Have you ever had one of those moments where everything feels dulled and the world kind of seems like its in slow motion? That moment where your blood runs cold and your mouth dries faster than a worm on a sidewalk in mid summer? That instant when your body doesn’t know whether to fight or flee. There’s something about that feeling that is both terrifying and exhilarating. Mostly terrifying though because this time I was having that feeling while holding back a Steel Ranger as a swarm of evil raiders turned on us.

I looked back, hoping we could make a break for the safety of the Ministry Hub I now controlled, only to see a smaller group raiders, about six in total, coming around the far corner of the Ministry of Awesome, Morale, and Image building, essentially cutting off our path. Shadow was hurling every obscenity in the ‘Big Book of Naughty Words’ while Melody and Compass, seeing that we were effectively boxed in, began to rush for the MAMI building entrance. I didn’t know what to do.

“Run!” Melody shouted as she flew through the door, Compass hot on her heels.

“Just shoot him in the back and leave him to die,” a darker voice inside of me ordered. I froze for a moment, startled by the new voice in my head, but then another idea crossed my mind. I would have to ignore the Nightmare for now.

“Let’s go, Shadow! We’ve got to run!” I shouted, lifting him and my shield in my telekinetic glow, trying to protect us both. The raiders all started laughing, even Jack, as I levitated my raging friend like he was a mere rag doll. As I turned, I yanked the half melted dogtags that had burned into the remains of Bulletsorm’s upper neck and jawline. With a nasty rip, they pulled away and my stomach did a flip in protest.

“Put me down, Aria! I gotta kill that scaley bastard!” Shadowbuck shouted, kicking wildly as I started moving towards the MAMI building. This got an even bigger laugh out of the raiders before a few started firing wildly from the estate across the street. I gritted my teeth, trying to hold Aegis in front of us while trying to not be angered by his word choice, but his thrashing was making it much harder for me to even move towards that door, much less concentrate.

And that’s when the bullets started to fly. Bullet after bullet rang off my shield, Shadowbuck’s power armor, and my own, ricocheting everywhere and causing me to wince as I rushed through the door. Large circles of pain were already spreading across my body as I dove through the door, and Shadow roared as I pulled him into the lobby

“Stop fighting me, Shadow! We need to get out of here!” I shouted as I tried to close the door while holding his flailing body. More shots ripped through the doorway, denting and pinging off my armor and sending us all crashing to the floor as my magic imploded in on itself. Shadow rolled to his hooves, firing two expertly placed rounds through two very unlucky raider skulls before I flung the bulletproof glass doors closed with my magic and locked the doors.

“Damn it, Aria! What are you doing?” he snarled, wheeling around on me and baring his teeth, jabbing me with his hoof as the raiders reached the doors and started opening fire on them, to little effect thankfully.

“Trying to save your life, Shadow! We need to get out of here! We’re completely outnumbered and outgunned!” I shouted back, batting his hoof away. I tried to lift him again, but he somehow dodged out of my magical field.

“They killed Bulletstorm! They killed my brothers and sisters! They deserve to die!”

“That can wait, Shadow! You’ll just get yourself killed!”

“You’re a coward!”

“What?” I asked, my nose twitching as I felt the anger rising inside me.

“Make him burn,” I heard the Nightmare inside me laugh.

“You really don’t know anything about honor, do you? Or being a soldier? Hell, you weren’t even a guard for more than a few hours before you got killed!” he snarled.

“What did you just say!?” I screamed, feeling my mane and tail starting to tingle and my teeth beginning to itch.

“Just what I said, Aria! You’re no hero! You’re just a little girl who doesn’t know an-”

BZZAP!

My lightning bolt struck him square in the chest, causing him to collapse to the ground in a twisted heap of smoking power armor. I angrily picked up my shield and Bulletstorm’s dogtags before throwing them onto Shadowbuck’s unconscious form.

“That’s what I know about honor and being a soldier,” I spat, before returning my shield to my back. I turned, seeing Melody and Compass watching me, horrified from the doorway leading to a stairwell and all the anger rushed out of me and was quickly replaced by shame.

“A-Aria?” Melody asked, her

“He-He wasn’t listening. He would have gotten us all killed. I just stunned him. See?” I said, picking him up and placing him on my back, closer to my flanks so he wouldn’t interfere with me drawing Aegis. “I can carry him now, let’s go.”

“Where can we go?” Melody asked, eyeing Shadowbuck’s unconscious form nervously. Meanwhile, the bullets continued to to hammer their deadly cacophony against the glass, shaking, but not even cracking the thick security barrier, and I sighed.

“I-I don’t know. They’ll have this place surrounded and-”

“Get out of the way, you fucking idiots! That glass is bulletproof, but let’s see if it’s dragon proof,” Jack shouted. I turned to see him land hard on the other side of the glass, smiling at me wickedly as green flames began to trickle out of the edges of his mouth and through his nostrils.

“Upstairs! Run!” I shouted, already starting my mad dash for the stairwell they were blocking. Seeing Jack rear back, Compass and Melody didn’t need to be told twice. They turned and started climbing the stairs as fast as they could as Jack let out of gout of balefire that turned the nigh indestructible glass into a melted pool of translucent chemicals.

Turning the corner into the stairwell, I barely escaped the flames, feeling their heat licking at my backside as my Pipbuck ticked steadily. Taking the stairs two at a time, I was shocked to hear the sudden claxon of an alarm and a moment later a symphony of gunfire erupted in the lobby behind me. On the landing, I stopped for a moment to look back and saw a turret had descended from the ceiling and started unloading on the attacking raiders. Bullets and energy blasts were returned in kind, but I decided I’d let the Ministry’s automated defenses take care of Jack and his raiders.

“Wow. For once I get lucky!” I cheered in my head as I turned to take the rest of the stairs, but my self congratulations were short lived as the turret exploded in a burst of sparks and fire and a reptilian head burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs. His face and shoulder were covered in rapidly healing bullet wounds, but thankfully he was just a little too large for a pony sized door.

“Ha!” I laughed before rushing up the stairs to the next floor. It was a good thing I ran instead of gloating any further, even with my legs starting to protest against Shadow’s added weight, because as I made it up the second step, another rush of balefire lit up the concrete stairwell and sent my Pipbuck clicking faster than ever before.

“Ha!” Jack shouted back as he tried to incinerate me, but I was thankfully shielded by the next flight of stairs. As I reached the next landing, my E.F.S. didn’t show Melody and Compass through the closed door to the second floor so I continued upwards, barely noticing the slowly increasing number of red dots swarming across my vision.

As I made it up the next flight, the stairs shook as a loud crash came from below and a cloud of debris filled the path behind me.

“I’m coming for you, you little bitch!” Jack roared as he broke down the doorframe and pulled himself through. I could hear his claws tearing into the half melted stairs a floor down, and I tried to put on some more speed. But with my armor, my gear, and the unconscious Steel Ranger on my back, just going at a brisk pace was difficult.

“Leave him! He called you a coward!” the Nightmare ordered, but I snarled. The fact that I was hearing another, darker version of me ordering me to leave somepony to die should have sent me into a panic, but right now the panic caused by physical murderers chasing me was vastly overwhelming the panic and fear my own crazy brain was trying to cause.

“Then he’d be right!” I shouted back, and the Nightmare laughed.

"Good point. Save his ass, rub it in his face, and make him your slave. I bet he’s pretty good with that big mouth of his,” she replied. I could feel my face burning, although that could have also been attributed to the radiation and heat filling the stairwell.

Making the turn up to the third floor, I was surprised to see Melody and Compass flanking the doorway.

“Run! Jack’s coming! What’s going on!?” I asked as I pushed myself up the last fourteen stairs to the landing.

“The stairs are blocked!” Melody shouted, and that was when I noticed the wall of rubbled sitting halfway up the next flight, the product of the stairs above collapsing down to the next floor.

“You have... Wait!” I shouted, first in anger, but it was quickly replaced by hope as a crazy idea crossed my mind.

Turning back to the stairs below me, I focused as much power as I could into a single spell. Sparks flew and enveloped my horn in an electrical aura, just as Jack started climbing up to the landing below me. Down on all fours like that, I couldn’t help but think he looked like a massive rotting alligator with wings.

Before Jack could open his mouth to let out another breath of balefire, I unleashed all my anger into one lightning bolt, the electrical burst slamming into the landing above him and sending a hail of rubble the size of a large filly crashing down on top of him. I could see his cloudy amber eyes widen in the first actual display of fear I had ever seen on a ghoul’s face before unfurling his wings and jumping backwards at the last possible moment. The ground beneath us began to shake as the entire stairwell started to collapse around us, my blast obviously pushing a weakened structure beyond its limit, and I turned back to my friends.

“Get out! Now!” I shouted, throwing the third floor door open and darting past them.

“But-” Melody tried to shout before another quake silenced her and she, followed immediately by Compass, darted through the door and quickly ducked behind a desk.

“Huh?” I asked, watching them dive for cover. A cloud of dust burst through the door after me and obscured everything around me. Fanning away the dust, I could hear Shadowbuck coughing and stirring on my back as I finally noticed the five red bars in front of me. Drawing my shield and sword, I stood ready for anything. As the dust began to settle, I finally got a good glimpse of the hostile targets on my Eyes Forward Sparkle.

Hovering a few feet off the ground were five spritebots. I started to relax, knowing that spritebots, no matter how annoying their constant playing of ‘March of the Parasprites’ could be, were not a threat. Looking down at the red bars, I wondered if all that balefire had screwed up my Pipbuck’s friend or foe software. How could spritebots be enemies? They don’t even have any weapons.

“Aria! Get down!” Melody said, half whispering, half shouting. I turned my head to her and smiled.

“Something’s wrong with E.F.S. Spritebots don’t have weapons. What are they going do, tuba me to death?” I laughed before turning back and... where did those barrels come from?

Pew! Pew! Pew!

I didn’t have time to draw Aegis. Diving for cover, bolts of pink magical energy struck me hard in the side. Two struck my side while the third narrowly missed striking Shadowbuck’s left shoulder. Landing and rolling under a desk, hissing as my burned flesh brushed against the coarse, filthy carpet and my heated armor burned me further.

“See! They shoot!” Melody hissed from her and Compass’ hiding place beneath a desk across the aisle from me. I nodded sheepishly before turning and poking my head up, only to be forced back down by the trio’s energy blasts.

“Cud! I can’t get a good shot! They’re too fast!” I cried, only to watch Melody pop up and fire three blasts from her laser pistol, each striking true, before ducking back down behind the cover of the desk just in time for three bolts to whiz over where her head had been only seconds before.

The spritebot wasn’t down, but when Compass popped up, fired off two shots of his own with his pistol, and ducked back down before he could get shot my jaw almost hit the floor. I barely even noticed the sizzling smell of burning wires or the crash and bang of the spritebot exploding.

