Weakness.

It overcame me the next morning. Weakness of body. My muscles protested with every move, reminding me of how the raiders’ bullets had torn them, how the only thing keeping me knit together was the magical bandage of the healing potions. I wore fatigue like a heavy blanket, and every movement only shifted the fabric, reminding me that I had endured strain I was not meant to endure.

Weakness of the mind. My emotions were ragged and dark once I opened my eyes, worse than they had been last night. I felt like a rapist. Me, who barely had the courage to flirt with Silver Bell, felt like a rapist. It seems crazy, and it was irrational, but I recognized within myself the elements of those stallions that drove them to such depravity. I did flirt with Silver Bell, I’ll admit it, and I was planning to again once we got to New Appleloosa. My intentions to convince her to have feelings for me felt like manipulation, and that didn’t feel many steps away from outright force. And while I had never had sex, I had lust, as anyone does, and I knew that factored into my motivations somewhere. I felt that it was possible for me to become as bad as those raiders simply by virtue of being a stallion.

Weakness of will. All of this led to a feeling of giving up. Rosemary’s words came back to me: “Who does he think he is? Littlepip?” And I didn’t. I realized how terribly far I was from the legendary hero, from all my heroes. Littlepip, no matter what she went through for others, never sought glory or recognition. She had hated her title of ‘Lightbringer.’ Shining Armor, from what I had read, had defeated great foes with the sheer power of the love between him and his wife. I didn’t stand for anything nearly so noble. Even my everyday heroes, Calamity, Velvet Remedy, my father… I felt they would be disappointed in me if they could see my heart. Rosemary had me figured out in a day. No wonder Calamity and Velvet didn’t trust me alone with Silver Bell.

In the moments of my waking up, for a brief thought, I decided to give up. To let somepony else handle Thunderfall, if he needed to be handled at all. After all, what could I really do about it?

Fate, I would come to learn, has a strong sense of irony.

I awoke to the sounds of soft crying. Rising from my patch of dirt early that morning, I discovered that the only other one awake at the time was Cloud Chaser.

I sat next to her. She noticed me and tried to cover her tears, wiping her eyes. “You’re up early,” she said.

It was obvious why she was crying. She still had some blood on her face. “It’s hard to sleep when you’ve killed,” I told her. “I take it that was your first real fight back there?”

She nodded. “It was so easy… he just…” her voice caught in a sob and she threw herself into me.

I was still angry and upset about what she and Rosemary had said about me last night, but it was easy for me to soften my heart for the pigtailed pegasus. It was just a few days ago that I had been in her exact position, and I may have been no Velvet Remedy, but I could try.

“You’re not a killer,” I told her, giving her a hug. “You’re not a murderer. Look at those mares.” She looked. “You caught a glimpse of what would happen to them when you saved Midnight. If it hadn’t been for you, that would have gone on for months. Years. The rest of their lives. You ended lives, but you gave them theirs. It was necessary.”

She nodded, resting her head on my shoulder. Calming herself down. I placed a hoof on her back and said nothing. After a few minutes, others started to wake up and Cloud Chaser pulled away. “Thanks,” she said with a grateful smile. “I needed that.”

“My first wasn’t that long ago. I know what it’s like, so if you want to talk about it…”

She nodded. Rosemary was up and doing what she could to prepare a breakfast instead of just giving out canned food. We were getting low with the additions to our group, but Rosemary seemed determined to make sure everypony was fed. Cloud Chaser went to pester her.

I didn’t bother her. I knew how she felt about me and I wasn’t going to make her pretend to like me. She spent a lot of time looking up at me, though, giving me weird looks. Her gaze pressed upon me, and I moved around, trying to avoid it.

For the remainder of the morning, I was silent. Cloud Chaser and Rosemary didn’t talk to me, and I didn’t try to talk to them. I still felt guilty about Silver Bell, and Midnight was right out. The other mares didn’t try to make conversation with me, either, and I wasn’t going to force it. The situation had left me ostensibly alone.

I remembered the audio file that I had gotten from Chain Gang’s terminal. Plugging in my earbuds, I decided to at least do something with my lack of social time.

A stallion spoke to me in the educated voice of a not-raider. “This place is turning out a lot better than expected. Captain Greaves may be a complete tool, I mean he did name the place after himself, but it’s not so bad. Homeland security is a lot better than the frontlines, staring down a bunch of zebras.

“It’s really all about appearances. As long as we look fit and ready to fight at any time, we could be here for the entire war. After all, this base was built to be the last line of infantry defense before Canterlot, so there’s no way Luna’s going to pull us out.

“And speaking of appearances, I wish I had gotten pictures of Captain Greaves when General Shining Armor showed up. After the salute, he went right to offering to take the General’s coat, then asked if he wanted coffee, complimenting him on everything. Princess Cadence’s face was priceless. I got the feeling that she didn’t like anypony else trying to suck her husband’s dick.

“Captain Greaves says that Shining Armor’s here to see how the elite are faring. Elite my ass. Half of us have never shot a zebra before in our lives. Lieutenant Fishhook even had the nerve to greet the General half-drunk. He let something slip about some sort of secret plan that the General was putting together. Even if there is some real top-secret stuff going on, I don’t know why the General stopped here. He’s sure as hell not going to find the ponies he needs in this daycare of a base.”

My heart jumped at the mention of Shining Armor. I had never heard about his activity during the war, and Littlepip didn’t either. The only stories about his life were pre-war. At first, I just assumed all of his war activities had been buried with the Crystal Empire when the bombs dropped, but if there really were something top-secret goings on, perhaps his activities had been covered up. I doubted I would learn anything more about him, but I secretly hoped that this wasn’t the only thing left about one of my old childhood heroes.

Soon we were up and moving again, on the final stretch of dusty road that led us to the promised land that had become New Appleloosa. I took the time to learn the names of each of the mares, but after that, conversational topics began to run dry. They all lived in Fillydelphia, and their shared experiences had caused them to stick close together, and I began to feel a little awkward.

