The more and more I saw of this town, the more it became apparent that the bright future that Stable-Tec wanted to save had failed. Ponies still lived, but it seemed that it was in spite of the end of the world and not because of Stable-Tec's attempts to preserve the best of Equestria. There were ponies from stables such as Spot Weld and the Lightbringer, but other than the hero, it seemed that most stable ponies just faded into the dull grays and browns of the wasteland.

But the more I thought about it, the less I saw any real change in things. Yes, the water was less than safe to drink, if left untreated. Some kind of mad ponies called raiders roamed around outside civilization. The main currency was in bottle caps. But the paranoia and hate had not changed. Everypony just now aimed their hatred at each other rather than just the zebras. Ramped chem abuse was just as bad back then, but now no pony seems to care to hide it anymore.

One thing had changed, and it was that there's no secret pink police to come drag you away for saying the wrong thing to the wrong pony. There was just no Ministry to really care about what a pony has to say anymore. Now ponies talk without censor, but also with no protection if another pony feels violently offended.

"Then the cumshit asked me what I was going to do about it. Blaw-blaw-blaw. How he loved the sound of his voice. I ended up smashing that saddlaraibian in his perfectly groomed snout," the Desperado stallion, Tire Fire, bragged before laughing loudly.

He was a charcoal gray earth pony with a yellow and orange mane done up in spikes. He also had a cutie-mark of a tire on fire.

I nodded, having a hard time following his verbose story. "So Saddlaraibia is still around, then," I realized aloud.

"Ya, and they’re fucking pricks, too. Some prince traveled down the west coast about ten years back. This was a bit after the skies cleared up. During that time, he managed to piss off nearly every town and city he passed through. My clan's territory was south of that mess, so we only heard about it from the traveling merchants," he explained.

"So the Desperados lives on the west coast?" I checked.

"West, east, a bit north, and some of the south. Wherever route fifty stretches and any good roads connected to it, we own," he replied in a proud tone.

"Then your territory hasn't changed for over two hundred and twenty years. That's actually impressive. To imagine that where the ministries failed to survive, a biker gang had," I remarked, honestly impressed.

Tire Fire put on a big grin. "It's thanks to our elders. Those original ganggers had made little bunkers all over route fifty before the great war ended. They stocked them with food, water, gus, and parts. From what the elders told us, when the rest of Equestria had become weak, the Desperados stayed strong. We still use those bunkers today. Each one houses a wall painting depiction our glorious history."

I couldn't put my hoof on it. Tire Fire was frankly a violent, dirty, and loud pony along with other qualities that would have him labeled as a dangerous bad pony. Still, after some of the ponies I had met here, I found him simply honest, though it was in a don't challenge him to a fight or he will break you in half kind of honesty.

The griffins of the Gunrunners were the same way. They had simple rules and harsh consequences if those rules were broken.

The Sheriff and her deputies, on the other hoof, seemed to have a book full of rules and a sliding scale for what punishment a pony will get.

Maybe that was it. Maybe I was in good with the Desperados and somewhat knew how to not get on their bad side, but I just didn't know where I was with the sheriff.

"Say, Slowtrot, what was it like before the wasteland? You know, before it all burned in the great balefire storm?" Tire Fire asked me curiously.

"Well, for one, we had working plumbing. I still can't get used to all that waste being just thrown into an open pit. But, other than that, I guess I can say life was just easier," I answered.

Then I sighed. "So easy, in fact, that ponies were terrified of the good times ending."

Tire Fire gave a bellowing laugh before saying, "That's kind of what the elders said about ponies back then. That they were so soft, they sent all the hard ponies to die in war to preserve their soft lives."

That sounded similar to what anti-war ponies would say. They accused the Ministries of sending the young to die so that they can maintain their power. It was all a load of hogwash. We were at war back then, but the more I see of what became of Equestria since then, the more I feel that maybe it would have been better if we just let the Zebras win and end all hostilities.

No, that would not happen. The storm of hatred was almost palatable back then. Letting the Zebras just win would have still resulted in the end of Equestria with ponies ripping it apart with our own hooves rather than by balefire bomb.

"Here we are," Tire Fire announced. He stopped at a wall of rusty train carts with the entrance guarded by two bored-looking Desperado mares. Above the mares was a blue banner with the words “Blue Skies Traders” written like gray clouds.

Scratching my goatee, I asked, "I thought the train carts were converted into homes?"

Tire Fire shrugged. "Up until a while ago, this place was used as a stockpile zone for the town’s building materials, though there were a lot of squatters we had to evict forcefully. Now Blue Skies use the train carts to house their workers or store their junk."

