"Hold still, Melody! I'm trying to save your hair here," I ordered. With a frown, my obstinate niece stopped squirming and sat quietly on the Stable Sixty-Three museum entrance floor. I brushed her hair into the closest thing I could achieve that could be considered style, dreading each tug on her frazzled mane. Melody's beautiful blonde hair was frayed and burned, her luxurious golden braid had ignited and was consumed along with most of the hair up to her lower neck. I bit my lower lip at the sight of the uneven, blackened mane and swallowed hard. This was not going to be a pretty fix.

"Where's Compass with those supplies you need? We need to get out of the museum and get on our way to Big Buck," Shadowbuck muttered as he stared down the dimly lit hallway that led to Stable Sixty-Three. He obviously couldn't see the damaged Stable's door, but he was watching the doorway behind the painting like a phoenix eyeing its prey.

"Hold your horses, Shadow. Compass is only used to carrying one item at a time in his telekinesis field. That gear and that painting are probably weighing him down," Melody said, defending her boyfriend.

At least I had decided to keep the Sword of Everfree. I needed something besides a shield to fight and I was not very good with a gun. I was a lot better at swinging a sword with my teeth than firing a pistol with the mouth grip. Until I got my magic back, the sword would have be my main weapon to defend myself. (Hey, don't judge me! I was going to use the blade to kill monsters, not sell it for personal gain.) Melody looked up at me, hope shimmering in her bright blue eyes.

"Is it really that bad?" she asked as she tried to tug on the braid that no longer hung past her shoulders. She pressed her lips together and looked at her shoulder with a longing that I found odd.

I remembered having lost a large chunk of my hair when I was younger due to a cousin putting gum in it while I slept, but I hadn't felt the dejection and loss that Melody seemed to be feeling. Her scalp had not been burned, as well as her face and much of her shoulders and forelegs, and since the burns weren't magical, and since Compass had administered heavy doses of magical potion, her hair would grow back.

I glanced over at the doorway, silently thanking Compass again for braving the outside and saving Melody, and I heard Melody whimper.

"That bad." Great. Melody was taking my silence as an affirmative to her fears. I spit out the brush, balancing it on my right hoof, and gave her a weak smile.

"Uh, I, um... No. I-I think can fix it. You know, make it look nice. I just need Compass to bring a pair of scissors and a mirror back and can use these bobby pins I found-"

"They'd be better off being used for lock picks," Shadowbuck said, looking down at his right hoof.

"I wasn't the one who broke almost all your bobby pins on those display cases," I answered.

"I would've gotten it eventually," he mumbled.

I rolled my eyes and strained to pick up a simple bobby pin in my magical grasp. My whole body shook as I placed the simple hair accessory in Melody's hair to hold back her bangs, and I let out a sigh of relief as I snapped it into place. Sitting down hard and panting, I stared at the open doorway along with Melody while Shadowbuck turned his head towards us.

"Is it getting any better?" he asked, and I nodded while closing my eyes and blowing my own bangs back. It didn't do anything, the brown and blue locks fell back into place easily, but it made me feel better. Shadowbuck could obviously see my annoyance through my attempt at being nonchalant. "Like I said, maybe Elder Cherry Scones can help."

"I hope so."

Suddenly, we could hear the soft clopping of hooves on metal, the rhythmic trot echoing down the hallway to us and getting louder as its source drew closer. Then another set of hooves. And another. Then, out of the shadows emerged Compass, Starshine, and Swiss Cheese, the two Security ponies carrying rifles and wearing heavy security barding.

"Starshine!" Melody squeaked before dashing behind me, trying her best to hide from her older brother.

"Melody? What happened to you?" he asked, his eyes wide as he rushed us. I stepped aside, being the 'kind and thoughtful' aunt that I was, and watched as he grabbed his sister by the shoulders and looked her over. “Goddesses, Melody, what happened to your hair? And your coat? You're almost completely hairless from the shoulders down! And where's your barding?"

"Glad to see you too, Shine. Please tell me mom's not with you," Melody whimpered, looking past Starshine and Swiss Cheese at the dark hallway behind him.

"No. She's back in the Stable. I have half a mind to take you back with me so you'd best tell me what happened Melody," he demanded, his voice firm and borderline angry. Who he was mad at I couldn't tell, but I really hope he wouldn't turn that anger towards me. I had promised to keep her safe and she had almost died on her second day out of Stable Sixty-Three.

"I got attacked by a flaming zebra mummy," Melody said simply, giving Starshine the biggest smile she could muster. Starshine blinked back a stare of disbelief, although I noticed a hint of fear in his blue eyes, and turned to look at Shadowbuck.

"You didn't tell me there were flaming zebra mummies on the surface!" he shouted. It came out as a strange exclamation halfway between yelling and snarling, but it forced me to step away from him. I don't know why, but something about Starshine yelling at us made it feel, subconsciously, like Golden Star was yelling at me.

"There aren't. That thing was sealed in a sarcophagus up stairs for a couple thousand years. That was some ancient zebra hoodoo, but it's dead now so there’s no need to worry," Shadowbuck assured Starshine.

"Yeah. Compass saved me, and the only reason it was on fire was cause my lasers ignited its wrappings," Melody said cheerily. I stared at her, trying to understand how a pony could stay so happy only an hour after getting burned alive by a creature as horrifying as Queen Cleopatra had been, until I noticed Starshine glaring at me.

"You promised Mom that you'd keep her safe," he said, his eyes cutting into me worse than the dragon's teeth had cut into the zombie horde.

"I-I-"

"Don't blame her, Starshine! Her horn isn't working! If Tea Leaves wasn't being so stupid, we would have been down in the Stable getting her magic working again. Then she could have taken out the mummy like she did all those ghouls!" Melody chastised her brother, turning his attention away from me so I could release the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding.

"But-"

"No buts! It was my fault, but I'm okay now. Plus it was my fault," Melody argued, adding that it was her fault twice. I furrowed my brow at her strange choice of counter argument. "Compass saved me so there's no reason to mad at anypony."
"Melody."

"Don't 'Melody' me! I'm sixteen, I'm an adult, and I'm out here to help Aria save our Stable... Wait, why are you out here?"

Starshine looked away from her and back down the hallway to Stable Sixty-Three.

"Cause Compass told me what happened, and I was worried. Is that so hard to believe?" Melody stared at him for a few moments, the room suddenly becoming dead silent and everypony tensed up. The awkward silence floated among us like a mournful spirit until Starshine sighed. "And when Compass brought down those relics and paintings and said the ghouls were all dead, the Overmare ordered we go look for anything else for the museum."

"Really?" I asked as Compass walked up to me with a bag full of supplies. "Thanks, Compass." The doctor-in-training simply nodded back nervously and stepped aside, before turning back to Melody. "Alright, Melody, let's get that crop chopped." Melody groaned before taking a seat facing away from me.

"Yes," Starshine replied, his shoulders slumping. "Saving historical artifacts is the Stable's main mission beyond saving ponies. The Overmare wants us to save as much as we can up here. Now that the threats are gone of course."

"Oh. Are you okay with that?" I said as I took one of the scissors' handles in my mouth and the other with my hoof. My horn sparked uselessly, unable to lift even a few strands of hair, and gritted my teeth around the scissors . The bobby pin had burned out the rest of my magic. "Cud."

"Let me help you with that," Swiss Cheese offered, and took an uneven lock of burnt blonde hair in her hoof. I snipped the lock and smiled.

"Thanks," I mumbled through clenched teeth.

"No, but it's my duty," Starshine sighed, and turned to address Shadowbuck. "Think you can give me a full report? Compass isn't the best when it comes to talking, you know?"

I set to work while Shadowbuck spoke to Starshine about what to expect in the museum. I listened as they talked about possible monster incursions and the fact that we had taken some of the zebra artifacts to sell. Thankfully for Shadowbuck, zebra artifacts weren't much of a priority for Starshine or the Overmare. Pony history was a priority, not world histroy. After about twenty minutes, Swiss Cheese and I had Melody's hair cut into a short, pixie cut that I honestly thought looked about as good as we could do with what we had to work with. I removed the bobby pins and smiled nervously. "There we go."

"I think it looks cute," Swiss Cheese added, trying to sound as encouraging as possible as she gave Melody a small mirror.

"I'll take those, thank you very much," Shadowbuck said, grabbing the three bobby pins from my hoof and adding them to his hoof compartment.

"Hey! Just don't go breaking them on those cases on the third floor!" I cried, but my annoyance was quickly diverted as I heard Melody whine.

"My hair." She reached for her braid and winced as she could no longer pull of the stylized rope of hair. Turning to look at Compass, Melody whimpered, "Do you think it looks cute?"

Compass froze, his eyes wide and darting back and forth between Melody, Starshine, Shadowbuck, and myself. I blinked. The stallion who had gotten the kill shot on an undead mummy, saved his marefriend, and confessed his love for her was unable to say one word about her hair? He looked at me like he was asking 'What do I say?’ and I spun my hoof at him. He looked to Starshine, but the stallion mimicked my gesture. Finally, Compass took a deep breath.

"Yes." I was completely dumbfounded. Shadowbuck seemed to be reading my mind because he turned to Compass and shouted,

"That's it? After all that build up all you can say is-"

"Thank you! If you like it, then I like it," Melody said with a happy smile as she threw her hooves around his neck and nuzzled him affectionately. Was everypony from Stable Sixty-Three a little bit crazy or just my family and their loved ones? No, the Overmare was pretty crazy, so that worked in favor of the everypony category. At least Curio and Leaflet seemed sane. "Stop thinking like that, Aria! They’re nice ponies. They’re not crazy. They're just... different."

"Alright, if we've got the trip to the beauty salon finished, then Starshine's gotta go scouting and we gotta get going. We're burning daylight and you do not want to see the streets of Trottingham after dark," Shadowbuck said, addressing us like we were soldiers going off to war, before turning to Starshine again. "Remember to incinerate those ghoul bodies and keep the doors locked. We've got a side door key so we'll lock it behind us, okay?"

"Got it, Shadow. Thanks again for all your help. Oh, and tell your Elder thanks for us too," he replied, and Shadowbuck nodded.

"Will do, Cap."

"Bye, Starshine. I know I already said it, but we'll be back with a new door in no time," Melody said with a bright grin and she placed the remaining hair care products in her saddlebags.

I simply nodded to Starshine, feeling a desire to avoid repeating myself from our previous goodbye, and turned to follow Shadowbuck out of the Trottingham Natural History Museum.

I was practically a ghoul. My legs moved as I followed my companions out into the devastated remains of what had once been Trottingham, but I was hardly controlling them. I had never been to Trottingham before the bombs, it was across the Marediterranean Sea after all, but I had seen pictures of it. The proud skyline of the historical city looked more like a jagged range of mountains, numerous buildings had either been destroyed, collapsed on each other to lean in haphazard and random piles, or had gaping holes where balefire had burned out the buildings but failed to consume them.

