It was a few hours after Wild had grown the fields. All the night ponies had gone to bed, with Ms. Rosetta just having gone to bed in the last few minutes, but there were still ponies awake at the Dreamwarden's house. With the night ponies asleep, Crystal and Tempest were taking turns watching Jessie and her friends. The three fillies were in turn left to figure out on their own how to occupy themselves.
Jessie was outside, and at this moment she was focused very intently on a small piece of wild lettuce growing by the edge of the house. Out of the entire yard this one plant was the only one of it's type, and the only one that might be considered a weed. She had her hoof on it, and had her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth as she concentrated as hard as she possibly could. Jordan and Jackie stood close by, watching her. Jordan was looking hopeful. Jackie was looking bored.
"Feel anything yet?" Jordan asked.
Jessie narrowed her eyes at the small piece of vegetation, silently demanding that it reveal its secrets to her. There was something there, just on the edge of her perception, as if the universe was teasing her by almost giving her access to her earth pony magic, but keeping it just out of touch. She'd been at this for a few minutes, and the fact she was sure there was almost a sensation kept her going. She wished she knew what could make that almost into something definite.
She pulled her hoof back and let out a defeated breath. "I think there's something there, but I might be imagining it. I don't think this lettuce is going to talk to me."
"Why would it talk to you?" Jackie asked in confusion. "Plants don't talk."
"I meant I don't think I'm going to be able to interact with it," Jessie clarified as she patted the lettuce with a hoof.
"What's enter act mean?" Jordan asked.
Jessie looked at her purple friend. "Interact, spelled i-n-t-e-r-a-c-t, one word, not two. There are two parts of the word. Inter, which is a suffix from Latin that means between, among, together, or mutual. The other part is act, which means in this case action. So, action between It and me. In short, it means I won't be able to do anything with it."
"Oh," Jordan said thoughtfully. "Um, what's a suffix?"
"It's a morph--" She paused as she realized her definition was going to go over her friend's head. "It's a part of words that have a meaning, and when you combine suffixes to words you get new words. Like how I combined the suffix inter to act to make one word that means something more than act."
"This feels like school, and we don't go back to school till tomorrow," Jackie groaned as she laid down and covered her head with her wings.
Jordan looked at her sister with one ear turned to the side. "I like learning things. I want to be a teacher like Mommy when I grow up, and Mommy says I need to learn lots of things to do that."
"Well, I want to have fun, and I'm bored," Jackie said with a small flap of her wings as she stood up.
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Jessie asked the pegasus filly.
Jackie looked upwards into the distance then pointed a wing. "I want to do what they're doing."
Jessie and Jordan looked at where the wing was pointing. There were lots of pegasi in the sky over where the fields were, and a hazy mist indicated it was raining there..
"Flying in the rain?" Jordan asked with her head tilted.
Jackie lowered her wing and looked at her little sister. "No, making it rain, and doing other stuff like that. I want to be a weather pony. It looks fun."
"It seems like you're only trying to do typical pegasus things," Jessie said as she observed the pegasi in the distance. "Don't you think that is a little boring?"
Jackie shook her head. "No. What's boring about making it rain? It's funner than doing stuff with boring old plants."
Jessie turned and raised an eyebrow at the other filly. "You didn't think Wild Growth was boring."
Jackie blew a raspberry. "She's okay, for an earth pony. She's isn't as great as Sunrise Storm!"
"She's more powerful," Jessie countered, as she stepped closer to Jackie.
Jackie snorted. "Who cares? She grows plants. Sunrise Storm is fast, and can change the weather, and do all kinds of other cool stuff."
"I just want to be like Mommy," Jordan said meekly.
Jessie gave Jordan a smile. "And that's good." Then turned back to Jackie. "And I just wanted to see if I could do it. I don't want to do typical earth pony stuff with my life. I want to do things with astrophy--" She reminded herself not to use big words with the other foals. "I want to do things with outer space."
Jackie flicked her tail. "So what if I want to do pegasus stuff. Only pegasuses can do pegasus stuff, so we should want to do it...or like, no one would do it. I think it's cool."
"Do you think I should do earth pony stuff because I'm an earth pony?" Jessie asked.
Jackie looked down at the wild lettuce. "Um, earth ponies just grow things. Anyone can grow things. It isn't that special."
"Mommy's an earth pony and she's special!" Jordan protested, as she snapped her ears down flat against her head.
Jackie seemed taken aback by her sister's sudden fervor and backtracked. "Well...Mom doesn't just grow things. She can find things underground, without seeing them. That's kinda cool."
"And she's a teacher," Jordan added in firmly.
"Um, that's okay, but kind of boring. Mom can be a little boring sometimes," Jackie said, and immediately seemed to realize she was digging herself a hole, as her little sister's glare deepened. "Boring for me, I mean. Ponies like you and Jessie think it's cool. I guess it's cool sometimes."
