We’d gotten underway just before first light. The fourteen of us, plus Lexi’s guards and the robots, were joined by Facemask. Bosco had tried to get the old stallion to stay behind, but he’d refused, citing his limited-but-not-non-existent medical skills as reason to come along as another healer.

It takes some of the strain off Mom, at least.

We were maybe half a mile out from Cefar when the rumble of heavy ordnance fire echoed back to us on the wind. Our entire force halted, murmurs springing up.

My eyes went straight to Wings, who stood with a tight jaw and narrow blue eyes. “It’s started.”

She didn’t look over, only clenching her beak a little tighter. “Yeah.” She sighed to herself, then motioned to Breeze. “Time to go to work, I guess.”

The technophile Pegasus hooked the cannibalised control unit of my Pipbuck around her wrist, cinching it tightly in place. “Remember, you’re just there to point the robots in the right direction. Don’t get into the thick of it. Let the bots whittle down their numbers. You’re just there to tie up their forces, Wings, not win this whole thing for us. Don’t try to be Blue Fire if it means Wings gets in some shit. Wait for the right moment, get in, do your damage, and get out again.”

“Point and click, got it.” The griffon’s quip was not well received. “Alright, yeah. I’ll hang back and direct. Can’t hold my guns and press the buttons on this thing at the same time anyway.”

“Seriously, Wings,” Bosco and Cassie joined Breeze in fussing over her, “be careful.”

Undertow and I crowded in too, hugging her tightly. “Dying won’t help us, Wings, no matter how many you take with you. You’re more important than the bots, ours or theirs. You can’t fall out here without ever seeing my Stable. I’ll never forgive you if you do.”

Claws wrapped around my neck in return, she squeezed back. Her warm plumage rested against my chest. “Wouldn’t miss your embarrassing baby pics, Snow.”

When the hug broke, Wings turned to her oldest friend. “Sure you don’t wanna come with, Schwarz? Lots of violence and explosions. You might pick up some more scars?”

Schwarzwald ruefully shook her head. “It sounds wonderful, dahling, but we each have our role to play. I wish you well, and repeat what the others have said.” She squared her shoulders and, even though it didn’t outwardly change, her grin became obviously strained. “Do. Not. Die.”

A veteran of Schwarzwaldian bravado, Wings barely blinked. “Yeah, I love you too. Keep everybody safe, Schwarz, yourself included.”

Schwarzwald led the others to the sky carriage, with Bosco helping to get the twins into the harnesses. That just left Wings and I standing in the snow. I feel like I should say something, but what?

No answers came, so we continued to stare each other down. Finally, I blinked. “I, uh… I’ll be waiting in the Stable. Don’t… don’t take too long.”

She held out a clawed fist. “Just remember we’re here to keep the Changelings safe. The Stable might’ve been jerks to you, but they’re caught in the middle of this. Focus on getting the Rangers out of there, first. I’ll gladly help you get some payback afterwards.”

My hoof bumped against her claw. “You do that, and I’ll owe YOU a favour for once.”

She snickered. “I thought we weren’t counting?”

So did I. “Just this once.”

“That’s a promise. Don’t do welching on the deal later.” Her claw withdrew, and she turned towards the robots.

I watched her go. “Not a chance.”

For the short walk to the sky carriage, I didn’t bother to look up. Too many thoughts of what might happen to Wings while the rest of us were away in the Stable plagued my mind.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t notice the Sprinkles Supplies guards going in the other direction until I ran into the last one. Shaking off the collision, I glared at him. “Where are you all going?”

He glared right back, but nodded over to the hatch, where my mother stood waiting. “Looking after the griffon. Boss’ orders.”

What? I scampered over to her. “What did you do, Mom?”

She offered a hoof to pull me into the carriage. “Ah ain’t about t’leave mah daughter’s best friend without backup, now am I?”

Gaping open-mouthed as we took off, it was several seconds before I could talk around the lump in my throat and chest.

“You’re the best mom ever.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A rolling wave of mist, courtesy of my glowing horn, filled the tunnel leading to the Stable entrance.

We stood at its mouth, the wind if not blocked, then dulled, by the bulk of the sky carriage. The blizzard outside, and the curvature of the rock, meant that light barely reached a dozen metres in.

I willed another wave of fog down the passageway. “You guys stay here for a minute. I’m gonna check it out.”

The four forms of my siblings started at this. “By yourself?”

Lo’s concern was touching, but unnecessary. “Calm down. I’m not gonna go nuts. Just gonna check it out. I’ll keep the mist cover up. It’ll be easier with just me. If we all go down there, the noise might alert any guards.” I was already a hoofful of body lengths in by this point, giving them no time to argue. “I’ll be back soon.”

“...Be careful, Snow.”