“How!? How the hell did you two do that?” I shouted, drawing another stream of laser fire peppering my cover, heating the desk slightly with each beam.

“SATS! I told you about it at the Four Star Station! It slows down time and lines up your shots for you!” Melody called back, causing the lasers to turn towards her and Compass’ desk.

“Queue up some of your lightning bolts!” Compass advised as the two hid behind their cover and their shouts drew more and more laser fire from the two remaining spritebots. Wow... I didn’t realize how tough office furniture was back in my day... Okay, now I feel old.

“Right. SATS... How do I...”

Suddenly the world around me stopped, dropping into a weird slow motion like everything was trying to move through thick honey. A green highlight surrounded Melody’s hoof and gave me an eighteen percent chance. An eighteen percent chance of what? Turning my head, the highlight surround one of the spritebots and told me I had a ninety-five percent chance. A chance to hit maybe? But I didn’t have a gun anymore; I lost it when the brahmintaur almost gored me. How do I queue up a lightning bolt?

And there it was, a little message popped up in the corner of my vision saying “Spritebot: Body.” What? How do I even use this stupid thing to shoot... Suddenly the world sped back up and I felt a focusing magic charging through my horn. Using it as a guide, I unleashed a lightning bolt directly into the left spritebot’s casing and it exploded with a near deafening bang. However, the world was back to normal now and the third spritebot was already turning on me again.

“Eep!” I shouted, ducking back down just as the robot’s laser whizzed over my head.

“Ugh...” I heard Shadow moan as I felt him starting to stir on my back, the dog tags stuck on his collar dropped to the ground quietly.

“I got this!” Melody shouted before popping back up, slipping back into SATS, and unleashing five shots into the spritebot, four striking home while the fifth barely missed the insectoid robot. So you can still miss with SATS? That was good to know.

But that didn’t matter since four laser blasts were enough to send the spritebot into an overload and explode, spraying the general area with shrapnel and debris that Melody was just barely able to avoid.

“What!? Where!? Ow! My head!” Shadowbuck shouted before wincing and struggling to bring his hooves up to his helmet. “What the hell? I can’t-” Then he noticed he was on my back. “Aria? What the fuck, Aria!? You shot me! And you fried my suit’s spell matrix! I can barely move, damn it!”

“You’re lucky to still be alive! If I hadn’t you would have gotten yourself killed!” I snapped back, picking up Bulletstorm’s dogtags with my magic.

“You... you got his dog tags?” Shadowbuck asked, the anger slowly fading from his voice only to be replaced by sadness.

“Yeah. I know something about war and honor.”

“Then why didn’t you let me avenge my brother?” Shadow asked, snapping his teeth around the dogtags’ chain before flicking it around his neck. How did earth ponies do stuff like that? “Jack... Jack has to die.”

“Not if you have to die in the process, Shadow. Bulletstorm wouldn’t have wanted that. I don’t either... And neither does Melody and Compass,” I added, trying to mask the empathetic sadness I felt for my Steel Ranger friend.

“Yeah. We’ll get Jack when we have a better chance,” Melody said, trying to comfort him with a smile.

“Plus, if we don’t find a way to escape, then Jack and the Royal Flusher Raiders are going to kill us before we can even try to kill him,” Compass added, while looking around the room for said means of escape.

We were in a pretty standard office, dusty desks and broken terminals occupied rows and rows of cubicles. Whether this was a Ministry of Morale or Ministry of Image office, I didn’t know. At least I knew it wasn’t Ministry of Awesome. Besides those white radio towers, MAw did absolutely nothing; Rainbow Dash had always been too busy with the Shadowbolts and the war to actually do anything with her ministry.

“Even if we find a way out, the Flushers probably have the building surrounded,” Shadowbuck sighed. “This looks pretty bad even if my spell matrix weren’t fried.”

“That’s all? Give me five minutes and I can use my Pipbuck’s matrix to reboot yours,” Melody said dismissively as if it weren’t a big deal.

“Yeah, well, we can do that when we get to the roof,” I ordered, heading towards the door at the opposite side of the office.

“The roof? Why are we going to the roof?” Compass asked, following Melody as she flittered after me.

“A Pinkie Pie balloon. I saw it on the roof when we were walking to the MOPAST building.”

“A Pinkie Pie balloon? That... that might work. We’d just have to defend ourselves from Jack. That scaley bastard can fly after all,” Shadowbuck mused, looking dejected and a bit humorous as he lay over my back like an extremely heavy sack of potatoes.

“I blasted the upper stairs down on him while he was chasing me up. I think Jack might be busy trying to dig himself out of the stairwell, if he’s even still alive.”

“Oh, he’s still alive. He’s a tenacious son of a bitch. No matter how many bullets he takes, he always seems to regenerate and keep going,” Shadow explained. A girl can dream, can’t she?

We started searching for any way up to the roof, but the other stairwell was just as destroyed as the first. It was as if the Wasteland was taunting us and I was beginning to think that might be the case... Which further reinforced my belief that this might be Hell.

“If we’re going through Hell, at least we have each other,” the Nightmare whispered in the back of my mind before giving a giggle. “You know, if we’re so intent on saving Shadow and letting him ride us, then we might as well let him really ride us.”

That made me blush. I don’t know what the hell was going on and why I was hearing myself talk like that, but feeling the weight of Shadowbuck on my back had me thinking naughty thoughts that I shouldn’t really go into detail about. Let’s just say that Melody interrupting my fantasies was a welcome diversion from the Nightmare’s darker influences.

“So what did you think of SATS? Pretty cool, huh?” Melody said, finally breaking the tension of silence that was allowing my mind to wander.

“Yeah. It seems like a handy tool, although I wish it didn’t have to recharge,” I replied. Melody shrugged.

“That would be nice, but when you're slowing down time and helping establish targets, I’d be a little tuckered out too,” Melody said, touching her Pipbuck protectively as if it were her child.

“Actually, it’s not slowing down time, SATS is temporarily increasing the user’s reaction speed, thought processes, and reflexes so that it seems like time is slowing down, but you’re actually moving much faster,” I answered, eliciting even more stares from my companions.

“But the manual says it’s time magic,” Melody whined.

“Well, they were obviously lying to cover what they were actually doing. Like the whole Stable doors being ninety-eight percent effective against balefire bombs.”

“How do you know it’s not time magic?” Melody asked, pouting at me.

“Because temporal magic has a different feel to it. Every hair on your body stands on end when a spell that affects the time stream is being used. It’s like the world biggest static electricity charge is hanging in the air, just waiting to shock you,” I said, looking down at my hooves as we entered another office. “I should know.”

“Oh. Well... Sorry,” Melody apologized.

“Yeah, well, time magic or not y- Aria! Look out!” Shadow yelled from my back just in time for me to look up and see a moving mirage lunge at me and clamp its invisible jaws around my right foreleg. “Nightstalkers!”

“Augh!” I screamed as white hot fire burned through my leg and up to my shoulder. The bite had torn through my underbarding and sharp fangs bore deep into my flesh, injecting their deadly poison into veins.

In a pain driven attempt to get the blurry creature off me, I reflexively fired a blast of electricity into its form. That was a mistake. The electric current coursed through its body, into me and then onto Shadowbuck. Two ponies screamed and a strange, reptilian howl filled the ministry hub and I blacked out.

Blurred forms swarmed as snarls and hisses reached my ears. Darkness. Gunshots and laser blasts peppered the morning air. Darkness. A shrill howl tried to pierce the din, but was quickly silenced by a familiar Pfft Pfft.

I awoke with a serious case of cotton mouth and a dull throb in my temples as Compass was attending to my wounds. He looked worried as he poured a green potion over the bite on my leg before noticing I was awake.

“You're awake?” he asked, and then chuckled as he start rummaging through his bags. “You’re really lucky I grabbed a few medkits at the Ministry of Peace hub, otherwise I wouldn’t have had these antivenom potions for all of us.”

“What were those things?” I asked after noticing the twisted, mutated bodies lying around the room. They looked like dogs, but their tails and faces were distinctly reptilian; their snake-like eyes’ death stare twisting my stomach in knots.

“Nightstalkers. We see them around this part of town from time to time, but I think we just cleared out a nest,” Shadowbuck said, and I turned my head to see him lying behind me with Melody’s Pipbuck plugged into his suit. “They’re a combination of dogs and rattlesnakes.”

“A combination of dogs and rattlesnakes? Why can’t we ever find something that’s a combination of two nice things?”

“Like what?” Compass asked as he offered me a healing potion. After chugging it down and instantly feeling one hundred percent better, I started to get back to my hooves, much to Compass’ chagrin. “You should rest. Melody’s booting up Shadowbuck’s armor, you just got poisoned and electrocuted.”

“That’s twice you’ve shocked me, Aria. This better not become our thing,” Shadowbuck replied sarcastically while giving me a grin. At least he wasn’t mad at me.

“Sorry... But we don’t have time to sit around. Jack might unbury himself and try to get in from the roof. Then we’d be as good as dead.”

“There’s some sense to that, but are you strong enough to keep carrying Shadow? The reboot sequence has begun, so I can disconnect my Pipbuck, but it’s going to take about ten to fifteen minutes for his suit to restart itself and get the power running to his joints,” Melody explained, and I nodded. I wasn’t going to let a snake-dog bite get me down. If we died in here, then Gigaton, Trottingham, and probably Stable Sixty-Three were all doomed.

“Time for another piggy back ride, Shadow,” I said with my own snarky smile. I could just picture the proud steal ranger rolling his eyes under his helmet’s visor.

“Alright. Just no more close range lightning bolts, you got it?” Shadow retorted.

“I got it.”

“Then let’s go. Melody said there’s a collapsed stretch of ceiling we can use to climb up to the next floor,” Shadow said as I telekinetically lifted him back onto my back.

Continuing on into the collapsed office, Compass, Shadow, and I carefully climbed the debris up to the fourth floor. Upon reaching the next level, we noticed that the carpeting was ripped up, claw marks adorned every desk, and piles of bones littered the rows of cubicles.

“I think we found their den. Everyone stay quiet and stay on alert,” Shadow ordered from my back. It was good advice, but his current position did make the leadership position he was taking seem a little bit comical. Quietly we crept through the office, trying our hardest not to alert the invisible predators that might be lurking all around us, lying in wait for the perfect time to strike and plunge their venomous fangs into our flesh.

“I’ve got it,” Melody whispered excitedly.

“Got what?”

“What about a powder puff combined with a pony? That would be a combination of two nice things,” Melody replied with an excited smile.

“What would you even call something like that?” Compass asked in hushed tones.

“Why don’t we call it a Flufflepuff?” Melody whispered happily.

“Why don’t we shut up before... Crap...”

Shadow’s gaze was transfixed down the aisle behind us. At first I couldn’t see what he was looking at; the way we came seemed empty. But then I saw the air shimmer and move around a near invisible form and the entire group immediately froze. A bark quickly snapped every creature in the hub into action. Out of the cubicles came four other Nightstalkers, not even bothering to cloak themselves as they licked their chops at the sight of four pony shaped meals standing just twenty feet down the aisle from them.

