The restaurant had a calm to it. I have a pet theory about that. I think that when you know that the next moment is going to involve ponies pissing themselves, you really start to appreciate the serenity of normal existence. The happy, yet empty expression on Reflex’s face was a ruse. He was a better actor than I.

We had been sitting there, waiting for someone to make a move for five minutes. The glances at their weapons had stopped occurring. They must have finally felt confident in their guns’ actual existence. To be fair, small arms were kind of illegal, so the odds of them having any extensive practice with their guns was slim.

It was only as our server came towards us that they made their move. The buck with the bulge on his side raised a hoof, pushing against something right under his hood. I could only see a slim bar slide into place just in front of his muzzle. The fellow beside him had turned his body, going for a pistol in his coat. For an amatuer, going for your mouth-held gun with your mouth makes sense. For someone who’s been trained, the idea of losing sight of an enemy would make them gag, or at least it would for me.

We were in the right; these Arabians were committing a capital offense just by having these weapons in their possession. Arming and aiming them at Rangers? That was a summary execution. Reflex Sight flicked his eyes in their direction.

“Well, you did take me to dinner first,” I said quietly. Lidded eyes and a throaty tone sold it for what it wasn’t.

The mouth-holder steadied himself. I could swear that he was shaking under that loose barding. We took that moment to move our guns closer to our mouths. Our dark little alcove would create a reverberation effect when the waves from the gunshot hit the walls. Ear protection is worth its weight in rage, sometimes.

Reflex was faster than anyone there. His pistol was drawn and aimed in less time than it took for me to get mine free from the holster. His gunshots were rapid. Bullets tore from the gun’s barrel only to slide into the buck with the mouth-gun. His body received three of the five shots spat in his direction. However, this did jack shit to the guy right next to him. Whatever kind of automatic gun he had was pretty powerful. He unloaded the thing, and the rapid but distinct sound of Reflex’s pistol were drowned out by its roar.

Reflex rolled out into the space between the table and his seating. The battle saddle user had no training to compensate for something as simple as hitting the deck, so all of his lead was buried in the wall where Reflex had sat half a second before, and just about everywhere else. I think a scribe would have said that the slugs were buried within a large probability cone; I’d just say that he lacked experience, not that he’d ever get any. The moment that his gun ran dry, he froze. It was like the implications of a finite magazine had never actually occurred to him, or maybe it the chaos that had been let loose in the restaurant had gotten to him. It wasn’t the screams that did it, I doubt that screams of revulsion and surprise were new to him. Ramsgard was a tough place. It was the knowledge that he had caused this, that people were going to have nightmares about this. Having a just cause is good and all, believing in a justification is a nice luxury, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is ready to become a killer.

As I moved my head and pulled the trigger with my tongue, I didn’t really think about what I was doing. Three times my shots disturbed the air, and the fleeing patrons, just a little bit more. He hit the ground, having been injured severely. If he didn’t receive medical attention in the next few minutes, he would surely die.

It was only after I glanced to Reflex that I felt my adrenaline rampage abate. He had a bullet wound, complete with exit hole, through his shoulder, and a series of deep grazes across his barrel.

My brain built a full train of thought as I walked swiftly over to the combatant Reflex had shot. Amid air that reeked of urine and cordite I realized something pretty odd.

The infirmary wasn’t in the best shape, but honestly, if I held up as well as that place, I’d be pretty well off. Reflex hadn’t been hurt real badly, and an application of healing spells and a couple days off duty would put him right. No, the real surprise was the Arabian that Reflex had shot up. The stallion had left a mess on the floor, but he was breathing, so I’d obtained some help to carry the both of them to the nearest clinic. Getting volunteers is a lot easier when you have a gun between your teeth.

The one that I had shot died on the way to the clinic, but the other was luckier. Feeling Reflex’s blood flow onto me as I carried him was unsettling; being that close to a bleeding friend wasn’t something that I had ever felt. Getting to the nearest infirmary didn’t take that long. That’s why the Arabian had lived, but weirdly, I couldn’t really remember it.

As I waited for the surgeons to finish operating on the Arabian, I sat beside Reflex’s bed. The poor guy had a line of stitches up his side and a bloody hole packed with gauze in his shoulder. He had fallen asleep about halfway through our trip back. It startled me when I heard him clear his throat.

“That was sure was fun, Ice,” he said clearly. There wasn’t that much painkiller in him; Ranger doctors were the ‘tough love conquers all’ kind of ponies.

“You could say that, but you’d be wrong,” I murmured before getting to my hooves.

“Icepick, Icepick, you’ve always had this weird fixation on my health…” he said, pausing for comedic effect. I trotted forward and slugged him in the shoulder. “At least, I thought you did,” he mumbled before whimpering.

“Wrong shoulder, wuss,” I said to him with an unamused tone. He chuckled lightly at the words and my eye roll.

