Memoirs of a Minutor Crystallum

by Witching Hour

Ch 5 - Cheater Cheater

The Royal Library, Canterlot Castle
Kensington, Canterlot, Equestria
Sunsday, 22 Breeze Moon, 1001 Equestrian Era

Hidden away in a study room of the Royal Library, I groaned and stretched, using the motion to shove the pile of records away because I couldn’t stand to look at them any longer. I had some experience in making information packets on ponies, but none that lived so low-key as my doctor… It seemed she was absolutely determined to not draw any attention to herself, despite her ties to the Peerage and her prestige as Princess Luna’s special student.

Needless to say, my work on making a new dossier on my doctor was going slow, so I pulled out the small note I’d gotten the day before.

The typed note had shown up out of the blue, delivered with my mail like it wasn't actually courtesy of a Minutor Crystallum courier. With my move in less than a week to live with Witching Hour, I’d have to make arrangements to continue such benefits outside of an apartment owned by the Capo of Canterlot. It was certainly a surprise, since I’d not even heard a whisper from Rat or Charon since they’d bailed out of Coltenhagen. They’d had good reason to maintain the silence until I’d left as well, what with Charon’s sgradito status at The Olympia, but they could’ve at least dropped a line once in a while in the two years since then.

“Not even so much as a ‘get well’ card, and I know they know about my injury…” I groused, not for the first time. It was a common hazard of my presentation as an ‘independent’ contractor; no love from the big ‘companies’.

Regardless, I wasn’t about to turn down an easy payday. Sure, I had enough to live comfortably, what with the ‘salary’ I had from the current job of maintaining a relationship with Witching Hour, but it never hurt to have a slush fund stashed away for any surprises… And the good and Honorable Doctor Witching Hour had thus far been rife with them.

Scribbling the name down on a scrap of paper, I rose from my seat and stepped back out into the main library. Navigating the shelves, I got to the main desk where Steady Quill, the head librarian, sat, glowering at all in her domain with watery blue eyes behind bright pink catseye frames. Those eyes focused on me, making me feel like an errant school filly again… Or like I’d just botched one of my reports to the Minutor Crystallum.

“Um… Madam Quill…” I started hesitantly, clearing my throat quickly and as quietly as I could. “I need help finding information on someone… For an independent project…” I explained, setting the piece of paper on the desk before her.

Steady Quill scowled at me again, her frown deepening the lines on her teal face. “And is Sergeant Veritas aware of your independent project?”

I cringed, not for the first time wishing my father hadn’t held me back so much. In Coltenhagen, I’d had to work under his constant supervision, which, as a mere Ferrum initiate, I had to swallow, but the fact is that he hadn’t let me start working on getting out of the grip of being a Ferrum until I was almost seventeen! After my year in that cesspit of a city and I’d finally made Aeris, he still hadn’t let me work alone much, despite even acknowledging that I’d worked my hind-end off to get a longer leash!

“Yes, she is,” I sighed heavily. “I told her on my way in.”

The librarian lost some of her scowl at my reply, but it wasn’t enough to completely erase the expression from her face as she took the paper in her magic to look at it. “Very well… I’ll send what I find to your study room.”

I smiled in gratitude, and nodded before beating a hasty tactical retreat. Vicus of the Minutor Crystallum were prickly in the best of times, but Steady Quill was the head of that part of the Order in this city, which made her even more so than the other historians. Back in my study room, I closed the door and scowled at the mess of papers. That wretched file I’d been given initially had at least given me a couple of starting points, added to my own experiences with her extended family in Ponyville.

I’d gotten another few pages done, detailing her father’s side, when there was a knock on the door. “Come in,” I said as I looked up, expecting to see the irritable Steady Quill… What I saw instead was a somber Earl Toffee quickly entering the room and taking the chair across from me. For a moment, I gaped, slack-jawed. After years of not dealing with much, if any, of the hierarchy of the Minutor Crystallum, having had not one but now two face-to-face visits from the Capo Minutor of Canterlot was a bit much for me to get used to.

“You’ve made some rather intriguing inquiries, Miss Wrench,” Earl Toffee proclaimed as he tapped a file folder against the desk. “Inquiries that, if related to your present mission with Doctor Witching Hour, raise a great many concerns.”

I blinked, finally regaining my composure. “Um… I swear I’m just making a new dossier…” I explained. “As I told you before, the one I was given is little better than toilet paper.”

“I can see that, and while I’m quite certain it will be magnificent, I must ask how Kayn Ost is relevant to the good Doctor’s dossier?” replied Toffee.

“Oh.” I was eloquence itself apparently. “Um… That’s for a side job I got through some of my old contacts from Coltenhagen.” In explanation, I slid the note from ‘Shirogane’ across the table.

