She probably did not need to carry on with her cello for nearly a third of an hour, but Rollins figured that unless it started raining she could play until the girls with power armor and heavy flamers got bored. When she finally brought the music to a close after seventeen minutes and bowed her head to refocus, absolute silence filled the intersection. The songs she had played on the streetcorner were light and soothing, designed to convey a mood rather than be performed for their own sake. She had whipped them up on the spot, borrowing from others' work and improvising rather like a DJ, but musicians had been doing that since long before "wubs" were conceived. What the grey mare had just completed was a performance of grand old music worthy of a full concert hall, but she had made do with the blockaded intersection.

The cellist looked up with slightly flushed cheeks and smiled hopefully at the lead Imparter. If she was to die, at least she had gotten to play for an audience first. A real audience, who could appreciate her gift. Before the blonde mare could speak, the pegasus stepped between them, brandishing his sidearm and seizing the moment as the ARGUS Little Red Book mandated.

"Allow me, glorious sister of the Educarchy." He leveled the pistol at Octavia's head. The sniper idly noted that it was made of cheap sheet metal and had only the most elementary of trigger runes. She almost felt insulted to be threatened by so crude of a weapon, but knew that it mattered very little at point-blank range. Remember, my daughter. You will face idiots, not equals, but an idiot with power will often be more dangerous. She steadied her breathing, and filed the memory away once more. "The Will of the Council of Nine is that Equestria be free of all discordant taint, and enforcing the Will of the Council is ARGUS' absolute duty!"

"If thou pulls the trigger, I will make a pyre of thee before all thy men, for thou will have harmed one who most certainly has the favor of Her Solar Majesty." The Imparter blinked a few times and cleared her throat. Behind her, the two other members of her team had donned their helmets to cover their own eyes. "Not even from the lips of foals have I heard such sweet music."

Rollins nodded humbly, then decided to twist the knife. He really hated being yelled at by ponies, the Lady Bon Hadescream excepted, and the pegasus had gotten spittle in his feathers. "We have wounded," he did not add that they were all in stable condition or doped up on medi-gel, "and most of us are exhausted from the night's battles. We were trying to relocate, but ARGUS arrived..."

"You cannot be fooled by such a simple thing as music!" The pegasus jabbed a hoof at the grey mare. "She has consorted with the discordant pigdogs, and we have reports of even more disgusting monsters who lurk among their ranks! The whole of their Organization must be purged, there is no-"

"To call music simple is to deny its might. To deny its might is to deny truth." The Imparter stepped forward and glared the pegasus down. "To deny truth based in sound doctrine is to open thy mind to the blackness of lies, and that is the sure path to ruination. This one of earth has revealed to us her soul." She turned to look at Rollins, then bowed her head. "Go in peace, operatives of the Ancient Organization... but know that we watch all for corruption." The Imparter gestured toward the milling mobs of ARGUS soldiers, many still spellbound by the grey mare's performance. Octavia blushed, then meekly waved at one who blew her a kiss. "And the influence of the Educarchy is both deep and wide."

"Thank you, Sister-Imparter," the gryphon nodded. "May you and yours walk in wisdom, and find the truths you seek." He smiled impishly at the pegasus, then practically drug Octavia back to the AFV. The communications officer clambered into the driver's seat, waited impatiently for the ARGUS Chimera to rumble out of the way, and floored the accelerator.

After a few moments and a few kilometers, he accepted that they probably would not be followed and blasted halfway to Canterlot. Rollins let out a very long sigh, then shrugged off his voxcaster, set it next to the seat, and twisted some dials. While the machine-spirits sang in warbling tones as they searched for another signal, he glanced over his shoulder. "You can let the sealed evil in a can out now, if you want." Had the vampire made a sudden recovery and then set her cold, black heart on shaking hooves with the Educarchy, he was fairly certain that the Imparters would have gladly melted the entire intersection.

