Introduction - Part 1

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the My Little Pony brand, and all inherent properties © Hasbro, Inc.

BioShock and all inherent properties © Irrational Games

Certain names and locations have been borrowed with permission from a map of Equestria drawn by hlissner, who is awesome.

The “Harmony” logo and FIMFiction.net banner were created by Alexstrazsa, who is also awesome.

Cover image drawn by CouchCrusader, who, to be redundant once more, is awesome.

• • •

There were certain things, Spike had learned over the years, that you simply did not do when you lived with a magically gifted unicorn mare. When she was exhausted after staying up past four reading an astrology textbook, for example, you did not wake her up before noon the next day for anything less important than a meteor strike. When she was practicing a newly discovered shrinking spell and needed a test subject for her first scientific trial, you did not stand obliviously in the middle of the library trying to figure out what “temperamental” meant. And when the love of your life gave you the gift of a lifetime, you did not ever let her get a washcloth within ten feet of your face.

But if there was one thing Spike knew better than anything else, it was that when magically gifted unicorn mares got frustrated, angry, stressed, or all of them at once, things could get real hairy, real fast. So when the young purple-scaled dragon woke up to the sound of a door slamming and somepony muttering lividly under their breath, he just laid his head gently back against his pillow and tried to convince himself he was still asleep. As usual, it didn’t work.

“Stupid, stuck-up, snobby, incompetent...argh!”

Spike squeezed his eyes shut and kept his groan mostly to himself, and opened them again just in time to see a fuming mass of violet fur throw herself onto the bed next to his and scream into her pillow. When the mass didn’t move for another thirty seconds after that, Spike reckoned it was safe enough to speak.

“Morning, Twilight,” he said.

Whatever Twilight said in return was blocked off by the pillow still wrapped around most of her head. “So...I guess the presentation didn’t go well?” Spike continued tentatively.

“The presentation?” Twilight lifted her head up with a jerk and stared down at Spike, the look in her eyes teetering back and forth between “simmer” and “bake”. “Oh, the presentation was fine. Great, actually. It was a fantastic presentation, Spike. The best I’ve ever given...no, the best that anypony in the history of Equestria has ever given. I mean, what else would you expect from years of research and months of planning and practicing, and a whole day sitting out in the cold waiting for somepony to remember the appointment I set up three weeks ago...but of course, that’s no reason for the Board to actually, oh, I don’t know, pay attention while I’m showing them the biggest technomagical innovation in two thousand years. Or look me in the eye. Or stay awake.”

“So it...didn’t go well?”

For a moment, Twilight looked like she was about to reply, but at the last second she just growled deep in her throat and slammed her face down into her pillow again, where it stubbornly stayed no matter how many times Spike assured her she was overreacting. He was right in the middle of attempt number three when a knock rang out from the door to Twilight’s bedroom, just before it swung open a moment later to reveal a stocky orange earth mare with a braided blonde mane and a well-worn brown Stetson resting between her ears.

“Twilight? You in here?” Applejack called out as she entered. “I thought I saw...well, howdy, Spike! Did I wake ya up?”

“I wish,” Spike replied as he jumped off the bottom step down from the loft, his mood soured and his brow creased into a disgruntled V.

Applejack’s smile wavered, and fell into a knowing smirk. “I take it that means Twilight’s home from Canterlot?”

Spike nodded.

“And I take it that means her presentation didn’t go too well?”

After a quick glance up towards the loft, Spike grimaced and shook his head. To be honest, he didn’t really know what her presentation had even been about. Actually, he was pretty sure nopony did besides Twilight. She’d tried to explain the principles behind it to him once or twice, but the only parts he’d comprehended had been that it had something to do with magical energy and that she’d been working on it bit by bit ever since her days at Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns. Four months ago, she’d had some kind of revelation in her sleep—at three in the morning, of course—and ever since then she had virtually lived in her lab in the basement, working on a project she kept saying would change Equestria as they knew it forever. Spike couldn’t imagine what it could be or how an idea someone came up with before breakfast could ever change anything, but it meant the world to Twilight, and as far as he was concerned that was reason enough to assume it was important. Just hopefully not important enough to require any testing first.

With a heavy sigh and a sympathetic glance at Spike, Applejack trotted up the stairs and went to stand by Twilight’s bed. “C’mon, Twi,” she said, gently prodding her friend in the side. “Ya can’t hide up here forever.”

Twilight rolled over onto her back and grunted, but didn’t get off the bed or take the pillow away from her face. Applejack sighed again, and her smirk began to return. “Aw, come now. It ain’t that bad, is it?”

Twilight moaned and nodded vigorously, the motion only visible through the jiggling of the pillow and the tip of her horn bobbing up and down just above it.

“It is?”

The pillow jiggled up and down again.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Now it was moving from left to right.

“Do you wanna get up and face this like the grown, responsible, intelligent mare you are?”

Left to right again.

Even from down below the loft, Spike could see Applejack biting her lip. “Of course she thinks it’s funny,” he mumbled under his breath as he went downstairs to dig up something to eat. “She doesn’t have to live with her.”

When he came back upstairs a few minutes later with an half-empty box of hay flakes clutched in his claws, Applejack had finally managed to get Twilight up to a sitting position, though her chin was still propped up on the pillow between her forehooves, and there were still more than a few thunderclouds flashing behind her eyes.

“Now just tell me what happened,” Applejack said firmly from her spot next to Twilight on the bed. Twilight let out a grumpy huff and muttered something about the stupid Academy and the stupid Board with their big stupid robes and their big stupid melon heads, but didn’t give her friend much else to work with beyond that. After a minute or so of optimistic patience, Applejack seemed to decide that she’d gotten about all she was going to get.

“Well, a watched apple never falls,” she murmured to herself before raising her voice to speak to Twilight again. “I think I got a bit’a cider in my bag someplace. Home-brewed and bottled from the juiciest Golden Delicious you’ll ever see. A sip or two’a that oughta cheer ya right up. That sound all right?”

Twilight hugged her pillow tight to her chest and said nothing, but nodded slightly after a pause of a few seconds with her face still scrunched into a scowl. After giving Twilight a friendly pat on the back, Applejack got to her hooves and came back down from the loft to poke through the saddlebag she had dropped by the foot of the stairs leading up to it.

“Is she okay?” Spike said, a little bit of concern creeping into his voice despite his best efforts to keep his tone curt. As much as he hated being woken up before he was good and ready to be awake, seeing Twilight so upset was still something he hated even more.

“She’s just havin’ a rough mornin’, is all,” Applejack replied, her voice soft enough not to reach Twilight up above. “She didn’t say much, but I get the feelin’ she didn’t get quite the reception she was expectin’ out there.”

A sudden tickle in the back of Spike’s throat cut off his words before he could even start to say them, and a second later a jaw-cracking yawn split across his face. “You can say that again,” he muttered once he had blinked the moisture out of his eyes and regained the ability to speak. He got a little chuckle out of Applejack for that comment.

“I wouldn’t worry about her,” she assured him. “Give her a few hours to get over it, and she’ll be right as rain. And in the meantime...well, consarnit it all!”

“What?” Spike asked. “What’s wrong?”

“I could’a sworn I had a couple bottles in here...” Applejack said with a frown, glancing back up at Twilight for a moment before turning to Spike again. “Looks like the cider’ll have to wait for a bit. You mind keepin’ Twilight company while I go fetch a fresh jug from the barn?”

Spike stuffed another pawful of hay flakes into his mouth and nodded, parts of a complete breakfast flying everywhere as he did. He was about to go back up to offer a bowl to Twilight when Applejack opened the bedroom door just in time to take a spray of confetti straight to the forehead.

“Surpri...oh, hi, Applejack! What are you doing in Twilight’s bedroom?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Pinkie,” Applejack countered in a bewildered tone as the pink-maned earth pony bounced into the room. “All of you, actually,” she added a moment later, once she noticed the crowd of concerned-looking mares following Pinkie Pie inside.

“Oh, where is she? Where’s the poor dear?” Rarity exclaimed, only wasting a few moments rushing frantically around the room before zipping up into Twilight’s loft to console the frazzled-looking filly. Seemingly following her fashion-conscious friend’s lead, Fluttershy flew up to hover anxiously by Twilight’s side as Rarity cleaned up the purple unicorn’s mane with a magically levitated brush, all the while assuring her over and over again that rejection was a natural part of the creative process and that most critics only liked what they could easily understand anyway. That left Rainbow Dash to explain to Applejack how in Equestria they had known to come here so quickly after Twilight got home.

“Combo,” Rainbow said with a shrug, as Pinkie popped up from behind her to clarify.

“That’s right!” the party pony confirmed. “Scratchy throat, twitchy hoof, and pinchy knee means that somepony’s being a grumpy-grumps!”

Applejack blinked, and thought better of the question sitting on the tip of her tongue. “I’ll never understand you, Pinkie,” she said quietly before bending a smile back onto her lips. “Anyhow, I’m sure Twilight’ll be mighty happy to see you girls t-”

“Oh, heavens, just look at these bags under your eyes!” Rarity gasped, prodding at Twilight’s cheeks like an artist working a hunk of clay. “Did you even sleep last night?”

“Not re…” Twilight started to answer before Fluttershy cut her off.

“Do you think she’ll be okay?” the pink-maned pegasus asked breathlessly, the edges of her forehooves prematurely perched on her chin. “Is she okay, Rarity? You’re okay, right, Twilight?”

“Well…”

“I think she’s got bigger problems than whether she forgot to put on her eye black this morning,” Rainbow Dash commented dryly to the now thoroughly miffed fashionista. “How bad was it? Did they even listen?” she went on to Twilight. “You want me to help you persuade ‘em to give ya a second chance?” The cyan pegasus launched herself into the air and held up both her forelegs in her best approximation of a fighting stance. “’Cause I got all the persuasive power ya need right here.”

“Uh…”

“First of all,” Rarity cut in tersely, keeping her eyes on Rainbow Dash as she gently nudged a quivering Fluttershy out from under Twilight’s comforter, “it is eye shadow, not eye black. And second of all, the last thing Twilight needs you to do is carry on with this…pugilistic nonsense about fighting the entire Canterlot Occulumental Board with your bare hooves.”

“Girls, I-”

“Well, maybe a bit’a pugilisticalness is just what they need to get their heads on straight! They’re nothin’ but a bunch’a old geezers anyhow, right?”

“Those geezers just so happen to be the most influential and most powerful unicorns in all of Equestria,” Rarity hissed. “They are the pinnacle of all magical knowledge in the realm, and it is the dream of every unicorn that someday they might be allowed to join their vaulted ranks and be immortalized for eternity in the Hall of the Occulumens.”

“Don’t look now, but somepony’s mane’s turning green,” Rainbow muttered.

“Ooh, where?” Pinkie interrupted before Rarity could pick her jaw back up off her chest. “I wanna see! I wanna see the green ma-”

“Girls!”

Everypony’s first reaction was to fall silent and turn towards Twilight, which was why it took them a few seconds to realize the shout had come from Applejack. “Let her breathe, for Pete’s sake,” she continued once she had the whole group’s attention, and with varying degrees of bashfulness the four ponies around the bed backed away and gave their friend a chance to speak.

Twilight took her time making use of the opportunity, and when she did her words were preceded by a shaky giggle. “Well, at least I’m not angry anymore,” she said bemusedly, the corners of her mouth staying perked even after her laughter died away. “Thank you all so much for coming over. You don’t know how much it means to know you guys are here for me.” Twilight paused, then weakly chuckled again. “Even if I haven’t ever bothered to tell you how much this opportunity meant to me too.”

“Aw, don’t worry about it, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash quickly replied as she alighted on the spare bed across the room, her face bent into a playful grin. “You’re always workin’ on some crazy science-y magical junk. We’re kinda used to it by now.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with crazy magical junk,” Fluttershy assured her. “That is, unless you do think there’s something wrong with it, in which case we, um…well, I guess we would, uh…”

“I think what we’re all tryin’ ta say,” Applejack explained as she stepped up into the loft, “is that while we might not understand everything you do, we still understand you enough to know that’s not what really matters. What matters is that we’ve got your back anytime you need us, and you’ve got ours. We’re your friends, Twilight, and that ain’t never gonna change.”

The rest of the group all nodded and agreed, and with six beaming smiles on six jubilant faces, the Elements of Harmony crowded together and piled into a warm and affectionate hug. Spike watched the display for a moment or two, then with a gruff snort he rolled his eyes and looked away.

“Mares…” he muttered into the box of hay flakes as he dug around for one last scoop.

For fifteen seconds, the scene in Twilight’s bedroom was peaceful, but after that Rainbow Dash’s curiosity couldn’t wait any longer. “Soooo…now that nopony’s upset anymore,” she said, ignoring the warning glare Applejack sent her way, “what was your presentation about? I mean, you said you never bothered to tell us before, but there’s no reason you can’t just go ahead and tell us now, right?”

“I don’t think Twilight’s in the mood to bring that back up at the moment,” Applejack started to say, but Twilight debunked that claim before her friend had even finished bringing it up.

“It’s fine, Applejack,” the purple unicorn said. “She’s right. There’s no reason I can’t explain my project to you guys. Do all of you want me to?”

“Of course we do, darling,” Rarity answered, an assertion that was echoed by Pinkie Pie—“Oh, yeah!”—and Fluttershy—“I’d like to know about it…”—in the same instant.

Twilight craned her neck past Rarity and looked towards the stairs. “Applejack?”

Applejack glanced around the room, then shrugged and grinned. “If you’re all right with talkin’,” she said, “then I’m all right with listenin’.”

“Sounds like a ‘yes’ to me,” Rainbow interjected. “Now come on, tell us!”

“Okay,” Twilight agreed. “I guess I’d better start at the beginning, then.” She went silent for a moment and shut her eyes, apparently collecting her thoughts, then looked back at her friends with her gaze aimed mostly at Rainbow Dash.

“How much do you know about magic?” she asked.

“Uh…I know everypony has some of it,” Dash said. “And unicorns have a whole bunch of it.”

“Well, yes, that’s right, but how much do you know about what it really is?”

“It’s…magic?”

“It’s energy,” Rarity explained with only the slightest hint of hubris. “Magic is a manifestation of natural energy that all members of the equine race can access.”

“Well, yeah. That too,” Rainbow added quickly.

“That’s close, Rarity, but there’s actually even more to it than that,” Twilight said, much to the satisfaction of Rainbow Dash. “Magical energy is one of the last great mysteries of the modern age. In a lot of ways, it’s just like regular energy: different ponies can have different amounts of strength with it, it runs out if you use too much of it, and you can train your body to be able to use more of it for longer periods of time. But in other ways, it’s like nothing else we know of in this universe. We know that it has unique traits for each of the three races, but we don’t know how it always knows what a pony’s special talent is almost before he or she does. And we also don’t know what exactly it does to make pegasi able to walk on clouds, or earth ponies able to know when and where to plant crops, or unicorns able to lift objects and pull them across a room.”

Twilight emphasized her last point by wrapping Spike in her trademark purple aura and hoisting him up into the loft, the baby dragon shouting and squirming the whole way up. Once he was safely back on the ground and looking none the worse for wear, his housemate got up from her bed, paced over to the window, and continued.

“Star Swirl the Bearded was the first pony to ever truly experiment with magic, and his research still forms the basis of all magical theory in Equestria even today, almost two thousand years after he died. He believed that magic was a mystical, otherworldly force that didn’t technically exist on our own plane of reality, that actually functioned as a conduit through the opposing realms of discord and reason. His theory was that magic was nothing more than a visible substantiation of the chaos inherent in an invisible alternate dimension, the counterbalance of which is what gives our own dimension its fertility and effervescence, and us our control over what we refer to as ‘magic’.”

Noticing the blank looks on her friends’ faces, Twilight shook her head sheepishly and backed up a bit. “Think of it this way,” she said. “Imagine that you have two pastures, and that there’s a big fence running between them. On one side of the fence, everything works normally, the way it’s supposed to. And on the other, the exact opposite: up is down, left is right…basically, everything that happened when Discord escaped. Those fields are like the two dimensions Star Swirl talked about, with one ruled by reason and the other by chaos.”

“So…the fence in the middle keeps them apart?” Fluttershy asked slowly.

“Exactly. According to Star Swirl, there’s something that works just like that fence keeping our world, which he called Rationalis, from getting mixed up with Absonus, the dimension of chaos. And magic is…magic is sort of like a hole in the fence, where some part of Absonus can get through to us in a form that we can use. That’s why magic can allow us to do things that, in a world completely governed by the laws of nature, wouldn’t be possible.”

“My head hurts,” Rainbow Dash groaned.

“So did mine, when I first heard about it,” Twilight replied with a laugh. “And I haven’t even touched on how complicated the technomagical science gets after that. But it’s still what all magical philosophy is governed by to this day. Until about five years ago, it was the closest thing to a reasonable explanation that we ever thought we’d have.”

“Wait, until five years ago?” Applejack interrupted. “Ya mean there’s more?”

“Not just more,” Twilight answered in a hushed, almost reverent tone. “Something else entirely.”

She paused again to let her last remark sink in, and more than one of her friends wished she’d quit with the dramatic effects and just get on with it already. “Five years ago, before I met any of you, a pony by the name of Foxtail Meadow came before the Board with an idea he said would change everything we’d ever believed about what magic was and how it worked. He said that magic wasn’t a border between reason and chaos. He said that there weren’t two different dimensions that had to remain in balance for the universe to continue to exist. He said that Star Swirl the Bearded, the pony whose wisdom and knowledge we’d trusted for as long as anypony could remember, was wrong, and that he was ri-”

“Just get on with it already!” Spike shouted over Twilight’s tirade.

After throwing Spike her best disgruntled glare, Twilight sighed heavily and cut to the chase. “Foxtail’s theory was that magic wasn’t just an anomaly, but a unique form of energy all its own that could be found within every living being in our world. He believed that in the trees and in our bodies and in the very air we breathed, there was an invisible current of inherent magical force that ran through all of us, and that we could all tap into it and use as much of it as we were capable of handling. Most importantly, though, he believed that, given enough time and enough effort, he could find a way to access that current and convert the energy inside it into a physical form…like something you could see and touch and store in a bottle in your cupboard. And since this current drew its power from a symbiotic relationship with living organisms, as long as the world around us remained healthy, it would never run dry. In other words, if we could draw a physical embodiment of magic from this current any time we wanted, we would have a never-ending source of unlimited magical energy. There’d be no spell we couldn’t cast, no invention we couldn’t design, no dream we couldn’t achieve.”

A crucial gear clicked into place in Pinkie Pie’s head, and she gasped with her eyes almost brimming over with excitement. “I could put magic into food!” she shouted. “I could make cupcakes that taste like magic!”

“It certainly does sound incredible, Twilight,” Rarity said. “But…well, to put it in context, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a magic-flavored cupcake before. If this Foxtail fellow had such an idea, why haven’t any of us heard of it?”

“Hey, yeah!” Rainbow agreed. “Why haven’t we heard of any’a this?”

“Because everypony on the Board thought he was insane,” Twilight said, speaking to her friends as if she almost couldn’t believe she’d had to connect the dots for them. “I mean, he’d spent his whole life working a plow in Dream Valley, and he paid for his trip to Canterlot by selling his entire family farm. For someone like that to go before the Canterlot Occulumental Board and claim that their entire interpretation of technomagical theory was manure…well, it was like walking up to Celestia and saying the sun could move just fine without her doing a darn thing. He was laughed out of the city by every unicorn within earshot, and two weeks after that he vanished without a trace. No one’s seen hide nor hair of him since.”

Five ponies and one dragon looked at each other, and their patient smiles slowly began to fade. “Well, then…what was the point of all that?” Rainbow asked bluntly. “Why’d you spend all that time telling us about some broke-flank country pony who didn’t know he was crazy?”

Twilight smiled, and her horn flashed into action. “Because he wasn’t crazy,” she said cryptically as her saddlebag floated up from the landing below. With painstakingly careful hooves, Twilight brought the bag down gently onto her bed, undid the strap on the front and, with her friends watching with furrowed brows, flipped it open.

“Because he was right.”

The collective Elements of Harmony had seen a lot of amazing things in their lives, but nothing prepared them for what they saw inside Twilight’s saddlebag. Sitting at the bottom of the main compartment was a small corked vial only four inches tall and no more than an inch wide, and inside that vial was a swirling, shifting, sapphire-blue liquid that glowed brightly enough to set the whole inside of the bag awash with its eerily ethereal light. Looking at the liquid was like staring up into a clear night sky; the longer you kept your eyes on it and the farther you let your gaze sink into it, the more it felt like the vial had no bottom, like the heavens had no end. The light had an almost physical permanence to it, the fluid an almost exuberant spark of life inside it. The hairs of the backs of each of their necks stood up as Twilight floated the vial out of her bag, and it wasn’t long after that before the fur lining their legs and backs was doing the same thing.

“When rumors of the Board’s decision reached the halls of Canterlot University, it wasn’t long before I heard about it too,” Twilight continued softly. “Most ponies believed what the Board said and forgot all about Foxtail, but I wasn’t so easily convinced. I spent most of the next two years running a few of my own experiments to see if his theory had any merit, but by the time I came out here and met you guys, I’d pretty much given up on it. It wasn’t until about a year after we defeated Discord that I remembered Foxtail again, and it was another eight months, fifteen days, and sixteen hours before I finally had my breakthrough.”

“Twilight…what is that?” Applejack asked slowly, still hypnotized a bit by the radiance of the vial.

“Exactly what the Canterlot Occulumental Board said couldn’t exist,” the unicorn answered with pride. “Pure, untainted magical energy, converted into physical form and safely packaged for equine consumption.”

“Consumption?” Rainbow asked. “You mean you can drink that stuff?”

“Drink it, freeze it into a popsicle…bake it into cupcakes. You can do pretty much anything you want with it,” answered Twilight. “In fact, if my theories about some of its more esoteric properties are right, you could even inject it straight into your veins.”

Rainbow Dash’s throat bulged ever so slightly, and the feathers on her wings ruffled before flattening against her sides. “I…think I’ll skip the injection stuff for now,” she coughed, giving her shoulder a preemptive rub. Once she noticed Applejack’s questioning look, her eyes narrowed and fell to the floor. “I don’t like needles, okay?” she mumbled a moment later. “They give me the creeps.”

“And you did this all by yourself?” Rarity asked.

“Well…yes, actually. Sort of. I mean, Foxtail did most of the preliminary work, of course, but I guess since I was the first to actually put it into practice, you could say something along those lines…”

“Twilight, that’s amazing!” Fluttershy gushed, her cheeks flaring pink when she realized how loudly she had spoken. Pinkie Pie was quick to agree with her, though, as were the rest of Twilight’s friends. Even Spike had to admit that Twilight’s secret project sounded like it lived up to the benefit of the doubt he’d been giving it. Twilight blushed and assured everypony that it wasn’t such a big deal if you thought about it, but the giddy glimmer of self-satisfaction in her eyes was unmistakable.

“So what d’you reckon you’ll do now?” Applejack asked, once Twilight’s face was even redder than Fluttershy’s.

“Actually, I don’t really know,” Twilight admitted. “In hindsight, I probably should’ve expected the Board not to be interested, but…I guess I got so excited about the opportunity that I never figured out what I’d do after I took it. I never even came up with a name for this stuff.”

“On it!” Pinkie shouted. “Let’s see…Bluedoo Voodoo Juice! Or maybe, Twilight’s Terrific Touguetastic Treat! No…something else with a ‘v’. Vigorous! What rhymes with vigorous?”

“Well, at least that’s one thing you won’t have to figure out,” Fluttershy commented after the inevitable span of a few seconds where Pinkie’s tongue was moving faster than any of her friends’ brains could process. Twilight grinned, a small giggle slipped out of Rarity’s mouth, and soon enough everypony had their hooves clutched around their stomachs and tears rolling down their cheeks. It was a long time before anyone could breathe normally again, and when that time came Pinkie was still churning out names like a hyperactive auctioneer, her eyes distantly pointed towards the ceiling and her hoof stuck pensively behind her ear.

“Boy, she just don’t quit, does she?” Applejack snorted as she wiped her eyes dry.

“Try spending a whole day on a hoofcar with her,” Rarity gushed. “It was a full week before I could even look at a cherry again!” Spike let out a boorish guffaw, and was too late slapping his paw over his mouth to cover the hiccup that followed.

“No kidding,” Rainbow Dash coughed. “You two came back into town that morning, an’ Pinkie was bouncing along like normal and you were just walking behind her with your mane all frizzy muttering, ‘Chimicherry, cherrychanga, chimicher…bahahaha!”

There was a short but valiant struggle against the urge to crack up again, but the other ponies in the room could only last but so long before they bent in half and collapsed onto their backs again. Rarity held out the longest, indignantly insisting that it wasn’t funny, but another hiccup from Spike finally set her over the edge, and her peals of laughter were the loudest of the bunch.

“You know, this morning really wasn’t that bad,” Twilight mused a few minutes later once relative calm was restored, the only breaks in the silence coming from the breathy sighs of the prostrate ponies around her and the occasional hiccup from Spike. “I mean, I’ve still got my research, and that vial of…”

“Sparkle Soda,” Pinkie announced.

“…whatever it is. So the Canterlot Occulumental Board didn’t want anything to do with it. They didn’t want anything to do with Foxtail either. I just have to work harder and get more proof. Sooner or later, they have to come around.”

“That’s the spirit, Twi,” Applejack said over another of Spike’s hiccups. “Whatever you wanna do, we got your…whew. We’re with ya.”

“I know you ar…honestly, Spike, it wasn’t that funny!”

Twilight just barely got her say in before yet another hiccup nearly knocked Spike over, each new spasm seeming louder than the last. “I can’t—hic—make it—hic—stop. I don’t—hic—know what’s wro—hic—wrong.”

“What’sa matter, Spike?” Rainbow teased. “Hey, cherry for your thoughts!”

“Oh, stop it!” Rarity squealed.

“Oh, f—hic—for Pete’s sa —hic—sak—hic—hic—hic...”

“I’ll get some water,” Fluttershy offered, but Spike called her back with a single raised claw. “Just a min—hic—minute,” he said, his other paw balled into a fist over his mouth. After a tense few seconds and a couple more stray coughs, Spike let his arms drop and sighed with relief.

“All clear,” he said shakily. “Wow, that was weird. I never get the hiccups that bad unless I’m getting a letter from-”

A strange shadow passed over Spike’s face, and the baby dragon fell silent as his grin twisted into a grimace. He coughed once, hiccupped twice, and then with a mighty intake of air, he belched out a horizontal column of heatless green fire, which swirled into a ball in midair and reformed into a tightly rolled scroll of yellowed paper, tied with a neat black ribbon and sealed with blood-red wax. Twilight lit her horn and caught the scroll just before it hit the ground, and made sure Spike was okay before she took a closer look at it.

“Now that’s weird too,” Applejack said. “It’s only been two days since we sent our last letter.”

“You…did apologize, right, Pinkie?” Rarity asked tentatively, thinking—as everyone else surely was—back to the circumstances that had led up to Pinkie Pie learning the particular lesson their letter had been about.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, lots!” Pinkie answered. “It wasn’t that big of a deal, though, seriously. Mane hair grows back, doesn’t it?”

“Mm…mm-hmm,” Rarity hummed back without making eye contact.

“Actually, I don’t think this is even from the Princess,” Twilight said. “This isn’t her seal on the front here. And frankly, I don’t think she’d ever be the type to use black ribbon.”

“But then…who else could it be from?” Spike asked. Everyone looked back at the paper again, and now the whole situation seemed almost eerie.

“Well, are you gonna open it or what?” Rainbow eventually blurted out.

Twilight paused to consider the matter once more, then shrugged and unsealed the letter with a tiny pop. “Might as well,” she muttered under her breath, her eyes already scanning over the first few lines.

It wasn’t the fact that Twilight’s eyebrows shot up a third of the way through the letter that really bothered anyone, nor was it the fact that they soon creased downward and gradually bent into a puzzled scowl. It wasn’t even the fact that she paused for several seconds once she was done with the same expression still frozen on her face. No, the thing that really got everypony’s hearts pumping was the fact that, at the end of those several seconds, Twilight moved the letter back down a few inches and started to read it again. Twilight Sparkle never read anything twice, because she never needed to read anything twice. She’d zipped through textbooks that’d give the highest scholars in Equestria more than a moment’s trouble without breaking a sweat, so if there was something in this letter that Twilight had to go over more than once, that was more than enough to let her friends know that things were not at all fine and dandy in the library that morning.

Once Twilight finished her second read-through, she still hadn’t spoken in almost two minutes. Nopony wanted to be the one to break the silence, which meant it ended up being Applejack who did.

“Well?” she said. “What is it?”

Twilight started to reply, but seemed unable to find the right words, or really any words at all. “It’s…”

“Just read it aloud, darling,” Rarity requested. Twilight nodded quickly, cleared her throat, and with a deep breath held up the letter for a third time.

“Miss Twilight Sparkle,” she read. “You do not know who I am, nor would I expect you have any inkling of why I am writing to you. I, however, am very interested in getting to know who you are, and more specifically interested in what I believe we can achieve if our respective talents were to be combined.”

Twilight paused, and when no one else took the opportunity to butt in, she continued. “Miss Sparkle, I don’t wish to obscure the point of this message any longer than necessary. Simply put, you are the kind of mare with the ability, the intellect, and most importantly the will to push the boundaries of magical theory further than anypony before you has dared to dream. Through my contacts in Canterlot, I have heard of your research regarding the theories of one Foxtail Meadow, and in light of your apparent success in that endeavor, I would like to cordially invite you to present your findings to me personally, tomorrow evening promptly at 1900 Greenhitch Standard Time.”

“Ha! How ‘bout that?” Applejack shouted triumphantly. “Ain’t even the afternoon yet, and you’re already gettin’ another offer!”

“That’s not all,” Twilight said quietly, waiting for Applejack to quiet down before she went on. “Unfortunately, my current state of affairs does not allow any opportunities for international travel, so if you wish to accept my proposal, you will have to make arrangements to visit me at my current residence, the coordinates for which you may find in the postscript below. I expect the trip and my own personal analysis of your claims will require about a week of your time, so please plan accordingly. I would also advise you to dress lightly, as depending on your mode of transport, your journey may be somewhat wet.”

“International?” whispered Fluttershy.

“Current residence?” wondered Rainbow Dash.

“Somewhat wet?” gasped Rarity.

“The parasprites and vermin that infest the streets of Canterlot would sell their souls for a single ounce of your potential, Miss Sparkle,” Twilight read. “Do not make the mistake of trivializing my desire to help you reach it. Should you choose to decline my assistance, I do not intend to offer it again.” One last pause. “And then there’s just this symbol that looks like a globe and two lines with a bunch of numbers on them. I guess those would be the coordinates.”

For the first time that morning, the silence that filled the room could really be felt hanging heavy in the air. “Well, that’s…good, right?” said Pinkie.

“If that’s what ‘good’ sounds like nowadays, then I must be hearin’ things the wrong way,” Applejack replied. “I hardly even understood half of what that letter said. What was all that malarkey about her ‘current state of affairs’ not lettin’ her come out here to see you?”

“And vermin in the streets of Canterlot?” Rarity scoffed. “What on earth is that supposed to mean?”

“Why would somepony ask you to come visit them, and not even tell you their name?” Fluttershy pondered aloud.

“Well, at least we know where to find ‘em, sorta,” Dash pointed out. “That is, assuming it’s even a pony who wrote that. What if it’s just some huge, horrible monster who thinks unicorns taste good with peanut butter?”

“I don’t think a huge, horrible monster would have such neat handwriting, Rainbow,” Twilight reasoned. “Or know how to spell ‘analysis’. In any case, it doesn’t sound like…whoever this is wants to hurt me. If they already know about my presentation, they must either know a lot of ponies in Canterlot or be amazingly talented with magic.”

“Or be a huge, horrible monster,” Dash repeated. “I’m just saying.”

“So what are you gonna do, Twilight?” Spike asked, peering over his housemate’s shoulder to get a peek at the letter she was still levitating in front of her. He had expected he’d get at least a minute or two to read it himself while Twilight was thinking things over, but to his dismay it only took her a few seconds to set her jaw and make up her mind.

“All right,” she said, and there wasn’t a soul in Equestria who could’ve thought she wasn’t sure about her decision. “The letter said it’d be a mistake to say no to this opportunity, and it’s right. I won’t get another chance like this for the rest of my life. I’m gonna go.”

Applejack took a moment to suck in a breath, then let it out all at once and nodded. “Then I’m gonna go with you."

“Applejack, you don’t have to-”

“I know I don’t. That ain’t why I’m doin’ it. I said I had your back, and I said what I meant. So that bein’ that, I ain’t about to let you go runnin’ off to another presentation all by your lonesome.” Applejack grinned and raised an eyebrow, almost daring Twilight to tell her no again. “Ergo, I’m comin’ with ya.”

There wasn’t even time to so much as say thank you. “I’ll go as well,” Rarity said. “All things considered, I’d rather like to meet this pony myself. Who knows? It might be a stallion. He might be handsome.”

“I’m in,” added Rainbow Dash with an impish smirk. “Because when it does turn out to be a monster and he gobbles us all up for dinner, somepony’s gonna be there to say ‘I told you so’.”

“I’ll come too!” Pinkie Pie declared, and Fluttershy followed suit a moment later, albeit with a bit less exuberance. Spike almost rounded out the group, but one last ill-timed yawn brought out the old “you’re just a baby, someone has to take care of the library, you wouldn’t have any fun anyway” argument, and so seven was once again whittled down to six. To be fair, though, they had a point this time: fantastic possibilities of Twilight’s invention aside, the idea of spending a week in some far-off—and probably gemless—land waiting for her to finish showing it off sounded about as appealing as a root canal.

“Well, I’d say that just about settles it,” Applejack proclaimed once Spike had been more or less appeased. “You reckon we’ll start out around noon tomorrow?”

“We’ve got to figure out where we’ll end up first,” Twilight replied with a laugh. “We don’t even know where this place is yet.”

“The letter said we might get wet. Maybe it’s near a river,” Fluttershy suggested.

“Or the beach!” Pinkie countered. “I love the beach! We could go snorkeling and dive for seashells and lie out in the sun all day! I hope it’s the beach. I could really use some sun, actually. I think my tan’s starting to wear off.”

“It might be a while before we know for sure, girls. It’s been a long time since I’ve brushed up on my cartography,” Twilight informed them as she squinted down at the bottom of the letter, where the coordinates to their new destination were written. “I don’t even know where Ponyville is on a longitudinal scale, let alone this place.”

Twilight wasn’t usually the type to ask for help with academic matters, so her friends knew right away that this was a job for them. Of all the ponies present in the room, though, the one that Twilight probably least expected to jump at the chance first was Rainbow Dash. “Lemme see that for a sec,” the pegasus said suddenly, guiding the floating letter down onto Twilight’s desk and studying it intensely with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. A few moments later, she straightened herself up, nodded, and waved Twilight away without looking away from the paper. “No worries, Twi,” she said. “I gotcha covered.”

Rarity looked puzzled and Applejack looked skeptical, but Twilight was quite impressed with Dash’s display. “You know how to read coordinates, Rainbow?” she asked.

“Yep. Pretty much every pegasus does. Helps with flight patterns and stuff. Kinda just comes naturally. This’ll be easy.”

“Okay, then. I guess that’s settled too,” Twilight said. “Tomorrow morning sounds fine, Applejack. I’ll go ahead and pack in a little bit, and then try to get some rest tonight. I wonder if we should take the ballo…something wrong, Rainbow?”

“How is that…no, I’m fine,” Rainbow said quickly. “Just…just gimme a second.”

“Oh…kay. Anyway, the hot air balloon’s probably the safest way to go. If it is at the beach, we’ll definitely need something faster than the train to get there by tomorrow even-”

“What the…oh, come on!”

“Landsake, Rainbow, what’s all the fuss about?” Applejack said.

“There’s something wrong with these coordinates,” the cyan pegasus griped. “This place can’t be…this guy must’ve given us the wrong ones.”

“Maybe you’re just reading them wrong,” Rarity said helpfully.

“I’m not reading them wrong! You start at Ponyville, move down five degrees, go east about thirty, and…” Rainbow paused, slapped a forehoof between her eyes, and then sighed heavily and dropped all four legs on the ground again. “Yeah, I’m definitely reading them wrong,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Maybe this will help,” Twilight said. “Scoot over a little bit.”

Rainbow Dash cleared a space on the desk, and on top of it Twilight placed a giant physical map of Equestria and the lands beyond it. As a few stray inkwells hopped forward to hold the edges of the unfurled map in place, Rainbow immediately pulled up to hover next to Twilight, already chattering away about where she thought the coordinates were pointing and how she couldn’t figure out where the hangup she kept running into was. With Twilight and Rainbow muttering too quietly for anyone else to hear, the rest of their friends were forced to work up some patience and wait for them to surface again with a solid answer.

“See, right there!” Rainbow Dash shouted after forty-five seconds of increasingly frantic muttering. “How could that be right?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied with just as much confusion, “but it is. If these are the coordinates we’re supposed to use, then that’s where they’re pointing to…what on Earth is going on?”

The cacophony of responses was quick and predictably tense. “Whaddya mean, what’s goin’ on? Where is this place?”

“Is it on top of a mountain, miles from civilization?”

“Is it in a big mysterious jungle full of nasty, horrible creatures?”

“Beach, beach, beach! Please say beach!”

“No, it’s not in any of those places,” Twilight said. “In fact…”

She shared one last look with Rainbow Dash, then turned to face her friends. A look of puzzlement was the first thing they all saw on her face, but the emotion hidden behind that—and the one Spike would remember for years to come—was one of slowly budding fear.

“According to these coordinates, it’s approximately three hundred miles west of the Eternity Coast. The place this pony is telling to go to is right in the middle of the ocean.”

Introduction - Part 2

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• • •

“Attention all passengers on Oceanus Airlines Flight 108. All pre-flight checks are complete, and in a few moments you will be escorted out onto the launching deck to begin the boarding process. Please make sure you have all your carry-on items with you, and your ticket ready to present to the agent at the gate. Thank you for your patience, and we hope you enjoy your flight. Bon voyage!”

I jerk awake as the announcement echoes through the terminal, the bubbly trill of the mare giving it still buzzing in my ears even after she stops talking, and within seconds my head is throbbing from the noise. Whoever first thought voice amplification spells were a good idea needs to have their head examined, and whoever feels the urge to use them so cheerfully after two hours of layover, doubly so. Especially when the best explanation we’ve been given for said layover is that the flight technicians can’t figure out which part of the zep the hydrogen is supposed to go into. And when my restless dream about building my own airship to take me to Haywaii alone was about to end happily ever after before Susie Smiles-A-Lot cranked the volume up and shattered it into a thousand beautiful pieces.

The rest of the passengers are already well on their way up to the gate by the time I force myself back up into a sitting position on the bench I conked out on, my eyes bleary and my back shrieking in complaint. For a moment, I almost get up and join them, but I blow off the idea almost as soon as it appears. It isn’t like it really matters who gets out the door first. We’ve all got at least another half-hour before we actually get on the zeppelin, because it’s going to take us all at least another half-hour to finish running the gauntlet of reporters, officials, and gawking pedestrians jockeying for position out on the launch pad. Because Celestia forbid that anypony miss the chance to watch eighty-three millionaires and one 22-year-old grease monkey from Rockton board the most momentous, incomparable, unequivocally extraordinary flight in the history of Equestria. Celestia forbid that Garnet just bring me out to Haywaii on a regular old sailing ship like the common, working earth pony he used to be. Celestia forbid that he hold his wedding back home with his family instead of dragging me out into the middle of Eternity’s Crossing to stand in for the whole clan.

I push a few stray mane hairs back behind my ear and straighten my glasses, and let out something between a groan and a sigh. All things considered, I don’t have any right to be complaining. I can’t even begin to imagine how much money went into getting me a spot on this flight, let alone into the five-star hotel I’ll be staying at once I hop back off it in about eight hours. “Nothing but the best for my family,” Garnet always says in situations like this, and it’s hard to imagine a different definition for “best” than what I have in store for me over the next few days. Such are the perks of sharing blood with the CEO and public persona of Brightshine Industries, I suppose. And such are the pleasures of the name “Brightshine Family Mining Company” being only a distant memory in a long-abandoned past.

“This is the final boarding call for Oceanus Airlines Flight 108, direct to Haywaii. All passengers on Oceanus Airlines Flight 108, your flight will be departing from Gate 1 in approximately thirty minutes.”

I blink hard one last time, and grab my saddlebag in my teeth before sliding off the bench. “Thirty minutes, she says,” I mutter as I swing my bag over my back and join the crowd at the gate. “Approximately.”

The rest of the terminal around me is virtually empty, but the mass of ponies in front of me is thick and impenetrable, and already starting to bottleneck where two velvet red ropes form a narrow path up to the gate itself. I stop behind a powder-blue unicorn chattering away to her coltfriend about how excited she is for the flight, and in seconds my ankles have tightened up and a tiny bonfire is burning in my chest. My dad always hated crowds, said that the only difference between a rockslide and an angry mob was that the rocks knew to stop at the bottom of the hill, and that’s one of the many things I inherited from him. Staring at the elaborately styled mane of the mare ahead of me doesn’t help, since all that does is remind me of how loose and ratty my own braid is, and staring at the floor isn’t much better, since that same mare’s gleaming white pumps just start the whole process over again. Then again, I’ll have to get used to that kind of thing sooner or later, won’t I? Garnet’s lovely young fiancée—you know, the one who’s about eight minutes older than me—will of course be expecting everypony sharing an island with her to be dressed in their most splendid finery for her upcoming nuptials, and will be simply gobsmacked if anypony were to attend…nay, to arrive in anything cheaper than a private yacht. Stars, she’ll probably even talk like that too. The last mare from Trottingham that Garnet tied the knot with sure did. Come to think of it, so did the last runway model.

It takes another ten minutes to get up to the gate, and by then I feel like I’ve had a woodpecker drilling into my skull for every single one of them. The mare in front of me has a voice like a squirrel—high, breathy, and prone to slip into a tittering half-giggle, half-whinny that seems specifically designed to make your ears bleed—and apparently her most favorite thing in the whole wide world is sharing that voice with everypony within earshot. Even after her companion gets their newly stamped tickets back from the pony who checked them and starts leading her down the walkway onto the launch pad, she still won’t shut up. Probably won’t be long before I’m not the only one wishing they’d packed some duct tape for the flight. Celestia help him, I think to myself as they disappear around the corner and I step up to the check-in desk. And Celestia help me if I end up sitting behind her.

“Ticket, pl-” the gate agent starts to say. Before she can finish, though, a loud cough from somewhere behind me cuts her off in mid-spiel, and I turn around just in time to watch myself get pushed gently to the side without so much as a “You’re in my way, numnutz.”

“Pardon us,” says a bubblegum-pink earth filly in a voice sweet as syrup, her dress gleaming with inlaid gems and her inflection making it sound like she’s scoffing with every syllable. “Very Important Ponies coming through.”

“Uh…Miss, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a moment,” the gate agent stutters back. That makes two of us who can hardly believe what had just happened. “There’s a line-”

“I know there’s a line, Miss,” the filly snaps back with a dramatic roll of her sky-blue eyes. “That’s why we’re at the front of it.”

“Ma’am, these other ponies were here first…”

“Let me handle this, Diamond,” another voice cuts in suddenly, this one having half the bark and ten times the bite. After Diamond nods and steps aside with a smirk, an iron-gray earth filly with a braided silver mane, dainty blue glasses, and an intricately decorated spoon stamped on her flank floats up to the desk. “Pardon me if I’m mistaken,” she says, in a tone that makes it very clear who she thinks is in the wrong here, “but Oceanus Airlines policy states that first-class passengers are always allowed to board before the other sections. Has that policy changed?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then what exactly is the problem?”

“But this flight is a special one,” the gate agent says. “All seats are considered to be in first-class.”

“What the hay is that supposed to mean?” asks the pink one impatiently.

“It means the line starts back there,” I can’t help but intone before the gate agent can get a word in edgewise.

In an instant, Diamond is on me like grease on a straight axle. “Was I talking to you?” she snarls, her furious eyes framed by a carefully fluffed mane with the color and consistency of grape-flavored toothpaste. There’s some part of the scenario that’s almost funny: this filly can’t be been more than seventeen or eighteen, and probably hasn’t seen a hard day’s work in her whole life. I could buck her snobby behind halfway to the moon and back if I had a mind to, and yet she’s the one standing there with that stupid fluffy mane trying to intimidate me.

And it’s working. I raise my eyebrows and do my best to send back a harrowing glare of my own, but it’s only a couple seconds before I’m the first to blink. I can’t keep my gaze from turning towards the ground after that.

“That’s what I thought,” Diamond sneers, strutting back over to her friend without a second glance in my direction. She’s a princess, all right, and the tiara stamped on her flank is the last thing anypony would need to confirm it. Stars above, she’s even wearing a tiara right now that matches her cutie mark to a T. A battle of wills with her would be like bringing a monkey wrench to a sword fight. I set my jaw and tilt my chin up casually towards the ceiling. She wants to board first? Fine, then. She can board first all she wants, for all I care. She can have the whole dang flight to herself, for all I care. She just needs to hurry up and take the opportunity, before I lose my patience and show her exactly how much time we take to deal with hubris back home in Rockton.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but you’re just going to have to wait,” the gate agent continues, picking up where I left off with only an ounce of my passion.

The gray filly nods without looking at her, then clicks her tongue and gives the agent a stare that would probably give even her smugly grinning friend a run for her money. “Who’s your supervisor?” she asks dismissively.

“I…beg your pardon?”

“Where is the pony who tells you what to do?”

That seems to be the final straw for the gate agent. “I report to the Lead Transportation Officer,” she informs her with narrowed eyes, “who reports to the Director of Operations for the Canterlot Airport, who reports to the Chief Executive Officer for Oceanus Airlines.”

“Who reports to the owner and primary stockholder of Oceanus Enterprises,” the filly adds as she pulls out some kind of ID card with the airline’s logo on the back. “Who just so happens to be my father.”

The agent’s jaw drops in the same instant her eyebrows shoot up, and I can see her eyes twitching back and forth as she reads whatever was written on the card. I almost speak up again, but my jaw is clenched too tightly to let any words slip out. “So if you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way now,” the gray filly finishes. The gate agent goes beet-red and mutters something to herself, then sighs and gives a conciliatory shrug. The look in her eyes probably bears more than a passing resemblance to the one in mine.

“Pleasure chatting with you,” Diamond says airily before glancing over at me one last time. After I don’t give her anything but a filthy look and the gift of silence, she shakes her head and laughs. “Nice glasses,” she whispers loud enough for everypony within twenty feet to hear it, and then she juts her chin out again and practically prances down the hallway leading out to the launch pad.

“I-I’m very sorry, Ma’am,” the gate agent stammers, still red as a beet and pretty well tongue-tied. “I don’t really have the authority-”

“It’s okay,” I say, turning away from the hallway before the itchy feeling in my hooves makes me do something I’ll regret. “I know the feeling.”

That gets a friendly smile out of the agent, if a brief one. “Is this your first time flying with us, Miss…” She pauses and looks down at the name printed on the ticket I just gave her. “Ruby?”

“’Fraid so,” I reply. “That your first time dealing with those two?”

“’Fraid so,” she mutters through a heavy sigh. “Enjoy your flight.”

I give her a tight-lipped nod and don’t waste time making sure she sees it. The crush of ponies I spent a quarter-hour wading through—and my encounter with two of them in particular—has already put me in a bad mood, and the gauntlet I’m about to run isn’t likely to improve it. Best to just get through this as quickly as possible, keep the teeth-grinding to a minimum, and board the zep before anypony remembers I’m supposed to be on it. Nothing too complicated, nothing that’ll draw too much attention. Just walk in a straight line, and don’t stop for anything.

The noise hits my ears long before I reach the end of the hallway, but the left turn about fifty feet in blocks me from seeing its source. I know perfectly well what it’s coming from, though, and by the time the first rays of afternoon sunlight begin to splay out across my hooves at the bottom of the ramp, I can feel it vibrating in every bone in my body. For a few moments, a familiar chill sets the hair on my neck standing on end, but I shut my eyes and will it away before it spreads beyond my maneline. Two minutes. All I need is two minutes. All I need to do is walk straight, not stop, and stay calm.

I step off the ramp and onto the launch pad, and in the helpless second when my unadjusted eyes are blinded by the sun, the chaos outside the terminal hits me like an anvil. A carpet spun of even redder velvet than the ropes in the terminal stretches all the way down to where the zeppelin is being prepped for flight, and on either side of the narrow path it forms is a veritable parted sea of shouting journalists and clicking cameras and, somewhere off in the distance, a full brass band playing the national anthem. A minute ago, I got cagey around less than a hundred snobby socialites who had butlers to hurt flies for them, and now it looks like the whole population of Canterlot wants to see them leave. Wants to see me leave.

They’re not looking for you, I tell myself. They’re not even looking at you. They’re just reporters. They want a few pictures of famous ponies and a cover story for tomorrow’s paper, and that’s it. Walk straight, don’t stop, and for the love of Celestia, stay calm.

The sunlight streams across my face, and the change in temperature from the air-conditioned airport sends a shiver crawling down my back. I don’t move.

You can do this, Ruby, a deep male voice murmurs inside my head. My dad always hated crowds, but he also sucked it up and dealt with them without a word of complaint, and he’d have sucked it up and dealt with this one if he were in my hooves today. He could do this. I can do this. I’m the daughter of Almandite Brightshine, and Brightshines don’t bow to anypony or anything but their own free will.

I take one step forward, then two more. The squirrel-voiced mare is ten feet up the path, squealing with delight at all the festivities around her and ballooning with pride every time a hoof reaches out to touch her. Twenty feet beyond that, Diamond and her friend are preening for the cameras, the former’s tiara pulsing and shimmering with every flash. All the way at the end of the walkway, I can just barely see the tuba player in the brass band, a lime-green earth pony whose cheeks puff out with every blast of his instrument. And to the left and right and all around me, shouted questions and bursts of conversation whip back and forth across the walkway and burrow their way into my skull, struggling to overpower the thoughts in my head.

“Are you concerned about running out of fuel?”

You can do this.

“Ooh, sweetheart, look at the band!”

Keep going.

“Any comment on the rumors that your flight will pass over the fabled lost city of Marelantis?”

Walk straight.

“Darling, isn’t this grand?”

Don’t stop.

“Are you afraid that something may go wrong?”

Stay calm.

“Are you afraid of heights?”

Stay calm…

“Is there anything you’d like to say to the millions of ponies cheering you on?”

Stay…

I chance a look up, and my heart nearly stops. The zeppelin is still hundreds of feet away and, now that I’m staring hopelessly up at it, almost seems to be shrinking. I blink, I shake my head, I suck in a breath so big I think my lungs are about to pop, but nothing changes: the zep just slips farther and farther away, and the blindingly noisy crowd just gets louder and louder. A pounding ache pops up behind my ears, then spreads out to the bridge of my nose before racing down to my hooves and all the way out to the base of my tail. I grit my teeth and take another step, and then the squirrel-voiced mare brays with laughter and my whole body ceases to function.

What are you doing?

“Just a moment of your time, sir…”

Walk straight!

“…n’t this so exci…”

Don’t stop!

“…nd one quick photo for the Daily, ple…”

“Stay calm…” I whisper with no air in my lungs. “Stay calm…”

“…at is she doing over there?”

I can’t do this, Dad.

I want to swallow hard and get a grip on myself, except my tongue is stuck to my teeth and my throat won’t open no matter how badly I need to scream. I want to sprint off the launch pad and gallop all the way back to Rockton, except Slate and Shale are too busy with work to spend a week in Haywaii and Mom wouldn’t leave the house for all the bits in the world. I choke down a single shaky breath and tell myself that I am strong, that Dad was strong, that Dad never panicked and Dad never quit and Dad never let us know that anything was wrong, but the mares on the path are laughing and the newsponies in the wings are shouting and I can barely even stand under the weight of the perfume and the pressure and the sunlight and the noise.

Finally, I do the only thing I know how to do in situations like this: I close my eyes, let the voices around me fade from an uproar to a murmur to a hum, and in the blackness behind my eyelids summon an image of my basement. I see my workbench, see a small kerosene lamp and a clean white cloth and the baffling yet intimately familiar piles of gears, axles, and bolted joints on top of it, and I get to work. Unfettered by the boundaries of physics and reality, I draw three cogs together and set them all spinning in midair, and as more scraps of iron and aluminum float up to interlock with them in a hypnotizing ballet of perpetual motion, the tension seeps out of my back and I breath freely for the first time in days. Everypony has a happy place, and this one is mine: a cramped, dusty back room filled with machine bits, memories, and complete and total silence. In here, I am not the daughter of a miner, nor the sister of a CEO, nor the mindless plaything of ponies richer and more confident than me. In here, I have no name or face, just a table full of parts and an idea in my head of how to combine them into a whole greater than their sum. In here, friction and gravity are moot points, and everything runs smoothly and cleanly like it never could anywhere else. In here, there are no surprises.

I open my eyes before my impossible creation is finished, but by then it doesn’t matter. The world could be ending two inches from my nose, but between my ears everything is calm, mechanical, and under control. In a few minutes, the serenity will wear off and I’ll remember again how many ponies are looking at me right now, but in this fleeting moment, for once in the last of a whole string of miserable days, I am at peace. Inside my mind, I am happy. Inside my mind, I am home.

“Miss! Excuse me, Miss!”

It takes me a few seconds to realize this reporter is talking to me, and about double that time to actually turn my head and face him. “How does it feel to be a passenger on the first trans-oceanic dirigible flight in Equestrian history?” he asks.

I watch the brown-furred, blond-maned, bright-eyed pegasus colt placidly, waiting to see how long he’ll keep thinking I’m considering his question. Just as the look on his face begins to sour and the determination starts to drain out of his gaze, I nod purposefully and answer him.

“Loud,” I say. The pegasus blinks, a camera bulb flares somewhere behind him, and by the time the bulb cools down and its afterglow fades away, I’m already halfway to the ship he was so anxious to know how it felt to board.

Now that my vision is clearer and the pain in my head has died down to a dull ache, the zeppelin doesn’t seem very far away at all. In fact, I can almost see the whole thing now. I push myself into a trot, pass right on by Diamond and completely resist the urge to check whether that sneer was pointed at me, dodge around a regal-looking unicorn with a flowing white mane and squeeze through a gap in his entourage, and then there she is: the airship Elysium, in all her glory. Maybe the rest of my trip might turn into the tropical vacation from Hades, but at least I get to ride out to it on this beauty of a vessel.

And she is a beauty: four hundred eighty-five feet from tip to tail, built on a skeleton of twelve state-of-the-art light-alloy rings interconnected by hundreds of hoof-welded girders, and covered by weather proofed, magically-treated canvas that tapers to a rounded stub at the bow of the ship and a sharp point flanked by four matching horizontal and vertical fins at the stern. Even at a flight weight of over 235 tons, she’ll be kept aloft with ease by just fourteen hydrogen-filled gas cells that take up the entire fore end of the craft, and powered by a trio of Maybuck VL-2 12-cylinder arcane combustion engines welded onto her stern, each of which is capable of maintaining a maximum thrust of 2650 wingpower for six hours straight, can produce an average flight speed of seventy miles per hour for twice that time, and has a max tested speed of eighty-two. She’s fast, she’s sleek, she’s the biggest magically powered vehicle ever created by equinekind, and I’ll bet a year and a half’s pay that not a single one of the high society ponies behind me have any idea. On that note, they probably don’t see anything wrong with the whole dang thing being painted a nauseating shade of salmon pink either.

But in this case, at least, their ignorance of their own luck doesn’t have to affect me. About twenty-five minutes from now, the Elysium will set off on her maiden voyage, and one of the eighty-four seats inside its twenty-five hundred square foot gondola will be reserved just for me. The thought isn’t enough to negate all the other unsavory bits of my impromptu journey to Haywaii, but it’s enough to make me forget about them for a few precious moments.

I was definitely one of the last ponies to exit the terminal, but as I step onto the Elysium’s boarding ramp and flash my ticket again to the flight attendant standing at the top, I realize that I’m the first to actually get on the ship. Well, I can imagine much worse things than having a ship the size of a Manehattan skyscraper all to myself for a little while. In any case, I’ll have a minute or two to chill out and mull over the events of the last few minutes, which isn’t something I really want to do as much as something I know is more or less guaranteed to happen anyway. My brain’s not the type that forgives and forgets easily, and its least favorite pony to go through that process with is the one whose noggin it resides inside. That’s another trait I inherited from Dad. Unfortunately, I also got his lack of patience. I hardly even have a chance to settle back into my seat before I’m staring out the window and fighting off the urge to grind my forehooves into my eyes and cry. Isn’t being emotionally imbalanced fun?

It isn’t even like this sort of thing hasn’t happened before. My whole life has been a string of one emotional breakdown after another: losing a balloon at the fair when I was three, scraping my knee at recess in third grade after somehow managing to strike out playing kickball, finding out Garnet was consolidating our family’s business into a corporation and refusing to speak to him until…no, wait, I’m still not speaking to him. The list goes on and on. And now I can add that last encounter with the reporter to the mix.