“Turn on the radio,” Rosemary saved me.

I gave her a puzzled look, but then remembered that PipBucks could lock onto radio signals, and DJPon3 broadcasted everywhere. I unplugged my earbuds and turned up the volume for everpony to hear.

“…Next up, another reminder about those missin’ folks from the Fillydelphia caravan,” the smooth male voice rose through the static as I adjusted the signal. “It’s been about twelve days now since the poor souls were attacked and the group of mares went missing. Now I know what you’re thinking, that they’re probably long gone by now and it’s a terrible shame. And it is a terrible shame, but don’t give up hope yet. They were on the road to New Appleloosa, so if you’re traveling between those spots and you hear something, make sure to let somepony know! Don’t go and do anything reckless, now, but this is our Equestria now, and everypony’s gotta do their part to tell those raiders still left that they can’t have it.”

The news went on, but nopony said anything. We would bring the mares to the sheriff of New Appleloosa, and I was sure he’d get them back to Fillydelphia safely.

“Do you think that’s still Homage?” Cloud Chaser asked.

“I think she retired and passed the torch after The Book of Littlepip, after her cover was blown,” I answered.

“Or maybe that’s just what she wants you to think.” Cloud Chaser waggled an eyebrow. I didn’t buy the conspiracy. If I was Homage, I think I would be done after all that happened.

One of the mares shushed us to hear the last of the news. “…The Church of Harmony has asked me to read this statement about their new marriage policy. You know the one. Ahem. ‘Regarding our request that all new marriages be performed by the Church, we want to assure the ponies of Equestria that they have nothing to be upset about. We will of course recognize prior marriages as legitimate. Same-sex marriages will be allowed, especially concerning ex-Enclave members. Our goal is not to try and control the lives of Equestrians, but to restore an aspect of pre-war Equestria, the institution of marriage, that our ancestors knew.’”

DJPon3 continued. “There’s a lot more here, but you want music, and you get the idea. So in dedication to those Fillydelphia mares still out there, if you can hear us, here’s the comforting voice of good ol’ Velvet Remedy.”

Velvet’s song, the one she wrote for Littlepip, began to play, and I think everypony smiled. The charcoal unicorn never sang that song to me or in public, and I think Calamity was the only one who ever got to hear it live anymore.

“Do you think ponies are really going to go to the Church of Harmony to get married?” I asked.

“We’ll see,” Rosemary answered. “They’re still so new. I think a lot of ponies don’t want to recognize all the authority they’re giving themselves.”

“They’re kinda crazy,” Cloud Chaser agreed. “But if the weddings are good enough I don’t see why not.”

I had heard that Shining Armor and Princess Cadence were married in Canterlot Castle. While I didn’t think the Church could pull off anything as good as that, I felt that it was a nice move forward to try and revive Equestria back to what it once was. Another part of me felt that Equestria would never be the same as it was during the Ministry Mares’ time, but maybe, just maybe, it could be.

When I first laid eyes on New Appleloosa, though, I knew we still had a long way to go.

It had been years since the Enclave’s massacre at New Appleloosa. How were things still like this? The ponies here had rebuilt to the best of their abilities, but this was simply awful. The train rails leading into town seemed to be the only things still intact. Buildings, shacks really, rose on makeshift scaffolds made of scrap metal all around us. The wreckage of years past had been put into the building of these structures, sheets of metal and wood still blackened, and what was unusable had been fashioned into walls and fences. Trenches had been dug out for sewage lines along the back allies leading somewhere out of the city. Foals played in the streets, the bits of metal and broken glass having been swept to the side by the many hooves that had worn the paths between the buildings in the dirt.

“I don’t get it,” I said out loud as we headed past the outer wall. “Littlepip made it seem like New Appleloosa was a good place to live. What happened?”

“The Enclave,” Rosemary said. “It takes a while to recover from an attack like that.”

“It’s been years!” I responded in disbelief.

Rosemary shrugged her shoulders. This was the New Appleloosa she knew. It wasn’t perfect, but to her it was home.

“Are you going to see your brother?” Silver Bell asked me.

I shook my head. “Not yet, at least. I want to make sure that what I’ve found is taken care of.”

“Well before you go anywhere, you’re coming back to the inn with me,” Rosemary demanded.

“The inn?”

“Yes. I run the only inn in town, and you, young stallion, need some food, bedrest, and a bath.”

I wasn’t about to object. Those all sounded lovely at the moment.

Rosemary led us all up a rusty metal ramp to the second level of New (New) Appleloosa. After walking on rickety platforms and narrow catwalks constructed on pipes, we arrived at her place, “The Jade Dragon.” It was one of the larger buildings on this level, the platform it was constructed on a little sturdier than others. While the walls were made of metal, glass windows had been installed, and I could even see a balcony on the second floor. I didn’t bother to ask about the name. It had food and a bath inside, and she might deny me access if she felt I was criticizing her.

The interior was a lot better than the outside. The first floor was one large room containing the reception desk and terminal, a kitchen in the back, and a large dining table off to the side. The metal walls had been covered in extensive, hoof-painted murals that were colorful without being too distracting. The kitchen looked to have an oven and running water, and while none of the furniture and utensils in the dining room matched, they were all of good quality. She even had wood floors that seemed smooth enough.

“Did you do all of this yourself?” I asked the little unicorn in awe.

“Well, I wasn’t going to leave the walls blank and rusty.” Now that Rosemary had gotten us here, she turned to leave. “I’m going to go get the sheriff. Cloud Chaser, make sure everypony gets what they need, and he,” here she pointed at me forcefully, “gets a bath.” I got it. I stank. No need to rub it in.

“But I can’t cook!” Cloud Chaser shouted as Rosemary walked out the door.

“I won’t be gone that long! Boil water for me if you have to.” She was gone before Cloud Chaser could protest.