Jessie decided she wasn't going to fight about it. "I guess it's okay to want to do things inherent to your tribe with your life. As you said, someone has to, but that's just not for me." She flicked her ear. "And it is pegasi, not pegasuses, when you're talking about more than one pegasus. If you're going to have so much pride in your tribe get the name right."
Jordan blinked. "So are a bunch of unicorns called unicorny...unicori...unicici? And what are a bunch of earth ponies called?"
Jessie smiled. Jordan might not know as much as her, but she could appreciate the fact that her friend was trying to learn things. "They are just called unicorns and earth ponies."
"See, pegasi are cool. We get our own special name," Jackie said proudly. Jessie just rolled her eyes.
"So, what are we going to do now?" Jordan asked as she looked around the yard.
"The demons have a tree house, we could try to see what's in it," Jackie suggested with an eager glance at the tree in question.
"They can climb up the tree into their tree house. We can't climb trees," Jessie reminded them. "Plus, that might be bad, going into their tree house without permission."
"Well, me and Jordan are their aunts. They have to let us," Jackie said with a confident grin.
Jessie pursed her lips. "Well, technically you're their step-aunt and Jordan is their half-aunt. I'm not sure that counts as full aunts."
Jackie and Jordan both looked at her in confusion. "What do you mean half and step?" Jordan asked.
She was about to answer when Ms. Crystal came running up. "Hey! Having a good day? Who wants to watch some cartoons?" The crystal pony said nervously.
"Which cartoons?" Jackie asked.
"Any cartoons you want. I'll download them off my account for you, my treat," Ms. Crystal said with a big smile, as she started to calm.
Jordan's ears picked up. "Any ones we want?"
"Any ones," Ms. Crystal confirmed with a nod. "You and your sister head into the house and decide what you want to watch. I need to talk to Jessie real fast before we go in."
The two sisters started giggling as they ran into the house. At the point they were reaching the door Ms. Crystal looked down at Jessie. "I don't think their parents have had a conversation about the fact that Tom is Jordan's step dad, or that Treasure isn't Phobia's mom. That isn't something that they should be learning from anyone but their parents."
Jessie dropped one ear and frowned. "Why? It's just the facts."
"It can get weird for a foal to find out that she had a different dad at some point. You're talking to someone who has first hoof experience with that," Ms. Crystal replied with a frown. "People like to know their place in a family, it's comforting. Dropping that information on Jackie, without caring about how it is going to make her feel, could hurt her. Let their parents handle that discussion." Ms. Crystal paused briefly. "I might need to dreamwalk their parents, and let them know that you introduced the subject. Tom and Amanda...Treasure, aren't really up to that at all right now, but maybe trying to decide how to deal with that will distract them."
"I still don't understand," Jessie grumbled as she kicked the helpless piece of lettuce..
Ms. Crystal sighed. "Look, those two are holding up well, but this is a very confusing time for them because of what's going on with their parents. One of the core things they understand is that's their mom and dad. Telling Jackie that she had a different dad makes her understanding of the family dynamic get confusing. You're telling her, in a sense, that her dad that she's always known as her real dad isn't her real dad. How do you think that would make her feel? Add to that everything else going on."
Jessie lowered her head. "I guess it might make her feel bad, maybe angry, lied to."
Ms. Crystal nodded. "Good, you're starting to understand. Just imagine how it would make Tom feel if Jackie felt that way. Tom loves Jackie just as much as he loves Jordan or Phobia, and she's every bit as much his daughter as them to him. What if Jackie got mad and felt he wasn't her real dad?"
"It would hurt him really bad," Jessie said sadly.
Ms. Crystal sat down next to her and wrapped a leg around her. "I know you think facts and figures are just that. You see it as just knowledge for you to apply. A lot of emotions can be tied up in knowing certain things, and finding out about them takes a lot of care in how you learn about those things. Their parents do need to sit down and explain this stuff to them, but they need to do it in a way that doesn't hurt them finding out. Be careful what you're telling people. How people find things out can really impact them a lot."
Jessie looked up at the older pony. "How do you know all this? You said you weren't that smart."
Ms. Crystal chuckled. "Experience, kid. You may have more brains than I'll ever have, but you don't have half the experience. My dad, who happens to be my stepdad, used to tell me that experience was the best teacher. I don't think I really started to take that to heart until the last few years." She got a sad look on her face. "I've screwed up a lot in my life, but because of those screwups I have learned a lot. I hope you don't end up screwing up half as much as I did."
"I don't want to screw up at all," Jessie replied.
Ms. Crystal laughed loudly. "Good luck with that. It's going to happen, though. There'll probably be a few doozies in there too. It happens to everyone. Just make sure you learn from them."
