Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons

By Somber

Chapter 53: Upgrades

“The war brought misery and death all over the world. I sure hope that something like that never happens again. But from what I've seen, there's not much hope for ponykind.”

The doors to the Fluttershy Medical Center ER smashed violently inwards, battered aside by a ferocious cyan-rainbow tornado wearing a shooty look all its own. Glory, her hide spattered and streaked with blood, stood in the doorway and bellowed with passion and assertiveness that would have done the original Rainbow Dash proud, “I am assuming control of these medical facilities!”

The few ponies standing around the battered ER just stared in speechless confusion at the sight of her backed by Lacunae and four power-armored pegasi. I lay like a heap of ballast across Lacunae’s back, twisting as I tried to alternate my gaze between the emergency room in front of me and the wagons that had hauled the injured all the way from Chapel to the hospital.

“Now wait a minute,” a brown earth pony began to say as he looked at his own balking security and the two beam turrets flanking his half-dozen ponies. “We’re in charge he--”

Two blinding flares of emerald magic streaked through the ER, and the two turrets exploded in a second. Glory hovered over him. “This is not a debate!” she roared down into his face. “Get whatever medically-trained ponies you can out here at once. Doctor. Nurse. Midwife. I don’t care, but move!” Her imperious hoof pointed at the security ponies. “You two. Go grab whatever buckets you can and start boiling water.” Next she pointed at four more ponies who looked on in wary bafflement. “You four! Grab buckets and detergent and scrub these tables as quick as you can. You have two minutes!”

All the ponies in the emergency center just gaped at her before she shouted, “Move it!”

And as if Celestia herself had returned, they moved.

“Scotch Tape. Get on Blackjack’s PipBuck and contact Megamart. We’ll pay whatever they want from what we stripped off the Harbingers if they can get Bonesaw and every healing potion and chem they’ve got together within ten minutes. Then do the same for the Collegiate, and get them to send Triage.” Scotch Tape lifted my remaining foreleg, removed it so that she could use my PipBuck more easily and wouldn’t damage me further by pulling on the leg, opened the panel, and fiddled with the controls a bit. Glory turned to Lacunae as the filly began to talk. “We’ll send Lightning Dancer and Boomer to Megamart with a cart. Will you have the magic to reach the Collegiate and bring the things back?”

“I will, even if I must imbibe the wastewater in the little fillies’ room,” Lacunae promised solemnly, setting me on a bench where I had a clear view of the ER.

“Good. Take my father up to the stasis pods before you go.” Glory then turned to P-21. “Go up to there and make sure that the one we put Scotch in is still working. If not…” She hesitated for an instant, glancing back at the bandage-wrapped form of her father. Her eyes met mine; I gave her as reassuring a smile as I could. It was all I could do at this point. “Try and get it prepped and ready if you can.”

“Should be easier this time,” the blue pony muttered, glancing at Scotch Tape as she talked into the PipBuck. Then he ran off towards the stairs.

Glory’s hoof turned to bear on the few uninjured Crusaders who had accompanied us from Chapel. “You four. Scour this place from top to bottom. Every chem, healing potion, bandage, and bottle of alcohol you can find, bring here or to the operating room on the tenth floor. Understood?”

“Bet I can find more than you!” one shouted, turning the vital scavenger hunt into a game and hiding his fear as he did so.

The Collegiate and Society ponies that staffed this little outpost staggered out from the side rooms where they’d been sleeping and were instantly drafted and assigned duties. When Archibald, the brown pony in charge, muttered something about caps and paying for this, Glory silenced him with a single stare and then pointed at the heaps of markspony carbines and anti-machine rifles we’d taken from the Harbingers. “Are these tools of death payment enough for you to save lives?”

“Um… ah… yes… I suppose,” he muttered.

“Then move!” Glory bellowed.

“I’ll just wait over here… and… um… watch…” I muttered from my seat.

In five minutes, two tables were scrubbed far cleaner than they’d been in centuries, and the first victims were brought in off the wagons. They’d been triaged back in Star House, the most wounded loaded last and taken off the wagons first. A few were probably Harbingers, but that didn’t matter right now. All that did matter was that they were mortally wounded. Glory had a nurse pour a pan full of Wild Pegasus and dumped the medical tools in. I envied the tools a tiny bit.

Lacunae levitated the still form of Sky Striker through the ER and then flew up to the stasis repository. Glory hesitated for one moment, her face clearly showing a yearning to be at his side.

Then she started to work.

I hadn’t appreciated her medical skill in a while. Nowadays I just regenerated, used healing potions, or was hurt so badly I was unconscious, and I hadn't watched her save Scotch. I saw her move from one tool to the next with her mouth with a deft finesse that matched Rainbow Dash’s flying skills. She made healing potions and unicorn magic seem like crude tricks, easy and almost lazy solutions, cheats. Given the lack of magic up above, I could now understand how much medicine would rely on cutting and sewing. The only magical assistance she used with each patient was to put the recollector on their heads to anesthetize them.

When Bonesaw arrived twenty minutes later, he and an earth pony Collegiate doctor working the ER had gone through and stabilized a half dozen patients. With magic, the old stallion pushed them further towards recovery and away from death’s bony hooves. Yet even magic had its limitations. It could heal wounds, certainly, but what of infection, shock, contaminants left in wounds, and other complications? With needle, thread, scalpel, and tubes, Glory saved lives without magic.

But not without cost. One mare who’d come to fight with the Crusaders shuddered, gave one long exhalation, and then went silent. Glory simply closed her eyes a moment with the slightest bowing of her head and then washed her hooves in a bucket, rinsed them with whatever alcohol was present, and moved to the next. She refused to give death more than that.

And me, I sat back watching it all with a profound sense of frustration. I wanted to will my limbs back in place so I could boil linen for bandages or sterilize the equipment, wipe down the tables or just give comfort to injured children. But all I could do was sit back and watch as ponies better than I worked to save others.

It’s not always about me, though…

When Lacunae returned with Triage and a few others an hour later, the alicorn looking positively drained of magic and her wings dragging on the floor as she walked, the critically ill were stabilized enough for the gray unicorn to take Glory’s place.

“Glory,” I said as she washed her hooves, staring at the bloody water.

She didn’t answer.

“Glory,” I said louder from my seat in the corner.

She bit a bottle and carefully trickled the alcohol over her forehooves.

“Glory!” I shouted, and she jumped, the bottle falling from her mouth and puddling at her feet. She stared at the fluid spilling away in shock as I tried to meet her eyes and said in softer tones, “Glory. Go to him.”

“I… I can’t. If he’s… I…” she stammered, clenching her eyes shut. “I’m needed here.”

“Glory. Go.” I imagined my mother, all the things we’d left unsaid. “Go to him. Triage is here. She can see to the injured. You’ve done your part. Go on.”

She glanced at me and the mask of her stoicism crumbled as tears welled in the corners of her eyes and she grimaced. “Blackjack… I’m scared. What if… how could she… why…?” She bowed her head, and I started to move to hold her before I remembered my missing limbs. “Why did she do that?!” she cried out at me.

“I don’t know,” I said in a low, gentle voice. “Maybe Cognitum took her over and attacked him before she changed her mind. Or maybe… maybe she had to do something so she couldn’t return to her old life. One that she wanted but that wouldn’t save the Wasteland. I don’t know. What I do know is your dad is up there. If he’s alive, you’re going to need to talk to him. And if he’s not…” I closed my eyes, remembering the head and the stake. “If not… you need to say goodbye.” I finished in a near whisper.

She looked at me for one more trembling second and then pulled my torso into an embrace, holding me tight. Even if I didn’t have legs, I imagined holding her just as tightly as I sighed and stroked my cheek against her neck. “Thank you,” she whispered back.

I sighed and kissed her neck and smiled when she finally pulled back. “Go on. I’m going to wait here. I know sooner or later Rampage will bring Rover.” I sighed, looking at my three stumps and damaged hindleg. “I’m really going to owe him a leg or three.”

“All right,” she said, then flew up into the air. “I’ll be back soon.” And with a swoosh of her rainbow mane, she shot down the hall.

Scotch Tape looked over at me from where she hugged my foreleg with my PipBuck within. I wondered what Cognitum would think if she knew that EC-1101 was in the possession of a filly; part of me found it funny, and another decidedly not. “Hear anything interesting?”

She sighed and looked at the leg. “Lots. There’s a bunch of chatter about one group withdrawing to some place called the Cathedral, another talking about ‘Operation Cauterize’ and something involving Canterlot, and a bunch of jabber that I think is Zebra. But I didn’t pick up anything from the Harbingers. If they’re communicating, they must be using landlines rather than transmitting.” She glanced off to the side and then back at me. “Blackjack… there’s this really freaky pony watching me right now.”

“Pale? Wide-brimmed hat? Cards?” I asked with a little smile. She nodded, glancing away again nervously. “Don’t mind him. He’s Dealer. Lives in my PipBuck. He’s a… friend.”

The filly set my leg down and backed away from it before looking back at me. She looked at the device, then looked off to the side, and finally leaned towards me. “Blackjack… I’ve seen him before,” she whispered.

I would have sat up a little straighter if… well… limbs. “What do you mean, Scotch?”

“In a book. There was a paper with a drawing of a pony that looked just like him,” Scotch Tape said before she shrugged off her saddlebags and dug around for a bit, pulling out a copy of the ‘Wasteland’ game book she’d picked up in Silverstar Sporting Supplies. She flipped it open to the back pages where several papers had been shoved in. ‘Character Sheet’ was printed in the upper left corner of each, and below were a bunch of boxes and letters that made no sense. Somepony with some art skills had drawn rather detailed pictures on the backs. One was a pony wearing steam-driven power armor. Another was a unicorn mare holding a talisman like Priest’s cutie mark, her head bowed reverently, while a third depicted a wildly grinning pegasus stallion with a long rifle strapped to his barding.

And there was the Dealer. Same hat. Same gaunt, sallow look with a dead-eyed stare as he flipped glowing cards between his hooves. “Turn it over…” I murmured.

Name: Smiling Jack. Race: Earth Pony. Profession: Occult Gambler. Hometown: Gallows Hill.

Player: Echo.

“I see,” I said quietly. It might have been coincidence. There may have been more than one pony with that name. But I wasn’t sure coincidence existed any more.

Dealer had worked for Goldenblood. A personal assistant. Dealer had also been a Marauder. Everypony in that team had in some way been affected by tragedy and failure. Suddenly the Dealer’s rants about responsibility took on a new light; he’d seen his team drift apart after the death of Big Macintosh. Seen one turn into a criminal, another driven insane, the rest spread apart and broken.

Doof. Psalm. Twist. Jetstream. Stonewing. Vanity. Applesnack. Big Macintosh. Echo.

The team was complete now.

“Dog think pony has problem,” Rover said calmly as the old canine cupped his chin and narrowed his filmy eye. “Now what could it be… hmmm…” He sat on a large wooden crate he’d hauled in while Triage readied her surgical equipment.

“I broke my legs,” I muttered, flushing as I lay there on a table. Now that the injured were more or less taken care of, there was time to deal with stupid mares who tore their legs off trying to rip open tanks with their bare hooves.

Triage glanced at Rover and then at me. “I dunno,” the gray unicorn said, her lips twitching around her cigarette. “Sprained ankle?”

“I broke my legs,” I repeated, huffing and rolling my eyes.

Rover ‘hmmmm’ed as he rubbed his chin. “Dog think Dog may have clue, but Dog is not sure.” He looked at the smirking unicorn. “Is something missing?”

“No. I mean… how could that be?” Triage asked in mock amazement, levitating my severed forelimb and cupping her own chin in imitation of the sand dog. “Isn’t she one of the strongest, toughest cyberponies around?”

“Dog certainly thought so!” Rover replied sarcastically. “Pony certainly act like it!”

“I admit it! I broke my legs!” I yelled at the pair, who ignored me.

“Maybe it’s not physiological,” Triage offered.

Rover feigned shock. “Pony think problem is in Pony’s brain?”

Triage nodded soberly. “I think it very well may be.”

“Okay! I’m an idiot who broke my legs!” I yelled at the pair. “Happy?”

Triage jumped and stared at me, her eyes wide. “Eureka! We have a breakthrough!”

Rover crossed his arms, bowed his head a little, and nodded once. “Yes. Pony may be onto something,” he said seriously.

“But how to fix it? I mean, we can’t make her less of an idiot,” Triage said soberly.

Rover shook his head. “No no. Dog is good, but dog not work miracles.”

I glowered at the pair. “I hate you both.” The pair arched their eyebrows coolly, simultaneously, as they looked at me and then at each other, and almost in unison gave each other matching smiles that I didn’t like at all.

“Dog has answer. If pony insists on doing things that ruins dog’s hard work, dog will simply make her tougher.” He looked at Triage and grinned. “What pony think? Securipony?”

Triage’s horn glowed, and I felt something release beneath my thigh. With a pop, my last leg came off. “I think we should just jump straight to an Ultra-Sentinel. Nip this problem in the bud once and for all,” Triage replied with her own grin.

I had a vision of myself sporting six legs each as big as my body and wiggled my three working stumps desperately as I struggled to get away. Triage levitated me, and my stumps waved helplessly in the air as I tried to flee. “No! I’ll never get laid again!”

Triage set me back in the middle of the table. Finally, she sighed. “All joking aside, we’re serious, Blackjack. You are throwing yourself into fights these legs just weren’t meant to handle. You need some more body reinforcement, too. Your cyber parts are designed for recon and being all sneaky. Face it. You need a combat model that can take the abuse you’re throwing at it.”

“I don’t want to be turned into Deus,” I muttered. “I like having flesh and blood.” And so did he.

Triage snorted and rolled her eyes. “Then you better get used to being a cripple. Fact is, you’re thrashing yourself harder than even your repair talismans can keep up with. And you won’t be any use to people if you can’t move.”

“Fuck you,” I hissed at her and closed my eyes. I saw the thing that Dawn became. That Deus had been. And I could see myself becoming just another version of Dawn. Was there any pony left in her? “I don’t want to be a machine, Triage. I don’t want…” I began, then slammed the back of my head against the bed as hard as I could. “Fuck!” I could almost imagine my mother looking at me from the everafter.

