> The Edge of Madness
>  by SaltyJustice
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Once again I found myself in a position where I was no longer certain who I was.  Once again I found myself in a situation spiraling wildly out of my control and unable to handle the consequences should it do so.  I felt trapped, pincered, like the life was to be squeezed from me at any moment should I fail to make the right call.
"Cadence, do you prefer the yellow or the blue gem?" Celestia asked me, with both of them placed on the table in front of me.
I knew that, if I failed to tell her the right answer, she was liable to snap and kill me, along with half of the city.  Half of me was telling me to go yellow, the other half, to go blue.  If Celestia made a poor showing at the ball tonight, she would blame the gem.  If she blamed the gem, she would blame me.  If she blamed me, nothing obvious would happen until, at some unspecified time, I'd find one of my dresses had been mysteriously covered in itching powder.
Celestia was planning a shindig with many of the upper-crust types, which was nothing too out of the ordinary.  However, she had recently been giving favor to the ambassador from Muletopia, probably because of some land-use arrangement or political intrigue I didn't care for.  As was her wont, she never told me exactly what was going on until it was far too late for me to have an impact, and she would frequently give under-the-table hoof-bumps to my mother when they discussed me.
"Go blue.  Oh yeah, that's the color of his eyes," I said, referring to the ambassador.
"Really?  Okay, I hope this will work," she said, fretting too much over the small things.  She always did have an eye for detail.
It had been over a year since we had conspired to bring little Twilight Sparkle into the magic school.  She had almost failed the entrance exam, giving us a bit of a headache until fate intervened.  The repairs on the tower still haven't completed, so we've been a bit short of office space in the interim.
Since Celestia spent much of her time tutoring the growing mare, I had time to return to my old life as I had left it.  My parents had practically forgotten about the whole thing the moment the next big case or deal came up, except Tia insisted on having them over for dinner every now and then.  My friends had been adapting fairly well, except Minty would constantly ask me which rumors were true and which were false, hanging off of every word.  I honestly didn't know about almost any of them, since I didn't keep up with the staff and didn't exactly have any royal duties to attend to, so I usually just dismissed them all.
Gabby had taken care of everything at school.  When it resumed in September, not a single pony even gave me a second glance.  Not because I wasn't some sort of celebrity, but because they knew Gabby would give them a whack if they did.  Even better, our biology courses, taught by Ms. Bunsen, were a breeze.  She had become quite amenable for some reason, giving me C's even if I did not understand the lessons.
It had been big news around the school when Mr. Prescott and Ms. Bunsen officially became an item.  By that, I mean it made the school paper's headline, which usually just reported on sports scores, since what else does a school paper report?
I had also been the only pony who hadn't known the two had an interest in one another.  When I first saw the headline, I had presented it to my friends over lunch with a sense of pride.  I couldn't tell them I was responsible, at least partially, yet I felt it was something that needed reinforcing.
"Oh yeah, you didn't know?" Squeaky had said, munching on a sandwich.  "Those two have been eying each other for like, ever."
"Yeah, I'm surprised.  Everypony knew," Gabby said, giving me a blank look.
"Well I didn't!" I said.
Why am I always the last one to learn about this stuff?
I had done my best to resume my 'job', for which I couldn't even explain had I wanted to.  Having a sister who's in charge of the entirety of the government meant I'd never be short on funds, so I could leave my old foalsitting work behind me.  Instead, I would wander around the town looking for the little whispers that had always led me to a soul who was in pain.  I had still refused to take my sword with me, leaving it in the room Tia had prepared.  I wanted so badly for it to not be necessary, and so far it had not been.  Besides, what would my friends think if they found out I was roaming the streets, mostly at night, carrying a sword and slaying villains with it?
That I was a superhero?
Tomorrow night I am definitely taking my sword with me.
"So, will you be attending tonight, or shall I find some excuse for you?" Celestia said, examining her array of golden items.  All had been gifts given to her over the ages, she had never commissioned a single item and would have had them melted them down were they anything but gold.  As she had said, gold was a useless metal, pretty, but not much else.  Had some smith presented her with a crown made of iron, she'd have it reforged into shoes for orphans.
"Actually, I was going to go on patrol tonight.  As usual," I said.
"Hmm, and have you been running into any trouble?" she asked, looking at her crown as she socketed the blue gem on it with her magic.
"Never have I seen it this bad," I said, sighing.  "Usually it was one or two per year, and that's all across Equestria.  Now, it's one or two per month, in this city alone."
"I see.  I had a feeling this would happen," she said as she put on her golden shoes and that big chest plate she always wore to formal occasions.
"Hey, should I wear the high shoes or the low shoes?" she said, with one hoof in either set.
"Tia, this is important, can you please be serious for a moment?" I said.
"I am being quite serious, why do you think I'm trying to look my best?" she said dismissively.
"Just cut the crap and tell me what you're playing at already," I said.  Tia would always do this, mostly to make herself feel so clever when she eventually revealed her plan to me, as if I had been trying to foil it.  We were on the same team!  Just tell me already!
"Fine, if you want to be direct about it.  I'm securing you special permissions to go and do your thing abroad," she said, deciding on the low shoes for tonight.
"I need special permissions?" I asked.
"Yes, unless you want the Muletopians to be arresting you for carrying deadly weapons around.  I have a task for you," she said, now considering a set of earrings.
"Look, I told you, I don't do the politics stuff, that's your business, and I'd prefer if you left me out of it," I said.  I felt like stamping my hoof to make an impression, but I was standing on a rug.  The stamp made no sound, and Tia was facing away from me.  I quickly repositioned myself for a stamp that would punctuate my revulsion to whatever she said next.
"And if I wanted someone to bungle a job, you'd be the first on the list," she said, turning around.  No earrings on, I noticed.
"No, I think this is something only you can handle," she walked past me and took a quick glance towards the door before shutting it with her magic.  She then turned and put her head close to my ears.  "I think there's more than one bearer,"
"What?  But -" I started.
"Yes yes, Twilight is one, that's obvious, and I'll keep a close watch on her.  Yet, I think there's more than one.  Do you remember that prophecy?"  she said.
"Pah, the one I made all those years ago?" I said.  It was true, I was the one who made that prophecy, though I did not remember doing it myself.  Celestia and Luna had told me that my voice had changed, become much deeper, and that I had sleepwalked into the throne room of our old palace before they found me.  I then spoke those words:
"And, on the longest day of the ten-thousandth year, the stars will aid in its escape, and it will bring about night-time eternal.  Where the three faded, the six will burn strong, on the edge of madness and forbidden deeper, tolerance will not conquer hate, but forgive it."
I didn't remember any of it, I woke up the next day to find the two of them standing over me.  Personally, I hadn't put much stock in whatever I had been dreaming about, though those two did.  Celestia had copied it down, I even saw it, in a mangled form, half completed, in a book I found open in the study where she often lectured Twilight.
"You think 'the six' refers to her and some others?  Why?  Why should we believe in what I mumbled when I wasn't even awake, almost ten thou-"
I realized what the significance was, even if it was probably a coincidence.  It was almost ten thousand years ago wasn't it?  And, coincidentally, here had come Twilight.  She would be of age at around the tenth millennium mark.  Perhaps there was something to this?
"I see you understand now," Celestia said, giving me that wry grin she always gives me whenever she's feeling proud of herself.
"Fine, so there's more than one.  What do you want me to do about it, scour every corner of the globe looking for them?"  I asked.
"You have a point.  No, I don't think that would even be necessary, I think that they can take care of themselves," she said, raising a hoof to her face as she thought.
"There is something else I need your advice on.  I've been noticing some odd patterns recently.  You know the symptoms better than any.  It starts with insomnia, then paranoia, hallucinations..." she said, trailing off.
"Yeah, and if we don't fix it, full on insanity," I said simply.  I was desperately trying not to think about what was happening all over the world right now, creatures being slowly and inexorably driven mad through no fault of their own, for the high crime of simply being born at the wrong time.
"There's been a rash of incidents in Los Pegasus that match that exactly, the psychologists are baffled.  Our official cover story is an unidentified disease, possibly airborne," she said.
"So?  You want me to go over there and clean it out?" I said.  I had had to do something similar a month ago in Ponyville, and a time before that in Cloudsdale.  It was nothing unusual, sometimes an outbreak would happen and I would have to go deal with it.  Yes, they were becoming more frequent, yet still nothing world-stopping.
"This one is different.  Every single victim has been attending a flight school, or has been in direct contact with the school at some point.  Hummingbird's Flight College, that's the one," Celestia said.  She took a look at the wall clock.
"Look, I have to get going.  I left the reports on the bed in your room, have a look at them and tell me if you think anything is suspicious.  Oh, and since you're not coming, you'll have to be on Twilight duty while I'm at the ball, only a few hours," she said, moving towards the doorway.
"You're sure you're not just seeing connections for its own sake?  I know how you get sometimes," I said.
"Cadence, I hope more than anything that I am.  Either way, you have much work to do," she said, stepping through the door and closing it behind her.  One of these days I was going to be the one giving orders to her, I would make sure of it somehow.  Until then, I settled for taking her private stash of itching powder and putting just a tiny amount on her throw pillow.  She thought I didn't know where she kept it, well, she was wrong.  That'll show her for putting super-spicy chili powder in my facial cleanser.
As I made my way downstairs to Twilight's room, I began to wonder about the effects that my little prophecy had had on my sister.  She was always so reasonable and logical, and yet here she was, putting all her faith in a muttering that could just as soon be forgot.  If anything, her belief in the prophecy would no doubt cause he to manipulate events such that it came true.  Couldn't it be true that Twilight was just a strange anomaly?  The timing was a coincidence, ten-thousand is exactly the same as eleven-thousand from any reasonable perspective.  We are hard-wired to see big round numbers as important, yet why should fate care about how we see things?
Then again, wasn't Luna banished around one thousand years ago?  The seal was weakening, that was for sure, on both hers and another's.  The evil bound deep within the earth was awakening, it would happen soon, yet soon could be tomorrow, or a century from now.  Could we really put our faith in such mystical mumbo-jumbo?
As expected, Twilight wasn't in her room.  We had given her this room so she could be within a short distance of us at all times, should another attack occur.  It had been over a year without an incident, though this was not necessarily because she was no longer a target.  Rather, she could also be too dangerous to attack, since she was now under our direct supervision.  On the weekends, she would go home to her parent's house, and I had to follow her around from a distance.  The attacks never came.  I was always within a block of her should they, but the attacks never came.
After checking Twilight's room, I started to make my way over towards the library.  I took a detour to get the papers off of my bed, right where Celestia had left them, before finding Twilight in the basement beneath the main reading room in the library.  She was looking for a book, she barely noticed me as she scanned the shelves.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.  She turned around and widened her eyes.
"Cadence!" she said, bouncing over to me.  Though she was growing up so fast, she was still a filly at heart, and I knew what she wanted from me.
"Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake!" she said, doing the little dance we had come up with when I was still her foalsitter.
"Clap your hooves and give a little shake!" I finished the song for her as we shook our tails around.  Fortunately nopony else was around, I was starting to get embarrassed whenever I did that.  Twilight didn't care, she loved the ritual, and she loved that fact that it was our special greeting.  I wished I could be so carefree.
"Aren't you going to the party tonight?  I bet Celestia would love to show off her prized student..." I said, hoping to get Twilight to go to the party.  My hope was in vain.
"I'm not much into parties.  There's a big book on frogs somewhere around here, want to help me find it?"  she asked me.  Frogs?
Frogs?
I mean, I have nothing against frogs, but the book we eventually hunted down was hundreds of pages.  Hundreds of pages, on frogs!  I could tell you everything about frogs in one sentence:  "They hop around and eat flies a lot".
What else do you need to know?
Regardless, once we located the book, we returned to the main floor of the library.  Twilight spent the rest of the evening reading it, while I took a look over the reports that Celestia had left for me.
The symptoms were exactly as expected.  There were twenty-one patients all admitted to the psychiatric hospital within two weeks of one another, and, as expected, all but one was either a student or employee of the flight school.  The one unusual patient seemed to have no connection, but Celestia had written on the bottom of the document, "patient found in colt's locker room, having broken in, with stage three symptoms".  So, twenty patients and one filly-fooler.
I checked over the patient interview reports.  What struck me was the slow onset.  Often, a pony would develop insomnia and paranoia, then progress to full blown insanity within a short time, a week was the longest I had seen a pony hold out.  Yet, all of these patients were in early stage two, hallucinations, except for the one who had broken in.  He had spent a weekend in the building after getting himself stuck with no way out of a ventilation chamber.  Once the guards pried him out, he attacked them with his bare hooves and tried to bite at them.
Twilight was totally oblivious to the horror that overtook me as I read the documents.  It seemed bizarre, but, was the connection the building itself?  This had never been the case, in every other situation it was the invisible corruption, manifesting itself as black tar to my sight, that latched onto a pony and squeezed the goodness from them.  Yet here, once they removed themselves from the premises, they did not progress further.
Fortunately, this meant I could treat the patients.  Only in stage three was the damage too much to be undone.  Unfortunately, it meant others were at risk of being afflicted, and I'd need to find the cause as soon as possible.
Twilight and I didn't notice as Celestia came in and stood behind us.  She looked over my shoulder at the documents I was reading before whispering in my ear, "boo".
I didn't jump up or backwards, that would have hurt somepony, instead I just shuddered in place.  Twilight didn't notice, as usual, she was so absorbed in her book about frogs that she'd miss a bomb going off right next to her.
"Well?" Celestia asked me.
I only nodded.
"Did it go well with the ambassador?" I asked, trying to change the subject.  Twilight's ears pricked up.
"Turns out he's a red fan.  Who would have guessed?"  Tia said, levitating off her crown.  "Still got the job done, I'm just that slick," she said.
"I could have told you that.  He also likes lemon pie for dessert, and his favorite food is carrot tarts," Twilight said, turning to face us.
Celestia shot me a look, a quizzical one.  "How did you know that?" she asked Twilight.
"I read it in his memoirs.  It's all right here," she said, motioning to another book on the table.  I hadn't noticed it before.
"At some point you're going to need something that can't be found in a book, Twilight" Celestia said, shaking her head.  "What are you going to do then?"
Twilight considered for a moment before answering.
"Find it out and write a book on it?"
> Chapter 2
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	As per usual, Celestia had made all the preparations for my visit.  As per usual, she had failed to run any of them by me before doing so.  As usual, I was a mere passenger on the vessel of fate, as Tia guided us around the rocks and currents that threatened us and felt like she was a master of destiny for having done so.
"Can you believe it?  Full scholarships, from out of nowhere!  I mean, my grades are good, but not that good, right?" Minty shouted at me to cover the din.  As we sat in the air taxi with all our luggage stowed safely in the storage compartment, the flow of the air around us made conversation impossible, though that never stopped Minty from trying.
"It wasn't your grades, it was mine.  You're part of the package deal, I said they can take us both or take neither of us," Squeaky shouted back.
"There is no way you know that," Minty said.
I merely observed this back and forth.  More than likely, this sudden acceptance with a full scholarship to Los Pegasus University for the twins was the work of my sister, which would conveniently give me a place to stay while remaining undercover.  Not that the twins didn't deserve it, just that a full scholarship was a bit much.  Somehow, subtlety was too subtle for Celestia.
"What about you Cadence?  What's your deal?" Squeaky asked me.
"It's too loud to talk, can't you wait until we land?" I said back.
Squeaky and Minty looked at each other, then down at the cloud layer as we began our descent.  Only when the wheels of the cart touched down did they resume the endless conversation the twins were always engaged in.
"So, what's your deal?  What does Princess Cadence need to live with us for?"  Squeaky asked again.  The sarcasm dripped off her pronunciation of Princess.  Was I a joke now?
I pulled up my roll of clothes, which conveniently wrapped around my sword and disguised it from onlookers.  In truth I wouldn't need clothes for the job I was doing, I really just brought these to keep ponies from gawking as I carried a deadly weapon through the streets.  One of my overcoats was large enough to cover the sheath and would allow me to walk around in public without attracting any attention.
I decided that I was going to be straight and honest with my friends, a courtesy that nopony ever bothered to repay.  Damn it, if Celestia would never tell me what was going on, my friends would at least know.
"I'm here to deal with a plague outbreak, and to keep my eyes out for the ponies who may save the world, one day," I said.  That was about as close as I could get to total honesty.
"Fine, you don't have to tell us if you don't want to," Squeaky said back.
Damn it.  Even the truth is a cover story now.
The flight school was beginning its fall semester, and I was the latest recruit.  We had fudged the records so I was now a transferring senior from a different school, and even managed to get me a respectable name of Miamore Autrena, my mother's maiden name.  The newspapers always called me Princess Cadence, so I figured nopony would make that connection.  I also had a trick up my sleeve.
"All right, check this out," I said to the twins as we stood on the landing pad.  The taxi drivers took back off into the air, presumably to find another fare, and left us mostly alone outside the terminal building.
I wanted to butter my performance up, so I said some mystical words like "Abra-kadabra" and "Shmoopaly Woopaly" before waving my hooves around and casting the spell Celestia had shown me.  My horn faded and disappeared before their very eyes.  They were not impressed.
Minty walked up and tapped her hoof on my head where my horn had been, connecting with it invisibly in the air.
"Didn't work" she said passively.
"Of course it worked, it's just invisible now.  Pretty neat huh?" I said.  My magic was terrible, was I the only one who was impressed I could cast this spell?  I practiced for an hour last night!
"Why don't you just wear a hat?" she asked me.
"Because hats aren't cool magic, Minty!  Can't you just let me have this?" I said, getting flustered.
Minty and Squeaky exchanged a look, then put on a great show of fake enthusiasm.
"Oh wow, so amazing!  How'd you do that?" Minty said, mockingly fainting.
"Never have I seen such a feat!  You truly are the greatest," Squeaky said.
"Oh shut up," I said.  They laughed.
"Get a load of Cadence, mightiest magician of the realm!  O true master, thou art so powerful and great, teach us!  Teach us thy mighty skill so we might be one one-thousandth the pony thou art!"  Squeaky continued, really milking it.
I just muttered under my breath and picked my clothes wrap back up.
I was now, for all appearances, just another Pegasus pony in Los Pegasus.  Perfectly incognito, unless somepony whacked me in the head.  So long as I didn't cast any magic spells, nopony would give me a second glance, and that was fine with me since I much preferred to do things the manual way.  Magic is overrated if you're not good at it.
I wasn't too hot at flying either, my wings never felt quite as natural as they must to somepony who was born with them.  Surely I would get used to them in time, but as long as I could avoid it, I'd walk everywhere I went.  In this city, most of the residents could fly, but not all of them; as per Goverment of Equestria regulations, every part of the city was accessible without wings.  The twins instinctively kept their hooves on the clouds as we walked, since this was just like old times to them.  The habits we had developed over the years would not be broken so easily.
Our house, if you could call it that, was a one-story building somewhere on the south side of town.  We had gotten it on extremely short notice, luckily it wasn't my money I was spending.  The semester didn't start immediately, but I wanted to get some investigating done before I got caught up pretending to be a student, again.  I also wanted to stop whatever was causing the outbreak before anypony else got hurt, though that was wishful thinking.  Still, the longer I dallied on unimportant stuff like housing, the more innocent ponies would lose everything, least of all their minds.

We passed the house at first, not because we couldn't read the numbers but because we didn't want them to be right.  The roof was partially caved in, not that it mattered in a cloud home since it never rained up here.  There were no windows, which was very curious, as anypony with a spare afternoon can make a window anywhere they wanted.  There were none.  I wondered who had used the place before we got a hold of it.
"This is the place?" I said.  Minty had been hovering over us while holding the map.  She dropped it on top of me, I looked up to see the shocked expression on her face.
"The ad made it seem, more, uh..." she started.
"Livable?" I offered.
"Structurally sound?" Squeaky tried.
"Comfortable, was what I was going to say.  We're going to have spend the rest of the week just fixing this dump up," Minty said.
"That'll give you two a project until classes start.  Aren't you glad we're in this together?" I said, trying to liven up the mood.
We had the key to the house, though it didn't matter much since the collapsed roof let the twins soar right on in while I unlocked it.
Minty spent a few minutes just surveying the damage, somepony had either been having a lot of fun with a lightning cloud, or else purposefully tore the support stratus out and let the roof collapse.  Squeaky and I checked out the rest of the rooms of the house.
The kitchen was really just a room with a desk in it that was meant to be the counter.  It was made of wood, one of the few non-cloud objects in the house.  There were no doors except the front one, the bedrooms could well have been living rooms or studies for all I knew.  There was a strange smell coming from the laundry room, so I let Squeaky go check it out while I started unpacking our stuff.
I had only brought my clothes and sword, while the twins had brought some clothes, school supplies, and a few flashlights I had asked them to bring.  I didn't have any myself, but since I was now going to be undercover as a Pegasus, I couldn't rely on conventional light spells.  Their father had a wide range of old flashlights in their basement in Canterlot for some reason, flashlights seemed like a strange thing to collect, but really no stranger than hoofball trading cards.  Everypony needs a hobby.
I had gotten two that really fit the work I would need to do.  One was a strapped light that hung around your neck, like a camera, with an additional strap to hold it to the chest.  I could walk or fly with it on and it would shine straight ahead of me, very useful for navigating at night.  The other was a light your strap to your leg, right above the hoof.  Apparently these were used by Pegasus construction workers for nighttime jobs, and it was perfectly suited for me when holding a weapon.
There wasn't a lot of charge in the batteries, as the flashlights were very old.  I had considered charging them up myself before Squeaky had yelled at me.
"No, you can't charge these, they're electrical batteries!" she shouted, shoving the flashlight away as I tried my magic on it.
"What's the difference?  A battery is a battery" I said.
"What difference?  Try huge!  Magic batteries work totally differently, these ones require a potential moving across a circuit, like a chemical reaction that discharges voltage at a controlled rate," she said, holding up the battery in front of me.
My eyes glazed over.  Have I mentioned I'm no good at science?
"What's the difference?" I asked again.
"Just, don't try to charge them yourself okay?  You'll hurt somepony.  Let me, like, build you a charger," she said.
I heard Minty speaking from the room next to the flashlight collection.  "Have you ever built a charger, Squeaks?"  She poked her head around the corner to look at us.
"No, but I know the theory," Squeaky said.
"I know how the theory is too, doesn't mean I can build one.  Remember the tomato cannon?"  Minty said back.
"The cannon was sound, Gabby just has a weak grip.  It would have worked!"  Squeaky protested.  Gabby has an excellent grip.
We bought a wind-up battery charger at the hardware store that afternoon.

"Which room do you guys want?  Wide open over here," I shouted at them, making sure I was loud enough that the sound would carry down the short hallway.
"Don't care," came Minty from the living room, or maybe it was the outside, since the roof was collapsed.
Squeaky didn't say anything.
