“Why can’t I come with you!” wailed Paneer.

“It’s not safe,” said Vindaloo. “You’re going to stay with the other Minutemares, and you’re going to the school for a day or two. Rarity’s schools are free, and you could use some education.”

Paneer’s mouth curled into a snarl. “I don’t need to go to school.”

“Oh yeah,” said Vindaloo, smiling smugly. “What’s thirty-two times seventeen?”

Paneer stared at her blankly. “Um. A number?”

Vindaloo arched her eyebrows.

“A hundred?”

“You’re going to school.”

“I don’t need to know math,” muttered Paneer.

Lyra sat with them in a back booth at On the Nose, waiting for the Minutemare veterans, with Soft Sounds curled against Lyra’s side, arching languidly in the grip of some drug Lyra hadn’t wanted any of. “They’ll teach you magic, too.”

Paneer scowled. “But you…”

“I’m going to go look for my family, Paneer,” said Lyra. “I’ll miss you. And I promise I’ll be back. But I need to see my little boy again.”

“It’s not fair,” said Paneer, pulling over her Shetland Temple.

“A mare in every port, huh,” said Vindaloo, glancing across Lyra’s lap at Soft Sounds. “She’s a little young for you.”

Lyra sighed. “I don’t claim to be a good pony.”

“None of us are. The wasteland ate all the good ponies a long time ago. And we all cope in different ways,” said Vindaloo. “Have you given up on your husband?”

Lyra sighed and stroked Soft Sounds’ mane. “Motherfucker went to the Enclave.”

Vindaloo whistled. “Damn. Well. You know a spell for walking on clouds?”

“Right now I can barely lift my cider,” said Lyra. “That doesn’t mean I’ve given up. I want some fucking closure, at least. I want to know why he ran away. But until then? I’m taking revenge-slash-comfort every chance I get.”

Vindaloo laughed. “At least you’re taking it with mares. Fucking stallions. You can’t trust them anywhere near a warm orifice. And they’ll think they’re so sly, and you’re like, ‘Asshole, I can smell her on you.’”

“It’s my fault though. Did I tell you how I got in that tank?”

“Saving lives, if I recall correctly.”

Lyra shook her head. “I saved some lives, but I destroyed my family.”

“Math still works out in your favor,” said Vindaloo. She looked across the bar, eyes distant. “You know what though? If it’d been Crispy in that tank, I’d have waited. I’d have sat there with a sack of food and a pile of ammunition and I wouldn’t have budged ‘til he crawled out again.”

“You’d have to get up to pee,” said Lyra.

“The point is your cowardly Enclave husband doesn’t deserve you,” growled Vindaloo. “Find somepony better. And here are my old friends!”

A group of five rough-looking ponies in Minutemares jackets saluted Vindaloo and sat down across the booth from them. “All right, troops. This is Lyra; she’s a civilian contractor who’ll be accompanying us. Lyra: The fat one is Flawless Victory, the thestral with the beard is Hartwing, the little guy is Ivory Spark, the thestral with one wing is Dark Snow, and the gigantic one is Star Metal.”

“What’s she do?” said Ivory Spark, setting a tumbler of clear liquor down on the table.

“Technical specialist. Magic support, too, but she overdid it and her horn’s in the shop. She’s heading up to the Combat Zone to look for her family.”

“They big gamblers?” rumbled Star Metal, his big square face looking genuinely confused.

Vindaloo waved her hoof. “Long story. The point is, Lyra’s done a lot for the Minutemares, so I don’t want to hear any of you griping about an ‘escort mission’.” She moved her cider to one side, reached under the table, and pulled out a street map of Buck Bay.

“Before I begin, I need to impress on you how serious this operation is. Don’t let the fact that we’re here to raid a T-shirt shop for merchandise fool you. This mission will earn us the materials and supplies the Minutemares need to survive. It would not be inaccurate to say that what happens today will determine the future of the Minutemares. I aim not to lose anypony. But it’s going to be dangerous, and I want you to know that any sacrifices you make today will be remembered.”

The Minutemares nodded and grunted. They understood.

“Our primary objective is the Hoof Topic on the corner of Neighbury Street and Exiter. The plan is simple — we sneak into the old Castle Records building on the corner with Maresachusetts Avenue and move from building to building. Stay quiet, stay out of sight.”