Jessie hung her head low. "I just don't want to mess up my life."
The crystal pony booped Jessie's nose with a hoof. She scrunched it up in frustration, but Ms. Crystal started talking again before she could complain about it. "Hey, my life was pretty darned messed up for a while, but I'm in a great place now."
"You can say bad words you know. I hear them all the time," Jessie interjected.
"Well, it's bad manners for me to be doing that, and you shouldn't be cussing," Ms. Crystal replied quickly. "Anyway, the point is; if for some reason you do something that really messes your life up, that isn't the end of your life. My life is better than I ever imagined it could be. I have a great job, that I love. I have good friends. I also get to meet interesting people like you. It would never have happened if I didn't mess up so badly before."
Jessie looked up at the mare with one ear tilted. "Ms. Crystal....are you telling me I should let my life get messed up?"
"Just call me Crystal," Crystal said with a chuckle. "No, you should definitely avoid doing that, but you shouldn't live your life in fear of it going off track. Sometimes things that are better than what you planned can happen. Life never goes according to plan, and you never know what else might come your way."
Jessie sat and thought about this for a moment and tried to think of a good counter example. "What about Ms. Jean? She's run away and everyone's looking for her and worried. Things seem bad for her right now since they've gone off track."
Crystal sighed. "That's a whole other kettle of fish." That was a weird expression. "We don't know yet if things are that bad. I know Rosetta is freaking out about it, and Wild Growth...and I'm sure Sunset Blessing is worried about her reputation, but I'm also sure they'll find her and get things fixed. That isn't your problem to worry about anyway."
"Why'd she run away if it wasn't that bad?" Jessie asked.
Crystal let her go and stood up. "She's just scared. People do crazy things when their scared. She has a very hard life because she's sick, and she doesn't want to experience that anymore. She felt helpless, and not in control of her life. That's a very scary thing." She shook her head. "Listen to me, talking about being scared and how it impacts people. Phobia has gone and indoctrinated me into her thinking."
"Well, that's her job, isn't it? Make people understand fear?" Jessie asked, more rhetorically than anything, but she was surprised to see Crystal shake her head.
"Phobia Remedy's job is to be a Dreamwarden. The job of Dreamwarden is really kind of straightforward and cold. It means she is supposed to enforce and maintain the rules of the dream realm. If that was all she was it would be a pretty sad existence," Crystal said.
The crystal pony looked up at the windows of the house. "No, Phobia cares about fear because she wants to be more than just a cold enforcer, she wants to help people. When she transformed she saw a world ready to eat itself alive out of fear. She made it her life's purpose to help people understand what they are afraid of and not be at the mercy of fear. That's all Phobia Remedy, not something she got from her job. I wouldn't be here guarding a Dreamwarden if I didn't believe in what she personally stood for."
"But, early on the Dreamwardens used fear to control the night ponies," Jessie replied. "Why would she do that if it goes against what she believes."
Crystal looked back down at her. "She thought it necessary at the time, and she was dealing with her own fears. By the time Psychic Calm got her to buck up, and be what she needed to be, things had gone bad with Sha'am Maut far longer than they should have. Phobia let her fears get the better of her, and made her stay silent and in the background. That let bad things happen because the rest weren't willing to stand up to Sha'am without her. It is a hard pill to swallow, but being at the mercy of fear doesn't hurt only you, it hurts everyone around you or depends on you."
"Like how Wild, Ms. Rosetta, and everyone else is being hurt right now by Ms. Jean being afraid?" She asked as she made the connection. "Or everyone around Jackie if she gets afraid about Mr. Tom not being her dad?"
Crystal nodded. "Yeah, just like that. You're a smart filly. Jackie will get this all explained to her soon enough, and will have to face the fear that comes with it. You should always respect your fears, because you fear them for a reason, just don't be at the mercy of them...Urgh! I really am starting to sound like Phobia. If I start monologuing you have permission to buck me in the face."
"I'm not going to buck you," Jessie responded in shock. "That would be mean, and it would hurt you."
Crystal laughed. "If it stopped me from turning into a monologuing mare it would be a mercy." She gave Jessie a nudge towards the door. "Let's head back inside and watch some cartoons before those two wonder where we are."
Jessie got up and walked, and as she did she reflected on the conversation. What did she fear that could make her act irrational? She couldn't think of anything, but if she wasn't thinking rationally about it would she even be able to recognize it? The easier question would be to determine what she feared, and then she could start examining her actions in response to that. A short reexamination of the last few days brought up a lot of things, and she had to admit she'd acted out of character in response to them.
None of this knowledge told her what actions and reactions she should have to her worries, though. Again simply knowing something had failed her in coming up with solutions. Crystal seemed to indicate she just needed to be brave about things, but didn't that just mean putting herself at the mercy of her problems? She didn't understand. She needed to ask more questions. However, those questions could wait until after she watched some cartoons.
