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// Early Mornings and Negotiations 
// Story: Blacklight: Dead Man Walking 
// by The Salesman 
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	Deadman opened his eyes and sat up from this place in bed, breathing in the questionably fresh air that his helmet filtered in to him with a deep gasp.
He had had the dream again. That mission still stuck in his mind, even after so many deployments. It was not productive to keep on replaying his failures to himself over and over again. If only his subconscious was more helpful, perhaps giving him time to think of strategies for his current situation.
Looking around, he realized that he had thrown the sheets off of himself during the course of the night. It appears his body did not rest well, the same as his mind.
Reaching down to his wrist, he pressed a button causing a holographic screen to spring to life. Pressing another button, he displayed the time and date.
It was Five-thirty AM, August the twenty third. Glad that his internal clock was still right on time despite the lack of rest he had gotten recently, he flipped his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.
He retrieved his pistol from the nightstand and put it in his holster, and then grabbed his extra magazines. He then kneeled beside his bed and grabbed his LMG, slipping it behind his back and letting the magnetic holster do its work, holding the middle of the gun snug directly below his heal injector. He then placed the extra ammo for it in a few of his pockets. It occurred to him then that the day-night cycle may not be aligned with the time back on Earth. He would have to check that out. Flipping on his HRV, he glanced over towards the door out of his room and saw roughly eight guards loitering out there, far more than the amount that he was comfortable with waiting outside of his room. But he would deal with them later. Flicking his HRV back off, he walked over to the balcony door and pulled the curtains open, before opening the door.
Stepping onto the balcony, he first noticed that it was still night time, with the moon progressing towards the edge of the sky, although it was rather bright for it being the night. The balcony overlooked some sort of hedge maze which sprawled out quite some distance, green hedges giving it the impression of some sort of particularly wavy green sea being frozen at one particular moment.. The third thing he noticed was that the balcony was only on the second floor. Looking back into his room, he decided that it would be far better to deal with a short drop than being annoyed by eight guards. Reaching in, he pulled the curtains back over the door and shut the door itself behind him, before making a move towards the edge.
He put one foot on the top of the short railing, and stepped over the edge. As he was falling through the air, he braced himself for impact, the short fall reminding him of air deployment over Balik. The period of reminiscing was cut short, however, as he hit the ground with a dull thud as his boots impacted the grass below.
Looking around and seeing nothing, Deadman flipped on his HRV once more and looked for an entrance to the maze. Seeing one around the corner of the maze, he started walking towards it and turned the HRV back off. Soon after, he rounded a corner and saw a green archway further down the path. Speeding up slightly, he soon entered the maze and began to wander aimlessly amongst the green corridors. Although he could ‘cheat’ with the HRV, he had no reason to do so. It was quite relaxing walking amongst the long corridors and the junctions, even if he cleared every corner as carefully as he would be if he was on a mission, and that he constantly was looking around for some sign of possible ambush.
Not long after, he came across an area which widened out, a square clearing with an oak tree sitting in the center amongst the short grass. This would be a good place to stay for a while, we figured.
He sat down beside the tree, and looked up at the night sky over the roof of the castle. He privately wondered if the sun was one of the stars up there, if home was out there, but he just didn’t recognize it. Then again, he could be trapped in another universe, with just as little explanation for how he managed to find his way over to Equestria. For some reason, though, the idea of being dumped on to another planet and just not recognizing home troubled him far more than being trapped in another universe did. It was one thing to be lost, it was another entirely to be lost with home in sight but with no ability to get back. Sighing, he pushed that thought aside and began to look for patterns amongst the stars. After that little chain of thought he needed something to distract himself with.
Before he had a chance to get quite into the spotting of patterns, however, he heard the distant flapping of wings. Flicking on his HRV and turning his head towards where the distant sound came from, he saw Princess Luna flying over the hedge maze directly towards him. Oh boy, he sure felt the need to deal with her at six in the morning.
