The human agent working to stop incursions from the world known to ponies as the shadowfell tends to be of two minds about his duties. In fact, Jack's been of two minds concerning just about everything lately. And one of those minds isn't his.
There's a motive behind every deliberate human incursion into Equestria. For the humans coming from Jack's world, it tends to be profiteering, combined with a total lack of empathy and inability to care about anyone who's not making at least three billion dollars per year. Every day, the sum of that equation is measured as lost lives in the shadowfell, and all which keeps the total from climbing higher on the pony side is a single high school student and his newfound friends. Or rather, a group of assistants and the bundle of chemicals which sometimes wears Jack's skin.
The chemicals may be insane. And that madness just might be the only way for Jack to survive.
The bundle of chemicals crouched high in the shadowed rafters of what was no longer successfully passing as an abandoned dockside warehouse, and continued to wonder what its name was.
The chemicals were vaguely aware that in the majority of cases, a name was something you didn't choose for yourself. It was also generally something people said upon seeing you and while that gave the chemicals a fair number of choices to work with, it somehow didn't feel that it was going to make a lot of progress during the loaned hours of its life if it went around introducing itself to potential friends as 'Mister Oh My God It's That Thing!' or 'Sir Keep Away Him Away From Me!' Handing out calling cards adorned with the smiling features of 'KILL IT!' definitely seemed to be in the realm of rather questionable taste. And so the chemicals, having no true name of its own, had been spending some time thinking about the problem, because a name seemed to be something it needed. It had thoughts and feelings to go with what it personally considered to be an incredible sense of humor and some rather dashing good looks, even if that last oddly didn't seem to be to everyone's taste. A name would just -- finish off the package. And so it thought about the matter whenever it got the chance (which wasn't often: most of its scant time was tied up with other things, and this had recently included tying things up), along with searching for inspiration and keeping its ears open, because there was always that off-chance that eventually, someone it was about to render into an unconscious sack of bad intentions would call it something good.
For now, there was time to kill, right up until the moment there would be people to not-quite-kill. Shortly before arriving at the warehouse -- in fact, just a little bit before learning that the warehouse would be the best of all possible places to arrive -- the chemicals had made a brand-new acquaintance. This made it happy. The chemicals loved to meet new people and have long talks with them about the city, their perspective on the world and their place in it, plus did they happen to know where something interesting might be happening that evening? Admittedly, it was still trying to perfect the finer details of small talk, like the part where you tied your new acquaintance up in a manner which guaranteed he wouldn't be wriggling off to tell anyone about the meeting until long after there had been a chance to make more passing acquaintances. It felt itself to be developing quite the network of contacts, as the chemicals had been meeting a lot of people over the short course of its life. However, unless he saw fit to send them out into the field again once the injuries had healed, the majority had been once each, and for those who were his, none of them ever seemed happy to see it again.
The chemicals guessed it could understand that. Really, when you were happy to see someone who beat you within (but never over) an inch of your life, there was probably something very wrong with you. And yet it was still disappointing. Painful, almost. It made the chemicals glad to have friends, because it felt it truly did, even if some of those friends really hadn't acknowledged that yet. And of course, there was nothing like having someone to love --
-- chains began to grind: someone giving the crank a signal from outside. The large front doors slowly began to open.
Well, more time for thinking about names later, if it lived. (It would do its best to live, of course, for life was important, and loaned hours had to be paid back.) The chemicals glanced up at the skylight it had come in through, made sure there were no extra cracks of moonlight streaming down. Small details were also important. And then it listened.
The van stopped, about fifty feet into the huge, not-quite-vacant floor. A near-silent transmission hissed, then dropped into its own form of temporary death as a bulky driver forced himself out, then walked around to the back doors. Two nearly-equally-heavy passengers came out from that side, and the chemicals briefly wondered how they'd all fit in there. Perhaps they knew each other well enough to share laps, although that would have left at least one with a gun sticking into a rather sensitive area.
"Ready?" asked the driver.
"Yeah," grumbled the more muscular of the passengers. "To unload. And... what are we doing after we unload, again?"
The chemicals would have sighed if it hadn't known better. He didn't have all that many intelligent people working for him. There was probably a superiority complex at work. (The chemicals had been learning about complexes, since at least one new acquaintance had accused it of having every last one of them.)
"Bleeding them," the driver said in a lightly exasperated tone. "Slowly. While we put the cooling stuff in." A nod to a large vat, right next to the gleaming surgical tables. "The doc should be here to take the organs by the time we're done. Better be. Should have been here already..."
The chemicals, who knew the physician would be a little busy for the next few months with healing himself, might have laughed if it hadn't known the sound would give it away, and if its laugh hadn't been so -- special. But it didn't, because it had also spoken to that new acquaintance at length, which included the one of dropping that well-met party almost all the way off the building, and so it felt the other emotion starting to build again.
"They're testing the organs now?" asked the slightly-smaller passenger. "For what?"
"For whatever he can get out of them. After what we heard from the other place about the blood..."
The chemicals were suddenly on very high alert.
"Other... place?" The thug who was only three hundred and fifty pounds looked nervous. "I... don't like that place. Even if they can't get here, just hearing their voices... knowing what they are..."
The driver looked -- sympathetic. Briefly. It reminded the chemicals that the driver was human. Somewhat. "Yeah. I know. But -- maybe we won't talk to them again. He's been trying for the last few days, and -- it won't connect. The boys say there's just been static. He doesn't know what's happened, and -- well, he ain't happy. So let's make him happy, okay? Get ready: I'm gonna open this."
"...why wouldn't it connect?" asked the heavier and stupider, moving into position.
"Maybe they broke their end. Or --" there should not have been a smile, and there was "-- maybe their end broke. Here we go..."
The van's doors were flung open, and the thugs scrambled inside. Seconds later, the first of the pony children was dragged out.
The chemicals watched, forcing borrowed lungs to work slowly as fur and mane colors, far too bright for this dingy warehouse, for this world, were led out under harsh electric pools of illumination and thin shafts of moonlight which brought no promise of protection with them. Ten foals in all, none old enough to have started into adolescence yet. Three had their horns covered in cones of thick metal, while two had been bound in such a way as to leave their wings locked into their sides and their legs barely able to shuffle. All had their snouts wrapped in muzzles, and yet soft, terrified neighs filled their part of the foreign night.
Huge eyes stared at the men who were talking about the upcoming deaths with just as much caring as they might have discussed the swatting of a mosquito. Frantically twisting ears understood none of the words, and all of the intent.
It's just what the doctor said.
They're going to kill them. For science. For exploration and discovery and, oh, let's face it, it's all about finding profit and if there's none to be had, then grumble about the bills, bury the bodies, blame someone else for everything and never, ever care.
But he didn't say it was on the advice of this -- 'other place'. How rude! After all we'd been through together. All the sweat. All the tears. All of it his.
But why here? Why not wherever he brought them across, wherever that is? Is that a logical question to ask? A sane one? Better yet, is this the time to ask that question? It's certainly the place, or almost so. Maybe at slightly -- lower altitude.
Ten foals.
They were herded, with pushes and shoves and kicks against flanks. Some of those last were aimed at the marks. The thugs laughed at the ponies who could barely move, then yelled at them in words they didn't understand, cursing them for barely moving when they were the reasons for it -- and that was followed by more laughter.
The thugs, the chemicals felt, did not truly understand comedy. And they weren't all that good at opportunity, either. Or rather, the avoidance of creating one for it, because after all ten of the foals had been herded towards the surgical tables and their ropes had been temporarily bound to improvised hitching posts, all three men went back to the van in order to close it up. The chemicals didn't understand why, as it only took one person to lock a door, especially if they used a remote for that too. Maybe they just wanted a few seconds where they were away from the desperate whinnies which indicated innocent lives about to end.
The chemicals didn't understand why they'd done that. (It didn't understand a lot of things about people. It had questions. 'Why won't you stop screaming?' was frequently at the top of the list.) All it knew was that the temporary arrangement of all parties provided -- opportunity.
It touched a special place on its belt. A tiny vial dropped into its hand. Bleach-white fingers moved. And you really couldn't say the thugs never knew what hit them, because as soon as the human-choking cloud of dark purple gas erupted from the shattered glass, they knew exactly what was about to hit them.
"Oh God, no!" the driver screamed.
God? The chemicals briefly considered that as it dropped down to ground level, which would have been a rather impressive thing to see for anyone who still could: legs weren't supposed to casually absorb a twenty-foot fall, and its -- well, that wasn't casual. The action actually stung quite a bit, and it automatically, silently apologized for what would be felt later. But still, the chemicals could do it.
Which didn't make it God. As a potential name, 'God' struck it as being a little too egotistical. More suited for him, at least when it came to the ego. Fortunately, the implied power level was still just a little bit short.
"Gentlemen!" the chemicals happily greeted the thugs who were stumbling around in the gas, barely able to see him, each other, anything -- but still reaching for weapons because they always did, they would fire off in all directions without caring and that just might hit each other, the foals, or the chemicals. Something not to allow, then. "What brings you out here at this hour? The sightseeing potential? The rental prices? The never-realized non-hipster irony of it all? Or did someone happen to mention the old carousel which he had taken out to make room for this place, and you just got entirely the wrong idea of pony rides?"
The words were steady. The movements were not. The chemicals understood something about bobbing, weaving, moving ahead of the aim -- and it could see in the gas, where the thugs could not. It could breathe, for what it insisted was its true face had a few special tricks built in, although the chemicals felt it needed a few more standard ones around the mouth. And so as it spoke, it rushed through the cloud, brass knuckles already in place, and it hit and it kicked sensitive areas and it did any number of horrible things which really shouldn't happen to anyone who was good and therefore, the chemicals were glad they were all happening here. And of course, it did the worst thing of all, or so it had been told by all those who just hadn't appreciated the action. It laughed, because the thugs looked funny stumbling around in the dark. It laughed because the look on someone's face when they were about to solve all their problems with a gun and then had it fall from their hand after the pain from a just-broken wrist made them oddly clumsy -- well, that was just funny. You had to laugh, if you had any sense of humor at all.
The thugs didn't, and the ones whose hands were still working had them automatically go over ears. This incidentally meant those hands weren't in a position to fire guns.
The chemicals grinned. It often did. It couldn't help it, really. And it moved.
It had to move quickly, and so it did. The chemicals could move faster than a normal human: an appreciable increase, although nothing really special when you understood what a few other people could do. It was somewhat stronger than it strictly should have been, more durable: additional side effects piled onto the one which was its entire life. But it could still get hurt. It wasn't bulletproof. (Its clothing was -- resistant. Or was supposed to be. It really didn't want to test that, especially as it might ruin the lines of the fine suit.) It also had many, more people-standard abilities built into its borrowed life, and the one it really didn't feel like testing was the one for bleeding out, no matter how special that blood might be, especially since that would actually be a double homicide --
-- it didn't move quickly enough. A short knife stabbed through the mist: switchblade. Its right wrist, one of the very few exposed areas and only when it was punching its hardest, was cut --
-- sorry, sorry, I'm sorry, I'll take care of that before I --
-- and blood sprayed out. Some of it went into the driver's eyes.
He screamed. The humor of that bad luck made up for the pain.
"Oh, I am sorry!" the chemicals apologized. "I know all your friends -- you do have those, right? -- might have told you about my acid tongue, and you might not have thought about the implications of that, because anyone who thought wouldn't still have this job..."
The chemicals caught sight of the foals at one point. No bullets had been fired in that direction: none had been fired at all. The pegasi, it knew, could see the radiance of all their heat moving within the cloud: the others would have no way to know what was going on. But all of them were scared. They had been taken from their homes, stolen from their families and loved ones and world. And if the chemicals knew him -- and it felt it did, just a little -- at the moment before they were removed from Equestria for what was supposed to be the rest of their lives, the last seconds within the magic which allowed them to understand human speech, they would have been told they were going to die.
They had every reason to be afraid, for the new world was something which held nothing but fear. However, that meant they were likely afraid of the chemicals too. The chemicals hated that. Fortunately, it knew a fix.
It dropped another vial. The counteragent spread through the air, and the mist cleared.
The chemicals stood over the fallen driver. Hard-heeled (but fashionable!) boots were currently crushing the fingers of the driver's left hand, because the knife was still there and really, a perfectly nice suit had been just ruined by bloodstains. Strange things happened to fabric when the chemicals began to borrow their hours, and it had been so hard to find something which would come up just the right shade of purple. A hue which got lost in the night. Which was a good thing, because the start of those hours also did odd things to skin, and that was not lost in the dark. It was the opposite of lost, and that was why the fashionable suit came with a hood.
"You're breaking my hand!" the driver screamed.
"Really? Well, one more thing to think about when you're considering stabbing someone," the chemicals shrugged. "The possibility of having your hand broken. Don't you think that if you really took a moment and considered the choices which led you to this point in what's oddly turned out to be your life, you might come to the understanding that this is all your fault? You stab someone and then bad things happen to your hand. Someone ties you to train tracks and strangely enough, your cause of death on the autopsy? It gets listed as 'heart attack.' Because you freaked out thinking about oncoming trains." It risked a quick glance back at the other two. They seemed to be out cold. It hoped they were truly out cold. The chemicals had learned a few things on its own, and one of the faster lessons was that people were a lot harder to render unconscious than the movies made things seem.
(The chemicals had never seen a movie. It had something which almost approached memories of a few. It mostly knew movies existed, and that knowledge was as borrowed as the hours.)
The thug was staring at it, or would have done so if he could still truly see.
"It is not," the chemicals grouchily declared, "a perfect metaphor. If you have a better one, let's hear it."
Ten foals, staring at the humans. And the chemicals. Especially the chemicals, because those who were terrified in a foreign land would latch onto anything even remotely familiar, and it had at least one minor viewing point to offer.
"And my eyes..."
"Oh, your eyes, your hand... fine, let's just make sure this movie's star is taken care of..." It grabbed the driver's wrists, dragged him over to the surgical tables, past the staring foals. "Now let's see... working to preserve organs, which means some truly nasty stuff around, and that should indicate -- yes, here we are! Eye wash station!" It got the man more or less upright, made sure the swollen orbs were fully splashed. "Honestly, your own tears would have done it in a few hours, but someone of your size who makes a living through slaughtering children just can't take a little pain --"
The chemicals bounced the driver's head off the edge of the sink. The man screamed.
"-- because those who can't take, teach." The chemicals frowned. "Those who can take, teach? Those who..." It raised an inquiring, hopeful finger. "...suggestions from the studio audience, please..."
"You're -- you're crazy --"
Bounce. Bounce.
"You kill children," it quietly said. "But I'm crazy. I suppose you feel the difference is that you're getting paid for it. In cash." Admittedly, the chemicals were also paid. In time. Hours, minutes, fleeting seconds of life. "Why here? Why were you going to kill them here? Why not where he's bringing them across?"
"I -- I can't --"
Bounce. Bounce. Bounce. Ten tails were now bobbing to the rhythm.
"...decentralized," the driver gasped when he could speak again and most of the teeth had been spit into the sink. "Can't... keep the entire operation in one place. That's what he says. Trying to spread out..."
"Very wise," the chemicals decided, because time could always be spared to say something nice, even about him. "And where is the transfer point?"
Another glob of blood landed in the sink, along with part of a bicuspid.
"...I can't."
"Maybe you should."
"You..." The driver swallowed what was left of his courage. The chemicals wondered if it made for a nourishing meal, especially as it never seemed to supply any calories to the brain. "...I've heard about you --"
"-- have you!" The chemicals brightened. "Anything interesting? Any gossip making the all-ears, no-brain circuit? Was there perhaps something about a name --"
"-- you won't kill me."
Its posture sagged a bit, as the foals huddled closer together. As much as the horrible ropes and bindings would allow.
"No," the chemicals eventually said. "I won't."
"And..."
The driver forced his head around, and the chemicals allowed that to happen. Reddened eyes focused, offered their only possible plea.
"...he won't kill... won't kill me....
The chemicals sighed.
"No," it agreed. "He won't."
Bouncing occurred.
Once it was over, the chemicals took a few minutes for mop-up work. The thugs had to be verified as still being completely unconscious, and then they needed to be bound. (It was getting good at that last part. It sometimes became overenthusiastic. It had recently taken out one of his in a hospital and, upon seeing all the bandages it could work with, had just about created a mummy. It wasn't sure how it knew what one of those was.) Then there was the matter of yet another burner phone, which would be left behind in its wake: it never got more than one call out of the things and mostly asked for selection based on color. The call itself... well, the police would come. And before it had met one of his new friends, depending on the current bribe level of the squad which actually showed up, their first duty would have probably been either apologizing to the wounded or asking what charges they wanted to press. But these nights...
"Hey! Guess who! Well, it's not as if you have to guess. Or maybe you do, since you can't set me up with a recognized number. Or name to appear when that number calls. By the way, speaking of -- oh? Right. Dockside. Number forty-seven on Sprang. Can't miss it. It's the warehouse with three of his waiting to make bail. Please make them wait a while. Wife okay? How's the girl -- oh."
It looked at the foals. They stared back. Legs and wings were still stretching out from where it had removed the ropes, because it was going to do that anyway and as long as it was tying the thugs up, might as well try out some irony. Not to the point of bleeding them out and saving their organs (although a trio of never-used brains probably had some value on the open market), but it appreciated the mini-joke. However, none of the muzzles had fit. At least, not over their faces.
"He hung up," the chemicals sighed. "Disconnected, really. No one hangs up any more. I'm not even sure what that means. But whatever it is, he usually does it. And yes, I know you can't understand me."
Its tones softened. Gestures emerged: slow, graceful weaving of talented borrowed hands.
"Also that you couldn't understand that. Not yet. But you haven't run. Maybe because it's the whole world is strange and you don't feel like you have anywhere to go. I understand that. Every night, for the nights I have. Or maybe it's because -- some part of you knows? Why I'm here?"
One of the little unicorns took a tiny step forward. She sniffed the air. Nickered.
"So," the chemicals gently said. "Shall we?"
One more vial. Not the most special. But as unexpected gas clouds went... it was deep blue, and billowing. It smelled like -- well, the chemicals weren't sure: it never scented much of anything. The price of its face. It never really got to eat, either. But judging by the way the ponies were taking deep, wonder-filled breaths, it had to smell pretty good.
It took its time about filling the little area. Too much time, in some ways. A friend had timed the process: twenty seconds to reach their limits, and then nearly a full minute for transition. The trip back was faster, but -- almost eighty seconds total, which made it just about impossible to drop into a group of kidnapped foals and simply get them out. Nearly eighty seconds of shots fired and knives slashed out and...
It had to take care of that arm, before the loan ran out. That was part of the promise. Part of the love.
Nearly eighty seconds, and then the gas dispersed, leaving the chemicals and foals atop a Sun-lit hill in a green land. It could see buildings in the distance. Help was close. Families were nearby...
"Welcome home," it said.
All of the foals, already near-capering in place at the sights and sounds of the familiar, trying to find a way past the disbelief, realizing they'd been saved -- they turned, at the sound of words they could finally understand. Stared at it, with the nature of that stare slightly changed.
The little unicorn filly looked up at the chemicals. It knelt down in front of her, to make things easier, and she slowly, slowly approached. Brought a shivering foreleg up, and it bent forward to meet the touch.
"I... I really like your mane," she whispered, running her hoof through green hair.
The banter, at least for general style, might have been familiar to anyone wandering through the high school between classes: two teenage males issuing each other dares, displaying a bravado which provided a poor evolutionary substitute for plumage, and that would have drawn no attention whatsoever. The pairing, however, was still regarded as being somewhat unusual.
The taller of the two -- they were both on the tall side, but in this case, 'taller' meant a full 6'4" -- had unruly black hair, a lean face which frequently showed signs of lost sleep around the eyes. He had a chin which was slightly too strong, and a nose that might have been overly narrow. It could be argued that he was attractive, but he achieved that quality without being handsome: female gazes occasionally rubbernecked in his presence, mostly as if regarding a particularly fascinating accident. His body had the long muscles of someone whose athletic devotion outshone the academic, and any college scout would have taken a look at the way he casually steered around obstacles and immediately pinned him as a point guard. Several had. And then everything had happened, and the scouts had stopped coming around.
