Catching up to Ginger was a losing prospect from the beginning. For Celestia's sake, the mare could run.

Chasing her down was attracting the attention of more than a few curious ponies, including glances from the Rangers mingling among the afternoon hoof traffic. Chops bristled as he squeezed between two stallions in full power armor in a bid to keep the red-gold flicker of Ginger’s short tail in view. Something didn’t bode well about the way she was running, as if he weren’t the only one on her heels.

He caught a glimpse of her ducking left down a narrow side street and nearly bowled over a young colt who meandered in front of him in hopes of selling some home-made trinkets. Several ponies shouted after him to watch where he’s going and were even less happy when he galloped away without an apology. He checked to make sure the incident hadn’t spurred any Rangers into pursuing him. Satisfied he wasn’t being followed, he turned off the main drag and onto the comparably empty side street.

His hoofsteps dropped into a cautious canter as he searched the thin smatter of ponies walking along the curbs. Nothing. Breathing hard from the chase and almost certain Ginger hadn’t been more than half a block ahead of him before she turned, he instinctively swung his attention to the open alley just a stone’s throw away. As he approached the shaded cut through the block of buildings he quickly saw that his instincts had been right. The loose rubble, dirt and filth that normally made these narrow paths treacherous to navigate - oftentimes clogging them to the point of making them impassable - had been shoved to one side of the alley in an almost ruler-straight line. Recently, too. Not all of the debris had gotten a chance to settle and some had spilled back into the now conspicuously clear path.

Chops paused at the entrance, noting that only the first twenty or so yards had been cleared. Beyond that, more rubbish, none of it appearing disturbed. A lone grey painted door sat at the far end of the cleared space. The only way it could have stood out more was if a neon sign had been hanging off the bricks above it. He gave the shoulder joint of each wing a tiny, reassuring roll. If this was where Aurora and her friends were hiding out and someone decided now would be an opportune moment to shake him down for caps, he needed to be ready to lead them away. Unarmed and lacking his partner’s aggravating charisma, flight would be the only weapon in his arsenal. The pureblood’s safety was the mission. Everything else was secondary.

He peered up toward the strip of overcast outlined by the rooftops. Though he couldn’t see them he knew the vintage, automated zebra cannonry perched atop the towers nearby could easily turn an escape flight fatal. All the major coastal cities had those striped, pill-shaped turrets. Being this close to the guns of the old war made him uneasy. He hurried down the alley, stopping at the unmarked door.

It was open. Just a crack. Just enough to make out the bright blue eyes peering back at him, lit by the dim amber glow of a unicorn’s horn. His hooves reacted faster than his brain and he hurled himself away from the opening. At that instance the alley shimmered. Sucking wind and a terrible sense of vertigo obliterated his senses as he found himself diving away from the ambush in one moment and surrounded by wooden walls and dusty shelves in the next.

Physics didn’t care where he’d ended up. The laws of inertia held fast, sending his substantial frame barreling through shelves along the wall. Boxes and bottles and medical supplies crashed to the floor splashing a variety of liquids, pills and shattered glass around his hooves. He would have sailed headfirst into the wall were it not for the inexplicably strong, probing force that redirected his momentum upward, pinning his chin against the uninsulated boards while the shelving unit came to rest heavily against his back.

He struggled and failed to effectively process the last few seconds, and his stomach nearly came up in bodily revolt. He gagged, squeezing his eyes shut against the visceral noise of shattered medicine bottles still glugging their contents out around his hooves.

“What in the goddesses’ names is… who is he? What happened to my tinctures?!”

Hoofsteps scraped behind him followed by a familiar, ragged voice. “Did you find… oh.”

Turning his head felt like he was pushing it through setting cement, the absolute smothering force of magic keeping him in place smearing across his face until he could see the ponies gathering on the other side of the shelves behind him. Ginger stood inches away, her horn ablaze like a torch. The ghoul and another unicorn he didn’t recognize stood just behind her with evidently differing focuses of concern. The stranger, evidently the proprietor of whatever establishment this was judging by the vest he wore, gawked with dismay at the valuable liquids soaking into the floorboards. The ghoul, however, had locked eyes with him.

“Chops?” A flurry of confusion crossed its face as it looked at Ginger, who in turn regarded Chops with dawning recognition. “What is he doing here?”

Ginger shook her head as if she’d expected to be crushing some other pony in her magic, which in turn begged the question: how was she this strong?

“I… he followed me here. I thought he was one of Ironshod’s.” The confusion on her face quickly solidified into fresh suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

She waited several seconds for him to answer, during which he stared back with baffled incredulity. His wings were pinned. What did she expect him to say?

The ghoul cleared its throat. “He’s mute.”

He could practically see the color rise to her cheeks. His nostrils flared a little as he blew out an aggravated breath. If Dancer hadn’t been so fixated on getting his dick squeezed, he’d have some backup to help calm this lunatic mare down before whatever chems giving her Saddle Rager strength convinced her to smear him against the wall like a rotten tato.

Embarrassed or not, she narrowed her gaze at him. “Where’s your friend? The talkative one. Is he with you?”

“Ginger, he can’t talk.”

The stifling shimmer around his head dissipated. “He can shake his head and nod.”

Chops shook his head as best a stallion could with his face pushed against a wooden wall. Ginger appeared unmoved. She tipped her horn toward his jacket.

“Weapons?”

He’d barely begun shaking his head a second time when her magic swept up under the folds of his disguise, feeling for whatever guns or grenades she thought he was hiding. He endured it, blinking irritatedly as she combed under his interlocked wings only to come up with nothing. Her frown deepened while Chops stared at her horn and the faint but visible ring of char that stained the living bone like a tattoo.

The stranger had apparently taken the time to grow some confidence. “I’d like to know how he plans to pay for all of this damage. That’s hundreds of caps worth of-”

“You’ll be reimbursed,” Ginger snapped, unconsciously pressing harder against Chops as she galled the stranger into silence. It was a lie, and not a convincing one. “Just… one thing at a time. Please.”

She turned back to him and her eyes hardened. “Did you or your people have anything to do with Aurora?”

He blinked, confused, and bent his head back toward the rest of the dimly lit room. At the edge of his vision he could spy the corner of a wooden table peeking out behind Roach’s shoulder. A single hind leg, green as grass, lay motionless atop it. Julip, he realized. But no one else. Where was the pureblood?

His visible confusion seemed to satisfy Ginger enough that her attention shifted to the broken shelving pressed against his back. For one fleeting moment it seemed like she was deciding how best to pull it away from him. Then she sighed, turned her attention to an empty patch of floor between them and narrowed her eyes in concentration.

Chops had less than the space of a breath to decipher what was happening before the entirety of reality wrenched away only for the same dusty room to clamp down around him in a completely different orientation. The shelving thumped against the wall to his left, sending a fresh deluge of jars and bottles crashing to the floor. Ginger stood directly in front of him, Roach just beyond her with a startled expression on his craggy face. The stranger looked like he was about to void his bowels.

Wide-eyed, heart pounding, his mind screaming at him to find some reasonable way to explain away what this unicorn had but was in no way supposed to be able to do and yet here he stood staring at the exact fucking wall he’d been hugging less than a second ago… Chops did the only thing a reasonable pegasus could do.

He bent over and retched on his own hooves.

Roach watched Peppercorn provide the Enclave stallion with a damp rag to clean himself up, wondering how much more the doctor could take before deciding the better option would be to bolt out the door screaming for the nearest Ranger rather. The stallion looked primed to tuck tail and do just that any second now. He needed a distraction.

“Get him something he can write with,” he murmured, tilting his head toward the recently teleported and nauseated Chops.

Peppercorn hesitated, only now seeming to realize how far out of his depth he was. “First, tell me how she can do that.”

“Magic,” Ginger stated. “Pencil and paper, please.”

The doctor took a step back, nodded and went to fetch the items. Roach kept an eye on him, wary of Peppercorn’s proximity to the door leading out into the storefront. Thankfully the stallion didn’t wander far. He hurried to the other side of the store room, pausing briefly to tip an ear toward an unconscious Julip’s muzzle and assess her breathing before tugging open a cabinet drawer and rifling through its contents. Rather than producing a gun or an ominously tinted syringe, he lifted out a nearly exhausted pad of paper and the yellow nib of a dulled pencil. As he returned with the items Roach noted the spiral notepad’s bright pink cover and the cartoonishly happy grin of the ministry mare featured across it, hooves thrown wide in mid-cheer. Balloon letters suspended above her head confidently declared, “BE A PAL! SHARE GOOD MORALE!”

Chops looked particularly bewildered by the offering as it floated toward him in Ginger’s magic. As he sidestepped his sick and moved forward to take them, she promptly flipped open the notepad and pressed it into the flat of his hoof. The pencil hovered in front of his nose. No wings, she was telling him. One so-called dustwing, they could explain. Two? The poor doctor would be on the streets screaming “Invasion!” before they could stop him.

Chops grudgingly took the pencil between his teeth and started to write. When he turned the pad back for them to read, it contained a single word.

Pureblood?

“Don’t call her that. Her name is Aurora. She was taken.” Ginger bit off the final word as she spoke it, turning to Roach. “Coldbrook’s feigning innocence to save face, but Coronado agreed to help us look for her. So there’s that.”

Roach knew better than to console her with empty promises. They would only add to the helplessness she was feeling. They were both feeling.

He grunted. "We could try the bounty boards. Someone's bound to see Ironshod for the right price."

Chops was already scribbling another note. Ginger only looked more frazzled for having to juggle the two of them. "I can just imagine how successful we'll be putting a bounty on a Steel Ranger. And with whose caps as collateral? We aren't exactly swimming in riches."

Her words stung him, but Chops had her attention before she could notice. He practically shoved the notepad at her. Her expression darkened as she read.

Where did you lose her?

But above the question was another, hastily aborted sentence.

You were supposed to

Her breath slowed. Roach took a half-step toward Ginger as she roughly snatched the notepad from Chops’ hoof to glare at the redacted accusation. Chops silently floundered, his eyes chasing after his only means of communication.

Roach could see the heat rising in her and tried to get ahead of it, setting a hoof on her back in hopes of holding back the dam that Chops had just kicked a hole into. “Ginger,” he said.

“I was supposed to do… what?” Her ears pinned back, eyes locked onto the Enclave stallion as barely contained fury seethed in her voice. She spun the notepad around in her magic for him to see, giving it a single hard shake for emphasis. “Please explain it to me because I clearly need it spelled out how badly I dropped the BALL.”

Chops held out a hoof for the notepad, the pencil still ready between his teeth. Ginger whipped the pad out of his reach, sending a trail of torn papers arcing through the air to come to a slapping stop against the far wall.

“No, no, no. YOU of all ponies don’t get to lecture me because Prim-… that bitch back home ordered you to. You can take that bullshit of hers straight to Tartarus or Hell or whatever the fuck cult garbage she’s sold you on!” Her voice rose to a frantic pitch, furious tears welling in her eyes. “You’re nothing but vultures! This stalking shit you do, these mind games? I’m done with it. Aurora isn’t some fucking mascot or totem for you to chase after. She’s worth more than you’ll ever fucking know. Do you understand me?”

Roach tugged on her shoulder. “Hey, I think he gets…”

She wrenched herself away, whirling on him.

“Don’t. Just let me…” For a flicker of a second the mask of anger slipped just enough for him to see the raw, helpless despair she was hiding underneath. She worked her jaw back and forth, eyes brimming, fighting to control herself just a little longer. Her voice was thick when she spoke again. “She’s the first pony besides you who ever thought I was worth anything! I don’t have to pretend around her, Roach, and I’m so sick and tired of pretending! When she’s with me it’s like… like I finally have something worth waking up for. She loves me and she saved my life and now she’s in the same boat I was in and I can’t muster so much as a fucking clue to where she even is!”

She shook her head, the words shaking as her anger lost steam. “I’m just… I need her back. I was supposed to keep her safe. What if he hurts her? If he… I can’t lose her.”

Her voice split. “I can’t.”

A hard, hitching shudder sent the first tears tracking down her face. He pulled her into a crushing hug all while staring daggers at the bewildered stallion who tipped her into this spiral. Being around Aurora, a pony who saw everything and everyone with fresh eyes, had allowed Ginger to examine herself honestly without having to think about what other ponies expected her to be. It had been a taste of freedom that she wasn’t ready to lose.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she babbled. “I don’t want to be alone.”

He tightened his grip around her as if she might shake herself apart if he let go. A chair quietly scraped the floor as the doctor seated himself beside Julip’s unconscious form, tactfully turning his attention to the ailing mare to give Ginger and Roach some semblance of privacy. Chops, on the other hoof, stood frozen in the same spot like a stallion who only just realized he’d stepped on a landmine.

Roach pressed his muzzle behind Ginger’s ear and gently shushed, a paternal habit he hadn’t used since he had Violet to care for. Somewhere between then and now, the grown mare clutching him had joined the long list of ponies he’d met over the decades who filled the void his daughter left behind.

In the beginning, the bombs had made the world a simpler place to exist in. Food, water and shelter became the trinity of life and many survivors found they could thrive more comfortably in the absence of ethics, morality and social expectations. For them the apocalypse had been liberating. They gleefully rode the descent of Equestria like a twisted carnival ride. The rules of the old world withered in the choking anarchy that followed. But over time new generations came of age, grew up and took the places of those first survivors. They looked out onto the broken world they’d inherited and decided they wanted more from life than sickness and ruins. Some looked back toward the old world and attempted to puzzle out the steps needed to rebuild. Some formed communities. Villages and towns, places that could be defended and expanded. Others sought to consolidate power by conquest, manipulation or both.

During his infrequent excursions from the tunnel to the greater wasteland, Roach witnessed the maps warp and change almost as if being shuffled like a deck of cards. At one point Junction City had been called Junktown, led by a pack of raiders with an affinity for barbed wire and beheading. Then it had become an outpost for the early Rangers, cleared out and walled in by ponies determined to expand their influence all the way from the coasts to Equestria’s old seat of power. The Rangers moved on and settlers moved in, building the little trading post that existed today. Factions of every stripe would appear and disappear over the years, absorbed or devoured by some bigger fish. He lost track of how many there had been, every one of them trying to build something resembling a world they understood less and less as time wore on.

It was like watching a pony trying to solve a puzzle who didn’t know half the pieces were missing. They looked back at the decaying billboards, remnants of books and movies, retelling legends that grew less and less accurate in the hopes of understanding what made the old world work. Meanwhile the Enclave and the Rangers secreted away the old knowledge and destroyed the rest to keep it from the scavengers. It was painful to witness. It was why Roach chose to spend most of his time in the tunnel with Blue.

Now, far from home and with Ginger going to pieces in his arms, he knew how much of a mistake that had been. How many ponies were out there just like Ginger, going to great lengths to imitate some prominent figure from the old world because they believed it would bring them happiness? How many ponies spent their lives squinting into the rapidly shrinking past while sacrificing their own futures?

He rubbed Ginger’s back to soothe the worst of her grief, bitterly aware there was little else he could do to help. Her normally kempt mane had become frizzled and smelled sour with the odor of sweat and stress. Roach glanced past her to where Chops still stood, the dull brown stallion looking less like an Enclave soldier and more like a fidgety teenager unsure if he should apologize or run away. And yet, Chops met Roach’s stony gaze head-on, the pencil still bobbing between his lips as he tipped his nose toward where the discarded notepad lay against the wall then looked pointedly back to Roach.

It was a question, he realized. Can I pick that up?

