“I calculated your chance of success to be… well, I don’t want to be morbid...”

Lists.

Most of my time in the wasteland was spent trying to achieve a singular goal. Get the A.A.S.S. back from the cyber ponies, get back home and keep everypony safe, hunt down Kamari and get my revenge. It was stressful at times, sure, but at least I had known what I was getting into and what I had to do next.

Life since the destruction of the MAS tower was anything but having direction. There were simply too many things on my list of things to do to keep track of. Find Mirra’s mother, get the A.A.S.S. back from the slaver, save Rubber Band form the Institute, find the Friendship Express. The list just kept going and growing.

But one thing was always at the forefront of my brain. Getting the A.A.S.S. back from Stern before she could get it to Red Eye. The A.A.S.S. had been my goal since the beginning, my drive to help me undergo the terrors of the wastes. I wasn’t ready to part with that objective, not yet anyway.

Nurse Heartbeat had taken to meeting Xayah, Pyre and Mirra better than I had hopped. We weren't the most pleasant gang of wastelanders to meet, but he managed to stay somewhat calm and composed, though I could tell Pyre’s snark did tend to put him a little more on edge than he would have liked. He had even found Mirra to be more interesting than frightening, much to both my and the small changelings' relief. Despite his rather unceremonious and abrupt introduction to our little gang of misfits, he seemed to be fitting in with us pretty well.

Brisk was a little less graceful in the morning. True to Heartbeat’s prediction, he seemed a lot healthier and coherent after a few hours of sleep than he had the night before, but he still seemed a little dizzy and out of it. He spent most of the morning in silence, trying his best to avoid eye contact with everypony and staring down at his hooves.

I’d have to sit down and have a talk with him when I had a moment.

Emissary’s body was quickly swept away by a few of the Tenpony guards and most of the blood that blotted the glistening floor was very quickly cleaned up. It didn’t take long before all signs of the gruesome murder had been completely washed away. I doubted that most ponies in the tower would ever even know the murder even happened at all.

I wished I could have done more for the dead Friendship Express operative, but I had things to do and ponies to stop.

I placed my hoof over the strange Friendship Express talisman that now dangled from my neck. I hadn’t put much thought into it since Emissary gave it to me, I had been a little more focused on his death at the time. But it was starting to catch my interest now. What did it do? Could it help me find the Friendship Express? I knew it could open certain locks that the Friendship Express designed, but was there anything else?

I doubted I’d get a chance to find out for a while longer. Such was the life of a wasteland wanderer it seemed.

So as soon as I had the chance, I got everypony packed up and out the large doors of Tenpony Tower. The slavers outside had withdrawn, letting us leave with the ease that was supposed to come with leaving the tower behind.

The ruins of Manehattan seemed even more desolite in the pale morning light, the cracked and broken down peaks of skyscrapers giving the skyline a jagged and thorn like appearance.

We had quickly started our way back to the Fetlock suburbs. I personally had no idea where this Stable 29 that the Applejack Rangers were supposedly holed up in was, but Pyre seemed to have a pretty good idea as she walked ahead of the group confidently, her newly patched up power armour gleaming.

I glanced down at my own patched up Stable barding. Coco Pommel had done a fantastical job of fixing it up, having patched all the rips and tears to look as if they had never been there at all. She had added a few dark blue patches over my shoulder and hocks to add a little bit of extra protection that I greatly appreciated. It seemed to have made my barding a little heavier, but nothing that would slow me down too much. It sure beat combat or metal armour. I had enough time swinging a gun around in my mouth, let alone a heavy suit of armour on my body.

“So how long are you going to stay with us?” Mirra asked Heartbeat curiously from atop Pyre’s back as we walked along. “You seem fun, and I wouldn’t mind a few more friends.”

Nurse Heartbeat gave the changeling a warm smile. “Until Brisk Spark is back to full health,” he said politely, giving a gentle nod in Brisk’s direction. “Though it has been too long since I left the comfort of Tenpony. I would not be unopposed to traveling with you a little longer if you five would have me?”

Mirra glanced back at me as if asking for my approval to keep a puppy. I just gave her a shrug. I wasn’t the leader of this group. It wasn’t my choice if he stayed or went. Mirra gave a happy squee. “Eeeee! More friends!”

I glanced over at Xayah who was walking quietly beside me, the hood of her stealth cloak pulled over the top of her head. “Do you think these Applejack rangers will be willing to help us?” I asked, casting a nervous glance in the direction Pyre was leading us. “I mean, Pyre seems pretty certain, but none of us have even met these ponies before. And not much comradery happened in our last run in with rangers.”

Xayah gave me a casual shrug. “I do not pretend to like how Pyre handles things, but she is more experienced in the wasteland than the rest of us. If she says they will help, then they most likely will.”

I rolled that around in my mind and tried to weigh just how much trust I should put into Pyre’s plans. Sure she was experienced, but she was also a raider. Her plans tended to involve a lot of raidery and violent action.

Not that my plans were usually any better.

I looked down at my pipbuck and checked over the audio files I had taken from SIlver Ace’s terminal. By this point I had listened to most of them. There were a few I had listened to last night while I awaited Brisk to recover, but they had been little more than statistics for things I didn’t understand or updates to things I had no context for. Scrolling through them, I noticed there was only one file I had been yet to listen to.

With nothing better to do while we walked, I clicked the file and let the audio file play out.

Almost immediately, I could tell that something about this audio file was different. My ears were filled with the sound of heavy panting and frantic hoofsteps. Far off in the distance I could hear the distinct and near deafening billow of blaring sirens, signalling an oncoming doom. The sound of a radio newscast echoed somewhere nearby as a news reporter preached about some coming disaster. The hoofsteps came to a halt and I heard the sound of a metal door sliding open.

“Fuckers!” I heard the nasally sound of Pure Blood's voice shout, his ragged breath coming out in heavy, huffs. “This wasn’t supposed to fucking happen!”

“Calm down, we need to get to safety,” I heard the aged, yet surprisingly relaxed voice of Silver Ace sooth. “We need to get to the castle, or this will have all been for nothing.”

I heard a loud snort of anger, followed by the sound of a hoof slamming against someone's head as Pure Blood bucked Silver Ace. There was a yelp and a thud as Silver Ace fell and was slammed against the ground. “This is all your fucking fault! You damn fool!” Pure Blood shrieked, his voice rising as he went into hysterics. You and that damned fucking pegasus! You stuck your muzzle where it shouldn’t have gone!”

I heard Silver Ace growl as he pulled himself back to his hooves. “I did what I felt was best for Equestria. It doesn’t matter anymore I suppose. Equestria is going to burn…”

The blaring sirens in the distance began to get louder and I could make out the tinny voice of an announcer speaking over some sort of radio. “Please get to the safety of your designated Stable!” The voice rang out, its stoic tone sending chills down my spine, even two hundred years later. “This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill!”

“Utopia better work! Especially after that catastrophe Chrysalis caused!” Pure Blood snarled. I could hear him closing in on Silver Ace again. “If it doesn’t then we are all of us damned!”

“Then perhaps we should get to the castle,” Silver Ace drawled again, the small clopping of hoofsteps ringing in my ears as he took a few steps back from the raging Canterlot elite. “And it will work. All we need is the A.A.S.S. in place and it will be fully operational. I have had Scootaloo install it at the castle for us, if you would just get out of my way so we could get there!”

There was a tentative pause as Pure Blood weighed his options, the only sound being the thunderous roar of the far off sirens. Finally I heard him give a snooty snort. “Fine, lead the way.”

“Our transport should be arriving at my apartment at any moment. We can leave Manehattan through there,” Silver Ace snapped. There was a sudden boom in the distance and the recording filled with static. “Shit! What was that!”

“My goddesses, Canterlot is gone!” I heard the news reporter gasp from the television. “The Prin-princesses are gone... goddesses…” There was another far off boom and the television went dead.

“We need to hurry!” Pure Blood spat. There was the hasty sound of galloping, only for the noise to be overcome by the ever growing sound of the sirens. The wailing sounds continued for a few more minutes before the recording finally went dead.

I looked down at my pipbuck as the final recording from Silver Ace’s terminal came to a close. I had learned less than I wanted to from the files, but I had never really known what I had been expecting to learn in the first place.

A strange thought bounced around in my mind, not for the first time, but definitely the most in a long while. If the A.A.S.S. was made for whatever this Utopia Program was, what had it been doing in Stable 25? Furthermore, if what Silver Ace had said in the recording was true, shouldn’t it have been at whatever this castle they were talking about was. And how did Red Eye and the cyber ponies fit into all of this? Did they even have a part of this or were they a part of something else altogether like Kamari had been?

So many questions I knew would probably take me a lifetime to oncover, assuming I ever uncovered them at all.

“Heads up everypony,” Pyre shouted back from the front of the group. “We’re almost there.”

She hadn’t even finished her sentence when several green bars popped up on my EFS. I could tell Brisk and Pyre spotted them on their own EFS as well, and Mirra seemed to be sniffing at the air like a bloodhound. She quickly shifted into a brown earth pony filly. She seemed to be getting better at controlling her magic and transformations after a good night's rest and the black charred look on the tip of her horn had died down significantly. A few more days and she would probably be back to her full strength, whatever that full strength that was.

“There appears to be some rangers up ahead,” Brisk grunted, breaking his silence for the first time that morning as he looked at the tags on his pipbuck. He pointed in the general direction of the green bars, informing everypony that didn’t have access to an EFS.

I intinctivally went for my weapon, only to remember we were trying to take a diplomatic approach.

I noted quickly that a small marker appeared on my Pipbuck map as we neared a small street corner. ‘Stable 29’ it read.

As we round the corner, we found ourselves only a few feet away from a group of around ten ponies, all clad in heavy power armour. True to DJ Pon3’s broadcast, they were all sporting a new black and red paint job and bore the symbol of the Steel Rangers with the new addition of three apples on it.

They had already spotted us, no doubt all having EFS of their own. Their weapons were drawn, but they didn’t seem to be hostile. Their bars were still green, so I took that as a good sign.

A large Ranger fully clad in power armour took a diplomatic step towards us. I forced myself not to gulp as I took in the rangers rather excessive weaponry. He had a huge grenade machine gun on the right side of his battle saddle while the other side held a massive box like gun that I could only assume was a particularly lethal rocket launcher.

I quickly made a note to not let myself get in a fight with that pony. I would probably meet a very quick and rather explosive death.

Everypony stood in silence for a moment, not fully sure how to proceed. The ranger that had stepped up to us turned to glare at Xayah for a bit before finally looking back to be and making what I could only assume was some snort like grunt. “You are currently in Applejack Ranger territory. State your business.”

Not the friendliest introduction, but certainly a step up from my last meeting with the Steel Rangers. I quickly put on my best smile and tried not to look threatening.

“We are hunting down a group of Red Eye’s slavers that are somewhere in the Fetlock area. We were hoping to get some assistance,” I said meekly, hoping they were interested in helping some random wasteland ponies like us.

The Applejack ranger glanced back at his companions and beckoned them over. The group exchanged a few words amongst themselves that I couldn’t hear as they approached before the leader turned back to me. “You’re in luck,” The leader monotoned. “We just received a distress signal coming from a group of scribes we had located out at the Fluttershy Medical center not far from here.”

The leader tapped something on the side of his helmet and suddenly a fearful, static filled voice started playing out. The sound of panicked breathing and gunfire echoed in the background of the recording. “This is scribe Butterscotch to Stable 29! We are holed up in the Fluttershy medical center and under attack by Slavers! Crusader Dustbowl is dead. I repeat, Dustbowl is dead!”

A loud gunshot rang out and the message went dead. The lead ranger looked up at me. “We were on our way to give our support. You are welcome to accompany us.”

I gave a quick nod. “You can count us in. It seems our goals are aligned.”

The leader gave a grunt-like nod and turned back to the rest of his squadron. “Alright, lets move out.”

A ranger mare stepped up to the ranger and gave a small salute like gesture. “Elder, are you sure you do not wish to remain in the Stable? I could easily take over the mission for you, and-”

The lead ranger shook his head. “I would much rather defend those who are in need then sit in the Stable Star Paladin Crossroads. I will be fine.”

Pyre walked up to me, Mirra still clinging to her back. “I must say, I didn’t expect that to work… Rangers aren’t usually that cooperative.”

I glared at her. “What do you mean you didn’t expect that to work? This was your idea!”

Pyre shrugged. “Eh, I figured we’d need to fight them to get them to work with us. That’s usually how our missions go.”

“You thought that we would need to-” I slapped my hoof against my face. “I need to stop listening to your plans. You’re going to get us killed.”

My irritating raider friend just grinned back. “Well duh. I gotta keep our adventures interesting somehow,” she trotted away from me, carrying a smiling Mirra with her.

“Now can I shoot her,” Brisk grumbed from beside me, rubbing his still dizzy head with a hoof. “Before she does manage to get us shot.”

I just gave him a shrug. “Bro, if shooting Pyre was a solution, I think you would have done it already. Besides, we don't shoot friends.”

Brisk just grumbled something I couldn’t hear and followed after the Applejack Rangers.

I glanced over at Heartbeat as he started to follow after Brisk. “Are you sure Brisk is going to be okay? He still seems a little out of it. Not to mention on the grouchy side.” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Heartbeat just gave me a comforting smile and tucked a strand of pink mane behind his ear. “I’m sure he’ll be grouchy for a few more days, but the dizziness should go away soon enough. Worry not, I am here if he needs anything.”

That was comforting at least.

I turned back to Xayah who was still standing beside me expectantly. “Alright, you ready?”

