Burrburrary 27th, EoH 47

Lyra launched herself onto the stable dormitory bed. It jiggled seductively as she sank into its pillowy depths. Rascal King had gone all out on the accommodations for this stable — the beds in 93 weren’t this nice. Her and Beanpole’s bed from before the Bad Day hadn’t been this nice. She’d slept in luxury hotel beds that weren’t this nice. She pulled the covers up around her and arched her back in hedonistic delight. This had been worth getting captured on purpose. She’d just love to drift off to sleep cradled in this thing.

But of course, she had to stay awake so that she could do the plan.

She glared at the electric alarm clock that Rascal King’s triggermares had left in the room with her, waiting for it to be late enough for her to get started.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“We are going to cheat?” BON-80n had said that morning, lying on her side on the cot in their train car bedroom. Her chassis lights glowed a purple so intense it verged on pink.

“Yep,” said Lyra. She squatted on the floor next to the cot, fiddling with her PipBuck and one of BON-80n’s reattached eyeballs.

“So that we can be caught?”

“Yep. I don’t like to cheat. It makes the game less fun. But I need to get Rascal King’s attention, and if just asking nicely doesn’t work then I’ll have to try something more extreme.” She clapped her hooves together. “Okay! I think I’ve got this! So what you’re going to do is watch the other player’s biometrics. If a player seems agitated, you’ll be able to access the vibrate function on my PipBuck. Buzz me once for each seat counter-clockwise around the table, not counting the dealer. So once for the player to my right, twice for the next one; you get the idea. Keep it on the lowest setting so no one else can hear it.”

“You are taking a terrible risk,” said BON-80n. Her engine hummed into life, and she rose from the bed.

“What else is new?” said Lyra. “How are the eyes feeling?”

“Very nice. It is good to have them back; I was tiring of looking at the inside of your saddlebags. You know that this is not a good plan, no?”

Lyra shrugged. “Worse ones have worked out for me. Wanna send me a test buzz?”

“I am concerned by your propensity for self-sacrifice. The willingness to risk your life for others. You take what many would consider a virtue to an unhealthy extreme.”

Lyra shrugged. “I just value my fellow creatures too much.”

“Or perhaps you value yourself too little. Perhaps these are more suicide attempts.”

Lyra tried to step past BON-80n and exit the room. BON-80n’s tentacles spread in front of her like a net. “Why, Lyra?”

“Because I’m a loser, okay?” said Lyra around the catch in her throat. “All I want to do is make a difference. I was this great gifted foal. Everypony was all excited about how smart and talented I was. I was in Twilight Sparkle’s graduating class. And what have I done with my life? I became an inventor who never finishes anything. I was in a band nopony listened to. Then I had a foal, and I became a horse wife and a delivery driver. Wasted. Fucking. Potential.”

“You are not a loser, mon petit cheval. This is not a game. You matter to the creatures around you.” Her tentacles embraced her. “You cannot save your son. He has made his own choices. Please come back to the Minutemares with me. Please be safe.”

“Too late,” said Lyra. “Paper Heart and Rara are depending on me. Gotta go.” She brushed her best friend’s tentacles aside and stepped out the door.

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The guards would not take Lyra to see Rascal King, even when she dropped Rarity’s name. So she went to the tables. By the time the triggermares came for her, she was up fifteen large.

“Hey, dumb ass. The boss wants to congratulate you on your winnings,” said one of the triggermares, laying a hoof on her shoulder.

They brought her to the stable door, and one of the triggermares lifted their sleeve to reveal a PipBuck. The thick steel door slid out and rolled aside like the tomb door of a dead god. BON-80n was not with them. Her role in Lyra’s cheating had gone undetected; hopefully, she was already on her way out of the Combat Zone.

Earth pony stable dwellers stopped their work and play to watch Lyra and the triggermares pass. Few of them wore blue jumpsuits, and not all of them wore PipBucks — StableTec didn’t run this place, Rascal King did. In the atrium, a group of foals, none older than six, played with toy trucks and cars, watched over by a young mare in a blue checked dress. Lyra’s belly roiled with dread — there was a possibility she and Paper Heart would have to fight their way out of here. She wasn’t accustomed to praying, but she prayed to Harmony all these foals would be safe in their beds if that happened.