The streets were empty save for us and mounds upon mounds of debris blocking many of the side streets. Collapsed buildings and giant sinkholes had turned the neat and orderly cobblestone roads of old Trottingham into the treacherous maze that was the Trottingham Ruins. It was a miracle that the concrete and marble structure of the history museum was still standing, dirty and charred but for the most part untouched by balefire or time's destructive influence. The only other structures that I could see still intact were the railway lines of the Duchess and Union Jack Lines and a large, glass building further down the street that I could recognize by the yellowed and damaged marquee as a Four Star station.

Even nature itself was wrong. The brownish gray clouds blanketed the world in a dull light as Celestia's sun tried its hardest to give Equestria its warm and loving embrace. However, the cloud cover the pegasi had enveloped the world in stopped even the might of the sun from reaching the surface. What had happened to the pegasi that they would all become cowards who would steal the sun and the moon and horde their gifts for themselves? I could smell the sea, but I couldn't hear seagulls or see the ocean past the wall of debris to my right. Even the air tasted wrong.

I knew why. I knew why everything was wrong. Zebra... and ponies had killed the world. Our fighting over something as stupid as rocks had destroyed everything. Equestria, and the rest of the world, was dead. Everything was dead. The sun and moon were gone, monsters roamed the earth, and everypony I had ever known, crossed paths with, or had never even met were dead. And yet, here in this hellhole two hundred years later, I walked in a haze outside the remains of an old Four Star station.

Golden Star and Grandmother were dead, and I was alive. The Ministry Mares were dead, and I was alive. The zebra Caesar was dead, and I was alive. The princesses, the keepers of the sun and moon and rulers all of Equestria, were dead, and I was alive! I had failed to save Princess Luna! I had failed to protect Equestria! My sacrifice was not a sacrifice at all! It had been in vain!

"Aria, are you alright?" Melody asked, her voice heavy with concern.

"Yeah. Sure. I'm okay. Why do you ask?" I lied through my teeth.

"Then why are you crying?" Shadowbuck asked, sounding equally worried.

"What? I'm not..." I touched my face and felt wet fur matted to my cheeks. Luna... I really was crying! The tears were flowing and I didn't even realize it. "I-"

My voice caught as a sob finally erupted from my lips, my conscious mind finally catching up to my emotionally devastated subconscious. I could feel my entire body shaking, I was even having trouble breathing, but I felt empty inside.
"Everything is gone. We blew it up. I-I failed." I sat on the ground, my hind legs finally giving way. I didn’t know how long my forelegs would hold out as they shook to hold me in a seated position.

"Aria. This wasn't your fault. This was a bunch of ponies from... oh..." Shadowbuck stopped, realizing what he was saying. But I knew what he was going to say. I was one of those ponies. I was a pony who joined the Royal Guard, a branch of the military, who helped escalate the war to this. I was just as guilty as the ponies who had created megaspells and the zebras who stole them and set the balefire megaspells off.

"I even failed to protect Princess Luna! My main goal in life, and I failed at that. I couldn't go to her school. I couldn't save Equestria. I failed," I cried, rocking back and forth as I held my knees tight to my chest.

I shut my eyes tight against the tears and saw the tiny green flame dancing in the darkness. It was calling out to me, speaking no words, but I could understand its every movement. The flame danced it seductive samba, calling out for me to feed it all my pain, my anger, my sorrows. It called for me to give it what it desired and it would give me strength. It would give me the power to keep going. I was alone, I needed it. I felt its tantalizing power caressing my lips and I wanted it so badly. I wanted to give in.

Then I felt a set of hooves wrap around my neck. Then, after somepony cleared their throat, another pony took me into their warm embrace. I opened my eyes, abandoning the flame and saw an armored blue set of badly burned utility barding. Looking up, I could see Compass looking rather awkward hugging me, he never quite made eye contact, while Melody held me tight and smiled sadly.

"You might have failed, Aunt Aria, but your making up for your generation's mistakes. You've been given the chance to help us. You’re helping us save Stable Sixty-Three. We didn’t ask you to, you volunteered to do it. You’re a good pony. You've got to keep going, okay?" she asked. Turning to Shadowbuck, the Steel Ranger was standing to my right looking about as tense and nervous as I had ever seen him, and Melody cleared her throat again.

"Get in here, Shadow."

"I'm not really the hugging type. Sharing a drink, bitching about our problems, sure. Maybe even helping a pony kick the tar out of a few monsters to work it all out. But I'm not really all that into the touchy feely kinda stuff," Shadow said plainly before trying to give Melody a convincing grin. It didn't seem to work.

"Get over here and hug Aria or I'm going to tell her what you told me in the mummy exhibit," she said, and I felt the slightest spark of laughter begin to burn through my depression.

I was depressed. That was the only thing this heavy, empty feeling could be. In my current state, I didn't know if I could ever crawl out of the dark pit I had fallen into. How could I when the whole world reflected that chasm of horrors that sat within my chest. My heart was ravaged and felt empty, just like the world. Hell, even the eternal cloud cover mirrored the dark cloud over my mind.

"I... Ugh, alright." Shadowbuck threw his hooves around us for almost an entire second before pulling away. "Look, okay, if you need a hug, and Mel and Compass aren't around, then... I guess you can ask me."

"Th-" I was about to say as I looked up at him and spotted movement on the rooftop across the street. A unicorn, his hide a ragged and mottled gray, was levitating a sniper rifle and lining up a shot on one of us. Doing the only thing I could think of at such short notice, I wrapped my hooves around Melody and Compass and started to pull them over the ledge down into the sunken courtyard outside the Four Star's station. "Get down!"

I didn't hear the shot, the rifle was obviously silenced, but I sure as hell felt the round slam into my back. The steel plates of my Lunar Guard armor stopped the bullet from ripping through my back and into my heart, but the force knocked the wind out of me as I fell on top of my Stable dwelling companions.

"Shit! Flushers!" Shadowbuck yelled as he jumped down to us and used the wall of the courtyard as cover. "Is she okay?"

"I-Ack! I'm fine," I coughed, feeling the pressure of a large dent pressing into my shoulder blade.

"My E.F.S. only shows one hostile. I'll get him," Melody announced and turned to take off.

"Wait. We need a plan," Compass said, grabbing her hoof with his magic and pulling her back. A split second later, the concrete beyond erupted into a miniature explosion that would have lined up perfectly with Melody's head.

"Eep!" she squeaked, pressing herself against the low wall as if she were trying to meld with it. Looking back at Compass, eyes wide, she tried to give him a weak smile. "If we get out of this and find someplace quiet, you get as much private time as you want."

Compass' eyes widened to match hers, his orange fur yet again darkening with a crimson flush, and he nodded.

"We need a plan," he said to Shadowbuck and me.

"Any ideas?" I asked, looking to the Steel Ranger expectantly.

"Yeah. You three stay here. He's gunning for Melody right now so I'll just sneak around, get a better shot, and take him out," he said, giving us a confident grin that I couldn't help admiring. Touching the device on his fetlock, he vanished from view. I strained to watch his blurred form creep towards the stairs only to hear a metal wrenching bang, see a shower of sparks, and watch as the blur hit the ground hard as his stealth spell deactivated.

"Compass! Pull him back!" I shouted, and our medical pony enveloped Shadowbuck in his magical aura as another heavy round smashed into Shadowbuck's neck. Pulling him back to safety, I saw that the rounds hadn't pierced through his armor, but one shot to the helmet and another to his neck had left him in pretty bad shape. He was out cold and even I could see that he was having trouble breathing.

Before I could give an order to help him, Compass was already on it, removing the helmet carefully and administering a healing potion, so I turned to Melody. She looked scared, her eyes wide, her lower lip quivering slightly, and her hooves grasping for a braid that no longer hung from her shoulders.

I nodded to her, hoping it would ease her nerves, and peaked over our bulwark at our mysterious assailant. His rifle's barrel and the top of his blue, spiked mane was all I could see over the edge of the building across the street. There was almost nothing to let us get a decent shot off on him, and, with my firearm's skill and inability to use much magic, I knew I wasn't any use here.

Suddenly, the corner of the wall showered me with dust as a bullet narrowly avoided taking my head off and I screamed. Ducking behind the wall again, I could hear a shrill chorus of laughter coming from the rooftops. There were other ponies up there and they were all laughing at me. I held my head in my hooves and felt myself starting to cry again.

"Augh! I'm completely useless!" I growled, the weight in my chest starting to consume what was left of my heart.

"Aria! You're not useless!" Melody shouted as she took me by the shoulders.

"Yes I am! My talent is magical combat! What good am I if I can barely lift a stupid bobby pin!"

"You're not useless, Aria! Grandpa Golden Star said in his diary that you were the smartest pony he ever met! I've seen you hack computers and know just what to do in combat against those raiders! I believe him! You're a smart pony, Aria, so think us a way out of here!" Melody shouted, shaking me literally and figuratively out of my depression for long enough to see that she was crying too. She was absolutely terrified and so was Compass as he tried his hardest to help Shadowbuck. As the potion started taking effect, the unconscious Steel Ranger let out a low moan and his eyes opened slowly.

"Ugh. What hit me?"

"The sniper did. He hit you in the head and neck. You're armor's all that saved you," Compass explained, showing him the shallow crater in the side of his helmet.

"Crap! The bastard's got infrared. If he can see my heat signature when I'm stealthed, then we're pinned until his back up arrives," he cursed, taking his helmet and returning it to his head. He pressed another button and I watched as his suit opened up to let him throw a piece of scrap metal inside. I knew that Steel Ranger armor could self repair, but watching the two large dents in his armor pop back into place was a marvel of arcane science and technology.

"I think they're already here and they're just toying with us. There were a lot of ponies laughing up there when I screamed," I muttered.

"Then we need to think of something and fast!"

I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the emerald flame dancing in the back of my mind, and tried to do just that. Thinking. Golden Star was right, I was a smart pony. I may not have my horn to rely on, but I still had my brain. Another mini explosion of street detonated in the plaza as the sniper shot through the batlike plume of my helmet, and I realized that he was toying with us.

"Goddesses. I don't want to die," Compass moaned.

"Okay, Aria. Think," I mumbled to myself, crouching lower behind the wall. If we left the safety of the wall or tried to take shots at the sniper, he'd blow our heads off. Shadowbuck and my helmet might stop one hit, but his helmet was sturdier than mine and he had been knocked him out cold for a few moments. Aegis could block the shots, but without my magic it was almost impossible for me to wield effectively.

"More hostiles on the E.F.S." Melody said, and my heart sank. They were finally getting ready to kill us. We were going to die. "This is hopeless."

As that thought crossed my mind, the flame undulated and almost seemed to be laughing. It offered me power beyond my wildest dreams as it multiplied and was joined by a host of sparks and exact copies of itself. They waltzed among the shadows, their movements refined and seductive. I saw myself, stepping through the darkness towards the flame, my features gaunt and my face a mask of terror. I looked like a living ghoul, my coat was patchy and faded, my eyes sunken and yellow, and my hooves were sharpened bone. I marched towards the beckoning of the balefire that had marked me since that fateful day with Golden Star in the garden. I marched with single minded purpose. My mind's eye was perfectly mirroring how I felt inside.