A new knot twists into existence in my stomach, and I lay my head gently back against my seat before I give in to the compulsion to throw it forward into my hooves. Stars above, what was I even talking about a minute ago? Hay if I knew. Hay if I was even fully on this planet when I brought it up. “What’s it like out here?” the newspony asks, and what do I say back? “Loud.” Way to provide some scintillating commentary there, Ruby. Really cleared the whole thing up for him, I’m sure. And just to check if my memory serves me right…yep, that was a camera shutter’s click I heard just before I walked away. So he has pictures of me too. Stars, I can see the front page now: a full-color lead-in shot of a short, murky gray earth mare with a frumpy maroon mane and rusty red eyes hidden behind thick black-rimmed glasses, and a headline above that reads in big bold letters: ELYSIUM TAKES OFF ON FIRST TRANS-OCEANIC VOYAGE, PASSENGER DESCRIBES HISTORIC EVENT AS “LOUD”. Fan-flipping-tastic.

Well, there goes that good mood, I intone inside my head as I lose my internal battle to keep my forehoof off the bridge of my nose. After a heavy sigh and one more glance out the window, I end up looking down at the watch strapped onto the ankle of my left foreleg. The watch is another gift from my father, and one of the few physical ones. It’d been in his family for generations, going all the way back to when his great-grandfather moved to Equestria from Germaneigh, and he wore it every day of his life until I was about nine years old, when it suddenly stopped working after a long shift at the mine. I always liked tinkering with things even back then, though, and I was also at that tender young age when curiosity and self-restraint hadn’t begun to share a bed inside my mind yet. So while Dad cursed his luck in the kitchen and Mom made dinner while pretending to understand why he was so upset, I swiped the broken watch and took it down to my dad’s workshop in the basement, where I stayed up the whole night poring over an old watchmaker’s manual I’d found in the library down the street and piecing it back together cog by tiny cog.

My long-term memory’s not the best in the world, but I don’t have any trouble remembering exactly what happened that night. Dad found me at four in the morning just as I finished putting the last screw into the back of the casing, and I’ll never forget the look I saw come onto his face right then: at first he’d been angry that I was messing around with his tools, but when he saw what I’d done with his watch and heard the faint but steady ticking coming from its hands, the corners of his mouth softened and the wrinkles around his eyes flattened out, and then his whole face tightened up as if he’d pulled a cord to cinch it to his skull. At that moment, I knew he was more proud of me than he’d ever been of anypony in his whole life. It was several years before I knew it really meant he was trying not to cry.

Halfway blind from lack of sleep and all the way cross-eyed from how long I’d held my nose an inch above the workbench, I grabbed the watch’s strap in my teeth and wearily offered it up to my father. For a moment, he just lifted it up with the edge of his hoof and kept that same expression on his face, but then he nodded ever so slightly and sat down on the workshop floor, motioning for me to do the same. Once I did, he took my forehooves gently between his own and, while I watched with wide eyes and a pounding heart, somehow managed to smile without ever moving his lips.

“A long time ago, when I was just about your age, your grandpa took me out to our mine and told me that whatever I could dig up inside, I could keep,” he said in his rough, rumbling voice, brushing his hooves over the watch as he spoke but never looking away from me. “It was the first time I’d ever been allowed inside. I thought I’d walk out that night with more gems and crystals than I fit in ten saddlebags. Well, I chipped away at those rocks the whole day long, and I didn’t find nothing but slate rock and worn-out coal streaks. By nightfall, I was tired, thirsty, grubby, and just about ready to never set hoof in that dusty ol’ hole again. But just as I was turning to leave, I saw something glinting in the corner of my eye. It was a gemstone, a dull little red thing no bigger than a peanut, the smallest one I’d ever seen. Any other miner worth his salt would’ve left it alone, but I chipped it out and took it with me. Something about it seemed special, even then. Like something about that rock and I was meant to be.

“When your grandpa saw that little gem sitting there in my hoof, his eyes lit up like the Summer Solstice, and he took it away and cleaned it and shined it until suddenly, it wasn’t dull anymore. It was a gem, like one you’d see hanging from a gold chain in a store window down in Manehattan or Canterlot. I’d found a gem, all by myself, without anypony helping me or telling me what I should or shouldn’t have done.”

He looked down at the watch again, then maneuvered it between his hooves until it was resting on top of my left forehoof. “That was my day your grandpa gave me this watch, the day he said I’d done all the growing up he could help me with. And that was the day he told me about where I got my name, how he found his first gemstone when he was my age too, and decided right then and there that he was gonna grow up and get married and have foals, and his little colt would have a name just like that gem: Almandite. And so I knew too, right then and there, that I was gonna do the same thing. Except I knew that I wasn’t gonna have a colt, but a filly. A beautiful little filly just as tiny as can be, with a tiny red mane that glinted in the sunlight and a tiny flame in her heart that’d never go out, that’d keep shining and shining just like my little gem.”

He pulled my hoof up to his chest, and with a gentleness that had baffled me even then, fastened the watch around my ankle. When he spoke again, there was more emotion in his words than I think he ever showed in the rest of his life combined. “You’re a very special pony, Ruby,” he murmured as he pulled me close to his chest, “and you’re gonna do great things. Someday, Ruby, you’re gonna change the world. And I hope you never forget that. I hope you never forget how special you are.” The last thing I remember after that is falling asleep in his lap as he ran his forehoof over my mane, and a warming sensation of movement as he carried me up to my bed.

I don’t know about the rest of it, but my own world certainly changed that night. I noticed the mark stamped on my flank while I was brushing my teeth the next morning, and from then on I spent every single day counting the seconds until I could get back into the basement to take apart a wagon or a toaster or a table lamp, every experiment driven by a small silver cog wheel on my backside with a brilliant red ruby set into its center. Maybe that talent makes me special, and maybe some of the things I used that talent for later on could be looked at as great, but as for changing the world…well, even my dad couldn’t be right about anything. I have his workshop and I have my machines, and I’m perfectly happy with things being just the way they are. That’s all there is to it. That’s why I’m moody today. That’s why I was moody yesterday too. And the day before that. And the day before that.

And now I’m depressed again. I let another sigh escape my chest, and refocus on my watch. I’ve been on the zep for three minutes, which means it’s been about eight since I left the terminal. So that means I have about another twenty-two minutes before our seven-hour flight to Haywaii gets officially underway. Be still, my obnoxiously indecisive heart.

I spend another minute or two pony-watching out the window, but you can only see so many kisses blown to so many starstruck fans before your gag reflex becomes too much to handle. I tossed a few snacks and a couple books into my bag this morning to stave off the boredom pangs once the flight gets underway, but I was really hoping to save those until at least the two-hour mark. Breaking into the Apollo Bars before we even leave the ground seems awfully weak-willed, and I’m too fast a reader to dive into either book below ten thousand feet. Especially when I already got halfway through the first one during the carriage ride into Canterlot.

Then again, my third best friend behind my welding torch and whoever invented the magnetic screwdriver is chocolate, and intestinal fortitude has never really one of my strong suits. For that matter, neither has patience. I bite my lip once just to make sure my subconscious knows what it’s doing is wrong, and then I snatch a candy bar and my first book up out of the saddlebag beneath my seat, picking up right where I left off last night as the sweet taste of caramel spreads across my tongue.

Over the next ten minutes, the faltering trickle of ponies boarding the zeppelin grows into a steady stream, but I hardly see anything of them but the tips of their hooves as they walk past my row. Every so often, something unique enough to catch my attention worms its way through my senses: a whiff of generously applied perfume, an unexpected burst of laughter, a sudden increase in temperature when Diamond and her friend come abroad. Beyond that, though, I keep my nose in my book and my mind tuned off the outside world, and on to the much more fascinating one spilling out of the pages I have balanced on my legs. The various scents and sounds that pass over and around me are only fleeting distractions, including the flickering shadows that wash over my book as more and more passengers trot by. Even when one of the shadows stops right next to me and tints my whole seat dark, I still don’t feel the need to pay it any mind. It’s only once that shadow starts talking that I can’t keep up the act any longer.

“The evil of the world is made possible by nothin’ but the sanction you give it.”

The dramatic pulse of the scene playing out in my imagination stutters and flatlines, and I look up to find a yellow-furred, green-tailed, and impressively fat earth stallion staring down at me. He shoots me a smile that shows a few too many teeth to avoid falling over the “creepy” line, and then motions down at my lap with a pudgy forehoof as he wedges himself into the aisle seat next to mine.

“Always hated that book,” he remarks once he gets settled in, leaning over a bit in the process so he can pretend to read over my shoulder. “Had to read it for school once, back in ancient times. My teacher wouldn’t shut up about it, kept quotin’ that line like a dang mantra. Me, I was too busy sellin’ Party Pops outta my desk to give two hoots about ‘Ponies’ States’ and whatnot. ‘Who is John Colt?’ Who the hay cares?”

The stallion pauses to take in a breath, and I lean back against the window as he lets it back out. If his paunch couldn’t stop a speeding bullet, his breath would do the trick in a heartbeat. “Where you’d say you go to school again, honey?”

“I didn’t,” I answer stiffly as I look back down at my lap. “And I’m not reading this for school.”

The stallion’s surprise comes out as a little harrumph and a small shake of his head. “How ‘bout that,” he says. “Already graduated, and readin’ for kicks on top’a that. Well, to each his own, I suppose. Or her own, as the case may be.” I nod without looking up, so the hoof that suddenly materializes right overtop of Chapter Twelve shocks me enough to get my attention again.

“Golden Garter,” he announces cheerfully, sweeping the short spikes in his mane back against his scalp with the same hoof he soon realizes I’m not going to shake. “I’m in the advertisin’ business, mostly, but I do a few other things on the side. Consultin’, negotiatin’, fraternizin’, things’a that nature. I’m supposed to meet some bigwig architect out on Mau’u, draw up a contract or three for his new clothing line or something. Can you imagine? An architect wantin’ to design clothes! What’s he gonna do, stitch building codes into a dress hem?”

Golden wheezes and shudders with laughter at his joke, and I briefly wonder whether banging my head against a reinforced gondola window will be enough to knock me out. “Ah, but for hay’s sake, I’m prattlin’ on about m’self again,” he coughs once he’s finished patting himself on the back. “What’s your angle for bein’ here? What d’you do?”

It takes a few seconds to realize I don’t have a credible lie to feed this guy. “I build things,” I eventually tell him.

“No kiddin’? What kinda things?”

“The patented kind.”

I see his next question coming from a mile away. “You got a patent?”

“No, the seat cushion does,” I reply in a deadpan. “I just handle the paperwork.”

Golden grins and chucks me in the shoulder, and I try to act like that doesn’t make me want to go crawling up the walls. “Shoot, I knew you were pulling my tail!” he guffaws. “C’mon, don’t be shy now. Pretty filly like you must be showing off for somepony. You an actress or somethin’?”

Now I’m the one who can’t help but laugh, although in my case it’s mostly just to keep myself from socking him in the jaw. “Don’t I wish…,” I mutter, turning a page with more force than necessary and hoping the message I mean by it is clear.

“Coulda fooled me,” Golden goes on without missing a beat. “You got the look’a one down pat. Like, you could be one’a those little sidekick ponies that’s always crackin’ jokes and gettin’ kidnapped an’ stuff.” He pauses, and eventually it begins to dawn on him what he just said. “One’a the nice-lookin’ ones, I mean,” he clarifies. “Not the ugly ones.”

I snap my book shut and turn to face him, and for about three seconds I manage to hold off the urge to inform Mr. Garter exactly where he can stick his next insightful comment. Mercifully, though, at the end of those three seconds, I’m saved. Not by Celestia coming down from on high or Mr. Garter suddenly growing a brain in his head bigger than the one beneath his stomach, but by a small, almost imperceptible cough behind him that sounds for all the world like a chorus of angels to me. I flash Golden the shortest forced smile in the history of Equestria and lean way forward in my seat to look around him, and what I see standing in the aisle behind him is just about the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all day.

Okay, not really. I’m a little prone to exaggeration when I get desperate enough. To be fair, though, the colt who just cleared his throat and caught both my and Golden’s eye isn’t that bad-looking anyway. He’s a unicorn about my age, with silvery-blue fur and a navy mane highlighted by a little loose strand of hair that hangs under his horn. His nose is a bit on the small side and his lips are too tightly pressed together to get an idea of what they might look like curved into a smile, but his eyes are a deep, elusive shade of green that seems to catch the ambient light in the gondola just like an emerald would. I can’t quite see his hind legs behind the plain brown saddlebags slung across his back, but the rest of him looks pretty well-built, and the little tuft of slightly darker fur sticking out of his chest is a surprisingly nice final touch to the whole image. All things considered, he’s actually kind of cute. And he’s standing right in front of me, waiting for an opportunity to speak. On second thought, maybe sometimes exaggeration is warranted.

“’Scuse me,” the colt says. He has a nice voice too: strong and lively with a bit of a smoky quality to it, but also carrying the unmistakable trappings of a Fillydelphia accent. Make that really cute, actually. “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but you’re in my seat.”

My heart leaps into my throat, and the prospect of not having to spend seven hours within hooves’ reach of Golden is only one of the reasons. “Beg pardon?” Golden says testily.

“Uh…”

“I’m pretty sure I know where my seat is, buddy,” Golden continues.

“Well, actually I-”

“What, you think I can’t read a ticket right?”

“No, I mean-”

“Do you?”

“Listen-”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing…”

One thing quickly turns into seven, and so for about thirty seconds both the colt and I are subjected to the laundry list of reasons why Mr. Garter thinks the first of us is an idiot. Part of me is just about ready to shove the big lug out of his seat myself, but another part of me is terrified of what that might lead to. On the one hoof, I’d get to spend the whole flight sitting next to this new colt, whose sudden tendency to chew on his lip when he was nervous is putting him a pair of coveralls short of being a certified dream. On the other, this flight will last seven hours, and the total length of all my interesting stories and anecdotes adds up to about twenty minutes. What am I supposed to talk to this colt about? Do I even want to talk to him? Has he even realized I’m here yet?

Judging by how he’s still trying to get a word in edgewise with Golden, probably not. “Look, can you just…”

“Just what?” Golden interrupts again.

Oh Celestia, just get him out of here.

“I wasn’t…”

“You weren’t what?”

Oh Celestia, don’t let him leave.

“I…”

“Well?”

The colt glares, and pauses to take in a deep breath. Oh Celestia, please just-

“I wasn’t even talking to you,” he says, just before looking back at me and raising a forehoof to point in my direction. “Her. You, I mean. You’re in my seat.”

“What?” Golden says after a long silence.

What?, my mental image of Princess Celestia sputters.

“What?” I half-shout before I can stop myself.

“Yes. You. Are in my seat. 12C,” the colt goes on, with the tone of somepony who’s running on borrowed patience as it is. “Please move.”

I don’t know what it is exactly that sets me off. Maybe it’s because this guy was more civil with the jerk next to me than he’s being with me now. Maybe I was about finished deciding I did want to spend seven hours sitting next to this colt. Maybe this last turn of events just fried what little portion of my brain wasn’t golden-brown with stress already.

“Please?” the colt asks. No, wait, it isn’t any of that. It’s the fact that I’m old enough to read a ticket and know where my freaking seat is on an eighty-four passenger zep, and that I have officially had it with ponies treating me otherwise while I just stand by and take it like a coward.

“You’re not in the wrong seat either, are you?” the colt says in an undertone.

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m not,” I reply with the same level of civility, snapping my book shut as I do. Golden’s eyebrows shoot up, so I take that as meaning I’m making a strong impression so far. “I’m pretty sure I can read a ticket right too.”

The colt’s hoof drops heavily to the floor, and between the tightness in his jaw and the long, deep breath he takes in, he looks for all the world like he’s about to go postal. A small part of my conscience is already berating the rest of me for acting even worse than Golden did, but at this point every word it gets in is like a single bucket of water thrown on a forest fire. “Okay, can somepony explain to me what the hell I’m doing wrong?” he growls with his eyes closed and his head quivering with frustration. “I get on the plane, I get to my seat and find someone sitting in it, and they act like I’m the idiot when I ask them to move. Where is the disconnect here, exactly?”

“Probably right around the part where you thought this was your seat, genius,” I growl right back.

“Oh, good. Now I’m the one who can’t read my ticket. How original.”

“Hey, here’s an original thought for you: why don’t you go find another fricking seat? We’re underbooked as it is.”

“Are we now? Well, by all means, take your pick, then.”

“Ladies first.”

The colt’s eyes widen for a split second before crumpling into a look black enough to stain linen, and I’m pretty sure Golden actually swears under his breath. Of course, that may be because I’m halfway in his lap by this point, for how far I’ve leaned towards the colt standing next to him. We’re nearly nose-to-nose by the time a fourth voice finally forces us apart.

“Excuse me, sir,” a perky young mare in an ocean-blue flight attendant vest says, hesitating a bit once she notices me off to the side. “Is there a problem?”

The colt leans back into the aisle without retreating from our silent staring war, then glances at the flight attendant just long enough to acknowledge her butting in. “She’s in my seat,” he says icily, his eyes still locked coldly with mine. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the attendant look curiously from him to me and then back to him again, before clearing her throat and extending her hoof.

“May I see your ticket, please, sir?” she asks. Finally, the colt turns his head completely away from me, but his eyes start darting back in my direction the instant he’s done fishing his ticket out of the front pocket of his saddlebag.

“Game over,” he mutters too quietly for anyone but to hear it but me. Before I can respond, the attendant’s lips twitch and narrow into a frown.

“Um…sir?”

“Mm-hmm?” he hums airily to the attendant, who is holding his ticket with a quizzical expression on her face.

“Sir, this mare is sitting in seat 12C.”

The colt glances back at me, and I can tell he was holding back a smirk. “Yes, she is, isn’t she?”

“Well, quite frankly, I don’t see what the problem is, sir.”

A little bit of bluster drains out of the colt’s eyes. “What d’you mean, you don’t…”

“Sir, your ticket has you in seat 21C.”

And now the rest of it is gone in half the time. “Are you kidding m…” he begins to sputter, but once he snatches his ticket back from the attendant and reads the line she’s pointing at, his mouth slams shut right in the middle of his complaint, and his face goes pale beneath his fur. Once he hears several mares and a couple stallions snickering in the seats behind him, that white hue darkens into a brilliant scarlet red. And after that…

I couldn’t help it. He had it coming. I wasn’t in my right mind at the time, or that day, or that month, or that year. I can spit out all number of excuses after the fact, but nothing I tell myself later on changes the reality that it’s my mouth that opens and my lips that purse, and my decision that this colt won’t leave without me having the last word. Without me further humiliating a pony who’s probably having just as bad a day as I am. Without me flashing a grin and letting out a long, low sympathetic groan that would’ve sent me diving for this guy’s throat if he did the same to me.

The colt flinches as if I’ve smacked him across the face, and when he opens his eyes again the look of pure, boiling hatred in his eyes cuts straight through me and shakes me all the way down to my core. Just moments ago, I thought those eyes looked like flawless emeralds sparkling in the sun, but now all I can see are dark pupils and glassy irises and a blackness that wants nothing more than to swallow me whole and leave nothing behind but a messy pile of bones and fur. Now all I can see is my own reflection, staring back at me with all the pain and hurt and disgust I’ve lived with longer than anypony could ever deserve.

The colt only stands there for a couple seconds before hiking his bags up around his shoulders and stalking off down the aisle, but I feel his gaze boring into me even after I fall back against my seat and stare blindly out towards the window in front of mine. Even after my shock crystallizes into shame and then snowballs into piercing, searing hatred for myself. Even after the gondola starts to spin and my head begins to throb, and the window in front of me blurred into a dim, shapeless grey blob.

“Buck me to the moon, you don’t screw around, do ya?” Golden laughs in between relieved whistles. “Boy, your coltfriend must have one hell of a…uh, hey, you all ri-”

“I’m fine,” I tell him through my teeth, my throat raw and my hoof propped up on my temple so he can’t see the warm wet beads sliding down my leg and dripping into my lap. I close my eyes tight and lean hard against my window, and don’t look up again until nearly an hour later, after our seatbeats are fastened and the launch pad is cleared and my stomach dives into my feet as a cacophony of cheers and complimentary champagne fill the whole zeppelin. I don’t see the spires of Canterlot painted black with the shadow of its greatest achievement, nor do I see the flight attendants come by with the drink carts, nor do I see Mr. Garter chug down however many eight-ounce bottles of malt liquor it takes to down a three-hundred-pound stallion in the advertisin’ business. I don’t see anything except the backs of my eyelids, and a dark, filthy workshop with broken and bent parts strewn all over the place and the scent of decay tainting everything inside it.

I open my eyes once Golden’s snores smooth out into a constant rhythm, and close them quickly once I see how far the twilit expanse of violet-gold water spreads in all directions outside, and how many miles it seems to be below me. In the middle of the first of what will surely be many vertigo trips, I hear a spell crackle into life at the front of the cabin, and my hunch about what it’s going to be used for turns out to be exactly right.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, Oceanus Airlines would like to thank you once again for flying with us this evening,” the perky flight attendant says, her voice amplified enough to reach the back row of seats but thankfully not in a deafening way this time. “It’s currently 6:45 P.M., we’re approximately one hour into our flight, and if you look out your windows now, you may catch a glimpse of the Eternity Coastline directly below us. This moment marks the first time in history that anypony has traveled beyond this easternmost point of the Equestrian landmass in a passenger-class dirigible. For the rest of our flight to the Haywaiian islands of Mau’u, Ka’ui, and Kilio, we will be traveling over approximately three hundred and seventy-five miles of open ocean, with an estimated time of arrival of 9:42 P.M. local time. The entire Elysium crew offers its gratitude and its congratulations, and we hope you choose Oceanus Airlines for all your future travel needs. Enjoy your flight.”

I hear everything the attendant said, but every single word passes right on through me like there’s nothing between my ears to stop it, like I’m just a hollow shell of a pony being blown wherever the wind chooses to take her. That’s certainly what I feel like at the moment: not angry or even really upset anymore, just empty. I feel like someone stuck a straw in me and sucked out all the energy I could’ve used to dry my face or rub my eyes, or even lift my forelegs off the arms of my seat. I feel tired. No, on second thought, I feel exhausted.

Always this. I always do this exact same thing. I get stressed out, things start to pile up on my shoulders and I bottle up my emotions for days and weeks on end, and then one day some little insignificant thing is the final piece of straw that snaps me clean in two, and I just zero in on whoever’s unlucky enough to be close by and rage at them until there’s nothing left inside of me to throw in their face. Sometimes, it’s just an innocent bystander, who more often than not gets indignant herself. Usually, it’s my mother, who never fights back and somehow makes it all worse because of it. Two and a half years ago, it was my older brother and second-best friend Garnet, and now he’s paying my way out to Haywaii when I’ve spent all my time since doing everything in my power to make sure I never saw him again. And here I am, sitting in a zeppelin, just going with the flow and trying to act like nothing ever happened. Just a hollow shell, filling and emptying and floating through life like a shadow, like the ghost of whatever it was I used to be.

I rest my head back against the window, and the numbness building in my brain spreads through my chest and into my legs and hooves. As my breathing slows and fatigue begins to overtake me, I find myself sluggishly thinking back to that night in the basement so long ago, when my father placed his hooves over mine and gave me the watch that’s still ticking on my ankle even now. Is this what you were thinking about, Dad? Is this what you always knew I’d be, what you knew I always was? I snort under my breath and force the memory away again. He hadn’t known whether I’d grow up to be an inventor or a businessmare, whether I’d turn into a strong, dependable worker or a miserable, spiteful lump of selfishness and fear. He hadn’t known what my cutie mark meant when he was the first one to ever see it. He’d never known anything his whole life but working hard and having jack-all to show for it. All that time I spent idolizing him, all those nights I wished I could be just like him, when he was nothing more than a backwater, third-generation two-bit miner: soft-spoken, mild-mannered, simpleminded, and mortal. Just like me. Just like Garnet. Just like everypony on this whole moonforsaken zep.

Well, good for you, Ruby, I think as the farthest corners of my mind began to shut themselves off. You finally figured it out. You feel better now? No, actually, I feel like I want to crawl in a hole and sleep for a week, thanks, and I’m about to get started on that now. Well, isn’t that proactive, I tell myself just before I lose consciousness. Isn’t that special…

Special. That’s what it always comes down to, isn’t it? Everypony wants to be special. Everypony wants to believe the ponies they love are special, when really all we are is an improbable combination of electrochemical impulses and faulty parts, with our expiration dates already stamped on our casings before we’re even born. We can do little things to buy some time, skimp and swindle our way into a few extra days here and there, but in the end there’s only one way out of this world, and that’s when the gears in your head stop turning and the pumps in your chest can’t kick hard enough to spin them around again. It’s not a matter of fairness or mercy, just cold, unrelenting inevitability. Nopony is above it. Nopony is invincible. Nopony is special.

My dad told me I was special. My dad told me I was gonna do great things. My dad told me someday I would change the world.

And you know what the worst part is?

He was right.

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“My friends and I all learned an important lesson this week:

never judge a book by its cover.”

- Twilight Sparkle

Welcome to Harmony - Part 1

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At the exact moment I become conscious, the first thing I feel is cold. All around me, the air cuts into my skin, pushing straight through into my chest and stomach and chilling me to the bone. It’s dark too, the blackness flowing over and around me like a thick woolen blanket. And yet the cold isn’t absolute, and the darkness isn’t complete: dull patches of red and orange light flash in the distance now and then, each one accompanied by a gentle gust of wind and a brief rush of heat.

I try to blink, but my eyes are already closed. A blurry squint is all I can manage before the biting chill of the cold strikes me blind again. Now I notice the noise too, a heavy, irregular thumping noise like somepony is beating on a thick wooden door. A shudder runs down my back, and I squeeze my eyes shut tighter still. Freezing. The air is freezing. Why is it so cold? Why can’t I move my legs right? Where am I?

I open my mouth to call out for help, and the bitter taste of salt floods my senses. Wet. The air is wet. My face is wet. I stretch out for something to grab hold of, and find myself swimming through open air. I’m floating. No, not floating. Weightless.

Cold. Weightless. The air is wet.

I open my eyes and kept them open a second longer this time. Another burst of orange explodes in the distance, too far away and too indistinct to tell what it is.

The air is water.

Eyes shut again, mouth open again. Salt. Burning. Something is burning.

Water.

Burning inside me. Burning inside my chest. I can’t move. I can’t think.

Underwater.

My eyes shoot open, just in time to see a white beaded string float down in front of me, followed by a brown rectangular lump. A necklace of pearls. A saddlebag. My lungs heave and contract, and orange and red flashes light up the air. Light up the water. Can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe.

I’m underwater.

Stars above, I can’t breathe.

I’m underwater!

My mind clears in an instant, and I kick backwards just in time to dodge a roaring black mass as it plummets down into the bottomless black void below me. I whip my head around, and my entire chest seizes up as white-hot panic flares up inside it. Those aren’t red and orange lights; those are explosions. That mass wasn’t black; it was bright salmon pink.

I couldn’t think before, but now there isn’t even time to try. A muffled cry punches out of my throat, and I throw all four legs into a mad paddle for the shimmering gray canopy overhead that I know is the surface. Around me, more debris sinks towards the bottom: suitcases, pink chunks of fuselage, misshapen black blobs I can’t bring myself to look at. I need to go faster. I need to breathe.

By now, I can only moan in terror, the scream stuck in my throat slowly dying away for lack of air to feed into it. The water is fighting me, tugging me down with slimy tentacles of sleep that pull at my legs and creep into the corners of my eyes. Go faster. Kick harder. Survive. Breathe. The surface is twenty feet away, now ten, and then the blackness sweeps in and I’m blind once more. My legs go numb, the cold stabs my heart, the last of my breath escapes in a cloud of bubbles…

…and I break the surface as water sprays from my mouth towards an empty night sky. My sight rushes back as I suck in a huge, blissful breath, and I nearly slip under again before all my limbs start working properly and I grab onto a big hunk of something or other floating nearby. For a minute or two, I just stay where I am, not moving and certainly not thinking, just bobbing up and down on my makeshift raft and reveling in the taste of fresh air on my tongue. I look up from the water once I build up the energy to lift my head, and what I see once I do takes me a long, heart-stopping moment to even process as being real.

The sea is dyed the same shade of ugly jet black as the sky, and smouldering on top of it is a floating wasteland of twisted sheet metal and rippling orange fire. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and ozone, and it isn’t until another blistering blast of flames streaks across the water to my left that I figure out where the second smell is coming from. There’s an arcane combustion engine around here somewhere, and it’s leaking its power source right into the fire. I need to get out of here before it drifts in my direction, before that fire starts streaking right towards…

Arcane combustion. Sheet metal. Bright salmon pink. The puzzle pieces start clicking together in my mind far too quickly for me to force them all apart, and suddenly the silence around me might as well be filled with screams. It wouldn’t be this quiet unless there was nothing left to make any noise. Unless everypony else is already dead.

Denial is my last hope for salvation, so I cling to it for all I’m worth. This is a dream, I shout inside my head. This is a horrible nightmare. I’ll wake up in an hour and we’ll be hitching up in Mau’u, and I’ll get off the zep and go see Garnet and everything will be just like it’s supposed to b‒

I’m staring down at the scrap of metal beneath me to keep from looking at anything else around me, and that’s the only reason I see it. But once I do, there is no denial anymore, no last refuge of sanity and hope. The golden letters on the fuselage below me are scratched, dented, and almost flash-burned out of existence, but I can still read them no matter how blurry my eyes get, no matter how hard I try to look away afterwards: in dramatic bold print right between my outstretched forehoof, the word Elysium stares up at me, the name of the pride and joy of all Equestria still glinting under a starless sky.

“This is real,” I whisper with lips too numb to even form the words right. “This is real.”

I’m paralyzed, as much as the cold as by the shock coursing through my body. I need to move, but to where? There’s no safe place to move to. We were the first airship in history to ever fly this far out to sea. It would take a search-and-rescue weeks to even find us, and I don’t have weeks. I have a tiny scrap of fuselage to hold on to, and an overturned hourglass counting the seconds until my organs shut down, until cold and hunger turn my body to ice and send it sinking helplessly down into the deep to never be seen again.

I grind my head against my hooves and moan again, but even sinking my teeth into the skin of my foreleg doesn’t chase away the thought of freezing, of drowning, of water rushing into my lungs and filling my body and purging every last trace of me, of Ruby. I’ve read adventure books before about daring heroes and heroines who stare death in the face and laugh, but right now my teeth are chattering too hard to let out so much as a whimper. I’m not like that. I’m not brave, or strong, or noble of heart. All I am is small, and cold, and afraid, and alone.

Alone. The word sizzles like fire in my mind, branding itself onto the front of my brain and echoing around me in the vast, terrible silence of the night. Alone. There were over a hundred ponies on the Elysium when it took off from Manehattan, and out of all of them I am the only one still breathing. How many of those sinking shapes were bodies? How many souls were fizzling out as I swam for the surface? I can’t begin to think of the situation like that. For a long time, I can’t even get the concept through my head. No one ever thinks about death in Equestria, because in Equestria it happens at the end of a long, happy life with close friends and family right by your side. That’s how death is supposed to work. We’re born into peace, we live in peace, and we die in peace. Nothing else makes sense. Nothing else seems entirely real.

Too cold and too confused to make sense of the world around me anymore, I lay flat against the fuselage and focus only on breathing in and out. My mind is empty of thoughts or feelings, and the gaps they leave behind are filled raw sensations of cold and pain and a numbing, almost gratifying fatigue. I should be panicking, I should be yelling for help, but instead the light behind my eyes is already sputtering away into nothing. Instead I am perfectly content to lie here and accept my fate.

I have almost closed my eyes again when I hear the scream.

My head snaps up and I nearly fall off my raft from the violence of the motion, and by the time I’ve gotten my grip back my face is burning with shame. Two minutes of losing my mind over the zeppelin crashing and everypony around me dying, and I had just about thrown in the towel myself and resigned myself to joining them. What in the name of Celestia is wrong with me? What kind of pony would choose surrendering to death over struggling to stay alive? A whole host of answers spring to mind: a weak one, a cowardly one, one that shouldn’t have survived in the first place. That’s what I am. That’s what I almost was. I am weak and I am a coward, but I am still alive. Everypony else is dead, and I am still alive.

“Heeeelp!”

And so is somepony else. So is whoever just screamed. There is no doubt in my mind about what I should do next. Too many ponies have died today already. I can’t let it happen again while I can still do something about it. I slide my torso off the edge of the fuselage and count down slowly from ten while my stomach and chest get used to the frigid water. Once my muscles have unclenched again, I start kicking with hind legs that feel as thick as ice blocks, and make fittingly slow progress through the debris field towards the voice.

The pony in the distance cries out again half a minute after I start paddling, and I scowl as I realize I’ve only moved forward a few feet. Too slow. This pony could be drowning already, or…I don’t want to think about what the alternatives could be. In any case, holding onto this fuselage is getting me nowhere fast. I suck in a breath and grit my teeth. I’m going to have to swim.

I spend a few precious seconds working up the courage to leave my raft behind, and I catch my first glimpse of the tower when I look up one more time to plot the course I’ll swim through the wreckage. In that moment, it looks for all the world like an oily black sea monster rearing up to search for a fresh meal. Even after I look closer and see the blocky masonwork and the barnacle-crusted island it sits on, I can’t shake the distant feeling that I shouldn’t go near it, that there’s something deep and powerful stirring within it that isn’t meant for me or anypony else to see. In the end, though, my desire to get the holy hay out of this water overpowers my sense of foreboding, and I push myself off the fuselage and start swimming towards the voice again, a low hiss slipping out of my mouth as the water covers my shoulders and laps at my chin. Whatever this thing or its reason for being out in the middle of the ocean is, it clearly wasn’t put there by accident. Somepony chose to build it out here, and that means that somepony knows—or once knew—where it is. It’s a slim hope to hold on to, but considering how I reacted the last time I lost all hope, I’m willing to take what I can get.

I only have to swim for a minute or two before the sound of splashing reaches my ears, and it isn’t long after that when I skirt around a half-submerged tail fin and see a dark figure struggling to stay on top of a soggy purple seat cushion. The pony’s shouts sound like they belong to a colt, and one in a good bit of pain at that, but I’m far beyond caring about anything as immaterial as what he looks like or what condition he’s in. All four of my hooves are filled with lead, and my heart is still thumping from my last halfway-voluntary brush with the great beyond. My one and only priority right now is getting to that tower, and as long as this colt is floating in the middle of my path towards it, I might as well take him along with me. I reach the other pony just as he loses his grip on the cushion and slips under with a rasping cough, and dive down under the mind-numbingly cold water just long enough to pull him back up into the air again.

“That way!” I yell in his ear as he gasps and squirms beside me. “Towards the island!” It occurs to me between shouts that trying to save a drowning pony without anything for us both to hold on to is probably going to end really badly for one of us, but luckily this colt handles his new situation a bit better than I did. After a few seconds, he gives me what I figure is supposed to be a nod and starts kicking towards the tower, and I follow behind at about the same pace. To him, it probably looks like I’m making sure he doesn’t go down again on the way out of the wreckage, but actually I’m barely keeping myself afloat as it is. The cold isn’t just painful now; every time I move my legs, I swear I can feel my skin peeling off and dissolving away beneath me, letting all the energy left in my body seep out into the ocean. By the time my hooves finally bump into solid ground and I drag myself out onto a flight of weather-worn concrete steps, it’s all I can do to keep from rolling right back down into the water again like a boneless, waterlogged stuffed animal.

“Wh-wha…wha-what h-happened?” the colt tries to say. His teeth are chattering just as badly as mine. “Wh-where’s everypony else?”

Shaky and feeble as it is, his voice is familiar. I’m sure I heard it at some point before the plane took off, but the comparatively warmer air still hasn’t thawed out my mind enough for me to call up a name or a face. “We crashed,” I tell him slowly. “Something happened to the zep. Something went wrong.”

There’s a long pause, and I know the colt is looking back at the wreckage like I am. “Holy…are we it? Are we the only ones left?”

“I…I-I think…” A violent shiver shakes the words out of my mouth, and I can’t bring myself to gather them back up again. “I don’t know,” I say. “You okay?”

The colt coughs, and then makes a strained noise deep in his throat. “Hit my head on something,” he groans. “I think I blacked out.”

I turn around to look at him, and there’s enough light from the sputtering lamps lining the staircase for me to get a much closer look at his face. The sense of familiarity is overpowering: silver coat, soggy blue mane sagging down over his eyes, a slightly rounded jaw tucked under a nose that’s just a bit too small for his face. I know I’ve seen this pony somewhere before. “You don’t remember anything?”

“I remember waking up underwater with the zep gone and my head splitting in two. What happened to you?”

His mouth is curled into a frown, and even under his mane I can tell his brow is creased. He’s trying to figure out who I am too. “I was asleep,” I say. “I never saw us crash either.”

The colt stares at me and I stare back, and he is about to say something else when it suddenly hits me. It’s his eyes that do it; I could be frozen in an iceberg or inches from death, but I’d known those emerald-green eyes anywhere. Finally, I know who this colt is, but the excitement of my success quickly turns to shock and then, as the colt’s eyes widen in recognition as well, condenses into a feeling of dread that’s somehow colder than any of the water I just swam through.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me…” he mutters as he drops his head back against the steps, and more than anything I wish that were somehow true. But it’s far too late to lie to myself about what we’ve just found out, let alone to him. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it somepony upstairs putting the cherry on top of the most horrific experience of my life, but the reality of the situation is clear: out of all the other one hundred and six passengers and crew abroad the Elysium, the only one of them that’s still alive is the colt who thought I was in his seat and hates me more than anypony else on the whole freaking ship. And now I just saved his life.

“Well, this is definitely not how I expected my day to end,” the colt remarks, though his look is still one of cautious distaste at best. I try to nod back, but only end up shuddering again. I’m not entirely sure it’s because of the water soaked into my fur this time.

“We need to get inside,” I say. “Maybe it’s warmer in there.”

“Warmer in…you want to go inside this thing?” He throws his foreleg up in the air and points it towards the tower. “Do you even know what this thing is?”

“I know it’s out of the water and not on fire,” I argue back, watching as he glances back at what’s left of the zeppelin. “Considering our circumstances, I’d say it’s the best option we’ve got right now.”

The colt seems to agree after a bit of thought and stands up when I do, but doesn’t make any motion towards climbing the stairs. “Can I at least know who it is I’m following into this place?” he asks.

Instinct force me to hesitate, but rationality opens my lips back up a few moments later. “I’m Ruby,” I tell him.

“I’m Link,” he tells me back. When I don’t volunteer to add anything onto that, he steps back towards the railing and gives me a cockeyed look of submission. “After you,” he adds with a sweep of his foreleg, and besides a quick dirty look of my own there’s not much else I can do to belabor the point. I haven’t decided I regret saving him just yet, but as I trot past him and start climbing, the notion is definitely on my mind.

The staircase spirals around to the opposite side of the tower, and ends at the biggest set of double doors I’ve ever seen. Each one is at least thirty feet high and made of what looks like solid copper, and carved into their fronts is the raised image of a muscle-bound male alicorn, his forelegs stretched straight up over his head towards a solid, unmarked sphere. As I step closer, the light from the lamps on either side shimmers on the polished metal, and I see that the left-side door is hanging wide open. The room that lies beyond it is pitch-black.

“Looks like somepony’s expecting us,” Link comments, his neck craned up towards the peak of the tower. “Or at least forgot to hit the lights on their way out.”

“Maybe it’s a lighthouse,” I suggest, trying to bide some time so I can work up the courage to walk in the door. “Or a research station.”

Link gives me a skeptical look. “Researching what, how salty the water is?”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong. I just wouldn’t put any money on it.”

“Well, no one was asking you to,” I mutter under my breath. Before Link can get another smart comment in, I shut him up by shoving the door open a few inches—it’s even heavier than it looks from the outside—and walking straight on through it into the tower.

“Hello?” I call out. Behind me, I hear Link come inside too. “Is anypony in here? Our zeppelin just crashed, and we need somepony to hel‒”

A hair-raising creak interrupts me before I can finish, and Link and I turn around just in time to see the double doors slam shut of their own accord. We spend a single terrifying moment trapped in total darkness as the sound of our breathing echoes off the walls, and then without warning the room is flooded with light and a monster the size of a freight train is diving down on top of me.

I jump about a foot in the air before I realize that the beast is just a giant statue of a stern-looking unicorn mare sticking out from the wall, and I can’t help but take a small bit of satisfaction from hearing Link curse to himself in the background. I start to walk forward now that I can see again, but can’t go more than a few steps without looking back up at the statue. In retrospect, “stern” just doesn’t seem like a strong enough word for what this mare’s expression is. Every facet of her face, from her wrinkled forehead to her strangely coltish lips to her piercing iron gaze, seems to extend an open challenge to anyone who enters her domain, and I can’t figure out whether it’s ordering me to turn back or daring me to keep going. Above her head, the walls are gilded with gold, and below her chin, a cherry-red banner proclaims in faded gold letters:

IN HARMONY WE TRUST
FOR HARMONY WE PROGRESS

“Research station,” I hear Link mutter behind me. “Right.”

More lights flicker on in the back to illuminate a flight of stairs going down, but nopony comes up them to greet us. Instead, a slight breeze drifts through my soaked mane and chills me to the bone, and somewhere far in the distance I swear I hear somepony playing a deep, mournful melody on a violin. It sounds close, but at the same time I can’t begin to place where it’s coming from. The song almost sounds as if it’s emanating from the walls, as if the music is being played from places where there couldn’t possibly be anypony hiding from view. Must be some weird thing with the acoustics in here, I theorize. Maybe something with the ceiling being so…

“Wait, where are you going?”

I turn around and look at Link as I reach the head of the staircase. I hadn’t even realized I’d started walking again. “Somepony’s gotta be playing that,” I say. “Maybe they can help us.”

Link stays put and gives me an incredulous look. “You’re just gonna wander down there? What if that pony isn’t friendly? What if he tries to hurt us?”

“What if we sit up here for days and starve to death because nopony knows where to look for us?” Even I’m a bit surprised at the sudden bite in my voice. “It’s not like we have anywhere else to go. Besides, what kind of psychotic madmare plays the violin?”

The kind that would live in a gold-encrusted tower in the middle of the ocean, my conscience whispers in my ear, but I keep my mouth shut tight and watch Link follow me from a distance as I descend deeper into the tower’s base. The farther we go, the more lights come to life around us, and the more my gut twists itself into a knot. Even without the circumstances of our arrival and the statue that still looms overhead, there is still something altogether unnerving about this place. The lights, the music, the way the door was left hanging open…everything is set up to make a statement, to embed a certain feeling about this place in my mind. As crazy as it is, it almost feels like somepony was expecting us to be here tonight. Like somepony is welcoming us home.

“What in the…”

I don’t have to ask what Link just saw, because I’m looking straight at it too. The stairs stop at a balcony overlooking the single lower floor of the tower, and the only thing occupying that floor is an enormous metal sphere floating in a pond of rippling black water. A faint hum emanates from the bowels of the vessel, and the spotlight sticking out from its top illuminates the room enough to see that there are no other doors or passageways out of here. This is where the tower ends.

“What is that thing?” Link mutters in confusion. Once again, I’m the first one down the next—and last—flight of stairs, so I’m the first one to see that the sphere has a glass door on its far side big enough for two stallions to walk through side by side, and also the first to see that it’s hanging wide open. Inside, I can see two padded red benches and a lever on a pedestal stuck right in the middle, but nothing that indicates anyone else has been here anytime recently. In the background, the violin still plays the same somber tune, but whoever’s playing it is still a complete mystery.

“It’s got a big lever inside it,” I report back to Link, glancing up at him before craning my neck around the side of the sphere. “And a propeller in the back. Must run on a track of some kind.”

“And that means what exactly?”

I take a few steps closer, and after a deep breath to calm my suddenly jumpy nerves, I stick my head inside the craft. Link isn’t going to get to me that easily. “It means that if we get in this thing and pull that lever, I bet it’ll take us somewhere where somepony might be able to help us.”

“In other words, you have a death wish,” Link says breezily. “Okay. Great. At least that’s out in the open now.”

All right, definitely beginning to regret saving this guy now. “Well, you were just fine and dandy with going deeper into the tower,” I snap back. “How is this any different?”

“’Tower’ was the operative word there. Not ‘little round we-have-no-idea-what-this-thing-is-omatic’.”

I don’t know precisely why, but even down here in the presence of this ominous-looking device, I’m still the brave one. “There’s nothing else in the tower except for this,” I argue, “and there aren’t any steering controls inside it, so wherever it goes, it has to go there on its own. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather check that place out than sit up here in this one waiting to see if the rescue team crashes here too.”

Link stares down at me with a strange, almost pitiful expression on his face, but doesn’t move a muscle. On the outside, I’m blazing with confidence, but on the inside I’m starting to wonder just exactly what the hay my pride is about to get me into. “I’m getting in this thing,” I go on firmly, even as my courage starts to fade away just as quickly as it came. “And if you’re not inside it in about two minutes, I’m sending it off without you. Your choice.”

It’s a completely empty threat, and I’m pretty sure both of us know it. As annoying as Link has been the past few minutes, there’s no way I’m going to just abandon him up here to die, no matter what our circumstances look like. As it turns out, though, I don’t even have to worry about what I’ll do after Link calls my bluff, because I’ve hardly even gotten in the sphere myself before I turn around and see him standing right behind me. The same expression is still on his face, but it’s tempered this time by a cold mask of indifference.

“I still don’t like this,” he informs me as he flicks his eyes around the inside of the sphere and avoids looking at me the whole time.

“You don’t have to like it,” I sigh back. “Just get in.”

Link obliges and steps inside, and now neither of us knows what to do. The sphere is big enough for us both to have a bench to ourselves, but Link has stopped close enough for me to see his chest rise and fall with each breath he takes. He’s still out of breath from the crash, as am I. His fur’s still wet too, and now that his saddlebags are gone I can see what looks like a coiled gray chain stamped on his flank, and a little white scar on his side just over his…

His saddlebags. His saddlebags are gone. My saddlebags are gone. My haunches are bare and my mane’s a sopping mess and my eyes are…

Oh, Celestia help me. My glasses aren’t over my eyes. My glasses are at the bottom of the ocean. Heat floats my cheeks and flushes down into my chest, and I feel for all the world like I’ve been shaved bare. I can’t look at Link without my glasses. I can’t even look at myself in a mirror without glasses. I look awful without glasses, like a little kindergarten filly with too big eyes and too large a nose and a stupid wet braid that she can’t even tie by herself. Part of me knows I’m being stupid, that under the circumstances I should be a bit less concerned about how my face looks and a bit more ecstatic to be alive—but losing my glasses makes me feel naked, makes me feel exposed. Nopony wants anything from a mare with glasses. Mares with glasses are just left alone.

“So are you gonna pull that lever, or...”

Without even looking up, I can feel Link’s eyes sweeping over me, probing for an explanation about why I’m so suddenly fascinated with the tops of his forelegs. I’m not brave enough to look him in the eyes, but I’m not cowardly enough to change my mind about the sphere either. Link shifts back a bit and opens his mouth, but by then I’ve made up my mind. Before he can get even a single word out, I twist my gaze away from his chest, hook a forehoof around the lever, and yank down for all I’m worth.

In the next few seconds, several things happen at once. All the lights in the room around the sphere shut off simultaneously, and the glass door on its front slams shut, a series of invisible locks clicking into place as it does. The air grows warm, the hum in the background ratchets itself up to a steady buzz, and I have just enough time to wonder what the hay is going on before the entire craft lurches down into the pool of water beneath it and throws me and Link into a heap against the wall. Before either of us even have time to panic, a tinny voice too high-pitched to be Link’s and too feminine to be mine makes my flesh crawl with shock.

“…et off me, Pinkie! Oh, heavens, when was the last time you washed your hooves?”

Another pony with an infectiously bubbly voice apologizes a moment later, and a soft chorus of groans and coughs fills the cabin. Link and I stare at each other from inches away. His eyes are green like oak leaves, and big enough to hold a whole forest.

“You hear that?” he whispers. I nod quickly, and Link falls silent again as yet another voice cuts in, still female but with a definite southern twang to it.

“Everypony okay?” she asks. “Apple Bloom?”

“’M fine,” replies a new voice, one much younger but with a similar accent. “Just got a little…ouch! Sweetie Belle, you’re on my tail!”

“Sorry!” A different filly this time, with an even higher voice that cracks on the first syllable.

“Sorry, guys…” A mare again, one who speaks in a soft tone that reminds of my fifth-grade teacher. I finally steady myself enough to sit up, but still can’t figure out where all these voices are coming from. “I didn’t expect us to submerge that fast.”

The word “submerge” rings in my ears even after the mare stops talking, and once I get to my hooves and look towards the door, I nudge Link in the side and point towards the water rushing by outside. He gets up just in time to watch with me as an ornate white sign passes by the window and disappears into the darkness above us.

“Twenty fathoms,” Link reads aloud. “How far is that?”

“I don’t know,” I answer as a familiar tingling begins to return to my chest. “But we’re still going down.”

“So wait, where are we going?” asks yet another voice, this one brash and powerful but also a bit squeaky and tinged with nervous energy. “I thought this guy was on an island someplace, Twilight.”

“The coordinates in the letter led straight to the tower, and this was the only thing in it,” answers the teacher voice. That’d be Twilight, I guess. “Looks like the place this pony can’t get away from is underwater somewhere. Maybe they work at a research station.”

I shoot a smug look at Link. “Oh, shut up,” he mumbles back as the other ponies go on.

“I think I bumped my head on something.” It’s the bubbly voice again. “That little glow-y something right over there.”

“Pinkie, what are you…oh. Oh, my,” says the first voice. “Twilight, what on Earth is that thing?”

“I don’t know, Rarity,” Twilight replies, and a sudden hiss of what sounds like radio static finally draws my attention over to the wall beside the sphere’s door, where there’s a little square machine with a row of buttons running along its top, and an indentation full of what looks like luminescent lime-green jelly right in its center. Twilight’s voice is much louder the next time she speaks, and the jelly ripples and vibrates in exact sync with her words.

“It looks like it’s a containment unit for some kind of self-sufficient spell,” she murmurs, “but the magic for enchanting non-solid objects is incredibly advanced. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

“Is it dangerous?” a new mare asks, her voice quiet but tinged with budding panic. By now, Link has picked up on the sounds coming from the machine as well.

“I don’t think so, but I can’t imagine what it’s for. The gel looks like it’s responding to my voice in some way, but as for what it’s supposed to be doing, I…”

A burst of orchestra music cuts Twilight off in mid-theory, and I don’t realize that the same music is playing in the sphere with us until a white canvas screen slides down in front of the door, and a faded advertisement flashes up for the same machine the voices are coming from. “‘Glowing Ember’s Personal Voice Recorders’,” Twilight recites. She’s looking at the same ad that I am. “‘Need to remember? Count on Ember!’” Twilight pauses for a moment, and reads further down the slide. “’Free sample in every bathysphere.’ Huh. Guess that explains that.”

A bathysphere. That’s what this thing is. The name rings familiar in my ears, and I’m not the only one who feels the same. “It’s a personal submersible, Rainbow,” Twilight explains, after her brash-voiced friend loudly asks what the hay a “bath of fear” is. “Ponies who study ocean currents and marine life use them to go underwater and make observations, but…”

“…but they’re not supposed to be moving like this,” I finish under my breath. Now I remember where I’ve seen that name before: in a thick blue book in the Mechanics section of the Rockton Library, printed under an charcoal sketch of a complex mechanical orb hanging twenty feet underwater on a thick black cable. The bathysphere in that book didn’t have a propeller behind it. It also didn’t have a little square machine inside it filled with magical green jelly that could snatch a mare’s words right out of the air and let her play them back anytime she pleased. As far as I know, nothing has one of those machines in it. For a moment, I can’t help but wonder if this whole thing really is just a long, crazy nightmare after all.

In front of me, the image in the window flickers and disappears, and is soon replaced by a second one with no pictures but a lot more text. This time, no one on the other end of the voice recorder reads it aloud, so after a few seconds Link decides to fill the silence with his own voice.

“Please remain seated until the bathysphere has come to a complete stop. Further instructions will be given once docking procedures are complete. Welcome to Harmony.” I can hear Link’s confusion hanging in the air as he falls silent, probably because I’m about as baffled as he is. “Harmony…” he mutters to himself a moment later, and once again it’s all I can do to suppress a shudder. I still can’t place my hoof on exactly what it is that feels so off about all this, but the more surreal my situation gets, the stronger that feeling becomes. Far too late, I begin to wonder whether staying up in the tower wasn’t the better idea after all.

“I don’t like this, Twi,” Rainbow says through the recorder, her tone a good bit quieter than I heard before. “This is really weird.”

“I know it’s weird, Rainbow, but I don’t think I can turn this thing around until it gets where it’s going,” Twilight replies, sympathy mixing with unmistakable determination. “Besides, anypony who could build something like this must be worth talking to. I want to find out what they want from us.”

“What they want from you.”

“Rainbow!” the country mare hisses.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? We’re all just along for the ride. We aren’t even supposed to be here!” The country pony tries to argue back, but Rainbow keeps talking right over her. “I mean, seriously, what kind of pony lives somewhere you have to get to underwater? Who does that? So she built this bathysphere thing, big deal. It’s not like that means she’s gonna be some crazy-smart inventor with a whole…whole…”

The sudden silence draws my attention back over to the right, where the screen in front of the window has dropped back out of view. In the distance, behind a massive sandy ridge coated with rocks and seaweed, an unearthly glow illuminates what I’d call the horizon on the surface. “What is that?” Rainbow whispers, and now her brashness has been replaced entirely by fear. To be honest, it’s pretty easy to relate to her at the moment: my heart’s turning backflips inside my chest, and goosebumps are rolling back and forth across my back.

“W-we’re moving towards it,” the quiet mare stammers, and she’s right. Already, I can feel my stomach being pulled towards the floor as the sphere ascends up the ridge. The light gets brighter every second.

“Everypony calm down,” Twilight pleads. “It’s probably just the docking platform. Just hold on until we get over this ridge, and then you’ll see there’s nothing to worry abo…abo…oh my gosh.”

I see exactly what Twilight saw the instant we crest over the ridge, and in that first moment where we are looking with the same eyes, the bathysphere vanishes from beneath my hooves and the senseless cold of the ocean sweeps in all around me. I am floating past a building taller than any skyscraper in Manehattan, bigger than any castle in Canterlot, and behind it is another one just as huge, and then another, and another. Each construction’s façade is lit up by countless neon signs and double-paned windows, and each of them shimmers and gleams in the murky haze of the water surrounding them, the water that should cleave them in two and grind each shattered brick into dust. This can’t be possible. This can’t exist. I can’t be seeing this with my eyes, sensing this with my body. I can’t still be alive at a depth that only the dead could ever hope to reach.

It’s almost a full ten seconds before the bathysphere snaps back into focus, before my legs find solid ground again and I can see the reflection of Link in the door glass as his chest heaves and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. I shut my eyes and bite my lip hard, but when I look up again the buildings still stand as strong as ever. In fact, we’re close enough now to see a polished white statue hanging off the front of one. A statue of a pony. A statue of an alicorn with both hooves extending over his head. The same image I saw carved into the doors of the tower that had gotten us down here.

“Holy sh…” Link tries to say, but his jaw never moves back up to form the final syllable, and from then on all I can think is the same thing I thought when I broke the surface of Eternity’s Crossing and held onto a piece of fuselage to keep it from sealing back over me again.

This is real. This is real. This is real.

I’m not looking at a docking platform. I’m not looking at a research station or a lighthouse, or even another tower like the one on the surface. I’m looking at majestic tiered structures a hundred stories tall, at walkways and guiding tracks snaking between and into them, at squid and whales the size of ocean liners weaving through the spires like rabbits between trees. I try to rationalize what’s in front of me, try to dream up some fantasy I might be able to compare this to, but this place’s existence defies description, defies logic. The ocean around me is dead, but this place is alive, like an organism. Like a microcosm. Like an ecosystem.

Like a city.

I’m looking at an entire underwater city.

And the bathysphere I’m standing in is taking me right to it.

Welcome to Harmony - Part 2

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It’s at least a full minute before anyone in the bathysphere speaks again, and when somepony does pipe up, her voice comes from the box on the wall. “This is incredible,” Twilight whispers, her tone solemn and shaky with awe. “Those buildings are anchored straight into the ocean bedrock. We must be miles below the surface by now!”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Rainbow growls back. Her gruffness doesn’t sound like anger as much as it does nausea, and I’m pretty sure I can understand why. Drifting by windows fifteen stories above the sea floor is giving me the uncomfortable sense that I’m flying, and even if my eyes can look around and tell me I’m still standing in the bathysphere, my stomach hasn’t quite figured out how to connect the dots just yet. I swallow hard and wipe the sweat off my brow with a shaking foreleg, and as the recorder goes quiet again I try to distract myself by looking off into the cluster of buildings I’m heading towards.

Most of the city—Harmony, I guess, if the slideshow was anything to go by—is made up of the same kind of structures I’ve already seen: tall, formidable, glassy-eyed giants, each with a different flickering sign or set of decorative columns gracing every side I can see. The deeper I look into the maze of steel and stone, though, the taller the buildings become and the brighter the signs glow, and in the city center behind it all lies a monstrous white dome, its rounded peak stretching up higher than even the tallest tower around it and backlit by an eerie blue glow.

