Equestria was many things, a veritable tapestry of landscapes and sensations for a traveller. One could visit frosty mountains and breath the cold air, or waltz along the verdant farmland of the interior; lose themselves in the faceless bustle of great metropolises or do some soul-searching in the remote wilderness of the Badlands or the forests. Beautiful oceans and fantastic geography; but equally notably, Equestria was safe.

This place, this place was none of these things. The portal had lead to a dirty, industrial wasteland; loud and terrible noises filled the wretched, stinking air; towering, artificial heights were lost in hazy, grey sky. It was a lot for a pony of humble origins and humble ambitions. Barley felt terribly out of place. Good thing she was the one taking orders.

She would have continued staring around in fear at her surroundings, when a sharp command snapped her back into focus. The rough voice of a Royal Guard was charged with reassuring authority, his armor magically gleaming in the dirty air and muted colors.

Barley nodded in acknowledgement, already fiddling with the pack that was indeed strapped to her. "Start laying out the instruments," the Guard had said, "and make it quick." Barley slung the pack off her back, working the magical clasps over. By touch, of course, the mechanism dumbed down so even an earth pony could use it. The Guard immediately turned is attention to something else, moving off to talk with the expedition lead. That's when Barley looked away from her fellow ponies, and back to her job.

Instruments were carefully taken out, unfolded, and fastened down with the wave of a hoof over a rune. Barley still had no idea how most of the intricate machines worked, delicate weaves of gears and pistons with glowing crystals at their hearts, but by her reckoning they were worth more than her. They were certainly worth more by her superior's reckoning, too. The loss of a pony in another universe was a tragedy, of course, duly grieved and the poor fellow's name added to the Hall, but the loss of a set of masterly crafted instruments from the finest machine shops in Canterlot set a buzz through the whole Project. Anger at the incompetence of the expedition lead that was responsible, mostly.

Barley shook her head, sucked in some rancid air, and tried to keep her focus. The ambient sounds of this universe were oppressive but indistinct, the screaming and crashing of metal, distant roars coming in waves. The screaming of voices, if Barley was one for imagination; it was pretty hard not to think of what might lie beyond the maze of buildings that choked off one's view in every direction.

The setup was finished with uneasy speed, the crystals spinning and innards whirring. Barley caught the glance of the expedition lead and waved; she nodded and checked off something, and turned away, Barley forgotten.

Barley sighed and sat down on the ground next to the machines, shifting uncomfortably at the grey, stony surface - stone-like in texture, but no stone was this smooth and uniform. Stone didn't come in seamless arches and spires, too, stark towers and walls that dissapeared into the hazy sky. The little plaza they ponies were milling about in was undecorated and crossed by alleys, winding into the darkness and rubble of this world.

And the noise! Without something to busy herself with, and unable to comprehend the frantic activity of her betters moving things out of the portal and heading off into the alleys, Barley could hardly ignore the assault on her ears. Thudding and shrieks, a steccato of cracking and the tear of metal was grating on her nerves.

The less time spent in this world, the better. She looked out again at her betters, and noticed a pair of unicorn guards fumbling with a case behind the portal. When it opened, Barley frowned; out floated a pair of guns. They were hardly flaunting their non-standard weapons as they glanced about nervously. Guns. A human invention, seen time and again in so many encounters with humans in these many universes. They were earsplittingly loud, foul smelling and disturbingly unassuming in looks.

A scream pierced the gloom. Barley looked up, wondering at how close it seemed to be - then it came again, several different voices, and the chorus of gasps around her told her it was not in her imagination.

Her gaze snapped towards the alley the advance teams are went down; a flurry of cracks and shouts came through moments later. The area erupted into chaos, Guards bellowing commands as they shoved aside the scientists and workers, rushing for cover. Nopony took a step for the portal, though there were plenty of glances: such were regulations. Also regulations was preserving the equipment, and through the panic coursing through her, Barley remembered there was a set of instruments entrusted to her care. She looked around desperately for the scientist unicorn that usually operated the contraption, but when she caught sight of him he was being huddled into a group by the Guards, the glimmerings of a magic shield issuing from their horns.

