//------------------------------// // Chapter 12: Solemn Hour // Story: The Harmony Initiative // by Madame Hellspawn //------------------------------// Solemn pushed her hooves against the ground, resisting in vain as Rime pushed her forward against the seemingly frictionless floors of the rear Engineering hallway storeroom. The low buzz of the machinery roared down the hall where ponies had just watched as Rime continuously pushed and shoved Solemn towards the rear end of the facility. “Dammit Rime!” Solemn growled. “Cut it out, would you? What the hell are you doing?” “It’s for your own good!” Rime shouted, giving Solemn a shove down the hall. The rear room was mere meters behind Solemn, sealed off and closed. “I swear, this is for a good reason! You have to believe me!” Solemn shook her head, horn glowing and enveloping Rime Runner, panic in her eyes and panting restlessly. She looked around, struggling to move her body and gritting her teeth in futile efforts to continue doing Celestia-knows-what with Solemn. She looked behind her, struggling to turn her head and grunting with every ounce of resistance Solemn’s magic put up. Her eyes returned to Solemn’s, glancing past her head and struggling to break free of the magic surrounding her. “Please!” she cried. “C’mon, Solemn, we need to get you someplace safe!” “We are safe,” Solemn groaned, pressing a hoof against the bridge of her muzzle. “What’s gotten into you? Could you just tell me what’s going on?” “Security is looking for you.” Rime explained between breaths and grunts. Solemn’s ears fell flat. She felt her grip loosen on her friend. “I don’t know what they want, I don’t know what they’re gonna do, but it is definitely you they’re looking for.” Rime pushed forward, shattering Solemn’s magic barrier and continuing to shove and push the blue mare onwards to the rear of the facility. Solemn was split between fighting Rime and turning herself in, or going with whatever it was Rime had planned for her. Given the brute strength the grey mare possessed, there was only one thing Solemn could actually do. Wouldn’t hurt to try to talk her out of it. “Look,” Solemn tried. “Don’t you think there’ll be less of a problem if I go willingly?” Rime shook her head. “I don’t know. They’re out in force, Solemn. Please, just go to your mother!” “You realize they could just look at the surveillance systems right?” Rime grit her teeth, shaking her head. The soft beating of hooves came from around the corner of the corridor, vying for Rime’s attention. Out of instinct, Solemn’s body moved backwards on its own volition, subconsciously doing what Rime had wanted. Her rump pressed against the cold steel sliding doors, tucking her tail between her legs as the guards simply walked around the corner. Shining Armor led them, haggard and, at best, slightly annoyed. Solemn tried not to think about how long they had been looking for her. “I’ll just—” Solemn began. Rime had already begun moving; pressing a hoof against the control panel, allowing the door to slide open and for Solemn to fall on her haunches inside. With no more than a quick glance, Rime turned and mouthed ‘sorry’ before she pressed her hoof against the control panel and the door closed right in front of Solemn’s muzzle. “Rime,” Shining Armor sighed. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do. We just need you to—” “No!” “What’s going on?” Overnight cocked her head. Her magic gently laid a set of spare materials in a cart, ready for the next foremare’s shift. “I don’t know.” Solemn shrugged, frustrated. She shook her head. “She never pulls a stunt like that. She practically dragged me all the way over here!” “Rime, stand down, that is an order!” Shining Armor shouted. Solemn backed away from the door. “The Commander wants the two of them now!” “She’s not a threat!” Rime breathed heavily. “I swear on my mother she’s not! She has nothing to do with those ponies up there!” “What is she talking about?” Overnight stepped closer, worry wearing on her face. “Solemn, what did you do?” “I don’t know what they’re talking about.” Solemn said. She pressed her ear against the door, using a hoof to block the noise in her other. The steel was cold against her hair and skin. “Corporal Rime Runner,” Shining Armor voiced sternly. “I am ordering you to step away from the door control panel. Move, or the security officers will open fire and you will be confined to sublevel C Seventeen until you are deemed fit to return to action.” “Rime?” Solemn pounded on the door. “Rime! Dammit open the door! I’ll come willingly, just don’t hurt her!” There was no response, her pleas seemingly falling on deaf ears. Solemn pressed a hoof against the door control pad, trotting jittery in place. A flash of red washed over her hoof, the word denied glowing above. Solemn shook her head, furrowed her brow and tried again, pressing her hoof against the pad, desperately, watching the door for any sign of movement. Denied. She tried again. Denied. Again. Denied. “Dammit!” Solemn punched her hoof against the pad, breathing