"Oy, Tire, the fuck took ya so long? Did ya have to take a shit?" one of the guard mares shouted.

The second one then pointed at me. "Ain't that the stallion ya told us about? The one working with the Gunrunners?"

"Ya. This is Slowtrot," Tire Fire introduced me before pointing at the two mares, "and these are my twin little sisters."

He pointed at the first mare, a dirty blond earth pony with a dark orange mane that was shaved on her right side and the left had the main which drooped down in long spiky bangs. "This here is Live Axle"

Then he pointed to the other mare, a dark orange earth pony mare with her mane being a dirty blond and mirroring her sisters. "And this is Dead Axle"

I held my hat as I bowed my head a little to them. "Nice to meet you."

Live Axle chuckled. "He looks soft."

"Well, he isn't a Desperado." Dead Axle commented.

Tire Fire rolled his eyes. "Soft or not, can ya show him around? He wanted to see where all the shit our employer are pushing out came from. I got to let the distributor know all the shipments were made."

Live Axle scrunched up her muzzle. "Okay bro, hold your fucking hanches. Isn't that the last thing Blue Skies wants us doing? I mean, fuck ‘em and all, but we’re still getting paid, so maybe not rock the fucking wagon. Also, we’re supposed to be guarding this entrance."

"Sis is right," Dead Axle agreed with a bored yawn. "Maybe we can just show him the reck area. Anyways, only ponies who had pass through here are the ones meant to be here, so fuck this guard duty."

"See? Dead's got the right idea. You need to loosen up, Live." Tire Fire said smugly then trotted past them.

"Oh, fuck you, bro!" Live Axle shouted irritably.

"I ain't our cousin, sis," Tire Fire chuckled. "But you can fuck him if ya want."

Live Axle then gagged as Dead Axle burst out in laughter.

There was a momentary pause before Live Axle glared at me. "Don't ya get any ideas. You get tat, softy?!"

"Crystal, not that I was thinking about sleeping with you in the first place," I responded kindly.

This only got Live Axle to glare at me harder before she pivoted around and stomped off.

Dead Axle chuckled as she trotted up next to me. "You're not the charmer type, are ya?"

I sighed, realizing that I probably said something wrong. "Never really been."

Following the twin mares into the walled-off section of town, the place was relatively nicer than the area that surrounded it, but far dirtier than the main part of town. As Tire Fire said, the train carts were either used for housing the ponies here, or for storing the different junk in their possessions. A few carts had a pony standing guard in front of them. The carts themselves are labeled with the word "DANGER" red paint.

There were several tents within the courtyard. One with a sign saying "company store" on it with both Desperados and ponies in suits lining up at it. Another tent depicted the Ministry of Peace logo on it. Beyond that tent, I saw another with several caps painted on the side.

In the center, I saw five-passenger train carts connected together into a pentagon shape. A tall antenna poked out from the middle of the group of carts. Unlike the carts making up the wall, these five had a relatively fresh coat of paint on them, and the ground around them was quite clean.

"Best to not get too close to the center carts. Blue Skies big boss stays in them, and she is a right bitch of a mare," Dead Axle warned me.

We eventually arrived at a shabby-looking tent with a tarp extending out and over the left side of it and a wide open front. On the left of the tent, under the tarp, was a pool table with several Desperado ponies already playing a game. On the right side of the tent was a setup for a hoof shoe throwing game, which had two ponies in dusty suits playing. Inside were two tables. One had ponies playing dice, the other was a poker table.

"We originally had a knife-throwing board set up here, but after a few trader ponies got stuck, we had to take it back to our camp," Dead Axle announced with a chuckle.

Live Axle sat down at the poker table, still looking annoyed. "So, ya seen the place. It ain't shit, don't ya think?"

I sat down at the table as well as I said, "Well, I haven't seen all that much, and I don't really have much to compare it to. Well, other than the main part of town and the Gunrunners compound, so no. It's not all that impressive, I guess."

Live rolled her eyes. "Ya, I heard that the pussy hawks got a good setup? Like a mini fortress and with ta guns to back it up."

Dead Axle also sat at the table, pulling out a deck of rather worn-out cards. "That's griffins for ya. Even on route fifty, we leave ta Talons alone. Our elders also make'n a point for us to never pick a fight with a griffon in a bar, as they don't need a gun ta easily kill a pony."

Dead began dealing cards without saying what game we were playing. I received only three cards, an ace and two princesses.

