> Night in Crystal City
>  by False Door
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> The Pendulum
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It’s true what they say: hate keeps you alive. Don’t call it a revolution. The word sounds so grandiose and lofty and coordinated like a thousand piece machine working in slick unity to bring about communal change. A team with a dream of something better and a real shot to make it happen. Let’s not put on airs. There is no dream; there is no team, not really. There’s just a corrosive hatred and one half of a stallion, the worst half. Don’t call it a revolution; call it unfinished business.
Plenty of opportunity to plot down here in the dark. Mindless work with only the ca-chink of your pickaxe and the occasional dick-waving threat from a guard to interrupt your thoughts. It’s a far cry from my former life to say the least. Out of all those who survived the takeover, I’m comfortable in saying no one lost more than I. I’d give anything to be hosting some insipid gala right now. Sitting on that cold-ass throne, joyless plastic smile on my face as I waved to some greasy bloated diplomat from who cares. But my daughter is on my lap and my wife is sitting next to me with an ass just as cold and sore as mine. I never appreciated how boringly charmed it all was. Captain of the Canterlot Guard to Prince of the Crystal Empire. I married an alicorn… Now I’m nobody. I too died that day but somehow my heart still beats.
I scooped up a pile of rubble with my magic and loaded it in the waiting minecart for a dead inside earth pony to whisk away. Then I eagerly checked my watch.
"Quitin' time," shouted a voice from up the tunnel.
"Quitin' time," I shouted to relay the message. I exhaled in relief and began trudging up the trail of glowing blue lanterns out of my wing of the crystal mine. Once out in the smog filtered sunset, I turned in my pickaxe and helmet and made for the dirt road back to town as I always did.
"Hey, Moon," called Crystaleen from near the equipment shack.
I turned to look. It finally felt natural. Even I knew me as New Moon now. Why New Moon? Because a black circle is an easy thing to paint over my shield cutie mark for the rest of my life. That’s it. That was the governing principle for establishing my alias. If nothing else, I'm pragmatic.
"Wanna go a few rounds of poker with us?" asked the unicorn mare.
I had time and no excuse. "I guess," I shrugged, trying not to sound too apathetic and off-putting.  







It was the same watering hole all the miners seemed to go to, all of them but me. I preferred the one near my apartment; they serve room temperature horn polish remover but the glasses are clean and they actually replace their windows when they get broken. 
My eye twitched when I recognized the off duty guard at the table yucking it up with one of the other players under a blanket of haze. Crystal City was infested with them. Most, I think, were of the mind controlled variety, identifiable by the green glint in the eyes. This one looked clean which made her a volunteer, my least favorite kind of guard. Who invited her?
There probably had to be a designated snitch or the gathering would violate some sort of size ordinance. Any place you go, a bar, a store, your workplace, there's always at least one within earshot. If not a guard, an informant. If not an informant, a blanket of fear and paranoia that keeps your lips sealed and your forehooves tied. I hadn't done much traveling since Sombra clinched control of Equestria but I had to imagine it wasn't too different in all the big cities even with Crystal City being the seat of power.
I didn't care to keep company with this kind of trash but it was probably in my best interest to just grin and bear it rather than back out abruptly and get put on a dissident watchlist or something.
I took a seat wearing my funeral face and anted up. Seven players. It looked like the dealer was shuffling two full decks in the air. I floated my cards to me as they came. Then I made a hoof of two pair and won the first round.
Sand Cast took a generous swig of his rotgut and winced. "So, New Moon, I never see you around here after work. You haven't always worked the mines, have you?"
"No," I replied absently, rearranging my cards.
"What did you do before they conscripted you?"
"Cook in the hospital canteen," I answered, brushing a scraggly black lock of mane from my eye.
"Oh, okay," he nodded. "I worked at the foundry. Don't know why they didn't just keep me there. It's still operating. Seems like half the city swings a pickaxe now." 
I lost six bits to Crystaleen's straight but after several more rounds, I was still above water with a gain of twelve.
"Found a real big one today," mused Crystaleen, ditching two cards. "One of those spiral shaped ones. Big as my head."
"I've been working in the mine since the overthrow and I still haven't found a damn fossil in there," complained Sand Cast.
"Seriously? I find them at least once a week. It's 'cuz you're working in a lower level than me."
Sand scratched his head. "But there should still be fossils where I am, just like… little ones, right? That's how the fossil record works. The deeper you go, the older the stuff is."
"That means if we put in one more vertical shaft we might find my parents," muttered the grizzled Chip, tossing a bit in the pot.
Sand Cast giggled. "Chip's probably old enough to remember Sombra's first reign. Is this whole thing like a nostalgia trip for you? The good old days?"
Crystaleen looked up from her cards and shot him a scornful, tight-lipped glare, subtly shaking her head.
"No," grumbled Chip. "It's not like a hell of a lot has changed one way or the other. I worked in the mines before; I work in the mines now. Life's really only different for the troublemakers."
The rest of the table fell uncomfortably silent. No one wanted to have a real discussion about this while under surveillance. My whole body tensed and I bit my lip harder and harder until I was all but certain that I would be feeling warm blood drops pattering on my lap. I wanted to make this guy eat his own teeth, metallic flavored gravel but if I did that I'd probably have to make the guard eat her teeth too and if I did that, it would be a whole thing and I could probably kiss all my big plans goodbye. It was getting harder to remember a time where my mind wasn't continuously occupied with violent fantasies and easier to believe that Shining Armor was just some nice guy I used to know.
"I fold," I muttered, pushing my cards away before standing up. "Have to go anyway. Got a date."







Some composite of snow and ash fell silently from the murky night sky as I trudged closer to the agreed upon location.
Three dead ponies swayed gently from creaking ropes at a gallows on the corner. Their heads were bagged and a sign above them read 'traitors.' I didn't pick the venue, my date did. Either he thought this was a safe place or… it was a setup. I thought everything was a setup at least once before actually participating in it. You can see why it's so difficult to connect and organize in a world like this. This was the most recklessly trusting thing I'd done since outing myself to Pinkie Pie.
I put my back to the wall at the mouth of an alley and lit up a cigarette. My eyes jittered across the vacant square, scanning for threats or my contact. I did not want to be out here any longer than necessary, especially at night. It was going to be curfew in less than an hour.
I looked back at my trio of deaf and blind witnesses. I'm still not completely clear on what gets you mind control and what gets you executed. I think Sombra knows that breaking ponies into submission is far more gratifying than just assuming total control. What he did to Rainbow Dash was enough to get the remaining Mane Six to voluntarily disband and send shivers down the spine of anyone who heard her name ever after.
I crushed the cigarette into the snow under my hoof and immediately lit another one. I couldn't help it when I was this nervous. I sighed smoke and looked up from the red ember to see two pegasai guards on the ground, zeroing in on me from. My heart began to race. Fuck, it was a setup. I knew it.
"Hey, you," called the pegasus mare gruffly. "No loitering."
I grinned stupidly at her and shrugged. "I'm not loitering; I'm smoking."
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. "Get moving, smart ass. There's more room on that scaffold."
I skulked away apologetically and went to the other end of the square like I was walking home. I cast one look back before vanishing around the corner to see that they were now loitering in my spot. Well, now what? Frustrated but on edge, I began scanning the neighborhood for a hopeful fallback solution when I slammed into someone.
"Oh, shit," I gasped in terror, letting the cigarette fly from my mouth.
"Here it is," hissed the stallion, holding up a cloaked tome to me. "Got the money?"
"Hold on," I panted, brushing the cloth aside to reveal a dark brown cover with golden embossed details. I feverishly flipped it open with my magic and fluttered through the pages.
"C'mon," he grunted fearfully.
I looked up and down the street and then stopped on a page with the word 'Diamond Cutter.' This was it.
"Okay, here." I passed him my entire satchel not wanting to prolong the meeting and risk another run-in, now with contraband.
He peeked inside to check the bits but I was already in the process of turning away.
"Sunburst sends his regards," murmured the stallion.
"What?" I spun around to look back but he was already gone. What the hell did he mean by that? Sunburst shouldn't know I'm alive and no one should assume that I know him personally… It was probably just a joke. The book was from the old empire library which meant either he stole it from under Sunburst's nose or Sunburst is getting a cut from the deal not knowing or caring who gets it. No… he knows what's in this book. He wouldn't just let anyone have it, would he? Whatever. I could be paranoid about it later. I needed to get off the streets. I wrapped my jaws around the concealed book and trotted away.







If you've seen one underclass apartment, you've seen them all, a torn folder in a rusty filing cabinet for haggard thralls and miscreants. If you're lucky, you get one less damaged by the dark crystal growth of the siege. Mine does have a nice view of my old place though. The glowing tower at the center of the city where my family and army were slaughtered was framed picturesquely by my dirty little window. As if I needed a reminder. 
Over two years since I was first alone but if I'm not careful, it starts to feel like it all happened yesterday. I have no grave to cry on because they were never buried. I don’t even know if there was anything left to bury. Over two years and I still felt anxious in bed without Cadance. Over two years and I still found myself sitting bolt upright, thinking I needed to check on Flurry Heart because I hadn't heard her all night. The irony was that if she were still here, she'd probably be sleeping through the night by now. It was like I was lost in that moment of rending separation forever.
I didn't glower out the portal at the perverted golden playground for rich sycophants tonight; I had the next building block of my plan to distract me. I cracked open the book and went straight to the spell that I was placing my bets on. 
"Diamond cutter," I muttered. "A practical spell for cutting almost anything." But not a very easy one, I thought scanning over the sizable mental incantation. I needed to learn this. What good was a shield without a sword? Those were the what if words that haunted every free moment in my brain. I could have saved them. I could have protected Equestria had I not been inadequate.
I closed the blinds and fished an empty milk carton out of the trash, setting it on my little dining table. Since recovering from the fight with Sombra, I'd been training myself in magical agility, stamina and multitasking in hopes of one day being able to go hoof to hoof, if it came to that, with a monster that could kill alicorns. The vast majority of my regimen takes place where nopony can see, either alone in my room or in my own dim corner of the mine. Why? Because if they think you can do any more with your horn than lift rocks and light your way, you're going to be in trouble. 
My above average magical abilities require a continued ruse in where I act like a sniveling little candyass toward officials who I could easily reduce to a red smear on the ceiling. Granted it had been a while since I'd been in a real fight but I'd only gotten more powerful since.
I sat at the table and carefully read the instructions again, whispering the words to myself. I couldn't remember the last time I learned a spell from a book, probably junior year in college. As much as I like to brag about my magical prowess, my sister could likely sight-read this and have it mastered in five minutes… wherever she was.
I looked up at the milk carton with determination in my eyes. My horn glowed as I imagined the angle of attack. An ethereal crescent blade materialized in the air, hovering there momentarily before striking the carton like a little blue shooting star. The milk carton flew from the table and hit the wall as if I'd swatted it with my hoof.
Picking up the target with my magic, I examined the side. There was a little slice through the material a bit smaller than the diameter of a hoof My razor apparition only went through one side of the container before losing its sharpness but not its force. 
I reset the carton on the table and did it again, yielding the same results. I did it again and again, each time cutting only one side and then knocking it to the floor. I kept doing it perhaps a dozen or more times until I finally jostled the carton without knocking it down. The front was now sliced to ribbons. I spun the target around, noting that there was one cut through the back. 
All the way through.
I set it back down and then noticed the tabletop. "Oh, shit," I mumbled, scratching my hoof over a little score mark I'd left in the wood. Hardly a diamond cutter but it was huge progress in an otherwise stalled plot. One large step closer to retribution… or reunion.
I popped out the loose panel in my wall by the kitchen and stuffed the new book inside atop my revenge planner, a collection of news clippings, floorplans, spells, tactics, photos, some of which were old postcards and other reconnaissance.
I prefer the more dignified conspiracy journal over the lunatic full wall display. Though not as flashy, it's portable and easier to hide. Also I feel like if you do a full wall, you also have to rig your room with explosives and I don't want to blow myself up prematurely while trying to get cheese from the icebox at three AM.
I replaced the panel snugly and glanced at my watch. Ten minutes till curfew. If I hurried, I could still get some action.
> Thanks for the Muffin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I opened my eyes to Gummy the alligator laying on my chest staring vacantly into me. I yawned and lazily scratched his head with one hoof as though it were a normal occurrence… because it was. He slowly closed his eyes as if he were falling asleep or entering some catatonic ecstasy. The scent of fresh baked something filled my muzzle and for a brief waking moment, things actually felt nice.
Gummy's eyes shot back open as we violently jostled with Pinkie Pie's sudden arrival on the mattress.
"Morning, Shiny," she chimed, sitting beside me. “I made banana nut muffins if you want." She held a still warm muffin tin sideways in front of my vision like she was proudly showing me a drawing she made. It looked like she'd already eaten three of them.
She popped two more out and placed them unceremoniously on my chest. Gummy slothfully clamped his jaws around his muffin, crushing it into a pile of crumbs on my fur. Feeling obliged, I more daintily attacked mine, trying to minimize the mess. It was pretty good for being 'baked' with a hotplate.
Some things aren’t awful. I still have my horn and I have close ties to the only hooker in Crystal City that comes with a continental breakfast. I'm so spoiled, I thought drolly, my eyes following the ceiling cracks of Pinkie's rundown apartment. For the moment I’m like a royal again, but the tacky slob kind that lays on a triclinium eating grapes and getting fawned over by mares… while an alligator eats a muffin on them.
"We're getting crumbs in your bed," I warned.
“Whatever,” she mumbled, cramming another muffin in her mouth. “I hafta change the sheets a lot anyway.” Her eyes shifted suspiciously from side to side. “Well… I don’t have to.”
I paused to stare glassy eyed at her.
“But I always do it if I think you’re coming,” she laughed nervously.
Pinkie is the only pony who knows I'm alive and in hiding and if this were the same Pinkie from three years ago, you'd probably think that's a huge liability for me but out of necessity everyone’s learned how to shut up about things… even Pinkie.
One day I went downtown looking for a mare and I saw her there on the corner. I couldn't believe it. She didn’t recognize me. I’d been so isolated. Seeing her was like seeing land after being lost at sea. I gravitated to her immediately out of some desperate need for familiarity and safety. 
I didn't tell her who I was until… afterwards and I still kind of feel bad about it. Every instinct inside me told me that telling her at all was a bad idea and that it was dangerous for both of us but hiding from her like that just felt wrong. That conversation was a little weird to say the least, standing at the intersection of acquaintance, client and confidante. I'm her biggest regular now and I still can't decide if treating her like this is wrong or permissible under the circumstances. Can you be a good friend to someone you pay for sex? Neither of us wants things to be like this but it's the best we can do.
Pinkie reminds me of how things used to be while at the same time reminding me of everything that was taken from us. In a sense she’s the only thing tethering me to my past life and the only time I don’t have nightmares is when I sleep in her bed.
Pinkie lost her job when Sugar Cube Corner went under after the takeover and the Cakes fled Ponyville. She went back to her family’s rock farm only to find that it had been seized by the state and her family had been relocated. Where? I think a work camp but they refused to tell her. She got travel papers to come to Crystal City and work in the mines but when she got here, they told her there were no more positions open, which is almost certainly a lie. Stuck in limbo, unable to find other work in the city or leave because the state won’t grant her new papers, she had to do something. The whole thing reeks of a soft vendetta plot to me. They know who she used to be. They boxed her in until she only had one choice.
"It sounds like they're planning on having a costume ball," put Pinkie offhoofedly.
"At the tower? I'm sure that was Rarity's idea," I growled under my breath. On occasion, Pinkie picked up significant Intel from a hooful of guards and inner circle clients. She shared whatever she thought might be interesting or useful to me. This one just pissed me off.
Pinkie's face fell. "Don't be angry at Rarity. She's just doing what she thinks is best for Sweetie Belle. I probably would have done the same thing in her position. We're all just… doing what we have to." She gazed into the muffin tin, lost in thought.
How could I not be angry at Rarity? She was sitting in my wife's seat next to the guy who killed her. Just thinking about Rarity made me physically ill.
"I know she can't really be any happier than the rest of us," added Pinkie. She lifted Gummy off of me who had finished his muffin to the best of his ability. I floated the aftermath to the trash before sitting up and wondered if every client was subjected to casual Pinkie antics like this or if it was just me because she knew I didn't mind.
"Gotta go hit rocks," I sighed, getting to the floor, lamenting what today could have been if it was a weekend, if such things still existed. I floated a stack of bits to Pinkie's bedside stand. 
She eyed the money and shook her head. "Keep it this time."
I stopped and turned back to her in disbelief. "What? You need to eat, Pinkie," I argued.
"I am eating," she mumbled with a mouth full of wet crumbs.
"You know what I mean," I groaned.
There was a flicker of sadness in her eyes. "Just take me to dinner next time, somewhere nice and we'll call it even."
"Somewhere nice," I scoffed. "If there's anything nice left it's not for ponies like us." 
She hoofed the money back to me and I reluctantly took it. "Fine," I breathed before plodding to the door. “Thanks for the muffin.
"See you tonight," she half joked.
I laughed weakly. Anything was possible but I really needed to cut back. I couldn't afford this many visits but even so as I walked out the door, I teleported the money back to Pinkie's nightstand.
> Look Away
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I refreshed my memory with the spell book while eating my simple breakfast. Then I headed off to the mines, joining the march of beleaguered faceless workers on the way out of the city.
I got my pickaxe and hardhat and reported to my finger of the mine, my own little endless project where I moved the wall and the minecart tracks got longer behind me. But alone in the dark was just where I wanted to be.
I took one swing at the wall using my magic and glanced back over my withers. As usual, nopony there. I'd forged a valuable reputation of quiet subservience. A pony who worked his job, spoke very little, never complained or acted out and thus I required minimal supervision. Underling of the year.
I shot a magical blade at the wall which dispersed in a blink on impact. I lit up my horn to add to the lantern light and squinted at the rock wall. There was a noticeable scratch in the stone. I just needed to keep practicing.
"Make with the digging, Moon," growled an unseen guard from up the tunnel. He'd noticed the silence from my corner. C'mon, I just barely got here, I thought.
I obliged him and began waving my pickaxe at the wall. I worked earnestly for a couple more minutes, building up a pile of rubble in front of me. I looked behind once more to make sure I was still alone and then began shooting blades at the wall one after another right at the spot I was mining.
As I began building up the neural pathways in my brain, the cuts in the wall became deeper and deeper. Eventually it appeared that I'd reached the threshold of practicality. I floated a hoof sized rock into the air and attacked it with my ethereal razor. It cleaved in two like an orange in a guillotine. I grinned at the halves before letting them drop to the floor. What a satisfying result.
I checked my six again and continued experimenting. I sliced rocks in two as I floated them in the air. I tossed rocks in the air and sliced them in two before they hit the ground. It was so slick and effective… and addictive. I battered the wall with a continuous staccato of blades while simultaneously chipping with the pickaxe. Not that I cared but I bet this made me a more efficient worker, the magic softening up the stone for the pick. I began altering the blades, making them slightly larger than their somewhat diminutive default size.
Suddenly on my backswing, I heard a metallic clang. I looked down on the floor and saw the tip of my pick under the glow of my horn. I levitated the tool I was still wielding, up to my face to see that one end had been sheared clean off about half way up. Oops. This spell was legit though. If it was enough for rocks and iron, it was enough for flesh and bone.
I had to stop now and go through equipment protocol or I'd be in trouble. I took the busted tool and plodded back to where my tunnel joined the main branch of the level. I was immediately accosted by a mind controlled earth pony guard.
"What's the deal?" he grunted.
"My pickaxe broke." I levitated it in between us.
He intercepted the tool with his hooves and looked it over closely. The 'break' looked oddly clean, almost as if I had smoothed it down flat with a grinding wheel. His eyes flicked up at me. "Got another end doesn't it?" he argued.
I shrugged. "Just reporting it. It is weaker and off balance now though."
"Come with me," he grumbled.
I followed the stallion up the tracks of the main tunnel through a constellation of miners to the central elevator shaft. The slatted door clattered as he rolled it to the side. We got on and the lift screeched upward toward the surface. As we reached the very next level, the car unexpectedly lurched to a halt. I heard a heated exchange and then the door rolled open. Sand Cast, without his hard hat, stumbled inside from an apparent shove. He crashed into the back wall and collapsed. He had a magic inhibitor locked around his head and the base of his horn. 
Two unicorn guards entered, one of which immediately sprang on Sand, stomping and pummeling him in the corner while the other shut the door again and hit the up button. My companion did not flinch or even acknowledge their presence.
I kept facing ahead at the scrolling rock face but tried to look out of the corner of my eyes as Sand groaned and cried for mercy amid meaty thuds and cracks. The freight elevator was slow but this was unsurprisingly the longest ride I’d ever experienced on it.
"Enough,” chided the other guard, flipping closed a floating lighter and exhaling smoke. “You're making a mess and he needs to have enough brains left for questioning."
Now quivering limp on his side, Sand’s speech slurred as he drooled blood on the floor. "Please, I didn't do anything. I can't leave my kids."
The first guard kicked him again in the rib, planted a hoof on his neck and pushed. “Save it for the White Caps.”
Sand continued to cry and sputter wetly as the guard pressed him into the metal floor
I knew this guy from back in Canterlot; Thornwick was his name. His weird burgundy coat makes him easily recognizable. He's also a complete psycho and that’s exactly why he keeps becoming a guard. I had him fired and court martialed for doing this exact same shit under my command. Of course he hated me for it, Shining Armor, that is. My worst fear was that he might somehow recognize me if I let him look at me long enough. Needless to say, I made a point to stay the hell out of his path.
There was no way I could abide by his actions as his commanding officer but I had a solid case for doing absolutely nothing about it at this moment. I could save Sand Cast for now. I could fight the lot of them and win before we reached the surface but then what? My identity would be burned and we'd both be on the run and how would that ultimately help Sand’s family anyway?
Even though I could soundly rationalize my inaction, I couldn't remember a time in my life where I'd been more ashamed of myself. I never would have stood by and let this happen before and yet I was too afraid to even look back and spare him a piteous look.
Blinding sunlight pierced through the slats of the door and the smoking mare pushed it open. Sand Cast coughed and gagged. I stepped out of the lift, feigning callous disinterest in the senseless brutality while guilt and sadness were eating away at my insides.
I went with my guard to the equipment shed and he passed the broken tool to the equipment monger who further scrutinized it before filling out a small report. Then I got a new old pickaxe and we returned to the elevator.
A trail of crimson drips now dotted the dirty snow outside the doors and inside were hoofprints and a pool of blood which no one had dealt with yet. Even if it got cleaned up, I'd still see it every day but what’s one more intrusive thought? I knew I'd be reminded of this moment, this lapse of integrity, every time I used the elevator and I'd have the same awful tug of war in my head where Shining Armor always lets go of the rope.
> When You're Drowning
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found myself at her door again just like I told myself I wouldn't, at least not until next payday. It wasn't like she had a schedule set in stone but her placard was down which basically meant she was 'off.' She always made exceptions for me though.
I knocked respectfully but the door swung open before I could even finish as if Pinkie had been standing there with her hoof on the handle.
"Look who's back," she grinned. She leaned against the door frame, casually blocking its entirety, her smile widening in anticipation. "So, where you taking me?"
At first I was confused. Panicking that I was failing to meet some important expectation, I began parsing through her words and recalling recent conversations to piece together the message I'd missed. Then it hit me. Oh, shit. I forgot she wanted me to take her to dinner. I guess she was serious about that… even though I still paid her last time.
She waited expectantly for my reply, her expression never faltering but instead waxing, bordering on manic. I wouldn't dare to disappoint her.
"It's a surprise," I smiled. That should buy me some time to think, though it kind of raises the bar.
Pinkie leaned in close, her saucer eyes drilling into mine at just past the tip of my muzzle. "I love surprises!" she shrieked.
"I thought so," I nodded measuredly.
She closed her door and bounced over next to me. We walked down the stairs and I wracked my brain to come up with a serviceable eating venue for a couple of underclass ponies in Crystal City.
Cadance and I used to go to this one park sometimes when we just wanted to get out of the tower for an hour. It overlooks the train yard at one end and It used to have all these little restaurants and bistros in it. I knew, like everything else, that it was a shadow of its former self but I took Pinkie there.
To my dismay, much of the park land looked like it was in the process of being developed into warehouses and roughly eighty percent of the restaurants were closed or demolished for new industrial construction. We ended up at some greasy spoon that mostly saw warehouse and train yard workers.
"I'm sorry,” I groaned as we walked with our orders to a nearby bench lining the park path. “It's even worse than the last time I was here. This is like a junior high date. We went to a hole in the wall burger place and can't stay out past curfew. The only thing missing is an annoying chaperone… Oh, wait, there he is." I cocked my head toward the guard posted at the corner near a rash of dark crystals.
"You're right," Pinkie giggled, opening her takeout bag. "But don't be sad. I wasn't expecting you to sneak us into the Platinum Sector or anything. It's the best we can do with what we have and it's just nice to do something like this sometimes, don't you think?"
"You're right," I agreed. "I can't even remember the last time I tried to have wholesome platonic fun with somepony." I took a bite of my levitating hay burger and gazed down into the train yard. We sat before a railing at an abrupt edge where a dozen parallel train tracks went through an array of tunnels burrowing through the earth just beneath us.
I looked back at Pinkie. She wasn't wolfing down her food as she usually did. Instead she took modest bites with long pauses in between. For a moment I was worried because it was so unlike her but then I realized she was just pacing herself to my speed to help make the outing last. She gazed wistfully at the burger in her hooves and then spoke absently in a low voice.
“I don’t know how it was for you but back then I used to do stuff like this all the time with friends. It wasn’t like it wasn’t special but I guess I just… took it for granted at the time. Now it’s pretty amazing if I can do something like this. It’s really hard to make friends here, even for me. I mean, I have all the other girls on the corner but that’s about it. Everyone else is scary or angry. Real smiles don't come easy like they used to.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “I know exactly what you mean.” 
Suddenly there came a loud crash sounding like nearby thunder.
Startled, the two of us jerked, looking back to the train yard.
"What was that?" asked Pinkie, wide-eyed.
"Oh, they're just coupling the cars," I explained, tossing a fry in my mouth.
"Wow, that's loud," she smiled.
In turn I smiled weakly at her reaction. We slowly finished our meal to the sound of intermittent thunderous booms I could almost feel in the air.
After finishing, we promptly slid off of the bench and meandered away, not wanting to risk harassment.
Pinkie playfully nudged her side into mine, making me wobble off balance. "Thanks, Moony; that was fun. Now what?"