She landed across from him with a dull thump, the expression on her face displaying a mixture of annoyance and anger. At least it was easy enough to know where you stood with her, he supposed.
“We understand that thou removed thyself from the room thou were assigned,” she said flatly, her eyes trying their best to kill him with a steely glare alone.
“Indeed I did,” he stated, tilting his head slightly. He was mildly inquisitive about her transition into an older dialect. An investigation into this was needed at a later date, perhaps at a same time he investigated the creatures in the tapestry.
“Might thou enlighten us as to the purpose of the absence?” Luna questioned, a small amount of anger creeping into her voice.
Deadman sat up more straightly than before and explained “I got up at my usual time and figured that it was a good time to get some fresh air as well as watch the sky for a while. The path of least resistance was to drop from the balcony.”
“Thou came out to watch the sky?” Luna asked, a small note of disbelief in her voice as she took a small step closer.
“Aye,” he answered, “When there isn’t a significant risk in going outside, I often go out and watch the night sky for a while if I have don’t have duties to do as soon as I get up. I find it peaceful.”
“There are not many who appreciate the night sky here,” she said, with a hint of sadness in her voice.
“I can not imagine why,” Deadman said, “It is not as if the stars here are any less interesting than the stars back home. Big balls of nuclear fusion hundreds of times larger than the world so far away that they turn it takes the light from them hundreds of years to reach the world? Who wouldn’t be interested?”
“I believe that our stars may be quite different,” Luna stated, dropping out of the older dialect entirely at this point, and being replaced with curiosity. “Our stars are motes of light hovering just past the moon but before the end of the sphere of the sky.”
“Our species often believed similar until we had the ability to look very closely at the sky. Do you have scientific evidence of your theory?” Deadman asked. He had a hard time believing that a species with a good grasp on how to levitate things did not have knowledge about what the stars were.
“Do you not believe that the Princess of the Night has not been up to inspect them herself? I can most assuredly tell you that they are small but extremely bright motes of energy,” Luna responded with a small portion of the annoyance from earlier creeping back into her voice.
“Then our stars are truly quite different,” Deadman stated, feeling a measure of relief. Even if we was not completely sure about her visiting the stars herself, she had no reason to lie about what they were. At least he wouldn’t be looking up at the sky and wondering if he was staring at home without knowing. While it was still worrying that he was in another universe, it was far better for his nerves than the alternative.
Unexpectedly, Luna asked “How are your stars able to lay in your sky if they are so large?”
“They are far away, I think the closest is around… I believe a bit over four or so light years away,” he stated, before realizing he should probably relay the speed of light too, “And light itself travels around three hundred thousand kilometers per second if I remember correctly,” he said before he realized that their measurement systems might not even be remotely the same. Figuring a way around that fact, he spotted and picked up a small piece of stone from the ground. Rising from his sitting position, he lifted the stone to a low height before throwing the rock straight up in the air, to the mild confusion of Luna, while he kept a careful watch of how long it was in the air. Satisfied with the result, he said “To give you an idea, that was in the air for around two and a half seconds. Given how many seconds there are in the year, you can imagine how far four light-years is.”
“If the closest star to your home is four light-years away, they must truly be far…” Luna began before a flash of remembrance crossed her face and the steely gaze from earlier returned. “Before this conversation continues on, however,” she continued “We request that you meet my sister and ourself in one of castle’s meeting rooms directly after the sun rises. We trust that you will be able to find us there without worry. Have thy any inquiries?”
“No,” he stated, and narrowed his eyes. Even though he certainly did, he was not going to voice them here and now. The fact that she implying she had knowledge of the HRV wasn’t lost on him. Action may be required if there has been a significant leak of information. Too bad on the front of attitude, he thought that she was warming up to him for a minute there but at least he now knew that she was easily distracted when one started talking about the sky.
