“Who the fuck is she exactly?” Icepick asked after Crescent spoke.

“The mare that prevented a massacre,” Permittivity replied simply.

“Icepick please, she’s given up a lot to help us,” I told her as she stomped over to us, that other mare following from behind, a worried expression across her face.

“Rose, she attacked an innocent town.” Icepick seemed to seeth while putting a hoof around Permitivitty’s shoulders, keeping him standing.

“Yes, but you’ve done the same. Icepick, we know about the murderer who killed a dozen of us with her bare hooves. The one that leveled a tenement to get at a bombmaker. We know the stories about the wheat-maned killer. So, I ask you, please, don’t be a hypocrite. Let me live the rest of my life, content in the fact I prevented the outright slaughter of innocents.” Icepick snorted at Crescent's words before spitting in the dirt. Permittivity nuzzled into her neck before she went forward. I couldn’t hear what was said but I imagine it was some kind of plea.

Regardless they walked off to a nearby building, probably to find a place for him to rest. That left Moon and that other mare nearby.

“So the townsponies were able to get to the train?” I asked her, knowing the answer but just looking for someone less contentious to talk to.

“They’re probably speeding back to Paradise right now. So, I guess that leaves us waiting for the Rangers to come and pick us up,” the mare said with exhaustion evident in her voice.

“Are you hurt at all?” I asked her, trying to remember my duties as I felt my own eyes droop as the adrenaline started to wear off.

“No doctor, I just really need a bath and a day off. My name is Wellbore Axis, by the way,” she replied before extending a hoof towards me. I shook it and smiled.

“I take it you met Icepick earlier. She’s an interesting mare.” I looked back at Crescent Moon, the mare who had saved us.

“Yes, she is, if a little prejudiced. I think she had the right idea though, she’s probably gonna try to rustle up some breakfast.”

“Crescent Moon, we’re gonna follow Icepick and Perm, and try to find some breakfast; you’ll be safer in a group,” I said to her. She looked up at me, before sighing.

“I may as well get my last meal as a free mare,” Crescent responded and picked herself off of the shrapnel and cordite strewn battlefield.

Moon and I followed Axis as she tracked Icepick and Perm’s hoofsteps through the sand. I mostly kept my eyes on the tall mare, making sure she was alright. I liked to think that I could understand her, but I knew in my heart that my home would always be a train ride away.

Icepick had kicked the door open to the other bed and breakfast in the town. It hung limply off its hinges.

“Our story is that it was already like this, right?” Axis said,nudging my withers with her own lightly.

“I doubt the break in will be the highest of their priorities,” I flatly stated.

“Right, just trying to lighten the mood,” Axis said quietly. I didn’t like the somber tone to her voice.

“I appreciate the effort. These have just been the longest twelve hours of my life,” I forced a smile as she looked at me.

“I feel the same. I’ve had accidents, spooks. Had a drill nearly take my head off before... just never for this long. Made you all shaky, right?”

“Yes, having a gun pointed at my face made me shake a lot-”

“Can the both of you either enter or let me pass?” We both turned to see Moon standing behind us impatiently.

“Sure.”

“Yeah,” we both uttered before walking through the door and realizing that the power was still on. Some tables were turned over, a lot of the chairs had clothing left on them, and some food and drink were still left on the dozen or so tables in the eating and pub area. Icepick and Permittivity were nowhere to be found-.

“There is clearly an additional level to this building,” Crescent told us offhandedly as she nosed through the kitchen cabinets.

“Right,” I said with a yawn. Axis glanced at the Arabian mare trying to make breakfast.

“I’m gonna help her,” Axis said to me before I set off to find the stairs. Moments later I found Icepick and Permittivity behind the restrooms. I hadn’t ever stayed the night here, so it was odd exploring this part of my now empty town. Minutes passed as I tried all the myriad doors in the place. Finally, I came across a door that wasn’t fully shut at the end of the hall.

“You can sleep if you want, I’ll watch over you,” Icepick said lightly.

“I’m just on edge. I took some stimulants; nasty old habit of mine,” I heard Perm say to her, with a chuckle following his words.

“Just try not to take them for fun is all, I’ve seen what they can do to ponies,” Icepick responded gently. I cleared my throat and knocked on the door.

“May I come in? I’d like to check on Perm,” I asked through the door. A few seconds of silence passed before they spoke.

“That’s a good idea,” Icepick said to me through the door. “The door’s not even shut, we’re kinky like that,” she finished and I felt a flush come over my face. Some part of me thought that was absurd. I pushed the door open with my magic and spotted the two of them on the bed, both were stripped down and facing each other. Somehow I knew that moments before they both had their hooves wrapped around one another. Icepick just smiled and spread herself out on the bed, forelegs behind her head. “What’s up doc?”