Ivory laughed. “Yeah, then why are Star and I here?”

“Because there are five wings of princesses and at least two of Ponysmith’s Centurions in the area. They’ll mostly be deployed along Exiter Street, so we’ll be right under their noses in the last phase of the operation. Hopefully, if we’re spotted they’ll be polite enough to come at us one at a time, so you can deal with them,” said Vindaloo.

“Naw, I can handle two or three at once,” rumbled Star Metal.

“This will be difficult, but the buildings on Neighburry Street are mid-Celestian rowhouses, all connected. Our client was able to supply us with floor plans that show where we can move from one to the other. I’m going to go over the operation step by step. If we do this perfectly, we should be in and out in no time. Now, listen close.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Burrburrary 26th, EoH 47

A magic bolt blasted through a spinner rack, blowing it to aluminum splinters and covering Lyra with the rotten remains of dozens of witty novelty postcards. She yelped and darted for the shelter of a moth-eaten rack of 27 EOH’s hottest fashions knowing full well they provided concealment, rather than cover.

“Are you hurt?” said BON-80n, her voice on its lowest volume setting. Her engine was off, and she had moved into cover by writhing her tentacles on the floor; a most unsettling thing to see. She’d insisted on accompanying Lyra to the Combat Zone; Lyra wished she hadn’t come because now she was in terrible danger.

All of them were.

“I’m fine!” said Lyra in a loud whisper. “Be quiet!” Not that anything more than a few feet away was audible above the clatter of the Minutemare’s weapons. Vindaloo’s order was for ‘suppressive fire’, which apparently meant shoot nonstop at everything in sight.

They’d entered the block through the Castle Records, as planned. The building was in wretched shape — stripped bare by looters, floors and ceilings sagging, walls torn open and even the pipes and wires scavenged. It didn’t take the floor plans to find a way to the next building, and the next. It wasn’t even possible to discern what the businesses inside these buildings had once been, beyond Lyra’s memory that this one had been a bookstore, and that one a dentist. Or was it a hair salon? The first store that had anything left in it besides a few scraps was this fashion boutique, and Lyra had been so curious as to why that she’d disregarded both the twinge in her lower back and the faint tingle in her horn that indicated magical activity.

In retrospect, they’d probably tripped a magical ward, and that’s what had brought the blue alicorn scout.

That was why the place wasn’t looted.

Now they were pinned down because apparently, a single super alicorn was a match for six veteran Minutemares.

Lyra hated the wasteland so much.

Even if they hit the blue alicorn, what good would that do? It seemed like the ones they’d fought by the Gitgo sign had known when they’d killed one of them. Weren’t they all supposed to be psychically linked?

Lyra’s mouth fell open in horror. If they killed this one, it would just bring more down on them. The Minutemares had to stop firing! She fumbled her 10mm pistol out of its holster and passed it to BON-80n. “Cover me.”

Her chassis lights blinked. “What?”

“I need you to distract the princess while I go talk to Vindaloo! Hold this in your tentacles and push here!” she said, showing her the trigger panel. “Try not to hit anything!”

“Not to worry,” said BON-80n. She started firing. The pistol bucked in her tentacles, most shots going into the ceiling and knocking down tufts of rotten plaster. Which was fine. As long as the blue alicorn was distracted. Lyra could see a bit of Vindaloo’s butt from here, pink and red behind an overturned checkout counter. She held her breath, tensed her legs, and sprinted. She couldn’t summon a shield to protect herself; she just had to hope the super alicorn didn’t have time to line up a decent shot. She hopped over Vindaloo and rolled to a stop behind cover with her.

“Lyra. What is it?” said Vindaloo without looking at her. While her soldiers filled the air with lead, she held her fire. Her eyes scanned the boutique, eager for a flash of blue to target.

“We can’t win this fight,” said Lyra.

“Wanna bet?” Said Vindaloo. She bit down on the trigger. A shriek like a striking eagle filled the air. Lyra’s heart stopped — she was too late! But Vindaloo knew better; she’d already hit the floor behind the counter. A telekinetic bolt sparkled through the air overhead.

“If we kill her, then what?” hissed Lyra. “They’re telepathic, aren’t they? The others will know! They’ll all come down on us and we’ll die!”

