I’ll skip through the boring part, I guess. We ended up walking along tributaries and rivers for something like three or four days. Screwbugs made a mess of my hide; I was half tempted to start shooting the little bloodsuckers with my rifle after the second day. Other than that, and Surge being her usual racist and bitchy self, I don’t remember much from those days of hiking. I guess that means nothing interesting happened.

I did manage to sort some things out with Surge over control of my body, though. She wanted free use of my head so she could express herself easier in conversations, and I insisted that she doesn't bother the rest of my body in return. After we’d both saved each other’s lives, we were both willing to compromise a bit to make this work. We also agreed that we could both use my horn to cast spells if we needed to. I mean, I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to double my magic output and have Surge cast a few spells with my horn that I didn’t know. While I was better with fire than she was, and she told me that was because I was naturally ‘attuned’ to fire or some shit, she knew things I couldn’t for the life of me figure out, like ice and lightning and teleportation.

When I randomly appeared on the other side of the river without warning during our hike, I was not a happy camper.

She made me swim back to the other side, too, even though it meant we both got wet. I couldn’t tell if she was just being mean, or if she thought it was a funny prank. Still, I did momentarily freak her out when I cast my flame-retardant spell on myself and then lit my mane on fire to dry off. I think I scared Nova, too, because she was about ready to push me back into the river to put out the fire.

But soon, we were there. I didn’t really appreciate what I was looking at at first; since we were following the river downstream, we were at the lowest point between the mountains. All I saw were a few low buildings along the river with hardworking ponies laboring outside them, but Ace insisted that we spend the extra hour to climb onto a bluff and get a good look at the city. I really didn’t want to, because that was an hour we’d be wasting, but it was worth it.

When I got to the top of that bluff and looked down, I felt my breath slip away. Here was a city. A real city. Hole had been impressive in the feats of engineering and architecture that had gone into supporting a vertical city inside of a mountain, but the whole thing was rotten with the RPR and everything else. Three Rivers was less dense than Hole, I thought, but it sprawled everywhere. The valley was shaped more like a bowl than a valley, with pink mountains all sloping inwards and supporting orange tufty trees around their upper limits. The river we’d been following flowed through this bowl and joined another river coming somewhere from the northeast, and together they formed a third, massive river that flowed south and out of the bowl. Nestled between and around all these rivers were log buildings supported on pylons that kept them ten feet off the ground. Those buildings were connected by rope bridges and walkways, and so many hundreds, thousands of ponies moved to and fro. And unlike in Hole, I didn’t get a feeling of poverty and desperation from the ponies moving around down there. They seemed happy and well-fed. For me and Nova and Gauge, who’d seen only war and bad shit since leaving Blackwash, it looked like a utopia, a model for how Auris should be like.

“It’s been too long since I’ve been here,” Ace said, drinking it all in. “Ain’t had nothing but good memories of this place. Three Rivers is like Thatch, except they don’t have the Ivory City breathing down their necks. Plus, they’re a hub of transportation, so they’re rich. They’re at the crossroads of the northern settlements and the interior of the continent, and merchants can ship goods along the rivers. Little wonder the Brass Bank sets up shop here.”

“Brass Bank?” I asked.

“The name’s pretty straightforward,” Ace said, shrugging. “They trade in bullets. They’ve got the biggest stockpile of ammo in the entire world, probably. Technically they’re a merchant organization, but they’ve been known to play favorites. Ain’t much to wonder about who done it when your enemies suddenly have thousands of bullets and shiny new weapons at their disposal; the Bank’s put out a loan on something they have an interest in.”

“I guess that means that they’ve got one hell of a mercenary army.”

Ace chuckled. “They’ve probably got the strongest army short of Reclaimer’s. It’s how they stay neutral; ain’t nopony wants to fuck with that and have the might of the Brass Bank wipe them from the face of the planet.”

“Impressive,” Surge said, taking over my mouth and voice. “I’d nearly written off all of you Auran ponies, but it seems that you’re still capable of the greatness the Synarchy birthed within our species.”