“Uh, food is being cooked I think?” I made sure not to look at her exposed mound as I walked over to Perm’s side of the bed. It was strange being around these two when they were nude, because they always wore at least some clothing. Even at this time I realized that these two were comfortable around each other now in way they weren’t around others. However, the idea that they didn’t mind me being around them in their vulnerable state, it was pleasant.

“So, how do you feel? I don’t have much experience with healing magic and its effects,” I told Perm, to which he flipped over onto his back. Damnit his sheath was now in sight too.

“Like Tartarus. There’s a deep pain and an itch from the spot where it entered all the way to the exit point. I’m exhausted and waiting for the stimulants I took to wear off. After that, I hope to get ample bed rest for days as my body heals.”

“That’s unfortunate, even if your plan is a good one, ‘though I’d say a week or two of taking it easy would be even better,” I said as I looked over his form. The entry wound was healed over, the only sign of it being a complete lack of fur.

“I wish I had that leisure time. As soon as I can, we need to leave for Ramsgard. We think Tegarni is up to something, something big,” Permittivity said with a sigh before pushing himself onto his side. The patch of missing fur where I had stitched up the exit wound was larger than the entrance wound. Somehow the magic had sealed the wound and done something with the silk stitching. “But that’s for the future, after your armed forces investigate this place and take us back for an interrogation.” He stopped speaking as Icepick pulled herself closer to him, and wrapped a forehoof around his barrel. Her unshorn hoof drifted over his stomach and she looked at me.

“I know it’s odd how the healing magic works. I’ll only have the memories and perhaps some scar tissue on the inside of my barrel, though if I had more of the potion even that would be left as it was ante-injury.” His hoof drifted down to rest on Icepick’s as she pulled her body up against his more fully. Upon the simple white pillow, both of their heads rested. Her nose was lightly pressed into his wavy chocolate mane.“I just wish I had had some of that when I was injured in the past. I think that being without such obvious scars would have spared me some of the trauma.”

“But scars are sexy on stallions,” Icepick said before nuzzling into his neck. Permittivity was silent after that. His muzzle contorted as many emotions fought out inside of him at once. My time was done here, these two were happy as they could be beside one another. Not perfectly happy. There was no such thing. And I wasn’t one to contribute to their happiness in any case.

“She’s not wrong, you look like the wrong pony to mess with,” I said wistfully. “I mean, Icepick doesn’t need the help, that’s before knowing she’s the mare who torched a whole army.” I laughed at that. Neither of them did though. I had hoped I would be able to understand after this. I had tasted the adrenaline, had seen ponies die. But there was still a distance between them and I. Maybe it was some weight on their withers. Perhaps it was psychic damage that occurs when you consciously take a life. Whatever it was, I guess should have been happy that I didn’t have it.

“Rosetta, I’m glad that you helped Perm and I. More than that –you led the ponies here to safety,” Icepick told me after that moment of dwelling in my own head. “After this though, I’m not sure that you should follow us, we’re only going to hurt you.” There it was. I wasn’t cut out for the rough and tumble. That’s why I had moved out here, to prove that I could be a tough pony. I could be like my father.

“I concur; don’t feel obligated to see this through. If I were a sane stallion, I would’ve taken the first chance I had to hang up my guns, clearly that would have benefitted my health, if nothing else.” Perm said, ending with a dry chuckle.

“I-I, I want to see this through. I need to see the pony that put a gun to my head and ruined my town put down. He’s clearly a threat to everypony in all of Sall’han now.”

“He always was Rosetta. I may have been the only pony to see it for a long time, but he always has been. I mean, the public egomaniacal speeches are new, but that’s just an extension of his crazy, not a new form of it.” Icepick said before sniffing a bit. “Damn that smells good.”

“Indeed,” Permittivity added. “I just wonder what Tegarni meant when he said he had the ability to make the world turn.”

“I think they’re cooking pancakes and hashbrowns, that’s what this place serves-usually served,” I caught myself halfway through speaking. I had no idea what Tegarni wanted, but I wanted to stop him. He had killed this town, maybe not all the ponies in it, but he had made a happy enough place into a place that would be picked at by vultures.

“I know what you’re feeling Rosetta,” Permittivity said before resting a hoof on my withers.

“I do too,” Icepick added.

I just looked at his hoof. Maybe I did know what they knew now. The alien feeling of a place changed irrevocably. Not erased, no weapon could do that, just changed in the way only ponies can do. Not withered by entropy and time, not destroyed in a blink by a hurricane or an earthquake. No, the smell of cordite and evacuated bowels, of fire and screams, followed by ashes and quiet.

“This is war,” I said solemnly after a moment.

“Only a taste of war,” Permittivity stated, a hitch in his breath.

“We’ll do to them five times what was done here,” Icepick added. “But you don’t need to be there, you’re better than it.”

“How was he?” Axis asked as I walked into the aroma filled kitchen.

