Chapter Sixteen: Group Dynamics

“Every soldier has a place on the battlefield. Infantry, support, medics, artillery, commanders. Work together and you just might survive.”

“Welcome.”

I watched the corpse of the fake pony slowly fade beneath me. She slowly turned from pink to black and then just melted into nothingness. Was that what I had done to all those mares in there? She hadn’t even left a bloodstain...

Realization hit me. What in the Goddesses’ names had I just done? My vision blurred, and the stinging from the glass slivers in my eyes suddenly became a million times worse as I started to cry. Unable to help myself, I threw up on the street.

“I said ‘you’re welcome,’” rasped the echoing voice of The Glowing One. She trotted over and looked at the mess I’d made on the asphalt. “And here I thought you were some Wasteland-hardened veteran, after what you did to those ghouls last night. You’d have fit right in back during the War, you know.”

I waved a hoof at her, hoping it would shut her up. I didn’t need a lecture right now. I just- I just needed to- I threw up again. It tasted worse the second time. My mind might not have any problem with gleefully running down the halls of a brothel and slaughtering ponies, but my body sure seemed to. I wiped my lips with my steel hoof, and forced myself up.

“Does it matter? I thought you had business to attend to,” I said to The Glowing One, cutting off whatever speech she might have prepared for me. I turned away from the sick I’d left, and headed for the door.

She laughed, once more, making that horrible noise bounce between my ears. Despite how damaged one of them was. I flicked the remaining one a few times, trying to get the noise out. “Honey, it’s been hours since we split up,” she said. “I saw Rosie already, she’s been having a rough day.” She looked me up and down once, then to the street. “Maybe not as bad as yours, though.”

I walked past her, not wanting to deal with the comments at the moment. Slowly, I pushed open the door and walked back inside the ‘Helter Skelter,’ remembering that somepony, somewhere, had called it ‘The Goddesses’ Bed’ instead. I didn’t have time for mysteries.

The door chimed as it closed behind me. Lost stood next to the bench where the filthy stallion had been before my rampage. Battu and the other Unity mares all sat on the bench in a row, in various states of focus. Lost’s horn glowed bright blue, as did Fouetté’s forehooves. The mare looked happy, and was by far the most lucid of the group, watching her glowing hooves as Lost healed her.

Fine Tune flitted from place to place, making quiet chirping noises as he inspected the room. I didn’t know what Lost had him looking for, but I guessed I’d find out eventually. Xeno sat at the bar, her deep blue eyes intently watching Blossom, the light-green mare. She had her knife in one hoof, twisting it into the polished surface of the counter. A cigarette hung from her mouth, gripped in her teeth and trailing smoke. Her lips were pulled back in a grimace, but I couldn’t tell if she was angry, or bored. Not that her mood mattered right now.

Almost in a daze, I walked through the room, stopping only for a half-second to look at the spot where the first pink mare had fallen to my gun. The wooden floor showed no hint that a pony had died there. Even the blood that had leaked from her head was gone, faded into nothing, just like her body. Were it not for the bullet hole in the far side of the room, I’d have never guessed something horrific happened here. I walked past the spot and into the back room where the kitchen was.

Along the back wall were several more bullet holes, one for each time I’d missed the mare I’d tried to kill. I looked at each one, and I felt my heart sink. “Dammit, I should feel bad about this!” I shouted to myself. Turning sharply, I slammed my head against the wall. I hit it with my face as many times as I could. Mistress Amble had done something to my head, and I did not like it. I wanted to feel bad for the rampage. I needed to feel guilt for what I did. It hurt that I felt worse about not feeling anything than I did about the murders.

I remembered it, from before. I’d felt so bad about killing Gunbuck, when he shot my sister, that I’d carried his severed head in my saddlebags and gave him a proper burial. So why couldn’t I feel that anymore?

No. They deserved this. These mares... this mare? Had done horrible things and needed to be put down. They’d helped to keep slaves under another’s control, and that was... beyond terrible. “I’m right,” I whispered to myself. I slammed my face against the wall one last time.

The rotten wood caved and I stumbled forward.

I twitched. Fucking zebra luck.

I could feel the distant burning of alcohol in my eyes, and in the cuts in my face. I stood there, head in the wall, and broke down. I sobbed, glad my face was hidden from the world. I should feel bad, even if they deserved it. Murder was horrific; it didn’t solve anything. And if it had become my go-to for solving a problem, then I wasn’t any better than the raiders who’d attacked us before we got to town, or the ghoul raiders who’d kept trying to murder us, even after losing their lives.

Something clicked in my mind, a little stabbing sensation from those long-annoying claws. This one felt different. This one had a feminine touch, and I could swear it felt like the purple hoof of a mare I never wanted to see again.

“Murderer,” it whispered. “I told you.” She’d been right. “Sneaking into pony’s homes and murdering them.” We’d wandered into their home, without a care in the world, and gunned all of them down. The voice in my head laughed wickedly, teasing me. I should have known better, after the first two trotted out. “Murderer,” she repeated, her voice dripping venom.

“No!” I screamed. I pulled myself from the wall, and turned to the kitchen. Pots and pans sat along the counter and the stovetops, unused but perfect for my frustrations. I grabbed them, one at a time, and threw them across the room. Something needed to feel my wrath, and I didn’t trust myself to not turn on my sister or friends if I dared leave the room. “I’m not a fucking murderer!”

Bucking and thrashing, I broke the stove’s doors and bent everything I could get my hooves on, until the strength left my sore legs, and I collapsed. I curled up on the floor amid the products of my pain and cried.

The Med-X wore off as I lay there shivering and twitching uncomfortably. Everything hurt, deep down to my bones. With every little flinch, I could feel the shackles digging at my bones, and my muscles screaming to be left alone. I didn’t want to move, or even breathe. For once in my life, I just wanted to lay there and stop existing.

I couldn’t kill myself, though. Suicide was against orders. It wasn’t necessary. But if I’d been reduced to the same mindlessness and self-destruction that drove raiders to attack a pony on sight, well, what more did I deserve than a swift death like the-

“No!” I screamed as loud as I could. I didn’t know who I was trying to convince, or if I just needed to keep telling myself until it became true. My throat felt scratchy, worn down by the sobbing and panting. “Fuck you,” I shouted, kicking at the trash on the floor all around me. I forced myself up and looked around the room.

None of them had come for me. I still stood alone. I took a deep breath and cleared my mind. I wasn’t one of those ponies. I still had something to keep me going. It wasn’t much, but I had the gall to not give the fuck up. I’d found ways to go on before.

Finding things was my Goddesses-damned special fucking talent.

No two-bit piece-of-shit slaver was going to take that away from me. I’d find a way through this if it killed me. I’d die trying, if it just meant proving that Mistress Amb-

No. She wasn’t a Mistress, she didn’t deserve the title. Amble. That cunt. She couldn’t, and wouldn’t win.

I’d found a way to put those poor feral ghouls out of their misery. I’d found a way to finish Gunbuck’s work. I’d found the Stable. My sister and I, working together, had found a way to destroy a cannibalistic monstrosity of a steel-clad pony. We’d found amazing friends. And we would find ways to fix ourselves, and become stronger for whatever lay ahead of us.

I was right, doing what I’d done. Those weren’t real ponies. And whoever they’d worked for, whoever the original pony was. The real pink mare. She deserved to have whatever doubles or clones or copies she had be destroyed for what they were doing to ponykind. I’d saved ponies I’d watched get tortured and beaten right next to me. And even if I wasn’t a shining example of a Wasteland hero like the one on the radio, I was still better than a raider who’d decided that random destruction was the best way to live their life. I’d find a way to stop the pink bitch, either with a bullet to the head, or talking her down like I had Rebar.

“I’m stronger than Amble,” I told myself, refusing to give her the honor of a title. If a monster like Wirepony could only take a hoof from me, I could beat a single mare without a scratch. All she’d done was give me the power to not feel bad when I knew a pony got what they had coming to them.

I’d made mistakes in the Wasteland, and I knew I’d make more. But, dammit, I’d get better, and I’d do better each and every time.

I stormed out of the kitchen, glancing at the freezer where I’d splattered another copy’s head in. I didn’t feel bad about it, and I didn’t need to. She wasn’t real, and she’d deserved what she’d gotten. I raised a hoof to stop my sister from saying anything to me when I returned to the main room. I needed a few more minutes. I needed to remember this feeling. I needed to see every murder I’d just committed.

I turned, and trotted up the stairs, down memory lane.

* * *

I hopped over the wreckage of the piano at the bottom of the stairs, and walked over to my sister and the Unity mares. I moved past Xeno and The Glowing One at the bar, both sitting in silence as they watched the pony behind the counter. Fine Tune was nowhere to be seen.

Lost Art worked on another of the Unity mares, one I didn’t know the name of. All four of them looked pretty terrible, though two looked like they were in better shape after L.A. healed the obvious wounds. I didn’t say anything, instead waiting for her to finish. I knew a long talk was coming, but trying to put it off as long as possible would be the least of the mistakes I’d made today.

Lost looked back at me, but said nothing. She just squinted and went back to work. Her horn’s glow finally faded, and she smiled. “Alright, Arabesque,” she said calmly. “You’re done.” She looked at the pale blue unicorn mare, who’d been sitting with the filthy stallion when I’d first walked in. “Let me work on my sister, and then I’ll take care of you Renversé. It’ll only be a few minutes more.”

The mare nodded, and looked over at the other three. All of them looked utterly defeated, and I could see the... ugh... sticky leftovers of... I shuddered. I didn’t need to think about that. They weren’t going to be held captive by this place anymore. It was a small victory. I only wished we had gotten here sooner.

Lost grabbed me in her telekinesis, her pale blue glow wrapping around my neck. She trotted away from the group and pulled me along in her magic.

I couldn’t help but follow, barely touching the ground a half-step behind her until we reached the entryway. The haze around my neck faded and I stopped. A hundred different things to say flew through my mind, but not a single one of them felt right. Instead I waited, watching as my sister’s face twisted up. Somewhere deep down, I knew she felt the exact same way I did, unable to find the right words to say.

As if unwilling to wait a second longer, I finally blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” she said at the exact same second.

We stared at one another in another moment of silence, before it finally clicked that we’d both apologized at exactly the same time.

“What for?” I asked her. I shifted uneasily on my hooves, knowing she didn’t have anything she actually needed to apologize for.

Lost Art sighed. “Rushing?” she asked. “Letting us get to the point where all you could do was run off and...” She looked at the room, her eyes trailing from the door to the kitchen, over the staircase and piano’s wreckage, and up to the second floor. “Well, for all of this.” She waved a hoof at it all.

