The sound of the shot echoed back to Twilight Sparkle from inside the hangar door. She'd been dragged out into the welcoming sunlight by Applejack and Rainbow Dash. Pinkie, Fluttershy and Rarity had all waited outside. Pinkie's hair was flat and straightened after listening to the poor unicorn's screams. Fluttershy sobbed quietly, her hooves trying their best to cover her ears. Rarity had stepped away momentarily to be sick.

Now, all of them watched the door in silence, still as stone.

"Trixie?" Twilight said with a choke.

They only heard the softest hint of rustling inside, before the doors began closing again. A few of them shouted warnings before the shadow of Corey jogged into the light, clutching something dark to his chest like he were carrying a child. Rarity held a hoof to her forehead dramatically before fainting, Fluttershy yelping as she caught her, lest she roll down the hill unconscious.

It took a moment for Twilight to realize what she was seeing. Corey carried a black plastic bag with some manner of cargo inside. It wasn't until she realized that something red dripped down part of it that it hit her.

"Oh Celestia," she said, closing her eyes. "Did she—?"

"I stopped it," Corey said shakily, as he laid the package on the slope they stood on.

"Stopped it?" Rainbow asked with a croak.

"The pain," Corey answered, unconsciously touching his pistol.

"Y— you killed her?!" Twilight said, staring at him with eyes that might have screamed ‘bloody murder.’

Corey didn't answer, only gazing into the space where Trixie's face was, kneeling in the dirt.

"You killed her!" Twilight cried, taking a galloping start and tackling the soldier.

The pair of them tumbled down the hill, nearly fifty feet of gradual dirt slope as the other ponies called and chased after them.

Corey wheezed as he rolled into a boulder, stopped-dead as the wind was knocked out of him. Twilight was more fortunate, hitting the boulder hooves-first and recovering, to tower over the human as much as her little body could. Corey felt himself seized by a familiar force and shoved backwards against the boulder so he faced Twilight, who glared at him as she panted.

"How could you!?" she shouted in his face. "She respected you! You could have saved her! You stupid humans and your stupid weapons— give me that thing!"

Twilight snatched Corey's USP Match from its holster, turning it over and inspecting it from every angle.

"How does this stupid thing work?!" she wondered aloud, pulling the hammer back, switching the safety lever. A pull of the latch under the trigger-guard sent the magazine sliding out and clattering onto the ground.

"Don't mess around with that!" Corey shouted, his muscles taught.

"I take it that held the bullets?" Twilight asked, glancing at the magazine before whirling the barrel at Corey's head. "So nothing happens now if I—?"

"No no no!" Corey cried. "Round in the chamber, the chamber!"

"What chamber?" Twilight asked, pointing the barrel skyward as she investigated.

An ear-ringing 'pak!' rang out as the pistol fired into the air, causing Twilight to shriek, recoil and drop it in surprise.

"Don't... EVER!" Corey shouted, picking up the discarded gun and magazine as the other ponies reached them at last, scattering dust and stray rocks. "Fuck around with my weapons! Especially if you don't know how they work!"

Twilight caught her breath and glared back at him. "Don't change the subject! You killed Trixie!"

"I ended her suffering!" Corey shouted back. "There was nothing we could do, and I wasn't going to leave her to be ground-up until she died! I'd hope anyone here would do the same for me."

Twilight shook her head at the comment, her eyes nearly winced shut. "I wasn't going to leave her! We could have still saved her, there had to have been something!"

"I don't think she'd have survived the amputation, but I was willing to try," Corey explained. "Then she lost her lower body: vital organs. She was already gone Twilight."

Twilight continued to glare at him, tears rimming her eyes.

"I take it from how you guys interact that you tend to lead this group," Corey said, "but from all this, it's pretty clear you've never had to make the hard decisions."

"I— I make hard decisions!" Twilight shot back. "I don't always know exactly what to do, but—"

"I don't mean just problem solving," Corey said, "I mean you've never had to decide to save hundreds by dooming a dozen. You don't know the scenario where you have to consider the needs of the many over the needs of the few."

"I shouldn't have to!" Twilight shouted. "There's always a way! You didn't make a 'tough call': you gave up!"

"You think it was easy for me?!" Corey shouted back. "I liked Trixie. She was flawed, but who isn't? I did everything I could think of to save her, and in the end I could only save her from her own pain!

"You know something else?" he continued. "If I were just being cold and practical, I would have left her there so I had time to get out. But I couldn't."

Twilight's tension lessened as Corey's tear-streaked eyes drifted to the ground.

"I couldn't leave her there," he said quietly. "All she wanted, outside your forgiveness, was to get out of that place. I— I couldn't leave her like that. I wanted to make sure she got a proper burial, if nothing else."

"Twilight," Applejack said, having hefted the body-bag down the hill on her back. "It's all a terrible thing. Biggest shame in the world that Trixie ain't gonna be here to have her big happy ending.

"But..." She paused, biting her lip a moment. "I'm with Corey on this."

"What does that mean?" Twilight asked, her frown intensifying again.

"Look, he did what he thought was right at the time. N'even now I can't think a' what we could've done to help her. For what it's worth, I'm just glad she's not hurtin' anymore."

"It sucks," Rainbow said, a choke still in her voice. "But it's not like I had any better ideas."

Twilight stared at them all in turn. With a groan, she stepped around the rock and down towards the gully, and the forest on the other side.

"I'm proud a' you Twilight," Applejack called after her. "I didn't know her well, but I'd bet Trixie'd be mighty pleased to see you cared enough to get mad over i—"

A shot rang out to the south, the echo a rushing sound through the treetops. They turned to see Corey, still against the boulder, clutch his stomach and fall to his knee.

“Corey, no!" Applejack cried as she and the others ran to him. Twilight cast her force-field as she saw the black shapes of four spotters against the sky, hovering down the gully towards them.

"No, no!" Corey grunted, unable to open his eyes for wincing them shut. "Get behind the boulder!"

Corey groaned in surprise as Twilight seized his body and dragged him to the rocky cover with them as they complied.

"How bad is he?" Twilight asked.

"As bad as we'll be once those things reach us!" Rarity said as she angled her mirror around the boulder.

"Oh Corey!" Fluttershy whimpered. "He's losing blood too fast! We need to patch him up quick or he's going to..."

"I'm not losing anypony else today!" was Twilight’s promise. "Rarity, help Fluttershy with the gauze; I'll handle the mirror."

"Okay!" Rarity said, getting to work with the first-aid kit.

In the mirror, Twilight saw the Spotters draw closer and closer. She lit up her horn, prepared to beam the little things to the last.

And then with a tilt of her head, she saw them collectively pause, turning to stare into the woods. After a few moments of some manner of stalemate, they backed away from the trees and began firing into them. A simultaneous rumbling roar, bleat and snarl split the air as the trees burst open, branches and leaves thrown out into the gully.

"What the hell is that?" Corey asked, finally opening his eyes.

A nightmare creature erupted onto the scene, swiping up at the Spotters with paws the size of Corey, before its lioness head spouted a stream of flame at them. One of the Spotters dropped from the sky like a stone, smashing onto the bed of rocks in the center of the gully. A goat's head with huge demonic horns oversaw the attack from atop the beast's back, bleating in a much deeper tone than one might expect of a goat. The head of a snake wove and snapped at the airborne sentries from the end of a long tail, hissing its displeasure.

"It's a chimera!" Twilight said in a hiss of her own.

"A... what?!" Corey groaned.

"A fire-breathing lion with a goat's head on its back and a snake for a tail," Fluttershy explained, as she tied the gauze wraps around his chest.

"Oh, why couldn't it have just been a dragon?!" Twilight moaned, shaking from head to hoof. "Why did it have to be something that's part snake!?"

"S— Snake?" Corey said. "That's the part you're worried about?!"

"It's 'cause Twilight's 'ophidiophobic,' " Pinkie Pie said. "That means she's terrified of snakes!"

Stares met her momentarily at this explanation —or, moreover, at who had given it— before the chimera's lioness head let loose another earth-shaking roar. The sound of great paws crushing stone underfoot filled the air, as one of the Spotters attempted to flank the beast. The chimera, however, had no blind-spot. The serpent's head struck at the drone, which swiftly dodged, but a massive hind-leg kicked out in response. The Spotter was smashed against a tree trunk, grey smoke rising into the air as its mechanical corpse sparked and clattered to a ruin on the ground.

"I don't reckon this'll be long, by the sounds of it," Applejack noted. "We best clear out before there's a winner, y'all."

"Fluttershy," Rainbow Dash said, "tell me you're as good with chimeras as you are with manticores. They're still just big lions with extra parts, right?"

Fluttershy shook her head fervently. "Manticores have lots of parts, but they still only have one mind! Chimeras have three minds, and they anger so easily. Even 'The Stare' might not work if I don't have the attention of each head!"

"Can't we just teleport out of here?" Rainbow asked.

"I don't know where we are, exactly!" Twilight said. "I don't have my bearings yet!"

Twilight nearly leapt out of her own skin as Fluttershy gasped loudly.

"Fluttershy, darling," Rarity said, watching her keenly, "are you alright?"

"That's it!" Fluttershy said. "Bearings!"

"Come again?" Applejack quirked an eyebrow, as the chimera growled ferociously while being peppered with bullets from above its reach.

