//------------------------------//
// Security 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Train doors slid open before me, beckoning me out onto a stone platform where the air shimmered from the day's heat. "Here we are," Jamjars declared, shepherding the three of us plus Kitty out of the slender vehicle. "One of the perks of living at Cold Karma is that all the best amenities are right next door!"

I recognized this station as the one where Gerardo had us board for the last leg of our journey here, though it looked substantially different in the late-evening light. The western mountains' shadow had just reached us, but not recently enough for the massive floodlights that illuminated the district at night to turn on, and the sky was still bright and blue up above, only showing bare hints of an impending sunset.

"How does anyone take this heat?" Corsica complained, wearing the same half-dress Gerardo had lent her to cover up her talent. She glanced at me and Kitty and narrowed her eyes. "How do you two dress up during this?"

"It's a surprisingly light coat," I admitted, not wanting to remind her that her gift hadn't been very suitable for a non-Yakyakistani like me in Icereach's climate.

Corsica glanced at Kitty, who was trying and failing to look at everything at the same time. "And you?"

"Kitty gots'ta rep her brand." The filly shrugged. "Plus, hoodies are cozy! Wanna try one?"

Corsica raised an eyebrow at the garment, which covered everything except the one thing she was trying to hide. "Think I'll pass..."

Already, we - though mostly myself and Kitty - were getting strange looks from other ponies on the platform, though more herself than me. A lot of them seemed to move in pairs, one mare and one stallion, and part of me wanted to sit down for thirty minutes and just analyze the crowd as it passed by. However, Jamjars had other ideas.

"Come on," she announced, beckoning us with her bushy tail. "We've only got all night. Now, food, leisure or physical goods, where to first?"

"I suppose I wouldn't mind breakfast," Ansel admitted, following a few steps behind. "Not that I have much of a wallet..."

"Oh, we'll get that fixed soon enough," Jamjars said with a wink. "So, any food favorites? An air travel hub like Ironridge has just about every dish the world has to offer."

Corsica shrugged. "I'm good with comfort foods. Salad. Whatever."

"I guess something new wouldn't be amiss," Ansel said. "Though I don't know how closely you're acquainted with what would be our normal. We're already here, though, so might as well be adventurous."

"Got any Varsidelian noodles?" I asked. "Kinda want to see how they compare to the ones back home..."

Jamjars pondered this. "Yes, I suppose we could..." She blinked, then gave a defeated frown. "Yes?"

Kitty was sitting on the ground, facing her, tail wagging earnestly. "Kitty wants cake," she declared.

"What kind of cake?" Jamjars sighed.

"Kitty wants wedding cake," Kitty stated, as though it was the most natural request in the world.

Jamjars smiled grimly. "How about we get some real food first for those of us who can't live off of sugar?"

Kitty frowned in serious contemplation. "...Cake with fruit on top?"

Jamjars patted her head and walked on past. "Nope. Come on, I know just the place!"

"Argon Palace!?" Kitty stuck out her tongue and eagerly bounced along.

"No," Jamjars sternly said. "Much as I can enjoy an establishment where the clientele are all easily persuadable, we are not introducing our new guests to Ironridge with a maid cafe."

"Aww...!"

I squinted at them, following along. "What's a maid cafe?"

Jamjars replied with a look that clearly said this is why you don't want kids. For some reason, Corsica looked intrigued.





We didn't stay out in the heat for long. Jamjars led us through a large cleft in the mountain wall into what looked like a bigger, better and much more brightly lit version of Icereach's shopping street: a broad indoor plaza, the distant stone ceiling covered in maintenance catwalks and ventilation pipes, air-conditioned air blasting down from above and cheerfully labeled shops with lots of glass in their construction lining the long walls.

Advertising billboards were largely absent, eschewed in favor of displays in storefront windows. Benches, fountains, potted trees and neon-glowing kiosks lined the center of the roadway instead, and on the side of the road facing into the mountain, I could see an elevated second floor, with a mezzanine looking out over where we were now. It was as if someone had found an underground ravine and decided it would be a perfect place to set up shop.

"Welcome to Eaststone Mall, kiddos," Jamjars announced, flicking her tail. "Not quite the be-all, end-all of materialistic paradise. You can do better if you ride further west. But for fixing up your backwater standards of what the good life looks like, this place is the promised land."

"Lady," Ansel scoffed, "back in Icereach, Corsica slept in her office and I had a metal toilet until a few months ago. I don't think we were living the good life by anyone's standards."