"You don't seem to like working with Blue Skies," I commented as I tossed a cap into the center of the table.

"Ya. They're a bunch of cunts, but cunts with the caps and guns to give us problems. We don't need to like ‘em to work with ‘em. Just that simple," Live explained.

Dead reached and took the cap, chuckling. "Thanks for the donation."

I raised an eyebrow.

Nopony said anything

I then tossed in another cap and showed my cards.

This time Live Axle laughed. She was struggling to breathe. Starting to wheeze at the end.

"Sis likes to test ponies. It's also a good way to start a fight with knuckleheads," Live explained as she gave the cards back. "But you're the first to do that. What game do you think you were even playing?"

I just shrugged.

Dead Axle then tossed my cap back onto the center. "You’re really not like most ponies in the wasteland, though that might just be because ponies like you don't live long. Were ponies like you back before the great balefire storm?"

"Like me? Probably," I surmised as I gave her the cards back. "I mean, ponies aren't meant for war and such. I remember when there were more singing and dancing than hate and violence."

"Sounds boring,” Dead Axle droned listlessly with a yawn. After that, she put two caps in the center before throwing Live and I two cards each.

"Maybe if ponies from back then had more backbone, the balefire storm would never have happened," Live mused as she tossed two caps in, then another one cap. "Hit me."

I checked my cards. I saw two aces.

"Or it could have been worse,” I speculated. “I remember that the whole war started because Equestria decided to do a show of force. To show their ‘backbone’, as you say. Then again, things were already going south for years before that.”

"Oh, like some bad blood, then BAM, a rival gangger steps on a landmine and now ya got a blood feud," Live explained in her own way.

I thought about it for a moment, then shrugged as I tossed in a cap. "Hit, and I guess that's similar.

"Speaking of bad blood, the chems being disturbed from here seem to be cut with other unknown chems. Maybe Blue Skies doesn't know about it. If it goes on, we may have a bigger problem later," I added.

Dead Axle huffed loudly as she tossed us our cards. "That's why we only use chems our own clan makes. Using random chems is a fast way to go raider, and a nasty kind at that."

"Going raider?" I asked.

"It's when a pony gives into the madness of the wasteland, though normally it's because they don't know how to survive any other way. Eventually, if the pony doesn’t stop themselves, they start to enjoy the rape and murder," Dead Axle further explained.

"It's why, if a chem den is not kept under control, it eventually turns into a raider base." Live Axle added.

I could feel the sense of dread drop into the pit of my stomach as though only now I realized a shadow hung overhead.

"Has a town ever gone raider?" I asked.

Both mares shrugged.

"All of Equestria went raider," I heard a voice whisper so faintly that it might as well have been the wind,

A sigh came from Live, then she showed her cards as she declared, "I fold."

"A road built on good intentions leads straight to Tartarus." Again, a voice spoke faintly. Neither of the sisters seemed to notice.

I checked my cards. My third was a 9, making 21. I revealed this to the others.

Dead showed her cards, hers being a twenty. "There are always rumors and stories. As with a territory as wide as ours, the bikers see quite a lot of strange things. Though, when ponies start going raider, they rarely stay in towns or are allowed to stay in towns. The closest I've heard about was a settlement that ran out of supplies and had nopony good at farming or savaging, so they started attacking their neighbors. Even then, it was never as bad as some raiders you can find. Just mainly theft or a shakedown."

Somehow I felt a bit relieved, but still worried about what was going on.

Again a voice faintly whispered, "So easy it is to manipulate, like a knife between the ribs. You just need to align the edge correctly."

Taking the caps, I left two in the center. "Sorry if i sound like I'm probing, but have you ever heard of chems called Chill, Cruel Tea, or Kiss Kiss?"

The two sisters shared a glance. Between the two of them, it was Live Axle that answered first. "Ya. They’re west coast chems, but you don't see them often in these parts of Equestria."

Thank Celestia! Finally some good news.

"Any way, can you tell me about them?” I asked hopefully. “The Followers might need to come up with a treatment for them, and I'm trying to help."

Three caps were tossed into the center of the table. The pegasus mare in the suit from Spot Weld’s workshop had joined us.

"Chill and Cruel Tea are exotic chems. You can't just simply make them in a lab. As for Kiss Kiss, it's a baked mix of coal sludge, abraxo cleaner, fermented xander root, and spoiled healing potions. Trust me, Kiss Kiss is probably the vilest thing you may ever taste, yet some ponies keep using it," she explained.