Octavia stood in the little portal between the driver's compartment and the AFV's cramped hold. Two badly burned ponies lay on the floor, thick coats of medi-gel slathered over their bodies. The rest of the survivors were in little better shape. One was doped with painkillers and staring curiously at what used to be her left hind leg. After a moment of consideration, the grey mare decided that Vinyl seemed happy enough where she was. The vampire had acted like this a few times before, but only after receiving wounds that would have atomized a lesser creature. She sighed, realizing that she would have to pour some blood packs into the barrel and hope that perked her friend up. They would just have to get back to the safehouse and check the medical bay... Oh. She glanced down at the driver, then settled into the other seat in the front of the AFV.

She was very quiet, but her eyes never moved off of the driver. Rollins knew what she was waiting for him to say. "We regroup, and try to consolidate what we can." He swerved to the right, the motorized AFV barrelling past a traditional horse-drawn carriage.

The city was waking up, ponies trotting out of their houses or apartments to carry on their lives. All of them thought that the biggest problem in the world was if their favorite sports team could win the big game tonight, and wouldn't it be grand if they could put a few more bits away for retirement this month. The headlines on their newspapers spoke of new railroad lines and grand feats of technomagery, hallmarks of a world that lived in peace and freedom. No eyes followed the speeding AFV. Why should they look, it was nothing more than a service vehicle. Moving rather fast though, but that just meant somepony else was getting an early start of it this morning. Oh, a building had burned down or something, quite the sad thing to hear about. Noisy too, but those brave fireponies had put out the blaze, good show!

Rollins sighed. The act of driving an armored automobile was as natural to him as flying. He had learned as soon as he was large enough to reach the controls. That was the kind of childhood one had growing up in Camp Pendulum. He took another deep breath. "And we hope that I'm not the highest ranking officer left in the whole city." The gryphon drummed his talons on the controls, then murmured something inaudible.

"You did well, Rollins," Octavia smiled at him. "Thank you."

"I'm communications. Not tactical command," he grumbled. "Hades, in gryphon years, I'm barely old enough to vote... oh, wait, that's right." The communications officer laughed bitterly. "Gryphons don't have representative government, we just beat the tar out of one another to pick a king."

"You do not live in the Gryphon Kingdom. You were born under Celestia's sun." The grey mare knew this was how he bled off stress. They had worked together for almost two years, and Octavia knew that the Lady Bon Hadescream trusted him even more than she trusted her. "We survived. That is what matters."

A sly grin crossed his beak. "Yeah... and hey, we were worth killin', eh?" He kept his eyes on the road, but a horrible memory from before he was even able to fly flickered before his eyes. Rollins pushed it away. Everyone had baggage, and Pendulum had swung it out of him. Mostly. I can still smell the blood. I can still hear that voice. He swallowed hard and clenched the controls tighter. That memory was what pushed him. Every operative had something to fight for. His was the reason he grew up in Pendulum instead of a happy home.

Octavia blinked. "I... suppose so, yes." She did not understand why the gryphon seemed to perk up at that idea. "Rollins-"

"Lieutenant Rollins," he smirked. "Asset." The comms officer kept a straight face for a moment, then started laughing, "or you can call me worm in the dirt, it's about the same as far as ranks go."

She shook her head and sighed as he braked, then slewed the AFV around a particularly slow moving wagon. "I have seen you order entire branches around, Lieutenant Rollins." Yes, he could be a jerk, but he was a smart jerk. Neither of them were particularly lucid at the moment. Both knew they had escaped for a moment, but were still in far more trouble than either wanted to think about. In the troop compartment, she could hear the operatives chuckling as they shared jokes. They had survived. The mind needed a way to cope.

"Ah, no you haven't." He snickered. "You've seen me enforcing the will of the Lady Bon Hadescream when I was issued special authority to do so. I'm just a conduit for her wishes." Rollins glanced to the side and winked. "You are the big hero."

The grey mare poked him in the shoulder. "I am a cellist. Nothing more."

"And nothing less," the gryphon retorted. Silence hung between them for a moment, then he slowed the AFV to a stop at a light. With a sigh, he realized that they could not put it off any longer. "We're noosed. ARGUS wouldn't have pushed like that if they weren't planning to take the city." He tapped the voxpack. "I haven't gotten an active signal from any of the other outposts, or on-duty teams. My long-distance pack was back in that burned building, so we can't get a signal out... and ARGUS is going to have the train station locked down before we even get there."

Octavia shook her head. "They cannot just shoot us in public."

