Pinkie watched silently as the pair of Vertibirds soared away, taking the few surviving members of Talon Company to Project Purity for interrogation. The Rainbooms were going to have to rest at the Fort until one could get back to extract them. Once the Vertibirds were out of sight, Pinkie looked back over her shoulder at the large canvas tent where the others were waiting.

She didn’t want to go in there.

The Rainbooms had won an incredible victory against Talon Company, crushing the mercenaries despite the fact that it had clearly been a trap, but the grim circumstances behind the battle had left all of the girls either somber or enraged. Sunset’s appalling injuries were bad enough, but the timing of the attacks on Rivet City, Project Purity and the Exodus building were far too well-timed to be coincidence. Someone had planned all of this.

With a heavy sigh, Pinkie turned and trudged slowly towards the tent. As much as she wanted to avoid the uncomfortable atmosphere around the others, she couldn’t just leave her friends alone at a time like this. Speculation would have to wait. Besides, there was a good chance that the others might literally try to tear Sonata apart if someone wasn’t there to stop them.

The tent was ominously silent as Pinkie approached. Inside, the others had arranged camp beds so that Applejack, Twilight and Rarity were sitting on one, Trixie and Fluttershy were on another, and Sonata was plonked on a stool between them. The four Rainbooms were glaring at Sonata, but Trixie had her head down and was staring at something in her hands.

“The Vertibirds are gone, they’ll be back as soon as they can,” Pinkie announced as she went and sat next to Trixie. She winced as she realized that Trixie was holding a bloodstained combat knife.

Applejack nodded and crossed her arms. “Good. That gives plenty of time for Sonata to explain to us just what the fuck is going on.”

Sonata scowled at her. The siren was still just as battered and bruised as before, and was sporting some fresh cuts and bruises that she must have picked up during the battle. “What do you wanna know?”

“For starters, how the hell can you still transform into that damn fish form?!” Applejack demanded.

“I’m a siren, that’s what we look like!” Sonata exclaimed indignantly.

“Ah don’t give a fuck what you call it, Ah wanna know how the hell you can still do it!” Applejack snapped. “Ah thought we broke your magic necklaces?”

“You did! I couldn’t even start to fix it until I got that chunk of crystal from the Enclave!” Sonata shot back.

The others all stared at her in shock and confusion. After a moment, Rarity sighed and rubbed her temples. “Why don’t you just tell us everything, starting from how you got a crystal from the Enclave?”

Sonata let out an annoyed huff, but complied anyway. Everyone listened intently as she described helping the Enclave scientist with categorizing magic, discovering that she could repair her amulet, finding a second crystal in Rivet City’s mirelurk nests, then foolishly descending into the metro system to try and fully repair the amulet.

“So that’s why you snuck out of the city!” Pinkie exclaimed brightly.

“Yeah, to fix her stupid necklace and stab us all in the back,” Applejack growled.

“I wasn’t going to stab you in the back!” Sonata snapped. “I hid my amulet when it was still broken because I knew you’d take it away, but now that I’ve fixed it, why should I care whether you know about it or not?!”

Applejack snorted loudly. “You seriously expect us to believe that you would’ve told us about it when it was fixed?”

“I told Sunset about it!” Sonata retorted.

Her sudden declaration caught all of the Rainbooms off guard. Pinkie was about to ask what Sunset’s opinion about it had been when Twilight cut in sharply, “I don’t believe you.”

“Well I do,” Rarity said loudly, forestalling Sonata before she could say anything stupid.

Applejack gave Rarity a curious look. “Are you sure about that? She didn’t say anything about telling Sunset before.”

“I was trying to tell you, but you all interrupted me!” Sonata cried indignantly.

Applejack grunted, then gave a curt nod. “Fair enough. Let’s hear the rest of it.” She held up a hand as Twilight opened her mouth to argue. “Ah said Ah want to hear the rest of it, so let her finish.” It was clear from the look on Twilight’s face that she was skeptical, but she relented anyway.

If anything, Sonata’s story got even more insane from that point. She spoke of getting chased by feral ghouls in the metro, being inadvertently rescued by what sounded like a Scorchbeast, then being snatched up by Super Mutants as soon as she escaped the metro.

The mention of the Mutants searching Sonata for ‘sparklies’ made the Rainbooms share a concerned look. “Bastards must be after our Geodes,” Applejack said gruffly. “Keep talkin’.”

A smug smirk spread across Sonata’s face. “The Mutants took me back to their camp, but I managed to escape from those big dumb freaks.” She gleefully spoke of how she had evaded the Super Mutants, repaired her amulet and made it more powerful than ever before, and immediately used it to demolish the Super Mutants looking for her. The other Rainbooms narrowed their eyes at the mention of the amulet being ‘more powerful’, but Pinkie had a sneaking suspicion that Sonata was fudging some of the details.