heavy and pacing in anticipation. “Rime! I’ll be okay, just open the door and let me do this on my own!” “I-I can’t.” Rime said. “I promised her mom I’d keep her safe and I’ll be damned if I don’t keep good on that promise.” “Solemn…” Overnight said, holding a hoof up to her mouth. Solemn turned, reading the worry and lack of understanding on her mother’s face. Her eyes sullenly scanned Solemn, as if she were somepony else entirely. Overnight trembled, extending a hoof. “Solemn, what did you do?” “I-I...I don’t know.” Solemn answered softly. She sat on her haunches, grasping her mother’s hoof in her own and pressing at to her chest. “Mom, I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize this. I’ll just go with them and I’ll explain...whatever...whatever they want.” Overnight’s lips quivered, but she nodded, taking her hoof back and blinking back worried tears. She gulped and continued to nod. “O-okay.” “...whatever the case, she might be a conspirator with those ponies out there. Twilight wants them for questioning and nothing more.” Rime was silent, possibly mulling over the situation in her head. Solemn wished she could be out there with her; reassure her that everything would be okay and that it was just a simple interrogation. That was all it had to be right? Solemn had done nothing wrong as far as she was aware. She had already been on her way to see her mother before in Engineering time and time again, and nopony seemed to have a problem with that. She hardly spoke to anypony besides those in Fireteam Valor, sans Cherry since he’d been hanging with his usual crowd and others. Solemn tried to make heads and tails of it. Who else do I talk to? Aegis, Swift, Lone, Rime, Mom, Applejack whenever the situation warrants. I don’t know anypony else very well. Who, Solemn, who?! The blue mare rested her head against the door, harshly. There was nopony she could think of, why was there nopony she could think of? Solemn cursed under her breath, trying to understand. “I…” Rime sighed. “I don’t know sir. I can’t let you hurt her. I can’t let you take her away. She is completely innocent. I know she is! Please sir, you don’t have to do this.” “Commander’s orders.” Shining Armor never backed down. Solemn tried again to get the door open in vain. She would never have thought Rime Runner of all ponies to have been the one to lock her in any room. “I understand that she’s your friend Corporal, but I can promise you that no harm will come to her. The more you keep this up, the more the suspicion will grow against her. You, of all ponies here, want to keep her safe. Trust me when I say that releasing her from that room will guarantee that safety.” “Out of the way.” It was Aegis! Solemn felt a burden lift from her back. She let out a sigh of relief; thankful for his timely arrival. “Bring her to the interrogation room; as if a pony like her needs detainment.” Ouch. “I’ll talk to her in there. You’ve got surveillance systems in there anyway. Out of the way Rime.” There was another bout of silence between the ponies. Solemn took her head and body away from the door, feeling the tight grip of her mother as she backed away. Solemn placed a gentle hoof over her mother’s protective hug, feeling the old mare’s muscles tightening and still barely trembling. The door controls flickered for a moment and the doors slid open with a hiss. Aegis stood, stoic and calm, collected and formal. His mane had been carefully brushed over, the hue of blue partially blending into the soft blue reflections against the metal walls. Behind him stood Shining Armor, and four other security officers, each one clad in padded black jackets and holding long barreled rifles, though not like those that would have been used on the field. They were far too simple and small. There was no magazines loaded into them. Solemn wagered they were full of some kind of tranquilizer darts. Twilight always promoted the well-being of those under her command. Aegis turned his head slightly. “I hope you don’t mind, but for comfortability sake, I’ll shut the door behind me.” His horn glowed, Shining Armor’s horn glowing as well. “Don’t worry Captain. Just in case you want in on the conversation.” “With all due respect Aegis, Twilight wants to question her personally.” “And she will,” Aegis nodded his head, rolling his eyes. “First, I’m sure after Rimes stunt, she’ll need a bit of reassurance. Just give me a few minutes.” The stallion walked in further, Shining Armor ready to raise his voice in protest behind him. Aegis pressed a hoof against the door’s control panel, paying no mind while it slid and hissed shut. He hung his head low, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “With that out of the way,” Aegis faced the two mares, Overnight still carefully protecting Solemn with her tight grasp. “You two can relax now.” “Captain?” Overnight slowly eased her grip off of Solemn. “Could you tell us what’s going on? Why do they want Solemn? What happened? Did she do something wrong? Did she—” “Relax,” Aegis ordered. The two mares