“You didn’t do that. Amble did,” I answered as coldly as possible. I wanted to make sure she noticed the part I’d left out.

“Right. Amble. There’s more to it than that, Hidden,” she corrected me. “It just worries me... When you think the best course of action is to go off and kill all of them?”

“I didn’t kill anypony. They weren’t real,” I said. I still felt my actions were justified.

“So? You ran through a building, and obliterated everything in your path. I’m honestly surprised the ponies who got out actually survived. Half the time you were running around like that, I thought you were just killing whomever you got your hooves on,” she said, her eyes wide behind her glasses.

“I didn’t. That’s not what I was doing, and you should know me better than that,” I said, trying not to spit the words at her. “You gave me an order, remember? No killing unless it’s necessary. What I did wasn’t killing.” I looked down at her, hoping she couldn’t see me barely holding back a breakdown.

“She’d have fit in, during the War,” said The Glowing One from the bar. “A mentality like that went a long way. You get a pony willing to sacrifice everything they held dear? Those were the ones they really wanted.” She laughed. The laugh was different from her others. It was a laugh with no happiness in it. It felt more like she was trying to hold back tears than showing actual joy.

“We’re not soldiers, we’re treasure hunters,” Lost snapped. “We’re just... in a bad way lately.” She stepped close and hugged me as tight as she could. Her grip wasn’t anywhere near as strong as mine could be, but it still hurt every part of me. I must’ve been more run-down than I thought I was. All of the sudden I really wished I had some more Med-X in me.

I wrapped my hooves around her, and hugged back.

“I’m still impressed,” rasped the ghoul. “Running a pony like her down and taking out that many, whew! That’s something.” She rapped a hoof on the counter, mimicking applause.

“Wait, you got here after I finished... Just how exactly do you know what I did?” I asked. I released my sister and turned to the ghoul mare. Something felt... off, but I couldn’t put my hoof on it. Slowly, I trotted over, staring her right into her glowing eyes.

“Word travels fast,” she answered, the muscles under her skin pulling back and parting her rotten lips in a shit-eating grin. The sight of her insides shifting over one another almost made me lose my resolve, but I managed to keep control. She reached out and tapped my nose with her forehoof, and winked.

I nearly threw up again. Her hoof was rough, and dried out, but I could feel the mush behind it where her insides had rotted away. I faltered, dry-heaving, and took several steps back. When everypony in the room looked at me, I just waved them away.

Xeno went back to watching the mare behind the counter, who still looked too terrified to say a word. Lost took a step closer, but I held my hoof up.

“Finish with them,” I said, pointing to the Unity mares.

“Hidden, we’re not done talking yet,” Lost argued. She looked over to the mares sitting and waiting on her to finish healing them, but shook her head and turned back to me.

“I know. We’ll finish afterward,” I reassured her. I didn’t want to finish the conversation. I didn’t really have a choice, though. “I just need a minute.”

For a moment, L.A. looked as if she wanted to argue. She snorted and turned away, her horn lighting up as she headed back to the mares.

“If itis any consultation, Hiddenpony, I think you did well,” Xeno chimed in. She spit her cigarette out into a hoof, and smashed it into the counter. “Let us move swiftly to the next part.” She sat forward and reached across the counter. She hooked her hoof into the green mare’s mane, and twisted it around her fetlock. The mare yelped as Xeno pulled her up and onto the counter. “I recognize this mare. Shewas one at the slaver town.”

“No I wasn’t! What are you talking about? I never leave the city!” she argued, whimpering between sentences. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her polished hooves dug against the counter as she pulled back, trying to get away from the zebra and her knife.

“Really? So the reason you have two ponies I recognize from when I was being tortured by slavers is...?” I asked, trailing off to let it sink in.

The color drained from her face almost instantly. She looked back and forth between me and the four mares sitting on the other end of the room. “Tortured?” she asked, chewing on her bottom lip.

Xeno let her go, and she pulled herself back behind the counter. She crouched down so that only her eyes and ears were above the counter itself. “She... umm... said they weren’t broken in like that,” she whispered. Her ears flattened back, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

I trotted closer and crawled up onto the countertop. “Look at my legs,” I said, lifting my left forehoof. “See this?” I looked from her eyes to the shackle just above my fetlock.

She followed my gaze.

“This has spikes on the inside,” I explained to her. “Deep ones. It hurts to walk.”

She looked over all four of my legs, her eyes widening as she noticed each one. “But...”

“Those ponies over there?” I pointed to the Unity mares. “They came from the same place. The same ponies who did this to me.” I waved the shackle in her face. “Those same monsters worked the four of us over. Two of them shared a pen with me. So. Tell me. Is my friend here telling the truth, or is she lying to me?”

Xeno sunk her knife into the countertop, as if to emphasize my point.

“I’m sorry!” she shouted. “I... I just needed ponies to make a living, okay? There’s nothing in this town, and leaving isn’t an option!”

“We all make mistakes,” rasped The Glowing One.

I glared. She wasn’t helping. “This isn’t forgivable,” I said, cutting her off. “Not after what we’ve been through.” I looked at the mare. “Blossom, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

I hopped from the counter, and sat down on the remaining empty barstool. “Alright, Blossom. Why can’t you leave? What about this town is special? What made you think that owning another living, breathing, thinking creature was okay? Did you think you couldn’t afford to leave? Because you certainly managed to afford purchasing the lives of these mares!”

I remembered the auction, and exactly how expensive they’d been. “Did you get the collars too? Cause I remember hearing about ponies in town talking about them here. Huh?”

She shrunk back from every question I asked, not answering a word. At my last question, she burst into tears and hid behind the counter. She just laid there and sobbed, just like I had back in the kitchen.

I needed to calm down. I could feel the anger rising in my gut, and I didn’t need that. I needed a break. I looked back at Xeno. “Can you just keep watching her?” I asked. “Lost can get better answers than me...”

“Yes, Hiddenpony. But we must hurry,” she answered, stabbing her knife into the bar top again. “The delays are starting to tire me.” She leaned in close, and pressed her muzzle against mine. “Wewill go to my brothers next, yes?”

“As soon as we leave town, I promise.”

“Then I will watch this Blossompony,” she answered.

I looked over at the ghoul, suddenly worrying about just how much radiation I might be soaking up from her. “You’re not coming with us, are you?” I asked. I glanced over at Xeno to get her opinion on it.

Xeno had already lit another cigarette, and ignored me. Her ears were skewed forward, listening to the mare behind the counter, her eyes staring at herself in the mirror.

“You’re an interesting little group, but I know more about you than I’m comfortable with already. I’ll be keeping my distance,” the Glowing One answered. She raised a hoof and brushed the thin remains of her mane away, before hopping down to the ground. “Keep yourself out of trouble, or we’ll be seeing each other again.” She looked over at my sister, then back at me. “One question before I go?”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“What’s with the hoof?” she asked, pointing at my steel forehoof. “More trouble with slavers?”

“No. A Wire-monstrosity bit it off,” I answered. I tried not to think about the details. “This is a replacement.”

She raised both eyebrows, and her eyes lit up, glowing bright enough that I could see the outline of her skull through her skin. “Well, that’s... very interesting,” she said, blinking a few times. “Stay safe out there, and remember: friendship.” She turned tail and trotted out.

I turned to my sister as the glowing mare left.

Lost had finished with the last of the mares and was digging through her saddlebags for something.

I dropped to the ground and sighed. “Thank you, Xeno,” I said.

“For what, Hiddenpony?” she asked.

“Being there,” I answered. “Friendship matters, right? So... thanks for not leaving.”

“Itis funny, you speak as if I have some place to go to,” she answered dryly, looking back at herself in the mirror. And she said her mother spoke in riddles. She wanted to go home so badly, yet said she had nowhere to go back to. I’d never understand zebras.

I walked across the large room to Lost. “How’re they doing? All good?”

“Let’s just say that I don’t think I’ll be taking another Mint-al for a while. Headaches be damned,” she answered, tapping her forehead gingerly. She winced at even the slight contact. “But they’ll be okay.” She turned to the Unity mares. “Right, fillies?”

The mares each grumbled something affirmative, but none would look her in the eye.

“Good enough. How about you?” she asked, turning away from the tattered-looking Unity mares.

“Everything hurts and I’m exhausted. Another shot of Med-X or some Buck and I’ll be fine,” I assured her. Seeing the look she gave me over her glasses, I corrected myself. “Maybe just a nap, once things settle down.” I could always limp myself along with a healing potion, but that wouldn’t give me the jolt Buck would, or the relief a good sleep would.

“This is why I wanted to stay at home, and have some time for recovery,” L.A. snapped.

“I’m fine. I promise.”

“The rampage you went on says otherwise,” she countered.

“Are we really back on that again? We went over it already. It’s in the past,” I retorted defensively. “I did what I needed to. We’re fine.”

“It’s not over,” she corrected me. “First of all, we have absolutely none of the answers we could have gotten if we’d kept one of them around-”

“I planned to leave one alive,” I interrupted. “But the ghoul shot her in the head before I could ask any questions.”

“Mmm, only after you slaughtered the rest,” she said, shuffling a hoof. “The second problem is that we don’t know just how fragile you- we both are, after what happened.” She looked away, at the floor between us.

“I told you what happened to me. It’s not my fault you didn’t see fit to tell me what Sunbright did to you,” I shouted at her. “We have too much shit to do. I don’t have time for a fucking lecture!” I pressed my forehead against hers. “You have no idea what I went through, watching you get beaten, without so much as being able to raise a hoof in your defense! I’m your damn sister, for fuck’s sake! It’s what we’ve done our entire lives! Protect each other!” I pushed her back, her hooves sliding against the floor. “And you didn’t get more metal bits stuck in your body! I wish I had the magic to make you feel what I felt!”

“She chained me down and tried to kill me, and worked me until my very last spell. Until I collapsed,” Lost said calmly. The look in her eyes was exactly the same as the one she’d had when we were trotted through the furnace room at Leathers. Given what Sunbright had done to that filly, I could only imagine which spell she used against my sister.

“She taunted me,” Lost continued, “teaching me how to cast that arcane blast, and daring me to use it against her, knowing full well she could easily dodge any attempt I made. She worked me non-stop, until I couldn’t even cast, until I was totally burnt out. She questioned everything I said, and when she realized I was lying to protect you...” She shuddered, her whole body shaking violently. “I... I don’t want to talk about it.” Tears rolled down her cheeks as she leaned against me. I could feel her shivers in my own bones. Whatever she couldn’t say... I knew it was worse, and it hurt me too.

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was the only thing I could say.

