Miscible
His horn was lit even before I hit the floor, rolling to throw my arms around Twilight Sparkle as the room exploded into light and noise.
The first burst from the laser carved through the wall, transparent glass turning to a jigsaw-puzzle maze of distorted images as delicate circuits were fused into ruined slag; as the laser changed course and swept horizontally, the wall’s window functions finally failed entirely and turned flatly opaque.
“Lieutenant! They appear to be trying to cut a segment of the wall free!”
At least Crenelle was still up and going. I watched as the beam swept on, clipping my half-emptied bottle and vanishing it in an eruption of vaporizing alcohol and fracturing glass; tiny fragments pinged off of Crenelle’s shield, filling the room with a noise like a piano played amid a seizure.
Moments later, the fire alarms added their keening howl to the mayhem.
“They’re going to breach and enter! Crenelle, we’re going now!”
Whatever Twilight had been up to in her past life, it apparently wasn’t enough to introduce a good sense of reaction under tension. She was still curled up beneath me, frozen and trembling, so I muttered a quiet apology and tossed her over my shoulder, grabbing my jacket on the way out.
The hallways outside were already a mess, filled with milling and confused crowds of humans, aliens, and biosynths. I didn’t mind - nobody gave me, Crenelle, or Twilight a second glance. What I did mind, though, was the sounds of weapons fire and screams coming from the hallway ahead.
They anticipated we might run. That wasn’t the only place they breached.
“Lieutenant-Investigator, where are we going?”
“Down and out. Fast!”
An armored figure burst from a doorway ahead, head-to-toe in black ceramic laced with the glowing lines of thaumoware. I got lucky, driving past him with a shoulder extended to shove him aside before he could figure out what was going on. The thing that stepped out after him? I didn’t get so lucky with that one.
Skidding to a halt, I sized it up; armor covered it too, but the shape was unmistakable: Easily more than a full head taller than me, ivory horns protruding from its head, boots that suggested hooves of some kind. A biosynth - military-grade, and ready to rumble.
My moment of hesitation cost me as it delivered a solid haymaker to send me tumbling, the hall whirling about in a blur. Something popped in my chest, and when I hit the wall Twilight wasn’t on my shoulder anymore.
Good, ‘cause if she was I might’ve landed on her. Bad, because now she was on her own.
Twilight Sparkle felt she had a certain degree of accomplishment under her saddle. Sure, she’d admit, she was no royal guardsmare. But she’d kept her head together when an elder alicorn of nighttime and darkness declared her return. Gazed upon the insanity of a landscape warped by Discord in the eye and was sane enough to tell of it. Even clawed back enough of a sense of purpose to come out of the burning ruins of her home at Tirek, and with her body suffused with enough gifted magic it seemed ready to burst at the seams at any moment.
Tartarus, she’d even dealt with the Cake Twins.
But stresses amount, and this chaos-
Too much too loud too fast too many screams
-had put her back down into that sheltered back corner of her mind, a place that smelled of paper and oak and the slightest whiff of dragon, and where she did not need to think about waking up in a madscape world of unthinkable creatures and impossible tales about ponies being slaves, where there were not explosions and fighting and it could go away-
Somepony screamed.
Not a cry of fear or panic, but a bellowed howl of challenge that reached right to the deepest core of Twilight’s soul. She perked her head up in time to spellwork leap from Crenelle’s horn, lashing about the body of an armored minotaur.
Guerro was slumped against the wall, doing something to his jacket, and the first attacker he had bumped into-
Hands closed around her flanks, pinning her wings, and pressed something to her ribs that filled her body with an icy tingling and blew the air from her lungs with a savage kick.
Twilight whinnied and lashed out with both hind legs, with the legs of an Earth Pony in full panic, and felt something pop beneath her where they connected. She lashed out again, and the pressure on her wings ceased with a muffled cry.
She spun about, scanning the madness for Guerro or Crenelle. The latter was dancing about the armored minotaur, one wing hanging limply, while the former had extracted something long, blocky, and viciously ugly-looking from his jacket.
Even as she watched another two figures burst from a blown-off door - another one like Guerro, and unmistakable a pony.
But the weapon in Guerro’s grip cracked three times, spitting hazy violet bolts into their armored bodies. They left oddly mangled holes where they hit, holes that made her head hurt to look at, and both tumbled to the floor with a gasp and pained whinny that very sharply choked out..
Killed.
He killed them.
A pressure had been building in the back of Twilight’s head, starting from the moment she awoke in a cell and swelling like water backed up behind a dam. From time to time it had alleviated, flowing away as Crenelle spoke to her, but every time it seemed the risk of total collapse was fading it flooded up anew.
Now, her mental dam could hold back no more.
Something slithered past her, an utterly alien, keening form which abruptly spasmed and slumped to the ground. Twilight spun about and saw the armored figure she’d bucked away before rising to his feet, an equally ugly weapon - because it could only be a weapon now - clutched in his hands.
Go.
I have to go.
GogogoGOGOGO-
Her horn ignited, the hallway filling with a sharp, actinic light as she called for her magic.
Twilight felt for the weight of the world and pushed.