It isn’t always about you, Blackjack. I could hear P-21’s soft words in my ears.

I’d given my flesh and blood for others before. Now I just had to give a little bit more...

Still, where was the line when I’d stop being Blackjack and start being Dawn? Or was it already too late? I fought the tears of frustration. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Don’t be. Near as I can tell, this is par for the course,” Triage replied.

I closed my eyes. I wasn’t Dawn. I was a better pony than her. I was…

“What have you got?” I asked quietly.

Rover looked back to me. “Pony is fortunate Pony has friends.”

“Professor Zodiac realized a while ago that you might need stronger stuff than what you had,” Triage said, “even if you didn’t want to admit it. She had us looking for whatever Steelpony parts we could.” She sighed and shook her head. “There were plans for cybernetic Steel Rangers and Shadowbolts, but finding the actual augmentations was a bust. It’d take a full engineering lab to make them from scratch.”

Now I frowned at her. “So… you don’t have tougher legs?”

“Not exactly,” Triage said as her horn lifted a black piece of metal from the crate. I blinked in surprise, and then stared at the rear leg of a piece of Enclave power armor. “You see, we won’t be making them precisely from scratch. We’ll use the remains of Sky Striker’s power armor, the Shadowbolt repair drivers, and your basic legs to make new ones.”

“You can do that?” I asked in surprise.

The gray unicorn sighed. “I think we can do that. The Shadowbolt design is based on power armor, only much more reinforced. Instead of armoring around a pony, it strengthens throughout the body. We’ll have to fortify your joints and spine, though. One bad fall on your back and you could easily snap it.” She levitated another long piece of black metal. “Fortunately, we’ve got enough pieces of Sky Striker’s armor to do it.” She looked into the box and pursed her lips. “Too bad the wing guards were shredded.”

Not too bad for me. Anything that got me more than twenty feet off the ground was something I didn’t want. Once I worked out teleportation… I sighed and then gave a half smile. “Just try and keep me as much flesh and blood as possible. I don’t want Glory to have to break out a wrench set when we make love.”

“And that was a mental image I could do without.” Triage shuddered and lifted one of my torn legs with her magic. “We’ll get you put back together. That shoulder is a problem, though. We’re going to have to pop you into a memory orb for a bit while we work on you.”

“However,” Rover added, lifting a finger, “there is price for Pony.”

I sighed, knowing there had to be one. “I’ll go to Grimhoof.” I really wanted to chase down Steel Rain and Dawn, but…

“That’s his requirement. The Collegiate has a separate request,” Triage said with a smile. “Fact is, the Collegiate is dying for a steady food source. The Society has been gouging us for years for basic staples. We got their plantations running and secured the tunnels connecting them with Elysium, and then they kicked us out. But there’s one plantation close to us that never got running due to extreme Enervation, stronger than almost anywhere else. Somehow, you’re immune to Enervation now. Maybe it’s a cyberpony thing. In any case, we want you to go in and see if you can clean it out for us.” My immunity seemed to annoy the gray mare; I supposed she didn’t like mysteries any more than I did.

“Why isn’t there any Enervation in the other plantations?” I asked.

“No idea. They were all underground Stable-Tec testbeds for stable orchards and gardens, built to pretty similar designs and without full stable shielding. If there was Enervation in the area, it shouldn’t just be hitting one hard and leaving the others almost untouched. The only difference is that that plantation was leased to some other company. Roseluck Agrifarms. We sent in some robots to look around both the surface structures and the plantation itself, but there were turrets that stopped them from getting deep enough to be useful. In the end, we just gave up and walled off the tunnels to it.”

Roseluck Agrifarms. I’d heard that name before.

“All right,” I sighed in agreement. “Soon as we’re out of here, we’ll travel there next.” It felt galling, considering the other important things I needed to do, but I supposed finding Steel Rain and Dawn could wait till I’d paid off my debt.

“Good.” Rover nodded. “Is nice having Pony that honors word.”

Triage opened up her saddlebags and pulled out a number of strange talismans and other arcane science equipment. She levitated a memory orb and something particularly pointy. “Hope you’re ready for a long night.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back. “It’s already been a long night.” She floated the orb over and touched it to my horn…

The world refocused into the eyes of a white unicorn mare looking into a mirror. I started a bit at her unusual appearance; her irises were rainbow bands and her mane was a chaotic blending of prismatic colors. An elaborate curl of golden wire looped around her horn to a tiny ruby set in the tip and matched her shimmery dress which was decorated with thousands of tiny gems. A gap showed her cutie mark: a diamond radiating spectra of light. She popped out a tube of lipstick, delicately applied a thin line of red, carefully tamped her lips, and then smiled. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “All right, Diamond Flash. You can do this.”

She turned with a swish of her shimmery prismatic tail, trotted from the bathroom, and walked into the bedlam of a great gathering of ponies. The cavernous space was awash in lights, music, and noise. Dozens of displays and booths filled the vaulted chamber, and ponies of all kinds, as well as a few beings from other lands, wandered through looking at the varied wonders. Above it all hung a banner magically illuminated to read ‘Equestrian Technology Trade Fair’.

Clearly, this was a major convention of some kind. In the distance, on the open floor below the ringing balcony my host was standing on, I spotted Applejack standing beside a green stallion and talking to Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie walked with an entourage two floors up. Opposite her, Twilight Sparkle seemed to be critically reviewing the Ministry of Arcane Science’s stall and clearly not finding it to her satisfaction. Two green unicorn mares fussed around with the displays, even with others looking on, clearly trying to execute the purple mare’s exacting directions. Stable-Tec had a massive three-story-tall display of a stable. From the traffic coming and going through the building’s wings, this event clearly went beyond even this massive space.

Diamond Flash walked casually through the throngs of ponies; every one of them looked as glamorous as herself, or more so. She levitated a glass of champagne and took a nervous sip as she looked over at one display. Flash Industries had something going on that had dozens of ponies oohing and ahhh-ing as energy zapped and flashed. She made her way closer, and well-dressed ponies looked at her, sized her up, and made room for her.

“Flash Industries, makers of magical energy weapons renowned across Equestria, now revealing the latest and greatest in shield matrix technology!” boomed a speaker as a large diamond rose from one end of a platform. “You all know Flash Industries’s fine products like the AEP-7, with a redesigned focusing crystal pattern, an improved photonic focusing chamber, and selectable beam focus, wavelength, pulse energy, and refire rate! Well, now witness the next generation in energy products from Flash!” A familiar, boxy energy pistol rose on a frame on the other side of the platform.

The diamond began to glow, and a hexagon of glowing panels materialized around it. “Using only the finest Crystal Empire gems, the Flash Arcane Defense Emitter, or F.A.D.E., creates a shield spell impervious to normal weaponry. See for yourself the awesome power of Flash!” The pistol began to fire crimson beams, the blasts striking the rotating panels and making them glow brighter and brighter.

“What’s that? Not enough Flash for you?” A beam rifle rose up beside it. “Let’s see if the F.A.D.E. can handle the cutting edge energy of the AER-12, now with improved platinum gem fittings!” Even brighter crimson beams blasted away along with the pistol, and the shield remained in place. “Oh my! Perhaps we need something even ‘Flashier’? What about the Flash AET-3 Triforce?!” boomed the speaker, and a third, snub-nosed rifle raised up and began to blast three beams at a time along with the other two weapons. A few ponies in the front backed away from the barrage of red beams striking the magical plates.

“I know what you’re thinking! How can this be? But you haven’t seen anything yet, folks! Because I know some of you must wonder: what if, somehow, your F.A.D.E. becomes inoperable? Are you doomed?” the speaker blared. “Not at all!” And then the diamond lowered back into the platform while the magical field remained. Red energy flashed and glared off the magical plates, even with the gem gone. “So long as your enemies keep firing, the F.A.D.E. keeps going. Truly a wondrous innovation from Flash Industries!”

The weapons stopped firing, and three beautiful mares and one handsome stallion stepped forward from around the platform, handing out pamphlets about exciting products from Flash. Diamond Flash hung back, giving a sigh of relief.

“Marvelous display,” a voice said from behind her, and she whirled, staring at a handsome yellow earth pony with a gorgeous unicorn at his side.

“H… Horse! And Sweetie Belle?! I… What an… I mean...” She fought to compose herself and smiled as casually as possible. “I’m delighted you found it impressive.”

He smiled genially as he went on. “Personally, though, I have to question demonstrating one product that renders your others obsolete. It does seem a curious move.”

She swallowed. “What, I should wait for a competitor to snap up something out of the M.A.S.?” She gave her best dismissive toss of her mane. “When you see the price tag for one F.A.D.E., you’ll know I’ll make a fortune either way.” Then she glanced across the room at Applejack. “Besides, the M.W.T. is urging more emphasis to be put on defensive applications, like power armor.”

“I’m sure the zebras truly appreciate their defensive capabilities,” Horse said sardonically, with a small roll of his eyes. He looked at the crowds with clear distaste and sighed. “Such a bother, but this is where the well-connected rub flanks and decide what the future will be.” He suddenly looked at her once more and smiled, arching his brow. “And you certainly seem determined to be one of them. Look at you. Lowly M.A.S. researcher to magical weapons dealer. Who would have guessed?”

“I… I’m just trying to do what’s best for my company. And for Equestria,” she added, sounding as if she wasn’t sure if Horse was mocking her or not. She glanced at Sweetie Belle, then frowned and looked down at the Stable-Tec display where Sweetie Belle was addressing a collection of ponies. Her eyes went from one to the other, mouth hanging open.

“I do love that look,” Horse said with a chuckle.

“Is that… is that a robot?” she asked.

“The latest and finest,” he chuckled. “Sweetie Bot, 2.0,” he said with a wave of his hoof, and the robot actually blushed and lowered her eyes. “She’s not for the show, though. She’s all for me. I just love seeing Stable-Tec squirm at the potential questions.” He gazed down at the distant, real Sweetie Belle with a strange, hard look. “I once asked her to marry me, but she declined. So I made one that wouldn’t. Worked out for the best, I suppose.”

“I’ll say,” Diamond Flash said as she looked around. “I… I wonder if the Princesses will show up.”

Horse rolled his eyes. “Oh, I suppose Luna will make an appearance, eventually. Give some boring speech about innovation, how pleased she is at our inventions, remind us to give our all to win the war, and then teleport back to Canterlot. Rah rah rah.” He gave a dismissive yawn. “I’d be far more interested if Celestia poked her horn outside her school… but she has even less inclination to be around weapons like these.” He scanned the crowd and then gave a savage little grin. “Oh look. Her cadaver’s here.”

She followed his gaze and looked down at the scarred form of Goldenblood walking around the edges of the room, skirting the crowd. “Who?”

He glanced at her, his expression turning pitying. “Oh, that’s right. You’re not in the know. I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore.” He smirked down at the pony as he made his way towards Stable-Tec’s stable display. “That’s the director of the Office of Interministry Affairs. One Goldenblood.”

Diamond glanced down at the disfigured pony who was now standing in a corner away from the crowd gathered around Sweetie Belle. The mare then looked back at him. “So what?”

Horse threw back his head and laughed. “Oh my. ‘So what?’ That’s so… cute.” He returned to glaring down at the stallion. “When I was interim director of the M.W.T., I discovered all kinds of interesting things about Goldenblood and his little office. Things you wouldn’t begin to believe. It was all right there, if you were smart enough to know where to look.” He caught Diamond’s eye, and his lips curled in amusement. “Applejack isn’t, by the way. She hasn’t a clue about a tenth of what’s done behind her back.” He glanced at the orange mare and her escort with a look that was almost pitying.

“You… you don’t know anything about what happened to her… her accident, do you?” Diamond asked, her voice dropping. Horse glanced at her and his lips widened even more. I knew ponies that smirked like that… I wanted to buck that smirk right off his face.

“Why… of course not. How could you possibly think such a thing?” he said in a voice of faux wounded pride, pressing a hoof to his tuxedo vest. He then looked down at Applejack’s green escort and chuckled. “How terrible that the assassin was killed rather than apprehended. Can you imagine what Morale might have discovered had he been arrested? Why, I imagine whoever did arrange things must have been tickled pink when he was dispatched. Probably sent Applesnack a gift basket.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Such irony…” Was he talking about himself or Goldenblood... ugh... either way, I didn’t like it!

The mare licked her lips nervously, averting her eyes from the handsome yellow stallion. Diamond started to move away from Horse. “I should… um… go mingle.”

But Horse reached out and pulled her close to the rail once more. “Ah ah ah. You want to be one of the big ponies, you need to learn how the game is played.” He nodded his head once towards the crowd, and the robot nodded in return and trotted towards them, drawing attention from the pair.

“It’s Sweetie Belle!” they began to gush, and the robot began to sing in her slightly-off buzzing voice as Horse led Diamond away from the scene.

“What do you want, Horse?” she asked warily.

“Oh, what do any of us want? Mares. Money. Mansions…” he said with a dull wave of his hoof, then he smirked at her. “Let me turn the question around. What do you want, Diamond?”

She balked a moment. “Well… to do what’s best for my company. And for my daughter. And… for Equestria, of course.”

He gave an exaggerated yawn. “Yes. How very dutiful to your stockholders, biology, and nation.” He frowned and darted in front of her. “What is it you want? You really want? What horrible, selfish, ignoble desire purrs inside your heart that drove you to release a magical talisman that makes all your other weapons, perhaps war itself, obsolete?”

Diamond stared into his powerful, charismatic brown eyes. “Magic,” she said in a near whisper. “I… I never was very good at it. All I could do was manipulate light… and when that didn’t lead to anything productive, I was… reassigned to lighting the lab. I want to… to make magic. Powerful magic. As powerful as the Princesses or Twilight Sparkle herself!” she said in voice of heated confession.

A small, triumphant smile crossed his face. “Mmmm… would you like the chance to do so? To make magic on an unimaginable scale?”

She hesitated for a moment, then nodded once. “More than anything.”

Horse chuckled and then tilted his head towards a small door. “Let me show you something.”

