“Hey! You’re not getting cold hooves are you?” Sunny had seen that I stopped. I fought to pull my eyes away from the swamp but I was almost hypnotized by the whispers in my head. The whispers were clearer now and I caught voices that belonged to me and my friends. I heard my voice calling out as I left the Stable, I heard Sunny and Grim comforting me and I heard Crusader Freesia inviting me to her headquarters. Then I heard voices having a conversation, one was clearly me but the other was one I didn’t recognize. Was…was I hearing something from the future? What was in my head? I mustered as much willpower as I was able and managed to yank my head away from the swamp. My body almost felt alien to me once I looked away, staggering forward with all the grace of a newborn foal.

“Whoa…you feeling okay Sparks?” Sunny trotted over to me and helped me find my balance again. “You sure you up for this? If you need more rest-”

“No! …no” I held my head up and inched forward on shaky legs. “I’m…I’m alright. Just got a little lightheaded is all.” A small part of me wanted to tell her the truth but I couldn’t let anything keep me down any longer. We had already been here almost a week and we had nothing to show for it and I wasn’t going to let anything hold us back. I looked back into the swamp and the compulsion I felt from before was gone. Though I could still faintly feel the strange sensation itching in the back of my mind.

“Okay, just try and take it easy alright?” Sunny gave me a light slug to my shoulder like a big sister would. I looked up and smiled at her. I knew that she knew something was wrong but she would never push me to tell her if I didn’t want to. I felt the same way about her when she was troubled. Neither of us wanted help unless we asked for it. What a strange friendship we had.

“I’ll be fine Sunny. Let me help myself this time. I think you need a break.” I joked and managed to get a smile out of her. That was a pretty rough start to our trek into Whinnyapolis and that feeling in my head never went away but within the hour we had made it to the edge of the Whinnyapolis ruins. Immediately the differences from Baltimare were obvious. Whinnyapolis was clearly a center of industry and production. I wondered how many bastions of civilization were left in the city. Now that we were closer I saw a few of the more distinguishing features of the city’s skyline. First was another of those needle looking white towers that vanished into the clouds above. Was there one in every city? Second was what remained of two large skyscrapers. The top third of one had fallen and wedged itself between it and its sister building, creating a bridge of sorts between the two of them. Had it fallen when the bomb hit the city or as an effect of time? Either way it made for an interesting landmark.

“Any ideas where to begin?” I asked, looking out across the city.

“How bout over there?” Aurora pointed to a crooked and bent sign that pointed the way to the ‘Uptown police department’. Sunny didn’t offer any suggestions and just sort of shrugged at me. It would be as good a start as any. We took a left at the sign that led us down a bumpy road towards the southwest part of the city. Thankfully that put us in the opposite direction from the gunfire I could hear in the distance. Along the street were the rusting and decaying bodies of wagons, carriages and even a few military vehicles. The last day must have been particularly devastating for the population of this city. In my time at Mareiucci I learned that unlike Baltimare, Whinnyapolis had been hit directly by a balefire bomb. The black skeletons fused to the old vehicles proved that they had died quickly. Three blocks of old dust and death later we had reached the collapsed entrance to the police station.

“Well that was a bust. We can’t get inside.” I made my way to leave when Aurora jumped off my back and back towards the station.

“Wait…I think I can get us inside.” She said, giving the old building an examining look.

“How?” Sunny looked at the young filly with concern.

“Look.” Aurora pointed the left side of the building. “There’s a loading bay door. If you lift me up through that window there I bet I can open it.”

“Absolutely not.” I stomped a hoof on the ground. “We don’t know what’s in there and I won’t let you go in alone.”

“Oh c’mon dad! You always say you don’t like bringing me out like this. Let me help! I can be more than a burden.” She wiped a few tears off her face but continued to give me a dedicated stare. I averted my gaze to look at Sunny, hoping to get her input on the situation. When she realized that she smirked and shook her head. So I was on my own in this conversation.

“Aurora… I know you just want to be useful but you have to understand where I’m coming from. It could be dangerous. I don’t want you to go in there alone.”

“I’ll be fine dad. I was alone for a long time before you saved me.”

That caught me by surprise. I intentionally hadn’t talked to her about her life before we saved her. The only thing that I knew for sure was that her real parents were dead.

“What do you mean?” I asked, stepping forward and putting a hoof on her shoulder.

“I…I wasn’t captured by that ghoul with the moustache.” She took a step back, away from my touch. “He…he took me from the ponies who killed my parents.” She had to pause and blink away more tears.

“Aurora you don’t…you don’t have to talk about it.”

“No! I-I’m a stronger pony now thanks to you…I should be able to talk about it without…without-” She paused again and wiped fresh tears from her face. “The ponies he took me from, they…they were slavers.”

All at once I knew what had happened to her. It wasn’t Fancy Pants who killed her parents, it was slavers. Aurora…my little princess…had been a slave. I tried to move forward and comfort her but her outstretched hoof stopped me.

“It’s okay dad, I don’t need help. You already saved me.” Her voice was shaky and her lips were quivering slightly.

It seemed I was right about her being a strong filly, yet she was equally frail and vulnerable. As much as I wanted to hold her in my hooves and soothe her mind she had clearly been thinking about this for a while and I needed to let her say it.

“I’m thirteen years old now. My parents were killed when I was eleven.”

We had just celebrated her birthday about two weeks ago. That left me to fill in the blanks myself but I kept silent for the time being.

“I was a slave for two years. T-they sold me to anypony who had caps and like property I was passed around between different masters. Some were better than others. Some kept kids like me away from the hard work and we were fed once a day. Most were cold and ruthless regardless if you were a kid or not. I was worked…I-I was abused and…a-and…” Her voice cracked and she wept quietly, avoiding eye contact as her tail moved between her legs to cover…sweet Celestia did she mean…? I felt a burning flame ignite in my heart but it burned out quickly. The one or ones responsible were long gone and I wasn’t going to force her to remember.

This time though when I stepped forward to comfort her she didn’t stop me or shy away. I knelt down and she buried her face in my chest and cried. I wrapped my hooves around her and let her cry it out. All this time and I hadn’t realized that she was just as broken as me, perhaps even more so. That thought brought tears to my eyes but I kept my focus on the filly in front of me. I gently stroked her mane while she cried and a few moments later she started to calm down. She took a step back and sniffled, wiping her tears away. She looked up at me and managed a small smile, poking a hoof into my chest.

“Sorry dad, I…I didn’t think I’d cry so much.”

“It’s okay to cry.” I said, blinking away what was left of my own tears. “I still cry sometimes.” I looked over at Sunny, hoping she would say something supportive. Half of her face was hidden under the brim of her hat and she made no move to remedy that.

“I never cry.”

Her stony reaction got a chuckle out of myself and Aurora. Afterwards we were left in silence, with Aurora and myself just staring at each other. While it was true that she had handled…far more than I had thought, I still didn’t like the idea of her going in there alone. Though if she was to grow I had to let her act on her own. I wouldn’t always be there to protect her regardless of how much I wished I could be.