The siren’s expression fell at that moment, making Pinkie wonder if the hostility was getting to her, only for Sonata to explain in a hollow voice how she had been captured by a Behemoth and taken to Shephard. Fluttershy and Rarity gave her sympathetic looks, and even Applejack winced as she described how the so-called Overmaster had questioned her.

The Rainbooms knew how the story went from there. A trap was set, the girls walked right into it, and Sunset paid the price.

Rarity let out a soft sigh and turned to Applejack. “I hate to say it, darling, but as foolish as Sonata has been, I think we should let this slide.”

“She did come out here to avenge Sunset, just like we did,” Fluttershy supplied. “Plus, you saw how prepared Talon Company was. We would have had a much harder fight on our hands if Sonata hadn’t made a mess of their plan.”

Applejack nodded slowly. “You ain’t wrong. Ah reckon gettin’ interrogated by Super Mutants is enough of a punishment anyhow.” She fixed Sonata with a stern look. “Havin’ said that, Ah’ve got a couple conditions for lettin’ you off the hook: First, if Ah hear you try to call us the Raingoons one more time Ah’m gonna wash your darn mouth out with soap, and if you do double-cross us Ah’m gonna stuff a grenade so far up your ass you’ll choke on it, y’hear?”

“I-I’ll behave, I promise!” Sonata assured her anxiously.

“Second,” Applejack continued, “Ah want to see your new amulet. Right now.”

“It isn’t really an amulet anymore, but sure.” Sonata pulled a velvet pouch out of her pocket. “Have you got a glove or something I can borrow?” Pinkie took out a leather work glove she had brought from Vault 101 and tossed it to the siren. Sonata slipped the glove on and removed something a lot bigger and more elaborate than her old amulet from the pouch.

Rarity gasped and clapped her hands together. “It’s a torc!”

“Yep,” Sonata said simply.

Applejack cocked her head in confusion as she looked at the crystalline accessory. “Torque? What the heck does that thing have to do with cars?”

“Not that kind of torque,” Twilight told her.

“It’s super powerful, but there’s so much fighting going on around here that I can’t control it,” Sonata explained. “Not without doing a solid projection and throwing around song-blasts, anyway. Doing that burns through a lot of magic.”

Pinkie and Twilight both nodded, while Applejack frowned in thought. After a few seconds she shook her head slowly. “Ah guess that all makes sense. But where does Trixie figure into all this?” The girl in question hadn’t looked up once during the entire conversation. She was still looking at the knife in her hands, though Pinkie was fairly sure that her attention was somewhere else entirely.

Sonata glanced at Trixie and shrugged. “She said she followed me because she didn’t trust me. I don’t know where she got the knife from, though.”

“Jabsco,” Trixie said quietly.

“She managed to follow Commander Jabsco into his safe room without him noticing, to try and get him to surrender,” Fluttershy elaborated. “I tried to get in to save her but I couldn’t get through the door. By the time I could tear my way in through the ceiling, Jabsco had already been defeated.”

Rarity sucked in a sharp breath, her expression lined with sympathy. “I know how awful a situation like that can be. It probably doesn’t feel like it at the moment, but you did the right thing.”

“How do you all do it?” Trixie asked without looking up. “How do you do this every day without…”

“Falling apart?” Fluttershy finished. Trixie just nodded. “Most of us did fall apart at one point or another. It isn’t easy, but we’ve all found our own ways to cope, whether they’re healthy or not. This world is evil. The only way to get through this is to do whatever it takes to survive. We don’t really talk about it, mostly because dwelling on it would drive us completely insane, but we’ve all got family and friends waiting for us back home. Surviving is the only option.”

The others nodded grimly, Pinkie feeling a twang of guilt as she remembered her low point when they first arrived at Rivet City only a few months ago. “Don’t worry, Trixie, we’ll do what we can to make sure that you’re not put in a situation like this again,” Pinkie assured her.

“What about me?” Sonata asked. “I’ve got my magic back, and I don’t have a prob-”

“You’ll stick with Vice-Principal Luna and stay out of trouble unless one of us gives you permission to do somethin’ else,” Applejack growled.

Sonata groaned and rolled her eyes, but a sharp glare from Fluttershy made her throw on a forced smile and promise that she would do exactly what she was told.

“Uh, what should I do with this?” Trixie asked, gesturing weakly with the knife.

Twilight adjusted her glasses as she looked at it. “If you got it from Commander Jabsco, then it’s probably Occam’s Razor. An entry on the terminal in his office says that it was his favorite knife.”

“You should keep it,” Rarity suggested. “Even sticking it in a sheath and never drawing it again would be a better use for the blade than whatever Jabsco did with it.” She stood up and stretched, her joints popping in the cold air. “In fact, I think I’ll gather some materials and make you a sheath now. We’ll just have to clean the blade first.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 178 - Beyond the Horizon Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 50 Minutes