“Run!” Shadow shouted, and I had to agree. We didn’t have the resources to survive more nightstalker venom coursing through our veins.

I erected a shield around us and we ran for the first door we could find. The canine carnivores activated their natural invisibility and gave chase. They were much faster than us, easily gaining ground on us before we could make it to the end of the cubicles, but their animalistic lack of knowledge of magic didn’t save them from running head first into the light blue force field erected in the path.

“Aria! Drop the shield and everybody run!” Shadow ordered. I looked back at him and saw the apple grenade clinched in his mouth and watched him smile as his tongue pulled the pin. I let the shield drop just as Shadow flicked his head and let the grenade arch through the air and land gently on the writhing nest of scales. Diving around the corner, the four of us barely made it out of the way before the explosive force of the grenade ripped into the nightstalkers and their barks and hisses were silenced.

Breathing heavily, my eyes closed, I could feel Shadowbuck’s weight on my head. Realizing he had fallen on my head when I had jumped for cover and hit the ground, I lifted him up and opened my eyes to realize that his nethers had been resting on my muzzle. If not for his armor, I would have been touching his... Wow, my face was really burning.

And the entire time the Nightmare was purring sweet nothings of sexual temptation into the back of my mind.

“That was quick thinking, Shadow,” I gasped, returning him carefully onto my back. Please let it be dark enough for him not to notice.

“Good job on that shield, Aria.”

I think he didn’t notice.

“Aria, why is your face so red?” Melody asked as I turned around. Of course Melody would notice! I’m a reddish brown and somehow she can tell, in the low light of this ancient office, that my face was just a little bit redder than normal. That was just my luck.

“Just a little dizzy, that’s all,” I replied, trying to catch my breath and banish the dirty thoughts racing through my mind.

“Did they bite you again?” Compass asked, concern weighing on his voice.

“No, I think I’m just coming down from an adrenaline rush,” I lied, but I think they bought it. “Let’s see if we can find a way up to the roof from here.”

“Hey! I’m in charge here. You Stable ponies almost got us killed back there. What part of be quiet did you not understand?” Shadow said angrily.

“We were whispering,” Melody replied. Compass nodded in agreement.

“I meant no noise. Nightstalkers have really good hearing just like dogs,” Shadowbuck explained. Melody frowned and pressed her ears against the back of her head.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. We don’t have dogs down in Stable Sixty-Three.”

“Fine, whatever. Let’s just go,” Shadowbuck sighed. “Let’s keep looking, Aria.”

“You’re a real back seat driver, Shadow?” I complained as we started walking again.

“More like backside driver, right?” Melody joked and playfully smacked my right flank. I let out a yipe and scowled back at her, but like usual my glare didn’t work on mares. Melody just smiled at me and Shadowbuck. “Although she can’t be that comfy in all that armor.”

“Melody!”

“Let’s just keep moving, ponies. And no more talking unless absolutely necessary. Got it?” Shadow interrupted.

“Got it,” Melody replied, seeming much more dejected than I thought she should have been.

The rest of the floor was relatively quiet. Besides two turrets that dropped down from the ceiling outside Ministry Mare Pinkie Pie’s office, we ran into no more trouble. And thanks to the wonderful little spell known as SATS, Melody, Compass, and I took care of those pesky turrets before more than a single bullet could bounce harmlessly off my armor.

We were all excited to get a look at Pinkie’s office, but after Shadowbuck clumsily picked the lock, we were confronted with the revelation that the entire floor above had collapsed into the office below, literally crushing any hopes of finding Ministry Mare worthy loot or historically significant artifacts. However, that did get us our pathway up to the next floor.

Our luck continued after skirting the edge of the collapsed laboratory above and entering another. Tise lab was completely empty save for tables, chairs, and a bottle marked ‘Zebra Tar Stuff,’ which Compass curiously added to his saddlebags. But on the other side of the room, mounted over a broken window, was the most glorious sign we had seen in a very long time.

Fire Escape-Roof Access.

Peering out the window, I could see a solid grating beneath and above were sturdy latter leading up to the roof. As long as they held up, we could all get up to the Pinkie Pie balloon.

“Here’s our way up! Let’s hurry!” I said, trying my best not to shout. There could be snipers outside and we would be sitting ducks until we got to the roof. Thankfully, the MAIM building (Why did you have to get that acronym stuck in my head, Melody?) was the tallest building for miles.

Ascending as quietly as we could, I could see a small group of raiders guarding the entrance below us. I was suddenly thanking whichever alicorn up there for the fact that they didn’t have griffins with them and that pegasi like Melody were so rare. Of course with my luck, the skies would open up and the Enclave would come to enact their revenge on the demon that killed their soldiers.

“That’s why we should have killed the other one. Letting her live was stupid.”

“Shut up!” I cursed back at the Nightmare internally, and I could hear her sigh as if I was frustrating her. She was the annoying one with all her desire to kill everyone who crosses me, her constant talking and wanting sex... Okay, I’ll admit that some of her ideas were tempting, but at the moment I had to focus about getting us safely back to Gigaton and not on the fact that my nose was still itching.

Reaching the last ladder up to the roof, I sighed with relief as the strain on my burning legs was partially abated. Taking those flights of stairs with a crazy undead dragon on my tail, nightstalker bites, the constant climbing, and the stress of trying to escape near certain death were beginning to wear on me.

Actually, I was pretty sure everything was beginning to wear on my entire being. I felt... different than I had before my trip to the Wasteland. I was angrier, I hurt more, and ever pony I killed seemed to affect me less and less. The Enclave ponies had been hard not because I had killed them, but because I had changed. Transformed into a monster I had killed them without mercy or remorse, just as a monster would have.

But those raiders, I wasn’t hesitating to kill them and I could see that I was already losing any shreds of remorse for committing acts that would have horrified me only four days ago. Was I really losing myself to this new Equestria already?

“Or is this the real you being let loose? The you without Luna’s approval as your goal. The you who finally lets out all the rage and hatred in your heart that has been building up inside you your entire life. What if we were always a monster, Aria, and the Wasteland is just letting us finally show it?” the Nightmare asked. To that, I couldn’t respond.

“Look, there’s the balloon!” Melody cheered as she flew over to the deflated Pinkie Pie head and landed next to the basket. Looking it over, Melody pulled a cord and a got a clicking sound in return. Frowning, she pulled the ignition cord over and over until after the forth tug a spark ignited and a bright orange flame erupted from the bottom. “Got it!”

As soon as the fire began to burn, hot air started to fill the bottom of the balloon and ripple through the crumpled pony head. As I watched the balloon dance along the ground and start to slowly swell, my face twisted at the sight of the deformed face of Ministry Mare Pinkie Pie.

“That’s kind of creepy,” Shadowbuck said, saying exactly what I was thinking. Pinkie Pie was a hero to Equestria and one of the Ministry Mares, but even back in my time there had always been something... off about her. Making balloons shaped like her head didn’t help her case one bit.

“Yeah, but at least it’s a later model. I heard the first Pinkie Pie balloons used a Hydrogen Talisman to keep them afloat, but that was a disaster waiting to happen so MWT made the next batch with these heated air engines instead of magical talismans. I don’t trust them as much as a good talisman not to fail, but they’re a lot safer than travelling by floating bombs.”

“That’s good to hear,” Shadowbuck said sarcastically. I looked back as he started wiggling around on my back and saw him frowning at his legs. His limbs were moving, but slower and with much more strain than normal. “Still gonna be a bit before everything’s back up to one hundred percent.”

“Maybe then he can ride us in a different, more pleasurable way.”

“Yeah,” I said absentmindedly. Then I realized I was talking more to the Nightmare and not to Shadowbuck and turned my gaze to the river.

I was ashamed that my mind was turning against me like this. I’ll admit that I had had thoughts like this before, mostly about Brightlight, but not like this. Was I really crazy? Did I really need the medicine Compass had given me? This Nightmare in my mind was worse than the flame. At least the flame was just tempting me for something as metaphysical and emotional as ‘giving it my hate, pain, etc.’

The Nightmare was tempting me in ways that would change me fundamentally. Never wanting to bring a bastard into the world was a part of me. I guess you could say it was my goal in life. Protect Princess Luna, earn my place in my own family, and not repeat my mother’s mistakes. But I couldn’t protect the princess anymore and Melody, Starshine, and Elegant Star were the only family I had left. That last vow was all I had left. But ever since I met Shadowbuck, ever since I came to Trottingham, that promise to myself was becoming harder and harder to keep.

“You do know that there’s no more Equestrian government. We can’t get married. Are we going to spend our entire life without feeling the touch of a stallion because you’re afraid of a foal?”

“Stop it,” I hissed.

“What’s that, Aria?” Shadowbuck asked.

“Nothing.” I lied. “The river snakes a lot. The trip from Gigaton took a few hours, but I think I can see it from here,” I said, trying to deflect his question and get my mind off of the more perverse thoughts bubbling up from my subconscious.

“You can just make out the rollercoaster from here. Trottingham was built around the river on both sides. There used to be a lot of bridges connecting each side, but only the Trottingham bridge remains to connect Trottingham Palace and Big Buck to the Gigaton and Stableton side of the river.”

“Stableton?”

“Yeah. Look upstream. Do you see an old riverboat? My dad said that it was a New Foalenean style riverboat. It’s stuck on the river bottom, but Stableton’s built next to it,” Shadowbuck explained as I squinted, trying my hardest to find the riverboat. Then I saw it.

The large wheel in the back was submerged and partially broken off and the deck was underwater, but the old dilapidated riverboat was barely visible from here. Around it I could make out numerous buildings and a semi circle city wall with the boat and the river acting as defense against attacks on the other side.

“Hey Shadow.”

“Hmm?”

“Before you passed out in the Ministry building you said I remind you of someone. Who do I remind you of?” I asked, and felt Shadowbuck shift nervously on my back.

“Um... You’re going to think this is stupid.”

“No I won’t. Who do I remind you of?”

“Honestly? You remind me of my mother,” he said sheepishly.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You two would have gotten along great. She was such an egghead.” He paused looking out over the serenity that was the view stretched out before us. Thinking back, this was pretty weird since we were inflating a giant Pinkie Pie head while trying to escape a group of murderous raiders led by a zombie dragon, but for some reason the strange serenity of the irradiated river and dead city was allowing the two of us time to have an odd little heart to heart.

“What was she like?”

“She was great. Always trying to find spell books and learn new spells every time she went out scavenging with dad. She used to be a scribe at Bucklyn Cross, but she fell for my dad, a stupid earth pony scavenger, and would sneak off to join him in the ruins. Then she got pregnant and had my older sister, Autumn Winds, and my mom decided to leave the Steel Rangers and settle down and make a family.”