There were two bathrooms upstairs with two working bathtubs. The water lines ran to the tubs, but there was no way to heat the water. One of the unicorns could heat the water, and she did so for both baths, and the other mares let her take the first bath. I decided to let the poor mares go through first, after all they had been through, and Cloud Chaser began to run around like mad, trying to get everything ready.

I was sitting downstairs for the mares’ privacy, waiting for my turn when Cloud Chaser would come tearing downstairs, shouting something like “Rosemary, where the hell do you keep your clean bedsheets! I swear, this shouldn’t be this Luna-damned hard!” as if I wasn’t even there. Then she would race back upstairs empty-hooved, only to come down with a pile of folded blankets and stand around, blank-faced. “What am I even doing down here?”

I had to laugh at that. She snapped to me, glaring. Then her expression softened. “Ebonmane, could you lend a hoof and get dinner started?”

“I can’t cook,” I said. It was true. I had never really tried, but I always felt lost in a kitchen unless I had explicit, simple instructions.

“You can boil water and chop vegetables, can’t you?”

I wasn’t going to argue. I stood and made my way to the kitchen. After digging through cupboards to find a slew of pans I filled a couple with water from the sink and put them on the stove. It took a while for the electricity to get started, and even longer for the water to come to a boil. The mares were taking their sweet old time with the baths, though, and there was no sign of Rosemary as the sun began to set.

After I had told Cloud Chaser that I couldn’t do anything but stand around because I was waiting for the water to boil for the third time, I decided that I should at least attempt to cook. I decided on soup. Easy, right?

Rosemary had carrots and apples in the pantry and nothing else, so I chopped them up as best I could and threw them in. I found her spice rack, and was shocked to see how many spices she had stored up when she only had a sack of carrots and apples each for real food. It wouldn’t be good soup without spices, so I picked and chose carefully, smelling them in turn and adding pinches of what smelled good to the pot. Somepony had once told me that a little spice went a long way, so I tried to keep the herbs to a minimum.

Just as I was about to taste my concoction, Rosemary returned home, saddlebags full. She saw me in the kitchen, standing over her stove, spoon before me. She gave me a look that destroyed all my confidence, and I felt like I had been caught stealing.

“What are you doing?” she asked me, charging into the kitchen before I could answer. “What are you making?”

“Soup,” I answered defensively. “Cloud Chaser told me to make dinner.”

“I said I would be right back!” she seemed way more upset than was entirely necessary. She looked in the pot. “Carrots and apples? What made you think those would taste good together?”

I backed up. I suddenly realized how many knives she had in her kitchen. “They were all you had!”

“They’re perishable, so I can’t keep too many at once! I went grocery shopping. That’s what took me so long.” She backed off a bit, allowing me room to breathe while she smelled the pot. Then she turned back, her glare cold and deadly, and her voice even more so. She spoke slowly, menacingly. “What else did you put in?”

“Uh,” I struggled to remember. “Um, parsley, sage, some thyme, uh…”

“Get out,” she said quietly.

“What? Why?”

“OUT!” she roared. I left quickly, hearing a splash in the sink and a clattering of metal as she dumped all my hard work out. I heard her exclaim “Stallions!” as I headed upstairs.

Cloud Chaser appeared at the top. “Uh-uh. Back down you go.”

“But-” I began to protest.

“Nope. They’re almost all clean, and I don’t need you hanging around a bunch of wet mares. Back down you go.”

I groaned in frustration and headed back down. Sitting on the bottom step, staying as quiet as possible so Rosemary wouldn’t hear me, I waited for at least another half-hour before Cloud Chaser finally called me up for my bath.

Cloud Chaser led me up to the tub and I finally was able to remove the filthy armor. I gave it to her to throw away. Even if I needed it in the future, I could buy something cleaner and more functional.

The pegasus hesitated while I slipped into the warm water. The white tub was a little small for me, but nearly every bathtub was. I let out a sigh, but my relaxation couldn’t be complete until Cloud Chaser shut the door.

“Hm?” I said. Maybe she had just spaced out again.

“Sorry. I was just wondering what you were planning on doing now,” she asked.

I still wasn’t sure. But it seemed clear to me that the gung-ho approach of charging up to Manehattan wasn’t the best idea.

“I don’t know. Tell the sheriff about Thunderfall. See what he says.”

She was unsatisfied. “And what if he says you’re crazy?”

After last night, I wasn’t interested in playing this game with her. “What do you think I should do?” I reversed.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think… somepony should do something. And it sucks, because I don’t think anypony will.”

“That doesn’t mean I should. I mean, what can I do?” Suddenly I had found myself playing Discord’s advocate against me.

“I guess.” She seemed disappointed. Whose side were you on, Cloud Chaser? I thought she would leave me to my much-needed bath at this point, but she continued. I was starting to feel very self-conscious. “So you think you and Silver Bell are going to live here?”

That was it. I didn’t want to talk to them about Silver Bell or last night or anything like that, but Cloud Chaser certainly hadn’t mentioned her by mistake and I needed to defend my motivations if she was going to start to pry.

“Don’t even start,” I said. Before she could say anything I added, “I heard you and Rosemary last night.”

She blushed. Caught. “Really? How much did you hear?”

“Everything,” I told her. I shifted in the bath to face her, spilling some water on the floorboards. “I know exactly what you think about me and Silver Bell, but it’s not like that, okay? I mean, if that’s what kind of a stallion you think I am…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. There was so much I wanted to say, but I was getting too angry, and Cloud Chaser looked upset. “Just don’t even talk to me right now.” I turned away from her. More water on the floor.

“Ebonmane, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.” I believed she was honest, but I was still mad.

“Well, I did,” I told her. “I get it, you know? Maybe I didn’t think everything through, but I still ended up doing the right thing. So think what you want. I don’t care.” Even then, I felt like a drama queen, but my voice was strong enough to convince myself that I had done the right thing.

“Hold on,” Cloud Chaser said, walking up to me. I turned to face her again, spilling yet more water. “It sounds to me like we both know what you were hoping with Silver Bell, but that doesn’t make you a bad guy, okay? All stallions think like that. I grew up on these fine streets. I know. But you still are nothing like them, okay? I might have been a little harsh last night, but I wasn’t that harsh. You didn’t have to hide and beat yourself up about it.”