The shorter (all of two inches) was also the thinner. He had what some might call a 'geek physique', which meant the majority of his exercise came from lifting concepts which most people couldn't even begin to get off the ground. Too thin, and skin so pale as to approach albino was made worse by insufficient exposure to sunlight. The lack of weight made his already-angular features sharp enough to cut. His best physical aspect might have been the blonde hair, but that was already showing cruel signs of early receding. His companion had told him that he'd been given one of nature's great skull shapes and the best thing to do was just surrender early and let the dome shine on. The blond, especially when it came to any advice meant to help with female interaction, had doubts.
"On three," said the taller. "One, two --"
"They're not even in this hallway any more. They went into Spanish." It was supposed to be the last year of Spanish classes. He didn't see any point to having any language other than English spoken in his city, and had bribed up laws which discouraged immigrants to suit. (It really didn't matter what languages the slaves he put to work in the secret places spoke, because they were never allowed to talk at all.)
"So ask out the air. It'll be practice." An extravagant gesture accompanied the words, one which pulled up the sleeve enough to reveal the bandage on the wrist. "Besides, the air might say yes. Nora, though..."
Vic sighed, rolled ice-blue eyes. Jack grinned.
It was something close to a perpetual tease between the two (relatively new) friends: their mutual lack of luck with women. For Vic, it had been a life-long condition: he was devoted to Knowledge and Science, so when Hormones had come calling, they had found the only subject which the school's resident genius (already interning and doing so for him) had voluntarily left off the schedule. Vic had a crush on Nora. Anyone who hung around him for so much as ten seconds (as long as those ten seconds had her in that general area) would realize it, see the red rising in near-white cheeks just from proximity. And Nora was friendly and open and rather accepting of just about anyone who was at least polite in her presence: add in the shifting curves of her figure and just about a third of the school had entertained a few fantasies about her, with more than a few trying to get smartphone pictures for private review. However, as accepting as she was, there was something of a condition for admission: you had to be capable of speech. And whenever Vic got close enough for the blush to rise, his frozen vocal chords very much left him out.
Jack, however... Jack's isolation on the social scene was a new thing: just one more aspect of his changed life. Before it had all happened, he'd been one of the stars, and there were girls who went for that. He'd been through a few of them, no more than three dates each, trying to find one who didn't just want to attach, because everyone knew Jack was going places and that meant there were girls who wanted to be pulled along. He'd been given advice about spotting the worst of them, had learned to recognize some of the others through their level of need for gifts, plus he'd had a built-in screener ready to swing into action at all times. Jack couldn't have any girl he wanted -- but when the action had still been on the court, he could have dates any time he liked, sex might have been on the table at all times, and he'd still never gotten the one he truly wanted because she didn't go for jocks.
He wasn't a jock any more. He wasn't...
...besides, there was no more screener.
There had been the Jack from before that last game, and there was the Jack from after. They knew each other, understood what had happened, and the one from the present would never be that other teen again. That was part of it. Most of the rest was the other one.
Vic didn't ask Nora out because he thought he'd be rejected. Jack didn't ask his dream girl out because even after all that had happened, perhaps because of all that had happened, there was a chance she'd say yes, and...
Jack and Vic were friends, these days. The general consensus around the school was that Vic, near-freak Vic to go with all the other freaks Jack had been accumulating, was all Jack could currently get. Because Vic was seen as being socially blind, deaf, mute, and so wouldn't understand the risks.
Vic understood those risks better than anyone. And that was part of why they were friends.
"Got banged up during the pickup game?" that recent friend casually asked, and Jack could almost hear the true words lurking underneath. Most of their public conversations were conducted in subtext. It got hurt again, didn't it?
"Yeah. Well, you know -- I've got to get back to the hardwood eventually, right? Especially with college getting so close." It's fine. It's practically a scratch. And college was no longer approaching at all.
"I want to look at that later. You're your own worst medic. Probably just slapped some tape on it and called it a night." Damn it, Jack...
"Fussbudget. Old maid." Stop worrying. (There would have been other terms, but Jack didn't use certain words any more.)
"Maybe I've got something that'll help." I need to check you.
"Fine..." Jack threw his arms into the air, raised palms to beg rescue from uncaring deities. "If you've gotta." Usual place. Fussbudget.
He briefly wondered where 'fussbudget' had come from. It was a fun sort of word, but it really wasn't one of Jack's --
"-- so ask her out," Vic said as they approached Algebra II. "Tomorrow."
Part of it was an act. Trying to look normal. Like there was nothing unusual in their lives at all. "Maybe." No.
Jack had accepted Vic as a friend. In many ways, it had been a slow process, and in just about every way, a reluctant one. For Vic felt Jack was an idiot, and there were many ways in which Jack agreed with him. Vic also thought Jack was insane, and Jack... well, if it was true, it was someone else's problem.
"And don't fall asleep in class again." Too many hours. Too many nights. Too many injuries.
"It's algebra. It's got a bra in it and it's still boring." I'm fine.
"If I have to hear Mr. Kuttler wake you up one more time... 'Mister Napier! Are we boring you?'" You're going to die.
Jack paused at the door.
"Probably will."
Probably will.
Jack hadn't known Vic all that well -- before. Oh, he'd known him on sight: you could hardly miss him. He'd been aware that the other teen was such a giant nerd that he had given him some lab space in one of the Foundation's buildings, and Vic went there most days after school and for huge portions of most weekends, which pretty much answered the question of where any prospective first date with Nora would actually wind up. He'd considered such sterling intellect as something which had to be acknowledged, and the way he'd chosen to acknowledge it was through --
-- he didn't understand why Vic had forgiven him. Why so many people had just -- forgiven. Maybe it was part of his new friendships.
Or maybe they all just figured Jack had been through enough already.
He hadn't known Vic all that well, and so he hadn't been aware of the teen having placed a secondary lab in the basement under his house. Victor still went to the Foundation facilities, and did a lot there -- but the majority of the real work was now conducted in a place Jack could freely visit. Even with Vic fully understanding the risks, that work went on.
Jack understood Vic a little better now, and so knew that Vic had also taken three days to make sure the entire house was free of surveillance devices, along with putting in a few tricks which waited for anyone stupid enough to try installing a few.
There was a long table in the basement lab. It had been clumsily padded, all the better to allow it to act as an examination area. (Victor's parents hadn't seen that. They truly trusted their son, and so never entered the basement.) Jack had stripped to the waist, all the better to be examined. And Vic was busy taking a sample of his blood.
Vic always took blood. The vampire jokes had run out after two months.
"Normal," Vic eventually announced after spending what felt like far too much time with the microscopes and things which mostly existed to spin. "I'm still not seeing any residue buildup. And I'm still not counting on that continuing to be the case. With everything you've been subjecting yourself to, everything you're breathing..."
"I trust your stuff," Jack smiled. (It was a small smile, and often took an effort to force into the world.) "I'm fine, Vic --"
"-- it wasn't supposed to work that way!"
A long-fingered pale hand lashed out to the right, hit a box on a nearby shelf, a metal near-cube lined with wires and tubes. One finger accidentally touched a button, and the fluid flowing through those tubes gave off an electric flash.
Vic yelped, pulled his hand back, began frantically blowing on his fingers. Jack immediately pushed himself off the table.
"What happened?" A moment was spared for looking at the somewhat frost-covered near-cube which now sat on the shelf. "Are you okay? What is..."
"Heat sink," Victor muttered. "Computers run too hot. I wanted a new heat sink. It works so well, it freezes itself up and just about anything touching it, until the components freeze and the whole thing shuts down. Which takes less than two seconds. It's worthless, Jack, and that's why it's on the reject shelf. I can't do anything with it..." He compulsively rubbed his hands together, checked the skin's color. "I'm fine. I've just got to take it apart already, before something stupider happens." Blue eyes moved, automatically came to rest on the bandages around Jack's wrist. "Something else I didn't mean to happen..."
Jack was already standing. He was close to Vic, and --
-- no. Too weird. Guys didn't hug, especially not off the court when it hadn't just been a huge win, and really not when one of them didn't have a shirt on. But he wanted to do something, and... Jack being in his basement was a big thing.
Vic had security measures, maybe stuff no one had ever seen before. And maybe that would be enough, if it ever came to that. But it could come to that. And Vic still wanted Jack in his house, several times a week. To monitor Jack, to show him what had just been added to the arsenal even as Vic tried to talk his friend out of ever using any of it again. Vic understood the risks -- and Jack was still invited over, as much as he needed to be.
So he didn't hug Vic, because that felt weird. Instead, he said the hardest words.
"None of us mean for a lot of stuff to happen. It -- happens anyway. That's the joke, Vic." Every word was bitter on his tongue. "That's the fucking joke, and -- maybe something else which wasn't supposed to happen can be the last punchline."
They looked at each other for a few seconds, until Jack finally reached for his shirt.
"Are you going out tonight?" Vic quietly asked.
"It will. I already told it that it'll get some time. During transition. That transfer point is out there. One way or another, we've all got to pin it down. Shut it down. I don't know why we've been dealing with one at a time so far, but he opened up a new one after the last lab it managed to close, and if getting this just buys some time --"
"I want to talk to it. Usual time and place."
The words had been calm. Strangely so.
"New equipment to test?" Jack asked. It was usually a good idea to give it a little practice time before anything went out into the field.
"No. I just think -- I want to talk, Jack. Let me meet you at the other place. I won't be followed, and you -- aren't. I know you're worried, but... he doesn't suspect you. To him, you're done. Because... stuff happened. To you. And..."
The angular head dipped. Thin legs shuffled.
"...I didn't mean for any of this to happen... I didn't -- I didn't goddamn know..."
Neither did I. Neither had he, a lifetime ago.
"I'll see you there tonight." Jack began to pull the shirt on. "But I've got a meeting before that, so I might run a little late."
"Who are you meeting?"
"The Princess."
Its lifetime.
"I'd better get out of here," Jack quietly said. "We're getting close to curfew. Sneaking out at night is easy. Getting inside in daylight after the gates close is a lot harder."
He'd been a star.
Anyone who knew Jack understood that. His father had been joking about it ever since first grade, how the family could spend on anything without having to worry about the cost of one college education, because his son was destined for a free ride. (The jokes came over dinner. They always had dinner together at home after a game, win or lose.) And Jack had basked in it. His place, even when he was just the littlest kid, had been on the hardwood. He could aim, shoot, weave around just about any defense. His court vision... there were times when he swore he could see the whole floor, and a point guard ran that floor, directing his entire team. The coach on the spot, the improviser when everything went wrong.
He was good. So good, good enough to attract college scouts, good enough that the voucher system which ran the city's schools had coughed twice and looked the other way before letting him into the best choice. Good enough to -- well, that was where Jack's ego tended to run out. He knew his father dreamed of seeing that son in the pros. Multi-millionaire, respect, endorsements, and a way out of the city which so few ever seemed to truly escape. And even then, there had been jokes around the dinner table, that he might arrange for Jack to be drafted as a hometown hero.
Jack hadn't been sure, though. He knew he was good -- on the city level. (A huge city, one with a population larger than some states and a nearly-as-big sister across the bay -- but still just a city.) He'd never pitted himself against the world, and some of the colleges which started to come around in his freshman year, scouting... they would give him that opportunity. Maybe he was good enough for the pros. Maybe he wasn't. You didn't find out until the highest level of competition came to you, or you to it. Until then, he didn't know, and letting his ego believe it without proof was one of the best ways to get curb-stomped.
But on the city level... people knew him, in surprising numbers. He could have little favors here and there, as long as he was asking someone close to his own school. He also had trouble wandering too far: those of rival institutions would take any chance to inflict damage.
Some girls tried to attach themselves, but his sister was good at spotting the motivations for the ones where Jack's head was just a little too hormone-fogged for his own good. (He had a type: short, small-breasted, athletic without fully being aware of it. His crush, who had refused a place on the school's gymnastics team simply because she hated competition, cheering, and unitards, qualified for all of that. Plus she wore glasses. There was something about those glasses...) He had friends on the team and people who didn't want to be his friends so much as his posse' because if there were millions coming, they wanted all of it spent on them. His mother usually got rid of them.
Jack could do just about anything he liked, and what he'd liked most of all was taking advantage. He'd...
...he'd been a dick.
He had teammates. He had a coach. He had his family. One group of likes, one put-up-with-a-little-longer, and one group of loves. He'd also had people he insulted, shoved, berated, maybe casually tripped, there might have been some punches here and there, and about sixty percent of his vocabulary in talking about guys who couldn't stay on the court with him (because that was the only possible measure of success) had been 'fag'. Plus variations.
He'd casually shoplifted a few times. As long as he stayed in his own precinct, who was gonna arrest him?
He'd conducted his little beta-male-assessment sessions in full view of a few teachers. Wasn't like they could make him miss a game.
Jack had been a city-great point guard, and an all-world asshole.
Didn't matter. As long as he dominated the court, he dominated life. Even in a city where so few people ever seemed to leave, where his shadow loomed over everything, where no one really talked about him in any way other than jokes and before you did so, you made sure no one was listening.
Because he loved the city.
It was his.
It had been the morning of the city championship, and Jack had been walking to school. He usually did. Extra exercise, right? Besides, the whole walk was his turf now, and he wouldn't be trapped on a bus with losers. And it was warm, for season and city, so the walk felt good.
He swung his arms a little as he strode. An imaginary ring weighed down one hand.
"Hey! Hey, it's Napier, right?"
He turned, because he always had time for a fan and if this wasn't one, if a rival school had sent someone into his turf, well -- Jack had protection. As long as he was close to home, there was nothing which could touch him. Nothing and no one.
On that day, nothing did.
The man was in his late twenties. Close-cropped dark hair, eyes which went over Jack like someone evaluating a steak: this is the grain, this is where we have to trim, and we put the knife in here as soon as we want a cut to the bone.
Jack had recognized that. Mostly in memory, when it was far too late.
"Yeah," Jack acknowledged. (He'd already decided to be relatively polite. Part of him thought it could be another scout: too young for a recruiting coach, but he hadn't committed to a college yet, he was having fun playing them all along...) "Something I can help you with?"
A quick nod. "Big game tonight, huh?"
"The biggest," Jack acknowledged. The biggest around here, anyway. And still there was nothing wrong. Just street chatter.
The man's hand went into his pocket, extracted a card. He offered it, and Jack's practiced eyes noticed the smoothness of all movements. A natural acrobat, maybe even a practiced one. "Take this."
Probably another agent. He automatically took it, looked at the front --
-- it dropped from his fingers. It took a second before it drifted to the sidewalk, and then the wind blew it against his sneakers.
"Lose the game," the man told him. It came out as a prediction. A guaranteed vision of the future which was just waiting for the present to catch up with it, and wasn't all that happy about the delay.
Jack couldn't move. Couldn't run, and there was nowhere he could have run to anyway. Not from...
He'd seen the symbol on the card. Everyone knew that symbol, and no one ever talked about it. No one who wasn't with him would ever hand out that card. To do so would have meant -- well, not death: that was another thing which didn't get talked about. But still... if you lived in the city, you knew.
"I --"
"It's easy," the man said, smiling. "He thinks the other guys should take the trophy. He's got a bet down. Well -- more of a mortal lock, you know what I'm saying? So -- help him out. Miss a few baskets. But keep it close, because he's also got a separate bet on the spread, and he knows it's going to be a close game. Losing at the buzzer? That's perfect. He'd consider it a favor. Something he'll remember. And -- well, you haven't met, right? Of course you haven't. But if you did, you'd know how much he loves having things come out exactly the way he thinks they should. He thinks the other team will win. So prove him right for me, willya? As a friend?"
It was a warm day, oddly so for season and city. Jack couldn't seem to feel any of it. The phantom jewelry on his finger had vanished.
"I can -- tell the team --" he'd finally managed. "We'll all --"
"-- just you," the man said. "No one else has to know. Should. Will."
"But -- I can't control --"
"Everything can be controlled," the man cut in. "That's what he thinks. That's what he does."
"-- someone goes on a hot streak, he wants it close and if I don't have the ball at the end, losing at the buzzer -- if I missed too much, Coach would pull me off the floor. If I kept it close --"
The eyes flashed. "Keep."
"-- and I don't have the ball, if the play is wrong, if anything happens..."
He was sweating. He was trying not to shake. His eyes were fighting to leave the man's face, check the street for anyone who could save him.
"It's about control," the man said. "Point guard runs the floor. So keep control. He's got his guarantee in. His mortal lock. You don't want to be the guy who proves him wrong, do you? You want to be the guy who gets invited over for a consolation dinner where he tells you all about how much he understands doing your best, even in a losing cause. You want -- to lose."
But no one and nothing came down the street, and the odds were that the road had been temporarily closed. That too was control.
Jack wanted to lose. He wanted it more than anything in his life. But...
"...there's eleven other players on my team. Twelve for the opposition. I can't control everything they all do. I can try, but..."
"Mortal. Lock."
"...what if I..."
He couldn't finish.
The man stepped closer. A incidental foot movement put the card through a sewer grating. And then one of those smoothly-moving arms came up, hand forward with the palm down. He had to reach up just a little, and then that hand was on Jack's shoulder.
In the nightmares, the ones where he relived the day over and over, he always realized something which had not come to him at that moment, the knowledge which made him wish he could wake up screaming. Because in the night, he realized that the man, in his way, had thought his next words were what Jack needed to hear. It was the only way that emissary could perceive anyone else thinking at all. He was trying to be comforting, and could not be.
The man's smile was friendly. The eyes were mostly filled with other people's blood.
"Don't worry," he told Jack. "You'll live."
Most of the school day had been spent in a fog. He could barely remember being on the bus he had to ride, the one which took them to the venue. The coach's pregame pep talk, always stupid, was forgotten. But he remembered the game. Every second of it, down to the very last.
He'd... stayed at school. He often did that on game days: they knew he'd eat something at the stadium. The stadium, this time. City championship. He owned the building, as he owned so many others, and the pregame spread was... who was it who'd been famous for throwing up just before virtually every basketball game he'd ever played? Eleven rings -- Russell. Bill Russell. Jack gave him belated company. He'd kept his head over the thankfully-clean toilet for an extra minute while wondering if it was a ritual which would stick.
He hadn't told anyone, because... he couldn't. He moved through the stadium and where it normally seemed as if so many people watched him, it now felt as if everyone did. One desperate moment had seen him nearly break, go for his phone, and -- the network had been down. Or his phone wasn't able to recognize it. Of course, he also ran the electronics for the building, and owned the phone company. No calls. No wifi. No anything.
On the court, practicing, with the ball bouncing off numb fingers.
But he'd been on his game. He had to be.
A puzzle with twenty-four moving parts and two people who felt they were directing all of it. Plus referees. Refs could screw up everything. He'd have to watch his foul count.
He could have gone to the refs. A coach. Any other player. But it had been Jack. The star.
Back to the locker room. Hearing the crowd fill in outside.
And then he'd gone out there. Stared up at some twenty-two thousand people occupying the seats for the city championship. Looked at nearly all of them, except for three who were a few rows back from courtside, because -- he couldn't. And that one skybox, because no one ever did.
Gametime.
His coach had shown him the statline a few days later. He'd thought it would be comforting, somehow. Jack had... well, there was more than one reason he no longer played, at least officially, and it turned out that once things had ended, the automatic overlooks had gone right with them.
But on that night... Jack had run the floor.
It had been the game of his life. He'd made shots when he had to, then missed them when he needed to even more. He'd seen which of his teammates were gathering heat almost before they did and put them on a cold streak through directing the ball away. He'd had to be careful. Subtle: even with a coach so stupid that he would bring out the newspaper later, the idiot almost caught on. But he'd been doing it.
And the other team? He'd never missed so many assist passes in his life or rather, had them land in exactly the wrong hands. He got beaten on defense just enough. There was a huge element of luck to it all: he couldn't control their shooting, he didn't have the height or a center's positioning for blocks. But somehow, perhaps from the strength of desperation, the will added to a constant stream of prayer...
There had been three seconds to go.
Down by one. Possession arrow was theirs. But they were at the wrong end of the court.
He'd tried to talk the coach into giving him the ball on the inbounds. It hadn't worked, because the man was stupid and Jack had been carrying him for several seasons: the reasoning was that everyone would have been expecting Jack. So it went to Masters -- who was instantly boxed, had risked a between-the-legs bounce pass and
he'd had the ball
in his hands
with time running out, the other team winning
lose at the buzzer
but he was too good a player to freeze, lose track of the clock, get caught dribbling as quad-zero hit
twenty-two thousand people watching him and only one counted
so he'd brought the ball up...