Pinkie sighed with finality and collapsed on top of me, nuzzling into the space under my chin, her hot rhythmic breath tickling my chest. I kept my hooves glued to her robust earth pony flanks as our bodies heaved slowly together.
"How much do I owe you?" she panted.
"You're funny," I droned, getting lost in the ceiling cracks again and melting into a post release stupor. "You did most of the work."
"Doesn't mean I didn't have more fun," she mumbled. She lazily swung her foreleg over the side of the bed and tapped her hoof on the floor to summon her alligator. "Here, Gummy. You can peek now." She flipped off his little blindfold and settled back into my chest.
I blew air into her poofy pink mane, making it ripple and then floated a stack of bits from my satchel on the table.
"Shining, no," Pinkie cried, suddenly grabbing my horn. The bits clattered to the floor as I lost concentration and was forced to look her in the eyes. A tear streamed down her cheek and dripped silently into the fur of my chest. 
"Don't you get it? I don't want you to pay me anymore. I just… want you to be with me. I just want one nice thing in my life that's not weird or gross or dangerous."
"What do you mean?" I offered, feebly trying to stave off the conversation I knew was coming.
Pinkie shook her head doubtfully at my ploy. "Maybe you don't know this but I don't let anyone else pay afterwords or run a tab. I don't let anyone else stay the night. I don't make breakfast for anyone else. You can't tell me you don't feel the same, that you're only here for the lay. Why did you stop seeing other girls? How come I see you twice as much as anypony else? You're probably going broke coming over here as much as you do. How come you care what I think? How come you care if I get off?"
I placed a hoof over her mouth and stared fearfully into her. I felt cornered. Keeping our relationship transactional was my foolhardy attempt to stay emotionally detached from her. I was terrified to love again in a world like this but at the same time I needed it now more than ever. Living empty and spiteful the way that I had was poison.
Her words prompted me to ask the same question I'd been asking myself for weeks.
"Pinkie, do we actually like each other or are we just drowning and the only thing we have to hold onto is each other?"
I slowly withdrew my hoof and allowed her to continue but she paused, thinking carefully on my words. "Does it matter? Why wouldn't you just hold on now and ask that question again someday when we're not drowning?"
I didn't know what to make of her undying hope and I had no idea if a day like that would ever come but she was right about one thing: when you're drowning, you don't think about tomorrow.
I closed my eyes and wrapped my forelegs around her, clutching her head to my chest and then running my hoof slowly through her mane, worried and relieved, elated and sick.
Pinkie sighed dreamily as she drifted off to sleep. "You're my most biggest project, Shiny," she mumbled. "One day I'll make you laugh again; stick a cupcake… in my eye."
> The Tackle Box
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tiny claws on my chest woke me up. Gummy was waiting there as usual for his morning scratches. I yawned and ran my hoof down the ridges of his back to the tip of his tail.
"Shining," blurted Pinkie in my ear, making me flinch. "I learned something important yesterday but I didn't bring it up because there wasn't a good or… safe time but they're looking for Twilight again."
My eyes bulged and I shot up, grabbing Gummy so he wouldn't fall. "Where?"
A teapot sitting on the hotplate began to whistle but Pinkie seemed indifferent, leaning over the bed, her head propped up on her hooves and her ass swaying like a metronome behind her.
"They're combing the Everfree Forest," she answered.
My heart leapt. "They wouldn't be doing that unless they got a hot tip or… or there was a sighting."
"Yeah," agreed Pinkie, with modest excitement.
I rubbed my face in sudden concern. "What if she's in danger now?" I mumbled.
I never really doubted that Twilight was still alive and free. If Sombra ever got her, the whole empire would be informed. As far as anyone knew, she was the only one left out there that still posed any threat to his rule. If she was brought down, it would quash the last bit of morale any of us had which is a good move if you're Sombra.
"I really need to connect with her," I muttered. "But I can't just leave." 
I'd never get travel papers to go to Ponyville without a good reason and If I just disappeared from my job and my apartment to go stowaway on a train, I'd be branded a defector and there'd be no getting back into the relative security and freedom of my new old life. I'd be tossing my hiding spot and privileges out the window.
I'd love to see her again, to tell her I'm not dead, to have her insight and her support… Plot revenge with her. But it was such a costly risk.
Pinkie's face fell at seeing my wrinkled forehead. "You're not gonna leave."
"No," I breathed, cradling Gummy in my arms like a newborn foal.
"I don't know if I would either," she sighed. "And I want to see my family more than anything. I'd understand but I still don't want you to go because I might never see you again."
That was another unfortunate possibility, I nodded to myself. 
"If I left Crystal City, it would probably be because it's the only move I have on the board," I assured her.
She stopped swaying and looked despondently into the wadded up bedsheets at the thought. "If you ever do have to go off the grid and you went to Ponyville or Rockville, would you try to find out about my family?"
"Of course," I nodded.
I'd look back on this heart to heart and frame it as some sort of catalyst or bad omen, the way most probably would. It's natural to sift through the debris of a disaster and look for meaning and warnings that we missed.
I believe in fate at my convenience. When it's fake it means I want to pretend to have control over my own destiny. When it's real, I want to absolve myself of responsibility when bad shit happens. At a glance, my life probably looks like a product of fate, but if you look closer, you'll find that it's just a small constellation of bad choices, the very kind I'd like to absolve myself of.
The next couple of days were… fine. I trained in the mines and at home. I went to Pinkie's apartment without the expectation of paying money or even getting sex but the latter still happened. She was right about this. It felt normal and healing.
One night I showed up late at Pinkie's just before curfew. She opened the door and smiled weakly at me, a dark blotch on her cheek.
"What happened?" I asked with worry, walking into her apartment.
She looked away. "Uh, nothing. You mean my bruise? Well I just tripped and fell down the stairs."
"Let me see." I tilted her face back toward mine with a hoof on her chin but her eyes darted away, trying to hide.
"It's fine," she murmured. "It looks worse than it is."
"It's in the shape of a hoof, Pinkie," I growled. "Someone hit you, didn't they?"
She mashed her quivering lips together and turned away on the verge of tears. "No. I just fell."
"You're lying," I accused. "You have a shoe print on your face. Who hit you? You don't have a pimp, do you?"
"No," she shook her head. "It… it was just… an angry client."
Two years and twenty megatons of repressed rage flooded my veins at once and highjacked my brain. That was the moment I was done biding my time in the shadows. I couldn't do it anymore, not this time. I needed to hurt whoever did this. I didn't need the story. Who hits somepony who's already being victimized and only ever wanted to make others smile?
"Who was it?" I demanded, scratching my hoof slowly across the floor.
"I don't know," she wilted. "Some red unicorn… Thorn something."
My eyes narrowed. "Thornwick?" The name felt like worms in my mouth. "Got it," I turned, heading back to her door, quietly seething, pressure building in my face.
"Wait, Shining," she pleaded, pulling my tail. "Please! It's not a big deal… You don't understand."
"I understand that he needs to be taught a lesson," I snapped
"But he's a guard," she countered fearfully.
"I know exactly who he is and you don’t have to worry about him anymore," I tried to put in a level tone but came off as ominous. I closed the door behind me, leaving her fretting alone about whatever it was I was doing.
Thornwick was going to get his face smashed in tonight. That much I knew for certain. It was the details of covering my ass from the fallout that I needed to nail down before I got to him. Blame couldn't fall back on me or Pinkie. If he experienced a seemingly random act of violence, he would likely perceive it as retaliation for something. Luckily the list of ponies with a motive to assault him was not short.
Having been in the business of avoiding Thornwick, I more or less knew where he worked, where he hung out and what his routine was. There were a couple of state run bars that stayed open past curfew to cater to soldiers, and government employees and he frequented the one nearest the mines.
Walking quickly by the glowing tavern, I could see that the crowd was thin tonight but he was there at a table in the window with a group. I passed into the shadows and around the corner where I teleported away to the roof across the street. It was five stories high and gave me an eagle eye view of the front door of the bar. Now all I had to do was wait.
I watched the skies as much as I watched the streets. Winged patrols were always out through the night looking for stragglers and miscreants like me. Thankfully my coat was white and the roof was snowcapped and as the night wore on, it even began to snow more. I couldn't have asked for better cover.
I knew it was serious now because I'd spent over an hour up there and failed to talk myself out of it. At a little after eleven, the doors of the bar opened and Thornwick left in a small group including an earth pony and a pegasus, neither of which appeared to be guards or combatants. I glared down at them, grinding my teeth. I really needed him alone for this to work out best. I didn't know where he lived but I could follow him home. No, that would look targeted. This was going to be an opportunistic mugging in the street. I teleported three roofs down and watched the group pass below. Then I did it again and again, staying on the high roofs. Occasionally they'd cross a patrol, making things more complicated but finally Thornwick broke off from the group. I tailed him like a lion on a sick gazelle. He turned into an alley away from the streetlights and I knew that this was the moment. I blinked off of the roof, appearing on the ground a few paces behind him.
Without a sound, I sent a single diamond cutter zipping through the air. It clipped through his horn just under the halfway point, sending it toppling down his muzzle and into the snow.
"What?" he yelped in surprise, groping the stump on his head. He looked down at his inert horn laying in the snow and then behind himself, only to be greeted with a blast of filthy snow in his eyes.
"Ahg!" he screamed, shaking his head. "Fuck! I'm gonna kill you!" 
Without his horn or his eyesight, he was about as capable as a meat piñata. I catapulted him into the air with my magic and slammed him into the side of the alley, then the other side, then back again and again like a tennis ball between rackets made of brick. I held him up high and let him drop on the icy cement with a heavy thud and a groan. I hit his face with another glob of soot-infused snow for good measure. He sputtered and shook his head weakly as he struggled to get up but I pinned him down on his side with my aura.
"Help!" he cried, his bravado all but evaporated.
I opened the ugly little tackle box in the back of my brain where I try to keep everything so carefully compartmentalized and tucked away for the appropriate time and place but it all just spilled out in a pile on the ground. This was no longer a premeditated plan to be soundly executed; it was instinctual mayhem like a shark in bloody water. Injustice, cruelty and the denied catharsis that comes from long awaited retribution that could never be great enough. Thornwick was an analog for everyone who had ever wronged me. The one within reach. The appetizer. Tonight he was Sombra, Pinkie was my family and whoever I was, it wasn't Shining Armor. 
I wordlessly stomped a hoof down on the side of his face. He let out a full throated scream as I mercilessly repeated the motion over and over like a machine. His cries and the dull crack of his head between stone and my hoof died in the curtain of white and the sickly gray snow banks around us. I only stopped when he began to cough up loose teeth and blood oozed across the ice from his muzzle like snow cone syrup. I kicked him once in the throat, sending him into a gurgling, choking fit, spraying a mist of more blood. 
Then I hit him in the ribs repeatedly, working my way down to his balls. He didn't know today was his last day at work. He wasn't going to be patrolling the streets ever again and he was not going to have a pretext for visiting Pinkie or any other mare for that matter. He could only whimper and spasm as I hammered him between the hind legs.
I paused, letting him marinade in the pain, probably praying that that would be the last of it but fearfully anticipating more. I suddenly became aware of my own panting and the cold air nipping my ears and the snowflakes caught in my mane. 
One last thing before I go. I eyed the knee of his left hind leg, the one elevated off of the ground. I pounced on it with my full weight on two legs. The alley echoed with a crack and then a hoarse scream that told me there was still plenty of life left in the bastard.
“Hey, stop right there!” shouted an authoritative voice from behind.
Thankfully I retained enough presence of mind to not turn around to look. I just ripped the satchel from Thornwick's neck and teleported down the block. Then once again. I didn't pause until I was back in my room, panting, heart pounding from an indescribably visceral encounter.
I looked wildeyed into the bathroom mirror to see my face pink with fine red speckles. Looking down at my forelegs I saw that they were the messiest and there was blood spattered across the whole front half of me.

Nice work, Shining. Gratuitous violence won't look targeted at all. Now who’s the psycho? I was shocked by what I'd done but at the same time worried that I didn't go further when I easily could have. I wondered why I didn’t just end his life and toss him in a dumpster. True, his suffering was admittedly more satisfying and I’ve never killed anyone off of the battlefield before but it was an act I thought I'd already resolved to commit. I lost it tonight but I still remembered to keep my mouth shut during the process. So did I also stop myself from killing? Maybe I should just call it a dry run but I needed to be certain that once I was finally at that summit, I would be fighting no holds barred.
> Dark Flight
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paranoia got the better of me that night. It was the only thing left in my tank after the adrenaline went. Coming down from administering a well deserved beatdown on a guard was like waking up in a strange bed after a night you don't remember. I was in the obligatory post revelry period where I waited to see if something bad happens now. That's why I was sleeping in the bathtub instead of my bed and the bed was stuffed full of spare pillows to look like me and I had a pack with money, my conspiracy journal and my wedding band clutched to my chest. 
That stallion, whoever he was, saw me. I was sure of it. There was no way of knowing how much he could recall of my description or if that would pan out in an investigation but I couldn't shake the pervasive sinking feeling that I had really… really screwed up. This was the sort of thing I needed another new identity for.
If they came for me, I didn't expect a knock or even a battering ram. They'd teleport silently right into my room, expecting me to be asleep or at least taken by surprise and then clamp an inhibitor on my head. Then they’d go to town on my face for starters. After what I did, there would be no reason to surrender. I would not let them take me alive. Dying in a brawl was unsatisfactory but preferable to what awaited me if I ended up in a cell.
I had a tripwire stretched across my living space and attached to a pyramid of empty ale bottles that would make one hell of a racket if they fell. If I heard that, I was out of here.
Despite the meager comfort of the single blanket lining the cold hard tub, my eyes began to grow heavy. I was semi unconscious when I heard the crash. My eyes shot open and I sat bolt upright. My ears stood at attention for confirmation. I heard a bottle plink and roll across the floor as if someone had kicked it. Then there was angry muttering.
That was my cue to leave. Well, shit. I mean, I did prepare for this possibility but I still couldn't believe how fast they nailed me. Same night, just hours later. I must be number two on the enemy of the state list now.
I cast a teleportation spell, aiming for the roof which I hoped was safe for the moment. The flash from my horn lit up the room and died away but I hadn't moved an inch. Panicking a bit, I rolled out of the tub quietly and touched the wall. It bloomed with a ripple of pink energy that faded away as it expanded across the surface. They warded my apartment. The only way I was getting out of here was on hoof and the only way that was happening was with a fight… or maybe they'd all just shrug and leave?
Before I could begin to weigh what little options I had, the doorknob to the bathroom jiggled and turned. Improv it is… I whirled around and coiled up, bucking the door with everything I had, just as it cracked open. It swung outward, making solid impact with another pony's face. She cried out as the force flung her off of her legs. I burst out of the bathroom and tried to make a hard left turn.
I felt the air smashed out of my lungs with a hard blow as I was blindsided and tackled to the floor. Despite my gasping for oxygen, I rolled and flailed my legs, quickly throwing off my attacker. I staggered first to my hooves and then tossed him backward with my magic into the wall with a crash, knocking down a column of shelves with a cascade of books. I telekinetically flung open my apartment door before barreling into the hall, still gasping.
I turned toward the stairs only to be confronted with a blockade of three more guards. I cast teleport again, really wanting an immediate exit from the situation but the spell fizzled.
I still couldn't teleport. They must have warded the whole building which meant they had someone with significant magical aptitude locking the place down, probably from the outside. This wasn't an early morning posse roundup, it was a serious tactical raid.
I shot a desperate glance behind to see that my prospects weren't any better in the other direction. Suddenly I was pressed to the floor, ensnared in a magic aura. I cried out in pain as a laser glanced off my side.
"Watch the crossfire, idiot," one of them shouted. "Mute him!"
I looked up to see an open inhibitor flying at my face. This time when I tried to teleport, I focused on the hallway. I blinked behind the wall of advancing guards and scampered into the stairwell to the sound of chaotic shouting.
If I could just get out of the building, my chances of escape would increase significantly. I was closer to the roof at this floor and I still held the belief that I'd meet with less resistance up there than on the ground so I teleported upward on the stairs to the roof access. I rammed the door open and saw a single wide-eyed pegasas, the safety unit. He took flight immediately but I grabbed him with my magic and slammed him back down onto the rooftop. Roughly rolling him on his back in the snow, I stretched one of his wings outward and stomped on it near the base as I rocketed past.
I felt the crack more than I heard it. His scream however pierced the black desolate night. One less eye in the sky. I left him quivering in agony and bolted to the edge of the roof, then teleported as far as I could, several blocks away to another roof and warily checked the skies. I ducked behind a water tank as a patrol flew overhead. 
Using the roofs had its downsides. Flashes of magic in the dark weren't low profile to anyone airborne. Discretion and patience were in order for any path I took but by nature I'm not a sneaky, subtle guy. My wheelhouse has always been head to head but I had to concede that that wasn't good for all situations and it wasn't good now.
My life here was over. My only real option now was to disappear from the city. I couldn't begin to understand what that meant for me. My plans… I couldn't even say goodbye or explain anything to Pinkie and it absolutely killed me inside but it was what was safest for both of us. I did this to myself and to her…
As I charted a winding route to the train yard, I heard a sad whistle wailing in the distance. Whatever it was, it was the closest thing I had to salvation. In two more bursts, I appeared atop a warehouse. I could see a single light down below, cutting through the dark industrial canyon. The engine of a cargo train, thundering my way. A procession of hopper cars and boxcars began to glide past. I zeroed in on a particular green boxcar and teleported inside. The interior was cramped with crates and sacks but I found a pile of lumpy burlap in the corner that was more comfortable than anything I had expected to find. Laying down, I winced in pain, suddenly aware once more of the laser burn on my side.
I slammed my hoof on the side of the car, angry at my own carelessness. After being so careful for so long, it was an unforced error that brought it all down. I was lost and alone again. Virtually everything leaving Crystal City was southbound. I didn't know what I was doing. I had no clue where this train was going but for now it didn't matter. Anywhere else was better than here.
> Pick Our Poisons
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have to find Twilight. That was the first thing to come to my mind when the screeching wheels of the train woke me in the early morning. That was the best plan right now. We'd figure something out together. She's the smartest pony I know.
I sat up and rolled my neck from side to side, trying to get the stiffness out of it. My back was sore and the burn on my side stung when I touched it. I was so hungry. 
My ride coasted to a stop, the engine hissing somewhere in the distance. Peering out through a gap in the boxcar, I could see the side of another train, shrouded in mist. I needed to figure out where I was if I wanted to get where I was going.
It seemed safe so I teleported into the knee-high grass outside and sniffed the morning air. I'd forgotten how much more penetrating the smell of morning was in the country. It was invigorating even with hunger and lack of sleep. I could hear a distant murmur and bustling as a few workers descended upon the cargo a ways down the track.
I walked slowly between the two trains, glancing through the space between each car before finally teleporting to the other side. The station platform materialized out of the mist and saw a dark silhouette with the unmistakable olive green cap of a guard leaning on two legs against a support beam. A sign hung from an ornate wrought iron bracket above him which read Pintoville Station. Pintoville… Never heard of it. Sort of almost Ponyville? I was going to need more to go on. 
Not having noticed me yet, I walked askew to avoid the eyes of the sentry. There seemed to be no one else around the ticket office at this hour so I crept quietly up onto the platform and approached the information board. There was no map on display for the train lines. Instead it was recruiting propaganda and wanted posters which my face was thankfully absent from, at least for now. No map seemed like an intentional change. I recalled pretty much every train station having a public map posted. Hadn't been out of the city for years though. I was certain there were many more changes yet to be noted on my adventure.
The information I sought had to be in the ticket office. Peeking around the side of the board, I saw the guard hadn't moved so I teleported right in. My ears were met with a soft snoring. I flinched seeing an old orange stallion seated in a chair at the front desk, the station manager by the look of his cap. He was turned away from me and clearly asleep so I carried on quietly wary of him and the guard still standing outside the ticket window. What do I have to do to get a job like that in this country?
There on the wall was a nice big map of every line across the Crystal Empire. I carefully ripped it from its pins with my magic, folded it up and stuffed it in my bag. Under the counter was the old guy's lunch tin. With a little bit of remorse, I snatched it away along with copies of the arrivals and departures schedule. I looked through a few cabinets, hoping to find a first aid kit and some pain meds but came up empty. Giving up, I scurried back to the tracks. 
Ponies were now unloading the train I'd ridden in on. I hid in the other train which was almost finished being loaded. I studied the map while I ate my stolen breakfast.
Having a map and a target made me feel a tiny bit better about the situation. It turned out that I was far off track from my destination but the path to get there was simple enough. If I took anything westbound, that would take me to Shail Junction, whatever that was, and then I could get to Ponyville from there on the right line. Probably almost a two day trip from where I stood. Unfortunately the train I was currently on was going the wrong direction and I had to have a thirty minute layover skulking in the woods.