Tonya flattened her ears and pressed her hooves together as she continued to listen to her wife argue over the phone. They were now in Sunset's office in the Bastion and there still had been no trace of Jean and Bill found. To be fair to the Equestrians, most of the yelling in this conversation was being done by Sunset.
"You need to tell the ambassador that you'll have to cancel. I need you here!" Sunset yelled.
"I'm conducting my business with the ambassador as quickly as possible. I can't just walk out because you have an issue with your experiment," Twilight Sparkle replied calmly over the phone. "Rarity has been informed to put six of our best mages, who are already on site, at your disposal. I'll be there when I have finished my business here, no sooner."
"This is an urgent matter and those mages aren't you!" Sunset fired back.
Twilight sighed. "I understand, and I'm doing my best to get this matter concluded as fast as I can. You need to understand that I am possibly creating friction with your government just getting involved, and the only reason I am willing to is that two people are in jeopardy."
Tonya got up from her seat before her wife could launch another angry retort. "Sunset, let me talk to her."
"I've got this," Sunset growled.
Tonya flew next to her wife and touched a hoof to her shoulder. "No, you don't, and you know it. You're not thinking straight and it isn't being productive. How about you go down to the vaults and work on things there. Let me be the one to talk calmly with the nice pony that we want to help us, okay? You and I are a team, let me do my part."
Sunset snorted and left her seat. "Fine." She then promptly stormed down to the the already open vaults.
Tonya took the vacated seat and spoke into the phone. "I'm sorry about that. She is under a lot of stress. We do appreciate you agreeing to try to help us even though it puts you in a difficult position. What can we do to help you help us?"
"You're her wife, Tonya, right? To tell you the truth, I don't see any simple ways of making this any easier. Ideally, if I had access to her notes on how her spell actually worked and was developed that might help me figure out solutions on how to stabilize their resonance, but I can't be sure of that. Given that this is a project your government considers a matter of national security, I doubt they will allow me to see those files. I'll be working blind."
"I may actually have a solution to that, though, I'm not sure it's one you would like," Tonya replied. "I'm not sure how much you know about me, but I'm a mind magic user. One of my jobs here is to give voluntary compulsions to secrecy. I have done a few for the government on the side as well. We can draw one up for you and let you review it. If you agree to it we might be able to give you free access to Sunset's files."
Twilight hesitated. "No offense, you seem like a nice pony, but I'm not really comfortable with the idea of a Shimmerist messing with my head--or anyone else for that matter."
"I understand," Tonya replied. "I'm only offering up options. I could get Phobia Remedy to watch when we did it, just to verify I only did what I said I would. If you're still not comfortable with it after that I won't get my feelings hurt too much. A lot of people aren't comfortable with that kind of thing."
"I'll just say it is under consideration and leave it at that. Do you think you're even strong enough to lay a compulsion on an alicorn anyway?" Twilight asked.
"That depends on how willing you are to accept it. That's something else Phobia could verify," Tonya responded. "If not, there's always the option of having Phobia herself do it. I know it will take if a Dreamwarden does it."
"We'll keep options...open on that," Twilight responded in a tone that screamed 'hell no'. "I will get down there as soon as I can, I promise. I'm actually doing another round of arguing about the bottlenecking of returning the ponies I fully transformed from a partial state. I made promises to those ponies too, that I would do all I could for them. I want your experiments down there to go well because it might help me convince the government to let these ponies go home rather than just stringing them along."
"Madam ambassador," another voice called out in the background. "There's a Jennifer Tanner on the line. She says that her special friend is talking a lot and that you'd know what that meant."
Twilight groaned. "I need to get going. Urgent matters keep mounting. I'm sorry to cut this short. I'll get back in touch this evening after I have met with the ambassador and figured out what's going on with Jenny. I hope you find them soon." The line clicked dead.
That could have gone better. Tonya left her seat and proceeded down to the vaults to see her wife. Sunset had the globe with the ETS sample pulled out and was doing some sort of magic. It was best not to interrupt when her wife was in the zone with something that complicated, so she decided to take a seat off to the side.
She looked up at the floating black sphere and shivered. That thing gave her the creeps. She hoped that it was taken away soon, since the Dreamwardens were pulling the plug on the project, or putting it on hold, or whatever. She hated the sphere with a passion. It wasn't just that it just felt wrong when looking at it. When she learned that the price for this thing had been bought at was her life it felt like somehow her destiny had forever been tied to this mysterious object, and now the Dreamwardens behaved like it didn't matter at all. The sooner she never had to think of it again the better.
She looked around at the other compartments. This place was a treasure trove of magical knowledge, definitely the greatest on Earth, but probably up there on the list if you included Equestria's knowledge as well.