A lifetime of training. Form. Plant. Push. Any player would do the Hail Mary heave. Such heaves typically missed, and Jack missed the entire backboard. The ball went into one of the hoop's support girders instead.
Then it bounced.
He tried to spot them, as the others swarmed around him. He tried to reach them. He couldn't. The bodies pressed in, the cameras were everywhere, he would be on YouTube forever with several million views and he would never be able to watch a minute of it. He tried to get out of the crowd. He called out and no one ever heard him. But they did not try to reach him, for it was his game, and they never wanted to be caught in the crush. They always talked about things later, at home, as a family, win or lose, and so as soon as that impossible rebound went through the basket, they'd headed for the exits. Even with blowing off everyone possible, it had taken Jack twenty minutes to get out of the stadium, and still more before he'd reached the house.
As it turned out, the promise had been good. Jack lived.
The first body he'd found, with the thick fibers of a basketball net stuffed into her throat, had been his sister.
The humans who worked for the Canterlot Deportation Agency were all capable of round trips between their own worlds and Equestria: it was one of the primary requirements for the job. Not all of them managed to keep that requirement intact: Jack seldom got a chance to speak with other agents (and wasn't always the one doing the speaking), but there had been enough time to learn a few things. There were agents whose methods -- one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable -- had been destroyed. Others wound up having the things stolen, which inevitably created more incursions when the thieves tested things out. Some just had to sit it out for a while as magic recharged or technology was repaired. (More frequently, while their broken bones knitted.) And practically no two methods of travel were alike.
In Jack's case... it was as if the city was invisibly superimposed on a heavily wrinkled map of Equestria, which created nothing even remotely resembling a 1:1 correspondence. If he left from a given place in his world, he would appear at a guaranteed location in the other, and every subsequent trip taken from those locations would always lead back to each other. But there was no way to tell where a given intersection, alley, or shadowed corner would put him until he left. It had resulted in trips which ended in lakes, train tunnels, pony bathrooms, and just once, the center stage at a school play.
Jack was sure Crossing Guard had a rather thick file with his name on it, as he'd been rather grumpily told that for someone whose job was supposedly stopping incursions, he tended to personally create more than his share. (Some of those 'personallys' were at one-remove.) The CDA's head didn't exactly like any of the human agents, and Jack's -- or rather, its -- frequent inability to reach a safe transfer point before heading back produced a lot of extra paperwork.
But there had been many trips, especially since he refused to shut down that part of his operation. There had been enough attempts in times of lesser crisis to pin down a few places in the city which had privacy, ready access, and led to an isolated location on the other side of the Barrier. (The places which the chemicals used to evacuate often worked out to 'anywhere!' and Jack, during one transition, had been gleefully told that a spot had been located which had taken it into the palace -- but not where that was.) In this case, there was a drainage pipe large enough for him to stand comfortably within, one with no cameras anywhere near it and a total lack of fences or iron bars to block access. He got a little damp when he went inside, and there had been times when he'd had to temporarily give up on it because a member of the city's scant homeless population had been using the pipe for some level of shelter -- but he typically didn't have to worry about being spotted.
(Jack seldom had to worry about the homeless person for long, either, because he would try (or have it try) to get them out of the city. But sometimes that failed. And when it did... well, anyone who was already homeless was just so easy for him to employ in the dark places, at a pay rate of work-and-maybe-you-live. The chemicals had found two of those places, and both had made it much less than happy.)
Today, so soon after sunset, the pipe was unoccupied. Jack still took a moment to carefully check the area before doing anything.
The Foundation's central building was visible from where he was, of course: it was visible from just about anywhere in the city. It was one of the tallest buildings in the world, and rumor had it that whenever someone else threatened to surpass it by a significant margin, he started throwing bribes around in the name of getting a bigger one. Or threats. Sometimes a bribe was a threat: I'll give you this, or you can have that instead.
Of course, it could be argued that those foolish enough to say no had nothing to worry about. After all, they would live.
He employed most of the city. Pulled the strings which controlled the rest. Strands ran from his fingers into the courthouses, police stations, legislature, and around people's necks. And from just about anywhere in the city, those who so seldom seemed to escape could look up and see his hand at work. Controlling.. A bridge here, a building permit denied there. A company chased out of town. An inventor who found he didn't have the right to the thoughts in his own head, but look at just how much money those thoughts were making him! (Vic, seen as an asset, wasn't being treated that harshly -- yet.) And of course, new hospitals, new stadiums, new theaters...
...the upcoming asylum...
The chemicals had stolen a copy of the plans for the place, when it had been announced after they'd all finally gotten one of his to trial and the man had -- confessed. Thoroughly. With complete sincerity in his voice, he'd told the jury about ponies and other worlds, and it had resulted in two things: a Not Guilty because anyone that crazy just couldn't be held responsible for their actions, and the announcement of the asylum as a gift to the city. A building effectively made from cardboard, to allow him reach which went through the walls, so he could extract anyone he liked at any time.
Well -- mostly cardboard. There was a cell to be built at the absolute center. Vic had said it was the strongest concept for a prison he'd ever seen.
That space was reserved.
Jack took a breath. One more look around.
The vial smashed against the concrete. He started counting...
...and when he hit seventy-nine, he was in the garden, with the stars shining down upon him. A different set twinkled within the mane of the alicorn who was trotting closer, and they twisted as she moved.
"Jack," the Princess quietly said. "On time, I see, and -- without the mask. As I requested."
He was never sure what to say when he saw her. She was royalty. She was power. She was, in many ways, the night. And on a more personal level, while the CDA reported to Crossing Guard, that unicorn ultimately answered to Luna -- which meant Jack did as well. She had been the one to hire them --
-- him. She had hired him. But she had insisted on speaking to each separately.
"Princess," he awkwardly tried. "Um... it told me that you -- a few days ago, when it came through, you -- asked to see me?"
"Yes," she slowly nodded. "You. Specifically you. And as this is a requested voyage, no part of the time used for our talk will count against your rather backlogged account." There was a small sigh. "Your world is an -- active one. Two hours in Equestria per incursion stopped, bonuses for superior activity, and with the foals and adults whom you have returned... I reviewed your total tonight. You are quickly reaching the point where for time not used, you are just about as bad as Ms. Daniels was."
"...who?" Was?
"Our agent in --" She stopped. The left foreleg came partially up, and the large eyes briefly closed. "-- it no longer matters."
"She -- did she..." Agents died. A lot of agents died.
"No. She survived. Her current situation..." And this sigh was much longer. "...is a problem. One I am attempting to deal with. You could see her if you wished, but -- she may not wake up for some time. For now, let us simply say that one group of incursions has ended. But it was nothing she did. I suspect there was nothing she could have done, no matter what she may try to make herself believe, and..."
The twisting mane slowed. Stars dimmed.
"...back to where you all came," Luna softly stated. "Exactly home, and nowhere else. That is the rule. What do we do when there is no longer any place to which one can be returned? Or a quartet, for we have Jake, and Bree, and -- two others. She somehow found a way to bring two with her, at the very last. Children, also recovering."
A deep breath. Every bit of strength mustered, and it wasn't enough.
"And that is all who remain, for on the other side for her Barrier, there are seven billion dead, Jack. What happens when a world is lost?"
He tried to get his head around the number. He couldn't. It was too big. Too much. It was halfway between statistic and horror. He wanted to mourn a world he'd never known, an entire world, and there was nothing in him which could mourn on that kind of scale...
"But tonight," Luna quietly finished, "is for you. Ms. Daniels will... I do not know. I hope to find an answer. But for now, you. I cannot take back what happened to her world. I will not wake her into nightmare. I scheduled this time for you, and so... walk with me, Jack. My Guards are elsewhere, and there are no other ponies in the gardens this night. Walk with me, because there are things I need to say to you. Things you may not wish to hear, and thus I must be the one to say them."
He hardly ever knew what to say, when it was Luna. He still had seven billion phantom screams echoing in his head. And so his legs went into motion while his thoughts churned, and he waited for what could only be a personal worst.
Seven billion...
What was it going to be like when she woke up? Did she even know?
"You have not been taking your jewels from the coffer," Luna eventually began as they went past a patch of carefully-cultivated wildflowers. "Nor has it. For some time. Something else which has been building up."
It was the way the CDA helped their agents cover expenses: for most worlds, it was a drastic overpay. "I can't sell them. He has most of the jewelers, at least some of the pawnshops, and they're -- sort of big, Princess. Perfect. They stand out. I gave some to Vic, and he's using the diamonds in some of his equipment. He said he can even use a few of the rubies. But I started running out of places to hide them, and... I just stopped taking them."
"As it did," Luna nodded. "Had the two of you discussed that?"
"No."
"And it still has no real access to your memories."
"I'm not sure. It knows things. If I learn something, then it seems to know that too. But just for stuff in my life, or what happens when I let it come out... I've tried to remember what it does, Princess. I've had some dreams, here and there, and maybe some of those were memories of things it did. But for the most part, we're blocked to each other. It's just -- transition. And nothing else."
She nodded. Passing roses now.
"It spoke to me recently," Luna told him. "When it -- shall we say, dropped off that criminal, for our cells. I believe it was rather miffed after your court case failed. We had a few words then, but it left and I wound up with another incursion to deal with, personally. But it said something to me, while it was here. I wish to know if it has said the same to you in transition, or whether anyone else has mentioned the matter."
She paused, then pointedly glanced at a rather large bench, just before trotting over to it and climbing on, arranging her body on the wood. Jack awkwardly positioned himself on what remained, faced her.
"It wants to know," Luna said, "what its name is. For it will no longer answer to yours. It has some level of objection to that. It wishes a name, Jack, a name of its very own. Has it told you this?"
The silence closed in.
"...no."
"Do you know if it has spoken of the matter to others?"
"It reads, when it can," Jack said as he wondered why the air seemed to be turning so cold. "It likes to check for its own press coverage. Newspapers and -- the real word wouldn't mean anything to you: it's basically people who report anything they see to anyone who might believe it. Not that it gets much mention: just a few sightings here and there. Most papers are his, and -- the majority of people don't believe it's real. Our pictures are -- easy to fake, Princess. But I don't know if it's looking for a name, or if it's asked anyone else about one. I can't remember what it does. Just -- dreams."
The temperature continued to dip.
"I could, perhaps, solve that," Luna said. "Having you sleep here, within the purview of my magic. But -- there are risks. And when it comes to the risks I will allow agents to take, Jack -- I have humans in so many worlds, doing what they can to help us. Every one of them, including you, are risking their lives. And some have died under the banner of a land which was not their own." A long pause. "Your efforts are one of the Agency's greatest secrets and even if they became public, some portions of my country would carefully fail to appreciate them. You do so much, Jack, and I am willing to let you risk your life. It is yours to risk. But..."
She looked up, towards the true stars, and her gaze seemed to be searching for something. Whatever it was, Jack couldn't see it. But she faced the stars, and would not look at him.
"What I say next," Luna went on, "remains between the two of us. Forever. Not that any would believe it, coming from a human -- but it is to be a secret. Nopony else shall know. Do you agree?"
He managed a bare nod, even as the shivering began.
"My father," the Princess told the unheeding stars, "is dead. He passed into the shadowlands... some time ago, a time which only three remember. And he died from madness, Jack. It was -- one of the more common forms of death, in the Discordian Era. We lived in chaos, and -- it was a struggle, day to day, simply to remain a sane being. Or to retain the delusion of that sanity. My father lasted longer than most, but -- it was madness which took him in the end."
And now he truly had no idea of what he could say.
"Princess --"
A hoof came up: wait. "You -- many of you, scattered across the worlds -- have something which those who possess them typically describe as a power. Yours comes from chemicals, with a touch of accident, drowned in tragedy. But your power also comes from madness. The entity which occupies your body when the chemicals are active -- it can think, Jack. But it thinks differently. The differences are enough to make it an entity separate from you. And it has been content to return your body, every time, and wait for you to unleash it yet again -- so far. But now it wants to know what its name is. And..."
It was possible to watch as she gathered up the words, forced them into some kind of order.
"...when it comes to names," she finally went on, "some ponies have beliefs. There is a rather strong undercurrent which suggests that to name something is to give it some amount of destiny, and more than a few ponies grant their children names which they hope will lead them to something great -- or, in a few cases, towards other things entirely. We have seen many whose names match their jobs a little too closely, and perhaps some of that is destiny. Parental steering accounts for something of the rest. But to name something, Jack -- to name something is to define it. What it is. Perhaps what it might become, what it could ever be. Grant a name, and you might create a destiny. Some ponies, upon finding their marks, take a new name. Others do so well after. For those who do it long after their manifests, it is considered to be an act of defiance bordering on foolish, idiotic, almost blasphemous bravery -- which is perhaps why so many dream of it, if only in their nightscapes. I have walked through many of those dreams, Jack. Where a pony takes a new name and seizes control of destiny itself."
"I don't understand --"
Or perhaps he did, and did not wish to.
For her part, she was still looking at the stars.
"-- it wants a name, Jack. It is searching for one. And to take that name might give it strength. It would certainly continue to define it. It is already something which is somewhat separate from you, and it is madness. An insanity which happens to be on our side.... yes, I acknowledge the truth of that. It has done whatever it could for ponies and Equestria. It has risked the life you both shared in order to bring my citizens home, something you both agreed to. I am grateful, Jack, for all you and it have done. But it wants a name, and... I have asked my human agents to die for a country which is not their own. Fight for a flag they can never claim. One is buried here, and only because she crossed seconds before she expired. A human is buried in Equestrian soil, and -- there will be more. I send soldiers into war, and soldiers die. It is the price of war, and the incursions are a war against my world, being fought on more fronts than I ever wished to imagine. In war, there are deaths, and those who sign on know they may die. I send humans into a war where they may die, and they have agreed to risk their lives --"
And finally, she looked at him.
"-- but not their minds."
The dark eyes were not wet. They were steady. Focused. And the portion of Jack which had not recoiled on the bench as he realized what she was about to say wondered just how much that had taken.
"I would lose you to the fight," Luna said. "But not to madness. Shut down this latest lab if you can. But when that is finished, you will search among those on your world and select one to take the burden, Jack. Bring that person to me, and I will decide if they are suitable. You have played your part in this fight. We will find a way to let you spend your earned hours in Equestria, and see about locating you a resource which can be spent in your own world, to establish a new life, one without chemicals, far away from that city at the heart of the shadowfell. But when it comes to your service to the Canterlot Deportation Agency -- you are done."
The current 'usual place' had only been their usual for ten days: Jack and Victor switched up those locations regularly, desperately trying to give themselves one more potential line of defense. But their nighttime meeting locations did tend to share a subconscious theme, and the uniting idea was conquest. Every place they used was a site where he had won. A reminder.
For the most part, they kept it to the economic victories. A single entity controlled just about every aspect of the city -- on the largest scale. (Sometimes that hand directly reached down to the lowest levels, just before it gripped someone's throat.) But that still left room for the things which were only controlled through law and intimidation. There were small businesses and once you factored out the protection costs and occasional bits of 'advice', those who ran them were truly the owners -- for just as long as those businesses remained small. Jack suspected there were even a few things which were left completely alone, if only because setting up zoning permits for lemonade stands would attract the wrong kind of attention.
But there were those outside the city who simply didn't understand how things worked. Some of them would try to enter and set up shop. They were just about always permitted to begin. (The major exception, forever blocked on even the smallest attempts, was a science and industry mega-corp run by a bright-eyed bald man with the readiest smile Jack had ever seen. There was a rumor that he was worried about that man, and it had made the CEO into someone Jack dearly wanted to meet.) And once they'd put together the shell of their new building, perhaps even moved in some of the machinery or arranged a few displays, they would discover that somehow, they didn't own it any more. All they retained the rights to was their legs, and only as long as those limbs were quickly used to help them get out. Those who tried to argue the case in controlled courts didn't even keep that much.
Most of the security on such fresh acquisitions came from the locals knowing who now held that property: having the vast majority of the true criminals under direct employ took care of the remainder. Some of those half-filled shells didn't even have working security cameras -- while Victor had a device which identified which buildings those were.
It gave them places to meet, outside of Victor's home. (Jack usually started those roaming conversations. The other one typically finished them.) The teens had been talking for some time, and nearly all of it had been about a single subject.
"So what are you going to do?" Victor's slim back had been planted against a half-painted wall, angled so that only the narrow shoulders made true contact. He was mostly visible as silhouette: they both stayed away from the third-story windows (or the places where windows would eventually go), and the dirty light which streamed in didn't quite reach him.
"I don't know," Jack quietly said, long legs folded up on the floor, his right hand covering the matching eye. He'd been in that pose for some time: someone fighting off a headache which didn't exist. Not as physical pain. "I mean -- I'm fired..." Which triggered a small, soft laugh. "Fired. I never had a paying job in my life until she hired me and now I'm fired."
"Collecting unemployment's going to be hard," Victor quietly said. "No paperwork. Plus technically, you were working part-time."
That brought a quick smile to Jack's face, just as small as the accompanying laugh. His hand slowly lowered, with the palm eventually planted against the plain wood floor. "Yeah... Vic, I know she's scared for me. But when I stop, the incursions won't. It's not like the movies, where there's only one copy of the build plans and no one ever makes backups. It takes out one transfer point and a few weeks later, there's another. I don't even know why we're only getting one operation at a time to begin with..."
"I've got some theories," his friend admitted, and Jack looked directly at him. "But nothing worth talking about yet. Keep going, Jack."
He did. "I stop, and -- he keeps bringing ponies over to our side. What if I can't find someone who'll take the job? How many ponies die while I'm looking? What if the new guy isn't any good at it? And who even makes the approach? Do I take that risk? Does it?" In rueful understatement, "Because it kind of has trouble with introductions. A lot of trouble."
Victor softly sighed. "And it would sound crazy." A little more quickly, "Telling someone about Equestria, I mean. That sounds crazy." And at a standard, somewhat wry pace, "On the other hand, providing proof is just about the easiest thing there is."
Jack nodded. Anything living which stayed within the deep blue cloud for the full duration (plus whatever they were wearing, carrying, or holding) would go to Equestria -- whether it wanted to or not. Race out of the borders even a second early and transport wouldn't occur: be held within until the timer ran out and greet a new Sun. The chemicals would sound insane if they tried to tell someone about the other world (although admittedly, having it sound insane was pretty much the default state). But proof was simple -- as long as you choose the right person to see that proof.
He had to try and choose his own successor. What if he put his trust in the wrong person? And he had his friends, it was sort of possible that one of them could try to do it, but he was already asking them to take so many risks...
"Fired," he wearily repeated, now staring at the floor. "By the Princess. Son of a bitch."
"Filly of a dam," Victor countered, and Jack glanced up at him. "Equine mother. They don't use that word?"
"I haven't exactly gotten to listen in one of their language classes. I don't even understand how the translation effect works to start with." Magic was a lot of things, and all of them were completely incomprehensible.
The thinner male adjusted his position a little. "Do you think..." A long pause, and fingers wove through the air, their owner trying to pick out words which would encompass the scale of what he needed to say. And he failed, because words for that scale didn't exist. "...do you think the Princess would be doing this to you if they hadn't just -- lost that world?"
Jack closed his eyes.
He'd asked to see her.
The Princess had told him that she was still unconscious, might remain so for some time. But he'd still asked if he could see her before he left. There was a certain degree of solidarity between agents, during those rare times when they got to meet. Victor and his friends were with him in the fight (although nowhere near the front lines, by Jack's choice, and the chemicals had readily agreed), but -- the other agents were the people who truly understood.
(Jack couldn't even get Victor to go into Equestria with him, not even long enough for a single glimpse. All Vic had ever said on the subject was that from a scientific standpoint, knowing the place was real was bad enough. He didn't have to look at it. He'd had a hard enough day with the one time when the transport chemical vials got smashed up during a really bad fight and Jack had wound up smuggling the frightened pegasus into Victor's house. (In retrospect, the bathroom had been a really bad choice of emergency hiding place.))
Luna had teleported him down to the secret layers which lurked beneath the Agency's headquarters. The hospital (or the four rooms which passed for such), filled with improvised equipment added to the scattershot medical wealth of so many worlds. And there she had been, in the bed, half-propped on carefully arranged pillows.
He'd never seen that particular agent before, not even as a body going by in the hidden halls. (He had no current way of knowing if it ever had.) He would have remembered. A figure that repulsive stuck out, particularly along the upper torso.
