(STORY EXTRACT)

Blinking a few times in disbelief, I slipped Thumper back onto my back, Scouring’s squadmates trotting out from behind the mini-tank’s wagon. The one who’d tackled Scouring initially moved to grab a pretty sizable rocket launcher from the ground, attaching it to his armor, as the brown-coated earth pony ranger trotted over and managed a quick salute before extending an armored hoof towards me. “Knight-Sergeant Crimson Wagon, of the Mountain Springs steel rangers. These two idiots with me are Knight Sweet Water and Knight Decisive Strike, guessing you’re the group we’ve been hearing about, Vanhoover Five, right?” Shaking his hoof with a whir of servos, I answered with a nod, Static looking over the three-pronged energy-weapon-thing that was attached to the side of his armor.

“Ah, yup, that’s us, heh. I’m Night Strike, this is Static Charge, Aerith, and Crash Dive. Vanhoover Five, in the flesh…” Nodding towards everyone, the ranger with the missile launcher looked up from where he was, looking towards me in minor confusion. What’s up with… ‘Knight’ Strike. Oh boy, that’s probably gonna get confusing before too long. Crimson Wagon gave a nod, a blue-coat power armored unicorn with a combat helmet and glasses on – ehm, must be Sweet Water, I guess – trotting over beside him.

“Hey, uh, so, if you guys ah cool with it, could you give us a lift, maybe? We kinda wanna get outta this place fast, yanno, really book it to somewhere that… well, isn’t here, eheh.” He wore a weak smile, looking out towards the fairgrounds as myself and Aerith looked at him in confusion, Static eventually noticing the annoyed look Crimson Wagon was giving him for examining his weapon and moving back up alongside me. Sweet Water gave a quick glance back at Decisive Strike, before leaning in closer. “And, yanno, if you don’t have space of all three of us, just me and Crimson are fine, we can leave Strike and nopony’d bat an eye. Just get me outta here…”