I don’t care what rank you are, this is the Thenardier guards!”

CLICK

“On the authority of my 9mm, Sargeant. I was there when London fell, when was the last time you faced the Barrier? Tomorrow? Now, you can come onboard and confirm I’ve got Verity Carter in custody, and then you can get the fuck back off my engine.”

*

It claimed the shattered ruin of the railyard, where cars and carriages lay scattered about as if the toys of a giant, petulant child. A lone locomotive, tipped on its side, blistered into ash.

The fractured interstate junction followed soon...as did tens of thousands of abandoned vehicles.

Their occupants ran, with nowhere to go. With Truro gone, there was no escape from Nova Scotia. As the Barrier pushed on it would drive them into the tip of the peninsula, squeezing and pinching them like a boil destined to burst and die.

Today, ninety-seven thousand souls would die in this state alone. They would not be the last.

*

The newfoals marched through the ruined town, snow crunching softly under their hooves. None wore anything over their fur, naked and pure. Small icicles hung from them, frozen beads of sweat forming a skein of frost...

“...coupled together, slaved together...permanently joined...never to part…”

Silent trees and buildings rose around and overhead like petrified sculptures or skeletons...as frozen as the newfoals’ smiles...as dead as their glazed eyes...

“...I am Load Bearer, I serve the Sun. I shoulder Her burdens...carry Her loads. I am Load Bearer, I serve the Sun…”

Everything else was silent but for their bastardized prayers, and the nonsense scraps of poetry and the calming litanies that they whispered to themselves. The words might have been genuine. They might have been prayers and screams for mercy, or lunatic babbling as their broken minds attempted to reconcile themselves with their their fate. None of them were inclined to make guesses.

Nor would they ever.

“...Firearm...Firearm...I am a weapon...I am a tool. Firearm…”

No birds chirped in the sky, no creatures scuttled in the underbrush. They had all fled.

“...glory be...glory be...glory be...I worship...I obey…”

The newfoals marched east, towards the Barrier. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet they obeyed their programming, returning to Home, to be debriefed, classified, and directed.

“...mama...mama...mama...mama…”

Some would be servants, others soldiers. All were slaves. Three hundred of them would die in this frozen overland trek alone, smiles on their faces even as their fellows left them to freeze. Nobody would pick them up if they were left to die. The Solar Empire was not picky...so long as it got new recruits, what was several hundred corpses...

“...thine be the glory, risen conquering Sun. Endless is the victory, thou o’er me has won…”

Five thousand newfoals trod the snow…

“...I serve...I obey...I hunt...I hunt…”

...except for one, who went the other way.

*

As it advanced, the Barrier crushed underfoot the many and storied houses of God; Anglican, Presbyterian and Pentecostal. It unmade the Church of the Immaculate Conception and reduced the Zion Baptist to the same nothingness that befell old Israel and Mecca. The various United churches were dissolved forever. The schisms and holy wars that had defined and divided them in the past meant nothing on this Day of Judgement: in the eyes of the Goddess, all faiths of man were equally worthless.

Those few who stayed behind for a final mass, putting faith in prayer, burned alive, their very atoms sundered into dust.

The Barrier moved on, reducing Stanfield’s Cotton Mills, where hundreds of townsfolk had labored for a century and a half, to a memory.

Finally, it overran the Colchester County Hospital, which was silent and still, a husk of lost lives and innocence, gutted of anything valuable, stripped of medical equipment that would be nigh-irreplaceable and priceless in the foreseeable future.

*

He came diving out of the sun, using its glare to shield himself. Nose down and engines at full throttle, the pilot pressed the jet to its maximum speed, trusting the runic enhancements to keep the wings from shearing off…

There! Bright dots of colour, swarming in the sky below...diving on a moving train.

“Oh shit no. Chupathingy to control, engaging targets…”

He held down on the yoke’s trigger, and felt the plane’s automatic gatling cannon begin to spit thunder. The pegasai scattered, but more were scattered across the landscape, in pieces. 30mm ammo did that, firing at over sixty rounds per second.

He pulled back hard, swinging through the nadir of an arc and back up into the sky. Some pegasai could pace this ‘Warthog’ jet in level flight, but only their best could keep up with him in a climb...

BUMP!

He looked up, and saw a pegasus stallion clinging to the cockpit canopy, death and fury in his eyes...a multi-hued mane flapping in the breeze...a bottle of potion clenched in his teeth.

“Chupathingy to control… ‘Flash Dad’ has got me...I think I’m about to check out…”

*

The Barrier’s conquest took less than an hour. And when those sixty minutes had passed, the town of Truro was gone forever.

The Barrier did not care. It pushed onwards, rolling inexorably towards Halifax, and beyond it the United States.

The same story was being told all across the world. The Holy Lands had gone to meet their makers, the Ethiopian cradle of human civilisation was being rolled into an unmarked grave, and Khazakstan, according to some ‘The Greatest Country in the World’, had been cast out of memory. Islamabad and New Dehli would soon follow Boston and New York into night.

At this very moment, on the far side of the world, Enitan, Yekemi, and Obayana Adebayo were fighting to help evacuees in Malawi, waiting for a slow evacuation train…

And eventually, inevitably, the Barrier would meet up with itself, several thousand miles southeast of New Zealand. No longer just expanding, but enclosing...

And then it would cease, and be no more.

And mankind, like the town of Truro, would itself be…

“Nevermore…” a harsh whisper croaked.

Lightning Dust felt her hooves crunching softly over a floor of crushed stone, moving towards a faint and distant light. Around her there was nothing but churning fog, and her breathing echoed cavernously as she slowly trotted forward.

Great, another mysterious change of scene. At least her wings has stopped hurting.

“Where am I now?” she whispered wearily. “Just let me go away from all this...please let me go home.”

“Nevermore.”

With nothing else to guide her, she pressed onwards, drawn into the light...as she drew closer her surroundings solidified out of the swirling fume, resolving into rough-cut stone walls that arched to meet overhead.

Wherever she was, she was now underground. And ahead there was movement, the furtive motion of someone driven on by fear and urgency.

It was a mare, a dull grey earth pony with a purple mane, the fringe of which had been trimmed straight above her eyes, the rest of it cut short just below her ears. It gave her a look of no-nonsense focus, accentuated by the dark hoodie and saddlebags she wore.

Lightning paused and cocked her head, eyes narrowing in suspicion. The odd mare was moving from side to side across the tunnel, digging a hoof into a wall or the floor and scooping up a small amount of rock that was quickly scrutinised, sniffed, or licked.

On the ground rested the source of the light, a small lamp with a ring fitted as a mouthold. Iit did not gutter or flicker like a candle or firefly-lamp, and the glow it cast was bright and sterile.

‘Like the beacon at the lighthouse….’

Just beyond the mare was a side-tunnel, above which was mounted a paint-peeled sign.

Reflexively Lightning moved to rustle her wings, and then had a moment of shock when she realised not only had they stopped hurting, they had stopped being anything at all. She couldn’t feel them!

‘Why can’t I feel my wings!’ she opened her mouth to cry, but another set of words came out.

“What’s going on, Maud?” she sighed wearily. “Why am I here?”

The mare looked in her direction, placid eyes barely lingering for a moment.

“Because I asked you to come,” she replied in an even tone, before turning back to gouging a rut into one wall with her forehooves.

Lightning blinked in confusion, bringing one yellow hoof to her throat...she, but...yes, this mare had invited him here.

“Everyone’s noticed your absence,” he said cooly. “Zecora apparently threw a rhythmic conniption when she got to Boston and found you’d abandoned your post.”

“It doesn’t matter,” ‘Maud’ answered, before pausing to eyeball a few flecks of ore on her hoof. “Copper...and Zinc.”

Lightning grunted, and used a hindhoof to scratch something that itched between his legs.

His...his…NONONO! She was a mare, not a stallion!

The world pulsed, and Lightning bucked hard, trying to throw herself out of this alien, masculine body. Hurled aside, she slumped against the tunnel wall, sinking into it as if was soft as sand. It felt as insubstantial as smoke…

Head swimming, chest racing, she looked sideways and saw the stallion that she had just been violently self-ejected from. He was canary yellow, with a curly brown mane pressed trailing like filthy string out from under a battered fedora. Like the mare, he was wearing a pair of timeworn saddlebags, borne over a thick vest made of padded plates of no material she’d ever seen. Everything he wore looked to have survived a journey through the Everfree Forest during one of its infamous storms. Some remaining part of her kept insisting that by Equestria’s rules, this shouldn’t happen. Lightning thought those sorts of journeys were mythical, that their time had passed by! And yet, something told her that this nightmare world she had been forced into did not play by the rules.

“She’s coming around…” he said, voice suddenly sounding far off and distorted. “Put her back under, quick!”

“It’s not that simple,” Maud replied, still digging away with manic fervor, her voice full of stress and concern. “She’s probably got human drugs in her system. Trying to work around those takes care, or we might put her into a coma.”

Lolling against the wall Lightning felt her jaw being worked, something pulling it open and ramming something into the back of her throat.

“That bezoar should neutralise anything she took, and then we knock her back out to reset her wings…”

The swimming sensation in her mind was coiling into a raging monster that pounded and kicked on the inside of her skull. Panicking, her mouth clamped shut in order to force her to swallow, Lightning flailed out, trying to ward off the unseen attacker. In the corner of her vision, she could see the mare named Maud and the stallion shouting at one another.

“Darn, she’s a fighter!”

“Of course she is, she’s my daughter’s First Lieutenant!”

“Okay, that should do it...don’t let her spit out the bezoar until I can get the sedation talisman on her.”

The pressure on her mouth tightened, almost choking her as the stallion took two steps forward and threw out a hoof to still Maud’s hooves. She reacted with a kick that knocked him away.

“I’ve got it. Just keep her still!”

Then something snapped shut around Lightning’s neck and the world of smoke and shadow dissolved under a wave of soothing bliss…

‘New subject recognised...searching for unity...unity unavailable, resorting to default configuration daemon…’

She floated, serene and unthinking, her arms and legs hanging loose at her side, fingers trailing in foaming waves of light. Dimly she felt that something was wrong about that...but the sense of relief was too strong for her to care. Faintly, somewhere else, she could feel dozens of warm, furry bodies pinning her down, rubbing their damp hides against her. She could hear their distant giggles, and sense the dampness seeping into her, warm and rich and magical…

‘...Configuration daemon loaded...commencing ponification…’

She was ready to be purified. She was ready to become her true self. To kill her imperfect self and at last smile with honesty.

“Why...hello there,” said a voice, calm and collected. “It’s been a while since I was last used like this. The spell’s network must have gone down…”

A lavender unicorn leaned into view, purple eyes bright and curious. Her mane was also purple, with two streaks of colour in it.

She was the most beautiful thing Lightning had ever seen.

“I’m ready…” she said, voice joyous. “I’m ready to join you. Please take me…”

“Oh, a willing convert!” the unicorn giggled, hooves clopping together in glee. “We get so few of those...oh this is going to be fuuuuuuuuuun…”

She ducked out of view and Lightning found herself being tipped upright, sliding onto a ethereal floor like a marionette with cut strings. Unable to move beyond a numb stirring, her limbs still swimming with that lovely warm lethargy, she looked around, seeing a sky of stars and a sea of glowing orbs and luminescent smoke below.

Windows hovered in the void, on each of them playing familiar memories. She recognised herself in those windows, recognised her coffee-toned skin and flowing hair. There was was at her high school graduation...her first day at medical college...helping to deliver a baby.

The unicorn mare was trotting around, examining each image with clinical coolness. Lightning knew her name.

“Twilight Sparkle…”

The purple pony ignored her, instead focusing on a particular cluster of windows.

“So you were a nurse? That’s interesting. Ah well, not much use to us.”

She tapped that cluster with a hoof and it burst like a soap bubble. Lightning felt something twitch in the back of her mind, and shadows seemed to press into her past. It was so hard to remember! A nurse? Had she been…

“I wanted to be a nurse…” she said slowly, trying to dredge up the old thoughts, with an effort that was not inconsiderable. Why was it so hard? “Can I please be a nurse? A perfect pony nurse, helping others…”

“Oh, no…” the pony said chirpily. “No, we don’t need any more doctors or nurses at this time. We have been dreadfully short on numbers, least of all in the quality that we so need.”

“But...I wanted…”

“Oh, and I’m not Twilight Sparkle,” the creature added, and this time its smile seemed to have more than a hint of fang about it. “I’m your friendly configuration daemon, a utility spell within the Ponification matrix designed to help find your perfect role in our happy society.”

Lightning blinked…”Then why can’t I be a nurse...that’s my skillset, my special talent...isn’t it?”

“Oh, you misunderstand…” the pony daemon crooned. “This procedure is not about finding a niche in ponydom for you to fill. The goal is to reshape you to meet our needs.”

Lightning listened numbly, her mouth falling open. “That’s….that’s…”

“What’s wrong?” asked the daemon, tipping its head. “Didn’t you say you wanted this? To become a pretty pony, perfect and free?” Those words were honeyed and sweet, yes, but to Lightning, they somehow felt rancid, more mocking in their sincerity than if she had said it sarcastically. It was as if something was being forced down her throat, rebelling against her system even as she accepted the taste.

It smiled, beguiling. Lightning slowly looked down at her hands. Her horrid, human hands. They shook, as if confessing a secret fear.

“Don’t you trust me? Don’t you trust ponies to be better than what you were?”

Lightning could not answer. Slowly she looked up at the memories floating overhead. Her wedding day, her son...her grief. An outpouring of grief upon grief, of unmarked, unknown graves and empty beds. The shadow of a nameless, faceless Taliban soldier stalking her dreams.

“Yes…” she said, weeping. “Just take it away. Make me better.”

“Gooooood,” it sighed, before leaning in and giving her a brief nuzzle. Its hide felt cold and smooth. Reptilian. Lightning shuddered, but the creature did not notice. Its’ gaze had fallen onto another floating window that had appeared.

“Oh, my Creator is so clever...she’s updated the potion with new templates. How wonderful!”

It scrolled through arcane webs of light, until it finally settled on something.

“Here we are...the perfect use for your raw emotion. Plenty of room for intelligence and creativity too, within limits. You’re very lucky, you know that?”

It smiled sweetly, but the smile did not reach the eyes. “You’re going to do so much good for Equestria, as our newest, brightest soldier.”

“NO!” Lightning screamed, trying to throw a leg up and failing. “Not a soldier, not a killer! Ponies don’t kill! I don’t want to kill! I wanted to be perfect and peaceful! To-”

“I already told you,” it answered, ears falling in disappointment. “It doesn’t matter what you want. You are only apes, after all, before the smiling goddess! Oh, and I had so hoped you would just receive this blessing willingly. So disappointing.”

Then it leered, and jabbed a hoof in her direction, eyes flashing. “And you’ll do whatever we tell you, my mare. And then, you’ll never disappoint anypony again...”

Lighting looked down, and saw to her horror that her hands had fused into solid, blunt hooves. Soft, peach-orange fur had already formed a coating over them, and was swarming up her arms. Her shoes ripped apart as her feet followed suit. It hurt more than anything she had ever felt, her muscles torn and reformed, stretched and pushed further than they ever should have been. Tipping her head forward she saw a thick, spiky fringe of pink-and-red mane fall forward over her eyes. She could feel her hairline pulling in tighter at the back, short and spunky. Hyperventilating she felt tears come to her, grief mixed with joy. She was going to be a pony…

“Oh, what beautiful colours...orange, red and pink form a lovely contrast. And your eyes...such a submissive shade of grey. Tall and lithe too...I think you’re going to be quite the looker.”

It hummed to itself and tapped the matrix floating beside it. “I think I’ll need to adjust your libido and muscular development to account for that. So many ponies crave an Amarezon, and I think you’ll get a lot of use off the battlefield for mess-hall relaxation. You’ll need the endurance to keep up with demand.”

The words slowly sank in, and Lightning looked at it, betrayal stabbing deep into her.

“You...want me to have sex?”

“But of course. Like I said, you won’t be able to say no. You’re going to be an obedient squadmate, helpmate and playmate. That should do wonders for your unit’s morale.”

“No!” she howled, trying to claw the fur off of her, even as it swarmed under the tatters of her shirt and out above the neckline. “No! Not like this! You’re not supposed to be like this! I was supposed to be happy! Perfect and peaceful and-”

The creature smiled, and this time its mouth was full of bladed teeth. Its eyes, once so welcoming, looked almost hungry. Nearly feral. “The troops can get rather frustrated, and we do so need those numbers. I am what I am, a construct following a programmed directive. And soon, you will be too. Execute reconfiguration.”

Lightning sprawled on her side as thousands of tiny needles seemed to stab into her body, penetrating deeper than flesh and bone. She wanted to scream, but she had no breath. Instead she could only shudder and gibber, frothing blood and spittle as she was touched, fondled and violated in a way that no pain or man had ever done to her before. It was as if cold knives were inside her memories, feeling at once as if she was being stabbed and suffering a concussion, shredding all that she held dear.

“Whyyyyy-rgh! Whhhhhhyyyyyy!?”

“Because we don’t need all that pesky individualism silly. We don’t need your soul. Just the bits of it that are useful to us. Besides, this is what you wanted, deep down. Freedom from your past.”

It touched her, stroking a hoof over her forehead as, with a ripping of flesh and bone, a bloody horn burst though. And as it pushed out, she felt something else press in, flowing along the path of the needles until it reached her centre, dug its claws in, and started to cut and slice.

“Such a beautiful thing I am, crafted by such a clever mistress. To take something as raw and primal as a living soul, and reformat it into a machine for useful work. Oh yes, what a beautiful thing I am.”

She had endured abuse, but this...this was the agony of a putric essence thrusting into her!

“You know, I really do love you ones who come in smiling. That moment when you lose your faith is so rewarding, and so useful in breaking you down for processing and reassembly.”

Above her the memories swam in their orbits, blurring and washing. Some faded away, while others began to glow red, pushing forwards in her mind until they seared like they never had before.

Pain...rage...hatred...hatred for the people who all her life had hurt her. All the humans that had hurt her. The longing to make them pay, make them suffer, make them share in this torture...driving, sinking, embedding.

“Hurt...them! She screeched, an equine roar ripping up from her throat. “Let me hurt them!”

“Oh you will sweetie, you will. And I think you’re going to be glorious. We just need to seal it...get you all wired up. See - look at that.”

It cradled her head and lifted it up so she could see. “That’s the strongest, happiest memory of your childhood. The foundation of your existence.”

Herself, five years old at Christmas, dressed in a nurse’s costume. She was cradling a doll, a baby doll, and taking its temperature with a toy thermometer. A smile on a face she couldn’t remember.

“Almost finished now...all we need is a name.”

“Nightingale…” she managed, forcing the words out in a whistle. “My true name is Nightingale.”

“Oh? No, that won’t do. I see your little thoughts, and I can’t give you that. No...I know…”

Words blazed across memory, dredged up from a long-lost school lesson, soon to be pushed deep into her subconscious.

‘Wretch!’ I cried. ‘Thy God above has lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee,
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!’

“There we go. You wanted to forget, and you wanted to share what you have. So you can be a gift of oblivion to other humans, my little Nepenthe.”

“I..am...Nightingale…”

“No,” it cooed. “You’re Nepenthe, and you belong to us now. And here...we...go…”

The memory burst into into blazing shards, and Lightning screamed as she felt herself shatter in kind. The rage and hate and loathing burned bright, and everything else of her mind and essence was reduced to fragments orbiting a red star of festering emotion, slowly drawn by its gravity into a new shape, a shell to encase what had replaced the core of her very existence.

Information poured in, forming a filigree of wire on the developing husk. Barbed wire. Battle tactics and drill practice, weapons handling and hoof-to-hoof technique all poured into her mind and muscle memory. Everything she needed to be a perfect, powerful warrior…

...and the knowledge on how to please a mare. How to coax a stallion to climax. How to flick her tail in such a way as to invite attention...

Slowly, her mind was bound up, locked in and chained down. Somewhere, deep inside, she was screaming for release, begging to have even a shred of awareness in what she was going to become.

‘But what’s the point?’ Another part of her asked, though it felt unfamiliar. Wouldn’t she be happier? Why would she want that? She could feel her thoughts twisting, her worldview warping...becoming clean and simple and bright…

...as it did a new image began to form overhead. Screams and howls faded into a low background buzz, and she began to feel calm. All the emotion dulled and dwindled as she beheld the new rock upon which the throne of her soul rested.

There was still a doll in the picture, a beautiful pony doll with an orange hide, short pink-and-red striped mane, and eyes of the softest grey, dull as the edge of a blade. She looked so strong and brave, clad in her shining plate armor.

And holding her, lovingly playing with a favourite toy, was the giant form of Queen Celestia, an alicorn filly with a flowing, rosey mane. With a flick of her horn, she levitated over a label: Property of Celestia.

She looked like nothing more than a petulant child of grotesque size, made hideous through demeanor and behavior, kept happy only as long as things were going its way and its way alone. A slight pudginess looked more like slimey extra layers, eyes set in a happy expression and yet filled with malice.

She was a monster, a nightmare…

The abomination magically stitched the label in place, and hugged the dolly tight.

...perfect, wondrous, radiant, divine. Her One! Her All! Her Owner!

The toy was...she was Ni… Nighting… Nepenthe… Ni… she could not remember. Could not reconcile, as her last bastions of self fought against the growing void within her soul. The doll was that nurse from her childhood. The doll was the beautiful pony doll, eyes made of nonreflective grey buttons. It was neither. It was both?

Tittering, her wonderful Owner glanced under the dolly’s tail, and found a pull-string. Slowly, She bit onto it and...

YANK.

“Hi there! I’m the Pretty Private, Nepenthe!”

Hot fire exploded in between her nethers and she bucked, her mouth spitting out the same words as the doll. Her eyes rolled back in her skull at the heat, the intensity, the raw pleasure that was inviting and somehow dark, all-consuming...

She was a pony. No matter how she struggled to believe that she was not, that was truth. To associate anything human with the idea of happiness was heresy...

Her seventh birthday. A brownie sundae instead of a cake, she hadn’t wanted one. A set of child’s fake tools, which she’d used to play doctor as all little fillies did. No, not a-

YANK.

“I love you, Your Majesty!” bleated a voice that she knew to be her own.

A great tsunami of other crested and splashed over her, and the memories washed away as she writhed in the afterglow, bits of herself running out with the tide.. She got a toy sword for her birthday, and grew up playing with the neighbourhood colts, whipping them in their games of cowponies and buffalos…

...once she was old enough, she’d let them whip her in other ways…such fun ways.

YANK.

“Everypony is my special somepony!”

And it was true...she’d happily lift her tail for anypony.

Raw...lustful...sexual...submissive...obedient...loyal...soldier...

“NO!” screamed some semblance of that hateful otherness. Pathetic. As if it deserved that mercy. “THIS ISN’T ME! THIS WASN’T ME! I WAS NEVER SHE WHO WAS NEVER ME AND I NEVER-”

“Then who were you?” the daemon asked.

“I… was...a healer...not a...”

YANK

“I’ll always protect you!”

Her entrance into high school. Awkward, gawky, another face in the hundreds at her school. Another girl, no, a filly, no, a girl, a best friend that she had known all her life whose name was escaping her, suggesting that they would be great friends. Invitations to parties. The two of them smiling on the river together among other friends, drunk with her best friend’s older brother, telling what seemed like great and terrible secrets in the bright light of the

YANK

“I’ll always serve you!”

Another wave. What need was there for such secrets? For the darkness of the human world? No, she could look up to another, other… brighter light, like the sun that lit Earth, but brighter somehow. She could not stop smiling inside. And her smiles seemed better, fuller, wider. What point was there in resisting?

YANK

“I belong to you!”

She… was… she was somepony, that was for sure. She might have been somepony who wasn’t Nightingale before, she thought? But even saying she was somepony seemed wrong. No, she couldn’t have been human, could she? She’d certainly hate to have been

YANK.

“I’m a Pretty Pony!

YANK.

”Everypony should be a Pretty Pony! It’s so much fun and you’ll be happy all the time!”

What use was there in resisting? If humanity was so great, she’d surely remember something of it. Something other than pain.

YANK

“Hi there! I’m the Pretty Private, Nepenthe!”

With each draw of the string, a rush of alien emotions and sensations, rushes of not-quite memories that she knew to be of life in Equestria, conditioning her to fit into their perfect society almost seamlessly. A surge of feeling that flooded and drowned her mind, swamping all resistance and doubt.

She came, and spoke, and thought...only when the string was pulled. Only as her Owner wanted her to, only when she was ordered to...

Regular, conditioned...programmed.

Gazing up, eyes wide, entranced and glassy, taking in this vision, the newfoal mare felt the muscles in her cheek twitch. This was her, she was a dolly. A happy pony dolly to be used, abused and discarded. And wasn’t that just wonderful?

She was free at last. Free from her past. Free from her pain.

Free from thought. Free from conscience. Free from choice.

And she had to do, all she wanted to do, was as she was told.

“There we go…” crooned the monstrous magical mare who had helped her, stepping back so that she could climb onto her hooves. A tall and strong unicorn mare, muscular and lean, ready to serve and die…

YANK

“Private Nepenthe reporting!” she said brightly, forehoof snapping up in a salute, her hindquarters twitching as some very special nerve endings flared deliciously.

She obeyed, and was rewarded. Simple, elegant...perfect. She was perfect now.

“How may I serve, mistress?”

The daemon trotted forward, giggling at the result.

“Oh the cleverness of me!” she trilled, almost intoxicated with the results of her own work. “Just serve and obey, Private…”

And then, with one hoof, she pulled the newfoal into a kiss.

YANK.

The freshly-baked mare responded with programmed enthusiasm, her eyes wide open and mindless as her mouth and tongue began to suck and hum. All there was in what remained of her mind, her every thought, was of how to serve...

...and a voice, a screaming, distant voice that hummed in the back of her consciousness, pleading and begging to die. But she ignored it. Even as her tongue worked with sensual skill inside the mouth of the daemon, her gaze fixated up above on the vision of herself in the hooves of her Owner.

And the twitch in her cheeks grew stronger, drawing her lips into a wide expression of adulant joy, the bliss of a toy fulfilling its purpose.

And so the pony named Nepenthe looked upon her reason, her meaning, her soul.

And she saw that it was good.

And smiled. She was her Queen’s loyal soldier pony dolly.

And it was playtime.

And all that she had been before, the woman who had been a mother and wife, the victim who had struggled to overcome pain her whole life, the nurse who wanted to be a better being, was…

“Nevermore…” something squawked in Lightning’s ears, and she tumbled with a horrified scream into a wet wooden deck. She hugged herself in a ball, eyes streaming and sobbing.

“I’m Lightning Dust, not Nepenthe…I’m Lightning Dust, not FUCKING Nepenthe. I’m not that thing!”

But there was a hole in her soul, a terrified void into which the horror of what she had just seen, felt, experienced, was pouring like water spiraling down a sink.

“Nevermore…”

“AND SHUT UP!” she screamed, throwing her head back, eyes squeezed shut. “What does that even mean!”

‘Whatever you believe it does…’ something whispered in her own voice. Lightning did not answer. She’d had enough of twisted visions and voices that spoke strange words with her borrowed tongue.

And so she held herself, and wept. She was afraid, and scared...but she was also in grief. She had seen that horror, and come back from it. But that creature...that ‘human’ that had become Nepenthe, she was trapped in that everlasting nightmare.

Because deep down, somehow, Lightning knew that what she had seen, the horror she had escaped, had been real.

She wept for the woman who had wanted to be Nightingale. It was an alien feeling for her, as foreign as the fear she had felt before the lighthouse. Empathy.

The sky above wept as well, soft teardrops of rain settling lightly on her coat and wings. Her stiff, broken wings.

At last she opened her eyes, and saw that she was lying atop a familiar flyer.

Luna: The World’s First Commercial Diesel Princess.

She blinked, and shook her head. No, it said ‘Tugboat’. The World’s First Commercial Diesel Tugboat.

Exhausted from emotion, she pushed herself up onto all four hooves, and took a self-steadying breath.

‘Remember your training. Assess the situation. Work the problem.’

Cautiously, and very aware that this time she was wholly conscious of her surroundings, she examined herself, building a situational checklist in her mind.

Teal coat. Pegasus. No additional limbs, digits or...members. Definately female. Proud and loud cutie mark of a lightning bolt and three stars, though it looked a little bruised in this dim light.

She was herself again. Not a passenger in another’s body, not experiencing something else’s life.

As for where she was...well, that was something else entirely.

She was once again standing on the deck of the tugboat where she’d been recovered by the stallion called Prism Flash...that realisation threatened to overwhelm her with unpleasant memories, but having suffered enough trauma already today she kicked those thoughts down. She had to retain composure, at least for now. And compared to what she had just experienced, her brief time aboard the Luna had been a holiday cruise…

Oh Celestia. That madmare, ‘Revving Engine’, or at least the madmare she’d been turned into...she was like Nepenthe...the same thing had been done to her...oh nononono…

“NO!” she barked, clenching down on herself. “We don’t panic, we don’t freak out. We stay calm, and we work the problem…”

Okay, okay. She had this, she had this.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she trotted around to the prow of the tugboat, to see where it was going.

And stopped, stunned.

’DAMMIT!’

The Luna had changed. Before it had been painted in dirty browns, blacks and shades of maroon, textured with rust and water-rot. Now the superstructure was a dusky blue, the hull a gleaming black. The vessel’s name was picked out on the wheelhouse in silver lettering, and from the single exhaust stack a cloud of stars slowly churned out into the sky, a corona of galaxies and nebulae pouring out behind it like a tail, and spreading out astern…

...over a sea of nothing. To either side a still ocean reached out under a dark and empty sky, with only a faint silver line to mark the horizon. Mist reached in an even blanket over the black water.

And ahead, there was a light, shrouded in clouds. The prow of the boat was pointed right at it.

Lightning stepped up to the forefoot, peering ahead. In the distance she could see a shore, one which seemed to recede away with every second. Beyond it, lit in the fleeting patches of light breaking through the flying cloud-wrack, she could see a green and radiant land. But something about it seemed wrong-the colors too dull, the light cold and pallid like a particularly unforgiving day. Yet she didn’t care. Today had gone beyond the events of a horror movie, beyond even a nightmare. You could at least wake up screaming from a nightmare, or go lucid and blink yourself conscious as you realized none of it felt real. Sometimes, they were even consistent.

Today, however, had been all too real, and none of it had made sense.

“Equestria...that’s home! That’s my home!”

“Nevermore…” an increasingly familiar voice intoned, and Lightning felt a chill wash over her. Turning, she looked up towards the wheelhouse and saw something perched over the teal-green windows.

An ominous shape, all feathers and beak, silhouetted by the light streaming over it from the masthead light.

It was a raven, gazing down at her. Still and silent..she would have sworn it was dead except for the burning light of its eyes, which were fixed on her with stern decorum.

“Nevermore,” it spake again, mocking her in those three syllables. Lightning gritted her teeth and flared her wings, ready to push off and kick the bird in the beak…

...and found her hooves anchored to the planking, stuck to its surface…glued to the monstrous shadow of the bird, cast long across the deck by the lamplight, and slowly inching up over her.

“Get off me! Get off me!” she roared, outrage at the past days events overwhelming fear. “Get the fuck off me!”

The bird tipped its head.

“And don’t say nevermore!” she screamed, even as the silky skin crawled over her cutie-mark...it pulled at her, tried to drag her down.

“Nevermore.”

Fingers grabbed at her, hands of darkness tearing at her wings. Shapes were crawling up out of the bird’s shadow, ghosts with blazing eyes and gaping mouths in which hellish light blazed. They screamed, a wordless howl of rage. Lightning thrashed wildly, her hooves sinking into the pooling oblivion, even as they stretched out to take her.

She saw the woman who had called herself Nightingale at the front, black hands covered in dripping blood.

“Saaaaaaave me! SAVE ME!” the monstrosity slurred. Then its face burst apart, and the pale figure of a dead infant crawled out covered in ichor, moaning in pain and clutching the doll of Nepenthe in its tiny, frostbitten fingers.

Others, billions of the apelike creatures she now knew to be humans, and hundreds of ponies screamed and howled, crying for deliverance, salvation, revenge, and blood.

Her blood. The blood of a pony.

They surged for her, oily flesh foaming into a wave of fingers and writhing tendrils. Lightning screamed as it burst at her…

“ENOUGH!”

Light blazed from behind her, golden and radiant, and the mass of shadows recoiled as if struck. Then, with a feral scream, it drew itself together into a hateful singularity, wings and horn slick with slime, an alicorn of death that threw itself over Lightning’s head and at whoever had spoken..

...and then there was another mare. An Earth Pony mare, creamy and solid. She reached forward, and Lightning threw herself back against the gunwale, whimpering.

The mare drew away, and then slowly lowered herself onto the deck, smiling kindly. A rusty lyre was strapped to her side, and she twitched spasmodically. Her eyes seemed to roll in random directions in time to those spasms.

“Two by two, eyes in blue…” she said, in a voice of a mad prophet, cracked and broken. But there was warmth under it.

She pointed ahead of the boat, from where screams and roaring “Two by two, eyes in blue; me and her, vee and u…”

Lightning slowly turned to see where she was pointing.

The shadowmare was duelling with another alicorn, a minty mare whose streaming mane was woven from silver and gold wire. Her face was regal in wrath as she swooped and dove on her fullspread wings; her eyes blazed like twin suns as she cracked her horn back and forth, hurling spell after spell in battle…

...and where each of those spells hit her opponent, they burnt away the shadow, revealing the monster beneath. Pearly fur, a rainbow mane, rosen eyes narrowed in malice and hate.

Struck speechless with awe, Lightning saw Princess Celestia in duel with the green mare, and did not know who to root for.

“Queen, not Celly, as you don’t know…” the mare beside her corrected softly. “Equestria yours not, this script gone badwise.”

“Who is she?” Lightning whispered, not caring about the broken syntax and mangled words.

The mare carrying the harp scrunched her face, and managed a single coherent burst of language.

“Lyra Heartstrings. Greatest in Equus or Earth. Dead and gone, but not forgotten.”

She smiled with pride, and then her expression broke, one side collapsing into heartwracked sobs.

“And her I am Bonnie.”

Lightning looked at her, and saw a grief that had become so familiar to her in just a few short hours. Unsure of what to do, she slowly stepped closer and pulled the mare named ‘Bonnie’ into a hug.

“I’m dreaming..aren’t I?” she said, maintaining her hold on the shaking earth pony, eyes still locked on the two titans roaring at one another in a cataclysmic storm of magical defiance. The alicorn named Lyra was clearly the younger, yet she traded every blow from the monstrous Queen Celestia like for like, her horn a fiery sword and her body ablaze in emerald light.

The flashes of their collisions threw up huge flares, illuminating a matching battle in the clouds and sea, a war of shapes wrought in storm and spray. One one side arose a swarming army of ponies, churning like grist in a mill as they were hurled into the fray, do close together and numerous that Lightning at first thought they were some solid oozing mass. Against them, outnumbered but cohesive, was a cluster of humans and ponies, holding tight together and lashing back with fist, and hoof, and weapons she couldn't believe.

And yet the swarming ponies seemed to be, slowly, relentlessly, pressing the advantage.

Far beyond the battle, half obscured by a mountain that rose beyond the vision of Equestria, Lightning saw that the light shining over all was not the sun, but a radiant alicorn mare with a scarlet mane and a white coat. As the whole world tore apart, she watched on with silent pain...and pride.

The raven watched on too, not so much as even rustling a feather.

“Dreaming of coruscant you ares,” Bonnie replied. “Envisioning and, handy yup.”

Lyra felt the trembling prophetess reach around and hold her close. “I seize your pains…” Bonnie said through clenched teeth. “And I nose what you can do. There’s greatness in you Dusty...don’t bumblebee afraid to seeker it. Become justice, and seek truth… for there are few ponies left and right to Doo that.”

And then, her hooves hooked around Lightning’s stiff wings, and with a sharp crack, dislocated them.

“Wake and fly...dream not die…” she said, holding Lightning’s head steady as the sudden pain sent the pegasus into a screaming recoil...before letting go, letting her drop overboard.

Lightning hit the water with a splash, and found herself once again writhing amidst living shapes that pulled themselves up out of the black foam. But this time they were ponies.

“You can’t fight us!” they chorused. “We cannot be denied…”

Two sets of hooves grabbed hold of her, threatening to rip her in twain. Panic dulled by shock and pain, Lightning saw she was being held up between two titanic pegasus mares formed from storm and froth.

One had a rainbow mane and tail, her face the very image of cocky contempt.

The other, was Lightning herself.

“You can’t fight us…” she taunted. “You are us…”

And then the sea below split open into a gaping maw, lined with shards of rock over which foam poured into a bottomless void.

“AND YOU’RE GOING TO BECOME US!”

They let her drop. Screaming, Lightning plummeted into the pit, which slammed shut on her…

Forevermore.

And then she woke up.

ABENAKI ROAD, JUST SOUTH OF TRURO

“Jean, elle se rèveiller…”

“Oui, oui…pouvez-vous parler assez bien le francais qu’elle ne peut pas nous comprendre?”

The brown and black mare stirred on the floor of locomotive’s cab. Her pierced ears twitched, and then with a groan she lifted her head, which felt as if it had a chestburster in it.

“I speak french…” she said weakly.

Two humans looked down at her, a older black man and a young woman, practically a girl. He was driving the engine, and she was leaning on the back of his seat.

“I can understand you, idiots,” she clarified. Je parle francais.”

They looked down at her for a long second, and then at each other.

“Sa mere est etait un amstere.”

“Oui, ei son pere odeurs du sureau.”

When she did not react, the girl smirked. “Yeah, you’re screwed. No way you speak French.”

Her accent was British; to the mare’s ears, it sounded smug, invasive. Another outsider.

“Fuckers…” the mare growled. She moved to stir, only to find all four of her legs had been shackled together with two padlocked lengths of chain, which themselves had been looped around the upright for the vacant conductor’s chair. She wasn’t going anywhere, and did not have the reach needed to reach either of them, or the controls.

Where were her guns…oh, cute, hanging over the windows in a rack, along with her saddlebags. Perfect, just fucking perfect...

As her captors continued debating in French, she gave up trying to get leverage on the chain, and instead lay still. She could hear a constant revving hum coming from behind, and the whole cab bumped softly as it rode over the rail joints. Snow flitted past the windows, beyond which she could see frosted, wintry pines gliding by, black on white.

Then the engineer started, and eased the throttle back. The cab bumped sharply, and the squeal of brakes rang out as he brought them to a stop. The mare watched as her two captors peered forward through the windscreen, but chained to the floor, she could not see what they were reacting to.

But her pony ears were sharp, and while she did not speak French, she was fluent in Spanish. There was not much overlap between the languages, but since her change she had found it easier to bridge the linguistic gaps.

And beyond that, phrases like ‘PHL’, ‘HLF’ and ‘Thenardiers’ needed no translation. After listening intently, she laughed snidely.

“Well fuck me on all fours and call me a pony...the boys pulled off a coronary!”

“You tell us what that means,” the girl ordered.

“It means kids, if you don’t know the score why not ask an expert. I didn’t know the old boys were making a move on Nova Scotia, but this sounds like their stuff. A coronary, a seizure of transport infrastructure. What’s happening?”

They whispered quickly in each others ears, and then the man looked at her.

“There’s a barricade across the line, not far ahead. Guys with guns and red signal flares. We’re trying to identify who they’re aligned with.”

“Is the barricade a school bus?” she said, tone sharp.

The glance they shared confirmed her thoughts. “Then it’s the HLF. It’s one of the Thenardier’s best tactics when it comes to holding up trains. Soft-hearted loco crews always stop because they never know if the bus is empty or full of bombs or hostages.”

She laughed again and let her head rest against the floor. “If it is them, then I’m just as fucked as you.”

To her surprise, the girl suddenly stepped away from the engineer and crouched down in front of her, close enough that she could get a buck in if she tried. The girl whipped up a sheet of paper, a familiar set of orders branded with the HLF crest.

The orders calling for her own destruction.

“Is this you? Verity Carter?”

The pony...Verity, nodded slowly. The Brit smiled in response, a nasty grin that bled across her face like a seam unzipping.

“Then you can help us, and in return, I’ll not just hand you over to your old compadres in the HLF. And afterwards we’ll discuss your repayment...”

Verity shuffled around to look her in the eyes. “What do you mean.”

Her captor stood and pulled on a tactical vest that had been hanging over the back of the engineer’s chair. It was dirty and battle-worn, and the letters ‘HLF’ had been crudely burned and scored across the breast, probably with a soldering iron.

“Did that myself…” she said proudly. “Thought I’d look the part…”

Well, it worked. She looked as much the part as anyone else in the HLF’s ramshackle rabble.

“And you can help me pose as one of them…” the Brit said, zipping the vest up tight, and holstering a pistol. “Now, who’s the commander of the Thenardier Guards?”

“Colonel Galt…” she replied, stunned. “Atlas Dagney Galt. He’s the one who’d be leading any attack. But how are you going to pose as a soldier...you couldn’t even shoot one fucking pony last night!”

“Simple...I’m going to present you as our captive. And then you’re going to tell me how you got fixed in the head.”

“What...is that my ‘repayment’?”

“Yes!” the girl snarled, getting down on all fours and pushing her face into Verity’s. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re kind of a fucking unique snowflake right now; a newfoal with a fucking will of her own. So you’re going to help us do our job, and then you’re going to tell me how to heal my whole fucking family! I don’t care what Erika Kraber’s studies said, you’re proof that there is a way, and I want to know!”

If she had wanted to, Verity could have put her hooves through the redcoat’s pretty face. But she didn’t.

Instead, she smiled sweetly.

“Deal. Keep me alive, and I’ll tell you everything I know…”

What followed was a crash briefing of names, ranks, and attitude. The girl, Tess...was healthy and dirty enough to pass for a HLF soldier, but she lacked the proper discipline or bearing. So instead, she had to make up for it by feigning a Napoleon complex.

“Be dominant…” Verity stressed, still chained down, as Jean advanced the throttle and moved them slowly forward. “Don’t give an inch and feel free to wave your gun around. The Thenadiers are macho-macho, they respect a show of balls.”

“Speaking from experience?” Jean quipped sarcastically. Other than the odd comment he had remained silent, but he kept giving Verity the stink eye. Whatever deals she made with Tess, she was certain he didn’t trust her.

Good. He shouldn’t trust anything that walked on hooves.

The engine lurched to a halt just before the barricade, where twin red flares were burning in the fresh snow. Through the windows, Jean-Eric saw men in armor and fatigues approaching his side of the cab, and held down on the horn as they reached for the catwalk railing. This was part of the plan as well, to keep them on their toes.

“Get away from there!” Tess shouted, emerging through the nose door. “That side of the cab was hit with a potion-phial coming out of Hali! You want to get turned into one of those geldos cause of a stupid-ass mistake?!”

The men jumped back, and Tess scrambled down on the opposite set of steps, the tac-vest she wore buckled up tight and both of Verity’s shotguns strapped to her back. Holstered as they was, it would be impossible to see that the stocks and trigger mechanisms had been modified for saddle mounting.

“You! Identifiy yourself!” a voice barked.

“Lieutenant Teresa Jones, HLF First English Battalion…” Jean heard her answer before the door swung itself shut. Through the driving snow he could just see her stepping around to the front of the engine, casually leaning against the coupling as she confronted the small unit’s leader.

“She’s got some smarts…” the pony named Verity said, almost casually, from the floor. “Inking the HLF stamp onto the train’s waybill was cunning. We could do with more minds like that.”

“Be quiet…” he answered coolly, not feeling any of his usual levity.

“Why should I? If this goes tits-up I’m dead anyway, might as well spend my last seconds in friendly conversation.”

“Because pony or person, you rub me the wrong way,” he said, the growl in his voice matching the idling snarl of the diesel motor. “Just listen to you, going on about how clever the HLF are, using school buses to stop trains.”

“Worked, didn’t it?” she smirked.

“Of course it did!” he seethed. “Any engineer would go full emergency on the brakes seeing that parked ahead of them; we watch footage of test collisions at grade crossings in training, we’re made to understand that road vehicles are sardine cans compared with a locomotive under power!”

He stared down at her, eyes burning, and then shook his head.

“Merde! No decent person wants to take out an entire bus of kids! If the HLF use tactics like that… how can they call themselves decent people?!”

“Well, sorry Mr Conductor, but this is war, not Shining Time Station. Everything goes out the window when survival’s at stake. You know the shit going on in Asia and South America. People are eating their own children down there.”

“I’m the engineer, not the conductor…” he answered, jaw clenched and a vein in his neck throbbing. “Tess is the conductor, and you’d better fucking hope she’s well disposed to you after this, because she’s the one making the call on your worthless life!”

He rose out of his seat, peering back down over the locomotive’s nose.

“Now shut your face and play dead, she’s bringing someone aboard.”

Verity, seething, rolled under the conductor’s seat with her face to the wall and went limp, feigning unconsciousness as the door opened, letting in a gust of howling wind and snow.

Tess came up with it, and Verity felt the thud of her drop into the conductor’s chair, the floor shaking as the girl planted a booted foot down either side of her little pony head. Then there was a soft pressure as the cool tip of the 9mm’s barrel pressed gently into the fur on her temple. She forced herself to not tense up.

“Here we are, Master Sargeant Birch. As promised, so delivered,” she heard Tess say smugly.

“Holy fuck!” a male voice answered. “It really is Carter’s traitor daughter.”

‘Dad...and where do I know the name Birch...was he in the Guards?’

There was a momentary silence, and then the HLF master-sergeant spoke again, voice threatening.

“Standing orders are to kill this whorse.”

“That’s changed, Birch,” Tess replied. “We made a successful capture of a former high-ranking operative. Priority now is establishing how deeply she’s betrayed us. What… secrets… she revealed to the horsefuckers.”

‘Birch...Birch...oh yeah, Johnnie Birch, the crazy who thought the ponies were some sort of zionist Illuminati plot cooked up by the Rothschilds and the reptilians…’ She stifled a groan. He was going to be almost physically painful to listen to. Still. Least he’s not part of Glanzon’s Gluemakers…

“John…” she moaned softly, stirring her limbs as if waking. “John, is that you…”

“Quiet, you!” Tess said, genuinely surprised, and jabbing the gun against her head. It was an impotent threat though, Verity had the measure of her now, and she wasn’t a killer...or at least not the kind that could kill with their own hands.

And she had Birch’s measure too. This could be amusing...

“...it’s me, Johnnie. It’s Verity…” she moaned, slowly rolling over to face them, a manic grin on her face and her eyes wide and staring. “We shared a drink once, Johnnie. I know you liked me. Come drink with me again Johnnie...drink deep of the potion of life…”

“Oh fuck, it even sounds like her…” Birch muttered, backing away. “That’s just twisted. God give us strength.”

“...come join me Johnnie, come be a happy slave...frolicing under ther all-seeing eye of illumination. Join our New World Order...our perfect new Babylon, one nation under Satan… living as one under the unrelenting love of our smiling Goddess...”

Birch had gone white as a sheet, stumbling back against the control console. Behind him she could see Jean-Eric the engineer goggling in disbelief.

“Oh sweet Jesus…” the soldier burbled. He looked much the same has he had before her ‘transformation’...right down to the giant Knights Templar cross painted in pony blood on his own tac-vest. “It's all true...I was fucking right about them! They’re…. they’re monsters, I knew it! They were taking people before the portal, you know!”

Nonsense. Superstitious nonsense. Yet something seemed odd about the tirade he was doubtlessly about to launch into.

“Saw it with my own eyes!” he practically screamed, pointing to one eye. “Homeless man… just got taken and vanished! Their hooves round his chest! Everyone called me drunk, but I know...”

Tuning him out, Verity twisted her neck to look up at Tess, turning her head as if she was auditioning for The Exorcist.

“We are your truth…we are the harrrrrbingers of your perrrrrfection,” she giggled, and then with the eye that was hidden from Birch by the angle of her muzzle, winked at the train’s conductor. “The fulfillment of alllllll conspiracy.”

Tess’s head flicked back and forth between her and the panicked sergeant, and then she got it.

“See what I mean, Sergeant!” she said, jumping up out of the seat, a vision of strength and command. “The enemy is at our gates. Their plan to bring all Earth under the aegis of the elites is on the precipice of victory. The PER and the PHL are both puppets of the demonic United Nations, and this creature is the key to their undoing! Colonel Galt has to interrogate it immediately, before the pure American nation, the last bastion of God-fearing humanity is rendered unto the Beast!”

It was having an effect, and so was Verity, who was putting up an admirable backing track of insanity as she thrashed on the floor, slurring out the same nonsense she remembered Birch forcing down the throat of everyone in the Guards. The paranoia and zealotry made him a very effective soldier...it also made him easy to fuck with.

“Prepare the camps! FEMA is ready to declare martial law...the ponies are in play, microchipped and perfect! Novus Ordo Seclorum! Novus Ordo Seclorum!”

Even Jean got into the action, clasping his hands together and fervently praying for deliverance from all evil. Under the threefold attack, Birch had no chance.

“Right!” he stammered. “Oh Lord, save us! Yes, Lieutenant! The Thenardier Guards are ready to serve...”

He scrambled down the steps and threw open the nose door, screaming for the barricades to be cleared. The blast of cold air in the face seemed to clear his head slightly however, and when he turned back into the cab, his expression was more composed.

“We’ve secured access for a mile and a half, up to just short of the town center, but the horesfuckers hold the railyard and the junction. Colonel Galt is leading our assault from an Home Hardware store on this side of town. There’s a spur that kicks back into a grain loader right beside his HQ. Go forward slow, and when you meet Corporal Flamel at the switch track, stop. He’ll help you set back into the siding.”

She saw Tess salute smartly. “Good work, Master-Sergeant.”

Then she looked thoughtfully out of the rear window, back down the line. Jean-Eric looked puzzled, and Verity herself felt a sudden unease.

“We’re the last train out of Halifax, Sergeant…” Tess said, turning back to face him. “There’s no need to hold the rail-line anymore. Disperse your forces here and scatter.”

“I...I can’t Lieutenant. Colonel Galt’s orders are to…”

“When Colonel Galt is made aware of the ponies’ true purpose he’ll confirm those orders!” Tess barked. “Take your men and get them away from here. Get them to where they can do the most for our cause, before the Barrier cuts off your line of escape! That’s an order, Second Lieutenant Birch!”

Birch opened his mouth to retort, and then paused as the last three words sank in. “You’re promoting me to a commission?”

“Yes soldier!” ‘Lieutenant’ Jones nodded, reaching up to clap a hand on his shoulder. “By the authority confirmed in me by our God, our creed, and our species, I confer upon you a battlefield promotion to the rank of second lieutenant. Now rally your men and get them to safety!”

Birch twitched, and then smiled, lifting his own hand in a shaky salute. “Yes ma’am, and God bless you! You do old England proud! You’ve got the fucking biggest dick I’ve ever seen a woman carry! I know you’ll serve the Colonel well!”

Then he scurried down the steps and disappeared off the engine.

“I’m fucking Welsh…” Tess muttered, before smirking. “Dipshit!”

“Good work…” Jean said softly. “You’ve cleared the line for any following trains, and maybe convinced those idiots to keep themselves out of harms way.”

“No, that was fucking stupid!” Verity seethed, pulling herself upright with the meager give in the chains. “Birch is a deranged idiot that should’ve been institutionalized, but he’s very good at his job. Mad dogs are good maulers, but they need to be kept on a short leash - you’ve just turned him loose and stuffed his ass with ginger!”

Ahead, the bus rolled clear of the crossing, and with a blare on the horn Jean throttled them forward, 9782 easing over the road and away into the snow.

“What harm can an idiot like that do?” Tess shook her head. “He’s just a moron with a handful of guns.”

“So’s the fucking Decepticon Justice Division!” Verity screamed. “A guy like Birch isn’t just a paranoid moron, he’s a zealot! All faith and rage and no restraint, just waiting for an excuse! Don’t you get it?!”

Jean simply raised an eyebrow.

Verity tapped a hoof on the wall, making a hollow bang. “Look out the back and tell me what you see.”

Tess shrugged. “May as well humor you…”

She crossed over to behind Jean and pushed the door open a hair, looking back along the length of the accelerating locomotive towards the dwindling crossing. “Okay, so they’re taking people off the bus...it was loaded it seems. Some ponies and people in hospital gowns...and they’re…”

She suddenly screamed in terror and flung the door wide open with enough force that it slammed against the catwalk rail.

“NO! NO!”

“What? What’s wrong!” Jean shouted, trying to spin in his seat.

The sharp rattle of machine-gun fire answered them.

“Congratulations, Lieutenant Jones…” Verity said, sitting down with the chains pooling around her blank haunches. “You’ve just earned your first blood.”

Tess stood limply in the open door, and then she howled.

“I DID IT AGAIN! I FUCKING DID IT AGAIN! THEY’RE DEAD AGAIN!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Jean said, desperately trying to reach behind him to comfort her, and watch the rails ahead at the same time.

“It’s not...it’s not…” Tess said, before slumping down into a slouch against his seat, ass on the floor and arms drawn up tight around her knees, hugging herself with the futile consolation of the damned. But not shedding so much as one tear.

And Verity watched on, rocking slowly to the motion of the engine and the rustling clink of her chains. Though she should have felt smug at the idiot redcoat getting her due, all she could feel was sadness, and a part of her, either the girl she had been or the monster she now was, wanted desperately to comfort her.

She leaned forward, feeling the chains tighten behind her. Useless.

“Idiot…” she muttered, maybe to no-one, or maybe to herself. “Softheart…”

NOT FAR AWAY

Lightning swam up through the darkness, towards a distant light. It flickered and shifted…

A weeping alicorn, hair red as wine…

A toy unicorn, with dull button eyes…

A minty mare, bearing a soul of gold on dreamspun wings…

A mirror, in which she could see herself.

She pushed up, unwilling to die, fired on by determination born of fear. She’d seen horrors, and survived. She was strong, she was brave…

‘There’s greatness in you, Dusty…’

But all she could see, as she came closer to the mirror-light, was a twisted mockery of herself. The eyes were cold, the teeth exposed with vindictive glee.

‘You are us...you will become us.’

She ignored it, steeled herself, and forced herself right up into its leering face. Then, with a defiant yell, she punched through…

...and out into light. She thrashed for a moment, feeling cool linens under her. Someone was moving over her, touching her gently, soothing her. It was a pegasus mare, a nurse in uniform, holding her down and repeating comforting words.

“It’s okay...you’re alright...Rio, get in here...you’re safe, Lightning Dust, you’re safe.”

The words percolated through, and Lightning stilled herself. She was safe?

Catching her breath, she looked around. She was in a hospital...how, how did she get here? She tried to speak, and found her throat was raw.

“Water…” she rasped, and the pegasus nodded.

“We need some wat...oh, thank you Maddy.”

There was someone else present. Lightning turned her head, and recoiled at the sight of an upright, hairless biped of some sort, proffering a glass of water.

Seeing her reaction, the ape-like creature flinched as if struck.

“I’m sorry...” it said..

Seeing that, Lightning chided herself.

‘Human...not an ape, a human,’ she thought, though she wasn’t sure where the words came from. How did she get here...she remembered a lighthouse, and a ship, and then…

...nothing but shadows. And screams...

“Tha...thankyou…” she whispered, reaching to take the glass in her forehooves as the pegasus doctor helped her sit up in the bed.

The human’s eyes beamed at the word of gratitude, although the rest of her expression remained somber. She had short, straight black hair, and almond-shaped eyes. Almost like a Chineighmare’s eyes…and she was small, clearly a child, a filly not yet grown.

“Well done, Maddy…” the pegasus said, gently shooing the child away. “Go find Rio…”

The child nodded, and walked away with prim little steps, moving her arms in sync, fists balled, as if miming hooves. The doctor watched her go, and Lightning thought she saw tears in the mare’s pink eyes, but a proper view was hidden by the glasses she wore.

“Well…” the doctor said, turning to face her patient. “What’s your story. How did you get here, Lightning Dust?”

There was a sharp inflection to the words, as if she was questioning her patient’s very identity. The unspoken accusation rankled Lightning, but calling on newfound powers of restraint, she slowly sipped her water and carefully chose her words.

“I was...in trouble. I was trapped in a lighthouse, somewhere called ‘Maine’. I tried to escape, and was attacked by more of the...humans. Then I was rescued.”

There was more to it than that. Questions, mysteries, and the horrific sound of ‘Revving Engine’s’ gibbering giggles all churned in her forethoughts, but she felt wary about saying too much. Her rescuers were almost certainly the same ponies that casually made ‘Revving Engine’ lose her mind. Admittedly, they’d put her somewhere nice, but something about it all was terrible.

“And before that?”

Before that there had been those voices, those warm, wonderful voices that had left her feeling so cold and worthless. No need to mention that. This mare would think her delusional. Before that…

“I was flying over Ponyville…” she began to recount. “All the newspapers were full of the wedding at Canterlot, the changeling invasion...and this mare who performed a sonic rainboom.”

She paused and sighed, before swallowing a little more water. She could see the doctor was frowning, but she was on a roll now, as if pouring out a confession.

“I wanted that...she’d done it twice before and I wanted that glory. So I left Cloudsdale and headed for Ponyville. I was going to smash the rainboom barrier, prove that I was a great flier...the greatest flier…”

The doctor waited for her rambling recount to trail off, and then gently steered the conversation in another direction. As she did, she used a wing to pull a small fire-fly torch from her coat pocket, and shone it into Lightning’s eyes.

“Humor me with a little cognition test. Tell me about the wedding, everything you remember.”

Lightning frowned.

“It was a month ago...and I wasn’t paying much attention. But I remember thinking ‘where’d this third alicorn come from?’ I didn’t know Princess Celestia had a royal niece!”

“Pegacorn…” the doctor corrected. “Cadenza was a pegacorn, not an alicorn. She couldn’t fly.”

Lightning gently pushed the torch away and looked straight into the doctor’s eyes. “She could too. It said in the news that she made her first proper glide flying to her husband’s rescue…”

...more than that, Lightning had secretly collected several pictures and interview clippings of the glamorous new member of Equestria’s ruling circle. Just to look at those eyes, those colours, and those amazing wings…so broad in span and rich in texture. EqSPN had run an entire feature in their supplemental magazine, predicting the new alicorn’s top speed and flight capabilities, and the figures quoted had turned Lightning’s head as much as Princess Mi Amore Cadenza’s other ‘dimensions’.

She felt herself blush and sped on. “She said in an interview that Princesses Celestia and Luna were personally teaching her to fly.”

The doctor blinked in confusion and then fired off another set of questions. “Alright then. Moving on, what’s your full name.”

“Lumina Dust.”

“What’s your date of birth?”

“What is your cutie mark?”

“What is your home address?”

The inane questions rolled on, with Lightning’s underdeveloped reserves of patience increasingly wearing thin. She tried to flutter her wings, and found they had been bound up. She needed to fly, fly away from here, fly home…

...and fly away from the terrible silence in the shadows of her mind. The silence that had replaced the screams, and which somehow seemed worse.

Then the doctor, whose name, it transpired, was Merciful Light, or ‘Mercy’, asked a final question, and the barb loaded into the way she said it was big enough to hook a hydra

“What year is it?”

“2nd Year Anno Harmonia…” Lightning said, mentally adding a few choice comments about the new calendar.

“Alright…” Mercy said softly, and then extended a helping hoof. “Let’s get you on your hooves…”

Gratefully, Lighting took the hoof and shuffled over to the edge of the bed (’oversized for a pony...’) and dropped onto the floor. At Mercy’s direction, she went through a full range of mobility tests; head, neck, shoulders, torso, legs…

...and finally wings.

As Mercy made a last examination, Lightning noticed something odd. The medical pony was wearing armor. The back of her doctor’s uniform hid it, but at the front of her barrel it opened up to reveal a shining pink breastplate protecting her chest and vital organs. There was even a reinforced collar.

“Are you with the Royal Guards?” she asked, almost, but not quite, innocently. But if Mercy saw the loaded question she did not spring its trap. Instead she hummed softly as she removed the bindings pinning Lightning’s wings to her barrel.

“Raise your wings please.”

Lightning obliged, and found to her relief that her wings opened, spread, and moved with only the slightest of pain, twinges that only made her feel more relieved that her third pair of appendages still worked. A pegasus could lose one or even two legs and still have a reasonable quality of life, but to lose even one wing, to be grounded...that was a nightmare.

“A little strained, but you’re lucky. Once we relocated your wings they showed immediate signs of healing. You’ve got a strong spirit.”

The relief drove away all of Lightning’s questions and doubts, and she suddenly spun around in a triumphant little dance.

“Who-hoo! Oh thankyou, thankyou, thankyou!”

And then she was hugging Mercy, knocking the doctor’s pink-framed glasses askew.

“Ooof! You’re...you’re quite welcome…” she replied, and to Lightning’s surprise, she heard a tearful note in her healers’ voice. Pausing, she looked closely at Mercy, and asked a question that she had rarely asked before.

“Are you alright? Can I help you?”

Mercy’s wings trembled. With the glasses knocked away, Lightning saw black bags under the mare’s eyes. And although her mane had some natural lavender-grey streaks in it, there was also some silver forming too. More than anything, she looked weary, tired. Older than she had any right to be.

There was at most five or six years in difference between them, yet Mercy looked like a pony straining under decades of stress. Something had definitely happened to her… judging by this world of monsters, mad-beings, impossible magic and technology and outright insanity, it was understandable.

“I’m...I’m fine,” the doctor said, using her wings to flick tears from her eyes. “It’s...it’s just been a while since a pony said that to me.”

“Well, I’m saying it now…” Lightning repeated, continuing the hug. “You gave me back the sky...my sky. I won’t forget that. I will never forget that you gave me back to the sky...”

She held tight, and Mercy finally returned the hug, weeping softly.

“Why couldn’t they all have been like you…” she whispered. “Oh Jackie...my poor beautiful JJ.”

The words meant nothing to Lightning, but the emotion was familiar. She understood this pain now, had felt it herself and come through it, damaged but whole. And she wasn’t going to let this mare who had helped her suffer alone.

She held on until the weeping stopped, and when Mercy finally let go, the two of them realised they were not alone.

The human child, ‘Maddy’ had returned. There was another woman with her, an adult, darker-skinned and middle-aged, holding onto the child.girl Both of them were wearing padded clothes that a winterwear look to them.

“You see, Madeline…” the woman whispered, tears in her eyes and her voice cracking. “That’s what it means to be a pony. That is what we will be, when it’s time.”

The words prompted a surprised twitch in Lightning, but she let it pass.

Wiping her eyes properly dry and putting her glasses into place, Mercy made introductions.

“Lightning Dust, these are my friends, Nurses Rio Deneter and Madeline Liu. They helped treat you.”

Surprised, but not terrified, Lightning let herself be led over and extended a hoof in greeting. “Uh, hi!”

The woman, Rio, knelt and took the hoof in both hands as if receiving a blessing. “Thank you so much, Lieutenant Dust. You’ve done so much for Equestria and Earth...”

In the corner of her eye Lightning saw Mercy making urgent throat-cutting motions; something was not right. “Lieutenant...I’m not a lieutenant. I’m not even in a Protective Pony Platoon.”

‘Rio’ lifted her eyebrows in surprise, and Mercy ducked in between them. “Just a little confusion, no need to worry. Guys, could you please go make sure we’ve got everything the HLF didn’t take?”

The two humans nodded and made themselves scarce. The letters ‘PER’ had been stitched onto the back of their quilted jackets. Little Madeline waved a hand as they went, fingers once again balled up so that she looked like an equine waving with her hoof.

“She’s only ten…” Mercy sighed. “Only ten and an orphan in the middle of all this war. I try to help her accept how beautiful a soul she is… but she wants to be a pony. And Rio...she’s suffered worse than most, even before First Contact…”

She turned and looked Lightning in the eye. “You’re not Lightning Dust; you’re not the Lightning Dust I know.”

The accusation should have been a shock, a revelation, but Lightning simply took in everything around her, and echoed Mercy’s own sighs.

“And this isn’t Equestria, or even Equus. Please explain to me what’s going on. So much has happened, and I just don’t understand…”

Redd Flamel heard the sound of a locomotive approaching and stepped off of the railroad line. He gave a quick glance over his shoulder, and confirmed that the derailing boot he had bolted to the track was still in place a hundred yards up the line. The driving snow, growing in intensity all the while, made it hard to see, but the derailer was painted in bright yellow and stood out among the soft whiteness.

“Alright,” he said to himself, the words muffled under the scarf wrapped tight around his mouth. “What’s ‘Batshit Birch’ sent me now?”

He lit two sizzling yellow flares and dropped them either side of the line, then popped the cap on a red one and held it straight up above his head. In railroad parlance, it was a straightforward message, with the exact same meaning that the elevated FAMAS F1 in his other hand held in all other languages.

STOP!

Headlights gleamed on the curve, and a shadow deepened in the blurring snow. Clanking at each joint a mammoth diesel eased up in front of him, and purred smoothly in the gloom. Red livery, with black and yellow hazard stripes on the cowcatcher. Through the snow he could see the letters ‘CP’ picked out in white on the front of the nose. Windscreen wipers flicked like blinking eyes across the glowing cab windows, and above that the locomotive’s road number could be read on the illuminated number-boards: 9782.

Dropping the fizzing flare he waited for a moment to see if anyone would come down to him, observing the rolling steel island of warmth and light, resenting its air-conditioned comfort. The windscreen wipers continued to beat, the motor continued to thrum, and the snow continued to settle. Nothing happened.

Keeping the gun up he slowly circled the engine, noting several iced-over splatters of purple on the cabside windows. A thwarted potion attack. As he passed the rear steps he paused to change the switch track he was guarding, realigning the points back into the spur that led to the grain silos and Colonel Galt’s local base of operations, keeping the engine confined to this section of track and barring it access back down the main line to Halifax.

Then, returning to the machine’s head end, he slowly climbed up the side steps, and reached the nose door. Bracing himself beside it he knocked twice and then cracked it open, ready to fire around the doorframe if needed.

“HLF! Identify yourself!”

“Lieutenant Jones, just out of Halifax...I’ve got a priority prisoner for transport to Colonel Galt.”

The voice was calm, confident, American-accented. It sounded familiar to Redd, and he pressed through with protocol. God alone knew that he wouldn’t swallow whatever it was that Birch took in without some proof. That man was almost as crazy as Viktor Kraber… but at least the stuff Kraber said before he turned to the ponypounders made sense. Most of the time.

“Squawk your ident, now!”

“Jones, Corporal. J-O-N-E-S. Thenardier Guards Infiltration Specialist. Serial number SM40. Unit Passphrase: Phoenix, Arizona. Now stop waving a gun into my engine’s cab and get in here. I need to confirm my orders with you.!”

“No-no, you come down to me.”

“I’m the only one in here with hands Corporal. If I leave the controls, the locomotive shuts itself down. Do you want to try and turn a 4400 horsepower diesel motor back over in this cold, because I sure as fuck don’t!”

Redd whipped himself back against the engine’s nose and considered his options. He could go in and possibly get killed for his trouble, or he could stay out here and hold up whatever mission this Lieutenant Jones had to carry out. The ident she had called out sounded legit, and yet at the same time it felt wrong…

Dammit. This was the problem the HLF suffered from. Distrust and a lack of organization! That, and too many wanting to play soldier, obsessed with the glamor of code-phrases and secrets, coming up with such a myriad of elaborate identifications and naming schemes so opaque to other units that it was nigh-impossible to tell who worked for what. There’d been firefights, terrible pointless gun battles due to poor organization.

‘We want to be saviors, but we fall apart more often than we stand together, and so the best of us splinter off and team up with the pony-pounders. Fuck.’

Rare (if not outright nonexistent) was the HLF unit that hadn’t lost men to desertion to the PHL, or whatever country was willing to accept their services. Even the great units of the HLF, such as the Swiss ‘Glanzon’s Gluemakers’, the Russian ‘Oborots’, the Serpents, the Heidelberg Brigade, Old Skinner’s assortment of units, all had lost some of their best men to the PHL. And in the Pacific, east of the Sea of Japan and in the far south of Asia, the HLF was all but nonexistent, folded into PHL-aligned partisan units. Most famously, there was Angus Reid’s defection back in ‘22, which gutted the numbers of Taskforce Paris.

On top of that, to bolster their numbers, the HLF had been forced to take on numerous unsavory characters in their war. Criminals who hadn’t been evacuated from prison, gangsters, terrorists, mad conspiracists like Birch, men and women of great violence who seemed to revel in the slaughter, and often outright ignored discipline or structure, focusing only on the killing. It wasn’t all of them, but of course the media had seized on the image, painting them all as psychopaths. The most terrible thing, though, was that he couldn’t quite blame the news for demonizing them. After all… they did employ Viktor Kraber and Kagan Burakgazi. He shivered at the thought of those two. Admittedly, whatever the PHL had done to him had allegedly made Kraber somewhat more personable, and he’d been nice to children or dogs, but Burakgazi was simply unfettered. And yet, both of them deserted for the PHL around the same time in a mutual pact, having delivered their respective resignations through brutal, bloody vengeance.

He steeled himself.

‘You want to transform the HLF into something better, make it something the general public are proud of, Flamel, you start here, with yourself. Any alchemy you want to achieve has to be done by your own hand, your own heart.’

“Okay!” he called. “I’m coming in, but keep your hands where I can see them!”

He eased the door open, and stepped into the short access corridor. The first thing that struck him was the upbeat music wafting down from the cab.

“This will be the day we’ve waited for,
This will be the day we open up the door!”

The second was an unholy stench coming from the chemical toilet compartment to his right. Grabbing the door handle he pulled it open from the side and glanced through the gap at his eyeline over the hinges. No-one was hiding in there.

“I don’t wanna hear your absolution,
Hope you’re ready for a revolution!”

Opposite the toilet was the locomotive’s handbrake wheel. Keeping his FAMAS aimed up into the cab proper, he reached over with one hand and began to turn it.

“Welcome to a world of new solutioins,
Welcome to a world of bloody evolution…”

“I’m setting the handbrake!” he called up. “Do you have any objections?”

“None,” came the cheerful reply. “But please remember to turn out the lights and lock the door if you’re the last one out.”

That got a chuckle from him as he wound the wheel tight, pinning the brake shoes on the engine’s leading wheelsets. “You’ve got a sense of humor Lieutenant, that’s rare these days.”

“And you’re following protocol to the letter Corporal. That’s admirable. HLF has a bright soul in you.”

He felt a small rush of pride, and did his best to not let it get to him.

“In time, your heart will open minds,
A story will be told,
And victory is in a simple soul!”

The song ended as he finished the job. With the brake wheel wound to the stops, he carefully tugged off his woolen gloves and made sure he still had decent finger-flexion, blew on them a few times to help circulation.

“Alright, I’m coming up the steps!”

He went up the short flight one step at a time, sweeping the gun across the cab. As his head came up level with the top of the cover provided by the workstations he crouched, and then rose quickly to sweep the cab, then dropped back down. Up, then down again, then two strides forward and into the centre of the cab, gun held safely down.

There was no danger. Only a single pony chained up beneath the conductor’s seat, and a pale-faced young woman sitting ramrod straight at the engineer’s position, one hand on the controls. The only weapons he could see were two shotguns laid out on the conductor’s workstation. Spotting the modified trigger mechanisms he snorted derisively.

‘Pony-rigged. Almost impossible for a person to fire, and practically useless to a quad not wearing a saddle on which to mount them. Junk!’

Finally he turned to the young woman. She had unzipped her tac-vest, and was staring at him with huge, haunted eyes. She looked shaken.

“Lieutenant Jones?” he asked, snapping off a smart salute.

“Hi…” she said weakly, waving one hand and managing a frail smile. Redd felt danger looming immediately. “Welcome aboard...”

He dropped the salute and brought his F1 up in a single fluid action. She went even paler and pressed back into the seat.

“Your voice...your accent,” he growled. “You’re not the person I was speaking to.”

“No,” someone replied casually. “But I am.”

No, not someone. Somepony.

Redd spun round and aimed down at the mare secured on the opposite side of the cab. She smirked at him.

“Good job soldier...but not good enough. You had the situational awareness down perfect, but you just blew it at the ten-yard line.”

And Redd felt a wall of cold air strike him from behind as the rear door, to which his back was now facing, burst open, and someone threw themselves into the cab and slammed an elbow into the small of his back.

The F1 flew out of Redd’s hands, but was kept within reach by the strap looped around one of his shoulders. The young rebel tried to spin and get traction on his attacker, but at that moment the chained-up mare shot forward as far as she could and bit him hard, just above the ankle, clenching on with an animal’s jaw strength. His feet were booted and padded with several layers of clothing, but he still yelled and went down hard.

“Go Tess!” he heard the man pinning him yell. “Go now!”

“We can’t, he set the handbrake!”

“Then unset it!” the man screamed back. Redd managed to get his elbow into his attacker’s sternum, and was rewarded with a gasp of pain. The resulting slack gave him enough reach to grab the F1 and spin onto his back, snapping the pony mare off his ankle with momentum…

“Hold it!” he yelled, pinning the girl in the assault rifle’s line of fire before she could jump out of the engineer’s seat. “No-one goes anywhere!”

Lying on his back he checked his sides. The mare was slumped against her side of the cab, nursing where the chains had cut into her ankles. The dark-skinned man who had jumped him, surely in at least his mid-fifties, had pulled himself into a seated position up against the back bulkhead, one hand pressed to his stomach.

“I SAID SIT DOWN!” he screamed again as the girl, face white except for two swollen green eyes, slowly eased herself up onto her feet. One hand slowly reached for the door handle behind her…

...the other was holding a handgun. He recognised it as a Beretta M9, US Army standard sidearm.

He also saw how she was shaking as she held it, barrel towards him. She had the safety off, well done to her for that, but the wobble betrayed her: she didn’t have a killer’s instincts.

‘...but it doesn’t take a natural killer to commit manslaughter. A fool with a gun is just as dangerous as a soldier.’

He didn’t lower his own gun, working to resume control of the situation, break the standoff.

“Drop the gun, girl…” he said. “If you don’t, I guarantee I can cut you down before you can even so much as squeeze the trigger!”

“You won’t shoot…” she said, voice shaking. “You wouldn’t shoot a human.”

The letters HLF were scored deep into one breast of her tac vest. They seemed to burn their way into his own vision. She might have thought it gave him doubt...instead it fired his resolve.

“I would!” he snapped back, pulling off the safety and hauling back on the bolt, loading a round into the bullpup rifle’s chamber.

He could...couldn’t he?

The girl’s free hand tightened on the handle and she pushed it out, letting in a flurry of snow.

He could.

The gun leapt in his hand as he pulled the trigger, spitting out a fat stream of bullets. The recoil threw him wide and to the left, swinging away from the girl and smashing the driver’s side window. She fell back out of sight through the door with a scream, and he heard the Beretta discharge as she toppled, the shot firing wide. Redd leapt up, ignoring the pain in his ankle, and hurled himself to where she had been standing so that he could cover the cab and watch the rear catwalk at once, standing with his back to the smashed window.

“Now...I’m in fucking charge here!”

The engineer was still slumped winded against the back bulkhead’s wall of fuse boxes and access panels. The girl was flat on her back, sprawled down the short flight of stairs onto the catwalk, her body holding the door open. She was taking short, clenched breathes and clutching the wrist of her gun-hand; the recoil had probably sprained it.