Off to the left, an uncommonly wide building bears a logo of an orange and red-lit flame encircled by the words “Pyrus Industries”, and laid out beneath a glass-paneled web of dark brown girders to the right are rows and rows of what look for all the world like apple trees. Calling this place a city was right on the money: this entire settlement is self-sufficient, making all its own food and manufacturing all its own technology. Technology like this bathysphere, and little machines the size of shoeboxes that can record everything that happens around you inside two cups of magically enhanced jelly. Technology that nopony else in the world has ever seen before.

Even with my heart pounding fit to burst, I can’t stop a shiver of anticipation from crawling across my back. All my life, I’ve wondered what the inventions of the future would look like, and now it looks like I’m about to find out. What if there are things in this place I can’t begin to imagine, things that aren’t even machines at all? Twilight said that enchanting non-solid objects was nearly impossible. If they can do that easily enough to give away free samples of it, who knows what else is possible in this place? Who knows what else is waiting to be discovered?

The hum of the bathysphere’s propeller shifts down a notch as the craft banks to the left and descends, and I bend the smile off my face quickly once I notice that Link is staring at me with wide eyes and mouth still hanging open in shock. Thankfully, he figures out what he looks like pretty soon after, and slams his lips shut so quickly I can hear his teeth click together, an impassive expression overtaking his face once more. He’s definitely had some practice at hiding his emotions. I should know. I’ve had a fair bit of it myself.

We move by Pyrus Industries and pass under one of the glass walkways that connect all the buildings, and the bathysphere levels out again just as the recorder crackles to life again. This time, though, the voices that come out are garbled and distorted, almost as if somepony else is trying to talk over them. Applejack starts off making some remark about the Pyrus building, but whatever Twilight says in return is muddled up by a nervous male voice that cuts in over hers, and after that I swear I can hear Applejack talking about two different things at the same time. It doesn’t make any sense, and it certainly doesn’t do anything to make my excitement stick around. Neither does noticing that some of the signs in this part of the city are flickering on and off and hanging loose from their moorings, or that some of the buildings themselves have jagged holes torn in them like they were hit by a cannonball. The rest of Harmony that I’ve seen makes the place look like it lives up to its name, but this section here reminds me more of a war zone.

I allow myself another gulp and keep my eyes pointed forward, in the meantime idly threading a nonexistent axle through a make-believe set of wagon wheels. Whatever questions I have about this place can be answered once we dock, and worrying about them now is going to get me nowhere pretty dang fast. That’s what I tell myself over the imaginary creaking of wooden spokes, anyway, but when everything I look at adds a dozen more questions to the buzzing hive of them inside my head, it’s a bit hard to forget that I can plainly see a hundred things worth worrying about in every structure we pass.

And now that we’ve straightened out, I can finally see where we’re headed as well. Set into the side of a wide, windowless building just a few dozen yards away is a seamless round hole the exact size of the bathysphere, the setup of the wall around it making the whole thing look like an entrance gate. The lamp on top of the bathysphere dims a bit as we enter, and we’re only inside the tunnel for a moment or two before it ends in a cylindrical chamber set aglow with ambient light, where a sudden and violent jolt tells me we’ve latched onto something out of sight.

All the while, the recorder keeps sounding off like it’s steering a boat to shore. There’s only one voice speaking now, but the words are so faint and scrambled by static that I can’t even tell whose voice it is, let alone what they’re talking about. Between that and the fact that the bathysphere is now being hoisted up through the now-vertical tunnel to Celestia-knows-where, I’ve officially found enough of a good reason to tell my better judgment to go screw itself. Link’s not quivering with fear yet, though, and there’s no way I’ll let myself be the first to crack. Not before I figure out what’s really going on down here.

“See, I told you we’d find help,” I tell him, watching from the corner of my eye as he presses his lips together and doesn’t say anything in reply. “Look, they’re already bringing us in.”

“This thing drove itself down here without anypony steering it,” Link remarks after a moment’s pause. “Could still be driving itself now.” Once he notices the look on my face, he closes his mouth again and lapses into a pout. “’Scuse me for being realistic,” he mutters.

“Yeah, I’m not sure ‘realistic’ is the right word for anything down here,” I reply as I look back out the front window, where our final destination is still blocked from view. “In any case, a place this big with this much magic stuff is bound to have a few unicorns in it. So all we have to do is wait for this thing to get where it’s going, and then go find somepony who can send a letter long-distance to Canterlot. After that, we’re as good as gone. The rescue team finds us in a few days, we don’t drown or freeze to death, and Oceanus Airlines buys our alfalfa for the rest of our lives.” I pause, and eye Link again. “That sound realistic enough for you?”

A fleeting glance and a nod is all I get, and anything I might’ve done about that is made moot by the crashing sound of parting water. The bathysphere has finally surfaced again, and although it’s mostly unconscious, I still breathe a sigh of relief. After everything that’s happened in the last twenty minutes, just getting out of the water again is enough to work a little bit of the tension out of my shoulders. Granted, the noise from the recorder seems to be getting louder every second, but despite that my confidence is already starting to pool up in my stomach again. In just one day, I’ve survived a zeppelin crash, a submarine trip through an indescribable underwater city, and the Equestrian media, and now I can finally do something about it.

Yeah. I can do this. I can do this. I can get out of here and find a way home. I just have to keep going, figure out who’s in charge here, and stay...

The bathysphere locks into position with another jolt, and the front door swings open just as the headlight on top flashes back on. My forehoof is halfway through its first step outside before I look up and see where we’ve landed, but once I do it jerks and stops in midair before it can even touch the ground. I would’ve thought nothing would surprise me after all the things that led to me being down here in the first place, but somehow what I find waiting outside our little submarine makes my breath catch in my throat anyway. For a moment, I try to just accept the absurdity of it all. For a moment, I try to disconnect myself from a reality that’s getting harder and harder to accept as the night goes on. For a moment, I try to tell myself that this isn’t really as bad as it seems. But I can’t, because it isn’t until we’ve landed that I realize how badly I didn’t want the trip to end. It isn’t until I get a chance to stop and get a grip on myself that I remember how terrified I truly am.

And it isn’t until I’m finally back out in the air again that I really begin to feel like I’m in way over my head.

The room before me is cavernous, lit by flickering lamps bolted onto intricate bronze columns and topped by a vaulted ceiling a hundred feet high. Empty docking bays extend in either direction beside me, and the wall behind the main platform up ahead is segmented by grimy vertical picture windows, each one offering a view of a blocky gray office building a few million gallons of seawater away. The dock is huge, the dock is coated with shadows and grime, the dock smells like sea salt and mold, and aside from dripping water and the distant buzz of a housefly, it is completely and utterly silent. Off to my left, though, the recorder is still going haywire with static, as well as the broken words of that same increasingly frantic voice that sends goosebumps rolling down my legs every time I can pick it out.

If this place is trying to make an impression on me, it’s working, because right now I have a very, very good impression that I really don’t want to be down here. Staying put seems like an even worse idea, though, so I bite down hard on the edges of my tongue and let my hoof drop the rest of the way onto the platform. When nothing explodes or tries to eat me alive, I follow suit with my other forehoof, and then a moment later with my whole body. I can’t be afraid. I can’t let this place get to me. I have to be strong. I have to find my way home.

“Hello?” I call out, my shout repeating twice before fading away. I wait for ten seconds and then twenty, but no friendly words of welcome ring out to answer me. By the time I take another step forward, even the fly has stopped buzzing. A thin line of sweat begins to form below my scalp, and the farther I walk down the landing platform, the more the pull in my stomach to run for cover starts to feel like a yank.

“There’s no one here,” Link says behind me, his voice hoarse in a way that makes him sound a bit out of breath.

“There’s gotta be someone here…” I whisper, probably too quietly for him to hear. “Hello?” I yell again, and still no one replies. He’s probably right, I tell myself. Somepony should’ve come down by now. Somepony should know we’re here.

“Hey! Is anypony out the-”

“Ruby, there’s no one here!” Link hisses. “Just get back in the bathysphere so we can get the hell out of here!”

“Would you give me a second to figure this out?” I snap back, turning around to face him but still backing up closer to the main platform as I do. “This place didn’t build itself. Somepony has to be down here, and I’m gonna find them.”

“And then what? How are they supposed to help us get home from a thousand miles under the ocean?”

“They can send a letter. Or they’ll have a radio. Or…or another bathysphere. They’ll have something.”

“Ruby, this is insane. You’re acting insane. How do you know they can help us?”

My eyes drift off towards the back of the sub, and Link falls out of focus. “I don’t know.”

“How do you know they’ll want to help us?”

“I…”

“Stars above, how do you even know anyone’s still alive down he-”

“I don’t! I don’t know, okay?”

Link’s lips freeze in mid-sentence, and as his face pales, the rest of his question trails off and dissolves into the darkness. After echoing three times around the dock, my shout does the same. “Just let me check,” I beg, my eyes shut tight and my throat starting to seize at what it must know is the absolute worst possible time. “Just let me make sure there’s no one here, and then we can do whatever the hay you want. Just stay there in the bathysphere, and don’t…don’t leave without me.”

“Ruby…”

“I’ll be right back.”

“Ruby, wait!”

I still have my eyes closed as I turn around to step onto the main platform, so when the concrete beneath my forehoof suddenly gives way and slides out from under me, the beat my heart skips is nearly enough to send me sprawling to the floor. A thunderous barrage of shouts and screams is enough to force me down anyway, though, if only to protect myself from the infuriated mob that’s suddenly mere inches away. I cover my head with my forelegs and press my face into the freezing cold deck, but the roar only get louder and angrier, and the pulse in my chest only pounds harder and faster. I am trapped under a suffocating carpet of confusion and rage, but then I hear a single voice cut through the crowd. Somepony is calling out over them. Somepony is calling my name.

I open my eyes, and the more my vision adjusts, the more my head throbs. The dock is still empty save for me, and for the silver unicorn colt standing over me with his mane hanging over his eyes and my name still fading from his lips.

“Ruby!” Link yells again. Once he sees that I’m alert again, he lets out a heavy sigh of relief and pushes his forehoof up through his fringe. “What the hell are you…”

Link’s gaze trails off as his voice does, and soon after that I’m looking at the same thing he is. On the edge of the dock, right where my forehoof was fifteen seconds ago, another personal voice recorder glows a vivid shade of green, just like the one in the bathysphere did. This one out here, though, looks like a sturdier model than the sample we left behind, and the waves of sound rippling in the gel are clearly visible even from a couple yards away. It’s also about ten times louder, and the voices that blast out of it are about a hundred times more unnerving. The loudest one is that of a heavy-set stallion who sounds like he’s speaking into a megaphone, but the cries and insults of mares and colts alike that fly through the air at rapid-fire speed are almost enough to completely obliterate it:

“Mares and gentlecolts…”

“Harmony is dead!” a sour-voiced mare jeers.

“…eturn to your homes immedi…”

“We ain’t your property!” a stallion proclaims.

“…his is an unlawful gatheri…”

“Ryder doesn’t own us!” a different stallion declares as another one agrees.

“…ay down your weapons and retu…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!” the first mare begins to chant.

“…order will not be repeated…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!” More ponies have joined the mare. A burst of static comes through the megaphone that sounds an awful lot like somepony swearing.

“…sten to me, you worthless little ra…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!”

“…ck off this dock and back inside your ho…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!”

“…are authorized to use deadly force if…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!”

“…ou understand that, ya spliced-up frea…”

“Let it end, let us ascend!”

“…ack up! All of you, get away from th…”

“Let it end, let us asce-”

Just as the crowd reaches a crescendo, two ear-splitting cracks punch their way out of the recorder, loud enough that I almost duck and cover again myself. More reports follow, some isolated and others strung together in short bursts, and as the riot collapses into a disorienting uproar of agonized screams and groans, the stallion shrieks himself hoarse all the while.

“Get back!” he howls. “I said get ba-”

A stuttering clunk wipes away the last of the stallion’s words, and after a few more whirring clicks, there is silence once more. The recording has ended. The riot is gone. I let out a slow, shaky breath and look off towards the dock’s back wall. The columns are smeared with speckled black residue, and there are dark brown stains soaked into the concrete below. I can’t be sure those came from explosions. I can’t be sure those splatters used to be blood. Either way, I don’t want to know, and I don’t care to dig any deeper into this place and risk finding out. At this point, sitting up in the tower and starving to death sounds just fine to me.

“Let’s get back in the sub,” I say to Link. He barely even gets a chance to frantically nod his agreement before I’m halfway back to the bathysphere again.

I’m only a few feet away from the sphere when the recorder inside emits a deafening squeal, and through the racket I can clearly hear somepony say, “Just one more minute.” Link nearly runs me over when I stop dead in my tracks, but before we can untangle ourselves, another noise spins my head around towards the main platform again. Something just fell hard on the far end of the dock, something blocky and inconstant and almost too dark to see. I look closer, and my heart skips its second beat of the day. It’s not just something. It’s someone. A pony is standing way over on the right side of the chamber, a small, spindly pegasus mare who’s staring at me with her head held low and her wings standing erect on her back.

“C’mon,” I mutter to Link, thanking the stars in the same breath before taking in another one and heading back down the dock. “Hey,” I call out as I reach the center of the main platform. “Excuse me. My name’s Ruby, and this is Link. We came down here in the bathysphere. Do you know who runs this place?”

“Ruby…” Link mutters in a cautionary tone. He’s right by my side again, though he’s standing a good foot farther back from the pegasus than I am. I take another step forward and ignore him.

“Our zeppelin crashed, and we thought the bathysphere might lead to somepony who can help us,” I go on. The pegasus flutters her wings and creeps closer with her left shoulder forward, but never lifts her head any farther from the ground or tries to speak herself. “Is there a radio somewhere we can use, or…uh…can you hear me?”

Once again, the pegasus doesn’t answer, instead just moving another step closer with her wings still twitching and her chin nearly scraping the ground. The light in the dock is still to dim to get a clear view of her face, but a few halting steps later I can hear deep, rattling sighs coming from her mouth. No wonder she’s not talking; she sounds sick as a dog. She probably needs help just as much as we do.

One last question about where we can find somepony else to help us starts to form on my lips, but when the pegasus sucks in another rattling breath, the words escape me and I take an involuntary step back. Thick bars of light dye the floor a wavering shade of teal right in front of each of the windows, and as the pegasus stops at the edge of one of them, a flash of yellow near the floor draws my attention to her ankles. On both her forelegs, thick metallic hooks lie flush against the outsides of her hooves, each one attached by a tiny hinge to a solid black brace that runs almost up to her knee. The mare shudders and lets out a hacking cough, and when she shifts her legs a bit I can see that both of the hooks are barbed. I look up and take another step back. The recorder has gone silent. I still can’t see the mare’s face.

“Are you…”

My voice cracks in mid-sentence, and I choke on the rest of it before it can slip out. It takes more than one gulp to get the dryness out of my throat. “Are you all right?”

This time, something changes. The mare jerks and hunches back, then pushes out a throaty breath that sounds angry. That sounds hungry. Cold sweat breaks out on my shoulders and legs, and when I look back towards the bathysphere I hear the same distorted voice from before, only now it’s clear as a bell and getting louder every second. A faint snick behind me worms its way into my ears and settles at the base of my spine, but my legs are glued to the floor and I wouldn’t want to turn around even if I could. I can’t even identify what it is I’m so afraid of: the fear coursing through me is primal, like my body instinctively knows that something is not right long before my mind can even begin to wonder what went wrong. I can hear hoofsteps in the distance, but between the shaking in my hooves and the electric surges of panic engulfing my brain, it’s impossible to know whether this new presence is real or just a product of my desperate mind.

And all the while, the mare behind me keeps breathing, keeps sucking in air and pushing it back out in uneven rasping groans, and with every noise she makes I can feel the sound waves pressing on my neck, bending the hairs down and yanking them back up as it passes by. At the other end of the dock is a hallway that cuts off to the left. I could run there and escape, and the mare would never catch me in her condition, but the hoofsteps I think I hear are echoing out from that same corridor. I need to move. I need to go. I need to lift my hooves and grit my teeth and sprint towards the safety I can’t allow myself to believe I’m imagining, but I can’t move and I can’t think and I can’t breathe, because I’m standing in a building at the bottom of the ocean and I’m drowning in the knowledge that there is no way I will ever get out of it again.

Somewhere out of sight, something heavy and hard crashes to the ground, and I know without looking that the mare’s breath has caught in her throat. There is an infinitesimal moment where the air stands still, where I feel Link’s tail brush across my ribs and I see a shadow flit into view in the hallway, and then a leathery buzz fills the room and Link jerks back and I’m staring with disbelieving eyes over at the hallway, where a chocolate-brown unicorn colt with a coffee-colored mane and a red cargo vest has just skidded around the corner. Link mutters something under his breath and I turn my head to look at him, and in that moment I notice three things: one, Link’s body is pointed in the opposite direction as mine; two, his eyes are narrowed and his mouth is twisted into a sour frown of confusion; and three, the mare that had been creeping up behind me this whole time is gone. There are no hoofsteps left on the grimy floor, no wingbeats fading away in the distance, not even so much as a muffled growl of pain. The spindly, sickly little pegasus has simply disappeared.

Blinking away the sudden fogginess creeping into my vision, I nudge Link in the side and motion back towards the hallway. After blinking a few times and showing off his bewildered look to me, he rotates around to face the new arrival, and I do the same just in time to see the unicorn lift a hoof to his chest pocket and press down on the side of a little golden box strapped onto its front.

“I found ‘em,” he says, his voice high and breathless with a Trottingham tinge to it. “AJ, I got ‘em, they’re right here. What do I do?”

Between the now-vanished pegasus mare and the brand new heart attack that just clattered into view, the last thing I’m concerned with is what Clutzy Hooves over here needs to do. Mostly, my first and only instinct is to scream my ever-loving head off and figure out why later. Before I even have time to squeak, though, the colt’s little box answers him with the voice of an unmistakably Southern country mare. It’s a radio, I realize a bit embarrassingly late, and the pony on the other end of it sounds flustered, impatient, and for some implacable reason, familiar.

“What d’ya do?” she shouts. “Well, what d’ya think you should do, dance a jig and sing ‘em a welcome song? Get ‘em outta there, for Pete’s sake!”

The colt gives a jerky nod and licks his lips, and then instead of running away like I’d been expecting him to before, he just lifts his forehoof off his radio and points it in our direction.

“You two,” he calls out. “Come with me.”

There’s no way in Equestria I’m about to just skip off with this guy after everything that’s happened, and I’m about to impress that upon him before Link beats me to the punch. “Who the hell are you?” he asks.

The colt blinks, and the shock of the moment is apparently so much that he can’t decide whether to keep his mouth open or closed. “I…m-my name’s Chestnut,” he finally stammers, “but that’s really not important right now. Right now, we gotta move before-”

“Move to where?” I cut in. “What is this place? Where are we?”

“Look, just…” Chestnut starts to say before the mare on the radio yells for him to get a move on, and he yells back that he knows, we’re going. “I-I’ll tell you later,” he stutters after that, and he goes on to detail all the various reasons why we need to quit talking and start walking. In my head, though, all I can hear is the clicking of his radio, and the echo of the voice that just came out of it. I can’t imagine a time in my life where I might have met the mare Chestnut was talking to, but a feeling almost like déjà vu is telling me that somehow I’ve heard her voice before. Somehow, I know who this mare is, not as a friend or enemy or even an acquaintance, but something simpler than that, something closer than that, something I can’t begin to identify even as the feeling of symmetry grows stronger and stronger…

“Why should we trust you?” Link asks with narrowed eyes.

“Because I’m not the one tryin’ to kill you!” Chestnut groans back. “I don’t know how much clearer I can make th-”

“Chestnut!” the mare in the radio screams, and it’s as if somepony has soaked me with a garden hose and finally woken me up. I do know that voice. Of course I know that voice. No more than five minutes ago, I was listening to that voice, listening to a little box on the wall full of glowing green jelly that vibrated with the voices of a brash young mare and a soft-toned older one, and one with a definite Southern twang. An unmistakable Southern twang.

“She was on the bathysphere,” I whisper to myself. “Link, she was on the bathysphere!” I repeat a second later, only this time I want Link and Chestnut and everypony else within earshot to know too.

“What?” Link says, glancing over at me for a moment without fully looking away from Chestnut. “What are you talking about?”

“I know that mare on the radio. She was in the recording we heard on the bathysphere,” I explain quickly. “Link, she came down here just like we did!”

“And that means we should trust her?”

“It means she’s working with this guy, and this guy doesn’t want to kill us.”

“Right, because anypony with that spiffy of a vest has to be telling the truth.”

I can’t bring myself to tell Link why he’s wrong, mostly because he’s not. I really don’t have a good reason not to believe Chestnut or this other mare are lying to us, but at the same time, something deep in my gut makes me want to believe they aren’t. Desperation is one possibility, blind optimism another, but the explanation I end up sticking with is really more of a memory. I think back to the recording, think back to Twilight and Rainbow and all the rest of them, and I remember how shocked they were to see this place. This mare was with them. This mare had to have been feeling the same things they were, had to be seeing this city with the same eyes, so she must know what we’re going through right now. She must remember what it feels like. And if that’s the mare who’s working with Chestnut, who’s telling us through him that she wants to get us to safety, then that’s the best option I figure we’re going to get. Even if we only know each other through a voice recording, that’s more than I know of anypony else down here. For the moment, I’ll just have to make do with that.

“It’s him or that pegasus,” I mutter to Link, and before he can answer I trot up towards Chestnut and park myself expectantly about ten feet in front of him. He gets the message quicker than Link does, but once everypony’s on the same page, the former nods again and starts off down the corridor. “This way,” he murmurs. “And stay close.”

From the docking bay, Chestnut leads us into a room that reminds me a lot like the terminal in the Canterlot airport. Instead of being filled with candy shops and traveling salesponies hawking their wares, though, this place just has a few rows of metal benches and several stagnant puddles, and a kiosk set between two darkened archways up ahead with a big red “CLOSED” sign in its window and water cascading down its front. Link and I follow our guide through the archway on the left, and that spits us out into a red-carpeted and velvet-draped waiting area, where Chestnut trots up to a pair of immense mahogany doors and then hangs an immediate left. One more right turn later, we’re in another long, narrow hallway, this one lit by circular light fixtures spaced evenly apart overhead, bordered by floor-to-ceiling viewing windows on the left and mildewed wooden panels on the right, and quiet as the grave.

“Come on,” Chestnut hisses back at me once he notices I’ve stopped to stare out at the panoramic view the glass panels offer. “We’ve gotta go.”

This time, he sets off again without even checking to see if we’re following, which gives Link a chance to sidle up next to me and murmur in my ear. “Next chance we get, let’s run for it,” he says, so quietly I can barely pick the words out. Clearly, he doesn’t think Chestnut needs to hear him conspiring to get us hopelessly lost down here. Now if I could only figure out why he seems to think I do.

“Are you crazy?” I growl back, though I keep my voice low too. “What did this guy ever do to you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, drag me off deeper into an underwater ghost town without telling me where we’re going or why we’re going there. Just to pick a pertinent example.”

“What the hay could be so bad about trusting him?”

“The fact that he might be trying to kill us?”

“If he wanted to…”

I glance back up at Chestnut, but he’s still creeping slowly down the hallway just like he was before. I don’t think he can hear us, but I lower my voice again all the same. “If he wanted to kill us, he would’ve already done it,” I whisper.

“Then why won’t he tell us where we’re going?” Link mutters back.

“I don’t know,” I answer him as scathingly as I can. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Link looks off to the side for a second, then shifts his eyebrows up and nods. “All right,” he says, his tone bright as a summer morning in Appaloosa. And the moment I realize I’m too late to stop him, he straightens up and points his gaze at the coffee-colored tail shuffling down the hallway in front of us.

“Hey, Chestnut!” he shouts. “You got an ETA for us, or are we just waiting for the tour guide to get out of the little colts’ room?”

Chestnut turns around, his expression hedged squarely on the fence between incredulous and terrified. “Simple enough, isn’t it?” Link goes on. “It’s like a trust exercise. You tell me where the hell we’re going, and I trust you. That suit you all right?”

“Suit m…for pony’s sake, would you keep it down?” Chestnut replies, his head lowered in mid-cringe as if every word Link said was a punch in the gut.

“Just answer the question, Chestnut,” Link says, and now his tone isn’t quite so jovial. “Where. The hell. Are we going?”

“Link, shut up,” I snarl back, although even I’m not really sure why he should. Aside from that pegasus in the docking bay and Chestnut and his radio, I haven’t seen hide nor hair of anypony since I fell asleep on the zeppelin. There aren’t even crickets to break the silence down here, let alone other ponies. In any case, Link only gives me the courtesy of a brief glance before ignoring me anyway.

“Okay, I’m gonna give you, say, ten seconds to quit screwing around with us, or I’m just gonna go find another bathysphere and leave you in Celestia’s hooves,” he announces. “Start talking, or I start counting.”

Chestnut’s jaw drops, and quivers through every word he tries to force past it. “W-wait, what d’you…”

“Ten.”

“Oh, for the love’a…”

“Nine.”

“Are y…are you bloody serious…”

“Eight.”

“What the…”

“Seven.”

“Hold on…”

“Six.”

“Wait. W-wait, stop…”

“Five.”

“No, really, just…”

“Four.”

“Are you…”

“Three.”

“Oh, sun and moon…”

“Two…”

“Link, for pony’s sake…” I start to say.

“On-”

“Damn it to Hades, shut up! Everypony shut up now!”

Link’s expression doesn’t change, but surprisingly enough, he closes his mouth as Chestnut freezes in place, his shout reverberating all the way back out to the terminal again. “Shut up, and don’t move,” he breathes out a moment later, his eyes bugged out and his chest heaving like he just sprinted in from far end of the hallway and saw half a dozen ghosts along the way.

“Why, is there a bee on me?” Link manages to mutter before Chestnut silences him again with an inexplicably frantic stare. Link glares back with almost the same intensity, and I’m about to step in between them and playact the voice of reason when the lamp above my head flickers for a moment. All three of us look up at it, and as we watch with mixed degrees of horror, it flickers once more, dims to a dirty beige hue, and then brightens back up to its normal strength. After a few more wide-eyed seconds of staring up at the now perfectly normal light fixture, I almost chuckle at how scared we all were over such a little thing, and as the hair on the back of my neck begins to flatten out again, I turn towards Link to ask if he’d gotten nervous too.

I’m still turning when every lamp in the hallway goes dark.

Welcome to Harmony - Part 3

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In an instant, the back of my neck is electrified again, along with every other inch of my body. Chestnut swears and jumps back against the window, and in the ambient green glow of the ocean that filters in from outside, I see a dim white aura envelop his horn as he yanks a blocky metal object out from under his vest and points it towards the entrance hall we just came through. Once I look closer and see what it is, another shock wave sweeps through me. The stock may be silver instead of black, and it’s certainly a lot smaller than any I’ve heard of before, but I’ve flipped through enough military history books to know a cannon when I see one. The firing mechanism is set behind a rotating chamber embedded in a wooden handle, though, and judging by the way the air seems to shimmer around a flattened metal trigger beneath it, it looks like it’s not fuse-fired either. I could just write it off as another amazing invention born inside an extraordinary city, but as the temperature in the hallway dips and the window rivets creak, I can’t help but wonder something I don’t think I want to know the answer to: in a city built miles under the ocean and filled with the kind of technology most ponies can only daydream about, why would anypony need to be armed?

For about ten seconds, nothing moves. I’m stuck facing the window with one forehoof raised halfway off the floor, Link stands two feet to my left and just a hair outside my range of vision, and right in front of me Chestnut has lowered himself into a fighting stance and holds his firearm dead level with his eyes, his aim never wavering even for a second. The world narrows to a tunnel that ends with a long silver barrel and a brown finished grip, and I start counting my heartbeats under my breath, if only to give myself something else to focus on.

When I get to twenty-seven, Chestnut’s left ear twitches. Six beats later, he lets out a slow, cautious sigh and lowers his weapon to his chest, though he doesn’t loosen his grip for even a second.

“Okay,” he whispers without looking at us. “Quiet as you can, turn ‘round and go down the hall. Stop at the end and wait for me there. If I don’t…if something hap…” Chestnut swallows hard, and a dark circle of sweat blooms on the carpet below his chin. “I-If something happens to me, turn left, go up the stairs, keep turnin’ right till you get to the plaza, then take the elevator down and follow the signs for the market. Don’t stop, don’t make any loud noises, and for the love’a the sun, don’t go anywhere but where I told you t-”

I barely even hear the thump at the end of the hallway, but to Chestnut it may as well have been a bomb going off. He jerks his weapon back up and stares at the foyer, his mouth forming a flurry of words that I’m not close enough to hear. A second, louder thump follows a second later, and once I turn my head again and start listening with him, I can hear something else too, a scratching, scraping, shuffling sound like somepony is dragging their hooves across a sheet of rough plywood. Except there’s no wood down here besides those mahogany doors, and I can see them both from where I’m standing, and now the noise is louder and closer and almost sounds like rattling. Like wheezing. Like breathing.

Stop it, a voice in my head suddenly scolds. You’re panicking. You’re all just panicking. There are all kinds of things that could be, and none of them have to be anything alive. Maybe it’s some kind of machine. Maybe it’s just the building settling. Maybe you’re just imagining things.

And for a few blissful seconds, I almost believe it. I almost believe I’m just making this whole thing up, that there’s no shuffling and no thumping and there’s nopony down there and there’s no abandoned city at the bottom of the ocean. And then the shuffling stops and one last thump rings out, and all the air in my lungs is sucked down the hallway towards the foyer and the terminal and whatever the hay that noise is. I can still see the doors, closed tight and motionless. I can see a hundred shadows splayed out across every surface in front of them. I count off four more heartbeats, one by one.

And then somewhere close by, I hear a loud, leathery buzz.

And at the end of the hallway, one of the shadows moves.

Chestnut’s reaction is instantaneous. Before my body even knows to send a flurry of goosebumps across my skin, his face pales to a ghostly white under his fur, and his eyes go black with horror. “Oh, shit…” he breathes without moving his lips. Then he lowers his cannon and hooks his foreleg around my neck, and takes off in the opposite direction.

“Run!” he screams as he shoves me forward. “Go, now!”

I don’t need to be told twice. The hallway blurs around me as I sprint towards the opposite end. Two pairs of hoofsteps follow close behind me, and far in the distance the buzzing noise returns, interspersed with heavy thuds of metal against carpet and the same scraping sound from before. My heart is heaving and I’m running faster than I ever have before, and yet every step just makes the angry drone louder and louder. Something is in the hallway with us. Something is chasing us down.

“Left!” Chestnut yells as we reach the end of the corridor, and I’ve almost finished the turn before a spray of water soaks me to the bone and reflex makes my hooves lock up. There's a massive block of stone about two inches from my nose, and fresh horror dawns on me as I realize why it’s there. I can see the stairs we’re supposed to take not even five yards away, but between them and us is at least two tons of fragmented concrete and jagged metal pipes still spewing their contents all over the walls. Chestnut lowers his shoulder and shoves it against one of the smaller chunks of rock, but nothing gives even a millimeter. Our escape route is blocked. There’s no way out.

I lock eyes with Chestnut, and just one glance at the look of despair rolling through his eyes is nearly enough to make me give up hope too. When he looks down and sees the dark maroon stain oozing from the fresh graze on his foreleg, something even darker seeps into him, pooling on his face as an amalgamation of pain, terror—and resignation. In the same instant, something else passes through him too, something that makes him set his jaw and suck in a hoarse but steady breath, even as fear still has its way with him behind his glassy gaze. He looks at me with lifeless brown eyes, and through my reflection in his irises, I see him come to a decision.

“Right,” he wheezes. “Go right.”

I spin around and make it three steps before I realize the other end of the hall ends ten feet away in a plain wooden door. Before I can tell Chestnut there’s no way out over there either, the door glows white and swings open of its own accord, revealing a storage closet that doesn’t look big enough for two ponies, let alone three. When I look back again, I’m met by a little golden box floating in midair in front of me. Without a word, Chestnut shoves it towards me, only pausing to make sure I’ve got the strap threaded through its top looped around my neck. When he sees that I do, he puts one foreleg on my shoulder and the other on Link’s, and starts pushing us backwards. His eyes are red around the edges.

Comprehension dawns on me far too late. “Chestnut!” I yell into deaf ears as we cross the closet’s threshold. “Chestnut, wait!”

But Chestnut doesn’t wait. He doesn’t even look at me. He just gives us one final push and turns around and steps out to the middle of the hallway, and watches as the carpet darkens in front of him and the lights fizzle and flash overhead. I have just enough time to watch him draw his weapon, watch something dark and amorphous rocket around the corner, force my teeth apart and scream after him.

“Chestnu-”

And then he lets out a despondent grunt and kicks out with a hind leg, and the closet door slams shut. The last syllable in his name tears a hole in my throat, and the room goes black.

In that first instant after the light vanishes, it’s impossible even to draw breath. Someplace far away, my hooves are still pressed into smooth, bare concrete, but between that place and the rest of me are a hundred million miles of freezing cold and burning skin, and a darkness so thick I can feel its weight bowing my back and locking my knees. I close my eyes and open them again, and for the briefest of moments I feel the sting of salt peck at my tongue. Before I can figure out why, though, the tinkling chime of an activating spell reaches my ears, and a heartbeat later the closet is bathed in wavering green light emanating from Link’s horn. His cocky bravado is gone, replaced by an almost juvenile expression of confusion and unease, and the shadows dancing through the room throw deep lines into his eyes and cheeks that make him look about a hundred years old at the same time.

A gentle thump against the door draws both our attentions back towards it, and once my head clears a bit, I can hear voices murmuring outside. Or actually, now I listen closer, just two of them. The first I know pretty well, but the second, a low, ragged voice that just keeps on muttering no matter what the other says, is one I recognize far too quickly.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Chestnut says, with the tone of a pony trying to keep calm and gradually failing at doing so. “W-We don’t mean no trespass. We just…”

A furious hiss slices off the end of his assurance, and Chestnut’s shudder vibrates through the whole door. The thump I heard before must’ve been him backing into it. “I promise I won’t do nothing,” he whimpers. “You can have my gun, just d…just d-don’t hurt me. Just lemme g-”

The thing on the other side of the door growls and screeches, and then a bone-jarring bang sends me clanging back into an empty metal shelf as the room goes dark again. I hear Link curse as Chestnut cries out in pain, and a moment later a second violent blow makes the door squeak on its hinges, the impact paired with another grunt from the chocolate-brown colt two inches of warped wood away. When the green tint returns to my vision, I still can’t see anything of what’s going on outside aside from the horrible images flashing across my mind’s eye, but at least I can finally see what made the lights go out. Link has part of his magic still channeling light into his horn, but the rest of it is occupied with holding up a black iron crowbar six inches in front of his nose, the curved end tilted towards the door. He and I look at each other, and shining in his eyes I can finally see the fear that’s been clawing at my stomach ever since I woke up surrounded by flames and the endless depth of the sea.

And despite everything that’s happened, despite where we are and what we’ve been through and the soft, pitiful groans wafting through the lightless crack below the door, something about that look in Link’s eyes puts me at ease. I can’t explain it, but in that moment just the thought that somepony else feels exactly what I’m feeling right now is enough to shore me up a little. And so in that moment, the claws loosen and fall away, and I can breathe again. But just like the trip in the bathysphere, the fantasy has to run its course, and the moment has to end. Another low hiss out of sight sets those claws drumming against my ribs again, and the trembling, nearly incoherent plea for mercy that I hear spill out of Chestnut’s mouth makes them intertwine between them. My spine tenses and locks up, Link raises his crowbar, and we wait for one second. Two seconds.

Three.

Unlike most mares my age, I’m no stranger to injuries. When I was a foal, our living room might as well have been a triage ward for all the cut, bruised, and battered miners that would file through every evening at seven. I’ve seen ponies with everything from headaches to hernias to ugly red gashes in their backs that glistened crimson under the dusty overhead lamp my mother always used when she needed to take care of a patient. Once I was about twelve, I even broke a bone in my own leg when I fell fifteen feet out of a tree. I can still remember the jarring, nauseating crack as I hit the ground, still feel the white-hot pain that flared up from my forehoof all the way into my neck. I know what it looks like when ponies get hurt. I know what it feels like to get hurt myself.

Nothing I’d ever seen at home, though, prepared me for what happens next. I hear the strike whistle through the air, and when it makes contact, a wet ripping sound—like somepony tearing a soggy burlap sack in half—soaks through the door and seems to pool around my head. Instead of screaming, Chestnut only lets out a long, low moan that echoes in the hallway and in my mind, like what I know was the sound of flesh being rent apart did just moments ago. Vertigo rolls over like a fifty-foot wave, and for a long moment I’m almost positive I’m going to be sick. I try to think the dizziness away and force my hooves to keep holding me up just a few seconds longer, but even after Chestnut and the monster that just killed him fall silent, the gentle splash of liquid—of blood—of Chestnut’s blood—against the floor is impossible to block out. I’m no stranger to injury, and now that I’ve survived a zeppelin crash in the middle of Eternity’s Crossing, I’m no stranger to death either. But there’s one thing I haven’t experienced, was never meant to experience, never would’ve experienced if I hadn’t gone into the tower and climbed into that bathysphere and let my stupid, brainless pride talk me into pulling that lever, and that is murder. I just heard Chestnut be murdered. And now-

“Pl…”

My skin prickles, and the breath I take in seems as loud as a cannon shot. Did I really just hear…

“Plea…”

“He’s still alive,” Link whispers. Chestnut is still alive. Still moving. Still breathing.

“Please…”

Still pressed up against the door, begging to be let go. But the thing holding him doesn’t answer, and the hacking cough that rattles out of his throat tells me he doesn’t have long to wait. Doesn’t have long at all, actually. Just a single moment that will run its course and, like all other moments, inevitably end. I get maybe two seconds to silently apologize to Chestnut for what’s happened to him because of us, and then the room is filled with shouts and tearing skin and smashing, splintering wood. And after that, all I can do is stare, because staring back at me is the barbed tip of a yellow metal hook, its whole length clouded by the haze of dust from the door it just smashed through and coated with the viscous remains of the pony it had to go through to get there.

The hook pauses, twitches, and then jolts down slowly towards the floor, the abused wood shrieking and shattering in its path. Chestnut retches out his last breath as something heavy splatters against the ground, and when the gash in the door reaches a foot in length, the hook catches in the grain and, after a few twists and jerks, is yanked violently back out. With the last thing holding it up removed, the body outside is left to crumple in front of the door. I catch a glimpse of red fabric as it slips by the cut opened in the door, a flash of brown fur as the pony I followed blindly into this place collapses and doesn’t move again, and then the city is at peace once more. The light from Link’s horn throws a ghastly pallor over everything in sight. A bitter metallic scent hangs around my nose, and the edges of the gash in the door gleam dark maroon.

And standing just beyond it, visible only in the thin stripe of Link’s light that manages to slip through the door, is a thin, brick-red pegasus mare with matted fur and crumpled wings. Her legs and chest are swathed in tattered red fabric, and even in the state it’s in, I can tell the dress it used to be was beautiful. No amount of Manehattan fashion, though, could’ve redeemed the head sprouting out from beneath the rags. One side of her face is pale and dirty but otherwise normal enough, and the eye that pokes out beneath a thinly lined brow is a vibrant, almost luminescent shade of green. The other side, however, is mangled beyond all recognition by a bulbous white tumor that twists her snout unnaturally to the left and covers her entire cheek and most of her forehead. The weight of the growth tilts her whole head over to that side, and the stench—an invasive blend of stale antiseptics and rotting flesh, layered over by the slightest scent of roses—sends my stomach spinning off into the deep again.

It takes the mare a moment to notice me, but once she does I can see the revelation ripple through her whole body as she blinks her one eye and lets out a low, throaty wheeze. She spends at least ten seconds—twenty-five heartbeats—staring at me before she blinks again, and the moment I start to feel like she’s looking straight through me, she lifts her head back up, takes a half-step back, and stands up straight without ever turning away.

“Is it someone new?” she croaks. She waits for a moment more, opens her mouth as if to speak again, and then throws her head back with a blood-curdling shriek that numbs every inch of skin I own. The hooks on her forelegs snap out and lock into place when they’ve even with her hooves again, and before I can even blink, she leaps forward and attacks. The cleaner hook smashes into the door and tears a hunk of wood free, and then a pinkish blur around her opposite hoof takes another chunk with it as it passes by the same spot. The door squeaks and tries to resist, but the mare keeps hacking away at it, dismantling it piece by piece in a mad attempt to reach me.

And yet even as instinct takes over and a burning, primal urge to flee fills me out from head to hoof, I still don’t move. Part of it is just cold, emotionless logic: there’s no point in running because there’s nowhere to run. Link couldn’t keep quiet enough and Chestnut couldn’t protect us, and now we’re backed into a corner waiting for the last few seconds of our lives to fall away like the thin wooden door that’s, for just a few finite moments, prolonging it. Beneath that, though, there’s the other part: the one that’s nailed my hooves to the ground and that’s forcing my eyes to stay open, the one that gritted my teeth in the terminal and ground me to a stop on the runway and nearly drowned me in the middle of the ocean. Some ponies can look death in the face and laugh, and that other part is what makes me one of the ones who can’t. Because it’s that other part that chokes me up and strikes me dumb every time I’m surprised by something, every time I have to think on my hooves to get out of a sticky situation. It’s that other part of me that controls me now. That always controls me when I get scared.

“Ruby!”

I turn around slowly, blinking like an idiot. Link is hunched over by the wall, right in front of a short vertical crack in it that wasn’t there when we came in. He works his forehooves into the gap and arches his back as he wrenches something away, and then the crack widens into a hole. It's a square air vent, barely big enough for a pony Link’s size to squeeze into. Once the crawlspace is open, he spins around and turns his big, green eyes on me again.

“Ruby, come on!” he hisses, but the words quiver and ripple in the air. I stare at him for a moment with my mouth hanging open and splinters peppering the small of my back. Move, a distant voice says. Move, you idiot. You’re acting insane.

“Ruby, come on, get in!”

Ruby, you’re acting insane.

“Stars abo…Ruby!”

I shut my eyes as tight as they’ll go, and suddenly the world becomes real again and a bolt of lightning blasts through my spine. I reach the vent in two steps and dive in headfirst, just in time to hear something buck the closet door clean off its hinges. I hear a shout and the soft crunch of metal against bone, and then a moment later another body enters the tunnel and another set of hoofsteps intermingle with mine. I don’t have enough room to turn around and see who it is, so I don't bother to try. I lie flat on my belly and scramble through the crawlspace as fast as I can, bouncing and banging off the ceilings and walls at every turn and T-junction I come to. All that’s left of my mind is white noise, and all that’s left of my pulse is a sickening vibration that sweeps through my limbs and prickles down my back and screams at me to move move move move move.

By the time I reach the end of the vent, it’s anypony’s guess how long I’ve been in it. I’m hardly even aware enough to catch myself when I stretch out my forelegs to pull myself forward and instead find them flailing around in open air as I fall towards a musty red carpet. My focus returns pretty quickly once I land, though, because it’s then that I look back up at the vent and realize I can still hear hoofsteps echoing out of it, too fast to run away from and too close to hide anywhere their owner wouldn’t find me in an instant. For a second or two, I think about trying for it anyway, but when I listen closer and the sound of ragged, heaving breaths reaches my ears as well, all my strength drains away, and I burn every ounce of what's left taking a single step back and locking my eyes on the tunnel’s exit.

A few more thumps sound out, and then a shadow appears on the vent’s inner wall, growing larger and wider and more detailed the closer the pony gets. I see an unkempt mane, an outstretched hoof, something metallic flash out of the darkness, and then Link practically launches himself out of the vent, coated from head to tail in dust and panting like a sun-baked dog. His crowbar is still by his side and enveloped in his magic, and as he whips around to stare at the vent with me, it swings aimlessly right past my nose, leaving behind it the slightest scent of putrescence and rose petals.

It’s a good thirty seconds before either of us has the courage or the strength to look away from the now-silent vent. Both of us turn to face each other at the same time, he with the first few stages of hysteria kicking on in his eyes, and I with a look that probably isn’t a whole lot different. Link’s lips are moving, and every so often an understandable syllable slips out, but he spends another half a minute catching his breath before he can finally form a few of them into words.

“Ru…Ruby,” he says faintly. “Ruby, I…Ch-Chestnut…Ruby, I-I didn’t mean...”

Link only gets halfway through our first coherent thought in the last five minutes before the lights in the ceiling, the ones I hadn’t even looked at before now, gradually begin to dim. Before the room can go completely dark, though, the whole far end of it lights up and throws a flickering white glare over both of us, and once we go quiet we can hear the distant rattle of a film projector. As the projector warms up and the light in front of me begins to flicker, my gaze shifts towards the thick maroon drapes that surround the screen and cover the walls, and a moment later I finally notice the pair of huge mahogany doors that sit firmly closed behind me. I have one half of a moment to think, the other half to remember why those doors look so familiar, and then a blaring rush of orchestral music blasts out from some unseen speaker, and the screen flares into life.

The first image that comes up reminds me of the slideshow in the bathysphere: plain and unmoving, with just a single line of black text that reads “FROM THE DESK OF RYDER”. This time, though, the slide only stays up on the screen for a few seconds before fading away, and in its place unfolds a clean, black-and-white shot of a mostly bare office containing only a high-backed chair, a side table with a small reading lamp on it, and a giant wooden desk set in front of a darkened, unblemished wall. A unicorn mare is standing in front of the desk, her mane jet-black and the rest of her fur dyed a mottled shade of gray by the film’s faded hue, and as the camera pans towards her, she turns her head and faces it with an intensity that makes me wonder whether she somehow knows that I’m here. Déjà vu plays havoc with my mind for a couple seconds, until I realize where I’ve seen that intensity before, glaring down at me from the cold, lifeless eyes of a monster the size of a freight train. This mare is the same one whose statue was in the tower, and the confidence and authority radiating out from her is exactly what I would’ve expected from somepony who’d build that big of a monument to herself.

“My name is Onyx Ryder,” she begins, her voice loud and imperious with not a single syllable out of place, “and all my life I have asked myself the same questions: what use is talent, when nopony may realize it? What use is vision, when nopony is allowed to see? What use is a gift, when we as a race are too afraid to open it, too afraid of what might find within? For let me assure you, we are gifted, my friends, in our minds, in our bodies, and in our spirits. We have the potential to experiment, to build, to create, to overcome…and yet we squander it. And yet we hide beneath the skirts of higher authority, obey every whim of the oligarchy of the elite. We worship those who deny us our gifts, when they are the very same tyrants who would have us crawl back in our holes and choke on their dust, rather than lift our heads above theirs and look to the stars.”

The mare takes a deep breath, and moves away from her desk, taking a leisurely pace towards the chair off to the side and seeming to watch as the frame shifts to accommodate her. “In the end, what separates a mare from a slave?” she asks, her gaze pointed off towards the ceiling. “Money? Power?” Now she turns, and fiery passion emanates from her eyes. “No,” she proclaims, and her next words are drawn out as if she means to brand them onto our memories in a place where we’ll never forget them.

“A mare chooses. A slave obeys.”

There’s a pause as the mare sets her jaw and stares us down again, and I turn to look at Link. The baffled look on his face is enough to tell me what I want to know, and he throws a helpless shrug on top of it just to enforce the point. Meanwhile, Onyx has started talking again, and instead of flaring up with the fervor of her words, now her voice is cold, almost as if she’s angry at something. “My little ponies, we are, all of us, slaves. And why? Because we have sacrificed the freedom of choice for the safety of passivity,” she derisively declares. “Because the rich and the powerful have told us to jump, and we have asked, ‘How high?’ Because we have pushed for change and strived for progress, and our princesses and our gods have only pulled our chains tighter, telling us that we have nothing to fear, nothing to want, nothing to desire but obedience and ignorance and bliss.”

Onyx sighs again and starts to walk again, and in her eyes and the corners of her mouth, I can see the fire start to seep back in. “I rejected those answers. I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose to use my potential: to experiment, to build, to create…”

The image of the screen flickers ever so slightly, and Onyx smiles. “And so,” she murmurs as her image begins to fade. “I created a city.”

The last word is barely out of Onyx’s mouth before the transition finishes, and once the new scene comes up, a gasp sneaks out of my mouth. The neat, conservative office is gone, and in its place is a sweeping, panoramic view of the exterior of the city, of all the buildings we just passed by in our bathysphere. “A city,” Onyx goes on, enraptured either with her accomplishments or with herself, “where the artist would not fear the censor, where the brave would not be inhibited by the weak, where the great would not be constrained by the small. And in choosing to dedicate your lives to preserving and inhabiting her, you have chosen to become great as well.”

The screen goes dark as the camera moves into the same tunnel we entered at the end of our trip in, and a moment later Onyx reappears. “My name is Onyx Ryder,” she says warmly, “and I bid you welcome. Welcome to the evolution of ponykind. Welcome to the most extraordinary chapter in your commendable lives. Welcome to a world where anything is possible.”

Onyx smiles again, and suddenly I feel like I’m staring into the hungry maw of a shark. “Welcome to my city,” she says.

“Welcome…to Harmony.”

The clicking of the film reel shuts off abruptly, and is quickly replaced by a low mechanical hum. The lights turn on and the picture goes dark, and as the hum gets louder, the screen starts to rise into the ceiling, revealing a picture window of the same size that’s been hidden behind it the whole time. And I tell myself right then that I don’t need to see what’s outside, that I’m not any braver than Link is and looking out that window isn’t going to prove otherwise, but even as I order myself to turn around and my mind screams at me not to move from this spot until somepony explains to me what the hay is going on, my hooves are operating on orders that go above anything I can tell them from the inside of my head. Even with everything that’s happened, some secret part of me has to know. Some incontrollable part of me has to see.

And I do see. I walk up to the window and I look outside, and I see about ten stories of ornate balconies and sliding glass doors, and far below them a wide open plaza where the floor is tiled with the shapes and patterns of the continents and the center is occupied by a majestic fountain sculpture of an alicorn with both forelegs stretched through the ceiling. But fear is never born from what we see first. We’re not afraid of what we know; we’re afraid of what we don’t know. We’re afraid of what we see last, of the little details that don’t seem out-of-place until we look at them closer and realize what they really are, what we’ve truly gotten ourselves into. And in this plaza, those little details are the dark stains splattered across the balconies, and the jagged holes in the glass doors, and the way the statue in the fountain, stained yellow by time and surrounded by filthy water the color of sewage, doesn’t seem like it’s reaching for the stars as much as trying to escape from the muck underneath it, trying to get out before it’s dragged underwater and suffocated.

And then, before and behind and beyond all that, there are the bodies. Bodies sticking out of windows, bodies crumpled on the floor ten stories below, bodies hanging from balconies and from the fountain and from makeshift gallows all around it, their fur painted violent shades of red and their chests covered by unreadable cardboard signs. Bodies of ponies with twisted necks and broken legs, ponies with sightless eyes that will never close and open wounds that will never heal. The room spins, a cold sweat rushes across my body, and suddenly I can’t seem to get enough air in my lungs no matter how hard I try to take more in. My legs are barely good for keeping me upright anymore, let alone walking, so instead of turning away from the window and running until my legs give out and my heart bursts, I just lean my forehead against the cool, clean glass and stare down at the fountain. Every inch of me wants to shut my eyes and block out what I see, but at the same time I can’t bring myself to look away.

At some point, I hear Link step forward and try to look out over my shoulder, and in the corner of my eye I see him recoil and stumble back once he does, his chest heaving and his eyes wide as saucers. After that, my eyes drift around of their own accord, lazily shifting from one corpse to another until they land on a lone one on a penthouse balcony no more than a dozen yards away. The pony there—I can’t even tell whether it’s a mare or a stallion—is lying on their side. A few patchy spots of orangish-yellow fur still cling limply to their flanks, but the rest of their skin is a sickly shade of grayish-green, save for the crusty black scratches and cuts peppering their forelegs and most of their face. Their eyes, glassy and empty though they are, still seem to sparkle and gleam in the light filtering in from overhead, and the longer I look at them, the more they seem to grow, until the only thing that fills my vision is the heartless, bloodless, soulless gaze of terror, of agony, of death in those eyes.

Death. Dead. Everypony from the zep is dead. Everypony in this city is dead. I should be dead, and yet I’m not. I should be in Haywaii drinking fruit punch by the sea, and yet I’m here, trapped twenty thousand feet under it in a nightmare that refuses to let me go, a nightmare that I have no help of escaping from.

“What is this place?” I whisper so quietly I can barely hear it myself. I can’t help asking, because I have no definition left for it, because all the little details and all the big ones have convinced me that I can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t know what to call this place, what to think of this place. And so I close my eyes, and I let my words float off through the window, and I stand and I wait for somepony to answer, for somepony to say something in return.

And just a few moments later, somepony does.

“Chestnut, security’s lightin’ up like the Summer Solstice. Where are you?”

Even with the viewing room being big enough to hold the screen that had covered the window a second ago, Link and I nearly bounce off the ceiling for how high we jump at the sudden intrusion of a voice that doesn’t belong to either of us. But when I whip around with my heart thudding like a hummingbird’s, all I see is Link standing right behind me, his eyes darting around the room just as mine are.

“Chestnut?”

Except now, Link’s eyes are on my chest, where there’s a little golden box hanging on a strap that’s all of a sudden digging into my neck. I still have Chestnut’s radio. Until now, I’d completely forgotten about it.

“Chestnut, you all right? Talk to me, sugarcube, what’s goin’ on?”

It takes me a second, but after a bit of examination, I find the button on the radio that Chestnut pressed when he wanted to talk to the mare on the other end. Once I shake my head and get my thoughts unscrambled a bit, I bend my leg around and reach up to touch it. Before my hoof’s barely even left the carpet, though, the radio launches up from my chest and nearly smacks me in the nose as it flies away, the strap yanking through my hair and sending my braid flopping over my shoulder. It doesn’t take me long to figure out where it’s headed, because it doesn’t have very far to go: by the time I look up, the radio is floating in front of Link’s mouth, with a tendril of the aura surrounding it wrapped around the button on the side.

“Who are you?” he hisses, turning his head away from me when I try to grab the radio back. “Where are we, what the…what the hell is this place?”

Even though Link still has the button pressed down, Applejack is still able to talk over him. “How’d you get this radio?” she snaps back, her frustration giving way to anger. “Where’s Chestnut? What did you do with him?”

“Please, we just…” I try to say before Link cuts me off.

“We didn’t do anything to him,” he growls, his voice a lot louder now than it was before. “What the hell do you want from us?”

“I don’t…what in the hay are you talkin’ about?” Now the mare sounds almost offended. Link’s having none of it, though.

“Don’t bullshit me, not again,” he growls back. “Where are we?”

“Would ya just hold up for a sec-”

“No, I don’t wanna hear that…” Link mutters.

“You-“

“I don’t wanna hear that shit again!”

The mare goes silent, and once his scream echoes itself out, so does Link. The way his eyes are closed so lightly makes it look like he’s calm, but the way his chest shakes every time he takes a breath and the way I can see his jaw clench straight through his cheeks say otherwise. He holds the radio pressed up against his forehead for a moment, and then opens his eyes and lets out a long, quivering sigh.

“No more holding up, no more explaining everything later,” he murmurs through his teeth, his voice gaining strength with every word. “I want some answers. I want somepony to tell me where we are, I want somepony to tell me what the hell we’re doing here, and I’m not gonna sit here for one more second waiting for everypony to quit jerking us off and acting like we don’t need to know!”

“Sugarcube, you’re panicking,” the mare on the radio says slowly, once again returning to that motherly inflection I remember from the bathysphere. “Just calm down for a second and let me-”

“Oh, I’m not calm?” Link shouts. “I’m not fu-”

“No, you’re not calm, so just shut up and listen 'fore ya set off every splicer in the city!” the mare shouts right back, and this time Link finally pays attention. He huffs out another sigh and lets the radio fall away from his mouth, and then the little tendril of magic lying over the talk button lifts off and dissipates. Over on my end, though, I’m starting to wish I’d been a little more careful about who I let monopolize the radio. What the hay are “splicers”? Is that what the thing was that killed Chestnut?

“You want answers? Well, I want ‘em too,” the mare says. “And until I get mine, you ain’t gonna get yours. Understand?”

After a few moments, Link nods, but it takes him a few more moments to realize that the mare can’t see him. “Yeah, I…I understand,” he replies, his voice thin but still quiet and respectful. He hasn’t completely recovered from the peak of his panic, but at least he’s not teetering on the very tip of it anymore.

“Good,” the mare says. “Now where is Chestnut?”

For the first time, Link looks like he almost doesn’t want to reply. “He…” he tries to say. “S-Something got him, I don’t…”

“Is he dead?”

Link lets off the button again, and soft static fills the room. His eyes are closed again, and much tighter this time.

“Is he dead?” the mare repeats forcefully. Link still isn’t talking, though, and between his outburst and the one I’m about to release all over everypony in earshot, I’ve officially had it with this little standoff he has going. I grab the radio back from Link before he has a chance to strengthen his grip on it, and when I’ve got it hung safely around my neck again, I lift it up with my hoof and, after a moment’s hesitation where my mind replays the sight of a patch of brown fur sliding past a jagged red hole, press down on the talk button.

“Yes,” I say to the mare, my eyes locked unblinkingly on the floor. “He’s dead.”

At first, I think the mare’s gone silent too, but when I bring the radio up to my ear, I can hear her muttering to herself from what sounds like a far distance away, and somewhere in her mumbling I hear that word again: splicers. Link’s lips are still sealed, but now I’ve got enough questions of my own to make up for lost time.

