//------------------------------//
// Moving Up 
// Story: The Immortal Dream 
// by Czar_Yoshi 
//------------------------------//

Once again, I was wearing a dress.

This one was black and lacy, with a high-backed collar and paper-thin silk boots that used little straps attached to the dress to make sure they didn't fall off. Jamjars had groomed my mane and tail for nearly an hour until she was satisfied with the condition, and it left me the prettiest I'd ever been: somehow, she was even better at styling my looks than I was. My mane, smooth and glossy, had a deliberately uneven part that left a lock of hair hanging cutely over my eyes, and my tail had a tiny twirl at the end that matched some of the spiral accents on my dress's neckline and hem.

My role had been beautifully crafted, and so I acted it with the care it deserved, smiling and beaming like there wasn't a chaotic party carrying on all around me and throwing hooffuls of rice from a little basket at anyone who got too close.

I was a bridesmaid. And I had never seen the lucky couple before in my life.

A loud pop and a hiss foretold a cork flying across the room, striking a stone pillar that held up white satin streamers and the roof of the chapel alike. Ponies stomped in applause and bumped into each other, all with the air of middle-class folks dressing up as the richest of the rich for a day. A homely mare with a flowered staff lounged around an altar at the back of the room, looking somewhat important yet far too comfortable for the room's atmosphere, and the bride and groom danced upon a rolled-out carpet, kissing deeply, together wearing the only white suit and dress in the room.

"When I was young," Jamjars whispered nostalgically, standing next to me in a gown that was also black, but much more stately and official, "I always figured I'd grow up to be a mane stylist. Do you know why I didn't?"

"Err, no," I whispered back without breaking my smile. This was a role I preferred to lose myself in and do without thinking; as much as I could enjoy a rowdy party, it was probably best not to get swept away by one when the subject was something I knew nothing about. Besides, I was technically being auditioned.

Jamjars gave a happy sigh. "Because I wasn't thinking big enough. Why settle for manes alone when a wedding planner can have that, and the dresses, and the decorations, the food, the music, everything, and each customer brings so many guests and everything is so romantic..." She twirled away, drifting off to mingle. "Keep up the good work!"

So, that was what I did. Smile and wave, smile and wave... The two other bridesmaids, both of whom also worked for Jamjars and wore identical dresses, performed their roles with a controlled passion that told me they were professionals, but not much else. Odds were, they had done this so many times that they were bored out of their minds. Or, they were doing their jobs and restraining themselves from mingling. Or, they were introverts who spent the whole time pony-watching, like me. Or... any number of things, really.

There was one other batpony at the wedding, a mare with a burn mark on her face whom I guessed to be in her mid-forties. She didn't seem quite as enthusiastic as some of the other guests, and was about as interested in watching me as I was in watching her. Our eyes met often, but she always kept her distance with a frown of quiet disapproval.

My run-in with Kuiper, now a full week ago, had been the furthest I'd ever gotten towards understanding the weird looks I constantly received. Plenty of ponies continued to tip their hats at me, and while I hadn't ran into any more who were combatively snobbish like the mare on my first visit to Eaststone, there were definitely also ponies who gave me frowns or else wouldn't meet my eyes. Once, a stallion even got up and left when I sat next to him in a train car.

It felt like everyone had something they thought of me, and all the ones who didn't show it just... didn't show it. This was the first time I had seen another batpony in more than distant passing, though. How come she seemed unhappy to see me? If my own kind were so rare and unusual, I'd have expected us to stick together.

Clearly, there was a lot more going on here than a cult of hat-tipping and one rude shopper. But I wasn't getting to the bottom of it at this wedding, so for now, I let it drop.

Instead, I turned my thought to the chapel altar, still smiling and waving to anyone who got near. Finding out what Ironridge worshiped, or even any progress on the light spirit at all, was something I'd made no headway at all on either in my two weeks at Ironridge. The last week in particular had been a mix of pretending Egdelwonk wasn't stalking me and obsessively using my train pass, getting a very good feel for the layout of the city's network. I told myself I was being productive and learning something useful, but mostly I loved being in a giant, moving machine.