She was... everything he didn't want in a girl. ('Girl' seemed fair: she only looked a little older than him.) She was far too tall, limbs more muscular than he wanted to see in a female, and her breasts had the mass for the mammaries of everyone he'd ever gone out with combined, plus some extra. Her hair didn't go with her skin, her skin didn't go with her height, and overall, she was someone his pre-championship self would have briefly considered tripping in the school corridors just to see which part of her anatomy hit first.
(Not that he would have done it, because he'd never attacked girls. But when one of the female students inevitably went for it, he would have watched. And laughed.)
To him, her body was repulsive. Her face, in normal sleep, might have almost been something close to beautiful. But it couldn't be, for all the pain of the waking world remained with her in false repose. Features twisted, the left arm abruptly jerked out as if trying to fend something off. She'd already kicked the blankets away from her legs, and he looked at the bandages which covered both limbs from ankle to thigh.
She was nothing he would ever want to be with. She was nothing he ever wanted to be. She was... everything he was afraid of. Everything which could happen. She was the worst-case scenario and she was -- still there.
She'd lived.
Jack understood about being the one who had lived.
He'd watched his new sister as she failed to fight her pain. And with only a silent Luna as witness, he'd let himself cry.
"I think so," he said as he let himself look at the world again. "I think it's been building up for a while, Vic. The name thing --" and stopped. "Has it asked you? Or talked to you about that?"
A slow head shake. "No. We usually discuss other things, especially if it's trying out equipment. It's curious about how things work. More than you, some days. It asks more, it jokes more, it... talks. I think it just likes having someone it can talk to." He sighed. "And it's not a topic I want to bring up. The Princess... I know you're worried, Jack. But so am I. About a lot of things. I'm not sure she's got her priorities straight this time. But she's not completely wrong. All the things she said about destiny is -- pony stuff. It doesn't hold, not here. But -- naming's a big deal in science. Naming something, especially when you've made a discovery, sort of -- finishes it off. If it latches onto a name, with the way it thinks..."
The slightly shorter male glanced at the open window frame. They both listened to the sound of police sirens. Being able to freely run through red lights when you were on the way to pick up bribes was presumably a good thing.
"But it doesn't know what happened," Victor went on. "It shouldn't know about the name thing being her motivation. But for being fired..." And his friend took a deep breath, then tried to take some of the burden. "I'll tell it. If you want me to."
Jack slowly shook his head. "No. I'll let it know. It should hear this from me."
He took a slow breath, felt the air saturating his lungs. His lungs, for just a little while longer.
There had been times when he'd had to perform the entire operation in a hurry, and with necessity pushing him, he'd done just that. But when there was time...
His hand came up to the metal square of his belt buckle and through his index finger, the natural electrostatic charge of the human body (his charge: Victor had made sure the buckle would work for no other) was pressed against a hidden trigger. The front panel dropped open, and a hyper-compressed roll of something more than plastic dropped into his palm.
There was also a tiny vial. The contents were swirling green which refused to select a state of matter, never quite settling into liquid or gas -- for as long as they were within the vial. Expose them to air, and the issue would be settled quickly enough.
The plastic was unfolding, expanding into something the size of a human face. On the side which pointed away from him, frozen features were unfurling. He wasn't looking at them, and hardly ever did. His view was of a panel which would go over the eyes, only clear from his viewpoint, along with filters which would press against nose and mouth.
There was time. And so he hesitated.
Even on the first night...
His left hand pressed the hybrid plastic against his face. His right crushed the vial.
Jack's last view through his own eyes was of Victor backing away, getting clear of the green cloud's borders. Staying safe, even as his friend turned that blue gaze away.
Transition began.
From the outside, it can look just about instantaneous. They'd both seen that, for Victor had recorded the process on video -- once. The chemicals had watched the results with bemused curiosity, as it had never been in a position to witness its own recurring birth before. (It did openly declare the viewing experience lacked something for not being a record of the original.) Jack had watched later, and then the boys had silently erased everything. It hadn't just been for security, although that had been the open excuse. It was simply something they didn't want to watch again.
From the outside, chemicals contact skin and pink loses all hue, goes to white. The effect rushes along that outer layer of fully ineffective biological armor, even as the colors of the fabric start to shift. Entire limbs bleach, just about all at once. Hair goes through a different kind of color change, which includes one to the texture. Posture warps: the chemicals have a different way of standing, something which makes it a little taller than Jack and leaves his back sore for a few hours after the loan is repaid. (It's sorry about that, but the situation is something it can't help.) And then the side effects kick in, including the one which is the existence of that other.
From the outside, it's a few heartbeats. But on the inside, everything is still shifting. Balances aren't quite any more, and the new levels haven't found themselves. Neurons are trying to fire two sets of messages at once.
In transition (and only then), there are two. Transition creates a period of time where Jack and the chemicals communicate directly, each taking their part of the stage within the theater of the mind. In transition, there are arguments and agreements, plans made and dashed, information passed along. There have been times when they've risked leaving videos for each other on a phone, but such messages only go one way, and no permanent record can ever be kept. Transition allows them to talk.
Transition lasts eighty-four seconds.
"Fired," the chemicals declared in open outrage, and that frustration vibrated the phantom proscenium arch of the invisible theater. (In the not-as-true world, the chemicals stretched out borrowed joints, checked to see how the wrist was healing and then stood up, happy to see a friend waiting for it.) "Fired?"
"I don't like it any more than you do," Jack quickly continued, "but when the Princess decides --"
"-- fired," it cut him off, now muttering the word. "One would think it would have been frozen. Aren't we doing a good job, Jack? Aren't we bringing them home?"
"Yes, but --"
"Why would she fire us? What did we do wrong? Was it bringing that one criminal to her direct attention, not to mention her cells? After what he tried to do -- it was better than what he deserved, you know that. But we did it anyway, because we don't kill, and to let him go into tissue paper and cardboard, laughing at his free premium streaming exclusives while he waited to be brought back out..."
Jack didn't have an answer. Not one he could give.
"And what happens without us?" Its inner hands were gripping intangible stage curtains, wringing the fabric. "How many of those little ponies wind up in the dump?"
And for that question, Jack had no answer he wanted to give.
"What did we do?" the chemicals half-whispered. "What did I do? You have to tell me, Jack. Someone has to tell me, because..."
It hunched forward. The white face, whose features could only fully express themselves here, traded the only expression it truly knew for a different one.
The misery was pressed into the imaginary curtains, and untouchable tears soaked the unreal.
"...I don't understand..."
Jack was -- closer. He hadn't walked across the distance, because there truly wasn't any. The stage, for the short times of its existence, was what they made it. He was simply closer, directly behind it, his right arm was coming up and --
-- guys didn't hug. Didn't really touch. So he didn't. He simply stayed where he was and watched, for it seemed as if there was nothing else he could do. Nothing he understood.
"Bodies in the dump," the chemicals whispered. (In the outer world, it was smiling, for it had no real choice in the matter. It was approaching its friend with long strides and asking what was new, because that was what friends did.) "You remember the dump."
Jack had lived. Or rather, his body did. The person who'd existed before that final shot took the freak bounce to end all bounces had perished at the instant the ball had gone through the basket, and his soul was buried with his family.
He didn't remember everything from that night, not from the moment of first discovery on. Not while he was awake, and seldom anything like a continuous progression. Little snips of film played across the screen, broke up and ran off the edges.
His sister's corpse. His parents. The blood, because whoever had killed his parents hadn't stopped at a choking. Someone had called the police and it hadn't been him, because his phone had only reconnected to the network -- later. Once. He'd seen the first bar and then slung it into a wall.
Who had called the police? Probably the same people who'd killed his family, because police were required. It was part of the process, letting him watch as they freely roamed around his house, on the last night he would ever be there. He got to listen to all the crude jokes they made about the bodies, starting with how it would have been nice if his sister had been a little older so they'd have a more fun view. He was allowed to watch as they freely pocketed things in the declared name of evidence and open purpose of acquisition. He was forced to stay in the area under heavy guard, with hands moving to the grips of weapons every time he moved, as they laughed and smiled and cared about nothing more than the pain they were inflicting, just before they lied about getting everything down to the station and starting the hunt for the killers immediately. He was still waiting for immediately to begin.
They had come not to help, but to show him how helpless he was. That was their job --
-- but there had been one...
That officer had stood out. Part of it was the lack of uniform. The heavy coat which took its place, stained around cuffs and bottom edges, wouldn't have been missed anywhere, especially with the lingering smell. The man was overweight, poorly-shaven, bad-mannered, stomped about in a perpetual anger which didn't seem to have any direction to it, true expression somehow shadowed under the tiny brim of what Jack had eventually learned was called a porkpie hat, which seemed appropriate to someone whose tiny dark eyes could best (if insultingly) be described as piggy. A slovenly mess of humanity with a presence which seemed to have been manufactured for the counter of a butcher shop, moving in a heavy tread which never went into the blood. He'd been the one who escorted Jack out of the house for the last time. He'd insisted on it. And with all the others already back in their cars -- he'd spoken, just once.
"I'll remember their names," the gruff voice had softly grunted. "I remember all the names. Just in case there's ever a goddamn day when I get to do something for them."
(It had been months before he'd learned the man's name. And after that, it had been mere hours before the chemicals had risked using a burner phone to speak with Harv for the first time.)
He'd been taken to the orphanage. (Other places had foster home programs. The city still went with orphanages, and mainly used the term because it was marginally more polite than calling them prisons.) The gates had swung shut behind him, and...
There had been a funeral, with no need to ask who had paid for it: certainly charity extended to covering the final needs of three people whose last night alive had allowed them to witness the winning shot. A dark limousine parked at the far side of the cemetery. There might have been someone inside, watching. It might have just been a reminder. Either way, no one ever emerged.
Jack had... drifted. His body had moved down streets which were no longer his. Sometimes it did things like taking swings at a stupid man who'd tried to reassure him with a stat line, and that got him kicked off the team. No one was keeping his grades up for him, and doing any work himself seemed pointless. A lot of things seemed pointless, starting with breathing.
He woke up every day in the little bedroom which only looked everything like a cell, and after opening his eyes, he would spend at least half a minute trying to figure out where he was. Sometimes his nose would pull in phantom scents, because there was a practice later and his mother liked to carbo-load him with pancakes, ones which had been made from scratch, he had to get up because his sister was probably already tying up the bathroom and that was her loss because it would let him be first to the pancakes...
There was a while when Jack lived for those precious seconds of confusion. For those scant dreams when he was at the dinner table after losing the big game and they were telling him it would be all right. Moments when fantasy blurred at the edges and it seemed that with just a little more effort, reality would do the same.
He barely talked to anyone, not that he had anyone who wanted to talk with him any more, because it turned out that he'd never had any friends. He'd had teammates, and -- now he wasn't part of the team.
He couldn't seem to cry. Anger eventually became inaccessible, and caring quickly followed. He never, ever laughed.
The dead remained the dead, and nothing would bring them back. There had been pain, confusion, fear, desperation, and -- perhaps that had been followed by eternal reward. Maybe there had been nothing. In the rare times when he could focus on the thought, Jack didn't think nothing was such a bad option. To simply -- stop, and not even have anything left which could know that an end had happened at all.
To die was to feel pain once. It was a single ending, and once it had come, there was nothing left which would concern those it had come to. But Jack went through the pain every day, for he had lived, and it took very little time for him to realize that it was the central aspect of his punishment. That he would have to go on, until the moment he could not. And with every breath he continued to take, even without a reason for allowing breath to happen, the agony would begin anew.
He wondered if he was going insane.
Then he began to long for it.
He'd been picking out a means of death.
Ideally, he wanted to do some damage on his way out. The perfect exit would have been one that took him along for the ride, but Jack had no idea how to actually do that. Getting into the Foundation -- his picture was probably on file somewhere, with facial recognition software alerting the entire building at the moment he stepped through the doors. An attack on the residence seemed slightly more impossible. He would be lucky to do so much as shove a minor functionary in front of a bus in time for it to hit them both and with his rather dubious luck, Jack might just live through the impact. Add in the odds of his getting anyone who'd been in his house that night, and... all he'd probably wind up doing was committing murder. His family had become involved because of something he'd done --
happened
-- and killing those who hadn't directly taken part in their deaths seemed to make him just as bad, although it was becoming increasingly more difficult to remember just why that was wrong.
He'd looked for the blood-eyed man, and found him waiting in dreams.
He probably couldn't reach anyone. He could very loudly accuse, and that might bring an ending. If all else failed, he could certainly reach a bridge. A rooftop. Or there was traffic. There was almost always traffic, unless someone had closed a road down to create a private conference, and most of it was moving fast enough to end him.
His body drifted through the world, and what seemed to be left of his mind waited to see where the final stop would take place.
Jack had almost drifted all the way up to the entrance of his school when he saw the car.
He'd been leaving for school earlier and earlier, too early for much of anyone to really be there. It was a reason to leave the orphanage, and it put him outside the main building just in time to see the two large men getting out of the vehicle. One had a hastily-tied package under one arm and a major huff on his face. The other was simply carrying about two hundred pounds of attitude, and there was no question about who they worked for.
Jack didn't form any plans at the moment he saw them, and there wasn't much left in him which could still try. He made no attempt to introduce either man to the next car which came into the lot. He simply saw that two whose employer could never be in doubt (taking up three parking spaces with one vehicle was a major clue) were heading into his school, he imagined them going into his house, and he followed.
He kept his distance, and neither man ever saw him. Jack had been progressively fading and in any case, it was rather difficult to perceive fine details when peering through a heavy mist of red.
They'd gone into the building: so had he. Up to the science labs, and then they'd stormed through one door, the only one with a light on because there was a giant nerd within who had a place to work in the Foundation, another yet-unknown one within the lowest level of his house, and still came to school too early in the morning because there were somehow things he was only working on there and they needed their share of his attention.
It was just possible to hear the small gasp from the lab's occupant. It was much easier to hear the recovery.
"Gentlemen," the nerd said. "Can I help you?"
"You," one of them replied -- he decided it was the one carrying the package, because he then heard the oof! as it was shoved into the thin chest "-- can fix this."
Jack heard the student stagger back, the little rattle of beakers from the impacted table.
"What's wrong with it?" Forced, near-desperate calm. Not understanding what was wrong and just starting to recognize how much more wrong things could become. "What is it?"
"The skinsuit," the second voice said. "Your fucking chemical forensic investigation skinsuit!"
Brief silence was followed by the sounds of paper ripping. "The vials are here," the nerd finally said, forced calm somehow holding. "One set, anyway. And one of the proof-of-concept masks." More tearing. "But none of the testing masks. Is that the part which needs fixing?"
The shout was abrupt, and the fist Jack heard hitting the lab table added all the punctuation required. "The whole fucking thing needs fixing! You weren't at the fucking test, dumbass! You didn't see what happened when we let your stuff loose!"
"...they did a test?" the nerd just barely got out. "I was supposed to be at any --"
"Works fine!" the first voice yelled. "Does just what you said it would! The chemicals hit, and skin doesn't shed dead cells! Hairs won't let go! Mask won't come off! Everything turns into something which either doesn't leave evidence or looks like nothing else in the world!"
"That was what he asked for," the nerd managed. "Something which would help the police. No more contaminated crime scenes. No bulky suits which no one could really move in. Chemical retention of some potential disruption, marker tags on the rest. And the early testing made it look like everything was working --"
"You weren't fucking there! You didn't see their skin change! You didn't hear them laugh!"
And the nerd, who was very smart in some ways and very stupid in others, said exactly the wrong confused, desperate words.
"Animals don't laugh."
Jack heard the thin body slam into the wall.
"Fix it," the louder voice. "Fix the fucking thing. No more laughing maniacs who take too much to put down. No crazy hitting like a goddamn truck and moving faster than we could tackle. Nothing which takes two taser hits and keeps on coming. Find out why it's going wrong and fix it."
They started towards the door. Jack's drifting body somehow located a moment of focus and put him into the shadow of an alcove, out of sight.
"...there were three proof masks," the nerd somehow risked, for no reason Jack understood. Not on that day. "Where -- where are the other two?"
The second man laughed.
"The dump. Where they belong."
The dump.
"The... dump?"
Both men ignored the question. The nerd had come to the city (been lured?) just a few years ago, and so he didn't know the answer. But Jack had been a resident for a lifetime. He knew exactly what they were talking about. He knew where.
They left. Jack pressed himself deeper into darkness.
"Idiot," the first man declared.
"Boss picked that idiot," the second reminded his partner. "Maybe you shouldn't have been so rough on him."
"He messed up. He's gotta learn the price for that. Everyone's gotta understand. Can't make mistakes like that. And what's he gonna do?" Muttering now, "Strong, fast, laughing freaks... that homeless asshole nearly killed me before Circus Act got that shot off."
"Good thing he reached us," the second mused. "I don't know how we would have stopped them..."
They left. But Jack remained in the alcove. Body still, but with thoughts suddenly racing.
Moving at the speed of madness.
The nerd had put the retied package in his locker: Jack had watched the action from a distance. And then he'd left it alone. Because the nerd had the stuff in his locker, and if Jack broke into the locker (which he was sure he could do easily, he'd had enough fun planting surprises for his lessers in the days before), then there would be a time when everyone would know just where it had gone missing from and... he would live. The nerd would live, and Jack wanted him to have the family-intact life of someone who hadn't taken any direct blame. Because there was a chance that if anyone went into the locker, it would ultimately be decided that the loss had been the nerd's fault --
-- but anyone could go to the dump if they knew roughly where it was (where it was supposed to be), and it could take a lifetime in the city to gain that awareness. Anyone who didn't care about the consequences if they were spotted. Jack qualified on both counts.
He'd waited, somehow. Gotten to the end of the school day, gone back to the orphanage before curfew kicked in. It had taken only minutes to finally recognize a means of getting out, especially with the sun down and no one really paying attention to the windows which opened over the dumpster. Then it was striding through the night, hoodie pulled low and clinched around his face, staying in the shadows.
At some point after that, he'd reached the outer edge of the dump.
You heard rumors about the dump, if you lived in the city long enough. You would hear about the auto yard where so many collectors liked to scavenge for old parts, and the section out behind the ancient Chevys where no one ever went. Men brought things in there, and nothing ever came out. Things didn't go to the dump for recycling. They went there to vanish.
The answers to a hundred mysteries were supposed to be in that dump and if anyone got caught searching for a single one of them, the solution to their murder would make it a hundred and one.
Jack... hadn't been sure. It had sounded like a fantasy more than anything else. There had supposedly been an old movie theater, and then it had been torn down to make way for an auto salvage yard, which had meant taking out most of the neighborhood around it. That was crazy enough to begin with. But to have a special place in the center, just for making things vanish... for starters, there had to be better spots for such things than that. More isolated. Secure. But then, the central security might have been in everyone knowing just who owned it.
The dump was an urban legend, if that word could apply to nightmare. You could make jokes about it in safety, wishing your homework would wind up there, perhaps next to the teacher who'd assigned it. But to go looking for it was madness. It was the act of someone who was just that desperate, didn't care any more, and -- it seemed as if Jack still qualified.
Had it taken hours to reach the fence? With the size of the city, traveling on foot, it just might have. But it was still night, he was there, the gloves were slipped on and an athletic body went up and over, pushing off a too-close wall in order to vault the coils of barbed wire.
It was a hard landing, but not a noisy one. There were probably dogs who could have scented him and with the way the wind just happened to be blowing, none of them ever did. No two-legged guard spotted him as he moved, keeping his tread soft as he walked on top of the stacked cars. A dozen times when he could have fallen, at least three where a pile might have collapsed under him.
The strange attention of fortune which had seemingly focused on a single shot might have been on him again that night, everything going right just long enough to take him into a place where everything could potentially go wrong.
He never should have gotten in without being caught. He never should have made it past dogs, guards, and cameras. He never should have found it.
He did.
It was smaller than advertised.
There was a hollow. It wasn't at the exact center of the salvage yard: the actual site was a little more to the left. One part of the stories turned out to be true, because there was a wall of Chevys blocking the majority of access. No one had mentioned the human outlines carved into the ground in front of them.
Jack had looked at them for a few seconds. One hollow had the shape of an adult male. The other was a woman. Both vacancies had been placed about ankle-deep into the asphalt. He didn't understand, and just then, he didn't care. A little further, and then...