Live, Dead, and I shared a concerned glance as the cards were dealt.

"Then ... do you know it's being cut into some of your product?" I checked.

She smiled as she carefully looked at her cards

"You mean poorly made products? Ya. Bad stock comes through regularly. As a result, we have to sell it at cost. It's all a major headache, but Blue Skies didn't get as successful as it is by just throwing out products." She turned her cards over which revealed an ace and a princess, 21. "We give fair warning to our customers that the product may not be top quality. From there, it's up to them if they want to sell it or use it."

Looking at my cards, I had an ace of spades and an 8 of clubs, so I folded.

"Now, Mister Slowtrot, could you come with me? My boss has shown some interest in talking with you, though she seemed less than pleased with the thought of it," the pegasus mare told me as she took my caps.

She then looked at the two sisters. "You two should get back to your post before some less than desirable pony gets any ideas."

The two rolled their eyes. Dead collecting her cards before they departed.

I got up myself and followed the business mare out of the tent.

As she led me to the pentagon of train carts, I couldn't help but feel the sense of familiarity, though nothing here was familiar at all. I've been to worksites. I had to trot around business ponies. A few times I even found myself where I was not supposed to be. But here, and the rest of the wasteland, still felt alien to me, so why this sudden sense as though I should know something about this place? I had a strong sense of deja vu, though I knew I had never been here before?

"Alright. You step in. The boss will see you soon," the business mare informed me as she opened the train cart’s door.

The inside looked like a waiting room with chairs along one side, a lamp hanging overhead, and photos of flowers on the walls, though all of it was worn down with over two hundred years of age. There was a door on either side along with one that went into the inside of the pentagon.

Steppin in and taking a seat, the door shut behind me with a heavy clunk, thus blocking out all light except the yellow glow of the old lamp.

Now this sense of familiarity I could put my hoof on. This seemed similar to all the times I had sat in waiting rooms like this, waiting to see if I got a job, or lost one. I could deal with good or bad news. It was simply the waiting part that always got on my nerves. My imagination tends to get the best of me until some pony let me know my fate.

It was worse now with how different everything had become, though I was sure that they were not going to take me in the back and shoot me like in an old gangster film. Still, I didn't know the rules of Blue Skies, and Jali had told me to be careful.

The crackle of a radio came on, and the annoyed sounding voice of a mare spoke up. "You can come in, Slowtrot."

Getting up, I turned to my left.

"The door on you right." The voice clarified to me.

Turning around, I trotted to the door. It opened with a rusty squeak. I passed through.

I had entered an office which had a desk at the far end and a row of filing cabinets on either side of the train cart's wall. Oddly, there were terminal screen's lined up on top of the cabanas. I also saw a proper terminal on the desk facing me and not facing where the pony at the desk would sit. The desk itself, other than the terminal, looked normal with a perfectly clean white coffee mug being used to hold several pencils and a name place presenting the pony I was to be seeing.

"Quicktrot Fragment," I read out loud. It sent a cold shiver down my spine.

"You know, I was hoping that it was a stallion who shared the same name. It does happen. Not every pony has a unique name. Nopony is a special snowflake, you see," the voice of the annoyed mare came from behind the back of a tall puffy chair.

The chair swayed before slowly turning around, revealing a tan brown earth pony mare with a pale pink main covering half her face. She and her suit were considerably cleaner than most of the ponies I've seen out here, though her pinpoint pupil gave me a sense that something considerably unclean was inside the mare.

Still, this was not the fragment I remembered.

It was still all wrong. I felt it was best to put some distance between us.

"I guess you were right, then. I must share the same name as a pony you know."

"Yes, I was right." She then picked up a clipboard and pushed it to me, revealing a polished pipbuck on her left hoof. The device makes me feel uneasy.

Looking at the clipboard, it had a document that said "Free Passage to the West Coast" on it.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's what it looks like," she explained, "A one way passage to the west with free room and all the food and beer you can reasonably stuff yourself sick with. Once there, you will be given enough caps to comfortably start a new life. What you do with that life is up to you, all as long as you stay there and never haunt my business again."

I looked at the document, this time flipping through the printed pages. I found no small text. All of it was in simple, direct words. If this was a legal document, it was the most honest looking one I had ever seen.

But it begged me to ask one question. "Why?"

The mare groaned in frustration. "Why else?! You're not supposed to be here, or anywhere for that matter. You died back in that stupid time warp, yet now your here, playing the idiot. But we both know better. You’re a wrench in everyponies well-oiled machine."

