Lyra Heartstrings v. Republic of Terra

by PegasusKlondike

Boiling Point

Bonbon frowned at her work.

The poorly sewn darning was going to fray, she knew it. And it was in such an open spot, right in the middle of one of the couch cushions, where the near constant traffic of ponies that had come to console her in the past few days had worn through. And despite her best efforts, a little chunk of the cushion's padding poked through, an obvious testament to the futility of the custard mare's feeble attempt at trying a new stitch. She'd wanted to do a patch with a whipstitch, but no, Ms Rarity herself had said that a bit of darning with a dark green thread would hold better, prove tougher, and would look far more fabulous than just a patch, even if Bonbon just ended up flipping the cushion over.

Bonbon sighed. "If only..." She couldn't say the next words. She couldn't bring herself to say that this little project that had taken her well over four hours on her only real day off since she had come back could have been done in seconds, if only a certain unicorn had been there with a mending spell sparkling at the tip of her horn.

The custard colored candymaker sniffled, gently dabbing at the corners of her eyes like she had done so much in the past few weeks. Her eyes drifted away from the poorly stitched cushion at her hooves and up towards the mantle. It was so empty now. Before, it had been sparsely populated at best, displaying a few photos from their wedding, one or two from their honeymoon, a few photos of the extended family, and even a gold-framed picture of Lyra in a silky black dress, standing on her hind legs with one hoof wrapped around the shoulder of her orchestral harp.

Of course, her eyes were closed in that picture, but it didn't ruin the photo opportunity in any way. At that moment Lyra had been at her most natural, her most beautiful, her most rapturous. The way she held that harp in her hooves, so gently, so sweetly, so lovingly, reminded Bonbon so much of the way Lyra would hold her at the end of every day. And though she had always been the rougher of the pair, so much so that their friends said she was just one of "the guys", her embrace had always been gentle and warm.

But now the mantle lay barren, cleaner than it had been in years. And Bonbon wanted nothing more than for that mantle to be cluttered, filled with memories and reminiscence of warm summer days spent in the park, of trips to the farthest places on the map, of parties and celebrations of the smallest things. Pictures of aunts and uncles, parents and in-laws, pictures of children...

"Hello?" a sugar-sweet voice chimed from the door.

Tearing her eyes away from the mantle and trying to gain some kind of sociable composure, Bonbon managed to crack a small smile when she spied the one friend that had been there for her the most in these troubling times. A silly, most of the time cross-eyed mare who knew the pain of separation all too well, but never let it leave her with a frown.

"Can I come in?" Derpy asked.

Bonbon stifled a tiny chuckle. "Heh, you kinda already let yourself in."

"Oh," she quipped, her smile falling just a bit, then lighting right back up. "Okay then!" The bubble marked and bubbly mare seemed to leap across the gap that separated them, greeting Bonbon in the only way that could ever truly befit such a loving friend, and she wrapped her forelegs around Bonbon's shoulders in a bear hug that would impress most bruins. After a few moments, Bonbon managed to wriggle her way free, lest the pegasi's deceptively strong grip blow all the air from her lungs or crack one of the earth pony's ribs.

"So, what do I owe the pleasure of this visit to?" asked the candymaker. Despite her melancholies, despite her guilt over leaving Lyra to fend for herself in a strange and foreign city, there was no sorrow that a strategic and liberal application of Derpy couldn't solve. The mare had taken her out for lunch and dinner a few times since she got back, just to get Bonbon out of the house and back into the public eye. Even if it was just an idiom, it was always a pleasure to see the local mailmare.

But despite her normally overwhelming bubbliness, there was something amiss with the grey pegasus today, and a thick newspaper poked out of her saddlebag. Bonbon frowned. There was normally a paper-colt that delivered the morning edition, Derpy just handled the post. She had been slightly overworked as of late, having been forced by the postal service to take on a new route that took her out to a small outpost several hours west of Ponyville as a part of a hybrid communication line between Canterlot and Lazarus.

The bubble-marked mare's smile fell slightly. "Um, these are for you!" She dipped her muzzle into her saddlebag, whipping out a small brown paper bag that smelled absolutely delicious. It was most certainly a bag of muffins, blueberry by the mouthwatering scent of them, and Bonbon happily accepted the bag of pastries.

"Wow, that's awful thoughtful of you. What's the occasion?" Bonbon replied, fishing a still-warm blueberry muffin from the depths of the sack and taking a tiny, polite nibble from the muffin's cap.

"Oh, um, nothing. Just thought I would bring you a smile!" Derpy put on a sheepish grin, and her eyes drifted downwards. Even the tip of her hoof rubbed anxiously on the floor.

Bonbon swallowed her bite of muffin, and she started to become concerned. Derpy was many things; silly, a little clumsier than most ponies, extremely friendly, but she was by no means a good liar. She was not a good gambler, considering that she had more tells than most ponies had hairs in their mane.

"What's wrong?" Bonbon earnestly asked. Derpy squeezed her eyes shut, biting down on her lip. "Derpy, tell me what's wrong." The pegasus shook her head from side to side violently, as if the troubling secret that she was keeping was trying to free itself from its confines inside her head.

Finally, she could bear the weight of it no longer, and she cracked, frantically spitting it all out. "My mom always told me to be honest about bad news! She told me give somepony something sweet to make the bitter news not so bad!" She waved her hoof towards the bag of muffins, covering her face in shame.

It was incredibly over-dramatized by any stretch, but Bonbon could tell that Derpy had the best intentions in mind when she walked in that door, bringing a bag of sweet treats to hopefully soften the blow of bad news. And judging by the fact that Miss Derpy had not taken the liberty of keeping one of her favorite pastries for herself could only mean troubling and possibly disastrous news.

Bonbon laid a hoof on Derpy's shoulder to console her. "Look, whatever it is can't be that bad. Now, calm down, and just tell me what's wrong."

Derpy pursed her lips tightly together, and she shook her head once again. But one look into Bonbon's eyes made her sigh, and she dipped her muzzle into the other saddlebag around her waist, retrieving the thick newspaper. Laying it down on the coffee table, Derpy shrank back from the paper like some ponies cowered from a big ugly spider or a snake.

Glancing from the mare to the paper and back, Bonbon slowly reached out, grasping up the newspaper in her hoof. Unfolding it, Bonbon focused her attention on the headline. And after reading a few lines in, her heart began to beat faster and faster.

"Dozens of arrests... riots... warrants issued... city in chaos... several injured. Lyra Heartstrings confirmed as a homosexual... Supreme Court preparing to declare a mistrial." The paper fell from her hooves, and Bonbon felt a lance of shame poke straight into her heart. "She's losing. She was doing so well, and now she's going to lose because... because of... me."

Every emotion that she had managed to keep in check, every tear and every mote of self anger all spilled out at once.

"It's all my fault. I-if I hadn't left her there alone, she wouldn't be in this mess! It's my fault that the humans are in such a mess with us! If I stayed, I could've talked her out of it, I could've convinced the court to drop the case. And now... people are hurt because of me. Don't you see, Derpy? It's all my fault!"

Streams of tears fell down her cheeks, and Bonbon felt a gentle, comforting hoof wrap around her shoulder. Feeling a level of gentleness that Derpy never normally showed, Bonbon buried her face in the pegasi's shoulder and wept.

*************************************************************

Earlier That Week

The sun beat down harshly on the small and blossoming Republic of Terra. The heat was almost intolerable, sending the mercury skyrocketing up the incline of every thermometer, and even the hardy plants of the nation drooped and wilted under the sun's relentless onslaught. With too few pegasus ponies to shift the clouds and not enough unicorns to cast weather-altering spells, the fledgling nation of the humans was fully subject to the harsh and brutal extremes of the often turbulent weather.

Most intelligent creatures would find a day this sweltering as a chance to hit the pool, or stay inside and find whatever fans they could, wishing for just a moment's respite from the heat, even thinking fondly of the cold months of winter that had been so difficult to survive in the Republic.

But the stern glare of the sun did not deter those who had something more than beating the heat on their minds.

"Fellow citizens, friends, comrades, brethren! The time for ponies to lay their heads low and quietly accept the oppressive boot and the scornful glare of our fellow citizens is over!" the mare shouted from a atop a small stage that had been hastily erected that morning. All around her, hundreds, if not thousands of ponies and other creatures who called this city their home shaded their eyes and sweated enough to raise the ambient humidity. But they still wore smiles on their faces, and clapped and stomped for Honey Cup as she gave her usual stage spiel.

Though the crowd was not roaring with cheers and applause, Honey nonetheless thrived off the minor claps and the occasional shout of agreement from the back of the crowd. Wearing her most dignified smile, the pegasus held her head high and strutted up and down the stage. "The time for passivity and humility shall come to an end, my comrades! Once, ponies may have been the bane of mankind, the creatures that haunted their dreams and destroyed their civilization. But that time is past! We are not those ponies, my fellows! We are not the warrior pegasi of old Cloudsdale that waged war on human soldiers, nor the noble unicorns of Canterlot that refused them aid when the monsters came to their villages, nor the humble earth ponies who would not share food and land with human neighbors! We are not our ancestors! We do not, and should not have to bear the burdens and the guilt that our forefathers laid upon us. But we shall strive every waking moment of every day to mend the wounds that our ancestors inflicted, and we will see the light of harmony flow freely throughout these streets, and the songs of love and friendship shall echo in the hills and the valleys!"