“I thought I was the strong pony here.” I mumbled more to myself. If she had made it through two years of slavery then this shouldn’t even compare. “Sometimes I forget that you aren’t just a helpless filly. That you are more capable than I give you credit for. We can talk about…what happened before later.” I grabbed her in a field of my magic and moved her up towards the small window where she hoisted it open. She looked back at me with soft, watery eyes.

“I won’t let you down dad.” With that she dropped through the window and into the station. Her words carried more meaning beyond what was happening here. She wanted to become a more active member of our group and I was reluctantly allowing it. That’s what she meant by what she said and I believed that down the line she truly wouldn’t let me down.

“It’s not an easy decision to make is it?” Sunny said from behind me. I turned my head to face her to see that she wasn’t hiding under her hat anymore. “Deciding when they are ready to act without you by their side.”

“Did you go through something like this with Stormy?”

“Not just me, every parent in the Wasteland does. Are you really prepared for what your decision entails?”

“Probably not but if I keep trying to shelter her she’ll never grow. All this time I thought I was protecting her but I might have been accidently holding her back.”

“You might make it as a parent after all Sparks.” Sunny came and stood by my side while we stared at the police station with anxious suspense. I trusted her ability to protect herself in there, she had her pistol after all and she knew how to use it. Five minutes later we heard an enormous crash as the loading bay door began to open. Sunny and I dashed forward, guns ready into the loading bay. It looked more like a mechanics garage which kind of made sense. Near the door to the inside of the station was an old police wagon that once shuttled criminals back to their cells. There were piles of old, rusted, useless parts and several toolboxes lined along the walls. One of the toolboxes had fallen over and knocked a pile of parts across the floor. That must have been what the crash was. Above the pile of metal was a button that I assumed opened the door, however Aurora was nowhere to be seen.

“Aurora!? Aurora where are you!” I shouted into the room. My eyes darted back and forth looking for any sign of her when I managed to hear a faint coughing. I zeroed in on where I thought it had come from in time to see Aurora push through the pile of metal on the floor. She coughed one more time and rubbed her forehead with a hoof.

“Damn that hurts…” She whispered through her teeth.

“You okay Aurora?” I trotted over to her and cleared a path through the metal for her.

“Yeah. I had to get up on the toolbox to reach the button. Guess I reached too far.”

“Well at least you aren’t hurt. Good job Princess, C’mon let’s check this place out.”

As we wandered through the dusty halls of the station I was starting to think there wouldn’t be anything for us here. With the entrance collapsed like it was, it looked that nopony had been here since then. That could have been as far back as the Last Day. We had to kick down the door to the offices where we were greeted by old skeletons still sitting at their desks, wearing dusty police caps that looked like they’d disintegrate if I touched them.

“Found a map.” Sunny called from the other side of the room. She held it in her mouth where I took it in my magic to unfold for us all to see. There was a lot of points of interest that meant nothing to me, however as I scanned the map I heard my PipBuck marking certain ones on its own map. At the very least we could now say the trip wasn’t a bust.

“H-hello? Is…arghh somepony there?” A very rough and guttural voice asked from the next room over. Aurora hopped behind Sunny and I as we readied our weapons. We carefully approached the adjacent door that the voice had come from. Inside was a long hallway with jail cells on either side all the way down. I took the first steps into the room and began looking into the cells. Most of the cells had their lights blown out or died but a few were still flickering, barely holding on to life. The fates of those in the cells mirrored that of their captors. Numerous skeletons littered each cell, some of which were still in bed, clinging to the tatters of their blankets. As we neared the middle of the cell block, labored breathing from the cell to my left froze me in my tracks. My EFS confirmed that whoever had called to us was in that dark cell. I was getting ready to turn my PipBuck light on when the occupant lashed out at me through the bars, his jagged teeth and sharp hooves made him look like a monster. His stunt caused me to almost leap out of my skin, falling back against the cell behind me. He snarled and hissed at me for a few more seconds before a look of regret appeared on his face.

“I-I-I’m sorry. I d-didn’t mean to…” He trailed off, his voice becoming quieter. I took a few heavy breaths to calm my heart and turned on my light. Aurora had to suppress a squeal and Sunny grimaced as we saw his form. He looked like a ghoul but he was by far the most disgusting looking one I had ever seen. His hide was slightly yellow and leathery looking, his eyes had sunken back so far into his skull that I was astonished that he could still see. His body was so withered that he looked like a corpse that had been lying in the desert for decades. He was all of that on top of how most other ghouls look. He saw the look on our faces and made a sound that could have been a scoff or a laugh.

“J-judging by your loo…rragh! Looks I am thankful that my light went out decades ago.” He motioned to a mostly empty frame with shards of mirror still remaining. He seemed like he was losing himself as some of his words came out as a bestial growl and his eyes were losing the life behind them. All around his cell was an endless tally marking the passage of time.

“How….how long have you been here?” I asked, already guessing what his answer would be. He looked around at all the markings on the wall and shrugged weakly.

“I-I ran out of wall space a loonggrh! …a long time ago.”

“You were in here when the bombs fell weren’t you.”

“Yes…fate was so kind as to cuuurrgh…curse me with undeath.” His voice was getting more and more animalistic as we spoke. “I’ve been I-in here so long…Please…kill me.”

His request was sincere. He had been trapped as a ghoul in this cell for well over two hundred years and my guess was that he was on the verge of going feral.

“P-please…I can feel myself fading…shoot me b-before it’s too late.” He pleaded through the bars at all of us, hoping beyond hope that one of us would comply.

“Wait.” Aurora approached the bars and gave the stallion a pitying look. “What is your name?”

“M-my…? My name?” His voice trailed off into a pained whisper. “I…I am…” His body slumped forward against the bars and went stiff. After a few tense seconds he began to move again but his movements were much jerkier than before. He looked up and the life in his eyes was gone. As if he saw us for the first time, he lunged forward and tried to attack us through the bars, growling and gnashing his rotten teeth together. Aurora turned away from the new monster and gave me a sad, yet pleading look. I understood what she wanted to do and nodded to her. She turned back to face the bars where the ghoul was still trying in vain to get at us and sighed gloomily. She reached into her backpack and pulled out her pistol, holding in in her mouth and leveling it at the head of the ghoul. Without any hesitation she fired a silent shot through its skull, splattering the back of the cell with an almost pitch-black ichor. His body slumped forward against the bars and came to rest just in front of Aurora, face to lifeless face. She simply stowed her gun back in her backpack and made to leave the cell block. I looked next to the cell and saw that it was number thirty-seven. If I could find a terminal maybe I could find his case files or whatever they had on him. Aurora had asked him his name before he turned. She wanted him to remember who he was before the end.

“Did I do the right thing Sunny?” I asked, wondering how much Aurora could take.

“There’s no such thing.” Sunny said, casually watching Aurora trot out of the cell block. “Just leave her be and she’ll figure it out on her own.”

I’d been right. I wasn’t prepared for what my decision would bring for her. Then I made another decision that may bite me in the flank. I was going to do as Sunny advised. I was going to let her deal with it on her own. If she needed to talk to me, and she would, it had to be her to bring it up. I was still wrapping my head around her life and how it led her to this point. She didn’t need me to watch over her, she didn’t need me to protect her but she wanted me to be in her life. I loved her as if she was my own child but she was already mostly grown up. I had gone through all the stages of having and raising a child and then some all in the span of about a month. I…I wasn’t prepared. For any of it.

