Triptych

by Estee


Neue Sachlichkeit

Despite her having rather recently learned to loathe him, Rarity would have (eventually) admitted to Doctor Gentle having been right about one thing: when something major happened, something which disrupted one's life... it was often best to begin the recovery process through focusing on a single minor detail. As a designer, her artistic life depended on such minor details: look after a sufficiency and the whole would often seem to assemble itself. And as for the time she'd spent as a Bearer -- well, it seemed that openly complaining about how one's mane might look after a fast-approaching fight tended to provide an inner distraction from the question as to whether one's head would still be attached.

Their imprisonment certainly seemed to count as a disruption to their lives, and so Rarity was currently in the process of reviewing the accommodations. But that was not the process of inspecting their surroundings in order to find a means of escape: she had already tried that. This was a review.

The towering column of negatives located a foundation stone in the lack of choice. They had been led (dragged, really, with no consideration of what it was doing to their dresses, she could feel where a rent had opened under her barrel and somepony was going to pay for that) deeper into the castle, further down than ever. (Rarity had been formulating multiple internal questions as to just how much 'down' the structure possessed: the distance implied by the slopes seemed to be turning it into the architectural equivalent of an iceberg.) And once they'd descended enough -- well, a certain stallion had stated that the grounds which currently hosted sports equipment had originally been intended to repel invaders. Planning one's residence around anticipating such assaults now seemed to include the concept that one might capture a number of attackers, and thus the cells. There were, in Rarity's opinion, a completely ridiculous quantity of them. It created a query as to whether the personality of the builder had been one which encouraged ponies to attack him, and this was added to the rather recent speculation about the current Lord not being any real improvement on his ancestor.

There were a multitude of cells -- but for those who had dragged them to this level, the problem was that just about all of them were already occupied. Those occupants were presumably being tortured, although all the displaced furniture could potentially confess to was being out of style.

The debris from generations of pony shopaholic hoarders confronted their captors, who quickly concluded they wanted nothing to do with it. Cleaning out cells would take time, the removed items would have to go somewhere... it was simply easier to scout the area and see if anything suitable remained before making any efforts at shuffling armoires. And it turned out that there were a few empty cells left -- but only one of them had been specifically designed to contain unicorns, and so that was the cell they had been dragged into.

From what she remembered of her history classes (not much for a fifth-year dropout, and she'd actually acquired rather more of an impression from portions of her romance novel collection), a number of castles had been built with cells -- and some of those cells had been meant to be occupied by captured generals, dignitaries, nobility of all kinds. They were cells furnished in rich woods and plush cushions, given their own little libraries to go with a selection of comfort-aiding devices which could never, ever be used to assist in escape -- unless, of course, one was particularly resourceful and happened to only exist within the pages of a romance novel. Rarity, throughout the final stage of the dragging, had retained faint hopes for being put into one of those.

However, as now seemed more suited to an original builder whose main concern in the outer design was to declare Look What A Strong Field I've Got, they had wound up within stone.

Cold, damp stone, with little rivulets of moisture running down the rough walls. (Rarity was uncertain as to whether the storm's humidity had sent that much moisture sinking into the castle, or if that quality came from being so far underground.) There was just about nothing in the way of smooth surfaces: to rub against a wall would disrupt fur at the minimum: the other end of the scale held torn dresses -- oh, and possible wounds to flesh, of course. The floor was no better: there wasn't a single square body length which was safe to rest upon, they had been provided with no blankets -- and when it came to sleeping, none of that mattered because there was a single assigned position from which they could enter the nightscape: standing up. It was all the multiple chains would allow. Some had been hung from the ceiling, others were attached to the walls, and the final taut-pulled combination had left Rarity's hooves slightly above the floor. Bodily movement had been limited to a slight swaying: certainly nowhere near enough to get any momentum going and crash into a captor who entered the cell. And the cuffs were not padded: the grain of her fur was suffering, and that status would be working its way deeper soon enough.

As far as other comforts went -- they had been provided with feedbags, and the part of Rarity's mind which wished not to make things any worse than they already were was doing its best to keep her from regarding them too closely just yet. The contents of those bags wasn't horrible: she could smell the oats. But as for toiletries... there was nothing. Absolutely nothing, especially since it was impossible to sway into a wall and collect enough moisture to wash up.

They had been told that there would be somepony sent in twice a day to assist with their toiletries. And not only was that asking their bodies to keep somepony else's schedule, but Rarity was now wondering whether that assistance would take the form of two buckets and some rather sarcastic advice regarding aim.

She could have shuddered at the mere thought. She did not, as that moment had yet to come upon them. Instead, she totaled her observations, then slowly shook her head.

The Diamond Dogs treated me better than this. In addition to the mobility issue, Spot and Rover had been willing to escort her to a corner, then stand guard with their backs mostly turned.

But when compared to that (although not the post-Gala time in Canterlot's holding cells), there was a single improvement in this particular captivity. There was company.

They had been chained up so as to face each other, with the cell door (and that strange cylinder of vacancy at its side) on Rarity's right. For ponies were, for the most part, a social species. Their captors, perhaps subconsciously if nothing else, had recognized that the prisoners would want to talk: in this stressful situation, they almost had to. She had been provided with a companion she could look at, speak to directly.

Companionship whose eyes were half-lidded, head dipped down under the weight of the elaborate restraint and so much else. A mare who didn't seem to be looking at much of anything, and hadn't since the moment the closing panel had blocked off the conference.

(There were ponies who, upon meeting her cellmate for the first time, would be visibly surprised at how small she was. They might have been equally shocked to watch her becoming smaller still, as her posture had been progressively collapsing since their first moment in the cell.)

Rarity looked at the close-set bars built into the middle portion of the door, the narrow gaps through which somepony might watch them. Nopony there. Rotated white ears, listened as closely as she could. Nopony close. Not even friends, for the others had been dragged to different, possibly distant sections of what now felt very much like a dungeon.

"So," she gently began. "As we seem to have some time... is there anything you wish to talk about?"

Silence, stretching out across both seconds and body lengths until it seemed to fill the cell -- and then an answer came.

Twilight's head didn't come up: purple eyes gazed at the floor, and she spoke directly to the chains. And the voice which said the words was, in some ways, doubly familiar. It was the voice of her friend, that blended accent tinged with Ponyville, Canterlot, and a House which lay so far to the west. It was also saturated with pain, and thus it too was broken.

"...Pinkie's sex life?"

Rarity blinked.

"Ah," she said and for five long seconds, could say nothing else. "Yes. I suppose in some ways, this is actually rather overdue. Exactly when did you learn she had one?"

"...the -- morning we left," Twilight softly replied. "A few hours before the Hall Of Legends."

Rarity nodded. "I had expected to go through some version of this conversation with you years ago." No response, and so she carefully pressed on. "Pinkie... it is difficult, sometimes, to think of how she might perceive things. But I feel that she associates sex with comfort as much as love. That to her, if it is truly necessary, it can simply be a means of -- making somepony feel better." She allowed herself a small sigh. "It is rare for a pony to feel that way: much more common for them to be judged for it. However, it is not something she does very often, and so I believe very few ponies know about it at all. For her, a last resort only, when everything else has failed -- and solely with those she loves."

No response.

"Empathy tells her when ponies are at their lowest points," Rarity continued -- then, more slowly, "Experience allows her to recognize when all other options have run out. And if she feels it would be right... she will approach them. Even when some of those ponies... don't understand why she's approaching. Don't recognize what she's truly offering. Speaking from the heart of both depression and confusion, decline -- and only hours later, deep under Moon, understand what she had wished to give." And this sigh was much deeper. "I imagine being with her is somewhat -- exhausting. Twilight, why are we talking about Pinkie's sex life?"

"Because..." A shallow breath, just enough to provide fuel for the pain which filled the words. "Because it's easier than talking about anything else."

And because Rarity knew Twilight, she waited. She knew that there were times when words rushed forward in their eagerness to emerge, that forever-lurking hope for a chance to lecture finding its hour at last -- and she also knew that there were times when it was hard for the librarian to speak. When she was desperately fighting to make sense of a world which refused to operate by logic alone, was trying to deal with emotions which had never reached scrolls. Days when words filled the air, and others when a few hesitant ones, barely able to approach the shoreline at the ocean of fear, would eventually be followed by that terrified venture into the water.

There were times when you couldn't force, shouldn't push. You simply had to wait for her, giving her that precious chance to move forward on her own. And so Rarity did.

"When we came back from the waterfall," the smaller pony finally said, head dipping more than ever. "When we told you about what we found, briefed you on everything you'd missed... do you remember what Pinkie said? About what a pony who would make somepony think they were broken would have to be?"

Rarity slowly nodded. "She said -- they would be the worst pony in the world."

And the next words were far more even than they should have been.

"Then what does that make me?"

Rarity waited, as her friend's tail went limp. Watched as the tears started to fall, and a heart began to shatter.

"I was listening to him. To everything he was saying. Thinking about -- what it meant. I couldn't stop myself from thinking about it. She... what was it like for her, Rarity? To hear him speak about her as an experiment? To learn that everything about herself, her entire life exists because he's sick and... I can't imagine that pain. I keep trying to think of things which are worse and worse and no matter how bad I make them, it feels like I can't go that far down. She was going through that, and all she did was reach out to me. Touch me. Ask me to be there with her, at the moment of her life when she was hurting more than she ever had. But I'd listened to him, I couldn't stop thinking about it, and when she touched me -- I couldn't see her. Not as her. I couldn't see Pinkie. I didn't even see a pony. I was being touched by a -- thing, and I screamed, I couldn't stop screaming, and..."