“So you’re fine. I mean, you’d think the one with the flying metal cutie mark would be the one to get hit with flying metal. But no, you just hang around making sure that I don’t die.” He spoke like he was gossiping to another Ranger.

“I just like having you around is all, even if you are the kind of buck to wear sunglasses indoors.”

“Thanks, you’re a better friend than most. But, uh-” He looked down at one of his forelegs before moving it closer to his eyes, wincing in the process. “It’s like, late O'clock. I’ll be fine, go rest. I know I don’t weigh that much, and gunfights don’t really phase you, but you should still try and get some rest.” He really wasn’t wrong, but I still had a job to do. I had saved the Arabian’s life, and I was going to interrogate the fuck.

“You’re probably right. I’ll see you soon, and next time we eat a meal, it’ll be at the Mess hall, where the most dangerous thing is the way they burn the soup,” I joked, turning away.

“I can’t wait. Night, Ice,” he said, a tone of accomplishment glazing his voice. I spun around quickly and pressed my lips to his forehead. For some reason, it seemed like the right thing to do. Getting lined back up with the doorway was accomplished just as quickly, and with a quick flourish of my tail. There were some moments when you wished your body didn’t smell like fear and cordite. Then again, the infirmary reeked of it as well, and it was doing pretty well.

He saw me leave. Letting an injured friend have some peace of mind… That was what mattered in the situation, or one of the things that did. It didn’t take a long time to reach the OR door. Nothing happened for a long time, the only other pony in sight being a knight third rank who refused to acknowledge my existence. I stood beside the door for two hours, before two ponies came into view.

The two mares were wearing uniforms that I had only seen on a few occasions. They were wearing light barding, and they were glancing at me with interest. A tan coloured mare stepped in my direction before looking me in the eyes.

“Knight second class, Icepick, correct?” Her voice was crisp and precise.

“Yeah, what department are you from?” I returned her look and stood just a little straighter. I had a head and half on this mare. The unicorn looked unimpressed. I guess the horn added a little height, and a superiority complex.

“Department of Internal Affairs, or the Constabulary, as you might recognize, would be an accurate enough description. Now, in the purpose of succinctness, my name is Agave Tart. This mare next to me is the head coordinator of our department's counter-terrorism unit.” Agave turned to face her superior.

“Thank you for the introduction, Lieutenant. Now, I have a few questions for our knight.” The older mare recognized the lieutenant before focusing her attention on me.

“Ask away, I’m just waiting for them to get done,” I told her with a hoof briefly pointed at the OR’s door, telling her what a I really meant.

“You have no right to interrogate, Knight. That would be a multifaceted breach of the law. With that out of the way-” I steamed. This breeding bitch. But I held my anger down. “-let me ask what happened. In detail.”

I told my story to the two of them, one listening and watching my face like a bird of prey, the other transcribing my words even as a recorder listened away from one of her barding pockets, ‘to garner the highest possible fidelity’. By the time I recounted the series of events I could feel my adrenaline rush beginning to cut out.

“Thank you knight, I do sympathize with you, if I were a knight, I would want to wring the answers to my prescient queries from the neck of an Arabian. But, alas, the laws we maintain are the laws of old Equestria. In any case, it says that you bypassed your language classes on a technicality.” She finished with a polished sounding speech.

I didn’t enjoy being compared to a barbarian. Then again, she wasn’t really wrong. I did kind of plan on going in there and beating the shit out of him as soon as I was able. Still, the idea held some appeal to me. Who really follows the law when their friend was almost killed. When some asshole fucker who shouldn’t have even had a gun was the one who had done it.

“Icepick, how exactly were you planning on speaking with this stallion?” That question got me. I hadn’t really thought about that, I just felt that it was guaranteed that when you started breaking bones they’d always talk. It wasn’t inconceivable that I could’ve had a translator in there with me.

“I would’ve had a translator in there with me,” I responded about two seconds after her question.

“Yes, I’m sure. If we need any other questions answered, we’ll contact you or your commanding officer. For what it’s worth we’re pleased that you brought this stallion here, it might just be the break we’ve been looking for,” she said before turning to her subordinate.

I stood there for a moment, then shot a look at their armoured security detail. They stayed stock still. I waited for a response for a moment and got nothing from them. However, I did catch an interesting string of words from the subordinate speaking just a little loudly. And as prim as it was, I had no problems making it out.

“The terror cell, this stallion was most certainly a part of it, the weapon of Zebra manufacture is nearly unequivocal!” Funny thing was, as I exited the building whistling nonchalantly, I almost wanted to kiss the pretentious mare.

Maintenance was the same as it always was, a lot of technicians fiddling with a lot of cranky arcana-tech. The place smelled like ozone and grease, not exactly a fifty bit perfume, but for the right pony it was familiar, and to a smaller number it was home.