She gave me a weird look. “I do not think I am ever ready to charge into battle against a bunch of slavers, but I suppose now is as good a time as any.”

The Fluttershy medical center was closer than I had been expecting. We hadn’t even been walking for ten minutes when the large, box-like building started rising up in front of us. The structure wasn’t much to look at, just a large grey cube with a large set of broken double doors that now hung off of their hinges.

A large group of slavers were camped outside; far more than there had been when we were attacked on the train from the Hollow Shades. The only reason I could tell it was the same group was because I spotted a few of the same slavers amongst the much larger group. They must have joined up with another slaver caravan while we were in Tenpony.

Looking down at the group of well armed slavers, I suddenly became extremely thankful that I had taken Pyre’s advice to team up with the Applejack rangers, despite her rather violent thinking. There were way more down there than we would have been able to fight on our own.

A few large tents had been set up around a large fire in front of the medical center and a collection of cage filled wagons dotted the side of the building. Even from this distance I could see that the cages held quite a numerous amount of ponies.

Stern was taking a go big or go home strategy right now, and she was definitely going big.

The Applejack rangers quickly took cover behind a ruined house a few miles away from the medical center.

“Alright, we need a recon team to go out and see how many we are up against,” The lead ranger said in his commanding and headstrong voice. “They have captives, so we are going to want to make this quick. We don’t want civilian casualties.”

Mirra’s hoof shot up. “Oh oh! Pick me! I can sneak in! I’m really good at Sneaking!”

The Applejack Ranger Elder gave me a crooked look. “You brought a child with you?”

Mirra crossed her hooves and frowned at him. “Hey! I’m not a child! I’m like… actually I have no idea how old I am… but I’m not a child!”

“You’re a child, kid,” I shot back, giving her a grin. Mirra stuck her tongue out at me with a pout. I looked back at the elder. “And there’s more to her than meets the eye. She’s got a trick or two behind her hoof.”

“I can go with her. I can keep her safe,” Xayah added, pulling up her stealth cloak hood and flickering out of view for a second. I could see the elder hesitate for a second, before finally nodding.

I raised my new combat shotgun and cocked it. “I’ll cover their backs if they get into trouble. I’m pretty small and don’t have power armour like you guys, so I should be more stealthy than most of you anyway.”

The Elder gave another nod. “Alright. Find out how many we are dealing with and report back to us here,” He glanced around at the rest of the ponies. He quickly pointed to two rangers. “I want you two ready a few feet back from them in case things go south. The rest of you, await further instruction.”

Before I could move away, Pyre grabbed the collar of my Stable Barding and pulled me close. When she spoke, her voice was a low whisper that only I could hear. “Keep Mirra safe,” Was all she said.

I looked up at the big raider, her expression unreadable behind the fully enclosed helmet. “Of course I will. You don’t even need to ask.”

“I know…” Pyre said, her voice dropping an octave or two. She glanced over at where Mirra and Xayah were waiting for us. “But I care about that kid Amber. I don’t think I’ve ever cared about somepony like that before. Not even Viscera… I don’t want her hurt.”

I gave a small nod. “If things go bad, I’ll take the bullet for her.”

Pyre let go of my barding and let me join with Xayah and Mirra as we made our way over to the slaver camp.

Up closer, the slavers were an even more intimidating group. They might not have been as bloodsoaked and savage as raiders, but their extensive arsonal and more militarized fashion made them look much more formidable.

Like I had seen from afar, they had a large collection of ponies in cages. Some of them appeared to be scribes from the Applejack rangers as expected, but I could see quite a few wastelanders among them as well, almost all of them unicorns. They didn’t seem to be in very good condition, with whip marks across their backs and dark bruises marring their hides. On the bright side, none of them seemed to be dead.

“So, how many do you think that is?” I asked, peering over Xayah’s shoulder as we crouched behind a large boulder a few feet away.

“I count fifty,” Mirra squeaked from atop my head. She wasn’t heavy, but I wasn’t very strong. I don’t know how Pyre managed to carry her around everywhere and still wear that heavy armour. “Of course, that’s not including any slavers that might be inside the tents.”

“I don’t see Stern,” Xayah pointed out, scanning over the group of slavers with her emerald green eyes. “Shouldn’t she be here as well?”

I nodded. “If what I’ve been hearing is true, Stern won’t be heading back to Fillydelphia without a large collection of slaves in tow.”

“Perhaps she is in one of the tents?” Xayah suggested. “It would keep her out of sight of any snipers that might want to try getting a lucky shot on Red Eye’s second in command.”

“Maybe, but we’d need to get inside the tents to be sure,” I grunted, my eyes locking with a tent that had two guards stationed outside. “Any idea on how to get into those?”

I could almost feel Mirra buzzing with excitement atop my head. No wait… her insectoid wings actually were buzzing.

“I think I might have an idea,” the tiny changeling grinned, pointing a hoof out at something near the cages. I had to squint to get a good look at what she was pointing at.

It was a slaver. A young slaver to be exact. She couldn’t have been much older than twelve. She was dressed in a small suit of combat armour that I felt might actually fit me and she had a small revolver strapped to her leg. I had to grit my teeth together to resist a scream of anger. These bastards had raised a kid to be a slaver!?

I glanced up at Mirra, mostly to look away from the slaver child than anything else. “Okay? So what’s your plan?”

Mirra gave me a flat look and giggled a little before erupting in a small burst of green flame. I jumped with surprise at the sudden burst of fire attop my head, only to find that the flames didn’t seem to hurt me any. When the fire died down, Mirra had changed into an exact replica of the slaver filly, though missing the small suit of combat armour.

The changeling gave me a cocky grin. “Infiltration.”

I gawked at her. “You want to go into a slaver camp in disguise by yourself!” I had to put a hoof over my mouth to keep from making any noises loud enough to alert the slavers of our presence.

Mirra just rolled her eyes. “Do you have a better plan?” She gave me a flat look. “Besides, I won’t be going alone silly. We can hide you under Xayah’s stealth cloak and have you follow me in while Xayah covers us with her sniper from here.”

I glanced at Xayah to get her opinion. She just gave me a shrug. “Your call.”

I sighed. “Alright, but we’re going to have to foalnap that slaver filly somehow so she doesn’t stumble across a second her and raise the alarms,” I slapped my face with a hoof. “That was not something I ever thought I would need to say.”

Mirra just gave me another one of her grins. “Amber, I’m a changeling. Kidnapping and replacing people is kinda my specialty.”

I rubbed a hoof to my temple. “I think the more I learn about you, the more you terrify me.”

I grumbled as I shuffled forwards under Xayah’s stealth cloak, Mirra clinging to the underside of my barrel like a koala bear. “This is ridiculous,” I muttered, trying my best not to topple over while Bearing the small changelings weight.

Mirra simply chuckled. “Get more stealth cloaks then.”

“They aren’t easy to come by,” I grunted back, taking another small step and finally pulling myself up behind the cage closest to the slaver filly. Up close, I could make out the slaver fillies amber coat. It was similar in colour to my eyes, though perhaps a few shades darker. “Alright, what now?” I hissed at Mirra, trying my best to keep my voice low.

“Just give it a second,” Mirra hissed back, finally letting go of my barrel and dropping to the ground below my hooves. While she probably could have stood completely upright while standing under a pony like Brisk or Pyre, Mirra had to lay on her stomach while underneath me.

A large slaver walked forwards, tapping on the cage we were hiding behind and making the pony inside jump with fear. The slaver chuckled and glanced down at the slaver filly who was giving him a weird look. “What? You can’t tell me you don’t like watching them squirm?”

The slaver filly shrugged. “Don’t really care for it. I’m here for the caps, not the joy of slaving.”

The larger slaver shook his head. “I will never know why Big Mino takes such a liking to you. I heard he likes tough slavers. You don’t look so tough.”

“I think he just thinks I’m cute,” The filly slaver scowled back. “Rumor has it the big guy is into fillies.”

The larger slaver scoffed. “That ain’t no rumor Whip Slash. Big Mino doesn’t even take his filly slaves back to Fillydelphia half the time. Keeps ‘em for himself. So what? You fuckin’ the big guy or somethin’?”

The slaver filly I now knew as Whip Slash blushed a bright red. “I am not! Red Eye would have his head for that and you know it!”

The slaver just chuckled. “Red Eye would have his head if he knew Mino was taking you out into the field at all.”

“Do you want something Potshot?” Whip Slash asked, her eyes narrowing slightly. “Or are you just here to annoy me and question my contribution to this team?”

Potshot raised his hooves in mocking surrender. “Oh I’m not questioning anything. We all know you bring in slaves better than most of us. Fuck if I know how you do it. I just wanted to have fun with the slaves is all.”

“Well you can have fun with them later,” Whip Slash scowled back. “I don’t need you distracting me while I’m on watch duty.”

Potshot groaned. “Fine fine. No need to be a cunt about it. I’ll get somepony to come relieve you of duty in an hour or so.”

She gave him a small nod that might have been considered a thank you as Potshot turned and walked back to join the slavers around the fire. She followed him with her eyes for a moment before going back to scanning the area for trouble.

Mirra nudged me and gave me a grin. “Watch this.” Mirra waited a few seconds, watching Potshot from a distance. Finally I saw Potshot crawl into one of the tents and out of view. The second he was gone, Mirra spoke up, this time just loud enough for Whip Slash to hear. “Hey, Slash… check this out…” Her voice had become identical to Potshot’s. Even I jumped a little with surprise.

Whip Slash’s ears shot up and she looked around. “Potshot? I thought I asked you to buck off?”

“Yeah, well I don’t listen,” Mirra said back in a stage whisper. “Now come check this out,” She had to hold a hoof to her mouth to stop from giggling.

“Where are you?” Whip Slash asked, her head whipping around to spot him. She was unsuccessful.

“Behind the wagon,” Mirra informed the young slaver, her voice still perfectly mimicking Potshot’s own.

Whip Slash narrowed her eyes and started moving around the wagon. “What the fuck? How did you get behind me without me seeing you?” She turned the corner, only to see nothing standing behind it. She looked straight through us, unable to see us while obscured by the stealth cloak. She took a cautious step forward. “Potshot?”

Mirra’s horn flared and wrapped around the slaver filly, dragging her under the stealth cloak with us. Before Whip Slash could yelp with surprise, my hoof clamped down hard over her mouth, silencing her. She struggled, trying to break free from my grip, only to go deathly still as her eyes landed on Mirra.

The small changeling grinned at her, showing off her sharpened fangs and forked tongue. “You yell, you die,” Mirra hissed, taking on an intimidating tone I didn’t realise she had. She was threatening enough that I had to resist the urge to quake in fear myself. She leaned down closer so she was almost muzzle to muzzle with Whip Slash. “Are you going to stay quiet?”

Whip Slash nodded quickly, her eyes wide with fear. She gave a small whimper like sound, but nothing loud enough to alert anypony of our presence. I slowly pulled my hoof off of her mouth and let her breath. She took quick, ragged breaths of air, clearly in the middle of hyperventilating. I glanced down at Mirra. “So… What next?”

Mirra sneered and continued to stare at Whip Slash. “You wouldn’t mind if I borrowed your combat armour and pistol, would you?”

Whip Slash couldn’t have agreed to our demands faster.

In less than a minute, Mirra looked exactly like Whip Slash, this time complete with armour and revolver. I quickly tied and gagged Whip Slash up behind the cage and joined the disguised Mirra in front of the cages.

The pony in the cage we had been hiding behind was looking at us curiously, no doubt confused what they had just witnessed.

Mirra stomped her now amber hoof on the ground a few times, signalling to Xayah that we had successfully taken Whip Slash’s place. I couldn’t see Xayah, but I hoped she saw us.

I leaned down and whispered in Mirra’s ear. “Alright, what next?”

Mirra shrugged. “Just follow me and make sure I don’t get killed, okie? I can do a lot of things, but I don’t think I could kill somepony.”

“Didn’t you just threaten to kill Whip Slash if she made noise?”

Mirra starred in my general direction with a flat glare. “It’s called bluffing Amber. I’m not you. I can’t just kill somepony.”

I hated that that was something that could be said about me now. I could kill… what the fuck had happend to me.

Doing her damndest job to look casual and as if she belonged there, Mirra started moving away from the cages and towards the tents. I silently followed behind her, my combat shotgun raised as I awaited an attack. No attacks came.

It felt weird to be so casually walking through a slaver camp like this. If you could consider wearing a stealth cloak and following a disguised changeling casual.

Mirra walked up to the first tent and popped her head in. A second later she popped back out, with an awkward smile on her face. “Sorry, wrong tent…” without breaking character she leaned over to where I was and whispered. “Two slavers…” then moved to the next tent.

I continued following behind. My eyes darted to a slaver as they moved up to Mirra. I raised my gun to fire, expecting him to attack.

“Hey Slash,” The slaver grunted, patting Mirra on the head roughly before moving on. I let out a small sigh of relief.

Mirra gave him a small scowl. “Hey yourself,” She turned and poked her head into another tent, only to once again draw it out a second later. “Sorry, wrong tent.”

Mirra quickly walked over to the next tent and stuck her head in. The second she opened the flap, I started hearing the sound of the two ponies inside. I felt myself suddenly blushing from horn to hoof. I didn’t even know my hooves could blush!

“Oh yes! Harder! Harder!” A mare inside groaned, her voice accompanied by the sound of rough, wet slaps. “I’m almost there! I’m going to… I’m going to…”

I could see Mirra’s mouth drop open a little and a small drizzle of drool roll down her lip. She quickly licked the drool up. “U-uh… Sorry. W-wrong t-tent…”

The slapping sound paused for a second. “Slash?” It was a male voice this time, panting and breathless. “You want to join us?”

