//------------------------------//
// Chapter 9 
// Story: The Mare in the High Castle 
// by ponichaeism 
//------------------------------//

	“....what sets us apart, see,” Thorny said, “it's....we create things with our mind, and then we bring them into being. All those adorable little critters in our pet shops, they cost a leg and a leg, right? But despite that, they can't do a thing that comes so easily to us. They can't capture reality....all this....through the power of art. They're stuck in their little glass cages, pacing around or slithering around or ruffling their feathers, unable to communicate what they see. But we, we ponies, we share our thoughts, our feelings, our-our-our perceptions. That's all an artist's style is. Their unique vision of the world? The artistic version of an accent. Here in Canterlot, art speaks the dialect of 'realism', that we....we take reality and capture it and display it 'as it is': the virility of pegasus ponies, the intelligence of unicorns, the hard work of earth ponies. That's the foundation of society, and our art represents that, as faithfully as a photograph.
“But even then, every artist has their own lingo, their own tics. They stride up to that canvas, and they ask, 'Hey, how are you doing?' And the canvas, get this, it speaks back to them. 'Draw a mountain here,' it says, 'and a moonlit lake over there.' But it's all in their heads. They....vomit their subconscious onto the blank slate. Just like the darkness, the canvas is waiting for a pony to project themselves onto it. One painter gets more of the detail in the form. Another gets the interplay of light and shadow. And we take all these dialects of reality and hang them in an exhibition next to each other, and we....pretend they're all the same. That they reinforce one another, even with their slight differences.
“But if you take a pony away from what's real, though, have them spend their lives staring at illusion after illusion that reinforces each other, who's to say the illusion won't replace reality itself? Does it then become a new reality?”
“In that case,” Freepony Young cut in, “I'm going to get working on a reality that doesn't include you.”
“I'm going to use my powers of illusion and pretend I didn't hear that.”
The Colonel chuckled into the eternal night.
“And while I do that, folks, why don't we hear a word from our sponsors: Foucolt-brand Architecture, for when you need to build structures that'll stand the test of time.”
The Colonel groaned. It seemed like they had just come back from a commercial break. She tuned the radio away, let it become one with the wind whispering past the top of the arch. Wind that all converged on this city, pushed clear across the world by pegasus power.
She took up her binoculars and scanned the street. The route the bomb would go down was visible for the most part, but there were a few blind spots where tall buildings blocked her view, and she had lost contact briefly. Should she go down and scout around? No, it was too risky. The Liberation Front might have their own eyes on the bombs, watching from the shadows. They were unusually well-equipped for earth ponies, which begged further investigation. Further investigation which would not be forthcoming from Spitfire's desk.
Another reason why I'm doing the right thing, she thought savagely.
She lowered the binoculars and slumped against the parapet, exhaling all her worries in a heavy sigh. Next to her crouched a gargoyles, and she stared at it in profile. Gargoyles were supposed to be ugly, but the pegasus's stone figure was heroic and beautiful, its scouring stone eyes watching over the city. The Colonel felt the pegasus above her, in a sense, as she lingered in the shadow of its outstretched wings as they blocked the moon. But it's cold and aloof features made her feel beneath it. Little more than an earth pony, in fact. They were so high, and she was so low and insignificant. When she had walked to the parapet, its silhouette laid in her path. She stepped over the shadow, but as she did, the shadow also covered her. It was above and below her at the same time; she was in the middle of it. Covered with shadow. Shadow everywhere. The Colonel was one with the darkness. As a Shadowbolt, her whole life was spent in it.
She shuddered, wondering where these thoughts were coming from. They didn't feel like hers. But out there, in the middle of a commercial break, she had nothing to occupy her except the stunning view of the city and the lonely wind. 
Focus, she thought. You have a job to do.
But how could she? Nothing to do but let her mind ramble. The radio continued to drone on, cutting into Thorny Bends's transmission time. Thorny Bends would understand her, if only she came back soon. It was a powerful experience, listening to her. She talked like she knew everything about the Colonel and her personal struggles.
The Colonel looked up at the beautiful gargoyle throwing its form across her, and though it was pitted and worn, she was shocked to see it resembled Spitfire, on that long ago day at the Academy. Long-ago and half-forgotten memories came to her. But against the dark and lonely night, they seemed as vivid as the day they had been made. Spitfire strolled past the line of recruits, totally and completely sure of herself. The director-general would weed out the strong from the weak before she placed the responsibility for defending Canterlot on their shoulders.
“You think you got what it takes?” Spitfire had asked them.
“Yes, ma'am,” Dash replied, swearing that she would never be weak.
“Oh, really? You look like you're going to limp home at the first bruise and cry to your mommy.”
“Just try me, ma'am.”
“You sure?” Spitfire asked, looking down her muzzle at the young mare, like the gargoyle did to the Colonel she had become. “Because when you offer yourself up like this, I'm gonna make it hurt, and hurt bad.”
With no hesitation, Dash declared, “No pain, no gain.”
Those four words could just about be Dash's motto. Struggle was how society kept fit. Kept from degenerating. The grand struggle of life itself. So when Spitfire blew the whistle right in her ear, she refused to flinch. She could take the shrill pierce. She refused to stop, not until she was at the top. At Spitfire's side.
“Listen up,” the director-general said. “Dash here has just volunteered you all for one hundred laps around the field. Now wing it!”
No pain, no gain, Dash thought then, as the Colonel did now.