Jamjars blinked at us. "That's disturbing. Oh well, my point still stands. Food first, I suppose..."





An hour later, the remains of a noodly meal sat splayed out before us, a waitress bustling over to collect our dishes and Jamjars making a show of letting her purse jingle as she picked up the tab. Ansel looked satisfied, and Corsica slightly out of it - I was happy with the quality of the food, but wishing I had more with which to chase down the spice. Not that there had been any lack of things to eat. Mine had been a stir fry with bamboo shoots, snow peas, cabbage, baby corn and, of course, noodles. The spices reminded me a little of Noodle Land, but the chefs here clearly had a much broader palette of ingredients to work with.

Kitty, still wearing her hoodie, was staring at Jamjars with an exceedingly patient expression, her tongue poking out once again. "Dessert time?" she whispered.

"Here you go, one moment..." Jamjars muttered, ignoring Kitty and counting change as the waitress lit her horn and floated away our dishes.

I was only half watching, my thoughts more on the meal than the ponies who had served it. But, for a split second, the waitress's eyes met mine, and she nodded in respect. Then, our dishes in tow, she was gone.

Huh. I wondered what that was about.

"Well well," Jamjars said as we stepped out into the mall plaza. "It looks like we just about beat the rush. Everyone satisfied and raring to go?"

"Not to knock the quality of the restaurant," Ansel said, leaning against a giant tree pot, "but that cuisine was what I'd expect for dinner, not breakfast..."

Jamjars chuckled. "Eating certain things at certain times of the day is for old ponies. Besides, you three asked for noodles."

I shrugged apologetically, being the only one of us to have actually requested Varsidelian food. "Hey, I liked it! Guess I just don't keep a healthy eating schedule?"

"Good sleep, proper exercise, and you can keep a graceful figure no matter when or what you eat." Jamjars shrugged, with a self-assured grin that probably would have been annoying to anyone who disagreed with her. "Unless you're Kitty. Pretty sure no amount of dancing can counteract that kid's diet..."

Kitty blew a loud raspberry at her. "Jamjars just mad she can't put away cake like Kitty. Sugar gives you energy!"

"You two squabble a lot?" I raised an eyebrow at them.

"Yup!" Kitty stared happily at me, her tongue still poking out from the raspberry. "Crushing enemies gives Kitty's life meaning."

Jamjars giggled nervously. "There's that competitive spirit of yours that has nothing at all to do with whatever you do down in the basement also please don't say things like that in public." She glanced around to ensure we weren't being stared at. "Sound like a plan?"

Kitty's tongue drooped all the way out, and she smiled cheerfully. "Kitty wants cake."

Jamjars tapped her nose with a hoof, making her go cross-eyed. "After we buy some other-"

Kitty licked Jamjars' hoof.

Jamjars glanced at her, blinked, frowned, and shrugged, putting her hoof back down. "Well, you can do whatever. Everyone else, with me?"

Kitty happily turned and started skipping off into the crowd. "Is she gonna be okay?" I asked, staring after her.

"I'd be more worried about anyone she runs into," Jamjars muttered to me. "She does all that on purpose. Wants to be an actor when she grows up. When she gets more ambitious than eating sugar and earning double-takes, that's when there'll be trouble."

I thought about how that made me feel. What were the odds Jamjars was perfectly fine and reasonable, and things started going south because her daughter annoyed someone important or got herself arrested?

"Not that I can entirely blame her." Jamjars straightened up and shrugged. "After all, I was quite the go-getter in my youth myself. But onto more salient things! The two of you are budding fashionistas, I take it?" She looked over me and Corsica. "Nice tastes, but you have a lot to learn about making fashion livable in the heat if you ever want to walk the Day District in the actual day. Especially with fur as lovely and luscious as yours." She gave Corsica an appreciative nod. "And I'm sure we'll find something for colts as well, if you want to join the dress-up game..." She tilted her head at Ansel. "Though there's something to be said for putting stallions' fashion on mares. Attractive and professional with an air of class and competence, that. Away we go!"

Jamjars wasn't wearing anything herself, I noted, except for raised, gilded horseshoes and several rippling ribbons in her tail and mane. Not that she needed much. She seemed to wear her personality instead, much more effectively than any mere fabric could be worn. I was almost envious... but then again, I could probably do that as well. I just liked my coat the way it was.