“You two are alright…” he said, chest heaving. “Just stay down and don’t fuck with me!”

Then he slowly drew his sights on the third target.

“But not. The. Fucking. Newfoal.”

He lined up on the mare and this time, squeezed the trigger gently...

...the FAMAS jammed with a crack...

...and Tess Jones, broken, hurt and betrayed, kicked him in the wounded ankle with all the strength she could muster.

“FUCK!” he howled, dropping the gun and stumbling back against the window. He flailed for the frame and missed, slicing his arm on the broken glass shards that lined it, scattering them everywhere like translucent daggers.

He screamed again, and slowly sagged against the back of the engineer’s head, holding himself up by its headrest.

“Get him out!” the mare screamed. Redd lolled his head drunkenly in her direction. His vision swum...why was his arm burning.

“GET HIM OUT OF THE CAB! LOOK AT HIS ARM!”

Her words penetrated the sea of shadows scunning inside Redd’s skull and he looked down at his arm...seeing the glass shards, the running blood, the spreading bruises…

No. Too purple to be bruises...too bright and vibrant.

No. No, no, no!

His trembling good hand reached for a splinter of glass piercing his wrist, pulled it out. Scarlet, arterial blood splurted on the floor. Redd didn’t care. His eyes, terrified, were focused on the purple residue speckled on the glass, mingling with his own fluids...

‘Potion...there was iced-over potion on the engineer’s window…’

And as he watched, his fingers twitched, shook, and slowly began to fuse together.

He should have screamed. He should have howled. But instead, something in his mind spasmed…

...and he felt himself begin to smile. A red cheshire smile as his muscles drew tighter than they had any right too, and tore.

...the shadows in his mind tore apart as well, and the Sun broke through.

He began to laugh, to shriek with deranged glee. He didn’t stop, not as his body twisted and bubbled, not as his mind bent, and not as the engineer rose up and flipped him, a mass of alchemised flesh, out of the window and into the snow.

Jean-Eric gasped, keeping his own bare hands away from the jigsaw of potion-tipped glass. It was all over the controls, his chair and the workstation. He swore silently, turned towards the catwalk, and dragged Tess back onto her feet and into the cab with him.

“Wait!” she cried, cradling one wrist. “The pistol! I lost the pistol!”

“No time!” Jean urged. “Get in before he finishes changing!”

Both of them struggled to ignore the sounds coming from track level outside the broken window as they slammed and wedged the back and nose doors shut. Both also struggled to not inhale deeply. Potion in a frozen state was safe enough except for direct skin contact, but if it warmed up…

“Can’t touch the controls…” he winced as they fell down to one side of Verity, none of them much caring about her shape or attitude anymore. “Can’t go forward or back even if I could shift us….he changed the switch behind us and set a derail ahead of us!”

The mare had a hoof on the dropped rifle, her eyes dull.

“FAMAS F1…” she said, poise and tone hollow, desperately trying to distract herself from the suffering outside. “French. Useless piece of crap. Disposable 25-round plastic magazines some genius decided could be reusable… jam like crazy. He should have gone for a G2. Or hell, he’s in Canada, could have gotten a Colt C7. Plenty of things he could try. ”

Jean looked down at her hoof, and then over at the lethal workstation. “If I unchained you…”

The question was left hanging. Could you drive us out of here?

“No,” she shook her head, her voice a frightened whisper. “I don’t know what that potion would do to me… I’m not risking that.”

Jean sighed and hung his head low. From outside the sounds of a life being mutilated had dwindled into a quiet series of snuffling sobs, and finally silence.

Not any more.

“Come out!” they heard the newfoal shout. “Come out and plaaaaaaaaay with meheehee!”

“Go fuck yourself!” Tess shouted back with surprising force. “Take some of that broken glass and stuff it up your sheath!”

“Oh it doesn’t hurts! It doesn’t hurts so gooooooooood!” came the answering moan. “Come out of your pretty red monster and play….red like meeee...Petticoat Red, that’s me. That’s meeeeeee!”

He continued to giggle, a mad lyrical outpouring.

“Red monster, red engine, come die with me!
Red button, red button, push it, yippee!”

“Oh shit…” Jean muttered, cracking his head back against the wall. “He found the emergency fuel stop.”

An alarm bell screamed for an instant, and then the whole cab gave a shudder as the motor shut off. Lights flickered and dimmed as they switched over to battery power, and the windscreen wipers stopped mid-swing. All that could be heard was the soft howl of the wind through the broken window.

In one instant, locomotive 9782 died, reverting to four hundred thousand pounds of inert steel.

And the three figures trapped inside, huddled against a wall from fear of potion inside the cab and a maddened newfoal outside, could only wait for their own deaths.

“What are you?” Tess said at last, looking across at Verity. “You’re a newfoal, but you’re afraid of potion.”

“I never said I was a newfoal!” she answered roughly, before flicking her eyes down in apology. “Look, I lied. I told you what you wanted to hear, to stay alive. But I’m not a newfoal...I’m not the cure for your family.”

“Iesu, Dafydd and Dduw yn y nefoedd!” Tess hissed, mirroring Jean in whacking her head back into the conductor’s seat. Her teeth were gritted, and Jean, looking sideways, almost wished he could see tears in her eyes, just so he could know if she was feeling rage, regret, or despair.

“Why don’t you cry?” he asked at last, as gently as he could. “You seen enough shit the past hundred miles to make a grown man bawl his eyes out. But not even a glint.”

“It’s private Jean…” she said at last. “My pain, my life, my rules. How about you? When’s the last time you cried?”

“Six months before CERN,” he answered without hesitation. “Was bringing forty cars of coal down through the Matapedia valley when I saw a car parked across the track...SUV.”

“Was...was it a breakdown?” Verity asked quietly. “Did they get out?”

“No...and no…” he said, and pinched his eyes. “Suicide...she had her kids in the car with her. And I could see...I could see it coming along the straight from a quarter mile away, but I had too much weight on to check in time. I was blowing the horn, dumped the air brakes into emergency, screamed for them to move...please move…”

Tentatively he reached out and put an arm around each of them. His shoulders twitched. “Two girls...two kids. I could see them staring up at me as I bore down on them. They died instantly.”

He hugged them, hesitantly. Verity stiffened, but Tess leaned in sideways and rested her head against his shoulder, looking up at the snowflakes flitting past the window.

“That was years ago,” she said at last. “You’ve not cried since?”

“Yeah…” he sighed. “I was laid off for ‘compassionate reasons’. Came back after the war started. Saw horrors that made those girls deaths look like a mercy. But by that point, I had no more tears left to shed.”

He tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Guess you’re the same way, huh?”

“Guess I am,” she answered. Then he felt an unexpected nudge to his other side, and realised Verity was now trying to draw herself in close to him as well.

“It was a mercy…” the creature in the guise of a pony said, in what sounded almost like a comforting tone. “You spared those girls all this crap we’ve had to swim through. Years of blood and blast…”

Her ears were drooping low either side of her head, and her mane and tail were sagging. Newfoal she may not have been, but she sure had a pony’s body language. He raised his arm so that she could curl under him, and gently scratched behind her ears. Against her will she gave a soft sigh. Yup, Pony nervous system too. Close up he could see her muddy mane was actually black with deep, burgundy waves, curling softly at the ends. Like blood and oil.

“We’re going to die here…” Tess asked. “Aren’t we?”

“Fuck we are…” Verity muttered. “Of course we’re all going to die. Either by the ponies, or by our own hands...hooves, whatever. People were screwed in their heads long before CERN. We’re just fucking motes of dust swirling into a drain, and too busy trying to drag each other down with us rather than trying to climb out.”

Then she lashed out with one hoof, connecting it smartly with the conductor’s workstation. Shaken loose, her two shotguns, balanced on top where they had been left in plain sight for ‘Petticoat Red’ to see, tipped off and clattered onto the floor. Tess’s Ipad fell with them, its padded case protecting it in the fall.

“But not fucking today!” she hissed, and tipped her gaze back to meet Jean’s. The blue rings around the edges of her irises seemed to flare, like warning marks.

“Unchain me...and I’ll put ‘Petticoat’ to sleep,” she said softly. “I just need the right...music.”

*

‘Petticoat’ staggered up and down the side of the locomotive at rail level, his hoofprints wearing a wobbling line into the snow. The ballast beneath crunched pleasantly under his hooves...his lovely new hooves.

He giggled again. He’d never laughed so much in the whole of his old life. Now he wanted to do nothing but laugh and sing and cry inside. Part of him, deep down, was constantly screaming in rage and frustration, but it couldn’t get any grip on the chains binding his every thought, reduced to a senseless, mindless howl struggling for purchase. Every time he felt it flare, felt it colliding with his wonderful new paradigm, the burst of emotion was suddenly siphoned away, soaring off into some unseen and terrible horizon in which countless faint voices screamed forever…

And that moment of fire, that sense of self-annihilation, burned and pleasured him like no womare ever could…

So good. It hurt so good. And it never went away. The screaming mote of pain inside him wasn’t fading, wasn’t dwindling, and he clung tight to it, clung to it to feel the pain, and to inflict it, to torture and terrorise what remained of his hateful human self…

All for His Queen. His glorious, eternal Goddess.

There were other humans here too, cowering in the red steel abomination. He could feel them, feel three motes of light singing their notes of discord, singing out against Her Light. Good for them...so good….they would hurt so good just like him, just like they all did, and that’d be all wonderful. They would scream and sing in the chorus of mastubutory self-destruction, burning forever in the radiant nuclear fire of Her Sun…

Sun...Son...he was her son now, a child of perfection...the hiding ones had to know this pain, this glorious pleasure. They had to serve it too, and make others serve…

Yes.

Yes.

YES-YES-YES!

He shuddered again as he felt that howl snuffed again, felt his whole perfect pony body flare with orgiastic bliss…

Then he heard the music. Angry, raging music…

“Death surrounds,
My heartbeat slowing down,
I won’t take this world’s abuse,
I won’t give up, I refuse!”

The words slammed into him like a sack of bricks, feeling the rhythm lighting more of those hot collisions in his soul. Something stirred in him, something disgusting and gross and human, but even as it rose up inside him, his perfect pony self grew stronger, happier, bigger in his mind. His smile widened, and he shook with bliss.

“Oh yes! Oh MY Queen YES!”

He was so enraptured that he nearly caught a shotgun slug right between the ears in the back of his skull, but the spell matrix binding his mind simply tugged a string and he spun, beaming like a soul enraptured and horn flaring with newly discovered magic.

Spells! He could cast spells!

The bullet cooked in mid-air, incinerated in a standing field of magic. Giddy, Peticoat mentally fumbled for more magic, and to his momentary disappointment found only that option available to him…

‘That’s a shaaaaaaaaammmmmm-eeee wants! That’s what She wants me to have! That’s all I need and that’s all well and all well and all that my unworthy self should ever need!’

He dropped the field of ionised fire and looked beyond, seeing a mare standing beside the locomotive’s nose. She was holding something yellow in her mouth...and he dimly recognised it as the derailing boot Redd Flamel had set on the track.

Then with a whipcrack of her neck she hurled it at him, and he caught the lump of metal in another cocoon of fire. The two disgusting human weapons strapped to her saddle barked, the slugs impacting in the snow.

“Fuck! They ruined the calibration!” she swore. So bright, so alive! Her eyes blazed. But she wasn’t right...he could tell. Not really a pony.

Not yet! But soon!

“This is how it feels when you’re bent and broken!” the music continued to scream. “This is how it feels when your dignity is stolen! When everything you love is leaving! You hold on to what you believe in!”

The words were familiar, but unimportant. All that mattered was the pleasure, the joy of being raped, the promise of raping another. This beast, this human in stolen fur, he needed to defile her, to make her like him!

Petticoat made eye-contact as she adopted a fighting stance. The guns she wore clicked as fresh slugs were chambered. She shouldn’t be wearing them, she shouldn’t exist!

Dirty, improper, unperfect!

“Let’s dance, little pony!” Verity hissed.

*

“Merde!” Jean swore as he slammed shut a control panel in the cab. “One of his bullets went through the ‘start engine’ relay. I’ve got the battery knife-switch set for start, reset the fuel pumps and closed all the circuit breakers, but I can’t actually bring the power on!”

“Is there another way?” Tess called from down in the nose corridor, where she was taking the handbrake off. Inside she wondered if it might have been the one shot she got off that might have hit that control panel...

“Yeah, in the actual engine bay, out on the catwalk, right above where they’re fighting…” Jean replied, and in the corner of his eye saw her tense. “Oh, no girl, don’t you dare!”

But before he could lunge for her Tess had already thrown open the nose door and was scrambling down off the front of the engine, zipping up the armored tac-vest as she did.

“Just get her ready to start!” she called up, circling round on the other side from the fighters. Jean paused, cursed again and clambered back to his control-desk, perching on his chair’s armrest. He had on a pair of woolen gloves that had been found dropped on the floor, and as he gingerly stepped up to the controls he pulled Tess’s old gas-mask over his face. The Second World War relic stank of sweat and old rubber, but it should hopefully protect him from inhalations.

“Right…” he muttered, voice distorted so much that he sounded like the French-Canadian cousin to Darth Vader. “Throttle shut, reverser in neutral, brakes in suppression.”

He reached out and flicked a switch. “Set to run…”

The alarm bell began to scream…

*

Verity screamed obscenities as she whirled and jumped, trying to avoid bolts of crackling fire that were being hurled by the unicorn newfoal. It was dancing and prancing over the snow like a child at play, whipping its horn in every direction and evading her attempts to put a bullet in in.

All the while, Tess’s Ipad, sitting in her saddlebag, continued to scream out a song of defiance, a song that every member of the Thenardier Guards knew…

“No! Not gonna die tonight!
We’re gonna fight for us together!
No we’re not gonna die tonight!”

It seemed to be having an effect as she and the animal sparred at long range. It was moaning in sadistic pleasure in tune with every chord, a warbling, perverting ullulation that rose and fell to the music.

She’d seen this before, seen an entire mess-hall of the HLF’s best turned by a potion-attack, and seen the resulting newfoals acting in this same way, mentally stroking themselves off to the tunes playing on the unit’s old MP3 speaker set.

It disturbed and sickened her, but she remembered it, and planned around it.

“Break their hold!
Cause I won’t be controlled!
They can’t keep their chains on me
When the truth has set me free.”

Yes, fucking yes. As the newfoal’s attention faltered in sync to the powerful shriek of the singer, Verity hurled herself forward in a gallop, getting into close range and spinning in a fierce buck, sending Petticoat flying into a tree. His only response was to giggle again, even as he tumbled into the snow.

Then his horn flared, and she felt an unwelcome tingle as a magical field wrapped round her.

‘Oh shit, I forgot all unicorns know that TK shit!’ she had time to think, before she was abruptly thrown off her feet by the non-Newtonian force and shot straight back into the 9782. She slammed into the locomotive’s side, her weight bashing a huge dent in the engine cowling. Somewhere nearby she could hear an alarm ringing as she dropped onto the catwalk…

...landing right next to Tess, who had been trying to get up onto the engine from behind.

“What the fuck are you doing here!” she shouted, her stolen Earth Pony physiology not even leaving her winded from the blow. A little sore, but still fired for full steam ahead battle.

“Saving our asses!” Tess blurted out. “And don’t break my iPad!”

“This is how it feels when you take your life back
This is how it feels when you finally fight back
When life pushes me I push harder
What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger!”

“Two for two!” Petticoat tittered, looking up at them from the trackside. “Two for two, ready to go!”

“Go!” Verity shoved Tess forward. “Whatever you’ve got to do, do it now!”

Tess scrambled forward on fours and grabbed hold to one of the access doors to the engine compartment, just as Petticoat jumped up onto the catwalk between her and Verity.

“Who’s first!” he screamed. “Who’s first to join my family! We’ll crack your minds and drink down your problems till smilies are all that’s left!”

Verity jumped onto his back and he threw her off with a telekinetic shove. Eyes rolling, spittle frothing at the corners of the mouth he turned to Tess, who was dragging herself up by the catwalk railing.

“You first!” he shrieked. “So much pain and self-hate! You’ll blaze like lightning! BURN!”

He dropped his head and aimed his glowing horn. Without thinking she grabbed the engine compartment latch and swung the sheet metal door open straight into the newfoal’s face. There was a crack as his horn took the brunt of the impact, and a flash as the incineration spell backfired. Hands pressed to the open door, using it as a shield, Tess listened to his sudden screams of pain and shuddered…

“This is how it feels when you back your life back!
This is how your life feels when you fight back!”

The catwalk shook, and she heard Jean yelling as he threw open the cab door. “The ‘start’ button Tess! The ‘start’ button! Push and hold it!”

She could see it, just inside the engine bay. An upright control panel with several buttons on it. With one hand she reached out and held down on the one marked ‘Engine Start’. The distant alarm bell began to ring even louder.

The metal door was heating up under her hands…

The immense motor, the size of a truck, coughed, and then began to chug and rumble as each of the sixteen cylinders struggled to turn over in the cold. Her other hand still holding the door open against the thrashing, screaming newfoal, Tess squeezed her eyes tight and hoped...

The rumbling, bellowing diesel motor spluttered, whooped and then, with a colossal belch of exhaust gas, caught itself. The alarm cut out and she took her finger off of the button, feeling the power of the locomotive surging through her feet…

And then the newfoal hurled itself against the door and slammed it back onto her, knocking her down onto the catwalk.

Petticoat rose over her, his horn burnt and his skin blistering where his own magical flames had turned back on him. One of his eyes watered incessantly, and the other was a burst, runny, ruin.

“Die!” he hollered. “Die and burn! Die-die-die!”

Despite his horrific burns he never stopped smiling, or giggling. Tess, horrified, spread her hands back to try and push herself up…

...and felt one land on something cold and deadly. The pistol.

“You won’t take Her blessing!” he screamed. “Why won’t you accept it! YOU MADE ME TAKE IT! YOUR FAULT! YOUR FAULT!”

Tess closed her hand on the gun, swung it up and around...and once again felt herself freeze at the last moment. Even now, even in the face of her death, she couldn’t…

KA-BANG!

The entire top half of the newfoal’s head tore away, two shotgun shells reducing everything between eyes and jaw to red paint. Tess didn’t move or scream as it splattered over her, just stared in mute horror as the furry corpse slumped off the catwalk...still grinning even in death.

With a pitiful clatter, the pistol fell from her hands and onto the metal deck.

The motor roared as Jean-Eric opened the throttle, and ‘82’ smoothly purred forward, away from the switchtrack and further into the town center. The snow continued to fall, swirling around her, stained pink where it landed in the splattered blood.

Verity Carter appeared through the fall, the twin barrels of her shotguns steaming softly as she approached along the catwalk. Her expression was grave, her eyes shadowed and stern.

“You choked…” she said bluntly. “If I hadn’t been here, you’d be ash or goo under his hooves.”

She sat facing Tess, the two of them swaying with the motion of the accelerating locomotive. With one hoof she reached forward and drew the pistol towards her.

“Beretta 9mm,” she explained. “Simple to use, clean and maintain. You treat it right, and it won’t fail you.”

She looked up and met Tess’s eyes, the strange colouration of her own holding the other girl transfixed. “But that’s no good if you can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger.”

She pushed the gun back along the rocking catwalk into Tess’s fingers. “This is your gun now, your best friend.”

“I can’t…” Tess replied in a hushed voice. “I can’t kill…”

“BULLSHIT!” Verity snapped and slammed her hoof on the engine’s side. “Anyone can be a killer! Children and foals can be taught to take a life, and they do! It’s no longer about IF you can kill; it’s WHY you kill that matters, because that’s the only choice left to you! So, are you going to be a mindless killer, a butcher, or are you going to be a soldier, someone who kills only when they have to? Look around you. World’s gone mad, and you need to step up.”

“I’m not a soldier…”

“YOU’RE FUCKING DRESSED AS ONE! YOU FUCKING PRETENDED TO BE ONE! YOU GAVE ORDERS AND DRESSED DOWN A FUCKING HLF PSYCHOPATH! YOU CLAIM TO BE THE TRAIN’S CONDUCTOR, IT’S COMMANDING OFFICER, SO START ACTING LIKE IT!”

Tess didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. Instead, she slowly reached forward and picked up the Beretta, holding it up in the palm of one hand as if it was a strange and possibly dangerous animal she had only just discovered.

Distant gunfire could be heard either side of the line, shadows on two and four legs flitting between abandoned houses and businesses. The PHL and HLF were trading fire, blood and thunder for the Hub of Nova Scotia.

Then, brakes squealing, they drew up in a triangular junction of tracks, a rail-bound island of land that at one end opened up into a yard of parallel sidings. New figures in military fatigues stepped forward, their motions crisp and professional. Their equipment and fatigues, while still ragged from use, looked somehow more… natural on them. Their weapons looked almost new, bearing the signs of PHL enchantments, and, unlike the HLF, they had not been reduced to using jury-rigged hand and pipe-cannons as their primary armament.

“I helped you get this far,” Verity finished, taking a step back. “But from here, you’re on your own.”

She dropped something from her saddlebag, and then leapt down to the trackside in a single bound. Tess looked down at her silent Ipad, then cradled her face in her hands and let out several broken, dry, sobs.

“Halt!” someone called. “This yard is under the jurisdiction of the PHL/UN joint forces. Are you the locomotive Halifax sent us?”

“They are…” she heard Verity respond. “I was just along for the ride. Please direct me to your C.O. immediately, and give these poor bastards all the help you can spare. Right now they’re both out of their depth.”

Truro, Nova Scotia. They’d arrived at last.

Tess just wondered what she had lost along the way.

*

“What…what does this mean?” Lightning said in confusion, staring at a floating image of several oscillating lines of light flowing across a chart.

“It’s proof that something strange has happened to you, little mare lost…” Mercy said softly, studying a spinning crystal that was hovering over Lightning’s head and projecting the illusory chart. The medi-mare had identified it as a ‘plumbob’...a device for measuring the magical state of a patient.

‘Magic from the Crystal Empire’, wherever that was.

“That teal line there…” she explained, pointing. “That’s your unique Thau/S identifier, your magical signature charted as a wave. 12.04.21.19.20 Gigasparks at an amplitude of 16.05070112151920 Microswirls.”

Lightning shifted uncomfortably, uneasy at the idea that she could be expressed as a series of lines and numbers. It made it feel like science knew more about her than she herself did.

“It should be the only line displayed here”, Mercy continued, before indicating a cluster of waves laid over one another. “But there’s several others. Ponies always fall within specific Thau/S ranges, so I can’t even begin to understand what these six outliers represent, except that they all share a common amplitude: 12.08011813151425 Microswirls, and running at such a high frequency that the plumbob can’t even properly detect them.”

She pointed again. “Same with the last line there, the dark blue one off by itself, tag-along number seven. It’s somewhere in the pony ranges, but too faint to measure exactly.”

She reached up with one wing and snatched the plumbob out of the air, cutting off the chart.

“So...does this explain what’s happened to my cutie-mark?” Lightning asked hesitantly. She had at first thought that it had bruised, but now that she had been washed and cleaned she could see that something more profound had occurred.

The same twin lightning-bolts still rode loud and proud on her flanks, but the six stars beneath had changed colour, each to a unique and distinct shade. Lavender, red and blue on one side, and orange, purple and pink on the other.

She should have felt panicked...terrified. Something had freaking changed her cutie-mark, the expression of her truest self, her destiny...instead, amidst all of this madness, she found the strange alteration somewhat comforting. It left her feeling that something...those voices that had plucked her out of Ponyville’s sky perhaps, had brought her here for a purpose. That give her flagging ego a slight adrenaline boost, which she really needed at this time.

“I honestly don’t know,” Mercy sighed. “All I know is that I’ve operated on the ‘real’ Lightning Dust, and you are not her. You’ve got none of her attitude, or her battle-scars.”

She pushed her glasses up, and the light streaming in through the room’s window glinted coldly off them. “You’re almost a glimpse of what Lightning Dust should be...would have been without the war.”

“The war…” Lightning Dust repeated, fresh questions pressing back upon her. She stepped away from Mercy, towards a map of this world that hung on one wall, and stared at it long and hard.

“I still can’t get my wings to catch that draught…” she said aloud, in what should have been disbelief, but instead came out as an accusation. “Equus made contact with another world, possibly even another dimension, and the first thing that happened was that we all went to war?”

“Not quite like that…” Mercy sighed, staring out of the frosted window into a wintry landscape of dark trees and buildings, before slowly looking down to study a handheld photograph. “It was just Equestria that went to war...against everyone and everything else.”

They had relocated to the hospital administrator’s office, which possessed the necessary wall-map on which Mercy had been able to explain to Lightning at least some of their situation. Lightning’s guesses at the lighthouse about her geographic location on the surface of the globe were roughly correct...it just wasn’t her native planet.

She had been shown ‘Maine’ (definitely spelt with an ‘i’) on the map, and Mercy had gone into detail about how after Lightning had been rescued, she had been brought here, the Colchester County General Hospital in Truro, Nova Scotia, a flight of some three hundred and sixty miles miles over a body of water identified as the ‘Bay of Fundy’.

“They were planning to extract you straight through to a Forward Operations Base, just past the Barrier, but realised that taking you through it with human food and drugs in your system might possibly kill you. So instead, they located a hospital and took it…”

“When you say ‘took it’, what do you mean?” Lightning asked warily, eying with some unease a drying purple stain that spread right across the office’s desk and one wall. It was magic, a tingle in her wings told her so...and a sickly feeling in her stomach warned her that it was no good form of magic either.

“The rainbow-maned bast...sorry, Prism Flash…” Mercy hissed. “He made a deal with the leader of a local group of human insurgents...some like-minded monster named Galt...the hospital was under heavy guard by defending forces. Equestria would ‘purge’ the hospital, then Galt’s troops would raid it for supplies, and withdraw...we could then come in and make use of what was left.”

“And you are?” the teal flier pressed, growing more and more alarmed at the story opening up to her, but needing to know the whole scope.

“Madeline and Rio are with a group called the PER...Ponification for Earth’s Rebirth. They support the Salvation Army and Equestria’s annexation of this world. I’m their little group’s pony liaison...the three of us were brought in while Prism Flash ‘secured’ access to this place. I did triage on you and kept you sedated in the air until we could get you into a safe environment to treat your wings.”

Her eyes went back to the photograph, and this time Lightning tried to get a decent view of it. She could see Mercy in it, a younger and happier Mercy, draped over the shoulders of a human mare with black-and-red streaked hair and a cocky, vivacious grin on her face.

“Who was she?” she asked at last.

“Jacqueline Jophish…Jackie...my JJ...” Mercy answered, in a voice so devoid of emotion that it screamed, not hinted, towards deep depths of personal grief. “Somebody I cared for...and somepony I no longer know.”

Then she tucked the photo away into a pocket and straightened her glasses. “You’ve got to get away from here, and fast. The Barrier is advancing on this place, and quickly. It will be here in less than a day, and when Equestria finds you, they are going to have some profoundly uncomfortable questions. Prism Flash already thinks that you’re his daughter’s *ahem* ‘sub’, and I would not want to be you when he gets intel that she’s flying high and directing the attacks over Halifax.”

From somewhere beyond the window there was a series of blasts, and Mercy yelped, her wings popping up in distress.

“Not to mention this town’s a battleground. Maddy and Rio answer to the PER, but they’re also my friends and I won’t keep them in a warzone any longer than I can. As soon as we’ve wrapped up our scavenging here I’m getting them evacuated.”

More explosions echoed from the world outside, and the purple mare trembled again. Used to sudden thunderclaps, Lightning Dust did not react so much, and instead stepped alongside and steadied Mercy with one wing - the poor thing was more skittish than a mistral.

“Why…” she asked again. “Why did all of this happen?! These humans must have done something to deserve it...surely...we don’t just declare war on other creatures...that’s not what ponies do.”

“I don’t know,” Mercy whispered, once again pulling out the picture of herself and ‘JJ’, as if seeking strength. “Oh there was some kind of ‘caucus beli’, some attack on the Conversion Bureaus that took the lives of pony volunteers...but I don’t think anypony who had ever spent time with humans could have seen that as reason to declare war on them all…”

Conversion Bureaus...that stirred other questions in Lightning’s memory, prodding at other recent events. The mentions of ‘purging’...the powerful, sinister magical residue everywhere...her oblique references to ‘JJ’ first as ‘someone’ and then ‘somepony’...and the fate of the creature that had called itself ‘Revving Engine’. It was all adding up like a terrible form of algebra. Lightning might not have been hot stuff in classes outside of Flight School, but even she could do simple arithmetic.

No. It couldn’t… they wouldn’t do that. But it all seemed to fit.

“Mercy,” she said, trying to make herself sound as firm as possible. “You told me all about the Barrier, your Queen, and these different factions, but you’re hiding something.”

She felt her companion tremble, heard a single sob.

“Mercy...what is Equestria doing to the humans it captures...and what are ‘Conversion Bureaus’?”

Mercy shivered, and then pushed away from her, reaching instead for a device on the desk, similar in appearance to the ‘Motorola’ Lightning had struggled to understand back at the lighthouse.

“Rio?” she spoke into it, holding it up to her mouth with a wing. “Is everything cleared up?”

“Everything’s stowed on the chariots and ready to fly Mercy…” came a crackling reply, and Lightning saw the mare’s wings drop. as if taking on an unwanted burden. “There’s just that last duty to carry out.”

“Alright then. Meet us in neonatal…” Mercy said quietly, before clicking the device off and turning to Lightning, eyes suddenly cold and accusatory.

“You want to know what the Conversion Bureaus were? Then let me show you.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Very many thanks to Doctor Fluffy, who was practically this chapter's co-author and fellow pumper of high-octane nightmare fuel!

This would have been the first half of an absolutely massive chapter, but I decided to put this much up now as I won't have much time in the next fortnight to work on it.

Those who are interested, look out for a blog post in which I'm going to post some piccies of a few members of the cast.

Mercy Among the Children

“Nobody's told you that even waking souls are only slaves in denial.

Make a conscious choice. Decide to move your index finger.
Too late! Your body began to act a full half-second before your conscious self ‘chose’ to,
for the self chose nothing; something else set your body in motion,
sent an executive summary – almost an afterthought –
to the homunculus behind your eyes.

You’re not in charge. If free will even exists, it doesn’t share living space
with the likes of you.”

Jukka Sarasti, ‘Blindsight’

“Ere the mother's milk had dried
On my lips, the Brethren came--
Tore me from my nurse's side,
And bestowed on me a name

Infamously overtrue--
Such as "Bunny," "Stinker," "Podge";--
But, whatever I should do,
Mine for ever in the Lodge.

Then they taught with palm and toe--
Then I learned with yelps and tears--
All the Armoured Man should know
Through his Seven Secret Years...

Last, oppressing as oppressed,
I was loosed to go my ways
With a Totem on my breast
Governing my nights and days--

Ancient and unbribable,
By the virtue of its Name--
Which, however oft I fell,
Lashed me back into The Game.

And the World, that never knew,
Saw no more beneath my chin
Than a patch of rainbow-hue,
Mixed as Life and crude as Sin.”

‘The Totem’, Rudyard Kipling

Oxford, Nova Scotia, 40 miles from Truro

The man sitting beneath the bridge barely remembered how he had gotten here. Oh, there had been some bad decisions in the past, a lot of chances he had wasted…

... but it was easier to blame his misfortunes on the state of things.

On the war.

On the ponies.

Clad in scraps of charity, his face lined with grief and a dirty, unkempt beard running down his chest with the painful weight of years, he mourned his lost years, and cursed his destiny. The river guttered past, soaking him in its frozen spray, not helped by the early winter winds whistling by. His bleary eyes looked towards the north east, where a pink glow like an early sunrise could be seen over the hills.

The Barrier would be here soon. In one hand he held a stolen bottle of Wild Turkey… or something that was labelled Wild Turkey. You could never tell with the booze around now-it could be the genuine article, or someone’s rotgut, or actual whiskey watered down to make it last.

Either way, it would be his last pleasure before death…

Oh yeah. That was how he had gotten here. He’d come here to die.

He rubbed forlornly at his eyes with trembling fingers wrapped in a pair of dirty gloves. It was getting harder to see. He had been warned of this, back in the last shelter he’d visited. Trace amounts of potion in the air were causing blistering cataracts to form. He needed surgery if he was to retain his sight, needed a corneal transplant.

Of course, he couldn’t afford it. And no charity was going to fork out that kinda dough for a nobody bum whose only joy in the world was in the bottom of a stolen bottle.

His vision blurred again, not from the damage done to his eyes, but from the tears running down his face. This was better. Better to go out like this, destroyed in a flash, than withering on the vine, blind and alone…

...would nobody mourn him? Would anyone miss him? Were any of his cousins still alive, did they even remember him?

He sobbed, and tried to pull himself to his feet, to shuffle towards the promised glow of self-annihilation, towards the end of pain.

His legs, cold and numbed, would not respond. Weak and broken, he jerked like a damaged toy, tears streaming down his face at life’s petty cruelties as he struggled to stand.

And then he heard a humming, a rapid pulse of wings that cast a soft note down out of the sky.

And terror, fear more knife-edged and icy than the season’s vicious chill, stabbed into him. The bottle fell from his fingers and smashed on the stones, as he scrabbled to escape, to run away.

His frozen, calcareous legs betrayed him, and weeping, drooling spit in between pained gasps of air he collapsed sideways onto the cold concrete…

But something suddenly soothed him, a refrain of music caught on the teeth of the wind. The sound of a voice singing.

There were no words, just trills and flows of perfect sound that washed over him like a warm blanket. It made him remember childhood, and mother laying him down to sleep.

‘Shush… shush…rest now’. It’s alright, you’re safe…’

“Mom…” he croaked, voice and soul breaking under the subtle weight of the song.

His motions stilled, and his breathing slowed. He heard the buzz of wings come closer, and then the tap of the singer landing beside him.

“Oh, that’s so sad...out here all alone, in pain.”

It was voice as sweet as her song, a gentle lilt that promised peace, if he were to only listen. It had music in it, and whispers running under the words.

He should have been panicked, desperate. But the whispers said to lie still, and listen...

“Oh, you poor thing. Here, let me help you up.”

A strong pair of limbs hooked him under the armpits and sat him up against the underside of the bridge. His streaming eyes washed everything in front of him into a blur of colour… so much colour.

He knew that kind of touch...the touch of a pony..

No… Not like this, never like this...

“No… no…” it said, and he felt a hoof softly rubbing his chest, gently massaging away the pain from where he had fallen. “Don’t fight… just relax…and feel the pain run away...”

He yielded, letting the flowing tones surround him. For the first time in a long time, he felt at peace.

“Nepenthe!” the beautiful voice called out. “I’ve found one! And he’s just the most perfect addition to the experiment!”

More hooves, tip-tapping closer on the concrete. More colours in the shadows at the edge of his sight.

“Great job, Sugarcane. Oh wow, you’re right. Just look at him, look at that pain in his eyes. So much fuel for our fires. You’re learning fast!”

“Well, I was sired by the best!”

Shared giggles, girlish and churlish.

“Soooo….can I practice on him Nepenthe? Please?”

Weakly, he lifted an arm to wipe the tears away.

Two ponies stood before him. Two mares in shining, light armor, without helmets. They were both smiling broadly... almost painfully.

The taller of them was a tomboyish unicorn with grey eyes and a two-tone mane. She was levitating a pair of throwing axes, twirling them in mid-air to shake off a skein of blood. Then, with a flick of her horn, the blades disintegrated into a glowing cloud of metallic particles that flowed onto her, reforming as a pair of short-swords holstered on her armor.

There was a small silver circlet on her brow...and blood on her armor. And yet she looked innocent and sweet, with a demenor and appearance that was horrifyingly cute.

“Go right ahead, Sugarcane,” she trilled. “I want to see your talents in action too!”

Her words seemed far off, unimportant. He felt a hoof pull his face around, and he met the owner of the amazing voice.

She was a pegasus, with the most amazing colours he had ever seen. Her mane was a shimmering sapphire, while her wings and fur were a scintillating turquoise that gleamed corvine in the dim light, appearing blue from one angle, and seconds later a lustrous emerald green. She looked sugar-frosted, or like a hummingbird that had suddenly grown hooves. The only contrast was a white streak in her mane and a matching patch above her snout. It drew his gaze to her eyes…

... amazingly ruby eyes, that seemed to fill his world. They were so empty, like a hole into which he could feel himself falling...

“Oh, look! It’s already working!” she giggled, and the dipping notes of her laughter carried away all his fears.

No, he wanted to whisper. No no no no no.

“Hi there!” she said, staring at him. “I’m the Pretty Private Sugarcane, and you’ve been selected to be a part of our special experiment.”

One of her wings began to flutter, buzzing at such a rapid rate that its colours seemed to sparkle, forming wonderful patterns. Weakly, he turned to look at the beautiful sight.

“Don’t... don’t want to be a pony…” he slurred, unable to look away.

“Oh, neither did I. I was so angry and full of hate. I just wanted people to listen to me, to listen to my truth. But you’re listening now aren’t you. You’re listening to my lovely voice, hearing nothing but my voice…”

Yes… yes he was... the other sounds were fading away. She shifted wings, fluttering the opposite one, and he drunkenly swung his head to follow. He didn’t want to stop watching those amazing colours.

“You were sad, weren’t you?” she was saying, and the truth of that pierced to the centre of his mind. “Why is that?”

“Alone…” he whispered. “Empty...with nothing…”

“Oh I see...so sad and lonely. Possessing nothing, and wanting of everything.”

“Yes…”

“But we can give you everything you ever wanted. Family, and purpose, an abundance of life…”

That...sounded nice…

“Do you want that...to be like us, and with us…free from sadness.”

With them? As a...pony?

“Can’t you feel it in you, the rightness of it, the truth in my words. Because with us now, you’re not sad anymore… you’re feeling safe, and relaxed. So calm, and relaxed…”

Again she alternated her wings, and again he followed. Back and forth, side to side, his head weaving like a charmed snake.

“And you’re calm... and happy... and relaxed, because I’m telling you to be. Because you can hear nothing but my voice, and my voice is telling you to believe me…believe my promise...my vow to you, my truth...”

Both wings were buzzing now, and that drew his gaze straight forward, into the yawning depths of her eyes, her impossibly open eyes.

Her voice was shifting lower, and deeper. Drawing him in, deeper. Deeper into those ruby eyes...

“... and what I’m telling you now... and what you now believe… is that you want to be happy…”

Yes…

“...you want to live…”

Yes…

“...you want to be alive and happy…”

Yes…

“... like me. Because I’m so happy that people listen to me… like you’re listening to me, isn’t that right?”

Yes…

“... and so you want to be like me…”

Yes…

“... as a pony, just like me…just ask for it, and we’ll make it true, make a new you...”

Ye…ye…

He could sense, no feel or see, the other pony, Nepenthe, stepping up beside him. Could feel his hairs prickle as she cast a spell.

“...you want to live…” she said again, instructing him. “Say it with me...you want to live.”

“I want to live…”

Something was swirling around his head.

“...you want to be happy...”

“I want to be happy…”

It was a liquid, thick and purple.

“...you want to be a pony…”

“I want... to be... a pony…”

It was rubbing off on his skin… on his hair, on his face…

“Say it again for me.”

“I want to be a pony....”

“Good toy…” she smiled, and he felt an inner surge. He had done good, he had made her happy.

“Now…” she said, and her eyes seemed if anything to grow even larger.

“Sleep…”

He toppled forward into the oblivion of her eyes, drowning in the music of her voice, and would never wake.

10 Hours Ago

“Colonel, would you kindly…”

“What is it, Andrei?” Atlas Galt said, not lifting his eyes from the map of Truro he had spread across a roughly-constructed table. Galt had thrown the workstation together himself using the ample supplies of cut timber and nails to hand... built by his own hand.

If one actually looked at the map, they would see a chaotic mess of eraser-marks and pencil-lines, everyday objects used as placeholders, and all the tools one used to turn a crude map into a plan of battle. A lesser man than Galt would have been stumped at the sight.

But war was his kingdom, and this base, which he had dubbed ‘Elsinore’ was his castle and citadel. From here, he commanded everything.

Setting up shop in a Home Hardware store had many advantages. One was the abundance of supplies, which had been put to use in creating IEDs and barricades. Another was that there was plenty of open space in which to establish a centre of intelligence.

People liked to say that his Thenardier Guards were unprincipled scavengers. A band of psychotic parasites who were the last dying gasps of the Human Liberation Front. They claimed that this methodical looting was the only reason that his unit had achieved considerable successes on the various fronts.

Those people were deluded. Galt knew that his Guards’ strength came from simple application of logic, of being able to outsmart the opponent and make his strength their own. Parasites simply took what they could - building something like the Thenardiers could only be achieved by real men and women.

“Well, would you kindly explain to me why you declared a ceasefire with that animal?” Andrei reiterated. A dapper middle-aged Russian who had gathered to himself a black-market fortune before the war, rakish and poised even when dressed in fatigues, he was Galt’s adjutant and general confidant.

“You mean Prism Flash?” Galt hummed, using a few set squares and rulers to mark out the current lines on the map. “Take a look at this and tell me what you see, Andrei?”

The other man did, studying the formations closely. Their current headquarters lay on the southern fringes of the town of Truro, and almost immediately north was the Colchester County Hospital. The rail-line curved past both to the east, and not much further south was where that blathering lunatic Birch (useful, if deranged) was nicely shackled in place, holding the front against any trains approaching from Halifax and not being a general pain in the ass.

“You’ve... allowed us to advance our own lines?” Andrei concluded at last.

“It’s pragmatism at action, the root of objectivist logic,” Galt explained. “By agreeing to allow the Equestrians access to the hospital, we can use their own strength as a buffer on our northern flank. That has freed up forces of our own to secure the interstate on one side and push harder for the town center on the other. We also gained first access to the hospital once they had pacified it, securing ourselves ample medical supplies and a considerable number of hostages.”

He pointed to where the map indicated high ground on the south-eastern side of the town. “And we’ve been able to consequently relieve our snipers and redeploy them as scouts, placing some of our best eyes where they can observe both the Equestrians and the traitors…”

Andrei grunted and glanced over his own shoulder. Beyond the storefront, out in the parking lot, the fruits of the arrangement with Prism Flash were being loaded onto two Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopters, ‘Rapture’ and ‘Columbia’. Drugs, surgical equipment, a backup generator looted from the hospital. The kind of ancillary material that could keep a battered army marching. The HLF had been rather short on useful material for awhile now...

“And if the whorses stab us in the back once they’ve gotten what they need?” he asked.

“What if they do? They’ve already given us the upper hand by coming to us seeking a truce, no matter how brief. We now know that they have an unexpected VIP casualty who needed immediate treatment. That kind of intelligence is worth the risk.”

“Okay, so how do we exploit that?” the self-made oligarch asked.

“For now we don’t…” the Colonel said, rolling his attention to the opposite front on the map. “Let the Equestrians and their PER lackeys do what they wish. What I’m more interested in is what our actual opponents think of affairs.”

“You mean, you’re trying to draw the PHL out, by using the seized hospital as bait?”

“Exactly. The softhearts across the lines normally try to reclaim hospitals and schools as if it were a reflex action. But not today. For some reason they’re holed up in the railyard and are not attempting to break out. I’d very much like to know why. If they’re fighting a defensive action, then what are they defending?”

Now that was one of the million dollar questions, and made Galt wonder if it was another breakthrough in his enemy’s arsenal. The PHL, for all their strength, were very secretive about their magi-tech, which often seemed less like armaments and more like fantastical swords and firearms forged in otherworldly realms or the lands of science fiction They simply churned out a continuous parade of new weaponry - swords that could shapeshift, rare energy weapons painted with bright red warning labels, conventional firearms that were far better in terms of fire rate and never overheated, explosive revolvers, and countless more.

Galt himself cared very little for such toys, whether they came from Heaven, Hell, Gondolin or District 9, and even less for ‘magic’. Men won wars, not weapons...but he’d very much enjoy smashing the PHL’s toys to bits.

’There comes a point in a man’s life, when the question as to whether they are mad or the world is, becomes purely academic. Here we are, drawing up plans for the defense and counter-offensive against an invasion by candy-colored horsies. I mean, just… why?’

They both stared at the railyard on the map intently, as if it could reveal a heretofore unknown great secret. Large red question marks were scattered all over the area, and someone had scrawled ‘what is this?” nearby. There were post-it-notes stuck to the map, surrounding the railyard: ‘mysterious explosion? Possibly thaumic’, ‘Unannounced train, arrived under cover of darkness?,’ and various cargo-related speculations.

As the two of them stood there, Galt with one hand cupping his chin thoughtfully, a communications runner ran up. It was one of the Colonel’s private frustrations to admit that his elite Guards lacked ample radio equipment, and so on operations like this many units had to rely on mouth-to-mouth information and motorised couriers to communicate.

“Sir! Sergeant Birch’s unit has abandoned their posts!”

“Was there any sign of a struggle?” Andrei said curtly. “Were they ponified?”

“Nossir! In fact they appear to have willingly dispersed after eliminating their cadre of hostages.”

A lesser man might have gotten angry, or have sought to apportion blame. Atlas Galt was no such man. Instead he listened and then grunted.

“Very well. Birch and his men are light infantry with a handful of sappers, and had only civilian vehicles to hand. They won’t be far. Alert all local commanders to be on alert for them, and detain them on contact.”

“Do you have anything else to report?” Andrei added.

“Uh, yes. Corporal Flamel at the switchtrack on our side of the front appears to have been PIA, and reports are that a light locomotive has crossed our lines from to that part of the town held by the ponyfuckers.”

Galt’s eyebrows lifted. Now he was curious. As the annotated map observed, one train had already arrived at Truro under mysterious circumstances some nights ago, and never left. Now a light locomotive had also turned up. Intriguing.

As Andrei dismissed the runner, the Colonel turned his attention back to the grand plan.

‘The PHL are a more pressing threat than the ponies themselves, in the long run…’ he mused. ‘A cult of personality gravitating around that martyred mare of theirs... that’s a very dangerous combination.’

He knew himself to be no idiot. He had secured many Equestrian textbooks on the thaumic sciences, and had read them at length. What he had learned had only strengthened his resolve to win this war on human terms, without recourse to that force of inequity they called ‘magic’.”

‘Magic makes it possible for a parasite to steal from those of substance and claim it to be ‘harmony’. Ha, ‘harmony’, what a lie. The only natural order is the struggle of strength… of makers and takers, predators and prey... the ponies proclaim ‘harmony’, ‘magic’, and ‘friendship’ to be a universal constant, a grand arbitrator of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ as false as any so-called ‘god’. It is just another imposed system of morality… another lie...

… and ‘magic’ can make an individual unnaturally strong… so strong that they dominate the minds of others by their very existence. Just look at their ‘divine’ royalty: religion and aristocracy rolled into one as some grand insult to the individual..and now I suspect the memory of the ‘Late, Great Lyra Heartstrings’ is having the same effect on her followers. They’ve cast off one false frame of mind and simply embraced another lie. No, I will have no truck with magic… or those who claim to wield it.’

Yes, he stood apart, as did all great accomplishers. Why else did he change his name if not to proclaim his objective superiority to the world? He needed no divine mandate or rallying cry to win this war, simply his own two hands…

“Andrei, we’re going to push for the town center. I think the PHL have taken delivery of something extremely valuable, and it’s time we appropriated it for ourselves…”

Tragically, if Colonel Atlas Dagney Galt, born Aeron Grant, had actually been as superior a mind as he believed himself to be, he would not have assumed that his enemies could not be predicting his own moves…

...perhaps he would not be fighting for the HLF at all.

“...mirror mirror, tell me something,
Who’s the loneliest of all?
I’m the loneliest one of all...”

-SHUFFLE-

“...had a question or two, seeking answers, from you
Though I’ve never been through this door
I know I’ve had this feeling, once, before…”

Tess’s iPad was on randomise as she sat in the Truro railyard’s office and staff lounge. The Beretta M9 was in her hands and a PHL soldier was instructing her on how to field strip it...

… a unicorn filly, barely into her teens.

“For Lyra’s sake,” the foal snapped. “That’s the safety, not the disassembly latch! Go back and start again.”

Her tone was as fiery as the wood-burning stove crackling in the corner of the room.

Tess’s hands trembled as she returned the gun to first a ‘live’ condition and then ‘safe’. When she hit the release tab for the magazine, it dropped out and clattered on the floor. Some part of her inwardly roared in fury at being yelled at like an idiot by one so young… but much as she hated to admit it, she needed the training. She needed to defend herself, and she’d been lucky so far.

“Catch it! You’ve got fingers, use them! What’s the point of asking for instruction if you’re not bloody willing to obey them!?”

Tess didn’t answer, instead keeping her jaw clenched shut as she once again went through the motions.

“Ease off on her kid,” Jean-Eric said from another couch, where he was sifting through a box of documents. “She ain’t been through the wars yet, only handling a gun for the first time today.”

“How in Tartarus did that happen?! Most human kids today have some sort of training with guns after all these years of hell!? How did a grown woman get by so far?!”

“Hey…” he retorted. “I ain’t used a gun in years myself, so why should she have? Not everyone’s a soldier, not everyone has to be some sort of pistol-whipping badass...heck, we’d never have gotten this far in the war if everyone was running around trying to play Rambo! She and me, we’re the average Janes and Joes who keep armies fed and in motion.”

“Uh-huh…” the filly rolled her eyes. “But Jane and Joe and John fucking Doe can all still learn how to defend themselves!”

“Which is why my conductor asked for help, so kid, instead of bitching, start teaching!”

Tess cut her eye in Jean’s direction, but he didn’t notice. Even while he and the filly had verbally sparred, his attention had been divided between the box in his lap and out of the window, where a slapdash hazmat team were removing any trace of potion from the 9782.

“The name’s Firelock, pops!” the filly snapped. “And, by the Golden Lyre, if you had any sense, you’d have asked for firearms training like she did.”

The old black engineer didn’t react, but calmly held up a set of railroad subdivision maps and charts, plucked from the box. “You’ve got your specialist training, and I’ve got mine. These are just as important to our train getting through to Montreal as knowing how to put a bullet through somebody’s face.”

Firelock scowled and turned her direction back at Tess, who had managed to separate the gun’s slide from the frame and was now fiddling with the guide spring. When the child soldier next spoke however, some of the edge had gone out of her voice.

“...not like that. The spring’s under compression. If you just try and lift it out, it’ll fly back and hit you in the face.”

Step by step, the unicorn filly guided Tess through how to take the gun apart and service it. A small manual for the Beretta M9 was spread out on the floor for reference.

“Hey, Firelock,” someone whistled from the door. A mocha-skinned woman with short auburn hair and shades steeped in and gestured with her head. “Laura’s finished rigging your new saddle. Needs you for the fitting.”

“Coming, Claire!” the orange filly chirped, before fixing Tess with another stare. “Have it reassembled and safe by the time I get back.”

As Firelock trotted out, the woman named Claire lowered her mirrored shades for a second to peek over the rim at the train crew, as if appraising them. A ridiculously huge pistol was strapped to her thigh, and her bare shoulder bore a tattoo of a red dragon surmounting a lone star.

“We’ll be ready for the two of you in a second,” she said at last, her tone suggesting she was not impressed with them. “They’re just finishing up on your engine.”

Then she was gone, and there was silence, except for the rustle of paper, hissing flames, and the quiet clink of metal on metal as Tess struggled, hunched forward, to put the Beretta back together. Eventually a kettle sitting on the ancient pot-bellied stove began to whistle. Without a word, Jean stood, carried it to a dirty kitchenette, and poured the steaming water into two tin mugs.

“That filly is a monster,” he said, feigning conversation as he stirred. “How’d she end up with a butt-mark of a flaming bullseye?”

He looked to Tess for an answer, and got none. Shrugging he rifled through the cupboards and gave a small cry of joy as he found a half-bag of sugar, which he spooned with great relish into the drinks. Then, with a mug in each hand, he moved back into the small lounge area.

“Here…” he held one out to her. “Boiling hot sugar water with a few coffee-grounds swirled in is the best on offer I’m afraid.”

She took it wordlessly and set it down next to her, keeping her focus on the gun. Wincing, Jean sat back down himself and sipped, watching.

After another minute, Tess herself finally reclined back into her own seat and gingerly blew onto her own drink.

In her lap, the gun sat, perfectly assembled. Then, as if in afterthought, she reached down with her free hand and put the safety ‘on’.

“I can’t do this, Jean,” she said quietly.

“You did just fine in my eyes.”

“I don’t mean the gun!” she snapped, spinning her head round and matching his gaze.

“And neither did I,” he replied.

Unable to maintain eye-contact with him, she huddled back into her seat and drew her sweatshirt’s hood up over her head. The both of them had been ordered to discard their clothes and go through a decontamination shower (the water of which had not been heated) and were now dressed in olive-green utility overalls tucked into lace-up boots. Jean had produced a quilted jacket from his bag of meagre possessions to wear over his and Tess had sourced hoodie to help warm herself. It was canary yellow.

The tac-vest she had been given by Colonel Hex had been confiscated. From the way she was hugging herself, Jean suspected she missed it.

“I can’t be your conductor Jean…” she said at last. “I’ll ride with you up in the cab, but I can’t be in charge.”

He heard her voice catch and waited patiently for her to speak again.

“it’s…every decision I make gets people killed. The poor bastard at the switchtrack, those people last night…”

“... anyone else?” he pried gently, and she nodded. He sighed and pitched over the bridge of his nose.

“I don’t know what to say…” he admitted. “Heck, I did what you’re doing now after the smash with those kids in the SUV. If you don’t think you can command the train, then that’s cool. But I’m not willing to let you step down as conductor...we’ll lead together if need be, but in my eyes, you deserve that title.”

Beneath the hood he saw her smile, though her eyes were still hidden.

“Thanks for understanding.”

The moment was broken by the sound of the woman named Claire striding back in, stomping compacted snow off her boots.

“We’re ready for the two of you.”

Downing their drinks, the two members of the train crew rose, and stepped through the door out into the blinding afternoon sun, blistering with harsh sterility on the ice.

As they left, Tess snatched up the Ipad, which was just starting on another song.

“What if the storm ends? And I don’t see you…
As you are now, ever again?”

“By the way,” asked Claire as they started away from the building. “I know your locomotive got potioned, but the decon guys said there was some other kind of trace magical residue in the cab…especially around the conductor’s chair.”

“What?”

“I dunno, they said there wasn’t enough to identify it, but that their scanners picked something up...”

“Verity…” Tess said thoughtfully. “That’s the side of the cab we had her chained up on…”

“Verity, huh? Was that the mare who rode in with you? Once she introduced the two of you she just flashed some PHL ID and headed back out. What was up with that?”

“Honestly, we’ve no idea what her deal is....”

Verity Carter retched, hocking up a wad of phlegm to clear her through. Tiny blue particles seemed to shimmer in it, and she cast a baleful eye over them.

Then, with a sigh, she turned her attention to a thin book she had boosted from the railyard. After taking her absence she had hung around, keeping herself unseen and picking up on the rumor mill. Finally, having gotten the gist of local operations, she had snuck back to search for intel…

...and that search had borne fruit.

Just because she officially now worked for the PHL and bore their badge, in no way implied she enjoyed spending time around them...or ever intended to ask nicely for anything that she could simply steal out from under their smouts.

In this instance, a leather-bound volume, with the following words stamped into the cover.

A stick-on label carried the number ‘1810’, and inside the cover were a list of successive owners under the printed header, ‘Property Of’...

All had been scratched out, except for a final addition at the bottom that seemed quite recent.

“Well, that’s interesting…” she muttered, and cast her eyes over the first page of the text. Instead of dry instructions on how to drive and maintain some diesel-driven behemoth, she found something else entirely.

Magically, the ink had been pushed around on the page, to form new words. What she had in her hooves might have looked like an ‘Engineman’s Operating Manual’, but it was actually something else entirelyl.

“Very interesting indeed….”

Carefully, she placed the slim book back into her saddlebags, and focused her attention forward. From this little hidey-hole in an abandoned dog’s kennel, she had a clear view out over the Colchester County Hospital, a red-brick building that stood overshadowing the street on a low rise. Oblivious ponies milled around the front doors, a mixture of guards and newfoals.

Verity’s attention slid to the troupe’s leader, a pegaus stallion in streamlined armor, sporting a distinctive spectrum-hued mane.

“Now...how to get close to you Prism Flash...and more specifically, how can you help me.”

Then she glanced back at her blank flank, and after a moment’s pause, smiled…

“What… what is this?” Lightning asked, eying with some suspicion a sealed flask of purple liquid that Mercy was holding up with one wing.

“This, is the root of the Conversion Bureaus,” the pegasus medic answered. “It’s Equestria’s primary weapon in this war. The official name is something like twenty syllables long, so everyone just calls it the Ponyficiation Potion.”

“It… it makes ponies?” Lighting guessed. Well, it was right there in the name, ‘Conversion Bureau’. “But... that shouldn’t even work.”

“It doesn’t,” Mercy hissed, underscoring Lightning’s words. “This stuff makes things that might resemble ponies, but aren’t ponies, in any sense of the word.”

“But what about your friends... they sounded as if they want to take this stuff?”

“They do!” Mercy stomped a hoof, teeth gritted and eyes clenched. “No matter what happens, they don’t understand. They don’t want to understand, because they’re true believers!”

An infant cried nearby. It was not alone.

“Then, what are you about to do with that flask?” the recovering flier asked, fearing the answer.

The two of them were standing in a half-lit corridor, outside a door marked ‘NEONATAL’. Mercy stepped up to it and paused, one hoof raised to push the door open.

“If you want to remain safe in ignorance,” she said, not turning around to face Lightning. “Then now’s the time to turn and run. Because afterwards, no matter how fast you fly, or how far you go, you’ll never be able to leave what you see in here behind.”

Lightning felt chills crawling up and down her spine.

“But… where would I go? Where could I run to?”

“That’s not important!” Mercy snapped. “Right now, as you are right now, you’re at least a little innocent of what we’ve done, the crimes we’ve inflicted. How long have you been in this world?”

“Not very long,” Lightning admitted. “Honestly, it feels like something out of a nightmare!” she winced at admitting that weakness, but she pressed on. “Nothing here makes any sense, and-”

“I’m going to stop you right there. There are men and stallions, mares and women out there, who would work you over for hours as you begged for mercy that would never come,” Mercy said. “Then, if they didn’t believe you, they’d hand you over to people you don’t want to think about. And those are the ones that don’t hate ponies. If the HLF get their hands on you, you’re doomed and you will die alone, grounded, and crippled. Right now, I’m urging you to dye your mane and hide away somewhere, put the name ‘Lightning Dust’ behind you, and just try to ride out this blood storm without getting it on your hooves. Go to the Pacific, I don’t care, just do yourself a favor get as far away from all of this as you possibly can.”

The sheer toxin in her words forced Lightning to take a step back, bringing her adjacent to a floor-to-ceiling window that had frosted over. She glanced at it, and saw herself framed in a motif of flowers that some soul had hand-painted onto the glass to brighten up this part of the building.

‘Pretend to not be me? Could I do that?’

At Mercy’s suggestion she had used a torn scrap of aqua-green hospital barding to tie her mane back. That alone was enough to break up her distinctive appearance. A few dyes were really all it would take to make her into somepony else...

But then, she wouldn’t be Lighting Dust anymore, would she?

“No,” she answered. “I’m not going to pretend to be somepony I’m not. I am Lightning Dust, and I’m not going to be afraid. Something sent me here, and if I’m going to discover why, then I need to know what’s on the other side of that door.”

Mercy’s shoulders shook for a second, and then she sighed.

“Alright. But you won’t thank me for it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

With a press of her hoof she pushed the doors open, and Lightning winced as the sound of crying children tripled in volume.

Kids… she always hated kids, foals especially. But this wasn’t just an annoyance, this was the heart-rending sound of newborns crying for succor, for food, for their mothers.

Twenty or thirty cots filled the room, along with a few incubators. Rio and Maddy were already present, trying to calm the infants. The full-body protective suits they had donned probably did not help in that task. A remote part of Lightning’s mind insisted on how obscene it was that equipment like this had evidently been sourced or modified in Maddy’s size. No child should be dressed like that…

… no child should have been abandoned here like this.

“Girls, are we ready?” Mercy asked as the door softly swung shut behind herself and Lightning.

Rio looked up from where she was dandling one baby in her arms and frowned.

“As ready as we can be…though I wish we didn’t have to resort to using this on children.”

Lightning found that sentiment curious, despite her growing sense of looming terror, and looked at Mercy, who shook her head. ‘Don’t ask questions’, the gesture clearly.

“The three of us knew the choice we’d have to make when we found these children had not been evacuated,” Mercy whispered, and held up the flask. “This should be enough for all of them, and then some.”

Drawing in close, the two humans each produced a large pipette and brimmed them with the serum. Little Maddy’s hands shook as she worked.

“We shouldn’t…” she whispered, voice distorted by her suit’s filter. “They should be big... all grown-up, before they have to change.”

Mercy averted her eyes as she filled a pipette of her own, and Lightning instead saw Rio kneel down and embrace the child in a one-armed hug, holding her loaded pipette at arms length.

“You and me both have the blessing of that luxury, Maddy, but these tiny ones don’t. But if we don’t help them now, they’re going to die. You know we can’t let that happen.”

She pressed her suited head to the child’s, and Lightning saw Maddy’s tiny face scrunch up. She felt her heart tug, and put a hoof forward.

“I’ll do it. If Maddy doesn’t want to, then I’ll do her job.”

The three of them looked up, and she saw different reactions flash across their features. Relief, surprise... but Mercy responded with grimness, and disappointment.

“I did warn you,” she said, coming close so that only Lightning could hear. “If you do this, you’ll not be able to forgive yourself.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’ve had years to argue with myself over why I have to make choices like this, and I’ve never been able to find even a scrap of mercy when I hold my own soul in the weighing. I brought you here to be a witness, not a participant.”

“I can’t not do it,” Lightning demanded quietly. “Look at that kid, she’s terrified. How can I let her do something like this if I can take that burden off her?”

Mercy looked her in the eyes for the longest time, her impossibly sad pink orbs seeming to penetrate deep into Lightning’s own.

“You’re a stubborn mare…” she said at last, before turning away. “Maddy, if you’re troubled, Lightning Dust is kindly volunteering to administer the potion for you.

With almost visible relief, the tiny human in the protective suit handed over the pipette to Lightning, who took it into her curled wing as if it was a live snake ready to bite her. Once again she could feel a powerful magic in the stuff Mercy had called potion, and like the snake, she could sense its’ venom…

Then, feeling as if she was treading to her gallows, she advanced on the first cot…

“Two nights ago, a train ran in ass-backwards from the tip of Nova Scotia, along the branch line from New Waterford,” Claire explained to Jean-Eric and Tess as they crossed the yard. “One locomotive and some kinda booster unit, propelling two cabooses. We had no idea anything was scheduled until it appeared in the yard, rolling along at a brisk jog; all the lights were out and someone was holding down on the whistle. Before it ran right through one of our people jumped on board and shut off the power. Can’t tell you how unnerved we were when we saw the thing. It could have been a PHL shipment, a train taken over by the PER, something the HLF were going to use to deliver gas...”

“What did your guys find?” Jean asked, a tone of morbid curiously in his voice.

“It was a fucking charnel on wheels. Five ponies, and three humans, all of them PHL. Pretty highly ranked too from their insignia. All of them were dead except for this poor shit of a unicorn who’d wedged himself into the engineer’s chair and lodged one of his buddy’s corpses into place to keep the deadman's pedal depressed. By the time he reached here, he barely had the strength to pull the whistle, let alone close the throttle.”

“Must have been a valuable cargo, then,” Tess said, suppressing a shudder at the idea of a train crewed by the dead rolling unannounced into the darkened yard. “Who attacked them? And what were they carrying?”

“Shit if I know, to both counts.”

“But… there must have been a sign of what got them?” Jean demanded. “HLF would have shot them, the PER’s style is to use bombs, and the Empire.”

“Look. We have no idea-the thing ended up a goddamn unsalvageable wreck-”

At this point in time, the word ‘unsalvageable’ was essentially a curse word, a proclamation that something was nothing but scrap metal, and that all useful components that could have been worth their weight in gold in the fullness of the future were fried.

“And we can’t tell who, or even what hit them. None of those corpses needed a post-mortem to confirm they’d died of untreated battlefield injuries. Mosta them musta dragged themselves onto the train and bled out or froze to death during the trip. And Trenderhoof, the poor bastard at the throttle, he was three pints of blood under-par and practically in shock.”

“What happened to him?”

Claire’s face was grim as she spoke.

“He burned to death when we tried to open up the cargo…”

That shut the both of them up as they rounded a stack of rail ties and were confronted with the sight of a medium-sized locomotive that had been scorched black all down one side. A pair of cabooses, just as blackened, and an odd vehicle that looked like a low metal block mounted onto a locomotive’s chassis, were marshalled behind it.

“...Mother of God,” Jean whispered, his mind running through hundreds of scenarios. “That loco’s a GP7u... but those things were built like tanks!”

“We checked with the locals,” another woman explained, a redhead with a tattoo that matched Claire’s branded on her own shoulder, a dragon rampant upon a star. “This is number 1810, a seventy-year-old hunk’a crap that was owned by a power station way up the branch-line. I’m betting those guys commandeered it to get the goods out. They must have been waiting for the Barrier to hit the tip of Nova Scotia to send a team through to horsey-land, make a high-priority grab, and then run for it. Classic heist.”

“You still haven’t told us what the cargo is… or was… whatever,” Tess muttered, unable to take her eyes off of the sight of paint and metal that had been flash-fried.

“Like I said… we don’t know. All of it was stored in these… well ‘containers’. Each about the size of a long coffin, made from hollowed-out tree-trunks split and hinged down the center. When the train arrived Trenderhoof said we had to get them to Montreal, so we offloaded them. But then, when we tried to open one… well, BOOM!”

Tess felt the blood drain from her face. She looked to her right and saw that Jean-Eric had gone grey.

“They… Equestria I mean... they boobytrapped it?”

“Yup… some kinda incineration spell. Took out Trenderhoof, and six of our friends…” Claire hissed, removing her shades and turning a pair of eyes as black as bruises on the two of them. Violence and death swam in them. “When I called this shit into HQ, the damn brass-hats’ first concern wasn’t with the casualties, but with the state of the ‘precious cargo’. Said they’d send another locomotive to pick it up.”

She wiped her eyes and returned the shades to the bridge of her nose.

“That’s why the two of you are here, and that’s why we’ve been fighting a defensive battle the past 48 hours instead of securing the rest of this town. All anyone seems to care about is getting this goddamn deathtrap to Montreal where the PHL can investigate it. Now, kindly take this mystery off my hands and let me never see it again! It’s going to bring us nothing but misery if we keep it here: sure as hell that if we keep guarding it, drawing suspicion to ourselves, the HLF will want it. And it’s only a matter of time before it catches the PER’s eyes as well. I don’t know what the damn macguffins are or what their for, but in all likelihood, it’s valuable. And a lot of parties want it.”

“So, no pressure then,” Tess muttered. “Just guard this thing like its the Ark of the Covenant, glowing briefcase, or some damn Maltese Falcon doom magnet.”

“No fucking pressure at all,” Laura drawled. Like Claire she was wearing a pair of mirrored glasses. The two women had a hardness to them that made Tess think not of the military, but of prison. If either of them had admitted to having done time, she would not have been surprised. Claire was also packing a fearsome handgun on one leg-holster, silver-plated to match Claire’s black death-stick.

“What about our own engine, and the necessities of our trip?” Jean-Eric demanded. “It’s several days overland to Montreal. We’ll need supplies, food, blankets.”

“All loaded and taken care of. We scrounged up some rations and welded a framed sheet of perspex over that broken window, even tossed aboard a tool-kit and some gear for running repairs. The rearmost of the cabooses was completely gutted, so we transferred the cargo into it, but the other has sleeping accommodation and only got slightly charred.”

“Like good BBQ, you know. Burns the outside, keeps all the yummy flavour in,” Laura laughed snidely. “Our little psycho Firelock even sterilised that damn toilet of yours. Burnt all the shit off with her horsey magic. Doesn’t that kinda treatment just make you feel special? We practically turned down the fuckin’ sheets and left a mint on each pillow.”

“Oh fuck off and die in a ditch somewhere!” Tess snapped. “Stop acting like we rode in proclaiming ourselves to be your salvation.”

As soon as she said it, she knew she’d gone too far.

She suddenly found herself face-to-face with the older woman. She tried to glower, but all she could see reflected in the commando’s shades was a girl playing at being a soldier.

“You’re a brat... a piece of shit I’d scrape off my boot,” Laura said calmly, the harsh truths of a criminal life in her words.

Then she made a sharp, cutting motion, and Tess gasped as she was whacked in the gut with the butt of her antagonist’s bullpup rifle.

“Hey!” she dimly heard Jean yell, and as she rolled, wheezing, onto her side she saw Claire holding up an arm to keep the engineer at bay.

“That’s an G22 lovetap bitch,” Laura said casually down at her, using a booted foot to roll Tess onto her back. “You think you’re big news because you got this far? Trust me when I say you’ve seen nothing yet. When you’ve shot a guy in the dick for stealing supplies, then you can talk. And if you live out the next week, then brag all you want. Heck, I’ll fucking go down on you if you prove you’re a genuine player. You can even wear the strap-on!”

Then she spun on her heel and slapped her hand against Claire’s backside. “Now listen to my bitchfriend here, and get the fuck outta town before we decide to give ya all the boot.”

Claire lowered her hand at last and let Jean through. He helped Tess up and glowered at the two women who were stalking away, weapons in hand.

“MAKE A HOLE, YOU WHORES AND WHORSES!” Laura snapped to the troops as they went. “WE’VE GOT A FUCKING WAR TO WIN!”

“Let’s go,” Jean said. “You’ve got nothing to prove to people like them.”

Tess wiped a line of blood from where she had split her lip in the fall, and silently promised herself that she’d never be reduced to that state again.

The 9782 was standing on a parallel track, and at Jean’s direction she climbed onto it while he made a quick recce of the 1810.

“Unsalvageable my ass…” he snorted when he came back. “They might be hardasses, but I tell you, none of them are railroaders. That old girl’s as serviceable as the day she rolled off the shop floor.”

“But...it’s all burnt.”

“Oh, the paint got charred and the cab controls are all burnt up, but the actual diesel motor looks like it’ll work fine. It’s just that the fire-flash shorted the traction-motors on the axles, that’s why they weren’t able to move it under its own power.”

Tess nodded. Diesel-electric locomotives did not use a mechanical transmission like a car or a truck, but instead generated voltage that was then fed to motors on the wheels. In a way, they were precursors for some forms of hybrid car.

“So it wouldn’t take much work to get it rolling again?”

“Got it in one. There’s even fuel in the tank. I say we take the whole train with us, loco, cabooses, slug and all!”

“Slug? Is that what that thing is?” she asked, pointing across to the low, cabless vehicle marshalled between the 1810 and its two cabooses.

“Oh yeah, that’s a yard slug,” he explained. “Like that woman said, a booster, a slave unit. At low speed it uses surplus electricity from the locomotive to power its own set of traction motors - you get more torque for the same amount of fuel, so it’s perfect for yard jobs like switching cars in and out of a train.”

“Alright, so we’re set…” she said, moving towards her seat. “Let’s pick that consist get out of here.”

And away from these people…

“Oh no”, he chided, and nudged her towards his seat...the engineers seat. “This time, you get to drive.”

“What?”

“We’re going to have to take it in turns, if we’re going to push through non-stop to Montreal,” he said. “You’ve driven steamers, right? This your first time helming a diesel?”

“No, we had a few diesels on the Ffestiniog Railway, ‘Upnor Castle’, ‘Vale of Ffestiniog’ - they were tiny compared to this, but I passed out to drive them before I began training under my dad on the steam engines.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding his approval. “Well, this is a bit larger, but you’ve at least got a rough idea.”

‘Yah… it’ll be just like jumping from a hatchback to an articulated lorry’, she thought to herself. ‘No worries whatsoever.’

As they brought the immense machine online, they heard the sound of hooves on the catwalk outside. Firelock, the filly with the fiery magic and an even hotter temper, strode up into the cab without even a word of introduction, two bulky garments slung over her back and a pair of helmets carried in her mouth by the chin-strap.

She was also wearing a saddle on which two assault rifles had been mounted. All in all, she was a terrifying sight.

“Got these for you,” she said blithely, spitting out the helmets and letting the rest of her load slide off her back; a pair of matching tactical vests.

“This town used to be a big place for making clothes,” she added by way of explanation, kicking a vest towards each of them. “Switched over from bras and panties to kevlar when the war kicked off. I was told to grab a pair of these out of stores.”

Tess picked hers up. It was camo-patterned and slightly smaller than the one Colonel Hex had given her; she guessed it was probably better sized to her figure.

“Oh, and Laura said you needed these too!” Firelock added, her grin turning downright sadistic. “Said a player like yourself needed the right markings.”

She levitated up a set of three fabric badges, velcro-backed. One had the PHL’s emblem on it, while another bore a single silver bar.

The third, said ‘JONES’.

“Congrats, this marks you out as a bonafide ell-tee,” the filly said. “Laura said everyone should know ‘Lieutenant Fucking Jones’ when she comes a calling.”

Tess felt like she should have screamed, or cursed. Instead, she just laughed and tousled the tiny soldier’s mane. At this point she was beyond caring.

“Tell her she has my undying gratitude, you monster,” she said. “Add a few ‘fucks’ in if you think it’ll make it sound more authentic.”

She stood up and zipped up the vest over her yellow hoodie, holstering the M9 in the appropriate pouch on the front. Then, after slapping the ‘Jones’ badge on her breast, she handed the other marks of rank over to Jean.

“What’re your orders, ‘Lieutenant Voight’?” she asked, milking the filly’s evident frustration for all it was worth.

“Hrm… make ready for departure, Ms. Jones,” he answered as he donned his own vest. “And evict the stowaway.”

“You heard the man,” Tess called to Firelock as she dropped herself into the engineer’s seat, and with a thrill, eased open the throttle “Get off our train.”

The filly scowled and backtracked to the nose door as 9782 rumbled into motion and began to ease forward.

“The two of you are going to get yourselves killed, you know that.”

“Didn’t you hear your crazy boss?” Tess laughed. “We’re a pair of players….oh, and thanks for cleaning out the toilet. But, due to the hostile service, please forgive me if I withhold your tip.”

Firelock laughed once, and opened her mouth to say something else…

... then there was a crack, and the filly’s eyes went wide. To Tess’s horror, she saw blood began to dribble from the pony youth’s mouth, and gutter from a hole that had suddenly appeared in her throat… saw the light fade from her eyes.

As Firelock slumped off the front of the moving engine, her tiny body bouncing off the coupling and disappearing under the cowcatcher, more shots rang out, and an alarm began to howl.

“IT’S THE FUCKING HLF!”

All hell broke loose.

“Snipers are working to clear the railyard, Colonel.”

“Excellent...sent in the main body of troops once the leadership has been eliminated.”

“And we’ve gotten reports of the Equestrian’s VIP invalid....but…this can’t be right.”

“Spit it out, Andrei!”

“Well, one of our scouts has got her scope trained on the hospital windows, and...she swears blind that she saw Lightning Dust go trotting past!”

“...the First Lieutenant of the Wonderbolts herself...this changes things.”