I fell asleep again and just as before, I was awakened by the train coming to a stop. Slightly panicked, I checked my watch. It was a little past six in the early evening, which by my rough estimate put me in the right spot. My neck felt a little better than last time as I stretched.
Outside, the air was heavy with the scent of oil and grease. I quickly became flustered by the maze of parked trains and the mayhem of countless crisscrossing tracks. This place wasn't just a junction, it was a significant hub. But as large it was, there seemed to be no real town nearby. It was more a loose association of kiosks.
I was going to need a more detailed map in order to figure this shit out. I squinted, scanning my eyes for any helpful signage or just at something to confirm that I was at Shail Junction but there was nothing to be had.
"Hey, you," came a gravelly voice in front of me. "Let me see your papers."
I looked ahead to see two guards, a turquoise unicorn stallion and a gray mare earth pony with… I squinted. Wait, I knew her.
The two stopped in front of me expectantly.
"Papers, please," reiterated the mare impatiently, her yellow-green eyes narrowing. "Are you deaf?"
I leaned to one side, trying to peek at her flank. She had a half lime cutie mark. It was one of Pinkie Pie's sisters. She's a guard. What the hell do I do?
"I- I, here's my ID," I stammered, completely failing to find a handle on the situation. I floated the card to them from my pack and the unicorn intercepted it with his magic.
"And your work docs?" added the mare who I was sure was Limestone.
Here we go, I thought. "I don't have them," I shrugged. "They're at home."
"And where's home?"
"A long way from here, I guess."
The two exchanged agitated glances at my suspicious vagueness. 
"You're under arrest," she growled . Then she cocked her head toward her partner, "Mute him."
Against my instincts, I submitted as the unicorn clamped an inhibitor around my head and then shackled my forelegs. The cold heavy caress of the metal was sobering proof of the gravity of my reckless actions. I'd missed my best chance to run. I didn't have a plan. I'd let myself get captured and was just going to wing it now. This was so stupid but for Pinkie's sake I couldn't squander this chance meeting. It was another one of those moments where I wanted to shun fate.
They walked me to a little building, the sign on the side said Shail Junction Depot. The holding cell inside was comparable to a hall closet with a squealing grate of bars, clearly a stopgap solution. I had the fortune to at least have my shackles removed after being ushered inside.
Limestone sat down in a chair beneath a small constellation of lewd stallion pinups just outside the bars of my cell. She swung my pack onto a table and then pawed at a nearby pack of cigs. She took one in her mouth and depressed a switch on a little tabletop lighter.
"Should go check the five fifty to Appleossa." she muttered, rifling through my satchel. She pulled out my book and I gritted my teeth in horror.
"Yeah," grunted the other guard in agreement, stuffing a loose paper in a folder. He pushed the filing cabinet closed and thankfully wandered outside.
"The fuck?" mumbled Limestone through her cigarette, flipping the pages of my journal.
"Limestone," I whispered.
Her eyes flicked over at me. "How do you know my name?" she glowered.
Well there is a lime with rocks on your flank, I thought. It was almost like a rebus. "I'm friends with your sister," I replied.
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Which sister?"
"Pinkie."
Her face softened momentarily and she paused as if she almost believed me. "The hell you are," she spat.
"I really am," I argued, desperately pressing my face into the bars. "Her full name is Pinkamina Diane Pie. She lives in Crystal City with her pet alligator, Gummy. She used to live in Ponyville at a sweets shop. She told me about her whole family and her sisters Maud, Marble and Limestone. You lived on a rock farm before it was taken by the state. She went back home looking for her family but they were gone."
The cigarette fell from her lips, the cherry exploding with sparks on the floor. Her face was a mixture of surprise and horror. "Who are you?" she breathed.
I swallowed, scarcely believing I was about to do this. "My real name is Shining Armor."
Her eyes widened even more as she leaned forward. "No way. Everyone thinks you're… you're dead. How did you recognize me? We've never met, that I remember."
"Pinkie has a family photo on her wall," I replied, sitting down on my haunches.
Limestone looked down at the floor with a far away expression. "How is she doing?"
I cringed and looked away. "Uh… She's… she's hanging in there," I answered nervously.
She furrowed her brow. "What does that mean?"
I sighed in defeat. There was no way of getting around this. "Well… She works as a prostitute."
Limestone tilted her head back and buried her face in her hooves for an inordinately long moment.
"So then you're just one of her-"
"No," I blurted. "No, I mean… I… was but we're sort of a thing now." This was not going the way I'd envisioned it when I first had this hypothetical conversation with Pinkie, not at all.
Suddenly aware of the still burning cigarette on the floor, Limestone crushed it with one hoof. "So you're dating then?" she inquired dubiously.
The concept sounded weird to me. "If that's what we're still calling it these days, then yes."
"You're shitting me." She looked me up and down slowly.
I blinked, not quite catching her meaning. "You're shitting me… good or you're shitting me bad?"
She sighed and muttered angrily under her breath before changing the subject. "You could have fled. We'd probably have lost you. You let yourself get captured just to tell me this?"
I leaned my cheek against a cold metal bar. "Yes. I told Pinkie that I'd try to find her family if I ever left the city."
"Well if you find them, let me know."
My face fell. "You don't know where your family is either?"
She sighed once more and looked down at the table. "I guess not. When they came for the farm, they gave us a choice. We could have it back in four years if we peacefully joined the collective and someone in the family served for four years. That means four years away from home for me. I'm half done now. I'm not really good at keeping in touch so until you told me Pinkie couldn't find them, I thought they were still working at the farm and the unanswered letters were just the mail being the mail. Now I have no idea what's going on."
"This doesn't sound good at all," I grumbled.
Limestone propped her head up on one hoof over the table and exhaled her worry. "Well, now what are we gonna do?"
"About your family?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You voluntarily got captured and muted while skipping town in possession of a crazy book like this and then you told me your real identity. You must really think this shit is just gonna magically pan out for you."
I mashed my lips together in uncertainty. "I was kind of hoping that if and when this moment came, it would be under relatively normal circumstances," I argued, sliding a hoof down one bar. "This is anything but."
"You weren't expecting a guard. I wasn't expecting a hooker dating a dead prince but we all have to pick our poisons, don't we?"
"If the poisons don't pick us first," I countered.
Limestone suddenly slapped the book shut as a shadow grew over the doorway. The other guard returned, floating a clipboard onto the table. He sat down and flipped back and forth between the top two pages, apparently cross checking them.
"What's with the book?" he asked without looking up.
"Just some old photo album," she muttered absently, pushing it back into my pack. "I'm still processing this guy. If you do the six ten alone, you can go on break early and I'll just cover the post."
"Deal," he nodded energetically. He refreshed his clipboard with new papers, promptly stood up and left again.
Limestone waited, tapping a hoof slowly on the table while she thought. Finally she looked back at me.
"I could unlock your cell and sign off on papers for you… but I'm not going to do that because I'd be in deep shit if you got caught doing… whatever it is you're doing out here with my signature in your pocket. However…" she trailed off as she got up and wandered over to the door to close it. She yanked open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a stack of official papers.
"I'm not above… forging you something that would land on someone else's ass." She sifted through the stack of visa copies before singling one out. "Oh, this guy's a dick anyway," she growled. "Name?"
"Huh?" I blinked, struggling to keep up.
"What's your name?" she clarified, sitting back down with a pen in her mouth. 'Your fake name?"
My forehead creased. "Oh, I don't think I should use my current name anymore. How about… Night Mist? How is this gonna work though. I don't have a matching ID-"
"I can do that too," she mumbled. "I'm not a notary but there's enough here to work with."
Limestone filled out a relocation permit, signed it copying someone else's signature, stamped it and dated it a week ago. She unlocked my cell and removed the inhibitor from my head. Then she gave me a bandage for my wound with painkiller ointment.
"The passenger train platform is on the far east side of the yard, that way," she pointed. "You can buy a ticket to Ponyville with your permit and ID."
I can as long as I'm outside of the dragnet, I thought, which it appeared that I was. I got the sense she didn't want to know what I was doing in Ponyville so I left it a mystery
"You're not going to get in trouble for this?" I asked.
"I write the reports around here. I'll just explain that you're a lost idiot."
"Sounds plausible. I wish I could do more to thank you," I said, scribbling down Pinkie's address.
She rolled her eyes. "Ugh, it's fine. Just shut up about it. I don't do well with stuff like this."
I nodded absently as I set the pen down. "You know, an official looking letter from you wouldn't get screened," I mused. "If you write to Pinkie, can you tell her I'm okay?"
"Yeah," she replied, scratching her muzzle.
"I hope we meet again someday under better circumstances," I added thoughtlessly.
"What did I just tell you?" she snapped, jabbing a hoof into my chest.
She's exactly like she seems in the photo.
> Plan F
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The train lurched back into motion on the initial stroke and we began to pull out of the station. I yawned, slumping back in my bench as the platform out the window began to slide away. Almost there. I hadn't exactly found an express. This was my third stop on the line so far but next was Ponyville. If it weren't for my mind burning with a million worries, the passenger train trip would have been a normal, relaxing one, almost like the old days.
The coalescing rhythm of locomotion was broken as the door of my cabin slid open. A bespectacled yellow pegasus stumbled his way in, panting and flush-faced. He tossed his saddle bag on the opposing bench. "Made it," he sighed to himself. He sat and gave me a quick once over and nod of acknowledgement before diving into his pack for a mess of papers. Total desk jockey type. Probably his first time out of the cubicle in months.
I'd only had one other companion for a short while on the trip. I didn't think much of the intrusion and just went back to disassociating out the window.
His ruffling of papers paused occasionally as he would review a document before moving on to another. I became lost in the rhythmic pounding of metal wheels on tracks but in my peripheral vision I suddenly became aware of the ghosted reflection on the glass of the interior of the cabin. The pegasus across from me was sitting motionless with his stack, no longer shuffling it but instead studying me.
My eyes flicked back to him and he quickly looked down and resumed his organizing. I watched him fumbling around for a few moments before tentatively returning to the scenery but I continued to covertly observe his reflection in the window. I saw him look back up at me once more, hurriedly stuff his papers back in his bag before standing up. Alarm bells went off in my head. This felt suspicious.
The pegasus placed a hoof on the door handle and tugged but my magic held the partition stationary. 
"Where you going?" I grumbled.
"Oh, I was just… heading to the restroom," he replied meekly without even looking back at me.
"Take a seat," I ordered.
The stallion didn't move. "Well if could just-"
"I said sit down," I snarled. I ensnared him with my aura and wrenched him away from the door, slamming him back on the bench. His bag overturned, the buckles unsnapping and letting loose a cascade of documents on the floor.
"Sorry about that," I sighed, looking down at the mess.
He sat rigid but shaking in his seat directly across from me as I gathered up his papers with my magic. All and all the documents looked pretty boring as expected. He was some kind of government auditor based on what I could piece together from the bold face headers on the pages. 
On the bottom layer of the mess, one particular paper stood out from the hundred other walls of legal text. I paused in the middle of my task to bring it closer for scrutiny.
"Ten thousand bits," I mumbled, scanning over the poster and the rough mimeograph of my face. "For any information leading to the arrest of New Moon. Wanted for bludgeoning multiple officers and resisting arrest. Considered extremely dangerous. Do not engage." How flattering, I thought. I felt accomplished to be recognized as a serious threat. But also having my face circulated  was a pretty bad development.
"That look like me?" I asked my hostage, levitating the poster up next to my face for comparison. "What are you even doing carrying around a reward poster?" I scoffed. "Are you that strapped for cash or do you just think it's your civic duty?"
"They… issue the new ones to everyone at the bureau," he replied weakly. "Listen, I wasn't going to turn you in. I just didn't want to be in the same cabin with a violent criminal."
"Uh-huh," I grunted incredulously, crushing the poster into a ball with my magic and teleporting it outside into the wind. "Well, unfortunately, you're stuck with me now." I stowed the rest of his papers and fished out his ID.
"Like your job, Mr… Red Tape?"
"Well… it puts food on the table." His eyes drifted over to the window and then quickly back to me as if he'd promptly dismissed the idea of crashing through the glass to get away. "Please, I didn't even do anything," he begged fearfully.
I sighed in frustration. "Put yourself in my position for a minute. What would you do in this situation?"
His eyes ping-ponged back and forth as he quivered in his seat. "Let me go as long as I promise not to tell anypony?" He hazarded a nervous yet hopeful grin.
I returned a humorless but equally condescending stare.
"You can't just… kill someone on a passenger train and get away with it," he blurted.
I shook my head absently. "I don't have to kill you on the train. I can just teleport you under the train and whenever they find your mangled remains they'll just think you were some poor bastard who lost his balance switching cars."
The color left his face and I gestated on the fact that this all somehow felt so natural for me and how I wasn't entirely certain just how idle my threat was. Clearly something needed to be arranged here. I guess it would be preferable if it wasn't messy.
I started going through his pack again, pulling out something with an official letterhead. Looking at the ID, I used Red's pen to scribble his name and address on the page.
"What are you doing?" he asked in alarm.
"Copying down your information so I know where you live and where you work." My eyes landed back on him. "Just in case I need to pay you a visit for some reason." I folded up the paper and slipped it into an outer pocket on my satchel. "Now here's what's going to happen-"
My fiendish explanation was interrupted as the door to our cabin slid open and a gray-maned earth pony in a waistcoat poked his head in. "Tickets, please." He eyed the both of us strangely as if the tension in the room exuded a rank telltale odor.
I promptly floated my ticket to the stallion for reinspection while side-eying the pegasus with an ominous glare.
"Oh, yes," Red chuckled nervously. "My- my ticket." He got into his pack and sifted around excruciatingly slowly as he bought time to think. "I always do this," he chided. "Can't keep track of anything."
The two of us waited impatiently for him as he continued to mill about aimlessly in his things. "I was sure I put it right…" Finally he looked up. I'm sorry, I can't seem to find it. I think it would be easier to just buy another one."
The ticket taker sighed and adjusted the little mechanical dispenser strapped around his neck. He ventured into the middle of our cabin right in between the two of us. "What's your destin-" He was cut off abruptly as Red Tape shoved the guy roughly right into my lap and broke for the open door with a flutter.
"Help!" screamed Red. "Police! Criminal!"
Looking back, that was the moment where I probably should have just fled the train. There was a decent chance I could have escaped the area without incident and found my way to Ponyville on hoof but I was like a dog chasing a squirrel.
I teleported into the hall, appearing right in Red Tape's path. His eyes bulged in horror and his wings parachuted out from his sides as he tried to stop. I wound up and clapped him with one hoof right in the jaw, sending his head slamming into a wood partition. His glasses went tumbling through the air.
"You idiot," I snarled. Serving him a second blow to the gut though he was already out cold.
"What's going on here?" shouted a mare who I didn't even need to see to know was a guard.
I clenched my jaw in livid frustration and turned to see two officers, a unicorn and a mind controlled pegasus. My eyes went back to the limp bureaucrat on the floor and suddenly I realized I wasn't screwed just yet. "Uh, this guy snuck onto the train and tried to run when they asked for his ticket." Pure genius, Shining.
"Did you just teleport?" shouted the ticket taker, poking his head into the hall some distance away.
Thanks, old guy, I thought. You're just ruining everything today, aren't you? I turned back to the guards who'd suddenly become noticeably more menacing.
"You're under arrest," declared the pegasus.
"Seriously?" I frowned. "I just helped apprehend a criminal."
"It's the law."
Giving absolutely no thought to where I was or how fast the train was moving, I focused a spell to take me to presumptive safety outside. Nothing happened. They fucking trapped me again.
"Submit to an inhibitor," ordered the unicorn, lifting the device with her magic. "This is your last chance."
Done with the discussion, I sent a diamond cutter blade flying at her horn. She relinquished the inhibitor and put up a magical barrier to block. The blade went through the barrier but lost enough potency that it dissipated on contact with her. She returned a laser blast from the tip of her horn which I deflected with my own summoned shield. I grabbed her in my magic field, intending to slam her into submission but she broke out of my grip just after her hooves left the ground. She was more well versed than the average unicorn but the fact that she had to drop the inhibitor to rumble was telling of her multitasking limitations.
Frustrated, I turned my attention to the pegasus who was circling around to flank me. I teleported him to me and held him frozen between us like a living shield. Then I expanded a barrier over the two of us. "Drop the ward or I'll snap his neck," I demanded coldly.
She seemed surprised at my myriad of abilities but no more compliant with letting me leave.
"It's not my ward," she replied.
I looked over my withers to see another unicorn guard, mind controlled, at the end of the hall, his horn glowing with a magical aura.
"Doesn't matter," I growled. I stretched one of the pegasus' wings out with my magic and tweaked it unceremoniously at the midway point. It bent ninety degrees straight up with a blood curdling crack. Though mind controlled, he still let out a sincere scream of agony.
"Stop," ordered the first guard, her eyes betraying an air of desperation.
"No, you stop," I shot back. I wrapped the broken wing flat around the pegasus officer's back, breaking it audibly at the base.
Though he was in extreme discomfort, the pegasus was not going to plead in support of my release because that would be a programming conflict. I waited for his cries to subside before barking again. "Two wings, four legs, one neck. Drop the ward."
The mare unicorn's face tightened with panic as she looked back to her partner who's horn was still glowing. "Just let him go, Onix!"
"No. We just have to hold him here a while longer."
"He's going to kill him!" she argued.
"This guy is dangerous. We can't just let him go."
I stretched out the other wing, preparing to apply more leverage.
"Fucking drop the ward!" she shouted urgently. Then charged up her horn in an aparant threat to get him to comply.
"What hell?" he retorted. "You're crazy! This is a violation!"
With neither one of them paying attention to me anymore, my eyes fell on the forgotten inhibitor laying open on the floor and I quickly formulated a plan F. I teleported the device down to the other end of the hall, right under Onix's chin and snapped it shut in almost a single fluid motion.
Without even waiting to confirm if the light of his horn was fully doused, I tried teleporting myself out of the train again. The sudden sensation of the wind whipping through my mane and blasting in my ears jarred me into a panic. Shit, this was fast. Go limp, was the first course of action to shakily come to mind but it evaporated quickly as the unforgiving but solid embrace of the ground never came and I realized I was just tumbling through space. Disoriented and terrified, I could not visualize an anchor point to jump to. Eyes wide, the last thing I saw was a cloudy sky and the train disappearing over the end of a high trestle. Then black.
> Shallow Water
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

