The Fires of Friendship Museum’s main attraction had been a cyclorama—a full circle mural that dramatized the battle against the windigos, supported lights and sounds. Considered a tour de force when it was new, by the late Celestial period it’d passed to being embarrassingly quaint. When college-aged Lyra had slept through it, it was so antiquated its continued existence served as an exhibit in its own right.

In the present moment, the paint was peeling, the art had been vandalized, and it featured an update in the form of a military ornithopter transport crashed through it.

The vertibird’s glass bubble nose had shattered when it slammed through the wall. Its delicate mechanical wings were twisted and bent. Crispy climbed up the stump of the vertibird’s machine gun turret and into the cockpit. Lyra followed him. A pile of metal plates and gears slumped against the back of the copilot’s seat; it took a moment for it to resolve itself into an open suit of power armor. The outside of the armor was painted royal purple. The inside sported a padded adjustable harness, mouth and hoof controls, and two large, dead screens where the wearer’s eyes would be.

Lyra looked up at the back half of the vertibird—the cabin was open to the cockpit, and she could see through the open side doors that it stuck out in the air over the museum. There was the minigun Crispy had mentioned, mounted pointing towards the top of the museum’s dome.

The other door had a good view of the streets below the museum’s front door. Lyra climbed up to look out and a bullet pinged off the aircraft’s frame. She yelped and let her self slide back behind the pilot’s seat.

“You see some of the challenges here,” said Crispy wryly.

Lyra narrowed her eyes with determination. “Yes. But I see something I can do right away. Hold on.” She summoned a half dozen telekinetic hands, some of them holding force field wrenches and screwdrivers, and set to work removing the minigun and its mount from the floor of the vertibird cabin.

“Hands?” said Crispy. “Really? What are you, six?”

Lyra blushed. “I just like humans, okay?” Her overused horn ached as she lifted the gun and turned it around. She’d used a lot of magic already today, and it was starting to drain her reserves. At least Littlepip was keeping her mouth shut. Lyra’s magic hands bolted the minigun into the slots set up for it at the other door. Easy as pie.

Lyra’s stomach rumbled. She missed pie.

She started to work on the power armor. A bullet punched through the vertibird’s hull and whistled past her head. “What the heck! This thing isn’t bulletproof?”

“Nope. No armor. These things go down pretty easy, actually. I’ll cover you.” Crispy hauled himself up so that he was half resting on, half hanging off the minigun mount. A bullet plucked at his coat, leaving a red line across his side. He started firing.

The minigun let out a vicious tearing noise, more like Harmony’s vacuum cleaner than what she’d expect from a gun. Bright flashes of tracer fire sparkled around the mouth of the gun, leaving bright streaks in Lyra’s vision. Crispy kept the barrels spinning, but only fired in short, controlled bursts. “Hurry!” he said. “My ammo ain’t gonna last forever!”
Lyra heaved herself over to sit on the back of the co-pilot’s seat. She’d seen suits of power armor before, of course, but never this close.

It was huge—adjustable padding inside made it adjustable to fit any size pony, including ponies Crispy’s size or bigger. It might as well be a house. Her stomach sank. Where did she even start? Why had she said she could fix this? She was going to fail, and her new friends were going to realize she was a phony, and kick her out.

No. They wouldn’t do that. They wouldn’t have to. If she didn’t do this, the raiders would starve them out or find a way to break into a museum, and if she was very, very lucky she might be killed in the battle.

All right. She could do this. Where to start? She remembered there being something that looked like an access panel somewhere on the belly of the P-45 model. She found it and started to unscrew it. She floated the screws off to the side as she worked; with no place to put them down, this was going to be awkward.

“I can hold those!” said Paneer from beneath her, shouting to be heard over the sound of Crispy’s minigun.

“You’re supposed to be with your mom!”

“I wanna help!” said Paneer.