"Twilight might not know where we are, but I do!" Fluttershy cried. "One of my bear-friends lives in a cave just down this gully! I'm sure he wouldn't mind letting us stay a while.

"Can you take us to that tree line Twilight?" she asked, pointing north.

Twilight nodded. "Yes, but we'll be on-hoof after that! I'm sorry, but I haven't rested all that much since we escaped!"

"How'll we be moving Corey?" Applejack asked. "I'm already spoken for, and he's about twice our size!"

"Leave me!" Corey groaned. "I'll draw its attention. Save yourselves!"

Twilight frowned at him as he laid against the boulder. "No," she said simply. "Rarity, you'll need to handle him. I'll use a 'featherweight' spell so he'll be easier to carry. I'm counting on you to keep his spine stable until we know how bad he's hurt."

"Right!" Rarity said, as Twilight hit Corey's body with energy that felt like being whipped by sunlight.

Rarity easily hoisted his body into the air as though his blood had turned into helium.

"Okay, here we go!" Twilight announced, engulfing the party in a swelling glow, before they teleported to the trees across from the gully as though carried by lightning.

"This way!" Fluttershy shouted, leading the way through the trees as the sound of gunfire in the background ceased at last, the chimera's many heads bellowing victory for all the Everfree to hear.

The walk to the bear cave had been mercifully short. Built into an otherwise unassuming rock formation, the place itself was secluded and hidden enough to be a worthy sanctuary. Corey had fallen unconscious on the way, but Fluttershy had been quick to find and convince the cave's ursan occupant to tolerate them. It groaned in throaty satisfaction as her butter-colored hooves kneaded the beast's great shoulders.

"Thanks so much for taking us in," Fluttershy cooed. "I hope it's not too much trouble. We'll be out of your fur before you know it."

"Nice work Fluttershy," Twilight said, as Rarity lowered Corey onto the floor of the little cave. "Help me out Rarity: I need to get this shirt off of him."

"With pleasure, darling." Rarity smirked, unstrapping his pack and guns from his back, setting them aside.

"Please be serious," Twilight groaned, leering at her out of the corner of her eye as she removed the gauze and began un-tucking Corey's black shirt from his pants.

"Oh Twilight," Rarity said, blushing as the two of them worked the fabric inside-out while the neck-hole cleared the top of his head, "do give me more credit than that."

Twilight groaned again upon seeing a white tank-top underneath the long-sleeved uniform, though paused upon seeing the bright-red stain on his midsection. Another effort later and they stared down upon Corey's pale chest, hairless but for the center of his chest and the tops of his arms. Like this, Twilight saw much more of a simian distinction in the human, the muscular chest quite reminiscent of a gorilla or a chimpanzee. She also noted the odd placement of vestigial nipples over his pectoral muscles, another odd feature associated with primates. She leaned over, putting an ear to his chest, searching for the telltale sound of—

She found it, a steady 'bu-bum, bu-bum' alongside the slow, hollow rushing of his lungs.

Holding the spot with a hoof, she turned to Rarity. "Check on his heartbeat. "Let me know if anything changes."

Rarity nodded as Twilight inspected the wound: a puncture in his gut the size of a marble, but obviously enough to be a reliable manner of dying.

"I need to get that bullet out of him before I repair any of the damage," she said, before addressing Rarity again. "Maybe I can find it if I alter your gem-finding spell?"

"It might work," Rarity mused, brows meeting as she stared at the wound. "I've had false-positives with that spell before when I put too much into it."

"Okay, here goes..." Twilight said, letting her horn glow as she siphoned more and more magic into the spell. Gems and precious metals began glowing through the walls of the cave like beacons, lighting even the darker depths of the bear's humble home. Eventually, rusty rocks and great veins in the wall glimmered as well.

"Found it!" Rarity exclaimed, Corey's belly lighting up as a small lump of lead shone through. "I'll get it dear, this will take a delicate touch!"

With that, Rarity caught the little lump and slowly snaked it out of Corey's body. He groaned and fidgeted as she worked, prompting Rainbow Dash and Applejack to step in and pin him down.

"Corey, hold still, it's going to be okay!" Twilight said as she kept the bullet lit for Rarity.

Finally, he shuddered and stopped moving. In fact, he stopped moving altogether.

Twilight aimed her horn carefully at the wound, which glowed as it slowly sewed back together, capillaries reaching out like vines to reattach themselves.

"Twilight!" Rarity cried, panic in her voice. "It's not beating anymore! He's not breathing!"

"No no no!" Twilight shouted. "Rainbow, we need a cloud, now!"

"Uh... 'kay!" Rainbow said, before whizzing out of the cave.

"We need to resuscitate him!" Twilight said, before Rarity began slamming a hoof against Corey's chest in a frenzy.

"Don't you walk out on us, you rapscallion!" she ordered. "This world is not finished with you, nor am I!"

"Oh, not that fast, please!" Fluttershy said. "You need the right rhythm."

"Breathe, you coward!" Rarity cried, before inhaling sharply and pressing her lips against Corey's as she exhaled.

"Oh... my!" Fluttershy exclaimed, her cheeks reddening as she tried to look away.

"Stupid, unorganized EverFree clouds," Rainbow Dash muttered, screeching into the cave while pushing a fluffy white mass. "Hey, I got it!"

With that, Rainbow demonstrated she'd understood Twilight's train of thought by kicking the little cumulus puff, which turned grey before belting a bevy of bright arcing bolts at Corey.

Rarity moaned sharply in surprise as she was caught in the dynamo while performing her Kiss of Life. She pulled away with a smack as Corey gave a gasp, though still unconscious.

Parts of her hair suddenly black and smoking, she swooned on the spot, giggling to herself. "Like every girl dreams it will be..."

"What was she doing?" Rainbow Dash asked, forelegs crossed as she lounged on her newly acquired cloud. Rarity gazed off into space, a drunken grin on her face as she giggled sporadically every few seconds.

"Um... CPR?" Twilight offered, before putting an ear to Corey's chest again. "Okay, he sounds pretty stable. But I don't think we'll be moving him till morning."

"All due respect, Twi," Applejack said, "but y'think that's particularly wise, us still so close to Mandeville an' all?"

"Getting to Canterlot won't matter if he's not alive when we do," Twilight answered. "It's been a long day, and we're a ways-off even from Ponyville."

"Twilight's right," Rainbow said, flipping onto her back. "We need to recharge the ol' batteries."

"What about... her?" Pinkie asked, indicating the black body-bag laid on the side of the cave.

There was a silence before Applejack spoke. "Did anypony know where she's from? Who she was kin with?"

Only silence answered her until Rainbow spoke at last. "I know she mentioned something about Hoofington, but that's all."

"We'll look into that after all this is done," Twilight said. "I'll go myself and see if she had any ties there."

"But we can't haul her with us, all the way to Canterlot," Applejack said.

"No," Twilight agreed. "We'll bury her tomorrow. If we find Trixie's family, we can find the spot again."

"Agh!" Applejack exclaimed as Fluttershy removed the gauze over her ear.

"Oh, I'm sorry Applejack," she said, before extricating Corey's hip flask from his bag. "And... um... for this too."

Applejack howled as the stinging liquid flowed through her wound. "Luna... bless it!

Corey felt strange. Not bad, per se, but off.

It might have been the absence of gurgling pipes or whirring turbines. It might have been the light breeze on his face or the rustles and creaks of distant trees. It might have been the light ache in his stomach. It might even have been the inexplicable taste of grass in his mouth. But mainly, he thought, it was how very closely he could feel the blanket draped over his body.

He opened his eyes to see a ceiling of smooth, beige rock, and turned to investigate the rest. He was in some manner of cave, but not far in, judging by the late-afternoon light on the walls. Nor was he alone, seeing the six mares chatting in a circle near him, facing a very small lantern.

Somewhere to his right, he heard a rough grunt, and turned to see a great brown predator snoring a mere foot away.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, catching the attention of the group as he scrambled backwards. Before noticing the eyes on him, he felt the cold of the breeze intensify, and grabbed the blanket back over himself hastily.

"Oh good!" Fluttershy said. "You're awake!"

"Dear, are you feeling alright?" Rarity asked.

"Why am I naked?" Corey demanded, neither frowning nor smiling. "Who took my clothes off?"

"Rarity and I did," Twilight said. "To heal your wound, remember?"

Corey lifted the blanket and felt around his belly. "It's gone!" he said, tilting his head back. "Oh god, what about the bullet?"

"Don't you worry about that," Rarity said, levitating the red and bronze lump. "We managed quite swimmingly. Though I did have to resuscitate you."

"Uh, we!" Rainbow corrected with a frown.

"I— You what?" he said.

"Your ticker stopped 'tocking!" Pinkie Pie explained. "And Rarity was all like, 'live, you dummy, live!' and she totally gave you mouth-to-mouth, and the whole time I was like—"

"She gave me mouth-to-mouth?!" Corey cried hoarsely, all too aware of that grassy flavor.

"She kinda saved yer' life, sugarcube," Applejack said, one eyebrow cocked.

"Hey now, what am I?" Rainbow Dash cried, still lounging on her cloud. "I'm the one who zapped him back to life, 'Mare E. Shelley-style!' "

"Uh, thanks, both of you," Corey said hurriedly, "but I don't think you needed to strip my pants, boots and my freaking boxers off for all that. Explanation, please?"