How come I was the idiot here? I was tempted to admit that she was right, but there was more that she just didn’t understand. “What did you expect? You saw the way Midnight jumped at me. I felt bad enough just being the same gender as those damn raiders. Explain to me how I can ‘think with my dick’ and still be a good guy.”

She paused for a moment. “Because you have a conscience. All of this…” she motioned to all of me. “These things you feel… They show that you care about doing the right thing for the right reasons. I don’t know what part of you was doing the thinking this morning, but…” she took a deep breath. “Either way, I’m glad you were there for me. And Rosemary doesn’t think so badly of you, either. Okay?”

I exhaled. I felt my emotions settle. “Okay.”

“So… friends?”

I nodded. “Friends.” I offered her a hoof, splashing her in the process. “Hey!” I smiled. “Jerk.” With that she left.

Finally. Surprisingly, I didn’t think about any of what had just been said. I was thinking about climbing into a nice fluffy bed after a delicious meal, but that made me sleepy, so I thought about Cloud Chaser’s original question. About what I would do.

I really had no idea. But I didn’t think I wanted to give up. Maybe I wouldn’t be fighting any time soon, but there was more to helping other ponies out than killing bad guys. I decided that I would make it my personal mission to make sure that Thunderfall was taken down in time, no matter who did it or how it got done. And if it had to be me, I would be more careful about it. Chain Gang had mentioned all sorts of cities, from Fillydelphia to Friendship City, that seemed to be involved. There were leads to follow.

Being the last one to get a bath, Rosemary had finished cooking dinner before I had time to really soak and enjoy myself. I came downstairs, still mostly wet, to see Rosemary set down a plate of vegetables covered in some homemade sauce before us. They were looking at me strangely, so I went into the kitchen and found a cloth to try to dry myself off with.

I took a bite. I had to admit, it was really good. Better than my mother’s and better than Velvet’s.

“So?” Rosemary asked. “Is it alright?” She seemed afraid that I would hate it.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “This is pretty good.” Pleased, she dug in herself.

“You’re not like other alicorns I’ve met,” one of the Fillydelphia mares, Ember, spoke up.

“I’m not really an alicorn,” I said. “My parents were normal ponies.”

“You have wings and a horn, don’t you?” Cloud Chaser spoke up. “How are you not really an alicorn?”

Rosemary explained. “Only alicorns give birth to alicorns.” She then turned to me. “So how are you an alicorn? Do you have any alicorn siblings?” I said that I didn’t.

“So how do you know your mom didn’t…” Cloud Chaser trailed off. Rosemary glared daggers at her.

I smiled. “I have too much of my father in me.”

Rosemary continued. “That still doesn’t answer the question.”

I shrugged and kept eating. “I don’t know, to tell the truth. No pony does.”

Rosemary seemed bothered by a question that should be so simple to answer, but she left it. She asked me to put the radio on again, and we ate while listening to Sweetie Bell.

Sweet Celestia was I hungry. I ate quickly, clearing my plate before the others had even made a dent, and they were half-starved themselves.

“I made enough for seconds,” Rosemary reassured me. I took her up on the offer.

While working through my second plate, I asked Rosemary. “What did the sheriff say?”

She spoke to the mares. “He said he could have a train ready to take you to Filllydelphia in the morning.” They all smiled at the news.

“Did you tell him what we found?” I asked.

“I thought I would leave that up to you,” she said. Which meant that she hadn’t told him. Why? “You’re the one with the evidence on your leg,” she said. Oh. That made sense. I guess she didn’t always have ulterior motives.

Rosemary showed me up to my moonlit room after dinner. The bed might have been a little small for me, but it was clean and freshly made, so I couldn’t complain. In a nice touch, the walls had been painted in a mountain panorama. All my equipment lay in a corner.

“I’ll take you to see the sheriff in the morning,” she said.

“Thanks,” I told her. Before she left, there were some things I wanted to know after my talk with Cloud Chaser, and now seemed like a good time. “Hey.” She stopped. “Do you think I’m doing the right thing by trying to stop Thunderfall?” It was kind of a trick question, but I didn’t want another fight.

She turned to face me, those big green eyes holding no deception. “No. I just think it would be smarter to let somepony else handle it. Like Tenpony Tower or Fillydelphia.”

“And what if nopony will?” I came back. “What if ponies just bat an eye?”

“There are lots of problems in the world right now,” Rosemary said. “Sometimes you have to pick your battles. I get what you’re trying to do… but I don’t want to see you get killed. You’re a good pony. You really are. And Equestria doesn’t need you charging to your death.”

I felt the notes of concern in her voice, but I was still disappointed that she had so little faith in me. Although I guess I couldn’t blame her. I wasn’t sure how much faith I had left in me, either.

“Alright then,” I said. “That’s all.”

She closed the door as she left. “Goodnight.”

I didn’t want to sleep right away, though. After everything that had happened over the past couple of days, I needed to get a lot of my thoughts out of my head.

I opened my window and flew into a warm night, sneaking quietly out of Rosemary’s inn. I rose higher and higher, searching for an isolated place. I found one out by the train tracks, on the crane operation platform. There wasn’t a pony in sight.

Despite feeling a little silly, I spoke freely. “Littlepip? It’s me, Ebonmane, again.” I took a deep breath. From what I understood, Littlepip was still in the Single Pegasus Project’s central hub. She had absolute control over all the weather, and for that she needed to be able to see all of Equestria. I had no idea how great her vision of the land really was, but I believed that she could hear me. And even though she couldn’t speak back to me, it was nice to feel like one of my heroes was listening.

“I don’t know if you saw what’s been going on with me for the past couple of days. Silver Bell got kidnapped. I’m sorry about that. I knew you cared about her. She’s alright, though, because we saved her from the raiders, Rosemary, Cloud Chaser, and me. We saved a lot of other mares, too. The raiders were going to sell them as sex slaves.”