Lyra ground her teeth in frustration. If Paneer caught a bullet Vindaloo would eat Lyra alive—possibly literally. But the little unicorn foal was out of the direct line of fire, and Lyra could use somepony to hold her screws. She shoved them at Paneer. “Can you hold these?”

Paneer grinned from ear to ear. “I can!” The screws wobbled in her telekinetic grasp, but she didn’t drop any.

Lyra could focus on the power armor now. She floated the access panel off. She didn’t recognize everything, but she recognized the spark battery—its power indicator flickered fitfully, and there was a port for a data transfer cable. She pulled out the cable on her PipBuck, and it fit!

You seem to be attempting to repair a suit of power armor, said Littlepip, bouncing up from the bottom of the Pipbuck’s screen. Would you like some help?

Lyra mashed the ‘yes’ button without hesitation, for once grateful to see the little bastard.

Performing diagnostics! said Littlepip, and then bounced back down out of her way. Several progress bars appeared in her place. While she waited, Lyra poked around the rest of the power armor’s guts. Power armor was a grotesque chimera on the inside — a hybrid of spell matrices, conventional electronics, and good old fashioned Ministry of Wartime Technology pistons and gears. Lyra wasn’t familiar with all the bits and pieces, but everything looked okay! She summoned a telekinetic screwdriver and tightened some connections until her PipBuck buzzed softly against her wrist to tell her that the diagnostics were done.

The spark battery seemed to be the problem, but what should she do about that? She blundered through some menus trying to find if there was a way to recharge it. Finally, Littlepip decided she was an idiot and popped up from the bottom of the screen again.

Would you like me to attempt to jump-start the power armor’s spark battery off the spark battery in your PipBuck?

Lyra cringed. She was wearing a spark battery on her wrist? Oh, that wasn’t a pleasant thought. Though it did explain how the thing hadn’t run out of batteries in twenty years. She mashed ‘yes’ and two cables extruded themselves from the back of her PipBuck. She plugged them into the terminals of the core and hoped for the best.

The open helmet of the power armor lit up. The eye screens flickered to life, scrolling lines of data before switching over to outside cameras.

Lyra whooped, tugged the screws away from Paneer, and locked down the access panel, with a couple of strips of duct tape to be extra safe. “Crispy! Get your ass in this thing!”

Crispy slid down the sloped deck of the vertibird. He attached his shotgun to a hardpoint on the armor’s battle saddle, grabbed the edges of the shoulder plates, and swung himself inside. “Can you handle the minigun?” he asked as the power armor’s plates hissed closed.

“I can point it at them and pull the trigger. Can’t guarantee I’ll hit anything.”

“Suppressing fire is enough. Slow, controlled bursts. Don’t shoot me in the back.” The power armor’s speakers made Crispy’s baritone even louder and deeper than it already was.

He bunched up his metal-plated haunches, gears hissing, and cleared the roof of the museum in one leap. Lyra and Paneer scrambled to the vertibird’s door just in time to see him slam into the street below, leaving four deep pits in the battered asphalt. All around him, raiders turned to him and raised their weapons. Bullets sparked and pinged off his armor. They didn’t even nick the paint.

“Whoa,” intoned Paneer.

“Get down!” Lyra hissed at her. “You’ll get shot!”

“No I won’t,” said Paneer, not looking away from the carnage beneath them. Crispy turned in a deliberate circle, knocking down groups of raiders with three round bursts from his shotgun.

One raider ran at him from behind with what appeared to be a sharpened pool cue. Without looking, he kicked his back legs and snapped their spine.

Lyra growled. “You’re gonna get down because if you don’t I’m going to spank you raw. Then I’m going to give you to your mom, and she’ll do it again.”

Paneer glared at her, and slunk out of sight, if probably not to safety. Lyra slid her hooves into the grips of the minigun and spun up the barrels. She didn’t want to shoot anypony else today, and Crispy seemed to have a handle on things down there. She just needed to…

Oh no.