"I decided this was a proper opportunity to wash that uniform of yours," Rarity said. "It's drying. Oh, and I gave you a once-over as well."

Rarity leaned in and sniffed daintily. "Ah... See, I knew there was a rosy gentlecolt behind that odor."

"I swear, if you did anything to me while I was unconscious—"

"Of course not dear, I am a lady," Rarity told him, her head held high before her face reddened. "Although, I admit that trying to tame that lower-mane of yours made it impossible not to notice your..."

Her blush deepened as Corey looked like he very well might kill something. "Lower-mane?" he asked.

"Yes," Rarity said. "I've met some fierce curls in my time dear, but that patch is simply untamable."

"Jesus Christ!" Corey cried, letting himself fall flat against the stone floor. "You tried to style my fucking pubes?!"

"Well I'm sorry you don't approve," Rarity said with a huff. "But don't cry to me when Canterlot society berates you for not keeping up your appearance."

"Okay," Corey said, "I don't think you get it: nobody is meant to see my pubes. Humans don't go anywhere without clothes on."

"Really?" Twilight asked. "I thought it was just because it's a uniform, or y'know, that you were cold. You humans are some kind of desert ape, right?"

"Yes, we came from Africa, originally," Corey said. "Hot, dry climate. But humans always wear clothing. At least enough to keep the private bits out of sight."

"That's silly!" Pinkie said. "What's so bad about that?"

"It's embarrassing," Corey said, "indecent."

" 'Indecent?' " Twilight echoed. "Your own body that you were born with is indecent?"

"Never a' pegged you guys for the shy-type," Rainbow said, smirking.

"Dear," Rarity said, "it's true that nothing is really hidden in pony society, but it's not like you see us staring under each other's tails. There is etiquette to that sort of thing."

"Look, it's just a human thing," Corey said. "We don't get much of a choice in the matter either. You get caught going au naturale in public, you'll get arrested for indecent exposure."

There was a collective exasperated laugh from the mares.

"Hoowee!" Applejack said. "You humans sound a mite uptight, if ya' don't mind my sayin'."

"Hey, I don't know why we're like this, we just sorta' are. It might've stemmed from religion, but I don't know."

"Mandeville seemed to think religion tore a lot of your kind apart," Twilight said. "That you all had a different version of the truth and fought over it."

"He's not wrong," Corey sighed, sitting down at last. "Religion based itself on primitive views of the universe, and to this day many people reject the findings of science in favor of them."

"Well, if they proved them wrong, why would they still believe it?" Twilight asked.

"A lot of reasons," Corey continued. "Not good ones, but understandable ones. Mostly the fear of death."

"What does a religion have to do with being afraid to die?" Fluttershy asked.

"What?" Corey asked. "Your sun and moon princesses have nothing to say about some kind of afterlife?"

"Princess Celestia has always been clear with us," Twilight explained. "Even she doesn't know if there's anything after we die. She just tells us to spend our lives well, in case it's all we have."

"Huh," Corey said, sounding impressed. "Well, that's different from any religion where I come from. Do what they say, you die and go to the good place. Don't do what they say, you die and go to the bad place. It's how they get people."

"They listen to that," Applejack said, frowning, "an' nopony even knows it's true for sure?"

"You must have discovered so much with all your technology," Twilight said. "And they reject all that knowledge, because they're afraid to die?

"But that's not it. It's not about that, is it? It's not being afraid for themselves. They want to believe the people they love are still there, somewhere. I guess I can understand that...”

Applejack’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the campfire. “Lotta talk of fear when it comes to you folks. Yeh’ were afraid Mandeville was goin’ rogue, you’re afraid a’ dyin’. And you go to all the trouble of making better n’ better stuff to hurt folks with.”

Corey raised his eyebrows. “You think that’s about fear? How are you sure we’re not just all crazy, raving slashers, and we don’t just make this stuff for fun? I mean, if Mandeville is anything to go by...”

“No,” Applejack said. “I don’t buy it. Could tell when you showed us that bright lil’ photo-thing of your friend. Hay, I could tell when I heard why you helped us. You humans care and yeh’ feel, no different than anypony. An’ you’re trained to use all that awful stuff.”

“Well, what’s your theory?”

Applejack was silent a moment. “It’s like I said. You’re afraid, but of each other. You don’t trust easy. Get a lot of fightin’ and war back where you’re from, don’t ya’?”

“Not as much as you think, anymore. A while back? Oh yeah. We warred like it was going out of style. We had something we called ‘World War One.’ ”

“World war?” Rarity repeated. “As in, the entire world?”

“No, not quite everyone, but it certainly affected everyone. Back then, it was a mess of entangling alliances. Countries got dragged into it when they didn’t even want to. Ultimately it was a first-rate clusterfuck, and some poor country called Germany took the blame in the end. Wasn’t even really their fault. But everyone basically screwed them with this war treaty, and they got left in the gutter for a few decades.”

None of them spoke for a moment, only contemplating.

“Funny thing about that though,” Corey continued, “we all paid for it, more than anyone should have. In all that time, Germany suffered. Economy in shambles, military disassembled, their lands annexed to neighboring countries. It got so badly desperate for them that they would have blamed anyone for their problems. Then this guy showed up, and pointed his finger at a convenient scapegoat. That guy, and his loyal army, became the single-most universally hated pack of marauders in living memory. They tried to rule the planet. Did the most unforgivable things to people.

“It took the entire world to bring them down. We called that ‘World War Two.’ ”

Fluttershy gaped. “A second world war?”

“This guy sounds kinda’ like Mandeville,” Rainbow Dash added.

Corey snorted. “Well, hold on now. Don’t become the first pony to violate Godwin’s Law.

“But in a way, I guess, yeah. If Twilight’s got the right idea on him, I might have just let some weird version of history repeat itself. Push someone into the most desperate situation and you might not like what you unleash.”

“Were there any other world wars?” Twilight asked.

“No, not yet. At the end of all that, we invented the nuclear bomb. A bomb that could level cities. Then it got bigger, more powerful, and we just kept making more. By my time, if anyone went to war with these things, they could easily destroy all life on the planet.”

There was a collective gasp as his words seemed to echo in their minds.

“Ain’t possible!” Applejack cried at last.

“Believe that if you want.” Corey shrugged. “But knowing that fact has stopped all actual war between powerful countries. There are some small ones, but so far nobody is fool enough to risk the nukes flying.

“In a way, it’s a good thing. It’s made us talk out our differences instead of going straight for the ammo.”

Twilight frowned. “It’s peace kept through fear though... all this fear.”

“It’s like a running theme, isn’t it? I mean, we should be able to trust our allies or enemies respectively not to doom the planet. But we’re always worried about that rogue element we failed to see. We’ve always been afraid of what we can’t see.”

“You know and can see and measure so much though. Forgive me, it seems a little silly.”

"Well, what you have to keep in mind is... there was a time when we knew nothing. And feared everything.

"A modern mind couldn't grasp reality through the lens of prehistoric man, but this 'modern' mind is a fantasy. I'm only 'modern' in the sense that I was born recently. When an anthropologist—"

"A what?" Twilight asked.

"Someone who studies humans as animals," Corey said. "But when they talk about the first 'modern' humans, they mean the ones from two-hundred-thousand years ago. Utterly ancient by layman standards.

"Those humans were identical to us. They were us. My brain is the brain of an ancient man. Same creature, same instincts. I just happen to know more than my ancestors did.

" A hundred-thousand years ago, ignorant to the world around them," Corey said, watching the faint sun setting outside the cave, "someone like me would have been living out of a cave like this one, very watchful of the setting sun. Because the night meant real danger, as if the day was a picnic for them to start with. That was when the beasts came out."

The bear gave a snarling sort of yawn, as Corey's tone darkened.

"Quiet, hidden. Wraith-like even," he said in a whisper. "You could never know it was coming.

"Now and again, someone careless —usually a child— would sleep too far from the campfire and just vanish into the tall grass. The voice of their doom growing distant, lost to the silence of the shadows."

A few of the mares fidgeted, scooting closer to the lantern.

"Every now and then someone died from a fever," he said. "Again, screaming. You think I'd have been braver? You think they were dumb and I'm the new, improved version?

"Nope!" he said with a laugh. "Same blueprint. Same flaws.

"Of course, fear isn't always bad. Fear has probably saved your lives more than you know. An instinctive fear of the dark was probably indispensable to my ancestors. When they were forced down from the trees in Africa, it happened too fast. They couldn't adapt."

"Forced down?" Fluttershy asked. "By what?"

"No one knows for sure," he answered. "We can only guess that a major change in the environment made the trees we called home unlivable, and we were forced to eek an existence in the open plains. But the tree-bound pre-humans were pretty much dumped on the ground to a deadly laundry list of disadvantages.

"What animal can't outrun us?" he asked. "You remember how easily you kept pace with me when I ran my hardest. And what good is a hand against a claw?"

He held up a simian hand and wiggled it, before pointing to the bear's great, lethal limbs. "Our ancestors were fish out of water. Nothing but a slightly bigger brain, some social skills, and two heavily evolved forelimbs. In the long history of evolution on my world, this is the kind of thing that, nine times out of ten, would guarantee extinction. And sure enough, several branching species living alongside us weren't as lucky, leaving us the lone hominids of the world.

