Chapter 1:

You know that feeling you get when your leg falls asleep? That screaming white noise, like the feeling of pins and needles brushing your flesh while the static snow of a dead computer monitor invades your veins? That’s what I was experiencing right now. The feeling was so bizarrely uncomfortable that it actually woke me up, my eyes popping open in the darkness of the room I shared with Firefly.

Darkness... oh, no. What had happened to my nightlight?

My eyes darted around frantically, seeing nothing but a pervasive blackness. I could see a slightly darker shade of black that must have been Firefly lying in the bed across from mine, as well as the darker box-like structure that must have been the nightstand between us.

I could even see the window, which showed the lighter darkness of the sky, peppered with innumerable stars. I saw the first hint of dawn creeping over the horizon of the cloud cover, obscuring the lower stars with the dark blues, violets, and oranges of daybreak.

Our room, however, was still very dark indeed. The luminance that should have been cast by my nightlight, which was always plugged in near the far corner at the foot of my bed, was absent. It must have burnt out during the night, and I had had the misfortune to wake up just before dawn. Caught between the blissful oblivion of slumber and the darkness before daybreak, I was all but smothered in the horrible, suffocating darkness.

I could’ve closed my eyes, but I knew the all-encompassing darkness would still be there, waiting. Besides, it wasn’t like I had time to go back to sleep again, and even if I did, I couldn’t have done so with that insufferable feeling of my muscles being asleep. What was that?

I didn’t want to wake Firefly before the morning roll call. Even if it was just a few minutes, she would be grumpy all day if I woke her early. I could wait just a few more minutes. I knew I could.

No. No, I could not.

The feeling, whatever it was, grew worse and worse. I tossed and turned, every motion making it feel even more insufferable. I quickly yanked the cloud covers up over my head and huddled in a ball, bracing myself against the darkness with the scant protection I imagined the covers would provide.

I could have been in a cocoon for how tightly I had wrapped myself up. I’d seen cocoons a few times down in Blackmarsh, down on the ground. They were always hanging from branches or being spun by the large, thick, squishy-green caterpillars that crawled around on the skeletal black trees of the swampland.

I could manage being in a cocoon, I thought. After all, they always give birth to those beautiful butterflies. Wasn’t that Ministry Mare Fluttershy’s cutie mark? Butterflies?

Maybe I would metamorphosize into somepony who didn’t have to deal with a primeval fear of the dark, much less this incessant feeling that was even now still making my skin crawl. That would be nice, to be somepony else, to not have to deal with all of the things that happened in my head.

Come to think of it, cocoons weren’t the only things I’d seen down below that looked like what I imagined I did curled up in my sheets. There were also those packets of silk stuck in spiders’ webs, containing either a poor, helpless insect about to be drained of its juices by a hungry spider or an army of tiny spider babies growing in an egg sack. I wasn’t sure which was worse, dying by a spider’s bite or being a breeding ground for new spiders.

Spiders... Spiders!

I threw the blanket back and switched on the lamp on the nightstand. Firefly grumbled, her snoring interrupted as she began tossing and turning before blearily opening her eyes.

“Surprise?” she asked groggily. “What are you... it’s still dark, for Luna’s sake!”

“I know!” I cried, looking down at myself. I screamed.

An army of spiders was racing across my body, crawling over one another and rushing every which way, their spindly legs dancing across my flesh.

“Surprise!” Firefly exclaimed, sliding out of her bed and leaping to the side of mine. She placed a hoof over my mouth, muffling my scream. Her eyes were full of concern despite having been barely focused from sleepiness a few moments ago. “It’s not real, Surprise. Whatever you’re seeing, whatever you’re feeling, it’s not real. It’s okay, I’m here.”

I nodded, the scream dying in my throat.

They’re not real, they’re not real, they’re not real... I repeated madly over and over in my mind. Come on, Surprise, snap out of it!

The light was definitely helping, even if Firefly was standing in the way. There were long shadows everywhere in the room, but at least they were just shadows and not a total darkness. I could do this.

I forced myself to look back down at myself, and the spiders were gone, as if they had never been. Truth be told, they had never been. It would’ve been impossible for spiders to be above the cloud cover in the first place, but my brain had never much cared what was impossible. I knew they weren’t real, I had known from the moment I first saw them, but that didn’t make them feel or look any less real. The fear was just as real as well, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I sat there shaking, and Firefly scootched me over and wrapped a foreleg around me, making soothing promises that everything was going to be alright. After a moment, I nodded, trying not to let my wet eyes shed any tears. I wiped them away, and tried my hardest to stop shaking.

“I’m alright,” I whispered hoarsely. “Thank you, Firefly.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” she said, smiling back at me, though her eyes were still heavy with concern. After a moment, she said “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m trying to fight it, I really am—”

“Sorry?” Firefly echoed, sounding offended. “Sorry? What are you sorry for? This isn’t your fault, Surprise, and I don’t blame you for it any more than you should blame yourself, which you shouldn’t. You remember what the psychiatrist said. It’s just a chemical imbalance in your brain. You were born with it; it’s just a random occurrence. It’s nopony’s fault.”

I nodded again, swallowing my tears. I gave her a quick but firm hug.

She smiled at me again and got off my bed, yawning as she did so. Some of the sleepiness returned to her eyes, and she stretched, flaring her wings and giving them a good shake as she loosened up her limbs. Peeking out the window with a forlorn look, she glanced at the clock.

My eyes followed her gaze, and I winced as I realized it was exactly one minute before roll call. We both looked up to see the ceiling was already darkening, though not for lack of light. The sun had crept far enough over the horizon that even the shadows were being chased away, and the lamp was no longer needed. There were only a few stars left in the sky, and the fluffy white puffiness of the cloud cover stretched out beyond our barracks all the way to the dropoff.

However, the cloudstuff of the ceiling, and the walls, and eventually the floor, was growing darker. I reached out a hoof and touched the wall, feeling the dampness of the water-heavy clouds. Sparks zapped between the roiling miniature hills, fading in and out, over and through one another on all sides of the room. The sparks grew into miniature bolts of electricity dancing over every surface.

Firefly’s mane and tail were standing on end, and I knew for certain that mine were as well. My mane and tail were a poofy mess of golden curls at the best of times, but at the moment, they must look like a tiny exploding sun.

And then, it came.

Firefly and I gasped as we leapt into the air, bolts of electricity crackling along our bodies.

“One of these days, I’m going to disassemble that surge generator and use the parts to beat whoever invented the damn thing to death,” Firefly grumbled, shuddering as the electricity exited her system and flowed back into the cloudstuff of the room.

“I’ll help,” I chuckled, sliding out of bed.

“I mean, why in the world would anypony think pumping Luna knows how many volts of lightning into somepony was a good idea for an alarm clock?” she continued, throwing open the door and trotting into the hallway. I followed, looking around nervously at the other soldiers filing out of their own rooms. A few gave me dark looks, and I offered a lame smile in return. It seems my scream had woken more than a few of them before roll call, allowing them to experience the full effect of the jolt. I didn’t really blame them for their moods; I’d be mad too if I had been awoken by somepony needlessly screaming in the night. That didn’t make it any easier not to experience such a vivid hallucination, however.

“You do have to admit, though, nopony could sleep through that,” I pointed out.

Firefly merely shot me an annoyed look, and despite her comforting me a few moments ago, I knew I’d have to wait until she had her morning coffee before talking to her again. She knew when I needed her, but when I didn’t, she was perhaps the most grumpy pony I’d ever met when she didn’t have caffeine in her system.

The other soldiers, Firefly, and I trotted to the end of the hallway and made our way down to the ground level. ‘Ground’ was of course a relative term when one lived in the clouds, far, far above the actual ground. We were joined by countless other pegasi, all yawning, grumbling, or rubbing their eyes. There were the odd occasionally bright-eyed ponies, the few who were early birds by nature, but they were wise enough not to pester the others with their peppiness.

I couldn’t help but yawn myself as I made my way to the ground floor, walking through what used to be the lobby of the Cloud Nine Resort. Nowadays, of course, it was the Primum Mobile Military Base, but much of it still looked as pristine and ornate as it did back in the days before the Great War. I often wondered what it would have been like to have lived back then, back when you had to be a pegasus with money and connections to stay at a place as ritzy as this, rather than any grunt who decided to sign up with the armed forces...or any grunt who was drafted.

I could picture it perfectly. For instance, there would be a middle-aged pegasus wearing a waistcoat and a monocle, looking at his pocketwatch over by the fireplace. The clouds making up the hearth, specially enchanted to allow for flames, would be keeping him warm while he waited for his young starlet mistress to arrive from her latest movie shoot in Applewood. He himself would be a wealthy merchant from Neigh’Orleans, the port city that was still directly below the base, even if it was now an irradiated ruin rather than a festive seaside community like it had been.

Satisfied that he was still early for the meeting, the wealthy merchant looked up and scanned the hotel lobby for an employee who he could trouble for a swig of brandy. His eyes locked with mine, and he called out “I say, good chap, where can a gentlecolt get his hooves on a hearty draught? You’d think there’d be some at the bar, but Surprise, what are you doing? Brandy? You know there’s no alcohol allowed on the base. Surprise? Are you even listening to me? Surprise? Surprise!”

“Huh?” I gasped, shaking my head roughly and closing my eyes tightly. When I opened them again, the wealthy merchant was gone, and in his place was a concerned Firefly. “Wait, where did...oh, I did it again, didn’t I?”

She nodded, and I looked around to see a few less sympathetic pegasi smirking before they trotted off to the showers.

“She’s gonna lose it one of these days, I tell ya,” one pegasus said to another, just loud enough for me to hear. “Why they ever let somepony like her have a weapon is beyond me. She’ll go crazy and kill us all in our sleep.”

“What was it this time?” Firefly inquired as we continued on to the showers.

“I saw a businesspony over by the fireplace,” I said. “What did I do?”

