Despite being a cybernetic centaur, Valla’s face was overall surprisingly ordinary. It did have a certain aspect, though, which made her actual emotions somewhat difficult to read. As her, Twilight, Forth and Elrod walked outside along the path that overlooked the great drop to the river on their right, Elrod hung back and away from her. He could not tell if she was happy or angry, and he did not want to be within hitting or kicking distance of her in either case.

Forth, however, seemed to like Valla as much as she liked all people and walked near her, her tiny feet racing tirelessly to keep up with the long gait of the centaur.

“Is it okay that you left work early?” she asked. “Did you get fired?”

Valla laughed, although with only minimal humor. “No, I wasn’t fired. And my shift was almost over anyway.”

“But you’re the bouncer. Who will protect the bar if you are not there?”

“The bar is fine. Moonlight will handle it.”

“Moonlight? The human man?”

Valla laughed, this time sincerely. “You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, but he actually spent a great deal of time out in the China Empire studying with Xaolin monks. Trying to find his center or some bullshit. I fought him once on a dare. The dude’s a quarter my age and he whipped my ass without breaking a sweat.”

“That sounds painful.”

“It was, but mostly just my pride. And he felt so bad he gave me free drinks for a month. Gotta love pacifists.”

“Then why hire you?” asked Twilight.

“Because have you seen Moonlight? He’s a five-eight hippie with a mellowing implant in his brain. He just isn’t intimidating. I am. I mean, look at these guns. And this sexy horse bod.” She held up her rather muscular arms and gestured toward her robotic portion. “I bet I could even take you on if you didn’t have that MHI body.”

“You mean if I were made of cheap plastic and aluminum. Yes. In that case an especially fat squirrel could off me.”

“I don’t trust squirrels,” said Elrod. Valla looked at him and then turned away, shaking her head. Elrod detected that she was laughing at him. “You don’t seem too worried about the disappearances,” he said.

“Pff. Come on, guy. Do I look like I come from a family rich enough to have a live birth?”

“Ms. Rainbow Dash sais that not all natural humans are rich,” noted Forth.

“Well Roxanne says sa lot of things. Most of them are right but I don’t believe them all anyway. No. I’m not a natural human. I was made in a vat with six hundred and twelve other infants. I don’t even have an even number of chromosomes. I’m about as natural-human as that guy.” She pointed to Elrod.

Elrod’s eyes widened. “Wait, what? Who told you? How do you- -”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately? With skin like that you’re either dying or you’ve had so many genetic splices put in you that you’d probably burst if I kicked you. You look sort of freakish.”

“Oh,” said Elrod, understanding that she perceived him to be human after all. He continued and tried to change the subject. “And when they made you, did they make you like…”

“Like what?” Valla noticed that Elrod was looking at her horse part. “Oh fuck no. Any company that builds incomplete human stock would have to be sketchy as hell. No. That’s me. I added it. It’s an old cavalry unit. I completely rebuilt it. Neat, huh?”

“Last time I saw you, you still had one leg,” said Twilight.

“Just one?” asked Forth.

“Yeah,” sighed Valla. “I lost the first one in a workplace accident at age eight. It was bad. Gas-gangrene, the whole nine yards. They gave me a robot one, but it just never felt balanced, you know? I had to get the other removed for symmetry. And then, ta-da! Horse bod.”

“I think it looks nice,” said Forth.

“Aw, thanks. I like yours too. With all those separation lines you must be packing a LOT of heat.”

“Wait, what?” cried Elrod. “But you said before that you thought she didn’t have any guns- -”

“I lied. I took you’re gun because you’re a hairless putz. She’s a pony. And one that’s with Twilight. An as much of a massive shmuck that she can be- --to the point of very nearly costing me my job and getting permabanned from her favorite bar- -I trust Twilight. She’s like family.”

Elrod was extremely confused by this. He looked at Twilight, and Twilight looked at him. “I’ve known her family for a long time.”

“A long time? It’s been almost two hundred years!”

This surprised Elrod greatly, but Twilight just smiled. “That long? Really?” She sighed. “Yeah. Her grandmother used to have Blossomforth’s job about ninety years ago.”

The group fell silent as they crossed over a bridge. Underneath it, a channel of water led outward and over the edge, forming a grey waterfall as the fluid from the square-walled river broke apart and descended as a mist toward the river far below. Valla stopped and looked out. Due to the way the bridge and river were constructed, there was no fence present. If any of them had fallen in, they would have gone over with the fast-paced water and dropped into the abyss.