Her passionate speech did not rile the crowd like she would have preferred, but she could only expect so much in such temperamental weather. They had been wise to bring out several barrels of cold lemonade and water for anyone who wanted to come to the rally, she thought for a moment before launching back into her speech.

She wiped a bead of sweat away as it streamed down her face, and she also thought that the cold beverages were most likely the reason why many of these people had come.

But in the back of the crowd, a few people who acted behind the curtains with running the movement stayed under the shade of one of the Park's many oak trees, tallying numbers and running the roster as efficiently as they could. High Spirits clenched a pencil in his teeth, jotting down the numbers for posterity. After all, they wanted every juicy morsel of information to go down in history.

Working the pencil around in his teeth, he set it down on his pad of paper. "What's the attendance on the Creatures for a Better Terra?" he asked the young mare beside him.

"All three hundred members of the CBT accounted for, Mr Spirits," High's assistant for the day answered, giving him a complete member's roster for the association in charge of improving human-pony relations in the countryside. High quickly flipped through the roster, complete with its cover image of a stalk of corn with a handprint and a hoofprint in the ground beneath it.

"And the HGA?"

The young mare flipped through her clipboard. "Yup, all thirty members of the Human-Gryphon Alliance are present, and they've even set up their own little rally spot, trying to recruit some humans into their organization."

High nodded. The gryphons of Lazarus were a fickle bunch, and it had been quite the small victory for the movement convincing them to form their own organization for civil advancement. After all, the gryphons of Lazarus were mostly uprooted peasants from Kali'Gryph, a land where agrarian feudalism still reigned. After that, Terra seemed like a land of abounding freedom in comparison.

And it was the small victories that would tip the scales towards the disenfranchised masses of the non-humans. Each friend made, every speech given, every petition sent towards the Senate, even if each one was almost immediately shot down, was a step in the right direction. A step towards equality and harmony. But it was a long road towards that destination, and High and his co-conspirators hoped that this rally would be a little shortcut on that route.

"Heya, Mister Barkeep, almost didn't recognize you without a rag on your shoulder and a glass in your hoof!"

High Spirits looked up from his notepad, cracking a bright smile when he saw Mr Jimmy Howell coming under the shade of the oak tree. Jimmy held a sign declaring him to be a proud member of the First United Steelworkers, and in his other hand a bottle of the coldest water he could find sweated profusely. And despite the temperature, the young man was wearing a jacket, a brand new acquisition in his wardrobe. One with the impromptu symbol of the First United Steelworkers stitched on the back, as well as a similar patch sewn onto his shoulder.

"Hey Howell, you got the numbers for you and your diamond dog buddies?" High Spirits asked the young human.

Jimmy set down his sign and sat down against the trunk of the tree. "Just about everyone from the Stoneclaw pack is here except for a couple still picketing the Slagworks," he replied, unscrewing the cap of his drink. Jimmy took a deep drink from his water, and after wiping off the top, he offered it to his pony friend.

High gratefully accepted the bottle, taking a polite but quenching sip before passing the bottle back. "You know, if it wasn't such a scorcher, I'd say we're doin' pretty damn good."

"Yeah," Jimmy replied with a grin. "We got a full crowd, a good roster of speakers, a reporter from the Phoenix and a jockey from LPR are here. Hell, we even got a band to come and play. That is, we would have a band play if Honey would wrap it up already."

High chuckled. "Ah, give her her moment. A mare like her lives for the spotlight, and bein' the center of attention must be like feeding love to a changeling for her."

Jimmy leaned back against the trunk of the tree, folding his hands behind his head and taking in some of Honey Cup's self-written speech.

"Hmph, half an hour up there and she hasn't said a word about the agenda yet. Just givin' her big speech like she was dying in a Shakespeare play. Don't get me wrong, I love Honey to death, but she is one heck of a ham. Enough of a ham to feed me and the whole Howell family at Christmas."

High Spirits looked up from his pad of paper, and he shrugged. "She may be the most overly dramatic actor in the Republic, but at least she's our ham."

But as the man and the stallion reclined in the shade, watching as more and more ponies, diamond dogs, gryphons, and even humans filtered in from the city and joined the burgeoning crowd to give their support for the common cause of peace and equality. And though they were pleased with the turnout, others within the city did not find the idea of mankind's most ancient enemies gathering in mass so appealing.

****************************************

Private Zwicky paced down the hallway, clutching a short stack of papers in his hand. The private was grim, just as his job normally entailed. And even if it was a normal day of filling out papers in the Lazarus Military Police Headquarters in Fort Greenewell, he would still be just as grim and firm set. But today was no normal day, reports had been filing in for the past two hours, demanding some kind of law enforcement action. And with the amount of complaints, the decision for forceful action could only come from one man: Provost Marshal Henry Mathers, commander of the Republic of Terra's military police and self appointed sheriff of Lazarus.

Private Zwicky knocked lightly on the door to the Marshal's office.

"Come in," the Marshal's husky voice called through the door. The private stepped into his superior's office, stopping to snap a salute.

Peering up from his current report, Provost Marshal Mathers looked annoyed at the private's presence, and Zwicky could understand why. Even though the Provost Marshal himself was still subject to routine inspections, his office looked ransacked. Papers were strewn across his desk in a messy heap, some spilling over to form little drifts of bureaucracy on the floor. Crumpled up reports and files overflowed from the waste paper bin, and it seemed like the file cabinets behind the Marshal were ready to burst. And despite the disarray and overall messiness of his office, the Provost Marshal himself was a different case. Mathers was a heavy man, muscled well despite years behind the desk ordering around the Military Police of Old World Fort Greenewell. At the neck of his tan office uniform, a pair of bombardier shades hung, always at the ready.

"What is it, Zwicky?" the Marshal asked.

Private Zwicky cleared his throat. "Sir, we've received sixty more complaints in the last half hour." Zwicky offered the file in his hand to the Provost Marshal. Mathers gave an exasperated groan, and took the additional paperwork from his subordinate.

"Noise, noise, noise, and more noise complaints," Mathers muttered as he thumbed through the filed complaints. "All about the same crap, that damn rally in the park. To think, I thought this was going to be a nice day; not a single non-human has made a fuss all morning, and the MP's haven't made a single arrest because of protests and crap like that." The Provost Marshal dropped the file on the desk, leaning back in his chair and rubbing at his sore temples. "What the hell do these people want me to do about it? They reserved the Park for the day, and so far all I have is noise complaints. And these people think that they can whine enough and make it stop!"

Zwicky shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Sir, the crowd is in excess of five thousand, and continuing to grow. With this many complaints, Senatorial decree says we have to take action."

"What kind of action do you think we should take, Zwicky?" the Marshal growled back, knowing full well that his soldiers should have investigated the situation hours ago. "The crowd is five thousand strong, but we only have five hundred MPs, half of which are off duty. The only thing stopping me from sending out all my boys in riot armor is the fact that those animals have the right to peaceful assembly!"

Again Zwicky shifted uncomfortably. "Actually, sir, they don't. That's one of the reasons why we have to take action. Their gathering is unconstitutional, and therefore a threat to the sanctity of Lazarus."

Mathers leaned forward, folding his fingers. "Straight from the book, eh? Jesus, the Justice Department is going to have my ass if this gets hairy. Zwicky, call all off duty military police, mobilize the standing garrison. I want them in crowd suppression gear only. If I hear a murmur about any soldier carrying live ammo, our whole branch of the military is going to be cutting permafrost for the railroad until the sun burns out."

"Yes sir," Zwicky replied grimly, spinning on his heels and marching out of the office.

The Provost Marshal sighed. If he took no action, it was a dereliction of duty, and a black mark across the face of the entire Terran military. But those creatures out there were in clear violation of the law, assembling in numbers that threatened the stability and the comfort of the rest of the citizens of Lazarus. He did not want this whole event to turn into a damned riot, which it always did when the police got involved.

"Fucking entrapment," he muttered.

****************************************

"And I can tell you, my fellows of both heart and home, that my dream for a better and more united Republic does not stand alone!" Honey Cup projected to her crowd. The pegasus waved a hoof to the reluctant pony beside her, a shaky little chocolate brown unicorn stallion with somewhat of a fluffy mane that reminded the audience of foam. "Sir, would you tell everyone what your dream was?"

The stallion shrank back as the mare addressed him. "Um... er uh.... I uh, I wanted to open a coffee shop," he said quietly.

Honey Cup stepped closer to him. "Speak up darling, you'll have to project. Speak from the diaphragm," she hurriedly whispered.

The unicorn cleared his throat. "I wanted to open a coffee shop."

