//------------------------------// // Musings on a Sandy Beach // Story: Dawn of the Vanguard // by Mystic Song //------------------------------// Low tide. Night, with a sliver of a moon brightening the cliff base that was nearly four hundred paces from where she stood. Kim leaned against the grey damp rock of the hanging cliff wall and breathed in the salt thick air. The tide went out far here, leaving the darkest sand and a few white shells in lieu of silvery-grey sea foam. If she were to hazard a guess there were about five yards of beach between the base of the cliff and the slowly lapping dark blue waves. She frowned as she shifted her boots over wet black sand fighting down her growing unease. How could there be so much black sand without any sight of a volcano either active or extinct? They had sent people to search the ocean bottom and along the coast, but had found nothing to suggest why there was black sand here. They would have immediately dismissed it as the work of an ancient volcano if the black sand hadn't just stopped completely after a few kilometers down the beach. It wasn't even a fade. It was like someone cut a line in the sand, on one side tar black sand and the other bright yellow dunes. Still they wouldn’t have investigated if the foliage and earth on the black sand side wasn’t dead. Charred black and dead on one side, and bright green foliage on the other. Like if someone scarred acres of vibrant land to the bedrock. She didn’t like it, but what she liked and didn’t weren’t of issue here. So, she held her tongue, didn’t point out how Klein refused to walk on the scarred land, and patiently waited for her orders to formally pull out of Equestria. Her teeth braced against each other. Two solid months of infiltrating on Equestrian soil, and they couldn’t uncover a single hint on the nature of the third pony sect. The commanders deemed that having newer fresher eyes on the ponies would bear more information. So her, Alec, and everyone who had been in Equestria to this point gets to relax on the submarine before they were switched back in. Ridiculous. She was strength class, she could go on for twice the amount of time she was here and still have strength to spare. Alec may not share her class but she knew he could last a few weeks more, they both knew it. Which was why she stood guard on her shift watching the cove like the good soldier she was while Alec rested. And if thinking of what they weren’t seeing while resting he relaxed him, well who was she to tell him that he rested wrong. Tap. Tap. Tap. Such an annoying repetitive drumming, yet there was nothing she could do but endure it. Alec was thinking. As in thinking, thinking. As in stop moving except for the stray frown, and the barely there movement of his shoulders as he almost didn’t breathe. Behind his half closed eyelids she could see his eyes move rapidly back and forth as if he was reading the same sentence over and over again. Unnerving to look at, but she couldn’t knock the results. His strange methods had gotten them out of enough bad situations. ‘Though this might not be one of them’, She thought as Alec’s eyes open and he stood up muttering to himself. ‘Might as well bite the bullet.’ She waited for him to stand beside her before speaking, “Thought of anything?” Alec’s only outward response was the slight down curve of his lips and a quick, “No.” Well that anger was very much directed at himself. I should remedy that before it gets out of hand. “Bounce your thoughts off me maybe I can help.” Okay, that look was uncalled for, mostly, but she could use it. “Who knows, the echo of my empty head might give you the insight you need.” An impassive face that had the slightest of tightening around the eyes. So, annoyed at me which means… “Your head’s not empty.” Monotone with the smallest bit of bite. Emotions that made him a little more human, a little more opened. Surprisingly open if she had the mind to stop and think about smaller things. Cold information was easy to get from Alec, deeper emotion happened when he slipped. “Still, saying what you’re thinking out loud could help. Spirit’s knows we have the time.” She huffed. “Have you been swearing to the spirits?” She was taken aback by the sharpness in his voice. “Not recently but-” “Don’t.” Alec didn’t snap, as so much as he warned. Like that time he said it was better for them to fly over a suspended bridge then walk across it. Alec must have read the question on her face because he sighed and said, “Klein felt something on the sub.” He paused, “Felt, not saw.” An Empath feeling a presence that they couldn’t see, “Well, damn.” “Usually I wouldn’t think twice about something like that." Alec continued, "Emotions linger, especially anger. It wouldn’t matter, except it was a logged room that no one had accessed in hours, and Klein felt the presence with him. He said it was like sitting in a reception with someone else. They didn’t speak, their breathing wasn’t very loud, but every so often they looked at you.” Alec rolled his shoulders back releasing a chorus of pops. “We should avoid calling attention to ourselves, seeing at we are on Equestrian soil.” Exasperated she shook her head, “You know most people would be a little more miffed at the thought of being attack by spirits.” “Klein wasn’t attacked. He said the presence felt more curious than angry.” Alec glanced at her, “Take that as you will.” A lot of spirits didn’t remember what it was like to be mortal. For many of them their idea of safe fun could kill people. So being poked at by something that might think being attack by wolves as being a slight inconvenience, she shuddered, “Great. Now we have to worry about getting blindsided by a curious spirit while we’re trying to stay hidden.” She released a hiss of breath, “I swear this whole place is cursed, and I’m not talking about one of those small one hundred year, your children and your children’s children will be forced to wander the land one’s. It’s like one of those vindictive, you will never know what you lost until it’s too late, ones.” “How so?” She paused at Alec’s voice, and looked at him. Impassive face, flat dead eyes, and one twitching hand drumming against