“You’re the ponies from the bathysphere?” the mare finally says nearly a minute later.

“Yeah, we…”

“Yeah, we are,” Link interrupts. He doesn’t seem to notice that the radio strap’s still around my neck when he pulls it towards him again, so he also doesn’t notice the fact that I’m glaring at him. “I’m Link, and she’s Ru-”

“So it works, then?”

Once again, Link trails off in mid-sentence. “What?” he asks.

“The thing you came here in, the bathysphere,” the mare clarifies. “It worked, right?”

Link shakes his head and gets his tongue tied in a knot, and I take the opportunity that presents itself. “Yeah, it…it worked fine,” I tell her. “What does that mean?”

I hear a relieved sigh crackle through the radio, but I don’t hear an answer to my question. In fact, I’m not entirely sure the mare on the other end heard me at all. “All right, listen to me,” she says in a commanding tone. “I don’t know either’a you from apples and I reckon you don’t know much about me either, but if either of you wanna get out of there with all your insides in order, you’re gonna have to trust me. I promise I’ll tell ya anything you wanna know once we get you someplace safe, but right now I ain’t got time to talk, and you ain’t got time to listen.”

“Why the hell no-” Link starts to say, but the mare isn’t about to be cut off again.

“Because the longer you stand there shootin’ the breeze, the closer the splicers get to sniffin’ you out!” she shouts. Link’s teeth clack together as his jaw slams closed, and judging by the way the mare’s voice has softened by the time she speaks again, I figure she heard it on her end too. “Look, I know y’all are confused and I know y’all are scared, but I’ve been down here long enough to know that there’s times for standin' your ground and fightin’, and now ain’t one of ‘em,” she says. “Just do exactly what I say, and you’ll be fine. I ain’t about to leave you twistin’ in the wind.”

Link doesn’t answer, and I’m pretty sure I know why, because I’m pretty sure we’re both thinking of the last pony who told us to do only what he told us to.

“You still there, sugarcube?”

Link lifts the radio slowly, and I duck my head and let him pull the strap off my neck again. “Who are you?” he asks one last time, his voice barely above a whisper. “What are you trying to do?”

The radio stays quiet for just a bit too long, enough that I’m about ready to be convinced that we’re never going to know anything about what or who is down here with us. Just as I start to turn towards the entrance doors, though, a faint crackle slips out of the speaker, and for the first and only time since we first saw this city, somepony answers one of our questions.

“My name’s Applejack,” the mare says, “and I’m tryin’ to keep you alive.”

Welcome to Harmony - Part 4

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Trust, I’ve noticed, is a fickle thing. It’s easy to come by when there’s no real danger involved, easy to throw around like “love” and “faith” and other words made commonplace by common ponies. Yeah, I love this pony, just like I love potato chips and good pens and a bright, summery afternoon. Sure, I have faith in her, just like I have faith in the sun rising every morning and the moon coming up each night. Of course I trust you, because you seem like a nice guy and you smiled when you said my name.

But when the chips come down and the horseapples hit the fan, suddenly “trust” gets a promotion back up to something worth thinking about. Do I trust this pony to get the job done? Do I trust that pony to keep my secret to herself? Do I trust myself to quit digging my own grave before I lose the opportunity to climb back out of it?

This isn’t something I’m just realizing now. Anyone who’s spent five minutes in modern society knows the difference between public trust and genuine trust. What I have just realized now, though, is that if the stakes get high enough and a mare get desperate enough, eventually she reaches a point where the only thing she needs to genuinely trust somepony is no reason not to. It’s like coming full circle and crossing the same line twice, or reaching the eye of a hurricane after spending hours trapped inside the full fury of the storm. And if I were going to pick a metaphor for what I’ve gone through since I left Canterlot this morning, a raging tropical monsoon probably wouldn’t be a bad choice. I don’t know if that at all justifies my decision to hear our new friend on the radio out, but by this point I’m content to just do what my gut tells me and leave the retrospecting to the philosophers.

“Where are you now?” Applejack asks, a moment or two after her introduction isn’t met with a reply. Link’s transition to full-blown head case is finally complete, so for the first time I’m free to talk to our new non-enemy however I want.

“We’re in a theater,” I tell her. Link never moves to stop me or grab for the radio again, but I keep one eye on him all the same. “I don’t know what it’s called. There’s a picture window behind the screen, though. Big wooden doors at the front too.”

“And a little movie goin’ on ‘bout the wonders and blessin’s of Harmony?” Applejack goes on, with the air of somepony leading us towards an answer she already knows. I go ahead and say yes anyway.

“All right…” Applejack says in a murmur that quickly gains strength. “All right, good. Here’s what you’ll do. Go over to the window and look down. There should be a plaza down there with a fountain in the center.”

A pair of glassy, empty eyes flashes through my mind, and the knot in my stomach cinches itself tight again. I look back up at the window, but I’m not moving an inch back towards it as long as I’ve got a choice. “Yeah, we…we saw that.”

“You see that metal door on the far side of it? Little square thing with somethin’ like a ship’s wheel on the front?”

A choice I apparently don’t have anymore. I shuffle forward and do my best to avoid looking at any of the corpses littering the clearing, but my gut rolls and my hooves tingle all the same. “Yeah, I see it.”

“Anypony around it?”

Nopony alive. “Looks clear to me.”

“Good,” Applejack says, “‘cause that’s where you’re headed. Go out the door left of the window and follow the hallway.”

With a sigh of relief, I turn away from the window and look to the left, towards a hulking metal door with the word “Securitas” printed on the front. “You’ll pass by a few shops and such, and then you’ll come to a bank of elevators,” Applejack continues. “Take one of ‘em as far down as it’ll go, and once you get out, turn left first chance you get. After that, you’ll be on a balcony right above the plaza. It’s right below y’all, ‘bout three, four stories down. You might be able to see it if you lean forward far enough.”

After about half a second of deliberation, I decide that I’ll just have to take Applejack’s word for that. “Then what?”

“There’ll be more elevators behind you that you can take down to the plaza. From there, it’s a straight shot across to the door. Once you’re through, call me up on the radio again, and I’ll keep you steerin’ straight long enough to get you over to me. You got all that?”

Do I got all that? If she means whether I understand it, then yes. If she means whether I’ve fully come to grips with everything it entails, I hope she’s got somewhere comfortable to sit tight and wait for a day or six. “What if we get lost?”

A burst of static hisses out of the radio immediately after I let off the button, and for a second or two I can hear another faint voice in the background. “What’s that?” Applejack says once the voice goes away.

“I said, what if we get lost?”

“You won’t get lost,” she answers in a rush. “I’ll keep an eye on ya, make sure you’re not wanderin’ off.”

“What if we do wander off?”

“Then I’ll give y’all a shout and point ya in the right direction.”

“You sure about…”

“Yes, I’m sure about this,” Applejack retorts, and now I can tell her patience is starting to wear thin again. “Just keep your tails on for a few minutes, and you’ll be fine.”

I snap my jaw shut and comb through my brain for something else to stall her with, but no matter how much I try to stir up my thoughts, nothing good floats to the top. I’m a couple seconds from conceding defeat when one more question surfaces.

“What if that thing comes back?”

Applejack goes quiet, and I shift my gaze up to Link. His eyes are dim and oddly passive, much like the question he just asked. “I’ll do what I can from here,” the radio eventually replies. “You just worry about getting to that door.” There’s another pause, and then Applejack sighs. “For what it’s worth, you can trust me.”

Maybe it’s not trust I’m feeling in my stomach. Maybe the word I’m looking for sounds more like “desperation” or “panic”. Maybe it’s more of a phrase, like “no other options”, or “what else can I do”, or “exactly how much deeper do I want to dig that grave of mine”. Or maybe it doesn’t matter, because maybe the only thing worth thinking about in a place like this is how I’m going to live through the next ten minutes. Trust is fickle, but it’s also powerful, and right now trusting Applejack is the only chance I have of surviving that long. If she’s telling the truth, I’ll know we’ve got at least one friend down here. If she’s telling the truth, we might finally be safe.

And if she’s not…well, we won’t be any deader than we would be on our own.

“We’re on our way,” I say into the radio.

“I’ll be waitin’,” Applejack replies. Once I let go of the radio and let it swing back against my chest, she adds, “And if you wouldn’t mind…keep that radio on.” I mutter some kind of affirmative answer bookended by static, and then we’re alone again. Once the silence sinks in enough for my pulse to drop down to its normal pace, Link readies his crowbar and points a “You’re the boss” look in my direction. A couple deep breaths and a quick silent pep talk later, I point myself towards the exit and oblige him.

It takes me a few steps to realize that I have no idea how the hay I’m supposed to open a solid steel door with no visible locks or hinges, but soon enough that problem goes ahead and solves it. When I’m about three feet from the door, I feel a faint tingle pass over my ankles like I just walked through an invisible wire, and by the time I connect that electric sensation with the hair-raising effect of a magical spell, the door has already opened on its own accord, disappearing up into the ceiling with a grinding squeal. On the other side of it is a long carpeted hallway bordered by boarded-up shops, just like Applejack said they would be. So far, so good in the trust department.

I step over the threshold of the door and into the hall, and Link follows close behind me, his breathing shallow and his eyes darting over anything and everything in sight. He’s completely lost it, I find myself thinking, and although it’s probably not something I should be all that happy about, that realization still comes with a certain sense of relief. All things considered, he’s a lot quieter this way.

Of course, I have to grant him the fact that I’m teetering right on the edge of the same canyon he just swan-dove into, and that this hallway isn’t helping matters any. The pony-to-corpse ratio’s a lot closer to my comfort zone, at least. Whatever it was that killed all those ponies in the plaza must not have ever gotten back here, because I don’t see one bloodstain or body the whole way through. In fact, I don’t see any sign that anypony has been back here in years. The floor is choked with dust and bits of rubble and splintered wood, and each window and door in the abandoned shops nearby—more than one of which has jets of water spraying through cracks in the plywood boards covering them—is plastered all over with posters of a unicorn stallion silhouetted by a dramatic yellow sunrise and, on top of those, plain white bulletins with words like “CONDEMNED” and “REPOSSESSED BY ORDER OF EQUESTRIAN EUGENICS” stenciled in black across them. The rest of the city felt wounded and corrupted, but this part just feels abandoned.

My hoof dips into something cold and wet, and the shudder that runs down my spine is much bigger than the puddle I just stepped in should’ve warranted. When I take a breath a moment later, my stomach drops again; it seems louder in the still air, more rasping and more desperate. I can hear Link breathing behind me too, in short but steady gulps that betray how fast his heart must be racing. I can feel every speck of dust floating around me, scraping along my coat and squirming underneath my mane. I breathe in again and breathe out again. I wait for someone to reply, someone to cough, someone to step out from a doorway and reveal their presence, and no one does. I’m alone. I’m completely alone. There’s absolutely no one back here, and yet all around me I can sense their eyes watching me anyway, invisible inside every shadow and behind every window.

Suddenly, I need to hear them, need to see them, need someone to just tell me what I need to be scared of, because right now I have no idea what’s real and what’s not real and what I can or can’t see hiding out of sight, and I’m about to go crazy trying to figure it out. I lift my hoof up and rest it on my chest, and when I speak, my words don’t come out as a shout, but as a whisper.

“Applejack?” I hiss into the radio. “Applejack, you still there?”

I hear static, the sound of something thumping against a receiver somewhere, and then like a tiny blue flower in a sea of thorns, Applejack’s voice blooms from the speaker. “Yeah, I’m here,” she replies. “Why, what’s the matter?”

I try to keep from sighing too audibly, but I wouldn’t bet the mine on Applejack not having heard it. “Nothing,” I say quickly. “Just…checking in.”

“All right, then,” Applejack replies after a moment of somewhat mystified silence. “You reach the elevator yet?”

Heat flushes through my face, and I speed up my pace from a slow prowl into a trot. “Just about.”

“Well, get a move on, sugarcube. That splicer’s still waitin’ in the wings somewhere…no tellin’ when she’ll be back for an encore. Y’all watch each other’s backs out there.”

I don’t know whether Applejack meant to warn us or just to light a fire under our tails, but either way she gets what she wants. It only takes me a couple seconds to cover the last few yards to the end of the hallway, where four identical sets of elevator doors are waiting for me, each pair bulging out a bit from the wall and built out of golden rods and spirals woven together in ornate patterns. Through the gaps in the bars, I can see all the way to the back of all four elevator shafts, but more importantly, I can’t see any of the elevators that should be blocking that view. I look for a rope or a crank to pull, but all I find are little panels embedded into the wall next to each door, each with two softly glowing buttons inlaid in the center.

For a second or two, I’m completely clueless about what I’m supposed to do next, but then I remember the movie screen that turned on all by itself, and the little stripe of invisible magic that lifted a metal door the size of a water buffalo. On a hunch, I walk up to one of the panels and push the bottom button, and sure enough, I look up a moment later to see a shadowy, cylindrical cage slowly descending down the shaft, its motor puttering away somewhere out of sight. Automatic elevators, my internal voice dryly proclaims. Now I’ve seen everything.

The elevator car creaks to a halt once it’s level with the floor, and the doors open with a tiny ding. Once I’m inside, I quickly find another panel just like the one outside, only this one has about a dozen buttons on it. You’ll come to a bank of elevators, Applejack’s instructions echo inside my head. Take one of ‘em as far down as it’ll go. Looks like that’s the sixth floor, then. I reach out and press the button labeled “6”, and with a slight shudder, the elevator kicks into gear again. The doors are nearly closed before I realize Link isn’t on the right side of them.

I throw my forehooves out and force the doors back open, and try to make sure the look I give Link once they slide back out of sight is as unsubtle as possible. Even then, though, he still doesn’t wake up and smell the seawater. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t do anything at all, just stands there a good five feet from the elevator with a shadow over his eyes that makes him look almost feral.

“You coming?” I ask him, putting the same force into my words as I did into my gaze. Link answers by way of not moving a single freaking muscle and, as an added bonus, pointing his wild stare towards me. His eyes—the same ones I’d compared to emeralds not even a full twelve hours ago—look more like dull, swirling spheres of pond scum now, and when I make the mistake of looking into them, it isn’t long before I feel myself start to get sucked in too, like his fear is contagious and I’m slowly being infected by it every second.

And yet, the longer I stare at him and he stares at me, the more convinced I become that it isn’t fear at all I’m seeing, but rather something oddly familiar that’s congealing and solidifying into a kind of cold determination. Either way, it still makes the fur on the back of my neck stand up, and given what’s happened in the last few minutes, that’s not even close to being on the list of things I need right now.

“Link, for Celestia’s sake, quit being a drama queen and just get yourself together already,” I growl, my last reserve of patience suddenly empty. “We don’t have time for this.”

Finally, a little blip of intelligence bubbles to the top of those algae-infested lakes, and Link blinks a few times before looking down at the floor. “I…” he starts to say.

“Well, whaddya know, Peter Pan’s back from Neverland. That’s just super. Way to go. Great job,” I say. “Get in the elevator.”

I get a few more seconds of silence and a couple hard swallows, and then whatever it was that was rolling around in Link’s head sinks down into the bog, and a glimmering sheen of passivity returns to his gaze. “Yeah,” he says with an awkward cough, and without further ado he steps into the elevator and reaches in front of my chest to push the button for the fifth floor. “Sorry,” he mutters without looking at me, his voice still a bit distant while my own silently begs to be allowed to chew him out again. As much as I’d like to grant it that pleasure, though, I manage to restrain myself. There’s something about Link that just makes him hard to stay mad at for long. It feels too much like kicking a lost puppy who won’t stop following you home. A puppy that’s liable to get us both killed sooner rather than later. Whatever it was I did to you, Celestia, I’m pretty sure I’m sorry by now.

We pass by a few other floors on our way down, but all I can see of them are a few flickering lights and a lot more free-flowing water than I’m really comfortable with. I’ll grant this place the fact that it’s definitely seen better days, but when a city built on the ocean floor starts springing leaks, a few buckets and mops just aren’t gonna cut it. And when more than one floor is so submerged that several inches of water seep into the elevator and wash over our hooves as we pass by it, the thought of how much structural integrity this place has left to lose quickly takes a back seat to the thought of buying a one-way ticket to scenic Anywhere-But-Here-Ville.

The sixth floor slides into view behind a thin, green-tinged waterfall, an aftereffect of the water cascading down from the upper floors. I waste a few seconds waiting for the flow to taper off, and then another few building up the courage to force myself through the freezing-cold sheet once I realize it’s not going away. Gritting my teeth and bolting through it in one motion gets me into the hallway all right, but it also gets me a mouthful of seawater and a painful chill down my spine to go with it. I was nearly dry from the crash by then, too. Charming, this Harmony place.

“This thing’s waterproof, right?” I say to the radio.

“Much as anything else down here is,” the radio replies.

And that’s another thing: not one single pony in this sunforsaken place can put anything in simple terms. They have to be cryptic about it. It’s like a fetish or something, like some part of them just has to go all Comic Book Bad Guy on me and speak entirely in riddles. Here’s a crazy thought: if I ask you a yes-or-no question, Applejack, just say “yes” or “no”. Or better yet: say nothing. Say absolutely nothing at all. Just let me keep prattling on to myself out here, because even that’s better than having to go dig out my Honey Oats Super Secret Decoder Ring every two minutes just to figure out what the hay it is you’re talking about. It was a rhetorical question to begin with, for Celestia’s sake!

By the time I finish taking the Princess’s name in vain for the nth time today, it occurs to me that it’d probably help out a lot in the way of efficient communication if I expressed a few of those sentiments out loud to the pony they were directed at. It also occurs to me that efficient communication is right below “filing my forehooves into razor-sharp griffon talons” on my list of priorities at the moment. Usually, the more I try to make my opinions heard, the more I end up making them heard to everyone within a half-mile radius. So in light of that, my better judgment knows that the far smarter option right now is to just wring the water out of my braid again and keep plodding along until I find a nice, quiet place where I can stick my head into a hole in the wall and scream.

“What are you looking at?” I snap at Link as he sidles up beside me. He responds with a slow, heavy blink and an open-mouthed shrug, and another claw screeches down the chalkboard in my head. Maybe I’m just tired. Or hungry. Or wet. Or all three at once, with a nice helping of stress and a few pinches of salt pricking into my eyes. How many different kinds of emotional and physiological trauma do I need to have before it’s morally acceptable to put a hoof through somepony’s larynx?

A question for another time, I suppose. Now is the time to say nothing, hurt nothing, and put one hoof in front of the other, so that’s what I do. I take a deep breath and hold it inside my chest for the first few steps, and when I let it out in a slow, controlled huff, the sound echoes down the hallway and into the intersection a few yards away. Turn left first chance you get, that’s what Applejack said. Okay, great. I’m turning left. I’m keeping my head up, I’m jogging these last few feet to the turn, and…

There’s someone else down here.

The pony I see is hardly more than an afterimage by the time my mind processes the fact that we’re not alone, and the flash of memory that stays with me long enough to go back over and review is nothing more than raw sensation—pink fur, orange mane, darkened face bent into a scowl. In the time it takes for me to even pick up that much, the stranger is gone, galloping off around the corner with an uneven gait muffled by the shaggy, water-worn carpet. I stand stock-still for a moment, waves of adrenaline rolling through my shoulders, and in the distance I hear metal clanging against metal, the harsh, grinding click of something being slotted together. A slight, almost dainty cough wafts around the bend, and then the air stands still. I take one slow step forward, tilt my head, hear nothing, take another step, and then instinct jerks me back and forces me down to the floor as I hear something approaching, something that clatters and squeaks like a rusty old wagon, or like a baby carriage.

Exactly like a baby carriage.

I don’t even believe my eyes at first, but I get much too long a look at this new arrival to be anything but sure that it’s real. As I watch in mute confusion, a rusted iron baby carriage rolls out from the left and rattles across the hallway, coming to a stop a few seconds later with a gentle bump against the opposite wall. Nopony follows it out, nopony shouts after it; I can’t even hear if there’s actually a baby inside. It’s just an ordinary four-wheeled wireframe carriage, sitting in the middle of the hallway, all alone. And despite the fact that every hair on my body is still standing at attention, it only takes a few seconds for caution to be overruled by curiosity.

The carriage’s front end is pointed slightly towards me, so I can’t see enough of the interior to check whether there’s anything alive in it. When I take a few steps closer, the clicking sound I heard returns, but this time it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the hallway on the left. In fact, the closer I get, the more it sounds like it’s coming from the carriage. I stop short with a good twenty feet to spare and listen for a moment, and as if on cue, the noise ceases too. A second later, though, a hollow, unearthly tone—like something you’d hear from an alien spaceship in a cheesy radio play—emanates from the stroller, and then, inexplicably, a tinkling, soothing melody fills the hallway. The notes are tinny and insubstantial, but I’d know that tune anywhere. Anypony in Equestria would know that tune anywhere.

Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to lay your sleepy head…

My subconscious fills in the words automatically, my mother’s voice seeping through faded memories and singing loud and clear inside my head, and the song echoes out from the carriage and washes over my whole body. I feel weightless, like I’m caught in the thin space between the real world and that of a slowly evaporating dream.

Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed…

The peaceful lullaby is nonsensical in a place like this, but at the same time some part of it is hypnotizing. Some part of it draws me closer and closer, even as my heart pumps faster and my head begins to fill with air.

Drifting off to sleep, leave your busy day behind you…

“Ruby?” Link murmurs. “Ruby, where are you going?”

A blurry vision of green grass and starry skies soaks into my brain, and suddenly the cold of the stale air and the seawater dripping down my back seems a hundred miles away. I’m not just warm. I’m contented. I’m exhausted. I’m homesick.

Drifting off to sleep, let the joy of dreamland find you…

“Ruby, what’s wrong?”

Wrong. Yes, this is wrong. There’s something very, very wrong here, and yet I’m powerless to resist it, powerless to do anything but keep walking toward the sound like a lamb being led to pasture. I just want one look, that’s all. Maybe there’s somepony in that carriage. Maybe somepony else needs help. I can’t just leave them there. I can’t bear not knowing.

Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to lay your sleepy head…

I have to know. I’m cold, wet, alone, and terrified, and I have to know.

Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to go to bed…

The song slows at the end of the verse, then cuts off with a violent clunk. The whirring, clicking noise returns, but now it’s not coming from underneath the carriage, but rather from inside it. I’m five feet away, and I can finally see inside the carriage, see a gossamer purple liner and a ragged gray blanket, and another one of those magic voice recorders. And no baby. The carriage is empty. The carriage isn’t moving.

The carriage is still ticking.

My blood runs cold, and the floor rolls in synch with my stomach. Five feet to the carriage. Thirty feet back to Link, whose eyes are wide and slowly filling with comprehension. I turn towards him and watch my name form on his lips, just before it punches through the air like a bolt from a crossbow.

“Ruby!” he screams, and fear coils around my spine like a snake. I kick my hooves into gear, and soon that five feet is eight feet, ten, twelve.

I’m fifteen feet away when the carriage explodes.

Heat scorches along my back and throat, and compressed by the unyielding hallway walls, the shock wave might as well as have been a tidal one. The impact scrambles my mind on contact and wipes away any awareness of losing my balance or having my legs swept out from under me, so when I come to a moment later nauseatingly dizzy and deafened by an unending screech, I’m lying on my side facing the wall, with my head pressed into the carpet and throbbing fit to burst. Over the keening in my ears, I can hear a voice somewhere close by, a sour, high-pitched squeal that seems to combine fury, pain, and the wavering, whining tone of somepony about to burst into tears.

“…told me I was gonna be a star…ain’t fair. It ain’t fair! You ain’t no better than me! Who are you anyway, huh? Nobody! She’s mine, you hear me?”

I press my forehooves against my temples and force my head up, and in the dirty brown haze that’s enveloped the hall, I see an earth mare dressed in discolored white lace with pink fur, a light orange mane shaped into a bowl cut, and a thick, dark bracer strapped to her foreleg. The second I catch sight of her, a demented snarl curls onto her face, and she jerks the bracer out from her body to eject a cherry red monkey wrench from somewhere inside it. I have just enough time to sit up, to see her raise the bracer up and drag it along the wall as she lowers her head into a charge.

“She’s MINE!”

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to brace myself, but the blow comes much sooner than I expected, and feels more like it came from skin and bone than metal. It still sends me flying off into the wall anyway, though, so by the time I get my bearings and look up again, it’s only just soon enough to see Link’s crowbar whip through the air and smack into the mare’s bracer, only just soon enough to watch him swing again and clobber her on the cheek, the meaty thud sending a spray of crimson arcing across the hallway. The mare hardly even seems to feel it, and with an indignant roar, she aims her next attack at Link’s neck. He ducks under the wrench a split-second before it decapitates him, and counters with a blow to her knee that sends the sickening crunch of shattering bone vibrating all the way down to my soles. That one, the mare feels. She stumbles again and nearly collapses before hopping back a few feet and crouching into a defensive stance, the leg with the bracer on it hanging useless below her chest.

There are so many things in front of me I can’t comprehend that for a moment, my whole brain just ceases to function. Once it’s back in motion, I have to rebuild the scenario from scratch just to even begin to make any sense of it:

We’re heading to meet Applejack and get to safety.

The elevator will take us down to Applejack.

We’re in a hallway leading over to the elevators.

There’s another mare in the hallway with us.

She has a white dress and a red wrench.

She just tried to attack me.

Link just attacked her.

Link just attacked her.

She’s hurt.

I’m not.

We have to move.

Finally, something to focus on: we have to move. We have to get out of here before she recovers. We have to run away from here just like we did before, except Link doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere. He looks petrified, actually, only beneath that fear is a maniacal look of abject rage. The mare, on the other hand, looks almost pitiful as she hobbles back and forth a ways down the hall, her eyes darting over Link’s rigid frame and her mouth motoring away even as she groans in pain.

“C’moooooon, baby…” she croons. “Just a little taste…don’t be such a square. I deserve it, ya bastard! I’m the star here, I’m the one who’s gonna be up in lights. Just you wait, you see, you’ll all see. It’s my part, it’s my chance to shine, and you. Can’t. Have it!”

Her sneer returns with a vengeance, and with another yell she comes at Link again. I see his shoulders tense, watch him take a step back, and then time seems to slow down as he brings his crowbar around again, as he slams it into her head and another cloud of blood splatters against the wall. When the mare looks up again, part of her jaw is hanging at a sickening, unnatural angle, and all the rage has drained from her eyes, leaving in its place an almost pitiful look of disappointment and pain, like a little foal who’d been sent to bed without supper.

Suddenly, everything is happening too fast. Before I can bring myself to stand, Link is standing over her, and I regain the ability to speak just in time to have my words die in my throat as he raises the crowbar and hits her again, and again, and again. A choked, mottled cough bubbles out of the mare’s mouth, and then Link cries out and slams his weapon down one last time. The mare groans and rolls onto her side, and doesn’t move again.

For a long time after that, none of my senses seem to work right. No matter how much I blink, I can barely see Link through the haze slipping over my eyes, and when he releases his magical grip on the crowbar and lets it fall on top of the mare lying below him, the metallic thump it makes as it bounces off her stomach feels as loud as a freight train. At the same time, though, the tangy scent of blood stings in my nose, and every hair on my body bristles against my skin like twine. Link stumbles back and heaves for breath, but a few seconds later once his pulse has slowed a bit, he shakes his head slightly and starts making his way back towards me.

“Ruby...”

The fur on the back of my neck stands up, and something solid and blazing hot twinges painfully inside my gut. “Wh...” I try to say.

“Ruby, you okay?”

“What...”

Link swallows, pauses, then swallows again with a little more effort. “Sorry about pushing you down like that, I...s-she was coming at you and I just...”

I look back at the mare again, whose eyes have gone glassy and dull beneath half-closed lids, and suddenly the haze is gone.

“What did you do?” I whisper. Link’s eyes widen and he keeps talking, but I can’t hear him anymore. The only part of my mind still functioning is the part that sees a pink-furred mare with her skull caved in, and a colt standing in front of me still coated with her blood.

“Link, what did you do?” I shout.

Now he just looks baffled. “What d’you mean, what did I do? She-”

No, not baffled. Offended. He’s offended that I’m not singing his praises for bashing another pony’s brains in. It’s all I can do to look away from him in time to keep from being sick, and when my eyes settle back on the mare my stomach just turns over again. “Stars above, she’s dead…” I whisper to myself.

“What the he-”

“Shut up, Link, she’s dead!” I scream over him, my gut roiling not with nausea now, but with fury. “You killed her!”

Link sputters for a moment or two, and I take the opportunity to let the coals in my chest simmer and heat up again. “Ruby, she was gonna kill you!” he argues back, his voice slipping into an incredulous whine that might as well have been an ice pick shoved into my ear.

“Don’t tell me what she was gonna do, how the hay do you know what she was gonna do?”

“I don’t know, maybe I jumped to conclusions when she charged at you with a monkey wrench!”

“So you charged at her with a crowbar? You broke her leg, Link, how in all creation was she gonna kill anybody with a broken leg?”

Link squeezes his eyes shut, and the expression on his face swings back around to a disbelieving grimace again. “I seriously can’t believe you’re arguing about this.”

“Well, I seriously can’t believe you just murdered somepony, so I’m pretty sure we’re even!” I yell back, although I’m sure the colt flinching a few feet away from me would call it a screech.

“You’re-”

“Yes, I am gonna call it that, Link, damn it,” I hiss at him. The curse leaves a bad taste in my mouth even after I spit it out, but with the circumstances being what they are, somehow it still feels justified. “Stars above, who the hay are you?” I go on after Link’s mouth snaps shut and the silence between us grows too heavy to bear. “What kind of pony does that, what kind of pony does something like that?”

For the first time since I’ve known him, Link is truly at a loss for words, but it only takes him a few seconds to find some again. “What kind of pony does that? What kind of…the kind of pony that just saved your life!” he spews. “You’re welcome, by the way!”

“Don’t patronize me, Link, not now,” I growl, my tone black as the bruises I’m one more self-righteous remark away from beating into every inch of him I can reach. I suck in a breath, say a quick prayer to Celestia—to forgive me for all the sins I’ve committed, and for those that I’m about to—and listen for the bell to start the round.

“Why not?” he sardonically replies. “Not like you’re gonna murder me for it, right?”

Ding.

By the time I get my tongue in working order again, I’m about two inches from Link’s nose, just like I’d been the last time he’d infuriated me right up to the edge of complete madness. I can’t remember whether the adjective my rational side wants to use is “coincidental” or “ironic”, so for the time being I go with the much more attractive alternative of “go buck yourself with a dictionary”.

“Listen to me, you gutless, insensitive, unbelievable-”

It’s a miracle I even hear the radio flicker back to life, and a bigger one still that my first instinct isn’t to smash it against Link’s forehead. “Ruby?” Applejack says, cutting me off just before I use my second swear word of the month.

“WHAT?” I answer through my teeth. To her credit, instead of shutting up, Applejack just answers in turn.

“Sweet mother’a mercy, keep it down!” she hisses. “What the hay’s wrong with you?”

And there it is: the moment I’ve been waiting for, the last straw on my back that snapped it clean in two. I’m trapped in an abandoned and terrifying city underwater, surrounded by piles of corpses and stuck with a colt who sees nothing wrong with adding to them, and the one guiding light I’ve seen the whole time has just asked what’s wrong with me. I’ve been this close to going straight off the deep end, and now—finally—I’ve reached the point where “this close” has become “right here, right now, and all over the place”. I. Am freaking. Done.

“What’s wrong with me?” I repeat, eyes closed and hoof pressed down on the talk button hard enough to crack it. “You know what, Applejack, I think there are a lot of things wrong with me right now. You see, where I come from, we have this wonderful thing called civility, which is what you use when you’re nice to your neighbors and you pay your taxes on time and you try not to make a practice of hitting ponies in the head with blunt objects. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“Ruby-”

“No, I get it, I really do. I have finally figured you ponies out. There’s some part of me—and it’s a crazy part, I know—that, I dunno, likes being civil. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. But I’m in a different place now, and you guys have different traditions, and that’s okay. Really. It is. So yes, for a minute there I was just the slightest bit upset about the whole ‘witnessing a murder’ thing, but you know what? That’s normal down here, isn’t it? That’s just what you ponies do, and I can just zip my lil’ trap and deal with that. But, as you can probably tell, I’m not really the most emotionally balanced mare in the stable, so if you all could give me, like, ten minutes to just wrap my brain around this entirely foreign world I’ve been dropped into, that’d be just peachy freaking ke-”

“Ruby, listen to me! This ain’t your fight, they aren’t after you!”

Finally, the red haze lifts from over my eyes, though not thanks to anything Applejack said. Rather, it’s what she isn’t saying, what I can hear being whispered down the hall by harsh, raspy voices that aren’t coming from any radio.

“They travel in packs, Ruby! Get outta there now before-”

Before the whispers become murmurs, then growls, then roars. Before another pair of bedraggled stallions gallop in from the other end of the hallway, both of them unicorns and both of them as filthy and as furious as the mare who came before them. Before they look down and see the body on the floor, and the blood pooling beneath it, and the two dumbstruck refugees standing behind it. All of that is what Applejack was trying to warn me about, and now that I finally realize I should’ve listened, it’s already too late to try.

“It was you!” one of them shouts, his horn crackling to life as he reaches into his threadbare black blazer and pulls out a cannon just like the one Chestnut had. “You ruined it! You took her away!”

“That’s the last straw!” his partner adds, hefting a wrench over his shoulder to emphasize his point before lowering his head and galloping straight for us. “It’s time for your performance review!”

Link scrambles for his crowbar, but he won’t get there in time. Everything’s moving too fast: the stallion, the blood pool, the floor beneath my hooves. We have nowhere to run, no way of fighting back…nothing except a radio and what I sure as hay hope is a miracle on the other end waiting to be called upon.

“Applejack!” I scream into it. “Applejack, what do I-”

I never see it coming. I never finish asking for it. For a long moment, I can’t even comprehend what it is. Somepony howls, a deep, rumbling bellow shakes the entire hall, and then the next thing I know the stallion’s wrench is clattering to the ground and his savage red eyes are suddenly lifeless and dull. He stumbles blindly forward for a few steps before crumpling to the ground with a meaty splat, blood seeping from the jagged red craters left by whatever it was that just blasted through his skull.

“Holy shit!” the other stallion yells once it becomes clear that his partner isn’t getting up. I look up at him just in time to see him raise his weapon at me, but another bellow throws off his aim and draws both our attention towards the hallway the carriage rolled out from, the one that’s right across from where his friend just had his head blown off. The floor begins to shake, the stallion steps forward and looks around the bend, and I’m just about to turn tail and run when his eyes bug out and his jaw drops to his chest. He swears again, raises the cannon, and then at the last possible moment, he dives off to the side and throws his hooves over his head. A split second later, my miracle arrives.

Calling it big would almost be an insult; the thing that comes steaming into view like a runaway train is a behemoth, a hulking mass of steel-plated armor and coarse brown fabric with air tanks and hoses sticking out from its back and a rust-mottled diving helmet over its head. Its first charge misses the stallion by inches, and its inevitable impact with the wall a moment later leaves a two-foot deep crater in the waterlogged plaster. That doesn’t stop the monster, though. If anything, it just makes it even angrier.

The unicorn screams and squeezes off a couple rounds from his cannon, but the metal beast either shrugs them off or never feels them hit. A swing from its right foreleg—which looks like it’s made entirely of metal—sends the stallion scurrying for cover again, but this time he doesn’t make it far. Before his stomach can even hit the ground, the beast lifts its other foreleg and stomps down on his tail, throwing him off-balance and sending him sprawling face-first into the carpet. When the stallion tries to stand up again, the beast swipes his metal leg around again and bats him across the hall, like a giant robotic cat playing with a mouse.

The telltale snap of breaking bone rings out as the stallion hits the wall, and as the beast strides toward him, he can only twitch feebly and moan over what must be a broken spine. From there, the fight ends quickly and brutally: the beast stops over the colt, eyes him almost passively for a moment, and then, ignoring the babbling protests of his victim, raises his foreleg one last time and brings it hurdling down towards his head. I shut my eyes and try to turn my head away, but the sound of the stallion’s skull being crushed beneath the monster’s hoof is still something I know will feature into a lot of my nightmares over the next few decades.

Running is no longer an option, and now even drawing breath is still out on the table. When I open my eyes again, the hallway is silent, and the beast is looking down at what’s left of his foe, a sight that sends whatever’s left in my stomach rushing up into the back of my throat. I do all I can to hold back from spewing all over myself, and in the end I mostly succeed. But despite my best efforts, the smallest of whimpers still slips out of my throat, and that’s enough to make the beast jerk around and finally notice me. An impossibly long moment passes where my terrified reflection in its soulless black faceplate is all I can see, and then another ear-splitting roar blasts out of the beast’s chest. It holds its metal leg aloft and watches as it shudders and transforms into a bulbous, glowing cannon that’s almost as big as I am, then lowers its head and bears down on me with all the fury of a hundred-foot tidal wave.

The part of my brain not occupied with forcing air into my lungs is too small to handle sprinting for the elevator, so my mindless attempt only leads to me tripping over my own legs and falling flat on my back, just in time to see the beast smack Link out of the way and skid to a halt half a yard away, the barrel of his weapon an inch from my forehead. And of all times and places, it’s only now that a clear thought finally coagulates inside the fuzzy mess that was once my mind: This is it. I’m going to die.

And I would’ve died, were it not for another miracle that arrives at just the right time. The beast would’ve cut me down just like the two stallions before, were it not for a small, childlike voice crying out from somewhere out of sight:

“Wait, Mr. B! Waaaaaait!”

Were it not for the little filly who darts between the beast’s legs and scoots over to stand by me, her voice free of fear and her moth-eaten pink dress bouncing up and down with every step. With a small, almost playful grunt, she stands up on two legs and pushes into the cannon with tiny white forehooves, and my heart catches in my throat as I realize how close the foal is to being squashed like a bug. But the beast doesn’t even try to resist her. Even as it angrily rolls its shoulders and sucks in furious, metallic-sounding heaves of air, it allows the filly to gently guide his aim away from me, and the instant she points a pouty look of disapproval up towards its expressionless faceplate, it jerks the cannon back underneath its chest, where it quickly rearranges itself back into an ordinary-looking foreleg.

“It’s okay, Mr. Bubbles,” the filly says, “she’s not a bad mare.” Her voice doesn’t sound nearly as innocent now. On the surface, it’s still the same bubbly little chirp I’d expect from a filly her age, but now that imminent death no longer has a monopoly on my mind, I can hear a thick, deeply distorted second layer to it, as if the beast behind her—or something even worse still lurking out of sight—is repeating every word she says in perfect sync. “She’s just like us,” the foal adds, and as she turns to face me I can’t help but jump back and gasp. Just like her voice, her face looks almost normal at first. A stubby unicorn horn pokes out from beneath pink and purple curls, and the dimples in her cheeks seem to glow when she smiles. But none of that is enough to distract from the part of her face that really is glowing: the twin orbs of otherworldly light that shine from her eye sockets and send a flickering yellow pallor splaying across my front.

The filly and I stare at each other, she with an angelic look of warm curiosity and I with something that’s steadily working its way up to horror, until without warning she hops back towards the beast and darts between his legs again, gesturing for it to follow as she slides back the sleeve of her dress to reveal a tiny bracer strapped to her ankle. “C’mon, Daddy!” she calls out, giggling to herself as she bounces away. “There’s stars in here!”

For the first time, the beast doesn’t immediately respond to the filly’s demands. I can see its legs tensing inside its suit, its mind straining to decide between staying with its ward and heeding its instinctual urge to not turn its back on me. I can’t see its eyes or any other part of its face through the porthole, so I can’t tell whether it’s leaning towards one decision or the other. I can’t even tell if it has a face under there at all. So I watch, and I wait, and I grit my teeth as my legs burn and my head begins to throb. If I run, could this thing catch me? If I pulled out one of those tubes, could I buy enough time to get out of sight? Could he hit me with that cannon from twenty feet away? From fifty feet? From the other end of the hall?

I can’t risk it. And yet I can’t just sit here either, wondering whether my lungs closing up will kill me before this machine pony does. Not even my workshop can save me now: every gear inside is too slippery to hold, every nail and screw too brittle to touch. I can’t decide. I can’t escape. I can’t…

“Ruby.”

Applejack’s voice is softer than usual, her tone calm and controlled in a way that makes it plainly obvious she’s forcing herself to stay that way. I try to answer her, but my lips are shaking too much to even form her name.

“You don’t have to talk, I can see you fine,” she intones. “Just keep quiet and don’t move.”

My brain catches her drift easily enough, but my tongue is still a step or two behind by the time she’s done. “M-m-maybe I could-”

“Don’t. Move.”

I swallow hard and obey, just as the filly turns around again. “Come on, Mr. B!” she shouts. “They’re dancing for us!”

“Look at the ground, Ruby,” Applejack tells me.

Now it’s my mouth that beats my mind to the punch. “What?”

“He’s watchin’ you because you aren’t lookin’ away. They’re only protectors, Ruby, wild dogs trained to bite only when one of those little ones hears somepony bark. Long as you keep starin’ at him, he’ll keep thinkin’ you’re a threat. So just look at the ground, and don’t so much as scratch an itch till he’s decided you ain’t worth his time.”

I take a shallow breath in through my nose and, and as slowly as I can, tilt my head to the side and turn my eyes down towards the floor, sliding my hoof off my chest in the same motion. The beast still doesn’t move. Sweat begins to bead at my maneline, but I don’t dare wipe them away, so soon my forehead is dripping from the heat flowing through my body and collecting in my face.

“Mr. B!”

It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to look up, and I guess that single action is what finally convinces the beast that I’m not going to attack. After one last parting groan, his shadow lifts from over me, and he retreats down the hall to join the filly he’s apparently supposed to be guarding. My eyes start to burn as soon as he’s gone, but I squeeze them shut tight and still don’t move. There’ll be plenty of time for emotional breakdowns later. In this moment right now, Applejack’s word is the only thing I need to hold on to.

“Stand up. Slow and steady,” she whispers. “Make sure Link’s all right.”

Link. Stars above, I’d completely forgotten he was even here. Wasn’t I mad at him about something? In the middle of rolling over onto my stomach, I throw a fleeting glance over to where I last remember seeing him, where the beast shoved him aside on his way towards me. He’s already on his hooves, a bit pale and shaky but otherwise unhurt. Our eyes meet long enough to confirm that both of us still generally in one piece, and then he looks back down the hall to keep an eye on the hall’s other two occupants while I occupy myself with remembering how to walk.

“You’re gonna have to pass by ‘em again to get to the elevators,” Applejack says once I’m up. “That big lug’ll preen for ya a bit once you get close, but so long as you don’t make any sudden moves and you keep movin’, he should let you by.”

He should let us by. I feel better already.

Without any more instruction to go on than that, all I can do is put one hoof in front of the other and keep my eyes on the prize as much as possible. Link falls in step behind me once I get going, pausing just long enough to grab his still-dripping crowbar and levitate it by his side where the beast won’t be able to see it. At least he’s being reasonable about that.

Oh, right, that’s what we were fighting about. The mare’s body was another thing I’d forgotten about over the past minute or two. I step around her as gingerly as I can, but keeping my eyes off that particular obstacle inevitably leads to my gaze drifting towards the much bigger one down the hall. The beast is now standing over the stallion with the hole in his head, his little partner crouched behind his torso with her hoof stuck inside his jacket pocket. Except that can’t be all she’s doing, because her hoof’s not moving like she’s digging around for something in there. Curiosity wins out over fear, and I give the pair a closer look just as the filly gives a little grunt and yanks her leg back away from the stallion.

A six-inch long needle comes with it.

A prickling chill washes over my stomach, and I stop dead in my tracks. I have only a moment to pretend I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing before the filly tilts her hoof to the side, examines a red vial inside the bracer the needle is protruding from, and then bites her lip and stabs back down. The syringe reenters the stallion’s body with a wet shick, and the floor pitches like a sailboat at high tide.

“Ain’t nothin’ you can do for him now,” Applejack calls out from beneath the waves. “Eyes down, hooves forward.”

Eyes down, hooves forward. I say it again under my breath, and each repetition gives me a little more strength to keep moving towards the hallway. Eyes down, hooves forward.

We’re about ten feet away from the filly before her protector notices us again. His angry groans and glinting faceplate follow us all the way past them. Eyes down, hooves forward.

We reach the second stallion’s body, and Link switches his crowbar out for the other pony’s more powerful cannon. When he leans back up, his forehead is shining with sweat. Eyes down, hooves forward.

We round the corner and walk a few more steps, until finally the corridor opens up into the balcony Applejack promised us we’d find there. Link nods forcefully and wipes his face with a forehoof, but I can’t even manage a relieved sigh. Even though we’re out of sight, nothing about this place feels safe anymore.

“Congratulations,” Applejack says wryly as I give a quick glance down towards the plaza. “You just survived your first meetin’ with a Big Daddy.”

“Is that something…I should be proud of?” I gasp back.

“Considering that rivet gun’a his can put six inches of steel through ya at seventy-five yards, it’s more than most ponies can say,” Applejack answers with a dark sigh. “Elevators are just off to the right there.”

The wonder of my first encounter with the automated machines has worn off a bit by now, so once Link and I are slowly sinking even deeper into Hades, I’m left with nothing to do but ask the question that’s been bouncing around in my mind since we got here. “What happened to this place?”

We’ve gone down almost a full floor before Applejack answers, and when she does, it’s in a soft voice tinged not with the motherly authority I’ve come to expect, but with a deep, almost physical sense of regret. “You might as well’ve asked what didn’t happen,” she murmurs. “Maybe the war we fought with each other did us in, or maybe the one we were fightin’ with nature all those years before whittled us down first. Could’ve been big business or big government, or big ponies pushing the smaller ones a step too far…most of us just didn’t care so long as the apples were fresh and the hypos kept rollin’ off the line.

“Me, though, I think we just got too smart for our own good. We made our bodies strong and our minds fast, and we kept buildin’ ourselves up higher and higher till it was too late to realize we were livin’ beyond our means, that those wings we were flyin’ on were just gossamer and mornin’ dew. Time was, this place was the busiest hive a bee could ever hope to find. Ponies came here from all over Equestria chasin’ after their dreams…now they’re ghosts, dead as the city they thought would save ‘em.”

The elevator creaks to a halt as it reaches the end of its descent, and once the doors slide open Link and I are treated to our first ground-level view of the desecrated plaza. The bodies littering the floor don’t move, and neither do we. “I don’t know what kind’a fate or providence got y’all in that bathysphere, Ruby,” Applejack says, with a new tone to her voice that almost resembles humility, “but if it’s kin with the kind that got me here…I reckon if I help you, maybe you can help me. Hope’s a right powerful thing to come by, and if believin’ in it makes me a fool…well, I can think’a worse things to be in a time like this.”

Applejack is silent for a moment, one that’s just long enough for her to gain her old personality back. “G’wan and head across the plaza,” she says. “I’ll send a bit’a help down once you’re a few jumps outta the fryin’ pan.”

I nod to myself and let the radio fall silent again, but I still can’t bring myself to step out of the elevator. It’s not even the bodies that bother me anymore; much more than that, I can’t shake the feeling that something else is in the plaza, watching and waiting for us to come just a bit farther out in the open. Normally, the point where I started thinking that would also be the point where the rational part of my brain told me I was being ridiculous, but in light of being rational getting me absolutely jacksquat so far in this place, paranoia just seems like an appropriate response right now.

But once I finally step out of the elevator and stop beside the stiffened legs of a long-dead unicorn, I begin to wonder whether those nerves are really justified after all. The plaza practically defines the term “deserted”; minus the sounds of my breath rasping out of my lungs, the whole place is silent as a proverbial grave. Not to mention it’s packed with enough bodies to make it a literal one. I let a shudder work its way through my back and then keep going, telling myself under my breath that the only way to get over fear is to face it head-on.

We make it all the way up to the fountain before I realize that’s also a great way to get yourself killed.

The lights, of course, are the first things to go. When I first walked into it, the plaza was lit by the same rounded lamps I saw in the bathysphere bay, but the instant I put a hoof past the far edge of the central fountain’s basin, each one fizzles out one by one until the place is nearly pitch-black. The effect, as I’m sure it’s meant to be, is terrifying, almost as much as the sudden screeching of metal that rings out from a dozen places high overhead, and the low whispers and growls that slither out after them like snakes closing in on a pair of half-crippled mice.

Before I can even so much as scream my last and hope whatever’s coming for me is kind enough to end my life quickly, the plaza is flooded with bright white light again, though this time it’s not coming from the walls. It’s coming from up above us, where something has unfolded from the rivets in the walls to form three giant glowing screens arranged in a circle around the domed glass ceiling. Struck half-blind by the sudden flash, the screens quickly take up what little vision I have left, which means I’m still looking up at them when the light shimmers and abruptly morphs into an image of the same mare I saw in the theater, and up in the tower, and in every shattered strut and rivet in this sunforsaken place. I blink up at the face and the face blinks back, and then Onyx Ryder’s lips curl into a sneer, and her booming voice fills the plaza with words that feel powerful enough to break me in half.

“The vultures of Canterlot smell blood in the surf…and yet still they circle overhead, sending their chicks down to brave the unfathomable depths of equine dissimulation. Tell me, little birdies, what did you think you’d find down here? A worm from the Princess, a crumb of bread from the scientific nobility? Here’s the news: Harmony isn’t some piddling colony ready to be boxed up and shipped back home, and Onyx Ryder is not some modest mare of science begging to be snapped up and bid upon by the oligarchy of the elite. But of course, the barbarous mind of the vassal knows nothing of passion or initiative, and such a creature is less than despicable. You are merely…useless.”

Off to the right, something flits across a balcony before latching onto the wall and turning its head down towards me. As if she’s aware of my inattention, Ryder pauses in her speech for a moment, so I have plenty of time to watch in horror as more shadowy shapes pour out of doorways and air ducts and jagged holes in the walls, crawling and flying down towards the plaza like monstrous black flies. The growls are much closer now, and getting louder by the second. “We are all connected by the Great Chain of Progress,” Ryder goes on, “and if a link in the chain is inadequate…for the good of all, it must be removed.”

Link backs into me and pushes us into a slow, consistent spin, but no matter where we look, the picture is the same. Everything is living, everything is breathing, everything is oozing down closer and closer to the spot where we’ll make our first and final stand. “So I bid you adieu, little birdies,” Ryder finishes, already sounding bored by the formality. “Perhaps next time, your associates might know better than to wander so far from the ne-”

The picture overhead doesn’t change, but suddenly the voice coming out of it is lost amid the even louder interruption of a jovial-sounding stallion with a deep baritone voice and a country drawl thick as pea soup. “Ho’ up there, sweet cheeks, ain’t no sense in gettin’ bowed up on their account,” he declares. “Tain’t a crime to stroll out and see the sights, now, is it?”

For a breath of a second, Ryder’s face is blank with shock, but her expression rockets back to abject rage two heartbeats later. “Daybreak, this doesn’t concern you!” she shouts.

“Aw shucks, darlin’, don’t be such a square,” Daybreak teases back. “Can’t let you have all the fun in this Podunk town.”

“Just as I can’t let you keep endeavoring to destroy it,” Ryder seethes back. Even the shadows on the walls have stopped to listen by now. A sudden feeling of lightness fills out my chest: in the confusion of the moment, everypony else in the room has completely forgotten we exist.

“Well, I s’pose we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that particular philosophy,” Daybreak muses before raising his suddenly angry voice. “Soup’s on, everypony!” he hollers. “Time to get ‘em while the gettin’s good!”

“Daybreak!” Ryder roars, but it’s too late. Before his name’s even finished echoing off her lips, a whole new sea of bodies swarms out of every nook and cranny in sight, and this time it’s garnished with a dozen whirring, whistling hunks of flying metal, all of which start spraying the walls with impossibly rapid cannon fire the instant they get into open air. Ryder’s forces get their bearings on the situation just in time to catch sight of Daybreak’s leaping for their throats, and within seconds the entire room has dissolved into chaotic, incomprehensible carnage. Shrieks and smoke choke the air, bodies fight and fall and pepper the ground with frightening regularity, and all the while both Ryder and Daybreak are screaming themselves hoarse telling their respective fighters who to kill and how violently to do it, although how they can tell which pony belongs to who is a mystery to me. I can barely even hear myself think right now, even though all that’s going through my mind for some reason is my name repeated over and over again. Even though the voice that’s saying it doesn’t sound like my own.

Even though that voice isn’t even inside my head at all.

“Ruby!” Applejack screams for what must be the tenth time. Distracted as I am fumbling with the radio, I don’t see the body hurdling towards me until pure reactive instinct forces me down as I catch the tiniest glimpse of it in the corner of my eye. The scabby black pegasus misses me by less than a foot and lands in the fountain with a bone-jarring splash, air bubbles and blood seeping out of the freshly opened hole in his neck. “Applejack!” I yell back as I crouch below the lip of the basin, my teeth chattering as the filthy water inside lips over the edge and splashes over my back.

“Oh, thank the stars,” Applejack says in return. "I don’t know what’s got into either’a them, but we’ll worry about that later! Get to that door and don’t stop runnin’ till there’s dirt between your legs!”

She doesn’t have to tell me hardly even once. I barely even comprehend the end of Applejack’s order before I’m sprinting faster than I even thought possible, the thick metal door on the other side of the plaza the only thing visible in the tunnel my vision has become. When the door is fifty feet away, another body plummets to Earth, this one a lacerated earth pony whose neck snaps on contact with the floor. At thirty-five feet, a unicorn bleeding from his mouth stumbles into my path, and with a lopsided grimace raises a wicked-looking barbed harpoon over his head. I’m only twenty feet from the door before I realize I just barreled straight through him like he wasn’t even there.

From then on, everything is a blur. The battle rages around me, the uproar deafening enough to scramble my thoughts even further. Beside me, Link is matching every step I take, and in front of me, the wheel on the front of the door is spinning. I’m fifteen feet from the door when it begins to open, ten when I can see a pony standing in the space behind it, five when I realize I’m going too fast to keep from barging right into them. Steel crashes, cannons rumble, and as I dive over the threshold I hear Ryder screech, “Get them!” at the top of her lungs.

Then the door clangs shut, the noise disappears, and I smack face-first into a yellow-furred earth mare with bracers on each foreleg and a braid of red mane hair swinging behind her head. We go down hard, our hooves clanging against the metal platform beneath us, but the other pony barely hits the ground before she’s up on her hooves again, panting with exertion and frantically beckoning us forward.

“This way!” she calls out with an accent that sounds remarkably like Applejack’s. “We gotta get y’all outta here ‘fore they get that door open again!”

Link and I share a look, but I don’t even have time to identify the emotion we’re sharing before we’re hot on the other mare’s heels, each hoofbeat reverberating off the glass walls of the tunnel that’s carrying us straight over a chasm that looks a thousand feet deep. We’re about two-thirds of the way across when the grinding squeal of the door sliding open reaches my ears, and judging by the way the mare leading us grits her teeth and groans, I’m pretty sure she heard it too.

“Over here!” she calls back, just before hanging a sharp right into another glass hallway about half the length of the first one, with a small fork in the middle where a support beam has been speared right through the center. In front of the beam lies another one of the flying cannons that Daybreak sent into the plaza, only this one’s been bolted to the floor and looks like it’s meant to stay there. My steps falter a bit as I remember how easily those things tore through the ponies clinging to the walls behind us, but the red-maned mare doesn’t slow down one bit. At least, not until we’re right on top of the thing.

“Stop!” she yells, sliding down into a crouch next to the machine without even checking to see if we’ve listened. Almost too fast for me to even see what she’s doing, the mare ejects a flathead screwdriver from inside one of her bracers and pries a panel off the side, and spends a few precious seconds rearranging the parts inside before slamming the panel back on and smacking the device to life.

“Go, go!”

The three of us turn tail and run again just as the mob behind us rounds the corner and catches sight of us. In the same instant, though, the mare’s bootlegged contraption catches sight of them as well, and soon the whole tunnel is ringing with concentrated bursts of cannon fire and the wails of the unfortunate ponies who took the full brunt of the assault. “That ain’t gonna slow ‘em down for long,” the mare grunts as we approach another crossroads. “Follow me. We’re takin’ a shortcut.”

Asking what exactly she means by “shortcut” would take far more energy than I have at the moment, so I just consign myself to enduring whatever fresh horror awaits me at the end of this tunnel, and mimic every step the mare in front of me takes. We turn left at the junction, run about fifty yards, then enter a building, turn right, then left, then left again, and then suddenly the air around me tastes fresh when I suck it down my throat. My sluggish brain registers the scent of flowers long before it tunes in to the fact that my hooves are thumping against the ground instead of clanging, and it even takes a second or two after that before I recognize the dark, crumbly stuff shifting between my legs is soil.

Soil. Dirt. Dirt between my legs. The scent of flowers invades my nose again, and now brings with it a soft, fruity smell. I look up and see green leaves and healthy brown tree trunks, and the crack my mind makes as it snaps in two is far too loud to just be something I just imagined. Green leaves. Brown trunks. Apple trees.

I’m in an apple orchard. I’m in an apple orchard under the sea.

“Come on,” the mare commands, though her voice is definitely more level now than it ever was before. “Ain’t too far now.”

She’s not kidding. Just a couple rows of trees and a corrugated storehouse later, we come to one last door big enough for half a dozen ponies to walk through side by side, bristling with rows of automated cannons and punctuated by a cylindrical camera hanging overhead that scans back and forth with a green spotlight along every inch of ground within ten feet of the door.