The actress almost knocked him over as she once again stole the limelight. "A simple coffee shop! That is all he has ever wanted in his life, a place where one can come to find refreshment, energy, and good company! And what did the federal government say to your dream?"

The stallion sighed. "They denied me a business permit, and the bank denied me a loan for capital."

"Was this because of bad credit? Perhaps a few unsightly misdemeanors staining your record?"

"No," the stallion replied, "it's because I'm a pony, and they didn't think that my business would recover enough income to pay off the loan."

Honey Cup laid a comforting hoof on his shoulder. "We all know that you would have made more than enough back in a single month to pay off any loans or debts that you had accrued. There is nothing wrong with you or your ideas, my friend. There is just the suspicion and the grudge that the human race holds against us. A grudge that we are undeserving of bearing! So I ask this of you, my fellow creatures, do not shy away from helping out a friend in need! If Mr Espresso files again for a business permit and succeeds, do not be afraid to help out his business in the slightest. We will overcome this dark time in the history of this nation not by rising up and waving the flags of revolution, but by being the most exemplary citizens that this nation has ever seen! Thank you for telling us your story, Mr Espresso."

The unicorn happily vacated the stage after being dismissed by the pegasus. Honey Cup took a moment to gather her breath, and noticed that her crowd was beginning to break apart. A quick check of the pocket watch in her light jacket revealed that she had been soap-boxing for the past two and a half hours, several times the length of time that she had been originally allotted.

Time for a break, she decided. After all, her voice was starting to get just the slightest bit hoarse, despite her special talent of vocal endurance, being able to go for hours and hours up on stage without needing a drink, a break, or even shutting up. Honey trotted off the stage, much to the relief of the crowd, and made her way towards the nearest source of cold water.

After fruitlessly searching for several minutes, she found a water cooler with some ice still sloshing around back by the event organizers, still tallying numbers and running interception on the press.

"Hey sweet stuff, finally run out of steam?" High Spirits asked.

Honey sipped daintily at her foam cup of water, holding her head high and poshly replying, "One does not 'run out of steam' in my art, an actress of my caliber simply knows when to bow out."

"Whatever you say, cupcake. Anyways, if you're done up on stage there, I want you head over and rendezvous with that politics reporter from the radio," High said, once again flipping through his clipboard filled with papers.

"Hmph, off of one stage and onto another. But it is the burden that I shouldered once I joined this movement," the pegasus murmured to herself, trotting over towards the small area of the rally cordoned off just for media and reporters. Indeed, a few of the reporters from Equestria had decided to get in on a slightly less headline-grabbing story since the seemingly imminent declaration of a mistrial in a few days.

She soon spied the human reporter, a younger looking woman that stood easily a head taller than the pony reporters all around her in the media pen. With her was a face that was vaguely familiar to the mare, one that everybody in Lazarus could easily identify. Mr Patterson didn't seem like he was at all interested in what was happening around him, yet the woman interviewing him seemed raptly intent about what he had to say about the rally. But she wasn't scribbling down notes like all of the pony reporters and columnists, she was speaking into another cryptic piece of human technology, one that Honey Cup guessed was some kind of recording device.

The pegasus waved at the woman, and realizing that Honey Cup was most likely the mare she was supposed to be interviewing, Lisa Eddins gave a quick wave back, weaving through the crowd to meet Honey halfway.

"Lisa Eddins, LPR," she curtly said in introduction. "You must be the spokesperson for the movement."

Honey stretched out her wings, flapping them just enough to hover about a foot off the ground, yet just high enough so that she was at eye level with the tall and limber human. "Honey Cup, madam. It is a pleasure to meet you." She extended a hoof in greeting, and Lisa fumbled around with her recorder, resting it in the crook of her arm so that she could extend a hand to shake.

They exchanged a fairly formal handshake, deciding mutually that the general roar of the surrounding crowd would not be conducive to conduct their business. And so both the mare and the woman grabbed a quick drink of the quickly dwindling supply of cold water and retired to a park bench just a few dozen yards shy of the rally. Though they could both still hear the goings on of the rally, their little private place was quiet and serene, a completely different world than the protests and the speeches that continued to shake the the city of the humans.

Lisa thoroughly settled on the bench, making sure that both she and the person she was interviewing were comfortable enough to conduct their little interview. The reporter and radio host was not surprised when Honey Cup curled up on the bench rather than sitting straight up. Satisfied that they were both in a good position away from the crowd, Lisa pressed the record button on her voice recorder.

"This is Lisa Eddins, political correspondent for Lazarus Public Radio. With me today is Honey Cup, the new spokesperson and the figurehead of the civil movement. Ms Cup, if I may call you that, I would first like to thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer a few of the public's burning questions about ponies and the civil rights movement in general."

"And I thank you for being so generous as to chronicle our struggle, Ms Eddins," the pegasus replied.

"Not a problem. My first question may be a bit blunt, why are you personally such a crusader for equal rights? I have met several ponies in the past few days who were radical supporters of the equalization of rights across the boundary of species. Even Melody, one of my fellow reporters and coworkers believes in tearing down the barriers that divide us. But nobody, sorry, nopony else I have seen has had quite the fervor and the zeal for this movement that I see in you."

Honey chuckled, a beautiful yet dignified laugh that Lisa believed would translate well onto the radio, a little nuance that might humanize the ponies of Lazarus a bit more in the eyes of the Republic's humans. "For me, I've always believed that everypony has some kind of cause that they were born to bear the flag of. Some people want to take part in small causes, like getting a petition signed to fix the potholes in the road or perhaps lower some tax or another. But some people are born to take part in bigger causes: raising money to help build a new hospital, campaign to build a new memorial to fallen soldiers, or even to right the wrongs of inequality. Personally, I joined the cause because I was among the first to hear the words of Lyra Heartstrings, who dared to stand up to what she knew was wrong, and that inspired me to do my own part. She told me that we did not need to fight to gain our rights, but we needed to stand together, and prove ourselves with the strength of our hearts and the power of our words. And most ponies will comment that nopony else they know has quite the voice like me. So when the movement began to spread out from the courtroom and into the streets, I was quickly pushed to the frontline."

"Fascinating," Lisa commented in one of her stock-reporter responses. "But don't you fear repercussions? I mean, many of the ponies that regularly take place in your protests and demonstrations have faced criminal charges for multiple offenses. Charges that will permanently be on their records, even if the movement succeeds or fails in its goal. I have heard from multiple sources that pony activists have received physical threats from those humans who take the extreme opposite stance from yourself. Have you received any threats? Don't you fear for yourself or your family?"

Honey sighed, remembering back to a night not so long ago. She had been walking back to her home from the Watering Hole, just a little tipsy from her usual evening libations, when a human who had had a little more to drink than her had crossed her path on the street. Thankfully it had not been violent, but the memory of what that man had threatened to do to her hadn't been dulled in the least. "There have been incidents, yes. But I will not be deterred. There are tales of warriors who lost a leg in the heat of combat, yet they raised up their blade and continued to fight until the day was won. If somepony can do that, I can take a few foul words and still have enough dignity to forge onwards towards a brighter tomorrow."

Lisa smiled. She admired this mare's courage, and with her continued bravery, ponies like Honey were the ones who were going to change this country forever. She had known people of greater power and greater responsibility in the twenty-first century who could not compare to amount of change for the better that they could bring. She thought for a moment about all the senators and all the statesmen of old America that campaigned and promised so much, yet accomplished next to nothing in all their years of presiding over one of the most powerful nations in the world. Yet it was the small people, people like Honey Cup, who would change the world for the better.

The reporter cleared her throat, bringing herself back to the interview. "The movement is running strong, and the people here are determined, but the movement did suffer a massive blow. You of all people should know about Lyra Heartstrings's defeat in court, what we assume will end in the declaration of a mistrial. How has that affected you? Lyra was a leader of the movement, and it was her decision to pursue the adoption of a human child that sparked the civil rights movement in the first place."

Honey sighed, her shoulders drooping down in defeat. The loss of Lyra and her focused attack on the judiciary of the Republic had been one of the most substantial blows to the morale of the ponies of Lazarus. Greater than any amount of arrests, threats, or even the continued bad press that many of them received, the loss of Lyra as a figurehead to stand behind had made at least a quarter of the ponies actively involved in the movement quit overnight, and every rights organization had suffered great losses in personnel, many of whom believed that the entire plan to change the Republic hinged on a victory in court.

"Losing Lyra was ... losing her was like losing a member of our family. Lyra was the reason that many ponies even knew that they had the option of standing up. And the day when that evidence against her was delivered, she came to us and said..."

It's over. Just go back to your homes and forget all about this! I screwed you all from the beginning, and now there's never going to be a chance for you all.

The pegasus held back those words, and she looked into the reporter's eyes with determination. "She said to us, 'Never give up. Never back down because of who you are.' And then she walked out the door."