He led her through the small access door and down a service hallway where cameras swept slowly back and forth. He pulled out an odd card with a gemstone reflector on it and held it up as they approached the cameras; there was a beep, and the red lights atop them went dark. He glanced at the incredulous mare and gave a wink. Eventually, they reached a small, nondescript office, and he tucked the strange card away. He walked to a large bookcase. “Ah, an oldie, but a goodie. ‘Principles of Power’…” he reached out with one hoof and pulled out a small book. “And ‘Applications of Technology’,” he said as he tugged out another. There was a faint click, and the bookcase swung out. “The classics never grow old.”

He pulled another gemmed card from his tuxedo jacket and hung it in front of his mouth as the heavy door behind the books appeared. The symbol of the Ministry of Wartime Technology was emblazoned upon it, but I saw the tiny icon of the O.I.A. in the corner of the door. A red lens popped out of the middle of the door and swept across Horse, Diamond, and the strange card he held up. The door opened with a hiss, and two huge sentries, perhaps the earliest Ultra-Sentinels, rolled forward from their access.

“One A Two C Four D Three I,” Horse said casually as he put the card away. Instantly, both robots turned their guns towards Diamond. She cried out, and he hastily added, “And one consultant.” The robots beeped and returned to their alcoves. “Touchy things at times, aren’t they?”

“What is this place?” she asked nervously. Beyond the two robots were an elevator shaft and a platform lift.

“This is the Ministry of Wartime Technology,” he said as he stepped onto the lift. “Down there… well… that’s the surprise.” He smirked at her. “You can still walk away, Flashie. Go back to making products and attending board meetings and chasing after quarterly benchmarks.”

As someone whose given name could easily be made to end in an ‘-ie’, I knew there was only one response. She turned and stepped onto the platform beside him. The lift gave a lurch and began to drop. Only green lights spaced intermittently gave any illumination as they descended into the earth below.

Diamond paced nervously back and forth. “Where are we going?” The smooth concrete walls gave way to rough-hewn rock framed with girders.

“Down,” he replied simply. “There’s a lot of ‘down’ in Hoofington. Even before the original city was razed, it had a rather stunning amount of drains, sewers, and access tunnels. It’s as if the city’s always been trying to draw its inhabitants to explore deeper and deeper into the earth.” He glanced at her and gave a grin. “Nervous?”

“No,” she said sharply.

“Liar,” he replied. “Unicorns always are when it comes to being underground. You love the shiny things… but the rocks? The dirt? The bones? No, you really don’t belong here,” he said as he casually looked over at the wall.

Diamond stared at him a moment. “Do you… not like unicorns?”

He looked at her and arched a brow, then smiled. “Truth be told, I hate every last one of you.” He turned to looked at the passing stone walls again. “It’s jealousy, really. You get to do magic. We can’t. It’s your dream to do incredible magic. Well, it’s my dream to someday have technology so advanced that there won’t be a difference between unicorns and anypony else. We’ll all be equal.”

“You’re… frightfully candid,” she murmured.

He gave a short laugh. “It’s this place. It brings out the honesty in me.” He turned and pointed to the wall, which now glittered with huge black bands. “As we dug the tunnels to bring building materials into the Core, we came across this strata of obsidian. One of the thickest ever encountered. Odd, because obsidian rarely forms so deep beneath the earth. It’s also a poor foundation for skyscrapers, to be certain, but, enchanted and processed, proved quite useful as a building material. But beneath it, we encountered something even more amazing… a layer of broken and compressed granite.”

“My… geology is somewhat lacking…” Diamond confessed.

Horse chuckled mirthlessly. “That was one thing I liked about Goldie. He could talk rocks all day. I think it’s the only thing I like about him.” He pointed at the gray walls. “The granite formed eons ago, some of the hardest stone in the world. But something had shattered it to pieces. This wasn’t some slow process of erosion but a rapid and traumatic event. Even more shocking, in several places we found pockets with intact zebra ruins, buried beneath an avalanche of debris.”

“Zebras? In Equestria?” she asked, baffled.

“Please. This was centuries before Equestria. We were being exploited for food by Unicornia and Pegasopolis,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “We came to one of two conclusions. Either there had been some sort of cataclysmic volcanic eruption, or a colossal impact had blasted a mountain of granite apart and the debris had rained down all across the valley. Magma then rose and rapidly cooled, forming the obsidian layer, which was buried beneath sediments.” He reached into his tuxedo and casually drew out a fragment of shiny silver metal. “And then we found this.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Starmetal. Sky Iron. Meteorite. Or rather, that’s what it appeared to almost everyone. What I discovered was that this metal isn’t simply an element or alloy. It has a peculiar atomic structure capable of manifesting particular macroscopic effects.” He smiled smugly. “And I realized that such a metal had more than simple natural origins. It was technology. Incomprehensible technology to everyone but a very select few. Technology that would allow us to not just end the war with pitiful ease but to also to utterly transform the world. Perhaps the universe.”

Diamond took a half step back from Horse as he chuckled. “Of course, that was just my pet theory.” He looked down, where the green glow was becoming brighter and more steady. “Then we found…” He paused, and suddenly the lift dropped into a colossal, perfectly round void. “…this.”

A few green lights along the lift’s hanging rails were the only source of steady illumination, struggling to light the massive space around us. The green glow was augmented by countless motes of ghostly white light circling in the middle of that great space. Along the periphery of the expanse were long, jagged blades of silver jutting hundreds of feet into the mile-wide cavern. Green crackling energy arcs flickered and danced along the edges like a distant lightning storm. A swarm of tiny humming dots swirled and flickered around the silver spires like a metallic mist.

“What… how…” she breathed, staring into the space as the lift dropped towards a large bulbous shape suspended in the very center of the chamber, hundreds of feet above the floor.

“We didn’t make this,” Horse said as he started out at the gargantuan machine surrounding them in all directions. “Something else, somewhere else, using a technology greater than anything we could imagine, did. Applejack’s engineers and Twilight’s researchers call it the ‘Tokomare’. The zebra called it the ‘Eater of Souls’. I call it the future of the equine race.”

She blinked and stared at him in shock. “How is this… thing… our future?” The lift came to a stop at a dangling station. A ring of terminals flickered around pieces of equipment, and a half-dozen ponies walked around the devices. A hum filled the air which would have made my mane stand on end if I’d been there myself. Diamond swayed as a familiar lethargy washed through her. “And what… what’s that screaming?”

An odd, small yellow mare with strange pointed eyes and a black mane pulled into a bun trotted up and passed her a small plastic canister on a plastic thong. “Here. Take this,” she said in an unfamiliar accent. “It’s the only thing that we’ve found that counters the ambient energy.” Diamond put it around her neck, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Doctor Toko, leader of the Tokomare project.”

“You’re from Neighpon?” Diamond Flash asked in shock.

“Indeed,” she said with a smile, then gestured to the other ponies. “This is Bastille, from Fancee.” A stern-looking gray earth pony mare nodded once from her terminal. “Trotski from Stalliongrad.” A blue stallion with an impressive, brushy beard trotted up and kissed her hoof. “Halah from Saddle Arabia,” she said as she gestured to a large, yet surprisingly delicate… pony? “Harmonia from Crystal Empire,” she indicated a white mare who was… sparkling? Okay. Shiny ponies was where I drew the line!

But that couldn’t prepare me for the last member of the research team. “And this is Amadi,” Toko said as she pointed to the final member, a large and shrouded form.

When indicated, he stepped forward and pulled back his hood, uncovering his long striped mane and lined features. He wasn’t just striped, however. His face was covered with intricate tattoos that seemed to emphasize his stripes. Strange glyphs were tattooed upon his hide in sweeping, elaborate tribal marks. His yellow eyes focused upon Diamond, and he gave a small smile, as if finding amusement in something.

“A zebra? What… how…” She swallowed, her mouth working silently a moment. “I thought zebras had been… ah…”

“There are certain elements within the government which can overlook the current political climate. Besides, my tribe is loathed far more than any pony could be by zebrakind,” he said fluidly with an easy smile. “The chance to be a part of this is more than I could dream,” he said with a wave of his hoof, then looked back at her and gave a little nod of concession to her. “But it is much to take in, I understand.”

She swallowed and turned to Horse. “What… why am I here?”

Toko gestured at the immense metal spines jutting out at them as she said, “The Tokomare is an alien device of unprecedented power and potential. But while some members of this team may have more… outlandish theories about its potential…” Toko glanced at Amadi who chuckled with a rueful bow of his head. “Our goal is simple: unlimited electricity for the entire world.”

“An end to all wars,” Amadi said with a nod. “With this device, the resource struggle will end, and both pony and zebrakind will have peace. All people will. Stars willing, of course.” Maybe it was just me, but there was something about the way he said that which made me wish my spine could crawl.

“Yes, using an unimaginably advanced source of technology to illuminate our lightbulbs. How… thrilling…” Horse said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.

Diamond looked from one to the next. “I don’t understand. What can I do?”

“I think it’ll just be easier to show her,” Toko said as she trotted to a control panel and began to push buttons. Everyone started donning green-lensed goggles that hung around their necks, and Amadi passed a set to Diamond. Instantly everything was awash in emerald hues. “Harmonia?” Toko asked as the other smart ponies went to work. The shimmery mare began to manipulate intricately carved crystal rods in another panel. “The Uvula is positioned right in the middle of the void. Any closer, and the radiation and discharge would be… hazardous.”

Four long crystals slid out of the dangling platform towards the sparking wall. Above us, four long metal arms that had rested along the lift rails slowly swung down and stuck far out into the void. Bright golden wands glimmered at the tips. “Extra duty magic lightning rods?” Diamond asked with a small smile.

“Flash Industries’s finest,” Horse chuckled as he worked on his controls. Instantly, the distant dark motes swept like a dust storm towards the platform. Tiny metal orbs fluttered in a swarm around the platform, then swooped into large drums along the elevator above, making them hum like massive beehives. “Mechasprites. Something that never was converted for market use… but very useful in hazardous environments like this.” When the last flying machine returned to the canister, he waved at Toko. “Ready here.”

“Ve are at full extension,” Trotski said from his terminal. “Shall ve go for a hundredth?”

“Sure. Give the system a workout,” Harmonia said.

Amadi bowed his head. “Ashur. Dagon. Namtar. Spare us your wrath and grant the daring a fraction of your power.”

“Shall we pray to the Boogiebuck and the Headless Horse while we’re at it?” Horse drawled with a roll of his eyes.

The zebra scowled. “Perhaps when your people suffer terribly from a power beyond your imaginings, you will have a greater respect for them.”

The yellow stallion rolled his eyes once again. “And I’m sure when it comes, it will be a miracle for the ages. Shall we?”

“Only a hundredth,” Toko warned. “Ear protection now.” Everypony present quickly donned strange crystal-studded earmuffs.

The hum began to fill the air as the four crystal wands began to resonate. The spires filled the air with an ominous counterpoint to the strange sound. “Tuning in to the frequency,” Harmonia shouted, the shiny mare barely audible as she turned a knob with her hooves. The swirling motes of light began to whirl around the dangling platform energetically. “Any second now. Be ready,” she said as the humming crystals hit a sweet note.

The flickering green lightning along the silver protrusions disappeared. Then the crystal’s note was drowned out by a single, brutal tone blasted from every direction that made Diamond scream and fall to the platform. Thunder boomed all around her, and she looked up to see dozens of streamers of lightning ripping through the space and striking the spires. The lightning ran like water along thick cables stretched along the sides of the metal supporting the platform. The storm lasted a few seconds, then disappeared. Diamond coughed at the acrid reek left in the air.

She looked up at the four lightning rods; then gaped at their absence. Four drooping, half-slagged spurs sat in their place. Horse whooped, “Look at that. All the outputs are maxed. Again!”

Diamond’s trembling hooves pulled off the earmuffs. “I’ve never seen that happen to any of our heavy duty lightning rods. That was a hundredth of full power?”

Toko smiled at her. “No. If our math is correct, it is one hundredth of one percent of the power the Tokomare is capable of.”

Sweet Celestia. “Sweet Celestia,” Diamond murmured. “How?”

“We’re not certain. The Tokomare seems to… react… to a singular frequency. But as you can see, we need something capable of shielding and channeling the power. And Flash Industries is the forerunner with your F.A.D.E. and other research projects with energy manipulation,” Toko said as she pulled her goggles up. “With your shields, we can not only tame the Tokomare, we can channel its power all across Equestria. Perhaps, all across the world.”

I thought back to the megaspell chambers beneath the city; if there was any way the energy I’d seen could have been channeled to them, then suddenly the zebra’s zeal for destroying the Core made a lot more sense. Terrifying sense. If the ponies living above knew the glowing bullseye they lived on, then they were bona-fide crazy people. One and all.

“Power like that… it would take dozens, perhaps hundreds… thousands… of F.A.D.E. units. And the mechanisms to control them and…” She closed her mouth, staring at the distant silvery prongs and their flickering lightning.

Horse walked towards her. “So. What do you say? Want to do magic on a scale that will make Twilight Sparkle green with envy?”

Diamond Flash looked from one to the next, and then her eyes returned to Horse. Then she smiled. “I’ll get started tonight.”

When the memory ended, I reeled there on the table. It didn’t help that my whole spine felt… stiff, and my shoulders and hips ached. So, that was the Eater of Souls: either a monster from beyond the stars or a ridiculously powerful machine. Either way, it was beneath the Core, waiting. What could it do? What, if anything, did it have to do with Horizons? Oh, who was I kidding? Something like that had to be involved with something!

Or did it… I reflected on something else: no Goldenblood. It was hard to imagine any conspiracy in Equestria without that scarred bastard involved, but I supposed that, statistically, there had to be some plots he wasn’t involved in. Maybe he was and had simply been absent. Or perhaps Goldenblood had conducted this one from behind the scenes too and… I groaned and rubbed my face with a cold black hoof. “Why so many damned secrets?”

“Because it’s the Hoof,” Triage said as she took the orb and returned it to her bag. “So… the Tokomare. What do you think?” she asked as she trotted back to the table with a freshly-smoking cigarette between her lips. “You saw the Tokomare. Horse’s marvelous mechanical monstrosity.”