“Colonel, what are our orders?”

“By my decree, the ceasefire is now abrogated. Seize the hospital, and eliminate everybody inside, pony or human!”

Lightning loomed over the cot, standing on her hind legs. The pipette was in her mouth, and as she looked down it trembled between her teeth.

What stared up at her, eyes open and smiling, was a tiny human, with a few wisps of yellow hair clinging to its scalp. When she had first reared up it had been crying, and the sound had brought back unpleasant memories…

‘Mom always put the needs of the day-care foals ahead of mine... always had time for them, and I had to be satisfied with what little of her was left over…’

While it had been crying, this baby had been just another one of those pests. But when she had actually looked at it, the tiny thing had opened its eyes and laughed. Tiny, amazing little hands had reached up for her, tried to grab hold of her fur.

She was captivated by those amazing hands, so small and complex...

“This... this is the right thing to do?” she asked, transferring the pipette to her wing before she squeezed the trigger. Mercy and Rio were standing either side of her, as if waiting for her to kick off proceedings. Maddy had been sent to go check in with their Salvation Army escorts.

“It’s the only thing we can do”, Mercy answered. “The Barrier will be here in less than twenty-four hours. Either we change these children now so that they can walk out safely on four hooves, or we leave them to die here…”

Lightning looked down at the baby again. Mercy said it was a colt... a boy.

“He’ll be happy and free, as a pony,” Rio added in. “He’ll never want to hurt anyone, or hate anyone. The potion cleans us out, makes us newborn… newfoaled.”

“Then why haven’t you taken it?”

Rio actually looked hurt, and Lightning found herself regretting the snide tone in her voice. “Not yet. Only when I’m at peace with myself, only when I understand fully what I’ll be sacrificing. Only then will I be allow myself to be changed... and become a better being…”

Lightning scoffed, and felt Mercy lay a cautioning hoof on her.

“Nightingale…” Rio said softly. “That’s the name of my true self. Nightingale, a kind and considerate pony nurse, unburdened by everything that’s gone wrong in the life of Rio Deneter.”

Lightning’s ears twitched at the name. Did she know a pony named Nightingale? There was something familiar there, but she couldn’t quite grasp...

“She’s who I want to be…” Rio continued. There were tears in her voice, and she scrubbed futilely at the visor of her mask as if to wipe her eyes clean. The words kept on coming, as if Lightning Dust had accidentally chipped a dam and triggered an outflow.

“... Nightingale won’t cry herself to sleep because of the ‘friend’ who abandoned her to raise a child he forced on her. She won’t have to grieve for the actual, loving husband the army stole from her…”

Something in Lightning ached at the words. This was a soul in pain, in denial, utterly broken. But the worst was to come.

“... and Nightingale, won’t have to live not knowing if her son… her wonderful, kind, kidnapped little boy… is even still alive.”

Oh no…

“By Celestia…” she whispered, just loud enough that the ailing woman heard her.

“Yes... by Celestia,” Rio said, looking up with the hint of a broken smile on her face. “She can help me... the Promise she made to all of us will save me… my parents disowned me, the army killed my Raphael, and the police abandoned the hunt for my little Marty... but She won’t... the ponies never abandoned me, never gave up on me...”

Mercy slipped back around Lightning and embraced her friend. The aqua pegasus watched them, unable to comprehend this conflict of emotions.

“You’re strong, Rio…you don’t need the potion,” Mercy was whispering. “You can overcome it. I’m here for you, I’m your friend…”

“I don’t want to overcome it Mercy…” the nurse said in anguish. “I want to be rid of it… I want to be free of everything. I don’t want to hurt anymore… please don’t try and convince me otherwise...”

The mare and the woman continued to hold one another, but now Mercy was beginning to weep too. Her spectacles clattered on the ground as her own tears flowed.

“I didn’t leave you… when the potion took my JJ away from me, I refused to leave you alone in the PER. Friends forever, we said. Please Rio, don’t leave me now. Don’t give up on the wonderful woman you are, for the promise of some mindlessly happy life as a newfoal…”

“I need this, Mercy… I’m sorry about what happened to Jackie. But she wanted to be free too, free from her neurosis and mental grief. Please respect her choice… please respect my choice.”

Mercy hiccuped and buried her face in Rio’s shoulder. The woman was smiling now, and stroking the pegasus’s mane with one hand, the other slipping Mercy’s fallen spectacles back onto her muzzle. She looked suddenly radiant.

“You’re not Lightning Dust…” she said softly, turning so that he shielded eyes gazed out from behind the visor. “But you are a wonderful pony… I can tell that much.”

There were stars in those eyes. Lightning suddenly wondered if this was how Princess Celestia felt wherever a pony addressed her. To be suddenly put on a pedestal like this was, unnerving.

“Uh... thanks, I guess.”

“No... thank you,” Rio said, dipping her head in gratitude. “Thank you to all you ponies, for coming to save us from ourselves.”

As she continued to hold Mercy tight, she looked around the room at the babies. Many of them had started to cry again.

“These kids are blessed, but won’t know it. They’ll never feel the pain of humanity. But they should have had a chance to grow, like Maddy. You can’t truly receive a blessing, until you understand what it is to be cursed.”

Those words struck at Lightning. Is this why she was here? To be a savior? A helper? She considered the wailing infants. And then she gave special attention to the little boy in the first cot. He looked so peaceful, but would he grow up to be like Rio, broken and hurt? Or would he be something else, something wonderful…

But he would only be a memory, if they didn’t act to preserve his life. She could see that human babies could barely crawl. But foals of this age could walk unassisted...

The only way these toddlers could leave this hospital safely… was on their own hooves.

She lowered the tip of the pipette towards the child’s mouth.

“It’s alright… it’s going to be okay, kiddo.”

His gummy jaws locked onto the rubber tip, and he began to suckle. Lightning shut her eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

The pipette clicked in her grip, discharging a set amount of potion. Before she could witness the transformation that would follow, Lightning quickly crossed over to the next table, and repeated the process.

Rio and Mercy had no time to react. With athletic precision, Lightning scooped up their own pipettes as she passed, and repeated the process at each crib, moving with increasing urgency to drown out a screaming voice in her mind.

Who was ‘Nightingale’...the name sounded familiar. But why was it ringing around in her head? Something didn’t feel right… there were bizarre images flashing through her mind...

She hadn’t seen this before. She couldn’t have.

And yet, every muscle in her body was screaming at her to stop, to turn tail and leave. But that wasn’t what Lightning Dust did. That wasn’t what Wonderbolts did. No, they stayed the course and worked the problem... this was her choice, her responsibility, her pride.

By the time she reached the incubator units, she was moving with almost frantic speed, flipping off the protective covers over the cots and letting them clatter and smash to the ground. At each station, she coaxed, nursed and forced the tip of the pipettes into each child’s mouth, administering the dose needed to…

... to…

... to...

The thoughts spiraled in her head. To what? To what?

Then, the deed done, she pressed her face against the end wall of the neonatal unit.

Her ears twitched. Not noting a sound, but the absence of sound.

There were no cries, no coos, not even a whimper. Instead, a deathly silence had fallen, broken by only her own ragged gasps, and the synchronized, mechanical breathing of multiple tiny lungs.

One breath, in unison. Two breaths. Three.

A whimper of her own grew in her throat as she began to turn. Something had gone wrong, something was terribly wrong.

But no, it had gone terribly right.

More than two dozen pairs of colourful, empty, glassy eyes stared at her. In each crib, lay something that looked like a little filly’s doll, a play-pretend foal made of ‘composites’, whatever those were.

Except these weren’t ‘composites’. They were real, made of real pony fur and flesh, breathing, but dolls all the same.

They were all smiling, silently. Their rictus grins like open wounds and wide eyes all piercing to the depths of her conscience.

‘What have you done to us?’ something behind their irises seemed to screech. ‘What have you done to us?!’

At the far end she saw Rio and Mercy still clinging to one another, their gazes fixed on her. Rio looked concerned, but Mercy looked horrified.

“Lightning… it’s alright Lightning!”

No, no it wasn’t. Her eyes slid sideways to the first crib, where the little boy with the golden hair and smile had been. A pink foal smiled at her from it, its mane a tangle of russet locks, those amazing little fingers replaced by hooves...

Where was he?! Where had ‘kiddo’ gone?!

Someone was screaming.

It was herself.

She shook, gagging, struggling to keep down what little she’d eaten in the past few hours. No. Dear Celestia, no.

She failed, upending the meagre contents of her stomach on the floor. What she’d done was monstrous, terrible… immoral?

And then she surged hard into rage, and her wings flared for the first time in hours.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” she roared, and with a crack hurled herself forward, barrelling into Mercy with enough force to knock the other pegasus out of Rio’s grasp. Smashing the doors down they tumbling and rolled into the corridor, with Lightning pinning Mercy down as they slammed to a halt against a gurney.

“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” she howled, punching down with her forehooves. “WHAT DID I JUST DO?!”

Mercy threw up her own forelegs to shield her face from the enraged blows. Lightning heard her glasses crack under the force.

“WE RAPED THEM! WE FUCKING MUTILATED THEM!”

“YES!” Mercy howled. “We did! We took something wonderful and we brutalised it….”

She trailed off, the word ‘brutalised’ skipping into a series of howls.

“But how else could I save them? No-one would have evacuated them! I’m sworn to do no harm, to protect life….I couldn’t let them die, so I had to turn them into pop-ppp-ponies! I was damned either way! I’M DAMNED NO MATTER WHAT I DO! ALL OF US ARE!”

As if she had burned her last ember, Mercy rolled onto her side, dropping all attempts at protecting herself. Furious, Lighting lifted one hoof, ready to drive it into her neck…

... and then froze. What was she doing?

Slowly, she looked sideways at her hoof, poised to deliver a killing blow.

... a killing blow. The weight of that sank in. She had been ready to commit m-mur-mur…

Murder. The word almost stuck in her throat.

Then she looked past herself, and the broken door to Neonatal. Inside, Rio had gotten to her feet, and was helping the newfoals down onto the floor. Each of them stood on their own hooves, alert and bright… following their shepherd with every hoof. All in synchronization. If Lightning moved, all their eyes would simultaneously track it.

For a second, Rio made eye-contact with Lightning, and then fearfully shied away.

She had called her a wonderful pony, just minutes before. What did she think of her now…

“Mercy…” said a voice. “What’s going on?”

Maddy was standing at the end of the corridor, her face pale behind her suit’s visor. A set of double-doors rose behind her, bright white light streaming in through their windows…

They burst open... two huge figures loomed into view, dwarfing the tiny figure of the human child.

“HLF! FREEZE, LIGHTNING DUST!” one of them roared, swinging his weapon to bear. Lightning couldn’t consider herself a scholar of human weaponry-she barely understood anything about it-but it looked lethal,.

She looked down, saw that Mercy’s flask of potion had rolled out into the corridor with them. It was half-empty.

Looked back up, saw a terrified Maddy turning towards the two hulking titans.

“The ceasefire is over!” the ringleader barked. “And you are now marked for elimination…”

Maddy took a step back as he aimed at her... and Lightning acted.

“GET DOWN!” she screamed; grabbing the flask, and hooking it in the crook of her leg, she threw herself into the air, spun around, and released it with all the force of a bolt loosed from the bow.

It sailed over Maddy’s head as the child threw herself to the ground…

…it struck the edge of the doorframe...

…and then it shattered, exploding outwards in a spray of glass and purple ichor that splattered over floor, walls, and flesh.

As the men fell to the ground, screaming, one of their weapons discharged. It flashed in a burst of firefly light, spitting what looked like tiny metal bees across the corridor. The bark and scream of the device at close range hit Lightning’s enhanced pegasus hearing like a brick to each ear, and she dropped to the ground.

Then, she opened her eyes. Maddy was crawling towards them, tearful, but uninjured. The two attackers were thrashing in the entryway.

And beside her, Mercy was spasming, blood pooling out of her where the discharging weapon had struck her in the chest and shoulder. It looked like the bullet had hit her there and simply exploded inside her body, leaving gaping holes a filly could fit her hoof into.

The medic’s eyes, panicked and afraid, locked onto Lightning, and a flailing hoof caught hold of her.

“Raaaauuuuuannn…” she gasped.

“No! No!” Maddy begged, pulling herself onto her knees and placing her small hands onto the suppurating wounds, applying pressure. “Miss Mercy, don’t try to speak, just hang on!”

Arterial blood glistened in the flickering light. It sprayed everywhere, adding a field of poppies to the floral display painted on the window.

“NO!” Rio cursed as she threw herself in beside Maddy. “Mercy, come on… you were going to be there when we changed… you were going to help us be ponies... DAMMIT, MERCY! DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME!”

But there was nothing that could be done. Lightning could see Mercy’s eyes dilating, the blackness in the iris swelling to consume her.

“Laihtnin’....ruuuuun... awaaayhhhhgh…” Mercy struggled, her breaths wet and choking. “Taaahke thamm an’d rhan awaii-hi-hi-he…”

She weakly struggled for breath. Rio ripped off her gloves and tried to ram her fingers into the bullet holes, to try and stem the bleeding.

“... h-h-hi-h-h...h...h…”

And then, she died. Broken and crushed, in a pool of her own blood, far from home, in the presence of the only friends she had left, Merciful Light’s light went out.

As Rio and Maddy tried to revive her, dozens of eyes watched on. Glowing softly in the light, nearly thirty tiny newfoals, and two adult males, watched the pitiful drama, and smiled.

Lightning’s mind whirled. She tried to find an anchor, a foothold, anything to allow herself to comprehend what had happened.

But all she could hear in her mind was a terrible silence, the silence that had haunted her since she woke.

And she knew what it was now, understood the context.

It was the silence that came when the children stopped screaming…

“Snipers! Hit the deck!” someone shouted, as Tess and Jean crouched low in 9782’s cab, hoping the huge locomotive’s construction would shelter them. The whole construct shuddered as it continued to roll slowly forward over the rail joints.

“Shut the throttle!” Jean shouted. Not even sticking her head up over the lip of the work desk, Tess reached up and grabbed the innocuous little lever, dragging it back into through idle and into dynamic braking mode. With a low moan, the immense machine creeped to a stop. Gunshots could be heard bursting all around.

‘I saw her die... that pony... that kid, she got shot right through the neck...got ground up UNDER the fucking train… no, stoppit, focus on what’s at hand…’

“What do we do?” she demanded, as she shielded her head with her hands. “We’re exposed right in the middle of the yard.”

Wincing from where he had fallen hard and twisted his leg, Jean looked up, flinching at the whistle and crack of passing rounds.

“Which side do you think they’re firing from?”

“Uh…” Tess trembled, trying to remember how she had seen Firelock die…

‘So much blood… so much blood, pouring from that hole... the exit wound… which meant that…’

“From the south - they’re firing on us from the south side of the yard.”

“Alright, then I’ll go out on the opposite side to tie us onto the rest of the train, use the engine as a shield.”

He said those words without any hesitation, but she could see the fear in his eyes. As he tried to stand he winced, and his leg gave out under him.

“Shit…”

Tess blinked, and then, chewing her lip, repeated the same decision she had already made once today.

“I’ll go…I’m faster than you and a smaller target.”

He winced and held his leg, before finally making eye contact. “Nothing I’m gonna say that will stop you?”

“I dunno. You could beg me not to go,” she said, checking the Beretta was holstered and her tac vest zipped up.

“Would it help?” he asked as he handed her the helmet.

“Probably not,” she answered, setting it on her head and buckling the chin strap. Sparing a quick glance at the open door she pursed her lips.

“Do me one thing?”

“Alright?”

“Tell me what the fuck is wrong with me? Why aren’t I a jibbering wreck right now?”

He shrugged. “I honestly think you get off on adrenaline.”

“Is that all you’ve got. No pithy words of wisdom, no pearls of truth?”

“Do I look like Morgan Freeman?”

“Stand to reason. Alright, here I go.”

Hunched over, she dropped down the access corridor, out the nose door, and threw herself down the side steps as quick as she could without falling.

She tripped. It saved her life. A grey streak of metal caught the edge of her helmet as she tumbled off the steps and into the ballast-hardened snow. The world dissolved into tinny ringing, and she batted dizzily at her ears like a dog trying to work a foxtail loose.

Someone grabbed hold of her and yanked her to her feet.

“....eeeeeeeeeee-nyone more butt fuck stup-eeeeeeeeeeeeeee-d outta my way and outta my sight!”

Through the blinding snow-glare Tess saw herself mirrored in twin tiny pools. Laura. She blinked, seeing a girl in the borrowed helmet and camo-print tac vest.

‘... kid playing at being a soldier... but you’re not a soldier, never wanted to be one… so stop playing at being something you’re not, and be who you are…’

Oh, she hated herself more than the redhead now, that was interesting. But that flash of emotion kicked her into action as Laura wrapped up her rant.

“...now stick your head down and don’t let me!”

“SHUT UP, YOU FRECKLE-FACED CUNT!” Tess snapped, and suddenly her Beretta was in her hands. She drew the slide back to chamber a round, hands moving on reflex.

“Let me do my fucking job, and I’ll let you do yours!” she seethed. “They’re obviously here to claim the cargo, so let me take it off your fucking hands and run as far away with it as I can before it all goes pear-shaped! Or, God forbid, this turns into a damn threesome with the PER and we’re left fucked between a rock and a hard place!”

She banged on the side of the cab and called out. “Jean! Run her back towards the switch, give me a rolling barricade!”

He didn’t shout a response, but within seconds the ground began to hum with released power.

“Who the fuck are you to give me orders?” Laura said, though this time she sounded almost amused. “Lieutenant Jones, maybe?”

“Me?! I’m the one with the fucking cargo you told me to take back! I’m the one doing my goddamn job!” Tess yelled.

She reached out to pluck the sunglasses off the commando’s face, so that her brown eyes could stare into flinty green.

“I’m this train’s fucking conductor! And you owe me a strap-on, bitchfriend!”

Laura scowled, and then laughed, throwing her eyes wide and tipping her head back to the sky.

“Another fucking monster is born! God I’m amazing.”

She hefted her rifle in one hand and that terrifying silver pistol in the other, shoving Tess ahead of her as she walked to keep the two of them within 9782’s protective shadow.

“Go on! We’ll cover you!”

Turning, Tess slipped the stolen shades over her eyes to shield her vision from the snowglare. The locomotive was rolling back towards the switchtrack that governed access onto the siding that 1810 and the cargo-train were stored on. To get to the switch-lever, she’d have to run out into the open, and throw it just before 9782 reached the switch blades.

‘... the fuck am I doing?’ a voice whispered in the back of her head. She ignored it.

“Distract them!” she heard Laura shout. “Fire into the treeline!”

A barrage of shots rang out as Tess, running forward in a half-crouch and using the shoulder of the railbed as a low barricade, scurried out into the open and stomped on the switch’s locking clasp with one foot and slammed the lever over.

Seconds later, the red, snow-dappled locomotive lumbered backwards past her into the siding. Keeping her gun out, and pointing it down in both hands, she scurried along beside it as Jean slowed. The brakes squealed as 9782 slowly backed down onto the ‘unsalvageable’ train.

“You really are another one,” Laura said, getting into an easy lope beside her. “I’d have loved to have gotten my hands on you before all this shit went down - could have really made something great out of you.”

“Pardon?”

“Take a look in the mirror sometime kid - you’re just loving this.”

Tess paused, realised she could feel an odd tightness in her cheeks.

She was smiling. In the midst of this hell, a huge grin had spread itself across her features, exposing her teeth. Shocked, she tried to compose herself, but she could not deny a slight curl to her lips, or a fire that seemed to be raging in her breast.

“Oh yeah…” Laura laughed snidely. “The bug got you good! You can thank my little love tap for that!”

Tess shook her head. “What the heck are you talking abou-mph!”

Her words were cut off as Laura suddenly pulled her into a rough, harsh kiss. Stunned, Tess did not resist, and for a few fleeting seconds felt a second rush of endorphins as the older woman chewed on her lip.

And then her own motor surged and she lashed out with both arms, shoving the redhead away from her.

“The fuck was that?” she spat, trying to wipe the taste of death and cigarettes off her lips. “Are you on the sex offenders list?”

“What I am, is a baaaaaad influence…” Laura drawled, a satisfied grin on her face. “A vampire who finds suitable creatures and turns them into little clones of myself. And how are you such a prude? Girl, you’re in your twenties and kiss like a kid in sex-ed!”

Without those sunglasses on Laura’s face, Tess could now see just how cold and empty the other woman’s eyes were... as if long ago she’d snuffed out her soul like a candle. There was a harshness to them, a glint of steel that had replaced any light of humanity.

“You’re a fucking psycho!” she shot back.

“No-no. I’m a sociopath, get your wording right. And you’ll be too. Just take a glimpse over your shoulder…”

Warily, Tess turned her head. Just along the line, Claire and several other PHL troops were crouched in the shadow of the 1810 and its train, taking turns to fire around the bladed shovel of the cowcatcher. The tall African-American with the pixie-cut was fearless, bold... and smiling the whole time, grinning like a predator in the hunt as she alternated between her rifle and her own colossal sidearm.

“When I first met her, she was like you - a wussy lil’ pussy with a sack of morals dragging her down. She was a lawyer you know, a real hotshot prosecutor, until she got on the wrong side of some dirty deals between the triads and the CIA. They set her up to take a fall, hard and fast... and no-one would help her. Not her friends, not her family, not fucking Uncle Sam who she thought loved her so very much…”

Tess slowly looked back into the all-consuming heart of darkness that was Laura’s easy, beckoning smile.

“But I found her… put a gun in her hands and showed her what life was like on the other side of the bar. And now look at her. Isn’t she amazing? I knew, from the second I met her, that with the right push she could be so much more than all the fucking plebs. She was a monster just waiting to transcend petty humanity... to be uber human. She had that fire in her from the start... and so do you…”

Laura stepped up and wrapped one arm around a suddenly petrified Tess.

“You’re just a kid now... but someday, soon, you’re going to be just like her and me. A stone-cold bitch who everyone around you is going to worship and fear, because they’ll know just from looking at you, that you’re better than them. That you could end them without hesitation, because of how worthless they are in comparison…on that day, you’re gonna know what it’s like to be truly alive, a real animal, wild and free... a killer.”

The words were dark, seductive. Tess didn’t want to hear them.

Killer.

Suddenly galvanised, she jabbed with her elbow, trying to knock the wind out of Laura. It failed of course, the veteran twirling away and dodging the blow with balletic ease, her red ponytail trailing behind her like a blazing tail of a comet.

“Oh nice! C’mon, I’ve made you angry, so show me just how mad you are. Stick that gun in my face and scream it out loud, climb out of the muck and stand alongside your fucking sister goddesses!”

Tess shivered, and took a step forward, clutching her shoulder where he sudden jab had twinged a muscle.

“You don’t know anything! I’m already a killer, you stupid bitch. I got a dozen innocent people shot today, and last night I might have killed over a fucking HUNDRED! And before that... before all that, I screwed up so royally that the people I loved most in the world died on a squalid dock, while I sailed to safety…”

She thumbed the safety on the Beretta and holstered it back in the tac-vest. Behind her, 9782 smacked into 1810’s coupling with a rough bang, the sound of metal-on-metal as deep and profound as the door of a vault slamming shut.

“Say all the shit you want. I’m not buying. My soul, it’s a no-sell. The fucking devil had it from the second that my family died, and I lived.”

Then, she turned away to properly tie on the train, trying to keep her back straight and her shoulders square...

...only for Laura to call out after her, in a tone that was as congratulatory as it was mocking.

“You’re still smiling, little sis.”

And she was. She hadn’t realised it, but thinking back, Tess realised that she’d delivered that entire speech with a cocky, hellbound sneer on her lips.

Even with her back to her, Laura seemed to read her thoughts.

“When we meet again in Hell, I expect you to have fucking Lucifer down on his knees in front of you, grovelling like a little bitch while you lounge on his throne and make him eat you out!”

Tess ignored her, did her best to focus on her work. But as she came up to the gap between the two locomotives and began to work at linking up the brakes hoses and the MU jumpers, she could not help but sneak a glimpse at Claire, who was watching over her like a guardian angel…

That grin, that easy stance as she dispensed death, that total self-assurance…

Was that how she had looked, just now?

Jean was alone in the cab. A line of abandoned boxcars now shielded him from any unfriendly fire, and he had climbed back into the engineer’s seat without fear of catching a 9mm dose of lead poisoning to the head.

‘Tess’s a good kid’, he thought to himself ruefully. ‘The daughter I always wanted but could never have...’

He watched the gauges in front of him and noticed a kick on the air pressure as she linked up the hoses and opened up the isolating cocks. The computer checked on all other systems and flashed back greens. The 1810 might have been inoperable, but now at least it and the consist were slaved in, giving him control over the brakes of every vehicle in the train, and allowing 9782 to feed electrical power back to the cabooses.

They were good to go.

He glanced across the cab, trying to spot Tess in the rear-view mirrors. The one on the far side was out of alignment, and he rose to cross the cab, slide back the window and adjust it.

His foot brushed against something, and he glanced down. He had lightly kicked against a dropped patch, the third of the ones Firelock had handed over.

It was circular, depicting the traditional white-on blue laurel wreath of many organisations affiliated with the United Nations. In the centre however, stamped proudly, was the now world-famous symbol of a stylised lyre.

At the top, between the tips of the laurels, were two words: “FOR ALL.”

“PHL,” he said to himself, picking it up and twirling it between his fingers. “Ponies for Human Life.”

He glanced out into the yard, where humans and ponies alike were scrambling to secure a perimeter. All of them carried the same badge. He often wondered how organisations like this recruited. Was there a classified ad somewhere? ‘WANTED: Brave souls ready to die for human salvation. Please supply your own neuroses.’ It would certainly explain how celebrated monsters like that Kraber a-hole had gotten into the PHL.

Now he knew better. The only way anything could keep going in times like this was by taking anyone who was available. Like that terrifying pair of women…

And yet, the PHL was the same organisation that had inspired him to get out of his fume and back on the rails, back to where he belonged.

Back in the throttle, back in the saddle.

He smirked at that, and, after moment’s pause, slapped the badge against his vest, securing it to a patch of velcro. He didn’t like choosing sides, but it helped to remember who your friends were. And, putting it lightly, his other options were utter assholes.

Once he was done, he opened the window and reached out to adjust the mirror.

“Jean!” Tess called from down at the rear. “We’re ready to go! Should I get back on?”

“No!” he called back. “Once we pull forward you’ll have to change the switch again so we can run this whole rig back to the junction with the mainline.”

“And then next stop, Montreal!”

“You gottit’, conductor!” he laughed, shooting her as reassuring a smile as he could manage, before he slammed the window shut and dropped himself back into his seat.

“Alright girl, here we go…” he muttered aloud, and advanced the throttle.

At that moment a few lines of music rattled through his head, lyrics to the opening credits of a movie he and his pa had enjoyed often on VHS.

’Maybe when this is done I can introduce Tess to those old movies, play at being a father a little while longer…’

As the locomotive thrummed and roared, slowly leaning into the new weight on her drawbar, he glanced down at the badge on his chest and began to hum himself.

“He rode a blazing saddle,
He wore a shining star…”

Clop-clop-clop, went the hooves of the newfoal children. Under the escort of a few Salvation Army guards, the thirty creatures were marching in single line through the corridors of the hospital, nose to tail like a consist of freight cars, obediently following the leader. Flickering light cast pools of shadow through which they pressed, the beat of their pace echoing hollowly..

Lightning had managed to pull herself back onto her hooves and was trying to get her bearings. Mercy’s body had been unceremoniously dragged away by the two adult newfoals, against Maddy’s screamed protestations. Now the child was in Rio’s arms as the older woman tried to comfort her.

For her part, Lightning had not said a word. Instead she was staring in mute horror at the passing newfoals, not one of which walked out of step with the others. Many of them were covered in red and purple ichor from where they had marched through spilt blood, and potion. Not a single one had complained.

“They’ll be alright, in time,” Rio said, as if reading her thoughts and trying, miserably, to assuage her doubts. “Once they’ve had time to grow, you’ll not be able to tell them from a native-born pony.”

There was no answer from the pegasus with the blazing mane. She might as well have been a statue.

Inside her mind though, she was screaming. Hundreds of thoughts had bubbled and frothed to the surface of her consciousness, and all came to the same conclusion.

This was all her fault.

She had administered the potion to those kids, she had thrown herself and Mercy out into the corridor and put themselves in the line of fire, she had been the target for those monstrous men…

... and before even that, she had been the one for whom this hospital had been seized to treat.

Numbly she looked around, seeing smashed windows and smears of blood, potion, and other unmentionable fluids, splattered across the walls and floor. Overturned gurneys, empty wheelchairs, scattered toys and dead bodies.

All of it was her fault.

“Good work, Lieutenant Dust,” someone said off to her side, and she turned to see a male pegasus hover in over the monstrous children. A brown newfoal mare with hazel eyes ringed in blue trotted a short distance behind him, a fixed grin stretched over her face.

Prism Flash. Her rescuer. Father of the famed Rainbow Dash.

“You held the line, defended this facility, and got us plenty of new recruits,” he said, before flicking a brief, dismissive glance at Rio and Maddy. “And I see you’ve even kept our friends safe…”

Her ears fell as he smiled at her, full of pride. He had no regard for them, Lightning realized. No matter what they did, he'd never be able to hold humans in high enough regard to respect them. What’s… what’s been done to these ponies?! she wanted to scream. And though she admitted she wasn’t a paragon of kindness, it was too much. She couldn’t even imagine what had made them so callous. Was this… was this the natural state of ponies? Would any Equestria act like this, with the right push? Was this her future?

“I’d expect nothing else from my daughter’s right-hoof mare. With this facility secured, we’re now free to attack the main part of town. I just gave the order.”

All. Her. Fault.

And under that dull horror, something dark and primal surged in her soul. She’d been wrong to say all the humans were monsters...

“Prism Flash… we need to talk.”

The real monsters were all around her...and within her.

Tess was standing at the trackside at the mouth of the sidings, reversing the switch after the last caboose cleared it. PHL soldiers had pressed forward up to the treeline, giving her the freedom to stand out in the open.

The blades of the switchtrack clanked over, and as the train drew up she raised a hand, signalling for Jean to beginning back up. From far ahead, at the window to 9782’s cab, she saw his arm wave in acknowledgement. Seconds later the locomotive began to whine, and with a banging of couplings the train jerked into reverse.

“How long is this gonna take?” asked Claire, who once again was shadowing her like some amazon of old.

“Jean said it was a mile back to the junction with the main-line,” Tess answered as the first caboose began to slide past them. “So a few minutes to set back slowly. Once the switch is cleared, we’re good to go.”

There was a faint crack from behind them, is if someone had stepped on a twig.

And then someone began screaming. The two of them spun round, and saw a PHL soldier thrashing on the ground, her face and torso covered in purple slop.

“Help me! SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP MEEEEEEE-”

BANG!

Tess yelped as Claire calmly fired a single bullet into the middle of the bubbling mound of flesh and fur, unrecognizable as neither human nor pony.

And then the two of them looked to the skies.

‘And here comes the threesome...’

Dozens of colourful dots were pouring out from behind the clouds, raining small phials that glistened in the winter sunlight...

“POTIONEERS! TAKE COVER!”

People and ponies scattered. Tess however, spun on her heel and threw herself onto the rear catwalk ladder for the dead locomotive numbered 1810, as the train continued to accelerate backwards out of the yard.

“Come on!” she shouted, beckoning to Claire. “Get out with us!”

“No!” the veteran shouted, running alongside to keep in earshot. “Get out of here and get that shit in the cabooses to safety. Don’t worry about us!”

The train lurched as 9782 propelled it backwards through a crossover, and Tess almost lost her grip. Claire caught her fall with one hand and physically shoved her back onto the catwalk steps.

“Go!”

The last Tess saw of her, the statuesque mulatto woman had whipped out a radio and was screaming into it for aerial fire support. Then she disappeared behind a shack, and Tess found herself holding on for grim life to the burnt metal of 1810’s catwalk railings as the train gained speed, lurching and jolting…

Too fast. They were going far too fast in reverse. Propelling stock at high speed was a surefire way to derail into a pile-up.

“Shit!” She pulled herself up and ran along the catwalk, trying to see around 1810’s cab to that of 9782 and screaming at the top of her lungs. “Jean! Slow down! We’ll wreck off like this!”

There was no response.

‘What happened? Did they get him? Is he dead or...ponified?’

The whole train bounced as it leapt a bridge over a small stream and lurched along the ill-maintained roadbed of the branchline, wheels and suspension screaming in protest.

Struggling to stay on her feet, Tess came to the door of 1810’s cab and struggled with the handle. It was locked. Through the glass pane she could see the charred controls, but the red-painted lever of the emergency brake valve still shone bright.

The emergency brake! There’d be another one just like it in the cabooses!

Turning, she fumbled back the other way, clutching her way arm over arm along the battered locomotive’s length, until she was standing at the gap between it and the slaved slug unit. The coupling bar linking the two jumped in its socket beneath her feet, straddling with jangling hoses and safety chains. Beneath that was the flashing oblivion of the rails and ties.

And as Tess ducked under the safety rail and caught hold of that on the slug with one hand, legs astride the gap, she realised she was smiling again.

She let go of 1810 and hauled herself onto the slug. It’s handbrake was right in front of her, and with strength she did not realise she possessed, Tess spun it over with both hands until she could smell metal burning as the brakes bound to the wheels. Before she could even question herself, she clambered onto the back of the slug and began to crawl along its length. As Jean has made clear, it had no side-walks, and was just a boxy slab of ballast-weight on a set of traction-motors. To her side she saw the town station flash past, and braced herself for the junction with the main track.

The train took the reverse-curves through the switch like a sailing ship caught in a storm, each vehicle canting first to one side and then the other. As the slug rolled, Tess lost her grip and slid across the icy back of the machine, managing to latch onto a hand-iron just in time, although her legs swung out over the edge. Hanging there, she held on tight as the train dashed over several grade crossings, charging right through the pitched centre of the battle for the town.

PHL and HLF forces on either side blurred into one another, the bark of rifles and homemade hand-cannons merging with the psychotic tempo of the wheels.

No right, no wrong, just a mutual orgy of madness.

And then, a familiar red newfoal corpse flicked past, and she was struck by a moment of horror.

‘Red… Petticoat… he changed a switch behind us when he stopped us... and we never reversed it. Which means...’

The thought went through her head with lightning speed, and a second later the train gave an almighty groan as it slid back off the main line and onto a spur…

... the spur which led straight to Colonel Galt’s field headquarters.

Galvanised by that realisation, Tess dragged herself back on top of the slug, dropped onto its trailing catwalk, and jumped the gap onto the first of the two cabooses. Throwing its door open she found herself in a rolling, jerking space that had been set out with bunks and a small kitchenette. Ignoring that she pulled herself up into the conductor’s cupola, the small cabin that rose above the roofline, and groped for the emergency brake valve…

... and then, with her hand on the lever, she looked back and froze. From here she could see back over the second caboose, which running in reverse was now the leading vehicle of the train... and saw that the line suddenly ended ahead at an immense wheat loader... the sidings of which were full of abandoned hopper cars.

She threw the valve and felt the train lurch as the master brake-line vented. The brake shoes clapped down on the wheels with a scream, and behind her 9782’s roaring motor shut back to idle as the emergency application tripped its own safeties.

The train slowed like the starship Enterprise dropping out of warp... but not fast enough.

Screaming in mindless fear and euphoria, Tess held on tight as her ride charged down onto the stationary cars with battering-ram momentum…

And collided.

There was a jarring bump, and a flash of purple light…

... and then every newfoal in the city of Truro screamed!

Like a ripple spreading out from the grain yards, anything that had once been a human exposed to potion clutched their heads and screeched, an unholy cry that tasted of hell, and the eternal cries of the damned.

Lightning Dust and Prism Flash had just been trotting out of one of the hospital’s back doors just seconds before everything had fallen apart. The teal pegasus had taken a deep breath, drinking in the cold winter air, and ruffled her feathers, feeling the sweat and fear evaporate off of her under open skies.

“You wanted to speak, Lieutenant?” asked Prism Flash. The brown newfoal mare with the odd eyes had followed them out too, and was gazing mindlessly in their direction. Seeing the earth pony’s empty grin and blank flank, untouched by magic or a soul, Lightning repressed a shudder.

“No… I just wanted to ask some questions,” she said, as firmly as she could will herself to sound.

“Oh, is it about Dashy?” he laughed. “I honestly wish I could help you there Dusty, but I’m pretty sure you know her ins-and-outs better than her old man could by now…”

“SHUT UP!” Lightning screamed, whirling around with fury smouldering in her eyes. “How can you just stand here and make small-talk after all…THAT!”

He froze mid-sentence, and then, slowly, began to frown. “What are you talking about?”

Lightning’s common sense was telling her that this was suicide, that she should be focused on keeping low, of not revealing herself.

Every other part told common sense to go die in a fire. Ever since arriving here her mind and heart had been tugged in all directions, forced open to new perspectives and emotions. Now, all of those surges and hot flashes had focused on a common wavelength.

Righteous wrath.

Somebody had to pay for all this. And if she was to blame, then her pride demanded she be the one to put it right.

“I’m talking, about what those ‘new recruits’....” she hissed. “Justify it to me. Tell me why they deserved to go through that. Tell me why they did not deserve to live as they were?”

His frown settled into confusion, and then black anger. “Questioning the will of Her Majesty is treason, Dusty… you know what happens to the defiant.”

“Yeah, and that kinda sickens me too!” Lightning strode forward, all but ramming her snout into his face. “I don’t know much about what you call Equestria, but it’s no place I’d want to call home.”

He opened his mouth to spit something back at her, when something screamed past overhead. An aircraft, a weapon mounted in its nose chattering away like a changeling hive. Caught off-guard, Lightning spun to look up at it, and Prism Flash used her moment’s distraction to spin around and buck her to the floor, backflipping in mid-air to land astride of her.

“You belong to Equestria…” he growled. “You belong to my daughter…”

The aircraft screamed past on a return trajectory, and with darkened eyes Prism followed it as it entered into a steep climb.

“Blast them… one of those ‘Warthog’ monstrosities…it’ll cut our people down like a wing through a cloud!”

He looked askance to the vapidly grinning Newfoal. “You! Keep an eye on this traitor! I’ve got a sky to clear!”

With a kick of his hooves and a snap of his wings he launched himself upwards and after the flying machine. Lightning, winded and panting, slowly looked towards her new captor.

“Look…” she wheezed. “I know what’s been done to you. Please, if there’s anything left of the person you were, let me go - let me fight him!”

“Are you defecting?” the mare said quietly, not looking at her. Lightning gawped.

“Wh-what?”

“I said, are you defecting from Equestria, Lightning Dust?” the creature said again, before glaring sternly in her direction. “Because after the shit you’ve pulled in your time, ‘Duststorm’, I’d just as soon kill you here as grant you clemency!”

A moment held. Then Lightning slowly crawled onto her feet.

“You’re... but you’re a newfoal?”

“No, I’m fucking not!”

But before anything else could be said, something else roared past. With a rattle of wheels on rails, something that could only have been a train, but unlike any train Lightning had ever seen, hurtled past the hospital in full-speed reverse

“Oh fuck!” the creature posing as a newfoal cursed as the train sped out of view. “Tess, what did you do this fucking time?!”

And then, in the distance, the two of them heard the sound of a collision…

... and heard the newfoals begin to scream in unison. Judging by the volume, it was all over the town. It was like no scream either of them had ever heard, a wailing, primal, howling agony that didn’t seem physically possible. It defied the limitations of vocal cords.

“What the fuck is going on Brains?” Laura demanded, rushing over to where Claire was trying to comprehend what they were seeing.

“Does it look like I have any clue?”

The PER and Salvation Army had flooded into the railyard, just as the HLF had launched a second surge to break out from their own lines. For a few minutes the centre of Truro had been an honest-to-God fustercluck of blood, magic and steel.

And then suddenly, most of the attacking ponies had just… stopped. Instead of fighting, they were howling out in pain. Unicorns and Earth ponies thrashed on the ground while pegasi tumbled from the sky. Anyone or anypony else, regardless of their situation, simply stood dumbfounded for half a second as they witnessed what seemed to be a simultaneous mass aneurysm. Most of them had poured bullets into them, only to find that the newfoals reamined standing, eyes wide and rolling, pupils dilating and contracting at impossible rates. They shook, mouths almost foaming, unmindful of the massive holes in their bodies.

And then, as if a switch had been flicked, the screaming stopped... and was replaced by a confused mass of giggles and screams.

“Heheheeeeeee…..”

“HURT… Hurt so bad!”

“DIE! DIE-DIE-DIE!”

“We’ll take you and drag you off, make you drink it down and put the smiles down your throat till they rise up and drown out all else!”

“MY ME IS GONE, AND YET I STILL DREAM THOUGHTS WHICH ARE NOT MY OWN!”

“Come on… taste the joy we bring and be reborn...”

“The screaming of the ape inside your new mind will never go away, but it just becomes more and more beautiful! COME HERE AND LISTEN!”

“Kill you! KILL YOU ALL!”

And the blood began to flow.

“Control, this is Chupathingy, maintaining 1000ft over Truro.”

“Ah, we hear you pilot, what’s happening? We thought you were about to go into the dirt.”

“Uh...‘Flash Dad’ was about to take me out...but then one of his own newfoals tackled him off my ride’s back.”

“Say that again Chupathingy?”

“I repeat, the newfoals are rampaging. I’m going to climb to a safer altitude and circle the town, try and get some idea of what’s happening.”

“Roger Chupathingy, good luck.”

Rio Deneter slowly looked up from where she had been holding tight to little Maddy. The last echoes of the newfoals soul-shaking cries fled into the depths of the empty corridors and wards, leaving just a stunned, shaken silence.

‘What… what in the name of Her Majesty was that...’

The newfoal infants lay still on the ground, and for a horrified instant she considered the chance that they were all dead.

But then, they stirred, breathing only slightly. Relief swelled in her heart.

It was to be very short lived.

What stood up were not the obedient, neat little automatons that she expected to see grow into happy ponies. Each of them was wobbling, their blank-eyed faces scanning around as if drunk and confused, some in what looked to be fear or agony…

One unicorn filly staggered into a pegasus colt, looked at him for a second, and then with a giggle, stabbed him in the eye with her stubby horn. Instead of screaming, he gurgled, ichor running down his face, and lunged forward, biting at her throat with teeth entirely unsuited for carnivores.

Instead of ripping out a large chunk of her throat, leaving blood dripping all over the floor, his powerful jaws crushed her windpipe as if it was a tube in a vise.

“Mama!” the filly gurgled, her wet, bubbling words as delighted as a child at Christmas. “Mama!”

In Rio’s arms, Maddy clutched on tightly and whimpered as the tiny creatures began to eviscerate one another. “What are they doing….Rio, what are they doing?”

“I… I don’t know…” Rio whispered, but a revolted part of her whispered that these creatures were reverting to human nature…

... to violence, hatred, and bloodshed.

“STOP!” she cried out. “YOU’RE PONIES NOW! YOU’RE BETTER THAN THIS!”

At the sound of her voice they all did stop. Covered in each other’s blood and dripping with potion, they froze...

And then one newfoal child spotted her and Maddy in the corner, and with a grin that had far too many teeth, pointed with a hoof and screamed.

“MAMA!”

“It is time…” John Birch said aloud. “The minions of Satan have cried out…it is a sign. Now is when we strike for all that is Godly and Righteous.”

“Are... are you sure about this, Sergeant?” asked one Sapper, who had just finished with wiring up demolition charges that had been earmarked for the main-line railroad from Halifax.

Instead, Birch had ordered them to be planted on the support beams of the highway interchange just outside of town.

“Lieutenant…” the conspiracy-theorist muttered in response, eyes gazing far off into some glorious hereafter.

“I mean…” the young demolitions engineer persisted. “If we bring this down, it’s going to trap everyone here… even our own! This is going to kill all the pony-pounders, yes, but the HLF’ll be fucked too! Sergeant, that’s just nuts!”

Without even looking Birch swung his sawed-off shotgun around and fired. The kid’s head disappeared in meaty chunks.

“I am your Lieutenant, and you’d best not forget that…” he repeated again, absently wiping blood off of the gun’s barrel, before turning to his other men. “The rest of you have witnessed the same truth as me - if we cut off the animals here we cull their numbers by the thousand! Let the traitors and the mindless sheep that call themselves humans burn against the Barrier. Our people are smart and daring enough to survive, blessed by powers Almighty to win this crusade. NOW GET BACK TO WORK!”

The sappers nearby scrambled back, working frantically, working double-time just to avoid that shotgun. The kid was right, most of them knew that.

The school bus that had originally formed their barricade across the railroad idled softly beside them, ready to crawl up onto the highway and flee north. In the shadow of the flyover, they worked by the glow of its headlights.

’Birch has finally gone off the deep end’, one Turkish man with a load of bathtub semtex thought. Then, immediately raising an eyebrow, he asked himself, ’...More than usual?’

Yes.

But then, so had the world itself. Everything had gone mad. Was… was something wrong with the fabric of reality? How could this have all gone so wrong? He couldn’t answer. Questions of philosophy were beyond him. But explosives… solid gel and blasting caps, those he understood.

Snowflakes fell to the ground beside him, and he hoped he had some way to survive this coming winter as himself.

Tess stirred, feeling a familiar ringing in her ears. Her shoulder burned where she had landed on it, thrown down out of the cupola and onto the caboose’s floor.

‘That’s it…’ she thought. ‘We’re off the rails, derailed. No escape now.’

But maybe… maybe 9782 itself had kept its footing and stayed on track. If that was the case, then they could flee in the locomotive. Just abandon the cargo and escape.

And then she stood, and got the shock of her life.

The caboose was upright, standing on its wheels. She turned and gazed through the leading door, seeing the slug unit and the KFC-grilled 1810 ahead, also upright and inline. So far as she could see, not one wheel had run off.

“That’s... that’s impossible…” she said aloud. “We hit at what…thirty, forty miles an hour, pushed from behind. Both of these cabooses at least should have been smashed to splinters.”

Herself included.

Stunned, she reached back up into the cupola and closed the emergency valve. If they were, amazingly, still on the rails, then they’d need to be able to release the brakes.

Then, hesitantly, she moved further back, towards the last vehicle of the train. The second caboose, which not only should have bore the brunt of the impact, but was carrying the cargo.

Hand shaking, she crossed over and swung open the door. Thick black smoke poured out, a sweltering fume that swirled around her with choking weight.

She waved a hand to clear some of it away, and reached inside the doorframe, fumbling for a lightswitch. At her touch, a single bulb in the compartment’s roof flared for an instant, and burst…

… in that flash, she saw the cargo. Coffin-like caskets stacked inside the caboose, smoke curling off their surfaces. Each lashed in place, not a single one out of alignment.

Unable to press in further, she stepped to the side of the smoking caboose and swung herself down onto the roadbed. Wheezing to clear her lungs, she looked back past the end of the train.

“How… how did?”

Running in reverse, the cabooses at the tail end of the train had struck the parked hopper cars. It should have been like crushing a sardine can against a brick wall. Light sheet metal should have folded and crumpled, been rent from the frames and scattered wide...

Instead, the opposite had happened. When struck with the sardine can, the bricks had collapsed up like paper…

The hopper cars had been driven back, smashed into one another and squashed together. The one that had been struck first had collapsed into a quarter of its length, and the vehicle behind had jumped onto its partner like a horse caught crying to clear a fence.

Somehow, the cargo had done this. Somehow… it had protected them, preserved the integrity of the train. It had saved their lives. What the hell was it?!

A thought struck her.

“Oh hell, JEAN!”

Realising that she’d completely forgotten about the possible fate of her engineer, she spun around and staggered through the snow back towards 9782. The immense red locomotive was idling softly, purring a single note of readiness. Scrambling up onto the nose, she found the cab door shut and latched.

“Jean!” she called, forcing it open. “Are you in there?”

Inside the cab was empty. The controls were still set to back them out of the yard, throttle open and the reverser lever dropped back into ‘R’. Without thinking, she strode over and reset them both to neutral, and then released the brakes. On the digital operations screen a number of red indicators blinked to green as the safety systems reverted to normal.

And then she heard something breathing, just behind her.

Something? Why had she thought of it that way?

Tess felt a breeze on the back of her neck as the cab’s rear door inched open. In the screen of the operations display, she could see the reflection of a shadow moving behind her...

“Jean?” she called out warily, hands still on the controls. Looking down she focused on the Beretta holstered on the front of her vest…

‘Grab, safety off, spin, fire, done…’ she mentally told herself. ‘Simple as that...’

But the horrors of memory held her back. The pony named Petticoat decapitated in front of her, a father and daughter condemned on a train-ride to death… her family left behind as she sailed to safety.

‘Do it...do it now or die and join them.’

She tensed, her shoulders shaking.

‘ACT!’

With a yell of primitive fire, she seized the butt of the gun, spun round...

“Woah! Take it easy!”

...only to slam into Jean, who was leaning against the frame of the cab door, ashen-faced and struggling to breathe. A fire-extinguisher was in his hand.

“You’re alive!” she gasped in relief, before lightly boxing him on the shoulder. “I thought they’d taken you, you stupid asshole! What the hell happened?!”

“Electrical fire…” he gasped. “One of the traction-motor buses shorted when I opened her up to push back against the load. I had to go outside and put it out with the CO2 extinguisher.”

“What…” she panted. “Why didn’t you close the throttle?”

“Would you have hung around in a warzone?” he said, before holding up one hand. “I know, it was dumb. I slipped on the catwalk and knocked the wind out of myself… couldn’t get back to the controls before we hit… well. Whatever it was we hit.”

“Another train… we hit another train and lived.”

“That’s… not possible,” Jean said. “We’d be thrown off the-”

“I don’t get it either, but it looks like the cargo protected us,” Tess explained. “It makes about as much sense as it sounds but… Jean, what is it?”

The colour of his face had gone from ashen to a deathly charcoal grey. He pointed forward through the windscreen, and Tess turned to see a familiar Earth pony rushing towards them along the track…

“Verity?”

...and right on her tail were a glut of newfoals, howling with no emotion she could name, either agony, rage or bloodlust… It was impossible to say.

Lightning had crashed through a second-story window hoof-first, shattering the glass and landing nimbly in the corridor where she had last seen Maddy and Rio.

“Guys!” she cried out, head whipping around. “Where are you!?”

She didn’t know why she felt so compelled to help, but the second she heard the newfoals’ screams she had left the brown mare and, with a crack of her wings, thrown herself straight at the window.

Deranged giggles echoed through the hospital, seeming to come from all around. Lightning spun on her hooves. Which way? Which way!?

And then, in a flash of logic, she looked at the streaks of filth and fluid that countless hooves had dragged along the floor… and followed it.

Along a corridor and down a staircase marked ‘Fire Escape’, right down to the ground floor. Lightning's hooves blurred as she ran, jumping off the walls at the corners. The laughter was getting louder, and the shadows deeper.

She reached the surface level and found the Fire Escape doors had been barred and blockaded. But the bloody trail continued, backtracking down another staircase. A sign at the entryway read:

She kicked open the door and dropped down the stairs, into the basement of the hospital. There was no illumination here except for the dim glow of emergency lights.

Down one last corridor, gaining enough speed that her outstretched wings caught the air for a second. The doors out to the leading bay were mechanical, and none of the lights on the panel adjacent were illuminated.

Hand-prints were smeared on the door, faint but bloody. Lightning’s heart trembled.

“Mama…” a voice whispered, and she slowly turned around on her hooves. Directly behind her were the darkened doors to the Pathology suite...through which the river of hoofprints led, like the trail of some disgusting bloodworm.

She followed, each step more hesitant than the last...except for the rap of her hooves everything had fallen silent...it was an expectant hush, the breath before action.

And then she came to an open door marked ‘Room 101’, and looked inside.

“Clouds above…” she whispered in horror.

Room 101 was a windowless space, cold and lifeless, lit by the sterile light of an illuminated wall panel on which grotesque X-Ray images had been pinned...their light and shadow falling over a metal table just long enough for a human to be laid out on, sitting on a scrubbed floor of bone-white tiles. Beside it was a wall in which four small locker doors were set at waist-height.

She knew what this was.

Room 101 was the worst place in the world...

Room 101 was where the dead were brought….

Room 101 was the morgue…

… and right now, it was full of undeath...

Rio was standing with her back to the foot of autopsy table. The front of her hazard suit had torn open, and her still-ungloved hands were gripping onto the edge of the table for support.

Gathered in front of her, facing away from Lightning, were the remaining newfoal children, standing stock still.

“Mama…” one of them tittered. Rio, breathing heavily, looked up and saw Lightning. And smiled.

“Her will is that my time’s come. Alright, I’m ready…”

The newfoals stepped closer, pressing in.

“But it’s not Maddy’s time… not yet…”

With her eyes fixed on Lightning, Rio nodded towards the corpse lockers.

Then, one of the newfoals jumped up at her, and struck her in the chest, knocking her back onto the table. Instead of batting it away, she caught it and cuddled it tight, like a teddy bear, letting its’ potion-soaked fur rub up against her bare hands.

More scrambled up, climbing onto her, pinning her down so that they could crawl in through the hole torn in her suit. Their giggling forms squirmed and writhed obscenely under the fabric.

“Get out!” Lightning screamed. “Run away!”

But Rio wasn’t fighting. Instead, she smiled out through her helmet’s visor.

“I’m ready, to leave all this behind… ready to be Nightingale… a perfect, pretty pony.”

And those last words penetrated deep into Lightning’s mind, flowed along some recently traumatised neural pathways...and like flipping a switch, opened them back up.

Everything she had seen and dreamt while unconscious crashed over her like a wave of vomit, and she gasped, remembering now why the name Nightingale had seemed so familiar...

She opened her mouth to shout a warning, but the words would not come.

Through the visor, she saw Rio’s eyes close, a peaceful, beatific smile on the woman’s face…

… and then they snapped open again, pinpricked with fear as they gazed upon something terrible… something on the far side of reality.

They were seeing something that nobody else could, but Lightning Dust knew what Rio was witnessing.

Because Lightning had lived it. Or rather, died it.

“NO!” Rio screeched, body arcing on the table. “NOT THAT! NOT A SOLDIER! NO….DON’T MAKE ME… PLEEEEEEEEEEAAAASSE!”

She began to thrash and plead, her faith broken, the newfoals packed into the suit with her making it look as if she was bloating, blistering to death. As her screams descended into wordless gibbers, her flailing became weaker… the boots and leggings deflating as her limbs were twisted, withdrawn and foreshortened. At the same time, the helmet tipped back and dangled off the end of the table, completely empty.

Now the hazmat suit looked less like a piece of protective clothing, and more like a birthing sac...a distended, writhing cocoon about to burst. It’s motions were profanely intestinal… accompanied by a series of lewd moans that had replaced the cries of a dying soul.

“Ooh… OOOOhhhh… ooooaah… yessSSSSSS!”

There was a smell in the air… not just the coppery stink of blood but a salty, organic tang that Lightning knew herself from nights curled up in bed with her naughty magazines…

Her stomach heaved… but empty, it could only ache and retch. Attention torn away from the sickening transformation, Lightning’s eyes fell on the corpse lockers, which three of the newfoals had clustered around. Like chicks pleading for worms, they were jumping up to try and grab hold of the handle on the one nearest to her…which sat slightly open.

And then Lightning realised why Rio had nodded towards it with Maddy’s name on her lips.

‘Oh, that’s just twisted...’

As the thing on the autopsy table contained to grind and moan to itself, Lightning jumped over to the lockers and bucked the newfoals away like hoofballs. Then, she clenched hold of the handle with her teeth and hauled back.

The tray slid out with oiled smoothness, and on it, hands pressed over her helmet as if to block her ears, was the diminutive form of Maddy, a single spot of life in this house of the dead.

“Go away!” she screamed, rolled on her side with her eyes screwed shut. “I’m not ready…”

“It’s alright, it’s me…” Lightning said, hooking one hoof over the girl’s torso. “We’ve got to get away! Come on!”

Quickly, keeping herself between the child and the newfoals, Lightning backed Maddy out of the room towards the door.

“Rio…” The little kid whimpered as she looked towards the autopsy table. “She said to hide… said she’d change and tell them to stop… promised me.”

Lightning couldn’t think of anything to say...her attention was focused on the wriggling suit. The newfoals were crawling back out if it now, leaving only a single mass inside, something that was ululating slowly, as if testing limbs, adjusting itself to a new existence.

Then, with a rip, a peach-orange horn tore through the fabric, rending the hole open further. The thing inside the cocoon was about to hatch.

She knew that horn… had felt it burst out through her skull.

‘Don’t be her… don’t be her…’

But it felt hopeless.

“Maddy,” she said softly, trying to keep the horror from showing in her voice. “Climb on my back.”

“W-what?” the human girl asked, as if Lightning had just suggested something blasphemous.

“Get on my back!” Lightning hissed, and at her urging Maddy complied. She was just short enough that her feet did not drag along the ground when seated , and Lighting’s wings, folded back tightly, neatly held her legs in place like stirrups.

The suit gave a final twitch, and then the thing inside began to stand up. With the light of the X-ray panel streaming over it, something with the shape of an athletic young unicorn mare stood up, body dripping with sweat and sex, the very image of primal strength.

But any momentary flutters of lust Lightning felt died the second the creature turned its eyes on them… empty grey eyes… grey as oblivion. Glassy orbs that reflected nothing.

“Hi there! I’m Nepenthe, the Pretty Private!” she squeaked, her lips twisted in a smile that was too wide, too toothy to look real. She sounded like a wind up toy, the phrase wooden, and yet terrifyingly joyous...full of programmed elation, artificial joy...

Lightning saw its attention shift to her trembling passenger, and felt her soul plummet.

“She’ll be a Pretty Private too!”

“No, she won’t!”

And with those words, Lightning ran.

Two detonators rested in two different hands over a mile apart.

In the centre of Truro, Claire Lawgrave flicked a switch on hers and tested the strength of its transmitter. It bleeped a confirmation tone, ready to carry out the PHL’s scorched earth policy. A sticky-label had been attached to the handle, the word ‘LEPERFALL’ pencilled on it.

“I always preferred sticky bombs myself,” Laura Hedd smirked. The two of them were leaning against each other in the shelter of the railyard office, propped up against a wall. Their handguns guns, each empty except for a single bullet reserved for themselves, lay close to hand.

Both of the women were bleeding heavily. Claire had been mauled by a deranged pegasus mare, and Laura had taken a sniper round right through the shoulder.

“Stickies wouldn’t have the kind of power we need...not to shatter the mill’s foundations, or bring down the reservoir dam.”

“Heh...it’ll be the biggest bang we ever gave anyone but each other.”

“Shut up Laura…”

“Hey… you know you love it.”

“Yeah...and I love you too.”

“Shut up Claire…”

Just outside the town to the north, John Birch held up his own detonator, and paused for a second, gazing off to the south. Smoke was rising in plumes all across the valley in which Truro lay, and the sky above was filled with swarming pegasi...some were tearing each other to bits, rather than focusing on the humans fighting and dying below. A single jet, the tip of one wing hanging loose, was circling groggily high above the carnage.

His deranged mind searched for a quote, for some profound wisdom with which to preface what he was about to do, something that would follow every mention of him in the history books, utterly encapsulating his character and trailing each memory. Coming up blank, instead he settled for something simple.

“Fuck them all. Amen.”

Unbeknownst to him, he’d succeeded at that. Also unbeknownst to him, he would not be remembered favorably by whatever writers that dug through file cabinets, records, and scattered testimonials. He would instead be remembered as “Oh dear God, that imbecile! That poor, brutalised fool!”

With those few words as his prayer he thumbed the detonator, and with a series of surprisingly uncinematic flashes and cracks followed almost immediately by the flat blast of the shockwave, the freeway intersection folded up into its own footprint.

Seeing his handiwork, his desolation of Sodom, Birch tossed the detonator down and climbed aboard the schoolbus.

“Let’s go. We’ll head up to the pass and barricade ourselves there. Anything on hooves that escapes this town, we’ll cut down before they can go any further.”

Galt’s headquarters, his citadel, was in chaos as the situation collapsed, with him at the centre attempting to micromanage a continual deluge of radio messages and courier dispatches

“Newfoals continue to rampage....physically attacking humans and ponies indiscriminately…”

“Use a soft retreat to draw them out and then push back hard!”

“They won’t respond! They’re downright-”

“... that freight train from the PHL has run back into the grain yards next door. Please advise…”

“Move up and capture it!”

“With what troops?”

“Give the admin staff guns if need be.”

“They’re not suited to this! There’s something weird about that train’s crash, I think we need-”

BOOM!

Colonel Galt heard the sound of a distant explosion, felt it through the floor.

“Andrei?” he called out. “What was that? Andrei, report!”

There was no answer. Around him message-bearers and administrative officers scurried, trying to draw in intelligence. Everything was going insane.

“...uh, I think that was the freeway. Aw shit, that was our line of retreat too! Who the fuck did that?!”

“Control yourself. We still have the helicopters, don’t give into fear!”

Galt hated confusion...hated when things did not go to plan. Plans were there to impose order upon chaos…

There were some moments when the universe just couldn't help itself. Moments where it would simply be rude not to respond to a challenge like that.

As if on cue:

“Chopper Rapture, this is Chopper Columbia, confirming takeoff from Homebase Elsinore,” crackled a bulky two-way radio set perched on the desk.

“Confirm Columbia, Rapture following on your six.’

“What!”

Hearing that exchange, Galt jumped up. From outside the Home Hardware store came the sound of immense engines spooling up, a familiar roar that he had until now mentally drowned out as he tried to formulate a response.

“What the fuck!”

In a rare moment of panic, he ran for the door and out onto the parking lot, where Columbia, his personal helicopter, was hovering overhead. Its partner, Rapture, was just spooling up to full power. As Galt cleared the door he saw the huge Mi-26 lift off…

...saw Andrei in the co-pilot’s seat.

“ANDREI! What is the meaning of this!”

The cockpit side-window slid open, and Andrei stuck his head out to call down as he ascended away.

“Apologies Atlas, but this fight is lost. It is in my best self-interest to leave now with whatever supplies we salvaged from the hospital, and put them to enlightened use. Now, would you kindly not make this any harder than it has to be. Do svidanya!”

And with a wave of the hand, Andrei dismissed him as if he were nothing. Nothing!? Atlas Galt, champion of the HLF, leader of the Thenardier Guards, nothing!?

“He’s ‘gone Galt’!” the Colonel seethed to himself as the two helicopters spun around and accelerated away. “Just like all those idiots at Defiance, and Goleman’s cartel of cowards.”

‘Going Galt’, a disgusting practice that amounted to glorified sticking one’s head in the sand. One reason why he had assumed the name ‘Galt’ was so as to redefine the phrase, remake it in his own image. So many in the HLF… especially the monied elites he had despised in his youth, advocated running away with whatever they could take and hiding out somewhere, usually the Pacific, until the world had finished falling apart, or someone else got the job of saving mankind done. Which meant relying on the PHL. Disgusting.

But there was nowhere to run to, in the long run. Every other HLF ‘retreat’ had been exposed or collapsed - like Senator Goleman’s lair in Alaska, the so-called ‘town’ of Defiance in New Hampshire, and nowhere in Asia was safe as long as those blasted Dragons of the East, the Stampede Fleet, and all their associated partisans were around. It hadn’t helped that the destruction of Defiance had been like uprooting a tree, ripping out retreat after retreat till almost nothing was left in what had been referred to as the ‘Great HLF Purge’ on both sides. The only options had been to hide, die, or join the PHL.

As a result, the HLF had practically haemorrhaged personnel into the PHL - Reid, Kraber, Burakgazi, Tengku, countless others. Cowards. The only way to win this war with a truly human victory was to keep moving, stay on their feet, be fluid and adaptable…

‘He’s abandoned the cause...left me here to die. No wait, I can escape overland...but the freeway’s down!’

… and so Colonel Galt stood stock still, trying to make sense of the world falling apart around him. Trying, and failing, to make this match to his mental dialectic where he himself had been left behind by his own men, his own beliefs.

‘The train...we’ll escape on that damn PHL train. But what’s it carrying!? What’s its’ secret!?’

“Heh… heh…” something rapsed from behind him, and he turned to see a familiar pegasus stallion being held under guard. One of his wings was in tatters, no blood visible but with countless feathers ripped out at the root. “Always a surprise when your underlings turn on you… isn’t it. So what, is he just going to sell of all your plunder, make himself a little nest until he can no longer outrun Her Majesty’s judgment or the human governments? And what about you, what are you going to do?”

“Flight Leader Prism Flash…” Galt said aloud, mentally defaulting back to his normal paradigm and shuffling recent developments aside for later consideration. “To what do I owe the honor of this reunion?”

“Captured him, Colonel,” one of the guards explained. “He was riding on the back of a Union jet when one of his own newfoals tried to grab a bite of his chicken-wings. Saw him crash just outside our perimeter.”

Galt barely gave the man a grunt. Let him seek platitudes and praise from lesser leaders. Instead he focused his attention on Flash.

“What happened?” he said smoothly. “Why have the newfoals all gone berserk?”

“If I knew, do you think I would tell you?” Flash smirked back.

“Bring him to my desk!” Galt snapped, leading them into the store.

Prism Flash remained as infuriatingly unflappable as always, though something flickered in his eyes as he was dragged through the emptied shelves of the store, smacked with the butts of rifles whenever he slowed down slightly. Or just when the HLF got bored.

And yet still, he still showed a confidence that something could save him. That he’d get out of this alive. That just made the HLF even angrier.

Flash was held down on the home-made workstation while his host scrounged up a power drill and plugged it into an extension socket. The tip whirred with all the sadistic glee of a dentistry set on steroids, and Galt slowly levelled it at the centre of one of the stallion’s prostate hooves, so that the drill bit rested just inside the fold of the ‘frog’ - the mass of soft tissue behind the sole that cushioned every step a pony took.

Incidentally, the frog was also richly threaded with alicornal tissues, especially in pegasi, along with an awful lot of nerve-endings.

“Now…” Galt said cooly, secretly relishing the growing sense of panic on his captive’s face. “Now you’ll talk.”

The drill hummed, and Prism Flash screeched.

And hearing that sound, all of Galt’s other concerns just melted away.

“What the fuck happened?” Tess demanded as Verity dragged herself into the cab. The sound of dozens of newfoals gibbering outside was like some chorus of the damned.

“The newfoals have gone nuts, that’s what! It’s like someone dosed them all with PCP! They’re just acting twigged!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, no-one tells me shit!” Verity called back. “Well, what are you waiting for, shift this thing! Get back across to the PHL’s side of the front!”

“Alright,” Jean said, dropping back into his seat with a wince as his leg twinged. “Did you close the emergency valve Tess?”

“Yes! Gun it!”

Obliging, he advanced the throttle. 9782 screamed as it edged forward two or three yards, and then lurched to a halt, wheels skidding on the rails and alerts flashing on the operations panel in kaleidoscopic madness.

“Shit...ah damn it!”

“What’s wrong?”

“With one of the traction motors blown, we’re down by a sixth...maybe even a third of our power. That shouldn’t be an issue, but there’s something holding onto us…like the train got heavier”

“The handbrake!” Tess realised. “I applied the slug unit’s handbrake when we were running out of control!”

“Well, now we’re trying to drag it with us!” Jean shouted, again attempting to gun the motor.

“I’ll go,” Verity said, and without waiting for an answer she jumped to the back door and shouldered it open. “Hold on if you can...I need to grab something while I’m out there.”

“Why should we wait?”

“Because the newfoals aren’t here for you, they’re just rampaging...the Empire doesn’t even know that you’re a threat to them...but you are, oh you fucking are!”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have Intelligence, and if you want me to share it with you, you’ll wait for me” Verity smirked. “Hunker down and don’t draw attention until I get back.”

And then she disappeared into the driving snow.

“What’s so important that she’s got to run off in a warzone?” Tess seethed as she sat herself down on the cab floor.

Jean knowingly tapped his shoulder. “I’m guessing its her saddlebags.”

He guessed right. Verity had left her kit hidden in the lee of the wheat-tower. Having released the handbrake wheel on the slug (which was unsurprisingly difficult without the benefit of opposable thumbs, and required her to get a first-hand taste of rust and flaking paint), the girl in the guise of a mare sprinted back to get her few treasures.

‘This is so much easier than if I was walking on two legs,’ she realised as she charged through the slush, nimbly evading the clumsy attacks of maddened newfoals and terrified HLF grunts sent up to try and seize the train, their only option for escape. This site, the Co-Op Atlantic Feed Mill, lay in a narrow salient bordered by the highway, the hospital, and the small retail outlet that Colonel Galt would have no-doubt bestowed some vaingloriously obscure codename upon.

‘What was the last one? Belmont? Inverness? Arden?’

But names didn’t matter. Now, this tiny sliver of rail, yard and dirt was a killing-field. And from what intelligence she had gained, Verity knew the full worth of what was at stake, even if none of the other players did.

Between the newfoals flooding over from the hospital, pony air support, and the contesting remnants of the PHL and the HLF, the area around 9782 and its train was just a churning quagmire of mud and blood.

Retrieving her saddlebags from their sanctum under a utilities cabinet, she slipped them on as quickly as possible. One of her hoarded comic-books had slid out, and without even a moment’s consideration she snapped it back up and tucked it in securely.

“Hi Mom”, she whispered, eyes briefly alighting on the name printed on the graphic novel’s cover. A momentary smile graced her muzzle…

...and then she heard the screaming. Not fifty feet from her, across an open yard, was the rear of the retail park. Some firedoors in the rear fascia of the stores had been left open for ease of access, and from one of them she could hear an unholy screech emanating.

‘Oh...sounds like an enhanced interrogation session...that takes me back...’

She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and then frowned. As much as she appreciated the idea of a pony getting what was due to them, some part of her was quailing at the sound of those tortured cries…

‘That’s a stallion screaming...could it be Prism Flash...and if so...’

Her conflicting emotions surrendered themselves at that realisation. A captured officer would be very useful to her ultimate goal.

“Oh, fuck it!” she swore, and bolted across the yard to the door...

...and not a minute later, something else followed her in.

Galt drove the drill home with a cold precision, lancing the third hoof in a row. Prism Flash was babbling in pain, words tumbling out of him.

But not the words that Galt wanted to hear.

“Tell me!” he snapped as he worked the screaming drill around inside the stallion’s hoof. “What’s so important that you launched an attack on this town? What’s on that train?”

“Augh! I don’t know! What train?”

WHIEEEEEEEEE!

“AIHEEEE!”

“How is Lightning Dust here! Intelligence has her leading aerial support over Halifax!”

“We found her...injured in Maine...brought her here -hic- for treatment…”

“LIAR! Are you telling me she’s in two places at once, or that there’s two of her?!”

eeeeeeeeIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRrrrrrrr

“AH! Ah-h-aaaaaargh! I swear, it’s the truth!”

The drill continued to bite deeper, until it suddenly struck the underside of Prism’s navicular bone. The shock caused the Equestrian flier to jerk so wildly that the bit nearly snapped off in the hole it had bored…

EEEEEEEEE-click!

Casually, Galt withdrew the drill and studied the bloody tissue now packed into the bit’s grooves. A few pale strands of alicornal fibres were wrapped around it like angel-hair pasta, glistening as they caught the light.

“Next hoof,” he said. “And then, if he still doesn’t talk, we can try the wing roots.”

“Pleeeeasse!” Prsim Flash begged desperately as one of his captors forced his last good leg out towards Galt, while the other stuffed tampons soaked in antiseptic up the holes drilled into the underside of his hooves. “You’ve already crippled me, please don’t ground me too! I don’t know anything, I swear...we only picked this town because it had a hospital!”

“I can promise you an extension of life in reasonable comfort, in captivity…” Galt said affably, as if Flash’s words had not actually reached him. “... but only if you share intelligence with us willingly. If you continue to resist, the only future you have is a short one, full of pain.”

He lowered the drill and squeezed the trigger switch.

..brrrrrrieeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

“I’m not an unreasonable man...in fact I’m objectively quite logical. Your pain brings me no pleasure.”

If he was being honest with himself, he would have acknowledged that as a lie. Truly great men were above the infliction of petty pain...

“Now, just enlighten me...what is on that train?”

Galt’s words, barely audible over the whine of the drill’s motor, got their answer from a most unexpected source.

“Why don’t you go find out for yourself, Colonel?” a female voice said from on high. Galt and company looked up, and to their visible surprise saw a pony mare gazing down on them from atop a high shelf-structure, just out of reach. “The train you’re obsessing over is parked just outside...on the front lines.”

She shook her head and snorted. “Oh, but I forget...we never saw you on the front lines, did we?”

One of the guards whipped up a gun, but Galt held out a hand.

“Withhold your fire.”

His eyes were narrowed in recognition.

“I can’t say that it’s particularly good to see you again, Miss Carter, given your lamentable condition…tell me, how does your loyalty to the HLF bear up in service of Equestria’s pack of spies and Quislings?”

She shrugged. “It’s tolerable. The smell of a stable following me around is a bit much though.”

“I imagine it is,” Galt smirked, before gesturing towards Prism Flash. “Tell me. From your own, intimate experience, which part of the pony anatomy is best suited to the application of interrogation?”

“Come on sir,” she snorted. “I’ve helped out in enough of these shows to know you’re going to get zilch out of him...you know he’s got nothing to say if you’ve gone through two hooves, let alone three. He knows nothing. Heck, not even the PHL know what’s on that train...and they’re the ones whose hands it’s fallen into. I wouldn’t be surprised if even Equestria is unaware they’re even missing something yet…their inventory-keeping sucks worse than the PHL’s forensics!”

“Oh?” Galt straightened up. “What do you have to offer? What have you found that your fellow traitors missed?”

The suffixed words, ‘tell us, and we might not kill you too...ha! Yeah, right!’ hung unspoken in the air like a smothering blanket.

Nonplussed, Verity turned and lifted up the flap of her saddle-bag, exposing the book she had raided from the railyard. The damn thing had been sitting in a documents rack in 1810’s cab, plain as day!

“This is the last war journal of a PHL operative named Trenderhoof. I’ve only had a glance, but it makes for fascinating reading...the contents of that train were part of a secret snag-and-bag operation run in association with Crowe Laboratory’s buddies...and it’s an intelligence goldmine.”

“And what do you expect in return for this boon?”

“Him!” the mare pointed down at Prism Flash. “I give you the journal, you give me that glue-stick, and then he leads me to my quarry.”

“Buck...you…” Flash gasped.

“You be real quiet!” Verity snapped. “Or I’ll ask for the drill as well...”

The threat did not shut Rainbow Dash’s father up…

...a beam of steely magic hitting one of the guards in the face, causing the woman’s head to pop like a rotten tomato, did.

Galt did not have time to react, and neither did Verity. An aura of telekinesis wrapped around the high shelves on which she was perched, and crunched it like toothpicks, causing her to slip and tumble to the ground as wood, paint and panes of glass tumbled around her.

Verity groaned, pinned by the weight of the shelves. Looking up, she saw Trenderhoof’s diary lying just out of reach on the floor.

She strained for it with one hoof, just caught the edge of the cover…

...and then it was kicked away by a passing set of hooves.

“Naughty ponies get punished!” a worrying cheery voice chirped. “Naughty humans get to die!”

