Author's Notes:

Huge thanks to KylerAdams, Eagle-Paladin of Shadows, and Ponyjosiah13 for this chapter, cause they're awesome.

Mount Pleasant Island:

After a rough night’s sleep near the shack that had once been the sole Coast Guard Station for the island, Henri and company made their way back to the coastline. Their purpose for doing so was to retrieve the supplies they’d left behind in their haste to the escape the Vertibucks, and hopefully see if any of it was still worth using and not waterlogged.

The fog had cleared away somewhat, but not entirely. It was still a necessity to use the lights that had been implanted on either side of the road for a full perception of the environment around them. The flashlights installed on the Pipbucks could only get one so far, after all. Shadows darted through the mist, and through the trees, and strange sounds echoed from the forest all around the group.

“It’s times like these I really wish we still did have that E.F.S. system installed on our Pipbucks…” Midnight muttered.

“You really want to know if there’s a chance that you’re surrounded by all kinds of messed up crap? Monsters… Ghosts, just hiding in the mist waiting to ambush you?” Target replied dryly, her rifle slung on her back.

“...Well, when you put it that way…” Midnight swallowed nervously, and clenched his shotgun in his hooves just a little bit tighter.

“You know, we could sing a little to help pass the time…” Target suggested. “Just to get our minds off of the fact that we’re walking through a figurative valley of death. Just whistle, maybe. Not like all of this talking’s given us away anyhow…”

“Point,” Midnight replied. “But you really wouldn’t want to hear me sing. I’m terrible at it, got kicked out of a karaoke night back in Junction Town for and I quote: “Singing that was offensive to the ears of the populace at large.”

Target stared at him in shock, lowering her sunglasses to look at the earth pony directly in the eyes.

“Wait, that was you?” Target replied. “...Celestia, strike the singing suggestion. Now I really don’t want to hear any of it… Least from you.”

“Gee… Thanks.” Midnight deadpanned. “While we’re the subject of our thoughts on each other, take those sunglasses off. They really don’t work in the mist,”

“Yeah, but they make me look cool.” Target replied, but Iron fully agreed with Midnight’s sentiments. And he had his own thoughts to share on the matter as well.

“No, they make you look like a complete and utter douchebag and an idiot who thinks she’s cool. It’d be the same thing with you wearing them at night, perhaps making a quip while standing over a dead body.” He said, in that blunt tone of voice of his that only he could pull off so well.

Target growled at him, but Iron just waved off the growl with a dismissive wave of his hoof. Sensing that this line of conversation wasn’t really the best of ideas, Midnight quickly changed the subject.

“Hey, any of you ever heard the rumors, you know the ones right?” He asked.

Henri groaned audibly.

“Please tell me this isn’t about that Grey Ghost crap. It’s a myth, nothing more. Despite what the radio has to say. No one pony is that good enough to just go hackin’ and a-slashing through enemy forces like some sort of badass from a bad piece of schlock fanfiction concocted by some hack writer,” Henri drawled. “Seriously, that one mare-army thing? It doesn’t exist!”

“Well, there’s Littlepip…” Midnight pointed out.

“And yet was she ever alone in her journey taking out the perils of the Wastes? Only time she went one mare army was the Massacre of Arbu with a Zebra Rifle, and that wasn’t even a fight. More like a slaughter. A well-deserved one I’ll grant you, but still…” Henri pointed out.

“That wasn’t the rumor I was referring to actually,” Midnight pointed out. “It was this one about this mare, strangely looking like Rainbow Dash except with a darker coat color appearing up in Fillytown, meeting with Fluttershy of all ponies!”

“Where’d you hear this from?” Henri asked, her ears perking up in interest.

“Friend of a friend of a friend of a brother’s… mother.” Midnight replied and Henri facepawed as the conversation faded out in Iron’s head, another flashback triggered.

There he found himself, in a crowd of pegasus ponies dressed in insect-like armor high in the sky, amongst the clouds. Atop a podium stood a pegasus similar in coat coloring and appearance to Calamity, but with a lighter shade of fur. It was tan, instead of the dark brown Calamity bore.