“Grand Galloping Gala. Apple Bloom,” the mare enunciates slowly, waiting for a telltale buzz from the door before continuing with her normal inflection. “Grounds are clear from where I’m standin’, Applejack.”

The same box that confirmed the mare’s voice now blossoms with the other one I’ve come to know so well in the past half-hour. “You hurt, AB?”

“Fit as a fiddle, and heavy two floaters,” AB replies. “Now open up ‘fore I break the lock again.”

The speaker in the door blips and cuts off, and then with a deep groaning noise and an even louder scraping one, a crack of light appears at the base of the door as it gradually begins to inch up off the ground. I see spotless gray tile, a braided blonde tail, a foreleg encased entire in gleaming gold metal, and then the door finishes its ascent and I’m staring past a pert, squarish nose, a ragged yellow cowlick, and a well-worn brown cowpony hat into wrinkled, weathered, weary green eyes that look like they’ve seen the whole world and everything in it. Exactly the kind of eyes I’d expect to see on a leader. Exactly the kind of eyes I’d expect to see on the pony who saved my life.

“Hey, Applejack,” I say a bit sheepishly.

“Howdy, Ruby. Howdy, Link,” she replies, giving me a once-over even as her freckles perk up with a smile. “You look rougher than a corn cob, sugarcube.”

“Tight schedule,” I answer with a weak grin of my own. “Didn’t have time to clean up.”

The chuckle that quip gets out of Applejack is small, but it warms me up so much to see a face so friendly that I couldn’t have cared less if she hadn’t even heard it. “Well, that’s fixed easily enough,” she remarks. “And if I’m not mistaken, I do believe I owe y’all an explanation or two.”

Link and I both remember his outburst at the same time, and to his credit, he has the decency to blush. “Don’t worry about it, sugarcube,” she tells him with another chuckle. “’F that’d been me in your place, I woulda hollered a lot longer than that. Louder, too.”

“Not to cut the meet-and-greet short,” the other mare butts in before any of us can continue shooting the breeze, “but the two-foot thick steel door and fifty-millimeter security turrets actually are here for a reason, so if we could all go ahead and hop on the other side’a those real quick, I’d be very much obliged.”

Applejack laughs for real this time, and when she looks over and flashes me a very poorly concealed eye roll, every nail and every screw that’s been twisted into my chest over the last few hours finally comes free. It’s not even the presence of security that makes me feel at ease; the feeling spreading through me goes much deeper than that. I don’t just feel safe, I feel comfortable, in a way that I haven’t felt in years. Maybe I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and maybe I have no way of getting back off it, and maybe I’m stuck here with a Canterlot socialite with dried oats for brains, but at least I’ve got one mare who I know will look out for me, who I know I can count on. Who I know I can trust.

That’s what this is, I realize as I step forward and enter Applejack’s home. That’s why I’m so happy. That’s why I’m so at ease. This is what it feels like.

This is what trust feels like.

“Come on down to the parlor and take a load off,” Applejack says as the door slams closed behind us. “I reckon we got some things to discuss.”

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• • •

“Come on, everypony, smile smile smile,

fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine...”

- Pinkamena Diane Pie

Farmer's Market - Part 1

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When I wake up, the sheets around me are damp, and the light filtering in through the window is a deep murky green. For a moment, I’m disoriented, my heart thudding painfully as I try to make sense of where I am, and then my last few waking hours come rushing back and my panic gives way to exhaustion. I’m not waking up to the cries of seagulls, that faded green paint on the walls wasn’t chosen by the hotel management, and that sure as salt isn’t Haywaii outside. I’m in Applejack’s hideaway, a tightly sealed complex buried deep within an impossible underwater city called Harmony, and the nightmare I just woke up from wasn’t a dream, but a memory: of our flight, of our crash, of sinking below inky black waves and screaming for air that’s far beyond my reach.

I kick off the covers and roll onto my side, grimacing as the mattress peels off my back. The bedroom isn’t cold, but my skin stays clammy no matter how many times I tell myself that the nightmare is over. Because it isn’t over, is it? I’m still trapped down here, where nothing is as it seems and everything wants me dead, and I still don’t know anything about what it is or why I’m here. Applejack already promised to answer any questions that popped into our heads, but once we got inside her compound and the immediate threat of a violent and horrifying death lessened a bit, the fatigue I’d been ignoring for hours hit me like an anvil. I hardly even made it into bed before everything went black. And now it’s been Celestia knew how long, and I feel even more exhausted than before.

I roll onto my back again and let out a groan. I have no energy, no idea what’s going on, no part of me that wasn’t either sore or soaked with sweat, and I can’t even muster up the will to feel scared about it anymore. The only emotion I have rattling around in my chest now is a dull, smoldering anger, and it’s anypony’s guess where exactly I would find its source.

“You should try counting.”

Apparently, I don’t have the strength to jump a foot in the air either, although the voice that pipes up next to the bed hardly sounds threatening. Actually, it sounds like it came from a little filly, and as I turn my head and look down, I see that it belongs to one.

“That’s what Mommy does when she’s mad,” she continues, her grassy green mane braided over her shoulder and her big blue eyes fixed unblinkingly on me. “She takes a big breath and blows it out real hard, and scrunches up her face like this—” The filly puffs out her cheeks and puts on an exaggerated scowl, and a grin splits my face before I can swallow it back. “—and then she counts a whole bunch until she’s happy again.”

“And that works?” I ask.

“Mostly,” she replies with a shrug. We stare at each other for a few seconds, and then the filly trots over to the corner of the room, where a beat-up old scooter sits propped up against the wall next to a weathered brown suitcase. She pops the latches on the suitcase and pulls out a well-worn stuffed cow, and once she plops down on the floor with it balanced tenderly between her forelegs, I can see that the rest of the case is filled to the brim with toys, cardboard books, and more stuffed animals.

“You’re not from here, are you?” she says after stroking the cow’s ears for a minute or two, her eyes never leaving her doll but her question clearly directed at me.

I hold back from being completely honest at first, but come to my senses after a moment’s thought. Paranoia might be a fair creed to live by in this city, but there’s hardly any risk in telling a six-year-old filly something it seems she already knows. “What gave it away?” I reply.

“Your eyes are too big,” she says. “And you . . . ”

In the middle of her thought, the filly bites her tongue and squeezes her doll against her chest, her cheeks flushing the same color as her mane. “I what?” I ask her.

“You talked in your sleep some,” she mumbles through the mop of black yarn atop the cow’s limp head. “‘M sorry. I didn’t mean to listen, but . . . ”

The filly’s eyes dart back down into her lap, and a couple strange details that flew right over my head before suddenly snap together in a way that makes perfect sense. No wonder this filly seems a bit out of her element. I’ve been passed out for hours in her own bedroom.

“It’s fine,” I tell her with a sheepish look of my own. “Thanks for letting me use your bed.”

The filly perks up her ears, and her smile is so genuine that it’s almost hard to comprehend it coexisting with the rest of this city. When’s this place going to rear its ugly head again? I wonder.

“You’re welcome,” she chirps. “Who’s Garnet?”

Ah. Right about now. “You said his name a lot,” the filly explains. “You sounded mad. You should try counting.”

“He’s my brother,” I eventually tell her.

“Why are you mad at him?”

“It’s a long story.”

The filly’s gaze flicks up and down my front, and for a moment I get the strangest feeling that she knows I’m hiding something from her, and that she knows I don’t want to talk about it. “I get mad at my sister sometimes too,” she says. She lifts her forelegs up and down, and the cow dances in her lap. “But we always forgive each other. It’s no fun being mad at somepony who loves you.”

The conversation dies quickly after that, and thankfully I never end up having to revive it. “Cider?” a familiar voice calls from outside the door. “Where’d ya run off to?”

“We’re in here!” the filly calls out. I hear hoofsteps coming down the hall, and then the door retreats up into the ceiling to reveal the mare that led Link and me to safety. She gives me a friendly nod, and then the filly a reproachful glare.

“Apple Cider, what’re you doin’ in here?” she says. “I told ya not to bother our guest!”

“No, no, she’s fine,” I say quickly, rolling onto my side in a feeble attempt to look presentable. “I was already awake when she came in.”

“If you say so,” the older mare answers cheerfully enough, although she still has one dubious eye on Apple Cider. “How’d the R an’ R treat ya?”

“Super,” I mumble. “Which one of you beat me over the head with a two-by-four, again?”

The mare grins, and the laugh that bubbles out of her throat sounds more like a little foal’s giggle. “Yeah, I reckoned you’d still feel a bit hazy right about now,” she says. “But if you’re hungry, we got all the pancakes ya can eat hot off the iron in the kitchen. They’re Applejack’s own recipe, and she makes ‘em better than anypony in Equestria. Think your friend Link’s already gone through half a dozen.”

And just like that, the good times grind to a halt How am I supposed to deal with Link right now? How am I even supposed to look him in the eye after what happened? And how am I supposed to decide whether I should even be the one who’s so out of sorts about it?

Neither of the other girls comments on the tone my cheeks have taken on, but the look they share once they see it can’t possibly bode well. “Come on down any time you feel up to it,” the mare says as she ushers Apple Cider out of the room. “We’ll be sure to save ya a plate.”

The door slides closed behind them and latches with a gentle click, and I’m left to stew in my own thoughts. On the one hoof, going downstairs meaning facing Link, not to mention the reality of my situation, not to mention the inevitable talk with Applejack when she’ll go over in great detail how far up the creek I am. On the other hoof, going downstairs means I get pancakes, and after not getting any food in it for almost a full day, my stomach’s roaring loud enough to wake the dead. I waste twenty seconds or so wallowing in indecision again, and then I heave my legs off the bed and drag myself to the door. Those better be some good freaking pancakes.

I follow the heady scent of buttermilk through a oddly wide hallway lined with what look like abandoned shops until I end up in a large, windowless kitchen that looks built for a much larger crowd than the four ponies occupying its only table now. Apple Cider looks up and waves as soon as she sees me, but Link’s eyes only dart up for a moment before turning back down his plate, as if he’s hoping I won’t notice him there. Before I can figure out what the hay to make of that, Applejack pops out from behind the counter and shoots me a grin, her big brown hat still perched on her head even as fresh pancakes sizzle on the griddle by her side.

“Well, top’a the mornin’ to ya, sugarcube,” she calls out. “Come on in and help yourself. That plate right there should still be warm.”

I nod my head slowly and make my way towards the heavily laden plate Applejack just motioned to, right across the table from Link. Apple Cider is sitting to Link’s left and thoroughly engrossed in licking the syrup off her hooves, and as I sit down next to the mare I escaped the plaza with, Applejack trots away from the stove and takes her place at the head of the table, her metal leg clanking against the tile floor as she navigates her way to her seat.

“How’d you sleep?” she asks once she’s settled down.

“Okay,” I mumble. Talking with Applejack over the radio was easy. Now that we’re all face-to-face for the first time, though, my tongue’s old habit of gluing itself to the roof of my mouth whenever anypony looks me in the eye returns in force. To her credit, though, Applejack doesn’t let it faze her in the slightest.

“Good to hear,” she says. “I suppose you’ve already met Apple Bloom?” Applejack nods at the mare next to me, who gives me a sticky nudge on the shoulder as she works on swallowing a baseball-sized wad of pancake. She then turns her gaze over to the little filly to her right. “And this little apple seed here is Apple Cider.”

“Pleased t’meet ya,” Apple Cider chirps. I put on a smile until she’s looking at her plate again, but my gut is still roiling, and it’s not just from hunger anymore.

Applejack seems to take my silence as hesitation to speak up and commandeers the conversation accordingly. “There’ll be plenty’a time for talkin’ once our bellies are full,” she says. “In the meantime, how d’ya like your cakes? We’ve got chocolate chips and peanut butter, and if you ain’t much for fancy eatin’, there’s a dish’a plain ol’ butter over in the icebox.” Applejack looks down the table, and a frown passes over her face. “There should be some maple syrup floatin’ around here too,” she says half to herself, “but I don’t know where it ran off to. Last time I saw it, it was right about . . .”

“Here.”

I turn away from Applejack and see a dark brown bottle sitting in front of my plate, the hoof of the unicorn who pushed it over to me still resting against its far side. Link’s gaze drops down towards his lap the instant I get close to catching it with my own, but the look in his eyes is unmistakable even from the brief glimpse I got of it. He may be trying to pretend otherwise, but Link can’t bring himself to speak to me either, and quite frankly it’s not hard to imagine why. The mental image of his crowbar connecting with that earth mare’s head is a stain in my memory that no amount of apologizing is ever going to bleach out, and whether the emotion I see flashing through his eyes is guilt or embarrassment or just a potent sense of how awkward this all is, it still isn’t something I’m all that worried about interpreting at the moment.

“Thanks,” I murmur, and Link gives a slight nod before leaning back from the table and, a few fidgets later, stands up and mutters something about finding the bathroom before walking out of the kitchen through a side door. By the time I’m done watching him leave, everybody else is concentrated on their food, but I know they must’ve been watching the whole exchange. My face flushes with heat, and I hunch over and start shoveling pancakes into my mouth before they start watching that too. Soon enough, though, the motions I’m going through have a little more feeling put into them. The pancakes are amazing, each one thick and fluffy with bits of candied apples mixed right into the batter as well as smeared all over the top. Even though my tablemates had a head start on me, my plate is clean a good two minutes before any of theirs.

“Told ya they were good,” Apple Bloom says with a smirk as our mutual food coma begins to settle in. A smile plays across Applejack’s face as well when she sees my half-lidded eyes. Once I’ve finished digesting enough to focus on her, she glances up at something behind me before clearing her throat and starting to speak.

“S’pose I don’t have to guess what you’re hungry for now,” she says. Her smile this time has a wry tinge to it, and her eyes a playful glint. Once I nod, she looks behind me again. “Or you, for that matter.”

I turn around just in time to see Link sit back down at the table. He nods at Applejack, and doesn’t seem to notice I’m staring at him. “Well, I reckon I could talk your ears off ‘bout durn near anything down here, but I’m guessin’ neither’a you are hankerin’ for a grand tour,” Applejack goes on. “So if you want to talk for five minutes or fifty, it don’t make a lick’a difference to me. Ask me any question, and I’ll tell you no lie. That sound all right to you?”

No, not really. I was kind of counting on the grand tour thing, honestly. I try to think of a question, any question, but so many are piling up in my head that my whole brain feels like it’s going numb. For a moment, I look for Link to cover for me, but once again the thought of having to depend on him to bail me out is somehow enough to spur me to action. I guess he is good to have around for some things.

“Who built this place?” I ask Applejack, whose first reaction is to nod quickly and let her shoulders slack a bit. Despite what she just said, it’s not hard to tell she’s relieved that I started out with such a simple question.

“Technically speakin’, you’ve already met her,” she says. “Miss Onyx Aloysius Ryder: scientist, physicist, and magical scholar extraordinaire, and mother to the most ornery little brainchild this world’s ever known.

“She made all this by herself?”

“Well . . . not entirely.” Applejack grins again. “I might have to break that promise I made about talkin’ your ears off.”

“It’s fine,” I tell her, and I really mean it. Maybe it’s just the pancakes talking, but without anything shooting at me or chasing me with monkey wrenches, the hypnotizing sense of curiosity I felt when I first saw this place is starting to come back. And as long as indulging in it involves a lot of Applejack talking and me just listening, that suits me just fine.

“You ever heard’a somethin’ called the Canterlot Occulumental Board?” Applejack begins. “Don’t worry about it,” she reassures us once Link and I both shake our heads. “I hadn’t either when I was your age. They’re a group’a unicorns up in Canterlot who keep track of all the arcane knowledge in Equestria. Basically, the best and brightest magical minds anypony’s got anywhere. Now, the average pony whittling away their days in Manehatten or Trottingham wouldn’t give two bits about these folks, but for anyone who fancied themselves an inventor or a magician, they were the next best thing to Celestia herself. So about . . . fifteen years ago now, I reckon, a scrappy little unicorn nobody’d ever heard of went before the Board with somethin’ he called ‘Magic Synthesis’. He told ‘em he’d figured out a way to collect magic into somethin’ physical, a liquid supply of energy that anypony could use whenever they wanted. Problem was, though, all those ponies on the Board got kinda stuffy sittin’ cooped up in the city all hours of the day, so sometimes they didn’t take too kindly to ponies comin’ up to them with wild an’ crazy ideas like that.”

’’Specially if those ideas didn’t mesh with the way they already saw the world,” Apple Bloom added as Applejack nodded her agreement. “The way I heard it, he never even got to finish his speech before they had him out on his butt bouncin’ down the front steps.”

“What happened to him?” I ask as Apple Cider giggles into her hooves and mimics Apple Bloom’s comment under her breath. Applejack shrugs, but with the way her shoulders never quite come all the way back down from it, I get the feeling she knows a lot more about the subject then she’s letting on.

“Ryder found him drunk half to death in a back alley and drug him off to wherever she was livin’ then, and don’t ask me if I know where she came from ‘cause I doubt there’s anyone alive who does. Anyway, she sobered him up, kept him fed and watered a couple days till he’d warmed up to her a bit, and then laid it on him: her city under the waves, an underwater fortress of freedom and opportunity, the whole nine yards. And he bought it like cheap cider.”

Finally, Link speaks up. “What was his name?”

For the next minute or so, Applejack mouths words to herself that no one else can hear, and I’m increasingly sure she isn’t going to reply. “Foxtail Meadow,” she finally says, her voice quiet and aimed somewhere beyond what any of us can see. “He was . . . a genius, one of the smartest ponies I’ve ever known. He grew up in Dream Valley, spent his whole life there cuttin’ wheat and dreamin’ up things nopony in his family could begin to understand. Ryder was the mind and the body of this city, but Foxtail . . . he was the soul, the fire burnin’ inside that kept it steamin’ along against every odd imaginable. In the early days, he got ponies from every corner of Equestria down here: scientists, artists, doctors, musicians. All of them at the top’a their field, and all of ‘em spirited out right from underneath Canterlot’s nose. Even now, I doubt there’s more than ten ponies back on the mainland who’ve even heard of him, let alone of the city he lived in. And his voice . . . when he spoke, it was like the seas all stopped flowin’ just to hear the words he sent soakin’ into ‘em. He could tell a story that’d make ya laugh, cry, chomp at the bit and scream for somepony’s head on a stick, and then when it was all said and done he’d still just be a little colt from way out yonder, a sixth-generation farmer who fell through pure dumb luck into the life he’d always dreamed of, and only wanted to keep from lettin’ it fade away.”

Applejack blows out a sigh and gives me a glance as if she sees the next question coming from a mile away. Judging by the way her eyebrows shoot up a moment later, though, I don’t think the one I end up asking was the one she had in mind. “Were you one of those ponies? The scientists and artists and all?”

“Hardly,” she replies with a snort. “That’d be Twilight Sparkle you’re thinking of, and if there’s one pony who ever lived who could go hoof-to-hoof with Foxtail in the brains department, it was her.”

“Yeah, I remember her.” One of Applejack’s eyebrows drops back down to give me a curious look. “There was an audiotape inside the bathysphere,” I explain. “I guess it recorded you guys coming down here.”

“Is that so?” Applejack says with a small chuckle. “Well, in any case, I suppose you already know how this part’a the story ends. Twilight went to the Board with proof that Foxtail was right and got the same reception, and she’d hardly even gotten back home ‘fore Ryder had a letter sealed and sent invitin’ her down to show off what she’d done.”

“What do you mean, what she’d done?” Link cuts in. “Wasn’t Foxtail down here before that? Didn’t he already know all that stuff?”

“Well, that’s just the thing: he did know it all, but only in theory. Twilight was the only one to ever put it to the test and got somethin’ usable out of it. In all the years he spent down here before she popped into the picture, Foxtail never figured out how to get it to work on his own.”

“Never really figured it out after that either,” Apple Bloom mutters with a roll of her eyes.

“And he and Ryder had another problem too,” Applejack continues. “With enough blood, sweat, bits, and pure skill with magic, they’d managed to build enough of Harmony to go ahead and call it a city, but they had no way of keeping it alive. The plan was that Foxtail would figure out how to turn his theory into an energy source they could use to power the city and all the technomagical inventions gettin’ slapped together inside it, but the more time passed, the more the whole thing started frayin’ around the edges. They probably didn’t have more than a month left in ‘em when we set out with Twilight.”

“‘We’?” I ask.

“Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity and her little sister Sweetie Belle, and me an’ Apple Bloom here,” Applejack says, drumming her hoof gently on the table with each name. “We were all friends beforehand, all from the same town, figured we’d ride out with Twilight for moral support. Rarity and I even brought our little sisters when they asked to tag along. We thought they might like to get out and see the sights too. We thought, ‘What’s the harm in takin’ ‘em out on a trip with us for once?’”

Applejack looks down and studies the table, and Apple Bloom pulls her lips tight across her teeth and rests her forehoof on her big sister’s shoulder. “That was ten years ago.”

Link lets out a heavy sigh and curses under his breath, and the forehoof that I’ve unconsciously slid over my mouth is the only thing keeping me from doing the same. Here I am, tearing my hair out over the thought of spending one more night in this place, when the mare who let one of her only allies sacrifice his life to save ours has been stuck down here here for an entire decade. These mares have been living at the bottom of the ocean for almost half the time I’ve been alive, and I had the gall to think I was the victim here. Shame forces my eyes closed and my hoof to stay clapped over my lips, but even still my curiosity is nearly bubbling over underneath it all.

“What happened?” I whisper. “When did everything go wrong?”

Applejack’s eyes flick up from the table and settle on me with the weight of every minute she’s whiled away in this underwater prison. She blinks twice and seems to mull something over for a bit, and then she turns to Apple Bloom while sending a pointed glance back in the opposite direction. Apple Bloom looks the same way for a moment before nodding, the message received as if she and her sister share one contiguous mind.

“You know somethin’, sugar plum,” she says to Apple Cider, who for our entire conversation had been patiently playing with her hooves and humming a perky little tune to herself. “I think you still owe me a game’a Stairs n’ Slides. I swear you cheated last time!”

“Nuh-uh!” Apple Cider argues through a powerful voice crack. “And I’m not a plum, I’m an Apple!”

“You sure ‘bout that? ‘Cause from here, you look more a pumpkin eater,” Apple Bloom says, an impish smile growing on her face as she reaches across the table and pokes the younger filly in the cheek. “Cheater, cheater.”

“Stop it!” Apple Cider squeals, though she’s giggling like mad the whole time.

“So what d’ya say, pardner?” Apple Bloom says, her voice dropping into a comically thick drawl. “Ya wanna put yer bits where yer gums’re bumpin’?”

“You’re on!” Cider shouts, hopping down from the table and galloping back towards her room. Apple Bloom jumps up and follows her at about the same pace, but not before giving Applejack another nod and me a quick wink on the side. Once Link and I are the only other ponies left in the room, Applejack puts both her forehooves together beneath her chin and eyes us with a weary look that’s still hard enough to cut through steel. There’s no happy smile brightening up her expression now.

“The one thing you have to understand is that nopony, and I mean nopony, meant for any’a this to happen,” she says in a tone so low it almost qualifies as a whisper. “We all made mistakes, we all tested waters we should’ve known better than to swim in, but no matter what you hear or what you think after I tell you this, there’s no one pony to blame. This is all our burden to bear.”

Applejack pauses, waiting for one of us to protest. Though I hate to admit it, I gain a tiny bit of respect back for Link when he’s just as silent as I am. “Once Twilight showed Foxtail how to make his formula work, everything changed overnight,” Applejack says. “Power grids were built, pipes were run all up and down every building in the city. They probably had the whole infrastructure planned out before they so much as laid a cornerstone for the first one. Even today, every light switch, every automatic door, every camera and video screen . . . all of it runs off that same magical energy. There’s a network goin’ through darn near every square inch of this city, and once they got the generators set up under Central Control, nobody hardly even thought about it anymore. We just took everything for granted, just kept sucking at that bottle we knew was never gonna run dry. For about two and a half years, it was like livin’ in heaven.”

“But you guys were stuck down here,” I can’t help but interrupt, and only because my flesh is still crawling over the point I just made. “What’d you do down here?”

Applejack makes a sweeping gesture towards the space around here. “You’re lookin’ at it, kiddo,” she replies with a lopsided grin. “You can stick me any place in this world or under it, but if there’s apples to be bucked wherever I end up, then I can make do with that just fine.”

Just for fun, I actually visualize the line being drawn between the two dots floating around in my brain. “That was your apple orchard we ran through,” I say, though by the time I get the whole thought out, it already seems painfully obvious. Where else would a mare named Applejack work?

“My pride and joy,” Applejack confirms. “We more or less grew the whole thing ourselves. ‘Fore we got here, all they had to work the fields were a couple miners who only requested a job reassignment ‘cause they thought they’d get free cider outta the deal. Once we got rid’a them and dug the place out from where they’d run it into the ground, it was almost like working the farm back in Ponyville. You even get used to all that artificial sunlight after a while.”

Applejack’s grin after that last comment is about as wooden as the table she’s leaned against, but I see no reason not to let it pass on by. “What about everyone else?”

“They all found ways to keep themselves occupied. Rarity was simple. She hardly got three steps outta the bathysphere before she had half the ponies in the city beggin’ her to make ‘em somethin’ to wear other than jumpsuits and overalls. Fluttershy didn’t take much longer. She was nervous at first, but the instant she found Arcadia an’ took a gander at the forest Ryder’d made to keep our air supply fresh, it was love at first sight. I figured Rainbow Dash would take it the worst, what with how much she loved flyin’, but it was only a couple weeks or so ‘fore she found a whole group of pegasi to roost with. And Pinkie . . . ”

Applejack heaves a sigh, chuckling to herself as she gazes up at the ceiling. “Landsake, I don’t think she shut her mouth once the whole first month we were here. Everything amazed her, everything was a new adventure for her . . . heck, I reckon she was friends with more ponies than we ever knew were here in the first place. That was Pinkie Pie for ya, always happy, always bouncin’ around with a smile on her face and that squeaky little laugh . . . ”

Once again, Link and I know better than to speak. I wrap my hooves around my shoulders to keep out the chill that’s suddenly descended upon the room, and keep my eyes locked on Applejack. She never takes her away from the ceiling.

“They called it MOON,” she says. “The stuff Twilight and Foxtail made. Guess they thought that blue glow it had looked like the night sky or somethin’. You know, I never did ask her why they called it that. Had plenty’a opportunities, but just . . . never thought it was important. Figured as long as it was working, and she was happy working on it, what was the harm in just lettin’ things run their course?” She chuckles again, this time with a voice empty of emotion. “Shoulda known better. Shoulda known better.”

Now she looks back down at me. “You remember what I told you about those wings made’a gossamer and morning dew?” I nod, and she continues, picking up a sugar cube from a dish in front of her and balancing it between her forehooves. “There’s a spell I saw once that gives unicorns and earth ponies wings like that, and that’s a whole ‘nother story there, lemme tell you. But there’s somethin’ I saw that day that I ain’t never gonna forget: those wings were just about the prettiest things I’d ever seen, but the instant you flew too close to the sun . . . ”

Applejack pushes her hooves together, and the sugar cube crumbles into dust. “We had everything we could ever want down here. It may not have been home and we may not have any other choice, but for what it was this place really was somethin’ special once. But Foxtail and Twilight were too smart for that, too determined to push themselves to the limit to be happy with what they’d already done. So they kept experimentin’, kept playin’ around with the MOON formula to see what else they could create. Kept tellin’ everybody there was a way to make it more powerful, that there was secrets of magical power that nopony in the history of Equestria could have ever dreamed of unlocking before. And, Celestia save us all, we believed ‘em.

“It was October, I think, ‘bout seven years ago when they finally did it. Some say Foxtail did it himself, most others figure he and Twilight worked it out together, but one way or another they’d cut so deep into the essence of magical power that they’d found a way to drain it right from the source. And when they finally worked it down to somethin’ they could contain, it glowed like the everlastin’ fire’a Hades, so a’course they called it SUN.”

“What did it do?” I ask.

“Mercy, what didn’t it do? It was magic in its rawest form. Not channeled through a horn or brewed up in one’a Ryder’s labs, just honest-to-goodness pure magical energy. It was exactly what Foxtail had said all along he could find, and you better believe he couldn’t wait to spread the news once he finally sniffed it out. It was ten times as powerful as MOON, cost next to nothing to make, and he and Twilight were the only ponies alive who knew how to produce it. The banks couldn’t begin to hold all the money pourin’ into his company. Even renamed the whole thing in honor’a that.”

Applejack turns away, but not quickly enough to hide the muscles clenching in her jaw. “Ya probably saw it on the way in. Pyrus Industries: Ignis Aurum Probat.” She falls silent, her eyelids just barely pressed together. “Fire tests gold.”

With a small grunt of exertion, Applejack pushes back from the table and gets to her hooves. I almost get up too, but settle back down once I realize that she isn’t leaving the room. “The reason MOON was so popular was because they wasn’t a single thing dangerous about it,” she tells us as she paces. “It was clean magic, the same kind any unicorn can use just condensed into a physical form. SUN was different. There was no filter, nothin’ to dilute it down and keep it under control, and so it was that much more powerful. Oh, at first it was like a dream come true: the stuff didn’t just make you stronger, it made you invincible. Your legs moved faster, cuts and bruises would heal up ‘fore ya hardly even felt the pain . . . even your thoughts were quicker. Unicorns’ve always been able to make little changes in their own bodies and others, but now anypony could do it. Everypony did do it.”

“But there was a catch,” I murmur.

“But there were side effects,” Applejack clarifies. “SUN was powerful, but it was also unstable. There’s a reason nopony ever managed ta find this stuff before, and that’s because magic has to have a conduit. It has to have somethin’ that dumbs it down and makes it safe for a normal pony to use. Take that away, and all you’ve got is a bottle full of natural-born chaos, and when pure chaos get ahold of you like that, it ain’t likely to ever let go. Ponies got addicted, keep scavengin’ and scramblin’ for every drop’a SUN they could find, and the more they got, the more their bodies became deformed, and the more their minds began to come undone. Six months after the first vial hit the market, the city had already started to come apart. A year after that, it was nothin’ but ashes.”

“Didn’t anypony try to stop it?” I sputter. “Couldn’t somepony have done something?”

“Oh, they did somethin’, all right,” Applejack growls, sitting back down hard with a huff to match. “They went to war. Once Harmony was all but run into the ground, Ryder worked up an army of those security bots and marched right through Pyrus’s front door. Torn the place to shreds, killed Foxtail, and made off with all the SUN she could carry. Celestia knows what she did with it. And that was only the tip’a the iceberg, ‘cause it wasn’t even a month before Daybreak popped up and made Onyx Ryder look like a flower mare.”

“We saw him too,” Link interjects. “He sent a bunch of . . .”

“Splicers. That’s what they’re called. Ponies so addicted and so damaged that they’ll do anything to anypony for even the thought of gettin’ some SUN outta the bargain. That’s how they fight now: Ryder has her machines, and Daybreak calls up the splicers and promises ‘em whatever they can imagine so long as they come runnin’ when he calls. I don’t even know what he wants with you two. He used to be the revolutionary type, pinnn’ Foxtail up as a martyr and gabbin’ away about how the commonfolk needed to take back what they always owned, but nowadays he hardly does a thing ‘cept get under Ryder’s skin every now and then. In any case, he’s just as dangerous as she is, ‘specially with all those plasmids he keeps feedin’ those monsters . . .”

“What’s a plasmid?”

A strange echo trails behind each word of the question, and my heart seems to freeze over as I wonder whether one of those little foals with the glowing eyes and the needle somehow got in here. Once Applejack whips her head around towards the seat next to Link, though, where a little grassy-haired filly is waiting expectantly for an answer, my confusion clears up pretty quickly.

“What in . . . what are you doin’ in here?” Applejack says, sounding a little bit angry but mostly just baffled. Apple Cider opens her mouth as if to reply, only to be cut off by Apple Bloom practically sprinting back into the kitchen from a different door. The panic radiating out of her eyes sticks around until Apple Cider gives her a shy wave from across the room, at which point it morphs into the same look of confusion occupying her older sister’s face.

“She slipped away from me,” she says breathlessly as she sits down hard by my side. “She went around the corner to her room, and by the time I got back there she’d just vanished. Wouldn’t answer when I called her or nothin’.”

“What were you thinkin’, runnin’ away from Apple Bloom like that?” Applejack scolds. “You see how scared she is?”

“I wanted to hear about all the stuff that happened,” Apple Cider answers with an innocent shrug, climbing up into her seat and setting her hooves on the table exactly like Applejack. “What’s a plasmid?”

Applejack’s mouth drops open like she’s about to retort, but in the end she shuts it again without a word and blows out a sigh through her nose. The weary, resigned expression she’s wearing looks like one she’s quite familiar with.

“Plasmids,” she tells the group, “are serums of SUN that dig into the part of a pony’s body that can access magic, and rigs it up to give you control over a new type of magic. In other words, they give active magical powers to ponies who otherwise wouldn’t have any. Just about the only good thing that ever came outta Pyrus. And even that’s debatable.”

“What do you mean, ‘active magical powers’?” I ask.

“That’s what Twilight called ‘em. Earth ponies like us have passive magic that tells us where to plant crops and gives us a bit’a extra strength an’ durability. With the right plasmid, though, we could do anything a unicorn could do. Start a fire without any wood, shoot lightnin’ from the tips of our hooves . . .”

“Lift things without touchin’ ‘em,” Apple Bloom adds out of the corner of her mouth. I look at her, then at Applejack, then back at her without either of them ever looking me in the eye, and then the implication of what she just said finally hits home.

“You’re kidding me.”

Applejack pulls her lips tight across her teeth.

“You guys are kidding, right?”

“Told you we’d have to prove it,” Apple Bloom mutters.

“You’re honestly telling me that you guys can move things with your minds?”

“You can’t?” Apple Cider asks. She sounds genuinely confused, and that just makes me even angrier. My head is throbbing fit to burst with all the unbelievable things Applejack just shoved inside it, and for whatever reason this is the one that it just refuses to accept.

“So what, if I just pick something up and toss it up in the air,” I argue, grabbing a fork between my hooves and tossing it towards the ceiling as hard as I can, “then one of you earth ponies can catch it with your minds before it even hits the grou-”

I make the mistake of stopping to listen for the clink of the fork against the table before I finish my sentence, and when I make the second mistake of turning my head to watch it fall, I nearly bite my tongue in half. Because the fork never does hit the table. It never falls at all. It just stops in midair about a foot away from my nose, surrounded by a shimmering colorless haze and pointed right at the tip of Link’s dormant horn. Between that and the look on his face, I can’t even tell myself that he’s somehow in on the trick. All I can do is watch in dumb silence as the fork drops down towards Link’s plate, spears a soggy bite of leftover pancake on its tines, and lifts it across the table into the waiting mouth of Apple Bloom, who twitches her eyebrows up at me before glancing over at Applejack.

“I think she’s taking it well,” she says through her food as the fork comes to rest on her own plate. After a pause of maybe five minutes at the most, I push my jaw back up and bite my tongue again until I remember what we were talking about before.

“How is that possible?” I ask in a small voice.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Applejack replies through a loud but still friendly laugh. “I can’t make heads or tails of how they’re made myself, let alone tell y’all anything on the matter. Far as how they work goes, though, it’s all got to do with your genetic structure. Apparently, we’ve all got the capacity to handle active magic like that locked up somewhere in our heads, it’s just that unicorns are the only ones with the right equipment to use it. So what plasmids do is go up inside that place and rewire it a bit, mutate just enough of your genes so you can use that one new kind of magic. It ain’t as easy as it sounds, a’course, and splicin’ up with too many of ‘em can still get you just as bad as a SUN hypo or two, but they sure as sugar make buckin’ apples a darn sight easier.”

“Among other things,” Apple Bloom adds. I know she’s leading me towards asking what she means even without the bubbly tinge of excitement in her voice, but by now I’m way past the point where I have the brainpower left to weigh any alternatives.

“Things like . . . ”

“I can hotwire turrets without even getting’ near ‘em,” she says proudly, her forehoof glowing blue as a luminescent ball of what looks like wet paint materializes in her sole. “It only lasts for a minute or two, but for anything or anypony I tag with this, that’s all I ever need.”

I turn to Applejack, who rolls her eyes at Apple Bloom’s antics but still follows her lead anyway. “If I get close enough, I can trick a Big Daddy into followin’ me around for a spell,” she says. “Don’t have much use for it nowadays, but back when the war was in full swing, it got me outta more tight spots than I care to remember.”

“And you?” I ask Apple Cider, half just for the hay of it and half because my benumbed brain can’t help but wonder if she’s the one who can shoot lightning out of her hooves.

“I can shoot milk out of my nose!” she shouts. Turns out, I was closer than I thought. “Wanna see?”

Thankfully, Apple Bloom heads her off before she can find a straw. “I think Ruby’s had enough earth-shattering revelations today, sweetpea,” she gently replies. I press my lips together and nod, but even that’s almost too much of an effort to stand. If my brain were any more cooked right now, I could stick a skewer in my ear and serve it to a diamond dog for lunch.

“I reckon that’s enough answers to keep y’all satisfied?” Applejack teases. Her remark is pointed more at Link than me, even though he doesn’t seem nearly as dumbstruck right now. Oh, to have a stubby little hunk of bone sticking out of my head that made telekinesis seem like a perfectly normal skill for a pony of my race to have. Must be nice.

“Think I’m good, yeah,” he says slowly.

“I’m sorry I asked in the first place,” I moan a moment after. It isn’t even my headache that’s killing me now; now that Applejack’s all done redefining my conception of reality, that honor has been returned to the fact that I’m still stuck in this psychotic place, and that my odds of ever seeing dry land again just went from slim to none.

And to top it off, now all Applejack wants to do is act like my mother. “Ruby?” she says softly. “Sugarcube, you all ri-”

“No, I’m not all right!” I shout through my forehooves, too overwhelmed by all the different emotions bouncing around in my head to keep my cool any longer. When I look up a moment later and see the look in Applejack’s eyes, I get to add ‘guilt’ to the list as well. “I’m sorry for yelling, I just . . . I thought knowing what was going on would help, but now there’s just more I don’t know and more I don’t want to know, and none of that even matters because I’m still trapped down here no matter what!”

“Ruby, we’ll gonna be fine,” Link starts to tell me, but one emotion in particular boils over in time for me to cut him off too.

“No, just . . . shut up, Link!” I bark. “The last thing I need is you treating me like a foal again!”

“When the hell did I-”

“Sugarcube, calm down,” Applejack says firmly. Link makes like he’s going to ignore her, but bites his tongue at the last second and settles for a pointed look in my direction. “That goes for both’a y’all,” she says. I think she’s talking to me now. “The last thing you really need is to be treatin’ anypony here like enemies. We’re all in this together.”

She pauses just long enough to compose herself, and in that split second I get the feeling that she’s been building up to what she’s about to say this whole time. “And if what I think I know about how you got down here is true, then we might just all get out of here together too.”

Farmer's Market - Part 2

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It’s as if the floor’s dropped out from under me. As Link’s eyes widen and Apple Bloom’s face goes dark with shock before lighting up with infectious elation, a warm, prickly sensation of weightlessness floats through my stomach. It’s a feeling I recognize from a dozen Christmas mornings, from the first time I ever saw my cutie mark emblazoned on my flank.

“You mean we can leave?” I ask, hardly daring to give voice to the thought.

At first, Applejack evades answering me, and my heart drops so fast it’s almost nauseating. “I ain’t makin’ any guarantees,” she says. “There’s a lotta things that could still go wrong, and I’ve got no way’a tellin’ ya now how many of ‘em are likely to go right. But the fact that y’all are here now means there’s a way for ponies from the surface to get down to the city in the first place. And if there’s a way into Harmony, then I reckon there’s gotta be a way back out too.”

Normally, my conscience would take an opportunity like this to remind me once again how much of a jerk I’ve been during the last few minutes, but right now even that can’t manage to distract me. All the little demons of confusion, fury, and embarrassment that were playing keep-away with my sanity a minute ago are gone now, replaced by a single, all-consuming goal: there’s a way out of this place. I can get out of here. I can go home.

“What do we need to do?” I ask.

“First things first, we gotta find ourselves a bathysphere,” says Applejack, “but that ain’t as simple as just walkin’ into the lot and pickin’ one out in our favorite color. We’ve always had a couple big problems with the bathyspheres down here. Ryder always had total control over where they were programmed to go and whether they even ran at all. She told us that the ones back up to the surface was just out of commission at first, but once the war broke out, word got around that she’d shut ‘em all down entirely. Stuck some kinda genetic lock on the system that made her the only one who could use ‘em. Till you two dropped in, we couldn’t even get one started up, let alone movin’ anywhere.

“But seein’ as y’all have dropped in, it looks like we finally caught a break there. There’s still the trouble of gettin’ us a bathysphere that’ll suit our needs, though. There’s a few different models of bathysphere down here, and any one of ‘em could technically make it up to the surface in one piece. Only one kind is built so it can be steered off on its own, though, and huntin’ one down is like tryin’ ta find a cherry pit in a barrel’a apples.”

I bite my lip and manage to keep a groan from leaking out of my throat, but Applejack seems to realize she’s killing the moment anyway. “Luckily, there’s some good news there too,” she quickly continues. “I went snoopin’ around a bit last night, and I found one that’s just about brand spankin’ new down in Pluto’s Keep. All it needs is a few replacement parts, and somepony to man the rudder.”

Now a clearer picture of the situation is forming in my head, along with a seed of an idea that quickly begins to take root. “So once we have the parts, we can fix the bathysphere and ride it all the way back to Equestria?”

“That’s the idea,” Applejack confirms. “We should have enough MOON in storage to keep ‘er puttin’ along till we hit the shore, but Apple Bloom an’ I’ll need to head out into the city to scavenge up the parts. Shouldn’t take us more’n a day or so.”

I nod my understanding and set my jaw. That seed just sprouted into a full-grown oak tree. “I want to help.”

Just as I expected, it doesn’t take Applejack to realize I’m not talking about holding the tool box once they get back tomorrow. “That ain’t a good idea, sugarcube,” she says firmly, in a tone that makes it clear she doesn’t know who she’s trying to reason with. “There’s a lot more wrong with this place than you know even now, and none of it’s anything you should have to deal with.”

“I could say the same for you,” I shoot back, and I know she gets the message again because she looks down at her mechanical leg at the same time I do. “I’m going with you.”

“You ain’t under any obligation to do this, Ruby.”

“And you weren’t under any obligation to send Chestnut down to rescue us.” That message hits the hardest of all. “But you did it anyway, because you were that determined to keep us safe. So if you think I’m gonna just sit around here and watch you risk your lives for me again, you’ve got another thing coming.”

To be completely honest, that isn’t really why I’m so desperate to tag along. Knowing that I owe Applejack my life certainly plays into it, but much more than that, I just can’t stand the thought of waiting patiently back at the ranch while somepony else solves my problems for me. Now that the end of this ordeal is finally in sight, I know I can push through it on my own. I need to push through this on my own. And if stretching the truth about how much that need factors into this decision is what it takes to get me out of this compound and out of this city, then I think my sense of integrity can take one quick shot in the flank. Mostly because it’s working like a charm.

“You’re gonna need equipment,” Applejack says, her voice hard and her gaze leveled on me with the weight of a boulder. “And you need to look me in the eye and tell me you know what you’re gettin’ into. Because lemme tell you somethin’: I know for a fact that you don’t, because there’s no way in Hades you possibly could. I’ve seen things in this city you can’t begin to imagine, things you wouldn’t wish even on the ponies you saw doin’ ‘em, so don’t presume to think puffin’ your chest out like it’s bulletproof is gonna get you anywhere with me. Look at me and answer me honest, and I’ll make my own decision about whether I think I oughta take you for your word.”

I run my tongue over my lips and swallow hard, resisting the urge to shiver. On second thought, maybe that charm wasn’t as effective as I thought. Applejack’s a more worthy opponent than I’d expected, but it’s going to take more than that to knock my mind off this one track. Even thinking about what I’m doing scares me straight down to my core, but come hay fever or high water, I am not sitting this one out.

“I know what choice I’m making,” I tell Applejack. “And that’s the honest truth.”

For a good twenty seconds, Applejack stays completely still, studying me with the eye of someone well-trained at rooting out things other ponies wouldn’t want her to find. The sigh she finally lets out afterwards, though, doesn’t sound disdainful at all. If anything, it sounds almost pleased.

“Good enough,” she says, and I’m so busy patting myself on the back that I almost miss what she says next. “Then Link’s going with you.”

And now I’m so busy letting my jaw drop to the floor that I almost forget to make it form a response. “What?”

“You heard me,” says Applejack with what can’t really be a smirk on her face. “You might have your head set right to do this, but that don’t mean your body’s gonna keep up. You need backup. I made the mistake’a sending a pony out alone once this week already. I ain’t about to do it again.” Stars above, now she’s definitely smirking. “And besides all that, he was about two seconds from buttin’ in and volunteerin’ anyway. All I did was cut him off.”

I whip my head around towards Link, who judging by the look on his face sure as hay wasn’t expecting Applejack to jump to that conclusion. But even as I watch him, the corners of his mouth tighten into the grin of a colt caught stealing from the cookie jar, and he gives a conciliatory shrug of agreement.

“Beats being the only one stuck back here,” he says, and the look he shoots towards me is so cool and nonchalant that it makes my stomach spin even after I turn away. So that’s that. We’re going out together. I had one chance for some time alone to get my thoughts in order, and I’m about to waste it making sure Trigger-Happy Tim over here doesn’t start shooting holes in anything that’s likely to spring a leak. And I’m too caught off guard by how dramatically my best-laid plans just went to Hades in a handbasket to do anything about it. The moment to act is going to pass, and I’m going to sit here with my lips glued shut and my eyes burning a hole in whoever’s head I can stand to look at.

“Well, glad that’s settled, then,” Applejack remarks, slapping her hooves against the table before jumping up from her seat. “Since you two’re earnin’ your participation ribbons now, I don’t see any reason why I should put this ol’ leg’a mine through any more stress today. I’ll stay back here with Cider an’ give y’all as much guidance as I can over the radio, and in the meantime, y’all three best get yourselves ready to ship out. Apple Bloom, you wanna take Ruby down to Slinky’s and fit her out with some travelin’ gear?”

“Can do, big sis,” Apple Bloom replies, shooting me another wink as another icicle worms its way through my heart. Who in Equestria is Slinky? And why is a pony who seemingly lives in the compound without ever showing his face our to-go gal for whatever Applejack means by “travelin’ gear”?

“And as for you, Link,” Applejack goes on, “I reckoned I might show ya a thing or two ‘bout that pistol you picked up yesterday. I don’t expect you to be an expert—or to even use it, for that matter—but the least I’d hope for is that you don’t put any rounds in anything you ain’t aimin’ for.”

“Yeah,” Link agrees, turning ever so slightly towards me as he speaks. “Wouldn’t want that.”

Horseapples, I think that one was a iceberg.

Link keeps his eyes on me until I leave the room, and the chill that crawls through my belly because of it will probably stick around for most of the day that follows. At first he was just annoying, and then for a brief time he seemed psychotic, but now he just seems cold, as if nothing that’s going on around him has even penetrated into his brain yet. How am I supposed to go wandering around a deserted city with somepony like that? And how does Applejack not see how stupidly dangerous it is to give somepony like that a weapon?

“So. Link seems nice,” Apple Bloom comments as we pass by Apple Cider’s room and head down a flight of narrow metal stairs. “Cute too.”

“Oh, yeah, totally,” I reply after a bit, with all the candor and good cheer of a hungry windigo. Judging by the cockeyed look of silent curiosity Apple Bloom gives me, I figure she picked up on the sarcasm.

“Suit yourself,” she finally chuckles as we round the corner at the bottom. A few turns later, she comes to a stop outside a pair of rusty double-doors rimmed with faded neon lights, set between two empty display windows with no glass in their frames and below a block-lettered sign that reads “SLINKY’S SURPLUS & SUNDRIES”.

“Guess Slinky’s not much for housekeeping,” I think out loud. Apple Bloom gives me an odd look for a second, then with no warning whatsoever bursts out laughing.

“Aw, hayseed, Slinky ain’t down there,” she explains once she’s wiped her eyes clear. “This here’s just one’a his old franchises. This whole place used to be part of the Farmer’s Market ‘fore the war broke out, so we just set up a perimeter around a few’a the abandoned shops and called it home. Heck, ol’ Slink’s probably been dead five or six years now.”

Apple Bloom pushes open the door and flicks on a switch inside, bathing the dust-coated interior in hazy yellow light. “Good thing, too,” she adds as she starts picking her way through the debris to another door in the back. “Crazy bastard did more shoutin’ than a minotaur with a toothache. Don’t tell Applejack I called him that, though. She still gets kinda dodgy ‘bout swearin’ sometimes.”

Inside my head, relief is going west at one hundred and twelve miles per hour, and residual fear is going east at about a hundred and forty-three. It takes them about two seconds to meet in a fiery explosion of confusion, and I do my best to shake away the wreckage as I follow Apple Bloom into the store. “So what are we doing here, then?” I ask as I pick my way around the piles of junk cluttering the floor, towards something I can’t see through Apple Bloom’s swishing tail. I hear keys jingling for a moment, and then Apple Bloom steps back from what turns out to be another door and mashes a button on a panel nearby.

“Just borrowin’ a few necessities,” she says as the door slides open. Given what I see on the other side, that’s hardly what I would’ve called it.

The sign on the front said “SURPLUS”, and it wasn’t kidding: the store’s back room is really more of a back warehouse. A full dozen rows of corrugated metal scaffolds fill the massive interior, each one twenty feet tall and stuffed with every kind of knickknack and doodad I can think of, along with a good majority of the ones I can’t. If I were to imagine my own personal version of heaven, all this place would need to match it perfectly is a coffee machine and a couple rolls of paper towels to wipe up the drool spilling out of my mouth.

“You really couldn’t find the right parts for the bathysphere in here?” I ask.

“Believe me, I looked,” Apple Bloom grumbles as she closes the door behind us. “Go figure, huh? As far as regular survival supplies goes, though, this ol’ dump hasn’t let me down yet.” She pauses for a moment to get her bearings, then starts off down the fourth aisle from the left. “Come on, let’s get ya decked out.”

I follow Apple Bloom at a distance, so enraptured by the contents of the shelves we pass that it’s a challenge to even keep her in sight. Once, I nearly lose of track of her entirely when I stumble right past the turn I missed her taking. I figure it’d be a good idea to close the gap a bit after that.

“So does anypony else use this place?” I ask once I’ve caught up and matched Apple Bloom’s pace.

“Nope. Nopony here but us gearheads.” Apple Bloom seems to anticipate my eyebrows shooting up, and meets the gesture with a cheeky grin of her own. “It wasn’t that hard to piece together,” she says with a nod towards my flank. “Been a while since I saw one’a those that matched my own.”

For the first time since I met her, I finally bother to take a good look at Apple Bloom’s flank. Sure enough, a silver socket wrench laid over a bright red apple shines behind her hips. “That showed up about a year after we first came down here,” she says. “Never even realized I liked tinkerin’ till then. Guess that’s what I get for all those years I spent tryin’ to force it to come early.”

My head’s completely clear now, and so is the part of my heart that’d been steadily sinking this whole time. I’ll see her “been a while” and raise her a “never in my whole entire life”.

“You’re an inventor too?” I ask with as level a voice as I can manage.

“Amateur mechanic’s probably a better way to say it, but yeah,” she replies. “Mostly, I just fix stuff that ain’t supposed to be broke, but I get creative every now and again. You get a good look at Applejack’s leg yet?”

Well, there goes that attempt to keep from geeking out. “You built that?”

“Sure did,” Apple Bloom says, and thankfully she just takes the change in my voice’s pitch as a reason to swell with pride. “I modeled it after those ones all the Big Daddies have. Couldn’t quite fit the cannon in, but the rest of it all works like a charm. I rigged up the voice locks on the front door, too. Those actually weren’t all that complicated. Once I got my hooves on a few voice recorders and switched the right wires around, it was clear skies and smooth sailin’ from there.” Apple Bloom shrugs, and suddenly seems to realize how loud she’d been talking. “It ain’t much to brag about, I guess,” she mumbles as a blush starts to tinge her cheeks.

I want to argue back that anypony who thinks inventing a voice-activated lock ain’t much to brag about is certifiably insane, but pulling the proper words together proves more difficult than I expected. While I’m occupied with that, Apple Bloom bears left and yanks out three rectangular wooden crates aligned in a row, giving a quick glance back at me before turning her attention to the middle one.

“All right, back to business,” she says, craning her neck to look around the sides and back of the box. “This city’s always been dependent on magical technology and the war didn’t do nothin’ to change that, so unless you want to end up with me havin’ to make you a metal leg too, to get through it you’re gonna need the right gear. So first things first, we need to find you one’a these.”

She holds her right foreleg up and waves it around, drawing my eyes towards the worn black bracer strapped to it. “Mercury Mechanics Multi-Tool Utility Bracer,” she calls it, punctuating the name with a small “aha” as she finds the seam in the crate’s lid and pries it off with the same screwdriver she used to hotwire the turret back near the plaza. “They used to be standard-issue for anypony workin’ down in Maintenance, but in light’a the war and all, they’ve, um… been on strike for a while. What’s your dominant side?”

Apple Bloom doesn’t look up from inside the crate, but I guess the silence that follows her question tells her clearly enough that I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. “If you were gonna kick me in the teeth right now, which forehoof would you use?” she clarifies.

“Uh… the right one?”

Apple Bloom lifts out a plastic-wrapped lump from inside the crate with her telekinesis and clops her hoof against the top of the left-most crate. “Put ‘er there,” she commands, and once I cautiously obey she unwraps the lump to reveal an oak-brown bracer that smells like new upholstery and doesn’t have so much as a scuff mark on it. Without a moment’s thought, she slips it over her hoof and around my ankle. “These things were first commissioned when the city was still under construction, so they’re designed to work for ponies without active magic,” she goes on to explain as she makes sure the device is fitted snugly. “Unfortunately, that means that the only simple way you can manage this many tools at once is through a direct neuromagical link with the machine. And the quickest way to get that link rigged up is straight through the bloodstream.”

She pulls both ends of the bracer tight, and suddenly my throat feels awfully dry. “And by that you mean…”

“This is probably gonna hurt,” Apple Bloom says casually. Before I even have a chance for my eyes to go wide, she leans hard against my knee and presses a tiny button right at the top of the bracer, and the vicious stabbing pain that shoots through my leg once she does is enough to obliterate any thought I had of entering a well-reasoned argument for why this could probably wait till later. Instead, I just shout out my objection through gritted teeth, shivering as my forehoof goes numb and a cold sweat breaks out over my entire body.

Just as quickly as the agonizing sensation came, though, it disappears without a trace, leaving behind a dull, throbbing ache and an almost dizzying feeling of clarity, as if I’ve just become aware of a new function I never knew my body had. Apple Bloom takes her hooves off me and sits back on her haunches to watch as I lift my foreleg and stare at the bracer, the one that now inexplicably feels as if it’s just as much a part of me as the hoof it’s strapped to. Curious about what that means, I look it over and consider each part of it as thoroughly as I can. The instant my mind focuses on the cylindrical arrangement of tubes that forms the most visible part of its anatomy, the one situated at the back of my hoof shudders, and a shiny sliver monkey wrench springs out of it. Once another concentrated thought directs it back into its sheath, a giddy chill runs down my spine.

“I started you off with a standard all-purpose one,” Apple Bloom tells me, though I can hardly even bear to listen for how in love I am with my miraculous new toy. “’Sides that wrench, it’s also got a flathead screwdriver, pliers, a clamp, a pair’a scissors, and two blades: one serrated, one sharp. Plus if you feed a MOON hypo into that part there, the strip at the top also works like a flashlight.”

“And I can control all of these just by thinking about them?” I ask, doing my best not to giggle and flail my forelegs around like a little foal.

“That’s a fact,” Apple Bloom giggles as I spin the tubes around and select the one with the scissors in it. “You could at least try to act excited.”

“Stop mocking me,” I mumble back. “This is amazing.”

“Well, I’m sure glad to hear that,” Apple Bloom says, nudging me over as she pries open the box in front of me. “’Cause we ain’t done just yet.”

That remark’s finally enough to pull my eyes away from the bracer again. “What do you mean?” I ask as she pulls another shrink-wrapped package out from the crate.

“Utility bracers are good for gettin’ through sticky situations,” she tells me, “but if you wanna survive in this city, you’re gonna need to be able to get out of them too.”

For the first time that day, I remember that Apple Bloom has a second bracer on her other forehoof. “Meaning…”

“Meaning if you want me to let you more than ten paces outside this compound,” Apple Bloom says, “you’re gonna need a gun.”

Another chill runs down my spine, through this one’s accompanied by butterflies with much sharper wings. She wants to give me a gun? I don’t need a gun. Link’s the one with the gun. Link’s the one who shoved me aside and killed that mare and gave me a look cold as frozen steel, like I was just as much a fragile heap of meat and bones as she was. But I don’t resist as Apple Bloom slips the unwrapped bracer onto my left foreleg, and I don’t cry out when another dozen needles prick my skin and send another tendril of extrasensory feeling up into my brain. I can get through this. I know I can. I just have to keep it with me. That’s all I have to do. Just keep it with me, and let Apple Bloom and Link do all the dirty work. I can’t overreact like this. I can’t jeopardize my chances of getting out of this place and helping to find those parts.

