“You want a cigarette?” said Button Mash.

“Please,” said Lyra.

He pulled one out of his carton with his teeth. Lyra took it in her magic and lit it off his.

She took a long drag and closed her eyes, letting the smoke settle in her lungs. “These things will be the death of me.”

Button Mash laughed.

A sad, strange procession straggled through the diffuse gray light of the wasteland dawn. The Minutemares marched in the lead, setting the ragged column’s limping pace. Lyra and Button Mash were in the front; the ones in the best condition. Their tiny vanguard was all the ground defense the column had — they were so desperate, they’d given Button Mash a rifle.

Next came Ivory and Crispy, pulling the sleds they’d made to carry Vindaloo and Bean. Crispy’s face was slack and empty, his eyes a thousand miles away. Ivory, with his hurt leg, was in no condition to be pulling a sled, but he was all that was available.

Bon Bon trudged between them, watching Bean and Vindaloo. They were sedated with Med-X and the last of the sleeping darts from Lyra’s flechette gun. Despite this, they screamed in helpless agony every time their respective sleds hit a bump or a ditch. Pity gnawed at Lyra’s insides — pity and, in the case of Bean, guilt.

Freed unicorns trailed behind them in a ragged wedge, like a flock of lost sheep following a single mangy sheepdog. They pulled their possessions — and their dead — in carts behind them.

“So, you’re tech support for the Minutemares? How long have you had that gig?” said Button Mash.

“Not long. A few months, on and off. I’m more of a generalist — machines and magic. I think there’s room in the organization for more help if you’re looking for a new job. So what was up with Ponysmith? He was an earth pony. His real name wasn’t Tidy Stitches, was it?”

Button’s eyes widened with surprise. “How did you know?”

“He’s an urban legend in Triple Diamond City. An earth pony obsessed with surgically modifying earth ponies to become unicorns. I connected the dots from there.”

“Yeah. That’s where he started,” said Button Mash. “I read all his emails, you know. He hated earth ponies; hated being an earth pony. Saw us as weak and inferior. But he hated unicorns, too. For being ‘better’. Not that you all are. Really, he just hated everycreature. He figured out how to give himself unicorn magic with that big stupid bull helmet, but it’s not the kind of thing you can implement on a large scale. He wanted to ‘uplift the pony race’, whatever that meant. Then he found an old Ministry of Image inventory that said Starswirl’s notes on Alicornization were stored in the Buckstone Public Library.”

Lyra whistled. “That’s what the alicorns want there, too.” She remembered the big, deformed, male, unusually friendly and humble alicorn Swan, whose existence indicated that the super alicorns didn’t have perfect control over their transformation process. Plus they only seemed to have the one combat spell each — not surprising; everyday unicorns usually only knew a couple of spells, but it went against the whole ‘great and powerful super alicorns’ reputation they were going for. An army of proper alicorns, even relatively weak ones like Rarity, would be the doom of everycreature else in the wasteland.

“Bingo.”

Lyra’s steps felt a little heavier. “Well, that’s going to cause us some problems.”

“It’s a complicated wasteland. I don’t know what you guys’ beef with Ponysmith was, but I hope it was worth it.”

Lyra sighed. “We didn’t have a lot of choices.”

In front of them, Blue Note fluttered up over a line of trees and came to a skidding landing in front of the two of them. She had bags under her eyes big enough to use for wallets.

“Blue Note!” said Lyra, hurrying over to her with an awkward limping prance. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Just give Blue Note a moment,” she said. She nosed a dash inhaler out of her saddlebags and took a hit. She shivered nose to tail as the high hit her. “That’s better. We found a settlement. Walled. Weapons on the walls. Boggy fields inside; looks like they try to grow crabberries there in the summer.”

Lyra squinted. “Crab berries?”

“That’d be the Slog,” said Button Mash. “A shroud of ghouls live there. There aren’t many of them, but they can salvage from radioactive areas even power armor ponies can’t go in, so they have good equipment. Ponysmith never had the time to clear them out, what with the alicorns and everything. I’d steer clear.”

“Any enemy of Ponysmith’s are good ponies, as far as I’m concerned,” said Crispy, lumbering up behind them.

“And I need a safe place to operate on Vindaloo and Bean,” said Bon Bon. “It has already been too long.”