Barley swallowed hard, and began working the instrument, breaking it back down into her case, focusing as completely as she could. A unicorn she didn't know ran up, saw that she was collapsing the instrument, and then galloped off . The air was oppressive and Barley was sweating terribly as she ran shaking hooves over the runes, the machine folding in on itself with a click and a hiss. She glanced around again, saw a Guard hurling a spear down the alley, heard the screams and cries of the Equestrians joined by foreign voices. Barley rose, hefting the instrument on her back, and tried to make her way for the portal. Ponies ran around her, some for the portal, others for the groups of overseers yelling instructions; they gave Barley a wide berth when they spotted the instrument she was burdened under.

There was a section of Guards at the portal, wrapping a magic shield around its frame and shoving at ponies to keep some semblance of order as they fled into its shimmering folds. One of them wordlessly turned to Barley when she had made it across the plaza, took the instrument off of her, the pointed for one of the overseers. Barley would have very much liked to sprint through the portal, but now the Guards were blocking it off, shouting and sending the crowd of workers back off to the overseers. Barley looked around, and saw nothing of the natives, only heard their cries, drawing ever nearer - she cringed when she saw one of the instruments broken on the ground, innards spilled out, left where it had been dropped by a worker. Barley was terribly glad that worker had not been her, when an enormous noise and a cloud of dust consumed her and she tumbled to the ground, clutching her ears from the ringing.

She was raising herself up, shaking her head clear, when a chorus of horrified gasps and cries broke out from the crowd around her, and she followed the wide-eyed gazes upwards. One of the walls had been blown out, scraps of parchment and lighter debris still floating down - Guards in bloodied armor were stumbling down the slope of rubble, the advance team returning with wounded and missing members. Above them stood a native, unmistakably a human, blurry in the dust but clearly holding a blade in one limb, and some kind of ball in the other. The ball flashed as it reflected the glare of the magic shields below, and then Barley recognized the gold, the helmet, and the equine face still set behind the noseguard. Her stomach churned as the human screamed, waving the severed head of a Guard, a mass of voices behind him echoing the cry and dark forms appearing in the dust behind him. The human screams devolved into chanting, a terrible chanting that grated at something deep inside Barley, and she shuddered in fear as the whole crowd of ponies shrunk back as the chanting grew in strength, until it was the only thing hammering at her mind, scrambling her thoughts, reaching a crest.

A sharper noise cut through the voices, the human with the Guard's head dropping like a puppet with severed string down the rubble, the head tumbling after him. Barley snapped her gaze to the source of the noise, a Guard holding a gun with his magic, his nostrils flared with hatred. The chanting turned back to jumbled screaming, more humans appeared out of the dust and bounded down the rubble, the Guards moved to meet them and most of the ponies turned to flee. There were more humans, bloodied wretches in rags appearing from alleys and sewer gratings, and in her fevered state, Barley could only think that she must be hallucinating some of them.

The slightest current of duty turned her head back to the rubble - amidst the newly raised dust of the humans' charge and ponies' stampede, a Guard sliced through three humans with a blast of magic, brought down the next moment by two more, their blades stabbing and flashing in the light of magic, the Guard's horn burning the face of one his assailants even as his blood sprayed through the air. Barley retched, seeing similar scenes, a few Guards fleeing for the portal now.

She turned back around and started again, confronted by the sight of faster humans plunging into the crowd, bringing down ponies and dying with little care to their fellows. They had guns, too, little bits of metal clutched in bandaged hands that spat out bullets wildly as they came, more concerned with digging a blade into Equestrian flesh than shooting them - the Guards with guns were firing too, the booming gunfire barely heard by Barley, practically unable to hear from the bombardment of the chanting, the voices, the screams all around her.