Lisa nodded, admiring the apparent grace in which Lyra accepted her defeat. "She sounds like a real leader. Which brings me to my next point..." She stopped herself in the middle of her sentence. Honey Cup had ceased to listen, instead looking around warily. Something did not feel right. Honey Cup was frozen in her seat, her large ears radiating around, trying to pick up some kind of sound.

"Something's wrong," Honey murmured under her breath.

Lisa strained to hear, not having the same level of sensory sensitivity that the ponies tended to have. Their place in the park was quiet enough as it was, but she finally heard what was. The dull roar of the crowd that marked the rally was different. Whereas before it had been full of cheers and the single voices of people on stage shouting their encouragements and their speeches, now the voices of the ponies of Lazarus trembled with fear and anger.

"Oh no," Lisa said under her breath. The reporter leaped from the bench, tossing down her recorder and her papers. But she was not alone, Honey Cup flew alongside her, keeping pace with her new human friend.

*******************************************

He didn't have to come, yet he did anyways.

Aaron was not the kind of man who willingly missed a good protest, and this was one doozy of a protest. Over five thousand ponies, humans, donkeys, a few gryphons, cows, and even a coterie of diamond dogs all rubbed shoulders in a sea of smiling faces. They came to represent the force of change that was sweeping across the small nation of mankind like a gale, and each and every one had their own reasons for coming to this rally today. Some believed that the only way to find themselves on equal ground and to achieve the success and prosperity that they had been promised upon entering this land was to make themselves a driving force in the goings on of this country. Others, like the diamond dogs, sought to bring themselves into a golden age of civilization and happiness the likes of which had not been seen since the fall of Understone, the once mighty subterranean utopia of the diamond dogs.

But for Aaron, it was more of a chore today. Certain "forces" had decreed that he be there as a witness, and to make sure nothing got out of hand. Despite his matron's declaration of forced neutrality, here he was acting like a chaperoning parent at a school dance, wondering when he could go home and relax.

"Least I got rid of Lisa," he muttered to himself, barely dodging a zealous pegasus pony as he zipped only inches overhead. His little magic student became rather clingy when he was around, and he suspected there was some kind of idol worship going on with that woman. Maybe even a little crush or something.

"Hey Aaron!" a woman's voice shouted. He froze, thinking for a moment that Lisa had managed to finish her interview in less than a minute and wanted to bother him again about teaching her that spirit conjuration chant that even he hadn't tested out yet. But his anxiety wore off and his confusion simultaneously rose as a woman dressed like she just dropped out of the Summer of Love walked towards him through the crowd.

"Who the hell?" he muttered, trying to see through the bandana, the overly large shades, and the gratuitous amount of flowers in her blonde hair. "Can't be. Eve Mcentyre? What're you doin' out here?"

The older scientist laughed as she closed in on her old partner and student. "I heard that a few people were having a party up top, and I decided to drop in. It ain't a counter culture until I show up."

Aaron snorted, looking over her frankly ridiculous outfit, complete with a more-than-worn flowery skirt that was threadbare at the hem, a tank top that showed a little too much skin for a woman her age, and what appeared to be a bandana stitched with a peace sign. "Hey, 1969 called, they said that Woodstock ended a couple thousand years ago."

Eve put on a mildly offended look, one whose sincerity was completely annulled by her playfulness and her free spirit. "Woodstock?! You wish I was that old! I was just a little girl when all the real hippie stuff happened."

"Then what's with the get-up? You drive here in a Volkswagen bus with twelve of your hippie buddies?"

She smacked him lightly on the shoulder, frowning lightly at his continued jibes. "I respect the culture. And at least I'm representing the ideals of peace, love, and harmony. Even more than you, Mr 'I talk to God'. And it makes me feel twenty to stick it to The Man again."

Aaron snickered to himself. "Stick it to The Man, huh? I forget, how long did you work for the U.S. government?" he asked sarcastically. "Oh wait, and wasn't some of that studying and breeding bio-weapons? So much for peace, harmony and love. Face it Eve, you're more of The Man than Nixon. And even if you are representing that kind of stuff right now, you're still gonna go home, wake up tomorrow and go back to work for The Man."

Eve was not swayed, and she grinned victoriously despite the mounting evidence of her false flower-child persona. "Ever consider that I might be a double agent? That the reason I know my way around a bio-lab so well is the fact that maybe I gassed a few microbial weapons research facilities when I was younger?"

The very thought seemed to quiet his objections, and for some reason the constant intrusion of the memories of the long dead blasted him with an image of six or seven young people dressed in black, breaking into a laboratory and doing exactly what Eve claimed to do back in her day. And the young man grumbled to himself about the woman who made less sense than some of the inane rants he heard from Pinkie Pie.

"So where's your little girlfriend? Word on the grapevine is that she spends a lot of time over at your place. Finally starting to act like a young man your age, eh?" she said, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow.

"What do you mean? I act my age."

Eve rolled her eyes at his thick-headedness. "What I mean is that you're acting like somewhat of a normal person for once. Getting a girlfriend, going out with friends, just enjoying your life instead of letting your responsibilities take over. Can you even remember what it was like to walk amongst us mortals? I mean, you've been so far out there that I was afraid you'd forgotten what it was like to be right here."

Aaron grinned at her hippie wisdom, a set of thoughts that had likely come to the woman under some "deep meditations". But after he thought for a moment, his grin began to fall. Her words were holding a lot more truth than he was comfortable with. All of the infiltrations of memories that he had never experienced, his regular communion with entities that would normally defy human comprehension, speaking with the ghosts of the dead, and even his newfound powers of magic, they were all distancing him from the here and now. Tearing him away from his true reality and replacing it with some cobbled together mind that was less and less his own with each day.

And that nightmare...

"Hey, you okay?"

He snapped back to reality, damning himself for falling away from their conversation like that. "Yeah, I'm fine. Anita's working today, so she's busy for a while. My roommate has been locked in the study for the past day and a half, and I'm... I'm doing my own thing."

The older woman raised a bandana clad eyebrow. "Which would be....?"

Aaron rolled his eyes. "You know, I think that's my business and my business only. A lot of top secret stuff, savin' the Republic and kissing the ass of everyone and everything that my half dozen bosses tell me to."

Eve started to reply with something about relaxing and finding his "zen place" and how she had just as much access to that so called "top secret stuff", when a commotion at the far edge of the crowd caught their attention. Several pegasi flew overhead, zipping either towards the gathering at the far end of the park, or running from it. The dull roar of the crowd began to switch away from a pleasant gathering of like minded people to a flurry of shouts and angered jeers.

"What the hell is going on over there?" Eve asked out loud.

"I don't know, but it can't be good," Aaron replied, already squeezing through the crowd in order to investigate, and if necessary, to stop whatever commotion was upsetting the creatures in that crowd. Something in the back of his mind was tingling, and he knew from the commonality of the sensation that something was trying to either connect with him psionically or just trying to warn him. Either way, when a situation similar to this one arose, that tingling feeling didn't mean that there was a half-off bake sale taking place.

As Aaron shoved through a nearly solid wall of technicolor ponies and other such creatures, his ears caught the first hint of what was going on. The rumble of several diesel engines was beginning to mix with the shouts of the rallied creatures. Soon it came to drown out the roar of the crowd. And when the young mage was finally able to push his way to the front of the crowd, he finally saw the source.

Twenty heavy military trucks and transport vehicles rumbled to a stop at the edge of the park. The doors on the backs popped open, and dozens of men dressed in black military fatigues and armor leaped out, forming a line in front of their transports two deep. The front line raised plexiglass riot shields and formed a solid wall of protection while the men in the back row raised up batons and tear canister launchers. But they did not press any kind of offensive, and one man among their number stepped forward from the line, holding a bullhorn in his hand.

Raising it up, he began his duties. "Attention citizens, your gathering is in violation of the law. Disperse immediately and return to your homes."

"Violation of the law?!" someone in the crowd shouted. "You're full of it!" The crowd shouted their angered agreement, sick of the way that the humans constantly stepped on their rights.

It was then that Honey Cup dropped from the air at the forefront of the rally, landing only a few feet from the man with the bullhorn. The ranks of military police behind him bristled in surprise, holding their batons tightly and their riot shields firmly.

"What is the meaning of this!" the pegasus demanded. "We have reserved this area fairly, we filled out all the proper paperwork! We have every right to be here right now!"

The man at the front of the MPs tucked his bullhorn under his arm, assuming Honey Cup to be the spokesperson and therefore the leader. "Citizen, the kind of gathering that your kind is engaging in is not sanctioned by either your constitutional rights or the laws of this city. Human citizens of Lazarus feel threatened by your presence. By martial edict, you must disperse!"

"We are doing no harm to anybody!" Honey Cup shouted back over the din of the crowd. "We have our rights! And if we do not, we will not leave this place until the government decides to grant us them!"

Back in the crowd, several rows in, Aaron prepared a little line-up of magical spells that he could use to break up the tension and force back both the ponies and the human military police. But he did not want it to come to that, and the forces that sent him here would prefer that he did not use that strategy. So until it came down to that, the tingle in his hands and at the back of his mind would stay right where they were. His greatest weapon now was his reputation and his sway, and he intended to resolve this with those two alone.