Three violet flashes, sharp and rapid, filled the hallway.
Twilight gasped, drawing a fresh breath, and dared to crack her eyes open.
No slumped body filled her vision, nor portraits of savagery in progress. Instead, she stood in a familiar gray-walled antechamber, oppressively austere and yet still mercilessly free of violence. Though alarms still howled their hoarse song, they were now no longer drowned out by screams and violence.
One ear turned as someone retched. The Lieutenant-Investigator, curled where her teleport had dropped him, down on all four limbs as he emptied his belly into an acrid pool on the hard floor.
“So,” he groaned, “that’s what being jumped without a starship feels like. I hate it. Next time, just let them shoot me.”
“Where-?” Twilight began, but Crenelle gave a soft laugh.
“The cell block,” he chuckled, muzzle split into a hard grin. “It’s the only other place here you really know, isn’t it? So you took us back to the cell block.”
It was, she realized. If she dared turn about, the hated cell they’d kept her in ought to be right behind her.
“Are we going to-” Twilight swallowed, forcing herself to not look back at the cell. “Where do we go now? What do we do? They’re killing everyone up there - you killed -”
“We run,” Guerro muttered, climbing to his feet. He took one step and hissed, clutching his side.
“Lieutenant-Investigator!” Crenelle gasped, galloping to his side and forcing his head up beneath the man’s shoulder to support him.
“It’s fine, Crenelle. I think I might’ve just pulled something hard. Maybe got a rib.”
Somewhere up above them, something gave a sharp crack that trailed off into a crackling rumble.
“Breaching charge,” Guerro said glumly, “they’re still looking, and we’re still leaving. Head for the stairs and down.”
“Won’t they follow us?” Twilight gasped, her horn sparking fitfully.
Guerro shook his head. “Dark Ops group like that? They’re meant to go fast, hard, and lightweight. They’ll have noosed off that whole block of the building, but don’t have the numbers or time to sweep everywhere. Especially once security gets rolling. But if we do run into one-”
He lifted the thing from his side - the weapon, she mentally added - and pulled it open. Something tumbled aside from it, steaming and hissing, and Twilight winced as she felt the chaotic, discordant magics within abrade at the edges of her consciousness.
She took a step towards it, but Crenelle stuck out a wing to stop her. “Don’t. Flayed matter cartridge. Warps whatever matter it’s shot at. Very nasty stuff, but there’s almost no armor ‘mong the stars that’ll stop it.”
“It hurts to look at,” she said, and Crenelle nodded, then shot a look at Guerro.
“It’s also very unusual for an Investigator in the Bureau to carry such a potent weapon.”
“We can use private weapons, Crenelle. Y’know that. You can interrogate me about my choices in self-defense later.”
“Right. Just walk, Twilight. Get away from that cartridge, get away from this floor, get-” His muzzle turned to Guerro, who was pulling his coat on with little grunts. “Where are we going?”
“Outside. To ground. If they’re sending dark ops teams in, then someone’s already compromised all the searches I did. No Bureau office will be safe for long; they’ll come back with bigger teams.”
No. There’s something else he’s not saying. I don’t know why.
I don’t know enough about anything here.
Another distant, violent snap-crack sounded from somewhere above them, and suddenly ‘away’ seemed like a rather reasonable place to be going.
Twilight’s first impression of the Bureau’s building, when she emerged, was that someone had inverted a tree, clad it gleaming glass and grey metal, and planted it crown-first into the station’s floor: Branches rising from the ground to twist, merge, and join until they unified into a single monolithic pillar reaching skyward into the star-shot night.
Everything’s upside-down here, Twilight thought, I used to live in a living tree. Now I’m running from an upside-down metal one.
Somewhere further up, from the side of that great tower, smoke rose in tufts and curls.
Twilight shivered.
The tree was soon left behind, along with its columnar and towering nearby fellows. Though the sights they passed by were inconceivable even to her imagination, Twilight found her thoughts were still whirling about inward, being sucked inexorably whirlpool-like towards a single thought.
I’m in a station over an alien world. One of my companions is a brainwashed slave, and the other is a killer.
I’m being hunted because they think I am a - a tool of some kind, or maybe a weapon.
When does this start making sense?
When do I find a way forward?
“I want to go home,” she murmured to herself. Guerro did not answer; Crenelle flicked an ear towards her, but when he turned to look at her Guerro reached over without even looking and tapped him on his neck.
“Hey. Eyes up, featherhead. I need to know if anyone’s following us down here,” he said, and Crenelle’s head shot straight back up. Twilight curled back into herself, shutting out the wind and noise and chaos.
In the end, it was not the sights nor the sounds but the smells which first wormed its way through her self-centered armor. It was different, slightly tinged with something foreign, exotic, and perhaps slightly metallic, but there was also no question of its familiarity.
“Hayburgers?” Twilight muttered as she sat up. Any further questioning was interrupted as her thoughts hit a hard stop of data flooding in from her eyes, and instead simply sat, mouth open, watching the streets slip by.