complied to the best of their abilities, Overnight’s body weakly holding herself up and Solemn’s mind meandering and still trying to put the puzzle of her folly together, still trying to uncover, in her mind, what had gotten everypony so paranoid as to make her the target of such an investigation. “Please. Look, I wanna help.” “What’s going on?” Solemn asked. “I’m not gonna sugarcoat it for you,” Aegis said simply. “It’s looking bad for you guys out there. Especially you, Solemn. Can thank that cutie mark of yours.” She recoiled out of impulse more than anything else. She was fully aware her situation was grim. However, she still held on to a small parcel of hope that she was not too deep in whatever mess she was in now. “What does my cutie mark have to do with anything?” Aegis paused, tilting his head to the side before reengaging eye contact with Solemn. “Your mark there was the same one found on a group of ponies who attacked a griffon convoy no more than twenty minutes ago. Innocent civilians were killed by these ponies and the Wonderbolts had to put them down.” Solemn’s chest tightened. She looked back at the marks on her flank. The only hint of red on her body; the eye overlooking a small white star, entrapped in a bordered hexagon. Other ponies with her cutie mark? Could that even be possible? Oh Celestia, no wonder Rime was so panicked. Her eyes met her mother’s. Overnight’s eyes darted, looking at Solemn’s and dancing between her cutie mark and Aegis. “How did Rime find out?” Solemn questioned. “How did you?” “Hell if I know how she found out. As for me, the Commander asked for help trying to convince you two to go with the security team peacefully. She doesn’t want violence. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, but trust goes both ways, you know how it is.” Solemn nodded her head. Despite not wanting violence, she did not get that feeling from the team standing outside of the doors and standing at the ready with their rifles. “As of now, Twilight is investigating the matter personally,” Aegis continued. Solemn’s chest felt compressed, ready to burst in on itself and collapse completely. The stallion stepped closer. “Trying to anyway. Think of this as a kind of heads up. I know things seem pretty bad right now, but I’ve known you two for a while. I vouched for you, Solemn, and I’ve known Captain Armor for a long time. If his sister is anything like him, then she’ll be fair, understanding, and completely just in whatever she decides to do with you resulting from her...interview.” Solemn fell on her haunches, running her hooves through her messy mane and shutting her eyes tight. The situation was grim. Dire at best. Even if she managed to explain...whatever Twilight wanted, Solemn doubted she would be allowed to return to her daily way of life in Harmony Headquarters. She feared even more for her mother. She was a sweet mare and in no way, shape, or form should she be punished for anything Solemn had done wrong. She tried to think. Was it even possible for a pony to share cutie marks with another? Solemn tried to make sense of it. Of course, given the amount of ponies in Equestria and the rest of the world, the chances were slim at best, but Solemn would not have ruled it out entirely. But the way Aegis explained it, there was a group of them. All with the same cutie marks. Solemn’s cutie mark. She tried to recount the days of her youth, when she was a blank flank. How had she gotten her cutie mark? She saw school grounds, playgrounds, the city streets, all popular locations from her childhood; typically ones where Rime had not needed to tell off bullies and pretty much defend her for most of the time the two spent together. Her flank was bare in most memories, lacking the cutie mark of the hour. “The ponies out there must think I’m evil or just completely working against them.” Solemn said, opening her eyes and struggling to keep eye contact with Aegis. “For all I know, they could be right! I don’t even know what the hell this mark means! I just...remember waking up one morning and there it was. I couldn’t even tell them if I wanted to.” Aegis was quiet for a second. His expression softened and he straightened his form. “Y’know, in Canterlot there’s this old saying. ‘There’s no such thing as an evil pony. They’re just ponies who have lost their way’. “You know, Luna wasn’t exactly evil when she turned into Nightmare Moon,” Aegis continued. “It was the jealousy that made her lose her way. Sure, many would argue she was. Her actions were selfish and she had nearly killed Celestia, but corruption is very different from being innately evil. The night we met, for example. I could tell just by looking you, those ponies you killed...you didn’t want that. Hell, you practically said it yourself. A mare like you? Not evil and still following her way.” “She’s a good girl!” Overnight stepped forward. “She’s never done anypony any harm on purpose! She-she-she’d never put us on the line. She’s—” “She’s innocent.” Aegis said simply, shifting about. “I know, I’ve heard