"Squeaky?" I said.
"BY CELESTIA'S BEARD, WHAT IS THAT THING?" I heard her scream from the laundry room.
Minty and I ran in as soon as we could, to see the laundry room covered in moss and lichen.  I think it might have been moving, and that wasn't even the disturbing part.  Lichen doesn't normally grow up in the clouds, though there's nothing strictly impossible about it, just the spores don't get this high up in the atmosphere.  Whatever the previous owners had been storing here must have been filthy.
What had set Squeaky off was the giant insect perched atop a particularly large patch of moss.  I couldn't begin to identify the species, all I knew was that it was bigger than a hoofball and looked like it had claws all over it.  As we entered the room, Squeaky backed up and nearly bumped into us.  The insect turned to look at us.  Minty was paralyzed with fear.
Instinct took over and I shot out of the room, back into the bedroom where I had left my clothes roll.  I grabbed my sword and unsheathed it as I charged back toward the laundry room.
The twins had remained remarkably calm this whole time, not panicking and staying still to avoid setting the creature off.  As I dashed into the room with my sword, they moved up against the wall and left me as much space as possible.  I could see the beast tense up as I stood on my hind legs and raised the sword proper.
It leaped, and I leaped at the same time.  We collided in midair, my sword arcing and slicing the creature neatly in two through its thick black carapace.  I landed near the moss pile on three legs, with my sword held in one hoof, as I turned around to see the creature land as well, before the stress became too much and it fell apart from the blow.  Yellow insect guts stained my sword and had splattered all over the walls and ceiling, with the twins staring at the display before them and refusing to comprehend it.  The vacant look on their faces reminded me of something, though I couldn't place what.
We skipped grocery shopping that evening and instead bought a few tonnes of bleaches, cleaners, sponges, brushes, and everything else imaginable that would remove the terror that had grown in our new cloud home.  When we were done, we wrapped all the supplies and garbage in a big bag we had bought to carry them, flew it down to the ground, dug a hole, then set the hole on fire and let it burn out.  Once the flames had died down we covered the remains in rocks and soil, then replaced the grasses atop the mound and prayed the evil would never trouble another pony again.
We also ate some delightful cabbage rolls that night.  All in all it was a good day.
> Chapter 3
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I bid the twins farewell the next morning, as I had some important business to tend to.  They grumbled at me as they went about fixing up the rest of the house and acquiring the various furnishings, such as refrigerators and desks.  Neither of them knew what I was actually doing, and no amount of assurances would make them believe that it was more important than fixing the house.  They thought I was shirking.  I'd have to convince them later.
The flight school itself would have to wait, the first thing I had to do was deal with the patients at the mental hospital downtown.  The hospital was a ways away from the “Strip” where all the big casinos and theaters are, and much of the city sprawled away from the strip on various cloud layers organized haphazardly around it.  You could tell this city had one defining feature, I felt bad for the residents who were just trying to make their lives here.
The mental hospital was a squat building with a series of wide terraces that attached to the main hospital building.  The terraces were all indoors, sealed off under glass in order to prevent any of the patients from getting any ideas about escape.  There was enough room to fly, mostly vertically, which I was told could be very therapeutic to some ponies.
There was no receptionist in the lobby, just a list of visiting hours and notices.  The place looked run-down, the interior had been built some time ago and never updated.  Like most government buildings, it was built with all visitors in mind, not just fliers, so the interior had stairways and was made of earth materials like wood and that strange floatstone that doesn't fall through clouds.  The paint was peeling in a lot of places, the signs had symbols on them but the letters had faded or fallen off, and I could almost smell the despair on the air.  This reminded me a lot of a certain other government building I had encountered once.
I saw a couple of fillies talking to one another down a hallway.  As I stood in the waiting room and got my bearings, the smaller of the two, a blue Pegasus with a mane that looked like she had dunked herself in zap-apple jam, noticed me and hushed up.  I looked at them and gave a wave.  She looked at me and pulled her friend, a lanky yellow Pegasus with hair that reached down to the floor, around the corner so they could speak in peace.
Celestia and I had sent a letter ahead of me informing the doctors of my visit, though it took me a while to track them down.  I didn't see those two fillies again as I searched around the building.  Dr. Hoverace I found first, she was just walking out of one of the patient rooms and recognized me from Celestia's descriptions.  She flagged down Dr. Wheeler as he passed and introduced me.
“So, before I get started, did you organize the patients as I asked?”  I said.
“The most difficult to administer ponies are in the lower numbered rooms on this hallway, starting at 201 and going up.  We sorted them in reverse, most advanced symptoms to least, just as you asked,” Dr. Wheeler told me.  I had told them to sort the ponies to make treatment easier to administer, my concentration would wane as time wore on and I was more likely to make mistakes, meaning the more difficult jobs would need to be done first.
“Good, what about feeding schedules?  Have any of them eaten in the last few hours?”  I asked.
“Nothing except water, as you specified.  Not that it mattered much,” Dr. Hoverace said, readjusting her glasses.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don't know what sort of mumbo-jumbo you do, all I know is that these patients are the first I've seen that refuse to eat,”  she said simply.
I had never seen a pony last long enough to die of starvation once they were afflicted, in fact, I hadn't really paid any attention to their eating habits at all.  I merely preferred them to be hungry since otherwise they were prone to throwing up on me.  Most unpleasant.
“Like, they'd rather starve?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Dr. Wheeler interjected, “these patients are suffering from acute paranoia.  They believe that the hospital staff are trying to poison them, I think.  They're very difficult to interview.  They only eat when they're so hungry it hurts.  They're practically starving themselves to death.”
This made much more sense to me.  Over the years, I had had the chance to speak to some of the afflicted after treatment.  The story varied in specifics but not in the general sense.  At first, they would get the creeping feeling something was watching them, even at times when that was impossible.  One mare had locked herself in her closet and we had needed to tear the door off to get to her, though that had been many years ago, back when this was a rare event.
Over time, the subject would begin to believe that the feeling was justified, and that everypony around them was spying on them.  I had heard as much from the patients themselves, some would find that their friends were speaking to them condescendingly, others would notice little lies and convince themselves it was a conspiracy.  They would stop trusting and begin to fear others.
Soon after, the hallucinations would begin.  They would see other ponies where there were none, in most patients, the hallucinations would always be facing away, or walking just out of sight.  Everywhere they looked, somepony was just turning around and leaving.  At night, the shadows would warp and twist, and combined with the fear of being watched, sleep became impossible.  They feared for their lives and would sleep in fits and starts, waking up after scarcely fifteen minutes.
The few ponies who had seen the illusions close up never wanted to discuss the faces they saw.  I had heard a wide range of descriptions, the only word that they all had in common was “wrong”.
Eventually they became incapable of understanding others, would retreat from any bright lights, and would mumble to themselves incoherently.  Many would attack those around them, believing them to be the villains hounding them day and night.  There was only one thing to do in that case, and it was part of my job.
I had not brought my sword today either, since the reports I had read in Canterlot had told me the victims were still treatable and would not need the cure.  I thanked the doctors and got to work, as they went back to administering to the others under their care.  The treatments were effective, the black fluid put up its usual fight and twisted or constrained them to cause pain as I cut them off.  Each time, I would find that the patient had fallen asleep by the time I was done, no doubt needing the rest after weeks of nightmarish confusion.  I would need to get the doctors to interview them for me and find out what was causing this problem.
Most of the ponies here were students at the school, of varying ages and disciplines.  I had found some reading material on the Hummingbird Flight school, which did more than just teach fillies and colts to use their wings.  It was one of those technical colleges, athletes and specialist workers would go there to get training and certification, up-and-coming prodigies hoping to be like the many great graduates who had competed in the Olympics or set records that would not be broken for decades.  There were a few older ponies who I assumed were staff, teachers or custodians, all the same to me.
What I found unusual about their affliction was that it was not progressing.  In fact, the tar did not react at all until I had started cutting, it was like it was dormant.  This was very unusual, as the usual occurrence was the tar actively sliding over and feeding off of its host, covering them entirely in itself, taking them over and squeezing the life out of them.  Only one pony had ever lasted past stage three, and I'd rather not talk about her.
It took me much of the day to clean and disinfect all eighteen of the patients, I needed to rest every now and then, emotionally if not physically.  The process took its toll as I was literally slicing up their psyches and patching them back together, occasional whispers of the fear and anger would make their way into me as I did so.  My mind was incapable of accepting this corruption they were covered in, I was the antibody created specifically to stop it, yet I still felt the misery.  It was through parts of myself that I was able to defeat it, I had to give just a little of my happiness and love to each pony so that they could reassemble themselves and carry on.  I would share an unspoken bond with all of these ponies for the rest of my days, like a blood donor, but on some more primitive level.
“There, that's all eighteen, sleeping like foals.  Let me know what you get out of the patient interviews,” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead.  I hadn't exerted myself physically, the air was just really hot in the building for some reason.  I wanted to go outside and shove my head in a cloud bank until I felt better.
“Eighteen?  Princess, there are twenty one patients total,” Dr. Hoverace told me.
“Oh that's right, isn't it.  Twenty here and one at the guard station.  Wait, where are the other two?” I asked.
Dr. Wheeler trotted down the hall and stuck his head into one of the rooms far away from me, too far to see its room number.  He then checked the room across the hall, and came trotting back up to me.
“They're not in their rooms at the moment.  Should I get somepony to find them for you?” he asked me.  I briefly considered his request, the two patients had been in the far rooms and were thus barely in need of treatment.
“What symptoms were they presenting?  Anything serious?”  I asked.
“Just paranoia, no insomnia.  They're probably hiding someplace, could take a while to find them,” he said.
“In that case, it's not a huge deal.  Send me a letter when you find them and I'll be right over, I have to go deal with the twenty-first patient,” I said, turning to leave.
A curious feeling overtook me as I did.
“By the way, what were their names, the two I didn't get to?” I asked.
Dr. Hoverace quickly checked over a clipboard full of patient charts.  After a few seconds, she looked back up at me and pushed her glasses up her nose again.
“Miss Rainbow Dash and Miss Fluttershy Smith,” she said.
I arched an eyebrow.
“Smith?” I asked.
She shrugged.  “Wouldn't tell us her real name, so we put down Smith until we find a family member.  Standard procedure,” she said.
I left the building behind me and set out towards the guard station where I had been told that patient twenty-one was waiting, in a secured, padded cell.  He was too violent to be kept in the mental hospital, I had been told, and thus had to be kept restrained by armored soldier ponies.
The guard station was some distance away, though I didn't feel like flying.  Something told me to stay on the cloud layer, so I took a brisk trot and took in the city sights.  Mostly washed-out gray buildings around this area, the city was boring except for the Strip, probably all the budget had gone there.  I wanted to just grab the nearest pony and shove a bucket of paint under his hooves, perhaps show him how to use a roller.  Would it kill them to put a layer or two on one of these structures?
As I pondered the poor design choices around me, one extremely colorful detail stood out.  Some distance ahead of me was a pony with a rainbow tail, standing next to a corner and talking to somepony I couldn't see.  As I got closer, I got a vague sense of deja vu, the peculiar color scheme stood out.  You didn't often see a pony with that many colors in her tail, perhaps she dyed it?
	Miss Rainbow Dash.
Sometimes I'm such an idiot.  The filly I saw up ahead of me was the same one I had seen in the hospital earlier.  I would have just ignored it except that the name of one of the missing patients was Rainbow Dash.  Would her parents really have named her that?  Did everypony have to have stupid pun names?  It was cruel to name your foal like that, imagine how many bullies she'd have to put up with every day, the constant name-calling.
As I approached the filly, it didn't occur to me to hide myself.  I would just walk up to her and talk to her, right?  She'd listen to me, I'm Princess Cadence!
Or not.  I don't know if it was my clever disguise, or possible a result of the mild paranoia she had been suffering from, but the moment I got close enough to speak, she turned, saw me, and shot away like a bullet.  I was left speechless for a second before it occurred to me to give chase.
Wings, don't fail me now.
> Chapter 4
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	This pony was fast, I'll give her that.
Los Pegasus organizes air traffic into three layers, the first and closest is for local traffic, the second is higher and for inter-neighborhood fliers, and the third is for those leaving and entering the city.  This filly was smart enough to stay in the first layer, keeping low to the clouds so as not to risk a collision.  She was flying far above the speed limit, and in the wrong direction, causing ponies to drop or rise to avoid her and prevent a crash.  This also meant that the traffic opened up as I traveled in her wake, I didn't have to dart around other fliers while she did, allowing me to slowly catch up to her.
She shot a glance back over her shoulder towards me, her tiny wings flapping four times faster than mine to make up for her lack of size.  As she noticed I was flying in a clear area, she dove right down to cloud-level and skimmed along the streets, only a few centimeters from the floor.  I dove to match.
Now this was downright dangerous, ponies were crossing between buildings and talking to one another.  Flying in this obstacle course could lead to a lethal crash, yet Rainbow shot expertly between all comers, rising to avoid a business pony who, terrified at the close encounter, threw his suitcase full of papers up into the air.  I banked and narrowly avoided him, catching one of his documents in my face and pulling it off as I saw Rainbow bank tightly around a corner.
I took the corner wide, and it was a good thing too, as she had purposefully taken this corner hard so that I would crash into a barber's shop sign.  She shot another look over her shoulder to see me still pursuing, and banked into an alleyway across the street.
"Wait, stop, come back!"  I shouted at her as I moved to follow.  She either didn't hear me, or ignored me, hard to say given all the noise the wind was causing.  The alleyway had an overhang in it, as I shot by I lost sight of Rainbow for a moment before it occurred to me to look behind me.  Sure enough, she had been hiding on the overhang and had doubled back behind me.  She knew the city very well, I was just a guest here and keeping up was getting more and more difficult.
Fortunately, Rainbow had thought she lost me and soared up into the second traffic layer.  I took the opportunity to get closer while flying directly under her, she didn't look down, only back, to be sure she wasn't followed.  Her pace eased and she slowed down slightly, making the chase easier until I could pull into a climb and grab her from below.
"Hey, watch it, ya weirdo!"  came the yell of some pony who I darted past.  I hadn't been watching where I was going, I was looking up at Rainbow.  The commotion caused her to look down and recognize me, then speed up as she took advantage of her height.
It took great effort to keep pace with my height disadvantage, Rainbow had left the neighborhood and was heading to another cloud at a lower level where I could make out a complex of about six buildings.  Judging by the signs, they were restaurants of some sort.  I was now about 150 meters behind her, and she could dive to gain speed.  In a more narrow environment, should could lose me easily, but as long as she stayed in the open air it'd be hard to shake me.
Rainbow seemed to realize this, taking another look over her shoulder before diving towards the restaurant complex.  The alleys between the buildings were too narrow for me to fly through with my larger wingspan, while she could navigate just fine, this had been her plan.  As she darted into the narrow gap, a griffon with a garbage bag exited one of the buildings through the back.  She frightened the griffon and he tossed his bag into the air, scattering its contents all over.
I couldn't follow Rainbow through the alley, but I had an idea.  I instead went to the center point of the six buildings, and watched closely to try to spot her.  The angles of the buildings made it difficult to see anything in the alleys except what was directly below me, though Rainbow could probably see me just fine.  As I hovered and waited for her to expose herself again, I made a show of looking around while I was quietly raising my own height, one flap at a time.  When Rainbow would eventually have to leave one of the alleys, I'd have a big height advantage and could dive to catch up.
A minute passed.  I could hear the Griffon swearing to himself as he picked up the garbage and put it in the dumpster.  The area became quiet, very still, I couldn't hear anypony moving around.  I keep sweeping my sight to cover the exits.
At last Rainbow made her move, waiting until I was looking the other way before darting out the alley farthest from me.  Though she was fast, I put myself into a steep dive and closed the distance very quickly.  Her acceleration was incredible, a born athlete who was able to keep ahead of me even with the dive advantage.  I closed the gap to 30, 20, 10 meters.  Rainbow, from the corner of her eye, saw me getting closer and entered into a dive, a streak of rainbow behind her as she plowed through a nearby cloud and scattered water droplets everywhere.  I angled myself down to follow, still very close to her tail.
I had a plan, of sorts.  Rainbow couldn't see my still-invisible horn, once I got close enough I could use my telekinesis to grab her.  I'd need to be right on her tail to do it, since a miscalculation could leave her with a snapped spine or a broken leg if I failed to catch her whole body at once.  She could easily wiggle out of a telekinetic grab, but I was banking on the sheer surprise of it to keep her still until I could pin her with my body.  Once my weight was on top of her, she'd be unable to escape.
Rainbow pitched her dive into a near-vertical angle, shooting beneath the lowest layer of the city and into the open sky below.  It was several kilometers of empty air around us in every direction, she no longer wanted to hide but simply out-fly me.  As I was so close to her, she picked up speed and began leaving a turbulent wake behind her.  This air was bumpy and uneven, one bad shock wave to my chest and I'd have to break off my pursuit.  Once again, Rainbow had proven herself to be a master of aerial maneuvering.
Fortunately, she still didn't know about my magic.  With no witnesses within sight, I cast a filtration spell in front of me, just like I had learned when I was straining spaghetti with mom when I was a filly.  The spell filtered out the air, making breathing more difficult but also neutralizing the turbulence and allow me to gain even more speed with less air resistance.
Rainbow shot another glance over he shoulder, and saw me with a pink-colored filter flying in front of me.  Her eyes widened as she saw my horn, now fully visible and casting a magic spell.  I could not tell if she was able to piece together just who was chasing her at this point, if she did, she did not stop the dive.  That, or she could not stop it.
She faced forwards again, the air ahead of her had started to build up a sonic bubble on it.  We were now dangerously close to the sound barrier, and any thoughts of catching Rainbow were quickly receding as I now needed to find a way to avoid getting torn apart by a sonic boom if we went any faster.  At this speed, even a slight bank in any direction, even the tiniest miscalculation, would cause the air to rumble and send all the energy stored in the sound back into us and send us in every direction at once.
This was high-school level physics, I doubted if Rainbow was even fully aware of the danger surrounding us as we approached the stress envelope.  The air around us thickened and began to vibrate audibly to me, the envelope was not quite symmetrical due to a slight difference in orientation between Rainbow and I.  The resulting disturbance was slowly building up, I could see a small vortex appearing to the right and just behind Rainbow's tail.
The choice now was to catch Rainbow, or to save her.  There was no chance of doing both, if I grabbed her at this point the resulting shock wave would doubtless break something, in her or me,  both were unacceptable.  The choice had been made for me, I needed to either stop Rainbow or neutralize the vortex which was building up.
Calling out to her would be pointless, as the sound would take several seconds to catch up to her since we were so close to the barrier.  I instead banked just slightly to the right, beating my wings once.  The air offset caused the vortex to stop spinning clockwise and start spinning counterclockwise, and all the force from the switch rocketed out in every direction.  I took the hit full in the chest, my magic filter stopping it enough that I didn't seriously hurt myself, but my pursuit was done.  The airblast caused me to tumble over and over for several seconds until I stabilized myself and got my bearings again.
I looked around, trying to see Rainbow.  I checked down first, in case the blast had knocked her out, but I could see nothing towards the ground.  After a few seconds, a rumbling from somewhere above me drew my attention upwards just in time to see a rainbow streak shooting back towards the city at incredible speed.  By the time I would be able to make it back up that high, Rainbow would be long gone.  I wondered whether or not she realized that I had just saved her from herself, why she had been so eager to run from me despite the doctors reporting her as having the least severe symptoms.  Something wasn't adding up.
I recast the cloaking spell as I made my way back up to the city, taking my time.  I was exhausted, and more to the point, mildly confused.  I had gone from terrified of any extended flying to an expert in a short time, clearly one of the many unremembered memories I had had taken over and given me the skills I needed.  Unlike last time, I hadn't re-experienced it, it had just come to me and felt natural, perhaps because I had no time, not even a millisecond, to relive the old days.
In any case, I had already had a long day and angled my way back to what was home, for now.  When I arrived the twins had fixed the place some more, some crude windows had been kicked into the walls.  Squeaky was doing something to the collapsed roof as I swooped through the gap and landed on the floor, perhaps a little too hard, and stumbled.  I landed face-first on the cloud floor, which wasn't so bad compared to the hardwood at my Canterlot home, or the stone in the palace.
"Wow, you look like hell.  What happened?" Squeaky asked me as she hopped off the roof and landed near me.
"Just a long day is all," I said, prying my head out of the clouds and standing up.
Squeaky gave me a long stare as I heard Minty come out of the hallway behind me.
"Wow, you look like hell, what -" Minty started to say as Squeaky switched her glare to her twin sister.
I turned around to face Minty, "Long day.  What's for dinner?" I asked.
"How about some paper towels covered in soap?  Because that's all we have," she said, tossing down a rag she had been using to scrub.  "Laundry room is mostly disinfected."
"Didn't we clean that out last night?" I asked.
"Yeah, but it came back.  So, I'm pouring alcohol all over every surface to kill everything.  Everything." she said.
Squeaky ambled towards the kitchen and opened up the new fridge she had installed.
"Take a look, we have nothing, nothing, and nothing," she said, showing me all the fantastic nothing they had bought that day.
"No time for groceries I see," I said, "Want to go out again?  It's on me."
I decided to take us back over to the cluster of six restaurants that Rainbow had tried to lose me at earlier today, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.  She had lured me there purposefully because she knew the area, which gave a decent chance of running into her again, especially given how easy it would be to spot a mane like hers.  Unfortunately, there was no trace of her, so we settled for one of the sandwich bars on the opposite side from where that Griffon had been taking out the trash.  Last thing I needed was a confrontation.
The twins had decided that whatever I was doing was no longer preferable to fixing up the house, though they didn't ask me for many details.  The look of exhaustion was all the answer they needed.  Though I was too tired to go on patrol that night, I did it anyway, keeping myself on the clouds and wandering through the streets.  I didn't find anypony lashing out and my instincts were quiet, so I went back home after only a few hours and went to bed.  Since I had gotten distracted, I would need to go see patient twenty-one tomorrow, and I suspected it was going to be much more than a casual visitation, I would need all the strength I could muster.
> Chapter 5
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I awoke earlier than usual the next day, I could hear the twins still sleeping in their rooms across the hall.  All three of us had been exhausted for different reasons, and I couldn't safely say mine were any better than theirs.  The one perk of my line of work was that I didn't have to clean walls off with rubbing alcohol in an effort to kill the bacteria growing all over them.
I checked the fridge again before I remembered there was nothing inside.  In fact, there was nothing to eat in the whole house, we still hadn't had time to buy groceries.  We didn't even have a toaster, how was I going to eat my customary burnt piece of toast with no jam?
Come to think of it, I could buy my own jam now couldn't I?  I had tried to earlier but my mom had insisted that I would never eat all of it myself before it went bad, so it was a waste.  I could just eat my toast plain, right?  Why was my mom still trying to control my life?  Well, with her half a country away, I could buy as much jam as I wanted and there was nothing she could do to stop me.