“You were talking in some weird accent and going on about how your date was late and how you wanted some liquor,” she told me.

“What a sticky wicket I got myself into that time, I daresay, old chum,” I sighed before realizing what I’d just said and how I’d said it. I was accentuating the words in places I never had. “Nay, that is not what I meant at all, I just got my knickers in a wad, I mean, I... Oh, confound it!”

“Who’s Delacroix?” Firefly asked as we made our way into the showers at last. The roof, made of clouds, was already raining everywhere, so all we had to do was stand in place while we were soaked. I shivered in the cold water. You’d think that with all the power they allotted to the surge generator to wake us up in the morning they could spare a little to heat the water, but of course comfort never crossed the military’s mind. It was a wonder the showers weren’t spewing snow or hail.

“Who?” I said, uncertain.

“You looked at me and called me Delacroix,” Firefly continued. “And, well, you tried to... erm...”

“Huh?” I said, feeling nervous. “What did I do? I didn’t attack you, did I?”

“Of course not,” Firefly chuckled. “Besides, we both know I can handle myself. You, well, you tried to kiss me.”

“I WHAT?!” I gasped. “But I—I would never—I mean, not that you aren’t a pretty mare or anything, Firefly, but—you know me, I’m not into mares, I was just—UGH!!”

“It’s fine, Surprise,” Firefly said, shrugging nonchalantly. “I know which way you swing. I was just wondering if Delacroix was a real pony.”

“Not that I know of,” I replied.

The showers trickled into a sprinkling and then a mist before stopping altogether. Shaking ourselves to free any excess water from our coats, we hurried into the mess hall. As I waited in line for food behind Firefly, I muttered the name ‘Delacroix’ over and over to myself.

It was getting worse, and I was worried. I’d never named my hallucinations before. They’d always just kind of...been there. But if I was coming up with actual personas, actual identities for them now...

I tried not to let it get to me, instead focusing on breakfast. Firefly and I grabbed our bowls and drinks from the counter and headed to a secluded table. Firefly simply stuck her whole snout into her bowl and began slurping loudly, only breaking for air and to take few swigs of her coffee, while I took quiet sips and tried not to think about wealthy prewar ponies with foreign accents.

The broth we were served was at least some form of distraction. It was a far cry from good, but the simple feeling of liquid sliding down my tongue was good enough. It didn’t really taste bad either, at least anymore. I’d nearly thrown up the stuff the first few days I was stationed here, but after a few mornings of being woken by electrocution my tastebuds had lost the ability to taste anything. It wasn’t really a bad thing, in retrospect; it save me from wretching every meal, and besides, I had had it better than a lot of ponies. Some lost hooffulls of hair their first few nights, or worse. Losing taste was a small thing compared to what else could have happened.

“Are...you okay, Surprise?” Firefly asked, seeing the worried look in my eyes as I stared sullenly into my broth between sips.

“No,” I admitted with a sigh. “I don’t want to trouble you, though—”

“Cut the crap, Surprise,” Firefly laughed. “You know I won’t accept that as an answer. Your problems are my problems, and vice versa.”

I gave a small smile and said “What if...what if one day you can’t break me free of one of my hallucinations?”

“That’s why I always tell you to fight back,” Firefly said simply. “It’s all a matter of willpower. I know you have it in you, we just haven’t found out the right method yet.”

“But what if it isn’t?” I pressed. “What if one day I get stuck forever? And what if it’s when I’m in... the darkness?”

“Surprise,” Firefly said sternly, looking me squarely in the eyes. The seriousness of her tone was offset slightly by the broth dripping from her snout, but I wasn’t in the mood to laugh at it. “That’s not going to happen. Don’t think like that.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” I said, nodding. “It’s just—”

“For the love of Luna, Surprise, stop moping!” Firefly exclaimed. “I know it’s hard. Trust me, I do. I’ve been your friend since kindergarten, I know how difficult it can get for you, and how it’s getting worse. But you can break free of it, though self-pity isn’t going to help you.”

I was a little taken aback by her sudden annoyance—she had always been very patient with my... ‘condition.’ Was I finally getting on her nerves? Seeing the look in her eye, I didn’t think so. She smiled at me again, though the sternness didn’t leave her look.

Besides, she was right, I realized. Feeling sorry for myself, no matter how much I actually did, wasn’t going to stop the hallucinations. Even if I didn’t think they could be stopped...

NO! I thought. You are NOT thinking like that! Pull yourself together, Surprise!

I nodded, firmly. Firefly grinned.

Finishing our breakfast, or what passed for such at the Primum Mobile Military Base, we filed back through the line and tossed our bowls behind the counter for the cooks to clean. Staying in line, we filed outside, not even breaking formation when we got into position to stand at attention in front of the former Cloud Nine Resort.

We waited for five full minutes before our commanding officer flew up over the resort and then swooped down to land before us. In that time, we never moved an inch, though it was far better than some days. Commander Archangel was well known for his special brand of leadership, and sometimes we had to wait hours before he finally showed up. We’d stand stiffly at attention the whole time, knowing full well what fate awaited anypony who was caught daring to break formation, as the commander could appear at any time.

The commander himself was hardly an intimidating figure...if you didn’t know his history. In his prime, he’d been one of the most highly decorated officers in the history of the Enclave. He’d also been known as one of the meanest, most ferocious fighters ever to fly below the clouds.

Nowadays, however, he was old, wizened, covered in wrinkles, and looked almost emaciated. His limbs were so thin and brittle-looking that it was a wonder they could support his frame at all, even if it did look shriveled and almost hollow. Nopony was ever foalish enough to try and take this as a sign of weakness, however. Legend had it that the one recruit who had, years ago, had left the base in a body bag.

“Good morning, recruits,” Commander Archangel spoke. His voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, and even then it was hoarse and slightly raspy. It was also far more terrifying than an angry shout from a set of strong, young lungs could have ever been. “How are you this fine day in our glorious Enclave?”

“Sir, we are excellent, sir!” we all shouted in unison.

“Good, good,” he said softly, smiling. His face was so creased with wrinkles that the slightest twitch of his facial muscles made it look like his face could slide off his skull at any moment. His smile made it seem like such was just a moment away from happening, though I knew nopony doubted that if it did, his skull would keep on ordering us around as if nothing had happened. Legend also had it that he had single-hoofedly defeated a dragon once, so the idea that even a gruesome lack of a face and all the deadly bleeding that entailed wouldn’t stop him was hardly surprising. “Did you all sleep well?”

“Sir, we slept excellently, sir!” we all asserted.

His eyes, just as sharp and alert as anypony a quarter of his age, scanned us carefully. And, much to our horror, he frowned.

“Forgive me for daring to suggest that you might be incorrect in your statement,” he spoke. “But I detect a slight hint of falsehood in your claim. Does anypony want to tell me the truth?”

We were silent. Nopony dared speak.

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me,” Commander Archangel spoke, even more quietly than normal. My heart was pounding. “ Did. You. Sleep. Well. Recruits?”

“Sir, we slept excellently, sir!” we all shouted, just as we had every morning since being transferred here from deeper in Enclave-controlled airspace. What was he getting at?

“Please, do not lie to me,” he sighed, shaking his head. His eyes had turned icy-cold. “It insults my intelligence. Do you not think I spent over forty years as an officer of the glorious Enclave to know when a soldier of mine is being untruthful to me?”

Again, everypony was silent.

His frown grew deeper as he walked slowly towards us. He stopped in front of a soldier a few ponies down from Firefly and I.

“Did you sleep well, soldier?” he asked.

“Sir, I slept excellently, sir!” she told him.

Seeming satisfied with her answer, he moved on to the next pony, asking the same question and getting the same answer. When he finally stopped at the pony standing next to me, he scrutinized him more closely than the rest. I didn’t really know him, but he did sleep in the room directly next to the room in which Firefly and I slept.

Wait a moment...

Commander Archangel’s question was the same, and he received the same answer. However, this time he smiled.

“I believe I have found the liar,” the commander spoke. “Do tell me, you worthless pile of Luna-forsaken maggot-shit, why did you think that it was wise to lie to your commanding officer?”

“Sir, I apologize, sir!” the stallion said.

“So you didn’t have a good night’s sleep?” the commander asked, raising an eyebrow. “And why not?”

The stallion took a moment to respond, but when he did, my blood ran cold.

“Sir, private Surprise woke me during the night, sir!” he shouted. “Sir, she was screaming again, sir!”

I heard snickers near either end of the line.

“Do you find this amusing?” Commander Archangel said, looking in either direction. Nopony dared speak, and he returned his attention to the stallion. “What is your name, recruit?”

“Sir, my name is Private Falling Skies, sir!”

“Step out in front of the group, Private Falling Skies.”

The stallion did as he was told, nervousness obvious on his face despite his stalwart attempt to remain composed. He was a rather tall stallion, with long, lanky limbs. His coat was a dark blue, his mane and tail an even darker shade of the same color. Despite living right beside him, I had to admit that I didn’t know much about him.

“Recruit, please tell us your opinion of Private Surprise,” Commander Archangel ordered.

“Sir, permission to speak freely, sir?” he asked.

“Permission granted.”

“She is a disgrace to this regiment,” Falling Skies said, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “She is mentally unstable and a danger to anypony near her, especially when she is supplied with weaponry.”

I gasped in spite of myself, my mouth hanging open. I didn’t doubt a word he said, even though I wanted to believe he was spewing nothing but lies. I knew everypony save Firefly agreed with him as well. Nevertheless, I had never thought somepony would come out and say it so bluntly in front of our commanding officer!

“I see,” the commander said flatly, though a twinkle of amusement played about his eyes. “Do the rest of you concur with Private Falling Skies? You are all granted permission to speak freely.”

There was another moment’s hesitation, but they all shouted “Sir, yes, sir!”

All save Firefly, who said nothing, instead looking around at the other recruits in disgust.