I sighed and looked at her, feeling the urge to be honest, and spat, “I think it’s more proof that virtually nothing that was made during the war was worth a damn. It’s like Dawn’s belief that all they need is one thing, just one, and everything will be perfect. And Diamond Flash was just sucked right in, too! No doubts. No ‘wait a minute, what if this thing eats us?’ or ‘maybe dangerous life-sucking radiation means we shouldn’t play with it!’ or anything. Did Equestria have a terminal outbreak of stupid?”

Rover laughed as he attached my leg in the new socket in my repaired shoulder. “In a way, Pony. Ask ghoul. Everypony just raced forward as fast as they could. Pony is herd animals by nature. But moreover, think of Equestria before pony’s war.”

Triage manipulated a probe in my opposite shoulder. “There were threats, certainly, but all they needed was for somepony -- notably Twilight Sparkle and her friends, but others, too -- to do the one thing needed to fix everything.” She gave me a little smirk. “You’re not the only unicorn who’s studied memory orbs. Before the war, they’d just use the Elements of Harmony and make everything better. Return a crystal heart to a pedestal and King Sombra is banished. Just do X, and Y is gone or fixed. Simple.”

Rover sighed as he lifted my last foreleg and began to attach it to the shoulder socket. There were a number of clicking sounds and a warm, tingly feeling radiating from the connection. “Pony never realize that occasionally X’s leads to more Y’s… Z’s… and letters of alphabet Pony never imagined.” He could say ‘alphabet’ but not ‘ponies’?

He reached over to a tray, lifted my black collar up with two fingers, and strapped it around my neck with a wordless smirk of delighted amusement. I felt myself blush profusely as he snugged it down against my hide. “Thanks,” I muttered in embarrassment. He didn’t say a single word, and Triage looked at me, the metal ring at my throat, and then back at me with a sardonic arch of her brow. “What?” I snapped defensively.

“I didn’t say anything,” Triage replied as Rover cackled.

I sighed as I looked at all the blood and scraps of metal scattered around the table. My E.F.S. showed a slightly different layout: still blue, but there was definitely a wing motif on the top, bottom, and upper corners of the E.F.S. display. “Can I get up?” I groaned, wondering just how bad the damage was.

“Yes, but be careful,” Triage warned. I slipped off the table feeling decidedly… heavier. These legs weren’t as light and quick as my others. “I think it all worked out okay. If the rest of his power armor were intact, we could probably have armored your whole body.”

“Thanks. This is good enough,” I said as I stretched and held out a hoof. Instead of white, it had the shiny blue-black metal of Enclave power armor. I tried to pop out my fingers, but there was nothing there but metal hooves. “No thumbs?”

“Pony have thumbs,” he said as he rapped the end of my forehoof. “Dog not know why pony not able to use. Talisman should make work,” Rover said, scowling at the end of my forelimbs as if the digits were insulting him with their absence. I looked along my limb to the shoulder and stared at the larger, heavier plate there. I looked back at my hips, but aside from two fresh red scars, the black metal ended at mid-thigh and continued at my haunch. “Pony thought you’d want to keep pony butt pictures.” Triage snorted and took an extra long drag on her cigarette as she avoided my eyes.

“Yeah, well, there wasn’t enough armor to fully reinforce your hips externally, so I put some internally and called it good.” Suddenly the mare yawned and shook her head. “And with that, I’m going to bed. Somepony else can clean up. Make sure you eat some metal and gems soon and frequently. Your repair systems are going to be working overtime for a while.”

I nodded, pulled out one of Glory’s cyberpony cakes, and began to eat. It definitely hit the spot with its appley-oily-metally goodness, but I still wanted to find a mirror. I wanted to see what Glory would see when she looked at me; did I still look like Blackjack, or was I something else?

“What is that Pony is eating?” Rover asked as he sniffed curiously.

“Oh. Glory made these for me.” I levitated up a few. “Everything a cyberpony needs.”

He picked one up and sniffed it, then took a bite. His eye popped wide as he chewed, then slowly swallowed. “Is full of gems!” He gobbled up the rest before I could blink.

Finally! Someone with good taste!

There was a large mirror in a recovery room down the hall, and I summoned up my courage and a light spell. “Not Dawn. Not Deus,” I murmured before I took a good look in the mirror.

Okay. It wasn’t… as bad as I’d expected. I looked like I’d put on half a suit of Enclave power armor and had neglected to put on the rest. Aside from my legs, there was a large shield-shaped piece of metal across my chest that connected to my shoulders. An articulated ridge of black metal followed my spine down to my tail. My sides were still bare; on one hoof, a tactical vulnerability, and on the other a wonderful reminder that I was at least partially flesh and blood. The ridge narrowed when it got to my mane and became two thinner strips, with my mane in the middle, running to just behind my ears.

“Blackjack?” Glory said from behind me, and I froze. Slowly, I turned to face her. Her rose eyes followed the metal along my back to my flanks and then down to my legs before looking me in the eyes. She looked absolutely exhausted. Then she gave a little half smile. “Wow.”

“Triage and Rover were tired of me breaking myself. So… upgrades. Fun!” I bit my lip as I rubbed my forehoof against my leg. “It’s not too bad… is it?”

She smiled and flew to me. “Not as bad as I was afraid it might be,” she said as she nuzzled my wonderfully flesh and blood neck. Our kiss was a delightful reminder of what it meant to be a mare.

“I was afraid…” I started, but she pressed a wing to my lips.

“You’re not Deus and you’re not Mother,” she said quietly.

“How’s your father?” I asked in worry.

“Stable,” she replied. “Lightning Dancer has contacted the Enclave. I… don’t know if there’s any help for him up in Thunderhead, though. Whatever Mother did to him… well… I don’t think there’s any way to undo it. It’s like his body has forgotten how to heal itself.” She sighed and rubbed her face. “I think about those kids and leaving him there... at least Lightning Dancer will stay with him. If I know Intelligence, they won’t abandon him either. Still... it’s hard.”

“Maybe someday the Collegiate can make him a cyberpony, too… maybe...” I trailed off lamely. I could tell she didn’t care for that thought at all as her eyes dropped. “Are you going to be okay?” I asked as I lifted her face with my hoof and looked into her eyes.

“I’m with you, Blackjack. There’s no safer place to be,” she murmured softly as she held me tight and then gave an arch little smile. “Now, let me check how Triage’s improvements work. Give you a full physical?” The line was so bad that it took every bit of my self-control not to snort.

“Well, okay,” I said with a little smirk. “But it’s been a long time since I played doctor.” Then I yipped as her tail snapped upside my rump. “Sorry,” I said as her tail hooked in my collar and tugged me towards the bed.

On that long-unused mattress, we both reminded each other that, as bad as things could get, there was still bliss to be found in each other. It might not have seemed like the best time for intimacy, my body still repairing itself and she half exhausted, but when we finished and lay on the bed with our limbs tangled together, I couldn’t help but feel sublime satisfaction.

Chapel, forlorn and lost, seemed somehow smaller and lonelier in the rain with so many Crusaders inside the buildings or at the hospital. Yet, even after the fight, some colts and fillies remained in the watchtower and kept an eye on the hills around the village. They observed with interest as the wagon, levitated by Lacunae, set down in the middle of the square and I, P-21, Scotch Tape, Charity, and two or three less injured children climbed out. Glory and the Neighvarro Enclave flew after us; I wasn’t going to leave them with her back at the hospital. Call me paranoid, but the three had been giving Glory furtive looks every time she passed.

“We gotta get them Harbringers,” Scotch Tape muttered sleepily as P-21 tugged her across his back. Rampage stalked out of the shadows beside the post office, and a second later the purple-scaled Precious emerged as well. Her slitted green eyes stared at my new black metal additions with equanimity, one freak to another.

“You can get the Harbingers after a few more hours of sleep,” P-21 said, then put his floppy hat on Scotch’s head. Glory gave a yawn and stretched, her blue wingtips trembling. She gave me a tired smile and nuzzled my chin one more time before staggering off with him. Twister watched her go, looked at me, and muttered something about catching some sleep as she and her comrades skulked off in the opposite direction.

“Any trouble?” I asked Rampage and the dragonfilly. My vision was showing warnings about low power; apparently my new augmentations needed more energy than the old ones, or my healing and repair talismans were working overtime.

“A few scavengers tried to snatch some gear the Harbingers left behind. We ran them off,” Rampage said as she gestured up at the manor. “No sign of the Harbingers, though. Or the tank.”

“You’d think a tank would be easier to find,” Charity muttered. “Still, I’ll be glad if it never shows up again.”

“I need some more gems,” I muttered, trying to refrain from rubbing my sore neck. It wasn’t muscles that ached. My eyes turned towards Star House; did I have any gems left? I needed one of Glory’s cyberpony cakes… if only Rover hadn’t scarfed them all.

“I’ve got some gems,” Charity said as she limped towards the post office. Apparently shrapnel wounds made the filly a little more generous.

“You mean my gems?” Precious hissed as she narrowed her eyes, but she balked when Charity, despite her bandages, whirled on the scaled pony with a furious glare. The dragonfilly shrank back and quickly amended, “I mean… the gems I sleep on?”

“You can spare a few,” the filly grumbled. “Besides, it never hurts to keep Blackjack in a little bit of debt to us just in case we need her to fight another tank.” The hybrid glowered at me defensively, then walked back into the post office.

“Another tank?” I asked with a snort. “Do you think I’ll ever have to do something like that again?”

Charity stopped at the door and looked back at me. “Given how your life goes, Blackjack, it’ll probably be three tanks. Flying ones.” I groaned, knowing that she was right. I followed her into the post office and was taken aback by the lack of weapons inside the shop. Where’d Charity stash the rest of the stuff they’d looted off the Harbingers? They couldn’t have brought it all to the hospital, not while taking the wounded. She limped to the back of the building and moved between the crates. “Come on down to the stable.”

Wait. Stable? I frowned and squeezed my way between the boxes and bureaus that held the majority of the village’s property and towards the back where there were, I now saw, stairs leading down. “No way…” I breathed as I looked at steel walls and telltale conduits that made my mane tingle. “It can’t be.”

I trotted down after the pair, my black metal hooves clanking far more loudly than my white ones had, and stopped short at the sight of the huge round door set in a concrete wall. ‘94’ was printed in faded white letters. “You have a stable down here!”

“Right. Which is why we live on the surface where we can get shelled,” Charity said flatly as she trotted over to the control panel beside the door. A moment later the lights above the door began to flash as a klaxon sounded. With a screech and grind, the door slowly rolled open.

“Welcome to Stable 94. The smallest stable in the Wasteland,” Charity said as she stepped through the door. Peeking inside, I immediately saw she was right. This wasn’t a stable entry like in 99. The walls seemed even thicker than usual and opened up into a large space that was maybe twenty feet high, forty feet wide, and sixty feet deep. There weren’t any offshoots or other hallways in here. The entire stable was just this one, singular room. Everywhere I turned there were boxes of valuable salvage ranging from trinkets to weapons to ammo to bottlecaps. I recognized quite a few fancy dresses from the manor and several plastic barrels full of bottlecaps, bits, and other wealth.

I used to joke that Charity would own every cap in the Wasteland, but to actually see it…

Charity limped over to a bed in the corner of the chamber, a desk with a terminal next to it. Nearby sat a heap of gemstones. Precious climbed atop the pile and began to sullenly flick rubies towards me. “You can have these. I don’t like the flavor,” she said sulkily as she curled up on the heap.

I levitated a dozen into my saddlebags, then lifted one to my mouth and started to suck on it, frowning at the yellow filly. When my systems had a bit more charge, I looked around at all the stuff and then back at Charity, arching a brow. She bristled a little, “What?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t have any clue you were this… loaded,” I said as I looked at the treasures. “It makes me wonder why you fought at all, instead of just holing up in here.”

“Maybe because we’re not stupid?” she retorted scornfully. “Maybe we know that all somepony would have to do is sit up there and starve us out if they really wanted us dead. Or maybe it’s because I really don’t want the adults up there to have a clue just how much stuff there is down here for them to snag. Or maybe, after seeing Priest die and being shot in the gut, I wanted to show the Wasteland that we’re a bunch of kids that shouldn’t be fucked with. Or all of the above,” she said grimly.

I sat and raised a hoof. “Okay. Fair enough. But what is this place? Is this a stable or not?”

Charity gestured to the terminal beside her bed. “I think it was supposed to be, but there was something going on with Stable-Tec. You can read it yourself.”

I trotted over, hit a few keys, and was glad to see that there weren’t any annoying passwords. Most of the terminal was meaningless gobbledygook, but there was a series of logs that piqued my interest.

>S, we’ve run interference with Image and Morale again. Please try to be a little more circumspect, if you can. The story is that the “material” for Stable 24 is for a satirical, ironic, postmodern performance piece. P&P are keeping PP occupied with infiltrators in Manehattan; hopefully, she won’t get a twitchy tail on you again. Give my love to AB. -E.

>P.S. Try and remember identification protocols, S. It’s that whole plausible deniability thing that keeps PP off our butts. Thanks.

Stable 24? I wasn’t familiar with it. It looked like it was ‘Fun with Code Words’ time again. Given that it was Stable-Tec, I guessed S for Scootaloo and AB for Apple Bloom. PP simply had to be Pinkie Pie. I couldn’t guess who the others were.

>GB, what the hay is going on there? I agreed to let your office scrap one stable. One. Now you’re taking materials from other projects. AB might not have a clue about how to read a spreadsheet, but I had to talk her out of doing a hooves-on inspection of 90. Our deal was you cover our flank, I look the other way from time to time. If you start snagging entire stables, though, ponies are going to notice. -S.

Those two letters made me bare my teeth, the hiss of my breath drawing both the fillies’ glances. Of course he’d be involved. He was fucking involved with everything! Now I thought back to the gutted stable in the south; no wonder it had been incomplete! The materials had been used for something else. Horizons? Redoubt? Maybe… Gardens too? Where else had Goldenblood gotten a Crusader Maneframe for Twilight without anypony else knowing about it?