Fighting for breath now. Gasping past the sobs.

"...I told her she was broken," Twilight forced. "I told her she was a monster. I couldn't think about it too much during the conference because there was just so much else, because I was waiting for them to kill us and that would have been me, all me because I screamed, we all nearly died and... I told her she was broken. I broke her."

So small, much more so than anypony ever expected, especially with more than three years of lessons collapsing from within.

"I trusted the wrong pony," Twilight softly said. "I broke my friend. I shouldn't have wings, I don't deserve friends, I'm the worst pony in the world. And all I can do, for the next three days... is think about that. So it's easier to talk about Pinkie's sex life, or anything other than whether Pinkie even wants to live right now. I can't see her, I can't talk to her, I don't know if she'll ever talk to me again. I don't know if she'll ever laugh. I..."

There was just enough strength left in the little mare for one more sob.

"I hate myself," Twilight stated, and curled up as much as the chains would allow.


Applejack checked the view through the bars again, rotated her ears a few more times, and then began the fifth inspection of her chains.

They were thick: exceptionally so. (There was a way in which it was possible to see that as a compliment.) The density and weight of the metal maintained all the way to the walls and ceiling, then hooked into dense eyelets which had been welded to bolted-down iron plates. They'd wanted to make sure she couldn't move, nothing more than her head and tail. But far as moving her head went... that range was normal. It had to be: the feedbag had been set so that it stuck out from her body, slightly to the right, and she had to be capable of facing that way and down in order to access it.

Not that she had any current desire to, for they'd been forced into the cell, transferred to the newest set of chains as a dozen ponies did everything they could to prevent them from striking out (or, realistically, to stop Applejack and only Applejack: her cellmate had never tried to resist). One of them had placed the feedbag on her, stiff joists and all -- then stepped back and raised his robes just enough to expose a red snout.

"A little special spicing," he'd said. "For the Lady." And then he'd spat in her oats.

If nothing else, Applejack supposed that told her exactly what a title was worth.

She looked across the short distance to Pinkie, and could make out very little past the straight manefall.

It ain't been this bad in years. Not since the baker's first days in Ponyville, trying so desperately to fit in and finding that her uncomprehending efforts only served to make her all the stranger. Trying to make any kind of connection at all. But then they'd become friends, Applejack's oldest friend among the Bearers, she'd gotten to know Pinkie a lot better, and... then they'd both been afraid of it, done whatever they could to fight it off, or reverse it in those times when Applejack got there a little too late.

They'd made up a name for it: dimming. It had initially felt like a strange thing to call a nightmare, and yet the name had stuck. Over the years, there had been less and less of it, there had just been the one incident after they'd found their Elements -- and Applejack knew she should have been paying more attention, thinking about the potential consequences, but Pinkie had come so far and she just hadn't believed it would happen any more.

Dimming: initially, an odd name for a source of fear. And then there had been that one Summer Sun Celebration, when a lack of light became the most terrifying thing there could ever be.

Ah used t' think it was... strange.

Ah used t' think a lot of things.

She took a moment, listened again, heard nopony off in the distance. Safe enough.

"So I was thinking," she softly began.

Pinkie said nothing.

"About... irony."

It was the truth, of course, if a partial one. She had mostly been thinking about helping her friend. Escape had certainly been considered, and revenge took up a significant part of what was actually turning out to be a full-fledged checklist. But irony was a surprisingly significant entry.

No response. The darkened body was breathing, and that was all it did. Dipped ears might have been taking in sound, but the mind behind them didn't care to answer the words. It had screams it could listen to, all internal, and with so many having been originally produced by kicks.

"Twilight asked me a question, when we went out together," Applejack continued. "About... actually, maybe I shouldn't start with that part. Maybe it's better if I begin with what we all heard him talking about. Because that's where the irony starts. Didn't get past me when I heard it. Couldn't. Not when he sounded jus' like me..."

One dark pink ear twitched, and the head raised by a single degree. Applejack pretended not to notice.

"He was talking," Applejack said, "about marrying pure. How he thought he was, and he thought she was, and... y'know, I never really thought about it too much before tonight. That there would be unicorn families just as dedicated to making sure the kids were nothing but unicorns, and pegasus parents who had to know their foals were gonna have wings." A little more softly, "Ah can understand that part. The part with the fear. That stallion's a pretty good speaker. Ain't never really thought too much about bein' a pegasus, not past the dreams most kids --" stopped herself. "-- wrong place for that, Pinkie. But -- I saw it then. What it would be like, to just see your firstborn -- fall. I went through that terror. Just for a second -- but I felt it. Ah think we all did. So as far as that goes... I can understand. But y'know what I don't get?"

It was too early for an answer, and so she pretended there had been one.

"Only pegasi and unicorns in that room," Applejack reminded her. "If a robe didn't have wings making it bulge in two directions, it had a horn poking it out in one. He went all over Equestria looking for ponies to give him money so he could try to find some way of making sure every family came out pure -- and Sun an' Moon, did that idiot ever shortchange his fool self."

Both ears twitched.

"I..." Weak, confused, barely present, and still so much earlier than Applejack had expected to hear it -- but with the words emerging in a strange accent, tones unheard in years. "I don't understand..."

This either saves her or finishes her.

She had to trust in her friend. Believe in the brightness within, and that it was just waiting for a chance to come out.

"Took me 'bout three minutes," Applejack casually admitted, "before Ah stopped searchin' that room for your father."


Rainbow blinked a few times. This accomplished nothing. Well -- almost nothing. It let her learn she'd somehow acquired a little bit of grit in her left eye, right before she found out that she'd just successfully shifted it to a more irritating spot.

She worked her jaw, twitched and rotated her ears, tilted her neck while concentrating just as hard as she could. Every last tenth-bit of the local atmosphere stayed exactly where it was, save for the breath she expelled in an irritated huff.

Rainbow was a pegasus, and so magic required movement. She'd been hoping that sheer determination added to everything she could manage with her head and neck would produce something -- but no, her magic was insisting that she include careful shifts of legs and wings, limbs which were currently incapable of --

-- I can't move.

I'm underground, in a tight space, and I can't move.

She had been at her worst during that first Running against Applejack, going to pranking -- cheating -- places she never would have normally considered, not when it was a competition. And part of that had come from stress. The pressure of that horrible rope wrapped around her wings, a constant reminder that she couldn't fly...

This was worse. This was ropes and chains and cuffs accumulated to the point where even her tail had been bound. It was also learning that no matter how awesome she was, she wasn't capable of weaving a technique with her eyelids. And she'd had plans: as soon as the first pony came in to refresh their feedbags, she would have disoriented them with a blast of wind and -- well, then she would have done something as a follow-up, and it probably would have worked, too.

We have to get out. We have to get out...

...slow, deep breaths.

We have to get out.

She looked across the little gap towards Fluttershy, who could not look back.

The blindfold was beyond saturated: the dipped head provided an assist to gravity, and so moisture occasionally fell away. Sometimes, the damp walls of the cell added a drip from the ceiling.

Carefully, so much more carefully than she usually spoke. "Fluttershy?"

A filtered teardrop provided the only answer.

"Fluttershy? I -- know things are bad right now." Potentially the understatement of her life, and a little stab went into Rainbow's own heart as she was reminded just how bad she was with words. "But we have to talk. We have to figure out what we can do to get out. We --"

"...Fluttershy..."

The word had not been spoken, and that was just the smallest part of the horror. It had been sung. The caretaker was the best singer among them, and so it was easy for her to send the pitch into the higher tones of a child. It even managed to come across in a way which implied a chorus.

"...Fluttershy... Fluttershy... Fluttershy can hardly fly..."

Rainbow froze.

No. Sun and Moon, no, don't let her --

"...it's -- almost funny, isn't it, Rainbow?" Spoken words now, words which were as weak as so many ponies believed the speaker to be. "...I was -- supposed to be so many things, when I was born. I was supposed to be strong. I was supposed to be powerful. I was supposed to attend weather college and become part of the Bureau. But I wasn't strong, and I wasn't powerful, I was weak and I couldn't do much of anything and... it is funny, because I was right all along. When I looked out of my window in my old home, across the clouds I could barely stand to touch, a world which felt so barren, a world which didn't have a place for me, and I thought I was supposed to be something else."

Words, there had to be words which would stop this, there had to be words because Rainbow couldn't move and so there was nothing else --

"...everypony in school knew how weak I was, and it didn't take long for everypony at flight camp to figure it out, did they? All they had to do was watch. I was too weak for weather college. I was too weak for remedial classes. So they sang, they always sang whenever they thought the adults couldn't hear them, and I spent so many nights looking out across the clouds, those horrible tacky-feeling clouds, thinking I should have been something else, that I had to be something else. I was right. I'm supposed to be dead."

Imperfect words tumbled through Rainbow's mind, hit the rocks and broke up into impotent syllables.

"...I should have been stillborn. But somepony, the pony I thought was my first friend decided I was an experiment, he didn't even do the one he'd meant to, and... it all started with me. He's always said so, even if it took me so long to learn what he was really saying. I'm eldest. Not the first foal he ever delivered, because that's her. The first hybrid. I didn't die, so he just kept doing experiments on foal after foal. If it hadn't worked on me, he might have stopped, but I came to Sun and he just kept going, over and over. Every pony out there who's different, who doesn't understand themselves, who just knows they aren't what they were supposed to be... they're supposed to be dead. We all are. And it started with me."

Frozen. Unable to move. Incapable of saving her friend from the final crash.

"I was never really thinking about committing suicide," Fluttershy softly stated as the very world wept, pony and walls and distant storm. "I was just thinking about catching up."


