Alarms blared in the stone corridors of Equestria’s one and only high-security prison. It was a testament to the nature of Equestrians that it was not a big prison, and even then, it had been expanded significantly over the last few years to accommodate the new breed of lawbreakers that had come with the advent of the Conversion Bureaus and ponification.

This cavern was now a square courtyard, ringed with cages. High above, the warden’s booth was connected to the only way in or out of the sealed prison chamber. Prisoners awoke to the alarms, walking to their bars and pressing snouts against the sturdy iron bars to look for the commotion.

“That’s a teleport alarm,” grunted a white pony to his cellmate.

“Who’s dumb enough to teleport into Blackstone, Shield?” grunted a yellow pegasus behind him, slumped on the bunk, a thick metal band secured around his torso and wings. “Even the whore princesses don’t teleport here... when they deign to visit us “terrorists”.”

“Hey, knock it off, Candy Ass,”  Illuminating Shield snapped back. “Show some respect for authority, don’t you?”

The pegasus frowned and reflexively covered the candy corn that adorned his flank. “Hey, my name’s not “Candy Ass”,” he said. “It’s Candy Corn.”

“Sorry, slip of the tongue,” Shield lied. “Besides. You’re acting like an ass.”

“I don’t get why you’re so goddamn defensive of the princesses,” Candy snorted, his muttering barely audible over the alarms. “You’re locked up here just the same as me. Probably worse, since I only ponified one or two people. How many’d you do? Six hundred plus? Gotta be forty to life.”

“I might have done some bad things,” Shield said, returning to watching the warden’s booth high above the prison floor, “But I swore an oath of fealty to Celestia, and I’m not going to break it easy.”

“You broke it enough to join the PER,” Candy argued.

“Shush,” Shield said, holding up a hoof as the alarm shut off, and suddenly, muffled conversation was audible from the Warden’s booth.

Candy obliged, his own ears turning as he strained to catch the muffled discourse, which sounded agitated.

“What the buck do you mean, “release the prisoners”?”

A much quieter response followed, and the prisoners began to murmur among themselves, repeating the words.

“Did you hear that?”

“Bull.”

“This is some sort of test, I know it.”

“What the hell’s even going on today? Earthquakes, now this? End of the world already?”

The murmuring died down as the warden stepped out of his booth, and moved to the railing. All the prisoners watched the sturdy unicorn clear his throat, and listened hard.

“Alright, you lot,” Warden Riot Shield announced. “Orders straight from the mouth of Celestia. Canterlot is under siege from a giant machine. You’re all getting conscripted for the fight.”

The prisoners murmured again.

“Conscripted? Us?” a deep voice pressed from behind a thick, steel door. “I’m capable of putting a hoof through something’s head, but you’re still asking the wrong crowd to fight.”

“Apparently, Prisoner Rampart,” the Warden looked back into his booth. “The enemy is... humans. You’re to be armed with whatever you need to get the job done.”

The prisoners murmured again, this time with more enthusiasm.

“I take it Celestia wants them alive?” a cold voice asked.

“Preferably,” Warden Shield said. “As long as they’re not attacking anyone, anything goes.”

There was a muted click, and bells rang briefly as the doors all slid open, pulled open by magic. Ponies emerged hesitantly, suspecting a trap. A second buzz, and all restraints popped open and fell off; magic inhibitors hit the floor with clanks of metal, and wing restraints popped open, freeing bound wings for the first time in months, and in some cases, years.

“Get limber, you lot,” the Warden said coldly. “Today’s your chance to make a good impression, prove you’re deserving of the freedom Celestia has returned to you. Your things are arriving now.”

With a zap of magic, crates were teleported into the cells, and ponies pried them open to find their possessions from when they were arrested. Shield turned around as a crate zapped into being behind them, and Candy eagerly rummaged through piles of his own clothing, what looked like a giant pinata costume.

Shield reached in, and fished out the only two items that belonged to him; a well-worn, much-battered set of old guard armor, and a photograph.

“Looks like we get to have our happy ever after,” he muttered to the photo, giving it a brief kiss and tucking it inside his armor.

“Assumin’ we live,” Candy said, throwing on a bandolier of purple vials. “I seriously doubt we’d be getting conscripted to fight if we weren’t gonna die. You want a bandolier? I got spares.”

Shield nodded, and shouldered the offered bandolier of potion. “Well, I’m not going to die,” he said, a cold chill running along his spine where his wings had once been. “I’ve been through too much to die now.”