I dreamed of the sky. Of being high way up over everything else, of blue endless reaches and of peace and harmony. The melody of the endless reaches, of wind and the sound of wings passing through the air.

I could hear her calling me. I knew the voice and I wanted it. I wanted to know what she was saying. I wanted to know why I was there, in the sky, why I was in Equestria.

I flew on and on and I heard another pair of wings near me, cutting through the air as smoothly as could be. A few puffy clouds obscured the ground below, though I knew I wouldn't recognize it regardless. An alien world, free for me to explore endlessly. Peace as far as the eye could see.

I hated it.

And I knew the one behind me was of a similar mindset. She knew me as I knew her, without knowledge necessary. We knew every nook and cranny of each other.

I was happy. The wings on my back kept my course true, like an arrow at a target.

I felt like an angel, tasting the breath of the sky.

And I knew her.

I didn't know her name. She was so familiar, but her name slipped from my head before I could say it.

-----

I stared up at the ceiling for a long time after waking up, feeling my thoughts sharper, and slower. It felt good, like an itch was being scratched at the end of my muzzle, to finally think clearly.

The world itself could be improved.

I could improve it. Blurs of gears and blurs of magic seemed to form in my vision before I shoved it away from me, instead turning to look at the other bed in the room. The short rise and fall of her chest brought me a feeling of comfort the likes of which i had never thought to be possible. I felt...

Safe.

In that exact moment that I quantified how I felt my mind went into a whir. Magic. My mind was dancing on the feeling of being safe to fill my thoughts with ideas...

It seemed to me, right then and there, that perhaps the only reason why the world itself hadn't been revolutionized with a fusion of machinery and magic was that no magic user in their right mind would ever to something so mundane as research gears. And whoever researched gears couldn't properly put magic to it. Heck, as far as I was concerned, maybe most of the humans on Equestria didn't have innate magic at their disposale. Of course... I was different. I had magic. It was almost a responsibillity, no my fate! I was to usher in magic and technology together. Together with the help of whatever I could manage. The world was my oyster and I was going to build a way to shuck it.

It was my duty to show the world what magic was truly capable of...

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

My right eye lid twitched and I looked around, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from.

And then something exploded and a massive cloud of yellow gas erupted from underneath my bed, licking at the air and turning it an unsightly shade of yellow

"What the fuck?" I yelled, rousing Cata. She shook her head and yawned before realizing that something was wrong.

"Hold your breath you idiot!" She snarled, and did her own advice.

I followed after her and raced off of the bed, which on the fortunate side got me away from the cloud. On the unfortunate side, I rammed into the locked door.

"Ow." I mumbled. The griffon glared at me.

"Pick the lock."

"I can-" Her form blurred and suddenly I was launched out of the window with her in tow, her talons wrapped around me. I didn't even have time to blush before we were outside of the hotel. I did get treated to watching my other two companions running out of the room.

"You know, if I didn't know better I'd say that was a Catastrophe." Canary punned, making me want to groan. The griffon set me down easily and I smiled at her.

"Thank you." There was no need to say it, but I said it anyway. I looked into her eyes for a long moment...

A cross bow bolt twanged off the ground in front of us and ruined it with the shock of impending danger.

"Right. Panic time." I muttered, looking around. My danger keen eyes, trained from ages of having everything that could possibly go wrong go worse, picked out several avenues of attack within seconds.

There were at least 11 spots where we couldn't easily hit. "Well, I say we go back to the ship and pray." I rolled my eyes as I heard another twang.

"Guardian." I said without much emotion, watching the bolt bounce off. "Let's go."

Canary sighed. "Can't we at least try to reason with them?" He fished into his pouch and pulled out a topaz.

I looked at him and sighed. "It's clear they are being hostile for no real reason. Or if it is a reason I don't really care." I needed metal, lots of metal. It was an itch...

I dropped the barrier for a second, content with Canary's job. He maintained the barrier, and the conversation while they continued taking shits at us.

"Still, you think we would have allies if we tried negotiation?" He continued.

Cata and Boss looked at each other. The griffon shrugged. "I'm so fucking glad that we live the most logical lives ever."