We followed Aurora out of the cell block and finished scavenging the next few rooms. All in all we had found both the station’s armory and evidence room which did us good for ammo and chems. Inside the armory were a multitude of small arms weapons, most of which were unsalvageable but what I did find that would help us greatly were Kevlar vests. I took one and strapped it over my barding. It took a bit of pleading to get Sunny to wear one under her duster but she conceded after a few minutes. As for Aurora…well they didn’t exactly make bullet-proof vest for children but they did make them for dogs… It took a bit more pleading than with Sunny to get her to put it on but eventually she allowed it.

“Thanks princess. You don’t know how much better wearing that will make me feel.”

“I…I feel silly.” She said, looking down at her ill-fitting vest.

“I know but it’s the best we can do.” I ruffled her mane gently and patted her towards the door so we could finish exploring the building. Most of what we found after that was either worn beyond use or just junk. However every storm cloud has its silver lining and we stumbled into the chief’s office. And as one would expect of a pony of that station, the terminal on the desk was still bathing the room in a dull green glow. Now was my chance to look into cell thirty-seven. I sat in the stiff, creaky chair, careful not to step on the skeleton that lay underneath the desk. The protection on this terminal was about as basic as they come. Either the chief was lax in his security, or more likely, he didn’t know how to secure the terminal. Once I was past the security I searched in earnest for any information I could find on cell thirty-seven and its occupant. I was surprised to see that he had quite the dossier written about him.

Case 1142-C. Wave Walker Assassination Logs.

Evidence Log Entry: WW-00

Object: 1x suspicious memory orb recovered from suspects home.

Status: Under investigation at Ministry of Morale facility “The Farm”

Evidence Log Entry: WW-01

Object: 1x silenced zebra rifle, found discarded near the scene of the crime.

Status: In evidence, North Whinnyapolis armory.

Evidence Log Entry: WW-02

Object: 37x ammunition for zebra rifle.

Status: In evidence, North Whinnyapolis armory.

Wave Walker was arrested at 10:37 AM after an attempted assassination attempt on Minister Rarity during a public speech. Minister Rarity had recruited the help of a body double to deliver the speech for her while she attended to a Ministry affair. Wave Walker was apprehended two blocks from where the speech was held after he successfully assassinated the body double. Upon his capture the Whinnyapolis Police Department found gunshot residue near his mouth and on his shoulders. A thorough search of the area led the police to recovering the murder weapon, tossed in a dumpster near the crime scene. The suspects DNA was found on the weapon. Wave Walker had been a loyal supporter of war time Equestria so the police were allowed to search his home for evidence of sedition or zebra sympathizing. Nothing that was found led authorities to believe that the assassination was planned or that Wave Walker held any kind of grudge against Minister Rarity or the Equestrian government. Upon questioning, Wave Walker denied any memory of the event. His testimony stated that the last thing he remembered was relaxing in his home when suddenly he was in an alley near the crime scene. The results of the interrogation are similar to that of the suspect in last week’s Black Tower incident. A second search of his home uncovered a memory orb and a recollector. Both of which were surrendered to the Ministry of Morale for their own investigation. There’s too much in common with those two crimes for this to be a coincidence. Something is infiltrating Equestria and the results could be catastrophic. Hopefully the MoM’s investigation finds the answers we could not.

I remembered reading the report on the Black Tower incident and the similarities described couldn’t be ignored. While I was reading the report my PipBuck had marked both the North Whinnyapolis police department and Ministry of Image hub on my map. Both locations warranted a visit if we could spare the time. What had Fancy Pants said to me? The secret project Rarity was working on could be found here…was it somehow related to the attempted assassination by Wave Walker? The more I found, the more questions I had and I didn’t have the ability to answer most of them. What few I could encouraged me to continue my own investigation. I slumped back in the chair and looked over at Aurora who was absentmindedly kicking at a pile of debris.

“Wave Walker.” I said, garnering her attention from across the room.

“What?” She asked, giving me her full attention.

“Wave Walker. That was his name. The ghoul.”

“O-oh…” She returned her absent gaze to the floor.

It was the reaction I should have expected. After all it wasn’t me she needed to hear it from. Having exhausted the building of anything else of interest, we cleared off a nearby desk and rolled out the map Sunny had found.

“So what should we be looking for?” I asked, looking at the map with no idea what any of it meant.

“Cutter said the pony we’re after is a Pegasus so it would make sense to me to look high. So we should look around here.” Sunny place her hoof on the map above the section of the city labeled downtown. The part of the city where the bulk of the skyscrapers would be. It made sense to me and by that same logic we might catch a hint of where the griffins, including Azura and Grim, might be.

“So we’re heading to where the ruins are the densest then.”

“Yep. If you could fly would you choose to live on the ground?”

“You have a point. I’m just worried what we might run into out there. We don’t even know where the megaspell hit, we might have to cross through or near ground zero.”

“Well…good thing we brought a lot of radiation medicine right?” Aurora said, poking a hoof at my saddlebags.

“I don’t know that they would help against that much radiation. Let’s hope it isn’t in our path.”

I took a moment to scan the map but I couldn’t find any sign of where the MoM hub would be. Typical really, why should it be easy? With our next stop decided we loaded up and headed back out into the Whinnyapolis streets. Ever hear the saying ‘the quickest path between two points is a straight line’? The closer we got to downtown the more enormous piles of debris we found. Very few buildings taller than five floors, outside the enormous skyscrapers, were still standing with the majority of them having collapsed or fallen into the streets below, blocking our path several times along the way. Every now and then we would come across something on our EFS that never amounted to more than radroaches or bloatsprites and the gunfire in the distance seemed to die down and cease altogether. I was staring off at the city’s skyline when I felt something push against my chest.

“Huh?” I looked down to see that Sunny was trying to show me something in a black sheath. I took it in my magic and freed it from its confines. What a saw was a white, hooked bone knife set inside a metal handle wrapped in sinew. “Is this the fang?”

“Yep. Belua’s Bite. Turned out to be a pretty good idea.” She said, snatching it from my magic and doing a little flourish before returning it to its sheath. We were talking about each other’s knives and their merits as weapons when Aurora stopped, shushed us and held out a hoof to stop us.

“What’s up Aurora?” I asked, scanning the area for sign of danger. There was nothing on my EFS but suddenly I was on edge.

“Shh!” Aurora shushed again, crouching low to the ground and pointing to a nearby building. Half of the aforementioned building had collapsed, forming a ramp up to the third floor of the building’s remains which Sunny and I were following Aurora towards. Once we reached the top, we carefully peeked out of the glassless window to a courtyard below. I was looking for anything suspicious but nothing in or around the courtyard looked out of place. I was getting ready to voice my concern when I heard something flapping in the wind, something that sounded like wings. I looked up above the courtyard and saw something shimmering slightly, the faint presence of something almost invisible. All at once whatever stealth field was being generated powered down and hovering over the courtyard were two pegasus ponies in sleek, black armor. The armor almost made them look like bugs, with orange goggles covering their eyes and a long, bladed scorpion-like tail coming from where their tails were supposed to be. They both had red gem tipped weapons mounted on their sides and tethers attached to their armor that suspended a cage between them. Without having to say anything to each other, they did something to remotely open the cage and dumped several creatures onto the cracked and worn pavement below. Once they had dumped their cargo they immediately engaged their stealth field and disappeared. Nopony said anything for a few minutes, all of us observing what they had dumped in the courtyard. From our vantage point we could see them start moving and when one of them had made it fully upright I recognized what they were instantly.