I left the house dejected and hungry, resolving to get something to eat after I dealt with number-21.  We still didn't know what his name was, despite him being in custody for so long, because he refused to speak to anypony.  The guards had reported that he just mumbled to himself, and no family members had come looking.  There weren't even missing-ponies reports filed which matched his description, it was like he didn't exist.
Today, I wore a long overcoat which conveniently hid my sword, strapped to my back in its sheath.  It wasn't cool out at all, I began overheating almost as soon as I put the coat on, the sweat sticking to the inside of the coat and making the entire affair of flying to the guard station far more draining than it had to be.
There were several guard stations in Los Pegasus, and the one number-21 had been kept at was fairly close to the mental hospital, mostly for expediency.  I will admit, I wasn't in any particular hurry to get to him and deal with his infection, and I know that if Celestia knew that I'd never hear the end of it.  It was just - well, he's a bad pony.  It sounds simplistic to say it like that, but what else can I say?  He was caught in a school having broken in to the colt's locker room, his motives were pretty obvious.  He deserved what he got, in my opinion, as horrible as that sounded.  Perhaps my sympathy was taxed simply because of a previous encounter I had had, but in any case I did not worry too much about what state he was in.

The guard station was a bland and boring building, almost entirely gray, just like every other building in this town.  Perhaps this was on purpose, perhaps Celestia had instituted some secret policy to make every government-owned building in the entire country as boring and unpleasant as possible, to ward off potential comers.  After all, if you overtax somepony, they may consider dealing with the staff and building not worth the hassle of getting a refund.
The desk sergeant was waiting for me when I got inside, my letter instructing them to be on the lookout for a discreet pink Pegasus.  By waiting for me, I meant that he didn't notice me at all, as there were no doubt quite a few discreet pink Pegasi around, I could see another one milling outside.  Fortunately I had also arranged for a password.
"Yes, is there something I can do for you miss?" the desk sergeant asked, looking bored.  I noticed he wasn't wearing his helmet, in fact, none of the guard ponies were.  There was a guard taking a disposition from a blue Pegasus who wore his armor suit but no helmet, there was another guard hauling in somepony who appeared to be unconscious, also wearing no helmet, and the carving of Princess Celestia that sat above the building's entrance also had no helmet on.  This whole place was so unprofessional.
"Sunflank should brush her teeth more," I said softly to the desk sergeant, who took a moment to realize that was the top secret password.  I hadn't told Celestia I had changed it.
"Right this way," he said, motioning at another guard to cover the desk.  He escorted me into the hallway that led further into the station, past rows of desks and filing cabinets where the guards stored the myriad paperwork necessary to dispense justice around the town.  A couple of mare guards were chatting with one another, as we passed, they saw me and hushed up.  One of them whispered, "Princess" to the other, they both had a look of awe on their faces.  Glad to see somepony recognized me.
Past the offices were a set of what looked like change rooms, except they were obviously re-purposed jail cells, I could see the pipes still hanging out of the walls.  Nopony had bothered to fix them up even a little, they just pulled the bars off and called it a change room.  There were no helmets in the equipment cages there, I started to wonder if Los Pegasus hadn't budgeted for its guards to have headgear at all.
Lastly, in the back of the station were rows and rows of jail cells proper.  According to my mom, most of the real dangerous ponies were held at separate penitentiary facilities outside of the major cities, while these cells were mostly for overnight stays.  The stench coming out of them confirmed that, these were what mom had always called "drunk tanks".  Most of the ponies in them were still asleep, a few groaned as we passed.  The cells were filthy, though whether due to neglect or their occupants was hard to determine.
Tucked in the back, at the far end of the hallway, was a sign reading: "Warning, no unauthorized personnel beyond this point", accompanied by a small doorway.  The sergeant took out a key from somewhere in his armor suit and unlocked the little door, holding it open for me and letting me through.  It shut with a neat 'click' behind me as I stood in what must have been the high-threat wing.  These certainly weren't drunk tanks.
There were two cells that looked like the others, except there was thick glass in the front, not bars.  The doors to these cells were sliding doors, and both were empty.  There were two guard ponies in here as well, both had their attention focused on a small doorway next to the other cells.
It looked like an entrance to a racquetball court, complete with a narrow slit covered in glass.  I was still not fully grown yet, and even I would have to duck my head to get inside, the door was so small.  It was also made entirely of steel, and reinforced by bolts all around it.  The two guards stood at attention as I walked over to them.
"Is this number 21?" I asked them.  I couldn't tell what the symbols on their armor meant, I thought they had something to do with rank but I've never paid attention to exactly what.  In any case, the guard with more symbols answered my question.
"Yes, this is him.  Padded room, triple reinforced," he said, stepping nervously in place.  I could see what looked like a few scratches on his leg, and a section of the gold trim on his armor looked dented.  By teeth marks.
"Been able to get anything out of him?" I asked, trying to see through the narrow slit in the door.  It was too small, I couldn't get a good look, but I thought I could make something out on the other side, sitting against the far wall.
"Nothing, ma'am.  Just mutters to himself.  Don't get too close," he said, trying to warn me.
"All right, open it up," I said.  The two guards exchanged a look and moved to undo the lock on the door.  I dropped my coat off, revealing the scabbard on my back as I let the magic of the invisibility spell on my horn fade.  The guards did not seem to be reassured by the display.
I stepped into the cell and the guards closed it behind me.  I could see one of their eyes through the slit on the doorway, watching me for any sign of trouble.
The padding in the room was made of some white fabric I couldn't place, it was soft, softer than a cloud.  It had to be, for, sitting opposite me on his rump, was a brown pony with a rough black mane, rocking back and forth on his hind legs.  He wore a straight-jacket, binding his forelegs together and making it difficult for him to move at anything faster than a walk.  He didn't look up at me as I had entered, he was muttering something to himself I couldn't quite hear.  It repeated, over and over.
"Mister 21?" I asked.  I doubted he'd recognize that name, since it wasn't his, but what else was I going to call him?
There was no response.  He was still muttering something.  I took a step forward and tried again.  "Mister 21?  Can you hear me?"
After a few steps, he suddenly noticed me and snapped his head upwards.  His eyes took a second to focus on me.  "Stay back!" he snapped.  I didn't move, towards or away, I held stock still.
He kept his eyes focused on me for a few seconds, struggling to decide if I was real or not.  Then, he snapped his head to look at something off to his right, shouting, "I said, stay back!  Back!"
He tried to push himself away from whatever it was that was scaring him, there was nothing other than me in the room, at least to me.  The push caused him to fall over onto his back, and he rolled over and held his face down into the padded floor.  I could hear him muttering more clearly now, something like, "not real not real not real not real".
He snapped his head to look at me again, still standing stock still in the room.  He wasn't angry, just afraid, though I doubted I could do anything to help him at this point.  There wasn't much left to save.  He held his stare on me for much longer this time, breathing slowly, pacing himself.  After a moment, he put his head back onto the floor and stayed silent.
The time had come.  I concentrated, closed my eyes, and let the magic that was my unique talent, my unique burden, come and bring me a sight beyond sight.  As was so often the case, the other realm was muted, hushed, dark, all around the victim of an attack.  The strands that bound beings together across time and space avoided those who had been afflicted on purpose, to keep themselves from being affected as well.  It was pure self defense, but it made the world cold and lonely in the last moments of one suffering such as patient-21.
I could see the strands that extended out from him, there were many, yet they had all been severed.  Purposefully, by him.  Perhaps as his final act of sanity, he had cut the bonds to his loved ones to spare them the pain of dealing with his fate.  Perhaps I had been wrong about him.
The black corruption had taken most of the light that burned within, he was far too far gone to save.  I could see it pulsing and gnawing over him, but once again, it was not progressing, just like those I had seen at the mental hospital.  Instead, the tar was only reacting to his attempts to fight it, squelching his resistance.  Torture.  It would not allow him to die, it just kept him in great pain and fear.
As I prepared myself to do my work, the ball of light, weak as it was, did something I had never experienced before.  It made a request, tugging at my psyche, asking me to do something.  The light doesn't speak directly, it speaks in feeling, emotions.  This request was complex, it took me a moment to understand it, as emotions are meant to be simple and easy.  My mind pieced together the request, slowly, as the light waited patiently despite its suffering.  Listen.
Listen?  To what? I asked back.
The light extended a strand out and brought it very close to my head.  There was no black tar on this strand, and each time the tar moved to overtake it, the light focused itself and fought it off.  Please.
We were on our way home after a hard day at the fruit packing plant.  We had decided to take our usual shortcut past that big flight school in the yards.  Our wings hurt, we had been working every day for the past month, it was so tiring we wished we wouldn't have to work ever again, but, there were others counting on us.  We would work ourselves until we dropped, for them.
We were passing by one of the lower parts of the building when we heard something.  It was soft, but it was there.  We stopped, and listened.  The night was cold, very quiet.  The stars were out in full, beaming down on us as we strained to hear the sound.  It came again.  "Help!".
It was so soft, we could not be sure it was real, but it was coming from somewhere inside the school.  We looked around, the still night was dead silent, nopony else was nearby.  There was no time, we started to run, first to the nearby door, then, finding it locked, to another side door.  The school must still be out on holiday, we thought, the doors must all be locked.
Never mind that, we looked up and saw some windows on the very top of the small building.  We lifted off, flying up next to the windows and trying to peer in, only to see darkness on the other side.  We were sure there was somepony inside calling for help, what do we do now?
We smashed the window in front of us, slicing up our foreleg with fallen shards of glass.  We ignored the pain and darted inside the building, only lit by dim moonlight.  We seemed to be in a classroom, though one for foals or not, we did not care.  We nearly landed atop one of the desks before we realized it was unstable and landed next to it, having confused it for the floor in the darkness.  We saw there was another door.  "Help!" came the cry again.
We tried to open the inside door, but the bottom was locked.  We started to panic before we realized the top half of the door was open, some custodian having forgotten to lock it.  We opened the top half and jumped over, looking around.  The cry was coming from somewhere to our left, though the building was shrouded in darkness.  There was a skylight somewhere, barely enough to see with.  We looked around quickly before setting off down the hallway.
"Hello?" we said, our voice deep and thick, with an Latin accent.  Spanish?  Italian?
No response, the building was still quiet.  We stopped in a bright spot, near the skylight, and waited, hoping to hear the cry come again.
The cry did not come.  We waited for another minute, perhaps our mind was playing tricks on us.  We were about to turn and leave when we heard a sound, a long, slow creaking sound as the basement door slowly turned on its hinges.  We turned to see its silhouette, barely visible.  Somepony was breathing down there, we could hear them as the door opened.
"Are you okay?  Who are you?" we called out into the open basement door.  No response came back.  A chill ran down our spine, the atmosphere thickened, became heavy around us.  A deep feeling in our gut told us to run, get away from here.  We did not care, somepony needed our help.
Though we could not see even a hoof in front of our face, we boldly stepped into the basement, down the small flight of stairs.  The only light down here was a very soft orange glow coming from what looked like a furnace in the corner.  We turned to see it, though there was something in the way.  Piping.  Pipes ran all over the room, some low, some high, they ran all across and formed a maze.  We started climbing over them.
"Hello?  Are you hurt?  Please answer me!" we called.  This time, something responded.  It giggled.
Softly, quietly, there was a gentle giggle coming from the far corner, far from the light of the furnace.  We turned, but the darkness was total.  We could see nothing.  The giggling continued.
"We need to get out of here, come, follow me," we said.  The giggling continued, and slowly, it increased in volume.  Before it was one little, gentle giggle, now it rose to a slow, merciless laugh.  We began to sweat.  We were afraid.  We looked back towards the stairway and we could not find it, lost in the darkness.  The laughter grew in volume, and in voice.
The laughter was now coming from all corners of the room.  We backed towards the furnace, the soft light barely enough to show what was in front of it.  As we did, the laughter noticed, it began to get closer, louder.  It was not a laugh now, it was a howl of hilarity, screaming at incredible volume.  It swirled all around us, there were now so many laughing at us that we could not keep track of where it was coming from, it was coming from all around.  We panicked, we ran, we did not care where.  We hit a pipe, we think.  We fell over, and the hyenas of the darkness swarmed over us.  We felt something close over us, we -
We?
We were no more.
I snapped out of my trance and backed away instinctively, the light was gone.  It was all dark mud now.  I lost my other sight and opened my real eyes in time to see him, patient-21 standing eye to eye with me.
"STOP LAUGHING AT ME" he howled and screamed, charging at me from only a step away.  My hooves reacted before my brain could catch up, I unsheathed my sword and plunged it into his chest in one smooth motion.  I had not even realized what I had done before it was over, his body went limp and he slumped back, sliding off my sword as I relaxed it.  Blood poured out of his chest, I saw it forming at his mouth.
I threw my sword to the side and sat down next to him, holding his head in my hooves.  I could see there was not much time left for him.
"Please, tell me your name," I begged, trying to keep myself from choking.
"Gah – Gazzo, Trivedi," he said.  He stopped.  His eyes bulged as he coughed, sending blood all over himself.  He was gone.  I laid his head back down on the floor and closed his eyes, holding my hoof over them for a moment.
The guards had finally managed to get the cell door open by the time I had collected my sword and attempted to clean it off.
"Are you all right Princess?" one said as he burst into the room.  His partner, just behind him, began examining the body on the floor.
"Gazzo Trivedi..." I said.  I looked at the bigger of the two guards.  I would not let tears come, I wouldn't let myself choke, I had to be strong.  "Run a check on the name, probably an immigrant.  Used to work really long hours at a fruit packing plant."
The guard nodded.  "Yes ma'am, we'll get right on it," he said.  I turned to leave.
"Let me know what you find as soon as you find it.  And," I said, stopping and turning back to see Gazzo's body as the guard stared at it, "don't tell his family."
It was not until I had left the guard station that I allowed myself to cry.  I knew there was nothing wrong with it, that it was not a display of weakness, yet a leader must still never cry in front of her followers.  I found a back alley that seemed secluded and let my tears bond with the clouds beneath, pitying myself for being so weak, so stupid.  Gazzo was among the finest ponies I had never met, a true hero who paid for his goodness with his sanity and eventually, his life.  I hadn't cared about him, I had thought he was a pedophile, I had misjudged him so harshly that it was a stain I could never wash off.
I would tell Celestia to find his family, his relatives, friends, whoever it had been he was sacrificing himself for, and to take care of them.  I wanted to tell them myself that Gazzo was the picture of courage and selflessness, I wanted them to know he had spent his final moments of sanity thinking of them.  I wanted them to know that his courage had saved so many others, that he had told me, at great cost, what I needed to know.  The basement of that building, that was the focal 
point.  I had to stop anypony else from going down there.  I had to clean it out.
> Chapter 6
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	The difference between a follower and a leader is that a leader knows that, no matter how rough things get, you pick yourself back up and get back to work.  Ponies are counting on you.  There will be time for tears later.
So imagine my surprise when I opened the door to my cloud home to find a big pink pile of feathers squatting in the living room waiting for me.
As I got closer to find out just what it was I was looking at, the feathers stood up and looked at me.  I recognized the creature as a pink flamingo.  Why was it in my house?
The flamingo gave me a sideways look before walking over to me and standing in front me.  We exchanged a look, and I'd say it was a good thing, except my skill at reading flamingo facial expressions is right up there with my ability to forecast next week's weather, that is, nonexistent.  He could be gearing up to eat me for all I knew.  For all I knew, flamingos ate ponies.  Suddenly I wished I had paid attention in biology class, because what sorts of birds are going to eat you seems like something they should teach in school.
Minty rounded the corner and the flamingo immediately lost interest in me, walking on its long, skinny legs over to Minty and flaring up his wings in front of her.  Several of the feathers were misaligned, so it dropped its wings and used its beak to start reorganizing them.  Minty just laughed.
"I see you've met Mr. Labamba!  I think he likes you," she said, holding up her hoof to introduce the flamingo.  Labamba?
"Labamba?" I asked.  This was important.  What kind of name is that?
"Isn't he the coolest?  Check this out," Minty said.  She stepped into the living room and found a nice open spot, and stood still.  She then flared one of her wings up and waited.
I saw Squeaky come around the corner to watch the display, as Labamba the pink flamingo saw Minty's opening and stood next to her.  He flared his wing up and they touched them together.  They stood like this for a while.
"I am so lost," I said to Squeaky.
"I was hoping you could tell me.  It's like they're soulmates," she said, staring at her sister and our new roommate.
"Minty, just what are you doing?" I asked her.  I didn't get an answer, she was really, really enjoying touching her wing to this flamingo's wing.  A few seconds later, she folded her wing back up and Labamba walked over to me, holding up one of his webbed feet in front of me.
"He wants to shake with you," Minty said.  I held up my hoof and Labamba gave me a vigorous foot-shake before resuming cleaning his feathers.  He then sat next to Minty as she stood, beaming with pride, and a huge grin plastered all over her face.
While Gazzo's memories had touched me and left a mark, I could not feel guilt or sadness.  The unbridled joy emanating from Minty and her new friend was too much, I couldn't help but feel good again.  Such is life, I suppose.  Perhaps it was the bizarre, sub-verbal connection between these two, perhaps it was the joy that Minty was feeling, rubbing off on me.  Perhaps it was the lifetime's worth of birdbrain jokes I would get to make that was giving me this high.  It was like she was walking into them and didn't care.
"Found him at the bird sanctuary this morning," Squeaky said to nopony in particular, her gaze still locked on the big pink bird.
"Isn't that where birds go to drink and eat seeds and stuff?" I asked.  That's what the sanctuary in Canterlot was for.
"It's not quite the same up here," Squeaky said, finally breaking her stare on the bird and turning to face me, "it's more like an animal shelter."
"Huh?" I asked.  I had never had a pet, or even considered one.
"You know, where they find stray dogs and keep them until their owners claim them, or orphaned puppies.  That kind of thing," Squeaky explained.
"Except for, birds," I said.
"Yeah, don't see a lot of dogs and cats up in the clouds," Squeaky said.  It wasn't a joke, she was quite serious.
Minty wasn't really paying attention to us.  She and Labamba were now engaged in some sort of bizarre game of patty-cake.  I suddenly realized that this was exactly the same kind of thing I had going with Twilight Sparkle, except I was now wondering who was the older, wiser one here.  Labamba probably wouldn't ace a science test, but something told me he'd be smart enough not to try to drink from the shower nozzle.
"So, what, you just saw him and brought him home with you?" I asked, trying to get Minty to respond.  She was still busy.
"Yeah, pretty much.  They're best pals now," Squeaky said.
"What if his old owner comes looking for him," I asked.  I still wasn't completely sure how this worked, was it like an adoption agency?
"Labamba's an orphan," Minty said.
"How did you know that?" Squeaky asked.  Minty shrugged.
"The keeper said they found his egg in an abandoned nest.  That makes him an orphan," Minty said.  Squeaky looked like she was about to scold Minty for using bad logic again, but her expression eased up and she relented.
"Yeah okay, let's go with that," Squeaky said.
I really couldn't tell his facial expressions, if flamingos even use facial expressions, but Labamba seemed to be very happy.  Alternately, he could be a sociopath planning to kill us all, so I was still going to sleep with my sword next to me and my door locked.  I also had to go shopping and buy a door since our house hadn't come with any, this bird was really adding a lot to my to-do list, right after "figure out what's wrong with Minty's brain" and before "study up on flamingo body language".
I briefly considered sending a letter to Twilight asking her to give me a condensed study before passing on the idea - no doubt I'd come back to Canterlot to find her up to her eyeballs in flamingo books.  For some reason I was imagining the books as being bright pink, even though that made no sense at all.
I shook my head to clear out the crazy that had decided to take root, and focused on my task.  I had come home in order to locate directions on how to get to the flight school.  It then occurred to me that we probably didn't have a city directory anywhere.
"Hey Squeaky, have you ever heard of the Hummingbird Flight College?" I asked her.
"Huh?  That sounds familiar.  Is that -" Squeaky started to say before Minty snapped out of her bird trance.
"Whoa, you're going to Hummingbird!  That's so awesome Cadence!  I wish I could go," Minty said, trailing off.  Her eyes looked at nothing in particular, perhaps she was lost in some daydream.
"They don't do particle physics degrees at Hummingbird, Minty," Squeaky said.
"Yeah I know, but wouldn't it be so cool to learn how to fly like the Wonderbolts?" Minty asked.
"What do they have to do with this?" I asked.
"Duh!  Hummingbird was founded by Erdrick Van der Belt, former captain and first member of the Wonderbolts!  How could not know that?" Minty asked, looking squarely at me.  As she did, Labamba stood beside her and tried to mimic her concern.  He looked the same as ever, clearly he did not have a mean face.
"Because I don't care," I said.  I really didn't, though that name seemed very familiar...
"Minty's kind of a big fan, Cadence," Squeaky said, trying to help.
"That doesn't change anything, do you know where it is?  I have to go check it out," I said.
Before Minty could say anything, Squeaky cut in, "Sure I know where it is, I'll show you!" she said.
"Hey, no fair!" Minty protested.
"It's not like there'll be any celebrities there.  The school doesn't open until next week, I'm just going to check something really quick," I said.
Minty was not reassured.
"If I see somepony famous, I'll get an autograph for you.  How about that?" I asked.
"Fine," Minty said.  I had a feeling this wasn't quite over, as Minty sat down in a huff.  Labamba tried to comfort her, presumably he was a Wonderbolts fan as well.
Squeaky actually had no idea where the flight college was, nor did I, but she did know where to look.  I followed her up a few thousand feet above the city and we looked at the entire spread of it across all the clouds, looking for a set of runways and aerial acrobatics equipment.  I was able to recognize it once I saw it, the roof had a peculiar curve to it that I had seen through Gazzo's eyes, and we went down to make sure.
The building was much as I remembered it, with a large open runway field next to it and a variety of hoops and poles that must have been used in some sort of training exercise.  It was a fairly large campus, all connected together through squat hallways.  I could see a flat, one-story building where all the classrooms were, another that looked like indoor gymnasiums, and a four-story tower which must have been the dormitories.  There was more sprawl which I could only guess at.  We landed on the side closest to the classrooms.
"Squeaky, I know this is going to sound weird, but I need you to do me a favor," I said to her as I cast my gaze over the building.
"Yeah, what?" she asked.  It was very quiet out, nopony was on the grounds or in the surrounding residences, at least not that I could see.
"Please don't ever come here, and make sure Minty doesn't either.  Not until I say it's okay," I said.  She nodded.
"Is this one of your Princess things?" she asked.
"It is," I said.
"All right, not like I'm dying to take more flight lessons or anything," she said, trying to brush it off.  "Are you going to stick around?  Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Not yet.  This could take a while," I said.  I was still wearing my overcoat, with my sword tucked underneath.  I think Squeaky understood.