A pony in front of her was tackled, screaming and fighting as he grappled with the human. Barley considered it for the barest moment, imagined herself dodging past the two and making for the portal, then adjusted her course slightly and barreled into the human. They both fell heavily, footfalls drumming past them, Barley panicking as her gaze locked on the human's blade, the human screaming and grinning, struggling to wriggle its arm out from under her, until in her fear and growing rage she smashed a hoof into his face. He went limp, then began to spasm a moment later, his eyes shooting back open from underneath the bloody mess that was his face, and in the turmoil his blade passed over Barley's thigh. The pain barely registered as she picked herself up and stomped down, then struck again in a haze. She looked around and saw fights and blood, the pony she had helped ducking under a human's stab with wild eyes, and she realized the surviving Guards had formed a perimeter around the portal and the fight was burning around them. Bodies of both species littered the ground around her, and with a start, she realized she was dead. The humans crowded for the portal, ponies were disappearing into it, and through the press of bodies and carnage, she could see a Guard perched on top of the portal's frame, punching the runes to self-destruct the portal.

There was no way through. She was going to die here. They would turn away from the portal, and kill her. She looked over to the prone body of a pony, her mane stained with her blood and hiding her face, and Barley saw the pony's cutie mark was a bundle of barley - Barley cried out, shut her eyes and shook her head, and then the cutie mark was a dove with its wings splayed out.

Something deep within Barley stirred, above the utter horror and revulsion that was shaking her - she watched the last of the Guards duck into the portal or fall screaming, and then she turned and galloped away, only pausing to snap up a knife in her teeth. She went down an alley, away from the rubble slope running and running .

Perhaps it was fate. Barley slowly became aware of noise behind her, getting louder, a sound different from the thud of hooves on a hard surface. A human had followed her, as it turned out, calling out with a leering voice. Barley turned, out of breath, part of her desperately screaming for her to face the madness in this city face to face. There was only one human, indistinguishable from all the others beneath the rags and squalor. In a few seconds time, Barley now stood in front of the madness of this city, the thoughtless violence and mindless hatred reduced to a lone human, hunched and ragged.

The human grinned, its teeth yellow and dirty, mouth twisting upwards underneath its hair. Beady little eyes met Barley's gaze and glared in the light of the fires. Barley opened her mouth to reason, remembered the ponies she had seen die, and her words died in her throat. The human crouched down, and hurled itself towards Barley without a word.

Barley backpedalled, trying to avoid the knife flashing in the human's grasp, cutting wildly as the human stumbled over the cracked ground. The gun in its other limb was forgotten, the knife skimming the skin of Barley's right cheek as the pony ducked down. The pain stung her whole face, blood spraying into her eye, and then something else inside Barley turned aside the fear and she threw herself into the human, catching the wretch on her shoulder. The human staggered back into a wall, pushed itself off while raising its gun: the human was in front of a jagged hole in the wall, and the gun fired wide as Barley tackled the human.

The human's crude weapons fell away with a clatter, and the two rolled down another slope of rubble, locked together. Barley felt the human's hands clutch her neck, choking her. A fighting spirit surged within Barley, and her world narrowed as she beat at the human, swinging at her assailant's head. The human didn't take much; it released the death-grip on Barley's neck after a few blows, and the two twisted apart.

Barley rose to her hooves amidst sputtered coughs, the human reaching for the gun. Without thought, Barley dove at the human, screaming a foul oath. The human retorted with an unnatural scream as they collapsed in a jumbled heap, though Barley hardly noticed it as she struck and bit the human in a red frenzy. A flash of metal beside their struggle cut through the haze, and Barley reached her head down to get the metal into her mouth.

And in an instant it was over, Barley pressed down on the human with a knife to its neck. The human gripped at Barley's head, trying to keep the pony away, but the knife clutched in Barley's mouth was already biting into the human's skin, slicing into the side of its neck. Blood trickled down, slight movements from the death struggle the two creatures were locked in jarring the knife in a sawing motion. Barley felt nothing in her body and little in her mind as she dug the knife in deeper, straining her head closer to the human's, locking stares. She saw nothing in the human's beady little eyes save madness, hatred and darkness and fear.

The moment stretched on for an eternity, the roar of the city gone, only the human. Barley relaxed the tiniest bit on her knife, stopping it before it cut through something important. There was fear in the human's eyes, yes, unmistakably fear - it worked its mouth, as if to speak, but nothing broke the moment.

Barley gradually came aware of other things. Her thigh hurt terribly, her face stung and blood was blurring her vision. She was pressed up against the human, body to body, and she heard the foreign heartbeat thumping beneath her. She couldn't ignore that blasted thing, the reminder her opponent was a living creature, a thinking being. Who was she to take life?

