Buck’s paw wiped across the moist wall before us, clearing just enough of the black death from it to read the faded sign underneath it that read Curse Removal Ward.

We looked up the sloping hospital hallway, and my pulse started to quicken. This was it. The prospect of either being free, or me spending my life watching Jynx kill off my remaining friends waited. My future sat, waiting to be decided behind one of the four doors ahead.

“Four doors. Four of us.” Hispano chirped as she flapped her wings and hovered forward a bit. “Who wants to bet their door will have the one with a working machine in it? Say... losers have to buy the winner a meal of their choice?” As she hovered ahead, she wore a hopeful smile across her beak. “I’ll take the top right door.”

“I’ll take that bet.” Happy seemed to perk up a bit with Hispano’s challenge, striding up the slippery sloped hallway with more confidence than he’d had so far today. “Top left door’s mine. Oh, and just so you know, when I win, I ain’t a cheap date.”

“So long as we find a working machine, that’s all that matters.” Buck sighed as he turned the corner and used those powerful legs of his to follow behind Happy. “But seeing as it’s all in good fun, I’ll take the bottom right. Unless, you’d like that one, Night?” He paused and glanced over his shoulder with his normal, kind smile. He really was too kind to me...

“And that’s why I’ll kill him first, Night.”

Jynx’s voice echoed through my mind, bringing with it a spike of fear that traveled down my spine to make me shiver. Just… calm down, Night. She’s just trying to save herself, remember?

“No, the left one is fine.” I pushed back my own fear as I tried my best to follow the others up the slant.

With each step, my real hooves slipped just enough to make me wary they’d slide completely out from under me. However, as they had, my prosthetic legs served to steady me. Each step with them felt as firm as hooking my hoof on the rung of a ladder, and for that, I could almost convince myself this alone had been worth the pain I went through to lose the legs.

Almost.

Of course, I was the last to come to a stop in front of their respective door. What had once been a wooden door in front of me was speckled white with small mushrooms that sprouted through the black mold that encompassed the surface. Letting out my breath slowly, the condensation it threw on the door caused each of the small mushrooms to move, following the moisture as it evaporated.

“How fascinating.” Buck spoke up from behind me. I shot a glance back to him to find his augmented eye telescoped out so he could likewise watch the mushrooms on his door do the same thing. “I wonder… is this fungal bloom following the heat of our breath, or is it simply trying to draw the excess moisture from it?”

“Who knows,” Hispano huffed as she hefted her sister up into her talons, “and who cares! It’s time to see who’s getting that free meal!” With a hard flap of her wings, she swung herself around and used Suiza’s long barrel to tear right through the corroded door like wet cardboard.

“Damn straight!” Happy spat out as he wrapped his muzzle around the hilt of his silver sword and drew it. With a quick twist of his neck, he plunged the sword through and tore it down the soggy wood.

Turning, I watched as Buck extended a single digit on his paw. With careful precision, he scraped and cut a line down around the door’s hinges. As soon as he’d cut around the upper one, the old door tore away from the lower and flopped back into his room in a single, solid piece.

“Fuck.” Hispano spat as she poked her head through the gaping hole she’d made in the upper half of her door. “This machine is toast.”

“Hrmng.” Happy growled through his sword hilt before he swung his neck again to slip it back into its sheath. “Bleh, my room’s a bust too. How about yours, Night?”

“I think… I won.” Buck gasped as he leaned into his room. His augment flickered brightly and cast a light inside as both Hispano and Happy moved to take a look. I got myself turned around and managed to squeeze my head past his fuzzy form through the doorway. “What are the odds?” He asked as the four of us found what looked like an oversized factory-new auto-doc machine, still neatly wrapped in it’s off-white plastic packaging. Besides the heavily rusted four legs that held up the table, the bed and the complex machine itself seemed in completely spotless condition under the protective sheeting.

“That’s incredible.” Hispano cood softly as her jaw nearly hit the floor. “All this time, in a place like this, and those preservation spells are still working.” A soft purple glow of three small gemstones along the tight wrapping ebbed softly as we watched. “Buck, see if you can cut around them. Those things in a barely functional state are rare, and I mean like, five thousand caps a piece rare.”

“She’s right.” Happy blurted out as I swear I could watch piles and piles of bottle caps form in his focused eyes. “Our family has spent a fortune on stockpiling enough replacements to ensure our heavy machinery survived this long. And we’ve never seen ones in this condition since, well, probably since before the end of the world.”

“I get it, they’re expensive.” Buck deadpanned as he stepped into the room. With ratcheting clicks, his boxy forearms opened up, and all of the little mechanical arms came out, ready to help remove the sheet. “I’ll try to be careful, but...”

As soon as Buck’s paw touched the plastic, each of the three gemstones let out a bright flash. One by one, each of the gems fractured, went dark, and crumbled into nothing more than purple sand. It left the four of us in an awkward silence as we simply stared at the piles on the floor.

“Oh, what a shame, right?” Jynx offered as she trotted out effortlessly from behind the machine. “To have lasted this long, somepony must have accidentally overcharged them during the war.” Which of course, she was going to take credit for, right? “Of course not, Night. But you should know that overcharged spell talismans have a nasty habit of exploding when they break.”

Of course she’d claim she just saved Buck’s life.

“Because I did, so don’t say I haven’t done anything for you lately.” Her twisted grin pulled back as she let out a long laugh that resonated deep down inside of me. “I’m so, so very close, Night.”

“Just fuck off already!” I screamed at her, breaking the silence that had filled the world outside of my fucked up head.

“Just hold on a little longer, Night.” Hispano offered as she came down next to me and pressed herself against my side.

