//------------------------------// // Chapter 59 - Chromatic Interjection // Story: The Stereotypical Necromancer // by JinxTJL //------------------------------// "Light Flow!" The faintest echo of a furious shout jerked Light back from the fringe of slumber, the once profound peace of nothingness rippling at once to gut-wrenching fear as consciousness slammed back into him. The scratchy weight of the mattress against his cheek. A grimy feeling. A hundred different aches. What few thoughts he instinctively put together as his eyes flew open were immediately rescattered by three, rhythmic bangs that each brought a painful pulse of adrenaline-laced blood rushing through his body. His first conscious breath was a deep gulp of air, stuck halfway in his craw when his jaws snapped shut on his lip from pure, shock-laced panic. What was happening? Who was there? Was he dying again? He'd barely finished three, terrified thoughts as he scrambled up onto sleepy legs before the mattress under him began to buckle, and he began to stumble. All too suddenly there was noise and definition and physicality and his mind was awake and- ouch! His head hit the floor- stars flew by- followed by the rest of his still-numb body in short sequence as he toppled over the side of his bed. No longer numb, he noted as his teeth rattled in his skull, settling just enough to allow him to eke out a pained groan and to peel his eyes open to the shadowed ceiling. The sudden shock of it all just might have been enough to kill him once and for all on its own, yet somehow the moment became all the more terrifying as a nerve-rending slam rung through his room, then through his bones. The window audibly rattled, and his entire house shook from a deafening crash as sense returned in a flash aside the pain and the delirium. He wrenched his eyes widely open as he hurriedly bent his still-trembling back forward into a sitting position, catching a hot, dust-scented breath as he scanned the shadowed wooden wall over his bed- the closed window, barely light outside- then jerked around to stare at his bedroom door. His heart jumped into his throat as an immediate sense of cold fear washed over his extremities; a thousand thoughts of danger and doom ran through his mind too quickly to process as the world seemed to still to a dispassionate grey around him. His fur began to prickle with foreboding as his entire focus in that moment zeroed down to nothing except that door. Somepony had broken in. But he might've recognized that voice. It was less conscious thought and more instinct that had him pushing forward onto all fours and twirling around to his door. He didn't waste a single second, discarding the throbbing ache in his head and gnawing fretfully at his lip as he rushed in a flurry of painfully awake hooves to the closed portal, not bothering to stir the still-sleeping mana under his skin as he reached a hoof forward to fling it open with all of his feeble strength. Without a blink, he pranced into the room on a rush of terrified energy, jerking his head around to the beat of four, solid clops. The up-tempo tension painfully straining his ears as he took in as many details as he could in as little time as possible while hoping his hammering heart wouldn't just explode. As it was since last he'd seen it, the room still remained dully lit by branching cracks of shadow, barely half-cast in fading orange infancy from the open door at the far end. His eye was instantly drawn to the overturned desk amidst a field of gleaming glass dust, hardly visible in the middle of the room as the dusk waned. Of course, he only knew the dusk was waning from the open door. Actually... open wasn't correct. Across the room, his door had come entirely loose from the frame, leaving a ruin of splinters and hanging planks in its place; the brutalized structure instead laid dead on its back directly in front of the now perpetually agape entrance to his home. With the downed barrier acting as a raggedy brown carpet for the entrance, it somehow made what little of the room was lit seem even smaller. It was immediately stressful- stars above why him- but even through the spiraling vortex of disassociation he was rapidly disappearing into, he still found time to make a note that its severance must have been the fourth bang that had so rudely shaken his house. Some small part of him found the discovery comforting in some oddball expression of roundabout irony. It was mostly dismaying. Standing over it in the dusk-filtered light of the previously-filled frame, a slightly guilty scowl on her blue face, was Rainbow Dash, daring to sport a golden necklace bejeweled with a thunderbolt-shaped ruby in his home. Her flushed cheeks and limp, multicolored locks spoke of some kind of exertion, though her tense, jerky posture didn't exactly scream aggressor. She obviously was; it didn't matter how sickly the hue of her bright, blue soul was. Why was that, though? It only took a few seconds to dissect what he saw. All of his vast speculative ability soundly led him to one inarguable conclusion: that Rainbow Dash seemed surprised. He'd not been asleep for very long, and his house remained otherwise unmauled. That was all he gleaned. And then the anger sparked to life in his chest. "What in Tartarus' deathly bespoken name have you done?!" he cried in horror- far sooner than the words even entered his head- while he cantered closer in open-mouthed mortification. The entire world seemed tinged ever so blurrily red as he mindfully skirted the glass around his downed desk, the fear for his life sinking in an instant to bitter vengeance as the clinging grasp of sleep sloughed off, dousing him in pure, heart-pumping adrenaline. He barely held his tongue from some kind of thoughtless slur against her kind as Rainbow Dash, somewhat struck from his sudden appearance as she broke into his home, jerked a startled glance from him to his downed door. "Uh..." she droned, fixing her dim stare on him then his door and then him again in sequence as she took a hesitant step back towards the outside. "It... was an accident?" Yeah, he was gonna believe anything she said. She was gonna try to sell him a bridge next, and he was gonna buy into that, too! Cart him off to become the duke of Manehatten, why wouldn't she?! He shook the weak apology off with a snort, feeding the growing flame behind his cheeks with a dose of hot air. "How, on the great green globe of Equus, do you knock somepony's door down by accident?!" he snapped as he advanced further, keeping his head high and his gaze low with arrogant fury as the sky blue pegasus before him cringed back with a seethe. Her eye flicked edgily to the side, then cautiously back to him as he growled at her. "An accident is innocuous! An accident is dropping a cup! Bumping into somepony! Forgetting a date!" He stopped in his tirade to recover a thin breath, gathering his all into his chest as his hoof slammed into the floor. "It is not an accident to besiege my home!" he snarled in a moment of excess enragement, and as his own voice deafened his strained ears in the small space of his home, the world seemed to darken with antipathy as the mare before him finally grew a careless scowl of her own. "Hey, it's not my fault your dumb door can't handle a freakin' knock!" Rainbow snapped back, straightening as her soul shone and spun at once into a purplish-red shade, and she took a pointed stomp forward. The show of defiance grew all the more infuriating as she cantered straight over his fallen door, showing abject disrespect for its passing as she stepped off its surface, rolling either shoulder menacingly with every step closer. "Anyway, I'm the one who came here to yell, so go ahead and can it!" The raspy shout clashing on his ears drew genuine, incredulous confusion from somewhere behind his font of anger, enough to manifest a scowling gape where he'd been gritting his teeth. "Wha-" His knee-jerk cliché swept into something very intensely hateful as the somehow aggrieved mare provokingly jerked her head up towards him, and Light remembered to shake the confusion off. Don't let her get to him. "You came here to break my door down and to scream at me?!" He shook