"But when a small population does find itself in a new, different place, certain traits they already had can become pronounced in as few as ten generations. There wasn't time to evolve for speed, better night vision or some kind of poison or armor to compete with predators that did their killing on the ground. What saved us wasn't just intelligence. Those old boys weren't that sharp. And being a genius won't stop you dropping your guard at the wrong moment.

"They were all as cautious as any other animals, but those animals could all beat them for speed. So, they had to be eve more cautious, more cautious than all the other prey animals. Doubly so when night fell."

Night, which had come at last, the fiery hues of dusk sinking further and further into the horizon.

"Question is," he said, "who's least likely to drop their gaurd?

"Someone confident, bold?" he said, looking at Rainbow Dash.

"The nervous?" He glanced at Fluttershy, before glancing to the fire, not really seeing it.

"Or a paranoid?"

Twilight stared, taking a silent gasp of understanding. Most of them wore looks of fear or frustration, wondering what he was getting at with this mother-of-all-ghost-stories. But for her, the bit had most certainly begun to drop.

"When it was everyone for themselves," Corey said, "when we needed to see the danger in the dark but couldn't, the only ones likely to survive long enough had their head on a swivel. The ones who saw danger in every shadow, around every blind corner. Even the ones they'd already checked."

The mares caught him gazing deeper into the unlit blackness of the cave, as the hairs on his arms stood up. Even with the cave's owner in full-view, it was a stare into the abyss that expected untold horrors.

"That," Corey said, finally looking to them all in turn "is how cautious a slow, feeble, defenseless ape must be when climbing to safety is no longer an option. I think this was the birth of that little spooky-feeling we all know so well. When you never know if the beast is there... you've got to feel like it always is."

"Corey, my gosh," Twilight said, shaking her head.

Corey only passively nodded before he continued. "In a group of biological losers, free meals on legs, only the paranoid survived. And then the paranoids were succeeded by paranoid kids, and those kids had little paranoids of their own. And in ten generations we're all checking shadows like life depends on it, and it does. We carry lucky charms around and stare nervously at the dark corners we can't see the end of. Just like every night.

"We're a species... of paranoids," he said. "We humans have gotta be the most frightened animal out there. And worse, animals with better eyes don't have as much imagination as we do, and they see what danger there really is. Us? We see as many dangers as our superior brains can think up, with our eyes shut.

"I mean, It's one thing to have a monster under your bed," he said in a whisper. "But what if your parents think they can see it too?"

Pinkie's eyes met his at these words, and she shuddered.

"It's gotten so bad, I'm sure it's impossible to recognize by now," Corey said. "It's just become the new normal. But ironically, it must've been hard for them to focus inward, when the sky was just full of all these gods."

The group, however they'd been listening before, turned to stare at him with quirked ears and eyebrows.

"I mean, they were clearly the cause of their fortunes and woes, weren't they? What else were they up there for, if not for them?

"But which god had to be appeased?" he asked, voice rife with sarcasm. "How could people best escape the fear? Which god would protect them? Is there something after death? Well, which god was in charge of that?" he asked with a mirthless chuckle. "Which is the most powerful? What do they want? Why are they so friggin' cruel?

"What did we do to deserve getting eaten? Poisoned, starved, crushed, broken, burned, frozen...?"

Fluttershy began covering her ears as he fired off his macabre checklist.

"...infected, suffocated, drowned, choked, impaled—"

"That's enough! You're scaring her!" Rainbow shouted, indicating Fluttershy.

"Oh?" Corey said, his blank face turning to the mare in question, eyes boring into hers as though he were staring through to something directly behind her. "Am I scaring you, Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy looked away as she shivered. "Y-yes..."

"Then you might just understand. Because it was scary.”

"Now humans," he said, Rainbow Dash still glaring at him, "have always looked to the sky for answers. Maybe that's just down to our intelligence: there must have been a sense that the motions and slow-shifting patterns in that sky all meant something. They had to mean something, right?"

He stared outside the cave, frowning at the churning clouds, splashed orange by the sun which had long left them.

"But no matter which 'god' the people prayed to," he said, "whatever rituals they performed, no matter how faithful they were, kids and grown-ups just kept dying, same as before. There was no reason for it. No end to it. No logic or pattern that we could see. The cruelty of the gods was so obviously beyond human comprehension.

"And, well, that's about how things stayed..." he said, his voice darkening. "For one to two-hundred-thousand years."

Twilight felt her body seize-up as Corey let this statement crash over them. Two-hundred-thousand years. It was longer than Celestia or Luna had existed, longer than Equestria had even existed. And such an impossible length of time to allow these poor creatures to perfect the art of survival, solely through a crippling fear of the very world they lived in.

"Then," Corey said at last, " 'Thales,' a man we call the first philosopher, was the first to predict a solar eclipse. It happened, just as he said it would."

Twilight turned to look at him as he stared outside the cave again. This time she too stared, at the moon which hung huge, yellow and crescent-shaped over the horizon, still slowly departing from the sun. She remembered the eclipse from only a few days ago. She noted the use of the word "predict," which suggested something more about his world.

"We don't know," Corey said, "if Thales got the time, the day or even the month right. We don't know the methods or math he used. But historical consensus is that he did it.

"It was quite the moment that day, when the sky turned black. A moment that took a couple thousand years for us to appreciate in full. A watershed.

"An ordinary man predicted what no priest, oracle, prophet, mystic —or god— ever had."

"Everything changed in that moment," Corey said, a slight choke in his voice. "Suddenly, whether we realized it or not, we were living in a different world. And yet, we were living in the same world. A world where we didn't have to be afraid anymore. And it was he that opened the way.

"The sad irony is, those early men were right: those changing patterns in the sky did mean something. So many answers to our fears were in the sky. But as a window on understanding reality, rather than a divine blessing."

"For the inclined," he continued, "understanding is the balm against fear. The counter to our worse, most destructive instincts. And it was a miracle we could believe in. Knowledge transform us. What once terrified us can become beautiful, simply by understanding it. How it came to be. What it is. What it isn't. And why it can't hurt you.”

Corey began beaming as he looked to Twilight. "Thales may have only ball-parked his eclipse," he said, "but two and a half-thousand years later, we've nailed them down to the second. And in the process, we've learned about galaxies, quarks and everything in-between. And everywhere, we see simple rules forging order, sewing chaos, and guiding order within the chaos.

"And each time we learn something new, life becomes that much more explainable, without spooks, witches or supernatural juju playing filler with the unknown. And without an omnipotent god in the way, the cruelty of life becomes... at least understandable. This is as fair as the Universe could be."

"Fair?" Rainbow asked. "What's fair about anything we've all been through? Even if we beat Mandeville tomorrow, this whole thing has been one big tragedy!"

"I said it was as fair as it could be," Corey corrected. "Tragedies are the sad, but inevitable consequence of life just being possible.

"The things that cause tragedy, are the same things that kicked-off life itself. The same gravity that crushes a man in a landslide, is the gravity that makes the stars shine in the first place.

"The Universe doesn't hate us. It doesn't toy with, mock us, torture us or punish us. We are not born into any shame. To say we are, is a crime, against humankind and ponykind alike."

Rarity giggled as the mood in the cave continued to brighten. "And yet you feel so ashamed without your covering." She raised an eyebrow.

"You're probably right," Corey said, lifting his blanket with a smirk. "We inflict shame to atone for our own imperfections, while demanding standards of ourselves that the best of us can't reach... And that's almost noble. And dumb at the same time.

"Earth molded us like that. Through something as simple as the fear of the dark, our ancestors developed an in-built fear of the unseen and the invisible. And we today, confuse that for a fear of the unknown and the unknowable. But slowly, we're realizing, that it doesn't have to be like that anymore.

"That's what a man named Thales taught me, at least."

Sleep had come unusually fast for Twilight. By all rights, with all that had happened she should have been sleepless, pacing. In that whole "Future Twilight" incident, she'd gone an entire week in a state of paranoid insomnia. But not tonight. Tonight, she was worn out. Having begun their escape at night, only to see daylight the afternoon after. Constantly moving, fighting, taking in all manner of new information. She'd used so much magic in the meantime, her little form was spent, eagerly recovering her energy for the next day.

And in the meantime, she dreamed. She forgot all about Mandeville, about Trixie. In the dream, everything was as it always had been. Back in her Library, having her friends over while Spike too broke from his duties. It was so simple, so right, so—

Twilight's eyes drifted open in the wake of Rainbow Dash's enthusiastic snore. She looked around at the cave, and remembered everything. Where she was, why she was there.

She glared at Rainbow's sleeping form, before rolling her blanket into the largest, cuddliest ball she could manage before wrapping her forelegs around it and squeezing as hard as she could. But no matter how hard she squeezed, it wouldn't hug her back. It could never hug her back.

For a few minutes she tried to sleep, but now her classic stressed insomnia had kicked in. Instead, she decided to take a walk.

It was still dark out, but the dawn was coming fast. There was enough light to the east —or rather there was less dark— to herald the coming sunrise. Beyond the cave, a lone bird sung its same tune to the misty woods. Twilight stepped out into the nip of the morning, where every plant was covered in dew.

"Mornin' Twilight," the rock to her right greeted.

Twilight started as an orange face turned to her. "Applejack?"

"Sorry fer for the scare, Twi'. It's my turn to keep watch and Corey was helpin' me get all inconspicuous-like."