“Would you like Blue Note to make contact? Tell them we are coming?”

“No,” said Crispy. “Lyra. You’ve always worked well on your own. I tell you what: you’re my envoy now. Go ahead. Get us what we need.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

“Freeze!” said a voice from a speaker on the wall. Automated wall turrets rotated to aim at her. The scrap wall was painted with a mural of ghouls engaged in scavenging scrap, harvesting what looked like tiny red crabs out of a shallow bog, and other workaday wasteland tasks.

“Already on it,” whispered Lyra to herself as a cold wind tore through her tattered armor. In a louder voice, she said, “I am Lyra Heartstrings, Student of Celestia and envoy of the Minutemares. I need to parley with your leader.”

“Thank you for sharing,” said the voice.

Lyra scowled. “We have wounded, and we need someplace to care for them. We have scrap to trade. We also killed Ponysmith, if that’s interesting to you.”

“You did what?” said the speaker.

“Killed Ponysmith,” said Lyra.

The speaker gave no reply, but the turrets were still aimed at her, so Lyra waited.

Melted snow had found the gaps in her repaired boots, and soaked into the bandages around her mangled hoof. It really hurt.

After a short eternity, the front gates slid up a pony height, and a ghoul in a creatively patchworked suit exited, followed by two guards in perfect suits of pre-war combat armor.

“Greetings,” said the ghoul. “I am Mayor Ricardo Diego Pinkmane of the Slog. And you, I gather, represent the army approaching my city?”

“We’re escorting refugees. We won’t be staying. But we could use your help if you’re willing to give it.”

Pinkmane narrowed his eyes. “You fought the Ponysmith?”

“Defeated him. Utterly,” said Lyra. “But we could use your help, and we’re willing to pay for it.”

“We saw the light of the battle,” said Pinkmane. “If you’re willing to disarm and wear a limiter, you can come to my office and we can negotiate.”

“Agreed,” said Lyra. They didn’t search her very thoroughly, but she passed over the flechette gun anyway. It was low on ammo, and if she boned this up so badly she had to shoot her way out of here, then she deserved what she got.

They lead her inside to a small clean town of recently constructed buildings. Raw and unlovely, but sturdy and warm. That was good; Lyra now mistrusted cute, homey towns. She observed a network of ducts running between the roofs; her eyes followed them back to a large metal building partly visible in the back of the town. Central heating. Not a bad deal.

Ghoul faces watched her from porches and windows. A gang of ghoul children stopped their snowball fight to stare at her. Were they children from before the war stuck in eternal youth? Or could ghouls have little ghoul foals?

The mayor’s ‘office’ was just his house. He led her through the front hall, and into a largish studio with south-facing skylights. An easel, model stand, and painter's cart took up most of the room. Dozens of lovingly detailed oil portraits of ghouls leaned against the walls.

“Guards, you can go. Lyra, have a cushion. Would you like some coffee?”

While she waited for him to make the coffee, She walked around and looked at his paintings. Art-starved, she hadn’t seen much of anything by way of painting since coming to the wasteland and she drank in these pictures like they were cold water. Passionate brush strokes, more evocative and even more realistic than mere realism, described the gnarls and whorls of ghoul’s flesh. There was a sameness to the subjects, certainly — fleshless noses, exposed teeth — but in each painting, the artist had found the subject’s individuality, the poses, colors, expressions, attitudes that made them who they were.

“I hope you like them,” said Pinkmane, setting her coffee in front of a cushion.

Lyra laid down behind them. “They’re beautiful,” said Lyra.

“Thank you. I was useless as an artist in my former life. It took the great disaster for me to find my calling. We are nearly indestructible — if you kill us, we come back. We can cling to a semblance of life without food or water. And yet any of us, at any time, could become a monster. I’ve seen the loss of self take place gradually over months or years. I’ve seen it happen between one eyeblink and the next. It is important, when it happens, that our community has a record of who that ghoul was before the change.” He took a sip of coffee. “So. Tell me your story. How did you come to battle the Ponysmith? Is it true that he is dead?”