“We both went through a lot,” she admitted, still not looking at me.

“We’ll get better,” I said, trying out my most reassuring voice.

“You know I can’t let you out of my sight anymore, right?” she asked. “Not after what you did here.”

“I’m a grown mare,” I argued. “I can handle myself.”

“Hidden...”

“Don’t you trust me?” I asked. I took a step back and stared her right in the eyes. “I need to know.”

She didn’t say yes. She just looked away and took a step back.

That was all the answer I needed. I turned and ran. I dodged past Fine Tune as he walked back into the building, making him chirp and jump out of the way. I ran into the streets.

I ran until I couldn’t hear Lost calling after me.

* * *

How dare she?

I slowed myself from a full gallop to a trot, feeling the weight of the world finally falling from my back. I wanted to put the entire Wasteland between my sister and me. For the first time since I could remember, I wanted to be completely alone. She’d always been there to back me up and save my flanks when I needed it.

But now?

She didn’t even trust me to be out of her sight. How could we be a team if she couldn’t expect me to have her back like I knew she’d have mine. We were sisters for Celestia’s sake! I laughed. Celestia’s sake... Wasn’t she the older of two sisters, too? The old stories that mom had told us as fillies... how back before the Wasteland, when Equestria real, that there’d been Celestia and Luna. She’d told us the story of Nightmare Moon and Luna’s banishment, of her return.

I felt like that mare now. I could understand exactly why she’d been gripped by darkness, and fought against her older sister. I wanted to do that right now myself. Lost had always been better than me, smarter, more talented. And now she didn’t even trust me.

I didn’t need her. I could be the bigger mare. The stronger one, the one who saved everypony.

I looked around at the buildings I no longer recognized. I watched the filthy, ragged ponies, looking out from alleyways and buildings with blown-out windows and doors. I’d saved them, hadn’t I? None of them paid me any mind as I walked by, as if they didn’t know I’d just been fighting to stop whatever pony had them underhoof by their addictions. I’d run my legs off to-

“Ow.”

My legs actually really hurt. I groaned, and trotted to the side of the unused road, then leaned against a crumbling wall. A few minutes of rest, and I’d be okay. A few minutes surrounded by ponies who would appreciate me for what I did, rather than tell me they couldn’t trust me or accuse me of going on rampages, would do me good. “She wasn’t even a real pony,” I muttered to myself under my breath.

I dug through my saddlebags, idly wishing I’d brought the PipBuck with me instead of leaving it with my sister. It’d be so much easier to find what I needed with that little cheater-y magic device. I pulled a full bottle from the saddlebag, and popped it open. Better late than never.

I took out one of the little pills of Buck and looked at it. I put the top back on the bottle, and thought about all the little wonders medicine like this had done for me. “You’re a great little thing, you know that?” I told the pill. “You give me the strength to smash whatever I need to, and the power to ignore the pains when I need to block them out. Sure, you’re not as good at numbing as mister Med-X is, but you’re sure a better use of my time.”

“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?” said a voice, the owner of which ended up being a short unicorn mare with a cherry red mane.

“Huh? Who’re you?” I asked.

“Fire Bomb,” she answered. She sat down across from me, and propped herself up against a lamp post. She tried looking me in the eyes, but I could see her glancing distractedly at the Buck in my hoof, and at the bottle. I sighed, and passed her the little pill. “This stuff’ll do whatever ya need, eh?” she asked before chomping obnoxiously on the pill and making a big show of swallowing it. She lurched afterward, then let out a sigh.

“Yeah, it’s pretty awesome,” I agreed, pulling out another for myself. I just needed something to take the ache out of my legs, but a conversation partner couldn’t hurt, right? I tossed the second pill into my mouth, and swallowed. After a moment, the pain subsided, and I felt better. Somewhere deep inside, a little version of myself argued that I needed to stop taking the pill. I quashed the voice, and grinned, feeling the power in my legs. If only I had something I could smash. “Do you think a pony who helps others is a hero?” I asked her, fighting against the desire to reach across and put my steel hoof through her face.

She took a deep breath and threw her head back. Her eyes opened wide, both bloodshot and her pupils small as pinheads. She bared her teeth and screamed, “Fuck, yes!” The mare smashed both forehooves into the ground a few times, breathing heavily.

She snorted several times to calm herself down. “I used to run with a bad crowd, I don’t think I can answer that sort of question,” she answered. She had a razor-thin band of pink around her leg, so faint it was almost invisible. Were it not for the sharp contrast against her dark coat, I wouldn’t have been able to see it at all. “But, well... This shit’s a lot better, and it only costs a little...” She laid herself down and stared up at the bottle in my hoof. As calm as she looked, I could still see her grinding her teeth, and the little spark in her eye that I knew all too well.

“I’ll give you another, if you give me a real answer,” I offered. What was one pill for some validation, after all?

She perked up, her ears swiveling forward and a smile forming. “Sure, sure. Look. A hero’s a good pony, right?” She tensed her legs, hooves curling and flexing ever so slightly.

I nodded. I felt my own legs doing the same, as if my body were trying to start something without me getting into it. I fought against it, wanting to keep in control, to not destroy everything around me. She was right there. I didn’t need to kill her. I could just rough her up a little. It’d be so easy...

“You think you did good?”

“I think I did great. I stopped a pony who was abusing others, and I set those mares free,” I answered. “I fucking know it’s a good thing.” The same little pony in my mind crossed her forehooves and argued that I should think whether or not I was kidding myself. Without the drug involved, I could practically see the red blood of ponies killed with so very little effort.

“Sounds like a hero to me, then!” Fire Bomb practically shouted. She crawled slowly closer, her eyes never leaving the bottle I held, her tail twitching back and forth, and her ears skewing side to side. I could see a hunger in her eyes, and I couldn’t tell whether it was for the drug, or for killing me.

“Alright, fine. You’ve earned it I guess,” I said, relenting. I opened the bottle and gave her another pill, which she took by levitating it in her magic. Her eyes matched her mane, and so did her telekinetic haze. Goddesses-damned fucking cheater magic! I couldn’t help but growl.

“Like I said, I used to run with bad ponies. We killed who we wanted, and took what we wanted. Leader saw himself as a hero, recruiting those he felt worthy, and taking them with him over to the old manufacturing district,” she explained. She took the second pill and let out a happy-sounding groan that bordered on lust. “What was right for him was right for the group. He did good, sometimes.” Her tail snapped, and she stood up on her hooves. She arched her back and dragged her forehoof against the ground.

“Ashen Hooves, right?” I asked her. I slid the bottle of Buck away, not wanting to offer her another. It was mine, and I didn’t want to give it all away. Ironically, I found myself doing to her exactly what the pink mare had been doing to the town. But that was it. She wasn’t getting any more. I wasn’t going to enable her to throw her life away. I needed it more anyway. It got me through fights, it made me stronger and tougher. I wasn’t going to let this bitch squander it all.

“Yeah, yeah. See. He’s always looking for good ponies. Ones that can get the job done,” she explained.

“I can get the job done just fine. But that’s the problem: how do I know that what I did was the right thing?” I asked her. The conversation had taken quite a weird turn, and I really needed to either steer it back on task, or meet the challenge I could tell she was giving me. I’d win. Easy. I just needed answers first. Then I’d beat the piss out of her.

“I’m getting there, just listen,” she said. She shook a hoof at me, then slammed it into the ground, hard enough to chip chunks out of the sidewalk. “Sometimes others don’t agree with you, and you gotta find the ones that really want to keep on your side. Those are the ones-”

“Stop,” I cut her off. “I went on a rampage and killed several ponies to save a few. Was it worth it? Do the ends justify the means? Somepony told me that they do, if you look at it in the right timeframe.” I gritted my teeth. “A few deaths for ponies who aren’t really...” My thoughts were strangely clear, but I seemed to have the damndest time expressing them through the haze of violence at the front of my mind.

“Rampage, eh?” Fire Bomb said with a chuckle. “I miss rampages. Those were the days.” She looked up at the sky and smiled so widely that I thought the top of her head might pop off. She laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh. Whatever joy might have been in it was from the memory of the pain she’d caused others.

That crystallized my thoughts. I never wanted to end up like that. I wanted to to turn her head into pulp, but fought the urge to tackle her, no matter how easy it would be. I knew that the Buck was goading me to act, but I had to fight against it, no matter how tempting it was. “Hey!” I snapped. “I asked you a question!”

“Huh, wha..? Oh, right,” she whispered. She looked back at me. “Do you think you did right by them ponies?” Her eyes flickered to my saddlebags, then back to me.

“Yes. I killed a dozen copies in an effort to save ponies I knew were slaves, and had been tortured and sold off,” I answered her. “I did what I needed to, because they needed saving. Who cares what my tactics were? That pink pony needed to be stopped.”

“Sounds like you did the right thing to me, saving ponies is hero work rig- Wait, pink pony?” she asked. She pinned her ears back and glared at me. No matter what thoughts ruled her head, I knew that look.

I forced myself up into a standing position, and glared right back. “Yeah, a pink mare. Aquamarine eyes, dark pink mane and tail. She’d been supplying drugs to that place... the Goddesses’ Bed, or Helter Skelter, or whatever the actual name of it was,” I answered her. “Why?” I practically spat the question at her. I had a very good feeling about what was about to happen. I took a step forward, daring her to start something.

“You killed Rose! How’m I going to get my fix now?” she screamed. She grabbed the sides of her head with her hooves and started to shake. “No... no... fuck! I can’t go back to Ashen, or he’ll kill me for desertion!” She looked me right in the eye. “You!” Her eyelid twitched, and she took a swing at me.

I didn’t expect a pony her size to have that much behind her. Her hoof caught me right in the cheek. I shrugged it off, letting somepony else deal with the pain. She’d done exactly what I’d wanted her to. I grinned.

Instinct kicked in. I tackled the mare into a nearby lamppost, smashing her head against the metal pole while I bashed her face in the exact same spot she’d hit me with my left forehoof. Inside my head, I heard somepony screaming for me to stop, but me and the Buck needed to vent. And this Fire Bomb pony gave me the perfect excuse.

I wouldn’t kill her though, not intentionally.

The blood flowed, and my veins surged. The pounding in my legs and head overtook everything else. It was hot and powerful. I whinnied and struck at her again, only to find my hoof blocked.

The mare chuckled. I looked over to what exactly what she found so funny. Her hoof, once a brown that reminded me of the Steel Rangers from Stable Sixty, now glowed bright red, almost matching her mane. She clobbered me in the face, knocking me clear across the sidewalk, and into the wall of the building I’d been sitting against. It burned like the slab of metal Lost had stuffed my stump into.