“Well what do you suggest?” said Vindaloo. The next magic bolt struck the desk, pushing it back against their heads. “The future of the Minutemares depends on this operation! We can’t run away!”

Lyra cringed. “Negotiate, maybe?”

“With a princess?” Vindaloo stared at her in stunned disbelief. “There’s something wrong with you.”

“Has anypony ever tried it?”

“Nopony who’s still alive.”

“At least give me a chance!”

Another bolt hit the counter, splitting it in half. “Fine,” then, pitched as an order: “Minutemares! Hold your fire!”

Silence.

“Why did you stop shooting?” said a husky, mellifluous voice from nowhere in particular. Lyra observed that the alicorn’s invisibility spell provided sound diffusion as well; that was clever.

“We want to talk!” said Lyra.

More silence. “Why?”

“Because I don’t think we need to fight you. We’re both enemies of the Ponysmith, right?”

“Come out where we can see you,” said the alicorn.

Vindaloo waved goodbye. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

Lyra stood up and walked into the center of the store. “You can see that I’m unarmed.” Not completely the truth; she still had the flechette gun tucked away under her dress.

“If this is a trap, my sisters will avenge me,” said the alicorn.

“Naturally.”

A tall blue alicorn stepped into view as though coming through an invisible curtain. Tall relative to a normal pony; not as big as Luna but a little bit taller than Beanpole had been. Her face and form were supermodel idealized; lanky limbed, thin-bodied, and long-snouted. A line of raw flesh traced the side of her neck, still bleeding. Cold violet eyes widened in recognition. “We saw you! We know you! You dropped a sign on our sister!”

Lyra gritted her teeth. “Well, you guys killed a friend of mine, so I think we’re even.”

“Ha!” said the alicorn. “You know nothing of true friendship! You cannot even imagine the bond between super alicorn sisters! We share every thought, every sensation!” She breathed in through her teeth. “We share perfect intimacy. When a great and powerful super alicorn dies, every sister everywhere in Equestria feels her pain, and every sister grieves.”

Wait. Blue coat. Purple eyes. Haughty diction. Unwarranted use of the phrase ‘great and powerful’. “Hold on. Are you Trixie?”

The alicorn’s eyes widened. “You know of the progenitors?” She tilted her head, contemplating. “We are not Trixie, but she is one of the ponies whose essence we partake in.” She paused, eyes growing distant, as though digging deep in her mind. “The sisters remember one like you. A dreamer. Slovenly. Full of mad plans. Though you are too young to be the Lyra we remember.”

Lyra willed herself to ignore the unflattering description, especially hypocritical coming from a ‘relative’ of Trixie’s. “You’re not the only one who was involved in a weird magical experiment.” She glanced back at the alicorn’s flank. Blank. She thought of the teleporting alicorn’s particular shade of purple, and all the pieces fell into place. “So I see that you’re all equal?”

The alicorn raised her head proudly. “Yes. At last! True equality, driven by magic! Our progenitors could not see it. We remember their terror at being merged into one! But we understand, where they did not — the super alicorns will bring unity to the wasteland! It is foolish to resist. The Friendship Inducing Mutagen is perfectly stable, and has no disadvantages or side effects! So say the great and powerful…”

“So our long term goals don’t line up. Okay. But we don’t have any quarrel with you right now. We just need to requisition some supplies from the Horse Topic up the street. And I hear you’re fighting the Ponysmith’s forces? We don’t like them either. They kidnapped my son.” There was no way he was fighting for somepony like the Ponysmith willingly, no matter what Steel Hooves said.

The alicorn gasped. “The great and powerful super alicorns know well the importance of family! One day all creatures shall be sisters under the glory of the Friendship Inducing Mutagen! But for now…” she narrowed her eyes. “What manner of supplies are you seeking? It would not be wise to give potential enemies undue advantage.”

Lyra smirked. “Ditzy Doo sent us looking for a cache of pre-war promotional merchandise. She wants to sell it in Triple Diamond City, to make money and make ponies happy. Nothing that could hurt you.”

The super alicorn threw back her head and laughed. “Ha ha ha ha ha! That is just like Ditzy Doo. But what help can you offer the magnificent military might of the tactically unequaled super alicorns?”