Lyra leaned down and lapped up some of her coffee. Its warmth suffused her belly, its bittersweet flavor calmed her heart. She launched into an abbreviated version of the Minutemares’ story as she knew it and had experienced it, leaving out details she guessed would be classified if Crispy or Vindaloo had thought to make those choices. “Right now,” she said, getting to the important part as quickly as she could, “We have two badly wounded ponies who need surgery. We have a medic, but we have no place to operate on them. Can you help?”

Pinkmane nodded. “We have salvaged advanced medical equipment, but we have no doctors. If your medic is willing to see to our needs as well when she is done, she may have access to them.”

Lyra blinked. “That’s it?”

“You’ll have to keep your army out of sight of our walls, of course. But most denizens of the wasteland hate and fear ghouls. It’s in our interest to cultivate the goodwill of those who do not instinctively recoil from us.” He looked away. “Although. There is something else we need to discuss. We had to choose, at some point, whether to keep secrets or maintain transparency. We voted, and transparency won. So. When you are ready, I need to show you something that may change your mind about wanting to work with us.”

Lyra knocked back a big slug of her coffee. “Better show me now. My friends need help.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The building in the back of the town was a fusion reactor. A small one, but given the Commonwealth's reduced population it could probably serve the entire North Shore with the proper infrastructure. They gave Lyra a hazmat suit inside the first airlock.

“We’ve tried various approaches to see if feral ghouls can be healed,” said Pinkmane, helping her zip up her suit.

“You keep feral ghouls around?” said Lyra, disbelieving.

“They are our friends and family. What do you expect us to do? Though without a medical expert, our options are limited. Once we had the reactor set up, we thought that massive radiation exposure might heal the damage to their minds. We were not entirely wrong.”

He led her through a second airlock and into a short corridor. They passed doors labeled ‘heating’ and ‘power grid’ before going into one labeled ‘radiation therapy Ward A’. The room consisted of a narrow observation area separated from the main room by a thick slab of reinforced glass.

“I recommend you do not approach the glass,” said Pinkmane, but Lyra stepped forward nonetheless, mesmerized by what she saw.

The main room consisted of a large open area, with several communal sleeping chambers off to the side. The back wall was grated; she could see pipes behind them, probably routing radioactive coolant water from the reactor through the room. Scattered around, sprawled on cushions, or just lying on the floor, were over a dozen ghoul ponies of all three tribes. They were reading, doing puzzles, playing board games, napping. It seemed like nothing more than a waiting room. She stepped close against the window, so close her nose touched it.

“Lyra…” said Pinkmane.

The head of every pony in the radiation therapy room snapped towards her. They rose from their pastimes so quickly that Lyra’s eyes didn’t register the intermediate movement. They slammed hooves against the glass, rubbed jagged razor-edged incisors against it. Red-glowing eyes rolled towards her, their expressions full of hate. Lyra’s mouth gaped; too stunned to move. Pinkmane had to pull her towards the back wall of the observation area.

“Herd! Back!” said a voice from behind the slavering mass of feral ghouls. They slunk back reluctantly and another ghoul, larger and more muscular than the rest, pushed through their ranks to stand in front of the glass. “Ricardo. My old friend.”

“Thurber,” said Pinkmane.

“This is a tender morsel you’ve brought us, Ricardo.” Thurber took a second to salaciously lick his lips at Lyra, who decided to back up against the observation room until her butt flattened out against it. “You’ll have to cut her up to fit her through the meal slot. Why not just let us out, and we’ll have an easier time.”

“I’m sorry, you know I can’t do that,” said Pinkmane.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable, friend,” said Thurber. “The power of the four wicked stars grows — not only over the minds of the ghouls — their forerunners — but across this whole blighted world. Carcosa and Fomalhaut, Aldebaran and Celaeno, they want to bring us a world of tainted beauty such as even you, with your artist’s mind, cannot imagine.”

“You can see,” said Pinkmane, “The radiation has power to heal their minds, but there is something wrong with their souls, as well. I don’t know what this nonsense about the four wicked stars is, but all of them are quite obsessed with the religion.”

“It’s a zebra legend,” said Lyra. “And when I say legend… well, if you’ve studied magic as deeply as I have, you’ll know that legends are usually more true than not.”

Thurber chortled. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. Yes! The four wicked stars called your Nightmare Moon to rise, and their work is not yet done. The glorious night will come again!”