“No!” Firefly shouted after the other recruits had spoken their minds. “Surprise is worth more than any of you! She’s more valuable than entire regiment of any of you miserable excuses for soldiers!”

The commander smiled genuinely now, and simply said the worst thing he possibly could have spoken.

“I concur.”

What?! I mentally gasped. But...they were right! I was a danger! I shouldn’t even be here at all, but it wasn’t as if Firefly or I had had a choice in the matter. After all, military service was voluntary unless you were drafted. It was not, however, voluntary for wards of the state. Orphans always became soldiers, whether they liked it or not.

“In order to explain to you why Private Surprise has been allowed to stay within this regiment, I believe a little demonstration is in order,” Commander Archangel said. “Private Surprise, please step forward.”

Limbs shaking, I did so.

The commander trotted towards me and reached into the pocket of his dull gray officer’s uniform. I winced, fearing the worst. He withdrew exactly what I had feared, but rather than shoot me with it, he placed the pistol he had drawn into my hoof. Grinning darkly, he stepped back.

I had to admit, I had not been expecting that. The pistol was a low-caliber magical energy weapon that nonetheless packed quite a bit of punch for its model due to all the customization jammed into it. The midmorning sunlight gleamed off of the carefully-polished metal casing, the rubber grip showed none of the wear and tear found on most standard-issue weapons, and the magical energy that powered the device crackled from within the green battery shell.

All in all, it was a rather impressive piece of arcane technology. According to the old stories that surrounded Commander Archangel like the miasma of fear we recruits felt in his presence, this was the same energy pistol he had used to fell countless enemies of the Enclave down on the ground. It was lightweight yet still sturdy, old but well cared for, and despite only holding six shots per battery rather than the thirty rounds allowed by more modern firearms, it packed more voltage per shot than anything the mass-produced grunt weapons could manage.

It even had a name. Engraved on the barrel of the weapon in lavish, curling script was the single word Excalibur.

“Private Surprise,” the commander said, breaking me out of my shocked study of the weapon. “I hereby grant you permission to fire upon Private Falling Skies. You will not be punished for the action, nor will any member of the regiment be permitted to hold it against you, lest they answer to me.”

What?!

Falling Skies’ eyes suddenly grew very wide.

“But, sir, you can’t be—” he tried to stammer.

“I am completely serious, and don’t even think of fleeing, lest I shoot you myself,” Commander Archangel cut him off, not even sparing him a glance. Instead, his intense gaze was focused solely on me, an almost eager look in his sharp eyes. “Anytime you wish, Private Surprise.”

I looked down at the gun and then back up at Falling Skies, then back and up once again.

It would be so easy... I thought. Falling Skies was far from the first pony to look down on me for my condition. I knew he would far from be the last. It wasn’t just snickers behind my back or insults to my face, either. I’d never really dealt with Falling Skies before this incident, but there had always been trouble when it came to my interactions with the other recruits. A foreleg tripping me as I practiced hoofwork during a drill, somepony tainting my broth with laxatives, even coming to blows with me once or twice, even if the commanding officers always broke it up. Who’s to say Falling Skies wasn’t one of those ponies? Who’s to say he doesn’t really deserve this?

“Go on Surprise, you can do it!” encouraged a voice that sounded eerily familiar. I looked around for the speaker, only to see a new pony stepping out from behind my possible target. She was clad in a white coat, bore a cutie mark of three violet balloons, and wore a frizzy burst of golden curls on her head and hindquarters. Her eyes were a pale purple, and they were brimming with eagerness and mirth. Her voice was incredibly high-pitched, almost squeaky.

I was looking at myself.

“Just fire at the bastard!” I encouraged myself, though the words weren’t coming out of my lips. “He made a mockery of you, he hurt you—well, he probably did! Go on, you can do it! Show these punks what you’re really made of!”

“No,” I said flatly. “No! You’re not real! Get out of here!”

The other ponies looked around, wondering who I was addressing, as my gaze was focused on an empty patch of cloud. However, I didn’t break eye contact with the other me, even when her irises turned blood red. Veins popped into definition in the whites of her eyes, which themselves darkened to a deep black. Her wings began losing feathers, revealing leathery bat wings underneath, while her coat began shedding and leaving only a piebald skin laced with scars.

“Shoot. Him. Now!” roared the other me—or whatever she was now. “SHOOT HIM!!”

“NO!” I shouted right back. I threw Excalibur to the ground, and the other me vanished.

I was breathing heavily now, but I began chuckling to myself. The chuckles grew into a giggle which became a laugh. I had done it. I hadn’t shot him. I wasn’t some low snake in the grass who sought revenge the first chance she got, and I had proved it.

I had wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to so much. But I hadn’t.

I sighed deeply as my laughter died down.

“That, recruits, is why Private Surprise has been allowed to remain in this regiment,” Commander Archangel told them, his dark smile having shifted to genuine approval. He strode forward and picked up Excalibur, holstering the energy pistol. “Privates, you may return to your ranks.”

We did so. Falling Skies let out a low sigh of relief. He glanced at me sidelong, seeming uncertain. I looked straight ahead, trying not to make eye contact, pretending I didn’t notice.

However, he whispered “Thanks.”

My eyes widened.

“Y-you’re welcome,” I said quietly.

“Now, does anypony else have any complaints about other recruits...” Commander Archangel inquired. “...Or can we stop being self-serving asses and get back to serving our glorious Enclave like we’re supposed to be doing?”

Satisfied with our silence, he announced “Very good. Report to your stations.”

. . .

“I’m proud of you, Surprise,” Firefly said, patting me on the back as the line broke up and the recruits began dispersing. “I would’ve had trouble not putting a hole in that punk myself.”

I smiled sheepishly and said “I really wanted to. I’m sure my, uh, ‘outburst’ made that clear.”

“But you didn’t,” Firefly said, smiling all the wider. “And you resisted a hallucination. That’s progress, Surprise! That’s great!”

“You’re right,” I realized. “Maybe I can force myself to ignore them.”

“That’s the spirit,” Firefly agreed. “Just take it slow and steady, but don’t give up, and everything will be fine. I’ll be here with you every step of the way.”

I nodded and thanked her. I don’t know what I would do without Firefly, and I hoped I never had to find out.

Most of the recruits were taking wing and headed towards the training grounds over where the Cloud Nine’s recreational facilities used to be. However, Firefly and I were trotting over to the armory. She had a long day ahead of her of decoding encrypted messages the Enclave picked up from groundside transmissions, while I was scheduled, as usual, to head over to the depths of the main building.

I had always found it rather odd that the Enclave spent so much time fretting over groundside signals, especially when Firefly’s skills could’ve been put to so much better use. After all, even if she was an Intelligence Officer, she was also the top of the class in hoof-to-hoof combat. She deserved to be down on the ground herself, taking care of threats head-on.

I, on the other hoof, was probably right where I deserved to be.

We arrived at the armory, picked up our uniforms and equipment, and parted ways. Firefly, dressed in her dull gray Intelligence Officer’s uniform, zoomed off towards the Intelligence Bunker, a renovated sauna. Meanwhile, I trotted back into the Cloud Nine Resort. While Firefly would spend her day bored out of her mind (as she never ceased to tell me after such days) pouring over data at a terminal, I was assigned to a more hooves-on set of tasks.

Wearing my maintenance smocks, I met up with the few others assigned to so menial a job in the hotel lobby. We never spoke much, as even down in the depths of the hotel we weren’t often together, but at least these few ponies knew me relatively well enough to rarely smirk or scoff at me behind my back.

One of the others pressed the call button on what used to be the hotel’s elevator, and the cloud doors opened onto an empty shaft. The elevator itself had long been scrapped, being deemed an outdated luxury that hardly had any utility at a military base. In a way, I saw the military’s point, as I never saw the point of a lift for ponies who could fly anyway. I supposed that the rich prewar ponies who had vacationed here were simply rich enough (or lazy enough) to avoid flying should they not want to do so.

I shivered a little as the other ponies leapt down into the darkness of the elevator shaft, using their wings to slow their descent. I waited a bit, trying not to look directly at the darkness until the lights flickered on to chase it away. Sighing with relief, I hopped down after the others, fanning my wings out to slow myself into a gentle downward spiral.

Unlike the rest of the hotel, the maintenance levels in the basement and subbasement were mostly composed of metal, all enchanted to float in the clouds. My hooves clanged on the cool, hard surface as I landed, each step making a dull dinging sound as I trotted out into the basement. The others had already left, taking their assignments from the waiting bulletin board and departing to whatever machines needed the most attention. Before the war, most of these machines had supposedly been largely automated, but two centuries of near-continual operation had left them pretty needy.

Searching for the paper with my name on it, my eyes lazily scanned the numerous other bulletins taped or pinned to the board. Many were notes left by other maintenance ponies requesting additional parts for certain machines, or warnings of areas that had become unsafe and needed a more specialized crew to repair. A few were even gambling notices, some ponies betting others ration tickets on whether or not one machine would break down again before another.

However, one message in particular caught my eye—

Hey, Stormbreaker, I read, recognizing the hoofwriting as the pony in charge of the storage wing. Remember that old lockbox we could never get open? I brought down one of my buddies from Weapons Management and paid him a few rations to blow the damn thing open. Not much inside, unfortunately, but the others and I were going to divide them up and see if anypony topside might be willing to trade for ‘em. I get first pick since I wasted a full week’s worth of rations to open the blasted thing, though I doubt it’ll be worth it. Who knows, though? I know some ponies like that prewar stuff—or maybe they’ll be worth something at a pawn shop the next time we’re on leave from the base. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know, just in case something in there does turn out to be valuable.

I raised an eyebrow at that. Not because I hadn’t been invited, mind you—I was never invited to anything, so that part hadn’t exactly been a surprise—but because I was well acquainted with the lockbox in question. Truth be told, it served as my table when I took my lunchbreak, as most of the others went back up to the cafeteria to eat. I never ventured up because Firefly was usually too busy for lunch, and I wasn’t about to eat alone.