But there was something else in the gargoyle's eye. It almost looked like bleak sadness. An accusation, and a condemnation. It's your fault, Dash thought. You refused to keep up, not me.
She suddenly came back to herself and realized she was talking to a piece of stone. But she couldn't help it. Where those stone eyes fell on her, they made her coat stand on end. And the way the moon lingered behind the gargoyle, it almost seemed like it was in agreement with Spitfire--
It's not Spitfire, it's just a statue, she thought, feeling her sanity ebb away.
To distract herself, she took in the unruly, tumorous mass gathering under the illuminated awning of the distant theater, just barely visible over the buildings. All of them waited for the mock battle against the tyrant Solara Victa to take place. But she, on the other hoof, was freezing her tail off fighting a real battle, and this war wasn't nearly as neat or glamorous as musical theater made it out to be. They haven't got a clue how we protect them and keep them safe. From themselves, if we need to. The sacrifices we make let them stay all cozy and secure in their theaters and office buildings. The pegasi are the real power in Canterlot. But soon enough, they'll understand that....I hope.
But still that stone Spitfire glowered sidelong at Dash, cutting right through her justifications, no matter how noble, with that madness-inducing stare of accusation.
It's been too long, she thought, the mane on the back of her neck standing on end. She picked up her binoculars and scanned the route again. It shouldn't have taken this long for her to reestablish contact, and doubt settled over her thick and heavy like a funeral shroud. I shouldn't have retasked Lightning Dust, she thought with dawning horror. It had seemed so important at the time, but looking back, how could she have thought that? Sometimes scarifices had to be made. Dash had done what Fleetfoot accused Spitfire of: not having her head in the game. Of course letting Sparkle go was the right call, in the middle of an operation. So why hadn't Dash made it? Why did she only realize what was important now, when there was nothing left to do but fret and worry?
She raised the binoculars again and scanned the route.
Nothing.
Come on. If you want to lead the Shadowbolts, you have to make calls under pressure all the time.
She turned the radio dial away from Radio Free Canterlot and towards the channel Major Dust was on, but a thought gave her pause. If she let Dust know she made the wrong call, how was she any more professional than Spitfire? A leader had to have her head in the game. She couldn't let Dust know she'd messed up. She turned the radio off and put it back on her belt, pledging to fix this mess herself.
Unless you don't have what it takes? Maybe Spitfire was right: this is just a sad, pathetic obsession--
Dash gritted her teeth, breathing heavily and feeling like a rook again. A weak, stupid rook making rookie mistakes. 
She hated this lonely waiting, without the radio, without action, without anything to focus on to. It gave the thoughts a chance to creep in. Those degenerate thoughts that cut away at her like a million tiny daggers when she was by herself. They made her weak, and she hated being weak. She spread her wings out wide she dived off the Arch, streaking through the night and out over the city below, hoping it wasn't too late.


When they reached the winding alley's dead end, they threw Applejack down to the grimy, filthy concrete, among the piled up garbage. She went limp, ignoring everything but the glass in her teeth. She had hold it firm, but not so firm she shattered it. So far she'd managed. But why bother? Soon enough they'd break it for her. There was no way she could fend off a half-dozen pegasus ponies all by herself. Her fate was not hers to decide, and never had been.
Just give up, AJ, a voice in her head thought. It'll only hurt fer a little while. That is, Ah hope.
“Lift her up,” the mare in charge said, cracking her neck.
Two of the Civil Force soldiers grabbed AJ's forelimbs and pulled her off the trash. The alleyway was slanted shadow, the other ponies barely able to be seen. The bones in Applejack's forelegs and her ribs strained, but the pegasi kept pulling until she stood nsteadily on her hind legs. Their leader came closer, a malicious smile on her lips. Sweat dripped down AJ's forehead and saliva swamped her duct-taped mouth. The mare put her hooves on the sides of Applejack's head. The hard edges dug into her coat, squeezed her skin. The pegasus yanked her head this way and that, inspecting her.
“Look at that face,” the pegasus said, rolling AJ's head around. “It's not like a Griffon face, all beaked and feathered. It could almost be a pegasus face. But there are tiny little differences. The broad muzzle, the low brow, the freckles. Still, she almost looks like a real pony.” She pinched AJ's earmark in her fetlock and pulled. “Good thing we have this to tell us what you are, isn't it?”
Applejack wanted to scream at her ear being stretched out, made thin and fragile, but with the tape no sound came out. The pegasus pulled harder, driving Applejack down to the ground while the others held her upright. The only way AJ could relieve the pain was to tilt her head to the side until it was nearly at a ninety degree angle.
“I said, isn't it a good thing?”
Through the muffling tape, Applejack screamed.
Mercifully, the pegasus let go. AJ's ear hurt even more when it returned to its rightful place. A thin trickle of blood ran down from the torn skin. Her lungs worked overtime to force enough air through her nostrils. She thought at them not to bother, but her lungs were stubborn things, desperate to keep hanging on to life.
“When we're done with you, nopony will have any trouble telling that face apart from a pegasus's.”