Down the end of the street near the park, a pony rose up from behind a wrecked car holding… some sort of massive metal slingshot. A comical weapon, but Lyra felt that tingly feeling at the base of her spine when she looked at the very large bomb sitting in its cradle.

SATS loved the minigun. It let her line up over a dozen shots with just one charge, each of which she guessed might be more than one actual round. She vaguely remembered Crispy saying something about ‘slow, controlled bursts’, but decided she could make an exception just this once.

She pulled the trigger, and the minigun emptied its entire remaining ammo stock into the slingshot wielding raider. Lyra watched in fascinated disgust as his whole body disintegrated into a haze of red goo. The slingshot triggered as it tumbled out of the ex-pony’s arms, discharging into the pavement at his hooves.

The entire world turned white. Lyra shrieked in post-traumatic horror as a miniature megaspell tore through half the block. She fell backward, grabbing the pilot’s seat at the last moment before tumbling out of the vertibird and onto the floor below.

A chain of smaller explosions shook the museum—most likely vehicles’ fusion cores being cooked off by the mini-megaspell. Suddenly she was back at the mouth of Stable 93, a roiling shockwave rushing towards her. Her chest felt constricted by bands of hot iron. She was shaking, sobbing… and… shaking more? Very violently. She’d fallen the rest of the way to the cyclorama room floor, and Vindaloo was shaking her.

“Lyra! Lyra! Snap out of it! We need you!” she growled.

Lyra sobbed something incoherent. Even she wasn’t sure what she said.

Vindaloo slapped her cheek.

Lyra stared at her, open-mouthed. What the heck? Who did that! She hauled off and slapped Vindaloo back. It was like kicking a concrete foundation.

“We need your help,” said Vindaloo, looking mildly contemptuous. Lyra’s hoof hurt, probably much more than Vin’s cheek did. “The raiders are gone, but Crispy’s stuck.”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

The mini-megaspell blast had fried the power armor’s electronics. Lyra felt they ought to be shielded against that sort of thing, but maybe the crash had damaged that, or she hadn’t put the access panel back on right. She should have used more duct tape. What’s more, the emergency escape level was jammed.

It took her, Vindaloo, and two of the healthier refugees fifteen minutes with a crowbar to force it open.

“It’s about Harmony damn time,” said Crispy.

Vindaloo sent out scouts from amongst the civilians with orders to sound a warning if any of the few surviving raiders came back, and set the rest of them to loot the dead. Lyra didn’t feel excited by that idea—she’d describe her feelings about looting corpses more along the lines of ‘nauseous’—so she started fussing with the power armor. All the mechanical stuff was still fine; she even got the manual release lever working again, though the cover wouldn’t go back on. But the magic and electronics were hopeless. She sweet-talked her PipBuck into letting her look at the armor’s primary spell matrix. There was no there there. She’d need to copy with firmspell off a compatible model of power armor to even hope to get the thing running again. Either that or rewrite the spell matrix herself, which didn’t seem like a realistic goal.

She did find one interesting thing—an audio recording in the armor’s saddlebags. It was labeled 'To Whoever Finds this Armor'. Lyra popped the thing into her PipBuck’s audio slot. It started with several seconds of static before an elderly mare’s voice cut in, cool, calm, and familiar sounding.

Twilight’s gone.

Lyra stopped the tape. Of course, Twilight was gone. She couldn’t have survived the war—despite her many, many flaws, Twilight would never leave Equestria like this. That was fine. She hated Twilight. So why was her throat tightening? She started the tape again.

I’m done with war. The things I saw today… I’m done.

I’ve been fighting since I was a foal. I’ve battled monsters, lead armies, captured cities… That was why Lyra remembered the voice— she’d heard it on the news, and in Canterlot on a different Bad Day many years ago. Field Marshal Fizzlepop Berrytwist. Twilight’s highest general and rumored lover. If anypony knew what’d happened to Twilight on the Bad Day, it would have been her.