I gave a final wave before turning the first corner. I hadn’t been kidding that I would be careful. Even with my haze cutting visibility, I hugged the wall. Any overzealous tintop decides to just shoot until he hits something, I’ll be out of there before he finishes his first volley.

It was slow going, though, and a not-insignificant number of curses were choked back due to stumbling on fog-hidden stones. Still, after a few minutes, I felt my coat growing damper.

Hmm. I blew out another patch, only to watch it displace the pre-existing miasma back around me. Nowhere to go. Slowly, I extended my hoof, feeling through the soupy air. I whispered to myself as I probed. “Gently, gently, gent-”

CLANG! The ringing of my horseshoe on the solid Stable door rang out jarringly.

“...-ly. Dammit.”

“WHO GOES THERE?” Above me, both top corners of the haze exploded into noise. Rattling and feeding back, 200-years dormant speakers wheezed out the robotic voice of some unseen Steel Ranger, on the other side of the Stable door.

Friggin’ speakers?! Overmare, you bitch! Gave me the silent treatment for like an hour when you kicked me out. Couldn’t have just told me to move on, save me half freezing for nothing?

Rather than answering the repeating demand, I reached back, along arcane channels, until I felt my favourite familiar water sourcery. My frustration at being noticed, coupled with growing battle readiness, got the message across. I felt her reaching back, growing stronger as she and the others drew closer. Atta girl.

“IDENTIFY YOURSELF! YOU ARE TRESPASSING, AND THIS FACILITY IS UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE STEEL RANGERS! THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING!”

I couldn’t help it, snorting in response to the wording. “‘Protection’, right. Whatever you say, fella.”

“Oh!” A less robotic, and far too familiar voice, took over. “Snowflake, there you are. I have been eagerly awaiting your arrival.”

Undertow and the others are almost here, I can feel it. “Have you now, Roc? I don’t remember calling ahead.”

The smarmy griffon’s practiced warmth didn’t falter. “Well, perhaps not directly, Snowflake. But, from their past encounters with you, my Steel Ranger friends here were quietly confident that you would find your way back here after you stopped in to visit them at Neighlway.”

“Oh, is the gang all here? Open the door and I’ll pop in to say hi.” I almost believed he would, too.

But then the sounds of the others approaching became noticeable behind me. The golden-furred griffon’s silver tongue kept wagging, but got a little sharper. “My, well, that’s a terribly kind offer, Snowflake. However it appears that, like me, you have friends with you. I wouldn’t want to keep you, considering how rarely you manage to socialise.” The veiled insult practically oozed from the speakers.

My tail shifted as one of the others brushed against it. “Get ready.” I grunted to them, chin down, before addressing the unseen Overseer. “Never let it be said you’re not one for etiquette, Roc,”

“Thank you.”

“...but I’m comin’ in, and any ‘friends’ of yours that try to stop me won’t survive the attempt.” With a flourish, the magic-born mist was dispelled, and my hooves and tongue ripped away the makeshift shawl covering my head. “Now shut the fuck up and open this door.”

My twisted horn and bubbled scars brought instant sputtering and background chatter through the loudspeakers. A dull thunk, then frantic scrabbling sounded before Roc came back on the line. “Snowflake, what have you done to yourself?”

Ignoring Roc’s flapping, we approached the door. Bosco rapped a hoof against it. “Feels pretty thick. Can we override it somehow?”

The twins were probing the edges of the doorframe. Breeze shook her head. “No way to connect from this side. Probably intentional.”

“It is,” Al piped up, “I took a look at the blueprints one time. The door’s just solid metal. It gets moved with a mechanism inside.”

Breeze huffed. “Then I got nothing.”

“I’ve got something.” Taking a few deep breaths, I stepped up to the door, resting my horn on the metal. “Been thinking about it on the way up. It’s gonna be dangerous, so you guys should probably back off like, ten metres or so, but be ready to move when I break through.”

Esto raised an eyebrow. “What are you planning?”

I shrugged. “It’s about to get very cold in here.”

The eyebrow raised higher. “If you are planning what I think you are, the temperature—”

“I know, which is why you all need to back off.” Her scepticism grated a little. “It’s gonna need to be damn cold, and I don’t want you all getting caught up in it.”

Without another word, Esto began moving straight backwards. “Everyone, I strongly suggest you back up to the next bend. This will be dangerous.”

Thankfully, they heeded her advice, leaving me free to concentrate. “Gimme a few minutes, Roc, I’ll be right in.” My horn began to glow glacier-blue, but then faded as I stepped back to look at the speaker. “Oh, I almost forgot. Overseer?”

Years of practice kept the decorum in his voice, but just barely. “...Yes, Snowflake?”

The most wicked grin I could manage spread across my battle damaged face. “You’re fired.”