The orderly succession of square-footed, looming, frequently indifferentiable buildings reaching towards the sky had long since been left behind; so had the more regular, angular gridwork of streets and web-like lines of vehicles hovering past in the air above. Those, she could see, seemed to line the further perimeter of the station’s vast, bowl-like surface. But now they had traveled down towards the center of that bowl, and the construction here could not be more different.
Instead, the streets they now passed by were lined with asymmetric, jumbled, riotously-colored structures that seemed to be almost growing from the ground into and atop each other like an eruption of fresh, young seedlings. Here, a collection of bulbous spherical pods seemingly built of some transparent material seemed to be subsuming a smaller, nearby building like an outburst of fungus; there, a number of hulls of old machines had been cleverly stacked to form a grid from which many such creatures hung.
And what creatures!
Twilight watched in wide-eyed awe as a vast, wingless griffon, its body almost as large as the vehicle she rode in, loped past them in long, lazy strides. A collection of ponies stood on a streetcorner - alicorns all, limbs thin and willowy, and voices jabbering eagerly in some half-familiar tongue. Here, something with a body much like Guerro but mounted atop far too many legs, black and chitinous all, skittered by clinging to a wall. There, a dragon - long, snakelike, and with a ruck of mane about its jaws that left it looking almost lion-like, yet still undeniably a dragon in Twilight’s mind - floated curled before a cart steaming with an entire feast’s worth of mouth-watering scents.
“Are they all-?” she muttered, and Crenelle nodded.
“Biosynths? Yes. There’s a lot of us here. The outer station mostly belongs to the businesses, trade, and travelers, but this place is ours. Though,” and one ear turned towards Guerro, “I am not entirely sure why we are coming here.”
If Twilight had been cruel, she might have called it a slum.
Certainly it brought to mind the jumbled, twisting, labyrinthine quarters of old Canterlot, where the crumbling brick and rotting wood walls seemed to aspire to bury those who trotted between them in murk and shade, or the mud-splattered streets of Hocksville where a last few ponies eeked out a bare living among the settlement’s once-thriving industry.
But signs of poverty here were debatable at best; if anything, it reminded her more of Ponyville’s robust, homemade aesthetic - lacking extravagance, yet having its own pride and clearly thoughtful (if modest) decoration.
To her shock, Twilight even realized that much of the tension she’d felt since waking had begun to slip away. The dam was no longer at such risk of breach. This was familiar, and comforting in the familiarity.
And that thought, more than anything else, sent a current of unease through her very core.
“Crenelle,” she said only just loudly enough to be heard over the rushing of wind and low thrum of their ride, “if they’re biosynths are - do they all - does someone own all of them?”
“Of course,” he replied easily, only a moment later sharply twisting about to look at her - the realization of what he had said finally catching up with him. Crenelle opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it.
Just another way this place is insane. Slavery - it shouldn’t look so comfortable. Twilight felt a low shudder run down her back. Suddenly the memory of the black-clad bodies, the shouting and deadly snap-crack of weapons, and the presence of the killer riding in the seat just beside had extra weight again - or a current, drawing her irresistibly closer to them.
“We’ll be there soon,” Guerro said, as if sensing her attention on him. “But one warning, Twilight: Not a word about anything that’s happened until I say it’s safe, you get it? Until we know who isn’t listening, don’t risk a thing.”
“I think I get it,” she muttered, but her thoughts were not there. Instead, a different question was hanging in her mind.
If I were one of his, could I even choose to disobey? Or would I be so in his grip, I wouldn’t even be able to say anything if I wanted to?
Their ride pulled to a halt at the side of one narrow alleyway; Guerro hopped out and hurriedly led the way in. Twilight spared only a glance back to see the vehicle that had taken them this far take off again, absent anyone or anything pulling or controlling it.
Was that some kind of slave too? Did I just ride on an enslaved - thing?
She flicked her tail and turned after Guerro, hurrying after him before she could fall too far behind.
On hoof, the environment was no less wondrous; if anything, the rich symphony of noise now added to the experience. A dozen different languages - that she could even discern! - were babbled from tables heaped with lusciously-scented food, behind windows, and from small knots of ponies and far less more exotic creatures clustered in small knots. Here, she saw a pack of colts and fillies - alicorns all, yet bearing the striped coats and upright, brush-like manes of zebras - excitedly talking among each other as they fluttered and cantered along. There, a pack of dragons no larger than her head clambered in and out of a half-wrecked vehicle, components and tools clutched in their claws.
Guerro glanced over his shoulder, and Twilight wondered how many times he’d done that and she simply hadn’t seen. Then he turned from the side path into an alleyway, stopping before a rounded door to rap on it sharply.
“Coming,” sang a voice, rich, heavy, and honey-like in tone. The door slid open, and Twilight found that the voice matched its owner: A mare of deep brown coloration, legs like tree trunks, and a body as wide as a boulder.
The mare’s head lifted, ears pricked forward and nostrils flared as she sniffed at the man in her door. A moment later, her face split into a wide smile. “Santana! So good to see you!”
“Hello, Zucchera,” Guerro smiled, “sorry to drop in on you without warning, but I need some place to lay low for a bit. You have room for an old friend?”