She didn't take off, she stood next to me and looked at the building as well.
"Is it really dangerous?" she asked.
"Very," I said.  She still didn't want to leave.
"Look, can't I help you or something?  Is there nothing that I can do?" she asked.  There was fear in her eyes.
"Even if there was, I wouldn't want you to.  The best you can do is make sure everypony stays away from here," I said.  I started walking towards the room that Gazzo must have used as an entry point, I could recognize the building from a distance.  Squeaky didn't follow me, I heard the sound of her wings beating as she flew off, back home.  All on my own again.
I found the window that Gazzo had used to break in, the glass had been swept up but the window itself had not been fixed.  Instead, somepony had covered it in white paper marked "Danger".  I took a brief look around to make sure I was really alone, I couldn't see anypony around or above me who might act as a witness.  I paused, I took a deep breath, and then flew into the building, cracking the paper and sailing into the classroom Gazzo had before.
It was daylight out, and the room was much better illuminated.  Minty had been right, this place was definitely a specialist school.  Even though this looked like a foal's classroom, with tiny desks and small door, I could see just who their heroes were expected to be.  The walls had double-large posters of various athletes on them, many of whom I didn't recognize.   The only ones I did were very old, sports heroes who were heroes for reasons other than sports.  Neville Garvup, the first mule to break the sound barrier using his patented rocket-glider, had a poster that detailed his achievements.  He must be dead by now, I reasoned, he had been a great inventor in one of my memories but the style of his clothing and mane were very old.  The poster itself was much more recently made, they had probably used an older portrait as a reference.
Curiously, the door to this room was still not locked properly, though now that it was light I could see why.  The top door didn't even have a locking mechanism on it, a gentle push was all I needed to open it and hop over.  It made me wonder why they even locked the bottom half.
I leaped over the bottom door, landing as quietly as I could, listening intently for any sound to come.  The hall was silent.  I did not want to have to explain why I was in here to any passing custodian, if there were even any around.  I wondered if they had to come in and clean the place, even if nopony was inside mucking it up, though that wondering could wait until later.
The basement was a few rooms off to my left.  The entrance was covered in yellow "CAUTION" tape, as the door had been knocked off from the inside.  The door itself was propped up next to the wall, I could see two large hoofmarks where the impact had registered against it.  The lock had been totally destroyed.  It had been locked when Gazzo tried to escape, but not when he was going in.
I tried peering down into the basement through the tape, but I couldn't see anything.  The light from overhead wasn't enough to cast down into the basement, and I couldn't see the outline of the furnace from this angle, if it was even there.  For all appearances, this was a black void that stretched out in front of me.
I hadn't brought along the flashlights, though I could try casting a light spell.  The problem there was it'd blow my cover, if anypony were to catch me.  Then again, if some passing janitor found me in the basement, I'd be in a spot of trouble either way, so would it really matter if they saw I was Princess Cadence?  Would that maybe help?  "No, nothing out of the ordinary.  Just stomping around your basement on royal business."
As I ruminated on this question, I heard a very faint clip-clopping of a pony or two somewhere down the hallway.  It was coming from around a corner, my ears perked up as I realized it was coming towards me, in the locked, closed building I wasn't supposed to be in.  My eyes looked for someplace to hide, the first and most obvious being the basement, and that also being the one I didn't want to make use of.  The walking became louder and I could make out what sounded like talking, possibly more than one interloper.
I darted back towards the classroom I had came in through, moving as quietly and quickly as I could.  Fortunately I had worn my running horseshoes today instead of the usual metal ones, my practical choice meant I made not a peep as I leaped back over the partially-locked door and closed it behind me.  I left the top half open just a crack and peered through the narrow slit in hopes of identifying when the danger had passed.
Whoever it was was still talking, though the voices were too muffled to make out what they were saying.  After a few moments, I saw a flash of two little fillies, one with a distinct rainbow colored tail.
The dormitories were closed when the school was out of session, so I had thought, so what were these two doing here?  More importantly, now I had the chance to finally deal with whatever had caused them to flee from me earlier, at least for Rainbow Dash.  If the other filly was her friend, Ms. Smith, then this was far too perfect.
I didn't know the layout of the buildings too well, but I could guess they were heading towards the dorm rooms in the tower.  As for what they had been doing in the halls was anypony's guess.  I waited until they had passed before opening the door and sticking my head out.  The now-distant hoof-falls of their walking echoed back to me as I padded along silently behind them.  Sure enough, they waked straight to the entrance to the dorms tower and went in.
I stood at the entrance to the tower and allowed them some time to climb the stairs, knowing they would be able to hear me opening the door and would surely try to bolt again.  As I sat idly, I noticed there were an awful lot of safety posters clustered here around the stairwell entrance, though that made a sort of sense.  Most Pegasus-made buildings didn't bother with stairwells, they simply had dropshafts to fly up and down in.  Only buildings expecting non-flyer visitors had them, so all safety posters concerning non-fliers would logically be most likely to be read here.
"One in ten-thousand cloud-shoes is defective.  Los Pegasus has over 50,000 visitors a year.  Don't become a statistic, wear your emergency parachute."  said one poster, with a stern picture of a guardspony staring back at me, sans helmet.  I wondered if that meant that five visitors every year found themselves suddenly plunging through the cloud layer and falling to the ground, with only their emergency chute to save them.  Wouldn't your other three shoes just mean you'd sort of dip into the clouds and not fall through them?
I had provided the fillies enough time, I pushed the curiously unlocked door open and started ascending the steps myself.  There were four floors total, and I couldn't be quite sure which one the fillies had entered, so I checked the first floor slowly by walking through the connection hallway and checking the doors.  They were all locked.
While I was checking the second floor, I heard noise coming through the floatstone floor above me, probably in the middle of the third floor hallway.  I doubled back out and ascended again, peering around the corner into the hall.  One of the doors was half-open.
I crept up closer to the door and stood just outside it, listening.  The fillies were in mid-conversation, totally oblivious to my presence.
"Can we open a window?  It's really stuffy in here," one said.
"Yeah sure," the other said.  I heard the sound of the window lock clicking, and the glass sliding open.
"Oh, hello mister sparrow.  You're up awfully late today," the first one said.  Her voice was very soft and gentle.  Also, she was talking to a bird, evidently, or herself, and I wasn't sure which was worse.  Maybe it wasn't just Minty.
I heard a gentle chirp come from inside the room.
"Oh sure, if you're hungry.  Here you go," the voice said.  I heard what sounded like a carrot snapping and a bit of grinding, then some chirping.
"I still don't know how you do that," the second voice said.  The room went quiet again.
I chanced a peek around the corner.  Both fillies were facing away from me.  It was definitely Rainbow and Fluttershy, since the lanky yellow filly had more than enough hair to match what I had seen in the hospital earlier, and for Rainbow?  It's hard to miss a mane like that.  She probably wouldn't even need a name tag or ID card.
The sparrow on the windowsill let out a chirrup and Fluttershy turned to look at me.  Her eyes went wide and, in less than a second, she had somehow ducked under the bed and hid there, her pink tail all that was sticking out after her.  It was visibly shaking.
The sparrow started to hop around and chirp more and more, as Rainbow turned around to see what the commotion was.  She saw me, or rather my head, and a look of pure terror came over her face.  It shook off in under a second, she quickly took an aggressive pose and snarled at me.
"Who are you!?  What are you!?  Leave us alone!" she yelled at me.  The trembling of the pink tail intensified.
I stepped around the corner in full view of the filly, as she stood her ground.  I could see her legs quaking very slightly, she was trying to suppress it and look fierce, but I could tell she was as scared as her friend.  I just didn't understand why.
I couldn't feel anything at all coming from these two.  Normally, when I'm within a short distance of one who had felt the touch, I can sense something.  When I was younger, I just thought it was nervousness, but now I knew what it was.  I could tell when somepony near me was afflicted, and I could also tell that these two weren't.  They must have gotten swept up along with the other patients for a different reason.
"My name is - " I started to say, before it occurred to me that Rainbow had already seen my horn.  She knew who I was, I think, though she may have been two young to know it.  I decided to try that thing that Celestia does, where her regal presence calms and reassures all those within sight of it, and her gentle voice soothes even the most troubled mind.
I cancelled the invisibility spell and struck a simple pose, wings flared, and said, with my softest and most soothing voice, "I am Princess Amoria, first of the triumvirate and protector of all Equestria,"  I hadn't rehearsed that at all, it was right off the top of my head.
Rainbow's eyes took on a blank look.  Evidently it wasn't working, whatever it was that Celestia did.  Maybe it was because she was taller.
"Erm, you can call me Cadence.  Or Miamore," I said, "I prefer the second one, actually."
Rainbow still had a blank look on her face.  "What?" she said.  
"You don't know what a princess is?" I asked, now very depressed.  Nothing takes the wind out of your sails quite like not being recognized, especially not when you're explicitly trying to use your fame to your advantage.  I bet the  Wonderbolts don't have to put up with this.
"Who?" she asked.  She wasn't angry, or scared, she was just plain confused now.
"I'm, uh, I'm..." I stammered.  I didn't even know how to explain this.
I saw a head stick out from under the bed behind Rainbow.  "How do you have a horn?  I've never seen a pony with a horn before," Fluttershy said.
I felt my hoof drift towards my face as the mild headache set in.
"You two, you've never even seen a Unicorn?"  I asked.  Rainbow shook her head.
"Do you pop balloons with it?  What does it do?" Rainbow asked me.
"I can use it to cast magic, see, watch," I said.  I closed the door behind me with my telekinesis, and Fluttershy's mouth fell open.  Rainbow was less impressed.
"Big deal, I can close doors too," she said.  Suddenly I realized we were getting off topic.
"What are you doing here?  Isn't the school closed between semesters?" I asked, studiously avoiding taking on the tone of a scolding parent.  Fluttershy pulled herself out from under the bed and made a motion at the sparrow.  He chirped and resumed eating the crunched up carrot bits on the windowsill.  She was avoiding talking to me, and making it fairly obvious that's what she was doing.
"None of your business," Rainbow said, taking an aggressive pose again.
"Actually, it is," I said.  Time to bluff.  "What would the dean think if I told him you were in here?"
Fear, real fear, took Rainbow's face.  She couldn't hide it this time, I had found something she was really afraid of at last.  "Please don't, please," she said, making a face like she was about to cry.  Fortunately, I was well versed in dealing with fillies, having adequate practice with them in the past.
"Hey hey, it's okay," I said, walking close and laying down in front of her.  "It's okay, it's okay.  Tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help," I said, soothingly.  Rainbow sat down in front of me, I could tell she wanted me to reassure her but she wasn't quite ready to trust me yet.  She was so young, yet was already starting to harden up, which worried me all the more.
She sniffed.  "We don't wanna go back," she said.  Fluttershy winced slightly, still watching the sparrow.  Another sparrow landed on the sill, so she picked up the carrot and crushed it a bit for the next one to eat.
"Go back where?" I asked.  Rainbow moved in closer, I could see tears building up in her eyes.  This was going to get bad, fast.
Rainbow shoved her little head onto my coat and started crying, softly.  I think Fluttershy was too, but she was making sure I couldn't see her do it.  The sparrows noticed and stopped eating the carrot bits, chirping at her as they hopped around on the windowsill.
I comforted Rainbow for a while, just letting her cry it out while patting her on her mane, cooing, "There, there."  This had been a long time in coming, I think, since I was more or less a complete stranger to them, and already had them bawling all over me.
After a few minutes of sobbing, Rainbow could cry no more, and withdrew from my embrace.  "Now, can you tell me where you don't want to go back to?  I promise I won't let them take you back," I said.  I was winging it now, all I could tell was something was wrong.  Hopefully, leading them with questions would cause them to open up.
Rainbow looked like she was about to cry again.  Her throat was too choked up to speak, so she sniffed and pointed at Fluttershy.  I gave her an inquisitive look, and she gingerly walked to Fluttershy and lifted up one of her wings.
Beneath the wing, hidden from view when folded, was a distinct scar.  It had healed, and the coat had grown back over it, but I could tell it had been big and very painful when it was inflicted.  Worse, it had been deliberately put under the wing to be less visible.
After I had seen the scar, Fluttershy closed her wing again and turned away, hopping onto the bed and throwing the green silk cover over herself.  Rainbow had finally worked the courage up to speak, again.
"They used to hit her because she wouldn't tell on them," she said.
"Who's they?" I asked.
"They ran the orphanage back in Cloudsdale," Rainbow said.
And at last, the pieces finally fit together.
> Chapter 7
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I convinced the two to come back home with me, after I managed to get a few more details out of them.  They had been living on their own for over a year now, Rainbow had been abandoned at a summer camp, while Fluttershy had been an orphan since she was born.  For some reason, they had become best friends, perhaps from a mutual struggle, or because Rainbow believed she had to protect Fluttershy, I don't know.  It was a tragedy in motion.
They had been hiding out on the school grounds and taking food from the cafeteria's freezer, hoping to somehow convince the staff they were students there when the semester started.  I could tell they hadn't really thought their plan through, or it was due to sheer inexperience, since fillies rarely had to fill out paperwork.  Suffice is to say, they would have been found out on the first day.  I intended to fix that.
I hadn't felt anything when I was examining the basement, but my gut told me that it was still dangerous.  Something at that school wasn't right, even if my instincts were quiet.  The less time these two spent there, the better, though I couldn't convince them to drop it entirely.  Rainbow was a huge Wonderbolts fan and insisted she was going to join them someday.  Fluttershy didn't want to talk at all.
The twins were out when we arrived back at home, but this time there was some food in the fridge, so I gave my new friends full access.  Fluttershy ate an apple in three bites, while Rainbow went straight for the sandwich spread and covered it with the grape jelly that I presumed Squeaky had bought for me.  The fastest way to a filly's heart is through her stomach, I suppose.
I decided to write a letter to Tia to report my findings, and get her to pull some favors and get these two admitted to the school.  While I was doing that, I heard the door open a surprised gasp come from Fluttershy.
"A flamingo!  Oh, hello, mister flamingo.  What's your name?"  I heard her say from outside the room.  I heard a squawk.
"That's a lovely name, may I call you mister Labamba, or just Labamba?" she asked.
I briefly considered calling in Dr. Hoverace to take a look at her, but dismissed the idea as soon as I had had it.  You can't fix this kind of crazy, I've been trying for years.
"So it seems we have new roommates," I heard Squeaky say from the doorway.  "That makes three in one day."
"It's not my fault, they just followed me home," I said wryly.  She gave me a disapproving look.
"Are they gonna pay rent at least?" she asked.
"First, we're not paying rent at all.  Second, they're fillies, how are they gonna pay rent?" I said.
"It's called sarcasm, Cadence.  Could you at least run this stuff by us first?" she asked.
I waved my hoof inwards, telling Squeaky to get closer.  I whispered quietly, "Orphans, big deal.  Abuse.  Non-negotiable," I said.  Squeaky understood.
"You're like a disaster magnet.  I'll see about getting them beds or something," she said, sighing.
"You'd do that?" I asked.
"The yellow one is worse than Minty.  Go look at the living room, they're doing some kind of moron-dance," she said, "This is just like being at home.  If the rainbow one starts cussing and collecting broken junk in the basement, I'm gonna think they're related to us."
I finished writing the letter to Tia, then Squeaky and I went on a shopping trip to get the house outfitted properly, leaving the fillies in the care of Minty.  Rainbow wanted to come with us, but I told her to be patient for a little while longer.
The next day was Saturday, and while I had hoped that would mean nopony was going to be at the school, I couldn't take that risk.  I woke up fairly late that morning, and I would have slept longer except for a rhythmic pounding that seemed to be coming from the kitchen.  When I checked, I saw Rainbow standing in the middle of the room, looking at the cloud floor.  Another pound came, and Rainbow suddenly shouted, "Right there!".
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Helping to fix the plumbing," she said, matter-of-factly.
I heard the sound of something unscrewing and then something clanking a few times.  Water poured out of the newly-installed faucet in the kitchen.  I had missed quite a lot this morning.
A moment later, Squeaky flew in the window and turned the faucet off, with a very proud look on her face.  "Well, aren't you going to ask me how this works?" she said.
I looked dumbly at her.  "Water comes out of the faucet?" I said.
She shook her head.  "Yeah, but where does the water come from?" she asked.
I looked even dumber.  I had never even considered where it came from.
"From the clouds, duh!  I installed a condenser in the base stratus, pretty cool huh?" she said, smiling.  I couldn't bring myself to be properly amazed.
"Rainbow and I will go get some more clouds to build the mass up, and we'll have to watch it to make sure the house doesn't fall apart if we use too much.  Still, this place is now almost livable, don't you think?" she asked.
"Oh yeah, all the finest comforts," I said.
Minty stuck her head in the window.  "Hey, check this out!" she shouted at us.
Rainbow had already flown out through the window by the time Squeaky and I made it there to look out.  Fluttershy was balancing on Labamba's back in the yard, looking like some kind of chicken-rider as he strutted around.  They were having the times of their lives, judging by the looks on their faces.
"This is just too adorable, wish I brought my camera," Squeaky said.  She turned to me, "Hey, what are you doing today?  Busy?"
"I was gonna go watch the school building.  Princess stuff, you know," I said.
"Ah, was gonna ask if you wanted to help me with my project," she said.
"What project?" I asked.
She took on a surprised expression, though it softened in a second.  "Yeah I guess you wouldn't know," she said, seemingly to remind herself.
"Every year, all the first-years in the Physics department have a science fair where we try to invent something awesome," she said.
"Really?  Why?"  I asked.
"Because it's awesome!  Duh!  Science is fun if you give it a try," she said.
"No Squeaky, dancing is fun.  Sports are fun.  Jokes are fun.  Science is a job," I said, though I could tell this was falling on deaf ears.
"When you see what I'm planning, you'll change your mind, I promise," she said.
I swung by the library and got myself a couple of novels to read while I kept watch over the school.  My plan was - well, I didn't exactly have a plan.  If anypony tried to go inside, I was just going to improvise, and definitely keep them out of the basement.
I decided to land on the side closest to where Gazzo had broken in, I could still see the warning paper, still broken from my entrance yesterday.  It flapped idly in the wind as I landed on the far side.  The yard was actually a huge runway made of black-painted floatstone, though it doubled as an aerial hoofball field.  I could see markings where the nets were tethered on the runway, and there were a set of fold-out bleachers on one end, with an inflatable air-raft underneath.  There weren't any pumps around though, they must keep those somewhere else and only use them when there's a game on.
I'd need to be fairly close to feel if something was wrong inside the building, so I nonchalantly perched myself on top of the corner of the classroom building and started reading.  I had seen Pegasi in Canterlot do this, just hang out on top of buildings and talk to one another, so I reasoned there were no laws against it.  If this was something I was supposed to know, it wasn't going to be easy to bluff my way out.  "Oh yeah," I imagined myself saying to a passerby, "I didn't used to be a Pegasus, but now I am!"
The day went by uneventfully, I read a lot of my novel and took a few sweeps around the building's perimeter.  Nopony came or went, not even staff, and now that I had flushed out the two squatters, the dormitory building was quiet.
Sunday was much the same, though Minty and Labamba stopped by to give me a bagged lunch.  Otherwise, it was dead quiet.  I considered going in to take another sweep, or even brave the basement, but I thought better of it.  For all I knew, the threat had passed, though until I got a feeling, or worse, a letter from Tia, that I was needed elsewhere, I decided to continue watching from a distance.
That Monday was the first day of classes for both the flight school and for Los Pegasus University, so all six of us woke up fairly early to get ready.  Minty and Fluttershy gave a tearful goodbye to Mr. Labamba, who (they assured me) promised to watch the house while we were away.
I escorted the fillies to the school, not because they wanted me to, but because I insisted.  They could doubtless handle themselves, I just didn't think they should have to.  When I was younger, there were certain things I expected my parents to do for me, so I could relax and enjoy myself.  I hoped these two hadn't become jaded by the experience, I hoped that I could undo whatever damage had been done to them by neglect.  I suppose that's my lot in life.
When we arrived for orientation, there was a table by the main entrance which had a pony standing next to it in a brown shirt that read "STAFF" in big bold letters.  He addressed us as we walked up.
"Name,"  he said, not as a question.
"Miamore Autrena," I said.  He looked at a clipboard on the table and then pulled out a little ID card.  It had my name on it and, more curiously, a picture of me on it.  Now I really was wondering how everypony had pictures of me for ID cards.
"Name," he said, this time to Rainbow.
"Rainbow Dash," she said.  She had told me earlier that wasn't her real name, but I hadn't managed to get the rest out of her.  She said she didn't want to talk about it, and Fluttershy didn't even have a last name.  We had decided to leave it as "Smith" for the paperwork.
The staffer gave her the ID card which also had her picture on it, though hers was smiling broadly.  Not only had I never seen her smile, there was no way a runaway orphan with forged paperwork had had her picture taken for an ID card.  Perhaps Tia has cameras on street corners that snap photos of passersby...
Fluttershy had spent this whole encounter standing behind me, trying to stay out of sight, so I got her card for her and told her to hang it around her neck if she didn't want to get harassed by security.  Perhaps Minty was right, perhaps this really was an important flight school if the even bothered with security, since my old high school didn't have it.  They didn't even lock the doors on the weekend, because what would a pony steal?  Knowledge?  Can you steal that?
If you could, then Twilight would have burglarized the place a lot sooner, I can promise that.
There weren't going to be a lot of classes today, just orientation, introductions, and tours.  I could see the staff members funneling us towards what looked like an auditorium, though it was actually just a gymnasium which had a retractable skylight, made out of cloud.  We flew up to one of the higher balconies to better see the introduction speeches.
A pony flew up into the center of the gym and seemed to be counting us out, pointing his hoof at each group in turn.  He flew back down and said something to a pony wearing a staff shirt, and she in turn pointed to a big group of ten or so fillies and colts who entered the gym just then.  Satisfied, he pulled out one of those magically charged megaphones you can get for five bits at the hardware store, and turned it on.  From this distance, I could just make out the logo "Hummingbird" emblazoned on the side.
"Fillies and gentlecolts, may I have your attention please," he said.  The room quieted down.  "Please allow me to introduce the principal of Hummingbird Flight College, Miss Tax Break!"
A mare in a business suit stepped in from the gym entrance, she didn't fly.  In fact, she was an earth pony, which seemed strange for a flight school.  I also didn't recognize the name, the pamphlets I had read said somepony else was the principal.
She took the megaphone from the staff pony and gave him a nod, then raised it to her mouth.
"Hello everypony!  I am Tax Break, though you can call me Ms. Break if you prefer," she said, before the megaphone screeched and she turned it off while covering one ear.  A moment later she turned it back on and said, "Test?  Test?  Okay."