“Excuse me? Snowflake, you are hardly in a position to—”

I let him rant, and focused on the task at hoof. My entire focus went to the very centre of the door, an area barely the width of a bottlecap. My magic rested on it, feather light, and then I started concentrating.

Cold poured onto that bottlecap space, more and more, layering into one pure, tiny sphere of ice. My will pushed on that sphere, keeping it the same size, while filling it ever denser with chill.

I poured it on, harsher and harder, sweat falling from me from the effort. Instead of hitting the cave floor, however, the falling drops froze and then crumbled into nothing mid-descent, robbed of their energy and form by the frozen core I pushed into the Stable door.

The door itself was feeling it too, with small pops and groans increasing in frequency and volume. Roc’s voice couldn’t be heard any more, the speakers warping and cracking in their sockets.

Still I moulded more raw frigidity into that same space. The cold was so intense now that the metal behind it was cracking and snapping off, a small crater in the centre of the mighty barrier.

Go deeper! I willed. Bite and claw and dig your way through.

My breath was turning ragged from the exertion, but I kept at it, the frost sphere boring through the door, the headbit of my horn’s drill. As it reached critical mass, the very light around the area dimmed, its warmth and power stolen by the ravenous core.

The twinges of the core were making themselves known now, hinting at the rapidly approaching apex. I could feel the sphere now, having dug through to the three-dimensional centre of the door now, the perfect position for its intended purpose.

The only issue being that I was still standing barely a metre from the door. Swiftly backtracking, and with no spare concentration to send a message through to Undertow, I had to hope that I made it around the bend in time.

Here...three steps…it...two...comes...one!

Four pairs of hooves reached for me,trying to drag me out of view, just as the core… went off. As it did, I saw the door turn black. Not just black: the deepest, fullest, most absolute black there could be. The utter absence of light.

Light wasn’t the only absence, either. The door was completely silent. No sound escaped, the vibrations drained by the cold. Light, sound, warmth, energy. The state of the door was ultimate stillness. For ten seconds, twenty, it remained that way.

“Um.”

The door exploded.

The basest levels of the metal, robbed of their energy, grabbed at anything they could find to regain their normality; each other, the energy around them, reaching out as far and as fast as they could.

Throwing my hooves up to protect against the shrapnel-filled shockwave, I braced for the pain to come. However, while the cacophonous ringing of metal on metal filled the tunnel, coupled with sudden and violent gunfire, I didn’t feel any chunks tear into me.

When I lowered my hooves, I saw why. A rippling transparent barrier stood in front of me, reaching out and up to block every millimetre of the rock and metal, which piled onto the shield in jagged bushels. Beyond the barrier, a pair of fully armed and armoured Ranger Paladins stood in the now-empty door frame, loosing volley after volley of bullets, bombs, and lasers. Every shot of theirs struck at the barrier directly in front of my eyes, and would have either put holes in my head or taken it clean off if not for the clear wall cutting them off.

Standing next to me, Spell Shooter up and glowing, Breeze twitched. “Get ready, everyone. Barrier’s about to go down. Move when you see the flash!” With that, she crouched down behind the piles of door pieces, pulling me down with her. “Nice work, Snow. Seriously, damn.”

The others bolted around the corner as the barrier flickered, hugging in low to get behind the temporary cover. I found myself getting positive looks from more than one of them. “Uh… thanks. I’m glad it worked.”

Breeze flicked her hoof, ejecting the spent crystal over our cover. “Cassie!”

“Eyes!” Still back at the corner, the sniper’s rifle barked as the barrier dropped. Her aim was true, and struck the tumbling shard, resulting in a blinding flash.

We’d heeded her advice, and turned our heads away, but the Rangers cried out as the glare overwhelmed their optics.

Bosco was first over the wall. “GO GO GO!” He and Cept snaked in on the right-most Ranger, ducking low under the arc of their blind return fire. Schwarzwald’s gatling sang out between the charging colts, jerking and jolting the Ranger’s armour and aim.

On the left, my siblings followed a similar game plan. Undertow kept up a steady torrent of levitation-accelerated shrapnel, to batter and discombobulate the Steel-clad pony, covering her three charging brothers, who wielded massive reinforced iron sheets as pseudo-riot shields.

With that much gunfire, shrapnel, and flash beating down on them, the two Paladins couldn’t set themselves long enough to line up shots. The Doublehorns slammed bodily into the left Ranger, shields first, crunching him backwards into the wall.

Across from them, Cept flipped into a double dive kick with his hind hooves, both connecting right into the faceplate. As the tin pony staggered back, Bosco used his smaller stature to duck between its legs, then flashed green fire around himself, bringing a fourth buffalo, magnitudes bigger than his colt form, into the fight.