As she talked, her hooves moved about in sweeping motions to punctuate every point.

Taking a deep breath, she then straightened out her tie. "So I'm giving you an easy way out. Skip all this heroic bullshit and go back to what's left of your home. You can even visit Sleepy Hooved Dinner. The place is trashed now because of the raiders inability to keep anything clean, but it is still there."

She then pulled out a glass and a bottle of red wine. "You know I do love how even the cheapest of red from back then is now an aged vintage wine." A pale blue overglow with a jade green core enveloped the screen of her pipbuck and the bottle. The bottle levitated and poured the wine into the glass before gently placing the bottle down. "Still… It tastes like shit.

"Throughout my time in the wasteland, I have learned a few important things." She stopped to sip the wine as she further explained, "One is that you don’t need to stop a pony to stop them from getting in your way. Sometimes it's better to just give them what they want, then have them just be on their way. Are they looking for some key, simple passage through your works, or want some ancient tech? Then cut losses and not deal with crazy ponies bullshit. You . . . you are one of those problematic ponies I rather have somewhere I am not. Far from where you can cause me trouble, so take those documents and go."

I gave a long sigh and pushed the documents back to her. "Fragment… Quicktrot… whatever you want to call yourself, why did you leave me to die, and what are you planning to do to this town?"

The mare’s eye twitched.

She reached up to pull her bangs back, revealing the hidden eye. Where the eye should be was what looked like a security camera lens that glowed with a jade and pale blue light from within. The lens looked almost like it had been just shoved into the eye socket and not been surgically attached. Mutilated rotting flesh covered in yellow pus-filled boils that threaten to pop, was surrounding it.

"Princess fucking Celestia, Fragment! What’s wrong with your eye?!" I gasped

"Oh, the usual," the mare spoke, but she hadn't moved her mouth.

The terminal on the desk flickered on. The face of a unicorn mare that looked very much like myself appeared, then spoke. "I call it soul rot, and it's something I'm trying to cure," Quicktrot spoke through the terminal. Her voice like mine but like a mare instead.

The lights went out. The other terminals turned on. They all glowed jade green. Each depicted a pale blue tone pony in different emotional states. Some were in laughing fits, others clearly raging, and a few were sobbing.

On the main terminal, Qucktrot faked sobbed. "It confounds me how their souls keep rejecting my cohabitation. It's not like I want all of it, just a little nibble. Then the soul pushes back, and I have to take a bit more, and a bit more. Eventually the body starts to just fall apart and I have to find replacement parts for them just to keep them alive. "

She then switched to a thinking pose before continuing. "I found out early on that ponies who were broken down mentally lasted longer than those still sane, but even a mad soul will fight back."

Quicktrot got real close to the screen. Her eyes were burning with hate. "Then that fucking cyber cowpony bitch had to then ruin everything!” Quicktrot exclaimed. “Her and her slut husband!"

The screen flickered. Now she was sitting at a podium. Faceless ponies were bowing to her.

"But turns out shooting me in the face and setting the servers on fire only temporarily set me back,” Quicktrot went on “so I found religion. Maybe if the broken ponies saw me as a sort of goddess, maybe they will willingly let me be them."

She shattered to pieces. Slowly she pieced herself back together.

"I may have gotten a bit greedy. God complexes will do that to a mare, you see, and challenge another freak like myself. Took me quite some time to remember who I was after that mess."

Her form became that of a pony in a business suit, caps raining behind her. "Lucky for me, I got to peer into the minds of a ponies who knew too much, so when I was me again, I got to work uncovering riches long forgotten. Now I'm in the business of business, and trust me, business has been really good."

She started laughing. As she did, all the other terminals flickered, becoming her in different states of laughter, echoing in my head.

I stomped my hoof down and shouted, "Answer my question, Fragment!"

They all stopped laughing. One by one, the terminals went blank until all of them were just a green glowing screen.

"It tugs at me when you're near,” Quicktrot explained. “I feel it tugging, and tugging, and tugging, and TUGGING ... like a migraine that just won't go away! The piece of your soul that made me want to return to you, but it's part of me, fully. If I could let it go, I would. I'd rip it off like a bandage and throw it into the garbage!"

Quicktrot's form returned to the terminal. She was now in a lab coat just like the nightmare Phobetor wore back in the R&D stable, though its sleeves were a bit too long, drooping past her hooves like a straitjacket.

"I left you to die so that I could live," she said as she floated off the screen, appearing on the line of terminals to my left.