Sometimes I wondered how much of my experiences should be recapped to her. Could she see more than one thing at once? Or was her vision limited? I didn’t know, but I continued with my thoughts. “I understand a lot of what you wrote now. About fighting and killing and getting shot and helping other ponies. I want to help other ponies, like I helped those mares.” I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn’t told her about Thunderfall. “There’s this stallion in Manehattan who probably would have bought Silver Bell and the others and made them be prostitutes, Thunderfall. Now that I know about him, we can stop him. But I’m worried that no pony’s going to want to stop him.

“You believed in the good in the world, and I do too. But even back then, ponies were only concerned with their own survival. You were probably the first to get them to care about others. You were the spark.”

I took a breath. I felt bad with what I was about to say. “But I don’t think the fire’s very big, Littlepip. And if no one goes after him, then who will? I want to, but… I’m not like you. It’s one thing to fight when you have to, like you did. Red Eye and Trixie and all the others… if you hadn’t stopped them, that would have been the end of Equestria. And you were the only pony around who knew how to stop them. That’s not the case with me. I… I might not even have friends around to help me, like you did.”

Hopelessness began to overtake me. “I just don’t know what to do. Am I responsible for this because I know about it? Or should I try to forget about it? There’s probably a lot worse things happening in the wasteland; why should I care so much about this? Because I can see it?”

It’s like I could hear her voice in my head. “Do you really want to be the kind of pony who turns his back on this?”

“I’m not sure if I could forgive myself if I let this go, if I stopped here, in New Appleloosa and made my life like everypony else. I’m not afraid to fight, and I have the information to do something about it… I’m just afraid to fail. To go in and die and leave everypony behind because I thought I could make a difference.”

I hung my head. “You weren’t afraid to die, Littlepip. You might have been at first, but even after you found Homage, you did what you had to. Anything less you considered selfishness.” With another deep breath I had my answer. “I’ll try. If it falls to me, I’ll give it my best shot. Celestia help me,” I finished, knowing full well that these were not smart things for me to be thinking.

But I fell asleep thinking that Littlepip had called her own brand of courage ‘stupid’ before.

The sheriff’s name was Caboose. He was probably the biggest earth pony I had ever seen. Rust colored, dark, and mean looking, he stood a head taller than me and probably doubled my weight. All muscle.

His office wasn’t far from where I had monologued last night. It was a cramped metal room, more of an oven on a hot day like today, with lots of filing cabinets. A radio sat on a scratched steel desk, single chairs situated on either side.

Caboose’s was the more comfortable one. He welcomed me in, sweat already dripping down my neck by the time I had sat down. There was a window, but for the love of Celestia why wasn’t it open? I felt a pang of sympathy for the big guy when I saw he was already coated in a sheen of sweat.

“You’re late,” he joked. It was tough to catch the humor in his deep bass. However, I may have smiled when I thought that he looked like he was sitting at a foal’s school desk. He was just so damn big.

“What do you mean?” I didn’t catch the joke.

“Calamity said you’d be here yesterday morning.”

“Sorry, I was too busy killing raiders within your jurisdiction.” I wanted to say it. So bad. But I held my tongue. Instead, I said, “Not everything went according to plan.”

“No,” he admitted, “But some might say they turned out better. We got a bunch of dead raiders, and some free mares, and no deaths on the good guys’ part. I have to admit, I’m mighty impressed.”

My ears perked up, and I smiled. “Thanks,” I said. Maybe he would listen to me after all. “But I’m here because there were more than just the raiders.”

“Oh?” he asked.

I stood and moved around the table, offering him my PipBuck with the journals on screen. “Take a look at these. They were written by the raiders’ leader.”

He scanned through them for a moment. “So?”

Not the response I was looking for, but it wasn’t a ‘no.’ “So, there’s something a lot bigger going on. Thunderfall is buying up lots of mares from a lot of different spots. This industry isn’t going to go away unless we take him out. If we do, then the raiders that are still left might crumble without his input.”

Caboose was quiet for a long time while he thought about what I had said, occasionally wiping sweat from his brow. I was very anxious. “Young stallion,” he started. My ears dropped. He was about to tell me no. “This thing doesn’t need Thunderfall. He’s like a hydra. Once you cut his head off, you’re going to see more of him pop up. His is the second oldest profession in the world, and it’s not going away any time soon. And neither are the raiders. Those things will take time.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought you would say.” I turned to leave.

“Hey,” he called after me. “Try the group at Tenpony Tower. They got more to spare than we do.”

I left without response. At least there was a breeze outside.

Tenpony Tower wouldn’t help. They had guards, but the wealthy higher-ups there wouldn’t dream of sparing their security to go stop somepony like Thunderfall. If I got out a message to DJPon3, maybe he/she would put out a message, a call to arms against Thunderfall, but who in the right mind was crazy enough to answer?

‘The Jade Dragon’ awaited me. The mares had left for Fillydelphia, so it was quieter around, and Rosemary and Cloud Chaser had wanted to know how it went. I got the feeling that Cloud Chaser was living off of Rosemary’s charity, so I knew they would both be waiting there.

I opened the door, and my pegasus friend sat in the chair, waiting for me. “So when do we march?”

“Never,” I replied bitterly. “You guys were right. He didn’t think it was worth the effort.”

“Well, when the call went out to help escort two ponies from Junction Town, all you got was us,” Rosemary reminded me as she set down lunch on the table. “This town isn’t big on taking action.”

“So what are you going to do?” Cloud Chaser asked.

“We’ll see,” I said. I knew this wasn’t over yet, but letting them in on whatever I was thinking would be a form of persuasion. They had already risked a lot for me. They had their own lives here.

Rosemary sat down. With just Cloud Chaser here, I think she felt more comfortable speaking to me. I noted that for such a nice inn it wasn’t terribly busy.