My eyes opened to the sound of screams. 
"Help me, Shining!"
My blood froze in an instant. I rolled over, stretching out my foreleg to feel for Cadance but she wasn't there. My hoof instead slapped against empty sheets that were wet and sticky. I shot up panting in terror. In the dim lamplight I could see my limb smattered in crimson. Blood was all over me and the bed.
My panicked whimper was drowned out by a baby cry echoing from afar. I whirled around. I was in my old bedroom in the tower but it was huge. My eyes locked on Flurry Heart's crib some distance away across an ocean of a floor rug. I stumbled out of bed and galloped to my daughter's bed as she continued to wail. "Flurry Heart!" I cried. The crib was empty too, adorned with the same bloodstains. My heart was beating out of my chest. Where were they?
"Shining, please, where are you?" Cadance screamed.
I bolted for the door. It was so far away and the ceiling was so high that I couldn't even see it. The walls simply extended upward, receding into what looked like a black starless sky.
"Cadance," I shouted, bursting through the door without breaking stride. The hallway was even more distorted than the bedroom, twisting in a barrel roll upside down as I ran past a million doors. The corpses of Crystal Empire guards littered my path, sprawled out on the polished stone floor and slumped over against the wall and ceiling. It got darker and darker as I approached the end and the double doors nearly broke from their hinges as I leapt into the throne room.
There was Cadance, crawling desperately toward me, leaving a smear of red across the once pristine floor. The dark horse, Sombra stood behind her laughing, relishing in the sight and stoking the embers of my rage.
"I'm here, Cadance," I bellowed, skidding to a stop on the crystalline floor. 
She reached a shaky hoof up to me, her horn broken, her eyes huge with fear. "Where's Flurry Heart?" she begged.
I took her quivering shattered body in my forelegs and glared up at Sombra. I focused a spell but my horn sputtered impotantly.
He sneered back at me. His horn glowed purple as he charged up for the blast that would end the both of us and give him the Crystal Empire. Unable to muster even a modicum of magical power, I threw myself over Cadance and clutched her to me in some involuntary attempt to rectify my actions from before. No killing blow came. Cadance's body evaporated in my grasp.
I opened my eyes to see that I was no longer in the tower but huddled over a canvas of luminous gray silt. I looked up slowly and instead of Sombra, I saw Princess Luna standing majestically before me. Her flowing mane waved without wind before a starry black void. Though infinitely graceful, her neck was burdened with an ethereal collar which bound her to this sphere just as it had for so many years before.
A knotted pang of conflicting emotions hit me hard. So many nights of dark visions like these. So many days of stumbling around lost. Breathless, I shook my head, unable to curate my words before they spilled out of my mouth. "Where the hell have you been?"
"You know exactly where I've been, Shining Armor," she began in a contrastingly genial tone as she plodded slowly toward me.
"Why didn't you come to me sooner?" I bristled. "I needed you."
Her face softened in sincere empathy. "I'm sorry. Things don't work the way they used to. While I do have more insight and influence than my sister, I still don't have much. But your brush with death seems to have made things easier."
She placed a comforting hoof on my cheek and my anger was smothered beneath an avalanche of sadness. I drew her close in an embrace, still high on the emotions of my nightmare and reliving the worst moment anyone can experience.
"I ran away, Luna," I sobbed into her shadowy mane. "I couldn't save them and then I just disappeared." Tears streamed down my face.
"You would have died too, Shining."
"Maybe that would have been best," I argued.
She released me and wiped my tears away in a motherly fashion. "I know it hurts but your heart still beats for a reason. You must find your sister, Twilight Sparkle."
It felt validating to hear those words from an ancient goddess, the part about Twili. I'm still on the fence about having a real purpose.
She mournfully scanned my eyes. "I see so much sadness in you," she added. "But I also see so much hatred. What are your true intentions, Shining?"
"I'm going to kill Sombra or die trying," I replied resolutely.
"I had definitely gathered as much. But what about the old Crystal Kingdom and the rest of Equestria?"
"What about them?" I shrugged.
"Suppose you succeed. They will need benevolent rulers to heal them and keep them safe."
The sad truth was that I hadn't really thought about it. I'd lived under the new regime just like everyone else. Struggled and suffered in it, wanted to burn the hideous mockery of my old empire to the ground like anyone with half a scruple left but I'd somehow never entertained the thought of actually sitting back on the throne and fixing it again by myself.
"Um… hopefully we could figure out how to free you and Celestia and you could go back to Canterlot," I offered tepidly.
"And the empire?" she asked, cocking her head expectantly to one side.
I looked away, shamefully allowing the moment to die.
"Shining?" she prodded, as if pressing a foal to tell the truth about who broke the vase.
"That was always Cadance's thing," I groaned. "I was mostly just along for the ride."
"If not you, then whom?" she posed, aghast.
"I don't know," I growled in annoyance. "The one thing that I want right now is Sombra's head on a pike."
Luna closed her eyes and sighed. "If anyone deserves death, it is he," she agreed. "But my fear is that you are becoming apathetic, even cruel as your lust for vengeance outweighs all else."
"What does that matter?" I shrugged dismissively.
She blinked in apparent shock. "What has happened to your sense of duty? You don't sound like yourself. Remember who you were and what you had. Remember the things that used to bring you meaning and peace and never stop seeking those things. Don't lose yourself to your hate. Hatred destroys all it touches, Shining Armor. You and your loved ones as much as your enemies."
"Don't tell me you just popped in to lecture me on my mission etiquette," I fumed. "Everything I've done has been calculated and necessary." I didn't even make it through the sentence without my belief in my own words faltering. The fact that I was no longer living in the city testified that I was wrong.
"What do you know about me anyway?" I scoffed, unable to amend a better argument.
Her eyes narrowed and she hunched forward to lambast me. "Your mouth may lie but your dreams cannot!" she bellowed in my face in her royal Canterlot voice. "The shiny brass ring of vengeance has kept you marching when all you want to do is flop over and curl into a ball! It keeps you sober where you otherwise would have been lost to drink or drugs but this motivation comes with a price! You are rotting inside!"
I rubbed my ringing ears, still reeling from the blast. She'd never yelled at me like that before, well, once but not at such close range.
"Who's to say I won't find peace again once I put him in the ground?" I argued weakly.
"Sit," she commanded sternly, slamming her rump into the moon dust.
I indulged her and she sidled up to me, beholding the Earth in the blackness above us and for a moment I was unsure if we were still in a dream or really on the moon.
"Destruction may be an inevitable solution for some things but it will not heal you," she managed in an even tone. "It's not killing Sombra, it's the careless wake of destruction left in your path to get to him. Ponies who were once your subjects and may have even served under you. Equestria will need your leadership. We can not replace a cruel tyrant with a shattered callus shell of a stallion to rule over the same ponies he cut down without mercy. Hold fast to the ones you love."
I gritted my teeth in frustration. "That's what I did before, Luna. Now look at me."
"So what then?" she mocked dismissively. "Live as a malignant vindictive husk the rest of your days, shunning love and abdicating duty? Leaving your country and ponies to twist in the wind. You have suffered a heinous transgression and an incalculable loss but you don't have to be broken forever, provided you don't rashly throw all your pieces away. Have you not once considered what life is like for an eternal alicorn? How many friends and lovers come and go in your life? You find one, you are happy, you lose them, you cry, then another comes." She bowed her head in a somber pause as if she were thinking of someone in particular. 
"When I returned from banishment the first time, everypony I knew was dead. Not only that, their children and grandchildren were dead. If things had gone as they were supposed to, you would die one day of old age while your wife and child lived on. You would be a stepping stone in their journey. Life could not stop for them. Cadance might find happiness once more with a new husband or eventually a dozen new husbands… or wives. That would never detract from the memories she had with you. Flurry Heart would outlive her own progeny and her progeny's progeny and so on but that would not stop her from loving all of them. That is life.
"That is depressing," I added, feeling my face tightening up in anticipation for more tears.
"Perhaps devastatingly so," she continued. "Until you realize it is not the end of a book; it is the end of a chapter. The next chapter is yet unwritten and the quill is in your hooves. Kill Sombra if you must but along your journey ask yourself is this honoring your family's memory or is it simply gorging your own bloodlust?"
I wish I could say that that was the moment that pulled me back together and made me a hero but instead it revealed just how much of me had already slipped away without my concern. The disconnect between Luna's expectations of me and my own self-gratifying desires and the fact that the full gamut of this glaring mutation had escaped my notice until now was nothing less than shocking. And yet I could not step back from the edge of monsterdom. It was like watching a precious photograph burn away because I was so entranced by the flame.
It's not like I'm a complete sociopath now, I thought to myself. I still cared about… Pinkie and Twilight anyway. Spike…
"Okay," I sighed in a placative conciliatory tone. "But all this leadership business I think is putting the cart before the pony at this point." 
"We will speak of this again," she cooed darkly in my ear.
I shivered at the full body deepness in her voice and her unexpected intrusion into my personal space. "Fine," I breathed
She laid out on the silver dune and twirled a hoof absently through the silt as she thought. "Then on to the matter at hoof. Before you attempt your assault, were you aware that King Sombra possesses the Alicorn Amulet?"
I raised my eyebrows. "He possesses the what now?"
"So you didn't know. That is how he banished my sister and I and why he seemed more potent than the last time you sparred. With it, I fear he is still too much for you. That is why you must conspire with your sister, the last alicorn in Equestria."
I sighed in frustration at the high probability that I was still inadequate but I was also somewhat intrigued by the silver lining of Sombra's power being more finite than expected, even reversible. "Well, I'm already on my way to Twilight," I boasted. "Do you know exactly where she is?"
Luna shook her head slowly. "She no longer appears to dream anything discernable, so I know no more than you do. She, like you, was consumed with Sombra and I am worried about her."
"Do you know where Pinkie Pie's family is?
Luna smiled weakly but kept looking straight ahead across the moonscape. "No but I do know that they are all alive."
"That's reassuring anyway," I muttered.
"You sleep in her bed, do you not?" She asked abruptly, peering back at me from the corner of her eyes.
"Pinkie Pie's?" I replied, taken aback by the somewhat personal question. "Whenever I can." My eyes darted away, landing on my own hoofprint in the lunar soil.
"That is part of the reason I've had such difficulty making contact with you. As the former Element of Laughter, she still possesses intrinsic powers that soothe your nightmares. You are so lucky to have her."
The few loose chain links on Luna's ghostly collar rattled as she melted fully into the silt on her side in a tired, almost listless flop. It was so subtle but I'd never seen her do such a thing before, seemingly shed the invisible burden of royal decorum right in front of me. Her sudden candidness put me on edge as though something were wrong. She looked as if she were ready to fall asleep right there on the ground but she kept her eyes on me.
"It's difficult to enter dreams at all anymore, Shining and I am in no way eager to return to complete solitude. Please do not mistake my intentions but would you do me the kindness of laying next to me until dream's end?"
> Cuasti!
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I could smell something mildly aromatic with a hint of smoke, something like incense. "Luna?" I breathed inadvertently, already knowing that my time with her was over. My body was sore and my bleary eyes focused in and out in pulses like a heartbeat.
I could hear the soft trill of night time insects drifting through a tipped open window. My surroundings were dark save for the dim flicker of a lantern. The flame's frenetic dance made strange shadows tremble on the wall, bringing the room to life. Weird faces and bushels of dried herbs seemed to animate in the light. It was nice that I'd survived but where the hell was I?
Somewhat worried, I sat up, ignoring my body's protests and lit up my horn for a better look. The simple fact that my spell worked at all was a considerable relief to me. Waking up clamped was a constant fear of mine now. I scanned over the rustic interior of the cottage. Masks on the walls, potions and vials on crowded shelves, an array of dried leaves and flowers hung meticulously over a cold black cauldron sitting upon a fire pit in the middle of the room. It didn't look like your average pony's house.
When I got to my far left, I saw a hammock stretched between the wall and a robust upright support beam. A zebra laid inside visoring her sleepy eyes from my light with one hoof.
"Who are you?" I croaked groggily before lowering my light to save her eyes.
"My name is Zecora. You're in the Everfree. No guards come in. No need to worry."
I raised an eyebrow at her oddly metered response, wondering if it was purposeful or just a weird accident. I guess I made it. I was supposedly right where I wanted to be but I needed details. I couldn't just canvas the whole Everfree Forest. I had to find local police and do reconnaissance for a more pointed lead.
"Everfree Forest?" I muttered. "That's Ponyville adjacent, right?"
"Indeed it is. Is that where you're going? Lay back down. Your wound is showing." She pointed to my side where a shell of soft gray mud had cracked and sloughed off of me, revealing a shallow but large scrape in my skin.
"Oh," I groaned, laying carefully back down. It wasn't until that moment that I realized that I was probably stealing her bed.
Suddenly she was at my side, pushing me softly with two hooves. "Lay on your right and I'll put more on. By break of day, the scrape should be gone."
"Thank you," I sighed, settling into the prescribed position. I flinched as she poured cold mud on my wound and began spreading it like frosting on a cake.
"I found you like this on the river bank. Lucky for you you never sank. Your book and things are hung up and drying… Why come out here and risk dying?"
I turned my head slightly to look up at her. "It's a long story but I'm looking for my sister, Twilight Sparkle. Last I heard, Crystal Empire officers were searching for her in the forest. Have you seen her at all or heard anything?"
Something sparked in the zebra's eyes. "You are her brother?" she laughed. "That is a surprise. It's been years since I saw Twilight with my own eyes."
I grumbled in my throat even knowing my hope of getting directions or just tripping over Twili's doorstep was unrealistic. "So you know her but you haven't seen her since the takeover? You're probably the only two living out here. If I was hiding out in the Everfree Forest and I knew someone there, I'd probably go to them."
The zebra shook her head. "Avoiding guards means avoiding town. That's the state I'm in. I am independent as I've always been. In times like these, when you're over a barrel, friends can help you up or put you in peril. If Twilight wishes to stay unknown, she may be better off alone."
"That is also true," I agreed, watching a moth kiss the light of the lamp. She does have a big target on her head."
Zecora put the mud jar away and got back in her hammock, giving it a soft swing before tucking her last leg into the net. "If you want to find the sister you lack, try asking Fluttershy and Applejack."
"I know them. They're still in Ponyville?"
"Hard to say; it's been a while. Without them it might be a trial. They were on the outskirts of town. I'll give you a map. Now go back to sleep and finish your nap."
Despite waking up in the middle of the night, lost in a strange place, sleep came back to me easily. 
In the morning my body groaned like a rusty gate. Falling off a bridge into shallow water does that, I guess. Zecora gave me a potion for sore muscles and a map to Ponyville with the two last known locations of Fluttershy and Applejack marked. She even gave me body paint to fix my cutie mark.
My scrape was miraculously all but gone and despite getting wet, my book and forged paperwork survived well enough.
I tried to give her money before setting out but somewhat to the relief of my coin purse, Zecora just shook her head and reminded me that she never leaves the forest or sees anyone so I just settled on giving her my thanks and an IOU to be redeemed at that mythical joyous occasion where we all sit around a bonfire, laughing and singing.
Floating the map out in front of my face gave me a powerful flashback from out of the deep. Once upon another lifetime, I went through basic and had to spend a week surviving alone in the Everfree Forest with just what I had in a saddle bag. Everypony had a turn to traipse across the widest part of the forest through a maze of checkpoints. This was going to be much easier. For one, I was significantly closer to the rendezvous point this time.
The Forest exuded a pristine primordial creepiness from every gnarled old growth tree, the ones that seem to posture threateningly, lie in wait and move when you look away. Even in broad daylight, the thick canopy choked out much of the sun's rays.
I found my first landmark, a little stream. I followed its lazy serpentine bank for quite a while before jumping off. I kept my ears up not just for dangerous animals but possible guards searching the area. Hopefully Pinkie's intel was good on this and it wasn't all just a wild goose chase. No. If I could get something, anything out of Twilight's old friends, it would be worth the trip. What was I going to do with myself anyway?







It was thankfully an uneventful little walk. My watch said I was coming up on an hour when I broke the treeline of the forest and plunged into unfiltered golden daylight. There, still some distance away, was a little cottage I had the haziest of recollections seeing once before in better days. The sound of barking dogs swelled in my ears as I got closer. I saw chain link fencing around a battery of big kennels. I walked curiously along the side of the enclosure where Dobermans and Canterlotian Watchers tried to climb the walls barking threats at my presence. How weird, I thought. This part was all new to me.
I rounded the corner and came upon the exact mare I was looking for. The yellow pegasus sat with her back to me next to a blue unicorn and a large dog leashed to a stake in the ground. He stood rigid at attention with a revving growl. His attention was on a confused looking gray mare several paces away in the open field. She wore a helmet on her head while the rest of her body bulged with padded armor.
"Sweetie, sit," ordered Fluttershy. "Sweetie… Sit," she repeated clearly when the dog didn't immediately obey the command. He sat stiffly on his haunches with the fur on his back sticking up and his eyes trained on the target.
"Good boy," she affirmed, wary of the dog's ominous body language despite his apparent compliance. Slowly she placed a hoof on the clasp on Sweetie's collar. "Sweetie, stay," she commanded in an airy but stern voice. Click. The moment Fluttershy unsnapped the leash, the dog jumped snarling to his paws and rocketed across the field. 
Fluttershy gasped in alarm. "Sweetie, cuasti! Cuasti!"
The armored mare turned to run but her pursuer was on her in seconds. The dog, nearly as big as a pony, clamped it's jaws around her hind leg, sending her sprawling to the turf. The powerful beast dragged her backward, its head thrashing side to side, trying to rip the flesh from her bone.
Fluttershy tried in vain to call him off one last time. "Lyra, stop him!" she cried.
The blue unicorn grabbed Sweetie in her aura and levitated him still snarling and writhing back to his nearby crate where she shut him inside.
Fluttershy exhaled.
"I don't think Sweetie's ready for primetime," declared Lyra with a dour face.
"No," agreed Fluttershy. "But he passed his obedience," she argued.
The gray mare flailed inertly behind them on her side.
"Are you okay, Derpy?" called Fluttershy.
"I can't get up," she moaned, rolling on her back and waggling her fatly padded limbs in all directions.
"I think that's enough for today," sighed Fluttershy. "Thank you."
I just stood there at the corner watching everyone pack up, unsure of when was a safe and appropriate time to approach. By the time I made up my mind, Fluttershy was skulking alone back to her cottage door.
"Um, excuse me," I called. "Fluttershy?"
The pegasus turned back to me with tears in her eyes. "Y-yes," she whimpered.
I froze in surprise. "I'm sorry; is this a bad time?"
"Every time is a bad time," she sniffed.
"I definitely feel that but listen…" I looked around, making sure no one else was nearby. "It's me, Shining Armor, Twilight's brother."
Her eyes grew wide and she shook her head in disbelief. "What? How?"
I ignored her invitation to venture off into the weeds and got straight to the point. "I came to see if you could help me."
Her eyes made a paranoid scan of the area. "Um…" She chewed her bottom lip. "O-okay. Come inside." She held the door open for me but quickly shut it once I was in.
"Do you want anything?" she asked, drifting into the kitchen. "I was just going to make tea."
"Yeah, that's fine. Whatever you're having. Thanks." I took the liberty of sitting myself on a chair in her living room. All around me were quilts, doilies and sentimental knickknacks. Quite a contrast with what was outside.
I scratched the back of my head. "Didn't you used to run some kind of… I don't know, halfway house for random animals or something?"
Fluttershy reappeared after putting on a kettle. "Yes, I did but the government said it wasn't, um… useful. So now I train police dogs." She sat on the sofa across from me. "It's not as fun and rewarding as I thought it would be. It's actually kind of… traumatic. Anyway, I don't know what kind of help you need but I probably can't-"
"I'm trying to find Twilight," I interrupted.
Fluttershy seemed to deflate even more if that were at all possible. "She disappeared a couple of years ago. After…" Her eyes dropped to the floor and she paused as if gathering enough strength to continue. "After what they did to Rainbow Dash, Twilight was the only one of the remaining five to refuse to renounce her elemental duties and allegiance to Celestia. That's why she had to hide. That's why she's still hiding. I'm sorry. I don't know where she is. I don't know that anyone does."
I sighed in despair. "Do you know where Pinkie Pie's family might be?"
Fluttershy screwed up her face in confusion at the out of the blue question. "Rockville," she replied simply.
I shook my head. "They disappeared from their farm a while back and neither Pinkie or her sister Limestone know where they went."
"The Apples might know," she suggested hopefully. "They're possibly cousins or something to the Pies. They voluntarily joined a collective so there's no government personnel on their farm if you're worried about that… Why do you want to find Pinkie's family?"
I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the ceiling. "Well, I'm sure you already know that Rarity lives in Crystal City but Pinkie Pie is trapped there as well and I promised I'd try to find her family if I ever left."
"So you've been living in Crystal City this whole time?" she said agast.
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Why? It's probably the worst place in Equestria now."
Again I resisted the call to try to untangle the horrid knot that was my story and instead pared down my thoughts to a succinct but adequate sentence fragment. "Unfinished business."
At first she looked perplexed at my response and opened her mouth for a moment but no words came out. "Oh," she finally said with a certain timid understanding.
The teapot whistled and Fluttershy left to retrieve it.