Next to him were effigies, one of a rainbow-maned pegasus with light blue fur, and another of a purple-maned pegasus, with orange fur.

“Now, you all know what they are, who they are! Their names… We shall not grace them with a name, they don’t deserve that, not after what they did! You all know the stories, they abandoned the clouds to help those worthless souls down in the Wastes below!” Autumn Leaf shouted to the populace before turning to the effigy of the rainbow mare. “Now, before Operation Cauterize begins, I just want to remind everypony of what we’re trying to do. Burn anypony like these traitors, these Dashites, and anybody who supports their cause!”

With that, he set the first effigy alight and the crowd roared and stamped their hooves in approval, and Iron heard a small growl come from nearby. He looked, and saw an aquamarine pegasus with a snowflake Cutie Mark vanish into the crowd in disgust.

“Hey Iron, you still with us?” Target asked, giving him a light tap on the shoulder pad.

“Sorry… Sorry,” he apologized. “Mind just wandered, you know how it is.”

“Fine time to take a daydream…” She muttered back before Riptalon spoke up.

“Huh, Target Quartermane. You know, with your rep, and your name, you could make quite a bit of money. Folks would pay quite a bit of money to travel with the Heroine of Bittersweet Springs, and a descendant of the legendary big-game hunter Allan Quartermane on top of that!” Riptalon commented. That turned out to be a mistake.

Target’s eyes narrowed, and before he could blink, a knife was held to Riptalon’s neck ready to sever his head from his shoulders in one clean cut. Target’s eyes bored into the griffon’s own.

“If you want to continue to breathe, I’d suggest you keep your mouth shut and never bring up either of those names again, understand? Are we clear on that?” She growled out in a low tone, and Riptalon nodded -Making a small squeak of fear in the process- and so the journey continued on in silence, at least for a little while. But it wasn’t to last. Perhaps predictably, it was Riptalon who broke the silence.

At one point, the “Blackhawk” as he was called swore he saw an alicorn’s distinctive form peering out of the darkness, and fired off a few blasts from Lawgiver, the muzzle flash very visible in the mist and the sheer sound sending a few birds flying up from their roosts in nearby pine trees.

“Idiot!” Henri hissed. “Are you trying to give us away? Those Enclave soldiers we encountered… Highly doubt that was the only squad on the island.”

“I’m sorry, but I swore I saw an Alicorn over in that direction!” Riptalon snapped, gesturing with a talon towards the treeline to the squad’s left. Henri sighed.

“Well, whatever it was… It’s gone now. Alicorn or not. You sure your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you?” the griffon inquired.

“Hard to fake both wings and a horn, really…” Riptalon muttered out as a reply. “I sorta trust my eyes, especially when they see what I just saw!”

Henri never gave him a response, or at least dignified him with one. She, in fact, stayed incredibly silent through the rest of their trek back towards the waterfront.

Eventually, they reached the beach and found amongst the burning hulks of the Vertibucks and corpses of Enclave soldiers, their remaining weapons, and supplies. Target, as she tossed Iron his rifle, let out a low whistle.

“Damn…” she whispered before turning to Midnight. “And you pulled this off?”

“Yeah… But make no mistake, I thought I was going to die. It was just a combination of luck and a few other things that I don’t have a hole in my skull right now…” Midnight trailed off.

“Well, whatever it was that kept you alive… Seriously, thanks. If you were a dead duck, so would I be at this point, considering that Enclave soldier had a Novasurge rifle to my skull and all…” Target trailed off.

“Hey, no problem. It’s all for one, and one for all these days,” Midnight replied. “We gotta stick together in these times, that’s the simple fact of the matter. No matter who we have to partner up with…” he trailed off, looking directly at Riptalon. The griffon rolled his eyes as he picked up a few clips of ammo out of the sand and stuffed them in his saddlebags.

Suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks and put his ear to the sand. “Hey, you hear that? Sounds like something’s burrowing underneath us, and I mean right underneath us…” He trailed off, readying Lawgiver.