“Alicorns…” Sunny and I whispered simultaneously, looking at the pile of them slowly rouse from whatever sleep induced state they had been in. We had to deal with them before they fully woke up and managed to arm themselves. They were just like the ones we encountered outside of Stable 71. Most of them didn’t have fur and their flesh was twisted, malformed and bloated in places. Some had grotesquely formed wings that were incapable of flight and others had vestigial looking horns half the length of a normal horn. Hopefully the two pegasi had gotten far enough away by now that they wouldn’t hear our culling. I don’t know how we would have fared if they came back. I drew my pistol and Sunny pulled the pin from a grenade and threw it out the window into the mass of fake alicorns. Only a few of them had recognized the grenade as a threat while the rest either were too dazed to identify it or didn’t see it at all. When it exploded it took the majority of them out with it before they could even stand. The survivors who had recognized the grenade numbered less than five and were easily picked off by Sunny and I. After the last one fell, we took several moments to hide out to wait and see if the two pegasi had heard the commotion. When nopony came to investigate the scene we all let out a sigh of relief and returned out attention to the slaughter below us.

“Who were those ponies?” I asked. The scene before me made me queasy but thankfully I was able to keep it down.

“I…I’m not sure.” In a rare moment, Sunny didn’t have an answer this time. “Whoever they were, they were very well equipped. Perhaps even more so than the Steel Rangers…wait.”

Sunny was overcome with a sudden realization. She looked to the sky, then back to the alicorns. She repeated this several times before she spoke up again.

“What are they up to? Why are they down here?” She said aloud, though to nopony in particular.

“What? What did you figure out?” I said in confusion. Aurora and I were eagerly awaiting her answer, when she seemed to remember that we were there.

“It’s them…the Grand Pegasus Enclave.”

“The grand what?”

“Remember when I told you that the pegasi retreated from Equestria and closed the sky?”

“Yeah… What about it?”

“It’s them. The Grand Pegasus Enclave is what’s left of Equestria’s military, specifically its Air Force. If the Enclave is operating beneath the clouds…they could be up to anything.”

Suddenly the gravity of the situation hit me all at once. If they really were a division of Equestria’s military, then they were undeniably the most technologically advanced faction in the Wasteland. What were they doing here? More importantly, were they doing the same thing in Baltimare? The presence of the fake alicorns proved that they had dumped them there at least once. With the technology they possessed, specifically their stealth technology, they could be doing anything anywhere and we wouldn’t even know.

After thinking about the ramifications our discovery might bring I came to a realization of my own. To confirm my suspicion, I brought up my PipBuck and navigated to its radio function to view the list of available radio signals. I was picking up the same two signals I had been picking up since I left Stable 63. Though the one in particular was one I’d been told had only been around for about two months now, the one labeled GPE-RDF. Now I had an idea of what it was. GPE…Grand Pegasus Enclave. Whether that meant they have only been operating below the clouds for those two months or not wasn’t an answer I had. Though the existence of that frequency meant that they had a base below the clouds somewhere…right?

“We should keep out of their way if we can.” I wish I had more to say about our options but truth was, we really didn’t have any. I was starting to make my way back down to the street when suddenly I got a dull ache in the muscles of my legs. As the other two joined me and we continued on our path the ache slowly began spreading up my body, specifically to my shoulder. I grimaced and began to limp briefly before I stopped and flipped through my PipBuck’s sorting spell to find what I needed.

“Are you ok dad?” Aurora asked, concerned for my well-being. What a flip we had taken in our roles, a few hours ago and we would have been in opposite positions.

Sunny noticed that I had stopped and stopped herself, though she remained silent, eyeing me closely when she noticed what I was retrieving.

“I’m fine Aurora, my shoulder’s just acting up.” I took the syringe of painkiller I had pulled from my bag and injected it into my rump and within the minute the aches began to dissipate. Swiftly I was back to 100% and we were able to keep moving.

After our encounter with those two Enclave ponies we started to move with a bit more furtiveness, careful of what was around us and carefully checking corners before we moved past them. Despite it being very unlikely we would encounter them again the three of us were on edge. And for good reason. We had just made it to a large concrete lot attached to a dilapidated grocery store when we heard the sound of hooves. I turned to face the front of the store and I saw a tail disappear into the darkness inside through a broken window.

“Did anypony else see that?” I said quietly, garnering the others attention.

“See what?” Aurora brought up her PipBuck and her eyes widened slightly. “There’s somepony in there.”

“Hostile?” Sunny asked, staring at the storefront suspiciously.

“No. Should we…check it out?” Aurora looked unsure of what to do and I shared her dilemma. I knew from experience that the EFS could be tricked when it came to detecting hostility. Even if that were the case there were three of us and there was a possibility that whoever was in there could help us.

“Stay here…I’ll go check it out.”

“Sparks wait-” Sunny tried in vain as I flipped my hood over my head and disappeared. Even though the sound I made was suppressed I still treaded with caution as I approached the storefront. I was careful to avoid whatever lay on the ground, shards of glass and the occasional can. Once I had made it through the window I saw what we were dealing with. The inside of the store had been occupied at one point in time, probably not long after the bombs fell. Some of the long shelves that once held food products and the like had been stacked horizontally and diagonally to make small landings above the ground floor and ladders up to the rafters where a full second floor had been constructed from scrap metal and plywood. I spotted the pony we were looking for not far from the window, hiding behind a poorly constructed guard post, peeking their head out to watch the window. I slowly made my way around the guard post to see that the pony was in fact a young colt who couldn’t have been much older than Aurora. His coat was black and his mane was blonde, both of which were absolutely filthy. I also noticed that he had chainless shackles on his legs and an enormous scar on his flank where a cutie mark would be. He was hyperventilating as quietly as he could, his eyes wide with fear. This…this colt had been a slave. Or at least that was the conclusion I came to, based on his condition and his reaction to us. I was unsure how we would handle the poor kid. If Sunny and Aurora tried to come in he would see them and surely run. If I took my hood off this close to him there’s no telling how he’d react. Given my option I went with the one that ensured he wouldn’t get away. I took down my hood and tried to soothe the kid with the softest, least threatening voice I could muster.

“Hello there.” As soon as he heard my voice he nearly jumped out of his skin, clambering backwards to try and get away from me and in the process he knocked over the flimsy remains of the guard post.

“NOOoo!! Stay away from me!!” the colt yelled, practically burying himself in the remains of the guard post, anything he could to put distance between us. From outside I heard Sunny and Aurora approaching the storefront.

“Hey kid, c-calm down we’re not here to hurt you.” I slowly approached the colt who started throwing bits of old wood in my direction, few of which needed to be dodged, his aim too shaky to do him any good. After the sixth missed throw I stopped walking towards him and simply sat on the floor, hoping he would see that I wasn’t hostile. Not even a minute passed before his breathing slowed and the bits of whatever he could grab stopped coming. Aurora, who had been watching from the window, jumped down into the store and trotted up to the colt. She clearly noticed his state and held out a sympathetic hoof.