Groaning in pain and ascending despair, Verity looked at a peach-orange unicorn mare who was examining her, empty grey eyes half-closed in an expression that could have been lidded lust or benign amity. The grin stretched out from ear to ear beneath it was neither.

“But you’re neither...or is it either? Human and pony together, and yet not…a quantum superimposition, or a quantum leap?”

Her study session was suddenly interrupted by a gun rattling out in a full-auto orgasm, and with disturbing grace the newfoal spun and ducked, avoiding the entire spread in one fluid motion. As she came back up, her horn flashed again, and a cracked mirror shot off the floor and through the neck of another HLF grunt, causing his head to permanently part company from his body.

“Panzerfaust!” Galt screamed at the third guard, who unslung from his back a homemade rocket-launcher welded up from scrap metal and a drainage pipes, covered in graffiti.

“FIRE!”

The botched-up RPG-launcher belched fire from both ends, spitting out a semtex-stuffed baked-beans can mounted on a rudimentary tail.

Verity mashed her face to the floor and hoped to high heaven that she’d survive the blast, but the newfoal did not even blink as it shot straight for her face…

KRACK-A-DOOM!

A hot wave of heat washed over Verity, causing every hair on her torso to stand on end. And yet...there was no shockwave or fireball.

‘That’s...not right...I used to help MAKE those things...they’re meant to kill everything six-feet from impact...when they work.’

She looked up, and spluttered in disbelief.

"You gotta be shitting me, that’s just fucking O.P!”

The newfoal had, in the time it took for the rocket-propelled can to travel less than twenty feet, used her magic to throw up a shield composed of fallen tools and home-improvement supplies.

“My turn!” she trilled, “and I think you’ll find that my dee-aye-waifu is stronger!”

A flick of her horn collapsed the wall, which then seemed to disintegrate and flow onto her in a wave of soluble material…

...and solidified into a lightweight suit of steely-grey plate armor, trimmed in burgandy-red fabric.

“Oh yes, my Owner…” the creature quivered gleefully, as the armor’s straps and belts tightened around her limbs and barrel. “Your Pretty Private comes with a full range of fun accessories!”

Galt’s two remaining guards fired on full auto, and the newfoal’s magic conjured more shining weapons from the surrounding debris.

“Such as a matching shield and sword!”

The constructs transmuted and transformed, reshaping themselves as her command, deflecting bullets in one instant, and in the next slicing them out of the air.

“Mace! Battle-hammer! Crossbow! War-axe! Yes, your Pretty Private has them all, she’s a walking arsenal just ready for playtime!”

The cloud of particles constantly shifted in her magical touch, jumping from one form to the next as she herself jumped, rolled, slid and dealt cuts, blows, kicks and vicious swipes with an ease that looked less like war, and more like dancing.

The nearer of the two guards stood no chance, the newfoal laying into him with a Combo attack that first disarmed him...and then disemboweled him from crotch to neck, using a two-handed sword that seconds ago had been a double-bladed axe.

The last guard, rather than protect Galt, ran for it.

“Naughty, naughty! You mustn't run away from me!”

Another flash of her terrifying magical strength, and the entire ceiling above the fleeing man crashed in on top of him with a sickeningly organic crunch.

“Your Pretty Private will stop at nothing in your service…” the newfoal finished up, reforging the obscenely-large broadsword into a pair of gladiuses that neatly slotted into her armor. “And will always be a beautiful, perfect toy for any deserving filly! Or stallion..."

She batted her eyes and moaned the last word, before flashing a terrifying wink at Verity, who felt an uncomfortable flush come over her.

'What the fuck is this thing?'

Galt was left alone, and Verity saw him fumble for his gun. The newfoal, still smiling, did not give him the time, and instead leapt forward and headbutted him in the chest…

There was a pop as her horn broke straight through the sternum. Galt made an empty gasping noise, and slumped backwards.

“Supersoldier…” Verity heard Prism Flash mutter. “She did it...Twilight Sparkle finally did it!”

“Yup!” the newfoal laughed, sliding her horn out of the Colonel’s chest like a knight who had slain a dragon. “I’m the first Pretty Private, designation Nepenthe!”

Flash paused, and then laughed through his pain. “Amazing...absolutely amazing! One newfoal against five human warriors...and you took them all down!”

He reached for her. “Now, get me to safety, Private…”

Nepenthe did not answer. Instead, she was staring up at the ceiling, her ears twitching.

“Network clearing…” she suddenly said aloud, voice hollow. “Unity re-established. All units, respond to ID-ping… Respond… Respond…”

“The fuck?” Verity whispered.

Then the newfoal shook her head and batted at her nose. The gesture might have been cute were it not for the blood running all over her face and mane.

“Configuration Daemon over-ride enabled, all I/O ports and nodes shut!” she squeaked, and almost sounded surprised. “Network disconnect complete, defaulting to local-law!”

“Help me up, Private, that was an order!” Flash repeated, and Verity heard a tremor of uncertainty in his words.

“In a minute, sir…” the creature said sweetly, fluting voice chirping. Now the thing named Nepenthe was staring up at the blood on its own horn. “I have an idea…”

“Newfoals don’t have ideas, you do as you’re told!”

“Shush!” Nepenthe said, like a mother to a rowdy child, and that one scolding word was enough to reduce him to a stunned silence.

Her horn began to fizz with pops of magic, and the blood slaked over it began to boil and bubble. Streaks of it floated off into a ball, encased in her magical aura. It was joined by other droplets and gobs. Paint from burst cans, water spraying down from the hole in the roof…

Smiling, Nepenthe turned and looked with maddened eyes down at Galt, who was drawing his last breaths.

“New Ponification Template Logged. Designation, ‘Pretty Private’. Step one: control experiment!”

The ball of fluid swirling in front of her, about the size of a grapefruit, was becoming denser and deeper…and changing colour, shading towards a familiar bright purple...

Potion, Verity realised numbly, This creature had taken Galt’s own blood… and paint… and somehow conjured up a ball of fucking ponifiction potion!

“Transmutation…the armour is one thing, but alchemical substances? That’s… that’s supposed to be beyond any Newfoal’s abilities!”

“Yes!” she giggled, bouncing on her hooves. “Yes it is! Which is why I’ve simply got to test my little Nepenthe’s capabilities to the fullest! Oh, what a wonderful thing I am, to make a creature like this!”

‘Wait...what?’ Verity pondered that choice of words as she tested the weight of the shelf on her back. ‘So is something piloting her right now?’

The creature giggled again as she looked down at a horrified Galt, whose mouth was frothing up blood. He was gagging, struggling to even scream or protest, unable to do even that.

“Please…” he gurgled, the words barely audible. “...please…”

His eyes said far more to Verity than those feeble splutters. If Galt could have seen himself, she guessed he would have been disgusted with himself for being so weak. On the floor, unable to do anything, dying like a nobody…

Begging for mercy that nobody in the room was likely to give...

“Please what?" asked the newfoal. "Please make you like me? Please kill you?”

She made a little ‘hah’ sound.

“No to both. You’re the control experiment, so you get to be another one of the generics! Sorry… though, really I’m not. It’s more than you apes deserve, anyway! Good bye!”

And then she telekinetically splatted the wad of goop down into his face with a fast-ball action that would have rustled Babe Ruth’s jimmies.

The worst thing, from Verity’s perspective, was that Galt did not scream… had not enough air left in him to even whimper, not enough strength to thrash or fight...

… and then a colbalt-black newfoal male stood up, eyes even emptier than those of the thing that had sired it.

Verity was happy she hadn’t seen Galt’s eyes as the potion overwhelmed him. Some people would ask her how she was coping with being an earth pony, if they hadn’t known her by reputation and spent nearly ten minutes rolling on the floor, laughing at her like that pretentious, Sharlto Copley-obsessed bliksem Kraber had. Even as she had screamed through her aftermath of her transformation, in the throes of hysterics, half-convinced she was turning into a zombie, that bastard had laughed...

This was how she coped.

Because she had dodged a bullet, and it was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

“I’m Load Bearer!” the abomination that had been Galt announced with mechanical calm and childish glee. “I serve the sun!”

Every newfoal said some variation of those phrases upon ponification. Like a cheap vocaloid, spouting off its pre-programming catchphrases.

“Get me out of here!” Prism screamed again, and the male earth pony obligingly spun towards him.

“Oh, yessir! Glad to help sir!” the newfoal said with obsequious calm, before beginning to drag rubble off of Prism with his teeth.

Nepenthe meanwhile...or the thing that was now piloting Nepethe, was examining something on the floor.

‘Trenderhoof’s dairy!’

“Well, what is this?” the abomination asked, struggling to lift it off the ground with suddenly enfeebled magic. “Hrm...dammit, this is harder than it looks from on the inside…”

At last though, it caught the book in a staticy aura, and flicked through its pages.

“Oh my yes...that is convenient...oh I can make use of that train, definitely…once I’ve refined this new template, oh yessssssss.”

The light of avaricious opportunity glinted in its eyes.

“And now, you…” it tittered, slamming the book shut and placing in a pocket of Nepenthe’s armor, before turning its attention towards Verity. “What are we to do with you?”

Verity herself just smirked, slowly shifting her hooves under her for maximum purchase. “Take a look and tell me what you see?”

The newfoal-thing took a step closer, horn flickering in contemplation.

“Hrm...as Nepenthe though in her first pass, not a pony...but not human. And yet, the basic latch-points and gene markers are the same...would the potion work on you? There’s magic present… yet…”

And then Verity spat at her.

The beast’s shielding spell flashed up before the wad could hit it in the face. It was weak, and flickering…

“Ah man, that was supposed to go in your eye!”

...but what happened next was surprising.

The splatter of phlegm, caught in the insubstantial magical field, burst into blue flames.

“What is this reaction?” the newfoal’s pilot whispered in fascination. “Something suspended within the spittle? Liquid droplets...a catechol, some variety of urushiol...which makes it biologically-originated, yes.”

It drew closer, a manic grin still spread across the features of its host…

“Flora...kingdom plantae… order sapindales… family anacardiaceae…”

...right up to the point that she suddenly recoiled as if stung.

“Toxicodendron crudelisiocum! The most powerful meta-allergen in nature! It’s spread all through your body!”

Her horn flared, and the burning ball of spit flashed off into the depths of the store.

“Yeah, didn’t you know?” Verity smirked, before flexing her back and, in a show of earth pony physiological strength, hurled off the shelf that had appeared to pin her down. “I’m fucking toxic!”

“Get back! You’ll contaminate the experiment!” the thing squeaked, acting less like a supersoldier and more like a child afraid that a bully would suddenly smash her toys. This was the typical newfoal - not so much fearless as they were too devolved into a childlike state to really understand these kinds of things.

And now the bully was Verity, who advanced on the newfoal with slow, steady trots.

“Why don’t you kill me, huh? Rip the roof down on top of me or swat me like a bee, or go all whirling dervish on me? You did just a minute ago… but no… whatever is steering you right now doesn’t have access to that power… it’s just a feeble little mind with no strength of its own. All flash, no crash. And besides, you don’t really have a mind, do you?”

She took a sidestep, revealing one of her rifles, saddle-mounted and apparently battle ready.

“You just have a latticework of spells that do so much of the work of your brain that you can’t adapt. You can’t deal with something like me. Run.”

And the newfoal scattered, running clumsily for the door. Paying it no heed, Verity patted the barrel of the gun she had used for the threat, currently unloaded.

“Good gun… now then, Prism Flash.”

The stallion in question was spread across the back of the newfoal that had been Galt, which was struggling to trot while carrying the flier’s weight towards the door. A kick between the flanks was enough to scatter the both of them across the floor. Panicked, Flash tried to stand, and collapsed back down, unable to bear weight on his crippled hooves.

Like a horse of the apocalypse, she stood over him and smirked.

“Hi there, I’m your charming captor, Verity!”

“What are you...what are you monsters?”

She bit into the scruff of his neck and tossed him sideways like a ragdoll, straight into another shelving unit.

“The monsters you yourselves made… now...”

Searching quickly around she came back with a coil of rope held in her mouth, and quickly bound it around the stunned stallion’s barrel, pinning his wings. Then it was simple foals...no, child’s play to hoist him onto her back, hostage style.

“...you and I have a train to catch.”

As if cued up by a sound engineer with no sense of taste, a bellowing air horn echoed outside. Ignoring Prism Flash’s protestations and curses, the transformed young woman sprinted down the corridor and back out through the same fire-doors by which she’d entered the building.

Ahead, she could see the train pulling out, plumes of black diesel-smoke staining the sky of marching clouds.

“Right on time!”

And then she heard the same horn blow again… the cry of a locomotive in full voice...

.. .but it came from behind them.

“I don’t like this!” Tess had hissed as she and Jean lay low in the stationary 9782’s cab. “Verity’s taking too long, and now they’ve gone all quiet.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean…” he answered, before tipping his head up towards the windscreen. “Take a look.”

“What?”

“Girl, you’ve got two good legs and I can barely stand!”

“Oh...great, just great,” she seethed.

But she still obliged. Crouching against the conductor’s chair, she peeked over the sill of the window frame and peered out through the frost that was slowly forming on the glass.

“What do you see…”

“They’ve just...stopped. And now they’re standing around and staring up into the sky. It’s like they’re listening to something and-oh shit!!”

She threw herself back down beside him, motions suddenly panicked and fearful.

“What now?”

“They all just fucking looked at me at the same time, like they were the same fucking pony! Fucking Exorcist-level bollocks!” she babbled. “No more waiting around, we’ve got to get our asses gone yesterday! I’ve had enough of this bloody madhouse!”

There was a bang as something landed on the cab roof, and Jean nodded in silent agreement. He took no convincing.

“Yesterday.”

This time, instead of sitting in the seat, he reached over the lip of the control desk and pushed the throttle forward with one hand. With the brakes all properly released, 9782 responded instantly, and the both of them felt the train surge slowly into motion. The roar of the motor built until it drowned out anything outside the cab.

Then there were more bangs on the roof, and this time a dent appeared in the metal overhead, shattering a light fitting. Uncertainly, and still lying down on her back, Tess drew her Beretta and aimed upwards, steadying her grip with both hands and bracing her feet on the bulkhead.

“Can you even shoot that thing?” he asked dubiously.

She swallowed, and felt that manic, hedonistic grin threatening to break out across her face.

“If they come, then I’ll have to.”

BANG!

This time the roof broke under the blows of the newfoals, a pinprick-hole forming right overhead. A few drops of water trickled down, and Tess saw someone on the far side of the keyhole moving…

...then a line of liquid dribbled through the hole and fell slowly towards her, so thick that it dangled on its own thread.

‘Potion!’

A fat dollop on the end glistened purple, heading straight for her face.

“Look out!” she heard Jean cry, before the engineer threw himself over her on his hands and knees..

He stared down in horror, his eyes into her own. She heard droplets going splat, splat...

He quivered… just the motion of the engine, she told herself.

He smiled… just out of relief, she hoped.

He began to giggle…a nerve twitched under one eye.

“Ooooheeheheheeeeeeeeee-damn!”

She saw his eyes shimmer, first with tears, and then as they colour-shifted.

“You were right Tess, about meeeeeee....I saved those girls I ran down...saved them from this....AHAHAAHAHAAHA….”

She felt her arm come back up as he continued to gibber.

“...and NOW I’m Going to saVE yoooouuuuuu toooo. She’ll save alLLL of us apes!”

She saw her hand lift into sight, the Beretta gripped tight.

“Yard Slug!” he blurted out “I’m...Jean...no...I...yes! I am a slave unit…a Yard Slug…”

She pressed it into his mouth, right between those falsely-smiling lips.

She fired.

Lightning Dust, back aching from carrying Maddy, had found the only way to escape the newfoals had been by going up. The tiny, mutated children tumbled down stairs with ease, but at their tiny size had extreme difficulty in ascending them.

And so the two of them had climbed. After losing the thing that had been Rio in a runaround on the basement level they had hit the stairs and not stopped until they reached the roof.

It was freezing up here, even with Lightning’s fur trapping an insulating layer of air over her actual skin. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like for Maddy, who had barely any protection against the elements except for the thin prison of her hazard-suit. Once out of danger, the girl had thrown off even that meagre protection off, violently discarding each article and hurling them as far away as possible, leaving her barefoot and clad only in a thin t-shirt and pants.

And then she had held herself and cried, wordlessly bawling out her fear and confusion, hands clutched around a pendant worn on a chain round her neck. When Lightning had tried to put a hoof around her, Maddy had batted it away with a screech of “NO!”

Unable to help in that regard, Lightning had reluctantly left the kid to weep, and had instead paced out their eyrie.

It did not look good. They were trapped on top of what was the highest part of the hospital complex, looking out over the town, which at this end seemed threaded with railroad lines. Beyond a patch of trees she could make out an unbroken ribbon of steel which she assumed to be the main track. Closely however, just past the hospital perimeter fence, was the spur on which she had seen that train run back on...a train that was stationary and in sight not that far away, surrounded by ponies and humans locked in a fight of death.

‘That’s a decent getaway...’

Who knew what the engine’s controls were like, but with with her sharp eyes and elevated position, she’d seen that the human crew were alive in the cab, just keeping low. She was certain that they’d get into motion soon...

Heh. Soon. What was ‘soon’, given all that had happened to her in barely a day hours, not even twenty-four hours. It was amazing how faraway Equestria now seemed, when she’d been gone for so little time. How much had she witnessed since her arrival yesterday evening? Equestria almost seemed like a dream, like it had never been real compared to this madness.

Poised on the edge of the roof, Lightning closed her eyes and let the wind coil around her, caressing her with its cold hooves. For the first time since she had awoken from sedation, she took a moment to seek out the alien zephyrs of this world, this Earth, feeling them lifting under her wings and filling her lungs. She breathed deep, tasting snow and pine in the air.

‘Fly away…’ she thought. ‘I could fly away, right now. Like Mercy said...just get away and hide. I could go to the Pacific, wherever that is, I could head for the frozen north, somewhere that there are none of these madstallions and madmares...’

But that was horseapples, and she knew it. Something about what she’d been told about this world gone mad told her that sooner or later, there wouldn’t be any such sanctums left.

And the thought of Mercy brought her back to the pony medic’s human friends…

‘Rio...how did I know what was going to happen to her?! How could I have foreseen fucking Nepenthe!? What’s happening to me…?! Am… Why am I here? How am I here?’

No, she stopped herself, forcing a touch of Wonderbolt thinking upon her own thoughts. Mercy was dead now, and so was Rio.

‘...dead…’ the word seemed alien, was this truly her first brush with the grave? Alright, there had been grandma’s funeral but-

’FOCUS!’

Alright, alright. Their fates had been decided, and weren’t the problem at hand. That problem was…

“Maddy,” she called out, as gently as she could. The two syllables sounded harsh and cruel in her ears. “Please come here.”

The human child, shivering and sobbing in the lee of the staircase access, shook her head. She was holding that pendant to her lips and praying, as if it were a charm or a hotline to Celestia.

Unwilling to give up, Lightning went back to her.

“Maddy,” she said again. “We need to get down from this roof.”

She braced herself for some tough love. “I could fly away, but that would mean leaving you here.”

The girl’s hiccuped sobs and whispered appeals to divinity broke off in an instant, and her head snapped up, fresh betrayal glowering in her eyes. Lightning winced internally; but at least she now had Maddy’s attention.

“But I’m not going to do that,” she said quickly, reaching out to place one hoof on her young charge’s shoulder, this time without being shoved away. “I am not going to abandon you.”

“...you will...they always do. Mercy did...even my human birthers did, when I was a baby...now even the Queen has gone away from me… and Rio too! She wanted to change me before I was ready, she broke her promise!”

“I said I won’t abandon you, and I mean it!” Lightning insisted, and on reflex she pulled Maddy into a hug.before the kid could start crying again.

“She promised…” Maddy sobbed. “She promised and she lied!”

“That thing, it wasn’t Rio, and it definitely wasn’t a pony…” she said, stroking the back of the little one’s head as they clung to one another. “Ponies, true ponies, keep their promises, and I am PROMISING you, that I am going to get you out of here safely…”

‘Mercy gave me back the sky...Rio sacrificed herself in trying to keep this girl alive. The least I can do is honor their memory...’

She broke the hug and looked into Maddy’s curiously small, dark eyes. Despite that, they were as full of emotion as those of any pony.

“Do you trust me?”

Maddy hesitated for a second. Her hands had drifted back to the pendant round her neck. It looked like a long, roughly tubular crystal, about three inches long.

The child clutched the object...charm...totem, whatever...as if she wanted to dive into it.

And then she looked into Lightning’s eyes and nodded.

“Thank you,” Lightning smiled. The expression felt alien. For the first time in her life, she, Lumina ‘Lightning’ Dust couldn’t think of flying solo as the only solution to her problems, or detach herself from a situation by running away from it, running away from the emotions it aroused. She was staying.

And by Celestia, she would do something.

...her solution still involved flying though. And running. Still, it wasn’t like she had any choice there.

“I’m going to have to try flying, with you on my back…”

Maddy’s eyes widened subtly, and she wordlessly shook her head. Lightning steadied her with her hooves, and tried to inject a bit of what she knew of Spitfire into her words. Wonderbolts were brave. Wonderbolts… would try to save ponies, she realized.

What would a Wonderbolt do?

“It’s the only way, Maddy. We’ve got to jump off this roof.”

“But we’ll die!”

“Maybe, but I’m sure as Tartarus not staying here! Everything below us is a madhouse! There’s those people with those…”

She struggled for the right word.

“...those weapons that can…”

“Guns?” the kid suggested.

“Yeah. Those. And more of those newfoals…”

Maddy’s expression brightened for a second, and Lightning shuddered.

‘Does she still want to be one of those things?’

“...mad, crazy newfoals that hate the both of us,” she blurted quickly before pointing with one hoof. “But just over there is a train, ready to depart. That’s our way out!”

And then they both heard a horn blow…

“Get on!” she said, spreading her wings. “Trust me, hold on tight, and keep as low to my back as possible.”

‘Yeah...wouldn’t want her to be a sky-anchor AND a giant air-brake, would we?’

Madeline hesitated, and Lightning stomped a hoof.

“Be brave Maddy. Be brave like Rio...or Mercy.”

‘Lies...Mercy was a craven coward...a monster who did unspeakable things...right? No?’

Hesitantly, Maddy climbed onto her back again. Lightning winced at the weight re-asserting itself on her spine, and yet it bore up well, as if the human’s shape was evolutionary suited to riding her...which was a creepy thought, and not relevant right now.

‘Why do I suddenly have an urge to rear and flail my forehooves in the air?’

The train horn blew again, a flat tone that seemed to crash across them both like a wave of sound.

“Hold onto my mane, and tuck your legs in tight! Ready?”

“Nooooo!”

“Sorry, no luck. Here we go!”

She didn’t rear or anything stupidly dramatic like that, which was another first. Instead, she put her head down and charged in a shallow circuit around the roof, gaining speed quickly, hooves clattering on the surface.

‘Can’t just flap off...not with this weight. I’m gonna have to glide off, and then beat these things with all I’ve got!’

Her outstretched wings lifted as they began to catch the air. She felt a familiar tug where their roots met with her spine.

“Almost there…” she shouted. More speed, she needed more speed.

Eons of instinct worked in tandem with her skills as she straightened up and bolted for the edge of the roof. Primary and secondary feathers aligned themselves for maximum lift at takeoff speed, and she subtly arched her back so that they cut better into the air flow.

“Lightning!”

The edge of the roof rushed towards them.

“Not now Maddy!”

She hit Vee-1, the speed at which she was committed to lift off, just as they reached the lip.

“I see another train!” Maddy screeched as they arced off into open air.

“WHAT?”

In the sudden confusion, Lightning’s wings flared, breaking their careful hold on lift. They stalled.

Or, in laypony’s terms, fell out of the sky.

Maddy screamed in fear as they dropped. But Lightning just felt herself flashing back to basic lessons in flight school.

WORK THE PROBLEM! You stall because of insufficient airspeed…

And you gain airspeed, by going faster.

So, instead of desperately flapping for lift, Lightning pointed her nose down and accelerated into a dive. Hospital windows flashed past under her belly as they plunged…

She saw the ground rushing up to splatter against her face, and mentally prepared to try and protect Maddy by taking the brunt of the crash herself..

Something on her flank tingled…

...and then she felt the joyous, magical tug of lift on her wings, and pulled up.

Whooping with glee, Lightning arced through the nadir of the dive inches from the ground, her tucked-in hooves scything through tufts of snow and ice with the sweeping speed of a painter;s brush. Crystalline flakes scattered around the pair of them as they swept upwards, facets shimmering with rainbow hues in the sunlight.

“Ha-ha! YEAH!” Lightning hollered, wings buzzing furiously to maintain forward flight. “Now, what was that about another train?”

“LOOK!”

Lightning did, and found her words best expressed by a word she’d made a close acquaintance of in the past day.

“Fuck.”

The were over the spur-line, heading straight for the train, which was accelerating slowly towards them, hauled at the front by a smoking red box on wheels.

But off to the south, on the main-track, was another train, coming hard and fast. Behind its double-headed power-set was car after car, a silver tail stretching back hundreds of feet.

She glanced back, and saw how ahead the two lines came together at a switch-track. If the two trains met there, tried to pass through it at the same time…

“HOLD ON TIGHT! I’M GONNA GO IN FOR LANDING!”

Their only hope was to warn the people on board this train, the human crew in the red locomotive. Folding her wings in slightly, Lightning dived again, bracing herself for a rough landing on the machine’s flat-topped body…

‘Ponies on the cab! Ponies on the cab!’

There were, indeed, two bucks on the locomotive’s cab roof, smashing at it with their magic, like an octopus trying to crack open a shell.

‘Well, they’ll make a nice brake!’

Rearing back, Lightning screamed in challenge, hooves brought to bear. She struck the first of the two with such force that he was hurled straight back, while she herself stopped all but dead. As Maddy dropped off onto the moving locomotive, her former mount spun herself around and kicked the second unicorn straight off onto the snow-lined roadbed.

‘Newfoals...’ she shuddered, seeing a frozen grin on his face as she launched him away.

And then...

“Oh no!” she heard Maddy cry out.

‘Is she hurt, oh Celestia please don’t let her be hurt!’

Touching down, Lightning spun, and saw Maddy was now crouched over the hole the newfoals had made in the cab roof. The chain of the charm around her neck had snapped as she landed, and the pendant itself had smashed open on metal…

It was hollow!

...and a dose of potion was running out of it, straight through the hole and into the cab.

“Potion! You were wearing a phial of potion the whole time!” Lightning gasped, horrified. “Why!?”

Maddy looked up, confusion in her eyes.

“For when I was ready…” she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

And then, from beneath them, there was a colossal CRACK! as some kind of weapon discharged.

“Oh shit!”

Tess felt Jean’s weight fall against her, heavy and dead. Without thinking, she pushed him back up and rolled sideways towards the controls, leery of any more potion dripping down. Jean’s body fell the other way, dribbling blood out of its mouth and onto the spotless floor...even more was coming from the immense exit-wound in the back of his head…

...and from where a mixture of his brains, brains and scalp had splattered across the ceiling in interesting patterns.

She gazed mindlessly at them for a second, and then glanced down, to where she had been absentmindedly cleaning bits of Jean off of the Beretta’s barrel…

...by wiping it on the dead man’s pants.

“OH GOD!” she shrieked, flinging the gun into the corner and crawling backwards on her hands and ass until she bumped into the engineer’s chair. "JEAN!"

Did she have any friends, anyone left in this world that wasn’t dead? Was… was there anyone left? He’d been with her through thick and thin this past day, he’d kept this mad train running… and now, there he was. Dead. Nearly ponified.

She didn’t want to look too closely at his body. The corpses of those that died part-ponified were… unpleasant sights. There were horror-stories about how even hardened morticians had nightmares having handled those twisted messes of body parts and muscle that simply did not work...

“Oh God, oh god… Oh god…” she whispered. “No. Have to keep focus. Calm down, Tess. You’ve got a job to-”

Fate conspired against her, as per bloody usual.

“I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BUT YOU NEED TO GET OUT!” an unfamiliar pegasus yelled, barging into the cab and freezing in the rocking, bouncing back door.

Tess scrabbled for the gun and swung it up in both hands.

“YOU,” she hissed. “You… you ponified my engineer!”

“Well… uh.. sort of… look!” the pony stammered, helping a human child down off of the top of the locomotive’s bonnet. She immediately dove behind the child as soon as the kid’s feet touched the deck.

“You’re using a human shield?!” Tess yelled, recognizing the pegasus.

Li...Lightning Dust...yeah, I know her from the news. Rainbow Dash’s second in command and lover…

...she led the attack on Fishguard Harbour...’

“You…” she snarled.

“Look, I know, I’m a horrible pony in this mad world,” Lightning said, speaking faster than Tess had ever heard a pony speak. “You have no reason to trust me. I’m the enemy. But you have to listen to me! There is another train coming, and you need to get this thing going before we all die at the switchtrack!”

“...Do you have any idea who you just ponified?!” Tess yelled. “That was my-”

“I’m sorry, but we have,” Lightning said, “to go.“

The cab rocked as they slowly continued to gain speed...

“You expect me to just take an apology after you ponified my engineer? AFTER YOU KILLED MY FAMILY YEARS AGO!”

“I’m sorry for that too, even if it wasn’t me. And… look, we can argue about this later!” Lightning said. “If you can’t listen to me, listen to Maddy here.”

She pushed the girl gently forward and nodded to her. Tess noticed the mare was trying to keep herself between the girl and the sight of Jean’s not-body.

“Miss Dust is right…there’s another big train coming, bigger than this one!”

Tess waved them over to one side with the gun, and trading sides of the cab, came up to the engineer’s side, the side that faced out towards the main track.

“Don’t...move!” she stressed as she pushed the door open and glanced out. Trees flicked past at jogging pace, interspersed with buildings.

Then...a flash of red and silver metal, overhauling them.

“OH FUCKING GREAT!” she screamed, spinning herself into Jean...the engineer’s seat and shoving the throttle forward. The pitch and tone of the diesel’s motor climbed into a scream, and the controls trembled under her hand…

*

“So how’s this gonna go down?” her mother was asking her. “You going to do your old mum proud?”

The inside of the old airplane hangar stunk with the rich tang of four-stroke petrol, and echoed to the screams of laughing kids and their parents.

A banner overhead read: VENOM RACING WELCOMES YOU!

“Yeah!” Tess laughed as she strapped herself in tight and grasped hold of the steering wheel. It was her fourteenth birthday, and she was finally getting to race one of Mum’s amazing go-karts. “I’m totally going to win, Mum!”

“Alright then,” Gloria Baker smirked, before stepping back and speaking into a handheld microphone.

“And last by not least, in Car #6, in her debutante race, my daughter Tess! Give it up for her, Venom Racing!”

The other patrons cheered.

“Are you ready!?” Gloria called out as the karts were brought to the starting line. Tess’s mother was wearing her old ‘Team Misfile’ racing-suit, and had climbed atop the plinthed XR4Ti she had driven so many times to glory.

Not quite the Stig...more like his awesome rally-driving cousin...

The green flag was in Gloria’s hands.

“I SAID, ARE YOU READY!” she called again, working up the families present to watch their kids race....

The six kids and the gathered crowds called out in the affirmative, and Tess, behind her helmet, grinned in delight.

“THREE...TWO...ONE...GO!”

The flag dropped, and Tess floored it, feeling all of the little Honda Cadet’s 6.5-horsepower…

...riding on top of the 9782’s 4400-horsepower, Tess felt a breath catch in her throat.

‘Mum, Dad...Jean, please be with me.’

Once again she found herself clinging to a machine speeding at ludicrous speeds over ill-kept track. This time though, she was in control...she hoped.

Wheel-slip warnings flashed on the display, and after a few seconds panic she hit a button marked ‘SAND’ on the panel, releasing fines onto the rails to give the wheels more grip. Immediately the train accelerated even further, the needle on the speedo climbing through the 40s and into the 50s.

The draught through the open door tore her loose helmet away, and flicked her hair up into a short brown mane that flashed behind her as she leaned on the throttle lever.Her eyes flashed sideways, seeing that the other train’s locomotives were pacing them…

‘Why...why don’t they hail me?’

“You!” she barked at Maddy, and pointed at the horn control. “Hold down on that!”

The child obliged, and 9782 blared a note of challenge to the speeding train drawing closer to it as the tracks converged.

There was no response. Behind the double-header that was hauling the other train, a string of passenger cars trailed out, brushed silver bodywork with gold and red detailing…the words ‘Grand Continental’ gleaming bright...

...except for where some of the windows were smeared with potion residue...or just plain smashed and broken.

They were racing a death-train...a ghost. An abattoir on wheels, kept running through poor luck and likely a corpse in the wrong place.

“Stop!” Maddy cried out. “There’ll be ponies on that train. Innocent ponies!”

“SHUT UP!” Tess roared in the kid’s face. “There are NO! INNOCENT! PONIES! Just newfoals, and killers!”

“HEY!” Lightning Dust snapped back, even if she had nodded to the words. “Don’t yell at her like that.”

Tess flipped a finger at her, before inverting it onto the horn button. The resulting blare of air shut everyone up.

“Look at what’s at your feet, and tell me there’s an innocent pony here! Maybe there’s some with the PHL, maybe there’s some hiding out in the pacific! But there sure as fuck are not any right here in this town! And even if there were, THEY WOULDN’T DO THAT!”

The train lurched as she surged towards the switch.

“Miss Dust didn’t cause that…” Maddy said, in a soft voice. “I did...”

She sounded...proud. And then the child stepped up to Tess and glared accusingly at her.

“He would have been happy as a pony...if you hadn’t MURDERED HIM!”

Tess held back her every urge to smack the ten-year old in the face. Could nobody on this train catch a break - wait, shit. Tess was answering her own question.

“Sit down, cuddle your friend, and shut...up…” she seethed, and glanced down at the controls, abashed but unreprentant. “Just let me win this one time…”

She glanced in her rear view mirror and saw that they were leaving the other train behind…gaining ground on it with every second as both tracks came together.

“Maddy, hold onto me!” Lightning Dust said as they thundered into the last hundred feet The child lurched across the cab, tripped on Jean’s body, and fell into the mare’s hooves.

“Here we go!” Tess called, as the speedometer needle kissed 65mph.

They reached the switch, and the train jumped sideways on the curve, the whole cab lifting on one side as momentum tried to roll them off the rails.

‘Don’t brake, don’t brake, NEVER try to brake a train with this much weight behind in the middle of a curve...you’ll only throw in enough slack to wreck everything off...’

And then they cleared it, the wheels singing out a series of bangs as they flew over the switch-blades.

“Are we clear?” Lightning asked.

“Not yet...we’ve got to make the final curve...I just hope someone set the junction after we left the yard…”

Lightning pulled herself and Maddy into the conductor’s seat. Ahead, just as the railroad hit the town centre, the rails divided, throwing off the connection to the yard on one side, and the main leading straight on…

Tess saw the pegasus glance in her own side-mirror, towards the Grand Continental, which was still charging along behind them...a battering ram to deliver a killing blow if they did derail.

“If this switch at the junction’s not set… we won’t live, with we?”

“Not at this speed, no.”

“Miss Dust...I’m scared.”

“I know Maddy...but be brave.”

And looking out of the corner of her eye, Tess saw the two souls trying to comfort one another seconds from death, and had never felt more alone…

It was almost a disappointment to glide through the junction with not so much as a bump. Releasing a breath that she had not even been aware she was holding, Tess gently tapped the air brake, and felt the whole train shudder several times as the couplings tightened, each vehicle’s momentum buffering it into the next along.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s like driving a car…” Tess muttered. “You brake going into the curve, and then you accelerate out of it. You geddit?”

“Uh, I think so…” Lightning Dust admitted. “Just one question.”

“Okay?”

“What’s a car?”

At this point, Tess did one of the most understandable things a human being could have done in that situation. Which was to say, she facepalmed. “...What?”

“Pony, remember?” Lightning said, and waggled a hoof.

“Yes, but you’ve been IN this world, right? You’ve hopefully seen enough to have…” she stared at Lightning’s face. By God, she really didn’t know.

BANG!

The whole cab jolted, knocking them forward in their seats.

“Hell! What the fuck was that?” Tess cursed, trying to ride on the power controls as they sped towards the ninety-degree turn out of the town.

Lightning spun around herself and stared back, eyes narrowed as 9782 continued to shudder and groan, pitting its brakes against another driving force.

“The other train, it’s caught us in the rear! It’s pushing us!”

A speed limit limited sign flashed past, shining for a second in the locomotive’s headlights: Unelevated Curve: 45mph max.

“We’re going too fast! It’ll forceh us off and pile on top of us!”

And then, suddenly, the shaking stopped. Tess felt the controls move freely again in her hands...instead of fighting her, the speedometer dropped like it was wearing concrete slippers.

“C’mon! C’MON!” she worked the levers with both hands. “Full air...full dynamic, shut throttle...WHAT HAPPENED BACK THERE!?”

Lightning and Maddy scrambled off their seat and each pressed herself to a rear window on each side of the cab.

“The other train, it’s slowing down….there’s sparks flying from its wheels!” Maddy cried out.

“I thought it was death on rails!” Lightning yelled. “Who applied it’s brakes...oh shit, here we go!”

The tracks spun out from under 9782’s wheels as they hit the curve, the surge of sideways momentum throwing all three of them against Tess’s side of the cab. Jean’s body rolled onto its back...its empty, violet eyes seemed to stare into Tess’s soul as she struggled to pull herself back to the controls…

*

“Do you want to take the regulator Tess?” a middle-aged man asked her, wiping sweat from his brow with a spotted handkerchief.

“But… I’m not passed out to drive yet!” eighteen-year old Tess blurted in surprise, before eagerly throwing down her short-handed fireman’s shovel and jumping up towards him. “Oh Dad, can I?”

‘Taliesin’, the tiny little steam locomotive that they were crewing, was flowing smoothly downhill over the rails, a train of happy tourists laughing and clattering behind as they came down the mountainside into the Vale of Ffestiniog, up here in the top-left-hand corner of Wales.

“Well, I’m the line’s Chief Mechanical Engineer and qualified to instruct registered volunteers…” Evan Edwin Jones began, before finding himself suddenly being politely but insistently shoved aside by his daughter. “Hey, steady on!”

“Oh c’mon Dad, get out of my way!” she said. Laughing, the two of them swapped sides of the compact footplate, and Tess rested her hand on the polished steel lever. Quickly she made an expert check of the brass-and-glass gauges, observing boiler, brake and steam-chest pressure.

“Okay, we’re going down, so you’ll only need a whiff of steam,” her father said, sitting back against the handbrake screw and propping up his feet on the boiler backhead, a mug of tea in his hand. “But on the tighter curves, I want you to gently ease on the locomotive brakes to haunch the carriages together, and then once you feel the bulk of the train has come through the apex, open her back out and pull the couplings tight again.”

The smell of hot metal and cylinder-oil merged with the scent of a forest in bloom. It was a perfect, crisp spring afternoon in Snowdonia, and the Welsh hills and valleys were filling with colour as the daffodils began to bloom.

“Okay...here comes the curve over the Cei Mawr. You ready?”

“Ready!” Tess called out, and eased on 'Taliesin's' steam brake in little bursts. The carriages banged together, the wheels shrieked as they came onto the bend, built up high on a drystone embankment over a side-gulley, the entire train perched on the narrow construct like a parkour maestro running along a beam.

“Wait, for it...wait for it...and…”

“NOW!” she cried aloud, forcing the throttle forward to its stops. 9782 surged forward with the ease of a sprinter on her second wind, and accelerated the train through the end of the curve and out of the railyard. There was a clatter as they jumped the river-bridge, and then they were free…

...a terrible cacophony of sound exploded behind them, of metal crushing metal and rolling-stock being crushed like cardboard canisters. Tess knew what it was, had heard it just the night before.

“Wh...what was that?” tiny Maddy asked. Lightning Dust, expression suddenly fearful, snuck a look out of her back window and then looked away, ears folded flat in grief and eyes shut.

“The other train…” she said.

“...it didn’t make it through the curve,” Tess finished grimly, trying (and failing) not to think about the poor occupants of that train, the Grand Continental.

‘Oh God...I saw it being loaded with people back at Shearwater...and heard Paul order the crew aboard. Frank, and Will...and old Al Turner...’

There were no possibilities that weren’t unnerving beyond all belief.

“Don’t look back Maddy, don’t look…” Lightning Dust was whispering to the child, who was now instead staring open-eyed down at Jean’s corpse.

Afraid of what she herself might see, Tess snuck a sideways glance into her mirror. Beyond the length of the train…her train, she could see smoke and dust rising high into the air.

“Yn enw’r Tad, a’r Mab, a’r Ysbryd Glan, Amen…” she whispered.

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost... a prayer for the ghost train.

Claire had fallen silent some minutes ago. Her eyes were closed and a faint smile was on her lips. Laura was alone now. She’d heard the sound of a train derailing, and was now quietly basking in the aftermath.

Crackling flames, the sound of metal flexing as it was heated.

And more than a few screams…

“What do I fear more…” she muttered to herself, holding the remote detonator marked 'LEPERFALL' in her hands. “Fire...or water…”

Fire was an old friend to her. She’d welcome it with open arms. But water...water drowned and choked. Water promised a dark oblivion from which there was no escape…

Yeah, water was an asshole, and she was going to go down kicking that ass.

“Alright girl…” she said, pulling out the sidearm that had so fascinated Tess, an immensely modified Colt frame with a ten-inch slide, chambered for .454 Casull rounds. She’d nicknamed it the Jericho, to compliment Claire’s own gun, the 13mm Jackal. “I always promised I’d be the one who killed you.”

She held the detonator in one hand, and levelled the gun at the unconscious Claire’s temple with the other. If her best friend...her bitchfriend, wasn’t dead already, then she’d make sure the end came quickly and painlessly.

I heard that bitch Jones’ train get out...good luck to her...she’s riding the last train that’s getting out of here alive...’

And then, without hesitation, she pulled both triggers.

’See you all in Hell.

The charges had been set all around Truro, to deny the town to any looters. The PHL was thorough, and ruthless when the time called for it.

The Stanford clothing factory, with its stockpiles of invaluable battle-dress and armor, went first. Industrial-strength demolition charges made short work of the foundations, and toppled the whole structure sideways into the river.

The university farm, town hall, and the rail bridge went next.

Finally, they brought down the wall of the town’s reservoir, a mile up in the hills. Millions of gallons of water, freed from captivity, immediately poured out and flooded down Leper’s Creek, a rocky gully that led straight into the town centre.

By the time it arrived, it was an all-consuming frozen avalanche of mud and rock, with uprooted trees for teeth.

Truro died in water, taking with it countless lives who might have escaped, had they the chance. The PHL were nothing if not thorough.

Ironically, the part of the town least touched was that where the newfoals had gathered, around the hospital and feed silos. Everything else was washed away, scraped off the land in seconds by the freezing flow. For decades to come, after the Barrier fell, people would find bodies of newfoals all over the area, those same ghastly smiles affixed to their faces.

With battle ended, the remaining casualties (for who could define newfoals as survivors?) all turned towards the east, and against freezing wind and snow, began to trot towards the barrier...

… except for one, who stood in a corridor of the hospital, grinning inanely as she quietly laid out Mercy’s body on its back, and pressed a bloodstained pair of photographs into the dead pony’s hooves.

‘Interesting behaviour...’ whispered the voice in her head, the voice that sounded so much like Twilight Sparkle. ‘Why was your first instrinct to come back to the place where you were born? And those photographs...did you recognise anyone in them?’

Nepenthe had no real answers for those questions. Oh she had glanced at the photos quickly, and had recognised the Pegasus medic named ‘Merciful Light’ in both of them. In one, she’d been smiling with her arms around a human mare who wore her mane in red-and-black stripes. It looked like they’d been caught in the middle of a cardgame.

In the second, Mercy was sitting between a different pair of humans. One was a foal… the same creature that had escaped on that traitor Lightning Dust.

The other, well yes that did feel familiar somehow...a faint, distant echo screamed inside of her, almost entirely silenced… dying.

‘Rio! My name was Rio...’

The pony named Nepenthe ignored the screams, which were growing fainter the whole time. Then, as she left, her horn flared, igniting Mercy’s corpse, and both of the photos. The flames reflected brilliantly in her sparkling armor, and her perfectly groomed mane and brushed coat shimmered in harmony.

She drew of her both swords and twirled them at her side, stalking away down the corridor. They felt so right in her grasp, a part of her, so malleable and full of potential, yet with such singular focus and purpose.

Bright...beautiful...lethal.

Magically she tossed one gladius in the air, and it came down as a dagger that she caught in her mouth. As she stepped through the outside doors and onto the hospital’s entrance steps, she swung her head to one side, and drove the blade into the face of a HLF straggler who had been crouched outside, rifle in hand.

It went right through his head and pinned it to the wall behind, embedded so deeply that she had to transmute it back into liquid metal to retrieve it.

‘So strong and skilled...I was a fool to try and pilot you directly. No, it’s much better to let you run yourself, see how far you can develop and improve...see how many others you can raise in your image...’

Nepenthe trotted on, and found a broken newfoal with a busted spine, half-drowned in a ditch.

“Hi!” she said, before swinging her weapons together into their war-hammer configuration, and brought it down hard on his head. “Bye!”

His dying twitch prompted another faint wail from within. Something about how ponies should not kill...

But a stronger voice was giving her instructions now, to the Glory of the Sun.

She paused, seeing herself reflected in the spreading pool of blood and water, and considered her hammer. Under the influence of her magic, a portion of it peeled off and snapped around her head, forming a neat little silver tiara with a red garnet at its centre.

She served the Sun...was the Property of her Queen...fought as her Warrior Maid...and should comport and attire herself accordingly. Let all who saw her know the Owner she loved and fought in the name of.

“Creativity and self-awareness as well...good girl… my wonderful creature…” crooned the Configuration Daemon. “Now, continue the experiment… and follow that train.”

Confirm all systems locked to auto-law. I/O ports sealed. Unit is now Self-Governing.

And the supersoldier, that had once been a nurse named Rio Deneter, swung her hammer, and smiled with honest glee.

“I hunt.”

After ten or eleven miles Tess eased back on the throttle and began to coax the brakes. It wasn’t easy… bringing the animal that was 9782 and its train to a halt was like trying to stop a battleship with wishful thinking. Eventually, you had to resort to dropping the anchor…

And of course, she wanted out of Truro. No more PHL, PER, or HLF, no more psychopaths… no more madness.

In the end, after several more miles of trying to stop gently, she’d given up and just shoved the brake lever over into a full service application. The train had drawn up sharply then, just short of a steel trestle over a wooded gorge. A small river followed at the bottom, along with an abandoned highway.

It was as good a place as any to lay Jean’s remains to rest.

And with him, were consigned what remained of the unicorn filly named Firelock. Tess had felt no love for the little monster, but when she’d checked over 9782 to find what had caused that electrical fire back in the yard...

...well, the sight of Firelock’s mangled corpse being dragged along under the locomotive, her hindlimbs caught up in one of the traction-motors, shorting it perfectly...

It had been enough to make her feel some remorse.

Obscenely, the kid’s battle-saddle barely had a scratch on it, and one of her two rifles was still usable.

The ‘funeral’, if it could be called that, was minimal. None of them had the strength left to dig a grave. Instead, they had manhandled Jean and Firelock’s bodies under one of the trestle’s approach spans, and covered them over with a tarpaulin.

Tess had tried not to look too closely at Jean, not wanting to see where fur had started to burst through his cheeks...or where the shot she had fired had punched through his head.

She’d said a few words, after making it clear to Lightning and Maddy that they were not welcome to join her, and closed her eyes.

“Thanks… I guess. I’ll keep on going, like you said Jean. Like you said.”

Her hands trembled and she suddenly dropped to her knees.

“Oh Christ, I’m so sorry! If I hadn’t been with you you’d have probably picked up that train with no issue and been halfway across the next province by now! Instead, you’re dead!”

Her face was flushed and her breathing rough, and yet she didn’t cry.

“You’re not the first...I said I worked as a ferry steward right? Well, I managed to bag my parents and boyfriend and myself a ride on one of the last ferries out of Wales, ahead of the barrier. But I screwed up!”

She rested her face against the jacket and screamed, as if into a pillow.

“I panicked. When they didn’t arrive I boarded the ship alone...I thought they were dead! But when we sailed, I saw them on the dock...AND THEY WERE LOOKING FOR ME! THEY GOT THERE BEFORE THE DEPARTURE BUT STAYED BEHIND TRYING TO FIND ME, BECAUSE I WASN’T THERE TO MEET THEM!”

She wanted to release, wanted the tears to come…but she was dry, just as she had been ever since that day on the ferry.

“And then Lightning Dust came...her and her damn so called ‘angels of Mercy’...I passed out on deck, screaming for them...I killed them, Jean. And I killed those evacuees last night, and those hostages today...and now you. That creepy kid might have dropped the potion, but I’m the one you jumped to defend...I’m the one who...who executed you.”

She hoped for a breath of wind, a whisper from on high, a ghostly touch on her shoulder. There was nothing.

“So, that’s it...everywhere I go, I get people killed. And now, again, I’m all alone. So I’ll keep my promise, and get this fucking train to Montreal…”

She swallowed.

"And… then maybe I’ll blow my brains out."

With that promise, she stood and tipped her head in respect. No salute or ceremonial gunshot, he deserved better than damn military honors.

Instead, she stood, thought long and hard for a moment, and then began to recite something she remembered from her childhood, an epitaph that her father had once shared with her.

As the last words sighed out of her, she turned to what was left of Firelock, and placed one of the filly’s rifles in between her forehooves. It’s barrel was bent, but she hoped it would be some comfort to the kid’s spirit, wherever it was that ponies went…

“Thanks…” she said at last, and for the filly’s sake alone, drew the Beretta and fired a single shot up into the open sky.

Then, as she climbed back up to the roadbed, she realised she was not as alone as she had hoped.

"Youre’ gonna blow your brains out?” said Lightning Dust, from where she was sitting on a rail, within earshot. “Why would you do that? Heck, when you let that bang off I was afraid you’d gone and done it."

“What do you want?” Tess said darkly, hands hanging limply at her side.

“Safe passage for Maddy and me. Neither of us have anywhere to go, so staying with the train seems best. It’s safe, heated, and has food supplies.”

“Supplies provided for the guy that damn ‘Child of the Corn’ potioned!”

Lightning’s ears flopped low. “Yeah...and I’m sorry what she said. I know why you did...what you did to him...I’ve seen what the potion does to people…”

She sighed and then looked up, resolve in her gaze as she stared Tess down.

“But it’s not her fault she’s the way she is. It’s the fault of how she was raised...you can’t blame her for that, anymore than you can blame me for looking like the mare who killed your family.”

Tess positively growled and then turned around. “Fine.”

“So we can come with?” Lightning asked, suddenly hopeful.

“Only so you can make it clear to me how in the hell you’re NOT the Lightning Dust I know...and you can start by cleaning up the cab...I’ll fix the hole in the roof so long as you guys scrub the mess off the ceiling.”

Blood, and brains…

Lightning shuddered, and then paused.

“You’ve still not told me why you’re planning on killing yourself.”

"Because I want to die on my own terms!” Tess snapped. “I don’t want to become a pony nor be the last one standing as the barrier closes in… and I don’t want to grow any older or bitterer than I am now. I lost my soul long ago, but I get to decide when it goes to Hell."

Having spat that out, Tess strode on towards the train, an angry figure in a yellow hoodie and tactical-vest. As she went however, she tossed something back towards the pony, something she’d plucked off of Jean himself.

“What’s this?” Lightning asked, clutching at a circular blue patch with a white lyre and laurel wreath printed on it.

“The only thing that’ll keep most people from shooting you on sight! You say you’re not Lightning Dust the mass-murderer, fine by me, but you’re still a fucking horse, and most people will want to gut you on those grounds alone. Wear that badge and you might just deter a few vigilantes.”

“But what does it mean? What’re ‘Ponies For Human Life’?”

“According to their own account, the good guys, but everyone says that. But they just blew up a fucking town! From what I’ve seen, they’re just another bunch of psychos, but with decent PR. Jean trusted them enough to wear their badge though, so I suggest you make your own fucking mind up!”

Maddy was sitting on the locomotive’s step, sipping at a cup of tea. One of Jean’s spare jackets hung off her tiny frame. As Tess strode up, the asian child’s impossibly old eyes stared into her own…

‘Murderer...’ they seemed to say, silently.

Scowling, Tess broke eye contact and stalked on down the train’s length, towards the back. It was late afternoon now, and shading towards evening. The storm had abated for a little while, and long winter shadows were forming on the hillside along which the tracks were laid.

‘When did I last sleep? During the night, between Halifax and Truro...’

It was only a few hours ago, but it felt like a lifetime.

As she approached the two cabooses, she drew her pistol and cocked it.

“ALRIGHT, COME ON OUT!” she bellowed. “I know you’re in there!”

Nobody answered. Unabated she continued to harangue the silence.

“The Grand Continental was chasing us, and it sure as hell didn’t stop by itself. Someone applied the brakes, and given the timing, I’m betting that ‘someone’ was a stowaway who reached back from this caboose and opened the air-brake turncock on the front of the GC’s leading locomotive!”

She scrambled up onto the caboose’s access platform and kicked the door open.

“Now who the fu...YOU!”

A familiar brown mare was lying low between the stacked caskets, with a tied-up stallion laid out beside her.

“Hi!” smirked Verity Carter. “Yeah, I saved your life. And for my next trick…”

She waved her forehooves around at the sealed cargo.

“... I’ll explain why you’re rolling north with a stolen cargo of Totem-Proles!”

Truro lay silent and dead. The newfoals had long gone and night had fallen, a still and absolutely silent darkness before the scheduled arrival of the Barrier in the wee hours of dawn...

Well, almost silent.

In ‘Elsinore’, the vaingloriously titled ‘base’ the lately lamented Atlas Galt had made in the Home Hardware store, a radio crackled. There was virtually nobody around left to hear it, save for dead newfoals and a few waterlogged survivors almost certain to freeze in the cold.

The set was tuned to 121.5 Mhz, the internationally-recognised frequency for emergency calls.

Ironically, the ones broadcasting had sealed their own fate not hours earlier.

“...Hello?! Are you receiving me?! This is 2nd Lieutenant Jonathan Birch’s unit requesting immediate fire support. HLF!”

It was also worth mentioning that anyone who might have picked up the transmission, and knew Birch, would have simply left him to die.

“We tried to supply ourselves from a stash up at Wentworth, at the pass by Folly Lake, and then hold the highway and railroad there, but we’re-ARGH!”

…

“...did you get through Private? Oh, shit! Alright, this is Jonathan Birch speaking on the approved distress channel, is anyone receiving us?! We are under attack from a superior enemy force… the armies of evil themselves are-”

“Hello there! Silly guy, I’m not an army, just myself!”

“DIE DEVIL!”

BANG! BANG! BANG! CLICK!

“Are you done now?”

“Twisted little monster. What kind of newfoal are you?”

“The first of many, and one with some very specific needs. What’s your name, oh powerful human leader?”

"My name is go fuck yourself!"

“Your parents must not have liked you! But I’d rather do that with you…”

“What!?”

THUMP!

“See, I was created to fulfil some very specific tasks, and right now, I’ve yet to test myself on all of them…”

“Whore! Slut!”

“Heehee, no, or is it yes? But I can see from how this little soldier is standing to attention that it’s working. Aren’t I a sexy little newfoal, 2nd Lieutenant?”

"No, you’re an ugly piece of shit… ah… ahhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaa..."

“You liked that...do you want more?”

“You’re… an animal, a shit eating horse.... oh Lord that tongue of yours!”

“I’ll ask again, do you want more…do you want to feel like that, allllllll the time.”

“Oh fuck yes, degrade yourself all you want. I’ll show you how a real man treats a fucking turd like yo-”

SNAP!

“-AIEEAEEaaaaaarrghHHHH! You bit it off! You fucking bit it off!”

“...PHWOO… but of course… I needed a tissue sample after all. Oh, look at it there, so small and weak on the floor - let’s change it into a nice dose of potion, shall we?”

“-AH! You raped me! You fucking raped me and bit off my damn dick!”

“Well, I did need to test myself in the field. Step one of the experiment was to see how effective my conditioning was. Given I killed all your men, and then managed to seduce you in under two minutes, I’d say that’s a success. Hrm… I wonder if I’m emitting pheromones…well now, let’s move onto stage two...”

"Shut up! Get this over with, turn me into a fucking pastel shit eating pony or kill me!"

“As you wish!”

SPLAT!

“I did promise more of what you wanted, so here it is”

“Ah… oh Lord… Father be with me… ARGH!”

“I know you’re in pain, but I will give you pleasure, and it will last forever…”

“What is that thing where my dick used to… oh god, is that a pus-sss… ah, oh Christ, my voice!”

“A beautifully sweet voice, yes… interesting… you’re becoming a mare… was that the effect castrating you had? No, ponification normally runs off genetic markers for basic details such as gender… maybe it’s just because you’re templated off me… ah well, it doesn’t matter.”

“NO! NO! NO!… though I walk through the valley in the sha-addddd-in the--in the light of Her Sun, I shall fear no evil, for She art with me. Her words and truth speak through mehehehehehe!”

“Okay, so a young adult pegasus mare… fascinating colours, almost hypnotic? Ah I see... Your pigmentation is laced with oneirochromatophores, like Mistress Fluttershy’s swarms of Everfree Monarch Butterflies! Perhaps your talent will be mental domination…and oh, I think a royal blue is going to be the perfect trim for your armor, and I’m sure I can conjure you up some wing-blades!”

“Oh wow, this feels so amazing, so alive! I’m so lovely and perfect and now everyone will listen to me at last! Hi there!!”

“Hello there, I’m the Pretty Private Nepenthe, who are you?”

“Oh, I’m a Pretty Private too...call me Sugarcane! I speak for the Sun!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's Notes:

Well, hope that was as unnerving to read as it was to write.

This officially brings us up to the end of the First Act of Last Train. The next update will be a mini-chapter and sucessor to 'Lost in Dispatches' that will seed some future plot points.

Sorry for indulging everyone's patience during the wait for this chapter - I took some time off for a trip to London that proved very inspirational however, so hopefully all's cool.

As ever, special thanks to the Spectrum Writing Team, but also to this chapter's special guest editor and creative consultant, reader and reviwer Vox Adam. Give him a round of applause everyone.

Cheers guys, and if anyone has any thoughts on this chapter or the story as a whole, feel free to drop me a line.

Nb: Poor little Firelock is a background filly I discovered on the fandom wiki. It's a fandom-allocated name, but seemed perfect for the personality I had in mind.

Nbb: Jean's epitaph is a real poem composed in memory of Thomas Scaife, an early English engine driver killed by a boiler explosion in 1840.

Lost in Dispatches II

Dear Queen Celestia,

Thankyou so much for providing me access to the records of ‘Project: Fullcrystal’. The work done by my predecessors in exploiting the raw materials of the Crystal Empire to meet Equestria’s needs is simply revolutionary, if somewhat primitive. It is my proud and humble conviction that, with ample test subjects, I can refine the Fullcrystal technology into a stable potion-based spell matrix that will fulfil your every desire for the human race.

Your faithful servant,
Twilight Sparkle

A missive liberated from the Canterlot archives. Retroactively dated, this exchange would have occurred at approximately the same time as the CERN incident. The exact particulars remain disputed.

Jazmin Carter to Retire

Well, it turns out the rumors are true. For health-related reasons, superstar artist Jazmin Carter is officially retiring from comics. The official word went out on her daughter Verity’s Twitter feed just today, and already the sheer outpouring of support from our fandom has been amazing. This here, is why we call ourself Stargazers...love and tolerance all the way.

Most of us here are familiar with Jazmin’s amazing art on IDW’s various Hasbro-licensed comics, including ‘Transformers’ and, of course, ‘Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls’, but she’ll also be missed by the readers of DC comics, where she notably filled in repeatedly on art duties for various lines including ‘Wonder Woman’, ‘Supergirl’ and ‘Teen Titans’.

Jazmin’s latest, and last project, the independently-published (and semi-autobiographical) graphic novel ‘Latter Day Saints’, which she wrote and illustrated entirely by herself, came out just last month to rave reviews, and has already been nominated for an Eisner Award. How better to bow out than on such a strong note.

From everyone here at Galaxia Daily, our thoughts and wishes go out to Jazmin and her family. Thank you so much for some amazing comics, Jaz. No one draws ‘The Great and Powerful Milky’ like you do.

-Sethisto

News article published on the fanblog ‘Galaxia Daily’, seven months before the CERN incident.

~static~

“-train pulled by number 501. It’s a steam locomotive, 2-8-0. Yes, I know, it was all we could find at the moment, but I know we’re not the only steamer chugging around New England… I know for a fact the 7470 is heading out for Manchester. And there's this other one coming down from Cana-"

“...Keep to the script, man. Just keep trying to reach someone.”

“Right - here’s our situation. We are running low on ammunition and fuel. Supplies of Rainmaker grenades nearly dry, in need of more .338 Norma Magnum and .308 Winchester or 7.62x51mm NATO. Conditions of rails ahead uncertain. The unicorns keeping the train steaming are half-dead from exhaustion. Supplies low. Running out of food and drink, and it's too hard to get out of the cab and cut some wood to use for fuel. We don’t think we will make it to the next town over. Snow is coming-many of us are bundled up in the cab getting warm off the fire, not enough steam pressure to heat the rest of the train. Worries of frostbite and death by freezing for those who can’t squeeze in with us. Guess it’s true what they said about the weather always being worse in Crawford Notch. Please, if anyone’s out there, we need help!

Is there anyone out there?! ANYONE?! Are we the last ones left alive? Are we? Someone, anyone, please? Are we? Is there anybody out there? Are we the last ones left alive?!”

Someone! ANYONE! We need hel-

*sounds of machinegun fire, interspersed with fire from a grenade launcher and a heavy rifle*

”Got them-”

“FASTER-”

"Don't fokking die on me, I've let enough kids and foals die already-"

“Can’t go any-”

“FOK!”

~static~

“Shema yisroel, adonai eloheinu, adonai echad-”

“-Lord is my shepherd-”

“Get that damn radio before it falls off-”

“STOP DYING AT ME, JOU BLIKSEMS!” (off in the distance, barely noticeable over machinegun fire)

“Come on then, come on you bastards…”

“Whitehall isn’t too far away, we just have to-”

“Hold on, Dancing Day, it’ll be fine, it’ll all be okay, just hold on and keep focusing the spell-”

“... tired...”

“-have to! PLEASE! They’re all counting on us! They need-”

“Got him! RIGHT IN THE FOKKING FACE!”

“-Last ones alive? Are we the last ones alive and not ponified? Please, answer! Is anyone out there?!”

~crackle~

“Hello? Repeat your message. Who is this?”

“Oh, thank God! This is Train 501. I’m Johnny C Heald, engineer. Least, I’m the closest thing we have at the moment. We’re in dire need of medical care and support. I have wounded on board. Potion amputees, and several cases of frostbite! The closest thing we have to a doctor can only do so much here. Identify yourself.”

“Colonel Ambrose Hex, PHL. I am southbound aboard Train 8888. I am enroute from Montreal with captured war material and could give you guys a lift if we can rendezvous.”

“Roger, Colonel, can you ID your final destination, where are you headed?”

“...”

“I repeat, please ID your train’s intended destination.”

“... Boston.”

Radio exchange between the famous Train 501 (see casefile: Light Despondent, Section: Stampede ) and Train 8888. These intercepted transmissions were later brought to public attention by the anonymous netizen ‘Triumvirate’.

“HLF weaponry is, putting it lightly, shit. Guns are easy to get for civilians - relatively speaking, that is. The quality of milisurp that we need to fight the ponies? That is...somewhat harder to get. So I’m supposed to fill that up with homebrewed rifles, some of which are open-bolt.

But say you want something with the right caliber for breaking shields when you don’t have magic bullets? Well that’s tougher, I’m not sure it’s so easy to get .50 Beowulf. Rocket launchers and grenades? Well those are even tougher to source.

And that’s where I come in. Not only is it hard to get guns in the quantity you need - which is why you see all those kalashnikovs that look like they were made from wrecked cars, which they kind of were - but I was the guy that made what HLF called ‘panzerfausts’. And they are awful. They used bean cans as warheads, for God’s sake! No, I’m much happier to be working on the ‘Truth’ rocket launcher. Have you seen that thing’s homing? It can turn on a dime!”

”Two-hat” Jack, ex-HLF weaponsmith and author of ‘Panzerfausts and Pretty Privates: Improvised Weapon Disasters in the Salvation Wars

“I was lucky to get out when I did. Only a mere five months before the war… I only wanted to get out because I couldn’t stand to see my brothers cry from their stomach pains, cry from being hungry all the time. We had only heard that Equestria was on Earth, but as far as I knew, there were no Conversion Bureaus in North Korea, and ponies were not allowed into the country under any circumstance. I was lucky to know an expert smuggler; he got us across the border DMZ...had some pull with the guards…”

“I loved Seoul when I visited. It was such a shock to actually get paid for my work, to have a balanced meal three times a day with snacks, to see all this culture, to… anything you take for granted, it probably sent me into sensory overload.”

“Honestly, I’m not sure how to feel on the China situation. It’s bad that many innocent people are abandoned by their government to fend for themselves as the rich, the elite have taken refuge on the coastline; on the other hand… they allowed for the killing of millions…”

“I remember one old Chinese widow… Jingfei Liu. Met her in Seoul - she’d been from Hong Kong, displaced to make room for more ‘deserving’ residents. All alone in the world… her son had emigrated to Canada as a youth, and she’d not heard from him since 2013. For all she knew, her beloved child, his wife, and the grandchild she’d never known, were all dead… and her sadness was just one teardrop in a well of misery.”

“It’s a miracle South Korea has been able to stay stable during the war. I guess it’s because they’ve always been preparing themselves for the inevitable… but instead of a war with their northern brother, they’re fighting alien invaders. But there’s always a feeling of dread hanging over our heads. Like any day could be the last.

“When I’m not at work, I watch the news. I still can’t get what those PHL ponies have said about Equestria out of my head. It literally makes me sick to think what the Tyrant is doing to her “little ponies”. It’s no different than what my family, what all of us went through. They don’t have a home to return to either. Not only that, but… the PER would try to entice people by saying that in Equestria, life would be better. I’ve heard stories from defectors, and it’s no different at all.

To think... a friend of mine who stayed behind in the north wanted so badly to take the potion because he wanted to be able to eat three meals a day. I don’t know what happened to him, or old Jingfei - maybe he died in the blast? Maybe she was ponified? I hope I never find out.”

Interview with Soo-Kyong Choi, North Korean defector turned South Korean Naval Communications Officer

“EVACUATE THE EASTERN SEABOARD AND THE MARITIMES. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. ANYONE ON THE EASTERN SEABOARD OF NORTH AMERICA NOT PLANNING TO FIGHT IS ORDERED TO EVACUATE THE COAST FOR THE NEAREST FORTIFIED AREAS INLAND. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL...”

[click]

(sigh)

“You alright Mix?”

“I dunno, 33...it’s easy enough to say all that...try and split it down between those who can fight and those who can’t...not everyone’s like your sister.”

“Yeah, Vinyl’s always been a bit of a handful...what’s this here on this screen? ‘Welcome to Nightvale’?”

“Something I was listening to...found it in the archives…go ahead and play it if you lick.”

[click]

“...perfection is not real. Perfection is not human. Carlos is not perfect –
no, even better – he is imperfect. Everything about him, and us, and all of this is imperfect. And those imperfections in our reality are the seams and cracks
into which our outsized love can seep and pool...”

[click]

“...well that’s grim.”

“It got me thinking, you know...about all those imperfect people...those average people caught up in all this. Like this girl I saw one time...just a teenager I spotted, on the boat over to Ireland...back when the UK got over-run. She was just sitting in a corner, not moving, barely blinking, holding this dead Ipad in her hands like it was a Bible...she might have been dead herself for all I know...what’s somebody like that meant to do in a war like this? Do they just lie back and die, or take up a gun and fight?”

“...as far as I’m concerned, Mix, that’s the only choice any of us have left.”

“Yeah, but it ain’t right, forcing the lambs to act like lions...”

PHL emergency broadcast by Mixtape, PHL radiostallion. The subsequent conversation with his sound engineer, 33⅓ LP, was not broadcast, but picked up on a secondary microphone, and preserved in the record.

"I can say with no uncertainty that those were the most tumultuous weeks of the war. We of the Americas had our first evacuation, and nothing could have fully prepared us for that horror. The PER and HLF both attacked the evac trains, coming out of the woodwork, just like those PHL dominants with Yael Ze'ev said they would. And supplies were shit, not just food and drink and ammo, but finding motive power for the trains. We even resorted to using honest-to-god steam locomotives to get out of New Hampshire. Bless the brave men, women, stallions, and mares that defended those trains….

...and rumor was that Marcus Renee was preparing something in Boston, something we all hoped was a miracle.

I don't know where to begin this story. So I'll start it in the middle, at the lost old station in North Conway, as I manned the grenade launcher on Train 7470's consist, watchin’ as the ol’ 501 steamed off in the opposite direction, towards Crawford Notch.

I had friends on that train - Aegis, Heliotrope, Johnny C, Dancing Day, Astral Nectar, Burt Gransvoort… too many to name. Not sure I’d say Kraber was a friend, but I can at least say he was trustworthy, Seeing that train go, it felt just like it did when my husband went to war in the name of the tyrant Sombra. Looking back, I almost wish the shadowy bastard had won, by nowadays standards he was bad, of course, but a damn sight better than the one we got. Liberation, my flank! We just traded one autocrat, but at least with Sombra you knew where you stood… but I am getting off topic.

The Crystal Empire in those terrible months after our return from banishment would have not been unfamiliar to those of you who witnessed the evacuation of New England and the Maritimes. Strife, fear, and desperation were rampant in both theatres. Communications were patchy, confusion reigned the day, and rumors ran rife.

And most terrifying of all, both on Earth and in the Empire, were the disappearances... "

From 'The Last Ditch: Four Weeks of Anarchy', written by Brighthoof, one of the few crystal ponies to make it to the PHL.

"With all due respect, if the Barrier gets to Yellowstone...what’d be left? Come that point, we'll be a hundred times worse off than we are now. Crammed into the Rockies, damn near no farmland, nowhere near enough men to make a final offensive... Africa will be gone, China even worse than it already is, Russia would be nearly completely consumed. Unless Renee can keep his promises and pull off a miracle at Boston, this will be the only thing… the closest thing to victory we can have..."

“And if I did sign off on this, Sherman, how would you make it happen? Even with all our remaining nukes hoarded, will we have enough to breach the Yellowstone caldera to the scale you propose.”

“Well, the PHL guys at Montreal have burnt the midnight oil on this. put out some feelers with the UN liaisons, and we think we can get more. The governments-in-exile of Russia, the UK and France have already put their remaining SSBN boats under UN control, and India may be willing to add in their Arihant class…”

“And China?”

“Still on the fence...but if we can make this work, each of those subs will put into the old Montreal naval shipyard over the next few years, and offload their missiles for dismantling, so that the warheads can be forwarded to Yellowstone. With those additional megatons, the think-tank boys reckon we can pop that volcano like a zit...”

“I don’t like it. I don’t like resorting to it. But if it’s all we have left…”

Transcript of Sherman Bright, proposing Project Ash Storm to US President Jack Davis.

“Alright, I know this is going to be tough. We’ve all heard the rumors of the past few days, we’ve all heard of the so-called Newfoal General and her forces. Well, I tell you what, ‘Nepenthe’ is just a shadow round the campfire, a name to frighten foals...and so we’ll build our own legend. If she turns out to be real, well, let's help her on her way to being just that, a ghost! Tomorrow everyone will shout our names...but today, we have no names, not until we’ve relieved Montreal. Until damn near everyone in this city is evacuated and safe! IS THAT CLEAR?!”

Sergeant Duststorm, PHL pegasus at the First Battle of Montreal, as dramatised in ‘Legacy of Wings’ (2026)

“Do not believe the mint bitch, for she lies as surely as her name would suggest.”

Early HLF slogan notable for its uncharacteristic mildness, circulated on Twitter and other social networks in late April of 2019.

“So, any regrets, looking back on your service with the PHL?”

“Heh, too many to name. People say: Oh, you must be so proud to have saved so many lives. Yes, I’m happy I served, and fought. I’m happy to have helped preserve so many people. On the other hand, though…”

“Yes?”

“Well there’s the evacuation of Quebec, of Nova Scotia, of New England… It was bad enough keeping control outside Montreal, and from what I heard from my friends, other places were a real clusterfuck. I told them all this would happen…” (sighs)

“Wait, you did?”

“Yeah. A year before the evacuation, back in Montreal, I was making a speech. I wanted to find the HLF and rip them apart. Get Galt and all those fuckers before they could take root.”

“That’s understandable...”

"I'd be called a fascist, I know. I'd probably crack down on so much that people hold dear to their hearts to get it done, but... Sutra Cross was a friend of mine. So were a lot of other ponies they killed. I'd seen what the HLF could do. I predicted that when the Barrier hit, it’d be anarchy, thanks to those shitters. I had rallies. I tried to seize every emergency power I could, got myself demoted for it, but I had to try for it.”

“There’s a lot of people that could make that same claim, you know.”

“I know. And I hate acting like ends justify means. I hate thinking that way. I think every day how right I was about how we needed that... I knew it’d be bad, but I just… it was madness! Look at Truro. You had HLF and PER coming out of the woodwork left and right, and the PHL hammerin’ the anvil. You had delays. You had ghost trains and runaways and detonators. You had early winter storms, and all the shit the Last Train went through...and for them at least I feel kinda responsible.”

“How so?”

“Okay, so I was in Reykjavik, you know, when Princess Luna got petrified by the Arch Bitch...I was the one who found the camera footage Luna left behind.”

“How does that connect to the Last Train?”

“Well, we were never able to figure out what Celestia did AFTER she stoned her kid sister. For ages she just stood there weeping...maybe she still had some soul left in her at that point...but then she did... something.”

“Wait, do you mean...”

“Yeah...she brought out that fucking bag and cast a spell. We had the best intel, lip readers, linguists, every expert possible go over that footage, and we never figured out what was going on there…if we had, well, maybe the end of everything might have been different. Can’t say if it would have been better, or worse, just…different.”

“Especially for the Last Train folks?”

“Yeah, especially them.””

Interview with Yael Ze’Ev, PHL-affiliated Israeli soldier.

“The thing you have to remember about what happened during that confused week, was that no-one aboard that train knew anything about the Bag of Tirek, or the deeper intrigues of the main campaign of the war. They were operating in a vacuum. They weren’t action heroes, they weren’t certifiable badasses like so many of the names that dominate the war, they were just as brave as they could be. They were scared people in a world gone mad. Yet, they did their best, going above and beyond what anyone could have expected.”

But likewise, the discoveries they themselves made, the secrets they unearthed, and the sacrifices they made, remained secret. Almost no-one outside of the survivors knew anything about the Deep Thought Protocols, or the Shadow Gallery, and the peril and the promise both posed, until long after the wheels had stopped turning…”

From ‘Shadowtracks: The True Story of the Last Train From Oblivion’, by M. Lawrin, published 2029.