Rarity was quiet for a time, for time they had and her words needed to be chosen carefully. It was also allowing Twilight a moment to herself, to see if the descent would end in a self-produced swoop or rebound. But the weeping continued, and so Rarity finally spoke.

"I don't believe I've ever told you about the first time I met Pinkie." (She allowed imagination to provide the minor shaking of a head and mane.) "The full story should wait for another day, but... it was some years before you came to Ponyville, and only a little while after I had first opened the Boutique. She came into the shop, because it was a new shop in town and her schedule had finally allowed her to see just who had opened it. Somepony she had believed would be familiar to her, because -- well, we are both aware that Pinkie has a certain way of picking up on new arrivals. But I had recently left my boarding school, and I was a Ponyville native: simply one who had not truly been home for some time. We had both been so busy as to miss each other, and -- as she eventually put it, I was new and not new. I suppose that kept her from -- noticing, initially. But she finally came into the Boutique as a whirlwind of greetings, one which I was fully unequipped to deal with. She quickly decided that what I needed more than anything was a welcome-home party. A surprise one, and that is part of the longer tale. But just before she left... she also felt my shop needed an extra touch of decoration. And so I looked up to find streamers stretched across my ceiling."

Twilight's only response was an unsteady breath: Rarity took it as permission to go on.

"And I kept thinking about that," Rarity slowly went on. "When had she done it? She had been moving so quickly... and then I spoke to another pony who had been in the shop, and learned that Pinkie's talent was for planning and hosting parties. Well, it seemed to me that head-tossing streamers with perfect accuracy could easily be a minor aspect of such a mark. And naturally, that sort of pony might continually carry party supplies with her within saddlebags. Except that... I couldn't recall if she'd even been wearing saddlebags. And when I spoke to that other pony, she was of the opinion that the streamers had been there the whole time."

The purple head came up, just a little.

"I spent so much time thinking about it," Rarity continued. "Had my father done it? He had assisted somewhat with the painting, but... he is not a pony well-suited to details of composition, at least for those which lie outside a playbook. And it would have required me to overlook those efforts for weeks. I thought about it, over and over, for several days. Then my party occurred, and it provided something else to think about in the form of a fresh category of disaster."

"Pinkie..." Twilight sniffled, the sound of a pony trying to clear her nose and throat enough for comprehensible speech. "Pinkie hosted a bad party?"

Rarity gently shook her head. "It was nothing she did, Twilight. Some of the guests were less than kind: we will leave it at that for now. But she came to me the next day, feeling it had been her fault. To apologize. That was when we started to become friends. And as I spent more time with her, with little oddities occurring during so many meetings... I stopped thinking about them. It was simply something that came with being her friend."

"I..." A swallow this time. "I tried to do some experiments, in my first year. On her Pinkie Sense. I didn't understand how an earth pony was doing that, especially when there was no way for it to be part of her mark. I needed to work it out."

Rarity nodded.

"And then I just... stopped..."

"Because you had accepted her," Rarity softly said. "We are among the most inquisitive of our group, Twilight, and you more so than anypony. But in time, we both reached the point where, when a mystery is mentioned, we simply wait for her to pass us the hat. We ceased to wonder where the hat had come from. There is Pinkie, and so there is a hat. It was all we needed to know."

"I rejected her." A plain statement, albeit one which was overflowing with a locally-directed hatred.

Blue eyes briefly closed, and the designer allowed herself a single sigh.

"Twilight... you -- have a need to understand. To turn the world into a group of facts which can be assembled in different orders at any time you require comprehension of a new facet. You categorize --"

"-- I'm obsessive," the little mare whispered. "Compulsively obsessive. I want to stop it and I can't..."

"You are speaking," Rarity wryly noted, "to a pony who has been known to sort out her personal wardrobe by gem hardness, followed by lying awake wondering whether there is a single ruby out of place. I believe I am rather well equipped to understand such things." The resulting silence seemed to pass for agreement, and so she went on. "There are times when the world itself confuses you. Less so in these days. But you still wish for things to operate by rules, in a given order. By a checklist, if you like. And so you categorize, because you need to: this is this, that is that. You accepted Pinkie -- and, for that matter, Fluttershy. But you also sorted them into categories. Here we have an earth pony, there we have a pegasus. And then, on top of everything you have been through over the last moon, you learned that you were wrong. That there was a new category. One of the most fundamental rules we all know, something so basic that we never even think about it... shattered. And you, with all you have recently experienced, including tonight... it's been building for a while, Twilight. So much came out at the ravine -- but then more arrived to replace it. A rule broke, along with those walls. And so you screamed."

"You're making excuses for me." As protests went, it was only weak in volume. "I did something horrible. Something unforgiveable --"

"-- I am simply explaining how I perceive, and hopefully understand, the situation. And as for forgiveness..." This was worth another sigh. "We have seen this from you time and time again. That even now, you can feel as if you are forever a single word from driving us away."

"It wasn't even a word. It was a scream. I treated her like she wasn't even a pony --"

"-- because for you, part of that category had just broken. And now there is a new one available, along with that which will once again be the most important: friend."

"But --"

"Stop."

For volume alone, the word had been soft. It had also been released in tones more suited to Canterlot than Ponyville. It was Rarity's best attempt to imitate anything about the speech of the Princess, and so if only on instinct, an automatic reaction which would need only moments to recover from, it stopped Twilight cold.

"You say you cannot understand her pain?" Rarity asked. "To wake up on one morning knowing that you are one thing -- and then to find yourself on that same night as something else entirely? Twilight, you understand the agony of that overturn as well as anypony in the world. So use it." Just a little more quickly, "You made a mistake, and did so at what nopony would argue as a horrible time for having done so. But you have made mistakes before, things which you continue to insist must drive us away... and we are still here, in no small part because you now acknowledge such things as mistakes, and do your best to make up for them. You are still learning. We all know that. And so we help when we are able -- or wait for you, as best we can. Go to her, at the first possible moment. Speak to her. She is waiting for you."

Disbelief, an almost overwhelming amount of it, and for those who barely knew the librarian, it would be all they would hear. But for Rarity, there was something else in that tone: the sound of another emotion being forced back, for the pain it brought might be too great to bear. "I went too far. This time, I went too far, Rarity. This was unforgivable --"

"-- it amazes me, at times," Rarity interrupted, "how many ponies believe their actions to be unforgivable. Especially if doing so would keep them from having to approach the one who could forgive them."

Silence, and the designer waited.

"It doesn't change what I did," Twilight finally said.

Rarity nodded.

"You can make excuses for me. I can make them. Nothing changes what happened. I know she has autophobia: Applejack told me after we came here. I knew being abandoned was the worst fear of her life. That was the moment when Pinkie needed me, more than she's ever needed me, and..."

The words were insufficient to contain the self-loathing, and so it saturated the cell.

"...I turned away from her."

"Yes, you did," Rarity gently agreed. "Now turn back."

Twilight looked up. And in her eyes, Rarity saw the horrible agony of hope.


"...my -- father?"

They almost never talked about him. About furrows and endless pushing, not since the first days. As far as experiencing the phantom pains of empathy went, there were ways in which having been told once was enough.

"Well, yeah." Applejack tried for a casual shrug, found herself bobbing up and down within the chains. (Of course they'd been afraid to let her hooves touch the floor, terrified of what could happen if she managed a hard push...) "Think about it. If there's anypony in all the world who'd pay out to make sure his kids would be the same as he was forever, who do you think it would be? Even as cheap as he is, with all that money stacked up in the basement which he never ever touches, he'd pay. He'd hate that he was paying a unicorn -- but to know there would be nothing in his line but earth ponies, forever -- he'd try to talk the price down, but the bits would come out in the end. You know he would."

It might have been a nod. It might have also been the darkened head dipping again.

"And there's a lot of earth ponies who feel that way," the farmer continued. "Well -- I guess it's a lot when you figure for everypony who'd agree with your father on the whole continent. Percentage might not be that high, but for total number of ponies, it's gotta be up there. So many ponies who would have given their money to the so-called Great Work -- but Doctor Gentle? He started by going up to the unicorns. Eventually, he got around to the pegasi. But not a single earth pony, because to him, that's part of what being broken means. He deliberately ignored all those ponies who would have helped him if he'd just rephrased things a little. Kept the emphasis on the pure. So as far as Ah'm concerned, he shortchanged his fool self, and I ain't gonna say different because that's the truth. Once I started to understand part of what he wanted, I had to look for your father. I was looking for earth ponies everywhere, for about three minutes. I was looking for..."

She hesitated, for the next words would be the truth. If voiced, they couldn't emerge any other way.

Ah don't have to say them.

But it was for Pinkie.

"...Ah was lookin' for mah own blood family."

The lank manefall shifted as her cellmate's head came up.

"Because..." Still the wrong accent, the wrong hue. "...you marry pure."

Applejack silently nodded.

"But you need farmers," those strange tones said. "You need earth ponies..."

"More ways t' farm than just the Cornucopia Effect," Applejack softly said. "Minotaurs. Griffons. Zebras, yaks, donkeys, the kudu and buffalo and everyone we ain't had the chance to meet yet. The whole menagerie. Effect's just easiest. They don't got it -- well, they don't got much of it, most of 'em. Lots of ponies living in the griffon nation, from what I hear. Rainbow's mentioned that a few times: decent native population, except they think more like griffons than ponies. And there's some other ponies scattered outside Equestria and Prance. But mostly, once you get past the borders -- ain't no Effect. And all those people, they still eat, Pinkie. Farming's just harder for them, without falling back on the magic."