“Are you okay? What is your name?” The colt was clearly confused by our demeanor and was wary of us, regardless of our intentions

“M-my n-n-name?” His voice was beyond shaky, this was like a colt who hadn’t spoken in a long time, his own voice foreign to him. He looked between the three of us and fear crept into his eyes again, though with Sunny blocking the exit he had nowhere to run.

“We aren’t slavers. You’re safe with us.” I said as soothingly as I could. His eyes darted between us again, looking for the truth behind us. Aurora was still giving him a compassionate look while holding out her hoof and Sunny tipped her hat up to show her face and gave what she would call her best disarming smile. This whole experience must have been too overwhelming for the poor colt because his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fainted.

“Poor kid.” I walked over to him and Aurora, getting a better look at his condition. Apart from being covered in dirt and grime, I noticed that his coat was patchy in places and I could see his ribs through his skin. Looking down at this slave colt brought up something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. My first day out of the stable. When I stood by and let a colt get executed for my cowardice. That feeling of being helpless and powerless to help that colt welled up out of my psyche, simultaneously filling me with determination.

“Let’s take him with us.” I said without thinking, though now that I heard it out loud I found that I didn’t disagree. I got no objections from the others so I levitated him up on my back, letting him have this time to rest.

“How are you holding up Aurora? This couldn’t have been easy to see.” I motioned to the colt on my back, to which Aurora shared a gloomy expression with the ground.

“It…it was hard to see. The way they treat the slaves…even the kids…just makes me so angry!” She kicked a rock that went clattering down the street. The fire in her eyes faded quickly and her expression returned to gloom. “But you can’t fight back, not when you’re captive. Most slavers don’t need much of a reason to dish out whatever punishment they want.”

Unexpectedly I didn’t see Aurora as just my daughter anymore. She had a strength of character that most ponies her age didn’t. The fact that she hid this for as long as she did spoke leagues of her willpower. The ability to keep that kind of pain, that kind of trauma hidden is no easy feat. The parallels between her and what a pony her age should experience brought a tear to my eye.

“You…are a strong pony Aurora.”

“I have to be, for both our sakes.” She looked into my eyes and the expression on her face brought me back to that day when I sat on the edge of my bed with a pistol to my head. The day we decided we needed each other, the day we learned we had to give the other strength. If I had known she was holding this inside…

“How long do you think he was a slave?” Sunny and Aurora both spared a glance at the colt on my back.

“Too long.” Aurora said sadly.

Sunny looked a bit closer and made a concerned face. “Almost all his life I think. Did you hear his voice before? That may have been the first time he’d spoken in years.”

That and the state of his health supported that theory. By the looks of it he had been fed just enough to not die and been badly beaten many times. The deep, warped scar tissue on his flanks was the most sickening. They were where his cutie marks should be which meant somepony had cut them off his body. To them he was property, he would have nothing that gave him an identity. I felt hatred burning a pit in my gut. Aurora and the colt…they were ponies but they had been treated worse than animals. Slavers…they were nothing more than monsters… and if I found them…they would get the fates they deserved. The Wasteland was making me more violent. I never wished death on anypony when I lived in the Stable. Now though? Not only did I wish it on them but I would carry it out myself. Chestnut’s murder was still fresh in my mind and not a single part of me regretted it, even if it didn’t bring me the closure I’d hoped for. I would happily inflict the same fate on those who hurt Aurora and the colt.

“What are we going to do with him?” Sunny had gotten closer to me and spoke in a low tone. “We can’t take him with us for much longer.”

“We can’t just leave him Sunny!”

“I know that but we can’t take him with us back to Baltimare.”

In truth I didn’t have a plan for the colt. I went into that store in hopes of finding somepony who could help us, not the other way around. We continued our way into the heart of the city and just like Baltimare I was surprised at the lack of activity. Though it would behoove me to remember that, unlike Baltimare, Whinnyapolis was hit directly by a Balefire Bomb. The skyscrapers were very near to us now but our path was blocked by a military checkpoint. The large metal gate that blocked the road had numerous scars and scuffs from bullets and fire. The door was equally caked in old black blood, at the base of the gate was a skeleton with the top half of its skull resting in its helmet…ten feet away from the rest of the remains. As we looked upon the metal barricade I levitated out the map we recovered from the police station and examined it. The checkpoint wasn’t on the map and the paths around to downtown were very far out of our way from our current location.

“Shit…looks like we have to find a way around.” It figured that once we had neither of our flyers we would come across the most problems that flying would solve. “We should hurry if we want to leave enough time to find somewhere to sleep.”

“I’m not going around, we don’t have time to divert that far.” Sunny walked forward and poked her head into the booth, looking for the door controls. “See? The switch is right here.” She hit the switch and the gate started rumbling as the mechanism attempted to open them. However it wouldn’t budge and the sound of something grinding loudly came from the gate and the rumbling ceased.

“Great, you broke it.” I gave Sunny and the gate an annoyed stare.

“Aren’t you a mechanic? Why don’t you fix it?” Sunny pointed an accusatory hoof at me.

“I’m not a mechanic! I don’t know how to fix a motor or whatever opens this thing. Not that I can even get to it.” I pointed at the air above the gate to a small wisp of black smoke, showing that the mechanism was on the other side.

“I’ll check it out.” Aurora ran up to the gate and jumped as if she was going to clear it. When she didn’t she looked back at me with an expectant gaze. “Dad?”

“What?”

Aurora touched her hoof to her forehead. “Help me?”

“Oh, okay just be careful princess.” I lifted her in the air in my magic and carefully floated her over the gate to the other side. “What’s it look like over there?”

“I think I found the machine that opens it, there’s a…um…there’s somepony jammed in the gears.”

“Can you…pull them out?”

“I’ll try.”

For the next few minutes I heard her exerting herself, trying to pull somepony’s remains out of the gears they were jammed in.

“AHh!” I heard her cry followed by the sound of bones hitting concrete. “Got it! Hit the switch again Aunt Sunny.”

“Sure thing kiddo.” Sunny hit the switch again and at first the sounds coming from the machine sounded like we were up shit creek but after a particularly loud metallic screech the gate began to slide apart.

“Alright good job Aurora.” I said, trying to spot her through the growing crack between the gates. I found her and saw that she was facing the other way. “Aurora? Are you alright?” As the space between the gates got big enough for me to fit through I came face to face with a unicorn mare who shoved a gun in my face with magic. Now that I could see past the gate I saw that a second mare had a gun shoved in Aurora’s face as well. Sunny saw the gun pointed at me and took an aggressive stance, to which the mare in front of me smirked smugly.

“Ah ah ah, make a move and they die.” She punctuated that point by practically sticking her gun in my mouth.

Sunny seemed to struggle with her choice for a moment before relaxing her posture. The mare in front of me smiled and took a step back, her gun still leveled at my head. A third pony. A stallion, came in past the gate and made his way to Sunny where he hit her over the head with a lead pipe. She hit the ground hard and a red stain of blood on the stallion’s pipe made me ignite my horn with magic. Before I could do anything with it I heard that dark whispering in my head again. It promised power, power enough to save my friends and myself from theses ponies. My vision was pulled away from the scene before me and the mare in front of me had time to stop me.

