Shining Armor paced outside of the interrogation room, the sound of his hooves on the stone floor as a regular as a heartbeat. Normally, he would have been content to sit still and wait, perhaps review some minor piece of new legislature or a subordinate's field report. But not now. Not when he was so close...
His ears pricked up at the sound of the opening door. He spun and trotted the three steps to the elocutor. "Well?"
The vedalken merely stared at him.
Shining Armor cleared his throat. Such haste was unbecoming from an Azorius arrester, doubly so for one as accomplished as he. In a much more measured tone, he asked, "Your findings, Elocutor Zalvis?"
Zalvis shook his head. "Nothing."
"Wh– Nothing?" Shining sputtered for a moment. "What do you mean 'nothing'? There can't be nothing. You're the best elocutor I know. You could get someone to confess to stealing a slice of cake at the age of three."
This got a shrug. "What can I say? He's tabula rasa."
"You know my Vedalken is horrible."
Zalvis exhaled with just enough volume to make it clear he was sighing while maintaining plausible deniability. "I mean he's a blank slate. He knows his name, the common tongue, and some minor but vital information like what food is. Beyond that, he literally knows nothing."
Shining sighed much more obviously. He floated out a scroll. "Take a look at the forensic report. Skip to the mana spectroscopy."
Zalvis scrolled through the scroll. He lowered it, registering faint confusion. "That can't be right."
"The analysts triple-checked it, using three different detectors. Same results every time."
"But that doesn't make any sense." Zalvis closed the scroll. "This is pure blue mana. Dimir mind magic always shows at least residual traces of black. Much the same could be said of any guild's magic. Any mage with this kind of capability would be snapped up the moment he demonstrated it... and yet."
Shining quirked an eyebrow. "And yet?"
"This was not the usual Dimir modus operandi." Zalvis paused. "That is to say—"
"That I understood. How do you mean?"
The elocutor took a deep breath, wrinkling his brow. "Bear in mind that this is all... theoretical." He shuddered, forcing out the words. "What little concrete information we can gather about Dimir operations is almost inevitably out of date."
Shining smirked. "I'm the last person who needs to be told that, Zalvis. Go on."
"As far as we can tell, when the Dimir decommission an operative, they remove all the incriminating memories, but they replace them with an innocuous life. It never matches up precisely, and thus a very good elocutor can find the cracks."
"Someone like you."
A straight edge might indicate a slight upward curve to Zalvis's mouth. "I wasn't going to say that. In any case, this is too obvious for Dimir. They would have covered their tracks. Leaving him like this just isn't done."
"And it can't be one of the other guilds," Shining added. "There are none of the telltale signs of Izzet or Simic involvement."
Zalvis was definitely smirking. "Electrical burns, foul-smelling slime, that sort of thing?"
"Exactly."
"So why can't it be a member of the Senate?"
Shining was stunned for a few seconds. "What?"
"Four guilds make use of blue mana," Zalvis observed. "Three have been eliminated as potential suspects. By process of elimination, that leaves either a member of our guild or some anonymous unguilded archmage."
"Well it can't be one of us."
"Why not?"
Shining bit back his first response. "It just can't" would not go over well with a vedalken, especially not one trained to wield logic like a sword and a scalpel. He gave a defeated sigh. "I admit, I just don't want to consider the possibility."
Zalvis shrugged. "You must. It is there."
"No white mana residue, though."
"There is that, but that leaves only the 'unguilded archmage' hypothesis."
"Then that's who we're looking for."
Zalvis frowned. "But that's... well, it isn't impossible; it's one of the two possibilities we have left. Still, it's objectively improbable."
"Not as much as you'd think." Shining nodded to the vedalken. "Thank you for your services, Elocutor."
"Of course." Zalvis essayed a shallow bow. "Do tell me of any further developments."
Shining smirked as he began the walk to his office. "When I finally catch him, you'll be interrogating him yourself."
Shining Armor liked to think of himself as a patient pony. Really, he had to be. One couldn't rise as far, submit as many applications for promotion, attend as many hearings and evaluations pursuant to those applications as he had without considerable patience. But patience didn't make a stallion rise in the first place. That took motivation. And while the importance of the law, the drive to protect and serve, and the honor of being one of the defenders of sanity and civilization were all as much a part of Shining Armor as his horn, they were not why he had come so far.