“You know better to ask!” she smiled, lifting her head to nuzzle his cheek with the familiar affection of an old acquaintance. Crenelle was next, the two meeting nose to nose. Nostrils flared, breath puffed between them, and he dipped his head in deference to the mare. “Still pulling Saldana into big messes, Crenelle?” she asked.
“Yes,” he confessed in a voice laden with embarrassed admission, “and bad this time, Zucchera. Real bad. You know we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t.”
The barest of frowns touched crossed her face, and then Zucchera turned her golden gaze to Twilight herself. “And who’s this, then? I don’t quite recognize her.”
Twilight’s own eyes turned to Guerro, who nodded. “Call her Twilight, Zucchera. She’s - entangled in the mess that’s got me coming here. Twilight, this is Zucchera; she was my mentor back when I started at the Bureau.”
“Look at how small she is!” Zucchera exclaimed, leaning in close enough that Twilight’s nose was filled her scent: Earthy, yet something vaguely spicy behind it. “Guerro, have you been feeding her enough?”
“Barely had a chance,” he chuckled, “but can we come in?”
“Do you need to ask?”
They did not.
The interior, Twilight thought, might once have been plain, perhaps even bleak. Those days were long since passed; walls made of some grey, stonelike material had been covered by a riotous collection of eclectic objects, less than half of which Twilight could recognize but all of which were carefully kept well-spaced and free of dust. Some might have been toys; others, art. Lush, richly-colored carpeting muffled her hooves, and the smell of something vaguely bean-like filled her nostrils.
The room they were brought to had not just windows, but a curving glass wall that arced all the way up to encompass part of the ceiling. Guerro did something at a panel on the wall, and the windows dimmed to opacity. Twilight frowned, but settled into one of the perfectly pony-suited cushions scattered about.
Small hooves scampering somewhere above her caused an ear to tilt, but before she could rise to investigate it Zucchera appeared again, a steaming bowl of something almost as dark as her coat held before her. “Eat,” she said with a smile, and Twilight’s stomach rumbled.
She lit her own horn to take it, but paused - looking to Guerro. “Can I? I know you said I’m - um - but I don’t know -” she asked.
He shrugged. “Go ahead. You already ate Crenelle’s pastries, and aren’t dying yet.”
“Pastries?!” Zucchera’s head snapped around, fixing Crenelle with a glare so fierce he almost seemed to wilt. “I know she’s a little wisp of a thing, but that’s no reason to make her fat!”
“She needed to be calm, not fit-”
“No excuse! A good meal is better than empty sugar! Tell me you are not eating that way yourself, you foalish colt!”
A little smile graced Twilight’s lips; the sharp, firm, lecturing tone had drawn a different image in her head: Golden-tanned coat framed by straw-blond mane, the weather-beaten hat tipped to one side as she lectured Apple Bloom over filling up on Sugarcube Corner’s finest-
Twilight started, because it had reminded her of Applejack.
But Applejack runs her farm for her own family. When she lectures Apple Bloom, it’s because she’s worried about her own sister’s future - her independent future.
Her ears flicked, and she stared down into the steaming bowl. Carefully, she took a long, slow sip of the stuff, and found it rich, warm, and delicious - unidentifiable as any food she had ever had, but delicious nonetheless.
When Twilight looked up again, Guerro and Zucchera were gone. Crenelle sat in the corner, carefully wrapping a bandage about one leg.
She stood, wandering about the room. Several pictures, drawn on oddly smooth and textureless paper yet clearly done with the messy scrawl of youth, had been fixed to the wall at several points. Twilight halted before them, head tilted and eyes wandering.
In broad, shaky lines, a vaguely ovoid thing topped by angular structures soared between blobby depictions of planets. Five figures - three she thought to be ponies, one maybe a griffon, one of Guerro’s kind - stood within it, simplistic faces painted with broad smiles and forelegs raised in triumph.
Red lines spat from the craft, rending another like it apart in a messy scribble of reds, yellows, and blacks.
“Tha’s what we’re gonna do when we’re growed up,” a little voice whispered, and Twilight gave a soft whinny as she leaped back. A young colt, so dark blue in color, stared up at her.
“This - is you?” she asked.
“Uh-huh!” Nudging in, the colt spread his wings to flutter up, pointing with his horn to each of the figures for sure. “That’s me, an’ that’s Chania, and that’s Peyquarasa, an’ Grizeta, an’ that’s th’ship’s cap’n. We’re gonna be space ‘splorers, finding new planet’s an’ blowin’ up aliens that don’t like th’Union an’ stuff.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice,” Twilight said, and the colt shook his head furiously.
“We’ll ask ‘em first, but if they say they’re still gonna be mean, then we gotta make everyone else safe,” he declared, fixing Twilight with a hard look.
It occurred to Twilight that but for his lack of cutie mark and golden-hued eyes, she might have been looking at a far younger (and male) Luna.
She could even hear Luna announcing it in her head: ”We shall grant them a chance to make their intentions clear. But if they persist in their hostilities, we shall not permit them to lay harm upon any of Our subjects.”