With the talismans a total write off, Buck didn’t waste any time dragging off the rest of the sheeting covering the machine. The old plastic sheeting itself ripped away to reveal a strange machine that looked something like an over sized auto-doc. Pale turquoise encasements and chromed metal wrapped around the sizable stable-tec branded terminal. It was bolted to the side of a wide, chromed metal bed with a pristine white padded mattress. Eight articulating arms, four from each side, stretched out from underneath and curled themselves up over the bed.

“Alright, let’s see…” Buck muttered under his breath as he ran his paws across the terminal keyboard and entered a few commands.

With a hum, the machine came to life. Each of the eight arms unfolded from their stowed positions, revealing that most held tips with different sorts of talisman studded head to them. A few of the gems were large and square, one was a spherical collection of dozens of tiny round rubies. The last pair each had a dagger-like purple jem that crackled softly with magic as they closed in on where I’m pretty sure my head was supposed to sit.

With a squeal, the movement of the arms forced the rusted table legs to sheer from the floor and the whole thing started to tip over.

Buck let out a bark of surprise and hastily grabbed out at the table. His paws clamped around it to hold it steady, and he moved his hindpaws to stabilize himself on the slick floor. All of us sat still for another moment of silence before Buck let out a sigh of relief.

“Okay…” He grumbled as he shot a sideways glance back to us. “Hispano? I’m going to need your help… working the terminal.” The motors in his legs let out a whine as he strained to keep both him and the table from slipping any further. “And Night? Maybe… get on the table so we can get this done… quickly.”

“On it!” Hispano chirped and tossed her sister over to Happy. “Here, and don’t drop her. If she goes sliding out of the building, the next thing to follow will be you.” Happy took Suiza with a begrudging grumble, but nodded all the same. With that taken care of, Hispano carefully made her way the few steps down the sloped floor and around Buck’s straining grasp. Okay, my turn then.

With light steps, trying to stick one hoof firmly down after another, I made my own trek. Stepping up next to Buck, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze past both Hispano and him to climb up. So as unfortunate as it was, it’d probably be best to climb up from the other side of the table. Continuing my walk, I counted on my prosthetics again to keep me in place. And they were doing a great job…

...right up until they weren’t.

With a squeak, the rubber pad on my hind prosthetic slipped out from under me and sent me down to the floor. My mind went into panic mode as I started to slide, and I splayed myself out and spread my wings down like an extra pair of legs. I could feel my body drag across the slimy floor as I slowed down, caking my underside in the black gunk.

“You okay, Night?” Happy called out as I came to a stop with my rear hooves pressed against the soggy feeling back wall.

“Yeah.” I grunted as I carefully got my forehooves positioned along the now clean areas of the floor my slide managed to create. Pulling myself up, there was a sick slopping noise that pattered down on the floor as the mold and algae dripped off of me. Ugh, I’m going to need to take an extra long shower the second we were done in here.

Step by step, I again made my way toward the metal table. With a shaking fetlock, I reached out and grabbed the lip of it. My eyes kept jumping from the metal lip, up to Buck, and back as I got my prosthetic hoof gripped around it as well. While I wanted to go slow, I didn’t want to strain him too much. Then again, if I hopped up too quickly, I could rip the whole table from his grasp.

“Night… it’s okay.” Buck growled as he tightened his grip around the table again. “I won’t let you slip. Whenever you… feel ready.” He nodded to me as his paws started to grip hard enough that they slightly bent the metal.

With a nod back to him, I took a deep breath and tucked my wings tightly against myself again. I rocked myself back and forth a couple of times, counting down in my own head. Three. Two. One…

With a spring from my hindlegs, I hopped myself up onto the pristine white padded cloth on the table. The black goop that coated my body smeared across the cloth as I did my best to quickly get into a position where I laid on my belly and set my head down under the crackling, dagger-like talismans.

“Alright, the system knows there’s a patient on the bed now.” Hispano spoke up as I could hear her talons get to work on the terminal. “It looks like all I have to do is enter some basic parameters for the system, but then the process itself seems to be fully automated.”

Well, at least Ping had been right about that bit...

“Is that a good thing?” Happy’s nervous tone mirrored the thoughts that had started to filter into my head again.

What if my worries earlier were right, what if this hurts?

“I thought that’s what you had a talisman to protect you from.” Jynx’s voice whispered into my ear.

What if something goes wrong?

“And I thought that’s what you had your friends here for.” Again, she acted as a surprising voice of reason here.

It helped to calm me, but that was a double-edged sword. While sure I felt better, I didn’t want her help to do so. Then again, I guess it doesn’t matter now, as that’ll be the last help she ever offers.

“I’m sure the machine built to remove curses will know what it needs to do.” Hispano’s monotone probably came with a deadpan back at Happy that I would have loved to have seen had I not clamped my eyes shut in anticipation. “Shit. It says we need to turn his augment off for the procedure.”

“No worries…” Buck spoke up. With a flicker from inside my left eye, everything went dark as it ceased functioning. The moment it did, a half dozen aches and sharp pains in my wings and back flared up, and I did my best to bite my lip to quell it for now. “There, it’s off.”

“Oh, finally.” The voice of a ghost came from in front of me, forcing my normal eye to shoot wide open. “It’s been far too long, Night Flight.”

Pushing through the inky blackness that coated the wall across from me, a charred and still slightly embered corpse stepped out into the open. The remains of an off-white coat still bubbled on some parts of him, and the irregular star that sat between Solomon’s glowing, empty eye sockets burned with an intensity matched only by a raging wildfire.

No, he’s… he’s dead. He can’t be here. It’s… it’s just a hallucination, Night! Get a hold of yourself!

The mechanical arms of the table hummed as they re-positioned themselves. Each one of the crackling purple talismans lowered down and pressed themselves sharply against my skin. There was a mechanical clunk, and four identical metal bands came up around the pad and locked my limbs down to the table. With a growing electrical whine from the arms, my heart climbed in pace with it, right until it hit a long steady tone.