"That's it!" I proclaimed, causing my companions to turn on me like I was crazy. I started writing out figures and drawing triangles in the dirt, eliciting more strange looks from my friends, and glanced up at the windows of the Four Star station. I looked back to the figures, adjusting my math slighting, and then one last look at the sniper. This could work. "I've got a plan. It's risky, but it's the only way."

"Okay, egghead, where do I need to shoot?" Shadowbuck asked, cocking his sniper rifle and giving me his usual, confident grin.

"You don't. You're the distraction. I need you to run for that door. Serpentine and dodge as best you can, okay? I don’t want you dying for this or I might just follow you," I told him and watched his grin turn into a scowl.
"I'm a sniper and a scout. I don't do distractions."

"Then how are you with energy weapons?" The scowl deepened and he let out an annoyed nicker. "Okay, Melody, I need your mirror."

"Is checking your hair really appropriate right now?" Compass asked, and I shot him a look that immediately shut him up. Thank goodness for Melody's taste in smart, yet bashful stallions.

"Okay, here. But what are you going to do?" she asked after giving me the mirror.

"Easy. We're going to beat the sniper with science!"

They stared at me like a radroach had just popped out of my left eye.

"Just trust me here. When I give the signal, you distract him Shadow." I pointed at the Steel Ranger before turning to Compass. "Then, Compass, I'm going to make a light mote for you to levitate the mirror to. When it's in position, I'll adjust it and set up a light on the mirrored windows. Melody, that's where you come in. I want you to shoot the windows at the exact point of the light mote. Okay?"

"I guess. Can your horn handle it?" Melody asked. I nodded, giving her a small smile. I sure as hell hoped this worked.

"Then what do we do next?" Shadow asked.

"When he's distracted by having been shot, we make a break for the station and try to lose the other raiders," I replied, eyeing the red bars on my Eyes Forward Sparkle. I really wished Stable-Tec had designed these with a way to depict how far the enemies were instead of just their general direction.

"And if the door's locked?"

"Then I guess we die."

Silence. Melody put her hoof on my shoulder, giving me a confident nod before glancing back up at the angel of death just out of sight. The red bars stopped moving as I saw the sniper hold a hoof up, say something I couldn't make out, and his back up let out another burst of laughter.

"Alright. Let's do this guys," I said solemnly, nodding to Shadowbuck. He looked down for a moment before throwing his hooves around my neck. I tensed under the odd showing of affection, feeling a strange mixture of desire and heartache from his hug. As he broke the embrace he gave me a sad smile.

"I'll see you on the other side, princess," he said, turned, and dashed out into the plaza. Just as he jumped to his right, a bullet embedded itself into the ground where he had been standing. Zigging and zagging across the pavement, never allowing himself to move in one direction for more than a few moments, Shadowbuck narrowly avoided shot after shot from the skilled markspony across the street.

"Let's hurry," I said, focusing as hard as I could on a single point in the air above me. As the tiny blue will-o-wisp appeared above us, Compass lifted the hand mirror into the air as fast as he could. Higher and higher the mirror climbed. Through the air, foot by foot, as I kept my gaze steady on the light I was conjuring. I really hoped the sniper didn’t notice our magic show or thought a mirror couldn’t hurt him until it reached the mote of magical energy.

It seemed that was the case as the mirror finally reach its position, higher than even the roof of the building our assailant was perched on. Peering back at the plaza, my breath caught and the magical light disappeared as Shadowbuck skidded on a dirty plastic bag, barely catching himself before falling on his face (and most likely to his death) but not before taking a grazing shot from a high powered round to his left hind leg.

"Okay," I whispered as I reached out with my magic, a dull pain starting to form around my temples, and adjusted the mirror to the correct angle. Lifting the mirror would have been impossible for me at the moment, but adjusting a weightless object was only a minor strain on my already taxed horn. When the mirror was in place, I nodded to Melody before pushing my feeble horn as hard as I could.

I summoned the flickering spark of magic in front of the mirror-like window panes of the Four Star station, my entire body shaking with the effort that performing such a simple cantrip was inflicting upon it, and watched as Melody lined up the shot.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed her Pipbuck's screen light up, a green glow emanating from the arcanotech's screen, and I was worried it would help the sniper get a better shot. Then, to my surprise, she unleashed a barrage of five scarlet red laser blasts from the magical energy pistol in her mouth. Each blast of energy struck the mirrored glass on the outside of the station at the exact spot I had marked as my light spell struggled to stay alive and were reflected directly at the hand mirror. Perfectly angled, each shot bounced off the mirror and five scorching beams shot down at the sniper, peppering him with energy blasts that forced him to stop firing on Shadowbuck.

Then, as if Celestia and Luna themselves, or maybe Dream and his sister, were smiling on us, the fifth shot bounced off the mirror, which shattered into tiny reflective shards under the repeated stress, and struck the sniper pony in the shoulder. His magical grasp on the sniper rifle imploded, sending it tumbling to the ground below where it clattered loudly on the cobblestone sidewalk, and I watched as the final shot turned him into pink ash. The ocean breeze immediately picked up the dust that had once been a unicorn stallion, scattering it across the street between us, and our assailant was no more.

I let out a sigh of relief, a wave of tension the size of the balefire tidal wave from my nightmare leaving my body, and smiled weakly at my friends. Everything hurt. My muscles were cramped, my head was pounding, and I was pretty sure I might have burned myself out again, but we were all alive. Shadowbuck let out a whoop of delight and collapsed against the station's front door. As his head and shoulder hit the steel door it swung open behind him and he fell through into the darkness. I wanted to rush over to see if he was okay, but my worries were put to rest as I heard the Steel Ranger cackling with a delirious delight that only a pony having come so close to death and come back relatively unscathed could muster up. Then Melody started giggling, followed by a nervous laugh from Compass. Even I let out a tired chuckle.

That is, until I noticed the red lines had started moving again. Some had turned yellow, but the majority of the markers on my E.F.S. showed hostiles moving around us.

"They killed Ace! Kill'em! Kill’em all!" A mare called down from the rooftops.

"I think that's our cue to get out of here!" Compass cried, scooping up his doctor bag. Shadowbuck bolted upright.

"Ace!? Compass! Grab that sniper rifle! Now! It’s too important to leave behind!" Shadow called, pointing at the assassin's weapon lying across the street.

"We don't have ti-" I tried to explain as we ran for the open door.

"Do it now!" he shouted, and we all realized that for some odd reason Ace and that rifle were very important to Shadowbuck. Obviously not wanting to get a tongue lashing from our Steel Ranger friend, Compass levitated the rifle towards the open door as we ran for the station. That was when we saw them.

Twelve raiders, almost all of them carrying semi-automatic or long range rifles, mounted the lip of the building Ace had once been occupying. They immediately opened on us, bullets whizzing by Compass and me as we ran. As Melody flew through the door, I realized Compass was falling too far behind, his focus split between running and carrying our would-be assassin's gun. I growled at Shadowbuck as he started taking shots with his own rifle and pulled out my own pistol.

"Aria, use S.A.T.S. It'll help you with your shots," Melody explained as she unloaded the last of her spark charges in a vain attempt at suppression fire. A bullet struck Compass in the flank and he began to falter, but, as his eyes met Melody's, his face twisted in as he put weight on his injured back leg and he pushed himself forward.

"What!?" I asked through the gun's bit, wildly firing the gun in the raiders' general direction. Our cover fire was barely holding their own attacks at bay, especially with my absolutely horrible shots mixed in.

"Compass!"

I didn't have time to try the S.A.T.S. thing as Compass barreled past us, the rifle sailing through the air right behind him. Shadow slammed the door shut as Compass collapsed on the grime covered lobby of the Four Star's rail station. I turned the lock, which actually worked, and looked over at Compass as he lie on his uninjured side panting heavily while a steadily growing blob began to dye his white lab coat a dark red.

"Will the door hold?" I asked.

"It should hold. Well, if they don't have a lock picker," Shadowbuck replied as I pulled myself back up to my hooves.
"You're a lock picker." I noticed that the red bars were moving, but I couldn't tell if they were moving towards us or away. I really hoped they had decided to abandon their pursuit.

"Yeah, well, believe it or not, most ponies can't do it." Shadowbuck said, slinging Ace's sniper rifle over his shoulder and looking at Compass, obviously concerned. "You okay, Eagle Eye?"

"I never want to run again," Compass moaned as Melody grabbed a potion from his doctor's bag. Even I noticed that the once full bag was already starting to get emptier and much lighter. The wasteland was hell. Two hundred years ago, a healing potion in a medical box could go unused for years. Now we were drinking them like they were Sunrise Sarsaparillas just to stay alive. Melody administered the potion, stroking his mane lovingly as he drank.

"You just rest up. You'll need all the stamina you can muster the next time we find a private bedroom," I heard her whisper, and Compass and I both blushed. I looked away, out towards the filth covered remains of the Four Star station. The lobby, like everything else in the Trottingham Ruins, was covered with a thick layer of dirt. While the mirror windows that covered much of the building's exterior had been almost pristine, the concrete and marble inside had actually cracked from the force of the balefire blast. My theory about those windows had been correct; they had been magically treated not to break and were pretty much magical mirrors.

The lobby was pretty cramped for a train terminal. It was no Grand Canterlot Station, that was for sure, but the design was interesting. The first floor housed rows of ticket tellers and multiple rows of benches, old convenience stores where ponies would have bought food, magazines, or books, and behind the teller banks were the two exits leading to the Duchess Line. Along the upper walls was a second floor lined with a long balcony that met on a bridge just before the ticket booths. The bridge had two staircases, obviously designed so that one was for climbing up and the other for climbing down, but the one on our right had been crushed by a falling slab of ceiling. Beyond the bridge, almost in mirror to the first floor, were two wide paths leading out to the raised Union Jack Line.

"Great job out there, Aria." I felt Shadowbuck place a hoof on my shoulder. He had taken off his helmet which was now hooked onto his battle saddle, and his mane was matted and disheveled, but again I thought that cocky smile was charming. How could the same upturn of a pony's lips seem so attractive at one moment and so infuriating at another?

"I didn't do anything really. You put your life on the line, Compass held the mirror, and Melody killed the raider," I mumbled, shrugging off his hoof and walking towards the stairs to the second floor. He trotted after me.

"Didn't do anything!? Aria, you used a window and a hand mirror to kill one of the Big Five of the Royal Flush Raiders!" he exclaimed, grabbing me by the shoulder and spinning me around to look at him.

"Melody shot him! Compass held the mirror! My talent is magical combat and I can't do magic!" I shouted back.

"You figured out all that math crap!"

"Math can't kill!"

“Of course it can!”

“I didn’t do anything!”

"Why are you so stubborn!?"

"Why are you!?"