Down here were copies of all the collected research of Robert McDermott, transcribed and sent in secret by his aunt, Sarah Tanner. Sarah had a great love and pride for her nephew and his achievements, and was not actually a Shimmerist herself, but understood that her nephew lacked the resources to make full use of what he had discovered. These days he released much of his research to the public, but early on much had been kept secret. There were still things he held back for reasons ranging from he hadn't resolved all the issues to he feared widespread use of the spell. Getting this information was invaluable, and that made Sarah one of Sunset's most valuable agents. It was a shame that they had to resort to these kinds of tactics with him. Many of Sunset's other agents out west were best described as strong-armed, and they'd gotten a little too aggressive with him and scared him off.
Here also were also copies of all information that those nobles on Equestria had tried to send to Earth. Twilight Sparkle had been aware of who the nobles had sent that information to, and done nothing to take it away from them. That faction of Shimmerists had shared their secrets with Sunset, and Sunset had repaid them by revealing what they knew and their whereabouts to the government. It hadn't been personal, but SPEC kept its good standing with the government by being loyal to the United States, and those Shimmerists had previously conspired with the Equestrian nobles to try to set up an Equestrian protectorate on US soil. In Sunset's opinion they were traitors, and that they had escaped justice was unacceptable.
It could be said that SPEC's methods in obtaining knowledge were often unfair, duplicitous, or on rare occasions-- brutal, but it was a case of the ends justify the means. Sunset didn't hurt anyone unless she felt it was necessary, and often went to great lengths to secretly protect those that she was taking information from. Dead and imprisoned researchers were not productive to her. Years ago she had placed agents around Bob. She had let the government know what he was doing and that she was monitoring him closely. They had agreed to keep their distance from him, despite him breaking the law at the time. Her influence had kept him from being arrested, even if he had no clue of it going on. She had raged when she found out that a rogue faction in the government had tried to murder him in cold blood. When his aunt Sarah had come to Sunset asking for aid in protecting him Sunset had already been in the process of demanding justice for the colt. The fact that they'd used her knowledge about his activities to select him as a target made it a deeply personal grievance.
The works of countless other researchers, and magical artifacts from the early Equestrian expeditions were housed in these alcoves, all carefully studied. Most people who contributed to SPEC didn't even realize they were on the payroll, or indirectly involved. Wild called it Sunset's secret empire, and she wasn't completely wrong in that. Knowledge was power, and this room was the foundation of all of the research in the Bastion. Sunset always made something greater than the sum of the parts given her, and these were the best parts Earth had to offer.
"I think I found something," Sunset said as she returned the globe to its alcove.
Tonya perked her ears up. "You know how to fix what's wrong?"
Sunset shook her head. "No, but I determined that how we were placing certain runes that impacted giving them a pony sense-of-self were slightly off compared to how they were set in the original ETS spell. I accidently threw them out of balance when adjusting for maintaining their true resonance in standby. This can be corrected in future versions, and I'm unsure what the full effect it's having on them. I suspect it might cause some problems with their thinking, though. That might explain how Jean got so dependant on Wild's magic so quickly, and how she was able to convince Bill to get involved with her plan to run off."
"They're not mentally balanced," Tonya said as she considered the implications. "You know there'll be an investigation by the Dreamwardens because of this."
Sunset flicked her tail dismissively. "It wasn't intentional, and they will verify that, so I'm unconcerned about it. It's a fine at most. What's more important is we're still left to wonder how much it's impacting their thinking. The fact remains that, in essence, those runes were applied sloppily, and sloppy placements of runes in long running spells can cause degenerative side effects. These are degenerative side effects impacting their minds."
"So whatever is wrong with their thinking might get worse?" She asked as her ears sagged.
Sunset nodded with her head held low. "Compounded by the fact the spell is persisting much longer than it was designed to. They aren't thinking straight right now, but if this keeps going that will continue to get worse, until there's no rational thought at all."
Tonya walked over to her wife and gave her an encouraging nuzzle. "They'll find them soon, and we've got the best mage there is coming to help figure things out. We'll get this fixed."
Sunset sniffled. "This is all my fault. I spent so much time crafting the primary part of the spell with care, but I rushed with the revisions. I was so concerned with getting something I could present by a deadline."
"We all make mistakes, my sunshine."
Sunset looked up with tear filled eyes. "And how long can I keep trying to apply that to myself before I can't use that for an excuse anymore?"
"You've done so much good. The world is better for all you've done," Tonya replied as she stroked her wife's mane with a wing.
A bitter laugh escaped Sunset's lips and Tonya stepped back. "I want to believe that, I really do. I want to say at the end of the day that I advanced God's plans, and the world will be better for it, but just look at this room. Everything I do ends with somepony getting hurt. Now, at the point I think I should be cementing my great legacy, it is happening again. I have two innocent people that I'm possibly destroying for the sake of the greater good. How many bad things can happen before they outweigh the good? Is my legacy the greater good, or all the pain and suffering that I caused on my path to it?"
