The badlands were a cool temperature at night. But Bubblegum Grins was pleasantly surprised. It was only half past sixteen and a gentle, forgiving breeze kicked about her mane. Sure the very breeze that comforted her brought dust and nuclear snow all about, but she didn't mind. When her empty mind was disturbed by disjointed, wheezing coughs and hacks, Bubblegum glanced over her shoulder. It was Cherry. Cherry Night. Judging from the state of her wings, all disjointed in the farthest wingtips from the body, she needed help. All it took was a crooked smile and a good, strong back to carry her along. Though she felt nice helping Cherry not die faster, Cherry herself replied sourly.

"No, no I... I need to walk myself. Please, Bubblegum, I- I need to recover by myself." The mare grunted, her white dress torn at the hem and limply flopping about.

Glancing back revealed her eyes blaring with struggle. One was violet while the other filmed in a sickly blue. Across her muzzle lay a bandage that scrunched well with her perfectly white and stainless teeth. Honestly, if she hadn’t suffered horrific rape a night earlier, Bubblegum would've been behind her pulling that silky, midnight mane.

"You're dehydrated, traumatized from repeated physical and mental shock and your lungs are probably cut by dust. Not to mention all that radioactive snow you must a swallowed, Cherry. If you could sing a whole song without falling to your knees, I'd let you down. But you aren't."

Cherry's eyes widened in both disbelief and complete surprise.

"You... you diagnosed all that without even using a WristBelle...? How? You- you've changed so much since we... worked back home." Hushed her friend, letting her lids grow heavy and limp.

It had been a while, she replied, keeping her interlocking lens and glowing eyes on the wide-open wastes. Not two meters away, they spotted a crashed vehicle buried roughly into the red earth kicked up by impact. Approaching the crash made her mind cluster and zip about with flooding memories. Her hooves crunched and shuffled about on the amassed white blanketing the ground. It was as if the earth bled when the crashed sky vehicle dug it's thin landing skids into Mother Equestria. Cherry's voice severed her flash flood of remembrance.

"You... remember, don't you. I do, too. This is where it happened. You never knew how I felt, but I was planning to drop Sargent Summers. I- I was but right before I had enough courage, they took us down." Cherry hushed, holding tighter against her savior.

"I didn't want to leave you, Bubblegum. None of us did." She whispered, only to sniffle at the thought of what could've been.

Her words fell short of their mark, she worried. The silence blanketing them wasn't just her old friend being totally alert and aware of the surrounding wasteland. It was just her being angry. Being hurt. Someone else left Bubblegum and surely, after all that time, she'd crushed the last bit of forgiveness she had left. A weighted, harsh dip drooped Cherry Night's brows. Her head hung low and water threatened to spill out from over her heavy, tired bags. When they stopped in their tracks, Bubblegum made her heart stop.

Grins took to a low crouch. Slowly, her ears rose and twitched in certain places with eldritch motions. And so did her right foreleg. The motion barely registered to outside observers. She'd learned to control how severely her body shook when it told the immediate future.

"As much as I want to say I forgive you... I don't,"

Cherry felt her heart squeeze. A fresh tear slid down her plush fur.

"But."

Her eyes were hopeful, growing broad with light barely registered in her pupils.

"That doesn't mean I don't love you. I'd love to play dating sim number sixty nine all over with you. It's just that we... are being watched. And I smell bananas."

Her hope stayed, but gradually, it shifted into pure, unadulterated dread. Her brow worked a cold sweat and her forelegs pressed hard, constricting tight into their partner's chest musculature. Her trembling lips parted to urge her. To scream out to the last pony she could ever stand to be by let alone feel anything warm for.

"Run."

The familiar spin and rattle of a spinning barrel sprung her into action. No wonder there was no heat around her. Somepony was manipulating the sky over the AV2-Vertibuck. Her suspicions were realized when a CSG-1987 reared it's golden barrel out of the clouds. Her hooves kept them just inches away from the monstrous solar plasma scorching the air behind them. A haze of snowy mist and brilliant, gilded light tailed their every step, forcing them behind the vertibuck. A constant hail of explosive, superheated photons bit their barricade and sent them into chaos.