She started walking again, and as she did so she spoke. “You know, Grandma Ruth used to fish down there in the Farmill.”

Twilight laughed. “Of course she did. That sounds just like her!”

“Yeah. She’d go down to the lowest level with a winch. You know, the big kind. With really thick steel cable and a honker of a hook on the end. She’d bait it with pork sausage and throw it down there.” Valla chuckled and shook her head. “Man, you should have seen the things she caught. She had a lot of them stuffed and set up in her apartment. Mutants, weird fish, things you wouldn’t believe. She even claimed to have once pulled up something that was almost human.”

“Almost?” asked Forth.

Valla nodded. “I never really knew what she meant by that, and she never really described it. Just said it had really weird eyes.”

Forth suddenly stopped walking. For a moment Elrod wondered if she was about to say something, but instead her ears cocked toward one direction as she listened to something that none of the others seemed to hear- -at least until Twilight stopped as well.

“Ms. Twilight?”

“Yes. I hear it too.”

Elrod listened but did not hear anything for several seconds. Then a sound seemed to echo off the buildings. It was quiet but quickly grew louder to the point where Elrod was able to recognize it as an engine. A car was approaching them.

Forth stepped back quietly onto the sidewalk and pushed back one of her sleeves. Elrod saw the lines in her skin expand slightly as she braced herself for the order to kill.

“Hold,” said Twilight, lifting a hoof. Forth maintained her pose and her unblinking eyes traced the area where the sound was coming from, waiting.

The sound suddenly increased and a car came around the corner. It was painted a hideous shade of green and was badly rusted in some spots. Black smoke was belching from the rear and white smoke from the front.

It pulled up next to the group and stopped suddenly.

“Hey,” said Valla. “Isn’t that...?”

As she spoke, one of the black windows opened and a powerful smell of something skunk-like wafted out. Moonlight peeked his head out. “Sup,” he said.

“Boss,” said Valla. “Why are you here? Who’s at the bar?”

“Bar’s closed, Val. It’s Tuesday.”

“Then why are you here? You live on the North Side.”

Jadeglow leaned across from the passenger seat and poked her head past her brother. Her expression was serious, or even afraid. “I need to talk to you, Morg,” she said.

“About what?”

Jadeglow looked around. “Not here, man. Too risky.” She looked at Valla. Valla did not hesitate in her response.

“My house then. You know the way.”

Valla’s resblock was not far away; it was two blocks one way, one another, and then part of a level down. It was a sprawling and somewhat dingy place, but not dilapidated.

“Okay,” she said, approaching a deep alcove that formed a small tunnel. The inside was lit with yellow light and smelled like stale urine. “Here it is. Home sweet smelly home.”

“Dude,” said Jadeglow. “You need to ask your boss for a raise.”

“You’re my boss. You know that, right?”

Jadeglow blinked. “Oh yeah. I forgot.”

The group marched forward through the short tunnel. Valla was in the front with Forth, and Elrod was in the rear. Twilight and Jadeglow stayed toward the center near each other. Moonlight was still sitting in his car, the engines running, and looking around nervously. Elrod looked behind him to see the man lighting a rather strange looking cigarette in an attempt to calm his nerves.

When they reached a set of worn, scarred doors, Valla paused. She backed herself into a small area and lay down. A mechanical sound came from her body, followed by a click as the upper portion separated. Valla reached behind her to disconnect her spinal linkage and then pulled herself free of her horse portion.

“Holy crap,” said Elrod, “that’s just- -that’s just wrong. And weird. And just- -”

“Well fuck you too, then,” said Valla angrily. She walked forward on her muscular arms, supporting her torso over the ground. Elrod could see that she had two very short stumps protruding from the leg-holes her underwear. “My apartment has low ceilings. Don’t look at my ass.”

Forth immediately turned away, but Elrod had not been. There was barely any “ass” to speak of, a byproduct of Valla not having any legs.

“I have an implanted proximity key,” she said. “Hold on, I’ll get the- -”

“Never mind,” said Twilight, pushing it open.

Forth gasped. “I thought Twilight was the only one who never locked her doors!”

“I DID lock it!” snapped Valla. “Come on, Twilight, don’t do that technomancer voodoo on my damn door! You’re going to ruin the locking mechanism!”

“That’s not how it works, and it’s not voodoo,” said Twilight. “Your lock is fine. Come on.”

Twilight stepped into the apartment, and Valla rolled her eyes. “Of course. Yes. Let me just, you know, invite you in!”

“Why?” said Jadeglow, blinking slowly. “Is Morg a vampire? Because we’ve been taking bets on it.”