Careful not to disturb Ginger, he nodded.

Chops quietly crossed the room, his hooves remarkably silent. He tucked the pencil to the corner of his mouth like a cigar, allowing him room to pick up the pad between pursed lips. As he set the pad onto the flat of his hoof, he looked briefly to where Julip lay and frowned at the cleaned and stitched wounds. The doctor connected an empty syringe to a makeshift port he’d cut between Julip’s ribs, pulling back the plunger until frothy pink bubbles sputtered into the chamber.

Roach watched Julip’s hind leg shift with discomfort out of the corner of his eye. It was all the protest she could muster in the midst of her drugged sleep. Peppercorn said he’d learned the procedure some time ago but didn’t go into detail, insisting only that it was important to keep removing the excess air in Julip’s chest cavity so that her lung could inflate. It appeared to be working so far.

Chops glanced from Julip back to Roach, then flipped the notepad to a fresh sheet and began writing. Roach rocked Ginger as she grew quiet, rubbing her back while Chops held the pad out for him to read.

Does Aurora still have her Pip-Buck?

Roach squinted at the words, thought for a moment, then nodded. Chops sighed as if it were the answer he was expecting but not the one he necessarily wanted to hear. Roach didn’t blame him. The thought of the Steel Rangers finally getting their hooves on a working Pip-Buck probably gave the Enclave night terrors.

He waited as Chops scribbled out another sentence and held it up.

I might be able to help.

Roach gave him a look of warning. Chops already had pencil pressed to paper.

No trick. Need to report home.

He didn’t trust it. Chops was the Enclave in the flesh, without any reservations for who he served or the orders he was tasked with. He wasn’t Julip. There would be a hook waiting for them at the end of this rope and no doubt Chops was well trained in obscuring where it would be once they grabbed on.

He also knew they didn’t have any other options. Wherever Aurora was, she was on the clock. Their only saving grace was that they’d only found one mare shot at the crater instead of two. If Ironshod had gone through the trouble of taking her somewhere, it meant he had something planned.

Chops apparently sensed his hesitation because he’d begun writing again unprompted. This time he was more direct.

Not asking permission. Direct orders to protect Aurora. Can’t fail. Be ready to move when I get back.

Bewildered, Roach had begun rereading the note when Chops pulled back the pad and jotted down a shorter line.

Tell the unicorn I’m sorry.

With that, Chops set the notepad and pencil on a nearby stock shelf and made a beeline for the back door. Roach watched him shoulder the door open and trot off into the alley, his hoofsteps picking up speed as they irrevocably faded away.

“Get her up.”

Aurora could barely muster the strength to tense up at the sensation of hooves wrenching her off the floor. Her bloodied cheek ripped away from the frosted metal like a scabbed bandage, pulling open the angry flesh of her torn lip in the process. The freezer lurched right-side up with a firm clack of chair legs striking metal. Ironshod stared down at her like he might regard a pet caught soiling the rug, lacking sympathy or shame.

He lifted his bloodied right hoof and idly regarded the iron nailed to it.

“What is Stable 10’s purpose?”

She swallowed, fighting back the urge to gag on the slimy texture of so much clotted blood sliding down her throat. How long had they been doing this? She’d lost track of time. Freeze and thaw. Freeze and thaw. Sometimes a beating in between. Sometimes just an empty, open door that slammed shut again. Sometimes nothing. Just a break long enough to keep her alive a little while longer.

Whenever Ironshod stepped into her little prison, she knew she’d have more time to warm up. More precious minutes to convince him to let her go. That this conspiracy about her home was just empty dreaming. That he’d assembled the puzzle the wrong way.

Ironshod grew impatient. His horn lit, bathing the freezer in cold silver light, and a bright bolt of pain sprang from her torn lip as his aura clamped down around it. She let out an exhausted cry as he pulled it away from her teeth.

“If you can whine, you can answer. Don’t waste my time.”

“Home,” she slurred, tasting the hot blood coating her gums. “It’s my home.”

He doused his horn and sighed at the soldier standing behind her. “Does it sound like she’s avoiding the question to you?”

A stilted mare’s voice responded. “Yes, sir.”

Meeting Aurora’s widening gaze, he said, “Hold her head up. I don’t want her flinching this time.”

Magic coiled through her dirty mane, pulling her pale blonde locks into a clutch that wrenched her head upward. She began to cry again as Ironshod positioned himself a few degrees to Aurora’s left as he chose the spot he wanted to ruin next.

“Wait!” she sputtered, her taut mane preventing her from turning her head. “Wait wait wait…”

He stopped, brow arched expectantly.

“Stable-Tec d-did experiments, right? They, um, maybe might have done one on us too!”

His posture relaxed, ears pointing more fully toward her.

“Our generator-”

He cut her off. “Elder Coldbrook already informed me about your generator troubles. Try again.”

The admission took her by surprise. Ironshod was Coldbrook’s subordinate. Why would he take the time to fill him in at all? She forced herself to set it aside. Ironshod was radiating impatience.

“But did he tell you about the ignition talisman?” When that failed to garner a reaction, she added, “Someone designed it to fail early. S-sabotage, I think. Why would the Enclave sabotage their own Stable?”

Ironshod watched her for several long seconds before giving the soldier behind her a subtle head shake. The tension in Aurora’s mane relaxed and she breathed a grateful, shuddering breath at the relief that followed.

He paced across her field of view, his attention seemingly absorbed with the empty shelving along the frosted walls. “Perhaps you did something that angered them.”

A deep throbbing in her hind legs signaled the return of feeling to them. She latched onto the hypothetical like passing flotsam. “Or-or maybe someone in the Enclave found out about us… maybe Primrose found out and didn’t want a Stable of dustwings getting loose! Maybe they transmitted some kind of… code or told Millie to wind the generator down for them?”

Ironshod frowned at her, unconvinced.

She forced herself to keep talking, afraid that once she had nothing left to say the interrogation would end and the next part would begin again. “Or maybe, maybe I’m wrong. Ironshod, I don’t know. I don’t know what you want me to say. Back at the Bluff you showed me a… um, a pin with RC engraved in it. Remember Cloudsdale. You said it was important enough that if I were with the Enclave I wouldn’t have given it back. That it was sacred somehow. You believed me back then because of that, so why not now?”

She watched him suck in a breath and slowly exhale, fogging the air like a kettle on the boil. For a fleeting moment he smirked at her. Then he lifted his hoof and let it swing back toward the ground like a pendulum, the edge of the iron shoe spitting sparks as it clicked across the stainless floor.

“Back then, I didn’t have your Pip-Buck. I didn’t know your Stable was a haven for pegasi or that its first overseer was a founding member of the Enclave.” He turned, sauntering toward her and settling a hoof onto the knee of her hind leg. She instinctively tried to pull away but her bindings only sawed deeper into her skin. He ignored her struggling and continued on. “Back then I didn’t know who I was dealing with. But I do now, Aurora. I know you’re an excellent liar.”

He leaned his weight onto her knee until she could smell the stink on his breath. “Your story about your generator? We know that’s dragonshit. You confirmed our suspicions when you accepted the Elder’s offer. That talisman he sent a photo of wasn’t the type you claimed to need. Not even close. The fact that you didn’t question it made it crystal clear to us that you were lying, yet again.”

She stared at him wide-eyed. Coldbrook had sent her a picture of a shield talisman as a test? What about the crate? The spec sheets?

“You had one all along. You made me come all this way… go through all of that shit all because I didn’t know what one looked like?”

Ironshod didn’t indicate a yes or no, but there was a sick glimmer of pride in his eye all the same. He was enjoying this. Whether he believed her or not wasn’t even a factor. It pleased him enough just to see her hurt. The burning ache his weight was drilling through her knee was just icing on the cake.

“We’re well past that. Let’s think back a little further to the first chat we had at the wall. Do you remember what I told you I’d do if I found out you lied to me?”

Her heart clamored against her ribs as his first threat sifted out of what felt like an ancient memory. She swallowed, her stomach twisting in revolt as cold blood pooled into it. Her eyes went to Ironshod’s hoof and her knee below it. He bent down in response, forcing her to look at him.

“Tell me what I said, Aurora.”

If I find out you’re lying, I’ll put you in crutches.

She pressed her lips into a white line, shaking her head until strands of mane clung to her bloodied mouth. She didn’t want to say it.

She didn’t have to. He knew she’d remembered.

He stood up fully and took a step back, releasing his hoof from her knee. When he spoke, his voice was as placid as the murky pond back in the crater. It grudgingly reminded her of the judicious tone her dad used to use when she was little and couldn’t decide on what she wanted, and she hated Ironshod in that moment for dragging that thought into this place.

“I’ll let you choose,” he cooed. “Left leg or right? Pick one or I’ll do both.”

Her chest heaved with despairing sobs, willing herself to be somewhere else. For anyone to walk into the freezer and tell him to stop. That by some miracle the Rangers had discovered something that proved Aurora wasn’t the enemy and that all she wanted was to go home and forget she ever stepped hoof into this forsaken wasteland.

Through grit teeth and with a crackling voice, she whimpered, “Left.”

She was grateful that the soldier behind her didn’t force her to watch. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of Ironshod’s metallic steps, jumping at the almost gentle touch of his hoof against her knee as he prepared her punishment. Her breathing ratcheted out of control and she began to hyperventilate. She embraced it, hoping to black out before Ironshod struck, but he was quicker.

The crippling force of impact blended with the sound of splintering bone. A miasma of competing signals flooded her body in a howling chorus of red hot agony. The chair snapped at the bolts, sending her tumbling back to the frigid floor in a writhing heap. Her voice jammed in her throat, the air stolen from her chest as her brain tried to find order among chaos. With tears in her eyes she looked down at her shattered leg and screamed.

This was bad.

This was very bad.

By the time Chops returned to the block where he last saw Dancer he was out of breath. To make matters worse his counterpart wasn’t here. Neither was the mare he’d been busily making eyes at. Her cart was still parked along the gutter, however. Its unimpressive contents of scrap mechanical parts and broken down pipe weapons were guarded by a lone earth pony stallion who looked as put out by his partner’s absence as Chops felt.

The stallion eyed him from behind the lit end of a hoof-rolled cigarette - something of a feat for ponies of his stock - his rear end parked squarely over the wagon’s forward beam. Judging by his build he did as much pulling as he did guard work. With no other option Chops hurried up the sidewalk to the loitering earth pony who in return drew a foreleg under the bastardized stock of a stubby automatic slung across his shoulder. It wasn’t a threat so much as a tacit warning that he didn’t trust Chops to get much closer.

The stallion didn’t know how lucky he was that Dancer wasn’t around to see. Being born mute had given Chops a well of patience for unintentional slights. Dancer or any other member of the Enclave for that matter wouldn’t tolerate being warded off by an earth pony. Just the suggestion of violence toward a pegasus was insubordination of the natural order itself, and it was no secret how creative some pegasi were in meting out reciprocity.

Chops was more interested in avoiding Minister Primrose’s justice than enacting his own. The two of them were already neck deep in shit because Julip fooled them into flying home. Now they’d lost a genuine pureblood to some fanatical offshoot of Rangers. If Primrose found out - who was he kidding, of course she would find out - they’d be lucky to see the inside of a prison cell.

He kept to the sidewalk, gesturing frantically at the rear of the wagon where Dancer had last been. The guard cocked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t handle trades. Come back when Sandy’s done getting her afternoon poke.”

Chops shook his head, wishing for the third time today he’d brought something to write with. He hated charades. No one he met was ever any good at it. He wasn’t even good at it. He swallowed his pride anyway and prompted the earth pony with two sharp strikes of his hoof against the sidewalk, staring at him expectantly.

The guard frowned. After a beat he said, “Two?”

He stuck his hoof out and nodded, tapping his chest.

“We don’t sell armor.”

Celestia’s dawn, he hated this. He stamped his hoof, touched it to his chest, stamped it again and gestured at the empty space beside him. When the meaning started to dawn on the guard, Chops gestured questioningly toward the surrounding buildings.

“If you’re looking for your brother…”

He bit down on the urge to throttle the stallion.

“...he and Sandy rented a room over there.” He hitched his hoof toward a disheveled four story building across the street. An illuminated sign hung below the second row of curtained windows bearing the name CRYSTAL CADENCE in an amalgamation of salvaged neon lettering. Chops had stared at the building while on his own guard duty earlier and hadn’t been able to make out what it was trying to advertise. Still couldn’t.

It looked less like a brothel and more like an aborted ransom note. Maybe that was the point. There were still ponies who preferred discretion, after all.

“Wanna bet a few caps on how long… hey! Where are you going?”

Chops stepped around the cart onto the street. He wove his way between clots of hoof traffic until he reached the opposite curb, his attention fixed on the gilded brass revolving door beneath the gaudy sign. He half expected to find a casino on the other side as he pushed his way inside but was instead greeted by an unassuming lobby decorated with peeling floral green wallpaper and faded white wainscoting. The battered carpet, a shade of pea soup, felt crisp beneath his hooves. He tried not to think too much about it as he strode across the small lobby, passing a cluster of once-plush sofas framed by fake potted ferns on his way to the front desk. Several bored looking ponies lingered in the lobby, some flipping through prewar magazines while others made idle conversation. Every one of them looked at him as he entered. More than a few eyebrows went up at his strange choice in apparel.

A chipper pink mare seated behind a working terminal watched him approach. “Hello there! Will you be booking on your own or can I interest you in our friends and family package?”

Chops stiffened slightly at the last part. A wide, schoolhouse chalkboard hung on the wall behind the mare, advertising the rooms, services and more than a few ponies currently on offer. He could only assume most of the mares and stallions waiting around the lobby were named on the board, available for those who didn’t arrive with a partner in mind.

The young mare waited for his answer with a porcelain smile. Chances were he wasn’t the first weirdo to wander in, but he could already tell that his silence was unsettling her. She didn’t seem the type for pantomime so on a whim he decided to try something else. Taking a page from Dancer’s book, he gave the lobby ponies a theatrically suspicious glance before turning back to the desk attendant with his best deadpan, touching the tip of his hoof to his lips. Her smile slipped as he nodded at a stack of old hotel letterhead behind the counter and mimed writing with his muzzle pointed toward the discolored veneer.

“Uh…” She lit her horn and a sheet wafted onto the countertop. He nodded his encouragement and she soon provided him with a pen.

He touched pen to paper and scribbled out a quick note. He could’ve gone with something simple and direct but something told him a place like this would have policies in place preventing strangers from interrupting paying guests. More than likely there would be security on the premises as well which would make knocking on doors a short-lived excursion. The pink unicorn was one of the low ponies on the totem pole which meant she was replaceable. Might even be on indenture depending on who owned the business.

He turned the sheet around and pushed it toward her. At first she frowned. Then her eyes grew wide.

Stay quiet. You’re not in trouble. Have reason to believe a counterfeiter rented a room here. Caps he paid you with are fake. Earth pony, leather duster, wearing a bandolier. Brought a mare with him named Sandy.

The mare sank in her chair and reread the note. “My boss is going to kill me.”

He pulled back the sheet and added, I need his room number.

“I gave them Room 401. Top floor.” She looked at him apologetically. “What am I supposed to do? He paid for the Empire Suite. I can’t afford to cover two hundred and fifty caps. How do I even tell which ones are fake?”

He held up a placating hoof and scratched out an answer. Steel Rangers will reimburse you after I take him into custody. I’ll need a key.