Even though the box certainly wasn’t mine, I couldn’t help but wonder what was inside it. After all, I’d been eating over it for years, so I felt I was entitled at least a peek before the others looted it. Besides, it wasn’t like it was theirs either.

Finally finding my work assignment, I sighed as I saw I was set to repair some of the internal wiring on the surge generator. Out of all the machines down here, this one would require the most attention. I might not even get a lunchbreak if things proved dicey, and that’s when I was betting the others would divide up their findings from the box, if they hadn’t done so already.

Oh, well. It wasn’t like it was that big of a deal anyway. I wasn’t losing anything, after all.

Sighing in spite of myself, I started to trot off towards the surge generator...before backtrotting and rereading the note. Surely the generator could wait a few more minutes, right?

Grinning guiltily, I hurried off towards the storage wing, praying to Luna on high that nopony would catch me. Thankfully, nopony did, and I slipped inside the room with the lockbox undetected.

The box was right where I’d left it, sitting next to the smaller box I used as a chair. The room was literally littered with boxes in all sizes and shapes, most of them emptied long ago by earlier generations of Primum Mobile soldiers. It was a wonder this box hadn’t been broken into or at least lock-picked ages ago.

Feeling slightly giddy, as much for knowing I was doing something I really shouldn’t as for getting to see what the others would never have bothered to inform me about, I carefully removed the blasted lock. The metal was burnt and twisted from the energy weapon used to ‘unlock’ it, and judging by the damage, I guessed it to be at least an energy rifle. Either the pony who’d been brought down here as a locksmith had had nothing smaller on him or, far more likely, this lock was a lot stronger than I had assumed it would be.

Lifting the lid, I looked in to see a hodge-podge of assorted junk. My face fell slightly, not knowing why I had expected to find anything better. I stuck in a hoof and began sorting through the pile, finding all manner of trinkets and doodads from before the Great War. I wondered how they had all found their way down here; there seemed to be no relation between the items, so perhaps it was a lost-and-found box? If that was the case, though, what was it doing down in the basement and not up behind the front desk? I would have thought that the box would’ve been opened long ago when the hotel was renovated into the base had it been in plain sight.

There was a snow globe, a moth-eaten fancy hat, a music box, and a couple of bags of prewar money (now worthless, as everything in the Enclave was bought and sold via ration tickets regardless of whether or not you were on a base). That was it? I had to admit, I was a little disappointed.

Picking up the snow globe, I saw two miniature pegasi posed on sticks inside, wings outstretched as if they were flying around one another. Though the figures were unidentifiable due to most of their paint having chipped away, the inscription read Winter Wrap-Up, and was dated just a year before the beginning of the Great War if I remembered my history lessons correctly. The bits were familiar sights, as many things in the Enclave were still adorned with the insignia of a sun and moon, representing Equestria’s dual-monarchy before Celestia had abdicated.

Curious and hoping that at least the music box might hold an interesting tune, if it still played at all after two centuries, I opened the box to see the same two pegasi on raised stands. They slowly spun around each other as a soft, melancholic tune played. The paint on the tiny models was also mostly chipped away, though I could see more details on these relatively larger versions. They were both mares, one with a long, sweeping mane and a tail that looked so lengthy it had to have dragged along the ground whenever she walked. The other pony had a shorter and slightly more jagged mane and tail, and thin grooves lined her hair as if to create six separate sections. There was something familiar about the shapes, but without colors or even cutie marks, it was impossible to recognize them.

The tune was even less familiar, as a soft, whispery voice sang “Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to rest your sleepy head, hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed...”

Sighing again, I closed the music box and placed it back inside. The hat was hardly of any interest, so I didn’t even bother picking it up.

“Dashie?” asked a soft, whispery voice. I’d just heard it from the music box, but now the box was closed, and the voice was coming from behind me. I jumped, whirling around to see...no, that was impossible—though she looked far older and more weary than any of her depictions in the history books or the old war posters that had still adorned some of the streets of my childhood town, the pony standing before me was unmistakably the mare in charge of the Ministry of Peace, back when there had been one. “Dashie, is that you?”

From her cream-colored coat to her pink mane and elongated tail, Ministry Mare Fluttershy stood before me. Her face was wrinkled, and stripes of gray ran through her hair. Even her coat was slightly faded. Still, it was definitely her, as if a wartime propaganda poster had come to life. She was even wearing her official Ministry Mare attire, clad in a leafy-green suit that was both businesslike and decidedly feminine. A matching fancy hat rested on her head, identical to the one in the lockbox save for it looking fresh and untouched rather than moth-eaten and old. One key difference, however, was the butterfly pendant pinned to the hat, made out of polished silver and pink gemstones, like a geological recreation of her cutie mark.

“F-Fluttershy?” I said, taking a step backward and bumping into the lockbox. I was still so startled to see Fluttershy that it took me a moment to realize that the voice I spoke with was not my own. It was slightly lower, and decidedly scratchy. “Wait, is that... is that me? Why do I sound so weird?”

“Oh, Dashie!” Fluttershy cried, darting forward and wrapping her forelegs around me as she sobbed into my shoulder. “I thought you were... that you...”

“There, there...” I said, patting her shoulder uncertainly with my own foreleg. My...blue foreleg?! I pulled away from her and looked down at myself to see that my white coat was indeed gone, replaced with a lithe, sleek cyan. Looking up, I could see the wispy bangs of a rainbow mane rather than my familiar golden curls. “What’s going on?!”

This was bad. It was a hallucination, it had to be, and I knew that. Furthermore, it wasn’t terrifying, just strange, and I normally would have been able to deal with that just fine. Strange beat horrifically nightmarish anyday, and the storage room was well-lit anyway.

But I’d never actually become one of my own hallucinations. They were always an external force, something I witnessed or experienced, never partook in as a fully-integrated element. It really was getting worse. What if I started acting like Rainbow Dash—because who else could I be—as well as seeing myself as her? I had acted like the businesspony back up in the lobby, but then I hadn’t known I was doing so, and I had been observing the hallucination as a detached entity. But if I was in one directly now, if I was one now...

“I thought that you were dead!” Fluttershy wept. After another deep sob, which sounded surprising come from such a famously meek pony, she looked up at me with a small smile. Her eyes were still streaming, but an element of profound relief had entered them as well. “But you’re okay! Of course you are, I should have known better than to think that... that horrid pony... could get you!”

“What are you talking about?!” I demanded in my scratchy voice, edging out of the way of the lockbox and continuing to back away, as if by moving further from the imaginary Fluttershy I could become less of the imaginary Rainbow Dash. “What’s going on?”

“You must be in shock,” Fluttershy said, looking concerned but still relieved. “I know I would be. I don’t know what I’d do if somepony tried to assassinate me. And somepony Princess Luna appointed! We have to tell the princess right away before she can try anything else!”

“She?” I echoed, racking my brain for any recollection of an assassination attempt on Rainbow Dash. If I remembered correctly, there had been several—on each Ministry Mare, actually—but they were always small-scale things that had never really amounted to anything. I definitely didn’t remember anything about an attempt by somepony the princess had personally trusted, though.

And why would I? I thought, shaking my head to try and dispel the false happening. This isn’t real! All of this is just made up! How could I remember something like that if it’s just a hallucination?

“That horrid mare,” Fluttershy repeated. “She had it in for you ever since you beat her at the Wonderbolt Academy. I don’t know why the princess ever appointed her.”

I tried to think of who she could possibly be referring to, but nothing came to mind. The Enclave had been sure to paint Rainbow Dash in a rather unappealing light when it came to the history books, and I had never really paid all that much attention to history anyway. Anypony who had wronged her during the Great War would probably have been praised as a hero, but I still couldn’t think of who that could be.

Seeing my blank look, Fluttershy said “Lightning Dust? You remember, don’t you? The pony who’s always in the news, telling everypony how horrible your ministry is for the war effort? The one Princess Luna appointed to be mayor of the city you created, not her?”

“The city I created?” I echoed again. Rainbow Dash had never created a city, had she? The only thing I ever remembered learning that the Ministry of Awesome had done was set up the SPP Towers that now enabled the Enclave to control the cloud cover...and killing countless pegasi in her aerial attacks against the Zebra Empire. Besides, who would have had time to make a city in the middle of a global war, anyway? I remembered that there had been plenty of cities rebuilt after zebra bombings, but no new cities were built, were there?

Unless...

“You mean New Cloudsdale?” I asked. It hadn’t exactly been new if it had been built to replace the Old Cloudsdale—at least, I didn’t think so—but I knew for certain that Rainbow Dash had had nothing to do with it. Come to think of it, hadn’t the textbooks all said that this ‘Lightning Dust’ was the chief architect of New Cloudsdale? That was all I could remember about that name, and I wasn’t entirely sure about that.

Even then, New Cloudsdale was just a memorial, a small-scale publicity stunt to boost pegasi morale after the bombing of the original cloud city... right? It had never actually amounted to anything.

“Don’t call it that, Dashie, please don’t call it that!” Fluttershy pleaded. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to think of it as her city too! That’s what she always called it. Did she brainwash you?”

I didn’t know what to say, and so I didn’t say anything.

“It’s name is Hurricane!” Fluttershy almost shouted. “You named it that. You built it. It’s your city, not hers!”

“Stop it!” I shouted in my unbearably scratchy voice. I couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re not real! None of this is real. Leave me alone, please! I just want to live a normal life, I just want to be normal!”

“Oh, Dashie...” Fluttershy said even more softly than usual. Her eyes were welling up with tears again. “I can see how hard this was for you. I know we’re all so busy right now, but I just want you to know that if you ever need my help, if there’s ever anything I can do... please let me know.”