"Yes, as I said, I am Ms. Break, and I've recently become the principal as I have purchased this flight school for a tidy sum.  I will now be in charge of the administration, so if any of you have any questions or problems I would love to assist you as best I can," she said.
I wondered if the recent rash of psychosis had anything to do with the purchase of the school, perhaps driving the price down, though I didn't know thing one about economics.  I suppose Hummingbird made sense as a private school, if it had been founded by Van der Belt.  I also noticed that Fluttershy refused to look at Tax Break, and that Rainbow seemed to be on edge for some reason.  Then again, maybe they had something against suits.  Does living on the streets do that to you?  Rainbow was gritting her teeth and didn't stop until Ms. Break waved and exited the gym.
"I don't like her," Rainbow whispered to me.  I could hear Fluttershy whimper in agreement.
"What?  Why not?" I asked.
She just shook her head, "Trouble, I can smell it," she said.
"From up here?  Are you being facetious?"  I asked.
She stared at me.  "What?"  she asked.
"Never mind," I said, as we turned our attention back to the staffer who now had the megaphone again.
"All right everypony, your instructors have assembled in the hallway outside.  They'll be taking you for the rest of the day, so please file out – "he said.  Everypony except the three of us immediately lifted off and made for the doorway.
"In an orderly fashion!" the staffer yelled.  The three of us stayed on our perch, giggling to ourselves as a horde of ponies all tried to file out the same door.  After the crowd thinned out, we glided down and I briefed the two fillies.
"This is where we split up, will you two be okay without me?" I asked.
"No," said Fluttershy.
"Yes, we will," Rainbow said, pushing Fluttershy gently.  She fell over regardless, letting out an "oof" as she bumped the floatstone floor.  I had made sure the two were in the same flight techniques class, though I suspected Fluttershy was going to be a charity case.  She flew much like I did when I first got my wings, which is to say, only when absolutely necessary.  I could see she was getting better, and I really hoped that having Rainbow there to help would get her to overcome her fears, but I wasn't imagining her as the next captain of the Wonderbolts, if you know what I mean.
"Meet back at the front entrance when your classes are over, okay?"  I asked.  Rainbow looked uncertain.
"And then what?" she asked.
"Uh, we go home," I said.
"Nah, that's okay.  Don't wait up for me, I'll meet you at the house later," she said, before she trotted off behind me.  Fluttershy looked up at me, hiding her face behind her hair.
"Should I wait for you then?" I asked.
"Uhm, yeah," she said.  Maybe I could see about transferring her into some sort of animals class.  She barely spoke to ponies, but wouldn't shut up when there was a robin or a sparrow around.  Did this school even have classes with animals?  There must be a veterinary program or something to work with.
Fluttershy didn't move on her own, so Rainbow came back and dragged her off towards her instructor.  I started making my way out before I got a feeling.  A bad feeling.  Something terrible was happening, right now, very close, and it was coming from...
> Chapter 8
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Wasting no time, I shot past the crowds of ponies who were assembling outside the gymnasium.  A dozen pairs of eyes looked wildly at me as I tore past them, banking around the corner and traveling at a full run down the hallway.  I couldn't tell the exact location of the feeling but it was close, somewhere inside the building.  I picked up speed and prepared to take another corner.
Somepony had recently waxed the floor, and I had not accounted for this as I made my turn towards the source of the feeling.  It was down one of the locker-straddled hallways, and now very close.  My turn slid around the corner as a solitary brown colt came into view.  I was certain he was the source of the disturbance, or its victim.  I turned towards him and barreled at full speed.
The waxed floor caused me to nearly slip as I tried to slow down upon reaching the colt.  I very nearly collided with him, and yet, he didn't notice.  He was staring off into space, at what, I had no idea.  He continued to stare at the wall, facing away from me, as I slid to a stop in front of him.  All at once, the feeling evaporated and I was left bewildered.  The threat had passed, as soon as it had come, and I was not even sure I was responsible.  Had I made a mistake?
The colt didn't notice me, so I tapped my hoof on the floor next to him.  The sharp thock made him snap out of his trance and start walking the other way, without even turning to look at me.  I watched him go for a second before I heard something behind me.
"Excuse me," said the voice.  I turned around to find myself face to face with Tax Break, staring at me with a disapproving look.  I hadn't even heard her sneak up behind me.  "Why are you running in the hallways, miss..."
She looked at the ID card still hanging around my neck.  "Miss Autrena?"
My mind reacted with lightning speed.
"Bathroom, almost ran over colt, bathroom!  Where!?" I said, trying to take a pained expression.  Her eyes widened and she pointed behind me, at the conveniently placed "Fillies" sign just down the hallway.  I gave her a forced smile and darted off towards the room.  As always, play it cool, Cadence.  Disaster averted.
I took a stall and waited a little while to make it seem like I was actually using it, in case she was suspicious and was waiting outside.  I don't know why I thought she might be, but I couldn't take that chance.  In truth, our bodies are not quite the same as those of a regular pony.  Technically, I could forgo eating and sleeping if I had to, indefinitely if it came to that, since those things were not absolutely necessary to a Princess.  I had done them before only because I thought they were necessary, and now I did them out of habit, and the fact that I really do enjoy grape jam on my toast.  Fortunately, everyday regular Pegasi had to use the washroom and it would serve as a fine cover.
When I got out of the bathroom a few minutes later, the hallway was empty.  I truly was a smooth operator.  There were no signs of disturbance either, though it reinforced my belief that something was badly wrong in this school.  I hadn't gotten a feeling from the basement, and I had no feeling from the colt, whatever it was could hide itself.  If the faceless ones had returned, it was not characteristic of them to try anything clever, they had always just attacked and attacked until there was nothing left to destroy.
I fought back the sense of dread that crept up on me as I made my way back to the entrance hallway.  I would deal with it when it came up, whatever it was.  It was certainly nothing I couldn't handle.

By the time I had made my way back to the front entrance, everypony had already split off to do their various building tours.  There were a few staff members milling about, so I asked them how to catch up.
"Excuse me, do you know where the combat flying class is?" I asked.
He didn't even try to hide the look of shock on his face.  "Combat flying class?" he asked, in disbelief.  I just kept looking at him dumbly.
"Err, check the flight deck on top of the building, or the runway out back," he said, still shocked.  I thanked him and headed outside to fly up on top of the building.
When I reached the flight deck on top, I found a group of about ten ponies, all much bigger than me.  Seven males, three females.  Since combat training was considered voluntary, Tia and I hadn't really paid much attention to gender selection, though I had been noticing there were more males in the guard corps.  If war came back to Equestria, that was going to change, but I put that out of my mind for now.
I landed next to the group as the instructor was talking about launch drills or somesuch.  I wasn't here for the military discipline, I had picked this particular course because I knew quite well I could ace it without having to worry about studies, and could thus focus on finding the source of the disturbance.  It also had a fairly sparse schedule, as cadets were expected to be training in their off time as well.
A few of the other ponies gave me a confused look as I landed, but the instructor just kept talking.
"... two at a time, and if you find the pony ahead of you is incapacitated or not present, then take his or her place in line.  Ideally we can launch a whole squadron in under a minute, and we will be testing you both individually and as a group as the semester goes on.  Any questions?" she asked the crowd.
"Very well, please follow me to the sparring range," she said, taking off and flying upwards towards a cloud far above the school.  I hadn't noticed it earlier, it must have just been placed here this morning.
The cloud was a simple nimbus, untethered to anything, with a flat floatstone floor and not much else.  There was what looked like a tether for a weapons rack, but the tether wasn't attached to anything, not even the cloud.  The instructor walked over to the tether and tossed one end into the crowd.
"One of you, attach this to the hook on the bottom of the cloud, okay?" she said.  One of the mares grabbed the other end and disappeared off the edge of the cloud, and the instructor took the other side of the tether off the other side of the cloud.  They both reappeared a few seconds later.
"This is the sparring range, this is where we'll meet for aerial and ground weapons proficiency training.  We have a range of practice weapons, so please take a look and make sure one of your specialties is present.  We don't have much exotic equipment, so if you need anything let one of the instructors or flight marshals know and we'll get it for you," she said, while she tested the tether with her hoof.
One of the stallions raised a hoof, and the instructor motioned to let him speak, "What's this tether for ma'am?" he asked.
"Recovery drills, you'll find out tomorrow since that's your first lesson.  All right, follow me down to the runway," she said as she leaped off the cloud and glided down.
I got to learn the ins and outs of the school's layout, finding out where all the equipment and classrooms were.  The information would come in handy during a crisis, so I paid extra careful attention.  This was so much better than chemistry classes.
The tour wrapped up in under an hour, and we were debriefed by a guard captain wearing a fancy looking dress armor, with gold and blue paint on it.  To his credit, I could tell he recognized me, but his face didn't betray that at all.  He merely let his eyes linger on me for a moment as he scanned the crowd.
"Greetings cadets, I am Captain Wintermere, head of the Los Pegasus garrison.  I don't know if you all knew this, but I am an alumni of Hummingbird, in fact, I was trained by Mr. Van der Belt himself," he said.  A murmur spread through the cadets, and stopped as soon as the captain began speaking again.
"Yes I know, it's very unfortunate what happened, but I'm sure Ms. Break will be a fine administrator.  However, you are still cadets and that means you report to me and the other officers first, is that understood?"
"Yes sir!" the cadets all said, in unison.  I was caught off guard, not used to this sort of thing, and I didn't say anything.  I really hoped this hadn't been a mistake, it'd be a shame to get busted by the other cadets since I didn't know military stuff.  I had always done irregular fighting and improvised everything, I wasn't used to drills and marching or whatever they make cadets do these days.
Fortunately, Tia had thought of everything.  Unfortunately, she had decided not to tell me that.  This was becoming a running gag of hers, except it had been running for millennia.
"I'm told we have a last minute addition to the recruits this year, is that correct?" the captain asked of the instructor.  She nodded.
"Specialist Autrena?" she asked, looking at me.
"Yes, that's me," I said, taken aback.  Specialist?  What did that even mean?
"We're honored to have you here, and we hope you have a good influence on the others.  If any of you want to have Ms. Autrena as a sparring partner," the captain said, addressing the crowd, "then I suggest you hone your skills.  I've been told she's the best."
I wondered if Tia's brilliant plan to draw attention away from me somehow involved drawing lots of attention towards me.  That was exactly the kind of thing she did, often.  She'd be getting a nasty letter from me.
Some of the stallions gave me a questioning look, as the captain cleared his throat.
"That's all for today, I'll be paying each of you a visit in the barracks individually so make sure you have some time off this afternoon.  Your schedules have been posted on the chalkboard.  Dismissed," he said.  The cadets all saluted, including the instructor.  I did my best to salute as well, though I couldn't tell if it was convincing or not.
I decided to try to find Rainbow and Fluttershy's tour group, but I gave up after sweeping the building a few times, and just waited near the front entrance.  I had neglected to bring my books today, so I took to counting the notches on the floor.  I got up to 153 before somepony stood in front of me while I was counting.
"Autrena?" she asked.  I tried to keep the number in my head as I looked up to respond.  153.  One five three.  Thinking it a few times helps to memorize it.
"Yes, that's me." I said, for the second time today, "Or, just Miamore."
"Hi, I'm Midnight," said the mare standing in front of me.  She was a light brown mare, with a very rough look about her, particularly her unwashed blue mane.  Her clothes were filthy, I could barely make out the yellow "Cadet" marking near her shoulder.  What, had she been mud-wrestling recently?  Where would you find mud in Los Pegasus?
"Er, hi?  Are you a cadet?  I didn't see you earlier," I said.  For all I knew she stole the outfit she was wearing.  From the trash heap.
"Yeah, I had to miss the tour.  I'm not even supposed to be here until tomorrow, but I can't stay away, you know?" she said.
"Yeah, I guess," I said.  I didn't know what she was talking about.
"You wanna be my sparring partner?" she asked, quite suddenly.  This aroused suspicion.
"Well sure, but why me?" I asked.
"Because I heard you're the best!  And I'm the only cadet in this class who uses a sword," she said.  I could tell there was something else to that as well, I didn't think Midnight was a very good liar.
"Okay, so why me, really?" I asked.
She sighed, "Nothing gets by you huh?" she said.  I shook my head.  In truth, everything gets by me.  She's a worse liar than I am, that's bad for both of us.
"All the other cadets are already partnered up, okay?  They all know each other," she said.
"And you don't?" I asked.
"I'm a transfer, just like you.  Hey, we're like transfer buddies!" she said.  One hundred fifty three - still got it.
"That's okay then, yes I'll be your sparring partner," I said, "but I don't know the formalities around here, I was kinda hoping you could help me out.  But if you're a transfer - "
"Oh that's no problem, it's all the same everywhere.  Ponyville's barracks wasn't this big, but all the drills are the same," she said.
"This is a flight school," I said.
"It is?"  she said, looking shocked.
"Yeah, didn't you see all the fillies and stuff?  How could you think this was a barracks?" I asked.  I have no formal training and even I know what they look like, though that might just be because of the guard detail posted in the palace.
"Ohhhhhhh yeah I get it," she said, looking sheepish.  153, one five three.
"Where I'm from, there are only like, sixty Pegasi, so we didn't really have anypony to train me," she started.
"Oh really," I said, idly.  It's not like I was busy, but I still didn't want to hear her life's story.
"Yeah, where are you from?" she asked.
"Canterlot," I said, impatiently.  She did not take the hint.
"Oh cool!  Is it really fancy?  Did you get to meet the Princess?  Do they actually have metal weapons there?" she fired out a flurry of questions.  Suddenly I realized that this was worse than Minty.  Is it something about how I smell, or maybe look, that makes everypony like this want to be friends with me?  Not that I regretted Minty, but sometimes this sort of thing wears on you.
"You don't have metal weapons?  Where did you say you were from?" I asked.
"Ponyville, it's waaaaay out there.  We used wood weapons to practice with, I must have broken like two hundred of them," she said, chuckling.
Wait, was my notch count 160, or 253?  I was starting to lose track.
I tried to clear my head, but it wasn't working.  One sixty three, definitely.  "Okay, great, I'll meet you after class tomorrow okay?" I said.
"Er, did you know when that is?  I mean, are you the A or the B group?  Because A goes at 8:30 and B goes at 9:30 so should I meet you at 10:20?" she asked.
I completely lost count of the notches, though I could have sworn it was somewhere around 196.  I sighed.
"I didn't check, so meet me at the sparring platform at 10:20 if I don't see you, okay?" I said.
"Okay!" she said happily, smiling and trotting off.
I started counting the notches again when I heard a squeak.
"Is she gone?" asked the little voice.  I looked up to see Fluttershy peeking around the corner.
"Who, Midnight?"  I asked.
"She's scary," said Fluttershy, shrinking back behind the corner.
"Really?  I think she's just annoying," I said.
"You're scary too," she said.
"I know, but I have a pink bird at home so you put up with me," I said.
I took her home.  The twins hadn't arrived yet, since it was still the middle of the afternoon and I suppose their classes decided to have full lessons on the first day.  Mr. Labamba was waiting for us when we got home, and perked right up when he saw Fluttershy.
I was beginning to think I had underestimated just how intelligent birds are.  There was a lettuce and hay sandwich on the table in the kitchen, and I could not fathom how the twins could have made it and then just left it there, that didn't make any sense.  Did Labamba make it?  How?
He let out a squawk and Fluttershy hopped into the air, struggling to keep herself level as she gave him a hug.  He put his wing around her and led her over to the sandwich as I stared in awe from the doorway.  What did I just watch?
"I have to go back to the school, will you be okay here until the twins get back?" I asked her.  She mumbled something as she took a big bite of the sandwich.  Labamba turned his head clear around, like an owl, and squawked something at me.  I think he was trying to smile, but he was bad at it, so I just left him and the filly there and headed back to the school.
It had been my intent to check my schedule and then simply wander the halls for a while, acting as a patrol.  I was no longer quite certain just where the source of the attacks was, but this morning's events had told me the threat was still present.  They were here, somewhere inside the building, and the sooner I tracked them down the better.  My suspicion still lay with the basement, but anywhere dark and isolated could do the job, the dark ones had no concern for things like air flow or moisture.  The bathrooms, a closet, anywhere could be where they were lurking.
I hadn't brought my sword along this time, since I would probably need some sort of trainee's badge to mark that it was okay to carry it without getting accosted.  My coat was fine but I had no intention of wearing it everywhere, especially not with how hot it got wearing that thing.  I would need to speak to Captain Wintermere about that.
I checked the chalkboard outside of the passage to the on-campus barracks.  I had seen it during the tour earlier, it was really just a squat little room with bunk beds for the cadets and trunks to keep their stuff in.  I was glad I was rooming off campus, considering how small the place was and the total dearth of privacy, a mare has certain needs, you know?  Sometimes you need a few minutes to yourself, and being stuck in a room with a dozen other ponies would push you to do stupid things.
I was in the 'A' group, and Midnight was as well, somepony had hastily scrawled a set of schedules on the chalkboard and then evidently ran off, since the chalk was broken in pieces on the base of the board.  The writing was otherwise barely legible, there were a few student's names I couldn't even read and, towards the end, the schedule started to become monosyllabic nonsense that didn't fit together into a sentence.  "Clean run use squish," said the bottom-most words, in the 'assigner' section, though it didn't say who was assigner'd to clean the run, using a squish.  Clean the rug?  Using a squid?
Before I could figure out how to use a cephalopod notorious for shooting ink everywhere to clean the rugs (there were no rugs in the building, to my knowledge), I heard a commotion coming from down the hall, followed by a slamming door.  Somepony was yelling, so I started towards the sound.
As I took the corner, I saw Cpt. Wintermere and the flight instructor from earlier, and it looked like they were arguing with Tax Break about something.
"-wrongful dismissal, you haven't provided a clear reason for this, and you can't simply dismiss staff from the military division without a clear reason," Wintermere said.
"If you read the contract, as I have, you would have noticed that I was only required to get your sign-off for a dismissal if the staff member has been working in a position for over six months, and that is not the case," Tax Break said, keeping her voice steady.  She looked ready to explode, but she kept herself held back to avoid ceding the argument.
"Argent has been an instructor here for ten years, the position only existed as of six months ago, and she's occupied it for the duration of its existence.  You don't consider that an extenuating circumstance?" Wintermere asked, doing his best to stay steady as well.
"I don't consider extenuating circumstances, I abide by the letter of the contracts that I signed, or were signed by my predecessors.  And, you shall find that contract under review when it comes time to renew it," she said coldly, shifting her glare from the captain to me as I walked up.
The flight instructor from earlier looked like she was about to cry, but was desperately fighting back the urge.  I could see her name tag close up now, it said, "A. Scythe".  Presumable this was the Argent that the captain had spoke of.
He sighed, took a moment to think, then said, "I can see there's no changing your mind.  Can you at least tell me why you're replacing her on such short notice?".
"I've had somepony ready to fill the position since before I took over here, it's as simple as that.  If there's nothing else, I believe you have a student who needs to talk to you," Tax Break said, before turning briskly and trotting into her office.  The door nearly slammed behind her as the air sent a shock wave through the three of us, rustling our manes.  Argent seemed to be unable to speak.
"What's going on here?  What was the shouting about?" I asked.
Wintermere ignored me for a moment, putting his hoof on Argent's shoulder and speaking calmly to her, "It'll be all right, we'll find a spot for you at the garrison."
"Sir," she said, saluting.  She walked off towards the student's barracks room.  I heard the sound of a locker getting bucked shortly after she rounded the corner.
"Sorry you had to see that," he said, addressing me, "we'll be able to talk privately in my office, Ms. Autrena."
He led me into his own office, which was just across the hall from Tax Break's.  Given the way this school was laid out, these offices were more or less in the center of the buildings, surrounded by gyms and classrooms.  The only light coming in was through the skylight on top, which looked like it had been carved out fairly recently from the floatstone on the ceiling.  The office contained two desks, one with a nameplate that still said, "Scythe, Argent" on it.  Some of the drawers will still open, and the trash bin was full of papers.
Wintermere closed the door behind me as I entered, then moved to sit behind his desk.  "Well Princess, are you enjoying your first day here?" he asked.
I was taken aback momentarily, before I realized that he had seen me earlier.  It was jarring to have to hop between the persona of a student and that of my true self, but that snap would be come easier with time.
Tia would have told certain ponies about me, or, perhaps he had been paying attention and had seen a picture of me somewhere.  The resemblance was fairly obvious, though I hadn't even gotten a second glance in this city from any random strangers.
"Argent Scythe?" I asked, "What happened?  Did she do something?"
The captain's face took a pained expression before he spoke, "Argent has been the flight marshal here since, well, forever.  We first negotiated a training contract with Hummingbird just under a decade ago, and she was the first on the list for marshal."  He let out a chuckle, "You know, she actually trained me when I was just a colt.  She's the best"
"Really?  Then why fire her?  I mean, I don't know anything about anything, but that seems like a dumb move," I said.
"She's not the first, but you know how it is, restructuring and all that," he said, though I could tell that simply brushing it off was not so easy for him.
"No I don't know how it is.  Has this been happening a lot?" I asked.
"Oh, I'm sorry Princess, I forgot this," he said.  He stepped out from behind his desk and bowed towards me, eyes closed.
"Cut that out, no need for formalities here," I said.  I paused before I remembered, "and please, just call me Miamore?  I don't need any extra attention."
"Of course.  Yes, Tax Break has been moving around a lot of staff since she took over.  It's like I don't know anypony here anymore, hmm," he said, looking at something on his desk, "I'll need to make sure this new pony is properly certified.  It's been nothing but trouble around here, hasn't it?"
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in," Wintermere said.  Midnight walked through the door, and was surprised to see me inside.
"Oh!  I'm sorry, I can come back later," she said.
"No, it's all right.  Have you found a partner yet?" he asked, idly.  I could tell he was distracted, he kept looking over at the now-empty desk to his side.
"Yes I have!  It's Specialist Autrena, right here," she said, putting one leg around me suddenly and yanking me in close.  I couldn't breathe, and this pony was strong.  As in, Gabby strong.  She could buck through a rock with legs like these.
"Ahh- yeah," I wheezed out.
"Very good, your weapons permits are in the top drawer of Argent's desk," he said, and no sooner had he than Midnight released me from her death-grasp and jogged over to pull them out.  She tossed one to me, a little diamond piece of cloth with a spear logo on it and a Velcro adhesive on the back.  I didn't even have a anything to stick mine on, but Midnight immediately placed hers on one of the few not-filthy spots on her cadet's shirt.  She looked like she had just won the lottery, a big ear-to-ear grin on her face.
"Right, thank you sir!" she said, nearly shouting, and gave a salute.
"Dismissed," said the captain, saluting back.  Midnight left as quickly as she had come, and the door clicked behind her.  I was still gasping for breath.