There were -- things. That might have been the single best way to describe them, especially for someone who'd never really cared about the literature part of his English classes. A hollow dug deep into the earth, with things in it. Some were metal, others were plastic, and practically all seemed to be broken. Random pieces of technological debris tossed from the Foundation's laboratories, never to be seen again. It still felt like a strange place to dispose of such items, and Jack still didn't care. He'd just carefully climbed down, been careful not to cut himself on any edges because his body would need to be intact for the brief approaching period just before it stopped being anything at all --
-- what am I doing?
He didn't care.
Why am I doing this?
Because he'd lived.
Life was pain. Life was madness. Life was punishment.
Jack dug. He wasn't sure what he was digging for and, with the certainty that came from delusion, he was equally sure he'd know it when he saw it.
His right hand went below what seemed to be a recently-shifted piece of metal, and his palm cupped the plastic-covered bulge of the first dead man's chin.
The human body changed when it died, and those changes broke the chemical bond. He didn't know that yet, didn't understand why the mask had come loose. He simply saw that the wrapping of the plastic had dislodged it, somewhat to the right. That had meant shifting the body, and he'd learned the true meaning of dead weight -- but doing so had exposed the box.
It was a fold-out box, with little shelves inside, much like something which could be used to store fishing tackle
Dad loved fishing
-- only the shelves were riddled with holes. Some of those holes still held intact vials.
He inspected them under the thin light of his phone's flash function. They were labeled. He couldn't make heads or tails out of the chemical names (most of which had been invented just months before), but there was a little plain English here and there. Like the part under the green swirling stuff which said Application.
Freeing the mask meant going through layer after layer of plastic. Unwinding that which blocked scent from the world. Touching the dead. But he'd done that already, when he'd cupped his sister's face between his hands.
Eventually, he had it all. He finished just as the sky was starting to show the first signs of approaching sun, violet night beginning to take on the first tinges of lighter blue. The mask was in his hands. He had the vial. And...
mask beats the facial recognition stuff
Not that it was much of a mask. Formless white plastic from one side, the world's thinnest gas protector on the other. He'd already checked and found he could see through it perfectly, at least from the proper side. The whole thing smelled faintly of a dead man's last application of aftershave. They would have let the victim shower and shave, before putting him into the human test. It kept things clean.
strong and fast, maybe I could get in, reach him before I
it won't work
it's crazy
it's crazy and I'm going to do it anyway because that way I'll have done something and
I'm going to die
Mom's dead. Dad's dead. Luanne's dead.
Jack's dead.
He pressed the mask against his face, not entirely sure what was supposed to happen next. Smoothed the contours with one hand: the other was holding a vial. Took a breath through the filters, found the only thing he could smell was the aftershave and
it smelled like his father's
and he was being pushed on a swing and his mother was cheering him from the stands and he was getting ready to dunk his sister in the public pool which was just fine because she was getting ready to do the same to him and they were eating dinner together and laughing and he missed them he missed them he missed them there were so many beds in that orphanage filled in the same way with all of the residents afraid to speak with each other and someone had to do something and
his left hand clenched, forced into movement by the surge of memory and pain.
Crushed the vial.
In the end, it was all about that first exposure.
There was a chemical quality to emotions, for the feelings themselves were ultimately chemical in nature. The limbic system was one of the body's internal factories. Every emotion has a signature which can be writ small in molecules. The exact form of the chemical balance in the subject's body at the moment that experimental, unready-for-humans handiwork first entered it would forever after determine the nature of every future interaction.
The homeless men, forced to subject themselves to the unknown, had been fearful, and so that which took their bodies for its own had reacted. But the teenager, at the moment the balance began to shift, had been filled with memory. Agony and regret, pain and desire for what could no longer be had. A desperate wish that such would never happen again to anyone else. Loss and love.
The animals who should have been tested were incapable of experiencing the full convolutions of that mix. In the last moments before their skin took in new agents, the men who had been killed only knew fear. But Jack, vision fading during the original seconds of transition, the inner stage yet to be fully built, simply felt a warmth. The comforting grip of phantom arms around his body, quickly overlapping the flesh ones just before they settled in.
It was all about the first exposure, and Jack didn't know that. It would be a long time before he even began to suspect. All he felt in those first/last moments was warmth. A warmth matched by the voice rising from within.
A bundle of chemicals knelt in a pit next to a dead man's body, borrowed eyes closed, and felt its first thoughts still echoing within something which seemed to be a newly-born mind.
Within the theater of the mind, the bundle of chemicals was still trying to find some way of dealing with the news. In the outer world, it was steadily, almost merrily striding towards someone it considered to be a friend -- well, actually, 'friend' could be regarded as being the less important part of the relationship.
"Vic!" it beamed, or tried to: its face could really only do so much, which required the voice to manage a lot of heavy emotional listing. "What's new? Anything important going on? Something fresh out of the lab to show off? Because it's very important, keeping up on what one's --"
"Do not," Jack said from his place on the phantom stage, "call him 'dad' again."
The chemicals barely missed a beat. "-- friend is up to. Especially in times of hardship, such as after learning that one has been fired." An exaggerated sigh. "I can see it now, really I can. Once every two weeks, I'll have to stand in line at the unemployment office, hours of pointlessly waiting around just so some bureaucrat can ask me 'Did you even try to fracture any skulls this week?' and when I show him -- her?-- him..." It frowned, at least somewhat: a true moment of thoughtful concentration would pull on muscles enough to alter the perpetual grin slightly around the corners. "...pronouns are tricky things... anyway, he'll ask me that, and I'll plop the moaning body which I've been carrying with me the whole time on the desk because it's not as if he was just going to take my word for it, and then he'll want to know why I should continue to receive benefits if I've clearly been on the job, but then I'll have to explain that it's all been for free and he'll think that's just --"
"-- stop."
The word had been soft, but with an odd firmness within it. Something... cold.
The chemicals hesitated, speech and movement alike, a few strides away.
"Did I say something wrong?" it asked. "Someone really has to tell me when that happens. And since you're here and I know how much you love to educate, this would seem to be an opportune --"
"-- don't talk," Vic cut him off, with narrow shoulders displaying an odd tension as he leaned against the wall, some fifteen feet away. "And don't move."
Somewhere behind painted, molded plastic eyes, the chemicals blinked.
"This," it softly said, "is a little more wrong than I was expecting."
"I want to talk with you," Victor quietly told it. "And only you. So you're going to stay right there until transition is over. I've been counting seconds since the mist came out: I'll know when it ends. And when it does end, you're still going to stay there, being quiet, letting me talk. Jack --" (and Jack, moving into the stage wings, paused to listen) "-- I set up the room before I got here. I'm recording this. You'll see what it said when you get back."
The chemicals, horribly confused and now feeling a strange pain radiating from intangible wounds, did something which was still so hard for it: shut up. And waited, until the stage and Jack had receded into the shadows.
Victor nodded to himself, exactly once.
"I'm a scientist," he told the chemicals, along with the air. "Or at least that's what I tell myself, on a good day. I tell myself it's what I want to be. And scientists ask questions. That's really most of the job: asking questions no one's thought of before. But you have to think of those questions. You have to make yourself think of them, when they're hard questions. Things you don't want to think about. Things no one wants to think about..."
Long-fingered hands came up, briefly wove strange patterns within dim light, dropped back down.
"There were questions I didn't ask before you were made," Victor told the chemicals, "because I was too naive to think of them. But I had the innocence... slammed out of me. I finally asked myself 'What's a skinsuit good for?' And obviously it's good for investigating crimes, keeping the police from contaminating existing forensic evidence because they can't leave any of their own. But if you can't leave that kind of evidence... if you don't shed skin cells, drop hairs, leave fingerprint oils behind..."
The teenager shivered. The chemicals didn't know why: it wasn't a particularly chill night.
"You have," Victor continued, "an exceptionally dry handshake. I wasn't expecting that, the first time you did it. It makes touching your skin feel -- off. I'm guessing most people don't realize what's wrong, not on a conscious level. Not that you spend a lot of time shaking hands. But it's... strange. I realized that would be part of what the skinsuit had to do. I worked out the process which allowed it to happen. And I still wasn't ready for what it would feel like, to shake your hand..."
(The chemicals remembered the handshake, which had come at the very end of their agreement. It had been the first time the chemicals had ever done that, and... it had felt good. Warm. Almost -- welcoming.)
A quick vibration of head and receding blonde hair, the outer manifestation of a rapid inner centering.
"You can't contaminate a crime scene," he said. "You also don't leave evidence behind when committing crimes. That's what the skinsuit is good for. It's part of why you haven't been caught. It's what he wanted all along, and I made what he asked for because -- I didn't think of the right question. I have to think of the questions -- and then I have to ask them. When I don't, that's when things can go wrong."
He paused. Took a deep breath, as his right hand slid into a pocket.
"I rigged this place last night," Victor steadily told the chemicals. "With a camera, so I could record your answer. And with something else. There are little vials of gas all over this room. The reversion formula. The third one, in fragile containers, next to small explosive charges. And you're fast, something I didn't plan for or know was going to happen -- but I don't think you can cross the distance to me before I press the button. Once the mist touches you, Jack will take control just about immediately, and all you can do is watch for the eighty-four seconds you'll have left. So I'm going to ask you some questions."
Another pause. Another breath.
"And if I don't like your answers," the chemical's parent said, "those will be the last eighty-four seconds of your life."
More sirens went by outside. Flashing red momentarily filled the room, bounced off white skin, glinted from some of the thin glass taped to the ceiling.
"You..." The chemicals swallowed. "When we shook hands... you said you would help..."
Forced, barely-holding neutrality. "Maybe I think this is the last thing I can do to help Jack."
The electronic wails faded. Silence took over.
"The third formula," the chemicals said.
"We both know what the second does."
It nodded. Breathed, while it still could. "What do you want to know?"
"When Jack returns," Victor quietly asked, "what happens to you?"
It tried to find the right words and at the moment they emerged, knew it had failed. "I just... go away. Down, into the dark. I -- stop. It's... peaceful..."
Softly, "Do you have any awareness? Any knowledge of what Jack's doing?"
"I think... I think I dream, sometimes. I don't exist and I dream that I do." Its eyes briefly closed, behind the outer layer of its face. "I've wondered if that's what life is. But no one can tell me."
Steady, practiced words. "And where is Jack, when you're here?"
"Where I am, when I'm not."
It was possible to see the teen's hand clenching within the pocket.
"You came to me," Victor said, "when the formulas were running out. You'd lost some vials, here and there. Accidents. Fights. The count went uneven. And you asked me for help, because I'd created the formulas. The only thing which let you exist was going away."
The chemicals risked a nod.
"But that's not what you said when you broke into my house. You told me that you needed to make sure there was always a way to bring Jack back. That he didn't use the last vial to call you, and just -- leave you there. Even on that first night, when you -- woke up in the Ace Salvage Yard, after the guards heard you laughing and you... finished with them --"
It smiled at the memory, for its opening night had held some particularly fine bits of comedy, largely based in audience reaction.
"-- you read whatever you could in the kit. You found the original reversion formula, you left a message for Jack, and then you used it. And..."
Victor hesitated, then pushed the words out into the world.
"Do you know what the time limit on the application formula is? How long you have until it naturally breaks down?"
"No," it admitted.
And with the quietest surge of strength which the chemicals had ever heard, Victor said "Neither do I. Because I never got to test for that interaction. I was originally aiming for six hours. But you had to stick around for most of a holiday weekend once, and there were no signs of reversion. So we know it runs at least that long, and -- it could be longer. It could be permanent. It's possible that you could just -- stay. And I'm guessing you've thought about that, at least once. Maybe a lot more."
It felt itself nod, and realized it might have just made the final mistake of its life.
"But every time," Victor finished, "you've pulled out the reversion formula, for whatever version was there, and you've used it. You have always gone back down into the dark, of your own free will. Not knowing if you'd ever come back out."
Again, for that simple nod was the only answer it had.
"Why?"
The chemicals took a breath, and then another, because you only got to live for a little while. Everyone did. It might be hours or something over a thousand years -- but compared to all the time there was, the moments when you were a living part of the world always worked out to a precious few. There seemed to be a good chance that it was within its final minutes, and so it breathed. Felt borrowed lungs working, sensed the pounding heartbeat which might be permanently relinquished to another.
But there was only so long anyone could stall. It felt ice-blue eyes on it, waiting. Saw the clenching of that hand within the pocket. And there was a chance that it might be able to cross the distance before anything could be done, for it was fast -- well, fast on the level of an edge. It would never come anywhere close to the nightmare which haunted the Midwest, and it had wondered what it would, even could do if blasts of wind and supersonic murder ever entered the city. But against a parent, it might have a chance.
There was a chance, and so it didn't try.
"There are... two reasons," the chemicals finally said.
Victor nodded.
The chemicals explained, as best they could. To its surprise, the words came readily, even if it wasn't sure those words were the best ones. It was as if the speech had been practiced, something it had subconsciously known it would have to say eventually -- although it had absolutely no idea when it had conceived of that, and rehearsal schedules were right out. Perhaps the speech was something it had dreamed of, during those times when dreams were all there were.
The teen listened to the words. Truly listened, and even the short life which the chemicals had been through let it know such states were rare. Victor listened to every last bit and when the chemicals were done, he said something back, which let the chemicals return the favor.
They looked at each for a while, after they'd both wrapped up.
"So what happens now?" the chemicals quietly asked.
The teen straightened, taking his shoulders away from the wall as the empty right hand slipped out of his pocket.
"You get out there," Victor told it, "and do what you can. There's still a transfer point somewhere, and a Princess who needs us to shut it down. See what you can learn."
It blinked. Its eyes went wide. Both reactions were unseen.
"I'll go back to my lab," Vic added. "There's something new I was thinking about making for you. The concept's pretty basic, and I don't think it'll take long to create. I'll check in with you in a few days. In the meantime -- just try to bring him back in one piece."
"I always try," the chemicals immediately replied, now slightly miffed. "I am doing my best every single time. It's not my fault that other people don't appreciate what I'm trying to accomplish --"
Ice-blue eyes rolled. (It was a common occurrence when the chemicals were talking.)
"Go," Victor said.
The chemicals went, for it seemed as if the words had been good ones. And because they had been so good, it would repeat them, while adding in Victor's, on an occasion when it seemed as if the same question was just about to be raised. But that was a few nights away and on this evening, it headed out into the world to see what kind of exciting new acquaintances were out there, just waiting to be met. You had to meet people. You had to socialize, for it was a poor sort of life which was spent completely alone.
Everyone only had so long to live, and so every life was precious -- with the possible exception of his. The one who took lives away.
It turned out to be something closer to a week. A week which saw one truckload of ponies being moved through the city and the chemicals moving to intercept, which had mostly allowed it to learn that windshield wipers made for horrible handholds. The entire clinging (and whipping -- mostly whipping) process had been something of an education, and it had reluctantly passed on the bruised ribs to Jack with regrets and a promise not to be quite as stupid the next time, because it had turned out that in real life, it was actually somewhat easier to place part of one's weight on an eighteen-wheeler's side mirror. (Finding a running board to stand on hadn't exactly hurt, at least not for the chemicals. The leverage available when it had been able to swing a punch through where the window had once been... well, that pain hadn't been its.)
It had intercepted one "shipment," and wondered how many it had missed. Crossing Guard had told it that Equestria had disappearances all the time now, and some of those would be going to other worlds. There was nothing the chemicals could do about that: the method which allowed it to travel only went to Equestria, with the reversal doing nothing more than sending it home. There were a very few agents who could reach worlds other than their own and that of the ponies, who could provide reinforcements -- but they tended to be extremely busy. The hot zone was, on a multiversal scale, everywhere.
Some of those vanishings would be from kidnappings which had ended in places the chemicals could never reach. But it was possible that some had ended in the city. And if that had happened without its knowledge and no interception possible, the next thing to end would have been pony lives.
It had talked about the matter with Jack, during one transition. That they might not be doing enough, that there was no way to know if they were doing enough...
...that no matter what they did, it might never be enough.
Especially after having been fired.
Both had given some thought to finding their replacement, and neither had gotten much of anywhere. There were a few others scattered across the country who were trying to win their own version of the good fight, a precious few who managed to live long enough to reach the level of rumor. Someone on the west coast was supposedly trying to battle weapons made of light with a few bits of floating matter aimed just so. A whirlwind of Midwest death would find its running path littered with caltrops -- ones made from a child's jacks. A length of glowing rope which took away free will was slashed at by retractable claws. Rumors, legends, and the occasional blurred photo which was so easy to fake. They had heard of all, met none, and every last one was so very far away. It didn't seem to be the sort of job where commuting was a real option.
But for the city... it was just the chemicals. It seemed as if no one had ever tried until the chemicals had come about. There was him, and millions of people who'd simply given up. They knew what happened to those who fought back or rather, to those around them.
They had friends, of course. And because they had friends, they both had a list of people whom they could never ask to risk more than they already had. Victor... the chemicals had gone to him because he'd been the original creator, a parent, and when Jack had learned about that... well, they'd both known they needed to find some way of going on, because the supply Jack had found in the dump was always going to run out. No vials meant no chance. The chemicals had told Victor about that, and so much else. It had taken long hours of talking, deep into the night (which wasn't easy to do, especially after you'd just broken into someone's house), before the teen genius had agreed to help them, and it often seemed as if a thousand clauses were attached to that assistance. The regular medical testing was one of them.
But when Jack had been told, in the transition following the agreement... it had been ugly. No, worse: it had been their first all-out fight. Because Victor, as the original creator, was likely being watched. Because the ongoing supply had to come from somewhere and the logical first suspect was the person who'd developed the formulas to begin with. Because Jack was the one who had lived, and for a survivor to be seen with the young scientist might just mean Victor would eventually come back to a house which was a little too quiet.
Victor had tried to explain about reverse engineering: how dissecting an extant formula was a hundred times easier than coming up with an original one. He'd talked about corporate espionage, and how easy it would be to plant a few rumors which would point away from him. He'd even offered to teach the bundle of chemicals about the basics of the science and when that eventually happened, it would turn out to be a surprising natural in the field. (It supposed that was similar to the average teenage male's preoccupation with sex, only with more interest in what could actually be created.) But still, after their fight, Jack hadn't called on the chemicals for a full week, a week which had left Jack increasingly angry, frustrated, desperate, watching Victor's house for signs that anything was happening...
Eventually, there had been an emergency, one major enough to bring out the vials. And some time after that, Victor had admitted to having gone through questioning. (He hadn't said whether it was physical. He had admitted to the fear.) He'd told Jack that he'd been cleared, that he wasn't being followed or watched -- and then the new security measures had gone into his own walls anyway.
The continued survival of Victor's family proved that whatever had been said during that questioning was still believed. Jack's continued nightmares were waiting for that to break. Victor was his friend, and... anyone who was his friend just might wind up seeing others die for it. Just for having known him, let alone having done what they could to help.
Jack had friends now, and most of the people at his school considered the group to be an accumulation of freaks -- while having no true idea of just how deep that state went for a few. But even then...
Friends were people who cared about you, and were cared about in return. Sometimes they even cared when you didn't strictly deserve it, or shouldn't have been forgiven, or... understood that there might be deaths.
But then, some of those new friends lived with him at the orphanage, and so had very little left to lose.
The bundle of chemicals looked at the small rectangular box which had just been placed into its white palm.
"Cards," it said.
"Cards," Victor grinned.
"Playing cards," it tried. "A full deck."
"Yes."
"I feel," the chemicals disgruntledly declared, "as if I'm missing something here. Other than the years required before I can legally gamble, which is either something just over three or very nearly twenty-one, depending on how we're counting. You said you had a new weapon for me, and I've just been handed a deck of cards. Do they come to life and charge at their targets while waving tiny spears? Because I'm fairly certain that when it comes to the historical record on that tactic, you're going to find very few victories."
Victory blinked. His gaze briefly moved away from the chemicals, looked around the most recent of half-constructed buildings. "How do you know about that?"
"About...?" Some further definition seemed to be required.
"Living cards. Lewis Carroll."
It had never seen a movie: it only knew what movies were. It hadn't read the book, and yet something approaching knowledge of its contents was available for review. (It was a very small amount of knowledge: strictly speaking, when it came to fiction, Jack generally read just enough to mostly bluff his way past the test.) "I don't know," it admitted. "I just -- know things, sometimes. What I also don't know is how this is supposed to work."