“Yeah, I didn’t think that far ahead.” Lyra looked back over her shoulder. “Vindaloo? Can we do this?”

Vindaloo peeked from her hiding place. “Lyra, you’re a hell of a diplomat. And damn right we can. Super alicorn: You’re fighting ponies in power armor?”

“At least two such foul metal-clad beasts, yes.”

Vindaloo’s grin showed miles of teeth. “Star Metal. Show ‘em what you got.”

The big earth pony rose out of a pile of pretty dresses like an ancient battleship being dredged from the murk of the sea. His armor wasn’t power armor, but it was still formidable — helmet and breastplate of super-hard ceramic, angled to deflect armor penetrating rounds. the rest of him was draped with ballistic fabric barding. He looked like a knight of the Crystal Empire, except for the weapons mounted on his battle saddle — a massive anti-machine rifle on his right side, and a pair of single-shot rocket launchers on his left. Ivory poked his head out from behind Star Metal; his little body was laden with clips for the anti-machine rifle and extra rocket tubes.

The super alicorn pursed her lips. “We are impressed. Perhaps this alliance will be of value to us after all.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Vindaloo spread her map on a dilapidated coffee table in an old loft apartment.

“Here’s the plan. There are two maniples of unislaves dug in on the other side of Exiter street. All five wings of super alicorns are attacking up Neighbury Street and Public Alley 441, deliberately exposing their flank. We expect the Ponysmith’s Centurions to exploit this, and attempt an attack down Public Alley 435, where we will be waiting in ambush. We will inflict as many casualties as we can, drawing out their Centurions, which Star Metal and Ivory Spark will then dispatch.”

Star and Ivory’s salutes clanked and rattled.

“Once the Ponysmith’s forces have been reduced, both alicorns and Minutemares will advance. Minutemares will loot the Horse Topic and return to Triple Diamond City. Any questions?”

Lyra imagined the unislaves charging into the Minutemares’ gunfire and felt a sinking sensation in her gut. Bean might be out there right now, “Can we really just… kill Ponysmith’s unicorn slaves like that? It’s not their fault they have to fight for him.”

She expected a verbal decapitation — surely Vindaloo would see that objection as a sign of weakness. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry, Lyra. A lot of times the Wasteland leaves us with no good choices. If you find your son’s body today…” Vindaloo hung her head. “I’ll help you bury him.”

Lyra tried very hard not to burst into tears. Keep it cool, think about magic. Not Bean lying dead in the street.

The one-winged thestral — what was his name? Lyra had forgotten already — raised a hoof. ‘What about our flanks? With only six of us and two civilians, we’re gonna be in trouble if they try anything sneaky.” Something in his tone suggested he meant both Ponysmith’s troops and the alicorns.

Vindaloo pointed at Lyra and BON-80n. “The civilians have taken care of that. You’ll notice the robot has two fewer eye stalks than before.”

“This is pretty bare-bones,” said Lyra, relieved at the distraction. She produced the other two metal eyeballs from her saddlebags “We haven’t had time to do anything fancy. But I have rigged these up to transmit directly to Bon Bon’s visual cortex and my PipBuck. I can levitate them anywhere I can see, including over the rooftops, and between the two of us we should have a couple of decent recon drones. They’re small enough that they’ll be hard to notice and even harder to hit.”

The one-winged thestral tilted his head back. “Damn. I’m impressed. Glad Vindaloo brought you along.”

Vindaloo snorted. “You think I carry deadweight, Snow? Lyra will also be in telepathic contact with the princesses. BON-80n is a nursing droid capable of providing battlefield medicine. Any other questions? No? Good. Now I’ll go over the defensive positions I’ve picked out.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra and BON-80n’s field support area was improvised behind a large metal dumpster. Bon Bon waited, engine powered down, beside the medical things they’d set out.

Through her drones, Lyra watched unislaves charge down the alley, five abreast, masked in slit-visored heavy steel helmets and stern black uniforms. They were allowed to reach the cross street before the Minutemares opened fire. Then they started falling. “Like rows of grain before the scythe” — she’d read that in an old history book somewhere, and hadn’t known what it meant. Apparently, it meant they fell down dead, and the row of ponies behind them did, and then the next. By the third row, they’d started firing back. Telekinetic bolts as sharp as knives tore into the rubble, trash bins, and abandoned cars (Lyra had taken out all the spark batteries so they wouldn’t explode) littering the Minutemare’s side of the alley. Then those unislaves died and were replaced by another row.