“Fuckin’ killin’ my dealer?!” she spat. “The fuck is wrong with you!? You think I can just go back to Ashen after deserting him like that?” She charged, both her forehooves glowing the same bright red, with little flickers of light erupting all around them.

Suddenly, I knew why they called her Fire Bomb.

The unicorn reared up, pulling both forehooves back. I rolled away, but it didn’t matter. Her hooves slammed into the concrete of the sidewalk, and burst into flame. A shock wave toppled me as I tried to get to my hooves. And she kept after me! She let out a war-cry and raised both brilliantly flaming forehooves to stomp me, matching the flaring of her horn.

In for a bit, in for a cap. I met her halfway, sidestepping at the last second, just like I’d done to Slipstock a week and a half ago. I heard a quiet ‘huh?’ when we passed one another, and took that as my cue. I slammed her sideways and pinned her against the building. Plans? What plan? I needed one, in a hurry.

Fire Bomb struggled as I held her against the wall, and felt forehooves flailing as she tried to attack me. Thankfully, ponies didn’t quite bend that way. She might not be able to get to me, but I was stuck too. “Let me go before I turn you to steak!” she screamed.

And then a flash of brilliance hit me. I grabbed her tail’s dock in my teeth and pulled, shifting to loosen my hold on her at the same time. With every ounce of strength I could muster, I swung her around, dragging her along the rubble and brick wall in front of me, her cries of pain music to my ears. The aches in my legs were gone, lost in the adrenaline rush. I swung her around and let her topple... then hesitated, not wanting to deal with the flaming hooves. But my body acted on its own. I leapt forward and slammed her against the pavement with my own hooves.

She grunted, but it didn’t seem to faze her as much as I’d hoped. She wrapped both flaming forelegs around me, and dragged me down onto her, bringing her head up and slamming her horn against me.

I dodged being stabbed through the eye with her horn, managing to only get a deep gouge across my face. It both stung and burned at the same time, as if her horn were on fire and dipped in alcohol.

“Oh, fuck!” I screamed. I hadn’t cleaned myself off after the last fight. I was still covered in booze. Fire Bomb brought a fiery hoof across my face, hard. I heard something inside my skull break as I burst into flames. The alcohol caught and flared up, scorching parts of my coat off and blinding me in one eye. I closed it just in time, and the fire dissipated. The booze burned away in a flash, and left me with nothing but a pain that even the Buck couldn’t rid me of.

Fire Bomb laughed and hit me again, though the second hit didn’t have the same heat behind it. The air felt cool and painful on my exposed skin, and the hoof-to-the-face only made the sting worse.

I leaned back and slammed her to the ground. I could beat her, burnt or not. I dropped down, planting whole weight on her and forcing her hooves outward. The ache in my legs flooded back, suddenly feeling like a fire inside my bones. I really started to hate fire. After all the times it’d been used against me, I felt justified. With a war cry of my own, I bashed my hooves and forehead against the burning unicorn.

I didn’t have cheater magic or a horn to stab with, but I refused to let up. After releasing a furious flurry of blows, I finally let up, breathing heavily and looking down at the mare’s bloodied face.

She spat a gob of blood off to the side, then spat out a tooth, and laughed.

I had no idea what was so funny, but I found myself laughing as well. Unable to control myself, I rolled off of her and simply laughed. The heat disappeared, and her laughter rang in time with my own. I hoped she felt the same as me, worn out and past the point where she could actually fight. I knew I felt it, my legs burning and aching.

The Buck wasn’t lasting as long anymore.

“Sorry,” I muttered, looking at the red-maned unicorn.

“I’ll find a new supplier, or I’ll go back,” she answered, “I suddenly really miss fighting with the gang.” Her horn lit up again and the familiar knitting feeling of healing flesh covered my face. The fires around her hooves snuffed out, and she let out a sigh, closing her eyes. “Shit ain’t as good as it used to be, anyway.”

“Don’t have the same kick,” I agreed. Lifting my flesh forehoof, I tapped at my face. I could feel again, and my coat was back in place. “Thanks.”

“Sure. Worth it for a pony who can give as good as she gets,” she replied with a small smile. “You might want to look into joining up with The Ashen. We could use a good ‘hero’ fighter. Hup!” She rolled to her hooves and looked down at me. “Manufacturing district, the old E.C.C. building. You’ll know it when you see it.” She winked, turned, and limped away.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath into my overworked lungs. One more thing, then I’d go back and... and do... something. I didn’t know exactly what yet.

* * *

Given what had happened with Fire Bomb, I found myself doubting my prowess in hoof-to-hoof combat. I knew I could hold my own when in a bad situation, but I needed to stop having to rely on drugs to do it. If only because it made everything hurt a lot worse afterward. On top of that, I’d been dealt too many moral defeats in my fights, even when I’d technically ‘won’ them. I needed more ammunition, and I needed to prove I could handle myself outside of combat as well as in it.

Okay, really, I just didn’t want to go back to my sister and friends with my tail between my legs and nothing to show for it but a face that almost got burnt off. It still stung a little, but at least the mare had been friendly enough to heal me up and not leave me with a horrific burn. I felt a sudden twinge on my back, where so long ago I’d been hit with a grenade and lit on fire, then whipped, then- eugh!

I focused, kept walking, and searched for a store.

After what felt like an eternity of searching, despite aching legs and lungs that wouldn’t breathe right, I managed to find a store. At least what I thought was a store. The sign that hung above the door was made of an old Sparkle~Cola billboard, split down the center of the cap. No other building I’d found looked remotely like a store, so I figured I’d just try my luck.

I pushed the door open and walked in, praying to the Goddesses that I wasn’t walking into somepony’s home. Inside looked exactly like a house, with a shattered staircase along one wall, a chair, and a small table in the center of the room. The table was loaded with knick-knacks, ranging from punctured stuffed teddy bears to unopened cans of centuries-old food. Along the back wall was a shelf covered in guns, all lined up next to one another.

Either somepony was extremely obsessed about how they decorated, or I’d just wandered into a repurposed building.

“Hello?” called out the soft voice of a mare. “Anypony there?” she asked a moment later. From the hallway at the back of the room trotted out a massively tall mare with a pastel-pink coat and a two-toned blue mane that flowed as she walked.

I froze. “Goddesses help me,” I whispered under my breath. Another one of those unkillable giant alicorn monsters.

She towered over me, her eyes scrunched up in confusion and one eyebrow raised. The mare had a horn longer than any I’d seen aside from Rebar’s, and yellow eyes that reminded me of what little sunlight I’d seen through the cloud cover. She walked into the room and took a seat behind the table.

“No wings?” I half-asked the mare, half asking myself. I wasn’t quite sure. She didn’t have any wings like Rebar did, and she had a cutie mark that looked almost identical to the sign on the door; a bottle cap shattered clear in half. Come to think of it, Rebar hadn’t had a cutie mark that I’d seen. I knew I wasn’t the best at noticing that sort of thing at first glance, but the moment I noticed this alicorn-looking mare’s, it stuck in my head.

“Of course not. When have you ever met a unicorn with wings?” she asked, her voice barely loud enough to hear. She pursed her lips into a sweet little smile and gave me a once over, looking from hooves to head. “So, new in town then, I take it?” she asked. Her voice lost the quiet sweetness, and instead sounded like a mare ready to devour the first piece of food she’d seen in a year. Suddenly it became painfully clear that I was ‘fresh meat.’

I gulped.

“Passing through,” I answered, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible. I really hoped she hadn’t seen or heard me gulp like that.

“Buying or selling?” Her question was short and to the point, from a mare who knew exactly what she wanted.

“Both,” I answered. I licked my lips and rolled a shoulder to slide the saddlebag from my sides. It thudded on the floor.

The mare’s ears perked up and twisted forward. She sat up straight and her eyes practically lit up, brightening up so much they almost looked like a different color. “Excellent. And you are?” she asked as she slowly lifted herself to her hooves. She stopped barely a foot from me and lifted my saddlebags in her telekinesis. The mare was easily twice my height, but unlike the addict from a few hours ago, she had none of the bulk, leaving a slim mare who suddenly made me feel quite unattractive by comparison.

“Hidden. Hidden Fortune,” I squeaked. Whether the crash from all the drugs had sapped my mental strength as well as physical, or I was just intimidated by this pony, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that I really wished I’d brought Xeno to do the bartering for me.

The unicorn nodded curtly, already lifting out various objects from my saddlebags with her magic and floating them in the air in a small circle around her head. She continued this until she had everything I owned out of the bag, hovering for her inspection. Her eyes darted back and forth between guns and pills, syringes and bullets. With expert control of her magic, she shifted the items around as if juggling them, until she’d sectioned everything into two different levitated piles.

“I’m willing to put a price on the items in this pile,” she explained nodding her head over to the one group of items. “The rest of them aren’t worth their weight in caps, and I suggest you keep the lot of them. I don’t see any resale value in the bunch, and I doubt that the price I could possibly offer while still making a profit for myself would be worth either taking them off your hooves or cluttering my shop. Assuming you wish to sell everything in the aforementioned selection that I do see fit to purchase from you, I believe I can give you fair market value.” She moved the items she didn’t wish to purchase back into my saddlebags and lowered them back onto me.

“Umm. What?” I asked. I hadn’t been able to keep up with everything she’d just said, let alone figure out what at least three of the words meant.

“Oh, aren’t you just darling?” she cooed. With the items in tow, she floated away the ones on her table and placed them in a perfectly identical setup on the floor to the side of her chair. Resting herself back into it, she lowered each item back onto the table. I could see the remaining grenades we’d brought, my various drugs, and a few other pieces of what I’d considered trash in there. None of it had a value assigned in my mind, and without the PipBuck to give it a value it somehow randomly knew, I didn’t know what any of it was worth.

“Well, I don’t normally do the selling, I have a friend who takes care of that,” I admitted. The minute the words left my mouth I realized I’d made a mistake. I didn’t know a lot about how to barter properly, but I knew giving her the upper hoof was a big problem. Rather than approach it directly, I snatched up the things I knew I didn’t want to sell. I left the trash and two of the grenades, but pulled away the drugs and what I intended to keep. “But I know I don’t want to sell those, I still need them. Instead, umm...” I pulled out the popgun pistol that I’d been using, having found it far too weak for my tastes, and some of the spare ammo for it. “I’d rather get rid of these instead, even if that won’t get me the same amount.”

“How frugal of you,” the mare commented.

“Wait, since we’re doing business, what’s your name? I told you mine,” I said. If I was going to get scammed, I wanted to know by who, so I could come back later with Xeno and do some proper bartering. Goddesses, why’d I done a stupid thing like run off on my own? I really could have used some backup.

