The corridor outside the clinic was, mercifully, completely empty. Sunset closed the door to said clinic, then sighed and sagged against the nearest wall. Rainbow, Twilight, and Pinkie were all still inside, all digesting the news that the doctor had given them.

Sunset was never sure what to say when someone was hurt. Sometimes, it was relatively obvious, but more often than not nothing came to mind beyond empty platitudes, and Sunset was pretty sure that Rainbow wouldn’t appreciate them in this case, even if she could hear them. Fluttershy was always better at this sort of thing.

“Um, are you alright?” Sunset looked around, then smiled softly. As if in answer to her thoughts, Fluttershy was standing in the corridor, looking mildly worried.

Sunset opened her mouth to reply, then did a double-take as she saw the state that the young nurse was in. Her right arm was utterly soaked in blood, and more of it was liberally splattered over the rest of her. She even had a new weapon slung over her shoulder. “I’m fine, what the fuck happened to you?!” Sunset exclaimed.

“Oh, um, nothing much,” Fluttershy replied evasively, a slow blush creeping onto her cheeks. “I… may have run out of blood and had to go find some, and, well, I found a Talon Company squad spying on Rivet City’s entrance. One of them had enough magic to put up a fight. Do you have any sapient creatures in Equestria that have feathers and talons?”

“Sounds like either a griffon or a hippogriff. You weren’t injured, were you?” Sunset let out a relieved breath as Fluttershy shook her head. “Good.” She gestured to the new weapon over Fluttershy’s shoulder. “I’m guessing that’s where you got that?”

Fluttershy nodded and unslung the weapon, revealing it to be a combat shotgun bearing Talon Company’s logo on the barrel in white paint. “I was going to give it to Pinkie, so she has a weapon she can use without nearly blowing herself up everytime she pulls the trigger. They also had a laser pistol, a couple of knives and grenades, and a couple of other bits and pieces. I’ll sort through them later.” She patted her nursing kit, and Sunset had a momentary flash of how weird it was to be casually discussing looting corpses with Fluttershy. The moment quickly passed when Fluttershy’s eyes flicked to the clinic door. “How is Rainbow doing?”

Sunset sighed and glanced at the door as well. “Could be better. The doc says that her ears are ruined, and they’re not likely to heal on their own. She’s completely deaf.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Fluttershy said sadly. “Is there anything Doctor Preston can do for her?”

Sunset could only shrug helplessly. “Doc says he has some implants that should help, but he’ll have to operate to put them in, and she’ll still have to wear hearing aids even with the implants.”

“What about the-” Fluttershy was interrupted by a security officer hurrying around the corner.

Relief flashed across his face as he spotted the girls. “Knight-Captain Shimmer!”

“Paladin,” Sunset corrected, earning a surprised look from Fluttershy.

“Oh, sorry.” The security officer dithered for a second, then cleared his throat and straightened up. “Er, Paladin Shimmer, Chief Harkness asked me to let you know that the President of the Enclave has arrived for an emergency meeting with the Council and Elder Lyons.” The officer held a letter out to her. “The President also asked that we give you this.”

Sunset raised an eyebrow as she took the letter. “Does the Chief want me at the meeting?”

“He said it’s up to you, but the Enclave President said that you’d probably prefer not to,” the security officer replied.

Confused and more than a little curious, Sunset opened the envelope and unfolded the letter inside. It was a short message, handwritten by Becky, but it made a heavy weight drop in Sunset’s stomach nonetheless. “Shit.”

“What is it?” Fluttershy asked, her voice tense.

“Something I haven’t had a chance to prepare for yet.” Sunset tucked the letter away and fixed the security officer with a serious look. “I need a meeting room big enough for ten people, as quickly as possible. Do you have one available?”

To his credit, the officer didn’t ask what she needed such a big room for. “The Merchants’ Committee has a room set aside for discussing things with the Merchant Representative. They’re in session at the moment, but Bannon is going to be at the Council meeting, so they should be leaving any minute now. That’ll be big enough.”

Sunset nodded and turned to Fluttershy. “Do you and the rest of the girls know where that is?”

“Rainbow and Rarity will,” Fluttershy replied, clearly intensely curious. “Pinkie probably does as well.”

“Perfect. Okay, round everyone up, have them drop their stuff off at their rooms, and get them over there as quickly as you can. I’ll head over there first.” Sunset quickly glanced back at the security officer. “Can you take me there, please?”

“Of course. Follow me.” Sunset gratefully fell into step behind the officer, her head whirring as she tried to figure out how to contain the coming addition to the week’s clusterfuck.

The room for the Merchants’ Committee did indeed turn out to be empty. It was situated on what could most accurately be called the middle deck, right between the wealthy upper decks and the less well-off lower decks. It had several tables inside all pushed together to form one long one, with rows of chairs on either side, easily long enough to sit ten people on either side. Sunset couldn’t help but notice that the Merchant Representative’s chair at the head of the table was a sumptuous armchair, considerably nicer and more comfortable than the others. Bannon really didn’t miss any opportunity to show off his wealth and status.

“Will this room do?” The security officer asked.