his head with a sputter as she drew up to him, the smaller mare holding herself nearly up to his height through sheer moxie as he threw his hoof aside in irate befuddlement. "What in all the hells have I done to you, you maniac?!" Her mouth opened, and his gaze was drawn to her angry eyes. The infuriatingly beautiful pink before him nearly caused him to double-take, leaving him defenseless as her hoof suddenly jabbed into his chest. Not painful, but absolutely infuriating. "You wanna know what the hell you did? Well, I'll tell you, you no-good creep!" Her flat insult only half registered as he skittered two steps back from her push, only recovering in time to glare defensively back at her as she snarled into his face. "You got Applejack all upset!" What- what even- what in the- how- why- The many- many questions that immediately crowded his mind had to be shoved unceremoniously aside as he tried to make room for rebuttal. It was hard- his mouth didn't seem to want to shut- but he managed, however barely, to make a case for words as he jerkily shook his head from side to side. "What... do you even mean?!" Whatever excess anger he could funnel into his tone was a bit less than he'd managed before as he took yet another unsteady step back, due of course to all the incomprehension. Before his still sleep-laced eyes, the world behind Rainbow Dash began to gently whorl as her snarl grew more gritted teeth. He tried to blink the delirium away to no avail as the scene before him stubbornly continued to change. Maybe he'd banged his head harder than he'd thought. In one moment, the mare was set firmly onto the floor like a bedeviled oak tree, yet in the next, somehow keeping in time with the shifting space behind her, her wings unfurled with a strong gust. Her figure at once grew frighteningly larger, shading the falling dusk light through curtains of flexing feathers as she stepped into the air with unfathomable ease, following his next unconscious step back and keeping her hoof level with his face as she poked it forward again. "You heard me!" she accused, forcing him back another step to avoid her pointing hoof poking his eye out. Anger- surprisingly genuine anger- gleamed in what he caught of the mare's narrowed eyes, though her entire expression towered over him by unfair virtue of flight. "Applejack's been acting like a zombie all day because of whatever you did to her last night! She was practically green the whole way through our entire adventure!" She poked her hoof forward again, catching him with his butt against the wall and managing to make contact with his forehead as Light instinctively growled. "So, fess up! What'd you say to her?! What'd you do?! Huh?!" Maybe it was the sharp point of dull pain left on his forehead by her hoof. Maybe it was how close she was, still yelling at him. Maybe it was being trapped against the wall. Maybe it was his tired delirium from being woken up. Maybe it was how she thought she knew enough to talk about Applejack to him. For whatever reason, he found it so very tempting. She was so close. It was right there. He felt the urge; it was like a hammering, smoldering barb under his skin- like sharp clawing behind his eyes. He always felt it; it sat in the back of his mind like a monster in a wooden cage, just waiting and watching with such calculating patience. It was so strong then, and he knew it would be so easy. She was smaller than he was- pegasi tended to be on the lithe side. She was quick, though; maybe he wouldn't be able to subdue her, but if he got even the flimsiest hold, he'd have the time to get in and out. Mana seeps into flesh like a sponge; he'd felt it for himself. He could see it right there: blue shaded over with red to make the faintest purple. Spinning madly about in vacant circles. The annoyance would be out of his mane forever. What a prize hers would be. Such a talented mare. The Bearer of an Element of Harmony. It was just a flash. A single moment of temptation. That's all it was. A temptation. And yet it made his eyes itch. He knew what had to happen. He wanted the anger- it was so sinfully intoxicating, but he knew. It... had to go. One breath. One second. Out and in. Two seconds. Orange fur. Breathy laugh. Soft lips and tender whispers. He knew he was keeping her waiting; he could feel the tension rolling off her in waves, and he could practically see her fidgeting behind his closed eyes. She was such a fathomless nuisance. Stupid rainbow dodo. He'd had dreams of her falling out of the clouds and going splat. Treasured memories, however fake. Three... stupid, freakin' seconds. And he could breathe. When Light opened his eyes, the fringes of his vision were blissfully clear of purple smoke, though he couldn't say for sure that there hadn't been any. Rainbow hadn't backed off, so if she'd seen, then she hadn't cared to comment or to paste a reaction onto her face. Lousy ingrate. Like pestilence on wings. A sigh built in his chest, one that he clamped resolutely down on. It was fine; everything was fine. He wasn't that angry. Not enough to murder Rainbow Dash, anyway. His skin wasn't clammy, and his head wasn't hot with enraged fervor. The urge was safely locked back up. No... in actuality, what he felt most strongly was a sensible smattering of weariness. With dispassionate candor, he eyed the hoof stiff hovering just above his nose, then raised his gaze to the increasingly sour-faced mare it belonged to. If she pouted any harder, her face was just going to pucker in and disappear. Not like that'd be a bad thing. The day when Rainbow finally shut up would be a great day indeed. He blinked, and with the sensation of a plaster mask shattering, he hooked the end of his frown up into a sneer. "You have... no idea what you're talking about," he muttered resignedly as he dropped his gaze, casually waving her hoof out of his face as he turned. He could only assume she'd jerked back to avoid touching him, as though he was hazardous or something. He tried his best, sure, but he didn't think his frown was that toxic. Of course, the anger was still there- for both of them- but he didn't let either sway him as he left the wall and walked away from Rainbow Dash with a dismissive huff. The mare let out a half-spoken squawk of consternation as he turned his sights to the other side of his home, where his bathroom door sat. His thoughts were finally catching up to his whirling mind, and the racing urgency of his sudden awakening was slowing by the second. He was still tired- still so unbearably sleepy somewhere behind the lace of adrenaline- but he didn't think he'd be getting back to sleep anytime in the next twenty minutes. If he was up, then he might as well make use of the time. With conscious effort to seem nonplussed, he made for his bathroom in an easy trot, somehow traveling the entire distance without Rainbow jumping onto his back to rip his mane from its roots. As he came to a halt in front of the door, laying his hoof on its knob, he chanced a glance back to see his colorful nemesis trailing after him with cautious, continuous beats of her wings: a distrustful leer on her face and her forelimbs crossed sternly over her chest, within which rapidly spun a soul sporting a deep, suspiciously lime sheen. A suspicious color, indeed. It had taken him a long time of telling obvious lies to decide what shade of green it was. He shook his head with a groan as he turned to the door, pushing it open and bravely peeking his head into the dark room. He spared short glances to the vague shape of his bathtub and sink... and the box of brown contacts laying on its shady, black-speckled rim. He balked at the implication of the object for a moment, idly sliding his gaze up to the shadowed face of the mirror and his... ugh, was that what he really looked like? Applejack was a brave mare indeed to kiss that colt. ...Wait... Light blinked, pushing the door further open and taking a short step into the bathroom as he peered closer. Had that been..? He shut his eyes, pressing them tightly together until he saw dizzy stars, then opened them once more. He blinked once more for good measure as he stretched his neck out, straining to make what he'd seen out