Boss looked at her for a long moment, still walking inside of Canary's forcefield. "Says the griffon who molests Ivan nightly."

She shrugged. "Hey now, don't judge."

I felt my cheeks lightly grow red. "Damn hormones." I hissed.

Canary dropped the force field, a cross bow bolt embedding in the pavement beside one of my legs. A storm of firey projectile hurtled from the buildings next to us and I easily shielded us.

"Guardian." I walked calmly away from them. "Don't you know that badass beats skill? Amateurs..." I clicked my tongue at them and kept on walking, ignoring the tiny part of me that advised logic.

"Come on, let's go take back the ship."

Bolts from shooters on the crumbled roof tops greeted my shields, each one eating into my magic stores. Not that it really in any way shape or form.

There was a tight ball of burning anger in me.

"Oh yeah world? You wanna fuck with me?" I muttered, looking around hatefully. "You want to kill off my friends? Kill me?" I dropped the shields for a second and caught an arrow out of the air with a puff of telekinesis, just because I felt like it.

An annoying ball of pain wracked part of my head, like I was doing something incredibly stupid that I really shouldn't be doing.

I brought the shield back up, my ship in sight. The Scourge looked almost proud on the port, with it's many hitchhikers pointing their ranged weapons at me.

"You know what, fuck you." Twisting my magic in a new and interesting way I forced one of their heads' to explode from the inside out with a force field in the brain. "Fuck you. You hear me?" I said louder.

Gore pelted the troops on my ship of an indeterminate origin. I felt like laughing.

"Anyone else want to try and be the idiot?" I blew up another pony's head, a faint chuckle spewing form me.

"Anyone else want to tempt the pissed off zebra? ANYONE?" A faint trickle of gore from the ship I was still walking toward splattered across my face, blood stinging into my eyes. I didn't blink, my smile never dropping.

"Drop your fucking weapons and if I have to say anything else again I'll start blowing shit up." The magic crackled around me sinisterly, like it wasn't really under my control and I was only the guidance system. I was okay with that.

As you can imagine, the hostiles on my ship abandoned ship shortly after, with murmurs of "Get me away from that fucking demon." and other such satisfactory remarks.

I watched them go with a wide smile and barely held back the urge to kill them anyway, just to be contrary.

I turned to Canary. "How good are you at your shield spell?" It wasn't a random question, I wanted to know.

He shrugged. "About as good as you are. Nice touch with the exploding heads." I knew he was doubting his doubt in me.

Oh... It felt so good to be alive.

I dispersed the magic and walked on board. "Come on." I stated, though it was more a command.

I felt every hair on my body alight with the power of feeling what I was doing. I was Ivan Marks.

I hated the world. "Canary. Boss." I snarled out, looking around the ship. "Stay here."

I turned to the griffon of my delight. "Catastrophe. Do you think you can support me? We have some assholes to kill."

She licked her beak. "Pretty easily. You haven't been eating near enough." It was a criticism, but a fair one.

On expected reflex I deflected an arrow before it struck my head and returned a fireball through the expected parabola of the shot, getting rewarded with the sizzle of an idiot dying.

"Yeah yeah. Find a way so that I can eat a steak and that will change." I walked over to her and rolled my eyes.

From what I could tell from my magic stores I was about at a half tank. Maybe more.

Catastrophe looked at me. "If you touch my wings I will drop you. Got it?" Her finicky feathered appendages held my attention for a time hardly worth mentioning. She growled lightly.

I tried to figure out how to get on her without it sounded perverted in text. After a few seconds of thought I just hopped on her back and decided to keep myself there with a bit of levitation.

Canary sighed. "Our jobs, Ivan?"

I turned sharply to him. "Make sure that this ship remains intact. Yes, that means you can kill them. Have fun you two." I barked at both of them.

Boss rolled her eyes. "Suicidal death flights are in style this season, I guess."

I flipped her a thumbs up, though lacking the required digits made it not come over right. I snarled at the world around me. "Had to be a fucking zebra."

Boss blinked. "Wait what?"

"I'll explain after I kill a few people."