"Sunset, you aren't thinking clearly, either," Tonya said firmly. There was some truth to what her wife said, but while Sunset was dealing with the aftereffects of her own transformation wasn't the time to be tackling this. "Let's just get home and get you to bed. If they find them, they'll call us. You just pointed out that you made a mistake while rushing. You could make more mistakes if you get yourself too upset."
Her wife looked like she might argue, but sighed in resignation. "You're right. I should be listening to you. If I had listened to you about delaying things we might not have this mess."
"I didn't foresee this happening with Jean and Bill either, so don't give me too much credit," Tonya replied. "Come on, you'll do better with some sleep. Hopefully Twilight Sparkle will finish up early and be here tomorrow." She touched a wing to her wife's shoulder. "And I'm proud of you for admitting you need help with this, and not letting your dislike of the Equestrians stop you from finding the best you could."
Sunset looked up and gave a small smile. "Baby steps for doing better?"
She hugged her wife. "Baby steps are the most important ones, because you can't walk until you've done them."
They left the vault and Sunset resealed the passage into it. They left her office out into the Chorus room and then out into the hallway. All the researchers were gone for the day and only members of the security and military were here, patrolling the halls. Sunset came to a stop and looked off down the wrong direction to go home.
"I need to check on Poly Glot's progress. See if he has figured anything out," Sunset said as she flicked an ear.
Tonya groaned. "Can it wait? I really don't want to be near him."
Sunset shook her head. "He may have found something, and when we find Jean and Bill I don't want to be missing any information."
She scowled in response. "Fine, but let's make this quick. I get sick just thinking about the fact I share air with him down here."
"I do too," Sunset said in agreement. "I promise he's gone after this. One way or another I'm not keeping that monster here anymore after this week."
"Thank God," she said with a sigh.
They walked through the twisting labyrinth of halls till they saw the well guarded door of Poly Glot. As they approached his voice rang out. "Oh my, are there guests for poor old Poly Glot? You should come in, I have so much that I would love to talk about."
Tonya shivered at his voice, but Sunset didn't deem to give him a reply. She instead looked at the crystal pony guards. "Has he been busy in there?"
"He's definitely been scratching away with a pen at something," the guard replied. "No one is looking forward to trying to take the pen from him. First thing he did was try to stab someone in the neck with it when he got it."
"Par for the course," Sunset said dismissively. "Get yourselves ready. I need to go in and check his progress."
"Sunset? You’re visiting me? Oh Sunset… Sunset, it warms my heart. You are such a wonderful jailer. I have secrets to tell youuu..." Poly Glot all but purred.
One of the humans unlocked the door as all the crystal ponies stood ready. Poly Glot had an inhibitor ring on his horn, and was chained, but all precautions were always taken whenever his door was being opened. He could do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, and knew exactly how to maximize his carnage. On the rare occasions his inhibitor had been removed in the past he had a literal army of crystal ponies watching if he tried anything. They had discontinued letting him have even brief periods of this freedom after he had caused mayhem with his broken time travel spell. Everyone had been told afterwards that they had just been stunned, and not the full nature of what they'd experienced.
The door was opened and Tonya took a deep breath as she and her wife stepped on in. Poly Glot was near the wall, with chains restricting him from getting anywhere near the door. The room was padded, but the padding near the wall the dirty brown unicorn sat was ripped and shredded, and the way it was done indicated he did that with his horn. He sat smiling at them, with his thin black hanging beard and mane twisted in knots. A mad gleam was in his purple pupils as he watched them. Papers surrounded him, many of them shredded, and bits and pieces of runic diagrams could be seen on them. There was no sign of the pen.
"Figure out where the fuck he has that pen hidden," Sunset harshly ordered the guards.
The guards came into the room as Sunset lit up her horn and her red aura locked around the mad unicorn to hold him still. They began checking his mane, underneath him, and in the ripped up padding, all came up empty. Sunset grunted and forced open his mouth with her magic and they did a thorough inspection of that, again nothing. She then lifted up his rear and one of the humans put a glove on and began searching that crevice as well, again nothing.
Sunset growled and motioned with her head for the guards to back away from him. The aura disappeared around just Poly Glot's head. "Where's the pen? You aren't getting left anything you can use for a weapon."
"I chewed it up....and ate it," Poly Glot cackled.
The aura holding him in place glowed more intensely for a moment before vanishing. Sunset panted for a second from the exertion before nodding. "He's telling the truth. I can detect it in his stomach."
"You could have saved exhausting what little magic you have if you had only asked," Poly Glot said with a smile. “Not that watching you strain so much wasn’t exciting in its own right.”