“And the bloodlust,” Gauge grumbled. “Don’t forget that part.”

“This is how it should be,” I said, smiling. “If we could make all of Auris as peaceful as this, then living here wouldn’t be so fucking awful.”

Nova strode up next to me and brushed my side with her feathers. “Kinda makes you hopeful, right?”

“Yeah, it does.” The pink grass beneath my hooves crunched and bent as I contentedly shifted my weight from leg to leg. “Come on, let’s go get a closer look at this beauty. No sense in just admiring it from all the way out here, right?”

We set off again, making our way back down the hill. For the first time in a long time, I felt some spring in my step; I was genuinely eager to be someplace instead of forcing myself to push through a wall of dread and anxiety. Three Rivers wasn’t some deadly installation that I had to go to; it was a city that offered a chance to rest and recover. I was already trying to make excuses in my head to stay at least for a day or two. We knew where we had to go, but Yeoman likely didn’t. He’d have to go searching around and asking ponies about what they knew, but Surge could just guide us there herself.

We could at least stay one day. I really needed the peace and rest, and I didn’t think I was the only one. Ace would tough it out, I knew that much, but Nova and Gauge were probably just as worn out as I was. Plus they hadn’t gotten a good chance to fuck in a few weeks, what with me sharing a tent with them and all. I could tell just by looking at Nova that she had a need she needed satisfied as soon as possible. I couldn’t think of a better way to be her best friend than to let her and Gauge get set up in a room and fuck all night long.

As we got closer to the heart of Three Rivers, I bumped into Ace. “Got any pointers so we don’t fuck everything up forever?”

“I think she means so she doesn’t fuck everything up forever,” Gauge said, making Nova giggle. I shot a dirty glare at the two of them before bringing my head back around to Ace for an answer.

“Only one, really,” she said, her eyes rising upwards to a low-flying cloud that a platoon of ponies in sleek armor and carrying shiny guns sat on. “If you draw a gun, you’re gonna get shot dead. Boom, dead, no questions asked. Three Rivers is violently neutral. They enforce it by killing anypony who threatens their neutrality through fighting and shit. They ain’t gonna care that you were shooting back in self-defense, they’ll gun you down too. Best thing to do is to run and get the mercs; the Brass Bank pays them well to keep the peace, but it’s a boring job, so they’re always happy to get in on a little action.”

“What about beating other ponies’ faces in with your bare hooves?” I asked, only semi-serious. “Can I still get in a good barfight if I want to?”

Surge rolled my eyes. “Barbaric.”

“Shut up.”

Ace chuckled a bit; I didn’t really blame her. I bet I sounded like a fucking crazy pony when Surge and I started talking aloud to each other. “Then you’ll just get kicked out,” she said. “They can afford to be a little more lenient if nopony dies.”

“That’s good to know.” I turned my head nearly backwards to kiss the butt of my rifle, sticking out over my shoulder. “Looks like you get a break from killing ponies and shit.”

Nova held a wing over her muzzle as she giggled, and Gauge waggled an eyebrow. “Why don’t you and your gun take a roll in the hay?”

“Pfff. Like I’d ever do that.”

“You say that,” Surge said, “but right now you’re remembering that time when you masturbated using the barrel of a submachine gun and then a colt walked in on you. Chaff, was it?”

We all froze for a second. My cheeks burned with fire as Surge let that little secret slip to my friends. Nova had a disgusted look on her face, Gauge was shocked, and Ace fell to the ground in howling laughter. “You fucked a gun?!” she yelled, hooting and hollering as she rolled on the ground. “Oh, Celestia! That’s fucking amazing!”

I flopped to the ground and buried my burning face under my hooves. Even though I had a dark coat, I was pretty sure they could all see my blush through it. “I fucking hate you, Surge,” I moaned, my voice muffled some by the grass and my legs. “I fucking hate you so much. That was private!”