I was hit by a bolt of lightning. A scream escaped my muzzle as the shock trailed up from my flank, growing in intensity and speed until it hit my mind. Everything went white as my body convulsed and the taste of copper overwhelmed me.

“Fuck, Night!” Hispano gasped out.

“Oh… fuck that hurt.” My own voice hit my ears, but… my lungs were still too seized up to breathe right, let alone speak. My only saving grace was that when my vision drained back to normal, I could see that Solomon’s melted form had been replaced by Jynx. She whimpered and held up her hooves as they started to fade away.

“No, this... this isn't how it's supposed to work!” She let out a sob as she brought her eyes up to me. The fear she felt was hard for her to mask, but boy did she try to flush it away with a look of rage. “I'm different! I'm SPECIAL!”

You're right, you were. I gave you a chance, and you made your choice. And because of that, you need to go.

Again, the charging sound building in the machine’s arms brought my heart rate up with it. This time as it peaked, I tried to brace myself for the coming shock. This was going to suck, but at least it was working.

“Get him out of that thing!” Hispano whined as I could hear her talons frantically move across the terminal keys. “Buck, remove the fucking restraints!”

“No!” Buck’s roar beat her out. The edge of the table near me twisted and bent further, and my view of things shifted slightly. “The treatment needs to run its course!”

“Let go of me!” I could only guess that Hispano struggled against Buck’s hold. “It’s going to kill him!”

The mechanical table-arms thrust each of the dagger-like talismans inward, and I felt as they punched through my skin and pressed against my skull with a sickening crack. A breathless scream was all I had time to get out before another bolt of lightning coursed through me. This time, I’m sure I passed out from it.

“Fuck… it hurts.” Jynx pleaded with me. “Stop it, please… I don’t want to die.”

I strained to open my eye as the sickening smell of copper in my muzzle mixed with the choking fumes of freshly burned fur. Smoke rose from my body as once more, the whining charge from the arms started up again. But before me stood the ragged and now somewhat dissolved form of Jynx.

You should have fucking thought about if you wanted to live before you killed Delta, you bitch...

The charge hit its peak, and again, released a bolt of lightning through me. My eye was locked open as I screamed out in pain. Even with losing control over my body, I was still able to watch as Jynx lost control of hers as well. Bits of her washed away in an ethereal wind, just as they had back when she spoke to me at Maple Station. It… it was working.

“You… you haven’t won yet.” She locked her emerald eyes on me and curled her muzzle into the most twisted grin I’d ever seen on her. With a point from her half dissolved forehoof, she turned her attention towards Buck. “I’m still in control!”

Buck let out a yelp as the motor in one of his legs sparked bright enough I could see it from the corner of my good eye. The whole table shifted as he slipped to the floor. It threw me against the bindings, and tweaked the talismans on my skull enough that my vision disappeared into a sea of stars and pain.

“No, I’ve… got you!” Buck cried out as he did his best to lay back and do what I had. His larger body helped to keep us from sliding fast, but he couldn’t stop us completely. Within seconds, I felt the table push up against, and then through the soggy wall.

“Come on!” Hispano’s fluttering wings shifted overhead as she jumped to the other side of the table. The charge in the arms started to build up again as we slid to a stop into the middle of the hospital hallway. “I’ve got this side… for now!” She grunted sharply. “Just… get him out of that thing!”

“Okay, okay!” Buck whimpered sharply as he once again clamped a paw around the table’s edge tightly enough to bend it more than it had already been. “Let me just…” One of his paws squeezed around the binding holding my prosthetic leg down. With a groan of protest from the metal strap, Buck’s paw managed to wrench it free, curling it up and off of me. “That’s one…”

“If I’m not getting out of here alive… then neither are you.” Jynx’s unhinged laugh resonated painfully in my mind as her wispy form appeared in front of me again. All that was left of her was half of her head, neck, and a single forehoof.

The charge in the arm reached its peak, and it discharged once more.

The electrical shock arched from me, up to Buck’s arm holding the table. With another sharp blast of sparks, it went limp and released the weighty machine. I couldn’t do anything but reach out for him as I started to slide away again.

“No!” Buck let out a roar as his other paw shot forward and gripped around my prosthetic foreleg. “I won’t let you go!” The ground under us creaked as he dug his one working leg down against the old hospital tiled floor, crushing the tiles to drag me to a stop just short of punching through the next wall. “His… Hispano…” He whined between heaving breaths as he looked up at her. “You need to undo… the other bindings.”

“How!?” Hispano whined as she flapped her wings and came around through the air above me. “I can’t do what you did! I mean, maybe Suiza might be…”

“Just do it!” Buck snapped at her as the whine in the table’s arms picked up again.

“It’s all over now, my dear Night.” Jynx let out her own roaring laugh as the charge reached its peak. “Victory is mine!”

Both Jynx and I screamed again as the bolt of lightning worked its way through me and up into my prosthetic leg. Her scream cut off as the rest of her body dissolved into nothingness, while my own was cut short for a different reason.

With a sharp pop, something in my leg burst, and the whole metal limb twisted. It sheared free of it’s connectors in my shoulder, and the table dropped to the floor. Buck couldn’t do anything other than look at the severed mechanical hoof still in his grip as I started to move.

The table’s mechanical arms were wrenched from my head as the whole table shifted and slid through the hospital hallway wall. Again, I think I passed out for a few moments, as in the time it took me to blink, I’d already crashed through a half dozen rooms and into another hallway. There was an ear piercing screech that filled the air, and the table shifted sharply as it smashed through a set of old pipes in one of the walls.

With a wrenching slam, the table smashed into something more consistent than tissue paper, nearly halting my slide altogether. My whole world twisted and spun as the table itself bent out of shape, tearing my prosthetic hindleg clean off, but more importantly, forcing my real hindleg to slip free from its binding.