“Most ponies call me Deal Breaker, but you can call me Ms. Breaker,” she purred. Her horn lit up with a golden glow and she lifted the pistol up to inspect it, paying almost no attention at all to me.

Deal Breaker? My heart sank at the name. Silently, I vowed to never try to go to a shop without Xeno. In all honesty, I hadn’t even paid attention to half of what I took anymore, ever since we’d started going all out and taking every last thing we could. Looking over the surprisingly well-organized mess on her table, I saw boxes of cleaner, scrap electronics, empty shell casings, and even some toys. I didn’t know where I’d even picked up half of those things!

I did grab the scrap electronics back. “Sorry, promised these to somepony,” I admitted. I tossed them back into my saddlebags and sat across from her.

“Right, that removes quite a bit of the incentive to make a purchase from you,” she said, “since I had a pony lined up requesting that sort of thing. But I suppose if you really do think you have a better use for them, then by all means, be my guest.” She waved a hoof across the items on the table. “Fifty, total.”

“Fifty? That’s an outrage!” I shouted. I didn’t really know if they were worth one cap or one hundred, but without anything to go on, I tried my best to pretend I knew how to haggle. “Seventy-five, minimum.”

She laughed. “Forty-five.”

“What? That’s even less,” I argued. Part of me wanted to reach out and snatch everything up and send Xeno in instead. It would only take another walk through town and admitting to Lost that she was right about not letting me out of her sight. Only that. Ugh. I couldn’t let that happen, so I just swallowed my pride. “Trade instead?”

“I thought you wished to sell?” Ms. Breaker asked, casually tilting her head to the side and giving me an inquisitive look. The mare’s long, flowing tail flicked through the air to the side of her chair, distracting me just enough. I thought I saw her smirk, but I couldn’t be sure.

“I need ammo for my gun,” I said, motioning toward where Persistence hung at my side. “Bullets are worth more than caps to me right now.”

“Oh! Why didn’t you say so, darling? We could have skipped right to that. That’s a .308, correct?” she asked. Her horn lit up again and a box underneath the shelf on the far wall lifted into the air. She levitated it over toward the two of us and cleared a spot on the little table for it. Setting the box down gingerly, she flipped off the lid to reveal row after row of perfectly ordered shells, all going from largest to smallest in little lines from one edge of the box to the next.

“Yeah, how many do you have?” I asked, letting my eyes trail over the box. From the top, I couldn’t quite tell which bullet was which. I knew enough about guns to fire them and load the bullet that fit, but I couldn’t pick them out of a row without being able to see them from the side.

“More than enough to match the value of what you have,” she answered. A golden haze covered two dozen bullets and she lifted them from the box. Once more lifting multiple things, she closed the box and floated it back to its place without breaking her telekinetic grip on the ammunition.

I’d remembered when I’d had more bullets than I could count. Was I really stuck in such a position where I had to scrape together everything I could, just to afford enough to get me through a single battle? Maybe I just needed to take some time to hone my other skills, or learn how to use Persistence properly. Or keep the gun from firing multiple times. Maybe if I had Lost take a look at her, and give the gun a once-over? She’d already been really good at using her magic to keep our guns in tip-top shape. I looked back and forth between the ammo and the things Ms. Breaker wanted to purchase, before finally looking at the mare herself.

Hunting for ammo in the Wastes was so, so much easier than this...

She smiled, a tiny smile with just the very edges of her lips curled. Her telekinesis floated the bullets in the air, bobbing them up and down enticingly. It was obvious even to me that she’d been doing it on purpose, and I hated the fact that she knew just how much of a bind she had me in.

I didn’t need the others, though. I could do things on my own just fine. I wasn’t the forgotten sister of a much better, more talented, and smarter mare. I was just as good. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have her cheater magic, or Xeno’s way with words and her freaky self-professed luck, or that I couldn’t make myself look like any pony I needed to to exploit my way through a situation.

I stomped my steel hoof. “Deal,” I stammered, doing my best to keep from sounding desperate.

“Ms. Breaker,” she corrected me. “And no, this isn’t a deal. To purchase what I hold here in my grasp, I’m quite afraid that I’ll be needing much more than what you presently offer up as a trade. The value betwixt the two sets of items is far, far from even, and to balance it out, I’d need something quite in excess of what you probably have to offer in return.” She shifted on her haunches and settled back into the chair, her hooves curling against the floor. She raised one forehoof and stacked the bullets in a little pile atop it, letting her magic hold them from falling off onto the floor.

“How much?” I asked, already afraid of the answer. I knew I’d need to start digging out caps to shell over. I also knew I’d probably overpay.

Maybe I did need them. I probably needed them. Oh, fuck it. I knew I was worthless without them. The only true thing I brought to our little group was the fact that I could act as the muscle. I was the best shot, and with my steel hoof I hit the hardest. Biting back the frustration, I nodded.

“Fifty Five,” she said with a sneer.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew she’d added the extra five as an insult. I didn’t care. I fished out the caps she demanded, and threw them across the table.

With ease, she snatched up every single cap from the air with her magic. I’d never seen such fine control of cheater magic by a pony, even from mom when she’d pulled off all sorts of little tricks while teaching Lost.

“Pleasure, Miss Fortune,” she said. With a whisper, she added, “Do come again.”

“Of course, Ms. Breaker. I’ll visit the very next time I have something to sell,” I answered mindlessly. It took me a moment to realize what just happened, and I shook my head. “I mean, if I’m ever in town.”

The mare smirked at me, and passed me the ammunition.

I snatched it up in my hoof, threw it into my saddlebag, and left, once more with my tail between my legs. I needed my sister and my friends, no matter how angry or justified I felt my anger was, and I’d need to just suck up my failures. Without my friends, I got taken advantage of.

Twice, in as many hours, I’d gotten into serious trouble. Was I really that pathetic?

* * *

The first thing I planned to do was check the PipBuck to see if I’d just gotten scammed. Okay, first thing I was checking was how badly I was just scammed. Once outside Deal Breaker’s shop, I loaded up Persistence so she had a full clip. I left the rest of the ammo sitting on top of my saddlebags.

I vowed never to do the shopping myself again, now that I knew just how outclassed I really was. The bright side was that we had Xeno now, and could go back to Pommel Falls, avoid Hydro, and get her to take Broker down a few pegs. The little glimmer of future revenge was nice, but it didn’t really do much for me at the moment.

I’d found myself lost again, in a particularly destroyed part of town. On the whole, I’d realized, the further in one direction I went, the worse the destruction. Places like The Restless Mare and Deal Breaker’s shop were located in the better parts of town, while whatever the actual name of the other bar was, was further down in the more ruined section. I felt a bit of relief knowing I was at least close. L.A. and the others would either be at The Restless Mare or waiting for me at The Goddesses’ Bed.

I decided I liked that name better, since it was far less weirdly gibberish. The connection to the Goddesses didn’t hurt. Maybe now that we’d effectively vacated it, I could use one of the rooms for a nap.

Then I remembered what they’d been used for, and shuddered. Nevermind. I could wait until we got somewhere safer. I’d already worked myself to exhaustion and felt a nice second wind coming on. The aches and pains were starting to subside, and I didn’t even really feel tired anymore. I’d gone so far in that direction that the sleepiness had totally disappeared.

Idly, I wondered if this was how Lost felt all the time. I rarely saw her actually sleep, and she tended to stay up late in the night doing whatever it was her cheater magic let her do. With her special talent of fixing things, that usually meant maintaining our weapons and equipment. On occasion she would also fix up any bit of old world tech so would could sell it for a higher price later.

.

I’d never be able to do that with my hooves. No skill for fine manipulation and all. I looked down at my hoof. Maybe I could get claws, like a griffon’s, attached somehow? I laughed. As if that would ever happen. I was a pony, and ponies had hooves.

It was just another reminder that, without my friends, I couldn’t really do a whole lot by myself. Terminals and the like terrified me, and I couldn’t barter or pick locks with any particular skill. I didn’t know how to mend a wound unless somepony told me exact steps to do it. On top of all that, I couldn’t even sneak well anymore because of the Goddesses’ damned clanking of my hoof. I might have gotten used to the sound by now, but other ponies always stopped to look when I came stomping through.

I turned a corner, and so did my thoughts. I walked down another road, looking for the brothel.

I wished for the PipBuck, both for the map and the radio. Hearing about the heroine on the radio would be a perfect way to lift my spirits right now. I bet she never had to worry about things like whether or not she was justified in a rampage, killing ponies she felt deserved it. She was a hero, like we were pretending to be. Like the stallion I’d killed had been.

Should I go back and visit his head? I’d told him ages ago that I wouldn’t be coming back, but that was back when I’d thought we wouldn’t be heading that way ever again. I couldn’t risk a romp through the Wasteland, just to tell a severed head hello. But if we were traveling back by, and going to walk right past him, all I had to do was look for the tree I’d marked, and make a quick stop. I’m sure nopony would mind... Except maybe Xeno.

I’d make it quick. I needed advice. I’d gotten used to the image of other ponies in my head, both a version of myself on Buck, and the little version of Amble that I could never quite see, whispering in my ear. So who knew, maybe I’d get some really good advice on how to be a hero.

Right now, I didn’t feel like one. My mind didn’t care, but my heart hurt something fierce. On the other hoof, having deluded myself into thinking I was capable of being a hero and saving ponies might have been my first big mistake. I was a treasure hunter at heart, a pony who survived. Not a savior.

I turned the corner and started down the next block. I hoped to find it soon, and save me from my own thoughts.

I didn’t really feel like a good pony at this point either. Had Lost not exploited a weakness of mine and given me an order, I’d probably have become just as bad as one of those raiders or bandits, taking joy in murder, without any care for others. I needed to set myself right. I decided that yes, I would go see Gunbu-

A lance of pain shot through my side. Whatever I’d been thinking about disappeared, replaced by agony. I screamed in pain as I fell to the ground. A bang echoed down the street from the gunshot. Blood poured down my sides, dripping to the shattered road from under my armor.

I bit my tongue to stop the screaming and looked back to see what happened. Breathing heavily, I pulled my jacket to the side. There was a hole in it, and another clean through my armor. Inside looked bad.

I needed to get back. I needed to get to my sister. At least to apologize before I bled out.

I forced myself to my hooves, only to collapse a second later. I vomited from the pain. The same kind of pain I remembered from when I’d broken a rib before. This felt so much worse. I checked my other side and saw a bulge in the armor, where the round had punched clear through me and hit the other side. I felt worse by a scale of thousands. Had they... used an armor-piercing round on me?