Lyra breathed in through her nostrils. “I think I’ve seen enough here.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

By the time she got back to Pinkmane’s office, she’d decided healing Bean and Vindaloo was worth the risk and was ready to bump hooves on their agreement.

She helped Bon Bon, Crispy and Ivory bring the wounded into the ghouls’ very clean and well-equipped medical center.

Exhausted and stressed as she was, Bon Bon’s eyes lit up to see the machines she would be working with — foremost amongst them a device that would allow her to control two camera-equipped claws with her hooves and earth pony snout. Lyra worked the rest of the morning to recruit the Slog’s one healer pony — an elderly midwife who’d been retired before the war — and a couple of freed unicorns with nurse training as orderlies for Bon Bon.

“What else do you need from me?” she said to Bon Bon, looking over her friend and her son strapped to operating tables. The orderlies were administering anesthesia to Vindaloo. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

Bon Bon touched Lyra’s foreleg gently. “I remember my programming. It gives me all the knowledge of what to do. The only thing I need from you is for you not to distract me.

“I won’t distract you,” said Lyra. “I want to be here.”

Bon Bon kissed her. “No. You will distract me simply by existing. Please go wait someplace else.”

Lyra turned to leave the operating room, head hung, feeling sullen. She could avoid being distracting!

“Mom,” said a masculine voice as she passed.

Lyra closed her eyes and cringed. She’d hoped he was still unconscious; she didn’t want to face him yet. “Bean. I’m so sorry.”

“Come over here,” he said. His voice was strong and calm, even though his legs lay nearby in a bin of packed snow.

Lyra sighed. “If I could have done things any other way...”

He shook his head. “Please don’t apologize. You know what you did. And I’m angry. Furious. I couldn’t hope for a worse mother.”

Ouch.

“But I’m also impressed. When I told you Ponysmith was the only choice for the wasteland? That was because I didn’t know what you’d become.”

“I don’t want to be a leader,” she lied. In the cold light of day, she didn’t want to admit to the power fantasies she’d indulged when she’d half-accepted, half-seized command of the Minutemares from Crispy for a few giddy hours.

“You’re strong, and more importantly you’re willing to use that strength. You don’t let morality limit you from doing what you think is right.”

Lyra tilted her head to one side. “Honey, you’re delirious from the meds. If something is the right thing to do, then it’s moral.”

Bean laughed. “Maybe I am. You don’t cling to the old world’s ways, even though for you, the old world was, what, only a few months ago? I admire your flexibility. Your adaptability.”

“So you understand why I did what I did,” said Lyra. She hovered over him, wanting to kiss him, but not sure if she should.

He closed his eyes. “I understand,” he said, finally allowing a bit of a tremble into his voice. “But I can’t forgive you. Maybe if your girlfriend gets my legs back on right. Don’t let her get them mixed up.”

“She will. You need to rest, honey. I know you’re hiding so much pain, right now.” She turned to one of the unicorn orderlies. “Can you get him some more Med-X?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

Crispy and Lyra wound up talking to Pinkmane about a possible trade agreement between the Slog and Stable 93. Crispy didn’t speak much; mainly he provided a bit of data and confirmed or denied Lyra and Pinkmane’s ideas with a head-shake or a nod. They hadn’t gotten much accomplished by dinner time, at which point they politely suggested that he go rest.

Crabberries were pretty tasty, once you got used to the way their little shells crunched. Very tart.

That night, Lyra found herself in a spare apartment with a bed and a small kitchen and it’s own bathroom, playing solitaire on her PipBuck. It periodically gave her a pop-up message about the trivial amount of radiation she’d soaked up in the reactor; she found herself missing Littlepip.

She was probably just lonely.

After a very long time, she decided that she wasn’t going to see Bon Bon that night. She washed up and brushed her teeth with the hygiene things the ghouls had left her. Then she got undressed and played more solitaire.

The next thing she knew, her Pipbuck was lying on her face, and a pale presence was standing next to her.

“Bon Bon?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” said Bon Bon, her voice shaking.

“Get in bed! Get in bed!” said Lyra, making room. Bon Bon wriggled into bed on her side; Lyra lay facing her and pulled the blankets over the two of them.

“It’s warm,” said Bon Bon. “I haven’t been warm in so long.”