Having avoided Ponyville proper thus far, I set off down a dusty road flanked by flourishing apple trees. It was a comforting site. This place looked mostly normal, at least. The road opened up to a barren turnaround where sat a big barn, the old farmhouse and a squeaky windmill.
The sound of soft clucking met my ears as I rounded a worn fence coated in peeling white paint. 
I glanced away from the front door and winced when I saw a red stallion with an eye patch and an open sack of chicken feed clenched in his teeth watching me intently over the top of the fence.
"Oh, uh, hello…" I fumbled in surprise.
Applejack's brother. I'd seen him before, a long time ago but I couldn't come up with his name. I didn't remember him having an eye patch either for that matter. 
"I'm Twilight Sparkle's brother," I began, trying to find some compromise between sounding trustworthy and divulging too much information.
He dropped the sack on the ground and seemed to tremble as he took a step back.
Not really knowing how to read his odd reaction, I continued. "Um… is Applejack around?"
He slowly bowed his head to rescue the feed sack from the gaggle of frenzied chickens. Then he just kept staring at me without uttering a syllable, his head and ears lowered submissively.
"I'll just go check if that's okay," I said, pointing at the door. He didn't seem talkative when I first met him but I didn't think he was mute.
The steps groaned as I approached the door. I rapped on the screen and exhaled the rest of my hope.
"Whaddya want," came a muffled but angry voice from inside. "We already paid our dues fer the month and gave the apples."
"I'm not here on business," I replied, trying to sound genial. "I need help."
The door cracked open and the hazy form of Applejack squinted suspiciously at me through the still closed screen. "Who are ya?"
"Shining Armor."
Her eyes bulged as she smashed her face into the screen to get a better look at me. "No," she shook her head. "That- that can't be. Ya died. You're cutie mark-"
"Is fake," I supplied.
"What about Cadance and-"
"Still dead," I breathed. "It's just me."
Applejack swallowed and stood frozen, unable to process any of what I'd just throw at her.
"Can I come in? I don't wanna talk out h-"
"O-oh, yeah, sure." She lurched back to life and pushed the screen open.
I shut the wooden door behind me and abruptly a loud hiss came from the open doorway of the kitchen.
"Oh, mah pot," exclaimed Applejack before zipping inside. I caught up with her just as she was moving a pot of boiling water from the burner. It settled quickly and she turned the gas down. "I's just in the middle a cannin' applesauce," she muttered. "Well… I guess I can pause for now," she sighed 
I eyed her setup, the dozens of jars, The boiling pots, timers, the raw pulp ready to be seasoned. "No, it's fine," I argued. "I don't need you to entertain me or anything." I took a seat at the kitchen table which was cluttered with both empty and full jars. "I just wanted to ask you some things." I would have immediately dove back into my so far fruitless search but I couldn't stop thinking about the broken stallion I'd just seen outside.
"What happened to your brother?" I blurted.
"Oh, don't mind Big Mac," replied Applejack, moving the big pot back over the flames. "White Caps took his eye months ago when he, uh… made a scene about the state takin' Apple Bloom to the new school. He didn't talk much before then but now ya can hardly beat a word outta him. Really took the piss outta him. Guess that was the point. But the only lesson he ever seems ta learn is about talkin' less." She frowned, busying herself with mashing apples while the jars cooked.
I watched the apple pulp dripping out the bottom of the apple grinder into a glass bowl underneath. "You know what really gets me?" I nodded. "All these ponies were living amongst us for years. I mean, some of them are being mind controlled or manipulated in some way but a lot of them, this is just who they are. The guy who stabs you in the eye for nothing is the same guy who three years ago sold you insurance. The one who orders your horn permanently removed is the one who used to fix your sink. There's something that's just fundamentally wrong with a lot of ponies and the only thing that was keeping them in line was-"
"They all need to be eradicated like the varmints they are," she muttered darkly. "Let Tartarus sort 'em out." She gritted her teeth, still turning the crank which whirled the grinder.
I never thought that Applejack could be a bad influence on me but there we were, spitballing about excising a large group of ponies from the population, semi indiscriminately.
The front door creaked open and latched again. Big Mac entered the kitchen without a word and sat across from me where he began putting labels on jars and then boxing them together. He acknowledged neither of us.
"I came to Ponyville looking for Twilight," I finally said.
Applejack looked up at me from her vengeful fantasies enacted vicariously through the shredding of the apples. "Ain't nobody seen 'er since the elements dissolved… Sorry."
"That's what Fluttershy told me," I groaned. Unfortunately it looked like I was going to need to spy to get anywhere with this. "Where's the Ponyville police station?"
"Twilight's old castle," she replied, fishing a hot jar out of the water with her tongs.
"Disgusting," I mumbled absently. "One other thing. Pinkie Pie is missing her family. Do you have any clue where they are?"
Applejack's eyes rolled back in her head as she thought. "No… wait, yes! Uh… Last year, Maud Pie came into town tryna find Pinkie. She didn't know she'd already left town fer home and never came back so Maud ended up at our door. Her family ran from their farm 'cuz they feared fer their wellbein'. They was all goin' someplace, somethin' bout goin' off the grid in an underground cavern." She clamped her head in her forehooves and grimaced, trying to focus. "It was Red- Red Eye… Somethin'... Shit, Ah can't remember. Big Mac, help me out here," she pleaded, bracing herself on the table and causing the host of jars to rattle. "You were there; I know ya heard it too," she charged desperately.
Big Mac sighed and looked down at the wood.
"Big Mac, please! What was the name of the place where the Pies went?"
He sat vacantly and unresponsive, seemingly locked away in his own little world.
Enraged and on the verge of tears, Applejack threw her hat on the floor and screamed in his ear. "Consarn it, Macintosh! Can't ya see this is important? We're tryin' ta reunite a family!"
Her outburst looked more like a boiling over of her frustration with her brother and everything else than a sense of urgency for helping her friend and for a moment I worried that she might get physical with him.
Applejack rummaged angrily in a drawer and spit a paper and pen down on the table in front of him. "If ya can't say it, then write it!"
Big Mac looked up at her, then back down at the paper. He opened his mouth slowly and took the pen.
I craned my neck forward in breathless anticipation. Did he actually know? Was he really going to tell us? When he dropped the pen, there were three little black words on the page: Red Tail Crossing.
> Cha-ching
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I had a win. I'd never heard of Red Tail Crossing before but I'd find it. As good as that felt, I couldn't help but think about the family members left out of the loop. I'm sure the Pies had their reasons for leaving but Limestone really got shafted. She's still working as a guard to hold onto the farm they just forfeited by abandoning it. They couldn't come get her because it sounded like they didn't even know where she was stationed. If Limestone's not getting anything out of her indentured servitude now, she should just go AWOL but first she'd need a safe place to hide. I had to tell her too.
For now though, I'd just sit on this intel. It was time to find Twili.
From the Apple's farm, I walked the long dirt road into town and tried to orient myself. It had been years and I'd only visited Ponyville a few times but I knew how to get to my sister's old house from the prominently visible clocktower, not that the Castle of Friendship was exactly low profile.
Everypony I saw on the street looked more relaxed than they did in Crystal City and from what I could see, there was less of a police presence as expected. There was a gallows at the base of the clocktower but thankfully nopony on display.
I passed by an ornately detailed gingerbread cottage which I recognized immediately as Pinkie Pie's former place of work, a sad looking Sugarcube Corner. The windows and doors were boarded up. The front walk and periphery were besieged by weeds. I guess nothing became of it. 
Staring into the darkness behind a broken window, I couldn't hold back the foalish reverie of Pinkie coming back to Ponyville and working there again… and being happy and it made me wonder what I'd be doing in that world.
Another few blocks and the great crystalline castle stood proudly in my path, still shimmering radiantly unlike Sugarcube. I frowned at the base of the trunk which held the whole structure aloft. The sight of the Crystal Empire flag flying over the door was as surreal as it was nauseating. The engraved wooden words police station were indescribably debasing for such a building, my sister's house or not. 
I dropped my cigarette to the cobblestone and crushed it, letting a final sigh of smoke escape my muzzle. Now how did I want to play this?
Despite having a conspiracy planner, I was naturally impatient and more into winging it. I did have one important asset to capitalize on besides magical brute force and that was already knowing the castle layout. The place was so huge it had to be mostly unoccupied. I could do teleportation hopscotch through every room, see what I could find  and be out again without ever being seen… theoretically.
I hid my pack in a nearby bush and rolled my head to one side until I felt my neck pop. Then I focused on Twili's bedroom. I vanished from the street in a flash and reappeared in the castle. It certainly wasn't a bedroom anymore but the important thing was that nopony was there when I could have instead teleported into a briefing room in the middle of a presentation. Unlikely. What would they use that amazing map room for if not briefings?
I looked curiously down the neat, almost wall to wall, row of metal cabinets. Opening a drawer at random, I found a subdivided interior, every little compartment filled with a single amulet or ring and a meticulously filled out paper label taped to it. Each piece pulsed with an unknown enchantment. It looked like the room was now a contraband and evidence locker.
I slunk to the door and cracked it open just enough to look through. I saw a pair of officers walking away down the hall. My eyes bounced from one door to another as I recalled the size and use of each one, trying to flesh out what they might be used for now. Thankfully every door I saw was labeled with a helpful plaque.
I poked my eye out past the edge of the door and looked the opposite direction. The next closest room used to be the study. The sign above the entrance read 'storage.' That gave me an idea. Quietly retracting back inside, I teleported next door to storage.
Twilight's old study made a sizable storage closet. Cuffs, batons, riot gear, police tape… My eyes were drawn to a big rack of folded police uniforms. Perfect… as long as my poster's not on the wall. I checked the sizes and slipped one on. Lastly I put a cap on my head and brushed my wild mane back out of my eyes.
I left the closet and began boldly walking the halls, dutifully reading every sign as I went. I needed to find where the action was in order to get anything out of this risky little adventure.
It didn't take long for me to see that the whole complex was spread thinner than lingerie a size too small. I found a large barracks that by my estimation was only operating at about a third capacity. The ballroom canteen was a ghost town. There were very few ponies in the halls. It was just as I predicted, the station wasn't a regional command center, it was like a little colt wearing his dad's boots. 
I turned left at the stairs. Lockup was probably downstairs. No reason to go there. As I drew closer to the open doorway which used to lead to Twilight's most treasured library, I actually heard murmuring and a quiet bustle of activity. This was the spot. I walked right in like I belonged.
Oddly enough the enormous library looked more or less the same. Some of the book stacks had been rearranged around a matrix of work desks but it looked like all of the books were still on the shelves. It was an office space integrated into a library and under other circumstances I might have even called it nice looking.
My nerves began to buzz as I skirted the perimeter of the cubicles. There were too many ponies in here and I couldn't just wander around for long without becoming suspicious. I stopped in front of a big bulletin board and scanned the wanted faces. I still wasn't there, at least not yet. Good. Maybe it wouldn't get out this far.
Just beside the faces was a big gridded map of the Everfree Forest. A spark of realization went off in my brain. There was a blobby shaped outline made of pins with red yarn stretched around them in the western half of the Everfree. This was pretty close to confirming what Pinkie Pie had said. Maybe the station was actually empty because everyone was searching the forest.
Looking over the rest of the room I realized that there wasn't much I could rummage through without brazenly insinuating myself into the office action. Searching a random empty workspace seemed like high risk, low reward unless it was the chief's office. He was in there at the moment. I could search it when he left.
I ran my hoof along a battery of wooden filing cabinets, reading every label on every top drawer. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a high ranking White Cap with bars on his gray uni come swaggering into the library. I immediately wondered what the hell he was doing here. Worst of the worst in my book, I'd seen a few of the grunts in rural Equestria so far but they were probably more well known for infesting the big cities, methodically backrooming ponies and ferreting out dissidents. They were the cold face of the purge and the most cruel of Sombra's appendages. If a head inquisitor of the secret police was in Ponyville, it meant something bad was happening here, an out of the ordinary kind of bad.
 The forest green earth pony went straight for the chief's office and disappeared inside. Now that was probably going to be an interesting conversation. I surreptitiously wandered over to the high bookshelves which made up the exterior of the big office and looked behind the books. Unfortunately there was a solid wall put up behind them and I couldn't just listen through the books. The chief had conventional walls but he might not have a ceiling.
The second tier of the library was unoccupied and had a balcony which wrapped around the interior and overlooked the main floor. I vanished quietly into a nook before teleporting up there. The beating heart in my throat reminded me of why I hated this kind of stuff.
I army crawled to the ledge and stuck an eye through the center of a wrought iron curl which adorned the bottom of the balcony railing. To my smug delight, I could indeed see right down into the office where the chief of police puffed on a cigar at his desk. 
"No more Ponyville for me," he chuckled. "I'm snagging a promotion for this and getting a transfer."
"Are you kidding?" scoffed the White Cap who sat across from him. "Ponies in the city would kill for a cushy job out here. And don't count your promotions before they're hatched."
"And why not?" shrugged the chief. "We know he's got the goods on her whereabouts. You think you might not get him to talk?"
"No, we will most certainly get the Intel. Whether in the end it delivers Twilight Sparkle to Sombra though is another matter entirely."
My heart revved at hearing my sister's name. They were interrogating someone who knew where she was. This was the ticket I needed.
The chief scratched his chin in thought. "Hmm… Should keep him alive as bait for a trap."
"Not my department but you may be right. The head inquisitor got up from his chair. "Session six is starting. I should check in."
"Six?" laughed the chief. "Is that a normal amount?"
"No… I've never seen anyone make it past two. It's kind of nice to see a real challenge for once." With that, he left the stallion with his cigar.
I teleported back to the main floor and followed the guy out of the library at a distance.
This was now a rescue mission. I get into the interrogation room, neutralize any resistance, free the witness and quickly escape with them before the station comes down on us.
We went down the stairs. The White Cap entered a door flanked by two posted sentries, a unicorn and an earth pony. I approached but kept my eyes on the hall straight ahead like I had other places to be. I shot a quick glance behind and saw that the hall was empty except for us. If I dealt with the sentries now by surprise, it would buy me more time.
In a snap decision at about five paces away I clipped the horn of the unicorn. Before the tip even hit the ground, I sent both guards on a date to Sugarcube Corner. The clock was ticking now.
I teleported to the other side of the door, ready to brawl. I couldn't believe what I saw. In the spacious repurposed bathroom I peered between the pair of White Caps to see a weary and bloodied Spike shackled, in a chair. A metal gag was locked over his mouth to suppress his dragon fire. His eyes scanned over to me on the edge of the dim lamp light but he remained indifferent to my presence. My adopted brother. I should have known. Who else would have that information?
"I don't leverage false hope about survival, dragon," the head inquisitor pontificated. "You already understand the terms. I promise your suffering will end after you give us what we want. How long that takes is entirely up to you."
The unicorn administering the treatment floated an obsidian tipped scalpel from a tray of various implements, picks, blades, an empty syringe, and eased the shining black tip up to Spike's face.
I felt immediate searing fury ignite within me, the very same I'd felt the last time I saw Pinkie Pie's face.
Before the torturer could make any use of the tool, I highjacked the blade with my magic, spun it around and drove it mid handle deep into her own eye. She shrieked, stumbling back into her tray of tools, knocking them to the floor with a crash. 
The head inquisitor whirled around in surprise. He locked eyes with my burning pits. I grabbed his head in my aura and squeezed.
"S-stop," he grunted in pain as the other inquisitor whimpered, trying to draw the scalpel from her socket with trembling hooves.
My glare deepened. I forced his mouth shut and kept squeezing. His muffled cries died behind sealed lips. His face turned red as the vessels within began to rupture. Blood seeped down from his eyes, nose and then even his ears as his guttural vocalizations became more frantic. Just as a puddle of red began to form at my hooves, I jerked his head around in almost a half turn to a chorus of popping vertebrae. I threw his body against the wall and turned my attention to the other White Cap who continued to struggle with removing the scalpel.
I floated her up, slamming her into the ceiling and pinning her there spreadeagle. "Let me help you with that," I growled. Telekinetically I twisted the embedded implement, causing more blood to drip from her now sightless orb. I listened to her scream, not caring if anyone heard or that I was carelessly wasting time I could have been using to safety flee the scene. In the back of my mind, I could see numbers on a wanted poster rolling higher like a cash register tally.
I called every sharp and pointy tool in sight to attention in the air and one by one jammed them all into the unicorn's barrel. She wailed and moaned in agony until she was a weeping, dripping pin cushion.
As I stared into her pathetic, soulless visage I saw flashes of Luna's disapproving face, then that of Pinkie Pie and my terrified wife and daughter watching me, seeing a cold viciousness I'd never shown them or anyone. I faltered in uncertainty but when I looked back at Spike who'd been bruised, battered and mutilated without mercy, it was like kerosene on embers again. How dare they. What excuse did I have for letting such irredeemable scum fester on this planet? 
My hatred renewed, I looked back at the quivering mass still pressed to the ceiling. I sent a single diamond cutter through her neck and then released her just as the red geyser erupted. She dropped to the hard floor with a meaty thud. She gurgled and choked face down, only able to shudder as blood quickly pooled around her.
I let out a shaky breath as I approached Spike. His eyes grew wide in terror. "No! No, please!" he begged, shaking his head as vehemently as his restraints would allow.
"Spike, it's me," I almost cried. "Shining."
"What?" he squinted hazily. "Oh, good… I'm finally dead. I didn't know ponies and dragons went to the same-"
"No. We're both alive."
"No way," he breathed.
I teleported him out of his bindings but the gag stayed on. I reached out to hug him. He flinched in pain at my touch. Even so, he managed to reciprocate weakly.
"Do you know where Twili is?" I asked, beginning to scrounge around for a key to his mask.
"Yeah," he gasped in exhaustion. He was clearly struggling to focus through the effects of whatever truth serum they'd put in his system. He held a shaking hand up in front of his face, gazing bemusedly at the empty space where his fourth claw used to reside.
I rolled over the body of the head inquisitor. "Did you tell anyone?"
"No," he grunted. "And I think I've been here for like two days."
"Spike, that's fucking amazing. I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to do that."
"Dragon fortitude," he mumbled. He looked down woozily at the other White Cap now face up, drenched in blood with every pointed piece of metal bent or nearly pushed into obscurity within her flesh. He abruptly looked away. "Yeah… Can we get out of here now?"
"Can't find your key," I muttered," examining the components of Spike's gag. "Hold still." I braced his head in profile view with one forehoove and summoned another magic blade. With surgical precision, it sheered the lock from the back of his neck. I knocked the device loose and it fell to the floor with a clang.
> We Were All Strangers
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spike studied the forest map as he rode upon my back. I'd roughly added in the two areas I'd seen on the station map denoting where the police were canvassing the Everfree.
"It looks like they're just guessing based on where they caught me," he mumbled. "I wasn't actually that close to the hideout. If this is right, we shouldn't have a problem avoiding them on the way."
"Is it possible they might find the hideout eventually?" I asked.
"They might find the entrance but they probably won't know it and they definitely won't get it open," he assured me.
"Uh… Shining? It's been a while since you saw Twilight. She's… I just feel like I should warn you, she's changed a lot from the Twilight we used to know and… you might not like what you see when we get there."
I turned my head to squint up at him. "What are you talking about?"
"She's losing it. It might be hard to see."
"What… You mean her mind?"
"Yeah."
I had a hard time envisioning this. Sure, Twilight had her freakout moments in passing but she was always still a pillar of reason after she came back down.
"Well does she get out of the hideout?" I inquired, trying to push back on his assessment.
Spike scratched his head. "Not really anymore. It's kind of risky anyway."
"She's probably just stir crazy," I argued dismissively. "You know how she gets."
Spike just sighed and ruffled the map. "Stay on this course and we'll be good."
Just then, we heard a distant howl echo through the trees. I stopped in my tracks to listen, ears pointed straight up. There arose a host of much closer howls in response, followed by a flutter of unseen birds taking flight in surprise. Spike crumpled attop me, wrapping his arms and the map around my neck.
"Timber wolves," I breathed absently.
"Yeah," agreed Spike, trembling on my withers. "Let's stay out of their way."
"I would if I knew where they were," I replied quietly, scanning the shaded forest for any movement. I continued walking carefully, now suddenly aware of how loud the dead leaves and branches were beneath my heavy hooffalls.
After several tense moments of walking in silence, I heard a rustling gallop building in my ears from an innumerable amount of pounding paws. With Spike all but choking me from behind, I dove behind the base of a thick tree and hoped that wherever the sound was coming from was on the opposite side of the trunk.
A powerful but quiet rumble swelled around us and I bared down as though I could will us invisible. The whole pack sprinted by like a gust of wind. In my peripheral vision, I saw flickers between the trees. There had to be almost ten of them. Not sure how I would have fared. I didn't stand again until I heard nothing but my own relieved sigh and Spike had melted into a boneless blob on my shoulders.
We continued onward, not much further.
"This is it," declared Spike, sliding gingerly off of my back. He walked over to a hollowed out tree and turned back to me.
"Okay, you need to ditch the uniform. She's super paranoid and on a hair trigger. Showing up in cop duds would probably be bad. I don't even know how she's going to react to your new look."
My forehead creased in worry as I took off the police uniform, folded it up and stuffed it in my pack.
Spike blew a blast of green fire into the hollow of the tree. A portal stretched across the void and I saw the interior of what looked like some kind of subterranean bunker. The ceiling was low and the walls were thick stone lined by torches that glowed orange with magical flames. I stepped in just behind Spike and the portal evaporated.
"Twilight," he shouted. "I'm back. I brought Shining Armor with me. He's alive." He delivered each syllable with precise clarity as if he were speaking with an old half deaf mare.
There were so many rooms so close together, all of them cluttered with books and every one had an iron grate over it, allowing me to see straight in. It looked like a prison. With each passing moment that I didn't see Twili, I found myself becoming more and more anxious.
"What is this place?" I finally asked, still looking back and forth at every passing doorway.
"This is the dungeon of the Castle of the Two Sisters. The real entrance to it is caved in, so the only way to get inside is magic. Twilight gave the place a ward enchantment and built this portal some distance away from the actual castle."
Twilight," he called again.
"Spike?" came a desperate voice from down the hall.
My heart skipped a beat.
Twilight clamored into the hallway from a door just ahead of us. She looked pale. Her mane was disheveled and her eyes were wild.
"Spike?" she blurted. Then she saw me. "Look out, behind you!" She charged up her horn and launched an energy beam at me. Spike hit the deck. I deflected the attack into the ceiling with a summoned shield, then another.
"Twilight, stop," screamed Spike, waving his hands in the air, still prostrate on the floor as a smattering of rubble landed before him.
"Twili, it's me," I shouted.
I heard another beam charging up but then abruptly die away.
"Me who?" she demanded, squinting suspiciously.
"Shining Armor," supplied Spike, picking himself up slowly.
"Your B.B.B.F.F.," I added desperately.
"Shining is dead and you don't even look like Shining," she charged, looking me up and down.
"I should have had you wait outside," muttered Spike. "It's really him, Twilight. He saved me from police custody."
"Sunshine, sunshine-" I began.
"Ladybug's awake," she responded feverishly.
"Clap your hooves and do a little shake."
She crept closer to me, head cocked curiously to one side, still incredulous to my authenticity. She stopped right in front of me almost muzzle to muzzle and stared into my eyes.
"Sh-Shining?" Her eyes softened and tears began to flow. She wrapped her forelegs around me. I hugged her back and began to cry too.
Spike put a hand on my side. I couldn't believe we were all together again. In spite of this unimaginable meeting, no one could find a word to say. It didn't matter that Twilight was smarter and more powerful than me; I felt needed as a big brother in that moment.
"Spike needs medical attention," I murmured in her ear. Our long embrace broke and I wiped my tears with one leg.
She bent down to look the dragon over. "What happened, Spike?" she asked bluntly.
"I got captured by police when I went out for supplies."
"Oh, uh… yeah." She scratched her head, seemingly bewildered that she didn't already piece that together. "You need to be more careful," she chided.
I gritted my teeth. "Twilight, they were brutally torturing him for two days. He's missing a finger. I think if there was a lesson-"
I looked down to see Spike pulling a lock of my mane and shaking his head at me as if he didn't want to press the issue.
Twilight's horn glowed as she sent healing waves over Spike's body. When they dissipated, he sighed in comparative relief. His cuts were smaller and his bruises lighter.
"Ugh, I can move my arm again," he grunted, working his shoulder around.
"Sorry, I can't regenerate the claw," she shrugged. "Well, let's… let's eat something."
I frowned again and tried to shake off my sister's uncharacteristically tactless remarks as she led us down the cell block. My eyes continue to ping-pong between rooms, expecting to see some sort of livable or utilitarian space but it was just books on top of scrolls on top of books and they weren't even organized as I'd expect. She loves projects like that. What else did she have to do all day?
"I thought you left all your books at your old place. Where did you get all these?"
"The castle upstairs," she grinned. "I did bring a few of my favorites when I fled though."
We stopped at a T-section and entered an open cell that I supposed was the kitchen. There were sacks and barrels and a little fire pit with a black cauldron hanging above it.
"This is the boiled water," said Spike, flipping a wooden lid off the top of one of the barrels. "Only drink out of here."
Twilight hastily assembled two bowls of oats from a gunny sack.
"Uh… the oats are kind of old," he warned me, pouring himself a bowl of granulated crystals. "But we have a ton of them."
The three of us sat around a wooden packing crate with our MRE quality meals. The food was bland but spirits were high. We were on the run, they were living in a dark, stale hole. We had no plan yet to fix any of it but there was an inexplicable sense of electric hope in the air just from seeing one another.
I told them about how I survived and about Pinkie Pie and living in disguise while working in the mines outside Crystal City. I told them what Fluttershy and Applejack we're doing and what the inside of that Castle of Friendship looked like now. I told them how I wanted the story to end.
Twilight stood up with a start, a crazed look in her eyes. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "Yes! Eating is over!"
Spike buried his face in his hands.
Without warning, she teleported all three of us to a larger room without bars. There was a mattress on the floor in the corner and more crates scattered about with countless open books draped over them. Plastered to the walls were clusters of transcriptions, constellations of mind maps and matrices of equations. Shit. She went lunatic full wall.
"Since no one else will help, I've been trying to formulate a plan to save Equestria by myself," she blurted loudly in my face. "Potions, magic, enchantments, whatever! I keep running the numbers but nothing I've found has a high enough probability of success to justify an attempt."
Her words were rapidfire and full volume as if she were yelling to someone on a departing train from the platform.
"But now that you're here, we have two brains and twice as much magic.
Spike crossed his arms and muttered indignantly.
"Well, more like sixty or seventy percent more magic,'' I laughed awkwardly. I teleported my pack into the room and floated the book out. "I've actually been collecting my own intelligence on Sombra-"
"Gimme!" She snatched the book away with her own magic and began scanning frantically over the pages, abandoning the conversation and disappearing into her own frazzled mind. She paced around, muttered unintelligibly to herself.
This is all she thinks about, mouthed Spike.
"This is an excellent source of information. It reminds me-" She began whirling about, looking in every direction. "Uh… Where did I put- I thought I- Where-"
Flustered, she teleported away and I could hear ranting and raving emanating from down the hall as she rummaged through her book piles for what, I didn't even know.
Spike and I exchanged distraught glances.
"She's just… having one of her episodes," I whispered, trying to reassure myself.
"Shining, she's been this way for over a year and it just keeps getting worse."
"Yeah, well, it's not good for her to be locked up down here all the time," I countered frustratedly. "It's dismal. You can't even tell what time of day it is in this place. That can't be healthy."
"She does this to herself," argued Spike. "I can't make her do anything. I told you she was paranoid. And she's obsessed."
Obsessed, I thought. Like me. But unlike me, she was still attached to her role as a guardian of Equestria. My eyes landed on a gathering of six little clay figures that looked like twilight and her friends. I approached the small crate table they stood upon and noticed a few photos on the wall behind it. I leaned in closer and saw something I thought I'd never see again, Cadance and Flurry Heart smiling back at me. It was all three of us and Spike and Twilight. We were all smiling. We were all strangers. I swallowed and stroked the picture softly with one hoof, fighting back more tears. Since that day, I had only seen their faces in my nightmares.
"I'll find it later," blurted Twilight angrily, suddenly reappearing behind me. "I'm not sleeping till we figure this out!'
> I Unquit
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was yanked from my restless dreams by a pair of hooves pushing frantically on my chest. "Shining! Shining! Quick, you have to wake up!"
The urgency in her voice sent my heart vibrating like I'd just done a line of moon sugar off a hummingbird feeder. I shot up from my burlap pile, ready to fight an unknown threat.
Twilight pushed her face into mine, her horn glowing purple, just bright enough to illuminate our two floating visages in the dark "Shining, I have an idea! Maybe I can just make you an alicorn and then the two of us-"
"Tell me about it tomorrow, Twili," I groaned, laying back down. "Go to bed. You need sleep."
"But I can research now and have it all figured out when you wake up in the morning," she countered manically.
"I'm serious. Go to sleep. Don't even set an alarm. Just wake when you feel rested."
"Not setting an alarm?" she gasped in horror. "That's completely irresponsible." She shook me again. "Equestria is crying! We have to-"
"Equestria's been getting ravaged for years. It can handle a few more hours. We're not doing any missions unless we're both rested and in the right frame of mind."
"I'll just research a little bit before going to bed," she proposed unconvincingly as she departed from my cell.