And no, the irony of using the train pass Egdelwonk had given me wasn't lost on me. I just really liked the trains.

Eventually, the wedding moved on, and the sleepy-looking mare at the altar waved her flower staff over the couple and said some words that made them start kissing again. I made myself watch in morbid fascination, partly because if I wanted to do this full-time I'd need to get used to it, and partly because I suspected Corsica would have no problem around kissing lovebirds and me finding it weird meant I was weird in return. Also, Jamjars looked positively giddy at the other side of the room, and it was giving me that strange old feeling I used to get pre-avalanche when Corsica and Ansel would tell jokes that went over my head.

The couple embraced. The crowd cheered. Several more corks flew. I just smiled and waved.





Two hours later, the party had come to a close. Most of the guests had shuffled out, but a fat stallion in a tux had passed out behind a support pillar and flower staff mare was trying to drag him away. A janitor - hopefully not one of Egdelwonk's - was disappointedly scrubbing at a stain on the roll-out carpet where it looked like someone had emptied a whole bottle. The other two bridesmaids had doffed their smile-and-wave act and were chatting together at a mile a minute as they picked up fallen streamers and confetti and swept up the rice we had spent the whole party throwing.

"Well, I'd say that was a success," Jamjars declared, walking up behind me with a dreamy look on her face. "Another happy couple, off on their honeymoon... Low payers, of course, so it wouldn't have been the end of the world if you had somehow turned this into a romcom. But you didn't, so we're good." She grabbed me and hugged me. "So, dream job, or what?"

"It wasn't very difficult," I admitted, fidgeting.

Jamjars let go and gave me a concerned look.

"What?" I tilted my head.

She tilted hers too. "Two ponies, having the happiest and most romantic day of their lives? Uttering their vows, friends turning out from all over to wish them well? You saw all that and the most notable part is that it was easy?"

I shuffled uncertainly. "Err, yeah?"

Jamjars' face fell further. "Two lovers, holding each other in a passionate embrace?"

I shrugged. "It looked kind of like they were trying to mug each other."

Jamjars' eye twitched. "Oh, for..." She took a deep breath. "You're just like Starlight, aren't you? She didn't get it either. Why does this allllways keep happening to meee..."

Admittedly, that last one had been on purpose, and I chuckled a little to myself as she walked away. I wasn't that dense. But if she was going to make me feel like I was missing out on something, I got to have a little joke too.

"You're hired, by the way," Jamjars called back to me as she moved to carry away a soiled tablecloth in her horn. "Seems a classical Varsidelian tragedy to waste a job like this on someone who doesn't appreciate it, but you've got the skills and nepotism is how you get ahead in the world. Whomp whomp..."

Well, that was the end of that. And it hadn't even been so hard to ask in an inconspicuous way. I pretty much just had to go up and do it. Now that I was safe from military conscription, I could get back to making Egdelwonk leave me alone, finding the Composer, understanding Aldebaran's motives, studying ether crystal fault planes, finding the light spirit, learning what Ironridge worshiped, exploring the city, acclimating to the Night District, meeting Kuiper's Zero Armada, learning why ponies kept tipping their hats at me, checking out the Sky District, getting an airship, getting my own room, figuring out why I kept having that reaction to mother of pearl, learning more about the me under my mask, helping Corsica see if Cold Karma was somehow behind the city's climate... Yikes, I had a lot of goals. One down, fifty-something to go.

Egdelwonk peered out of a trash can next to me. "Congrats on the new gig," he whispered, sliding out a wing and passing me a roll-up party whistle.

"Screw off," I told him, taking it and blowing weakly. Phweee.

This had been happening a lot, lately.





Several hours later, I dragged myself through the door to me and Corsica's room in Jamjars' house, barely stopping to knock, and flopped down on my bed in a heap. I needed a shower, but my ears told me it was already in use, so I would have to wait.