I could see Mirra genuinely pondering the question for a second. I leaned in quickly and whispered in her ear. “Snack later. Infiltration now.”

Mirra gave me a small groan, then shook her head at the two slavers inside. “M-maybe later…” she quickly ducked out of the tent before she could change her mind and join them.

We quickly moved up to the last tent, this one with two slaver pony guards stationed outside, both clad in sturdy combat armour. One of them quickly took a step forward as Mirra approached them. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?” The slaver asked, his voice a low snarl.

“Um… going inside,” Mirra suggested, trying to move towards the door again.

The slaver pushed her back. “Into Big Mino’s tent? Are you fucking crazy Slash?”

Mirra rolled her eyes. “What? Is he still having that meeting with Stern or something?” I held my breath. How did Mirra know Stern and this Mino character had been having a meeting? Was she guessing? Is so, that was a ballsy move.

The two guards glanced at each other. “Did you not hear?” the one who hadn’t spoken yet asked. Mirra gave her a small, innocent shake of her head. “Stern took ten of her slavers to get the last of those scribes out of the medical center.”

“So Mino is alone in there right now?” Mirra pushed.

One of the guards knitted their brows together, but he gave a tentative nod. “Yeah, what’s it to ya?”

Mirra gave a shrug. “I don’t know. Just bored I guess. I’ll see you two later,” She quickly turned and walked away from the slaver guards, leaving them with a slightly confused look on their face. Eventually they shrugged and went back to guard duty.

Once we were out of earshot, Mirra leaned into me. “Alright, that’s everything. Let's go get Xayah and get back to the rest of them.”

Before we could start heading towards Xayah, a voice called out. “Whip Slash? Fuck you doin’ away from the slaves?”

I turned to see Potshot striding towards us, a confused look on his scarred face. Mirra gave a small smile. “Oh… uh… I was relieved of my duty early. You won’t need to send anypony to take my spot in an hour anymore.”

Potshot glanced over at the cages. “I don’t see anypony over there?” He cocked his eyebrow and gave Mirra a funny look. “You aren’t… leaving your post are you?” His voice had dropped to a sinister whisper.

Mirra took a nervous step back and scratched at the back of her head awkwardly. “Hehe… Um… maybe…” Potshot’s eyes narrowed at her.

I leveled my combat shotgun with the back of Potshot’s head, certain our cover was about to be blown at any second. After a second, Potshot lifted his head away and laughed. “Good on you Slash. And here I thought you were some goody two fucking shoes that always followed the rules. Good ta see you bein’ lazy like the rest of us. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Big Mino on ya.” he chuckled for a second, before walking away to once again join the fire.

Both Mirra and I let out a long breath. That could have gone way worse.

A few minutes later Xayah, Mirra and I pulled back up behind the broken down house next to the rest of the Applejack Rangers, a squirming and tied up Whip Slash held aloft in my magic.

“You aren’t going to get away with this,” The slaver filly growled as I tied her to a rusted mailbox.

I just gave her a smug grin and a small pat on the head. “You’re welcome for not killing you,” I said smugly, turning away from the grumpy slaver filly captive and looking at the rest of the gathering. “Alrighty, we’ve got about fifty-seven slavers down there. Fifty in the open and seven or so inside the tents, one of which being their boss,” I informed them, relaying all the information Mirra had told me. “Then we have Stern and about ten more slavers inside the building. Apparently there are a few scribes still in there that need our help.”

“And the captives?” The Applejack ranger elder questioned with a grunt. “How are they?” Heartbeat gave a nod as if to inquire the same question.

“Not great,” Mirra admitted from beside me, wiggling over to Pyre and hopping up onto her back. Even though the helmet, I could see Pyre grinning. “A lot of them are beat up and in pretty rough shape, but they’re all still alive it seems.”

Xayah gestured to Whip Slash who was currently trying to gnaw her way out of her bindings. “The captives are currently unguarded. If the slavers plan to use them as leverage in an attack, we’ll have a few moments before any guns start getting pointed at their heads.”

The Applejack Ranger elder gave a grunt of acknowledgement before turning to the ranger standing beside him. “Crossroads, Take five rangers and draw the slavers attention to the left and away from the captives,” He then gestured towards me and my group. “I’ll take these ponies into an assault from the front. Meanwhile, the rest of you will get the captives out of there and return them here where Nurse Heartbeat can give them medical attention,” he pointed to the ground we were standing on, then to Heartbeat a few paces away from me. “Any questions?”

“What about Stern and her slaver inside the medical center?” Brisk asked, raising his hoof in the air.

The Ranger just gave a grunt. “With any luck, they will remain inside of the structure until we have the perimeter secured.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” A voice piped up. We all looked around, trying to figure out who had spoken. After a second, all of our eyes settled on Whip Slash, who had somehow wiggled around to a point where she dangled upside down from the mailbox.

“And what would that be,” One of the Applejack Rangers said with a small snort.

Whip Slash rolled her eyes. “Do you guys have a plan for dealing with Big Mino?”

We all glanced around at each other. “Um… why? Is there something about him we should know?” I asked, gesturing for her to continue.

The slaver filly just rolled her eyes. “You ponies foalnapped me and tied me to a mailbox. That’s all your getting out of me. Just telling you, he’s a bit of a tough bastard to fight.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” The lead ranger said flatly, turning back to face the slaver camp. “Is everypony ready?”

What else was there to say? Time to kick some ass.

It was no surprise to me that the Applejack’s rangers had a very similar fighting strategy to the Steel rangers. That being, charge in headfirst and overpower your enemies with a near unnecessary amount of force and firepower.

We had creeped as close as we could to the camp without being spotted, allowing for the two other teams of rangers to get into position. There must have been some sort of signal that everypony was in place, because after a few seconds of pause, the ranger elder bounded forwards, his grenade launcher firing a barrage of lethal explosives into the center of the slaver camp.

Cries of panic rippled out across the camp as the first wave of slavers were blasted apart. They stood and started fumbling with their guns, giving us a little time to close in and fire without needing to take cover from impending fire. I could see a group of five rangers charging in towards the camp from the left, laser pistols and rocket launchers firing devastating attacks onto the scrambling slavers.

I fired two shots from my new combat shotgun, each blast of buckshot ripping appart the hide off the slavers body. Two slavers collapsed to the ground by my hooves, their bodies still spasming slightly in their final death throes.

Then the slavers organised themselves and shot back. I leapt to the side, a volley of gunfire spilling towards me and ripping apart holes in the slavers canvas tents. Somewhere to my right, I saw Brisk blow the brains out of a slaver, the slavers body flopping backwards and crashing into the small fire, sending a jet of flame shooting up into the air.

Xayah crouched behind the tent with me, every couple of seconds sticking her head over the edge of the tent and firing off a well aimed shot from her silenced sniper.

I slaver bounded past the tent, their shotgun aimed for my head. My combat shotgun sent an explosive slug through his front hoof before he had the chance to fire, sending him staggering to his haunches. Screaming in both rage and pain, he went to aim again, only for me to ram the front of the shotgun into his face, effectively caving his head in.

I picked his dropped shotgun up in my magic and started scavenging his shotgun shells. I managed to collect ten in total.

The Applejack rangers to the left burst fully into the camp, their weapons forcing the slavers to scatter and take cover behind anything they could. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few more rangers start freeing the slaves from the cages and leading them towards safety.

We were still outnumbered, but we were winning.

The slavers inside the tents started poking their heads out, weapons raised. A few of them clutched at bloody wounds that had been punctured in their sides when both the rangers and the slavers had blindly sprayed their weapons at the tents.

One of the newly emerged slavers spotted me and started to take aim, only for Pyre to barrel into him and simultaneously engulf him in a jet of fire. The slaver began swatting at his burning coat, trying to smother the scorching flames that raced up his body. It was no use. He fell to the ground, his body a charred and withered corpse.

Xayah ducked to the side as another shot fired towards us. Her sniper snapped up, silently sending a round straight into the attacking slavers chest. The slaver stumbled back, his hooves grasping at his chest frantically before he lost his balance and fell onto his back, slowly bleeding out on the ground.

The almost pitiful clatter of a 10mm pistol fired somewhere behind me. I ducked, the rounds ripping holes in the tent I had been taking cover behind.

I pulled myself up, leaping over the sagging tent and fired in the direction of the attack. My combat shotgun tore into Potshot’s hind leg. He scampered back, applying pressure to the bleeding wound as I closed in on him.

I advanced, my shotgun raised in my magic. He fired at me, making me flinch, but his gun ran on empty.

“Shitshitshitshit!” He screamed frantically. Pushing himself away from me as I started sprinting towards him, his hooves fumbling as he tried to reload his weapon.

My shotgun leveled. I prepared to fire.

A massive roar of rage billowed out across the battlefield. I froze, my gun floating mid air in front of me. I could see all my allies locking up as well as the tremendous bellow reached their ears. Even the slavers looked a little shaken.

Something began to rise from within the largest tent. At first all I could see were two curving horns, but as it began to emerge I started to make out other things as well. The dark brown fur, the seemingly endless amounts of muscle on muscle, the huge, hulking arms that were large enough to rip me in half if they got the chance.

My jaw dropped around my hooves. I had read about these things in a book about all the different races that had lived in equestria over the years. I had never thought I would ever see one in person.

“Big Mino is a Minotour!” I gasped, my face still slack with shock and fear.

Potshot kicked up and started running away, but I didn’t care. My eyes were locked on the massive wall of dark fur and muscle that was Big Mino.

The minotaur rose up to its full height, easily towering over everything around him save the medical center itself. How he had even managed to fit inside the tent, I had no idea. His dark, hazel eyes darted around at all of us with a burning anger and a large puff of steam burst from his nostrils with an aggressive huff.

He turned, his eyes locked with my fearful ones. His face twisted into a snarl. “You! Stern told me ‘bout you!”

I gulped. “She… uh… she did?” I was too stunned to speak anything more than a pitiful stammer.

The huge minotaur nodded, his hoof stomping and scratching at the ground as if he were preparing to charge. In hindsight, I suppose he was. “Stern said you come! Stern said kill you if come!”

I took a nervous step back. “Oh… is that all… Uh…”

Pyre was the first one of us to pull herself back together. She charged at Big Mino, her hooves slamming hard against his chest. Her strong hooves, which I had seen crush in a ponies skull, did little more than bounce off the massive monster's tough hide.

Big Mino looked down, his face looking slightly confused at Pyre’s attack. His huge arm swept out, knocking Pyre aside and sending her tumbling to the ground. The Minotaur snarled and stepped past her, taking another step closer to me. He glanced around at all the slavers who had paused and were looking at him in uncertainty and terror. He gave them all a low growl. “What stupid ponies doing!? Kill metal ponies!” Big Mino roared. It was blunt, but to the point and got his message across crystal clear. Mino didn’t seem to have the largest of vocabularies.

Shaken from their fears by Big Mino’s demands, the slavers rallied, their weapons aiming and firing upon us with new found vigor and confidence. The Applejack rangers were forced back a little by the sudden ferociousness of the slavers attacks and the still reeling shock of seeing Big Mino.

Big Mino charged me, his head lowered and his horns aimed to rip out my throat. The ground seemed to tremble around me as his thunderous hooves stamped against the ground.

I jumped to the side, just barely avoiding being impaled on his horns as he practically flew past me. His immense form crashed into the side of the Fluttershy Medical Center, shaking the building and smashing a huge hole through the solid wall.

I raised my shotgun and fired. The buckshot practically bounced right off of his tough hide, doing little more than leave him with a couple of small cuts on his backside.

Big Mino turned around, bits of brick and dust falling from his face where he had rammed his head through the side of the building. A chunk of wall was still stuck to his horn. He took a moment to steady himself before rushing forwards again and slamming at me with his huge pony sized fists.

I rolled to my left, the spot I had just been standing in being crushed by his huge clenched hand. As his hand raised, I saw a large fist shaped groove in the ground. I gulped for the second time since he had emerged from the tent. This was bad.

I ducked and rolled again and again as Big Mino continued to swing at me with his bulging arms. I tried batting at him with my baton, but he didn’t even flinch as the metal rod slammed against his form.

I saw Brisk and Xayah send a couple of shots his way, but with the slavers pushing in on them from all sides, it was hard for them to get a good shot. Two of the Applejack rangers were taken down by some lucky shots from the slavers. They crashed to the ground, their power armour muffling their dying screams.

One of Big Mino’s hooves shot out and bucked me in the chest. I could feel something break as I was sent flying head over hooves through the air. I crashed into one of the small tents, collapsing it completely, the stretched canvas folding around me and threatening to smother me.

I coughed, a wad of blood being flung from my mouth and staining the canvas. I pulled myself up, sturgling out of the maze of tattered canvas like a pony drowning in water. My head had only just broken the surface when Big Mino slammed into me at full force.

The wind was knocked out of me a second time as the two of us went barreling forwards. One of the slavers was crushed under hoof as Big Mino rushed forwards and slammed me into the ground with enough force to make the whole area quake.

His gargantuan fist slammed down at me again. I had only just enough time to duck my head and scoot between his legs before his fist crushed the spot I had just been lying in.

Now behind him, I leaped forwards, wrapping my hooves around the back of his neck and clinging for dear life as the huge minotaur reared up and started trying to shake me off with a bellow of rage. My hind legs flailed around behind me as I focused all of my strength in not letting go. I raised my shogun in my magic and tried to aim it at the back of his head, but I was being whipped around so fast, that even up close, it was hard to line up any sort of shot.