Catastrophe sighed. "Let's just do this, heroic banter is for people who are heroic."

I paused and made sure my grip was secure. "Guardian." I muttered, the barrier forming around both of us.

"Let's go."

-----

"So..." Canary mused, looking at Boss. "I can't really tell if this Ivan is better than the others. What do you think?" He watched the golden sphere that made up the dangerous duo speed off back into the town.

Boss shrugged. "At least he can fight. Kinda. The better question is how we are going to get the stains off of this ship." The remnants of the exploded heads, gore bones and brain, covered most of the surfaces on the craft.

"We should worry about cleaning later." Canary stated simply, though worry glistened in his eyes.

Boss looked at him. "What is it?"

Canary rolled his eyes. "What have we gotten ourselves into?"

She merely shrugged and smiled at him. "Does it matter? Would you rather be a slave?"

He gritted his teeth. "That's not the point. Why the hell is everything happening?"

She shrugged again. "Live in the moment. It is best that we don't try to see the future."

"My life expectancy has been shortened and I'll die by 45." He sighed.

"But when you are with this group you know you feel alive." Boss smiled.

"I doubt that I'll live that long, even if I hide." He reasoned.

"But you know the rewards are worth it. The pain that you abide..." She looked around.

"I feel as if this world isn't fair..." He shook the worry from him.

"But hell. The devil may care." She finished, readying herself for a fight.

"Before I die."

----

Soaring through the air was an experience the likes of which are hard to precisely explain. It was made even harder by the fact that I was not the one doing the soaring, but the one keeping the griffon in the air from the fire of the diamond dogs.

It was pretty ridiculous. Almost every single building had at least one dog on it, and each dog had some sort of ranged projectile designed to kill us

I could feel her exhilaration at the flight, could feel her anticipation as she sped up. "Ready?"

The wind blasted into my face and brought my eyes to water, tears streaming out. I had no idea what I was doing, but it felt right. "Hell yeah."

And then we were over the first of the buildings and I felt my eyes burn with pure power, my rage lending itself to guide fireballs and rain death down on them. I could feel ounces of myself disappear into the magic, feel the burning of the fireball, the demand to exhaust the stored power that the manipulations of the magic in the air demanded.

I could feel the urge to be resistant, to never falter in it's purpose from the barriers, decimating through the dogs.

It felt good.

I felt myself explode into a group of them, felt my fires lick over their skin and burn out their bodies. I felt the desire to remain burning, and I felt the cold pain of loneliness when I snuffed out the blaze from spreading.

A dog exploded while I tweaked a thread of my essence and tore him apart.

the barrier surrounding us was nothing more than an absolute projection of myself

it felt good to be used

the griffon below me felt like she knew where to go.

I snapped out of a half trance, the barrier flicking back to life as I stopped hurling spells around. I felt exhausted.

My shoulders slumped. I should've known better than to think that I had enough magic to manage this.

My thoughts... my anger was leaving me.

"Ivan." She said, her voice dim. "Ivan."

"Catastrophe." I replied. "Catastrophe." I repeated.

I could literally hear her body cut off something sarcastic. "Stay awake."

I kept the barrier up, though I felt apathy start to rush in. It licked at my thoughts as sure as any fire would, burning away my resolve. A chorus of thoughts, not at all mine in any way swarmed up, demanding to be heard.

They wanted to be remembered. They pushed against me like I was a simple peg, one that stood between them and eternity.

"Ivan." I heard her voice faintly as my vision faded. Black licked the edge of everything, wildly distorting it all. And I smelled blood, pouring out of my mouth and my nose, smearing over my front...

But I stayed awake. Blood whipped off of my body and was thrown behind me by her flying. The dogs were in full retreat. They were leaving the roof tops.

----

Canary rummaged through the food supplies they had with them, pulling a few apples out and then quickly charging it with his magic, mending a particularly nasty looking cut made by an opportunistic Diamond dog.

"It really doesn't make sense." He noted, hiding above a door way and knocking out a dog that rushed in to see the voice with a particularly full water jug. Levitation was a good idea.