The pegasus mare stepped back, into a shadow. Her eyes gleamed in the dark as she looked over her shoulder. Applejack readied herself for the blow that'd tear her face and throat to shreds. In her mind, she felt the impact of the hard hoof, the cuts and slashes of the glass, the choking sensation of blood stopping up her throat. Would she survive it? Did she even want to survive it? The leader stretched her hind leg, preparing herself to kick. She raised her hoof to judge the distance until it was so close it made Applejack's eyes blur. The pegasus took it in, then stretched it out again, getting limber. Just do it! Applejack wanted to shout, but she was voiceless and powerless. She was already dead, she just had to wait for time to catch up to that fact. Her thoughts drifted away, back to the earth pony ghetto. Was her family sitting down to a nice meal right about now, wondering what sort of errand she was on? Saving her a slice of the meager food available to their kind? Gathering around the rattling heater, leaving a space for her? Was old Granny Smith asleep in her rocker, like a wizened old angel?
The pegasus mare's hind leg shot out, straight for Applejack's jaw. AJ screamed through the tape and tried to wrench herself away, but the other pegasi held her fast. Here it came, here comes the end.
But the hoof stopped an inch from her face. The pegasus cackled, though Applejack's heart leapt. Maybe they weren't going to do it after all, maybe they were just getting their kicks by frightening her out of her wits....
“Just warming up,” the pegasus in the shadows said. She coiled her hind leg again. “Are you ready, dirt-eater?”
Of course Applejack wasn't ready. How could anypony in their right mind be ready to die like this? But it was the end. The end of her sad, pitiful life. Why couldn't she have been a pegasus? What miserable, cruel power that be had made her an earth pony? Were they just tossed out at random when a pony was conceived? Why was this her life, and her death? But she had no time to ponder the mysteries of the universe. Not now. Or ever again.
The grinning pegasus mare's leg shot out, coiled with power, aiming to put an end to Applejack. And this time, it was once and for all.
But it didn't. Her hoof halted with the loud slap of skin on skin, hoof on hoof, echoing around the dead-end alley. It was too dark to see, with all the heavy shadows, but a flurry of motion in the darkness put the other Civil Force soldiers on edge. Their leader spun around roughly, taken off-guard by rough hooves that fanned her wings out. With a sharp snap, the bones broke in half, and she screamed out in pain as the pony in the shadows shoved her forward. She landed in a heap in the scarce, slanting light.
"Who's there?!" a pegasus shouted into the shadow.
As the stallion stepped into the light, he kicked the fallen mare's peaked cap up into the air, snatched it, and hung it carelessly askew on his head. He smiled a mad grin as he said, "Flash Sentry, Sergeant, 76th Thunder Battalion." He tossed a rolled-up ball of paper to the ground at Applejack's hooves: her letter of transit. “I was in the area and I couldn't help but notice you escorting your target away. Need a hoof?”
Applejack wanted to cry out, but the tape and the uncomfortable hunk of glass in her jaw stopped her. Who was this newcomer? Would he save her? She wanted to believe it, even though she'd been living far too long to depend on the kindness of pegasus ponies. But as the stallion stepped fully into the light, he didn't have any wings. Was he a pegasus, like he claimed, or not?
The Civil Force troops looked at one another. Then, the three of them who weren't holding Applejack tight rushed this so-called Sargeant Sentry as one. He ducked under a kick thrown by the first stallion, caught him by the head, and swung him around until he went sailing right into a window and broke his muzzle. The reinforced glass cracked into a star shape, and the Civil Force stallion collapsed to the cracked concrete, bloodied and dazed.
Another stallion swung for Flash, but like his name suggested he moved almost too fast for the eye to see. The corded muscles along his legs and body moved swiftly and precisely. Sentry's attacker threw out a hoof to strike him, but he smoothly deflected it and punched the attacker right in the face. Then, not missing a beat, he followed through on his swing by spinning round until he planted his forehooves on the ground and gave the other pegasus a roundhouse kick that slammed his head back. The Civil Force stallion stumbled backwards. 
The mare with the broken wings came to her senses and lunged at him from behind. Without missing a beat, and without even looking, he caught her swung foreleg, pulled her across his back, and slammed her into the ground. She flopped down and rolled limply on the trash-strewn ground. An eager young mare rushed Sentry, slashing out with her wing in a swift knifelike jab. Effortlessly, Sentry bent his knees and ducked under the wing. The pegasus flashed out with the opposite wing, aiming low to take Sentry unaware. But Sentry's coiled knees shot up. He jumped over the bladed wing and punched the pegasus in the face as he came down.
In the moment of calm that followed, Sentry reached up to adjust the stolen cap on his head, making sure it was still artfully askew. Then he started hopping in place on his hooves, steeling and unlimbering himself like a boxer. His grin welcomed all who thought they could take him. His face became something insane, a mad grin for a grand cosmic joke.
Three of the soldiers came to their senses and rushed Sentry at the same time. Rather than take them on, Sentry jumped again, this time bringing his hooves down atop the head of the middle one and leapfrogging over his back as the soldier went to his knees. AJ didn't have time to do anything but breathe hard through her nose before this Flash Sentry planted his forehooves on the concrete, twisted in midair, and kicked the two pegasus ponies holding her tight square in the faces with his hind legs. The mare hit the brick wall and slid down, while the stallion's head connected with a fire escape. Both were instantly knocked unconscious. 
Applejack herself fell to the ground. Hurriedly, she ripped the tape off and spat out the glass model. Canterlot shattered to pieces on the cracked ground. The balled-up letter of transit was right in front of her; she swiped it and stashed it in her cloak. Then she looked up to see Sentry grappling with the pegasus mare who had been the ringleader, and hopped to her hooves to help him.
“No!” he shouted. “They can execute you for striking a pegasus. Just get out of here while I hold them off.”