For a very long, very awkward few moments, we stood, inches apart, furiously glaring at each other. Neither of us would yield in our angry staring contest, never blinking as my violet and green eyes peered into his hard gray eyes. I felt my lip twitching and I noticed his breathing was uneven. I wasn't going to lose this, and I didn't know why. He was right, we had all contributed and it was my plan, but I was hurting, physically and emotionally, and I did not want to lose this completely inane and pointless debate.

"Just kiss already!" Melody shouted, and we both turned on her, screaming in unison.

"Why would I ever kiss him! He's the most stubborn idiot I've ever met!"

"Why would I ever kiss her! She's the most stubborn idiot I've ever met!"

My eyes widened and I glanced over at him through the corner of my eye. Amazingly, his face almost perfectly mirrored mine, his eyes were just as wide and his mouth was agape. We turned away from each other in a huff and then jumped as a loud bang on the door stopping our arguing. It was then followed shortly by another. And another.
We all prepared, although Melody and I were out of ammo, and I knew Compass and Shadow were pretty low. If the raiders got in we were probably dead. I really did not like being in life and death situations every minute of my life. How did Shadow do it? A fourth bang and then silence.

For the longest time, we waited. The red dots milled around the locked door, presumably trying to pick the lock, but all we could hear was our own breathing. The next minute passed by as if each second that passed was an eternity. I was pretty sure Melody had stopped breathing. I looked at her, taking deep, slow breaths to tell her to breathe, and rolled my eyes when she finally exhaled and took a deep gulp of the musty station air.

I turned back towards the door, shaking my head at my niece's absurdity, and noticed that the red lights were gone. They were all yellow now and more and more were disappearing. First one. Then another winked out of existence, followed by another. Soon they were almost all gone.

"They're leaving?"

"Okay! New game plan! Mels, you're with me. We're looting and scouting the first floor!" Shadow shouted as he stormed off towards the ticket counters.

"Fine then! Compass, you and me upstairs!" I ordered, and started taking the stairs two at a time. I reached the landing and looked back to see Compass following me up the stairs slowly, a slight limp in his gait, and I suddenly felt guilty. I looked down at Shadow and Melody as they were working their way around the ticket stalls.

"Hold on... Melody, you and Compass take the first floor. And see to his limp. Shadow... We'll take the second floor," I said half heartedly.

"Sounds good! Come on Compass!" Melody replied, her happy grin returning. Compass smiled up at me appreciatively and nodded before turning to head back down the stairs.

"Why should I go with you, Aria?" he said curtly, looking under the first ticket counter dismissively. I sighed.

"Because I was wrong and we need to talk, okay?" I admitted, and his ears perked up.

"What was that?" he said as much hated cocky smile returned to his face.

"You heard me Shadow so don't milk it," I snapped back. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, chuckling under his breath, before heading up the stairs to meet me.

"Okay, you were wrong, and you need to talk. So what's up?" Shadow asked as he joined me on the second floor landing.

"I-Uh..." I looked down at Melody and Compass on the first floor before spying an office door left ajar to my left. "Not here. Come on."

"Oh ho! Actually taking Melody's advice? But what makes you think I’m that kind of stallion" he laughed, sarcasm practically oozing from his every word, as I pulled him through the door marked, 'C.E.O. St...hi..'s Office.' Amazing how the word 'office' always seemed to be perfectly preserved, but the name of Four Star's C.E.O. was missing. Something about that fact kept needling at the back of my mind, but I couldn't remember who it was. Wasn't Four Star started by four ponies who were all joint C.E.O. of the company? Could you have joint C.E.O.’s? "Ugh! I don't need to be thinking about this right now!"

"Shut up!" I snapped, loudly closing the door behind him with a swift kick of my back right hoof, and turned on him. I stood in silence for a few moments, trying to collect my thoughts. I didn't know if I could actually say what I wanted to admit. "I could really use a drink for this."

"You're feeling all messed up inside." Shadowbuck said plainly. I blinked. "You're lost, you've just seen the end of everything you held dear, the world you knew is gone, and you're blaming yourself. I understand."

"No you don't! No one does!" I cried, feeling the tears coming on again.

I sat down hard and started shaking. Was all this crying normal? Was anything about me normal? I had dreams about gods, mysterious prophecies appearing on my Pipbuck, dancing balefire flames calling out to me, and I couldn't stop crying unless I was being shot at. Any time I wasn't sad, I was angry. Oh, and let’s not forget that getting blown up by balefire sends me hurtling through time and space.

I felt a set of hooves around my shoulders, wrapping me in a cold and metallic, yet somehow warm and comforting, embrace. I closed my eyes, ignoring the flame, and smiled as I pretended the stallion hugging me wasn't Shadow, but my big brother holding me in his strong and comforting hooves. I cried for a few minutes more, letting all the pain wash out of me until only the dull ache and the hole in my heart remained. Would anything ever fill that hole?

"I thought you said you weren't going to hug me?" I said as I leaned my head against Shadowbuck's shoulder.

"Only when Melody and Compass weren't around," he replied in a hushed, comforting tone, and I couldn't help but smile.

"You're a real pendulum, you know that right?"

"What word is that replacing?" he asked.

"It's not. You're like a pendulum. You almost never stay on one side or another. Sometimes I think I could actually like you and then others I hate your guts," I whispered, and felt his chest shake as he laughed silently.

"You hate my guts?"

"Sometimes. When you're acting like an arrogant jerk or joking around too much," I said, my eyes still closed as I tried to collect myself.

"That's how I deal," he said, his voice somber and with a hint of pain tinting his admission. I opened my eyes and looked at him resting his head on my shoulder. He looked tired as he smiled at me weakly. "I've lost a lot too. Everyone in the wasteland has. Joking around is how I deal with all the crap the world sends my way."

"Oh... I'm sorry," I said, looking at the Star Sapphire bracer on my foreleg.

"You've got no reason to be sorry, Aria." he replied, hugging me a little tighter for a moment. It actually felt good for him to hold me like this. This was definitely swinging his pendulum hard towards my good side.

"Of course I do. I was one of those ponies that made the war and the world end like this."

"No. You were a guard. You were trying to protect ponies. You were trying to protect the princess," he said, his voice becoming for forceful.

"But..." Suddenly, he spun me around, looked me in the eyes, and snarled.

"No buts. You're a smart, strong, beautiful mare who's lost almost everything! You've lost more than any other pony in the wasteland! And faster than any pony. Ghouls at least had centuries to get used to this crap or go feral. You haven’t.

“We all may have lost the sun and the moon and the princesses, some have even lost our families, but you remember all of what we've lost. You remember the sun on your face! You met Princess Luna! I won't let you add undeserved guilt to the sadness you're fighting!" I really, really, really wanted to kiss him right now. I started to lean towards him, but before I could even move more than an inch a metal shod hoof was on my lips. "And I won't have you kissing me because you're an emotional wreck right now."

"I-" I felt my face heat up like an oven baking one thousand toffee biscuits on the sun and looked away from Shadow, unable to bear what I had just tried to do. I really was an emotional wreck. I... "No."

"What?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at me.

"No, Not again. Not..."

Behind him, on the wall by the door was another painting. Another painting of a pony I had known. Two ponies actually. One who had been my best friend, the other the family I had never known. A much younger version of my brother stared out at me, probably only eight or nine years old, being held by a white unicorn mare with dazzling blue eyes and a curly blond mane that I would have died to have. She was wearing a shimmering silver gown and a diamond tiara that denoted her rank as a Princess of Equestria, but even without the dress or jewelry a pony could tell she was special. An aura of royalty and beauty practically radiated off her. I had only seen her in photos, but this painting truly captured her beauty, grace, and poise.

Finally, standing proud and regal next to them was a white unicorn stallion in a tuxedo, his sandy blonde mane tied back into a ponytail, while he gave a handsome and debonair smile to the painter.

"Do you know them?" Shadow asked as I broke his hug and slowly walked towards the painting of my family. Golden Star, my mother, and his father were together, alive and whole. This was before I was born. This was before my mother's indiscretion and my birth tore this happy family apart. This was the world before me.

"Yes. It's my mother, my brother, and his father, Starshine." I remembered why I knew so much about Four Star. Golden Star had told me about his father starting a metropolitan rail company in Manehatten, Canterlot, and Trottingham with two of his friends and his friend's daughter. Rising Star, the famous actor, General Five Stars, the decorated war hero, and Silver Star, Five Star's daughter and a former Royal Guard turned businessmare. And Lord Starshine, the Manehatten noble and former husband of a princess.

"So Cap Starshine was named after his super great grandpa. Huh. Didn't know he had been prez of Four Star," Shadowbuck muttered as I reached out to touch the painting. It was dusty and faded, but I felt a mixture of deeper pain and subtle joy as my hoof brushed gently against my mother's face. She had been so beautiful. One mistake, me, had taken this beauty from the world. "Your mom was beautiful."

"Yeah. She was." I rested my head against my painted mother's chest, wishing it was really her. Shadow took a breath, as if he were trying to say something else, and I felt a hard lump on the other side of the canvas. I reached up and grabbed two corners of the painting with my hooves. "Hey Shadow, there's something behind the portrait. Can you help me with this?"
"Yeah, sure." He hurried over to me and we carefully removed the painting to reveal one of the most interesting and intricate looking safes I had ever seen. The jet black safe had a keyhole and a combination dial, two things you would usually see on a safe, but not at the same time, and the words 'Safecracker’s Bane' were written across the face in big red letters. Also, there was a weird hoof shaped pad in the lower right corner and a tiny antenna on the top right corner that emitted a faint bluish glow. Shadowbuck let out an impressed whistle.

"Wow. This is a thing of beauty. Whatever Grandpa Starshine was trying to hide in here, he sure as hell didn't want anypony else getting at it."

"Can you open it?" I asked.

"Maybe. This this is the work of a master safe builder. I might need to pop some mint-als for this one," he replied as he began digging through one of the carrying compartments on his armor.

"Mint-als? That nasty zebra drug? You know those are illegal, right?"

"Kinda hard for something to be illegal when there's no government to enforce the laws," he said as he pulled a small tin of a smiling zebra out of a compartment on his shoulder.

"But they’re highly addictive drugs."

"I know that, but so are Buck and Rampage and us Steel Rangers have that stuff pumped into us through our suit's medical program all the time," he said calmly before popping a tiny mint into his mouth.

"You're a drug addict!?" And Shadow rushed back into the negatives.

"No, I'm a soldier. This is what soldiers have been doing since back in your time. I'm using chems responsibly, when I need them to get a job done, and then, when the mission's done, I go back to Big Buck and Medical purges my system of the drugs and any chemical addictions I might have gotten from taking them," he explained as he put his helmet back on, hit a button, and a shallow cone formed over his ear. "This thing's got a key, dial, computer code, and biological scanner for security. Once one gets cracked we'll probably have about ten seconds to crack the other. If my hunch is correct, three out of the four are required just in case something happens to the biological match, so I'm going to set up the dial and tumblers to the point where they're almost ready. You’re gonna have to hack the terminal since we can't crack the genetic lock, okay?"

"Can't we get Melody in here? She's descended from Starshine so it should let her through," I replied as I slowly went around the desk to the still working terminal. When I turned on the screen, I was immediately confronted with the odd fact that it was blue instead of the normal green. "That's different."