Yet that thinking was clouded and hateful, that Barley could also see in its eyes. Twisted and warped and wrong, she could smell the human now, a sweet and sickly scent that swelled up something horrified deep in Barley. Her nose was used to plants and animals, farms and warm food - lately cold technology and dizzying magical residue. But this smelled of corruption, like every rotting piece of food or animal corpse Barley had ever recoiled at rolled into one wretched thing.

There was something wrong about this human. She knew that, normal sapient beings didn't usually attack newcomers in rags and filth, but there was something deeply wrong. More than just going crazy, or having a weird culture - she'd such things from afar, and this was not so simple. The human struggled beneath her, and Barley saw the red splotches and sharp growths coming from its skin between cracks in the wrappings and rags.

Ten seconds could not have passed, but Barley was coming off her high, the blinding rage of a life or death combat settling down. She looked down at the human, the corrupted and ragged wretch, and knew she wouldn't finish it off, couldn't do it. Barley was an earth pony acutely aware of her own limitations and failings, and as she thought at the rapid pace that danger spawned, she knew she couldn't end a life like this. A fact.

The human stopped fighting ineffectually at Barley's weight and grip, paused, then strained at the pony with surprising vigor. Barley could see the human's muscles jerking and shaking unnaturally, but the pressure was enough to push Barley back. She snarled, thoughts blown away by the renewed threat, and shoved the human down roughly with a burst of strength of her own. The knife came back down to the human's neck, Barley's fighting instinct screaming that only one of them would pull away from their entanglement alive, that there was no reason it wouldn't be her if she would just jerk the knife a hoof's length to the left. She could imagine it clearly, the blade cutting through the blistered neck skin, blood flowing into the ground and staining her fur, screaming her defiance at this blasted, twisted city.

The thoughts were almost not her own, and Barley tried to calm herself, the human now straining to the side, trying to escape the knife from cutting any deeper. Barley was hardly at war with herself, a winning battle against instinct, but it amazed her in a distant way how easy it would be.

The moment stretched on, the human writhing beneath her.

She conquered her instinct, relaxed slightly, and pulled back enough to show the human she did not mean to kill it. The human stared up at her, glancing aside at the knife that had been removed from the side of its neck. Barley wondered at her next move. Perhaps in defeat the human would flee, and Barley could try and make her way back the portal.

The human coughed wretchedly, and again strained up against Barley's weight. A thousand warm tables and hospitable greetings to newcomers flitted through her mind, thoughts of home.

"Hello," Barley said, managing a smile, "can you please leave?" she added.

The human swallowed, "Blood." it snarled, shaking its head. The voice was female, but cracking and hoarse. The human retched again after her words.

"You don't sound very good," Barley observed, an intrinsic part of her causing a twinge of concern for the stranger, insane circumstances be damned. She relaxed her grip even more, and the human didn't fight her again, instead staring up at her with twitching eyes.

"Daemon," the human said, then coughed. "A-are you a daemon?" She stuttered in her speech, but Barley could tell it was not out of fear, but of the obviously diseased state of her lungs. The human was almost pitiable in this state, thin, ragged, and twisted.

And then there was the manner of being a daemon, and Barley wrinkled her brow in confusion. Daemons did not figure highly in the ancient earth pony folk tales. Barley racked her brain for daemons, and only remembered vague stories of Tartarus and foul things that lurked there. Her time in the mirror expeditions had encountered no daemons. She was ignoring the obvious, of course; Barley was no daemon. She would reassure this poor human she was no abomination.

"No, human," Barley said, "I'm not."

The human mumbled something guttural under her breath, and coughed again, spitting blood all over Barley's fur. "Damn," the human merely said, paying no heed to her own bodily fluids, face contorting into what could pass for a frown.

"And why would you want me to be a daemon?" Barley asked suspiciously, pressing down a little harder, scowling but taken aback. Of course such a foul creature would want to consort with daemons.