“What about you?!”
“I'll be fine,” he said. She noticed the scars along his side. He twisted the mare, angling the pegasus ponies to one side of the alley and making a gap between himself and the wall for her to slip through. “Get out of here.”
Applejack, flush with adrenaline, lingered for a moment while she thought of something, anything she could do. But so  much was going on, so much to take in, she couldn't handle it all. But she finally had somewhere to run: away.
“Thank you,” she said, then turned tail and ran out of the alley before the others could get her. She ran back through the twisting alleys, hoping she remembered the way. Shadows rushed around her; the shadows of a fire escape, a dumpster, a skyscraper overhead. The shadows reached for her, consumed everything around her. They conspired to bleed into one another until the shadows were the only thing that existed aside from her.
But before long she burst out of the alleyway, right back where she'd started. Her cart waited for her, the empty harness waiting to be picked up. She was safe. Relatively. Trying to act inconspicuous, she picked up the cart and walked off the rush of blood coursing through her veins.
A shadow crossed the moonlight on the sidewalk in front of her, a silhouette on the sharp line of a building. She looked back. For a second she thought a shape crossed the moon, but then it was gone.
An APC thundered around the corner. Its brakes squealed as it came to a stop. The back dropped open and more ponies in gray fatigues swarmed out, only these ones were wearing riot gear as well, with grilled helmets and thick body armor. They swept out around the street; in the distance, she saw the unicorn who'd owned the souvenir cart milling around and watching.
"Put the weapon down!" one of the Civil Force soldiers yelled at an earth pony, wearing a bright work detail vest and standing in the shadow of a tree planted along the sidewalk. A pair of hedge clippers hung loosely from the earth pony's fetlock. The other Civil Force soldiers ringed him and drew their truncheons. Before he could process what they were yelling, one of the riot troopers bodyslammed him from behind, knocking the hedge clippers away. A soldier fell on him and started beating his head with the truncheon; it only took three swift blows before Applejack saw the blood gleaming in the moonlight.
Run. Now. Before they see you!
She pulled the cloak's hood up and over her head and walked away as fast as she could, before they noticed her.


“Shameful,” the unicorn major said as he paced in front of the line of captives sitting on the sidewalk, all their hooves bound with manacles. He was an old warhorse, with a thick moustache that curled slightly at the ends. He tugged at it as he fretted. “Absolutely shameful. Seven pegasus ponies, good and proper ponies sworn to defend their nation, turning on each other and inciting lawlessness. And over what? A dirt-eater. Disgraceful.”
“It was his fault.” The mare with the bandaged wings nodded at Flash. “He was the one who stood up for that--that--”
“Enough! Your commanding officer is an old friend of mine, and he will surely have a heart attack when he hears about this. In the meantime, you can calm down in a holding cell. Take them away.”
Gendarmes lifted up all the ponies except Flash and walked them to an idling paddy wagon. They shuffled slowly, their hooves caught by the chains. The rear door swung shut and the autocarriage rolled away, leaving Flash alone with the major and a hoofful of gendarmes in riot gear.
“What happened?” the major asked pitifully, glancing down at Flash's passport. “They might execute you for social discord. Why? Why risk your life over a dirt-eater?”
“She had papers. She was on assignment from a unicorn, and had a reason to be here. I was keeping order. Funny, I thought was your job."
The major's nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. “I don't like your tone, son.”
“Really? My mother always told me I had perfect pitch." Flash was tired of this ridiculous stuffed-shirt. He would welcome the judges. He only hoped he had stashed his mailbag in a secure spot; he had no way to tell when he would be able to get back to it. If they found what was inside....
Ah, let them. They may kill me, but at least I'll die spitting in their faces, and that's a good way to go out.
The major gave a signal for the gendarmes to lift Flash off the ground, but before they could hustle him away a voice called out, “And where do you think you're going with him?” Flash and the major turned to see a Shadowbolt in shades strolling down the sidewalk. A multicolored mane spilled out from under her purple beret.
“Colonel Dash,” the major said courteously enough, but nowhere near compliantly. “Is there something I can do for the Directorate?”
She came to a stop and waved a forehoof at Flash. “For starters, you can unhoof my agent.”
“Your agent?” the major asked, his voice sounding as confused as Flash felt at the moment. 
“Is the perimeter secure?"
The major bristled at that. "We swept it very thoroughly indeed, have no worry."
"In that case, yes, he's my agent. I sent him in to rescue the earth pony. She's part of an operation.”
“Another agent of yours?”
“No,” Colonel Dash said. “A possible target. I sent Might in to protect her.”
“Might?”
“Max Might. Him.” She nodded at Flash.
The major lifted up the passport. “Says here his name is Flash Sentry.”
Dash groaned, tilted her shades up, and rubbed her eyes with her hooves. “What is this, amateur hour? Do you really think I'd send an undercover agent around with his actual identification?”
The major turned to Flash. “Is this true?”
Flash glanced at the stoic colonel, then back to the major. “Yes, sir.”
“And you didn't mention this why?”
“I'm a clandestine operator. So deep cover it's out of your pay grade. Besides, I have Colonel Dash watching over me, to bail me out of trouble.”
“So if we'll all done here,” Colonel Dash said, “I'd like to get back to my operation, please.”
“Fine,” the Civil Force major said. “But I'd appreciate a little more interdepartmental cooperation. Would it kill you to send a memo around the next time you'll be in our area of operation?”