"In theory, maybe. It might work a lot like those old bypass spells that no one can seem to crack. But Melody's a pegasus..."

"And that would mean she would be farther removed from his genome than, say, Starshine or Elegant Star," I finished for him.

"Exactly. Now I need some quiet for this dial lock," he told me and I set to work on hacking my mother's husband's terminal. Wow. That was a weird thought.

The wall of garbage code appeared on the screen and the passcodes that appeared were an astounding eleven characters long. My heart jumped into my throat and my brain suddenly felt like sludge. There was no way I would be able to figure out this code unless dumb luck was on my side, I took a flank load of Mint-als, and probably had a couple books on the subject of computers and hacking. This was... "Oh you have got to be kidding me!"

There, sitting among the random piles of junk code was a name I knew all too well. Grandma never called my mother Elegant Star. She always called her Elegant Rose, or Rose for short. That what my mom's maiden name had been, she had changed it when she married Starshine. Staring out at me from the glowing blue screen was eleven simple letters that held so much weight. 'ELEGANTROSE.'

I pressed 'Enter' and the screen came to life. The junk code vanished, replaced by two simple commands and two notes, and Starshine's computer was open me. My mother's name was his password, after all the years between the my birth, mom's death, and the end of the world, Starshine still had her picture on his wall and her name as his password. Even after betraying him, he still loved her. I knew from Grandmother's stories that Golden Star's dad had been angry and yelled at mom when I was born. He had called her all sorts of horrible things, I didn’t know what but they made Grandmother sad and angry every time she thought about it, and the next day Mother killed herself.

He had every right to be mad; mom had betrayed him and given birth to a bastard. But he must have blamed himself for her death. He must have forgiven her and realized he had always loved her.

I looked up at the portrait of a once happy family and felt another stab of regret through my already wounded heart. My birth had destroyed an entire family. I really was a curse on my family. Why had Golden Star been so nice to me? I had been one of the reasons he didn't have a mother anymore.

"Alright, dials are set pretty close to the right number. Gonna start working on the lock," Shadowbuck told me, snapping me out of my downward spiral of depression.

I needed to take my mind off of my family. I couldn't lose it now while Shadowbuck needed my help. Inside were two commands, 'Execute Command Link' and 'Disengage Safe Lock.' I didn't know what the Command Link was, and while Shadow was working on the other locks I wouldn't try anything funny, but I could at least look at the two notes.

Mr. Starshine,

I cleaned out your terminal just like you asked. If you ever need the files, I've sent them with a trusted courier to be hidden in your 'Special Spot.' Don't worry, if the MoM comes and tries to get the files out of the cache, then the mini E.M.P. will go off and destroy the entire computer. I told you I was a smart pony. ;)

Your faithful secretary,

Lilyrose

The Ministry of Morale? Why would they try to take files from Golden Star's dad's computer? Also, Lilyrose, a smiley face? She was either twelve years old or had a major crush on Starshine, and I seriously doubted Starshine hired twelve year old computer whizzes as his secretary. Why was a pony who could rig up a cache triggered electro-magnetic pulse to destroy a computer a mere secretary? That made no sense. I bit my lower lip and selected the other note, dated on a very familiar date; it was the same date as Dr. Hoofentrotter's e-mail to Daring Do. The day the bombs fell.

Lilyrose,

I'm going to pick up my son and his family. My personal zeppelin will be picking us up there. Meet us and come with me to our company Stable in Manehatten. I know you and Golden Star have passage into Stable Sixty-Three, but those Stable-Tec idiots don't know how it's going to go down. We don't need to hide in the ground for hundreds of years, Golden Star will probably be the next in line so we need him to establish a new kingdom after the war is over. I'd like you to be in that kingdom and not locked in the ground until you die. We’ll only have to wait a few weeks. I'm heading there now so please be at his estate in an hour. You are a smart pony, remember?

Starshine

New kingdom? Four Star Stable in Manehatten? How had he known the war was going to end soon? Did Starshine know about the balefire bombs? No... That's impossible. If he did, he would have known that the bombs would wipe out everything and a few weeks wouldn't cut it for enough of the magical radiation to subside. What had been going on two hundred years ago?

"Hey Aria, got that terminal hacked yet?"

I snapped back to reality, blinking the thoughts of what my brother's father had been up to away and throwing them into the Stable in the back of my mind. I smiled nervously.

"Yeah. Got it first try. His password was my mother's name," I said, trying to sound confident, and he smiled.

"Good job. I'm going to turn over the tumblers and when I say go, you hit the terminal release. Got it?" he said through gritted teeth as he returned his attention to the keyhole lock.

"Got it. Ready when you are."

"Alright, I just need quiet here," he said in a hushed tone, and I pursed my lips together. If the terminal had a E.M.P. fail safe, what kind of fail safe could the safe have? I heard a click and watched as Shadow quickly pressed his helmet's ear cone to the safe and gently turned the dial clockwise until that let out a click as well.

"Now, Aria!" he shouted, and I hurried back to the main menu, selected 'Disengage Safe Lock,' and pressed 'Enter.'

There was a loud click and a hiss as the safe's locks opened and the steel door slowly swung open. Stepping away from the safe to let the door open I heard Shadow let out another impressed whistle Stepping around the desk, I saw the safe's contents and I joined with an impressed whistle of my own. Inside the safe was a briefcase, not that impressive but well made, some sort of jewelry case, and a glowing white memory orb.

"A white memory orb? I've never seen one that color. Aren't they usually purple?" I asked as I reflexively reached out with my magic for the orb. Of course, my magic just sparked uselessly, failing to lift the orb or even make a connection, and I sighed.

"Every memory orb I've ever found has been purple so this is quite the find. Wonder why it's white?" he replied, carefully picking up the orb with his hoof, I seriously hated that earth ponies could do that, and he offered it to me. "Most of my compartments are full and you actually have saddlebags. You should carry this stuff, especially since it was your stepdad's."

"He wasn't my stepdad," I growled, not realizing I was doing it until the angry utterance had escaped my lips.

"Oh. Sorry," Shadow apologized before picking up the jewelry case and gingerly opening it to reveal a diamond tiara. The multitude of tiny diamonds set into the golden framework glistened with a light all their own. In the dull light of the office, the gems should have been dull and lifeless, but these diamonds had a magical luster to them. "Is this what I think it is?"

"My mother's tiara," I replied, staring at the beautiful crown with a reverence and longing that was bringing tears to my eyes again. Why was the wasteland taunting me so? I was on the other side of the world from Canterlot, two hundred years after my death, and yet I kept running into reminders of the life I had lost.

"Here," Shadow said, offering me the tiara as well. "It was your mother's, so now it's definitely yours."

"Thank you," I whispered, barely able to speak as he slipped the jewelry case into my saddlebags next to the memory orb. I watched in silence as he opened the briefcase and sighed at the mountain of bits that was stored inside. In my day, if a pony found a treasure chest full of golden bits, then they would have been ecstatic. But in the Wasteland, that treasure was garbage and bottle caps, the ultimate garbage of my time, were a true treasure. "At least this much can get us something. It's enough melt down to make something else so we might get a better deal in bulk." He turned back to me. "So you find anything else on the computer?"

"Not much. Some notes about where Starshine was when the bombs fell, the lock function, and something about a command link."

"Then let's check that out before we get going. It's almost three o'clock. Thankfully it's almost summer so it stays light out until about seven," he replied as he trotted over to the terminal.

"It's almost summer?" I asked, following him to the desk.

"Yeah, your Pipbuck should have a date function on the main menu," he told me as he jabbed the 'Enter' key and the words ‘Establishing Connection’ appeared on the screen. I lifted my left hoof, switching my Pipbuck over to the main menu, and froze as I saw the date.

"It's only four days until my birthday."

"Really, how old you turning?" he asked as the computer read off various names.

Silver Star, Manehatten Terminal: Failure to Connect.

Rising Star, Canterlot Terminal: Failure to Connect.

General Five Stars, Manehatten Terminal: No Longer In Service.

"Seventeen for me, but two hundred and sixteen by the date," I replied.

"Well then we'll just have to throw you a party this weekend," Shadowbuck replied with a small smile. "What's this? We have a connection!"

Connection Established. Connection Established.

"I see your natural curiosity has brought you to Starshine's terminal, Mister Shadowbuck," a harsh, male voice said as an empty black box appeared on the screen. "Just as I thought it would."

"Huh? So you know who I am? I guess I'm at a disadvantage here," he replied sarcastically.

"Ah, Shadowbuck of the Brotherhood of Steel's caustic wit. Allow me to introduce myself. I am King."
Shadowbuck's jaw dropped, and if he hadn't had his helmet on I was pretty sure his eyes would have popped out of his head.

"King? As in the King!? Nopony outside the Royal Flush gang has ever talked to you! How do I know you're really King?" he asked, trying to compose himself and appear more confident than he obviously was.

"If I wasn't King, how do you think I could have called off Ace's flunkies?" the gravelly voice on the other end said. His voice was rough, but the way he spoke denoted a certain air of superiority and confidence that I usually only saw in the Canterlot aristocracy. He even had the accent of a Canterlot elitist down pat; there wasn't even a hint of a Trottingham accent to be found.

"You called off your own gangers? Why?" Shadowbuck asked as I watched in silence. More post-apocalyptic Trottingham politics that I didn't understand. I mean, I got that this was the mysterious leader of the Royal Flush Raiders who attacked us outside the station and in Stable Sixty-Three, but he seemed to be focused on Shadowbuck and the Steel Rangers. I just wanted to fix Stable Sixty-Three and keep my family safe, not taunt a gangster.

"Because I respect you, Mister Shadowbuck. You and your Brotherhood of Steel have killed two of my lieutenants in the past three days. When Ten-Thousand Scars led an army to attack Stable Sixty-Three, the Brotherhood and a few Stable ponies killed him. And when Ace tried to kill you one-on-one, you came out on top. Say what you will about me, Mister Shadowbuck, but I am a fair player of the game,"

"What game?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"Ah, is that the little pegasus mare that Ace tried to kill? The one from Stable Sixty-Three? Well my dear, you're new to the surface so I shall explain." He misidentified me, meaning this thing's camera wasn't on, but I wasn't going to correct him just yet. "Everyone in the Equestrian Wasteland is playing a little game. A Game of Kings and Queens, or Princesses if you want to be classical. The great powers are beginning to make their moves to make Equestria in their own image. The Goddess seeks control and assimilation, Red Eye seeks his world of slaves and lords, I seek the throne of the old world." Shadowbuck growled. "And my oh so pleasant friend in the power armor and his cohorts in the Steel Rangers seek to control the old world's technology."

"Trottingham Steel Rangers are different! We take after Elder Litwick and Star Paladin Steelhooves' example," Shadowbuck replied curtly. King simply laughed on the other end of the connection.