Rollins rubbed his forehead. "They don't have to. They'd just bomb the train." He raised a claw. "Yes, I know who runs the rail lines, and yes they would get in big trouble, but I think once that officer gets back to ARGUS HQ, he's going to be motivated to risk anything." He took a breath, and glanced up at the still-red light. "The city's lost. I'm calling it. That means we need to preserve as much value as possible."

The Asset took a breath, and leaned back in her seat. She did not know if the past twenty-four hours had been horrible or wonderful. There had been music and victory, but also so much pain and loss. "The skyport, then. We should be able to charter a-"

"Nope." For the same reason as the train station.

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "Then... what?"

He kept his eyes on the road as the light turned green. "You and the bloodsucker are worth more to the Organization than the rest of us put together. You two are the reason ARGUS hit us so hard at the safehouse."

"One of the operatives mentioned a spider-"

"-drone. Yeah. That's what I thought." He rubbed his forehead with the back of a claw. "We lost an outpost two months back. Received a crate that supposedly was full of new pots and pans they had ordered from a cookware company. Inside were a bunch of metal spiders that blew everypony to hades and back, except for one pegasus who managed to get clear." The gryphon did not mention that the medics refused to say if she would ever fly again. "When I saw the leech come flying out the window, the pieces started to click." His official post was as a communications aid to the Lady Bon Hadescream. Unofficially, he was her wings. Lambda was her private army, he was just the courier pigeon. It was what he loved to do, all the fun with none of the responsibility. Then nights like this happened, when lives were in his claws, and there was nobody around he could pass the bit to.

The grey mare nodded. "The local branch bought surplus equipment from ARGUS. I suppose you would call the spider-drone a gift-with-purchase?"

He chuckled. "Yeah."

"This... they cannot be doing this," Octavia said simply, refusing to accept what she had seen for the past two years with her own eyes. "We are all ponies. We share a purpose, a nation, a... a common decency. They cannot be trying to destroy us."

"Yeah, they can. Systematically and thoroughly, all the while knowing we can't hit back in kind. It wouldn't be the first time."

"What do you mean?" The cellist felt a sinking feeling in her gut, stronger even than the rush of joy from playing for that wonderful audience.

The gryphon turned left. "I mean... the Bon Hadescream Organization's been wiped out completely before. Twice, that I know of." He kept his eyes on the road, and ignored the horrified expression on her face. "But we always come back from the ashes. That's what the Spire does. It's a little fire in every heart that helps us make hard calls. It's how we endured for almost a thousand years, while all these other little secret societies are flashes in the pan."

She looked at him suspiciously. "Lieutenant... where are you taking us?"

"I'm headed for the city limits. I'm going to drop you off, along with whatever rations we have." He took a breath. "There's a forest, and I know you're class-A on survival and evasion. ARGUS won't find you, no matter how hard they try. You're going to take that barrel of vampire scrap and head northwest until you reach-"

"No." Octavia's tone was firm. "I know what you are thinking. You will stay behind and provide a distraction, a game of cat and mouse with ARGUS. You would buy us time with your lives."

"I'll get the wounded out," he rebutted quietly, keeping his voice low so those in back would not hear. "Without you two, we could go to the Educarchy Sanatorium." Like hades I would. I'll take medi-gel and cloned organs over their mad scientists any day. "You-"

"No, Rollins," she said firmly. "It is a noble idea, but it is unacceptable. I will not look the Lady Bon Hadescream in the eye and tell her that I lost you. ARGUS caught us by surprise, but we will win."

The gryphon began to laugh. "Octavia. We're the last ones left. A pocketful of torn-up operatives, a barrel of rubbish who in about an hour will turn stiff as a stone and need to be protected from the sunlight, and a pretty earth pony with a cello." He slowed the AFV to a stop at another light and shut his eyes. "Oh, and we're all sleep-deprived. You wanna take on an entire city of ARGUS goons with that lineup?"

She tapped her chin. "Mmm, does not seem fair, does it?" A slow grin spread across her muzzle. "Perhaps I will shoot with my off fetlock."

"You're ambidextrous," he grumbled.