In the morning, Twilight woke me up like a crazed science zombie which implied that she did none of the things I'd suggested when she came to me in the night. My watch said it was a quarter past seven but I guess time of day doesn't really matter much in here. Not even I felt rested but I'd slept on a scratchy fabric pile and, come to think of it, I had only been on one real bed in the past few nights.
I grudgingly obliged her unwelcome wakeup call and shambled into the kitchen where she had two bowls of oats and a groggy Spike at the breakfast crate.
I rubbed my eyes and beheld the near tasteless offering before digging in with the same spoon I'd used yesterday.
"You said something about making me an alicorn… or was that a weird dream? Can you really do that?" I admit that the thought of ascension filled me with trepidation, especially if I didn't even earn it. That was a surprising detail to get hung up on. It almost felt like a muffled protest from Shining Armor, wherever he was.
"No, I can't actually do that," she lamented, as she stuffed her face. "Just forget about that. Only natural Alicorns can grant Alicornhood. Made Alicorns like me can't. But I have an idea that might even be better. I can give you my alicorn powers just like Luna and Celestia did for me when they imbued an amulet with their powers."
I scratched my chin as my eyes widened with understanding. "So… alicorn amulet against alicorn amulet."
"Exactly!" She pounded the table with excited emphasis.
I screwed up my face. "But you're already an alicorn. Can't I just give you my power as a boost?"
She shook her head and floated one of Celestia's old spell books up to thump on it. "It's an alicorn only enchantment. Believe me, if it worked the other way around, I would have already panhandled enough magic from friends to take out Sombra a long time ago. I can only pick one pony to receive my power and you're the obvious best candidate in Equestria."
"Okay," I exhaled thoughtfully.
Twilight downed the rest of her oats and began to gesticulate. "We need a piece of jewelry to enchant with my power though and I don't have any in here. We could search the castle-"
"I have my wedding band with me," I suggested eagerly.
"That's perfect," she gasped.
I floated the ring out of my pack and set the piece on her upturned hoof, the little necklace strap I'd given it, dangled down. She beheld the symbol of my fidelity with an emotional sort of reverence, setting it carefully on a dish she drew to her from atop another crate near her rack of stay awake potions.
I rubbed my hooves together anxiously. "Okay, what's next?"
Twilight stared down at the shiny metal band and swallowed. "Let's do something fun now," she replied out of nowhere.
"Something fun?" I blinked. "A few hours ago you were ready to go fight Sombra in your pajamas."
"Let's go watch the sunrise," she proposed. "I haven't been above ground in a while."
"Okay?" I shrugged. Though a little bewildered, I wasn't about to stop her from getting out of the house finally.
"Yes," Spike celebrated with a fist pump.
The three of us exited the dungeon through the hollow tree portal into the early morning mist. Twilight teleported us straight to the top of a tower in the old crumbling castle. We gathered around a big window where the stucco on the frame had worn away, revealing naked stone. Spike crawled up to straddle the sill and we all looked out upon an ocean of trees just as the golden sun began to pierce the horizon and set fire to the sky.
"You're not getting cold hooves are you?" I muttered. "You know I'll give your power right back when I'm done."
"Yeah, I know… Wow," she sighed, resting her forelegs on the sill. "Haven't seen one of these in a while. Haven't seen the sun in a while, for that matter."
I presumptuously pulled my last cigarette from behind my ear. "Mind if I smoke while we're having fun?"
She looked bemusedly at the cigarette and then up at me. "You quit."
"I unquit," I sighed.
"Oh… go ahead," she mumbled, turning back to the gold bump growing behind the trees. "Do you remember when I was born?" she asked abruptly.
"Of course," I scoffed, flicking the lighter shut. "I was around the same age that you were when you hatched Spike."
"I know, I guess what I mean is, do you remember it fondly? What did you really think about getting a sibling? Be honest." She suddenly seemed somber but also more lucid and articulate like she'd been rejuvenated by the natural light or perhaps it was just that she felt like she finally had a handle on the situation.
"I was excited at first because I don't think I really understood what that all meant." I admitted slowly. "Then, when the reality hit and I was getting a lot less attention from our parents, I was a lot less excited… for a little while anyway. I guess I've been chasing to get that missing attention back ever since."
Twilight laughed weakly. "I never felt that way when Spike was born." 
"You were never an only foal," I argued dismissively. "And you were like his third parent. Doesn't matter. I conceded your victory on your coronation day." I flicked ash over the edge.
She snapped her eyes to me. "Hey, it's not fair to pit our paths against each other. They're both good, just different. I became an alicorn princess but I never got married or started a family."
Whatever her intention was with that line, it felt like I'd been bucked in the stomach. "If we're being completely honest, neither of us have any of those things anymore," I countered bluntly.
An awkward silence passed between us which we both used to regret our stupid words.
"You still have plenty of time for that, Twili," I finally said.
She just gazed wistfully into the intense glow overtaking the treetops. Looking at her, I formed the misconception that she was carefully ruminating on her next words.
"Can I try your cigarette?" she asked, still staring out the window.
My older sibling instinct immediately dictated shock and apprehension at the question. I couldn't let her do that; it would be irresponsible. We weren't foals anymore but it was still image-shattering and so unlike her.
"Not much left but you can have the rest." I floated it to her, upright till she caught it with her own magic.
She took a modest drag and choked out a puff of smoke. "I don't like it," she croaked, eyes watering.
I smirked back at her. "I don't think either of us thought you would."
She examined the ash tip closely before flicking it off as if it were all part of an experiment. "Remember when I caught you?" she murmured absently.
I stared vacantly into the wind, trying to parse through every traumatic memory that fit Twilight's vague theme.
"Smoking," she clarified flatly. "And I didn't tell mom because you were supposed to go to the water park and we knew you'd be grounded if our parents found out?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Why bring that up? Are you finally collecting on that IOU?"
She returned a look befitting the absurdity of my comment. "What? No. They found out a few months later anyway so what good was it?"
"Right, they were always going to find out eventually but the important thing is that I got to go to the water park. So it wasn't for nothing."
She snorted and then chortled at that. "You're right. You know, that was the first instance I can remember rebelling, even if it was mostly by proxy. I was more afraid of ruining your trip than I was of not adhering to the rules. Traditionally I've been a straightedge and a square my whole life but I did have a few moments."
"You chose them well," I nodded, patting her nest of squirrely mane.
Twilight finished the cigarette and coughed again before letting it drop to the stone floor. She glanced up at me almost as if wanting approval on her form before she stamped it out with a twist of her hoof.
"Alright, I'm ready. Thanks for humoring me."
"Everyone wave bye to Celestia," said Spike, waving to the sun.
We both waved a sad but hopeful hoof. Hope you don't mind us squatting in your old castle.
Twilight brought us down to the old tree and soon we were back in her laboratory bedroom at a most dismal and primitive setup. 
"Here we go," she exhaled, standing before the plate. The tip of her horn glowed ultraviolet. Then she looked at both of us individually. "I love you guys."
My face fell in sudden concern at her strangely timed remark. "Uh… Twili?"
My words were drowned out as a blast of focused energy burst from Twilight's horn and converged on my wedding band. There came a gale of wind that ruffled my mane. The look on her face was strained and the light was so intense that I had to look away. The spell didn't take long. It ended suddenly when I heard a thud. As the wind subsided elegantly, I looked back to find my sister on the floor motionless.
"Twi," exclaimed Spike.
"Twilight?" I rushed over to her and rolled her over to check. "Oh, shit, she's not breathing," I cried. "What happened?"
"Check the spell book," Spike squealed in panic.
I scrambled over to where Twilight had set the old tome aside and quickly opened it to the bookmark, hoping desperately that it marked the spell she'd used. My eyes landed on the name.

Grand Transference Enchantment: Imbue a metallic effect with the enchanter's alicorn magic. Magnified potency spell requires enchanter's lifeforce.

My blood ran cold. "No," I breathed. I brushed the large bookmark out of the way and realized that there were actually two. No… they weren't bookmarks; they were something more, two pieces of paper folded neatly in thirds and inscribed with a name: one read 'Spike' and the other, 'Shining.'
My throat closed up. I couldn't breathe. I felt sick. I felt like I was plummeting off of a cliff. This couldn't be true.
"What is it?" begged Spike urgently, kneeling at Twilight's head.
"She's gone," I whimpered. "She wrote us both letters." I floated Spike's letter to him and his jaw dropped in horror. 
For a few moments, he just stared at it apprehensively as if rejecting it might bring her back. When he finally did grab it, he shook his head slowly at me. "I can't," he quivered, tears pooling in his eyes.
"She wrote it for you," I sniffed. "This is really important." I couldn't deal. I'd exited my body and was watching myself unfold my letter from across the room.

Dear Shining,

If you are reading this, it means I'm with mom and dad. Please understand that it was an entirely intentional sacrifice and not an accident or calculated risk… And it is not reversible. I'm sorry for omitting this critical detail but had I told you, you would have tried to stop me and steer us toward a plan with a significantly less probability of success. 
I deeply regret leaving you like this so soon after getting you back and after everything that's happened. It also feels selfish to yoke the fate of the nation squarely on your shoulders but I know you love Equestria as much as I do and believe me when I say that you are Her best and last chance at salvation.
I know you are in your element in a head on fight. With the power I'm entrusting to you by this modified transference enchantment, you will have the edge in that fight.
I don't know how everything pans out from here but I do know that you will be the benevolent ruler that the Crystal Empire or Even Equestria deserves.
I'm so very tired…
Thank you for always being there for me. No one could ask for a better big brother. Good luck.

With all the love, your B.L.S.F.F., Twili

I set the paper down, shaking like a leaf. My whole face was tight, aching with pent up sorrow behind a dam that was about to crumble. "I'm going to need to step outside," I managed to choke out. "Spike?"
Spike gasped between sobs as he struggled through his own letter but wandered into the hall to help. He opened the portal for me and I hurried through, unable to contain myself a moment longer. I collapsed pathetically to the forest floor, heaving. I pounded my hooves in the dirt and screamed curses to the sky above.
> On My Sister's Wings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

We buried Twilight deep, not just out of respect but with a genuine fear that something out there might dig her up.
Spike placed a stone he'd scratched a name and date on at the end of the mound and we stood there and gave the eulogy at the spot where the Tree of Harmony used to grow.
"I promise I'm gonna come back here with the most beautiful headstone you've ever seen." I wasn't sure if I was speaking to Spike or Twilight.
We left just as the sun reached its zenith, casting a golden ray through the cave ceiling and down on Twilight's final resting place.
"What are you gonna do now?" I asked Spike, hanging my head low as we dragged ourselves toward the brightness of the cave mouth.
"I guess I'll stay here until supplies run out," he responded glumly. "Then, depending on what happens, I might flee to the Dragonlands."
"You won't have to flee," I resolved.
"I hope not. the Dragonlands might not have Sombra but they're not exactly nice."
We returned to the lab which to me seemed to have a tainted air about it now. I sat before the ring which, in the mayhem and fallout of everything, hadn't moved since Twilight set it down. I rubbed my face with both hooves, not knowing how to feel about it anymore. The symbol of my love for Cadance was also now a symbol of Twilight's death and her selfless love of country… and her trust in me.
That letter was addressed to the Shining Armor that Twilight used to know but no matter who I was now or my misgivings about rulership, I couldn't let her down. My heart couldn't take it. I would have just dropped dead from sadness but Twilight's sacrifice meant that I had to succeed now more than ever.
I pounded a hoof on the table, rattling the ring on the plate. There had to be another way. She was too exhausted to make a decision like that on her own. She wasn't in her right mind. Of course I would have stopped her, just like she wrote.
My eyes settled on the empty space within the ring as my mind slogged through the darkest of swamps. This is stupid, I thought. I couldn't change anything now. Twilight did what she did and she didn't give me her powers to just sit around dwelling on her loss and what could have been. She gave me a mission.
I levitated the ring in front of my face and snapped off the necklace. I'd wear it like it was intended to be worn. Spike watched breathlessly as I floated the ring over the tip of my horn and slid it down. Just as the metal band lodged snugly on me, electricity surged through my veins. Visions I could only understand as Twilight's memories flooded my head as the synapses in my brain expanded and realigned. I gasped as the euphoric rush subsided.
"Did it work," breathed Spike, wide eyed.
Instead of answering, I looked around for something to test my powers on and singled out a frying pan. I focused the first spell to come to mind and transformed it into an ugly but functional alarm clock. I wound it up and began passing it in and out of little wormholes that I ripped in spacetime all about the room.
I hit the device with an energy blast that made it glow red hot and shoot out little plumes of fire. I continued juggling the smoldering clock through portals before making it pop up in front of me. The cutter I sent through it was three times bigger than the ones I usually made. It sliced the clock in two with a shower of sparks and drove deep into the stone wall with a thud. In an instant, I transfiggured the clock halves back into a single frying pan and let it clang robustly on the floor. Then I cast my ultimate defence which bubbled around a little flask on the shelf. While holding it there, I sent out another diamond cutter. It dissipated on contact with my barrier, protecting the flask within but shattered the two which flanked it on either side.
Spike blinked in amazement. "Woah… you might be more magically agile than Celestia."
"I'd better be," I sighed. By my math, me plus Twili plus live sacrifice needed to yield something unprecedented.
The agility was one thing but I also felt incredibly powerful and well versed. Spells that I previously had no knowledge of how to execute were now second nature to me. Spells that I'd never even heard of before, I could conjure instantaneously as easily as recalling my name. 
Was this really what it was like for their kind? Was the bulk of this prodigious epiphany from my sister's exceptional abilities? Was it just typical alicornhood, the sum of those parts or had I transcended to something else entirely? Without having sized up Sombra in years, the magical synergy within me, had me convinced that I was now the most powerful being on the planet.
"I have to go," I murmured, turning to Spike. "Are you going to be okay?"
He swallowed nervously. "That depends. Are you going to die?"
"I don't think so. I feel pretty confident right now, despite everything awful."






