At some point, the ordeal with the Lightning Streak fan had become a personal challenge. That point was probably the second she had mistook him for the other stallion. Fire Streak was not going to give up. He was, after all, the kind of pony that never gave up on anything when he set his mind to it. Forget all those times he had given up on things in the past.
He burned a number into his mind so that he would never forget it. It was the house number. After a somewhat disappointing reaction from the fan (in terms of received praise), he made the mare a second promise. He was going to prove through shear skill that he was a better 'Bolt than his peer. The next time that all twelve Wonderbolts flew together, she would see who was the better of the two.
He wasn't quite sure why it was so important other than the mere ego factor. The mare was a bit attractive but he wasn't looking for that sort of thing. He shook off further thoughts as he sped through the air towards his destination. It was no place in particular other than the fact that it was devoid of curious eyes. Any simple spot in the green grass of the countryside would do. It wasn't that he didn't like anypony to watch him. He just didn't like getting recognized and bothered by fans - it interrupted valuable concentration. The flight goggles were gone so he would not likely be identified. Still, he felt the need to be alone and wondered if it was the fresh air, breeze, and sunlight that were affecting his mood.
He found the perfect spot and landed in the grass with a muted crunch. The grass was apparently quite stiff. Not wanting to get poked too badly by it, he found a nearby spot where the grass was matted. Alright, he thought. Lightning Streak is better than me at the flips and turns but he doesn't have a very good push when he exits them. My best chance to impress that mare - whatever her confounded name is - would be to improve my exit boost. It'll make it look like I've got way more energy and skill even if I botch the nuances. There's only one way to get that kind of spring...
Fire Streak laid down into the grass and stretched his wings downwards so that the tips touched the soil. He curled his hooves against his body and tried to push himself up with shear wing power. Immediately, he strained and fell back down from the pathetic millimeter he managed to push himself up to. Ugh, he groaned. I knew I shouldn't have put off those routines. I guess Spitfire was right. I have lost a bit of my figure. I used to be able to do this stuff without even trying. Last time I saw the captain's wings...
The stallion's thoughts stopped abruptly as he blushed. It was hard not to compare himself to Spitfire. The mare had obviously been doing some sort of secret training because she was far more toned than she used to be. It was getting to a point where it was embarrassing for him. After all, he was a stallion and she was a mare. The fact that she had the guts for training when he didn't was just sad.
Fire's determination roared back. I'm going to do this! I'm going to show them all that I've still got the fire! Wing-ups, meet your master!
...Just as soon as I get to twenty...
Times had been bad, Light Scribe decided. But the scale was ready to tip and Issai would be the first bit of snow to start the avalanche. It had been a few more days and the green-tea-colored mare thought him to still be as sick as he appeared to be. However, he had made up his mind a good two days ago and took every opportunity to use healing magic when she was away. He faked the illness that he now only barely had.
The stallion also took the moments when he was alone to prepare a trap. Issai may have been a mare destined for gardening but that was not to say that she couldn't take him on head-to-head. Light Scribe was not a warrior, so his physical ability was stereotypical for his name. The back-and-forth work he did as a field messenger did help toughen him a bit, but it was not enough of a difference. Issai was cunning and could obviously use her magic to great advantage. He still couldn't imagine how she had managed to get behind him in the tunnel without him knowing. The only conclusion was stealth magic, which he wasn't familiar with.
He would have to fake weakness and then overtake her in an instant. That was the first goal. The second would be to get the contacts out of her. She was obviously nothing more than an agent in the grand scheme. Even if she didn't know the ringleaders, she would still know somepony that would give a solid lead. Light Scribe would have to get that information out of her and to Celestia before the schemers found out. If they knew too soon that their agent was compromised, they would wipe their tracks, split, and reform anew.