“Why couldn’t she stay with the Steel Rangers?”

“Because romantic fraternization with tribals and non-Rangers is forbidden. Hell, some chapters forbid even talking with non-Rangers.”

“So why are you hanging out with us, Shadow?” I asked, smiling back at him without even realizing I was doing it.

“Because the Trottingham Steel Rangers are different. Elder Litwick was one of the dissenters to the isolationism that most other chapter follow. He believed Star Ranger Steelhooves was right and we should use our technology to help ponies like Ministry Mare Applejack wanted, not act like glorified raiders. That’s why we’re here in Trottingham, across the sea and far away from Equestria. There was almost a civil war ten years back and Elder Litwick gathered all the Rangers that sympathized with his ideals and moved us here to help Trottingham with their monster problem.”

“Where’s this Steelhooves guy then?”

“He stayed behind. No idea why, but he turned down becoming Elder of the Manehatten chapter and lives in a shack on the outskirts of the ruins. The old ghoul just couldn’t leave for some reason.”

“He’s a ghoul?” I asked, surprised that there were ghouls in the Steel Rangers.

“Yeah. He was a Steel Ranger back during the war. Did you know him?”

“No, but... Wow...” I said, letting my voice trail off at the sound of shouts from below. Looking back, I could see what they were shouting about. The Pinkie Pie balloon was already filling up and poking its head over the top of the roof. It wouldn’t be long now before the raiders realized we were up there and try to stop us from escaping.

“What happened to your mother, Shadow?” I asked, turning back towards the balloon so I could help get everything set for take off.

“I-I’d rather not talk about it, Aria.” He paused for a moment before taking a deep breath and then sighing. “But promise me something.”

“What?”

“We ran into spritebots earlier. If you ever come across a spritebot that starts talking to you and calls itself Watcher, don’t trust it. Fuck, just blast the hunk of junk out of the sky,” he growled.

“Why?”

“Because Watcher’s the name of the son of a bitch that got my mom and sisters killed,” he spat.
Someone named Watcher was using the spritebots to kill ponies? That was a scary thought. With those lasers and the sheer number of spritebots the Ministry of Morale were manufacturing before I got blown into the future, if even a tenth of them survived there would be more bots out there for this ‘Watcher’ to use then I really wanted to think about.

“Okay. I will,” I replied.

“I think it’s almost ready, Aria. We need to hurry and take off,” Compass said before jumping into the basket.

“Right,” I said, following him into the basket and turning to Melody. “Once we get off the ground, the balloon should be light enough for you to push towards Gigaton. It will get us there faster if you do. Think you can stay on course to the Southwest?”

“Yup!” Melody said, saluting me with a smile before showing her Pipbuck to me. “I’ve got Gigaton marked on my map and EFS. There’s no way I can miss it!”

“Good. Let’s just hope-”

A roar cut through the mid morning air that made my heart skip at least two beats. There was a rumbling inside the Ministry building and I swallowed hard.

“That answers that question,” Shadow moaned.

“Jack isn’t dead,” Compass answered.

“Biscuits,” I swore. The Nightmare laughed.

“Just say shit. You did it earlier.”

“Come on, you stupid balloon! Lift!” Melody shouted, giving the basket a kick that actually moved it about ten feet. “Huh? Aria! It’s barely off the ground!”

“Then let’s kick the flame in high gear!” I shouted, pulling the cord down harder and sending a torrent of flame and heating gas into Pinkie’s head. Compass, meanwhile, started cutting some of the sandbags and the balloon leapt a good fifteen feet into the air. With an exasperated laugh, Shadowbuck struggled to lift his right hoof and pointed Southwest.

“Aria! Set up one of your shields to protect the balloon from ground fire! Melody! Push us home!”

“Aye aye, Captain Backside!” Melody cheered before flying up to the basket and pushing us back towards Gigaton.

Focusing a protective barrier around the balloon, I frowned when I realized I wasn’t strong enough to extend the shield around the basket and the entire balloon. The top of Pinkie’s head and her puffy pink curls were poking out of the top of my shield, mocking me with their stupid designs.

But as the bullets started flying and bouncing off my energy shield, I realized that no pony on the ground could actually hit the exposed area of Pinkie Pie’s head unless they were the luckiest shots in the world.

“Luna’s Luscious Lemon Squares! I’m going to jinx myself!”

“It’s always food with us, isn’t it? I’m surprised we’re not as big as Canterlot Castle.”

ROOOOOAR!

As we reached the riverfront, another roar ripped out of the Ministry hub causing the raiders to stop firing and turn towards the entrance. Before any of us could even breathe, a surge of wicked green flame poured through the front door, engulfing a few raiders and killing them almost instantly. Then, like a batpony out of Tartarus, Jack emerged, his wings already unfurling, and he jumped into the sky.

His ascent was slow and laborious, but I could see why. Straddling his back, a sniper rifle held perfectly in her teeth and balanced on her forelegs, was the dark pink unicorn mare from before. Even as Jack fought for altitude, the sniper mare was already lining up a shot and firing, striking a heavy blow against the underside of my shield and sending a jolt of arcane feedback through my mind.

“Shit! If I could move, I could line up a shot and take them out!” Shadowbuck lamented, and I had to agree. With his skill with a sniper rifle, I could wait for the raider on Jack’s back to take a shot, drop my shield, and let Shadow blow Jack’s brains out. But with Shadow’s suit still rebooting, Melody focusing on pushing us back to Gigaton, and Compass’ low caliber weapon, and lightning bolts being almost worthless against the deadened nervous system of a ghoul, running and defense were our best bets.

“That shot hit pretty dang hard,” I said, pouring more magical strength into my shield as I tried to reinforce our barrier. No sooner had I fortified our defenses did the raider knock them right back down. My reserves of magical strength, stronger they may have been, would not be able to keep this up forever.

“Should I try fighting back?” Melody asked, looking over her shoulder as she pushed us.

“Keep going, Melody. I’ve got this,” I told her, gritting my teeth as another bullet struck the shield and caused it to flicker.

“You can do it, Aria. I’ve got the burnout remedy from the Ministry of Peace, and... and I think I have a plan,” Compass said nervously.

“What’s your plan?” I grunted after pushing more mana into my shield.

“Just hold on a little longer for Jack to get into position. When I give the signal, I’ll need you to drop the shield, I’ll throw this, and Shadow can shoot it so it breaks over Jack and his sniper friend,” Compass explained as he pulled out the bottle of Zebra Tar Stuff and smiled nervously.

“That’s a great plan, Compass, but I can’t shoot with my battle saddle until my suits done booting. It’s been stuck at ninety percent for five minutes an-oh, nevermind. Ninety-one percent,” Shadow complained until Compass offered him his pistol. “Will this do?”

“I guess...”

Meanwhile, Jack was slowly gaining altitude and ground, no wait, air on us. The undead dragon let out a roar, unleashing a torrent of flame from below us that sent me reeling. The shield flickered, barely catching the mare’s sniper round, before the shield and I both collapsed.

“Crap! No time like the present, Compass!” Shadow said, his head exposed as I realized he had thrust his legs over the edge of the basket and was aiming Compass’ pistol at Jack and his rider.

“Celestia, I hope this works,” Compass prayed, wrapping the mystery bottle in his magical aura and chucking it over the side. Spurred on by his magic and probably some help from SATS, the bottle shot at Jack like a rocket. Opening his mouth wide to send one final blast of balefire at us, Shadow lined up his shot and fired.

CRACK!

The jar burst and a disgusting globule of thick black tar fell down Jack’s open maw. While that tactic would have caused almost instant suffocation for a living dragon, the tar seemed to just cause Jack severe discomfort. Clawing at his mouth and flapping even harder to stay aloft, snipermare’s next shot went wide, missing Shadow’s head by only a few feet.

“Gotcha, bitch!” Shadow said around the mouthpiece of Compass’ gun before firing another shot directly at the mare.

However, right as he fired, the mare lost her grip on Jack’s back and slipped. Instead of blowing her head off, the bullet cut through her ear and into Jack’s left wing. Roaring in muffled pain, Jack’s wing buckled and he and the mare plummeted right as I got my hooves back underneath me. Or, she would have if I didn’t see one of the most impressive displays of the simplest of magic tricks I had ever seen.

Floating high above the city, suspended only by her own telekinetic field, the mare took aim with her sniper rifle and smirked. Thinking as fast as I could, I erected my shield once again, covering all but the top of the balloon in protective magic. I was tired, but I knew that I could last much longer than she could stay aloft; the strain was already showing on her face.

“And they call me a one trick pony!” she shouted, and turned her rifle upwards. Following its path, I suddenly realized what she was aiming for, but before I could alter my shield, she fired. The bullet ripped a hole through the pink curls on the top of Pinkie’s head and the balloon lurched and started steadily dropping.

“So long, losers! When ya get to hell, tell the devil Ace sent ya!” the mare laughed, blood pouring down the side of her face, before giving us a salute, releasing her levitation spell, and diving head first towards the city below. I gasped and Shadow snarled as he fired shot after shot, missing horribly, before disappearing from sight into the ruins of an old soccer stadium. (Although I think Trottingham residents called it hoofball.)

“Guys! You’re dropping really fast!” Melody shouted as she tried to pull on the balloon and keep us afloat, but it was no use.

“We’re losing too much air, Melody! Take Compass and I’ll teleport Shadow and myself to safety!” I ordered as we sailed back over the river. We had crossed two bends and were only two more bends away from reaching Gigaton. We were so close, but it was time to abandon ship.

“I’m not leaving you!” Melody shouted.

“Me neither!” Compass yelled back, but Shadow shook his head.

“Go! Aria and I will meet you on the shore!” he said, pointing to an old boardwalk. “Can you get us there?”

“No problem!” I lied, trying to sound more confident than I actually was. I was wiped, almost all of my energy spent after the running, fighting, and abuse of keeping that shield up had pushed me to my limits, but I was sure I could at least get us to the shore.

“Okay,” Melody said reluctantly, taking Compass’ forelegs in hers and flapping hard to take off out of the basket. “Be careful.”

I nodded, heaving Shadowbuck over my shoulders and placing him on my back on top of my saddlebags. There wasn’t any time for comfort as the river below started rushing towards us faster and faster. Pinkie’s head was shriveled and hissing and I could hear the churning waters below. Focusing my magic on Shadow on my back and the beach, I pushed myself as hard as I could until I heard a BZZAP and felt something pop in my head again.

I opened my eyes, seeing stars, before I realized that something wasn’t right. When I felt wicker beneath my hooves, but didn’t feel any weight on my back except that of my armor, I realized I had teleported Shadowbuck, my saddlebags, and Aegis, but not myself. Before I could even try using magic with my newly burned out horn, the basket struck the water hard, sending me flying head over hooves into the water. I skipped twice, almost getting the wind knocked out of me and causing my helmet to fall off, before I splashed down hard into the radioactive river.