"Yes, yes. Following Ministry Mare Applejack's belief that your should protect ponies with technology instead of just protecting technology itself," he replied mockingly. I could see Shadow gritting his teeth and his hooves were shaking as he held the desk like it was a life boat keeping him afloat on a stormy sea.

"Calm down, Shadow. He's just trying to rile you up," I whispered.

"Yeah, well, it's working," he hissed before King continued.

"I seek to return Equestria to its former glory. The glory before Luna made commoners into mini-princesses and helped destroy the world."

"You're a monster that leads an army of rapists, murderers, and thieves!" Shadow yelled.

"The rapists are a means to an ends. Fear is a powerful deterrent to any who might oppose my rule. The thieves are taking that which belongs to no one since the true owners are long since dead. And murderers? Really, Mister Shadowbuck? We are at war, a war for the fate of ponykind, and we are just on two sides of that battlefront. That is why I respect you, my sworn enemy, and have not had my raiders kill you.

“But the chessboard has a new player. Miss Stable Dweller, what is your goal. I can gather the goals of every actor on the Trottingham stage, but you are a new unknown in my ever growing kingdom. That is why I spared you my followers' wrath. Before I am forced to either recruit you or kill you I must know your intentions for my Trottingham," the mysterious King asked. Somehow, through his harsh and gravelly voice, he sounded smooth and charismatic.

"Don't answer him, Aria. You killed two of his lackeys already so he's got no right to be asking you anything," Shadow snarled.

"What? You killed Ten and Ace? Not-Wait... Stable Sixty Three... What did you say your name was?" he hissed, his voice dripping with a venomous rage boiling just beneath his smooth exterior.

"Aria," I said calmly. There was silence on the other end of the connection.

"Come on, Aria, we've gotta get going. I gotta get back to Big Buck, you gotta start looking for a way to fix Stable Sixty-Three's door," Shadowbuck said coolly as he placed his hoof on my shoulder.

"You wish to save your family in the Stable then? That is your goal?" King asked so suddenly I almost jumped out of my horseshoes.

"Yes," I replied as smoothly as I could.

"Are you related to Prince Golden Star? Was he one of your ancestors?" he asked, and I felt my heart leap into my throat. Even Shadowbuck stared at the terminal, too shocked to say anything else. After a few moments of stunned silence, I finally found my voice.

"How do you know his name?" I whispered, barely able to speak.

"Because my dear..." The top of the terminal opened up, revealing a camera and a bright white light that blinded us both. I couldn't see; the sudden change from the dull, cloud and dirt filtered light coming from the windows to the painful glare of the terminal lamp had made it impossible for me to see the figure on the screen. "I-No... That's impossible. Y-You're dead! You're dead!" King screamed. Before I could see what he looked like, the screen went black and the terminal gave a loud pop. The smell of burning wires and ancient dust let me know that the computer was dead.

"Crap! We almost saw him! We almost saw who King is! Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Shadow yelled as he banged on the terminal's casing.

"We need to go," I muttered.

"We gotta get this thing working again! This is the closest anypony's ever been to seeing King's face! If we knew who he was, we could find him and kill him! End this stupid gang war and focus on clearing out the monsters!" Shadow yelled, hitting the keyboard hard enough to break it and send numerous letters flying. A letter 'D' hit me in the right eye and I snarled. I had had enough. Grabbing Shadow by the collar, pulled him in close, and stared into his visor so he could look me square in the eyes. I couldn’t see his, but he certainly could see mine..

"Listen to me! I may be depressed as all hell and a little bit suicidal, but I'm not ready to die yet! And I sure as hell am not going to let a bunch of rapists, murderers, and thieves get their bloody hooves on Melody while you're beating up a burnt out computer! If King could call those raiders off, then he can call them back on too! They could be on us any minute now! He knows who I am and I'm pretty sure that last 'You're dead' was a curse, not a statement of presumed fact! So shut up, pack up, and let's get the hell out of here!" I yelled, my eyes narrowed to angry little slits and my nose twitching furiously. Shadow stood there, held by the collar for a few moments, until he finally seemed to calm down and collect himself.

"You're right. Let's go. If we take the Union Jack Line, it'll take us away from the bridge to Big Buck, but it should take us near Gigaton. We'll be safe there, and we can take the ferry to Big Buck tomorrow morning," he said, finally snapping out of his hissy fit and giving me the confident smile I liked instead of the one I hated.

"Glad to have you back, Paladin Shadowbuck," I said, taking a deep breath to calm myself down before following Shadowbuck out the door.

"Melody! Compass! Let's go. The raiders are coming back and we don't want to be here when they arrive! We're taking the Union Jack Line outta here!" Shadow yelled down to our companions as they trotted out of the restrooms with medical boxes in their mouths. Melody gave us a salute with her right wing before taking off to join us on the second floor, while Compass galloped after her. We waited at the top of the stairs for Compass to catch up and rushed out onto the abandoned platform.

"Melody," Compass panted as Shadow and Melody helped him tie the boxes to his saddlebags. "You're flying a lot faster than you used to down in Sixty-Three."

"I guess having wide open space has been good for me," she giggled. Then her giggling stopped and she pulled us all down low. "They're coming down the street. We need to hurry."

Right as she said that, a host of red dots appeared to the East on my E.F.S. Crouching low and trying to be as quiet as possible, we jumped down onto the rail line and started to sneak away from the station. I'm pretty sure we were all holding our breath as we crept quietly along between the rails and the five foot tall guard railings. Thankfully, the raiders passed right under us on their way to the Four Star Station, the guard railings had kept us hidden from any pony on the ground's view, and when we were far enough away we started to sprint down the line, following Shadowbuck to the supposed safety of a place named 'Gigaton.'

The rest of our trip down the Union Jack Line was surprisingly uneventful. After we left the train station behind us, the train tracks were almost a solace from the ruins below. I was especially glad we had taken this route when Melody spotted two very large manticores prowling the streets below. The bat-winged, lion-like creatures were using their tails to sift through piles of debris.

"What are forest monsters like manticores doing roaming the city?" I asked Shadowbuck, making sure to whisper as not to attract the leonine creatures below us.

"Ever since the bomb hit the area north of the Trottingham Forest, the monsters that live there have been pretty bold. They come out into the city to hunt for food."

"How much food can they find down here?" Melody asked as she walked, balancing on one of the rails like a tightrope walker. If it hadn't been for the fact that the city had been without power for over two hundred years, I would have told her not to do that, especially since the rail she was walking was in fact the third rail, but it seemed pointless to say anything now.

"Plenty since pony seems mighty tasty to most monster palettes," Shadowbuck remarked casually, but I couldn't help smiling at the shocked look on Melody's face as she glanced back at the manticores.

"They eat ponies? But they look so cute," Melody whimpered. I stopped, staring at her as she walked by me. "What? They are. They're like big fuzzy kitties."

"Big fuzzy kitties with razor sharp fangs and claws, bat wings, and scorpion tails that pack enough poison to paralyze or kill a pony with one sting," I replied, trotting past her as she stopped to look back one more time.

"They're still cute," she mumbled as the railway turned a corner and the line of tall buildings ended to reveal the most depressing, yet amazing sight I had seen so far.

The Union Jack Line gave us a perfect view of the riverfront and the bay the river let out into. A few miles up stream I could see a large bridge, and beyond it the imposing structure of Big Buck, it’s yellowed face looking down on Trottingham. The river was a nasty brown, even from our vantage point I could tell it was obviously polluted and not suited for pony consumption. It moved slowly until it reached the churning, wild sea, its waters matching the brown clouds above us. Large sea gulls the size of sky wagons flew over the brown cliff in the distance that had once been the Green Cliffs of Clover. As if all color had been sucked out of the world, everything seemed to be brown. And standing atop the dead cliffs was Trottingham Palace, its tall towers and sturdy walls still standing strong as if the apocalypse had never happened.

Beyond the palace, far in the distance, I could see a single, ivory white tower jutting into the sky and piercing through the cloud cover like a needle piercing through a wool sweater. At least the broadcast towers that the Ministry of Awesome built had survived the apocalypse, although I wondered if anypony still used them. However, that wasn't the most impressive part of our almost panoramic view of the Trottingham Ruins.

On the waterfront, in what had once been a Ministry of Morale amusement park, stood a town. It was nestled within the skeletal frame of a massive Ferris wheel that had been knocked free from its support structure, fallen on its side, and was surrounded by half of a faded pink roller coaster. It wasn't much to look at, the cars had been cut free and moved into the interior of the wheel to make houses and buildings. Some were stacked on top of each other and had stairs snaking up their sides to make multiple floor domiciles. Others had been welded together to make makeshift longhouses. Finally, the ponies that lived here had erected massive steel walls all along the perimeter of the roller coaster and Ferris wheel husks. I didn't think anything short of a dragon or an ursa major could overcome the twenty feet of solid steel surrounding Gigaton.

Facing out towards us was a gate, the only opening I could see in the wall surrounding the town, and I could see ponies on energy turrets mounted on either side. Actually, there were turrets around the entire perimeter of the small, amusement park turned community. They were spaced about twenty to thirty yards apart, each helmed by a tough looking stallion or mare. It also appeared that the bumper car pavilion had been turned into some sort of fort as the once open structure had been walled off like the Ferris wheel and had the biggest anti-air cannon I had ever seen mounted on its roof. This time I let out the impressed whistle.

"Welcome to Gigaton, mares and gentlecolt," Shadow said with a wave of his hoof.

"This place has got to be the most secure place in all of Equestria," Melody remarked, marveling at the feat of pony engineering that lay before us. Compass simply nodded in agreement.

"Not quite. Fillydelphia's almost impenetrable thanks to Red Eye's tech and his griffin mercs. And Tenpony Tower has a freaking energy shield they can erect when in danger, or at least that's what I hear, but you gotta be something special to get in there for more than a day anyway. And of course, no pony gets into Trottingham Castle without Queen Cadence's permission," Shadowbuck explained. I nodded absentmindedly until he mentioned Queen Cadence and stopped.

"Huh? Queen Cadence? Don't you mean Princess Cadence?" I asked.

"I guess she'd have been Princess Cadence before her mom died in the Royal Stable, but no, she calls herself queen now," Shadowbuck said nonchalantly as he kept trotting towards the station down the tracks where we would be getting down.

"Wait, so Queen Cadence isn't the alicorn princess who rules the Crystal Empire?"

"Pfft! No! She's a unicorn. Alicorn princess? Come on. Celestia and Luna died two hundred years ago, Aria." Melody cleared her throat angrily and Shadow sighed. "And ascended into heaven where they watch over us... Anyway, what the hell's a Crystal Empire? Or a Princess Cadence for that matter?"

"I think I read something about her in a book in the library. Not much about her except she ruled the Crystal Empire to the north after she and her husband defeated somepony named Queen Chrysalis. Only other thing I saw was that she did something pretty bad just before the bombs fell, I think a couple months or something. Then Princess Luna annexed the Crystal Empire and Cadence was banished. Don't know where either," Melody replied dully. Obviously, the events of wartime Equestria that did not involve Golden Star or me did not seem interest my usually studious niece very much.