I thought I’d seen everything. But what I saw today… Cities wreathed in fire. Canterlot choked in magic gas. Two nations wiped off the map. Twilight… Twilight… I’m done.

The tape went silent for a moment. Lyra guessed it was Fizzle trying to keep her emotions in check, rather than lost data. She could relate. She checked the date stamp on the recording. Scaretober 24rd, EoH 27. The day after the Bad Day. Fizzle was going through the same thing that Lyra herself was right now, twenty years later. Everypony around Lyra right now her had grown up with this new world; none of them could have been older than Paneer on the Bad Day. Many of them might not even have been born. Fizzle was far from Lyra’s favorite pony, but hearing her speak brought the reality of what had happened home to Lyra in a new way. Lyra clenched her teeth, trying not to cry.

So. If you’re listening to this, I’m going to assume you’re a survivor, and you’ll need help. The most important thing to know is that Buckstone got it better than most places in Equestria. Lt. Hot Wings and I had to fly for a long time before we found anyplace safe to land. By which time landing was kind of forced on us if you know what I mean. So don’t go off on a quest looking for the end of the rainbow. It’s here.

“Good to know,” said Lyra bitterly.

The second thing is critical. If you’re going to survive, you absolutely have to…

And here the recording broke into static for a full minute and a half.

I hope you took notes.

Lyra scowled. “Well, that was helpful.” Maybe she could go back and try to glean some data out of that section later.

The power armor is yours. Try to use it to do some good in the world. If I hear somepony is using it for pillage and conquest, I might just come out of retirement and kick your ass. The spark battery’s a bit wonky, the escape lever sticks, and I think the megaspell shielding is wearing out. It’s certainly been exposed to enough radiation.

Lyra sighed. At least all the information she already had was intact.

So I’m heading… somewhere. I don’t have any right to have survived this. Not when so many ponies better than me have died. But Twilight entrusted me with… More static. I owe her memory that. Maybe I’ll share what’s on it one day. Maybe I’ll melt it into a puddle. I haven’t decided.

Lyra narrowed her eyes. How did one go about melting a memory? Ah, that was probably just Fizzle being unhinged.

Whoever’s listening to this, whatever you do, and wherever you go, good luck. We’ve had the worst war possible. I like to think that maybe after this we can all be done with war, and talk instead of fighting. But I’m not getting my hopes up.

One last thing: if you’re a loved one of Lt. Hot Wings, I’m burying him… Static. Know that he died bravely.

This is Field Marshal Fizzlepop Berrytwist, retired, signing out.

Lyra closed her eyes and rested the top of her head against the side of Fizzle’s power armor.

Crispy tapped her on the shoulder. “Getting anywhere?”

“Not really. The megaspell blast messed this thing up. Do ponies really still use megaspells?”

“If they can find ‘em,” said Crispy.

“Well, that’s not gonna help things get back to normal.”

“What’s normal?” said Crispy, unslinging a sack full of weapons and ammo from his back. “You any good with guns?”

Lyra pulled the sack open with a telekinetic hand and pulled out a small-caliber revolver similar to the one she’d stolen from the raider she’d shot earlier. “They’re not my specialty, but I know my way around them.”

“That’s good enough,” Crispy grunted. “You seem to pick stuff up quick.”

“Do you mind if I fire them off to test them? I don’t want them blowing up in somepony’s mouth.”

Crispy just nodded. “Should be fine.”

Beanpole would have giggled and blushed like a middle schooler at the thought of things blowing up in his wife’s mouth. “All right,” said Lyra, struggling to keep her voice steady. “Let me have a look.”

She lost herself in inventorying, examining, and cleaning the weapons. Some were obviously unusable; she broke these down for parts. The raiders seemed to favor small caliber ammo; a lot of the guns had been rechambered to take .38 caliber rounds. It seemed a bit clever for raiders to simplify their logistical chain by using a single ammo type, but at least she didn’t have to waste a ton of time sorting bullets. They used a lot of shotgun shells, too, but those were easy to tell apart.