“Exhausted,” I responded as I watched her swish around some potatoes in a pan.

“She wear him out that quickly?” Axis shot back with a crooked smile stretched across her muzzle.

“N-no, he was shot remember?” I stuttered back. My mind shifting to back to his sheath and her exposed marehood.

“That ain’t any fun. But yeah, I remember, she wouldn’t stop talking about it. Thinking back, it was probably because of him that she had the idea to blow the tanks and the rig,” Axis said with a look of mixed admiration and dismay on her face.

“She burned dozens of ponies alive because she thought her husband was dead?” Crescent Moon asked, incredulity dripping from her voice.

“Honey, that stallion isn’t her husband,” I looked at Moon’s muzzle as it twisted in shock. “They’re just really sweet on each other,” Axis finished as she dumped a bunch of potatoes onto a plate and flipped one of the pancakes over.

“They weren’t chosen by their families?” Crescent looked at Axis and I, and saw only the beginnings of a smile.

“Permittivity is an orphan, and Icepick never knew her mother, and her father could have been any one of the Rangers, I think,” I told her. She shook her head.

“That explains so much, no wonder they’re lost-” she said while watching Axis flip another pancake.

“They at least have each other, eh, I wish I had a stallion like that,” Axis interrupted her before adding, “Or a mare like that.” She laughed as both of us blanched. “Hey, when you’re stuck out in the fields with a bunch of filthy stallions all day, they rub off on you.”

“You’re depraved,” Crescent Moon said. “You’re also depraved.” She looked at me. “You’re all depraved and decadent.”

“Hey, I like giving ponies the benefit of the doubt, but you gotta concede that you can’t cast judgement till you’ve tried it,” Axis shot back while wiggling her flanks back and forth while raising her eyebrows.

“Don’t call other’s depraved for the little things, and Axis don’t tease her. She’s probably never had an environment for healthy sexual exploration,” I told both of them as I felt my stomach rumble.

“Fine. As an apology, here’s a plate o’food,” Axis said before lifting a plate of pancakes and hashbrowns into the air with her magic. She looked at me for a moment before I picked it up with my own magic.

“Now apologize to her,” I shot back as I set the plate on the counter. I knew that this was breaking all of the health codes. I couldn’t give less of a damn at this point though. Fringe benefits of societal breakdown. When the bullets fly, ponies care less about food poisoning.

“Aye-Aye Doc,” she said to me, adding a mock salute with her dirty spatula.

“Carry out,” I told her in a mock official voice. One that I had heard from Bajada one time when she was talking to a recruit she found in the street. I don’t think I did it any justice. Then again, I was using it for a dad joke.

“How many pancakes do you want Crescent?” I heard her ask as I took another bite. It wasn’t until I had food in front of me that I realized how ravenous I was. I had worked through the whole night, and I hadn’t slept for damn near forty hours. Not that the sleep I had had two nights ago was anything special. Somehow my memory magic had led me to replay Perm’s memories over and over again before I awoke. Maybe using my brain as a conduit to transmit memories changed it.

“-really, they’re made of flour, and you cover them in sugar and butter?” I heard Crescent asking Axis.

“Ayep,” Axis replied.

“And this is a breakfast, not a dessert?” Crescent shot back, curiosity and incredulity dripping from her voice.

“Yeah,” Axis told her quickly, before flipping the nearly done pancake. I looked at her before chuckling a little bit. Equines were still good, essentially. That was something that hadn’t been stripped from me.

“That doesn’t make any sense, it’s a dessert.”

“But it’s not,” Axis told her as before placing a pair of pancakes on a plate. “Here’s your dessert.” She snickered at the Arabian mare. Who in turn, just rolled her jade coloured eyes. Picking up my fork, I watched the tall mare settle against the counter. She must’ve rediscovered her hunger as well. I smiled as she dug into the rich food, my own pile of potatoes grew smaller all the while.

“So Rosetta, what part of Paradise are you from? I’m from dockside.” Axis’s voice was wrought with curiosity. Maybe it was the sheer familiarity of the question, something that was asked around this town all the time.

“I’m from stable side, my father was from dockside though,” I told her simply.

“So what brought you out here? I came out here for the work, obviously, says the filly with the wellbore cutie mark,” I looked at her for a moment.

“I came out here to be myself,” I told her simply. Her false nod was enough to tell me that warranted further explanation. “I knew that if I stayed in Paradise I would never reach my potential.”

“Alright, I believe you,” Axis said to me across the void of communication.

“You make a good pancake,” I told her simply. My stomach attested to the veracity of that statement.

“Thanks, my mom taught me well.” Axis told me simply. There was a smirk of pride on her muzzle.

“What do you mean by Stableside or Dockside?” Crescent asked inquisitively.