"The Acres --"

A small head shake, one which took place without the familiar weight, and she wondered where her Daddy's hat was. She knew where she'd left it, but if anypony had gone into the guest cottage and collected a personal souvenir... or destroyed one.

"Acres could keep running without it. Have to learn how, and we'd probably have a rough transition -- but after that, it's just a different kind of work. An' -- Ah've been thinkin' about that for a while, Pinkie. Because we both know that whatever Apple Bloom's gonna wind up with for a mark, it won't be for farming. And... she's gonna leave home, eventually, go to wherever her best place is. Granny..." This part hurt. "I don't know how many more years she has. It leaves two of us, two ponies for the whole Acres when four was just barely enough, and that because of all the neighbors. It's why Ah've been thinking so much about dating this winter, about finding the right pony. And -- about what we'll have to do if I can't." She softly sighed. "Ah ain't much good at the dating thing. So I was thinking about asking Twi to dip into the library exchange program for me, ask for some books on --" the word felt so foreign "-- agronomy. Science farming. Just in case."

She'd known the name would produce a bad reaction, and it did: Pinkie's head went down again. She'd also known she had to say it anyway, because it was part of what had to be said.

"Which, Ah guess, kind of brings us back to the irony part."

The renewed silence was no less harsh for its increasing familiarity.

"Because Twi said something to me, when we were out there by ourselves. Something I've been thinking about. I don't think she knows just how important those words are. I didn't. I didn't want to think about them at all, and I turned them around on her right after she said them, so I wouldn't have to. But..."

She stopped. Listened again, as best she could, to make sure they were truly alone. That nopony was listening. And, just for a moment, wondered why she cared.

"...what she said... is something only she could say. As somepony looking at everything from the outside." She sighed. "For all her books and learning, for all she loves t' lecture -- sometimes, the moments when she's smartest is when she's not even trying to be. She asked me something no adult earth pony could ever ask. Can't have irony without something to be ironic, and..." She deliberately trailed off, waited.

Finally, "What -- what did she say?"

The words hurt. To say them was one kind of pain: to think about them was to ram the hooves of generations into her own ribs. But they had to be said, and they could never be forgotten.

"'Applejack, when you make yourself look weak... how much damage has the Secret done?'"

She winced as she repeated them: it couldn't be helped. It meant she needed an extra moment before she saw her cellmate looking at her again, this time in total confusion.

"I don't understand..."

"Y'know what tonight was, Pinkie? I think tonight was the Secret. The price of having it, letting unicorns and pegasi believe lies for hundreds of years. Telling them that lies are all that's out there, all there ever could be. And they believed us, didn't they? They decided we were telling the truth. We made ourselves look weak, and that meant we were weak. 'cause at least half of being a racist is deciding you're better than somepony else -- and guess what? We'd told them they were. Must have made it all the easier, don't you think? Not that some ponies ain't gonna lie themselves into thinking they're better than everypony else no matter what the evidence is, but here we all went and gave them an excuse."

She was starting to wonder how many kicks she could take. Earth pony durability didn't seem to mean much when all the blows were coming from the inside.

"So maybe that doctor --" the word was nearly spat, and the momentary release of venom gave Applejack a little more strength "-- would have always been a racist bastard, Secret or no Secret, because Ah think there's always gonna be a few around no matter what anypony does. Or maybe, if there wasn't a Secret, he would have looked at the filly he'd just saved, cried for a while, washed her up, taken her to the funeral, an' then gone around to as many homes as he had to until he'd found somepony who could help him during her Surges, teach his daughter all about her heritage." With increasing rage, an emotion which had more than one target, "He might have loved her, loved her for real, not whatever he hauled out of Tartarus and wants to call love."

"He doesn't..." the distorted voice softly said. "Not the way he should."

Applejack forced her breathing to slow, nodded once. "You spotted that, Pinkie, before anypony else did. Even like this, you knew. It ain't pure love, not where he'd love her just for being his kid. It's something else, something dark. Ah jus' hope she really heard you. That those words went deep. But I don't know if she has the strength to believe them, not when it's been her whole life of him telling her something else." And because it was the truth, because she was still trying to reach that spark inside, "Pinkie, you said it, because out of all of us, when it's about feelings, you say the smartest things." And waited again.

Eventually, if only from force of habit, "...what did I say?"

Applejack looked at the muted colors of the dress, now stained where it had been dragged across the dirty floor. (She looked at dresses more than she once had.) Hues which had become a prediction.

"'Sometimes the fastest way to turn somepony into a bad pony is by telling them they're a bad pony'," Applejack replied. "What happens when somepony spends their whole life hearing she's a killer?"

Her cellmate spent several seconds in silence, and Applejack let it happen, for it felt as if it was the quiet of thought.

"It didn't make her into a murderer," finally emerged. "She's killed, with the Diamond Dogs, but that was just being scared, defending herself when she didn't have control."

Applejack nodded, waited a little more.

"It..." Blue eyes closed. "...made her feel like she had to spend her whole life making up for it. Like she had to do anything to make up for it. Anything he told her to do, anything at all."

It was the first time Pinkie had mentioned the doctor, and Applejack decided to treat it as an encouraging sign. "Yeah. Back at the lake, when we had her down for a few seconds, before --" and her own head dipped "-- Ah lost it, Twilight said -- 'We know she's already killed at least twice.' An' Twilight meant the two Dogs. But I'd bet that when she heard that, she broke it down another way. The Dogs and her mother. She's had him telling her that she killed her mother for her whole life: I'd wager the Acres on it. Ah... don't want t' imagine what it's like, living that way, not for too long. I tried it just now, and it's like having a mountain on your back. He'd decided his daughter was weak and broken, and you heard him, Pinkie: the only way it was gonna work is if he made her feel that way too. You just said it: he told her that she killed her mother, and so she decided she'd do anything to make it right."

It's... not mah fault. Not personal.

Never met the stallion before we came here. Never said a word t' him. Maybe no part of our families ever got t'gether before this.

But Ah'm part of it...

"Look at what we did, Pinkie," Applejack softly said. "Look at what we all did. She's an earth pony: that's how she was born. That's the heart of her, the soul. A beautiful voice, could have been a great singer if she just had somepony to teach her how. And he didn't know she had a voice at all -- so he decided he could just speak for her, tell her what to say, what to think, everything she had to believe. Losing somepony hurts: we both know that. Y'remember what Ah was like after mah Mommy and Daddy died, even if Ah don't want to. An' losing his wife... it was part of everything. But some of it was the Secret. Some of it was us, every last earth pony --"

She took the deepest breath of her life.

"-- except for you."

The darkened head looked up. Blue eyes opened.

"...me?"

"You were ready to break the Secret. Because you knew when to break it, and why. Because..." Mommy, Daddy, I'm sorry "...Ah think it's gotta break. Maybe not tonight, maybe not for a few years, not until we can all figure out how. But soon, because it might have done more damage than it could ever do good. Just... sending on... there's two things that could mean, Pinkie, and I don't want to talk about either of them right now, because the better one feels like us. But the other..."

She forced herself to stop, center, push the visions away for a few more seconds.

"You're stronger than me, Pinkie," Applejack told her friend. "Y'always have been. You're stronger than some stupid words a stallion with rocks in his head wants you to believe, better than he ever thought you would be --"

"-- I'm a monster."

Soft. Steady. But not insistent. Words which almost seemed to be praying for denial as something to believe in.

"Y'ain't."

"You heard what he said, Applejack." The limp tail held steady. "I'm a freak --"

"-- you've always been a little weird," and the sheer degree of understatement briefly made Applejack smile. "We're friends anyway. We're still friends. Pinkie, I'm right here. Ah ain't goin' nowhere."

The next words were, at best, graveyard humor, whistling into the shadowlands -- but they remained some form of joke. "You're in the same cell. In chains. You don't have a choice."

"Ah call that," Applejack declared, "convenience."

Silence for a while.

"But -- Twilight..." Her head went down again. "You saw..."

"Twi freaks out sometimes," Applejack softly reminded her -- and aimed another kick at her own ribs. "Tell the truth, Pinkie, another minute and I might have been right behind her."

Moisture began to coat her cellmate's eyes, and even the blue seemed to be darkening. "But..."

Hurry, hurry...! "Pinkie... y'know me. You know my family. We talk about marrying pure. So the doctor talks and suddenly, ain't no such thing as pure no more. It was scary. It hurts to tell you that, and I've gotta because it can't be between us, not silent and secret. It scared me. And Twilight -- she puts things in boxes. She's gotta organize the world. And she had you in a box with a bunch of labels on it, like 'friend' and 'baker' and 'earth pony,' and then somepony ripped that last one off and the whole side went with it. But y'know something? Right now, there's a pony who feels just about as bad as you do, the only thing keeping her from kicking herself is the chains, and she's probably telling herself that you'll never speak to her again, an' that y'never should. Ah know Twi well enough by now to know when she's gonna hate herself. She needs you, Pinkie. She needs to know y'forgive her, that you can forgive. She needs to laugh. Ah think when this thing wraps up, we're gonna need laughter more than ever. We need you, 'cause we're all wounded right now -- and without you, how are we gonna heal?"

"...and who heals me?"

She'd been waiting for that one. "Us. The Cakes. Cranky, 'cause that jack's decided he's your grandpa, he jus' don't say it out loud. Everypony who knows you. Everypony who loves you. Pinkie, when Twilight comes up to you... can you forgive her?"

Ears dipped again. "What if she doesn't come? What if she can't see me as anything other than a --"

"She will."

"...you don't know."

Ah know she's locked up with Rarity. She was counting on the designer, and it no longer felt strange.