With blood dripping from the corners of my mouth, I dug frantically through my saddlebags. I needed something, anything, to heal myself. Mostly, I needed Lost for this, but a healing potion would do in the meantime. At least I didn’t have to worry about trapping the bullet inside. Finally finding a potion, I dragged it out and chugged it, praying to the Goddesses I hadn’t lost too much blood or gotten too torn-up inside.

Chucking the bottle down the street, I looked around. I needed to know where they’d fired from, and why they hadn’t gone for a second shot. Was somepony toying with me? The gunshot scattered the drug-addled locals, and they’d rapidly vanished. I didn’t see anypony with a gun nearby. No glint from a scope.

“What the absolute fuck!” I screamed at the empty streets. Dragging myself back to my hooves, I limped forward, struggling to pull my hind legs behind me. The healing potion had helped, but the damage the bullet had done inside me was too much for just one. On top of that, the pain in my eyes from the chandelier glass earlier was getting much much worse.

I might have just healed the glass inside my eyes.

The ground beside me exploded as another shot whizzed past, so close that I felt the drag from it. I lurched forward and collapsed on my side, screaming in pain. I looked side to side, hoping for some clue as to where the bullets might be coming from. The sound of the gunshot echoing through the empty streets gave no hint to where the shooter or shooters might be. I forced myself back up and bit back against the pain.

Now, I knew exactly how Marshmallow Sundae felt after what had happened to her back at Leathers. I limped forward, struggling to put one hoof in front of the other. Breathing heavily, I mentally counted off the time between the shots. If the shooter was consistent, I’d have another-

“Ow! FUCK!” I cried as another bullet tore into me and knocked me to the ground. I didn’t need to look back to know that it had hit me right in the cutie mark. Suddenly the idea of having a big stylish-looking X emblazoned on my flanks was a nightmare. All I did was give a pony a perfect target to aim at. I didn’t want to know what the far side looked like. I just hoped Lost could fix the damage when I got back to her.

Target or not, it was my cutie mark.

Grinding my teeth, I fought against the tears. With my good forehooves, I dragged myself away. Somewhere... I needed somewhere out of sight. Not knowing where the shooter was, I pulled myself behind a broken down wagon on the curb. Hopefully it would be safe. I only needed a few seconds. Once again, I cursed not having cheater magic as I reached back and dug through my saddlebags to grab something to deal with the pain. I couldn’t run if my bones were fucked. I caught glass with my fetlock and pulled another vial out. Wonderful healing liquid in my grasp, I rolled to my side and looked.

“Oh, Celestia...” I whispered, seeing what the shooter had done to me. The white of my coat ran dark crimson. The wound opened like a blossoming flower of killing joke. I could see bone... Taking a deep breath, I tipped the vial and poured. Wincing as the potion spilled in, I closed my eyes and breathed. It would have to be enough to get me back. I just needed to wait for the next shot.

Like clockwork, a bullet tore through the cover I’d been using, just past my head. The echoing crack of gunfire followed a second later. I threw the bottle away, as hard as I could, using it as a distraction. The meager healing I’d done would have to do. I made a break for it in the opposite direction. Whoever was shooting couldn’t be moving too fast, since both bullets had gone through the same side of me.

I heard the bang of a gun going off again, but I didn’t feel or see a bullet hit anywhere. My ruse seemed to have worked. I ran, trying not to trip over my dragging hooves, praying to the Goddesses I was going in the right direction.

Right or not, I turned the next corner, and dove into the alleyway. Bullets could go through a lot, but I doubted even a good armor-piercing round could pierce the collapsed rubble of a three-story building. I leaned against the wall and sighed.

Lost had better not be fucking somepony again when I got back...

* * *

I finally found my way back, chugging and chewing every last healing item I’d owned. I hoped it had been enough to stop whatever internal bleeding I was probably suffering, but I was far from ‘in good shape.’ I felt barely good enough to walk without a limp.

The sign reading ‘Helter Skelter’ showed the way to paradise for me. If the Goddesses cared about me at all, and if zebra luck decided to fall on my side this time, then my sister and my friends would be in there, rested and waiting, able and ready to heal the damage I hadn’t been able to take care of myself.

I nudged the door open with my face, and looked around the room. Instead of seeing everything ready and waiting for my return, I saw, well, I saw what I might have done, had I been left alone there.

Lost stood next to the bar, her forelegs and chest splattered with blood. Xeno sat behind her at the bar, her helmet on and pulled down far enough to hide her eyes with her flattened mohawk. Fine Tune stood beside my sister in his unicorn form, wearing a new set of reinforced leather barding and floating a silenced pistol in the blue-green haze of his magic.

Blossom, the pony who owned the place, lay in the center of the room. Surrounded by a pool of blood, and her coat covered in splotches of it, she wasn’t moving. A dozen bullets lay scattered all over the floor, with several shell casings all around Fine Tune. Every one of the bullets was covered in the same blood as the mare. She stared at the floor, not even blinking. Were it not for the slow rise and fall of her chest, I’d have accused Lost of killing her outright.

Rather than question any of what happened, I simply collapsed. The door chimed right as my head hit the ground, before everything went black.

* * *

“I didn’t faint, I passed out,” I argued. “Now, will somepony please tell me exactly what I missed?” I looked at my rear, watching my sister’s healing magic close the hole over my cutie mark. I breathed a sigh of relief as she managed to get it back to perfect shape. Were I able to, I’d have reached back around and hugged my own flanks. Just having that X back the way it belonged was a weight off my withers.

“Well, after you ran off, I tried to talk to little miss Show Blossom over there, and get some information from her. She wasn’t as... forthcoming as I would have liked, so I had to take the hard way,” she explained. Slowly she trotted around me, her horn closing my little cuts and scratches, healing the remainder of my face where Fire Bomb had missed spots. She’d managed to pull the glass slivers from my eyes in the fifteen minutes I was unconscious, for which I was eternally thankful. I really didn’t want to know what it felt like to have tiny slivers of glass pulled from me, especially from my eyes.

I stood without my barding or jacket, leaving me feeling strangely naked. I really hoped I could find a pony with some skill with a needle and thread to patch the poor thing up. I didn’t worry about my armor, since I knew Lost could fix metal, but we lacked the materials to fix a leather jacket.

“So, the blood splatters?” I asked.

“Remember when we escaped U Cig, and I killed Lead Line?” Lost said. She took a step back and looked me over, from freshly-healed ear to my now-clean hooves.

“Yeah, you killed her because she had closed our escape route,” I answered. I remembered that a little too well, honestly.

“Yeah, and by killing her I made it so we couldn’t get the combination to her lock, meaning we had to fight our way out,” she said. “So when Show Blossom here decided to fight her way out I shot her through the hoof, instead of killing her outright. The gun belongs to her.”

“And this new barding, too,” chimed in Fine Tune. He trotted in a little circle to show off the reinforced leather. The barding covered his chest, barrel, and haunches, leaving only his hooves uncovered. He didn’t have a helmet, but he finally had something to keep the worst of the Wasteland off of him. “Too bad it doesn’t have room for my wings.”

“Maybe we can make some,” offered my sister. She turned back to me and continued. “I got the slave dealings out of her, then I got what she knows about your pink pony, the one you’d decided to kill indiscriminately.”

“I didn’t kill the last one,” I argued. “I told you before, it was The Glowing One.” I raised my hoof to stomp it, but relented, knowing I wasn’t in any position to be angry.

“Alright, sorry,” she admitted. “Either way, she talked. I gave her armor and gun to Fine Tune, and relieved her of her supply of exploding collars.”

“Okay, and all that actually means?” I asked.

“It means that sheis a bad pony and that wehave stopped her slave trade,” Xeno answered for her. “Itis one step closer to my requests.” The zebra spit the cigarette she’d had in her mouth into the rather large pile growing on the bar, and looked over at me. “Itis not important. What is important is that wehave done what you wished to do, and we should leave before dark so that we can reach my brothers and my homeland sooner.”

“Short version, sis?” I asked.

Lost shrugged. “She’s the slaver of the town. She buys the mares to keep the selection fresh, sells off customers who can’t pay or are too drugged out to put up a fight. The sign out front is misleading to keep out the capless bums, and your pink pony was the local ‘drug lord.’ Med-X helps ween the mares into their new lives here... She has no idea where the pink ponies came from; only that they kept her well supplied.”

Well, that answered everything nicely. It also put to rest the issue of the sign and name mismatch, which had really been bothering me. “What are we going to do with her then? If we leave her, won’t she just start up again?” I asked.

“I’ll be making a quick stop to talk to Relly, and she can decide what to do with her,” L.A. answered. She trotted over to the Unity mares and waved her hoof. “C’mon, we’re about to head out.” She trotted back over to me as the four mares slowly started to get to their hooves. “She might be a drunk, but she did want the town cleaned up. A quick stop at The Restless Mare to say goodbye to Nip Chaser, then, assuming nothing goes wrong...” I knew the look she gave me. She expected something to go wrong, or everything to go wrong. I wasn’t quite sure.

Given the luck we’d had lately, I could only expect the Wasteland to come down on us like a bloodwing on a lost foal. Whatever the Wasteland had, I was ready for it. After the day I’d been through, I felt I could take on anything.

“...we’ll take the mares back to Skirt, then we head back to pick up Xeno’s brothers,” Lost finished.

Together, the two of us looked over to Xeno, who smiled. She actually genuinely smiled. She pushed the slaver helmet up to move her mohawk, which shifted just enough that we could see the pleased look in her deep blue eyes.

“Okay, so we have a plan, that’s good, right?” I asked. I sat on my haunches and pulled my armor back on, ignoring the hole and the dent on the sides of it. It took a bit of work without magic, but I managed to wriggle my way in and get it pulled on where it belonged. Lost helped me, and then assisted me in getting my jacket back on over the top. The battle saddle with Persistence went on last, and then I was all ready to go.

“Yes. Now do you want to tell me what you've been doing and who's been trying to kill you?” Lost asked, her horn glowing again. Her forelegs and chest lit up in the same blue glow, as she started to slowly use telekinesis to lift the splattering of blood from her coat. It didn’t look like an easy process, but it kept her eyes off of me.

I bit my tongue. “I talked to an ex gang pony, bought some new bullets, and got shot by a pony I couldn’t see,” I answered after a moment’s hesitation, glossing over the details.

“New bullets? Oh, do you have any for this?” asked Fine Tune. He floated the gun over toward me and popped the magazine from it. There were only two bullets inside, far fewer than it could hold at its maximum.