Iron heard it as well, and put his own ears to the ground before he let out a shout of “Holy Celestial Shit!” as a massive creature, that could only be described as a giant hermit crab erupted from the sand. A metal shack, advertising cooked lobster meat was acting as it’s shell. As it clutched Iron in one of it’s massive two front pincers, the pegasus shouted out: “Fuck you, Blackjack! No seriously, fuck you to Kingdom Come! Real great idea, convincing everybody to start disabling the E.F.S! Really would have loved an early warning system about this!” in both anger and fear. He heard the distinct crunching of armor as the crab squeezed, and looked it dead in the eye.

Riptalon and Midnight shared a look, and dropped their usual hostility towards the other and opened fired with their shotguns on the massive mutation, which frothed and bubbled at the mouth. Dodging and weaving between the legs, and getting up under it, they opened fire on the softer underbelly.

Blam! Blam! Blam! Their guns went, muzzles flashing and shell casings flying. At one point, the crab tried to slam it’s “Shell” atop them, but they both rolled out of the way.

“Okay… Clearly, getting up under it… Stupid plan!” Riptalon snapped as he fired off another shot and then found himself dodging another swing from the pincher as he reloaded. He then blasted the crab in its legs, ripping into the armor. Midnight took the same route. The crab raised one of its legs and tried to impale Riptalon, but Midnight blasted the leg point blank with his shotgun. Another leg was raised and knocked the two aside.

As he squirmed in the crab’s grip, Iron managed to pull out his Peacemaker and fired one direct shot towards one of the few unarmored areas of the beast: The eyes. While it missed and bounced off the crab’s armor, it did give Target an idea and she fired one powerful bullet from End of the Line right into the crab’s left eye.

It screeched out in pain and Iron found himself dropped to the sand in a frankly unceremonious fashion. Henri then took her chance and went into S.A.T.S.

Pulling out both White and Black Rose from their holsters, she leaped backwards as the crab tried to impale her with a leg and fired shot after shot into the crab’s mouth with a snarl of: “You want some of this you bastard?”

The crab let out one final screech and slammed into the sand with a loud thud, dead at last.

“T-Took you long enough…” Iron panted out before he turned to Riptalon, grinning in a wily manner at the griffon. “Aww, so you really do care!”

“Shut up,” Riptalon grumbled. “I was just saving my own pelt, understand?”

“Suit yourself…” Iron trailed off. There then came a shout from Midnight, the pure black Earth Pony pointing towards the sea with a hoof.

“Look, over there!” He shouted, and Henri watched as a hat, one belonging to a train conductor slowly floated towards them. It washed up on the shore, and Henri sighed sadly as she picked it up and shut her eyes.

“Another pony chewed up by this war, another pony dead because of the Enclave…” she thought to herself. “I… I never asked for their names, either of them you know? The conductor, nor the engineer.”

She then turned to the rest of her squad. “Did any of you?”

The silence said it all.

“Yeah… that’s what I thought.”

Finally, after a short while, Iron spoke. “She… she was so full of life, y’know? Talked about her kids back in Neigh Orleans. Her husband as well. They’d just moved to the city, now that it was safe from the constant threat of something called ‘Firerain',” he said softly. “Said as soon as she was done with her job of taking us here, she was going to go back and see them. ...What… What are we going to tell them?”

“That she died like a hero, doing her duty. Nothing more, nothing less.” Riptalon answered quietly, though at once he knew that was the wrong thing to say and regretted it at once.

“Really?” Iron snarled, getting up close to the griffon’s beak, nose barely a few inches away before he grabbed him by the throat looking ready to throttle him. “Doing her duty? Cause I don't think that’s good enough! This wasn't a job, this was a suicide mission and we all knew it! Fuck, I suspect she knew it as well!”

“Well, what the Hell am I supposed to say? Be upfront, brutal like you are?” Riptalon snapped back, wrenching himself from Iron’s grip and shoving him away. “Say that she was slaughtered in cold blood by the Enclave?”

“...Well, at least that way you’d be honest about her death!” Iron growled.