—-
I wanted to go straight to the kill and roll credits like I'd wanted to do for almost two and a half years but I was worried about Pinkie and her family. Like Twilight said, I didn't know how it would pan out. After a presumptive win, would it be harder or easier to help them? Would it be more or less dangerous for them? In the end, what drove my final decision wasn't any sort of tactical acumen or statistical calculation. I knew where they all were right now and I just really wanted to see someone happy. I needed it. If I could just find where they were hiding, I could reunite all of them and they should be safe together no matter what happens.
I did what I'd already been doing, bared down and pushed forward with steeled resolve. One second I'm standing in the shadows of the Everfree Forest, the next I'm materializing between two parked trains in Shail Junction. It was an incredible leap, exponentially greater than any distance I'd ever spanned before. The feat was shocking yet somehow just as predicted.
Even having a big cashe of brand new and upgraded spells which I had yet to try out, I was still at the same time acutely aware of the extent of my own abilities. They already occupied a well traveled space in my brain. I did not need to practice with them. I was at the top of my game just as before.
I wandered the train yard in the early afternoon light in much the same way I had on my first visit when I got picked up by Limestone. Seeing no one around, I went in the direction of the depot where I'd been locked up. Between two cars, I saw the same clipboard bearing unicorn guard from before who's name I never got. Close behind him was Limestone. The two were leaving to do audit inspections or whatever it was they did.
I quickly hid behind a parked tanker car and maneuvered around to the other side, keeping out of sight as they passed over the tracks.
As the tip of Limestone's tail vanished behind the corner, I teleported her back to face me.
"Hey," I whispered.
Her eyes bugged out in surprise. "What- What are you doing here?"
"I figured out where your family is hiding… I think."
Her eyes narrowed in determination. "Well, take me there right now."
Her unexpected demand threw me for a loop. "Uh, take, take you? Well there's a few details we should probably-"
She suddenly shoved a hoof over my mouth and shot a glance to the side. "Go ahead," she yelled. "I'll be there in a minute."
I lowered my voice. "The Apples told me Maude went through Ponyville to try to find Pinkie but she'd already left. They said they were going to some cavern in Red Tail Crossing. Does that sound familiar to you?"
She rubbed her chin. "Yeah, that's supposedly where father's family took shelter during a harsh winter on the wagon trail before they settled in Rockville."
"So you know where that is?" I prodded expectantly.
"Not exactly. I've just heard the story about it a million times… but we have maps in the depot." She turned and pointed back the way she came in a beckoning manner.
I preemptively zapped us inside the little building. Limestone blinked confusedly before digging into a cubby of rolled maps. She spread one out, covering the whole table and then flipped it over to see the index. This whole reuniting thing was a more complex puzzle than I'd expected but I felt like we were almost there.
"This is the most detailed map for that area. It should have it." She pointed to the Rs as she scrolled down the list. "G-8," she muttered, flipping the map back over.
We examined the grid swatch which fell upon a quite rural region. It didn't take long to find it. There were only five named things in the whole square of G-8.
"Right there." She tapped her hoof on an intersection of two outlined roads, indicating that they were undeveloped.
"There's… nothing out there," I murmured.
"I'm sure that's the point," she replied absently. "Ugh. I shouldn't run before I have a place to hide but I'm pretty sure I can find that cave if I could just get there." She sighed in frustration. "But it's all wagon roads for miles and probably with half a dozen checkpoints on the way."
I looked all over the map for some place I'd been or even just heard of as a reference point. Ponyville was hugging the opposite edge of the region, almost off the map. I checked the distance scale, trying to estimate how big of a challenge this might be for her alone and started becoming worried. There were indeed no train tracks out that way.
I thought I'd be simply relaying this information and then she'd want to sleep on it to plot her next move if there was one. I hadn't planned on just diving in like this but I couldn't stop myself now. "I could probably get you there in fifteen or twenty minutes," I blurted.
"How?"
"Some creative teleportation," I replied, twirling my hoof.
She furrowed her brow in confusion. "Wait, how far can you actually teleport?"
"Pretty damn far now," I admitted.
"But you needed a train before."
"Yeah, I did. It's a long story but now I don't need a train."
Her forehead wrinkled as she thought. "I have an out to disappear for the rest of the day on official business but that's all I get. If I'm not back tomorrow morning, I get reported as a deserter and I'm stuck out in the open till I can find my family and hide.
My eyes metronomed across the room as I formulated a plan. "I can take you there now. We can look around. If we don't find the place, I'll just bring you back before tomorrow like nothing happened. We can do that whenever you can and as many times as you need.
Limestone gritted her teeth and looked away momentarily. Silently she wiped her eyes with one hoof. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," she agreed with a strained voice.






—-
"Okay, stop. Stop," pleaded Limestone. "I'm gonna barf."
I paused us in the middle of a grassy meadow full of dancing butterflies and she took a deep, labored breath.
"Are you keeping your eyes closed like I said?" I asked, looking alertly around.
"No," she grunted. "What if there's danger?"
"I'll tell you if there's danger. Close your eyes. We'll be there in… I honestly don't know. Less than ten?"
We were both dressed as officers. I figured it would make the trip easier.
"Does Pinkie know anything about this?"
I shook my head, my anxiety over Pinkie renewed. "No. I haven't seen her yet."
"Should we have brought her?" She looked into my eyes with a worry on her face I wouldn't think she'd allow.
"I don't know. She's at work right now."
"Well, so was I… Oh." Her face fell in realization.
"It's okay," I nodded. "I'll have her up to speed by tonight."
Limestone tentatively closed her eyes and we continued teleporting. Red Tail Crossing was probably a day's trip from Ponyville on hoof. I started us out from the Apple's farm and apparated us in a chain of long range bursts as far as my eyes could see while avoiding the roads.
Contrary to popular belief amongst non magic users, even with the incredible teleportation range that I now possessed, I still had to have a mental spacial lock on a location to blink there and that's difficult if you've never been there, can't see it or can't visualize it. The real story though is how I wasn't feeling drained at all.
I took us to the outskirts of an isolated village nestled in a grove of tall trees. The closest town to the crossing was a place called Blossom which had a sign at the entry reading 'Population 48.' 
We walked down main street casually, absorbing the feel of the place. I expected rustic but it looked like it hadn't changed since pioneer days, like an untouched community lost to time. The few ponies who saw us, looked away or kept their heads low. At the other edge of Blossom was a worn signpost supporting a collection of roughly painted distance markers, the closest monument being Red Tail Crossing at just two miles.
"So what'd you do in Ponyville, anyway?" grumbled Limestone.
"Looked for your family but the whole reason I went there was to find my sister, Twilight."
She blinked. "Your sister is Twilight Sparkle? I guess I already knew that. She's still out there? Did you actually find her?"
My gaze sank into the dusty wagon rut scrolling lazily beneath my hooves. "Yeah but… then I lost her again."
Limestone spent a moment trying to unravel my vague reply before conceding to her curiosity. "What do you mean?" 
"She…" I swallowed as despair swelled in my chest again. "I buried her a couple of hours ago."
"Holy shit." Mortified and spellbound, she quickly looked away.
"She sacrificed herself without my knowing to put her powers into my ring and then told me to go kick Sombra's ass with it. So that's what I'm gonna do."
Limestone stewed silently over the brutally blunt revelation and I started to feel even worse for killing the conversation and painting her into a corner with it. "It's okay if you don't know what to say to that," I fumbled. "I wouldn't know either."
"I'm sorry. I…I didn't know." She shook her head. "I shouldn't have dragged you out here."
"You didn't drag me out here. I wanted to do this. It's the only thing that makes sense right now. It's… healing, I guess."
She looked back at me with words poised in her mouth but they never came out.
The trees disappeared along with the smattering of little log buildings as the old dirt road took us into open fields of waving grass. There were countless outcroppings of big bulbous rocks jutting up all around us. We came upon another signpost marking a crossroads in our path. This had to be it. There was nothing else out here.
Limestone sat on her haunches upon the dirt x and looked around bemusedly at the oddly shaped monuments surrounding us. "Okay, we're looking for a rock formation that looks like an ursa's head."
I scratched my head. "So, one of these big rock mounds has a cave in it?"
"I guess," she shrugged. "I don't know how much of that story is reliable though. Father wasn't even on that journey. It's something his grandfather told him when he was a foal on the rock farm. I didn't know there'd be this many rocks either. I mean, any of these probably could have worked as shelter in some way."
"Don't worry. Remember, we don't have to figure it out right now. And now that we've been here once, we can come right back in a blink.
"Yeah… okay. I guess we should split up."
I nodded in agreement. "And look, it's already divided up into quadrants. You wanna take the town side and I'll do the far side?" I suggested.
She stared incredulously at me.
I frowned. "What?"
"Nothing. No, that's okay." She stood up and flicked the dirt from her tail.
We went to work. I tried to keep my search methodical, grid-like so as not to miss areas or cover anything twice. I recognized many shapes in the rocks but nothing that really stood out as an ursa head.
I teleported to the top of one particularly tall mound just to get a good view. There were dozens of these outcroppings stretching out in all directions like we were ants in a farmer's crop field. I saw the gray figure of Limestone far below on the other side of the road, pacing and scanning the base of a mound for an entry point.
I continued searching but found nothing save for a few shallow, empty nooks. The sun sank lower until everything was bathed in gold and as the shadows lengthened, our hope for finding them today waned. We met back near the crossroads.
"You didn't find anything, did you?" grunted a deflated looking Limestone.
"Nope."
"Smoke break while I think." She backed up against a rock formation and patted down her pockets till she found her pack."
"Share?" I asked meekly. "I'm out."
She held up the open pack on her hoof and I floated a cigarette out.
"Shit. Do I not have matches?" she grumbled angrily, still searching herself.
I magically sparked the end of her cig and then my own. I knew how to do that now.
She raised her eyebrows. "Oh, thanks," she sighed heavily. She slid down the rock face until she was back on her haunches with her eyes closed.
"You seriously think you can beat Sombra?"
"Yeah," I breathed flippantly without hesitation."
"Then you must be pretty amazing. I'd love to have that time back… and our stupid farm. Hard to believe that a couple of years ago I thought my life would just keep going on more or less the same as it always had. Turns out I've never been more wrong about anything ever."
I sat down in the grass beside her. "I think that's normal, to think or lie to yourself that things will always stay the same. There's some fancy psychology term for it but I can't remember. Twilight would have known."
"You two were pretty close?"
"Yeah."
Limestone picked a little white flower and twirled the stem between her hooves, making the petals dance. "I don't get how you can just be out here looking at rocks with me right after that."
I cleared my throat. "I think everyone deals with it differently. I'm like a top. If I stop moving, I fall over and can't get back up."
She laughed weakly. "I guess I can see how that works. Never been there myself, at least not that deep, so I don't know and I don't think I know any well adjusted ponies to take notes on either."
"Is Pinkie well adjusted?" I asked facetiously.
"Pretty sure you already figured that one out by now," she smirked. "She's… different. There's a reason she left the farm. That kind of life isn't for everypony. I never really sorted out if I was personally offended or jealous when she went."
Limestone looked down at the pile of pedals and beheaded flowers between her legs. "Wait… snow." She facehoofed. "It was winter. According to the story, the snow here was as high as 'five buffalo' that season."
"Then that means the entrance wouldn't even be close to ground level where we were looking," I mused. 
She shot up and spit out her cigarette. "And it would mean we can ignore all these shorter rock formations. A lot of them would have been completely buried."
I zapped us to the top of a large outcropping and we surveyed the area again, keeping that new detail in mind. The sun was beginning to dip below the horizon.
"I count six that would be high enough," I muttered.
"Really?" she scoffed. "Exactly how high is five buffalo then?"
"'Bout that high," I replied, gesturing vaguely to the sky in a silly non answer.
"Well let's go see if one looks like an ursa head."
I took us down to the base of the nearest outcropping that fit the description and we walked around it, looking up watching to see if it metamorphosed into an Ursa.
"Wait, we're just making the same mistake again," I blurted. "What if it only looks like an bear head from-"
"From five buffalo high?" she finished. "Then why don't we just climb all six of the rocks?"
"Yeah," I nodded.
We started scaling the stone in a corkscrew pattern, trying to find an entry anywhere. When we found ourselves at the top, I teleported us to the next one.
I caught myself watching Limestone's ass as she began to ascend fearlessly above me. Were those flanks a Pie thing or just an earth pony thing?
We scouted the second formation all the way up just like the first but found nothing. The dying gasp of the sun's rays vanished from the sky before we reached the third summit with nothing to show. Before we could reflect on our fruitless search combined with our loss of light, Limestone cried out.
"Look," she gasped, pointing out into the dusky field. There, across the way, disappearing into the indigo veil of night, was a great stone mound with two tufted ears and an open snout, roaring up at the sky.
I stroked my chin. "Oh… I see it now."
"Take us over," she ordered impatiently.
I teleported us to a relatively flat spot about half way up. We scattered, moving upward from there. Our exuberance reached a fever pitch as we scrambled haphazardly over the rough stone in the dark as if we could squeeze a little more use of a few lingering particles of light if we hurried.
"Here it is," laughed Limestone.
I scraped around the corner along a narrow walk to meet up with her in front of a dark gap in the stone.
Our eyes widened as an orange glow began to rise from within. Then a warped silhouette materialized on the sweep of the rock wall within.
"Maud," exclaimed Limestone.
Another gray earth pony stepped out of the mouth of the cave, carrying a lantern in her mouth. Her face was expressionless as she calmly set the light down on the ground. "Oh, it really is you," she droned.
Limestone screwed up her face in confusion. "Huh?"
"We made Boulder the lookout. He said you were here." Maud picked up an unassuming but out of place river rock sitting at the entrance. "I can't believe you found us," she continued, affect still as flat as ever.
"Yeah, thanks for looking for me before disappearing into hiding,'' snapped Limestone.
"We had no idea where you were and you never wrote."
"I wrote… like two or three times."
"In two years," Maud retorted matter-of-factly.
Limestone stomped her hoof on the ground. "Beside the point."
This wasn't exactly the happy reunion I was craving.
Maud's eyes turned to me. "Who did you bring?"
"This is Shining Armor, Pinkie's boyfriend. He actually brought me."
Maude cocked her head to the side in what I hoped was pleasant surprise. "Pinkie has a boyfriend now? Is she here?"
"Not yet," I answered.
"C'mon! Take us inside," complained Limestone.
Maud bent down and picked up the lantern in her teeth once more. We followed her inside, down a spiraling descent just big enough for a pony to walk through. I kept my eyes on Limestone's hooves, chastely averting them from her hindquarters. Finally the ground leveled off and the passage opened up into a sizable chamber adorned with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites.
On the floor, illuminated by another lantern was what I could only describe as a subterranean picnic. The rest of Pinkie's family, Igneous, Cloudy and Marble, gathered round a humble setting of plates on a blanket. Their fare was hay and mushrooms.
The three of them shot up at our intrusion and rushed to mob my companion.
"Limestone," gasped Cloudy who spearheaded the pack. She flew to her side but gave her a conservative side nuzzle as if to save space for the others. 
"This is truly a great day," proclaimed Igneous, resting a distant hoof on her withers. Marble was the only one to give her a full on embrace around the neck, marking an end to an obvious stretch of desperation and worry.
Despite the repressive austerity they possessed in Pinkie's photo, her parents really did seem overjoyed to have one of their daughters back right now.
"Is Pinkamena with you?" asked Cloudy.
I smiled at hearing her given name.
"No, mother," answered Limestone. "Uh, Everyone, this is Shining Armor." She pointed to me and I was all but certain it was the first time they'd actually noticed me. "He figured out where you were and helped me find you."
"Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire?" blinked Igneous in disbelief.
"Formerly known as," I scoffed.
"Will wonders never cease? We owe you a debt of gratitude."
Pinkie's parents laid their hooves on my shoulders in sincere appreciation.
"You should stay for dinner," mumbled Maud, sitting down at the blanket. "I hope you like cave mushrooms… because it's cave mushrooms again.'
"I would love too but you know what I would love even more? If Pinkie was here with us."
"I would love that too," she agreed.
"I'm sure you all have a lot of questions and catching up to do. I'm gonna go get her. It won't take long."
The family reassembled at the dinner blanket but before I could depart, I felt a hoof tap my side.
"Wait," said Limestone. She swallowed. "Um… it's been a while since I saw someone actually care about someone else's problems… Kinda makes me wanna hurl, in- in a good way, I guess." She grimaced and scratched her head, flustered with her inability to express her gratitude.
I felt like this was the best first impression that I could have possibly made with Pinkie's family.
"We did good. High hoof?" I suggested.
"Yeah, that works," she agreed.
We bumped hooves and I caught her smiling.
"Well, thanks," she mumbled at the ground.
"I'll be back soon," I promised. "I'm going to go get Pinkie and then I'm going to get you your farm back and then even more."
She looked up at me with startled amazement before I vanished in a flash.
> Night in Crystal City
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I appeared in the dingy hall outside Pinkie's door. She should be off by now and at home, I surmised. Despite my trembling excitement, I also had a lump in my throat. Nervousness swelled within me. I hoped she wasn't mad at me for just disappearing like that and for so long.
I knocked on the door and held my breath. There was no answer, not even a sound from within.
"Pinkie," I called. "It's me." I knocked again and listened carefully. Again, I heard nothing. Then I heard a soft, slow scratching at the door.
I furrowed my brow in concern. I had to go in. Without further debate, I apparated to the other side of the door and was met with Pinkie's normal, messy but vacant apartment. "Pinkie?" I called once more, scanning over the living room. I turned around to face the door and saw a sickly pale Gummy staggering toward me.
"Gummy," I gasped. I picked him up with my magic and rushed him to the bathroom. Setting him down in the bathtub, I turned the cold water on and stopped up the drain. He opened his mouth, listlessly allowing the rising water to lap inside. He was in an awful state. He must not have been fed or watered in days. Pinkie never would have-
The gears in my head made a sickening clank as they revolved finely to reveal a chilling, indisputable truth. Pinkie hadn't been here for days and it wasn't by choice. They came for her.
I collapsed to my haunches at the side of the tub as the full horror of the situation solidified like a lead weight in my gut. If they came for her, it must have been because of her connection to New Moon and that would mean… probably White Caps.
"Shit," I breathed shakily. I covered my face with my hooves as Gummy began to float. "What do I do?" If she was alive, she was in detention somewhere but that could be anywhere in Crystal City. I could start blowing the doors off of every single police station in town… Or…I could sort this shit out from the top down. Sombra… Right here, right now. 
No, something inside me screamed. You've been lusting after this moment for years. You can't just decide to drop in hot and wing it. You could fuck up your only chance. You've been up since seven A.M. after sleeping on a pile of gunny sacks. You just buried your sister today.
Pinkie is in danger. I can't wait. That was the end of the internal debate. I shut off the water and hurried to the kitchen. I came back with a box of gator food and sprinkled it directly into the tub water. I knew Gummy needed his food soft, especially if he was weak.
I ran my hoof down his back gingerly. "I'll come back for you," I murmured. "Please eat."