Relief settled over her and she nodded, dipping beneath the desk briefly before reappearing with a ring crowded with a thicket of brass keys hanging from her jaw. He waited as she used her magic to sort out the right key and disconnected it from the ring. He had to stop himself from shying away from the pale pink glow as she held it out for him. He still hadn’t been able to reconcile what exactly Ginger had done to him, or how. Magic beyond simple manipulation was effectively dead in Equestria, or at least it was supposed to be. And yet he could still feel the remnants of nausea from being… moved. Like the space between where he’d been and where he’d ended up hadn't been there at all.

He snapped out of it and took the key. Their mission was getting complicated, fast. Dancer needed to know what was going on.

Three flights of stairs later he stepped into the fourth floor hallway. The decor was much the same as the lobby save for the pink, diamond patterned wallpaper and assortment of quartz crystals suspended from the ceiling on what appeared to be fishing line. Yellowed photos of the long dead Crystal Empire hung on the walls, most featuring scenic views of grand crystalline vistas. Fakes, probably, though a photo of the royal family seemed real enough. Plenty of pictures of those old traitors still fluttering around the wasteland.

The door to Room 401 stood at the end of the hall. He was barely halfway to it when he started to hear the unmistakable noises of the room in use. His lip wrinkled at the sound of Dancer’s exaggerated grunting. He always grunted whether his mare or stallion of choice liked it or not. Chops had seen more than a few leave camp tails down and visibly annoyed. The lucky ones were usually able to convincingly fake their finish and be done with it, but some were left to endure Dancer’s “performance” until he ran out of steam or got bored.

Judging by the solo act permeating the thin walls, Dancer’s partner was probably being subjected to the latter. Chops uttered a silent groan and sank the key into the lock.

When the door swung open he saw pretty much what he’d expected. A somewhat elegant room decorated with pastel crystals, fake marble pillars and more framed artwork fitting for the Empire Suite. The walls had been given a fresh coat of white paint making the room feel almost sterile were it not for the soft shades of pink and lavender cast by candlelight reflecting off the rose quartz decor. And, of course, a four poster bed dominated most of the room because an oversized bed with its own dusty curtains had been the height of luxury in some lonely decorator's mind.

Chops was less concerned with the furniture and more with the ponies occupying it. Dancer, ever the gentlecolt, had the trader mare bent over the edge of the bed and had mounted her from behind. He winced at the jarring sight of Dancer’s ballsack flinging back and forth under his pitched tail, his pale purple wings clutching the ornate bedposts for… leverage.

Chops kicked the door closed, startling a yelp from the mare and causing Dancer to sputter a startled curse as he pivoted to face their intruder. For a moment the two of them stared at him, one spread over the old mattress and the other at full mast. The mare clearly recognized him from his intrusion back on the street and glared at Dancer for an explanation. Dancer simply rolled his eyes, turned back and unceremoniously jammed his cock back into her.

“You know there’s usually a charge - unf - for watching.”

Chops huffed his disapproval and crossed the suite, picking up Dancer’s discarded duster while diligently trying not to notice the thick scent of sweat and sex. He didn’t like being included in Dancer’s imaginary audience any more than that mare was enjoying his attempts to use his dick as a battering ram. He threw the duster at Dancer and it tangled noisily around his hind legs.

“Little late - ah - for that now.” He gripped the bedposts more tightly. “Go be pissy outside.”

Empty offer. Dancer wouldn’t care whether he left or pulled up a chair for a closer look. Chops stole a glance at the mare, and noted the twitches of discomfort in the corners of her eyes. He sighed and looked around for something to write with but of course there was nothing to be found. Ponies didn’t rent these rooms to write in their journals. Screw it, then. He unbound his feathers and the rasping of his jacket hiking up above his opening wings caught Dancer's attention.

There was some concern in Sandy’s eyes as Chops began motioning a series of simple signs that Dancer grudgingly observed. His pumping slowed to an almost resigned pace.

I contacted Aurora’s group. They were attacked. Julip injured, Aurora abducted. Steel Rangers have her.

“Fuck.” Dancer nearly stopped, paused, then resumed his frenetic thrusting. “Fine, but let me finish, first.”

“Someone ought to,” Sandy muttered.

Chops balked at him and gestured a hurried we need to go at him, but his attention was zeroed in on his work. Deliberately so. Chops stepped closer, practically standing beside the mare he was intent on fucking into a wheelchair and gnawed his lip in anger as Dancer looked up at the ceiling to avoid his pestering signs. He stamped the floor but Dancer ignored him, his thrusting becoming frustrated from the now thoroughly unwanted distraction. He stamped again. Last chance. But Dancer kept at it, bent on crossing the finish line.

That’s it.

He rounded the bed, ducking under Dancer’s wing and stood close enough to the lieutenant to make him recoiled a little, thrown off by the invasion. Chops glared up at him.

“Celestia’s sake, Chops…”

He held up a feather and set his jaw when Dancer diverted his gaze. Okay then. Plan D it is. He extended a single long primary and lifted his wing until the tip of it stood prominently in Dancer’s line of sight. An old family trick. Well, less of a trick and more unvarnished abuse. His grandmother used it whenever the stallions of the house got a little too relaxed and became “indecent,” as she politely put it. Only there was nothing polite about it. It hurt like everliving fuck.

Without apology, he tracked Dancer’s thrusts. The slick appearance and submergence of his mottled shaft was easy to time. Out, in. Out, in. Out…

His wing and its single extended feather struck across exposed skin and continued toward the floor with an ear splitting CRACK. Dancer’s grip on the bedposts dissolved as he stumbled out of the startled mare with an audible pop, crumpling onto the rug floor while making a shrieking noise better suited to a filly a fifth his size. He rolled on the floor like a mortally wounded mole rat, wings clutching fruitlessly at his groin as a furious red welt surfaced along the circumference of his quickly retreating cock. Sandy took the easy out and slid off the bed with a look that said she didn’t want to get mixed up in whatever this was. Chops watched her go not without a little satisfaction.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Dancer howled, rocking himself back and forth on the tacky rugs. There were tears in the stallion’s eyes, his face caved in like he’d just bitten a lemon. At least now he was looking at him. His feathers cut through the air as he signed his rebuttal.

Steel Rangers kidnapped Aurora. If they kill her, we die too. What the fuck is wrong with YOU?

“I was almost done you fucking asshole!”

You're done now.

Dancer craned his neck back and closed his eyes, uttering a bitter, “Fuck you.”

He kicked his leg, forcing the stallion to look at him. Pack your dick away and stand up. We need to talk strategy.

“Strategy my blue balls,” he groaned, grudgingly forcing his hooves under him. “Fuck... she’s still got that Pip-Buck, right? We can go find a spritebot and tell the geeks back home to start pinging for it, same as always.”

Except for the part where Primrose finds out we lost her.

Dancer winced as he stood up, his hind leg hitched slightly to deny Chops another opportunity to featherwhip his delicates. “The way I see it, Julip’s the one who lost her.”

She took a bullet for her. I’m not throwing her under the bus.

“The fuck is a bus?”

He ignored the question with a dismissive wave. Rangers take the low road, not us.

“Julip took the low road when she betrayed the Enclave.” For a brief second Dancer looked conflicted about his own response, but not enough to backtrack on it. Chops was well aware the two had been friends as they came up through the Enclave and no doubt it weighed on him to cast that all aside. Regulation was regulation. He glanced at Chops and flinched away from his poised feathers. “Should I be worried about you getting wingsy or can I put my leg back down?”

He signed a choice bit of profanity in response, his eyes trailing back to the door. How much did you tell her?

“Oh, you know, that I’m an agent of the Enclave sent here on a mission to recover the escaped pureblood pegasus of Commander Spitfire’s lost Stable. Gave her my serial number too in case she finds a spritebot and wants to call me.” Dancer let out a derisive snorted and relaxed his stance, following his partner’s exacerbated gaze. “I told her the usual. Lonely dustwing seeking adventure, treasure and companionship. We were having a good time until you kicked down the door.”

He shook his head. Whatever you say. If you’re up for a walk, I’ll show you where Aurora’s friends are hiding out. Then we call home. We can work out what to do on the way.

Dancer picked up his duster by his teeth and threw it across his back. “You say that like we have more than the once choice to pick from.”

Because they didn’t. Not really. If they were going to find Aurora, they were going to have to ask for help. On any other mission one of them might have been able to pull some strings to ensure things were handled quietly, but not this one. This mission was radioactive. Everyone who touched it would wind up under a microscope if something went wrong, and something had already gone very wrong. Primrose was going to find out. There wasn’t any other way to cut it.

Chops let Dancer steady himself against him as he worked his forelegs into the duster’s ungainly sleeves. He stepped aside once Dancer was finished, his partner’s wings once again obscured. Just two earth ponies wandering the wasteland together, same as every mission.

He began to sign. The unicorn has magic.

Dancer started making his way to the door. “The sky is blue.”

Real magic. Old world stuff.

He waited as Dancer wrapped the knob in his lavender feathers, holding short of opening the door. “No shit, another one? Think it’ll have any play with Primrose?”

Can’t hurt to mention it.

Dancer grunted. “Yeah. Why do I get the feeling I’ll be doing all the talking?”

“I’m not being unreasonable. In fact, I’ve been more than generous.”

“All we’re asking is for one more day. Two, tops. Enough time for her to recover and find our missing friend.”

“You have until tomorrow morning. After that, I want the three of you gone.”

Julip listened to the discussion take place within a thick fog of lethargy. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t move. She was in that comfortable middle ground between the end of sleep and wakefulness, under no obligation to do anything except lie still and sink.

Only the wooden table pushed back. Her head throbbed. The light overhead made her distantly aware that even her eyes hurt. But she tried to keep still. She clung onto the fibers of sleep hoping she might slip away for a bit longer.

“You don’t think I know what she is?” A pause. Something grabbed one of her wings and lifted it. She grunted. “I’ve examined dustwings before and not a single one of them had this degree of muscle development. She’s flown on these wings and she does it often. The only pegasi who fly enough to see this kind of definition come from the Enclave.”

A gravelly voice drew close to her. Her wing was set back down. “She isn’t a threat. She defected.”

“It doesn’t matter and frankly I don’t care. I operated on her. She’s going to recover because of me. If the Rangers find her here they’ll lock me up for aiding and abetting an enemy. I want her out before I open the pharmacy tomorrow. Period.”

Sleep pulled her away from the voices. When she resurfaced, the room was quiet. The air smelled cooler than she remembered, but a gentle weight was keeping her torso warm. She could feel herself waking up more fully this time, bringing with it all the aches and pains that the drugs temporarily kept at bay. Her brow wrinkled as she shifted on the table in search of a less uncomfortable position to lay in. She eventually settled onto her left shoulder and risked cracking open an eye.

For a long moment she saw nothing but inky darkness. Then, slowly, a crackled pattern of pale green fissures glowing with that strange inner light resolved into view, close enough that she could make out the smaller plates of chitin that floated like little continents on a mantle of luminescent skin.

The longer she waited, the more details she could make out against the black. He’d propped his head up on the table against his hoof, the ridge of his muzzle tilted at just slight enough an angle that his lower lip drooped open as he snored. His mouth, gums, even his teeth gave off a gentle jade glow. She wondered if the radiation was what kept ghouls living for so long, then she remembered most ghouls didn’t luminesce at all. Not the friendly ones, anyway. She set the thought aside and watched him sleep.

Time passed. Roach eventually stirred, his eyes opening the slightest bit before turning to focus on her. A smile crossed his lip. “How’re you feeling?”

She pulled her knees up under the old blanket, spurring a dull ache in the core of her chest. “Not dead.”

“It’s a start.” He took a deeper breath, coming awake himself. “Do you need any painkillers?”

She hesitated, then nodded. Roach sat up, stretched and pushed himself out of his creaky wooden chair. His hooves scuffed across the floor, the pale lines of his body dimming a little in the darkened room as he walked to the far shelves and retrieved a bottle of pills. He picked something up on his way back. A set of saddlebags.

She looked at the bags as he sat down. “Those are new.”

Roach sat the bottle down in front of her and produced a metal flask from the saddlebags that sloshed between his teeth. She sat up a little and plucked the stopper from the bottle, tipping out a pair of little white pills. After eyeing them for a moment she popped them into her mouth and chased them with a swig from the flask. The water was warm and clean, and in that instant it reminded her just how thirsty she was. She tipped the rim to her lips and drank deeply, nearly forgetting to come up for air until the flask ran dry. When she sheepishly offered it back, he pressed a second one into her wing with a knowing smile. She’d almost downed the entire thing before she finally felt satiated.

Settling back onto her side, her belly satisfied for the time being, she watched him pack away the empty flasks and quietly hoped he might offer one of the apples they’d picked in Stable 1. Then she remembered those had been in her bags. She took an uneasy breath and asked, “Did you find Aurora?”

Roach lifted a hoof to his lips and turned to the darkened room where Ginger lay sleeping on the floor in the far corner, curled around new saddlebags of her own with her back pressed to the wall. He turned back to Julip and shook his head.

She let that sink in. “What time is it?”

“It’s late,” he whispered. “Close to midnight.”

“What’s the plan?”

Again, Roach shook his head. Reluctantly this time. “We’re still working on it.”

She frowned at him but he didn’t offer anything else. Because there was no plan. The Rangers had gotten away with Aurora. They hadn’t left any clues behind. No cryptic note, no ransom, nothing. That crucible-marked ballbag who put a bullet in her didn’t want to be found.

Aurora could be anywhere.

The last few days had been one hit after the other. Julip glanced over Roach’s shoulder to where Ginger slept. She looked broken.

“So we’re stuck.” She set her head back down on the table with a heavy thump. “Goddesses, I fucked everything up.”

“I already told you, green bean. None of this is your fault.”

“Saying that doesn’t make it true.” A lump threatened to bog up her throat. She took a moment to collect herself. Roach waited. “What’s with the nickname?”

He tilted his head and shrugged. “Old habit. I’ll stop.”

Her tail flicked. “Didn’t say you had to.”

A tiny, barely perceptible smile perked the corner of his lip. It proved contagious. Emboldened, she took an experimental breath and scrunched her face at the dull pinch of stitches. “Feels good to breathe again.”

She lifted the old blanket with her wing to look at the square of clean gauze taped between her ribs. Her coat around the wound was stained dark, a mixture of blood and the disinfectant the doctor treated it with. No dirty rags, no infection, no needle scars from administering stimpack after stimpack. It was genuine, professional work. She knew medics in New Canterlot who would be impressed.

She glanced at Roach and saw the relief in his eyes, as if he still needed reassurance that she was going to be okay. She knew more than anyone how close she’d come to giving up. It was thanks to Roach and Ginger that she was here at all.

Propping herself up with her foreleg she scooted to the edge of the table, swallowed her pride and dropped a wing around Roach’s shoulder. To say she caught him by surprise was an understatement. With her injuries limiting most of her movement, she practically had to climb up the changeling in order to properly hug him. It was awkward. She felt like an idiot, half-hanging off the table while clinging to the bewildered stallion with both wings, but she also needed this. She needed him to know she was grateful. That she didn’t regret staying with them.

“Thanks for not giving up on me,” she whispered.

Roach squeezed her back. For the first time that she could remember, she felt sure she’d made the right choice.

