“You shouldn’t have come,” said Lyra, mutated brambles prickling every exposed part of her coat. “It’s dangerous out here.”

Melting snow had soaked through her jacket and coat right through to her skin, though on the bright side it had somewhat cleaned the Minutemare viscera still clinging to her body.

“I could not in good conscience let you go alone,” said BON-80n. “Also I need your help to reattach my eyeballs.”

One of the peculiarities of the wasteland that Lyra was discovering was that it could take a very long time to go a very short distance. After consulting her PipBuck’s map, she’d decided to sneak across the Public Garden and Buckstone Common, rather than risk the roads, where she’d be more exposed. A leisurely fifteen minutes walk in the old days; overgrown, mutated vegetation had turned the garden into a small forest and made the trip across into an hour-long slog. To make matters worse, Vindaloo had warned her in no uncertain terms not to go near the old swan boat pond. There was something in there. So in the end she’d reached the road that divided the gardens from the park just in time to see the vanguard of Ponysmith’s reinforcements arriving.

They came in long columns. A centurion or two, followed by maniples of fifty to a hundred unislaves, plus a dozen or so teamster ponies pulling carts. Every time one maniple passed out of sight and she thought the coast was clear, her PipBuck showed another cluster of red coming from the north. Every once in a while a larger group of ponies pulling carts would roll by lugging supplies or heavy weapons. What was interesting about the teamsters was that they wore no helmets. Just ordinary, thin, tired looking unicorns. They might be working under coercion, but not mind control.

By the time the last unislave passed by, Lyra had counted almost a thousand, which must be a massive movement of troops by wasteland standards. It was getting dark. Too dark to risk wandering through the wasteland — with no street lights or cars, no stars, and no moon, the city of Buckstone was dark as the Everfree after the sun fell. Lyra’s body heat had melted the snow and soaked her to the bone, the temperature was rapidly dropping from ‘freezing’ to ‘dark side of the moon’, and both BON-80n and Littlepip were nagging her about hypothermia.

“Your body temperature is dropping alarmingly,” said BON-80n. “You should seek shelter.”

“Seek shelter where?” Her pastern buzzed. Lyra glanced down to see that her vital statistics were up on the screen. Littlepip pointed at her temperature, making a broad gesture with the other hoof as if to guide Lyra’s eyes toward that temperature. “Hey, can you see this little pony?” She held her PipBuck screen towards her robot friend’s one remaining eyestalk.

BON-80n rocked her chassis back and forth in imitation of a nod. “Ah, I see you are hallucinating already.” Tentacles draped across Lyra’s body. “Please. Come with me.”

Deep in the park, ice cracked. “Did you hear that?” hissed Lyra, ears swiveling towards the sound. Water lapped against the shore of the swan pond.

“Some sort of wildlife,” said BON-80n, voice volume turned low. “Nothing more.”

“Wildlife!” sputtered Lyra. But before she could say anything else, something massive, dark, bulbous rose up above the trees behind them.

Lyra cowered down in the snow, wishing she hadn’t given that last rocket launcher back to Ivory. Faint edge-light gleamed on the behemoth’s wet, misshapen body, showing it to be as big as a school bus. She’d run, but the brambles barred her way. Time to die. She drew her little pistol, and waved it at the behemoth, as if a 10mm bullet would do anything but enrage a creature that size. “Don’t come any closer!”

“Swan know you,” it rumbled in a deep, silky voice. “You two help Swan’s sisters.”

“Huwha?” said Lyra. Whatever this thing was, it was not an alicorn.

“I believe my friend is trying to say that we are not sure what you are saying. It sounds as though you are saying you are related to the alicorns somehow?” said BON-80n.

The towering lumpy blackness made a huge, nodding motion against the deeper blackness of the night sky. “Yuh huh. Me powerful super alicorn! Just a little different than the others. Me hide here for when they need me. Me a secret!” The creature lowered its voice. “Me on secret mission right now.”