“Paradise was founded by two seperate bunkers; one was filled with personnel and sailors from the naval base, and the other was founded by the tourists and people living in the resort town. When they opened up, work was done to resettle the town and get it functioning again. Basically, dockside is the north side of the city, with most of the docks and maritime activity. A lot of those sailors grandchildren still work on the sea and run the desalinators, hence the name dockside,” I told her in as few words as I could.

“I guess it was naive to assume you were from a monolithic society,” Crescent said after a few seconds.

“Nah, we got the stable side softies like him, and the tough ponies like me,” Axis told her before flipping her own pancake onto it’s plate with practiced magic. I just rolled my eyes. She wasn’t quite wrong. Neither was she right.

“Yet you live harmoniously?” Crescent asked with renewed interest.

“Mostly, I mean, everyone over the age of eighteen elects representatives to the council. The council decides the budgets of the Rangers, the health service, and the corp of engineers.” My words struck her like a baton to the knee.

“You’re very different than your people to the south.” Crescent Moon looked away, out the narrow window and into the empty dining room. “You speak the same language, you look the same, you even bring the same technologies to bear on our land…”

“It’s freaky, I know. You’re just as weird to me as Icepick,” Axis told Crescent with a faint note of humour. I heard a growl from Crescent.

“Don’t compare me to her!” she yelled back. Her body tightened and she turned to face Axis.

“You wanna fucking go?” Axis replied, her own body squaring up to fight the other mare. “I’ve been fucking nice to you, so listen to me and get it through your warrior princess mind. You and her are both violent fucking mares, hell bent on being right with yourself. The only difference is the flag you wave and whether you’ve slept with no stallions, or a lot of them.” Crescent sneered in response. “No, I just made you a nice fucking breakfast, don’t ruin it by being sensitive to a few words.” Crescent and I stood there stunned when she finished and just went back to her food.

It was silent as we finished our food. I knew I wasn’t the only pony that had gone through a lot. Minutes passed as the silence continued, until I heard the sounds of other ponies walking in the door. I felt the urge to duck instantly, to hide. With a conscious effort I managed to not do that. To stand tall and to watch as some of the oil ponies came back in.

“We saw some trucks driving in from the north, they’re probably the Rangers,” one of them said to us before loudly sniffing the air. “You make breakfast without us?”

My eyes drifted downwards as I tuned out. We had saved the ponies, yet the town was gone. My thoughts wouldn’t stop circling that notion. Worse still, I would be asked to answer for what happened. I had been the one to talk to the strange ponies upstairs. I hadn’t realized what their appearance had foretold… Even they had been horribly surprised that someone else had crossed the desert. Maybe it was because none of us belonged here. We weren’t desert dwellers, Icepick came from green lands, Permittivity came from cold lands, and I was from a place that had been made green by our own hooves. They had made a journey that was thought impossible, or at the very least pointless.

Now we knew that those blank spots on the maps that we had left myopically unfilled had monsters in them. We had made the same mistakes as our ancestors had. Long ago they had made maps and filled in the unexplored areas with monsters and serpents, to explain why they couldn’t cross the deeper seas. Except, by crossing the sea, invading this other land and setting up shop, our much more recent ancestors had created those monsters. The image of Icepick firing her missile launcher into the bank filled my mind again. A dark thought crossed my mind: Arabians were just the closest threat in the sands beyond, and not even the most dangerous.

Someone tapped me on my withers, I looked over to see Axis giving me a curious expression. “You look you saw a ghost.”

“Only the ghosts of the past,” I told her as the rest of the oil ponies, shuffled in and began to make their own breakfast. I was sure that their pancakes would be inferior to Axis’.

“Yeah, you know what the cure to those are?” Axis watched from the corner of her eye as Crescent slid past her and made her way up the stairs. She probably didn’t want to around the armed rowdy oil ponies.

“Enlighten me?”

“Doing stuff in the now; the present isn’t dead. Set in stone. Whatever words you wanna use. Drinking, working, sleeping-” she pulled herself forward as she starting listing things, pausing as her muzzle ended up next to my ear. It twitched as I heard her take in a deep breath. “-Rutting.”

I balked and she watched me back up a pace while laughing softly. “Damn, Icepick was right,” Axis told me with that same loose grin on her face. Her imperfect teeth were framed by a boxy muzzle for a mare. Her emerald eyes made all of that work though. For the first time I really looked at this mare. She was beautiful through all the sweat and pain she had just endured. Just like a dockside mare, my mom would probably say.

“About what?” I managed to choke out as I felt energy and nervousness return to me for the first time in what felt like years.

“A few things. She’s wrong about a lot too… ” She stopped as everypony in the place heard the deep rumble of a large engine echo off the buildings down the street.

“I see,” I mumbled.

“You don’t know how much she talked about you two.”

“Us two?” I asked.