“Hmm… Ah, yes; ‘Rat’ and ‘Charon’ from that business in Coltenhagen two years back, I do remember the report.” mused Toffee as he glanced over the note before setting it off to one side. “Well… I must say that this is rather curious, then, and another thing for you to keep an eye on while you’re here.”

“Oh no…” I groaned. “Why do I feel like this job is quickly turning into a sand trap of problems? What’s this guy have to do with the Vices?”

“Considering that this individual hired the Shadowbolts to assassinate the Elements of Harmony twice, and someone affiliated with said Shadowbolts is hiring you at double pay for information on this individual?” Toffee asked rhetorically as he opened the file folder on my desk. “The concrete intel we have on Kayn Ost is all things that your Shadowbolt contact would already have; a train derailment and that Ponyville debacle that nearly killed the Wonderbolts Ace Squad. Everything else is merely speculation based on the common threads between these two events. What we do know is that, whoever they are, they have powerful connections and they seek to take the Elements out of play. Normally, I would suggest telling this contact you weren’t able to find anything and playing this close to the vest, but there’s already so little here, I would say that it wouldn’t make much difference. What I want to know is how far we can trust this ‘Shirogane’ and their associates? You’ve worked with them before, however briefly. What are your thoughts?”

“If you had the report from Coltenhagen and The Olympia, then you’d know we owe them a solid,” I retorted iritably, and then bit my tongue with a wince. One day, my knee jerk responses to Earl Toffee would get me in trouble and it’d be better if I stopped such a bad habit before then. “I’d trust them. At least Rat’s crew and Charon… I can’t vouch for the whole organization, just them,” I added, my tone more moderate.

Toffee merely nodded, unperturbed by my outburst. “As long as we are not bashed over the head with said ‘solid’, I wholeheartedly agree. Go ahead and share what we have, and keep me informed. We may need to get eyes inside of that flying fortress of theirs-”

“They have a flying fortress?!” I asked eagerly. “Dammit, now I wish they could afford me!”

“... Perhaps they might, should the need arise,” smiled Toffee. “The good doctor is our priority, of course, but you may wish to nurture this ‘friendship’, if the ‘Get Well’ gift basket waiting at your apartment is anything to judge by.”

“Oh sure… Now they send one…” I grumbled. “By the way, let the couriers know I’m moving into the Mayfair apartments at the end of the week.”

“Already noted when a certain Doctor inquired about adding you to her lease,” smiled Toffee as he stood up from the chair. “A pleasure as always, Miss Wrench.”

As he left, I snagged a clean sheet of paper and quickly wrote down my reply to ‘Shirogane’. I’d leave it in my dead drop on my way back to my apartment.

---

Summer Fun Fly-Meet
Wonderbolt Stadium
Canterlot, Equestria
Moonsday, 7 Rose Moon, 1001 Equestrian Era

I eyed the various courses dubiously, feeling my nerve failing again even as my heart ached to go through the twists, turns and crazy obstacles on them. “Doc… I don’t think this is a good idea…”

“Nonsense!” protested Witching Hour beside me, shaking her head. “Look, Miss Wrench. There’s not much more we can do in the physio room at the hospital. You’ve managed to get a grip on the strength you need to fly normally, but we need to find out if that control extends to all aspects of your flying. We won’t find that out any better way than here… and don’t even try to tell me you don’t like the idea. If your conversations with my grandfather weren’t any indication, the fact that you come from a long family tradition of Wonderbolt Reservists is a clear sign that you love stunt-flying. So… This is how we find out if you’re still up for it, right?”

It really wasn’t fair of my doctor to know me so well already. I’d barely known the mare a month, and she still remained something of a question mark in my books… but there she was, calling me out on my shit.

“Couldn’t we just wait until the next Craft Day and see what your family can cook up? Between Anvilhead, those three uncles of yours, and Zetta, I’m pretty sure they’d come up with something comparable…” I asked, mostly shying away from the idea of going through this test publicly.

“What? Being my test subject wasn’t enough for you, now you want to subject yourself to the rest of my family?” Witching Hour teased. I wasn’t sure I’d get used to that, after being introduced to her as my somber and cautious (if painfully optimistic at times) doctor, but I took it as a sign that I was developing a good relationship with her. “Besides, this is just an amateur fly-meet right? Lots of pegasi have mishaps here… So even if you do, and I doubt you will, it won’t be out of the ordinary. So no reason to fear, right?”