He took a deep breath, and began to push his way towards the front, when a hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"What do you think you're doing?!" Eve shouted to him.

Aaron spun around to face her. "Doing my job," he replied firmly.

She held onto his shoulder as he tried to turn back. "Woah woah woah, you can't go up there! This isn't your fight! You see, this is what I was talking about, this is what's wrong with you! You're not Superman! You can't just go up there, wave your hand, do some heroic stuff and save the day. Aaron, are you listening to me? Aaron? Aaron!"

The young man's eyes glazed over, the world began to grow blurry for him. Everything was suddenly encapsulated in a veil of mist, as if a cloth had been drawn over his eyes. The air grew thin, and he tried to breathe in more and more, but found that he couldn't seem to breathe enough to fill his lungs. And as his body began to ache with the need for air, the unthinkable happened.

All at once, without warning or even a sign, his magic vanished. His psionics, his arcane touch, even his link to the other world all blinked out like a snuffed candle. He panicked, or at least he wanted to panic. He wanted to gasp for breath that would not come, he wanted to scream that he had become vulnerable. He wanted to desperately cling to whatever shreds and tatters of his magic and the ever present comforting link to the world of his matron. Every instinct and sense was screaming at him that he was in danger, that something wicked was falling over him and the rally. But the veil that fell over his world carried with it something that dulled his senses and made him weak, and his mind and body could do nothing to fight this sudden loss.

He heard his name being called through the ether, and the young man head lazily turned to see the slowed and blurred form of Eve looking him right in the eyes, her distant voice carrying concern and fear.

"Aaron," her distant and far away voice said through the veil, "your nose."

My nose? the young man thought, and his hand unconsciously drifted up to his face, where he felt a warm and damp substance covering his lip and trickling down his chin. He looked at his fingers, and his mind was completely unsurprised to see them stained red with his own blood. It didn't make him concerned, it didn't startle him, yet deep down within the very depths of his soul, he was afraid.

And then it all became clear again. The veil began to lift, but the world still stayed in the slow moving snail's pace that it had taken on. The voices were still dampened, the faces of the people around him still contorted in anger and fear. The crowd was pressing closer to the ranks of military police, who in turn were readying their weapons and their shields. In the back of his mind, he could hear her, his matron, the great Mother Earth screaming at him, telling him to intervene, telling him to do stop the violence before it could begin. But her voice was too far away, so tiny that it barely seemed like the buzz of a gnat at his ear.

He felt a grip on his arm, and he drunkenly swung around to see Eve trying to hold him, trying to keep him from falling.

"Aaron! Just calm down! Just relax, you're gonna be okay!" she screamed ineffectually. But nothing could have been farther from the truth.

A spike of pure agonizing pain drove into his skull, and Aaron fell to his knees, screaming from the intense and searing agony. The blood in his head pounded like a thousand drums, and his skull felt as though it were splitting at each little seam, threatening to explode with each thunderous pound of his own heart.

So weak... so... pitiful...

The mere sound of that voice ringing through his thoughts froze the man in his agony. It was not the kind, gentle, and soothing voice of his celestial matron. No, this voice carried with it the screams of untold numbers of tortured souls, and the very sound of it in his mind made him feel unclean and tainted. "No..." he whimpered. "NO!"

A single image flashed through his mind, burning itself onto his memory. A single image. A pair of eyes, blackened by an abyss of empty, dark flame, glaring into the depths of his soul. Mocking his very existence, promising so much pain.

So violent, it crooned. So easy...

Aaron looked around himself, seeing the world had continued to slow, almost to the point of being completely frozen. All around him, the looks of fear and anger had seemingly multiplied, and the crowd was on the verge of storming the MPs. So much chaos was waiting to erupt, and the dark thing inside of him was feeding on it.

No, it was not feeding, it was causing this. It was cutting off his magic, sending out waves of anger and hatred to roll through the crowds.

He looked up to the sky, his hands pressed against his temples, and he screamed. He screamed in agony, he screamed in fear, but most of all he screamed in despair. There was nothing he could do to stop the growing turmoil around him, and in fact his very presence and the presence of the foul thing lurking in the dark reaches of his spirit seemed to stoke those flames.

For within him, the monster lived on.

***********************

The captain with the bullhorn continued to stare down Honey Cup, not giving an inch to the intense and unswayable pegasus.

"This is your last warning. Go back to home immediately, and you will not face criminal charges for obstruction of justice!"

"What justice?" Honey Cup yelled back, reinforced by hundreds of her shouting supporters. "My people came here today to protest in peace, and you fascists proclaim that the only way we can even hope to change a law is breaking the law! If there is any true obstruction of justice and violation of the law, it's you people that are doing it!" The crowd behind her roared their agreement, raising their fists and their hooves in the air.

Something seemed to touch the captain's mind, and his face twisted in rage. "Violating the law? Violating the goddamned law?! You animals are the reason why we need these laws! You've tossed this entire goddamned country into chaos, and all the people of this city want is to be left alone! And as a last warning, you now have two minutes to begin dispersing!"

Honey Cup set her jaw firm and narrowed her eyes, glaring with determination, not hatred, at the angered man only steps away from her. Her eyes flicked away just for a second, looking down at his hip. In the time that she had spent among the human race, she had come to recognize the kinds of strange and alien looking weapons that their soldiers carried. And sure enough, there sat a small black object, a smaller version of the ones that the regular soldiers carried.

A puffed up actress against an armed soldier, she thought to herself, how did I get into this? All around her, the shouts and the jeers of the literal thousands of ponies and other creatures magnified as the captain made his ultimatum. Honey refused her instincts, her base urges that were yelling at her to run like a scared filly and hope she could find safety in the herd.

If we can beat them here, if we can beat them now, we can beat them anywhere, she thought to herself. Wise words from a wise man. A wise human man, one who had fought the very wars that the soldiers in front of her had learned their fighting ways and earned their grit from.

"You have one minute to comply!" the captain shouted to Honey, waiting for her to wilt under the burning heat and the oppressive glares of him and his soldiers. They possessed enough non-lethal firepower to drive back the entire protest if necessary, but should the creatures make the first move, it would be a hard fight to win. They had the firepower, but they lacked the manpower, and though his force was imposing to untrained eye, even the simplest strategist knew they possessed the disadvantage, being outnumbered a disheartening ten to one at the very minimum.

"Ready tear gas. Fire mid-crowd, and only at my order," he said to the second rank of military police, who each slid a 40mm gas canister into their launchers.Turning his focus back to Honey Cup, he shouted, "You now have thirty seconds to comply!"

Honey wanted to turn tail and run away more than anything else in the world, but if she backed down now, everything that the movement had left would be gone. They had lost too much with Lyra leaving as it was, and she knew that the ponies behind her would lose their will should she back down.

A shaggy, dusty looking form appeared by her side, and Foxtrot laid a paw on her shoulder. "Get behind me, pony. They not hurt me as bad as they hurt you."

"No!" Honey said to him, knowing that the large and imposing diamond dog would only incite the humans to strike. "This is my fight." Begrudgingly, the sandy coated hound stepped back, though he was still more than ready to spring to her side at the slightest cue.

The captain set his face firm. "Ten, nine, eight, seven. Six! Five! Four! THREE! TWO-"

His countdown was cut short by a scream from the crowd. A shriek of pain so blood curdling and so piercing that every man in the line and every creature in the crowd instinctively covered their ears, recoiling from the suddenness of the interruption. Something within that soul chilling wail touched something primal in the field commander, a fear of the primal darkness that had affected his kind for so many millenia, a fear of his fellow man and the horrors he could commit.

"Captain!" a young private from the second rank shouted. "Active omega signature! The needle is buried, sir!" He held up the viewing screen of his energy spectrum analyzer, showing the extreme spike in active magical energies. The machine on his back was practically whining with the amount of energy that it was feeling in the air.

And the captain, a man who had been on multiple patrols and heard that phrase several times, as well as having been in the retreat skirmishes of Operation Hammerstrike, knew the meaning of such a spike: combat spells, or at least something similar to them.

"Shit! Defensive positions!" he shouted, falling back between a row of riot shields. "Get a goddamned Tesla Shield up!"

Reacting more out of instinct than order, a man in the back row fearfully fired a tear gas canister into the heart of the crowd. And once it began to spray clouds of noxious and stinging gas, all hell broke loose. The crowd surged forward, and the military police responded in turn, firing more tear gas rounds, flailing with their batons at the nearest creatures, and pushing forward with their riot shields.

And being the first person in their path, Honey Cup was the first to feel their wrath. She held her ground despite it all, and for it she received a baton to the cheek, a blow that knocked the mare completely off her hooves and onto the ground. But before a human soldier could slap a pair of handcuffs on her, and before the advancing line of riot police could trample her, a sandy coated diamond dog leaped in, bowling over three men in a ball of canine anger. Instantly the lines closed around Foxtrot, and the diamond dog was showered with a flurry of baton strikes. With a heavy swing of his burly arms, Foxtrot knocked two more riot police back as they tried to subdue him. The diamond dog snarled, retreating back and scooping up the unconscious mare from the ground and shoving his way through the crowd.