“You and funny accent,” Axis told me with what started as a laugh before falling to a more somber tone. “I’d be surprised if she didn’t jump his bones up there,” I flushed consciously as I remembered seeing them fully unclothed together up there. “You didn’t walk in on them did you?”

“No!” I paused and looked at the floor. She half smiled, half questioned me. “I’m like ninety-percent sure I didn’t.”

“Ninety?” Her eyes glowed at that, somehow making me squirm by thinking about those two attractive ponies going at it was the funniest thing ever to her.

“Neither of them look flustered, and I would’ve expected Permittivity to show some embarrassment,” I finished and stopped myself before I embarrassed myself with the defensive blubbering. I heard footsteps come around the corner, which I assumed were just the steps of the miners-

“Why would Perm be embarrassed?” Icepick asked me with a yawn.

“Uh,” my mind blanked, it really wasn’t any of my business.

“We were wondering if you jumped his bones up there,” Axis said in a deadpan tone. She looked at us with a confused expression for a moment, before looking at me intently.

“Honestly I’m a little pent up, and you didn’t help matters two nights ago, so the thought crossed my mind. But, he’s hurt and currently sleeping like a rock. Besides, I might just take things a little slower this time around, maybe act a little like the rest of you prudes-” She finished with a slight smile. There was a warmth sloughing off of her…

I would’ve just been the latest in a long line of rolls in the hay. I didn’t want that. Icepick was used to using ponies, and being used by them. But she could be better than her.

“Watch who you’re calling a prude! Us oil ponies invented Ponoleum Jelly,” Axis said with a smirk and flick of her tail.

“I’ll give you the benefit of the debauched,” Icepick replied with a smile and a nod towards the other mare. “Rosetta on the other hoof still blushes when giving mares examinations.”

“I was checking you for blisters and sunburns, and yet you kept talking about the cold steel of the speculum while smiling like a wolf! That isn’t a normal examination!” When I met both of their eyes, I realized I was fighting a battle that was already lost. I was the shy, cute stallion. No amount of frontier medicine or living like an ascetic would change that. Though some parts of me blanched at that thought, another wondered if it wasn’t a good thing in a way. It had almost certainly gotten me together with Bajada. Maybe it was time to make peace with it. Having been through a battle, and my entire life had been uprooted by the will of others. I was lucky to be alive, but to realize that I was refuge now… Well, it kinda taught you to not sweat the small stuff.

“I would’ve checked to see if she was in heat, personally,” Axis shot back. Icepick gave her an odd look.

“I have an implant, I don’t get those, and can’t really get knocked up.”

“Lucky mare, I have to take potions to not pop out a foal when I’m in heat,” Axis shrugged before looking back at Icepick with worry in her eyes. “It’s reversible right?”

“Of course, it wouldn’t make sense for the Rangers to sterilize themselves.”

“You only have them to keep the gene pool viable,” I said, piecing it all together.

“Keeping future Rangers from having fifth legs or missing muzzles is kinda the point, and worth it.” Icepick said before looking at the ponies cooking. “I did kinda come down here to eat.”

“I can help ya out, I’d like to show you that if even I can’t shoot worth a damn, I can at least flip flapjacks with the best of them,” Axis replied before motioning Icepick to go over to her.

Rangers seemed to think of things in a scarily pragmatic way. Everything was a means to facilitate the end.

They had a different name for it. Icepick had used a different one, the five year plans. The rebirth of industry, the renaissance of science and the repopulation of Equestrians. Those things in a vacuum were laudable goals. It takes a strange kind of pony to say that they would rather not have them. The possibilities swirled out before me. The idea of a military conquest seemed eminently plausible… Paradise wasn’t on a war footing, and we lacked their pre-war armaments, if Icepick’s power armour was anything to go by. Most of our old war material had been bent into plowshares long ago. Our military was a glorified police force compared to theirs. And if the rest of the rangers were anything like Icepick, we wouldn’t last a week, if they went after us today.

But, that would never be their plan. War kills too many, clearly, and they enjoyed the idea of rebuilding Equestria. A war against us would be a dire thing, to be avoided to by their leaders.

“Unification day,” I spoke out loud. I saw a number of the oil ponies look over to me. “I’m just thinking out loud. But I have a question for you all? Do you like the mare in the powered armour?”

“She did more than her fair share to help barbeque those fucking Arabs,” A large sunbaked stallion said to me.

“I mean, she led us out against the rest of those fucks, armour or not, that takes fucking guts,” another said.

“I know you did your part Doc, but you didn’t charge ponies with guns when your gun jammed,” came a voice in the back. I had had a gun pointed at my head many times, but I guess these ponies didn’t believe that required as much valour.

“Would it surprise you all to know that there’s an entire city full of ponies like her?”

“Are they all hot amazons?” A stallion who had been burying his muzzle in a pile of pancakes yelled out. Hoots and hollers rang out among the tired ponies.