I can’t be having second thoughts right now.

“And there we go,” Apple Bloom says triumphantly, letting go of my leg and forcing me to hold up the significantly heavier weaponized bracer on my own. “It might look and feel a little different than the other one, but basically they both work the same way. When you want to shoot, just flick the safety off there—” She points to a tiny switch on the side of the bracer that’d be hard to accidentally hit on anything but easy to reach with my teeth. “—and then just point and think to fire. You get eight shots in each chain there, and to save ya some time, I went ahead and gave ya a semi-automatic one. That means that as soon as you fire, that cylinder’ll spin around and load up a new round without you havin’ to do anything, at least till all those chambers are empty. After that, just yank the empty chain off and replace it with a fresh one. The ammo chambers and firing mechanism are magic-based and magnetized, so all ya gotta do is get a reload close to it, and it’ll snap into place all on its own. Extra ammo’s in that third crate there.”

Apple Bloom chews on her lip and thinks for a moment, then breaks out into a grin and shrugs. “And that’s about it, I s’pose. Anything else I can do ya for?

I was keeping it together with everything she was saying up until now, but this last question is somehow worse than all the others. I can’t answer it honestly, because honestly I’m biting my tongue in half trying not to scream like a banshee and tear these bracers off with my bare teeth. I can’t lie either, because Apple Bloom is still smiling at me with big trusting eyes as orange as sherbet ice cream, and I can’t force my head up long enough to look at them, let alone watch them melt into disappointment and doubt. So I stare at my forelegs and swallow back the lump in my throat, and try to pretend that it’s really just oddly warm in here, that the sweat I feel beading around my temples isn’t really that noticeable.

“Are there any glasses in here?” I ask, cringing at the sound of my scratchy, cracking voice echoing through the warehouse.

“What, like, eyeglasses?” Apple Bloom trails off, her forehoof lodged thoughtfully behind her head. “Uh… think so. Probably in the back someplace. Follow me again for a second?”

Once I trot back down the corridor and meet Apple Bloom back at the front of the warehouse, she leads me a few rows past the door in the opposite direction and into an aisle even more packed than the first one. At the far corner of the shelf on the right, Apple Bloom finds a big plastic chest with a cartoonish black pair of eyeglasses stamped on its front and pulls it out, swinging open the lid to reveal its contents neatly organized inside.

“Geez, I almost forgot we had these. Probably shoulda taken inventory sometime within the last two years,” she mutters a bit wryly. “Any case, I know none of us’ve ever messed with ‘em, so I reckon they’re still sorted out left to right by strength here.”

“Thanks,” I say quietly.

“Pleasure’s mine. You know, I’m kinda surprised I never needed glasses myself, what with all the time I’ve spent bent over a workbench. Can’t imagine goin’ without ‘em this long if I did need ‘em, though. Then again, I guess you didn’t have much of a choice, huh? Stars, I remember when Sweetie Belle first got hers, she wouldn’t wear ‘em for a week ‘cause she thought they made her look silly. Bumped into half the walls in Harmony ‘fore she finally let up. She used to be so stubborn… course, it ain’t like you know what I’m talking about. I mean, you’ve probably never even met Sweetie Be—”

I was hoping that Apple Bloom would be distracted enough by her story not to notice which pair of glasses I took, but I’ve never been all that good at being subtle. As soon as I slide them onto my face—a big pair with thick brown rims, taken from the very top left corner of the box—I can feel her eyes on me, her focus sharpened to a point that’s aimed right at me. I curl my lips up between my teeth and try very hard to look casual, but I already know she’s seen right through me. Seen right through the glasses that barely change my vision at all, that might as well have plain crystal in place of the lenses.

But Apple Bloom says nothing. Her face smoothes out again a few moments, her trademark smile just as strong as ever. “Guess that’s that, then,” she says. “Now, I gotta skedaddle upstairs and round up a few things m’self, so in the meantime you can get to know that pistol a bit and poke around in here for anything else you think ya might need. Don’t feel bad about takin’ anything: none’a this was ours to begin with, and we ain’t gonna miss it once we’re high and dry on the surface. We’ll all meet back in the kitchen in about a half-hour or so. Sound good?”

Apple Bloom ducks around the corner once she sees me nod, and a few seconds later I hear a low, rumbling boom as the door closes behind her. The string tied up at the top of my spine snaps the second she’s gone, and I try to dip my head into my hoof until a hunk of rounded metal clunks against my skull. Then I remember what’s still bolted onto it.

I’m alone now, at least, so I have time to stop for a second and take stock of everything that’s happened. Except by the time I sit down and lean back against one of the shelves, the only things spinning through my mind are the two miracles of technomagical engineering weighing down my forehooves, and the already fading sense of extra control I feel like I have over these new parts of my body. I can certainly tell by looking at them that these weren’t cobbled together by a self-proclaimed amateur mechanic with nothing better to do. Each brace was factory-made and, judging by the number of them the Apple family seems to have collecting dust back here, mass-produced. Which means not only was this city torn apart and ruined by war, there was a time where hurting and killing other ponies was even encouraged.

Stars above, what the hay am I doing? What was I thinking, telling Applejack I wanted to go back out and help her dig up a bunch of spare parts in the most dangerous city in equine history? What was I thinking, telling myself I could handle this, that I was strong enough to dive headfirst into things that were bigger and more powerful than anything I could’ve imagined? The simplest answer is the right one: I wasn’t thinking. I was looking at Link—thinking about his crowbar knocking that mare away from me—and my heart acted before my mind could think to horsecollar it and drag it back into its hole. That’s another good question: why the hay couldn’t he just leave me alone? Why couldn’t he just hate me openly like I knew he did inside? Why did he have to keep being so frustrating, so innocent, so utterly impossible to figure out?

I don’t have an answer to any of those questions, but on the plus side, fuming to myself about them makes my stomach hurt a little bit less. Jumping to my hooves and setting a steady pace towards the door does too. I can’t begin to remember what aisle that third crate with all the extra ammo for my bracer was in, but that doesn’t bother me much. I’m not planning on using any of what I’ve already got.

I’m nearly back to the front of the warehouse again when I hear it: a shuffling thump, a distant clink of metal smacking against metal. I come to a halt, one hoof half-raised off the ground, and more noises drifts along between the shelves. Storage crates don’t move on their own. Somepony else is in here with me.

“Apple Bloom?” I call out. Nothing but silence answers me, and a chill runs up my spine as my stomach twinges with the prickling feeling of somepony’s eyes boring into the back of my neck. I put my forehoof down and slowly start to lean forward, only to hear a much heavier thump come from somewhere behind me. I turn around just in time to see a length of pipe clatter onto the floor, to see a shadowy figure perched on the very top of one of the shelves. It looks down at the wrench, then at the crate it’s standing behind, then straight into my eyes. Before I have time to so much as squeak, the shadow jerks back and dodges behind a nearby crate. A half-second later, the crate topples off its shelf and tumbles end over end all the way down to the ground, where it smashes apart with an ear-splitting crunch of wood against concrete.

I spend a good while heaving for breath and whipping my head around looking for the pony who just about made my heart stop, but it’s no use. By the time my ears stop ringing and the muscles in my neck start working again, he or she—or it—is already long gone. In fact, the only evidence they were ever here at all is in pieces about twenty yards in front of me. Were they trying to hit me with it? No, it was much too far away. But they couldn’t have just knocked a crate that big off the shelf by accident. Was it a distraction? A warning? A message?

I look a bit closer as the haze settles, and suddenly my last guess seems a lot more credible than I would’ve thought. Right in the middle of the box’s remains, surrounded by bits of hay and splintered hunks of plywood, lies a single dusty brown box. A personal voice recorder, just like the ones I saw in the bathysphere and the dock. What is that doing in here? And why would it be inside the one crate that pony up in the rafters inexplicably decided to knock down to somewhere within my reach?

The longer I stare at the recorder, the more my curiosity begins to overtake my fear that this whole thing is just a big, inconceivable trap. The battle isn’t an easy one, though; I still pause for nearly half a minute listening for the slightest breath of a sound before I tiptoe forward and pluck the recorder out from amid the destruction of its container, wiping the grime off its front with a forehoof before grabbing it in my teeth and galloping all the way out into the front of Slinky’s store. No matter what this thing is or why it was collecting dust in the back of a virtually abandoned warehouse, there’s no good reason to hang around the place I found it any longer than I have to. Especially when I don’t have a single clue where the pony who pointed it out to me ran off to.

I spit the recorder out on top of the cashier’s counter and set myself up on a stool so I can take a closer look at it. The machine is old, but clearly still functional—and clearly meant to be listened to. There’s a note taped onto it near the top, with an arrow pointing down towards one of the buttons on the bottom and the words “PLAY ME” written on it. Even still, something still holds me back from following that direction. It’s not really that I don’t know what I might hear, or that I think it might be something the Apples would rather keep hidden. Much more than that, I can’t shake the feeling that I haven’t escaped that shadowy thing at all, that it’s still watching me from somewhere nearby and waiting to see if I jump at the bait it’s planted. They might have even been the one who put the recorder in that crate to begin with.

There’s no doubt about it, then: the recording inside this thing was meant for me. Not just anypony, but me specifically. And I have no idea why, because there’s no logical reason that I, a nopony inventor from Rockton who didn’t even mean to come down here, should be the central piece in some crazy splicer’s incomprehensible scheme. But in the same moment I figure that out, I also realize something else: there’s no way in Equestria I’m ever going to drag myself away from this room without finding out exactly what this latest twist in this city’s complete and utter insanity is all about. I take a deep breath and bite my lip, then reach across the counter and press the button marked by the sign.

The recorder whirrs and clicks as the magical gel inside loosens up, and then after clearing their throat and heaving a deep sigh, a pony with a soft-spoken voice as clear and crisp as a morning breeze in autumn begins to speak. “A fire left unchecked can burn for hours, devouring and destroying everything it touches,” he says—I think it’s a stallion talking, but his voice is so delicate and charged with muted force that I can’t even be sure of that. “But in order to start one, all it takes is a single spark. For six years, this city has been seared and blackened in the name of progress and science, and for six years I did everything I could to protect it when it no longer had the means to protect itself.”

The voice sighs again. “But for all my effort, all my years of suffering and anguish, I had not enough breath to thin out the smoke, not enough water in the ocean the smother the flames. I failed, and Harmony nearly died because for it. Nearly… but not entirely. There is still life in this place, still potential for faith, and truth, and friendship, and love. But struggling to defend it will not ensure its survival. This place cannot be nursed back to health. The sickness must be purged through the same brute force by which it entered. Fire must be fought with fire in return. And all we need now, all I need now… is for somepony to provide that single little spark.”

The stallion pauses again, and when he starts up again his smooth, steady inflection has faded away, replaced by something that sounds a lot closer to the exhausted, desperate pony he was making himself out to be. “I know this seems… insane,” he admits. “You don’t know who I am, you don’t know why you’re here, and to be completely honest, I don’t entirely know why you’re here myself. But I do know this: your arrival in Harmony was no accident. This city cannot be saved by me alone, or by anypony else here. We’ve lived here too long, been too corrupted by that same disease we helped to create. But you, you… are different. You’re pure, untouched by the blackness that surrounds and ensnares all of us. In you, I see the light of the surface. In you, I see salvation.”

The last words the stallion spoke sink straight down from my ears into the pit of my stomach. The sound from the recorder now seems patchy and far away. “I’ll warn you now, this won’t be easy,” he says. “If you choose to do what I ask of you, the weight of this entire city will be on your shoulders, and there are plenty of ponies inside who will do anything and everything they can to stop you from lifting it. But even though I couldn’t do this on my own, that doesn’t mean you have to. I can’t communicate with you through normal means, but so long as you’re still in Harmony, I’ll keep an eye on you and make sure you know when you’re on the right track. Because salvation isn’t the only thing I see in you. I see passion. Principle. Sincerity. All the things we’ve forgotten how to feel, forgotten how to pass on to others in a way that benefits us all.”

The stallion chuckles, and I’m almost positive I’m going to be sick. “You are the best of us all, Ruby,” he tells me. “And should you find the courage and the strength necessary to rise above the sins of our past and prove it, I have no doubt that you will be the one to restore Harmony to what it once aspired to be.”

It takes a herculean effort to keep my breakfast where it belongs, but I manage to do it just in time to hear the recording end. “Good luck,” the stallion says, just before murmuring, “Celestia knows, you’re gonna need it.” The recorder whirrs again, then clunks to a stop. The silence that follows almost crushes me flat.

In a different situation, I might’ve stood there forever, thinking back over what I just heard and pondering what it all meant. Here, though, in this dilapidated old surplus shop, my decision is made in an instant.

“I can’t do this,” I whisper to the recorder. And it’s true. It’s been true this whole time, and the only thing keeping me from seeing it was my own stubborn pride. I thought I could just stroll through Harmony without a care in the world, without ever running into a single one of the psychopaths occupying every inch of every flooded, broken-up room. What in Equestria was I thinking? What in Equestria made me imagine I could handle this, that I was at all prepared for the lunacy that everypony in this place just accepted as normality? I’m not a fighter; I’ve never been in a fight in my life. I’m a mechanic, for pony’s sake. Everypony outside this compound would eat me alive without a second thought. And now after I find out one of them’s been watching me this whole time and thinks I’m the chosen one who’s going to save the whole stupid city, I’m supposed to be comfortable with skipping out straight into it?

Not anymore, I’m not. I need to find Applejack and tell her I changed my mind, tell her that I finally got wise and figured out what a stars-awful mess I was about to get myself into. Maybe she’ll understand, or maybe she’ll hate me for ditching the group and putting my own safety ahead of everypony else’s. Most likely, though, she’ll probably just think I’m a coward. And you know what? She’d be absolutely right, and as of right now, I’m okay with that. Because as far as I’m concerned, the only difference between cowards and heroes is that at the end of the day, cowards live longer.

The only problem is, I have no idea where she… no, wait, she’s upstairs with Link, showing him how to use his pistol. Oh, stars above, I didn’t even think about him. How am I supposed to explain this to him? He’s only going because I said I was. What’s he going to do when he hears I’m chickening out? There’s a way around this, there has to be. I’ll just poke my head in real quick and ask to speak to Applejack in private. Say it’s a “girl thing” or something. Do mares even do that down here?

I shake my head and allow myself one second to growl at the empty room. I’m overthinking this. I just need to go up there and be honest. And so after taking a quick moment to make sure I didn’t forget to leave my crazy new friend’s love recording somewhere I’ll never have to see it again, that’s exactly what I set out to do. Unfortunately, on this particular jaunt through the bowels of Harmony, I have neither a radio nor breakfast to lead me where I want to go. I make it back to the stairs all right, but somewhere between there and the kitchen I take a wrong turn at Whiteoak, and everything pretty much falls apart after that. Being the daughter of a miner, you’d think I’d have a better sense of direction in tight spaces. Apparently, that was one of the many genes I didn’t grab in my trip through the pool.

I wander around for a good ten minutes, and I’m about to just turn around and try to retrace my steps when I see a faint glow shining on the wall in front of me. Around the corner, behind a door left just slightly ajar, a screen is flickering all by itself in an otherwise dark room, much smaller than the ones Ryder showed up on in the plaza but almost as bright despite its size. My mind turns to Applejack again, and makes the jump from there to something I never really thought about before now. She told me she could see me and Link even though all she had to talk to us through was that radio we got from Chestnut. Come to think of it, Ryder and Daybreak seemed to be able to see us in the plaza too. Is this how they could see all over the city like that? Maybe Applejack is already there now, waiting for us to leave. Maybe this would all be just as simple as I’d hoped.

I nose the door open quietly just in case she’s easily startled, but it turns out there’s no need. Aside from the banks of dormant video screens, the room is empty. The single screen in the corner, though, is still flickering with what looks like pulsating white snow, and even though Applejack is nowhere to be found, the question that got me in here in the first place is still begging for an answer. I poke around for a bit and find a whole panel of tiny switches lodged into the wall right across from the door, each one seeming to connect to one of the switches on the wall. One switch in the top right corner is already turned on, and after a moment or two of deliberation, I reach out and swipe my foreleg over the rest of them. They all click up with only a little resistance, and just a few seconds later, the whole room is flooded with light.

“You lookin’ for somethin’?”

Add to the list of things I can’t stand about this place: the tendency everyone in it has of creeping up behind me right when I least expect it. I cringe under the harsh yellow light of the lamp that just flared to life overhead, and turn around as slowly as I can to face Applejack, who’s standing in the doorway with one hoof still over the light switch I completely missed on my way in. “I-I-I’m sorry,” I start sputtering. “I shouldn’t be in here, I just-”

“Relax, sugarcube,” Applejack chuckles. “Just thought I heard somepony out here. Matter of fact, I’m glad it ended up bein’ you. I was meanin’ to talk to you ‘fore we left.”

Just say it, I tell myself. Don’t beat around the bush, just spit it out.

“Why is that?” I ask her.

Applejack shrugs, steps forward and smacks the static-filled screen with a forehoof. It buzzes in complaint for a bit, then snaps to an image of the giant door where Applejack and I first met face-to-face. “Figured you’d appreciate it,” she says. She doesn’t look at me, but my face flushes with heat all the same. Am I really that easy to read?

“Applejack, there’s something I need to tell you…”

“I know you’re scared, Ruby.”

Yep. Apparently, I am. “Aw, don’t feel bad about it, sugarcube,” Applejack adds once she turns around and sees the look on my face. “Heck, I’d be a sure sight more worried if you weren’t scared right now. When I see you lookin’ like that, your shoulders tight and your face all bunched up, that’s how I know you’re normal.” She chuckles again. “That you’re smarter than anypony else in this sunforsaken place.”

Despite my best efforts, the exact place I left the recorder I found in Slinky’s warehose comes back to me in a flash. At the same time, so does the sense of vertigo that was rolling through the whole time I was listening to it. “I want you to know somethin’, all right?” Applejack says. “I’ve met a lotta ponies down here. Made a lotta new friends out of ‘em too. And you know what? The kind of pony who’d do something like you did, who’d follow somepony to the ends of the earth just ‘cause they knew they needed a helpin’ hoof… you don’t find ponies like that every day.”

Applejack looks back at the video screens again. My eyes trace over the dozens of rooms visible through them, and Applejack’s eventually settles on an image of the theater where Link and I first heard her on the radio. “Chestnut was one’a those ponies,” she murmurs. “We’ve had a few stragglers come and go in here over the years, but he stayed the longest of all, and there were times I thought…”

Applejack sighs, a low, somber noise like one I’d expect to hear at a funeral held for a filly who died before she was grown. “That was a right brave thing you did earlier,” she tells me, and the passion in her voice when she says it digs into my chest like a paring knife. “And I don’t care if y’all go out there and bring back nothin’ but holes in your horseshoes. It’s enough to me that you and Link are willin’ to pull your grownup stockings on and do what needs to be done. Far as I’m concerned, y’all’ve already done right by me. And I reckon you’ve done right by Chestnut too.”

There’s no point even trying to speak up now. I couldn’t tell Applejack I wanted to stay behind if my subconscious were holding a blade to my throat. “I think Apple Bloom and Link are ready to head out over in the kitchen,” she says with a nod towards the door. “Go left outta here, then left again, then it’s the third door on the right. Don’t keep ‘em waitin’ on my account.”

I nod as best I can and turn towards the door, which by my estimate is about three and a half miles away. If I’m going to make it all the way out of here with my insides intact, I need a reason to stay put here long enough for the walls to stop spinning around me like the inside of a centrifuge. I only need to think about where I woke up this morning to remember one that’s been bouncing off the back of my mind all day.

“Can I ask you something, Applejack?”

Applejack has already pulled out a chair from beneath the desk in front of the screens and settled herself down into it, but she still manages to twist around enough to look me in the eye. “Shoot.”

“It’s… it’s about Apple Cider.”

Applejack doesn’t move, so it’s possible I’m just imagining the tension that suddenly fills the room. It’s also possible that I’ve been a pegasus my whole life and just never noticed the feathers on my pillow each morning. “Are you… what I mean is, is she your, uh…”

“Is she my daughter?”

I force my lips shut and nod. Applejack lets her eyes fall shut and turns back towards the screens. “Stars, were it that simple…” I hear her mutter. When she turns back around again, the weariness in her voice makes her look about a thousand years old.

“We found her out lookin’ for supplies one day,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine for a single syllable. “She was a teeny little thing, not even old enough to crawl yet. No idea where her parents were, or are now. Back when the war was still on, it wasn’t that uncommon. Orphanages filled up like soup kitchens, all of them run by Pyrus. To the public, it was a gesture of goodwill, but anypony who knew anything about it knew they were really just looking for more bodies to make into Little Sisters to scavenge for SUN. More innocent lives to violate and destroy. ‘Course, I couldn’t let that happen to her, so me an’ Apple Bloom took ‘er in and… well, she started callin’ me Momma one day, and I never stopped her. Figured it was better than telling her the truth.”

Some part of me knows that something isn’t right with what Applejack just told me. At the same time, though, another part reminds me that I seem to be pushing her far enough as it is. “So Chestnut wasn’t her…”

“Not by blood, no. Celestia knows, he did the best he could.”

On the other hoof, I’ve never been all that well-versed in social graces. “Were you two, um… were you close?”

Applejack cocks her eyebrow, but in a way that lets me know that this is a question she doesn’t mind. “Not in the way you’re askin’,” she says. She waits for another few moments for me to ask another question that never materializes, then looks behind me again. “You should probably get goin’.”

“Yeah,” I agree. I’m still not satisfied even though she answered everything I asked her. “Hey, uh… thanks for everything. I mean, saving us and giving us food and… all that.”

I get one more genuine smile and an assurance that I shouldn’t have mentioned it out of her, and then I know for a fact that I’ve officially worn my welcome thin. I leave the room without a word, and make the trip back to the kitchen in two minutes flat. The whole way there, all I can think about is that bank of video screens I left Applejack sitting in front of, and the look in her eyes I saw reflected through them when I asked her if Apple Cider was her own foal.

“Well, speak’a the devil!” Apple Bloom shouts as I make my appearance in the breakfast hall. “I was just about to come lookin’ for ya. You find everything okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” I hum back at her. My head’s pointed in her direction, but my eyes are focused on Link, who’s been outfitted with a form-fitting pair of black saddlebags strapped together over his back and stomach. Once again, the look of indifference on his face alone is almost enough to make me see red, but I keep as much of it out of sight as I can. If he’s trying to get under my skin, the least I can do is not give the satisfaction of seeing that it’s working.

“All righty, then,” Apple Bloom goes on. “Hope ya got a chance to get some practice in with that pistol. AJ told me Link’s quite the crack shot with his. She ain’t never seen anybody pick up the craft so fast!”

Link’s gaze darts down to the bracers on my forehooves. Aside from a slight twitch in his eyebrows, his expression doesn’t change one bit. “Mm-hmm,” I hum again, my lips pressed even tighter together this time.

Either Apple Bloom’s gotten a lot better at ignoring the little intricacies of my and Link’s relationship or a lot worse at picking up on them, because she hardly wastes a moment before cheerfully announcing that it’s time to get this show on the road. Link and I follow behind her in perfect step, neither of us saying a word to her or especially to each other. What is he thinking now, I wonder? Can he see through me like the Apples all can? Can he see the terror in my lifeless eyes, the insecurity that keep tugging at my legs, begging them to stay still and not carry me closer to that big metal door that represents my last link to safety? Does he have any idea who I really am?

I don’t know. And that’s what bothers me the most. That’s what’s always bothered me about this place, I realize as we cross the threshold out into the orchard, and the compound’s front gate screeches shut behind us. I don’t know what we’re going to run into out here, how long it’ll take us to find those parts, whether we’ll even be able to find them at all. But more than that, I don’t know anything about the ponies who, as much as I hate to admit it, my life now depends on. I don’t know how Apple Bloom can seem so nonchalant about everything, where Apple Cider came from or why Applejack doesn’t want to talk about it. And most of all, I have absolutely no clue what kind of pony is walking beside me right now, staring straight ahead with his bags bouncing off his legs and a shiny silver pistol sticking out of a holster on his flank.

Is he a murderous psychopath let loose in a place where there’s no vestige of society left to hold him back, or is he just a desperate, miserable socialite doing whatever it takes to keep himself alive? If another splicer attacked us, would he put a bullet through their head without a single moment of regret? If I fell behind, would he leave me? If it were me in those situations and not him, would I do the same? I have no way of guessing. I have nothing to go by but a zeppelin crash and a dead mare in a white dress, and piercing green eyes as unreadable as a picture book soaked in ink. And now I’m stuck with him on what might as well be a suicide mission with a gun I can’t use and a point mare who think it’s all a big joke. Just waiting in the wings to see what new scene our lead actor is going to perform.

That, I think, is what I hate most of all. I don’t know who Link is, I don’t know how he thinks, and I don’t know how any of that would determine what he might do now that we’re out here. But it’s only a matter of time before I find out.

And if the rest of what’s happened to us since we got here is anything to go back, I have a feeling that time is going to come sooner than I think.

Farmer's Market - Part 3

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My big brother Garnet always used to say that every storm cloud has a silver lining. He loved little fortune-cookie morals like that; he picked that one up from a spicy little mare he met in Las Pegasus, and since then it’s been one of his favorites. Look for the silver lining, he’d tell me. Look on the bright side of life.

Well, I’m looking all over the place right now, and so far the rim around this situation still looks pretty well black. Our group is fifteen minutes out from the Apple Family’s compound, weaving between sagging fruit stalls picked bare by looters. Apple Bloom is in front, Link is brining up the rear, and I’m trapped in between them, my head tilted towards the floor as I try to shake off the feeling of Link’s eyes on the back of my neck. I don’t know for sure that he’s staring at me. In fact, I haven’t so much as glanced at him since we left. No matter what he does or doesn’t do behind me, though, some part of me knows he’s just waiting for a chance to give me a piece of his mind, and by now it’s starting to drive me out of my own.

“All right, here we are,” Apple Bloom says with a relieved sigh. “Geez, it’s a maze back here. C’mon, let’s pull over a spell and get our plan together. I don’t wanna be fumblin’ around for too long out here any more than y’all do.”

She gestures over to a group of tables in front of what looks like a walk-up café, and we all crowd around the nearest one. While Apple Bloom digs around in her saddlebag and Link gazes off placidly at Celestia only knows what, I take the opportunity to get my bearings. We’ve moved out from the cramped hallways surrounding the exit from the orchard into a market square about fifty feet across. The design matches the rest of what I’ve seen in this part of the city: stained oak gleams in the floorboards and shops, and bright flags and banners hang under an immense striped canopy that covers the whole area.

Even here, though, the effects of the last six years are plain to see. The stands are broken down and coated in dust, and the banners are faded and ragged, some so much that they’ve almost been torn to bits. Through a hole in the canopy, I can see a web of girders and glass holding back the ocean above us, and more exposed iron beams and panels are visible around and under the mismatched shop fronts they support. It all adds up to an eerie recollection of a one-sided battle of ideologies. Ryder may have designated this section of Harmony for the farmers down here, but she sure as hay didn’t build it for them.

“And there you are,” Apple Bloom mutters, pulling out a tightly rolled scroll of paper and one of the three radios we brought along so we could keep in touch with Applejack and each other. She spreads the scroll out on the table, revealing the map printed on the inside, and switches on the radio. “Ya ready, AJ?” she asks it.

“An’ able ta boot,” the radio crackles back. “What’s the plan?”

Apple Bloom nods to herself and smoothes the map out with her forelegs. “Right now, we’re here,” she tells me and Link, one of her hooves stopping over a scale depiction of the square we’re sitting in. “We came up this hall here—” She traces along a path pointing off towards a misshapen clump of shops. “—so we got two more choices about where to go now. One of ‘em leads to the Mercury Mechanics store and the other leads to the meat grinder, so I figure we’ll just flip a coin or somethin’ an’ hope for the best. Sound good?”

Apple Bloom waits a second to take in the expressions on our faces, then cracks a grin and chucks me on the shoulder. “Aw, c’mon, I’m just kiddin’. The left one goes to Mercury. Other one just goes to Sunbeam Sweet Shop. Worst thing that’ll get ya in there is a stomachache.”

“Ha.” I say through a wide, toothy grin. “Funny.”

Seeming to realize her joke didn’t exactly bring the house down, Apple Bloom clears her throat and slots an awkward pause into her speech before she continues. “Still, I ain’t so familiar with that area an’ ya never know where a few splicers might’a wandered, so let’s just stick to Mercury for the time bein’. We should be able to find everything in there easily enough.”

“Define ‘everything’?” Link asks. By way of answering, Apple Bloom floats three photographs out of her bag and spreads them out before us.

“These are the busted parts from the bathysphere we’re gonna ride outta here,” she explains. She points to the first picture, which shows a lumpy cylindrical mechanism with rust eating into its sides. “That’s the primary rotor for the rear propeller. Without that, we might as well try to swim to the surface for all the good the bathysphere’ll do us. The one we need’s a bigger model than most, since this sphere needs more thrust to get to the surface, so I’ll take care’a huntin’ that down.”

She moves the second photo overtop the first. This one shows two coils of thin, transparent tubing, with a circle drawn in red pen around the gap between the two split ends. “And that’s the tubing that carries MOON from the fuel tank to the injection system in the engine. It wears out pretty quick if there ain’t anypony around ta maintain it, so we’ll need a new coil with about a five-eighths inch diameter. Doesn’t really matter how much of it we get. I can cut it down to size once we get back home. Link, ya think you can handle that?”

Link pulls the photo towards himself and considers it for a moment, then nods. Now Apple Bloom turns to me.

“Third, and last, we need a new ballast pump. Every sub needs ballast to weigh it down enough to travel underwater, and without this little puppy, we won’t be able to release it gradually enough to send us off with any grace an’ dignity. We’d basically just slingshot straight up to the surface.”

“Is that bad?” Link asks.

“Imagine you’ve got a ten-thousand foot bungie cord tied to your ankle, and I just cut the rope holdin’ you to the ground,” Apple Bloom replies. Link’s lips tighten, and he nods again.

“You’re up for trackin’ that down, Ruby,” Apple Bloom continues. “Looks like this.”

The picture she gives me shows a boxy contraption that looks more or less like a fish tank filter on steroids. It’s small, sturdy, completely unremarkable, and it’s my job to sift through an abandoned underwater scrap heap until I stumble onto one of them. Well, as long as there’s nothing living in there with it—or already dead nearby—I’ve survived far more tedious jobs back home.

“I got it,” I tell her.

“Perfect!” she shouts, and for a second I can picture her perfectly as a pint-sized little filly, clapping her hooves and cheering as her friends all agree to try one of her daring schemes. How can she exist like this, making jokes about our bloody demise one moment and squealing like a schoolgirl the next? How can she seem so innocent even as she waves around a fully loaded pistol bracer on her foreleg?

“Now, we’re all gonna go in together and leave together, but just in case anything funny happens while we’re split up searchin’, I want ya both to take a radio.” Finally, she passes out the other two radios she’s been keeping in her bag the whole time. “They’re all on the same channel, and so’s Applejack. So any time ya take a wrong turn or Celestia’s name in vain, she’ll make sure ya know exactly what you gone and did.”

“I heard that,” all three radios squawk. Apple Bloom smirks and mimics a shocked expression, and then her impossibly genuine smile returns.

“Any questions?” she asks.

Link and I are both silent. Just barely, I resist the urge to give him an awkward glance.

“All righty, then. Let’s get our rears in gear ‘fore AJ clunks out here and buckstarts ‘em for us. Celestia knows, she’s got about as much patience as a tree squirrel waitin’ for the peanut vendor.”

“I heard that too.”

Apple Bloom makes another face at her radio, then takes off at a brisk pace towards the hallway on the left. Just like when she rescued us, it seems she just expects us to follow her. Because we don’t have any other choice. My pulse ratchets itself up a notch, and this time I go ahead and turn towards Link just as he turns towards me. As I probably should’ve expected, the end result is plenty awkward.

The way Apple Bloom talked about this place made it sound like the mechanics shop was right down the hall, but by the time we catch up with her, we still haven’t gotten where we need to go. Instead, the hallway just seems to keep twisting and turning farther away from the square, though instead of fruit stalls, this place is bordered by rounded light fixtures faded yellow with age, spaced out between glossy posters advertising every kind of mechanical nut and bolt imaginable. Since Link decides to hang back and I refuse to get stuck in the middle again, I end up at the front next to Apple Bloom, who gives me a couple sideways glances but doesn’t say a word otherwise. Normally, I’d be fine with that, but every step we take without anypony else popping into view makes the silence ring louder in my ears. Starting a conversation with Apple Bloom would probably be like opening the metaphorical floodgates for how much she seemed to love the sound of her own voice, but at the moment, even that seemed better than trudging mutely through this deserted corridor with only the sound of my breathing for company.

“So this is all part of the Farmer’s Market?” I ask.

“Yep,” Apple Bloom answers quickly. Of course. We’re ten miles up the creek and a couple minutes from bucking the paddle to pieces, and now she’s got her tongue tied in knots. I swallow back a growl and push harder.

“Seems like strange stuff for a farmer to buy,” I go on, nodding at a pony-sized flyer showing off Rusty Nail’s Axle Lubricant. Judging by Apple Bloom’s sheepish grin, that seems to have finally grabbed her attention.

“Yeah, I was wonderin’ when you’d ask that,” she admits. “The mechanics were here in this sector first. Back when the city was first bein’ built, this was where they all lived. The Market didn’t open till regular residents started movin’ in. Ryder needed somethin’ to feed ‘em with and, well, once she started hawkin’ the place as a paragon’a equine culture and technomagical advancement, a whole wing set up for rough’n’tumble miner types kinda stuck out like a loose tooth. So she monopolized the fields she planted to feed the workers and consolidated ‘em under one’a her puppet corporations. Couple weeks and some ‘natural enhancements’ later, she had her Farmer’s Market. Saturn Incorporated leased out cropland and retail space, Ryder taxed the raw materials, and the farmers kept whatever profits they made off the fruits and veggies they sold. The quick ones pooled their resources and formed sub-companies. The rest burned their savings on berry wine, and tilled the fields for half-bits an hour and a promise they could claw their way back up the social ladder if they just worked hard enough.”

Apple Bloom dodges around a puddle of water formed by a jagged hole in the ceiling, and slaps a forehoof against the sopping wet poster underneath the gap. A trio of darkened red apples dominates the display. “And to the quickest,” she says, shrugging her shoulders with a wry half-grin, “went the spoils.”

Apple Bloom bounds ahead before I get a chance to consider what she just said, and what I see up in front of her whisks the thought away anyway, and stops me dead in my tracks to boot. Just a few feet away, the hallway is flooded with wavering blue light, and instead of dark iron and wood, the walls are made of crystal-clear glass. It takes me a few seconds to recall something to match the sight in front of me: the web of enclosed walkways connecting each of the buildings that I saw on the bathysphere ride in. By the time that memory makes it to the forefront of my mind, my legs have turned to jelly.

“All right back there?” Apple Bloom shouts back. “Don’t worry ‘bout the walkway now. It might look a little on the flimsy side, but that glass is six inches thick and magically treated to be all but Celestia-proof. It’d take half a building fallin’ on it ‘fore we’d need to start worryin’.”

I step to the edge of the walkway and look over. She’s right. I know she’s right. For Pete’s sake, we already sprinted through half a dozen of these walkways when we were trying to escape the plaza. I’ve done this before. These things are sturdy. There’s nothing to worry about. So why does the seabed I can see pulsing and shimmering in the distance make my heart want to punch its way into my hooves?

“C’mon, y’all, shake a leg!” Apple Bloom shouts back at us. She’s already at the other end of the tube. “Mercury’s just up ahead!”

Because I’m thinking about it. Because all I’ve been doing this whole time is thinking about it, thinking about everything. Thinking, and worrying, and moving one more mechanical step like a dog being pulled on a leash. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep dwelling on things I can’t change. Because if something does go wrong and my head’s still swimming with all the things that haven’t yet, the only thing I’ll be good for anymore is telling Link and Apple Bloom what color flowers I want at my funeral.

“You…” Link starts to say, but whatever he wants to say reaches me too late. I’m already a half-dozen steps beyond him, my hooves echoing against the floor and my jaw shut tighter than the lock on a manticore’s pen.

I reach the other side in half the time it took Apple Bloom, due in large part to the fact that my controlled trot kind of evolved into a gallop somewhere along the way. Thankfully, neither Link nor Apple Bloom seems to notice, the former because he’s just about sprinting trying to catch up to me, and the latter because she’s already on the other side of the room I just barreled into: a wide and open space with a pair of staircases curling up to a small mezzanine in the back and all the cheap seating and barebones décor fitting of a corporate lobby. All in all, the place looks absolutely nothing like the underwater mechanics shop I had pictured in my head, and the image isn’t improved at all by the mangled, bloody unicorn corpse lying spread-eagled in the center of the room. More specifically, the mangled, bloody unicorn corpse that Apple Bloom appears to be poking at with all the grace and solemnity of a foraging raccoon.

“Boy, this poor sucker must’ve been turned around somethin’ terrible if he ended up all the way down here,” Apple Bloom comments, her words muffled by some blocky blue thing she’s holding in her mouth. “Unicorns never come this far down into Engineering. Probably got cut up wanderin’ through somepony else’s turf and couldn’t make it to a first aid station in time.”

“So you’re… moving him?” I ask, my voice distorted too by the crinkling of my nose at the tangy scent of blood in the air.

“Searchin’ him,” Apple Bloom replies. “Never know what you might find. He’s fresh too, so he probably ain’t had anypony else pickin’ through his pockets yet. Can’t have been here more than a few hours, I reckon.”

Somewhere between “pickin’ through his pockets” and “more than a few hours”, I suddenly lose my ability to keep my eyes open and my breakfast down at the same time. While I turn my head away and do my best not to wonder whether apple bits taste the same going down as they would coming up, Link graciously takes over the role of “grimly fascinated party member with brass intestines”.

“Did you find anything?” he asks hesitantly. I glance up for just a moment, but it’s long enough to see Apple Bloom toss her head back and spit the little blue package out towards us. It hits the floor with a wet, rattling thump, and my innards blast off for the moon again.

“Energy bar,” I hear her say. “Couple pistol rounds. And, uh… box of cigarettes. Either’a y’all smoke?”

“Can’t say I’ve tried,” I groan towards my hooves.

“Can’t blame ya,” she replies. “Try suckin’ half your first one straight down to your lungs.” Apple Bloom stands up, and one of her hooves splashes in a puddle that I’m absolutely positively one-hundred-percent sure is just water. “Thought I was fixin’ to cough up my…”

At first, I don’t know what to make of the silence that follows. Once Apple Bloom loudly clears her throat and I glance over to see the positively green tinge in Link’s cheeks, a couple things begin to click together.

“Man, I keep forgettin’ what y’all aren’t used to,” Apple Bloom mutters. “Let’s just, uh… keep goin’. Storerooms are downstairs. Just back here a ways.”

Seeming content with leaving her apology unspoken, Apple Bloom motions us forward. After gingerly picking my way around the corpse, I follow her off to the left through a short hallway and down a wide flight of steps. Link lingers back at the body for a few seconds, then jogs to catch up with us. His trademark look of stoicism is back, but I can tell that not all the color has returned to his face yet.

Unlike the surplus shop Apple Bloom got my bracers from, the storage area in this place is organized into six partitioned rooms, each of which looks about a tenth the size of Slinky’s warehouse. Apple Bloom splits us off so we’re each responsible for searching two rooms: she takes the first two, Link takes the middle, and I take the ones in the back. After we promise that we’ll holler if anything goes wrong and Apple Bloom informs us—through a pointed look at Link’s patently colorless lips—of the bathroom back upstairs, we all take our positions. I walk up to the left-hand door in my section open and walk under it as it automatically slides up into the ceiling, and once I hear it touch back down behind me with a whoosh and a gentle thump, I am finally, blissfully alone.

The urge to let my shoulders go slack and slump back against the door is tempting, but ultimately I choose to push on with my job—mostly because the door just snaps back open again when I try to lean back into it. Thankfully, Apple Bloom and Link are already inside their respective rooms, so they both miss the show I end up making when I flail around and smack my head on the ground outside. They also miss the door almost closing on my stomach once the motion-sensing spells around it detects the fact that I’m lying immobile on the floor clutching my skull and moaning. Harmony, two; Ruby, zero. Things can only get even fricking better from here.

Once I’m up and more or less at ‘em, the job before me seems, in a rather polite word, daunting. Turns out, a tenth of Slinky’s inventory still covers a good six long shelves worth of space, and to make matters worse, these ones don’t look organized by any sense that’s even distant cousins with rhyme or reason. For lack of any better ideas, I just hop around the piles of sagging cardboard boxes and unidentifiable metal contraptions over to the first shelf, and start looking for something that might possibly fit into a submarine.

As my newfound mood was keen to predict, the search quickly proves to be futile. I’ve combed through storage rooms for parts before, but in those cases I always knew exactly what I needed and exactly where I’d need to go to get it. Even if the ballast pump is in here—and the more shelves I comb over, the more I’m convinced it’s not—it’s going to take me ages to dig it out, let alone haul it all the way back to the Apple Family compound. Still, though, the thought of getting out of this place and back to one where the doors all have lovely little knobs to keep them closed whenever I darn well want them to be keeps me going, and once my first sweep of the room is done, I trudge right back to the other end and start over again, checking beneath and behind every loose gear and scrap of sheet metal and sifting through every box of half-inch thick screws and propeller blades. The work is monotonous, and the polar opposite of intellectually stimulating. Left with the choice of either finding greener pastures to reside in or going completely numb, my brain eventually turns to Link.

Actually, a better way to phrase that would be “my brain spins circles around the concept of Link”, because everything I see him do just confuses me more and more. A few minutes ago, he was a visibly nauseated tourist here trying to put on a brave face he could show off to the rest of us. This morning, he was a mumbling introvert with a facial tic that made his eyes turn to me every time he spoke. Yesterday, he was a raving lunatic with a radio, then he was a raving lunatic with a crowbar, and before any of this even started he was a well-groomed colt with a wind-ruffled mane who couldn’t read his ticket right and looked like a kicked puppy the second I called him on it. My hoof pauses in the middle of its third sweep through the crate it’s stuck in, and my guts twist together. I never apologized to him for that. And he never apologized to me for setting me off in the first place.

Oh, who the hay am I kidding? None of that was his fault. He was fresh off a shouting match with a fat, ornery marketing executive. If that’d been me standing there, I would’ve been ready to blow a fuse too. If anything, I just escalated the tension in the cabin. We were both in bad moods, and we took it out on each other.

I reach over for the next box in the row, and nearly fall over a second time when my hoof hits empty air. I’m at the end of the last row again. I’ve gone through this entire room front to back and top to bottom twice now, and I’ve got nothing. So now I get to add a whole steaming pile of misery and frustration on top of the load of guilt I just buried myself under. I wonder if that little game this city and I are playing has a mercy rule.

And wouldn’t you know it, the good times just keep on rolling. I look through the next room three times, and still come up dry. The only thing even vaguely interesting I find lost among the discarded and forgotten parts is another voice recorder, with a label on it that reads “Marla Mercury – Regarding Lost ID Cards”. When I first come across it midway through my second circuit, I leave it on the shelf for fear of getting distracted and wasting time. By the time I reach the same spot on my third go-around, I figure having something to break the monotony is the only thing that could possibly motivate me to finish.

“Greetings, loyal Mercury Mechanics employees!” a cheery mare’s voice trills once I push the play button, her voice dripping with enough syrupy sweetness to drown a honeybee. “As co-founder and chief operations officer of Mercury Mechanics, it is my eternal pleasure to provide assistance, advice, and a warm, welcoming smile to anypony who asks! Recently, it has been brought to my attention that several ‘Product Managers’ and ‘Consumer Appropriation Experts’ have misplaced their personal identification cards, and as such, I would be overjoyed to inform you that… is he gone, Sparks?”

A different pony in the background gives an unintelligible reply, and Marla lets out a heavy, distorted sigh. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped a good three registers.

“All right, numbskulls, listen up: I don’t know whether you’re mistaking those cards for potato chips or trading ‘em in the Commons for male enhancement tonics, and quite frankly, I don’t care. Celestia knows, this ‘positive reinforcement’ crap is running this company into the ground, which should come as no surprise considering that’s always what happens when I get a migraine and can’t keep Max from blowing our entire R-and-D budget on some half-cocked scheme to build automatons out of porcelain. Any case, here’s the deal: I don’t want to front the bill for new ID cards, and you don’t want me to kick your pockmarked little asses to the proverbial curb. So as of right now, you boys are officially students in Professor Marla’s Hacking 101 class. Lesson one: rearrange the MOON pipes inside the door controls so that the red light turns to green. Lesson two: don’t let the MOON spill out or the pressure inside the pipes get too high. Lesson three: should you ignore lesson two and allow the system to short-circuit, your employee benefits do not include medical insurance. Lesson four: you didn’t hear this from me. Congratulations, you passed! Use your newfound criminal expertise well, and for Celestia’s sake, keep track of your shit so I don’t have to.”

There’s a pause, and the Marla’s perky voice returns. “Have a wonderful day!” she says. The tape shuts off, and after giving myself a second to bite my lip and get over the urge to snort, I decide to commit Marla’s advice to memory. Never know when something like that might come in handy around here. Worst case, it would at least give me something to talk about with Apple Bloom later.

I’m a little bit surprised when I find I’m the last one to come back out into the hallway, but once I take a closer look at the two other ponies in my group, I’m kind of glad things turned out that way. Apple Bloom has her forehoof propped up on a blocky metal object that looks exactly like the rotor in the picture she showed us, and Link has a long coil of rubber tubing looped over his shoulder and chest. Despite the extra time I took, I’m still the only one who came out empty-hooved. At the very least, nobody can accuse me of not trying. And come to think of it, I bet that counts as a silver lining. See, Garnet? I can be positive sometimes too.

“No luck?” Apple Bloom asks once I join them between the two doors of the rooms Link searched. Her tone is gentle and completely sympathetic, but my face still grows warm the second her eyes settle on me.

“It wasn’t for lack of effort,” I assure her. “I probably could’ve built a whole new bathysphere out of all the other parts in there, but I never did find the one we actually needed. Guess that pony up in the lobby wasn’t the first one to wander back here.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Apple Bloom says with a grimace. “Pretty much everyplace in this area outside our compound’s either been picked clean enough to eat off the shelves, or just gotten all mixed up without any clerks or workers to keep it all in order.” She looks down at her rotor, and a spark of cheerfulness begins to sneak back into her gaze. “Still, though, it ain’t all a wash. Least we got two parts outta the three. To be honest, that’s more than I was hopin’ for on the first day.”

The first day, she says. The first day of wandering through the city hunting down a part that might not even exist anymore. Speaking of positive thoughts, I’m also positive that silver lining’s starting to look more like fool’s gold.

“You have any trouble finding that, Link?” she asks next.

“No, not really,” he answers. “Second room was weird, though.”

“How come?”

“Well, I found this in the first room I checked,” he says, pawing at the coil while nodding towards the door to my left, “and you guys hadn’t come out yet, so I figured I was just done early. And then I thought, why not check out the other room just for the hell of it? So I went over and opened the door and…”

“And what?” I interject.

Link looks at me for a moment and then chuckles and shrugs. “And nothing. The whole place was empty. Not one single part or parcel anywhere.”

“What, in medical?” Apple Bloom asks incredulously. It takes me a second to figure out what she’s talking about; until now, I hadn’t noticed that each room in the hallway had a sign over its door that displayed what kind of parts were stored inside it. Both of my rooms were labeled “Transit”. The one Link was standing in front of now was labeled “Surgery”.

“Yeah, it was crazy,” he confirms. “Whoever it was that got in there, they weren’t screwing around. Even the shelves were gone. Only thing left was one of those audio recorder things, right in the middle of the floor.” Link magically flips open his bag and pulls out the recorder. “I don’t know what’s on it. I was just about to flip it on when you guys came out.”

“Well, ain’t that the darndest thing…” Apple Bloom murmurs, her brow creasing in puzzlement. Like always, though, her face is sour only for the most fleeting of moments. “Well, we can be thankful you at least still got what ya came for. Let’s go on an’ head back for today. We’ll give that tape’a yours a listen once we’re back in friendly territory.”

Link and I both nod in agreement, but even though Apple Bloom sees us do it, she still doesn’t move. “Actually, on that note, Link, you mind goin’ up ahead and makin’ sure the lobby’s still clear? I got somethin’ I wanna check on back here.”

Link nods again—slower this time—and glances in my direction for just a moment before turning around and climbing back up to the front hall. I’m two steps behind him all the way to the foot of the stairs, but once I get there, Apple Bloom sticks a foreleg out in front of me.

“I could use a hoof here, Ruby,” she says. Link stops on the fifth step and glances back at me again. He knows just as well as I do that something’s up, but we also know that neither of us know what it is. So we both fall back on our standard response techniques: he walks away and pretends he didn’t hear anything, and I sit tight and wait for somepony to tell me what they’re expecting me to do.

I stand there for ten seconds, then fifteen, then twenty. The urge to blurt something out hits us both at the same time, but Apple Bloom’s voice is louder and a pretty good deal more fervent.

“I’m sorry!” she half-shouts as my counterargument of “I shouldn’t have come” falls on deaf ears. The open-mouthed stare we share in the silent seconds that follows ends with Apple Bloom snorting with laughter, and me eventually cracking a grin of my own. I’ve heard people describe laughter as infectious before, and Apple Bloom’s the first pony I’ve met in a long time that truly lived up to that cliché.

“What are you sorry about?” I ask once we both bend the cheesy smiles off our faces.

“I’m just sorry about being so…” She pauses, her tongue stuck between her teeth as she tries to think of the right word. “…uncouth about all this. I mean, with the jokes and all the kiddin’ around about that unicorn upstairs, I just… I wasn’t thinkin’. I wasn’t thinkin’ about how you or Link were feelin’, or rememberin’ what it’s like to come straight from Equestria and see things like… things like that. I know it’s scary, an’ I know it’s shockin’. An’ I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I forgot that for a little while.”

I don’t know why my first instinct is to laugh again, but luckily enough, that reaction seems to make both me and Apple Boom feel better. “I just don’t get it,” I confess to her. “How can you be so… uncouth about it, or whatever? How aren’t you scared or shocked or… well, like me?”

Apple Bloom shrugs. Her laugh is a tinge wistful this time. “Built up a callus,” she says. “It’s like apple buckin’: the first time you do it, it stings like all get-out, but give it a couple weeks and you start to bulk up. Your hooves get tougher, your muscles get stronger, your back legs start goin’ numb once ya get into a groove…” The look in her eyes is opaque, like a glass of water that’s been emptied and refilled with something a little less pure. “Lotta things work that way. More than you’d expect.”

“So that’s it? It just doesn’t bother you?”

“Sometimes it does,” she admits. “Most times I just… treat it like it ain’t supposed to.” She chooses her next few words carefully once she sees the look on my face. “It’s hard to explain. I guess the best way of sayin’ it is that the mind’s a right powerful thing if you know what to put it to. You see enough unnatural things, enough friends disappear or die or do things you never would’ve expected ‘em to do… eventually you can’t think about it all at once. You keep it all up in your head, you try to make sense of it all, and before you know it you’re the craziest one outta all of ‘em. So we don’t think about it, I suppose. Applejack just don’t say much to begin with, and I just… try to be practical. If I see something like that poor unicorn sometimes, I figure out what I can do about it, and if the answer’s ‘nothing’, then I don’t beat myself up over somethin’ I can’t change. And if I get scared, I joke about it. Kid around. Act like it ain’t a big deal, because emotions are funny things and if you tell yourself you ain’t feelin’ any, sometimes you believe it.”

Apple Bloom pauses for breath, then bites her lip. I’m almost sure this is the most she’s opened up to anypony in years. And come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I know why she chose me to do it with.

“’F I’m bein’ honest, I don’t know I still do it,” she goes on quietly. “I tell myself it’s for Cider’s sake, and it ain’t like that’s a poor reason at all to keep a smile on, but… I just can’t bear the thought’a her growin’ up somewhere where the sun don’t shine. I want her to grow up in Equestria, where the fields don’t have walls around ‘em and the windows aren’t always dark, and the rain don’t come from a spigot in the ceiling. Used to be I wanted to go home, but I can hardly call it that anymore. I spent more’n half my life down here. Lost my friends, lost half my family, lost ten years of growin’ up after doin’ it all in a few days. And I laugh about it. I laugh about it, because by this point it hurts too much to cry. Because this family’s all any of us has got left, and if either’a them saw me start to sink, they’d hang onto me all the way to the bottom.”

Now her eyes are frothing, not with pity but with resolve. “And so help me, I will not let that happen again. Not with Cider. Not with AJ. And not with you or Link either. You don’t deserve to be stuck down here. Nopony does.”

She lets herself trail off and eyes me expectantly, waiting for something I can’t identify. Ten seconds pass, and then she wipes a hoof across her brow and whistles loud enough probably for Link to hear it in the lobby.

“Damn, you’re good at this listenin’ thing!” she says. “I could swear you were even interested for a bit in the middle there!”

I almost protest, but Apple Bloom’s wink steals the words from my mouth. “Seriously, though, thanks for… thanks for stickin’ around,” she adds. “Means a lot.”

“Don’t mention it,” I tell her, tossing in a wink in return for good measure. “You think Link fell out of a porthole waiting for us?”

“With how long you let me ramble like a steer without a yoke? I reckon we mighta starved him to death up there.”

“I’m not searching his body if we did,” I joke back. Apple Bloom’s grin is the widest one I’ve ever seen split her face.

“Neither am I. I don’t hate him that much,” Apple Bloom jabs back. My half-hearted chuckle only eggs her on further. “Aw, c’mon, he’s really not that bad. Harmless enough, at least. Besides, coming out here with us in the first place has gotta count for somethin’, right?”

This time, I do a little bit better of a job faking amusement. Apple Bloom doesn’t know the whole story between him and me—and personally I don’t know how much credit I can give him for just going along with what Applejack and I had already decided—but that isn’t worth spoiling the moment here over. “If you say so, Apple Bloom,” I tell her.

“What’d I tell ya? You are good at listenin’,” Apple Bloom replies, punctuating the remark with a chuck on the shoulder. “And for the record, just ‘AB’ will do fine. Seems more friendly-like.”

I shrug again and nod my understanding, all the while doing a very good job of holding onto whatever parts of my mind I haven’t lost yet. She told me all those secrets. She wants me to use her nickname. Does that mean we’re friends? Oh, wow, this is what it feels like, isn’t it? I made it through a whole conversation without Apple Bloom thinking I’ve got motor oil for brains, and now we’re friends. I don’t mean for my next step to be more of a bounce, but by then it’s beyond my ability to control. Holy crap. I mean, oh my gosh. I mean… oh my gooooosh!

For the next little bit as we climb the steps, my thoughts stick more or less to that same path. Meanwhile, Apple Bloom fires up her radio and floats it close to her mouth.

“Hey, Link, sorry for keepin’ ya waitin’,” she says. “We, uh…” Her telekinetic aura shimmers, and one tendril of it lifts off the talk button. “What am I supposed to tell him?” she whispers through a giggle.

Oh geez. Don’t be braindead. Say something funny. Help. “I don’t know, make something up,” I whisper back.

Apple Bloom sticks out her tongue and presses the talk button. “Ruby found a room full’a frilly little shoes and saddlebags,” she says, dodging around the awkward/friendly swipe I take at her foreleg. “Couldn’t drag her away. Where you at?”

Apple Bloom lets off the talk button to bicker with me some more. We’re almost to the top of the stairs before we realize Link hasn’t answered yet.

“Liiiiink,” Apple Bloom calls back the radio. “C’mon, sugarcube, say somethin’.” She releases the button again. Nothing but static.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Probably just doesn’t have it on,” AB replies. She doesn’t sound at all sure, or at all casual. “Let’s go check the lobby. Try to raise him on yours in the meantime.”

Apple Bloom picks up her pace, and I follow close behind, balancing on three hooves as I hold my radio against my chest. “Link, if you can hear me, pick up already,” I order him, but when I pull back and wait for a response, I get nothing more than AB did. “He’s not answering,” I tell her.

“Try it again,” she pants. “We’re almost there.” Our jog has become a run. My heart is thudding like a cheetah’s, and it only beats faster when I dip my chin down towards my radio again.

“Link, this isn’t funny. If you’re out there, if you’re still alive out there, just stop screwing around and answer your-”

“Get back!”

Apple Bloom’s order comes out as a violent hiss, and is accompanied by a powerful hoof smacking my radio away and pressing me back against the wall of the corridor. “Apple Bloom, what-”

“Get down and stay quiet,” she interrupts in the same low growl. With one hoof still on my chest, she stands up on her hind legs and pushes her back flat against the wall. With me still watching from below, she raises the bracer on her other hoof to her mouth and yanks at it with her teeth. I hear her grunt, and then the click of a switch: she just flicked the safety off her gun.

“What’s going on?” I whisper through my teeth. Now my heart’s going like a hummingbird’s. In response, Apple Bloom just jerks her head towards the corner a few feet away. The lobby is right in front of us, but whatever she’s motioning at is hidden behind the curve of the wall. I can hear it, though: a shuffling, clumsy thing, punctuating whatever it’s doing with a constant and unintelligible stream of nonsense words and animalistic growls.