“Ebonmane, I was thinking about what I said last night, so… I’m sorry.” I looked up at her. I didn’t expect those words to come out of her mouth. “Cloud Chaser told me about you overhearing, and I tried to explain myself, but I kept thinking about it, and I realized why you were really so set on finding Thunderfall.”

“And why’s that?” I prompted her.

She looked down slightly, her eyes peeking over her glasses. “This kind of thing really gets under your skin. Thinking about him treating all those mares like slaves… you won’t feel okay until you know it’s taken care of, will you?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that. Maybe I could have turned my back away from this, but it’s like Littlepip seemed to say to me. I didn’t want to be that stallion.

“No. But I’m not going to rush into this, either,” I told them.

“So what’s the plan?” Cloud Chaser asked.

I shook my head. “It’s not really your problem. I’m not going to ask you to drop everything and follow me in this.”

Cloud Chaser stood. “And what makes you think that you’ve got a monopoly on feeling responsible? We know just as much as you do, and we’ve seen just as much trouble as you have. If you feel like you have to do something, then we should too, dammit.” Here she pounded her hoof on the table for emphasis.

I looked to Rosemary to see if she agreed. “We’ve been talking about this. I said I didn’t want to see you get killed, but if you go off and die and I’m not there, then I think it would be partially my fault for not going with you.”

There was one last thing that they were forgetting. “But what if you die because I led you there?”

Rosemary shook her head. “We know what we’re up against. We still want to help.”

Cloud Chaser nodded in agreement. “So? Do you have a next step?”

The smile on my face was too big to contain. “I think I do. Thunderfall must be in contact with other traffickers. Chain Gang said that he was selling to buyers in just about every major city. Don’t you think Thunderfall would be a part of this, too?”

“What do you mean?” Rosemary asked.

I tried to sort out my thoughts. “There have to be other ponies who have dealt with Thunderfall. If we find them, we can find out what they know about him. Any information will be useful. From there, we could go to Tenpony Tower, or maybe even Applejack’s Rangers.” I took a breath. “We wouldn’t be going in alone and outgunned then.”

“So when you say ‘information gathering,’ do you mean interrogation, hacking, theft..?” Cloud Chaser trailed off.

“Whatever it takes,” I answered.

“Where do we start?” Rosemary asked.

“Chain Gang said he definitely sold to somepony in New Appleloosa. But there’s no way a stallion here could be keeping a sex slave without anypony noticing. The town’s too small.”

“So?” Rosemary asked. I don’t think Cloud Chaser connected the dots yet, either.

“So, if it were me,” I said, my voice losing confidence, “I know where I would keep her.”

“Ohhhh,” Cloud Chaser said. Ding ding.

“What?” Rosemary asked. Cue buzzer. She could not think like a stallion.

“C’mon,” Cloud Chaser said, eager to get out the door. “There’s only one place in town seedy enough to hide a private whore without anypony noticing.”

Rosemary gasped in shock. I do believe she got it. “Cloud Chaser, no! And you, young stallion,” she whipped a hoof at me. Why was she always calling me that? “You are not going to a whore house!”

“Technically, it’s more of a strip club that gives a little extra on the side,” Cloud Chaser explained to me. “It’s kind of small, but you’re absolutely right. Our commodity’s got to be there, or everypony would notice.”

“Ebonmane, you will stay here. Cloud Chaser and I will find this mare and talk to her,” Rosemary said, stamping her foot.

I rose. This was just about enough. “First of all, Rosemary, you’re not my mother. I’m not going for any of that, I’m kind of going for the opposite reason, to put a stop to it. Second, what makes you think two mares are going to be able to just walk in and start asking questions without raising suspicions? You need me. I’m our only cover.”

Rosemary searched and searched for another reason, but couldn’t find one, even as Cloud Chaser led us through dirty alleyways to the shady underbelly of New Appleloosa.

“’Mareheat,’” I said out loud. “They actually named it ‘Mareheat?’” It sounded to me like Littlepip’s colorful curses had found an unintended audience of admirers. Even the little sign outside the stacks of patched-up boxcars had a mare’s silhouette in front of Celestia’s sun.

“Do you expect creativity out of these types?” Cloud Chaser returned.

Rosemary looked extremely uncomfortable. “Just how do you know about this place, Cloud Chaser?”

“What part of ‘grew up on these streets’ do you not understand?”

Rosemary was taken aback. “You never-”

“No!” Cloud Chaser shouted. “Of course not! I was never that desperate!”

Well, we were off to a good start.

I hesitated before entering, my hoof hanging in the doorway. I felt ashamed that I was about to do this. But Cloud Chaser and Rosemary had both agreed that this was the best lead in New Appleloosa. I was doing it to stop Thunderfall, and nothing else.

With that thought of self-fortification, I stepped inside.

The room was so dark it took my eyes a while to adjust fully. No windows, just single, dim light bulbs covered in colored plastic to turn areas of the room different shades of red and orange. The only music in the wasteland, DJPon3, played from a large radio in the corner. Homage would be so ashamed.

Cloud Chaser was right, though, even a pony like me could tell this thing was small-time. The stage in the back was small, with one bent pole jutting from the front. Tables were strewn about the rest of the floor, skinny mares in all sorts of ridiculous outfits walking between them or dancing on top of them. A modest group of stallions, who looked to be regulars by their disheveled appearances, watched eagerly as the mares moved their hips in ways I had never seen a mare move before. The current song was a slow parlor tune, but the mares seemed to work with it anyways. Small pouches hung from garters on their inner thighs, and stallions deposited caps, grabbing a feel and probably a little more when they paid up.

Rosemary and Cloud Chaser took a moment to enter behind me, seemingly having their own moments of self-doubt. I turned to see the reactions of my friends. Cloud Chaser was bug-eyed with shock, and Rosemary looked depressed.

“Wow…” Cloud Chaser stammered.

“It’s not fair,” Rosemary said. “They starve themselves!”

I had to keep them on track. “Or the boss starves them. Now we have to figure out which one’s the one we’re looking for.”