At some point somepony brought her the sniper rifle—half-melted by the mini-megaspell, but the scope was still intact. It looked like it might fit on Vindaloo’s rifle. She seemed like a careful shooter, it might make a good peace offering. Not that Lyra felt a need to make peace with the pony who would’ve let her die.

Though Lyra was starting to wonder if it would’ve been better if Vindaloo had let her die. The wasteland was worse than she could have imagined. What did she have to hope for?

She had to focus on finding her family again. That was something to hope for. She couldn’t just give up on that.

Once every weapon was cleaned and sorted, she started to fix up borderline guns with bits from the broken ones. Then she started to check her work, magically holding them on the other side of the power armor and firing a couple of rounds from each repaired weapon. Or at least that was the plan; she was on her second gun when Vindaloo stormed over, coat tails flapping with the speed of her passage.

“What the actual fuck are you doing?” Vindaloo snarled. Paneer peeked out from around her hind leg, gaze darting between Lyra and her mom.

“Crispy asked me to fix these guns,” said Lyra, leaning away from Vindaloo. “I was testing them.” She hated how apologetic her voice sounded, but Vindaloo had taken her by surprise

“You’re giving away our fucking position is what you’re fucking doing!” roared Vindaloo.

“I… I don’t.” Lyra held a foreleg up to block the flecks of spit flying from Vindaloo’s lips.

Crispy came charging over, broken asphalt and dirty snow flying out from under his hooves. “Hey! Vin! What’re you doing to the new mare?”

Vindaloo rounded on him. “Did you tell her she could fire off guns like crazy?”

“No. Just a couple of rounds to test ‘em. Which is what she was doing.”

“She’s going to bring more raiders down on us! Your new pet’s gonna get us killed.”

“She ain’t my pet, and ain’t no raider runs towards the sound of guns.”

Vindaloo stomped. “There’s more than just raiders out there and you know it. You also know we have to consult each other before giving orders. We’re the same rank! I don’t need you going over my head! Unless you want to split the group in half?”

“Why you gotta take it to extremes, Vin? We can share power without needing to wipe each other’s asses. I ain’t gonna check with you for every call.”

Lyra found her courage and piped up. “Listen. I’m done for now. It’s starting to snow, anyway. Most of these are fine. I’ll just… do the rest later. When it’s safer.” She levitated up the guns she’d been working on, and started stuffing them in the sack. Spare parts went in her saddlebag—including that scope. Fuck peace offerings, Vindaloo didn’t deserve it. “Where do you want the ammo?”

✭☆✭☆✭☆✭

For the first time since she’d woken up in the stable. Lyra felt warm. Too warm.

The Minutemares and associated refugees had set up camp in the museum’s basement cafeteria. Lyra had helped them strip a patch of kitchen floor down to the bare stone foundation, and Vindaloo had built a cooking fire. Her heart had sunk when she’s seen Vindaloo pulling boxes of Dressage Horse apples out of their supply bags—she hated those. But Vidaloo had also pulled out a big bottle of oil and a small plastic container of salt that she handled like it was a holy relic. Now the smell of frying apples filled the small space, making Lyra’s stomach rumble and twist.

It was evening, and she’d dismissed notifications from Littlepip reminding her to eat three times. There was another setting she needed to find and shut off.

The heat of the fire filled the small cafeteria, making Lyra sweat in her blue jumpsuit. She’d already taken off her cloak and the half-assed armor. Soon she found herself needing to unzip the stable jumpsuit and pull it down around her navel. Then she took off her CSGU T-shirt. She felt exposed.