I peer around the corner and make a quick sweep of the room, but some part of me already knows where to look. In the very center of the lobby, a dust-covered black pegasus wearing a torn collared shirt that’s two sizes too small is digging through the pockets of the unicorn we found earlier, his efforts seemingly fruitless if the increasingly erratic twitching of his wings is anything to go by. I hold my breath and try to keep as far out of sight as I can, but the pegasus is so absorbed in what he’s doing that he doesn’t turn around once. Another scan of the room reveals our problem: he’s facing right towards the walkway we came into Mercury through. In order to get to it, we’ll have to get past him first.

“Must’ve been pals with the other one,” Apple Bloom guesses as I slide back behind cover. She peers out around me again, and a look of thinly veiled disgust overtakes her face. “Damn vultures. They act all chummy, prowlin’ around in groups, but that’s only ‘til one of ‘em ain’t useful anymore. Once the SUN starts flowin’, they’re about as noble as foxes in a henhouse.”

“Should we try to distract him?” I ask. “Maybe we could sneak around.”

“Maybe,” Apple Bloom says. “Maybe not. Some of ‘em are smarter than you’d think, ‘specially the pegasi. We call ‘em Buzzards back at the ranch. They can’t really fly anymore—the SUN does their wings in something awful—so they climb all over the ceilings and walls with those hooks they used during the war. Just about all their wings are good for is jumpin’ short distances, and you can always hear ‘em buzzin’ like houseflies when they do. They’re still natural-born hunters, though. Couldn’t tell you why, but when pegasi get too far gone with that stuff, it’s almost like they go feral. He might well smell us comin’ ‘fore long.”

I think back to the thing Link and I saw in the bathysphere dock, and my skin crawls. This one doesn’t look nearly as deformed, but his raspy breathing and jerky movements are all too familiar. “This thing ain’t worth a split pea from this distance,” Apple Bloom grumbles, lowering her bracer and crouching down so that her belly almost touches the floor, “and you don’t ever wanna tussle with a Buzzard in open space. We’re gonna need to draw ‘im over here so I can get him in range and trap him in the hallway. I’ll fire a round over his head, then pull back outta sight. With any luck, he won’t see me till I’m on top of him. I’ll take him out nice and quick, you’ll back me up if he gets away from me, and then we’ll both get the hay outta this building and go find Link. Got it?”

“I-I…”

The gears in my head were spinning fast enough to fly right out my ears a minute ago, and now it feels like somebody shoved a crowbar right in the middle of them. I sit down hard and do my best to nod, fumbling with the safety on my own bracer and praying I’ll even be able to aim the thing with how bad my hooves are shaking.

“Don’t worry. I’ve done this a hundred times. We’ll be fine,” Apple Bloom says without looking at me—or judging by her hollow tone, convincing either of us. “Ready?”

My hoof loses purchase on the opposite leg’s bracer. The safety on my gun is still on.

“On three,” Apple Bloom says. “One…”

Apple Bloom, wait!

“Two…”

I grab desperately at the switch with my teeth. I still can’t get a grip on it. “AB, I can’t get it off!”

“Thr-“

“Pssst!”

In the time it takes me to blink and jump back in shock, Apple Bloom snaps her hoof away from the pegasus and up towards the mezzanine in the back of the foyer. Behind the balustrade bordering the platform, Link’s hoof is frozen in the middle of a frantic gesture to get our attention, his eyes slightly crossed as he looks down the barrel of the pistol trained right between his eyebrows.

“Damn it to the moon,” Apple Bloom spits under her breath before lowering the bracer again, her hoof trembling ever so slightly the whole way to the floor. Link glances down at the pegasus and signals for us to come up the stairs, and once Apple Bloom directs the same motion towards me, I follow her slowly and quietly up to where Link’s hiding.

“Are you outta your friggin’ mind? Where’s your damn radio?” Apple Bloom hisses at Link, her teeth clenched so tightly I can tell she’s doing it so she doesn’t scream at him. She isn’t the only one, either.

“I turned it off,” Link snaps right back.

“Why the he-”

“What was I supposed to do? I walked in here the same time he did,” he says. One hoof is pointed towards the stallion now haphazardly ambling around the lobby, and the other is holding tight to the radio pressed against his flank. “I barely had half a second to think, and then you two wouldn’t shut up on this thing! I’m lucky I even got up here before he figured out where all the noise was coming from!”

Apple Bloom mouths something that looks an awful lot like a curse, then slumps back against the stone railing, peering through a gap between the pillars holding it up at the situation below. “You think you could hit him?”

“With wha-”

Apple Bloom shoots him a look, and Link’s eyes turn away from hers and towards the holster on his hip. It’s about time he did too; my eyes have been glued there this whole time. “Can’t you?” he whispers.

“Not at this range,” she repeats. “Magic-operated guns are always more accurate. Don’t need to compensate for recoil as much.”

Link wets his lips and swallows hard. Now he’s clutching the holster just as hard as the radio. “What if we just wait him out?” I suggest. “He’s gotta wander off sometime, right?”

“That’s the other problem,” Link says weakly, and Apple Bloom and I follow his sideways glance out through the immense window that forms most of the building’s façade and tapers into an arch three stories above our heads. I squint towards the blotchy dark mass that seems to be stuck halfway through the glass tunnel we went through to get in here, and the realization of what I’m really looking at is accompanied by a tingly sensation of dread, and a low, mournful bellow that echoes into the lobby and dissipates without the pegasus below so much as looking up. Apple Bloom groans, and Link goes back to fiddling with his pistol. When a foolish giggle wafts out of the tunnel a few seconds later, AB swears again.

“It’s the Big Daddy,” Link asks. “That’s what you call that thing, right? Big Daddy?”

“And a Little Sister to boot,” Apple Bloom grumbles. “We mighta jumped outta the fryin’ pan, but we’re ‘bout to fall into one helluva of a fire if we don’t do somethin’ fast.”

Link and I share a brief look of mutual panic. For once, he doesn’t even try to feign indifference. “What fire?” I ask.

“That walkway’s too narrow for us to just skirt around that big bastard,” she tells us. “And once he gets in here, that splicer’s gonna gun for that Little Sister like a moth towards a porch lamp. He probably won’t be able to do much ‘cept set her bodyguard off, but by then it won’t matter. He’ll be pissed off, and we’ll be his next targets once he swats that pegasus into a wet spot on the wall. Best case would be that he doesn’t notice us and we just wait for his Sister to finish pokin’ holes in both those poor saps’ corpses, and who know what else’ll wander in while that’s goin’ on.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

Apple Bloom slaps at her pistol bracer and sets its ammo chain spinning, the gentle whirring of the mechanisms inside the device seeming a hundred times louder in the otherwise silent room. From behind Link’s back, she pulls out the rubber tubing with her telekinesis, testing its strength in midair before unfurling it onto the floor and cocking her gun with one twitch of her leg.

“Expedite the process,” she says. As we watch in numb confusion, she loops one end of the tubing around a balcony and begins tying it into a knot, explaining the rest of the plan as she does so.

“If that splicer gets a chance to attack the Sister and start a fight, we all stand liable to get caught in the crossfire. Our advantage is how the Big Daddy’s mind is programmed: he won’t get involved unless he thinks his Little Sister’s life is in danger. So if we kill that splicer before they get in here, we can just walk right out, and that metal monster won’t so much as give us a wave as we pass ‘em by.”

Apple Bloom finishes tying off the tubing and tugs at it again to test her knot. Once she threads the tail end between the balustrade pillars and tosses it over the edge, she has a makeshift rope leading down to the first floor. “There’s a security station right below this balcony,” she continues, turning to face us again but still keeping low enough for the railing to give her cover. “I saw it on the way in. I’ll get down there and hack a security bot to watch our backs. Once I’m done, Link, take the best shot you can right at that splicer’s head. He must be runnin’ pretty dry if he’s in this neck’a the woods, so you don’t have to worry ‘bout him healin’ up. One good round through the skull oughta be enough to do him in.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Link groans. “You gotta be kidding me right now.”

“Look, I…” Apple Bloom shuts her eyes and gnaws on her lip like she’s trying to bite it off. When she looks up at us again, the pain in her eyes is something I know she could never fake. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I got you into this, and I’m sorry I can’t think of any other way to get us all out. I swear, if I thought for even a second I could take this all on by myself, I would, but… that ain’t no ordinary splicer down there. He’s fast, he’s dangerous, and I’ll bet apples to oranges he’s about as crazy as they come down here. I might be able to take him by surprise if I moved quick enough, but I’d be goin’ all in on an inside straight, and I sure as hell ain’t about to risk strandin’ you two alone out here on a piss-poor gamble like that.”

Link gulps ahead and bumps his head back against the railing. If anything, he looks sicker than before. Sicker than I feel, even. “I promise you, this’ll be simple,” AB says. “Even if you miss, I’ll have a bot ready to pick up the slack. All you gotta do is pull the trigger. Just like target practice.” Now she turns to me. “Ruby, you’re on standby again. We’re all a team here. You watch Link’s back, and I’ll watch both’a y’alls. Clear?”

“Wait, just wait a second,” Link pants. “What if I screw it up? How am I supposed to know when to shoot him?”

For better or for worse, I can tell by the half-cocked smirk on AB’s face that her good humor and spirit has started to return. Without breaking eye contact with Link, she reaches over with her telekinesis, plucks his radio out from beneath him, flips it on, and tosses it into his lap. “I’ll keep ya posted,” she says. Before he can object again, she lifts up the tubing and wraps it around her forehoof, then hops up onto the railing and over the side of the balcony. We both duck down and listen for the clattering racket of her impact on the ground, but neither we nor the pegasus hear a single solitary sound.

“I’m in,” she reports a few moments later, her voice coming through Link’s radio in a scratchy whisper. “Remind me to thank the guards for leaving the place less locked than they found it.”

“Will do,” Link croaks back. He slides the radio off his lap and his pistol into it, handling the weapon between his hooves like a hot coal from a furnace.

“And here we… go,” Apple Bloom then mumbles on. “All right, gimme a minute or so to get this sucker up and runnin’, and we’ll be good to go. Ruby, how much time you think we got till our guests arrive?”

I push myself up into a half-crouch and peer over the railing. The pegasus is tearing apart a desk on the far left side of the lobby, and the dark blob in the window is three-quarters of the way through the tunnel outside. “Less than that,” I tell her.

“Heh. Time trial,” she murmurs. “Figures. Start the clock… now.”

“What?” I sputter, but the silence I receive in response to that seems to indicate that she was probably serious about that. Her loss for trusting me to do it, then. I’m a bit preoccupied watching Link slowly lift his gun up to rest against his forehead, with the mouth of the barrel pointed right at the tip of his illuminated horn. To her credit, though, it doesn’t take long after I do start counting before the crackle of Link’s radio announces her success.

“Done!” she triumphantly sighs. “All you, Link. You got one shot. Make it count.”

My heart sinks, and all the sweat and droplets of seawater that’ve accumulated in my coat suddenly turn ice cold. So this is what I came out here for. For history to repeat itself. For Link to have to end another pony’s life. And why? To save Apple Bloom the trouble? To convince him he was in the right all along? To protect us?

To protect me?

Link blows a long, slow breath out between tightly pursed lips, then lurches onto his hooves and lifts his pistol up in front of his face. His eyelids flutter for a moment, then open as wide as they can go.

“Link, we’re runnin’ on borrowed time here. He shouldn’t go anywhere fast, so don’t worry about ‘im bein’ a movin’ target. Just line him up in the sight and squeeze. He won’t feel a thing. All told, you’re probably doin’ him a favor.”

Link readjusts his stance and rolls his shoulders. I’m still crouched out of sight behind him, but I feel as though I’m sharing his body with him. I can see the splicer lined up at the end of my gun, hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, feel the bead of sweat trickling down my temple towards the corner of my eye.

The splicer has lost interest in the desk now, instead choosing to shamble back towards the center of the room. Far away, I swear I can hear the voice of a little filly calling out for somepony to hurry up. Without me realizing it at first, my lips are moving in tandem with it. Why hasn’t Link fired yet? What is he waiting for?

“Nice and easy…” Apple Bloom says, though her voice is getting quicker and a little less patient. The pegasus stops suddenly, cocks his head and sticks up his ears. He’s heard something. The blob in the walkway is twenty feet from the lobby. Link isn’t looking at the blob, though. In fact, he isn’t even looking at the splicer. He’s looking away from his gun, away from the living, breathing pony it’s still pointed at.

“Link, it’s now and never. Just shoot him!”

He’s looking at me. Hopelessly, desperately, he’s looking at me. And far too late, I finally understand why.

The splicer’s head is turning up. He’s looking towards the balcony, towards the exact spot where we’re hiding. I turn away from Link’s stare just in time to crash into that of his target; for a mind-numbing second, my own wide eyes met a pair of cloudy, livid brown ones. Then the pegasus below lets loose a furious snarl and snaps out the hooks strapped to his ankles, and Apple Bloom’s voice is ringing out through the entire room.

“Hey, featherhead!” she screams from somewhere right beneath us. The splicer twitches and focuses in on the security station, and in the corner of my fire I see Link’s ankles tighten up. In the time it takes me to drop my mouth open and whip back around to face him, he narrows one eye, shuts the other eye tight, levels his pistol dead in line with his nose, and fires.

The round makes an ear-splitting crack that brings tears to my eyes, and tears into the splicer’s left shoulder with enough force to ricochet out the other side in a burst of ruby-red gore. He screams in pain and stumbles back, his body sent into a slow spin by the force of the bullet’s impact. There’s no time for a warning, no time for Link to try again. Apple Bloom can’t even get her security bot out in the open before the splicer’s eyes drift towards the far side of the lobby, before they latch onto a mint green earth filly with a wavy silver mane and a hulking metal monstrosity wearing a bulbous, multi-windowed diving helmet—a Big Daddy—standing behind her. As the splicer dips into a crouch and cackles with greed, the Little Sister screams in terror, but her thin voice is soon drowned out by the furious bellow of her bodyguard. The pegasus launches into the air, the Big Daddy’s foreleg splits in two to reveal a rapidly rotating mining drill, and the battle is on.

I’m too far back from the railing to get a good view of the fight and too scared to get any closer, but the vicious squeals of metal against metal and anger and pain are vivid enough to give me the feeling of being right in the thick of things. After one particularly heavy-sounding blow, the radio coughs out something too garbled for me to pick up, and a moment later the whirring sound of a propeller overtakes the noise below. Apple Bloom’s released her security bot, its cheery, melodic whistle announcing its entrance into the fray. Over the ensuing volleys of gunfire and cries from the splicer trying to dodge them, I hear the radio come to life again.

“We gotta go!” Apple Bloom screams up at us. “Ruby, grab Link and get outta there no-”

The first time I got into a mess like this, there was a point in the fight when everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. That never happens here. In the split second before the balcony explodes, I see Link duck down and try to dive towards me; he barely gets his knees bent before we’re showered with dust and rubble, the force of the splicer’s impact against the railing strong enough to smash through it like it was carved out of hollow glass. The unwilling flight of the pegasus comes to a gruesome halt at the wall behind us, where feathers fly from his back as he bounces off the tile and leaves a round splotch of blood trickling down from his point of impact. Even still, I can see his eyes fluttering, his wings and legs struggling to push him back upright. He’s still alive. He’s going to attack.

“Ruby, jump!”

Jump, the radio says. Who said that? Apple Bloom? Applejack? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I don’t question the order for a second. I push Link off me and onto his hooves, then shove him through the gap in the balcony rail. He lands ten feet from the Big Daddy charging up from the front of the room, and hits the ground running. Now it’s my turn. I take two steps forward, channel all my strength into my back legs, and then something slams into me from behind and sends me careening into empty space.

It’s the splicer, blood streaming down his face, teeth bared in fury, manufactured metal talons clamped around my sides. We fall together, his first blow sending us into a somersault that ends with me landing on top of him in a disorganized heap. He never loses his grip, though, and when our dizzying spin comes to a stop, he’s standing over me with all four of my limbs pinned under his impossibly strong legs. He raises one blade for the kill, his shout of triumph spraying my chest with gore. I don’t even have time to blink.

Which is why my eyes are still wide open when a massive block of steel the size of a football player smacks the pegasus halfway to kingdom come, sending him soaring across the room and into the wall for a second time. The Big Daddy cranks his drill back to life once he sees he’s scored a hit, and for a moment the irrationally deadly weapon is gyrating half a foot from my nose. Then the beast bellows again and lowers its head into a charge, lumbering towards the far wall at top speed. The splicer dodges to the side in the nick of time, and the Big Daddy’s impact against the wall shakes the entire building.

I feel Link beside me before I see him: he’s reaching down towards me, threading his forelegs underneath mine, pulling me up and shouting at me to keep going. I stumble to my hooves and follow him to where Apple Bloom is waiting at the mouth of the walkway, my ears ringing and my vision knocked off-kilter in a way that makes everything seem too blurry and too bright at the same time. Another impact behind me vibrates through the floor, and then we’re outside the building and Apple Bloom is running ahead of us again. Clearing the way, she says. Hurry up, she says.

“Stay here!” Link says. “I’ll be right back!”

His words echo in my skull, and finally penetrate my brain as he sits me up against the wall of the tunnel. I grab his foreleg just as he starts to turn. “Are you crazy?” I shout at him. “We gotta go!”

“Just stay here, it’ll only take a second,” he says. “I gotta get the tubing.”

“Get back here!” I scream at him as he pulls away. “Are you serious?”

“It’s the only reason we’re here in the first place!” he screams back. The Big Daddy roars behind him. Now I can feel the walkway shuddering too. “And I’m the only reason it all went to hell! I’m not leaving it behind!”

I open my mouth to tell him he’s an idiot again, but Apple Bloom beats me to it. “Landsake, forget the moondamn tubing!” she yells from the opposite end of the tunnel. “We’ll get it later! Let’s go!”

Link isn’t listening. He’s already turned around. I’m still scrambling to get to my feet when the biggest crash of all hits me like a tidal wave and stops him dead in his tracks. The floor sways beneath me, tiles and wall fixtures shatter inside the lobby, and when the dust settles, an eerie, haunting silence settles with it. I freeze halfway off the ground to check if the battle’s really over, and that’s when I hear the faint, unmistakable clink of stone against glass.

Link and I both look up towards the same spot, where a chunk of concrete about the size of a baseball is sinking down outside the enclosure surrounding the walkway. It didn’t seem to do any damage to the glass plating it bounced off of, but that’s not what really keeps our attention. About ten stories over our heads, the roof of Mercury Mechanics is barely visible past millions of gallons of foggy seawater. Sticking out from the front of it is a huge, misshapen blotch, its color a different shade than the rest of the building and its shape not nearly uniform enough for it to be part of the roof’s construction. Link steps closer to me and narrows his eyes. At first, the blotch looks like it’s just wavering in the dim light of the city around us, but after a few seconds I’m almost positively that it’s moving. Shifting towards the edge of the building.

Shifting towards us.

I plant my forehooves against the floor. In my mind, I can still feel it shivering from the pounding blows of the Big Daddy. Could he really have been powerful enough to shake the entire building? To dislodge something stuck on the roof? I only have to wait a few moments before my questions answers itself: with a distantly audible crunch, the blotch separates from the building and, pulled by the force of gravity, begins to descend.

“What did Apple Bloom say about these tunnels?” Link asks quietly.

“That it’d take half a building falling on them to break one,” I answer him. And it’s almost funny that now, of all times, the world has finally slowed to a crawl. I see Link’s shoulders go limp, Apple Bloom’s jaw drop open, and the shape overheard slowly morph from an indistinct smudge to a jagged hunk of salmon pink steel, all in the span of a few seconds. My eyes drop towards the opposite end of the hallway and lock together with Apple Bloom’s. A hundred feet end to end. So far. Too far.

“Get back!” she screams. “Get back insi-”

I don’t get a chance to hear her finish. The dislodged piece of the zeppelin’s hull cleaves the walkway in two in a single moment of shattering glass and screeching metal, and a wall of bone-chilling water knocks every inch of air from my lungs. Apple Bloom vanishes, Link is swept away by the wave, and in the instant before I shut my eyes, I see the lights of Harmony go dark.

Farmer's Market - Part 4

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Light blooms in the center of my vision, sending a dull twinge through my skull. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but the bright light streaming down from the lamps overhead is enough to drag me back into consciousness again. I roll my shoulders and try to move my legs. They all follow each command I give them, albeit with more than a few complaints in the form of teeth-gritting soreness. On some level, that’s comforting: it means I’m still alive. On a very close other level, it’s terrifying: it means I’m still alive and alone inside of Mercury Mechanics.

The next two sensations to hit me come almost simultaneously. The first one is familiar: a cold feeling of wetness soaking into my stomach that sends a tingle down my spine every time I move. I’m lying in a puddle of seawater, the last remnants of the wave that sent me hurtling back in here. The second feeling is one I know too, but from a place much warmer and cozier than the one I’m inside right now. It’s a voice, loud and feminine, long departed from concern and chugging along towards full-blown panic.

“Ruby! Ruby, Link, please, if you can hear me, say something!” I hear Apple Bloom shout. She was with us before, wasn’t she? And now she’s gone. Swept off by the opposing twin of the wave that threw us back in here. The funny thing is that she’s probably not even a hundred yards away, but with the bridge we would’ve crossed together now lying in pieces at the bottom of an ocean trench, she might as well be on the other side of the planet.

Ignoring as best I can the needles stabbing into the bridge of my nose, I crack my eyelids open and squint at the source of the noise: my little beat-up radio lying in the same puddle I’m spread-eagled and slack-jawed in. The force of the tunnel collapse was enough to tear it free of its strap and toss it back into the lobby, and yet it’s still working like a charm. Those things really are durable.

I roll my shoulders again, this time enough to prop myself up onto my knees. As Apple Bloom continues to beg for a response, I pull myself through the water and over to the radio, little ripples of water washing over it and petering out at the edges of the puddle. My energy spent from even that simple task, I roll out of the water and onto my back again, grabbing the radio with both hooves so I can clutch it to my chest without too much effort.

“I’m here,” I say into it once I’ve pressed down the button on the side. “Alive. Hearing you.”

Apple Bloom swears, then lets out a shaking sigh. “Stars above, don’t scare me like that again,” she finally says once she’s done hyperventilating. “Are y’all in one piece?”

I let my hoof off the button for a second and turn my head to the side. Behind a wall of overturned and waterlogged chairs, Link is just now rolling onto his hooves, his eyes half-lidded and his legs wobbling from the effort. “I think,” I tell Apple Bloom once he gives me a salutatory nod.

“Well, that’s some good news,” Apple Bloom says after a pause that goes just a moment too long. I grit my teeth, and let my head roll back to face the ceiling again. She doesn’t need to tell me the bad news in this situation.

“Can Applejack still hear us?” I ask.

Her response is so quick, the first part of her sentence is cut off when I can’t release the talk button fast enough. “–ight here, sugarcube,” Applejack says. “I can hear you just fine.”

“Can you see us, though?” I don’t know what a chunk of zeppelin bashing through a walkway could do to the camera system she’s depending on to guide us, but my best guess about it is that it can’t be anything good.

“Lost a few feeds here and there, but the lobby’s still comin’ in clear. Landsake, though, what in tarnation happened out there?”

I don’t want to be the one to tell her, and judging by her tone of voice, neither does Apple Bloom. “Tunnel collapsed,” she says quietly. “Got hit by somethin’ that fell off the roof. I’m all right over in the Market, but Link and Ruby... they’re still over in Mercury.”

Apple Bloom’s next few words hit me like icicles to the chest. She sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. “This is all my fault,” she whimpers. “I-I told ‘em I’d take care of ‘em, and then I just ran ahead and let us get separated and n-now they’re...”

She trails off just in time for Applejack to harshly cut in over her. “Apple Bloom, hush. You didn’t do nothin’ wrong, you hear me? If anything, it’s my fault for not warnin’ y’all ‘bout that Big Daddy sooner. What with Link’s radio off and you and Ruby too close to get your attention, I just...”

Applejack sighs—the thumping burst of static sounds almost like a brick bouncing off the receiver—but when she comes back on, she’s smoothed her voice back out into a firm, authoritative tone. “We all made mistakes, and now we gotta pull on our big girl boots and deal with the consequences. You’re gonna be fine. You’re all gonna be fine.”

Forgive me if my glasses are a little less rose-tinted, I almost snap back, but just barely I manage to hold my tongue. That doesn’t mean it’s not true, though. Link and I are alone in the deep blue yonder of a city populated entirely by murderous psychopaths, with a waterlogged map we can’t read and two guns we don’t know to shoot. And more to the point, it’s worth mentioning again that our one and only way out of this building just got cleaved in half by a twenty-foot hunk of the first Equestrian-made zeppelin to ever blow up in the middle of uncharted waters. But hey, what could hurt about looking on the bright side?

I reach down to pull the radio closer, and the surge of pain in my shoulders brings tears to my eyes. Everything. The answer to that question is everything.

“Is there another way out of this building that doesn’t involve swimming?” I ask against my better judgement. Thankfully, at least this answer doesn’t sting as much as all the others I’ve heard since I came to.

“There are maintenance corridors that go along the ocean bed back to the Farmer’s Market,” Applejack says. “They weren’t meant for pedestrians so there aren’t that many cameras down there, but it’s still a pretty straight shot out. You’ll just have to go down through Mercury and... and a few other places in the Market. I should be able to steer ya out over the radio.”

Oh. How nice. Two more good things. And one awkward pause that seems to be hiding something Applejack doesn’t want to tell me about, and I really don’t want to hear about right now. Guess I’ll just sit here and stew on that while Apple Bloom assures me that it won’t really be a problem.

“It won’t really be a problem,” Apple Bloom assures me. “Only thing wrong with that area is that we never officially went in to clear it out, and those maintenance tunnels weren’t ever all that crowded to begin with. Considerin’ what the lobby was like, there’s a good chance it’ll be near empty down under it too. I’ll try to loop around and meet you halfway, in any case.”

To be honest, that at least actually does make me feel a little better. Having to cover half the distance back home with just Link by my side—who, speak of the devil, has finally made his way over to sit next to me in front of the radio—wasn’t my first choice for how I wanted to spend today, but it’s better than going the whole way like that.

“So the plan is that we find a way down to the maintenance tunnel, follow it out of the building into some other place in the market, meet Apple Bloom, and skip on back home in time for dinner?” I ask.

“Said it a heck of a lot better than I would’ve, sugarcube,” Applejack replies with a chuckle. “If you’re still in the Mercury lobby, there should be a stairwell off through a hallway in the back someplace. That’ll take you straight down to the–”

Applejack’s voice cuts out, and a little corner of my chest goes cold. The hitch in her sentence wasn’t gradual like she’d just lost her train of thought. It was abrupt, like an unseen predator had snuck up on her and clapped its hoof over her mouth. “What in the...” she mutters a moment later, only a few syllables making their way through the radio before words fail her once again.

“What’s wrong?” Apple Bloom asks before I get the chance to.

“Something’s wrong with the feeds,” Applejack says slowly, like she can’t even believe what she’s saying. “Energy levels are spikin’ like something’s overloadin’ the... y’all get downstairs and find the breaker room now, or the whole system’s gonna go up in–”

Before Applejack can shout the word, her voice is blown away by its real-life counterpart. Flames blossom and balloon out from the ceiling lights overhead, bursting the bulbs and spraying out white-hot sparks that fizzle out in the puddles left over from the tunnel collapse. I throw up a forehoof to shield my eyes, and for a terrifying moment afterwards I wonder if I waited too long to do it: when I open my eyes again, I can’t even see my hoof as I lower it back down to the floor. Once I pick up on the distant glow of the city proper filtering in through the lobby windows, though, I’m able to get ahold of myself again.

I’m not blind. The lights just went out. Again. Just like the last time it happened, it seems obvious that whatever just shorted them out was deliberate. Remembering the audiotape I found in the warehouse where I got my bracer only makes me more sure. Somepony wants us to be stuck down here, and they don’t want us to see them coming when they sneak in to snuff us out. And if this particular strategy of attack is anything to go by, I think I might have a pretty good idea who that is.

As if on cue, my radio crackles to life with an abnormally loud burst of static, and the voice that wafts out of isn’t Applejack or Apple Bloom. It’s somepony else entirely, the first one I expected to hear and the last one I ever hoped I would hear again.

“I have created this city in my own image,” Onyx Ryder says, projecting her speech like she’s speaking in a public forum and making an example of us to the gathered crowd. “From faded cloth, I have sewn beauty. From bedrock and steel, I have built a legacy. But you... the invaders, the parasprites of the surface world. What have you done? What great truths have you uncovered, what wonders have your mortal hooves wrought?”

Link’s pistol is drawn, the soft green light from his horn throwing a shimmering gleam over its finish. I’ve checked to make sure the safety on my bracer is off too, but so far nothing has crawled out of the walls or burst out of the ceiling with teeth bared and guns blazing. There’s nothing else in the room with us at all, just dark, roiling shadows and the self-righteous voice of a madmare with no choir left to preach to.

“Do not mistake me for a fool. I know why you’re here. You’ve come for my treasures, to peck out my eyes and flitter away from my blinded corpse with a few trinkets and baubles to line your nest. You seek fame, fortune...” Ryder pauses, then draws out the next word as if it’s venom dripping from her tongue. “Profit.”

This isn’t the same mare we heard in the plaza. Every sentence sprays from the radio like a hurricane, each syllable like another freezing spray of seafoam trickling down the back of my neck. She doesn’t just want us gone. She wants something far worse than that.

“You will find nothing,” she seethes. “This city is mine, and I’ll watch it burn before I see it desecrated by your filthy, scrabbling talons. You hear me, little birdies? Onyx Ryder offers you nothing but ashes!”

Her final threat sounds more like a vengeful scream, but with the situation being what it is, I’m not concerned with screaming and panicking as much as I am trying to figure out what the hay is going on. The last time this happened, Ryder couldn’t wait to send a hundred hungry splicers down to tear us limb from limb. Now, even after the radio goes quiet for good, not even so much as a spider scurries out of the shadows. Is she trying to scare us? Warn us? Are we just the newest playthings of a complete raving psychopath?

I point a clueless look towards Link, and he mirrors my expression right back. Whatever Ryder’s game is, she doesn’t have all her pieces in the right position yet. Which means our best option right now is to trot down into the maintenance tunnels and probably push them into place for her.

On second thought, maybe a bit of screaming and panicking would do me some good here.

“You get any of that, Applejack?” Link says. His words are a bit tentative, just as mine would be if I were speaking into a radio I wasn’t sure would even work anymore, but it turns out there’s no need for him to be cautious. Applejack answers him right away, and sounds like she’d rather tell him anything but what he’s hoping to hear.

“I got it, all right,” she mutters. “Wish I could say it’s just like her to be all bark and no bite, but she’s been crazy like a fox for years. I don’t know what she’s got planned for you, but I’d sure as hayfire love to never have to find out.”

“What was she talking about?” I ask. My heart’s still winding down from the wide variety of pulse rates it just browsed through, so it takes me a moment to catch my breath before I can keep going. “We didn’t do anything to her. We’re not even supposed to be down here in the first place! What did we do wrong?”

“It ain’t what you’ve done, it’s what she thinks you’re gonna do. Ryder’s as paranoid as they come, and since the day this place went up she’s figured somepony up on the surface was fixin’ to hunt it down and ruin her perfect little utopia’a freedom and progress. And to think she’s talkin’ about you peckin’ her eyes out when she’s too blind to even...”

Applejack grunts and cuts herself off. I swear I can almost hear her head shake on the other end of the line. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “Don’t worry about Ryder. What you need to worry about is meetin’ up with Apple Bloom and gettin’ back here. ‘Til then, just move fast and watch each other’s backs, sugarcube.”

Right. As if that’s going to be enough to tide me over until we’re back in the compound sipping apple juice in front of a roaring fire. “What about the other guy?” I ask. “There was another pony who fought with Ryder last time, a... a stallion. What about him?”

I let off the button and listen closely. Applejack says nothing.

“What’s his name... Daybreak! You talked about him before, didn’t you? What’s he got against Ryder? What’s he gonna do?”

The silence stretches on so long that I begin to wonder whether Applejack and I are even still connected. I’m a few seconds away from giving up and consigning myself to wandering around forever in a pitch-black ghost town when she finally replies.

“Wherever Ryder goes, he follows,” she says quietly, “and whenever Ryder hunts, he gobbles up the scraps. If he wanted you dead, he’d have left you alone in the lobby, so whether he thinks you can help him or just wants to get under Ryder’s skin, he ain’t likely to leave you be now.”

“Is he as bad as Ryder?”

She pauses again. The faint static between us sounds like storm waves rolling over hard-packed sand. I wait and I wait, and my heart pounds in my chest.

“No,” she finally tells me. “He’s worse.”

Applejack clams up and leaves me a chance to ask what she means by that, but I’m stopped in my tracks by an overbearing sense that there wouldn’t be any point. No matter what she could tell us about Ryder or Daybreak now, it wouldn’t do much good other than letting us know the exact details of how deeply we’re screwed. And it wouldn’t change anything about the fact that I’m still stuck out here with freshly cracked glasses and my braid dripping down the back of my neck, and nothing but a hoof-mounted gun and a battered old radio between me and the same fate I just barely avoided a few moments ago.

Link’s up on his hooves now, stumbling and splashing towards me through the dusky shadows the dim outside light can’t penetrate, but I can’t tell whether that he’s just disoriented or more seriously hurt.

“You all right too?” I ask him, looking more at his chest than all the way up to his eyes. Finally, he steps into a more well-lit area, and I can see him clearly. His mane and saddlebags are dripping wet and streaked with grime and scratches, but there’s no blood staining his coat or clouding the puddle beneath him. He stops once he’s back on relatively dry ground next to me, and takes a moment to catch his breath before answering.

“I’ll live,” he says. His gaze drifts from me over to something in the corner of the room, and I follow suit in spite of knowing I’ll regret it. For the most part, the tidal wave that just smashed through the Mercury lobby didn’t do much in the way of lasting damage. A few chairs and tables were upended and bits of glass and rubble are scattered here and there, but other than that the floor looks more or less normal.

It’s the walls, rather, that show the true extent of what just happened. Crumbling dents and scratches mar the once pristine moldings, and thin crimson ropes drip down from patches of the splicer’s blood, washed away in some places by the water that just crashed over them. The splicer himself, meanwhile, is lying dead against the wall—at least, there’s a pile of mangled feathers and flesh over there that I assume used to be him—right next to a metal blast door that’s now blocking off what used to be the way out of here.

That explains why we’re not all paddling around in twenty feet of water, I guess. Smart design for a place like this. If only they could’ve put the same amount of thought into the spindly little walkways keeping them all connected. And if only marveling at the ingenuity of Harmony’s engineering staff was enough to keep my head from spinning so badly that I almost want to throw up just to get the images all around me out of my mind.

“Some day, huh?” Link says quietly.

I try to keep from looking over towards the splicer again, and end up looking straight into Link’s weary eyes. “Some day,” I agree.

The silence that follows stretches out for almost half a minute, long enough that I know we’re going to end up dragging it along with us whenever we do get out of here. Judging by his shuffling hooves, Link seems to feel the same way.

“We should get moving,” he eventually says. “If that Big Daddy’s still in the building, I’d rather us sneak up on it than the other way around.

His suggestion is predictable, but he has a point all the same. If the Big Daddy and his Little Sister aren’t in the lobby anymore, that wave didn’t do anything to slow them down. On the other hoof, maybe this could work to our advantage. That big beast probably knows this area a lot better than we do, and he’s bound to leave a trail of chaos and mayhem behind him. So long as we keep close on his tail, he might just lead us right back out to the Market again, and take care of any splicers along the way to boot.

“Let’s go, then,” I say, and although Link eyes me for a few more seconds with his lips pressed against his teeth, whatever he’s repressing the urge to tell me never comes out. We find the hallway Applejack mentioned and start sloshing towards it together. When we’re halfway there, Link peels off towards the security station under the balcony, where he pokes through the debris littering the floor for a bit before grabbing some lumpy black thing and stuffing it inside his bag.

He closes the short gap between us without looking at me, and he doesn’t say a word even though he must know I was watching him the whole way. So I don’t speak either. Instead, I just follow close behind him as he edges around me and heads down the hallway, wondering what he’s thinking and whether any of it has to do with me.

It takes us half a minute to reach the stairwell down to the maintenance tunnels. The whole way over, the tail end of the rubber hosing for the bathysphere bounces back and forth in front of my nose.

As we stop at the foot of the stairs, both our radios ask simultaneously if we’ve moved out yet. Applejack’s voice echoes half a dozen times in the cramped, pitch-black space, and I have to swallow hard before I can will myself to respond.

“We’re at the stairs,” I report back, squinting into the inky darkness that the feeble light from the lobby has no hope of penetrating.

“And?”

“Well, it’s...” Really dark and scary, I almost add, but I hold back at the last second. I’m not going to make this any easier on Applejack or Apple Bloom if I go around acting like I’m afraid of my own shadow. For the time being, especially with Link right beside me, I just need to suck it up and be brave. “The power’s still out. Any chance you can get us some lights?”

“Not from where I’m sittin’, no. Wish I had better news for ya, but if the lights are gone in the stairwell, that means emergency power’s cooked too. I told Apple Bloom to see if she can’t unring a few bells and get the system back up, but till then your best bet is to poke around for a MOON vial or two and test out that light on your utility bracer.”

Link lights his horn up and cranes his neck forward, and the first landing of the stairwell just barely comes into view. It’s not a lot to work with and both of us know it, but I’m halfway through convincing myself that it’ll be enough when the radio buzzes again. In a spurt of optimism, I figure it’s Apple Bloom checking in with us from someplace out in the Market. Like every other time I let optimism dictate my thoughts in this city, I’m dead wrong.

“Well, isn’t this quite the pre-dic-a-ment,” another stomach-sinkingly familiar voice drawls, each syllable practically quivering with glee. “Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing now, sweetcheeks. Handycolt Daybreak is on the job.”

I fumble with my radio and try to mash the button quick enough to say something back, but he either doesn’t respond or can’t hear me in the first place. Given how much both he and Ryder seem to enjoy butting in on our conversations when we least expect it, maybe their radios are designed that way. In any case, by the time I realize I’m not going to get an answer about what Daybreak is doing, there’s no need to ask for one. A deep, rumbling buzz charges up inside the walls of the building, and then strips of what look like foggy white glass begin to glow along the walls and underneath the stairs. The main lamps overhead are still dark, but the new lighting is more than enough to make the trip down the stairs a much less spine-tingling experience.

“That’s a bit more cozy, don’tcha think?” Daybreak proudly proclaims. “No, no, don’t thank me. Just bein’ a friend to those in need. Y’all run along now.”

The radio goes quiet, and its last command is repeated back to us by the stairwell. Sharing another look with Link feels like it wouldn’t end well, so I settle for staring at the ceiling and fantasizing about the wonderful world of the surface where nobody knew who I was and I didn’t care if they did. At the very least, that seems like a much better option than keying on the radio again and asking Applejack if she heard that too. Somehow, I get the sense she wouldn’t be in much of a mood for sarcasm at the moment.

“Just get downstairs, sugarcube,” she says after a long stretch of intentionally not-awkward silence. “Give a shout if you need directions.”

Link reacts to Applejack’s command first, so he takes the lead going down through Mercury’s lower levels. The stairs are rough and made of concrete, so the clatter of my hooves against the stone still rings out loudly even though I keep trying to muffle my steps. Still, as creepy and unexpected as their source of power was, the soft, shadow-dispersing glow of the emergency lights does wonders for calming me down. Before I know it, we’ve descended four stories—a lot more than I thought there’d be room for underneath the lobby—and emerged into a grungy, windowless tunnel that twists out of sight twenty feet off to the left.

Dim skylights (oceanlights?) spaced at even intervals along the apex of the rounded ceiling give a little more help to the emergency strips near the floor, but other than that the creaking metal tube is empty. There’s still no hint of danger down here, but my pulse speeds up all the same. We must be miles deep by now, sandwiched between the ocean floor right below us and probably billions of gallons of water overhead. If this tunnel collapses, there won’t be any blast door to keep us high and dry.

Link spends a few moments peering down the corridor, then nods for me to follow him and heads off. The speed of his pace gnaws at my gut, but only for a second or two. Applejack only told us to call her on the radio if we needed directions, and it’s not like we’re in any danger of getting lost in a tunnel that only goes one way. Besides, I’ve probably been hard enough on Link already, especially since he had the wherewithal to grab the tubing before we left the lobby. If I want to smooth things out a bit between us, I could start by giving him the benefit of the doubt once or twice. There’s no reason to freak out right now, and deep down I know it.

Of course, it becomes a lot harder to remind myself of that once Daybreak’s voice starts oozing out of our radios again, creamy as melting butter and tinged with a salespony’s false good cheer.

“Mighty sorry ‘bout all the fuss back there,” he says languidly. “Used to be Miss Ryder was a genuine Dream Valley peach, but the times... well, they gone ahead and changed. Course, I can’t say I’m entirely innocent in that partic-alur state’a affairs, but I ain’t one to tell old war stories whilst I’m still in the business’a drummin’ up new ones. Any case, I don’t reckon that concerns you too much. What I do reckon is that you’re fixin’ to get outta here quick as you can. And I also reckon that with the right amount’a persuasion, I might just be inspired to... now, how would Miss Ryder say it? Facilitate that outcome.”

My legs peter down from a canter to a walk, and then all the way into a dead stop. Link sidles back next to me at about the same pace, his eyes locked on his radio just as mine are on my own. Suffice it to say: we’re listening.

“The terms of this arrangement are simple,” Daybreak continues, picking up right where he left off after a brief and surely intentional pause. “Matter’a fact, sweetcheeks, you’ve already done your part all by yourself. All’s I require of ya is a gentlepony’s agreement to follow through on it. That ain’t so difficult, is it?”

I want to shake my head, but hold off on the urge for two reasons. First of all, I’d feel kind of silly answering a voice floating out of a radio like that, but more importantly, something about this conversation seems the tiniest bit off to me. What does he mean, we’ve already done our part? Which one of us is he even talking to?

My first question is answered as soon as he starts talking again. Unfortunately for me, he also answers my second one at the same time.

“Now, I won’t go namin’ any names, but if my canaries sang me the song I thought I heard, one’a you little birdies found yourself a certain personal voice recorder not too long ago. Talkin’ ‘bout sparks and diseases, and savin’ the city and such? See, the pony who made that is... rather, was, I’m sad to say, quite a dear friend’a mine once upon a time. It meant the world to him, tryin’ to rebuild this place and heal up the places Miss Ryder let burn away, but all that crusadin’ did one hayfire of a number on him after a while. He got desperate, started sendin’ out those tapes to anypony an’ everypony he thought could take up the mantle after he couldn’t bear to do it no more himself. And this time, that poor soul was you.”

I thread my lip between my teeth and bite down hard, trying to make the pain potent enough to chase away the tingling dread crawling down my spine. I can feel Link’s eyes on the side of my face, and another pair of eyes from somewhere far away, hovering over a microphone magically linked to the box hanging from my neck.

“Oh, don’t worry about doin’ anythin’ he said. Landsake, I bet just hearin’ all that nonsense scared the livin’ daylights outta ya. No, all I want you to do is, ‘f you’d be so kind, find a way to get that tape over to me. The pony who made it may’ve gone off the deep end, but somewhere in those tapes is some part’a him that ain’t all the way over yet. There’s things about this city that nopony but him could ever know, and speakin’ as its democratically appointed savior... well, I rightly feel it’s my responsibility to know ‘em too. So that’s the deal: you give me that tape, and I get a little bit closer to tuggin’ this little slice’a heaven out from under Miss Onyx Ryder’s heel. Heck, you don’t even have to go outta your way. I reckon you’re fixin’ to take one’a them bathyspheres from Pluto’s Keep outta here? Well, so long as you just drop that tape down there ‘fore you cast off, I’ll make sure one’a my boys picks it up. I’ll even clear the way down there for ya if you like. That sound agreeable? Can you do that for me, sugarcube?”

His questions must be rhetorical, because one way or another I can’t answer him. “G’wan and think about it if ya want to,” Daybreak offers, “but I can guarantee y’all ain’t got nothin’ ta fear from me. Just remember who your friends are down here... and don’t forget who’s tryin’ to be anything but. Y’all take care now.”

Daybreak’s last cryptic remark recedes down the empty hall, and I’m left clueless in its wake. Applejack doesn’t chime in with an opinion either, so the silence persists until Link’s eyes dart away from me for a split second, then flash back up once he sees that I’ve noticed his movement.

“You know what he was talking about?” he asks. And it’s so tempting to tell him, so seemingly easy to confess what I found in Slinky’s warehouse, that it comes as a complete shock when I lie anyway.

“No idea,” I say, and in case my own guilt wasn’t enough to set my cheeks ablaze, the crease in Link’s brow does the job beautifully all by itself. Just like Applejack, though, he keeps whatever his true thoughts are about the situation to himself.

“All right, then,” he mutters with a half-hearted shrug, nodding in the next moment for us to keep walking down the hallway. We round the corner in silence, him close to the inside wall and me looping around him with an awkward gap between us, like I’m anchored to his body by a taut, fraying string just barely keeping itself from snapping. Between the knot in my gut and the heat in my face, I feel like I’m about ready to go up in smoke.

This has to stop. I can’t keep brushing him off like this and pretending he’s not worth the time to talk to. I’ve got to stand tall and be open with him, no matter how scary it may seem, no matter how much my legs are quivering and my heart is fluttering like a manic-depressive moth even at the thought of initiating contact. In the last twenty-four hours, I’ve survived a zeppelin crash, met at least a half-dozen different ponies who’ve actively tried to kill me, and pretty much literally spit in the face of death. For Celestia’s sake, I should not be afraid of a normal freaking conversation with a normal freaking pony.

So that’s it, then. We’re going to round that next corner in the hallway, I’m going to turn towards Link, and I’m going to strike up a conversation. I have to get some practice with it somewhere, right? And beyond that, maybe it’d be easier to understand him if I just spoke to him like a civilized mare. Heck, even small talk would be a start. That seems logical. Simple, even.

Right. Simple. Talking is simple. I should do some talking. Talking to Link.

Yep.

Gonna talk now.

About small things.

That I’m having no trouble at all trying to desperately force into my head. We walk around the bend and a few more seconds tick by in a vacuum of sound, and then finally I can’t take it anymore.

“So,” I say as we duck around a crack in the ceiling that’s spitting up the briny deep all over the walls. “Nice weather we’re having.”

In my head, it makes perfect sense. All the paperbacks I read back home were chock full of witty banter between the heroes, and ironic comments about the weather always got at least a dry chuckle out of everyone involved. And there was water falling from the ceiling that looked like rain, so it was basically the same thing.

Link, judging by the look of thoroughly complete bafflement on his face, clearly feels otherwise. I put on the biggest grin I could and try to at least hold up my end of the bargain, and what I get is a bit too dry with not enough chuckle. So in the end, it sounds less like a laugh and more like the sound a foal would make while trying to cough up a carrot stick.

In retrospect, I really didn’t think this through.

Despite that—or quite possibly because of it—I keep talking anyway, determined not to let one little setback knock me off course. “Hey, look, about what happened back in the lobby, I...”

And once again, words fail me, though this time it’s for a completely different reason. I’m already deadset on telling Link how I feel about him shooting that splicer, but the truth I’m just now realizing is that I never really figured out how I feel about it in the first place. What am I supposed to tell him? That it’s okay, that it’s all in the past? Well, no, to be honest, it’s not okay, and the nauseating itch in my shoulder right where Link’s bullet hit the splicer is only making things worse on that side of the equation.

On the other side, though, a different kind of rationality is taking hold. It wasn’t right to kill that splicer just for being in our way, but would it have been any less wrong to risk one of us dying for his sake? And what about that mare back at the plaza? I’ve seen what kinds of monsters that SUN stuff turns ponies into, so I can’t pretend now that there was some way we could’ve reasoned with her. Is it right to kill somepony if they’re trying to kill you first? And am I really the crazy one for thinking that here, of all places, it’s not?

“What about it?” Link asks.

“Nothing,” I answer quickly. A short moment of gritting my teeth and cursing myself for dodging around an honest answer is all I can spare before I go on. “I just think we need to, uh... communicate a little better. I mean, we are pretty much alone back here, and I guess we kind of got off to a rocky start on the zep and all, sooo... I don’t know. Thought we could just... talk a bit.”

Link’s eyes twitch in my direction, but his head stays pointed at the next twist in the hallway. “About what?”

Splicers. Paranoia. Ryder. Social anxiety. Imminent death. Panic.

“Y’know, just... stuff.”

Link doesn’t seem inspired to take the initiative from there, so this time I play it safe with my opening line and fall back on another standard one I remember from my stories. “Where are you from?”

As he starts to turn towards me, I can tell I’m all but flipping cartwheels across his last nerve, but he composes himself at the last second. With the benefit of hindsight, I suppose I can’t blame him. It’s not like I’ve been a particularly simple nut to crack during the last few minutes.

“Fillydelphia,” he finally says, his tone gruff but not overtly hostile. Sounds like progress to me.

“Really? I’m from Rockton. ‘Bout twenty miles north of the city limits.” Link gives what I think is a nod, and says nothing.

“Big mining town?” I go on. “Been around since old Equestrian times? Still provides sixty-three percent of the ore for every factory south of Trottingham?”

“Never heard of it.”

Link looked like he was ready to chew a hole in his tongue a second ago, and now I know precisely how that felt. Just like him, though, I keep quiet about it, and with good reason. If he’s from Fillydelphia and managed to get a ticket on the Elysium, he’s probably just as loaded as anypony in the whole city. Heck, he might even be the heir to one of the big manufacturing corporations my family sells raw materials to. Of course he wouldn’t have a clue where a backwater grease spot like Rockton was.

He should, though, I can’t help but think, and that train of thought is a big reason why tone of my internal voice bleeds a little too much into my external one.

“Well, I’ve worked there my whole life,” I explain, my voice a perfect blend of “as if I care” and “so you sure as hay better”. “Brightshine Family Mining Company. I’m Ruby Brightshine. My family pretty much owns the town. My father pretty much built it, actually. Kept it together when the gem market crashed, grabbed a big chunk of the steel market once Manehattan started building up and got the working stallions back on their hooves. It’s a neat little place.”

Link nods again. His lips are pulled tight against his gums, and when he speaks, they barely part. That’s not necessarily bad. All I did was defend my hometown a little. We’re still doing fine.

“I suppose you’re an executive or something?” he asks. This whole time, he still hasn’t so much as looked at me. I have to bite down on my lip to keep a sarcastic response trapped behind my tongue.

“R and D,” I say. “I build things, and my brother makes money with them.”

Link laughs and gazes off at the ceiling. “And your parents burn it all from the top on brandy and cigars, right?” he asks, with a bitterness in his tone that I can only assume is directed at me.

Keep it together, I order myself. You knew this would be awkward. It’s very awkward right now. Just keep walking, stay calm, and be polite.

“My mother keeps the books,” I tell him.

“Just your dad, then?”

This time, it takes several seconds before I can get myself under control, and it’s only because I keep repeating in my head that he doesn’t know, that he couldn’t know, that I have no reason to expect he could possibly know. Maybe he’s had a bad time at home. Maybe he hates me. Maybe he doesn’t hate me, and he’s just really, really oblivious. This isn’t worth the trouble. He’s not worth the stress. I can be calm. I am calm.

“He’s not around very much,” I say, deliberate force boosting up each syllable. I grit my teeth, I narrow my eyes, I give every fair warning I can with every part of my body that he’s straying into dangerous territory, but he just...

“What, he’s a gambler?”

Won’t...

“Drinker?”

“Stop!” I shout, a little bit louder than I meant to. Or maybe I did mean to be that way. Either way, it still doesn’t shut Link up.

“Well, what is he, then?” Link asks, throwing his forehoof up in the air hard enough to stop him dead in his tracks. “You’re the one who wanted to talk so damn bad, so talk! What is he, if he’s so great and powerful? What is your dad now?”

It’s a perfect shot, one that slips right between my ribs and straight through to my spine, and by the time I remember how calm I’m supposed to be, it’s already too late to keep the nerve center it pierced from spilling out all over him. “Right now, my dad’s dead,” I snap at him. “So thanks for bringing it up.”

I hear Link’s hooves stumble to a halt behind me as I walk past him. I keep my eyes forward, and my breathing as steady as I can. “I-I didn’t...” he tries to say.

“No, I know you didn’t,” I say over him. The end of the tunnel is tinged red. I want to hit something, and I can’t decide what. “Didn’t know, didn’t th...”

I glance back at Link for just a moment. He’s twenty feet back and staring at me with his jaw still popped open in mid-excuse. “It’s fine,” I say. “We should keep moving.”

Link shuts his mouth and runs his tongue over his lips, and I just barely hear him swear under his breath as he trots back up to my side. We make it around the next bend without a word spoken between us, and about a hundred yards away I can finally see the tunnel start to open up. We’re nearly out. I’m almost back to safety.

“My, uh... I never saw a lot of my parents,” Link says, his eyes wandering the walls all around us and never making their way back to me. “Businessponies, y’know. Places to be, huge production plants to run. It’s been in my family for years too, I think. I don’t know much about it, really.”

My eyes subconsciously drift back past his saddlebags to his flank, and I speak before I can think to wedge my hoof in between my teeth. “Which explains why you have a big metal chain for a cutie mark.”

Link’s lips part as his eyebrows twitch, and I press my hooves down extra hard into the floor so I’m not tempted to let one rise up and smack me in the face. I’ve regretted pretty much everything I’ve said since I started this conversation, so why should this time be any different?

“It’s... I-I just don’t go into the factories a lot,” he says without looking at me, stammering for a moment before clearing his throat and speaking a little more confidently. “My father owns a big conglomeration of metalworking plants, and I just help out around his office and, y’know, learn the tricks of the trade. I was actually on my way to a conference out on Kilio when the, uh...”

Link trails off, mumbles, “Yeah,” and doesn’t elaborate beyond that. Guess that means our little chat’s over. Fine by me. It means I get to stop reminding myself to be civil every time he opens his mouth, and cringing every time my own gets away from me anyway. Even now, as the room at the tunnel’s end begins to come into view, a white-hot ball of anger is rolling around in my stomach, its stinging heat directed at myself just as much as it is at everything around me.

It was his fault for saying all those things about Dad, one part of me thinks. It’s your fault for letting it get under your skin, says another. It doesn’t even freaking matter, the loudest portion of my brain shouts, because we’re out of the tunnel and we’re almost back to the compound, where I can find an empty room and scream my stupid head off until I feel like I can blend in with polite society again.

Shadowy metal gives way to gnarled wood paneling again, and one of the knots in my chest loosens up as we exit the tunnel and enter the antechamber outside it. “All right, we’re out,” I think out loud to Link, keying on the radio so Applejack can hear too. “Probably just a few more rooms to get through, and then we’ll be home-fr–”

“Get down!”

Before I can process the meaning of Link’s frantic hiss, he makes it abundantly clear by wrapping his leg around my neck and yanking me behind a low partition. On the other side of it is a courtyard half-covered by a raised deck built out of plywood, and even with my ears crushed up against his side, I can hear now what I should’ve heard before: voices, low and angry, just a few yards away from where we’re hidden.

Farmer's Market - Part 5

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“... ain’t nothin’ left down here to find, Lola. They’re all dry.”

Instinctively, my hoof goes to my gun, and without letting go of me Link looks down and violently shakes his head. I go ahead and move anyway, but only enough to worm my way out of his grip. My legs are shaking almost too much to even manage that, let alone stand up and fight through the courtyard full of splicers I nearly waltzed right into the middle of.

“Well, go back and check ‘em again!” somepony else screeches. The first voice was male, thick and impatient, but this one definitely came from a mare, and an unnervingly angry one at that. “No wonder my motha never liked you. Always lazy, always lookin’ for the easy way out!”

“Ah, go soak your head, ya crotchety old bitch. Ain’t like you’ve been lookin’ anyplace either.”

The mare makes a noise like she’s about to protest, but eventually just blows her partner off with a dismissive grunt, muttering and cursing to herself about two-bit suits and good-for-nothing drunks. Neither of them make any sort of movement towards us. They didn’t hear us come in.

I let myself take my first breath in half a minute and slide a little farther down behind the partition. My heart is buzzing like a forgotten alarm clock, and not just out of fear of getting caught: stupid as it seems even now, it’s really the way those splicers were bickering at each other that’s bringing out the cold sweat on my hooves and legs. In all my life, I’ve never heard anypony speak with such abject hatred in their voice, let alone direct it at another pony they were supposedly friends with. But down here, that seems to be almost the norm for everypony outside the Apple Family’s compound. And all that over what, some supercharged magical energy drink? Even after seeing its effect a dozen times, I still find it hard to believe that SUN alone could so dramatically change who a pony is like that.

I turn to ask Link what the splicers are doing now, but he’s crouched just as low as I am behind the partition, bracing his shoulder against it for support as he paws at his radio. “Applejack,” he whispers. “Don’t talk too loud. We’ve got company.”

Link lets off the radio, and my heartbeat hitches with a jolt that sends another shiver down my spine. Even the hiss of radio static seems deafening now. “How many?” Applejack asks a moment later, her tone low enough that it doesn’t carry beyond our hiding place. I hope. “Where are you?”