For me it was always a place where I could learn something… while waiting for them to complete a task that they said would be done two days ago. Then again, they weren’t the requisitions department. Those ponies had more ways of being behind schedule than they had forms for you to fill out, which really was a feat of bureaucratic engineering.

I made my way over to the technician in charge of my armour. He had the entire back plate open. The black-coated stallion was practically lying inside the armours torse.

“Hey,” I said simply before lightly rapping the armour with a hoof.

“Knight, right?” He said to me without looking.

“Yes.”

“You mind coming back, I’m kinda replacing the crystal catalyst in this armour’s reactor.” He sounded exasperated, and just a little frightened.

“That sounds important, what’ll happen if you mess up?” I asked, not really convinced that his attitude was warranted, or maybe I just didn’t like the guy.

“Probably nothing, but if something else in the room decides to act up, something that makes a very large, pretty specific, magic field, then we’ll be dead. This reactor will explode with the power of a balefire egg.” He said this to me with a dismissive wave.

Like any person with a bit a curiosity or you know, a healthy fear of death, would instantly be thinking up a string of questions.

“What specific magic field?” I asked, I was a little alarmed, it could be heard.

“Well, if the catalyst isn’t correctly placed and the startup charge from another reactor, either a big one within a couple hundred meters or another armour reactor starter within a few hoof lengths, then the energy generation in the device happens. Just not in a controlled manner. Spark reactors need to be very precise in their energy generation, or else things go wrong. To answer your next question, this isn’t an issue for a properly maintained reactor.” By the end of his explanation he sounded bored, annoyance takes more out of you than an explanation you’ve given dozens of times.

“That’s good, I wouldn’t want to be a walking bomb.”

“Says the mare with the shrapnel cloud cutie mark,” he said simply. Then he laughed loudly, exactly one time. He sounded like a jackal with a dash problem.

“When will it be done?” I glared at the back of his head, even as my tone stayed purely business-casual. He picked himself up and out of the splayed armour. The black stallion gave a mock salute, the saluting hoof covered in an unidentifiable fluid. A smile almost appeared on my face. Jack-hole had smeared it on his forehead.

“The reactors reassembled, so really all I have to do is give the inside a wipe down and replace a couple of servos that weren’t quite up to snuff.” He had lost a little of his attitude. Really, he wasn’t a terrible stallion, he just had a lot on his plate and a little reflective junk on his forehead. I could almost sympathize. Then again, none of his saddle bags smelled like head.

“Estimate?” I said simply, looking slightly down at the short stallion.

“Uh, it’ll be done by…” He was picking his own deadline, that I could believe in. “1430, yeah,” he finished with a flourish of his sticky hoof. I dodged, even if he didn’t really have the reach to get it on me. Even if he knew it was there.

“Thanks a million. I’ll see you soon.” My voice was to the point, but it wasn’t really cold.

The time was convenient, mostly because my acting CO had told me to come to her back to her office at 1400. Making my way over there early, 0700 or so, was my normal routine. In my last couple days she hadn’t had anything for me to do that didn’t involve armour. Which was stupid, she hadn’t read through my personnel file all the way. It said in plain equish that I had a technical certification. Down south, the place where I had been from ages 0-13, they had enough Arabian speakers and not enough scribes to run all of their maneframes and sensor arrays. I had been educated for sensor stewardship, so being a knight with computer and network skills made sense. Not that command, by and large, ever utilised my additional skills.

The meeting went mostly as like it usually did, other than her praise for helping Reflex get to safety. That was weird, not that I knew this paladin really well, but getting praise from higher ups is rare.

Knowing that I’d be needed here at 1400, and looking at the time. It still early in the morning, so I decided I’d check on Reflex.

Her office door was closed. It was also unlocked. When I peeked into the room I realized that it wasn’t just the paladin in the room. No, it was the subordinate mare from the night before. Both turned to watch me as I entered. The paladin pointed to a chair in front of me with an outstretched hoof.

“So, you’re telling me that there’s a terror cell operating within the city?” the Paladin asked the operative.

“That’s what he told us, not that that isn’t suspect, as all information is. But, we’re reasonably sure. I even obtained the location,” Agave said to her. She didn’t even glance in my direction.

“Reasonably isn’t good enough. We’re Rangers, not warlords, remember? Not to say that your information won’t be included in the next intelligence briefing that Waters receives.” Paladin Onion Flavouring leaned back in her aged desk chair.

“Is that it then, are we not going to act on that intelligence, for all of her flaws the mare next to me was the one to get that prisoner, at great potential cost. Will we sit on our haunches–” Agave’s exquisite call to action was cut short by Onion’s hoof smacking the desk in front of her.

“Is that the kind of thing you say in the presence of your superiors? I thought that they ran a tighter ship. Now, you saw that mare enter, because you just used her a prop for your impromptu speech. As an intelligent mare, you should wonder why she just now entered, as she is now. I have an assignment for the both of you, regardless of your individual animosities.” I had smiled at every word of hers, until she mentioned working with this pretentious mare.