She looked so sad, so horribly, terribly sorrowful, that I was afraid saying anything against her wishes would break her. Even if she was just a hallucination, I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I simply nodded, still looking uncertain and hopelessly confused, but it seemed to do the trick.

“Thank you, Dashie,” she said, giving me one final hug. “Here, please take this—it’s a communicator on a secure network. I asked Twilight to make it for me. I have one just like it, and you can use it to talk to me whenever you need to. Just press the jewel in the center and I’ll hear you.”

Fluttershy reached into a pocket in her suit and pulled out a butterfly pendant identical to the one pinned to her hat. She placed it in my hoof and I hesitantly took it. It was indeed beautiful to look at, though it definitely didn’t look like anything other than a piece of expensive jewelry.

I looked up, supposing it would be polite to thank her, but she was gone. Looking down again, I saw that the communicator, if it had even been that, was gone as well. My hoof was empty, and it was white now. Golden curls hung down over my forehead rather than rainbow streaks.

“Hello?” a voice called out. “Is somepony in there?”

“Y-yes?” I said, my familiar high-pitched squeaky voice a comfort to my ears.

“Oh, it’s just you, Surprise,” said the voice as a stallion opened the door and walked into the storage room. “I thought I heard someone having a conversation in here. Were you... having an ‘episode’ again?”

“I must have been,” I said, nodding. “I’m sorry, I hope I wasn’t bothering you—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be fixing the surge generator?” he cut me off, cocking his head and narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “What are you doing in here?”

“Oh, I, uh, I just saw that you all opened this lockbox and—”

“And you were trying to see if you could get first pick?” he interrupted again, walking forward and looking inside. He seemed satisfied that I hadn’t taken anything yet. “You know Tempest called first pick, since he convinced his friend to open it. If you wanted to get something, you could’ve waited till we were all here.”

“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry,” I said. Then, against my better judgement, I couldn’t help but add—a little sorely, no less—“Nopony invited me.”

“It’s not like we would have kicked you out if you did come,” he said. “Besides, this wasn’t exactly a secret either.”

He was still eying me suspiciously, as if I was a thief caught in the act. It wasn’t my box, but it wasn’t his either, and I couldn’t help but feel a little insulted at his insinuation. Besides, if anypony had any claim to this box, I did! I was the one who ate on it every day!

Frowning but seeming to take pity on me, he said “Did you see anything you liked?”

“Not really,” I admitted. Then, remembering the hat, I looked back inside. It was faded, ripped, and torn, but it definitely looked identical to the one Fluttershy had worn in my hallucination. I had seen the old hat before I imagined Fluttershy wearing it, so I knew there was no real connection, but it was still eerie to me.

“The hat catch your eye?” he asked, reaching in and holding it out to me. “Tell you what—it’s probably the most worthless piece of junk in here, so I doubt Tempest would mind if you took it. How about you take it and I’ll pretend I never saw you shirking your duties at the surge generator?”

I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted it, but if it meant he wouldn’t report me...

“Sure...thanks,” I said, taking the hat and shoving it into one of the pockets of my uniform. He nodded and I headed out, trotting off quickly towards the surge generator.

For some reason, I noticed, the hat seemed heavier in my pocket than I would have expected.

I thankfully didn’t see anypony else on my way to the surge generator. I doubt I could have explained my way out of not being at my post again, much less convince the others not to report me. The other maintenance crew members might have been more tolerant of me than most, but we certainly weren’t friends either.

Opening the large, thick door to the room holding the surge generator, I slipped inside and closed it behind me. Turning, I looked up at the immense machine that was responsible for powering virtually everything on the base, as well as what shocked me out of sleep every morning.

Despite how annoying it could be for that last key reason, I had to admit that it was indeed an impressive sight. It was roughly the shape of an egg, though it was as tall as the hotel’s first story and as wide at the middle as a vertibuck aircraft. The entirety of its egg-shaped portion was made of special crystal, supposedly imported from the Crystal Empire during the war. Mostly transparent, you could see lightning crackling about inside its core, zapping out from a central sphere of brilliant luminance to strike at the clear sides as if trying to break free. A loud crack accompanied each burst of compressed lightning, though the crystal walls absorbed most of the sound to prevent it from being as deafening as close exposure to the thunder would normally have been.

At the top and bottom of the crystal container were large metal cables that anchored the generator in place between the ceiling and the floor. These tubes would branch out into wires that ran throughout the entirety of the base, supplying the electricity to wherever it was needed. Most of them did, anyway. A few wires actually supplied power to the generator from a collection of solar panels stationed outside the base, near the cloud crops. The sunlight absorbed by those panels was channeled here, where special enchantments converted the energy into cloud-compatible electricity.

According to my work assignment for the day, one or more of these wires was damaged, and I would have to track the wires—all the way to the solar panels if I had to—in order to find where the problem was. I would have much rather started outside, but breaks like this almost always happened nearer to the surge generator than further due to its violent power output. Unfortunately, we only knew that because it happened so often.

Trotting over to the supply closet, I unrolled some spare lengths of wires from the spool of extras and slipped on my protective rubber hoof-guards. Slinging the extra wiring across my back, I walked over to the section of the floor directly over the wires leading to the outside and opened the cover. A flurry of sparks wafted up from inside, but after they winked out of existence, taking a few singed hairs from my coat with them, I saw that the wires for this section appeared to be undamaged.

Closing the door, I repeated the process, only to get the same result, as expected. Like I said, this sort of work could take a while.

I had worked my way down to the last section of wiring before everything would start to move outside—which would require me to crawl through the cramped and claustrophobic maintenance tunnels leading through the wall—when I unveiled the problem. Two brands of frayed wire tips greeted me, emitting more sparks than the amount usually exhausted to prevent overloading the system. A huge surge of power must have barreled through here and proved too much for the old wiring, which must have already been worn thin by who knew how many years of other such bursts.

Careful to make sure only my rubber-protected hooves touched the frayed ends, and doing a double-check to make sure I wasn’t wearing any metal (even though all of our maintenance smocks were carefully designed to exempt any such components), I clamped my front hooves around one end of wiring and began trying to yank them out.

They were stubborn and stuck fast, and I had to brace my hind legs against the side of the opening before they began to budge. Even still, they refused to move more than a few inches, so I had to resort to flapping my wings as hard as I could, pulling myself backwards.

I grit my teeth, as much to try and ignore the pain of the random sparks singing my coat as from the exertion of pulling out the wires. They were coming out, slowly but surely.

Almost there... I thought. Come on, just a little further...

The sparks were leaping out faster now, and were far more numerous and frenzied. That had to mean the wires were on the verge of popping out. My coat was going to be missing a few patches of fur after this, but at least I was almost done...with this side. The sparks were flying everywhere, landing on my hind legs, my wings, a few even drifting up to my nose and ears. I prayed my mane didn’t catch fire, and I instinctively closed my eyes lest any drift too close for comfort.

It must have been just after I closed my eyes that a spark drifted into my pocket. I assume that’s what happened, because that would be the only explanation for what happened next.

A white-hot jolt of pure raging agony surged through me, my muscles feeling as if they had been pumped full of nitroglycerin and then shot through with a round of blasts from a heavy-duty energy weapon.

The next thing I knew, I was up against something hard, my back feeling like it had been snapped in two. Spots swam before my eyes, and a static scream filled my ears. Every inch of my body was twitching or jerking involuntarily, and I couldn’t stop writhing even after I’d fallen to the ground from...wherever it was I’d been thrown.

Stop it, Surprise! I told myself, fighting to form coherent thought through the blanket of pain. You can fight this!

With a monumental effort, I rose to a sitting position, though my muscles were still spasming. I tried my best to breathe softly, in and out, in and out, without allowing my jaw to lock up or become stuck open. Slowly, the spots stopped dancing in my vision, and my jerks came less suddenly and forcefully. I strained every muscle to simply stand still, and at last they did.

A static scream still played about my ears, however. Actually, now that I thought about it...

I raised my hooves to my ears and covered them, and the screaming stopped. Taking them out, it returned. Whatever it was, for once it wasn’t coming from inside my head, which was quite a relief. After an electrocution like that, who knows what might have happened to my brain.

Where was that noise coming from, though? I looked around, but saw nothing. Come to think of it, why had I been shocked? I was wearing my rubber guards, and I wasn’t wearing any metal...or was I? What else could have triggered a shock like that?

I ran my hooves over my body and through my mane and tail, but came up with nothing. I pulled out my pockets, all empty save the crumpled, old hat, which fell the floor with a loud metallic thunk.

Oh...

I picked up the hat and shook it a bit. There was definitely something heavier than fabric in here, though light enough that I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I set the hat down and routed around in it, my hoof finding something hard hidden underneath the top of the fabric. Searching for an opening, I found the tag and yanked at it, pulling back a hidden pocket. Upending the hat, a small object fell out, shining in the light of the surge generator.

I recognized it. I had never seen it, at least, not in reality...but I recognized it.

“That’s not possible,” I breathed, picking up the butterfly pendant. Its silver frame was dull, having lost its careful polish centuries ago, and its jewels needed a hardy scrub to remove the dust and grime, but it was unmistakably the pendant the imaginary Fluttershy had given to me. Er, Rainbow Dash.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

And yet...here it was. Incorporating something into my hallucination from something I’d already seen was perfectly plausible. Hallucinating something so detailed that I had never known existed was certainly not.

What’s more, the static screaming seemed to be coming from the pendant. I held the object up to my ear, and the scream became louder by tenfold. I covered it with a hoof, and the scream became a soft whisper.

“...H...” it whispered.

What?!

“...Hu...Hur...Hurricane...” it spoke. The voice was barely audible over the blaring white noise, but I was certain I could hear it. I could make out the words, but even with the white noise, there seemed to be something off about the voice. “...Hurricane to Equestrian airspace... Do you copy...?”