“Yeah, but in some cases, a lie would be better than the truth. And this is one of those times…” Riptalon trailed off, and he said no more on the subject, collecting his belongings in silence.

That night, they made camp, opting to hide in the treetops to avoid the patrols of the Enclave soldiers, and the various animals that roamed the island. It wasn’t the most comfortable of sleeping arrangements, but it’d have to do for the time being. There was a stream about a quarter mile away, not too far away, but not too close to risk attracting the attention of the Enclave and them checking the nearby area.

Target and Henri remained awake for the night (Along with Riptalon thanks to his usual insomnia, but they did their best to ignore his presence.) to act as guards. Midnight and Iron hung upside down from the tree limbs in their sleeping bags, resembling giant bats in some fashion. Their weapons (Stored in bags) were acting as counterweights, slung over the tree branches with makeshift ropes of vines.

“Hey, you alright?” Henri asked, looking at the group’s sniper. “When Riptalon brought up that name… Allan, you flew off the handle at him. Granted, it’s hard not to keep from exploding when you’re around the guy, but still… You’re usually a fairly calm pony.”

“It’s nothing I want to talk about, okay?” Target grumbled, shooting Henri a look warning her not to press. Henri ignored it, her curiosity getting the better of her. She honestly didn’t know how or why, but she saw something of herself in the pony. Anger, grief, and they didn’t know quite who to direct it towards.

“Alright, alright, I suppose you deserve to know…” Target muttered. “It was probably going to come out anyways, someone figuring it out or knowing my name and remembering it. You ever heard of Bittersweet Springs?”

Henri wracked her brain trying to remember, but came up with very little. The name floated around in the back of her mind, but it never registered.

“It was about ten or eleven years ago, so you probably don’t remember. This was during when Equestria was still a mess, before the NCR. Lawless, nobody to keep order except for perhaps a brave few in the Rangers,” Target began. “Bittersweet Springs, it was a town. Emphasis on was, I might add. Small little town out west, near Appleloosa. It’s a ghost town now, like a lot of places out in that general area. Think it’s run by ghouls now, or at least ghosts who fail to rest…”

“What do you mean?” Henri inquired, scooting closer to Target.

The pony sighed, and took off her Stetson, putting it aside for the moment as she continued her story. “You ever heard of the scouring of Bittersweet? It was this big massacre, if you ask around in the right spots amongst Applejack’s Rangers, they’re probably going to tell you about it. But it’s not a pretty story,” Target warned. “Far from it, it’s about one of the ugliest moments in their history…”

“Wait, wait…” Henri said, suddenly remembering as her eyes widened in horror. “You don’t mean to imply…”

“Hardly implying anything. Yeah, I was there. I was Lieutenant Quartermane, back then. Large and in charge with power armor and battle saddle to boot. That whole situation was a real shit-show from start to finish and could easily have been avoided if we had just one good thing. That one good thing? Good intel, plain and simple. The major in charge at the time, to Hell with her, she made one helluva bad call - she thought Bitter Springs was full of Raiders and Slavers, so we surrounded the place with Rangers. By the time any of us realized there were civilians down there - mares and foals, by Celestia! - the shooting had already started. The major froze up at the news, and we couldn't get another word out of her. I… I took over and salvaged the situation as best I could. For my effort, I earned myself a promotion. Not quite the way I'd have wanted it. Mark of personal shame on my career. They called me a hero, the Rangers involved did. Made my great-great-great-great-oh, who the Hell knows how many greats granddad proud. Sure don’t feel like he’d be proud of me, if I was to be honest…” Target muttered in personal disgust with herself. “Quit and resigned from the Rangers soon after. Ditched the armor and the battle saddles, and picked up the sniper rifle instead. To this day, I still look at them in disgust. I know they’re not all like the ones who were involved in that massacre… But each time I look at one of those power armored ponies, I see the faces, and remember the names. Every last damn name, I never forgot. Never forgot who I was a part of slaughtering like I was a fox in a hen-house. The Scourge of Bittersweet Springs, that’s what I should be known as. Not Target Quartermane, heroine and salvager of Bittersweet Springs...”