The human gave Barley a blank look for a few seconds, then shook it off and looked up with only a hint more intelligence than before in her lidded eyes. "The voices. The factory head, he told us about what was happening, he talked about the coming daemons. We wouldn't have to work the machines, a warp-damned sack of flesh spouting his mouth off about freedom - ha! Just imagine, just some sores and a lot of pretty signa."

Barley had the uncomfortable feeling the human might be talking very literally about the sack of flesh. At any rate, the wretch didn't seem like the kind of creature to use a phrase like that in a metaphor, or a metaphor at all. She almost respected it; Earth ponies were upfront with their language, and Barley was very aware of her own simplicity, but the meaning Her mind churned, considering ways to make the human talk more, to learn more. Heavens knew one of her betters, a unicorn probably, would have deciphered entire scrolls of information already from the human's rambling, but Barley wasn't nearly smart enough for that. She needed the information up front, or at least very strongly implied. She'd been getting better at hidden meanings in her time in the mirror expeditions.

She blinked. Of course in times like this, her thoughts would rambling.

"Why do I look like a daemon?" Barley asked.

"Are you a xeno?" the human slurred, by way of reply. Barley didn't even get the sense she was avoiding the question, the human was simply not very . . . present. The human didn't even seem dangerous anymore, just a confused, diseased creature. That had tried to kill her quite mindlessly. She had to remember that.

Barley sighed. "I don't know what that means."

"Not human," the human said back, trying to lean up. Barley allowed it, herself sitting back to allow the human some room, taking care to nudge the human's weapons over beside her with a hoof.

"A daemon isn't human," Barley observed, the obvious coming easily to her.

The human didn't respond immediately, apparently thinking over what Barley had said. "I- I don't really know what a daemon is. Its not a xeno, though."

"And how do you know it isn't a xeno?"

"The sack of flesh said so. He said we shouldn't hate daemons as xenos, but love them, love them..." the human trailed off, thinking and mumbling, before coming up with what she meant to say. "Daemons are creatures of the warp, and the warp is our salvation." she recited, obviously not her own words. She spoke the phrase with a coherency that had not been demonstrated so far, and it startled Barley.

"Yes. The sack of flesh," Barley said, shuddering, "well, you're not human either."

The human blinked. "Huh?"

"I've seen humans. They don't have things growing out of their limbs like that, they don't have bubbles on their face or neck or arms," Barley wracked her brain for the term she'd heard a unicorn doctor call the things, "Pestules, all cracked like that. Skin looks like paint peeling."

The human raised her arms and regarded them blankly, evidently not very aware of the diseased state of her skin. Finally the human shuddered, and looked up to Barley. "Well, damn." the human muttered quietly, almost reverently. The moment was broken when she winced and clutched at her head, her nails drawing blood. "My head hurts."

"Right," Barley said, feeling a twinge of annoyance, almost glad to feel such a mild emotion in this insanity. The weight of her circumstances, it hurt whenever she started to consider them. Stuck alone with no way to home, in a city that was death and industry. She recognized nothing. Just rubble and the haze of the sky above, and this damned human in front of her. A current of fear passed through her, and Barley shuddered.

"Feels good to talk, though," the human continued, apparently unconcerned with the pause. "What's wrong, uh..."

Perhaps a little concerned. "Pony," Barley said, then shook her head. "I mean, Barley. I'm Barley. I'm a pony but Barley is my name. You probably haven't heard of the feed crop."

"I haven't, pony," the human shrugged. "You look wrong."

"Dammit, looks are my tiniest problem," Barley snapped, then shook her head. The smallest bit of concern on the part of another creature was too seductive to Barley, tired, bruised, and increasingly consumed with horror at her isolation. "How- how do I look wrong?"

"You looked like someone'd stabbed ya in the gut, pony," the human said, shrugging again. "I never got around to that, but it looked like it. On your face. Ah, scrag it, I can't..."

"It's a metaphor, I remember that from school. And it's Barley, not 'pony'."

"You didn't ask me my name, pony." the human said, almost smiling.

Barley blinked at the human's display of sensitivity. Or something approaching that, anyway. "What's... what's your name, human?" Barley asked slowly.