The cracking concrete pillar the table bounced off of let out a groan of it’s own as the now twisted table started to slide across the floor once more. As it did, it twisted around and I was surprised to see that the next wall was a lot brighter than the abyssal black wall’s I’d been crashing through. Unfortunately, it was bright because it was the last thing standing between me and the fall into the outside world.

The window itself was half covered by a pool of putrid liquid, and the still rotting remains of a few wooden desks and the like. Even from here, I could see how the window bowed out from the weight, and it had to have been a miracle that it hadn’t shattered yet. Add to that a thousand pound auto-doc table and it’s pony patient? Well, I wasn’t confident that it’s luck would hold out.

“Night!” Hispano’s voice called out from up the makeshift tunnel the table had carved through the building. “Just hold on!”

The table continued to spin as it picked up speed. Just like with the charging of the arms, as I moved faster, my heart rate followed suit. Tugging and pulling, I tried to fight the binding against my forehoof. Why wouldn’t it slip out!?

As the table spun around again, I got a bit of light from the outside once more. The metal band wrapped around my hoof had been warped by the impact with the pillar, and dug against my fetlock so hard that it had sliced into it. Well, fuck…

The edge of the table hit the putrid pool, and I gasped as it dragged half of me down into the near freezing water. Arching as much as my trapped hoof would allow, I managed to get my head over the side of the table in time to see Hispano speeding into the room. She flared her wings as she passed the pillar, and raised Suiza up in her talons.

“Just my forehoof is still stuck!” I cried out, pulling and tugging in the hope that the cold water might add some sort of lubrication. Instead, I felt a painful pop from my fetlock as I strained the joint just a bit too much. Fuck, that’s really stuck in there good, isn’t it? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to cut it off to get out of here...

“Alright, just hold on and I’ll…” Hispano’s hope filled words were cut off with a crunch. The edge of the table struck the window, and the old glass finally gave out. “Night!” She screamed as the table tipped away from her.

My world flipped end over end as the table dragged me out into the open air. Reflexively, I made the mistake of flaring out my wings. There was a more painful snap from my leg as my body tried to stop falling, but the table didn’t. The bone in my leg tore through my skin as stars filled my vision. No no, don’t pass out now, Night!

Sharp bangs from above me helped me to focus. A healthy zipping noise rang out with a shower of sparks from the table as one of Suiza’s shots skimmed along its surface. My mind was torn on what was worse. Either pancaking on the swiftly approaching uneven ground, or getting torn in half by an errant twenty millimeter round.

The thickening air picked up under my flared wings, and I swear I could feel myself somewhat slowing the fall of the table. It wouldn’t be enough of course, but even with as tired and stiff my wings were, I… I just couldn’t give up. Whatever happened in the next few seconds, I would not stop fighting.

Closing my eyes, I strained and pulled at my leg with everything I had.

With another zipping shot from above, the weight dragging on my leg was severed, and the full force of the wind under me scooped under my wings. Again, I acted on reflex and did my best to pull up from my dive, arching my back and straining myself to level out. My eye shot open, and I scanned the quickly passing ground under me for somewhere suitable to land.

I gasped and torqued my wings as I sped quite alarmingly close to the rebar spiked remains of some other collapsed ruin. My wings protested as I torqued and forced them to help me turn and level out again. Sailing just over the tips of the various city ruins, I spotted a nearly clear path between a few of the collapsed buildings. It wasn’t very long, and it had the busted wrecks of a few skywagons on it, but the potholed remains of the old city street would have to do for now.

My wings twisted and cramped, nearly dropping me down into another set of jagged grey ruins. My mind tried to panic, but a wave of exhaustion washed over me. With the road in sight, I allowed myself to sink lower and lower in the air, until I was so close to it that I could reach out and touch it… that is, if I hadn’t blacked out.

My whole body hurt, and I was just so tired. It was hard to focus, and even harder to open my dust and dirt covered eye. My lungs seized and I coughed up a mix of blood and the dirt I’d become caked in from my rough landing. But, I was alive. I had managed to survive, again, while Jynx… she was finally gone for good.

“Night…” A soft voice filtered through the air, sounding so far away, but so warm.

The bright morning sunlight shifted as something blocked it out from above. My eye wandered up, and I could see Hispano’s dull black and white form above me. Huh, didn’t… didn’t she used to be brighter…?

Her beak moved, and she frantically tore the sling from Suiza, but… I couldn’t understand what she was saying. The fuzziness of my mind had moved in like the fog back home, and it blurred Hispano’s form as it washed at my thoughts like an incoming tide. Honestly, it was quite relaxing to me, and I smiled as I imagined myself back on the beach in Delilah’s town, sitting in the warm sun with my friends and family around me. I felt like I could just relax now, and maybe get some sleep...

Of course, the universe couldn’t be that forgiving.

Hispano’s form blurred in an odd way, twisting and shifting sharply. There were flashes of light, muted like everything else, but they blinked in pulses. Soft thumps that sounded like the rumblings of far off thunder followed before the blurry griffon stepped over me.

My ears rang as my head was slammed to the side by another blur. Pain sharpened my mind, and surprisingly my augment flashed on to help dull it. As my augmented eye powered on, it helped usher the fog from my mind, and reorient me with a colored and well defined world. Unfortunately, that meant it left me staring at the bony and rotten muzzle biting around my own right now. The feral ghoul over me snarled and clamped down it’s jaw, drawing a fresh line of blood to spring from my face.

“Fuck!” Hispano snapped as she placed the barrel of Baby right up against the ghoul’s forehead.

With another ringing shot, the back of the ghoul’s head bloomed out. It’s fowl muzzle released it’s grasp as the newly lifeless corpse fell to my side. I tried to lift my fore hoof up to put pressure on my bleeding muzzle, but stopped short once I’d seen the makeshift tourniquet around my blood soaked fetlock and busted forehoof.