The shower switched off. I told myself to get up, but my legs didn't move. Minutes later, Corsica stepped in, her barrel wrapped in a towel and her mane dripping. "Halcyon?" She blinked at me.

"Oh. Hey," I said, again telling myself to get up yet somehow staying put.

"First day of work: done," Corsica proclaimed, dropping her towel so she wouldn't drip on the carpet and standing on it as she rooted through her dresser for more. "How about you? Rough day?"

"It went alright," I answered. "Not exactly fulfilling, but Jamjars said I'm hired and it's not very intense. Just a lot of standing around and smiling."

Corsica raised a soggy eyebrow. "You sure about that? Because you look trashed."

I tried to shrug and wound up just flailing a little in my bed. "That's because afterward I went back down to the Night District. Might have pushed myself a little hard today, but I've gotta acclimate to the heat so I can see what's down there."

Corsica stepped over to me, abandoning her towel. "Heatstroke, huh? Sounds like the best thing for me to do is shake and spray this water all over you?"

I grunted. That didn't sound so bad.

"And you lecture me about not taking the heat well," Corsica huffed, going back to drying herself. "Maybe take a page out of my book and never go outdoors? I'll go get you a drink..."

She left, and returned moments later with the promised drink in tow. As I gulped deeply, she went back to grooming herself. "So, what's being a wedding planner's assistant like? There's gotta be more than just pretending to be scenery."

I sat up. "Not really. I mean, maybe there will be once I start doing it for real. I really did just stand around and throw rice at ponies for a couple hours."

Corsica chuckled. "Sounds like my kind of job. Co-workers?"

"A few, but I didn't meet them," I explained. "Not sure if they were with Jamjars or the newlyweds, actually. You?"

"Hard to say," Corsica replied. "I don't think they want me knowing how big or small this 'Junior Dumpster Despot Corps' is, real name by the way. I'm paired up with a mentor called Papyrus, though he's a colt who's definitely younger than I am. He's... weird. In a teenage colt way. Big mouth, big ego, the works. Probably would have gotten along fine with Ansel, before he got amnesia. Not that I like him, of course. I've grown out of that."

"Sounds like a goon," I pointed out. "So how do you have a mentor for being a janitor?"

Corsica shrugged. "Gotta learn the lay of the land, right? Where to find supplies, where to clean, how to not vandalize something with a botched cleaning job. Ha. Can you imagine me, doing that?" She cracked a grin.

Let's put it this way: here at the Department of Detritus, we clean up Cold Karma's messes. A memory of Egdelwonk drifted through my head. That includes oops-I-broke-it messes, and also oops-someone-leaked-the-big-bad's-name-to-the-media messes...

Was Corsica not mentioning that part, or had Egdelwonk not told her what his department supposedly actually did yet? I remembered her talking earlier about the job like it was her ticket to go snooping around the governmental buildings at the top of Cold Karma. If it was a job that involved keeping secrets, and Egdelwonk could see everything, maybe she was deliberately not telling me...

If that was true, I would trust her and help keep it a secret by not mentioning it, either. So, I nodded and returned the grin.

"Yeah. Old Graygarden would probably flip his lid if he could see you now," I agreed.

Corsica poked at her mane, a half-dry, frizzy, tangled mass. "Heh. Prolly would."

She went back to her grooming, and left it at that. And the silence gave me time to think, and my mind quickly started going down a track it hadn't wandered before: me and Corsica both had jobs. In different parts of the city. She would be working the Ice District, at least until Egdelwonk trusted her with his whole secret-covering-up thing. I would be working... well, anywhere else, because probably very few ponies wanted to get married in a dingy metal factory. Unless they did? I was far from an expert.

The point was, for two and a half years Corsica and I had hunkered down together in a lab in Icereach to do math, track dates, operate microscopes and tiny machines, swap theories, and generally hang out and fool around. I always thought of those days as the best days of my life, and I hadn't been in Ironridge long enough to draw a solid line between now and then. Those days... could become the old days. And if there was one thing I wanted to take from them and carry into the new days, it was us being friends. Sure, we were roommates, but we had to do stuff together, too.