How could the Ponysmith be so careless of pony life? How could he make those ponies charge into certain death? No training could prepare them for that. Then it clicked. Something else from a history book — those helmets were no use as armor. They crumbled under the Minutemare’s bullets. But they did resemble the ones King Sombra had used to control the Crystal legions.

She clenched her teeth in rage and disgust. That fucker! How could he do that to ponies? She couldn’t watch the massacre any more; anyway her job was to watch the flanks. She levitated her drones over the rooftops.

In the drone’s view of Neighbury Street, literal sparks flew from the battle between the alicorns and the unislaves. The Ponysmith’s defensive tactics were much less suicidal; they fought from cover as the Minutemares did. The alicorns fought in the open, confident in their powerful shields.

Her other drone panned down Stone Soup Street. Two armies camped around the pillared marble edifice of the Buckstone Public Library; the Ponysmith’s forces dug into trenches and the fortified husks of the two churches up the street, the alicorns guarded by a phalanx of white alicorns casting a shield so powerful it was practically opaque. What was so interesting in there? Were both sides in desperate need of reading material? And what, exactly, was keeping them out?

A volley of smoke bombs arced out of the Ponysmith’s lines from hidden launchers. Gray coils spread to fill Stone Soup Street, the super alicorn’s view, but not Lyra’s drone’s lofty perspective. A pony in bronze power armor came around the corner from Neighbury Street. Two more power armor ponies — Centurions? — pounded out of one of the churches. The armor of these two was street camouflage, mottled brown and gray, and black. The three joined up and vanished into the smokescreen.

Lyra flicked on her PipBuck’s radio. “Vindaloo! Three Centurions, coming in somewhere through the row houses!”

“What side?” crackled Vindaloo’s voice.

“Right flank! Stone Soup Street! They’re near my position!”

“Roger that. Sending you Star Metal.”

Star and Ivory came clanking around the corner of the trash bin. “Okay. Where’s the fire?” rumbled Star.

Lyra was about to say that she didn’t know just yet when a green flash blinded her. She blinked her eyes until the shadowy double image of a power armor pony levitating two combat shotguns. One of the muzzles swung to point at her.

Unable to think of anything else to do, Lyra screamed.

Star Metal was fast. Before the Centurion could pull his triggers, he bit down on his. He fired everything — rifle and rockets. The bright trails of the rockets traced burning lines across her retinas. Their heat scorched her fur. The Centurion staggered backward, his breastplate bent and scorched but not penetrated. Star had hit him where his armor was thickest.

The Centurion’s shotguns fired, but Lyra had time to duck, and most of the shot went overhead. She felt some bouncing off her helmet and was glad she’d worn that.

The Centurion’s other shotgun blasted point-blank in Star Metal’s face. Blood splashed from his visor. He charged the Centurion. and they both went down. The sound of his anti-machine rifle echoed again and again until the magazine was empty. Star Metal staggered to his hooves. The Centurion stayed down.

“Star! Star, brother, let me look at you!” shouted Ivory, bouncing frantically around his chest.

“Where you at, little buddy? I can’t see you. Got blood in my eyes.”

Ivory got a hold of his neck armor and tugged Star’s head down to where he could look inside the visor of his buckshot scored helmet. What he saw there made his jaw fall open. “Oh no. Oh shit,” he said, tears squirting down his cheeks.

“Does it look okay? Did he get me bad?” said Star Metal.

“It’s okay,” said Ivory, wrapping his forelegs around Star Metal’s head. “I’ll be your eyes. I’ll be your eyes.”

Lyra’s slumped back against the dumpster, trying to absorb the implications of what she’d just seen. How had the Centurion known to teleport here? Unless… The realization came like a punch to the throat. She was using radio transmissions to get signals from the drones. And communicating with Vindaloo by uncoded radio transmissions. And the Ponysmith’s Centurions had radios too, right in their power armor suits. She’d been so stupid!