“What… the hell is going on?” I whined as Hispano repositioned herself, helping me crawl over to the burned out wreck of an old motorwagon. The tourniquet binding my blood soaked broken foreleg made it hard to prop myself up against it, but with my other prosthetic missing, it was the best I could do for now.

“You’re little crash-landing caught the attention of some of the locals.” She grunted as she used a hindleg to help steady me before flipping Baby in her talons. She gripped the large pistol by the slide and twisted it around. With little regard, she shoved it’s grip straight into my bloody muzzle. “I don’t have enough talons for this shit, so you pull your weight and shoot some of these assholes too.”

A feral screech from the rubble pile across the old street pulled my attention. Hispano spun her other leg around and leveled Suiza at the pile. The moment we could see the milky white eyes of the ghoul pop over the top of it, she fired.

Suiza barked out a pair of shots. The first blasted the rubble below the ghoul, exploding and sending a few chunks of the old stone rolling into the street near us. The second’s result was a mystery hidden by the plume of dust that obscured the ghoul.

As the shot echoed off through the ruins of the rest of the city, both Hispano and I kept quiet. I perked my ears and adjusted my muzzle around the heavy pistol’s grips. The sounds of countless different hoofbeats from all around echoed and bounced off the old broken buildings. It made it impossible to know just which ones were real…

Goddesses, if only I had Buck’s ears right now…

“There!” Hispano shouted as she spun Suiza around towards the hulk of an old skybus.

Her sister spouted a gout of flame once again, and the rusting metal frame of the bus’s front end blossomed outward. The ghoul who’d been hiding just inside scrambled it’s rotting legs to move, and it raced towards the rear of the old wreck.

“You’re not getting away!” Hispano smirked as she tracked the ghoul with Suiza. Another pair of shots flashed from the end of the large cannon, making my hearing disappear into ringing again. The rear of the bus erupted into a cloud of rust and blasted fragments of metal that showered the road.

We both stared and waited for the rust cloud to subside. Unlike with the rubble, the rust cloud wasn’t as big, and even before it cleared, we could see the blasted half of a rotten pony slump out of the ruined bus. Hispano tipped the barrel of Suiza up and smiled as she took in the results of her expert shooting.

My gut twisted sharply, and even though they were still ringing, instantly my ears perked again. Hispano seemed to notice and looked over at me with a puzzled glance. The moment she had, from the clearing dust cloud behind her, I could see the form of a pony poised to attack. The ghoul’s body was held low, coiled and ready to throw itself at her.

I ground my teeth down on the frame of Baby as I craned my neck to the side. With a short prayer that I didn’t hit her by accident, I wrapped my tongue around the fetlock trigger. It took a considerable amount of pressure to pull the trigger, but it finally broke with a crisp snap.

Baby fired off with a bright flash, and the recoil nearly tore it from my bloody muzzle. I blinked as my augment highlighted a trail that showed the shot had struck low and to the right. It put a crack in the concrete rubble the ghoul was on, and told the undead beast that it was now or never.

Hispano let out a roar and brought Suiza’s butt onto the ground hard, tucking it against her hindleg. As the ghoul launched itself at her, she brought her sister’s barrel around and held it out like a spear. With a shift of her talon, she pulled the trigger, and Suiza let out another sharp report.

The hindleg of the ghoul evaporated, and half of it’s flank burst into ribbons of rotten flesh. The howling ghoul landed on Suiza’s barrel hard. The rotten flesh buckled, and with a squelch, allowed the barrel to impale straight through the ghoul.

Hispano gasped and tried to abandon Suiza as the ghoul slid lower, but it got its teeth around a strap to her flight cap and yanked hard. It only tore the cap from her head, but she went down to the ground as the ghoul’s cracked hooves scraped and battered her. With its prey subdued, it released her cap and opened it’s muzzle to try to bite down on Hispano’s exposed neck.

I flicked my tongue again, taking another shot at the beast. It was hard to miss at this range, but my round punched up under its jaw. Gurgles replaced the ghoul’s normal grunts and moans, and a sappy black ichor drained down from the gaping wound. But if my poor accuracy had any upside, it was that at the very least it now saw me as more important than snacking on Hispano!

It struggled to shift itself while impaled on Suiza’s awkward form. It’s hooves pushed and did their best to drag the weighty gun with it the few steps over to me, but all it was doing was letting Suiza’s long barrel slip further and further back out of it. The slow advance gave me the time to line up one last shot…

With another blinding flash, Baby recoiled and sent a round right through the left eye of the ghoul. The side of its socket, as well as the back quarter of it’s head blasted outward. The ghoul gave out a groan and looked like it stumbled. But with a twitch of it’s foreleg, it caught itself and kept coming.

Oh come on!

A meaty squelch emitted from the ghoul’s back as Suiza shifted lower. Her barrel twisted slightly, and then lifted up again. It aligned itself with the remains of the back of the ghoul’s head, and pressed upwards firmly enough to push the ghoul’s gaze down a bit. I closed my eyes and threw myself to the ground right before another tremendous pop from Suiza made my ears ring.

I didn’t need to look to know the ghoul was dead now. No, I could feel the bits and pieces of it splatter onto me from the shot. Of course, opening my eyes from my prone position, I looked straight across to Hispano’s similar form. Her talon was still tightly wrapped around her sister’s black-gore-coated trigger assembly, and she too had been splattered with enough rotting flesh that it made her feathers and fur look drenched.

“Were you even trying to kill it, Dum Dum?” Hispano growled as she worked to pull herself up. With a retching heave, she used a talon to push off a lumpy bit of ghoul from Suiza’s receiver.

Spitting out Baby from my muzzle, I decided that it was too much work to get up, and just took a moment to rest.

“Hey, that’s not fair.” I shot her a sideways glance, “I hit it right in the eye and it didn’t go down.”

“And what did we learn?” She fired back her own sideways glance at me as she tapped Suiza’s butt on the road a few times to shake loose a few more bits of ghoul.