Thrusting my hooves out and trying to swim as Golden Star had taught me so many summers ago on the beach in Manehatten, I just couldn’t keep my head above the water for very long. The extra weight was too much for me and it was already getting hard to breathe. It was at that moment that I realized something very important.

It is impossible to swim in twenty five pounds of armor.

Taking one last gulp of precious air, I could see Shadowbuck and my shield lying helplessly on the shore. I could even swear I heard him call my name as the weight of my Lunar Guard armor finally pulled me under and I started sinking into the murky depths, the steady tick tick tickety of my Pipbuck being the sad funeral march playing as I plunged into the watery grave beneath me.

“Don’t worry, Aria. I’ll never let anything happen to you. I’ll teach you how to swim and you’ll never have to worry about drowning. As long as I’m here, you have nothing to fear,” I could hear Golden Star reassuring the nine year old me across the span of time and memory.

But Golden Star wasn’t with me. He was over a century dead and his statuette was on the shore with Shadowbuck. My magic had been taken from me again and the armor I had wanted for so long, the symbol of my devotion to my princess, was going to be my death. I had nothing left, no magic, no strength, no hope. There was nothing left for me.

“Give me your sorrow. Give me your hate. Give me your rage. I can give you the strength to live. The strength to rule. The str-”

Before the flame could continue, before I could accept his offer, something slammed hard into my chest. Precious bubbles of air escaped my lungs, but the pain was just beginning. A vice like pressure gripped down on my left fetlock, wrenching my shoulder as my bracer crushed my foreleg with a nasty crack. I screamed in agony, watching the last of my air rush out of my mouth and the most intense burning sensation in my life replaced it.

I gasped, replacing the oxygen with irradiated water as the pressure on my leg increased and threatened to severe it. As my eyes rolled back into my head and darkness started creeping into the brackish gloom around me there was another sharp crack and my watery world was filled with a familiar blue light. Somehow the light pulled my sight back into focus just in time to see the Star Sapphire glowing with the same ethereal light as the tunnel that brought me to the future, and in that light I saw my aquatic adversary.

A creature armored like a tank with pincers larger than my head had my foreleg in a death grip. Its hooves kicked with a strange ease as it tried to pull me deeper into the depths of the Trottingham River. Its beady eyes were focused on the light erupting from my wrist as it continued to tighten its grip until another pop came from within the gem.

Suddenly, there was only the light. At first I thought I was dead, but everything hurt and burned. My next thought was that I had finally fallen into Hell, but why did I feel like I was floating? Then, in the blink of an eye, I realized I was actually floating in an abyss, suspended in mid air with a gulf of emptiness quickly being refilled by the river. I tried to gulp down a breath even with the water occupying my lungs, but I didn't have time for much more than that. Realizing now that I was falling, I saw that the water around me was gone, vanished in the blink of an eye in a flash of blue light.

Gravity had taken effect again, and I was falling towards the river bottom as a tidal wave of water was rushing to fill the void that had once been my own personal tomb. I tried for one last, pained breath as hundreds of pounds of force crashed down all around me and sent me spinning back into the abyss. And just as everything went black and I lost consciousness, I heard a young colt’s voice whisper one word.

“Mama?”

“Wake up, Aria. We’ve made it to Manehatten,” Golden Star said as he gently shook me awake. My eyes fluttered open to see my brother’s smiling face. “You have a good nap, sis?”

“Yeah. I had a weird dream,” I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

“Really? What about?”

“I can’t really remember. Something about a crab,” I mumbled until I caught sight of the Manehatten skyline, its skyscrapers reaching for the sun while the Bucklyn Bridge stretched the East River that separated Bucklyn from Manehatten. My eyes widened and I rushed to the window, smiling at the sight of Equestria’s second largest city. It was so different from Canterlot’s high mountain side infrastructure and grand castles and manes. Manehatten was a city by the sea made of brick and mortar. While Canterlot was a city for princesses and royalty, this was a city made by ponies, of ponies, and for ponies. “Wow!”

“Yeah. I guess it is pretty impressive, isn’t it?” Golden Star laughed, and I nodded without taking my eyes off the cityscape before me. “So you were dreaming of crabs, huh?” I guess you’re really excited to go swimming at the beach. It’ll be your first time, right?”

“Mmmhmm...” I hummed apprehensively.

“What’s the matter?”

“I’m scared,” I said, watching the river flow beneath us as our train crossed the Hairy Cudson Bridge into Manehatten.

“Of what?”

“I can’t swim, Golden Star,” I admitted.

“Well then I’ll just have to teach you,” he said, giving me a reassuring smile.

“Really? But what if... what if I’m no good and I drown?”

“Don’t worry, Aria. I’ll never let anything happen to you. I’ll teach you how to swim and you’ll never have to worry about drowning. As long as I’m here, you have nothing to fear,” he said, putting his hooves around me and taking me into his strong, protective embrace. “So are you going to let me teach you?”

“Really?” I asked, turning away from the window.

“Of course. That’s what big brothers do, right? We protect our little sisters.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding and smiling happily. A week in Manehatten swimming at the beach, shopping on Fifth Avenue, and getting to see Sapphire Shores live? Plus, I was getting to do all of it with my big brother while he was on leave from the war? This was going to be the best weekend ever!

“Woah! Your house is almost as big as the palace!” I gasped, staring in wide eyed wonder at the expansive mansion and estate on the edge of the city as the taxi carriage pulled up to the steps leading to the gilded front door.

“I don’t think it’s that big, Aria, but dad does well for himself,” he said, tousling my hair playfully.

“Y-your dad? I-Is he here?” I asked nervously. I had never met Golden Star’s father, but from what I had heard from Uncle Blueblood, he hated me.

“Nah. His company just landed the contract to build the new railroad in Trottingham. He won’t be home for weeks,” he reassured me.

“Oh. Okay,” I said as he helped me out of the carriage.

“Come on, kiddo. I’m getting kinda hungry so you must be starving. I’m sure Clementine’s got something for us to snack on until dinner,” Golden Star said, turning and coming face to face with an older stallion in a tuxedo.

“Welcome home, Master Golden Star,” the gray earth pony with the pencil thin black mustache said drolly. “I did not know you were bringing a lady caller; especially one so... young.”

“Tuxedo, it’s good to see you again. Let me introduce you to my sister, Aria,” he said, kneeling down to put his hoof around me. “Say hello to Mr. Tuxedo, Aria.”

“Aria?” he asked, his eyes widening in surprise. “Master Golden Star, do you really think this is such a good idea. Your father-”

“My father doesn’t need to know. He’s so busy with his company that he won’t even notice.”

“He was always ashamed of us. Look at him try to hide us from his father,” a mare whispered in my ear. I turned, but no one was there.

“But sir-”

“Nope. Not gonna hear it. Come on, Aria. I’m sure Clementine’s got some milk and pie for us in the kitchen. She makes amazing peach cobbler too,” Golden Star said, ushering me past the uptight butler and into the mansion. “Do you like peach cobbler?”

“It’s okay. I really like strawberries.”

“That’s good to know,” he said before a smile crossed his face. “You know, there’s an ice cream parlor at the beach that serves great sundaes. I’m sure they can make you the best strawberry sundae you’ve ever tasted.”

“Yum! I can’t wait!” I cheered, smiling brightly.

“Ha. Grandma always said you think about food just as much as magic. You better be careful, sis, or you’re going to get a big tummy,” he joked, poking my sides and making me giggle.

“Nuh uh! You’re gonna get a fat tummy!”

“Fat? That’s crossing the line! Come here!” he joked, grabbing me with his telekinesis and lifting me onto his back as I laughed uncontrollably. He started trotting towards the kitchens, giving me his patented ‘World’s Best Ponyback Ride.’ “Come on, I can hear some peach cobbler calling our names. Can you hear it? Golden Staaaaar. Ariaaaaaa. Come eat meeeee.”

“We’re coming to eat you, Peach Cobbler!” I shouted, pointing off towards no place in particular. I didn’t know where the kitchen was, but I was pointing the way anyway because as long as I was with Golden Star, it didn’t really matter where we went; I had my big brother.

“Thank you, Miss Clementine! This cobbler is delicious.”

“You’re welcome, honey. I haven’t been able to cook for an appreciative young pony since your brother left to go to the military academy,” Clementine, an elderly orange mare with gray hair kept up in a hairnet, said, giving me a warm smile. “And please, dearie. Just call me Miss Clem.”

“Come on, Clem. I haven’t been gone that long,” Golden Star facetiously complained.

“It feels like ages for me. An old mare worries with you being shipped off to the front lines all the time. I’m sure little Aria worries about you too,” Clementine said, and I nodded while trying to swallow another mouthful of peachy goodness.

“Mmm-hmm. But getting to spend time with Golden Star when he gets to go on leave is awesome!”

“It’s fun for me too, sis. Just remember, my home is your home,” he said, ruffling my mane lovingly.

“But that doesn’t mean she is welcome in my home,” a stallion said harshly as he entered the kitchen, slamming the door open as he walked in.

“Dad? But I thought you were in Trottingham.” Golden Star leapt out of his chair, shocked as the blond maned unicorn burst through the door.

“I got back this morning, Rising Star is taking care of the final negotiations with the royals. How dare you bring her into my home!” Starshine shouted, thrusting his hoof into my brother’s chest.

“She’s my sister!”

“She’s not your sister, she’s your mother’s mistake!” Starshine yelled, piercing a hole in my heart deeper than any knife could have.

“Mr. Starshine! You shouldn’t say that in front of the filly!” Clem gasped, but Golden Star’s father didn’t hear her or care.

“Mom made a mistake, but Aria shouldn’t pay for it! She’s still my sister, dad!” Golden Star snarled, slapping his father’s accusing hoof away from him.

“She’s a constant reminder of your mother’s sin and I will not have her in my home!”

“Please... Don’t fight,” I pleaded meekly, but it fell on deaf ears.

“She doesn’t deserve to be treated like this!”

“She’s a bastard, Golden Star!”

“Don’t call her that!”

“Get that bastard out of my home! I will not have her under my roof!”

“Please...” I begged as the tears began to flow.

Clementine took me in a tight hug and whispered words of encouragement and consolement, trying her best to shield me from my brother and Starshine’s argument, but the words and the fear were hurting far more than any blows ever could. The fighting didn’t last much longer, mostly just Golden Star and Starshine repeating the same points over and over and shouting until finally Golden Star turned from his father in a huff.

“If she’s not welcome, then I’m not staying. I’m an adult now and actually fighting this war you keep running from. I’ll find my own place to stay and Aria will always be welcome there!” Golden Star shouted, before turning back to me. “We’re leaving Aria. We’ll go stay at the Mareyott Hotel, okay?”

“Don’t you turn your back on me, boy!” Starshine roared, reaching out with his hoof and spinning my brother away from me. “You’d choose this bastard over your own father!?”

“Let go of me, dad! I’m leaving!”