"What did she do?" Compass asked me. I shrugged.

"Don't know. Relations with the Crystal Empire were fine before I got blown up. I guess whatever happened happened after that." There had to be a better way to phrase my time travel experience as 'before I got blown up' and 'after I got blown up.' "So is this Queen Cadence the Royal Flush Raiders' Queen too?"

“How’d you know about the Royal Flush Queen?” Shadowbuck asked, obviously surprised that I had known such ‘top secret’ information.

“Cause they’re a Royal Flush. A hand of a Ten, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace of the same suit. We met King on the terminal and Ten and Ace are dead, so it’s pretty obvious what the pattern is,” I explained, getting strange looks from Melody and Compass. “It’s Poker! It’s a card game! Did you not have Poker down in your Stable?”

“Nope. I like Go Fish,” Compass said meekly. I looked to Shadowbuck for help.

"We tend to play Blackjack, but I guess it makes sense. Poker's the game Backdraft likes, but he's originally from Hoofington so maybe it's a regional game," Shadowbuck said dismissively. I sighed, feeling extremely odd that Poker, a game I occasionally played with the other cadets when weekend leave was canceled, was actually something I knew more about than any of my companions.

“Nevermind. So is Queen Cadence the Flusher Queen or not?” I asked, adopting Shadowbuck’s derogatory term for the killer gang vying for control of Trottingham.

"I wish. That would make things easy for us. We've checked, and even though the queen's a bitch and a half, she doesn't seem to have any connection to the Flushers. She even has a bounty out on Queen since she believes that she is the only pony that should hold the title 'Queen' in Trottingham." He nickered with disgust and shook his head. "It's not like she's doing a very good job of ruling though. She just holds up in her castle with her noble cousins and court, sends ponies out to control the rail lines on the other side of the river, and use their special badges to escort traders around the ruins. It's all about her royal parties and making money with her."

"Special badges?" Compass asked, again breaking his silence only to ask questions that I was about to ask anyway.

"Yeah. All the Queen's Court has special badges to show they have Cadence's approval, but they're also some pretty interesting tech. Whenever a pony with a badge is nearby, all the monsters in the area run and hide. Well, except for feral ghouls, but I have no idea how they work so who knows why that is."

"You don't know how they work? Really?" I asked, slightly skeptical that the Steel Rangers didn't know how tech might work. “Are you sure they’re not magical in nature?”

"The Queen's Court keeps them pretty tight to the vest, literally. We know they're not magical because our scribes don't sense any magic coming from them, but we haven't been able to get our hooves on one to check what kind of tech it is," Shadowbuck told us as we finally arrived at the next Four Star station and climbed back up onto the platform. "Let's hurry to Gigaton. We've only got less than an hour left of daylight and we do not want to be stuck outside when the gates close."

"Cause of the monsters, right?" Melody asked as we followed Shadowbuck onto the landing.

"You got it. Night time is never the right time in Trottingham,"

"It doesn't look that far away and..." I stopped as we left the platform and entered the station terminal, confronted by another slap in the face courtesy of the Wasteland. The interior of the Four Star station was the same as the one near the museum except for one key detail. The ceiling had collapsed centuries ago and destroyed both sets of stairs. We had no way down to the first floor and the wide open doors leading out to Gigaton.

"Well, that's a problem," Compass muttered, looking over the edge at the jagged rocks and twisted metal below. "I don't think we can jump down from here."

"What if I flew you guys down over there? It looks safe under those balconies." Melody pointed to the walkways closer to the exit.

"You sure you're up for it?" Compass asked, his voice worried and unsteady.

"I think so, I'm getting better at flying every minute I'm out here. You should be no problem, but I think we'll need to have Shadow and Aria take off their armor and toss it down. You two are way too heavy for me to carry. I'll lower Compass down while you guys get undressed."

Us getting undressed? That was not what I wanted to think about doing with Shadow right now. Maybe two hours ago when I really wanted to kiss him, and it would have definitely stopped at some light 'heavy petting,' but now that I was a little more balanced that was definitely a no go. Turning away from Shadowbuck, slightly ashamed that I had even thought about that, I again tried to use magic and my horn sparked uselessly.

"Cud. Okay," I mumbled as I slowly began to loosen straps on my armor with my teeth and carefully pull off each plate. Meanwhile, Melody took Compass' two forelegs in hers and, flapping her wings hard and letting out a soft grunt, slowly began to lower him to the ground below.

Again, this would have been a lot easier with magic. I probably could have just teleported down instead of having to go through all this fuss. I could have even lowered Compass and Shadowbuck down telekinetically. Another fog of gloom began to wrap around me mind as I realized, again, that I was pretty much useless without my magic. As I pulled away the last of my armor, stripping down to my underbarding, Shadowbuck frowned. "What? What's with that face? Hey! Why haven't you started getting out of your armor?"

"Nothing. And I don't need a lift so I don’t need to strip down," Shadow said so matter-of-factly that his position far on the side on my good side was starting to shake and inch back towards the center. He trotted over to a railing, detached a small grappling hook and a line from his barrel, and hooked it around the railing. He gave us a smile and a salute. "See you on the other side."

With that, he was over the edge and slowly lowering himself to the floor. Twisting slightly as he descended, he was safely on the rubble strewn ground floor with Compass in a matter of moments. A quick tug on the line released the hook and the line zipped back into its compartment with a loud whine and a thunk.

"Cool," Melody remarked.

"Yeah... Real cool," I said sarcastically, rolling my eyes. Then I slowly and carefully started pushing my armor to the edge of the second floor railing and looked down at Compass. "Can you float this down, Compass?"

"I can try."

Furrowing his brow, Compass took my armor in his ruby colored magical grasp and piece by piece it lifted my armor into the air. Slowly, the pieces descended to the floor, but each piece was taking more and more of toll on Compass. Sweat was beginning to form on his brow and occasionally his magic would flicker. Was my armor really that heavy? Although, now that I think about it, I had been wearing cadet armor for years and my magical levitation spell was a lot stronger than normal unicorns. My talent was magical combat after all, it would have to be for me to swing a shield or sword around like I did.
When my armor had safely joined Compass and Shadowbuck on the ground floor, I turned to Melody.

"Ready?" I asked, nervous as to whether she would be able to safely carry me down. I knew, even though I was stronger and more muscled than the average mare, that I was lighter than Compass, but it still didn't make me feel any less nervous about being slowly lowered over the debris covered floor below.

"Yep," she said with a smile as she flew over me. I reared back onto my hindlegs and let her wrap her forelegs around mine. She grunted as she flapped her wings with all her strength and my back hooves slowly left the ground. Thoughts of being dropped and impaled by a skewer of rebar or a twisted piece of railing flash across my mind.

A sudden drop. Bones snapping as I hit the ground. Leg bones jutting through flesh. A spear of industrial piping piercing my chest, making my heart pop out of my back like a shish kabob as a crimson fountain of blood sprayed all over my friends. The light fading from my eyes as... Luna save me! What the hell was wrong with me!?

As we set down safely, I had trouble breathing, my heart was pounding in my chest, and I had to close my eyes and try to focus.

That didn't help.

There it was, the dancing green flame, waiting for me in the darkness of my mind. It moved gracefully across my subconscious to the beat of an unknown waltz. It promised me power so that no pony, not even the King, could hurt my friends. It promised me wings so that I would never fall. It promised me a future. All I had to do was give it everything it desired. My pain. My anger. My sorrow.

Myself.

"Shut up!" I screamed, my eyes snapping open as I pushed the flame away.

"Celestia damn it, Aria! I just asked if you were okay! You don't have to bite my head off," Shadowbuck snapped back, taking his hoof off my shoulder and turning away from me dismissively.

"I-I'm sorry. I wasn't talking to you," I mumbled, turning away from him and slowly trying to put my armor back on.

“Then who the hell were you talking to?” he snapped. I didn’t answer.

"Are you okay, Aria?" Melody asked, her voice and Compass' expression looking almost pained. They felt sorry for me. They felt sorry for me!?

I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t talk. I didn’t want to look at them. I kept fumbling and biting at straps and plates, trying my hardest to put my armor back on without my magic, but for some strange reason I couldn't do it. I had done it earlier, but now this was beyond me.

"Aria? Are you okay? Do you need help?" Melody asked again, putting her hoof on my shoulder as she tried to comfort me and help adjust my dented shoulder pad. "I can fix this if you want."

I nodded. The more I worked on each piece of armor, the more my hooves started shaking and the stupider I felt. My brain wanted to do magic. My soul wanted to perform a simple trick. Everything about me was magical, and yet here I was trying to learn the earth pony/pegasus way of putting on armor. Magical burnout had reduced me to an earth pony with a horn.

I hated it.

I felt useless. I hated feeling useless. I felt crippled. I hated feeling lame and crippled. I didn’t know if I could do this. I didn’t know if I could keep on going. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep on going.

I closed my eyes for a moment longer and saw the flame waiting for me. I could feel it smiling at me. The flicker of balefire burning away my sanity promised me that my horn would work again. I wanted it to work again. I needed my horn to work again. I wanted to give the flame what it wanted, but I was afraid. Why was I afraid? It was offering me exactly what I wanted, but was I willing to pay the cost? And was the flame and its promises even real or was I just going crazy?

"There we go, Aria. All better," Melody said, and I turned to see her happy grin. She had been assaulted and burned, lost her mane and coat, and she was still smiling. A kind and genuine smile. I wished I had her mental fortitude. I threw my hooves around her, taking her warmth into me as I tried to fill the hole in my heart with just the smallest scoop of her love.

"Thank you," I whispered before reluctantly letting go and turning to Shadowbuck and Compass. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. We should get going, right?"

"Yeah. It's no problem. Sorry I yelled too," Shadow said. I nodded and he led us back out into the Trottingham Ruins.

As we walked down the street to Gigaton, I noticed we were not alone. Strange shadows started to dance in the windows of the abandoned stores and brownstone apartments that flanked us on either side. Trottingham was bathed in a sudden orange glow as the sun began to make its descent beneath the cloud cover.

A horrible and depressing thought crossed my mind as I looked West towards the steadily brightening sunset. If Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were both dead, then that meant the sun and the moon were rising and setting on their own. The sun and the moon, the ever present and comforting celestial bodies that my aunts had once commanded, were now just as wild as the Everfree Forest.

"Aria," a familiar voice called out from the ruins. A kind, yet feeble voice that had once held such life. An impossible voice. "Everything's going to be alright, Aria."

"Grandmother?" I whispered, and I stopped in my tracks, confused by the voice of the elderly mare who had raised me calling out from the window of a three story tenement.

"Huh?" Melody and the other stopped and stared at me. "What is it, Aria?"

"Aria!" Golden Star called from a diner next door to Grandmother White Rose's apartment complex. I saw something move in the shadows behind the diner's counter and took a step towards my brother.

"Golden Star! You're alive!" I started to move forward, feeling myself compelled to find my family.

"Oh shit! Aria, run! Everypony run!" Shadowbuck cried, and Melody and Compass started dashing off towards the open gates of Gigaton.