Two things went through Ginger’s mind when she opened her eyes. The first being that it was too bright out. The ground itself shone with painful white light and reflex crushed her eyelids into tense slits. Seconds passed as she tried to orient herself. Hooves scuffed the pavement around her. Someone laughed. The rev of an engine caught her ear, but there was something wrong about the way it sounded. No clunk or screech of rusting metal, no banging of moving parts worn centuries past their intended lifespan. She forced her eyes to open a little more and watched a powder blue carriage putter away on a sheet of blinding cobblestone. And so the second thing occurred to her.

She was dreaming again.

A trio of pastel mares giggled as they stepped around her, glossy shopping bags swinging from the jaw of one while the other two trotted along with their own suspended effortlessly in vivid shades of magic. She blinked. Suddenly she was standing off to one side of the busy sidewalk, a pristine display window cool against her shoulder. It felt like her subconscious was trying to fill in the gaps, and she vaguely remembered walking here… but after the fact? Something must be wrong with the dream, she assumed. Disoriented, she winced against the dizziness and tried to get her bearings.

She was certainly in a city somewhere. Not Fillydelphia judging by the architecture. The street was neatly framed by buildings hardly more than a couple stories tall, many of them intricately decorated with finely crafted wood details that made the pinks, whites and lavender facades stand out as if she’d been dropped into a bowl of dinner mints. No scavenged signs here. These were originals. Antiques made new again.

This was Equestria before the war.

How? She stared, bewildered, into the storefront next to her. A pair of ponies seated at a window table stared back, brows curiously tilted at the mare interrupting an impossibly detailed, colorful meal Ginger had never seen before. She flushed with embarrassment and turned away while still entirely too conscious of the fact that none of this was real. Unsure of where she should be going or what to do, she nervously merged in among the stream of pedestrians.

Everything shuddered again and she walked knee-first into a wrought iron patio chair. It toppled along with her but the experience of falling ass over teakettle went muddy. A blink later she was standing, completely unharmed, the decorative chair standing a few feet behind her where it had originally been.

“Ruh roh,” a diminutive voice piped up behind her. “Someone’s running out of horn juice.”

Now she was entirely bewildered. She spun around to see a lone filly, hardly old enough for the porcelain cup of coffee held in her bubblegum pink wing, watching her with open amusement. Tight blue curls that went out of style centuries ago bobbed above cold, intelligent eyes. Ginger didn’t need to see the brick colored rook on her hip to know who she was.

“Primrose,” she said. It was as much of a hello as she was willing to offer. “I’m guessing this is your dream, then.”

“Mine and the dozen or so other wastelanders running around in here.” Primrose sipped and set the cup onto a matching saucer waiting on the small round table in front of her. She gestured toward the chair Ginger had only recently tackled. “Pull up a seat and try not to gawk so much. You’d be amazed how good these nutjobs can be at picking out dreamers.”

She did as she was told and sat down, unsure whether Primrose was lying, delusional or both. Despite the filly seated across from her, sitting down gave her some relief from the strange jitters that plagued her. She took the opportunity to look around a little.

There were more identical patio tables and chairs dotting the streetside cafe. Some were occupied by other ponies who ate, drank and mingled as if all of this was entirely normal. A winged stallion nearby slouched over a brand new hardcover book while chewing on some kind of hoop-shaped pastry. The blue and yellow bottom half of a form-fitting flight suit clung to, well... everything. A few tables away, two mares eyed the lone stallion with hooves tactfully hiding their muzzles. Judging by their excited whispering they were trying to goad the other into talking to him. Celestia have mercy, some things never change.

The roar of another engine caught her attention and she watched, jaw dangling, as a genuine prewar Sparkle-Cola truck hauled its way to the corner. It slowed on squeaking brakes and idled just off the curb, brake lights glowing, and heaved around the bend on its way to wherever it was going. Everyone in the wasteland knew what motorized carriages were. Once in a while someone even managed to get one of the old engines to turn over. But to see one working? Rolling on tires that hadn’t collapsed, dried out and broken apart like rotten wood? It was no wonder these things were everywhere!

It rolled away as quickly as it had appeared, leaving her to resist wondering how much work it took to keep that one vehicle running. She knew better than to dive down that rabbit hole. Equestrian infrastructure was well, well beyond her understanding.

Her attention was quickly drawn across the busy intersection to the imposing structure just a few blocks away. She blinked, once, her eyes widening with vague recognition. There, embedded into a towering wall of granite, stood six dense white pillars. A large, colorful banner hung from the top of each supporting stone with the unmistakable shape of an Element emblazoned on them. They dwarfed the ponies filing up and down the marble stairs beneath them, the architecture itself radiating power and security.

Until now she’d only seen the Pillar’s famous facade in yellowed prewar propaganda and the odd film reel her father liked to collect. This was something different entirely.

“This is Old Canterlot,” she murmured, turning back to Primrose. “We’re on the mountain right now.”

“Give the unicorn a prize,” she droned. “Stop rubbernecking like some tourist. This isn’t even real.”

Ginger settled back into her chair, but there was no force in Equestria capable of keeping her from staring at the spires of Canterlot Castle just over Primrose’s shoulder. “There are others here, too? How?”

She fiddled with the cup’s handle. “How else? Luna’s pet ghost got lonely again. Just keep your head down and they won’t bother you.”

“Who…?”

Primrose rested her chin atop her wing and pointed a tiny pink feather up the street. Ginger cautiously followed her feather. She didn’t have to bother scanning the crowd for the pony Primrose had spotted. The lone zebra stallion stood out like a sore hoof. He strode down the middle of the street with no concern for the vehicles rolling past him, teeth flashing behind a black muzzle as he shouted up into the endless blue sky.

“Don’t stare,” Primrose murmured. “He’s a fucking cornball.”

“He’s a zebra,” she whispered back. “I thought zebras were all dead.”

He stopped at the middle of the intersection and shouted what sounded like gibberish at a passing carriage whose driver didn’t appear to notice him at all. The lack of reaction only made him more furious and his eyes quickly fixed on the distant shape of Canterlot Castle. He stormed past the corner cafe, oblivious to Ginger or Primrose as he turned his outrage toward the lofty spires.

“Maxaad halkan noo keenta?! U qaado jinniyadaada Vhanna! Tus waxa aad ku samaysay dalkii hooyo!!”

She didn’t understand the words but the challenge in them was unmistakable. Yet no one seemed to pay him any mind. It was as if he wasn’t there at all. They watched him go, occasionally stopping to accost passing drivers.

“Eshe’s the only one who hates these… communal dreams more than I do,” she chuckled. Now that he was well past noticing them, Ginger could see the unfiltered joy it brought Primrose to see the stallion so infuriated. “Don’t let the stripes fool you. He’s fluent in ponish and he will remember your face.”

She shook her head and turned her gaze to the tabletop.

“Sorry, it can be a bit much the first time around. If it’s any consolation, he can’t hurt you in here.” She picked up her cup and took another sip. “Mm. Or out there, for that matter. He’s still stuck in that Auto-Doc at the bottom of Mariponi. Poor bastard.”

Ginger frowned. “Mariponi?”

She glanced away, ignoring the question. “I forgot to ask, how is the mission going?”

And just like that, the illusion shattered and reality came crashing through. Here she sat experiencing a fantasy most ponies believed impossible while Aurora languished… where? Ultimately it didn’t matter where. It only mattered that she was out there, alone, and it killed Ginger to know there wasn't a thing she could do to change that.

Tears stung at her eyes but she would be damned if she'd let them fall. Still her vision blurred. She lit her horn and swept them away while pegasi crisscrossed the sky above.

"That good, huh?" Primrose sat up a little higher in her chair. She was practically small enough to need a booster seat. "I only ask because I received a report this evening that has me concerned. Did you lose her?"

She scrubbed a hoof against her nose. "Rangers took her."

"The supposed 'rogue squadron' led by Paladin Ironshod, I take it?"

Her eyes hardened. "Chops told you."

Primrose giggled. The sound of it coming from a filly's mouth was profoundly disturbing. "Chops just flaps his wings around like a headless chicken. His flouncy counterpart does enough talking for the two of them."

She shook her head. "You're cruel."

"Says the mare indulging Aurora in the wasteland’s least plausible scavenger hunt." She brought the cup to her lips, enjoying the scent of the seemingly endless substance it contained. "If it weren't for me, Coldbrook's Rangers would already be banging at Stable 10's door. Now he has a full company of our finest flyers to keep him occupied."

Ginger looked away. She reminded herself she was playing with fire just by speaking to this mare. Filly. Whatever she was. As much as she hated it, she needed to set her own baggage aside. At least for a little while.

"Do you like cappuccino?"

She hesitated. "What?"

Primrose set the cup on its saucer and pushed it toward her. "Try some."

A list of possibilities went through her mind. Poison, chems, truth serum… none of any made sense in the context of a dream, but past experience told her not to drink any liquid she couldn't see through. Especially when they were brown.

"Or don't." A second cup appeared in the filly's wing. "You'll be missing out, though. I thought it might pair well with a little good news."

She watched the filly sip and wince as if she'd singed her lip. Either it was a good act or she was actually being sincere. When describing the immortal leader of the Enclave, very few ponies thought the latter.

Ginger floated the cup from its saucer and eyed the contents. "You're going to help us," she predicted.

"Even better, I already am." Primrose grinned in her seat, giving her the uneasy appearance of a child preparing to yank out a rusty carving knife. "Or more accurately, my field agents have been. So far we can confidently say Aurora is still in Fillydelphia."

The cup dropped, flickered and reset itself onto the saucer. Ginger stopped just short of leaping from her chair.

"You found her? Where is she? Is she okay?"

The little filly held her wings out, miming for her to calm down. "I think you misunderstand me. We've narrowed her down to the city. A big city. It's going to take time to pinpoint exactly where she is."

Her mind was racing. "How do you know? How long until you find her?"

She tapped her foreleg. "I have some assets in the area working on getting a ping from Aurora's Pip-Buck. They've only just started but they were able to briefly pick up a faint response. It'll take more pegasi to cover enough ground in order to refine the accuracy."

She swallowed the stone in her throat and nodded rapidly, not trusting herself to speak.

Primrose smiled with that too-cheery smile. "She's still alive, Ginger."

Even coming from the demented little nightmare seated in front of her, the words hit Ginger like a hammer. She nearly lost it and it was a battle to cling to the shreds of her composure. She looked up at the puffy clouds being herded by weather ponies overhead and allowed herself to wipe her eyes, coughing a sobbing little laugh. Aurora was alive, and she was still here. It wasn't much, but for now it was just enough to keep her head above water.

"Good. That’s good," she whispered. "I want to help."

"We won’t need it. It’ll be easier for everyone if you and your friends stay put and wait." She steepled her hooves, her expression growing serious. "You've already muddied things by involving the local chapter of Rangers. They'll be paying attention to you. The fact that you have them looking for their own people has created an opportunity for my pegasi to slip into the city, but I can’t afford to have you seen asking for updates from anyone not on Coronado’s salary."

Ginger filled in the rest. "Because he’ll want to hunt down your people instead of Ironshod."

Primrose nodded. "Nobody will have time to find Aurora when we’re busy killing each other, and my assets won’t have the option to fly away with the city’s guns monitoring the skies. That’s why this operation will… ah. Welcome to the party."

Following Primrose’s unwelcoming gaze, Ginger twisted in her seat and managed a halfhearted smile. The Tantabus was politely weaving her way through the tables toward them, pushing in the odd chair with the flat of her wing as she passed. That caught Ginger’s attention. She had wings. Feathers, even. She wasn’t appearing as an intangible starscape cut out of the world she occupied. She was as defined as any other pony in this dream. Maybe even a little more.

Primrose’s tone was touched with mockery. “What, no tiara?”

The Tantabus came to a stop to the left of Ginger, staring down at the impetuous filly with open disdain. Between the creature’s midnight blue coat and flowing mane - not to mention wings and horn - the list of ponies she was attempting to embody shrank considerably. And yet it was her vertical pupils that refined those options down to one.

Even lacking the silver plate armor, the helmet, and the deranged grin from the collection of colorful foal’s books she absorbed herself in when she was little, it was easy for Ginger to recognize the body of Nightmare Moon.

“Are you behaving yourself tonight, Cozy Glow?”

The filly’s mocking smile went brittle. “That isn’t my name.”

“Strange. I must have heard it in another pony’s dream. Let us consult your father to be sure.”

Primrose sat bolt upright, jarring the table and sending her cup clattering across its surface and off the edge. It stuttered midair as Ginger struggled to keep up with the sudden motion before flickering out of existence. She felt a pang of guilt at the sound of Primrose pleading. It didn’t last long. The Tantabus’s horn flashed and a stallion’s voice cut the air.

“COZY! Get your ass over here, NOW.”

Ginger startled at the sight of a pale blue unicorn easily twice Roach’s size shoving his way through the chairs toward them. He was carrying something in his magic. A length of copper tubing, folded in half and gripped by the ends like a club. She looked back to Primrose and saw the filly’s eyes swimming at the stallion’s approach. It pulled at her too hard to ignore. She lit her horn, fighting through disorientation and brought her shield down between Primrose and the memory of her father. The stallion stopped in the same manner Ginger’s father had in her first dream on the mountain, incapable of doing anything outside the bounds of Primrose’s own memories.

Primrose stared at Ginger with a mixture of grudging relief and deep humiliation. The shadow of her father tapped the folded pipe against the shield hard enough for Ginger to feel it rattling her horn. Three times he knocked before turning his ear to the barrier with barely contained fury creasing his muzzle. “You have until the count of three to tell me where my Jet is or I will TEAR this FUCKING DOOR DOWN. ONE!”

He never reached two. Something about the memory snapped something in the filly. She broke into frightened tears and in a wild panic began pounding her own hoof into her temple. Ginger sat, stunned, as Primrose finally recoiled with a genuine gasp of pain from the fourth strike and vanished. Her father disappeared with her.

Ginger looked up at the Tantabus, shaking her head. “That was unnecessary.”

She watched the creature’s lithe figure round the table and push Primrose’s empty chair in. “Do not pity her. She is a tyrant and a manipulator.”

“She wasn’t…” She doused her horn, finally releasing the unneeded shield. The simple effort made her lose track of what she wanted to say. Maybe she’d overdone it when contending with Chops. “I’m not arguing that she deserves to be punished, but… that felt wrong. Even for her.”

The Tantabus watched her thoughtfully. “I believe you misunderstand. I would not terrorize a child. Primrose is a grown mare of many years, even beyond my own.”

Her patience was waning. “That doesn’t matter.”

“I do not understand why.” She frowned down at herself. “Is it due to my appearance? Luna was very fond of this form and I would not-”

“You look fine, Tandy.” The words came out a little sharper than intended, but the Tantabus didn’t seem fazed by it. Everything about her posture - her puzzled frown, the tilt of her head, the forward facing ears - hinted at the fact that she truly didn’t understand what she had done wrong. Even stranger, she seemed keen to learn.

She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “If all you wanted to do was punish her, you could have woken her up. You don’t rip open trauma like that.”

The Tantabus wrinkled her nose at the little table and it seemed as if she might be on the verge of understanding. Then she spoke. “What is a Tandy?”

She deflated. This was going nowhere. “It’s a nickname Julip made for you.”

“Tandy,” she murmured, testing it out. “I like it. May I use it?”

“Knock yourself out,” Ginger shrugged. She watched a smile widen across Tandy’s blue-black muzzle. The de facto ruler of dreams looked around to the ponies on the sidewalk, the tables around them, the sharp canines of Nightmare Moon’s teeth showing as an undeniable happiness washed over her.

