Twilight opened her eyes.
A cloud of smoke hung in the air above her head. The sound of shifting paper settled somewhere nearby. The curtains on her window were singed and askew. Her mother was next to her, heaving with sobs, staring ahead at something only she could see. The odor of smoke, ozone, and hot iron was heavy around her.
She slowly began to feel her own body. Two spots of intense pain were pulsing on her back. A slick warmth had spread along her stomach. Her horn had finally stopped itching so bad, though she did still feel the onset of magical exhaustion. Her right foreleg was dislocated from the impact. Her left hind leg was gone entirely.
And her brother...was nowhere to be seen.
This couldn't be happening. This wasn't what she wanted. Her theory was only meant to keep a small reaction, something that she could regulate directly with her own magic. It should have failed as soon as her hooves left the circle, and definitely should have stayed to the boundary she had drawn. What had happened? How could it have gone so wrong?
Velvet's breathing hitched and broke. She reached out from her spot near the door, grasping at the air where Shining Armor had been a minute earlier. Tears swelled and fell without her needing to blink.
Something new in Twilight, something vast and clear, seemed to give her answers to questions she hadn't asked. Balance, it said, balance had to be achieved. Whatever she had done had demanded a toll, something that she wasn't equipped to pay. It had been drawing on her magic to meet that toll, then had drawn on Shining Armor's when he entered the field of alchemy. But it gave her no answers about her missing limb. The most she could guess was that more was required of her than just magic. Too much more.
It was the first of many lessons the young alchemist would learn.
"B-bro...ther..." Her voice was still shredded, but she pushed ahead. "No, n-not...you..."
Velvet turned slightly to look at her broken daughter. She made no other movement. Twilight welled up any strength she had left, any that hadn't been taken, to pull herself forward. She forced herself to ignore the intense pain that hit her from all sides and the blood loss that threatened to make her lose consciousness.
"Not...him..." she muttered. "H-he still...has...s-so much to do..."
Eventually, Twilight reached the paper with her transmutation circle. By some cruel irony, the paper and circle were completely unharmed; it didn't even look like it had moved an inch. She looked at the sheet as her vision once again began to fray at the edges.
"Don't...t-take him..." Her voice was louder than before. "My b-brother is...starting...his own family...don't take him from that..."
A glint of metal caught her attention. Nearby, Shining Armor's training helmet rested upside-down. She was just close enough to reach it and pull it close. The weight of it in her hoof magnified the guilt she felt, but she knew it couldn't do it justice. There was too much to consider, far too much, and her mind was too noisy to focus on any one thing.
"Shining...Armor..."
Twilight openly cried. She cradled the helmet and let the waves of guilt wash over her. How could she possibly explain this? What kind of mistake could she have made to cause such a chaotic rebound? She knew that alchemy was a dangerous science, but this was beyond her imagination. What would his brother's marefriend think when she found out? Heavens, what did her mother think right now?
The inner voice spoke again, quiet but assertive. It fed new facts into her mind, enough to stem the tide of her own guilt for an idea to form. She didn't yet know what had caused such a bad transmutation - whether it was something with her theory, her intent, or even the way she had drawn her circle - but a new wealth of knowledge she had gained was helping to clear her head. Twilight lifted her eyes to glare at the alchemy circle. What exactly had she received in exchange for such a high price?
Balance, her inner voice answered.
"No..." she whispered after a moment. "Not him...not my brother. I...I won't let you."
Balance had to be achieved.
"Not him...no, you can't take him..."
Balance had to be—
"G-give him back."
All matter is subject to balance.
"I wanted...to fix an imbalance...so give him back."
Twilight pushed herself up as high as she could. The movement caused more of her blood to spill from her wound, and a rush of vertigo came to her, but she pushed past it. Using her own blood, Twilight carefully ran the tip of her hoof on the inside of the helmet. She drew a rune on the inside, knowing on instinct what to do. This new voice, whatever it was, had given her plenty of facts...as well as a way to save her brother.