Elrod ignored her and followed Twilight in. Twilight, of course, had not bothered to turn on the lights. Elrod did so, and when he did was immediately struck by a wave of jealousy.

For some reason, everyone seemed to have a bigger apartment than him. Meredith Fluttershy’s had been large, and Hoig had even had a workshop- -but even Valla’s was enormous in comparison to Elrod’s own. Whereas his was three feet by four feet, Valla’s was a single room at least ten feet square, complete with a door on one end that led to her own bathroom.

The place itself was something of a mess. There was a bed on one side of the room that was elevated high above a very low table with several pizza boxes and beer bottles on it. Next to that was an interface port. The far wall held a plastic sink, a few salvaged shelves, and a weight bench near a pile of rusted free-weights.

“Sorry I don’t have chairs,” said Valla, closing the door. “Not really much point in it. They’re hard for me to get into. Goddamn resblock, I feel naked without my body. By the time I’m sixty I swear I’m going to have enough money to move somewhere where I can be a centaur full time.”

Elrod looked at her. Physically, she appeared to be in her early twenties. Her statement made some sense, though; genetically engineered humans generally aged slowly or not at all.

“I hope you didn’t close the bar early just for this,” said Forth. “We could have waited.”

“No way, Little Blossom.” Jadeglow laughed, but not with her usual soft mirth. “Right now it’s only Roxy. She stays late to practice her routines. Like, super diligent. If I was that diligent I’d probably have a degree or a plumber’s certificate or something.”

“That sound like her,” said Twilight.

Valla pulled herself up the latter to her bed and sat there, perched above the rest of them. With her high up, the room felt relatively empty. It was small and the floor was strewn with clothing, but ponies were all quite small relative to humans. Elrod- -who was not a large person by any means- -was the tallest there, and he stood near the sink on the far side of the room.

Forth cleared a space on the floor and let Jadeglow sit down.

“Do you want anything to drink?” asked Valla.

“Thanks but no,” said Jadeglow. “As you can see, I’m actually kind of freaking out.” She looked around at the walls. “Are there bugs here?”

“Roaches, maybe.”

“No, man, like the kind with ears.”

“If you mean listening devices,” said Twilight, “then no. I already checked.”

“You sure?”

“She’s one of those machine-wizards, boss. You can trust her.”

“Well, alright.” Jadeglow scratched one limb with the other and looked around as if somehow she would be able to see bugs that Twilight had missed.

“You wanted to tell me something?”

Jadeglow nodded. For the first time, she really did look genuinely and completely afraid. “I heard what you said. You know, when you were talking with Roxy. About, like, pures disappearing.”

“Pures,” said Twilight. “Interesting. Why, do you know something?”

Jadeglow nodded nervously. “Yeah. I do.”

“Anything you know could help. The case is on the way to being stone-cold right now.”

“You said there was…like, you know, an organization? People fighting in the name of agricultural freedom?”

“I never phrased it like that. I believe I used a term similar to ‘agricultural terrorists’.”

“Yeah,” sighed Jadeglow. “Like, way harsh language. But I can’t really argue. Yeah. I know them.”

Valla almost fell from where she was sitting. “You?!”

Jadeglow nodded, looking a little ashamed. “Yeah. It’s like, part of the community. And it’s a cause I’m really behind, you know?”

“Then you work with them,” said Twilight.

“No, man!” protested Jadeglow. “I’m a Tree-Hugger unit, Morg, you know that. I’m into the whole pacifism thing. They tried to recruit me, but like, my moral principles won’t allow that. They’re fighting for what’s right, but the methods…” She leaned forward and put her hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “Violence never solved anything! Not even when its for a good cause, that’s just not the way you do it! It’s not worth it!”

“I strongly disagree,” said Forth.

“Their ‘cause’,” said Twilight, ignoring Forth. “What ‘cause’ would that be?”

“Like I said, man, agricultural freedom. Protesting the pillaging of Mother Earth by greedy corporations.”

“I think it’s a little bit late for that,” muttered Valla.

“It’s never too late, man. It’s all this genetic engineering, messing with the way nature’s supposed to be, trying to turn beautiful plants into factories- -or weapons.”

“Weapons?”

Jadeglow nodded. “Yeah, man. They told me stories. Things they saw when they tried to raid Monsanto, you know, bad things. Things the vassals and the government don’t want you to know about.”

Valla rolled her eyes. “Here we go…”

“What kind of things?” asked Twilight.