“It’s hard to not notice when you remember it so vividly—!” I cut her off by burying my own muzzle in the grass; at least it worked. Then she just started teasing me inside my skull. Hit a nerve?

I liked it better when you were angry and racist, not mean and racist, I mentally muttered back at her. Somepony’s hoof started patting my shoulders, and I tried to claw my way into the center of the earth. “Just let me die, okay? I just wanna curl up and die.”

“Oh, come on, Em,” Gauge said, apparently recovered from his shock. “Get up. We’ll only tease you about it for the rest of your life.”

Him and Ace helped me stand, and then Ace wrapped her foreleg around my shoulders and wiped a few tears from her eyes with her other hoof. “Whoo-ee that’s something! Did you at least unload the thing?”

“I did,” I muttered, glaring at the ground. “I’m not that stupid.”

Nova approached a little more cautiously; I could see her judging my life choices in the face that she was making. “You’re lucky you didn’t get an infection,” was all she said. “I can’t believe you! That’s disgusting!”

“Aw, don’t be lying to yourself, Nova,” Ace said, coming to my defense. “Listen, we’re all mares here—”

Gauge roughly cleared his throat.

“—and we’ve all shoved shit that don’t belong in our cunts in there at least once,” she finished, ignoring him. “Come on, let’s hear it. I’ve used the handlebars of a hoverbike before. Don’t even have to lie down for that one, just lean it against the wall and go to town. Perfect height.”

“Oh my stars,” Nova said, blushing at that. “You girls—”

“Water supply shutoff lever to the fusion plant of a Rainbow-class homeworld cruiser,” Surge abruptly said, cutting Nova off. All of my friends looked at us; I don’t think any of them, myself included, thought Surge would get in on this too. “I feel sorry for the next engineer who actually turned that thing with their mouth.”

Nova’s mouth hung open, and Ace openly laughed again. “Look at you! Sparky knows how to have fun, too!”

“A shutoff lever?” Gauge asked. Now it was his turn to look horrified. “That’s like, what, an inch or two thickness of hard, steel girth? That had to hurt!”

I could feel Surge picking her next words before she even said them. “…I like it rough.”

“Sweet fucking Celestia, you’ve got a tougher cunt than mine,” Ace said, looking impressed. “At least the hoverbike’s bars are padded!”

“I can’t believe you three!” Nova exclaimed, sitting down on the grass.

“Come on, Nov, it’s your turn,” I said. Stars bless Ace; now I didn’t feel like I wanted to curl up in a hole and die of embarrassment anymore. “I know you’ve done it.”

“Can we just go to the city?” Nova pleaded. “We really shouldn’t be wasting time out here!”

“We ain’t moving ‘til we hear it,” Ace insisted, sitting down right next to her. She wrapped a wing around Nova and pulled her in close until their cheeks pressed together. “C’mon! Don’t lie to us, filly, we’ve all been there.”

“Uhhhh…”

“Even I’m interested,” Gauge said, smirking and sitting on Nova’s other side. “Maybe I can take something from this into the bedroom.”

Poor Nova looked like she was gonna fucking die. Even Surge had a little bit of sympathy for her, but I could tell that she was just as eager as we all were to hear the truth from her. And judging by the look of her face, it was pretty obvious she had something she was hiding.

“I, uhm…” She hid her muzzle between her forelegs. “I’ve used… Gauge’s tools…”

I snickered and clapped my hooves together. “See? That wasn’t so hard!” Ace rubbed Nova’s back, and I turned my attention to Gauge. “You ever noticed that any of your tools tasted like your mare?”

Gauge just looked at her with one eyebrow raised. “You really liked the ratchet with the rubber grip, didn’t you?”

“Oh my stars,” Nova whined, hiding her face from us. “I hate all of you…”

“Awww, I feel like we had a good family bonding moment, there,” I said. “What about you, Gauge? Ever stick anything up your butt?”