The beige unicorn was determined to nail that second goal too. Such things may normally have been outside of his expertise but there was no other choice in the matter. It was the third and final goal by far that bothered him the most. He would have to figure out how to fix Issai for the long-term. She was misguided and he didn't know how to correct that. He didn't even completely understand why she was doing this. She implied that she was upset over something regarding him and his job. Maybe she was being co-dependent? If she thought that she had no future without somepony else - whether it be him or not - than that would make sense. She just never struck him as being so aggressive as to take out her frustrations in such an extreme way.
"Still hacking up a lung, Light?"
The voice knocked him back to reality. Issai really must have trained with some kind of stealth magic because she came up on him far too quietly. She had just entered the room and started making something - probably tea - with some simple magic.
"Ugh," the stallion replied with a few thrown in coughs. "But I think I'm getting better. Might be out of the cough-stage in a few days."
The mare didn't look over at him but he could see a faint smile nonetheless. There was definitely something very wrong with the pony. Her moods were too unpredictable and she was liable to quick rage when she thought he might escape. Depending on the position of moon and stars, she would be either happy or angry at his recovery from the cold. Light Scribe laughed pitifully at his own joke. He hadn't seen the open sky in many days.
"What's so funny?" Issai addressed him skeptically before returning her gaze to the tea-brewing.
"Oh, um..." he stuttered with a sneeze. It was a legitimate one that reminded him that he wasn't completely over the cold. "Just remembering how you used to ask me why carrots were orange. You were persistent about it back in magic school. The weirdest things made you curious."
"I didn't care about the carrots. I hate orange anyways," she almost barked. Her expression turned intense as she stared at the boiling water.
There was that mood swing again. Something was really eating away at her but the stallion had no choice but to calm her down if his plan was going to work. "If you don't mind my asking, why did you keep bringing it up then?"
Again she didn't look at him but continued to pour the water and add the tea packet. "It was just a dumb excuse to talk to you."
Light Scribe felt his heart go cold. Goal #3 just got a whole lot more complicated. A silence fell but he couldn't let it keep if he was going to catch the mare off guard. "I recall you got your own house and started a garden," he changed subjects, not wanting to light an early fuse.
"The garden died. I just couldn't take care of it when...it was just so...meaningless."
Her tone was flat, dismal, and not very encouraging for his purposes. "It was a really nice country house, right? Your parents sure worked hard to get it for you," he tried desperately to get her mood to swing back. It wasn't working.
"So that I could have a cozy life with my special somepony," she replied brightly. Her mood changed suddenly and a smile was beaming on her face. She turned from the brewing tea and came up to his bedside. The mood she was now in was too happy. There was something wrong about it and it was then, as she faced him a mere hoof away, that he knew what was going on. Everything that didn't make sense now did. The mood swings and the carelessness mixed with caution and cunning.
Issai had snapped. Her eyes stared into his with a certain void that sent chills up his spine. At some point when she was in that country mansion all alone, she had snapped. Maybe she just refused to accept the world around her. Maybe she thought she had been robbed of something. Maybe that's why she blamed Celestia...blamed his job.
He knew he had to act. It was now or never, especially since the mare was so far off the deep end.
"Huh?" Issai almost grunted as the stallion flew from under the sheets and tackled her to the floor. In one motion, Light Scribe struck her horn and ignited a light spell. She was now incapable of magic and half blind for a few seconds. He quickly rolled off of her and pulled the items he had prepared previously from under the bed. The shackles clicked onto all four of her hooves even as she still reeled from the take-down. Light Scribe had secured the shackle chains to the floor so that she would be secure. Next, he slipped an inhibitor ring over her horn.
The ring would not be able to prevent her from using magic, as he didn't know enough about such things to make a full inhibitor. He did, however, know the basic sealing technique to keep the ring on and a wealth of light-based magic to penalize her every time she tried to use her horn's abilities. It would have to do.
The exertion unexpectedly made him feel light-headed and the adrenaline made his head throb. Issai was coming out of her shock. "I have some questions and you're going to answer them. Don't try any magic unless you want a light show. It'll make you dizzy really fast."
"You...you're not sick!" she seethed as she rushed to her hooves. She instantly regretted it as the blood rushed to her head.