“Not all of their mares are as big as her, and they have stallions too, but they’re largely warrior ponies that descend from Equestrians too-” I was cut off by a burly mare wearing stained trousers and smoking.

“You’re saying I can get one of them in stallion too?” Her question was met with even louder laughs, as one of her friends smacked her on the flank. “It was a serious question, if I start walking south, can I get a hot buck with that same accent?”

“I would recommend taking a ship instead, but conceivably yes,” I told the grinning mare. “I would be irresponsible if I didn’t tell you that they don’t really believe in the same things we do,” my words caught their attention. “Southern Rangers don’t vote in elections, their military and their government is the same thing, and well, they treat the Arabs like shit.” For a few seconds the assembled ponies evaluated what I said.

“How many of them are there? And how many Arabs?” The first stallion asked me, his brow furrowed in thought.

“From what she’s told me, they outnumber the Rangers by a lot.” I answered honestly, because the truth would be known eventually, and I needed to know right now where these ponies’ hearts and minds stood.

“I don’t blame them then, if I had a bunch of sword swinging savages who hated my guts outside my window, I wouldn’t hesitate to put them in their place.” The mare from before answered honestly. “Honestly, if the executive council doesn’t vote to go to war against the Arabians after this, I’m gonna see if I can’t join those ponies down south. At least they’re fighting these fuckers.”

“No, no, they’ll vote for war. If they don’t avenge this massacre then we’ll vote in a new council.” That opinion was widely shared if the sense of the room could be believed.

“They’re Equestrians too, and if it comes down to it, we need to support each other.” That too got agreement.

“That’s what I thought,” I said to the assembled ponies, the harbingers of what was to come. I nodded at the pony who had heard me say the words that had begun this whole experiment. Time to ask the important question. “This sounds a lot like what ponies said before unification.”

“Maybe it does, I wasn’t there. But Is that a bad thing?” The mare who had first brought up strong warrior stallions spoke up once again. “I don’t know more than one Southern Ranger, but she seems solid enough. And well, would unifying necessarily be a bad thing? Maybe we shouldn’t jump right into one government, but allying, that’s a reasonable first step. I’m just glad we’re not alone out here.”

“We were taught that we were the last pillar of civilisation,” I said to her, but mostly to myself. “They thought the same thing. We both thought everyone else had perished in the bombs.”

“Has anypony ever tried to cross the ocean again?” Someone spoke up in the back. “How do we know that those first reports weren’t over blown, we know that there were lots of stables, and military bunk-”

“We’ve listened on the radio before, and it’s always been dead silence. Besides, if ponies had rebuilt there, they would’ve made the trip over. We still have the fuel civilisation needs.” And from there the debates continued. I had heard enough, even if the bevy of theories and pre-war history knowledge displayed did reflect well on our education system. They were as intelligent and broadly self-interested as any good democratic constituency could be, needed to be, and yet they didn’t realize the power dynamics involved. Icepick’s cause was something they could be amenable to.

In the face of this, in the face of the war to come… and the deal with the devil we would collectively make. No, that we would vote for.

The brick sailed through one of the few windows that hadn’t been ravaged by the fighting. Under normal circumstances I would’ve paid good money for what I was about to loot, but these were not normal circumstances. My best friends and dearest clients were ponies from another world, figuratively and literally, respectively, my home was a bombed out husk and I knew now that the world of my childhood would never be the same.

My aim was true. The broken brick sailed into the plate glass window of the general store. Behind the counter, at the top of the shelf was a bottle of the same type that I had given Icepick and Permittivity as a present. There was a certain poetry that I would be taking one as I left this place. Some bitter part of me saw thought that if they had never stumbled into our town, we would’ve been left alone… But I pushed those thoughts away as soon as they popped into my conscious mind.

The bottle opened with a rough tug from my telekinesis. As I lifted the bottle up, the brown liquid absorbed the light flowing into the building as the sun rose into the sky. If I had been a more routine alcoholic, this would be a reward for saving all of those ponies, or living through the dangers involved in that. I didn’t believe in rewarding behaviour, because at base I didn’t believe that ponies had a choice in the matters that defined them. Some magical, causality defying spark of magic in the minds of ponies had always seemed odd to me. Moreso that most believed in it. No, I wasn’t rewarding or denying my achievements. Whatever that meant. I was merely calming my nerves, giving euphoria to a brain that sorely needed it.

If anyone could self-medicate, it was the pony who wrote the prescriptions right? Physician heal thyself!

The bottle tipped back in my loosely held magic, and the burning, barely aged liquid tore a swath down the back of my throat. It was exactly what the doctor ordered! I chuckled dryly at my own joke as I started my walk to the outside of the place. Only a block or two away was the inn where everypony else was staying in. Everyone there but Crescent Moon was in company that understood them. And even then, Permittivity knew what it felt like to be an outsider. Her and him shared more than that though, I knew it.