>S, I don’t know precisely what you’re doing with your stables, and frankly, I don’t care. L was not keen on allowing Stables in the first place, as they suggest Equestria will lose the war. I do know that if what you’re doing became public knowledge, Stable-Tec would be finished. I also know that no corporation in Equestria has the resources that Stable-Tec does. Nepotism can be quite useful. What are two or three stables lost when you get to keep the rest? Be practical. -GB.

“Of course,” I muttered as I read the next and then shook my head. Blackmail and sneaky tricks followed him around like a fart. How could Luna, whom I assumed was ‘L’, have ever trusted him? There were a few more that seemed largely inconsequential.

>AB, hey Bloom. I was digging through some of the MWT’s Stable-Tec files and lookie what I found. Mind transfer to a computer? Sexy, Bloom. Really sexy. You’ve been holding out. I saw what you have cooking at 29, 33, and 94. Hope you don’t mind if I snag the designs, ROFL. This has got some real possibilities if we can reverse it. Play around a bit. -H.

>P.S. You should check out my Sweetie Bot.

Horse and mind transfer? I frowned as I thought back to the Tokomare; an immense machine of terrifying potential, and Horse had his hooves on some sort of technology that could connect a mind into it? Why did that feel SO wrong on so many damned levels?

>H, I heard all about the “Crusader” you tried to make. Look forward to reading about your lobotomy when you fail to upload yourself into it. -AB

>P.S. SB hopes you get tetanus.

There were a few dozen other correspondences in the terminal, none of which made much sense to me. Then I found the last one.

> Your Majesty, what is Project Horizons?

“That’s what I’d like to know!” I shouted at the terminal, and then covered my face in my hooves. Dawn had given me a snippet, but she’d told me more about Cognitum than she had about the project that was always tantalizingly out of reach.

The terminal beeped. I blinked and stared at the blank screen and a single, flashing cursor. Then an audio file began to play. “So what is the energy output of the moonstone/starmetal reaction, Doctor Trottenheimer?” rasped a familiar voice that made my mane creep.

“I could do the math for you, but it’s a ridiculously large number, Goldie. At an optimal ratio of 1000 to 1, you’re looking at an extreme arcanokinetic reaction. Even using it at a less efficient and more manageable 1 to 1 ratio, it’s pretty energetic. So much so that no reactor or generator could contain it. You’d need to bottle the blast inside some sort of magic field… and even then, it would be tricky. Sorry, but I don’t see this becoming an energy alternative for coal in our lifetime. Or any lifetime,” a calm and intelligent voice replied. Then there was a pause, and he asked, “Are you okay? When was the last time you slept?”

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Goldenblood muttered.

“Oh, so tomorrow, then? Given how you look…” There was a pause where I could only imagine a glower, then Trottenheimer suggested, “Maybe you should stop working with that starmetal. We still don’t know if it has toxic side effects or not. It definitely has some bad vibes coming off it.” When Trottenheimer said that, Goldenblood gave a wrenching laugh. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Trottenheimer asked again, sounding even more concerned.

“It’s nothing. Just… bad vibes. It’s funny.” He coughed and hacked a bit longer before asking, “Weapon applications?” Trottenheimer let out a long sigh. “You knew it was coming. Applications?”

“Practically nil. Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’d blow up just fantastically! But the collateral damage would be… excessive. If you used a hundred kilograms of starmetal with one kilogram of moonstone, you’d wipe the Core off the face of Equestria. A thousand kilos of that starmetal and you’d take out Canterlot as well. Megaspells are plenty destructive enough and easier to control.” Trottenheimer chuckled. “Good thing we only brought back two or three kilograms of moon rocks, huh?” Then there was another pause. “Goldenblood?”

Goldenblood rasped, “And if we used, say, ten thousand tonnes… what then?”

“Oh, are we going for morbid speculation? Well with that much starmetal we’d probably lose everything from here to Manehattan. There’d be pieces of the capital raining down in Roam.”

Goldenblood didn’t answer for a moment, then he said in a hiss, “I meant ten thousand tonnes of moonstone. At optimal ratio.”

“Ten… ten thousand t…? Goldie… I don’t think there’d be anything left of Equestria with a reaction that big. Or the zebra lands for that matter,” Trottenheimer muttered in shock. “I… the planet would still be here. We’d probably keep the atmosphere and oceans too, but I doubt there’d be much for survivors beyond that! It’d be equivalent to a geologic event. Dust clouds for years afterwards. Worldwide forest fires. I can’t even imagine the arcane aftereffects of that much energy being released. It would be a weapon with no sane application. Besides, where would you get that much moonstone? Unless you’re planning on making a couple hundred trips to the moon, you’d never get that much together.”

“Of course. Of course. It was just… a thought,” Goldenblood muttered.

“Don’t have those thoughts. It scares me when you have thoughts like that,” Trottenheimer said, then sighed. “You know what? You need to get out of the lab more. You might know your metals, but trust me, the less you work with starmetal, the better. Stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies! Give me megaspells any day.” Trottenheimer laughed, though it was a little strained.

There was silence for another moment, and then Goldenblood rasped, “You’re a good pony, Trots.”

“No I’m not. I make spells that can kill thousands… hundreds of thousands… indiscriminately. But do you know what’s sad? We don’t know how many have died in this war. When we add up pony losses, zebra losses, third party and neutral casualties… it’s already in the millions. You’ve seen No Pony’s Land around the edges of Hoofington. This war will bleed us dry. If the threat of the megaspells we’re designing for Starfall can staunch that flow, it’ll be worth it.”

“And if they’re used and kill everyone?” Goldenblood asked in a harsh whisper.

Trottenheimer was silent for a moment and then said in a voice of resignation, “Well, it’s one way to end a war.”

The recording ended, and the two young ponies stared at me. “What the heck was that, Blackjack? I never heard that recording before,” Charity said as she gaped at the terminal.

I just sat there, numb. Moonstone and starmetal make catastrophic explosions; I’d seen that myself, but I’d never imagined just how big they could be. More than any megaspell or balefire bomb. If he had enough of both, he could destroy all of Equestria. All of the world. I felt numb as I contemplated it; did Horizons have something to do with… with that? If I’d been capable of hyperventilating, I’d have passed out right about now. Because I had no difficulty imagining that Goldenblood could. That he might. But did he?

Where would you get that much moonstone?

I stood and carefully looked around the corners of the room. There. My eyes landed on a camera in a corner. I stared into its lens, a tiny red light beside the optics, as it focused on me. Who was on the other side of that camera? Cognitum? Horse? Dawn? Who was playing these games with me?

“Was there any kind of arcane science equipment in here?” I asked as I stared at the camera.

“No. It’s always been empty,” Charity replied as she stared at me in confusion, like she’d never seen me before. “There used to be cables and things sticking out of the floor though. Maybe something got taken out a long time ago?”

Something involving a way to copy a mind into a machine. “Thanks, Charity. I’m glad you showed me this.”

Charity flushed. “Thanks. Just don’t talk about it, please. We’re a target enough because folks think we’re weak. I don’t want them to know just how much salvage we’ve collected over the years, especially from the manor.” I’d had a huge bounty placed on my head; I knew exactly what she was talking about.

Then Rampage shouted down the stairs, “Enemy spotted! It’s back! The tank is back.”

“Deus,” I muttered, and the raced for the door. Had he reverted and decided to wipe Chapel off the face of Equestria, or was he here for some other purpose? I ran into Rampage at the top, the striped filly stepping aside as I made a beeline towards the exit. “What’s he doing, Rampage?” I wasn’t hearing explosions; that had to be a good sign. Right?

“It’s not rampaging yet, Lieutenant. Hostile was spotted to the northwest, half a klick away,” she said as she followed me. “No sign of other hostiles, yet, but they’ve got to be out there. Enemy wouldn’t leave armor unsupported. Do you want me to recon and see if I can find them, Vanity?”

Wait. What?

I paused and looked back at her and the furious look in her eyes. On her flank, the two candy canes forming a heart were foremost in the slew that was her cutie mark. I swallowed. Twist could disappear at any moment; just noticing she was in the body of an older filly might do it. She seemed to think I was Vanity. Maybe… “One moment, Sergeant. Are you mentally clear and focused on combat?” I’d have to be quick and careful; I had two highly unstable Marauders to deal with.

She hissed in her anger. “Damn it Vanity! I’m fine. I don’t need your freaky unicorn magic messing with my head. I’m not Jetstream. I can deal with it.” Her entire face twitched with aggravation; I might not have been a morale officer, but even I could tell she was close to snapping.

I considered her coolly. “I’m not sure I can take that risk, Twist. Let me put them in a memory orb for you. You can hold on to it till after the battle. I won’t take it.” Please don’t notice that I was half metal or a mare or that my mane was the wrong color. “Please don’t make me bench you this battle for psych…”

“I told you I’m over what that bastard did to me! Peppermint and I…” she snapped, then grit her teeth as she stared into my eyes. ‘See me as Vanity. I am your friend. I want to help,’ I thought as I returned her gaze. Twist’s jaw trembled as it clenched and a tear ran down her cheek. Then she spat, “Fine. Just be quick about it. And I want it back after we deal with that tank. I am not turning into Jetstream!”

No arguments there. I pulled an empty memory orb from my saddlebags and touched my horn to her brow. According to Triage’s notes, the trick to gathering a memory was not to dive right into the middle of it, like I had with Shujaa. Rather, it was like collecting a cloud of flickering images. The more bright and clear a memory was, the more important or traumatic it was to the viewer. I imagined hooves of magic wafting the cloud into a tighter bunch. I saw vague images of Shujaa, Twist, and Rampage all swirling together.

What to get? I couldn’t copy it all. There’d been a name that Shujaa’d mentioned, though. “Peppermint…” I muttered, and watched as a portion of her mind bloomed with images.

“What about… Vanity?” she muttered weakly. “Wait… you’re not…”

I saw her mind become erratic and, with as much skill as I could muster, I gathered up that glowing section and pulled them from the others. I didn’t have time to look through. From how bright and sharp the flickering images were, I could only guess they were important to Twist. Hopefully they’d be important to Rampage, too.

The glowing cloud emerged from Rampage’s forehead like a… um… like a little glowing cloud coming out of somepony’s forehead. I lifted a blank memory orb with my magic and touched the cloud to it. With a small flash, the nimbus disappeared into the orb.

Rampage swayed, then shook her head. “Blackjack? What’s going on?”

“The tank’s back,” I replied as I held up the orb. “And I think I’ve got something for you to see later. Something that’ll help.”

“Something…” She blinked at the orb, and her pink eyes shifted back to me. “Are you sure? I mean… knowing about Shujaa was cool, but…”

“It’s from Twist,” I said with a small smile. The name gave the filly a haunted look. She’d been the last to receive the phoenix talisman; I could understand her feelings.

“You… why don’t you… you look at it?” she stammered and swallowed, shaking her head. “I mean… then you can be sure.”

I stared at her and then glanced at the orb. “Okay. After the tank, then.”

Outside, the sallow glow of day was lightening the usual Hoofington gloom. I must have been reading messages longer than I thought. I popped another spicy ruby in my mouth and trotted quickly to the stockade, peering through a gap. The ponies who hours ago had been fighting the Harbingers now looked to me. Some stared at my new augmentations. Others saw the truth. The Harbingers attacked because of me. Sanguine attacked because of me. The tank was here because of me. There wasn’t anyplace I could call home where somepony wouldn’t try and take me out.

So this is how Arloste felt: a home that doesn’t want you because of the risk you pose but that would feel too guilty if it asked you to leave.

P-21 emerged from out of nowhere, making me jump. My blue friend had my sword in his teeth and several saddlebags strapped around his neck. Spitting it out, he peered at the tank and gave a triumphant little smile. “Good. This time we’re ready.”

“We are?” I blinked as I looked at the tank. I took the weapon, though, and felt a little comfort. I just wished I had something that could pierce its armor that was less… melee-dependent.

“When we didn’t destroy that thing, I took the liberty of making these satchel charges from the Harbingers’ explosives,” he said, holding up one bag and opening it to reveal a cone of beaten metal. Then he turned so I could see a tube of Wonderglue duct-taped to the side. “Press hard. Glue adheres the blast side to the armor. Radio detonated. Shaped charge should breach better and hopefully take out the tank’s repair talisman. Or its brain.” I stared at him for a moment, and he frowned in worry. “What?”

“I am so glad that you’re on my side,” I replied with a smile, making him scowl… and blush… as he muttered about me being an idiot. So, now we could do something in case things went bad. I closed my eyes and concentrated. The chaos in Unity had subsided; it was now almost ominously quiet. I didn’t want to try and think something at Lacunae. Right now, the last thing I wanted was for the Goddess to distract me from dealing with Deus. “Where’re Lacunae and Scotch?”

“Scotch is minding Boo. She tore the place apart while we were gone,” he said with an arch of his brow. “Lacunae’s with Glory.”

I sighed, trying to think of what to do. “I should have left some more cakes out for her.”

“We did. She wasn’t looking for cake. She was looking for you,” he said.

Okay. Guilt was what I didn’t need right now. Especially when the tank began to move across the slope, around the village and towards the road between it and the bridge. “Okay. When you think you can, get those charges on it. Don’t blow them unless it fires.”

“I can use the drainage ditch for cover if it gets on the road. What are you going to do?” he asked.

I rose to my hooves. “I’m going to go talk to him.” He groaned and covered his face with his black, floppy hat. “I gave him a chance to be a better pony. Now I need to find out if he took it or not.”

“That’s not it,” Rampage said, then smirked at P-21. “Fifty caps. Pay up.”

“You can collect from Blackjack,” he replied sourly.

I looked at the pair for a moment with pursed lips. “I’m so glad that my friends are betting on my idiocy,” I muttered sourly as I started towards the northeast, trotting down towards the bridge.

“Oh, that’s nothing. You should see the betting pool for how long it’s going to take for you to ruin your shiny black legs. I think half the ponies you know are in on it,” Rampage said. “I gave you sixteen hours…”

“I am not going to ruin these legs. I don’t think Rover has many more ‘fixing stupid pony who always breaks her legs’ in him,” I grumbled as we stepped out the gate together. P-21 was already gone.