Gauge shook his head, stood up, and backed away a few steps. “I need to be about a million times drunker than I am right now for this conversation to go on any longer. Let’s just go to the city, get settled down, and take stock, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” I said, standing up. I flipped a cigarette out of my box, lit it, and stuck it between my teeth, inhaling that sweet, sweet poison. The tingling in my hooves went away almost at the first hit, and I started humming as we approached the city proper. I did notice that Nova kept her head hung low and was shooting the rest of us dirty looks, but that whole thing had been so funny that I didn’t give a shit. I was definitely making it up to her by getting her and Gauge their own room when we got into town.

A few minutes removed from that little shitshow of a conversation, we drifted back toward more normal topics, like the unique architecture of Three Rivers. We climbed up a stout wooden staircase near the edge of the town and began working our way inwards, walking through the thick of the colorful ponies and zebras and even a few griffons around us. “Why’s everything raised up like this?” I asked, leaning over a railing and looking at the dry ground below.

“The rivers likely breach their banks during the rainy season,” Nova said. “This whole valley’s just a big bowl. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns into a lake during the middle of spring.”

“They get a few feet of flooding every spring, yeah,” Ace confirmed for us. “They put all the buildings on stilts so they ain’t gonna get wet. Also makes loading goods onto boats easier,” she added, pointing a wingtip to a simple crane lowering crates down to a wide skiff sitting at the edge of the nearby river.

“A real city. How about that,” I mused, staring with wonder at the buildings we passed. Most of them were little houses that had their storefronts on the first floor and living quarters on the second, though not many of the buildings were higher than two or three stories. Further into the center of the town, however, things started getting a little taller and denser, and the walkways grew more narrow. Even despite all that, there weren’t really big buildings; I guess they were limited in what the pylons could support. They weren’t really gonna get much higher than that.

The city was filled with the idle chatter and drumming of hooves from thousands of ponies, creating this sort of background hum to everything. It wasn’t nearly as loud as Hole had been, since the mountain just made everything echo, but I could see actual happiness here, free of that disgusting scar called slavery. Children ran along the streets and dashed over the bridges, mares and stallions ate together at restaurants, and a few street musicians popped up here and there on street corners. Nova’s generosity started getting the better of her, and she ran off with a mag of bullets so she could mete out some change into the musicians’ hats.

As I suspected, the center of the town was centered around the fork that joined the two smaller rivers together into the third river that flowed southeast out of the valley. Impressively large bridges spanned the largest river here, their walkways wide enough for thirty ponies to cross standing shoulder to shoulder. All sorts of stalls lined the edges of these bridges, and a number of them had buckets hung from pulleys so they could lower goods to the crews of the river skiffs as they passed beneath them. Further downstream, a massive town square made from probably hundreds of felled trees spanned the entire width of the river, uniting both shores while allowing room for the boats to pass underneath. But even that wasn’t the most impressive sight.

At the fork of the two rivers, its dominating façade staring down the length of the third, an impressive building that must’ve been ten stories tall stood proud. Like the buildings around it, it was made of wood, but the craftsmareship was leagues ahead of everything else. I could hardly see the seams between the smooth planks, and it was obvious that careful thought had gone into the architecture and design of the structure. Tall windows seemed to hang from the rounded dome on top of the building, each one a different length, like icicles; the longest must’ve been six stories from top to bottom. The whole thing was fenced off with delicately worked wrought iron, and two huge doors that must’ve been plated in brass or copper or something marked the entrance into the building. Just in front of it, a cartridge easily twice as big as I was stood upright on a pedestal, but instead of being carved from stone or something, it was forged from the twisted remains of melted and shaped guns. Everything from pistols to marksmare rifles had been incorporated in that statue. It had to have taken thousands of guns to create.

My jaw hung slack as I stared at this whole thing, astonished. Nova excitedly fluttered a few feet off of the ground, clopping her hooves together. “This is incredible! Beyond amazing! It almost puts the engineering inside of Hole to shame!”