He carried the mare through the screaming masses, holding his breath and squinting his eyes at the stinging clouds of tear gas that were erupting with the continuing barrage from the riot police's line. Others were on the ground already, choking on the noxious gas as it pumped into the air, their eyes red with tears and their lungs burning. But diamond dogs were made from tougher stuff, and they were used to the harsh chemical gasses that one would inhale when working underground or over a forge, and so members of the Steelworkers Union were ferrying out ponies and other creatures to a safer place upwind and away from the melee.

Foxtrot ran to the edge of the park, towards the people that he knew would take care of Honey Cup. Both High Spirits and Jimmy Howell were watching the riot with horror on their faces, and their shock only multiplied when the diamond dog erupted from the crowd with a limp mare in his arms. He laid her down as gently as he could in the grass, coughing from the burn of gas in his lungs.

"Honey!" High Spirits shouted, dropping down to check her for wounds. A large gash bled profusely across her cheek, and both the pony and the man worried that her neck might have been injured.

"Jesus man," Jimmy swore, dropping his sign and tearing off his jacket. "What the fuck are we gonna do?!" Wadding up his brand new jacket, the young man pressed it to the deep gash on Honey's cheek.

"We're gonna get Honey to a doctor, that's what!" High tried to lift the pegasus mare onto his back as delicately as he could.

"What doctor? All the doctors in the city are humans, and it's illegal for them to treat a pony!"

High grimaced, shifting Honey Cup so she wouldn't move on his back. "I don't know, okay! We just gotta find someone to help her!"

But before the pair could run off into the city, the mare began to stir. Honey groaned, a hoof drifting to her cheek. "What happened?" she croaked.

Jimmy placed a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from leaning up. "You got hit bad. The whole crowd has gone nuts, and we have to get you to a doctor right now!"

As the sounds of the riots filled her ears, Honey Cup leaned up, removing herself from High Spirit's back. Spreading her wings, the pegasus turned back towards the riot.

"Hey, what are you doing?!" High shouted as she leaped into the air.

"I started this, and I have to end this!" Honey shouted back, flying as quickly as her swimming head would allow.

"Damn it!" High swore, stomping his hoof ineffectually on the ground. "She's gonna get herself killed!" Without need for any kind of planning or even the need to discuss the matter, both Jimmy and High ran after Honey, right back into the heart of the Lazarus riot.

**********************************

Lisa kept towards the edge of the surging crowd, not wanting to get crushed or trampled by the writhing mass of ponies and other creatures as they both tried to hold their ground and beat a hasty retreat. The whole time, her eyes swept the massive crowd, looking for one person in particular, one who she believed could stop this all with a few words. But the clouds of tear gas and the constant shouts of ponies both in anger and in pain.

Her search only yielded one definitive result, the knowledge that most of the humans that had dared to take place in the rally today had skipped town at the first sign of the riot police, and with their absence, the ponies lacked the assurance that their actions were completely legal.

Right about now, she should have been doing her job as a correspondent for the media and snapping as many pictures as she could, pictures of the clouds of gas, of the line of military police swatting ponies away like gnats, maybe a picture of the stallion limping away from the riot, his entire shoulder swollen and purple with bruises.

Suddenly, she spotted an older woman dressed in a worn skirt stumbling away from the crowd, a much larger figure supported on her shoulder. Lisa knew somehow that she had found the person who could stop this, and she ran as quickly as she could to the older woman's side, taking Aaron's free arm and slinging it over her shoulder. Without a word of thanks or the need for direction, together they carried the semi-conscious man away from the riot and towards a shaded bench.

"Lay him down gently," the other woman instructed. Lisa carefully laid Aaron on his back, folding up her overshirt and placing it under his head.

"What's wrong with him? Do I need to get a doctor?" Lisa asked frantically.

"I have medical training, but it sure as shit wouldn't be a bad idea!" Eve ripped off her headband and unscrewed the cap to her water bottle, soaking the rag with plenty of cool water before pressing it to the man's forehead. She took notes of all his symptoms; violent spasms, unconsciousness, foaming at the mouth, what felt like a fever, and something that a medical doctor would normally discount, the apparent headache he suffered. "Okay, he either has epilepsy, some severe heatstroke, or he has the most sudden case of rabies I've ever seen."

"What do we do to help him?!" Lisa practically shouted.

"Epilepsy, nothing. Heatstroke, we're already doing everything we can. Rabies, dig a grave."

Lisa didn't find the morbid humor in the other woman's diatribe so amusing, and she tried to think of anything that she could do to help. And for some reason, seeing the park in turmoil, seeing her teacher lying on a bench possibly dying from some unknown malady, the classes at the Shrine began to come back to her. Certain classes, certain lessons flashed through her mind, and the reporter almost unconsciously reached for her pad of paper and her pencil. Flipping to a clean page, she began to scribble down a rune from memory. She knew she wouldn't be able to get every line straight and every little letter nuance right, but it would hold some strength no matter how badly she did it. And with her hands shaking so badly and the shouts and screams from the riot only a few hundred feet away ringing in her ears, she hastily finished her rune, tearing it from her notebook and placing it face down on Aaron's bare arm.

"What are you doing? What is that?" Eve asked, not knowing the implications of Lisa's theory nor the art of runic magic.

"It's a rune," Lisa replied, scribbling out another rune of the same basic function in her notebook. "Celestial letters that focus magic. That one means 'calm'."

"God damn it, this isn't the time for fucking hocus pocus! Now go get-" Eve silenced herself as Lisa applied the second rune to Aaron's other arm. And somehow, through some kind of almost miraculous means, his thrashing became less violent, and he breathed much more easily. Stopping a seizure out in the field without any medical equipment was unheard of, and usually first responders simply let the seizure stop on its own, with much risk to the patient. "Do another!" Eve said.

Lisa quickly penned the rune for 'mind' and accompanied it with another 'calm' rune, placing that pair directly over his forehead. Within seconds, the man's breathing began to even out, and his limbs began to go limp. Scripting another set of calming runes along with the rune for 'ice' to cool him down, they had him stabilized within another minute.

But that did not stop the riot that was growing in fury.

Lisa bit her lip, finally deciding that Aaron was no deus ex machina who could clear the air with a wave of his hand. Realizing that the best thing she could do was the most obvious, she stood and turned to run back towards the city. But before she could go, a cold hand clamped around her wrist. The reporter turned back, seeing that the magi had awakened. Or at least, his eyes were open, yet they held no spark of life, and they were filled with a dull haze.

"She's calling...." he whispered. "The abyss... I can see it. Go... go to the shrine. She's calling you." And with that, Aaron fell limply back to the bench, fully unconscious and asleep.

"Shrine?" Eve asked, looking from Aaron to Lisa.

"The Shrine of the Singing Crystal," Lisa said, and she suddenly knew the answer. "I know what to do. You stay with him!" Lisa dropped her bag, and she began to sprint towards the center of the park, knowing somehow that the Crystal could undo all of this.

The sounds of the shouting masses, the acrid smell of the noxious fumes, and the thoughts of the deep rifts that were being gouged into the collective psyches of both the human race and the ponies who had come with peaceful intent in mind kept her running through along the path that she had come to know so well over the past few weeks. And as she drew closer and closer, she could hear the call. A single, clarion, beautiful note on a crystalline chime that echoed in her mind, encouraging her to come closer.

She arrived in the clearing where the holy relic was kept, and she slowed herself to a walk. Not out of fatigue, but out of a respect and reverence that overcame her every time she entered this sanctified place. But time was short, and each person injured out there in that field could be the first fatality in the civil rights movement. With the fate of lives and the future of the Republic in her hands, Lisa carefully approached the magical artifact that hovered inches above the pedestal in the center of the shrine.

The crystal shined with its typical luminescence, and its soulful song filled her heart and mind with a sense of calm and invitation.

"Okay," Lisa whispered to herself. "What do we need to do?"

The crystal did not respond, and it simply continued its eternal song. The reporter reached out with a hand, reluctant to touch something of such reputed power. For though she was a student of practical magic, she had never actually touched the sacred relic, and the thought of allowing an entity as powerful as a god into her thoughts was unnerving.

Lisa closed her eyes, and she leaned forward, placing her open palm against a smooth facet of the crystal. And once her hand touched the warm and smooth surface of the artifact, she felt the essence of her spirit bond with something greater. She gasped at the influx of power, at the sudden awareness of the hundreds of spirits all around her, floating in the ether. But most of all, she felt a powerful, awe-inspiring presence, one that did not seem bound to one place, yet the reporter felt its eyes upon her.

You wish to serve harmony? Then let this be your trial by fire.