Remembering my hallucination, I still wasn’t quite believing this was at all possible. Maybe I had been knocked totally senseless by the shock? But if so, how else could I have been shocked if not for this piece of metal?

Experimentally, I pressed the tiny jewel in the center of the pendant.

“H-hello?” I said quietly. “Can you hear me?”

“...Contact... received...” it spoke. What was it with that voice? There was no enunciation on any syllable. It was flat far beyond any natural monotone. It had to be synthetic, machine-generated. “...Request... confirmation code...”

Confirmation code? I didn’t know any codes besides my personal passwords, and those had all been randomly generated by the Enclave for my locker combination and such when I had been drafted. If this was real...and by now, I suppose it had to be... then it was something prewar.

Suddenly, I was very, very frightened. If my hallucination had foreseen this little machine, then how much else of it had been true? If this communicator belonged to Fluttershy, then how had it come to be here? Was this hotel really one of Rainbow Dash’s safehouses? How much more did that infamous multicolored mare have a hoof in this? And what was Hurricane?

I knew one thing for certain, at least. This was bigger than me. I couldn’t handle this on my own.

I slipped the pendant, which had thankfully stopped screaming, into my pocket. Trotting back over to the wiring, my stomach fell when I saw that though I had indeed pulled the broken wiring away from one side of the damaged section, the other side was still in place, though it wasn’t sparking.

Gulping, I turned nervously around to see just what it was I had slammed into after my electrocution. A Surprise-shaped silhouette had been left in the side of the surge generator, a spiderweb of cracks emanating out from it.

“Uh-oh,” I said simply.

Bolting through the door as fast as I could and not even bothering to slam it shut again, I spread my wings and flew as best I could in the small hallways. Skirting around the final corner to the lobby, I slammed my hoof onto the alarm button. A blaring siren began wailing through the maintenance section, a sound that likely hadn’t been heard since the final day of the Great War.

Hitting the call button for the elevator, I tapped my hoof in frantic impatience as the doors slowly slid open. I could the worried shouts of the other maintenance ponies calling to one another as they rushed to the lobby.

The doors finally slid open, and I stood back as the other ponies raced out of the various hallways and up the elevator shaft. None of them so much as spared me a glance, but I counted them all the same. Satisfied that everypony had made it up and out, I hurried after them. I tried to ignore the deafening thunderclaps growing louder and louder, echoing throughout the hallways of the basement as they competed with the siren and eventually won.

Up on the ground floor, a second set of sirens were blaring. The thunder wasn’t as evident up here, but I could still hear it, and it was still growing. What’s worse, the lighting was flickering, and I could hear various appliances going haywire in the kitchen. Everywhere, ponies were rushing past me, flying out of the elevator shaft from the upper floors or scrambling out of the cafeteria. Others I could see flying out of their windows.

I quickly followed them out, the lights beginning to quit their flickering, instead growing brighter and brighter until they burst apart in a shower of sparks. I even think I heard some explosions from the kitchen, though I prayed my ears still hadn’t quite healed from my shock.

Once outside, I took wing, following the others as we sped to the designated emergency meetup area. Ponies were fleeing the other buildings too, and I only hoped the surge protectors had disrupted connection between the minor buildings and the main generator before everything went critical.

Seeing Firefly’s pink form dashing out of the Intelligence Bunker and looking around wildly as she called out my name, I shouted back to her, nearly slamming into her.

“Surprise, what’s going on?” she asked frantically. “Are you alright? Who pulled the alarm? Are we under attack? Is it another dragon?”

I simply grimaced and pleaded “Come on!” as I pulled her hooves with my own, flapping my wings as hard as I could. Looking even more concerned than she had, she followed, but she didn’t give up.

“Surprise, what’s—”

KRA-KOOOOM!!

We were suddenly thrust forward, tumbling head or tail with countless other pegasi as a massive thunderclap rolled over the clouds and nearly deafened us even as it almost shook our bones to dust. The sky and the clouds took turns somersaulting over each other before the clouds won whatever sick game the two were playing, rising up to engulf us both.

I struggled to free myself from the clouds, spitting out a mouthful of the fluffiness before looking around frantically for Firefly. Her rear and hind legs were almost sticking up out of some clouds a few feet away, her hooves kicking about almost comically. Many other pegasi were in a similar circumstance, though I could see that plenty had made it beyond the dropoff and were now circling just beyond the cloud cover, riding the thermals above the ocean.

Many were shouting, or screaming, or something. In fact, almost everypony I could see were moving their mouths...but I couldn’t hear anything. I tried to say something myself, and though I could feel my jaw muscles moving, I couldn’t hear my voice, high-pitched and squeaky or low and scratchy or otherwise.

Great. On top of overloading the surge generator, of course I had to go and blow out my eardrums too...wait, the base!

Dreading what I would see, I looked over my shoulder to see that the base... wasn’t there anymore. The Cloud Nine Resort, which had stood for over two centuries, was gone. In its place was a dissipating mass of cloudstuff strewn every which way, forming little hills in a circular pattern around an exposed foundation of jagged, blackened metal. Some the cloudstuff drifted free on the breeze, and some of it seemed to have been vaporized by the explosion entirely.

The surge generator itself, or what I could see of it, was nothing more than a fine crystal dust shimmering through the sunlight as it rained down like a transparent snowfall.

“...Surprise...”

I... I couldn’t believe it.

“...Surprise...!”

I’d blown it up! I’d blown up the Primum Mobile Military Base!

“Surprise!”

After the orphanage, it had been the only home Firefly and I had ever known. Sure, it hadn’t been the best of places, but it was food, water, and shelter, and that’s what counted, right? Oh, princesses, I’d just destroyed it all! And not just for me, for everypony! All because I had been too stupid, too useless to—

“SURPRISE!!” shouted Firefly’s voice as her hoof smacked the back of my head.

“What?!” I gasped, whirling around to see her standing beside me, concern flooding her eyes. “Are you alright? Oh, Firefly, I’m so, so sorry...”

“I’m fine, Surprise,” she said soothingly. “Are you alright? And wait, what do you mean, ‘you’re sorry’?”

The tears welling up in my eyes must have said it all.

“Oh, Surprise...” Firefly breathed, her eyes widening. “Whatever you do, don’t say anything—maybe they won’t—”

“She’s over here, Commander!”

For the first time in my life, I wished that clouds weren’t substantial to pegasi. Then I could have simply fallen through the cloud cover and plummeted straight on down to the ground. It would have been preferable to what I knew was coming.

I heard two ponies alighting behind me.

“That’s her, Commander Archangel, sir,” said a familiar voice. I recognized it as the stallion who had ‘caught’ me routing through the lockbox. “She was in charge of repairing the surge generator.”

“Are you certain nothing else could have caused this?” inquired the quiet, infinitely terrifying voice of the commander.

“I’m certain, sir,” he replied, his voice quivering with anger. “Nothing but the surge generator had that much raw power to discharge.”

“I see,” Commander Archangel responded. “Private Surprise, please turn around.”

My eyes glued to my hooves, I did as I was instructed.

“Look me in the eyes when I am speaking to you, private,” the commander ordered ever-so-softly.

I did so, though he and everything behind him was a blur of color through my tears.

“Would you please explain to me what happened, private?” he asked. His voice was emotionless. I couldn’t discern anything from it beyond the question itself. That was almost more terrifying than his all-too-familiar anger had ever been.

I hesitated.

“It wasn’t her fault, sir!” Firefly spoke up. “Honest, it wasn’t! She was—”

“Under most circumstances, I would strip you of your rank for interrupting me, Private Firefly” Commander Archangel said quietly. “Given the current situation, however, I shall overlook your insubordination as a result of shock. Interrupt me again, however, and I will break your neck with my bare hooves. Then I will strip you of your rank. Is that understood?”

Knowing Firefly, she’d risk it if she thought I could be spared. I couldn’t let that happen. Not now, of all times.

“It was my fault, Commander,” I said shakily, trying to swallow my tears but hardly able to speak at all. “I was repairing some damaged wiring in the surge generator, and... and...”

“And what, Private Surprise?” he prompted.

Firefly’s eyes darted from the commander to me and back again. Her lips twitched.

“I allowed a metal object to come into contact with the energy of the surge generator,” I said. “I was electrocuted and knocked back into the generator. I broke it. The fault is mine.”

“I see,” the commander said, though for once in my life, it sounded like he didn’t. If at all possible, he sounded... uncertain. I hadn’t known his vocal chords were even capable of such a tone.

“But Surprise, you never make a mistake when you’re running maintenance,” Firefly said, sounding uncertain herself, though for different reasons. If anything, she sounded like she was wrestling with whether or not to feel like this was all some big mistake and I was an innocent victim, or if she had been...betrayed. If I had wanted to fall through the clouds earlier, I wished for it now.

“Is this true, Private Freezing Rain?” the commander asked the stallion, not taking his eyes off of me.

“She... does have a perfect record, sir,” Freezing Rain admitted. It was true, too. Even he, the head of the Maintenance Division, had a few reprimands on his record for past fallacies. Still, I hardly thought that mattered given the size of my one mistake.

“Then what, pray tell, caused you to slip up this time, Private Surprise?” Commander Archangel asked. His usual tone was beginning to creep back into his voice now.

Firefly looked at me with a similar questioning gaze.

“I didn’t know I had metal on me, sir,” I replied. “One of the lockboxes in storage—the other maintenance ponies—that is, the others and I, sir—we opened it and were planning to divide up the contents. We knew it was against regulation, sir, but we foalishly thought it wouldn’t cause any harm. I chose an old hat, not realizing there was a piece of metal hidden inside it.”

“So it was an accident,” Commander Archangel breathed. What? Had he suspected me of sabotaging the generator? He sounded... relieved. “Though I had thought the storage wing was all catalogued long ago. What is it that you found, exactly?”

“Sir, how could that be relevant—” Freezing Rain tried to say.