"Ah know I want t' see you forgive her, when she comes limpin' up, draggin' the weight of the world with her tail," Applejack quietly said. "Because maybe... that means you'll forgive me."

Water ran down the walls, dripped from the ceiling.

"You've been thinking about dating," that cellmate eventually said. "About a next generation for the Acres. I didn't tell you. I haven't told anypony yet. But... I'd been thinking about children, for a while now. Having my own foals. Someday..."

Applejack blinked.

"You can't be around the twins and not think about it," the strange accent insisted.

That was worth a small nod.

"And..." A shallow breath. "...I knew it wouldn't be easy: the twins taught me that. And... there would have to be somepony special in my life, that very special somepony... that's a weird way of saying love, isn't it? But... I was afraid. Because I knew I was deaf, and mute, and... maybe that would be in my blood. Maybe my foals would be like that too. I didn't want to see them go through that. But maybe it wouldn't be in the blood. Maybe they'd be normal earth ponies, or pegasi, or unicorns. I was hoping for that, hoping so hard..."

And with horror, Applejack saw that her eyes were now navy, tilting towards black.

"...but now I know what I am, don't I? I know what's wrong. I finally know what's in my blood. Applejack, if I have children... what will they be?"

The verbal kick went directly into Applejack's heart.

Fluttershy's the oldest. She's old enough to have kids of her own. The ones within a few years of her are old enough that some of 'em could have gotten married, or just gotten knocked up.

There's gotta be at least one of 'em who's pregnant, or who's been a sire. Maybe that foal is already here. A next generation. And those kids could be normal ponies, because it might not be in the blood, it might not be passed on --

-- or they could be just like the one parent. Mixed. A hybrid.

The walls had broken, and there was a chance that they could never be repaired.

She looked at her friend: a pony who was always different, always a little strange. A weirdness you just accepted after a while, because those oddities came part and parcel with a mare who was kind and caring and never wanted to see anypony hurt. A good pony.

A good... pony.

Applejack looked at her oldest friend as fur blackened and mane threatened to fall away, and said the last thing she could.

"They'll be the only thing they could ever be, with you as their mom," Applejack stated. "They'll be loved. Because that's what somepony who's the family of mah heart would do."

Silence.

And then, with the first of the restored curls bouncing, Pinkie's sobbing blue eyes came up to meet her own.


Words. Please, brain, please help me, I know I'm not the smartest one, I know that and --

-- I hate it.

Fluttershy needs words. Not stunts. Not techniques. Words.

Please...

But Rainbow didn't know what to say. She didn't know if there was anything which could be said at all. And so she simply started talking. Because that was better than silence and if she was talking, then at least she was doing something. Besides, it probably wasn't possible to make things any worse.

"I was thinking about my manuscript," she told Fluttershy's weeping form.

"...your manuscript." There was a bitterness to it.

"Well -- yeah. But mostly about Coordinator reading it, and what Twilight said he tried to do with it."

"...and let me guess," Fluttershy softly interjected. "If you see him... just before you kick him, you want to ask what he thought of it."

Well -- yeah. To show something to Twilight was to unwittingly -- and painfully -- engage the services of an editor. Her future favorite target would have been her first true audience.

"...it's always about you, isn't it?" The tears were seeping through at a more rapid pace. "Even now, it's always --"

When she's angry, she takes it out on the wrong ponies. She's as sad as I've ever seen her, but she's angry too.

So who is she mad at?

"-- it's about you."

Dead stop.

"...me?"

"Yeah. I was listening to what Doctor Gentle said. You wrote him letters."

"...yes," Fluttershy eventually admitted. "Every moon or so, when I could spare the postage. He was my friend, Rainbow. He was my first friend, there were years when he was my only --"

"-- letters about us."

The movement behind the blindfold suggested a blink.

"...yes. It was... something important in my life. He was important in my life. He helped me set up my treatment room, he gave me equipment, I'm still using some of the stitching needles..."

"You told him about Discord," Rainbow said. "Did you tell him about anything else? Any of the missions, any of the things we did around Ponyville? Appleloosa, Dragon Mountain... how much were you writing down?"

"...most of it," Fluttershy eventually admitted. "Why? Because he'll bind my letters and publish first?"

"Because," Rainbow told her, "that means he must have known just about everything that was in my manuscript. He even knew more, because I only wrote down the first year." Wincing, "We -- kinda had a few more screwups in the second and third. But that dumb Coordinator still went through my manuscript and tried to blackmail Twilight with that. When Doctor Gentle knew that stuff all along. Knew more. So why have somepony else do it? And do it with less than they could have? I mean, if he'd just pulled out the whole Smarty Pants Incident..."

I think I'm going somewhere with this. She wished she knew where. But there was a flight path of sorts, and the current best option seemed to be going forward.

"...I don't know..."

And much like the sign in front of Davenport's shop, it hit Rainbow right in the snout.

"He's a hypocrite."

The words had been spoken on instinct, emerged before she could truly think about them, recognize what they meant. But Rainbow's ears perked and somewhere below them, her mind began to accelerate.

"...what?"

"Well -- actually, let's go back to the chaos pearl stuff," Rainbow casually began. "And essence, whatever that is. It's all about giving foals their heritage back, right? If they're not born the same race as their parents, assuming both of those are the same and I kind of got the idea that he doesn't like mixed marriages too much. And in order to give foals their heritage back, the first step in figuring out how to do it --" she pushed the words, lent them speed "-- he tried to turn you into a unicorn. When both your parents are pegasi. So to get her heritage sorted out, he started by trying to steal yours. Heritage is important, it's the most important thing ever, it's the only important thing -- as long as it's not yours? What the buck do you call that?"

Total confusion. "...I -- Rainbow, what --"

"I mean, if it worked, if he'd gotten the right pearl, you would have been a unicorn! And if it worked with the one he'd used, earth pony!" She quickly pictured the results, rapidly concluding the tail would have been exactly the same. "Either way, no wings, and your parents would have had to move! So much for a pegasus growing up in the clouds and flying with her family because that's the heritage, right?"

"...but I was dying... he only tried it because I was going to die... but I came to Sun when I shouldn't have, I was born..."

"And as far as he's concerned," Rainbow huffed, "you would have been born broken. It's been about his daughter all along, right? His and nopony else's! Saving everypony else from having a kid who isn't just like them is a side effect!"

"...Rainbow..." Fluttershy's voice was becoming perceptibly weaker. "...he was saving lives..."

"You're defending him."

"...yes."

"A couple of minutes ago, you said you were supposed to be dead. Everypony like you, including Pinkie, is supposed to be dead. And now you're defending him."

Gasping for breath now. "...I... I..."

"Okay, he's saving lives," Rainbow admitted -- then rushed on. "And there's a while where he doesn't know what's going on, he admitted that in front of everypony. He knows the chaos and essence stuff saves lives, and that's not the worst reason for doing a lot of things. But he's also finding out that the magic's been messed up a little, right? He said that too. Weakened, at the very least. No Surges. Still, better a weak kid than a dead kid, and he keeps going. It's a little hard to blame him for that part of it. But then Pinkie's mark shows up. And as soon as he sees her, he knows what he really did. He didn't weaken the magic, he mixed it up. And this stallion, who's so concerned about heritage, who just found out he put a hundred lightning bolts through it, every foal he does this to is gonna be mixed up -- he keeps on going! He's stealing heritage here, there, and anywhere! It's all he does! As far as he's concerned, broken ponies are the worst thing ever and he's making them every moon! He's a hypocrite, Fluttershy, maybe the worst one ever!"

The gasps stopped. Fluttershy's head shot up, and the covered gaze still made a furious attempt to focus on Rainbow.

I am so glad she's blindfolded right now.

"...maybe --- maybe he would have tried to fix us! All of us! Once he knew how to change ponies --"

"-- turned you all into alicorns?" Rainbow challenged. "When he thought you needed a lifetime of training for it, had to just about have being a Princess as your mark? So he's gonna change marks now? Three hundred years from now, Twilight's great-great-whatever kids are gonna be giving lectures at some school and kids fall asleep on the thrilling story of Gentle Arrival?"

"...he -- he was saving --"

"-- you're defending him again!"

"...he's... he could have found another way..."

"And he would have had to tell all of you what he'd done in the first place." It was almost a hiss. "Kind of sounded like tonight was the first time he'd ever done that. He'd have to go up to everypony who had their mark already and tell them sorry, kind of messed around a little when you were born, but you know that magic you've had for a while? Your talent? Your life? Gotta go and fix that: hold still! Sorry about the whole cottage, guess those animals have to go somewhere else now, the ones you still need to treat just about continuously for the next week will die without you, but that's okay because now we're gonna see what you would have been like if you'd been born, what was the stupid bucking word, pure! And he's got all this stuff you wrote down, but it's bucking Coordinator and the manuscript because he just can't be the one to blackmail anypony because he's just so good, so perfect, so bucking pure --"

" -- shut up!"

It wasn't a shout: just normal speaking volume. It was also a change.

Spiral's just ahead: keep it tight...

"Why do I have to shut up? What am I saying that's not true? I'm being honest as chains in Tartarus: maybe Applejack should switch necklaces with me. I've got truths like sunrise: they just keep coming."

"He -- he was just -- he was trying..."

Stark now, a sudden switch designed to make the spectators gasp as they waited to see if she could pull the trick out. "You wanted to die. You were talking about suicide."

"I -- I want to --"

And she had it.

It was like the burst of a Rainboom. It was light and color and power, only with all of it staying inside her head. It had a chance to be the fourth-best moment of her life (mark, Element, Academy entrance) if it just worked.

