A friend can appear at any time, the problem is figuring out if they are friend or foe.- Applebits

I woke up and I had a note In front of my nose, “Everything went well at Nowhere, the little filly loved her cake! She sent you back a letter, I’m glad I was able to deliver it, but I am keeping it in my shop, seeing as you are in a box car, come see me when you can, I will be leaving with the free ponies after I clean out my wagon and make it more comfortable for them. You groan while you sleep. Love Ditzy Doo! P.S. the transport of the free ponies is no charge, glad to help!”

I was the first up, aside from Blade who had final watch, he didn’t move. I waved a hoof in front of him, he didn’t move, then I heard him snore. I chuckled to myself, he had fallen asleep in his armor standing up, as bad as that was I didn’t really care, no harm befell us so he did his job. For good measure I left a note telling him that if I wasn’t back when he woke up that I would be at Ditzy Doo’s place.

I walked up to Ditzy, she was just finishing putting the hay in the bottom of the wagon. Silver Bell was still asleep and the sky had decided that it wanted me to rust, it wasn’t raining, it was pouring.

“Hey, good to see you Ditzy!” I said cheerfully, she looked at me and charged me, not even an eye blink passed and she was hugging me, naturally, even in my armor, I hugged back.

When she had finally let go of me she looked at me then pointed to her store, walking into her store she immediately dried off my armor realizing that I was in steel armor, and that steel rusts.

“You don’t need to... Never mind you already did.” I said, not wanting the ghoul to fret over me like my mother used to.

She had moved into her room and was digging through an old saddle bag.

She returned with a letter in her mouth and put it on the table with a smile, then wrote, “This is your package from Fire Bloom, she was very pleasant and I stayed two extra hours so that Silver Bell and her could play…” she had cleaned off the board and was writing again, “… it’s a very nice town, no worries I won’t tell anypony about it.” she finished by moving the letter closer to me.

“Thank you Ditzy, for being so nice.” I said, looking at the ghoul, now I was absolutely certain that she was the nicest pony I had ever met.

She smiled at me then wrote, “Open your package, I have supplies for you to write back, I can deliver it on my next run in one hour” it said, I nodded.

I opened the package, it was a rolled up drawing with a note attached, the drawing was of me and my comrades saving the town of Nowhere, I started crying. I opened the note, Applebits, I’m so happy to hear from you, thanks for the friend and the cake! Everything is going great Ms. Woods has a massive farm next to the town and the rangers are doing great, no pony has attacked in so long that they set up a practice range near the stable. Love you, Fire Bloom, I was crying harder now, underneath the words there was a picture, it was of Fire Bloom and Silver bell eating the cake I had sent her, there were a few ponies in the background, young ones also enjoying cake, I sobbed. I had placed the package in front of me, Ditzy had wrapped me in another hug, I was smiling and crying all at the same time.

My friends walked into the store looking for me, I had removed my helmet to read the letter better because the drawing had made me bawl and I couldn’t see through my visor. Ditzy was still hugging me and I was still crying my happy tears, now I was just slightly embarrassed.

“Something wrong?” Lightning asked.

Bull’s-Eye was in shock, he had never seen, or heard me cry before, he knew me as the fearless Star Paladin who’s actions had saved platoons of ponies from the zebras during the war.

“No just, a message from home.” I said in between breaths as I tried to regain my composer, as to not further embarrass myself.

Ditzy had put everything back in the travel container, she then started writing on her board, “Take that container, I’ve got tons more, free!”

I looked at her, sniffing, I gave her a hug and she hugged back. By the time we had stopped hugging the boys had become extremely confused.

“What do you mean home?” Lightning asked.

“Nowhere, when this is all done I plan on retiring in Nowhere.” I stated, just realizing that I had never told them my plans.

“Well then, you think far ahead.” Bull’s-Eye said with a smirk, they had both removed their helmets and were smiling, “You don’t need to hide your heart from us ya know.” Bull’s-Eye added, looking at me with a concerned face.

“Having a heart is something you shouldn’t be worried about.” Lightning added, it was then I decided that I had great friends, no, the best friends.

I wrote my letter back to Fire Bloom, complete with a picture of myself, Dark Lightning, Bull’s-Eye, Ditzy Doo, and Silver Bell. Ditzy tried to tell me free of charge for my mail to Fire Bloom, but I insisted, I didn’t want her to not have funding for the filly she needed to take care of, even though she most definitely knew how to. We left the town at the same time, I watched from the rear hatch of the Sky Tank as Ditzy Doo took off and headed in the wrong direction, then corrected course, obviously so that the sheriff didn’t know which way my town was, thank you Ditzy!

We had been flying for a few hours now, I noticed from the landscape that we were close to where Cloudsdale was when it was destroyed.

“Hey, Lightning how are you doing out there?” I asked, worried that he had noticed the same as I, where we were.

“Eyup, doing fine, got a tail wind right now, making good time.” he replied in a cheery voice, seeing his old friend had been good for him.

“How long till we get to Ten Pony?” I asked him.

“We should make the outskirts of Manehattan by nightfall, then we can rest up, hide the tank, and walk the rest of the way.” he said, a little pride in his voice for getting us this far this fast!