When he went home that night to his modest apartment not far from New Prahv, he was met again by the force that had impelled him ever upward. His cause. His inspiration.
"Welcome home, dear."
His love. "Hey, Cadence," he said with a smile. The couple nuzzled one another. "How was your day?"
The unicorn mare returned the grin. "Oh, the usual. Play with Skyla, listen to the neighbors argue, get them to actually listen to one another, demonstrate why there's a pair of hearts on my flank. You?"
Shining groaned as he walked further inside. "Could've been better. A lot better." He began magically unlatching his armor. Cadence helped him remove the heavy barding, lingering ever so slightly at his cutie mark, admiring the shield with its row of three triangles above the nested runic circles.
Once he had disrobed, Shining managed a smile. "I'll tell you about it later." He moved towards one of a pair of low couches that faced one another. "At the moment, there's a filly who's hardly seen her daddy all day, and I need to fix that right about... now!" With that, he pounced on his pegasus daughter, who'd been hiding behind the couch.
Skyla, barely out of diapers, screamed with laughter and fluttered her little wings helplessly as her daddy relentlessly assaulted her with tickles and zerberts.
Cadence smiled. Soon, Shining would describe his trying day and she would help him find the best course of action. But for now, her love was home, her child was happy, and her heart was full. All was right with the world.
Once dinner was served and Skyla was put to bed, her parents lay on the couches in the entry room as Shining ran through the day's frustrations.
"So," Cadence reviewed, "you've got a case that's taken more than twice as long than any you've ever investigated. Did you ever consider that you can't do this alone?"
Shining snorted. "And who would help me? I'm the second best arrester in the district. I can't just ask the Lavinia of the Tenth to help out on some wild moa hunt, and anyone else would just slow me down."
Cadence shook her head. Celestia preserve her from stubborn stallions and their pride. "Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, you could get someone from outside of your guild to help you?"
"Don't make me laugh. Who would bother to help some Azorius busybody?"
"Hmm." Cadence put a hoof to her lips. "Well, there was that pegasus mare you ran into in Nimbus Court. She seemed very eager to help."
Shining grimaced. "She won't be now. Not after the way I treated her."
"And whose fault is that?"
"Supreme Judge Isperia and every grand arbiter before her," Shining immediately replied. "They wrote the regulations. I just follow them."
Cadence didn't bury her head in a cushion and scream. Oh, she was tempted, but once she started, she might never stop. "Perhaps an apology is in order?"
Shining's frown slowly shifted from frustration to regret. "I... yeah, that would probably be the right thing to do." Ears flat, he asked, "You think she'll accept one?"
His wife giggled. "Dear, a woman is always willing to see a man admit fault. If you can do that, you'll certainly have a chance." Cadence went from smile to glower in an eyeblink. "But I know you. Don't you dare imply any of it was her fault."
"But—"
"No. It doesn't matter what she did, you were in the wrong."
Shining brought his gaze to the floor. "Yes, dear."
Cadence's smile returned, the sun back from behind a cloud. "Good! And there's one other mare I can think of who'd be happy to help."
"Who do you..." Shining's eyes widened as he tried to press himself into his seat. "Oh, no. Not her."
"Her. You may as well call in the big guns, honey."
"Yeah," Shining allowed, "but guns that are just as likely to fire on me?"
"Just be nice, like with the skyjek," Cadence assured him. "What's the worst that could happen?"
Her husband quirked an eyebrow. "Do you really want me to answer that question? Because I could speak from experience."
Cadence, like every Azorius spouse whose marriage lasted longer than a week, was a fairly patient pony herself. Still, she had her limits. "Do it or you'll be sleeping in the street."
"Yes, dear."
Shining sighed. Swallowing his pride hasn't been easy or pleasant, but he'd managed to do it. Now if only Rainbow Dash could return the favor.
Instead, the skyjek was hovering above him with a wide grin on her muzzle. "I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I heard you right. Could you say that again?"