“My. That seems terribly exciting,” said BON-80n. “But I wonder if we could trouble you for a moment? My friend here is wet, and cold, and tired, and we need to get to Stable 114. Would you mind carrying her?”

“Small creatures get cold. Swan no get cold. Swan too big, too fat. Me ask the sisters if…” He paused for a few ponderous moments. “Me no ask. Sisters mean sometimes. Sisters say Swan ‘imperfectly mutated’. Me not as equal as they are. Me help you, and if they find out and say I was wrong to do it, me just pretend not to understand.”

BON-80n clapped her tentacles. Her chassis lights flashed green. “Excellent. Quickly, then, mon ami, we have no time to lose!”

“P-put me down! I’m f-fine,” said Lyra through chattering teeth.

The journey across the common reminded Lyra of being in college, walking home from a party with a campus guard escort. Except in this case the guard was cradling her against his chest like she was a small dog. “Me stallion, once,” he said as he walked on his hind legs. “Super alicorns capture me, and expose me to the FIM. Me very unhappy. It supposed to make me a mare. Make me smart. Make me pretty. But not do any of those things. It just make me big. It also make me hear the sisters in me head, but me not part of them. Me no have to do what they say, and me no have to listen if me no want to.” Lyra felt warmed by Sawn’s embrace. The warmth made her eyes heavy.

“That’s very interesting.” said BON-80n. “So the Friendship Inducing Mutagen does not always work. I wonder — is it a magical transformation, or is it something else. A retrovirus perhaps?”

Lyra felt Swan shrug. “Me no know.”

“There’s different ways to be pretty,” muttered Lyra, “My mother always told me ‘pretty is as pretty does’.”

“Yes. Sisters pretty on outside, but sometimes very ugly on inside. Me other way around. Usually.” He stooped and set Lyra gently in the snow. “Me put you here. Guards here get shooty when they see me. Bullets not hurt Swan, but you two might get hit.”

BON-80n curtsied. “Merci. Without your help, my friend Lyra might have become very sick.”

“No problem,” said Swan. “Me go smash bad ponies now.” He turned, and waved, and lumbered off into the night towards the library.

“Now what?” said Lyra. She was still wet, and away from Swan’s massive bulk she was getting cold again.

BON-80n pointed behind Lyra with a tentacle. The two entrance kiosks of the Park Street subway station still stood, stone chipped and stained but largely intact. On one of them flashed a large neon sign reading ‘COMBAT ZONE: food, drink, gaming, live fights’. “Perhaps we should ask there?”

“Oh,” said Lyra.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

There was a line to get in. Lyra stood shivering, pressed up against BON-80n for the slight warmth of her engine, waiting for a bouncer — an honest to Harmony bouncer like they were just out clubbing! — to frisk them let them in. They were respectful but thorough. They even found the flechette gun.

Inside the station doors, they had to check their weapons at a teller behind a thick glass window.

“You’ll need to wear this,” said the teller, pushing a dull metal ring through the gap at the bottom of the glass, along with her claim check.

“Is it mandatory?” said Lyra, touching the magic limiter nervously.

The check room teller looked at Lyra over the top of her glasses.“No. But neither is the guards not shooting you.”

Lyra sighed, and slid the ring over her horn. It was uncomfortable, putting it on so soon after losing her magic.But the sensation was different — more like having her magic numbed than losing it.

She’d wondered how putting a casino in a stable would work; it turned out the casino wasn’t in the stable but in the train station; the stable must be beneath the station. The first thing inside the doors was a bar; the whole place had been renovated in dark wood and brass fixtures to the point where the only thing Lyra recognized from the old station was the location of the support pillars. Lyra found an unoccupied stool and flagged down the blue earth pony bar tender.

“What’s you’re poison, ma’am?”

“Coffee. Black. Four sugars. I’m gonna need a bed, too, for me and my robot. And a shower. And laundry. I’m a mess.”