"Hey," I said, getting out of bed. "Might be crazy, but there are a few hours left in the night. Wanna go explore the city with me?"

Corsica gave me a dubious look. "You sure that's the best idea? I don't take heat well, and you were just being a dumb-dumb with the Night District."

I gave her a sneaky grin. "We could go to the Sky District."

Corsica tilted her head. "What's in the Sky District?"

"I dunno." I shrugged. "Some old ruins? Jamjars told me it's an interesting place to visit, and that it's much cooler than the rest of Ironridge."

Corsica thought about that for a moment. "...Sure. Sounds fun. Why not?"

I grinned.

She grinned back.

Yep. We were definitely still friends.





It took longer than I was planning to actually find the way up to the Sky District, a process that involved a lot of walking around and looking at maps that didn't mention it and even bothering locals who didn't seem to want to remember. Initially, Corsica complained about the heat, but piped down once she decided I had gotten the point, especially considering I wasn't about to argue it.

At least she was more dressed for the weather than the times she collapsed out here early in our visit. That didn't mean she was walking around with her talent exposed, though - somewhere, she had found a garment consisting of a thin triangle of cloth anchored to a light, ornamental saddle and arranged so it covered her flanks and only her flanks while providing as little insulation as possible. When I asked her about it, she said Jamjars bought it on the black market.

Why anyone would want to hide their special talent when talents were so hard to come by was just as much of a mystery to me as why the equipment for doing so would be found on a black market. Any normal ponies, at least. Myself and Corsica didn't count.

Eventually, our search met with success. High up along the Day District wall and not too far around from the Eaststone Mall train station, a big plaza opened out, carved back into the mountain wall and extending forward over the cliff face on reinforced metal beams, providing the biggest patch of flat land I had seen so far in Ironridge. The plaza was meticulously worked, with artistic swirls and arrangements of cobblestone in the floor, and decorated railings with a far higher degree of craftsponyship from the cheap glass barriers that often appeared in train stations. Leading into the mountain was a circular, rounded arch decorated like a gigantic gear, the road rising through a hole in its middle. But even though that was our goal, the view across from the gear momentarily stole my attention.

In one place, the railing parted, and a catwalk extended out over the city, resting on a support beam that had been made longer than the others. The plaza already extended for one or two street-widths out over the cliff face, and this viewpoint easily doubled that, ending in a glass platform that gave the biggest and vastest view of Ironridge I had seen so far. I remembered viewpoints and lookouts similar to it from before, but none so high up, and none that stretched so far.

Corsica wandered up behind me as I stood at the edge. "This high up, the air's almost breathable," she remarked, fixing a stray hair in her mane.

"Yeah," I whispered, feeling like I was in a shrine. I turned around. The catwalk was slightly sloped, letting me look down on the plaza at an angle and see it properly, framed against the mountain. "It's crazy how empty this place is, up here. It looks like it was designed for hundreds and hundreds of ponies."

"It probably was," Corsica said. "From what I've heard, the Sky District was designed to be the entry point to all of Ironridge. I guess they moved their airports down the mountain after the old one got smashed?"

"Must be," I answered. "Although with all this stuff still here, wouldn't it have been easier to rebuild? Maybe they just wanted to relocate it closer to old Sosa."

Corsica shrugged. "Well, guess the traffic will be light for a bit."

I nodded uneasily. "Yeah. I guess it was hard to get directions because nobody actually comes here anymore? Although it did kind of feel like ponies were avoiding us more than usual..."

"Were they? I just figured they were snobs," Corsica said. "Or that Ironridge has some social code of ethics that involves keeping your distance, making eye contact and not saying anything at the same time."

"Dunno." I started walking back toward the archway. "Usually, I get all sorts of different looks. Probably 'cause I'm a bat, but I can't figure out for sure. Today, everyone seemed a lot more on edge. I wonder if something happened."