As I was swung violently around I caught a quick glimpse of the Applejack rangers helping free the slaves. They were all out of the cages now, the last few heading over to get medical treatment from Heartbeat.

I felt Big Mino’s hand before I saw it. His massive, uncomfortably muscular fingers wrapped around my body and pried me off of his back. I yelped as he pulled me free from him and raised me up so that we were face to face.

“Punny pony annoying!” He snarled in what I suppose was supposed to be a threatening whisper. Nothing was quiet with this guy.

But he had made a mistake. He had stopped whipping me around. My combat shotgun raised and leveled with his face before he could even figure out what was going on. An explosive round burst forth from the gun, the buckshot ripping at his face. He dropped me in surprise, stumbling back as he grasped at his bleeding face with his hands.

I grumbled, rubbing my head as I shook off the dizziness of being dropped on my head. “Seriously. That didn’t drop you!” I was getting really annoyed by the bullet sponginess of this guy.

Big Mino lowered his hands and snarled at me bearing his sharpened fangs. One of his eyes had been shredded by the shotgun blast, its remenace a goopy paste oozing from the socket. He dropped his head and abruptly dashed forwards, his huge horns aimed at my chest.

His unexpected rampage caught me off guard. I didn’t have time to react as his two, sharp and twisting horns rammed into me, their sharp points going straight through my barding. A stabbing pain shot through my chest and down my spine. I screamed falling backwards and lying helplessly on my back.

I heard the quiet shots of a silenced sniper. A few seconds later, Xayah leaped over me, her sniper firing off two shots into the minotaurs shoulder.

Big Mino snarled, blood spewing from his shoulder where the snipers .308 caliber rounds had punched into his hide. He stomped his hoof, steam billowing from his nostrils in thick bursts.

Xayah crouched down into a battle stance, both her sniper and combat knife held ready. “You will not touch her,” Xayah’s voice was little more than a whisper, but I had no doubts that the minotaur could hear her.

Big Mino let loose another roar of rage and sprang towards us. Despite the pain coursing through my body, I found the strength to roll out of the way and take cover behind one of the tents that had managed to stay upright. Not that that would protect me much if Big Mino launched himself at me.

Xayah did some sort of flying leap. She practically soared upwards, doing a half somersault in the air before landing atop the raging minotaurs horns. Her knife swung down and stabbed him on his blind side, the serrated blade digging deep into his right ear.

Big Mino howled, his whole body shuttering as he slammed himself downwards to get Xayah off of him. Xayah quickly bounded off, landing gracefully on her stripped hooves before Big Mino could crush her completely.

But Xayah wasn’t used to fighting opponents with arms. A big arm swung out and cracked against the side of her head. Xayah was sent flying off her hooves, her body crashing into the dirt beside me.

Big Mino began to rise, blood trickling down one side of his face and making his dark brown coat seem almost black. His hide was a mess of scars and cuts and there was a stagger to his step. But he was still moving towards us.

Finding the pain in my chest too strong to concentrate on magic, I raised my combat shotgun in my mouth and readied myself for him. I was far too weak to wield shotguns without my magic, but I’d half to do my best.

A loud cry came from across the battlefield. We turned our heads, our eyes landing on the newcomers.

The five Applejack Rangers that had been sent to free the slaves as well as a couple of now armed slaves were charging towards the battle. Their weapons were drawn and were firing a wall of bullets towards the slavers. The slavers were pushed back, three more falling to their new combatants.

The Applejack ranger elder’s grenade launcher fired, taking advantage of the slavers new panic. The explosion ripped through their lines, giving him room to advance. The elder rushed forwards, a rocket blasting from his battle saddle and whizzing towards the huge minotaur.

The rocket detonated against Big Mino’s chest, ripping open a gaping hole and sending the minotaur stumbling backwards. Big Mino growled, his muscles seeming to bulge even bigger as he pushed on through the pain. He leaped forwards, his massive arms swinging at the elder.

The applejack ranger elder met him mid air, their bodies colliding and crashing to the ground as a wall of solid metal and firepower battled against sheer size and natural might.

I pulled myself up and helped Xayah to her hooves. “Thanks for that,” I said with a small blush, trying to push aside the pain and raise my combat shotgun with my magic. I was only somewhat successful.

“Do not mention it,” Xayah replied quickly, her sniper aiming in her mouth and cracking off another shot at an incoming slaver.

Brisk rushed by us, his pistol blasting the hooves off of another slaver as they tried to get a shot on us. “Talk later, fight now!” He yelled at us.

I nodded and turned back to the fight, my baton raised and swinging.

The slavers were beginning to look nervous. We had cut down their ranks to the point that we outnumbered them now and our firepower was clearly stronger. The only thing keeping them in the fight was the looming threat of Big Mino.

I saw the Applejack Rangers elder get thrown to the ground, a few new dents in his heavy power armour. Big Mino towered over him, his already battered form now a mix of broken limbs and dangling flesh. The huge minotaur limped over, his fists raised to crush the elder.

I tried to push forward to help him, but two slavers quickly jumped in my path.

As it happened, the elder didn’t need my assistance.

Big Mino slammed his arms down, his huge fists slamming down on the elders armour. At once, the rocket launcher on the elders battle saddle spun up and launched a rocket directly into the minotaurs face point blank.

The missle didn’t even detonate. It ripped straight through the monster's head, spewing a fountain of brain matter and viscera out the back of his noggin. Big Mino’s body was blasted backwards, his whole body stumbling back and crashing into the wall of the Fluttershy medical centre.

The slavers froze as they watched their leader fall. Then, one by one, they lowered their weapons and raised their hooves above their head in surrender. We had one.

I wondered what Stern would have thought of this had she not been inside the medical centre at the moment.

It didn’t take long for the Applejack rangers to round up what was left of the slaver forces outside the center. In only a few moments, they had been all locked away in their own cages, their weapons confiscated.

Heartbeat walked up to me quickly, his hooves already fumbling through his medical kit as he searched for healing supplies. I quickly brushed him off. “Don’t worry about me, there are others that need help first.”

He gave me a flat glare. “Amber, even from all the way over there, I watched you get stabbed by that Minotaur’s horns. The fact that you’re still standing is a miracle.”

Thinking about it, that was odd. I didn’t feel that bad though, just a little banged up. I couldn’t even feel the normal sensation of blood rushing out of my body like I had had in so many other fights. “I… I don’t feel hurt, really.”

Heartbeat just shook his head stubbornly. “I‘m tending to your wounds, and that’s final,” He said sternly. “Please take off your barding so I can see what the damage is.”

I did. It felt weird to be standing in the wasteland without my Stable barding. I know ponies don’t normally wear clothes, but I felt naked without it for some reason.

As I pulled the tight jumpsuit over my head I heard a small gasp escape Heartbeat mouth. I glanced down at my chest to where I expected a large gash to be from Big Mino’s horns.

There was a large, slowly growing bruise, but that was it. No gash, no gaping hole, not even a small nick.

“I… wait, wuh?” I said, my mouth falling open. “B-but I felt the horn penetrate my armour!”

Heartbeat leaned in closer and tapped the bruise gently. I flinched, but the pain was minimal compared to other pains I had felt. Having all my bones broken and then getting incinerated by a mega spell was certainly worse than this.

I could see Nurse heartbeat’s eyebrows knitting together in confusion. “You have two broken ribs, but that's about all I can see…” he bit his lower lip as he tried to think of an explanation. He clearly couldn’t think of anything. “What is that armour of yours made of?”

“Not much. Just fabric and a bit of extra padding that Coco Pommel added,” I admitted. “I’m not really strong enough to wear any sort of other armour for a prolonged period of time.”

Heartbeat held my Stable barding up to the defused light of the cloud covered sun, as if expecting to spot some sort of metal plating on it. Finally he found the hole that had been ripped open by Big Mino’s horns. His mouth dropped open. “Amber, where did you get this!”

I raised an eyebrow. “Uh… My stable. Stable 25. I’ve had it most of my life.” He shook his head and showed me the tear in the fabric. I squinted my eyes at it, trying to make out what he was trying to show me. Something silver glinted between the small threads. “What is that?”

“It’s something called ballistic weave,” Heartbeat informed me, his face still filled with awe. “I’ve only ever seen something like this once. It’s incredibly rare.”

“Coco Pommel had some ballistic weave on her back in friendship City,” I said, thinking back. A thought struck me. “You don’t think she lined my barding with it when I got her to patch it up, do you?”

Heartbeat gave me a shrug. “I suppose that would be the most logical answer. I can’t think of anywhere else you could have gotten this,” I made a mental note to give that ghoul the biggest hug in the history of hugs if I ever ran into her again. Heartbeat cleared his throat, his horn lighting up with a pink aura. “Now hold still, I’m going to try and fix those ribs of yours.”

I gave him a look. “You can’t just fix bones like that, it’s not-” by ribs clicked, mended and snapped into place. I gave a yelp of surprise. “What the fuck! Warn me before you do something like that!”

Heartbeat gave me a smug grin and wiped a bead of sweat off his brow. He looked tired, the spell clearly having taken a lot out of him. “I find the pain is lessened when the patient has less time to hype up what the pain will be like.”

“How did you even do that!” I gasped, feeling my chest for any signs of broken bones. Aside from being a little sore, they seemed to have mended perfectly.

“I didn’t dedicate my life to medicine for nothing,” Heartbeat answered, taking a step away from me.

“Where have you been for the last two weeks,” I smiled. “We could have used somepony who could mend bones like that. Might have saved Brisk from walking around with two braces for half the trip actually.”

“I’m sure you could have,” heartbeat agreed, sharing my smile. “Most ponies in the wasteland often overlook the value of having a medic.”

He moved over to one of the cages where a slavers was curled up and nursing his own broken leg. Heartbeat’s horn flared and the slavers leg mended itself. Heartbeat collapsed to the ground, panting.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” I asked, rushing over to him and helping him back up. “Those are the slavers!”

Heartbeat just gave me a knowing look and a nood. “I know, but I made an oath to help any and all ponies that I can. Even ones that probably don’t deserve it.”

“Not if it hurts you to do it,” I retorted, casting the now healed slaver an angry look. “Besides, these ponies are not nice ponies. Helping them will only let them hurt others.”

Heartbeat tapped his chin thoughtfully for a moment. “Perhaps,” he finally said, looking away from me. “But I don’t think I can sit and do nothing while others are hurting. Even if they are bad ponies.”

He moved away from me, moving on to the next injured ponies.

“We need to get in there and help the scribes trapped inside of the centre while the Slavers are still confused about what is going on,” The Applejack Ranger’s elder said to another ranger that was standing next to him as my friends and I approached them. “They no doubt heard the gunfire and know something’s up by now, Stern isn’t stupid. With luck, they won’t know exactly what they’re up against.”

“What can we do?” I asked, gesturing to my friends.

The elder looked us over quickly. “You five have proven yourself more than capable in combat. Not that I’m surprised. Stable Ponies seem to be very resourceful,” He looked to the door of the Fluttershy Medical Centre. “There’s only one door in, so our plan of attack is limited. But as far as we are aware, we still maintain more firepower than the slavers inside.”

“Seems easy enough,” Brisk said cautiously. I could understand his worry. Whenever things seemed like they might be easy in the wasteland, chances were they weren't. “What’s the catch?”

“Only one door mean’s were going to have to fight through a choke point,” Pyre told him quickly, rolling her eyes as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And since they no doubt know we’re coming, they’ve probably set up an ambush.”

“There are also civilians inside,” The star paladin I recognised as Crossroads said. “We don’t know if they’ve managed to capture any of our scribes from inside the building yet, but if so, we’ll need to tread carefully. We want to keep casualties to a minimum. Everypony is important to us, especially after the schism between the rangers.”

“Perhaps a stealth mission then?” Xayah suggested, pointing to Mirra and herself. “We might be able to keep deaths minimal that way.”

The elder shook his head. “No. We are tight on time. Every second we spend waiting, the more likely the slavers come to killing our scribes. Besides, if Stern is in there, then we need to get to her before she escapes. We can’t let somepony so crucial to Red Eye’s forces slip through our hooves.”

A Ranger quickly approached us and gave the elder the traditional Ranger salute I had seen in my first encounter with rangers. “Elder Steelhooves, we have a problem!”

The elder I now knew as Steelhooves turned to stare stoically at the ranger. “What is it, knight Blueberry?”

The knight lowered his hoof. “We just got a message from Stable 29. It’s Elder Cottagecheese, sir...”

Steelhooves growled. “Damn it…” He turned to look at Crossroads. “Crossroads, you’re in charge of the rescue mission in my absence. I have something I need to deal with.”

Paladin Crossroads gave him a salute and turned back to us as Steelhooves quickly marched away.

“Get your hooves off me!” I heard Whip Slash’s high voice growl. I looked over to see Two Applejack rangers marching over, the young slaver slung over one of their backs, her hooves still tied.

“Just be quiet please…” One of the rangers groaned as they stopped in front of us and dropped their charge on the ground.

Whip Slash scowled and glared up at me. “So, are you going to kill me now like the rest of the slavers?”

I felt my heart drop at that. I sighed. “How old are you Whip Slash?” I asked, not really sure if I wanted to know the answer.

Whip Slash looked confused for a second, cocking one of her eyebrows upwards. “I-I’m old enough. What do you care?” I just sat there and continued staring at her. “Fine, I’m twelve. Are you happy?”

I glanced over at the mound of slaver corpses a few meters away. After a few seconds I dropped my head and stared at my hooves. I reached out with my magic and pulled the ropes that bound the young slaver off of her. “You’re free to go. Get out of here,” I said, my voice so low that I hardly heard it myself.