The sounds engine noises became louder and louder, even as I drank and stumbled down the street. My hooves kicked up amble dust in the waxing light. I would venture to guess that it was around nine in the morning by now. And so it was that when I turned the corner to the inn, I saw the large military trucks parked outside of it, slowly guiding the ponies out and into the covered beds.

One of the rangers at the doorway looked at me, before blinking underneath their goggles and face cloth. They began bounding after me, the only thing my mind could pick out about them was the fact that they were rather short. Some part of me picked up on that fact, just as they made it within a pony’s length from me, skidding to a stop and throwing up coarse sand with their booted hooves. With a swipe from their hooves they pulled down the cloth from their face.

“You look like shit,” she paused after making that wonderful pronouncement, “but you’re breathing,” before I could say anything in response she pounced on me. Bajada wrapped her hooves around my neck and squeezed as if to make sure I was real. “I’m so sorry we didn’t get here sooner-”

“I’m not even sure you all could’ve turned the tide.”

“Are we talking about me and the rangers? We’re the badasses,” Bajada began to start on one of her stories of valour. By now, I could see through it. She had fought some bandits and the desert itself. She hadn’t gone fetlock to fetlock with an enemy army.

“Those oil ponies deserve medals,” I told her. “But we only made it through this thanks to the help of a few outsiders.”

“Lightning ass and big blondie?” She asked me derisively.

“You don’t know them, hell I barely know them,” I told her. Out of everypony I knew, she was the only one that would voice those same gut instincts that I suppressed. She was a base mare.

“But I know that they’re good ponies, and that they did their best in the battle a few hours ago. Can anyone else you know sacrifice themselves to drop a bolt of lightning from the skies? Would anyone else you know try to trap their opponents in a rigged oil field… Would anyone you know sacrifice themselves and their legacy to help ponies that hated them?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? How drunk are you? ”

“Crescent Moon? Didn’t you find her? Second of all, I’m not drunk, yet.”

“No, we didn’t find a Moon, and yeah, sell me some fucking sand, it wafting off your breath like a dockside drunk,” Bajada finished as my mouth fell open. She had slipped the nest. Not that I blamed her. And good luck finding her. I sighed and looked away. Before pulling my bottle from my coat again and taking a pull right in front of her.

“Don’t fucking tell me you’re still blaming me for everything,” Bajada said to me, before pulling the half empty bottle from my magic and smashing it with her booted hoof.

“No. I’ve matured a bit. You’re only a symptom of greater maladies,” I laughed at her as I felt the first of many tears begin to stream down my cheeks. The accumulated sweat and crud began to flow with those same tears. “It’s all fucked, and you don’t even know it yet. None of them realize it yet. None of us anyway,” in my mind Permittivities drunken words called back to me. He understood power. Maybe he was right, and all other morality was nothing more than a fairy tale to let ponies live with themselves, everything that was necessary could be apologized for in the future. After the memories of the dead fade, and the victors write their histories… All the matters is that someone is left alive to write.

As Bajada balked at me and the remaining ponies in sight watched as she tensed up like she had been struck, I smiled. I may not have lightning bolts or fancy armour, but I had something I had been given by a stroke of chance. I knew the fulcrum from which this whole thing would lift. The idea that I was a confidant and council to the two transients that already changed so much, and I know would do more than shake things up, well, I would have to guide them. There was a better way. I had been brought up right, and if anyone was built to steer things, to save ponies, it would be me.

No-one else knew what I knew, or could change what others knew- Maybe war was necessary, but I would do anything to limit the suffering… I had to.

Permittivity came to mind again, as did Icepick, they were made for each other, and I was made to shape them into the ponies I knew they could be. It was almost enough to make a rational stallion believe in irrational things-

“-get on the fucking truck before I have to drag you home to your mother personally!” Bajada finally broke through my reverie. Mentioning my mother helped her, the bitch knew what buttons to hit-

“Fuck you, I’ll get on the damn truck, but only for my friends,” my words mollified her, even as I felt that familiar, comfortable warmth fill my form.

“You’re gonna feel really shitty tomorrow,” the mare who had broken my heart said. My smile wavered a little, but only a little.

There was work to be done tomorrow, and what was work without a hangover. Mildew had taught me well. Even if it had taken a little while for me to understand why he was the way he was. The world broke weak ponies. The world broke the good ones.

When I entered the truck, I had many eyes on me. There was still ample enough room, and casks of water to drink. I assumed that these ponies knew how to hydrate themselves. Still, I ambled over to Icepick and Perm, who had found the corner nearest the cab to lay down in. They gave me concerned looks.

“Are you worried about Crescent too?”

“Not nearly as much as we’re worried about you-” Permittivity began to speak but Icepick interjected.