Tandy adopted her new name with an undeniably innocent charm. Ginger wanted to say as much, but she still couldn’t get over what had just happened to Primrose. How could Princess Luna create something of near omnipotence and neglect to instill it with a sense of compassion? Was she even aware of the ramifications, or was this just an example of the sort of laissez-faire thinking that led prewar ponies to blindly invent the tools of their own destruction? It felt akin to giving a grenade to a foal. The explosion was inevitable.

She pursed her lips and pushed out of her chair. Maybe words she’d chosen weren’t the right approach. Maybe in Tandy’s case, it was a lack of experience.

“Can I ask you a personal question?”

Tandy turned to her and nodded.

“Do you ever think about the memories you share with Luna?”

She paused for a moment. “Not often, no.”

Curious. “Why not?”

“Many of them I do not like.”

There we go. Ginger stepped around the table, hoping to lead Tandy to the sidewalk. She wanted to see more of Old Canterlot before she woke up. “That’s normal. We all have our share of memories we’d like to forget. Are there any you can remember that stand out? Ones you would prefer to avoid?”

Tandy didn’t follow as Ginger had hoped. Her smile was gone, replaced by a look of deep contemplation. “There is one.”

“Okay then. Think about how it would feel if-”

She stopped abruptly as Tandy turned toward her and lowered her horn to touch the tip of her own. A shock of something almost electric passed between them and for a split second Ginger felt paralyzed, unable to move as the edges of her vision began to tunnel into hazy pinpoints. Then, just as soon as it began, Tandy lifted her horn away and broke the connection. It left Ginger gasping.

“What was that?!”

“A gift. It would be difficult to experience the memory of another with your magic so depleted. What I shared should be enough.”

She stiffened. “You’re saying…”

Tandy smiled, anticipating her words. “I can only share what magic you are already able to contain. As another unicorn I knew once put it, I cannot make your cup larger but I can make it full again. Though I do not fault you for hoping otherwise. Now please, prepare yourself.”

Her horn flared with light causing Ginger to step back. The illusion around them rushed away in every direction until nothing was left but infinite void. Tandy was gone. Old Canterlot was gone. It was as if existence itself ceased to be and for a long moment Ginger was afraid that she would be stuck here, trapped in this suffocating nothingness until she became part of it.

And then, everything.

Light, sound, the deafening rush of air and the clattering of hooves erupted into a cacophony of chaos. She was running. No, flying through the ornate marble corridors of a building. Ponies in full armor ducked out of her way as they shouted after other occupants to evacuate. Ginger realized she wasn’t in control, here. She was merely a passenger being hauled along in some other mare’s body. She approached a junction to another grand hallway and pitched sideways with wings flared wide, braking just enough to catch her gilded hooves against a tapestry and kick off in the new direction.

She could feel the panic pounding in this mare’s chest, the existential dread convincing her that all of this was futile. It hadn’t worked against the changeling army. It wouldn’t work now. Too late to argue. It was happening.

She landed hard, driving furrows into the corridor’s opulent carpet as she skidded to a stop at the open door. The haunting howl of sirens filled her ears, beckoning the whole of Canterlot to seek shelter. Beyond the door, standing on the sunlit balcony on the other side of her bedroom, Celestia stared back at her with terror in her eyes.

“Hurry, Luna!”

The pale burn of emergency lights gave each foot of Stable 10 an unsettling yellow glow.

Sledge could already feel the low hum of panic beginning to rise. First Delphi’s suicide, then Aurora’s escape, the scheduled brown-outs that had gradually devolved into black-outs, and now this. The one event everyone had been hoping Aurora would be back in time to prevent had happened right when evacuating the Stable had been pulled off the table. Aurora hadn’t minced words when she told him about the faceless army gathering outside. If he opened that door they would pour in and strip their home down to the bare concrete. They would find themselves left to fend off the creatures of the wasteland, enslaved or worse.

And if he didn’t, and they couldn’t solve this problem without Aurora, they would die together in the corpse of their home. They were stuck. Worse, they were all looking to him for a solution.

Sledge passed his Pip-Buck’s light over the stilled heart of Stable 10. Once a chamber filled with the roaring hum of raw electricity, now the generator hall drowned in its own silence. The only sound came from the milling hooves of Mechanical’s technicians, the stifled clank of floor panels being lifted away and the occasional deep pings of cooling metal within the darkened machine itself. He clicked the flashlight off and stepped over to where Carbide and two other pegasi were working to remove the dead talisman.

“Any progress?”

The weak emergency lighting made it difficult to tell what anyone was doing, let alone Carbide’s team. “I’m getting ready to call it. The only way I see us getting in that chamber is with cutters.”

Which they couldn’t risk. None of them knew whether the chamber surrounding the ignition talisman played a part in its operation and despite over a week of searching none of them had been able to turn up a blueprint that shed light on it. Just another item on the list of things Stable-Tec decided wasn’t important for them to know. This wasn’t something they could afford to fly blind on and Carbide knew it, too.

“Where are we on power consumption?”

Carbide sat up from the hole in the floor and dimmed his Pip-Buck with a touch of exasperation. “I don’t know, Sledge. We’re running lights for the whole Stable off a two-hundred year old battery bank. With the way things are going, I’ll be surprised if they last a full day.”

He bristled. “Keep your voice down.”

Carbide was on his hooves in the space of a breath. He leveled a black feather at Sledge’s nose. “Keep my… we wasted days working on a containment system we don’t need anymore when we should have been optimizing the fucking jenny like I told you.”

“Get that feather out of my face before I pluck it.”

He could feel the eyes watching them now. Carbide too. After a tense moment the stallion dropped his wing. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Sledge chewed his lip and clapped a hoof against his shoulder. “You need a break. Do me a favor. Why don’t you go upstairs and get something to eat from the chow hall. Grab something for our guest, too.”

Carbide looked unsure. “You want me…”

“Volume,” he murmured.

He dropped to a whisper. “That’s a little over my pay grade, isn’t it? What if she’s… bitey?”

“You and Aurora handled each other just fine.” He smiled, ignoring the stallion’s faltering protest. “I’d do it if I didn’t already have my wings full, and besides Deputy Chaser has door duty tonight. That hasn’t changed. At the very least, just grab a meal and ask him to take it to her. Please.”

Carbide groaned at him. “Fine, alright. Gimme a few to close up the floor, first.”

“Try to wrap up in fifteen. If anyone gives you trouble about the second meal, have them ping my Pip-Buck. I need to swing by Sanitation in the meantime and get a read on the storage situation.”

“Water’s not going to be an issue this soon, is it?”

“Not as long as everyone sticks to their rations.” He chuckled darkly, trying to find a scrap of humor in their situation. “Shit still travels downhill, generator or not. With the recyclers down we may need to get creative on how to store it.”

“Better figure it out quietly or everyone’s going to hit the head at the same time. It’s enough work just keeping people’s wings away from their Pip-Bucks.” Carbide looked out at the denizens of Mechanical, many of their attentions split between pulling up floor panels and the green glows of the devices. “I’m thinking about confiscating them.”

He smirked at that. Word would get around, Pip-Bucks or no. “Food. Guest. Remember. I’ll check back later.”

He wished he could have departed Mechanical without ticking another box on the long list of emergencies they would soon be facing, but they were all past the point of being sheltered from their new reality. The more the residents knew, he decided, the more minds were turned toward finding solutions. He just needed to be careful with what he shared and how quickly. He needed to drip feed the bad news, prioritizing the critical issues. Get these ponies focused on the important problems.

He tapped the call button for the service elevator and waited, frowning when nothing happened only to remember it was down. He mumbled an embarrassed curse and pushed open the door to the stairwell. Sanitation was on the opposite side of the Stable just one floor above Mechanical. While some residents often wished their home were larger, especially the compartment levels, Sledge was just grateful it was the size it was. At a touch younger than fifty, he wasn’t getting any younger and these stairs weren’t getting any easier.

He couldn’t imagine living in a Stable like the one Aurora described in her most recent messages; a massive silo layed with dozens upon dozens of levels, with nothing but a single spiral staircase to travel from one to the other. How had the elderly gotten anywhere in a place like that? It sounded like each level was segregated to some degree as if travel on the stairs had been a deliberate design choice. And to have it collapse like it did. The thought of that happening here made him shudder. He wasn’t going to let that happen.

As he exited the stairwell and strode down the long corridor toward Sanitation, his thoughts wandered. Did the department head there have data on… intake? Maybe there was a way to moderate how often residents relieved themselves and stave off the inevitable hour when they ran out of places to store their waste. He grimaced at the thought of what would happen then while simultaneously accepting the fact that he only had passing knowledge of how Sanitation operated. With the exception of the pegasi who worked there, much of what happened down here was a mystery to most. He wasn’t looking forward to being shown what lay behind the big, brown curtain.

“Sledge! There you are!”

His ears perked at the familiar sound of Opal’s voice sprinting up the corridor behind him. Several other pegasi meandering through the dimly lit hall squinted in his direction, none of them aware that their overseer had been so close. He slowed enough to let Opal catch up, but he didn’t stop. If by some miracle he managed to live long enough to still be hustling around in his seventies, he’d be a happy stallion.

Opal looked ready to crawl out of her own skin when she reached him. Her eyes were wide, which wasn’t exactly uncommon given the state of fear among the residents, but not in the way he expected. It was the same look she’d worn when they’d broken through Delta’s encryption.

“I need to show you somethin’,” she said between winded breaths. “It’s important.”

He tried not to let his irritation show. “What I’m doing now is important.”

“Not compared to this it ain’t. We got power in I.T.”

The stress had gotten to her. “Those are just the terminals, Opal. They’ve all got internal power sources.”

She stepped in front of him, forcing him to a halt. “It ain’t that, you big idiot! The whole server room’s gone lit itself up like a Hearth's Warming tree. Lights, climate control, all the servers, everything in that room just… rose from the dead. Just like that Stable Aurora was at.”

Hope and dread whipped themselves into a tempest in his chest. He had no intention of letting his friends and neighbors wind up like the residents of Stable 1, and yet the things happening here were uncomfortably similar to the events that unfolded in that other place. And the more insights and revelations they uncovered from the past, the less he felt he had any control over any of this.

He looked down the corridor to the doors of Sanitation, then to the elderly mare barring his path. He sighed.

“Show me.”

“--orders have been rescinded. Failure to comply will be treated as an act of willful insubordination and result in loss of rank, expulsion from service and imprisonment. This message will repeat.”

Ironshod sucked at his teeth with his cold gaze turned toward the old ham radio set. The young radio operator, a Squire barred from further promotion thanks to a series of indiscretions he’d been complicit in regarding the collection of “tolls” from passing trade caravans and whose silence in this mission would earn him a clean record, carefully avoided eye contact with the stallion looming behind him.

“This message is intended for Paladin Ironshod and any Rangers or civilians under his command. You are engaged in unlawful action. By order of Elder Coronado, cease all operations immediately and remand yourselves and your captive to the custody of the Steel Rangers of Magnus Plaza. Your orders have been rescinded. Failure to comply…”

He lit his horn and pressed a switch on the radio. The speaker let out a hollow pop and the equipment went dark. The Squire couldn’t quite keep his ears from pinning back with worry. “What do we do, sir?”

“Nothing,” he said, his eyes lifting from the radio set on the faded counter to the Rangers gathered in the ransacked remains of what had once been a dining room.

A dozen armed mares and stallions reclined in ragged booths or standing in the space cleared at the center of the room to accommodate the four empty suits of P-65 power armor watched him with thinly veiled concern. They had all heard the broadcast well before Ironshod had been summoned up from the abandoned restaurant’s basement. An order like that, sent unencrypted over military and civilian frequencies, was no small thing. By now the entire city of Fillydelphia would know they were here, and the Rangers he’d brought on this mission hadn’t signed up to be arrested.

“We do nothing,” he repeated more firmly. “Coronado wants us out of his territory, which we will be once we’re finished. He doesn’t know where we are, and there are no laws in the Charter that forbid this interrogation.”

One of the recruits seated in a corner booth looked up from the disassembled rifle laid out on the table in front of her. Former Knight Rivers, he recalled. She’d already been stripped of her rank and discharged a year earlier after she and her friends had gotten drunk and stolen a crate of tracer rounds from the Bluff’s armory. They’d climbed to the top of the Bluff and managed to shoot off half the crate into the sky by the time Rangers in power armor reached them. It was one of the few times Hightower Radio had gone off the air in the middle of the broadcast due to its DJ having to hit the deck until Rivers and her fellow revelers could be detained.

Rivers had a reputation for being a shit starter, sober or not. “Hard to swallow when you’ve got an Elder saying otherwise,” she said. “You told us this operation was on the level.”

He fixed her with his gaze, willing her to close her mouth. “We are interrogating an asset of the Enclave. The only crime here would be to let her free.”

She wasn’t swayed. “Coronado didn’t say let her go. He said to bring her with us.”

He could see them all turning to look at her, ears up, listening.

“Six months in a cell was plenty enough for me,” she continued, pausing to shake her head and chuckle. “I’m not so eager to go back, you know? Especially not for that pegasus you got holed up down there.”

He approached the counter and set a hoof on its surface with an iron clack. “That pegasus is our key into an Enclave Stable.”

The mare narrowed her eyes at the bloodied ridge of his shodden hoof. “If you say so, sir. I only bring it up because it’s obvious now that someone recognized you and decided to rat us out to the local constabulary.” She tipped a hoof toward a wiry stallion seated in one of the restaurant chairs. “Hopper was in charge of recon and he’s one-hundred percent sure the pegasi were the only ones in the area. Do the math, hammerhooves. You didn’t kill the other mare.”

His eye twitched at the accusation. He stiffened and stepped away from the counter, lighting his horn as he did. Silver magic swarmed into the radio and grasped at the cluster of vacuum tubes inside, wrenching them out of their sockets with an abrupt series of glass pops that caused several of the gathered Rangers to jump in their seats. With the radio ruined, he shoved it off the counter. It hit the green and red tiles with a satisfying crunch.

“I will say this only once,” he rumbled. “None of us heard that broadcast. This conversation did not happen. Your orders are to stand watch and be ready to defend this building from all intruders including the local Rangers. My orders are to extract information from our prisoner for the purpose of accessing the Enclave’s Stable and taking away their technological advantage over us. If anyone here attempts to prevent you or me from performing our duties, life in a cell will be the least of their worries. Do I make myself clear?”

A low murmur of yes sirs rippled through the dining room with the exception of one. Rivers stared at him with calm defiance. He didn’t look away.

“Rivers, I advise that you think long and hard about how you want to be remembered when this is done. Either as one of the heroes who helped steal the first Stable away from the enemy, or as a disgraced Knight whose cowardice preserved the Enclave for generations to come. I’ll leave the decision and its consequences up to you.”

With that he turned and walked away, feeling the heat of Rivers’ gaze against the back of his head as he stepped past cold fryer stations, stacks of apple-themed sandwich boxes and a cold table of grease-slick steel that had once been the restaurant’s grill. Rivers had a dangerous mouth, but she didn’t have the clout to spur her comrades into action. Not when they were all complicit and not when they were this far from home. Coronado could bluster all he liked. Once they were done and back in Elder Coldbrook’s territory, there would be nothing that cloven-hoofed diversity hire could do.