"When I hid inside your body, it was for survival, but how could I know the consequences of that? I was just a program gaining sentience at the time. They were going to delete me. Me! It was only when Thorn Rosland showed up that I started to get it. She was me, I was her, yet I was also you, and you were me."

Quicktrot began tearing at her face. It broke into pieces before coming back together.

She stopped to look at me as she floated. Madness was clear in her pinpoint eyes.

"But it then became clear when you put my body back on. The other two soul fragments came to me, yet I only tugged three ways."

I stepped back, knowing what she was on about.

"Yes! Poor Healing Herbs didn't tug. I mean, you did shoot her in the head. It made her all cold and dead," she said in a mad yet joyful whisper.

Quicktrot tilted her head unnaturally to the side. "When I left you, only two finally tugged, tug tug, but far away and weak. Phobetor was immoral, so nothing to be done there, and I thought Thorn had found a way to live on. A ghoul maybe? But it turned out it was you all along. Now you are tugging hard at me."

"So that's why you left me to die and why you want me to leave now? Just to give yourself less of a headache?!" I asked with a disgusted sneer.

She nodded as she floated offscreen, now appearing on the row of screens on the other side of the train cart.

"As for this town, it's just too perfect for my experimentation. Oh, how I envy the Ministries and Stable-Tec for their wealth of bodies to toy with as they pleased! The wasteland may be full of life, but its space in viable test subjects. So many ponies already are broken and mad, or with wills forged into iron. Finding those who can be molded properly is not an easy task. Getting my hooves on them is harder still."

She chuckled to herself as she said, "But what if I had them come to me? Have them bend to my will willingly? I could mold them into the perfect subservient soul where I could nibble the soul. It will not reject me and rot the body. I could have a permanent body. I could have many bodies!"

"Then why the drugs?!" I growled.

Quicktrot shrugged. "Money is power. Like war, that will never change. I'll have an entire population of addicts wanting products that only I can provide. Mister Wizard taught me that lesson, among others. Too bad he died before we could meet. I did manage to snatch a few punga plants from those blasted mirage ponies in Cantercross."

"Mister Wizard? You mean that acano tech scientist that did a foals TV program?" I asked, feeling a bit confused.

She rolled her eyes. "Ya-ya. Never meet your heroes kid. They might turn out to have become a drug kingpin. Would have loved to have picked apart his brain."

This was all too crazy, but deep down I knew that nothing she said was a lie. I knew that she was serious and didn't care if I knew about it.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly to clear my head, then calmly asked, "What if I told the sheriff about all this?"

The screens flickered. Quicktrot returned to the terminal on the desk as she taunted, "What? No declaring me as evil and announcing that you will stop me, or lamenting that I came from you? Instead, you resort to tattle, telling mommy Ashy on me."

Quicktrot started chuckling which quickly turned to bellowing laughter. Even the pony she was possessing laughed in a strained, robotic way.

"Go on ahead,” Quicktrot invited. “Do it. See what happens. Tell them everything and be labeled as a mad stallion. Tell them a little and find out how much she really cares," she said as she wiped a digital tear from her digital face. "This isn't the Equestria you grew up in, Slowtrot. Those six good ponies you looked up to not only died so long ago, but they're the ones who killed Equestria itself. The only room the ponies of today have in their hearts is spiteful hate and insatiable greed."

"That's all just projection, Quicktrot,” I argued. “You think that's all ponies can amount to because that's all that you are. I, for one, know that I'm not some hero. I couldn't even properly collapse that megaspell, damnit!" I turned from her and began trotting to the door. "But I can at least make ponies aware that you’re up to no good. Maybe that Lightbringer will come back to take you down."

"You're forgetting something, Slowtrot!" she called out as I reached for the door.

Her magic had picked the document and floated over to me. It was followed by several other wisps of her magic. They looked like parts of different pony’s faces. The magic opened up my saddlebag and placed the document inside.

"Remember this, Slowtrot ... you don't need to be here. All this doesn't need to be your problem," the possessed mare said with a sneer. "Anyways, you were just another one of Thorn’s victims after all. Backed into a corner by her ambition. At least I'm giving you an out, a chance to again live that simple life you once had. Who knows? You might find a pretty mare and start a family. I will guarantee that I will never darken your life as long as you never darken mine."

I turned from her, opening the door, and left the den of that figment of a nightmare. The hot air that greeted me gave me a sudden realization of how cold it was in there and how much I was shivering.

Leaving would be so easy. It's not like this town owed me anything, and those I did like were planning on leaving.

It wouldn't hurt if I left it first.