Whip Slash gawked at me. “You’re… you’re letting me go?” She looked at the rope that now rested around her hooves. “What do you get out of that? You’ve already killed my family! Why don’t you just kill me too!”

I winced as her voice rose to a furious shout. I just gave her a sad look, my heart heavy. “I’m not going to kill you Whip Slash. I’ve killed enough fillies for my lifetime,” I took a deep breath. “I’m giving you a chance to do better. If you crawl back to Red Eye to continue this life of slaving, I can’t stop you, but you at least should have the opportunity to try and leave it all behind you.”

Whip Slash took a small step back, her face conflicted and confused. “I… What? Are you fucking kidding me! You killed my family and you’re just going to throw me out into the wasteland alone to fend for myself!”

I nodded. “What else would you have me do?”

“Kill me!” Whip Slash spat. “At least I’d be with my family again!”

I just pushed myself back up to my hooves and looked away from her and towards the Fluttershy medical center. “I can’t do that. Get out of her Whip Slash. I hope you can do better.”

Whip Slash just glared at me for a moment, her jaw slack as she tried to process what I was doing. Finally she just shook her head, a small tear rolling down her face. She looked so young. Just a scared filly that didn’t know what to do in this cruel and heartless world.

With a sound that sounded like a mix between a growl and a whimper, the young slaver span on her hooves and bolted away into the wastes. I hoped she would make something better of herself. She deserved that at least.

I suddenly became acutely aware of everyponies eyes staring at me. “What?” I asked, giving them all a casual shrug.

Paladin Crossroads just shook her head. “Nothing, just… nothing...” She turned back to the rest of the group. “Alright, I want five rangers to hold back while we go in. I, along with knight Blueberry and these five here will go in first and try to clear the area. Wait two minutes and then come in behind us. Are there any questions before we go in?” She gestured to me and my friends.

“Why not just all charge in at once? Would it not be easier to take them out if we went in with full firepower?” Brisk asked.

Crossroads shook her head. “We don’t outnumber them by much, and our superior firepower may prove more of a hindrance to us in close quarters. The last thing we need is more missiles flying around in there where they could hit us or our scribes,” She paused for a second, glancing over at the doorway to the Fluttershy medical center. “Besides, the slavers have no doubt had time to prepare for our attack. It would be impossible to fit all of us through that choke point while there is likely a trap beyond. It would be best if the seven of us go in first and clear them out the best we can before the calvary goes in. Any other questions?”

There were none.

The five of us, along with the two rangers moved towards the Fluttershy medical centre. Somewhere beside me, I saw Heartbeat still tending to the many injured ponies from the battle.

The large double doors of the medical centre were far beyond the point of disrepair. The glass that made up a majority of the door had been completely shattered and the metal frame the glass had once sat in was dented and dangled from its hinges like a snapped branch from a tree.

Through the doors was darkness. Not as dark as the caves below the Hollow Shades perhaps, but dark enough that I had to squint to see what was a few feet beyond me.

Paladin Crossroads pulled up next to the edge of the door, her laser pistol raised. “I’ve got two red bars on my EFS just within the door.”

Glancing down at my own EFS, I saw she was correct. I quickly pulled up next to her, my friends quickly following suit. Knight Blueberry took a position up on the opposite side of the door.

“Alright, Crossroads and I will go first,” Pyre grunted, looking at her own EFS inside her helmet. “We’re the most heavily armoured, so we will be most capable of surviving whatever trap is laid out inside there. The rest of you come in a second after us, go in by two’s to avoid being shot down in the choke point.”

Knight Blueberry cast Crossroads a questioning look to see if he should follow Pyre’s orders. Crossroad just gave them a shrug. “As she says.”

After a beat, Pyre and Crossroads spun on their hooves and charged through the doors and into the darkness of the medical center, their weapons blazing with light as they went. I heard the scream of a slaver as one of Crossroads magical energy rifles tore through them.

Blam!

A single sniper shot rang out. A second later there was an earth shaking explosion as five mines that had been placed by the door detonated. Pyre and Crossroads had managed to avoid stepping on the mines, but the slaver had ensured that they trap triggered anyway.

Pyre was sent skidding from the building. Her armour was charred and smoking, but seemed relatively undamaged. She gave us a sideways look. “That was the trap! Give ‘em hell!”

A second later, Brisk and I rushed through the front. I spotted the slaver at the top of a large set of stairs that led to the second floor. He held a sniper in his mouth, which he was whipping around furiously as he tried to aim at all of us at once.

The second slaver was still alive, though with his front hoof bleeding profusely from a hole that had been blasted through it. He pulled himself up a little, his shotgun trying to aim at Brisk as he started rushing up the stairs at them.

Blam!

My own combat shotgun fired, popping the head off of the shotgun wielding slaver before he could fire a shot. Another sniper shot fired, this time from Xayah’s silenced sniper as she put a bullet between the other slavers head.

Both slavers fell to the ground with a thump, their warm blood pooling around their bodies and dripping down the steps of the stairs. The fight was over in less than a minute.

Crossroads was wasting no time. The moment the two slavers were down she was bounding up the steps, knight Blueberry hot on her tail. My friends and I raced up with them. I stopped only for a second to snag five shotgun shells off the fallen slaver.

“Shit, they’re coming up the stairs!” I heard a slaver shout from somewhere above us.

There was the sound of shuffling and frantic hooves beating against the ground. Finally another slaver called out. “Get to Stern. Warn her!”

We barreled up the steps as fast as we could. As we started to near the top, a small metal apple rolled through the doorway towards us. Crossroads was quick to warn us. “Grenade!”

I jumped back, the explosive detonating only a few feet away from me. Shrapnel was tossed about the room, jagged chunks scratching at the walls. Crossroads, the only pony close enough to the top of the stairs for the grenade to do any real damage to stumbled back, a large dent in her armour oozing bits of blood.

“Take them down! Now!” A slaver shouted from ahead of me.

I saw five red bars pop up onto my EFS before I saw the slavers. Three rushed into the doorway, automatic assault rifles blazing. A wall of bullets spilled down at us. Luckily for us, these slavers were a terrible shot. Not as bad as raiders perhaps, but still really fucking bad.

I dove to my right as the assault rifle fire ripped up the part of the stairs I had been standing on, bits of the floor blasted up around me, showering me in dust and broken wood.

Mirra jumped past me, her currently yellow horn glowing a bright green as it wrapped around one of the slavers weapons and tried to reef it from their mouth. The slaver pulled back to keep a hold on their gun. The weapon remained in their grip, but their fire sprayed up at the ceiling away from us.

“Keep behind me!” I heard Pyre yell at Mirra over the din of battle. Mirra gave a grumpy face, but ducked behind Pyre as she asked.

I bolted to my hooves and charged the nearest raider with my shock baton. The raider clambered back, eyes wide as the heavy baton swung down at them. They rolled away from my attack, making my baton swing into empty air. But I was ready for them as they rolled back up, my combat shotgun already positioned to take off their head with a single blast.

I had been closer to the slaver than I usually was when my combat shotgun roared into him. A wave of blood and shredded flesh spewed at me, coating my coat black in the dim light. I stumbled back, momentarily blinded as the slavers blood dripped into my eyes.

I felt the whoosh of air as a rocket launcher strapped to Blueberry’s saddle blasted forwards. The rocket slammed into the area just beyond the slavers, sending many of them flying into the air helplessly as the massive shockwave slammed into them.

I was suddenly very grateful we hadn’t had all the Applejack rangers charge in at once. That much firepower in a confined space was lethal to far more than just the slavers.

A blast from Crossroad’s magical energy rifle turned a slaver to dust before they could hit the ground. Another slaver growled at her, his hooves scooping at the dust as if trying to put his deceased friend back together. Despite his slaver lifestyle, I found myself feeling bad for him.

Pyre finally reached the top of the stairs, her flamers lighting up the whole room with a blazing light. Two more slavers went down, their bodies burning away until little of their hide remaned.

The final slaver started backing up, his eyes wide as he took us all in. He spun around and darted for the door at the far side of the room. He had just reached it when a bullet from Brisk’s pistol tore through his neck and sent him flopping lamely to the ground.

As he fell his hoof reached out and hit a button on the terminal resting next to the door. At once the lights in the hospital shut off, plunging all of us into darkness. Until that point I hadn’t even noticed that this building had somehow had its lighting working on the second floor. The only light in the whole room were small beams of dimmed sunlight leaking through a few cracks in the walls. I could hear the screeching of the large door the slaver had tried to get through slide shut.

“What the hell just happened?” Brisk groaned, trying to make the rest of us out through the darkness. He was having just about as much luck as I was, which was to say none at all.

I clicked the light on my pipbuck on, flooding the room with an eerie green light. “Not sure, did the slaver shut the power off?”

I saw Crossroads give a grim shake of her head. “He activated the emergency lockdown. The place was built like a fortress incase zebras or zebra sympathisers ever made an attack on the patients here. Thankfully, from what I’ve heard, fluttershy was against anything lethal, so there shouldn’t be any defences.”

“So what? We are locked out of the upper floors of the building?” Pyre asked, tapping her hoof on the large metal door that had indeed slid shut.

“I can probably hack through the terminal to get the place running again, but it might take me a bit,” Crossroads said, gesturing to the terminal the slaver had pressed. His bleeding corpse still lay curled up at the base of it. “The bad news is that this gives Stern more time to get to the scribes if she hasn’t already. The good news is that Stern and her slavers are locked in here too. They won’t be getting out of here any faster than us.”

“We could just leave them up there and starve Stern and her slavers out,” Brisk suggested. I quickly gave him a smack on the back of the head.

“And leave the scribes up there to starve as well? Not an option,” I corrected him. “Besides, Stern has the A.A.S.S. in there with her. We need to get that back anyway.”

Brisk knitted his eyebrows together. “So we can, what? Destroy it?”

“No, not until we know what it does,” I snapped back, tired of hearing Brisk suggest we stop chasing down the A.A.S.S.

“We know it lets psychopaths like Kamari use things like Luna Prime! Seems like a good thing to destroy to me!” Brisk shot back. He had a good point. I didn’t even know why I was so determined to keep it from being destroyed myself.

I realised I had just taken to staring silently at Brisk after his last remark. I quickly shook myself and turned away from him. “I don’t think that’s why Red Eye wants it. I don’t even know if Red Eye knows about Luna Prime. We aren’t destroying it yet, and that’s final,” I stomped my hoof to show that the conversation was over.

“Wouldn’t matter anyway,” Crossroads said, glancing back the way we had come as she started typing on the terminal. “The lockdown has most likely trapped us in here as well. It’s a complete shutdown of everything. The loss of power to the lights is no doubt a result of the building putting all of its power into these security doors.

“I suppose that means those reinforcements of ours aren’t coming as well then?” Mirra squeaked, ducking behind Pyre’s hoof.

I gestured to the terminal Crossroads was still trying to unlock to minimal success. “Here, let me hack that. It's my specialty,” Crossroads slowly stepped aside and let me get to the terminal.

I quickly looked over the lines of coding. It was a tough terminal, with a password of about five letters in length, but not even remotely the hardest terminal I’d had to hack in recent days. I should have it cracked in less than a minute.

I spotted an audio recording resting on a table beside me, almost invisible under the thick layer of dust that had gathered atop it over the last two hundred years. With nothing better to do, I floated it over and clicked it into my pipbuck to listen as I worked.

“Hello, this is Dazzling Souvenir… again… I don’t really know why I keep saying my name at the beginning of these. I’m the only one that is going to or even supposed to hear these anyway. But there I go, rambling again. Sorry… uh… me. I’ll get right to the point,” A chipper sounding mare said over the audio recording.

“Wow, a pony that doesn’t sound depressed,” I grumbled to myself as I clicked away at the terminal. That was a new one.

“Anyway, I was just assigned a new project today,” The voice of Dazzling Souvenir continued. “It’s the big one! Memory orb combination. Creating and combining memory orbs that have the ability to hold an entire lifetime of memories, maybe even extensions of those memories like thoughts and emotions. Just imagine if we could successfully create full consciousness inside of orbs! Eeeee!” I winced at the joyful squeal that escaped the recording. “The Ponies keep saying it's impossible, but I don’t think it is. The few tests we have done so far show that our newest model of memory orbs are capable of holding quite a few more hours over the normal length, with the longest being a full month… Still trying to figure out how to get Amethyst out of that orb…”

Great… remind me not to go into any memory orbs here. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck in it for the rest of my life.

“...Silver Ace is working on a spell to fast watch memory orbs, so that we can do proper testing, but it might take him a while. He’s usually pretty busy with his more secretive works,” My ears shot up at the mention of Silver Ace. That pony just liked to pop up all over the wastelands history, doesn’t he. “That’s about all I need to say on that right now, but I’ll definitely update this later. I should probably record it to my terminal though so I don’t just have a million audio tapes lying around… I feel like recording every entry on its own tape is kinda inconven... ”

The sound of a magical energy weapon blared from somewhere behind the door, cutting off Dazzling Souvenir’s final words on the recording. Both Crossroads and Blueberry were on their hooves in a flash. I could see their bodies tensing underneath their armour as they leapt into a battle stance.

“Think those are the slavers getting to the scribes?” Xayah asked, leaning an ear up against the door.

“I don’t think so. That didn’t sound like normal magical energy weapons, and our scribes are only armed with a few pistols for basic self defence,” Blueberry said, his eyes still locked on the door. “We didn’t equip them with more because our resources have been spread thin since the schism between the rangers and this place was supposed to be relatively safe and non hostile.”