through the deep well of shadows. Okay, so he had seen right. His eyes were red. That wasn't right. He swallowed as he took a step back, flicking his eyes to the left of his reflection, and to what sat just behind the open door. He'd figured it'd been in the bathroom since it hadn't been anywhere else, but... The thought that... okay, he'd already known about his eyes changing color, but only to blue. And as disconcerting as seeing that box of contacts was, seeing for himself that his face wasn't how he'd remembered it might've been even worse. Nightmare Moon had the means to walk around as him without any tell whatsoever. The thought of it just added a whole other layer of... unpleasant, creeping, crawling motes on the lining of his throat to think about- and that was on top of the mental abuse and years of torment. She'd used his body. And his body had changed. He shook off a shiver as he stirred his mana and lit his horn, wincing at the ache behind his eyes as his magical pathways blearily woke from their own slumber. The stern handle of his erstwhile broom came quietly after him on a sparkling river of red as he turned from the bathroom with a seethe, leaving its door ajar as he trotted past the curiously peering mare in the air aside him. How long had his eyes been red? When had he last looked at himself in the mirror? It wasn't very often he did; there was a reason the bathroom was the only room with one, and it wasn't like he did much grooming. He just didn't like to look at himself very much. Something about it just irked him. He'd gone through a phase where he'd thought he liked to, but then he'd kept waking up in the night with cold sweats after mirror-related nightmares, and he'd come away from the whole period with some horrible insecurities. He'd spent years compensating, and... he was pretty sure he still was. Aside from his varied traumas, he knew one thing for sure. Nopony had brought it up, and that either meant it was nothing to worry about or that everypony everywhere was completely blind. There was also the possibility it had only cropped up after he'd fallen asleep- but he was trying not to think about that. He had to keep up appearances, at least in front of Rainbow Dash. At least for the moment. He could feel her glare trailing after him as he maneuvered the incumbent, cumbersome cleaning implement out in front of him, heading for the disastrous middle of the room where what he could see of the machine's remains laid. Only a few steps away from the bathroom, though, a lilting breeze began to wash over his side. "I've got plenty of ideas about you, jerk," came the annoyed grumble near his ear that he didn't even bother turning to reciprocate. If Rainbow wanted to idle at his side like an annoying little pigeon and spout insults like a... him, then she was free to do so. He was awake, he was home, and he didn't have much else to do besides get yelled at, so he might as well clean in the interim. He could argue and sweep. He was multifaceted like that. He let the brush tilt down to the floor, beginning to drag it wherever it looked necessary as he idly worked his jaw. Aching, like everything else was. He clamped his teeth together, licking the backs of them anxiously for a moment and keeping his eyes down as he stepped back to resweep a spotty patch of floor. So much to do... He flicked a glance up, to the mare at his side. He only caught a flash of frowning blue under the whole other spectrum before he turned back to his work, and managed a word. "You know..." It was two words, actually, and that very thought may have been what brought the slow chuckle rumbling from his chest as he shook his head dismissively. "Actually, never mind." He wore a spontaneous, sardonic smile as he flew his broom closer, making a show of pretending to lean on the floating stick as he shot a glance at the grimacing pegasus hovering over him. "Tell me all about the devil you claim I am," he mocked with a grin, pushing as much sarcastic intent into his expression as he could as he leered back at the brash mare. "Maybe Cerberus will hear your pleas of my villainy and drag me off to Tartarus." At least he still had his humor to keep him warm, however frigid Rainbow's glare was. He forced himself to snicker at his own joke to make a point as he turned back to his sweeping, advancing forward to the upturned side of his desk. There was really no way to actually see where there may have been glass... he'd better just sweep wherever. As he'd begun to do when blue crept into the top of his vision, and he found it prudent to catch her in his peripheral as the upper half of the mare leaned over the side of his desk. "How about we start with that," she spoke hotly, drawing Light's confused stare to her as she impatiently knocked one of her crossed hooves to the desk's face. "Why're you always such a mule?" The hostile tilt of her eyebrows was enough to catch his attention for a moment, but only a moment. He turned his attention back to his sweeping- he tried, anyway- as he gave a disdainful sniff for the mare hovering over the edge of his desk. "I could say the same about you, Bow." The nickname came as naturally as rote as he swept forward- literally swept forward- while he did his best to skirt under the air hazard as he tried to make a general circle of broken glass. Oh, there was one of those gems. Should he save those? His broom suddenly halted, and more importantly, a painful swell of fuzz pulsed through his head that he was forced to close his eyes in a seethe to weather. Nothing worse... than magical feedback... bucking... Tartarus... With some difficulty, he peeled a suddenly stinging eye open to see a blue hoof pressed to the top of his broom and a frowning pegasus at its end, having crept forward to perch entirely on the edge of his desk like some kind of massive, ego-driven bird. "I told you not to call me that," she huffed mightily, narrowing her gaze a moment before she pushed the tip of his broom away, allowing him to clumsily grab it in a crooked hoof. "It creeps me out." He glared at her, contemplating for the briefest second jabbing her in the eye with his broom before he thought less of the effort, and set the brush back to the floor with a huff. Resuming his cleaning, he opened his mouth to snark back that that was why he did it before he was suddenly interrupted- "Hey! That right there!" -bringing a frown to his face as he straightened, meeting Rainbow's eyes as she tilted back on her haunches to point accusingly at him. "You're always making up those mean nicknames for everypony! That's not cool!" He had to admit, a tiny fraction of his attention was more or less focused on wondering how in the world she was keeping her balance on the edge of his desk. It wasn't even wobbling or anything! Her hooves just sat flat on the wood's surface in a neat row like some ultra boring variation of a tightrope act. He hated that he admired her ability. Ugh, he hated her. As the miraculously balanced pegasus seemingly tried to bore a hole in his head through sheer vitriol alone, Light drew his broom closer to himself, slumping slightly as he tilted his head off to his right, towards the door. "Rainbow..." he muttered, losing himself to a seethe for a moment before he caught himself, and placed a hoof to his head with a shake. Growing headache. "-I don't know what you want from me. That's just... what I do." Was it nice? No, but neither was he. How was it his fault if mocking ponies was one of the few things that brought him joy? She should blame his upbringing. Not like he pointed hooves at her for being an egotist. Lousy egotist. He glared towards the door for another moment before he remembered a better use for the lour, and leered to the side until he caught the mare sitting on the side of his desk. He matched her angered gaze in every respect as he bit back a frustrated growl. "What are you even doing here?" His grimace rose to a sneer as he jerked his chin forward. "Did you really bust my door down at the cusp of night just to tell me you don't like me?" He honestly had no idea. He'd known since earlier that day that she was angry at him for whatever reason, but he'd never managed to puzzle