Standing in the snow on a high roof just outside the Platinum Sector, I glowered at the shimmering spire that was once my home. Searchlights played above it across the underside of the clouds. It was the center of the heart of the city, a gentrified place now only for the rich and privileged who revelled in Sombra's rule.
The city within a city had been walled off from the rest of town to keep the rabble out. I hadn't been in the area since the takeover but I'd heard a lot of rumors about what went on in there.
I thought about my old bedroom and cast a teleportation spell which fizzled in an instant. I thought about the grand hall and repeated the spell but got the same results. To be expected. The whole tower was probably warded. 
I rolled my eyes and sighed before teleporting to the mouth of an empty alley I could just make out from the roof. I stepped out into the street and flinched as I nearly ran smack into a trio of masked ponies. One had the fanged face of a changeling while another had the cowl wrap of a fortune teller and the third wore a mask of tree bark with strange antlers of leafed forking branches. They laughed in inebriated surprise and stumbled apart to make way and move around.
Bewildered, I glanced back as they departed, receding into the crowds of the bustling thorofare. As I walked around, I quickly realized that they weren't an anomaly. I'd say more than half of the ponies I saw were wearing masks. All around me was laughter, music and drunken revelry swirling in a carnival-like atmosphere. There were high end boutiques and restaurants catering to the lavish whims of Sombra's pet oligarchs and sycophants.
I walked past a bordello with a multicolor array of enchanted flames engulfing the entire facade where stallions, mares and even foals danced seductively in the windows. The establishment was butted up against what used to be the assembly hall but was now a glitzy high rollers casino with illuminated dancing fountains in the front. He turned this place into a debauchery themed amusement park for putrid fat cat fucks. My face tightened in a glare as I became sickened by their joviality, their parasitic ability to flourish in an environment that destroyed everyone else.
I came upon a fashion boutique, something akin to Rarity's old shop in Ponyville but more upscale. Plastered to the windows were posters for an event, Sombra's masquerade ball. It was happening tonight in the tower, (and all through the Platinum Sector, apparently.) The ad sparked something in the back of my brain. This was something that Pinkie picked up and told me about.
In the windows were ponnequins dressed immaculately in unique high masquerade garb. My eyes landed on a red skull mask with a tattered black cape and hood. That was me. I didn't bother checking if ponies were watching. I just teleported the costume on and continued down the strip.
As I neared the base of the tower, I saw a great brass statue of King Sombra standing triumphantly atop a slanted stone pinnacle. A ring of skyward pointed lights lit the piece dramatically from below. I fought off the impulse to use it as a practice dummy and plodded onward between two big gyrating searchlights.
I pushed through a raucous crowd at the main entrance and saw ponies coming and going past a line of guards without screening. I guess if you were in the Sector at all, you were already screened. Inside, everypony but the guards wore masks. In the hall I saw elegant feathers and shimmering scales and misshapen monstrosities entirely out of somepony's imagination.
"Ambrosia?" asked a masked unicorn server floating a loaded drink tray,
I winced out of my sensory daze. "Oh. No, thank you... Not tonight."
String symphonic music swelled in my ears as I neared the entrance to the throne room. That was where he was; I was sure of it. I slowed apprehensively as I saw staff checking invites at the door or rather, it looked like they were checking necklaces. It must have been an exclusive venue within and those were the passes. I made a slow aboutface, scanning every neck in the crowd for a lanyard to pick off. I could have just teleported through that open door but I'd likely cause a stir. I'd already made it this far by blending in. The smart part of me wanted to get things done in a surprise attack that no one saw coming. The other part of me needed him to look into my eyes and know it was me, back from the dead.
There were plenty of VIPs meandering through the hall. I singled one out who was alone in a vacant wing. He sat in a chair beside a crystal table along the wall with two empty glasses, both his. I got the sense that he'd probably have more if the staff hadn't already bussed them away.
"Do you have the time?" I asked, sliding up in front of him.
He looked up at me dazedly to see my hoof flash in his eye before connecting with his jaw. His body jolted before he slumped unconscious to the side, cracking his head on the table and rattling the glasses. I swiftly snatched the eye pendant from his neck and slipped it onto my own, leaving him as he was.
I returned to the throne room entrance where the great doors were parted and all the hedonistic spoils of cruelty radiated from within. A doorpony nodded approval at me and I strode inside. It honestly felt like I was infiltrating some secret society.
Nudging through the crowd of stagnant minglers, I found open space near the dining tables and that's when I saw him. Over a sea of waltzing couples I saw him sitting on the throne I used to call mine, floating a golden goblet to his lips as he humored an advisor with his attention. He wore a black wolf mask and regal black robe.
In almost perfect contrast, Rarity sat like a statue in the twin throne beside him, wearing white on white with whiskers and long ears looking like a snowshoe hare.
I could just make out the amulet around Sombra's neck. If I could take that from him, it would be game over but I already had an opening for the kill. Sombra was distracted. Right now was as good a time as any. Cut his horn, I thought. Then cut his neck in a one-two punch.
My heart beat with the ferocity the moment deserved. I had blinders on and the only thing in the world that existed was the guy who took everything from me and the only thing that mattered was that he stopped breathing forever. In the split second it took me to conjure an ethereal blade, I felt my muscles seize inside someone's magical aura and my attack veered half a degree off course, slicing into the wall behind the throne with a thud.
"Halt!"
I turned to see a mind controlled unicorn guard who'd been watching me. I broke out of his restraint with ease and reactively flung him full force at a high window that refused to break from the ward enchantment. The crowd gasped as the music staggered to a stop.
"What is this disruption?" boomed Sombra, shooting up from the throne. "Who dares attack me in my own castle on this night of nights?"
I could feel him try to grab me by the proverbial lapels to drag me clear across the dancefloor to him but I quickly swatted his influence away and stood unmoved.
"Who are you?" he huffed indignantly, stepping down from the platform.
The masked party goers went silent, quickly clearing a space around me and a path to my target. "My name is Flurry Heart," I answered with conviction.
Sombra raised his eyebrows and scoffed, "What is this?" He tried to lift my mask with his magic but I stayed it with my own. "Princess Cadance, then," I continued boldly.
"Ugh. I see. Another suicidal new guard loyalist." He waved his hoof dismissively.
"Rainbow Dash," I offered. "Twilight Sparkle."
The crowd jeered with disapproval.
Sombra's eyes narrowed in disgust. "Guards, show him the gallows so that we might continue the festivities."  
On cue, armored guards materialized from all sides and encircled me. Unimpressed, I rolled them all into a lump and chucked them out of the room in three seconds flat. The big doors boomed ominously as I slammed them closed without breaking eye contact. I blasted the ceiling with a bolt of my own ward enchantment. It rippled blue across the surface, overriding the previous ward.
Dropping all decorum, I reached for condescending annoyance. "I don't think you're understanding the situation here, jerkoff, so let me spell it out for you: I'm gonna kill you."
Sombra threw his head back and laughed haughtily. "Delusional. You missed the only miniscule chance you had, though you are welcome to fail again. But enough talk. Have at you!" The horn atop his wolf head glowed green and he shot a robust laser at me. I unflinchingly deflected the attack straight back at him with my summoned shield. Sombra threw up a barrier where the beam dispersed violently with a loud crash and a crackle.
I came alive the moment his jaw went slack as he finally recognized me by my shield and the impossibility of that revelation turned his entire world upside down.
The crowd broke out in pandemonium and scattered in fear but there was nowhere to flee except the opposing end of the great throne room. I aggressively teleported straight behind Sombra with focused energy at the ready and let it fly, not caring who got caught in the crossfire.
Sombra could hardly manifest a defensive spell before taking the close range blast in the back. Whisked away, he slammed into the wall on the far side of the room. He teleported to the ground before falling, his robe tattered and smoking. He looked back at me with rage in his eyes, no doubt unable to recall the last time he was rocked in such a way.
I launched my next attack immediately, sending a flurry of ethereal blades whirling at him. He teleported evasively but I quickly changed the trajectory of the blades to track him where he appeared. He teleported again and again as he tried to shake the attack. In a blink before disappearing again, he shot a precision beam high above me and I heard the sound of shattering crystal. Forced to look up, I saw the incredible eight tiered chandelier plummeting straight down at me. I teleported just before the deafening crash of the impact, momentarily swallowed the whole chaotic symphony of our melee.
Having lost visual with Sombra, I began to apparate  sporadically all over the room, determined to keep him on defense and never give him an opening.
A sudden intense light grew from behind me and I spun around alertly. An immense crackling ball of lightning bore down on me, causing my flesh to tingle and my hair to stand on end. Instead of dodging, I countered with a sustained energy beam, driving the attack back at Sombra. He reciprocated, pushing back with his own beam. The electrical sphere stalled between us as it reached equilibrium. The light of the ball became brighter and sizzled loudly as it absorbed the energy from our combined push against push. That was the moment I realized I was out of his league.
I bared down and sent a shockwave pulse through my beam. The surge hurled the sphere smashing into Sombra with tremendous force. The whole room flashed as bright as the sun. Once more, he crashed hard into the wall but this time, with electricity racing through him, lacked the reflexes to right himself before falling to the floor. His mask was gone and his robe torn to ribbons. He staggered to his legs with a livid, bloody sneer and suddenly I felt his nightmarish eyes drilling through to the back of my mind. Reality began to warp and I heard the screams of my family again. The floor beneath my hooves was covered in the same red smears. Towering dark crystals erupted from the floor all around me and I lost sight of Sombra again.
"Face me and die, you sniveling coward," I screamed in feral rage. "There is no nightmare you can show me worse than the one I live!"
I began sending energy blasts in all directions, shattering the crystals, and raising a crescendo of terrified screams. The damage I did to the obstacles closed up again just moments later.
I galloped through the strange labyrinth, seeing flashes of both myself and Sombra in every reflective surface. As I darted around a pillar, he materialized in my path. Without hesitation, I sent a barrage of diamond cutters at him. The blades thrashed his broadside, passing straight through flesh and bone and sending a spurting severed hind leg cartwheeling away.
Without so much as a whimper, he dropped to the floor. The illusion of Sombra's likeness dissipated and I saw before me a slain party goer in an orange dress and fox mask sprawled out on the crystal panels. I leapt over her and continued my desperate hunt.
I heard Sombra laugh as his spiteful face played across the mirror-like formations. When I saw the flick of his tail, I didn't wait to confirm that it wasn't just a reflection. I blasted him. The enormous beam was big enough to envelope his body entirely before punching a hole through the black crystal barrier behind him. He tumbled dead to the floor but again it was an illusion. The stallion on the floor was burnt, smoking, his costume too blackened to recognize. 
Let Tartarus sort 'em out. Applejack's words echoed in my head and they never sounded better than at that moment. I'd find him eventually. He couldn't evade me forever.
When I came across another Sombra, this one standing defiantly in my path, I mowed him down with cold decisiveness. The blades I slung pierced and lacerated his body and he dropped to the floor with a thud. Blood quickly pooled from a deep arterial slice in the neck. I slowed to check the body, hoping this would be the real one but already knowing it was just too easy.
The illusion evaporated to reveal a pink mare in a once white pierrot clown costume. It was then that I sustained the worst injury of our fight. My eyes widened in horrific disbelief. It was Pinkie, shaking and spurting blood on the floor.
She had a ball and chain shackled to one hind leg and a metal gag locked around her mouth, similar to the one Spike wore. It had a happy smile cruelly painted on it. She'd been brought here to be put on display as something for guests to mock and gawk at.
I tore off my hood and skull mask and collapsed to my haunches at her side. No, I told myself. No. No. No. It's not real. It's all just part of the nightmare illusion. She's not here. She's somewhere else.
Sticky warm blood flowed over my foreleg as I clutched her to me. "Pinkie," I cried. "I'm so sorry. Hold on!" I chopped the hinge on her mask and tossed the accursed device away. Then I tore the ruffle from her neck, revealing the gruesome extent of the damage and eliciting an unobstructed geyser of blood. I didn't know if her face was so pale from blood loss or face paint. I began closing her neck wound with mending magic. She was bleeding from several wounds but that was the worst I could see. Her eyes were staring off into space and for a moment I thought she was already gone.
"Pinkie," I shouted desperately. "Please!"
Her eyes shakily jogged over to mine as her whole body trembled. She smiled faintly as if she just noticed it was me and then gave a wet cough.
Suddenly I heard the high pitched whine of energy focusing. I cast a half sphere barrier around us just before the beam hit and splintered like light through a prism.
I looked up to see the one true Sombra cackling at us.
"I see. It all makes sense now. You and this New Moon are really one and the same." He fired another blast, stronger than the first but my barrier held firm as I tried to focus on saving Pinkie. The ball and chain on Pinkie's leg now glowed with some sort of magical influence.
Sombra tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Well doesn't this all look very familiar? But be assured, this time you will join your whore in oblivion."
Sombra's horn glowed like the sun just as it had the last time I saw his annihilation attack. An incredible ray of power burst forth, hammering into my barrier with a violent rumble and an unceasing roar. I held back the initial impact but the beam kept coming like a drill.
I tried to teleport us to safety but Pinkie's unbreakable magical encumbrance anchored her to the spot. My shield began to waver. I couldn't hold off the unrelenting attack and help Pinkie at the same time. I refocused on our dying shield and looked down. Pinkie's eyes were unfocused and unblinking even under the brutal assault that rocked us. I could no longer sense a pulse through my basic diagnostic spell.
I shook her in denial. "Pinkie?" I cried. "Pinkie? No!" I hunched over her and clenched my teeth so tight, I thought they might shatter. Then I let out a feral roar that seemed to shake the whole universe and strip my throat, nay, my whole being raw. I became untethered from everything and pure light poured into my eyes until I was blinded by it. The same bodily euphoria I'd felt when putting on the ring broke over me and on my back, I could feel pins and needles as energy gathered there. All at once, a pair of white, feathered wings materialized from the aether, fusing with my own flesh. They splayed out reflexively, emitting a shockwave that shattered every dark crystal in the room. The formations dissolved into sparkling black sand which blanketed the floor and the room became unexpectedly calm.
As my whole field of vision returned, I saw Sombra staggering to his legs and then terrified party guests, running, crawling, moaning in piles and I knew the nightmare was broken.
Frothing at the mouth without a taunt or quip, I focused my unadulterated wrath into a maelstrom of dancing blades greater than any I had created. The swarm honed in on Sombra who began jumping away and shooting them down with laser blasts from his horn. I conjured more. He put up a partial barrier, having to focus all his power into a smaller area to make something potent enough to block my attacks. Though teetering on the edge of his abilities, he wielded what he had expertly, cleared the air and kept himself from a direct hit.
He faced me, flush and winded. I flung a single diamond cutter straight at his horn. As expected, he raised the partial barrier again to swat it down. Before the blade could break on his shield, I tore open a wormhole that swallowed my own attack. There was no time to make sense of it, much less react but he understood when his barrier vanished and the horn toppled off of his head.
I sidestepped the redirected blade as it came straight back at me and smashed into a burst of glowing particles on the wall. Sombra looked down at his horn, then up at me with an expression of shock and utter helplessness. It was over.
My horn glowed and hummed. Then I unleashed one last energy blast. Unable to evade or block, Sombra took the laser head on and smashed into the wall under its full force. His charred body slumped limply to the floor.
I panted heavily, not from exertion but from a subsiding all consuming rage. I traipsed slowly through the sand which had adopted a cylindrical shaped indentation from the final blast. I stepped over bodies and body parts. The room was filled with the wails of the maimed and the dying. I plucked Sombra's horn from the sand and continued through a debris field of broken musical instruments to finally stand above the stallion I'd wanted to destroy for so long.
His mane and tail were burnt off. His flesh was cracked and blistered. I'll never forget the smell. He groaned in pain as I rolled him over carelessly with one hoof. I tried to look into his eyes but they were gone, burnt right out of his skull. There was only one thing left to do.
I forced his mouth open with my magic, causing him to gurgle and writhe weakly in protest. "You dropped this," I hissed before jamming his own severed horn through his jaws and into the back of his skull. I spit on his corpse but only out of practiced diligence because as soon as his heart stopped, I stopped feeling anything. His suffering was over in moments but mine was free to linger for an eternity.
Without looking, I opened the doors and allowed the few dozen able-bodied ponies left to spill out into the hall in a wild, bloodstained panic. Right now they were most useful as eye witness messengers.
I teleported back to Pinkie's body and shut her eyes and cut the chain on her leg. Staring down at her face and running a hoof through her mane, I waited for the tears to come but they never did. I thought that would upset me but it didn't. My lack of detectable sorrow seemed disrespectful, especially when I was the one who had killed her.
All I could sense was the wings tingling on my back. At the crossroads of revenge, ascension and tragedy, emptiness, wanting to die and having to live, how could I feel so numb? The emotional burden of it all was just too great. I felt like I was watching myself in the climax of a play that I'd slept through and now, at the end, uninvested, could only make educated guesses as to how I should be feeling but wasn't.
I turned my eyes to the throne which loomed like an oppressive millstone. It was a void that would be filled regardless of the choices I made. Rarity somehow still sat untouched in Cadance's seat. She'd frozen there in shock and terror but was now weeping uncontrollably into her hooves.
I scooped up Pinkie with my magic and walked slowly toward the cold crystal chair. I was running on muted basic instinct, some kind of primordial auto pilot or maybe… maybe it was duty. Unable to triage the wreckage inside me, I was navigating through the dark by the constellations in my brain, the words of the ponies I respected most.
If not you, then whom?
Don't be angry at Rarity.
I know you love Equestria as much as I do.
Rarity's sobbing continued as I sat beside her in the empty throne. In our parallel headspaces it seemed as though we were both indifferent, almost unaware of each other's presence. I clutched Pinkie in my lap, feeling the last bit of warmth recede from my life as I stared blankly into eternity. Then I closed my eyes and whispered to myself, "It's even colder than I remember."
> Epilogue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I ran my hoof slowly over the bumps of Gummy's fringe. It always helped me think. I don't know why. We sat on a bench in the courtyard gardens at the spot where I wanted my family's memorial to go. There were more pressing matters but I'd already commissioned statues, a tapestry and a stained glass window in the likenesses of everypony I'd lost.
Sunburst adjusted his glasses and shuffled sloppily through his notes. "It's not a question of if but when," he continued astutely. "I am confident we'll have a working substitute that can emulate the power of the elements of harmony before the end of next year."
I puffed out my cheeks impatiently. "Are you sure this is the best, quickest option for freeing the princesses?"
"A lot quicker than waiting it out," he chuckled.
"Okay. I trust your judgement on this."
He cleared his throat. "I've also been thinking, since we need your power to pull it off, we should make the whole thing a public event, something really big and unifying."
My forehead wrinkled with worry at the thought. "Hopefully it works."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess. I know you have a lot on your plate right now. It's almost like starting over from when the empire reappeared. I'll give you weekly updates. How does that sound?"
"Perfect," I nodded tentatively. "Thank you."
Sunburst turned away and immediately drifted back into his own head, piecing together who knows what. Gummy fell asleep in my lap.
Stepping back into power was easier than I thought. Yes, I was the most powerful being in Equestria but I also still had many friends and allies who'd weathered the previous regime and were eager to help rebuild. Also, being more popular with the masses than Sombra was a low bar to hurdle. Most ponies even viewed me as a hero but I did not count myself among them. How could I?
From the beginning, my motives were impulsive and self serving and I lost sight of everything but achieving revenge. I didn't boldly set out to save anyone. Liberating Equestria was just a byproduct of my own callous folly. I was a phony and a murderer. I couldn't forgive myself for what I did to Pinkie and I couldn't bear being in the public eye regardless of how I was perceived. I felt so isolated and dirty.
Spike appeared at my side, waving a stack of legal documents. "Hey, Shining, I have the first batch of tribunal death sentences for you to review."
"Goody, my favorite," I muttered, rubbing my face with one hoof, trying to wake myself up.
"Oh, and you have a visitor," he added.
"Audiences are over for the day," I frowned.
"I know but I thought you might make an exception for this one. It's Limestone Pie."
A foreboding chill ran up my spine. Why, I wondered. Why would she come all the way here to speak with me? My mouth was suddenly dry.
"Okay," I sighed fearfully. "Guess I will deal with that. Can you put those papers in my quarters?"
"Yeah, sure." Spike turned on his heal and departed.
I sat Gummy on the bench and promptly teleported to the throne.
Limestone stood rigid and alone before me, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. "Um, hi… your- your majesty." She bowed woodenly.
Mortified by her distant formality, I quickly raised a hoof. "You don't have to do that. Please don't do that. You don't have to treat me any differently."
Limestone sighed in relief and her shoulders sagged. "That's good. You have no idea how long I spent worrying about that on the train." She shook her head. "I don't know how to do any of this kind of stuff."
It didn't sound like she was here to air grievances with me but I remained on edge.
"Do you mind if we talk somewhere less stodgy?" I asked. "I honestly hate being in this room."
Limestone blinked in surprise. "Uh okay," she shrugged.
I teleported us to the garden where I was previously.
The corners of her mouth curled in amusement when she spotted Pinkie's old pet laying on the bench. "Oh, hi, Gummy. You look well." She patted the tiny gator on the head, making him squeak and close his eyes. "It's good you took him. He probably likes you better than anyone else." She looked around uneasily. "Wanna show me around the garden?"
"Yeah," I agreed slowly, still unable to deduce where she was going with this.
Her clear apprehension over her visit was making my apprehension worse. We walked slowly down the tiled path that meandered through the little jungle. It was always my favorite place in the castle and I'd made a habit of fleeing to it now because it held the best memories. It never tormented me like so many other spaces in the tower.
"Uh… it's been a while," she grumbled warily. "How is it going?"
It had been a while, at least for not seeing someone I thought I was going to be spending a lot more time with before everything went sideways. Up to this moment, I'd been avoiding their family. Going to them with Pinkie's body and telling them the truth was the hardest thing I've ever done but they deserved an explanation and no one else could give it. But after that, I was simply too ashamed to face them. It seemed reasonable to assume that that was a natural place to part and that they would want nothing to do with me afterwards.
I promised the Pies their farm and more and I delivered on that promise after taking the throne but in the wake of killing their daughter, I was afraid it came off as a cynical compensation for their loss instead of due reparations for how they were wronged by Sombra.
"It sucks," I replied, stopping on a little wooden bridge over a babbling brook. "But don't tell anyone I said that. It's bad for morale."
"Really?" asked Limestone, resting her chin on the railing to watch the fish. "I thought it would be just like getting your old job back. Is it so much worse?"
"Yes. No… I… I mean I can do this, it's just…" I sighed, conceding that I'd just have to level with her. Our faces were unrecognizable in the rippling water. "That night when I said I was going to get Pinkie and then I came back much much later, I actually never wanted to come back at all. I wanted to disappear into nothing and that feeling hasn't stopped since."
"Oh," she groaned painfully. "Listen, I know it's hard to not blame yourself for Pinkie but no one asked for this. It was Sombra above everything else. I'm not exactly proud of everything I've done either, especially in the last couple of years."
I turned away, leaving the bridge with my head low. "I could have saved her but instead I killed her," I sulked. That was a blunt fact that had kept me awake many a lonely night.
Limestone raced in front of me and jammed a hoof in my chest to stop me in my tracks. "Look, we can be sad all we want and wish we'd done this, that or whatever but it's not going to change anything. What matters now is what you do now. Like you said, you keep going and you do something healing. If you're really like a top, tops don't break when they fall over; they just need another spin. My family thinks you're a good pony who was just in a shitty situation." Her eyes dropped to the ground. "Actually, I'm the only one who talks like that but it's true."
Her claim shocked me to my core. How could they even stand me, much less think I was good. My mind circled back to the same millstone I could never get rid of. The ball was always squarely in my court. "If I'd just never gotten involved with her-"
Limestone put a hoof over my mouth and leaned in close for dramatic emphasis. "Then you wouldn't have saved me and the farm… or found your sister and liberated Equestria. Shining, we can only offer you half of the forgiveness; the other half has to come from you." She tapped my chest once more, much gentler this time.
I was dumbstruck by her profound words.
"You know Pinkie," she added. "If she were here, she'd be the first to say 'it's okay.'"
I thought about how the last thing she did was smile at me even after I cut her down. I stared back into Limestone's eyes quizzically. "Why did you come all the way up here?" I breathed.
Her eyes darted away evasively. "Well… um, because we do this thing for Hearth's Warming with the Apples where they come to our farm and it's the first time we've been able to do it in a couple years and you- you know it's sad because yours and our families are both smaller this year, we thought it would be nice if you joined us for Hearth's Warming." Unable to wait for my answer, she began backpedaling nervously. "The- the farm is kind of ugly and my family is boring but also weird and you don't have to come if you don't want."
"You came all the way here just to invite me?" I asked in disbelief.
"We would have sent a letter but you're probably already getting a lot of those and we wanted to make sure you actually got the message."
Overcome by the beautiful gesture, I swallowed the lump in my throat. "That sounds really great. Thank you. I'll be there." Without thinking, I put an appreciative hoof on Limestone's shoulder. She tensed up at my touch and I started to retract, not wanting to violate her personal space. Then, to my surprise, she wrapped both forelegs around my neck. I hugged back as tears began to flow down my cheeks and though it still hurt, I felt like everything I needed to get back up again was in that embrace.
I wiped my eyes after pulling away. "I thought you weren't good with this kind of stuff," I sniffed.
"I'm not good with receiving praise or embarrassment or expressing my own feelings… but I'm amazing at pep talks."
I smiled weakly. "You're not going home tonight are you?"
"No."
"Where are you staying?"
She shrugged. "I dunno. I was just gonna find-"
"No way," I interjected. "You have to stay as my guest at the tower… If… if that's okay."
"Yeah, she nodded amiably before her eyes grew huge in concern. "Just don't put me in any formal situations."
"I promise," I told her. "Stick a cupcake in my eye."