"Hey," Corey's voice said from her left. She turned to see his eyes staring at her from beneath a face streaked with mud.

"What exactly am I looking at?" she asked.

"See," Applejack began, "Corey's got these special shiny 'space-blankets' for hiding from Mandeville's machines. What they do is hide your body-heat. Else wise they'd see us a long while before we'd see them."

"They don't look very shiny."

"They are, on the inner-side," Corey explained. "The outside has a layer of camouflage for the outdoors. Even if they can't see heat, those drones aren't stupid. You don't get a lot of shiny stuff in nature."

"And the mud?" she asked.

"Just added insulation to keep you looking cold to the CID. And they know what faces look like."

"But after Rarity raised earth and sky to get you clean?" Twilight giggled. "You realize she's probably gonna turn you into a real-live pincushion? I've seen her do it."

"That'd be pure ol'-fashioned hypocrisy," Applejack huffed. "I still don't know what makes it so different when the mud's green and she's wearing cucumber on her face."

"So, AJ," Corey said, "think you'll be okay?"

"I have to mind thievin' critters all the time back at the orchard. If one a those whiter-than-teeth CID things can see me, I'll see them for sure."

"That's my shift over then."

Corey groaned as he stood up, not yet removing the space-blanket as he raised his arms and stretched. He twisted his body left, and then right, meeting Twilight's eye.

"So then, what's got you up and about?"

"Oh." Twilight paused, not expecting the question. "Dash snores a bit. Couldn't go back to sleep. Nothing exciting. I was just gonna take a little stroll. I must have fallen asleep before anypony thought of keeping watch."

"You were pretty wiped-out. Don't blame you. I'd suggest you not stray far. Best that can happen is you get lost."

Twilight snorted as she fixed him with a glare. "I don't know how familiar you are with ponies, but I'm not a little filly Corey. I can take care of myself just fine."

Corey shrugged. "Alright."

As he turned to walk inside, Twilight pulled a one-eighty. "Actually..."

"Hmm?"

"Corey, would you come with me? I'd like to talk for a minute."

Corey hesitated a moment before turning and following her out. "Alright."

Twilight led him a short distance to a grove just outside Applejack's sight. The grassy floor crunched wetly beneath her hooves as the morning chill did its work. By now, patches of red appeared on the clouds above as the sky brightened.

Finally, she stopped walking and turned to face him. "Corey, I... I don't really want to ask this. But I think I might regret it if I don't now."

Corey only replied by walking to a nearby tree and crouching, leaning back against it, and watching her attentively.

"I just- I don't know how much you remember me saying, or if Trixie told you anything, but... we came out here after hearing about a lot of disappearances. But we found out too late he'd been after me too."

Corey nodded. "Trixie and I... we definitely had time to talk. She told me how it all went so wrong, that someone you cared about got hurt when he came looking for you."

Twilight nodded, feeling her eyes sting. "H-his name was Spike. He was the best and oldest friend I ever had."

"Forgive me, but I'm suspecting you're going to ask me about Renee. Am I right?"

She didn't even need to nod. "It's just, I've never lost anypony before, and I'm not sure anypony I know has, other than the Princess. I just don't know how to deal with this. There's just this... this gaping hole in me now, and if I weren't worrying about Mandeville or running and fighting for my life, it would be all I think about.

“And then Trixie. I was there Corey. I was there, in the right place to save her, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t even save somepony right in front of me..."

"Hey..." Corey said soothingly as she sniffed, holding out an arm. "C'mere."

She obeyed, uncertainly walking towards him. Once she reached his arm, he moved the rest of the way forward, wrapping both arms just behind her withers and pulling her close. She couldn't help but to wrap her own front hooves around his neck and bury her head in his chest in a much needed embrace.

Corey stroked her mane as he whispered to her. "If I had any insights into overcoming loss, I'd share them with you in a second. You seem pretty hurt. I know how that is. I'm probably not the guy to give you advice on dealing with it though. I'm the idiot who agreed to take part in a knee-jerk reaction that got at least one man killed, inadvertently brought slavery and war to another race in another Universe, and meant to kill himself while doing it."

Twilight stared up at him. "You meant to die?"

"A part of me did. It was stupid." Corey sighed. "But when we saw that the weapon wasn't going off from the outside, I leapt at the asinine chance to die like a big damn hero in the name of my friend. It's only after everything else that's happened that I understand how childish and stupid it really was.

"You were right. We should have tried to get Mandeville the legal way. Due process, jury of your peers, all that shit. The people up top were afraid of his capacity to fight off anyone coming to arrest him. We didn't know how far gone he was. He had nukes, he had jets, he had bombs. And every big-wig was afraid of the bad press we'd get if we decided to bomb him from far off. Mandeville was kind of heralded as this idol of independent business among a lot of people. If they saw the government stomp on that with nothing solid, it'd be a bad precedent. So they wanted something quiet, something our country could deny doing. Mandeville would just vanish off the face of the earth.

"And of course it wouldn't have mattered if I'd been part of it or not. They'd have gotten someone else. I didn't have any skills nobody else had."

"It sounds like you must have loved her a lot," Twilight said. "Being so willing to die for her."

Corey nodded. "She was like a sister to me. The good kind, y'know, not the kind you have to live with that drive you crazy."

Twilight chuckled, in spite of herself.

"Corey, if anypony could have come here with Mandeville, I guess I'm glad it was you. I haven't been fair with you. If you weren't there to help us, we wouldn't be here right now. I know you did what you could for Trixie. I'm just not used to dealing with this sort of thing."

"It's not a matter of being used to it. Truth be told, I was about as frightened and horrified as any of you were. I just hid it a little better.

"It's more that... I recognized when trying to save her was doing more harm than good. The only thing I could save her from was her own suffering."

Twilight's eyes winced shut as she lowered her head. "I could never have been strong enough to do that."

"Loyalty and perseverance aren't weaknesses, Twilight. Even if it isn't the same manner of strength, it's strength nonetheless.

"So, this friend. Spike. What was he like?"

"Oh," she said. "He was... loyal and reasonable. He was always there to help. Back at my library, he was my number-one assistant. He was like a little brother, but also kind of a son, now that I think about it lately. I mean, I hatched him when I was a filly."

Corey's eyebrows rose slowly. "Hatched? Um... I don't know how ponies and unicorns work in this world, but where I come from horses are live-birth."

"Oh, Spike wasn't a pony. He was a baby dragon."

Corey stared while tilting his head down. "A dragon. Well, of course. And am I to assume that dragons talk?"

"Well, yeah. All the ones I've met anyway."

"But wait," Corey said. "I thought he was a baby? And he talks?"

"Dragons live for thousands of years. Really, I'm only about seven years older than him, but for a dragon he was still just a baby."

"Y'know, I'm having a hard time discerning age amongst you folks. You said you worked in a library, but forgive me, you seem a little young for that. How old are you exactly?"

Twilight giggled. "Where do you get off asking a mare her age? Early twenties, but that's all you're getting from me. What about you?"

"Late twenties. I have to ask though: where I come from, horses are lucky if they live to forty. Where does that put you?"

"We live to double that, usually. But like we keep telling you, we're not horses. Would you like me to call you a chimp? We have horses in Equestria too. Huge compared to us, but very primitive. They prefer to live in isolation as herds, much as your cousins live in tribes."

"Huh. Sounds like our lifespans are similar then. That's interesting.

"Well, I wish I could say we were simpatico, but it sounds like you've got it worse than I do. I lost a friend, a sister even. But I didn't lose a daughter. I'm actually amazed you're in any condition to handle everything you have.”

Twilight felt herself blush a little as Corey frowned.

"I have to wonder though. Trixie said you'd all come out here after Mandeville. I thought you were a librarian? Are you folks really that 'take charge'? Why not get the authorities involved?"

"Well, Princess Celestia said she wouldn't stop me if it was something I had to do."

Corey's frown deepened. "So you went to her first for help?"

"No, she came to check on me the morning after it happened."

"Wait. So you already have connections with the ruler of your kingdom?"

Twilight beamed, somewhat proudly, by now disentangled from their hug and lying on Corey's lap. "Yes actually. I'm her most faithful student. I have been, since the day Spike hatched during my entry exam into her school for gifted unicorns. It was almost the best day of my life! It was even the day I got my cutie mark, when I realized my special talent was magic. I think the next best day was when I realized I represented the Element of Magic, when I first realized my friends were... well, my friends, and we first used the Elements of Harmony."

" 'Elements of Harmony?' "

"Yes. You see, my friends and I are the bearers of the Elements, powerful objects tied to the powers of harmony and friendship. I'm magic, Applejack is Honesty, Pinkie Pie is Laughter, Rarity is Generosity, Rainbow is Loyalty and Fluttershy is Kindness. Together we wield the Elements when Equestria is in real danger."

Corey let out an exasperated chortle. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry— the power of harmony and friendship?"

Twilight stared up at him, entirely straight-faced. "Yes."

"So, you're what? The 'Super Best Friends Forever'? Using your ultra-super powers for fighting crime and the forces of evil? The go-to A-Team for when your Princess sees something bad brewing?"

"At times, I guess."

Corey remained silent, shifting his gaze from tree to tree as Twilight watched.

"Okay," he said at last.

"Wanna go back and get some breakfast?"

"Okay."

At that moment, Corey froze as Twilight tilted her head up and lightly kissed him on the cheek.