out the reason. Rainbow Dash was many contradictory things- slacker, savant, egotist, self-pitying- but she wasn't needlessly cruel. However rude she often was, and however mean-spirited her pranks could sometimes be, she had morals- and despite what he'd always assumed, they were evidently laudable enough to earn her an Element of Harmony. That had to count for something. So, however much resentment burned in her narrowed pink eyes- far too acidic for a hero like her- the necklace she wore just under it told a different story. Much as he loathed it, and her. The mare was silent for a moment as he remained steadfast in their heated staring match, working her jaw behind a disgruntled pout as her tense brows continued to furrow. Finally, she began to tilt forward, keeping her eyes on him as her perch dissolved, her wings once again unfurling to catch her with ease as her hooves alit on the air and she dipped, then leaned towards him. Her body kept even as she drew closer and closer, her head tilting down as she went until they were about eye to eye. It was then, as he entertained the thought of whacking her in the nose with the end of his broom, that she spoke again. "Why'd your eyes change color?" It was a matter-of-fact statement as much as it was a genuine question, and for how horribly Rainbow's sense of flair somehow failed her in that moment as she cut straight to the issue, Light still felt a cold shiver of unease ripple uncomfortably across his pelt. His every hair stood on end as Rainbow narrowed her eyes, staring deeply into his own as they widened, and he swallowed. Uh oh. Which did she mean? She meant the red color, dummy. What should he say? He... didn't even know what caused it, so how could he lie effectively? Actually, he didn't know much of anything about the change since he'd only found out a few minutes ago. He didn't know long it'd been since it happened, whether it was permanent, or whether it wasn't really just some cruel trick of the light. Maybe it was about the blue- though why wouldn't she have brought it up earlier? Too many unknowns! For a split second, Light thought about turning away; perhaps, if he hid his face, she'd not see how her question affected him, and he could make some clever deflection. Yeah, that was good... But then, as another second went by, he realized all too quickly how stupid that would be. Of course she'd already noticed; Rainbow happened to possess a gift for observation, perhaps even greater than his own. If he could tell that there was something besides anger driving her, then she could tell he was deflecting out of fear. One plan came and was thrown into the trash in a blink, and he knew he'd already taken too long. He'd used up the vague second of inherently righteous denial he'd had with redundancies; now, he'd have to improvise. This wasn't like bickering with Applejack; if he took too long, then Rainbow would take his silence as confirmation of guilt, and she would not be giving him the benefit of the doubt. It was fine. It was gonna be okay. All he had to do was let his impulse drive him. Don't overthink. Let the lies form on their own; let the lies come naturally. As he'd been taught. "Contacts," he answered stiffly- too stiffly. He forced himself to relax, letting his broom sway out from where he'd leaned it onto his shoulder as he turned away in a huff, making a show of casual dismissal for the suspiciously peering pegasus. He returned to sweeping without so much as a second look at Rainbow- pointedly, because he'd provided a reason not to look at her anymore. He was making an assumption, he knew, but the other option was to say something lame and risk falling flat. That was almost as bad as failing to provide any lie at all. That notion had been... impressed upon him. The smoky realm of dreams. Warmth on his back. Her purring voice. He took a breath with each uneven pass of his broom, letting his eyes dart about the floor wherever they pleased as he pretended to search around for glass. Really, he was doing his best not to freak out and drop his façade: a task made all the harder as Rainbow Dash leaned in around his shoulder to catch his gaze. "What, is that it?" she sneered in an obvious taunt- and Light had to bite his lip. Hard. Her hooves uncrossed from her chest to lay on her sides, leaning low to badger him even as he returned his burning eyes down to the ground. "You just woke up! You think I'm gonna buy that you wear 'em in bed?" Light begrudgingly let his lip escape from its torture, reveling in the mental feeling of frustration as he pushed his mana out, sweeping his broom forcefully forward without bothering to look if Rainbow was in the way. She'd move aside, he reasoned as he trotted forward, letting his broom angle to the side as he veered in a gentle circle around the overturned desk. The physical action was doing wonders for his mental agility; it helped take his mind off providing an outward front as he submersed himself fully into his own thoughts. He'd answered contacts for two reasons: it was the most readily logical answer, of course, but then there was the somewhat misappropriated truth of it. The best sort of lie was the kind based on a truth, to wit: he'd actually worn contacts before. And so, he arrived to the answer. Light tossed his head, forcing the nervous, anxious energy building behind his eyes down as he instead pasted a cocky smirk onto his face, swiveling his head around to the pegasus hovering in place with as much flourish as he could manage while coincidentally holding a broom. "I didn't say I wore red contacts." His smarmy retort landed on deaf ears as Rainbow immediately threw her head to the side with a scoff, so he went further, rolling his eyes and waving his hoof in her direction in his most outlandish manner. "I typically wear brown, and I'm not right now!" A total, bald-faced lie, but hopefully good enough to escape scrutiny. All he had to do was stay calm. Or stay angry. Either worked. With a tepid sense of victory brimming behind his fear-driven smile- because he was bad at taking his own advice- he turned back to his sweeping. A stray gem here, some dangerous shards of glass there... it was fine enough just to bunch it all up near the machine's dead husk for the moment. Such a sad sight in the shadow of the table with its strewn wires all crossed and tied together. It'd probably never return to operational status. As he scrutinized the machine, there was suddenly a weight on the top of his head. Vertigo overwhelmed him for a moment as the weight tilted, and he was forced to dip forward and turn on the tips of his hooves to stop from being pushed down altogether. His broom went clattering... somewhere- hell if he knew. He swayed to a halt after his spin, locking apparently red eyes with unfitting pink narrow with distrust. Rainbow withdrew the hoof she'd used to tilt him around- as he swatted at it- and raised her front half with her hooves splayed in either direction in a clear, angered affront. "Yeah, right!" she jeered, jerking her head down and forcing him to lean back as she shouted into his face. "You expect me to believe that all these years, you've been wearing contacts every time I've seen you?! Get real!" Light stepped back with a snarl, feeling around with a scan of mana for his broom- it'd make a good weapon- but finding little success in anything besides flattening his ears and spitting out a retort. "I'm not lying!" He jerked his head in the direction of his bathroom. "You were looking in after me, weren't you?" He forced out a heavy snort, poking his hoof accusatorily forward. "If you didn't see the box of contacts on the sink, then you're a disgrace of a weathermare!" Rainbow sucked in half of a gasp as her front raised back up, drawing it short as she straightened out and bared her teeth in anger. "What'd you say?!" she barked roughly, lowering again and poking her hoof forward into his nose. He growled at the first dull prod, grimacing deeper as he pulled away from her second attempt, but keeping in close range of her. Something brushed against his formless awareness, bringing a vindictive smirk to his face as he pulled his broom up from the floor in a haze of