"She's got some fight in her, I hope you're ready," he said.  I think she crushed a rib, I ran my hoof over my chest gingerly, checking each bone.
"Oh yeah, ready for anything, come what may," I said.
> Chapter 9
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I took a quick detour back home to grab my equipment before returning to the school to go on a search.  I tried to make it look as though I was just exploring, but the campus wasn't really big enough to get away with that.  Fortunately, nopony seemed to care, all too busy going about their own business, as I stuck my head into each room at least once to give a clear.
I checked the entire building twice, and nothing seemed amiss.  I did not let down my guard, not even for a moment, but my senses told me nothing.  The only room I did not check was the basement, for that'd be far too suspicious to try to get away with, and the place creeped me out anyway.  I was not in a hurry to go back.
Finally, after finding absolutely nothing in the search, I picked a spot on the floor in the hallway with the basement, and opened up my novel.  I kept my eye on the entryway as the student body began to thin as the day went on, until it was only I left as the sun set outside.  The building didn't have much of an internal light source, only a few rooms remained lit up as presumably a few teachers went over their curricula by candle light.  I just used my hooflight to read my book as I sat keeping watch.  I was still only on the fifth chapter of 'Daring Do and the Figurative Spiral'.
The basement door still hadn't been fixed, the warning tape still remained.  The gaping void beyond it was threatening to me even to look at, I did not let my eyes linger on that awful place any more than I had to before returning to my reading.  Gazzo's terror had been my terror, it was all the more real because I had not experienced it myself.  A cold wind blew by me, and made my coat stand on end.
"Gah, sis is unacceptable.  Sees Zephyrians, who do sey sink sey are?" I heard somepony cursing to himself just around the corner.  A pale yellow glow announced the presence even if I could not see the speaker.  Feeling I had nothing better to do, I got up to go investigate.
Standing around the corner, staring at a bulletin board with a range of notices posted on it, was a very old stallion, his mane greyed with age, a great bushy white mustache adorning his mouth.  Even his coat was very pale, it had been much darker when I saw him last...
"Erdrick Van der Bolt," I said, looking at him with a big smile on my face.  He turned to me with a confused expression.
"Eck, erm, hello there.  I did not see you, I apologize," he said, his accent somehow vanishing.  Before he had spoken with a very distinct German twinge, and yet now it was dead flat, no accent at all, to my ears.  Uncanny.
I kept smiling until I realized he did not recognize me.  After all, how could he?  I was dead, to him, and he'd never put the pieces together by himself.
"I don't know who you're talking to.  Name's Eddy," he said, extending a hoof to me.  I shook it, being careful not to break anything, I was sure he'd be very delicate.  If my estimates were right, he'd be just over a hundred years old, and still working?  Simply incredible.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Eddy, I had you confused for somepony else," I said.  I looked right at him, he moved his eyes away, a soft whistle left his lips, "an old friend of mine.  Oh well."
"Erm, yes ma'am.  Are you new here?" he asked, giving me a once-over.
"Just started, first day," I said.  I wasn't going to let him change the subject, and I felt like teasing him just a little.
"Name's Miamore, but my friends sometimes call me Amy," I said, trying to get him to look back at me.  He was very studiously keeping his eyes averted, "It's short for Amoria."
If he recognized the name, he did not react.  It was a minor curse of mine, when sometimes I would return to find a pony who I had known before who had not moved on.  Only a few had dared make that grim connection through the ages, and it was no doubt a very uncomfortable leap to make, having mourned my passage only to find me returning decades later, fresh and young.  Perhaps I ought to leave him alone, though a little reunion would have been nice.

I had met him last when he was just beginning his training in the air force.  His family were immigrants, acrobats and fliers who had come to Equestria for reasons I had never managed to pry out of him.  He had joined the army when he was just old enough, mostly out of fear of having to become a circus act like his father wanted.
We had special programs for ponies like this.  Every now and then, a pony who is uniquely suited for his task comes along, one who seemed to be built for the mold and more than happy to break it.  Erdrick was one such pony, distinguishing himself within a year as the most promising flier in his class.  Yet, when he graduated, he left the service within a month, complaining that he was not content to follow and nopony ever should be.  Tia had become concerned, not for the integrity of her armed forces, but because I believe she may have fancied him, albeit from afar – she never got involved in such business.  I had picked up her hints and pursued, and Erdrick showed me his true skill – evasion.  I hunted across the country, trying to find him as he remained incognito, always one step ahead.
Eventually the chase wound down, as Erdrick had been moving methodically between every major city in Equestria, always staying for only two days before moving on.  I showed pictures, asked passersby, alerted the guards, yet he had always moved on to the next town by the time I caught up.  The only common thread was his interest in young athletes, schoolmasters always remembered his visits very vividly.
And one day, I caught up to him, watching a group of Pegasi flying laps in a small village just outside of Trottingham, its name lost to me.  He had been expecting me, he said, and presented me with a list of names.  I asked him what they were, he said, "The best."
He told me he wanted to change the world, to inspire everypony to be their very best.  He had flown around the country to find the next generation's up-and-coming and ask them to join his organization when they came of age.  His plan was to create a network of coaches and charities in every city who would make sure everypony could come together in sports and contests, to truly bridge the gaps that had been building in our society.  Money was no issue.  Fillies could play against colts, mules and zebras would be treated the same as any pony.
I had asked him why he had hidden himself, why he had tried to do this secretly, and he told me there were powerful forces who didn't want it to happen.  He never did tell me what he was talking about, only that they existed, and they would stop him if they found out, before he was ready.
I left him alone after that, though I did enjoy a correspondence with him, on Celestia's behalf.  In truth, he wrote letters to me, and Celestia wrote them back, in my name, that was the extent of her life outside the castle.  A few years later, he started his program, and Equestria's single-largest racing event, the Van der Belt derby, began.
Unfortunately, my time had ended shortly after, and I was not privy to the intrigues that happened afterwards.  His coaches had unanimously decided to honor him after his retirement by forming a team of the greatest fliers, the "Wonderbolts", in his honor.  A fitting tribute.  I would need to remember to ask Celestia if she had ever acted on her impulses.

"Oh, well Ms. Miamore, I was just mopping, if you don't mind," he said.  There was still a tiny inflection of his accent lingering on the edge of his words, perhaps he was hiding himself?
This was his school, or formerly, anyway.  Fortunately, I am very well versed in dealing with ponies who refused to be straight with me.
"Ah, what were you muttering about?  Zephyrians?" I asked.
"Oh, nothing important.  You know, in my day, we wouldn't let anypony try to pick off our students," he said, motioning towards one of the pamphlets that hung from the board.  I took a closer look.
"Be all you can be, except with a jetpack!  Join the Rocket Knights today!" I said, reading it aloud.  There was a picture of a Pegasus pony with huge oversized goggles and what looked like a silver toilet bowl with red fins on it strapped to her back.  The rest of the pamphlet was recruiting information.
"What?  Is this a joke?" I asked, turning to 'Eddy'.
"No, I'm afraid it's very real.  They put those deathtraps on their backs so they can fly faster, pure insanity, if you ask me.  And now, and now!" he said, looking like he was about to tear the pamphlet from the board, "They come over here and try to get our students to sign on?  Preposterous, I say, simple preposterous."
"Why don't you just take it down?  It's just a flier," I said, moving to bite it and pull it off.
"Nein!" he said, stepping in my way to block me, a wild look on his face.  "I mean, no.  The new administrator says they can stay up as long as the contract isn't violated," he said, not trying to hide the disdain in his voice, "I wouldn't want to get in trouble."
"Oh, well I wonder what the old owner would think.  Did you hear what happened?  I didn't, hadn't even moved in yet," I said, trying to make it obvious I knew who he was.  He didn't take the hint.
"Hm, I don't think he'd care, what with him being retired and all.  Retired twice, that is," he said.  He cleared his throat.  "Don't know much about the specifics, and I shouldn't be gabbing to the students when there's work to do."
With Celestia, switching the bedsheets so they didn't go all the way to the edge was usually enough to get her to talk, and if that didn't work, there was always the old trick of switching the milk with white-coloured clay putty, or switching her ink with lemon juice and food coloring.  I'd always wind up paying for it later, but it was a firm indication not to dance around important issues.  I also knew it wasn't going to work on Erdrick, he was a tougher nut to crack.
"I get you, I'll let you do your work.  You know what they say about the ears having walls," I said, winking at him.
"You mean, the walls have ears?" he asked.  He wasn't picking up any of my hints, I was starting to think I would need to hit him over the head and explain it to him.
"They certainly do," I said.  How could he think nopony recognized him?  He was world-famous!  Then again, so am I, and nopony recognizes me, either.  Maybe it's simply the gall of such an obvious lie that sways the casual onlooker, the "it's so crazy that it must be true" effect.
"I should really get back to work," he said, looking at me, "and you're standing where I need to mop."
"Fine," I said, turning around and walking off.  I started back towards my novel, still open on the floor, when I heard something else coming from the other end of the hall.  It sounded like shouting.
I started trotting towards it, more curious than alert, as I had thought almost everypony had already left the building, other than the cleaning staff.
"I said, leave her alone!" came the call again as I got closer.  The voice sounded familiar, a very raspy and squeaky voice of a filly.
"Hey wait, come back, come back!" it shouted, and I saw Rainbow Dash charge down the hallway ahead of me, entering my sight and exiting it in a moment.  I took off running after her, banking down the corridor.  There were no signs of life in the corridor beyond, had she been yelling at shadows?  The sound of her hoof-falls told me which path she had taken, I ran after them and followed them in a nauseating path that led around several classrooms and through twists and turns.
"Fluttershy, wait, it's okay!" she shouted, though I could not see Fluttershy anywhere.  I had thought she would be back at the house.  At last, Rainbow came to a stop in front of an empty doorway, covered in yellow and black warning tape.  She stared down the void in front of it, looking uncertain as I caught up to her.  The basement.
"What happened, why are you running?" I asked as I stopped to catch my breath.  Rainbow wasn't winded in the slightest.
She didn't respond, she kept looking into the darkness.  "Fluttershy?" she called out, but there was no response.  I could hear a loud humming sound coming out of the open door, probably the result of some machine.  There was a rhythmic thumping associated with the humming sound, it was oddly unsettling.  I also hadn't heard it last I had been here, but that had been when the school was supposedly empty.
If there had been a response, it would have been drowned out.  Rainbow put a hoof forward tentatively onto the first step, and before I could even comprehend it, I found myself grabbing her by the tail and pulling her backwards.
"Hey, what gives?" she called angrily at me.  My brain caught up with my mouth just in time to spit her tail out, and shake my head.
"What's going on?"  I asked, "and be honest, this is very important."
"Some..." she trailed off, before stating, "guys.  These guys were makin' fun of Fluttershy, so I tried to make em stop," she said.
"I see, and she ran off, just like that?" I asked, peering past Rainbow and into the basement.
"Yeah," she said, suddenly looking sheepish.  No time.
"Rainbow, go back to the house and wait for me there, I'll find her, okay?" I said.  My tone made clear this was not a request.
"But, I -" she started, before I cut her off.
"This is not up for debate Rainbow, I will take care of this," I said.  She didn't move.
"Please?"  I asked.
"No," she said simply.
"Okay, how about you wait here while I go check it out then?  It's very dangerous down there," I said.  She accepted that, crossing her forelegs.  "Fine."
I switched on the light around my leg and shone it down into the inky blackness leering at us through the portal.  The light was not particularly strong, but I could see the darkened floatstone floor at the base.  It was far too narrow to fly, so I stepped gingerly down into the basement on three legs, limping forward while shining the light everywhere.
"Fluttershy?" I called out into the dark.  I sent the light into the corners, but there was a veritable maze of piping running everywhere.  The basement itself was warm, I almost began to sweat, but the pipes themselves had an aura of cool radiating around them.  They also blocked my sight, and I swept the small room carefully.  I felt the air disturbed beside me.
"Rainbow, go back upstairs," I said, turning to face her.  She was hovering gently in the middle of the room, her small frame allowing for greater maneuverability.  She ignored me as she peered into the darkness.
"Fluttershy, it's okay, come on out," she called out.  The thrumming was louder now, though I could not identify where it was coming from.  In fact, other than the pipes, the room was empty.  I remembered there being a furnace here, but it was gone, and a quick check showed no evidence of it anywhere, nor of Fluttershy.  The room was empty.
"Are you sure she went down here?" I asked. 
"Yeah," she said, looking around, also bewildered.
That feeling of dread began to overtake me, not the one my senses gave me during an attack, but one far worse.  There was no other way out, she could not have slipped past us.  Had they already claimed her?  Had Rainbow's eyes deceived her?  I did not know, so I resolved to redouble my efforts.  In the corner, where before I remembered there having been a furnace, there was now a square wooden depression in the floor.
I could hear the throbbing sound loudest while standing near it.  I rapped the wood twice with my hoof, it returned a hollow knock indicating there was something beneath it.  Rainbow came up beside me and looked at the depression as I did.
"Down there?" she asked.  There was a tremble in her voice, though her face would betray no fear.  My heart beat harder as the realization made its way over me.  There was no way she doubled past us, she must have hidden herself in whatever this sub-basement was.  I swallowed hard, and nodded at Rainbow.
"I'll check it out, wait for me out in the hall," I said.  This time, she listened to me, all too eager to quit the eerie atmosphere as the thrumming became louder.  I pulled the wooden block out and revealed the passage beneath.  The humming was deafening now, further communication would be impossible.
I poured the light down the hole before me, showing a floatstone floor much like the one I was standing on some distance below me.  There were no steps, no ladder, and it was far too narrow to fly up the small hole.  That was a problem for later, I slipped down the gap.
The room I landed in was much like the one I had left, though much larger.  Pipes here ran everywhere, forming walls that were impenetrable to all but my light's beam.  I tried to shine it through the gaps, but successive walls blocked all but the closest path.
I shouted into the darkness, but the noise blocked it out before I even heard my own voice, drowned beneath a sea of thumping and whirring all around me.  I could see, in the far corner, the familiar orange glow of the furnace machine.  I set off towards it.
The pipes formed a maze that required me to jump over and crawl under the blockades as I went.  Cool steam would burst from the pipes and hit me in the face.  I guessed, as I went, that these pipes pulled water from the cloud layer and brought it for use in the school, darting here and there to take it across the campus buildings.
The path weaved and snaked through the layers of piping, I bumped my head as I finally reached a clear area in front of the furnace, it cast an orange counterpoint to the white light ahead of me streaming from my hoof.  There was no sign of Fluttershy here either, but, if I were to turn the machine off, I could call out to her.
There seemed to be no fuel source around, and given the nature of the room, I wondered if they hadn't dome some sort of magic enchantment to keep the thing running.  Just how was a janitor expected to get down here anyway?  I checked the front of the furnace out, it was a steel grate attached to what looked like something burning on the inside, there were no switches or valves of any kind attached to it.  The thumping was definitely coming from this device though, and the humming did seem loudest next to it.
Barring breaking off the exhaust pipe, there seemed to be no way to shut the machine off.  I thought, foolishly, of removing the fuel, though I'd need a tool.  Looking around, I saw a pipe that looked loose and grabbed it with both hooves.
I pushed with my legs as hard as I could, until a loud crack signaled the pipe breaking off and steam shot out of the attached line.  The pipe itself was cool, slightly bent from where I had torn it off, but it would do.
I gingerly opened the grating on the furnace, it was cool to the touch, completely unnatural for a furnace.  I tried to pay it no mind, my goal was to find Fluttershy and get out before solving all the inconsistencies that plagued this place.  She needed my help, and that came first.
Of course, it was not until I thought that thought, that I realized it was the same one Gazzo had thought last.  The realization sent a chill down my spine, time was running out.
There was no wood or coal in the furnace, but what looked like a charred piece of meat.  Had some poor bird flown down the exhaust pipe?  I poked at it with the pipe section in my mouth, no sparks shot out.  Despite sitting in the furnace, it was cool.
I could not get a decent grip on it with the pipe, so I used it to delicately pull the charred flesh out of the furnace by dragging it along.  It rotated and flipped a few times as I pulled it out, before getting caught on the lip of the furnace.  I wrenched at it, using the pipe as a lever, before it finally popped out of the furnace and landed on the floor.  All at once, the throbbing and the humming stopped all around me and the room became dead silent.
I looked at the lump that had fallen at my side, it left black charred flakes where it had skidded before coming to a stop.  It was a skull, and as I examined it, the terror I had been fighting this whole time finally overcame its hurdles.  The eye sockets, the shape of the face, the snout, the overlarge cranium.  It was a filly's skull.  Fluttershy's skull.
The revelation hit me and, as I sat there daring to confirm what my eyes were telling me, I heard it, a little laugh coming from somewhere else in the room.  Very, very close.  It giggled unnervingly, and there was no chance it was Fluttershy herself.  The poor filly had merely been the bait, and I, the fool who took it, walking right into their trap.
The sense of hatred filled the air around me, making it thick and swirling around me.  The atmosphere itself oppressed, I could hardly breathe as I fought the urge to panic.  The laughter became louder and louder, more voices joined the first as they closed in on me.  My sword sat upstairs somewhere, why had I not taken it with me?  Now I was alone, defenseless, trapped here in this impossible place to await the jackals to overtake me.
No, I would not go easily.  I would take these monsters to hell with me.
> Chapter 10
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Reason, it was the tool I possessed that they did not.  This trap, whatever it was, was their first inklings of it, but they were not its masters.  I knew the rules, as they were, and the first among them was that no situation could never be escaped.  What appeared to be was what was, and so long as there remained an exit, no matter how small, there was hope.
I would not let the jeering specters drag me quietly off, they would have to earn their catch today.  I set off on, standing awkwardly on my hind legs, with the wrenched pipe in one hoof and the light shining from the other.  Banking around the pipes I had navigated to enter in on, I could tell they were swarming about the maze around me.  Their sniveling laughter filled the air, but at the same time, revealed their positions, or at least those who were closest to me.  I ducked under another set of blockers and leaped over the ones after that, ambling along the piped corridors as the beasts prowled in search of their now-mobile prize.  After a moment, I could sense a shift, the beasts suddenly realized their prey did not fear them.  I steeled myself for what was to come after.
As expected, it was cold methodology.  The laughter, though still present, quieted itself and organized, the creatures of darkness I could not see began to pick paths and cross them in the labyrinth of metal.  I took a corner, and another, and I felt a great sweeping of the air in the passage next to me, blocked off by lead to all except the light wrapped round my hoof.  Something was there, mere inches away, but the rules stated the maze could not be breached, and so it was not.  The enemy was close, and yet, so far.
I could not remember exactly the path I had taken once I had entered, but there had been a U-turn somewhere along it that I remembered very distinctly.  It was only one turn away from the entrance, and I saw it through a gap in the piping as I passed.  I was close, safety was mere meters away, a left at the next intersection and all would be resolved.
It was not to be, I took the left and passed the turn.  I saw a narrow block of slim light coming through the exit hatch above me, but beneath it stood... something.
It was not like the dark ones I had faced so many times before, though it took the same form.  This one was that of a grasshopper, with six legs of the type they had, giant angular things each the size of my chest, all facing away from each other in a circle.  The top half of the beast was more a tree trunk, with the branches growing out at angles to the body.  I could see them slowly moving, as if smelling the air to await my presence.  The beast seemed not to take notice of me, but I could be assured that its orders were to not let me pass.  They had cleverly placed a guard at the exit, and the hunters behind me would gain with each moment I wasted.
Though my weaponry was insufficient, improvisation was still an asset.  I closed my eyes and concentrated, I would need to see the beast's true body, not the one that it showed my primitive eyes.  The realm beneath came to my vision, and I saw the creature as it truly was, except with one modification.
Inside its body, there was an object.  I have seen many of these creatures before, but none like this.  The object had two-dozen sides, exactly how many I cared not to count, made of triangular and square faces.  Itself, it was black, just as the creature's body was here, but it had iridescent green runes written randomly all across it.  Was it significant?  What was its importance?
The creature noticed me, and extended one of its legs to push its trunk towards me.  All at once, all of the branches merged together and stabbed towards me, a great spike protruding from the trunk aimed at my face.
I stepped quickly to the side, banging my foreleg into the pipes that formed a wall and letting out a hollow ringing that rippled all through the room.  The laughter came again, a wild howl of hilarity, mocking the failure that I had just revealed my position to all the creatures seeking me.  Time was now a precious commodity.
I recovered before the beast did, and brought the pipe down atop the extension with all my strength.  It was not enough, the flimsy metal, if this really was metal and not a trick of imagination, bent upon contact and rendered itself useless.  I dropped it, and it clanged on the floor as the creature stepped back and reset itself to attack again.  I didn't think it would miss this time, and even if it did, I had no way to fight it.  Or...
There was nothing left to lose, nothing left to try except the insane gamble that brewed in my head that moment.  I stood in the middle of the narrow corridor again, and the creature's strike came again, faster and better angled, but still too slow.  I dodged again, more nimbly this time to not hurt myself, and in one fluid motion, I shoved my hoof as hard as I could into the creature's body.
I slammed my chest up against it with all my strength, pushing my weight into the hoof that extended down into this things malformed structure.  The consistency was much like a thick pudding, my leg stung like I had poured acid all over it as it entered with scarcely a splash.  I reached as it went inside to try to grasp the green object buried within the body, gnashing my teeth and grunting as I fought for each centimeter I extended into the beast.
At last I felt the edge of the object and held as hard as I could.  I placed my other three legs onto the creature and pushed them off it, trying to pull my leg out with the object attached.  The creature did not fight back as I did this, in fact, it had stopped moving at all as soon as my hoof contacted it, slumping over slightly and lettings its legs rest against the ground.
With great effort, finally the object tore free of the blackened body, and I landed on my back with a thud as the creature dissociated entirely, turning into a pile of mush on the ground which pooled and ran under the piping into the layers beyond.  No time to celebrate, no time to think, no time to do anything except stand back up and escape.
I did not discard the object, whatever it was, as it was my trophy now.  I could see another creature coming towards me, and I could make out the outline of another object just like the one I held, somewhere inside its body as well.  What the hell were these things?
The narrow exit point was above me now, I could see the light from the hallway far above bouncing on down to me.  It was too small to flap my wings through, and I could not try to jump and climb through, not with another creature bearing down on me.  The way out seemed so far out of reach, but hope was not to be lost yet.
I concentrated, this time on pushing down, with my magic, on the floor below me.  Unlike my usual telekinesis, this one I was allowing to build up without releasing it.  The force was not being applied, just built, and I let it build until I was sure the beast was within striking range.  As I could hear it reforming some awful appendage to better crush my bones, I released the force all at once, and the floor beneath pushed back up on me, catapulting me upwards and through the trap door.