“So - you’re all going to do that together, then?” she asked instead.
“Uh-huh! Get our contracts bough’ up by the Caro - Cartoa- Cartography Ins’tute! An’ go out on the same ship too!”
Get our contracts bought.
The words struck at Twilight like a hammer blow.
“I- I see. That’s - very ambitious?” she barely managed to stutter out. The colt tilted his head, frowning.
“Say, where’re you from? What’re your parents’ genestocks? Your voice sounds kinda funny-”
“Lodestone!” Zucchara’s voice, sharp and sudden, made them both jump. The mare was marching angrily. “I hear you, Lodestone! I thought I told you - all of you - to not bother our guests!”
“Eeep!” Hooves scuffed furiously across the carpet, and the colt vanished around the corner. Shaking her head, Zucchara watched him go. “Colts! I tell you. They are nothing but trouble.”
For a moment, Twilight saw her vision replaced by the frantic fleeing of three fillies, retreating before the consequences of their latest bit of mayhem.
”Get our contracts bought.”
The vision broke.
“Thank you for the meal,” she murmured, and Zucchara smiled warmly.
“It’s the least I can do. Santana coming to my door, and now the newsies are all screaming about something happening at Sector Investigative Bureau headquarters? I may be half-blind, but only half. I can still put two and two together. He must be desperate.”
“Half-blind?” The words came out before Twilight could stop them; her cheeks colored a moment later. “I’m -sorry-”
“Do not be. I don’t show it; both my eyes are fine. It is something in my head.” Circling about her, Zucchara headed for one of the cushions. “I told you - I used to be the Bureau’s too. Can’t see me doing that kind of work, can you?”
“I can’t,” Twilight admitted as she followed her.
“Sometimes, a soft touch and gentle voice is as powerful a tool for finding the truth as any pulse gun or scannerpak. I had twenty-seven years with the Bureau, and then the truth came looking for me with a spall grenade in hand. The medics put my hide back together, but my sight… it was something in my head.”
“I’m sorry,” Twilight repeated, but Zucchara shook her head.
“Don’t be. I’m a lot better now. At first it gave me the worst headaches too, so painful I thought I’d go entirely blind. That faded, but my vision has never returned.”
She shrugged.
“I was mad then. I was furious when they transferred me out. But now - ah, I think now I’m happy to see those little terrors grow up well.”
“My brother’s a guard too,” Twilight murmured, and Zucchara tilted her head.
“Is he now? But - you look so tense! Like a spring all wound up, or you are about to scream aloud at any moment! Is this all really so different to you?”
“No, he’s-”
Twilight paused.
Zucchara nodded. “I know. Something to do with what happened today. I understand, you cannot say.”
“Thank you,” Twilight whispered. “You’re trying your best, for a total stranger who came into your house. I think you might be the best pony I’ve met here yet-” I’ve met three. “-and just - thank you. Rarity would like you, I think.”
“Rarity?”
“A friend of mine.”
“I see.”
If I ever see her again.
Something thudded against the ceiling; Twilight jumped, but moments later the muffled but excited squeals of youthful voices echoed down. Zucchara snorted. “I’m going to have to see what mayhem they’re on about now, huh? I’m sorry, Twilight - enjoy the food. There’s more in the kitchen if you want it.”
“Thank you.”
But she did not enjoy it.
She ate, yes. But the food was sawdust and dirt on her tongue now, devoid of every bit of enjoyment she had felt before.
”Get our contracts bought.”
”I used to be the Bureau’s too.”
”Now I’m happy to see those little terrors grow up well.”
“Twilight?”
She jumped as Crenelle laid a wing across her back. She hadn’t heard the stallion enter.
“Hey,” he said, “Zucchara stopped by and mentioned you were in pretty rough shape.”
“Yeah.” Twilight didn’t move.
“The fighting earlier?”
Three sharp cracks. A pony, slumping limply to the floor.
A moment later, Twilight felt Crenelle’s muzzle brush along her side, slipping beneath a wing and reaching underneath to-
“Woah! Hey!”
Crenelle jerked back as if stung when she wrenched her wing away from him. He blinked in surprise, tail swishing, and let out a low nicker: “What is wrong? Your wings are a mess, and I thought a preening-”
“Thought?” Twilight snapped. “You thought?! You can’t just go and try to preen somepony you just met! That’s not appropriate, and…” Trailing off, she found herself staring at the absolute look of pain on Crenelle’s face. She winced, looked away, and murmured, “This is another one of those ‘this world is upside-down-and-nothing makes sense here’ things, isn’t it?”
Crenelle bowed his head, wings drooping. “I - am afraid so. My sincerest apologies, Twilight Sparkle. I did not realize that for you, it is… a matter less casual. We learn to trust each other, and that includes with care of our wings. Should I go?”
“No. Stay here. You - didn’t know. And you stopped when I asked.”
“Thank you.”
Twilight did not answer. Eventually, however, she did turn her head around to peer at her wings and winced. He’d been right; they resembled more ragged feather dusters than sleek gifts of flight. With some resignation, she extended one and began to work her teeth along its length.