With a start, I realized I was thinking that way now about my new coat from Corsica. Not two weeks ago, I had received this thing and been unable to imagine adjusting myself to its more competent image. Maybe getting another glow-up would do more for me than I thought.

We didn't have to follow Jamjars for long to reach a mall store called Silver Silk, which looked to be a large, high-end boutique... though I wasn't yet familiar enough with Ironridge fashion to judge what was truly high-end and what was meant to imitate it so the middle class could feel classy too.

"Here we are," Jamjars declared, guiding us down an aisle that seemed to bisect the store into indoor and outdoor categories. Mares and stallions walked past us, most dressed in clothes that thinly accented without covering anything, and a few dressed oddly heavily. Like me. One such stallion, wearing a beige business suit and a broad fedora, nodded at me in respect as he passed by.

I nodded back on instinct, but blinked the moment he wasn't looking. What was that about? Regards from one suit to another? I remembered that waitress had treated me the same...

This was bizarre. And not least because Gerardo had not-so-subtly warned me that batponies weren't liked in Ironridge. For some reason, random strangers were treating me as though I had a high social standing.

"So," Jamjars said, stopping us across from an aisle that was filled with small lacy things I couldn't identify a use for. "Since you're new to the city, here's a crash course on Ironridge fashion. It's hot here. Nothing is the smart and sensible thing to wear. Anyone who wears things is showing off either their tolerance for heat or their budget for air conditioning. Sounds crazy, but it's what the upper classes like to do, especially the former. You have to compete with your peers somehow..." She fluffed her mane. "And there's always those poor sods that have to wear safety padding for construction and other dangerous work, but I'm sure you have no intention of joining them."

"And what about folks who just like covering up?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. Maybe this was why I was getting the reactions I did, though I didn't think that waitress had been wearing much. Had she?

Jamjars grinned a shark-like grin. "Then you're gonna be roasty-toasty, kiddo. Or stuck indoors all day. With perhaps some minor benefits of being more easily able to schmooze the upper echelons of society. Can't imagine why anyone would want to do a thing like that..." She winked. "Of course, I've got a corporate credit card, so no need to pick and choose. Let's buy you a little of everything!"





We spent upwards of two hours inside Silver Silk before I even thought to check how much time had passed. The moment Jamjars asked to see Corsica in a new outfit she had picked out, I was nervous that she would do the same to me, but then I discovered the store had private changing stalls with lockable doors and large mirrors that let me change in peace. And Jamjars, thankfully, had caught on without me saying anything that I was shy of being clad in anything that didn't go head to hoof. Her suggestions were more of guidance, and before long, I found myself laden down with things I might actually conceivably wear.

Nothing I found could quite capture the cartoon-wannabe appeal of my old coat, which was far too thick and warm to consider wearing in Ironridge. But apparently there was a detective genre called noir that had come into vogue about a hundred years ago in Ironridge, with a not-too-different aesthetic that Jamjars said was widely respected as cool while being nothing anyone in their right mind would wear outside of a costume party. Now I had an oversized black trenchcoat that felt more like a cloak and had trails that brushed the ground when I walked, and a matching hat to go with it - I'd have to watch myself not to trip, but was pretty sure it was exactly what I wanted. And it was made of some special lighter-than-it-looked fabric that made it breathe even better than my new coat from Corsica. Corsica's coat would still be my default, but having something like this would be useful.

That wasn't what I was wearing right now, though. Instead, I had deigned to put on a dress, simple and smooth and shiny mother-of-pearl, with matching silk boots that reached all the way up into the dress's folds.

This was about as far away from my norm as I could get. And yet, it somehow worked. The dress had a high neckline and covered everything I needed covered, from my special talent to my legs, and it also lacked any sort of lace or ruffles, making me somehow look smaller than I actually was, hugging my barrel with slits for my wings. I had tried several colors, and was tempted to settle on royal blue, but for some reason this one struck a chord with me and made me feel... something.

I felt, wearing it, like I had found something that was lost for a long time. And yet, there were no swirly, foggy feelings like when I thought about something that was hidden behind my mask. It couldn't be that, yet a strange, tingling sensation in my ears warned that if I took it off, I might lose something invaluable that was currently just out of sight.

What was that feeling? Maybe all the dresses had it, and this one was just my favorite. It certainly wasn't often I tried to make myself beautiful, at least. I decided this one was definitely a keeper. Time to show Jamjars and the others.