My wing caught the edge of the square and shuddered with pain as I launched through into the basement above.  I flew too high, banging my head on the roof above and landing in a heap next to the trap door's wooden frame.  Pain told me to lay still, but fear proved the stronger, and I limped away from the portal before anything could try to pull me through.  Searing terror, screams of anger and laughter flowed through, not audible except in my mind, as I stumbled through the short path of piping back to the basement door.  I emerged into the hallway beyond, bruised and exhausted, terrified, confused, angry.  I fell down in front of the basement door, and the screams from below stopped.  All was quiet.
Rainbow was nowhere to be found, the building was dark save for a distant candle that came slowly closer.  I could hear somepony speaking in a panic, shouting something, the light became closer.  Another voice joined the first, something poked at me.  I didn't care, I was too exhausted to move.
"Call the doctors, we've got another victim," said a female voice above me.
"No," I said, opening my eyes to see two ponies standing above me.  I recognized "Eddy" as one, and the other, I had never seen before.  There was fear written on their faces.
I tried to stand up, but I was dizzy from the head injury I had suffered.  I realized my horn was visible, except my mangled mane covered it from sight as I had lay there.  I quickly and quietly cast the invisibility spell as I struggled to stand, the black and green object still in my hoof as I did so.
"The guard, call the guard.  Seal the place off, nopony goes down into the sub-basement, you hear me?" I said.  Eddy cleared his throat before speaking.
"Ma'am, there's no sub-basement in the building.  What are you talking about?  What were you doing down there?" he asked, his accent concealed completely.  He must have cleared his throat whenever he needed to speak incognito.
"Thought a filly ran down there, went looking.  Where's Rainbow?  Blue filly, crazy mane?" I asked.  Eddy looked confused.
"You're the only one that's in the building, except for the staff.  Only cadets are allowed in the halls after dark," he said.
I was such an idiot.  The whole thing had been a trap, tricks played with my eyes, on my ears.  What had been real?  Had Rainbow not even been here?  Had I fallen for the same thing Gazzo had?
This was so much worse than ever before, so much more advanced.  Never before had the creatures laid a trap, never before had they used hallucinations like this, never before had they come so close to eliminating me the way they had.  I had a feeling that whatever was different, whatever had changed, had something to do with the black stone shape that I now held in my hoof.
"Oh, sorry, must be my eyes playing tricks on me.  It's late, I better get home," I said.  I could tell the two didn't believe me at all.
"Are you sure you don't need a doctor?  This has been happening all summer," said the mare.
"No no, I'm sure she's fine if she says she is," Eddy said, though his face betrayed a concern.  "We can't go blaming a mystery disease if a bump on the noggin will suffice."
"Oh yeah, banged my head on a pipe," I lied.  I sat down and rubbed the sore spot on my head.
"At least put some ice on that, and see the school nurse tomorrow," the mare said.
"I'll be sure to -ow-," I said, as the bump started to hurt suddenly again, "I'll see the nurse tomorrow, thanks."
The two walked off, taking their candles with them.  I could see them send a look back at me every few feet as I sat there, rubbing my head, illuminated by my flashlight.
I collected my things from where I had left them in a heap earlier, and flew back home.  My wing had done much better than my head, forming only a bruise as I went and functioning as expected.  I really had been tired, I would need to examine this... thing I had found, later, when I had rested.
Everypony was asleep when I got home, I took note of the two fillies sleeping on a bed in the living room.  Rainbow and Fluttershy had probably been here the whole time, though it was no relief to me to see them.  I should have known better.
I didn't have a bed in my room, we had given it to the fillies and replaced mine with a big cumulus cloud we had shoved in the corner.  It did the job just fine, I left my coat in a heap, with the object underneath it.  I was asleep within seconds of laying down.

I awoke with a jolt, sitting up before I was even aware of it.  There was very little light in the room, all I could make out was a set of shadows at the door.
"Hello?" I said.  They had pushed my door open, and were staring at me.  How long had they been doing this?
I had neglected to take off my flashlight, so I clicked it on and pointed it at the doorway.
Standing there were my friends, Minty and Squeaky, as well as Fluttershy and Rainbow, except... they looked different.  Their eyes were unfocused, like they hadn't gotten any sleep in days, weeks.  Heavy bags beneath them, their expressions blank.  Their coats, manes, tails... all were grey, like the color had been washed out by something.  It made Rainbow look ridiculous, if you could still call her that, now she was a featureless grey color like an old pony.
"Give it back," Minty said, her expression unchanged, her voice monotone.
"Give what back?  What's going on?" I asked.
"Give it back," Squeaky said.
I rolled off the cloud bed and stood in the middle of my room, my light still fixed on the four ponies at the entrance.  I scarcely breathed as their gazes followed my movements.
With no warning, Minty leaped forward and arced through the air at me.  Instinct took over, before I realized what I was doing, I had levitated my sword up from under my coat and gripped it with both forehooves.  The light bounced off the cloud roof and scattered throughout the room, giving me just enough to see the silhouettes of my friends.  I blocked Minty's attack with the flat of the blade and pushed her backwards with it, causing her to tumble backwards and hit the cloud wall next to the door.  She kept going through it, tearing a  hole open and giving my room a new interior window.  She landed in a heap in the hall just outside.
Squeaky tried now, the same approach of leaping at me.  I dropped the sword, not wanting to accidentally hurt her, and caught her body with my own, intercepting her in the air.  We landed in a heap on the floor, and I stood up before she did.
A spell whirled out my subconscious, some telekinetic wind-spell, I think.  Non-lethality was crucial, hurting my friends was not an option.  I focused all my telekinetic force in one point in front of me, and as Squeaky stood back up, unleashed it on her, sending her flying forwards and knocking over the fillies who were still in the doorway.  Rainbow recovered instantly, and looked about ready to charge herself, before her face took a pained expression and she slumped over of her own accord.
All four of them put their hooves on their ears, their faces reflecting a terrible agony as they writhed in the pale glow of my flashlight.  They looked as if they were trying to pull their own heads off, and I stood in a baffled daze until -
I woke up suddenly, for real this time.  It was morning, though I couldn't be sure of the time, as my room didn't have a window, interior or otherwise.  I looked at the wall I had sent Minty through, but it was intact.  A dream, though it had seemed so real, as dreams always do.  I wondered what it could mean.
The sun pierced through the clouds of the house, illuminating the room from without as I ran outside to gauge the time.  Roughly seven o' clock, I estimated, and stepped back inside.  Everypony else was still asleep, and I wasn't late for classes.  I decided to take it easy, and get some of my customary toast.
Except there was no bread present.  I had definitely seen bread here yesterday, no doubt somepony devoured it before I had a chance to get to it.  Cold cereal would have to suffice.
After a brief breakfast, I went back over to the object still wedged safely under my coat.  Upon further inspection, it was more of a sphere, except an angular one.  I turned it over and over a few times, trying to make sense of the strange runes written on it, though if it was a language I had never seen it before.  Something truly exotic.
I didn't have the sort of resources and time to figure it out fully, especially if it meant trying to translate the writing.  I turned it over again and noticed something unusual.  The runes were different.  Not that I had exactly memorized them, but I did notice they had changed since I had seen them a few seconds ago.  When looking right at the object, everything held still, yet as soon as I turned the faces then turned them back, there were changes.  Small changes, and more the longer I looked away.
I still had no idea what to even call this thing, what it was for, what I should do with it.  It was as close to an enigma as the physical realm could possess.  It was Tia's problem, I reasoned, and I would use a special bit of express mail to make it so.
I quickly wrote up a letter explaining where I had found the thing, and what I had learned about it.  I then stuffed it in an envelope, and prepared to cast the exo-teleportation spell, which would have been impossible for a magical remedial case like me, except this was a two-way joint spell.  So long as Celestia was awake and able to cast the receiving spell, it took very little effort for me to send it.  If she had been asleep, I'd have been in trouble, but she rarely went back to bed after raising the sun.
The object and letter vanished with a pop.  I hoped Tia would have better luck figuring the thing out than I had, because I had a much more dangerous encounter to handle today.  A sparring match with Midnight.
> Chapter 11
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"Twilight, slow down for pony's sake.  You're going to choke yourself," I said, trying to take on my best scolding tone.  Twilight took no notice of me, practically inhaling the waffles on her plate whilst simultaneously reading a book (on table manners, no less) and using her magic to stuff a spoon full of minced hay into Spike's mouth.  He gurgled and rolled over, falling asleep as soon as he swallowed.
"Mmmghghghh," she said, looking up at me.  Her mouth, half-open, had minced hay nearly falling out of it.
"Swallow before you speak," I said gently.  She swallowed hard.
"Mmmmghghgh," she said, this time with no food in her mouth at all.  I fought back a laugh.
"Are you trying to test my patience, Twilight?  I have more than you're prepared for," I said.
"No, I'm trying to speak Dragon.  That's what Spike says when I talk to him," she said.
Draconic?  It sounded more like something a Minotaur might say, though it was best not to speak that aloud.
"Perhaps I can teach you a bit more about Dragons then, language studies are important -" I said, though I was distracted by a vortex forming in the air.  Amoria was sending me something, and it was big.  Too big actually, it was straining the matrix.
-Crack-
A bowling ball came down on my head, followed shortly by an envelope that rested on my nose as my legs buckled.  The envelope was exactly enough to set my balance off, and I tumbled to the floor.  I will give her this:  Cadence's pranks had been becoming far more brazen.
"Princess Celestia, are you all right?" came Twilight's voice from somewhere above the table.  I struggled to stand and try to shake it off gracefully.
"Oh, just a concussion," I said, trying to feel the spot where it had hit.  Somepony was going to get a firebomb in her bagged lunch next chance I got.  I opened up the letter magically and held it in front of me while Twilight tried to finish her breakfast, though I could tell she was concerned, as she was only vacuuming up the cantaloupe at 80% her normal speed.
Celestia
I know it's not supposed to be possible, but they have bodies now.  Physical forms, not just psychic ones.  They're smart too, tried to set a trap for me, so be on your guard.  Not sure what's going on here, but it's big.
I found this inside the body of one, but I don't know what it is.  I figured you'd have better luck than I did.  I can't tell if it's writing that's on it, or even what language, but it seems to change when you're not looking at it.  Good luck.
-Cadence
Finally, she was making use of all her resources instead of trying to solve everything by herself!  It was, in fact, not a bowling ball, but was some sort of dodecahedron.  Or was it?  In fact, the number of sides on the object was not consistent.  It was black, and it seemed to have as many sides as it could get away with, as I turned it over with my magic I noticed that a square might become a triangle, or a triangle might become a square.
"What's that thing?" Twilight asked, and for once I did not have an answer.
"I don't know, but I'm supposed to find out," I said, "so we may have to cancel today's lessons."  I touched my hoof on the object to see how hard it was, and perhaps to glean some idea of what material it was made of.
All at once, it was like the color was sucked out of the world around me.  Everything took on a slightly gray tinge, except Twilight, oddly enough.  She looked the same vibrant purple she always did, but the tablecloth was now a dull, metallic yellow instead of the brilliant gold and red it had been before.
"Oh, can I help you find out what it is!?" she piped up, practically shouting.
"No, absolutely not," I snapped at her.  She quieted down instantly, and returned to munching on what was left of her breakfast.  It was mine, and I wasn't going to give it up so easily.
"I just wanted to help," she said, trailing off as she did.  I didn't regret what I said, she had deserved it for being so pushy.  I'd need to start teaching her discipline, to keep a check on her tongue, especially when in my presence.
Wait, what was I thinking?  My head started to hurt, quite a lot, like a migraine, throbbing under my skin.  I took my hoof off the object and pressed it onto my aching head, and the color of the world came rushing back.  Twilight continued to chew on something, at a normal pace now.
"I'm sorry Twilight, I didn't mean that," I said, trying to recover, "of course you can help."
Her eyes lit up, and she resumed her best maelstrom impression, obliterating what was left of her breakfast.  Her plate was cleaned off completely, not even a crumb remained, before I could even finish rubbing my head.
We put Spike back to bed and headed off to the northern tower of the palace, where I had a hunch we could find answers about the object.  I made sure not to touch it, rather, I kept it afloat with my magic, which seemed to prevent it from doing whatever it had done earlier.  Cadence had not mentioned that, I wondered if she had not the occasion to touch it?
Reaching the tower, I let Twilight knock on the door for me.  It was kept locked most of the time, though not for my sake.  A voice came from behind the door.
"Yes, who is it?" asked a raspy, impatient voice.  Before I could answer - 
"Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia!" Twilight shouted, totally oblivious to who might be behind the door.  Her enthusiasm was legendary already.
"What's the password?" came the voice again.
"New England clam chowder," I said.
"The red or the white?" he asked.
I paused, I would always forget this part, "The white?"
The door clicked and opened partway.  Twilight tried to push it open further, but it was very heavy, and she only succeeded in opening it enough to see inside.
Beyond the door lay a study, made of ancient brick in a dark blue hue.  Our palace had been filled with curvy, gold-trimmed furniture for a long time now, but there had been a time when we used simple stone and hay-stuffed cushions.  This study had never left that time, elegant in its simplicity.
Twilight went barging forward, eager to explore the room.  She examined a chemistry set along the wall without even taking note of the pony standing just to the side of the door.
"She's a curious one, isn't she?" he said, regarding her.  He had shaved off his beard recently, but was still my old friend Starswirl, from a time best forgotten.  I do not mean that figuratively.
Twilight, turning around, noticed him for the first time.  Despite his reputation as that of a bearded old codger, he was actually quite young, with a warm smile on his cream colored coat, and a thick black mane he had been letting run wild.  He looked as old as the day I had met him, for a very good reason.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Twilight said sheepishly, turning around.  Amazingly, she had forgotten there was somepony behind the door to unlock it within the 3 seconds it took to open it.
"No trouble at all madam," Starswirl said, taking a bow.
"Twilight, I'd like you to meet Sta -" I started, he cut me off abruptly.
"Shush!  The name is Steven," he said, extending a hoof.  Twilight stared at him awkwardly until he put his hoof back down.
"Hello mister Steven, I'm Twilight," she said, and that introduction done, she spun around and trooped back towards the chemistry set tucked in the corner.
"Steven eh?  Some reason you're using that moniker?" I asked in a hushed tone.  Twilight paid no note of us, she was busy examining a vial labelled 'Sodium Chloride'.
"Can we really go around telling everypony my real name?  You're likely to cause a panic, or at least a lot of questions," he said.
"Yes, if anypony actually remembered who you are.  Do you know how long it's been?  You're ancient history," I said to him.
"So are you," he said back, shooting me a panicked look as Twilight picked up a vial labelled 'Ammonium Nitrate'.
"Don't sniff that!" he shouted at Twilight, who promptly put the vial back down.
"Twilight, why don't you come over here and let me introduce Professor Steven to you properly," I said.  Her head turned all the way around while he body remained facing the chemistry set, I thought I heard a crack in the neck but she was no worse for the wear.
"Professor?  What do you teach?" she asked 'Steven'.
"I'm an expert in time magic, actually, but I've dabbled in just about everything," he said.
"Oh, like auguries or..." Twilight started, then she held up her hooves to her mouth to stifle a gasp, "time travel?".
"Something to that effect, yes – "Starswirl started to say.
"Can you tell me my future?  Can you tell me how to tell my future?  Can you tell Spike's future?  Can you - " she rattled off questions at an alarming pace.  I shifted my stance slightly, and that was all it took to calm her down.
"One at a time Twilight, time magic is something you really mustn't rush," I said.
Starswirl lowered his head to better commune with Twilight, summoning up as much patience as he could, though I could see he was going to be strained if she broke something important while we were here.
"Well my dear, I could tell you your future, though there is one minor caveat," he said.
Twilight's face took a blank look, and she turned to me.  "What's a caveat?" she asked.
"A catch, a problem that doesn't seem obvious at first," I said.
"Ohhhh," she said, turning back to Starswirl.
"Indeed.  I could tell you, but it would always be wrong, even when it's right," he said.
"How can it be right and wrong?" Twilight asked, clearly taking in every word.  I could see she was thinking, but she would always ask even if she thought she knew the answer, to make sure she was correct.  There was no advantage in being fast if you weren't right.
"Because, if I read your future, it's based on you not knowing your future.  If I tell you, then you will know, and that will change your behavior, making the prediction wrong," he said.
"What if you read it, and don't tell me?" she said.  Starswirl chuckled.
"For one thing, that'd defeat the purpose.  For another, it would still not work, though it would be harder to tell.  I would be altering my own behavior, which could have effects down the road and would eventually invalidate other predictions," he said.  Twilight was satisfied, though a bit unhappy.
"So why can we look at the future if it's useless?" she asked, and for once, Starswirl was not sure what to say.  I decided to tell her instead.
"Some ponies are different, they have a destiny that they cannot avoid.  If you read their future, it always stays the same," I said.
"That's just a theory, nopony has ever proven it to be true," Starswirl interjected, somewhat angrily.  I could tell the discussion was making him uncomfortable, and a change of subject was in order.
"Yes well, that's not what we came here to talk to you about," I said, levitating up the orb-object in front of me.  Starswirl forgot all about the conversation we had just had, and admired the construction floating in the air.
"Well well, what have we here?" he said to nopony in particular.  His gaze was transfixed on the object.
"We're not sure, but I figured an expert in all things exotic would," I said.
"One moment," he said, darting off into the antechamber attached to the study.  I heard some books being tossed on the floor and what sounded like glassware shattering, before he re-emerged with a book floating in front of him.
"Equestrian Rare Minerals study, first edition," he said, as he went over to the chemistry set and began preparing some devices.
"I have a few ideas based on the appearance, but there's only one way to be sure," he said as he pulled out a scale, a beaker of acid, and a number of other rocks with labels on them.  He struck the object with each of the rocks in turn and made some notes on a parchment, then placed the object on the scale and determined its mass.  Lastly he dabbed some acid on the object and took note of the lack of a reaction.  Twilight was enraptured the whole time.
"Hmm, hardness of nine, maybe higher.  Density looks to be eight or so grams per cubic centimeter, hmm hmm," he said, starting to hum to himself, "this doesn't quite add up."
He levitated the orb into the middle of the room, looking at it closely.  Twilight, as soon as he left, started reading the book behind him and checking over the notes he made.  I believed he was coming to the same conclusion  I had, and I could tell he was puzzled by the same property I was.
"This makes no sense at all then.  Unless?" he put the object down with his magic, then touched it.
I should have warned him, but it hadn't occurred to me exactly what had happened earlier.  Now, I got a good view.  Starswirl started to turn grey, the color seemed to siphon out of him, starting at his hoof where he touched the orb and spreading upwards from there.  His eyes took on an unfocused quality and he looked confused.
I reacted as soon as I saw it starting, charging forth to knock the object away.  He instinctively tried to stop me, but my legs were longer and I hooked them under his, knocking the object away like I was doing a tackle in hoofball.  As soon as he lost contact with it, his coat returned to its normal color.
"Ooh, what happened?" he said, holding his head.  Twilight had remained completely oblivious, as was usual when she found herself a project.
"Ziristone," she said, turning back around.
"Amazing..." Starswirl said, though he kept his hooves on his head.
"That's what I had thought Twilight, but perhaps you can tell me why it shouldn't be Ziristone?" I said, and I held the object up with my magic.  I was going to need to put this thing in a sack to keep anypony from touching it.
"It absorbs magic, increasing in density when it does," she said, though she had clearly read that out of the book.
"So if it does that, then how am I lifting it up right now?" I asked.  She thought for a second.
"Maybe it's full?  It can't absorb any more," she said, turning back around to see if there was an entry for that, though I knew there was no such thing.  Ziristone is extremely rare, occurring in exactly one place.  That place was off-limits for mining, and had been for millenia.
"It's possible, but it'd need quite a lot of magic to do that," Starswirl said, recovering from the incident.  His eyes told me we would need to speak about that later, I gave him a small nod to confirm it was not only him that had experienced it.
"Is it supposed to have this green stuff on it?" Twilight said, comparing the picture in the book to the object suspended in the air.  Starswirl shook his head.
"That, I am at a total loss for.  Please understand, this stone is incredibly rare, I've never had a sample to study myself," he said.
"I'm sure we'll be adding this to the textbook.  Thank you very much for your help Steven," I said.  Twilight took this as the cue to leave, but I could see she was looking back at the minerals book with a sense of longing.  It was a first edition, I wondered if she knew that that tome was presently in its seventeenth iteration?  She seemed to pay no heed to the curious state of the tower either, and had no idea who the pony who was rubbing his head was.  Perhaps I'd need to give her something to read on obscure Unicorn history.  Then again, would she connect the dots?  She was smart, but terribly naive, I would need to work on that first.
We left the study and heard the door close behind us.  Twilight was now terribly curious about rocks, and I quickly concocted a lesson plan for the day to teach her the basics.  Before I did anything else, I would need to let Amoria know about our findings, and more importantly, find something to shut this thing in before anypony else touched it.
> Chapter 12
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I neglected to pack myself a lunch as I headed out, knowing I would regret it later but unconcerned.  Improvisation was my specialty, after all, or I could just mooch something from the cafeteria.  I arrived early enough to sweep the building again, but nothing was out of place, save one thing.
The basement door had been repaired, or rather replaced, with a bright white door with steel trim all around it.  It had a large, rather obvious lock, and another, and another.  I counted six locks total on the door, all made of the same steel the trim was.  Perhaps this had something to do with last night?  Nah.
Finding nothing further out of place, I made my way to the sparring platform floating above the school.  I had figured it would be empty, and I had figured wrong.  Argent Scythe was there, doing something with the bungee lines.
"Oh, miss Autrena!" she said with surprise as I flew up and landed on the platform.
"Did you not expect me to be here?  I know I'm a little early," I said, looking up at the sun.  I gauged it to be eight or so.  "Or a lot early, whoops."
"Oh no, it's just, uh," she said, looking bashful.
"Wait, weren't you let go the other day?  What happened?" I asked.  A wicked grin spread across her face.
"Strangest thing, the guy who was supposed to replace me?  Something came up, so I got my job back," she said.  She looked around to make sure nopony was around.  We were alone.
"Thanks so much," she said.
"Uh, you're welcome?  What did I do?" I asked.  She was taken aback by my confusion.
"Well, Princess, I figured you would have something to do with it.  I try not to play politics but I don't turn down good news," she said.
"Captain Wintermere told you, I take it?" I asked.
"Yes ma'am.  I will absolutely not violate your cover ma'am," she said, giving a crisp salute.
I was starting to think the entire city knew, but thought everypony else didn't, and thus believed it was a secret.  This cover story was getting more ridiculous by the minute.
"I had nothing to do with it.  I guess you just got lucky," I said.  She dropped the salute.
"Very well ma'am, I will assume you are being modest," she said.  Not only is the truth a cover story, telling the truth now made me look self-serving.  Maybe I should take up recreational lying?
Midnight flew up over the side of the platform and landed, giving Argent a salute.