“If I can see the PipBuck, I’ll know,” I answered. I held up my right forehoof. “Can I have it, Lost?”

“Please, my Queen?” whimpered the changeling.

“Alright, here,” answered Lost. She unclasped the hoof-mounted device and floated it over to me.

It closed atop my steel hoof with a click, and flickered to life. The familiar little display menus appeared in the corners of my vision, telling me lots of little things I hadn’t quite figured out how to process, other than the frame of reference for how hurt I was and how many times I could shoot in the targeting spell.

With mild annoyance, I flipped the display color back to green. “Thank you, Lost,” I said, already staring at the screen and organizing the items in my saddlebags. I found a grand total of ten bullets for the little pistol Fine Tune had and pulled them out. I passed the bullets to the unicorn-disguised changeling.

He let out a shrill happy-sounding chirp clear through the illusionary form and snatched them in his magic.

“Are you sure that’s all?” my sister asked. She glared over the rims of her glasses, making me shrink back.

I still wanted to be mad at her, but what little time I’d spent away from her had really drilled into me my need for her. Whether she trusted me or not, I figured it was best to swallow my pride, bite back my complaints, and just nod. So I told her exactly what happened, from the drugs to the fight, to how I’d been taken advantage of by Deal Breaker, to the two shots that dug through my sides.

“Hidden, what am I going to do with you?” she finally asked. The tone of her voice wasn’t angry, but worried.

Xeno simply shook her head. Fine Tune half-smiled and gave me a sympathetic look. Show Blossom just lay where she’d been since I stumbled in.

“The same thing you’ve always done?” I offered. I lowered myself to the floor and scuffed my flesh forehoof on the wood below me.

She sighed softly. “Yeah, watch out for you and make sure you’re alright. C’mon, let’s go.” She placed her hoof on me, and I looked up at the white mare. Clean of most of the bloodsplatter, she looked perfect to my eyes, like the protector I’d always known.

I nodded and stood up.

“First things first, we go back to The Restless Mare and drop off Show Blossom,” Lost explained. She looked around at the group, her eyes pausing on each one of us as she talked. “Then we find a safe route back to Skirt and drop off these mares to their families, hopefully they'll be grateful... We don't stop though, we continue on to Pommel Falls and our friends, resupply and recover then we'll go take Xeno's brothers home.”

Xeno nodded and smiled. She grabbed her knife from where it was embedded in the countertop, and slid it away to wherever she kept it hidden. Fine Tune nodded as well, before sliding the silenced pistol into a holster around his foreleg. The Unity mares grumbled approvingly, none of them doing more than standing calmly behind my sister. Even Show Blossom looked up, a relieved look in her eyes.

We turned and headed out. Things finally seemed back how they should be.

* * *

I walked down the street, the map showing me where to go for once so I wasn’t running blind and wandering all by my lonesome. Lost and I walked behind Show Blossom, a pistol lazily trailed on her to make sure she didn’t try to bolt and escape. Behind us were the Unity mares, with Xeno and Fine Tune bringing up the rear to make sure none of the mares fell behind or got hurt. Given how seedy the town proved to be, we took every possible precaution.

The sooner we got away from this cesspool, the better. I didn’t want to have to worry about that pink bitch of a pony appearing from somewhere, or everywhere, in the shadows to take shots at me. I missed the long stretches of road with lots of visibility, that allowed us plenty of time to get off the road if any of us saw a pony coming up early enough.

Despite our reunion, there wasn’t much talking to be done. The stress of everything that had happened in just a few hours wore on our entire group, and though none of them said it, I could tell that they were almost as ragged as I felt. Maybe...

I looked down one of the streets at the rubble lining the edges of the road, and shook my head at the mess toppled all over the sidewalk. Such a shame. One of the buildings had two wagons in front of it, which weren’t like the skywagons I’d become so used to using as cover during the shootouts I seemed to find myself in these days. Instead the two wagons were flat wheeled platforms with huge engines over the back of them, that looked more at home on the ground than in the air. A trip riding one of those instead of walking would be wonderful, and it would give me a chance to sleep without getting in the way of helping Xeno.

Of course, riding around in something like that without any armor would just be a big ‘come kill me’ beacon to any pony with an itch under their tail. Still, it was nice to dream.

I turned back to my sister, who smiled at me.

“I’m excited,” she said, “to go back and see every-”

With the clang of metal hitting metal, and a flash of fire, the world erupted between us. I heard the distant ring of a rifle firing as I flew through the air. The explosion floored both my sister and I. The mares all around us started to scream and panic, as did the locals who’d been in the street the shots came from. Xeno and Fine Tune started yelling over them, trying to calm the ponies. I only heard voices screaming, but not the words, through the ringing in my ears.

“Lost!” I yelled, straining to hear my own voice. “Lost!” If the explosion had hurt her I’d- The cloud of smoke cleared with a gust of wind. She lay on the ground, her armor cracked clean in half down the length of her body, with a huge piece missing over her shoulder. Charred chunks hung by her skin, revealing bone. Blood drained from her side and pooled underneath her. “Xeno! Help!”

I looked back at the zebra, who had her rifle in her hooves already. She looked over at me, eyes wider than any time I’d ever seen before, and grimaced. Turning to Fine Tune, she yelled something in her zebra language and pointed the rifle at the mares.

Before the changeling could do anything, another grenade hit the ground between us. It bounced once. Mid-bounce, it exploded. Everypony around us was thrown back. The air filled with rubble, bits of the street blown all around. Another one hit Show Blossom in the side. The explosion splattered the former slaver’s insides on the road and she collapsed into a mass of gore and blood. She didn’t even have time to scream in pain before she died. We hadn’t intended to do anything terrible to her, just turn her over to Relly and let the town sort their own problems. It didn’t matter anymore. We didn’t have enough pony left.

Lost groaned. I looked over at her. One of her eyes fluttered open and she started to cry. Weakly, she lifted her head and looked at the mess of her shoulder. “Oh...” she whispered. “That’s what it feels like...” Her head dropped again, both eyes closed.

“Sis!” I yelled, pushing myself up onto my hooves. I’d been lucky, I was mostly unhurt from the explosives. I had to get her out of the line of fire. Xeno and Fine Tune could handle themselves, and hopefully they’d take care of the Unity mares too. I ran to my sister. I just-

A hail of grenade rounds bombarded the street at our side, most falling short or going too high. The one that hit my sister must have gotten a lucky shot, or they were banking on quantity over quality. I could hear the screams of other ponies as they fell to the explosives meant for us. The wall of one of the buildings in the intersection exploded. Two grenades hit the bottom corner. The sound of shifting rubble rattled into my ears. I didn’t have time for-

“Scatter!” I yelled as loud as I could. The scream hurt my throat. Without hesitating, I grabbed Lost’s barding and dragged her away. Every second mattered, and deep in the back of my mind, I wished I’d been expecting this sort of thing enough to take a Buck before. I tried to find a safe place, my ears skewed back to listen.

Bricks fell, shattering on the broken asphalt of the street behind me. The building groaned. I looked back. My ears drooped.

“Celestia, Luna. Please?” I whispered to the heavens. I stood overtop my sister and braced myself.

Three stories of brick, mortar, and wood toppled into the intersection, and cutting me off from the mares I’d helped to save, and more importantly, from my friends. Plumes of dust from two centuries ago shot into the air, blocking out any and all visibility. Several pieces of wood and rubble struck me, but I didn’t care. I could take it and Lost couldn’t. Not right now.

The ringing in my ears finally died down enough to hear the voices of other ponies yelling. Xeno’s voice echoed louder than the others. She yelled in a mix of her native tongue and the one I understood, barking orders to the various ponies around. I’d never have expected her to be so cool under that sort of pressure.

“Xeno!” I yelled, looking around frantically. This wasn’t the time to wait. I needed to act. Neither of us were hurt by the collapsing building, and the ponies or whoever had been attacking seemed to be slacking off for the moment. Either they thought dropping a building on us was enough to down the group, or they were relocating.

I dug through Lost’s saddlebags. Sure, I’d used up all the healing supplies she’d given me, but she had to have some left over. Frantically throwing things onto the street all around me, I searched for the supplies I needed. Lost was an organized and smart pony, so why weren’t the healing potions and bandages on the top of her bags? She was still breathing, shallowly, but that was still breath.

That breathing might not last though. The wound in her shoulder was huge, and I counted it a blessing that her leg was still attached. Through the cracks in her armor I could see her coat completely scorched, and spots that looked to be burnt down to the muscle. Her side looked almost as bad as the pony I’d watched burn alive. The charred flesh went up from her shoulder over her neck and across the side of her face, stopping just below her eye. At least she wouldn’t need new glasses again.

“Hiddenpony!” Xeno yelled back, finally. “Lostpony!” Echoing alongside her voice were the screams of several other ponies. Now I just needed to hear from Fine Tune.

I switched saddlebags and found a healing potion sitting right on top. She was a smart pony. Grabbing the cork in my teeth, I pulled it from the bottle and spit it away. Working my clumsy hooves as fast as I could, I poured the vast majority over the bloody wound. She wasn’t bleeding that badly, I didn’t think. The blood just oozed out, draining slowly. That was good, right?

“Lost, c’mon. Wake up. I need help here,” I begged. Using my flesh forehoof, I swatted her cheek a few times. “You need to tell me what to do!” Tears fell from my face. She couldn’t die, not again.

“Hiddenpony, Lostpony! Please tell me whatis going on over there!” yelled the zebra again over the other voices. “Quiet!” The screaming of the Unity mares quieted as Xeno snapped at them.

“Shut up!” I screamed back over the building. “Lost is hurt! Get over here!” I lifted my sister’s head and pulled her mouth open. Her eyes didn’t open, and she wasn’t breathing anymore. “Come on, sis. I don’t have the magic to fix this on my own. You need to wake up so you can tell me what to do.” I poured the remainder of the potion into her mouth and prayed. “You’re the smart pony, mom taught you the medical stuffs. I just know how to-”

She coughed. One eye opened, followed by her mouth, which let out a long pained groan. “Ugh... hurts. What happened?” she asked through clenched teeth. Her wounded leg twitched, hoof lifting. She howled in pain and dropped the leg down again. “Hidden...!”

“Explosion. What do I do?” I asked. I could barely see her through the tears in my eyes. Whether they were sad tears because I thought I’d lost her, or happy tears because she was awake again, I didn’t know. I wanted to grab her and hold on so tight not even the Goddesses could separate us, but first she needed to be healed.