The sudden size increase beneath it up-ended the Steel Ranger, leaving him easy pickings for Buff. Leaving Al and Lo to keep the left Ranger pinned against the wall, with Undertow jamming its weaponry with shrapnel telekinesis, Buff body slammed down right on top of the rightmost Ranger with a mighty crash. Buffa-Bosco joined him a moment later, with Cept’s Fallen Caesar hammer blows raining down on the exposed head of the prone pony.

Even when pressed nearly flat against the wall by two hefty bovines, the other Paladin still tried to fight. Servos whining, they inched themselves around until they could angle a shot against Al. I saw Al’s eye widen as the Paladin growled out a curse. “Wastelander SCUM!”

That was as far as he got before Cassie surged forwards, slamming her rifle’s barrel point-blank against his eyeguard and pulling the trigger.

The other one lasted only moments longer. I’d frozen a hoof-wide spot along the armour’s neck joints, and Cept’s hoof crashed down onto, and then through, the embrittled metal, collapsing the cartilage underneath. Bosco and Buff kept her pinned as she gurgled out her last.

The half-second lull in the fighting revealed to us that Roc was still on the p.a. “What are you doing, Snowflake? All of you, stop this now!”

“Stay out of the way, Roc. We’re coming in, and you’re not stopping us.” Hopefully he runs and hides, but he’s probably gonna sit there in his office until I break down his door.

Roc’s decorum had evaporated entirely. “Why are you doing this, Snowflake? You are not a resident of this Stable any longer. You are not welcome here!”

I couldn’t resist, even if it was gonna make the situation slightly worse. He’d been such a pain back when I lived here that I took a second to taunt him. “And yet here I am, former-Overseer Roc.”

“You were not invited here, Snowflake, and you are attacking those who were.” Nasally breaths played over the speakers for a few moments, before Roc composed himself enough to continue. “I can see that the rumours about you were true, Snowflake. You truly are lost to Old Equestria.”

“Yeah, yeah, big bad Snowflake’s here to cause you trouble. Sure.” I spat on the ground. “Get over yourself, Roc. We’re not here for you.”

“You said ‘we’.” Roc replied excitedly, changing tac. “You others there, you may not be aware, as you are travelling with her, that there is a bounty out for Snowflake’s capture. If you apprehend her now, I will pay the amount here, and allow you to take her to collect the same from the one who issued it out in your ‘Wasteland’.”

Breeze, who had been poking and prodding at the dead Rangers’ systems, straightened up. “You don’t say? You got the caps for that?”

A slight hesitation on the griffon’s part. “Not caps, no. I am afraid that we don’t yet deal in that form of currency. We do have bits.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not interested. The exchange rate sucks.”

“Wait!” Roc tried again. “We have something else. I saw your weapon before. We have technology of our own here. Technology that has been lost for two hundred years! Pristine, maintained stringently and untouched by radiation. Surely we could trade some, up to the price of the bounty, for you to capture Snowflake?”

Back and forth, slowly and deliberately, Breeze rubbed her chin with a hoof, before breaking out into a bright smile. “Y’know what, Roc? You’ve got a deal…”

“Very gracious of you, my lady Pegasus. Now, if you—”

The smile disappeared. “...if you can answer this question.”

Riding high, there wasn’t a shred of hesitation on his part. “Of course. However I may be of help.”

Breeze was dangerously neutral. “Does ‘Naiara’ mean anything to you?”

“Hmm, ‘Naiara’,” It felt like Roc was the one rubbing their chin this time, “my apologies, but I am afraid that I’m not familiar with the term.”

“I see.” Breeze’s wing unfurled, laser straight, to point at me. “It means something to her.”

Slamming another crystal home in her Spell Shooter, Breeze spoke to the entire room. “Snowflake knew Naiara. Snowflake loved Naiara, and was loved by Naiara in turn. Naiara was not so foolish that Snowflake could dupe her, so that means she genuinely found worth in Snowflake.”

She had all our attentions now, mine especially. Her words hit deep inside. Breeze...

Feathers shaking, the technophile Pegasus stalked across, placing herself squarely in front of me. “The ones Naiara loved are here in this room. Snowflake is one of those Naiara valued and loved. That makes her ours. That makes Snowflake one of us. To threaten Snowflake, to try to take her away, is to spit on Naiara’s memory. I will be damned if I let another one of us be taken away.” She finished by raising the Spell Shooter up, primed to fire, and aiming it at the speaker pointedly.

Even through the purple smoke, my eyes were wet, and the lump in my throat ached warmly. You don’t know how much that means to me, Breeze. Naiara would be proud.

Roc got the point. “Unfortunate. I had hoped someone in our group would be reasonable. I see now that that won’t happen, therefore I call on Elder Iron Sights, and all Steel Rangers, to drive these intruders from my Stable.”

The p.a. system cut out. Breeze didn’t give it another thought, and instead strolled past the entrance room, into the Stable proper, where the corridor split into three directions.

“Let’s go to work.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~