“That’s what millions and millions of C’s can buy you,” Ace said. “That there’s the headquarters of the Brass Bank. You’re looking at the most powerful institution on Auris. Wars have been won and lost because the council that runs it decided to intervene on one side or the other. Wherever the bullets flow, the Bank’s not too far behind.”

“And what are all those ponies doing?” Gauge asked, pointing to a line of colorful mares and stallions all waiting to get inside.

Ace shrugged. “Ain’t it obvious? It’s a bank. They all want loans or gotta do other shit involving money. Cashing checks and that sort of thing. Ain’t nopony gonna lug around thousands of bullets when they need to buy something like a skiff or a house.”

“Astonishing,” Surge said, even while I was too awestruck to have many thoughts of my own right now. “They certainly have flair, but it’s too gaudy for my tastes. Synarchy architecture was much more… efficient than this. Equestrian Brutalism might not have the most lavishing looks, but it’s simple and you can feel the power coming off of the buildings.”

“I grew up looking at some old barracks built in that style,” Gauge said. “They’re ugly as shit.”

Surge made me shrug. “They were. Ugly or not, they still had a weight to them that was impressive.”

I finally recovered enough of my wits to get over this awesome sight I was seeing. “Alright, how’s about we go find an inn or someplace to stay at so we can leave our shit there and go sightseeing later? I don’t want to be carrying around all our supplies all day if I can help it.”

“I wonder if the old place I used to stay at’s still around,” Ace said, walking toward a bridge that’d take us to the north shore of the big river. “I used to do a lot of business around Three Rivers. Haven’t been back in a few years, though, so I don’t know if that place is still kicking.”

We followed her along more raised streets and little bridges between platforms. She eventually took us to a long two-story building that owned a good portion of the ‘block’ it was on. A cracking sign with peeling paint advertised it as the Spent Casing Inn. Not exactly the best name, I thought, but there were certainly worse names to call an inn. She nosed open the door, and we piled in after her into a large communal room that already had ten or fifteen ponies sitting in small groups or on their own at the various tables and chairs scattered around it.

Ace walked over to the counter set just a bit inside the door, and I followed her. Nova and Gauge hung back, surveying the interior. When we made it to the counter, Ace tapped her hooves on the wood, startling the stallion sitting behind it. “Hey, Lines! Thought you’d never see me again, didn’t you?”

The stallion behind the desk, Lines, almost did a double take. “Ace?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. “You’re alive? Why, it’s been years! Where have you been?”

“Wandering,” she said. “Guess that’s one way I take after my Pa. Spending too much time in one place gives me the itch something fierce.” Her eyes drifted around the inn and she chuckled. “This place hasn’t changed one bit.”

“Neither have you,” Lines said, smiling. He glanced at me out of curiosity, and then over my shoulder at my friends by the door. “Where’s Zephyr?” he asked Ace. “She outside or something?”

Ace’s eyes fell to the counter and her wings trembled a bit. “Z’s dead,” she murmured. “She’s been plant food for a couple of years, now.”

I saw Lines’ breath catch in his throat. “Zeph’s... dead?” A moment later, he put his hoof on Ace’s. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know how much she meant to you.”

“She was my world,” Ace whispered. Grimacing, she coughed once and shook Lines’ hoof off. “Don’t matter none, now. Been traveling with some new ponies. This here’s Ember, and her friends back there are Nova and Gauge,” she said, pointing to each of us in turn. She left out Surge for obvious reasons, and thankfully, Surge felt no inclination to correct her. I think even she knew how awkward things could get if she made it look like I had really bad schizophrenia.

I could tell Lines was still really concerned about Ace, but he wasn’t going to bring it up again for her sake. Instead, he nodded to me and smiled. “Nice to meet you. You have to be tough to keep up with Ace here—unless she’s gone soft since I last saw her.”

“She knows what she’s doing,” I said, shaking his hoof. “She’s been really helpful for me and my friends back there. We’re from the valley way to the north, past the Celestia Dam, so we hardly know how anything works this far south.”