Lisa almost disengaged from the crystal at the sound of that voice ringing in her thoughts. But she did not, she held on. The Singing Crystal flashed with blinding magical power, and Lisa was consumed by it. Her test had begun, and the spirit of Earth laid out many options for her. Lisa could feel the weaves and the commands for hundreds of powerful spells at her fingertips, each and every one strong enough to end the riot.

But she had to choose carefully.

Biting her lip and scanning through the hundreds of spells, she fell on one that felt promising. A quartet of runes flashed before her eyes, and a vision played out in her mind's eye. This particular spell would summon hundreds of elementals from the energy plane, and in turn they would march in and break up the riot. But the image came with visions of monsters made from stone and flame, fully fifteen feet tall, smashing through lines of shielded riot police and masses of ponies alike, not discriminating at which fragile creatures managed to fall under their bone-shattering feet or crossed their pulverizing fists.

She very quickly dismissed that idea.

Another spell came quickly to mind, one that would suspend all gravity in the vicinity for several minutes. But the thought of thousands of creatures suspended in the air and trying to continue their fight was not promising, and she dismissed that one.

Finally, after going through almost every action that the Singing Crystal could do to stop the riot, she found a spell that she believed would work. And without another moment of hesitation, she poured all of her thoughts and all of her willpower into the crystal, hoping that she had chosen wisely. The relic began to glow more intensely, as if her willpower and her intent were fueling its efforts. But she was not nearly enough to execute such a massive expenditure of magic, and her consciousness, melded with that of the Crystal, began to reach out into the land itself. Tendrils of her mind and the Crystal's magic seeped into the deepest places of the land and high up into the loftiest reaches of the sky. The world was filled with magic, an energy that was waiting to be harnessed, waiting to flow through her and conform to her will. And the Singing Crystal would be the focus that Lisa would use to harness that power.

Lisa concentrated, and the cloudless sky rumbled with thunder.

******************************

Honey Cup flew as quickly as her body would safely allow her to. Her head was swimming from the blow, and blood continued to leak down her cheek and stain her coat a dark crimson. At any give moment she felt like she could blackout from a concussion and plummet to the ground, a danger that all pegasus ponies were warned of and trained to avoid from a very young age. She flapped her wings, though the exertion was pumping her blood and only worsening the ache of her head.

But she had to stay roughly one hundred feet off the ground, because she was out of range from the crowd-control shotgun pellets that were shooting down other pegasi, and far enough to where the tear gas couldn't get in her eyes and lungs. Yet if she fell unconscious, there was only the vague hope that someone down below would have the courtesy to catch her, or else she would be a roughly mare-shaped splatter on the ground.

She flew with purpose, her goal not being the escape of the forceful rout from the park, but to find the heart of the riot. Her methods of protest, and her stubbornness had caused this dark moment in the history of the Republic, and it was her solemn duty to try and absolve this conflict, even if it meant getting killed in the process.

Honey soon spied her target, and she banked sharply downwards into a dive, tucking in her wings for extra speed. She had to pass through a gauntlet of shotgun pellets and concentrated pepper spray, but she ducked and dodged as deftly as any Wonderbolt at one of their airshows.

Flaring out her wings to slow her descent, Honey landed hard behind the lines of the military police, sending up a small cloud of dust from her landing zone. The landing had been rough on her head, and for a moment she swayed on her hooves, almost collapsing from her concussion. But she regained her focus, and she spun around to face the soldiers. And within seconds, she was surrounded by a wall of riot shields, only broken by the one man she had come here to face off with.

The field commander, the man whose hasty order had accidentally caused this disaster, scowled at the mare's reappearance, and his hand unconsciously drifted down to the pistol holstered at his hip.

"Stop this! We have done nothing wrong! Please, stop all this!" Honey shouted.

The field commander stepped forward, his face darkened with anger. "You and your kind have threatened this city for long enough! Now lay down on the ground, put your hand behind your head, and submit!"

Honey Cup stood firm. "No," she replied.

That single word, the mere utterance of it, was her confirmation. That one word and the mare who said it would ring throughout the annals of Terran history forever. The moment of true defiance in the face of oppression.This moment was why she had joined the movement, when the humans told her that her life was nothing, and told her to lay her head low and to accept her place as a second class citizen.

The captain grew red in the face, stepping even closer to the mare, his hand firmly clamped on his still holstered pistol.

"This is your last warning. Get on the ground, and put your goddamned hands behind your goddamned head!"

Honey narrowed her eyes at him. "No!" she said more firmly.

With anger coursing through his veins, and images of the final days of the Great War flashing through his mind, the captain acted out of anger and instinct.

His pistol left its holster.

And within half a second, Honey Cup was staring down the barrel of a 45 caliber. The mare did not shrink back, she did not quiver in childish fear. Honey Cup glared past the weapon only inches from her face, and into the eyes of the man who was threatening both her life and her freedom.

The captain held just as firm, unyielding to the simple whims of an animal. His finger found the trigger, and slowly began to apply just the slightest amount of pressure.

Neither the human nor the pony could tear themselves away from their deathmatch long enough to notice that the military police had all stopped their assault, frozen in shock that their commander would pull a lethal weapon on a protestor, and that every pony was standing stock still. The entire crowd of nearly six thousand stood transfixed, almost completely silent at the sight of a lowly mare facing down inevitable death.

But the ponies were frozen from something other than fear and horror. Something was in the air, a tingle of magic that tickled their minds and drew their attention. The unicorns could feel it the most, and they resisted the urge to embrace their own magic and investigate the source. But this magic was not meant for them, and the tendrils of harmonious flow sought out one person in particular, one man who needed to see the truth more than any other right that moment.

The invisible tendrils of magic found the captain, and they seeped into his mind.

**************************

His finger tightened on the trigger. He was only seconds away from blasting the defiant mare into an early grave when he began to feel the tingle of magic brushing across his skin. He resisted the urge to shiver, and his skin broke out in goosebumps. The arcane tendrils crept across his shoulders, and into his head. It was not invasive, nor did he hardly even feel it, for it would take a truly advanced and experienced student of magic to know when they felt the touch of magic on their skin.

And as it began to creep into his mind, the world around him began to shimmer and shake. A myriad of cracks spread through his vision, and as they spread, the world began to crumble into an infinite expanse of nothingness. The people began to fade away, all the world was replaced piece by piece with another place, somewhere far removed from the park in Lazarus. The shattered pieces of the world began to reassemble, and he was no longer in Lazarus. And the mare standing only inches in front of him was replaced by someone else. A young woman, barely out of her teenage years, holding a flower in her hand.

The world behind her began to resolve into a large campus building, and dozens of other young men and women just like her, screaming for the end of a war that had come to a miserable conclusion millenia ago. The captain looked down at his own body, and he was surprised to see himself wearing olive drab fatigues, much like his grandfather wore back in Vietnam. And in his hands, a rifle that he would be more likely to see in a museum, complete with a fixed bayonet.

It all felt like some kind of dream, or rather a growing nightmare as he raised up the rifle and took aim. With a shout from his company commander, he squeezed the trigger, and the young woman recoiled from the impact of his shot to her chest. She fell slowly, as if time had become some kind of frame by frame horror show.

And just as she reached the ground, the world splintered and shattered again. Again the pieces the world fell away to reveal an infinite void, and again they reassembled to show him a new perspective. This time, a cold winter gale howled at his back, and crowds of shouting men and women dressed in wool and linen coats and dresses, clothing that seemed more fitting at a colonial reenactment, stood against him and his fellow soldiers. Again, he raised his weapon, a smoothbore musket, and along with the rest of his company of red-coated soldiers, opened fire on the protestors.

And as the men and women of the crowd reeled with pain and screamed in fear, again the world cracked and shattered. And again it reassembled, this time to something he did not expect. It was him that stood alone, his hand outstretched, the only defiant citizen against a rolling war machine. For even if the line of tanks that kept on trundling towards him did not crush him into an unrecognizable corpse, his state would execute him for simply standing up and saying no.

Again the world shattered, and again it reassembled. Each and every time the delicate, glasslike surface of this strange reality broke, it would reassemble faster, and the memories of the people who had lived these lives would flash at him even more furiously and without reprieve. It seemed like a hundred memories came through his mind before the flood began to relent, and the world of broken glass began to fade away along with the tingle of magic on his skin.

As the magical touch crept out of his mind, the captain began to realize that he had been returned to his reality. The heat of the summer sun beat down mercilessly on his head once more, and the person in front of him was no longer some face from history, it was the face of a pony mare. But in her eyes, she had the same spark of defiance that all the others had, all the others that had died for their beliefs.

It was only then that he realized he was shaking, and that every eye was on him.

The captain looked at the gun in his hand with horror and disgust, pulling his extended arm back to his side and holstering the vile thing. He looked at his hands, looking for the blood that had been there in the world of broken glass, expecting the sins of that reality to follow him back to this one.

"Captain?" his corporal called out. He looked up from his clean, yet filthy hand. "Commanding General Pilotte is on the radio. We're getting orders to pull the plug," the corporal said carefully to his superior. The captain did not respond, still haunted by the images of those past sins, still looking at his own hands. "Captain?" the corporal asked again.