“Very well, the meeting shall happen at said appointed time then,” Luna confirmed and turned away, before spreading her wings out and flying up into the air once more, before gliding out of sight over the hedge maze.
Deadman sighed. It was never simple, was it? Assuming that they actually knew about HRV, he needed a plan in case of him being accused of spying. If they knew about the HRV, they probably knew about his other gear, and there was a very high chance that they were going to try to get him to relinquish his arms and armour. Such would be a bad idea, and completely against protocol.
Turning towards where Luna flew off to he flicked on his HRV and followed her form through the air. Looking towards where she was headed, he spotted Celestia up higher in a tower. Perhaps there was some sort of morning ritual to be attended to before the meeting. Flicking his HRV back off, he started retracing his path through the maze, although with far less care for cheating than before. He walked through the maze constantly checking the route with his HRV to find the most efficient way out. Within ten minutes, he exited the maze and on to the soft grass again. With a sigh, he started to walk in the direction of the tower Luna was moving towards before. Turning on his HRV once more, he noted that both of them were still up there, and as he got closer, he noted that there were more than a few guards on the same floor as him, guarding a door into the tower, with some more on the floor below guarding a different entrance. Turning his HRV off back once more he noted as he approached the large wooden door that the light from the sunrise was just starting to creep into the sky.
He had two options here, he could either try and go in and try to get up to them, or he could simply wait for the sun to finish rising to confirm the meeting position.
After a moment of thought, he decided that the second was almost definitely the better option, and started leaning against the wall as he watched the night fade.
With an abrupt shift, the small cracking of dawn shifted into full morning as the world became abruptly brighter, although he could not see the sun of this world himself as it rose from behind the tower. Deadman looked around, confirming that what he saw just happened. That was most certainly unusual, to say the least. He waited a few more moments before turning back towards the building once more and turning on his HRV. Right on the other side of the wall, there were the princesses, the guards saluting as they passed by in silence and continued down the set of stairs to the other entrance he saw earlier. He waited for them to pass the threshold on that entrance and close the door behind them before he turned off his HRV and swung the doors in front of him inwards.
He paid no attention to the guards as they shuffled uncomfortably at his presence and closed the doors behind him before wordlessly continuing down the stairs. He had no business with them, and they did not try to stop him, therefore they were a non-factor.
He opened the door and quietly stepped through, closing it behind him once more, of course, and activated his hyper reality visor to make sure of their position before continuing on through this much drearier section of the castle. If they did not know of the HRV, he was not going to give them more reason to suspect its existence. It looked as if this section of the castle had not been used for a while, with cobwebs building up in some places. The stone in the windowless corridors appeared not only appearing to be cut of far lower quality rock, it appeared worn slightly, as if maintenance had not happened for quite a while.
He turned down a side-path and saw at the end of the corridor a short, heavy looking door made of a dark wood. With just a brief flash of HRV to check that the princesses were in there, and they most certainly were, he walked up to the door and quietly opened, stepping inside silently and closing the door behind him.
The room was made of a dark stone, perhaps a variety of gabbro, and the princesses sat on the right side of a low table on low cushions, and both of them quietly watched his approach with emotionless faces as he made his way over and sat cross-legged on the cushion across from them.
“You did not inform us of the capabilities of your weaponry, nor did you tell us of your ability to see everything that goes on in the castle,” Celestia stated flatly.
“Indeed I did not,” Deadman confirmed.
“Mind informing us as to why?” Celestia questioned, leaning over the table.
“The Blacklight Agency is a low-profile organization when it comes to operations, Agents are not trained for diplomacy,” he stated.
Celestia frowned and asked “So you thought it was best to not tell anyone about the capabilities of your equipment when it could endanger the lives of many around you?”
He was not oblivious to the implications of her saying that he could endanger lives. She thought that he could snap. However, he forced down the anger rising at the idea that she thought he would kill a civilian. It was logical for them to attempt to minimize the threat.