“I heard about that whole thing!” he exclaimed. “Those Sentinels finally delivered the knockout punch to Carrion and the Crimson. The whole town’s been buzzing about it for weeks! The merchants were all fighting with each other over who’d be the first to open up trade to the north. Those caravan routes had been closed for years because of the Crimson, so the farthest north they ever went was Hole.”

I’m still amazed at how quickly news spreads, even on a planet as sparsely populated as Auris.

“Guess that’s gonna be good for business then, ain’t it?” Ace asked.

“For Three Rivers as a whole, and definitely for my little inn,” Lines said. “We’ll get a lot more through traffic with a brand-new market opened up in the north. I’ll probably start making a killing in a few months when the traffic really picks up. I wish I could thank the Sentinels for getting rid of that menace once and for all.”

“You can thank me,” I said, smirking. “I may not have the armor, but I’m a sergeant in their ranks. I was at the Dam when it all went down. It was a hell of a fight.”

“The merchants tell stories, but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to somepony who lived it.” Lines grinned at me; I was starting to like him, though I was surprised that an earth pony as good natured as him got along so well with a rough and tumble outlaw like Ace. “I don’t envy you, but you still have my thanks for what you all did up there. Auris is a better place because of it.”

I nodded my gratitude. “Thanks. Does that mean that you’ll give us a discount on rooms, since we’re big heroes and all that?”

Lines rolled his eyes. “Ten C’s a room.”

“Is that before or after discount?”

“I’ll let you decide,” he said, smirking. “How many do you want? There’s only a single bed in each room, mind you.”

“Two’s fine,” I said, shrugging. Nova and Gauge certainly wouldn’t mind sharing, and I don’t think Ace cared that much. “I just wanna dump this shit off of my back so I don’t have to carry it around all day. We need a day or two to rest before we get moving again.”

“Sure thing.” Lines ducked behind the counter for a moment and came back up with two keys in his mouth. He put them on the table and pushed them towards us while I counted out the bullets from my ammo bag. “Rooms 309 and 310. You two can take your pick, though I think I know where you’ll be, Ace.”

Ace smirked as she snatched the key to 309. “Glad to see you remember my old room,” she said with it dangling off a feather.

“Kind of hard to forget it; it still smells like your tail all these years later. I don’t know how many bullets I’ve dumped into trying to get rid of the stink.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you, too.” She started walking away from the counter, twirling the key about on her feather. Turning back to Lines, she winked at him. “Good to see you, buddy. I’ll be back down in a bit and we can share a few drinks.”

Lines smiled back at her. “You know I’d like nothing more.” Then, turning to me, he added, “You enjoy your stay. Be careful around that one, though; you never know what she’s gonna do.”

“I’ve certainly gotten a good taste of it, up close and personal,” I said. “How’d you even meet her? She’s, like, a borderline psycho outlaw, and you seem like an honest stallion.”

“We’ve known each other since we were dumb kids,” Lines said. “It was a long time ago. We were both getting caught up in all this nonsense with the Ruin Runners. It’s a story and a half, but when you have go through the things you do as a young Runner, you make a few fast friends that’ll last you for life. And if there’s any one thing I like about her, she’s reliable. If she says she’ll do something, she’ll do it, even if she has to move mountains.”

“She certainly hasn’t let us down yet,” I said. I saw Nova and Gauge getting antsy by the door, so I dropped twenty bullets on the counter and picked up the key for their room. “We’ve been wandering the middle of fucking nowhere for the past forever, so after we drop our shit off and maybe take a nap or something, I wanna just do touristy shit with nopony trying to kill us. Any good places for that?”

Lines collected the bullets and dropped them in a box under the counter. “The Brass Bank’s the obvious one, and it’s usually open all day. You can skip the line if you’re not actually trying to do some banking. Also, check out Southside. That’s where the bars and restaurants are. Other than that?” He shrugged. “We’re living in post-apocalyptia. I doubt there’s going to be any historical landmarks for another couple hundred years, not until civilization gets back on its hooves.”