Also, she’d seen three Centurions flanking them, and they’d only fought one, and…

Familiar voices screamed from up the alley. Lyra snapped her attention back to reality. BON-80n hung over Star Metal’s prone form, tentacles working over his face. His helmet, scored with buckshot and soaked with blood, lay to one side. Ivory watched, down on his belly, tears and Star’s blood soaking his cheeks.

“Vindaloo! VIndaloo! Do you read me? Watch your right flank!” Nothing. This was very bad.

“I think I may be able to save one of his eyes,” said BON-80n. “My own would be helpful, here.”

Lyra jerked them back from the rooftops and set them down under her. “You’ll have to set them up yourself. Ivory. I need your rockets.”

He swung the remaining three single-launch tubes off his back and shoved them at her. “Fucking take them!”

Lyra sent a telepathic call for help to the alicorns, and ran up the street, 10mm pistol drawn. She zipped from cover to cover as magic bolts flashed over her head. Gunfire still sounded, but there was less of it. That was bad — most of the gunfire on this battlefield came from the Minutemares. Less of it meant fewer Minutemares. It meant Vindaloo might be dead.

A magic bolt tore across her shoulder, ripping open her jacket. She felt cold shock, unable to determine if the bolt had hit her body or not. She looked in the direction the bolt had come from — unislaves were over the Minutemare’s barricades! Three of them, horns glowing.

She dropped and rolled for the cover of an overturned Cowvega, entering SATS as she did. She let off a flurry of bullets, as many as she could squeeze out of the targeting spell. The unislaves crumpled — a little too quickly; she wasn’t that good a shot. She looked to her left. The fat Minutemare — Flawless Victory? — waved her towards the Hoof Topic. Lyra nodded at him and bolted around the far side of the Cowvega.

Light flashed from the broken windows of the Hoof Topic. She unslung one of her rocket launchers. How did this work? Her knowledge of military weapons was patchy, but she’d watched somepony handle one on the firing range once. You had to pull a pin or something…

Lyra yelped as the metal tube telescoped, doubling in length instantly. A long vertical glass sight of the kind Lyra had never really understood popped up, revealing a push-button trigger. Her PipBuck’s EFS told her that her I-72 Light Anti-machine Rocket was now ready to fire.

Heavy weapons are dangerous! Please do not use the I-72 LAR in an enclosed space! warned Littlepip.

“Shut off,” muttered Lyra, and dashed to the window of the Hoof Topic, ready to use her LAR in an enclosed space. Her HUD showed two red and one green dots dancing in a complex pattern. Should she dive into the battle? Or poke her head up and try to see what was going on first? A magic bolt tore a chunk out of the wall next to her — she was too exposed here. Over the windowsill she went, broken glass tugging at the hem of her dress.

She landed face-first in a train of entrails. She yelped and rolled away, covered in blood and shit. The one-winged thestral had been hit here; and his hind end still lay next to his tangled intestines. A trail of blood led off behind a pile of shelves, where his front half had crawled off to die. Lyra willed herself not to puke. She didn’t have time.

Two Centurions danced through the narrow confines of the shop floor. The one in street camouflaged armor dual-wielded assault rifles; the one in bronze armor fired magic bolts, both of them aiming at something she couldn’t see. Wait. No. She could. Near the back of the store, she saw Vindaloo roll between two piles of rubble, and snap off a series of rifle shots at the camouflage-armored pony before vanishing again. Bullets sparked off the seam between his neck plates and his shoulder plates. Lyra was amazed — there was absolutely no way Vindaloo was going to kill a power armor pony that way. Even the visor glass was proof against small arms. But she still fought. It was both admirable and pathetic.

Or not. The gray armored pony turned to face the place Vindaloo had been seconds ago — directly away from Lyra. She entered SATS, locked the rocket on his armor encased butt, and fired.

No kind of armor could be thick everywhere — it weighed a lot, and design trade-offs had to be made. Almost every armor designer chose a simple solution to this problem: heavy armor up front, lighter armor in the back. Keep your face to the enemy and you’ll be fine. This meant that if the front of the Centurions power armor could absorb multiple rocket and anti-machine rifle hits before collapsing, the back had to be thin enough that it could not even stop a single rocket.

Lyra’s rocket flashed through the air and poked a small hole next to the pony’s tail. The power armor pony didn’t scream or fall, he just stopped — standing still, held up by the armor’s frame, a corpse in a tin can. A surge of triumph rose in her chest. Two down. She discarded the empty rocket tube and popped open another.