"Back in the bucking room, you said you knew what he did to you. You said that right after he talked about heritage. You've been thinking about this the whole time! He told you he saved your life and you still wouldn't go with him! You're getting louder, Fluttershy, because you're mad! You're talking about suicide because you're mad and thinking about dying is easier! Who are you mad at? Why?"

And then there was a scream.

It wasn't a very loud scream: it seldom was, and the stone seemed to absorb most of it. But the pitch was high, for it was the sound of boiling emotion being vented under high pressure, emerging as something close to psychic steam.

"I love him, he was my first friend, he was my only friend, he gave me my life even when I hated my life and wanted to end it, he told me to live and when I had my mark, he told me I was exactly where I was supposed to be, who I was supposed to be, his wonder, his special filly, he lied to me over and over and over and I love him and I HATE him I hate him I hate him I love him and I -- !"

It stopped, all at once: head dropping, tail sagging, breaths coming in ragged heaves. Rainbow silently watched.

Okay. Give her a minute, because she needs one. And then we'll see if we've both got enough left to land.


Rarity had given Twilight words, something to consider, hopefully something which would be acted upon. And now she had to provide distraction: allow those sentences to drop down to the deeper levels and do what they could, while the rest of that brilliant mind worked on something else.

Besides, she had questions of her own.

"How many do you think there are?"

Twilight easily guessed. "The hybrids."

Rarity nodded. "For lack of a better term. 'Ponies whom Doctor Gentle has experimented upon' takes too long for frequent repetition."

"It's... hard to say," Twilight sighed. "I don't have all the variables for the equation. I don't know how many problem births a typical midwife would see in a normal year. Or how many births they see at all, total. But --" and she had something, Rarity could see it in her eyes "-- he didn't have normal years, did he?"

"Your meaning?"

"I don't know much about midwiving," Twilight admitted. "But I do know something about the Exception, because of all the articles. It came out immediately... and I just realized 'Foal #1' in the very first article was Fluttershy... The Equestrian Magic Society has known about it for just about her exact lifetime. It was studied, it couldn't be duplicated or taught... and word spread, Rarity. But it must have spread beyond the researchers. There must have been doctors and midwives all over the continent who read those articles, because it was medical magic and that has its own journals. And if they had a gravid mare who might be in trouble at birth, they could have told her... go to Trotter's Falls. So he didn't have normal years. He had years where mare after mare who was afraid for their foal sought him out. Think about all the times since we've been here when he had to go off and take care of somepony who'd just shown up. I thought he was late to the party tonight because it happened again, and it wouldn't have surprised me if we'd had a birth during the party."

"So as his reputation spreads," Rarity slowly said, "more and more potential problem births appear at his doorstep."

"Because he's the only place to go. And because so many of those foals are brought to Sun, that brings in more parents... it's an escalating number, Rarity: it can't be anything else. I don't know how many births he sees in a year. But the percentage for the ones which would normally be -- fatal... it has to be higher than the typical midwife's, a lot higher. I don't have the base numbers, and that means all I can do is guess -- but it's Fluttershy's lifetime. I think..."

It was almost possible to see the symbols shifting before her eyes.

"At the minimum," Twilight eventually said, "it's several hundred. I'm pretty sure the maximum is much less than two thousand. For a median... a little under a thousand sounds about right."

"Most of whom have yet to find their marks," Rarity realized.

Twilight nodded. "He only put up pictures for some of the adults..." And a sigh. "Sun and Moon, Rarity, just in Ponyville... who tells Ratchette? Who tells Snowflake? How do you tell them? Should they be told at all?"

"I..." It was hard to admit, and that was why she had to. "...I don't know, Twilight. Part of me believes they must be informed. But at the same time -- we saw what his words did to Pinkie and Fluttershy. No matter what we say to them, it will be a shock. The upheaval of a lifetime. I... don't want to do that to anypony right now. And we need to be there for our friends first, to help them adjust to a new reality."

"Fluttershy." The self-loathing was rising again. "I hadn't even thought --"

"-- there is a strict limit to the number of things anypony can think about at once," Rarity quickly broke in. Which is part of why you have yet to speak of Spike, with the rest being fear. "And Rainbow is with her, while Applejack can speak to Pinkie. Trust them, Twilight, until we are together again."

"...I'll try." A long pause. "Rarity... what does my restraint look like?"

She blinked. "Well, if you were wondering if it goes with your dress, the answer would be a decided --"

"-- just describe it to me. Please. I can only see yours."

"Very well." She focused. "Iron. It has aged well, but there was a degree of neglect and it was stored somewhere damp: there are hints of rust. The metal has spinel and howlite sunken into it along the path of a regular spiral design and should you be aware of the traditional emotional connotations for both stones, you might find that somewhat ironic. The size of the cone suggests either extreme thickness to the metal or that the hollow can accommodate a horn much larger than your own. Rather unusually, the straps are threaded with metal, but that has discolored to the point where I can no longer tell you which kind. I suppose that is to make it harder to remove by brute force. There are two buckles and one lock, with that last visually appearing to be a rather mundane specimen -- but of course, neither of us can attempt to feel an enchantment at this time. And we will not discuss the artistic merits of the design, for there are none. Why?"

Twilight sighed. "I was afraid of that. It's old, but it's the heaviest-duty model there was for its time: that's why the howlite is there. Extra opacity. I've been trying, but... I can't get anything past it. And I won't be able to. I could go to the triple corona, hold it for as long as I could, and all I would do is pass out."

Rarity regretfully nodded. "And mine? I sense metal against my fur in the buckles, but not where the straps run."

"It's a lot more basic," Twilight admitted. "There's barely any gems, and the straps are just heavy fabric. I guess they only had the one for me."

In other words, she could have potentially broken mine with a single hard push.

Rarity's field strength was strictly average. It always would be. And when Twilight was your friend, there were times...

She tried not to be jealous: as she'd been reminded, her own field dexterity was rather advanced. But there were still times when it was so easy to feel... inferior.

Twilight believed that Rarity could learn more workings. And do so as a fifth-year dropout, with average field strength, and...

...there were better things to think about.

"While we are on the subject of magic," Rarity said, "when we were brought in here..." She tilted her head towards the cylindrical hollow near the door. "One of our captors said 'You know what this does,' and you nodded. What does it do, along with its counterpart on the outside? For I did not see one next to all the doors. Only a few. And most of those were guarding against a breakout of desks." With a quick frown, "Actually, where are our guards? I would have expected somepony standing much closer watch than this."

"The conference ponies brought us down," Twilight reminded her. "Guests. There's some locals, but there's also a lot of ponies who have to head home. And the servants are cleaning. We could get guards later, once everything gets sorted out. Maybe they're asking for volunteers upstairs, or they'll leave it to the servants. Or --" a brief pause "-- if the conspiracy goes that far, they could send some of the local police. In robes again."

Twilight sighed, and the slender left foreleg briefly moved against chain and cuff: a facehoofing denied.

"He said he started looking for sponsors from those around him," she said. "In Trotter's Falls."

Rarity nodded.

"That means at least part of the town was in on it."

Again.

"I owe Rainbow an apology... The cylinder is... it's not on every cell because it's only meant for unicorns, plus it's expensive to set up and hard to maintain: whoever put it there probably couldn't afford more than they have. And it's sadism, Rarity. At the very back of that hollow is a sensor device which turns off any security spells in the cell and opens the door. The one on the outside does the same thing. But you have to press both of them inside a minute, going in or out, or -- whatever workings are in here go off. Outside, that probably sounds an alarm. In here... it might dispose of prisoners." A tiny sigh. "It's been years since this came up in class, and it's not like I can ask Spike to bring me the notes... Anyway, you probably missed seeing the pony who used his field to press them while they were dragging you towards the cuffs."

"So we could open the door," Rarity slowly said. "If we could get out of the cuffs. How is that sadism?"

"Because we're in restraints," Twilight sadly replied. "And the enchantment repels inorganic matter. Something living could touch it, but it has to be something sapient. The diameter is too narrow for a hoof to get through. That means you need to touch the sensor with a field. So it's meant to just... sit there. Reminding us that we could escape, if we just weren't restrained. If they hadn't taken our magic. And... if we know about what happens if somepony pushes their field against the outside sensor five times straight... to wait for that. It's sadism, and... I guess it kind of goes with the rest of the place."

Rarity wondered about that final sensor function, and then forced herself to stop.

Twilight looked at that hollow again, returned her gaze to Rarity.

"I just thought of something I can say to Pinkie."

"What?"

"We..." A little swallow, and then purple eyes squeezed shut. "Applejack said it, and then he... She held a party for her parents, so her father would love her. And I went out there, in front of everypony..." The next breath was forced. "I got one dance. We both only got one dance."

"This may not be the best time to talk about that," Rarity quickly said.

"Why?"

Simply, "Because you're hurting enough already. This can wait until you've rested, eaten, recovered --"

"-- that's why I want to talk about it," Twilight broke in. "Because... I want it to stop hurting, as much as it can. As much as -- I can pretend it can."

Three years of lessons. And she has learned things none of us ever taught her.

"So, then," Rarity softly agreed. "We turn to Quiet. Where did you wish to begin?"

Five breaths each, both marshaling themselves to the task, and then Twilight looked at her again.

"During the dance," Twilight asked. "What were you all doing? Pinkie said you --" the discarding of words was rather visible "-- reacted."