The commander simply made a sound like a bone breaking. Given any other circumstances, it would have been impressive to hear a set of wizened, old vocal chords pull that off. Understandably, all it did for Freezing Rain was silence him and turn his coat pale.

Hesitantly, not any more certain how it could be relevant than Freezing Rain had been, I removed the hat from my pocket and pulled out the pendant. I placed it in Commander Archangel’s outstretched hoof.

I scanned his eyes for any sign or recognition, but saw none. He apparently didn’t know what it was anymore than I did, save for what my hallucination had supplied me, and that was far more confusing than anything he could possibly think about it.

On impulse, I reached out and pressed the jewel in the center of the pendant.

“Hurricane to Equestrian airspace,” the synthetic voice spoke, clearly and crisply, having lost the static feedback entirely. “Do you copy?”

“Hurricane?” Commande Archangel echoed. “Yes, we copy. Who is this?”

“Contact received,” the voice repeated, just as it had earlier. “Request confirmation code.”

Commander Archangel squinted his eyes as he scrutinized the pendant, which only served to make his wrinkly face appear as if it was eating itself.

“This is Commander Archangel of the Primum Mobile Military Base, Enclave Airspace,” the commander intoned. “You are hereby ordered to identify yourself.”

“Contact received. Request confirmation code.”

“The damn thing must be fully automated,” the commander murmured to himself. Then, turning his attention to me and the hat I was holding, making me wince just at the feel of his gaze, though his eyes remained unreadable, he said “Private Surprise, this is the hat in which you found this device?”

I nodded.

“Interesting,” he murmured. “Private Surprise, if you will accompany me to the officer’s barracks, I believe we have something to report to the general.”

Freezing Rain looked at the commander as if the thunderclap of the explosion had only just now deafened him. He glanced at me angrily and then at the commander again, biting his lip before saying “Commander, what about—”

Freezing Rain was on the ground, writhing in pain with the commander’s hoof on a pressure point before anypony could react. He simply nodded to me and took wing. I followed, Firefly close behind me. I was worried about her as Commander Archangel hadn’t technically invited her, but I knew better than to tell her not to accompany me. I only hoped the general wouldn’t blame her for my mistake as well.

The officer’s barracks wasn’t exactly that much to look at. It was identical to so many of the other minor buildings on the base that, if not for the fact that it stood relatively by itself, it would be indistinguishable from the rest. It flew the same flag of the Enclave as the other buildings and was just as unassuming as them as well.

Nevertheless, my knees were quaking as we touched down outside it. Out of all the buildings on the base, I dreaded this one above all else. I’d never even been this close to it, and all of my own volition.

The commander knocked three times on the door before entering, even though I knew he bunked here like every other commanding officer. I shakily followed him inside, feeling like I would collapse at any moment. I had no more tears to shed—if anything, I felt horribly dry. My mouth was so parched I doubted I’d be able to speak when the inevitable questions came, not that I could have really answered them anyway.

Whatever happened next, I knew this was it. Whether I was kicked out of the military and left to starve on the streets of the nearest cloud city, as I had no other skills, or I was banished to the ground below without any supplies, I was done for. Who knew? They might even kill me on the spot, or at the very least set up a public execution. Maybe I’d receive the whip before my wings were clipped and I was hung from the gallows.

“General Firmament?” Commander Archangel called as he knocked thrice more, this time upon the door to the office of the highest-ranking officer on the base. I vaguely wondered if I should take a look around the barracks before I met with the general, or as I should probably start addressing him, my executioner. After all, it very well may be the last thing I ever saw, and I’d never seen the inside of the officer’s barracks. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, considering how short my lifetime was looking to become.

My eyes darted around the room, which only showed me a few more office doors to lower-ranking officers and a hallway leading to the individual rooms of the officers. All in all, it was a pretty bland last sight. I would have at least expected a few medals for valor in battle or something. The room was, however, almost entirely spotless.

“LUNA DAMMIT, ARCHANGEL!” shouted a voice I’d only ever heard through the base’s loudspeakers on rare occasions. “WHAT THE PRINCESSES-DAMNED HELL IS GOING ON?!”

“I’ll take that to mean that we may enter, sir?” the commander asked.

“I WAS TAKING A CALL FROM HIGH COUNCILMEMBER FORNAX FOR LUNA’S SAKE!” the General roared. “I WAS THIS MOTHERBUCKING CLOSE TO GETTING HIM TO TRANSFER ME TO A BASE THAT ACTUALLY MATTERS, AND THEN THE WHOLE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK SHITS ITSELF!”

Commander Archangel pushed the door open and walked inside, beckoning for me to do the same. He didn’t so much as glance at Firefly, but he wasn’t dropping her to the ground, so I assumed that was a good thing.

I nearly stumbled over my own hooves as I made my way inside to see General Firmament himself fuming at his desk, eyes glued to his terminal screen as he repeatedly slammed the call button on his personal communications device with a hoof. He was almost as old in appearance as the commander, though he was far more...present. His massive girth strained his already plus-sized uniform, and his handlebar mustache was longer on either side than any facial hair I’d seen on any other stallion—and it still barely concealed his drooping jowls and wrinkled face.

The only thing tiny about him were his eyes, squashed into his bloated face behind a pair of miniscule spectacles. It was a wonder he was a pegasus at all; I’d never actually seen him fly, and given the size of his wings compared to the rest of him, I was seriously beginning to doubt the physical possibility of such.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, ARCHANGEL?!” the General demanded, still not looking up from his terminal. “I’LL RIP THE MOTHERBUCKING WINGS OFF OF WHOEVER DARED TO BUCK UP THE MOST IMPORTANT CALL OF MY LIFE!”

I vaguely considered whether or not I shouldn’t just make a run for it. There was no way General Firmament himself would catch me. Commander Archangel was another matter entirely, though, if one of them didn’t just try to shoot me first. I’d seen Excalibur up close, and I knew it could certainly do the trick with a well-aimed shot. I idly wondered if General Firmament’s weapon of choice had a name as well.

Come to think of it, I didn’t actually see one...

...oh.

When the General finally turned his attention away from his terminal monitor to look at us, he had to shift the entirety of his bulk to do so. The resulting motion sent his fat rippling just enough to show me what he had ‘concealed’ in the area most ponies would use to store a holster.

Unlike Commander Archangel, or any of the other high-ranking officers on the base, General Firmament didn’t wield an energy pistol. Truth be told, his gargantuan hooves were probably far too large to even handle so tiny a weapon.

No, General Firmament’s weapon of choice was a high-caliber shoulder-mounted energy cannon. If I hadn’t used the surge generator to blow up the Cloud Nine Resort, that weapon certainly would have done the trick for me with a few-marked shots.

“WELL, ARCHANGEL?!” the General bellowed. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! WHO THE HELL IS RESPONSIBLE?! IS IT THEM?!”

He pointed a hammy hoof at Firefly and I. I was rather surprised at myself that I didn’t faint.

“It’s a pleasure to see you as well, General Firmament,” Commander Archangel murmured. Then, speaking louder, he said “No, General Firmament. These two are not responsible for disrupting your call.”

What?! But.... but I was! Wasn’t I? What was going on here?

“As I told you the last time this happened, the officer’s barracks possesses an emergency backup power supply,” the commander informed him. “Our spark generators would have kicked on the moment the surge generator was incapacitated.”

“THE SURGE GENERATOR IS OFFLINE?!” the General nearly gagged. “WHY?! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?! AND WHY THE HELL WAS MY CALL CANCELLED?!”

“I assume, just like last time, it was because High Councilmember Fornax had his secretary hang up on you,” the commander sighed, rubbing his temple with a hoof. “And, speaking of High Councilmember Fornax, I have need of him immediately. May I use your line?”

“WHY THE HELL SHOULD I—”

“I’ll stop feeding you sugarcubes if you don’t,” the commander said simply, as softly and coolly as ever.

The General’s eyes widened to an impossibly large scale.

“NO, PLEASE! I’LL DO ANYTHING, I’LL—”

“Just wear your headphones like a good little general and I’ll feed you later,” the commander promised. The General complied, picking out a pair of headphones from underneath his desk and putting them on, muttering softly to himself as I heard a faint drone begin to play, muffled by his great ears.

What in the world?

I looked back at Firefly to see if she had any idea what was going on. She kept looking between the general and the commander, her face full of disgust and a degree of horror I’d never witnessed. I supposed that for such an athletic pegasus as Firefly, seeing somepony so, well, fat had to be rather unnerving. Or perhaps it was simply the odd dynamic between two ponies who were supposed to hold positions of power that were obviously the reverse of what was on display. That couldn’t have computed well with her Intelligence Officer’s sense of logic.

“I do apologize for General Firmament,” the commander said to us nonchalantly as he turned the terminal monitor to face our way, tapping the call button. “He can be so finicky at times, though he is useful in his own way, I suppose. After all, only generals are granted direct lines to the High Council.”

After a few moments, the screen flashed to life, showing the black-and-white face of a young mare sitting at a desk in front of the official seal of the Enclave’s governing body. She looked furious, and the instant the sound came online she began shouting “General Firmament, if this is another transfer request I will be forced to—”

“Good afternoon, Stardust,” the commander said curtly. “Is Fornax available?”

“Oh, Commander Archangel!” gasped the mare, presumably Stardust and presumably Fornax’s secretary. “I’m so sorry, I thought it was that insufferable oaf again. Yes, I’ll alert him right away.”

The commander nodded as the young mare typed away at her own terminal. The screen flickered, and the face of a middle-aged stallion who was looking a bit pudgier than normal (but who was still a speck of dust compared to the planetoid that was Firmament) filled the screen. He was dressed better than anypony I’d ever seen, and he had every reason to be. Even here, way out on the edge of Enclave Airspace, High Councilmember Fornax was well-known. How could he not be? He was currently leading the election campaign for Chief Councilmember.