"Thess. I'm Thess 'li For'twa. Don't mind the last bits, that's just my designation. Everyone's designation. Manufactorum Complex Four-Two, Hive Liset. So I'm sharing For'twa with, ah, maybe fifty-thousand other people? Less than that with the rebellion. You know, half of Four-Two got hit when the Hive Prefect ordered a purge of the rebels. Other half didn't see a mite of action, 'cept for killin' the overseers. They never got around to purging us, not when the this hive and every other hive on the vox was in a mood for blood all of a sudden,"

Thess stopped, shook her head. "Look, you got me talking now, don't you? Congrats, pony. Got this free girl talking, spoutin' off worse than the stacks. Y'know, the smokestacks, most of them have stopped - the only ones still belching are the really old ones that can't stop, controls be damned, or the manufactorums that have got our fellows, or loyalists still in 'em. North Face is full of 'em, still choking up the skies like before, that's where the munitions are made, plenty useful that,"

"And I'm still talking." Thess muttered.

"It's fine," Barley said. The terminology was mostly totally foreign, she had no idea what Thess was rambling about. Perhaps the unicorns might have been able to decipher something, but she didn't have a recording crystal, and all the unicorns still in this city were dead. "It's all very informative."

"Smart pony," Thess grinned, and Barley bristled - yet like before, was inwardly glad at such a normal twinge of annoyance. Getting flustered at mere words seemed so ludicrously mundane, it was a jolt of sanity in this immense, leering city. Certainly, she wasn't trying to comprehend the city, or her situation of being forever stranded in it. She would go mad if she tried. It wasn't like it appeared she would be living very long here, anyway...

Barley sighed, staring downwards and looking over the rubble with a pain in her heart. "There ya go again, pony," Thess said, her voice distant, "you look like I just reached over and stabbed you in the gut. Which I didn't. But it's a good idea, don't look like you'd put up much of a fight."

Barley blinked back a tear, coughed, and straightened up. "Why don't you try, human? For a murderer and a crazy, you're sure talking a lot."

"That's just it," Thess shrugged, "it's like a heap of rags got pulled off my eyes. It's not like I could go murderin' you with your fat ass pressing me into the dirt - and a knife at my neck - and then you started talking, and I talked back, and here we are."

"Glad to see two creatures can still have a conversation. Without killing each other." Barley observed dryly.

"More like, with the threat of violence," Thess glanced down to the knife on the ground. "Say, what're ya gonna do with me, pony? It's really damn weird you're talking like this, but you're gonna starve. Or die from one of those cuts."

Barley stared, muttered, "Frank, damnedly frank."

"What's that, pony?"

"So frank. You're so open with your fate. I'm twisting myself into pieces over my fate right now. You seem like you'd just stare and raise an eyebrow if I finished you off, right here."

Thess giggled, giggled and covered her smile with a sore-covered hand. "You'd think that, wouldn't you? Don't blame you. I'd say I'd fight, but look at me. Once you got me talking..." Thess trailed off into another fit of giggling, but Barley didn't discern any hint of the madness in Thess' voice, the madness Barley had heard when the human was laughing and screeching and out for Barley's blood. Thess, diseased features and coughing fits so constant that Barley was beginning to ignore them notwithstanding, was increasingly becoming a thinking creature in Barley's eyes. Barley wasn't quite sure what to think about it all, but it was another welcome distraction from the city.

"Once you've got me talking," Thess finally continued, "it feels so different. Hard to say how, pony. I guess I feel more like myself. Even though digging a blade into flesh in that damned red haze feels like the best, rightest thing in the whole hive-" Thess cut herself off, shook her head with a scowl. "You say you're all twisted up inside? I'm a hair away from jamming a knife into my throat and ending it. At least that's how I feel when my head's clearer, like right now, talking to you. Heh, maybe I'll live longer if I just run around screaming my head off and wavin' a knife like the rest of that lot..."

Thess stopped again when she met Barley's gaze. Confusion flickered across Thess' face, until eventually her features softened and she turned away. Compassion? Pity? Barley wasn't exactly sure what her own eyes held, but the human had seen it, and she looked spooked.

"It's better this way," Barley finally said.

Thess looked up, uncertain, then broke into a wry grin. "What, killin' ourselves? Sure, just don't let the knife flop into a grating when you're done, I've got to be able to indulge my thinking.."