Rascal King used the overmare’s office, of course, but heavily modified to his taste. He’d kept the warm-colored fake-wood paneling and plush carpets, but stripped out the semicircular desk in favor of several couches, a pool table, and an extensive liquor cabinet.

“Lyra!” He was a round-bellied, orange earth pony in shirt, vest, fedora, slacks, and necktie. “So good to meet you! Have a seat! Would you care for a drink?”

The triggermares guided her to a corner where three couches facing each other made a conversation nook. Easy Money sat on one of them, smiling his usual vague smile and shuffling a deck of cards in his magic. Lyra ignored him and looked at the photographs on the wall. Rascal King at a groundbreaking. Rascal King giving a speech. Rascal king at a party. Rascal King posing with his wife and six foals. Rascal King drinking with the unicorn brothers who founded StableTec.

He came over clutching three coffee cups between his hooves. “Never too early to get started, eh?” Lyra took one and sipped; the coffee had been spiked heavily with whiskey. She lapped at it politely. Easy Money set his on the coffee table and lit a cigarette.

“So,” said Rascal King. “You had a pretty lucky morning, huh, Lyra?”

Lyra leaned back on the couch, legs hanging over the edge. “I needed to talk to you. Your guards wouldn’t bring me. So I had to get your attention some other way. I decided to bring my ‘A’ game at the card table. Though I think it only worked because Easy over here wasn’t playing.”

Easy shrugged. “I told you if you kept your head in the game, you’d do well.”

“So Lyra. What did you want from me?” said Rascal.

“Rarity wants Rara back.”

Rascal took a sip of his coffee. “Well, that’s too bad. Rara signed a contract. She’s ours.”

Lyra rolled her eyes. “And I’m sure she wasn’t under any kind of duress when she signed it.”

“So what you need to know,” said Rascal, setting down his coffee cup, “Is that my operation here thrives on trust. Trust, for instance, that I won’t allow cheating at my tables.”

“So you need the raiders and mercenaries to trust you. Right. Do you have any evidence that I was cheating?” said Lyra.

“No. But I’d like to have a look at your PipBuck.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“Please. It’s not like we have any shortage of those things around here.”

This is what she expected. She’d left her bag in her room and her guns in the check. Right now she just had the PipBuck, her jacket, and the clothes she was wearing. Giving up the PipBuck was giving up the only tool she had left. That was the plan, of course, but it was still a scary thing to do.

She took a deep breath, slid it off her foreleg, and passed it across the coffee table. If everything went well, she’d be able to steal a new one later. One without Littlepip on it.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Miss,” said Rascal cheerfully. He waved to one of his triggermares; she collected the PipBuck and left the room. “Of course you’ll be offered a complimentary room in the stable while we examine your device for any signs of foul play.”

“Of course,” said Lyra.

“I tell you, you can’t ever let your guard down. Did you know just this morning I found out one of my bartenders was a damn hiveling? Now him? He didn’t cooperate.”

Lyra cringed inwardly. She hoped Paper Heart was okay, but she couldn’t ask. “Wow. They’re everywhere.”

“And you can’t even tell! You just gotta wait for them to let their guard down!” said Rascal.

“It’s a travesty,” said Lyra dryly.

Easy Money tapped the ash off his cigarette. “You won’t need to put her up. I’ll be taking her with me.”

Lyra’s whole body felt numb. That would ruin her and Paper Heart’s plan! That was not okay at all!

Except it was, because then she’d get to see Bean.

Why was life in the wasteland so complicated? Well, for once the situation was win/win for her. Either Paper Heart would help her find Bean or Easy Money would take her straight there. She’d better just relax. Deep breaths.

Rascal King’s head whipped to face Easy, his expression going from cheery and casual to apoplectic in less than a second. “Oh, is that fucking so?” His tone could have cut glass.

“It is, actually,” said Easy Money. “Ponysmith wants to talk to her.”

“It doesn't matter what Ponysmith wants. This is my damn stable, and she’s staying here.”