“Triage bet it would only take you eight,” Rampage snickered.

“Well, Triage smokes too much,” I countered with a scowl. “Don’t we have a tank to deal with right now?”

“Somepony is touchy,” Rampage observed.

“Somepony is dealing with a tank run by the brain of your old pal, Deus,” I snapped. “Somepony has a right to be touchy.”

“Deus?!” she gasped as she looked up at me, and then pointed at the tank with her little hoof. “You’re telling me… that… Deus’s brain is in there?” I sighed and nodded, and the filly burst into a peal of laughter. “Oh, Sweet Celestia, that is just perfect!”

Deus had crossed the ditch with ease, and now the massive tank began rolling up the road towards me. “Rampage, stop helping Triage win that bet,” I said as the road shook under my black hooves. Looking at those two cannons, I could only gulp and manage a weak smile. Then I spotted a black hat moving quickly and quietly along the ditch beside me, creeping as low as possible. That gave me a little confidence as the huge machine came to a stop twenty feet away. At least none of his weapons were pointed right at me. Okay. Time for diplomacy. “Hello, Doof.”

“Doof?” Rampage looked at me with a frown and pointed a hoof at the tank. “I thought you said this was Deus?” She frowned, as if focusing on something. I watched as the two candy canes appeared, but didn’t manifest fully. Her eyes flickered, and I imagined Twist peeking at me from the depths of Rampage.

“Doof was Deus. And now he’s Doof again,” I said, looking up at the tank with a hopeful smile. “Right? The good marauder Doof? The pony who wants to be a better pony?”

The turret whirred low as the cannons swung back and forth twice. Oh… I really hoped that P-21 was fast with those satchel bombs. “Oh, let me guess,” Rampage said as she hopped onto my back and tapped the black plates that ran along my spine. “You’re here for a rematch? You should watch yourself. Blackjack has all these fancy upgrades. You really shouldn’t fight her for… um… another eight hours. Right. That should put you in the perfect window for a rematch.”

“Rampage! Stop trying to win that bet!” I said, bucking her off and onto the road beside me. The tank let out a rumble, and a camera focused on the older filly. “Yeah, Deus. That’s Rampage.” I frowned. “Haven’t you ever seen her like this?”

Deus swung his turret back and forth again. Rampage snorted. “We don’t exactly allow magical disintegration weapons in cage fights. Ruins the suspense, and the damn Flash Fillies would be impossible to live with.” Rampage stood and faced Deus again. “Big Daddy is going to squirt when he hears about this. He’s always going on about having the biggest, baddest fighters in the Hoof. Not even Brutus can compete with you now!” The engine gave a little rumble. I hoped that was a good sign.

“So… you’re not here to fight me again?” I asked. The turrets rose and fell once. “Yes, you are or yes you aren’t?” The tank let out another deep rumble as I raised my hooves defensively. “Okay. I’ll take that as a no!” The cameras focused on me, and I looked at my black armored limbs. I gave him a wan smile. “Yeah. Blackjack, new and improved. And a little less me.”

The engine let out a low growl. Rampage stepped forwards again, and I cringed inwardly as she said, “You’re being awfully quiet. Don’t you have a single ‘CUNT’ for me? Come on, that tank has to be wired with loudspeakers or something.” Deus let out a deeper growl of his engine and shook his turret. “No you aren’t, or no, you’ve suddenly embraced a whole new appreciation of femininity?”

I took several steps away from her to the side, and spotted P-21 peeking at me from behind the tank. He smiled, gave a little nod, and disappeared behind it completely. “Rampage, I’m not going to blame Deus for shooting you. Stop being like Brass.” The engine growled once more, but softer. Slowly, I moved in front of him again. “Is it because you can’t talk? Did they do something to you?”

The cannons rose and fell once. Rampage whistled long and low, “I guess that’s Dawn’s equivalent to washing a pony’s mouth out with soap.” The engine growled again, lower and more ominous.

“So you’re not here to fight me… what are you here for?” I asked as I looked up at the vehicle. He didn’t growl his engine or shake his turret or anything. “Are you here to help me?” No answer. “Help Chapel?” Again, no answer. “Revenge on Dawn?” No answer. “Go back to the Reapers?”

Suddenly Rampage fell back laughing. She laughed so hard her hooves kicked into the air. “Rampage? What’s gotten into you?”

She laughed so hard she was crying. “Oh! Oh! It’s just too much!” She wiped her eyes with a hoof as she looked up at the tank. “Is it that you suddenly don’t have a clue what to do with your life and the only thing you can think of is to follow Blackjack in the hope that she’ll help you make some sense of the incredibly fucked up circumstances you now find yourself in?”

Deus rumbled his engines in an idle tone, and then gave a tiny rise and fall of his cannons.

“What?!” I blurted out. Rampage laughed even harder at that. “Wait! Why?!”

“Because that’s what you do when you’ve been beaten by Blackjack, duh!” Rampage said as she sat up. “If she doesn’t kill you then she makes you re-examine your entire life and you follow her along until you find something that makes sense! And because it’s a whole lot easier than trying to kill you a second time. I mean, look at the list. You’ve got me. Sanguine at the end there. Psychoshy. Now Deus. I bet Gorgon would have, too, if it weren’t for that whole rock crushing to pulp thing.”

I sat back on my haunches, eyes wide as I tried to process this particular line of crazy. “But… that’s… that’s insane!”

“Blackjack, have you looked around lately? What’s sane?” Rampage asked as she stopped laughing, smiling up at me. “I’m an immortal amalgamation of souls. You’re a cyberpony. Deus is a tank! One of your best friends is an alicorn and your lover looks like Rainbow Dash. The only friend you have even close to anything approaching normal is P-21.”

P-21 stepped out from behind Deus, tossing a detonator to me. “I’m just waiting with baited breath to turn into a ghoul,” he said flatly as he stepped beside me and looked up at the tank. Its engine roared. P-21 pushed his hat back and glared up at Deus. “Stop. You’ve got four bombs glued to your chassis. I’m not nearly as mechanically smart as my little girl, but I am pretty sure that they’ll rip your engine right off.” The engine noise dropped substantially, and P-21 went on, “They’re also on timers, so even if you kill us, they’ll go off.” The engine rumbled again, and he pointed a blue hoof up at the tank. “Stop.” The engine slacked off. “I’m not like Blackjack. I don’t trust somepony who chased us all across the Wasteland to not swap back to being a complete monster. The only way I’ll tolerate you being anywhere around us is if we have a way to turn you into scrap if you decide to swap back to Dawn’s side or just kill us for the laughs. Got it?”

For a very tense moment, I was sure we were all going to explode in a fiery ball. Rampage stared at him in amazement, and even I was a little taken aback. P-21 didn’t flinch away from the machine. Then Deus raised and lowered his turrets once. “Good. Then open your hatch, because if I were Steel Rain, I’d have some kind of bomb strapped to your brain set to go off the instant I knew you’d gone rogue.” I blinked in surprise. Why hadn’t I thought of that, given that was exactly what Dawn had done to Steel Rain?

The hatch on the turret opened, and P-21 started climbing up. Rampage stepped next to me and murmured in amazement, “When the hell did his testicles drop?”

“Hush,” I replied, unable to stop smiling. I tried to jump up beside him, but my legs were slower and heavier than I was used to. Instead, I scraped and flailed my way up the side of the tank, nearly falling off twice. I really missed my fingers! It seemed Shadowbolt augmentations didn’t understand the concept of ‘climb’. There were errors flashing: ‘Device not found’. I reached the top, and one camera turned to look right up my hind end. Yup. Deus all right. The engine made a strange coughing noise… was it just me or was he laughing?

I got to the hatch, looking down into that cramped space. “Do you even know what you’re looking for?” I asked as I saw a blue butt poking out from underneath some equipment.

“Nope. But I’m not looking for it. I’m sniffing for it. Definitely smelling some plastic explosive in here,” he said. I looked at the armored brain resting in faintly green fluid inside the glass jar. “In fact, if I were you, I’d get out of sight. If a Harbinger spots you sitting up there, it won’t be a hard call to set off whatever I’m sniffing down here.” Then his hooves flipped over. “Aha! There you are. Wired to… well… something. Hmmm.” His hooves went limp. “Is that the radio? Aha! There!”

“You found it?” I asked with a grin.

“I found one. I doubt it’s the only one,” he replied. “You really need to get out of sight, though, Blackjack. At least till I’m sure he won’t blow when somepony else pushes a button.”

“Right.” I looked over at Rampage. “I guess you and me should--” I was interrupted by the turret swinging back and forth. “Huh… okay…well, I guess I’ll go.” Hopping down was much easier than scrambling up. Apparently the legs didn’t have problems with falling like they did with climbing. I trotted away, looking back over my shoulder at Rampage and the cameras all oriented on the filly. Deus was interested in Rampage?

“Okay. It’s official. The Wasteland is stark raving mad,” I said flatly as I trotted up the grassy slope towards Star House. I whirled around and looked, waiting for the Dealer or the Goddess to make an appearance, but neither did. “Well… that’s vaguely disappointing…” I muttered as I continued up to the house. It was still battered from the party. Had that really been just hours ago? It felt like months.

Inside, I spotted Scotch Tape lying on her side with Boo, snoring up a storm. The inside was even more thrashed than we’d left it. Then Boo popped her head up from behind Scotch Tape. She looked right at me, but rather than charge, she crept over the sleeping filly and looked at me with her pale eyes. She looked… wary. Even scared as she shied left and right. “Hey hey hey… Boo. It’s all right. It’s me.”

But she didn’t look reassured. If anything, she seemed more worried, ears hanging and eyes downcast. What was the matter? Was she sick? Injured? Was there something wrong with her cloned body? No… nothing I could see. Then I looked into the worry in her eyes. It wasn’t her… it was me. But what had I done... no. I sighed and closed my eyes. Damn it…

“I haven’t been treating you very good since Hippocratic, have I, Boo?” I’d left her to go gallivanting across the Hoof, then come back only to leave her behind again. I really was a self-centered nag, wasn’t I? Gently, I reached out and stroked her white mane. It was growing a bit long, partially concealing her white eyes behind milky bangs. I pulled her closer and held her, rubbing her spine. I could still nuzzle her as well as I ever could.

Boo relaxed a little bit and nuzzled me in return. “I’ll try not to leave you behind again, if I can help it. Okay?” It was a risk; I couldn’t see her surviving a place like Hightower... but leaving her behind just meant a different kind of hurt. “Just try not to let yourself get hurt. Okay?”

I didn’t know if she understood what I was asking of her. I could only hold her and hope that I wasn’t going to get her killed with my kindness. Of course, something bad would happen; the steel that was consuming my body one upgrade at a time was testament to that. But I could hope. I could hope…

She rested her head on my side and huffed softly. As carefully as I could, I stroked her mane with my hoof. It’d been a while since I slept. Maybe just a short nap…

I trudged through the green snow along the chunks of obsidian talus at the base of Black Pony Mountain. The Hoofington basin was quiet. No rain nor falling snow marred the clear air. As far as the eye could see, green drifts of snow blanketed the land. You could almost imagine that it was a calm Hearth’s Warming Eve day.

Then I passed frozen earth pony corpses in the snow and was reminded that this was anything but. Nothing useful on any of them. I had worked my way through half of my radiation supplies. The goods I’d pilfered from the hospital were running low, and I needed to find more. Hoofington Memorial was south of me; I could take what I needed from there.

But right now, I needed to check in. The only problem was that the EBS had fallen almost as silent as the snow. There were a few desperate sobs from the west, somepony in the Manehattan M.A.S. hub trying futilely to get some kind of organization effort going. The military channels had fared even worse. There was machine chatter, but it wasn’t anything I could access. Every channel was either destroyed, locked down, or useless. Since I couldn’t do so remotely, I only had one choice: report in person.

I continued to pick my way up the talus. The radiation clicked slowly away, my black riot armor providing slight protection as I ascended towards the eastern side of the mountain. It’d been only a few weeks since the bombs fell. But I still had my duty to perform. I still had to earn my forgiveness.

Finally, I pulled my way up onto a flat shelf of land between the obsidian crag and the eastern mountains. The shelf was littered with a dozen sky carriages, some of them large passenger affairs and others small, expensive personal craft. Some had landed perpendicularly atop other carriages because the space was so limited.

And there were a lot of bodies. Pegasi still dangled from their harnesses, some killed by radiation and others killed by bullets. Earth pony laborers lay in heaps. A smattering of unicorns in fancy outfits clustered together in whatever shelter they could find. Bodies… bodies… bodies. So damn many. I walked along as silent as death towards the sheer eastern wall. Once there’d been a cave here, a cave that had been home to a colossal beast in older, peaceful times. Today there was no cave, just a solid wall of black obsidian.

I approached, hoofstep by hoofstep. A sense of dread filled me, and I hesitated. A few more, and again I froze. I looked to the left and right, looked at the perfect semicircle of bodies that had stood here and slowly died of radiation. I couldn’t take another step forward; something refused to let me. If he were here… he’d open it. He’d need me. He’d use me.

And he was on the list.

Then someone had the ill judgment to shoot at me. Worse, they missed.

I came around, both SMGs rising up as my eyes picked out where the shooter might have come from. It wasn’t really all that hard. The emaciated red earth pony mare swayed in the doorway of one of the wagons. As her eyes rested on me, she immediately smiled in relief. “Oh, Operative Psalm. About time somepony useful came along.” She turned and trotted back inside the skywagon, and I followed. The once expensive skywagon was now a squatter’s shack.

“Do you have any RadAway or Rad-X, Operative?” the red earth pony wheezed as she trotted over to a tiny cache of supplies in the corner. She turned, more of her mane falling out as she moved. But I didn’t respond, simply looking at her. She pointed a glittery red hoof at me. “I asked you a question, soldier!”