Lyra lay still. She wanted to ask how things had gone, but she was afraid to ask, too, and was willing to let Bon Bon speak when she was ready.

“I can feel you vibrating,” said Bon Bon. “I can tell you that Bean will be fine. He will be on his hooves again in a month and a half. Fully recovered in a few months.”

“Physically, anyway,” said Lyra.

Bon Bon kissed her cheek. “You did the best you could. Oh! mes baies de crabe, your hoof! Let me look at your hoof!”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not. I have stimpacks, now. Let me change the bandages.”

“Don’t waste a stimpack on me,” said Lyra, who didn’t want a massive needle in her breastbone right now. “It’s not that bad.”

“Some discharge. You’ve lost a good chunk of the hoof wall, and quite a bit of flesh, as well. No damage to the bone. You’ll heal better if I use a stimpack.”

“Bon Bon, why aren’t you talking about Vindaloo?” Lyra swallowed on a dry throat. “Is she… is she dead?”

“Non,” said Bon Bon, though it was more of a choke than a word. “I did… everything I could. She might walk again if she tries very hard. Eventually. I don’t know. I don’t know if she will.” She pushed her face against Lyra’s chest, sobbing bitterly, thick little earth pony body heaving.

“It’s all right. It’s all right. You’re tired,” said Lyra. “She’ll be fine. No matter what, she’ll be fine. She’s tough. Tougher than any of us. She’s alive, and that’s what matters.”

“Lyra?” said Bon Bon.

“Yes?”

“Make love to me.”

They slid their hooves under each other’s bellies and played with each others’ teats. Rubbed them together pushed up between thick thighs; Bon Bon’s small virginal ones against Lyra’s, still heavy from having nursed a foal. Bon Bon cradled them one at a time against the frog of her hoof, then slid down beneath them. She pressed the edge of her hoof up against the slit of Lyra’s pussy, rubbing up against her little double nub. Fire built in Lyra’s lower belly, burning brighter and brighter before exploding up her spine. She lay, gasping tangled in the sheets and Bon Bon’s legs.

“Stop…” gasped Lyra. “Moving your hoof. Too sensitive.”

Bon Bon smirked. “Only one?”

Lyra bit her neck. “You want it, smart ass? Because I can give it to you. Hard.”

Bon Bon shivered at the neck bite. “How hard? This body… it is a virgin. I think I broke its hymen in the battle, but… will it hurt?”

“Take the limiter off my horn and I’ll show you what I can do.”

She positioned Bon Bon on the bed in front of her, rear in the air, and poured magic into her like wine into a chalice. She filled Bon Bon until she moaned, and then filled her a little more. She formed her magic into fingers and pushed and pulled gently, rubbing a magic thumb against her little clit, watching her round butt tremble.

“Do you like it, my little pony?”

“Mon harmonie I love you so much! It feels so good!”

She licked the curve of Bon Bon’s creamy ass cheek. “Then this belongs to me, now.”

“That is accept… accepta… oh, par les orteils salés de Discord!” She screamed; her pussy clenched hard, and she slid off Lyra’s magic fingers and slumped on the mattress like a pat of half-melted butter.

“Are you okay?” said Lyra, licking sweet-pungent pony goo off her magic.

“Oui,” said Bon Bon. “I came.”

“Never would have guessed.”

She slid down next to her, and they lay together, chests rising and falling slowly. As they rested, Lyra felt empty. She’d succeeded in so many things since she’d come to the Wasteland — she’d won battles, she’d forged peace, she’d brought justice. She’d lost her family, but she’d found a new one in the Minutemares. Her husband had abandoned her for Sea Sprite and the Enclave, but she found Bon Bon. She’d lost her son and found her son, and if she was lucky one day he’d forgive her.

And yet.

There were still so many things wrong. What was going to happen to VIndaloo? What was going to happen to the Wasteland? To Rarity and Triple Diamond City? To the secrets of the library?

Lyra sighed. There were so many things she could worry about. There would probably always be -- After the Bad Day, nothing would be easy, ever again. Yet worrying about them did no good. She couldn't predict the future, and she couldn’t change the past. What was left but hope? Hope, so often dashed. Hope, the traitor emotion.

“Bon Bon?” said Lyra. “Is it okay to hope?”

But Bon Bon was already snoring.

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