Boss shrugged, and nodded. "Thanks for the heal, Doc." She joked, picking up one of her swords. The other sword was quickly used to end the life of the downed dog. "And what doesn't make sense?"

"Why all these dogs are here." They had been overwhelmed by the dogs almost immediately. Turns out that one of the dogs figured out they could climb up the side of the ship and without anything ranged to hit them with they had taken the battle to the ship's underside. So far, it had been going well with his healing keeping the friendly canine alive.

"We've been with Ivan for how long?" They both looked at each other for a long second.

"A few weeks." He answered after thinking it through for almost a minute.

"And how many times have things happened that don't actually make any sense at the time and get explained later on?" She kept her gaze on him, jabbing the hilt of her sword into the nose of another dog.

"A few." He muttered, seeing her point.

She reversed her grip and brought her sword through the enemies throat, tsking at the blood on the floor. "Exactly. There's probably a good reason behind this."

Canary shrugged. "Until then, we keep taking out the grunts?" It was remarkable how calm he was. But pondering on that could wait for another time.

She smiled lightly. "Of course." She stepped out of the store room and went back into the fray. Canary followed closely, flaring his magic out to deflect a few arrows.

----

Catastrophe sighed and then felt her heart thump faster in her chest. Something warm and wet had dripped on her back. Her suspicions on what it could be were only made worse by his head thumping between her wings. She felt more than saw the barrier protecting her collapsed, though the visual component was a pretty telling factor in it all. It was awfully hard to miss the shield shattering.

But the archers weren't shooting. They were running scared. She felt a bit of a smile for just long enough for it to sink in that the one responsible for making them run was on her back and bleeding out. A brief stab of concern floated through her before she landed on top of a building. The building belonged to another doctor in the city, one she knew quite well. A tiny ache remained in her mind.

She gently pushed him against the top of the building and looked him over. "Damn it." There wasn't a visible wound.

Not under all the blood at least. His face was a red stained mess, blood seeping from under his eye lids and nose. Tear trails of bloody liquids marking the path that whatever had happened to him had taken. There was quite a bit of blood and it was only the very real chance of his demise that kept her attention on the fact he was bleeding, not that he was 'bleeding'.

She gently wiped the blood from his face with her wing and tried to remember anything she knew about first aid. It came slowly, a rise of panic starting to bath her thoughts. She bit down on her tongue and felt the pain sharpen her mind. She bit down on her tongue again, cutting it with her beak. She needed to focus.

Heart beat. She felt like hitting herself. She brought her head and gently placed it to his chest. In a few seconds she heard his heart clearly, thumping evenly.

It hit her that she shouldn't be worried and in that same hit she realized that she owed him her life and it was right around goddamn fucking time she did something besides flirt with him to repay him. She tore off one of her loose fester and gently used to the flip open his right eye lid.

The eye moved about erratically before fixing itself on her, unnerving the griffon. In an odd way, a secondary train of thought followed while she tried to think of something to do, he looked cute. In the same way a broken puppy did, one that had been kicked too often and fed on every scrap of attention it could get.

By the same token, she felt bad. In a deep way, she felt like a truly bad griffon for the first time in years, feeling disappointed in herself. She wanted to use this broken zebra to advance herself instead of helping him.

"Great. Now I'm going nuts." She muttered looking away from him. She didn't doubt herself anymore than the wind did. She was Catastrophe, the pilot of airships and breaker of airships. She was also called a breaker of hearts, if the whispers were anything to go by. She never felt guilty for messing with hormone ridden idiots.

But maybe she felt bad because he had saved her. Willingly pushed her out of the way of the shoggoth. She would be dead, or swimming around in his head.

She gently tugged free another feather and looked around. It looked like the Alpha had come to town, and he wanted Ivan.

She shook her head. Her memory drifted back to the wanted poster. They wanted them dead. Someone dangerous wanted them alive, so the dogs wanted them dead.

It seemed the worst of places to be. They benefited someone by being alive. They benefited someone by being dead. Either way, they weren't half as hidden.

She thought all this while thinking of a way to help him. He stopped bleeding, though he kept staring at her.

There was an Alpha somewhere in this mess...