The reminder that her magic was weak earned a snarl from Sunset, and Tonya prepped herself to stop her wife from lashing out. "Sunset, don't let him push your buttons. You know that he's trying to get you mad enough to come near him."
Poly Glot giggled. "Ton-ya, you know me so well. I can't wait to spend some quality alone time with you. We'll have so much to discuss just between you and I...the time is getting so close, I can already hear the music of your screams. La-da-dee la-da-da-da."
Sunset stood up straight. "Enough! Did you actually figure out how to fix the spell, before you ripped up all your work?"
"Fix it?" Poly Glot said in confusion. "Why? The spell is almost perfect. The only thing wrong is that the intensity is too low."
"It has a degenerate effect on their minds," Sunset replied. "I can't use it like that."
"Oh..." Poly Glot laughed. "But it's just so perfect that way. Slowly pushing them to whatever brings them the most pleasure, and pushing away all other paltry concerns. It really is a work of art, returning the lucky recipient to a creature with only one goal, with no other thought. Pure perfection."
Tonya stiffened. Was that what it was doing to Jean and Bill? It would explain Jean hanging more and more off Wild even though she didn't have to. The magic gave her pleasure, and she was a junkie for it. Sunset said this would get worse and worse as time went on. Would they stop thinking about anything but how to get magic?
Sunset frowned. "I guess you were somewhat useful after all. At least I know what it's doing now. I was pretty sure I knew how to correct it already, but it is good to know what kind of side effects I'm looking to fix." She turned to the guards. "We're done here. Make sure he gets a bath in the morning, he stinks. Also get a physician to look him over to make sure he hasn't torn up his intestines with that pen. When he is taken out of here I don't want anyone able to say we unnecessarily mistreated him."
"Time is com-ing so cl-ose," Poly Glot sang. "I’ll get to play and dance and sing!"
Sunset glared at him. "Don't count on it, you perverted freak. I'll see that you hang. Your days are numbered."
"One...two...three...hehe," Poly Glot said as he went back into giggling. "I'll be seeing you both soon...real soon."
Tonya left the cell with her wife. As the guards relocked it up she reflected that at least her wife got a reminder of what a real monster was.
"Why are we stopped?" Wild asked her driver. The question was partially rhetorical; there was a police barricade that had not been there earlier up ahead, but an officer had spoken briefly with her driver and she hadn't been able to overhear because she'd been on the phone.
"The protests, Miss Growth," her driver explained. "The Humanity First group has started a protest without getting a permit, and the police and national guard are trying to disperse them as we speak. We're still waiting to find out where we can detour."
Wild laid down in her seat and flattened her ears. "Great...who knows how long we'll be stuck here."
"Something really needs to be done about all these protests. I know they're a normal thing around here, but lately they've been getting completely out of control," Number complained.
"If you can think of an answer on how to do that let me know," Wild replied as she sat back up. "Hopefully they can get this group under control before they get into it with any of the other groups. If they don't we won't have a group of protests on our hooves, we'll have riots."
"It's a regular powder keg," Number said in agreement. "We have Humanity First, the Anti-Dreamwarden League, the Night Pony Rights Organization, a collection of concerned parents groups, Anti-Shimmerist groups, people protesting the United Nations over the Moroccan genocide, people protesting the UN in general, extremist ponies who are protesting our way of life, socialists protesting that SPEC is too big a friend to big business, other groups protesting that SPEC is too involved with trying to divert tax dollars to public handouts...the list goes on, and they all hate each other."
"Sunset has gone too far with her protections of freedom of speech and right to protest," Wild grumbled. "Those freedoms are great, but the way it has been handled in Riverview is ridiculous. She all but encourages protests since she provides them food. Sooner or later, someone is going to get hurt."
One of the officers came up to the car and started talking with her driver again. She listened in for a moment and then stopped as she realized he was just giving directions on how to detour safely, rather than any new information about the protest. At least their stop had been a brief one. However, she needed to find out more about the protests, as those could interfere with the search for her mama. As a safety precaution there had been laws put in place that only flyers who were involved with trying to keep order could fly over a protest area, under penalty of arrest. This kept protestors with wings on the ground, because once protests got into the air as well as the ground all kinds of new problems were introduced.
The car started moving again, and in a few minutes time they reached her mansion. As she entered, George gave her a rundown of updates about the house. That the crew working on the nursery had left paperwork about design choices for her to make decisions on. That someone had come by and inspected the bathroom she had damaged and given an estimate on how long it would take to fix, as well as a request to have someone take a more detailed look at the structural integrity of the ceiling right above the bathroom. That the alcohol vender would not be available to restock her bar for another two days due to him being short staffed and having to reset the mods at a few stores. He also informed her that no news had arrived about her mama.