"Who got you into this mess and where are they? Who wants those artifacts?" he was surprised by the intensity of his own voice. He didn't want to admit that he was in a dangerous situation. He was an overseer...a scribe for Celestia's sake.
Issai practically jumped into his face. "You dumb-!"
The mare cut her own words short as she noticed, or rather felt, something on her horn. "You can call me names if it'll help get everything out. Who are you doing this for?" Light Scribe encouraged her to continue but the mare suddenly sat down in front of him on her hind hooves. She reached up with her front ones and batted at the inhibitor ring. It didn't budge.
The stallion masked a sigh of relief. He had never made something like it before and there was always a 50-50 chance that it simply wouldn't work or stay on. The mare's rage seemed to drain away completely, though. Another one of her mood swings...almost like she didn't even register the shackles that clinked with every movement. She just kept looking up at her horn and batting at the ring.
"Issai, who are the other ponies?" he tried again and again she didn't answer.
When she finally did speak it was in a tone of awe. "Ring..." was the only word that escaped her. Her eyes drifted away from the ring and then down to the floor. It went to the shackles next and then to the chains as they laid across the floor. She looked up at Issai and a dark glare started growing on her face.
"Issai?" Light Scribe asked as he no longer hid the concerned tone in his voice. He looked straight into her eyes again and no longer saw a void. He saw a battlefield where her emotions fought to decide who she was...how she would react. One of the feelings won and it wasn't one that he had ever known.
"Light?" her voice was weak as if she was ready to cry.
He couldn't trust her. She was switching personas too fast. Still, this one was probably the Issai that had been alone for all of those years. This was the one he had left behind, so he had to change his tactics. "Issai..." he didn't want to take advantage of her but the situation was already on the edge of a knife. "If you tell me about the other ponies then..." he paused painfully. "We can go back home..." he gulped. "Together..."
The mare started crying without abandon. She leaned down and covered her face with her front hooves even as the chains rattled against the floor. She continued for quite a few minutes and Light Scribe knew without any doubt that this had to be the worst and most awkward day of his life. Gently, he put a hoof on her shoulder and mustered as calm a voice as he could. "Issai, who are the others?"
She stuttered badly with her sobs and her face looked like a wreck but she finally replied to the question. "T-There's a...brown o-one. Klacky H-hooves. He's i-in Canterlot. There's Tyr-rant Blood too. She's in Maneh-hatten. They're the only t-two I know. I think there are two o-others, though."
She sniffled constantly and would probably have continued crying if she had any more tears left to use. Light Scribe burned the new information about the scheme into his mind. With any hope, there were only four other ponies involved in addition to Issai. Regardless, the matter was now in Celestia's hooves. The only question left for him to address was how to get the news to the throne fast and without the other ponies finding out. Magic letters were in all likelihood a bad idea. Magic traffic around the vault site was probably watched closely by the ponies in question. A quick inquiry to the weeping mare confirmed it.
"S-Spitfire will take your letter," Issai suggested as the Stallion standing above her thought to himself.
"Letter?" he asked, confused as to how she read his thoughts.
She wiped the tears from her face and sniffled again. "You work for Celestia, right? So you need to get a letter to her..."
"Yeah...who's Spitfire?"
"Pegasus. Celestia sent her to check up on things, but she was too late for that. Maybe she could fly the letter for you."
Light Scribe's serious expression finally began to lift for the first time. "Perfect! I just hope she's fast enough."
He started to turn for the exit prematurely and he heard the chains rattle and slam against the restraints. Issai fell back down to the floor with a crash. "Don't leave! You said we'd go together!" she screamed.
Light Scribe's heart wrenched. He didn't want to lie but...he had something he had to do and it couldn't be delayed. He had a duty. There it was again. Everytime it came up, the mare before him was the one to suffer. He wanted to curse the day for forcing way too many hard decisions on him. Maybe I'll regret this, he told himself. But my conscience won't.
With a set of clicks, he popped open the shackles with his magic. "I think I'm going to need you to show me the way."