"I'm the one...who started this. S-so...take me instead!"
All matter is subject—
"Take whatever you want!" she screamed.
The mark in the helmet was complete. Twilight set the entire thing in the center of her circle as she continued to plead. "My leg...my magic...my heart, I don't care! Take anything...take everything! You're so eager to keep balance, so keep it! Keep it all!" A fresh flow of magic coursed through her horn. "Just give him back. He's my brother!"
In a rage, she swept her left foreleg across the floor. Her hoof dug into the carpet and became hot with friction. The action sparked a second reaction from the circle, which glowed with the same intense brightness. Twilight faced it, directly focused on the brilliance, and carefully listened for her brother's voice to guide her.
The report was nearing its last page. The information inside had proven useful in completing a large portion of the paperwork assigned to him. It wasn't explicitly required of him, but he felt it helped him to keep things accurate. In spite of that, Flash Sentry was still disturbed by the story of Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor.
Their accident had taken place nearly five years ago. Twilight, dabbling in powers she hadn't properly learned, had paid a heavy price for something she ultimately didn't even ask for. It must have been the final insult, Flash wondered, to be granted a talent so unique but still have so few answers. He had known better ponies who would have been broken. What kept them going?
Flash Sentry read the end of the report. The details were concise: following the accident, the colonel had been sent to the house to investigate. While Twilight Sparkle was undergoing emergency care, Rainbow Dash reported what she called a 'rebound', something that alchemists like her were taught to avoid. Flash had been with her at the time, but the nature of the accident was lost on him. Still, he remembered how she had responded - the colonel had flown into a rage that took her to Twilight's hospital. It was there she finally met the siblings.
They found out that Twilight had acquired a special gift that made alchemic reactions nearly instant for her. Rather than needing a circle to mediate a transmutation, Twilight could begin one by simply picturing a change in her mind, then scratching her hoof against a surface. The type of surface didn't matter - wood, stone, fabric, even her prosthetics - as long as there was friction involved. It was that gift that allowed her to bind the soul of her brother to his training armor in exchange for her right foreleg. Even the colonel had praised that as being among the most advanced and risky transmutations in known science, and it proved enough to give Shining Armor a body to command. His soul was bound to the armor he had brought home.
The report ended there, but Flash remembered the details of what came next. Colonel Rainbow Dash had spent hours behind a closed door with Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. She had learned all the details she could at the time, but rather than have Twilight arrested for her actions, she offered her a way to continue working on alchemy as a whole. At the time, Flash thought it was the colonel's way of pitying the unicorn, but lately it was hard to tell what her motives were. One could say that Rainbow and Twilight became friends, but Flash knew better. Neither of them devoted time for friendships.
Now here they all were. Leaders, followers, and occasional partners. The colonel gave Twilight Sparkle particular regard every week, coaching her on how to be a better alchemist while also berating her for any mistakes in her theory. Shining Armor was at her side for nearly every moment of every day, and would often teach her some basic methods to defend herself, skills that he had been taught during his time as a cadet. There were times when Brigadier General Poppy Seed would borrow Shining Armor, but otherwise he was allowed to work with his sister.
As for the Princess' niece...Cadance had tried to adjust to the reality of Shining Armor's condition. Flash Sentry didn't have many details regarding her, but it was a well-known fact that she usually spent all of her time within the palace's royal sectors now. It was a subject that Shining Armor had yet to discuss with anyone.
Which makes it a distraction, he chided himself. Flash shook his head. Distractions wouldn't help him do his work. But still, his original question refused to leave him alone. He stared at the latest in a large pile of reports needing his attention. Some minutes ticked by with no progress before he finally spoke up. "Ma'am?"
Rainbow Dash spoke from halfway across the office. "What is it, Lieutenant?"
"If you don't mind me asking...what motivates them?"
"Who?"