“Major, we're always in your area of operation. You just never realize it.”
The major curled his lips up and gave her a brief look of distaste, then walked back into the APC with his troops. Flash stood by the curb and watched as it rumbled to life and rolled away, then turned to the Shadowbolt, wondering where to start with his questions. But she, staying calm and ice cold, preempted him.
“Well, agent,” she said, “good work salvaging my operation. Let me show you my thanks for your help....and for keeping it on the quiet, alright? You have a bank account?”
Flash turned away from her, keeping his lips sealed.
“Nevermind, then. I'm sure we have it on file somewhere. We have everypony else's.”
“Keep your money,” Flash spat. “I don't need it.”
“Everypony could use a few extra bits here and there. That's the way the unicorns like it.”
“Let me rephrase that: I don't want your money.” He started walking away from her. "Or your thanks."
He felt her stoic presence behind him. “I took an awfully big risk on you, Flash Sentry. I'll have my eye on you, so in case you change your mind, just remember that I owe you one, alright?”
Flash kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead and walked on. After a moment, he heard the flap of wings as the Shadowbolt lifted herself off the ground and flew away. Then he breathed out slowly, wondering if he did the right thing. But in this city, who could ever tell?


Applejack felt the Chariot Theater long before she saw it. It burned like an invisible fire, and the closer she came to the flame the hotter it scorched her. She sweated and itched, uncomfortable in her own skin, but that wasn't anything new. The ads, billboards, and posters surrounded her, for Croup Steel and Flicka Mining and Farrierben Pharmaceuticals. They pressed themselves against her eyeballs and forced their way into her head, united in praise of Canterlot, glory be to it. Here it was, the heart of the free world in all its glory, where divine natural law ruled. Where ponies made their own destiny with the sweat on their brow and the coins in their purse. As long as they had a horn or wings.
She felt the chains weighing her down. The chains of love that bound her to her family, shackling her to those other ponies she couldn't help but love. It was so heavy she could barely move. So what could she do? Everypony wanted to chain her down, and she had to let them, pretending she had some kind of choice in the matter. She couldn't even save her own life. She had to rely on the pegasus ponies to do it for her. Her life, and her death, were in everypony's hooves but her own. 
“Excuse me,” a dark voice from a dark alley called. “Do you know the way to the Chariot Theater?” 
The cart's wheels squeaked as Applejack stopped. In the mouth of the alleyway, Hammer beckoned to her from the shadows, wearing a heavy cloak like her own. 
She scowled at his easy smile and said, “That's not funny. Not a bit." She checked the street, but nopony was paying any particular attention to her. Except, for a moment, she thought she saw another shadow pass in front of the moonlight, but when she scanned the rooftops and the sky, there was nothing. "How'd ya get here, anyway?”
His scarred face, just barely visible under his hood, twisted as he grinned wider. “I have my ways.”
“Uh huh. And Ah sure do hope you have a good explanation for why ya didn't just take this here confection yerself.”
He sighed and indulged her. “There wasn't enough room to transport an entire cart. And anyway, I couldn't risk being spotted at a checkpoint. I told you, I've had a few run-ins with the Directorate before. So how was your trip in?”
“Hairy,” she said. “Very hairy.”
"The night is still young," he said. "It's not time yet. Come on, I know a quiet place where we can relax."
He turned and melted back into the shadows. Applejack took one last look around the street, unable to shake the feeling she was being watched. Yer just spooked, she thought, and followed Hammer into the darkness.


High above the street, on a rooftop steeped in shadow, the Colonel watched the two ponies disappear into the side alleyway. One of them was new, concealed by a cloak. Probably the mysterious leader of the Earth Pony Liberation Front. But if she was curious, she quashed it. She had to get her head in the game now. And so she stood and watched, brooding and silent, and left the radio off.


To Flash's relief, his mailbag was right where he'd stashed it. And good thing, too. There were too many watchful eyes in the city. Like in the cafe. That filly, he thought, remembering the little thug in the Shadowbolt cadet uniform. He had longed to set her straight, but with all the other ponies watching him, what could he have said that wouldn't have gotten him arrested? Everypony watched everypony else, their eyes wide open for the slightest sign of disloyalty, skepticism, unpatriotic behavior. 
All for the Empire of the Moon, huzzah! May the Empire never end.
He walked through the night, weary and aching from the fight.
That filly, he thought again, but with pity this time. Living in this toxic city. What would she be like someplace else? Someplace that wasn't the Empire? Would she still be a little thug, stomping around in self-importance? Or could she have grown into a decent kid?
Nopony would ever know, he guessed. How could they? A pony only got one live in one world. No time to waste on what-might-have-been-if-only.
She's a little thug, and that's that, he thought savagely.
Of course, so was I, once. 
He remembered Thunderlane then, all of a sudden, and it hurt. The searing pain of the jagged scars on his back had faded long ago, but even at its worst it never hurt as badly as the memory of Thunderlane did at that very moment. As he walked down the city street, a disquiet settled over him, and in every pane of glass he saw his past reflected back at him. He had nothing else to occupy him, nothing but his memories and the city. They ran together and became one, because they had always been one.  He had gone overseas to make sure these stones would never fall. The city was a part of him, and of everypony else who lived in it. Everything he had fought for, bled for, suffered for, it was all here, embedded in the streets and buildings themselves. As he walked through it, he also walked through his past.