In between, she said, “Crenelle, have you ever had everything you thought you knew - everything you thought was right about the world - just ripped away from you, all at once?”
“I don’t believe I have, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Today I was just told that everything I believed was a lie. That we - ponies - aren’t even real, just some tools made up by a nation dead an eternity ago, just slaves made to make worlds for them and - then what? Stay bound to that forever?” Stop. Slow yourself, Twilight. Deep and steady breaths. Don’t let your feelings run your mouth.
When she resumed, her voice was lower - but laden with no less bitterness.
“Yesterday, we were chasing a thief. My friends and I. Yesterday, I’d never seen a pony killed before. I’d seen ponies hurt in fighting. I’d seen bodies, when the changelings came. But I’d never seen somepony go from living to dead in just a heartbeat. I know my brother carried his spear and his spells, but I never saw him - We’re - nevermind. Rambling.” Nervous. Shaky. Prone to being distracted, because I don’t want to talk about the real problem. “Crenelle… until yesterday, my friends and I lived in a little village near our capital. We farmed our own food. We hold market days, twice a moon. I was helping three little fillies find their cutie marks, because we get ours when we find our own destiny and talent.”
She turned around fully, folding her wings back in and meeting his eyes. “Our own destinies, Crenelle. Not to be bought or sold or owned by anypony else. Everypony has to find what’s right for them! Not - not -” Words. Words not coming. Too many thoughts at once. “-this!”
Crenelle rose, taking a few long steps to the windows. With one flicker of his horn, they faded back into transparency. Another flicker, and they somehow rolled up into themselves; a low breeze flittered through the room and the scent of roasting food and something stony met Twilight’s nose.
“Isn’t - what about whoever that was that came in before, couldn’t they-”
“Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has been working upstairs,” Crenelle cut in, “calling any of his contacts. Whoever the strike team was, they won’t be doing anything for now. The entire station is buzzing with security services; you don’t get to raid the entire Sector headquarters and not invoke a major response.”
“Oh.”
Outside, whatever seemed to have passed for night had arrived; the sun had vanished, being replaced by an eclectic collection of lights mounted, bundled, even festooned to every building in sight. The atmosphere was almost party-like, and indeed Twilight’s ears twitched at a heavy, grinding tune drifting from somewhere distant.
She found herself magnetically, inexorably drawn to the window. The end of ‘day’ had not cut even a hair into the neighborhood’s spirit; turning her head in one direction, she watched as something vast and shaggy-coated lurched down the street on multiple legs, several ponies sat on its back. In the other a small crowd milled about in a lamp-clad square, some dancing in circles - yet the tune was not the one she heard, as they moved to an entirely different beat. A colt and what she thought was a child of Guerro’s kind chased each other, giggling as they weaved between larger bodies and down alleys.
Overhead, the same leviathan vessels cruised by like ghostly wraiths, marking their passage only by the lights fixed to their hulls, the true stars being eclipsed by artificial ones. Even beyond that, the planet still hung in the sky - a quarter of its breadth illuminated still.
It occurred to Twilight that she was, possibly, only the second pony ever to see a crescent planet as opposed to a crescent moon.
“Crenelle?”
“Yes?”
“Who lowers your sun? To bring your night, I mean?”
When no answer came, she looked aside and found him staring back with a slightly tilted head. “You’re serious. And literal,” he said slowly, and Twilight nodded.
“This,” he said slowly, and perhaps a bit sadly, “is why they will want you. Raising a sun…! That kind of thaumocasting is - utterly beyond anything a Biosynth could do now. Rediscovering that ability…”
“Because you can’t, or because they won’t let you?” Twilight asked.
“Can’t. Both, maybe?” Crenelle shrugged with a little toss of his head. “I’ve never even heard of any Biosynth using it, but stellar engineering is fairly heavily regulated, so I could see why they wouldn’t develop that kind of Biosynth.”
“‘Develop’? Didn’t you say you have family?”
“I do. And I chose to have them. But our abilities… the synthing houses are constantly developing new lines of Biosynths. Our gene-lines are carefully tailored and neural architecture studied, to give us the abilities and casting we need without risk of disorder.”
“And what about Guerro’s kind? Do they do the same things to them?”
“No. Their genetic and neural structures are not so malleable as ours. Some genetweaking may be done, but they heavily rely on cybernetics as well.”
“Oh.”
As if by some unspoken command, both of them turned back to the window.
Something flashed by on buzzing, harmonic wings; Twilight flinched, thoughts of black chitin and ivory fangs coming to mind.
“I’ve seen slavery,” she said softly, “I’ve seen it with chains and collars. I’ve seen it with magic and mind control. I’ve seen it with nothing more than bullying and coercion. But this… I don’t know if there’s somehow nothing actually wrong here, or if what’s wrong is so fundamentally built into this place that I can’t even fathom how to fix it. And I think… I think I’m a little scared by that.”
“I do not think I know exactly what to say, Twilight Sparkle. I think Zucchara might know better, but she is afraid of hearing any part of this, I think.”
“You’re trying,” Twilight said, resting her head against the windowsill. “But everything about this place is too strange for me. Even you, Crenelle.”