“Hey! No magic!” She whipped her pistol into the back of my head hard enough to knock me down. The colt fell from my back and as I laid there looking through the darkness surrounding my vision, I saw the stallion bending down next to Sunny.

“She’s alive.” He said flatly, standing back up and lifting her onto his back. “Bitch is heavy.”

The mare above me smiled again and looked down at me with a subtle joy written on her face. “Sorry about this but caps are caps.”

Before I had a chance to react she swung her pistol into my face with her magic, knocking me out cold. For the briefest of seconds I thought I heard a stallion calling out to me as nothingness took me.

Hours later I awoke in the back of a caged wagon, naked with only my PipBuck and the familiar pressure of a nullifier ring to comfort me. Sunny, Aurora and the colt were still unconscious on the floor of the wagon. They were in similar states as me with everything taken except their PipBucks and shackles in the colts case. In the diming light of twilight I could just barely make out the skyscrapers of Whinnyapolis. We were heading west based on their position to us now. I walked to the bars of my cage and looked at the ponies pulling the wagon. Harnessed to the wagon was the stallion from the gate and the mare who had pulled a gun on Aurora. Where was the third? The one who knocked me out? As if she could hear my thoughts, her head appeared upside-down at the top of the bars from the top of the wagon. Her sudden appearance startled me, something she seemed to take an amount of joy from.

“You had some sweet gear you know that?” She said happily.

“Huh?” How was I supposed to react to that? Didn’t she just foalnap us?

“Your gear!” She chirped. “Your pistol is pretty awesome and your cloak? Holy shit I’ve never seen anything like it!” To show her excitement she flipped the hood of my cloak on her head and what little of her I could see vanished. “This’ll make sneaking up on ponies so much easier!”

“Calm down back there, we all got some cool stuff.” The stallion turned his head back towards us and tipped Sunny’s hat at us, he was also wearing Sunny’s battle saddle and her new knife. Once he was done the mare on the roof reappeared and gave another carefree smile.

“No hard feelings right? About the foalnapping I mean.”

I just stared at her, my lips turned down in a scowl.

“Don’t look at me like that, I’m not a bad pony. It’s just business.”

“Ponies are not products to be bought or sold.” That stab seemed to shut her up for a while, her head retreating back up to the roof of the wagon. I looked back to the others who were still unconscious on the floor. Aurora was breathing softly, her chest rising and falling in the calm of sleep. Sunny on the other hoof had been bludgeoned over the head and the presence of bloodstained hay near her head gave me plenty of cause to worry. Her breathing was less calm but she was still alive. It was at this time that I wished I had been a medical pony instead of a repair pony. I knew nothing of the healing and soothing properties of magic and it was killing me to see her in such a state. I gently stroked her mane and hoped that my actions would somehow help her recover. The mystery colt looked as though he had been drugged to stay in a state of unconsciousness. I didn’t hear anything from our captors until well into the night, when we presumably reached our destination.

“Alright Fizz, we’re here. Get down and help us unload them.” The stallion called from the front. I sat in the middle of the wagon in defiance as the two ponies who had been pulling the cart opened the back and tried to shepherd me out. I gave them the dirtiest look I could muster and they chose to go around me and grab the others. Whenever I could I tried to get in their way and do everything I could to be a nuisance to them, knowing it was the most I could do without retaliation. However I hounded the mare trying to take Aurora too much and the first mare materialized next to me and shoved me towards the back of the wagon.

“You guys take those three on ahead, I’ll take the fight out of this one.” She didn’t take her eyes off mine as she spoke.

“Whatever F just don’t take too long.” The stallion yelled back as they disappeared down a set of stairs with Sunny, Aurora and the colt. Now that she was this close I got a better look at her. Her coat was an amber in color and her mane was a bright pink. She was wearing my cloak over the ballistic vest I found in the police station. She was extremely close to me now, so close that I could feel her breath on my face. She grabbed one of my hooves and levitated out a set of cuffs, locking my hoof to one of the bars of the cage. She repeated the process to my other hoof and leaned in close, breathing in the scent of my mane. She shuddered slightly and that familiar joyous smile formed on her face.

“You know how long it’s been since I fucked a good looking stallion like you?” She inched forward and plopped her rump down in my lap, straddling me like she was my lover. She rocked her hips back and forth and no matter how revolted I was by what she was going to do, my body couldn’t help but have a reaction. Her eyes practically glazed over when her prize emerged from my sheathe.

“See? Getting foalnapped isn’t that bad.” She lifted herself up and took hold of it, guiding it towards her eager marehood. She dropped back down onto me and squealed in delight. I closed my eyes and struggled through what was happening, grunting as quietly as I could as this mare took advantage of me. She smiled, giggled and gazed into my eyes as she made me hers, bouncing up and down until I couldn’t hold it anymore. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth like an animal as she moaned in absolute bliss, taking a sick enjoyment out of what she was doing to me. I winced against the feeling that had been forced out of me, my assailant breathing heavily, her hooves around my neck making me stare into her eyes. She held her position for several minutes just waiting, for what I did not know. When she finally stood up I turned my head in shame, unable to look.

“That was better than I’d hoped! I can only imagine how good it would have been if you had wanted it as bad as I did. And don’t worry pretty boy, I’ll be finding you again.” She turned and gently brushed her tail under my chin. She slowly made her way out of the wagon, swaying her hips as she did. She stopped at the edge of the wagon and tossed a key halfway between me and her.

“Horizon! Come get the last prisoner, I’m done here!” She yelled towards where the others had gone. She closed the door of the wagon and spared one final glance through the bars.

“I’ll be seeing you again, real soon.” She said softly, patting her belly happily as she wandered out of sight. Once she was gone I let a single tear roll down my cheek. Among my belongings she wore, one of them was Winter’s necklace. I had seen it dangling before me as the mare had her way with me.

Thankfully I was being kept in the same pen as Aurora and Sunny. The colt we saved was put in the pen across from us. If he had any doubts that we weren’t slavers before then he had his truth now. The compound we were brought to was built on a large, flat concrete slab that may have once been a parking lot or possibly even a playground. The pens were centered in the middle of the area and each one was surrounded by its own encircling wall to ensure we couldn’t see the others, giving us a feeling of isolation. Over the next few days I learned that we were sold into the care of slavers who were using us to dig and mine for valuable resources. At the very least I wouldn’t have to worry about Aurora or anypony else being sold off to another owner. True to her word, the amber mare would return to our pen every few days and take me away to make sure I knew that I was her plaything. Every time I withstood to the best of my ability but even though I possessed great willpower the body would do what it wanted, regardless of the want of the mind. Aurora and Sunny were no fools. Though I never told them what was happening when she took me away they figured it out faster than I’d have wanted them to.