Cherry scoured through the remains of her last transport, tossing away random junk and trembling enough that her grip slipped every time. Before she could yell to see if Bubblegum was alright, she praised Luna for her find. A rusted, yet functional MLPX Novasurge Saddle burst to life from it's rubble prison. She handled a saddle grip between her teeth and yanked, crashing her on her rump. Bubblegum, instinctively speeding over, barely dodged the solar spray raining down on them. It only took a few minutes to attach her saddle and brace it for intense directional stress. Cherry winced when glancing down at her flank, where the cutie mark on her right side used to be. Instead, her black, oozing blood hissed over the charred remains of her roasted flesh. Bubblegum kissed her lips wet with slime and gagged her a few times with their snaking tongue.

"I'm okay. Hurry, and start shooting. I love you." Soothed her beloved, only to limp toward the interior of the Vertibuck and search through the mess.

This was it. She had to do it. Cherry Night Sky, a name she forsook two years ago, seemed so fitting at that moment in time. Somepony had to light up the sky and fight for what they loved. They'd never make it running. She'd never prove how she felt if Bubblegum never saw her fight. So her teeth grit behind the pressurized biting grip. Without looking back, she told her she loved her more and soared.

Her wings, though worn and beaten from the horror of the week prior, they had newfound strength. In the air and without a care in the world about being shot down, she followed the wind tunnels and twisted by the law of the skies, zooming past the steady stream of solar plasma singing her coat black. Her altitude neared the point where a mare needed a suit to feel healthy. Cherry's eyes started to twitch. Her hindlegs grew heavier and heavier till the clouds, so desperately near, grew blurrier and blurrier. Despite those damned Celestia clones setting the clouds higher than they ever were before, Cherry Night reached for the barrel below the clouds. A deep breath settled in her exhausted lungs and she whispered without regret 'this is for you, Bubblegum. it will always be for you.'

A blinding surge of white, supercharged magic struck the sky above, dwarfing her in it's brilliance. There were only two times in her life she'd ever seen an overclocked Novasurge streak the sky white. Once, when she was a child fleeing with her family in a shaking vertibuck, and the other: when they were ambushed in that very same area by the children of the old warrior goddess Celestia. Before long, she felt the sting and rip of heated sun beams tearing her legs apart. It didn't matter. When her novasurge struck the source of the spitting gattling laser, she sighed one last time.

Another three, four gattling barrels peaked out from beneath the sky. And she glided just over or just below their shots, finally sober enough to fight like she used to. It took an endless trance to handle the tremendous gravity of being fired at from all, perceivable directions. Nopony else could handle it but Cherry. Why?

Because she was a god damn legacy. She was the best of the best. A daughter of the Grand Pegasus Enclave. And nopony would shoot her down till a better Equestria laid her down to rest.

Two down. She spun in a spiral formation to avoid the lagging accuracy of the spinning streams. Cherry furrowed her brows as she fired where a long neck and a narrow snout might have been. Attacking in a horizontal manner, she slid by and sliced the head off of her third enemy. Three down. Her chest stung and felt like someone took a laser lance right between her ribs. Cherry Night Sky spat her blood away and retaliated. One, last stream of blinding supernova white put an end to the rush of battle.

That was when she finally closed her eyes and thought of that one, charming mare she met as a young officer. When that same mare, her mane long and pink with bubbly curls, showed her how to fight for what she loved. A high tide of days spent sneaking around Celestia Clone Facilities and taking them down with her bare hooves crashed over her. The lessons Bubblegum gave her on hoofboxing. The way she grinned her easy, fangy grin when she taught her how to ignore pain by focusing on her loved ones. It put a smile on her face before she crashed into the red earth and watched white snow dance around her. They were doves and wishes suspended in time as Bubblegum Grins cried over her and held her cheeks. They kissed while the world turned black.

She savored the kiss of that same, childish girl she told that same, childish story to so long ago. It stuck inside her mind as the last of her blood spilled out her shattered skull. Cherry Night Sky held her hoof and told her she'd done alright. When she was gone, she'd be there in the great beyond.

Where the bubbles go.

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