"Twilight Sparkle and her brother." Flash Sentry looked up from his stack, only to notice that the colonel was still invested in her own.
"I would think it's obvious," she answered. The report she was working on shifted to the side as she wrote. "They lost a great many things when Sparkle dabbled in forces beyond her control. The memory of what they lost drives them forward."
Flash nodded. "Yes, but to what end?"
The colonel paused and finally looked up. Her mane was shifted like her report had been. "Isn't that their business?"
"I apologize," Flash Sentry said. He lowered his eyes back to his own share of the work. "It's not my place to ask."
"Nonsense!" the colonel snorted. "There's nothing wrong with being curious. What's got you so interested?"
Flash Sentry considered his answer. She likely knew that he had become distracted, so there was no sense in hiding how far along he was. "It's these files, ma'am. I pulled the dossiers on the two of them to help me fill these out, and I got to thinking about what they've been through. I can't help but wonder about what their goal must be, especially considering that there seems to be some information missing."
"Heh, I always wondered if you picked up on that." Rainbow Dash slowly stood and turned to her office window. She raised her voice to be heard better. "Still...you should know enough to understand why. Sparkle committed a serious act against nature. A detail like that doesn't belong in something as unsecured as a personnel file, whether or not ponies can guess what it is. The fewer ponies that can confirm it, the better."
Flash picked up on the subtext. "So you...know what those details are."
"Comes with being their C.O."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I can't accept that," Flash Sentry said. "You know because you saw."
The colonel didn't answer. She stood against the sunlight coming through her window, framing her body in crossing shadows. A subtle twitching in her tail told Flash that she was miffed, but he didn't see any point in apologizing for his words. It wasn't the first time he had challenged her. The moment stretched on, and Flash turned back to his paperwork to wait it out.
Finally, she spoke up. "If you were in their position...what would your motivation be?"
He had been expecting that, but still hesitated. It was a hard question for a non-alchemist like him. "Well, I...I think that I would want to study more to figure out where I went wrong.
"No," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Try again."
"Ma'am?"
"Your motivation would be to constantly study? To prove what you already knew was a mistake?" Rainbow Dash shook her head, then turned to look squarely at her adjutant. "That's not you, Lieutenant, and that's not Twilight Sparkle. So try again."
Flash Sentry didn't often get surprised, and he never openly admitted when it happened. Needless to say, the way that the colonel had risen to defend Twilight Sparkle had caught him a little off-guard. He handled it the same way he often handled things in life: he reconsidered the facts and worked through his questions from a different approach.
"To change the mistake," he eventually answered.
The colonel turned away again. The twitching of her tail had stopped. "Go on."
"I'd want to learn more about alchemy, but not just to find out what I did wrong. That would only be part of it, and I wouldn't be satisfied with stopping after I proved what I would already be living." Flash stood up and joined his superior at the window, explaining himself as he went. "I'd try to find another way, to find every secret that I could, in order to correct what I had done wrong. I'd travel the lengths of the world if it meant finding an answer."
"And why is that?" Rainbow Dash pried. Below, the forms of Twilight and her brother vanished beneath the roof of the detention center.
"Because I would have already paid the price for doing things the wrong way...and anything I could do to make things right again would never be enough."
The answer was allowed to float around their heads unchallenged. Some of his answer had been extrapolation, but Flash was confident in his honesty. It was difficult enough to get into the mind of an alchemist; then again, he had frequent dealings with two of the youngest enlisted alchemists in the realm. He watched the subtle changes in the colonel's face through his peripherals, priding himself in the telling smirk he found.
Rainbow Dash took a deep breath, held it, released, then turned to look him in the eye. "Is that enough to answer your questions, Lieutenant?"
"I believe so, yes. Thank you, Colonel."
"Good." Rainbow Dash spared a moment to rub her eyes. Then the moment passed, the two of them returned to their piles, and the sounds of bureaucracy filled the office once more.