“Well if it’s not the slavers and it's not the scribes, something tells me this place has a bit more security than you initially thought,” Pyre scowled. Her metal encased ear twitched and she glanced behind us at the stairs leading to the lower floor.

After a second I heard what she had. The slow grinding of metal on the floor, followed by the occasional blast of a magical energy weapon.

“What is that?” Mirra asked, her gaze moving back and forth between all of us as we began moving into a battle stance. None of us had any answers to give her.

Red bars popped to life on my EFS. lots of them. Enough that I had difficulty telling one red bar apart from the next. The sound of gunfire began to break out in full upstairs. I could only barely hear the frantic shouting of slavers over the ever growing sound of grinding metal and flashing lasers.

The first red bar made it to the top of the stairs, letting me finally make out what was coming for us.

It was a robot of some sort, but like nothing I had seen before. It was somewhat pony shaped, with a mechanical head and barrel, but its legs had been replaced with a large set of tracked chassis. Two metal arm-like appendages stretched out from the front of it’s metallic barrel, each one ending in a strong looking claw.

But it’s head is what caught my attention the most. While the lower half of the face was simply that of a metal ponies, the top half was that of a large glass dome. Within sat something fleshy. A pony brain, still pulsing and jiggling as if it were still alive. From where I stood I could even make out nervous system-like wires hooking into the brain and traveling into the body of the robot.

I gulped. I didn’t want to know what had happened to make a pony have their brain put inside a robot.

“You do not belong!” The robobrain said, slowly rolling into the room. It’s voice was far too pony for my liking. “I must eliminate all life forms that are not regist-”

The robobrain was cut off as a missile sailed from Blueberry’s battle saddle and blasted the robot to bits, sending jagged chunks of metal and, to my growing horror, viscera across the room.

The next two robots to enter the chamber were a lot faster to attack, each one sending a blast of magical energy through the room before they entered. We scattered, trying to avoid being turned to dust by the devastating laser blasts.

Then they began swarming in. They burst into the room in organised groups of twos, their energy weaponry spewing towards us to keep us from using the doorway as a choke point.

Damn, these things were smart. I suppose that’s what you get when you put a brain inside of a computer.

We jumped into action immediately, trying to quickly take control of the situation before the room, and in turn us, were completely overrun.

The first blast of my shotgun proved to be… less than effective. The slugs slammed against the metal plating of the body, doing little more than dent the robots armour. Through the flurry of flying lasers, bullets and missiles, I could see that my friends were having just about as much success. Brisk’s pistol and Mirra’s newly claimed revolver were doing little to damage the plating on the robots and Pyre’s flamers were doing next to nothing at all. My raider friend had quickly taken to bashing at the robots with her hooves, smashing open the glass domes on their heads so she could fry their brains. It worked, but it looked far from easy.

Xayah and the two rangers seemed to be the only ones having any luck. Xayah’s sniper seemed to be powerful enough to punch through the glass domes and into the squishy brains inside and Crossroad’s magical energy rifles were more than effective. And Blueberry… Well, missile launchers are effective against anything and everything.

I jumped back as a robobrain swung at me with one of its clawed arms. I whipped out my baton and bashed it against the robobrains head as hard as I could. The glass on its dome cracked slightly, but didn’t shatter.

“Threat detected! Kill! Kill! Kill!” The robobrain screamed, its oddly pony sounding voice making it far more nerve chilling than I was comfortable with

A missile flew past me, blasting into the side of the attacking robobrain and sending it flying five directions at once as it was blown apart. I glanced over at Blueberry who gave me a quick nod, his missile launcher still steaming. “Quick, shut off the lockdown. Turn them off!”

Best advice I had heard all day.

I bolted towards the terminal, only for another robobrain to get in my path. I ducked low as it swung a clawed arm at me. I didn’t have time to get up as its head blasted some sort of strange pulsing wave of energy at me.

I was flung backwards, the force of the strange energy wave making my head reel. It wasn’t a laser and didn’t seem lethal in small doses, but whatever that attack had been hurt like a bitch. My head spun and I had no doubts that I had a concussion.

“Sorry, just doing what I’m programmed to do,” The robot said, its tracks grinding against the ground as it rolled closer to me.

The robobrain’s words made me stop cold.

These things were being programmed to attack us? Regardless of what the brain wanted? That was just wrong! It might not have involved cages and chains, but this was slavery all the same.

But that wasn’t the only thing that gave me pause. The voice, I recognised it from somewhere. It sounded a little tinny and a little older, but it was still the same voice.

“Dazzling Souvenir?” I asked, my jaw dropping slightly.

The robobrain stalled slightly, its tracks momentarily slowing to a stop. Just when I thought it might drop its hostility and turn green on my EFS it started advancing towards me again, its claws outstretched. “I apologize. Perhaps we can still be friends after I kill you.”

Damn it, I couldn’t do this…

I rolled aside as the claws swung at me, pinching at the air where I had been like a hungry radscorpion. I scampered around it, no longer heading towards the terminal on the wall, but for the robobrain’s back.

I hopped to my left as another robobrain blasted at me with one of its magical energy weapons. “Wait! Stop fighting them!” I yelled, dodging another blast and jumping at the panel on the back of the Dazzling Souvenir robobrain.

Another rocket spewed forth from Blueberry’s battle saddle, blasting apart two more robots. He cast me a confused look, but ceased his explosive fire.

“Are you insane!” I heard Pyre shout, her hooves smashing open another brain case and pulping the fleshy organ inside. “I’d like to not be turned to ash, thank you!”

I saw Xayah lower her sniper next to me and go into a more defensive mode, trying to stay clear of their lasers and swinging claws while doing as little damage to them as possible.

The Robobrain I clung to began spinning in circles, its metal body trying to shake me off. Its long accordion like arms began wrapping around itself, trying to pinch at me and pry me off. “I wish I had been programmed for something else, but it was not to be,” The voice of Dazzling Souvenir said to me from within the robot.

Xayah rolled underneath a swinging claw arm and slinked over to me, her dagger in her mouth and swatting at anything that got too close to her. “What are you planning Amber?”

What was I planning? A good question. I had no idea if this was even going to work. But I couldn’t leave these ponies trapped as slaves to their mechanical bodies, nor could I just kill them. That seemed immoral somehow.

Damn my morality. It always had to make my life harder.

Salt Water had shown me how to hack into things without a terminal back in the Hollow Shades. Time to see if that training paid off. I reefed off the panel covering up the back circuitry and began fiddling with the wires. It looked daunting at first, but after a few seconds of fiddling, a small grin broke out across my face. My expertise lay in Stable-Tec technology, and these looked like they were designed by the MTW, but the basics were the same and I was a fast learner.

A few robobrains shot lasers towards me, forcing me to try and duck behind the Dazzling Souvenir robobrain. I pulled at a few more wires before replugging them in. Suddenly Souvenir’s robobrain stilled.

For a second I thought I had failed and accidently shut it down, but a second later, the robobrain began to move again. It didn’t attack this time though, instead it began looking around the room.

“I… What is happening…” Dazzling Souvenir’s voice echoed from the robobrain, a growing sense of panic in her tone. Her robotic head kept looking around at the swarm of robobrains that kept spilling into the room.

One of the robobrains blasted one of its weird sonic waves at Brisk, knocking him backwards and slamming into the far wall. He slammed against a medical cabinet, collapsing it and sending piles of assorted chems spilling across the floor.

“Whatever you’re doing Amber, do it quick!” Crossroads shouted, jumping aside as three Robobrains closed in on them. “We can't hold them back much longer without using lethal force!”

I quickly turned to the reprogrammed Dazzling Souvenir Robobrain. “I don’t suppose you can get your friends there to stop could you?” I ducked as a laser shot over my head.

The reprogrammed robobrain just stared at me silently for a second, their thoughts and emotions completely concealed by their expressionless metal face. Finally, it turned from me and rolled over to the terminal. Its clawed arms extended towards it and quickly typed ‘Peace’ into the terminal. All at once, the robobrains froze. Then, they’re arms dropped limp and the small lights on their bodies blinked out.

Everypony let out a large sigh of relief as the deadly assault halted in its tracks.

“Everypony alright?” I asked, glancing around the room. I was met with a mix of tired nods and grim smiles that lacked any form of real mirth.

I let my gaze drift to Brisk. He stood not far from where the robobrain had blasted him, his eyes locked on the large pile of chems scattered around his hooves. I could spot the large stash of Buck tablets that littered the area around him. I focused in on Brisk’s face, taking in his wide-eyed expression and quivering lower lip.

I stepped forward to tell him to get away from the Buck, but before I could he stepped away himself. His hooves shook as he stepped over it, very careful to keep from coming in contact with the addictive chems.

I let myself release a breath I hadn’t realised I had been holding.

“What happened…” I heard the pained voice of Dazzling Souvenir say from behind me. I turned to see the robobrain standing behind me. Apparently my reprogramming had made it so she didn’t shut down with the rest of the robobrains. That or she had intentionally kept herself online. “Why can't I feel anything… Everything is so blurry...”

Goddesses, how did you answer a question like that. You’re a brain in a jar now? The worlds dead? There was no good way to answer. So instead, I did the next best thing. I ignored the question.

“We are trying to rescue some ponies upstairs, but the building went into lockdown. Do you think you can get us through the doors?” I asked, gesturing towards the door.

There was silence from the robobrain again, then it rolled back over to the terminal and activated something. The large doors blocking us from the upper floor slid open with a screech. I could hear the doors blocking the exit down below us slide open as well. After a moment and to my surprise, the lights flickered back on.

I gave the robobrain a grateful nod. “Thank you.”

We quickly moved on up the stairs, leaving the robobrain alone in the room filled with what I had come to realise were all her friends and colleges, not pickled brains.

“We can’t just leave her like that?” Mirra said, her breath ragged as she tried to keep pace with the rest of us as we darted forwards. I nearly jumped out of my skin at the changeling seemingly materializing next to me. Her magic was slowly returning, allowing her to perform small acts of teleportation again. “I can’t imagine being stuck in one of those…”

“We aren’t going to leave them like that, I promise,” I assured her, readying my combat shotgun as we reached the top of the steps. “But right now we need to stop Stern and save those Scribes. We’ll help them as soon as we can.”

The top floor was covered in the broken remains of blasted apart robobrains. The bodies of a few slavers lay strewn around the room and I could see a few still smoking piles of ash.

“I guess the robots and the slavers dealt with each other for us,” Brisk said, looking around at the death and destruction.

I poked a pile of ash with my hoof. I quickly remembered it had once been a pony and pulled my hoof away. “You think Stern was dusted?”

There was a crash from down a long hallway, followed by an angry squawk-like yell that could only come from a griffon's beak.

“I’m going to take that as a no,” Crossroads scowled, advancing down the hallway towards the noise. The rest of us closely followed. I had faced off against Stern before. I knew she was no threat to be taken lightly.

We rounded the corner, taking in the sight of Stern. She paced back and forth before a large steel door, her sharp talons clicking against the cracked ground as she walked. Her Anti-Machine Rifle was held tightly in her one claw and her bullwhip rested by her hip, easily within quick reach.

“You can’t fucking hole yourselves in there forever!” the griffon snarled, her claws clacking against the ground again.

“Fuck you Stern!” I heard the muffled, but brave sounding shout of a scribe from behind the door. Stern lashed her talons against the door, causing sparks to shoot in all directions and the door to shake violently. I could hear the scribes beyond whimpering at the sudden sound and motion of the door.

One of Stern’s green eyes landed on us and she stilled. We all stood silently, staring at each other with weapons drawn. Stern’s gaze slowly shifted to me and my friends. “Fuckin’ hell. I’m guessing Big Mino is dead then,” she sounded more annoyed that furious or worried. I gave her an affirming nod. “Fuck. I always need to do everything myself.”

The large, black griffin launched themself at me at a speed I couldn’t possibly have expected. I rolled to the side as her talons raked at the air I had just been in.

My allies opened fire, their weapons peppering the walls with holes as Stern twisted in the air dove out of the way.

The slaver griffin had her whip out in a flash, the thick rope flashing forwards and wrapping around Blueberry’s rocket launcher. She pulled, reefing the large barrel from his side as he fired it. His shot went wide, the rocket missing Stern by a mile and crashing into the far wall, blowing a huge hole into it and out into the wasteland beyond.

One of Brisk’s shots landed, his pistol blasting a small hole in Stern’s side. The griffin flinched back, a spurt of blood erupting from her side, but she remained upright, her face hardly registering the pain of the bullet.

The Anti-material rifle in her talons swirled around and blasted into Brisk’s hoof, sending him toppling to the ground. Brisk Screamed, his pistol falling from his mouth and clattering to the floor.

I pushed myself forwards, reaching for my combat shotgun as I went to protect Brisk from any further harm.

Pyre was faster. She darted past me, her metal enclosed hooves flying towards Stern’s head. The griffin flipped out of the way, her body swooping completely upside down as she evaded what would have otherwise been a lethal attack. Stern was fast, but the bullet hole seeping blood on her right side seemed to be slowing her down.

Mid swoop, her saddlebags opened a crack. Through them I saw the thin glint of light of a smooth black surface. The A.A.S.S.

I continued my rush forwards, my hooves reaching for her saddlebags as quickly as I could. Stern Swung around, her thick tail lashing me across the face and pushing me back. My head bounced painfully against the ground, sending my vision into a fractured blur.

Crossroads advanced, her laser rifles forcing Stern to retreat somewhat. The griffin landed on the ground, her own rifle sending off quick shots towards us. Xayah jumped to the side, what was to be a well aimed shot shooting wide as Stern forced her to dodge.