red, poking its wooden tip forward to stave her off before she could advance on him again. "You heard me!" he threatened- he tried, anyway- jabbing his broom forward again as she tensed towards him, forcing her back as he advanced a step, instead. Her position in the air grew markedly less confident as she was strangely aggressed by a cleaning utensil, bringing a nearly unsure tilt to her expression. He knew she was quick enough- impulsive enough- to just knock the pole away, and him shortly after, but it was possible the sheer oddity of it was throwing her off. That was fine; he'd take whatever he could get. With his agile broomplay driving her back to whence she came, Rainbow Dash retreated away into the air with a deeply conflicted grimace, laying nearly all the way onto her back as her wings picked up speed to keep her aloft- scattering all his sweeping work! Hey! He cried out in vein-bursting frustration as glass blew in every direction and gems clattered across the floor, subtly thanking his lucky stars that none of it had hit him as he levied his stare up, glaring intensely at the rainbow pest who was peering down over her shoulder with an uneasy, regretful wince. Well, that's what it read as, anyway; her soul was still mostly red. He doubted she really felt bad. He poked his broom forward again, drawing her attention back as she swept away from him in a few flaps, nearly to the opposite wall. "You're full of it, Bow!" he shouted after her, raising his broom above his head and shaking it aggressively as he nearly stomped his hoof down- then thought better of it. Still, he shook his head with a rough snort, indulging the growing rage squeezing his chest as he screamed. "Go ahead and drop the act! You don't care enough to ask about my stupid eye color- so why're you really here?!" As he vented his rage, the oddly expressive mare curled her hooves into her stomach, quietly seething his way from the opposite end of the room. Her face scrunched tighter and tighter until she shut her eyes, raising her forelimbs to her head as she roughly shook with a strangled grunt. An angry little ball hanging in the air. What was causing her so much distress? What turmoil was driving her, even as far as going to war with herself? It was obvious she wasn't here just to yell at him, but he just couldn't decipher anything past her mask of anger. Why was she really here? Rainbow's tightly wound pose of pure self-contradiction abruptly ended as quickly as she'd started as, suddenly, her head sprang out from its cage of hooves with a wholly unrestrained groan. He'd barely had the time to recoil before her head fell back down with her hooves along with it: a stormy veil of fury raging like a pink thunderstorm behind her narrow stare, strikingly accented by the vein-deep lines of her tight, twitching grimace. It struck Light then that, from her position just aside the open door, she was flying nearly perfectly in between the terse line of fading dusk light and the shade of his darkened home. Half of her stare shone from a pink pinprick out of the dark, while the other half lent gleaming orange light to the glowing reflections of her still, utterly impassioned eye. And her Element. Half of the red jewel reflecting a hundred points of glinting orange light like a raging wildfire, while the other side sat dull and inert in the recesses of the color-muted void. An impossible contradiction of opposing forces, clasped uncompromisingly together in unholy matrimony by an unyielding golden frame. It was an odd, nearly contrived time to remember that... he didn't know anything about the Elements of Harmony. Not their individual names, nor their bounds, or even the leagues of their power. He didn't know a single thing. What if she were to invoke it? How was such a thing done? Where once had been a fire-fueled anger lodged at home in his heart, there instead nestled something new. An inscrutable emotion of incontinent proportions that he had no time to sift, as the light-divided mare hovering across the room from him like a heralded angel of heavenly duality began to waver. She shifted an inch one way, then the other. The dark, then the light. Her glowing eyes following every tilt. And Light held his breath for every tenth of a second that adrenaline forced him to endure. Watching in hopeless agony, waiting in tragic trepidation to see which side would win out on the battlefield of blue fur. The light, creating a million new patterns of endless, individual beauty with every motion off the jewel, or the dark, simply rising and ebbing into the tide. The corona of her spinning, blue soul beneath it all, set apart from the madness. Pure and undisturbed. Beginning to glow with colors beyond emotion. She hesitated for what may have been a single second. And then she shifted to the right, into the light. Light heaved out a breath from the pit of his chest where it had been held captive as Rainbow Dash let her front half fall, paying no mind to what must have been entirely his own delusion as her hooves alit on solid air. Obviously, her wings caught her with a lilting series of flaps, but to his eyes, it really did seem as though she was actually standing on the air. And then she began to walk forward- making the actual motions of walking as her wings drew her closer, somehow at perfect pace with the ambling of her hooves. If he hadn't stunned himself to silence with an odd moment of undeserved reverence, then watching the spectacle of a pegasus mimicking trotting in the air consummately would've shut him right up. Of course, Rainbow's voice ringing out would've done that as well. "Fine. You wanna know so bad?" She'd kept a grim mask of resentment through the moments after he'd yelled at her, but then, she began to scowl. Not hatefully, nor was it all that resentful as she'd been only moments ago. It was only a vague expression of loathing, for the sheer statement of it. A physical statement that carried its message through the mare's advance, first over his desk and then down its side as she solidly stepped down invisible stairs. She didn't waver in the slightest from her stare or her pace as her hooves made contact with the floor, and simply continued to carry forward. Even as her soundless steps began to creak under her and her wings slowed to a halt and folded into her sides, she continued towards him at the same, intent pace. Until they were eye to eye with little but two hoof-lengths between them. Light Flow, standing in silent inspection of the mare before him, and Rainbow Dash, rapidly proving that she did have some kind of self-control as, below the ruby clasp of her necklace, the uncountable strands of her spinning blue soul began to shine. Every strand running with messy, liquid paints in every color of the rainbow. In that moment, she stood taller than he did. Rainbow Dash thumped her hoof to her chest, keeping it just below her necklace as her frown deepened with... resolve. "I got Loyalty." The clear tone of her voice rung out through his suddenly quiet cabin, and Light's heart skipped a beat as the proudly saluting mare before him let out an unsatisfied huff. "That means it's up to me to make sure my friends don't get hurt. You got that?" Light swallowed, his throat suddenly unbearably dry as that emotion- that inscrutable idea- began to rise in time with the take of his breath. It spoke to him; a growing compulsion was taking over his being. He felt it, every second of it. His fear of her Element. His anger towards her. His undeserved reticence, even in his own home. He remembered now. The Element of Generosity. Rarity had told him. That was how they were named. He was careful not to blink. Not to break that stare he held with the Bearer of the Element of Loyalty, for fear of seeing a memory of a throne room. Of seeing through the eyes of a colt just finding his legs for the first time in his life, and finding the scarred pupils of a dread Nightmare before him. It was only a memory, but as he cleared his throat, and as he spoke, he felt the deja-vu of having spoken before. Of what he'd felt then, as he felt it now. "So?" Courage. Light Flow stood tall against the threat to his way of life, as said threat finally