We had gotten to the outskirts of the Cloudsdale aftermath when lightning bolts struck the tank, my armor had no insulation, and the tank wasn’t grounded, needless to say, it hurt like bloody hell. I got to my hooves and open the rear hatch to see what hit us, I had a strong suspicion that it was an alicorn, to my utter disapproval, there were four of them, but something was off. There were three smaller alicorns, still taller than me, fighting a larger alicorn, I didn’t know what it was all about but when the large one took a hit for our tank I opened fire on the others. Soon BrokenBlade got the idea and unleashed the tanks missiles as I shredded the alicorns, between the two of us they were dead at least ten minuets before the bits and chunks that were their bodies found the ground.

I looked for the friendly who had taken a bolt of lightning, I told my friends not to shoot a lone alicorn, they argued at first but after I explained they understood my reason and complied. I finally spotted her several feet below us and climbing slowly back to our altitude. During the battle Dark Lightning had put us through a lot of crazy maneuvers that had granted us a bit of altitude as well, which made looking down absolutely terrifying. Before I knew it I was falling, only a complete idiot could fall out the back of a flying tank, yup that was me.

The tank disappeared from my view and the ground was coming up fast, then out of nowhere I was rising again. A golden levitation field had surrounded me and could I saw the alicorn in which the field originated from. She was clad in medieval silver armor, her coat was black, her mane and tail were gold, she had gold eyes, and her cutiemark was of a silver sword sheathed into a golden shield that had the Equestrian coat of arms on it.

“I’ve got you Star Paladin!” I heard her say in a reverberating voice as she lifted me into the tank.

“Who are you?” I asked somewhat awestruck, I knew that there were alicorns in Equestria before the fallout that operated in the shadows but this was ridiculous.

“I am Shining Defense, a friend of Tempest’s!” she said, her voice was regal, and she sounded much like Luna, but she was definitely a different pony.

“Beginning decent!” I heard Lightning say over the radio, our alicorn friend flew just behind and to the side of us, I kept the hatch open to watch her.

Before I knew it Lightning had found a place that he could land, him being immune to electricity sounded great, because as soon as my hooves hit ground I removed my helmet using my telekinesis and my mane made me look as though I was Pinkie Pie's descendant. Looking about I saw Lightning discharging electricity into the sky and BrokenBlade grounding himself, one disadvantage of having steel armor, we make good conductors. The alicorn landed gracefully next to me, she was smiling, something about that scared me, mainly because I have never seen Tempest smile about anything short of being triumphant, and I never saw the princesses smile when they were addressing their crowds, except for when I was much younger and there was peace across Equestria.

“You need to be more careful, and try not to fly, you don’t have wings silly unicorn!” she said laughing, now that the immediate danger was over and we were all together.

“So Shining Defense, what brings you here?” I asked, slightly confused.

“I awoke not to long ago, to this, this wasteland.” she said looking around, trying to put it all to words, “I tried to keep to myself until I figured things out but, I wasn’t going to sit by and watch those strange alicorns kill the three of you.” she added, sounding slightly unsure of herself.

I looked at her more closely now that we were both firmly on the ground, her armor had runes, similar to what the runes on Tempest’s armor were but the changes were there, I shifted my gaze about her, she was all pony, no dragon traits about her.

“How did you survive the fallout?” I asked her.

“I was part of a elite team of alicorns, we were deployed to fight the zebras behind enemy lines. When the war ended we returned to Equestria, sadly we returned to a hostile radiation filled landscape. We sought shelter in a stable that had already been activated, it was a military stable with cryo tubes, we had been using anti radiation magic so they let us in. I woke up to a careless raider opening my chamber to cut me open and cook, like he did to every other pony in the stable, I killed the raiders and left the stable. I have been traveling by the shadows since.” she said in a monotone voice as if she had no feelings, somepony took the military discipline to a new level.

I pulled my team to the side while she took back to the skies to scout about and secure the area.

“Do you boys think that we can trust her?” I asked, looking about them.

“Well Equestria did have a small alicorn fighting force, it wasn’t well known because very few have the potential to become alicorns, at least conventionally.” Lightning said.

“To add to that statement, she did come to our aid up there, without her we would be dead right now.” Bull’s-Eye added.

“So are we going to give her a chance?” I asked them.

“Don’t see why not.” they said in unison.

“Okay.” I replied as she came back.

“Nothing to report Star Paladin, the area is clear!” she stated.

I waved the others off to go prep the supplies, we still had a little daylight and had decided, before getting attacked by crazy alicorns, that we would get to Ten Pony and rent a room there.

“I want to talk to you.” I said to her.

“About what?” she asked me, the look in her eyes being that of uncertainty.

“The boys and I have talked it over and, and well, we decided that you can join us on our crusade if you would like.” I said, forming the words in my head as they were coming out my muzzle.

“Splendid, I would like very much to join the three of you, if there is anything you want to know of me just ask, I’m an open book to my allies.” she said with a smile, and at that we all moved out into the ruined remains of the city.

Author's Notes:

Okay so at long last I am updating this story again, I have many changes to the original, but I do want to check this one off to the completed list.

Stay Brony