Shining rolled his eyes. "I'm sorry."
Dash nodded. "Uh huh."
"I was wrong."
The pegasus rolled a forehoof. "Keep going."
Shining finished through gritted teeth, feeling like every roundcake guzzler in the garrison was watching. "I need your help."
Dash shook a little, hardly able to contain herself. "Can I get that in writing? It's not that I don't trust you, I just want to frame it and hang it in the barracks. Maybe get it notarized first or whatever."
Shining took a deep breath before answering her. "Are you going to help me or not, Sergeant?"
Dash stared at him like he'd grown a second head. She landed, her smile softening into something more apologetic. "Of course I am. It's just, come on, when's the next time I'm going to get an actual apology out of one of you paper-pushers?" She offered a hoof. "No hard feelings?"
Shining accepted the hoofbump. "No hard feelings."
"Great, 'cause I've found your man, and I know where he'll be tomorrow evening."
"Wha–" Shining gaped. "That... You... How!?"
Dash made a show of examining the polish on one of her front greaves. "Yeah, turns out when you don't have to fill out like a dozen forms for every step of the investigation, you can actually get stuff done."
"Well, good to know. I'll ask my other contact for aid and we can reconnoiter tomorrow morning."
"Cool. See you at the Frog and Chestnut." Dash flew off without another word.
Shining just stood there for a moment. "...The what?"
Shining Armor hated the lab. He hated Izzet architecture in general, all pipes and valves and random instruments thrown wherever the builder felt like at the time. No polish, no planning, no logic. None he could see, anyway. That the place was only lit by flasks full of luminescent liquid only made it worse, layering ominous shadows over the haphazard construction.
"Hello?" The word didn't echo as he'd expected it to, sounding more like he'd shouted in an amphitheater than a small repurposed warehouse.
The smells were almost as bad, Shining thought as he waited. Molten metals, strange acids, magical reagents, and the ever-present burnt tang of ozone, all coming together to punch him in the snout. He didn't know how anyone could tolerate it, not even humans. "Hello?"
This time, there was a distant reply. "Just a second!"
A low hum made itself known, rapidly rising in pitch soon after Shining noticed it. Past experience had him shut his eyes and threw his forehooves over them. Even so, he could see the flash of light. And his own bones.
"Oh, it's you." The voice was polite but detached. Listening to it, one wouldn't have been able to tell if its owner had last seen Shining Armor a day, a year, or a decade ago. "What brings you to my little corner of paradise?"
Shining got to his hooves, trying to blink away the spots swimming before his eyes. "Does your teleportation really need to be that bright?"
"You ask that every time, you know." Again, the tone was merely observational. "And to answer your question – again – the energy manifestation's increased luminosity is a side effect of several mana flow techniques that increase the effective range of my spacial winks by eighty-four point seven percent."
"Weren't you just going from one end of your lab to the other?"
"It's bigger on the inside. So, is this a social call or what?"
Shining sighed, his vision finally clear again. "I need your help apprehending someone."
This broke the other's neutrality. Incredulously, she blurted, "Me? Seriously?"
"I'm desperate."
"Clearly."
"And, in the interest of full disclosure, Cadence made me."
This got a chuckle. "Yeah, I figured as much."
Shining stifled a grumble. "So, can I count on you?"
Lightning crackled somewhere amongst the amassed scientific apparatuses, briefly illuminating the figure and her smile. "Why, B-cubed-F-squared, I'm hurt. You think I've forgotten the importance of family?"
The Frog and Chestnut, according to Twilight, was a pub. A fairly popular one, actually, but close enough to Rakdos territory that Shining had avoided the area out of prudence. Were he single, he might have braved the thrill-killers to bring order to the area, but not when there were ponies who waited for him at home every night.
Twilight had assured him that the pub itself was safe, but he still entered the building warily, mundane and magical senses all alert for any sort of disturbance.
"Hey there."
"AHH!"
"Whoa, whoa! Easy there, pal!"
Shining blinked. Bit by bit, he took in the situation. He was on his hind legs, his front hooves slammed down on the bar. Behind it, a brown earth stallion was backing away from him. Oh, and his horn was aglow with a half-cast incapacitation incantation. The arrester cleared his throat, doused his horn, and eased himself back from the hapless bartender. "Sorry about that. Kind of on edge."