split her resolute frown to quirk up into a scowl. "Yeah. So," she parroted back as she dropped her hoof from her chest. Making no motion beyond it, for there was little need to sully the message. She knew that, surprisingly. All she needed was a tone: suddenly low, and pointed. "I don't like how you treat Applejack." No longer were her eyes at all hooded; now, she met his with fire, her brow darkly drawn and deeply tense with pronounced intention. "I don't like how you treat anypony. I think you're a crappy friend, and a crappier pony." As Rainbow grew angrier and angrier, rapidly returning to her former indulgent state, Light only watched. Keeping a shell of passivity as her breath came recurrently deeper- hotter than before, while below it all, the beautiful spectrum drained from her soul. Every single strand of it that he could perceive withering of every color besides red. Blue and red. Almost purple. She'd fallen from grace in countable seconds. The hard heel of her hoof laid roughly onto his chest, and Light levied his gaze up from her soul. Her eyes were nearly black with antipathy. Two raging cesspools of bitter anger, the vitriolic likes of which he'd only seen in a mare... a madmare who'd gone far beyond the unspoken line of heroism. And when she spoke, her voice was a whispered hiss. "You don't deserve her. I want you to-" She didn't finish, of course. Heroes shouldn't spout dreck like she was, especially not in somepony else's home. Of course he was angry. Of course he was. But he still didn't expect it when he hit her. Light was not a strong pony- he wasn't even a candle's flicker next to his marefriend- and so Rainbow Dash was not sent flying or falling or even greatly stumbling away from him as his hoof flew out to soundly smack her cheek mid-sentence. Nor was the smack itself even very pronounced. If his ears hadn't been so painfully strained, he might've mistaken it for an innocuous whack instead. It actually almost hurt his hoof a bit. But Rainbow did lean away from the hit, and she actually took a step aside as a strangled gasp eked from her throat. Her head lolled limply forward as she took another step aside, even... even tottering for the briefest second as she leaned into the shade of his desk. If he was at all strong enough to warrant such an overblown reaction, he didn't stop to think on it. Instead, he soundly stamped his hoof back to the floor where it belonged, and spoke in his loudest, clearest intonation. "Applejack and I are in love." The assertion- that little assertion- may as well have been a second punch for how Rainbow reacted. First, she froze, then, almost before she'd even finished stopping her previous motion, her head whipped around to stare at him, her nearly ridiculously wide eyes only as striking as her subtly gaping jaw. The prismatic mare, nearly crouched low to the floor from his physical and... verbal assault, seemed to try to muster a response, though little came but petered groans and smallish whimpers. It was almost pathetic, especially sporting that red welt just below her eye. She looked... tinier than he'd ever seen her. It brought him some satisfaction, though not nearly enough to make up for the simmering anger he felt. It was a good anger, though. It consigned itself to his will; it bent to his whim. He was angry for a reason, and it was righteous. This anger was deserved. And so he graciously allowed it to creep into his tone. Towering as he was over the silently murmuring mare, his voice gained an undercurrent of power- of purpose. "Earlier today, she and I spoke about what happened yesterday, and about last night." He broadened his shoulders- was he suddenly taller? An aptly tough grin worked its way onto his face, all the more so as some kind of... something seemed to shatter in the mare's wide eyes. "We talked for a long time, and we got a lot off our chests." He nodded his head forward, taking pride in the motion. "I apologized." With his next words, something seemed to change about the crouching mare before him. Rainbow Dash almost always kept a sense of swagger about her; there was always a true sense of unthinking confidence behind her every action. He'd seen behind the veneer a few times, but she was otherwise genuinely self-assured to a borderline harmful degree. As he spoke, he couldn't see it. Not at all. "We kissed. Afterwards, I asked, and she said yes. She and I are dating." As her eyes widened even further, beginning to pronounce veins around their edges as glinting spots of wetness welled from their verges, he felt less vindicated than he'd expected. He'd had the sense that saying it would break her, for whatever reason, but he'd thought it would be sweeter. More satisfying. When Rainbow's head fell, and a muffled little whimper broke out from her audibly bit lip, Light wasn't able to smile. When she slumped, laying her forehead to the floor as the curve of her back arched, he couldn't bring himself to laugh at her. In the long few moments after his proud declaration of his and Applejack's courting, he simply sat where he'd once proudly stood. He remained quiet, only listening to the heavy panting of a very proud mare struggling not to cry, and not jeering as he once would have. In the low light of dusk filtering in through the door, he could only regard her crumpled, half-shadowed form with pity. He'd not known. Genuinely, he'd never known Rainbow had felt that way. He hadn't thought the two were all that close, actually. Applejack hardly ever spoke of her as anything but a nuisance, as he often did. He was fairly sure... no, he knew his marefriend didn't feel the same way. He supposed... it didn't have to be reciprocated. Actually... he knew what it was like to be in that situation. That had been him just recently. In silent reverie, he closed his eyes in a slow blink, and in that brief flash of darkness, he could see it. Brown fur instead of blue, and a red mane instead of every other color. A prone colt crumbling into himself in dejection. He wouldn't have had the strength to stop from crying. She was stronger than him in a lot of ways, and he'd always known that. He'd always figured. When a pony's soul was naturally blue, how was he supposed to tell when they were sad? Though the proceeding moments of inattention may have felt long to Light Flow, sitting squat on his haunches none too impatiently, he knew very well it didn't take very long for Rainbow to recover. She was strong like that. A proud, strong mare who could very well stand on unsteady legs and push herself up from the pits of despair. As she stood in her defiant way, her face still hidden behind a partitioned waterfall of colors, he stood with her. He chose to remain silent as the mare wobbled, steadying as she shook her head minutely, hawking as she... great, she just went ahead and spat on his floor. Barbarian. A broken heart was no excuse for poor manners. He tried not to grimace too resentfully as the mare jerked up from kneeling and to facing away from him, only raising her head with a drawn out sniff as soon as he couldn't see her face, and if he wasn't mistaken... Frowning, he leaned his head forward, perking his ear curiously. "Sorry?" If she repeated whatever she mumbled to herself, then he didn't hear it. Oddly, the mare only rolled her shoulders as, before his eyes, the delicately laid lines of her wings crept up and away from her back, taking delicate care to flap a single time and fan away as Rainbow raised one hoof, then oddly set it back down. He licked the backs of his teeth, outwardly frowning puzzledly at the downplayed actions of the pegasus who he'd more or less expected to tackle him for evidently stealing the mare she liked away from her, stopping his oral ministration after a moment as... something began to... change..? His fur was beginning to prickle. Painfully beginning to stand on end as the pressure in the already dry air began to rise- he felt the change in the back of his throat. He opened his mouth to ask what was happening, but found his words choked to a halt as the air over his tongue tasted... burnt. It tasted chemical. Like condensed heat. This had happened before. Before his unblinking eyes, and before it had