“You are making the biggest mistake of your life!” Starshine shouted, his eyes filled with rage as he grabbed Golden Star’s mane with his telekinesis.

“I don’t want to hurt you, dad!” Golden Star shouted, trying to wrench his hair free, but his father was holding tight.

“Yet you betray me like your mother!?”

“Leave him alone!” I shouted, a bolt of electricity leaving my horn in an uncontrollable burst of magical energy and striking Starshine with the intensity of all of my rage, pain, and sorrow. Starshine crumpled to the floor, releasing Golden Star’s mane so he could turn to stare at me in horror. Then, the world stood still.

“This is the power of our rage. This is the true us, Aria. If we had given into the power within us, this is how it could have been. Starshine dead and our brother all to ourselves. But instead we cowered and let him fight our battles. We let him get hurt. We should have given the flame what he wanted and escaped our watery grave, but instead you chose to give up and die,” the Nightmare whispered as she strode past me to take Golden Star in a hug, draping herself over his statuesque form. “We lost everything because you wanted to be good. You wanted to be Luna’s guardian, you wanted to get married. But what has that gotten us? Nothing!”

“But I’m not a bad pony!” I shouted, realizing I wasn’t a child anymore and back in my own body.

“Bad pony? Good pony? Who decides that? Celestia? She and the ponies of Equestria neglected Luna and shunned her gifts. But when she got angry over her mistreatment, what did they do? They banished her to the moon! You were loyal and good, but other ‘good ponies’ walked all over you! Good ponies are bad. Bad ponies can be good. There is no true good or evil, right or wrong, black or white! Embrace the strength within us and we can remake this broken world the way we see fit! It’s the only way to save Equestria!”

“But...” I looked to Golden Star, frozen in place with that repulsed look. Would Golden Star want this? Would Melody? But... I knew deep down that I was just so angry.

My family. Starshine. Brightlight. Cherry Scones.

The way they had treated me. All I had ever done was be alive and they treated me like garbage for it. To them the very act of my existence was enough to give me nothing but hate and scorn. Why did ponies who would treat me like that get such privilege while good ponies got hurt... or worse.

With that thought, the kitchen melted away, replaced by Canterlot as I had never seen it before. Pink mist filled the streets as horrifying ghouls shambled to and fro through the ruins of the once great capital city. Everything was dead in the city of dreams, the city that was home to goddesses.

“Look at Celestia and Luna’s folly, Aria,” the Nightmare said, gesturing to what my home had become. “They had the power to rule, the power to make their word reality, but they never took the steps to do it. They could have used the Elements of Harmony to bring true peace and harmony to Equestria. They could have remade the world in their image, but they didn’t.”

“Why not?” I asked, but the Nightmare just shrugged and took the skull of a long dead unicorn into her telekinetic grasp.

“They were powerful, but they were weak where it mattered most. They didn’t have the drive to do what needed to be done. But we have that chance, Aria. We can-”

A burst of white light burst forth from the Ministry of Wartime Technology building, and when we could see again, we were in the gardens in Canterlot. They were the way I remembered them, the bird singing beautiful melodies in the trees and the aroma of a multitude of gorgeous flowers filled my nostrils. Standing before us, Golden Star looked upon us gravely. From me to my darker self, he looked upon her with disgust and me with worry.

“Golden Star! Is this another dream or is that you?” I asked, rushing to him.

“It’s me, Aria. In your current state I could make another connection,” he explained, stepping over to the Nightmare.

“Golden Star...” She seemed just as torn as I was at Golden Star’s appearance. She still had that fire of hatred burning in her eyes, that horrible green glow dominating the violet that had once been, but it seemed to have softened at the sight of my... our brother. The way she looked at him, her eyes filled with the same joy and sorrow that I was feeling, I could truly believe that she really was me. A darker me, but me nonetheless.

“Aria. This isn’t you. You’re not like this,” he said, and the Nightmare looked away. Was she ashamed?

“But Golden Star,” she plead. “The world is such a horrible place. Even before the war, before the world turned to shit, ponies treated me like a monster. I was an outcast. But now I have this power within me. The flame promises me even more. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Keep on fighting, Aria. The Lightbringer has arrived in Equestria, but her light cannot reach the Elements of Harmony if the Darkness returns. Keep fighting, and stop Voidheart, then the day of sunshine and rainbows will come.”

“Why do you keep saying that? How can this Lightbringer really do all you say she will? Who is she?” I asked, approaching my brother and the Nightmare.

“She’s the spark, Aria. Remember that and remember what I keep telling you. Both of you,” he said calmly, taking us both into a hug. “Keep on fighting.”

I slowly opened my eyes and a dull pain wracked my body. Everything was sore and it actually hurt a little every time I took a breath. Coughing into the pillow underneath my head, my eyes slowly began to focus on the nightstand next to the bed. Golden Star’s statuette stood proudly, standing a silent vigil as I slept, while the Star Sapphire bracer sat at its base, giving off a faint glow that disappeared as soon as I noticed it.

“Huh?” I heard a voice say behind me. I turned over, even as my body protested the sudden movement, and saw Check smiling back at me, a tray carrying a bowl of soup and mug floating at her side. “You’re awake. Ya had me worried there, ya know? All of us, actually.”

“Check?” I asked, confused as to where I was and how I had gotten here. “Where am I?”

“You’re back in Gigaton, Aria. You were in pretty bad shape when Shadow and the others got back. Compass said he had to use up every last bit of medicine y’all had left,” she explained, setting the tray down on a chair next to the bed.

“But... I was sinking. I...” I couldn’t continue. The balefire blast and fighting raiders were one thing, but drowning... That had to be the worst way to die. The futility in fighting, the pain as the oxygen in your lungs left and was replaced by unimaginable burning, the cold fire as the water filled your lungs.

“They said you washed up on shore and weren't breathing. Compass worked his magic and said he even gave you the kiss of life,” she said with a smirk after sitting at the edge of my bed. “Although he kept calling it CPR or something.”

“I...I’m alive?” I said in disbelief. “But that crab creature. And the bright light.”

“Well, the crab creature was probably a mirelurk, best I can guess, and the bright light was probably just the light at the end of the tunnel I always hear ponies seeing when they’re near death,” she explained, putting a reassuring hoof on mine. “But you're not dead and that’s what’s important. Welcome back to the world of the living, fire flanks.”

I was alive. For the second time, I had cheated Death. But was that a good thing or not? It seemed that she was on my side, giving me this connection to my brother from the other side, but I had my doubts. What were Death and her friends really after? I couldn’t help but wonder why gods, if they even existed, were so interested in me. Were they honestly trying to help me or was I just some pawn they were trying to get across the board so they could finish some celestial game of chess?

“Hey there, Equestria to Aria. Ya in there?” Check asked, knocking on my head playfully.

“Yeah... Wait a second! The bomb!” I shouted.

“No need to worry. Melody, Cherry Scones, and I took care of it. It was tough work, but Cherry Scones and I figured it out thanks to the data on your Pipbuck,” she explained, pointing down to the Pipbuck still on my wrist.
“You worked with Cherry Scones? After what she...” I started to say until another spasm of coughing overtook me.

“Woah! Here, try some of this,” Check said, helping me sit up and offering me the mug. Taking it in my telekinetic sheathe, I held back another bout of coughs and sipped the sweet tea slowly. The warm liquid ran down my throat and the slightly spicy scent filled my nostrils and eased the stress on my lungs. As the pain and coughing abated, I greedily downed more of the restorative tea until it was all gone and Check laughed. “Thirsty, I take it?”

I nodded and she shook her head.

“And I see it took care of your cough too. Don’t worry, Tekash has a lot more of his honeyspice root tea at his shack.”

That caused another round of coughing.

“Tekash!? The zebra!? You gave me zebra tea!?”

Check just rolled her eyes at me over the frames of her sunglasses.

“The whole zebra thing again? Didn’t you learn anything? Life’s too short to spend it hating someone, especially someone ya never met. Look at his tea, it helped ya, didn’t it?”

“I guess,” I admitted reluctantly. “But how could you work with Cherry Scones after what she did to me?”

“I didn’t like it just as much as you, but with you out of commission, she was the only unicorn with the magical know how to make heads or tales of those arcane designs and spells to disarm that bad boy,” she explained. I didn’t like it, but she had a point.

“But what about the radiation?”

“That was actually pretty easy to take care of once the bomb was defused back to its base parts. Tekash spent day and night during the crisis making some weird shaman totems that absorbed necrotic energy. Besides the town square, almost all traces of the radiation are gone. The square’s gonna take a lot more time to clean up,” Check said before offering me the bowl of soup. “Here. You should eat. You’ve been out cold for over a day.”

“A day?” I asked, letting out a sigh of relief. “At least I didn’t miss my birthday.”

“Your birthday’s coming up? We’ll have to celebrate then!”

“I don’t really feel like celebrating. I feel like I’m cursed,” I said, grabbing my hind legs with my forelegs and pulling myself into a sitting fetal position.

“Why ya think you’re cursed, honey?” Check said, sitting next to me and putting a protective foreleg around my shoulders. I sipped the soup, which had a strange flavor I had never tasted before, yet it was rather tasty and wholesome.

“Because I’ve almost died four times in the last four days,” I said before taking another gulp of the delicious tasting broth. Whatever this flavor was, it was really growing on me.

“Please, fire flanks. That’s just the way the Wasteland is. If ya aren’t almost getting killed, ya ain’t living,” she said, giving me an affectionate squeeze that felt good at the moment. Some form of pony contact was acting as a pretty good balm to my aching soul. “I’ve got an idea that’ll do you a whole world of good.”

“What’s that?” I asked, taking another gulp and realizing I had almost finished the shallow bowl.

“We’ll prove you aren’t cursed by getting your fortune told,” she replied with a bright smile.

“My fortune? There’s a unicorn that knows divination magic in town?” I asked, setting the bowl down, my interests peaked.

“Nope. Tekash is really good at divining the past and the future with his magic deck of cards. He perfectly told me my past and everything he’s predicted about my future has come true. Well, except that last part.”

“Tarot decks,” I groaned, rolling my eyes. “That’s not real divination, Check. It’s just a cheap parlor trick.”

“Not his, Aria! Tekash told me my whole life story and I hadn’t told anyone. Then he told me a bunch of stuff from my future and it’s all come true except for the last part,” Check rebutted, raising her voice in aggravation.

“And what was that?”

“That I would find the love I seek in the last place I’d expect it. The love I so desperately need to heal my broken heart,” she said solemnly, taking me into a tighter hug. “I think a lovely young hero from Stable Sixty-Three is the last place I’d expect it.”

“And we’re done here,” I said, pushing her away and trying to stand. However, my legs trembled underneath my weight and I was suddenly very glad that Check rushed to catch me.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. But ya need to calm down and give Tekash a chance. Ya shouldn’t judge someone and call them a monster just because of the color of their coat,” Check said as she helped me get my hooves under me and let my body get used to walking again. Who knew spending a day in bed could make walking so much harder.