I had never expected to meet General Firmament in all my time on the base, but I had never in a million years thought I would see a High Councilmember, even through a telecommunications link, in all my life in the Enclave. Surely my accidental crime wasn’t so horrific that the central government of the whole aerial pegasus nation was getting involved!

What was going on?!

It seemed Fornax shared my sentiment.

“Commander Archangel?” he inquired, his gruff voice emanating from the terminal’s connected speaker-box a split-second behind the movement of his lips. “What is the meaning of this? You know this line is to be kept closed except—”

“—In cases of extreme danger or extreme interest to the Enclave,” Commander Archangel interrupted. I gasped, unable to help myself. Finding out the commander somehow held sway over the general was one thing, but interrupting a High Councilmember? Did he have a deathwish? “I know your specifications all too well, Fornax. Why else would I call you save for such a reason?”

“Then...what is this reason?” Fornax inquired, actually sounding concerned. “Is something happening groundside? You’re too far south for Red Eye’s forces to be a problem, and the alicorns have never had any interest in the Neigh’Orleans ruins anyway, not since their initial communications attempt failed at... no, surely you don’t mean—”

“I do,” Commander Archangel cut him off again. “Truth be told, it’s probably a fluke, a useless lead, just like all the others. But I didn’t station myself here for forty years and manage to prove all those leads false without being thorough, now did I?”

“So this isn’t about—”

“I didn’t say that,” the commander continued. “In fact, it most certainly is. There is a very, very small chance that this is the real thing, the one I’ve been waiting for. And, if it is, and if you hold up your end of the deal, you will finally have all that I promised and more. The catch is, though, that we simply won’t know without further investigation. Do I have your support in this matter?”

The High Councilmember looked uncertain for a moment, licking his lips. The commander looked on, as unreadable as ever, before raising an eyebrow. A smile split Fornax’s slightly pudgy face, and he nodded vigorously.

“Excellent,” Commander Archangel said, smiling ever-so-slightly. “Then you know what to do. Nopony can know about this. All communications between Primum Mobile and the inner Enclave Airspace go dark, save for this line, until I give the all-clear. Blame it on a surge generator explosion, tell the press there was a training accident, make something up, I don’t care. Just make sure that I am not bothered. Give me a few days to investigate and, if all goes well, the skies won’t be quite so dark anymore.”

“Let’s hope there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then,” Fornax said quietly, though I could tell that he was barely containing his own excitement.

The screen went dark, and Commander Archangel led us out of the General’s office, not bothering to tell him to take off his headphones. Almost eerily, he simply continued to sit there, mumbling softly to himself, rocking ever-so-slightly in his straining chair.

“...C-commander Archangel?” I said meekly as we trotted back outside, wincing as I saw the ruins of the Cloud Nine once again. Most of the pegasi were still near the dropoff, many flying in circles out over the ocean. A few were checking the rubble of the basement, probably out of curiosity more than anything, until they saw the commander and instantly zoomed back to the dropoff. “I-if I may a-ask, what was that all about? And w-what about...”

I couldn’t finish.

“The destruction of the Primum Mobile Military Base’s recruit barracks is inconsequential at the moment,” he replied, not looking back at me, instead trotted off towards the dropoff. I noticed that he kept feeling his pocket, as if to make sure that the pendant was still there. “Should my investigation for High Councilmember Fornax turn up nothing of interest, as expected, then you will be court-martialled, tried for ineptitude at an inner-airspace base, and most-likely be dishonorably discharged from the Enclave’s armed forces. If that happens, then... I apologize, Surprise, but there’s nothing I can do.”

I nearly stumbled over my own hooves, and only Firefly’s quick reflexes caught me before I face-planted in the clouds again. I was so shocked that even though I noticed the commander’s sincere apology, my brain didn’t register it for the impossible oddity it was.

“Should my investigation go as I hope, however,” he continued. “Well...let’s just say that things should be better for you. However, you are not to speak of what you saw in General Firmament’s office to anypony, least of all the other recruits. Is that understood?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” I managed to squeak out.

“Excellent,” he approved before spreading his wings and hurrying his pace to the dropoff.

I tried to follow him, but my wings refused to work properly, and I fell face-first into the clouds all the same.

“Surprise, are you alright?” Firefly asked, though from the tone of her voice she already knew the answer. I simply shook my head, my whole body shaking as if I was freezing. “Don’t worry, Surprise. We’ll get through this. We’ll find a way. We always do.”

“But I... I...” I stammered. “I could get bucked out of the military! I can’t do anything else, and I could hardly do anything here! Who’s going to hire a crazy homeless orphan with no skills?! And worst of all, I won’t have you!”

“Yes, you will, Surprise,” Firefly said softly. I looked up, turning to her, shaking my head vigorously. “No, you can’t stop me. I’ll be there for you, Surprise, whenever you need me. That’s what I’ve always done, and that’s what I’ll always do.”

“But you’re good at being in the military,” I protested. “You have a home here, a future. I’m not letting you give that up because of me!”

“Then we’ll just have to find a way to get you to stay as well,” she said, smiling softly. “Commander Archangel said that if his investigation goes as he hopes, then things will be better. All we have to do is make sure he finds what he’s looking for.”

I nodded, still shaking slightly, but able to see a sliver of hope. I didn’t know what was going on, but Firefly was right. I couldn’t give up yet.

She gave me a firm hug and I returned it, my shaking finally stopping. Helping me up, she took wing, and I followed her over to the gathering of other recruits. Firefly soared out over the ocean before landing near the back of the crowd, and I followed suit, feeling the warmth of the thermals and the scent of the sea carry me effortlessly higher before touching down.

“...It is for that reason that the Primum Mobile Military Base will be going into lockdown immediately,” Commander Archangel was saying, his quiet voice almost as loud as that of an ordinary pony having a casual conversation. Everypony in the regiment was dead silent, and it carried perfectly. “Due to damages caused by the surge generator malfunction, communications with the inner airspace have gone dark. The nearest base is too far to send replacement materials for repairs that we could easily scavenge from the ruins below. It is for this reason that General Firmament has ordered me to send a special team of carefully-selected operatives groundside to secure an alternative source of long-term power. In the meantime, all skyside resources will be devoted to the assistance of this team, and all machinery will be operated on a strictly as-needed basis to conserve fuel for backup generators. Are there any questions?”

Every recruit had been here long enough to know that there was no asking of questions after a Commander Archangel debriefing.

“Very good,” he said. “You are to rendezvous with your assigned emergency teams immediately. You are dismissed.”

The other pegasi began to murmur amongst themselves as they took wing. I looked at Firefly, as technically she was supposed to be reporting to the Intelligence Bunker with the rest of her team, but she simply smiled and shook her head.

The only ponies left at the dropoff besides Firefly and I were the other maintenance ponies and Commander Archangel, the former of which didn’t really have a place to meet up any longer. They were all huddled around Freezing Rain, and with the other background conversations gone, I could easily hear what they were discussing.

“There was no malfunction, I tell you!” he was whispering incredibly loudly. Firefly tried to steer me away from the group, who was even now shooting glances in my direction. I watched my hooves to avoid making eye contact. “It was all her, the crazy one! I don’t know why the commander’s covering for her, but I intend to find out.”

I shuddered, thankful when we finally left earshot. When I raised my eyes from my hooves, I saw that we were approaching Commander Archangel. He was standing at the very rim of the dropoff, gazing out across the sea. It was hardly noon, and the horizon was virtually empty. It was like looking into eternity.

“Why are we seeing him again?” I whispered to Firefly. In truth, I suppose I should have been at ease to see him. After all, he had had every reason to expel me or worse the moment he found out what was going on. He was covering for me, and I didn’t know why any more than Freezing Rain did. I should have been grateful, and a large part of me was, but at the same time I also couldn’t help but wonder why.

“Commander Archangel?” Firefly spoke up, calling out to the elderly officer without answering me. “I would like to submit a complaint. The Maintenance Division is harboring ill will towards Surprise.”

“But they deserve to!” I protested. “Please, Firefly, don’t get mixed up in this. You’ve done so much for me already.”

“That she has,” Commander Archangel observed without looking away from the horizon. “Such loyalty is immensely admirable. You have my respect, Private Firefly. As for the Maintenance Division, you needn’t worry. I’ll be keeping them much too busy with maintaining the emergency spark generators for them to be able to give Private Surprise any trouble.”

“But sir,” Firefly went on. “If Surprise is working with them, I can’t help but fear for her safety should one of them—”

“Surprise won’t be working with the Maintenance Division any longer,” Commander Archangel interrupted. His eyes were still scanning the horizon, though for what I couldn’t guess. “I am transferring her into a specialized squadron immediately. You as well, Private Firefly. We’ll need ponies like you two if we’re to find what we’re looking for.”

“You mean... we’re going to be sent groundside?” I gasped. This was... I didn’t know what to say. This was the exact opposite of reprimanding me. If anything, this was the biggest promotion I possibly could have received. I still hadn’t the slightest idea what was going on, but I decided that for now it wouldn’t be wise to question my good fortune. “You want Firefly and I to find a replacement surge generator?”

“There will be a few others, but you two shall be in charge of the operation,” the commander agreed. “And yes, they will be under the impression that you are attempting to locate and secure a replacement power source. However—and this is beyond confidential, privates; the following information could very well cost you your lives should it become compromised—I want you looking for something else instead.

“The power supply is inconsequential,” he continued. “Nay, scratch that. The power supply is your cover story. Even if you find a suitable replacement, destroy it. Ignore it. I don’t care. Just stay on the ground as long as you have to until you either locate what we’re looking for or determine beyond a shadow of a doubt that it does not exist.”

“What is that, sir?” Firefly inquired.

“Weren’t you paying attention earlier, Private Firefly?” Commander Archangel said, finally breaking his gaze on the horizon. “Hurricane is out there. All it requests is an access code. If you find it, we find Hurricane.”