even begun, he could see it again. He was back in the throne room; She was sat before him. They were speaking of the Elements. She wanted him to understand. Arcs of dying sparks bouncing down silver metal. A solemn frown. The air itself burning. Light that seared his eyes. The pressure. The flash. The explosion. The bang. The visions of the shortly-passed endless night faded with a blink, but the smell- the cruel anticipation in the air remained. The fading light of the trailing dusk that dared to creep in from his door was at once smothered as a blueish-white snap of light flickered across the room from the unseen front of Rainbow Dash, illuminating the cramped space of his home insofar as it dominated it. That one show of light alone was enough to make him hear his heartbeat, loud and hammering in his ears, and then, as a grating crack broke through the tense, suffocating silence, his ears went deaf to all besides the drowned-out echo of her voice. "I said..." Then, only the static rumbling of the growing light. The echoing, buzzing hum of rapidly intensifying electricity emanating from such a foully sordid source as Rainbow Dash, seeming all too much like the horrible epicenter of a steadily expanding maelstrom of rebounding streams of jagged plasma. A phenomenon grown and cultured in a literal flash. Her rear, pointed towards him, remained so little as dramatically shaded by an expanding wreath of electricity, growing more and more definition by the second, all wholly centered at the end of her hunched, hung head. It crawled about her upper half in mischievous, bouncing waves, forming shapeless, eclectic patterns just as often as they randomly sparked and withered. All the while, its radius grew and grew. Where it had first begun as mere sparks of light falling to the floor and dying in lame cinders, before his eyes were forming jagged, definable arcs daring to lick and lash at the air as they snapped apart ad infinitum. A terrifying show of static current held in place by the mare's stout hooves, somehow tamed to the ease of unerringly straying from flicking into the floor and catching alight. It only kept to her. She was its center. It all happened too quickly to react. Or, perhaps the sight of it all had struck him dumb and deaf to the world. For whatever compelled him, he would forever malign the cruel impulse that stayed his hooves for as long as they did. As they always did. As he always was. The ill-fated observer. Light kept dead-hooved and open-mouthed as Rainbow remained proudly still, her wings fanned to a pristine stress of feathers and the tiding ebb of her rainbow mane blustering about her head like an impossible refraction of light from where she stood at the middle of a perpetually shifting sphere of deadly electricity. Her posture far too relaxed for what she was causing, yet still leagues apart from calm. And all the tenser did she seem as she turned. As Light's eyes widened, and his every muscle clenched in a body-wide shift of tension- a true, conscious moment of realization- Rainbow Dash swept to face him in a single motion in which she leaned back and sidled all the way over his desk with a flap of her wings. Uncountable strands of held-together static current falling from her hooves and staining the air with crumbling flecks of smoke for every inch that she shifted. In his mind and to his eye, there was little but a single second of scene-wide sight. As his forelimbs pushed with all of their unconscious might to rear into the air, and he sucked in breath for a silent scream that would never be heard by any ear, the world seemed to freeze. A blinding white light reflected in two sets of wide eyes, framing the entire cabin in a single moment of pure iridescence. If one were looking in from the outside, they, too, would see the flash reaching out from the broken doorway in a futile attempt at escape. For it wished to escape as much as he did. A cage of perpetually rebounding electricity with its uneasy center cast around two blue hooves, raised with their owner into the air in pure defiance of fate. The unending pitch of the phenomena ever rising as the chaotic energy seemed to form sets of broken spirals around the limbs, rearing back in unspoken preparation to bring all beholden to a sight of pure, unfaltering control over a primal force of nature. Beautiful and deadly, as was the mare around which it wreathed. Her hide unsinged as the electricity crawled across its every breadth. Her mouth wide open in a shout. Her wings pitched long to curl around her form like an angel's cloak. Her wide, pink eyes clouded with such fury to the point of seeming unhinged. And the tears that crawled down her cheeks. Her hooves shot forward. It was only in the moments after that Light processed the words that she'd spoken- the shout that had preceded, or perhaps, accompanied her turn. The last thing he heard before the flash. The bang. The jolt. "-you had better take care of her!" And then, the world went white. It took a long time to understand what happened at that moment, or even in the moments after. He'd not blinked, even through the blinding light that seemed intent on burning his retinas out completely. Though it was difficult to make out through the intensely disorienting overlay of pure white, he'd actually seen the moment that a concentrated coil of lightning leapt from the end of Rainbow's hoof to piece the floor in front of him. A single snapshot of connection between herself and her target: less than a tenth of a second, if such a thing were possible. It took him a while to realize that he should be grateful it hadn't hit him. That she hadn't hit him. That she hadn't intended to. His forelimbs had been up; he'd been trying to rear away in some dumb excuse of an escape attempt. A fool like him, thinking he could outrun lightning, probably deserved the jolt. The sting. The resounding, overpowering resonance that shook his floor, that quaked through his back legs and up his spine. The unadulterated discharge of electric current. Every inch of his body subject to its fury all at once. He felt it like a convulsing impact in his bones. It was like an acidic fire in his blood. In his teeth, his eyes and his horn, it was like nothing he could equate it to. Like a sting. Like he'd been stung by a bee, in every inch of his extremities. And then it was gone. It was only that single moment after the flash, and the bang that he swore should've popped his eardrums, that he felt the shock. In the moment after, there only remained a dull ache. Like muscle cramps. He didn't know when he'd started sitting. All four hooves were on the floor, so he must've landed sometime after he'd reared. It was good that gravity was still in effect. Times like these, a stallion needed to remind himself of all the principles of physics just to assert some kind of understanding. He'd not blinked in a while. Or, maybe he was blinking too much. When he closed his eyes, he saw the same thing as he did when they were open, he was pretty sure, so it was kind of hard to tell. A hole in the floor a hoof-length away from his own hoof, surrounded by blackened char, against a burned-in backdrop of fuzzy white. No matter how he blinked or shook his head or looked anywhere else, it was all he saw. Like a mirage burned into all the scenery. It followed him relentlessly. So, he resigned himself to staring at it. Just until he could feel his extremities again. Just until he stopped tasting chemicals and acid. Until he stopped shaking. Until the world stopped shaking. The hole was jagged and roughly burned at its edges, about three inches both ways around. From his angle where he sat, he couldn't see very far down into it, but he could see a single, small beam of wood an inch or two into the depths. He was guessing it went down further. Maybe all the way to the cellar. Magically created lightning was not the same thing as natural lightning. He'd vaguely known that before, and now he had a tangible proof of concept, because he'd be dead if natural lightning had struck so close to him. It might've still punched through the floor, but it also would have fried him to a crisp several times over and set his house on fire