“What do want us fine mares to do? I mean she has the horn, I’d probably be good for unclogging drains. I’d be up for testing that.” Onion listened to me speak. There was even a twitch in her facial muscles. That meant it was real doozy for her.

“As curious as I am, and as much as I love your comedic attempts, I have to inform you that the task doesn’t involve a drain,” she said. Her bright yellow coat and green eyes fit her well, especially as she insulted the both of us. “It involves both of you, with your respective skills, gathering intelligence. That building you found, you’ll be observing it. I don’t trust my informants right now; until this Arabian was captured we had no idea that these terrorists were as organized as they are. Or supposably are. Honestly, if my statements remain ifs or have to be prefaced when speaking in any official capacity, I’ll scream.”

“I imagine I won’t be wearing my armour for this?” I asked, knowing the answer to my question before I asked it.

“You’re not Reflex, but you’re decent with a service pistol and built like a brick house. You’ll suffice. You'll both be dressing like them, dirty rags and all, so don't bother asking. Now, before you ask any other questions, let me point you towards my underling. His name is Guarana and he has a hell of a lot more energy than I do. Goodbye and goodnight. Oh, and don’t kill each other.” The mare finished her speech, before pulling a flask from one of her desk compartments. When she opened it, I could smell it from the across the desk. It smelled like paint thinner.

The two of us said exactly nothing as we left our chairs and then the room. She shut the door telekinetically. I turned towards her, my face morphing into a sneer. The hallway was empty excluding us.

“I work alone!” I yelled at her.

“N-no,” she responded, with just a hint of stutter. To be fair, my face had shifted in the time it took her to respond. My dopiest grin took the place of the sneer.

“With that out of the way, let’s shake,” I said before extending my right forehoof in her general direction. Everyone deserves at least one slate cleaning.

The two of us made our way into the city by cover of night. We had a stake out position to reach. Our trip was uneventful, like most of the trips into the city. Don’t take this as an indication that most of the city was safe, though. The Rangers didn’t maintain a strict monopoly on violence. Then again, if the crime was committed with a sharpened stick, why bother. Sticks don’t penetrate powered armour.

The place for our observations was picked because it offered high concealment, an effective viewing angle and good cover for our story.

As we walked into the Inn a loud bell rang. The stallion running the counter barked a hello at us. Agave had her head pointed down, it was customary. He looked to the taller pony, which was me. I pointed my head at him, and he could only see my eyes under the thin and poofy cloth I was wearing. I said my rehearsed line, which put a puzzled look on his muzzle. Everything went to plan as Agave spoke up in a formal arabic accented to sound like it came from the south.

He spoke with her for about two minutes before handing her a key as she passed him a number of paper bills.

I pushed ahead of her as her head lowered to the floor, again. I grabbed the key from her and unlocked the door to our room. It was small and had a paper-like screen for a window. But, it was on a latch, and at night we could peer down at the compound from there. The floor of the room was half covered by some shittily spun rugs, with a hay filled sleeping mat lying in the middle of the room. On the bright side the room was actually cool, adobe has that going for it, along with a lot of sound dampening. This building was old, I should mention that. It had a number of shell holes and shrapnel scars. It had been here for the initial sack of the city. The hardwood door was older than me by quite a bit.

“I think that he believed it,” Agave said as she pulled her hood down with a magical tug.

“Do I really look like a southern trader?” I asked, my head turning sideways slightly.

“To wit: My husband is a glorious example of the equity of god, his body didn’t know when to stop growing, and his brain never started.” She said in a low voice, before emitting a single peel of laughter.

“Mare, I never took you for the religious type… good thing you aren’t the funny type,” I said quietly, and with that tinge of fake exuberance. It took her a second to parse the comment. It’s always the ponies that think they’re the smartest person in the room that leave their ego where everyone can see it.

“Knight, you know as well as I do what we think of religion.”

I looked at her with a cocked head. I had better things to do than arguing with her, like napping. I said as such, and she looked oddly pleased. Under the circumstances hot bunking was a the best thing that we could do – and knowing that we were gonna do the spook stuff after dark, it was the least contentious thing in that room.

Lying down on the mat I realized that I would be living a lie, in super close proximity to someone who disliked me, and basically everything I stood for. This wasn’t going to be fun, but if it gave me a shot at the slags that shot Reflex, well, I could stick it out.

The night we arrived was quiet. No-one did anything that even looked odd outside the place. Honestly, the time I spent watching normal Arabians just living their lives felt wrong. Other than learning a couple Arabian curses as I watched the trickle of ponies going home or visiting friends in the middle of the night, it felt like the night was wasted.

We didn’t complain though; for every minute I spent watching old ponies stumble around in the dead of night, I had one spent watching the few wispy clouds drift in and out of the moonlight. All those furtive glances upward add up, is what I’m saying.