But Check’s words resonated with me. Everypony in my family treated me differently because I was brown. They treated me like garbage because of my coat color... Was I really doing the same thing to Tekash? But he was a zebra, a sworn enemy of ponykind, and...

“Hello! Having an Aria moment in there? So ya wanna come with? I’ll pay for the reading,” Check said, trying to give me a reassuring smile.

“You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

“Not until we get that little racist bug outta your butt,” Check giggled, and I sighed.

“Alright,” I groaned, causing her smile to brighten. “But if he does anything funny I’m not going to hesitate to electrocute him where he stands.”

“Noted,” she said, taking me by the forehoof and pulling me out into the living room.

“Where are we anyway? And where’s Melody, Compass, and Shadow?”

“Oh! We’re at my old place, now your place,” she replied. I must have been giving the biggest ‘What the Hay?’ face because she just laughed and pulled me over to the door. “I’ll explain on the way. Will and Bill wanted to give y’all Five Card Stud’s old place, but after I told him what happened there I talked him into giving me Stud’s place and y’all now have my place in exchange.”

“Was I in your room?” I asked, suddenly feeling a little uneasy.

“Of course! It’s the best bed in the house,” she said before moving in close to whisper in my ear. “I’ll have to show you the secret panel where I usually keep my ‘toys.’ I even left one behind for you. You did say you like stallions, didn’t you?”

“Oh? Maybe a good time with toys will lighten you up,” the Nightmare said devilishly, finally breaking her silence and shocking me out of my slightly perverted stupor.

“That seemed to have gotten your attention,” Check said with a wink, misinterpreting the cause of my surprise.

“Speaking of stallions, you didn’t tell me where my friends are,” I said, quickly changing the subject.

“Oh, well, Shadowbuck’s helping his fellow rangers set up the memorial for Bulletstorm and the other rangers Jack killed. Everything that happened yesterday has kinda changed shaken things up a bit.”
“What do you mean?”

“To start, the Royal Flush Raiders have been kicked out and are officially banned from Gigaton. I even heard Stableton banned them too. Something about putting their petty war with the Steel Rangers ahead of saving the city finally caused Will and Mayor Crapshoot to finally take a stand against them,” Check explained.

“Mayor Crapshoot?”

“Yeah, good buck, but a real unfortunate name.”

“Okay, but where’s Melody and Compass?”

“Moorheart’s. They rented a room for some ‘special time.’ Lucky gal,” Check answered, causing me to suddenly have a flashback to the boat. Wow! Was my face burning!

“Okay, um, well, let’s get to Tekash’s then,” I said, trying to change the subject away from sex again. Why was that such a common topic now? It almost never came up back in Canterlot.

“That’s the spirit! Let’s get your future divined!”

“You mean, 'Let’s divine your future.'”

“Whatever ya say, ya grammar legate.”

A short time later we arrived at Tekash’s house on the outskirts of town just inside the wall. It’s simple design made with the base of a concession stand reinforced with driftwood, metal beams, and wrapped in strange, out of place vines that I had no idea how to identify. To be honest, I was actually pretty nervous and wondering if this was such a good idea.

This was actually the first time I had ever seen a zebra in person. I was actually surprised he didn't have fangs or glowing red eyes. Of course, I had had fangs and glowing green eyes last night, so could I really judge anypony for that anymore? My tongue poked the back of the newly grown fang in my mouth, hoping that it had disappeared. I was yet again disappointed.

You must be wondering how I had never met a zebra in real life before. I had been only three years old when the Wonderbolts Incident occurred and the minor trade disputed took its first major steps towards erupting into the full out war that had destroyed the world. After that, Canterlot had pretty much became a no zebra zone and Equestria's zebra citizens were moved to camps and towns delegated just for them.

Now I was about to step foot into the home of a creature I had been told my entire life had no redeeming qualities and stood for everything ponykind opposed, but for some reason Shadowbuck, Check, and the citizens of Gigaton seemed to accept and respect him. Could zebrakind have changed for the better in the Wasteland while ponykind had obviously degraded? Or...

“Don’t tell me you're getting cold hooves, Fire Flanks?” Check asked, appraising me over the rims of her sunglasses.

“N-No!”

“Okay. Then I guess you ya won’t mind if I do this,” she said before knocking loudly on the shack’s aluminum door.

“Okay, Aria. Open mind. How bad can Tekash be if so many ponies like him? Exception that proves the rule, maybe? Or perhaps he was raised by ponies and that tempers the evil in his zebra heart? That could be an explanation, right?”

“Or he’s fooling all of these gullible, stupid ponies into believing his lies,” the Nightmare hypothesised.
Before I could think up any other explanations to calm my nerves, the door opened a crack and Tekash peaked through with half lidded green eyes.

“Oh, Checkers, is there some problem or deviation? Are the totems not cleansing the town of the radiation?” Tekash asked in a thick zebra accent and the rhyming speech pattern his race was known for. That did nothing for my mood or my preconceptions of Gigaton’s resident shaman. “And I see you have brought a friend. I’m am Tekash, I hope I did not offend.”

“Cut the rhyming, Tekash. She doesn’t need to be sold on anything. I already talked her into getting a reading. My treat. Aria, this is Tekash. Tekash, this is Aria, the Nightmare Knight. ”

That got his attention.

“The Nightmare Knight? Please come in,” Tekash said plainly, losing the accent and rhyme scheme altogether.

“Okay, that was weird.”

I followed check into the main room of the altered amusement park booth, its furnishing mostly comprised of red curtains, shelves covered in strange brews and totems, and a black table covered in strange, green glyphs of unknown origins, but most likely they were zebra.

“So you want me to give the Nightmare Knight a reading, huh? I’d usually say no since her affiliation with Nightmare Moon would be a bad omen.”

“It’s just a name that radio DJ gave me because I wear Lunar Guard armor,” I spat. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Settle down, girl. Let’s just keep things friendly,” Check said, putting a hoof on my shoulder. “But ya don’t got a problem with that, do ya?”

“I guess not. Howling Buck and DJ-Pon3 can be a little sensational at times,” he said with a shrug before taking a seat on the other end of the arcane table. Gesturing to the other seats, Tekash smiled. “And no charge. You did brave the Ministry Hub to get the town the key to saving it, so it’s the least I can do.”

“See, Aria? I told ya he was a good buck,” Check said righteously. Why didn’t my glare work on mares?

“Can we start so we can get this over with?” I sighed. Tekash gave me an unsettling smile before a deck of cards appeared in his left hoof.

“I told ya he was good, Fire Flanks,” Check said, nudging me in the side while giving me a smirk.

“It’s just a simple sleight of hoof trick. It’s not real magic.”

“Ah! So we have a skeptic? Allow me to show you the power granted by the spirits of old, Nightmare Knight Aria,” Tekash said, fanning out the cards across the table, face down. Then, with a simple tilt of his hoof, he deftly flipped all the cards to reveal a deck unlike any I had ever seen. It had a few of the standard suits and images of a tarot deck, but two cards drew my attention.

Devil and Death.

While having Celestia and Luna as Sun and Moon were normal across all cultures, even the zebra, this deck had two alicorns I had never seen depicted before. Death, a white alicorn mare clad in black robes and carrying a long scythe, and Devil, a black alicorn made completely of shadow, his glowing red eyes staring back at me.

But with another turn, the cards flipped back face down so Tekash could join the deck together, split it into two stacks, and flip one stack backwards before shuffling the two back together.

“That’s an odd tarot deck,” I said, as he started setting cards face down across the table.

“It has been in my family for countless generations. It is said my ancestors were priests in the Summersand Isles,” he said as he placed the final card and folded his hooves in front of his face, watching me intently.

“Um, okay?” I asked, unsure of what the relevance of such ancestry actually meant.

“Then I shall begin the ritual,” he said with a smirk, closing his eyes and fanning his hooves over the cards. “Oh great Dream, Lord of the Unseen World, grant me the sight to see the many fold destinies and divine their true purpose.”

“What?” I thought, my eyes widening in surprise as the cards let off a soft glow and an ethereal chill ran down my spine.

“He knows about Dream!”

“Oh, this is the real cool part,” Check murmured softly, but I nodded. I couldn’t see anything to point this trick as just a simple ruse or magician’s illusion. I dare not touch the cards to see if there was some sort of film to cause the glowing, but I couldn’t see any form of black light or hex flame to cause this reaction.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Oh great Timestream, Lady of the Sands of Fate, grant me the power to pierce the sapphire veil and cross the swirling vortex of your domain,” Tekash continued, and I swallowed hard. That was two Eternals he had just mentioned, and that sapphire veil and swirling vortex sure sounded familiar to me. “Of the Seven from the stars above, grant me sight beyond sight. Of the Six whose power is known, grant me strength. Of the One from Below, be gone from this place. Of the power of Destiny itself...”

Suddenly a gale of wind threw open the door and rushed past us, howling an unknown song, and three cards flipped over to reveal The Fortune, The Empress, and The Hermit. Tekash opened his eyes, a soft smile crossing his face that unnerved me more than the occult display Check and I had just witnesses.

“Are you ready to delve into your past, Nightmare Knight Aria?” Tekash asked, his voice somber and hushed.

Part of me wanted to find out how he had pulled off such tricks since he wasn’t a unicorn, but the invoking of Dream and Timestream during the ‘ritual’ had left me a little shellshocked so all I could do was nod. I didn’t believe he could tell me anything about my past, most likely it would just be vague ‘predictions’ of a charlatan fortune teller, but for now my skepticism was put in check by the mention of two of the divine beings that seemed to be playing an unknown game with my life.

“Three cards of your past in reverse, an odd combination. The Fortune is upside down, revealing to me that your life should have been one of privilege, but instead was one of poverty. Whether it was true poverty or one of love or spirit, I do not know,” he said, before looking into my eyes and bowing his head. “Although I sense the poverty was one of love.”

“I didn’t know you had it so rough, Aria,” Check said, putting a foreleg around my shoulder.

“That’s just coincidence, Aria. Nothing more that vague platitudes,” I told myself. It was all a part of the trick.

“The Empress is in reverse, telling me you were stripped of a role of power and leadership while the Hermit tells me you are alone in our world,” Tekash added.

“She’s got Melody and Compass, Tekash. I think your mojo’s a little off today,” Check added before whispering. “And ya got me too, if ya need a friend.”

Tekash simply gave me a knowing smile before touching the next card. As he turned the first, three others flipped with it even though they were not touching.

“I see your family. I see the warrior, standing stronger in your defense. A brother perhaps?”

“Golden Star...” I whispered before shaking myself out of my shocked revery. The Warrior being a father or brother was a simple association. He had a fifty-fifty chance of being right. He moved his hoof to three cards that had flipped onto each other, pulling the face down card underneath The Sun and Moon cards and placing it on top of them.