Before we could begin to narrow our search, one of the dancers, a pink unicorn with a red mane came up to greet us. “Hey there, big guy,” she said in a professionally sexy voice. She rubbed up against my chest as she passed, tossing her tail. Somehow, she smelled like cherries, which was her cutie mark. Suddenly I was feeling very warm. “Haven’t seen any of you around before.”

“It’s his first time,” Cloud Chaser said like she had rehearsed it. “You know, birthday?”

“Birthday buck?” Cherries said, batting her eyes at me. “You’re going to like this.” She put her hoof in her mouth and whistled sharply. “We got us a birthday, fillies, and a first timer to boot.” All the mares gave little cheers and gathered on stage. It was a tight fit, even though there were less than ten of them, but they pressed their bodies together on purpose. A mare dressed in a nurse’s outfit pulled a cord and a single sprinkler attached to the ceiling went off. They were all soaked within minutes, their necks and flanks glistening, their outfits clinging to their bodies-

I turned my head slightly and lowered my eyes. My heroes would be so ashamed of me.

But I looked up again in a double take. A red mare with a blonde mane, dressed in a black leather rodeo vest, had a barrel of apples as her cutie mark.

Chain Gang had mentioned that he had to go all the way out to Sweet Apple Acres to get a group of mares.

“Try not to stare too much, ‘birthday buck,’” Rosemary hissed at me.

“The one with the apples,” I said quietly to her. “She’s the one. I know it.”

Rosemary didn’t bother to ask how I knew. One of the patrons hit me on the back of the neck and pointed to the mares waiting on stage. “Go ahead. Take your pick.”

My hooves took a moment to get moving, but I walked right up to the stage and looked up at the apple mare. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Pink Lady,” she answered with a wink. Uh-huh. Sure it was.

At any rate, this seemed to have been enough to designate my choice, because she stepped off the stage, walking toward me confidently. I backed up, but she reached out and pushed me into a chair with a hoof. Was my balance normally that bad?

She then reared up and put her hooves on the shoulders of my seat. Oh Sweet Celestia, this was not what I had in mind when I imagined how things would go in here. My blood was starting to race now that her whole body was before my eyes. And I was feeling… very warm.

Rosemary and Cloud Chaser intervened. “Thank Luna,” I thought. If this went on for too much longer, they would never forgive me.

“Hey,” Cloud Chaser said quietly. “You wouldn’t happen to, uh, give ‘private performances’ would you?” My pegasus friend brought forth a small pouch of caps. My heart seemed to stop. I understood what Cloud Chaser’s plan was, but this was not helping me one bit.

Pink Lady took the caps. “You’ve got some generous friends,” she said. Then she looked at Rosemary, still overtop of me. “Most mares we see are the jealous types.” Rosemary’s scowl should have killed Pink Lady on the spot. And me too. “Come with me, lucky stallion.” She dismounted and led me past a curtain to the back, then up a flight of stairs. The other stallions were catcalling after me. Oh, the words Rosemary must be having with Cloud Chaser at this moment.

But I had things under control. Despite my warmth and the feeling that my heart was about to explode, I knew that the most embarrassing part was over. We would get to the room, and I would talk, and that would be all.

She led me down an equally dim hallway with several closed doors. We reached one at the end and she opened it. Inside was a very tiny room, lit by another dim bulb. The only thing inside was a small mattress and a tangle of thin blankets.

Once she closed the door, I spoke up before she could take another step toward me. “Stop,” I said. “I’m not here for that.”

She looked alarmed. Her hoof shot to the door. “What are you here for?”

“Just to talk,” I said to calm her. “You aren’t here of your own free will, are you? You were sold. By raiders who attacked you near Sweet Apple Acres.”

She gave me a hard look. “How the hell do you know that? Who are you?”

Looks like I picked the right one. “Me and the mares I came in with killed those raiders. But there’s more going on. There’s a whole industry of mares being captured and sold, and nopony seems to notice. It’s not on the radio. Everypony just assumes they’re dead or being held. But the stallion who bought you… who is he?”

“He owns the place,” Pink Lady answered me. “He’s a unicorn. Silver Bolt. But I’m the only one he’s bought. The others are just dancers, I think.”

I doubted that. “We need to find out what he knows about a pony named Thunderfall. Does Silver Bolt come here often? Does he get messages or meet with clients here?”

“He has a private room that I’ve never been in,” she told me. “But it’s locked.”

I was no lockpicker. Damn. “Okay,” I said, thinking quickly. “Get the two mares I came in with up here. Say it’s a foursome or something. They’ll be able to help.”

She nodded solemnly, walked out, and closed the door. I waited for not thirty seconds when the door burst open. Rosemary was furious.

“What’s this about a foursome!?”

“Keep your voice down!” I hissed at her. “I need to get past a locked door. Can either of you lockpick?”

Rosemary was still glaring at me. Cloud Chaser spoke up. “Bobby pin?” Pink Lady produced one. “Rosemary, come with me. You’re my screwdriver.” Rosemary huffed, but followed Cloud Chaser out of the room.

Leaving me and Pink Lady alone. “That’s not your real name, is it?” I said.

“No,” she admitted. “It’s Apple Bushel.” She laughed. “Not a very sexy name, is it?”

“Mine’s Ebonmane,” I told her. “But even a boring name’s better than a fake name, right?”

She nodded with a smile. “You three are really going to stop Silver Bolt and this Thunderfall guy?”

“We’re going to try,” I assured her.

She looked towards the door. This was taking a long time, and I was getting anxious. “You with the red one? She seemed pissed.”

“No. She’s just… strongly virtuous,” I concluded.

Apple Bushel laughed again. “I see. Must suck to be her. To have to come into a place like this.”

“Yeah.” What was taking those damn mares so long?

“Thanks,” Apple Bushel said. “You’re a good stallion, to go out of your way to stop ponies like them.”

I blushed at the compliment. “It all just kind of happened.”