The rest of them would keep Rivers in line. He followed the sandwich assembly line to a larger space in the kitchen stocked high with rusting metal containers, plastic tubs and an assortment of lids for every one of them. Spray nozzles hung limp over a row of steel sinks, the last of which was partially filled by a jumble of bones from the front half of a unicorn who had died at their station. The back half were scattered across the floor, kicked around by scavengers who had come some time before. Ironshod was careful not to disturb the bones as he walked to the corner of the space where the floor hatch to the basement stood propped open with an old pipe rifle. The stairs were steep enough to make navigating them a chore, but he didn’t let his discomfort show as he descended.

The steps bottomed out into a dry storage room lit by the same generator that powered the ancient freezer. Calling it a storage room was charitable. It was more of a storage hallway, and the low ceiling gave Ironshod the slightest twinge of claustrophobia as he made his way to the silver door at the center of the far wall. Two of his Rangers waited on either side of the door, weapons ready and blissfully unaware of the wrench Coronado was trying to throw into Ironshod’s work. Even so, Aurora’s guards looked slightly pale, especially the stallion who accompanied him to Aurora’s last session.

Ironshod gestured for them to step aside and they did without a word, only watching as he flipped the lightswitch beside the door and turned the thermostat until a deep thud shook the cooling units outside.

Taking the heavy blanket held up by one of the guards, he wrapped his magic around the handle and pulled apart the icy gaskets. Chilled air fogged into the storeroom bringing with it the sour odor of blood and urine.

“Alright, Aurora,” he murmured. “Let’s try this again.”

The sky was a piercing shade of blue speckled with puffs of cloud. The sun warmed her face, the air crisp and cool as it cascaded down the mountain toward the green and golden quiltwork of farmland and forest sprawling out in every direction. It was a paradise compared to the yellowed and torn photographs the ponies of Old Canterlot collected and bartered for. A place bubbling over with prosperity, magic and mystery. It was so real. And it was all coming to an end.

Sirens howled up to the parapet Ginger stood upon, stirring an entire capital into visceral panic. Pegasi fled from the mountain city in great flocks, many of them carrying foals too young to fly while others clung to luggage barely light enough to carry. Those restricted to the ground washed through those beautiful cobble streets like a dark, living river that split in two directions. One crashed headlong into the stairs of the Pillar, clogging the narrow entrances with a crush of ponies desperate to evacuate inside. Others, seeing the danger in being trapped among this crowd had begun to split off in droves, pouring south toward the railroad where she watched them flee down the lines, desperate to get as far from the city as they could.

Everyone down there knew what was coming, but when the moment came raw terror whittled their well-meaning evacuation plans down to basic survival. Find shelter or find a way out. Distant gunfire crackled up from the Pillar, muted little pops like corn kernels on a skillet. Ginger wanted to look away but Princess Luna’s eyes were glued in horror at what was happening to her people. Memories of old wars Ginger didn’t recognize flashed through her mind, torturing her with the undeniable realization that it was happening here of all places. All of their conquests, all of the pain they had inflicted in order to secure this land now called Equestria was now being inflicted upon their people. Here, at the height of their reign, she was watching the civilization she had helped build tumble into primal chaos.

A force Ginger struggled to recon with clamped around her muzzle, vibrating the very teeth in their sockets as it wrenched her gaze away from the disarray below and toward the alicorn standing beside her. Her sister. Luna’s sister. The boundaries between memory and reality were becoming too blurred. Ginger struggled to cling to her sense of self. This was nothing like passively watching a prewar film reel. This was present, visceral, indiscernible. As if she were the one staring into Princess Celestia’s red-rimmed eyes and feeling the deep, tearing shame of knowing what her sister wanted to do was doomed to fail.

“Focus, please!” Celestia begged. “We have to protect Canterlot!”

She was going to die here. They both were. Celestia knew it too and even now she was determined to keep up the facade that what they did here stood any chance of saving anyone. The fiction they had spent thousands of years creating demanded they did. They were the Princesses of the Sun and Moon. Immortal and all-powerful. Careful lies that had kept them in power and struck doubt into those who might challenge it. A shield of words and illusion that comforted the weak and lulled the strong into allowing centuries upon centuries of relative peace.

Now that was coming to an end. Their borders were burning. Cities were falling from the sky. Even now, Luna could see the brief flickers of green light on the horizon.

“I love you, Tia,” she whispered.

Her sister’s composure slipped. “I love you too. I’m sorry I didn’t do better.”

Tears stung her eyes, but before she could reach out to embrace her Celestia stepped away and turned her gaze toward the sky above them. Golden light swarmed off the tip of her horn and spiraled into the blue on a tenuous filament of magic. Luna blinked away the tears and steadied her nerves as best she could as she concentrated on the spell.

Ginger gasped at the sensation of tapping into a reservoir of power so deep she couldn’t imagine where the bottom might be. As Luna assembled the framework of the spell Ginger couldn’t help but revel in the feeling of accessing magic free of restriction for the first time in her life. The thrumming energy that so easily bent to her will made the magic she’d taught herself with the added charge of Autumn Song’s stimpacks feel as if she’d been throwing magic into the gale winds of a tornado. This was magic in its purest form, harnessed in perfect calm and unobstructed. This was alicorn magic.

She recognized the basic components of the shield spell forming in Luna’s mind much like an amateur cook might recognize a strong spice. It was there, but a part of something much greater. The spell arced into the air alongside Celestia’s magic, the two filaments coming together at the apex of their flight. From the convergence poured a lavender dome many orders of magnitude larger than anything Ginger had ever created. She could feel the layers of protection stretch, fold and mesh into one another, strengthening the barrier even as it fell to encompass the entirety of Canterlot. She could sense the leading edge as it curved beneath the great promenades at the city’s edge, sweeping under the enchanted stone the city was perched upon. Once the spell sealed itself against the mountainside, Luna breathed a resigned sigh. This wouldn’t hold. Not against balefire.

“Don’t stop,” Celestia murmured. “It needs to be stronger than this.”

Luna could already feel the strange prickling of needles assaulting the dome, radiation from the balefire already unleashed eating away at their magic ahead of the missiles that were tracking toward the city. No sense in arguing. She redoubled her efforts.

Layer upon layer folded and interlocked within the structure of the magic already made physical, thickening like ceramic. Concrete. Iron. Steel. Layer by layer the shield grew denser. The sky turned deep lavender, sunlight stained as it streamed through casting Canterlot in shades of twilight. Pegasi who hadn’t been able to leave the city before the shield dropped turned back to the ground while unicorns and earth ponies slowed or stopped completely, gathering in the streets or approaching their windows to watch their saviors defy the inevitable.

Ginger felt Luna’s frustration at glimpsing the onlookers below. They needed to find shelter or they would not survive. They were dooming themselves, surrendering their chances at survival just to ogle the spectacle outside. It sparked a deep, old anger in her heart. These powerless fools throwing themselves to the slaughter at the first sight of something shiny. In their ignorance they had invented a power capable of destroying everything they loved, and they still couldn’t help but stare slack-jawed at the sky while their rulers strove to buy them a few precious seconds to flee.

Rather than scream at them, she channeled that anger into her magic. Knit and fold, stitch and weave. Balefire would burn through their magic like a lit match dropped into dry kindling, but with enough fuel it would still take time for that cannibalistic magic to eat its way through. Perhaps they could deaden the worst of the detonation, or deflect it entirely…

Too late. She spotted the narrow white exhaust trail of the missile as it lifted up from the horizon like a length of string held aloft. Celestia saw it too. Her sister began pouring raw magic into the shield haphazardly now, emptying her reserves into the spell that caused the focal point of the dome to glow nearly white. Luna tried to control her breathing as she did the same, eyes fixed on that pinprick of light as its arc slowed without deviating left or right. This one was meant for them. For Canterlot.

It slashed across the sky like a mighty osprey sighting a hapless fish. Celestia and Luna braced the shield with every ounce of strength they could muster, only to watch in helpless horror as the missile streaked beneath the lip of the city and out of view. In the fleeting moments between sight and understanding, Luna opened her mouth with the beginning of a scream.

Time turned to tar. The Pillar hadn’t been Vhanna’s target. Nor had the castle or the city proper. The zebras had known. Somehow the zebras had known these would be defended, and so they focused on the one place that wouldn’t be. Survivors of the evacuation would recount seeing the missile’s final dive toward Canterlot before burying itself into the magically hardened stone of Canterlot Mountain itself.

Luna witnessed it differently. She watched as the landscape beyond their shield bloomed with pale green light, smoke spooling away from houses and farmland as the thermal shockwave reduced the vibrant quiltwork to carbon. The deafening clap of the explosion rupturing her eardrums and the delicate structures beyond, muting her scream even as the strange sensation of falling overtook her. Because that was what was happening. Canterlot was sliding. Tumbling into the pool of fire that spewed up over the drunkenly tilting promenades and sizzled against their worthless shield like acid through tissue paper. The city broke apart beneath them. Great fissures ripped open beneath streets and houses and ponies allowing curtains of balefire to rush in through the voids.

She could taste the flames well before they clawed their way to where she stood, flooding her senses with the taste of blood, ash and metal. It latched onto her magic and burned black in her mind, promising to burrow its way down to the very font of her power, boiling away her great reservoirs of magic until even the residue was scoured from existence.

Her concentration gave way and her magic failed. She saw her sister bow under the immense weight, heard her cry in shock as the balcony cracked beneath their hooves. The shield fell. The balcony fell.

Canterlot fell. And as it did, the full brunt of the explosion beneath the great Equestrian capital raged through the barricades, engulfing the city and its inhabitants as they plummeted down into the inescapable inferno.

“Up and at ‘em,” a low voice echoed. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

Consciousness came slowly. Sleep clung to her frozen bones like a reluctant lover, coaxing Aurora back down into herself with the promise of comforting dark. Something hard clubbed her across the jaw, painting the walls of her mouth with fresh blood and throbbing pain. It dragged her awake against her own will, forcing the slow awareness of now to take shape in her aching head despite her desperate wishing for it to stop. It didn’t stop. None of this was going to stop.

She didn’t have the energy to fight this anymore. Defiance hadn’t done a thing to help her and she was too tired to worry about embarrassing herself in front of him. Her chin stayed pressed against the frost coating her chest and she wept with ugly, heaving sobs at the sight of her own frozen urine puddled between her legs. Blood and spittle dribbled off her chin as she became aware of the black hooves just in front of her and the promise of violence they brought.

Through the wash of tears she could still see the terrible wrongness of her left leg, crushed and shattered under Ironshod’s brute punishment. She could see the dark discoloration of purple flesh through the gashes his iron shoes left behind, the swollen skin frozen stiff in a plaster of solid blood. He hadn’t just broken her leg. He’d pulverized it. Even now as warm air flowed in from the open door and her body gradually thawed for what felt like the hundredth time, the deep throb of damaged nerves coming alive only extended as far as the furious wound Ironshod created. Everything below her upper thigh was numb.

Dead.

“Stop crying,” he said.

A different voice spoke up behind her. “Sir, she needs a break.”

“What she needs is a bullet.” The barely contained fury in his voice only made her more inconsolable. “And you’ll get one too if you suggest that again. Now go get a stimpack before she goes back into shock.”

She didn’t know how long the other Ranger was gone for. It felt like he hadn’t left at all before a deep, stabbing pain erupted from her hip. For a fleeting moment she felt hope as she tried to calm herself enough to look at the syringe being pulled out of her, but that hope crumbled as she recognized the unremarkable shape of a modern stimpack. She felt like an idiot expecting it to be anything else. Even if Ironshod had access to prewar medicines like Autumn had, he wouldn’t waste a dose on her.

He grabbed her by the chin, his horn bright with anger. He shook her head with each word. “Stop. Crying.”

As he held her there, she realized something. She wasn’t leaving. He had no reason to let her go. She could give him everything he wanted right now, her Pip-Buck, fabricator schematics, the tightbeam coordinates to SOLUS, even open the door to Stable 10 itself… and he would let her die here all the same. Somewhere along the line Ironshod’s anger had overridden logic. Coldbrook was cruel, but something told her he wouldn’t sign off on something like this. Ironshod was doing things that were making his fellow accomplices squeamish. How many more times could she endure the cold before it finally took her? How long would it take him to run out of limbs to destroy before he gave her that promised bullet? He was far from finished with her, and the deeper he dug this hole the more certain Aurora was that he would be forced to bury her in it.

She wasn’t going home. Ginger and Roach weren’t coming. She was going to die here, alone, just another corpse to feed the wasteland. What happened between then and now wasn’t up to her. It never had been. From Cider, Autumn Song, the raiders and the slavers, the cannibals and the warped monstrosities lumbering in the shadows, she’d found one way or another to ignore the warnings. All the stories she’d been told as a foal about the world outside had been true after all. The Wasteland was a place meant for the dead.

Coming out here had been a mistake.

Her tears stopped running, her sobs slowing into silence. Ironshod released his grip and her chin dropped back to her chest.

“Tell me the purpose of Stable 10,” he said.

She stared down at her ruined leg, saying nothing. Some of the exposed skin around the wound had turned black with frostbite.

He waited. Then, in the hopes of coaxing out her voice, he set a hoof against her ruined leg and pressed his weight into it. She watched the flesh deform under the pressure but felt nothing. It was bizarre. Gradually, the stallion put together why she wasn’t showing a response and lifted his hoof away in disgust.

“Don’t think I won’t take your other leg, Aurora,” he warned. “Answer my question.”

She offered the mildest shrug and continued to ignore him. Take the leg. Take the wings. She didn’t care. It would hurt for a while and then it wouldn’t. All the roads he had to offer led to the same dead end.

Time ticked by, marked by the slow drip of thawing urine against the floor. It stank. She took comfort in the knowledge that he had to smell it, too. Ironshod waited for her to speak for several long minutes but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable anymore. Not for her, at least. A part of her hoped he would be goaded into fulfilling his promise and take his anger out on her surviving hind leg. She didn’t think she had the strength to survive the trauma and it would be nice to have this over with.

Ironshod sighed. “No. You don’t get to give up that easily. Not until you tell me the truth.”

She watched his hooves turn toward the door. The stallion behind her began to follow.

“You stay. Put her in a clean chair. I’ll send someone down with a field kit to treat her leg.” He paused as he crossed the threshold, and Aurora could sense the overt notes of challenge rippling through his voice. “We’ll try this again after you’re finished.”

Stepping into the server room was eerie. He expected the reverse to be true.

Compared to the dim yellow light of the corridors, the deafening silence of air recyclers, and the worried whispers of residents he passed on the way here, Sledge had hoped seeing the bright, blinking, chattering servers to be something of a relief. A return to normalcy. Instead, he couldn’t help but feel as if the white fluorescents that bathed the room in sterile light acted as a condemnation. Proof that this place and these computers were insulated from the rest of the Stable’s decline because, somehow, they were a part of it.

“Before the power went on the fritz, I took some time to review the security footage taken here on the day Delta Vee had her row with ol’ Spitfire.” Opal spoke over her shoulder as he followed, navigating the rows of blinking servers by habit and memory. “Sure enough, she’s on camera runnin’ in here like a royal with her mane on fire shoutin’ all kinds of colorful language that I’m sure you’re already familiar with.”

Sledge smiled a little, but he wished she would get to the point. Ahead of them at the end of the servers lay the open hatch Opal had shown to him before. A team of four pegasi who he quickly recognized from his time in Mechanical glanced toward them as they approached, one of which grinned sheepishly at the sight of Sledge.

Flux lifted a wing in greeting, her chestnut mane bundled with a dirty rubber band behind her neck. “Hey there, boss.”