Nopony else cared. Most of them had taken off what little clothing they wore when the fire had started up. Crispy sat right next to her, salivating as he watched Vindaloo cook, his junk just… just hanging out there. His cutie mark was a red apple with a worm crawling out of it. He sure had plenty of worm in his apple. Blue Note sat across the fire from her, orange light gleaming on her round belly and swollen teats. Lyra’s pulse quickened—in a pleasant way for once—as she drank in those ripe blue curves

Blue Note made a soft, curious “Eeee” noise, and Lyra looked up to meet sultry slit-pupiled eyes. Caught! Lyra blushed and turned away. What was she doing? She was a married mare!

One of Vindaloo’s sous chefs handed Lyra a chipped coffee mug half-full of apples. Lyra frowned at how little there was and glanced around to see if Vindaloo was shorting her. Apparently not. Everypony else got a half portion, too, except for Blue Note.

The texture of the apples was perfect, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, and the oil and salt offset the brand’s obnoxious sweetness. Three green chili peppers marked Vindaloo’s wiry flank. Lyra’s first assumption had been that they were for her temper, but now she suspected that she’d be a demon in a properly stocked kitchen.

After dinner, a mason jar of clear liquid made the rounds. Lyra sniffed it before she drank, and wasn’t surprised when the fumes cleared her sinuses. She felt everypony’s eyes on her. Well. If they were going to judge her by her drinking abilities, she could accommodate them. She tipped the jar back and took an ample gulp. It burned her throat and filled her head with stinging fumes, but she willed herself not to gag as she forced it down. She was rewarded with a comforting warmth in her belly.

“Whoa. That’s good stuff,” said Lyra, blinking and smirking as she passed the mason jar to Crispy.

“That’s Rotgut’s Special Moonshine!” said a wild-eyed, wild-maned dun stallion lying on his bedroll nearby. He stuck his ass in the air and waved it from side to side, showing of cutie mark of a sparkling full moon. “Making that’s my special talent, you know.”

“Damn sure makes life in the wasteland easier,” said Crispy, taking a sip and wiping his mouth with his pastern.

Lyra felt woozy and a little sick, but she didn’t feel quite as afraid and depressed. Damn, the wasteland was going to make her a drunk. “So what’s you guys’ story? Who are you? Why are you on the run? What happened at Breeder’s Hill?”

“We’ll tell you our story if you’ll tell us yours,” said Vindaloo, not disguising her hostile glare.

“Deal,” said Lyra. “Dish.”

Crispy took a deep breath. “Well, our story starts right after the war. General Horse Teeth—she was just Horse Teeth at the time—left her Principality fallout shelter almost as soon as the dust had settled. She saw how bad things were, and she decided that somepony had to fix them and that somepony was her. Walking the earth, feeding the hungry, righting wrongs, getting medicine to the sick, that kinda thing. Some say she killed fifty raiders with a kitchen knife. Some say she sold all her real teeth to buy Rad-Away for a foal with radiation poisoning. Some say she killed a diamondclaw with one hoof and made dentures out of its fangs.”

“Some say that’s yakshit!” whooped Rotgut.

The refugees laughed.

Crispy raised a hoof. “I know, I know, these stories get a little out of hoof. But she was wearing diamondclaw fangs when I met her. The point is, as time went on, she met other ponies who were trying to do good. And she talked other ponies, like Vin and me, into mending our evil ways. But it became clear to her that lone ponies doing good by themselves weren’t going to be enough to help the wasteland. So she started the Minutemares.”

“So you and Vindaloo were Minutemares from the begining?”

“Yeah. We weren’t anything special, mind you. Just mercenaries who decided to become soldiers, kicking ass, taking names, making our way up through the ranks. For five years, it seemed like nothing could stop the Minutemares. We beat the Talons at the battle of Winter Hill, and we beat the princesses at Triple Diamond City…”

“Princesses?” said Lyra.

“They call themselves the ‘super alicorns’, but we call ‘em princesses. Small ‘p’. Victims of a pre-war super-soldier program. You’ll run into some sooner or later, and when you do, run. Anyway, General Horse Teeth decided it was time to take it to the next stage—trying to set up a free wasteland state, protected from raiders and monsters by the Minutemares. We built a walled settlement around Breeder’s Hill— by the monument because it seemed defensible. We’d heard about the Ponysmith operating in that area, but we weren’t afraid of him—we thought he was just another raider warlord. We’d learn better.