Easy Money took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke in slow rolling curls. “There’s no reason to lose your temper. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to tell you earlier, but we only just learned that she’s active in the wasteland. I received my instructions this morning. I don’t see why this is a problem.”

Rascal set down his coffee cup. “It’s a problem because she was cheating. This establishment has to maintain a certain level of credibility, see?” He tapped his hoof on the coffee table for emphasis as he spoke. His coffee cup wobbled ominously. “Creatures gotta believe my games are fair.”

Lyra raised her hoof. “Um, You can’t prove that I was cheating.”

Rascal swung around and pointed at her. “I know damn well you fucking were. Not even Easy’s that good at hoof hide.” He turned his glare back towards Easy. “If I let her go, one of two things is gonna happen. Either everycreature’s gonna try cheating, or nobody’s gonna come play because they can’t be sure of an even chance. Maybe both. Either way, the Combat Zone is over. It’d be less over if you burned it down — I can build a new one. I can’t rebuild my reputation.”

Easy Money tapped the ash off his cigarette. “There are worse things that could happen.”

Rascal King surged up, forelegs on the table, knocking over his coffee cup. “Are you fucking threatening me?”

Easy didn’t flinch, and his expression didn’t change. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Well let me tell you something fucko. You go back to your boss, and you tell him Rascal King says ‘up yours’. You don’t come into my stable and tell me what to do! What does he think he’s gonna do to me, huh? Bust up my little hobby outside? Boo hoo. Guess what? I’ve got a stable door Harmony and all four Princesses couldn’t get through. We can live two hundred years down here! Two thousand! And meanwhile, how do you think all those raiders, and Talon mercs, and AWOL pegasi are gonna feel about you shutting down the only good time north of Tenpony Tower? You think your Ponysmith is capable of holding out against the whole Harmony damn wasteland?”

“I think you have no idea what we’re capable of,” said Easy Money. “But if you’re going to be unpleasant, perhaps I’d better leave.”

“Yeah,” growled Rascal King. “Perhaps you’d fucking better. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” He stabbed a hoof at Lyra. “And you. Knock that smirk off your face. Somebody clean up this fucking coffee.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Burrburrary 28th, EoH 47

Lyra sat up in the stable room bed and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She’d drifted off after all. The alarm clock said it was past midnight. She still had almost an hour until her rendezvous with Paper Heart. She went to the closet, which was stocked with towels, and with a stable suit on a wire hanger. Perfect.

She’d found the security camera in the room a while ago. Now she pulled a towel from the drawer, sneaked up behind its little dome, and draped the towel in front of it, anchoring it from the ceiling panel. The device wouldn’t report being tampered with, and unless whoever was watching the feed had eyes on it all the time, they might think it was just a malfunction and not investigate immediately. Next, she got changed — stable suits might not be the height of fashion, but they were warm — improvised a couple of simple tools from the wire coat hanger, and opened up the door control panel.

This room wasn’t designed as a prison; it was just a single bedroom. Instead of locking the door in any meaningful way, they’d just shut off the interior door controls. She was able to reactivate it with little effort, and then unlock it from the inside.

The corridor was empty. Lyra looked left and right and scurried to the next corner. Assuming 114 followed the same basic floor plan as 93, the interior security station should be to the left a few sections away. She headed that way, doing her best to fake the confident yet bored stride of a pony who was where they were supposed to be, doing what they were supposed to be doing.

She heard hoof steps approaching around the corner. Her horn felt like a beacon on her head, and her freshly cut mane was too short to hide it. Hooves were getting closer. Voices. At least two of them. More than she could fight unless she wanted to cast magic bolts and risk burning out her magic again. She saw a door labeled ‘maintenance’ and opened it; it was a supply closet so stuffed with cleaning materials that she could only fit her front half inside.

“…bitch thinks she can talk to me like that? I oughta give her a piece of my mind,” said one mare.

“She’s fucking retarded,” said a second. “You can’t go around saying shit like that, or…” Lyra felt a thump on her cutie mark. “Hey, move it lard ass!”

“Sorry!” said Lyra, voice muffled by the mop bucket she was hiding her head in.