“If I had any hostile intents, I simply would have exercised the ability to do so long ago. Perhaps in the room that was full of most of the country’s command structure,” Deadman asserted.
“You must understand, ambassador, we are not concerned about you causing an altercation, we are concerned about the actions of others,” Luna said, keeping carefully neutral.
“I can’t particularly say that I see your cause for concern, your majesties. After all, I keep my dangerous equipment on myself at all times, and I am very vigilant in guarding it. Even if one were to try and get at my equipment while I am asleep I would wake and neutralize them,” He said, recognizing this particular brand of politics bullshit. Hiding behind the statement was the fact that they meant they didn’t trust others to not trigger him in some way.
“Still,” Celestia continued, “It may be safer if you were to hand your equipment over, for safe keeping.”
“I’m sorry, but unless it is guarded all the time by soldiers recruited Spec Ops a well a trained and geared up even further, it will not be safer outside of my reach,” he explained, resisting to add in that even if they took his equipment it would only delay his response, not stop it.
“You guard it even while you are asleep?” Celestia asked.
“Yes, if I didn’t wake up when someone tries to sneak into my room I would have likely been killed,” Deadman said before leaning across the table while a smirk hidden underneath his helmet. “Even if one were to somehow miraculously remove my armour and weaponry from my person without waking me, not only they be completely untrained in its use, they would be the completely wrong body shape to be able to use it. I would then find them and eliminate the threat before they would be able to figure out what does what.”
“I would imagine that with the ability to see through walls without the slightest issue finding them would be of no issue to you,” Luna said which prompted a quick glare from Celestia.
“And so we get to the core of the matter,” he grumbled at a low volume before continuing “So, mind telling me how you happen to know about the HRV, which is a technology entirely exclusive to Blacklight Agents and member of The Order, both organizations of which you did not have knowledge of the existence of until yesterday? I do not remember telling you of it.”
Luna shifted uncomfortably in her seat before uncomfortably declaring “I attempted to use a spell to contact you in your dreams last night and you happened to be reliving some memories when I witnessed your… HRV in action.”
Wait, spell? They had something that was explicitly magic and not some advanced technology? Well, that certainly explained a lot. If the laws of physics accommodated magic here, he should be glad that they weren’t different enough that he immediately explode upon ending up here. However, it made him quite a bit more worried. It was yet another unknown factor here out of his control. “Let me just confirm that you used a spell, something that was for certain magical to look into my dreams,” he queried. 
“What else would I have used to contact one in the realm of dreams?” Luna asked, causing Deadman to lean back and look up at the ceiling. “I find it hard to believe that you didn’t develop a spell back home to see into dreams if you developed one which can accurately locate others from far away and through walls,” she continued. He felt like he really should feel more angry about Luna watching his dreams, but the revelation that it was done with magic drowned out any anger that was building.
“Well, that isn’t exactly magic,” Deadman explained, “There is no magic at all back on Earth. Zero, none, or at the very least not enough for us to ever notice.”
“But then how are you able to do anything you do! It should be impossible,” Luna stated, and shook her head, drawing another glare from Celestia.
“I would say the same about magic, but here we are,” Deadman responded.
“But how would the sun and moon move? How would the seasons change?” Luna questioned, although these questions drew a mildly inquisitive glance from Celestia, rather than the earlier glares.
“Perhaps I could ask you about how it works on your world, and I will in return tell you about how it works in my land?” he questioned.
“I believe we have an accord, but afterwards we must continue discussion on the subject of you are your weapons.”
“Very well, you brought up how the moon and sun move through magic here, how do they do that?” Deadman asked before shifting his position on the cushion to be more comfortable. He felt like this was going to take a long time.
“The sun and moon are moved by my sister and myself through magic around the planet every day, through a spell renewed by both our strength at dawn and sunset,” Celestia answered. If it wasn’t a magic-casting talking unicorn with wings from another universe that told him that he would have been tempted to disbelieve it.