I stepped out to see Corsica modeling a full black tuxedo and Ansel wearing nothing but shades and a bowler hat. Corsica immediately blinked when I came into sight.

"Wow," she said. "Look at you. Never thought I'd see you in something like that."

Immediately, I felt self-conscious. "In a good way or a bad way?"

Corsica whistled. "Pretttty good."

"Hmm," Jamjars said, sizing me up. "I approve. Of course, now your mane means everything. This is a look, but how about short, straight, and flipped to one side? I started out working as a stylist, I'll have you know. Any revisions are on the house..."

"I'm a pretty good stylist too," I admitted, though I was curious to see what she could do. "I just keep it this way on purpo..."

I trailed off, noticing a nearby mare who was giving me a withering stare.

Middle-aged, with a short, dyed-blond mane and tail, she looked like she had just noticed me while walking by. After a second of eye contact, she huffed and shook her head in scathing disapproval, and turned to keep walking with a flick of her tail.

Rude. For a second, I was frozen, caught between the surprise of being visually accosted and the realization that maybe Gerardo had been on to something after all. However, we were in public. Plenty of ponies were around, including Jamjars. I had my bracelet. I had been treated well earlier. This was clearly supposed to be a respectable establishment... and wearing this dress made me feel powerful. So, some unnecessary side of me decided to kick the beehive.

"You got a problem?" I asked after her.

She glanced back at me. "Sarosians," she muttered, and then spat in my direction before continuing on.

Like a rippling wave, everyone stopped and looked up. All the ponies in the aisles near us - at least four, at a quick glance - were focused on her.

A stallion in an open-fronted vest with pilot goggles pushed up on his forehead got in her way. "Do that again," he challenged in a deep, gravelly voice.

"This is a free store in a free city," the unpleasant mare shot back, meeting his glare and not flinching. "And I will very well say what I want."

"Not this again," a tall stallion complained, watching over a rack of ties.

"Oh yeah?" Pilot Stallion leaned into the unpleasant mare's face.

Before I knew it, Jamjars was standing beside me. "You know, usually one starts tavern brawls inside actual taverns," she whispered in my ear. "But, I suppose some cases can't be helped. This should be interesting."

"Someone call public security," sighed a mare in a huge sombrero with two foals strapped to her sides in carriers. "Ugh, I'm so tired of ponies who do this..." She glanced apologetically at me. "Sorry, hon."

"Public security!?" cried a teen colt with heavy acne. "No, keep them out of this! You show her, Dad!"

Pilot Stallion just grunted.

The mare who had accosted me kept up her facade, but was clearly frazzled and annoyed at being surrounded. "What is this, mob rule?"

"Excuse me," a voice called, and a professionally-dressed pegasus with an employee badge marched over. "Is there an incident?"

"I'm being harassed," the unpleasant mare complained, pointing snootily at Pilot Stallion.

"She was givin' that kid over there lip," Pilot Stallion replied, pointing at me.

The employee nodded, pressing a button on a small device on his chest and stepping away. "I'll leave this one to security, I suppose..."

Suddenly, a large circle appeared on the ground, and began to glow green.

Eerie emerald flames licked their way around it, and the ground inside became hazy and indistinct as the fire rose up in a smooth wall. Then, figures began to rise from the ground inside. In barely two seconds, the flames around them dissipated, and it was over. Five new ponies were in the store, four wearing helmets and clad in armored police barding, and an androgynous white unicorn with a white mane who wore no clothes and an incredibly vacant expression.

"What's going on here?" a police mare asked.

Once again, the unpleasant mare was the first to speak. "I am being harassed by these ponies, who are all infringing on my right to shop in peace!"

The officer glanced around for anyone else.

"She was spitting at that kid there," Pilot Stallion said, repeating his allegations.

"I was just minding my own business," I said when the police mare turned to me. I glanced at the unpleasant mare. "What have you got against batponies, anyway?"

She just snorted.

"Right," the officer sighed, giving her a look. "Conflicting accounts. Not going to plead guilty?"

"Didn't you hear me the first time?" the unpleasant mare challenged. "I'll have words for your boss about this if you don't let me go on my way."

"Yes," the police mare sighed, nodding to the vacant white unicorn. "I suppose you will."

The unicorn's horn glowed, and four spheres of light materialized in the air around them, hovering and forming into a rectangle near the ground. The spheres pulsed, emitting some kind of energy toward each other, and in the center, a green-tinged hologram of two ponies took shape.