“It’s perfect, thanks,” Sunset replied. “Would you mind going back to the Enclave group for me, please? They’ve brought some people with them that we need to talk to.”

“Do you want them brought here?” The officer waited for her to agree before nodding and leaving.

Left by herself, Sunset dropped into the Representative’s chair and let herself just melt into it. The armchair was as comfortable as it looked, almost on par with the ones the Enclave used, but she was mainly using it so she could try to prevent any attempted murders on one of the people who was about to arrive.

As the seconds slowly ticked over into minutes, Sunset realized that she might be left alone with her thoughts for longer than she was comfortable with, so she quickly pulled out her Nova Pistol and started tinkering with it to try and occupy herself. Just as she was wondering if she could find a more efficient configuration for its plasma inductors, the door opened and the rest of the Rainbooms filed in. All of them looked anxious, curious, or a mix of the two, and for some reason Applejack had a terminal tucked under one arm.

Sunset jerked her chin towards it as she holstered her pistol. “What’s that for?”

“It’s for Rainbow,”Twilight answered. “I’ve gotten a lot of practice at typing using my magic, so I’m going to type out everything we say so Rainbow can keep up with our conversations.”

Sunset felt her heart lift a little at the consideration. “That’s a great idea! Good thinking!”

“I still think it’s a little weird that those things are battery-powered,” Pinkie said absently as Applejack dumped the terminal on the table. “How long do those fission batteries last, anyway?”

“In a terminal like this, they’re rated for up to fifty years of daily use, but they can last a few centuries if you don’t use the thing that often,” Applejack told her. She tipped her hat back and turned to Sunset. “Anyhow, what the hell is goin’ on? Ah know that Becky has arrived, but what do you want us all to gather here for?”

“It’s… complicated,” Sunset replied awkwardly. She gestured to the seats. “Everyone sit down for the time being and I’ll explain until they get here.”

“They? Are we waitin’ for someone?” Applejack asked. When Sunset didn’t answer, she frowned and did as she was asked.

The rest of the Rainbooms quickly sat down and looked at Sunset expectantly. No last-second flash of insight occurred to give her an easy way of telling them what had happened with the portal, so she just took a deep breath and went with her gut. “You know that the Exodus team was working on their own portal?” The others nodded, their expressions varying from doubtful to cautiously optimistic. “Well, it turns that out they managed to put together a complete prototype, and began testing.”

All of the others exclaimed loudly at that little reveal.

“Does this mean we get to go home?!” Rarity demanded.

Sunset tried to control her expression, but Twilight noticed her hesitation and sighed. “No, something went wrong. Did the dialing sequence fail?”

“No, it actually worked pretty well, apparently,” Sunset replied quickly, though her face fell a second later. “The problem is that Doctor Turner was broken out of confinement by a rebel, and he interfered with the experiment.”

Applejack swore and clenched her fists so hard her knuckles turned white. “Ah swear, if you’re about to tell me that that asshole sabotaged our way home, Ah’m gonna rip him apart like a pissed-off fox in a chicken coop,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Oddly enough, we think he was actually trying to help,” Sunset told her. “Tara’s plan was to test the system on a very low setting, so she could make sure that the systems were all working together properly and see if anything needed tweaking.” The grim looks on the others’ faces told Sunset that they all recognized the similarity to what had happened with the Diviner. “Turner thought that that way of doing things was too inefficient, so he secretly disabled the safety systems and pushed all settings up to maximum, which, of course, fried the circuits and wrecked the portal. The Exodus team are confident that they can rebuild it easily enough, but the SDT-1 was vaporized. We’ll have to find another one.”

“Great,” Twilight muttered. She took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes, then put them back on and sighed heavily. “Maybe we can still salvage something from this. If I can look at the data the Exodus team got from the failed experiment, I might be able to figure out what went wrong with the Geode Diviner in the first place, so we don’t eventually end up getting dragged into this world again.”

Sunset scowled and shook her head, her temper rising again from just thinking about what had truly happened. “I know what went wrong with the Diviner, and it didn’t have a fucking thing to do with any of us making a mistake.” As calmly as she could manage, Sunset explained what she had learned about Mandible, the human Shimmer, and their sabotage of the Geode Diviner.

When she was done, the rest of the Rainbooms just sat in appalled silence. It was Fluttershy who eventually spoke first, “So this was all caused by the, um, human you, and a… changeling?”

“And the Dazzlings helped them,” Rainbow spat. She snarled and cracked her knuckles menacingly. “I swear, when we get back to CHS I’m going to wring their fucking necks.”

“Not if I get to them first,” Twilight cut in before turning to Sunset, “What I don’t understand is how you know all of this?”

“Someone else got dragged through from CHS,” Pinkie said grimly.

Twilight shook her head vigorously. “Don’t even joke about something like that. Besides, it’s not possible. No-one else at CHS has magic.”

Sunset coughed quietly, making everyone stare at her in horror and disbelief. “Actually…”

Before she could explain any further, there was a loud knock at the door.

Next Chapter: Chapter 153 - Moons of Rivet City Estimated time remaining: 11 Hours, 11 Minutes