air. Careful, careful. He might be onto something here, “It’s like, it’s like... Well have you seen how the ponies here act? One small bit of uncertainty from their government and they’re near damn ready to go feral. It wasn’t like their leaders are killing them in the streets, they’re mad because they haven’t seen one of their leaders for a few months. They’re destroying buildings because one of their leaders got sick. It’s insanity. The only ones who aren’t acting insane are the soldiers, and that third sect we can’t find. I swear everyone else is raving mad-” “They’re insane.” Alec whispered, his hand freezing at his side as his breath did that fluttering stopping and starting thing that she hated. “Alec, you know I can’t help you if you don’t talk. What’s wrong?” She asked, and she was going to wave a hand in front of his face if he didn’t start blinking soon. He looked at her, dull brown eyes alight with a frenzy she hadn’t seen since that time they were spelunking in Aria’s cave system and someone suggested lighting a match to find the direction a terrible scent was flowing from. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. It didn’t look like the world was going to disappear in a giant fireball, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a good time to look for cover. “Kim,” Alec said bringing her attention to him, “We have been following the wrong ponies.” Alec’s hands clenched for a brief moment, “I need to send a message. Now.” Well, then it seems that Alec was all nice and rested. Her axe shifted on her back as she reached for the handheld that was given to them. She tossed it to him, and watched as he played with the dials. “Want to tell me what’s going on?” She asked. The radio buzzed to life, and Alec looked at her, “How many books have you read on the Era of Entrapment, and the loss of humanity?” “...Give me a crash course.” “Simply, to become the way we are now humans for a brief period of time threw away their humanity.” Alec said, frowning at the radio as he skipped through channels, “The writers I read all said that doing so may have left hereditary psychological scars on the ponies.” “And you care?” And that came out way more snarly then she intended. “My dear Kim, I couldn’t care less if my ancestors actions doomed most of these ponies to a life of dribbling insanity.” Alec said coolly, “What I care about is the ponies that don’t fall under most.” She frowned, working Alec’s words through her head, “You really think that the majority of ponies are insane?” “You said it yourself. Sane people, sane creatures don’t go foaming mad at being left alone.” Alec said, “And that’s where we made our mistake. We expected the third group to not be with the ponies we think are insane. But if that insanity is normal, and the third group doesn’t want to be seen as different…” Her eyes widened, “They would be acting like everyone else around them.” Alec nodded, taking a brief moment to shut off the radio and turn it back on again, “They may even be overcompensating or hiding in the company of ponies who are. The more they act like the insane population around them, the more they rant and rave, the more they show their ‘true’ colours the less they stand out.” “So they’re blending in by standing out.” Kim muttered, “So the ponies that we’ve been following?” “They avoid each other but for small moments where they would walk close enough to obviously pass notes. Passing notes while looking around themselves in the most suspicious unsuspicious way. They’re acting too sane, their actions are too rehearsed they have to be a distraction.” Alec said, shaking the radio in his hand. She watched as her brother shook the radio hard enough to make the button's click against the plastic surrounding them, and asked, “Need a little help there, bud?” He looked at her flatly, “I can’t get a reception.” “The batteries are dead?” She asked her eyebrows raising at the thought. The technicians were always on top of things like that. Alec opened the bottom of the radio again and weighed the batteries in his hand, “They’re heavy.” “Then it’s a problem with the circuits inside, isn’t that the best spot of luck. Nothing like possibly having crucial information without a way to pass it along.” She snorted, “Looks like we’re waiting for the next team to relieve us of duty.” She sent Alec a frown, more like she frown at the tightness around his lips, “You’re not running off to tell them.” “I don’t like it.” Scoffing she answered back, “You don’t have to like it all you have to do is follow protocol. The next team comes in ten, fifteen minutes tops. We’ll go back to camp change this radio for one that works, then tell them what you figured out.” At Alec’s deadpanned stare she snorted, “I know that you know that if they see one hint of weakness, rule breaking or whatever out of us they pull us out. Sit on your annoyance and wait for the right moment to use it. Then we will crush some skulls.” Alec held her gaze, blinked, then looked out to the ocean. And if that wasn’t a ‘I disagree with you but I rather not fight you on this’ she would eat the terribly pinching shoes on her feet. Her fingers tapped at the handle of her axe. As she thought about what she knew they both were thinking. All they had was a very good, very informed guess. Damn it, what they needed was a concrete sign something that the higher ups couldn't ignore, and would force them to stay in Equestria. She couldn’t lie. The want for revenge did entice her, and did drive a large part of why she wanted to stay. But it didn’t drive all of it, what drove her to stay was something that she saw on all of the faces of those stationed here. A drive that none of them would bring up. The cold from the breaking surf reached out to her and she stood ready. She held still in the face of the pulling mournful sigh as sea air tumbled across the black beach. There was a sickness in this air that seeped into everything near it. A sense of death leeched up from the soil waning and blooming with the tide. It was enough to make her feel ill, and left an emptiness that whispered to be solved. There was something else going on here, and they needed to find out what that was.