But he was wrong. I didn't need to run, my family was nearby. I had to find my family. I started to walk faster. I needed to find them. If I got blown up and launched into the future by balefire eggs, then they might have been sent here too. That had to be it.

I leaned forward, trying to gallop towards the ponies that I loved, but a heavy, metal encased earth pony who I thought was my friend lunged at me. Armored hooves wrapped around my neck, this time not in a comforting display of understanding and friendship, but in a wrenching motion that pulled us both to the ground.

"What are you doing, Shadow! My family's in there!" I thrashed, my armor clashing against his as I kicked and tried to throw the much heavier stallion off me. If I had had my magic it would have been easy, but the weight of his power armor added to his own natural weight was holding me to the ground as if I were only a child.

"Help us, Aria! The fire's trying to burn us! Save us from the fire," I heard Brightlight call from another tenement window high above.

"Please let me go, Shadow! I have to save them!" I cried, tears streaming down my face as I fought in vain to free myself from the Steel Ranger's grasp.

"Aria! It's not real! We need to get out of here! Your brother died in Stable Sixty-Three! Remember? Ow!" he shouted as I slammed my elbow into his jaw. Then I felt the fog clouding my mind begin to part as I remembered that Golden Star had died an old stallion, safe down in Stable Sixty-Three with a loving family around him. I also remembered that Brightlight had died in Stable Sixty-Three as well. And Grandmother had probably died before the bombs. But...

"Aria. It's mommy. Come to mommy," I heard a mare call from the rooftops above. Her voice was so beautiful, as if a nightingale had learned to speak and was caressing my ears with words made from ethereal silk. I had never heard the voice before, at least not that I remembered consciously, but it made my heart ache worse than I had ever felt. It was as if my very soul was being ripped in two. I knew in the pit that had once been the bottom of my heart that this voice was my mother's and the compulsion to find my family vanished.

"What... What's going on!?"

"Run, Aria! They're coming for you! We need to get to Gigaton before..." And that was when we noticed the line of darkness racing towards us. The sun was setting. Even though Shadow was wearing his helmet, I was sure his eyes were as wide as dinner plates behind that dark visor. "Run!"

I didn't argue. I jumped to my hooves with him and we immediately burst into a frantic gallop. My legs pumped as hard as I could as we raced towards Gigaton's front gates.

The already closing front gates.

Our metal horse shoes clopped heavily against the broken cobblestone streets, I could hear the terror in Shadowbuck's breathing as we ran. Or was that my own heavy, panicked breathing I was hearing?

"ARIA!" my mother cried as I heard glass shatter and a rush of wind accosted us on all sides.

"Don't look back!" Shadowbuck shouted. Why did he have to say that? I wasn't going to look back! But now I had the sudden urge to do it. It's like telling somepony with a fear of heights not to look down while crossing a bridge.
So of course, I looked back and felt my blood turn to ice.

Swooping out of every open window along the street as the wall of night followed us, were owl-like creatures straight out of the most depraved horror film. Their bodies were covered in a inky, flowing substance that almost seemed like living oil, their wings beat silently and their clawed talons were extended towards us. I couldn't make out the creatures' beaks, the only feature I could see on their faces were their glowing, tennis ball sized green eyes, but I was sure they were salivating with the thought of ripping off our flesh strip by strip. The flock grew and began to form a flapping, screaming wave of evil incarnate. What made matters worse were that they were all calling my name in perfect imitations of my loved ones' voices.

"ARIA! WHY DID YOU FAIL ME, ARIA!? WHY DID YOU LET ME DIE, ARIA!?" they wailed in unison in Princess Luna's powerful, yet sorrow filled voice.

Fear gripped me and spurred me on faster, my legs burning and my heart feeling like it was about to explode. Every hair on my body was standing straight up and pushing uncomfortably against my armor, but I paid it no mind. Looking forward, the gate was already half closed and the ponies on the walls were already turning their turrets on the flock of monsters hot on our tails. I could almost feel the wind off their inky wings blowing on my neck.

"Hold the gate! Open fire on those damned monsters! Save those ponies your worthless sons of mules!" an authoritative voice called from the wall, and, with that order, the ponies of Gigaton opened fire on the demonic owls.
Emerald bolts of magical energy arched over our heads, some of the shot zipping by us close enough for me to feel the heat as it engulfed our feathered foes. Almost immediately, the energy blasts were reducing them to nothing more than wisps of shadow and ash. The creatures screamed with my family's voices, each more gut wrenching than the last, and some began to peel away from us. But they were still gaining on us, I could practically hear their ebony beaks clacking open and shut as they hungered for our flesh.

Suddenly, a rocket streaked across the evening sky and a familiar minigun began to join in the owlicious slaughter. The screams of my loved ones as the owls were engulfed in flames or ripped out of the sky were becoming maddening. It was almost as if I were with them as the balefire burned them away to ash.

As we reached the gates, I threw myself through the small gap, the opening barely large enough for one pony to pass through at a time, and slammed into what felt like a brick wall. My neck wrenched, my nose exploded with pain, and I felt the dent in my shoulder guard stab into my shoulder blade. I screamed as I hit the ground, trying to hold everything by curling up into a fetal position.

"Oh, sorry about that, kid," a rough and masculine voice said as I wiped blood away from my nose.

"Sheriff! Close the door!" a mare ordered, and I heard a contemptuous snort.

"Please, we are not a pair of ignoramuses. Only a single moron occupies this corporeal form," a gentle voice replied, his Trottingham accent more refined than any I had met so far, as the first voice laughed.

"Yeah," the first voice grunted. I watched the gates slam closed behind Shadowbuck as he jumped through, deftly rolling to the side and around my prone form. "So shut your yap before we snap back!"

"Ugh. Thank you. I-"

Standing above me was another terrifying sight. You know, with the way the past three days had been going, I might as well stop telling you something was terrifying and start telling you when something wasn't. It seemed, that in the Wasteland, terrifying was par for the course.

He stood at nearly eight feet tall, his lower half was hoofed and covered in thick cobalt fur. My eyes drifted up his muscled, blue torso, his two pairs of arms as thick as tree trunks and covered by a long brown, four armed brown duster. Around his neck was a thin black tie with a sheriff's badge pinned to it, although it looked more like one of those tin Sunrise Sarsaparilla promotional badges instead of a real one. His hair was styled into a mohawk between his steel gray horns, and he had a tuft of hair beneath his chin that seemed to suit him well. I swallowed hard as the minotaur's yellow eyes peered down at me, seeming to glow in the dim light.

Then I saw the second head turn and peer around the other.

"Hello, my dear. Do you need some assistance?" the second head asked as he glanced around the first. This head's hair was long and tied back into a tight ponytail while he wore a monocle over his right eye that appeared to be made from the bottom of a Sparkle Cola bottle.

"Yeah, how can Sheriff Iron Will," the first head said.

"And Steel Bill," the second head added.

"Help ya?" Will finished while offering his lower right hand to me.

"Br-Br-Bra-Brahmintaur!" I screamed, backing away from the monster looming over me.

“Woah! I ain’t gonna hurt ya, kid!” Iron Will told me, but I wasn’t listening. I continued backing away until I ran into somepony. Looking up, I saw Shadowbuck smiling down at me.

"It's alright, Aria. Old Sheriff Will's a good guy. A little rough around the edges, but he's one of the few good brahmintaur out there," he said, trying to reassure me as a I stared at him, wide eyed and pretty sure he was just as crazy as me. He began to help me to my hooves as I looked around Gigaton's entrance.

"But-But-But... Where's Melody?" I asked, suddenly realizing my niece was nowhere to be seen.

"With me, Lieutenant Aria," a mare said calmly as somepony finally lit a torch. The screams of the owls had begun to die down, as had did the laser turret fire, to my relief. Into the light strode a peach colored unicorn, her mane a bright white, wearing strange blue robes and a thick, yet somewhat stylish pair of glasses. She was older, not like my Grandmother, more like the Ministry Mares, and seemed to exude a confidence that I knew all too well from the Royal Guard Academy. Behind her stood Compass and the Brotherhood of Steel while Melody fluttered over them.

"Are you okay, Aria?" Melody asked. I really hated how everyone kept asking me that. I was pretty sure it was obvious that I wasn't. Before I could answer, Shadowbuck coughed and sputtered.

"Elder Cherry Scones!" Shadowbuck straightened up and gave the older mare a proper salute. Elder Cherry Scones? Leader of the Trottingham Steel Rangers? I quickly turned and gave her a salute as well. A military officer of higher rank deserved just as much respect, if not more, as a Royal Guard officer.

"Glad you made it, Shadow. When we heard Howling Buck's report, we figured you four would end up here instead of Big Buck," Star Paladin Buzzsaw said, acknowledging his subordinate happily. He noticed the sniper rifle strapped to Shadow's back and a bright smile crossed his face. "And I see Buck's still just as accurate as ever. Can't believe we took out Ten and Ace in just three days."

"Yes. That is quite the achievement, but it is not why we are here, Star Paladin Buzzsaw," Elder Cherry Scones said curtly. "At ease, Paladin. You as well, Lieutenant.”

“You know my rank?” I asked as I lowered my salute first. I was surprised that anypony outside of Stable Sixty-Three knew who I was. First King, now Elder Cherry Scones. For a pony whose ‘sacrifice’ had been practically erased, I sure was popular.

“Yes, Lieutenant Aria. I don’t know if you really are who Star Paladin Buzzsaw and Stable Sixty-Three’s denizens say you are, but I have been made aware of your past, your rank, and your actions since arriving in the Trottingham Ruins. I have to stay abreast of any new players on the Trottingham stage.”

Wow, she really was all business. I could see why Shadowbuck was so worried about money problems with this mare. She made the Canterlot elite seem like real party animals.

"If I may ask, Elder, why are you here? You rarely leave Big Buck anymore. It's too dangerous, especially now that the Flushers will be looking for blood," Shadowbuck respectfully asked as he lowered his salute.

"You gonna tell 'em, or should we?" Iron Will asked the Elder, both sets of arms crossed as he leaned casually against a set of stairs leading up to the wall.

"I shall, Sheriff. Thank you," she said, nodding politely to the two headed minotaur. "We are here with a task of the gravest importance."

A flaming owl screeched as it flew over the wall and crashed into a maypole on the other side. It splashed down in a filthy looking puddle of water, flailed for a few moments in an attempt to put out the flames, before shuddering and bursting into a puff of shadow.

"The day we have feared has finally come, Shadowbuck. The balefire missile lodged in the center of Gigaton has become unstable. It is slowly leaking radiation and may even detonate if we are truly unlucky. If we cannot defuse it, then all life in Trottingham will most likely come to a sudden and terrifying end."

Oh biscuits.

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Tough Hide (Level One) : The brutal experiences of the Trottingham Wasteland (Plus all that Royal Guard training) have hardened you. You gain +10% Damage Threshold for each level of this perk you take.

Sneak Skill: 50

Author's Footnote: Special thanks to my editor/pre-reader Chimpso for the help with editing.