"Samael, Director of Public Security," one said in an emotionless voice, a short unicorn with a long mane that looked like a mare but sounded like a stallion.

"Estael, Director of Public Security," the other echoed in an equally emotionless tone, a short pegasus with a short mane that looked like a stallion but sounded like a mare.

The unpleasant mare took a step back, suddenly looking worried.

"She is being oppressed by these others," Samael said tonelessly, his face betraying the barest hints of feeling. "We should let her go."

"No," Estael said. "She is the oppressor. It would be a crime for these others not to intervene. We should submit her to the law."

"We are the law," Samael replied.

"Yes," Estael said, just as unfeeling as her counterpart. "That is why justice should be administered."

"But she is being oppressed," Samael repeated.

"As was she doing to another," Estael replied. "And these ponies were attempting to stop it. The scales are two against one."

"No," Samael said. "The scales are one against one minus one."

"The result is the same," Estael replied. "We should submit her to the law."

"Yes," Samael agreed. "The scales have been weighed. We should submit her to the law."

"The scales are one against one minus one," Estael agreed.

Both of them nodded. "Take her in," they declared, their voices echoing together. Then the spell ended, and their projections were gone.

The police marched forward. The unpleasant mare looked around, panicked, but no one came to her aid. The four of them surrounded her, and then the green circle quickly reformed, the ponies inside sinking into the ground and out of sight.

Everyone who had been standing around sighed and started moving away.

"Creepiest thing I ever did see," the tall stallion behind the tie rack told me. "Don't know why anyone would risk the wrath of that. Best keep your head down and take care of yourself, kid."

"Keep your head down," muttered the sombrero mare as she wandered away. "No one should have to do that..."

The circle faded, and only then I realized the white unicorn hadn't gone with them. Its horn pulsed, and the spell quickly reformed.

Everyone who was leaving paused.

This time, only Samael was present, and he looked straight at Jamjars. "You," he said.

"Me?" Jamjars tilted her head.

"Your daughter was recently impounded for licking cakes that were on display in a bakery," Samael said. "Pay the cost of the cakes at your convenience, and she will be free to go. Justice will have been served."

He bowed, not waiting for a response, and the spell went out. Then the green circle returned once again, sized for one this time, and the white unicorn sank out of sight. This time, everyone was properly gone.

The crowd finished dispersing, everyone pretending nothing had happened. Except for the employee, who soon returned with a rag to wipe up the spit.

Jamjars sighed airily. "Well, that went smoothly. Now you see why I've always wished I had saner and better-behaved offspring such as yourselves. Shall we leave in a hurry and let this place be rid of us?"

"Err..." I found that I couldn't quite move, still processing everything that had happened. Change out of the dress, some part of me warned. But between being generally respected, spat at, and witnessing what I hoped was a very unusual administration of justice, I was too stunned to do it.

"Come on," Jamjars urged, scooting me and my friends along. "Even when you're innocent, there's such a thing as overstaying your welcome."





The crowd composition of Eaststone Mall had changed during our time inside Silver Silk. More ponies were present, looking on average much less groomed compared to the finery on display earlier, yet they were still hardly scruffy. Also, notably, there were a lot more children.

I had never really thought before about how few foals Icereach must have had. Sure, I sometimes saw them here and there, but busy scientists couldn't have had much time for raising families, and so I never much questioned their scarcity.

Here, however, it felt like every other group of ponies had someone younger than me in the mix, from gangly teenagers to waddling foals to infants riding on backs or dangling in carriers. And for the families that had them, it was rarely limited to one. My brain did some quick math, pointing out that two parents needed two kids for a population to stay stable, and of course not everyone could or would pair off, and after a moment of feeling like my surroundings were bizarre, I decided they actually made perfect sense. Predictably, it was my hometown that was weird, instead.

Also, thinking about it let me avoid thinking about the fact that I was wearing a dress.

Perhaps it shouldn't have surprised me, but Silver Silk let us check out while wearing the products we were buying. At least I wasn't alone in my fanciness, as Corsica was stuck in her tuxedo and Ansel showed no sign of giving up his hat. He was also the designated pack horse for everything we had bought but couldn't wear, not to mention all the stuff I had changed out of.

A quick trip into a bathroom gave me a mirror and some space to fix up my mane, changing it to something slightly more suited to my current dignified look. When I came out, I found Ansel, Corsica and Jamjars discussing what we were going to do next.