Pyre launched herself at Stern again, this time her flamers spewing a stream of fire towards her. Stern leapt aside, the tip of her tale burning. Stern growled and slashed at Pyre with her talons, the sharp claws gouging rents into the side of her armour.

I took her momentary focus on Pyre to Snag her saddlebag with a hoof, ripping at the thick fabric and sending its contents spilling across the floor. There was a clang as the A.A.S.S. dropped from the bag and rolled across the floor.

Stern’s head spun in my direction, her beak snapping at my neck as if trying to rip out my throat. She pushed Pyre aside and dove for the A.A.S.S. I dove as well, my hooves reaching for the oblong device.

My hooves wrapped around it at the same time as her talons. I suddenly found myself involved in a frantic and deadly tug war in which I had no hopes of winning. I was not a strong pony, and Stern definitely was. I mean, how am I supposed to compete with lion strength?

Crossroads’ laser rifle blasted a gash across Stern’s side, the burning laser cauterizing the wound before it could start to bleed. Stern scowled from the pain and reached forwards with her talons, refocusing her grip from the A.A.S.S. to pulling me down.

I felt my body give under her overbearing strength and smash against the ground. One of Stern’s talon’s wrapped around my head, pushing my face into the flooring while her other swung up her Anti-material rifle and fired countless shots towards her attackers with deadly accuracy.

My friends scattered, trying to dive away best they could in the tight confines of the hallway. One of Stern’s shots pierced the plating covering Blueberry’s chest. The Applejack Ranger fell, blood spilling from the hole that had been ripped open in him.

Then the cavalry arrives. It was about fucking time!

Five rangers burst down the hall, their battle saddles aimed at Stern. The griffin suddenly found herself confronted by a wall of grenade launchers and magical energy weapons. She glanced down at me, her eyes locking on the A.A.S.S. that I still held in my hooves.

I raised my shotgun in my magic and aimed it at her, adding to the overwhelming amount of firepower Stern was suddenly facing. The griffin scowled at me and quickly retracted her talons. “Don’t think this is over Amber,” Stern purred, her beak snapping slightly in agitation. “Don’t think this is fucking over!” With that, she leapt backwards, and with a mighty flap of her powerful wings, flew out the large hole in the wall and off into the wasteland.

The second she was gone, Crossroads was at Blueberry’s side. “Hey, you alright?”

Blueberry let out a loud groan, his hoof placed tightly over his bleeding chest. “I feel like I’ve been mauled by a Hellhound.”

Crossroads turned to the closest two rangers and gestured them over. “Get him to Heartbeat now. Hurry!” The two rangers quickly obeyed, hauling the wounded knight off as gently and expediently as they could.

I stumbled over to where Xayah was doing her best to wrap up Brisk’s wounded leg, my head still feeling a little dizzy from being slammed into the ground. “Hey, you doing alright?”

Brisk gave me a blank stare. “It would be nice if I could have some Buck…” my eyes widened and I opened my mouth to protest his request, but he silenced me with a wave of his uninjured hoof. “Don’t worry, I’m messing with you sis. No more of that stuff. I promise.”

“We should get you to Heartbeat,” Xayah said, finishing up wrapping his leg. She leaned back and looked over her work. It was better than I could do, but not nearly as good as Heartbeat could do.

Brisk quickly shook his head. “I should be fine for now. He has more urgent ponies to patch up at the moment. I’ll see him about my leg when things calm down a bit,” he glanced over at my saddlebags. “I see you got the A.A.S.S. back.”

I gave him a smug grin. “Hopefully that's the last time we are going to need to chase it down.”

He returned my grin, though his was admittedly more cocky. “Won’t need to hunt it down again if we destroy it,” I swatted at him with my tail.

Mirra scrambled over and sat down next to us. She seemed relatively unharmed, with only a small scratch across her face. I suppose you tend to get through fights better when you have a pony as strong as Pyre Blaze keeping you safe. “Remind me to stick to infiltration next time,” The disguised changeling grumbled, looking over her new revolver in her magic with disdain. “I don’t think I like combat very much.”

I knighted my brows together. “Was this your first fight?” I asked, feeling somewhat surprised.

Mirra gave a timid nod. “Unless you count the small scrimish on the train, but this was the first time I actually fought against a pony before.”

“Well you did good. Better than I did. I think I was a little more squeamish in my first fight,” I admitted, giving the small changeling a friendly bump on the shoulder.

“She screamed,” Brisk said flatly, a hint of a smile on his lips. “Screamed like a girl.”

“I did not!”

“Did too!”

I flustered. “Yeah, well you dance like a girl!”

“Natural talent.”

“You’re the worst.”

“I know.”

Crossroads approached the large steel door Stern had been trying to get through and knocked on it with a hoof. “Scribe Butterscotch, this is Paladin Crossroads. The area is clear to open up.”

There was a bit of shuffling behind the door, followed by a loud creak as the large metal door slid open. Twelve Applejack Ranger scribes stood on the far side. A lot of them looked injured, their clothes ripped and caked with blood. One mare with a white coat and blond mane that was dressed in similar attire to nurse Heartbeat rushed back and forth among them, tending to their wounds.

A scribe with a yellowy-brown coat took a small step forwards, limping slightly on a bandaged leg. “Paladin Crossroads, thank you for getting us out of here. Crusader Dustbowl is-”

“I know Butterscotch. Your message was received,” Crossroads turned and gestured for the rest of the rangers to start helping the scribes up and out of the building. “You did good, protecting our brothers and sisters. Thank you scribe.”

Scribe Butterscotch placed his injured hoof over his chest in the Ranger salute. “I-I have something to report mam, about our findings here...”

Crossroads raised a hoof. “At ease. I’m sure your report can wait. Heal up, get some rest. You’ve earned it.”

Crossroads began to turn to help one of the fallen scribes, but Butterscotch put a hoof out to stop her. “Mam, I think this is very important. It’s about Iron Hock…”

My ears shot up at the name of the Ranger. It had been a long time since I had even thought about that power hungry Steel Ranger. From the way Crossroads froze, I could tell she was surprised to.

“Iron Hock!?” I asked, pulling myself to my hooves and walking over to them. “What does he have to do with this?”

Crossroads cast me a quick glance. “I take it you’ve met him?”

I gave a quick nod. “He kidnapped me! Not to mention kept talking about using the Steel Rangers to conquer the wasteland!”

Crossroads sighed. “Yeah, that sounds like Iron Hock. Nasty piece of work that pony is. Always thought the Steel Rangers could do more than sitting around hoarding tech. He wanted to impose a military run government system upon the wasteland. Of course he wished he would be incharge. He cares less for the protection of ponies and more for the protection of the idea of organized society.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t take well to the Applejacks Rangers then,” Brisk monotoned, limping over to me, Xayah at his side supporting most of his weight as he walked.

Scribe Butterscotch snorted. “Took it well enough. Inspired him to make his own splinter group.”

I gulped at that. “Let me guess. This splinter group of his is all about hostile takeover of the wasteland?” I didn’t need to see Crossroads nod to know that I was right. Perfect. Another faction that was going to start causing trouble, just what I needed.

“Unfortunately, Iron Hock had quite a few followers inside of the Steel Rangers, and the skism only strengthened their beliefs in him. It didn’t take him long to form a group large enough to be a genuine threat. And with Elder Cottage Cheese currently in our care in Stable 29, a lot of Steel Rangers in the Manehattan area are looking for leadership,” Crossroads grumbled, clearly not happy with the facts. “He’s been staying low at the moment, but it's not like Iron Hock to sit with his hoof up his ass. Nor is it like him to think small.”

“That's what I was going to report about mam,” Butterscotch said, gesturing to the room behind her. “We think Iron hock was here, scavenging pre war tech.”

“I’m guessing he took everything of value here then?” Crossroads said flatly.

Butterscotch shook their head. “That’s just it. He seems to have left all of the really valuable stuff behind. He mostly took parts from power generators and robobrains.”

Crossroads head snapped up. “What! Why would he… are you sure it was him? Iron Hock would never leave a piece of tech untouched.”

Butterscotch gave an affirmative look. “We managed to hack into the prewar security cameras here. It was him. Him and a lot of other rangers.”

I could clearly see Crossroads concern, despite the fact that she was doing her best not to show it. “Thank you Butterscotch. I look forward to your full report once you are properly healed,” With that, she started leading the scribe away and down the hallway.

I noticed the medic that had been tending to the scribes was looking at me wearily, her eyes locked on my saddlebags. I followed her gaze to where the A.A.S.S. sat slightly exposed from the top of my bag. I quickly covered it up, making her realise I knew she was staring.

The medic blinked a few times before clearing her throat and approaching me. “Where did you get that?”

I glanced back and forth between my saddlebag and the approaching medic. “Depends, who are you?”

The medic stopped in front of me and extended her hoof for a hoof bump. I returned it. “The name is Reverie, and I work here.”

I blinked. “You… Work in an abandoned hospital?” Reverie nodded. “Do I even want to ask how that works?”

“A lot of ponies need healing in the wasteland. It's not uncommon for wounded ponies to come to the hospital in search of medical supplies. I set up shop here to help those that come looking for just that,” Reverie replied, gesturing behind her where I saw what appeared to a fairly cosy looking living space built into one side of the room. “I also do therapy for ponies that need it. I unfortunately need to charge for health care so that I can keep up my supplies of healing potions and chems, but I can listen to a ponies problems free of charge.”

“I don’t suppose you saw Iron Hock and his rangers when he stormed and ransacked the place?” I asked, hopefully.

Reverie shook her head. “I was out at friendship city at the time stocking up on supplies. Though I doubt I would have been able to stop him even if I was here. I’m no fighter.”

I gestured to my saddlebags suspiciously. “And you know about the A.A.S.S. how?” I asked, one of my eyebrows raising slightly.

Reverie’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “A client of mine stopped by here not long ago with that in his possession. I want to know how you got your hooves on it.”

“A client of yours… had the A.A.S.S?” I stammered. That made no sense. “Unless you were giving a powerful immortal zebra or a group of deadly cyber pony death machines therapy sessions, that’s not possible,” Reverie remained silent. I could feel my eyes widening as I began to put together what was happening. “Wait… You actually gave one of those a therapy session, didn’t you.”

Reverie bit her lip, trying to figure out what she should or should not tell me. “I… Crank had stopped by me multiple times. Yes.”

I balked. “You were giving Crank therapy! As in the massive killing machine of ultimate death cyber alicorn Crank!” The idea of Crank sitting across from somepony on a couch and telling them about his problems seemed ludicrous.

The therapist gave a small nod. “He saved me from a group of raiders that attacked me a few years back. I offered to heal him, but he didn’t need it. So instead, I offered him therapy. He accepted reluctantly, but refused to open up. When he left I felt as if I had failed to help or get through to him, but he returned a few months later, this time seeking help. His visits were far and few between, the last time I saw him being the first in quite a few months. I think he was very lonely.”

I just continued to stare at her, my jaw agape. “But… what! What would a pony like Crank even talk about!”

“At first it was about a mare named Scarlet Dusk. But when he found out that she… well, I won’t get into details… but eventually he started talking about how he was looking for a way to become a pony again in our time together. There's a pony out in Las Pegasus that can regrow old limbs. I don’t know how it works, but his price is impossibly high,” Reverie said, a sad look in her eyes. “Crank hated being a cyber pony. He always wanted to find a way to fix what had been done to him.”

I felt it before I registered what it was. A tear was rolling down my cheek. I quickly wiped it away, hoping that Reverie hadn’t seen it. She had. I saw her face fall.

“Crank’s dead… isn’t he…” Reverie’s voice was low and distant.

I felt a thick lump forming in my throat as I forced myself to nod. “He died a good pony,” I managed to get out. My voice sounded like a croak. Another tear rolled down my face. “He… he managed to become a good pony before the end.”

Reverie put a hoof to her chest and let out a long, slow breath. The breath was heavy and pained. “I didn’t think that pony really could die… I know he did bad things, more than he ever told me… I’m glad he could turn himself around before the end,” She took a step past me, her expression grim. “Now please excuse me. I have a lot to think about and ponies that need healing.”

The therapist quickly moved away from me, leaving me alone with just my friends as the rest of the Rangers and Scribes filed out with her. I glanced around the hospital. I had planned to scavenge for healing supplies, but that just felt wrong now that I knew it was still a functioning hospital. Or at least somewhat functional.

“Something on yer mind, Amber?” Pyre asked, walking up and stopping beside me. “You look a little out of it?”

I shook my head. “I should be fine. Just thinking is all. The more I know about Crank, the more it feels like I never knew him at all.”

Pyre looked away and out the large hole in the wall Blueberry’s rocket launcher had made. “It's best not to think too hard about what your enemies were before you put them down. In the wasteland, that will only drive you mad.”

I sighed. “I suppose that’s correct. I just can't seem to stop thinking about him. It isn’t fair! He should have survived! He had only just begun to turn his life around!”

“The wasteland isn’t fair Amber. Ponies die. It's as simple as that.”

Brisk slowly approached us, still limping slightly on his leg. “Hey Pyre, you mind if I talk to Amber alone for a second?”

Pyre shrugged before turning and marching down the hallway. I could see Xayah and Mirra doing the same. Clearly Brisk had already asked them.

I turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “What is it bro?”

Brisk turned and looked out at the wasteland. It looked like a windstorm was starting to pick up outside. Nothing too dangerous, but something to keep an eye on for sure. “I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I… I mean I’m better than I’ve been in a while…” I said, confused. “I don’t think I’ll ever be simply alright again, not after what happened at Stable 25. But I’m doing okay now… Why? Is something up?”