“Again, shooting something in the face should kill it!” Seriously, it’s worked on pretty much all the other ghoul’s we’ve encountered!

“Remind me again why you aren’t dead yet, Night?” She asked with the slightest hint of a smile tugging at her beak. “Oh right, pure dumb luck.”

Oh shit, that’s right!

“Now that Jynx is gone, I wonder if my luck will get better or worse.” I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Seriously, she was gone, and I could feel that. No more curse, no more bad luck for me. Finally, I could just be myself. “If it’s better, then I guess that’s pretty much all I’ve got going for me!”

“That and you are cute…” Hispano muttered under her breath, but I think from the way she froze up and turned bright pink, she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Just… be glad you’ve got me around to constantly save your flank, mister!”

“Couldn’t ask for a better partner.” I offered and watched as her cheeks turned almost strawberry red.

A sharp whining picked up in the air, and both Hispano and I turned our gazes skyward. From over the ruins behind us, the looming form of the Remora came into view. It’s armored door was already open, and Buck was leaning out of it precariously. Even from down here, I could see the worried look on his muzzle when he spotted us. Still, I couldn’t help but smile up at him and give him a light wave with my foreleg. A leg that thanks to the tourniquet, now looked almost stark white.

“Right…” I blinked at it before glancing back over to Hispano. Holding it up to her, she cringed slightly and looked away from me. “So… what exactly happened?”

“Funny thing…” Hispano let out a nervous laugh as she pulled Suiza up close to her again. “I couldn’t hit the restraint on the table, so instead I uh, aimed for your leg... and happened to miss it anyway.”

“You’re admitting you tried to shoot off my hoof?” All I could do was blink at her. Seriously, I’m glad I got free, and that I’d thought it might have been necessary, but… seriously!? “What, one wasn’t good enough? Is it that you just wanted the pleasure of removing both my forelegs with your sister!?” A laugh pushed out of my muzzle at just how ridiculous that sounded.

“I know that’s a joke, but cut me some slack!” She snorted and rolled her eyes. “Just be glad I missed and actually hit the restraint instead of your thick skull. Sure there was just a slight clipping of an artery, but you’re fine now, right?”

With a heavy slam, Buck crashed down into the street next to us. His mechanical legs whined, and a few sparks shot out of the damaged one, but they held firm. He let out a sigh as he looked between us, but ultimately let his worried gaze hang on me.

“He will be.” Buck nodded as he approached and held out his paw to me. His boxy forearm unfolded as his medical gear unpacked itself, quickly getting to work on the various cuts all over my body. “I’m just glad you two are safe. But...” He paused as his words seemed to get trapped in his throat. “Did… did it work, Night? Is your curse gone?”

I nodded to him.

“Yeah.” With a soft sigh, I let myself relax. “It’s over. I’m just a normal pony now.”

“Nah, you’ll never be normal.” Happy laughed as the Remora touched down just behind Buck. “But that being said, I ain’t ever going to do that shit for you again. So what say we go home already, alright?”

Home. That word had a different meaning now that Solomon was dead, and my curse was gone.

It used to mean the place that I got lost in myself, wondering just who I was. It used to be the place that I contemplated just what I’d end up doing with my life. It used to be the place where I could count on my curse making things miserable for those around me. But this morning, thousands of miles away from my old ideas of home, I found myself with a new concept taking shape.

Home was where I’d go to be with those closest in my life, free of cares or the fears that have weighed on me. A safe haven to do more than just say I was a family with Buck and Hispano, but to truly be together. It was a place that I would exist without outside influence, where I could just be me. That concept, after everything I’d been through, almost didn’t feel real.

“Yeah, alright.” I closed my eyes, letting myself smile as the warmth of this new definition soaked into my mind. “Let’s do it. Let’s go home.”

With the Remora secured under the Arcturus, the hydraulics hummed to life and opened the hatch up into the weapons bay. Soft streams of cloud dribbled down into the cramped cabin, and the weapons bay lights were somewhat muted from the thick fog still drifting around the interior of the cloudship. Right, now that my mind’s been fixed up, it’s time to fix the Arcturus… as well as King.

“Here, let me take those.” Hispano offered as she pulled the remains of my prosthetic foreleg from Buck’s paw. “I’ll get this to Tofu and see if she can salvage it.” With a hesitant grasp of her talon, she also grabbed my sticky looking and black mold coated prosthetic hindleg. “And I think I’ll do what I can to rinse this off in the shower, then see if my dad can disinfect it. See you in the showers?”

“Yeah, I think we’ll all be in there shortly.” I did my best to smile as I adjusted myself in Buck’s grasp. “And thank you, Hispano. For not giving up on me back there.”

“We’ve talked about this already, Dum Dum. Back at Galloway, or don’t you remember?” Hispano smirked as she rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I don’t understand why you keep doing the stupid things you do, but it doesn’t mean I’m not going to be there by your side to help pull you out of every trainwreck you find yourself riding off the rails on. Because, even though you’re an idiot, you know I love you.” With a leap, Hispano flapped her wings hard and disappeared up into the weapons bay fog.

“Well, hopefully now there’ll be less ‘trainwrecks’ now that you’re free of your curse.” Buck’s kind words were followed by him pulling me tighter against his warm, furred chest.

“Wouldn’t count on it, Doc.” Happy gave a healthy pat on Buck’s side as he stepped out under the hatchhole. “Hispano’s right, Night’s a walking disaster. Always has been, always will be.” He paused, waiting for Buck to shift his free paw over so he could climb up onto it. As usual, he clung on as Buck lifted him up so he could hook his hooves through the hatch and climb up on his own. With a grunt, he pulled himself up and spun around, turning and dipping his head back into the hatch once more. “And while I can’t say it’s been fun, I know that together, we can pretty much handle anything that might pop up in the future.”

With a wink at me that made me feel more than a bit uncomfortable, he pulled away from the hatch and likewise disappeared into the fog.