"Really?" Ansel was saying. "Bailing Kitty out isn't your top priority?"

Jamjars shrugged. "Let's just say this isn't her first time around the block."

"She does this kind of thing regularly, then?" Corsica raised an eyebrow.

Jamjars sighed laboriously. "Oh, you have no idea. Or, perhaps you do. Let's just say I know the names of over half the ponies who run the front desk at the public security building, and leave it at that."

"Have you ever considered... you know..." Ansel spoke carefully. "Teaching her to not get arrested when she goes off on her own? Or maybe not letting her on her own in the first place?"

"What do I look like, a wise and nurturing mother?" Jamjars chuckled. "There are benefits to living with me, and then there's a price." She lowered her voice. "In this case, the price is probably that I've been a bad influence on her. Odds are ten to one she did it on purpose because there's someone in jail she wants to talk to, which is a thing I'd never condone as a reasonable and responsible parent." She straightened up, her voice returning to normal. "Or, maybe she just likes cake and needs to be taught a lesson or two. Who knows?"

I frowned. If Kitty was innocent and stupid, Jamjars really ought to be taking better care of her. Then again, I wasn't sure I would have been up to the task either if our roles were swapped. Did I have grounds to be hard on her for being a bad parent?

Of course, there was also the possibility that Jamjars was telling the truth and Kitty was way smarter than she acted.

"That's all well and good," Ansel warned. "But for my own peace of mind I think I'd feel a whole lot better about this if I saw you taking care of the ponies you're responsible for. Trying to convince us this is a safe place to stay, remember? If I got into trouble and you had a way to get me out, but simply didn't care to use it, I doubt I'd feel very appreciative."

Jamjars gave him a sly look. "Are you saying you plan on getting in trouble soon?"

Ansel just stared back at her.

"Ugh, fine. We'll go save Kitty." Jamjars huffed and did an about-face, marching towards the exit to the streets. "See for yourselves how torn-up she is about it..."





We walked a ways before boarding a train to the west. My dress breathed surprisingly well, though I noted Corsica didn't look happy about being outside while fully-clothed. Or about being outside, period.

Funny, though... Hadn't there been a station just a short distance away? After a moment of pondering, I realized that Jamjars was just as much of a cheapskate as Gerardo. She was skipping the fare checkpoint as well.

The train itself wasn't nearly as crowded as the previous night, though part of that might have been our traveling in the other direction. I felt awkward in my dress, a scruffy little teenage socialite dressed for a royal ball, but nothing was worse than an incomplete look, so I held my composure and acted the part as well. With good posture and a stiff jaw, I held myself up, the emptiness behind my mask tickling at me and reminding me that I felt just as much myself right now as I did when wearing my old coat in Icereach.

I could be anything. Here, where that skill might be a whole lot more useful, I needed to get used to the idea of using it.

After a bit of riding, we got off and walked some more, a journey that was hard on me and clearly much harder on Corsica. It was nighttime! High up on the mountainside! Why was it so hot?

"I'm sweating," Corsica muttered in my ear. "I'm sweating and I'm already going to ruin this tux..."

"It'll wash out," I whispered back. "What do you think I'm doing to this silly dress?"

Eventually, our posse reached an imposing building high up on the mountainside. If you went far enough up the Day District, the mountain wall steepened until it was nearly vertical, and the public security building was a large tower built up against that wall like an outward-facing notch in the mountain. It was hard to crane my neck enough to see the top.

"So the police aren't a Cold Karma division?" Ansel asked, surveying the building. "Funny. I'd have expected a big, rule-everything corporation like them to run this, too. Who does head these folks, if not the government?"

"Oh, they are part of Cold Karma," Jamjars replied. "They just keep a base out here, instead. Some time ago, before the Steel Revolution, they were called the Stone District Defense Force - that's the old name of this district, before they changed everything when Cold Karma came to power. Kind of a paramilitary, vigilante, foreign-government-influenced place... Don't ask how that happened without anyone doing anything about it. It was a mess. Anyway, Cold Karma said 'work for us,' gave them a new boss, and here they are. Still in their old fort. A lot more ethical than they used to be, I'll tell you that..."

We entered the building through a revolving glass door that looked a lot newer than the rest of the wrought-stone construction. The first thing I spotted was Kitty, sitting at a table with her tongue poking out, playing a card game with some very consternated-looking ponies in police barding. They looked far more distressed than she did.