I nodded once, and she grinned. There were missing teeth in her smile, and her gums were bleeding. Another day or two and she’d be gone. I looked around and spotted a black earth pony mare lying in a heap with a bloody knife embedded in her neck. Another one of my old bosses, Onyx. “Good. Good.” Garnet tossed the revolver on the bed, blood smearing the mouthgrip. “Damn Redoubt is sealed. Can you fucking believe it? Somepony got here before us… all of us… and locked it up tight!” She rubbed her face, beads of sweat on her brow. “I just knew that eventually somepony who could get inside would come along.”

“Is Luna in there?” I asked in a low, tense voice.

“Luna?” Garnet cackled. “Luna’s a corpse in Canterlot. Celestia too! All of Equestria is dead. Fuck Luna,” the red mare said as she slumped. “I was supposed to be a part of the new order. Richer than fucking Filthy himself.” She looked over at a brown stallion in the snow. “Fucker wouldn’t shut up about his kid. Can you believe that? We’re all fucking dying, and he wanted to run off to the far side of the country to get her.”

“We have confirmed deaths for all the Partypooper targets?” I asked in strained reasonableness, and Garnet gave a bloody grimace.

“Cloudsdale is vaporized, and that was the last place Dash was spotted. I think we got her. Maripony was balefired too, but it’s still standing. Anypony’s guess if Twilight survived.” If it was standing, she had. “Rarity and Fluttershy are corpses in Canterlot. You killed Pinkie.” She rubbed her chin a moment. “Applejack might have made it to Stable Two in Ponyville…” She stared at the bloody spittle on the chipped, glittery hoof. “I need that fucking RadAway, Operative,” she said, a touch weakly.

I ignored her request. “Where is the director?” I asked slowly. Keep calm, just like when shooting. I had to stay calm and centered. I had to…

“Who the fuck do you think is in there?” She glowered at me, pointing at the wall with a chipped ruby hoof. “He buttoned it up tight. He’s got everything in there. The whole facility to himself. Probably his fucking robot, too.” Then she grinned her ghastly, bloody grin. “But now that you’re here, you can get in there! You can get me inside! Right? You have a code… or password… or something… That’s all I want.” She panted in desperation as I just looked at her, and she asked in exasperation, “What? Do you want money?” She kicked open a suitcase, scooped up two great big hooffuls of bits and held them up to me. “I’ve got money… there was so much damn money we scammed off those aristocrat jackasses. Kingpin paid a mint to get in too. CEOs and other business leaders… fuckers all came here actually thinking they’d get in.” Her bloodshot eyes twitched as she grinned hopefully, then her grin sagged… along with her forelegs. Gold coins bounced and tinkled around her hooves. She rubbed her face with her hoof, muttering to herself. “I thought we’d get in…”

“You’re sure that Horse is inside?”

She narrowed her feverish eyes. “No! I’m not fucking sure, but unless Sapphire told Rainbow Dash or Emerald told Twilight, he’s the only pony with the authority to access the Redoubt!” She coughed and retched, bringing up bile over her glittery red hooves. “Now pass me some Rad-X, Operative.”

“No,” I replied, turning to go.

“What?” Garnet gasped.

“I still need to finish the mission. Luna gave the order. I must carry it out,” I said simply. “I’ll need all my radiological supplies to do so.”

“Give it to me or I’ll take it off your corpse!” I stopped and just looked at her as she trembled, then swept up the gun in her mouth and fired again. And again. And again. The thirty-two caliber rounds thumped against my barding but didn’t penetrate. Then the revolver started to click. She shook, pink tears running down her cheek as the gun slipped from her mouth, taking two more teeth with it. “Please… help me.”

“Helping you doesn’t earn me forgiveness. I will serve Luna and earn forgiveness, and her last order was to carry out Partypooper. I can confirm two kills. I suppose I’ll have to confirm the rest,” I said, readying myself for the long walk to Maripony. Then I’d have to use every Stable-Tec access code I had to clear out that Ponyville stable… difficult, but doable.

“You stupid cunt! Luna didn’t give that order! I did! And you killed for me! You stupid damn bitch!” she cackled as she pointed her hoof at me.

I stared at her. “Liar. Only Luna could give that order,” I said weakly. “Only Luna would…”

“You unbelievable dumb shit!” Garnet roared with laughter. “Did it ever occur to you that there were fucks who benefitted from everyone dying?” She pointed a hoof at me. “Goldenblood had it set from the start. When the war ended, you… me… Trueblood… we’d all be brought up on fucking war crimes! War crimes! Fuck! That!” She swung her emaciated hooves wide as she grinned ghoulishly. “Soon as Horse found out, I knew I wasn’t going to let that fucking happen. So I gave the order. Right when we were certain clusterfuck apocalypse was going to hit. We sent out hit squads to kill every last person even vaguely connected to the O.I.A. or its projects. Nopony would know about the Redoubt! We’d live like fucking gods!”

“I see,” I murmured. I bowed my head and clasped my hooves. “Forgive me Luna, for I have taken the life of another.” But the words gave no comfort. No absolution of my sins. I was damned, and not even Luna could save me.

“You’ll never be forgiven! I know who you killed.” I lifted one of the SMGs at her cackling, bloody maw. She grinned her bloody smile, ready to eat a bullet. “Come on, finish me! Finish me you killing fuck!” she screamed as she threw her hooves wide. “You’ve killed fucking thousands one by one for your fucking Goddess! Kill me!”

But I didn’t. Instead my magic reached out and took the knife that’d been stuck in Onyx. Her grin disappeared as I flicked the blood off it and tucked it in my belt. Then I turned and stepped out into the snow. “You should have saved one of those bullets for yourself.”

Garnet hobbled to the entrance after me. “No. Come back here! Kill me, you cunt! You whore! Murderer! We killed everypony! Kill me!” She screamed after me. I never looked back as I heard her bloody choking sob, “Please… kill me too…”

I woke, my PipBuck’s chronometer telling my two hours had passed. Boo snuggled against me, snoozing as well. I smiled and nuzzled her mane; she smelled like cherry filling. Then I glanced up at Glory, watching me with an odd look on her face as she sat before me. My cheeks reddened, and I swallowed, looking aside. “I didn’t do anything...” I muttered. How long had she been watching me sleep? Was she ticked I’d slept here rather than going up to her?

“I know you didn’t,” she said as she moved up to my other side and curled up against me with a sigh. “The question is... would you like to?” She wasn’t asking as if she planned on throwing me into more walls, but there were still little alarms going off in my head. As if sensing my trepidation, Glory smiled a little. “I’m not going to be mad. I just wanted to know if you’d like to or not.”

I glanced at the snoozing blank, then back at her. “Um, no? At least, not unless she suddenly told me she wanted to do something like that with me. And you were okay with it. I mean, if you’re asking me on a purely physical level then... but I... um...” I trailed off as she sighed. “Sorry.”

“It’s something you can’t really help, Blackjack. You are who you are,” she replied as she leaned against me. “I’m understanding that a little more now. I guess the question is... am I okay with it? And I really don’t know.”

“You seemed really okay earlier,” I muttered with a rueful smile. “Biter,” I added, and watched her blush and smile.

“That was relief sex, Blackjack. I claim temporary insanity,” she muttered, then sighed. “I don’t want to be left out of your life, because then I’ll have nothing. But staying with you is hard. It’s not your fault. You just... have stuff happen to you. But it’s still hard. And it hurts.” She closed her eyes and lay against me. “Just don’t... don’t leave me out. Whatever happens, don’t leave me out or leave me behind. Please...”

“I won’t,” I murmured and kissed her closed eyes, drawing a smile and sigh from her lips. She nuzzled me and drifted off to sleep. With a blanket of mares... maybe the dreams would be better...

Then I noticed that she wasn’t the only pony who’d been watching me. There, opposite me, sat the Dealer. His eyes trailed over my sleeping companions, and then he looked at me with an expression of quiet envy. “Echo...” I murmured, and his lips curled into a sour sort of smile.

“So. Figured it out, did you?” he rasped softly. “Supposed you would sooner or later.”

“Scotch Tape did. Or, rather, she figured out Smiling Jack.” I looked at his gaunt figure as his eyes widened in surprise.

“Did she? Huh.” He chuckled and gave a sheepish little smile as he rubbed the back of his head. “Always loved that character. Once mesmerized a dozen zombie buffalo to perform ballet in tutus. Good game, that one.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about Echo sooner?” I asked as I looked up at him. His smile disappeared instantly.

“What was there to tell? I was the unwanted product of an egotistical jerk and a mother who didn’t want to be reminded of her past mistakes,” he said grimly as he looked away. “I entered the military because there was no other place for me. There never was. I was the pony who wasn’t there.”

“But you saw--” I began, but then he snapped and threw his hat to the ground.

“Of course I saw!” he snapped, and then laughed bitterly. “I was the pony who saw it all. The good times... the bad times... I called them in. Recorded them down. I saw Big Macintosh die. I called in the medics who took Stonewing away. Watched Jetstream lose it on the battlefield. Saw Doof become a criminal. Vanity eaten up by regret. Twist turn into an emotionally scarred husk. Applesnack consumed by bitterness. Psalm by sin. I watched it all... and I did nothing to stop it!” He spat as he started to pace back and forth.

“I was the witness. The one who knew where the bodies were being buried but who never blew the whistle. The one who overheard all the dirty secrets but was too gutless to bring them to light. The one who knew my friends’ pain but was too cowardly to raise a hoof to help!” As I watched, the sallow white stallion transformed into a buttery yellow one with brown hair in short and shaggy profusion around his shoulders. “Why in Equestria would I want to tell you about Echo? The pony who did nothing while he watched the world explode around him?”

He scooped up his hat and put it back on, reverting back to the Dealer, his lips in a harsh frown. “Smiling Jack was the bitterest, angriest, nastiest pony in the Wasteland, and he was a thousand times better than Echo ever was.”

I stared at him quietly for an instant. “What happened to all of you?” I murmured.

He turned away, and for a moment I was certain he was going to leave again. But then he whispered, “Stars...”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s stupid. It’s just... something I’ve thought about.” He looked back at me over his shoulder. “It was right after training. We’d finished basic and it was Nightmare Night and everypony was in a mood to celebrate. Twist wanted to go to a carnival being held right where Chapel is today. Before the graveyard was there. Bit by bit, we all agreed. Psalm took me along because she took pity on me.”

He sighed and shook his head with a sad little smile. “That was a good night. I actually felt like I had friends for the first time ever. There were games and rides and kids running around and... it just felt like the war wasn’t happening. Everyone was having a wonderful time...” He shook his head again as he lowered it. “Then Twist saw that damned fortune teller...”

“Fortune teller?” I asked with a frown.

“An old zebra had a tent. Strange old guy. Had tattoos all over his face. His tent had bizarre, leering masks and creepy herbs and specimens in bottles. The kind of zebra that would have been snapped up by the M.o.M. had he been around a few years later. Maybe he was. Asked us if we wanted to know our fate.” He snorted and shook his head. “Of course... we did.”

He sighed and looked mournfully at me. “He said we’d all die ignoble deaths on the muddy battlefield within a year.”

I winced. “Ouch.”

“Needless to say, none of us liked that. But then the old codger asked us if we wanted to change our fate. He said there was a way for all of us to be heroes. The greatest heroes in the whole war, so long as we were true to each other. So long as we never... ever... broke fellowship with each other.” He hissed slowly through his teeth. “What can I say? Friendship... fame... heroism...”

“The catch?” I asked with a sympathetic smile.

He shook his head and looked at me. “The first to break the fellowship would die... and they would receive the most merciful death at that. The rest of us would wish we’d been the first to break, if we were not true to each other.”

“And you accepted.” How could they not?

“We did. Partly out of pride and partly out of a wish to laugh at the zebra’s predictions. But then he got out this book. This... this horrible, black book. And suddenly it wasn’t so funny. He called on the stars to change our fates, and curse us if one was false to the others. There was a hum and... green spiraling things... things an earth pony can’t really explain.” He shook his head. “When the light show ended, the zebra was gone. The tent was completely bare save for a few empty crates.”

He sighed once more and then gave a little smile. “What was funny was... it worked. The next day, we were all assigned to a special combined task force. Experimental... three pony kinds working as a special squad. And it was... amazing,” he finished with a wistful look. “We were amazing. We... we did things that nopony thought was possible. Things we didn’t think possible. And there was fame and glory. Most of us never talked about that night, but I thought about it. We were going to be friends. Loyal and true forever and ever...

“Then Stonewing fell in battle and we wondered... oh never out loud... but there were looks. Questions. Had he been untrue? Had he broken the fellowship?” He sighed as he dropped his head. “We didn’t know that he was being held in a hospital in critical condition. Some paperwork error. And then...” He raised his eyes to mine. “Then Big Macintosh said he’d had enough. He said he’d met a mare and it was time to settle down. He’d figured he’d done his share for Equestria, and didn’t believe in zebra curses. He wanted to raise a family. Said family was the most important thing of all. He’d stay for one last critical mission... protecting Princess Celestia at a peace summit. He figured that once the meeting was done, there wouldn’t be need for Marauders.”

“Then he died,” I said quietly.

“Oh, not just a death!” Dealer snapped, “A hero’s death. Princess Luna turned it into a rallying cry... another escalation in the war. A sign we had to fight harder -- do better -- to defeat our foes. The next day, Psalm disappears. A few weeks later Doof rapes Twist. A month later Applesnack gets reassigned to babysit zebras. A few months after that, Jetstream snaps. Then Vanity walks away. Twist takes the enemy as her lover. And me... I was left all alone. Picked up by Goldenblood out of... I don’t know... pity, I suppose.”

I thought of that moment out on Star Point. Before I’d found out about Gardens and taint and... everything. Had my fate been changed there? Had I been supposed to die with a bullet through my head beside Marigold’s bones? Cursed to become the thing I was now? It was a chilling thought.

“I’m sorry. I just... don’t know what to say. Stars and zebra curses... Sekashi said the stars were powerful, fickle, and dangerous. But I don’t know if they can actually do things like that,” I muttered, looking at the stars on the beams overhead.

“I can’t imagine they do. Every colt and filly wished on stars back when you could see them. I did,” he said softly, hanging his head a little. He looked so glum that I wished I could give him a hug.