"As long as they keep it to looks, that's their problem and not ours," Corsica proclaimed. "And if they don't, we'll just go all Yakyakistan-style on them."

"Maybe beating ponies up just because we can isn't-"

"Relax," Corsica told me. "Newly-minted janitor, remember? Even if we make a mess we can't sweep under the rug ourselves, I'm pretty sure I've got some connections who will do it for us. Now let's get out of this place and see some weather that's actually cool."





The walkway inside the tunnel was slightly raised from the floor, with lights under the edges that perfectly matched the color of the rock, making it seem like the rock walls themselves were glowing until I poked my head over to check. Soon, however, we ran into a steep slope, a grated floor at the end of the walkway and no road going forward. Two massive belts ran up and down the sloping tunnel, and I could see several grated platforms pinned to them, giant lifts that were supposed to carry ponies up and down. After looking at them for long enough, I almost suspected the grates were arranged in such a way as to pass through each other, so that new platforms could rise up directly through the floor.

It would have been wonderful, if it wasn't trashed.

Mounds of broken glass had been shoveled to the sides of the grate area, filling up the lighting trench between the walkway and the actual tunnel. Detritus such as bent and twisted metal mixed with it, plus a lot of things that were clearly garbage, like discarded cans and bottles, old tarps and a decrepit folding chair. Corsica's ears fell as she beheld the wreck, and mine went further back than they already were.

A staircase, I noticed, had been chiseled into the steep tunnel ramp, inexpertly and unevenly and full of zigzags and wobbly switchbacks. It was probably still the easiest way up.

"Uhh..." Corsica glanced at the mess, then lifted a hoof, showing me her dainty, noise-making shoes. "Here's hoping these work against broken glass."

We started climbing, and eventually the source of the debris came into sight, far up above. The tunnel opened out above the mountains, and it looked as though it just kept going, a metal wire frame rising up along with the lift and continuing the trajectory above the ground. But that had long since collapsed and caved in, and all of that glass had just tumbled down the elevator chute until it reached the bottom in disarray.

"Wasn't planning on climbing a mountain today," Corsica huffed as we neared the top. "Makes me... glad we're... really buff."

I nodded. Admittedly, I had been slacking on my usual training lately, and finding a good place where we could fight each other for practice sounded like a decent idea. At least spending hours wandering the city wouldn't let me go fully to seed.

The top of the shaft presented itself, a walkway made of hammered-together crate parts and a discarded beam of iron forming the final short bridge to the surface. Thoughtfully, someone had nailed and fused upside-down bottlecaps to the floor to help with traction. Corsica led the way, and I peeked out behind her, getting my first real look at the Sky District.

This was not level ground. It was craggy, rocky and barren, and yet full of life as well, patches of dirt sticking to rocks and building up in crevices that were overflowing with plant life, mostly tall, spiky grasses and bright, spiky flowers that looked like they would hurt to touch. I clambered to the top of one stony outcropping and couldn't believe my eyes: it was like the mountains as seen from an airship, only in one to a thousand scale, a field of crags that was surprisingly flat in the grand scheme of things yet more like a forest of spikes and cones that were three times as tall as I was.

Buildings were there, too, the remains of the fallen glass tunnel leveling out and passing through three majestic, still-standing support columns to a structure that looked more like a series of plates sitting on spires than any building I had ever seen. Needle-thin support poles held up huge platters, reminding me of the stems of fancy glassware, and the platters were protected by reinforced glass domes like mushroom caps, though most of the domes were missing or broken or incomplete. To the right was another such stand of platters, and further to the right was a wide, low facility I couldn't make out well. To the left was a proud, golden spire, the most intact-looking building of the bunch. All four had clearly once been linked by another raised tunnel, but only stretches of it remained, empty support pillars telling the story of where it had once been.

"Woah," Corsica said. "The Ice District should have tipped me off, but Ironridge engineers are crazy."