“Like, monsters. Monsanto, they do lots of bad things, but the monsters is the worst.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. “So this terrorist group hates Monsanto because of…monsters.”

“No, man, the monsters are just the latest! It’s the contamination of the food supply they really hate and, you know, trying to own stuff that should belong to everyone! But the monsters…that’s how they enforce it.”

“They made monsters.”

Jadeglow suddenly looked excited. “Yeah man, now you’re catchin’ on!” Her expression darkened and she leaned forward and whispers. “I’ve heard the stories. Not just from them. During the War, man. People would go out, make settlements, you know, towns and stuff. It’d be fine for years…and then one dark night they’d come.”

“From where?”

“From up from the ground, man! Like they were buried there! No sound at all. Bullets don’t even work on them. And then everyone in those villages would die.”

“I have no records of this,” said Twilight.

“Because you wouldn’t! They covered it up! They even took over the land!”

“Forth?”

“I am not aware of this,” said Forth. “But there is little I am aware of. The territory near Monsanto was not our jurisdiction, and I am aware of no Blossomforth units that were supplied to that vassal.”

Twilight seemed to consider for a moment. “So. Strange monsters from Monsanto, political opposition to genetic engineering, terroristic tendencies. I think I get it. And I think I knew that, apart from the monsters portion.”

“Which is complete ponyshit,” said Valla.

“We do not defecate,” said Forth.

“Exactly. Meaning it doesn’t exist. Like the time you said aliens kept breaking into your house and moving all the furniture?”

“They were! I saw them!”

“No! Moonlight was taking those freaking orange pills and moving them around in your sleep!”

“With the help of aliens! And, like, the Russians! The blue avians sent me a message!”

“Yes. Through a piece of beryl crystal carved into the shape of an elephant.”

“The elephant knows man, the elephant knows!” Jadeglow turned toward Twilight. “Like, that’s where all the pures are going!”

“The unmodified humans?”

“They’re going to an elephant?” asked Forth.

“No, man…well, I don’t know about ALL of them- -”

“Focus, Jadeglow.”

“Right, right. The Green World Shepherds. They don’t like people with genetic mods. They don’t trust them. They’ve been trying to recruit pure humans to the cause. They’ve been getting a few too.”

“Really. Rich kids and poor kids alike all going to fight against GM crops?”

“Perhaps literally,” suggested Forth.

“You’d be surprised, man. I’ve seen a lot of kids sneak down from the Upper Levels. Mostly to see our girl Roxy.”

“Yeah, and keep grabbing her. Every single goddamn time,” spat Valla. “One guy, he even tried to grab me. ME!”

“And you were offended because he was a man?” asked Elrod.

Valla’s eyes went wide. “Goddamn it, why does everyone think I’m a lesbian? I did that ONE time! I’ve literally done it with ponies more times than I’ve done it with chicks. No, baldy, it’s because men keep trying to lift my tail instead of…you know…” She pointed at the lower half of her actual body. “Needless to say, I’ve made a lot of rich boys a lot less pretty in the past three years.”

“I don’t know,” said Twilight.

“Oh, no. I did. I don’t stop when they get on the ground. I stamp them. Hard.”

“No. Not that. There are inconstancies. I need more information.”

“I don’t really have anymore. I told you what I know.”

“Can you take me to them?”

Jadeglow’s eyes widened. “Wh- -what? No, I couldn’t do that! No way, man, I don’t even- -”

“Know where they are? They contacted you. They wanted you to join. Maybe your brother too.”

“Not Moonlight. No. My baby brother isnot part of this man, and you need to keep him out of it. He’s not a natural human anyway. Pure, but only in spirit, man. But we don’t choose our body, that’s fate and- -”

“You’re trying to change the subject. You know where they are.”

Jadeglow looked around in a panic before her eyes settled on Twilight. “You’re not…you’re not going to force me to say, are you? With your…you know…abilities?”

“It isn’t any ability I have that you don’t. Just a difference in learning. And no, Jade, I’m not. I would never do that to you. You know that.”

“Right, right.” She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, you wouldn’t. But you really need to talk to them. If they’re taking folks against their will…pacifists like me…” She shook her head and opened her eyes. “Give me a chance to meditate on it. Get my spirit level and even. I’ll do it. I’ll take you to them. Just give me a few hours.”

Twilight paused, and then nodded. “A few hours. I can do that.”

Elrod watched as Jadeglow smiled weakly, and he knew that the arrangement had been made. He had not stepped in in time to stop it. As he thought about it, though, more and more implications of it became clear- -and he knew that this was going to end horribly for anyone and everyone involved.