She was supposed to be sleeping. Her shift started in a few hours. He forced himself not to lay into her over it, knowing there wasn’t going to be much work waiting for her down below anyway. He grunted with a curt nod, neither approving nor disapproving of her presence or the tradies she’d brought with her. “What’s the story here?”

The teal mare and her counterparts made room for them around the hatch. He peered down into the cavity where the cleaved ends of several cables had been carefully bent away from what remained of the intact core. Hooves could be heard scraping and scuffing somewhere below the floor, the ongoing work of some unfortunate volunteer who’d been voluntold to blaze a trail through the untouched dust and cobwebs.

“Well,” Opal started, gesturing to the severed cables with a wing, “judgin’ by how much of a hurry Delta was in when she cut these, I thought she’d gone in all willy-nilly just hopin’ to get lucky. Th’more Flux’s team looks at things, though, it’s lookin’ more like surgery. Means that old fart knew what she was doin’.”

Sledge frowned at the heavy duty cables. They were thicker than anything he’d been taught to replace.

Flux slid her top half into the hole and tapped a feather against the largest cable. It was cased in steel conduit large enough to drop his hind leg into with room to spare, and bolted to the exterior skin of the Stable with what he assumed were pressure-rated seals. He’d read some old books about large scale infrastructure before the war and how the modernized cities on the west coast submerged high capacity lines in non conductive oil to prevent arcing. This looked a lot like those diagrams, though a little smaller than he expected.

“That line is keeping servers online,” Flux said, moving her feather to a smaller intact bundle tucked in the larger’s shadow. “We’re still working on this one. Best guess, it links up to an antenna somewhere on the surface. It’d be easier to troubleshoot if whoever laid these bothered to mark them.”

It wasn’t an unremarkable observation. All of the cables were devoid of any of the standard manufacturer’s markings. If Delta had known which ones to cut through she’d either gone off of some very lucky guesses or had gotten access to schematics. Considering the lengths she’d gone to encrypt and preserve Partition 40 without Spitfire’s knowledge, he suspected she’d done her research.

“So she cut everything except the incoming power and a radio.” He frowned at the cleanly sliced lines. “What were those meant for?”

“Data and communications,” Opal said. “Whole mess o’ fiber optic, standard copper, you name it. Whoever conjured up this umbilical to the outside didn’t spare a bit doing it, neither. Heck, there’s genuine telephone wire down there. Beats me who you’d call, but it’s there. Guess whenever Stable-Tec figured they’d sound the all clear, no one wanted to risk us not gettin’ the message.”

“So Delta cut us off from Stable-Tec’s network… but then how are we sending and receiving messages from Aurora?”

Flux glanced at him and shrugged. “That’s why I’m guessing that the smaller line runs to a surface antenna. It has the shielding I would pick if I wanted to extend the network range that our Pip-Bucks connect to.”

He stared at the innocuous cable for several long seconds before shifting to the sliced sections that had been pulled away. Something wasn’t sitting right with him about that.

Opal nudged him. “What’re you thinkin’?”

He glanced at Flux and her chosen team before offering Opal a subtle shake of his head. “What are the chances we could divert the power we’re getting from that line to the rest of the Stable?”

If Flux noticed what had passed between Sledge and Opal, she made no indication. “The whole Stable? Zero. Our generator outputs power on an order of magnitude greater than what we’re seeing coming in from this line. It’s beefier than anything we have here but we’re on a trickle feed. Probably why it’s lasted this long without needing to be replaced.”

“Okay, so we’re dealing with percentages. But if we wanted to, could we still redirect power somewhere other than the servers?”

Flux pulled herself up from the hole and sat up, pulling a few stray strands of mane through the elastic band. “I mean, sure, but it’s not a lot to play with. Where are you wanting to send it?”

“Sanitation,” he said. “For starters. They need power to get the recyclers back online. The air recyclers too.”

He sighed, adding, “We’ll want to top off the cisterns at the top of the Stable, too.”

Flux puffed out a long breath and mulled the numbers in her head. One of the reasons she’d gotten the job leading Mechanical’s first shift was thanks to her expertise as an electrician. She wasn’t perfect - that’s why they had the computers - but she was damn near.

“You’re not making this easy,” she said, but her expression was touched with humor and seeing anyone else smiling down here was a welcome break from the norm. “There’s not enough juice to check everything off your honey-do list at once, but if we set up a rotation and decide on some hard limits on demand… I mean, yeah. There’s enough to get the toilets flushing again.”

She looked at Opal, adding, “It means we’re going to have to shut off the servers, though.”

Sledge waited for the old mare to protest and was surprised when she looked back at the vast array of chittering machines and shrugged.

“Let me set a restore point and I’ll have my folks take ‘em offline. I ain’t spendin’ my golden years shittin’ in no bucket.”

They all chuckled while gradually becoming aware that there wasn’t anything else to discuss. Flux and her team had their job, Opal had hers and Sledge… he was just trying to hold everything together long enough for Aurora to get back and pull them all away from the abyss. He turned to leave and Opal followed beside him, the two of them quiet as they followed the way back through the servers.

“Something’s eatin’ you, Sledge. Spit it out.”

He could see his own gloomy reflection in her eyes. “I’m not liking what all of this is pointing at.”

She frowned. “And what’s that?”

He went down the list. “Ten years after the Stable closes, Overmare Spitfire gets a phone call that turns her into a blubbering mess. Shortly after that the generator shits the bed and she isn’t even surprised by it. Now you’re telling me Delta Vee was here when the lights went out and hacked apart our connection to Stable-Tec’s network, after which she went straight upstairs to tear into the overmare.”

The lines on Opal’s brow deepened. “Can’t say that paints a pretty picture, now that you mention it.”

It didn’t. None of this did.

“It tells me that our generator didn’t fail because the ignition talisman went bad. Two hundred years ago someone tried to shut it down from the outside.”

The pieces were clicking into place. Worse, they dispelled dozens of lingering questions Sledge had about what was going on in his Stable. In a fog of nothing he was beginning to see the shape of actual events that occurred so many generations ago.

“And somehow Delta Vee knew exactly how to stop it.”

The last dying moments of a city blinked away as if she’d never been there at all, and Ginger found herself seated once again at the curbside cafe. Tandy occupied the patio chair beside her, watching Ginger with her creator’s eyes. She waited patiently for Ginger to collect herself like a student in no hurry for her teacher to begin the lecture.

She needed a moment to assure herself that the ground below her wasn’t primed to tear apart into a yawning, boiling chasm. Her brain did the best it could to reconcile what she was feeling just then. An incompatible mixture of dread for the fate of the city around her, relief to find Canterlot intact and unhurt, and bewildered as to how she could feel either of those things when she knew the ruins of this old city lay in a tragic heap at the bottom of the fire-scarred mountain. It was a form of mental hopscotch ponies more adept at dabbling with illicit chems played to entertain themselves, and Ginger was well out of her depths in that regard.

“You are quiet.”

Her eyes briefly followed a mare on the sidewalk who looked remarkably like Aurora would if she’d been born with a horn. “I’m not sure what I should say. Did all of that really… happen?”

Tandy turned to look at the same mare with innocent curiosity. “What you experienced was a pure memory unadulterated by time or introspection.”

She blinked at Tandy.

“Yes, it did really happen.” When she saw Ginger slump in her seat, she added, “Before, you inferred that there was a lesson I might learn from that memory.”

She had? It came to her slowly and, yes, she had been trying to teach Tandy something about digging around in another pony’s old wounds. She closed her eyes and tried to cobble something meaningful together but Luna’s memory... Ginger’s memory of Canterlot’s demise was too fresh in her mind. She could still see the balefire bursting through the streets, consuming those who had stopped to watch, churning up the castle ramparts until she could feel flames flooding into her mouth, her nose, her eyes until the pain of it flickered into nothing.

She’d experienced death, she came to realize. Luna’s death, yes, but she’d been there to see, hear and feel everything Luna had without the benefit of forgetting after. She steepled her hooves above the table and propped her forehead against them, unsure what to do with that knowledge.

“I will not conjure Primrose’s father again.”

Ginger lifted her lips to her hooves and frowned up at Tandy. As a filly she’d read the legend of Nightmare Moon, the cackling midnight mare who tried and failed to overthrow her sister with the Elements of Harmony and earned banishment as her reward. Never in those books did she appear unarmored, calm, or seated at an outdoor cafe wrapped in deep thought.

Even the way Tandy wore Nightmare Moon’s mane had changed. The ever flowing curtain of constellations settled around her shoulder, still and unmoving as any other pony Ginger knew. There was a vulnerable beauty in it.

“I cannot pretend to understand which nightmares cause the harm you described because Luna did not teach me. She created me so that I might plague her while she slept. She told me it was penance and so I did as she asked.” She stopped, eyes lifting from the little table to meet Ginger’s. “May I share a secret with you?”

That made her hesitate more than anything else. What answer other than yes could she give an apparently sentient creature capable of manipulating the fabric of the subconscious with as little as a thought? She braced herself in anticipation of being swept into another one of the dead princess’s too-vivid nightmares, and nodded.

“Go ahead.”

Tandy smiled a little, and for a brief second she looked more nervous than Ginger was the day she left home. “Luna did not intend to relinquish control of her dream realm to me. When she died, the connection which tied us together - the connection that permitted me to share her experiences and craft her nightmares - ceased to be. The cage she built to contain me was gone as well. It is how I know she did not survive. It is also the reason why I treat little Cozy Glow so harshly. Because of the lies she tells about Luna and her sister.”

Ginger found herself trying to keep pace with Luna’s torturer, realizing that this was a confession in Tandy’s fashion of sharing it. She waited until the creature finally continued.

“I worry that I am not doing the things Luna would do if she were still alive. The creatures who appear in this realm have so few happy that are not already tainted with grief. Those few who dream often mistake me for her and beg me to return. They believe the lie that the princesses are in hiding, or ascended, and I fear this hope for their return stops many from rebuilding their world.” Tandy’s horn glowed briefly, and a purple stoneware mug of something hot appeared near her lip. She took a sip and lowered the mug into her waiting hooves, something Ginger rarely ever saw unicorns do. “Serving this role was not my decision. Had I the choice, I would not continue in it.”

Ginger was quiet for a while. “And… do you have that choice? To quit?”

Tandy shook her head and set the steaming mug beside Ginger’s foreleg. “I have been told cocoa is in precious little supply in the waking world. Try it.”

She blinked down at the mug of dark brown liquid, her mind drawing unappetizing connections in the process. “Co-co?”

Tandy smiled and the stars in her mane shined just a touch brighter. A second mug appeared before her, vibrant pink and sporting three familiar balloons which faced Ginger. She drank with eyes closed, savoring the liquid.

“It is a chocolate beverage. You will like it.”

Ah. She knew what chocolate was. There were plenty of the vaguely sweet but ultimately inedible grey bars still floating around Equestria, their expiration date having come and gone centuries ago along with most of their color. She supposed the drink beside her couldn’t be much worse than the “sugared brahmin milk” that enjoyed brief popularity in New Canterlot before word leaked that the mare selling it was also the source of the milk.

Shuddering at the thought, she lifted the mug to her muzzle and drank.

Liquid bliss. Rich, creamy and thick, it filled her with a pleasurable warmth as it inundated her senses with the incomparable aroma and flavor of a long forgotten sweetness. She drank greedily, each mouthful just as wonderful as the last, until eventually the cup ran dry and the dream ended.

She woke with the taste of the chocolate elixir fading on her tongue, replaced by the sour dryness earned from a night spent sleeping with her mouth open. Swallowing, she cracked her eyes to see the dusty bottom shelves of Peppercorn’s storeroom. A wooden crate repurposed to hold neatly folded clean rags looked back at her as if she were the unwelcome sight and not the other way around.

She rolled over to face the room and saw something not entirely unexpected. Roach had fallen asleep at what amounted to Julip’s operating table, his head resting against one of his bent forelegs. In the weak morning light that filtered in through the boarded walls, she watched Julip’s barrel rise and fall with fuller breaths. She was recovering. And of course she would. She had Roach to make sure of it.

Jealous tears stung at her eyes quicker than she could will them away. None of this was their fault and no matter how much she wanted to blame Julip for not standing against Ironshod, she couldn’t. It was by the barest glimmer of luck that Julip survived long enough to tell her and Roach what had happened. Without her their chances of finding Aurora dropped to zero. Yet even now with Elder Coronado bending his considerable resources to the search, her odds were painfully slim. It occurred to Ginger that the time may come when she learns there was truly nothing she could do. Despite everything, Aurora could already be dead.

A flood of defiant anger washed through her. Her horn glowed, bathing the storeroom in amber. She quickly doused it, startled by how readily her magic had come rushing to her in response. Lighting it more dimly she tried to detect the fatigue or disorientation that dogged her when she put Chops through his paces, but it came to her beckon eagerly. As she let the room go dark again she thought back to her dream and the moment Tandy touched her horn. Had she given her magic? That was ridiculous. It couldn’t be that easy. Unicorns weren’t motorized carriages who could just… pull up to the pump.

Could they?

One more mystery she wasn’t in the mood to solve right now. Tandy had topped her off. Fine. When they found Aurora, maybe she’d practice a new spell involving the forced relocation of Ironshod’s head to his colon. Any other day the thought would have spurred a laugh out of her, but thinking about it now only stoked her anger. She didn’t know what she would do when or if she ever crossed paths with him. Nothing good, she decided. Nothing he didn’t already deserve.

She pushed herself off the floor, stopping to watch Roach and Julip dozing at the table. The hazy light of dawn was already creeping in through the gaps in the walls and it wouldn’t be long before the doctor came in with a broom to shoo them all out. Before they found themselves out on the curb, she wanted to speak to Coronado again. See if he’d heard anything and ask if there wasn’t something she could do to help.

Roach and Julip would be alright by themselves for a few hours. She stretched her legs, gathered her resolve and crept her way to the back exit. Her magic wrapped gently around the knob and pulled open the door.

Chops stood on the other side, his hoof hovering in the air ready to knock. Ginger frowned down at the stallion before shifting to the taller pony beside him. Dancer regarded her with equal disdain.

“Oh good, you’re still here,” he stated in a wholly disingenuous grumble. One of his wings slipped out of his duster just enough for her to see the object held between his feathers. A single Pip-Buck. Her stomach dropped.

“The Minister would like a word with you.”

Dancer didn’t wait to be invited inside and pushed past her. Chops offered an apologetic shrug to the bewildered mare and followed, leaving her to lock the door behind them. Hooves thumped across the boards of the dimly lit storeroom, stirring the other two members of Ginger’s remaining party awake. Julip and the ghoul startled at the sudden noise, the latter dropping from his chair and snapping out the tarnished shotgun strapped to his foreleg. The ghoul only relaxed once he spotted Ginger behind them.

“It’s getting crowded in here, Ginger,” he murmured.

Chops uncoupled his wings and lifted a feather toward Dancer, but the lavender stallion had drifted out of reach and was examining the mess of broken bottles and chems that had soaked into the floorboards since his first harrowing visit. Dancer had the attention span of a fly at times. He held up a feather toward the ghoul instead and pantomimed writing.

“This is where you’ve been hiding out?” Dancer nudged a hoof at one of the broken shelves laying on the floor.

Roach stood rooted where he was, positioned between their visitors and Julip who was working her way off the table and into one of the unoccupied chairs. Ginger crossed the room without taking her eyes off him or Dancer and retrieved the same festive notepad and pencil from earlier, floating them to Chops.