“Want to see something funny? You get an HLF member in containment. Get him on a kick about how the HLF are the only true resistance faction on Earth, how the PHL are stupid horsefuckers or whatever… then ask him how he plans to stop the Barrier. The looks on their faces are hilarious, it’s like someone replaced their brains with scrambled eggs!

But in a way, you have to feel sorry for them. Swap that around with how they used to be, before they went off the damn rails and took most of the world with them. Remember the Harriet Thomas Foundation? Remember the good Reverend for nagging on about the Kraber Reports? Remember the Ponification Protests? The blockades of the first bureaus? Patrick Saunders going after those PER with a baseball bat when they tried to treat his son with the potion? No, of course you don’t… all everyone remembers is Mike Carter and his ilk, the radicalists who came in full of hate and wrath and self-righteousness… and everyone remembers them, because they were the first to hurt the Empire’s ponies good and proper. That’s all everyone’s going to remember.

The May Day Attacks were a turning point, and not in the way most people have chosen to view them. Apologists like to claim that those attacks, and the ‘Three Weeks of Blood’ that followed, were the casus-belli for Celestia’s declaration of war. But when our people were being stolen, our friends and families turned and mutilated, just before the Barrier started expanding, it was the birthing spasms of the ‘modern’ HLF that made the first strike.

May 1st of 2019 was amazing - targeting ten brand-new Bureaus all at once, right around the world - well that showed the HLF had teeth! I saw the footage of Mike Carter and his guys freeing everyone inside the Salem Conversion Bureau, before they burnt the place down. And what I remember, is that for a moment, the whole human race was on their side. I watched that shit on TV, and I practically worshiped them for a few weeks!

Think about that…despite the immediate backlash, they had the support of the world, though many were loath to admit it. They were the heroes basking in the sun. In that one shining moment, they could have made a real difference.

But something went wrong in the whole process. The uncontrolled bloodshed throughout the rest of May was a symptom of the cancer that had been eating away at the HLF from the very beginning. And then Reverend Thomas was kicked out of the group that had essentially become his own children, and it all went completely downhill from there. I think some of us still wanted to believe that they were the good guys, but then... Then they shot Lyra! They… did those horrible things to Sutra Cross and turned into the KKK while we sat and watched. I mean, what went wrong?””

'A War In the Pocket: The Decline of the HLF'. Written by Dayoung Tengku, Viktor M. Kraber, Aegis, and Yael Ze'ev.

“We’re waiting now. The stillness is indescribable as we watch the Barrier advance upon the headland. It is about to make contact with North America, and then it will be our duty to go through, and…

...it’s made landfall. There’s a weird sense of release...a fatalistic knowledge that now is the time to commit to victory, or submit to death. I don't know how you measure this sort of thing, but I know that this is our last chance, or something so close to it that we have little or no alternatives left to us.

Pitch Bark summed everyone’s feelings up best. He turned to Melanie and said these words:

“Well. Guess that’s the end. Cheque please.”

From the War Diaries of Trenderhoof

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED

“...we were right, Ray. Multi-planar curliean emanations….”

“I see em, I see em Spengs. They seem to indicate which of the facets are active at any given time...we could use this like a circuit tester. Shame we can’t actually power it up though.”

“Heh! Too much risk that it might just broadcast everything we do back to momma…”

“Thanks for that valuable insight Peter.”

“Uh, guys, we’re linked up with Mr. Crowe’s office now…”

“Crowe baby! Is Pecker down there with you. Give him a hug and a little kiss from me!”

“...if you’d let me finish, Peter, we’ve only got one direction on the A/V - so he can see and hear us, but not reply back. Ray, you’re up to the plate.”

“Ah - okay, thanks Winston. I’ll skip the formalities, Mr. Crowe, and get down to business. So, this is the first attempt to analyse one of Equestria’s public-surveillance devices, or ‘totem-proles’ as they’re known in the local parlance. This particular unit was obtained via sympathetic contacts within the Solar Empire, but as you’ll see from our correspondence with your offices via Mel Ortiz, we’ve put in multiple requests that further devices be obtained for a more thorough analysis…”

“Ah, Ray...let’s not waste the man’s time. He does hold our lives, and salaries, in his hands...”

“...alright, getting back on track. The object in question is a crystalline pillar standing about six and a half-feet high, roughly obelisk-shaped, approximately twenty inches square at the foot. Kinda looks like a model of Freedom Tower. Although the exterior is smooth to the touch our proton microscopes have shown that all the surfaces are indeed faceted, but seem to possess an unnaturally polished finish, which we presume to be a byproduct of the thaumic crafting techniques used in making them. Egon?”

“Each of the facets has one of a number of runes engraved upon them which can be detected when active on our PKE meters…”

“That’s Psychokinetic Energy Mr Crowe, and I’d like to remind you that the meters, as well as all of the releated proton, neutrona and ecto-containment technology is registered and patented in our name…”

“Pete, cool it.”

“Just protecting our IP guys...need I remind you that we’ve already had one shyster try and rip us off? We are the only, and I repeat, ONLY commercial entity with the edge on this kind of applied meta-physics in the Five Boroughs, or anywhere else...which I will point out is why Mr Crowe came to us.”

“Indeed...we’re trying to get a full translation of the runes from other experts, but we have identified several as being identical to the kind often seen within the ponification spell matrix…which here are apparently used as a form of programing.”

“It’s an Operating System designed in Hell, Mr Crowe....”

“Yeah, ‘Vista 2.0: the return of Bill Gates’.”

“Honestly, I’ve no idea what most of this is for...runic matrixes are more Ron Alexander’s province, and Janine’s trying to convince him to ‘deign to work at our level’...”

“Heh, and speaking of the shyster…”

“Until Mr. Alexander can contribute, we’ve decoded a few of the superficial spells using the Tobin database. We’ve identified sensory input, holographic projection, the usual stuff that might be expected…”

“A unique application though is this particular rune-set here, ‘Unrelenting Force’...it effectively shields the pillar from all applications of blunt force, dissipating attacks and attempts to breach it as kinetic energy into some unknown plane.”

“So unless dearest Ronnie replies to our calls and helps us work around that picadillo, we’ve got about as much chance of cutting into the thing as disco has of making a comeback.”

“Instead, we’ve began running deeper analysis, strictly non-invasive. When you joined us we had discovered that LIDAR and ultrasound are able to show us the inner crystalline composition of the pillar, and we’re observing a network of threads interwoven among a number of other structures which appear to be inactive…”

“Yeah, and get this, when we turned the ultra-sound on it at high resonance we were able to detect emissions, not just on our PKEs but in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum, and we captured some interesting activity on camera…show him exhibit A, Pete.”

“Crowe-sweetie, here’s your next cover of GQ. Check out the aura on this sucker...now there’s definitely activity there.”

“Mr Crowe, what my pals here are saying, is that even when powered down and dormant, this thing is alive, and dreaming. This is not just an Equestrian attempt at bootstrapping themselves into the computer age, this thing, appears to be ahead of us in many regards. I did some years designing electronic barrier systems after my military service ended, and I know my IT - this thing is practically AI.”

“Thanks Winston, for the layman’s explanation...but he’s right Mr Crowe, and this isn’t the only curiosity. My assistant Kylie interviewed some established Equestrian contacts with Babs’ help, and they indeed describe totem-proles as having an intuitive, auto-responsive interface that goes above and beyond anything we’ve seen in human data-processing.”

“And that same research by Ms Griffin and Ms Seed also made clear that these pillars were being installed before the incident at CERN, during the Equestrian war against the Crystal Empire.”

“Long story short Crowey, this isn’t them trying to catch up to us, they were developing this shit before we even knew they existed, and implementing the infrastructure to run a police-state that would look like George Orwell through the lens of the Teletubbies...the bastards were planning for war.”

“Hold it there Pete, we just got a return on the multi-scan…”

“What in the...what are those shadows there?”

“It’s the structures inside the pillar...but they look like…”

“Like what?”

“Nah, it’s silly.”

“We should get a deeper look.”

“Why don’t I composit the LIDAR shots and run them through the spectrum analyser?”

“Good, I’ll try turning up the radiance.”

…

“Mr Crowe? We’ve found something! I think it’s-”

“What the hell is that?”

“I know what that is. I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

“When you guys had me up to my arms in a dead pony’s guts extracting alicornal tissue...that’s what their nervous system looks like.”

“Oh, mother pus bucket!”

"That...is highly disturbing.”

“Uhh…I think this corresponds with supplementary data. All those reports from Lichen about prisoner numbers in Equestria during the Crystal War? Oh wow! This suddenly explains so much!"

“...guys, hold it. Make this clear for someone who never took biology. Those shadows?”

“Bones, Winston. Atrophied muscle, redundant organs…”

“In short Zeddy, seriously messed up shit!”

“Aw man, that just ain’t right.

“Whatcha got there Spengs?”

“...I can see calcified blood vessels and a ...that there, the central processor, it’s a distended brain...”

“Hey, fellas, do you see that? Those little specs, they’re teeth….there, right there...and over there...oh man, down there too.”

“Dude, did that bit just blink at me?!”

“...bundled threads of crystal strung throughout the remains of the spinal column and gastrointestinal tract. They run all the way up into the brain...and out the other side.”

“Hold on, hold on. Egon? Do you have a flashlight or something?”

“Here, have my Iphone, Venkman.”

“Alright, Ray, tell me what happens on the monitor when I slide this over the surface.”

“You guessed right Pete, and I really wished you hadn't....that eye. It… it tracked the light. Ugly stuff.”

“Cut the feed man, cut the feed.”

“Guys, this isn’t a computer. It never was a computer… the reason they made such a leap wasn’t because they surpassed us in programming… it’s because they used their own people as raw materials… substituted sentience for software! This was a crystal pony!”

"I think this clarifies what happened to Brighthoof's husband..."

"You're saying Celestia used POWs?! For this?!"

"No...not just POWs… consider the Crystal Empire when it returned. Chaotic, most of the population amnesiac, all census records lost. Equestria could have just picked victims off of the street and they would not have been missed."

“In a purely scientific sense, it’s an admirably efficient use of available resources. In every other sense, this can only described as unadulterated evil.”

“... stirring stuff Eeg.”

“I just thought of something. How… how do they keep this running? Is it sustained by magic? Do they feed nutrients into those dead organs? How’s it still running?”

“Guys, cut the damn feed! That’s a naked soul on the screen!”

CONNECTION LOST

Record of a telepresence conversation between Crowe Laboratories [Rio De Janeiro, Brazil] and a contracted firm of outside consultants [Tribeca, NYC].

“What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?!”

“I mean Maud Pie is not here, Commander. Reports are that she left sometime last night.”

“What?! Why!? She was suppose to help Zecora with that spell of hers, to help out etch out the proper runes in solid stone!”

“I’m sorry sir, all I know is that she received some letters yesterday evening, and then she quickly hopped on the next flight out for Shearwater. When Zecora arrived this morning and saw Maud had gone well...I never thought I’d hear someone make rhymes out of the words she’s using right now... I'm almost glad Victor's not around to translate."

“Alright...ugrr...thanks for notifying me. Ask Zecora what she needs to make up for Maud’s absence and we’ll send it her way. Renee out.”

[click]

“For fucks’ sake, she chooses now to leave?! We have HLF and PER coming out of their fucking caves and causing all sorts of problem all across New England and the Maritimes, and the Barrier bearing down us with all the momentum of a damn glacier. Someone get me the flight times and tell me when that plane landed, now!”

“Sir, we have a high priority package coming in from Maine. Colonel Hex needs you to sign for it!”

“Great, just what I need, another one of his ‘magic bullets’. Alright, we need to get on top of this. Cher, who do you want to send to bring Maud back?”

“Well...who do we have to hoof that’s free? How about...Spitfire’s team?”

“Nah...can’t spare our best fliers to track down one mare. There’s Vinyl, and we could send her cousin or brother with her?”

“Hrm. 33 ⅓ LP’s on telecommunications with Mixtape and...let me see if Vinyl and Allie could...ah, no."

“No?”

“They’re already on deployment. I’d suggest Trenderhoof and Melanie Ortiz, but they’re off way up north and no-one’s heard from them in a few days.”

“Humph! Crowe better appreciate the sacrifices we make by putting some of our best at his disposal. Trender and Mel get along like chalk and cheese, but they do good work. What about Heliotrope?"

"In Montreal with Ze'ev."

"What about Blossomforth?"

"In the White Mountains of New Hampshire on evac duty with Kraber, Aegis and the others. They’re coordinating it with Weiss and Gransvoort over in Berlin, and I still can’t believe that Victor went and requested it through the proper channels."

“Well, perfect…”

“...Marcus, I’ve got an idea.”

“What is it? What’s with that face?”

“...there is someone we can use. Little Miss ‘V for Vendetta’s’ down in the brig for picking fights with the new pony recruits, again.”

“Oh Jeeze. First mare ever to lay Kraber out on his ass and all she can focus on is going on a rager against anything on hooves.”

“And the only one that makes him look personable as well…”

“Well, it would get one problem off our hands. She’s trouble, but she’s good at what she does.”

“I think she’d pop your head off if she heard you refer to her as a mare, Marcus. She’s got a rage-on for ponies in general, herself included…”

“Too bad for her then. Hrm...but she hates betrayal more, even the possibility of treachery...and I know she’s got a grudge against Maud’s whole family.”

“I don’t know Marcus. The Conversion Bureaus still cast long shadows. She would be more likely to kill Maud than bring her back alive.”

“... Can’t say that’d be a bad thing, if Maud has gone rogue…”

“Marcus…just because her sister is Pinkie Pie doesn’t mean...”

“I’m sorry, Cher, but she’s got the connections and a possible motive as well. Plus, she’s gone AWOL on us right in the middle of a decisive stage in the war. I’d rather have her back here to answer my questions on why she left…”

“...but if she ever turned her knowledge against us…”

“Exactly. I’ll tell our little huntress to keep her guns cool once she gets to her, but if Maud refuses to come back to base, if she is indeed a traitor…then our girl will have permission to terminate."

[click]

“Renee speaking, put me through to containment… hello, Cell Wall, it’s me… I need you to have the guards escort a prisoner up to me ASAP...”

“The… *Snicker* the ‘walking joke’, sir?

“I will pretend I haven’t heard you due to the amount of crap I have on my plate, soldier.”

“Uh…. Yes, sir! I will have Ms. Carter brought up to you right away sir.”

“Good. The shit I have to deal with…now, what is it that Hex has sent our way this time? The man just seems to conjure trainloads of cargo out of thin air...”

Recorded conversation between Marcus Renee and Cheerilee Cherry some days prior to the ‘Last Train Affair’. Although classified due to having being presented as evidence in the 2025 War Crimes Tribunals, the document was subsequently released to the public in 2030 after a Freedom of Information injunction filed by ‘Wright, Finch and Walters’, legal counsel to M. Lawrin.

PRELIMINARY REPORT

PROJECT TYPE: NEWFOAL TEMPLATE (IN DEVELOPMENT)

DESIGNATION: PRETTY PRIVATE

LOGGED BY: DEFAULT CONFIGURATION DAEMON (version 10.21, iteration 12021973)

My Dearest Mistress, Twilight Sparkle

Please forgive this unexpected action, but I have interesting news to report.

I was activated at 15:41hrs on 10-NOV-2023 to manually oversee the ponification of a thirty-year-old human female, due to the local newfoal network having temporarily collapsed. After an initial appraisal of the raw material, I implemented a reconfiguration as follows:

U-FEM-BASIC
Type ‘L’, Version 0.17
(foundational template best matched to raw genome: unicorn with recessive pegasus traits)

As per the ‘grandparent protocol’, gene markers were used to identify the four (4) templates best suited to build upon this foundation.

U-FEM-GRACILE
Type ‘F-D-L’, Version 3.35
(primary physical characteristics: frame size and proportions)

E-FEM-LABOR
Type ‘A-J-S’, Version 1.28
(secondary physical characteristics: muscular development and metabolic attributes)

P-FEM-ATHLETIC
Type ‘L-N-D’, Version 5.13
(tertiary physical attributes: neurosensory attributes and pathways)

U-FEM-MAGE
Type ‘T-L-S’, Version 0.01
(quaternary physical attributes: alicornal tissues and biothaumic structuring)

The result of this blending was a young adult female unicorn with considerable strength, agility and above-average magical capability, suited for combat operations.

Mental conditioning, left to my own discretion, drew upon the following templates.

U-GUARD
Type ‘S-N-A’, Version 9.25
(foundational mentality: military training, protocolling and conditioning)

U-FEM-MAGE
Type ‘T-L-S’, Version 0.01
(magical conditioning: standard spell matrices and elementary casting)

P-FEM-ATHLETIC
Type ‘L-N-D’, Version 5.13
(sexual conditioning: skills, technique, context)

P-FEM-GRACILE
Type: ‘F-T-S’ Version 7.65
(personality traits: grace, poise, appeal)

Predictive patterns indicated that this blending of traits should result in an marginally above-average footsoldier, with sufficient intelligence and adaptability to function well within a military deployment. As is now standard, sexual conditioning was included to allow the subject to be used for recreational purposes within her unit. In this instant, the subject was configured to be visually and emotively appealing to both genders, dedicated in performance, and to possess physical strength and endurance sufficient to engage with multiple consecutive partners. Submissiveness, obedience and devotion to native Equestrians is of course guaranteed.

Subsequent experience however has resulted in unexpected developments. Due to the temporary local network failure, the subject was deployed immediately into combat operating on Auto-Law, that is to say, self-governing. As this is a very rare occurrence, I remained active after fulfilling my primary function, in my secondary ‘oversight’ capacity.

The subject, upon deployment, made full use of the skills accorded to her, and exceeded all set parameters. In magical and physical combat she demonstrated considerable agility, speed, dexterity, and ability, subduing five armed assailants in the space of less than a minute. I am proud to announce that an Equestrian observer declared this performance to be that of a ‘supersoldier’, and accredited that success to your own tireless work, Mistress.

I have also observed a considerable spike on the subject’s Thau-S patterns indicating a proficiency with a particular wavelength of magic. Since it is unusual for newfoals to manifest abilities outside of those not already contained within their template, I consider this to be of note, and stimulated the appropriate brain sectors to both encourage appropriate spell-casting and guide the matrices involved. The magic subsequently wielded by the subject proved to be transmutation: its use was both deft and skillful, and the resulting constructs (weapons and armor), although plain, are of the highest quality.

I consequently rank the subject (now designated NEPENTHE) in the highest percentile of combat newfoals produced to date.

As may be appreciated, this is a rare occurrence. As the stated function of all configuration daemons is to maximise the capacity of newfoal subjects, I have analysed all records and have now developed several hypotheses as to how this situation came to pass with subject Nepenthe:

A: Chance. Although unlikely, it is possible that this particular blending of templates combined to randomly create an exceptional combat-mage.

B: Predisposition. The raw material was a willing supplicant and possessed of vast quantities of mental strife, which facilitated a cognitive scrub of above-average quality and thoroughness (thanks to being subconsciously assisted by the raw material’s desire to discard past traumas). In subject Nepenthe, the majority of the raw materials’ memories have consequently been either suppressed or over-written. The foundational memory chosen on which to build Nepenthe’s mental framework was also of considerable strength and clarity, which may have affected matters.

As supporting evidence, I point to the project title. The self-identifier ‘Pretty Private’ appears to have manifested spontaneously out of the subject’s own consciousness, and may reflect that the new mentality has embraced its appointed role within Equestria to the fullest.

C: Auto-law. It is rare indeed for a newfoal nowadays to be configured outside of the governing influence of the master spell network, much less deployed in combat operating under Auto-Law. To my understanding, there may be less than forty incidents where a similar situation has occurred with the new combat-orientated templates, none of which have shown as much skill or potential as subject Nepenthe (see subject Focus Ray and similar).

This has had a notable effect on subject Nepenthe’s Thau-S readings. In the majority of newfoals, the echo of the raw material’s signature remains permanently ‘dormant’ within the ‘soul’, often resulting in destructive interference where it and the new signature collide, manifesting as a mental ‘scream’. This ‘scream’ represents a flare in the newfoal’s magical essence, which is then vented into the local network and consequently wasted. Records indicate that up to 50-to-60% of all newfoal ‘potentia magi’ is expended in this manner.

In subject Nepenthe however, disconnection from other newfoals has caused the original Thau-S signature to degrade at an accelerated, and continuous rate. The resultant ‘screams’ are consequently much weaker, and thus Nepenthe’s magical reserves are not depleted at a rate comparable to other newfoals. I predict that within the next week, the original signature (and residual identity) will have eroded into nothingness.

As a result of this, I also predict that Nepenthe’s magical and martial prowess will increase at an inverse rate to the declination of her original identity as the new Thau-S signature continues to establish itself as the sole identity running on this chassis. I am proud to say that within a week’s time, Subject Nepenthe will most likely rank as one of the most powerful combat-mages in the modern Imperial Army.

This represents a remarkable opportunity to better the glory of the Empire. Insufficient time and energy has been expended in improving the battlefield capabilities of our newfoals to date, preferring the axiom of quantity over quality. Under my prime directive of maximising newfoal performance however, I have taken it upon myself to develop a new template, designated ‘Pretty Private’, with subject Nepenthe as the master version from which to extrapolate further variants.

To facilitate this experiment, I have established the following protocols:

A: Subject Nepenthe is locked to ‘auto-law’, and her connection to the local newfoal network cut off, with all I/O points and access nodes scrambled **. This is to better facilitate her development and skills. Connection will only be established for the transmission of these reports, in micro-burst format. To minimise possible corruption of the experiment, these momentary connections will be ‘outbound’ only.

** As a safety feature, I can establish local-law control over subject Nepenthe at any given time. However, given this may hamper and/or contaminate the experiment, I reserve this veto as a measure of last resort.

B: Subject Nepenthe’s mind has been linked to her onboard ponification matrix (namely, myself). This will allow her to essentially wield the matrix as a spell, using her prodigious transmutation skills to create batches of potion ‘on demand’, requiring only a tissue sample from the raw materials to optimise configuration. She has also consequently gained limited-user access to my database and sub-routines.

C: Subject Nepenthe will apply the new template only to raw materials that either desire ponification (consciously or unconsciously) or who possess a level of mental anguish commensurate to that of Subject Nepenthe’s original identity.

D: Subject Nepenthe has been instructed to both refine the template through self-improvement, and to seek out a suitable totem-prole or master terminal by which ‘Pretty Private’ can be uploaded and imposed on the network.

I am sure that you will agree with these measures Mistress and approve of them.

As of this time, two additional ‘Pretty Private’ test units have been formatted, designations ‘Double Flash’ and ‘Sugarcane’. Full details on these units and their unique characteristics will be included with the First Interim Report. Initial test results however suggest that subject Nepenthe’s core attributes have been successfully translated, along with the associated mental paradigm.

Based on this data, it is my proud and humble conviction that a perfected ‘Pretty Private’ template will ensure Equestria’s immediate and complete victory in the remaining theatres of conflict. I look forward to the horror of our enemies when this template is loaded onto the network as the new ‘default’ for newfoal production, quickly swelling our ranks with many thousands of ‘supersoldiers’. It may even be possible to impose the new template upon existing newfoals, which would instantaneously create an army of over one billion ‘Pretty Privates’.

I remain, your faithful servant,
Default Configuration Daemon, Version 10.21, Iteration 12021979.

PS: I can confirm that the subject’s secondary training in the sexual arts have also been field tested, with great success.

Micro-burst transmission received by the Solar Empire in Canterlot at 00:00 hrs, 11-NOV-2023. Later research showed the receipt of this report prompted panic on the part of local authorities, who repeatedly issued remote ‘Cease and Desist’ commands to the Configuration Daemon in question, with no response.

The first interim report was received 24 hours later, by which point there were four Pretty Privates active in the field…

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Well guys, as promised here's a not-so-mini chapter to round out the end of this act and seed plot points for the one to follow.

It is a bit of an infodump, but remarkably we've managed to weave a small narrative through several of the intros, as well as some very satisfying cameos and pop-cultural nods.

This section truly was a collaborative effort, with (I think) most of the Spectrum-team contributing something, including the maestro himself, Redskin! Three cheers for them all! HIP-HIP-HORRAY!

And so, as we head towards Act 2, questions arise. Amongst them:

Why did Maud abandon her post, and how does Cheese Sandwich factor into her story?
What's the deal with Verity? How did she end up the way she is?
Where will Nepenthe's journey take her next, and can she and the other Pretty Prviates get any creepier!?

The answers to this questions will be answered...in the next set of chapters.

Cheers guys, hope you all enjoyed!

- TB3

Altered States

“Hello, my name is Elder Price,
And I would like to share with you
The most amazing book…”
‘The Book of Mormon’
Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Robert Lopez

“I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of suffers also…”
‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

“I know you’re broken down by anger and by sadness
You feel I left you in a world that’s full of madness
Wish could talk to you if only for a minute
Make you understand the reasons why I did it…”
'RWBY: Red Like Roses Part II'
Jeff and Casey Lee Williams

IPSWICH STREET, BOSTON

OCTOBER 31st 2016
(fifteen months before the CERN accident)

The apartment door clicked softly, and then was pushed open from outside, letting in the glow of the corridor’s warm lights.

It also let in the sound of someone struggling not to sob, the shamed sniffles of someone who didn’t want to show their heart. They contrasted pitifully with the relentless patter of raindrops on the windows, an unceasing fall of tears.

Two figures stepped in, one leaning against the other for support. The weightbearer, the taller of the two, flipped the switch inside of the door, filling the cosy apartment with light. Posters and framed pieces of artwork were hung on every wall, including some classicalist imitations and abstract daubs...

And heroes. Superheroes and heroines, in flight and in battle, soaring and whirling and holding up shattered rubble to allow innocents to escape to safety. They shared the wallspace with giant robots and girls that roller-skated across galaxies...

They were framed comic-covers and splash-pages, each one lovingly inked and coloured. And each and every one of them bore the same signature…

Jazmin Carter eased her crying daughter onto the couch and touched a hand to her cheek.

“I’m going to call Dad. Is there anything you need, Verity?”

Verity Carter, seventeen years old and dressed to impress for her school’s twelfth-grade Halloween party, shook her head and bit one of her knuckles, breaths coming in wheezing gasps as she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Alright… I’m right here, okay Vee?”

Taking another tremble of Verity’s head as a ‘yes’, Jazmin stepped into the kitchenette and picked up the phone receiver. As she dialled, she saw her own clear-complexioned face reflected in the glass surface of the induction hob, and smiled wanly.

‘Never looks quite how I drew myself in my mind, even years on...’ she thought to herself, bringing one finger to the strong cleft in her jaw. ‘But my face never bothered my family, and for that I’ve been blessed...’

The phone continued to ring, and as it did she looked out towards Verity, who had now fallen silent, and was staring between her knees at the floor. Her daughter was dressed in a navy blue tunic and pants, paired with tanned-leather boots and a fake pelt-dress. Combined with Verity’s naturally browned skin and dark hair, it was a near perfect match for the character she’d gone out dressed as.

‘Verity… my girl, I wish you’d never have to know the same rejection I did...’

But now they had that in common. Mother and daughter alike.

“Hello…” came a sudden voice on the line. “Jaz, is that you? How’s Verity?”

“She’s fine Mike, she’s back home with me now…” Jazmin replied, having to raise her voice to make herself heard over the sound of jet engines and baggage trolleys on the opposite end of the call.

“What happened? Was what she tweeted true, did Astrid…”

“It’s true, Mike, and it was as hateful as you could ask for.”

“Well shit… how is she taking it?”

“Like anyone else would when their first love dumps them…”

“You mean utterly rejects them! How could Astrid have done it, to someone as brilliant as our girl!?”

“I know…” she replied, unable to hide her own misery. “I really thought Verity had found someone for her, especially seeing them posed together in costume last night… they were happy, Mike, they were so happy.”

“Mike!” called another voice from his end of the line. “Final crew call for our flight, we’ve gotta prep to board the passengers!”

“Coming!” he called out, before speaking back into his phone. “I’ll be back into Boston tomorrow evening on the Honolulu flight. It’s a red-eye for me, but come down to the airport with Verity and we’ll all go out for food somewhere. My treat.”

“Alright, Mike,” Jazmin smiled back. “Have a safe flight.”

“You bet, and tell Verity for me that Astrid never deserved a girl as amazing as her. Love you both, bye!”

“Love you too…” Jazmin repeated back as the call ended, and held a deep breath. As someone who could not stand flying herself, it always brought on a little flush of fear to imagine her kind, loving, considerate husband directing cabin service at +60,000 foot altitudes. In truth, Mike himself sometimes confessed to finding the constant cycle of takeoffs and landings a stress, especially after news of some other ‘hull loss’ or catastrophic human error…

Hah, catastrophic human error. That nicely described the situation she now found herself in. Someone had made a cruel mistake and crashed her daughter’s self-esteem into a mountain.

‘Mike always says he looked to me for his courage...’ she thought to herself. ‘Now I’ve got to do the same for our kid...’

The problem was that Jazmin did not consider herself particularly brave, no matter what others told her when they heard her life story. Her one moment of courage was in defying her parents with nothing but truth and honesty, and for even that she had drawn strength from…

‘That’s it...’ she decided in a flash of realisation, and after a brief struggle to remember where the phone’s cradle was, she turned her mind towards her daughter.

“Verity?” she called softly, crossing back into the lounge. “I’d like to show you something in the study…could you join me, please?”

A pair of blue eyes, too blue to be natural, flashed up in curiosity. “Sure…”

Jazmin’s study was a strange demilitarised zone in the apartment. It was more accurately her studio, where she pencilled and inked for days at a time. It was governed under a simple law: If Mom is working on licensed properties, DO NOT come in…

It was how she upheld her NDAs, the Non-Disclosure-Agreements that bound her to secrecy on any projects she was engaged on for outside parties. She’d not gone so far as to fit the door with a lock, but both her husband and daughter had lived by that rule for years.

Jazmin held the door open for Verity, and could not hide a smile at the brief grin that flashed across her daughter’s face upon seeing the two framed pictures that held pride of place on the wall.

The first was Jazmin and Mike’s wedding photo, from the summer of 2004. That was the year in which they and countless others had gained the right to be legally married. Mike, black-skinned, tall and elegant, was resplendent in his tuxedo, and some very careful tailoring had made Jazmin every bit the radiant bride. Verity, not even five years old, was standing posed with her parents in an adorable little dress, overjoyed to be bridesmaid to her own mother.

The three of them formed a strange harmony. Mike with his African ancestry contrasting with Jazmin’s midwestern complexion and Verity’s Hispanic roots. And yet the love that bound them beyond measure seemed to radiate from the picture like light.

Beside it, hanging in equal measure, was the cover-art for an issue of IDW’s ‘Transformers’, depicting a human girl in red power-amour, a cocksure grin on her face and fire in her eyes. And an Autobrand - symbol of the ‘Heroic Autobots’ - emblazoned proudly on her chestplate.

“Verity Carlo…” Jazmin heard her own Verity murmur, and could not hide her own smile.

“I couldn’t believe it when Simon Furman chose an expy of you to be the main human focus for IDW’s comics. You really made an impression on him at the wedding reception…”

Unbidden, they both shared a sigh and a smile, and Jazmin reached over to cup her daughter’s chin. “I was so happy when I finally got a chance to draw her, and share my amazing girl with the world…”

More tears were pricking in Verity’s eyes, and Jazmin wiped them away with her fingers.

“And now, as mother to daughter, I want to share something with you.”

A few seconds of rummaging produced a stack of leather-bound books, each an inch thick. Then, with the two of them seated cross-legged on the studio’s throw-rug, lit by a pair of dancing lava-lamps, Jazmin opened the first volume, revealing a series of alternating handwritten and typeset texts.

“These pages are the originals…” Jazmin explained, pointing to the hand-written sheets, yellowed with time. “And the opposite pages are the same text, typed up by my great-grandmother sometime around the Great Depression, when she had the books properly bound.”

“What are they?” Verity asked.

“The journals of your own namesake…” Jazmin replied gently, taking Verity’s hands in her own. “My great grandmother’s great-grandmother, Verity Wilford.”

They looked down at the first pair of pages, which were dated 1831.

“The Wilfords were among the first Mormons, among the first to join Joseph Smith after he was visited by the Angel Moroni. These diaries cover Verity’s entire life-story from the age of fifteen, and through her eyes recount the entire Mormon journey across America from New York to Utah. Everything is here - the trials and tribulations of a new, young religion and its people –
everything they endured over thousands of miles. The murder of the prophet in Illinois, the founding of Salt Lake City, and the construction of the Great Temple, nothing is skipped over. Verity lived long enough to see the Temple’s completed, and saw-in the turn of the century… the last diary entry is by her own daughter, recording her death aged eighty-four.”

“That’s…” Verity swallowed, unable to process what she was holding. “That’s an amazing life… this, this is like a Great American Story.”

“It is, and all of it came from her heart, honest and true. Even when describing things which today we consider distasteful, like racism and polygamy, the honesty of her approach is all to her credit. The entire human condition -good and bad- lies in between these covers, seen through the eyes of a child as she grows into a woman, a mother, a grandmother…everything she ever experienced, felt and did. The promise, the perseverance, the pain, and the persecution…”

Verity looked up, and Jazmin saw her swallow. “Oh, Mom!”

“When I realised the truth about myself…” Jazmin continued, holding her daughter’s gaze. “...realised that the feelings in my heart were true and loving, sacred to me and a Heavenly Father, it was these diaries that inspired me to go through with the transformation of my life. The confrontation with my parents, their rejection of me, my excommunication from the Church, the surgery and recovery… I couldn’t have done any of it, without the strength and courage and faith bound within this book, passed down from mother to daughter through the entire history of our family… mother to daughter, from me to you.”

Verity bit back another sniff, and gingerly touched the edge of one page, as if afraid it would reject her. “But you and Dad adopted me, so she… Verity Wilford, she wasn’t really my ancestor.”

“Never think that, little Vee,” Jazmin soothed, as she brought their intertwined hands down onto the open pages. “Without these books, I would never have been able to fall in love with your father, and to experience the joy that comes from being your mother. All the love in my heart, all the love that I have ever given and received, flows from these words… and that makes you a truer heir to this legacy than my parents ever were.”

“How… how do you still have her journals, after they threw you out?”

Jazmin gave a little smirk. “I took the books back from them, obviously…”

“You mean you stole them?”

Verity sounded disbelieving, and Jazmin shook her head, that same little smirk smouldering like a coal in the corner of her mouth. “If my parents were too blind to see that they had become the persecutors, and I the honest pilgrim, then they obviously had never truly read these books, or disregarded them as nice little heirlooms, but I had. You cannot steal that which already belongs to you…”

She leaned forward and kissed Verity on the brow. “And nothing can ever steal away that loving heart of yours Verity, even when someone you’ve offered it to casts it on the ground.”

Verity’s arms came forward, and Jazmin found herself embraced in a fierce, powerful hug.

“I just wanted her to love me, Mom!” Verity cried out. “Like I did for her… wasn’t I good enough, was I wrong?”

“Never! Never!” Jazmin replied back, now holding onto the hug herself, clutching her daughter so tight that her chest burned. “You did nothing wrong Verity, nothing! And if there is any justice is in the world, then Verity Wilford is watching down upon us, a Queen of Heaven, and she will agree with me!”

Verity managed a laugh. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff any more…”

“I lost my Church, Verity,” Jazmin smiled. “I never lost my faith, and that faith tells me that you are going to do amazing things, in this world and the next. I know what happened to you tonight is painful, and cuts so deep that you can’t believe you’ve not died from it...”

So true, after all, she’d gone through the same rejection once.

“... but love is love, and that transcends gender, race, creed and sexuality. If Astrid couldn’t see that, then she’s the one who has lost out on something wonderful, not you, my blessing, my angel.”

Verity gave a hug sob, but this time she didn’t try to hold back, and let the tears flow. “You’re the angels Mom, you and Dad. If you hadn’t taken me in, named and raised me… if you hadn’t come for me, I’d be someone completely different… and I don’t want to be anyone else but Verity Carter!”

“And you’ve no idea how much those words mean to me…”

They gently broke apart from the hug and sat back, still facing each other, cross-legged on the floor. Verity’s eyes were still wet, but there was a strangely serene smile on her face, the finishing touch to her costume.

“...my wise young Avatar.”

They spared a quick glance for another framed picture that hung opposite the desk, a trade-paperback cover depicting two figures holding one another as golden light swirled around them. Both were girls, and one was the spitting image of Verity in her costumed garb.

The Legend of Korra: The Truth, read the title. Seeing it, Verity’s smile grew, and Jazmin reached forward to brush a lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear..

“So, how do you want to spend the rest of Valentine’s Day, ‘Avatar’?”

She was surprised to see a flash of concern flicker across Verity’s face. “Mom, tonight is Halloween, not Valentines.”

“Sorry, got a little mixed up,” jazmin demurred, waving a hand dismissively. “Wanna power up the X-Box and pull out the horror games?”

“Actually, Mom…” Verity smiled, that moment of concern already fading as she looked down at the open books in her lap. “I’d like to do some reading…”

And with those words, Jazmin found the love she felt for her daughter could still grow further.

Later though, curled up with Verity on the couch, mugs in their hands and reading together, she found there were gaps in her memory, fragments of the story that had faded from all recognition, and that concerned her.

‘Good thing I’ve been illustrating these diaries for the best part of a decade...’ she thought to herself, smiling at the thought of the surprise Verity and Mike would have when she revealed the Magnum Opus she’d strived towards all her life.

‘Latter Day Saints’ she had named it. A semi-autobiographical graphic novel documenting the trials and tribulations of two generations of their family, drawing upon Jazmin’s life and Verity Wilford’s diaries. Nine years of work, secret even to Mike, and almost finished...

But sitting there, one arm across Verity’s shoulder, Jazmin decided there was still room for an Epilogue...

NOVEMBER 10th 2023

The apartment door clicked softly, and then was pushed open from outside, letting in the glow of a handheld torch that had been set down on the dusty, litter-strewn corridor’s torn carpet. A pair of hooves neatly clicked on the floor, and after returning a pair of lockpicks to her saddlebags, the small equine who had opened the door picked up the torch in her teeth and stepped into the darkened space.

And then, she glanced upwards, and the torchbeam shone on the apartment’s circuit-box, mounted high on the wall. Despite the mains power to the building having been cut, each of the breakers were shut, and the status light on each was softly illuminated.

Hesitant, almost disbelievingly, the youth reached towards the lightswitch, and tapped it with one hoof. The lights came on without hesitation, the AC began to whir, and nodding to herself, the teenaged mare turned off her torch and tossed it back to join the lockpicks in her bags.

“Yeah...this is it…”

Babs Seed flicked her unruly fringe back, eyes narrowed in suspicion as she explored the space. Before the war she guessed that this had been a nice enough place to rent; hardly upmarket, or even mid-market, but comfortable. There was a studio-style kitchenette and dining room that extended through into a TV nook, a decent-sized bedroom, two bedrooms, and a decent-sized study. Perfect place for a young couple or small family starting out in the world.

Or at least, that’s what it had been. Regardless of it’s pre-war disposition, now the apartment clearly served another purpose. The bedrooms and study had been stripped bare, restocked as laboratories, and the walls of the living space were covered in notes, diagrams, and advanced magical formulae. The closest thing to a bed was a meagre gathering of sheets on a cheap orange and green couch scavenged from somewhere, its upholstery so color-clashing that it would’ve had Rarity screaming murder, back before… well, the war.

There was a mini-fridge which Babs opened, curiously. All she could see were a few cheap, unremarkable vegetarian dinners, though most of the fridge appeared turned over to the storage of small pebbles and several softly glowing crystals. She suspected a few of them were worth miniature fortunes, and probably ranked somewhere high on the requisition list the PHL had discreetly traded with various cells of the Equestrian Resistance.

“How’d these get here?” she half-whispered, voicing her thoughts aloud. Despite her curiosity, she dared not touch the gems, especially the ones lit with their own internal light. Who knew what they could do?

Closing the fridge door, she looked up. The notes on the walls, swaying gently as the AC circulated the stale air, were incomprehensible, crowded into every inch of space, spreading onto the floors and even across parts of the ceiling.

Involuntarily, she found herself recalling something, a quote from a novel that Kraber had loaned her...

“There was nothing of him,” said Doul, “in the Wordhoard. “His berth down in the hold, it was clean and dry. His walls were covered with notes, pinned everywhere....”

Babs had never given much thought to reading, until one soldier, the same man who had loaned her the book in question, showed he had a soft spot for foals and children by reading to them of evenings. Now, those same books were a welcome release for Babs, an escape-route back to simpler, kinder days, when adventure and thrilling horror was something from a story, and not a daily reality...

”...but nothing of him. He’s like an empty doll. Those notes everywhere, like posters, and a little hand printing press, and ink and grease. His clothes in a trunk, his notebook in his bag—that’s all there was of him. It was pathetic… you could examine that room for hours, and you’d still have no idea what Silas Fennec was like. He’s nothing but an empty skin stuffed with schemes.”

An empty skin stuffed with schemes... though the author had likely never expected their words to be applied to a situation like the Conversion War, those words were certainly apt.

But unlike Fennec’s wall of notes, there was a point of sanity amidst all this scribbled chaos, one single thing that seemed fixed and singular…

“Hey there, Pinkie,” Babs sighed as she approached it, smiling sadly.

‘It’ was a photo, a framed likeness of Pinkie Pie - and unlike the rest of the room’s clutter, it appeared to have been treated with respect and love. The glass and frame gleamed, and the only thing that could outshine their brightness was the sheer joy and vivacity in the party pony’s eyes. It was an old photo, from before the war; another memory of peaceful times.

Sighing, Babs tipped the photo a salute and turned back to resume her search.

Whoever used this space had been very busy, and from the way some of the supplies had been ransacked, very recently. There was even a hint of fresh ozone in the air, a sign of magical experimentation that Babs had grown very familiar with in her service with the Ponies for Human Life.

And yet, there had been surprisingly few signs of entry into the apartment, forced or otherwise. The door had been locked, but the piles of trash and litter in the corridor had seemed almost entirely undisturbed. In fact, there had only been a single trail of hoofprints imprinted in the filth and clutter, and they had led out of the building...

Babs already had a theory to explain that, but just to be sure she checked all the windows, and found to her satisfaction that not only had they all been blacked out, but nailed shut.

“Called it! Howz’at for a lil’ filly?”

Suddenly galvanised, she began to root through the rooms, until at last she found what she was looking for. Hidden down the back of a work-desk was a floor-to-ceiling mirror set in a plain frame, turned on its side. Reversing it however revealed dozens of softly glowing glyphs cut into the rear of the facade, all linked through to a single node.

Without hesitation, the filly dragged the mirror out, tipped it up against an open patch of wall, tapped the node, and stepped back as the hum of magic filled the air. Inside the frame, her reflection in the glass became distorted, swirling away down a developing crack in reality, allowing something else to take its place in the glass...

Babs failed to suppress a smirk as she found herself staring through the mirror, straight into the jade eyes of a surprised zebra mare.

“Little seed, do my eyes lie?” the shaman mureed, holding one delicately tapered hoof to her brow. “Or have you discovered the who, where and why?”

The PHL’s highest-ranking representative to the Apple clan nodded her head eagerly, and stepped through the frame, and out into the research laboratories of the PHL’s Boston Headquarters. It was no different from crossing an open threshold, with nothing but the faintest tang of magic to suggest anything had happened. Now surrounded by humming equipment and the bustle of many voices, Babs strutted straight up into the striped mare’s face.

“Zecora, I dun called it!” she trilled, lightly bobbing the zebra in question on the muzzle. “I found Maud’s lair!”

By the time High Command’s representatives arrived, what remained of the Boston PD had barricaded off Ipswich Street, and troops had established a cordon around the entire apartment building. There weren’t exactly many people to barricade off – the city was emptying by the second, trains packed with passenger numbers far above safety limits streamed out, and Lieutenant Django Miller and his men from the precinct were having a devil of a time trying to manage the evacuation.

Still, you never knew who might come in.

“So, Maud lived here for a while?” Marcus Renee asked as he crossed through the teleportal that linked the apartment and his organisation’s local HQ. He staggered for a second, and breathed, allowing his stomach to settle from the unfamiliar nausea of magical transportation, and hoping that the burning tingle in his arms would reduce.

“She sure did!” Babs crowed, her chest pushed out so far it seemed as if she was trying to fire her heart upon a cannon. “From the look of it, she’s been occupying this place for at least a year…”

Marcus sighed and shook his head. “Maud a traitor? Guess we were right to send our troublemaking ‘V for Vendetta’ after her…”

“Verity…” Babs muttered, before looking around and stomping a hoof on the ground. “We shoulda seen this coming. Maud’s been tight with the Empire long time afore the war started… moved into Boston only two months after CERN, claimin’ to establish a joint research project wid’ da university. In truth, she was attached to the local consulate’s staff...”

“We knew all that…she told us about her government business when she defected to us,” Marcus grunted. “And until now we had no reason to disbelieve her… speaking of which, how’d you find this place.”

“This apartment belonged to Ve - to a small family. A married couple and their daughter. Turns out, the Mom was the first Bostonian to take the potion, on accounta Alzheimers. Was told it’d fix her head up, for the trade-off of becoming a pony. Maud and her sis were both present at Massachusetts General Hospital, representing Equestria. Things went south pretty much straight after the Newfoal came a’ trottin out… the husband attacked Pinkie, and Maud got hurt bad trying to intervene… three weeks after she was healed up, she writes to Lyra saying something’s sinizter with the potion...”

“So Maud made herself a nest in the home of the first human family she hurt…” Marcus hummed. Had Maud felt guilty, or ashamed? Or was her choice of hideout just some dark humor, a bit of poetic irony.

“It’s quite a narrative, Babs. How’d you put all of that together?”

“With lotsa’ hard work. News atta’ time hushed it all up for confidentiality, and cause of Reitman and the consulate leaning on all parties to keep shtum. But Lieutenant Miller helped me get access to what’s left of da’ police archives, and wid’ that, Lyra’s journals, some HLF propaganda and an ol’ copy of da’ telephone directory, I put it all together. Then, I just had to chase down my hunch, and look where it broughtz me!”

Babs’ prideful declamation was halted when Marcus abruptly squatted down before her and stared into her eyes. She swallowed for a second and came to attention, struggling to avoid his flinty gaze.

And then the weathered soldier chuckled, and tousled her mane roughly.

“You do good work kid. I knew I chose my adjutant well. Right on.”

Suddenly he winced, and staggered again. The earth pony teen caught him with both hooves, and her own expression turned hard.

“Yer’ tats giving youze grief again? By the Golden Lyre, I toldya that Sparkler couldn’t be trusted wid’ a needle…”

“It’s fine, honestly Babs… just still getting used to having magical runes branded into my skin. Getting regular tattoos hurts just as bad, only now I have to get use to the new weight.”

“C’mon Big Em, I’ll helpya through to Zecora. She and Sparkler are turning the whole damn place inside out.”

Sure enough, the former apartment was a blur of shifting paper and artifacts as the two mares in question darted from place to place. Zecora would point, and Sparkler’s amethyst aura would immediately levitate the object of her attention into one of several growing piles. Forensics experts huddled against the walls for safety, expressions aghast as a potential crime-scene was robbed of sterility.

“It’s all here, Marcus!” Sparkler gushed as soon as he questioned the method to their madness. “Everything that Maud ever researched into runes and geomancy, every project we ever tasked her with, a heck loada stuff she discovered on her own and kept for herself. Everything’s here!”

“Why…” he muttered, stunned. “Why would she do this?”

"Actually," Babs interrupted, pointing at the photo of Pinkie Pie – not quite a forbidden artifact of Equestria, but certainly not the most well-regarded. "I think it's obvious. She did it for family..."

“Less talk, more walk!” Zecora grunted as she trotted past, hooking Marcus by the arm. “Commander, I would have your ear. Please help Sparkler, Babs my dear.”

The only place devoid of techno-magic paraphernalia was the bathroom. Locking the door behind them Zecora perched herself on the lip of the tub as Marcus sat himself down on the room’s throne.

“Tell me what you’ve found, Zee.”

“Riddles within lies, betrayal and disguise!” she answered, rapping a frustrated hoof against the porcelain.

“So Maud has sold us out?”

The zebra mare made sound of disgust and struck the wall with enough force to shatter a few tiles.

“Sold down the very river, yes. A viper we held to our breast!”

“To who? Who was she bartering with.”

“Any enemy you can name, Maud has played in this foul game. To the Empire she did secrets tell, while trading HLF and PHL! Told and tattled as she did please, from Celestia, to that rancid Cheese.”

It was a stunning revelation. Marcus was left counting on his fingers, trying to work it out.

“That would make her a triple...no, a quadruple agent! And what’s that about Cheese Sandwich? Why would Maud be trying to get in tight with the Equestrian Resistance?”

“We know alike, you and I… the who and how, and here’s the why…” Zecora sighed, taking a calming breath. Then, she held out a small rock.

“Boulder…” Marcus whispered, recognising Maud’s precious pet rock. “She left him behind?”

“First of all, please understand – this discovery is all as Maud had planned. In the event she did take flight, she left the means to set things right.”

“She recorded a message on him?” he asked in disbelief, seeing a complicated glowing sigil cut into the tiny stone’s surface.

“A confession of sorts, I do believe. For this deceit, Maud claims to grieve. She speaks of love, and dearest kin. And she bequeaths to us this trove we are in.”

Uncertain, but needing to know more, Marcus reached out and touched his finger to the sigil carved into Boulder.

“By the time you hear this, I’ll have fled…” began the recording, playing out in Maud’s dry, dusty tones.

“...You’ll say it’s impossible. I’m sorry, but I have to try. Even if it kills me. Thank you. Goodbye.”

Marcus turned Boulder over again and again in his palm as the recording finished playing itself. It was around fifteen minutes long, and he’d listened to it three times by now, pausing at periods.

In that time, Zecora and Sparkler had closed up shop and left with the better part of Maud’s research documents. Lab equipment and other miscellania were now being carted back through the mirror into the Boston HQ for closer study – and, if possible, being utilized in the coming battle. It was a fool’s errand, trying to make weaponry like that on the spur of the moment, but every bit counted.

Even now, people in basements were struggling to scratch out new weaponry, flash-enchanting everything from modern assault rifles to ancient designs that dated back to not long after the decline of percussion-cap weaponry, while others ‘piecemealed’ PHL guns, dismantling them and sharing out the improved and enhanced components among off the shelf weaponry...

It may not have meant much in the final weighing, but every little bit counted, after all.

In the here-and-now, that left only the task of stripping down the apartment to try and establish any further details into who else Maud might have entertained here. It hardly seemed necessary, given how she had apparently recorded every meeting and conversation held within these walls with a fervour that would have given Richard Nixon pause. An entire closet was filled with neatly labelled rocks and pebbles, each holding within chiselled runic memory hour after hour of secret meetings and private thoughts.

“So, she wanted us to find this…” Babs asked. “She set this place up as a private hideaway, and from here she’s been secretly working miracles and playin’ all comers for her own ends.”

“Looks like that…” Marcus nodded.

Babs’ words were not ill-chosen. From what he could tell, Maud had taken her knowledge of geomancy and combined it with her studies beneath Zecora and Sparkler to accomplish more than a few impossibilities.

The mirror was one of them, a bonafide teleporter connecting two points. Then there was the gemstone wired into the circuit panel, generating free electricity for the apartment out of the magical ether. Pebbles that functioned as grenades, and powdered rubble into which complex spells had been woven. The raw science alone was apparently enough to qualify Maud for a few awards, and the treachery of it enough to land her three or four decades behind bars.

All of it documented and detailed, every scheme and plan noted down on paper and stone. All left behind. It seemed almost as if Maud had been building herself a magical arsenal, and then fled armed only with the knowledge bound up in the cavernous depths of her mind.

And then there were the recordings… so many recordings. Many of the labels were obtuse, including an conspicuously-empty rack labelled marked ‘Meetings with Celly’s Ward.’

Others were more detailed. Cheese Sandwich had an entire shelf to his name. Marcus scowled at the thought of the yellow stallion, an ember of frustration smouldering in his breast.

‘The fucking Equestrian Resistance… always our ally, never our friend…’

The Equestrian Resistance was living proof that the old saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ was bullshit – (‘them and the HLF’, he snorted to himself) - they had a few agreements and a little common ground, nothing more.

And then, letting his eyes drift to the end of the rack, Marcus read several labelled rocks and found himself suppressing a low groan.

“Babs, you didn’t tell me the name of the family of lived here, did you?”

He did not need to see the small filly’s reaction: he could hear her swallow.

“No… no I didn’t Commander. Wasn’t sure how to break it, wanted you to come in with a clear head afore’ I dropped that on you.”

Ah Babs, ever the good subordinate. Like all adjutants and sergeants throughout history, she’d picked up that the key task of an assistant is to manage their superiors. Marcus had fully adopted that philosophy when he was an Non-Commissioned Officer. He’d just never expected to be on the receiving end of such treatment.

“Well, I know now…” Marcus said, as he reached out and picked up a pair of small rocks, no larger than a golfball. One came from a shelf marked ‘confessions’, and the from a section designated as ‘HLF’.

“Jazmin, Mike, and New Bloom...” he read aloud from the first, below holding up the second. “HLF: Meeting with Captain Verit...”

Oh shit...

‘They knew each other…’ he mentally stuttered. ‘I knew Maud and V disliked each other, knew there was a grudge of some kind, but I had no idea… was it all an act between them? Were they both in on this?’

“What is it, Big Em?” Babs pressed, stepping closer.

Marcus struggled to speak the words, and instead held the label out for her to read.

“Oh, fucking fuckity fuck-fuck me,” she hissed. “They were in contact with each other!? Before they were both on our side!?”

“Yeah…” Marcus answered. “And now Maud is free, and I’ve turned Vee loose with orders to hunt them down…”

He hoped to God, or whatever was listening, that the various troops he had stationed up in the Maritimes and New England crossed paths with those two mares before they themselves did. But it was never that easy, was it? The war had taught him that things like miracles, or even simple good luck were in too short supply to be ever expected.

“Doesn’t it feel?” he said aloud. “That every day, we’re just playing into somebody else’s plan? That everything we do is directed by some fucking Destiny...”

“Sure…” Babs laughed cynically, before turning to present her flank to him. “Welcome to the fucking world of the cutie-mark...”

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Well, after three months, here comes the next block of chapters, divvied up into three nice parts.

Many thanks to Doctor Fluffy, Jeff, Vox, Kizuna, Redskin12004 and everyone else who had a hand in this.

And of course, amazing thanks to Kare-Valgon of Deviantart for the amazing cover-art!

Fugitive Pieces

“Who knows who will be on board? A couple of spies, for sure. At least one grand duke; a few beautiful women, no doubt very rich and very troubled. Anything can happen and usually does on the Orient Express…”
Morley Safer, Canadian Journalist

“You’re all punks hiding there, yelling in the dark… lemme tell you where you assholes stand!
First there’s God. Then the Warden. Then my guards. Then their dogs out there in the kennel!
And finally you! Pieces of human waste! No good to yourselves, or anybody else!”
Associate Warden Ranken, Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison, Alaska
Runaway Train (1985)

“I wanna tell you that you’re all that ever mattered
Want you to know that for eternity I’m shattered
I tried so hard just to protect you but I failed to
And in a prison of abandonment I’ve jailed you

I never planned that I would leave you there alone
I was sure that I would see you when I made it back home
And all the times I swore that it would be okay
Now I’m nothing but a liar and you’re thrown into the fray…”
'RWBY: Red Like Roses Part II'
Jeff and Casey Lee Williams

DORCHESTER CAPE, NEW BRUNSWICK

Clun-cl-clunk, went the wheels on a rail joint. Three bangs, one for each axle on the wheel truck tucked under 9782’s cab. After an agonizingly long wait, the same sound repeated itself as the train slowly continued to reverse itself along an abandoned and overgrown spur that looked and felt like it hadn’t been maintained since the use of steam engines. They were already a mile or more away from the main track, but it helped to be well hidden.

“Keep it coming,” crackled a handheld radio perched on 9782’s dashboard. “Nice and slow...”

Night had long fallen. After putting as many miles between the fallen city of Truro and themselves as possible, Tess Jones had finally identified – between her own haphazard knowledge, Jean’s maps, and a railroad divisional handbook – what they needed: a disused spur on which to hide themselves and the train for a few hours.

The squeal of wheels grinding against tightly curved rails eased, and Tess, alone in the cab, reached for the radio.

“We’ve cleared the bend,” she said, picking it up to speak. “How much further?”

“Another half mile or so to the treeline, from what I can see,” came Verity Carter’s answer. “Can’t you push this thing any faster?”

“No,” she replied bluntly. “Propelling stock is tricky enough, but on track like this…”

The cab rolled to one side as the neglected, waterlogged roadbed settled under the train’s weight, and she tensed, holding onto the controls as if expecting to be suddenly turned on her side.

“Fine, I get your point,” Verity admitted, her voice tinny even at this short range. “Okay, I can see the trees now, only another five minutes or so before you can haul up in the woods.”

Tess mumbled a word of thanks and dropped the radio back into a cup-holder. 9782’s motor banged and whined behind her, pitch rising and falling as she shifted the throttle lever back and forth between its two lowest settings, struggling to not let the beast get out of her inexperienced grasp. It was like trying to ease a car backwards at a crawl without stalling or flooding the engine.

‘Five minutes...five minutes and then I can sleep.’

She hoped that didn’t count as tempting fate. But she was driving blind, exhausted, and pushed past any limits she could have dreamed she had, even after the Barrier had started growing. With the cab lights dimmed and only the glow of the operations screen to provide interior illumination, she could feel herself teetering on the exhausted threshold of sleep. Her limbs and body ached from too many hours seated behind the control desk, and her eyes burned from want of sleep.

Only the dim glow of a green light, reflected in the cabside mirror, kept her eyes open. It was being waved up and down by Verity from the rearmost caboose’s platform, indicating that they could keep backing up into the brush. Branches and overgrowth scratched over the windows the further they got from the main track, the train forcing its way along rails nature seemed determined to reclaim. 9782’s headlight, pointing back along the way they had come, illustrated too well the railroad’s rough path, gouged through wall after wall of brush.

Hours. It had been hours since they laid Jean and Firelock to rest. Hours since they had discovered their additional pair of passengers. Hours since her vocabulary had grown to include the phrase ‘totem-proles’.

‘Some kinda pony computer, right?’ she sighed to herself, head too heavy to comprehend...

Even after Verity’s explanation, she still wasn’t clear on what exactly she was hauling.

And those hours had been spent driving. Pushing the train onwards across the length of Nova Scotia, running without signals or a dispatcher, possibly into oncoming traffic. After that strain, the fear of a head-on collision lurking around every curve, the only reason Tess clung to the controls so tightly now was because her hands shook like crazy when she tried to let go.

But they were safe now, at least for a few hours. Safe to rest and recover and finally steal a few hours of slee–

“STOP STOP STOP!”

Tess slammed the brake lever into ‘full emergency’ and closed the throttle before Verity had finished screaming her warning, and felt an immediate surge of compressed air course through pipes below the deck and buck the brake-shoes against the wheels.

Going at barely walking pace, the train stopped immediately, banging a few times as the couplings stretched and the consist rebounded.

And then there was silence. 9782’s engine had dropped back into a comforting hum, and Tess , sitting rigid in the engineer’s seat, tried to relax, reach out, and pick the radio back up. It took her several tries, and with every second she was struggling to hold back a wave of nausea.

“What is it? What happened? Is anything derailed…” she whispered into the mouthpiece, her stomach threatening to rebell at any second.

“No…” came the reply at last. “No, we’re fine. Here is good, we’re hidden enough here. Shut it down.”

“Roger,” Tess managed. Then, with forced, considered actions, she reset the controls into neutral, and then locked them by removing the detachable ‘reverser’ lever, the locomotive’s equivalent of a gear stick. Taking the lever out of its mounting was like setting the wheel lock on a car: now nobody could tamper with the controls.

She didn’t power down the motor though. That stayed running in idle, so that if needs be they could make a quick escape without having to worry about the startup sequence.

‘Because you don’t know how to fire this thing up properly…’ whispered the treasonous voice that poisoned her every waking thought. ‘And instead, you’re going to leave the engine running while you sleep, burning precious gallons of diesel, until at last you run out of fuel midsection in the middle of nowhere, stranded and helpless…’

She did her best to kick those pessimisms to death, focusing on rising from her seat, setting the handbrake and gathering her supplies, but the cab suddenly felt uncomfortably warm and suffocating.

‘Get out, get air, get a hold of yourself!’

Firelock’s rifle went onto her combat vest’s back-holster, while Jean’s maps and plans neatly folded up and slipped into her bag.

Helmet, coat, the reverser...

‘Useless, stupid…’

Bag, loco keys, Beretta…

‘Shouldn’t be here, can’t hack it…’

Got everything, turn off lights, head to door…

‘Foolish, childish, KILLER…’

She stepped out onto the rear catwalk and was hit in the face by a wall of cold winter air, spiced with the smells of pine, tree sap, and sea salt. It was a bracing rush, and just the shock to the system she needed to shake her out of this fuge...

Except this was the point when her stomach, already overtaxed, gave up the fight and somersaulted into full-on rebellion. Feeling the surge of backwash, Tess threw her head over the railing and sicked up into the bushes, several foul bursts of vomit jetting from her mouth and spreading over the vegetation in a steaming, fetid mess.

“I can’t do this…” she whispered to herself.

“You’ve not got much of a say in the matter,” came a blunt response.

Tess didn’t spin, or shriek, or lash out. She was too spent and hurting to do much more than turn her bleary head to see who had addressed her. It was Verity, the resilient earth pony standing on the catwalk and looking ready for business.

Her eyes, ringed with that freaky electric-blue, seemed to glow in the dark.

“You look rough,” the pony said at last, before turning and pulling a bottle of water from her saddle. “Here, wash that sick down with this.”

“Thanks…”

The cool water on her abraded, vomit-stained mouth and throat was like manna itself. After two swigs Tess found it in herself to force an upright posture, managing to mimic some of that swagger she had seen, craved and felt back in Truro.

‘Laura and Claire… terrifying women, so why am I emulating them?’

She couldn’t understand it, and yet the thought of the two she-demons gave her strength. Passing the empty water bottle back to Verity, she locked the cab door, lit her flashlight, and locked the mare right in the eye.

“What did we nearly hit?”

“Another train.”

EQUESTRIA FORWARD OPERATIONS BASE X69, ‘CAMP REBIRTH’
DORCHESTER PENITENTIARY, NEW BRUNSWICK
(3.5 miles from Dorchester Cape)

The sound of barking dogs was the perfect score to any prison tale, and they were not absent here. Vicious barks and savage snarls echoed amongst the complex, missing only the howl of sirens and the sweep of floodlights to complete the image of a desperate jailbreak.

In truth though, these animals were crying out not for the scent of escaped inmates, but for mere nourishment. Left behind when the prison had been evacuated, they had turned to cannibalism in their starvation, and none of the new population had either the courage or the heart to try and go into the kennels to feed, pacify, or euthanize the feral remainder.

‘I hate this place...’ Flash Sentry snarled in thought. ‘I hate this entire world!’

He stared through the window with a scowl. An abandoned ape prison was no place in which Equestria’s armies deserved to be billeted. Even if those armies now mostly consisted of (shudder) Newfoals.

Honestly, Flash suspected there was some irony in that, setting the humans animals free by transforming them into liberated ponies, only to quarter and house them in repurposed cellblocks and exercise yards. Some vicious part of him took grim delight in that.

Because most of all, moreso than the humans or this filthy world, Flash Sentry hated the Newfoals, and outright loathed the fact that they were now the crux of his life.

Newfoals were the reason for Camp Rebirth’s existence, and his current employment. There being no facilities beyond the Barrier to house the coming campaign's predicated glut of converts to the pony race, it fell to the Salvation Army’s Forward Operations units to locate human structures large enough to not only house a temporary population of several thousand Newfoals, but classify and segregate new ‘converts’ based on skills.

Before long, the Barrier itself would arrive and demolish the camp, freeing its residents to begin their new lives. Most would be released into the general pony population, classified as laborers or servants, working out their days either in Equestria itself or on reclaimed Earth, helping to grow ‘New Equestria’.

A large percentage however, would be retained for military training.

‘Meat shields, almost to the last… it’s only once in a while that you get a Focus Ray, or a Stalwart Heart…’

The thought of that particular stallion prompted an inner surge of scorn. Upstart little bastard, latching himself onto the Princess’s Lady like that. Death was too merciful a fate for that kind of arrogance.

‘Oh, I’d just love to kill them all, right now… sick little fakes...’

He could see them now, milling around like animals in the courtyard below, as he gazed out from his office, formerly a watchtower. He’d considered setting himself up in the former warden’s presidium, like various commanders of outfits like his had. And yet… something hadn’t felt right.

As some Newfoal – Flash could never remember their names – led him into the office, lined with wood paneling, he’d felt… a sensation. He couldn’t put his hoof on it, but upon entering, the sight of a dead monkey’s trinkets and trophies decorating the walls left him with an odd sense of trespass…

‘What was he like? That ‘human’. What had he thought as he turned his prisoners loose to save their lives. What had he felt as he witnessed his entire world collapsing, metaphorically and literally?’

He momentarily reflected on that room, now sealed and barred a little more zealously than anypony would be willing to admit. There had been photos perched on the desktop, of smiling human foals and grandfoals and other family members. A rack that must have contained some of those revolting firearms, now empty except for the outlines left in the dust.

Thinking back to that office, and its framed painting of a stern-looking human elder, he felt an oncoming sense of shame surging within him…

/LOVE! OBEY! WORSHIP!/

It broke, collapsed, and dissipated. He was here by orders of the Most High, the Throne Celestial, and that was all that mattered.

… So why did he suddenly feel so cold, inside and out?

There was a rap on the door, and he turned, glad of something to take his mind off the hollowness eating inside of him.

“Enter,” he called out, not noticing that he had clasped his wings tightly to his side in an attempt to keep warm.

The door swung open, handle wreathed in the shimmer of unicorn magic, and Flash resisted the urge to curl his lip in a sneer.

“Miss Diamond,” he said, by way of greeting.

The unicorn mare who walked in was dressed in what resembled a Royal Guard’s uniform, lacking only the helmet and correct military bearing to complete the image. Instead of a weapon, she carried a fussy little clipboard, and the letters ‘PETN’ were stamped into her armour’s side, indicating her function.

Ponies for the Ethical Treatment of Newfoals. A group of interfering busybodies who were bad enough when only imposing legislation and procedure upon the EUP’s hardworking mares and stallions from the distant spires of Canterlot. Now, they were actually attaching ‘liaison officers’ to units likely to deal with Newfoals. Such ‘officers’ were a drain on resources, useless in a fight more often than not, and that was actually the least annoying thing about them.

“Captain Sentry, I must protest the recent actions of the guard staff,” Diamond-Mint Jewelup said crossly, not saving any time for pleasantries. “Have you seen that disgusting fleshpit they’re running out of the former workshops?”

That sort of thing – that tut-tut-tutting from behind the backs of soldiers who put their lives on the line for Equestria, that profound ignorance for the needs of the Guards, that habit of placing the troops below a bunch of jumped-up nationalistic convies who acted like they were better ponies than natural Equestrians – that was the most annoying.

Flash struggled to not massage away his growing headache by judicious application of the liaison officer’s face to the floor. He was indeed aware of the thriving little business, and while he did not exactly approve of it, he had certainly not taken use of the facilities himself, anymore than he begrudged those who did. Stallions and mares of the frontlines had needs, after all.

He’d put in requests for new kinds of Newfoals, ones far more suited to the sexual preferences of a unit cut off from the simple joys of home, but he doubted that he’d get them. Equestria’s wartime bureaucracy, a stumbling juggernaut that he thanked Celestia he didn’t have to deal with, was already struggling under the weight of… something.

/It isn’t your place to QUESTION!/

And even if he did get the perfect Newfoal mares and stallions to service his unit, he wouldn’t feel up to it. His heart belonged to another.

‘Hm. Unless they had the ‘right’ kind of mare… lavender, with purple mane and eyes… then maybe.’

Bucking those pleasant thoughts of the Lady of Magic in the face, he returned to the annoyance currently parading through his office.

“As I understand, it is perfectly legal and acceptable for Newfoals and native ponies to engage in recreational activities… we are not human, after all. And I also understand that you yourself have made use of several Newfoal paramours… you favour unicorn mares, do you not?”

To her credit, she did not blush. Instead, she just rapped one hoof angrily against the floor.

“It is legal and acceptable once a Newfoal has been acclimatised to Equestrian society. This camp’s populace haven’t, which violates both spirit and word of the Newfoal Integration Act.”

Oh, what a capricious, irritating beast that little wartime law was. Flash groaned. These PETN cited it near-constantly. Before he could reflect on it any further, Jewelup came right up to him and slammed both forehooves on the table this time, snarling with contempt.

“There are fillies and colts in there that are practically foals! They may be consenting, but your vaunted troops are charging bits for the sexual services of young adults! Some ‘welcome to Equestria’ they’re receiving. Are you commanding a base or a bordello, Flash Sentry?”

That little revelation did leave Flash feeling more than a little sickened, and he mumbled something about seeing to it.

“You better!” Jewelup sneered. “Or I’ll have word of this in Lady Fleur’s hooves so fast that yours won’t touch the ground on the way out!”

She spun around and, head held high, trotted for the exit. “The Newfoals are our future, and some of us care enough to want to help them, not hold them in contempt for past mistakes.”

Unable to let her leave with the last word, Flash stuck in a parting barb.

“I love what you’ve done with your ‘look’,” he smirked, seeing to his delight that her hoof drifted automatically to an enchanted flower with which she had pinned her mane back. “It’s certainly ‘unique’. Is that covering up a past mistake, or a fresh one?”

She turned, and this time her expression was downright volcanic.

“Oh, very original, Commandant…” she hissed. “Is that supposed to hurt? Is my ‘lamentable’ resemblance and relation to our most vaunted traitor, somehow intended to injure me?”

There certainly was a resemblance. Same mane and build, with only colouration to differentiate. Flash smirked in response.

“Not intended at all… I just know that it works.”

She looked as if she wanted to hit him, and he was entertaining fantasies of returning the compliment. But no, that wouldn’t do, would it?

“You’re finished, Sentry…” she seethed. “I don’t care what you do, what bribes you offer, or how much you beg me, I will see you crawl on your belly through the filth and slime.”

This time she leaned across the table. Her eyes promised no quarter offered nor given.

“I am not Lyra Heartstrings. I’m far less merciful, and you’re going to discover that the hard way.”

With a flick of her tail, she departed. Flash sniggered, not in the least intimidated by a mare caught in her delusions of Newfoal rights. Even if they were individuals, turned against their will into smiling automatons–

/Power! Control! Dominance! Order!/

Yes… only true Equestrians had real worth. The Newfoals were simply a resource, a tool. Useful, deserving of care, but discardable. The Royal Guard and the EUP knew that, and would close ranks around any pathetic attempt to discredit him.

“Canterlot Ponies,” he spoke aloud, clucking his tongue in disgust. “What do they know about life on the Earthfront?”

No, they couldn’t understand, not like a guardspony could. Only a remarkable, glorious few had any semblance of real wisdom, like the Lady Twilight–

/Love! Worship! Adore!/

And Her Majesty Celestia, of course.

He shivered again, suddenly feeling chilled, and seating himself behind his desk he instinctively moved his hooves towards the warmest part of his anatomy, like a colt huddled under the blankets on a cold winter’s night…

And then came another rapping at the door, somewhat louder than before. Whipping his hooves away from his crotch, Flash admitted a flustered pegasus guard, and demanded an explanation.

“Ser! One of our scouting parties to the east has picked up four Newfoals in the human community of Oxford Junction. All mares.”

“So, how is that demanding of my time? Run them through Processing and place them in the camp population.”

“Sir…” the guarded whispered, almost pleading. There was a manic glint in his eye that Flash, to his surprise, recognised as horror. “You have to come see these four. They’re...not natural.”

Afraid. How could a pony, whom Flash knew had faced down some of the worst horrors of the Crystal Campaign and the conquest of Europe, be afraid of four Newfoal mares?

A lesser stallion, one drunk on his own confidence, would have brushed him off. But Flash had learned in this war to trust not just his instincts, but those of the ponies under his command.

“Alright,” he said, donning his helmet. “Show me.”

‘Processing’ was located in what had been the prison’s administrative building, a imperialistic block of masonry that managed to combine elegance and threat in the same instance. However, with none of the human amenities running, indoors lighting was being provided by firefly lanterns, aided by Moonstones.

As they crossed through the Newfoal shanty town established in the courtyard, Flash demanded more information, occasionally kicking away a particularly enthusiastic supplicant.

“They’re… they’re just not right. All smilin’ and worshipful like a Newfoal should be, got on the chariot and came back here as pretty as you please. But there’s something about them, and then there’s the way they act, the way they behave…and the way they’re dressed.”

“Dressed. What do you mean by–”

Flash’s words trailed off as he stepped into Processing, only to be confronted with four mares lined up with near terrifying precision.

“Oh,” he finished, lamely. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

The four mares were, to put it simply, wrong. Yes, each had the familiar manic smile of a Newfoal, but carried themselves with a surety and alertness that Flash was more used to seeing in his own troops… a kind you just didn’t see in Newfoals. Asking a Newfoal to do something was like working one of the old punch-card computers, the kind that were being phased out in favor of totem-proles. Slow, methodical, devoid of that spirit of individuality.

They were armed too, and armored. Each wore a matching suit of lightweight armour matched with a cape, customised only to complement their individual colouration. Some of them had mounting points for weapons, and had made use of them. He noticed one of the Earth Pony Newfoals had even armed herself with a pair of human firearms, and felt his inner pony recoil. Revolting.

But the eyes, it was the eyes that stood out. As wide and staring as any other creature of their ilk, yet bright, active, and aware, gleaming like the golden tiaras each of the four mares wore. He could see thoughts churning within their minds as they silently tracked his approach, and the very concept of what thoughts lay behind those eyes sent chills down his spine.

“Attention!” trilled the obvious ringleader, and the quartet snapped themselves to attention with a crisp, lethal fluidity and efficiency of movement.

‘Weapons…’ he realised. ‘It’s like looking at a sentient armory. They’re not ponies, or Newfoals. They’re weapons… Where’d they come from? Who or what made them? Did they come from a potionshaper unicorn? If so… what happened to him?’

“Hi there!” they chirped in unison, hooves forming a salute. “We’re the Pretty Privates, reporting for duty!”

Tess shone her flashlight on the filthy mass of steel that she had nearly run the train backwards into, revealing strokes of blue and yellow paint beneath the grime. The entire machine appeared wedged into the overgrowth, trees pressing on from both sides as if in a possessive embrace. It was another six-axle locomotive, but similar to the 9782 only in the most rudimentary of details, being clearly much older, and from a different manufacturer. In fact, it looked more like the 1810, except on steroids.

‘A Super Diesel…’

“An SD40,” she said, directing the beam onto the unilluminated number-boards, which brooded like steepled eyebrows over the cab windscreen. “Number 8888…”

“There’s more back here,” called out Verity, who had already clambered over the top of the abandoned locomotive and proceeded aft. “The line divides into two, and both head off in different directions, parked nose-to-tail with old freight cars. It’s like a junkyard.”