It wasn’t till the third day of eating weird food procured by Agave that we spotted something in the last two hours before daylight. It was a single stallion leaving the place.

He was wearing a thick set of clothing and had a pair of heavy looking saddle bags, but other than his late exit it wasn’t that odd. To me.

“He never entered that building,” she said, confusing me.

“Alright, that seems unlikely. Isn’t it more likely that they just came in when we weren’t looking?”

“One of your premises is wrong. We aren’t the only ones watching this place, not even the only rangers watching it. There is another pair set up a block north of here, though their cover is that they’re brothers stopping by for a few days.” There had been an itchy sound to her voice when she’d said that. I let it slide, but I knew at least five ponies that knew their parents; they all turned out alright.

“But there are more out there, spooking the place.” She nodded at that, like I was a foal. “So, how have you stayed up to date, I really hope I haven’t missed morse code smoke symbols?” I grinned at my own joke, I knew several ponies with siblings that wouldn’t do that, so-

“The market has informers, and those that can keep their muzzles shut.”

“Right.” This all made sense, and that was good. The sooner that we knew that this was the place... Well, I’d want to be the one doing the team sent to take the place out, one way or another.

The sound of knocking on the door opened my eyes. I walked my sweaty carcass over to it, lazily. I heard her mutter an arabic phrase. Trotting over to the door, I felt a little uneasy, judging from the level of light in the room it was pretty close to noon.

I still had on my robes, that probably wasn’t helping the whole heat distribution thing out. But anyway, I fished out the key and slid it into the lock. A quick rotation of my head disengaged the lock. Right after that the door pushed open, I moved to my right, and as the door swung towards me I caught a glimpse of a much larger pony. I tensed and had but a second to approach this whole scenario. There would be another arabian holding…

The buck swung his head in my direction, a dagger between his teeth for the record it looked pretty sharp). I stepped forward and leaned my weight on my right foreleg, my left being bound for his windpipe. My hoof made contact with a sound that was far too similar to an apple hitting the ground. Just before I turned my head to face the doorway, I glimpsed his eyes bugging out as he dropped, any plans to attack me forgotten.

The other arabian was standing beside Agave, their own knife pressed against her cloth covered coat, this place was deserted. Ponies here had an attitude of: if it isn’t my business, I’m not going to make it my business. We three were at a standstill.

His mouth was full and I wasn’t expecting help from anyone here. We stood like this for at least ten seconds, watching each other, as he started to walk back into the hall with Agave in tow, a thought popped into my head. When I said that I was completely unable to speak Arabian, that was a lie, but a small one; I knew a couple, memorable phrases.

I stood there inert. I was trying to remember one of those phrases. See, a call for help would have been ignored, that was simple self-preservation on their part…

but not everyone knew that assholes with knives were doing the kinds of things that assholes with knives are prone to doing. So, I had that going for me.

Finally it clicked, I shouted at the top of my lungs an obscenity that can’t even translated, it involves several goats, a virgin filly and a bucket of crotch rot… I think.

Whatever the fuck I said, it brought a lot of heads into the hallway. That was enough distraction for him to look away, when really he should have kept his knife pressed against her throat. He had only been about four meters away, and by the time he looked back I had raced ahead, turned around, and was in the process of planting both of my rear hooves into his pliable fucking skull.

He stood dazed, before Agave drove herself forward and between me and the wall. I let her go. The buck, bloodied and with a broken muzzle streamed forward. I angled my body and jumped out of his stabbing arc. I think his failed stabbing had left his mind blank, even as I turned and struck his muzzle from the side, the side opposite to the knife.

He dove forward to slice my face open, I reared up and dodged the edge of his blade, and with his body over extended and lowered to the ground I had the grounds to drive my body forward and into his from his left side. Before bringing us to the floor I drove a knee into the base of his jaw. I could feel the bone of his inner jaw fracture, the muscle around it bruising instantly, relaxing as his mouth swung open on instinct.

The knife dropped with us.

The stallion was shocked by my coming out on top, but in a few seconds he would be struggling, trying to throw me off. But he was pinned under me, his back legs pressed against the ground at the knee. There isn’t really leverage there. His muscles went all kinds of berzerk before he passed out: I had been pressing the hard edge of a forehoof against his one of his carotid arteries, for enough seconds. For what it was worth, the cover would have been kind of intact, but they knew what we were doing, so it was worth jack fucking shit. Still, it felt good, winning a fight always does... for a little while, at least.

I looked up from the unconscious stallion. Agave had run off, and after thinking that, I was about a half a second from sprinting back into our room. But, then I saw our door slam shut. Agave, looked the other way in the hall before looking in the direction of me.

“Covers blown, we need to leave,” I yelled in her direction.

“I agree, the insurgent in there is immobilized. Also-” She said while telekinetically throwing me my equipment, which amounted to my service pistol. “-let me lock him down.” She moved up to me, before gesturing me to move out of the way. Is she going to shoot him? The flaring light of her horn caught me off guard. A little ball of light struck him on the forehead. It didn’t really look like much, his leg kicked a little, that was it.