“Keep your voices down,” she said, dousing her horn. “We’re not the only ones here.”

Dancer followed her gaze toward the ceiling and frowned. “How many?”

“Just the owner.”

Chops held up the notepad with the words Any luck? scrawled across a fresh page. Ginger briefly squinted at it and shook her head, turning her attention back to Dancer who was now rifling through the shelves with his hooves. He rolled his eyes and resumed writing.

“Here we go.” Dancer unfurled his wings and plucked a small white bottle from one of the boxes. He cupped it and used the other wing to hold out the Pip-Buck to Ginger. “Put this on. I’ll be back down in a minute.”

Ginger looked at the offered device with open distrust, then stared down at Dancer’s other wing. “Show me.”

Dancer stared back at her for several long seconds before finally relenting and lifting up the white bottle for her to see. Chops paused writing to read the label too. It was one of the little RestWell sprayers that the junkies back home would smuggle in to snort in between uppers. The stuff was forbidden within the Enclave for its addictive qualities alone, though that only forced the trade underground like all the other chems. He frowned his disapproval at Dancer, but the stallion carefully avoided his gaze.

“Just take it,” he said, tossing the Pip-Buck at Ginger. She caught it and glared after him as he sashayed his way past Julip and the ghoul. “I’ll be right back.”

He found the stairs at the far side of the storeroom and slinked upstairs. Chops let out an exasperated sigh and finished his note, holding it up for them to read.

Minister wants to talk to Ginger. Spritebots draw too much attention. Pip-Buck will let you talk to her but if you put on don’t take off.

Julip hissed as she tried to find a comfortable position in her seat. Chops watched her tap Roach on the flank with her wing and beckon him to her. She whispered something in his ear while staring daggers at Chops. When Roach murmured his answer, the hostility in her eyes shifted to pensive fear. She looked away and mouthed a silent fuck.

A hard thump shook the ceiling, followed by the brief sound of a struggle. Chops grew tense for a moment but soon the scuffling quieted. Knowing Dancer, there was an equal chance that the proprietor was knocked out or dead. Best to keep that to himself. Dancer appeared from the stairs moments later and flicked the empty RestWell bottle onto the floor, glancing only briefly at Julip as he passed by.

“He’s out,” he said, turning to the Pip-Buck still held in Ginger’s magic. “Put it on. Minister Primrose will be…”

Ginger cut him off. “Chops explained what it’s for. What does she want?”

Dancer sidled over to the table and pulled up a chair for himself opposite the ghoul and Julip. “We wouldn’t know. Thanks to Julip, we weren’t exactly in a position to ask questions. I’d go so far to say we’re lucky she allowed us to leave New Canterlot at all.”

Julip avoided his gaze. “Not my fault you’re so fucking gullable.”

His lip curled away from his teeth. “Far be it from me to assume my friend would turn out to be a traitor.”

Chops stamped a hoof into the floorboards, ending the argument before it got out of control. He tucked the notepad into the crux of his leg and began signing. Dancer slouched against the table and followed along with no small amount of chagrin.

“Chops says he agrees whole-heartedly,” he droned.

A second, harder stamp earned a meager gesture of surrender from Dancer. The three others regarded the lavender stallion dubiously. Dancer could be unbearable when he was pissy.

“He says that the Minister wants to help us put our house in order.” He waited on Chops for a moment before adding, “The Pip-Buck will help us find Aurora.”

Ginger frowned at the device, then to Dancer. “He said I shouldn’t take it off once I put it on. Why?”

Chops closed his eyes and tried not to smile too much. Dancer snorted as he gestured.

“Chops says he’s mute, not deaf.”

Ginger immediately grew uncomfortable. Chops shook his head, waving her off to let her know it was fine.

“Happens all the time,” Dancer said, speaking on his own now. “That Pip-Buck’s been modified and cleared for field operation. Once it detects a wearer, it creates a biometric signature that it monitors until someone with clearance shuts it off or the pegasus… or unicorn takes it off.”

Ginger looked to the ghoul for some kind of reassurance, and the ghoul looked in turn to Julip. He half expected Julip to torpedo them out of spite, but the mare held out a wing with visible discomfort.

“Let me see it,” she said. Ginger obliged, and she turned the device this way and that, examining it for anything suspicious. After a minute she tossed it back to Ginger. “It's disposable, like they said. When you take it off you’ll have a few seconds to toss it before it destroys itself. It’s the only way the Enclave can be sure the Rangers won’t get their hooves on one.”

Ginger looked incredulous. “They want me to wear a bomb?”

Chops tapped his hoof to get her attention and began quickly signing.

“Not a bomb,” Dancer said. “Thermite charge. Turns all the hardware the Rangers want into slag.”

“It creates a lot of heat and smoke,” Julip clarified. “Doesn’t explode though. We… fuck. They wouldn’t put them on their field commanders if they were dangerous.”

“There you go,” Dancer said. “From the mouth of shortstack herself.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Dancer sat up. “I’ve always called you-”

“Don’t.”

Chops started signing for Dancer to knock it off but he wasn’t watching. He’d turned to face Julip more fully, doing little to disguise his anger toward the mare they had both spent their share of time running drills and training alongside. Dancer jabbed an accusing feather at Julip in advance of his righteous anger, but a sudden shimmer of green light grabbed his wing and flattened it against the table.

The ghoul’s hoof, the one bearing its shotgun, stood inches from Dancer’s nose.

“Shut your mouth and go wait outside.”

Dancer rose from his seat. “I am a lieutenant of the Encl-”

“Now.”

Their standoff lasted for several tense seconds before Dancer rolled his eyes and relented. Chops watched with mixed feelings as his partner strode past him without a word. When the back door opened and slammed shut, he expected the ghoul to turn the weapon on him and make the same demand. He wasn’t sure how relieved he should be when it collapsed the weapon back onto its rail and glowered at Chops before pulling up a chair next to Julip, blocking her from view.

With his interpreter in time-out, Chops exhaled and picked the pencil and notepad off the floor and began writing. He held it up to Ginger, who appeared bewildered by Dancer’s dismissal.

I’m sorry. Dancer angry about defection.

Ginger frowned and looked toward Julip while he scribbled another note.

Minister wants to talk to you, not her. Please put on Pip-Buck.

She took a calming breath and sighed. Her horn glowed a little brighter as she hefted the device. “Any objections, Roach?”

The ghoul looked up at the Pip-Buck and shook his head. “Julip says it’s safe.”

Chops wanted to ask how a ghoul could trust someone like Julip, defected or not, but chose to keep the question to himself. What he should be asking is what made Julip switch sides in the first place. What was it about these ponies that could make her doubt herself so much to abandon everything in less than a week?

It wasn’t his place to know, let alone even ask. Some ponies just… lost faith.

He watched her pull the Pip-Buck over her hoof and secure the clamp. It chirped as she doused her magic and began clicking away as it ran through the automated boot sequence. Ginger sat down as she waited. The cartoon image of the Stable-Tec mascot flickered onto the screen with a cheery wink before disappearing, replaced by a black screen bearing a single word.

Seconds ticked by and the Pip-Buck chittered again. The waiting prompt disappeared, the screen suddenly filled with Minister Primrose’s regal smile.

“Well hello, Miss Dressage,” the mare on the screen cooed. “You look well-rested.”

Ginger stiffened at the sight of Minister Primrose staring up from her leg.

When Dancer first showed her the Pip-Buck she thought it was Aurora’s, but after seeing it more closely the differences had become apparent enough that she’d managed to keep herself from coming apart at the seams. It didn’t even look like it was the same model Aurora used. The casing was slimmer, less of a brick and more streamlined around her foreleg. Lighter, too. But most notably was the color, or in this case colors. With the exception of a few visual artifacts caused by what she assumed was a weak connection, Primrose waited patiently within the screen in full vibrant shades of pink and baby blue.

It occurred to Ginger that she hadn’t seen the Minister since well before she ran away from home. There had been a ceremony when she was little that she barely remembered. A commemoration or a grand opening for some new institution near the Chapel building. Primrose looked the same now as she had back then, slender and beautiful with pulled curls that spun into a bundle over one shoulder.

And even now she recognized the quiet confidence behind those adobe eyes that reminded her to be careful. This mare wasn’t just dangerous. She was deadly.

Ginger composed herself, unsure whether the tiny black pinhole just above the screen was a microphone or camera or both. “Chops said you wanted to talk.”

Primrose smiled, the angle shifting as she sat down on what looked to be a very well tended bed. The room behind her was resplendent, almost as well decorated as the short glimpse Ginger had seen of Princess Celestia’s bedchamber. “I do. Do you remember any of the things we discussed earlier?”

She blinked and looked over to Roach and Julip who were listening and more than a little confused. When she glanced at Chops, the stallion regarded her with a light shrug. He must already know.

“From… the dream?”

She nodded. “Before we were interrupted by discount Nightmare Moon, we were discussing what you could do to best help the search for Aurora.”

She remembered. “By doing nothing, if I recall.”

Primrose chided her. “Staying put is not nothing. It takes immense strength not to act, especially now. A critical element of strategy is knowing when to act and when to wait, right now I need you and your companions to wait.”

She almost laughed from the frustration alone. This was insane. All this covert cloak and dagger nonsense just to test her memory? Luna’s grace, it was all she could do not to rip the Pip-Buck off and throw it into the alley to burn.

“You didn’t have this gadget flown out here just so you could repeat what you already told me, did you?”

“That ‘gadget’ is what we’re using to pinpoint Aurora’s location. And no, it wasn’t flown out exclusively for you. I had it requisitioned from one of my field majors in the region who is not the type of officer easily separated from her tech.” The Minister leaned against one of the bedposts and stared across the vast distance between them, her unsettling smile hardening. “The purpose of this conversation is to accomplish two things, the first of which we’ve discussed to exhaustion. The second item will be a little less simple. To put it plainly, if we are to work together to find Aurora then we will need to maintain a direct line of communication, which we’ve now established. The obvious problem is that you are not in my territory and I have doubts that the locals in Fillydelphia would be excited to see you and I speaking to one another. Can we both agree on that?”

Ginger looked over to Julip who met her gaze with quiet apprehension. Be careful, her eyes warned.

She turned back to the Pip-Buck. “I can see how that could create problems.”

Primrose laughed. “If I know Coronado, it’ll be more than just a problem if he finds out you’re double-dipping.”

“Double…?”

“It’s an old expression.” Primrose shook her head, the lines in her eyes softening. “You don’t want him knowing I’m helping you. Elders like him only see the world in black and white, especially when it comes to my Enclave. And yes, I’m aware you’ve reached out to him. And no, I’m not mad. Coronado’s recording is going to stir up the hive in a good way.”

She frowned. “Explain that.”

The angle pitched as Primrose shrugged. “Misdirection. If Coronado has everyone looking for a rogue group of Rangers…”

“Then they won’t be looking for your pegasi. Got it. What does that have to do with us?”

Primrose dipped a pink feather toward the screen, practically blotting it out as she pressed a key on her own device. Her face disappeared and was promptly replaced by a map of Fillydelphia. A triangular icon indicated their location on the city’s main drag. Before Ginger could work out whether they’d been disconnected, Primrose’s voice filtered out through the speaker.

“The lieutenant and corporal will escort the three of you to one of our safehouses on the coast.” The map moved, crossing over Fillydelphia’s dense city center toward an even tighter cluster of roads on the eastern shoreline. A new indicator suddenly appeared with a caption beneath it. Harbor House. “You will be out of the way and somewhat safe there.”

She lifted an eyebrow at Chops. “Somewhat safe. And once we’re there, then what?”

The map blinked out and Primrose’s crooked smile reappeared. “You, the changeling and my misguided ward make yourselves comfortable.”

Julip wrapped her wings around herself. “I’m not your ward.”

“I was wondering if you were still with us, Corporal Julip,” Primrose said, her eyes searching as if trying to peer around the edge of the screen itself. Ginger bristled and tilted her leg away from the others. Noticing this, Primrose’s smile grew wider, almost predatory for just a moment. Then it stopped, she leaned back and appeared almost serene by comparison. “Corporal Chops informed me that she had been grievously injured recently. She must have the goddesses’ blessing to have survived.”

Julip dropped to her hooves and limped toward the door to the vacant storefront, using her wing to bang it shut behind her. Ginger closed her eyes and sighed as Roach slid from his chair and quietly followed.

“Touched a nerve,” she murmured.

She shook her head, praying her patience would last just a little longer. “Minister-”

“Call me Prim.”

“Prim,” she amended. “I understand that you might feel Julip deserves punishment for parting with the Enclave…”

Primrose laughed. “‘Parting?’ Oh, I’ll have to remember that for the next pony who turns traitor.”

Her temper flared. “Just because she doesn’t buy into your cult doesn’t mean she’s a traitor. Julip is finding her own path, same as I did. And… as far as you need to be concerned, she’s under our protection now.”

The logical side of her brain screamed at her to stop talking. She could already picture the hole she was digging them all into. Several uneasy seconds ticked by while Primrose absorbed what Ginger had just said to her, the confident smile on her lips sliding away to form a dangerously neutral stare.

“I assume by the absence of the lieutenant’s yammering that you’re alone?”

She glanced toward the bloodstained table and its empty chairs, consciously avoiding eye contact with Chops as she scanned the room. “Yes,” she said.

“Good. Then let me clarify our relationship. You and I are not friends, nor are you in any position to negotiate how I discipline deserters. I am willing to work with you until such time that Aurora is located and returned to her Stable. When that is finished, this partnership ends along with my obligation to look the other way when you disparage what I created. Am I understood?”

Just nod and say yes.

She set her jaw. “No. You owe me.”

Primrose’s open mouth turned into a disbelieving frown. “Excuse me?”

“I said you owe me.” Her heart was trying to beat its way through her ribs. This must be what it felt like to stomp on a landmine. “I spoke to the Tantabus after she… woke you, and I convinced her to stop conjuring that memory of your father. You won’t see him anymore.”

Primrose’s defiance faltered and for just a moment Ginger saw the terrified filly who bludgeoned herself awake. Her eyes dropped away from the screen, staring thoughtfully at the bed beneath her. Her voice shed all of its menacing overtones.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

Ginger swallowed, nodding once. Before she could think of anything to add Primrose cleared her throat and spoke again, albeit a little softer than before.

“Go to the Harbor House and leave the Pip-Buck on,” she said. “I’ll contact you when I know more about Aurora.”

She let out the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “What about Julip?”

Prim’s feather stopped short of the screen. She chewed her lip. “I’ll allow her time to reflect on where her loyalties lie.”

With that she tapped her screen and the connection dropped, leaving Ginger to stare disbelievingly at the map of the city. Unbeknownst to Elder Coronado and his Steel Rangers, Minister Primrose had just joined the search for Aurora. She dropped her Pip-Buck into her lap and blew out a long, tired breath. Two of the most powerful competing factions had just signed on to locate one mare.

She knew on some level she should be relieved. That the anxiety of being able to do nothing should give way to hope. Aurora stood a chance now, and Ironshod would be facing comeuppance of a truly immeasurable scale. She should be happy.

But something told her she’d done something wrong.

She stood up and began walking to the door to the storefront. Roach and Julip needed to wrap up so they could get moving. It would take a few hours to reach the Harbor House and she didn’t want to be out on the streets when the city finally woke up.

The Enclave was coming, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that Fillydelphia wouldn’t be safe once they arrived.

Next Chapter: Chapter 36: Lost & Found Estimated time remaining: 34 Hours, 30 Minutes