“The first time his legions raided us, over a year ago, we fought them off easily. Sure, they had a suit of power armor with ‘em, but we had missile launchers, and we thought we were hot shit. We didn’t hear from them again until a few days ago.” Lyra realized that the whole cafeteria had gone silent. The dying firelight flickered on Crispy’s face. “The power armor ponies didn’t even fight. They just sent wave after wave of unarmed unicorns at us. We thought it was funny, at first. Then pathetic. Then it made us sick. Then they breached the walls with their magic. The power armor ponies teleported inside while we were busy dealing with the breach, and they tore us apart, starting with the civilians hiding in the monument.

“General Horse Teeth’s last order was to send Vindaloo and me away with the surviving civilians. She died covering our escape.” Crispy hung his head.

Lyra found the jar of moonshine back in her hooves. She took another gulp and waited for the silence to pass.

“So, how about you?” said Vindaloo wryly.

Lyra didn’t know how to follow that story up, and she had a little too much moonshine in her to try to be clever, so she just told the truth, everything she remembered up to reaching the front of the museum. She only left out the weeping ghost—even though she knew ghosts were real, it was hard to talk about them without sounding like a crazy pony.

Vindaloo snorted. “Lyra, If you were going to lie to us, you could have at least made up a plausible story.”

Paneer poked at her mother’s side. “Nuh-uh! It’s all true! At least the parts I was there for.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Paneer. Lyra, you left a stable for this?”

“Yeah. If I was lying, I’d make up a better lie,” said Lyra. Oh, she wanted to punch Vindaloo in the face, but she knew her hoof would come off the worse in that exchange. Stupid earth pony toughness. But she could use her magic to hang her up by her tail…

“Wait,” said Crispy. “You said you walked here from the stable?”

Lyra and Vindaloo turned to look at Crispy. Gears turned behind his eyes.

“Yeah,” said Lyra, cautiously. “It’s maybe half an hour from here.”

Crispy rubbed his forehooves together. “And it was abandoned.”

“Except for dozens of rabid mutant pukwudgies,” said Lyra.

Vindaloo sat up very straight. “Crispy, I hope you aren’t going where I think you’re going with this.”

“Me too,” said Lyra. “We’re on the same page here.”

Crispy tapped his chin with one hoof. “Could you get back inside?”

Vindaloo hopped to her hooves. “No! Crispy no! This is a trap!” She pointed accusingly across the fire at Lyra. “This bitch is working for the Ponysmith. She’s wormed her way into our ranks, and now she’s leading us into a trap!”

“What?” yelped Lyra. “I just said I don’t want to do this!”

“Reverse psychology,” said VIndaloo.

“Fuck that,” said Crispy. “What does the Ponysmith want with us any more? If Lyra were working for him, she’d have kept Paneer and left us to die.”

Lyra raised her hoof. “I couldn’t have kept her, because, um, I didn’t take her? I found her, okay?”

Crispy and Vindaloo ignored her.

“Listen”, said Crispy, “All I’m saying is that we should check this out. This stable might finally be someplace really safe for us. A place to rebuild the Minutemares. If it’s not good, we don’t have to stay there, but we should at least look.”

Vindaloo stalked over to Crispy. “She’s taken you in! She’s roped you into this idiotic plan of hers, and..”

That was too much. Lyra got up on all fours and raised her voice loud enough that the two Minutmare majors couldn’t ignore her. “This is NOT my plan, okay? Did I at any point say, ‘Hey, why don’t you all come back to stable 93? It’ll be a blast, I’ll make brownies?’ No? Good because I never said anything like that.