Flash walked on, and in the window of a record store, he saw boot camp. The constant running, the push-ups, the weapons training. They told him the pain at the end of the day meant he was getting fitter, and he was glad for it. He signed up to be shipped out as soon as he was eighteen, in 990, but that was the tail end of the war, only three years before it was over. Back then, the thing that worried him most was that his war would be over and he wouldn't get a chance to prove he was a true pegasus.
In the window of a laundromat he saw the golden Grazembezi savannah, the air hazy from the sweltering heat that seared his coat and skin, making him feel dirty and unclear as he soldiered so far away from the eternal moon. Even though the army gave him his shots to protect him from the sun's ravages, once in the eternal sunlight, it was impossible to escape the creeping feeling that crawled across his sweat-soaked skin. Especially not with the mosquitoes buzzing everywhere, sensing the blood about to be spilled. But there was Thunderlane, right beside him, always ready to entertain him with a joke about him and his girl, Blossomforth, in the communal showers.
By the glow of an electronics shop, Flash saw the zebra who had died before his very eyes.
Far from the glorious battles on the radio serials, he and Thunderlane had gotten their first assignment on a highly boring patrol route along the concrete walls surrounding the Flicka mining consortium mines. After eleven years of occupation, the zebra who worked the mines were well and truly broken. Degenerates, his drill instructor and his commanding officers had called them, who stole the land from ponykind's ancestors and had to be kept under a watchful eye so they couldn't steal Equestria away, too. But they all worked with eyes humbly downcast and lived off the scraps the company provided them, more worried about surviving than destroying him. It was disappointing, how mundane and routine it all was. Where was the action? he wanted to know.
And then, one blazing day, he got his wish.
Inside a bakery window, among the cakes and muffins and loaves of bread, he saw the militia rising over the hazy ridge, riding full force towards the mining camp with crude machetes and spears slung over their back. They had no technology, not like the massive mining complex at Flash's back. Another mark of degeneracy, they told him. But their weapons would kill him dead regardless, only a lot less efficiently than a hoofcannon shell to the face, and wasn't the point of technology to be more efficient? But despite Flash's best attempts, he wasn't feeling the efficiency. Thunderlane had already unslung his hoofcannon from around his back, shouldered and sighted it, and fired at the advancing line of zebra. Mushrooms of fire sprouted on the rank of battle and flung the bodies caught in them in every direction. But Flash struggled to unsling the two-foot-long steel tube off his back. The strap was stuck, the hoofcannon's barrel was pointing downward, and he still couldn't see with the sun in his eyes. He fumbled back towards the wall, until something slammed into him and drove him to the dusty ground. He rolled around and stared up at the snarling zebra rearing up against the sun, a dark silhouette with burning edges swinging a humongous machete. Terrified of those degenerate hooves touching him, infecting him.
Flash turned his head and saw, in the windshield of a parked autocarriage, the zebra's upper body blowing apart from the impact of the shell. And behind its smoking corpse, there was Thunderlane, dropping his hoofcannon and running over to haul Flash, whose coat was slick with blood, off the ground and hustle him into the compound behind the thick concrete walls.
When Flash dreamed that night, he saw the zebra explode over and over again, but in the morning he told himself it was alright: those were degenerate body parts, sickly and weak, as opposed to the strong and virile body of a pegasus. No need to feel bad about it.
Instead, he gave Thunderlane the stashed bottle of cider he had trade his Captain Combat comics for, and toasted his best friend before the entire mess hall back at base.
Flash crossed the street, and on the corner ahead was the large, curving glass building of the Second Bank of Equestria. In it, he saw the ambush that had decimated his patrol, some two years later. Another zebra loomed large over him as he lay among the bodies of his patrol. Flash never could tell the zebra apart, and this one looked just the other one. He raised his hoofcannon to fire, but lost consciousness before he could pull the trigger, and Thunderland wasn't there to save him that time. 
Flash regained consciousness in fits and starts, until he woke up inside the hut. The sloping little hut, so unassuming, yet so terrifying. The militia commander looked him over, checked his dog tags, conferred with the others. Then, together, they stretched him out on the floor. He struggled, thrashed, pleaded, spat curses, but with a thwack, the machete came down and his skin and muscle and tendon and bone split in two. He saw them casually throw the wing that had been a part of him all his life aside, discarding it like it was nothing. Then they took the other one. But if there was one comfort, Thunderlane wasn't there to see him weep. A real pegasus never wept, no matter the circumstances. But as he spent the day chained to the floor, shivering and sweating and aching and empty, he realized he wasn't a pegasus anymore. He was nothing.
A better part of a year passed for him inside that hut, wondering what was happening in the real world. Occasionally, the zebra would ask him questions. He had no answers, but that didn't stop them. They would beat him and starve him, but he refused to tell them anything. He might not be a pegasus, but he was still a pony. Still superior.
We certainly got our revenge on them, though, didn't we? The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.
He passed the marble front of the Flicka mining consortium's headquarters, and in the lobby's glass doors, he saw the day when he had been rescued at last. He woke to the sound of jets flying overhead and the zebra shouting in their guttural, ugly language. Heard the explosions outside, as helicopters moved in and blasted the compound to pieces. The troops swept through the camp until they stumbled upon him, alone and starved and exhausted, and there at the front was Thunderlane. "Think I was going to leave you behind?" he asked. Flash would have wept at the beautiful sight of another pony after all those months, but all his tears were gone, dried up by the harsh and degenerate sun.