Our captors were in no rush to make sure we were well fed or properly taken care of. The first five days were the roughest, at least for me. I did everything I could do to protect my daughter which meant fighting off particularly bold slaves and going hungry some nights so she wouldn’t, all the while gritting my teeth and enduring the ‘treatment’ I received from the amber mare. I silently thanked the goddesses that she was a mare with an interest in stallions who was more than glad to take me as tribute if it meant that nopony would ever touch Aurora. Sunny was always by my side in the times I was actually in the slave pen. She saw the trials I was enduring for Aurora’s sake and knew I would choose to suffer for all eternity if it meant sparing Aurora that kind of pain again. I was wearing myself ragged, working for two in the mines and withstanding the torture the amber mare forced upon me to ensure Aurora’s protection. After the first week of captivity we made an alarming discovery. How exactly we managed to find what we did is uncertain but one day when our pen was to relieve another in the mines, as we passed the other pens worth of slaves we spotted a certain blue fringed griffin among them. We locked eyes as we passed and soon every waking thought I could spare was devoted to finding us all a way out. However something detrimental occurred the following day. As our captors were taking a whip to me for collapsing in exhaustion Sunny lost herself and Downpour emerged, killing one of the slavers in retaliation. In response to the incident Downpour was locked in solitary confinement, which in reality was a single pony fallout shelter near the edge of the compound. Her absence made protecting Aurora that much harder because the times when I was called upon to ‘service’ the amber mare meant I had to leave Aurora alone in the pen with ponies many times her age. I had no doubt in my mind that our captors cared not for our wellbeing while we were kept in the pens. As more days passed and some events could be predicted with some regularity, Azura and I were able to pass notes to each other as we passed one another when one group would relieve the other. In the end though we had little to work with. Ponies with guns patrolled the grounds and even if we did manage to escape our pens we would easily be spotted from the guard towers and gunned down. Maybe if we could get the magic nullifier off my horn we would have a better chance. In the end we couldn’t formulate any kind of plan that would be effective. Eventually Downpour was returned from solitary and she was less than helpful in the planning department. Then an idea came to me, the amber mare had taken a liking to me through our one sided encounters, perhaps I could use her if I played along the next time she came for me.

“Really? That’s the best you could come up with?” Downpour was quick to criticize but she knew that any of her ideas would likely get us killed.

“It’s the only thing I can do. Her loyalty isn’t to these ponies, it’s to caps. If I can convince her that helping us would be more profitable then maybe we can get her help.”

“Dad.” Aurora placed her hoof on my leg and looked up at me, all the pain she knew I was enduring evident in her expression. “You don’t have to do this.”

“It has to be me Aurora.” I patted her on the head and gave her an empty smile. “I’m the one she wants…it has to be me.” I whispered the last part to myself in the hope that it would help my resolve. It didn’t. My body was so tired, my eyes burned whenever I blinked and my energy reserves were gone. Days without food has that effect on ponies. I hadn’t seen myself in over a week but I didn’t need to to know that I looked like shit. What the amber mare saw in me I did not know but enduring the treatment one more time could grant us a solution. Perhaps she didn't see anything in me, rather wanted to see how long it would take for her new toy to break. There was no telling how she would react to my plan but I had to try, for all our sakes.

“Here.” Aurora pushed her bowl of whatever they fed us towards me. “You need to eat something.”

“I…I’m fine Aurora. You go ahead.”

“Please dad! Do you think I haven’t noticed? You haven’t eaten anything in six days! You don’t have to do this for me!” She knew what I was doing, she knew that I was killing myself to make sure she would never feel as she did when her parents were killed. “You don’t have to protect me! I can take it! Let me be the one to help you this time…please.” Her eyes were welling up with tears but she wouldn’t falter. She understood what I was trying to do but didn’t want to see me die for her even though I would have gladly done so.

“I…I don’t-” I tried to protest.

“No! I’ve been a slave before and I know what it does to ponies. Look at you! You’re suffering more than you have to. For me.” Her teary eyes tore into me, forcing me to feel everything she was feeling. My body clearly showed the toll my actions were taking. Scabs and bruises from whippings and beatings, along with the whole of my body becoming gaunter from the lack of nourishment. She wasn’t going to let me continue down the path I chose to walk. To her, this was just as bad as that day in the Crater when she saved me from myself. Suffering for her sake was a form of suffering for her, a realization that pained me more than my empty stomach. I stood up and walked towards Aurora. She stared me down as I approached but didn’t resist when I pulled her into as strong a hug as I was capable of. Her hold on me became tighter and I could feel her tears on my fur.

“I l-love you dad.” We held our embrace long enough for our tears to dry. When we let go I picked up the bowl of food and started eating. There are few words that can describe the wonderful feeling of having something in your belly after days of starving. Even after finishing the crude meal I still felt like death. My muscles ached and my mind felt as if I were looking through the fog of the swamp. I had a good idea of why I was feeling that way but escape was my sole concern right now.

“Did that help? Do you think you’ll still be able to go through with it?” Downpour poked me in the chest with a raised eyebrow, fuck was she impatient. Though she did spend a few days in the Box so maybe it was warranted. “Better decide fast.” She said, looking over my shoulder. “Here she comes.”

I could hear the sound of her hoofsteps approaching the pen. When I turned around I saw that she was flanked by two of the slavers as she always was and pointed at me with a hunger in her eyes.

“I’ll take my favorite toy for the rest of the day please.” She jangled a small bag of caps which prompted the two slavers to act.

“Alright everypony get up against the sides of the pen!” One of them barked.

They did as they were told and fanned out to the edges of the pen, leaving me the lone pony near the center of the pen. Once everypony was off to the sides the slavers opened the gate, with one watching the slaves on either side while the amber mare collected me. As was her routine, she locked a bomb collar with a leash around my neck and tugged it roughly.

“Follow, be a good dog and you may get a treat~” she let that last word linger in the air, getting angry glares from Downpour and Aurora. She yanked the leash again and pulled me all the way out of the pen. She looked back at the others and fluttered her eyelashes like an innocent foal. “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of my pet.” Her calm demeanor evaporated in an instant. She jerked the leash on my collar hard enough that it choked me and pulled me backwards onto the ground. A lustful smile formed on her face as angry scowls formed on the others’. “So long as he behaves.” She stood over me, leaning down close enough that our faces were practically touching. “I do love the sight of a handsome stallion beneath me.” She tugged the leash lightly twice, which signaled me to get back on my hooves, an effort that took nearly all my strength. With no words said between us, she took the leash and began leading me wherever she pleased. Which usually ended up being the wagon she brought us here with, after all she didn’t have a home here. As with every other time I found my front hooves cuffed to the bars in the back of the wagon. The other two who were with her when we were captured were nowhere to be seen this time, a fact that worried me.

“Where are the others?” I asked in a whisper, anything louder and I might have been punished.

“They’re inside and what a good boy you are, remembering your manners.” She patted my head condescendingly, planting a soft kiss on my nose. She discarded her armor and cloak, my armor and cloak, leaving only the flower shaped pendant dangling from her neck. She gently lowered herself onto my lap, straddling my legs with hers.

“Normally I know a mares name by now.” I added more volume to my voice, knowing now that she had gotten comfortable nothing would come of it.

“No names, makes it less intimate. Just the way I like~”

“May I…ask you a question mistress?” My answer was another kiss, this one on the lips. Her tongue forced its way into my mouth and I wasn’t going to let it conqueror me, my own battling back, an action that made her hum happily. When our lips parted there was nothing left but a strand of saliva connecting our mouths. She giggled and gave me a desirous look through half lidded eyes.