“Wher- Ahh!” she tried to ask back. She tried to lift her head, but only winced and set it back down. Her breathing came in rapid shallow pants, with her cursing ‘fuck’ over and over under her breath. She sputtered, choking back howls as her whole body shook. Her eyes didn’t quite focus, and I could already feel her flesh going cold.

“Hiddenpony, I am leading the ponies around the building,” yelled Xeno. “Bugpony will be flying over.” Oh thank goodness. Fine Tune was still alive too.

As if on command, the changeling flew over the remains of the building that blocked the street. He chirped once and flashed green fire to transform. Wings disappearing, the familiar unicorn form dropped to the ground. Half a second later, the dust split open as a grenade flew right through the spot he’d just been hovering. He saw it too, and crouched down, eyes wide. Without his barding or gun, he looked like the average Wastelander once again, and wouldn’t have survived that shot.

“What do I do?” I yelled over the explosion behind me. I didn’t care who answered.

“Another potion,” Lost ordered. “Now.” She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. Once again she looked over, but gave up halfway. Even though she was panting, she still spared the breath to swear several more times.

I did exactly as she said, grabbing the last one from her saddlebags and offering it to her.

A faint blue glow wrapped around the bottle as she took it from my hoof. Fine Tune’s own blue-green joined hers and he helped her to uncork the vial. The two of them together lifted it to her mouth, and she swallowed every last drop.

Xeno’s voice cut through the air once more. “Gun!” she screamed. Once again on cue, the silenced pistol arced through the air over the rubble.

Fine Tune’s magic wrapped around it, catching the gun in midair and pulling it down to hover near his head. He winked at me and turned his back, slowly sweeping over the gaps between buildings and offering us much needed cover.

I found myself smiling as we worked as a team, even if it was a somewhat dysfunctional one that seemed to make shit up as we went. A team after my own heart. Snapping back to reality, I looked down at my sister.

The gaping wound on her shoulder had started to close up, the edges already healing as the magical liquid did exactly what it’d been designed to do. Lost looked up at me, her eyes half-closed and her breathing weak gasps. “Bandages next,” she said.

I dug into her saddlebags again. I wasn’t designed to be a field medic. I was a soldier, just like The Glowing One said. This wasn’t my calling, and without any magic to lift things, I found myself fumbling. I dragged out the bandage she had rolled up inside, managing to unfurl it in the process. I sighed and offered it to her.

"I- I can't. You do it, around shoulder, tight," she ordered. Groaning and grimacing, she shakily lifted up the offending leg.

Really, having a building crash between us worked better than it could have, since we actually had the time to do this. Were it not for the wall of rubble between us and the shooters, Lost Art might have died while we scrambled around. Falling on old habits, I both blamed and thanked Xeno’s crazy zebra luck.

Quick as my hooves would work, I wrapped the bandage around her shoulder and under her leg, doing a few passes around her withers and barrel completely whenever she instructed me to. The process was slow, but with each wrap of the bandage she moved easier and easier. Bandage applied and healing potions completely used, Lost slowly lifted herself to her hooves. The second I finished, I stuffed her belongings back into her saddlebags.

“Hidden. You have my permission to kill any pony in this Goddesses-forsaken town that stands in our way of getting out alive,” she said, staring me straight in the eyes.

I only nodded. The word ‘necessity’ fell away, only to be replaced with the word survival. I wouldn’t hesitate, not anymore. If I saw that pink pony, or any other pony trying to stop me, my sister, my friends, or the freed slaves, I would do everything in my power to make sure we survived and they didn’t.

As we talked, Xeno finally got around the next block and intersection and led the terrified Unity mares up toward us. She barked orders to each mare in turn, keeping them in line. Whether they listened despite their fear because of the barding that made her look like a slaver, or because she had the only level head of the group, I didn’t know. It might even be conditioning from Rebar, given how the others with her followed without question.

Lost stood on three legs, showing considerable favor to the foreleg wrapped in bandages. She looked the three of us over, then at the Unity mares. One eye closed and her teeth clenched together, I could see the gears in her head moving as she tried to figure out what to do. With time working against us, we all waited impatiently to hear her plan.

My idea for the situation was to run in and start shooting, but if they had any more explosives to fire down the street at us, that would be a suicide run. Xeno, I felt, would tell us to just leave and forget it. That had been her stance since we left home yesterday morning. Fine Tune, viewing L.A. as his queen, would more than likely simply follow whatever instructions she gave. He was a good bugpony, but he wasn’t a leader. The three of us stared.

I could feel myself starting to sweat. Every second she waited was another second the ponies firing at us could move closer. The fact that I could hear the screams of ponies in pain in the distance, but no more gunfire, had me scared. Others were hurt because of us, and the attackers were taking their time, letting the wounded suffer. I couldn’t decide which was worse, the thought that they were waiting for us to step into their trap, or that they were closing in for the kill and didn’t want to give away their position.

“Al-alright,” she started, pausing only to cough. “Fine Tune, you have wings and can move fastest. Get the mares somewhere safe. We didn’t go through the trouble of saving them just to let them die here. Xeno; you, Hidden, and I are going to rain death upon this town.” She didn’t stutter once, and even managed to get the entire plan out without stopping to pant or wince in pain.

Fine Tune wasted no time in throwing a mock salute and turning tail to help the Unity mares.

Xeno shouted something in her native tongue, and pointed her hoof at the changeling. Whatever she said, it had the same air of confidence she had when bartering with a merchant. “Follow him, no questions,” she ordered.

Fine Tune bolted, running down the street past the mares and around the corner of the next intersection. The group of mares followed as ordered, their heads down and hooves shaking. From around the corner came a flash of green as Fine Tune transformed again. He was such a smart changeling, but a lifetime of training to stay out of sight probably left him with quite the overabundance of common sense for being outside of line of sight before transforming.

I checked Persistence. I knew she was loaded with the bullets I’d gotten from Deal Breaker, but it didn’t hurt to be sure. If they had more grenades, this wouldn’t be a fun fight for us. It took everything I had to not jump out over the remains of the building and start firing blind. A combination of something digging at the back of my mind and the phantom pain over my cutie mark kept me from making a kneejerk reaction.

“And how do we do that, Lost?” I asked, fighting the urge to go commit murder on whoever had dared hurt her.

She looked down the street, up at the buildings behind us that were still standing and the rubble of the fallen one. Slowly she set her hoof down, but stopped the second it touched the asphalt. With a hiss of pain and flinch, she pulled it back. “We’ll need to find whoever’s shooting and hit them where they can’t see us. Umm,” she said, once again pausing to deal with her pain.

I dug through my bags while she thought, looking for some Med-X. After all we’d been through, a single shot of painkiller wouldn’t do any harm. Before she could stop me, I jabbed the needle into her leg and pushed it in.

“Hidden wha- Ahh...” she said, starting to pull back. As the chemical surged through her veins, a wave of relief washed over her face and she smirked. “Thanks, but ask next time.”

“No time, sis,” I reminded her.

“Fine, whatever,” she said, relenting. “Xeno, can you get up to a vantage point to overlook the street? We’ll need covering fire.”

“I can,” the zebra confirmed. She turned on a rear hoof and went for the broken door to the building. It had plenty of windows on both sides, which would give her plenty of room to move around and keep whoever our enemy was guessing.

“Stay safe. Move forward if we get out of sight!” L.A. yelled after her. She lowered her hoof, wincing as she put weight on it. The leg held, and she pulled out the plasma pistol she used for medium-range fighting. “Ready? We move for cover, one step at a time.”

“If that’s the plan,” I answered with a nod. I mouthed the bit of my battle saddle and moved for the corner of the building we’d been hiding behind. With the cover of a shattered building and a brick wall to my side, I felt safe enough to take a quick peek to get my bearings.

The road down was a complete mess for several blocks. A half-dozen ponies lay dead, fallen mid-step as they’d run from the barrage. I could see chunks here and there, limbs too, all blown away by the explosions. I shuddered, seeing one without a head. It brought back too many unpleasant memories.

One mare was still alive and crying for help. Her back legs were completely missing, blown away at the hips. Part of me wanted to put a bullet in her head from here, just to put her out of her misery. No pony should have to suffer like that.

Forcing myself to look past the carnage, I searched for good spots to hide. One of the wagons I’d been looking at earlier now lay on its side, a crater in the street beside it. Between here and there I didn’t see much in the way of cover. Getting there from where I was would be one long run.

I kept an eye out for further cover, doubting that one change of position would be enough. Another wagon, some sales carts in front of ancient storefronts. It could work, but it would be slow going and leave me open to getting shot most of the-

Another explosion shredded through the wall of the building I was hiding behind. “Ahh!” I screamed, jumping back. I pressed against the wall, looking myself over to make sure I hadn’t been shot clean through again. No damage spotted, I turned to Lost. “Cover me?”

She nodded, lifting the pistol into the air in her telekinesis. She hobbled over and ducked behind the collapsed building, crouching so only her head was above the line of rubble. Her gun floated above her, ready to fire. “Go,” she whispered.

I ran around the corner, moving as fast as my aching hooves would let me. Head down, I ran in a little zig-zag pattern toward the cover of the toppled wagon.

The ground behind me exploded, sending my rear hooves up into the air, and a shower of road chunks over my backside. I bit my tongue to keep from crying, eyes watering as one chunk hit a particularly tender spot. No second shot followed, as the echo of B-KEW marked my sister’s return fire. Thanking the Goddesses, I jumped over one of the corpses, dove behind the wagon and backed up against it.

I shot the wounded mare in the head. I’d have asked her to do the same if it were me in her position.

The act of kindness brought another round of gunfire down the street. The wagon I stood behind exploded, throwing wooden shrapnel all around me.

I crouched and covered myself as best I could, eyes clenched shut and hooves over my head. I’d picked good cover, and the upturned wagon protected me from the worst of it. The heat and pressure washed over me, but it was nothing I couldn’t weather.

A single gunshot from behind me silenced the onslaught. I knew the sound well: Xeno’s rifle. Whether she hit something or not, they stopped firing. I poked my head out to see if I could spot who might be firing. No matter how good they were, they had to look to shoot at me. I saw nothing. No ponies, no armored behemoths, not even a turret set up to attack automatically.

“Any idea who we pissed off enough to gun us down like this?” yelled my sister.

“Do you need me to read off a list?” I yelled back. Not wasting the time I had between salvos, I ran from my cover to the far side of the road. I dodged left, right, then dove into a building. My hooves clipped the windowsill, and I crashed to the floor. Groaning, I pushed myself back up. No shots that time. Worked for me. I leaned out the window and aimed Persistence.

I was ready to fire at the first sign of movement. None of the locals were left, thank goodness, which meant little in the way of collateral damage. I wanted to feel bad for gett