The captain absently nodded, still searching his hands for the blood that had been spilled on them in so many memories. Slowly, he looked back to Honey Cup. The mare's expression had changed in the mere seconds that the vision had taken, and now she wore an expression of concern more than anything.

"You," he said, pointing towards the mare. "You're under arrest for... for disobeying of an officer of the law."

Honey Cup raised her eyebrow. But the mare had been seconds away from death only moments ago, and at least he was charging her with a crime that she had actually committed. And if the Republic's laws were anything like Equestria's laws on the subject, it was nothing more than a minor offense.

The mare stepped forward, and offered her front hooves to be handcuffed. And just as a pair of military police in their riot gear finished cuffing her, a roar of thunder rumbled in the sky.

One of the riot policemen looked up to the sky. "Thunder? There's not a cloud in the sky."

But before he could finish that sentence, a chill wind blew, making every man, woman, stallion and mare shiver with the sudden change. Again the thunder rumbled, and a thin mist began to form from the moisture in the air. Rising into the sky, it formed into a bank of thick, roiling clouds. Just like the clouds that the ponies who had petitioned in the countryside had made to bring rain, these very clouds looked bloated and heavy with precipitation.

A single droplet fell from the sky and splashed down on the cheek of the captain. And as it slid down his cheek like a tear drop, the anger that had boiled in his veins began to fade. And he could not remember why he even was so blindly enraged in the first place.

A sheet of rain fell from the bloated clouds, pouring down on every inch of the park, before spreading to the rest of the city and the rest of the country. The chilled wind whisked away the noxious tear gas, and the rain cooled the heated tempers of every person in the park. And when the thunder rumbled once more, everyone felt the need to take shelter from the wind and rain, and the crowd began to disperse, many running for the refuge of their homes to escape the sudden storm.

Neither side had won, yet neither one lost. The riot police had made their stand against insurmountable odds, and the rallied creatures had held their ground. In the end, it was the intervention of nature that had ended the riots before they could spread and consume the entire city.

And as the riot police began to load up their arrests, the corporal found the captain sitting on the fender of one of the many transports.

"Sir?" the corporal shouted over the torrential rain.

"What did I almost do, Jenson?" his superior said lowly. "I was so ready to squeeze that trigger. I was ready to paint the dirt red with her brains. But I saw something. I saw the past, I saw all the faces of the men and women who had been in the same place, in the same position as that mare. I even saw through their eyes. And I knew that I was just repeating it all, that I was repeating history." The captain looked down at his clean hands, seeing the blood that could have been on them. "I'm lucky, I guess. I was spared that shame and guilt."

The rain washed down his skin, and the man cracked the smallest smile.

********************************

The flow of magic ceased, and Lisa stepped back from the Crystal, panting from the exertion of controlling so much wild magic. The reporter slipped a hand up to her forehead, taking a deep breath to calm herself.

"That was easily the weirdest, most bat shit crazy, most ... awesome thing I have ever done. Holy shit, that was amazing!" she said, laughing and twirling in place. "Oh my god, that was magic. That was real magic!"

She felt like dancing with glee, and she did, just for the hell of it. Lisa twirled and spun, so full of joy that she had stopped the strife and ended the danger. The rain falling around the gazebo sounded like applause, and she could even feel the pride emanating from the Singing Crystal. She had bonded with it, she had seen the world of the spirits, commanded the wild magic of the world, and she had used it to bring harmony and peace.

Lisa laughed once more, flopping down in one of the many benches that ringed the gazebo's railing. A smile was plastered across her face, and the only thing she could think about was how incredible the flow of magic had felt coursing through her spirit. It had felt so pure, so powerful, so right.

But sitting there, staring at the roof of the gazebo, basking in the afterglow of such a powerful rush, Lisa was suddenly aware that she was not alone. She sat up on the bench, and saw someone standing just outside the eaves of the gazebo, holding a large umbrella that covered all of her face except her enchanting smile.

"Lovely day, huh?" Lisa jokingly called out.

"Mhm," the stranger hummed. "Nothing like a nice, refreshing rain to clear the air." She lifted her free hand out from underneath her umbrella, holding her palm flat to catch a few cooling raindrops. The stranger chuckled to herself, slipping her dampened hand into her pocket. "Here, I think you dropped this."

She withdrew something small from her pocket, tossing it gently over to the young woman on the bench. Lisa caught it easily, and she looked down at the object. It was a small medallion attached to a silver chain, stamped with an odd symbol of the sun flanked by two crescent moons. And within the heart of the blazing sun, an endless spiral that seemed to be in constant motion caught her eye. Lisa traced it with her finger, only to find that she could never truly find the center of it.

Lisa smiled, and she peered up from the medallion to see that she was once again alone. The reporter slouched back on the bench, slipping the silver chain around her neck and letting the medallion rest on her bosom.

"Guess I passed," she whispered to the rain.

***************************

"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Republic."

Cameras flashed as McGoff stepped up to the podium emblazoned with the flying phoenix seal of the Presidency. His appearance was different, and it was all thanks to the weasel faced man that stood behind the president. Gone were the military trappings and the dress uniforms, and in their place McGoff wore a simple navy blue suit with a white shirt and a dark tie. The men who acted as his Secret Service had finally started to look the part, shedding their combat fatigues for black suits and their assault rifles for more concealable sidearms. His image, and the image of the entire executive branch of the government had undergone a massive overhaul, overseen by none other than Vice President Smitts.

And now seemed like the best time to display that new image, one that would hopefully help the people of his nation to fall in behind him.

McGoff took a deep breath, and he began his speech.

"Earlier today, events transpired which resulted in the shedding of Terran blood by soldiers of this nation. Roughly two hundred individuals were arrested in the resulting riot, several dozen civilians were injured, and some were put in critical condition. No one knows who fired the first shot or threw the first rock, but that does not matter. What matters is that soldiers of this nation reacted in a way that was not exemplary of this nation's military. As a result, the Provost Marshal of the Military Police has been placed on administrative leave, and his service record has been placed up for review."

"But it is not the actions of the military personnel who responded, nor the aggressions of the creatures who assembled in the park today that marks this tragedy. We will not remember this day in the history of the Republic by the number of injured, nor the saving grace that prevented this event from spreading into the city. Historians will remember this day as the day that the people of this nation forsook their fellow citizens and chose instead to act in violence. But we will not be weakened by this tragedy! The Republic of Terra has weathered many trials: natural disasters, monsters, even the apocalypse itself! Today is simply one more trial along our road to greatness. The strength of this nation has always been based on trust and brotherhood, the very foundations of friendship and harmony. And it is with the intentions of brotherhood and warmth that the Office of the President stands behind the liberties and the freedoms of the citizens of this great nation. All of its citizens."

And with that, McGoff stepped away from the podium, allowing Smitts to step up and close the rather brief speech. But it did not matter, for the entire room had erupted in shouted questions and the flashes of cameras.

Author's Note:

Sorry about this one being so late. I've been doing a lot of job hunting lately. Took me literally seven months of hunting, but a place finally responded to my application today.

Why do I do my best writing at midnight?

Comments

[Iron Sides]

Digging permafrost eh? XD I dont think Rich would even let them dig permafrost. He would probably have put them to work digging shitter holes hahaha

[Detective Chmilewsky]

"...on her only day real day off since..."
only need one 'day'

"Of course, her eyes were closed in that picture. But it didn't ruin the photo opportunity in any way."
Could probably combine these two sentences with a comma.

"...knew that the ponies behind her were lose their will should she back down. ..."
were should be replaced with would

With those out of the way, this was a very, very powerful chapter, and I really enjoyed it.

[warpd]

So many things going off all at once. Looks like defeating Lyra did little to stop this movement.

[PegasusKlondike]

3202338 Yeah, I didn't take much time to edit. Being a month behind my self imposed schedule, I just wanted to get something published. Kinda rushing through this one to get to bigger and better projects. You know what I'm talking about.

[Detective Chmilewsky]

3202997 Hey, at least we got something =P. As I said before, I adore this chapter.

[La Vallett1]

Wow, did Lucifer's influence just caused this much chaos? And that magic in the end was a huge relief.

[AnormalUnicornPony]

Excellent.

I see that the spirit of this series is not jumping around randomly. I see that sometimes when an author is on a series for a while.

That can be good but usually it just is.

I am curious. So Lucifer is trying to make a comeback I get that but what is Lucifer now?

I suppose he had the most direct corruption from the Lucifer weapon in the first book. That makes me think about whether Lucifer is a force for chaos and evil or an instance of that force in this case OR just an instance of how magic could be put together to be an organization of chaos? Or would it be better to just think of Lucifer as surviving in him somehow? I find ways to over think things myself.

[PegasusKlondike]

3225322 All in good time, faithful reader. Lucifer is something different, something so mind boggling that it will take nearly an entire chapter to explain. And now to write that chapter!