She sighed, and gave out a series of instructions. With that done, she walked over to the large group hookah and took a seat at it.
"Wild, you aren't supposed to be doing that," Number scolded. "You're pregnant. Think about the foal."
She gave the hookah a dejected look and nodded. "You're right. I'm just stressed and stuck waiting for any news. Do you know what it's like to be so worried and not be able to do anything but wait?"
"We've all been in situations like that at some point in our lives," Number replied as she lit her horn. A blue aura enveloped Wild and she found herself being levitated away from the hookah to the couch. She gave her best friend a dirty look for picking her up like that, but Number ignored it. "I know you're worried, but try to find other ways of relaxing. That foal inside you is not near invincible, like you are. Just stress alone could be bad for it."
"Then everything about today is bad for it," Wild replied flippantly.
She glanced up a hanging clock, evening was falling. Her mama and Bill were going to be running out of magic soon, if they hadn't already. If they were hiding that would leave them hidden and helpless somewhere. Bill could call for help and use his arms to crawl to search for it, but her mama couldn't even do that much. It broke her heart to think about her mama being left in that kind of position.
Her phone rang and she quickly answered it. "Yes? Did someone find her?"
"Sorry, Wild. " Sapphire's voice came over the line. "Couldn't come up with anything and neither did any others yet." Her tone shifted to annoyance. "Who do I lodge a complaint with by the way? And it better not be Sunset. It's a pony city and I'm being told you have flying restrictions? We're trying to find a couple of missing temp-ponies who might be in trouble and they told us to stop because a crowd is getting a little rowdy."
"It's meant to keep order," Wild explained sadly. "Thank you for trying. I appreciate it. Maybe someone else will have had some luck."
"If they want order, let us create a thunderstorm and that’ll clear em out real fast. Human methods are always so inefficient. But whatever, I need to go back to my family for the night," Sapphire replied with a huff. "If she isn't found by tomorrow I'll help again in the morning. You should get some sleep too, freaking out and keeping yourself up all night worrying isn’t going to accomplish anything."
The line went dead and she hung her head. If Sapphire had spent the afternoon searching and found nothing that meant her mama was either inside a building somewhere or out where the protests were happening. The protests at the moment covered a large area, and buildings could have her anywhere. Nothing had really been narrowed down much.
A knock came at the door and she looked up as George went to get the door. A moment later he returned with Melissa Rivers.
The police chief looked at her glumly. "I've got some news. I wanted to give it to you in person rather than call. I hurried over here as soon as I found out."
"Did you find her?" Wild asked eagerly, then her heart sank as she further took in the human's mood. "Is she hurt and that's why you wanted to tell me in person?"
Melissa shook her head. "We haven't found her, but we did find two ponies that were drained of most of their magic by a pair of agitated crystal ponies. They are in the hospital recovering right now, and should be fine in a few days. We have witnesses to the event."
Wild's breath caught as one of her big fears about what could happen was coming true. Melissa looked at her and continued. "It happened near where some of the Anti-Dreamwarden League were protesting. They were tettering out for the day and starting to leave for their hotels when two crystal ponies matching the descriptions of your mother and Bill attacked a pair of isolated unicorns by an alleyway. Some humans came when they heard yelling, and they say the crystal ponies ran away while calling out how sorry they were. I have teams searching that area now, but haven't found a trace of them yet."
"Mama...how could you?" Wild whispered, then nodded stiffly. "I understand. Let me know when you have more information."
Melissa looked contrite. "I have to let you know I'm going to have to reduce the number of people searching for the time being. We're switching over to night shift and I need the night ponies to help keep the peace. The Anti-Dreamwarden League have gotten it in their heads that this was an attack by those protesting the what happened in Morocco, or possibly sympathizers for the Night Pony Rights Organization. They're angry, and things might get ugly. I can't let violence break out."
Wild took a deep breath to try to calm her nerves. "I understand your position. My mama and Bill are glowing again now, and it's getting dark. Hopefully that will help the night ponies catch sight of them while doing what else they need to do."
"Maybe," Melissa replied. "I expect that they'll be finding somewhere indoors to sleep, so my night ponies might not be in a position to find them. I have humans out checking for anywhere that's been broken into. It's best that they are found by humans anyway, rogue crystal ponies can be dangerous to anyone with magic. I'm the only human on the force with any known magical powers."
"I understand," Wild replied, feeling like she was stuck repeating that over and over. She understood all these things, but she was getting more and more disheartened acknowledging them.
Melissa turned back towards the door. "I need to get back to checking on the people I have keeping the peace. I'll let you know right away if there is any more news, I promise."
Wild silently watched the human depart. Her mama was getting dangerous. What if next time she drained a pony till they died?
She bowed her head and wept. "Mama, what have I done to you?"