it already ma’am; from Rime, to the fact that both of you are acting this way. The point is, no matter how the ponies out there see you, no matter how you see yourself, there is no true evil in Equestria. Believe me.” “Sir?” Solemn asked. “Why are you telling us this?” “Because there’s nothing I can say to Shining Armor nor Commander Sparkle that can sway their opinions on what to do with you, whatever it is they want to do.” Aegis explained plainly. “But what I can do, is at least try to ease the panic Rime just put you through. For what it's worth, I’ll have something for her to do because of this little stunt. Anyway, I just need you to know, I can’t bail you out of this one.” Solemn let out a puff of air, shaking her head and slumping her body in disappointment. That much, she was completely aware of. There was not a single thing she could do. Run? Even if she managed to find a way out of the base besides the hangars, then ponies would be on her tail the whole way. That, and her mother would be in no condition to endure such an arduous challenge. Hide? Rime already proved how futile that would work. Just go peacefully with security as to not promote anymore suspicion against her? Arguably, that was the best and only option Solemn could see. Her fate and the fate of her mother was in the hooves of Twilight Sparkle. Whether she was angry or scared or just overall confused remains to be seen. Given the security force gathered outside of the engineering storeroom, it may have been a culmination of all three. They were, in fact, possibly armed with tranquilizer guns. Just in case the nervous mare and her frail, partially handicapped mother tried to resist. It was a bit toss at this point. There was no other choice besides coming in peacefully or having to be dragged into the interrogation facility. Solemn cursed under her breath. Aegis turned around, ears twitching and horn flickering. He whispered and nodded his head, looking back at Solemn with an odd kind of discomfort. “Am I supposed to be okay with this?” Solemn snapped. "Just let them take me and keep me caged up until the war is over? I came here to serve Equestria, to...to deliver justice for ponies against the aliens! Isn't that enough? Am I really supposed to be okay with having this happen?" “No,” Aegis narrowed his eyes, twisting his head back towards her, glowering. “You’re supposed to be dragged off to Celestia-knows where in the base, possibly detained, with minimal connection to friends until the situation blows over or until they decided you’re too dangerous to be kept around on the surface before completely branding you a prisoner without so much as a complaint!” He turned his whole body, approaching the mare. “I don’t know what more you could ask for, kid. I don’t know what I can do for you. Instead of keeping you in a cage, I’d put you on a short leash. A very short one. You ought to be grateful that they’d even let you out on operations with us, if they’d let you. At least a ‘thank you for trying’ would have been nice, because the way I see it; me putting myself on the line for you and you having to deal with Commander Sparkle is getting off easy, even if you are gonna be missing in action for a while.” Solemn averted her eyes, hoping to keep herself sheltered from Aegis’s glare. He pressed his hoof to the door panel and trotted off without another word, not doing so much as huffing or puffing out of restrained anger or frustration. He muttered something to Shining Armor, who nodded solemnly and trained his eyes on Solemn, letting out a sigh. She released a one of her own, overshadowed by her mother’s gasp for air, looking at her daughter with the utmost terror. She looked pale, the violet hue drained from her face. The looming shadow of guilt and misunderstanding loomed over the two of them, threatening to consume the both of them. The questions consistently flowing through their heads remained hidden, tucked away behind pursed lips. Overnight inched slowly towards the door, Solemn taking one of her hooves, much like she would when she was a filly. As Solemn guided her mother towards the relaxed security officers, she cast a soft glance to Rime, eyes glued to the floor and face oozing regret. She leaned against the wall, forehooves crossed and deep in thought. “Rime,” Solemn spoke out softly. The grey mare snapped from her trance and raised her head slightly, ears flicking. “I just…” “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes were tired, wet as a result of what she had undoubtedly considered a failure. “I tried, Solemn, I really did.” Solemn released her grip from her mother and put a gentle hoof on her friend’s cheek, wiping a stray tear coming down. “Thank you. That’s all that matters to me.” “Ms. Vigil,” Shining Armor said. “I’m sorry, but we need to go. I was supposed to have you prepped for interrogation twenty minutes ago. I swear to all of you, as Celestia as my witness, you and your daughter will not be harmed. That isn’t my way, nor is it Twilight’s. Please, I need you to believe me.”