Grumbling, I let her herd me into the lineup for the obstacle course. I wasn’t about to admit that the thought of the challenge was appealing… Gods knew it’d make her more insufferably right than she already was. However, there was a large part of me that was afraid these new wings would fail, or that I’d go careening wildly out of control, and generally make a fool of myself. Two months was not enough time for me to feel comfortable with how the reconstruction had affected my flight.

I shrugged off the windbreaker that I’d been using to conceal my wings up to this moment, thanking Celestia that today wasn’t a bright and sunny day. Honestly, in that one moment, I felt more naked and exposed than at any other point in my entire life, and having wings that flashed light just like a conehead’s horn would have brought far too much attention. Witching Hour’s magic quickly caught the discarded jacket and folded it into her bag.

“I really don’t know why you insist on wearing things that cover your wings. Don’t pegasi hate having their wings constrained?” she asked, even though I knew full well she already knew the answer to that. I mean, how could she not, with her family littered with pegasi? And we both knew why I was willing to sacrifice that comfort.

“Witching Hour… Really… If you insist on asking questions you already know the answer to, I’ll tell Her Ladyship, the Countess, how much you moan in bed.”

That meeting had almost been as interesting as meeting her father’s family, but not nearly as pleasant. The Countess Grey, Sweet Tea, had marched into Fine Brew’s tea shop, cornered Witching Hour and I at our booth and interrogated us for over an hour over our ‘relationship’, which really didn’t exist in the way Sweet Tea had built it up in her head, but apparently Leaf Wind had thought it funny to make a joke about us moving in together within earshot of the matriarch.

“All non-contestants please make your way back to the stands! The Final Heat is about to begin! Contestants; get to your places!”

The look that the good doctor gave me as she made her way back to the stands did not bode well for me later, but I honestly couldn’t care less as I took my mark on the track. Four other pegasi stood to my left, three well-toned stallions and a lithe willowy mare, all stretching and preparing for the announcer’s call. The older stallion had a voice for radio and lungs to match as he prattled away on the five of us and the current best times. I let the words wash over me, since there was nothing useful there. I’d watched the course dozens of times in the past hour. I knew what I was up against. I just didn’t know how much my new wings would bring to the table.

The announcer started his countdown. Three: I extended my wings and waited, my eyes closed as I focused my mind. Two: I inhaled slowly before releasing out through my mouth, letting the cold shock of adrenaline wash over. One: I opened my eyes. The airhorn blared, but I never heard it. I was already on the move.

The double slalom came up first, side to side, then up and down. I couldn’t exactly place where my mind was at during the quick turns and the rapid climbs and dives, as I was too busy savoring the feeling of truly letting loose in the sky again. It was intoxicating; the wind in my face, the tingling burn of my wings, and the pounding of my pulse in my ears. Any pegasus would tell you that soaring in the Open Sky after being ground-bound for any length of time was better than booze, better than drugs, hell, even better than sex; I was inclined to agree, in that moment at least.

The triple hairpin came next, and I couldn’t keep my grin from spreading wide across my face. I could hear the announcer shouting something as one of the stallions spun out and crashed into one of the safety clouds, unharmed but disqualified. Honestly, I didn’t comprehend a word of it, and that was fine by me. Gods, I knew the Doctor was going to give me the worst ‘I Told You So’ look later, but the feeling in my soul at that moment might have been worth a thousand of those looks.

By the time I reached the Oscillating Rings, any remaining thoughts of anxiety had melted away. I was swiftly catching up to the leader, twirling and dancing my way through each ring as though they were standing still. I passed the mare, tucking into a spiraling roll as I threaded the needle through the ring we were both aiming for. The lead stallion flinched as the ring he was passing through shifted, causing him to clip his left wing on the edge and slow down as he tried to regain his rhythm. I turned sideways to avoid him and glided decisively through the last ring into the lead.

Back in flight school, I never did like the “Buffers”, especially when they followed my favorite sections like the Rings or the Slaloms. They always seemed so crude, rebounding off a cloud barrier at just the right angle to strike another one, and another and another, on and on down the line like some living pinball or billiard ball. The artful threading of needles was always my passion, but even my distaste for the crass bouncing was dulled in that moment on that course. As I rebounded off the last buffer, the sky gleamed a brighter blue than I’d ever seen before, as if urging me on to the finish.

The final set on the course was simple in concept, deceptively so, and had disqualified more contestants than the previous four obstacle sets combined. The Over/Under/Over Barriers were three solid cloud walls marked with boundary markers and spaced close together. The goal was to climb over the first, dive under the second, and climb over the third before a controlled dive through a narrow checkpoint at the end, but the rules were strict. Touch any of the walls in the slightest way? Disqualified. Drift out of the marked boundaries? Disqualified. Miss the checkpoint at the end? Disqualified. It was exactly what it was advertised as: a Wonderbolt-Tier obstacle.