“What is it my pet~”

“Of all the stallions in Whinyapolis…why me?” I didn’t expect to get an answer from her, the question was more of an act of stalling, buying time to figure out a way to turn this encounter to my advantage.

“Do I really need a reason? Perhaps it had been so long that I no longer cared. Or maybe I find you to be a very fit stallion for breeding naughty mares like me~”

“B-breeding?” I felt bile rise in my throat. Nothing would destroy me more than to have a permanent reminder of my torture in the form of a foal.

“Haha you should see your face. Fret not lover, I can’t get pregnant. The Taint saw to that.” She began grinding herself against my groin, punctuating her point with her intention. Suddenly an idea grew in my head, an idea that almost made me sick but one I had to act on.

“Is that so? In that case I don’t have to hold back.” I gave her a look of animalistic hunger and instinct, yanking against my cuffs loudly. She didn’t flinch and a disturbing twinkle came to her eyes.

“Don’t think you can play me that easily…I’ll have my way with you until I’m satisfied.” Her hips kept rocking back and forth, forcing biology to leave me exposed to the air and the plump flesh of her flanks.

“Remember what you said to me the first time? How good it would be if I wanted it as much as you did?” I made a show of licking my lips and bucking my hips like an animal. That twinkle in her eyes exploded into an insidious sparkle of lust. She bit her lip and her horn lit up, releasing me from the cuffs. Once my forelegs were free I moved them to her hips and pinned her against me. She cooed in delight at my touch. I leaned forward and touched my tongue to the base of her horn, licking all the way up its length and flicking the tip with a flourish. A burst of golden magic sparked out of her horn and a deep blush was forming on her face.

“Oh Goddess~ maybe I misjudged you.” She tried to sit up but I pulled her roughly back into my lap, staring at her sternly. Without saying anything I pressed our muzzles together again in a sloppy kiss. When we broke away we were both breathing heavily, a blush also coming out on my face. “You animal! What are you going to do to me~” She wiggled anxiously in my lap, grinding her wet sex against me. I smirked devilishly and stood up, throwing her to the floor of the wagon. She looked back over her shoulder at me. Now that I was standing at my full height over her a tremble ran down her spine.

“Ass up, time to show you real satisfaction.” She did exactly as I said and lifted her flank into the air, leaving her head down against the wood of the floor. I had crossed the point of no return and I still had my magic disabled. If I tried anything now there was a chance I’d fail spectacularly. However if I continued with my plan, it would leave her in a very vulnerable position. I grinded my teeth together and grabbed her hips, pulling her back and spearing her with my stallionhood. Nothing about what I was experiencing felt like it should. Every moan of pleasure and every slap of our hips colliding made me want to vomit. I forced my mind to wander, pushing the scene out of my mind until I neared my peak. Her moans had quickened and with an abrupt clamping of her muscles around me I had reached my limit. I grabbed her tail and harshly pulled it towards me, pinning our bodies together and giving her everything I had, everything she wanted. After we separated from each other, a quiet moment passed as our heavy breathing began to return to normal.

“I have a proposal for you.” I made sure my voice was flat and detached, again passively showering her my disdain. “If its caps you’re after then I can help you. I can make you richer than any of the slavers here ever could.” She rolled over and pushed her disheveled mane away from her eyes.

“Are you suggesting we work together?”

I had to force my feelings down my throat before I could form the right words. “Yes…together we could become rich beyond our wildest dreams and spend every night just. Like. This.” I leaned down towards her, getting closer with every word until our noses were touching. “Get this nullifier off of me and let’s get this show on the road.” I whispered, planting a small kiss on her lips.

She stood up and looked at me warily, eyeing me up and down for any signs of deception. Her golden magic illuminated her horn and a soft thud sounded from the nullifier hitting the floor of the wagon. She smiled and held out her hoof.

“Partners?”

I held out my hoof and just as was just about to take hers when an explosion rang out from inside the slaver compound. She looked past me with a look of confusion. I took her hoof which got her attention.

“Partners.” I affirmed with a bit of spite in my voice, pulling her towards me and with the last of my strength driving my head into her face. The hit knocked her out cold as the sound of gunfire began to pollute the air around me. I retrieved my armor, my cloak and all my belongings, leaving the necklace for last which I angrily yanked off of her neck and placed in my bags. Now that I had my pistol back, I looked to the unconscious from of my tormentor and pressed it to her head with my magic. I stood there amidst the gunfire and screaming with a pistol to her head and yet I couldn’t pull the trigger. Memories of the last time I spared somepony burned fresh in my mind and even still I couldn’t pull the trigger. Not everypony was Chestnut, not everypony was a monster. I took the pistol away from her head and cursed quietly to myself. Killing her would have been easy, it would have erased everything she did to me. At least that’s what I told myself. Then I remembered that Chestnut’s death didn’t fill the holes in my heart like I thought they would. I turned away from her and tried to hop out of the wagon when a rapid beeping reminded me of the bomb collar around my neck. Suddenly I was glad I had some technical know-how. Though attempting to disarm a collar on myself was considerably more difficult. After a bit of fiddling I heard a sharp whine as the collar was disabled. Though in my blind operation I had damaged the locking mechanism and it was now stuck around my neck. Now that I was clear, I had to get inside and find the others. I looked back to the amber mare laying on the floor of the wagon. After all she put me and my family through I had chosen to spare her. Killing her wouldn’t undo the damage she had already done, though for the briefest moment I reconsidered before the two sources of power in my mind reminded me who I was.

Be Strong!

Be Awesome!

I slammed the door to the wagon closed, locked it and threw the key into a nearby gutter.

“I’m not a monster.”

I pushed open the doors to the compound to see that the slavers were on the defensive and losing ground fast. Whoever was attacking had freed the slaves and they were pushing the slavers back to the gate. Most of them had their backs to me and I enthusiastically put bullet after bullet into all the slavers I could see. In a few more minutes the gunfire had stopped and out of the crowd ran Aurora and Downpour. They had both recovered their gear as well which told me that the other two who had captured us were dead.

“Where’s the mare?” Downpour asked with a growl. I motioned towards my gear and spit on the ground.

“Dealt with.” I said bitterly.

“Good.” Aurora said, putting her silenced pistol in her backpack.

“What happened? Who attacked the slavers?”

“We did boss.” A large black stallion with a red Mohawk stepped out of the lineup and nodded towards me.

“Blackhawk? A-are the other here too?”

“And then some.” Azura sailed up from the others with Grizela next to her. We had this many recruits already? I was amazed by the turnout. There were at least twenty ponies here, helping to liberate me and the others.

“But how? How did you know where we were or we were in trouble?”

“We had a little help from a friend of yours.”

A friend of mine? Who was he referring to?

“I see you took my advice Sparks.” A neutral, robotic voice said from behind me. I turned to face it and came face to screen with a spritebot. It bobbed up and down, looking me over with an amount of what was supposed to be pity. “You look terrible.”

“Watcher?”

Footnote: Level Up!
New Perk: Lonesome Dove. – When adventuring alone or separated from your companions you receive a + 1 to STR and END.

Next Chapter: Chapter Twenty: Along the Veil Estimated time remaining: 18 Hours, 38 Minutes