But the bronze pony had seen her. He turned to face her. The armor’s horn casing glowed. Lyra ran.

Hot exhaust from the rocket had set the dead thestral’s severed butt on fire, and Lyra used that to her advantage, diving into the foul-smelling smoke. She hid behind a fallen set of shelves. The vary same the thestral’s front half had crawled behind. She looked at his dead eyes and his exposed ribcage and screamed. Then she covered her mouth. Had the bronze pony heard her over the noise of battle?

Ironshod hoofsteps moved towards her. He knew where she was. She cringed, cowering down next to the severed torso beside her. Maybe she could pretend to be dead. Maybe if she fired her last rocket right in his face?

Too late. The bronze pony rose up over her, staring down. Lyra stared up at him, ears pressed flat against her skull, so scared she couldn’t even breathe, let alone aim a rocket. The light of magical battle reflected off his faceplate. Vindaloo’s bullet’s sparked off his side.

He didn’t fire. Why didn’t he fire?

His horn plating glowed. Not an attack. An invitation. Lyra responded without thinking — true telepathy was a difficult spell, but unicorns’ minds could touch on a surface level almost without effort. She knew this touch. She’d felt it many times before. The first time she felt it, it had been inside her womb.

“No,” she whispered, backing up against the wall. “No, you can’t be. You wouldn’t. You’d never.”

If the bronze pony had anything to say, he didn’t get a chance to say it. Thre purple alicorns teleported into the store and started blasting even before the glow of their spell had faded. A flurry of magic bolts hit him, tearing off a chunk from his back armor. He cast a teleport spell and vanished in a flash.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra had worried that the Hoof Topic’s useful stock had been destroyed in the firefight, but it had a stock room. A locked, metal walled, climate-controlled stock room. The keypad that controlled the lock was a RoanCo design, so it was still operating, and easy for her to coax into revealing its secrets. Lyra whistled in awe as the door hissed open. Shelf after shelf of plastic sealed T-shirts and mint-in-box toys. Not to mention several cases of Sparkle Cola. Pay dirt.

The Minutemares had made good use of the time it’d taken her to get the vault open. Two suits of battered but functional power armor had been emptied of their former occupants' remains and readied to carry cargo. Star Metal was ready, too — eyes bandaged, but willing to work if Ivory led the way.

While they worked, Lyra interested herself in a game of solitaire on her PipBuck — she’d rescinded the super alicorn’s access to her mind, a simple enough procedure, but maybe they knew a way around that. Lyra didn’t want to be a means for spying on her own ponies. The Minutemares had to work fast — they were allowed to loot the Hoof Topic as part of their agreement. The alicorns had said nothing about the power armor, and while their tall skinny bodies wouldn’t fit inside the suits, they would not want a rival army to have them.

She let herself get absorbed in helping Littlepip sort cards. Mostly she failed, but when she did, she just started a new game. Games were good that way; it didn’t matter how often you failed. You could just start again.

If you failed at being a mother, that was it. She could have another foal one day, maybe. But for Bean, the damage was done.

She felt a soft touch on her shoulder. She looked back. “Vindaloo?”

“They’re away.”

“Good. The princesses aren’t bothering them?”

“They’re still distracted. BON-80n’s helping them with their wounded.”

Lyra sighed with relief. “Good.”

“It shouldn’t take our ponies long to get back to Triple Diamond City. We all need to get out of here soon. The Ponysmith’s going to hit back, and hit back hard.” Vindaloo looked her in the eye. “Have you decided where you’re going?”

“Vindaloo, it was him. The bronze Centurion. It was Bean.” Lyra’s voice cracked as she spoke.

Vindaloo’s eyes widened. “You’re sure? You didn’t see his face.”

“A mother knows,” she slumped, head hung nearly to the bottoms of her hooves. “I failed him. It’s my fault. He’s evil and it’s my fault.”

Vindaloo put a hoof on her shoulder and gave her a firm but gentle shake. “Hey. Hey. If I blamed myself for every idiot thing my kid does I’d never stop kicking my own ass.”

“Don’t be nice to me, I’ll cry,” said Lyra, her voice shaking.