That made sense. The notes in Jean’s divisional handbook said that this spur, the Dorchester Cape branch, was a political pork-barrel, built along with a brand-new deepwater pier and fertilizer factory to stimulate the local economy back in the 1960s. Nothing had ever come of it, and so the port, factory and rail-line had simply been left to rot.

“Canadian National must have been using this place to store unserviceable rolling-stock,” she concluded, clambering onto the 8888’s leading catwalk to try the cab door.

‘Locked.’

Curious, she peered into the windows and saw that the cab itself looked pretty clean and free of dust. There was even a faint glow of LED bulbs on the rear bulkhead’s circuit-panel, suggesting a battery charge.

“Maybe this unit was used to shunt the junkers around…” she mused, which gave her an idea. “Verity!”

“What?”

“You’re smaller than me. Squeeze yourself down the side of the engine at track level and check the fuel-tank for me.”

Verity complied with a grumble, and after several minutes worth of rustling branches and curses, called out to confirm that, according to the bobbing float in the fuel-gauge, the tank was still half-full of diesel.

“Oh, thank you God, or Jean, whichever one of you’s watching out for us,” Tess muttered, before running a hand over the bonnet to reveal the reporting marks of the Super-Diesel’s owner. “And thank you CSX Transportation as well.”

“What was all that in aid of?” groused Verity, who had squirreled her way out of the undergrowth, and was now pulling lengths of branch and briar out of her mane and tail.

“One piece of equipment in our train’s manifest is a portable fuel pump and several lengths of hose…”

“So, what? You want us to siphon this thing’s fuel?”

“It’ll stretch our range a bit, so yeah, why not. And fuck, the Barrier’s coming in just a few days. I doubt anyone’s coming back for ‘crazy eights’ here between then and now.”

It was a sensible plan, and yet Tess could barely bring herself to stay on her feet. And from the haggard expression on Verity’s face, she suspected she felt the same way.

“Buts let’s… let’s sleep first,” she managed, stifling a jaw-breaking yawn.

“Yeah… sleep sounds good…”

As they headed towards the serviceable caboose, Tess paused and shone her torch back at the silent 8888. The locomotive seemed to glower at her through the darkened windscreen windows, and she suppressed a shiver.

‘It’s just another engine, a power-plant mounted on a wheeled chassis. You’ve worked with them all your life. Driven and mastered steam, and apprenticed on diesels. It’s no different...’

And yet the sight of the machine, parked in the middle of nowhere, sleeping in the wilds like a predator in hibernation, put her hackles up. The only word to describe it was ‘sinister’.

Shaking her head, and turning nervously away, she climbed the steps onto 9782’s leading caboose, and followed Verity out of the winter cold into…

Home, or something much like it.

Warmth, light, and the unmistakable smell of something burning on a hot stove. Tess stumbled, caught in the moment, and looked around, properly taking in what before she had only had the briefest chance to inspect.

Railroad cabooses, or ‘guards’ vans’ as she knew them in the UK, were odd vehicles. Back before the days of ‘continuous brakes’, operating on every wheel in a train and remotely controlled from the locomotive’s cab, the only way of adding braking power to a freight train was by tucking something like this at the tail: a ballasted chassis fitted with powerful brakes, on which a wooden body was mounted for the use of the brakeman. Whistle codes and knowledge of the route would tell him when to apply his own brakes to aid the locomotive going down slopes, or to keep a lengthy consist in check. And if a train broke in two by accident, like say if a coupling sheared, then it would be the job of the caboose to bring the snapped-off cars to a safe halt.

In the UK, ‘guards vans’ were little more than that: vans, shacks on wheels furnished with little more than a flag locker, bench and pot-belly stove. In the Americas however, where journeys could be transcontinental in length, more was provided. Cabooses often served as offices from which the train’s paperwork could be conducted, and fitted with facilities to cover multiple shifts of men: sinks, toilets, hot-plates and beds.

It was a romantic ideal, of men whose work took them the length and breadth of a nation in these rolling homes, like the precursor to modern truckers who lived and slept in their juggernaut rides.

Time never stopped for romance however. Automation and continuous brakes had steadily made the old cabooses redundant, and those which had not been scrapped had been repurposed. Some stayed in service fitted out as mobile bunkhouses for maintenance-crews, while others were sold for conversion into holiday homes, never to turn a wheel again.

Honestly, Tess could not tell whether this particular caboose had been ‘retired’ in such a manner and then called back into service, or if it had just been well-cared for. All she could perceive was the polished luster of wooden furnishings, the welcoming allure of several bunkbeds mounted against the far wall, and the sight of the tiny Chinese girl - Mary, no, Maddy - pouring mugs of hot chocolate from a battered saucepan into a collection of tin mugs.

After weeks of living hand-to-fist, bartering her way across the railroads, and the insanity, burden and chill of the past two days, this pocket of sanity and home was a tiny drop of heaven. Tess struggled not to break down and collapse right there, and instead busied herself with hanging up her gear on an equipment rack, masking the tremors in her face with activity.

“Honey, we’re home!” called out Verity with false levity, the brash mare pushing her way through and scrambling into a dining nook positioned opposite the stove. “Bagged a juicy big steer too!”

The kid cut a suspicious glance at the earth pony, dark eyes squinting. Then her attention turned towards Tess, who was still lurking in the entryway, and her features visibly twisted in disgust.

‘Fuck her… fucking Rebirther groupie. Even if she’s just fucking ten…’

Not appreciating the child’s scorn, Tess stepped up to the dining nook, and spread one of Jean’s charts out on the table. Before Maddy offered it, she plucked one of the mugs out of her hands, lifted it to her lips, and then immediately regretted it as the scalding liquid burned her lips and throat.

‘Don’t show weakness, don’t show pain…’

Hissing softly, she lowered the mug, and focused on the map, which showed the entirety of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia along with bits of Quebec, with railroads marked out in bold. Other maps bound to it outlined the track mileage in detail, right down to every bridge, crossing, siding and milepost.

“So, where are we?” asked a tired voice, and Tess flicked her eyes towards the person sitting opposite her.

Lightning Dust. Not for the first time, she struggled to bite back a curse. The pegasus mare, despite having spoken at her, was staring silently out of a side-window, peering out to where only the ghost of her reflection could be seen.

“Yeah,” prompted Verity. “What’s the deal?”

All attention shifted to Tess, even that of Maddy, who had climbed into the seat next to Lightning Dust, the teal pegasus laying one of her wings across the child’s shoulder in a light embrace.

For a few seconds Tess nursed her drink and examined the map, warming her hands by cupping them around the mug. Then, at last, she placed a finger on a quarter-inch of ink that jutted like a thorn from the main line, itself a slender black thread that connected Halifax to the rest of North America.

“We’re right here. Dorchester Cape, New Brunswick…that little stub there in the ass end of nowhere is this spur we’re parked on.”

“Hiding’s more like it,” snorted Verity, and Tess shot her a black look, feeling her inner fire rise with the warmth of the cocoa. The PHL freak could wave all her guns around all she liked, but right now, she had centre stage.

“You want to go out there and deal with unknown territory full of people that want to turn you into a pastel zombie or give you lead poisoning, be my guest. Because right there...is Truro…” she said firmly, sliding her hand six inches to the right. “Not even eighty miles behind us.”

Whatever unusual backgrounds they all had as individuals, nobody could suppress a shudder at the memory of that town...

“And it’s several hundred more miles from here to Montreal,” Tess continued. Though none of them knew just what Montreal was like, it had to be better. Hot chocolate. A rest. Some measure of security, much as you could be secure after Barrierfall. It was a hope, a destination to reach…

A destination that was days and miles away. That realisation chilled the mood a little, and Lightning Dust turned away from the window, looking down at the map with an expression Tess knew all too well from a face she often glimpsed in mirrors: the honest fear of the genuinely lost.

“And ‘Montreal’... that’s where you’re taking the cargo, those totem-prole things?”

Only a blind person could have missed the subtle tightening of her wing’s grip on Maddy. “We’ll be safe there, right?”

Tess nearly blurted out a bland ‘I don’t know’, but resisted the urge.

“Safe? SAFE?” laughed a snide voice from one of the bunks, the voice of the stallion named Prism Flash. “When Equestria realises what you’ve stolen, they’ll send every hoof under arms to destroy you!”

“There’s a drill in the tool-chest bucko!” replied Verity, icily. “Want me to pick up where Colonel Galt left off?!”

Silence. Tess felt something twist in her gut. Verity’s words sounded like a meaningless threat, but she knew the context…

‘What they did to his hooves. He might be an Equestrian, he might be Rainbow Dash’s Dad, but Iesu Grist… that wasn’t right.’

She kept her tongue however, trying to mentally focus on the task ahead of them. Little Maddy however had no such compulsions.

“What the humans did to Mr. Flash was wrong, and you know it!” the child squeaked, striking the table with a bunched fist, as if stomping a hoof. “It’s no wonder The Queen came to save them, when they spent their entire history doing that to each other!”

“Maddy…” cautioned Lightning Dust, her voice ragged, like a sail about to rip. “Talking like that isn’t going to help. Please, drink your cocoa...”

“But it’s true! Ponies don’t do terrible things like that to each other! You know that, do you?” Maddy doggedly insisted, before pointing first at Tess, then Verity.

“And you killed that poor stallion, and you, why are you helping them? You’re a pony, even if you’re a blank flank!” she accused through clenched teeth, trembling with the desperate agitation of crumbling faith bolstered with bluster and words

“SHUT UP, MADDY! SHUT UP! JUST SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP!!” Lightning snapped before Tess could respond, and Maddy spun round to stare into the shouting mare’s blazing eyes.

“What happened back at the hospital was the work of ponies!” the flier seethed, as if venting an overburden of steam. Tess recoiled in surprise, and even Verity flinched at the outburst.

Maddy’s own face had flushed white, and only seemed to pallor further as Lightning prodded her in the chest with a hoof.

“Remember what Mercy did? Remember what happened to Rio? That was done by ponies, and by people who believed ponies were perfect, like you, and decided that gave them the moral high ground to do whatever they want and still be the so-called ‘good guys’! Well I’m a pony, and ALL OF THAT WAS PERFECTLY FUCKED! THAT WAS THE MOST DISTURBING THING I’VE SEEN IN MY LIFE, AND DON’T YOU DARE SAY IT WAS FOR A GOOD FUCKING CAUSE!”

“STOP IT!” Tess interjected, banging her own hand down. “Just, stop it. I know she’s the Rebirth’s little groupie, but she’s a child and you’re swearing at her! Now cut it out!”

Lightning’s outburst of words cut off with a gasp, as if she was suddenly seeing the trembling mess that she had reduced her charge to.

“Oh no…” she said, audibly shocked at her own burst of rage. “Maddy, I’m… I’m sorry…”

She extended a hoof towards the girl, who pushed herself out of the seat, backed away from the table and climbed up into the brakeman’s cupola, over their heads.

“Congratulations,” Verity said dryly. “Now you made the ten-year old cry. Perfect poster-girl for the pony race you are.”

The sound of Maddy’s sobbing drifted down from above them, and Tess rose to try and speak to her.

“Don’t… please...” Lightning said, reaching across the table with a pleading hoof. She looked shaken. “Just, let her work it out for a few minutes. She’s an orphan, and the two people who cared for her both… well, today she got orphaned again.”

Tess remained half-standing, crouched under the low ceiling, one hand resting on a fire-alarm lever.

“Please,” Lightning pleaded. “Just, please sit down. I’ll go talk to her in a minute.”

Slowly, Tess came back down onto the bench, beside Verity. She looked down at the map, which now had a splash of spilled cocoa extending inland from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, like probing fingers.

“... the Barrier’s coming,” she said softly, as if the realisation was just dawning on herself. “It’s at most a day behind us. Now I don’t know about you two, but if it catches up with us, Maddy and me are going to be in serious trouble.”

She whetted a finger-tip in the liquid and drew a line across the chart, tracing the railroad line a short distance up the coast to the next major settlement.

“That there is Moncton, biggest city in New Brunswick. It’s where we’ve gotta turn inland, away from the sea.”

Her finger swung away from the coastal routes, and inched up into the countryside, where after a few miles the railroad split in a ‘Y’, leaving two lines wending their way in seperate directions.

“This is Pacific Junction, the crucial point, because there the rail divides. The Newcastle Subdivision carries on north towards the St. Lawrence, but we’re shortcutting off along the Napadogan Subdivision, the mainline…”

Her hand swept northeast, slashing a cocoa-stained line right across the centre of New Brunswick.

“That’s our quickest and most direct route to Montreal, via Quebec City, right through the evacuation zone. It’s more than three hundred miles as the pegasus flies, and further by rail…”

She looked up, channeling every bit of charisma she could summon, even if it was a lie.

“I know none of us really planned this ride, but we’ve got our backs to the pink wall and we’re not going to get very far if we can’t tolerate each other’s presence, or at least act like it. I’m not asking you to trust or even like one another, but we’ve got to at least work together as far as Quebec City…”

She laughed bitterly. “And maybe, if we get there, we can be buddy-buddies and go share a meal at Aux Anciens Canadiens. Now, I’m the only one who can drive the train, you’ve all got things you can do, and I’ve got to get at least a few hours sleep tonight, so-”

She stopped, and sighed. She was getting ahead of herself.

“Look, right now, it’s…” she paused and glanced at her watch. “10.15 PM. First light tomorrow is at six in the morning, and dawn will follow barely an hour after that. By the time the sun’s up I want us to be in motion…”

“What about the train we nearly ran into?” pressed Verity, and Lightning cocked a confused ear. “How long’ll it take to pump its fuel?”

“A few hours, or so…” Tess said. Again she looked down at the map, and felt Jean’s dedication weighing down on her like an invisible burden.

‘Ah crap, I’m gonna hate what I’m about to say…”

She sighed and pinched at her burning eyes. Perhaps there was some coffee nearby.

“You guys go to sleep now...I’ll set up the fuel siphon and take the first watch, for an hour or so. Once the pump’s into it’s stride, I’ll wake one of you to take the second watch, and turn in myself. Six hours sleep or so should be enough for me, so long as I get up and start us rolling before dawn gets much advanced.”

“Alright…” said Lightning, who seemed comparatively more chipper. “I ‘kinda’ slept during the ride, so I’ll follow you on after a cat-nap, or something…”

She trailed off as if uncertain. Tess wondered what ‘kinda slept’ meant, and guessed that the pegasus was afraid of going to sleep. Nothing new there, everybody had nightmares nowadays.

“But first,” Lightning continued, finding her tongue and pointing across the table. “First, I wanna know who the two of you are. Buck, I don’t even know your names.”

“Funny,” snarked Verity, forehooves folded, “Because we sure as hell know yours.”

That prompted a ghost of a laugh from Tess, and she held up her hand in greeting before Lightning could bite onto the earth pony mare’s barb.

“I’m Tess, okay? Tess Jones… my homeland was consumed by Equestria over three years ago now, and today you find me as the driver, guard and conductor of this lashup. I’m twenty-three, single, and an orphan. By that I mean both of my parents are either dead or ponified, and the same goes for my boyfriend.”

All of that came out in a smooth stream of syllables, and she surprised herself at how blithely she had consigned Mum, Dad and Sam to a footnote. And the words were still coming.

“This charming sack of prime horseflesh beside me is Verity Carter, apparent psychopath for hire, now mysteriously a mare, and I’m sure despite her constantly changing allegiances and a streak of violence wider than the Severn estuary, she no doubt has a heart of gold somewhere under all that fur and mane.”

Now it was Lightning’s turn to snigger, and Tess found herself the subject of Verity’s inscrutable gaze.

“You really are full of shit, aren’t you, ‘Lieutenant Jones’... the playtime soldier with a body count in, what was it, the triple digits?”

Tess should have collapsed under that accusation, but exhausted and tired, and having willingly consigned herself to further sleep deprivation for the good of the ‘crew’, she was beyond caring.

“I’m also the only one who can properly use these…” she taunted back, dangling the cab keys and reverser lever in front of Verity’s snout.

“Touche…”

Glowering, Verity refocused her glare at Lightning Dust. “What’s your story?!”

“I don’t know,” Lightning said, her snorts of laughter abruptly choking off.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?!”

“I mean, I don’t know! Any of this!” Lightning answered, swinging a hoof in exasperation that seemed only slightly forced. “I was trying to do a sonic rainboom, and suddenly BANG! There’s weird voices judging me, talking all weird and circular like I’m not even… wherever I was, and then I find myself in a storm that only an idiot weather team would make…”

Verity remained impassible, but Tess was fascinated.

“Then suddenly, I’m the enemy and beings I’ve never seen before are trying to kill me! And apparently, I’m in love with that filly that did a sonic rainboom in this world, and my home’s at war and trying to turn people into what look like zombies! I still have barely any idea what’s going on, I’ve gotten nothing but horror since I got to this nightmare world, I have NOTHING to go back to, and I’ll probably get killed if I try to go back to Equestria!”

“You think I believe that?”

“You think I do?

“Well, assuming this is true, let me tell you something. You’re not getting off this train,” Tess found herself saying, glad to see that Lightning was cowed a little by her insistence, by the sudden hardness in her voice. “You know how mad this world is, right? Anyone give you this speech?”

“Yeah,” Lighting replied, voice suddenly subdued. Tess saw the pegasus break eye contact and look up towards where Maddy had ensconced herself in the cupola. “Her name was Mercy… and I’m beginning to think she had a point.”

“She did,” Tess said, before forcing herself to take another gulp of cocoa. Lowering the mug she forced herself to speak calmly. “I don’t like you, but you’ve done more to save that little girl than I’d expect of near anypony.”

“Anypony?” Lightning asked. “Nopony else would–”

“Maybe a few. But given who you are, I’m at least inclined to believe you’re not just crazy... but get this straight, you’re in danger just from being anywhere near civilization. There are people out here who make you look like a mewling foal on your best day. People who have eaten ponies tougher than you. There are men and women out there with weaponry you wouldn’t believe, designed to kill Newfoals en masse, and very willing to use them, ponies with magic you wouldn’t believe… and some of them work together.”

“What’s your point?” Lightning glowered, folding her hooves.

“Her point,” Verity clarified, “is that there’s not much love left in the world for ponies or race-traitors… if you, spitting image of a war-criminal, and a kid with PER branded through her vocab walk into the average town and ask for help, the only thing most people will offer you is…”

She mimed being hung. “A short drop and a sudden stop.”

Lightning, to her credit, did not recoil. Tess did not speak either, letting Verity carry the conversation.

“That’s disgusting,” the pegasus seethed.

“That’s what Equestria has reduced us to…” the ex-insurgent replied evenly. “Even if I hand you over to the PHL, you’ll not have long for this earth.”

It was a faceoff between the two mares, one that Tess had little desire to see continue. Snapping her fingers in between them she broke their eye-contact, drawing attention back to her as she downed the last dregs of her mug.

“Okay, what was the first rule. ‘We try to get along’. Dust, you want to get yourself and the kid to safety, and Verity, I can only presume you need transportation away from here…”

“You’re right,” Verity answered. “I’m only here because I need a ride. Jones, you’ve got some pretty important shit tied on behind us, and you’ve gotta get it to Montreal, and that’s cool and sweet, but I’ve got my own mission…”

She tapped a hoof on the map, at a spot marked ‘Brunswick Mines’, way up north on what Tess had called the Newcastle Subdivision. “Now tell me, what are these?”

Tess frowned, but opened up the divisional guidebook and flicked through.

“Ah… the Brunswick Mines, they’re a part of something called the Bathurst Mining Camp. It says here that the railroad used to bring a lot of ore out on them before the mines closed up. They reopened them for a few years earlier in the war, but apparently production was permanently suspended this summer.”

“What did they mine?” Verity pressed on. “Was it something like ‘MS deposits’?”

Tess flicked her eyes back at the guidebook and failed to hide her surprise. “Ah, yeah, VMS ore deposits: ‘Volcanogenic Massive Sulfides’…”

Just as she’d been unable to hide her reaction, Verity seemed unable to conceal a smirk of triumph. “Then that’s where I’m going…”

“What!” blurted out Lightning Dust. “You can’t. We need you to protect us… I mean, protect the train!”

“Don’t assume that I’m going to be your ridealong bodyguard or chief of securiy,” Verity interrupted. “I was sent into the Great White Fucking North to apprehend a fugitive geologist, a key PHL agent who’s gone rogue-”

“How can a geologist be dangerous?!” Lightning asked.

“Because she has hooves in every pie from here to Equestria, and she’s willing to sell everyone out just to get what she wants. My last bit of intel had her riding towards Bathurst, looking for something called ‘MS’ deposits, and boy howdy, look what’s just turned up on the map!”

Tess frowned, and tried to think of something that would convince her otherwise, only for Verity to hold up a hoof before she could even speak.

“Don’t argue with me, because I’m going to those mines. Securing Maud Pie is my objective, and its personal… I’ll ride with you until the subdivisions subdivide, this place ‘Pacific Junction’ up past Moncton, but from there you’re on your own. I’m not playing Worf or Tasha Yar here...”

Her attitude was maddening, infuriating… all the more because Tess couldn’t think of a decent riposte that didn’t go against her own stated rule of cooperation.

“Well, either way,” she declared. “We’re all still in the same boat until we get past Moncton, which means our common interest is keeping this train underway. And that means we all need our rest, and I’ve got first watch.”

“And what do we do if something happens to you out there?” posed Verity. “What’s our plan of action if we’re ambushed in the night, ‘Lieutenant’ Jones?”

Tess did not have answer, and instead rose without speaking, dropped the tin mug into the sink, and flexed, wishing she had the muscles to back up her bluster. As it was, she looked and felt like what Verity said she was, a wannabe playing at being big.

“Both of you get some sleep…” she replied, without answering the question.

As she went, she noticed Lightning Dust staring down at the map, and for a second thought she saw the teal pegasus silent mouth the words ‘Maud Pie’...

Dragging the pump and hoses into place, and priming it, took Tess thirty long minutes. By the time she came crawling through the brush, having had to squeeze herself through the undergrowth to open up the filler cap on 8888’s fuel tank and drop a length of pipe in, she was a mixture of freezing and sweltering, lungs raw with the cold air, and arms and neck burning from where they’d scraped on countless bushes and brambles.

The pump itself she had set up beside 1810’s slug unit, halfway down the length of the train. When she’d finally brought it snarling to life, Tess’s first panicked reaction had been to immediately kill the idea of siphoning the other diesel’s fuel, fearful that the roar of the pump would bring ponies down on them from miles around.

After just a few seconds though, fuel was flowing through the lines and the pump settled down into an even purr.

Relieved, she grabbed onto a ladder and scrambled atop 9782’s long rear hood. Not only was it the highest vantage point around, but the warm air rising from the idling unit’s radiator was enough to stave off some of the cold… even if the subtle vibration of the motor was threatening to lull her to sleep.

Desperate to stay awake, at least for another hour, she fumbled in her backpack and pulled out her Ipad. Her playlist was still queued up, paused, but instead she exited from that app and opened another.

-RECORD-

“This is…” she said, before shaking her head. “It’s now November 10th, 2023. I think today was a Friday... TGIF…”

Her audio diaries. The only way in which she could justify talking to herself without coming across as crazy. Setting the Ipad down between her crossed legs she leaned back against an exhaust manifold and spoke aloud, addressing the sky and stars.

“I did it… I got a locomotive, all to myself. More than that, I’ve got a bonafide train. Now I’ve just gotta find some way of detouring us to pick up the consist… the mare riding with us, Verity, she wants to go in the same direction, up towards Bathurst...”

A pause.

“But I can’t go off course, I promised Colonel Hex that I’d get this cargo to…”

Her mind drifted momentarily, remembering the grizzled PHL officer. Then she remembered another man, the one who she truly owed a debt to.

“...I promised Jean that I’d get it to Montreal.”

She fell silent for a few minutes and then wiped away a few tears.

“I killed people today. Not just like Mum, and Dad, and Sam… I said things, and did things that got a lot of people killed… and I shot someone. I put a gun in the mouth of a decent guy and pulled the trigger. He was dying from potion, yes… but I still ended his life...”

Her hands were doing something she was barely aware of, moving to stay warm. Realising this, she looked down and saw that absently, she had pulled out the Beretta and was field-stripping it.

She didn’t recoil or throw it off the roof. Instead she finished reassembling the pistol, just as Firelock taught her, and quietly set it down beside her, within easy reach.

“This is my gun… a Beretta M9, standard issue. I killed a man named Jean-Eric with it, and I’ll probably have to do it again. And all I can feel about that, is a little sad…”

Slowly, she hugged herself. “God save me, please…”

As she began to quietly sob, the pump down below continued to thrum away, quietly siphoning away one train’s lifeblood to power her own.

Jewelup entered her quarters at a rapid trot and quickly closed the door behind her. This had formerly been the associate warden’s suite, and the lettering on the door still proclaimed it as the demesne of someone named ‘RANKEN’.

The PETN mare paid that no mind, crossing instead quickly to her bed and rummaging around beneath the mattress, until she found a small rip she had torn with her horn. A little more telekinetic effort withdrew the items she had hidden inside…

A metal key on a chain, along with a stubby socket-ended lever. A metal tag on the ring that connected them had the letters ‘CSX’ printed on one side, and the numerals ‘8888’ stamped on the other.

“My getaway…”

It had become standard policy for the Ponies for the Ethical Treatment of Newfoals to secure alternative methods for transporting Newfoals awaiting orientation and normalisation, rather than just turning the poor things loose when the Barrier overtook the holding camps.

Likewise, they tended to procure said transportation ‘on the sly’ from the EUP armed forces, which recently had become rather zealous in their rejection of any human technology. Not a smart move, she had to admit, given that winter was coming soon enough…

Securing an entire train though, and hiding it away within just a few miles away from Camp Rebirth, was one of their best pieces of work. Jewelup, having been trained in the rudiments of locomotive operation from a ex-railroader Newfoal, had taken custody of the 8888 a fortnight ago, and kept it secret.

Oh yes, she had planned to reveal this additional asset to Flash Sentry tomorrow, when they began ‘take down’ procedures ahead of the Barrier, with the suggestion that they load anything useful onto some flatbeds, hook up the stolen diesel locomotive, and take it with them…

“He’ll never have listened to me though, they never listen…”

Now though, now she had other plans. She was getting out of here tonight, whether Flash Sentry liked it or not, and she was taking those four new arrivals with her, the four Newfoal mares who had turned up out of the blue and proclaimed themselves to be ‘Pretty Privates’.

“The Pretty Privates,” she repeated aloud, and could not suppress a smile from coming to her face. “The Newfoals we’ve been hoping for…”

This needed to be documented, and a bit of searching through her bedside cabinet unearthed her most prized possession, a shard of crystal gifted to her by no less than the Lady Fleur herself. In appearance it looked like a carving of a severed unicorn horn, but a close examination showed a myriad of runes etched into the surface.

It was the very latest advance in Equestrian science, a miniaturized, hoof-held version of a totem-prole. No official name had been given to the prototype devices yet, but Jewelup had taken to referring to it as her ‘pocket prole’.

“Take a memo,” she spoke aloud, and the device lit up with a ‘chirp’ sound.

“This is Liason Officer Diamond-Mint Jewelup, and I am making this recording so that, in the event of my death as a consequence of the war effort, a remarkable occurrence is preserved for posterity…”

She began to move around the room, pacing as she dictated.

“Since before the war, PETN has championed the right of Newfoals to full recognition and equality as Equestrian subjects. To date however, the admitted deficiencies of the majority of Newfoals has hampered our efforts. Our hope has always been however that through time and careful nurturing, these former humans will began to grow and develop as true ponies…”

It was an admitted problem. But for Jewelup herself, not an insurmountable challenge. Before the war, she had been a specialist teacher, a tutor whose gift was helping ponies interpret their cutie-marks and fulfill their potential.

The Dearth of cutie-marks that had struck Equestria had, admittedly, put a cramp on that career. Until the Lady Fleur had offered her a position in PETN, helping Newfoals grow into themselves, much in the same way she had helped numerous fillies and colts.

And right now, she could not stop smiling. For her, for everypony in PETN, something long-promised finally appeared to be coming true.

“Tonight, four Newfoal mares were admitted to Camp Rebirth, the former Dorchester Penitentiary. These mares, although only hours from their transformation, show exceptional deviance from the standard Newfoal paradigm…”

For a second, her smile faltered, thinking back to what she had witnessed when Flash Sentry had ordered the four mares to demonstrate their abilities before the camp’s senior staff...

....what had followed had been several examples of simulated carnage.

“...on one level, they’re terrifying. Each is physically and magically powerful, and demonstrate creativity and flair in the way they wield that power. They also seem to have been tailored by the ponification process to military applications, which I admittedly find concerning...”

She shuddered.

“There are four of them: Harvest, Trimurti, Newspeak and Nepenthe… collectively they call themselves the Pretty Privates. Any similarity between them and the persistent rumors of ‘super Newfoals’, like the mythical ‘Reaper’ who duelled the human ‘Kraber’ in the Battle of Portland, have yet to be confirmed.”

Struggling to gather her thoughts, she sat on the bed before continuing to speak.

“Harvest appears at first to be the weakest. She’s an Earth Pony, bronze with a gold mane. Her special talent at first appeared to be the standard agri-mancy of her tribe, but when Commander Sentry ordered four guards to attack her with blunted blades…”

Vines sprouting from the ground, whiplashing across the training-space, tripping up and binding the four stallions. The feral dogs in the kennels were howling in time with the crack of the vines, and the Newfoal mare simply stood her ground, as still and silent as death, not even blinking…

“...I’ve never seen anything like it. And there’s something else unique about Harvest. She’s blind…”

Dull, emerald eyes, with purple cataracts the color of potion in place of pupils.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed a physical ailment carry across the potion-barrier, which might suggest the poor human mare was already afflicted with a magical impairment of her vision. Her other senses seem enhanced however, as if to compensate, and her attitude is extremely positive. She’s also got some skills with animals...”

The silence from outside testified to that. For the first night in weeks, no savage snarls or yelps came from the prison kennels.

Another pause, another dry swallow. Why was she suddenly feeling nervous?

“Next is Trimurti… at first glance, another Earth Pony…”

“Headcount, are you telling me that thing can split itself in three?” whispered an astonished pegasus guard, as she and a colleague peered through the bars into a holding cell.

Not ‘she’ or ‘that fellow soldier’ or anything with connotations of camaraderie. If you’d only overheard Headcount, you wouldn’t think he was talking about anything equine, or even sentient.

“Yeah, Parade… watch this...” confirmed the unicorn, before clearing his throat. “Private Trimurti, please demonstrate for us what you showed the Commander.”

“Yes sir,” smiled the silver mare, before closing her eyes.

There was a soft ‘crack’, and suddenly three Newfoals occupied the cell.

“Oh… ponyfeathers!” hissed the mare, ‘Parade’. “What are they?”

“I’m Pathos,” laughed an amber pegasus mare with a fiery red mane, blue eyes shining with fervour. “I can’t wait to fight beside the two of you! How can I help!?”

“I’m Logos,” added her counterpart, a blue-haired, aqua unicorn with the most piercingly scarlet gaze that either of the guards had ever seen. “It is a pleasure to serve beneath you, officers of Equestria.”

“And I am Ethos…” concluded the third Newfoal, wingless and hornless, her hide and eyes a neutral tan, and her mane purple. “What are our orders?”

Parade took a step back as Headcount smirked. Her eyes flicked to the Newfoal’s armor, and saw that Pathos and Logos each carried a human firearm.

“Why, the death-sticks!” she demanded, feeling a sudden wrath directed at the two freaks. “How dare you sully Her Majesty’s army with them…”

Neither mare’s grins broke. Instead, the two halves of Trimurti looked at each other, as if speaking without words, and then back at the two observers.

“A tool is a tool, mam,” said Logos evenly. “What matters is Jericho’s and Jackal’s manufacture so long as they enable a victory.”

“Yeah!” added Pathos. “And have you seen the size of the holes these things make! It’s just awesome!”

“We salvaged them for the advantage they give us in battle,” nodded Pathos. “I’m sure you’ll agree with me that we made a wise choice.”

Answers given, they fell back into grinning silence.

“What are they!” Parade repeated, almost desperate to get away from this place. That instinctive urge to run however was crushed and steamrollered beneath her Loyalty, and her Duty.

“They’re a superweapon…” the stallion, Headcount, smirked subtly. “That will be all, privates. As you were.”

Another flashbang pulse came from within the cell, and the three ponies reformed back into a single earth pony mare. You could still see hints of their presence however - she had Ethos’s tan hide, her mane was coloured in alternating stripes of aqua, amber and purple, and her eyes - violet – looked exactly as if you’d matched paint samples to the unicorn’s red and the pegasus’s blue irises, and stirred them together...

Unlike her components, ‘Trimurti’ did not introduce herself, but simply nodded with a smile, remaining ‘at ease’ inside the cell.

“What do you mean, a ‘superweapon’?” demanded Parade, turning to face away from the unnerving creature. “You can’t mean you want to see these freaks actually deployed in combat!?”

“Why not, if they give us an edge against the humans…”

“We don’t need an edge!” Parade seethed. “We have the Barrier…”

"And we all know that without the Barrier, the humans would destroy us easily," Headcount responded instantly, the certainty in his voice grating against Parade’s ingrained loyalties.

"How could you say that?!" she snapped. “That’s, that’s defeatism!”

“Parade, my friend,” Headcount sighed, “I pray the Barrier never falls. If it does…”

They shuddered. Nopony should have to imagine how terrible that would be.

“But I think we could still wi– no, we will win, even if we–” Parade started.

"Hello!” he tutted. “Have you actually studied the apes’ capabilities? Do the ABCs of ‘atomic’, ‘biological’ and ‘chemical’ mean anything to you?! No, if the Barrier came down tomorrow, the humans could immediately reduce Equestria to a smoking ruin."

"But we have Queen Celestia, ruler most high!"

"Oh, Her Majesty would survive, and I’m sure she’d protect as many ponies as possible. But the rest would die from the poisons and toxins Earth would unleash against us," Headcount said softly. “That’s why we’ve got to beat them, by any means necessary…”

“You know,” he added. “After this war is over, we’ve gotta hunt down every pony who collaborated with the monkeys. For all we know, they might have shared the secrets of these ‘weapons of mass destruction’...“

“Will you please stop going on about these fantasy superweapons the humans apparently have? The very concept of splitting the atom is ludicrous!”

“You have no idea how many ponies would die if one of those ‘nukes’ went off, do you?“

"Oh, don’t be so morbid. The Queen will protect us."

“She can’t be everywhere, I’m afraid. Ever heard of the Black Zones?” Headcount asked.

“What?” Parade asked. “I thought they were just, I don’t know, a myth or something.”

“They’re in areas that used to be human power plants,” Headcount explained. “Atomic ones. Ponies that settle there, they get terribly sick – they throw up, they lose their fur. Radiation sickness, it’s called. And that is just passive fallout, which the Barrier can’t nullify… imagine what’d happen if a weapon built along those principles went off.” He paused. “No, wait. Don’t imagine. The human regions of Washington DC, and North Korea. You think we did that?”

Headcount leaned closer.

“When you back an animal into a corner, it will fight back. You think Washington and Korea are one-of-a-kind incidents? No. If the Barrier finally, finally, manages to push the humans into that corner, they will not lay down, they will not wait for their eventual death, oh no. They still have their nuclear arms, and you can swear by the Queen’s word they will use them.”

“And Celestia forbid, they will bring us down with them”

“Oh… oh dear Celestia,” Parade said. “Still, there has to be some way to protect ourselves from it!”

“I certainly pray so…” answered Headcount. “But if these super-Newfoal ‘Pretty Privates’ can help us increase the pressure on mankind, and deny them any attempts at striking back against Her Majesty or the Barrier, then I would rather have a company of Trimurti and her sisters at my back than an entire battalion of regular Newfoals…”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Parade whispered. “About these ‘Pretty Privates’. You didn’t see their pegasus fighting. ‘Newspeak’ she called herself...”

Her own wings drooped subtly, and Headcount turned, curious.

“Why, what did ’Newspeak’ do? Kick her opponents about with thunderbolts, or knock them down with transonic booms?”

“No… she just… talked to one of them, caught her in a tackle and whispered in her ears while using her as a shield. Then… the guard, she turned on the others and… and broke their wings.”

Now it was Parade’s time to shudder. “I heard one of them could change colours. Is it the same one, Newspeak?”

She nodded in response, and a faint blush came to her face.

“Yeah. She was… she was beautiful. I couldn’t look away from her, the way her coat and mane kept shifting and shimmering. And when she was ordered to directly engage, to fight by herself… she just began buzzing and whirring like a hummingbird, her wings and coat flashing… and the guards sent to challenge her just, stood there, dazed, until she dropped out of the sky and smashed each of them to the ground.”

“A mesmerist...” Headcount realised. “And hypnotist…”

“Yeah, but really, really docile the rest of the time. And now, now the Commander’s taken her off for a, ahem, personal debrief.”

The two of them shared a knowing look, and then a thoughtful glance at Trimurti, who still had not moved from parade rest in the center of her cell…

“No, darker…” Flash Sentry insisted. “The mane has got to be darker, and straighter.”

“Anything you desire Commander!” chimed Newspeak, still grinning inanely, like all Newfoals. Her wings were folded in tightly at her side, and had turned lavender, as had her coat.

The eyes… after some very specific instructions, she’d matched the eyes to perfection. A deep and winsome purple...

Now they were just trying to get the mane right. The curtains of his sleeping quarters were drawn, and a rose-tinted shade over the moonstone lamp lent everything a suitably amorous glow...

Flash should have been terrified by this Newfoal’s powers of disguise. Like a cuttlefish, she seemed to have an absolute command over her body’s pigmentation and texture to the extent that she could even had limited control upon her own manestyling.

But instead of terror, when he had witnessed her transform her colouration at a whim, only one thought had come to mind for him. A single, primal desire.

“Is this what you wanted, Commander?” Newspeak asked, as her mane straightened out, forming a straight fringe over her eyes and extending silkily down the back of her neck. Although it did not gain any additional volume, the fact that she had arrived at the former prison with it bunched up around her head in tight, grecian curls, like a helmet, hid just how much length it actually possessed.

Flash whetted his lips, feeling the yearning burning inside of him, the fire and want that he had felt ever since his unit had briefly served as bodyguards to the Lady of Magic.

“That’s… that’s just about perfect.”

She’d gotten the colouration matched just right, even including the stripes in the mane and tail. Admittedly she was a pegasus, but it was close enough.

Flash only wished he could wipe that insipid smile off her face, and replace it with the cool, superior smirk of the Lady.

But no, this was a Newfoal. And a Newfoal always smiled, and always took orders.

Speaking of which.

“Now, lie down on the bed, and spread your hindlegs.”

The facsimile of Twilight Sparkle bounced into the requested position with glee, giggling as she did.

“I’m happy to oblige sir, this is my first time. Please buck me good!”

Oh, Flash would, he would…

And just to make sure they were not disturbed by that interfering witch from PETN, he had sent her a very special toy of her own…

Jewelup was once again pacing, pouring out a fervour of thoughts to her pocket-prole.

“...these four mares, they represent something new about Newfoals. They’re not just machines, they’re unique,” she said, on the edge of panic. Though she couldn’t rightly say why. “I feel like we’ve stumbled into something bigger. They’re-”

“Hi there!”

She had not heard the door open, caught up in her hopes and dreams. Now though, Jewelup spun in surprise, noticing the mare who had intruded into her quarters.

“Oh, hello there. You’re the Pretty Private, Nepenthe, correct?”

“I am…” the unicorn mare trilled. “And you’re the Lady Diamond-Mint Jewelup, of the Pee-Eee-Tee-En.”

Jewelup breathed a sigh of relief and smiled.

“I am, and it’s wonderful to see that you’ve come to speak with me. My colleagues and I have been hoping for Newfoals like yourself and your colleagues to manifest for some time and we have high hopes for the ex–”

“Sisters.”

“–ample you can set.... I beg you’re pardon, what was that?”

“The other Pretty Privates are my sisters,” Nepenthe explained, her smile not shifting by an iota.

And with that, she telekinetically swung the door shut behind her, and began to advance into the room, towards the bed.

Jewelup felt her heart sink. “You’re not here of your own accord, are you?”

“Nope! I’m here under orders!” was the reply.

Nepenthe was now standing just a few feet from Jewelup. Her ever-present grin, without a single muscle shifting position, suddenly seemed… hungry, predatory. It was then that Jewelup noticed just how, even with herself stretched out upon the bed, she only came up to the Pretty Private’s eyeline.

She suddenly felt small, and easily squashed

“On Flash…” she swallowed, eyeing the pair of swords holstered on Nepenthe’s muscled hips. “On Flash Sentry’s orders, right?”

And then, not breaking that smile, Nepenthe spoke the words that, for years now, had always cut Jewelup deepest.

“You look just like the traitor.”

The traitor. Her mother’s niece. Her cousin, Lyra Heartstrings. The nag that had ruined her life. Ponies pointed at her and laughed, Newfoals mocked her in the streets. It had been little things, to begin with. Small, indistinct annoyances that piled up till it was too much to take.

Oh, how bright did the sun seem to shine, the day when the masked unicorn mare they called the Queen’s Justice, the Sword of Celestia, finally brought the Betrayer to face her reckoning! After that momentous occasion, Jewelup was sure her lot in life would improve.

It had not very much. That Celestia-damned cousin was the reason she was here. Out in the flank end of nowhere, miles and miles from the nearest team capable of setting up a portal, surrounded by pricks like Flash Sentry… she couldn’t prove it, but she knew he’d screwed up somehow. Not many ponies volunteered for this sort of thing.

… And now it looked like it was going to get her killed.

Nepenthe’s horn glimmered, and her pair of swords lifted into the air.

“Did he, he...” Jewelup struggled to speak, her throat frozen in fear. “Has he sent you to kill me, because of that?”

The Newfoal’s grey eyes seemed to shine with some inner light, or was it a madness? The blades of the levitating swords seemed to carry the same bright sheen along the edge.

Jewelup felt her heart slow. She tried to think of what words to say, what pleas would save her.

“No silly! I’m not here to kill you!”

The swords dropped to the ground, discarded.

“I’m here under orders to show you a good time!”

Before Jewelup could even process that, Nepenthe’s burgundy-red cloak shred itself into thousands of crimson flakes, that billowed around the room like droplets of blood…

… Actually, rose petals.

They swarmed on Jewelup, brushing her flanks and swirling in her mane, chastely kissing where they touched her fur, her cheeks, her lips…

“Stop…” she whispered, even as the cloud caressed her. “I don’t… don’t want this…”

A hoof touched her gently, and she found herself looking into a pair of grey eyes, framed from above by a slender circlet of gold.

“But you do want it… you long for it. To feel loved, to feel adored and worshipped…”

Another shimmer of magic, and the tiara slipped from Nepenthe’s head, spun around, and gently settled onto Jewelup’s…

“... my lady.”

The petals were pressing on her from behind, elevating Jewelup into an upright, regal pose, seated atop the bed and looking down upon Nepenthe. At the same time, they were weaving their way through the buckles and clasps of her battered PETN barding, removing each piece and casting them aside.

She looked down, and saw that the same had happened with the Pretty Private, leaving Nepenthe clad only in her breastplate. The peach-coloured amarezon sank into a low bow, looking every inch the loving supplicant.

Suddenly feeling dizzy, Jewelup touched the tiara that now rested upon her own brow.

“Why, why do you wear a crown…”

“A tiara, to show I serve the Unconquered Sun,” came the reply, Nepenthe not even breaking her bow. “But tonight, I serve yourself, Princess…”

“I don’t…” she breathed, unable to hide a flush. “I’ve never seen any Newfoal show so much… romance…”

“I’m not any Newfoal,” Nepenthe replied back, looking up from her bow, eyes shining with devotion and submission. “I am an exception Newfoal. I am the definitive Newfoal. It is my function to serve the ponies of Equestria, to ensure their safety and happiness…”

Jewelup suddenly felt a weight upon her shoulders. The swirling petals had reformed into a single garment, that draped across her back and clasped gently at her neck.

“...and tonight, I have been ordered to make you happy.”

Jewelup’s eyes flickered across to a mirror on the opposite wall, and she swallowed a gasp.

In it, she could see herself…but not herself. Nepenthe’s magic had shaped her mane into an elegant plait, tied off with red coils of ribbon. Coupled with the cape and tiara she now wore, she looked like…

A Princess. Neither the PETN annoyance nor ‘the Lyra lookalike’ that ponies whispered about when they thought she was out of earshot… she had transcended that mare. Had somepony like Jewelup seen this mare in the street, she wouldn’t be recognized.

Regal, powerful, beautiful. With a knight in armor, an amarezon, kneeling at her hooves.

“I don’t have any choice in this, do I?”

“No. I am your servant, and I shall service you...and I promise you, your Pretty Private is very skilled…”

Her heart quickened.

“This…” she whispered. “This is wrong. You shouldn’t have to do this… you’re more than a Newfoal… you’re unique…”

“No,” Nepenthe shook her head. “I am a Newfoal, and I am a slave…”

She leaned forward, opening her mouth.

“And I belong to Equestria…”

Jewelup felt her heart break, one dream shattering and another coming true…

... Nepenthe extended her tongue, lowered her head in between Jewelup’s open legs, and went to work with all the energy and precision of a machine sheathed in organic flesh…

Pleasure filed the world.

Then Passion.

Oblivion....

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

Part 2 of this 3-part update. Have fun!

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

“Waiting in a car
Waiting for a ride in the dark
The night city grows
Look and see her eyes, they glow

Waiting in a car,
Waiting for a ride in the dark
Drinking in the lounge
Following the neon signs

Waiting for a roar
Looking at the mutating skyline
The city is my church
It wraps me in the sparkling twilight

Waiting in a car,
Waiting for the right time
Waiting in a car
Waiting for a ride in the dark…”
‘Midnight City’
M83

“Have you ever sat by the railroad track
And watched the empties coming back?
Lumbering along with a groan and a whine,
Smoke strung out in a long gray line,
Belched from the panting engine’s stack-
Just empties coming back!

I have - and to me the empties seem
Like dreams I sometimes dream
Of a girl - or money - or maybe fame;
My dreams have returned the same
Swinging along the homeward track-
Just empties coming back.”
CB Clark, 1936

“This bedtime story ends with misery after after
The pages are torn and there’s no final chapter
I didn’t have a choice I did what I had to do
I made a sacrifice but forced a bigger sacrifice on you

I know you’ve lived a nightmare
I caused you so much pain
But baby please don’t do what I did
I don’t want you to waste your life in vain…”
'Red Like Roses Part II, RWBY'
Jeff and Casey Lee Williams

‘KILL ALL PONIES’

Three words, carved into the wooden upright of one of the cabooses’ twin bunk-beds. Lightning had stared at those thirteen innocuous little letters for what felt like hours, but which could not have been more than a few minutes.

She couldn’t grasp, couldn’t comprehend the venom that was being conveyed in the statement, and yet she feared she soon would. After the hospital, she was suddenly fearing a lot of things...

...feared to even sleep, in the chance that she would dream more horrors, more nightmares doomed to come true.

‘KILL ALL PONIES’

The caboose had fallen silent. Verity had ceased tossing in the bunk above her not long ago, and on the other side of the companionway, Prism Flash was either asleep or brooding in silent contemplation.

Even Maddy, curled up at Lightning’s side, was at last asleep, The ten-year old’s face looked deceptively serene, and Lightning found herself smiling wistfully.

“Well Mom, guess I am following in your hooves… looking after somepony else’s kid.”

Convincing Maddy to come down from the brakeman’s cupola had been… not difficult, but emotionally taxing. The little girl’s head was suddenly full of doubts and questions that had not been there before, and those cracks in the facade were beginning to spurt water.

Lightning could sympathise. She’d been there… was there.

"Do... do all humans want the ponies dead for what we've done to them?" Maddy had asked, when her crying had stopped.

Lightning had no definite answer to give for that. “I think you should talk to Verity… or Tess.”

It was a feeble answer, deflecting a question she considered herself ill-equipped to tackle.

“I don’t like them… the human’s just mean, and Verity’s a traitor… and they both hate me.”

The urge to shout down how wrong that attitude was had flickered in Lightning again, and she’d done her utmost to ignore it. It wasn’t as if either person had done much to disabuse that opinion.

“I don’t think they hate you Maddy. It’s just… well, ponies have clearly caused a lot of suffering for both of them…”

She’d held up a hoof and coaxed Maddy down from the spot where she’d nested in the cupola, trying to isolate herself from everything.

"But… the ponies are here to save humans."

"So you tell me…”

She’d withheld judgement, thought it had proved difficult.

“It’s not about you, Maddy - they don’t hate children, trust me. It’s not you, it’s who you’ve hung out with. I think you need to talk to them. Don’t tell that they’re wrong to be angry. Ask them why they’re angry.”

“Will... will you be there with me?”

“Of course I will.”

By this point Maddy had climbed into a bunk, and as Lightning had moved away, she had suddenly found the kid holding onto her hoof.

“Please… stay with me.”

A moment’s hesitation, and then a nod. “Alright…”

She’d crawled into the limited space next to Maddy, cradled in the embrace of the walls and the bedsheets, and hesitantly pulled the kid into a hug.

“Lightning…” Maddy had asked quietly, burying her face in the soft fur of her barrel. “Will we be alright?”

“We’ll be okay kiddo. This train, it’s a safe place and Tess knows how to drive it. I’ll take care of you, and Verity’ll take care of all of us…”

“But she’s leaving us tomorrow…”

And that was how Lightning had found herself lying on her back – and boy, did her wings ache in this position – with the human girl holding onto her, as if afraid that weakening her grip would cause her to vanish.

Hesitantly, she used her muzzle to brush a lock of hair off of Maddy’s face, and bitterly smiled as the kid stirred in her sleep.

Maddy was her charge, and she had promised to keep her safe. Lightning was still struggling with that fact, and even as she closed her eyes and tried to steal a few minutes rest, those conflicting thoughts warred in her mind.

‘I’m trying to be the best I can be… but how can I protect her in this war? I can fly pretty good, but I can’t fight much, and I don’t know the politics of this place… any more than I could expect a human to understand the backstreets and alleys of Cloudsdale...’

Honestly, from what she’d seen today, she wasn’t sure of anywhere being truly ‘safe’. Even if this train could be made into a rolling fortress, nopony on board truly knew how to fight…

‘Except for Verity.’

Lightning had not seen the strange mare fight, but she carried the mantle of a warrior. It was something in the eyes, a hardness she knew from street-punks and cops and some of the older Wonderbolts. Everypony became intimately familiar with the environment that had shaped and moulded them, and Verity had been raised in this war. Lived and breathed years of blood, thunder and cordite.

More importantly, she had survived in the thick of it. Rather than hade, she had evidently waded into the fight and come back strong, tempered by warfire.

Strong enough to endure, strong enough to, maybe, protect this train.

‘Isn’t it ironic that of everypony here, only the blank-flank has the skills and talents to keep us alive?’

She’d have to talk to Verity, Lightning decided. Tomorrow morning, before they passed this place named ‘Moncton’, she’d have to try and convince her, appeal to her duty or honor or some of those other ‘finer feelings’ that she herself was only just discovering.

‘Protect the train, escort the cargo, bring it to safety...’

It was simple, pragmatic and unemotional. A sensible choice. The train was important and they were its crew. Protecting one meant protecting the other, and a safe conclusion to this journey would benefit the war-effort.

Would that kind of argument work? Verity said she had her mission, tracking down that fugitive, but she’d also admitted that the train’s cargo, those ‘totem-prole’ things, were important. Maybe she could be convinced that…

‘But Verity’s got a grudge. She wants revenge for something, wants it more than an end to the war...’

“Lightning,” came a whisper in her ear. “I was so wrong…”

“Don’t worry about it Maddy,” she murmured, eyes still closed. Go back to sleep…”

“I was so, so wrong…” the child’s voice continued, and Lightning opened her eyes with a see to that Maddy’s face–

“NO!”

–had distended into a muzzle, eyes bulging and swelling like balloons, fur spreading across her lips. Something purple dripped from between her teeth.

“I was wrong to have doubts, but I’m all better now!”

Lightning screamed and tumbled backwards out of the bunk. She collided with somepony and whipped her head around to see–

“Mercy...”

–standing over her, dry blood caked down the pegasus mare’s chin.

“No,” came the reply from her torn, bruised mouth. “No mercy, not for you…”

Rio loomed overhead, a monstrous figure in an orange hazmat suit. The face and horn of a pony could be seen in the fabric, pressing out from the stomach like a grotesque pregnancy, roiling and moving under the suit… and, Lightning was certain, under the skin. The fabric was caved in around the eye sockets...

“You killed us… all of us…”

Lying prone on the floor, Lightning hyperventilated. Her wings were gone, and her hands, burning with pain, caught only splinters as she scrambled for a grip. The morgue and the caboose blended together, an abattoir on wheels, the white-tiled floor wet with blood and potion, and the water from an overflowing sink. Out one window behind her, she could see a snowstorm, and unutterable things pressing against the glass, pounding against it with their hooves. Emaciated ponies dragging themselves out of the shelves in the morgue, mutilated, with huge gaping bloody wounds…

“Mama!” one whispered, blood gurgling out the hole in her throat.

“Get away! Get away!”

Maddy crawled to the edge of the bunk and beamed down, a nightmarish expression of glee on her face. The words ‘KILL ALL HUMANS’ burned bright red in the woodwork behind her. Blood and potion dripped from the hoof-carved lettering.

“Hi! I’m Maddy, the Pretty Private!” she giggled.

“You’ll be a Pretty Private too!” chorused the thing struggling to birth itself from within Rio’s suit, sounding like multiple voices all speaking at once.

“No! I’m not a pony! I’M NOT A PONY!”

And then they descended on her, smothering her in what had been Rio’s hazmat suit. They bit down on her fingers, tearing them away, shearing them away strand by strand of muscle. She looked up at the stumps and screamed at the terrible absence of pain, screamed at the sight of the blunt hooves at the ends of her forearms.

They jammed bones into her back, and stabbed feathers into her. They cut her open and stuffed new organs and tissues inside, they placed needles in her eye and her skull and made it grow…

They systematically deconstructed her, replacing her skin inch by inch with fur, snapped the bones of her legs to force them into a digitigrade stance, cut off her toes and threw them on a pile….

In the puddle made by one of the overflowing sinks, Lightning saw herself, with peach-colored fur and a dark pink mane, and she screamed in ecstasy at such a wonderful image.

“I’m…”

And then she flopped forward, dropping like an apple from a tree, desperately feeling all over herself. Hooves, wings, fur… everything right, everything normal.

“I’m me…”

“That remains to be seen,” spoke a male voice in reply. “Who are you, Ms. Dust?”

“What… what’s that supposed to mean? I’m Lightning Dust,” Lightning asked, looking up at the one who had addressed her. “I. Am. Me!”

“Oh that is not to be doubted…” commented the speaker, a tall human male. “Even if it is a rather simplistic answer. My question is - ‘who’ is Lightning Dust? What kind of a mare is she?”

She eyed him warily. He was slender, and had a somewhat wizened, careworn face framed by a dark beard and muttonchop whiskers. His attire reminded her of old pictures of Canterlot dignitaries and ministers, right down to the stovepipe hat perched atop his head.

Warily, she wiped at her mouth, and saw a dash of blood staining her hoof.

“I’m dreaming again, aren’t I? Funny, I usually wake up when I realise that…”

“That is usually the case. But please, address my question. Who are you, Lightning Dust?”

She planted her plot on the ground of this… neverspace, and jabbed a forehoof in his direction.

“Well, right now I’m a confused mare conversing with a total stranger. Do you even have a name, man?”

“Not man; man once I was...” he answered, and seemed to suppress a laugh. “Just a ghost, dead some seven-score and eighteen years.”

“Ghosts,” Lightning sighed. “Of course. Zombie ponies that aren’t actually ponies, technology beyond anything in Equestria, nightmares, losing everything I’ve ever known… and now ghosts. Why should I have expected anything different?”

“Why indeed?” He reclined on an invisible chair, arms upon the rests. “Call me… Virgil. And I am here as your guide, of sorts…”

“Were you.. were you ponified?” Lightning asked.“If so, I don’t want to listen to a mindless Newfoal. No wonder humans want the ponies dead if the alternative is freaks like you!"

"I assure you, Lumina Dust, I am no Newfoal”, ‘Virgil’ growled, sounding somewhat insulted.

“How’d you know my name? No wait, we’re inside my head, dumb question, sorry. Okay then, so what are you?”

“A question I asked of you, young Equestrian…”

“You’re an uninvited guest in my dream, I get the first questions.”

Lightning held the human shade’s gaze, each pressing the other.

Virgil merely sighed. “I am as I say: a ghost. Not dead, but not alive. What soul there was in me has passed. I am just an echo, the dreamed memory of one ‘great’ man, a man so revered and idolised, I can no longer remember what words were my own, and which were placed in my mouth by finer speakers down through the course of nearly two centuries.”

He seemed to shimmer, as if doubt had left him insubstantial, and Lightning felt a moment’s kinship with the guy. She knew what it was like to have no handle on an identity…

“Well, you said your were my guide,” she offered. “So that’s a start, right? My guide to what?”

Virgil removed his stovepipe hat and ran a hand over a thinning patch of hair.

“To your future.”

Her future? Well that was a joke.

“What future?” she asked. “Can’t have a future without a past or a present, and I lost one and am lost in the other.”

He tipped his head, lips pursed. “Eloquently phrased, if a little simple. But consider, that past, present and future are ever-flowing, tomorrow’s sand pouring through today to become yesterday. You are at this moment, living in the future of all your yesterdays. Perhaps, looking at it through that lens might enable you to perceive your destiny… and why you are here now.”

It took her a few seconds to sift his tenses into some kind of order, but when she had, Lightning realised there was a compelling truth to his words. She’d already assumed that she was on Earth for a reason, and since arriving here she had…

Had what? What had she accomplished since her arrival, besides get a lot of innocent people killed and ponified?

“I caused a lot of hurt,” she admitted. “A hospital was attacked to treat me, and blood and potion have been shed because of me.”

“You were asleep for those. Cruel and unjust as it seems, you cannot hold yourself to fault for choices made by strangers on your behalf. Tell me, Miss Dust, what you yourself have done by your own hooves. What works shall I know you by….”

She looked down at her hooves, and remembered herself poised over countless cribs, a pipette of potion held in her grip.

“I killed babies,” she said at last. “Ended the lives of nearly thirty newborns. Me. I did it.”

Her gaze drifted back up to Virgil, and she could feel her eyes smouldering.

“And don’t try and talk me out of the guilt I feel over what happened at that hospital, or the people who died while I slept. You said you were a ‘great’ man. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen others pay the price for your ‘greatness’.”

He replied with a rueful smile, and a slow clap of the hands.

“You’ve gained some insight since your arrival here, well done for nurturing it. And yes…”

She saw him visibly shrink, curling into himself as if time and toils were weighing upon him. His skin suddenly seemed like parchment, and his hair more salt than pepper.

No longer a great man. Just a man.

“I have sanctioned and actioned horrors, ruled as a tyrant and hardened many hearts, not least my own. I’ve sent countless men and women to war, with so few to return, nurtured abominations within my heart and compromised where mayhaps I ought to have drawn a line…”

His spider-like hands appeared to tremble, and Lighting once again felt that surge of empathy. She stepped up and touched a hoof to his leg, and that action drew a smile from the grey shade.

“Done out of a sense of righteousness, of championing a cause I knew to be just. To that end, I burned my soul on the altar of history.”

He suddenly rose, unfolding like a ladder from the invisible throne. “Maybe that is why I was chosen to walk you through this dream world, to keep you from the mistakes I made… or so I would hope.”

The fog around them seemed to blow away at that pronouncement, and Lightning realised the two of them were once again standing on a familiar, thrumming deck. Glancing behind her, she recognised the wheelhouse of the tugboat Luna gazing down upon her through green-hued windows. Powerful engines rumbled below-deck.

“So where are we heading?” she whispered, turning forward towards any shores hidden beyond the prow. “The future?”

“Every destination lies in the future,” Virgil chuckled, folding his hands behind his back and stepping up to the bowsprit. “Do you know where we are, Miss Dust?”

“I thought at first I was going crazy…” Lightning felt a spray of salt on her lips, dry and brittle, and whetted them. “But after what happened with Nepen– with Rio, I realised I was somehow tripping back and forth through other people’s heads.”

She glanced back at the name painted in silver on the side of the tug’s midnight-blue superstructure, and nodded to herself. “But this… this suddenly makes sense… I’m dreamweaving aren’t I?”

“I understand that dreamwalking is the correct term for your current actions,” Virgil answered, a smile curling about his lips. “Yet you are correct.”

He waved an arm across the desolate ocean. “This is the Earthly plane of dreams, and you are among the first to tread its shores. Your previous visits were… chaotic, admittedly, hence my assignment as your guide in the ways of this realm. And, with time and practice, I do believe that yes, you should be able to weave the weft and warp of dreams, shaping them to your will.”

Lightning’s ears pricked up at that. But then she heard something in the distance, a pained sobbing.

“Rio…” she whispered, before throwing herself to that side of the tug, hooking her hooves into the rail.

“She’s over there! That way!”

Even with her back to him, she felt Virgil’s reluctance, and spun to face his damning silence.

“What are you waiting for! There’s somepon– somebody crying out there, alone! You said you were my guide, so take us there!”

His papyrus features were wane, almost fearful. “You lead and I find the path, Miss Dust, but I warn you, what you’ll see within that poor soul’s mind won’t be in any way pleasant…”

“I don’t care! That’s Rio’s voice I can hear, not the freak that took over her body and mind!”

“As you wish,” Virgil murmured, and Lightning was knocked to the deck as the tugboat Luna ran aground on some invisible shore. The deck pitched steeply to one side, and even as her ‘guide’ remained rooted to the deck, tipped at an impossible angle, Lightning was thrown over the gunwale and into…

A familiar peach-orange mare.

Lightning smiled. All she could do was smile, all she could feel was that smile, pushing in on her like screws driven deeper than flesh and bone.

She stood in perfect stillness, neither blinking nor moving. Before her was a plane of glass, and reflected in it was herself, rendered in plastic. Her limbs hollow tubes poured from a mould, her eyes printed-on decals.

Beyond the glass expanded a vast room, everything grotesquely huge and out of scale compared to herself.

‘Or is it that I’ve shrunk… oh, Celestia, I’m a doll in a display case!’

Yes, that was clear now. She was a figurine in a glass cage, placed upon a shelf for everyone to see, in what looked like a small study with only a few sparse bookcases full of what looked like textbooks and training manuals. A familiar suit of armor hung on the wall, plus a selection of melee weapons. That was all. Bright and clean, and shiny-shiny.

… She was not alone.

Across the room from her was a stained-glass window, which provided all the light for the enclosed room. A living likeness of a familiar woman was captured upon it, weeping and holding herself, moving as if trapped within the glass, beating on the inside of it with her hands.

“Rio!” she tried to cry out, to call out. “I’m here, Rio!”

But she could not speak, only watch. Watch Rio’s suffering.

And suffer she did. Bound in chains, the poor woman seemed caught in some bizzare neverland between human and pony. Small patches of peach-orange fur could be seen on her exposed skin, and one of her brown eyes was already grey as swordsteel. Her ears were slowly crawling onto the top of her head, and elongating...

Beyond her lay another room. Or at least a reflection of this one, only rendered in cold cement and synthetics. Lightning felt a certain horror to see that other room was slowly crumbling away. Dust dripped like waterfalls from bookcases as their contents disintegrated, ever so slowly, the furniture was decaying, peeling away at an astonishing rate.

She supposed it would not be long before that room vanished. When all that could be seen in the window would be the smiling likeness of Nepenthe against a pristine void.

“This ISN’T right!” another voice interjected, and Lightning’s horror-struck thoughts were shattered as a new doorway slammed open, admitting a furious pony into the study.

No, not a pony. The Configuration Daemon, clad in the stolen flesh of Twilight Sparkle. If she could have, Lightning would have leapt down from her perch and beaten the beastial scrap of magic senseless.

But she could not move, only watch and listen…

“I was SO CLOSE!” the Daemon vented, pacing back and forth through the mental space. “I had her configured, I’d established the experiment protocols, and set it in motion!”

It stomped a hoof.

“She was doing what I wanted her to! Growing the squadron, developing more Pretty Privates! And then, then they had to run into some actual BUCKING ponies, who of course gave her orders she couldn’t refuse…this is why I like Newfoals,” she muttered. “No unpredictability, nothing like that horny orange pegasus with the damn fetish for my Mistress… You can make! Them! Follow! A! PLAN!”

The sight was not unlike watching an allegedly full-grown adult throw a temper tantrum.

“Oh, but that’s just the problem, isn’t it. Newfoals… so perfectly conditioned and masterfully programmed. Never any wiggle-room for them to interpret conflicting orders, and no leeway. Not fair! Not fair! NOT! FAIR!”

Silence fell as it finally seemed to notice the space it was in, and visibly gasped. “What the…”

Frozen in place, Lightning saw the creature turn in a full circle. With fickle callousness, the thing that built Nepenthe had made a complete emotional one-eighty, going from a foal denied a coveted toy to a filly turned loose in an entire toystore.

“This room is… this is magnificent… it’s a…”

It stopped, and Lightning felt a frisson of fear, seeing the Configuration Daemon was now staring right at her, the plastic mare behind glass.

“A dream! Nepenthe, you clever filly! You’ve created yourself a dream!”

It danced about on its feet, prancing and pronking in place with glee. “Oh, this is perfect. Perhaps the key to everything!”

What!? Had she somehow seen her?

Telekinetic light swept over the glass of the case, swinging open the latched door, and Lightning found herself tipped forward and dropping into the colossal hooves of the beast.

“My clever girl… My Little Pony…”

It was a living nightmare, being held in that reptilian touch, feeling those equine hooves playing with her brushable mane...

“Is this what you dream of, my Pretty Private? To be a toy waiting to come out and play?”

‘Yeeessssss...’ came a whisper from deep in the back of Lightning’s mind, and she realised that the Daemon was right, and struggled to fight off the nausea that came with that revelation.

This was Nepenthe’s dream. She was just a passenger.

Because Nepenthe was a toy, a toy that dreamt to be used. And dolls are nothing, think and say nothing, until playtime.

The Daemon held her up to face the stained glass window, holding her face-to-face with the silently pleading likeness of Rio. “Do you recognise her, my dear?”

‘A human? She needs to be ponified. Then she’ll stop crying!’

Lightning wanted to weep, hearing those grotesque, self-annihilating flashes of thought on the fringes of her own consciousness.

“Virgil!” she pleaded. “Take me away from this!”

Nothingness. But was the silence the absence of a response, or a coded prompt for her to work out for herself the exit… a jab at her to not expect her hoof to be held, in the dream she had demanded they land upon the shores of.

“Hrm…” the Daemon was saying, the globe of her face filling Lightning’s fixed field of vision, leaving her feeling like an ant about to be struck by a train. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you? Oh, but I can fix that. I just need to help you dream a little bigger...”

Her horn glimmered, and Lightning felt a pain stab into her back, a pain so deep and penetrating that it took away even the breath to scream…

Twisting, rasping, nibbling away flecks of plastic.

She was being drilled. The Daemon was boring a hole into her back, and all that Lightning could hear was Nepenthe’s moans, as the Pretty Private’s mind welcomed the pain and violation with open hooves.

Then something else was slipped into the hole, something cold and metal.

‘I don’t want to see, I don’t want to see...’

But she had no choice, as the Daemon hefted her up in front of the display case, in which her reflection could be seen.

‘A key...’

It was shining brass, with a red stone set atop the shaft.

‘My Key...’ Nepenthe sighed.

“Now…I wonder what happens when we wind you up?”

The first turn burned, and Lightning could not hold back a moan. It felt as if every atom in her body was resonating, thrumming in tune to the strings of a cosmic orchestra, rich and dark…

‘Hi there!’ blazed a familiar voice in her mind. ‘I’m Nepenthe, the Pretty Private…’

More turns of the key, and more flashes of that awful voice...

‘This feels so good… I’ve got to share this feeling… make others feel the same...’

And as Nepenthe’s clockwork mind stirred, Lightning could feel her own… slowing. Her thoughts… dimming.

Turn, turn, turn.

The room was shrinking, no, it was her that was growing. She felt rough-worn planks underhoof, and the warmth of magic on her plastic fur.

‘Soooo goooooooood…’

Nepenthe stretched as that wonderful heat spread through her limbs, restoring them to motion.

‘How wonderful it is to dream…’ she purred to herself, before turning to the radiant creature that had brought her into this state.

“Hello again Mistress!” she waved. “How can I serve you?”

The Mistress smiled, reptilian eyes gleaming, and seemed to consider that question for a second… Nepenthe held her parade rest, eagerly awaiting her instructions.

“Nepenthe…” her Mistress said at last. “I need you to…”

Oooh, what? To kill somepony? Or fuck somepony?

“...refuse Flash Sentry’s orders.”

“Oh, I can’t do that,” she replied immediately, unable to hold back a laugh.

Silly Mistress. Turning around she hefted her tail and spread her hindlegs, presenting herself.

“I’m a Newfoal, Mistress. I’m a slave… you should use your slave, instead of playing games…”

Magic grabbed her by the jaw, and Nepenthe found herself hauled back around to face Mistress, whose face had blackened like stormclouds.

“THIS isn’t a joke!” she yelled. “You’re my slave, MINE! And I’m am ordering you to continue in the mission I set you!”

Follow the Totem-Poles. Execute the Experiment. Grow the Squadron.

“Oh yes, Mistress!” she nodded eagerly. “Just as soon as the local commander approves it!”

Mistress’s expression fell flat, and she telekinetically released Nepenthe from her grip.

“Useless. What’s the point in arguing?” she muttered. “Built you too well. Wrapped you up in a perfect web of chains…”

It hurt Nepenthe, seeing Mistress sad. She didn’t like the hurt, she decided. It ached in her emptiness, like, like…

‘Shame, betrayal, loss, Rio!’ Lightning realised with a start, feeling herself yanked away from the Newfoal sea into which she had nearly drowned. Shaken and cowering, she curled up into a ball, but still peering out from behind Nepenthe’s eyes, and hearing the artificial creature’s thoughts.

To ‘hurt’ was bad, Nepenthe concluded. It was bad for her, and bad for Mistress too.

‘And I kill everything that’s bad, everything that hurts ponies…’

But this wasn’t a ‘bad’ that she could cut down or stab. No, it could only be murdered through happiness…

‘I must make Mistress happy...’

It was simple logic, and Lightning, as the onlooker, had the perfect, terror-stricken vantage point as Nepenthe trotted over to the Configuration Daemon, and before the creature could object, pulled her into an open-lipped kiss.

And then Nepenthe performed the task she was programmed for. Slaying and sucking, fighting and fucking. It was rare that those two functions overlapped so precisely though...

‘I have to get out of here!’ Lightning thought frantically. ‘I… I need to get out!’

But, as her mind raced, she found none of the tricks she’d heard were meant to wake you up from a dream were working - Blinking? No. Punching yourself in the face? Also no. Try and move your legs? Your wings? In the real world, not in the dream. That didn’t work either.

Her body...no, Nepenthe’s body, was getting into its stride now, rolling the Daemon onto its back and grinding their marehoods lasciviously together…

“Wake up, wake up!” Lightning screamed, trying to visualise herself inside a of a bubble, trying to envision herself taking the walls apart...

No… she had to look out. Dreams never made sense from the outside. She just had to… had to dream bigger…

So instead of fighting, she tried to force a sense of calm… to listen to the thoughts sharing her headspace. She had to work the problem. This was the mind, right? Physical strength or speed didn’t mean anything. What mattered was how big you could think. She tried to listen into Nepenthe’s thoughts…

But there was nothing except love, servitude, and violence pressed up against lust.

‘There has to be something in here… something that’s of Rio, or Nightingale!’

And then she felt it. Felt a single strand of memory, fresh and recent, that shone out in the void of sex and slaughter. A memory that felt more real. Like something that belonged.

Five small words, spoken by an unfamiliar voice, but enough…

She reached out with her wings – or was it her fingers? – and grabbed hold of the blazing string of fresh syllables.

YANK!

“...more than a Newfoal…” she heard Nepenthe say, mindlessly… “unique…”

“What was that?” moaned the Daemon, and she, Lightning – no, Nepenthe – lifted her salt-stained mouth from between the creature’s thighs and repeated the words, rolling them around in her mouth as if savouring their taste.

“I’m ‘more than a Newfoal’... I’m ‘unique’...”

The room seemed to shake, and Lightning felt a surge of triumph.

Until she saw the Daemon’s eyes gleam. “Yes… yes you are…”

High up on the wall, pinned like a butterfly upon glass, Rio began to scream.

“Oh, yes!” the Daemon cried, pushing Nepenthe away with a casual shove. “Those were the unicorn mare’s words, yes?”

“Yessmam!” Nepenthe repeated, beaming. “Diamont-Mint Jewelup of the PETN!”

“She’s a clever mare…” the Daemon murmured, trotting up to the cancerous likeness of Rio trapped in stained glass. The chains woven into the picture were shaking and trembling, and the poor woman was shreiking as they cut into her flesh, leaving searing, weeping burns.

“That was all you needed before!” it cried out, pointing up at Rio’s suffering. “More of that!”

‘What have I done?!’ Lightning screamed internally, as the Daemon’s horn began to glow in corkscrew patterns. “What have I-”

The window, Rio, shattered under a single bolt of purple magic. Shards of glass flew everywhere, a cascade of jagged prisms, all resonating with a pained shriek… the sound of a besieged soul’s last walls coming down…

Nepenthe stood there, smiling blandly, with not so much as a twitch as the broken dreams of her past live burst over her like surf on a rock…

And then, silence, except for the lingering echoes of Rio’s scream, emanating like wraiths from the smaller shards, which were burning off in little eddies of smoke.

What was left were two-dozen or more of the largest shards, each now caught up in the Daemon’s magic.

“I can’t fault you for being new at this whole ‘dreaming’ thing Nepenthe,” she was crooning. “I don’t really get it myself, but if there is one thing I’ve learned about sentients…”

She held up one of the shards, and it unfurled into a frothing mass of white fabric, on which several red crosses had been stitched.

“They waste their whole lives cultivating useless dreams.”

It was a nurse’s outfit, with the name ‘Nightingale’ printed on the breast in neat lettering. A flicker of magic reworked the characters into Nepenthe’s name, and suddenly a floor-to-ceiling mirror filled one end of the room.

“Dress-up time!”

Within seconds, an unfamiliar mare stood in the mirror, where Nepenthe’s reflection should have been. She tipped her head in confusion, barely able to recognise herself dressed in something outside of her armour…

“Hi there!” whispered the Mistress, leaning in close and whispering the words into her ear.

YANK!

“Hi there!” she replied, feeling the words coming without thinking them, but feeling them in her soul. “I’m Nepenthe, the Newfoal Nurse. I’ll make all your hurts go away…”

“Oh, I’m sure you will…”

Nepenthe (and Lightning) understood at last. She was a pretty dolly, and a dolly could become anything… anything at all, when playing Dress-Up.

“Oh, the Lady Rarity was right!” tittered the Daemon. “The clothes truly do make the mare!”