“Whatever. Lay off the Fancy Lads, thunder thighs. Anyway, what was I saying?” said the first mare.

“Retarded bitch.”

“Oh yeah, right, so I said to her…”

Lyra pulled her head out as the voices retreated around the corner, and headed for the security station, smelling like bleach.

One triggermare sat on a stool in front of a terminal, sleeves rolled up, an open Sparkle Cola and bag of chips on the table next to her, playing a video game. Lyra moved slowly towards the lockers behind her and began checking them for equipment. The first one had a fedora and a Sparkle Cola in it; she draped the hat awkwardly over her horn and ignored the soda. The second just had a stable suit in it, but the third was the jackpot — all of Lyra’s stuff! Her pistol, her bags, her jacket, her flechette gun…

“Hey, what are you doing in here?”

Lyra drew the flechette gun from its little holster, spun, aimed, and fired, putting three darts halfway into the triggermare’s nose. She wobbled on her stool, forelegs flailing. The stool fell over with a clatter. She tried to get up, reached out one leg towards the terminal, and collapsed.

Lyra checked the selector on the flechette gun to make sure she’d drugged the triggermare and not poisoned her. Then she checked to make sure she was still breathing.

“Thank Harmony,” said the potted plant by the door. “I thought you’d never get here.”

“I’m happy to see you too,” said Lyra, pulling the triggermare’s PipBuck off her left foreleg and putting it on. Hers was in the locker, but she didn’t want it back. “Hey, what do you really look like, anyway?”

“Oh, pretty much like you’d expect.” The trash bin unfolded itself into a typical off-white, ceramic-plated Hiveling dressed in a brown trench coat and fedora.

Lyra pulled the stool over to the terminal, alt-tabbed out of the triggermare’s game, and went digging around for the security logs. “You know fedoras aren’t cool, right? Everypony around here seems to think they’re fashionable, but they’re not.”

“Rarity says otherwise. I’m gonna go with her opinion.” Paper Heart poked his head up over the edge. “Where are they keeping our mares?”

“Hey, did you know this stable was an experiment too? There’s this huge data siphon going into an encrypted folder. Something about the effects of institutional corruption on social stability.”

“Not what we’re here for, sister.”

Lyra sighed. She didn’t have the time to go poking around. “Okay, they’re located in these suites. We’ll take extra stable suits to disguise them in, and meet at the atrium in fifteen minutes.”

“Got it.” Paper Heart scooped up the triggermare’s submachine gun. “Here goes nothing.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The stable room door slid open top to bottom. Fizzlepop Berrytwist stood in the entrance, dressed in a blue and yellow bathrobe and looking irritated. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to rescue you,” said Lyra.

“Who says I need to be rescued?”

“You don’t want to be rescued?”

“I don’t need to be rescued because I’m not captured.”

Lyra sighed and tried a different mode of attack. “Okay, we’re trying to rescue Coloratura, and we need your help. Please, Field Marshal Berrytwist.”

Fizzle rolled her eyes. “It’s Umbra Gale now, thanks.”

“It’s what Twilight would have wanted.”

Fizzle scowled and turned away. “Get in here before somepony sees you.”

Her suite was much nicer than the room Lyra had been imprisoned in. The same fake wood paneling used in the Overmare’s office, a cozy little living room with a radio and several bookshelves, a kitchenette, and two interior doors, suggesting the unthinkable luxury of a private bathroom. Fizzle indicated a bottle of pre-war scotch on the counter. “You want to pour yourself a drink before I rip out your throat for telling me what Twilight would want?”

“Tear out my throat literally or metaphorically?”

“I haven’t decided yet.” Fizzle sprawled on the couch, long muscle-roped legs slipping out from under her bathrobe. “So who the fuck are you, and what do you think you know about Twilight Sparkle?”

“I went to school with her,” said Lyra, swirling the scotch in its glass before taking a sip. “Whoa. That is smooth.”

Fizzle’s eyes narrowed. “You do look familiar. Have I met you before?”

“Never in person.” There were stools on the other side of the kitchenette’s counter; Lyra sat on one. Interposing something solid between her and Fizzle made her feel a little safer. “Your soldiers locked me and my husband in a cage once, though. I guess you’ve had a bit of a relapse?”