It didn't feel like a strange place to begin, for the ultimate subject was now betrayal, and it was easy for Rarity to see just where and when that final level of trust had been born. "Rainbow," she began, "was... well, she had a certain amount of space overhead and ponies to watch: you might have spotted what happened to that one tapestry. Fluttershy was likely in her chosen corner. I'm not entirely sure where Applejack was, but Pinkie was in the corridor above the party, coming back from having taken Spike up to your assigned quarters: I saw her approaching the ramp, and so she would have seen me as well. She saw me trying to reach you. I was doing my best to push through the crowd -- but there were too many ponies, and calling out felt like the height of rudeness." Yes, she was definitely entitled to indulge in any number of sighs tonight. "I'm not even certain what I meant to do. I simply felt you were making a mistake, a horrible mistake, and -- I had to stop you."

These words were far too soft. "You were right."

And that statement would have to be dealt with shortly. "When it ended... I tried to follow you. A few ponies did: some were rather curious, or might have been simply searching for that chance at additional gossip. But I..."

She frowned.

"...I couldn't find you." More slowly, "We all saw the direction you left in, and there are only so many rooms which lie along that path, so many hallways... but I couldn't find you. Nor did I feel the burst of magic from your teleporting away. And there are no ramps there, so trotting or even flying to another level was out of the question... Twilight, where did you go? Did he bring you into a hidden passage?"

A tiny amount of emotional distress had been replaced with confusion. "No. Just a pantry. It's right at the end of that one hallway. We only went through three doors."

"A pantry?" Her own confusion was much more intense. "How did I overlook --"

-- and the idea hit her.

It rocked her. It should have sent her flying out of the cuffs. But instead, it produced a soft gasp, as all of the little details began to assemble into a sketch. Or rather, a portion of one.

"-- oh, no. Oh dear, oh my..."

Concern, laced with a growing panic. "Rarity?"

"Twilight -- just before you screamed... remember where I was. At the back. I saw Pinkie touch you. But in the moment before that, I did not see Quiet. He had been right next to you, I never saw him move, and... I was looking down, so many of us were looking down, and so not to see him move is a reasonable thing. But nor did I hear him. The restraint... it must have been in one of the boxes. But such seldom open in silence. No sounds of hoofsteps or rummaging through contents. Nothing. And I was not the only one in the back row. Remember where he was standing when he placed the restraint upon you. He did not simply attempt to fetch it with his field. He had to get up, move past you, reach the boxes, extract the restraint, come back -- and none of us noticed. Pinkie touched you -- and then he was standing over you. Everypony in that room lost track of where he was --" and her eyes widened. "Sun and Moon, Applejack openly spoke of Surges. Well, I suppose most would accept that earth pony foals experience them, although they likely imagine flowers which spontaneously go into bloom. But for her to do so with a stranger about? It's as if... she forgot he was there."

Twilight blinked.

"The restroom," she said, and did so as if it suddenly meant everything.

A portion of Rarity's anatomy twinged. "I believe that may be some hours off."

With increasing urgency, "No, Rarity. I went into a restroom with Pinkie, right after I'd decided to bring Quiet in. Before we got everypony together in the birthing room. And she couldn't remember Quiet's name. Not immediately. Pinkie needed a second to think of who somepony was. And there was the thaumaturgy shop, where the reporter never put his name in the article. I thought she was just trying to keep all the blame with me..."

They stared at each other.

"His mark," Rarity quickly said. "Do you recall it?"

"It's -- grey. I could tell it was there, but it was so hard to make out exactly what the icon was -- I gave up after a while, and I just never asked."

"And I stopped trying. Concentrate, Twilight, as much as you ever have. Picture it as clearly as you can: I will attempt the same. Devote everything you have to the assembly of that image."

They focused. Teeth nearly ground against each other, right up until Rarity realized how much damage she might do to the enamel. They pushed...

"...it's... an outline," Twilight softly realized. "It's thin gray lines in the outline of a pony's body. It's just barely there at all..."

"What would you call such a talent?" And now Rarity's fury was beginning to build. "A mark for invisibility?"

The question reached Twilight's lecturing side, and the librarian quickly shook her head. "Invisibility's almost impossible: in practice, it's more like using illusion to cover yourself in a sort of advanced camouflage, making yourself look like your surroundings -- and if you move, you have to keep that up in real time. That's Luna's skill level. And for true invisibility -- it's not much good to have light going through your eyes, Rarity: a truly invisible pony would be blind. This is closer to resonance, it has to be. A talent for -- projecting dismissal. You don't notice him. You can't. You search for him and you overlook where he's hiding. You forget he's even there... Sun and Moon, I've never read about a talent like this..."

And it was easy to perceive how it would elude the Archives, simply through the desire of its possessors. "He could be right outside the cell," Rarity realized. "Listening to everything we say. He could be in this cell --" and it took nearly everything she had to force the stop. "-- no, he is preparing for departure, if he has not left already: he has other concerns." There was a time and place for paranoia, and there was frankly a time and place where paranoia had better be prepared to wait its turn in line for quite a while.

"But all the things we talked about," Twilight whispered. "About -- secrets..."

"Were missed," Rarity firmly said, a second before she realized why it was true. "If he had overheard us speaking of her days ago, things would have happened rather differently than they did tonight. Perhaps Pinkie Sense defeated him, or he was simply never able to intrude on us. And as for why neither of us ever felt him at work... mark magic is subtle to begin with, and his could easily include the ability to elude such perception. The means of defeating such an ability... I cannot imagine..."

"We're already halfway to beating him."

There had been anger in the words, along with the expected amount of lingering betrayal.

"Explain, if you would?"

"It's a talent," Twilight firmly said, "which works best if nopony knows you have it. When you can just -- sneak. We know what he does now. What he is. We can prepare for him."

"And the method of preparation?"

This sigh was also fully justified. "That's the hard part."

They stood in silence for a time, or rather, lightly swayed.

"Let's talk about something else," Twilight proposed. "Something... lighter. Just for a little while." (Rarity nodded.) "I saw you talking to some mares. Did you make any sales?"

"I had some inquiries regarding commissions," Rarity admitted. "I can't seem to feel very confident in seeing any of them fulfilled."

The silence closed in again.

"Have you truly taken a look at these feedbags? Examined them at all?"

"No."

With the open disgust coming through at last, "They are ghastly. If we are to be confined in a cell with no comforts befitting our status, one would think that the feedbags could at least be of quality!"

And Twilight giggled.


"Remember when the twins were born?"

Applejack nodded. "Ah remember." Followed by a little sigh. "Ah remember thinking about what kind of family tree the Cakes had to get a pegasus and a unicorn in the same birth. And I remember more or less doing it out loud. Mr. Cake's a good stallion: lots of 'em would have just kicked me on the spot, and I just got the filly lecture in basic biology."

Pinkie nodded: some half-curls quarter-bounced. "I... asked Doctor Gentle to attend the birth."

Blink. "Y'did?"

"I thought it was the best thing I could do for them," Pinkie quietly said. "The Cakes and the babies -- well, baby, because maybe I was right to ask him in one way: the doctors in Ponyville couldn't even figure out that it was twins. He'd saved me, and if anything had happened... I wanted him to be there. So once we knew the due date, I wrote him and arranged everything. He was going to stay in Ponyville as much as he could, starting from two days before. For me. I... thought it would be great, having him around town for days. I was going to introduce him to everypony. But it was twins, and those births can go faster. Or start sooner. Mrs. Cake delivered two weeks early. So I had to write him again, still thanking him, but he didn't have to come any more." A little shiver. "And if he'd been there..."

"It was a smooth go," Applejack reminded her. "A long go, but there weren't any real problems, right?"

"Not past the doctor saying 'Why is there another foal coming?'" Pinkie softly snorted. "You know, between that one Twilight took Spike to and him, we really need some better medical ponies. It's just that... I can't stop thinking about it. If it had been a problem birth. What he would have done."

"The Cakes would have loved them," Applejack made herself say, for there was horror in the vision -- and there was also her oldest friend. "Y'know they've got some experience with kids who might be just a little bit unusual..."

"Yeah." There was no giggle after the word, not just yet -- but Applejack knew such would eventually come and in time, be followed by laughter. "Did you try to -- eat around your oats?"

"Not yet." Maybe next serving.

Pinkie's tail swayed, fluffed out a little.

"My Pinkie Sense was right, you know. Things changed tonight. Everything did."

"Can't deny that." She wished she could. She wanted to make time itself go backwards. No mission. No revelations. Exist in the moments when everything seemed so much brighter. But even then, there were shadows, for light created places where secrets could cluster.

We tell ourselves everything's okay.

We can spend our whole lives not talking about it, because that's what everypony did before us.

We're earth ponies.

And we took the best of ourselves and buried it.

Hesitantly, "Do you think... it changed for the worse?"

"Ah think..." She had to reach for the exact words. "Ah think that if we come out of this, once we all get the chance to talk again -- we'll all be a little better off."

"I hope so."

She had to be honest. "Me too."

Another hesitation, and "Can you -- could you get us --"

Applejack slowly shook her head, and missed her Daddy's hat more than ever.

Ah don't deserve t' --

She listened again before she spoke: some of that was habit, and the rest was not letting the wrong ponies in on her plans. "No. We ain't up against an outer wall. Had some thoughts about trying to vibrate a little, shake a few bolts out. But that's way subtle, and this cell ain't positioned for it. Anything else... don't know how strong this place is. We might not come through anything big. But if Ah think of something, you'll know it. Maybe you will, after you feel a little more like yourself. An' if anypony comes in to remind you..."

"They get some special spice right in the face!" Pinkie firmly declared. "It's the newest food sensation for all the lords and ladies!"

They both giggled.

"Applejack?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

"'Ain't nothin'."

And with a tiny laugh, "Liar."


The ribcage under the forest-green dress was moving a little more regularly now, and so Rainbow aimed for a gentle glide.