"That's for listening. Thank you."

Once again, Corey remained stock still.

"No problem."

As sunrise came, the other ponies in the little cave rose. Soon after a quick breakfast of ‘haybrowns’ (to which Corey opted to stick with his MREs) the time had come for the group to be on their way.

But there was one last order of business to attend to.

It would have been easy, expedient, to stop Corey when he drew his trowel and began digging in a clearing outside the cave. It would have been simple to dig Trixie’s grave with magic. But the group seemed to agree, that she deserved better than that. Everypony —Rarity included— aided in creating this resting place for the departed unicorn.

By the time they had finished, they created an inexact but respectably accurate rectangular hole in the earth. Four hooves long and three hooves deep, it would shelter her, until such time as her family was found.

Not content with paying respects to a bag, Corey and Rarity worked briefly to make the body presentable, though the seamstress was evidently unsettled by the task.

At last, the group gathered by the edge of the grave, where Trixie’s body was placed. She was made visible from the chest up, otherwise concealed by the bag. Rarity had done her best with her makeup kit, though the dark stain of blood spots persisted in places. Her hair and face had been done up far nicer than she had ever looked inside Mandeville Arms, where her self care had been all but entirely limited. It was all that could be done to style her mane in such a way that her fatal gun-wounds were hidden. It was not a professional job, but it would do.

“Anypony wanna’ say anything?” Applejack said, holding her stetson to her chest.

“Trixie was the first pony I’d ever met in this world,” Corey began. “In the short time I knew her, I gained an understanding of just how alike our two species are. She’d made mistakes, she had regrets, and she wanted to make it right. I’m not gonna lie: I grew fond of her pretty quick. I couldn’t judge her for what she’d done, and what we both wanted fell in line with what we needed to do.

“I know it sounds absurd, what with basically spending a single day together, but I considered her my friend. And what I did for her, that last thing, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. I’m... I’m gonna miss...”

Corey suddenly reached his hand up to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes, before turning his back on the party entirely. Now and then his body shuddered, punctuated by a sharp breath of air.

Seeing this, Rarity quietly walked over to him and wrapped a hoof around one of his legs, as she leaned into him from the side.

“Trixie,” Twilight said, staring into her expressionless face, “when we first met, I didn’t particularly care for you. Really, I was more afraid my friends would treat me the way they treated you, if I showed-off with my magic. When I saw you run out of town, I was relieved, but a little sad for you.

“If I had known just how bad things would get for you, I’d have stopped you from leaving. It was never my fault about the Ursa Minor, but I would have helped you, talked with you about what I’d learned about friendship.

“Then there was all this.”

She pressed her eyes closed and turned away. “You made the worst mistake yet, you tried to hurt me for no good reason. Spike was killed. And I hated you for it all. I can’t even say how ashamed I am... I knew you were sorry, I knew you felt what you’d done. I believed you when you said you never wanted anypony to get hurt. But I wanted, wanted so badly to see you hurt the way you hurt me.

“I went so far I made you want to die! I-I’m not even sure who I am anymore! I just didn’t care! I never thought I could be so bitter and hateful, but I kicked you while you were down... And I’m sorry... I’m so, so sorry!

“And—” Twilight choked, trying to hold back the tremors in her eyes, “and you died for us. For me. You could have left us, and I almost wouldn’t blame you if you had. Okay, you didn’t know this would happen, but you knew the risks. You took a chance on us. You saved us.”

Two identical, glimmering trails ran down her cheeks like little rivers. Blades of grass below barely reacted, only flicking away as the droplets of hot salty water from above rolled down them and into the soil.

“And I’ll never forget that. I’ll never forget you, Trixie.”

The others nodded in agreement, muttering sentiments of thanks to the body, before Twilight and Rarity began zipping the bag back up.

“Wait!”

Corey turned around, making the two unicorns start as he pulled a spangly purple cap out of his pocket.

“She should have this. I almost forgot.”

“Actually,” Applejack said cautiously, “maybe you should hold on to that, sugarcube. When we find her family, it might help if they have something to remember her by. Meantime, you can keep it, much for the same reason.”

Corey stopped and considered, before nodding.

Twilight and Rarity zipped the bag up again, and both lifted it, standing on either side as Trixie’s unofficial pallbearers. The bag rose over the space dug into the earth, and slowly lowered. Once she was set down, both unicorns magicked the pile of dirt beside the grave back in, resulting in a smooth mound.

Twilight then took a great, weathered stone she found in the riverbed, and mounted it into the end of the pile. Using her magical beam, she cut words into the tombstone. In short order, she stood by, satisfied with her work.

As were the other mares, and the lone human, who stood beside her. Meanwhile, Fluttershy set down a modest bouquet of wildflowers they had collected in front of the stone.

“Goodbye, Trixie,” she said. “You were a good pony after all.”

There were no more words. There was more to say, certainly, but not at that moment. There would be days, months and even years to say everything. Or at least they hoped.

They packed up and walked away, bidding their bear roomie their thanks and a goodbye, leaving the little cave and its new neighbor behind them.

One might have expected the words on the headstone to be rough in form, but Twilight was nothing if not practiced in penmareship. The words were carved into it in Twilight’s hoofwriting:

“Alright,” Rainbow spoke up, “so what’s the plan?”

Twilight barely turned her head as she walked. “Get Corey to Canterlot, and be ready to fight.”

“So we’re just walking? Why don’t you just write down what she needs to know, and I’ll fly over myself!”

“I can’t possibly convey all that intel onto a sheet of paper,” Corey told her.

Rarity sighed. “We’ll just have to board the next train once we get to Ponyville.”

“Ponyville?”

“Well yes, it is strictly on the way.”

“No, no, I mean the name! What if I called a town Humanville? That’s ridiculous, even by—”

Corey’s face froze as his head tilted slightly up. Meanwhile, Applejack sighed.

“Yeah, Granny told me when it was founded, we were gonna call it Fillydelphia. Funniest thing though, turned out some other town beat us to the punch.”

“Ooh!” Pinkie winced as she stared at her. “I hate that! The first sip of punch is always the best, y’know? I can’t tell ya’ how—”

“Ah, shit...”

Pinkie stared curiously. “Shi—?”

Applejack’s hoof shot out to cover her mouth.

Twilight frowned. “And that means?”

“You say ‘horseapples,’ I say ‘shit.’ ”

She scrunched her nose and made a noise of disgust. “You humans are so... immature when you get upset!”

“That town needs to be evacuated.”

“What, Ponyville?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Yes.”

“Corey dear, it’s on the way, certainly. I can hardly say it’s in danger though. Why would Mandeville bother with it?”

“Well, to capture more ponies, for one. For another, he might just enact a scorched-earth policy, preventing any potential threat from flanking him.”

Pinkie let a ‘tee-hee’ and a snort escape, before giving her rump a shake and muttering “ ‘Flanking...’ ” to herself.

“He might also decide to use the town as a stage to demonstrate what his weapons can do.”

“What, just to scare us?!” Rainbow asked, caught between disgust, confusion and outrage.

“Crippling an enemy’s morale can work wonders. The mind is as wide a battlefield as any.”

Fluttershy grew increasingly antsy, quite incapable of staying still. “Oh, all the ponies and animals that might get caught before it’s too late!

“Not to mention our homes, our kin...” Applejack winced at the thought.

“And all the ponies I know in Ponyville!” Pinkie Pie said. “They could be hurt, or be forced to move away, and then who would I throw my parties for?! And it would all just be so terri-horribly awful!”

“And our places of work!” Rarity added. “I’ve invested so much into Carousel Boutique, I can’t afford to start from scratch!”

Applejack’s ears sagged. “Worse still, if we lose Sweet Apple Acres, that’s our livelihood gone. We can’t plant all them trees and wait for ‘em to get growin’ again! Sure, cousin Braeburn might donate a few, but they’re only just off the ground as it is. An’ the Apple Family ain’t no buffalo-givers!”

“We need to go! We need to go right now!” Fluttershy squeaked frantically.

Applejack nodded determinedly. “We need to split up, y’all! Some of us’ll help Corey get to Canterlot, the others’ll at least help Ponyville get movin’!”

Corey frowned a moment. “Actually, I’m wondering about Dash’s plan you guys.”

“I... thought we sorta ruled that out,” Twilight said.

“I don’t mean her carrying a letter. Didn’t you use some spell yesterday to make me lighter?”

Twilight and Rainbow’s eyes widened.

Rainbow sized Corey up as she hadn’t before. “You want me to fly you to Canterlot?”

“Hey, I’m not thrilled about it either. But if Mandeville thinks we’ve gotten away, he’s going to step up his invasion plan. Whatever he claims, he’s not interested in taking you all on when you’re ready for him. He needs surprise on his side, and I can’t be explaining it all to your Princesses, generals or whatever while Mandeville is beating down your door. The sooner they hear what I can tell them, the better.”

“So what, you’re gonna grab my tail and hold on for dear life? You’d give me such drag it’d be embarrassing!”

“Well, how ‘bout this?” Applejack said, her muzzle diving into her saddlebag and retrieving her rope. “Ain’t much, but better than nothin’ I guess.”

A crystal blue aura engulfed the rope as Rarity tied it around both Corey and Rainbow’s waists.

“What is this?” Rainbow asked, sneering between the rope and Corey. “A six-legged race?”