The bartender whisked a pot off the counter behind him. “Lots of folk are, when they come in. You’ll find all those things if you go through the door to the casino and hang a left. Beds are ten caps a night, showers and laundry are free, though you gotta buy your own soap. Anything else I can help you with?”

Lyra tried to lift the coffee cup in her magic, but she couldn’t grip it with her limiter-weakened telekinesis; it wobbled and sloshed on the counter. She leaned down to lick at it instead. Tired and punch drunk, she thought about the benefits of being direct, and decided why the hell not. “I’m looking for Paper Heart, for Coloratura, and I need to talk to the Ponysmith.”

The bartender didn’t bat an eyelash. “Coloratura’s on at nine.”

Lyra blinked. Well. There was one mystery solved.

“I don’t know any Paper Heart, but if Easy Money’s here he’ll be at the hoof hide tables. If you want to join up with the Ponysmith, go talk to him. I’d skip all that if I were you, though. Don’t join an army. You’ll live longer if you keep your head down, sell scrap, and spend your money here.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“I do not understand this place at all,” said BON-80n, hovering near the low ceiling to get a better view of the casino floor. “Most of these games seem to involve little to no skill. Why is everycreature so excited?”

Lyra shrugged. “They just like gambling. I never did, except for hoof hide.” The Combat Zone’s clientele was just as diverse as Rarity’s city, though it drew a very different crowd. Raiders clustered at slot machines, hooting and hammering on them between lever pulls. Ponies and griffins in military uniforms mingled, drinking and talking — unicorns in uniforms similar to the ones the unislaves wore but with more medals and without the helmets, and pegasi in navy blue uniforms that Lyra assumed were from the Enclave. There were creature Lyra hadn’t yet seen in the wastelands — buffalo and deer, a couple of raiju, and an Abyssinian dealing blackjack. Security wasn’t subtle — earth ponies in fedoras and full suits, shoulder rigs loaded with 10mm sub-machine guns with drum clips. Lyra resolved to try and avoid making trouble here.

“So let me see if I understand the concept of gambling correctly,” said BON-80n as Lyra led her down a row of slot machines. “The player offers a sum of money, and receives a random sum of money in return, ranging from more than they offered to none at all.”

“That’s the long and short of it,” said Lyra, slipping nervously past a gaggle of raiders. She worried one might pick a fight with her, but their glassy, bloodshot eyes saw nothing but their slot machines. One of them pulled the lever, and plastic chips began to spew from the slot. The whole group of raiders gathered around the machine, whooping and pumping their hooves in the air.

BON-80n’s chassis lights glowed a skeptical purple. “If creatures wished to accrue profit, would it not be more sensible to, how do you say, invest in a likely business venture?”

Lyra looked over her shoulder and grinned. “If ponies were rational, sure. Let me get cleaned up and I’ll show you hoof hide.” The shower was communal, but she found she was finally regaining her blase attitude about public nudity. She even stood around naked while she tossed her dress in an electric washer and scrubbed the last of the blood, mud, and filth off her jacket at the sink. She put on one of the other dresses she’d bought in Triple Diamond City, and styled her mane with her hooves. Then she rented a room — just a partition in an old subway car with a cot, a foot locker and some clothes hangers — left her jacket there to dry, and hit the cage to barter some T-shirts for chips.

“So this is hoof hide,” said Lyra to BON-80n, standing near a table watching the creatures play. “It’s simple. The dealer stirs up the little flat stones, there, see? And he passes out a dozen to each player, face down. That’s your bob. You have to make a trail from your bob, using six of your stones.”

BON-80n’s chassis lights dimmed slightly. “A trail as in a little line of them?”

Lyra shook her head and waved her forehooves. “No. A trail means a set of stones in a particular order, based on what’s on the face side, like a run of numbers, or all the same suit, or all princesses, or whatever.”

“I see.” BON-80n’s tone indicated that she did not understand at all.

“And then the players all go around and say if they’re going to hide, or sniff, or lift their bets. And then the dealer turns over one of the stones in the river… wait. Did I tell you about the river?”