"Hey! Yoo-hoo!" Jamjars made a loud snapping noise with her horn, drawing everyone's attention. "Cavalry's here ahead of schedule..."

Kitty glanced up with sparkling eyes. "Hiya, lady!"

The police looked relieved. "Finally," a stallion sighed, throwing away his hand. "If we'd been playing with real chips, I'd have been out a month's pay..."

"Here to sign for your kid back, Miss Jamjars?" a mare with an angular face asked. "I've got an expense report on the damages here..." She pulled out a notepad, then nodded over her shoulder at a closed door. "Plus about thirty pounds of used cake for you to take home. You break it, you buy it."

"How pleasant." Jamjars' eye twitched as she took the paper with a forced smile, reading it over.

Kitty beamed at her with an aren't-you-proud-of-me look.

"Alright," Jamjars sighed after upending her purse. "Let's go see the damages. Hopefully we don't have to rent a wagon..."

Kitty sidled up beside me as we started to move. "When no one was looking," she whispered in my ear, "Kitty licked forty cakes."

"When no one was looking? You sure about that?" I gave her an oh really look. "Because you got pretty well arrested for it."

"She licked forty cakes," Kitty repeated. "That's as many as four tens!"

We entered the side storage room to see an entire rack loaded down with cakes, many of which had been obviously disfigured with tongue marks. Most of them were small, thankfully, but a few were massive.

Jamjars groaned. "That's terrible... You're eating all this by yourself, you hear?"

Kitty looked as though her birthday had come early.

"So a kid does this, and you kind of just hang out playing cards with her?" I asked the mare who had opened the door.

She shrugged and sighed. "Repeat customer. Besides, can't make Junior Karma mad by incarcerating a family member of his official wedding planner." She lowered her voice. "You didn't hear this from me, but it feels like he's always making excuses to get that mare political immunity... What I wouldn't give to have someone that important in my corner instead." She straightened up. "Haven't seen you before, though."

"Friends of family." I gestured at Jamjars with a wing.

The police mare rolled her eyes as Jamjars argued with someone else about whether she could keep the wheeled rack the cakes were on and Kitty sniffed them eagerly. "With a Riverfall mare, just about anyone could claim that. Well, stay safe out there, citizen. The law will always be on your side."

"My side?" I tilted my head. "Why, because I'm a bat?"

The officer hesitated. "Ah, forget it. Shouldn't over-step my duty..."





Some time later, we were on our way, Ansel and I sharing the duty of pulling the cake cart as Jamjars used her telekinesis as a brake to ensure it didn't run us over whenever the hill sloped downward. We must have looked quite the sight, a teenager in a fancy dress pulling a cart full of licked cakes... but Kitty was as happy as could be, and Corsica was doing her best to avoid fainting from the heat. It was about the best we could do.

"She could have left these behind, you know," Ansel grumbled, hauling the cart alongside me.

"Waste not, want not?" I shrugged. "Maybe they'll go stale before Kitty can eat them all, and she'll make herself sick of them, or something."

"Maybe." Ansel didn't sound convinced. "So what was that between you and that police officer?"

"In the building?" I frowned. "I dunno. I guess she just wanted to gossip with me?"

"Seems like an odd thing for an active-duty officer to do," Ansel muttered quietly. "You've probably noticed, but random strangers have been sneaking nods at you all night."

I shook my head. "You're looking out for those too?"

"Yes, and it's just you," he whispered. "No one is giving me or Corsica the time of day."

"Weird." I swallowed. "You make anything of it?"

"I don't know," he sighed, sounding troubled. "But there's one thing I can tell you for sure. It might not make you feel better, though, and you have to swear to keep this quiet..."

I perked my ears, stepping a little closer.

"That teleportation circle the police used," he whispered. "In the clothing store? That was changeling magic."

My eyes widened in alarm.

"The kind it takes someone relatively powerful to cast," he added. "I'd rather not talk about it in detail, but you should be smart enough to figure out what that means."

Well, he hadn't seen the Composer in Lilith's entourage. But even if he had, I doubted it would change his assessment...

The changelings were up to something in Ironridge. I knew for certain the heads of two company divisions were involved, or at least adjacent to ponies involved. And that made it relatively likely it went up to the very top of the company.

My goals had just grown a lot clearer, and a lot more dangerous.