Home, he had thought. I'm finally going home.
They bundled him into the idling helicopter, the last POW they'd been searching for. It lifted up and swooped away, just before the jets screamed past, leaving strange white contrails in the hazy sky. He turned to Thunderlane and asked what was going on.
"Just spraying for pests."
As the air force jets, and dozens more like them all across the skies of Grazembezi, pumped gallons and gallons of Chemical BLUE over the savannah, he felt a vague sense of triumph. Of debts owed finally being paid. Of victory. Canterlot was still standing, and that was what truly mattered.
He passed a photography studio, its windows full of smiling foals and wedding pictures and family vacations. The technology to capture moments in time forever, for better or worse. In the glass, he saw a very different sort of picture, the ones leaked from the military's chemical warfare division, still stamped 'confidential' across the bottom. The vets in the support group had started passing them around to each other, to take a small moment of unbridled vindication. Flash remembered the them well; when finally they landed at his hooves, he stared at them with a creeping revulsion.
They showed the military's chemical crews cleaning up Grazembezi for the eventual settlers. They grinned at the camera in their billowy chemical suits. And behind them, the corpses. Piles of dead bodies with jagged stripes of black and white and legs sticking out at odd angles. There were close-ups, too. They had never told Flash the details, but one grizzled old veteran with no hind legs gleefully filled Flash in as he looked those terrible photos over. The gas constricts the muscles and suffocates the unlucky equine who breathes it in, and curls up the limbs until the victims are stuck in the fetal position, and distorts the facial muscles until they're pulled back in a shocked-looking expression, all widened eyes and drawn lips. An expression of pure terror as the gas rolls across the savannah. That grizzled old vet said it was nicknamed the 'Chemical Blues'.
The cleanup crews evidently found it too much of a hassle to disentangled the stallions, mares, and foals who'd huddled together for one last moment of closeness as the gas shut down their bodies. So the military piled them all up, all the dead zebra hugging each other tight, a whole mound of entwined legs and blood-stained eyes and muzzles reaching to the sky.
Another degenerate race swept into the dust pile, Flash thought in the present, an ironic twist on thoughts he once had in earnest. As soon as the settlers move in, all those corpses and the dirt they're in will make some fine farmland. 
For the Empire.
Despite his revulsion, Flash had refused to give in. He told himself they deserved it, they had it coming, they were evil. That sympathizing with a degenerate was in itself degenerate, and he, who had bled for his nation, was no degenerate. Of all the mares and stallions in the veteran's support group, Thunderlane was the only one who spoke out. Once he saw those pictures, Flash saw his best friend collapse. That was the only way to describe it. Like he had been slowly hollowed out, until his facade couldn't take it and he imploded. He cried in despair that ponies were the real degenerates, and in a fit of rage Flash slammed him into the wall; overcome with terminal intensity, he beat Thunderlane down, and every time the pony cried out, Flash beat him harder. Traitors are traitors, he told himself. A true pegasus stood resolute against degeneracy. The betrayal was the worst part of it; he had trusted Thunderlane with his life, and now here he was stabbing Flash in the back. Stabbing his city in the back. Destroying everything they fought for.
And so, he had dutifully gone to the Midnight Guard and told them, still burning with betrayal.
"A pony will do anything to protect the land he lives in," he told the officer. But when he tossed and turned sleeplessly in bed that night, it struck him suddenly that the zebra who had mutilated him lived in Grazembezi. Even more frustrated, Flash got up and took the full bottle of cider out of his refrigerator. By the time he passed out, it was half-gone.
Thunderlane wasn't at the next support group, nor the next one.
It only got worse from there. The creeping, crawling horror followed him into the civilian world and stalked him from the shadows. It was the same feeling he got all those years ago, in the hot sun of Grazembezi, that raised the hackles and set him on edge. They were scheming against him and his civilization in the shadows. A confederation of degenerates, pony and not, secretly attacking the righteousness of Equestria from all sides. Jealous of the the pony values of diligent hard work and upstanding moral character, and the success it brought them. They would never know the lunar divinity or the World to Come, and so out of spite they schemed to make sure nopony else would, either. They had already tried to take his city once, in the Winter Rising, and had been soundly defeated by the militia and the Civil Force. So now they plotted to erode the pillars of society in secret, with their degenerate art and questioning Equestria's moral righteousness.
He, Sgt. Flash Sentry, had to stand firm against the hordes, like those valiant knights in olden times enshrined in myth and legend who strapped steel armor on and crusaded against dragons. He might not have wings, but he was still a centurion, a modern-day knight crusading for his princess. He would meet vile, insidious speech with the language that trumps all others: physical force. Every time they tried to tear down his Empire, foundation of his life, the stronger he built it back up. Because otherwise, what had he lost his wings for? What had he slaved and sweated on the savannah for?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
All his life, the pegasus ideal had been a shining guide to life itself. There had to be a reason for what happened. Why he felt so miserable all the time and drank too much. He refused to believe it was anything but the degenerates stabbing the nation in the back, and that propped-up belief was the burning core of his being, a flaming passion, and every time somepony threatened it, Flash pushed against them with vigor in his bones and the glint of murder in his heart.
"Thank you for your sacrifice," the ponies of Canterlot said to him when they saw what had happened to his wings. And at first, he thanked them graciously. That was the protocol; anypony who said that was a true Equestrian. 