Instead, I did the next best thing. “So... tell me more about the adventures of Smiling Jack.” A small smile curled in the corner of his mouth.

After an hour of Dealer regaling me with stories about hunting down bank robbers across the desert, dealing with spirit-summoning shamans, being forced to dress in drag to infiltrate a monastery, fighting hordes of zombies, and something called an ‘epic botch’ that apparently turned Jack into a ‘kumquat’, Dealer returned to wherever he went when he wasn’t feeling chatty.

I’d have to go soon and check up on P-21 and Deus. There was just something that was bothering me as I lay here nice and quiet. It was too quiet. Particularly in my head. I hadn’t heard a peep since the riot inside the Goddess ended. The stillness was unsettling... and unnerving. Was the Goddess just silently watching in the back of my mind, or was she away plotting something?

So far, I’d only listened to Unity and talked at Lacunae. I’d never actually tried to go into the hive consciousness. Part of it was that I didn’t know how, but another wondered what would happen if I did try and push that connection. Would I be sucked in forever? Could the Goddess control my body while I was in there? Was it even possible?

Aw hell... it wasn’t the first time I’d ever done something completely clueless and heedless of the risks...

I thought about the memory magic I’d done with Rampage and what I’d read in Triage’s books. I wasn’t a smart pony, but I wasn’t as stupid as I used to be. Memory spells shared memories, and the Goddess was like a massive memory orb filled with countless recollections and souls. She was just able to control where those memories went. If I thought about the Goddess as a collection of memories, maybe I could go into it the same way as I entered Rampage’s thoughts.

I visualized that part in the back of my mind where I talked to Lacunae and the Goddess spoke to me as a pool of water filled with countless glowing clouds of memory. Instead of trying to pull them to me, I pushed myself into that pool, just as I had with Shujaa. Slowly the world around me faded to black as I struggled deeper and deeper into that pool. Swimming was a pretty alien concept to me, so I settled with sinking. Sinking I could handle.

Then I heard it... the faintest whispers in the dark. First one or two. Then a small crowd. Then a steady stream of barely audible comments. ‘She has it. She is out. She is coming. Coming soon. She is bringing it. Bringing it to us. The book. She has the book.’ I didn’t know who ‘she’ was. More chilling were the comments after that. ‘We must kill her. No, we must reward her. One of us. One of us!’

I tried not to pay attention to whispers. I needed to find the big ego in charge of them all. Mentally, I sank deeper. My body was left behind; an unnerving sensation. It was exactly how I’d felt after escaping Hightower. A feeling of... letting go.

Then I heard the voice and saw the distant blue glow. I moved towards it; for some reason I imagined myself as a white unicorn with a striped mane... and no metal. At least here I could be normal. That blue glow coalesced into the Goddess, an immense blue unicorn from the waist up surrounded by a ring of faint glowing pony shapes. Her hips devolved into a glowing amoeboid mass stretching out around her like tendrils into the cloud, and her lumpy blue hide seemed to undulate and move in strange ways. I stared at the sight of two green unicorn heads poking from her shoulders, looking on. By the side of the Goddess’s head floated a translucent, membranous balloon connected by a meaty filament to the Goddess’s temple.

And trapped within was a very familiar purple mare’s head.

In front of the Goddess were hundreds of windows, like terminal screens. In them, I could see images all across Equestria. Most of them were scenes of the Wasteland. One was looking down upon a village of zebras, and I thought that one of them looked a bit like Xenith... of course, they all looked kinda similar. Then I spotted Calamity! There was no missing that hat. It was like P-21’s, and there just couldn’t be another pegasus with one like it in the Wasteland.

The windows in the center swelled in size; perhaps window size was the equivalent to how much attention she was giving something? If so, what she was looking at was... as best as I could see... a floating city-fortress hovering over the clouds. From a dozen eyes, I saw a wing of alicorns fly through the dark clouds around the massive structure of war. “Such power...” the Goddess purred.

“Thunderhead class mobile siege platform,” said the mare’s head in her right shoulder.

“The Glorious Dawn,” intoned the other.

The view swooped in and suddenly jerked as the alicorns teleported into a docking bay. One by one, the crew pegasi were magically neutralized and dragged into the corner. The green mare heads closed their eyes and said in unison, “We have the location of his quarters.”

The Goddess nodded. “Watch the others and make sure they are not discovered.” She turned her gaze to glance at the purple head inside its balloon and then returned her eyes to the windows. “Take us there.”

“Are we certain he is amenable?” one of the green mares asked.

“Of course he will be!” the Goddess snapped. “He desires magic. We desire power. What better match could there possibly be? With his machines of war we shall bring Red Eye to heel and save all of ponykind from the Wasteland.”

“So long as he does not turn that power upon us,” the other green mare warned.

“Yes, we shall take precautions. Soon the Black Book will be ours, and we will make the required changes to perpetuate ourselves,” the Goddess said testily.

“Trixie...” murmured the purple head weakly. “Please...”

“Silence,” the Goddess boomed as she glared at the balloon. “You tried it your way. You failed. I acknowledged when you were right about me. Why can you not accept that this is the way it must be? Why must you perpetually insist on ‘another way’? After 200 years of trying, only force has been proved to work. What kind of scientist continues to use a flawed method?" The Goddess stared at the windows as the purple head hung in shame. “No more missionaries, Twilight. No more trying to work with ponies like Red Eye. We must control the situation, not let it control us.” She glared at the windows a moment. “Go.”

Half the windows flickered as they jumped into a sumptuously decorated office. The walls were festooned with weapons, pegasus uniforms, flags, and maps. The dusky pegasus I’d seen before at the Rainbow Dash Skyport now sat behind a desk, scowling at a chart. Two guards stood by with bored looks on their faces.

Those bored looks turned to astonishment as magic bolts slammed into them and dropped them in heaps on the floor. Harbinger drew a strange, ominous-looking beam pistol as he crouched behind the desk. There was something familiar about it, but I wasn’t precisely sure where I’d seen it before. “PEACE!” The Goddess thundered. “THE GODDESS HAS NOT COME TO DO BATTLE! YOUR SOLDIERS ARE MERELY STUNNED, NOT SLAIN!” Slowly, Harbinger rose up from behind the desk as one window slowly advanced upon him. “THE GODDESS HAS COME TO PARLEY WITH THE GRAND PEGASUS ENCLAVE!”

After a moment, he dropped the pistol on the desktop. “Brown wind... it’s true,” he said as he slowly rose to his hooves. “You really do exist.” He narrowed his eyes a bit. “I expected an assassination attempt from Red Eye’s alicorns before now. He has to suspect we’re moving against him.”

“INDEED, BUT THE GODDESS DOES NOT SERVE RED EYE. HE HAS ABUSED THE GODDESS’S TRUST, AND SO WE SEEK A NEW PARTNER. A BETTER PARTNER. AND WHO BETTER TO RULE THIS NEW WORLD WITH THE GODDESS OF EQUESTRIA THAN THE LORDS OF THE SKY?” Her words were perfectly chosen, drawing a smile from the gray stallion.

“You’re proposing some kind of alliance?” he asked slowly, as if disbelieving even the idea of it.

“THE GODDESS IS. YOUR PEOPLE REQUIRE MAGIC? THE GODDESS HAS MORE MAGICAL POWER THAN ANY EQUINE WHO HAS EVER LIVED! WITH YOUR FORCES, YOU SHALL HAVE YOUR RIGHTEOUS BATTLE AGAINST THE WICKED RED EYE. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL! THE GODDESS KNOWS OF YOUR STRUGGLE WITH THUNDERHEAD! HOW THEY WITHHOLD THEIR OWN SOURCES OF MAGIC WHILE YOU GROW EVER WEAKER! HOW THEY PURSUE BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS TO USE AGAINST THEIR OWN PEOPLE! THEIR EVIL IS INTOLERABLE EVEN TO THE GODDESS! ONCE RED EYE IS CHASTISED, THE GODDESS WILL AID IN YOU DELIVERING A PUNISHMENT BEFITTING SUCH TREACHERY!”

Okay. This was rapidly approaching a level of nightmare even I was having trouble handling.

“Well. That’s an interesting proposition. Very interesting. But you know that saying about things that are too good to be true,” he said with a glare. “What is the catch?”

“NO CATCH. NO TRICKS. TOGETHER WE SHALL BRING PEACE AND ORDER TO EQUESTRIA. YOU WISH THE SKIES? KEEP THEM WITH THE GODDESS’S BLESSING. THE GODDESS’S CHILDREN SHALL RULE BELOW AND BRING SALVATION TO ALL PONIES TRAPPED IN THE WASTELAND. THE GODDESS SHALL PROVIDE YOUR ENCLAVE THE MEANS TO CONTROL NOT JUST THE SKIES OF EQUESTRIA, BUT OF THE ENTIRE WORLD! AND IN RETURN, ALL THE WORLD SHALL BE UNITED AND SAVED.” But that was a lie, and I knew it. Zebras, griffins, and ghouls couldn’t be turned into alicorns. But looking into the office, I could see the naked appeal in Harbinger’s eyes.

Still, he wasn’t entirely sold. “How do I know this isn’t a trick? Perhaps an attempt to get me out in the open?”

“LOOK UPON YOUR NEUTRALIZED GUARDS! HAD THE GODDESS WISHED YOU DEAD, YOU WOULD BE SO! OUR OFFER IS MADE IN GOOD FAITH, HARBINGER. THE GODDESS SEEKS YOUR ASSISTANCE, NOT YOUR DEMISE.” He clearly seemed to be considering it.

Finally, his lips twisted sourly. “It’s not exclusively up to me. The council will want to debate.” He said the word like it was a curse.

The Goddess chuckled. “YOU KNOW THE VALUE OF SPECTACLE BETTER THAN MOST, HIGH GENERAL! THERE WILL BE NO NEED OF DEBATE WHEN YOU ARRIVE WITH A WING OF THE GODDESS’S CHILDREN WITH YOU. YOUR PEOPLE SHALL FALL IN LINE AND EXCUSE YOUR AUDACITY WHEN ALL THE GODDESS’S GIFTS ARE PRESENTED. NEW TALISMANS. FRESH MATERIALS TO MAKE NEW WEAPONS OF WAR! THE STRENGTH OF YOUR PEOPLE RESTORED! COME TO THE HOME OF THE GODDESS. BRING YOUR CAMERAS SO THAT ALL CAN SEE THE GLORY OF THE GODDESS! THUS SHALL OUR ALLIANCE BE MADE FACT FOR ALL TO SEE!”

Harbinger glared at her, but his eyes danced with the potential hope. “He desires,” whispered the two heads.

“Of course he does,” chuckled the Goddess. “We’re speaking the same language. Power.”

Harbinger finally said with a little smile, “I’ll reflect on your generous offer, Goddess.”

“He shall accept!” the green left head said.

“He only needs to get his plots together,” the right green head murmured. “Then he shall come!”

“OF COURSE, HIGH GENERAL. THE GODDESS LOOKS FORWARD TO OUR ALLIANCE! TOGETHER WE SHALL BRING PEACE AND ORDER. BUT WE URGE HASTE IN YOUR DECISION, LEST THE GODDESS BE FORCED TO ACT WITHOUT YOU.”

“Of course,” he said with a little smile.

“Return,” the Goddess said with a cackle, and the windows aboard the siege platform disappeared and were replaced by images of clouds.

Okay, I had to do... something! I had to tell somepony! I needed to...

Twilight Sparkle was looking at me.

The old mare’s head seemed so terribly tired and sad as she looked on. Yet even as I looked, the corner of her mouth turned in the saddest smile. Then she mouthed a word within that diaphanous balloon. ‘Run.’

“What...” the Goddess began, and then the immense blue form turned around to face me. Then I understood what all those lumps were and why they moved so oddly. It was a body made of eyeless pony faces, a thing that could have been birthed in Horizon Labs. Her periwinkle eyes widened as they looked down at me, then narrowed in an enraged glare. “YOU!”

Shitshitshitohshitohshi--

Out. Awaken. Leave. Vacate! I struggled to pull myself out of this void and back to myself. Maybe if I got into myself, I could warn someone! Spike! I could tell him! He’d warn Homage! He could tell everypony! The Enclave and Goddess... together?! It had to be stopped. I felt myself pulling out, but too slowly. Far too slowly!

Her immense hooves reached out and caught me. “Sneaky, sneaky, Blackjack. I look forward to having you fully within Unity. And that day shall come soon. Very soon.” Her lips curled wider as her eyes narrowed. “In the meantime... let me repay some of the annoyance your lineage has caused me!”

She pulled me towards her gargantuan maw, filled with countless babbling pony heads and an infinite number of teeth...

I jerked, disturbing both Glory and Boo as I clutched my pounding skull. “What is it, Blackjack?” Glory asked in concern. “What’s wrong?”

Something was wrong. There was something... Something I needed to tell somepony...

“I don’t know... just a headache...” I muttered as I lay back. We were going to have to leave soon. I had debts to pay, and sticking around here was just an invitation for the Harbingers to attack again.

I just wished I knew what the Goddess found so damned funny...

Footnote: Maximum Level Reached.

Quest perk achieved: Shadowbolt armor Mk I. You’ve received the reinforcing base for Shadowbolt cybernetics. +3 DT.

Author's Notes:

(Author’s notes: I really want to apologize for the lateness of this chapter. School, pneumonia, and writing difficulties made getting this chapter done a nightmare. This is the third form of the chapter. I hope it’s okay. The chapter ended up being a recovery chapter. Sorry. I’m getting formulaic I guess. Anyway, thank you for your patience in waiting for the chapter. I hope it was worthwhile.

I want to thank everypony for reading as far as they have. It’s my dream to finish PH this year. I want to thank the endless support and help, given by Hinds, Bronode, and Snipehamster to making this worth reading. Trust me, my rough drafts are painful. Special thanks to Kkat for creating FoE, as always. And I’d like to thank every pony who’s generously supported PH. There were quite a few donations this month and sadly I didn’t get a chance to thank everyone personally.

Thanks to people’s generosity, I’ll be attending Unicon in Las Vegas in February. Hope to see folks there! Just look for the grossest attendee... that should be me!)