“Next I see the Twins, the family beyond your reach within The Sun and The Moon. This I do not understand.”

“Damn! You’re good, Tekash. Aria here’s a bonafide princess. Cadence was all over her and Melody for being related to Celestia and Luna.”

“C-Coincidence. You just set this up since you probably heard about my connection to Queen Cadence,” I said dismissively, and Tekash shrugged.

“Believe what you will, Nightmare Knight Aria,” he said before pointing to the last card. “The Lovers in reverse where your parents should be. You never knew you mother and father, did you?”

My eyes widened and Tekash chuckled, obviously amused by my reaction.

“Would you like for me to divine some information on them?”

All I could do was nod.

Flipping one card, Tekash revealed the The Priestess.

“Your mother was a mare with a great passion for knowledge, a great love in her heart, and a hidden truth that even she did not know.”

“And my father?” I asked, moving forward in my seat before I knew what I was doing.

“Your father,” he said, turning another random card and his breath caught. There it was. The Devil, his hateful green eyes staring back into my soul.

“The Devil? What the hell does that mean?” Check asked, her gaze passing back and forth between Tekash and myself.

“That her father was a stallion with great darkness in his heart. A deceiver and betrayer. He was one who was beyond redemption,” he said, returning his gaze to match my own. “I am sorry for this.”

“I...” I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to believe a word of this reading, but the longer it went, the more truth Tekash was able to divine from simple pieces of paper. My mother had studied Mathematics here in Trottingham when she was younger and had even furthered her education in Manehatten University; it was where she had met Starshine. Golden Star was The Warrior and The Sun and The Moon with the Twins had to represent Luna. Plus there was the whole lost privilege and alone in this world thing.

So could it be possible that he was right here too? Could my father have really been some horrible pony who deceived my mother? Or worse... Could the reason my mother said she never cheated on Starshine, but I wasn’t Starshine’s daughter be that she had been raped and was too ashamed to admit it? Could my father have raped my mother?

“I’m so sorry, Aria,” Check said, giving me a little squeeze that I barely felt through my shock. If my father was this horrible person, then who was Guardian Heart? I shut my eyes tight and fought the urge to scream.

“Damn it! Why did Dream have to show me that vision!? Why is this all so confusing!”

“I just want answers, damn it!” I shouted without realizing it and thrust my hooves over my mouth.

“Then answers I shall give for the cards will tell me your future. May it be better than your past,” he said. Flipping one card so that four more turned over as well, he stopped and stared once more, wide eyed and shaking his head. For the longest time he kept staring at the card while occasionally looking up at me and muttering something under his breath. Justice was upside down next to Death and The Judgment was on top of The World in reverse while the card before me revealed The Star. “No... No. This is not possible.”

Looking up at me, his eyes suddenly becoming darker and filled with a mixture of fear and hatred, he snarled.

“Get out,” he said in a low, angry tone.

“What?”

“I said get out! Be gone!” he said, raising his voice and leaping from his seat to point towards the door.

“Tekash! What the hell? This ain’t like you one bit! What’s got you so spooked!”

“I never believed the old tales, but the signs are here. The cards point to it. She is the one spoken of in prophecy, the one who only brings destruction.”

“I almost gave my life saving this stupid city!” I shouted, jumping to my hooves and letting my chair clatter down behind me.

“There is a great rage in you. Of this I am certain. You are she,” Tekash said angrily, his nose twitching more and more as his fury grew.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Tekash? Let’s just calm down you two,” Check said, trying to defuse the bomb that was already exploding in her face.

“The signs are here and in her eyes. The Nightmare Knight is the daughter of lies. As Nightmare Moon in whom she serves, destruction is all that she yearns. To zebrakind you are known near and far as the blighted Maiden of the Stars,” Tekash said.

“Not this bunch of horse apples again!” I scoffed. The zebra back in my time had called Princess Luna the Maiden of the Stars and used it as some sort of rallying cry in the war. It was a bunch of bullshit used to spread fear and make the zebra forces almost fanatical on the battlefield. I wasn’t going to stand for this slander.

“I see the balefire in your eyes and you served the Nightmare Mo-”

“Don’t you call her that, you dirty savage!” I screamed, wrapping him in my telekinesis and throwing him into the far wall.

“You are not of our world, but of the last! The cards have spoken! Death will come to Justice, tyranny shall reign, and dark judgment will befall our world and be destroyed! You are the Avatar of the Stars, the Maiden of Destruction! You were born to bring about this world’s destruction, Aria the Nightmare Knight!”

“Look around you, you damn stripe! Your kind already did that!”

“To stop the last Maiden from doing it first!”

“That’s the biggest load of-”

“Guys! Stop fighting! Tekash! Stop it! Aria’s not like that!”

“The Maiden is a deceiver, Check. How long have you know this girl? A day? Yet you are in her thrall already. Turn back or you will be one of her victims!”

“Enough!” I screamed, tossing him through the far wall and into a bedroom in the back. Crumpling against his bed, Tekash lifted his head to smile at me.

“You know it to be true,” he coughed. “You will destroy this world, Nightmare.”

“Sounds good to me,” she replied.

“No!” I screamed, picking him up again.

“Stop it! Both of you!” Check screamed and an apple grenade appeared next to both of us. The one near Tekash was a yellow banded stun grenade, but the one floating in front of my face was a blue banded, magic disrupting grenade. “Aria! Put him down! Tekash! Apologize!”

“Don’t listen to her. End him!” the Nightmare ordered, but the grenade made me pause. That kind of grenade at close range could shut down my magic all over again and leave me weak and useless. After two days without magic and almost dying multiple times because of it. I needed my magic to survive.

Turning, I stormed out the door. I had been right all along. That zebra was just like I had been told, a superstitious, lying, monster. They were hateful creatures who didn’t deserve to live and I had been right. That Maiden of the Stars crap was all just a bunch of zebra hoodoo. It wasn’t real magic or divination either.

Then why was I so spooked by his prediction? Was it because he knew about Dream? Or maybe because of what I had become yesterday. Or...

“Me?”

“Shut up!”

“Aria! Wait up!” Check shouted as she rushed out of Tekash’s shack to catch up to me. I turned a corner, hoping she took the hint and wouldn’t bother me, but instead she kept following. “Aria! Stop!”

“What!?” I shouted, spinning around on her. “What do you want? To tell me to give that stupid striped jerk another chance!? To let him tell me that Princess Luna was some monster and that I’m some demon?”

“Aren’t we? Well, by their standards?”

“Aria...” Check said, trailing off and looking away from me.

“I thought so.”

I turned away again, not knowing where I was going, but I wasn’t really in any kind of mood right now.

“Wait. Can we talk about this?” Check asked, placing her hoof on my shoulder again.

“What’s there to talk about. You were wrong. That zebra is everything I was ever taught about and worse. I can’t believe you would have sex with something like that,” I snarled, brushing her hoof off me.

“I-I don’t know what got into Tekash. He’s not like that. And... I just wanted to find something to fill that hole in my heart,” she said, her voice shaky. I turned to see tears streaming down her face.

“Check?” I asked as the anger in my heart started to melt away. Something about seeing this strong and confident pony breaking down in front of me made it hard for me to stay angry. “What do you mean?”

“I-I just want to be loved by somepony. I want to feel loved again. Like before...” Check sniffed. Taking off her sunglasses to wipe her tears, she revealed thick scars under her eyes. They followed the crease of her eyelids and looked as if somepony had tried to rip her eyes open by force. There was some fading, which I guess meant it had been many years ago, but the sight of those scars were pretty disturbing.

“What happened to you?” I asked, taking a step towards her.

“It... I don’t want to talk about it, but I... I’m sorry for bringing ya there, Aria. Please don’t be mad at me,” Check pleaded, replacing her glasses while trying to compose herself.

“Why? Why do you even care about what I think of you? Why are you so obsessed with me?”

“Because of what Tekash told me,” she said, rubbing the back of her right forehoof nervously.

“What did he tell you?”

“That... that I’d meet a mare with fire in her eyes, marked by lightning and flames, who would lead me to the love that would fill the hole in my heart. The love I would find in the last place I’d look to find it,” she explained before looking up over her glasses at me. “I think a mare from Stable Sixty-Three would be the last place I’d ever look.”

“Check... I don’t like mares like that. I’m not the pony for you. I can’t fill that hole in your heart. I wish I could...”

“Ya do?”

“Yeah... I-I never knew my parents. My family all but abandoned me except my grandmother and brother,” I admitted, feeling almost seventeen years of hurt bubbling up inside me and flowing out of my mouth.

“And ya have Melody,” Check said, trying to give me a reassuring smile while fighting back her own pain.

“And Melody.”

“Come here,” Check said, taking me into a completely platonic hug that I really needed and I’m sure she needed too.

“Maybe we can help each other,” Check whispered in my ear.

“Yeah...”

“And if you’re worried about being the Maiden of the Stars, I can help ya with that Maiden part too,” she laughed.

“No! Bad pony!” I shouted, breaking the hug as I started punching her on the shoulder.

“I’m joking! I’m joking!” she giggled. “Come on! I couldn’t resist! That was too good a joke to pass up!”

I growled at her, but ceased my pummeling while giving her my best glare. Yet again, it was completely useless against Check’s feminine anti-stare barrier.

“Come on. Don’t give me that look! How about we head over to Moorheart’s and I treat ya to a drink. What’s your poison?” Check asked, pulling me back down the road towards the bar.

As we started walking away, I took one last glance back at Tekash’s shack to see the zebra staring at me from his doorway. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t afraid of me, he actually seemed... sad?

“Zebra are crazy!” I thought, returning my attention to the road ahead. “Just push it out of your mind, Aria. That stripe was just that, a stupid, superstitious, primitive idiot.”

As we reached the bar, I looked up at the windows and makeshift balconies wondering which room Melody and Compass were in. Then I remembered what they were doing and had a new dark thought running through my mind, fighting for control of my subconscious nervous energy. As we stepped into the dimly lit tavern, I spied Shadowbuck, Boom, Backdraft, and Buzzsaw sitting around a table, their attentions focused on the beers in front of them and their voices hushed in reverence. I lifted a hoof to get Shadow’s attention until I suddenly felt another chill run down my spine. A colt whispered into the back of my mind again, stopping me cold.

“Mama. Where are you, mama?”

Footnote: Level Up

New Perk: Spell Alacrity: The initial AP cost for casting spells is reduced by -10.

Quest Complete: Why I Learned To Love The Bomb.

Author's Footnote: Special thanks to my editor/pre-reader Chimpso for the help with editing. I'd also like to thank Volrathxp for the story recommendation and to Somber for letting me use her 'Maiden of the Stars' idea. The side story for the writing contest and life in general delayed this one, but I hope you enjoy it. Thanks again for reading and I hope to see all of you again for Chapter Nine - Into The Heart Of Darkness.