With a thin smile, "Do you know about paper cuts?" Victor passed over a tiny plastic vial, one with flexible sides and a squeeze-drop tip. "Open the lid, then sprinkle this on." It did so. There was a brief puff of red smoke, and Victor's nose wrinkled at an odor which the chemicals couldn't register through its own face. "I've been trying to find ways where you can carry extra weapons -- things which would pass for something normal if Jack got caught with them. Brass knuckles are common enough, and you can drop them in a hurry. The vials can be hidden --" a brief pause "-- up until we hit a full x-ray, and by then... well, it's too late already. But cards... anyone could be carrying those."
It nodded. "But as weapons?"
"That formula reinforces them -- for a while. They'll be as tough as steel. It's a paper cut magnified." The blonde briefly looked satisfied -- then sighed. "Which still isn't ideal, because they still have the mass of paper. You'll have to learn how to throw them so that they'll hit edge-first, and you're going to need a lot of practice. But these could potentially cut deep enough --" There was a small shudder. "-- it's like the knuckles: under the right circumstances, just about any hit has the potential to be fatal. So you have to be very careful about where you hit someone, and I want you practicing for at least half an hour per night. Which means you're going to be running through a lot of cards -- and you can't save anything you don't use for another night because three hours after they're treated, they dissolve into sludge. But it gives you a distance weapon, something people won't be expecting -- something that gets past Jack being randomly stopped on the street, at least for a while."
The chemicals were starting to feel excited. They had been talking about distance weapons for some time, because the default state of combat was wading in to where the guns were. (It had considered using guns, but while they were easy to acquire -- especially once the fights had wrapped up -- they were a little hard to control when it came to degree of wounding, and extremely difficult to explain.) Tasers, much easier to deal with in terms of potential fatalities, were restricted within the city and as he generally had very little interest in stunning targets, the chemicals hadn't been able to scavenge one -- which probably would have just had a tracking chip in it anyway. The cards...
"I'll practice," it sincerely promised. "I can try for half an hour now, before I have to leave. There's an appointment which I simply cannot afford to miss. And do you happen to have an extra deck? Just in case I wind up needing to deal with someone on the road?" Or deal to them, as the case might be.
Victor nodded. "I'll give it to you before you leave." A worried hesitation, and then "Appointment?"
The chemicals glanced up, for this site had yet to install every portion of its roof. Thought about how beautiful the moon was and filed the memory away, because there might never be another glimpse.
"Well, in some ways, it's a drop-by, or at least a drop-in," it admitted. "But I do know he wants to see me, so he really shouldn't object to when I manage to show up, especially given the hours he keeps. He used a dead-drop to make the request and yes, before you say anything, I will be very careful about exactly how far I trust him because I'm aware that if he feels there's more in it for him that way, he just might use the chance to try and make me drop dead. But he claims he's following up on that idea Jack passed along, from you, about three days ago, so..."
Which told Victor exactly who it was meeting, and the teen winced. "I don't trust him."
"There's something good in him," the chemicals said. "Admittedly, it takes some digging before you start to see it. You have to go through seven years of college and at least three layers of bedrock."
"He's doing this for the jewels," Victor pointed out. "People who can be bought don't always stay bought."
"And where," the chemicals inquired, "do you know that from?"
"...Netflix," Victor eventually confessed as a tinge of red suffused pale cheeks. "It's still true."
"There is," the chemicals repeated, "something good in him. I occasionally see it peeking out of the corner of his eye. The right one, if you're curious. So. Cards, and then I'll choose the smallest emerald we have -- you know, I really should find out exactly how he's selling those, or if he's just holding onto them as a future investment -- before dropping by." It carefully pulled the first card out of the deck (a two of diamonds) -- then brightened. "And now that I'm going to be passing out cards, perhaps we should consider getting something personalized! A little home-printing. We could do an icon, or a logo -- something we can trademark, don't want him somehow getting a cut of something which does the cutting -- or even put a name on it --"
Which was when it saw the teen's expression.
"A logo," Victor repeated. "Or an icon."
There seemed to be a curious omission in that repetition, and the chemicals decided not to point it out.
"Well, yes," it said. "I'm sure we can find a graphic artist. Somewhere. It's a high school: check the loudest locker for recent stuffing. So. How does one throw a card? Pinch between the fingertips? Three at a time, between the fingers? For what might seem to be obvious reasons, I won't be putting one between my teeth and swinging on a ship's rigging any time soon, in part due to lack of ship. And most of the rest is typical lack of access to teeth. Incidentally, I know you've been very busy with the cards and all, but has there been any progress on my next face? The one which would have a little more -- range?"
"I don't know robotics that well," Victor admitted. "Not enough to make compressible plastic gears and a micro power source. But I'll keep working on it. There's just been a lot going on lately."
"Like the cards," the chemicals decided.
"Well -- yeah." There was a distant look in the teen's eyes. "And... other things."
Curiously, "Such as?"
"Nothing I want you bringing into the field yet," Victor said. "It's still at Emergencies Only. And if we have that level of emergency, it's probably too late already."
The chemicals accepted that, then tried the first toss, which took an awkward bounce off a girder and wound up half-embedded in soundproofing tile.
You had to laugh.
Strictly speaking, trusting one of his was a fool's endeavor and while the chemicals occasionally entertained the notion that it was insane (mostly because the concept was so inherently funny that you just had to give it a little time on stage), it resented any implication that it might be a fool -- even though it understood that in some cultures, it more or less looked the part.
(Its facial appearance was still a work in progress. During the time when they had been working with the contents of the original case, it had been sporting a blank white sheet, which the chemicals had found made it rather difficult to sincerely look rescued victims in the eye when reassuring them. But after the handshake, Victor had said its hair and skin reminded him of something, a profession which some people had an unreasoning (and unreasonable) phobia about, and had sculpted a second face into a mostly-frozen mien to suit. True mobility of features was the next step, but the chemicals understood it was going to take a while.)
In the case of the chemicals' appointment... it had been around ponies enough to get some idea of how a number felt about destiny. But strictly speaking, this particular first meeting had been accidental: he'd saved the man's life from a mugging which was in the middle of going a little too far, because even with nearly all major crimes controlled by a single entity, there was still room for the occasional small family operation. As its rescue had been rather shaken and turned out to live close by, the chemicals had taken him home, which admittedly hadn't done much to calm the poor man down. And once inside... well, the open files which covered just about every flat horizontal surface in the cramped apartment had quickly informed it of just who the man worked for, along with the fact that he'd probably learned a little more than he strictly should have. Some quick, rather mobile discussions (in terms of the small confines) had then established his unwillingness to turn any of it over to the police. (Not that doing so would have done much on those nights, other than getting someone -- not necessarily him -- killed, but it had felt like a natural sort of question to ask.)
The chemicals had followed up later, because when you met someone during that kind of situation, there seemed to be a certain obligation to check in on their well-being. And so he'd learned that the man, who occupied a position in the Foundation known as barely-paid slave labor (a seeming contradiction, at least until you saw his pay stub) liked money and there was a part of him, ground down into the fine sand of desperation by years of accumulated student loans, which didn't care very much about what he did to get it. But there was something else in him which could almost be ethical, which had started to glimpse what lay under the Foundation's surface, realized there might be no ready escape from the contract, and wanted someone to do something. Someone other than him. Someone, in fact, with absolutely no connections to him, and preferably an individual who could provide the funding for a desperate run should something go wrong -- or if his withered conscience, which had apparently provoked his field of study in the first place, actually took over for a full hour.
He wasn't entirely happy about who he was working for, and he wanted money towards a possible long-term goal of stopping. This, to the chemicals, made him an asset. A low-placed, barely-seeing-anything asset -- but anyone the chemicals could talk to was a welcome addition to the circle, even if this one was a person whom you just had to keep an eye on. Because the chemicals had recognized the danger long before Victor had voiced it: someone the chemicals were paying to talk might readily accept money to talk about it. Any meeting had the potential to turn into a trap.
You had to be careful, with people who stood in the darkness and strained towards the light. That felt like a hard position to hold, and the chemicals weren't sure which side he would ultimately fall on. And so it met someone who wasn't quite a friend in one of the smallest of the parks -- after scouting the area for hidden reinforcements and sniper perches. Fail to completely trust, but verify.
The man stood under one of the larger trees, allowing its shadows to take him into a deeper night. He was shivering slightly, and the briefcase in his right hand trembled accordingly. (Stress: it still wasn't quite that cold.) The chemicals watched him for a full minute before the final approach, because it wanted to see if there was any potential problems which might manifest at short range. And also because, quite frankly, he was just worth taking a moment to look at. The chemicals had very little concept of sexuality, but were easily capable of appreciating beauty. There was the shine of the moon, the night sky on those rare times when clouds and light pollution abated enough to glimpse a star, and then there was this man's face. It suspected the horrible hours required by the contract were keeping him away from most of the city's single population, quite a few of the married ones, and at least a dozen Well, If I'm Going To Try That Out, It'll Be With Him. Watching him was like watching a particularly nervous piece of fine sculpture, and even the startled jump backwards which came when the chemicals dropped out of the tree seemed oddly charming.
"Hello!" the chemicals beamed. "It's always so nice to see you!" (It had been working on its manners and felt itself to be making excellent progress. It sometimes felt that simply entering a situation and not hitting people was at least half of the social battle.) "Especially when you took the step of asking to meet me. Alone. And here we are, alone together, at least to the best of my ability to determine and honestly, I am going to be very disappointed if this suddenly turns into a trio -- well, at any rate, good evening! And I won't keep you long, because I know you have to get to work. Given your hours, possibly back to work. I know of exactly one individual who sees dawn more regularly than you do, and she's considerably less tired when that happens. Now -- what was so important that you just had to see me in person, which is especially nice when it means you must see me as one?"
The man swallowed. He did that a lot.
"Your -- whoever it is you talk to..."
"I speak," the chemicals haughtily declared, "to a great number of people. Sometimes twice, while not hitting them, which is often oddly important in second meetings. I don't tell them your name any more than I would tell you theirs, because that is what friends do for possible friends who may not be quite ready to commit. But we do gossip about you behind your back, which would apparently be the surest sign of possible acceptance, should we all be girls. Or of rejection." It tried to frown. "It depends on the channel, really."
Another gulp. "Let me see it."
The chemicals held up the emerald: so small by Equestria's standards, and absolutely ridiculous in carat and clarity anywhere else. Brown eyes widened, all the better to take in more of the green, and the man finally nodded.
"You know I'm not high up," he said. "Most of what I do is paying bills." With semi-private disgust, "Years of studying just to pay bills -- and some of that is just shuffling money around. When the same person owns the place using the utility and the utility itself, it turns into a closed system. There's all kinds of opportunities for tax dodges there. But there's still records, because something has to be sent in to the government. And where there's records..."
He opened the briefcase. (The chemicals watched, alert for a weapon.) A file emerged.
"These are copies of electric bills, broken down by hourly pull rate," he explained. "And at certain times, there is a massive, extremely expensive power draw. Something which moves. And it appears at each of the places your -- acquaintance -- listed. Locations which have since shut down, for reasons which aren't provided in anything I have access to."
The transfer points. Every one we've found and closed.
"How massive?" the chemicals asked, for that question seemed to be important.
"I'm not a electrician," the man said. "I know it's big enough to cost a lot of money. More than I've ever seen on an electric bill before. I'm surprised I didn't see the lights flicker all over the city when it happened, but I don't get to spend a lot of time looking out the window. Not that my office has much of a window. Or a view." Disgusted, "And my own desk lamp flickers all the time."
"One emerald," the chemicals said, "should buy a fair number of lamps."
"I'm saving up," the man shot back.
"For a spotlight? I haven't looked at the rates for those, but I'm sure you have enough put away for, say, a dozen or more..."
"And the next time I need to speak with you, I'll shine them all at the sky and spell out your name in lights," the man sarcastically declared. "If I knew what that was. Pass me the emerald. Then I'll give you the good part."
If he knew.
If I knew...
"The good part," the chemicals decided, "should come first."
"Don't you trust me?" the man asked with a thin (but extremely handsome) smile.
"I could ask the same," it noted with some offense.
"I'm sane. I know why I do things. I'm not sure about you."
"I," the chemicals stated, "saved your life."
"I know," the man quietly said. "In this city, that makes you crazy."
A breeze rustled through the branches. No footsteps moved through the park. Not at night. Not in this city.
"You said..." Another swallow, and the man tried again. "You said this is about lives."
The chemicals nodded, and wished it could look properly solemn.
"How many? Enough to be --"
"-- there is a way to measure whether a number of lives qualify as important," the chemicals softly educated. "You look at the number. And if it is a positive integer, then it is important. What do you know?"
The man's shoulders sagged. The sculpted chin dipped as brown eyes regarded the ground.
"I'm guessing," he said, "I don't know. But I think the power draw is so massive, you can't do it in more than one place at a time. That anything more, or even keeping it up for too long, would get noticed, or even burn out the grid. I'm guessing, and that's just based on the size of the bill. But dedicated generators on the scale you'd need to create that kind of voltage -- I know those are expensive, because I looked up that price using a public library server. And when you already own the utility, and your money is just going in circles, why spend any? Profit keeps the pulls down to one location, which keeps moving. Nothing more. And..."
A half-limp arm just barely came up, while the head did not. He held the file out.
"...the last page," he finished, "has the current site."
The chemicals took the folder, tucked the papers into the fashionable suit.
"Thank you," it said.
The man wouldn't look at the chemicals.
"This saves lives," he not-quite-asked.
"Yes." And then, because the chemicals liked to be honest, "Possibly, if it all works out. For a while."
"I got into law because..." One last swallow. "It wasn't for this. It wasn't supposed to be like this..."
The words seemed oddly familiar, and the chemicals weren't sure why. It watched as the man shivered in what still wasn't an external chill.
Twenty seconds passed.
"Your emerald?"
With a faint note of surprise, "Oh. Yeah. Hand it over." The chemicals did. "Fine. And now I've got to get to work. It's another all-nighter, until sunrise might let me go home. You don't want to know what they do to the first-years, all the times we work through hours no one should ever see..."
"I also happen to know a lady who sees them all the time," it replied. "She seems to do rather well with her life."
It created a small smile. "Is she pretty?"
"She's..." The chemicals took a few seconds. "...rather unlikely to be your type."
Ruefully, "Too bad. You mind keeping an eye on me for a few minutes? Make sure I get out of the park in one piece?"
"I will." The chemicals crouched, ready to spring back into the trees. "Go greet the sun, Apollo."
"Dent. I keep telling you, it's --" and a sigh of pure resignation. "-- whatever."
The chemicals jumped. The lawyer (whom the chemicals liked to think of as Apollo because 'Dent' implied imperfection on someone that handsome and it already had a 'Harv' in its life) took a few breaths, banished his shock to background levels, and started to make his way out of the park. The chemicals followed, now on the alert for a trap which would spring upon exit -- along with one which might be waiting at the next stop. But...
There's only one transfer point at a time because with that travel method and power consumption, there can only be one at a time. But that doesn't stop the next one from appearing...
There had to be some kind of solution. But before that could happen, the current point had to be shut down. And that meant there was about to be a raid.
It will be the last raid, for that is what the Princess has ordered: the final instruction given to those recently-fired employees. The raid is also going to be in a location which the chemicals have never seen before (well, certainly not from the inside), it may find the chemicals up against previously-unimagined levels of opposition... things which seemed to indicate that an extra degree of planning had to be involved. The chemicals mostly know plans as something it personally happens to in order to make them go wrong, but does understand the importance of occasionally having to wait.
There will be a last raid, and then... after that, for the chemicals, there may be darkness. (It was trying not to think about that too much, and mostly failed.) But the darkness isn't something to be afraid of. The darkness is cool and comforting, a place where there is no pain, no anything -- except, perhaps, for dreams. And the chemicals have wondered if that's all life is, for life itself is chemical in nature: billions of interactions in the darkness, having electric dreams of being something more. But no one can tell it. And so it simply wonders in its somewhat different way, and waits to go back down into the dark for what may be the last time. Something it cannot truly fear, as long as Jack still stands in the light.
Perhaps that is why they both get along so well with the Princess, or at least what the chemicals feel is getting along. Neither can see her as a source of fear, nor does either one truly understand how rare that is.
The chemicals dream, for the body is asleep, and so Jack dreams. It is not transition: there is no communication and as with nearly all dreams, there will be no recollection of what had replayed upon the stage. But in dreams, the lines can blur, especially for the events which had taken place on both sides of the inner border. With the thoughts of a final raid on their minds, their last service to Equestria...
It sends them back, and so they dream together in the darkness.
"I was afraid of that," Victor had sighed. "And so were you."
Jack had nodded, and the movement had been a shaky one. The chemicals had been very detailed in their description of the previous night's events, at least within the eighty-four seconds which had been available. Just enough time to explain how and why their time had come so very close to running out.
"They knew someone was using the application formula," Victor had gone on, looking at Jack from across a short distance on the latest abandoned warehouse floor. "And that meant eventually, someone was going to try using the reversion vials as a weapon."
Jack had sighed. "Gas guns. It said it was like facing down a dozen Darkwing Ducks without the fashion sense, and don't ask me how it knows about that show. It had to abandon the mission: it knew that if any fumes touched it, the mask would just fall off right there and... well, it would have been me and a dozen guys who would have grabbed me, hauled me in to see him and after he was done with me, they would have switched to the other guns. And since the formulas are all we've got..." He had slumped against an exposed support girder. "Maybe we're done. Last night could have been it, and we're nowhere close..."
"Maybe," Vic had countered, "they just lost the only chance they had."
There had been a half-smile on the thin lips. But there was also a certain... tension.
Jack had blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I've been thinking about it for a while," Vic had said. "That this was pretty much inevitable. And since I thought about it, I've been working on a way to stop it. I just hadn't said anything because the formula was so tricky, and..." He'd sighed. "And because there's exactly one test subject. You're already being exposed to a lot of things, more often than anyone should. No matter how clean your blood tests are, this is something new. I know what I want it to do, what it should do. It's also asking you to stand in the middle of a brand-new cloud of compounds. It's another risk, and..."
A deep breath, and it hadn't done enough.
"If something goes wrong," Victor had told him, "it could kill you. But so would getting caught. So maybe this is where you stop, Jack. Because doing this next part might kill you, and having it go out into the field again when they know how to get rid of it will kill you..." It was getting very close to a plea. "Maybe last night was your luck running out. The signal to just -- stop."
Jack had briefly closed his eyes. There were times when he could do that and not see corpses. That hadn't been one of them.
"What is it supposed to do?" he'd asked, while already having a pretty good idea. And with that one simple question, the vow had been renewed.
"Immunization," Victor had softly surrendered. "If it works, then it's a two-stage treatment. Use the first stage in conjunction with the original formula and you'll bring it out, the same as usual. The other brings you back. But after that's done, the original reversion formula won't work any more. Just the new one. They won't be able to use the first vial group against it. But there's a lot which could go wrong, Jack. We still don't know about long-term effects from the first batch, let alone this. I've tested it as far as I could without human exposure. But when it comes to that, past what the math says it should do, all I know for certain is that the filters will let you breathe, the mask will let you see through it, and I'm not dropping you into a cloud of acid. That still leaves a lot of ways where this could make things worse. Especially -- mentally."
"It's my life," Jack had reminded him. "And if you made this stuff in the first place, you were willing to risk my using it."
The reply had been more than half a mutter. "Maybe insanity's contagious..."
Victor had fished in his pockets, removed two vials. One swirled with deep blue: the other almost shimmered in shifting yellows.
"Blue is first stage," he'd said. "Yellow is second. The change should be just about instant, as always. But the treatment is probably going to take a while. Unless it feels something bad happening, you have to stay inside the cloud until it dissipates." He'd turned to the box he'd left on the ground, knelt down next to it, opened the lid, began removing emergency medical supplies. Unable to look at Jack any more. "Last chance to back out."
"Vic..." Jack had started to take a step closer -- then stopped. "This is my choice. If it goes bad, it's not your fault. I'm the one who decided --"
"Just do it," Victor had said, removing a more conventional gas mask, placing it next to a chemical burn kit. "Just... do it already."
Jack had accepted the vials, which had been presented through a hand held behind the smaller youth's back. Slowly walked to the other side of the warehouse, then looked down at his palm, the new compounds next to the old. Taken out the mask, held it to his face, and... hesitated. When there was time in which to do so, he always did. Hesitated and looked at the slim back, the lowered head which would not look at him.
But Victor would turn, when he heard the glass break. Monitoring. He always did.
Jack had hesitated, because there was time for a last look. There was always a risk, and part of that hesitation came from the chance that it was a last look.
But he also always broke the vials.