“This is not simple at all.”

“That’s okay. None of it really matters.”

BON-80n’s chassis lights dimmed to almost darkness. “What?”

“The core of the game is bluffing. Nocreature knows what your trail is, right? Because you hide it with your hoof. And you can’t control what your bob is. But you can act like you’re got a great trail, lifting all over the place, when you’ve got a crappy bob, and if you scare everybody so they hide…”

“I was led to understand that everycreature was already trying to hide their pieces?”

“No, no, I mean hide as in giving up your bet and stopping playing for the round. It’s different.”

BON-80n pressed gently on Lyra with her tentacles. “Why don’t you just go play.”

Lyra bought into a seat at one of the tables and the dealer dealt her into the next bob. Shielding her stones with her hoof, she noticed they included a three, a five, an eight, a twenty-one, and a thirty-four — almost a Fillyonacci straight! She tried not to show it in her face, and lifted. Luck was on her side, and the river included a thirteen. She took the bob easily, giving her a nice little pile of chips to work with for the rest of the evening. Playing hoof hide with money she didn’t need — what was she going to spend it on, out there? — was a nice change from life in the wasteland.

She took her time and played cautiously, getting the measure of the other players. None of them were especially good, especially not the nervous uniformed pegasus, and even less so the yak in a cheery tropical shirt whose body visibly slumped or straightened when he got the first look at his bob. She was having a good night, until the yak got up and the white unicorn sat down.

He lit a cigarette, pushed his shaggy blonde mane out of his eyes, and smiled absentmindedly as the dealer passed him his bob. That absent minded smile didn’t change as he set up his trail behind his hoof. “In for ten.” He pushed his chips towards the center of the table.

“Sniff,” said Lyra, tossing in ten caps worth of chips when it was her turn to bet. The other players had made similar modest bets, trying to get a feel for the new player.

“Lift twenty,” he said, still smiling gently. His soft blue eyes had a faraway look that made Lyra want to hug and cuddle him. She sniffed his bet, and the dealer turned over the river.

“Raise fifty,” said the white unicorn. He laboriously tugged over an ash tray with his limiter-ring-shackled magic, and tapped non-existent ash off his cigarette. A tell? He seemed harmless enough. Excellent hoof hide face or no, clearly the river was good for him and he was getting overconfident. She decided she would try to bluff him out.

“Hide,” squeaked the nervous pegasus.

“Lift twenty,” said Lyra, struggling not to smile. She was going to pummel this beautiful fool.

The pony on her right hid, as well. It was just her and the white unicorn now. “Lift fifty,” he said, tapping out the ash of his cigarette again.

Lyra’s stomach fluttered with doubt. Her bob wasn’t that good. Two pairs. Not bad but nothing to write home about. Could she make something better off the river? She checked quickly. She could not. Damn. Her doubt must be showing on her face. This was too dangerous. She’d get him next bob. “Hide.”

His expression didn’t change as he raked in his chips.

Over the next hour and a half, he took the table apart. He didn’t win every bob, but he won a lot of them, and he never lost big. Lyra ground her teeth — that unnecessary-cigarette-tapping tell came up again and again, but not in any discernible pattern. She thought it meant he had a good bob, or was at least feeling confident, but then he started to do it before he hid.

Lyra didn’t want to cuddle him any more. She wanted to smash his pretty smiling face against the table. “So,” she said, while the dealer passed out the next bob. “You must be Easy Money.”

“And you must be Lyra. It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Lyra felt a vein under her eyelid pulse. “Why, does Bean talk about me much?”

Easy Money nodded towards Lyra’s bob. “You’d do better if you’d keep your head in the game.”

That was it. Lyra was going to take every last penny this asshole had.

Half an hour later she was broke.

“I am sorry you lost,” said BON-80n. “You are very upset.”

“Don’t worry about it. I still have T-shirts left.” She wasn’t upset about the game. “Hey, did you get any biometrics on that big white guy?”

“Oui. I did not like him, so I kept a close eye.”