“From the moment I left that stable, awful things have been happening to me. I’ve been captured, threatened with robbery, threatened with slavery, threatened with rape, shot at, actually shot, falsely accused of foalnapping, had my character repeatedly besmirched, suffered a TPSD flashback, been needlessly slapped, and I’ve killed… Harmony, I don’t know how many ponies. Seriously—I killed my first pony last night. As of this afternoon, I have already lost count of the number of ponies whose deaths I have directly or indirectly caused. And I’m just getting started out here! I have had the worst day of my life. And considering what yesterday was like, that’s saying a fucking lot!

“So if what was waiting for me back at that stable was any better than all of that, I’d have turned around and gone right back in and we never would have met!”

Crispy narrowed his eyes. “So what is in there that you’re so scared of? You’ve got us, we’ve got guns, we can handle the pukwudgies.”

Lyra turned her head to one side, regarding Crispy with a single eye. “Stable tech had security. They had guns. They should have been able to handle the pukwudgies. Something else made them leave. I told you they were doing medical experiments on us. On me. On my family. There could be disease down there, or worse. I don’t want to go back in there.”

Crispy nodded. “All right. You got anything else to say?”

Lyra shook her head. Her legs trembled underneath her. That little speech had taken every bit of energy and willpower she had left. “No. I’m done.” She sat back down quickly before she collapsed.

Crispy turned to Vindaloo. “So. I’ve told you about my plan. What’s yours?”

“Well, we can’t stay here.”

“Agreed.”

Vindaloo thought for a moment.”Triple Diamond City. It’s another long walk down, but it’s the only safe place left in the Commonwealth. They owe us. They’ll take us in.”

Crispy nodded. “It’d be the end for the Minutemares. The refugees will blend into the city. Maybe you and I will work security, or go back to being mercenaries. There won’t be another chance for a free wasteland. Back to the old ways. Back to the ministry mares.”

Vindaloo shook her head. “We can get through it. We need time to rebuild, and staying at Triple Diamond City will give us that time. And even if we drift apart, and the Minutemares disappear, it’s better than dying chasing that stable.”

Crispy stayed silent for a few moments, mulling over Vindaloo’s words. “That makes sense, Major. That makes a lot of sense. But you’re wrong.”

Vindaloo smirked. “No, Major. You’re wrong.”

“I don’t think we’re going to agree on this, are we?”

“Nope. Vote?”

“Vote.” Crispy turned his gaze across the refugees around him. Lyra looked too, the firelight flickered on desperate hungry faces half-hidden in the darkness. “So. You’ve heard the arguments. This choice affects you, too. You all ready to vote?”

A mumbled chorus of ‘aye’s filled the cafeteria.

Crispy thrust a forehoof out towards Lyra. “All right. All in favor of checking out Lyra’s stable, say ‘aye’.”

“Aye!” said almost everypony in the room.

A look of fear flickered across Vindaloo’s face, but she set her jaw and went back to her normal, hostile expression. “And all those in favor of marching to Triple Diamond City?” she said.

Silence. Lyra would have voted for Triple Diamond City, whatever that was, but she wasn’t sure her vote counted. Anyway, she didn’t want to give Vindaloo the satisfaction.

Vindaloo hung her head for a moment. “Fine,” she said, looking up at last. “You’re all idiots. But I’ll go with you. We move out in the morning. Get some sleep, all of you.”

Level 5.
Perk: Handypone. You can now craft all level one firearms and armor mods.

New Status:Traumatized Pony Stress Disorder. You have witnessed great horrors, and they haunt you still. When exposed to something that triggers your memories, you suffer panic attacks and/or flashbacks.

Originally I was going to have Lt. Hot Wings’ skeleton still in the cockpit, as one would see in a Fallout game. But then I realized that Fizzle would never leave a fallen soldier unburied. In this way, character trumps atmosphere and lore.

'Vertibirds' sounds like a name ponies would give to an airplane, so I used that instead of a sky chariots. Also pegasai don't have to pull them; that was always awful hard on poor Calamity.