“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?