“What was that?” I asked with an edge to my voice, unicorn magic was usually the kind of thing that if one told you about theirs, you’d just kind of nod along.

“Paralysis spell, it makes the brain flip the ‘switch’ that normally flips when we sleep. It stops the brain's conscious impulses from moving our bodies. When we’re done with this, I’ll elaborate further.” She said this with a little fluster, like I had pulled out her stocking and was showing everyone. Whatever.

“You’re right, let’s go.” I said, pointing my body towards the exit, she was gonna have to work those stubby legs to keep up with me.

The gate security thought we were arabians up until the point we removed our hoods and spoke a little equestrian. From there we had an emergency meeting with Onion, who basically told us that we were on a clock. We had an hour and a half to prepare, Agave made her way to the security building. There were quite a few on notice, apparently the assault was going to happen in the next forty-eight hours.

Personally I was just getting myself in order, and that involved visiting the repair bay.

“Took ya long enough,” the black-coated stallion said to me as I trotted up to his section of the bay.

“Really wasn’t my choice, but–” I went from looking at him to looking at what he had affixed to my armour. A quad tube rocket system hung off of left side, and the ammo box bolted to the rear of my armour made the entire thing look off. The left side had my customary light machine gun, though he had replaced the ammo box and feed mechanism on that as well.

“Like it?” He looked at me curiously. I normally wouldn’t care, but this buck seemed to have but a lot of effort into this. Still, I had never really been a fan of missile launchers. “I thought that you in particular would like it,” he said before looking at my flank. I had dropped the smelly robes as soon as I had had the option, and had a normal undersuit in my bag so I was walking around like nature intended. I really wasn’t surprised to see his leer staying there. I had kinda ran here, so I was a little sweaty, although this sweet mechanic buck didn’t seem to mind. My brain filled with a images and possibilities.

I cleared them out right as I turned my head to meet his eyes. Maybe later.

“Yeah, it could be pretty useful,” I said quickly, before letting my tone grow just a hint huskier. “But, I’m a little surprised you remembered that the mare who left her armour in here had an explosion on her ass” He looked down, and I bet his cheeks were growing red. But, ya know, his coat was black. “Well, I guess you can answer later. Is it ready?” I said in a more soldiery tone of voice, while pointing my head and a foreleg at my armour.

His head followed my hoof, and he nodded briskly. It was almost like he was embarrassed, or something.

“Last thing, what’s your name? I really don’t want to have to walk into the room full of balefire eggs to hunt you down,” I said as I dropped my bag and pulled out my undersuit. To his credit, he only snuck a couple glances at me as I pulled the suit onto my body.

“Oil Can,” the buck said simply before releasing the clasps holding the armour to its support frame. By the time I had gotten the piece of clothing zipped up he had opened the armour up outward like a clamshell.

I had a single memorable thought as I stepped into it: If it was a clamshell, did that make me a pearl? Judging by the way Oil looked at me, maybe.

I exited through a door to the outside No-one else in the repair bay seemed to notice or care. I was mostly loving the feeling of servos and steel after a week or so of ground pounding. It was like the world was back in order.

We assembled in the courtyard. There were thirty of us in all. About half of us were those security ponies. The regular Knights and Paladins were standing on one side of the yard, the security people on the other. I had missed the initial introductions, but I caught all of the important information. There was going to be a feint attack up one of the main avenues, by the Rangers. Ten or so of us were going up that route. Meanwhile, the main assault was going to be done by the security forces. They were deemed more able to do it without excessive collateral damage.

I didn’t blame them, but the idea of unarmoured personnel going up against firearm equipped insurgents seemed sketchy. I formed up with the group. I would be second in command by rank. Being in the assault force itself, or a good honest feint for the assault was enough.

We marched out of the compound. Maybe I was eager to do my part, or maybe I wanted to give some of these assholes a prostate exam with my armoured hoof… No, it was definitely the second one.

We had made it about three quarters of the way to the intended stopping point, I had my IFF overlay scanning the vicinity, but I didn’t see a damn thing. Damned red thing.

No, like most patrols, especially ones that involves more than a small number of knights, the Arabians crammed themselves inside their homes. Doors were locked, that kept the noise of us breaking a suspected buildings’ door to a minimum. Not a whole lot else.

The noise of servos that weren’t mine told me that Paladin Sonic was walking up to me. “You needn’t be so tense,” the older buck told me. I’m sure that if I had looked behind me I would have seen nods of agreement.

I signalled my own microphone with a thought. I decided not to speak, instead taking a deep breath and a gulp of water from my reservoir.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t right. They would have put up a fight. If, if they hadn’t already moved all the contraband and personnel. I thought I had been angry, but when that pang of powerlessness hit, of not being able to do anything, it was bad. I don’t think it was justice that I wanted, but I wanted something. I had always been able to make things right when I was a kid, all it took were some tough words or a few bruises on them and every once in while, me.