A huge cloud had billowed forth: the last thing he saw before his vision began to recede and he found himself upon the stage, quickly explaining what they had to do. The chemicals had accepted it, even been hopeful, and they'd stood together within the cloud as that time of duality began to run out, the chemicals had forced themselves to wait for the full dissipation before risking movement, there had been no sensations of burning or illness or disorientation, just simply standing and waiting and then there had been a schoolhouse.
The fresh paint on the schoolhouse's outer wall almost shone with red under sunlight. Everything seemed to shine. Colors were more intense: the green had a brightness which the chemicals had never seen (except, perhaps, for tiny hints which were mostly buried in its own hair), the metal of the playground equipment reflected light with wondrous dedication, and the tiny horses (some with wings, others with horns) which stared up at it did so with eyes that displayed intelligence and expressions just starting to dart into terror.
The chemicals, which often found themselves emerging into the world during what might be seen as rather odd situations, thought about what it was seeing, and did so differently. Others might have screamed, questioned the reality of what had just happened, concluded that they, or perhaps the world, was insane. But the chemicals already knew that a good part of the world was simple madness, as was so much of life. And as for how it saw things... well, when you were dropped into a strange situation, you simply had to accept that and move forward, for what was stranger than life?
So in the end, what it saw was children. And it loved children, loved that some forms of innocence still had a chance to exist. But it also saw that those children were afraid of it, and it hated that. It never wanted to bring fear to any who didn't deserve the emotion. Children didn't.
It had an instant in which it could react before the terror spread enough to take over, a scent which the chemicals could not register jumping from little pony to little pony until the tiny herd fled as one. And so it did the only thing it could think of.
It looked the part of a fool, at least in some cultures. It resented being treated as one.
But it still began to dance.
The children froze. Watched long limbs canter, white fingers partnering with the air. Playground equipment turned into pivot points, slides (there were slides, and long ramps with multiple indentations for hooves to help the ponies achieve the heights) served as places for both stunts and pratfalls. For the chemicals looked the part of a fool, and so now they played the part. It happened without questioning how they had come to be at that schoolhouse, or how it could go home, for the children were what was important now. The chemicals often lived in the now, for now was all it had. And it never wanted those precious minutes to be a time when children were afraid.
One of the winged ones giggled at the capering. Another, lacking in wings and horn both, tried to mimic a step, and found that extra legs didn't allow for exact duplication. And the chemicals danced, something it hadn't been aware it knew how to do. (Perhaps it didn't. Perhaps it was simply making up movements and giving them a name, which seemed to be most of what dancing was.) It danced until the fear went away.
The children spoke to it, in the scant time they had before the schoolhouse bell rung to bring them in from recess, and it did not question why it understood them. It watched them go inside, unaware that they were about to repeat the tale to their teacher, much less the alert would soon be traveling across a continent. But before the one who had giggled left, she came forward. Came as close to it as any of them had, and shyly offered a gift. It accepted the token in the spirit with which that symbol of acceptance had been given.
It had stood in the sunlight for a few seconds, admiring the colors. And then it had remembered that there was supposed to be a second stage to this and Victor was probably wondering what had happened, so it had crushed the other vial. (A solo act this time: the original reversion formula neglected for a moment.) Stood within the new cloud, waited patiently, almost heard the beginning of adult shouts and then it was back in the warehouse.
Which was when it remembered its minor error.
Sorry! it called down into interior darkness, and used the older vial...
...Jack had blinked within dusty light as the mask fell away and Victor ran forward.
"What happened?" It was nearly a scream, and it would have been a fearful one. "I was hoping it had just slipped out while the cloud was up! Because when the vapor broke up, you were gone, and -- where did you come from just now? I didn't see you come in, you were just there, and --"
He'd stopped.
So much more slowly, "-- what is that?"
But Jack had barely heard him, for much of his hearing was turned inwards, listening to excited babbling about all the friends which had just been made.
(It shouldn't have worked. The chemicals were among the earliest entities to recognize that: it shouldn't have worked. So many of the travel methods never should have worked as they had, still more should have done something else entirely, with a significant remainder having resulted in nothing. It shouldn't have worked and eventually, there would be more of those who finally began to question why it had.)
The rest of his attention was reserved for the pegasus feather in his hand.
There were any number of ways to describe Ozzie and for those who had never bothered getting to know him, the majority would have been insulting. It was easy to create a picture of Ozzie: the hard part was in using something other than a target for the easel. In the social ladder of high school, Ozzie was the wet spot on the floor which you brushed aside before stepping onto the bottom rung. Ozzie had been designed by nature to be picked on, and nature had picked up a few assists.
He was short: more than a foot under Jack's height. His black hair was naturally oily, to the point where it had the sort of glistening which would only find appreciation by getting access to a working time machine. He was somewhat overweight, and that extra mass was all clustered in the belly. He was also nearsighted, had a nose which would only be described as 'beaky' if you had yet to gain awareness of the word 'dildo' -- the former was more accurate, the latter more amusing, at least from the sixth grade on -- and at some point during the many fights which his appearance had put him into, there had been a left hip injury, one which hadn't healed properly. It gave him an extremely distinctive walk, which just piled on top of all the other extremely distinctive things about him. Those looking to insult Ozzie often lost the chance because by the time they'd finished picking out an option, he'd already waddled into class.
Most people didn't talk to Ozzie: there might be words, but they didn't count as conversation. Even in his worst days, Jack hadn't bothered with him that much because there was such a thing as too easy. Nature had designed Ozzie to be picked on, because nature was kind of a bitch. There wasn't much point in piling on when sheer genetics had already outclassed anything you might do.
Most people didn't talk to Ozzie, and so they never found out just how sharp he was. How the only thing more pointed than his nose was his social insight, because the kid no one paid much attention to was constantly listening to everyone else. How he had a way of slicing into the heart of an argument, how a few words spoken back could potentially destroy... because within the confines of the school, Ozzie seemed to know just about everything about everyone. He knew about events for which he'd never been present. He had spied out secret relationships, cheaters, and always knew what the next day's lunch special was going to be. But for the most part, he didn't use that knowledge. He just listened, and learned about the lives he was never invited to share.
That lack of direct participation never truly bothered him. Ozzie had his friends, friends everywhere people didn't look: everything else was soap opera or, in an emergency, a reason to hit the alarm bell and get that breakup fight stopped. Ozzie had a quick mind, a surprisingly good heart, and not much of a sense for revenge.
Well... he had a little of that last.
The chemicals could think. But it thought differently, and that difference could mean that things which were incredibly obvious to everyone else needed to be explained to it. However, this also sometimes meant the reverse. And so during one transition, after it had gotten the chance to see Ozzie from afar and Jack had quickly explained about what had happened to the teen on that day, it had made an interesting observation.
"Looking good so far..." Ozzie whispered. Not that there was any true need to do so: it was just Jack and Victor with him in the park with the sun going down, a good twenty blocks away from the action. (It was potentially the last raid, and so Victor had oddly chosen to be in the general vicinity. He'd said he'd been worried, that he'd just had a bad feeling about this night. He was also half-bent under an unexpected and overloaded school backpack, unaccustomed to carrying so much weight.) "You're fine for places where it can get in. There's actually an overload there. The problem is going to be picking one where it won't be visible. There's just too much open to the sky in the outskirts. And it'll have to cross all of that if it tries to go in through the central section."
"Can you get into that part?" Jack quietly asked as they strolled down one of the side paths, heading away from the park's security cameras. He didn't have to worry about their looking too much like a trio of gang members: no self-respecting gang would have included Ozzie.
"I've got a shot if someone opens a door: I'm small and fast. But I'll get chased out quick." The short teen frowned. "No guards, but that's probably because just having people guarding this would look suspicious -- camera! Camera on the roof. Fixed angle. Vic, pass me that tablet -- okay, here: tell it about that, Jack: should be easy to go around -- oh, shit..."
Dark blue eyes went wide behind the thick lenses, and both of the other boys froze. "What's wrong?" Victor quickly asked. "Did someone spot --"
"-- cat." Ozzie shuddered. "Cat on the roof. I'm fine."
There had been a transition where the subject had briefly been Ozzie, and the chemicals had made an observation, one which had started with something nobody else had ever spotted.
"So everyone who gives him a really hard time winds up with a few dozen birds shitting on their car?"
Nature had designed Ozzie to be picked on and so as compensation, had thrown in something special: telepathy. But it only worked on birds. He talked to them, understood them, saw through their eyes (although as Jack now understood it, the colors were confusing and Ozzie sometimes had to wear a thick piece of glass called a monocle in order to keep the headaches from the overlapping vision down). Ozzie could control them directly, although he preferred to ask for favors because seizing someone's wings was just rude. And in a city where a human population of millions sometimes seemed to be matched by just as many pigeons...
He wasn't much of a fighter, although Jack was working on that: just the fact that Ozzie often used a cane for extra help on long trips meant that he was carrying a weapon to start with. For reasons beyond friendship, he didn't want to use his birds for direct offense: his telepathy came with a price and part of plugging into the nervous system of another was having his own create phantom echoes of what they were going through. (He had, after a while, told Jack that he'd been in a friend's head at the moment of their death, and then hadn't said anything else for two days.) But when it came to scouting, he was the best in the city. Possibly the world.
Most people didn't talk to Ozzie, and it was their loss.
"This isn't easy," he muttered as sweat joined the oils in his hair, gave it the sheen of black feathers. "I'm having problems with the smell. All of the blood..."
"It's a stockyard," Jack reminded him. A slaughterhouse. There were a few old ones scattered around the edge of the city. The active ones processed animals from a few chosen farms, with the results heading directly to restaurants and the wealthiest of dinner tables: in both cases, the consumers never served themselves. But some had been abandoned, and this was one of the latter.
It made sense, in a dark way. No one ever really paid attention to what happened at a stockyard: no one wanted to. The smells lingered and after too much time among those odors, you would start to swear that the ghosts did as well. (He was probably lucky that the chemicals wouldn't be able to register any of that. He hoped: technically, it had just about no sense of smell, and both had been waiting for that to bite them.) It would have taken a lot of work to make the place sanitary, but if it was just being used as a transfer point to get in and out of Equestria...
Or they just want to do the slaughter somewhere which already has the equipment.
"Any skylights?" Jack asked.
"I wish," Ozzie replied. "Not even on the tallest building at the center -- wait. Busted window. Hang on -- and doors, closed doors, too many closed doors and it's dark in here..." He groaned. "How much time do we have to keep searching?"
"I don't know," Victor quietly replied. "I can't monitor that from here: I can't load the same protections in when there's this little memory. I could have done it from home, but..."
Which made Jack glance at him. "You could head home," he told his friend. "Call it in. You don't have to be here."
Victor bent a little more under the weight of the backpack. Thin shoulders curled.
"I should." A plain statement.
"Why?" It felt like a natural question. "That's part of the deal, too. I'm the only one on the front lines --"
"-- I'll stay back," Victor said. "I'm just worried about this one. More than usual. Every time it goes into one of these labs, things get worse. The defenses are trickier, the guards are faster. And if this turns out to be the last time... I want to be close by, Jack. They won't see me. But if it uses the burner phone to reach mine, if it gets that bad, I want to be close. Okay?"
'Close by' had better mean half a mile. But there were times you couldn't argue with Victor. "Fine..." They were on the edge of an open field, and Jack paused. "Let's toss a frisbee while we wait."
Ozzie glanced up at him. (At least, Jack was fairly sure the short teen was looking at him.) "Why?"
"Because it'd be nice if one of you learned how."
Victor eventually snagged two catches, if only on the absolute ends of his fingers. Ozzie was a little too distracted to participate. And eventually, they all stepped into the shadows of the trees.
Ozzie finished marking the tablet's map, handed it back to Victor, looked up at Jack. "See you tomorrow."
It wasn't really an offer. More of a wish. And then Ozzie trundled off into the dark.
He's safe. A quick, involuntary look at Victor. And he'll stay back. We've never used the burner to call for help, because... Because anything where it would need help was a situation in which no help could ever come.
One more time.
He touched his belt buckle, took out the mask, waited for it to unfurl -- then turned it around in his hands, looking at the frozen features which were all the world ever saw. The face of a forever-grinning clown.
There were those who were afraid of clowns: Victor had said it was a surprisingly common phobia. Jack hadn't really seen the value in sculpturing a face to match: the blank white sheet had felt as if it was disturbing enough. But... there were those who did react with fear. With some ponies, the image presented could actually help a little: stark white skin and bright green hair was actually closer to what they knew from home. But for humans... some of them cringed. A little of that was appearance, more was a fast-developing reputation among those who were his, and most of the rest was the laughter.
Victor had recorded the laughter, and deleted that file within seconds.
I never see you this way.
It's always on the stage. Where everything moves, where you have a real face and you frown and roll your eyes and...
...weep.
He called inside himself, called down, and found only silence.
"What are you thinking?" Victor quietly asked.
The answer was the honest one. "What happens when it's over." Because they had found no one to take the burden, because there would just be another transfer point and more kidnappings and... more deaths.
Bodies in the dump.
"First," Victor said, "it gets through tonight." He glanced up at what little of the sky could be seen through trees and pollution. "It's dark enough. Ready?"
"Yeah. I'll brief it on whatever I can, and then you show it the map."
"Good luck," his friend quietly offered.
I'm not the one who needs it.
It was a strange sort of thought. Was it him who needed the attention of fortune, given what some of that regard had done? Was it them? When luck was wished for... who was it meant to help?
At least for now, it didn't matter. Philosophy wasn't his kind of subject to start with, and there were things he didn't want to think about.
He knew a way to stop thinking.
The chemicals weren't really thinking about the future, especially since it wasn't certain it had that much of one. The important thing was the now, because that was the best way to make sure Jack had a later. And in the here, now, and incidentally sneaking through what remained of the shadow-filled slaughterhouse, the chemicals were rather confused.
There should be more guards than this. By which I mean, strictly speaking, that once I got into the enclosed spaces, there should have been some guards. Someone to have a nice meet-and-greet with, because there's always this one person who feels I'm such an interesting personality to meet, he has to call all his friends in so they can say hello too. Usually with bullets.
But there aren't any guards. All the cameras I dodged were on the outside...
Well, all the cameras it could find. The chemicals might look the part of a fool, but it wasn't stupid. It was fully aware that cameras could be extremely small, that the tiniest glint of glass in the wall might indicate a transmitting lens, and the most advanced of those might not be registered by Victor's inventions. So it was searching as carefully as it could, while it slowly moved through the empty halls of the slaughterhouse. But most of what it found on the walls was well past glinting in what little moonlight came in through broken windows, because blood only glistened when new.
It was finding blood in what it considered to be strange places. There was supposed to be a central killing floor, and another area for butchering. But perhaps some of the animals had panicked, run...
Or some of this blood isn't animal.
It had asked Victor about how animals were led to their deaths, for the concept of a slaughterhouse was strange to it. The anticipated answer had been that every creature would have been dragged to its demise, bleating and screaming to the best of its wordless ability. But Victor had said he wasn't entirely sure: the genius knew much, but not everything, and mass killings simply (not to mention understandably) weren't his field --
-- but then he'd hesitated.
"I read once that they use a goat."
"Goat meat? Disgusting stuff. Or so I imagine, along with a nasty aftertaste of tin --"
"No. The goat is trained to walk in front of the herd. They're afraid, the smells have them freaked out, they know there's death around them -- but then they see something calm and self-controlled, which looks like it knows where it's going. So they follow it, to wherever that is."
"And then?"
"The goat's the only one who walks out."
The chemicals had been to Equestria: a place where herd mentality didn't always operate in the open -- but if you observed closely, it was possible to see how its machinations affected so much of native behavior. For ponies, it was a constant vulnerability, forever awaiting its chance to steal away personal reason and replace it with the group's mindless decision. But once you started to see it in them, it became so much easier to spot the signs in humans. That in times of stress, so many would stop thinking for themselves. They would seek out a leader, anyone who looked as if they knew what they were doing -- and then, even with the scent of death all around them and screams coming from ahead, they would follow.
And he wants to lead.
No -- he wants to be the one who thinks for others. The only one who thinks at all, while the rest of us simply react with fear.
I suppose that makes him the goat.
No guards. No (visible) interior cameras. Naturally the stockyard sections weren't going to be guarded by anything more than fences, but the building itself should have had more in the way of locks --
-- this is a trap.
Apollo? The betrayal never got the chance to sink in. No: this is too complicated. If that was the cause, then they would have known he was meeting me: simple enough to set something up there. This is him, and let's call it... learning from experience. He sets up a transfer point, I show up and shut it down... after a while, you'd start to anticipate this sort of thing. There's still cameras on the roof, and there may be a few in here which I didn't see, but there's no locks and no guards because he's very politely offering me an invitation to come in and...
And die, mostly likely. But how? An explosive set up to detonate as soon as it opened that one crucial door? Blades waiting to spring from the walls, taking off a head before its owner ever got to have a proper face? It struck the chemicals as being decidedly rude, somewhat practical, and rather likely.
It hesitated. Reached into a pocket, then pulled out the burner phone. Tapped out the message.
Building is a trap. Didn't spring it. Getting out --
And then it felt the vibration.
It was a familiar sensation, for it was not the first transfer point which the chemicals had tried to shut down, and so it knew what happened when the equipment started powering up. One of the scientists, someone it had been through the pleasure of a brief acquaintance with, had said it was all about vibratory rates. And so when the machines began to do their work, the air itself would be set to humming. The vibration passed through its face, grounded in hidden teeth and made its jaw ache.
There seemed to be a fair chance that this too was part of the trap: an invisible camera had seen it pause, realized the animal might not be willing to head towards the killing floor, and decided to present one more lure. It also could have been the first stage in stealing more children from their homes. And, since he would certainly appreciate multitasking, the odds felt rather strong that the vibrations represented both things happening at the same time.
I can save Jack if I leave right now.
But I'd be leaving the children behind.
It might not happen tonight. But eventually, there will be children, and parents who only know that they're the ones who were left alive...
Jack would hate that.
He would die to stop that.
Another hesitation, and then it tapped white fingers against the burner's cheap keys.
Doesn't matter. Transfer starting. Going in.
There were two more hallways. There were many more bloodstains, and the chemicals began to suspect that some of them had been arranged for atmosphere. And so there would be no explosives, no sniper waiting to fire -- well, not at the exact instant a final door opened. This was a trap, but it was also an invitation.
It would have been rude to decline.
The vibrations were increasing. The chemicals slipped a borrowed hand into a deep purple pocket, pressed the other against the wall and briefly allowed the shaking to travel up bone. Getting very close. The very next door, the one with light streaming through the crack between portal and floor, would put him at the heart of it.
The chemicals took a breath, while it still could. Apologized, because there might not be time for that later. And opened the door.
The light hit it, might have blinded just about anyone else -- but his friend had anticipated things like flash-bangs, and so a mere change in illumination simply darkened the inner viewing panel. It allowed him to see the machine, the computers surrounding a stage made of steel and titanium and things which shouldn't be shaking like that for very long. It was a strangely cold platform: the chemicals had gotten the chance to stand on it once. For the stolen, it would be their first contact with an equally cold world.
It could see an open expanse of floor, recently cleared of all but bloodstains. Several hooks still hung on ceiling-mounted chains, the apex of which was more than twenty feet above. There was a high-set walkway with accompanying railing about twelve feet ahead of it on the diagonal, which allowed people to circle the floor and observe from overhead. A door on that upper level probably led to offices, and perhaps a place from which to view cameras.
There were also five men. Two had guns. Another pair carried thick transparent body-height shields via inner-surface handles, a plastic dense enough to stop bullets, and they were holding the barriers in front of him.
"A clown," that man said, and the words carried a tiny hint of disappointment. "A goddamn clown."
The chemicals, which thought differently and so understood why the guns wouldn't be firing just yet, did the only thing which seemed appropriate. It bowed low, sweeping the one free hand out to the side while keeping the other in the pocket. It felt this did a lot to conceal its own disappointment, because it had somehow felt that if anyone was going to just come up with a great name for it out of nowhere, it would have been him.
"The," the chemicals began in half-mock offense as it straightened up, "'goddamn clown', if you please. And I'd say it was a pleasure, but it isn't, and I'd say this is long overdue, because it is, but mostly I want to say that your tailor is a genius. The lines of your suit! The way it perfectly sets off your eyes! The mysterious manner by which it somehow completely conceals the forked tail! How does he do it?"
It wished it could frown properly.