It was the darkest joke Barley had heard in her entire life, and it wasn't particularly funny - Barley giggled, Thess laughed, Barley joined the human in full and the two's voices echoed into the alleys and not much farther. Deeply disturbed with herself, yet strangely light, Barley finally corrected the human: "No, no. It's better thinking and talking like normal creatures. I'm not killing myself, but I'd die before I gave myself up to madness."

"That's a hell of a motto, pony," Thess said, still grinning. "So, now that we're friends, you gonna give me that gun back?"

"Friends?" Barley said, half to herself. Friends. The word was so familiar to the pony, yet it sounded damnedly foreign in this city, so divorced from Equestria. Was friendship even something that could be aspired to in this world? Did a conversation with a human that tried to kill sound as friendship? Thess was not getting her gun back.

"You're not getting the gun back," Barley said, and Thess sighed, but Barley went on, "but friends..."

"You're pretty hung up on that word, pony. Honestly, I was just trying to get my gun back." Thess' voice was dry, but strain as she might, Barley couldn't tell if the human was genuine with her words. She really wanted to know if Thess had meant it. She didn't want Thess to know how much she cared about friendship.

"I just- look, you seem awfully eager to cozy up with me. If I walk out into the city, will you follow me?"

"Do you want me to follow you?" Thess responded.

"Company would be lovely," Barley said after a pause, then quickly added, "but you're... really not a trusted travelling companion. Not by any definition."

"I want to follow you, Barley. You could always kill me right here, kill me and run off- but you're not gonna do that. But if you go that way, and I go the other way, I'm just gonna find a piece of metal and I'll forget about everything. Probably end my life charging some PDF puke with a stubber because I'm a suicidal idiot when... when I'm not myself. I'm myself when I'm sitting here, talking with you."

Thess's voice lowered to a whisper. "I'd rather die as myself. I decided that in the last five minutes, talking here with you. I want to die next to you, pony. Sounds stupid as all hell, I know, but it's less stupid than throwin' myself on someone's gun."

"Die next to me?" Barley said, but she was affected to a degree more than she was comfortable with by the human's words. Pain simply oozed from them, and that damned twinge of sympathy was hurting her heart again. "That sounds like a good deal."

Barley didn't know human conventions in this world, but she stuck out her hoof in the hope that they were roughly the same as Equestria's. Thess looked at it, then reached an arm and gripped the offered hoof in her - what was it - in her hand. Thess's hand was rough and painful, but Barley reached over her other hoof and they shook on the agreement. The broke off, and Barley realized Thess could have certainly grabbed a weapon with her free hand had she wanted to.

"Die next to you. Aye. Looks like this'll be a short-lived agreement." Barley observed.

"Well. I'm hungry. Too bad the sack of flesh couldn't get rid of hunger," Thess rambled as she stood up.

Barley followed her, rising to her hooves, struck by how ridiculous it was that this whole conversation had taken place in a crib formed by rubble, a womb broken open- they appeared to be halfway into some kind of sewer system. Whether a street had once run between these buildings was guesswork, and there was only great mounds of rubble in the shadow of the towering edifices on all sides.

Barley trotted a few paces, then stopped, leaned against a wall of rubble. "Stars above," she muttered, "this is insane. I'll go mad if I think about how insane this is, I'll go utterly mad and I'll shoot you down and then put a bullet in my brain."

"Couldn't fit your lump of a hand into the trigger-thing." Thess observed.

"Yeah. This is mad. My life is completely gone. The portal's gone, the project's gone, I'm just a name on the Wall of Remembered. Tartarus, 'least I got that instrument to safety..." Barley continued, quietly,"now I'm walking to my death with some human I met a half hour ago. Watched a dozen ponies die an hour ago. I'd go mad. I'd go mad, Thess."

"Please don't," Thess said softly, and Barley felt a diseased hand on her cheek.

"I'd go mad if it weren't for you," Barley said, and pushed herself of the wall. "Still might go mad yet. Let's go, aye?"

"Solid plan." Thess said, and the two started forward again with no destination, voices near and far echoing with the roar of machinery and howl of winds above.