“Me? Forgive me, Twilight Sparkle, have I upset you?”
“No, it’s just…” How do I explain? First there were two, then there was one for a thousand years. Then, suddenly, there were two, but the one who went came back, wreathed in moon-fire and fog. “...where I come from, Crenelle, ponies like us - ponies with wings and a horn - we’re extraordinarily rare. Here, there’s - how many did you say? Millions? Millions?”
“How many were there on your planet?”
“Now? Four. And I only became-” Princess. Ruler. Special. Ascended. Without any idea what I’m doing. “-this a little while ago. Cadance too. And Luna was - away. So for a long time, one. When I, um, when I first saw you, I - I wasn’t sure what you were.”
“You changed yourself?!”
“I don’t understand how. I don’t know if even Celestia does.”
I don’t know how much of - any of this she knows. The unspoken fear loomed in the back of her mind like a storm hanging just on the horizon - there, threatening, but refusing to sweep over her just yet. If she knew, why didn’t she tell us? Was she afraid? Testing us? Celestia’s left things out to help us learn before, but we couldn’t have just learned about this.
Even if I can get home, how will I ever talk to her?
“Can you tell me more about your home?” Crenelle said, and relief flooded Twilight at the distraction..
She laughed aloud, shaking her head. “I don’t know where to start…! Um - let me try - so I live in a place called Ponyville. I was sent there a few years ago by my teacher, Princess Celestia. She’s one of the alicorns I mentioned before. So, I didn’t even know what I was doing at first, but I met five other ponies there…”
She talked.
He listened.
The stars drifted by overhead.
Outside, the music grew quieter.
By the time the last words trailed off, Crenelle was resting with his head on the window sill, ears drooping and tail curled around his hooves.
“It sounds nice,” he said quietly. “Like something out of a tale I would tell my foals.”
“I thought you said you were happy,” quipped Twilight, her tone slightly accusatory.
“I am!” He laughed, though it didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I am happy with my life, Twilight, strange as it might seem. I’m proud of what I do. When we crack a ring smuggling enough Kharavesh to addict thousands of lives, I’m happy to know those people won’t suffer. When we figure out who pirates have been blackmailing to host them and take both into custody, I know humans, aliens, and biosynths alike are all safer for it.”
“But?” Twilight prodded.
His tail swatted against the floor. “But - I don’t know. Some of it - a whole world where you live such simple lives - it sounds so pleasant. And yet, I know it is a place that has wounded you.”
“Wounded?”
“Your body. We examined it when you were first brought in. Remnants of burns, cuts, broken limbs! And none of them treated correctly. Proper treatment would not leave scars like you bear.”
“Hey!” She shot him a glare. “We do our best. Redheart is one of the best ponies I know, and she never complains to us no matter how many times we come galloping to her. She’s treated everything from dragon fire to sandviper venom and too many scrapes and cuts to count.”
“Forgive me,” Crenelle said, and Twilight could hear a bitter chuckle in his voice, “I did not mean to critique your healers’ skills. I have no doubt they are skillful, as you have been healed. But you have also been hurt, repeatedly, by your world and speak of it so idyllically… a paradox for me. Then again, you have an absolute ruler, a ‘princess’ who you must follow. You must understand, Twilight Sparkle, to me that sounds as absurd as you feel about my being a ‘slave’.”
“Celestia doesn’t lord herself over us, though! Neither does Luna-" Okay, maybe Luna does a bit. "-or Cadance, and I definitely don’t rule over anyone in Ponyville!” She paused, then added, “Except in the library. If a book doesn’t come back…”
“And yet she still does rule.”
“Wouldn’t you just say we were just… designed that way? We’re just ‘tools’, after all.”
“And yet you believe yourself to be your own selves with your own destinies, do you not?” Crenelle said softly. “Maybe I am starting to believe it too. Maybe I want to.”
Or maybe you are wrong, Twilight thought. Instead she said, “What’s wrong?”
Crenelle frowned, but not at her. “I suppose you have told me enough, considering how little you trust me. I should be honest too.”
“Honesty is important,” she agreed.
“And yet… I have… not been entirely honest with the Lieutenant-Investigator.”
Twilight blinked; she could feel exactly how much it had hurt him to admit that. The way a certain rawness had suddenly seeped into his voice. “Do you not trust him?”
“I have been somewhat disho- lied. I have lied because I trust him. A lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless.”
“I’m… not sure I understand.”
“I told him your case was assigned to him. This is untrue. I chose him. I told the first investigator assigned to it that it had been assigned to her by mistake. I changed the assignment log, and then brought it to Guerro myself.”
“Why?”
“I do not dislike my job, Twilight Sparkle. But I find great enjoyment in hunting those who would mistreat biosynths. And Lieutenant-Investigator Guerro has always been kinder to us. When I saw your case, I thought…”
“I thought he would be kind to you as well. Instead he forced the diagnostic halo on you, thinking you were something else.” A smile, small and sad, twisted the edges of his lips. “So you see, Twilight Sparkle, I can choose. I can choose to do wrong, and because no override code compels me now they cannot stop me. But in doing so, I break his trust and hurt the one I was trying to help.”