“Well,” I sighed and pressed myself back against Buck with a smile. “I don’t know about you, but I’m about ready to take a nice, long shower before taking the rest of the day off.”

“Night, I…” Buck started with a static filled crackle from his voice cutting him off.

He tensed up slightly with his pause, and it made my gut sink. I did my best to turn myself over, and when I did, I found a look of pity coming from him I hadn’t expected. It was exactly the sort of look I’d expected to get from everypony when I first lost my hindleg, but… it was just so out of place here. After a moment, he tore his gaze from me and simply stared up into the foggy weapons bay.

“I’m sorry.” He finally continued. “I fucked up, and I’m sorry.”

“What?” My muzzle scrunched with the words as my mind tried to solve what was going on here before I bluntly slapped him across the muzzle with a stupid question. “What are you even apologizing for?”

“Hispano told me to pull you out from the machine, and I hesitated.” Buck cringed and slumped his shoulders with a sigh. “If I had acted first, I wouldn’t have had to break your prosthetic trying to keep you alive. You wouldn’t have nearly died, again, because of me. I was a stupid, selfish idiot who should know better than to endanger you!”

“You were brave.” I offered, reaching my hoof up and pressing it against his chest. “The treatment worked because your instincts to let it finish were right. Don’t doubt yourself, Buck, because I don’t. I know you’ll always do your best, for me and for anypony else.”

“I’m still sorry you got hurt, but thank you, Night.” He smiled and brought his muzzle down onto my head softly. Closing my eyes, I used my hoof to squeeze at him tightly and wished more than anything I could feel his warmth.

With a flash, my augment turned off, and the numbness in my skin slowly faded away. The stabbing pain from my healing foreleg shot through me, but I did my best to push it away as the warmth of his luxurious fur pressing against me helped to put my mind at ease. Despite the pain, this small comfort meant more to me than anything else in the world right now.

“Um, excuse me, Night?” The hesitant voice of King came down through the Remora’s open hatch. My augment flashed once again, booting itself back up as I sighed and let the numbing sensation wash over me. “I know you just got back, but… I think we need to talk.” He shifted his single slit-eyed glance from me to Buck with a frown. “Um, alone, if you don’t mind.” With a step forward, King dropped down through the hatch and landed beside Buck and I. “I can help him up once we’re done.”

“Alright.” Buck nodded and shifted us both. His mechanical arms whined as he carefully lowered me down onto my own hooves again. “Just don’t be too long. You wouldn’t want to miss out on all the hot water in the shower.” Cocking his eyebrow with a smile, Buck gave me a wink as a bit of an incentive to hurry this up.

With a thump from his legs, Buck kicked off and launched himself up through the hatch. Within an instant, he’d disappeared into the foggy weapon’s bay and left both King and I alone. Taking a deep breath, I turned my gaze to King, who let a shiver run down his oversized, bandaged alicorn body. It ran down his form, ending with him letting out a whine as his horn sputtered with magic.

A flash filled the interior of the Remora, and I blinked as the other pony in him took control.

“You simply won’t stop, will you?” The voice of King’s angry other half came out of his muzzle through a guttural growl. “Not until you’ve ruined his life forever.” Her horn lit up, and before I could move, wrapped it’s magic around me tightly. Too tightly, in fact. As she lifted me from the floor, I couldn’t move my wings, and my legs refused to move at all. “Telling him about me was the last mistake you’ll ever make.”

“Let me go, now.” I snapped at her. Okay, this was definitely unexpected, but not something I couldn’t get ahead of. “He deserved to know that you’ve been taking over and suppressing him. And you think I’m doing something wrong? Take a look in the fucking mirror, lady.”

“I told you to let him go, so he could at least be happy.” She leaned in and bared a muzzle full of sharp teeth as her one, unbandaged glowing eye burned brighter than normal. “But since you’re determined to make him suffer, I’ll just have to keep you away from him. Permanently.”

“Really?” I wheezed out a laugh as her magic squeezed around me tightly. She was squeezing the air out of me. “What are you going to do? Kill me right here?” She squeezed harder at that, making me groan as I could feel more than a few joints pop uncomfortably. “You do that... and the others will kill you... for this.”

“You’re right, it would be suicide.” She let out a laugh that sounded more like Jynx than I’d liked to admit. “So, why don’t we take this conversation outside?”

Her horn wrapped itself in a layer of overglow that was nearly blinding. With a squealing groan, the armored door to the remora began to glow with her aura. It gave out a stiff shift before something in it failed, and the whole door tore free from the skycraft. In an instant, the lighting to both the Remora and in the weapons bay flashed red, and a piercing alarm rang out from inside the Arcturus.

The deafening alarm sent a look of confusion and panic over the alicorn’s face. With a flicker, King’s magic cut out and dropped me to the floor. The mare inside him was seemingly gone, and his worried expression was left to blink at me in confusion. To his credit, it only seemed to take him a single moment to realize what had happened. Opening his muzzle, his horn flashed and again I was wrapped in his magic.

“I… can’t suppress her for long.” His aura sparked as he struggled to hold onto me and drag me off the floor again. “I can’t let her hurt you. You need to run, Night!”

Before I could answer, he screamed and used his magic to throw me out of the Remora. I tumbled end over end, out into the cold open air above Vanhoover. Shit, Night, recover, recover!

“Night, what’s going on?” Buck’s voice filtered through the panic running wild in my mind.

While still stiff, I forced my wings to flare out. The thick air and hefty breeze washing in from the coast scooped up under me and helped pull me straight. With a snap of my tail, I shifted my hind leg back and brought my tightly-bound forehoof as far forward as I could to help me steady my two-legged flight. Unfortunately, without my flight pack I was going to be struggling with any landing, but hey, at least I wasn’t a pancake on the ground!