Corey smiled, double-checking that the knot was solid. “Well it makes me feel better anyway.”

“Okay Corey, hold still,” Twilight ordered, as her horn glowed and he felt that strange warming ‘snap’ hit him.

“Whoa... I feel weird.”

Corey took a step towards Rainbow, only to step off and float head-over-heels diagonally into the sky. He yelled in surprise and grunted as his tether went taught, leaving him adrift and attached to Rainbow Dash like a child’s balloon.

Twilight's magic engulfed him again, dragging him down to sit upon Rainbow’s back. He barely fit at all.

“The featherweight spell will make you nearly weightless at first, but it fades. I might be able to follow along, just in case, but—”

Rainbow snickered. “Twilight, I told you. You might be able to fly now, but you’re just going to slow me down. And if you make a mistake and drop like a rock, it’s gonna be twice as hard to save you with Corey like this.”

“You’re right,” Twilight said. “I’ll help get everypony to Ponyville and get it evacuated as fast as I can with my teleport spell... once I figure out where we are exactly.”

“And you!” Rainbow turned her head around to her ‘passenger.’ “Front-legs around my neck, head and chest as far down against my back as possible, and hind legs back with mine. Keep ‘em outta my wings, got it?”

Corey nodded.

“Good, cause’ we’re gonna be flyin’ fast. I know you’ve got your rope, but you’d better hold on tight anyway.

“Contact!” Rainbow shouted as her wings unfolded and began to beat the air. Corey squeezed her tightly as her hooves left the ground and she maintained a steady rise.

“Good luck you two!” Pinkie cried. “Try and get along, now!”

“We’ll see you all in Canterlot!” Rarity said. “But please, be safe, the both of you!”

“And tell Princess Celestia,” Twilight shouted as the distance between them grew, “that it was difficult, but I’ve kept my promise!”

Rainbow smiled and saluted in response, before taking off like a shot as Corey cried out in surprise, keeping the rising sun to the right of her.

“This darn Everfree Forest weather, it’s ridiculous!” Rainbow shouted, zipping above the trees at significant speed. More speed than Corey had been expecting, evidently. His eyes were kept closed as he maintained his iron grip on her neck.

“Never a decent updraft nearby. That would not fly in Equestria. We station updrafts every few hundred yards to keep traffic steady. It’s pure anarchy out here!”

“Uh, yeah, we don’t control the weather back where I come from. We just predict it.”

“Whoa, seriously? That’s gotta bite. There’s some dangerous stuff weather can do. So you’re telling me your guys get runaway tornadoes, huh?”

“Depends on the region. We actually have a stretch of land people call ‘tornado alley.’ ”

“Tough break.

“Whoa, there we go!” Rainbow cried, as Corey felt her rising rapidly, warm air suddenly on his wind-chilled face.

Rainbow noticed him clinging so tightly at this that she turned her head back and laughed.

“Hey, you’re alright big guy, I’ve gotcha’. I’m not gonna let ya’ fall.”

Playfully, she corkscrewed into a quick barrel-roll, causing him to cry out.

“Far... Hehe...!”

She took his silence for a response in itself, and turned her head again. His head was partly buried into her neck, but she could see well enough to know his eyes were still shut tight.

“Hey look, I’m just makin’ fun. Feels good to be back up here, ‘specially after being stuck in Mandeville’s place, y’know?

“You should seriously open your eyes. It’s kinda’ windy, but the view is some of the best part in being a pegasus.”

Corey slowly obeyed, doing his best not to look down, and looked outward into the grand expanse before him.

And suddenly it struck him. Equestria was beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful. The Everfree Forest was a thick wood that somehow retained the qualities of a jungle as well, but beyond...

Rolling plains of grass, towering majestic mountains. The land was dotted with the fullest, most aesthetically pleasing trees. Crystallic lakes and rivers, tumbling waterfalls, and a cozy little town nestled in the distance. And from so high up in the puffy white clouds, he could see everything.

And then Corey shook himself instantly out of Equestria’s spell.
“Oh no. Oh no!”

“Okay, I get it, you’re scared of heights! Yeesh, ya’ big baby.”

Corey glanced nervously behind them. “How long have we been this high over the mountains?”

“Since we hit that updraft, why?”

“I completely forgot! If Mandeville has radar up, he’s bound to be watching for outgoing air traffic.”

Rainbow frowned. “Huh? ‘Ray-darr?’ ”

“Look, we’ve gotta stay as low as possible, or he’s going to see us, and then—”

Rainbow’s ears pricked-up suddenly as she turned around, leaned back and flying backwards as though her wings were doing the backstroke. Corey gasped as his legs started dangling freely in this position.

“Dash, what the hell?!” he demanded.

“You hear that?” she asked, straining to hear the noise more clearly.

“Yep, coming this way!”

With that, she righted herself and shot away far faster than before.

Adrian Mandeville stared at his monitor. A search of the outlying areas of the forest beyond the facility had yielded nothing. Given another hour, he would have called it off and proceeded straight with the march.

And now this.

It would have been too much to hope that the tiny blip on the scanners was them. He wasn’t even sure what lurked in the forest. That chimaera had certainly thrown him for a loop.

Might have been another small dragon... one with wings, this time.

And yet the eagle-eyes of the SHADE were seeing a most welcome sight. It was indeed one of Sparkle’s friends. The pegasus pride-rally that had given him lip before the group all but vanished.

And what was more? Riding her was the spec-ops skidmark himself.

Partly, he wondered if the unicorns knew anything about necromancy, as he was quite certain he had seen the man gutshot. He ought to be furious at having failed to kill him, but then, how often did you get the satisfaction of killing someone twice?

But that wasn’t the end of his luck. They hadn’t evaded him, they weren’t up and gone like he feared. They were lying in wait.

This was it. This was their move!

“Shall I engage?” CAIRO asked.

Mandeville considered a moment.

“Anti-personnel turret only. Take out Rainbow-Brite. I want to give that son of a bitch the time to think long and hard about what’s happening, before he splatters all over the ground.”

The soldier and pegasus on screen were still a ways ahead, but they were bolting for Canterlot.

“And while you’re at it, bring in two more SHADEs,” Mandeville ordered.

“Two more units? I estimate this to be unnecessary, and more likely to draw attenti—”

“I’m not risking them getting away again!” Mandeville roared. “That is a direct command, CAIRO. Now blast them out of the fucking sky!”

Rainbow Dash bolted through the sky like a missile, as the unmistakable shape of the SHADE closed in from behind.

“I knew you’d slow me down!” Dash shouted, glancing behind her at the craft. “Any ideas?”

Corey began to sweat in spite of the freezing wind. “I dunno, evasive maneuvers?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, great, thanks!”

“No, seriously! We’re smaller, we’ve got the advantage in maneuvering. Keep out of missile-range and don’t let it line itself up for that autocannon! Then you’ve just got that little turret to worry about.”

“Yeah, saw that before! Anything else?”

“Uh...” Corey muttered. “Oh! The turret can only rotate so fast. It’s designed for tracking living targets on the ground. It won’t keep up with anything too close to it!”

“So get closer?”

“Get closer, close as you can.”

Rainbow paused as the winged death machine’s turret popped out of its nose, and honed in for a shot.

As it fired, Rainbow’s wings spread to their fullest, putting on the breaks and causing the SHADE to shoot nearly past her. However, she was too good for that, putting on a burst of speed as soon as she was level with the machine.

The turret wheeled around to find her again, as the craft attempted to break away for better range. Rainbow Dash had none of this, matching every feint and maneuver it attempted in order to shake her. All the while, the turret simply couldn’t track her movements fast enough.

She hooted and hollered at the thing while Corey held on for dear life, and hovered over one of the wings. The SHADE finally retaliated by performing an Aileron roll, the wing purposely slamming into the side of the pegasus and human, making the pair tumble about twenty-feet before she could regain control. In the meantime, Corey had fallen right off and was dangling precariously from the rope.

Corey began hauling himself up the rope only to realize the SHADE was behind them again. However, it closed in fast, purposely guiding itself so that Rainbow Dash was on a course in line with the dark black vent serving as its jet-intake.

“Dash, watch it!”

Rainbow made a noise of surprise and promptly accelerated, swinging Corey taught and diagonally left, but the SHADE was prepared for this, the shrill noise of its engines turning into a scream mixed with a roar.

Between the suction of the jet engine and the craft’s speed boost, Rainbow Dash would have been swallowed entirely by the intake had Corey not been separate from her momentum. He was swung over the nose of the SHADE, the rope catching itself upon the turret, arresting its movement and keeping Rainbow from being entirely drawn in.

Rainbow Dash shrieked, her forehooves around the outer edges of the shaft, desperately trying to pull herself out.

“Corey, help!” she cried. “There’s something spinning in there, it’s gonna cut me to pieces! Ya gotta help pull me out!”

He nodded. “Right!”

Keeping certain the turret wasn’t going anywhere, he grabbed the rope and started pulling. The force was enormous, and Rainbow was having no less trouble with the strain on her end.

Meanwhile, the SHADE flew in a tight circle, determined to keep the scene away from Equestrian eyes if possible.

“Corey, I can’t hold on, I’m slipping! It’s too strong!”

“Damn...it!” Corey grunted, almost entirely helpless himself.