I had just started to feel the adrenaline, when, in the peripheral of my Vision, a mark flicked to red. I was a tenth of a second from yelling a warning.

The big fucking boom from behind me alerted all of them just fine.

I heard screams of pain from the microphones of the injured, that fucker had set off a remote bomb… That realization both pissed me off and worried me. I shoved my words into the choir of injured ponies. “Knight Gumball , you’re in command, if anyone is in shape and not needed for injury care. Come with me!” After that I shut off my radio. I set off at a dead sprint, his IFF marker was still visible. Pushing myself with a combination of adrenaline and magical energy, I knew I could get within range of him.

I could hear my blood pumping through my ears and that was about it as I ran the bastard down. When I turned a corner to a back street, my compass revealed another of them. They were sitting behind a good stack of sandbags on the roof of a three story building, the sighted me by sound before I even realized it. The harsh ping of a high velocity peice of metal being deflected off of your armour always sucks. Someone up there had used something with some power, but that doesn’t mean they had used it well. The other two attempted to wound me with small caliber pistols. I had dropped my rear legs, like I was sitting down for a comfortable chat.

The explosion of the hard fired missile accelerating of my launcher must have surprised one of them, they flashed green in the half second between me activating the mechanism for launch and the explosion. I hadn’t forgotten about the running buck, and as I ran past the remnants of their position I felt another pang of worry. If they ever had the tools, they could probably kick us back to the sea…

There was no-one except me and the pony I was determined to catch. I even felt like I should smack the ‘on’ button for my radio.

“We need assistance, they had the gall to hit us. This is Specialist Agave calling on all Ranger units not currently occupied to converge on the square southwest of the target location!” I had felt like we had been walking into a trap. Sometimes it sucks to be right.

Then, I caught sight of him. The running buck seemed to realize this at the same time his body started to shit out on him. Power armour doesn’t make you the fastest, but when you're putting a lot of the strain on the armour you have staying power when you’re moving. Yeah. He made a last minute dash into another alley. He didn’t, couldn’t shake me.

When I made the same turn he had collapsed onto a pile of trash. He gave me an expression of disgust that slowly shifted to a grin. He spoke a line of Arabic to me, I even recognized one of the words. I realized then that I had no way of telling him to stand down, or even keep his hooves at his side. That train of thought and its tiny pull on my attention was what he wanted. From a stomach pocket he was pulling an object out. Whatever you want to say about him, the bastard kept his eyes trained on me and the rest of his body loose. I was about to tell him to stop doing that when he finished fishing it out, the thing was another half second from being tossed in my general direction. He didn’t have to throw it far.

I fired a long burst from my machine gun. The twenty bullets at point blank range tore threw him, he was dying before my eyes, quickly. I backed away from him, he might have set off an explosive, he had been fond of them. But more than that, I was struck by just how dead he was. Even if he had been shot in an intensive care unit stocked with healing potions and high caliber doctors and nurses, he would have been dead. Not that he was anywhere close. No, he was going to die in a pile of garbage stinking of food remains and feces. He knew it too. That was the fucking clincher. He had enough life in him to look at me with anger, and in the half minute I stood there it changed as the pile was dyed red, his face just looked resigned even as weaker and weaker words exited his muzzle.

I think it was a prayer. Some of it anyway. I had never really seen anyone die quickly enough for them to have no-one they wanted around, yet still have time to know it and make some kind of peace with the universe.

After I watched his eyes close, I turned around. There was too much shit flying to get wrapped up in the life of one insurgent. In the edges of my vision I spotted friendly EFS markers. My knights in sandy armour.

It was over, and I knew I had to say one goodbye. When I opened the door to his hospital room I didn’t expect to see a mare wearing a medical uniform standing beside his cot, a foreleg around his neck, with a foreleg of his around hers and a tail that was lazily wagging behind her. “Be out of here in a weeks, so what’s your barrack number?” Reflex said to the mare hanging off of him.

I stood there in the doorway as he realized my entrance, the nurse answered him, not knowing I was there, or just not caring. “Twenty-Three, west wing, room number forty-five,” she rattled off with a practiced ease, and a long draw with her tail. I wasn’t sure what they had been doing before, but I had several ideas.

This was normal for Reflex – he was a real mare eater, in both senses of the phrase – but I felt a stirring in my gut looking at the two of them. I moved past it before clearing my throat. “So, you wanna hear in gritty detail how it went south, and thanks to me down?” I said to the two ponies, though my eyes were locked onto Reflex’s. With a quick turn, and a brush of her tail past his muzzle she made her way out.

“Knights…” She said with a huff as she walked out, though the position of her tail as she walked out meant that she had given him a view. She had a pretty nice ass. Objectively speaking.