Years later, I’ve gone back to that moment and that obstacle, trying to remember what went through my mind as I made history, but with little luck. Speaking with a few track designers, Wonderbolt engineers, and even the Doctor about it after the fact, the speeds and wing-power levels that I breezed through the Barriers with were theoretically possible for a pegasus to achieve while still maintaining complete control through the course, but the margin for error was somewhere around 0.0037 percent. At the time, I had no idea that I’d performed the perfect ‘textbook’ run and set a new record time for the Barriers that wouldn’t be broken for decades, nor did I care. To me, in that moment, I was one with the Open Sky, shining a wonderful blue, and she was smiling with me.

I barely felt the tape at the finish line as I briefly skidded before my wings halted my motion. The crowd was screaming in a fever-pitch, and the announcer was losing his mind with his fellow commentator, but my pulse was pounding too hard in my ears. I collapsed to my knees with a brief sob as my mind finally turned back on and the implications of what I’d done hit me in that moment: I was as good as new, maybe better. After living through the worst nightmare a pegasus could have, I was back in the sky the same as I’d always been. Tears of relief fogged the inside of my goggles as I took in the fact that flying with these new wings didn’t feel the slightest bit different than how I had before. These were my wings, not ‘replacement wings’ as I feared they would be, but mine. Trophy? Who cared about a trophy? I had my wings back.

And then the bottom dropped out.

“CAN’T YOU SEE SHE CHEATED?!” demanded one of the stallions in a harsh bellow.

In an instant, the applause and cheers from the crowd silenced, replaced by hushed whispers and mutterings. Most seemed shocked that somepony would have the audacity to make such an accusation. Witching Hour seemed to be torn between medically disassembling the offending stallion, lecturing him into the next century, or possibly both.

“Mares and Gentlestallions, let me assure you that any accusations of cheating are baseless and-” began one of the announcers.

“THEN WHAT’S WITH HER WINGS?!” demanded the stallion again. “FREAK FROM NOWHERE SHOWS UP WITH FREAKY WINGS AND SETS A NEW RECORD?! I CALL BULLSH-”

“Oh give it a rest, you featherbrain,” sniped one of the other mares. “If anything, it’s a miracle she can even fly with wings covered in garish crystal like that…”

The stallion seemed to turn a brand new shade of purple as his three brain cells worked overtime to find a rebuttal. In all honesty, I was so worried about how these wings would feel that I never considered how they would perform.

“WHAT ABOUT MAGIC?! IT COULD BE AN ENCHANTMENT! REMEMBER THAT UNICORN WITH THE BUTTERFLY WINGS?!”

“Are you having a laugh?” snorted another stallion. “We were all placed through the same dispellment charm to clear any performance-enhancing enchantments! There’s no way magic could be involved!”

Except that wasn’t true. My wings were magical constructs. They were made by the next incarnation of Hope herself. Comparing standard magic to the power of the Virtues was like comparing a raindrop to the Baletic Sea. On top of that, I wouldn’t even have wings anymore if it hadn’t been for magic.

I could already see the dream of ever becoming a Reservist in the Wonderbolts, never mind joining the Recruits or Elites, being ripped away from me. I’d be lucky if I could even join the Air Guard with these things, amazing as they were. All because of my failure to avoid a known, if obscured, hazard. Anything I could do would be cast into doubt, attributed to the crystal iron.

I dropped the trophy without another word. It was never mine, nor was that moment in the Open Sky. Of course I never felt so incredible up there before: that thrill was these damn wings. Just these damn wings, and nothing more than that. I had to get out of there as fast as I could, and so I called upon these cursed wings once more and let their bittersweet rapture carry me far away from my shame. My mind at the time could only wonder where the rogue raincloud had come from. The weather schedule called for nothing but clear blue skies all day, so where did the rain come from? Of course it was a rogue rain cloud; why else would my face be wet?

Author's Note:

What's this? Old contacts coming out of the shadows (pun intended) to try to figure out what they're dealing with?

Thanks are owed to Jim Hoxworth for his "Shirogane"... and then for his massive assistance with the second half of the chapter. I've had Chapter 6 done for a bit, but I wanted to make sure I didn't... y'know... do something stupid like toss out whole sections upon rereading.

We're now closing in (timeline-wise) on the start of Steady As She Flies. WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Don't mind me... I'm just a little crazed. I've got some other things written because writing Monkey in this headspace is... Not easy... I'd even go so far as to say it's gorram frustrating. So instead, The Troll Squad of VirtueVerse has been working on a group project, as well as two additions to our storyline.

Keep your eyes open for those, and, as always, Be safe, friends!!!
Love & Light,
Witchy