Deadman continued this line of questioning, asking “And what are they composed of?”
Luna answered this time, saying “Both are primarily composed of magic, but the moon is composed of a non-radiant magic which is much more solid, while my sister’s sun is composed of magic similar in composition to the stars but of greater heat and brightness.”
Well, he should have expected that given their names and Luna’s earlier explanation regarding the stars here. “Alright, on to home,” Deadman said, “Back home our sun is a large scale, long time going fusion reaction many times the mass of Earth at its most basic form. This produces a gigantic surplus of light and radiation which reaches our world, which is around eight light-minutes away. We orbit it, rather than the other way and a high speed and distance keeps our orbit stable. The moon orbits our world through a similar mechanism of speed and distance, but is made of various rocks and minerals rather than a similar reaction as the sun.” He paused for a moment to let this sink in, before asking “Now, how about the seasons?”
“Life on this world rotates the seasons through changing the production of weather and I personally lower the temperature of the sun for the colder months,” Celestia said.
“And the weather? How is it produced and controlled?” Deadman queried. The idea of the weather being entirely controlled by magic was weird to him to the extreme.
“Pegasi and other flying species have factories where they produce it clouds, and they then place them where they are needed. Granted, they do need to compensate for wind, but for the most part it is under control,” explained Celestia.
“Back home weather is a result of heat causing evaporation of the oceans as well as winds generated by the same heat. Clouds form around particles in the atmosphere and when they are unable to hold more water due to cooling of the cloud the extra water precipitates out until they are able to hold the remaining water. Different conditions such as differentials in temperature of static charge causes different types of weather, as does the intensity of winds,” Deadman stated.
“However, before we get distracted any further,” Celestia said, reminding him that even if he got either of them off topic it wouldn’t last forever “We must discuss the matter of your weapons in the castle.”
“Giving up my weapons or otherwise leaving them in the care of others would be a poor idea, as it would go against Blacklight protocol,” Deadman flatly stated, earning an almost angry seeming glare from Celestia.
“While I would like so, I understand that it is unlikely. However, I wish to have some basic guidelines for your… weaponry and HRV while in the castle,” Celestia stated, her eyes narrowing at Deadman.
“What are your rules?” Deadman questioned. He hoped that they were reasonable.
“Your weapons are to be kept in a state in which they are not able to be fired at all times. None of your weapons are to be drawn at any time. The HRV is to be used strictly as a navigation tool, and not to pry into the private lives of others. You are not to go out of your way to avoid contact with guards sent to communicate with you. You are not to use your HRV or any other methods to sneak into areas which the general public is not allowed into. You are not to go into the city area without express permission from either my sister or myself. You are not to fight, except in self defence, and you are not to goad another into fighting you. When you fight, you are only to stick nonlethal methods unless your life is in danger and there is no other option,” Celestia laid out, causing Deadman to nod his head in agreement. Those demands were reasonable, and although they had no way to know if he followed a good portion of those rules, he would respect them. They were things he didn’t really do anyhow.
“I agree to your terms,” he stated, before continuing “Was there anything else that you wanted to talk to me about?”
“There is currently nothing,” Luna spoke. It was interesting that she said much less on matters of policy than her sister here. Perhaps she wasn’t good with discussions like this? She seemed to be plenty eager to participate when he first arrived yesterday.
“Then I must return to my room, if you have no objections,” Deadman said, rising from his cushion.
“Wait!” Luna called out, prompting him to turn his head towards her. “If you ever want to exchange information again, contact me during the night. I will reciprocate your sharing of information,” she continued. It appeared that her curiosity had won over her concern for now.
“I believe I will,” Deadman confirmed, before exiting the room with a glare from Celestia burrowing its way into the back of his skull.
He wondered if Celestia’s sudden lack of friendliness was caused by a reversal of attitudes, or if she just pretended to be nice in public.