I chuckled. “True that, I suppose.” I tossed the key over my shoulder, right into Gauge’s outstretched hoof. “Good talking with you. Thanks for the rooms.”

“It’s an inn; what kind of establishment would I be running if I didn’t give you rooms?” Lines shook his head and leaned across the counter. “Enjoy your vacation. I can’t wait to hear from Ace later tonight what she’s been up to since we last talked.”

I nodded and stepped away, heading in the direction Ace had gone. We spotted a staircase through an open doorway, and two flights of steps took us to the third floor. About halfway down the hall, I saw an open door with a big ‘309’ painted on it, and immediately across the hall was the other room.

“Let’s get our shit settled and sorted, then we’ll get food or something and plan what we’re gonna do next,” I said, drifting over to the open door. I stopped right at the bannister and winked at them. “Try to save it until tonight, okay?”

Gauge laughed and shook his head, and Nova’s wings twitched at her sides. “Sure thing, Em,” Gauge said, and in a few motions, he’d opened the door to his room.

My attention went back to the room I was sharing with Ace. It really wasn’t all that big, and the bed didn’t leave much floor space unused. Still, there was a crude dresser and a table to put our shit on, and the bed wasn’t that small. It was certainly bigger than the lumpy thing I grew up on in Blackwash, and it’d fit me and Ace without much problem. We’d certainly be a little bit cozy, though.

Not that you mind that, Surge thought at me, bemused.

Shut up, I thought back at her. She’s hot.

I’m not going to complain if you two fuck, even though I’m straight. I’ve gone two centuries without sex, and I’ll take what I can get, even if it’s just piggybacking off you.

Ewww… I shivered and blinked a few times. Stars, I’d just started getting used to her hanging around my consciousness while I was taking a shit, but having her more or less look over my shoulder while I got laid was going to be something else entirely.

Ace turned around and saw me staring off into space. “Uh, Ember, you alright?” she asked, waving a hoof in front of my face.

I blinked and vigorously shook my head. “Sorry, Surge and I were talking about… things.”

“Huh.” She shrugged and flopped down on the bed now that she’d shed all her weapons and gear. “I’m glad that Surge kept her trap shut while we talked with Lines. That level of craziness wouldn’t have been good for anypony.”

“I know it’s to my detriment if I make Ember look like a schizophrenic,” Surge retorted. “Even if I don’t agree with what she’s saying or how she’s acting, I will voice my concerns more discreetly with her first before deciding whether to act or not.”

I shrugged. “That’s about as much as I can really hope for, I guess.”

“Quite.”

Ace rolled around on the bed a bit, sort of messing up the pattern of her mane. She came to a stop with her head on one of the pillows and sighed. “I’d stop here every time that I happened to be in the area, and this was always my room. Ain’t never had to go somewhere else. It was like Lines kept the damn thing open for me, just in case I’d show up, even if he’d filled every other room.” She winked at me. “He may not be blood, but that’s family. I just feel like shit for not seeing him for so long, but after Z died, I—”

She abruptly cut herself off and looked away. “Don’t matter none. Forget it.” Clearing her throat, she popped her head up and pointed past me to the other door before I could even say anything. “Nova and Gauge done with their shit? We should get out of here, get lunch somewhere. Enjoy this time we got before we gotta get moving again.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Ace was hurting. I think that much should’ve been obvious by now, since it’d come up a couple of times. But as much as I wanted to sit her down and talk about it, now wasn’t the time. That, Surge and I could both agree on.

“Yeah, they should be ready,” I said, shedding my bags and floating them over to the corner of the room. I thought about keeping my rifle, but I decided against it. Three Rivers was neutral, right? And if what Ace had said was true, then drawing my rifle was just gonna get me killed. Besides, I had my pyromancies, and Surge could add her spells to my list, too. We’d be fine.

At least, so I hoped.