She looked up at me, giving me her sexy eyes. “A hero deserves a ‘thank you,’” she said. Her words knocked the breath out of me. I couldn’t have found my voice if I tried. She drew closer to me. “You’ve really never, you know, done it before, have you? If you like, I wouldn’t mind…” she spoke into my ear now.

“Taking…”

Her mouth moved down to my neck. My heartbeat must have been audible.

“Care…”

I could feel her breath on my chest. I was starting to feel an… uncomfortable pressure build.

“Of you.”

I put a hoof on her chin, stopping her from going any further. Then my mind caught up, and I knew why.

I simply shook my head, still wordless. I looked into her pink eyes. She was confused. Her life, her treatment, her abuse had so warped her mind that she thought this was an appropriate thank you, that this was what I wanted. And when I said ‘no,’ I realized that no stallion had ever said ‘no’ before. The word was foreign to her, despite all the times she had probably said it. She had no concept of the value of her body anymore. Silver Bolt and this entire fucking place had caused her to believe that she was… just a thing. A tool to be used by stallions.

And I wasn’t going to be another stallion who had used her.

She sat down on the bed next to me and didn’t look at me. I couldn’t tell if she was legitimately upset, or just worried that she had upset me, but neither of us spoke. We just waited for Cloud Chaser and Rosemary to come back.

Rosemary knocked. “Ebonmane. We found a terminal. We need your PipBuck.”

Eager to escape the situation, I opened the door. Rosemary gave me a look. “You alright?” she asked in a loaded tone.

“I’m fine,” I said softly. She seemed to sense that this was not the case.

Our ears perked up when we heard hoofbeats come down from nearby stairs. Before we could hide, he appeared. It was unmistakably Sillver Bolt.

Without a thought, Rosemary was using her magic before he could say anything. I saw her green glow wrap around his neck, and she pinned him to a wall, placing her foreleg against his neck, completely choking him.

She held him there, while he tried to speak, his voice coming out in weak splutters. Her eyes locked into his, watching as they slid into the back of his head. Never before had the little unicorn looked so terrifying.

Finally, he fell with a thud. “Leave him,” she said, heading down to the terminal room. “Let’s hurry before anypony finds him.”

This was bad. My mind was racing with too many thoughts to handle, too many scenarios to sift through. But I knew we were very close to losing it all.

I hardly even noticed the terminal or the room it was in. I just downloaded everything to my PipBuck.

“What happened?” Cloud Chaser asked Rosemary.

“A stallion came down. He’s unconscious.”

“That’s Silver Bolt,” I informed her. “He owns this place.”

Now Cloud Chaser was just as agitated as we were. “What the hell? Why didn’t you kill him?”

“What would you have done!?” Rosemary seethed. She took a breath, but I could see tears in her eyes. “Let’s just get out of here before he comes to.”

Download complete, we headed downstairs and out the door, sweet goodbyes following me out.

“He lives here, right?” My brain was starting to work now. “And he definitely saw you.”

“What’s he going to do?” Rosemary countered. “Accuse me of attacking him inside his strip club and stealing his rapist information?”

“No, but he might have, like mob connections or something!” Cloud Chaser’s brain, on the other hoof, seemed to be going wild. “We can’t live here anymore! He’s going to hunt us down and kill us and burn your inn down and-”

“Then it’s a good thing we’re leaving,” I said. They turned to me. Cloud Chaser seemed to have put fresh tears in Rosemary’s eyes. “Stable Two isn’t too far from here, and I bet there’ll be Applejack’s Rangers there.”

“What makes you think they’ll listen?” Cloud Chaser asked. “What makes you think we even found anything on that terminal?”

“Anything is better than nothing. It’s worth a shot, right?”

There didn’t seem to be another choice. We headed back to ‘The Jade Dragon’ and packed as quickly as possible, planning to find some traveling traders to buy anything else we would need. We didn’t have a lot of money, but enough to get by.

As we hurried out the gates of New Appleloosa, I didn’t feel anything. But there was a point where we had stopped by a stream that flowed from a larger river, our guide, that I began to feel terrible.

Rosemary didn’t help. “So what happened between you and what’s-her-face while we were doing all the work?”

I understood that she was upset about leaving her home and being faced with killing a pony and being unable to do so, but I wasn’t too happy about the whole thing either. I didn’t even get to let my brother or the rest of my family know that I was safe, and they were probably worried sick about me as it was. I didn’t get to say goodbye to Silver Bell, or apologize to Lion Heart for killing his wife, and if Silver Bolt really was connected, everypony we loved could be in danger if he recognized us. My point is, I was at my limit.

“Nothing!” I shouted at her, far too loudly. She turned and walked away. Even if she did believe me, which couldn’t be guaranteed, I had still made a mistake.

It wasn’t what I said, but how I said it, my voice hurt and full of rage. Even Cloud Chaser looked up from where she was filling her canteen in concern.

Thinking about my whole experience in ‘Mareheat’ left me feeling bitter and angry. Justifiably so, when I thought about how badly Apple Bushel’s mind had been damaged by her abuse, but a lot of the anger came from yet more confirmation that Cloud Chaser’s initial analysis had been right.

The thing was, I realized, that I had liked being in there. I was really turned on by all those mares, and even if nothing happened, Apple Bushel’s mouth still went far too low before I stopped her.

But the worst part is that a small part of me wondered what it would have been like if I didn’t stop her. She was, after all, a professional. I couldn’t tell myself that it wouldn’t have been amazing to feel her, to finally have my first time.

The good parts of me, as small as they felt, hated myself for lingering on those thoughts as long as I did.
I’ve heard that it wasn’t a sin to be tempted, but I wasn’t so convinced in that moment. The temptation was still with me. So I waded into the stream, splashing the cool, muddy water on my face, as if I could cleanse myself of it. But my face just became more soiled, and I knew that I was only seeing the fringes of the darkness inside me.
But we trudged on, the three of us not speaking for long periods of time, heading towards the very heart of evil. Bloodshed certain.