“But his emotions. Pupil dilation? Heart rate? All that stuff you can pick up on. How’s he feeling?”

“There was no variation. Always the same. Perfect, resting calm.”

Lyra patted BON-80n on the side of the chassis. “Thanks for looking out for me, Bon Bon. I need to hit the little filly’s room. Could you see if we can get seats to Coloratura’s set?”

BON-80n curtsied. “But of course!”

Lyra did have to pee a river, but that wasn’t where she was going. The uniformed pegasus had left the table the same time as she had. She followed him back towards his room. She had a lot of questions to ask Easy Money — was Bean alive? Was he hurt badly? — but he didn’t seem like he was up for a nice friendly chat. This pegasus looked like a much easier nut to crack.

So to speak.

Mom had always told her she’d catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, but where was mom now? A pile of radioactive ash, most likely.

She felt eyes on her as she followed him towards the train tunnel. She glanced to one side, and saw Littlepip watching her from the door to the showers. She nodded at Lyra, and smiled.

Even knowing Littlepip approved of her course of action couldn’t turn her aside from it. She slipped the limiter off her horn.

The pegasus stepped up the stairs to his train car. The lights were out in most of the train. They were alone, and hopefully the noise of whatever she did to him would be covered by the bustle of the casino. She acted as though she was going to walk past him, then at the last second jumped up in the train car behind him and kicked closed the door.

The ‘room’ was barely wider than a single pony. She kicked his legs out from under him and he tumbled back onto the bed. She leaped up on top of him. He wasn’t a big stallion, but he was still probably stronger than her; she hoped he’d be too shocked to fight back right away.

“My money’s under the bed! Please don’t hurt me!” he squealed.

Lyra pressed her hoof against his throat. “Are you Enclave?”

“What?”

Her horn glowed. She got a grip on his balls, and twisted ever so slightly. “Are you. Fucking. Enclave?”

“Yes! Yes! Don’t you recognize the uniform?”

“I’m new here. Do you know a stallion named Beanpole Heartstrings?”

“Huh?”

She twisted again. “Beanpole. Heartstrings. They brought him back from Triple Diamond City about two years ago. Brown. Tall. Skinny. Do you know him?”

“No! I don’t know everypony up there!” He let out a high pitched squeak as Lyra tightened her magical grip. “But I remember that group!”

“Are they okay up there?”

“What?”

“Are they okay? Do they have enough to eat? Are they treated well?”

“Damn better than they’d be down here!”

Lyra smiled a toothy smile. “Well, You’re going to do something for me. You’re going to find Beanpole, and you’re going to tell him to come down here and talk to his damn wife. He’s got some explaining to do.”

“I c-can’t!”

Lyra twisted hard. “You can’t what? Ever father a foal?”

“I can’t bring him down. No one is allowed to leave the Enclave!”

Lyra scowled. “And yet you’re down here.”

“I’m an officer! We look the other way for each other! Ordinary ponies have to stay in their assigned flock!” A tear trickled down his cheek. “I can’t do anything to help you. Will you please let me go? I promise not to tell anyone you were here.”

“You’re not convincing me he’s better off up there,” growled Lyra. But she let him go and stepped off his bed. “Find him. Tell him I’m looking for him. Or the next time I see you things won’t go so well for you.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Lyra tilted the program flyer from side to side, as though viewing it from a different angle could make it make more sense. “So Coloratura’s on, and then there’s a fight?”

BON-80n bobbed in her imitation of a nod. “This appears to be the plan for the evening.”

“Something for everypony, I guess?”

The lower platform of the train station had been converted into what could be thought of as either a stage in the round or an arena — rings of seats surrounding a caged, circular platform. As they spoke, the lights dimmed. Lights around the stage began to strobe. “Oh. Either the show is starting or my visual cortex is malfunctioning.”