while it was at it. He didn't know whether to say he was lucky to be alive given that his attacker had been the captain of a weather team well-versed in handling lightning of both varieties, but if he ever told anypony about what had just happened, he probably would. He could do with some prestige. There was still a discharge. Of such a controlled measurement with so little energy passing through him that he'd not even spasmed- he didn't think- but he'd still felt it. He'd never been shocked before. Was he in shock? Maybe. He was having a difficult time feeling anything but a dull, throbbing sense of discontent, and that about checked out with what he knew about shock. His ears hurt. The ringing had only started a few seconds after the initial impact, and now it was almost overwhelming. Like an endless school bell- no, three of them all overlaid. He wished he could go back to when it'd been quiet; when he'd not been able to hear anything. This was... making it hard to think. It felt like a monumental effort just to fold one ear back, and it was still with jerky, cautious movements. Feeling it cup against his head, however pleasant the physical feeling of eye-twitching discomfort, just wasn't enough. He had to flex it back up- then press both down. Up, then down again. As he performed routine calisthenics with his ears in the hopes that it would alleviate the ringing, he broke from his sculpted line of sight to slowly slide a glance up, to the edge of his peripherals. No blue. The smear of dirty green he could see from out of his door was growing darker. Dusk was almost up. He dropped his gaze, falling back to the hole that had trailed up with his glance. He could have Rainbow Dash arrested. What she'd done was tantamount to assault in any regard, hero status or not. Broken heart or not. He'd hit her first, but that was after she'd broken in. Literally. Broken in. Self-defense wasn't self-defense when striking back at somepony who had acted in self-defense. That was just aggravated assault. Light slid his gaze to the side, feeling somewhat like a creeping painting on a mansion wall as he did. He could barely see the corner of the room at all in the worsening dark, and with the light burnt into his eyes- still so bright- he didn't have a chance of adjusting. He could barely see the frame of the bathroom door, and that was barely. He'd impressed himself with that lie about his contacts. His marefriend would disapprove, but he'd only promised himself that he'd be honest with her. Maybe that itself was a bit dishonest, but what was a relationship without a little mischief? Feigning a ghost of a smile- feeling like it could shatter at any second- Light tipped his gaze to his other side. The vague shape of table legs, and a conspicuously large shard of glass propped against it. So much for getting something useful out of the time. The stupid rainbow bird-brain had scattered all the work he'd done, and now it'd be even harder to clean up. Who even knew where his broom had gone. He certainly couldn't peer into the gloom to find it as he was. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the outline of his bookshelf, and that, at least, lent a little authenticity to his smile. For all that Rainbow Dash could have destroyed, he was glad she'd chosen the floor. A sigh slipped over his lip as he bent his head down to his chest, then up against the back of his neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, cursing the white that robbed him of peace, then he opened them to the still vaguely white ceiling that was, in actuality, completely dark. Even through the returning sense of danger- oh, there were his feelings- he couldn't help looking back on the moment with some kind of despondent awe. That had been... truly spectacular. He'd seen electricity handled before- felt it before in a very similar antagonistic sense, but what Nightmare Moon had done somehow managed to pale in comparison to... eugh- Rainbow Dash. That made him feel gross to think. He was a stranger to pegasus magic, he could admit. A very distant stranger- basically all he knew was that pegasi blended elements of earth pony and unicorn magic. They were the in-between. Other than that, he knew they could manipulate weather and control electricity, as had been succinctly demonstrated to him by a mare on the verge of committing murder out of jealousy. What a show she'd put on... The strings of jagged light, seeming so impermanent and fragile. The composure. The lightning's contiguity to the mare's limbs, like loose sleeves of shifting electricity. The sound of buzzing. The chemical smell. The feeling of total despair. Another sigh slipped from his lips, altogether more dreamy than his last. Call him a romantic lunatic with odd fondness for mares who had come close to killing him or had actually done so, but the sight of Rainbow Dash wearing an interlocking grid of lightning around her body as she turned to throw it at him may well have been one of the coolest things he'd ever seen. Like a winged spirit of nature itself. Still, he hated her for it, and for a dozen other things that had happened today. Whatever lame attraction he'd once felt towards her was over. She was pretty, but he just couldn't ignore what a mule she was anymore. Actually, she deserved a worse word. Rainbow Dash was a certified ass. His hooves found themselves under him by some gods-forsaken miracle, and he actually managed to stay standing, against all odds. His hooves were... wobbly- and he had to take a deep breath- but he was fine with shaking out the jittery nerves, for the most part. He didn't even stumble or anything. On his way to the front door, though, he felt as though he should, at least in homage. He sighed again- somewhat of a habit- as he stood over the mangled carcass of his door. Not that it was scarred or anything, but it was suitably desiccated. It'd gone far beyond the expected punishment threshold for any piece of furniture, and it'd finally paid the price. For the briefest moment, he considered trying to get it up off the floor. Perhaps leaning it halfway across the open frame to mimic closing it as much as he could, or to keep some of the weather out. He'd always been fond of half-done pretenses, after all. It was a whim that came as quickly as it went, and he soon turned away with a mournful parting glance over his shoulder. He was in a realistic mood at the moment, and he knew he'd sooner spark a stream of electricity of his own than conjure up the strength to lift the Tartarus-bound thing. Trotting across the room, his eye settled on a great many things he could- probably should occupy the time with. There was his broom, carelessly tossed aside. He could finally finish sweeping. His overturned desk was overdue to be righted, he knew. There was a loose stack of books next to his bookshelf that... somepony had gathered up- who'd been in his house? Had it been Rarity? It had probably been Rarity. There was still a knife stuck in the wall. He needed to find the dustpan. It was probably time for a shower. When Light pushed the door to his bedroom open, he'd already decided to push it all back. Later. Tomorrow. In the morning. Sometime that wasn't right now. It was only a few steps to the bed. It was only a few seconds that he stared down at it. After he'd collapsed onto it, he only spent the bare minimum time required to think back on everything that had happened between him and Rainbow Dash. The pegasus with an aberration for a mane and an unfair amount of skill in her race's magic. The wielder of the Element of Loyalty- if that was even how the titles worked- who had, from his inspection, barely qualified for the title. His undisputed attacker, who had broken his door and put a hole in his floor. As the clinging tendrils of slumber began to drag him deeper, he thought again about whether he should report her to some authority. He could easily have her thrown in jail, and he'd never even have to tell anypony he'd been the one to turn her in. Her crimes spoke for themselves. A smile crept over his face, half-hidden behind the blanket he laid face-down on. On the other hoof... it'd probably pay off to have some blackmail in his pocket...