“Some kind of terrace or something,” Link replies. “We heard two of ‘em. There might be more, I don’t know.” He must have let off the button again for a moment, because Applejack cuts him off before he can explain further.

“Don’t move a muscle till you’re absolutely sure,” she says. “Remember, they always travel in packs. Last thing you want is to get ambushed by some straggler wanderin’ off behind the rest.”

I wait for Link to ask Applejack what we’re supposed to do, but when her end of the radio goes quiet again, he just catches my eye and jerks his head up towards the top of the wall. He wants us to check how many splicers are in the room with us. He wants us to take care of them ourselves.

I roll onto my hooves and nearly all the way over onto Link before the floor solidifies enough for me to keep my balance. Don’t be afraid, I tell myself. Don’t lose control. I glance at Link again and count down with him from three, then slowly raise myself up into a sitting position and peek over the edge of the partition.

The room we’re in is about thirty yards wide, and the deck I thought I saw before is actually a walkway that catty-corners the left and back walls, connected to our level by an angled flight of stairs on the far side of the room. A walk-up bar fills the space beneath it, and a few rusting tables and chairs complete the setup of what was once a cute little restaurant, chips of their once pristine white paint staining the boards of the terrace and the oddly

It’s among those chairs that I see the first splicer: a lemon-yellow earth mare hunched near the center of the room, her crossed hooves the only thing keeping her sour face from sagging into the table in front of her. Across the way, another earth pony is poking around behind the bar, and the faint grumbles coming from beneath the register make it a pretty easy guess to identify the relation between the two. Those are the splicers we heard before, then, but two doesn’t seem like much of a pack.

Sure enough, a few seconds later a third pony stumbles into view on the walkway overhead, this one a navy blue unicorn wearing a tattered coat with some glowing thing bulging out from its inside pocket. He stops to survey the room with a furtive look, one eye peering out from behind a soiled bandage wrapped around his forehead, and Link and I both duck down out of sight before he gets a chance to spot us. I can hear him clunking down the steps and out onto the patio, but after that the room goes quiet.

“Three splicers,” Link murmurs. “And the only way out is through ‘em.”

Five seconds pass without Applejack answering, then ten, then fifteen. I don’t realize until I shift my gaze to my left again that Link never even switched his radio on, that instead he’s pulling out his pistol and checking the chamber and wrapping a tendril of his telekinetic aura around the trigger. Several facts hit me at once: Applejack can’t see us. Apple Bloom isn’t here to help us. The only way we’re getting past those splicers is if we take care of them ourselves. Link is about ready to do it with or without me.

And if I don’t do something to stop him, it could very well be the end of us both.

“Wait!” I whisper as harshly as I can manage without attracting the splicers’ attention. Link only glances at me, then shifts into a crouch and readies his gun besides his head. He’s not listening. He’s going to try to start a firefight anyway. So, trapped between desperation and panic, I do the only thing I can think of doing: I grab at his gun with my forehoof and push it back down before he can manage to lift it—and the rest of his body—out into view.

“What do you think you’re gonna do?” I hiss. For a moment, the same cold fury I remember from the zeppelin crackles in Link’s eyes, then he sucks in a deep breath and thaws back out to just looking a little annoyed.

“What does it look like?” he says slowly.

“It looks like you’re about to get us both killed!” I tell him honestly. “There’s three of them, Link, and only two of us. And we don’t even know how to fight in the first place!”

Link shrugs, but the effort is weak. I can see his shoulders rebelling against the action at first, his mind reminding him of what his heart is determined to ignore. “We’ve got guns,” he says.

“For all we know, so do they,” I argue back. “And I’m pretty sure they know their way around them a lot better than we do. Shooting at them’s just gonna make things worse.”

“What other choice do we have?” Link snaps back, and now a bit of genuine anger is starting to seep back into his voice. Let him be angry, then. Maybe he’s forgotten how he froze up the last time he tried to shoot somepony, but I’m not so short of memory. And more importantly, I’m not all that keen to find out whether putting me in the same situation would get us the same result.

“There’s gotta be another way to do this,” I tell him. I’m hoping to get a few seconds to actually come up with another way to do this in the meantime, but Link seems to have already decided he’s going to have none of it.

“Yeah, you know, we haven’t tried negotiating yet,” he replies. “Maybe if we just give them our guns and the clothes off our backs, they’ll kill us quickly instead of dragging it out for half the moondamned day.”

“I meant we can figure out another way,” I say through clenched teeth. “Just gimme a few seconds and chill out, for pony’s sake.”

I can feel another smart comment burning in Link’s throat, but he swallows it back as he slouches back down behind the barricade, rolling onto his rump and ever so slightly away from me. “You’re crazy,” he whispers just loud enough for me to hear, and as I peek back over the wall and catch sight of the earth mare at the table again, I can’t help but wonder whether he was thinking of using another word entirely.

I grit my teeth and roll my shoulders to keep from cramping up. Focus. I need to focus. Not on arguing with Link or being friendly with Link, just on piecing together a way out of this room that doesn’t involve turning this place into the OK Corral. But as much as I was hoping that another good look around the room would reveal a big golden arrow pointing towards the solution to all our problems, the reality I end up finding is a lot less convenient.

From what I can see, there are only three options about where we could go from here: back the way we came, up the stairs onto the platform and into the hallway the third splicer came out from, or off to the right through a big metal door which I suppose leads out to another one of those glass and metal walkways. Even barring the fact that I trust those things about as much as I trust Miss Sally SUN-For-Brains over here, the door’s well within view of all three splicers in the room with us. We wouldn’t even get close to it before we were spotted, let alone have a chance at reaching the hallway on the upper level. Link was right. To get out of this room, we’ll have to go through those three splicers.

And that brings me nicely into our second problem: there really doesn’t seem to be anything left in here at all we could defend ourselves with. There’s a small wooden door behind the bar on my left, but that couldn’t be much more than a storage closet, and there’s no way I could get over to that without being spotted either. A long length of rope is hanging from a pulley next to the stairs, but even if the dumbwaiter it was once attached to wasn’t smashed to pieces, we wouldn’t be able to climb it without that pulley dropping us right back down to the ground again. Little bits of trash and scrap metal are floating about here and there, but unless I want to start chucking them at Link’s head so the splicers have an easier time getting at him and not me, they won’t be any use either. Given the way Link’s glaring at me now, though, I have to admit the idea is kind of alluring anyway.

“Just stay here and cover me,” he says, giving up on me before I even so much as duck back down. If I were madly in love with him or just an idiot in some other way, I could imagine that he was trying to be noble. Since I’m not either of those things, it’s pretty obvious that he just wants me out of the way, that he’s tired of humoring me and more than ready to take charge all by himself. And once again, the idea of just sitting back and letting him is sorely, shockingly tempting. If he’s so determined to throw himself into the fray and take on three bloodthirsty maniacs all by himself, who am I to stop him? All I have to offer here is a bunch of scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that I haven’t seen the picture on the box for. I’m never going to figure this out and neither is he, so why bother? Why even try to put all those pieces together?

It’s weird, I think, the way my mind works sometimes. No matter how deep a hole I’ve dug myself into, the only thing I need to pull me out again is one idea, one stray thought, one little diagram in my mind that’ll show how all the parts and pieces of a problem can fit together. It’s not even that I actually know what I’m going to do yet. I just need to realize that I’ve got all the right components sitting in front of me, and it’s my job to try every combination I can think of until I find one that somehow miraculously works.

On the other side of the partition, the splicer mare cries out and jumps clumsily to her hooves. I can hear the screech of her chair as it slides out from under her, the disgruntled and then panicked response of her target—the unicorn, the one whose voice I hadn’t heard yet up until now. She’s noticed the bulge in his coat pocket. She’s demanding that he give it to her, whining that he always hogs all the goods he finds. My cutie mark is tingling, telling me to trust in the indescribable instinct that’s drawing my eyes up over the wall and past the two splicers tussling near the walkway door, all the way back over to a dusty gray hunk of metal and technomagic wiring propped up against the inside corner of the bar.

One more piece in the splicer’s pocket. One more piece at the bar. I think I’d like to solve the puzzle now, Link.

“We need to get to that security bot.”

At the last second, Link pauses again. “What security bot?” he asks in a voice I can tell he’s straining to keep level. In response, I just nod my head towards the hunk of metal that at first I thought was just worthless junk. He looks at it for a moment, then squeezes his eyes shut and tilts his pistol ever so slightly down. He may not feeling all that cordial with me, but at least he’s listening now.

“We can’t take on three splicers with only two of us,” I explain as quickly as I can, “but if I can get that bot running, we won’t have to. With that thing buzzing around, those guys won’t even turn our way. We could get through this without anypony having to get hurt.”

“Yeah, uh, quick question, though: you skipped over the part where you actually make it all the way across the room to that thing in the first place,” Link says. “And also the part where you have any idea how that damn thing works.”

My answer to Link comes out on instinct; I don’t have time to look him in the eye. The splicer mare has her hooves around the other stallion’s shoulders. Her eyes, same as mine, are locked on his pocket. “I’ve built bigger stuff from scratch out of spare parts and duct tape,” I say. “Trust me, I can get it running. All I need is a distraction, and then...”

The distant crackle of radio static intrudes in on my thought process, and I pull my radio back out to tell Applejack that I’ve got things under control. But when I pull the box closer to my ear, something else cuts across my mind much more violently: silence. My radio’s silent. Applejack isn’t talking. The static’s coming from somewhere else, getting louder, filling the room and drawing the attention of everypony still inside it: the two ponies scuffling in front of the bar, the one still digging around behind it, and Link and I crouched behind a flimsy little partition, stuck in plain sight like sitting ducks if anypony felt inclined to point a glance our way. Before I can so much as raise my gun, Onyx Ryder’s voice booms out from some unseen speaker, so loud that even the floorboards vibrate with the force of her words.

“Desecrators wander the halls of Harmony,” she says. “As we heal and rebuild, the doubters on the surface send parasprites to spoil our ointment. A hundred vials of SUN to the mare or stallion who pins their wings!”

What happens next is almost like déja vu: I see the splicers look at each other a split-second before their heads move, sense their attention shift from the ceiling to the walls to the partition in front of the maintenance tunnel, and yet I’m powerless to do anything but watch it all happen right in front of me. Another burst of static jolts through my ears and down my spine. This one is from my radio.

“Y’all might wanna start runnin’ now,” Daybreak says, his voice as cheerful and calm as if he were commenting on a hoofball game. Forty feet away, the gears in the splicers’ heads are starting to turn. I have maybe a few seconds before they realize who Ryder was talking about and attack. Should we go for the door? Try to escape? Run away and lead this pack of bloodthirsty maniacs straight towards the ponies who’ve done everything they could to protect us?

No.

Link thinks I’m a coward. He thinks he has to do all the dirty work for me. He thinks I’m too fragile, too frail, too wrapped up in my past to even bring it up around him. And what is he doing now? Stepping forward with his gun raised, in front of me, ready to save the day. Just like I knew he would. Just like how he’s going to get us both killed.

Daybreak wants me to run, then? That sounds fine to me, so I pick my legs and I run. But not towards the other doors in the rooms. Not back into the tunnel. Not away from the splicers who are already fumbling around for their weapons.

Instead, I run straight towards them.

For the briefest of seconds, luck is on my side: the splicer mare is telekinetic just like Apple Bloom and Applejack, and she’s not good enough with it to keep a firm grasp on her pistol once she pulls it out. The gun hits the ground with a clattering thunk, and the same instant I slam into her and the unicorn beside her with enough force to make my head spin, my mouth lowered to just the right level to make a grab at the glowing red syringe that comes flying out of the stallion’s pocket.

Ryder’s speech only confirmed what I’d been thinking before: any splicer in the city would walk over hot coals to get a grab at a few drops of SUN, and that’s precisely what I knew the stuff these two were fighting over had to be. So once I have their precious syringe safely clasped in my teeth, I know they’d follow me to the ends of the earth to get it back, which is why the first thing I do with it is chuck it over the mare’s head and towards the little door behind the bar.

It’s a good toss, fast enough to trigger the magical force field that makes the door slide open on its own, and like clockwork the splicer mare squeals in panic and chases the vial straight into the pitch-black pantry it’s disappeared inside. Once the door closes automatically behind her, I run over and buck at the molding beneath it for all I’m worth. The door tries to open again, grinds and crunches against its torn-up track for a moment, then buzzes angrily and shuts off. One down, two to go.

Unfortunately, the rest of my plan isn’t quite so foolproof. Mostly, it involves sprinting over to the security bot and hoping that the other two splicers would remain awestruck by my ferocity and courage long enough for me to fire it up. Admittedly, Link may not have been entirely off on the wisdom of this particular part of the plan.

Luckily, that also meant he took it upon himself to handle the unicorn I’d just stolen the vial from, who looked a fair bit peeved that I’d thrown away his prized possession and only got angrier once Link blindsided him and rode him to the ground with his forelegs wrapped around his throat. Crude, but effective. Time to get to the bot.

Or it would have been, had we only been dealing with those two splicers. Halfway over to where the bot lies abandoned, the earth splicer vaults the bar and makes a telekinetic swing at me with a jagged lead pipe. I stumble and dive off to the side, and my skin crawls as the pipe whips over my head. Stars above, I completely forgot about him. Why the hay didn’t I ever think about him?

When I straighten up again, our positions have reversed. The earth pony is crouched in front of the bot, and I’m pressed up against the bar with no place else to run. The splicer grunts and chucks the pipe at my head again, missing me by inches and sending freshly shattered fragments of liquor bottles showering down onto the floor. For a moment, I wonder whether I could sprint past him like I did his wife, but he learns from experience a second faster than I do. He lowers his head and charges at me like a rampaging bull, and every ounce of courage evaporates from my veins. I dodge away and knock a squeal from my lungs as I hit the ground in front of the stairs, and when I look up again, the splicer is snarling with fury in the little crevice between the stairs and the bar, his legs hopelessly tangled up in what’s left of the ropes from the dumbwaiter.

On second thought, that’ll work too. Before the splicer can extricate himself from the ropes, I grab the tail end of one in my mouth and sprint up the stairs, tugging it limply along with me until it suddenly snaps tight and yanks my neck back around. I grit my teeth harder and keep pulling, and finally manage to pull the struggling, shouting splicer all the way up to the second level. He shuts up just long enough to look me in the eye, and opens his mouth again at the same time I do. The rope whips away from me and takes the splicer with it, and when the splintering crash I hear below isn’t followed by another shout, I let out all the breath in my lungs in a single heavy sigh. The coast is clear. We did it.

Link’s name is halfway past my lips when the railing next to me explodes.

I’m on the ground before I realize my legs have moved, and as I cover my head and shimmy forward on my belly, another deafening report sends another spray of splinters raining down on top of me. A cheery whistle rings out over a constant, droning buzz, and even though it’s more or less pressed up flush against the floor, my heart still manages to sink. That sound can only be coming from the security bot. Somepony must’ve turned it on.

And that somepony has decided that I’m their next target.

I spring to my hooves and stumble blindly forward, and a third volley from the bot chews up the deck behind me. Down below, I can see Link flat on his back with his hooves over his face and blood smeared all over both of them. And stomping up the steps no more than ten yards away, I can see the unicorn splicer who Link had been fighting with, his horn awash with the same cherry-red aura that surrounds the metal casing of the security bot hovering over the terrace. My back hoof slips back along the boards of the deck, and the bot spins up its turret and peppers the wall behind me with lead, its single red eye trained right on me. The splicer has me trapped between a rock and a hard place, and the sneer curling on his face tells me pretty clearly that he knows it.

“Thought he’d keep you all ta himself...” he mutters as he reaches the top. “Oughta show him how a stallion takes what’s his!”

I try to take another step back, and the security bot forces me to stay put again. I press my lips together and bite my tongue to keep from screaming, but the pressure welling up in my throat is threatening to burst straight through my chest. With all the theatrics he’s going through, this splicer can’t just want me dead, and the thought of what he does want instead almost makes me too sick to stand.

“Come on!” he says. He’s only a few feet away yet, close enough for me to see his tongue flicking out over his lips. “You want me to teach you to dance? I’m real good!”

I need to move. I need a way out, but the splicer’s at one end of the deck and the hallway he came in through is at the other, and between both of them is too much space for me to cover before the security bot shreds me like parmesan cheese. But it tried to shoot at me before when I dove onto the ground, and it missed. It shot the deck full of holes, not me. It would be able to track me if I tried to run, but if I didn’t run, if I just made one quick movement again...

The splicer lunges forward, and in the same instant, so do I. We pass right by each other and careen to a halt a few steps apart, and at the last second the stallion realizes he’s standing exactly where I was before, where the turret still thinks I’m standing now. With a frantic burst of magic, he shoves the bot away and forces it to miss hitting him, instead directing its fire into the wooden struts and supports shoring up the deck and the alcove where the bar is set up.

“You really think you’ll get rid’a me that easy, babycakes?” he spits as the turret warms up again.

“Kind of,” I tell him as I raise my left forehoof and aim it at the floor beneath the splicer’s hooves. I was all set to finish with my own gun the job that the bot started, but there turns out to be no need. The deck buckles and shrieks underneath the splicer’s weight, and as the demented fury in his eyes gives way to confusion, the battered and pockmarked support beams finally give way.

The splicer vanishes as the deck falls out from under him, and a moment later the angry red haze in the corner of my eye winks out and the deactivated security bot drops to the ground like a rock. By the time the sawdust has settled, the room is finally silent. Now—I think—I can breathe again.

My first thought is to run down and check out the bot, but the trip down takes a lot longer than I thought it would. The fight took something out of me I hadn’t really known I could lose: my legs feel hollow like I just run a marathon instead of a few dozen yards, and my lungs don’t seem to be big enough for me to catch my breath anymore. Making it down the stairs without falling on my face turns into an exercise in patience: I take a couple steps, wait for my knees to stop wobbling so badly I’m afraid they’ll break in two, take as big a breath as I can manage, and then start the process over.

In this haltering, clumsy way, I eventually make it down to where Link is slowly getting to his hooves. The flow of blood from his nose seems to have stopped, and now that I can see it a little better it doesn’t look like anything was broken.

“Nice plan,” he says. “Thanks for sharing it.” The edge in his voice leaves little to the imagination, but behind it I think I can hear a bit of begrudging admiration for how quickly we dealt with all the splicers. Or maybe that part is in my imagination. Either way, he’s up and ready for action, and that’s good. I’ll need him to watch my back while I’m messing around with the bot.

“Coast is clear, Applejack. We’re good,” I say into the radio. My next sentence is directed at Link. “Keep an eye on the exit for me. Let’s see if I can’t get this thing fired back up.”

Link’s mouth pops open as I turn away. Like a runaway train, I can feel his complaint coming a long time before it hits. “Do we really have time for that right now?”

The bot is lying over by the bar, propped up off the ground by the rotor sticking out of its top. The blades are scratched and dinged up a bit, but probably still solid enough to function. “Are you still bleeding?” I ask Link as I walk towards it.

“I don’t think so.”

Once I reach the bot, I sit down next to it and give it a once-over. As far as I can tell from here, it’s still in working order. “Are any of the splicers in here about to get up?”

Link pauses for a few seconds, which I imagine he uses to check out the collapsed deck and dumbwaiter. “No, but–”

“Then we have time,” I say as I spin the bot around. Once I find a panel that looks like the one Apple Bloom tore off the turret back at the plaza, I stare at the bracer on my right hoof and concentrate. As soon as I gather my thoughts, the bracer shudders, and a flathead screwdriver to match the screws securing the panel pops out. “Besides, if I can get this to work, we won’t have to fight by ourselves if we run into more trouble. I would’ve thought you’d be happy having some extra firepower.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Link mutters as I pry the panel off and set it on the ground next to me. He doesn’t see the need to explain what he means by that, though, and I’m too busy examining the innards of the security bot to bother asking him. Right now, I’ve got a couple larger elephants to usher out of the room. Like how in Celestia’s name I’m supposed to make any sense of the mess of tubes and intake valves snaking above and below and all over each other inside this thing.

No, no, I can do this. This is just another puzzle, and like before I’ve already got all the pieces laid out in front of me. What did Marla’s tape in the storeroom say about hacking the door controls?

Step one: rearrange the MOON pipes inside the door controls so that the red light turns to green.

MOON pipes. That’s what those tubes are. Applejack said everything in the city runs off that MOON stuff Twilight and Foxtail created, so that must be what powers this thing as well. I take a closer look at the intake valves and notice a little red light blinking next to one near the top left corner of the machine, as well as another one near the bottom right. I need those to be green. I need those to be connected.

Lesson two: don’t let the MOON spill out or the pressure inside the pipes get too high.

So all I need to do is manually switch the tubes around until the flow of MOON goes from one light to the other. If I do it fast enough and don’t let any of it spill out, the bot will reset and I’ll be able to control it. I used to play with logic puzzles like this all the time when I was a filly. This won’t take hardly any time at all.

“See anything, Link?” I ask before I start off. He’s facing away from me, his gaze pointed towards the heavy metal door on our level.

“No,” comes his lethargic reply. “Hurry up.”

But I’m way ahead of him by that point. With a little tugging, the chunk of pipe closest to the first red light, an L-shaped one that would let the MOON flow harmlessly back into an unlit valve, has already come loose in my hooves. Replacing it with a straighter piece creates a new path that points more towards the second light, and not a moment too soon. By the time I fasten the new pipe into place, a thin, luminescent trickle of MOON has already started seeping out into the tube. Must be a security countermeasure to keep the average yokel from sticking their hooves too far into this thing. Unfortunately for this bot’s designers, I don’t think I really fit that description.

I didn’t realize it until a few months after I first got it, but my cutie mark doesn’t just mean that I’m handy with a socket wrench. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but ever since I was old enough to see over the top of a workbench, I’ve had what I can only call a sixth sense when it comes to technology. I’ve never had to read an instruction manual or look up a blueprint before I could figure out how something worked. Even when I put my dad’s watch back together, I barely touched the clockmaker’s guide I’d pulled out from his bookshelf. To me, the secret to how all the parts and pieces of a machine function and work together comes as naturally as flight does to a pegasus, or good friends do to extroverts.

I reach the halfway point in seconds, my hooves mechanically moving pipe chunks around while my brain is already three steps ahead. When I’m three-quarters of the way done, I notice the sound of soft, faltering hoofsteps behind me, and soon after I can feel Link peering over my shoulder. Part of me hopes he’s still keeping an eye on the door, but I can’t help but feel proud that he’s taking such a close interest in what I’m working on. In fact, he’s practically breathing down my neck.

“Geez, Link, you ever heard of breath mints?” I say as I finish, both red lights flashing green as soon as the last piece is connected. It’s kind of a joke, but also kind of not: the air wafting around my braid is rancid, like an old garbage can filled with rotting garlic. He puts his hoof on my shoulder, then presses down hard and spins me around. I feel the pain before I notice the gaping, filthy cracks in his hoof, and I notice those before my gaze lifts up to meet a pair of scummy, furious, glowing red eyes.

Link doesn’t have red eyes.

The mouth beneath the eyes cracks open, and a wave of nausea makes my vision go dark. An ear-splitting boom knocks me onto my back and a sudden flash of light pieces through the blackness, and when the spots finally fade from my eyes the floor around me is red and the air smells like it’s burning. Link stands in front of me, pistol raised, barrel smoking, his teeth clenched behind his cheeks and his shadow cresting the twisted, motionless hooves of the mare who I thought I’d locked in the storage closet. Who I never considered would actually use the SUN I sent her sprinting after. Whose luminescent red blood is spreading across the terrace boards, dripping through creases in the pounded-smooth slats and pooling under a hole torn straight through her head.

“Don’t say a word,” Link growls, the air in my chest expanding with every syllable out of his mouth. He holsters his gun and starts walking towards the exit he’d been watching, and for a moment I’m sure I’m going to throw up. I clutch at my chest and gasp for air that won’t come, and when the harsh, grinding sound of the door opening punches through me, it finally jars the lump in my throat loose.

“Link, what–”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Ruby!”

I’m halfway up onto my hooves when Link turns around and screams at me, and I stay stuck in that half-crouched position for so long it starts to hurt. On the outside it probably looks like I’m trying to process the sudden bite to Link’s voice and maintain my composure, but it’s really because the buzzing, weightless sensation inside my legs is starting to move up into my chest. It’s a feeling I’m intimately familiar with, partially from the exact moment I solve a tough problem or figure out a new way to look at an invention, but mostly from the appearance it always makes whenever my mother snaps at me like that.

“You don’t want to hear what, exactly?” I ask, stretching out into an upright position with my hooves shaking beneath me. Link’s face tightens over his cheekbones, and he purses his lips as if he’s about to spit on me.

“Oh, don’t play stupid with me, not now.”

“I’m not–”

“No, you’re not doing anything wrong, Ruby,” Link says before I can finish. One of his forelegs is off the ground, hanging in midair and tensing up every time he ends a sentence. “In fact, you know what? You’re never doing anything wrong. You are so... convinced that you’re invincible, that nothing in this place is going to hurt you, and I’m sick of putting my own life on the line just so I can protect you from everything that tries!”

He’s sick of protecting me, he says. As if I didn’t just take out two bloodthirsty splicers with nothing but my bare hooves. As if the only reason I got ambushed now wasn’t because I had to improvise on the fly to deal with the one splicer he couldn’t handle. “I never asked you to protect me, Link,” I say with a ferocity that doesn’t surprise me at all.

Link’s raised hoof twitches again, then darts towards his forehead. The look on his face makes me wonder if I’ve been speaking another language this whole time and didn’t notice. “Oh, Celestia hel... is that actually how you see this? Do you seriously think I’m only looking out for you because I think you’re weak?”

“Well, who died and made you my knight in shining armor?” I shout. I want to stalk forward and say that right in his face, but I hold myself to just a single stomp of my forehoof against the terrace. “I’m a grown mare, Link, I don’t need protecting! I can take care of myself!”

“You just ran into a three-on-one fight without even knowing how you were gonna get out of it!” he yells right back. “Bullshit, you can!”

“Oh yeah, great. Start swearing at me now. That’ll patch things up.”

For a moment, it looks like Link’s read my mind and decided to close the gap between us himself, but at the last second he swings his first step around and starts pacing back and forth in front of the door. “All right, lemme just see if I’m hearing this right,” he says, shaking his head and staring off at the ceiling. “We’re half a mile underwater in an abandoned city full of psychopaths, one of whom would’ve just done Celestia knows what to you if I hadn’t shot her in the moondamned head first...”

Now he looks back at me. “And your biggest, most pressing concern right now is that I’m swearing?”

This would probably be a perfect time for a witty comeback or sharp remark, but by the time I comprehend what Link’s saying, my mouth is hanging open and I’m speechless. There are so many things about this I can’t believe: that he’s actually acting like this. That I haven’t bucked him in the head for it yet. That I’ve even put up with him this long, when ever since I saved him from drowning he’s been nothing but a pain-in-the-flank spoiled-rotten socialite who thinks I’m gonna throw myself at his hooves just because he’s the son of a big steel magnet and I’m a helpless little bookworm who’s too scared of her own shadow to even curse.

“You know, this is probably gonna seem a little petty, but I’m genuinely curious now: do you even know any swear words?”

Link’s question bites into me like ice water over my head, and a flare of anger shoots a response back before I can so much as grit my teeth. “What does that... yes, I do! For your information!”

“Really?” Link’s eyebrows shoot up, and with an exaggerated roll of his shoulders, he tilts his head towards me and gestures towards his ear. “Hit me.”

“Are...” I’m shaking so badly I can barely form words, and my vision’s narrowed into a tunnel, a red-tinged pistol barrel with a big ol’ target painted right over Link’s simpering, slimy face. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Nope. Not a bit,” Link says. The hardened look in his eyes doesn’t soften. “If that’s really your problem here, then let’s just get it over with and get the hell out of here, because I’m done trying to figure out what it is I’ve done to piss you off so badly. So, not kidding at all, let’s hear ‘em.”

Once again, words spill out of me without warning, without any thought involved save for a searing, all-consuming image of Link sprinting away from me with his tail between his legs. “Well, I... I know ‘hell’,” I say.

Link’s eyes flick towards the ceiling, and he replies, “Literally just said that one.”

“S-shit...” I say next, half in answer to his question and half from pure reflex. The word feels like sludge surging out of my throat, but I spit it out anyway. I’ll rant and cuss till I’m green in the face before I let Link get the best of me here.

“Ditto,” comes Link’s immediate reply.

My mouth opens and closes, and nothing comes out. The urge to run away tugs at my stomach, but at the same time weighs me down and anchors me to the floor. I don’t need him to help me. I don’t need anyone to help me. Not with proving I can handle things on my own. Not with something as stupid as this.

“Ruby, this is ridiculous,” Link says. “You know and I know this isn’t why you don’t want me around, so just... for once, could you please be honest with me? Could you please just tell me wha–”

“I know the F-word.”

The way Link’s looking at me, I imagine he’s wondering whether I’m even worth the effort of a response. The way I’m looking back at him, I imagine he’s about to find out. “You know the F-word,” he says, in a voice that makes him sound like an tight-flanked father scolding his daughter for staying out too late.

“Yeah, I do,” I snap back. “I’ll even say it. Is that it? Will that make you happy?”

I’m closer to him now, a few steps or so that I don’t remember taking. Link bites his lip and shakes his head, and when a chuckle slips out of his throat it’s only the floorboard pressed up against my hoof that keeps the knife in my bracer from popping out. “You know what, Ruby? It totally fucking would,” he says. “In fact, it’d make me so fucking happy I might just keel the fuck over right here and have myself a little fucking heart attack.”

“Damn it to the moon, you are such an asshole!” I scream at him.

“Pretty sure that one doesn’t start with ‘F’,” he says with his lips curled into a smirk.

“No, you know what, Link? You’re right. I don’t want you around. I don’t need you. In fact, I don’t even like you,” I shout over him. Some part of me knows what I’m saying, but it’s a part that’s stabbing at my heart instead of my head, instead of my brain that’s clouded up red and pounding fit to burst. “You got Chestnut killed because you wouldn’t shut up and listen to him, you’re perfectly fine with killing everything you see because you think it’s all high and noble of you to protect me, you keep staring at me every chance you get like we crash-landed into a moondamned peep show, and now you’re standing there yelling at me like I’m the one who should apologize to you!”

“Then say it.” Link’s face is hard as stone. His eyes never leave mine, and staring into them feels almost like falling off a cliff. “Say you don’t want me near you. Say you ha–”

“I hate you.”

I don’t know how I knew that’s what he was waiting to hear. I don’t know why I never thought to say it before. I can’t even see Link anymore, an inch away from me and yet blocked off by a gaping black hole in my vision. All I know is that there’s some titanic beast trying to claw its way out of me, and saying that aloud just made it roar. So I say it again. And again. And again.

“I hate you, I hate you, I can’t stand being around you, I hate you. You don’t owe me anything, I’m not some damsel in distress who needs you or anypony else to rescue me, so just drop the selfless martyr routine and leave me the hell alone.”

I can’t remember who it is I’m screaming at anymore. My mother, my brother, my father, myself—bodies in a shapeless mass swirl around me, crowd into me, open a million mouths to speak with one voice that echoes with gentle firmness and funeral bells, that says I’m weak and I’m tragic and if I just sit in my room and let the grownups manage all the necessary affairs it’ll be like it never happened and it’ll be like nothing is wrong.

And in the middle of it all—blossoming into view as my muscles unclench and the red haze dissolves—stands Link, his face colorless, his jaw quivering from the effort of keeping it closed, his emerald green eyes pooling up with what should be all of those things I hate and instead is none of them. For the briefest of moments, he just looks like my mother.

“Fine,” he finally says. “Have it your way.”

It takes me a few seconds to realize what’s happening, and by then Link is nearly back to the door again. “Where are you going?” I call after him. “Link, don’t you dare walk away from... Link!”

The door screeches against its moorings as it slides open again. Link walks through it, and doesn’t turn around.

“Link, get the... get the f... g-get the f-f-fu...”

Link thinks I can’t take care of myself. Link thinks he has to protect me, and Link is walking away from me and leaving me behind down here because I told him he doesn’t. Because I told him I didn’t need him. Because I can’t swear.

“Get the f-f-fuck back here!” I scream, but he never hears it. The door slams shut, his bushy blue tail vanishes from view, and the echo of my outburst soaks into the walls and dies away.

He’s gone.

I’m alone.

This is what I said I wanted.

So I say it again.

“Fuck!”

Repeating the dirty word does nothing to bring Link back. It does nothing to erase what I what I said to him, what I meant to say to him. Did I mean it? I must have. I wasn’t thinking about hurting him or making him run off when I said it, so that means I must’ve meant to say that I hated him and that I wished I’d never met him. And that means I meant to get myself stranded out here. That means some part of me is happy about this. And cursing does nothing to make that any less true, but it feels so good anyway I can’t help doing it again. And again. And again.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I need to get out of here. I need to keep moving and get back to where we’re supposed to meet Apple Bloom, where Link will surely end up anyway since he’s on the same radio channel as the rest of us. Or then again, maybe he won’t. Maybe he won’t find his way back. Maybe he’ll get lost out here or another pack of splicers will find him or a tunnel will collapse again, and he’ll be trapped and we’ll lose the tubing and he’s going to die and it’ll be all my–

Instead of swearing, this time I just kick out at the security bot. The motor whines as my hoof throbs, and then with a belch of smoke and a whistle, the bot turns on. Its rotor whirs to life and chews a ridge in the terrace boards until it’s moving fast enough to lift it into the air, and once its glowing green eye zeroes in on me, it lets out another whistle and propels itself forward to hover right over my head. Its turret is aimed right at the door Link walked through.

“Come on,” I growl. As fast as my exhausted legs will allow, I make my way towards the door, the bot following right behind me as happily and obediently as a little lost puppy. I don’t know for sure that this is the way I’m supposed to go, but I know it’s the only way out I can easily reach thanks to the deck collapsing in front of the other exit. I also know it’s the way Link went out. Whatever the reason, my baser instincts seem to be converging on the same path, and since residual adrenaline is the only thing keeping me alert right now, I’m not really in the mood to argue with them.

The door opens out onto another glass walkway, but my heart rate’s already so high that stepping out into a veritable deathtrap again hardly does much to change it. The path splits off at a T-junction twenty yards away, and I’ve already walked thirty before I realize that I turned off to the right without even thinking, a fact that only troubles me for a moment or two before the crushing weight in my chest smothers it. I can’t stop moving. I can’t stop to think about where I’m going, because then I’ll think about where I’m coming from and then I’ll think about where I just was, and then I’ll have to start thinking about why getting exactly what I asked for makes me wish I could throw up all over myself.

In any case, the route I’ve chosen is a short one, only extending a few more yards before a squat, windowless building swallows it up. The room I step into looks like someone left it out in the sun too long: the garish colors and cartoons painted on the walls have faded into depressing paisley shades, and sagging sculptures of giant candy pieces and stoic tin soldiers form a lazy arc around the entrance, as if someone had started moving them out and gave up on the job halfway through. The air is stuffy and sticks in my throat, and the sugary scent of crystallized sugar hangs over me like a blanket. There’s no sign that Link or anypony else has been through here in years, which can mean only one thing: I’ve been riding solo for a minute and a half, and I’ve already managed to get lost.

My first instinct is to call up Applejack on the radio and get some directions, but my second instinct says that doing that would be more trouble than it’s worth. She’ll ask how Link’s doing and I won’t have an answer to give her, and more importantly I’ll probably just be bugging her. I don’t need her to hold my hoof for this. There’s nopony else here, and if what I’m seeing and feeling around me is anything to go by, there hasn’t been in years. Worst case, I’ve got Rover here puttering away by my side to keep me company and viciously rend the life from anyone I come across. It’s not the best circumstances I’ve ever been in, but it’s not like I’m in any real danger either. I just got turned around a bit. I can figure this out on my own.

Holding my breath as much as I can—the sickly sweet scent in the air makes me nauseous, and it only gets worse as I get further inside—I navigate my way around the debris in front of the door and enter the building proper. The only other exit out of the room is right in front of me, through a heavyset pair of double doors framed by two giant candy canes and situated under a off-kilter sign with most of its letters missing: SU__EA_ SW_E_ __OP. Just like in the Mercury Mechanics lobby, two flights of stairs on either side of the doors ascend up to an upper-level mezzanine.

In the back of that mezzanine, something is glowing.

I climb the stairs expecting to see a window into the room behind the unreadable sign, but the only thing I find once I get up there is a huge, boxy machine about twice my height that’s bookended by two grimy plastic statues of curly-maned earth fillies in purple dresses. According to the round neon sign balanced on its top and the cursive script near its base, this thing is called a Pyrus Paradise, and the light I saw from below is coming from a little window in the center of the machine, where a rounded bottle of red liquid about the size of a milk carton sits next to a thick syringe filled with what looks like the same stuff.

It’s SUN. It has to be. No other substance would glow like that, or be stored in a syringe already prepped for injection. And yet the longer I try to convince myself that’s what the bottle holds, the more I become sure that it isn’t. Even for the few seconds I held the splicers’ SUN vial back at the terrace, I could feel its raw power it contained, the vibrations in my teeth where it struggled and strained relentlessly to escape its airtight container.

Nothing about the liquid in this machine reminds me of that experience. It’s not moving at all inside the bottle or the syringe, and staring into the light it gives off feels like watching the glimmer of a dying fire rather than the glare of a raging inferno. It might be SUN all the same, but it’s a processed kind, distilled and refined until it’s something a normal mare or stallion could control. On second thought, I think I might know what it is after all.

“Hey, Applejack?” I say into my radio. “What do plasmids look like?”

“What, before they get inside you?” Applejack says after a pause of a few moments. “Little glass jugs’a radioactive fruit punch. Pretty much like SUN, ‘cept with all the fight bucked out of it. If y’all think you found one, g’wan and bring it with you if you can, and we’ll take a look at it once y’all get back here.”

I think back to breakfast at the Apples’ table that morning. Apple Bloom grabbing a fork out of midair without touching it. Applejack talking about bending Big Daddies to her will. Lightning shooting from the tips of your hooves. All that power, all those miracles of magic that an earth pony like me could never even imagine, all locked away in that bottle and that syringe. What would Link say if he was with me now? What would he think we should do with it?

“Hello? Anypony home out there?”

He’d think we should leave it here. He’d think it was too big to bring along with us, too dangerous to test out, too foolish to think about achieving something impossible when we were so busy already getting back to reality. He’d think I was stupid to be curious about trying it. He’d think I couldn’t handle it if I did. He’d think I was a coward.

“You’re not usin’ that thing now, right?”

Fuck him.

There’s a little translucent port in my gun that seems built for a needle to go through it, so once I step forward and grab the plasmid from behind the window, I brace myself against the Pyrus Paradise machine and do my best to balance the syringe over that hole. Pushing it inside my foreleg is surprisingly painless—maybe the magical connection the bracer has with my nervous system did something to numb the area. Either way, the needle’s in, and I’m feeling just fine.

“Ruby? Ruby, wait!”

Without any hesitation, I lean forward and push the plunger down. In the time it takes the syringe to fall to the floor, every thought and memory in my head has been wiped away, replaced by one all-consuming state of being.

Pain.

Pain that locks up my muscles and fills them with acid, pain that slices my guts into ribbons and blows a smoking hole in my brain, pain I can’t even scream at for lack of air in my lungs and energy left in my body. I thought it had hurt to break my leg as a filly, to get crushed by a tidal wave, to nearly drown after a zeppelin crash, but this is worse. This is inconceivably worse. This is breaking and crushing and drowning all rolled into one and amplified a hundredfold. This is every part of me dying at once, rising from the ashes only to burn away again a thousand times a second.

I’m not aware of my legs moving or my hooves carrying me across the floor, only of the railing as the shock of slamming into it rolls through my body on a wave of razor-sharp needles. Impossible shapes and sounds flash in my eyes and stab into my ears: pale, ghostly blue apparitions of dancing fillies and laughing colts, chasing each other across the room and squealing with glee over candy creations that rotted away years before. The room is full of them, full of ponies who can neither see nor hear me, who have no idea that I’m here and that I’m watching them and that I’m in agony and that I’m melting.

Melting. Every drop of blood in my body feels like lava pulsing through my veins, and my skin feels like it’s peeling away from the heat radiating off it. Somewhere below me, Applejack is screaming at me. Somewhere in front of me, something is glowing. My hooves are glowing. My hooves are spitting out angry red sparks. My hooves are burning.

As I watch with horror I have no mouth to express, my hooves crack apart and burst into flame.

The pressure in my gut intensifies, then without warning vanishes. I’m aware of losing my balance, of air rushing past my ears, of the ground shooting up towards my face, and then stars explode in my eyes and every bone in my body shatters into dust. The light is gone. The fire is going out. I’m dying. I’m alive.

I stare up at the railing, and the ghosts are quiet. I close my eyes, and the silence rushes in.

The (Only Slightly Abridged) Rest of Harmony

View Online

I can’t tell for how long the plasmid holds me in its grip, paralyzed and barely on the edge of consciousness. Here and there, moments of clarity break through the haze, but beyond those time crashes over me in waves, speeding up and slowing down at the whim of whatever breed of magic I poisoned myself with.

When the force of the plasmid recedes, pieces of the candy shop courtyard snap into focus: a sagging sculpture, a faded poster, the distant lights of the city shimmering in a puddle in front of my nose. Each one stays for a few seconds, and then the tide of diluted SUN swells forward again and fogs up my eyes with a milky gray mist.

And all the while, even as I try to cobble the scattered fragments of my mind together, my body launches an uncompromising revolt against the substance invading it. My coat tingles and buzzes like there’s lightning crawling through it, and every muscle I own aches all the way through to my bones. Each frantic beat of my heart threatens to crack a rib, and the drops of blood it sends flashing through me sizzle and burn on their way down to my hooves, where all I can feel is prickly pins and needles in the few patches of skin that aren’t completely numb.

In my brief brushes with sensibility, I don’t see anypony come into the room with me. If anypony did, I wouldn’t have the strength to even reach for my radio and call for Applejack, and my ears would be ringing too loud anyway to hear whatever she said. Any splicer that ambled in could do with me whatever their psychotic heart desired, and yet in all my waking moments I don’t see so much as a cockroach scurry into view. I’d call it luck, but I think I know better. And I’d call that paranoia, if it didn’t turn out to be right.

Just before I black out completely, the room shudders and creaks to life. Some ponies know better than to kick a mare while she’s down, and Onyx Ryder must despise every single one of them. When she speaks, her words echo in my stomach like gunshots, and the icy sting of her breath envelops me as if the city itself were exhaling it for her.

“So the little birdie thinks she’ll learn to fly…”

A twitch in my neck turns into a shudder down my spine, and for the first time since falling I find the will to move. My hoof drags along the ground and bounces off my radio. Silent. Freezing. It’s not the machine talking, but the walls. It’s the building. It’s Ryder. It’s Harmony.

“I dreamed once of a city without authority, a city where power could only be as strong as the pony who sought it. Have you found what you were looking for in that vial, little birdie? Has your perversion of the arcane bought you some spectral sense of security?”

I throw my chest forward and reach out again, an extra rush of heat flooding through me from the effort. Between grabbing the radio and drawing breath, I have nothing else left to fight off the blackness gathering in my eyes. The lights flicker, then flare up brighter than ever.

“Your vanity will be your undoing. Unlike you, I do not fear death, only those who would deny me the life I choose to precede it. If you’d rather wallow in your own egocentricity like the rest of the parasprites… you needed only ask.”

The world is black. My legs are filled with lead. Only my ears still work, still tether me to life.

“A mare is only as honorable as the company she keeps…”

In the distance, I hear a door slide open. I hear hoofsteps.

“I hope you enjoy yours.”

Blindly, numbly, I grit my teeth and stretch out as far as I can. An impact ripples through my hoof, and the radio slides out of reach. The floor presses up into me, and as if I’m as much a ghost as the apparitions I saw before, I fall right through it.

“... well, good golly, Miss Fally. How’d you get here?”

***

“... OW.”

I wake up with a start and a splitting headache--and not in that order. I feel like I've been asleep for years. And in a blimp crash. And sent down to a hellish underwater city filled with murderous magic-addled mutants where I was forced to work with a mechanically-altered farmpony and her tone-deaf little sister to find parts for a bathysphere that could get all of us back to the surface. And, briefly and very recently, on fire.

“Hi there, sleepyhead!"

I blink, blink again, then look up to find a shockingly pink earth pony staring back at me about three inches away from my nose. I would’ve jumped, but my head hurts too much for that. As do the parts of me that were just on fire. Seriously, is that what all plasmids do when you first inject them? How the hell did those things ever take off as consumer products down here?

“Hi,” I grunt after a moment’s pause. “Who are you, and am I dead? Answer those questions in whatever order you want. I’m not picky.”

“I’m Pinkie Pie, and you’re as alive as I am secretly full of SUN and lowkey bloodthirsty about it!”

I blink once more.

“Ugh, I rushed it, didn’t I?” Pinkie Pie says, backing off of me so she can rub her hoof sheepishly through her mane. “Sorry. I’ve been waiting so long to find another living pony to help me down here. Guess I kind of gave away the twist there… don’t suppose you’d still be up for helping with a fetch quest or two? I can throw in a boss fight afterward if you’d like.”

“Uh… no, thanks,” I tell her. “I should probably get back to Applejack and Apple Bloom and what’s-his-face… Link. Who names a pony Link? Anyway, yeah, I kind of wandered off and they’re probably looking for me, and I kiiiiind of told Link to literally go fuck himself a bit ago, sooooo…”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Pinkie grumbles. “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to. Just figured I’d ask.”

“Sure, no problem, my bad. Good luck with, uh… finding more crazy-fying magic juice?”

“Thanks! Good luck apologizing to your boyfriend!”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“Uh-huh. Sure he’s not.”

***

“So you’re sure we’re cool?” I ask for probably the fifth time.

“Yeah, totally,” Link replies, punctuating his remark with a blast of his magic-held pistol. Once the SUN-crazed splicer in front of him falls with a bloody thump, he offers me a characteristically awkward grin. “I mean, you apologized, I apologized, we’re both better for this experience and way more comfortable with murder than we ever thought we’d be. Why wouldn’t we be cool?”

“I mean, lots of reasons, to be honest,” I say as I casually blow a splicer’s brains out with my own hoof-mounted gun, “but yeah, I guess that’s better left for our respective therapists to deal with.” In a brief lull between waves of faceless bad guys, I flick my radio on with my gun hoof. “Applejack, you guys ready down there?”

“Just about,” Applejack answers. “Bathysphere looks like it’s running fine, and I’ve already loaded Apple Bloom and Apple Cider in. We’ll have y’all back to the surface in two shakes of a sheep’s tail!”

Link looks at me, and I look back at him. “That’s not a thing real ponies say,” he says.

“Definitely not,” I agree. “But at least we’re done with all this. We’ve got the bathysphere fixed, and all the splicers are dead. How bad could things possibly go from here?”

***

“Okay, so… that went really bad.”

Link doesn't need to agree aloud, but I know he agrees silently. There isn't much else he could’ve done, considering that our escape attempt ended with the city’s respective psychotic leader and rebel icon, Onyx “Definitely Not Andrew “Definitely Not Ayn Rand” Ryan” Ryder and Daybreak “Definitely Not [Spoiler Redacted Just For a Hot Second]” Nevergotalastname, interfering by way of--respectively--filling the launch bay with toxic gas while Apple Bloom and Apple Cider were still inside, and then setting said gas explosively on fire. Can't really blame Applejack for swearing bloody revenge on both of them at that point. And also regular-swearing a bunch too.

“Well, I guess there’s nowhere to go but forward,” Link says. “Specifically, to the… what was it called again?”

“The Aerodome,” I clarify, “Y’know, so the pegasi can still fly around someplace while miles underwater.”

“That’s… really impressive,” Link muses. “Like, it’s a technological marvel that singlehoofedly proves the ridiculous nature of this entire endeavor. Kind of a perfect metaphor for the city of Harmony itself.”

“Huh,” I say. “You know, you’re sharper than you look.”

“Thanks. You’re pretty sharp too.”

“Are we flirting right now?”

“Stars above, I hope not.” Link lifts a hoof to point ahead. “Look, there’s the entrance. Let’s go talk to Applejack’s friend Rainbow Dash and figure out how she can help us defeat Onyx and Daybreak.”

“Did Applejack ever specify exactly how her friend could do that?”

“No. No, she did not.”

“Cool. Just checking. Was wondering if I’d missed something.”

***

“Okay, so that went really, really bad,” Link says.

“No kidding,” I agree. “Like, a seemingly peaceful society in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world that turns out to be violently cultish and fond of making splicers fight to the death for their amusement? That’s literally just the Governor plotline from The Trotting Dead! Talk about a narrative copout.”

“No, I more meant the part where we both got imprisoned for using plasmids and you had to fight a bunch of splicers in that arena, and then you almost had to fight and kill me too. But, y’know… you’re not wrong. And you did get that Telekinesis plasmid out of the bargain, so… silver lining, I guess?”

“Definitely,” I say, spinning my newly acquired/stolen shotgun around in my newly stolen/acquired magical aura. “Basic unicorn powers are OP as fuck, dude.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Link admits. “Are we flirting now, though?”

“Stars above, I hope not,” I snort. “Wanna go check out Arcadia?”

“Wait, that’s just… exactly the name the original game gave that area.”

“It certainly is. Wanna go find out which of Applejack’s old friends lives there?”

“... Yes. Yes I do.”

***

“Ah-ha-ha-ha!” Rarity cackles. “You’ve fallen right into my trap! Now that I’ve sealed all the exits to this area, you have no choice but to help me finish my masterpiece by… pause for effect… going on multiple fetch que-”

“Yeah, okay, no,” I calmly retort, while in the same motion gently slotting the end of my shotgun in between Rarity’s gnashing teeth. “In the past, mmm, 24 hours or so, I have been stung by mutant bees, technically tortured an Aerodrome pegasus into having Stockholm Syndrome, watched Applejack’s friend Fluttershy shoot Applejack’s other friend Rainbow Dash because it turns out Rainbow was using plasmids after all, and then almost drowned before finding out my definitely-not-boyfriend Link got ripped open like a Ziploc bag and I had to stab him with an ADAM syringe to keep him from dying. In other words, I have had a very, very long day. So if you’d be so kind, please let me out of this drawn-out crazy artist pastiche before I pump thirty pellets of 12-gauge buckshot straight down your fucking throat.”

After taking a moment to consider, Rarity accepts my proposal. She vanishes in a burst of teleportation magic, leaving the keys to the area’s exit in her wake.

(This is almost literally how this section was actually supposed to end.)

***

“Hey, Ruby?” Link asks as the elevator to Onyx Ryder’s office ascends. “Are we still flirting, or…”

I blink, then turn to face Link with a quizzical expression. “Link, we literally--and I do not use that term lightly--just had sex on a pile of Hearth’s Warming sweaters in an abandoned clothes emporium,” I say. “We have most assuredly advanced past the flirting stage.”

“Okay, just… just checking,” he replies. “Y’know, it’s good to make sure before you…”

“Fuck somepony in the remnants of a clearance rack, yeah, I’ve been slowly realizing that,” I say. “Well, what’s done is done. Literally, in this case. At least that Foxtail Meadow guy Ryder hates so much turned out to be pretty cool when we finally met him face-to-face.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Link says. “He even helped us get this elevator running and insisted we wear these pointy hats that say “MARKS” on them. He must really want us to go meet with Onyx Ryder.”

“Yep,” I agree as the elevator jolts to a stop. “Pretty chill guy. Well, let’s go end this thing.”

***

“Well,” I say, after watching Link shoot Onyx in the face on orders from Daybreak, finding out that Daybreak was Foxtail Meadow all along, learning that Link was secretly Onyx and Foxtail’s son and brainwashed to follow any order preceded by the word “Sugarcube,” and then--again on Foxtail’s orders--being shot in the chest myself by Link, “fuck.”

***

“... OW.”

“Oh, stop complaining,” Twilight Sparkle says as I rise very literally from the dead, surrounded by all the SUN-gathering Little Sisters Twilight accidentally enabled to be made. “You’re not the only one you’re stressed.”

“Wait, wha… how am I alive?” I sputter. “I thought only direct blood relatives of Onyx Ryder could use the Vita-Chamber and resurrect after they… oh, shit.”

“It’s not incest,” Twilight quickly clarifies. “You’re just pregnant with Link’s child. It’s a technicality, but hey, you’re not dead, so count your blessings.”

“Oh, cool… wait, oh shit.”

“Yeah... also, Applejack’s dying,” Twilight continues. “Foxtail made Link shoot her too. And she didn't even know about the 'Sugarcube' thing, that was just a passive-aggressive dig at her from Foxtail. But if it’s any consolation, it turns Apple Bloom’s alive. And so is Apple Cider, even though she actually came from Foxtail raping Applejack and she’s a Little Sister now.”

“SHIT.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” Twilight says. “Apple Bloom being alive really isn’t that much of a consolation.”

***

“Well, isn’t this convenient?” Foxtail says, bleeding from his many bullet wounds atop a surfaced submarine filled with Twilight, Apple Bloom, Fluttershy, the Stockholm Syndrome pegasus, Vinyl Scratch (for some reason), and a bunch of Little Sisters. “You two just had to beat all the odds and do some video-game bullshit to defeat me, didn’t you?”

“No, we…” Link starts to say before I nudge him in the shoulder and offer him a conciliatory shrug. “Actually, yeah, you pretty much nailed us there. But come on, we reformed the Elements of Harmony with a bunch of background ponies and OCs! That’s gotta be worth some credit, right?”

“Yeah,” Foxtail coughs, “I guess Applejack would be proud of you after all.”

“Oh, fuck you, you overwrought political metaphor,” Link says before turning away to let Foxtail face justice on the mainland (because this is the good ending). Startled by his utter failure to corrupt Link in his own image, Foxtail tries to make one last desperate grab for him, but fails and slips off the sub to drown, because seriously, fuck him.

“Look, you tried,” I say, rubbing a hoof on Link’s back as he stares into the ocean’s depths at his sinking estranged father. “And that’s what counts. I think that’s what the moral of all this was. Aside from the fact that Ayn Rand was an idiot.”

“Does that even count as a moral?” Link asks. “I mean, everyone knows that.”

“You’d be surprised,” I say, and whatever Link was about to say to ruin the moment, I cut off with a deep romantic kiss. “By the way, I’m pregnant,” I say once I pull away.

“Oh,” Link replies. “Shit.”

(This is also almost literally how the ending scene was going to go.)

FIN

Author's Notes:

Fun highlights I didn't have time to cram into the speedwritten version of this include:

Since Ponk was hooked on SUN, she harvests the Little Sister Ruby finds during her fetch quests, and when Ruby decides that's not okay and shoots her in the heart, the SUN heals the bullet wound and things got a little tense until Link reappeared with an Electro Bolt plasmid of his own to finish the boss fight
A centerpiece of the Aerodrome section was a vault that Rainbow Dash and her crew couldn't get open that supposedly had a bunch of sweet weapons in it; after escaping the arena with Link and being recaptured, Ruby bargains her way out of getting shot by saying (correctly, it turns out) that she can hack into the vault's MOON-run lock and open it, which turns out to be moot because there's a second door with a code-word voice lock that Ruby doesn't figure out until much later
Rarity's fetch quest would've put Ruby face-to-face with, in order: Vinyl Scratch (who talks her way out of an early grave after Ruby blows away her splicer army in her nightclub), Lyra (who does NOT talk her way out of an explosive three-way battle between her, Ruby, and a Big Daddy with terrible timing), and Octavia, who gets a bullet point all her own because...
... she's SUPER spliced up and kicks the shit out of Ruby the first go-around, and after surfacing from a half-flooded horror show of an abandoned boutique and killing a LOT of splicers (including the one that chased her and Link when they first arrived in Harmony), Ruby defeats Octavia too by (and god, this fight would've been epic) dunking Octavia's giant reserve tank of MOON all over herself and blacking out half the city with how big of an plasmid-sponsored "fuck you" she gives Tavi
Yes, for the record, Sweetie Belle was the Little Sister in the "Welcome to Harmony" section (still smol, unlike Apple Bloom, because hand-wavey SUN bullshit), and in preparation for her final faceoff with Foxtail, Ruby goes and saves her while also getting the Aerodome vault open in the same trip; there's a spare Big Daddy suit and rivet gun in there that Ruby uses to climb up the outside of Foxtail's tower, fight past his security, and keep Link from shooting himself on Foxtail's "Sugarcube" orders
With the Elements of Harmony reassembled (Twilight and Fluttershy plus Apple Bloom [Laughter], Stockholm Syndrome pegasus [Loyalty], Vinyl Scratch [Generosity], and Ruby [Honesty]; Link doesn't get one because he's a test tube baby), everyone's able to keep Foxtail occupied long enough for Twilight to send his mainland-bound sub straight to the fuckin' moon (bitch)
And finally, I was gonna write two alternate endings ("neutral" and "bad") for presumed playthroughs where Ruby did cowardly or straight-up evil stuff (i.e. not killing Ponk, harvesting Little Sisters, killing Vinyl, etc.); in the neutral ending, Ruby can't save Twilight from drowning in the wake of her submarine moonshot, and Link shoots Foxtail rather than try to let him face justice; in the bad ending, Ruby lets Twilight drown intentionally and kills everyone else left, then directs Link through the "Sugarcube" phrase (which wasn't deactivated previously because bad end) to come with her to the mainland and wreak bloody, spliced-up revenge on the society that kicked her around too much