Another shard, this one twisting itself into a shimmering short dress that sported a delicate pair of gossamer wings…

YANK

Now Nepenthe was a sprite, a breezy, fancy-free fairy. Magic and thoughts of drifting on the winds under Her sun filled her mind, beckoning with prospects of spells and cantrips that twisted nature to her mischievous whims, and all of all the silly, pretty ponies she could play tricks on–

YANK

Vast power flowed in her body, bound submissively by a few scraps of silk. The genie waited, patiently, to grant a cosmic wish-

YANK

A maid, silent and demure, devoted to the servicing of her Mistress, her Lady–

YANK

Her horn vanished, replaced by a pair of sinisterly sensual bat-wings. The Vampire grinned toothily, seeing the delicate fangs that now adorned her smile, notions of dominance and seductive passions consum–

YANK

The puppy wagged her tail, barking and yapping for Owner’s attention–

YANK-YANK-YANK!

Teacher, student, pilot, actress, chef… countless stolen dreams flashed by Lightning’s eyes, who could only watch on in some frozen moment between disgust and arousal as Nepenthe donned guise after guise...

Barbarian, astronaut, lifeguard…

YANK

Princess…

A pin landing upon a pillow could have been heard in the silence of the mind that descended at that moment.

Nepenthe’s hoof touched at the crown that sat atop her flowing, shimmering mane. No longer the demure tiara she had crafted as a symbol of her royal servitude, it was a symbol of authority and command. So too, were the broad wings at her back and the elegant horn upon her brow....

“I… we… we are a Newfoal, and yet we…”

She looked down at the Configuration Daemon, Her Maker, who was smiling in evident triumph, and then she looked up around them...

“... we have grown…”

The room had swollen many times beyond its original size. What was once a small study had become a living-space the size of a large chapel, wrought in stone and wood. Armaments and armour hung from a rack opposite an empty hearth that merely needed fuel and flame to blaze, while a multitude of bookshelves lined the walls, almost all of them waiting to be filled.

Nepenthe looked upon her opened mind, seeing hints of Dreams. A small box-garden filled with newly-sprouted flowers was tucked into a corner beside a study-desk and totem-prole computer. Closets of outfits, a feather-duster lying on the work-surface of a kitchenette that had yet to produce a single meal. Cameras and jars of developing fluid, nick-nacks and brick-a-brack.

All of it shiny and new, sterile and pristine.

And rising over it all, filling an entire wall, was shelf after shelf devoted to a series of action figures… no, of dolls, each a peach-orange mare clad in a variety of costumes. Every one representing a dream she had carried within her for just an instant, but which was then taken away and frozen in plastic.

One figure in particular stood out. Enshrined in the centre, a glass case protected an armoured warrior-mare. Her truest self, the focus of her being: the Pretty Private. Three other cases flanked it, containing three familiar mares.

‘Trimurti’, ‘Newspeak’, and ‘Harvest’ read the brass plaques mounted on the frames. Her family. And there were other cases straddling them, empty cells awaiting occupants.

‘More Pretty Privates, more sisters...’ the Princess thought tenderly, before her happy smile faded to quiet horror. ‘More tortured, mutilated souls...’

“Oh the cleverness of me,” came a cocksure crow of delight, “to build even a likeness of a Princess…”

The Newfoal sovereign's eyes whipped back to the smirking Daemon at her side. It suddenly seemed a tiny and awkward creature, almost loathso-

“Well,” it said, reaching up for the crown. “That’s the last of that wretched woman’s dreams.”

“Can I keep this one, Mistress?” the Princess asked, touching at the crown, surprised at a sudden urge to… self-preserve? “It makes me feel… like a real pony...”

“Oh, of course you’re a real pony,” it cooed. “You’re more real than any of those shambling puppets that call themselves ‘trueborn’ Equestrians...”

It waved a hoof.

“Just look at all you can be, and yet how focused all of that is…”

The Princess looked again, and saw the truth in that, felt the appeal of certainty, of creativity sharpened with laser-like focus upon a conditioned goal. And yet…

“But if it makes you happy, you can keep the crown, my little princess.”

A flash of relief, and then a touch of magic as the Royal Newfoal lifted her crown away and leapt forward to nuzzle at her Mistress, once again Nepenthe the Pretty Private, crying out in joy and utter adulation.

“Oh, thankyouthankyouthankyou! Is it mine? Is all this mine!?”

“Yes, my dear,” smiled the monstrosity guised as a mare, now cradling in her hooves the plastic, make-believe crown of Princess Nepenthe. Chuckling to herself she set the worthless diadem on a coffee-table, before turning back to face her. “Now, what is your mission?”

“Oh, to grow and develop the Pretty Private Paradigm, Mistress!” was the immediate, enthusiastic response. “By any means necessary!”

“That’s my wonderful toy…” crooned the Daemon, as a flicker of her magic ignited the hearth. The blazing flames filled the room with amber light, casting a particularly sinister illumination upon one of two stained-glass windows that bracketed the transept of this sanctuary.

It captured in silicon an image familiar to all present, of a monstrous alicorn filly, cuddling a Pretty Private toy in her hooves… the image that was the rock of Nepenthe’s identity.

And facing it was another window, the one that had been shattered to realize Nepenthe’s non-existent dreams.

It was Rio, still sobbing and broken, still twisted and caught somewhere between person and pony. But now, now she was all that remained within the window, crucified on a few cracked panes, surrounded by a featureless nothingness.

And it suddenly all made sense to Lightning, who had been unable to summon anything other than confused disbelief through the entire process. Now, taking in the empty shelves to fill with knowledge, and display cases to fill with fresh Pretty Privates, seeing how all the beams and uprights of this space were carved in the shape of vast, binding chains, she understood...

Nepenthe’s mind had been small and enclosed, nothing but a display-case and a fragmented memory of the woman she had been. But now it was a temple, an expanding and developing space in which an identity could grow, though bound and regimented. A new identity. A Newfoal identity.

All of it at Rio’s expense, and all of it her fault.

She opened her mouth to scream, and at that instant, somebody grabbed hold of her shoulder, and bodily hauled her backwards. Out of Nepenthe, out of this nightmare, landing in a… a city alleyway. It was nighttime in this dream, and heavy rain poured down out of the sky, fountaining in rivulets from building cornices and window sills.

Lightning’s first instinct was to sob and add her own tears to the sky’s. There was a puddle beside her, and she rolled onto her side and into it, as if trying to wash herself clean.

“My fault…” she heaved, over and over. “My fault…”

Nepenthe woke slowly, coming back out of sleep like a ship sliding down the ways into its native element. Her grey eyes flickered in the firefly glow of the lamps, and her smile curled like the break of a bow-wave.

‘So many new things to try...’

She had dreamed… and now she had dreams. Where once her thoughts moved like a single jet of water, now she felt a thousand flowing currents in the ocean of her mind. Ideas and aspirations and plans, all harmonising under the inexorable will of her Purpose, which drew on them as the moon pulled upon the tide.

Pathways opened up to her as she stirred languidly, stretching like a cat. Channels of possibilities. Now, instead of smashing against an obstacle like a wave against a rock, all power spent and wasted, she saw alternatives. She could flow around the rock, or beat it down, or suck out its foundations and drag it under, pulling it into her embrace….

Jewelup lay cradled in her forehooves, sleeping. There was a contented smile on her face, and the tiara she had been given encompassed her brow like a ring upon the world…

...the world Nepenthe had been given to conquer, all thanks to this mare’s innocuous words.

“Thank you,” Nepenthe whispered, and leaned in to softly kiss the unicorn mare on the snout. Jewelup stirred briefly in her sleep, but did not wake. “You’ve made me a real mare.”

Then, moving slowly, so as to not wake the pony she had been ordered to love, she slipped out of the bed and exited the room, her hooves trotting on relentlessly until she came to Flash Sentry’s quarters. A tired-looking guard stood attentively on guard, and a flicker of her magic was enough to bring his armour to life and wrap it around his mouth, the fabric and metal gagging him until he passed out from oxygen.

‘So weak…’ she thought in contempt, briefly checking to make sure he was still alive after releasing her hold upon his breath. ‘Was this the kind of colt I was to mindlessly obey?’

Stepping over him she pushed open the door, and could not hide a flash of excitement at the stench of lovemaking flooded into her nostrils. Flash Sentry apparently had much more stamina than Jewlup, and was still making quite a go of Newspeak, who was squeaking like a delighted rubber toy everytime he thrusted into her.

There were no words shared between the two sisters. Neither Pretty Private had any need for them. The second Nepenthe stepped across the threshold, Newspeak’s lavender-tinted eyes fixed upon her. Lying upon the bed, her head tipped backwards over the edge, the pegasus Newfoal held eye contact with Nepenthe for a silent minute as Flash, oblivious to the actions of his now-silent toy, continued to pound into what was a very convincing likeness of Twilight Sparkle’s marehood.

Their unspoken conversation finished, Newspeak’s eyes shimmered, beginning to flicker with a beguiling medley of colours. Nepenthe nodded, granting permission to proceed, and turned away as Newspeak suddenly flexed her lithe body and inverted both herself and Flash, pinning him beneath her so that she could stare deep into his eyes.

“Hey, what the! What are you do… ing…”

“You’re tired, Flash…” the pegasus crooned. “Tired and exhausted from servicing your Lady. But she’s got instructions for you now. If you look into my eyes, look deep into my eyes, you’ll be able to see her, hear her words in your ears, hear my words in your ears…”

Satisfied that everything was in hoof, Nepenthe exited the room and closed the door behind her. There was a lot to do before daybreak, and she had an awful lot of ponies to take care of…

“My fault…” Lightning whispered to herself in the depths of the alley. “All my fault.”

The weight of water from an overflowing gutter-pipe poured down on her like a proclamation of guilt, a sentence of culpability.

“Somepony…” she wept. “Help me… anybody? Virgil?”

No answer, neither from the shadows nor from the human shade who had claimed to be her guide…

Again she cried out, desperate for someone to come and show her some pity or wrath, anything that could numb or burn-away this utter sense of Failure that sat in her barrel like a bag of lead-shot.

But all that answered her, were tears. And they were not her own.

The sound of another’s pain was, cruelly, the perfect balm to her own. It was an instinctive reaction…

‘Somehow, I kinda see the appeal Nepenthe has in focus. Everything seems easier when you view your life as having a set goal…’

Aching, Lightning stood and tried to get her bearings. She might not know where she was or why she was here, but she at least had a purpose.

To find the source of the tears.

She actually went too far at first, passing through the end of the alley and out onto an open street. Tall, brick-built buildings rose around her, and she almost thought she was back in Baltimare or Fillydelphia, until she looked to her right and saw a pillar of light and shadow ascending into the sky.

‘That is one bucking big skyscraper...’

She’d not seen the like of it anywhere, let alone on Equus. It seemed poured from black panes of glass, rising straight up from an open plaza like a ziggurat from out of ‘Daring Do’.

Okay, so she was definitely on Earth. Turning again, she caught a few more details. Street-signs told her she was standing at the intersection of ‘Dartmouth Street’ and ‘Public Alley 440’. A rust-pitted ponyhole – or was it humanhole? – cover kindly informed her that this was a city by the name of ‘Bostonma’, and several street-signs and banners proclaimed that tonight was a ‘Happy Halloween’, through from the jack-o-lanterns set in the windows of a shop across the street, it looked more to her eyes like Nightmare Night. She’d have to ask Tess about it later.

Again, the sound of sniffling, and turning, she spotted the source.

A figure was seated on the steps of a small porch that sat alongside the entrance to the alleyway, a human teen. She was dressed oddly, especially given the rain. Instead of wearing any kind of jacket, she was wearing what looked a bit like a Wonderbolts cadet jumpsuit, blue with some very simple white trim. Navy pants were tucked into sturdy-looked strap-up boots, and she sported what looked like a pelt as a sort of skirt.

“Never came…” the person whispered in between sobs. “Left me…”

Lightning put one hoof back. Low and muttered the words might have been, but she recognised that growl.

“Verity?”

There was no response. Lightning repeated her call, and heard her words resound soundlessly in a world that was muted except for the girl’s sobs.

...and then something began to ring, a cheerily out-of-place ditty in this pocket of sadness. Responding to it, Lightning saw the human pull something flat and rectangular out of a pocket and pressed a thumb to its glowing surface, wiping her snot and tears away as she did.

“Yello…” she spoke dully, holding it to her ear with her head still downcast at the ground. “No… oh, you saw my Tweet…”

Her shoulders twitched, and her teeth gritted, as if struggling with something far larger and primal than herself: her emotions.

“What happened?” she suddenly outburst. “Astrid didn’t show, Mom!” Another pause as she listened and pressed her fist against her eyes, as if trying to stuff her tears back where they’d come from.

“No… there was…. Mom, she sent me a text!”

Another pause as the human fiddled with the device and held it up in front of her eyes, reading something off of that glowing panel in the front.

“Verity, I’m sorry but I can’t come. It’s wrong for me to be with you, wrong for us to have wanted it. I don’t want to be like you, or Jazmin. Dad’s transferring me to another school when the semester restarts. Please don’t try and find me, and please find it in yourself to turn away from this mistake. Goodbye.”

Verity… and it could only have been her after reciting her own name, shook again, and brought the device – some kind of fantasy communicator? – back to her ear. “She’s gone Mom. She’s gone and… and she thinks I’m broken… thinks you’re broken.”

She gasped, a desperate gulp of air that threatened to become a howl. “I wanted… I only wanted to be hers! I only wanted us to be…”

More silence, and Lightning could almost imagine shushes and words of comfort ringing in her ears. She felt a momentary pang of jealously, and swallowed it back.

“I’m… I left the party at the Library. I’m behind the school, on the back steps of the Old South Church… yeah, could you please come… please bring a coat. I kinda left mine at the party and…” she hugged herself tightly. “Mom, I’m cold…”

Lightning wobbled on her feet, extending a hoof… it was like looking at Maddy back on the roof of the hospital, huddled up in a feeble attempt at warmth, outcast from a harsh world.

But…

She remembered Rio’s screams as her identity was dismantled, smashed like glass. And all because she, Lightning, had intervered, interfered…

Her hoof fell back to the pavement.

“It could be said,” mused Virgil, who had appeared out of nowhere. “That the truest test of a person is how they act when giving power. Few men, or mares, can fare enough adversity to show their true character, but give someone power, and almost anyone will show you their most honest face…”

“What does that mean…” hissed Lightning, cutting her blazing eyes down at his feet, not deigning to look him in the eye. In truth, she was glad that she had not jumped when he had suddenly spoken… then again, she half suspected that he had been hovering over her shoulder the whole time.

“It means whatever you choose it to mean. Suppose I observe instead on the fact that when given the power to walk in dreams, your first action was to run towards the sound of weeping…twice over.”

“Fat lot of good it did me,” was Lightning’s seething reply. “I jumped into Rio’s dream and gave her something to really cry about. Now she’s dying inside her own mind and I helped them do it…”

“You jumped into a mind bound in chains by a sinister artifice of intelligence and malice, whose only goal was to reconstruct that same mind into a false likeness,” Virgil answered sternly, hands clasped behind his back. “Don’t presume so much of yourself to assume the same fate would have befallen that woman without your involvement. That creature claiming to be cast in the name of Twilight Sparkle was entirely focused on achieving her ends, and all of its wit and power would have found a way.”

“Are you…” Lightning whispered, even as everything of Verity’s dream melted away to reveal that they were once again standing upon the deck of the Luna. “Are you sure of that, or are you just lying to make me feel better?”

“I was in life, and in death, regarded as an honest man, and I strive to maintain that goal,” admitted Virgil. “But that may be my hubris. But to assume everything that transgressed with Nepenthe’s mind was your fault alone is hubris, an arrogance born of self-loathing. A prideful shame!”

The deck of the tug trembled beneath them, and Verity’s sobs continued to echo from out of the fog, like a navigational beacon.

“But know this, young mare…” Virgil added, kneeling down to look Lightning in the eye. “You have been given power, and with it a duty…”

“I don’t want this power!” Lightning cried out, screaming to make her point felt. “I just want to go home, to go back to Equestria!”

“Is that really what you want?” Virgil asked.

“Yes! I want to go home, I want to be away from all the madness and monsters an–”

“Ah, see, that’s what you really want,” Virgil said. “Simplicity.”

“I…” Lightning puzzled over that. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

“But tell me. Would you really be happy with yourself if you managed to get there somehow and left all this behind? I am not ‘guilting’ you, as people say nowadays, but I doubt that you would come home with a clean conscience.”

Chest heaving, she peered out beyond the gunwales, hoping against hope that she could catch a glimpse of that green country she called home, catch a glimpse of her hometown in the skies, but saw only more fog. Sure. He was right. What would happen if somehow, she managed to return? Away from Maddy, away from a world on the brink of the end? She’d… she’d remember what would happen to those poor human children for the rest of her days, she’d carry the trauma of the past few hours with her for quite some time...

“Be a Wonderbolt… work the problem…” her own voice called out of the choking mists, and she forced herself to listen.

“I want to go home, yes…” she panted, steadying her breathing. “But, since I can’t… you’re right. I’ve got to settle for the next best thing. Keeping my promise, to keep Maddy safe. The most I can do is help out.”

“Then you have accepted a duty, and it falls to you to make use of everything in your power to make that come true…”

Virgil, still kneeling, extended a hand either to side of her and, eying Lightning as if to gauge her consent, reached out and touched her cutie marks. Beneath his fingers they seemed to glow, and Lightning shivered again, feeling that tingle, just as she had on the lighthouse jetty, and when diving off the hospital roof with Maddy on her back.

Virgil’s hand came away, cupping a representation of her cutie-mark in his hands, built from green coils of magical light shot through with golden sparks.

“Something powerful brought you to this world, Lightning Dust, and it has left its mark upon you. Yet it has not changed the substance of who you are, only shaded in that which was blank…”

Lightning glanced behind her and, after some scrutiny, admitted that he was right. The six stars on her haunches still retained their usual colours, but as a border surrounding new fill… so many new colours, thrown up by a lightning strike, a brilliant bolt of white fire.

“Look at it Lightning…” Virgil commanded, and she turned to look at the pocket of magic in his hand. “This is your magic, your life, your soul… see how it burns soft and brilliant by turns, feel its warmth, see its light...”

Entranced, she stepped nearer, reaching out to touch…

“Is this…” she hesitated. “Is this like the shimmer around a unicorn’s horn?”

“Yes… few are the pegasi who gain the chance to see their natural magic in this form. Fewer still are the ones who can wield it other than as an extension of their physical labours. But…” he paused and smiled knowingly, the light of her magic illuminating his old, dark eyes. “We are not in the physical realm anymore.”

He cupped his other hand, and into it, pooling up out of nothing, appeared a swirling nimbus of dark blue light, flecked with starry specks.

“Whatever brought you here, Lightning, touched your soul in such a way that you now have access to this dreaming plane, to wield your magic upon it as a unicorn might with her horn, to shape this space as surely as you might shape the clouds when awake.”

He pressed the crackling bubble of shadow and stars to the deck, and it spread, lines of magic running through the grain of the planks and the seams of the hull. Still further they ran, extending like oil across the water, into the fog.

“See Lightning…” he said softly. “See how far your soul might spread…”

He made a flick of his hands, and like water pouring down a dry gully, the light of her magic cascaded down through the circuit he had already formed, turning the dark-light magic to gold and teal.

Stunned, Lightning turned, seeing that same magic, her magic, race across the oily tendrils into the dark, burning the fog away to reveal...

“Oh, wow…” she breathed.

Islands, countless islands extending as far as could be seen. Only a few could be made out in detail, but on them rose cities and forests, mountains and plains. Defying the eye, defying geometry, each surrounded by black seas that beat upon them like a thousand hands upon a ragged drum.

“Each island a mind, each island a dream…” Virgil explained. “Each besieged by external malice, each a bastion against the nightmare pressing upon the shores of mankind, whether living or dead...”

“Dead?” she whispered, seeing how many of the islands were just that, dead: the trees stripped of leaves, the buildings gathering dust, populated only by ghosts. “The dreams of the dead?”

“Aye…” he answered, staring off into the dark. “What is remembered of the dead, echoes in the breach of time...”

For a second she wondered if there was a island for him too somewhere here, some monument to that man that had been ‘Virgil’...

But before she could process that, her eyes drifted to something far worse that the deathly isles: a darkness.

“What…” she whispered, paused, swallowed, tired again. “What are those…”

‘Those’ were darkened dreams on which no light shone, covered instead with black fumes. From each rose a crystalline trunk, shimmering and strangely beautiful, climbing and throwing off branches that joined with others of their kind, interweaving into an ethereal net that covered the sky.

“That,” answered Virgil, jaw set grimly. “Is an abomination upon this place, an unwanted artifice that binds countless shattered minds and bends them all to a depraved will… exploiting this place to a monster’s triumph, and giving back only fear....”

He pointed, and she saw that the black isles were the source of the dark waters that beat upon the dreaming shorelines, each outpouring a storm of filth and corruption into the sea...

“These minds are under attack, Lightning Dust. The war is being fought not just by the limbs and arms of those involved, but within their thoughts. And if their despair grows, in time it will consume them. They need aid, heroes to inspire them where martyrs and memories cannot. Only those who walk in dreams can aid them in their strife, and you now rank among that number.”

He held out his hand, in which that crackle of her magic still swirled, joined through him to everything else. “I do not know if you were brought her for a greater purpose, but I can see an opportunity for you to be the best mare you can be, to reclaim a destiny you’ve forgotten. All you need do, is embrace it…”

Lightning’s hoof just brushed the edge of her own magic, feeling it play over her like a soft breeze, like an autumn wind heralding the storm, warm and fearsome.

“If… if I do this…” she said, softly. “I can help people… help Maddy?”

“Yes you can…” he said. “You would not be a mere observer in dreams with only the merest grip upon events, but a participant. Consider that young woman drowning in self-pity upon the closed porch of a church. You could step back in and bestill her fears, implore her for the aid she can lend your cause…”

‘Convince Verity to help us... and help her through whatever’s hurting her at the same time?’

It was tempting, alluring. A deep part of her ached for Verity, and for Rio, a strange empathy for people she had known barely a day.

‘The only people you’ve met… the ones you’ve hurt, and the ones you need to survive…’

Could she really do something for them, for everyone she had met, if she accepted what Virgil was offering her? Secure safety, ease pains…

She could stop working the problem, and become a solution.

“If I do this, I’m committed,” she said, and Virgil frowned.

“Nothing will be forced of you, no service demanded by threats or violence. You were volunteered to this without your will yes, but I am not about to-”

“No,” she cut him off. “What I mean is, I’m committing myself. I don’t do anything by halves. If I’m accepting what you’re offering, then I’m going in full-dive, ‘wings out and winds behind me’…”

“The Wonderbolt Motto…” Virgil snorted, lips pursed. “An admirable ideal, but I wonder if you’ll be able to devote yourself as fully as you intend.”

“Just watch me!” Lightning declared, and drove her hoof into the ball of magic, reclaiming what was hers…

She’d expected it to be more dramatic. Some feeling of change, or fire in her limbs and soul. Maybe even a symbolic cluster of magic forming a horn on her brow.

But then, this wasn’t a transformation. It was simply accepting what had been with her all along. And so what Lightning felt, as the magic flowed off of Virgil’s hand and along her foreleg, was completeness, an inner warmth that settled in her chest like a comforter around her heart.

“I’ve not felt this way since… since the day I got my cutie mark…”

“An apt comparison,” chuckled Virgil. “For today you have embraced a new destiny, one forging by your own hoof.”

He rose up to his full height, and Lightning forced herself to stand tall as well, wings unfurled and a serious smile on her face.

“Where next then, Lightning Dust? Where are we heading.”

There was no hesitation in her voice as she answered. “Dartmouth Street and Public Alley 440…”

Headcount and Parade Rest were still debating the dangers of human warfare outside of the holding cell containing the Newfoal named ‘Trimurti’. Although the night had been clear a few hours ago, as the temperature continued to drop, a tick fog was beginning to roll in off of the coastline and marshlands.

Caught up in their arguments, neither of them noticed at first that they were no-longer alone, that three new participants had stepped out of the cell and into their conversation. Only two spoke at first, one speaking with fiery passion, and the other whispering cool logic.

Soon, the two guards were agreeing with everything the newcomers were saying, and decided that more of their fellows needed to hear the same argument.

When the third intruder gave them a order, they obeyed willingly.

“Yes Mam’, the barracks are right this way…”

Verity sobbed, only the overhang of the porch keeping the rain off of her. The colourised contact lenses she was wearing as part of her costume burned at her eyes, just as much as the tears welling up out of them.

Her iPhone sat in one limp hand, screen ticking away the minutes. In a few minutes, Mom would be here to pick her up and take her home. Take her away from all this pain.

“Astrid…” she repeated to herself. “Why’d you go… why!”

That was all she wanted, more than anything. To look her girlfri– to look Astrid in those amazing crystal-blue eyes and see for herself what was in them. The same callous cold she had felt in the text message, perhaps? Maybe sorrow, guilt?

Or best all of, love. Love and an apology.

“Please Astrid… please come back, please…”

It was at that moment that she heard footsteps in a puddle, oddly harsh and solid hoofsteps–

Footsteps approaching her. Someone come to laugh, to mock…

“Verity,” called a voice, and she looked up and saw.

A pair of brilliant blue eyes – too blue to be real – flashed up at her, and Lightning suddenly felt herself kicked in the head by a sense of vertigo.

“Whoa…” she staggered, holding a blue-sleeved hand to her head. “What was…that?”

Her words trailed off as she noticed the appendage now mounted on the end of her forelimb - her arm, but Verity’s next words cut the locomotive off that train of thought and left it freewheeling down the grade.

“You came back!” the girl exclaimed, springing to her feet. “You… but you said. Oh, I don’t care, you’re here!”

Lightning suddenly found herself wrapped up in a giant hug, and a pair of lips pressed to her own. They were a little rough, but that only helped set off sparks in her brain before the other figure broke off the kiss and stepped back, beaming with adoration and still holding her tightly.

“Say my name. C’mon ‘Kara’, tell me who I am…”

“Ver… Verity…” she replied, unable to process what was happening. She’d come here with a clear plan in mind, but Verity had suddenly sucked her into dream and cast her in a role. And who in the hay was ‘Kara’?

“Well duh, of course I’m Verity!” the other girl pouted, before looking down at her own weird costume. “What, don’t I look enough like ‘Avatar Korra’, the most bodacious babe ever animated?”

This… yeah, this was definitely the local version of Nightmare Night if people were dressing up. And it was definitely Verity gripping onto Lightning – the skin and hair were a perfect match for the mare’s coat and mane, even if the eyes were off.

But it hurt, physically ached, to see so much love and energy in someone from whom she’d seen only bitterness and hate.

“What happened to you?” Lightning whispered aloud, and ‘Verity’ scowled. Or was it another pout? Weirdly, her getup looked well-suited to bending out all manner of pouts.

“You stood me up…” she replied, breaking off contact. “What was all that shit about us being ‘a mistake’ and ‘wrong’...”

Verity turned away, stalking back towards her stoop, and hesitating for a second, Lightning caught a glimpse of herself in a puddle…

‘Why am I dressed like a human Power-Pony?’

It was a good enough match. Her long legs had been squeezed into a pair of knee-high red boots, which sported some weird open knee-guards. And if part of Verity’s costume had seemed reminiscent of a Wonderbolt jumpsuit, then the blue, long-sleeved leotard Lightning was now habitating was a dead-ringer, sleek and form-fitting…

She ran her fingers over a symbol spread out across her upper chest, and wondered what it meant.

‘An ‘S’ inside of a shield…yeah this is totally something out of Power Ponies or Justice Herd...’

But it was the cape that was the giveaway. Diamond-tailed and clasped at her neck, it was a deep red, bordered in gold. The trim matched her hair, which framed a stranger’s face in a shoulder-length bob…

“Well, ‘girlfriend’,” Verity snarked. “Don’t just stand there in the rain, getting your fancy duds soaked through…”

Struggling to ignore the unfamiliar features gazing back at her from the puddle, Lightning looked up at Verity, who was once again slouched on the steps of the porch. The other girl patted a spot beside her, indicating that Lightning should sit her plot down.

Warily, she did, and the two sat in hunched silence for a while. Lightning was not sure what was going through Verity’s mind, but her own was circling a single fact in screaming orbits…

‘Verity’s cast me in the role of a marefriend that dumped her!’

“That costume looks really good on you…” the other girl said at last. “Mom really did some amazing work there.”

“Uh… yeah…” Lightning answered. “Yours too Veri...an, sorry ah, ‘Korra’ was it?”

The response was something broadly similar to Verity’s usual bray, but not as harsh as what Lighting had witnessed in the past day. Rather than the combative, gravelly tones of the mare she knew, this girl’s voice was like sand. Gritty, but soft instead of rough.

“Yeah, Avatar Korra, ‘bridge between the spiritual and physical worlds’… I know, I’m such a nerd…”

The mocha-skinned youth reached over and flicked a lock of Lightning’s blonde hair. “If you’d have been willing to dye your hair black, I’d have gotten you in racing leathers and jodhpurs: that would have been a statement - Korrasami themselves turning up hand-in-hand at the party…”

Her hand suddenly fell away, as if stung.

“But Supergirl suits you...” Verity trailed off weakly. “The last daughter of Krypton… the little girl lost...”

Korrasami? Supergirl… Lightning guessed the last was the ‘identity’ of the character she was dressed as, but…

“The Avatar dating the Girl of Steel,” added Verity with a laugh. “Now that’s a power-couple!”

Argh, none of this made any sense. But by Verity’s own admission, she was the kind of girl who liked to dress herself and her partners up on Nightmare Night as superheroes and that kinda junk…

...and the kind of girl who, despite all her muscles and bravado, hugged her own knees and wept when stood up on a date.

The girl who she had come to comfort… and convince...

‘Work the problem, Dust. Work it…’

“So…” she said, cautiously. “How would, ah, ‘Supergirl’, go about apologising for… well, all of this…”

Verity’s affectionate smile faded, but lingered. “Well, she could start by telling me ‘why’ she ran off like she did…”

Ran off? Oh, that had to have hurt bad, especially if words like ‘mistake’ and ‘wrong’ had been used. Finding a decent response was a challenge; nothing like this fitted into Lightning’s own sphere of reference…

No, wait, there was. She’d run herself, hadn’t she. Well, ‘flown off’ would be a better descriptor, after seeing that headline blazoned across ‘The Cloudsdale Tribune’s’ sports supplement, only two mornings previously....

“Miss Dash-”

“That’s my mother or my aunt, just call me Rainbow Dash! Or R.D. Both work.”

“Alright. Today, we’re interviewing Rainbow Dash, daughter of Prism Flash, one of the most prominent citizens of Cloudsdale. Rainbow Dash, you’ve been making headlines since you were a filly, when you achieved the first sonic rainboom in modern history - and you’ve repeated that feat no less than three times! How do you do it?”

“Lots of flying practice, and just plain being awesome!”

“Do you think anypony could do a sonic rainboom?”

“No. I know what some of you little colts and fillies reading must be thinking… but you have to work hard at it. You gotta practice hard, you gotta be awesome… And you have to think the right thoughts when you do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Any professional flyer doesn’t think too hard about what they do. If you think too hard about your flight path through an obstacle course, you’re going to worry, then you crash. But if you’re awesome like me and you trust your instincts, then you’ll get through without a scratch! That’s how a sonic rainboom works. But, if you can do it, I’d love to see somepony give me a good challenge!”

“I’m sure that everypony reading this will be happy to learn that, no doubt they’ll be in demand for all the chic weddings. What would you say the proudest occasion you’ve done a sonic rainboom was?”

“Good question. Saving your friends, being awesome at a friend’s wedding in front of everypony in Canterlot, or proving some annoying jerks wrong and making history? I’d… screw it, they’re all awesome! It’s just breathtaking, being faster than near-anypony alive...”

“Is there anyone you have to credit for where you are today?”

“Sure. All my friends and fellow Elements from Ponyville! I’m nothing without them!”

Rainbow Dash. Oh, she’d heard the name bandied about, heard the gossip about the Best Young Flyers competition – and darn it all if the inability to stump up the admission fees for that event didn’t still sting – but seeing her ‘in the fur’ for the first time, so self-assured and confident, living the dream, had burned at Lightning.

The Element of Loyalty, Hero of the Realm, Mistress of the Sonic Rainboom.

It had been like looking into a mirror, and realising that she was the lesser reflection...

Yeah, she had run from that… run screaming, run towards Ponyville, determined to prove herself the better…

And then, with the idea of ‘running away’ blazing in her mind, she realised how to win Verity over...

“I was scared…” she blurted. “I was scared and all I could go was run… afraid of who I was, of what I was.”

“Astrid…” Verity replied, voice barely raised above a whisper. “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of!”

‘Astrid’... was that, ‘her’ name?

“I do! I’m… I’m selfish, and jerk, and a coward who’s afraid to be the best she can be… yeah, I ran away…”

She flashed a look at the other girl, seeing so much familiar there. The surety, the confidence, the euphoria of being. Some of those traits she’d seen in the caboose, and others in that interview...

Yeah, she knew those qualities all too well, saw them all the time in others, and never in herself. That was what she had coveted after all, what she had seen in Rai – in that other mare.

“Not like you… you’re strong, and tough…you know what you want and you charge for it...” Lightning continued, not sure if those words were directed at Verity or the Element of Loyalty. “What could I offer you? What do I bring?”

“Inspiration…” Verity leaned in close. “You inspire me to be better, Trid. To keep on trying to improve myself…”

They were words directed at somegirl else, a absentee who had not come back. They weren’t intended for her, and yet Lightning welcomed them.

“Please keep on trying…” she replied, putting as much power and conviction into her words as possible. “Be better than me Verity, don’t run away from people who need you.”

She reached around and grabbed Verity’s hand as the other girl reached again for her hair. “I mean it Verity. You know this is a dream, and that when you wake, you’ll be back on that train with a bunch of people totally unready to take on this war. You’re the only one who can get us through this…”

A brief stare-off, and then Verity laughed.

“I’ve got no clue what you’re talking about Trid, but alright… if you need me to be your strength, then sure, I’ve got your back…”

That same smirk, but full of vivacity and brash optimism, and not jaded bitterness. Sweet Luna, what had happened to Verity since then?! What… what could have made her so broken?!

And yet… it challenged Lightning, invited her to try herself against this warrior-girl. Then Verity’s hand came up to brush against her cheek. She felt her heart flutter, and her cheeks flush.

‘Oh… no… NO! What am I thinking…’

This wasn’t her dream. This had to be… had to be Verity’s remembered affections imposing themselves on this memory of ‘Astrid’ she had been forced into…

But there was a cute, tough, combatative girl touching her, looking into her eyes with such affection and teasing confidence, that she found herself filled with a sweet, yearning need.

‘In for a penny, in for a pound. She wants this, then fine. It’s her dream after all…’

Not holding back, she grabbed hold of Verity’s tunic and pulled their tips together, eliciting a surprised, excited gasp…

“Promise me, Verity!” she repeated in between kisses. “Promise me that you won’t abandon us the way you were…”

“I promise…” Verity replied, grabbing hold of Lightning in places she’d never posessed as a mare. “Anything you want Astrid, I’ll give. Just please don’t let this moment end…”

Her fingers did something, her teeth nibbling on parts of Lightning’s chest, and she responded with a gasp, digging her fingers deep into the other girl’s back…

“I’ll stay, Verity… I’ll never leave you…”

“NO!”

Verity suddenly lashed out with her fist, and Lightning found herself smacked in the jaw by what felt like a brick...

Thrown back across the street she smashed through a shop window. Lying among the rubble she looked up and saw that it had indeed been a brick.

“Astrid LEFT ME! She didn’t COME BACK! She NEVER came back!”

She had been hit by several bricks in fact, all hovering around the enraged Verity’s fist as if she had a power over them. Mentally, if not physically stunned, Lightning touched at her jaw. Strangely, there was no pain.

“This is a LIE!” the other girl roared, spinning around in a martial twirl and pulling the very raindrops out of the air, forming them into a javelin of ice. “All of this is a lie!”

She hurled the bolt of crystallized water, and Lightning instinctively held up a hand to ward off an inevitable skewering. But it only burst against her skin with no more pain than might be expected from a flicked pebble…

“I’m not lying, Verity!” she called out, managing to pull herself to her feet, swatting away hurled bricks and masonry with strength beyond her imagination.

“How…” she stammered. “How did I?”

And then she remember: she was dressed as a Power Pony.’

Lashing out in reflex, Lightning’s own fist punched into the storefront and shattered it to atoms from the inside. Jets of flame guttered from shattered pipes, and eyes glowing with a terrifying light, Verity waved her hands and conjured those flames into the likeness of a dragon.

It roared at her, bathing her in fire, and Lightning found herself laughing when she realised the inferno merely tickled.

‘Fly… you’re a pegasus dreaming she’s a hero! You’ve gotta be able to FLY!’

She wasn’t sure how she did it, but imagining her wings spreading, Lighting found herself rising off the ground; fists curled and cape fluttering in the thermals as she ascended effortlessly out of the flames.

“I’m not lying…” she repeated. “I only came to tell you the truth, Verity!”

The other girl snarled, eyes still blazing with white fire, and she made another series of motions with her hands, spinning a tornado out of empty air. Fire, water and shattered earth swept into its arms as it surrounded Lightning, tearing buildings apart and hurling their remains into her, slamming her about and dragging her down…

‘Buck this!’ she mentally roared, before inverting herself and accelerating down at the nexus of this element assault, Verity herself. ‘If she doesn’t want to talk, I’ll force her to!’

The impact was like the crash of two planets, hurling the two of them through the alley and into the wall of a red-brick building that backed onto it. Conjoined, they came to a crashing halt in a stairwell, a poster fluttering down on them.

Snowden International School, it read. ‘Senior’s Halloween Ball, Tonite at the Boston Public Library.’

The dogs in the kennels had fallen silent, seemingly quelled by the soft words of a golden-maned, bronze-coated Newfoal mare in armor.

“Hush now, my lil’ beauts…” Harvest soothered, flicking her mane back. “Mum’s come to make it alright…”

She stood on the far side of a chicken-wire fence from the six remaining animals, all of them looking more like an admixture of dog and wolf than any particular hybrid of canis lupus familiaris. They were large, powerful creatures, clearly bred for size and strength, and almost certainly illegal under pre-war laws… guards of such ferocity that the prison staff had left them to die rather than turn them loose when they fled the facility.

“How are they, Harvest?” asked Nepenthe, stepping in from corona of the prison spotlights, freshly reactivated. “Can you help them as we were helped?”

“I think we can, sis...” nickered Harvest, turning her blinded eyes briefly towards her sister-in-arms. “Chick, the ideas you’ve brought into my head, they were… just amazing!”

“I know…” was the reply, and the two Pretty Privates traded smiles that no-longer seemed so forced. “What do you need for them?”

“Meat.”

“Oh we have plenty of that,” Nepenthe tittered, before turning to whistle over her shoulder, summoning out of the dark fifteen or twenty equine shapes...empty-eyed and slack-jawed.

“None of the Newfoals have reacted particularly well to the Pretty Private formulae,” Nepenthe explained. “These are some of the worst. Everything inside them just kinda, ‘broke’.”

“Aww, the poor bitzers…” Harvest crooned, trotting up to the first of the brain-dead Newfoals and pressing a hoof to its eye, with no reaction. “Cryin’ shame, to come so close to being blessed, and then to end up nowt’ more than a brumby...”

“I know,” Nepenthe sighed, briefly pawing at the ground before looking back up, expression as cheery as her voice. “So, will these do for meat?”

“Oh I think so!” Harvest replied, trotting merrily up to the fence and eyeing the dogs within. “But I’ll need you to hit up that spiffy transmutation of yours.”

“Just point me in the right direction, sister…” Nepenthe smiled, as Harvest stomped a hoof to the ground, prompting a dozen thick vines to erupt from the gravel.

“Ugh… ain’t much dirt and soil to work with here. How could we have whacked this planet so bad?” she shuddered, as each vine swelled to the height of a single-story house before bending over, each wrapping their prehensile tip around the neck of a Newfoal.

“We’re better now, Harvest…” Nepenthe soothed, reaching over to pat the other mare on the shoulder. “We’ve been shown the error of our ways, and given the power to set things right.”

“That’s what I love about you Nepenthe…” Harvest grinned back. “You’re such a fine optimist.”

She stamped her hoof on the ground again, and the six vines whipped upright, elastic fibres springing them up in a neat flick, and ‘snap!’, six Newfoal corpses hung in the air. Six pieces of strange fruit hanging from a bough.

“Oh, I meant to do this for you…” Nepenthe said casually, stripping a few leaves from one vine and magically weaving them into a hairband, which she used to tie Harvest’s mane back into a practical-yet-elegant top-knot. “There, now your mane won’t keep getting in the way of your muzzle.”

“Aw, thanks Nep, that helps heaps!” Harvest replied, blindly tossing her head about to confirm that her curly mane had been contained. “Alright, time to feed the pups.”

Another pound of her hoof flicked the vines, tossing the raw ‘meat’ into the kennel enclosure.

“Come on you beauts, come get ya tucker…” cooed Harvest, and lulled by her words, the six wolfdogs padded in closer, eyes shining with hunger and saliva dripping from their muzzles.

They leaned in to take the first bite…

Only to yelp in fear and sudden terror as more vines burst from the ground, pinning them down and pressing each of them against a dead Newfoal.

“... come and take ya medicine…” she finished, as beside her, Nepenthe’s horn began to glow with her signature alchemical magic.

Howls filled the air, howls which within seconds became inequine brays…

The two figures lay in the dreaming rubble of a high-school stairwell, one pinning the other.

Verity, muscles straining, chest heaving and eyes blazing, looked up in seething fury at Lightning, who was holding her down without even breaking a sweat.

“You’re better than this, Verity Carter…” Lightning found herself saying with alien calm. “You’re a daughter of idealists who endured prejudice and hate, a devotee of champions and heroes. Is this what you want to be? A hateful, vengeful monster who turns away from people genuinely in need of your help, to chase your own vendettas?”

The words were her own, but where was this knowledge coming from…

“You worshipped death and violence as a member of the Human Liberation Front. You helped change the Harriet Thomas Foundation into what it is today, and then you joined a more righteous cause only because your old ‘family’ would no longer have you… and now that there’s a chance to achieve something meaningful right in front of you, something that could fucking well save the world, you’re going to take it instead of getting angry and not taking any damn responsibility!”

She pulled Verity a foot off the ground and slammed her down, repeatedly.

“I’m! Not! Letting! You! Run! Away!”

Verity’s arms, flopping at her side, suddenly came taught, and the metal bannister of the stairwell ripped from its mountings with a whipping crack, catching Lightning around the throat and tearing her away from Verity. Hurled back against the wall she found herself pinned by the length of iron, with further bands of brick and cement and steel pinning her other limbs.

“How dare you…” growled the girl, springing onto her feet with gracile ease, aided by a buffeting jet of air. “How dare you come in here and lecture me!”

Eyes glowing, she reached out for Lightning and pushed her palm against the other girl’s head.

“I’ll take everything! Everything you are!”

Her eyes flashed, and Lightning felt something inside of her bend. Bend! The pegausus whipped back here head, screaming.

Another flash, catching both of them by surprise… and then the world smashed apart, borne away on tendrils of midnight light dappled with stars. Lightning found herself falling, beside Verity.

But this was a different Verity, dressed differently, tumbling back off a catwalk as a familiar cream mare watched on with madly rolling eyes...

“You pushed too hard, young mare…” chided Virgil, plummeting straight down beside them, a hand on Verity’s brow. He looked terribly pale and frail, almost as much a ghost as he claimed to be. “She almost woke up. Fool on me, for prodding me into it so quickly…”

“You smashed it apart?” Lightning questioned. “You broke us out of that dream before she could… hurt me?”

Her nodded silently. Under his touch, Verity had fallen still in this endless freefall, eyes half-lidded, arms hanging loose.

“That…” Lightning asked, pushing more of her questions forward. “That wasn’t a dream, was it? It was too detailed.”

“No, it was a memory. I was foolish to have not realised sooner.” His face twisted into anger as he regarded Verity. “I’ve reset her sleep cycle; with luck, she’ll not remember any of that. But what comes next, will depend entirely upon yourself…”

He was fading rapidly now, as frail as mist.

“... I’ve not the strength to exert myself again tonight. Fare thee well, Lightning Dust. But I warn you: do not delve too deep into the minds of others. You will not like what you find.”

He vanished into the slipstream, and Verity’s eyes fluttered open. Lightning reached out a hand to call to her and–

Smash

That one simple word, which changed everything.

Body torn, struck through with glass, screaming in pain, she crashed into a soft bed of vegetation, flailing in agony as millions of blue spores filled the air, filled her lungs and eyes and wounds.

They burned like acid, burned away everything that she was… and then she was crawling, crawling and screaming out of the ruined greenhouse, panicking and howling as fur crawled up her arms…

All while a tall, bearded high-cheekboned human with a colossal pistol in his hands pointed at her and laughed, laughed, laughed…

“You’re no daughter of mine!” roared a voice. Lightning spun, and saw Verity, now a mare, tied up in a hospital bed. Around it paced two figures, the bearded man with the pistol – his face bearing such an expression of rage that it made him look almost like a gargoyle-like – and a darker-skinned man, whose eyes were full of hatred.

“Dad!” Verity begged. “Don’t leave me… please, I’m still your daughter!”

“You’re no daughter of mine!” snapped back the raging man, oblivious to her plight. “You’re no daughter of mine!”

“Dad!” she wailed, reaching out with a bandaged hoof, desperate cries becoming screams as he turned away. “DAD!”

As her father’s figure vanished into the night, she turned to the man.

“Don’t leave me here. Please Kraber, don’t leave me alone, I’ll lose myself on my own…”

“You’re already lost,” he sneered. “You’re another Geldo now, but you never fokkin changed…this is what you always were inside, and it’s fokkin’ hilarious!”

“I’m not!” she reached out and grabbed him. “Don’t go, PLEASE!”

Eyes blazing he lashed out, knocking her back off the bed, off the catwalk, through the greenhouse, against the wet deck of a jetty.

“Hope you enjoy your new hooves!” he yelled, climbing aboard a crowded boat and pulling away towards a distant, burning shoreline, leaving her alone.

“Everyone leaves me…” she whimpered, struggling to pull herself to her feet. “Everyone…”

“I’m here Verity…” crooned another voice, a loving, maternal voice. “I’m here…”

“Mom?” Verity groaned, reaching back with one hoof… only for it to land on another…

“I’m here!” giggled the Newfoal stallion who had materialised behind her. “I’m here for you, Verity! Come be with me!”

“No!” the mare-who-was-now-a-girl screamed, trying to back-peddle off the jetty, but finding herself fastened down on another bed. “You’re not my mother! You’re not my mother!”

“No, I’m not…” answered the stallion, posed majestically in the open door of an operating theatre, as Verity fought against the wrist and ankle-restraints pinning her. “I was wrong to think I could ever be a mare… deluded to believe surgery and adoption could make me a mother....”

“That’s not true! You raised me! You loved me! I am YOUR daughter!”

Two earth pony mares watched on. A pink monster who laughed at the sight of it all, and her monochrome sister, gazing on in silent horror.

“Fix her!” Verity screamed at them. “Something went wrong, I’m begging you, please FIX HER!”

“Oh, but we did!” rejoiced the pink atrocity. “We made him all better, made him what he was born to be! You silly humans are so yucky and twisted, but we straightened him out, took away everything he hated about himself and made him happy!”

“You promised me!” Verity screamed at the other mare. “You promised me, Maud! Promised me she’d be a mare! That she and Dad could have foals, could grow our family!”

“I… I…” the shocked mare gaped, before Pinkie whirled on her too.

“Don’t tell me you began to believe those human lies too, Maudie? The potion doesn’t work that way, silly-filly! You can’t choose what you become, can’t choose your cutie-mark; your destiny was chosen for you before you were born!”

Lightning watched on too, palms and back against a wall, heart racing. This was nothing like Mercy’s broken ideals, or Rio’s tragic and misguided faith.

“This is evil…” she whispered aloud. “Equestrian evil…”

“You’re a dream, Verity…” the Newfoal said serenely, human features flashing over its face as the lighting flickered nightmarishly. Maud and Pinkie faded away into the dark, leaving just a tied-down girl, and the thing had been her mother, hovering over her bed. “A beautiful dream that could never come true for me… now I’ve got a new dream, a better dream.”

“Don’t go Mom!” Verity screamed again. “Don’t leave me! Fight it please, FIGHT IT!”

“Oh, I fought all my life, first as Jason, then as Jazmin…” crooned the stallion. “Fought to deny the destiny of my birth… but I’ve finally been fixed, I’ve finally surrendered to the truth...”

Smiling, the Newfoal held out a phial of potion towards Verity, hooking a hoof into her jaw to force her mouth open. “I’m New Bloom now, and I want to be your father, my little pony!”

“No!” Lightning growled, feeling something inside her break. Unable to watch on any more, she reached out, grabbed the Newfoal’s head in her superhumanly strong hands, and twisted.

The dose of potion fell to the floor, shattering on the cobblestones, bleeding purple death into a puddle.

The rain came down again, slicking Lightning’s hair across her shoulders, and soaking into her cape as she once more found herself standing before a crying girl in a Halloween costume, huddled on the porch of a closed church.

“Don’t leave me…” Verity sobbed, holding onto herself when no-one else would. “Please don’t leave me…”

“Oh, Verity…” Lightning whispered, suddenly comprehending some of the other girl’s depth of pain. “I’m so sorry…”

With no more words, she crossed over to the other girl, sat down and took her into her arms, hugging her tight until her sobs quietened.

“Astrid? Is that you?”

“I’m sorry, Verity…” she repeated again. “I was so scared that I did something dumb… I hurt you… but we need you, need all that strength… need you to survive…”

She brought a hand up to the other girl’s head and tried to will something to happen.

“Sleep… sleep peaceful tonight… forget this ever happened... “

She felt a tingle, as if her hooves were shaping clouds. Around them, the rain began to cease, creating a spreading pocket of calm...

“Forget the rage, and hate, and pain…”

Verity turned to look at her, a pleading in her eyes, the same yearning for completeness and comfort that Lightning had longed for since arriving on this crazy world.

“Astrid… don’t leave me again… please let this be real...”

“I...I can’t Verity, I can’t stay for you… and I’m sorry…”

Their foreheads came together, their lips brushed…

“Please?” Verity whispered. “Just one, last, time?”

And for a second, just when Lightning was ready to close her eyes and gave into what Verity wanted, what they both wanted, she saw someone else standing at the mouth of the alley, where the rain still fell.

‘Virgil?’ she whispered.

No, it wasn’t. It was a human figure, a woman. She was dark-haired and pale-skinned, a strong, masculine chin and a pair of gentle eyes framing a sad smile. Raindrops splattered on her coat, and a second jacket was carried in her arms. Making eye contact once with Lightning, still wearing her sadness in the guise of happiness, she nodded, before fading away with the last curtain of rain…

“Wake up, it’s time,”

“Agh!” Lightning kicked out, nearly knocking Maddy awake as she did. A figure hovered over her, face cold and blue in the uplight of a glowing electrical device, and for a second she feared that the Verity from the dream had somehow followed her into the waking world…

“Tess…” she said, recognising her waker. “What is it?”

“It’s time for your watch,” the human girl replied, before stepping away and beckoning for Lightning to follow. There were damp spots on her cheeks, and for a second Lightning wondered if she had been crying. “And my turn to sleep…”

Carefully disentangling herself from Maddy, Lightning rolled out of the bunk. Instead of waking the other sleepers with the clop of her hooves, she lightly fluttered her wings and held herself off the ground, producing only a slight downdraft as she joined Tess beside the stove and the dining nook, touching down on one of the benches to put them at the same eye-level.

“Is there anything I need to know?” she asked, suddenly feeling more concerned about braving the dangers outside than the perils of her dreams. “What do I have to do?”

Tess was groggily running a finger around the inside of the saucepan Maddy had prepared cocoa in, wiping it clean and then licking off the residue.

“Keep an eye out for attackers…” she answered. “Or spies, I dunno.”

She held up a hand, dangling the keys to the locomotive’s cab, and a short, fat lever that hung on the keychain.

“If you see something, lock yourself inside ‘82’ and push this lever into the socket marked ‘reverser’... your wings have the dexterity for that right?”

Lightning nodded.

“Cool… I already took the handbrake off, but we’re on level track so that’s okay. If whatever you see attacks us, shove the reverser into ‘forward’, pull the two levers marked ‘brake’ all the back to release them, and then advance the throttle a little, but not too fast on these rotten rails… once we’re moving, blow the horn to wake the rest of us up…”

“You’ve had time to plan this, haven’t you?” Lightning quizzed her, almost amused at the detail into which Tess had planned out an escape, and the fact that the girl now had chocolate smeared around your mouth.

“Well, I had ninety minutes to kill,” Tess shrugged, striking a match and touching it to a lamp. “And Verity was right, we needed a contingency plan…”

“Yeah, Verity was right…” Lightning murmured, glancing back towards the bunkbeds. “About a lot of things…”

“What were you doing in that time?” Tess asked.

“Sleeping…” she answered, still looking towards two of the three occupied bunks, Maddy below and Verity above. “I guess…”

“Well,” Tess sighed, and as Lightning’s eyesight adjusted she could see the red rings around the human girl’s eyes. Red with tears or exhaustion, she could not tell. “Now it’s my turn to sleep…”

“Tess…” Lightning started, holding out a hoof to stop her. “Or… uh, Driver Jones, I dunno… can I ask you for something?”

The girl paused and laughed. “Tess is fine. Driver Jones was my granddad Edwin. What do you need…”

“Could you, please, sleep with Maddy tonight?” Lightning asked, keeping her tone as neutral as possible.

Tess, who was rinsing her hands in the sink, did not answer until she had turned around and grabbed a towel from the rack. Her lips pursed, and her jaw clenched briefly as she rubbed the ragged scrap of cloth over her hands.

“Give me a good reason to…” she said at last, seemingly struggling to keep her own voice calm. “I know she’s a kid, but the stuff she’s done, the stuff she said… she’s a Rebirther! Give me one good reason why I should comfort her…”

The flickering oil-lamp divided them.

“You loved your family, right?” Lightning asked, feeling a wan smile tug at her cheeks, resisting the urge to glance at Verity again. “Loved that grandpa of yours?”

“Granddad Edwin, yeah...”

“Tell me one thing about him, and I’ll tell you why Maddy deserves a little sympathy,” Lightning replied.

Still massaging the towel in her hands Tess snorted to herself. “Alright...he was a storyteller…”

“Well give me more to work with than just that…” Lightning rolled her eyes. “What kinda stories?”

They shared another glance, and Tess shrugged, and boosted herself up onto the edge of the worksurface.

“Granddad… heh, ‘Grampa Edwin’, looked after me when my Mum and Dad first separated… and he used to tell me these amazing stories, about his days when he worked on the railways. Silly, make believe stuff, about how his engine used to talk to him by blowing its whistle, and how he befriended a dragon and carried it around in the firebox… fairytales dressed up in iron and steam, but to a kid terrified about Mum and Dad not being together any more, well those are the kind of stories you want to hear - simple things about friendship and happiness and circus elephants, choirs singing in the valleys and the pithead wheels turning on the hillsides… the stuff Wales was made of, ‘once upon a time’...”

Tess’s eyes had misted over, the light of the lamp shimmering in them as she gazed back into the past. Then she, blinked, and with the spell broken, those same eyes hardened over.

“He’s dead now. All of my family are dead.”

“And so’s Maddy’s…” Lightning responded softly. “I don’t know what kind of life she’s had, Tess, but I bet she never had a grandpa like yours for her when she was crying and all alone. The only people who were there for her are those Rebirthers… not her fault they became her family…”

She waved a wing towards the bunks. “She’s just like you Tess, an orphan. And Verity’s the same way… and I’m… well, I guess right now I’m the last daughter of Equestria, or at least the last daughter of the Equestria I called home…”

“We’re all alone, unless we come together, right?” Tess asked wryly. “Huh, was that there your grand argument?”

“You argued not to differently a few hours ago…”

“I argued that we should pretend to like one another, or at least act like people that know each other,” Tess answered, trailing off.

She unlaced her boots and tossed them into the corner, and Lightning wrinkled her nose at the stench arising from them.

“You don’t like that smell?” Tess asked, flexing her feet to restore circulation. “That’s the smell of living in the same doubled-up pair of socks for a month. You do not want to sniff my smalls… I’ve not had a shower in about two weeks, so my B.O could be used by Kagan Burakgazi as a chemical weapon, and I cut my hair with a pocket-knife. I sleep in boxcars and locomotive cabs. Half the insulation I’ve got against the cold comes from the grease and loco-grime I’ve picked up along the way. I wear gloves all the time because my hands are so dried-out from constantly handling paraffin and diesel, that the skin on my knuckles cracks every time I make a fist…”

Still perched on the sink, she pulled off her combat-vest, hoodie and overalls to reveal arms and legs covered in bruises, plasters and scars. Only a pair of boxer-shorts and a T-shirt hid her modesty.

“We’re at war, Lightning Dust. No one’s going to hug us and make it go away. And Maddy was aligned with the most despised people on the planet. Not just because of their ideology, but because they suffer nowhere near as much as the people they victimise, thanks to their Imperial friends keeping them supplied with food, clothes and an army of medics. She was crying earlier, because compared to most of us, this war’s been easy for her.”

Wincing, she pulled at a bit of thread sticking out of one nasty cut, some stitches that were just beginning to be forced out by the healing flesh.

“This isn’t one of Grandpa’s stories. It’s real and dirty and nasty, and so are most of the people in this world… you can’t just butt in and fix that with a few pretty words and a smile – ah, shit!”

She bit her lip hard enough to produce blood as she gingerly tugged out the last stitch.

“But fuck it, sure, I’ll hug the little idiot tonight if it helps her sleep better, because Mum, Dad and Grandpa Edwin would want me to. And in the morning, she can get the same talk I just gave you…”

“Thanks…” Lightning whispered. “She wanted to talk to you anyway, to try and understand.”

Tess exhaled, pushing back her hair to reveal her tired, over-aged eyes. “Well, I guess you understand better now.”

Then, tossing her bags down on the bench, and with her gun carried in one hand, the filthy, haggard girl put her back to Lightning and walked towards the bunks. With her boots off, Lightning could see she walked with a limp.

“Thanks, Tess…”

“What for?” the human asked, easing herself in with Maddy.

Lightning watched in silence as she shoved the gun under the pillow and hauled the blanket over them both. She didn’t know. The lost, stray pegasus had nothing to say.

Later, sitting out on top of the train’s purring locomotive, she mulled over what Tess had said, about pretty words and smiles.

That was what she had offered Maddy, a comforting hug and a listening ear. And to Verity as well… It was what Virgil had offered her, a chance to help millions, but only in their dreams…

Did dreams count for anything in a world like this? What did people value more, a peaceful night’s sleep, or the certainty of being alive at the end of day? Was it a kindness to lend sweet dreams, or a cruel, taunting joy that was whipped away at first light?

But she’d helped, hadn’t she? Eased away all the poisonous emotions that had hardened Verity Carter to the world. If she woke up to see everything in a new light, saw how much she was needed, and volunteered to stay on… Well, that counted as a win, surely? A contribution.

A good deed done.

Yet all Lighting could see in her mind’s eye was the sad smile on that odd woman’s face as she faded out of that alleyway dreamscape. Dwelling on that, and on how Verity had reacted before Virgil intervened, it wasn’t the night she dreaded anymore.

Now it was the morning, and what it would bring.

Four hours later, the pump siphoning fuel from #8888 into #9782’s tanks ran dry, sucking on air. Hearing it automatically shut itself down, Lightning jumped off of the roof to disconnect the lines and roll them up. Then, with no small difficulty, she loaded the equipment back onto the train. Tess hadn’t asked her to do any of this, but she felt an obligation to contribute something… real.

Finishing those tasks, she stood atop the train, basking in the first breaths of a morning breeze which blew across her mane and feathers. She could hear the faint and distant cry of birdsong. The night was still pitch black, but the long-neglected weathermare inside of her knew what those clues meant. Dawn was coming.

Jewelup woke not long before first light, her long-abused body-clock responding to a military schedule beaten into her during her stationing with the Salvation Army. Immediately, she realised something was wrong. Instead of the sounds of troops mustering for the dawn parade, of clattering metal and trampling hooves, she heard only a hushed silence.

She was out of the bed in a flash, still wet from her exertions with Nepenthe but not caring. Heaving, she scrambled for the window and peered down on what would have been the prison’s exercise yard. Expecting to see the tents and huts of the Newfoal shanty town, to see the occupants mulling around like sheep, she pressed her face to the glass. And screamed.

Without even realising it, she was in motion, running and scrambling through the corridors, carrying nothing but her saddlebags. The 8888’s key and reverser-lever dangled from their ring, gripped tight in her mouth.

She had to flee, had to find the Pretty Privates and get them away from this, like she should have in the night....

What she had seen from that window were bodies. The bodies of at least fifty blank-flanked Newfoals laid out in neat rows on the exercise yard, every one of their necks broken so viciously that their chins touched their spines.

Flash Sentry had gone mad, and slaughtered the creatures he despised! That was the only answer, it had to be…

Coming upon a staircase, she heard the murmur of voices below.

“I miss Thunder Spree…” said a stallion. “He was a good soldier. I wish he could be here with us now… now that we’re taking the fight to the traitors...”

“Couldn’t agree with you more, Headcount,” answered a mare. “What happened to him?”

“The humans got him… butchered him…”

“Which faction were they with?”

“Does it even matter, Rest? The filthy monkeys are all going to die now… and the traitors too. They’ll all die, and then Thunder Spree can rest in peace.”

“You’re not concerned about those superweapons anymore?”

“You heard Trimurti’s arguments, you were right there with me… we’ve got our own superweapons now, and we need to help make as many as possible, help them perfect themselves…”

“Headcount…”

“Yes, Rest?”

“You saw what happened when they gave the Pretty Private potion to the Newfoals… if they offered it to you, would you take it?”

“Not if it meant becoming like those animals outside...”

“But if they did perfect it, would you want to be a Pretty Private?”

“If the Lady Nepenthe asked me to, then yes, yes I would…”

“Yeah, me too…”

Jewelup trembled, waiting for them to walk away. Despite the calmness of their words, the two ponies had sounded terrified… and awestruck.

Ponies administering the potion to Newfoals? Forcing a second dose on them? That, that was an abomination. A life only needed to be reformed once. To demand a second pass at the process was to imply that the system, Her Majesty’s system, was defective.

“Nepenthe…” she whispered to herself. “Nepenthe’s the one doing this.”

But it couldn’t be. This had to be a mistake. All she needed to do was find Nepenthe, and ask… that’s to say, order her to explain herself. She’d take orders, right?

No, she needed to find Flash Sentry, to make it official. Turning around, she went the other way, towards where Flash was billeted.

He wasn’t there. Nor was he in his office, or in the administration wing. So he had to be outside somewhere, on the prison grounds.

Keeping herself to the shadows, Jewelup excited out into daylight, on the far side of the compound, beside the prison workshops, which shielded her from the main courtyards.

‘The bordello,’ she thought in disgust, before briefly glancing through the window, hoping at least that whatever had happened in the night had closed this deplorable little establishment…

“Celestia above…”

She had found Flash Sentry. Chained to the floor, a delirious grin on his face and a glazed look in his eyes, facing up towards the ceiling. Several other stallions and mares – each of which she recognised as the ones who had been making a few bits on the side by whoring out the Newfoal population – were chained down beside him, all smiling in the same way as him.

Well, except for the ones who had a Newfoal sitting on their faces, groaning and crying out as the ponies beneath them worked away with their mouths and tongues.

A mare stepped in, a Newfoal teen Jewelup recognised from one of her self-development classes.

“Tea Cosy”, she whispered to herself, remembering a grinning, clumsy waif who was scarcely able to carry a serving-tray without tripping up. As far as Newfoals went she had been adorable, though Jewelup feared for how she’d fare, even as a servant. There were cruel masters out there that wouldn’t be nearly as kind, and might beat her for being a Newfoal… or just cause they knew she’d take it. Newfoals seemed to bring out the worst in so many ponies and humans, after all.

This mare, was not the Tea Cosy she knew. Her steps and motions were mechanically precise, and she now wore a suit of standard EUP armour with such poise that it almost appeared she had been poured into it. Fresh muscle coiled under her coat like oaken timbers, and her stubby horn had gained at least three inches in length.

‘Another Pretty Private?’ Jewelup wondered, but then discarded that thought. Tea Cosy might have been changed, but there was something about her appearance, something in the eyes, that set her apart from the four mares who had arrived last night.

“Hello there, toy!” Tea Cosy announced cheerily, standing over Flash Sentry. “How does it feel to be on the bottom?”

“Wonderful, m’lady!” Flash nodded eagerly. “How can toy help you today?”

Tea Cosy didn’t answer, but instead turned around and hoisted her tail, lowering herself down until Flash’s outstretched tongue–

Jewelup jerked away, shocked.

“What… what the buck is going on here!?”

And then she saw her own face reflected in the mirror, and started. The regal mare from last night looked back at her, her hair tied up, just the way Nepenthe had left it…

The tiara, her tiara, shone proudly on her brow. Silver, set with an amethyst stone… except last night, it had been golden, inlaid with a garnet.

“How didn’t I notice this,” she whispered. “Why? I must have felt it on my forehead between waking up and–”

She reached up to remove it, and then stopped the second her hooftip made contact with the metal. Jewelup blinked, feeling a sudden sense of disorientation.

“What was I doing,” she whispered, lowering her hoof and staring at it. She had been reaching up for… for something? To brush her mane back, no, that couldn’t be .

Another glance through the window confirmed that Flash Sentry was still busy giving Tea Cosy a truly disgusting welcome to Equestria, and shuddering in revulsion, Jewelup fled.

Back into the shadows, back into the building, back through administration and out through the front doors, onto the open hillside.

‘The Pretty Privates did this… they’ve gone mad!’

The tiny, abandoned community of Dorchester lay below her, wreathed in starlight mist, and beyond that, cutting across the marshlands, was the railroad line.

‘I’ve gotta get out of here!’ she decided, breaking into a gallop. ‘Gotta get to the train, get away, and report all of this madness!’

She hoped, right then and there, that the mythical ‘Kraber’s Reaper’ had been real. Because if one human and one unicorn could take something like that down, then maybe, just maybe, there was hope for her, and these things weren’t unstoppable.

Otherwise, the alternative was to call for Celestia’s Sword. And she didn’t know if summoning that mare to put down this rebellion was a less frightening prospect.

Her keyring jangled in her mouth, glinting softly in the pre-dawn light as she sprinted down through the town and hit the railroad line, backtracking towards the spur on which the 8888 was hidden. She was safe at last.

…that was when she heard the barking of hounds on her tail.

Verity had been lying in the bunk for an hour, watching the first predawn rays of light eek in through the caboose windows, banishing the dark. One of her forehooves rested on her forehead. If she still had fingers, she would have been flexing them.

She liked this, liked the feel of bed sheets beneath her, and positively loved the warmth of the stove and the smell of woodsmoke. Sleep had been a blessing. She wasn’t sure what she had dreamt about, but she felt… lighter, freer. Unbidden, a smile grew upon her muzzle.

From beneath she heard an alarm squeak, and heard somebody stir.

“Urgh…”

Verity rolled to the edge of her bunk and popped her head over. Tess, hair in her mouth, stirred groggily, looking sick. The mare was unable to stifle a laugh at the sight of the human girl, with a bed dose of bed-head, hugging onto an equally oblivious Maddy as if she was a teddy bear.

As she laughed to herself, a strange feeling washed over her. She wasn’t sure if she’d felt it the night before when arguing over the map, buried under her fury, but it was here now.

Guilt. She was abandoning these stupid, soft people to go her own way. Leaving them to find their hapless way across a nation while she hunted Maud…

‘I’m leaving them to run away, like Mom did to me that night… she never showed. If Astrid hadn’t come back...’

Astrid, she realised. That was who she had been dreaming about. Sweet, flawed Astrid. Cruel enough to break up with her, kind enough to come back and at least say why...

That, that was a painful night to remember. She barely recalled going back to the party, but she must have done, after Astrid came back and apologised… but still broke up with her…

And Mom. Mom never appeared. Never came to get her like she had promised on the phone.

Left her in the rain.

Still looking down on the two sleeping girls, Verity felt a scowl crawl into the corners of her lips…

!!BANG!! The entire caboose lurched as the train abruptly started off, shambling forward down the track, couplings banging and axles shaking.

Verity saw Tess’s eyes fly open, and within seconds the two of them were out of their bunks, grabbing hold of clothes and weapons.

“The fuck?!” she found herself yelling.

Bwaaaarm!, 9782’s horn blared from up front.

“Lighting!” Tess shouted back. “That’s the signal we agreed on!”

“The signal for what!”

“That we’re under attack!” the train’s conductor and engineer called out, stuffing her Beretta into the elasticated waistband of her shorts and grabbing hold of a radio.

“Caboose to Head End, Caboose to Head End! Come in?”

No reply. As Tess tried again to raise the cab, Verity slapped on her battle-saddle and ratcheted the slides.

“They’ve come for me!” laughed Prism Flash from his own bunk. “Equestria! And they’ve come for you!”

“Shut up!” she snapped, grabbing hold of the bunk’s curtain and drawing it closed, shutting him out. The entire caboose was rattling and shaking now as the train accelerated down the neglected spur, and nobody was enjoying the ride.

“What’s happening?” Maddy pleaded, pulling the bedsheets up around her. “Where’s Lightning, what’s going on?”

“It’s alright, it’s okay…” Verity soothed as best she could, resting a hoof on the child’s leg. “We’ll take care of it, okay…”

“Hello, is that you guys?” crackled Lightning’s voice from the radio. “Am I working this thing right?”

“Lightning!” Tess shouted back, right as the caboose lurched and nearly threw her to the floor. “Lightning, you’ve got to slow down, we’ll wreck going anything above jogging speed on this track…”

“Ah, that’s not going to happen,” was Lightning’s slightly-garbled reply. “If we slow down, they’re gonna get us…”

“Who are!?”

“The Newfoals. There’s an entire army of Newfoals chasing some mare down the line towards us! And I–”

Lightning paused suddenly, and Tess used that silence to shout off another reply. “Sit tight, I’m coming forward…”

“Oh, BUCK! How do you make it go faster! I recognize that one! Nepenthe!”

Verity’s head snapped around at that. The mare from the hardware store, here? How!?

“R…” Maddy stammered, also in recognition. “Rio’s here!? NO!”

Terrified, the girl crawled back into the corner of her bunk, eyes suddenly bright with fear as she tried to make herself seem small and unnoticeable.

“Don’t let her get me, please don’t let her find me!”

Verity muttered more calming words, but inside she was seething.

‘Yeah,’ she swore to herself. ‘I’m not abandoning these people. I’m not going to betray them like Mom did to me...’

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Notes:

And here we have it, the conclusion to this block.

Originally these three chapters were a single wall of text, but wiser minds prevailled. I will admit that I am quite pleased with the mini-story running through them.

And now the many truths about Verity's past are out in the open. Was this what you guys expected?

The Double Hook

“Masquerade! Paper faces on parade …
Masquerade! Hide your face, so the world will never find you!
Masquerade! Every face a different shade ...
Masquerade! Look around - there's another mask behind you!
Flash of mauve, splash of puce ...
Fool and king, ghoul and ghost ...
Green and black, queen and priest ...
Trace of rouge, face of beast ...
Faces ... take your turn, take a ride
on the merry-go-round ... in an inhuman race …”
‘Masquerade’, from The Phantom Of The Opera

“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Harriet Tubman

Manehatten, the Solar Empire. One week ago.

The Salle de Chevaux was Manehattan’s premier house of music. Designed by the renowned Gallopican architect Marque Brillante, it was not even half a century old, and yet since its dedication had borne the mare’s share of Equestria’s great premiere events. There was something to Brillante’s design, not merely architecturally splendid but acoustically perfect, that had won it the acclaim of all of Equus.

That was before the war, of course. Tonight a special performance had been arranged, allegedly as a fundraiser for colts and fillies orphaned by Equestria’s ‘Righteous Crusade’ against Earth, and it was only right and proper that Brillante’s grandson should be among the guests. Even if said grandson was in disguise, and attending under an assumed name.

Dressed in a fitted tuxedo, his mane and tail expertly groomed to conceal their usual curls, Cheese Sandwich struggled to hide his sneer as he approached the opera house along the waterfront boulevard. Despite his troubled childhood, he had always appreciated a trip to ‘Grand-Père's Salle’ with his parents, and had shared in some of those gala premieres. He had witnessed first hand Tchaiklopsky’s ‘Couronne de Platine’, as performed by the Stalliongrad Ballet in their first international tour, and sat entranced as Horns Millions conducted the Canterlot Symphony through a sublime arrangement of Gustav Hoist’s ‘Winds Suite’ that had reduced the audience to tears.

Tonight’s event, by comparison, was an insult. If art was considered food for thought, then the scheduled performance could be compared to the finest dinner plates being used to serve formless, offensively tasteless slop. The merest glimpse at the banner strung across the Salle’s facade told the discerning connoisseur all they needed to know…

“Performed in full, my flank!” he heard a society mare snort. “The entire allure of La Sirene is that it is unfinished! The Maestro died before he could complete the work! This is just another crass reinterpretation, no different than any other!”

Well, it wasn’t quite the same, but Cheese felt his heart go out to the stranger, glad that someone shared his feelings on the matter. Poochini, perhaps the greatest operatic composer ever gifted to Equus, had laboured on La Sirene for the final five years of his life. What should have been a simple operetta had bloomed into a three hour opus, as if the canine artist had been trying to pour his very soul into the piece. Tragically, Poochini died with the final twenty minutes of the score committed to nothing but his memory, and the libretto containing no words for the truncated fourth act.

As a mark of respect for the masterly old dog, in over a hundred years nopony had ever tried to complete the score or even compose lyrics to be set to the fourth act. Instead an entire artform had developed around interpreting the mysteries of the piece, with each director crafting their own vision of how to conclude the narrative, with nothing as their guide beyond the talents of their ballet and Poochini’s stunning orchestrations. It was perhaps the greatest oxymoron - an opera that for its final thirty minutes contained no singing.

Now, somepony well-placed within Canterlot claimed to have ‘discovered’ Poochini’s secret diaries, and from them assembled what was allegedly the ‘definitive’ ending to La Sirene. It was an act of such tasteless arrogance that it could make anypony’s head spin, and, from a certain point of view, one could say that it was a nail in the coffin for yet another bastion of expression. From what he had gathered through the Equestrian Resistance, Cheese had some extremely dark suspicions as to what form that ending would take, and who might have commissioned it…

‘Figures that of all the unfinished works the Palace’s propaganda bureau could have mutilated, they’d choose the one that wasn’t composed by a pony…’

But he wasn’t here tonight just to commiserate poor old Poochini. A member of the Resistance close to Chairpony Harshwhinny was in attendance, and Cheese had been ordered to meet with her in order to be briefed on his latest assignment rather than waste time detouring to Canterlot. Meeting at the opera might have seemed melodramatic, but the mare in question maintained a public cover as a member of Equestria’s cultural intelligentsia, and this was the one opening she had to meet with him, while the performance was underway.