The stallion quirked an eyebrow at him. "You don't say?"
Shining felt his ears flatten and his face heat up. "Um, I'm actually supposed to meet someone here. A unicorn and a pegasus?"
The barkeep shrugged. "Well, I just opened the place, so you'll have to wait. Go grab a table and try not to scream at any of the regulars." He smiled. "Anything I can get you in the meantime?"
Shining picked out one of several tables clearly designed for ponies, lower to the ground and without chairs. He sat on the floor, positioning himself so he had a good view of the whole room, especially the entrance. "Tea will be fine."
Twilight arrived a few minutes after her brother. An hour, a pot of tea, and several amusing anecdotes about Skyla later, Rainbow Dash swooped in. She paused at the door, boggling at the pair. After a moment, she trotted up and blurted, "You two know each other?"
Shining and Twilight looked at one another, then back to Dash. "We're siblings," they said simultaneously.
Dash shuddered a bit. Too creepy. Once she recovered, she continued loud enough to draw the morning crowd's notice. "So, let me get this straight: Twilight Sparkle, the mare who basically redefined the awesomeness of explosions, and Shining Armor, the stallion so uptight he's got Vitu-freaking-Ghazi up his ass, are brother and sister?"
"Yes," said the siblings, again in sync.
"Stop doing that!"
The two looked at one another and smirked. Turning back to Dash, they asked, "What?"
Dash scowled, her wings flaring. "Oh, come on! I'm not stupid, I saw that little look you guys did. You want my help or not?"
"Sorry, Rainbow," Twilight said with a chuckle. "It's all in good fun."
This got a snort. "Yeah, for you, maybe."
"You have our apologies," Shining assured the pegasus. "Please, Miss Dash, sit. We've got a lot to discuss."
"Fine," grumbled a slouching, scowling Dash, "but don't call me 'Miss.' Makes me feel old." She straightened up, her expression hardening from petulance to professionalism as she pulled papers out of her saddlebags. "Now, here's what I've got on this guy..."
The young man walked down the street just like anyone else, almost totally unremarkable under his blue cloak. No one noticed him duck down an alley, and even those who might have would've ignored it, assuming he either could handle himself or had a death wish. Not their business in either case.
Whatever the man had expected to find in the alley, the armored unicorn definitely came as a surprise. "Jace Beleren," Shining Armor intoned, "by the authority granted to me by Isperia's Edicts and the Revised Guildpact, you are under arrest for mental assault and conspiracy to undermine the city's peace. You have fifteen seconds to surrender peacefully before you will be forcibly detained."
Jace sighed. "Hello again, Shining."
"You have five seconds to surrender."
"What, no incredulity?" Jace casually negated the paralytic spell the moment Shining cast it. "How about now? You never cope well when we go off script."
Shining took a step back before realizing it. "How did you–?"
"The spell? Don't worry, it happens to every mage sooner or later."
The stallion snorted, lowering his horn. "You know what I mean!"
Jace nodded. "Of course. I know your name because this is the eighth time you've confronted me in the past four months."
This shocked Shining out of his fighting stance. "What?" he managed, staring at his quarry.
"You pursue me, you confront me, I throw you off-balance, I erase your memories, rinse and repeat." Jace shrugged. "It's gotten rather predictable, really. Though you did surprise me a bit; I wasn't expecting you for some time yet."
Shining smirked. "Well I've got a few more surprises for you."
Jace raised his eyebrows. "Really?" He glowered, his eyes aglow with mind magic. "Then we'll have to cut this short. See you next—"
Discontinuity. When Jace regained his bearings, he found himself on a rooftop. Shining Armor was casting another inaction injunction; Jace countered it with less than a second to spare. "Okay, I admit, that was surprising."
Shining said nothing. He just glowered, dug in his hooves, and launched a burst of light from his horn.
Jace let the harmless flare go off, keeping his gaze on the arrester. "If you're trying to distract me, you're going to have to do better than that."
"Who said anything about distracting you?"