“A lot of ponies are having them. Ever meet a ‘super’ alicorn? Trixie and Starlight aren’t doing so well these days.”

Lyra took a long sip of the heavy, smoky-tasting scotch. “So how’d you find yourself down here? I found your old suit of power armor a while back. Heard you say you were done with war. What happened?”

“Cage fighting isn’t war,” said Fizzle, examining her hooves. “Anyway, war wasn’t done with me. I found Rarity. Helped her set up Triple Diamond City. But then she asked me to kill her, and I just wasn’t up to it.”

“Hold on,” said Lyra, rubbing at her ear. “Say that again. I thought you said Rarity asked you to kill her.”

“That’s what I said.”

Lyra took another sip of her scotch. “Okay?” This stuff was good.

“She’s a ghouified Celestia-grade alicorn. Think about that for a moment.”

Lyra did. “Oh. Can I get a refill?”

“It’s Rascal King’s scotch, not mine. Take as much as you want.”

Lyra poured herself a hearty shot and knocked it back. “So I’ve been out of the loop. Ghouls. Do they always go feral?”

“It hasn’t been long enough to tell, but it happens to a lot of them.”

“And do unicorn ghouls always keep their magic?”

Fizzle looked at her empty whiskey glass sadly. “Yes. Can you see the problem?”

“So… Rarity has the potential to become a feral ghoul that can control the sun.” Lyra poured herself another shot of whiskey.

Fizzle got off the couch and leaned up against the kitchenette counter, fumbling with her hooves to pour herself another glass of whiskey. “She was right. She needs to be destroyed. But I can’t do it. She’s the only pony who survived the war and became a better pony for it.”

Lyra waved her glass in a circle, describing an elliptical orbit around an imaginary sun. “What about…?”

“Also an issue. If I killed Rarity then no one would be driving the planet. We don’t have enough population to burn through several unicorns a day raising the sun like the ancient Unicornians did. Twilight told me…”

“…that Eqqus’ orbit is unstable and without constant correction we’d become tidally locked? It’s true. Always scorching day on one side, always freezing night on the other. Which is what Nightmare Moon wanted, for some reason. Then we’d gradually drift towards the sun over the course of hundreds of years.”

Fizzle tapped her glass against Lyra’s. “Boom. You are a student of Celestia’s. So I left Triple Diamond City. Because I might be hard, but I’m not hard enough to kill my beautiful, ugly ghoul alicorn friend in cold blood. Then some bad things happened.” She pushed back her mane to show Lyra a clean, subtle scar that ran ear to ear across the top of her scalp like the edge of a cap. “Eventually, I found myself sitting across the table from Rascal King with a contract between us.” She paused to empty her glass. “It’s safe here. At least until the day I finally meet my match in the cage. And then… well. Hopefully, it will be over quickly.”

Lyra nodded. “Okay, Fizzle. I haven’t got much time left, so here’s the deal: you have a chance to do something good tonight. Coloratura doesn’t want to be here. We’re going to bust her out. We could use your help.”

“I told you, it’s Umbra now.”

“It’s always been Fizzle, Edgy McEdgesalot. Are you in or out?”

Fizzle took a shot directly from the bottle of scotch. “I’m going to regret this when I’m sober.”

“Probably, yes.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Bullets sprayed through the row of slot machines, scattering fragments of metal and plastic.

“I regret this already!” growled Fizzle, crouching on the floor near Lyra, Coloratura, and Paper Heart.

“We’re all going to die!” whimpered Coloratura. “We’re going to die and it’s my fault!”

“We are not going to die!” said Fizzle. “Keep it together, follow me, and we’ll get through this. Do you hear me?”

Coloratura bit her lower lip and nodded. “I hear you.”

“Good,” said Fizzle. “You’re stronger than you think.”

It struck Lyra as odd that the dreaded Tempest Shadow was nicer than Vindaloo.

They’d gotten through most of the stable without a hitch — Paper Heart had changed himself to look like Rascal King, and nopony wanted to question him. At least not directly. But somepony had thought to double-check, and the real Rascal King had shown up with a whole squad of triggermares as the Stable door began to open.