“You smell like the inside of a sadness factory that was sprayed with whiskey, Rose. I know you’ve been through a lot, but this isn’t the time to get sloshed.”

“Yeah, tell that to me half an hour ago, and to my harpy of an ex,” I rambled out before smiling broadly. I much preferred the warmth of alcohol to the sober heat that would have surrounded me otherwise.

“Oh, you’re calling me a harpy now, that’s very fucking original!” I heard Bajada yell from the end of the vehicle.

“You what’s not fresh, your rotting cunt!” I yelled back to the astonishment of many ponies. Where had this stallion appeared from? What happened to the doctor? Did he finally snap, hours after the moment of greatest stress?

“She didn’t say fresh.” Axis said flatly from the darkest corner of the truck-bed. She didn’t look at me. Bajada was smoking and didn’t give the slightest shit about my retort. Icepick and Perm were fiddling with the pipbuck attached to his foreleg. I just laid down beside Icepick’s powered armour and waited for my body to fall into an unconscious stupor. The truck began to move. Moments passed and my vision began to swim. I knew I wasn’t going to be conscious for a whole lot longer. Exactly to plan. But something familiar began playing from Permittivity’s Pipbuck.

"Hello ponies of Paradise, it's your host, Disc Jockey! But as much as I want to open today’s broadcast on a lighter note, we have to talk about the subject I told you about at seven. The attack on Copper Springs." It was him. The mudslinger. The Propagandist.

"Well, the stories are filtering through from the first train load of ponies to make it back to Paradise. 'They came out of the desert.' ‘They just killed and killed’ 'The Steel Ranger steel ranger fought for us.'- Wait, a Steel Ranger?” He paused and after an audible shuffle of papers he cleared his throat. “Okay folks, I read over the paper that was teleported onto my desk and yes, it does say Steel Ranger…” He continued on with the news report, focusing on the unprovoked nature of the attack and the way potential political ramifications. Eventually he got made it to the end of his ramblings. “I don’t know what any of it means, even if it is my job to speculate. Every piece of information is still making more questions than answers. All I can say is that these will be dark times. We all know the lessons of history, the old world was destroyed by war. We’re the last city in the world. We have a responsibility to carry the torch of civilization. Finally, as with any news story, if anyone knows something interesting, a perspective left unseen, some detail that only you’ve noticed, you can call us at our number, or visit our offices. Anything that adds colour. And with that, I’m passing the torch to Salient Query.”

“Why is he talking if he doesn’t really know anything yet?” Icepick asked the assembled ponies.

“It’s their business model, the first ponies to get the news out have an advantage, even if the details are scant,” Axis told her before pulling out a hidden cigarete and staring at it.

“So, is does he work for your council?” Icepick asked before motioning for Axis to give her the cigarette. Permittivity snorted and pressing the tip of the it to his horn with his magic. After a brief blue spark and a telekinetic passing of the torch back to Axis Perm turned to say something to Icepick. Before he could though, she gave him a blink and you’d miss it peck on his cheek. The scarred stallion looked down, though I could tell he enjoyed it.

“No, he doesn’t work for the government, he works for a radio company. All they do is get a license and try not to curse to much, or say ridiculously untrue things about ponies and they’re good.” Axis told Icepick before passing the cigarette to her. I would’ve said something about the health effects of tobacco, but that would’ve been hypocritical given I was on the edge between alcohol poisoning and one hell of a hangover.

“That’s really weird, I mean, we have news reports and a station that plays music, but they’re run by a special division of the rangers.” Icepick’s once again seemed so naive, but that was an illusion, if anything she was better at adapting to a changing world than anypony I knew. If anything she was just alien enough to be exotic, and just close enough in demeanor to Paradise ponies to be intriguing.

“Up north we have independent presses of which censorship, especially during times of war, is common. At least that’s what you determine when you compare the illegal press releases to what’s allowed,” Permittivity said to Icepick and Axis, he had gotten over the very public peck and was back to bring some of that same dynamic into the mix. He wasn’t the kind of pony make others laugh, and he was always more distant than Icepick was. Whether that was some inherent quality of his or an side effect of him hiding his true origins was another open question. The two of them together though, between their magical link, similar backgrounds, and their (often volatile) chemistry with one another made each other work. Co-dependency is when you need another pony to make you feel normal, maybe what they had was they needed each other to become their best selves… They were powerful ponies, and they made me question whether there was some grand plan, but I couldn’t forget that they were ponies.

I couldn’t forget that they were driven by hopes and dreams as much as anyone is. Even if they had both snuffed out many people with dreams of their own. They were levers to move the world, I was sure, but I couldn’t forget that they were pones.

That was the last thought I remember before I slipped beneath the surface.

Author's Notes:

Sorry about the wait. It's been rough, but the next chapter is already halfway done, and that one will have a little extra Interlewd...

If you really liked it, feel free to pm me here or on discord.
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