His face kept that lovable smile on it, he had gone from an attractive mare and her showy way of moving to another attractive mare that he was friends with and worried about…. You could never blame him, he did as we all did, just better, and I liked him a little too much for it.

“So, you’re getting out in a week?” I said to him as I trotted up.

“Yep, and back to duty in another,” he said quickly before pulling his wounded frame off of the bed. I shook my head at him before chuckling. I lowered my muzzle to place a single kiss on his lips, and to put a foreleg under his back. It was a closed mouth kiss, but my body told me that I wanted more. I bit my lip and suppressed that idea, with only a flick of my tail giving that idea away. As he broke away I let his body slowly fall back onto the mattress. “I’m glad that you came back all right, even if I wish I could’ve made sure of that myself.”

“We got what we needed,” I said to him, “it’s good that you’re gonna be fine, really, more than fine given it’s you.”

“Kissing up to me,” he said in a neutral tone, “it wouldn’t be the first time, and I really hope it won’t be the last.”

“If my head’s on straight then it won’t be… Really though, I remember you kissing up to me most of those times,” I said before giving his shoulder a gentle rub with a hoof.

“You might be right,” he said in a low voice of rare agreement. He had always been susceptible to a little closeness. “Hey, you promised gritty detail, irregardless of my weakness-”

“-es.” I finished for him.

“Thanks,” he said simply. I stuck my tongue out at him.

I looked at the edge of his bunk, he saw my look and scooted himself far enough for me to lie down. But, not enough for us to not touch. I rolled my eyes before setting myself down beside him, making sure to set up on his withers at least once. From there I told him what had happened up until the death of the runner in the pile of trash.

“Around this time three knights had arrived. Blunt Spade, the pony leading, told me that they had followed the sounds of gunfire. We found the security ponies the same way. The rest of that fight, well, you can read about all the ammunition expenditures and the specifics of who exactly made that building collapse, or that other one…” I said to him, as he sat there looking me in the eyes. He always looked you in the eyes.

“After firing those missiles, and leaving a lotta brass on the ground, we were breaking them. Any who weren’t running for the hills or blending in with the other natives were out of their skulls. The rest of our Knights and Paladins had filtered into the city square in roving packs, dealing with resistance. I attached myself to one of the few security groups that were still fighting. There were five of them. We were holed up in a leather shop. The security pony, Blunt Spade, and I decided to do what this mission had meant to do. We asked command what our orders were now that the resistance had been neutralized.” I said to him. He was listening intently, even as he started stroking my withers lazily.

“Good stuff, so what happened next?” he said before yawning and stretching out his forelegs.

“We made our way to the building. The run over there was tense, but other than a few pot shots we were left alone. The building and the surrounding area was empty; whoever had been there, they were turning sand. This freaked me out, if it was us we would have set the place on fire and smashed everything to pieces. It wasn’t just me, all of us approached it cautiously. I stayed to the side, was ordered to guard the flanks. I was far enough Reflex, I was standing at one of the crossroads…” I let my eyes draw down to the washed but tarnished sheets we were lying on.

“I felt it from the bed. You don’t have to say it,” Reflex said.

“They rigged it,” I said. I had to tell him, I had had to tell someone with my words. Or I thought I needed to. I don’t think I was wrong. It was like pushing an arrow out through your own body, it needed to be done, it didn’t need to be pleasant.

“We’re strong, and we won. As much as they hate it we’re building a better world, Ice.” He moved a hoof to my chin, and lifted my head to look at my eyes.

“This is a war for civilisation. We’re fighting for the genesis of one, and they’re fighting for the right to live their whole lives in the same twenty square kilometers they were born in. To live in a grubby hut, to give birth there, and to die there. I love them, the natives. They can make good food, some strange music and they bond as strongly as we do. After the end they’ll see that.”

“Right,” I said. With a wet noise, I cleared my throat. “Reflex, I’m heading back on a supply boat tonight.” I shifted myself forward, letting my chest rest on his. My eyes slipped closed, there were a couple tears between the lids. I needed him more than he needed me – he knew it- he didn’t abuse it, he was just Reflex. He draped his good foreleg on top of me.

“I was hoping that we would get that night to ourselves,” he said. I snorted air directly into his admittedly nice smelling chest.

“Yeah,” I said. He didn’t speak another word, he just moved that hoof to my mane. As I lay there I knew that I would never be around him like I had been before, we would never be what we had been before. We were older now. We had killed. We had moved on. The buck stroking my mane had become a force to reckoned with, a lucky decade from taking command of this place. He had made himself into someone. He believed in ideas, he told others about them like they were truths.

I couldn’t fall for ideas, I could only fall for ponies. I had only fallen for him.

I didn’t know that then.

In that moment though, I just cracked a smile.

You don’t have to know anything to smile.

I have a pet theory about that…

End Of Chapter Four: Ultra-Violence, And Its Discontents