But then the doubts started to creep in, first in the dead of sleep, and eventually in the beautiful glow of the moon. The doubts gnawed their way out of him every single second, and try as he might, he couldn't get them back in. Everywhere in the city, he saw the piles of zebra bodies. He knew they weren't really there, but his senses told him so. And to keep the rising tide of revulsion down, he grew ever more fanatical. He saw the shadows of daggers poised to stab him in the back everywhere, and it drove him to a nervous breakdown. The two halves of himself couldn't mesh together, and they were starting to break the machine of his mind.
Ploughshare, they called it. He remembered those bleary photos on the cover of the underground magazine the degenerates put out. Where they organized their secret plots. The dead zebra haunted him, and wherever he turned there was a discarded copy in an alleyway or on a park bench. 
He was a soldier, he figured. Maybe if he had an enemy, his life could feel normal again. If he could take the magazine out, they would call him a hero for this act of valor. He obsessed over it, sneaking into the ghettos to hunt down the source, spying on the ponies he suspected had something to do with it. Canterlot itself became enemy territory to him, but he didn't know where the enemy was coming from. The sun was blinding him from all directions now.
But the more he poured over the magazine, the more it began to work in him. Everything he read in its pages convinced him of its truth. Convinced him the pieces did fit together, if only he held the right ones. Real life was an enigma, but Ploughshare was the key to deciphering it. And so, when Flash Sentry finally found the source of the magazine, it wasn't to commit murder but rather to get on his knees and beg to be a part of it.
"Thank you for your sacrifice," the ponies of Canterlot said to him when they saw what had happened to his wings. But he longed to tell them it was only a sacrifice if it meant something, and a few more tanks and planes rolling off the assembly line and a few more tons of ore in the hooves of the Flicka mining consortium didn't mean anything. But they would report him to the Midnight Guard, like he had once done to Thunderlane. It was the perfect marriage: the military-industrial complex running society and the persecution complex ruling the individual. The military-industrial-persecution complex, then. Both fueling the other, on some unspoken and perhaps even unconscious agreement, fanning the flames and gorging themselves on the equine wreckage.
So he bit his tongue and resisted doing anything rash. He couldn't afford to bring undue attention down on himself, and his passive-aggressive attitude was already skirting the line between wisdom and stupidity. Not even a veteran like him could get away with handling the kind of contraband in his bag. The Midnight Guard execute him as a degenerate, like they did to Thunderlane, if they found out. Like he did to Thunderlane, it pained him to admit. But he carried on, for the sake of Thunderlane and all the others like him.
And also, he suspected, for his own sake as well. Sometimes he thought he wanted to go out like the soldier he always fancied himself as, with a smile on his lips and defiant scorn in his heart. He would stick it to the hegemony, let their fury rain down on him. The other parts of him, the more practical parts, tried to quash it, but Flash still felt a giddy thrill at dying in glorious battle.
He passed out of the city center and ended his wandering at a little art gallery near the theater district. Its flickering and dilapidated neon sign announced it was 'The Stable'. He pushed the door open and climbed a dingy concrete stairwell, deliberately left unrepaired, like he was walking into a factory. He pushed the second floor door open and entered a bare loft with exposed girders and support beams. The place was fairly full, because the outlandish art was always just on the right side of respectable to draw a crowd. He himself had no eye for the stuff, but he had other business to attend to. He pushed open a door marked 'Employees Only' and brazenly walked inside, then down the hall to an unmarked steel door. He rapped on it until a panel slid open and a pair of eyes appeared. Then the slot closed again and the door swung open.
“Thanks, Bulk,” Flash said.
He squeezed past the portly pegasus bouncer, a stallion with wings so stunted they had rejected him from the army. Cast out from his military family, he'd found solace here, in this den of rejects. Still, Flash would've preferred even those measly things to the scars on his back.
“Is he in?” Flash asked as he headed for a cabinet against the far wall.
“Yeah!” Bulk shouted after him.
Flash pulled on a copy of 'To the High Castle: On Having a Personal Relationship with the Princess of the Night No Matter How Far'. The legendarily overwrought and sentimental tome was guaranteed to never be touched, not even by die-hard loyalists. The mechanical workings connecting the book to the wall clicked open as the lock released. He went to the side and heaved the bookcase aside on its rollers. A door with a crudely drawn sign reading 'Members Only' greeted him. He entered the room beyond and emerged onto a grated catwalk overlooking a second gallery. The real gallery. 
“I say, come on down,” a pony called up to Flash.
Flash trotted down the corrugated steps and brushed past bizarre statues on pedestals and freestanding walls full of astonishingly abstract paintings that would give the Midnight Guard aneurysms before they could even shout 'Degenerate art!' The ponies inside the gallery were an eclectic mix: unicorns in odd fashions, relaxed pegasi sipping drinks, earth ponies mingling easily.
Good thing sewer maintenance is all done by earth ponies, Flash thought. If the security services found the secret entrance down there, they could roll us up like a map. Flash approached a booth in the corner. The pony who had called out to him sat on the other side of the table, sipping a glass of cider and smiling lightly. A slender unicorn mare lounged beside him and watched Flash approach with cool disinterest.
“Did you bring the latest issue?” Fancy Pants asked.
Flash reached into his messenger bag and dropped the stack of Ploughshare magazines on the table. With a grim smile, he said, “I'd say I've actually got a few issues.”
“Don't we all? Then perhaps we should get down to business and do something about them, shall we?”