"Hey, is that..." I squinted. "Look!"

Across from us, behind the stand of buildings our tunnel had once gone to, a solitary airship was rising, a streak of blackish pink burning above it like a colorful shooting star. My science side was very interested in why an airship might possess a thing like that, but more practically...

"Guess they do still get air traffic up there," Corsica pointed out.

"Guess so," I agreed, wondering how long we had left in the night. "Well, come on. Let's not have dragged our rumps up here for nothing. Wanna go check the ruins out?"





There was something resembling a road leading to the nearest cluster of ruins. Any wagon would have its wheels fall off in an instant, and the ground was so rough and uneven it felt like someone had tried to smooth it with nothing but dynamite. Often, we crossed crevices that had been filled with loose, gravelly debris that crunched under our hooves and hadn't fully settled.

Corsica's eyes wandered to the scenery, and mine did too. It was quite wet up here, the rough terrain trapping rainwater and creating hundreds of miniature lakes, most no bigger than Jamjars' bathtub. Flowering lilies bloomed in the water, stemmed plants with big leaves rising up along the shore, with big, bucket-like blooms that made me want to reach up and look inside.

Vegetation hadn't really been a thing in Icereach. We could see it from the Day District, looking down at the Night District canopy, but that was hardly different than seeing a picture in a book. Here, the world was alive, and that life was all around us.

"Look," Corsica said. "Have you noticed it's getting colder?"

I nodded. It wasn't my immediate interest, but I had.

"The plants are changing with the temperature," Corsica pointed out. "The further we get from the lip of the crater, the cooler it gets. These ones must like it colder than the ones back there. Crazy, huh?"

I blinked, processing that for a moment, and realized she was right. It was a gradual change, not noticeable if I just looked over my shoulder, but that first view stepping out of the tunnel was fresh enough in my mind that the contrast was obvious.

"It's almost like they're ponies," I said, walking over and inspecting a vine. "You, me, we've got different favorite climates. Ansel too. We can put up with others to an extent, but left alone, we just go where we're most comfortable." My mind filled with an image of these plants getting up and walking around in search of the right weather, and I giggled.

"Wonder if the scientists in Icereach know that," Corsica added. "I bet you could make an entire study out of these things and where they grow best."

"I bet they don't." I stared harder at the vine, picking a leaf to zero in on. The closer I looked, the more detail it seemed to have, like a fractal... "Although the Ironridge scientists do. Bet they need to care about that a whole lot to get crops to grow in the Night District without bursting into flame."

Corsica snorted. "Phooey. Guess we won't be able to patent this."

I laughed again. "I bet there are a trillion other things that seem obvious out here, but we don't learn in Icereach. Like, think about it. We've got snow potatoes, right? I bet those don't grow around here. Probably have their name in the first place because they're capable of growing back home. So someone's gotta know. We just... never thought about it."

Corsica nodded. "Yup. Come on, though. Unless we wanna look at flowers all night, we need to get a move on."





Debris became more common as we approached the ruins, twisted hunks of metal laying at the bottom of crevices and sticking up out of lakes. It was like the skyport had just exploded, or been torn apart by something strong enough to fling the detritus everywhere. My neck craned further and further up as we approached the edge of the central raised disk, searching for stairs or a way up. It wasn't until we were almost beneath it that I realized the ponies of the Sky District lived beneath those platforms, not on them. Duh. A much better way to shelter from the elements...

A gate made out of scrap metal heralded the end of the road and the start of town. Welcome to Dead Herman, a proudly-drawn sign proclaimed, ramshackle walls stretching out to either side that looked more like they were there to mark a boundary than to stop anyone from crossing.

"Dead Herman?" Corsica gave the sign a suspicious look. "What's that, this town's name? Who names their town Dead Herman?"

"This place, apparently," I said, leading the way inside.