"Bother. No help for it then." The grey mare winked at him. "You forget, Lieutenant. We are a rogue unit now. Off the grid." The mare giggled, using those funny terms he loved always needled him. "Central cannot be held responsible for our actions."

"Yes they can. I'm in command."

"And you are thinking like a soldier, Lieutenant. That is your problem." She rested her chin on a front hoof. "Rollins... what was I raised to be?"

The light was still red. The gryphon pressed his claws over his face. "A mad gunmare."

She groaned. "No, not a mad gunmare. An assassin." A Jäger, but that was not a word she liked to use. It was her father's word. "The difference is that one is a job, and the other a mental sickness. Rollins, you have just told me that we have nothing to lose, and that this entire city is full of acceptable targets."

"You're crazy."

"Perhaps." She stuck her tongue out at him, a delightfully uncivilized thing for a lady to do. "But, as Vinyl says, that's how it goes!"

He pressed down on the accelerator, and turned right. After a moment, he said, "you're wrong, you know. I do have something to lose." The gryphon's eyes drifted up to a small mirror, installed so the driver could see the troops in the hold. They were laughing, a few wincing with the pain of the act. All of them were counting on him to find a solution. They trusted the chain of command. Then he looked over to the pretty cellist. A lump formed in his throat.

"Oh, cheer up. Things will get better, you will see." The grey mare yawned. "Besides, we still have a mission to complete."

Rollins looked back to the road. An operative in the hold began telling the tale of some rascally cartoon rabbit. They were in good spirits for the moment, but all of them needed medical aid and rations. He glanced over at her. "I'll just add that to the list. Bread, eggs, milk, medi-gel, kill ARGUS, find and subdue a bleachie to be transported back to Central, oh, and mustn't forget the half-pound of sugar. Pure cane sugar, of course."

Octavia's stomach grumbled, and her cheeks turned as red as the stain on her uniform.

The gryphon turned right again, toward the bad section of town, where good little ponies did not venture. "You sound like you need a meal and a shower." He ran a claw through the white feathers atop his head, then turned to look at the mare sitting in the seat normally occupied by the vehicle's navigator. "Pass me that sheaf of papers next to your chair." When she complied, he rifled through them with his beak while keeping one claw on the controls. "Ni... ni... ni... um!" The gryphon pulled a page free, then dropped the rest on the floor.

"What is that?" Octavia asked, then tried to stifle a yawn.

"An intel brief on an abandoned hotel," he flopped the stapled packet of papers open with one claw. "Now hosting a convention of cult-heads."

The grey mare raised an eyebrow. "I... thought we had bigger problems than some cultist rabble?"

He nodded. "Yeah, but they have running water, electricity, and food. According to the report, they really fixed the place up. It's on the other side of town, an hour's drive."

A slow grin spread across Octavia's muzzle as she shut her eyes and snuggled into the seat. "And it is small enough for ARGUS to miss, mmm?" She yawned. "You really are an excellent strategist, Lieutenant."

"I'm just communications." But he smiled all the same. The grey mare was asleep within a few moments. Rollins waited till the next stop light, then ducked into the rear hold and urged the rest of the operatives to take what rest they could. As he drove to the abandoned hotel, he reached down every few minutes to adjust the frequency his voxpack scanned. He did not expect to hear anything. The only unit he expected to still be functional would not be on the communications network. They were on their own. As terrifying of a thought as that was to the young gryphon, he was cheered by the thought that the Asset had not agreed to his first plan. She trusted him. They all did.

Poor saps. The communications officer chuckled to himself, trying to boost his own morale. Don't they know the most dangerous thing in the world is a lieutenant with a compass and a map?

Author's Notes:

Thus ends the third and final chapter of this little arc, with our heroes cut off from resupply. I hope you enjoyed this burst of updates, and are as excited to see what's coming next as I am to write it! I pushed myself to get this out tonight, and am really happy I was able to publish all three of these chapters so quickly. This arc took a lot of work to tell, but hopefully it was worth it!

What happens next? Well, Octavia wants a meal. Vinyl needs blood. It might be a bad day to be a cultist. The next chapter is coming sooner rather than later, but I'm just happy that I was able to publish all of this so quickly! Let me know what you liked or disliked about the past three chapters, and if you see any typos, please ship me a PM!