Paper Heart shouting “Hold your fire!” in Rascal King’s voice worked exactly once. That and a blast of raw magic from Tempest’s horn was enough to get them into the casino. Now they were surrounded, protected only by the bullet-resistant bulk of the Combat Zone’s slot machines.

“We need a plan to get out,” said Lyra.

“I’ll surrender myself,” said Coloratura, eyes tearing up. Even in a stable suit, she looked breathtaking. “They’ll let you all go, I’m sure.”

Fizzle sneered. “You should know Rascal King better than that. They’ll dock you and me some privileges, but they’ll shoot these two. Execution style. Probably in front of you.”

Coloratura’s eyes widened, glistening and trembling. “Oh. Oh no.”

“Don’t cry,” said Lyra, opening her bag to look through it for ideas. “We’re going to get out of this.”

“Also if you cry I’ll kick you in the nose,” said Fizzle.

Coloratura whimpered and put her hooves over her eyes. Okay, maybe Fizzle was almost as mean as Vindaloo.

Lyra fumbled around her saddlebags and pulled out the incendiary grenade Artillery had given her. Her other bag rattled on her back, bottlecaps bouncing around inside the Pinkie Pie lunchbox. A horrible, horrible idea occurred to her. The kind of cruel trick she couldn’t believe she was even contemplating.

A cruel trick that could keep her alive long enough to see her son again.

She tore off a strip of her towel to make a tripwire. Rigging the grenade to go off inside the lunchbox wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially in the middle of a firefight. She kept her nose in her work while Fizzle fired raw magic one way, and Paper Heart fired his pilfered submachine gun the other. Every second was an agony of imagining what the device she was making would do to a pony.

When the triggermares fell back, leaving a couple of their number still on the ground, Fizzle looked back to see what Lyra was doing. She raised an eyebrow. “Are you making an IED?”

Lyra gave a weak little nod, tears lost in the sweat on her face.

“I like the way you think,” said Fizzle, which was not a compliment Lyra wanted. “Set it up, and then follow us. I think you built us our ticket out of here.”

Fizzle led them down the aisle of slot machines towards the center of the casino, Paper heart bringing up the rear with his relatively sturdy ceramic-plated body. Fizzle let out a burst of raw magic as they hit the end of the aisle, stunning the triggermares waiting in ambush there.

Hoofbeats pounded in pursuit behind them.

Lyra had barely turned the corner when she heard the sound of somepony tripping and swearing, followed by an explosion. A blast of heat and a shock wave hit her in the ass. Small metal objects whizzed by her, tugging at her stable suit and the hem of her jacket. One of them sank through the fabric and into the meat of her flank, burning inside of her.

Lyra and Fizzle swung around into the next aisle so that they were heading back towards the bar and the exit. Near the site of the blast, flames flickered. Ponies screamed and screamed in visceral agony as they burned alive. Smoke blocked the view ahead of Lyra; if there were triggermares down there she couldn’t see them. She looked for Coloratura and Paper Heart — there they were, her sobbing but not bloody, him with new holes in his coat and hat.

“Everycreature all right?” said Fizzle.

“We’re holding it together,” said Paper Heart, letting Coloratura lean against his side.

Fizzle nodded. “Lyra, get your gun out. When I give the order, everyone charge.”

The next few moments were a haze of chaos and panic. The smoke stung Lyra’s eyes, blinding her to anything more than a few hooves away. Bullets tore empty streaks through the smoke, barely missing her. She had only the red and green pips on her EFS to guide her. SATS was useless, losing possible targets before she could set up the shot. She pressed forward, no idea where anything was, hoping she was heading for the exit and hoping the others were with her. A shape loomed up in front of her in the smoke. SATS gave her 95% to hit. She emptied three rounds into it before realizing it was a slot machine.

A clear spot opened. Lyra saw the exit stairs. Nopony was on them. She looked back to see her three allies still pinned in the aisle of slot machines. Coloratura was down, bleeding heavily from a wound in her leg.