Brisk shook his head and picked something up off a table that I couldn’t see. “What… what is this?” He said, his voice suddenly sounding very interested in something. “Amber, take a look at this!”

He tossed something at me. Instinctively I reached out with my magic and wrapped a telekinetic field around it.

Almost immediately, the world swirled away as my magic took hold of the glowing memory orb Brisk had passed me. The last thing I saw as my surrounding spiralled into oblivion was the sad expression on Brisk’s face.

“I’m sorry Amber. I hope you can forgive me…”

I was in the body of a mare. I was trotting down a hallway. One that I recognized. It was the same one I stood in now, outside of the memory orb.

A lavender mare with a blue mane trotted past, a pile of papers resting on her back. She gave my host a happy wave as she passed. “Morning Souvenir!”

So this was Dazzling Souvenir’s memory.

“Morning Amethyst,” Dazzling Souvenir’s chipper voice replied, giving her a polite smile. “Is your head feeling better?”

Amethyst bobbed her head in response. “It was a little weird being inside of a memory orb for so long, but there doesn’t seem to have been any harmful effects. It’ll take a bit to get used to being a mare again though.”

Chuckling, Dazzling Souvenir continued on down the hall and turned to face a large steel door. The very one the Applejack Ranger scribes would hide behind two hundred years later. She reached out a hoof and knocked politely on the door. Almost immediately, the huge door slid open.

The room inside looked nothing like it would two hundred years later. Where I had once seen blood soaked walls and shattered furniture, I now saw what looked to be a lavish looking library crossed with a fancy looking office. Bookshelves lined the walls, each shelf containing more books than I could ever hope to read in my lifetime. I made a mental note to scavenge the room for books that had survived after I got out of this memory.

Correction. I’d do that after I found out why the fuck Brisk had trapped me in here in the first place!

In the center of the room, standing around a fancy looking dark wood desk stood two ponies. The first I recognised immediately. I had been finding traces of him all across the wasteland as of late.

Silver Ace stood to one side, his silver hoof placed over a large book to keep his place. The dark bags under his eyes seemed to have deepened since I had last seen him. I doubted he had been getting much sleep.

The second pony took a second to register. I recognised them, that was for sure, but not directly. They were a pegasus with a yellow coat and a long pink mane. Three butterflies adorned her flank. It was the cutie mark that finally gave her away. The Ministry mare Fluttershy.

“It’s risky,” Silver Ace said, not turning to see Dazzling Souvenir in the doorway. “If zebras get their hooves on such a spell… the war could get very dangerous very fast.”

“But I can’t just stand by while others are out there getting hurt,” Fluttershy responded. I think she had actually yelled that, but her voice was so quiet it only barely rose to normal talking level.

Silver Ace sighed. “I know… I know… neither can I… We just need to be careful. Other ponies won't take it well if they found out about this Fluttershy. I won’t stop you. Celestia knows that I couldn’t. Just be careful.”

Fluttershy gave him a gentle smile. “Thank you Silver Ace. I’m glad you understand.”

Silver Ace was silent for a second before trotting over to his chair and slowly lowering himself into it. “I don’t know if I understand or even fully agree with it, but I can at least understand where you’re coming from…” His eyes glanced over to the door where Dazzling Souvenir still stood patiently. “Come in Souvenir.”

My host started trotting forwards, giving Fluttershy a respectful nod as she did. Fluttershy returned it before turning and fluttering out of the room. The second she was out of sight, I could have sworn I saw the smallest hint of a smug smile spread across Silver Ace’s lips, but he did a good job of hiding it.

“You wanted to see me sir,” Dazzling Souvenir said, giving the aging earth pony stallion a polite nod as well.

Silver Ace nodded. He reached down and tapped a talisman that rested on his desk. A small white aura glowed around the talisman and floated up at least ten old looking books around him. “Yes, I have been reading over your findings in regards to the memory orb project that I assigned you. I was quite pleased.”

Dazzling Souvenir blushed slightly. “Thank you sir. Memory orbs have always been my specialty,” She gestured towards her flank where I saw a cutie mark of a glowing memory orb out of the corner of her eye.

“I am aware. That is why I am going to be promoting you to the highest level assignment,” Silver Ace said, his eyes seeming to read over multiple books at once.

Dazzling Souvenir’s brow furrowed. “I thought that… I thought that I was already on the highest level assignment?” she said, her voice confused. “Is that not what I’ve been doing?”

Silver Ace smiled slightly, finally looking down from his books. “You have been working on the highest level here at the fluttershy medical center yes. But this assignment is a little bigger than that,” He took a deep breath. “This memory orb project is only a small part of something much much bigger. I want you as my head scientist for a little project I have been working on called the Utopia program.”

“What is Utopia sir?” Dazzling Souvenir asked, her voice peeking with interest.

Silver Ace glanced around, as if looking to see if anypony was listening in. “I’m afraid I can't say here. I’ll explain in more detail once we are somewhere more private,” He started. Had I been able to groan I would have. Of course he wasn’t going to say what it was. Curse my luck. “But I can tell you this. I fear this war is headed towards disaster. I fear that Equestria will be little more than ruin when this is through. The Utopia program can fix that.”

“What exactly do you mean? What disaster?” Dazzling Souvenir asked, taking a small step closer to his desk.

“Equestria has undergone huge advancements in technology and magic since the start of this war. I fear we are reaching the point that our society’s advancements are no longer creating progress, but simply more horrific ways to destroy ourselves. If that ever comes to pass, we need a plan,” Silver Ace said, once again returning his gaze to his books. “We need a way to bring the Utopia of Equestria back from total annihilation…”

I jolted out of the memory orb. As I came back to my senses I could make in the howling wind outside. Perhaps that windstorm was more severe than I thought.

The Utopia program… whatever it was… could fix everything? The idea alone seemed impossible. How could anything fix all of this! All the destruction and death... And why did it need the A.A.S.S?

Instinctively, my hoof reached down and touched my saddlebag where the A.A.S.S. should be. It was gone!

I bolted to my hooves, my head whipping around the room to try and see if it had fallen out onto the floor. It hadn’t.

And Brisk was gone… damn it! That's why he had put me into the memory orb! He was going to destroy it!

I bolted down the hallway, my hooves still aching from the battle not all that long ago.

Xayah, Pyre and Mirra stood in a small clump, talking amongst themselves when I reached the end of the hallway. They all glanced at me, confused by my sudden panic.

Xayah stepped forwards and put a hoof over my shoulder. “Amber? Are you alright?”

“Where is Brisk?” I asked, my voice frantic.

Pyre cocked her head towards a stairway just down another hall. “He just went down there a few minutes ago. Said he needed some time to think. Looked like he was headed for the roof. Why?”

“And you didn’t stop him why?” I asked, turning and starting to move down the hallway Pyre had suggested.

“Was I supposed to?” Pyre asked, her voice only growing more and more confused.

I didn’t stop to answer her as I broke out into a full sprint down the hallway, pushing past the pains that shot up my legs. I heard my friends calling for me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. I had to get the A.A.S.S. back before Brisk destroyed it. I couldn’t lose it now, not after what I had learned.

I remembered the last thing he had said before sending me into that orb. ‘I’m sorry Amber. I hope you can forgive me…’ damn it Brisk.

I barreled up the stairs and burst onto the flat roof of the Fluttershy Medical center. It looked like the windstorm I had seen earlier had begun to pick up in earnest, sending thick swirling waves of ash and dust billowing through the air around us.

Brisk stood at the edge of the roof, his back turned to me, the powerful winds whipping his mane around him wildly. The A.A.S.S. was held alfot in his hoof. He was hesitating, thank the goddesses.

I started moving towards him. “Brisk put it down!” I said, alerting him of my presence, my voice only just loud enough to hear over the storm.

Brisk turned to me, a sad look in his eyes. “I’m going to destroy it, Amber. Then this will all be over!”

I reached a hoof forwards, gesturing for him to give it back. “Don't do this Brisk. I need it!”

“No you dont!” He yelled back, his voice still clearly legible over the sound of howling wind. “Stable 25 is dead Amber! Everypony is fucking dead! The only pony that needs this is Red Eye! So lets make sure that he never gets it!”

I took another step towards him, struggling to move forwards against the violent winds that seemed to be pushing me back. “We can’t do that! I think it can fix the wasteland Brisk! I don’t know how, but it can!”

Brisk gestured to the horror filled landscape that spread out from the medical center in all directions. “Nothing can fix this Amber! The world is dead! It’s never going to stop being dead! But we can end this right now! We can stop Red Eye or whoever else wants this damn thing from ever getting their hooves on it!”

“But what if there was a chance!” I shot back, my voice rising as I took another step towards him. A massive gust of wind blew past me, making me stumble slightly. “What if there was a chance to fix everything! Shouldn’t at least try!”

“I’m tired Amber!” Brisk shot back, raising the A.A.S.S. higher as he prepared to smash it. “I’m tired of constantly needing to chase crazy ponies across the wasteland! I’m tired of getting shot at for trying to stop something that we don’t even fully understand! I’m tired of watching you slowly get crushed and destroyed by the wasteland Amber! You deserve better than this! You deserve to settle down somewhere and live a happy life! After everything, don’t you at least deserve that!”

“Not if I give up a chance to save everypony!” I spat back, pushing a blowing strand of hair from my face. “If I give that up, I don’t deserve anything!”

“Then don’t give up! Let me give up for you!” Brisk yelled, his voice raising higher and higher to be heard over the wind. His hoof came down, slamming the A.A.S.S. against the edge of the roof.

The A.A.S.S. cracked. It didn’t shatter or break completely, but it cracked. Brisk raised his hoof again, this time slamming all of his force down upon the black, oblong device. The crack grew, thin lines spreading across the surface of the device.

I was too far away from him to tackle him away from it. He would smash it into bits long before I reached him. So I did the only thing I could do.

I raised my combat shotgun in my magic and aimed. “I’m sorry Brisk. I hope you can forgive me…”

Blam!

The buckshot ripped through his injured foreleg. Brisk stumbled backwards, his undamaged hoof clutching at where I had blasted into him. Blood spilled from his leg, colouring his barding crimson. He staggered, trying to stay upright and keep smashing the A.A.S.S. He failed. He fell, collapsing onto his side in a heap, chest slowly rising and falling with pain filled breaths.

I lunged forwards, pushing myself the last few feet to where the device lay on the ground. I reached a hoof forwards, preparing to grab onto the device.

Blam!

I staggered back, my foreleg bleeding from a hole punched into the side by Brisk’s pistol. I was pushed aside as Brisk tackled into me, sending me skidding across the rooftop. I climbed to my hooves and pushed back, grappling him away from the device.

We stumbled across the rooftop, hooves kicking and flailing at each other. Brisk’s hoof knocked me upside the head, sending me stumbling towards the edge. My hoof bumped against the A.A.S.S. sending it rolling towards the edge of the roof.

I reached out with my magic and wrapped it in my telekinesis, pushing it away from the ledge and back to the safety of the center of the roof. I let out a sigh of relief, pushing Brisk off of me and once again lunging for it.

Brisk wrapped his bleeding hooves around my midsection and pulled me back. I twisted, bucking him in the chest. I heard a loud crack as my hoof cracked his ribs.

Brisk yelled with pain, stumbling away and clutching at his chest. I tried to pull myself back up, only for Brisk to spin around and Buck me in the face. I flew back, his strength easily tossing around my light body.

I rubbed my cheek with a hoof. Something was definitely broken.

I rolled up, trying my best to push past the pain. I limped forwards, my bleeding forehoof making walking incredibly difficult. I glared at Brisk as I watched him do the same.

“I just wanted to stop this Amber! We’re so close!” He said, a drizzle of blood dripping from his mouth. “We can end this!”

“I won't let you destroy the Wastelands only chance of ever becoming a Utopia again!” I snarled back, spitting out a wad of blood and broken tooth fragments.

We flew at each other again, hooves pounding against each other as we tried to knock the other into submission. One of Brisk’s hooves slammed against my side, pounding against where Big Mino had broken two of my ribs. I yelped, rolling on top of him and slamming my hooves down against the side of his head. His head snapped to the side, a large bruise already forming where the strike had landed.

Brisk tried to push me off, but I held him down. I slammed my hoof down again, knocking out one of his teeth. His hind hooves kicked at me. I felt one of my own ribs snap.

I reeled up, both forehooves coming down hard on his head. There was a crack as Brisk’s head bounced against the hard rooftop. His eyes glazed up, a thick stream of blood spilling from his muzzle.

I leaned back panting, my whole body aching from the fight. I placed a hoof on Brisk’s chest. He was still breathing, thank the goddesses, just unconscious.

I staggered off of him, my hooves threatening to give out from under me. I turned to where the A.A.S.S. had landed and froze.

Somepony stood over it. Or at least I had thought it was a pony at first.

They were made of metal, their body looking almost like an off white mechanical skeleton. There was an insignia engraved on their shoulder. The symbol of an alicorn, hooves and wings outstretched in the center of a circle. The symbol of the institute.

The synth leaned down, its metal hooves picking up the A.A.S.S. Slowly it raised its head to look at me, it’s two glowing blue eyes burning into mine.

I stumbled forwards to stop it, but I was too weak. I collapsed next to Brisk, helpless to stop the synth, blood spilling from my body and mingling with Brisk’s.

The Synth put a metallic hoof to their ear, pressing down on a small intercom on one ear. “The objective has been secured,” It’s voice was tinny and emotionless.

A beam of blue light shot down, and the synth vanished from sight, taking the A.A.S.S. with it.

Footnote: level up.
New perk: Action Girl -- +25 Action points