In a moment that chilled their blood, Rainbow cried in mortal terror as her hooves slipped entirely, all but her face vanishing inside the intake.

With her pupils turned to pinpoints and an overall amazement at remaining unharmed, Rainbow Dash betrayed tears, her forehooves grasping for the edges of the shaft again.

“HELP ME COREY, I’M TOO AWESOME TO DIE!” she wailed, her voice reverberating inside the jet.

Of all the situations to be in, Corey hadn’t exactly expected this. His ride and ally under the threat of getting sucked into a jet turbine. He’d heard of this happening to people. Only one that survived made it because his flight helmet jammed the thing, though he was still cut to ribbons and—

“Brace yourself against the wall!” he shouted, grabbing from his dwindling reserve of EMP grenades.

“Okay...okay...” she muttered in response, trying to stick to one side.

“Alright, here it comes, keep your eyes closed!”

Corey tossed the grenade as straight as he could, but it banked over the wing, the intense slipstream sending it spiraling off behind the SHADE.

“Shit!”

The sight or sound of the blast weren’t even detected at their speed. Corey only had two more left, but he’d use them without a second thought.

“Corey?”

He prepared another grenade, leaning low. If he could throw it ahead, and into the jet’s suction, it might make it...

“Corey, what’s happening?!”

“Fire in the hole!” he shouted, hawking the specialized ordnance.

Rainbow only muttered her confusion, before shouting and ducking as the lump of glass and metal soared past her into the guts of the engine.

She shouted, closing her eyes as she remembered to do, while clangs and sparks filled the interior and smoke filled the sky behind them. A bright white flash —not orange like fire— erupted from within, the machine going still as it died. A sudden nauseous feeling came over both Rainbow and Corey as the SHADE descended, now gliding to its destruction.

Without the resistance, Rainbow crawled her way out in moments, her mane and body a mess of black grease and general frizzledom. Quickly noticing the spot where the rope caught, she tugged from the proper side before scooping Corey onto her back again.

“You alright?” Corey asked, pulling his G36 out and holding it steady as he could.

Corey felt her shudder. “My entire life flashed before my eyes...”

And then her entire face lit up. “It was awesome! Kinda sucks though. We were even after I saved your from that CID. Guess I owe ya now.”

“Maybe you can drop me and then catch me again?” Corey offered, making Rainbow chuckle.

“Seriously though, even if you only did it to save yourself... thanks.”

Corey smiled. “Anytime.”

At that point, a great flash signaled the SHADE crashing into the trees below, the roiling fireball’s roar like a distant delayed ‘bang’ from their altitude.

They soared off again, gaining preposterous speed until a wide white cone of condensation surrounded them, and an incredible noise seemed to smack Corey in the face.

“The hell was that?!” Corey shouted. When Rainbow didn’t answer, he tapped the closest thing he could figure was her shoulder.

She turned around. “Hmm? What’s up?”

“What was that sound?”

“Huh?” She stared blankly, before chuckling. “Oh, right! Not used to having a passenger. I can’t hear you from up here Corey, your voice isn’t fast enough to reach my ears. You can hear me because mine is going the other way.”

Corey stared, before leaning forward to speak directly into her ear.

“Are you trying to tell me we’ve broken the fucking sound barrier?!”

“An’ that’s not all I can do monkey-boy! But, uh... Hey. Can you keep an eye out behind me? At this speed I’m not gonna hear them coming either. Like, tap on my head if you see anything an’ I’ll get with the evasive maneuvers.”

Corey tapped on her head with his open hand.

“Yeah, just like that.”

The tapping came again, faster this time, and harder.

“Okay Corey, I—” She turned around, only for her eyes to widen.

“WHOA!”

Two SHADES were closing in fast, and Corey was twisted backwards, silently firing his weapon at the them. The rounds glanced off the their armor, but when he began clearly aiming at the engines, they broke off, hanging back beyond his range.

Rainbow swerved this way and that as she felt their bullets displacing the air when they sailed by.

It was almost all Corey could do to hang on as she tried to shake them. He dug into his pack, hoping to at least be theoretically ready in case the SHADEs—

And then they did exactly as he feared they would, the flaming dot of a missile now chasing after them, slowly gaining in spite of their speed.

Finally he clasped his emergency kit and opened, adrenaline making him shaky as his fingers rolled over a rod-like object. Pulling the road flare out, he removed the cap and struck the end, causing a deep red flame to sputter from it, white smoke trailing behind them.

Experimentally, he waved the flare in an arc back and forth. Relief washed over him as he saw the missile gently correct its course as he did this: it was tracking the flare now.

He tossed it as hard as he could to their left, and couldn’t help laughing as the missile sank, chasing after it.

The SHADEs responded by switching to their twin forward cannons, which tore through the sky, the steady stream of lead rounds tracing smooth lines in the clouds ahead of them as they split the air.

“Hold on!” Rainbow cried, before rolling sideways and kicking a passing cloud. Corey felt his hair stand on end as a lightning bolt shot out behind them. It was a perfect shot, right into a jet turbine which promptly ripped itself apart in midair. Even the rear-mounted vertical propulsion system was ruined by the shrapnel being shot through the exhaust system, sending one of the SHADEs into a lopsided death roll until the pressure sheared the very wings off of it.

“Woo!” Rainbow cried. “One to g—WAH!”

Dash veered wildly to the right as a spray of bullets shot up at her from below. Despite being doomed to a fiery wreck, the SHADE’s turret took surprise shots on its meandering fall. Corey shouted as he fell off once more and dangled behind her.

The last SHADE took notice of this and once more launched a missile their way. Corey by now had retrieved a flare gun, which he held in his left hand. Rainbow took a momentary glance behind her to check on Corey, only to see the missile and angle upwards, climbing to evade.

Another stream of bullets arrived from below, far spread and wild with the dead SHADE so far out of range. However, in a lucky shot, one of the rounds tore through the fibers of Corey’s rope harness. As Rainbow ascended, Corey fell, a wave of terror gripping him.

“DASH!” he cried. But she could not hear him.

The missile continued after Rainbow Dash as she climbed. She didn’t dare to look behind her to see it. Then, a smoking red light fizzled to the left of her, making a screeching noise like a firework. As she watched, the missile chasing her veered off, reaching the red light and erupting in a fiery blast she could feel.

“Whoa, more of your work Corey? Corey...?”

Glancing behind her, she noticed the trail left by the flare, and the frayed end of Corey’s rope. Looking down, she could just barely see a dot shrinking towards the green plains below them.

“I’m comin’ Corey!”

With that, she dove, paying no mind as the SHADE behind her fired its twin auto cannons. The rounds zipped past her along with the SHADE, which failed to adjust to the maneuver fast enough, and turned around to follow her dive.

Meanwhile, Corey had discarded the flare gun which only seemed to hover alongside him, having spent his charge. He heard the other SHADE explode on the ground at last, and didn’t dare to see how close the ground was by now. He tried his best to keep flat and slow his fall, but he wasn’t sure even his supersonic steed would catch up to him in time.

Rainbow pushed her hardest to close the gap, but the ground was approaching fast. The SHADE was descending after her, switching to hover mode rather than its jets and descending after her through a freefall, combined with the electromagnetic propulsion pushing it down even faster.

Gradually, the mach cone surrounding her body narrowed its angle, but the SHADE continued to close in.

“Yes, yes!” Mandeville shouted, leaning forward, engrossed in his monitor. “You’re sure that she can’t catch him?”

“Rate of acceleration is insufficient,” CAIRO confirmed.

“Fan-fucking-tastic! Gun her down, I want to see his expression.”

On the screen, Rainbow’s mach cone shrank nearly to nothing as the turret locked onto her.

“Warning!” CAIRO said. “Force Five disturbance detected. Type: electromagnetic.”

“Hmm?” Mandeville saw the screen suddenly explode into the ultimate acid-trip. A blinding prismatic flash expanded from where the pegasus had been.

“Alert: target has become hypersonic. Current velocity: eight-thousand-six-hundred-ninety nautical miles per hour.”

“WHAT?!”

On the screen, the feed had gone haywire, and the image was rocking erratically.

“Warning! Electromagnetic turbulence has compromised magnetic repulsors. Drone in freefall. Drone in freefall.”

Indeed, as the SHADE passed through the shockwaves of Rainbow Dash’s sonic rainboom, its entire propulsion system had driven it into a tailspin. Meanwhile, Rainbow herself was at her topmost speed, a polychromatic trail left in her wake.

Corey watched the scene above him play out, and wondered to himself just how he’d gotten here, before she had scooped him up and pulled out of the dive masterfully. As if to punctuate her victory, the SHADE finally crashed to the ground faster than gravity, the micro-mushroom cloud rising into the sky as she flew away over the plains. They were out of the forest and truly in Equestria at last.

“Holy shit...” Corey said slowly, his eyes bugging out of his head as he dangled with her hooves under his arms. “Y’know when I said to drop me, I was kidding.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Still even, though!”

After basking in their victory a moment, Corey noticed something in the distance.

“Whoa, is that a Frank-Lloyd-Wright-shaped tumor on the side of that mountain, or did you guys build a fucking castle up there?”

“That, Corey, is Canterlot!”

“No shit, huh?” he muttered, shaking his head as they sped towards it.

Meanwhile, miles behind them, the only other human in Equestria was nursing cuts in his hand after having put his fist through his monitor.