Something soft but very heavy slammed into her side. She went down, kicking and biting. In the flurry of legs, she found a neck and squeezed. Bullets stuttered across the floor next to her. Lyra aimed a weak telekinetic punch at the pony’s shoulder, knocking his submachine gun out of its holder. The other pony kicked at her hind hooves.

“Rara! Let go of me you dumb cunt!” Rascal King rolled over on top of her so his whole considerable weight pushed down on her body, then heaved himself up and let himself fall, knocking the wind out of her.

Lyra whipped her 10mm pistol around and pressed it against the side of his head. “I’m not Coloratura!” she gasped.

“How was I to know, in all the smoke? You both got a fat ass.” A burst of bullets hammered the floor next to them. Rascal King raised his voice. “Hold your fire!”

Another burst of gunfire zipped over them. “I said hold your fucking fire! It’s fucking really me this time!”

Lyra pressed her gun into his head. “Let us go.”

“Fuck you, I ain’t letting you go.”

Something felt wrong behind Lyra’s eyes. Like somepony else was looking out through them. She spoke, but the words weren’t hers. “Then you’re going to die. You deserve to die. You let innocent pegasi and unicorns burn in balefire. You hide here in luxury while creatures suffer outside. You’re a cancer. And it’s my job to cut that cancer out.” Lyra knew those words. It was Littlepip again — not in her hallucinations, not in her PipBuck. Littlepip was inside of her head.

“Ha! You don’t have the nerve to…”

Lyra’s pistol pivoted in her magic. SATS gave her a 77% chance to hit his right hind hoof, so she fired twice just to be sure. Chunks of meat, bone, and hoof wall splattered across the carpet.

“Nopony fucking threatens me!” roared Rascal King, twisting in her grasp. “Kill her! Shoot her! Shoot them all! I don’t care if you hit me!”

Triggermares stepped towards them out of the smoke, staring, eyes confused, open mouths hovering over the bite triggers of the submachine guns mounted on their shoulders.

“Did I fucking stutter?” roared Rascal. “I said…”

A blast of raw magic crackled through the air, electric bolts arching between triggermares. Lyra watched them tumble. Then the blast hit her. Her muscles spasmed and went limp. Rascal King rolled off her and out of her range of sight.

“Thanks for getting them all together like that,” said Fizzle, leaning over her. “You saved me a lot of trouble. Now let’s get out of here.” Fizzle hauled Lyra up onto her back, and headed for the stairs, leaving the burning casino behind.

Lyra’s dazed mind raced. What had come over her? Why had she taken out her rage on Rascal King? He wasn’t innocent; none of the things she’d said about him were false. But he had nothing to do with her troubles. Did he deserve to have his hoof blown off?

She hadn’t done it. Littlepip had taken control of her, right?

That was so much bullshit. She was clearly dissociating — placing responsibility for all the horrible things she’d had to do to survive in the wasteland onto an imaginary scapegoat. Was that a thing that could happen? She’d have to ask BON-80n when she got outside. She’d know. Oh, by Harmony, Lyra missed her so much already.

Fizzle pushed open the old train station door and led the four of them into daylight. Paper Heart had bound Rara’s leg, she limped at his side, grimacing and quietly weeping. Lyra felt snowflakes spatter across her snout as she left the Combat Zone. Fresh snow was beginning to gather on the corpse of the bouncer by the door.

“Easy Money,” said Fizzle.

“I’d say I was surprised to see you, but I’m not,” said Easy Money.

Lyra looked up, still dazed by Frizzle’s raw magic. What she saw drove the fog right out of her mind. Easy Money stood alone in the falling snow thirty hooves from the casino entrance, smoking a cigarette, smiling kickably. One forehoof rested on BON-80n’s cracked chassis. Her tentacles thrashed, weak and helpless, in the snow.

“Bon Bon! No!” screamed Lyra, tumbling off Fizzle’s back. She raced towards BON-80n, snow flying out from underneath her hooves.

Level Up
New Perk: The Hurt Lunchbox. — You gain the ability to craft booby-traps and mines. Yay?

Next Chapter: Chapter 19: Self Storage Estimated time remaining: 3 Hours, 14 Minutes