“Not sure, but the mare inside King seems to want me dead!” I thought back to him as I forced my wings to let me gain some altitude. “I’m outside just under the Arcturus.”

A crack like a bolt of lightning split the air above me. Shifting my flight so I could look back up, I found the cloud shrouded form of the Arcturus hanging out amongst the low clouds hovering above the city. From inside of the cloud, a glow shifted and lowered down. Like a missile, a green streak shot toward me. I’d hardly had time to torque my wings and roll before she shot past me like a bullet.

Shit she’s fast!

“What do you mean the mare inside King?” Buck responded with more than a note of confusion in his tone. “Fuck it, Hispano’s getting her sister reloaded and ready to go again. Just hang tight and survive as long as you can!”

“No, we can’t kill King!” I thought back to him as I beat my wings again. I just need a bit of altitude to buy some time. “I know it looks bad, but I can’t risk him dying!”

“You said he’s trying to kill you!” Buck’s response came through with a worried whine that I desperately wanted to use as a justification to write off King with. But that’s not how this works, and that’s not who I am.

“No, I’m not giving up on King!” I shouted as I shot an angry glare back up at the Arcturus. I knew Buck couldn’t see it, but I was almost ashamed that he could suggest that after we just had a talk about how he always did the right thing. But he was just afraid, and to be honest, so was I. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to talk her out of this.”

Her horn glowed as her massive alicorn wings splayed out, slowing her down almost impossibly fast. With a twist of her own head, she looked up and easily picked me out. Her wings arced and then pumped hard as they flashed with her magic aura. Whether or not it was magic or just some sort of illusion, her wings doubled in size, allowing their massive span to practically throw her up through the air after me.

Okay, that’s just not fucking fair!

Out of desperation to avoid the green spear-headed missile shooting up at me, I forced my wings shut and kicked my legs forward. I practically stalled my flight as my body flipped into a vertical position and hung there for a moment. Keeping my eyes groundward, I looked past the incoming angry alicorn for any places to use to my advantage.

My eyes traced along the crater marked coastline of Vanhoover Bay until it landed on a lumpy pile of boats. It must have been some sort of private marina before the end of the war, and it still contained the rotting hulks of a hundred or so small sailboats and private yachts. To most pegasi, the twisted mess of masts and rotting sail rigging might have seemed like an insane place to fly towards. But to somepony as desperate as me, it looked like the perfect place to trap an alicorn in.

I flared my wings and beat them as hard as I could, picking up speed as quick as you’d assume one would in a near vertical dive. Snapping my tail again, I pitched myself down just far enough that even while straining her neck, King’s sharp horn sailed past me harmlessly as the mare controlling him screamed in frustration.

A crack of lightning shattered the air to my left, and I could feel my fur stand on end as the charge it released dissipated harmlessly. Keeping my wings flared, I decided to double my focus on my dive down towards the prismatic dirty waters of Vanhoover’s crater bay below me. With a few tweaks of my form and body, I started to carefully torque my wings to prepare to level off.

The thick, salty ocean air flowed across my numbed skin, applying an oddly satisfying pressure as more and more I called on it to help straighten me out. My lungs strained against the forces wanting to dash me down into the swiftly approaching water, and my normal eye started to dim. Adding in a slight list, I sharpened my turn, and felt as the G-forces started to pry my mind toward a state of unconsciousness.

However, if missing one leg had helped me before, missing two meant that though this was a harder maneuver than I’d ever pulled before, I’d get through it before ever passing out.

Ten meters above the water or so however, I found myself slip into a layer of air different to anything I’d felt before. Be it because of the change in humidity, or if it was just something different about the air here in the south, I cut through it’s resistance like a hot knife. It felt like I was being carried on a cushion of invisible cloud that helped to save me from bleeding off my speed like normal.

I was practically rocketing across the calm surface of the water, moving about as fast as I’ve ever gotten going on one of my dives. There was no fighting it as my muzzle split and I beamed out a smile almost as radiant as the sun. This was amazing! This is the feeling I’d always wanted in my life, the freedom of flying I’d always dreamed of.

A big red warning popped up in my augmented vision, snapping my mind back to the fact that there was a reason I was out here. The same display as I’d had in the fight with the Sergeant at Maple Station popped up, and a red dot displayed at my rear. It popped in and out of the display’s range a few times as it barely kept up with me, but it wasn’t going away.

I shifted my attention back to the swiftly approaching marina to formulate a plan. From above, it had looked like a massive birds nest, a collection of interwoven sticks and branches. That didn’t really do it justice from down here however, as now it had gone from a nest, to more of a spotty spider’s web. Thousands of old ropes hung down and were tangled between the countless masts and ships. From this angle, there were maybe five or six paths that lead through all the way to the other side, and those still had a dozen ropes and lines criss crossing it at some point.

My flight was bringing me closer to the marina with every passing second, and each second a voice in the back of my head was getting louder and louder. It reminded me of the fight with the alicorns at the amusement park up north. This wouldn’t work, Night. This plan wasn’t going to work.

Torquing my wings, I pulled up at the last second. The thick air caught under my wings and I was ripped skyward. I swiftly dumped all of my speed for altitude, leveling out and arching my flight back out over the prismatic crater bay. The massively wide wingspan of the flying green alicorn was easy to pick out, and the glow from her horn grew brighter every second. And at her speed, a few seconds was all I had to make a decision.

Okay, Night, you made a mistake. You went all in on this marina plan with no backup, and no pony coming to help for a few minutes. Hell, now you don’t even have your curse to fall back on! So now you alone have to figure a way out of this where both you, King, and the other mare come out of this alive. No pressure, Night.

No pressure…

Author's Notes:

As always, I'm super thankful for all the help TheFurryRailFan has been over these years. It means so much to always be able to rely on him to give these chapters a good look over!

And of course, a bit thanks to Kkat for creating FoE, as well as for letting us all run around in this fun little universe!