Henri tried to put a paw on her shoulder to reassure him, but Target was having none of it. “And don’t you try and tell me everything’s alright okay? I’d had enough of things like that for one lifetime…” she said, shaking her head and her voice hardened. “You know, over the years, I’ve tried so many times to justify my actions. Tried so hard. But there isn't. Isn't any justification for something like that. It was cold-blooded murder, plain and simple. That’s all it was.”

With that, Target leaped down from the tree, gripping End of the Line tightly in her hooves. She began trotting off up a path leading deeper into the island, towards its center.

“And where do you think you’re going?” Henri shouted.

“Scouting. Chances are, a good portion of the Enclave are asleep by this point, meaning if I’m quiet enough, I can do a little recon, and maybe, just maybe find out what they’re up to…”

“That being, if you somehow manage to avoid this island’s countless creatures,” Henri put in. “Going out alone, in this place, at night? You’ve gotta have a death wish or something.” she muttered and as Target walked off into the gloom silently, Henri’s eyes slowly widened in realization. She looked away in shame as a tear slowly slipped from her eye.

By pure chance, Target did manage to avoid running into anything and found herself at the edge of a ridge. Her eyes widened as she saw it. One massive structure, made of metal and pointed skywards. An anti-air cannon, spotlights surrounding the whole structure lightning it up. On various catwalks around the cannon itself, Enclave soldiers patrolled the area, Novasurge rifles or Star Blasters in hoof. Her eyes widened, she didn’t realize -the Enclave as technologically advanced as they were- that any of those weapons were still in existence outside of a rare few. Only ones she still knew about were in the NCR’s possession, after Calamity had raided an ammo dump back in the day. The thing about this particular weapon was, it could eat through even the strongest of shield spells, even those granted by Alicorns. What was left was nothing but a pile of ash, the target completely vaporized. If they weren’t vaporized by some small amount of luck, you were likely to be killed anyways by the sheer force of the blast.

“Wonderful…” Target muttered. What little she -Or anypony else for that matter- did know about the Star Blaster, aside from its destructive capability, was that it was theorized to come from beyond the stars. Some said, and Target took this with more than a grain of salt, that it had come from a highly advanced alien species even more advanced than Equestria was prior to the Last Day. “Guess they must think the weapon’s a gift from their God or something.” she thought to herself in disgust.

Target then hunkered down and pulled out a spotter’s scope to get a better view of what exactly was going on down there.

She observed a pegasus, clad in more elaborate armor than the rest, walk out of the base of the anti-air cannon and began berating another of the troops. He took off his helmet as he turned to a mare, revealing his facial features. He was an older stallion, with a white mane and matching beard. Target shuddered. Somewhat frighteningly, he bore a slight resemblance to Iron Skies, if not a few decades older. Almost old enough to be his… No, it couldn’t be.

“I give you a simple direction. Capture, not shoot.” the pegasus remarked angrily. “I distinctly remember saying stop those intruders, not order your men to shoot the intruders. Stop, shoot. Do either of those words sound the same to you?” he asked in a low growling tone of voice, and the pegasus, quite quailed by the Captain’s words, shook her head nervously. “Anypony else? Yes, stop the intruders, not shoot the intruders, that’s what I distinctly remember saying. I’m very particular about my words, remember that? But alas, you tried to shoot the intruders ignoring my words entirely. Stop, shoot. Stop, shoot! For Celestia’s sake, it’s not hard to tell the difference!” the pegasus snarled, his wings flaring out as his tone rose in anger and rage. Then, he grabbed a Novasurge Rifle from one of his ponies and shot the pegasus dead. Target winced as the trooper went up in a fine orange mist, leaving no traces of her existence behind.

“Let that be a parable to you all!” the commander shouted as he looked at every one of his troops. “Disobey me, disobey the will of Celestia, and she’ll cut you down. Remember, I’m just a simple soldier, so I don’t have the luxury of forgiveness. Not my job.”

With that, he walked right back into the interior of the cannon in a rage leaving Target to wonder what the Hell was going on around here...