"I thought I screwed up with the water transfer operation."

No answer.

"I -- I've always known you don't have much magic, Fluttershy. We were at flight camp together, and after we met up in Ponyville again... it doesn't take long to see. But you had something, and... every bit helps." She'd just barely managed to keep from saying 'tenth-bit': it had felt insulting. "I wanted you to see that you could help. That there was a pegasus helping. She didn't have to be a strong one. She just had to work with the team. But you hated it, and it humiliated you, you tried all that training and it barely did anything, and... even after you helped us all come through in the end, I didn't ask you the next year. You could work on the muscles behind your wings, but you couldn't do anything about your field strength, ever. I forgot about that. And I -- I just didn't want to put you through that again. I didn't want to ask you to be something you weren't."

She'd barely talked Snowflake into participating, had seen his reluctance just before ignoring it...

"...to be a pegasus. You didn't want to ask me... to act like a real pegasus."

Getting a cold thermal, I went the wrong way and it's my fault...

"No. I -- used the wrong word there. I should have said 'I didn't want to ask you to be somepony you weren't'. I wasn't asking you to be Fluttershy. Fluttershy talks bears into leaving gardens alone. She stands up to manticores. She evicts full-grown dragons. She doesn't have to do water transfers on top of all that stuff, because the rest of it should be enough. And... we were talking about hypocrites..."

This time, the silence felt like it might have been the best possible result.

"...I'm not good with words. Twilight knows it, everypony knows it, maybe that stupid Coordinator knows it too. So... I have to ask for -- help. Until I get better. And you're the only pony here. So -- "

As it turned out, emotions had their own wind shear, and so it felt as if her feathers were about to come off.

" -- the way I feel right now... I don't know if I have the right word for it. So maybe you can tell me if 'hypocrite' is it."

"...and what do you feel that way about?"

It might have been neutrality in the soft tone: emotions spent to the point where there was nothing left. Or there could have been a touch of disinterest. Sarcasm. Rainbow couldn't tell.

But Fluttershy had asked. That was the important thing.

"It's about Doctor Gentle." She hadn't expected an answer there, and didn't get one. "I -- kind of hate him right now. For how he made you feel about yourself. For what he did to her. It's like electrocution isn't bad enough, and... I can't fly high enough to give him a drop long enough to think about everything on the way down. Nopony could: they'd run out of atmosphere. I hate him, and I want to put lightning bolts through him until there's nothing left, and..." Rainbow closed her eyes. Just one more thing Fluttershy couldn't see. "...I kind of want to thank him, all at the same time."

"...thank -- him."

"Because -- "

Words hurt.

They hurt to hear. They hurt to say. Maybe when you get the right ones, they hurt to write.

Flying's better.

"-- I don't want you to be dead. I won't let you kill yourself. I'd stop you. I'd watch you every minute of every day to make sure nothing happened. Without napping. I'll move into the cottage if I have to." She thought about living with Angel, and was almost glad nopony could see her shudder within the chains. "I don't know what you would have been like, if you'd been born as what he calls pure. Maybe we'd be on the same weather team, or you'd be my superior, or -- some legendary funnel breaker out by the east coast. But if you'd been 'pure'... you would have been dead. That's what you said, Fluttershy. You all would have been dead, and... I can sort of imagine you being as strong as your parents. But I can't imagine you not being. Just... a vacuum, like that one in the middle of her mark. I think about life without you, and... it hurts. That's the only word I have. It hurts like being told to leave the Academy. It hurts like nearly failing my practical trial during the auditions. It hurts like all the times I couldn't get the Rainboom back. It hurts like all of that put together, only six times worse. It just... hurts."

Please, please follow me in...

"I think," Rainbow made herself go on, "if you asked the parents, the ones whose kids he changed, whether they'd rather have a living foal or a pure corpse... the good ones would say they wanted their kid. And you've got good parents. That's why you've got the cottage: you told me that, remember? They knew it wouldn't be weather college, so they just -- let you go to ground. They didn't have to understand you. They just loved you. And I... I don't know you any other way. I don't know pure, and it makes it really hard to care about that kind of stuff. I just know the mare who reroutes birds and plants sod on her roof so there's extra grazing space, and... who forgave me, for everything that happened during that race at flight camp, when she didn't have to. Who was willing to even talk to me after that. I just know my friend, I know what I'd feel like if I lost her, I don't want to imagine her not being there, never even having been, and... without Doctor Gentle..."

The yellow head slowly came up.

"I hate him," Rainbow finished. "I can't think of anything bad enough to do to him. But I -- kind of want to thank him at the same time, you know? Because you and Pinkie are worth thanking somepony for. Sun and Moon too. So -- I don't know if I have the right word. Does that make me a hypocrite?"

Fluttershy took a slow breath.

"...it makes you Rainbow."

Who frowned. "That doesn't help."

"...it's still the right word." A blindfolded head automatically tried (and failed) to look around the room. "...I need you to describe this cell to me. The walls."

With open confusion, "Stone."

"...more words, Rainbow."

She searched within herself. "Rough. You wouldn't want to rub against it: there's some spots which look kind of sharp. There's some tiny pieces on the ground near the edge, where some of those rough sports sort of dropped away." She looked down. "It's actually rougher in those parts. More -- piecework? Because most of the upper part of the walls, that's one piece, like the base at the outside of the castle. But the bottom, there's a few stones sort of pressed together. Or maybe somepony put a rough layer on top of stones all the way up, and it's just being exposed at the bottom? I'm not sure. Anyway, there's some little holes there. We'd have to be a million times smaller to get out through them, though. Or maybe a thousand --"

"...holes."

"Yeah. Deep enough to have some shadow. But everything's cold and damp down here, so I can't really tell --"

"...holes," Fluttershy carefully repeated. "...you can stop, Rainbow." (Who, now utterly confused, did.) "...Twilight was right, you know."

"About what?"

"...that he told himself he was doing something great. I think... I think he tells himself a lot of things. And when you just talk to yourself about everything... you decide you're hearing the truth."

The caretaker took a breath.

"For starters," she said, "he told himself that being indoors would stop me."

For Fluttershy, words dropped away. The tones of the utterances remained that of a pony, with all of the emotional complexities -- and some of those were very complex indeed. But the sounds had become a mixture of hisses, chatters, and squeaks, and so Rainbow could only listen.

Fluttershy called out into night, storm, and stone. And then they waited together, for if it failed, each had only the other for company, chained so that they were facing each other across a short distance. One could not see, and neither could truly move.

And yet they drifted closer.


He had been told to run. He had been sold out. He had been betrayed, they were using his knowledge of everything and one pony's apparent belief that the money would now simply flow in forever to effectively blackmail him into acting. And to the last, he would never perceive a single degree of irony.

There were other things he could have done, and he did not think of them. It could be argued that he'd had the option to go directly to the press, for he had his contacts there. He even could have gone to the Princesses, trading evidence for a degree of safety. But that was not his nature. Exposing his own role (for such seemed difficult to transfer onto another: who ever would have believed another pony was brilliant enough to manage it all?) was simply out of the question, and so he never truly thought about it. And to make a deal was to allow another the dictation of any terms.

He never pictured himself going to the press, not then. (The image would briefly flash within his mind, just before the very end.) He did not think about heroes, for a hero was simply a shielding body, and there were forever more of those. He spoke to no other pony as he worked out his plan, for the only entity truly worth consulting with resided within his skin. But he did see himself within the palace, because information was control. If not for the circumstances, indulging in the waking fantasy would have given him pleasure. The Princesses before him, almost begging for the reveal of each new datum, and he as the only one who could provide it to them, making it last. Oh, they might be willing to make a deal, one where everypony else saw jail time...

...one where he never held power again.

They would not allow him to be within a thousand body lengths of any Town Hall. Forms would be limited to whatever he used for taxes and census. And he would be watched, constantly watched, just in case he decided to rebuild.

He had been rejected by the palace and so had built up a life in Trotter's Falls, one where he was free to control the ones of those around him. And he had been told to give that up. For the Bearers could identify three ponies: he had spoken up during the conference, words of basic common sense, and there was certainly one mare who knew that voice, now wasn't there? This researcher would come, the cells would be opened and perhaps within mere hours after, his description would be relayed to every law enforcement agency on the continent. It might go beyond. It would be impossible to find a new position from which to construct a web anew. He would be hunted, and perhaps the two fools and their mistake could live with that. He would not.

There was a moment spared to consider what would happen following the discovery, and it was largely used to settle on how the blame would be passed on -- if the obvious conclusion were to somehow fail. (He already knew who would receive it: after all, what ponies would believe the denials of criminals who would potentially be already on the run?) Much more time was spent in sorting through an internal list of names to find those who would act on his behalf, and there were seconds available for regret at potentially losing the chance to watch.

She had rejected him twice and for the first transgression, had been punished with nothing more than mere isolation -- a state which had broken. The penalty for the second would be far more appropriate.

He waited a little, but not too long. It was necessary for the conference to begin dispersing, for the fools and the freak to be well away. And while he'd picked his names, there was also a certain need to see the ponies he would be speaking to, and that meant stalling long enough for the robes to come off.

He approached directly, as soon as he saw that his first possible target had wandered a little away from the others. (He did not think about what had happened just a few hours ago during his last direct approach, much less why he'd truly taken that route at all.)

"I know what happened in Vanhoover five years ago," he whispered into the exposed ear. "Along with where the results were buried. Would you like to know what you have to do in order to keep the press from finding out?"

For the price of his continued established, comfortable existence was a mere seven corpses, and the cause of death could be listed as nothing more than pure rational thought.

It was, as the older fool might say, simply doing the needful.