The road continued for a ways, flatter and smoother this time, along with the ground around it - probably leveled during the skyport's initial construction. A main street of sorts had cropped up to fill the space, scrap dwellings stacked up behind vendors and storefronts. Everything was destitute and recycled, made from smashed materials obviously looted from above, like the kind of shantytown you could only find in stories. And yet the ponies we passed were well-dressed, neon lights flashed from hoofmade signs and advertisements, and the streets pulsed with late-night life.

Somewhere, someone was playing an upbeat jig on a saxophone. A trio of foals chased each other out one alley and into another. Barkers and criers hung out in front of their respective stalls, though plenty of entries just hung open, yellow lights welcoming everyone inside. The architecture told one story, but everything else spoke of a party that didn't end.

"Woah." Corsica beamed around us as we walked, the skyport's metal roof soaring overhead and blocking out the stars. "I dig this place."

I wasn't about to be too hasty in following suit, especially when I noticed a stallion behind a support pillar giving us a lecherous glance - even if this place looked bright and friendly, Jamjars had made a point of reminding me to stay alert. But the weather was pleasingly cool, so I vowed to enjoy myself, too.

We kept walking, eventually coming upon a central plaza. It was wide, round and well-lit, with an eye-catching center fixture: a huge block of marble that looked vaguely like a tomb, and atop it, a noble bronze statue of a young unicorn mare. Something about the display gave me a chill.

Corsica moved up closer to examine the plaques, and I followed. The statue had its own, looking old and a little battered, like it had been there since before the statue was dragged out here into its present position. Shinespark of Sosa, it read. In the year 965 A.B., became the first pony to be born on an airship.

Huh. So she'd be... what, thirty-eight now? Thirty-nine? She looked maybe fourteen in the casting. This statue must have been around for a while.

The lower plaque was newer, if less descriptive: Here lies Herman, Ambassador of Yakyakistan. Others may forget the mare who laid him low, but we will always remember.

I glanced between the tomb and the statue atop it several times more. Jamjars had mentioned the Steel Revolution involved a conflict between Ironridge and Yakyakistan, hadn't she? Maybe this had been part of it.

Something about that statue, though... I got a prickling feeling I couldn't quite explain that this mare wasn't right. There was something wrong with her, some reason she was very bad news. It felt like... I rubbed my head. Concentrating on this feeling was harder than it should have been.

Did that mean this feeling of unease had to do with something behind my mask? Usually, it did, but I had no idea what kind of thing I could have learned and then forgotten to make me feel this way. Granted, that was usually the point, but still. Bizarre.

"She's handsome," Corsica pointed out, admiring the statue with none of my reservations. "Bet you could rock that manestyle."

"Yeah," I said absentmindedly, still focusing on myself.

For a moment, she was quiet, and I turned away, deciding that if this was something I didn't want myself knowing, trying to pry at it would be a fool's errand until I could get somewhere solitary, take off my mask and reassess whether it needed to stay a secret. The moment I did, I blinked.

There was a stallion strutting through the plaza, a fat old lavender pegasus with a black bowler hat and a long black goatee. But his goatee had a jagged red lightning bolt running through it, and his mane was similarly garish, sporting bright red streaks wherever it poked out from his snugly-fitting hat. His tail's motif was exactly the same.

I blinked again. Nature didn't generally produce black and red manes, not unless two parents specifically got together for their phenotypes and stuff. It was like... a universal constant of fairness in life, because anyone who actually got one would be marked for villainy or at least being a huge punk from birth, and things didn't work that way. Which meant two things: this stallion was dying his mane, and both he and his stylist had an ego the size of the moon.

Whatever his personality, I could respect that. So I nodded in respect.

He caught the gesture and tipped his hat. "Ladies!"

That got Corsica's attention. "What? Uh, hey?"

Now the stallion started wandering over, and I stood my ground, curious what I had gotten us into. "Nice beard," I remarked.

"Thank you!" He nodded again. "The Howenator accepts your compliment with gusto."

"Uhhh..." Corsica tilted her head, clearly having no idea what was going on.

I had no idea either, other than that chance meetings in the Sky District could apparently get interesting.