Twilight found herself looking away. Looking at Crenelle didn’t seem quite right now, but neither did saying nothing.
“It’s not your fault, Crenelle. We forgive each other. That’s part of Friendship, and you didn’t mean to hurt me. You meant the opposite. You didn’t do all of this to me."
But when she turned back around to look, Crenelle had vanished.
Morning, or whatever passed for it on a city without a planet, found Twilight stretched across one of the seats, and her nostrils twitching to the scent of something spicy and honey-scented cooking in the next room.
Over breakfast - some sort of cakes filled with a spread, the tangy-yet-sweet taste of which left Twilight devouring four more - Guerro set a tablet whose glowing screen held a map of the station.
“Right,” he said, rubbing at blurry eyes, “good news is, for the moment we’re safe. Dark Ops team that hit the HQ went to cloak and is staying under cloak - means we won’t be having anyone gunning for us for the time being. Bad news is, they definitely know what the deal is, and if we wait long enough, they’re gonna take a go at Twilight again.”
Twilight swallowed the last of one of the cakes, hard.
Guerro continued, “Means we’ve gotta find somewhere safe to put her until we can roll this whole mess out right. Now, I’ve got some thoughts, but I’m not liking any of them.”
“How about home?” Twilight asked bitterly.
“Would you accept going home?” Crenelle asked, his head tilted curiously.
Twilight poked at the cakes on her plate. “Any other day, Crenelle… Any other day, I’d have been begging you to take me to a library, or a university, research enclave. There’s so much here I want to know, and I even know you have those things because the language you shoved into my head gave me the words for them. But right now, I really do just want to go home.”
Away from this upside-down madhouse of a world.
“Home’d be great, ‘cept someone found their way there once, and until we know how they could just do it again.” Guerro gestured around with his utensil, mouth still half-full. “That’s the real problem. I’d love to just put you back somewhere where you aren’t my problem, but unless you can tell me how she did it? ‘Home’ ain’t gonna help.”
Crenelle settled in at the table, nodding slowly. “I also hate to give negative news, but I don’t believe you yourself know how to get back home.”
“You can’t just ask - her? The one who took me?” Twilight said.
“The Tlatoani?” Guerro let out a barking laugh, then shook his head. “I could probably get her to talk, but the point is the information is out there. If one stupid little tramp freighter captain could stumble on you once, then it could happen again.”
“I… don’t know,” Twilight admitted, “that - thing they used to keep me a prisoner in my own head muddled all my memories too. The last thing I remember was being back in Equestria, chasing down Ahuizotl with my friends, and then-”
Something clattered to the floor.
Twilight’s head snapped up, and found both Crenelle and Guerro staring at her in slight awe.
“Um,” she said.
“Say that,” Guerro said slowly, “one more time.”
Instead, Twilight narrowed her eyes, the gears in her mind turning. “Ahuizotl. That’s what I said, isn’t it? Something about that name? Why’s he important?”
“Describe h- it. Describe Ahuizotl. Carefully,” Crenelle said softly.
“...sometimes walks on four legs, like a dog. Sometimes on two. But not like Guerro. Two arms, but a tail with another hand on it. Head’s, uh, kind of long, with a lot of teeth. Really a lot of teeth. And blue - he’s very blue - coat’s mostly short, with a light blue patch on his belly,” Twilight rattled off hurriedly.
“Eyes?”
“Green?”
“How many fingers on the hand?”
“Three. Plus the small one.”
Crenelle and Guerro stared at each other. Crenelle’s tail lashed. Guerro said something which Twilight didn’t understand, but brought a touch of red even to Crenelle’s slate-grey cheeks. Twilight frowned. “What, what is it? Are you going to tell me he’s some other special kind of ‘biosynth’?”
“Ahuizotl isn’t a biosynth,” Guerro said quietly.
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i mean, she has battled all sorts of villains. but yes, what she is facing now really is unlike anything she has faced before
augh, Twilight!
so true actually, a very poetic and cruel irony
dang Crenelle really is lacking in class consciousness
love this poignant mix of emotions
that is part of the great unease of it. i am like Twilight and i also want to go home!
so true. the difference between a justifiable hierarchy and one that is very much not
dang, really laying bare the background ideology of this Society through the mouths of its innocent children, huh?
auaugh
cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/957679742822281266.webp?size=96&quality=lossless
augh, love this sequence so much
oof. opsec, Twilight!
i would object to Crenelle personally about how it’s totally different, but it makes sense he would make this kind of assumption about what a Princess is, given how absolute the dynamics of power are in his Society
augh, i should have known! of course Crenelle would have his own agency, and is doing his best and finding as much meaning and happiness as he can within the constraints of this awful Society
ooh, what a twist! and Ahuizotl, of all creatures, is the one that doesn’t belong and gets this reaction out of these hard-bitten detectives? not Discord or the Windigoes or any of those guys? Ahuizotl? really? kinda love that actually
Uh oh, someone's been a naughty guy!
"less" looks like a mistake here; also, "small knots" is used twice in this sentence