For a moment, indecision consumed Jace. A bluff? A warning? He risked a glance skyward.
Rainbow Dash couldn't say how, but she knew the moment the human looked up. She wasn't close enough to see his expression, not yet, but she was sure it was priceless.
From Jace's perspective, the skyjek was a notably motionless dot amongst the city's air traffic. Well, mostly motionless. It was slowly getting larger. The mind mage threw together a bit of quick and dirty æthercraft that would toss the dive bomber back to wherever it came from.
Shining Armor, of course, wasn't going to just stand there and let that happen. His horn ignited, runes forming a circle within a triangle around its base as he fired his own counterspell.
Jace saw the light show out of the corner of his eye and pivoted, one hand pointed up, the other raised against the antimagic, palm facing out, aglow with a dispel effect. Scarcely a moment later, the light swirled out of his left palm just before Shining's spell struck it, shorting out the unsummoning and paralyzing the man's tongue.
A ripple of distorted light behind Shining Armor revealed a smirking Twilight Sparkle layered in contraptions of brass and glass. "Don't worry, it happens to every mage sooner or later."
Jace smiled. Yeah, he deserved that. But he wasn't sticking around to admit it.
By the time Dash hit the roof, she did just that: hit the roof. Some mist swirled about her hooves, evaporating as she watched. She twirled about her landing spot, looking for her target. "What happened? Did he get away?"
Head down, Shining reluctantly replied, "It would appear so."
"How? There was that light show a few seconds before impact, but..." Dash spun to face the stallion. "You said that spell of yours would keep him from casting anything!"
"It did!" he cried. "At least, it should have!"
"Fascinating." A series of lenses unfolded from Twilight's equipment, snapping into place in front of her eyes. "Technically speaking, that wasn't a spell."
"What?" Dash spun from brother to sister. "You're telling me that that... that mind rapist literally got away on a technicality!?"
Twilight either didn't notice Dash's fury or didn't care. "Yup. It was some sort of intrinsic ability. The sort of magic you're born with rather than the kind you can learn." She sighed. "I admit, I'm jealous."
"Well where in Ravnica did he go?" Dash demanded.
"I can't say." The lenses retracted as Twilight mulled over the data. "I was able to track his æther trail, but the destination coordinates are totally nonsensical. As far as I can tell, he simultaneously travelled several times the circumference of the planet and less than a nanomizzet."
Shining stared at the spot where Beleren vanished. "Well, wherever he is, he didn't wipe my mind. And next time he shows his face in this town, he'll find it on wanted posters."
The Academy at Tolaria West wasn't quite at the level of its predecessor, but when that predecessor had been built by a nigh-omnipotent mad genius as part of a millennia-spanning plot to thwart an even longer-term plot to conquer the Multiverse... well, it got by.
It certainly suited Jace's purposes as a rest spot, especially after such an abrupt jump into the Blind Eternities. He spent some time just watching the waves lap against one of the island academy's beaches, letting the adrenaline drain out of him. "That," he muttered to himself, "could've gone better."
Crunching sand signaled someone's approach. "Want to talk about it?"
The mind mage flinched, a spring into action stopped by recognition. "I didn't know you were here."
"Everyone's got to be somewhere."
Jace chuckled. "True. Thanks, but right now, I just need to collect my thoughts and return to Ravnica as soon as possible. Something massive is coming."
"Really?" Ditzy Doo began the mental preparations for a proper planeswalk. "Well, then I'll go on ahead."
Azorius Guildpony WU
Creature — Unicorn Wizard
Whenever one or more Ponies, Pegasi, and/or Unicorns you control become the target or targets of a spell or ability an opponent controls, counter that spell or ability unless its controller pays 1.
"A guild is like a herd. We protect one another from the chaos that lurks beyond us."
1/2
Shining Armor, Lyev Elite 4WU
Legendary Creature — Unicorn Soldier
Hexproof, vigilance
Whenever a permanent an opponent controls deals damage to you, detain that permanent at the beginning of your next upkeep.
"The law does not act immediately. Time must be taken to ensure justice is served. If the guilty think that delay means that they have escaped unpunished, they are sorely mistaken."
2/5