Platforms cranked down from the ceiling into the cage, bearing Coloratura, her piano, her dancers and her band. She was already singing as she came down, and leaped to the floor and started strutting and prancing. For a pony who must be over fifty by now, she had a lot of vim. A bit thicker in the haunches than she was last time Lyra saw her live, but it looked good on her.

Time for the cataclysm
Time for apocalypse
The bombs burn bright and the colors glow
I'm just a pony,
I think you know
Nothing matters anymore, it's about to blow!

Razzle dazzle
Glitz and glam
Burn it all up, it's a cataclysm
Razzle dazzle
Glitz and glam
Burn it all up, it's a cataclysm

Let me live
Though the Apocalypse
Nothing else matters
It’s a cataclysm.

Razzle dazzle
Glitz and glam
Burn it all up, nothing matters
I’m still singing
Just to impress
Nothing matters after the apocalypse.

She’d changed the lyrics a bit, but it was still good stuff. Lyra stomped and cheered, and lost herself in the show. Rara played a lot of her back catalog — The Magic Inside, Hoof Hide Face, Alicorn Down — and a bunch Lyra didn’t recognize. Nothing mattered in the apocalypse, but Coloratura hadn’t let that block her creative groove. She also played a number of covers. Rescue me. Holding Out for a Hero. I Want to Break Free.

It was almost as if she was trying to send some sort of a message.

It was a long set, at least three hours. Adrenaline kept Lyra going — she hadn’t been to a good concert in awhile, even before the Bad Day — but when the lights went down and the crowd stood up to cheer, Lyra hit her seat.

“Are you all right?” said BON-80n over the whooping of the crowd. They loved Coloratura here — as they should, of course. The raiders seemed especially appreciative, hopping in the air and voicing their various gangs’ war cries.

“Just tired. Long day.”

“That it has been.”

The stage lights came up again, and the crowd hushed into respectful silence. Coloratura sat at her piano, alone on stage, ready for her encore.

“I came to this place,” said Coloratura, “because I was afraid. I was worried by Rarity’s decision to allow hivelings into her city. I worried they would disguise themselves, do horrible things, and cast the blame on innocent ponies. I knew this fear was wrong, but it haunted me, and I took Rascal King’s invitation to come to the Combat Zone.

“But now, I realize that there is nothing so important as freedom. And to be truly free, we need to not only accept ourselves as we are, but to accept others as they are.

“I understand that now. But it’s too late.”

Lyra sighed. That was Coloratura. She made mistakes from time to time. As in, if it was a given time, she was probably making a mistake.

Coloratura began to play, unaccompanied on the piano. Another cover — one of Sweetie Belle’s songs, but the passion in her voice made it clear the words were close to her heart.

How did this happen? What have I done?
I was only trying to help, but I caused so much pain.
I wish I could hide. Wish I could run.
I wish I could find a way to do it all over again...

The bitter ballad of regret washed over Lyra like a lullaby. BON-80n’s tentacles wrapped around her middle, guiding her out of her seat towards the back of the house and the stairs up towards the casino and their rooms.

A voice crackled over the house speakers. “That was a wicked pisser, eh? Well stay in your seats, ladies and gents. We’ve seen beauty, now it’s time for the beast! For our first fight of the evening it’s the one, the only, the undefeated Umbra Gale! She’s fought her way to an unprecedented Combat Zone record of three hundred and eight fatalities! But can she overcome… The Hellhound?”

Lyra tugged on BON-80n’s tentacle. “Wait.”

“What is it?” said BON-80n.

“A feeling. Something about that name.”

Inside the cage-walled stage, two platforms lowered again. On one platform, inside its own cage, a diamondclaw, its glossy brindled brown hide roped with muscle. Young and healthy, unlike the last one she’d seen. It crouched, patient, angry eyes locked on the pony across the arena from it.

A lean, dark purple mare, her hard face lined with age and crossed with new scars, her broken horn crackling with raw magic. Lyra’s jaw fell open. It was her!