"...how does she do it? He, she... I'm not being sexist, am I? Someone generally needs to tell me about that sort of thing."
The man was staring at it.
The chemicals didn't take too much time for staring back. (It considered itself to automatically win all staring contests, as the visible part of its face never blinked.) It knew what the man looked like: just as tall as the chemicals were, but considerably burlier. It knew about the perfection of features which just might have been granted through knives, because this was one who would never allow himself to have a perceived personal flaw. The dark hair was beautifully styled, the suit was in fact divine, and only the clenching hands gave away the monster within.
What the chemicals were truly looking at (and no one ever caught it doing side-eye either) were the guns. The machine was running. The vibrations were in the air, and the chemicals were used to that. But they were also in everything else, and it seemed as if the snipers had never been at a transfer point before. The sights shivered and shook, red dots jittered in all directions. Above them, chains swayed and twisted.
Now where is the end of the nearest one? About nine feet from the floor...
"I wanted to get a look at you," the man said, "before you died. It's like pulling out a splinter. Someone can do it for you, but when the annoyance and chance of infection are high enough, it's better to watch the procedure. To make sure every last bit has been extracted and destroyed."
"Or tenth-bit," the chemicals remarked.
That produced a subtle nod. "I thought they'd sent you. The first two labs -- those could have been coincidence. But it's been clear for a while that you're targeting this, and on another's orders." There was no true curiosity in the next words. "Are they too afraid to cross themselves? They should be. I have some things waiting for them. Originally, I was thinking about a cell for you, but... it could hold other things."
And then there was a smile. It was an attractive one. It often featured prominently in those rare pictures which reached the public. It had been present on the face of a child, one who had been standing over a pair of graves.
"Imagine what an entire world would pay just to see the sun come up every morning," he said. "I have."
The expression faded. Mere money seldom made him happy for long.
"I wanted to get a look at you," the man repeated. "I rarely get splinters. There's a certain curiosity as to exactly what's trying to be irritating. And now that I've seen you for myself, without relying on the eyewitness accounts of those who fear simple laughter, it's easy to see what you are."
Large hands became fists, vibrated at the large man's sides.
"You're disappointing," he said. "Kill --"
Which was as far as he got, because the chemicals had been waiting for that. And legs which could not-so-casually absorb a twenty-foot fall were also perfectly capable of jumping some distance straight up.
The chemicals moved as bullets sprayed, bullets which didn't hit their target because the shooters couldn't adjust to the shaking. Grabbed the chain with its one free hand, brought the other borrowed hand out of the pocket, whipped the first of the treated cards (a nine of hearts: it tended to notice such things) forward as it threw all of its weight into the motion, trying to get the chain swaying just enough --
-- not all of the bullets missed. One of them slammed into its right leg, and so demonstrated exactly how resistant that clothing truly was. There was a roar of pain at an impact like an outraged hoof, something almost loud enough to break through the chemicals' desperate attempt to apologize, and there would be a giant bruise later. But the metal didn't penetrate. It simply hurt like hell, and the impact shifted the movement of the throwing arm.
As much as the chemicals had been aiming for anything, it had been the shooter on the right. Give that one something to dodge, take its attention off firing the gun, and an actual hit on any level would have been a nice bonus. It hadn't expected to accomplish anything in that department, and it didn't. The redirected angle went high and center, with the card bouncing off the wall behind the big man's head.
It then rebounded into the edge of his left ear, and sliced through most of it. The card thudded into the shield, and slid down just ahead of the bloodspray.
He howled. And the chemicals learned that when someone that important expressed pain, he immediately became the most important person in the room, because no one wanted him to start spreading that pain around.
The shooters instinctively stopped firing, turned towards him. Those with the shields clustered closer, and the one on the left let go of the thing, all the better to free up hands. There was probably an offer of first aid coming, along with a desperate plea for forgiveness. And the shock would wear off soon enough, perhaps they would simply surround him and get him to safety, or they might start shooting again --
--except there's one place they can't shoot at, isn't there?
It had both hands free now, and the chain had momentum. It also had one more chain between itself and the railing, plus it was rather good at jumping. And so it did something which it was completely sure it had just invented on the spot, because Jack's viewing tastes had never gotten around to something so ancient as men raised by apes. It swung enough to get an outstretched hand around the next chain, and then it pivoted its entire body around that and used the momentum to get its entire body just about horizontal before it let go and the chemicals, who were naturally the most fond of that branch of science, found itself being carried by Mother Physics over the plastic shields.
It landed behind the big man, who hadn't even had the chance to finish howling, and then it launched a rabbit punch into the left kidney.
There was another scream. And the guns came up because of course they did, and then the shooters froze because of course they had to.
They can't shoot at you.
There were other factors to consider and one was the arrangement of privacy, for the chemicals felt that this needed to be a much more personal meeting. As such, it turned its attention away from him for a second, just long enough to push one of the shielders over the railing: the plastic itself made for a wonderful surface upon which to conduct a pivot point, and a fall from that height meant living through the impact. Another moment was used for getting rid of both a gun and the person who might fire it because the chemicals knew that he tended to hire stupid and someone might be dumb enough to eventually convince themselves they'd lined up the perfect shot. And the world shook and hummed, the air felt as if it was trying to come apart, and then a huge fist went into the side of its head.
It staggered, about six feet backwards along the recently-cleared side of the walkway. The metal floor tilted and swayed and threatened to tip him onto the platform and possibly into Equestria, or at least did so within the sudden burst of dizziness which didn't want to go away.
"Oh," the chemicals declared. "You work out. Well, physical fitness over moral exercise --"
Another fist was swinging in, and the chemicals jumped backwards, then leaned left within the limited space, just enough to avoid a foot. (The shoes were also magnificent.) It was starting to recognize the style, or rather, the blending of them: you couldn't be in so many fights without trying to learn a little something about martial arts, especially when you were working on jokes about how so many were actually marital ones.
The big man swung again. The chemicals danced backwards, trying to keep its footing as the world continued to sway. Wondered if one punch had been enough to deliver a concussion. It was still conscious, and if it hadn't gone down from one punch, it seemed likely to stay awake for a while. However, it seemed that 'a while' might be defined as 'the second punch'. And the other two who were still on the railing were trying to swarm past their leader, but it was a fairly narrow space, made all the more so by a very big man --
"-- get the others!" that one snarled.
Oh. There's others.
That's probably very bad.
The one with the gun turned, went towards the door. The shield-bearer didn't seem to know what he was supposed to be doing. Those who had been knocked to the floor below mostly groaned, and one of those sounds had some interesting harmonics to it: he'd landed on the transfer stage, and the shaking was truly becoming bad now. Still, there was no need to worry about losing one of them, nor could the chemicals use the platform as a means of relocation: based on its previous experiences with the technology, actual transfer was probably about five minutes away. It was very unlikely that the fight would go for five minutes.
It was even more unlikely, should some of those 'others' be carrying tasers and have good enough aim to get in about six hits, that the chemicals would survive that long. And two would go down into the dark.
Another kick, another swing. It kept dodging, trying to reorient, recover, spot an opening, it had only taken the one hit but it only seemed to be a matter of time...
The big man, whose suit was now simply ruined by bloodstains, swung again, missed. And the chemicals looked into the furious eyes of an overgrown child, one who had once been told that there was something he might not be able to have, and so had spent his life making the world give him everything. Taking everything.
The next words emerged as the scream of that child. The purest of tantrums.
"OH WHY WON'T YOU STOP MOVING AND JUST BEHAVE?"
The chemicals' borrowed eyes blinked behind its face.
"Oh," it said, and didn't try to keep the bemusement out of its words. "I'll put away my little chemical advantage while you keep your extra hundred pounds and decade of combat training and then we'll have a fair fight, is that it?"
The roar which responded had gone beyond words, with the swing far too wild. The chemicals reached out, grabbed the still-moving wrist, and let momentum carry the entire arm into the wall. It heard the wonderful crack of knuckles breaking, although most of that was lost in the scream.
"No," it said as it tried to fight off the ringing in its loaned skull. "I think this is more of a come-as-you-are party, and this is how you made me. It would be rude to appear as anything except myself."
A white hand clutched at the railing for support. It was almost certain it hadn't told the hand to do that.
"I'll... I'll find out who you are," the man gasped. "Everyone around you, everyone you love --"
We fight for the ones we love.
The chemicals got its hand off the railing, launched a punch which did some damage. But it didn't seem to be enough. It hadn't been using the brass knuckles because they tended to make card-throwing more difficult. It didn't have the time to put them on now. There were others coming, it felt as if there was a new vibration entering the room and that could have been fast-approaching pounding footsteps, it wasn't sure where those were coming from and so it risked a glance down to the lower level, just in time to see where one of the idiots had decided he'd lined up a perfect shot, one which would avoid the hood and simply go directly through its face --
-- the lower level door flew open, nearly rebounded off the metal, and everyone looked. None of them could help it. When someone made an entrance like that, you had to look, and so both opponents saw the metal sphere fly through the air, slam into the hand of the shooter and adhere there, the thin layer of goo on the impact side attaching it to skin.
Two diodes flashed blue.
And then there was another scream, the gun falling to the vibrating floor as frost formed on the metal, as flesh blackened and the scream just kept going on...
"WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?" the big man screamed at the figure in the doorway.
The chemicals already knew.
It was possible that no one else did, for the configuration of that body had changed quite a bit. Wearing multiple layers of hoodies and sweatpants had bulked up the thin body into something more suitable for a tire company's mascot. The lower part of the face was covered by at least three ski masks, the hands were coated in gloves so thick as to turn any prospective punches into something very much like getting hit by a pillow which hadn't been getting enough exercise, and the eyes had ski goggles over sunglasses. There wasn't an inch of skin visible, which did an excellent job of concealing the identity of the person within and was probably putting him three serious exertions away from heatstroke.
There was also a scarf, and shoulder pads. The scarf seemed ill-advised.
"I'm -- !" the muffled voice half-declared -- then stopped. "I'm..."
The chemicals took some comfort in the thought that names weren't that easy to come up with. (It turned out to be an exceptionally brief comfort.)
"...Frostbite!" Victor declared, and the next spheres to be removed from the messenger bag were thrown at the computers as one of the world's worst battle cries sounded in the vibrating air. "Kiss your components goodbye!"
Cold cracked the screens. The platform, without a program telling it how to modulate the vibrations, began to shake all the harder.
"We've got to get out of here!" Victor's muffled voice called up. "There's some more swarming in! We don't have that long!"
The chemicals looked down at a friend, wondered if the layers had been given any degree of the bullet-resistant treatment. Thought about a limited sphere supply, and someone who had no idea how to truly fight. Someone who, quite frankly, was so bundled up that it was a miracle he'd managed the elbow motions of throwing, and the second sphere had wound up bouncing into the monitor.
Then it looked at him.
I don't kill.
But the police were his. The courts. The city.
We may not get a better opportunity --
-- but he could hear the approaching footsteps. Every second was crucial now. And with Victor here, who was doing this for the first and what had to be the last time...
"Thank you ever so for the invitation to the deathtrap!" it smiled. (It couldn't help it, really.) "Please don't mind my unexpected plus-one! Because you really have to factor for all the math --"
It jumped, just enough to kick the man in the head, noticed how hard it was to stay upright on the landing.
"-- including the part where someone finally takes your toxic part of the equation and rubs it out. You didn't quite lead me to the slaughter, did you? So go snack on a tin can until next time-- goat."
(It was the last mission. The final transfer point. Their concluding task for the Princess and Equestria.)
It vaulted the railing, staggered quite a bit upon landing. Did as much damage to the computers and machinery as it dared. And then it raced from slaughterhouse and stockyard with a friend at its side. But Victor wasn't used to the exertion, much less the layering, and so...
Eventually, they agreed to never discuss the ten blocks of shoulder carry again.
They stood upon the stage, with one nearly in the wings. After all, there was about to be a departure.
"Talk him out of it," the chemicals said. "Whatever you have to say. Tell him there won't be a fresh diamond supply for the spheres. Tell him he's not fast enough. Tell him he doesn't know how to fight. Tell him he'll get himself killed."
"I can try," Jack replied. "But I can see his face right now, with the layers coming off. He's on an adrenaline rush. Maybe the first of his life which doesn't have vials involved. It'll be hard to keep him from going for it again. It's like hitting --" and stopped.
"Your first real distance shot," the chemicals quietly finished. "Yes."
They had so little time, and some of it was expended on simply looking at each other.
"It's... all right," the chemicals softly said. "It's just darkness. I just -- without us, without having found anyone and it cannot be Victor... but -- it's not my decision, is it? You call me when it's time, and -- I go away. When it's time."
Its head dipped. Tears more real than mere liquid and salt began to moisten phantom eyes.
"So... if it's time..."
There would be no true movement, for the stage was what they made it. Wish to vanish, and the shadows behind the wings would beckon. Exit, stage right.
There was no true movement, and so it never heard the footsteps: there were none. It simply felt Jack's arms wrap around its body. The warmth, the welcoming, the gentleness of the hug.
It raised its true arms, reached back. And they stayed that way in agreement until it all went dark.
The bound human (wrapped in bungee cords this time, for that was what had been available) dropped from the ceiling, hit the floor of the Lunar throne room, and rolled a short distance before coming to a stop, wide eyes trying to reconcile the presence of the furious alicorn who had just flown off the cushions.
"Now I know he looks small!" came from the shadows overhead. "But you cannot throw him back. There is no weight limit on this sort of thing, nor do we have a restriction on deviancy. Meet the head of their biology team, Princess! He had some very interesting ideas on what to do with organs. Oddly, none of them seemed to include having those in his own abdomen impacted by my shoes. Several times. But without his twisted little mind -- I was almost tempted to open it up and have a look, but I decided against it, and I do not advise walking through his dreams unless your Most Royal Feedbag can also hold Most Royal Vomit -- the Foundation should go back to different forms of exploitation for a while. And extortion. But I already informed Crossing Guard about that last, and he'll have a briefing for you in, oh, probably about six minutes --"
"-- you were let go!"
Silence from above. It didn't last.
"Yes," the miffed voice said. "And not for job performance, either. Really, one could be offended, but --"
"Then why are you still doing this?"
She heard the breath, and the way that sound was changed by the filters of the mask.
"If one is made to retire from a paying job," the chemicals said, "and one happens to simply enjoy the work, then one finds a volunteer position and does it for free. Or three, because there was a trio of ones in there, and did I happen to tell you --"
"-- you are," she harshly cut him off, "trying to buy time in which to exist. You are trying to take over from Jack, and I will not let you --"
It laughed.
The sound flattened her ears, made her want to start flying just so she could free up her forelegs, lower her head and press hooves to block out more of the horrible mirth. It laughed on and on, and the scientist writhed to suit.
"You," the chemicals softly said from the shadows above, "are not the first person to think that. Shall I tell you what I told my friend? And what he told me in return? We have a little time, and I happen to think they're good words, as he accepted them immediately. Perhaps you will as well. But in the name of drama, let me rearrange the order..."
It would have been so easy to snatch it from its hiding place. Have it locked in a field bubble in front of her, to rip the belt apart and force the reversion gas into its lungs. And because she knew how easy it was, she waited.
"The first thing I told him," the chemicals began, "was my awareness of how the application formula works. He doesn't know how long it lasts before wearing off. He was afraid it could be permanent. That I could just... stay. But it's a skinsuit, Princess, one which prevents dead cells from falling away. That means not leaving evidence. And it would, after a few weeks, likely leave me coated in a very thin layer of rotting flesh. I already have enough troubles in making new acquaintances, thank you. Adding odor and a new kind of skin condition doesn't seem to help my chances."
The alicorn did something which was still so hard for her. She remained quiet.
"So, breaking up the order..." that other mused, "...here is what he told me. That before I came, Jack was... slipping. Not into the dark. Into madness. Frustration and grief and the horror of being the one who lived. But since my arrival, he's been -- getting better. Slowly. But during those times when I can't be called for a while, he starts to go down the slope again. It is my friend's opinion that my thinking differently is what allows Jack to think normally. He needs me, Princess. Someone truly needs me, and I can't deny that need. Not when it's him. Because... of the other thing I told my friend."
"And that would be?" the Princess finally asked.
"That I love him," the chemicals softly responded. "I love him like the sibling he lost, like the parents who birthed him. It's a poor child who decides to kill his family. I met one of those recently. And even without my having a name, not being quite sure who or what I am... I know that's not me. I love Jack, and I exist so he can live. Not merely survive, Princess, although that's hard enough in that city. Perhaps one day, if we win... he'll live. If I can dream of anything, then I'll dream of that. And so we go on. No more CDA backing us? No more jewels? Then someone still needs to be in the fight -- and we now know more about where those fights will be, since I have a friend remotely monitoring the pulls from the grid, until the generators come in. Someone needs to watch out for your little ponies from our side of the Barrier. And so that will be us, for as long as we can."
"Without payment," the alicorn eventually managed. "Without anypony else knowing about your service or acknowledging what you have done."
A simple "Yes."
"That," Luna declared, "is madness."
"Yes," the chemicals agreed from its place in the shadows. "Or heroism." Gas began to billow outwards. "I understand the two are often confused for each other..."
It vanished. The laughter remained.
He was still favoring the impacted leg. It made him move in unnatural ways, and he'd reached the point of asking Ozzie for the loan of a cane. The bemused teen had pointed out the need to fit such things to the user's height, reminded Jack of the difference between them and then, as it was a rainy day, offered an umbrella.
Jack was staggering down the school's hallway more than walking, and so he truly didn't notice when he went into the little blonde.
"HEY!"
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't see you, I -- I'm --"
"-- you," the angry (and somewhat nasal) voice declared, "are on top of me."
He desperately rolled right, and nearly went into two of the students who'd stopped to applaud.
"Let me get your books," he offered, trying to recover in any way he could when scrambling to his feet with a bum leg just wasn't working right now. "I'll just --"
"-- you've done enough. I've seen what you used to do to people, just another stupid athlete who thinks being able to do one thing is a license to bully --"
" -- I'm not an athlete any more."
The bluest eyes in the world looked at him through overly-round lenses. One slim hand went up behind her head, patted a few stray hairs back into the bun.
"Seriously?" asked the cutely nasal voice, which had never been heard cheering at any game.
"Not since the championship. I gave it up."
She looked at him across a tiny distance and endless seconds, as the crowd flowed around them.
"I heard what happened," she softly admitted.
Everyone had, and so Jack waited.
"I'm... sorry." And much more quickly, "But it doesn't give you the right to bully --"
"-- I gave that up too."
And now she seemed to be looking inside him.
"Why?"
"Because it was stupid."
She picked up her own books, straightened to her full lack of height.
"How are you going to get into college without basketball?"
"I think I've got other plans."
She shrugged. "I'm going for Psych." Watched him stand up, as Jack used a nearby locker for a brace. "What happened to your leg?"
His brain felt slow. Sluggish. As stupid as she probably found him to be. "Other plans."
"Right," she decided, tone dubious. Turned away, and began to head for a classroom door. "Later, Napier."
She...
She knows my name.
"Later, Quinzel."
She glanced back at him. The bun bobbed.
"Harleen," she said, and quickly closed the door behind her.
Eventually, Jack reached his own class, about two minutes late. The leg was still healing, and that had a way of slowing him down. But the dreams... those had brought him down to a crawl.
It was too dangerous now. It might be like that for a long time. He couldn't risk it.
But a long time didn't have to be forever.
The chemicals crouched high in the rafters of the newest warehouse, watching the activity below. It was staying out of the moonlight which streamed through the just-closed skylight on its left, and almost wished it didn't have to. The chemicals felt that just the right pose, against a backdrop of moonlight, would be rather dramatic. And also get it shot several dozen times, which seemed to defeat most of the purpose.
It kept looking at the men shifting around on the floor level. Watching to see if that highest level of competition was going to arrive: a chance to not only potentially fix everything, but find out how good it truly was --
-- now isn't that an odd thought. I wonder where that one came from?
Well, it didn't look as if it was going to happen tonight. Just a routine operation to shut down, and some unusual medical expenses to run up. And so white fingers reached into a purple pocket, extracted a deck, opened the lid and took out --
-- it looked at the near-mirror image in the center, for there was time in which to do so. Even in a life which was borrowed, using hours which had to be paid back, there was time for the little things.
The chemicals looked at the card which wasn't normally supposed to be in play. The random element. The thing which, under just the right circumstances, could turn the weakest hand in the world into a winner.