Vindaloo put her hooves on both of Lyra’s cheeks, lifted her head, and glared deep in her eyes. “All right. Listen up, you crazy daughter of a whore. You’d be completely within your rights to just let him go. Yeah, the wasteland tore your family apart. So what? It does that to everypony. You’re lucky your son is still alive. What does it matter to you what he does with his life? He’s evil? Let him be evil. You want a family? Come back with us. Settle down with Blue Note, with that slutty DJ, with both of them, or whoever you want. You want kids? You can adopt. The wasteland makes a lot of orphans.”

“I just need to fucking talk to him, okay? I need to know why.” She needed to know if she could save him, but she didn’t say that out loud. Vindaloo would tell her she was being stupid, and she would be right.

Vindaloo nodded. “Okay. It’s your funeral. How are you going to do that?”

Lyra swallowed around the dry raw lump in her throat. “I’m going to march up to the Ponysmith’s lines and surrender myself.”

Vindaloo sneered. “That’s too stupid, even for you. Try again.”

“I… I don’t know.”

“What about the Combat Zone? Paper Heart is there. He can help you find him.”

Lyra shook her head and pushed Vindaloo’s hooves away. “I know where Bean is now. I don’t need Paper Heart anymore.”

“You know what he does for a living. You don’t know where he is. Armies move around a lot.

“Another reason you need to go there is because the Combat Zone is a neutral zone. Rascal King’s security is the tightest in the wasteland. If you want to talk to someone from the Ponysmith’s army safely that’s the place to do it.”

Lyra blinked. “What. Rascal King. He’s named after the mayor of Buckstone from before the war?”

“No. He is the mayor of Buckstone. Stable 114 was a huge grift. He paid StableTec with taxpayer money to build it for himself and his earth pony cronies. When the megaspells fell, he let in many poor earth pony families, too. He saved a lot of lives.”

Lyra tilted her head to one side. “That’s… good? I guess?” It had always been hard to tell, with Rascal King. He helped the poor with one hoof and picked the government's pockets with the other.

Nope,” said Vindaloo. “He turned away pegasi and unicorns. No exceptions. I know you think I’m tribalist, but inequality between earth ponies and the other tribes was real, before the war. You couldn’t always see it, because the princesses would never let anypony go hungry. But what jobs did earth ponies do? Farming, pulling carts, working mines, and rock farms. Those things didn’t pay as well as the white-collar jobs you unicorns do, and we couldn’t run away to the sky like the pegasi did. We couldn’t afford stables, and that left us outside. But I tell you what — turning somepony away from safety because they’re a unicorn or a pegasus is just as bad as turning them away because they can’t pay. Worse, maybe.”

“Damn,” said Lyra. “That’s where I’ve got to go. Will they even let me in?”

“If you’ve got caps, they will. Here,” She out a Pinkie Pie Tote bag and tossed it to Lyra. “Some stuff for barter.”

Lyra opened the tote. It contained a dozen wrapped Pinkie Pie T-shirts, a couple of figurines, a few Sparkle Colas, and a lunch box full of bottle caps. “Damn. You’re sure?”

“Ditzy doesn’t want Pinkie Pie stuff. Everycreature still hates the Ministry of Morale. Might as well be yours.”

Lyra slung the bag over her back. “So this is it. Goodbye.”

“Yeah. It’s been… damn, has it only been a month?” Vindaloo’s voice sounded wobbly now. “It’s been pretty intense.”

“I’m gonna miss you. Tell the other’s I’m gonna miss them.”

Vindaloo grabbed Lyra and squeezed her until she couldn’t breathe, smacking her on the back over and over. “You can always come home to us. Wherever the Minutemares are, you’ll be welcome. Stay safe. Stay safe.”

They hugged three more times before Lyra got away. She hadn’t even gotten out of the store when she thought of something else she wanted to say. She turned back from the door. “Vindaloo?”

“Yeah?”

“When you told me that you’d stay by Crispy no matter what. Does he know that?”

“Nope.”

“Maybe you should tell him.”

Vindaloo smiled. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

Level Up
New perk: Rocketmare. You have a natural affinity for rockets and missiles, and gain 20% accuracy when firing them in SATS. Give ‘em hell, mare.

Next Chapter: Chapter 17: Hoof Hide Face Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 58 Minutes