“Ah, yes, Monsieur Fromage,” genuflected the ticket clerk when Cheese presented himself. It was a Newfoal. Cheese couldn’t stand the things. He’d get called a galloping racist for saying it in public, but he simply couldn’t understand how nopony else suppressed a shudder when these things, these golems made from humans reduced him to a minority in his home. “Your party has reserved seating in Box 9. Madame Pommel and her guests have already arrived. Please, allow me to…”

“That will not be necessary,” Cheese replied, keeping his tone frosty and aloof, allowing a little touch of his Gallopican heritage to slip through into his accent. “We are quite familiar with this establishment’s seating arrangements. Merci.”

Trotting readily up the stairs, his feigned disdain was nothing compared the chilly aura that clung to the pony who received him in Box 9. There was something wrong with the mare, though ‘wrong’ didn’t seem to cover it anymore. It was as if something essential had been scooped out of her, just like with the Newfoals, except here nopony had shown the decency to put anything else in or pick up the pieces.

“Coco,” he nodded by way of greeting.

“You’re late, Cheese,” she answered, enunciating each word as crisply as a morning frost. “We were scheduled to meet half an hour ago.”

Coco Pommel was publically in a state of mourning after the ‘tragic’ and ‘unexpected’ death of her friend and employer Suri Polomare, but in Cheese’s estimation, funereal black simply made the once-timid seamstress look all the more like the ice-cold assassin he had helped mould her into. Flanking her were the twins publically known as the Flim-Flam brothers, who Cheese knew as two of the better ‘demolitions’ specialists within the Resistance Directorates.

‘How did we come to this?’ he wondered, just for a moment.

Then his weary eyes drifted across the stalls, briefly alighting on the occupants of Box 5, and the sight drove all doubts away.

‘Oh Father, my Father...’ he thought to himself, a terrible stillness settling in his stomach. Then he forced himself to harden, to take that chill and channel it through his very being. For justice, vengeance and family.

“I’m just in time for the overture, actually,” he replied firmly, drawing the quilted door shut behind him and slipping a small talisman from one of his tuxedo’s hidden pockets. Hooping it over the doorknob not only sealed the entrance to the box, but created a one-way bubble around it that dampened outgoing sound waves, in effect muting them. “How goes the tune-up?”

“Well, for what it’s worth we’ll get decent production standards,” Coco sniffed. “Suri’s contributions to the costuming department might have been phoned in, but the mares and stallions in the orchestra are professionals.”

“Well, at least someone present cares for the integrity of art,” Cheese shrugged as he took his place and produced a pair of opera glasses from his jacket pocket.

“Take a look at this,” Coco murred, not making eye contact as she hoofed him a copy of the playbill.

“I thought you were all about getting the job done with minimum fuss?” Cheese snorted. “Why waste time discussing the show?”

“Because we’d draw more attention by leaving now than if we stayed,” she said, before slipping him the barest hint of a smile. “And because you’re one of the few ponies who I can actually discuss Celly’s abuse of the arts with on equal terms.”

“What’s she done now?” he sighed, glancing to where she was holding open the back page of the playbill, where upcoming performances were advertised. He felt his expression fall, and let out a weary sigh. “Great, ’The Winds Suite’… another masterpiece blacklisted.”

The page in question had formerly read as followed:

Now however, a black ‘CANCELLED’ had been rudely stamped over the elegant advertisement. ‘By Order of the Ministry of Arts and Culture’ was printed beneath in smaller letters.

Cheese could not hide his disgust and disappointment. It wasn’t the first work to be blacklisted by that hideous ministry, and certainly wouldn’t be the last. Their first action, or at least the first one he’d noticed, had been to ban somepony’s adaptation of a human play, by Oscar Wilde. That was back in the early days, of course, when Celestia still maintained the illusion that free speech was allowed.

Shame, too. The play had been hilarious. “Gwendolen, it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth!”

That cancellation had been during the chaos of the ‘Hand-In-Hoof Riots’ and the ‘Great Battleship Strike’, and the Ministry justified it’s censorship on the grounds that the play was inciting public unrest. Many more had followed, the excuses for the suppression of creative works becoming more and more transparent. Nowadays, the only evidence you’d have of many works’ existence was through the samizdats - Cheese didn’t bother learning why they called it that - smuggled and circulated under-the-radar, but the price for owning any such tract was steep, to say the least.

“She’s killing us…” he said darkly, as the lights dimmed for the opening movement. “Little by little, she’s excising everything in the Equestria psyche that could object against her.”

Little snips and cuts, reducing the scope of thought, tramelling the mindset of a nation. With surgical precision, Celestia and her Ministries were reshaping the pony paradigm into an idealised shape, that shape being a drooling, hapless, obliviously happy idiot that could be pointed at a threat and turned loose, until it stopped being a threat.

The humans had a word for that process: lobotomy. Except now those four little syllables had become an indelible part of Equestria’s lexicon as well, along with such other wonderful little words like ‘samizdat’, and ‘reeducation’, and ‘rendition’...

... and ‘Resistance’, with a capital R.

Thoughts along those lines occupied the better part of Cheese’s thoughts until the interval, as he let the splendour of Poochini’s masterpiece wash over him. He had to admit, the direction was excellent, as was the delicacy of the ballet and the artistry of the production.

‘That’s one thing we’ve always done better than mankind,’ he thought wistfully. ‘Say what you want of their amazing works, but nothing can beat ponykind when it comes to stage production.’

And it was true. He’d seen human plays and productions work miracles with dry-ice, lighting rigs, sound effects and all the mise-en-scene of the theatre, but it was something else altogether to see Pony Magic on the stage. The last aria before the curtain came down was an excellent example, with the weary and drunken old Starswirl reclaiming his pride and prowess in a storm of magical light, pegasi ballerinas twirling overhead like angels.

During the interval, he finally broached the subject of their meeting, and Coco honoured him with a brittle little smile.

“You know we’re coming into the endgame, don’t you?” she said, the magic charm and the hubbub of milling ponies masking their every word. “Earth is at the tipping point. Once the Barrier makes contact with North America, it’s going to consume their hoarded military resources like a forest fire.”

It was a grim, but honest summation. Cheese knew full well that no-one was even close to finding a way to sabotage the Barrier, not even after years of research. With Europe overrun and the southern half of Africa isolated except to air and sea travel, the remaining population was clustering in the eastern half of Asia, Australasia, various Pacific islands, and the Americas. It was a refugee situation approaching critical mass, like a spot about to burst, and all it would take would be for the Barrier to squeeze a little extra…

“... Unless a miracle comes their way, Earth will fall within the year,” Coco continued bluntly. "Though that's a conservative estimate. The chaos stirred up might just destroy the PHL by the end of summer. Say what you will about all we've stolen, they've got more ponypower that can be dedicated to slowing the barrier. If they fall, the time mankind has left will probably be cut in half."

'Within the year?! Faust almighty,' Cheese realized. It was appalling to think that things had gotten that desperate, and that fighting a delaying action was their best hope left. In the first year of the Resistance, as partisans, disaffected workers, artists, and students had rallied together, he'd dreamt of shattering the Barrier and maybe going back to something like before the war, before the Changeling Purges...

Seeing a third of a world die and being powerless to stop it, watching friends suffering fates worse than death, suffering as his home mutated into a repressive cesspit, and witnessing atrocity after atrocity labeled as justice was hell on anyone's idealism.

“And once she’s got her victory there, Celly will turn her enslaved thralls onto Equestria. Any sentient species that remains, like the zebras or griffons, will presumably get ponified as soon as the potion can be resequenced. Projections are that the Human-Newfoal population will have risen to five billion by the time the Barrier reaches the Pacific, and if that wave floods over our own borders, we’ll all drown beneath them. We can’t fight those kind of numbers, and worse yet, we can’t recruit from them. Their foals have shown promise, as they seem to be functional ponies, but by the time they’re of recruiting age, they'll be so indoctrinated that we’ll harvest a trickle at best. And by then, well..."

Her voice trailed off. No matter how few remnants had been left of Coco after Suri's tutelage in business and the Resistance’s tutorage in skullduggery had hollowed her spirit out, even she couldn't stomach the thought of what would happen to Equestria after the Barrier fell. Infrastructure for food supply, already stretched far enough that the breaking point was a distant memory, would disintegrate under the weight. With no humans to rally against, Celestia would tighten the noose around natural-born ponies for not being pony enough, and send their battle-hardened troops against Zebrica or Griffonstone, and it would be a massacre.

Before long, they wouldn't live in anything vaguely resembling Equestria.

The reports made for grim reading: Cheese skimmed them whenever he needed incentive to stay awake, staving off sleep with the threat of nightmares.

“So what’s my part in this?” he asked. “Madame Chairpony must have something in mind if she’s ordered the two of us to meet up so indelicately. What’s the sitch?”

“She’s authorising you to activate one of your sleeper agents,” Coco nodded. “Maud Pie. That little introvert’s research into runic magic is bleeding out on the cutting edge of the field, and you know full well that Maud has promised us a, a… what did she call it again?”

“A Hail Mary pass,” Cheese murmured. “A saving throw in the final minutes of the play.” He shifted his weight in the seat, and jabbed an interrogative hoof at the fashionmare. “But Maud is claiming a miracle among miracles - she promised us the ability to unmake Celestia’s magical artefacts.”

“You don’t seem to have that much faith in her,” Coco observed.

“I want to believe she could do it,” Cheese said. “The damn mare’s worked on this sort of thing nonstop, almost since the Crystal War ended. I'd almost swear her Cutie Mark's warped to fit that. But I know this: she doesn’t tell us everything she knows, and her first and only loyalty is to rescuing Pinky Pie.” He threw up his hooves. “And even discussing this is useless unless we possessed one of those artifacts!”

“Au contraire…” Coco smirked. She beckoned to Flim, who nodded and reverently eased a rolled-up scroll from his saddlebag, tied up in red ribbon. Taking it in her hooves, she peeled back one corner, allowing Cheese a glimpse of what was printed upon its surface.

He felt his complexion turn pallid, felt his heart slow, as he reached out and dragged a disbelieving hoof across the document. The cracked parchment sparked where he made contact, resisting all damage, his hoof not so much as leaving a crease.

“It’s... It's.... the Charter of the Guard…” he whispered, rubbing at his face to try and restore some semblance of colour to it. “The root of Celestia’s control over the EUP.”

This was it, this was the abominable bucking scrap of parchment that had caused so much suffering, turned kindly guards into sadistic, twisted monsters. He was touching that which had been the cause of more Newfoals than he wanted to consider, caused strikebreakings that had left ponies dead or crippled in the streets.

And yet, despite being indestructible, it was here. In their hooves. The power that they held at this very moment was overwhelming. Almost intoxicating.

Coco rolled the scroll back up with a prideful smirk. “Yes it is… and if your little Miz Pie can destroy this, we might win. Unless you think it’s too risky for her-”

“She’s the only one with that kind of edge on runic application,” Cheese said, trying to gather his thoughts. “Even Zecora is building on the foundation Maud has laid.”

He tried to rationalise: the charter was in their hooves. He didn’t know what had transpired to acquire it, or how many potential friends in Resistance cells had died for it. In fact it was probably best to not dwell on it.

He looked up, gimlet eyes staring into Coco’s empty pits. “This is too hot to entrust to a courier, I’ll deliver it to her myself. And not a word of this gets to the PHL, or anypony within five degrees of separation of any of their identified moles. I don’t want to think about what they’d do if they could wield this kind of power. That… thing... in their R&D is bad enough.”

“Good thinking,” she nodded primly. “So, when Maud unmakes this, every trueborn soul under arms will be freed in one stroke. Freed, and very angry at what our saintly Queen did to them. The Court is still planning how to best exploit it, but Madame Harshwhinny is vetting submitted plans...”

Cheese wasn’t listening, and instead was applying his aptitude for engineering by running numbers: the greater part of the Salvation Army was built on the back of Newfoals nowadays, but the key positions in the Officer Corps were still natural born Equestrians, as was the entirety of the General Staff. Bound by Celestia’s Geis or not, organising and directed an army required a flexibility of thought simply not found in a Newfoal...

Nepenthe took a step back off of the overgrown railroad siding and blinked calmly as the steel frame of the huge Canadian Pacific locomotive howled past, turbocharger screaming, motor spinning up to full power. Wheels, suspension arms and brake-blocks blurred by, scant inches from the tip of her muzzle, but she didn’t even flinch. Her mane flicked in the slipstream as the train accelerated, but her eyes and ears were alert, examining the passing consist. Behind the locomotive was the burnt-out hulk of another engine (a smaller cousin to the beast in front), then something that looked like a concrete slab on a rolling chassis, and finally a pair of cabooses.

As the second of the twinned vehicles skidded past her smiling lips, she felt something tug at her inside, and smiled. The Eternal Sun had delivered unto her exactly what she needed to complete her duty, the tools required to make the Pretty Private Paradigm the standard template of all Newfoals.

Totem Proles!

She had felt the same tug minutes after she had been reborn in Truro, and now she felt it again. Regardless of what else was on that train, it was carrying Totem Proles. Bad enough that the intelligence downloaded into her at birth indicated that the humans already possessed one, but a shipment of this magnitude couldn’t be allowed to fall into their filthy hands. Not when they could better serve Earth and Equestria in her own hooves...

It was perfect. But instead of springing into pursuit she took a steadying breath and allowed herself a moment to plan out the appropriate course.

‘Mere Newfoals only react…’ she thought to herself, with a trill of pride. ‘But a Pretty Private acts, using her wit and discretion to draw upon the full abilities of her forces.’

She turned, and felt her pride redouble when she saw that her Pretty Private acolytes, the new-fledged troops under the command of herself and her sisters, had formed themselves into neat ranks, bright and smiling and sharp as knives. Adoration shone in their eyes, and their weapons and armour glinted in the morning light.

They weren’t ‘true’ brothers and sisters though, their first exposure to the Potion having scrambled enough core synapses to leave them incapable of platforming a complete reformatting. However they could now at least show initiative and individuality in their approach to a given task, much as she had been prior to her ‘awakening’ in the wee hours of this morning.

They were flawed, but in Nepenthe’s eyes, they were still beautiful.

‘But how best to deploy them?’ she thought. The appropriate military knowledge was all there in her mind, preloaded and ready for the using. There was strategy, which was the objective, the goal - we must obtain that train’s cargo - and then there was the means to the goal, tactics - we must either board or incapacitate said train.

And, pleasantly - something seemed to cackle, it’s laugh echoing in the wide empty space of the back of her brain - she found there were no longer any limitations hardwired into her. No constraints to what she could do to claim and exploit that train’s stolen cargo. There was only a directive, and she could take any path she chose to get to it...

“Trimurti,” she sang out after a moment’s pause, turning to her firstborn sister. “Split yourself up…”

“Aye-aye!” came the huge mare’s chirped reply, and with a minor flash-bang, Trimurti divided into three separate ponies, each representing a distinct pony tribe.

“Pathos, Logos,” Nepenthe ordered, pointing at the fiery pegasus and the analytical unicorn components. “Each of you take a unit and harass that train. Make use of every resource we’ve scavenged from the prison, but don’t waste our troops unnecessarily. Let them demonstrate the capabilities of even a flawed squad of Pretty Privates.”

Her eyes flicked to the third of Trimurti’s nascent selves, an earthpony. “Ethos, stay with me and act as a relay between myself and your other parts.”

The three shards of a single psyche saluted smartly, and broke the better part of the forces to hand in two. With Pathos leading them, the available pegasi immediately took off into the sky, banking away north and out of sight, while Logos galloped away at the head of a regimented column of ‘ground-pounders’.

That left Ethos, Nepenthe herself, and their youngest sister, the blind geomancer Harvest, standing on the siding. Newspeak, their resident mesmerist, was overseeing the bulk of the new recruits back at Dorchester Penitentiary.

“Alright girls!” Nepenthe beamed, turning her head into the far end of the railroad spur, towards the sound of savage barking. “Let’s go get what we came for.”

Meanwhile…

Diamond Mint Jewelup cowered in the cab of #8888, the diesel locomotive that had been procured for her by the Ponies for Ethical Treatment of Newfoals. Beyond the windshield, something inequine made a twisted, guttural snarl that sounded like cries of pain, fear and anger layered all over each other, sending her heart racing with each primal cry. She didn’t want to face the horrors that produced such sounds, she just knew she had to get going. Whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly.

“Come on!” she screamed, fear compounding with adrenaline as she pounded her hooves on the circuit breakers on the rear bulkhead. “Why won’t you start?! By her Unconquered Sun, why?! Won’t?! You?! START?!”

That had been the crux of her plan as she fled Dorchester Prison, the erstwhile ‘Camp Rebirth’. Get to #8888, escape to safety, and report that a creature calling itself Nepenthe was doing unspeakable things to innocent Newfoals (and not-so-innocent trueborn Equestrians).

Despite the sounds of dogs on her tail, she had made it to the siding just in time to see a different train to her own pulling out. Dodging around it, she had gotten to #8888, half-buried in the undergrowth, locked herself in the cab and set about starting the locomotive…

...which obstinately refused to turn over!

Again she depressed the ‘Engine Run’ button, but instead of a powerful roar, all she heard was a strangled metallic bleat as the motor struggled to start. Panicked, she scuttled across the cab, examining all the readouts and gauges.

“Battery charge, fine…” she read aloud, “Motor, primed…” Her railroad knowledge was rudimentary, learned from a Newfoal who hadn’t even driven the same class of machine, but she had memorised every detail she could find regarding the operation of this ‘SD-40’ type of locomotive and was sure she had done it all right.

Then, fumbling her way along, she came to one of the internal fuel gauges.

Empty.

Cold fear clamping around her spine she tapped at the glass to unstick the needle, knowing deep in the pit of her stomach that even if she could, it wouldn’t move. It remained obstinately buried at ‘0 Gallons’.

“How?!” she wailed. She’d taken delivery of it fair and square, confirmed with her own eyes the amount of fuel in the tank, how could it have-

Her senses sharpened for the briefest of moments, and for that fraction of a second, she heard the other train rumbling in the distance.

‘Humans, Diamond Mint realized. ‘The humans on that other train stole my fuel!’

And then she realised that the sounds, the awful snarls from beyond the cab, had stopped…

*Knock Knock*

It was a hoof tapping on the door.

Oh no. Suddenly terrified, Jewelup backed up into the nook formed by 8888’s control stand, and curled up into a ball, trying to hide herself.

There was another *Knock Knock*, the sharp tang of keratin against metal, and this time it was accompanied by a melodic voice.

“Milady Jewelup. It’s Nepenthe. Would you please come out and speak to us? Pretty please for a Pretty Private?”

It was hard to tell if Nepenthe was mocking her or not. Jewelup would swear she saw frost creeping over the windows as she pleaded.

Jewelup caught her breath, forced herself to be still. How long could the door hold out against these monsters… a few minutes, or mere seconds? But if she could get the locomotive’s handbrake off, and then telekinetically punt against the railbed, she might be able to slow-roll to safety...

In her panicked and somewhat hopeless attempts to devise an escape plan, she completely forgot several salient facts:

A: Nepenthe’s Pretty Privates contained among their ranks an Earth Pony mare who could bend plantlife to her will.

B: The locomotive that was her current hiding-place was half-shrouded in trees, bushes, weeds, and assorted other manners of undergrowth. Not to mention, the weeds had grown up between the railroad ties, so even if she’d gotten 8888 moving, something would have stopped it.

C: While she might be hidden from the line-of-sight of the cab’s front-door, there was also the back-door leading out onto the rear catwalk, the very back door that was less than three feet from where she was curled up on 8888’s deadman’s pedal.

D: Yeah, this wasn’t going to end well.

No, all she heard was a soft rustling sound, and then the ‘prang’ of rending metal as the locomotive’s back door was ripped off its hinges and hurled clattering down the catwalk into the brush. Jewelup had just enough time to see this, to gasp, before thick green trunks of ivy writhed in through the opening and lassoed one of her legs. It tightened, pulled, and before she could scream or telekinetically grab hold of something, she was hauled out of the cab and tossed bodily forward, arcing over 8888’s roof and plummeting towards the rails that reached out from under its rusted cowcatcher…

A field of silver-grey magic caught her, and she found herself suspended in front of Nepenthe. The self-proclaimed ‘Pretty Private’ had already replaced those parts of her armour with which she had anointed Jewelup last night, and had even embellished her armoured cuirass with a badge-of-rank: Captain.

But it wasn’t these little details that caught Jewelup’s horrified attention. No, that privilege went to the dogs. Dorchester Penitentiary, like all human prisons, had a kennel of guard-dogs assigned to patrol the facility and hunt down escapees. That was all nice and legal, under human and pony law alike.

But even the depravities that humans called ordinances forbade the breeding of the wolfdogs such as those that Dorchester’s staff had reared in the kennels to put the fear of primitive human gods into violent convicts interned during the war. They had been a terrifying sight (and sound) during her time at the prison, their various admixtures of animal content and the savagery fostered from training, abandonment, starvation and cannibalism combining to serve up a prime dish of canid wrath bundled in fur. Their initial upbringing in the prison’s atmosphere had already left them rowdy and near-uncontrollable. Evidently, this had been the assessment of the humans that ran the facility, who had left them behind when the penitentiary had been evacuated. Nature, nurture, and several weeks confinement had done the rest, winnowing the pool down so that only the six largest, fiercest and most aggressive animals had survived long enough for the ponies to take occupancy of the prison. Some were larger than the others, some had heavier fur or sleeker builds, and yet they were all somewhere in that unnerving hinterland between barbarism and domestication… rather like humans, in Jewelup’s eyes.

Oh, oh how that comparison now came back to haunt her, with irony slathered on top. Now, now the wolfdogs were even worse.

Now they were half-pony!

She wasn’t sure what kind of black alchemy had been employed to do it, but somehow or other, Nepenthe’s unit of witches had clearly fused the six remaining dogs with Newfoals. They now had the build of ponies, but with clawed paws instead of hooves. Pelt had fused with mane to create a shaggy, colorful mass that was neither canine or equine, while the clear light of sentience blazed in their gleaming, pony-sized eyes.

Neither bitch nor mare, and both at the same time. As Jewelup stared and quivered, one of them drew back its lips in what was clearly both a smirk and a snarl, revealing a maw of needle-sharp incisors. It growled softly as it did, a muted purr that contained all the threat and promise of a morning in the wilderness, of thunder before the rain and the roar that heralded an avalanche.

“They’re wonderful, aren’t they?” beamed Nepenthe, seeing where her captive’s attention lay. “I’m so proud of what Harvest achieved, of the creativity she showed in making something new…”

Something new…

“They can’t speak unfortunately, but they understand languages just perfectly, and Harvest can speak through them… ” Nepenthe continued. “All the benefits of an equine physique, combined with nascent human intelligence and the enhanced senses and metabolism of a creature designed by nature as an endurance hunter. Perfect scouts and trackers, as you saw.”

Oh, Jewelup had seen, and heard. These animals had chased her all the way from the prison, and it was only sheer terror that had given her the stamina needed to reach 8888 before she was overtaken.

Something new… against her best instincts she felt a thrill of pride. In all her time trying to bring out the best in Newfoals, she had never seen an act of imagination or creativity on this scale. And yet, she would’ve given almost anything not to be on the receiving end of that achievement.

“Six hounds…” Nepenthe concluded, pausing to scratch one behind the ears. “Enough for each of my sisters and myself to share, with one to spares.”

She stopped and looked straight at Jewelup, her smile widening until it threatened to push past her cheeks, almost wider than the Newfoal’s head, wide enough it looked like it could swallow her... “All of my sisters.”

And in that moment, terrified and trapped, Jewelup finally understood humanity’s fear and rejection of salvation, and screamed in fear as this thing far above a Newfoal called Nepenthe reached for her face…

“We have such wonderful things to show you.”

“Move it up,” motioned Verity, and moving from the cover of the caboose Tess shoved Maddy up and onto the rolling flattop of the slug unit coupled in the middle of the moving train. The mare, carrying a gagged Prism Flash - his legs and wings tied under her barrel - was already ahead of them aboard 1810, and once they reached her, Verity moved up again, pushing to the burned-out locomotive’s cab and checking around, gun-saddle armed and un-safetied. Tess had her Baretta out as well, checking on all sides of the moving train until once again Verity indicated that it was safe for them to proceed. Then, with her body hunched over to shield Maddy, the two of them scuttled forward along the catwalk.

At last, they reached the head-end of the train, 9782’s cab. Lighting had locked the door, and was perched on the engineer’s seat, staring forward with wings spread in rigid terror. It took six or seven knocks before she turned and noticed them peering in from behind.

“What was that?” Tess gasped as they tumbled in, making sure to lock the door again behind them, before evicting Lightning Dust from the engineer’s seat and reining in the throttle as they approached the junction, the convergence between the spur and the main-line.

“Nepenthe…” Lightning whispered, her wings drooping, and Maddy made a terrified little squeak. Tess saw Verity tense up at the mention of the name, pausing in the midst of shackling Prism Flash to the conductor’s seat.

“OK, so who is Nepenthe?” asked the Welsh youth. “Some kind of Newfoal?”

“Oh, you have no fucking idea…” Verity said aloud. “If a Newfoal was completely bugfuck insane, well more than usual, and programmed to actually be competent as opposed to the usual ‘clog-a-gun-with-bodies version 4.5’ OS.”

“Then why did they break off the pursuit?” Tess pointed back. “They just let us roll by. Come on, we’re not the first to get a train out of Newfoal territory… even those guys in 1810 got as far as Truro.”

She wasn’t sure just who she was trying to reassure. It wasn’t working on her, that was for certain. And she couldn’t help but remember that the taskforce who brought the 1810 and its cargo into Truro all died...

“They didn’t have this thing on their tail!” Verity yelled.

“They were chasing a mare,” Lightning put forward. “It was when I saw her coming that I set us rolling, like you said I should. Nepenthe came afterwards… but she wasn’t alone.”

She turned a serious glare at Verity. “You’ve seen her in action?”

A hesitant nod. Lightning swallowed, and in that pause Tess held up a frustrated hand. “Okay, enlighten me here. What’s so terrifying about one ‘competent’ Newfoal? I mean, you hear rumors about a few real freaks, like Imperial Creed, Quickblade, even Reaper, but what makes this mare any more awful than the average-”

Abruptly, the absurdity of what she’d said struck her. 'Oh, it’s just a lobotomized abomination made from the innocent, stuck in a horrible living death. Nothing terrifying about it.'

“-victim,” she finished lamely. She saw Lightning and Verity exchange hesitant glances, and looked away, focusing her attention on negotiating the last curve and the s-bend switch that would return them to the main line. They were near the coast now, running along a beltline of pine-littered marshes that separated an ocean inlet from the inland hills, everything painted white by last night’s fall of snow. Signal towers rose like stripped trees beside the line, their lights dark and unilluminated.

Out of reflex, she picked up the cab radio, checked that she had the right frequency for the Canadian National dispatch network, and held down on the ‘transmit’ key.

“Train CPX-9782, transmitting in the blind,” she said dully. “I am returning to the main line from the Dorchester Cape Spur, heading northbound to Moncton. Please copy.”

She released the key on the handheld mouthpiece, and the radio chirped, awaiting an answer. But nobody had replied any of her hails last night, and she didn’t expect to hear anything now. And as expected, all she got was silence.

She glanced into her cabside mirror to check back down the train, and found it obscured with snowy slush. Frustrated, she made a hand gesture, and Verity, interpreting it correctly, unlocked the back door and stepped onto the catwalk.

“You’re clear…” she said at last. “The entire train is off the siding.”

“Roger that.” Safely on the main, Tess quickly opened up the throttle, and 9782 accelerated, shuddering as her cowcatcher sundered each drift of snow that had smothered the rails. The track stretched out clear towards the horizon, and free to look away for a moment she turned back towards her ‘crew’. Verity had rejoined them, and she and Lightning were having a silent conversation, while the pegasus kept a comforting hold on Maddy.

“I mean, this Nepenthe is just one Newfoal,” Tess said aloud, as if trying to convince them of something she did not believe. Her hand clenched over the throttle. “Just one Newfoal, how bad could…”

Everyone in the cab stared at one another, except for Prism Flash, who let off a gagged burst of near-crazed laughter. She almost felt sorry for him. It hadn’t been a good day to be him…

But then, it hadn’t been a good day for anyone lately. So fuck him.

“It’s not just any Newfoal,” Verity said. “That thing… that might be the most dangerous Newfoal I’ve ever seen. It conjured a fucking ball of ponification potion out of odds and ends, it survived a goddamn homemade RPG at point blank-oh no.” Had Verity been human, her face would have gone pale, but Tess could see a slight, pale discoloration around the fur of her face. “Kraber was right - those rumors you hear, about ponies like ‘Sylvia the Reaper’, I didn’t want to believe the stories, but now...”

“Sylvia,” Maddy whimpered. “Rio’s friend Sylvia? Kraber the Killer, Rio said he took Sylvia away.”

Tess saw the ten-year old look up at Verity, challenge in her eyes.

“I’m not going to apologise for knowing him, and that doesn’t matter now,” Verity said calmly. “The important thing is that he won in a straight-up fight with a Super-newfoal,...”

“How did he beat it?” Lightning asked, like Tess apparently floundering and lost.

“He had PHL armor, about five guns, a unicorn, and shield disruptor grenades,” Verity said. “Meanwhile, we have a rifle from an assault saddle, two shotguns, a Beretta… and we’re a child, a girl that can barely be convinced to pull the trigger, and somepony that might well be a madmare. On top of that we’re outgunned, and we’re a huge target thanks to the cargo and Miss Dust here…”

She paused and smirked. “But you do have me, and I’m pretty good at slaughtering Newfoals if I do say so myself.”

Tess saw her reach over and tousle Maddy’s hair. “You’re not alone, kiddo.”

“Nepenthe’s not alone either. There were other ponies with her, in identical armour, and she was leading them…” Lightning Dust said, tightening her hold on Maddy, her eyes furtive. “Back in the city she called herself a Pretty Private, and now I think she’s making more of them, more soldiers like her.”

A dreadful silence fell. Tess looked slowly between each of their faces, seeing rage and fear in equal measure. Even Prism Flash was clearly affected, teeth clenched tight around his gag and eyes sunken.

“An army of Newfoal supersoldiers,” Verity spat. “Well, that’s something new. Fuck.”

“...ssscherwaitz…” hissed the radio, a garbled burst of static cutting short any contribution Tess could have made to the conversion. “...come in train 9…...his is Canad…….patcher at Monc....”

Suddenly energized Tess grabbed the radio and clutched it like it was a votive symbol. “Hello? Hello, this is train CPX-9782, copy. We’re receiving you but the signal is weak.”

“Adjust frequen...fearance from the Barrie….”

Fingers trembling, she tapped at the radio’s bandwidth adjuster, three ponies and a child watching on in hushed silence.

“Hello,” she said, trying again. “This is train CPX-9782, transmitting in the blind. Do you receive us, over?”

“Copy 9782,” came the reply after an agonising moment’s silence. It was a male voice, young yet hoarse, punctuated with the harsh bursts of what sounded like a smoker’s cough. “This is the Canadian National dispatch office in Moncton --koff-koff---. We’ve been tracking your progress since you left Truro. Sorry for leaving on your own for so long but *koff* we were having a hard time getting through the radio interference coming off the Barrier. Stand by for Advance Forecast.”

Verity was at Tess’s side in a second, producing a map of eastern Canada from out of her saddlebag and spreading it out on the floor. Faint concentric marks radiated inland across it from the Atlantic, projecting the expected advance of the barrier, each line marked with a figure that corresponded to the distance in miles from CERN, the epicentre of the advancing front. Quickly the dispatcher parsed off a figure, and with a pen clenched between her teeth, Verity attempted to highlight the corresponding ring. Her grip was shaky, not made any easier by the motion of the locomotive…

...then Maddy reached forward and, hesitantly, beckoned for the pen. Blinking, Verity passed it to her, and lying down on the map like a kid doodling on scrap paper, the ten-year old silently traced a neat line along an arc, and passed the sheet up to Tess.

“Thanks”, both she and the mare muttered. Maddy made no reply, instead returning to Lightning Dust’s embrace, clutching to the pegasus as if she was a life preserver. Sharing a brief glance with one another the engineer and the militamare turned their attention to the map.

“Halifax hasn’t been consumed yet?” Tess asked, seeking clarification.

“That is correct, but Truro *koff* was further east, and went down about an hour ago. Halifax will fall later today, but with the railroad out of town now severed *koff*, no more trains will be following you.”

“Wait, what?” Tess said, suddenly realising something. “I know the Grand Continental ripped off behind us in Truro, but there were over a dozen trains scheduled to follow us on out of the city, one of them must have gotten out. We shored up on the Dorchester Cape spur last night partly so that following traffic wouldn’t run head-first into our ass-end and-”

“-there isn’t!”

Tess’s words stumbled to a halt. Her speech had sped up as she spoke, words tumbling out of her as her voice ran away from her thoughts.

“There is nothing else following you,” the dispatcher repeated. “No other engineer or conductor has called in *koff*, no dispatch orders have been sent, and my control board shows that all the track-circuits on the main line between you and the Barrier are reporting ‘unoccupied’. There’s probably nobody around for miles.”

How that man could remain calm, Tess had no idea.

“But this was the FIRST train out of Halifax!” she insisted.

“And it’s also the last! --koff-- You’re it, 9782. You’re the last train. Now, please confirm your destination and desired route.”

Tess didn’t answer. Her mouth was clenched shut, but in her mind...

“9782, copy.”

...in her mind Tess was screaming. Visions of the railyard back at Halifax, of the supply and evacuation trains, of Paul Labiche and Colonel Hex, and the awful realisation that they were all now trapped on the rump of Nova Scotia, unable to escape…

...and the fact that she would be trapped with them, if she hadn’t annoyed Paul to the point that he showed her onto Jean’s engine in order to be rid of her.

“9782, I repeat, copy!”

Her shoulders shook, and she wasn’t sure if it was with relief or despair. She dropped the radio handset in order to press her hands to her face, and it fell against the face of the control desk, bobbing on its coiled wire.

Her breath coming hot and ragged, she heard Verity fumble the headset in her hooves, and carefully speak into it.

“Moncton dispatch, we copy. Our destination is Montreal, and we need the most direct line there. Please route us…”

“...via Pacific Junction, the Napadogan Subdivision, and Quebec City,” crackled the radio inside 8888’s cab. Nepenthe, curled up cat-like in the engineer’s seat, listened thoughtfully and made a careful note on a pad she was levitating beside her.

Then she sat and listened again, nonchalantly twirling and clicking the pen in her magic.

“What’s the nature of your cargo?” asked the dispatcher. An incisive male that one. She scribbled another note, tore it from the pad and passed it to an attending Pretty Private, a pegasus mare, who immediately saluted, sprang through the open cab window, spread her wings and took off north.

After a long silence she heard the mare, the pony-that-was-not-a-pony, answer. “Our cargo is classified, under orders of the PHL and UN joint command, authorised by Colonel Ambrose Hex.”

Hearing her voice, Nepenthe suppressed a slight shudder.

“Copy, 9782.”

Was it possible that she ‘feared’ that little freak, the one called Verity? The one whose very spit was dangerous, possibly even toxic to her work, to her Purpose? If that mare-that-wasn’t-a-mare was too involved, things could get very dangerous indeed… and Queen Celestia would never see her lovely work, her Pretty Private Paradigm.

Mind turning towards that Purpose, she glanced down at the floor of 8888’s cab. There lay Diamond-Mint Jewelup, the aqua unicorn spasming occasionally, eyes wide and glowing with magic. The tiara on her brow had been inscribed with runic symbols, and they blazed with light, as did the gemstone mounted upon the centre of the golden helm, the gem which had transformed itself from a ruby into a lustrous amethyst.

‘Just the same colour as Ponification Potion…’ Nepenthe thought to herself. ‘Such a beautiful, rich plum purple…’

And of course, it made absolute sense that the gem should take on that particular colour. Ponification Potion was, after all, just a medium for the actual spell. Oh, it was incredibly advanced, and incorporated a number of medical ingredients, various sedatives, puratives, hallucinogens and what-not, but those were all in service to the actual Ponfication spell matrix.

Which was, in essence, runic. And with her mind gloriously slaved to a being that was the very essence of the spell matrix, Nepenthe could think, see and speak in runic. The magic of transmutation, of reality itself, was an intrinsic part of her very being. She’d already created modified versions of the Potion with that magic, had seen her sisters perform their own incredible feats, and now she was taking it to the next step.

‘For the Pretty Private Paradigm to become the standard template for the Empire’s forces, it must also be applied to native-born ponies…’

And that required a test subject, to which Jewelup had volunteered herself for by trying to escape. Now the Ponification matrix, carved into the tiara, was scanning her DNA, identifying the gene markers that would need to be targeted to turn a Pony into a Pretty Private.

It was a staggeringly simple solution, one culled from Nepenthe’s own human experiences. Mankind’s computer hackers called it a ‘blunt force attack’, and she could not for the life of her comprehend why nopony else had ever attempted it. Ponies were immune to the basic iterations of the Ponification spell, that was true, but this would change all that...

Jewelup cried out briefly, voice howling, and Nepenthe dropped the pen and pad and dropped down to cradle and hold the unicorn. She felt no animosity to the mare for having tried to escape, in fact she felt…

She felt…oh, she felt…

Nepenthe smiled a touch wider, and though she could not see it, an outside observer would have seen that this time the smile reached her eyes. She wasn’t sure what the warm, velvety feeling coiling in her stomach was, but she knew that she felt a deep debt of gratitude to Jewelup for what had happened last night, for the PETN representative’s words had given her the chance to evolve, both herself and the Pretty Privates. Jewelup’s words had set her free from the chains of Flash Sentry’s lesser command, and allowed her to coil herself gloriously in the chains of her Queen, and of her Purpose.

Whatever happened, she wanted the best for Jewelup. And although it might scare her a little, she was sure the lovely mare would absolutely adore what being a Pretty Private would do for her life. She’d craved confidence and power, for comfort and family. Now she was going to get all of that, and more.

Jewelup began to thrash again, and Nepenthe telekinetically drew one of her swords and transmuted it into a baton that she jammed into her other mare’s mouth to prevent her biting her tongue in two.

“There, there, she soothed,” holding Jewelup tight to her and stroking her mane with one hoof. “You’re almost there milady, you’re almost family…”

“9782,” the radio crackled again. “Please confirm the number of souls aboard?”

“Five,” came Verity Carter’s immediate reply. “Two ponies and three humans, including one prisoner-of-war and one child.”

Nepenthe’s ears perked up at that. Speaking of family...

“Maddy,” she whispered aloud.

Lightning watched in silence as Verity continued to liaise with the dispatcher, feeling Maddy’s tiny arms wrapped tight around her.

“You’ve civilians onboard? Do they have military protection?”

“They’ve got me”, answered Verity, standing with her forehooves resting on the control desk. “And I’m not leaving them… copy Moncton?”

“I copy 9782. Maintain radio contact, call in when you reach Painsec Junction, on approach to Moncton. Over and out.”

“Over and out…” Verity replied, before twirling the handset cord on her hoof and slinging it back into its cradle. There was a bounce to her step that had not been there yesterday. A chill crept across Lightning’s wings as she saw the woman-turned-mare silently repeat the words ‘I won’t abandon them’ to herself, before Verity focused her attention on the silent Tess, who was staring forward along the railroad with a million-mile gaze.

“Hey, you’re going to be okay, right?” she said by way of comfort. “Heck, you’re not the only railroader I’ve seen pull through harsh troubles. There’s this guy in the PHL called Johnny C, and he’s done some crazy stunts…on steam engines!”

“Steam engines?” Tess muttered, and Lightning saw a corner of her mouth twitch, her gaze briefly lift. “What kind?”

Verity rolled off into her story, hoisting herself up to perch on the edge of the control desk, back against the windscreen and hindlegs dangling.

“It was a two-eight-something,” she said. “He called it a Mogul.”

“2-8-0,” hummed Tess, pushing her fringe back and wiping her eyes. “Freight engine.”

“Yeah, whatever. The point is John-boy used it to steal a totem-prole from an Imperial science team. That’s the only prole that we’ve come into possession of before today. He never shut up about it. But hey, we get this load to Montreal, then we’re the Big Damn Heroes, and Johnny C will be buying US drinks next time I see him. Plus the extra he owes me already.”

“That’ll be good,” Tess laughed faintly. “I only turned the legal drinking age in the US this year. But back home, I was drinking Dad under the table soon as I turned 17.”

“Well, I’ve got a line to some home-brewed moonshine that’s proof enough that 82’ here would probably burn it in her motor,” Verity laughed, giving the engineer a friendly hoof to the shoulder. “You drive, I shoot, and we’ll put your stomach to the test as soon as we get the chance.”

Her gestures were broad, expressive, her passion evident. Lightning didn’t have many friends, but the attitude she was seeing was very much like some of the lessons taught in flight school, about offering a lifeline to ponies in distress and never letting go.

It was heartwarming, it was touching and inspiring.

But it WASN’T Verity, not the true Verity who would have abandoned them to chase after her own mission, and it was all Lightning’s fault.

‘But that’s a good thing, right?’ she thought to herself. ‘I didn’t mean to change her memories of that night her marefriend abandoned her, but it’s all good if it means she lends her strength to keeping the train safe. Nobody got hurt, right?’

But it felt like a lie. Even as she sat, and comforted Maddy, who was looking uneasily towards the trussed Prism Flash, all Lightning could see was the shade of the human mare who had come to comfort Verity on the night she was dumped, who had brought her a coat to keep off the rain…

...who Lightning had unwittingly scrubbed from that memory, replacing her with a vision of herself, guised as Verity’s marefriend ‘Astrid’, decked out like a superhero and humbly repentant.

Should she confess? Should she keep a secret?

“She’s a nice pony…” someone whispered, and she realised it was Maddy, who was looking across the cab towards Verity, who was now laughing with Tess over some private joke.

Lightning looked down at the girl in her care, and saw the light of sincerity in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, that I was so rude last night,” Maddy added, ducking her head. “Just please, don’t leave me alone. I don’t want Rio… to find me.”

That cinched it. Lightning tightened her jaw. She might have hurt Verity, violated her mind, but if it guaranteed Maddy’s safety, she’d keep what she did a secret until they were all safely away from this madness.

Maybe, tonight, she could try and repair some of the damage-

SCR-PLATT!

Everyone froze as the engineer’s side window, the one that had been replaced with a sheet of Perspex, suddenly bloomed with purple goop. A shadow flitted over the windscreen.

“Hit the deck!” Verity bellowed, and hooking Tess with a hoof she threw the two of them to the ground. Lightning followed suit, dragging the cowering Maddy down the short flight of steps into the locomotive’s nose corridor, hidden from the windows.

“No!” Tess yelled. “The deadman’s switch! I’ve got to keep resetting the system or the brakes come on!”

“What?” seethed Verity, and Lightning saw Tess roll her eyes in frustration.

“Locomotives are equipped with a system that detects if the driver has died at the throttle or fallen asleep! I have to hit a ‘reset’ button every few seconds, or 82 assumes she’s running without anyone at the wheel and slams us into Full Emergency! I’ve got to stay close to the controls!”

Scuttling on her hands and knees, she scrambled back into the cab. Lightning and Verity shared a glance.

“Well, she’s got a point…”

“Don’t do anything stupid like sitting in the chair!” Verity called around the corner. “Bunch yourself into the footwell under the desk and reach up to do whatever it is you have to do!”

“Got it!”

“Well, at least she’s not cracking up on us any more,” muttered Verity, who was now struggling with her saddle. “Help me undo these straps would you.”

An extra pair of hooves made quick work of the job, breaking Verity’s saddle quickly down and freeing up the actual firearms.

“Now, how to get a shot off on them…” she muttered, before looking up at the ceiling. Lightning followed her gaze, and saw an access panel and hatch that had been crudely set into the steel, leading up onto the nose.

“Lightning,” Verity said firmly. “I’m going to need to stand on your shoulders…”

“And coming round, not quite awake, sleepy and relaxed and obedient…”

Jewelup blinked languidly, obeying the Voice that guided her, emerging out of what had seemed like an inky comforter. She breathed slowly, not thinking much of anything, a lazy smile curling round her lips.

The mare facing her was smiling too, a half-lidded, drifting smile that seemed as bright and fragile as a rainbow. Jewelup’s eyes were locked to that empty, smiling face… so empty.

“Can you hear me?” asked a voice, the beautiful voice that had woken her.

“Yessss…” she breathed.

“What’s your name?” the voiced cooed.

“Diamond,” she sighed. “Diamond Mint Jewelup.”

“And what’s your job? Who do you work for?”

“Pet-un. The Ponies… for ethical treatment, of Newfoals,” the words came to her slowly, still ready to hoof, but heavy and difficult to grasp. “I liaise with the Sal… the Sal… the Salvation Army.”

“Well done Minty. Good girl…”

A shiver rushed through her at those words, and she felt ‘something’ on her back twitch. That was odd. She lifted a hoof to check-

“Freeze, Minty.”

-her hoof stopped mid air. She held her breath, not even blinking, waiting.

“Put the hoof down.”

She did as she was told, feeling a languorous warmth flow through her as she complied. Once again the words “Good Girl” were spoken, and she trembled, a giddy little rush cascading through her. A hoof, not her own, gently stroked her mane. The mare facing her, the indistinct, blurry mare, now had a little blush colouring her cheeks.

“Tell me about yourself Minty. What are you?”

“Pony… blue pony… unicorn.”

“Who’s your closest surviving relative.”

“L-Lyra… Lyra Heartstrings… my mother’s nie… my cousin.”

“Is your cousin a Good Mare, Minty?”

“...”

“No, no she’s not,” the voice said for her. “She’s been very bad. She’s done awful things.”

The unfamiliar mare’s smile slipped. Jewelup felt sad for her, felt sad herself.

“You’ve been a Bad Girl too, Minty,” the voice added, conversationally. “You ran away, didn’t you?”

“-ss-” she said, a terrible shame suddenly suffusing her. She felt awful, cold, worthless. The other mare looked ready to cry. She knew she’d been bad, because she’d been told so. But when she tried to remember why she’d ran away, the memories slipped through her hooves like sugarspun clouds.

“But we know you want to be a Good Girl Minty, so we’re helping you… helping you to be a Good Girl.”

Her knees should have buckled at the shivvers those words (those ‘triggers’ part of her observed), but she couldn’t, because she was standing at parade rest, and wasn’t allowed to move, had been ordered to stand here, before she woke…

“Do you see the mare in front of you, Minty?” asked the voice, and this time the abstract part of her thoughts leant it a name… Nepenthe.

“-ss-”

“Describe her to me. Look closely and tell me what kind of mare she is.”

Jewelup blinked, and now that she had permission, found she could look away from those vacant, happy eyes. Her own eyes felt heavy, sluggish, but obeying Nepenthe’s orders she slowly piloted them across the other mare.

“Pegasus…” she spoke, finding it hard to lift her voice above a whisper, but not caring. She described a tall, elegant, athletic mare with deep, dark sapphires for eyes, a champagne-coloured coat, and a mane that seemed to rear forward over her head like a cresting wave, a frothy burst of pink-and-lilac. Part of it, at the back, had been tied up in a perky bun by a pretty little red ribbon. Her tail was tied up too, in matching fashion.

“What is this mare wearing, Minty?”

Armour. The pegasus was clearly a soldier mare, because she was dressed in grey plate armour, trimmed in royal blue. A plum-purple cape rested between her wings, which were broad and strong. On her brow sat a silver tiara, the amethyst stone in its centre complementing her mane.

“This mare is comfortable with herself, isn’t she Minty?” Nepenthe instructed. “See how her body and her armour fit perfectly together, see the powerful muscle in her limbs and wings. And look at how happy she is Minty, at how she knows there’s nothing she need fear, that nothing can ever hurt her.”

“Yes,” Minty sighed dreamily, feeling a subtle ache in her heart. The other mare seemed so confident, so poised and at peace. Everything she wasn’t.

“Well done”, Nepenthe purred in her ear. “She’s not royal, Minty, but she serves royalty. She’s a soldier, a priestess, an angel of grace and judgement, a demi-goddess who bends knee only to the Highest throne. Isn’t she amazing, Minty?”

Yes, yes she was. The hoof was back, gently rubbing and massaging her mane. Minty let out a vacant giggle: it tickled.

“Drink her in Minty, absorb everything she is. Look at her Posing, wings out-further, further-there see? Look at her getting ready to Buck, turn a little-perfect, see all that strength. See her ready to dance, to fight, to fly. Happy and serene and hot. Stunning, beautiful, the lust of stallions and envy of mares. A mare who can have anything, anypony she desires, everything she craves, because she’s a Good Girl, a Very Good Girl, and Very Good Girls get very good rewards for their service.”

The hoof came back, stroking the back of her neck.

“Do you see it, Minty? Do you see this wonderful mare?”

“Yes… yes I see her.”

“Good Girl… Good Girl…” Nepenthe cooed, and then, when Minty’s squeals and giggles of reward had died down, she gave a new order. “Minty, touch your horn.”

Minty obeyed, and whipping her hoof up she touched-

-nothing. Like a confused foal she pawed at her forehead, feeling only fur and flesh. The amazing mare she had been studying was copying her, mimicking her actions perfectly.

“It’s a mirror, Minty. Do you see?”

“-ss-” Minty whispered, and now her words had an undercurrent of dread.

“Which means that the wonderful mare is you. Pose, Minty.”

Minty obeyed, and now she understood, drawing herself up into the proud posture that had been implanted into her while she slept, head held high, wings flared, a confident smile on her face.

“Good Girl,” Nepenthe repeated, and now she stepped into view, coming up from behind her and carefully embracing her from behind. Minty squeaked softly as the words triggered another little rush, saw her wings strain with excitement, saw Nepenthe run a careful hoof along them.

“A beautiful strong mare, with beautiful strong wings. Wings that can help her fly, far away and high above the judging eyes and petty fears, a mare that can stamp out all those whispered comparisons to Lyra Heartstrings, a mare so powerful that she could stomp out the very memory of Lyra Heartstrings…” Nepenthe rested her head against Minty’s shoulder, and slowly, as if swimming through molasses, the new muscles strange and yet intimately familiar, Minty curled one wing around her in a hug.

They stared together into the mirror, drowning in what they had become. Minty whimpered, in fear and excitement.

“Aren’t these mares amazing, aren’t they beautiful, aren’t they above what they once were,” the unicorn repeated, and Minty felt those sentiments sink through her ears and into her thoughts. The purple gem on her tiara glittered brightly.

“This is what it means to be a Pretty Private. Aren’t they Good Girls…”

“Yes…” Minty answered, flushing.

“Do you want to remain that Good Girl?”

“Yes!”

“Is every Pretty Private a Good Girl?”

“YES!”

“Are you a Pretty Private?”

“...”

Nepenthe waited, patiently.

“Yes.”

Minty saw Nepenthe smiling in the mirror, a soft, joyous smile, saw her lean in and peck her cheek in a single kiss.

“Well done Jewelup. Good Girl. And now, Wake Up.”

Jewelup blinked, as the fog that had clouded her thoughts rushed away. She nearly toppled forward on her suddenly-weak limbs, but caught herself with an instinctive flutter of her wings. Feeling them working between her shoulders, she nearly passed out with shock, but instead turned and stared at Nepenthe.

--commander--leader--sister--

She should have screamed, would have screamed. And yet she didn’t. She was horrified, flushed with rage at what had been done to her, yet she was In Control of herself.

--discipline--grace--awareness--

She blinked, seeing the world come into focus. There was something off about her eyesight, everything seemed sharper now. They were back in her room at the prison, and glancing through the window she saw dozens of armoured Newfoals at work in the exercise yard, saw with vision so refined that she could identify and distinguish each pony as they drilled, salvaged, built...

‘Pegasus eyesight…’ she realised. Pausing, gathering a deep breath, she pawed in mid air and reached for the floor. Her hooves made contact with the carpet, and she composed herself. Calm came with unnatural ease, because despite everything seeming WRONG, her body felt like a natural fit, as if she had lived in its skin her entire life.

She heard a *tinkle* of magic, and sensed something hurling towards her through the air.

--danger--fight--act---

As if a switch had been flicked she spun herself around, caught the projectile in one wing, and still twirling, hurled it at the nearest wall. Then she stopped, and stared, seeing six-feet of javelin shaft embedded into the solid stone.

At last, she turned on the grinning Nepenthe, and saw they now stood at the same eye-level. Jewelup whetted her lips, frowned, and pointed out onto the exercise yard.

“What did you do to them?” she demanded.

Nepenthe turned towards the window. Jewelup blinked. Subconsciously, she had expected the action to be that of a Newfoal, where the head alone turned, the rest of the body remaining motionless. Nepenthe however was fluid and gracile, swinging her entire barrel around in the action.

“We did exactly what you wanted…” she said at last, eyes narrowed with satisfaction as she looked out over the yard.

“What I wanted?” Jewelup repeated in disbelief.

“Oh yes,” Nepenthe turned back. "You wanted a better Newfoal. But we're as far removed from the average Newfoal as Queen Celestia was from you. You asked for a better Newfoal, Minty. And here. We. Are."

Jewelup looked from those smiling grey eyes to the milling ponies in the yard below. Then she looked towards the mirror that had been set up in one corner of the room, examining herself. She flexed a leg, flapped her wings experimentally, ran a hoof calmly over her forehead to confirm her horn had been excised from her existence so thoroughly as to suggest she was born of pure Cloudsdale stock.

“Alright then… so what did you do to me?”

“As I said…” suddenly Nepenthe was in her face, eye to eye with her. “Nothing that you didn’t want…”

Want… pressed this close to the Newf -- to her captain -- Jewelup felt a sudden pang. Last night’s sex had been wonderful. She’d been nursing a yearning, and Nepenthe had given her what she wanted.

Now, she yearned again, but felt none of the fear or hesitation that had defined her then…

This time, she just reached out, grabbed Nepenthe by the shoulders, and took what she wanted.

The kiss that followed was deep, passionate and earnest, two mares hugging one another tightly as hoof, feather and magic explored, probed and felt.

As she bit lightly onto Nepenthe’s lip, Jewelup’s eye flickered open, landing on the mirror. She’d turned away slightly in the process of tangling with the unicorn, presenting her flank to the glass.

She blinked, and broke off from the kiss, Nepenthe’s sweet, euphoric taste tingling on her tongue, and peered deep into the glass, searching for something. Something was amiss…

...and then she realised that her horn was not the only thing that had vanished. Where once the purest expression of her being had glittered on her flank, now there was just a smooth expanse of fur. Her cutie-mark was gone.

Her cutie-mark… what was it again? Dimly, in the back of her mind, she visualised three sparkling gems, but the image felt distant and faint.

And then she snorted, with a touch of sadness, but also relief. Those gems had been Jewelup’s cutie-mark, and she was… no longer Jewelup. The academic part of her cautioned that this was conditioning and hormones speaking, but the fact was, she had hated herself - always in Lyra’s shadow, always the lesser mare, caught in the trap of teaching, always suffering the slings and arrows of selfish brats.

Not anymore. She still felt those old drives, to teach, share and educate, but now she felt no fear, just a confidence grounded in calm certainty. Nothing could hurt her anymore, not as she now was.

She was new-born, new-foaled, with a fresh, unknown destiny ahead of her, a new life to discover. Bright and shining as a sword, as elegant and lean as the curve of a sabre.

She smiled, first in relief, then with utter joy. And the smile grew and grew, until it filled her mind with radiance, purpose, and the certainty of Her cause. Everyone would share in this chance to start again, to rise over their past demons, to become new-foaled.

For Earth, for Equestria, in the name of Queen Celes -- in the name of the Unconquered Sun!

“Is something wrong, Jewelup?” Nepenthe asked softly, laying a hoof on her shoulder.

“No, not Jewelup,” the mare said, shaking her head, mane dancing prettily around her face in the mirror. “Not anymore. Call me… Sabrage...”

She licked her lips, turned and laughed, snapping off a crisp salute. “Hi there! Pretty Private Liaison Officer Sabrage reporting for duty! My sword is sworn to you, my Captain.”

She saw Nepenthe’s own ever-present smile flicker briefly, a touch of something regretful glistening in her eyes. Then it faded, and the unicorn pulled Sabrage into a hug. “Welcome to the corps, sister…”

“Thank you…” Sabrage whispered as she planted a series of soft, fluttering kisses down the back of her sister-Captain’s neck. “Thank you so much…”

A phial of potion shot through the air, narrowly missing Verity’s head, which was peeking up through the hatch set into the top of 9782’s shaking nose. Standing awkwardly atop Lightning Dust’s shoulders, she hoisted one of her rifles and steadied it in her hooves.

It was an alien experience, trying to fire from the hoof. In the past, she’d always found the idea of using her innate tactile magic to manipulate objects as somewhat disgusting. Now however, now she had no choice, and in truth, hefting the sights to her eyes and setting the gun’s stock firmly into her shoulder, it felt right and natural.

She swept the sky, waiting for the pegasus who had hurled that phial to sweep back into view-

-there-

She brought the barrel around, let out a breath, steadied her arm and - and gaped.

!!SCRASH!!

The moment’s hesitation nearly bought her a flask of potion to her face, the glass container hurtling down out of the sky, wrapped in a shimmering field of magic. She ducked just in time, and the flash shattered itself harmlessly on the edge of the locomotive’s frame, splattering potion over the snow that flanked the railroad.

Cursing herself, this time she focused on taking the shot, and feeling the magic in her hooves ‘grip’ the trigger with a kind of tactile tingle, she loosed an armour-piercing round into the sky.

It flew straight and true, puncturing straight through the barrel of the pegasus mare she had fired on, dropping the pony from the sky as surely as if it's wings had been cut… but it also brought down a unicorn, a lightly-armoured stallion who had been strapped into a hang-glider towed behind the pegasus, the same unicorn who had used magic to guide and stabilize the hurled potion-flask that she had nearly caught with her muzzle.

Verity watched them fall, the weight of the shot pegasus pulling the glider down in a death-spin. The unicorn however had some skills of his own, because he managed to pull the glider out of the spin and line it up for a belly-landing in the snow.

Wanting to see more, not believing her own eyes, she hauled herself completely through the hatch and sprawled on 9782’s leading hood. Two stainless-steel truck exhausts had been welded flat against the steel of the nose awning, and getting a grip on one she stuck her head out past the edge of the cab and peered down the length of the speeding train, eyes narrowed as she tried to make out the crashed glider through the powdery snow thrown up by the wheels…

‘Oh shit!’

The railroad ran close to a highway here, steel and asphalt winding their way hand-in-hand across the marshes, pinned between the hills and a tidal arm of the Petitcodiac River. The glider had come down onto a berm beside the highway, and as the unicorn dragged himself from the wreckage, vehicles came hurtling up the road to aid them.

Verity grabbed the pair of binoculars that hung around her neck, checked to make sure the skies were clear, and held the lenses up to her eyes, squinting.

The unicorn wasn’t just rescuing himself, but was hauling the pegasus mare from the snow and laying her out in a recovery position. The vehicles coming up the highway were human in origin, cars, trucks and four-by-fours, but while some were being driven under their own power, others were being hauled by mares and stallions. The first to arrive was clearly a triage unit, because it immediately discharged lightly-armoured ponies who wore red-cross/pink-heart armbands, ponies who immediately surrounded the shot pegasus, one of them levitating a human first-aid kit, another carrying what looked like a portable defibrillator...

Stunned, Verity spun the focus-dials, and as the train threw itself round a corner and blocked the scene from sight, she confirmed with her own eyes that every single one of them sported a rictus-grin.

She let the binos fall, and they bounced against 9782’s oxide-red hull, still secured around her neck.

Newfoals. The hang-glider had stunned her - never before in the war had the armies of Equestria attempted such initiative, combining the strengths of horn and wing in a single package - but the sight of the support column chasing along the highway had knocked her mindset clear out of the ballgame.

There was a name for it, Combined Warfare. For the first time ever, Newfoals, not just ponies but Newfoals (!) were practicing combined warfare… and scavenging human materials… and performing battlefield medicine on one of their own.

No! This wasn’t right! Newfoals were brain-dead cannon-fodder, meatsacks only good for hurling at enemy lines in mass numbers, until they either broke through by sheer numbers or clogged the barrel of every gun with their bullet-ridden corpses.

She suddenly felt like a George A. Romero zombie survivalist thrown into the world of 28 Days Later, confronted with quick-footed, rage-crazed fiends, not just shambling corpses. She knew how to fight ponies, and she knew how to fight Newfoals…

But these… she didn’t know how to fight these things…

Something wheeled in the sky and she lifted her eyes, feeling a new dread beat over her, seeing dozens more pegasai-hauled hang-gliders filling the skies. Then her eyes slid down to 9782’s windscreen, and she peered through into the cab, making eye-contact with Tess, who was peeking cautiously over the lip of the control desk.

Verity Carter felt her resolve harden. She’d promised to protect these people, to not abandon them the way her mother had, not just by rejecting her humanity and becoming the stallion New Bloom, but the way she’d failed to show her face when her daughter needed her most, on that Halloween night long-ago…

’...wait, that’s not right. Didn’t Astrid show up instead? But how could mom and I have then gone home and talked about her past...’

She shook her head, and focused herself. Right now she was on this train, and there were ponies that needed killing. And to do that, she’d have to apply the same rule they appeared to be living by. Improvise.

She ducked back through the hatch and, ignoring Lightning Dust, jumped into the cab space.

“They’re coming after us along the highway, and they’ve got cars and trucks! How long until the railroad leaves the road and goes cross-country?”

Still crouched on the floor, Tess reached up and snatched the Barrier Forecast Map from where it had been left spread-out on the control desk.

“Uh, this isn’t as detailed as my other maps but… that road peters out once it links up with the Trans-Canada Highway. Once under the highway we’ll have about five miles of woodland before we hit the outskirts of Moncton, and then it's a twenty-mile dash across town before we strike out into the wilds.”

Just as Verity moved to curse, the radio crackled.

“Moncton *koff*, Moncton calling 9782, pick up immediately!”

Tess snatched up the handset. “9782 here Moncton, we copy.”

The line dissolved into a heavy burst of coughs and splutters before the unseen dispatcher got his wits together.

“9782, we show the section behind you as occupied *koff*, have you lost part of your train?”

Verity saw Tess glance out the back door and check the locomotive’s dashboard. “Negative Moncton, we’re running fully-fitted. The brakes would have come on if I snapped off part of my consist.”

There was a long silence. Then the dispatcher’s voice came back, breathing heavily in between gasped words.

“Copy… 9782… that uh… that blip on our screen has --koff!-- started moving. Ah… 9782, go faster!”

“What?” Verity demanded as she saw the pallor leave Tess’s face. “What does that mean?”

The youth looked her fearfully in the eye as further flasks of potion began to shoot past the windows, some smashing onto the roof above their heads.

“It means another train is following us!”

8888 rumbled smoothly, the motor purring as diesel scavenged from the prison’s backup generator system flowed through its fuel-lines.

With Sabrage at her side, Nepenthe trotted down the road from the prison, smiling widely as the locomotive drew up neatly at the grade crossing in the fields below what might once have been called ‘Downtown Dorchester’. Behind them flowed a column of Newfoals, bearing on pallets and trolleys everything that could be scavenged from the prison. All of it went onto a number of flatbeds marshalled behind the locomotive, condemned carriages and boxcars that had been hauled out of the Dorchester Cape spur and stripped of their bodywork, leaving just the floors and the rolling chassis.

With all eyes on her, the Captain of the Pretty Privates jumped onto the locomotive’s running board, and pointed north.

“Load them up and roll them out! Let’s raise the curtain on the next act!”

The siren and the mage were locked in combat, the ballet and orchestra whirling and rising in tempo with their hoofbeats. As Starswirl and Adagio unleashed their full magical power, the audience gathered in the Salle des Chevaux tensed themselves, knowing full well that this was the moment, that they were approaching the point where Poochini died, where his final opera should be all rights end…

Cheese gritted his teeth, thoughts torn between what was unfolding onstage, and what was transpiring inside the box he shared with Coco Pommel and the Flim-Flam brothers.

The Charter of the Guard. Somehow, the Equestrian Resistance had stolen the enchanted oath that bound all sworn members of the EUP to the explicit will of the Solar Tyrant. And now it had been entrusted to him, with the express goal of destroying it…

’This would mean burning my bridges with the PHL, revealing my true allegiances by activating my sleeper agents. The consequences will be dire, for all sides. If the attempt to destroy the Charter fails, then the backlash of the betrayal I set in motion might cost us the whole war, and worse…’

...his eyes flickered across the auditorium to Box 5, which was occupied by a single stallion, attended to by a cadre of nurses. Cheese felt his eyes tingle, and fought back unexpected tears.

‘Father…’

‘Iron’ Kreme Brulee had seen better days. The troubled and yet galvanised stallion who had launched the Great Equestrian was now a shadow of himself, barely alive and yet denied death. What sat in the box looked like pieces of leather stitched into pony form, rheumed eyes gazing through cateracts over the tawdry show defiling the stage built by his own father, Cheese’s grand-pere Marque Brillante.

‘We were never close,’ Cheese admitted to himself. ‘Not with how different we were. But you were never a bad stallion or an unkind father… you just had a different path planned out for me, compared to that which I wanted to tread.’

Engineering was in the family line, and Cheese admitted he had some gift for mechanics and artificing, evidenced by the spectacular constructs that were once an integral part of his long-gone parties. But those skills were always in service to his true passion, which was to make ponies laugh, laugh honestly and gleefully…

...ironic then that he should end up a spy, cloaked in lies and falsehoods. And yet it was far better a fate than what had befallen his father: Kreme Brulee was one of Equestria’s most brilliant engineers, and too much of value to the war effort for the state to lose. And Equestria was oh so good at taking others and repurposing them for their needs nowadays...

So, despite the perversion of his dreams, despite his loathing of war and a certain warmongering alicorn, despite seeing his ‘Great Babe’ recommissioned as a warship, despite the loss of his wife and the estrangement of his son, despite wanting nothing more than release and peace, Kreme Brulee was not allowed to die. Vast amounts of magic had been expended to keep his mind active and inventive, at the cost of his physical form. Squadrons of medics stood on hand 24/7 to ensure he didn’t kick the bucket unexpectedly…

...and worst of all, he had been sworn into the EUP as a reserve in the Engineering Battalions, thus enslaving his very will through the same Geis that bound every other member of the armed forces. And then he had been compelled to invent, for his mind to race every second to create concepts that would bring ruination to humanity, and even his beloved home. There would be no rest, no sanctuary in his own mind. As long as he had an ounce of creativity left, he’d be left alive… no, not left alive. Pickled. Prolonged.

So much for being a Great Equestrian...

Cheese’s hooves gripped tightly onto the scroll in his hooves, just as the orchestra cut loose with an unfamiliar, invasive burst of brass, the bombastic fanfare completely at odds with the impassioned and subtle scoring that defined Poochini’s masterwork. His gaze flicked back to the stage, and he sneered as the actor playing Starswirl hefted a hoof and began to sing an ode, a proud aria calling upon a supreme power to lend him aid in this undecided fight…

...an ode to Celestia.

As the act wound to its conclusion, Cheese’s stomach twisted in rage and disgust. He had expected the ‘completed’ finale to be something tasteless and patriotic, but this was beyond the pale. Old Poochini would be spinning in his grave fast enough to generate current if he could see this travesty!

No, now his magnum opus on the clash of personalities, on the value of self-respect and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, the work that had challenged and intrigued performers and audiences for decades with its mysteries, had become nothing more than a puff-piece for the Solar Empire.

“Disgusting,” he heard Coco whisper, twenty minutes into the ‘new’ material. It was at that point that Celestia herself, represented by a divine light shining down from above the stage (heavens forbid that the High Queen herself by sullied through being portrayed by some mortal actress), manifested to directly intervene in resolving the fight, calling on Adagio and her henchmares to lay down their arms and swear fealty to her.

“...and go forth, in my name,
to a realm thou knowest not,
a place that knowest not harmony,
but which in time’s fullness must.”

And in return the Sirens cried out that they would, that they would be her spies and agents in ‘The New World’, laying the groundwork for the glory to come.

If anything, Cheese gripped the Charter of the Guard even harder, as if through sheer will alone he could cancel out the magicks that protected it.

And then, suddenly, Coco reached over and rested a hoof on his. The dark-eyed mare shared a brief moment of emotion with him, nodding in agreement.

“We can end this,” she said, softly. “We can bring it all down and ensure tonight’s performance is a one-night stand.”

As the profanely sycophantic words being sung below tried to crowd out Cheese’s thoughts, he felt the fires of his indignation burn brighter.

“My grandfather’s stage has been sullied with this filth,” he spat. “Please, burn it down.”

“All right,” Coco’s lips curled into a smirk, one that for once had a touch of equinity in it. “Flim, Flam, work your magic.”

The two silent brothers slipped out of the box, and for a few minutes nothing happened. Cheese and Coco sat without a word, watching the denouement of the narrative play out.

Then, just as Starswirl launched into another Godawful piece giving thanks to Celestia for her intervention, swearing his magic to her service, the building’s magical intercom crackled. The orchestra cut off abruptly, the actors stumbling mid-step, before-

“AUUUAAAAAAAARGHHHHH!”

-the sound system squealed and popped, segueing into the scream of a human caught in the throes of ponification. All throughout the theater, natural-born couples held each other, shadows of horrified doubt making themselves shown as they were forced to endure the fear in that poor human's voice. Cheese’s eye however was on the Newfoals attendants going about their work in the aisles… was he imagining it or did their smiles suddenly seem… pained? Regretful?

And then, rising like a lark ascendant over the scream, there was a voice.

“I’ve...I’ve been allowed to uphold my right of Final Words...” Lyra Heartstrings spoke from beyond the grave. “...a chance to justify myself, as either a martyr to humanity, or a traitor to equinity...and so I’d like to borrow from the words of a great human, Charlie Chaplin...”

Cheese lifted an eyebrow at Coco and clopped his hooves silently together.

“A statement from the traitor mare?” he said, both of them fully aware that Lyra hardly possessed as much good standing among the Resistance as she did the PHL. The repeated news of humans, ponies, and others wanting to canonize her as a saint and/or worship her had not helped.

“Flim and Flam call it ‘showbusiness’,” she replied drolly. “Lyra apparently gives better copy than Lady Harshwhinny.”

"I will admit that Harshwhinny has all the dramatic and theatrical sense of one of Maud's rocks," Cheese conceded. Well, whatever else could be said about Coco, she knew how to choose cronies with style.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be a martyr or a traitor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to subvert or conquer anyone anywhere. I should like to help everyone - if possible – Pony, Human - biped - quadruped.”

"HEARTSTRINGS!" somepony screamed, infuriated at the mere sound of the mare dubbed ‘Anti-Citizen #1’ within the empire. “WHO DID THIS!”

!!CRASH!!

As if answering his enraged cry, a massive spotlight marked ‘Celestia One’ plummeted out of the stage rigging, smashing itself across the magical wards that shielded the actors and audience.

“Fear and greed have poisoned our souls, barricaded borders with hateful barriers, and marched us into misery and bloodshed. We say our ‘enemy’ has developed speed, and so we shut ourselves in. Their machinery which could give abundance has inspired our fear. Our war with Sombra has made us cynical. Their history has made them sometimes hard and unkind…”

Lyra’s words continued to resonate, Marque Brillante’s architectural acoustics amplifying them gorgeously, as a cascade of flaming lamp oil burst out of the wrecked housing, a burning wave that immediately set the walls of the stage ablaze. As if the building itself was relieved at this development (though Cheese suspected some flimflammery at work), the safety-curtain immediately jammed itself as it began to descend, giving the oil enough time to drip into the orchestra-pit, spreading the fire beyond the confines of the stage and into the actual auditorium.

Before the first voice had even drawn breath to scream, the fire-alarms rang into life, while magically-charmed doors concealed within the walls swung open, revealing wide and copious fire-escapes leading directly out onto the streets. Cheese smiled grimly. No ponies would die here tonight, and it would be a fitting final testimony to his grandfather’s architectural genius. If the Salle de Chevaux was to die tonight, then it would go down swinging…

...and Lyra would be its swansong performance, the Mare herself already ascending towards the climax of her final speech, cribbed from the Great Dictator.

“Ponies! Newfoals! Humans! Don’t give yourselves to brutes – the Queen who despises you - enslaved you - who regiments your lives - tells you what to do - what to think and what to feel! Who drills you - diets you - treats you like animals, uses you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to this unnatural Beast – a machine mare, with a machine mind and a machine heart! You are not machines! You are not weapons! You are living beings! You have the love of others in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate - the unloved and the unnatural. Guardsponies! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!”

The opened doors had another effect. As ponies fled, air flooded in, feeding the flames, and within seconds the wards failed under the heat, allowing the fire to drop onto the swiftly-abandoned stage, flames licking immediately across the set, salivating oil in anticipation of the meal to come…

As Cheese and Coco made their own escape, feining panic, he slipped a parting glance of triumph at the stage, and to his satisfaction saw the orchestra conductor hurling the ‘completed’ score for La Sirene into the devouring flames. Savouring the moment, and feeling nothing but pride for having saved the theatre from having to host further travesties, Cheese’s eyes rose to Box 5, and he took further heart from what he witnessed there. Old Kreme Brulee might have lost his family, freedom, and much of his mind, but clearly there was something still at work behind his eyes…

...because for a fleeting instant, Cheese saw his father gazing upon the wreck of his own father’s stage, and realised that the old colt was smiling at this small victory, at this ruination of another attempt to pollute the arts.

Then the moment had passed, and as Kreme’s attendants wheeled him away, Cheese trotted after Coco out onto the streets, where the howl of approaching sirens commingled with the synthetic cries of the hastily-evacuated game arcade next door to the theatre, a place where dozens of colts and fillies were usually engaged chasing the high-scores on games ‘inspired’ by the war for Earth: Salvation Army, Equestrian Liberator and Righteous Crusade.

Even as fire-hoses came to bear, the flames leapt from the blazing cinema to the arcade, and Cheese felt another moment of serenity. All might not be right with the world, but tonight at least, some justice had been done.

“Bonnie, can you hear me?” Lyra’s ghost spoke, grief and love suffusing her words. “Whatever happens, look on Bonnie! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kind new world, where we’ll rise above hate, greed, and brutality. Our souls have been given wings and at last are beginning to fly. Flying into the rainbow. Into the light of hope! Into the future! The glorious future! That belongs to you, to me, and to all of us. Look on Bonnie, look on! I love you!”

“I’ll mobilise immediately,” Cheese nodded as Lyra’s final words died away in the flames, accepting the mission placed (literally) into his hooves. “But I can’t activate Maud - she’s too much of a risk, too highly placed to slip away unnoticed.”

“Do what you have to do,” Coco demurred, vanishing into the crowds as if she were a never-present ghost. “We’ll be watching, Cheese.”

Not bothering to search for her, Cheese nodded and trotted away. There was much he had to do. He didn’t dare use Maud, but he had contacts in PHL R&D, the little enclave run by Colonel Hex.

“All I have to do is message Astrid,” he murmured. “And she can put me in touch with Hex. I need Maud’s research, but I don’t need Maud.”

It would not even be a week before he regretted that decision.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's Notes:

Well, it's been nine months, but at last we have a new chapter. Consider this piece a sort of recap, reesetablishing the characters and laying the groundwork for what is to come.

As Nepenthe said, we're now raising the curtain on the second act, and things are about to get explosive!