The platforms hit the stage. The latch on Hellhound’s cage popped open. It charged forward with the silent, deadly intent of a dog out for blood. Fizzlepop jumped towards him, swinging her hind legs around in midair. Her hind hooves connected with the diamondclaw’s chest with a sickening crack. The crowd roared with approval.

Lyra turned her face away. “I can’t watch this.”

“You must not,” said BON-80n. “It is a horrible thing. Come. You need your rest.”

They walked back through the empty casino, as close to side by side as a pony and a hovering robot could.

“I love you, BON-80n,” said Lyra. “You’re the best friend I’ve met out here.”

“You are a very good friend as well,” said BON-80n. “In the little time I have known you, you have become dear to me.”

Lyra nuzzled BON-80n’s engine housing. “I wish we could make love.”

BON-80n stroked Lyra’s mane with a tentacle. “And I wish that I desired to make love with you. I am afraid we must remain only friends.”

“Ha! Okay. I don’t mind being in the friendzone with you.” Lyra opened the door of her room, and climbed up into the train car.

There was somepony sitting on her cot. Lyra gasped and went for her weapons, only to find they weren’t there. Then she tried to cast a self defense bolt, but she’d put her magic limiter back on.

“Cool it, sister. I’m not here to make trouble,” said the blue earth pony bartender. “Which is more than I can say for you.”

Lyra rubbed at her head. Trying to cast a self defense bolt had given her a splitting horn ache. She needed to remember to take it easy with the magic. “Did that Enclave pegasus send you?”

BON-80n’s chassis lights flickered red. “Lyra, what did you do?”

“He didn’t send me, but he did complain to the management,” said the earth pony. “Not that I’d worry about that. Rascal King prefers that his patrons work out their differences between themselves. If he has to step in, it’s typically very unpleasant for both parties. And our pegasus friend can’t exactly go crying back to the Enclave, since he’s not supposed to be down here in the first place. But you’ve got Rascal King’s attention, and that’s never good. I hear you’re already on first name terms with Easy Money, too.”

Lyra flashed him a toothy, unfriendly grin. “I came here to make friends and influence people.”

“Well you’re doing a great job,” said the bartender, crossing his forelegs behind his head and leaning back against the train window. “So what’s your business with Paper Heart?”

“Well, Paper Heart, my son’s gotten mixed up with the Ponysmith. I need you to help me find him.” She sat down on the bed and pulled off her magic limiter. “Swell disguise by the way.”

Paper Heart nodded. “The Ponysmith has forces all over the city. Is there anything else you can tell me?”

“He’s a Centurion. He was stationed on Neighburry Street until today, but the alicorns overran his position and he was wounded.”

“Easy Money would know, but good luck getting anything out of him. Still, if your Bean is wounded, they’d have taken him off the front lines, and not just to a field hospital. Ponysmith values his officers. You know the Sawhorse Iron Works? Of course you do. Ponysmith’s got a big compound there. Hospital, armor factory, training ground.”

“Pretty broad range of services.”

Paper Heart laughed bitterly. “Yeah, in the Ponysmith’s case those three things go nose to tail. Great guy. I can put my nose to the ground, try to find out more, but you’ll need to help me out in return.”

“What’s your rate?”

“For you? Help me with Coloratura.”

Lyra put her hooves to her cheeks. “Where could she be? It’s a huge mystery.”

“I had to tell you where she was smart ass,” said Paper Heart. “A mare like Coloratura is never hard to find. It’s getting close to her that’s the problem. Rascal King keeps her locked up in Stable 114, and I haven’t been able to get in there to bust her out. Now, if I had an accomplice, maybe the kind of pony who likes to get into trouble, I might be able to do something.”

Lyra raised an eyebrow. “I’m happy to help. She’s wasted down here. What did you have in mind?”

Level Up
New Perk: Player of Games. You have an intuitive grasp of strategy, in simulation and in life. +1 Luck.

Mm-mah-mah-mah.

The hundred-unislave units should be centuries, not maniples, especially since they're led by Centurions. But 'century' is confusing out of context. Don't @ me about it.