"Cadet Midnight Blossom, reporting for duty ma'am!" she shouted.  She gave me a wink.
"Bright and early cadet?  I like that.  Do you have your training weapon?" Argent asked her.
Midnight had cleaned her cadet's shirt last night, but that didn't help.  It had a wide range of holes and gashes, and had been patched a dozen times using different materials.  She had a large sheath slung on her back, and leaped into the air while unsheathing the blunted training sword.  She flapped as she ran her hoof along the blade to make sure it was non-lethal, accidents with edged weapons having a very predictable outcome.
"Yes ma'am, this weapon is up to code and ready for action," she said.  Argent turned to me.
"What about you Autrena, do you have your practice weapon?" she asked me.
"No, this is my normal sword.  Where might I get a practice one?" I asked.  Midnight swooped over and landed next to me.
"Wow, that's a real sword?  Can I see it?  Please?" she asked me, practically grabbing at the sheath while I stepped away.
"Cadet!" Argent yelled.  Midnight snapped to attention.
"Now, I'll go get you your practice sword ma'am.  Please wait right here," Argent said, and flew off the platform.  As soon as she was out of sight, Midnight started to bug me again.
"Please please please?" she asked, looking like a filly.  This was exactly how Twilight acted, come to think of it.  And Minty...
"Later," I hissed, as Argent flew back up onto the platform with another sword in tow.  She passed it to me, and I quickly checked the edge.
"Good to go," I said.
Another two students flew up and landed on the platform.  Evidently being early was more common than being on time, though we still waited around until it was time for class to officially begin.  That day, we were doing weapons-recovery drills, as we had been told the day previous.  The instructor ties your weapon to the bungee cables while you hang underneath the cloud.  Then, she tosses them off, and you have to catch them before the cable goes taut.  It was a good bit of fun, and very useful for aerial combat.
Midnight was far too eager to impress, and kept catching her blade in time, but did not seem to mind grabbing the edged part.  That's a good way to cut your legs off.  I made sure to always grab by the handle if possible, and only go for the flat of the blade if the alternative is to miss entirely.
The other students were fairly clumsy but showed good improvement by the end of the lesson.  I, of course, had no trouble, but that was the entire reason I was here.  After about an hour, the other half of the cadets showed up and did the same lesson while we watched.
"Hey, you ever been in a duel?" Midnight asked me as we hovered, about two-hundred meters from the platform.
"More than you'd believe," I said.  She had been asking me questions like this endlessly.
"Did you win?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
"All of them?" she asked.
I turned to her.
"Yes, Midnight, I won every single one," I said sarcastically.  Of course, she didn't pick up the sarcasm.
"Teach me?  Please!?" she practically begged.
"Lesson one will be patience," I said under my breath, as we watched two of the B-group students both fail to catch their spears.  Argent said something to them as they hauled their spears back up by the bungee cables.  I noticed a pony with a blue uniform flying up to us.
"Excuse me, I was told I could find Miamore up here?"  he asked me.  His uniform was that of a postal worked, now that I saw it up close.
"That's me," I said.  I was saying that a lot lately.
"Special delivery, high priority," he said, pulling out a letter and passing it to me.  He flew off without another word.
"Aren't you supposed to sign something for that?" Midnight asked.  I ignored her, and tried to read the letter.
"Hold this," I said, passing her my training sword.  I didn't have anywhere to put it and couldn't use my magic to hold up the letter.  I had also learned not to try to hold a metal object in my mouth; bad for your teeth, so I had been told.
Dear Miamore
We believe this is a Ziristone artifact, but it's so full of magic it can't absorb any more.  That's our best guess anyway.  Did you happen to touch it?  It has some, shall we say, disturbing properties when it is touched.  We will investigate more and get back to you.
No luck on the green symbols either.  I'm working on it.
-Victoria
I wondered just how many other ponies would know what Ziristone was, should this top-secret letter have been intercepted.  Did we have any enemies?  I had been away for a while, and Tia hadn't mentioned any, but she signed the letter as Victoria.  Perhaps it was secrecy for its own sake.
"What's the letter say?" Midnight asked me.
"Top-secret, can't tell you," I said, my voice was getting grated.
"Really?  Why's it top secret?" she asked.
"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," I said.  Sarcasm, comedy, all were lost on her.  She hushed right up.
We watched the rest of the lesson and gathered for Argent's explanation and coaching.  We had another lesson that afternoon, and were expected to practice more on our own.  I actually liked the very loose organization, the cadets were learning independence and self-betterment at the same time as combat skills they'd rarely use.  Perhaps this was why Argent was the best.
I had figured I'd have a spare moment to take a drink of water, but Midnight wasn't having any of it.  Before all the other cadets had even left the platform, she already had her sword drawn and was standing there, reared up, brandishing it.
"Are you just a bit excited?" I asked.  She shook her head.
"I've been waiting a long time for this," she said.  Kind of out of place, unless she honestly thought half a day was a long time.
There was no schedule for this sparring, she just came straight at me and attacked like a berserker.  There was very little discipline, but she made up for it with strength and endurance, swinging wildly and trying to overpower me.
Rather than play her game, I kept my hooves on the platform and stayed low.  She fought the whole time with her wings flared, ready to jump into the air at a moment's notice, but I simply parried and dodged in order to let her tire herself out.  She had real talent, latent and unrealized, but nopony had shown her how to use it before now.
As I saw her start to pant and sweat, I let her keep going until she seemed ripe.  Then, in one swift motion, I parried a swing and brought my free leg down to pin the blade.  I spun around and pulled, yanking her sword out of her grip.  She was completely unprepared for it and stood dazed as I gave the blade back to her.
"What just happened?" she asked me, possibly in shock.
"I disarmed you, that means you lost," I said.
"Oh, okay," she said, dejected.  This must have not happened before.
"Don't look like that, you've got some real talent.  Here, watch me," I said, and I demonstrated how to swing without sending yourself off balance.  We'd need to work on the basics.  Need to learn to flap before you can fly, and all that.
Midnight wanted to keep going after two hours, but I wanted to get a drink and eat the nothing I had packed.  I headed over to the cafeteria to see what was on offer.  Midnight decided to tag along, having nothing else to do, and we ate together.
"Do you drink out of the public fountains?" she asked me, as I went over to the fountain.
"Yes?" I said.  She was a bit of an odd duck, what's wrong with drinking from the clouds?  I figured that was where the water came from, since Squeaky installed the tap there.  Maybe not.
"You shouldn't do that, I heard the government puts stuff in the public water," she said, deadly serious, "Fluoride and stuff.  Mind-control, it makes you docile and easy to control."
"Do you know anypony named Minty?" I asked her.
"No, should I?" she said, shaking her head.
"Nevermind.  If I don't drink from public fountains, where do you get your water?" I asked.
She pulled out an orange bottle which was filled with, well, water.
"I got this stuff, I call it 'Midnight's Sewer Brew'.  I make it myself," she said, matter-of-factly.  I detected no pride in her voice, this was a public service.
"Please don't tell me you pull water out of the sewers," I said, grimacing.
"What?  No, I use ground-up rat weed, it grew all over the place in Ponyville.  Rat weed, sewer brew, get it?" she said.
"What else is in there?" I asked.
"Sugar, rainwater, a pinch of salt.  This stuff is great, try some," she said.
I took a small drink, and it was actually pretty good.  I had never even heard of rat weed before, I would need to look that up.  If it was poisonous, Midnight would have been dead by now.  Then again, it could also have accounted for her hyperactive behavior, I didn't know what was in it.  Rat weed could very well be a hallucinogen.
That afternoon we were doing some group takeoff drills.  It wasn't really my cup of tea, but there was a sense of unity with the rest of the cadets, trying to get scrambled out of the barracks in under one minute.  They used this sort of thing in emergencies to assist firefighters in Canterlot, though I wondered what they would use it for in Los Pegasus.  Perhaps they scrambled everypony whenever one of the theaters downtown had an act cancel, and we'd need to scour the town fast for an alternative to make sure the tourists stayed entertained.  Lives would be hanging in the balance.
I gave the building another sweep before I packed in for the day.  As before, Fluttershy was milling around the entrance of the building, hiding behind a potted plant whenever somepony came by.  There was no sign of Rainbow though, and Fluttershy wasn't willing to tell me where she was, if she even knew.
I had resolved to resume my patrolling later that day, I would need a proper meal and a rest before I could continue.  Midnight had asked me to train her more later that evening, so I had intended to conveniently take her along on the patrols.  Not for her sake, of course, but so I would not be alone should another trap take place.  Two heads are better than one, even if one is Midnight's head.
When we reached the house, Fluttershy ran in ahead of me to search for Labamba, but he was not there.  In fact, nopony was home, which was unusual.  Perhaps he had hopped out a window, as our house was rather insecure.  I didn't even bother to lock the door anymore, since somepony could just kick a hole in the clouds if they wanted to steal everything.  They'd make off with our laundry I suppose, there was little of value in the building.
As I was puzzling over the missing Flamingo, I heard a scratching sound coming from somewhere.  Following the noise, I found a tin can sitting in the laundry room, attached by a wire to a small, white box.
"Cadence, can you come in here please?" the can said to me.  The can.  It was talking.
I mean, that's really when you figure you've gone off the deep end right?  When inanimate objects start talking to you, that's a bad sign.  I figured I may as well roll with it, if you're going to be nuts you may as well enjoy it.
"I'm already here, miss can," I said to it.  The can did not react.
"Oh, oops.  You were supposed to be in the living room when I said that," the can said back.  It sounded a lot like Squeaky, but with a garbling noise in between.
"Can you not see me?" I asked the can.
"You don't have any idea how radio waves work, do you?" asked the can.  I did not like its tone.
"Don't get snippy with me, tin can.  I will kick you out the window if I have to.  Hope you like the ten-thousand foot drop," I said.  The can wisely shut up.
I heard the door open and somepony start towards the laundry room.  Squeaky stuck her head in.  I noticed a metal object tucked under her wing, but I couldn't make out what it was with all the feathers in the way.
"Are you some kind of special case, Cadence?  Anypony would be able to figure out how a radio works if I showed them," she said.  The connection was starting to become clear.
"Since when could you use magic?  I've heard of a ghost-voice spell that would do this, though not out of a tin can.  Is it an enchanted can?" I asked her.  Her face took a sullen look.
"Radio waves, Cadence.  They can transmit electrical signals over a distance," she said.
I looked at her dumbly.
"This is a revolution in the making!  If I can work out the problems with the receiver and boost the transmitter, I could send radio signals all across Equestria in under a second!" she said, trying desperately to convince me this wasn't magic.
I continued to look dumb.
"Do you know what a telegraph is?" she asked me.
"No, is it like the intercom we had at school?" I asked.  She put her hoof on her face and left it there.  She turned and left the room, mumbling something as she did.  I followed her out.
"I take it this is for your physics project," I said.  Squeaky was holding her eyes closed in the living room.
"Where's mister Labamba?" Fluttershy asked her.  Squeaky didn't take her hooves off her head.
"Outside, with Minty.  Look out back," she said.
"What's Minty's project?  Anything cool?" I asked.
"Radio waves aren't cool enough for you?" Squeaky asked me, looking upset.
I was about to answer, but a high pitched sound had begun a few moments earlier.  It was getting louder and louder, and quickly drowned out anything I said.  Before I could finish my sentence, the noise stopped and a red triangle wedged itself in the roof.  It dangled down from above, more like a cone as I walked around it to get a better view.
"What in Equestria is that?" Squeaky said, looking at the object.
Without warning, a billowing cloud of smoke burst forth from it, covering us and everything in the house in a layer of thick black ash.  I closed my eyes instinctively, and all three of us started coughing.
The cloud of ash settled in a few seconds, and I opened my eyes again to see Squeaky and Fluttershy standing baffled in the otherwise black-coated room.  The bed was covered in fine ash, and as Squeaky moved I saw a perfect outline of her shape left in the ash layer.
Minty appeared at the kitchen window.  Labamba stuck his head in soon after.
"It worked!" she shouted.  Squeaky coughed again.
"What worked?  Are you working on chemical weapons? " Squeaky said, coughing as she did.  I started towards the feather duster that was in the kitchen, but I figured it was going to be utterly insufficient for this mess.
"No, that was the first test flight of the M-101 'Labamba' Rocket!" Minty said.  Labamba squawked, also excited, though his face betrayed nothing.
"Mister Labamba, were you a part of this?" Fluttershy said, scolding him.  He lowered his head beneath his wing, trying to hide.
"Don't give me that mister, you explain yourself right now," she said.
"Relax kid, this is my physics project," Minty said, trying to cool Fluttershy down.
"Minty, we already have rockets.  That's not going to do you much good," Squeaky said, chiding her.
"It's not the rocket, it's the guidance system.  Okay, I have a theory, right?" Minty said.  She started to say something else before Squeaky cut her off.
"You are going to be working on the rocket first.  And you're going to be cleaning the house too," she said.  Minty sighed.
"Sorry," she said.  Labamba squawked.
It was at this point that I realized I needed a shower, but I wasn't quite sure how to get a raincloud to do that.
"Can one of you show me how to make it rain?" I asked.  Squeaky went over to the sink and starting washing her face off.
"Just get a cloud and stomp on it a few times, should start raining for you," she said.  She grabbed a dish towel and wiped her face off, leaving a big black stain on the cloth.  She threw it down in frustration.
"You're doing the laundry too," she said to Minty.
A proper meal was now out of the question, if I was going to make my appointment with Midnight, I'd need to improvise something for that as well.
I bid the twins goodbye as Minty was getting out some paper towels.  I was thinking she'd need a lot more rolls of the stuff, but it wasn't my problem right now.
I had an idea of using the showers at the school to clean myself off and still make it in time, but Midnight intercepted me as I flew towards the school.
"Hey you're early, and you wear camo too!  That is so cool," she said.  I tried to ignore her.
"I need to take a shower," I said, "give me a few minutes."
"Oh okay, I'll meet you in the south gym?" she asked.
I didn't answer.  I had a feeling, a bad one.
"Midnight, follow me, right now," I said.
"What?  What for?" she started to ask.
"No time, move!  Now!" I shouted.  
> Chapter 13
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Midnight and I dove, she on my tail as I shot at full speed towards the classroom building.  The feeling I was getting was somewhere inside, and there was no time to enter through a conventional way.  I couldn't spot any other entrances though, I hovered directly over the source and looked frantically for another way in.
"What is it?  What's going on?" Midnight asked, still unconcerned.  I wondered if she thought this was a game.
"What's the closest entrance, quick," I said.
"Launch pad on top of the gym there," she said, pointing at the narrow opening atop the gym.  There were openings like this all over the school, but we'd have to go in and around.  That would take time.
I flew onto the launch pad but did not land, instead staying airborne and maintaining momentum forward.  There was a door on the inside which had been left wide open, I banked through and kept going. I heard Midnight land and start running to catch up behind me.
The gym inside had the pad entrance towards the top, so I entered another dive in the open air and whirled to reach the exit on the base floor.  I landed running, and kept barreling at full speed.  The feeling waned, and was gone, but I knew where it had been.  I took a corner, then another, and saw it, in the middle of the floor.
Two fillies, around the same age as Rainbow, laying in the middle of the floor.  Their bodies were grey, almost completely colorless.  They weren't moving at all.
Midnight caught up to me, breathing heavily.  I moved slowly towards the fillies laying there, but I could see they weren't breathing.  I reached out to touch one, and there was no reaction.  The body was cold.  I was too late.
"Midnight, find the captain, instructor, anyone from the guard," I said.
"What happened to them?" she asked.
"I don't know, but this place is now a crime scene," I said, "we'll need somepony to cordon it off, identification, collect evidence," I said.  She nodded, already familiar with the basics of investigation.  It wasn't all combat training here.  Without another word, she dashed off towards Wintermere's office.
I examined the scene to the best of my ability, and while I was no investigator, I had learned quite a bit from overhearing my mother speak about this sort of thing.  The bodies were laying slumped on top of one another, I estimated they were pre-teens but we'd be able to run background checks on them once we identified them.  There were no signs of actual injury anywhere on the bodies, save for the fact that the color had been literally siphoned out.  It reminded me of my dream the night before.
I made sure not to touch or disturb the bodies until we had a photographer take pictures of the area.  I did notice one odd thing though.  A green, iridescent fluid had been spattered on the ground underneath the corpses, there was probably more beneath but I could only see the edges.  I knew where I had seen that before, it was the same color as on that object I had sent Celestia.  There must be a connection, but what?
I heard the sounds of ponies approaching, but didn't take my eyes off the scene.  The object had not been painted, the green had been a part of the Ziristone, while here I could see that it was a fluid.  That also meant I could get a chemist to find out what it was.
"By Celestia's beard..." I heard the captain say.  I looked up to see him, Argent, and several cadets all standing nearby.  Midnight looked like she'd seen a ghost, and I could see a nervous look on Argent and Wintermere's faces.
"Argent, we're going to need a full crew for this one.  Cadets, rope off the scene, move!" he shouted.  Though they had probably never dealt with a real scene, they had been trained in how to handle one, which was mostly just follow the investigator's orders.  Within minutes, crime scene tape had surrounded the scene and the cadets were making sure nopony got too close.  The commotion had caused a small crowd to form, mostly students who hadn't gone home yet, and the staff.  I could see Eddy nearby, though he was not actively looking at the scene.  He called to Midnight and gave her a towel, which she then gave to me a few moments later.  I rubbed the char off my coat, but it wasn't going to come out completely.  I looked like a muddy brown filly.
"Never seen anything like this," Wintermere said to me, though I was still busy puzzling out the curious fluid.  It didn't fit.  I could guess well enough about why the fillies were dead, though I couldn't tell anypony about what I knew.
"It's related to my line of work," I said to him.  I think he understood, if he had been briefed then he would make the connection.
"Do they.. kill?  I hadn't heard of killing before," he said.
"Neither had I, but there's been a lot of strange things going on lately.  Add another to the pile," I said.  Argent came up to him and passed him a small leather pouch.
"These were what was in their lockers", she said, "ID and dossiers inside."
He thanked her with a nod and sat down to read the dossiers.  There was nothing particularly special in their belongings, school supplies, binders, notebooks.  There was a small cloth and a glasses case, but the glasses were nowhere to be found.  I was thinking it was a random attack, except it was lethal, and had done this strange color change.
Wintermere sighed.  "This is beyond excusable, we need to close the building down," he said.  No sooner had he said that than I head a commotion amongst the cadets.
"Let me through!  Wintermere, what the hell is going on here?" Tax Break pushed her way through the line and stomped angrily towards us.  She didn't react to the corpses, but rather the indignation of it all kept her angry and unstable.
"Specialist, what do you make of this?" he asked me.
"Murder," I said.  Tax Break looked like I had slapped her.
"In my school?  Impossible, what sort of trick are you playing?" she said.  She went to kick the bodies but Wintermere stopped her.
"What are you doing you maniac?  Don't disturb the crime scene!" he yelled at her.  It finally dawned on her that the two were really dead, as she took on a completely different tone.  I think she may have noticed the bodies were completely motionless, now being so close to them.  Her voice was hushed.
"Who did it, why?  What am I going to do?" she seemed to be asking herself, and not us.
"You'll be suspending the semester until we look into this," Wintermere said.  I noticed the green fluid seemed to be getting dimmer.  Tax Break sat down and rubbed her temples, thinking.
"Erdrick, you sold me a bum school.  Curses are bad for business," she said.  I quickly grabbed the glasses-cloth and swiped up some of the fluid, as it was disappearing before my eyes.  I stuffed the cloth back into the pack Argent had left as I saw the fluid vanished completely.
"Is that photographer here yet?" Wintermere asked Argent.  A group of three uniformed guardsponies arrived, one of whom had a large camera around his neck.
"What took you so long?" Wintermere said to them.
"Sorry captain," the camerapony said.  These three looked to be from the guard's station, judging by the colors of their armor, and the lack of helmets.  They busily started taking pictures and drew a chalk outline, while I sat back and let them do their work.  Midnight came up to me as they did.  She had a shaken look about her, and spoke softly.
"How did you know about this?" she said, looking at me with concern.  This was going to be tricky to lie through.
"Didn't you hear the scream?" I asked her.
"There was a scream?  I didn't hear a scream, are you sure?" she asked.
"Midnight, if you don't pay attention, you'll never be a great guardspony," I said.  She looked confused, but let it drop there.
"What do you think did it?" she asked me.
"I haven't got any idea," I said, and for once that was true.  This was all so wrong, so different.
"All right, you can move the bodies now," the photographer pony said.  I pushed the top body off the bottom one and scanned over it for injuries.  The missing pair of glasses were on top of the second body, having been crushed by the top one.  Glass shards fell out as the body rolled off.  There were no injuries, none at all, no bruises, contusions, cuts, anything, not even from the glasses.  I would need privacy to use my other sight to check them, but for now I could see no reason they were dead, on either body.
"Hmm, suffocation?" Argent asked me.
"Check the necks, could be a broken bone or crushed windpipe," Wintermere said.  I felt the necks but there didn't seem to be anything out of place.
"Nothing.  We'll need to wait for the coroner on this one.  Wrap them up," I said.  The other two guardsponies had some bodybags with them, though the fillies were quite small and barely filled the bags.  I watched as they hauled them out, and looked at the floor where they had lain.  No sign of that green fluid at all, but I had gotten a sample on the cloth.  I checked it to make sure it hadn't vanished, and it was still present.
There was nothing more to gather at the crime scene, but I stayed and kept watch anyway as Wintermere and the camerapony checked the area in detail.  No clues, nothing even slightly out of place.  No hoofprints.  No signs of struggle.  They were baffled, but I could tell Wintermere was thinking about his briefing, about the invisible attackers Celestia had no doubt told him about.
Eventually the crowd thinned and most of the ponies left reluctantly, though I did notice Eddy had remained behind, if at a distance.  Tax Break hadn't left yet, but Wintermere had dismissed the cadets when some more guardsponies arrived to take over.
"Do we really have to shut down the school?  I'll be ruined!" Tax was pleading to Wintermere, but he kept a stony expression.
"Random diseases are one thing, but murder?  No, this semester is on hold.  No pony enters this building except the cadets.  I'll need the dormitories to be separated off and the doors locked," he said to her.  He turned to Argent Scythe.
"All cadets are to be armed with non-practice weapons while on campus, until we can relocate them to the barracks.  We'll also need around-the-clock surveillance here," he told her.  She nodded and trotted off towards the dorm rooms.  Finally, he turned to me.
"Ma'am, anything you can do to help.." he said.
"What would she know?  Why is she doing the investigating anyway?" Tax Break asked.
"Miss Autrena is a specialist, and not just in combat.  I am told this is not the first incident she has been present for," he said.
"Not that I sought this out.  Misfortune follows me around," I said, which was true enough.  Tax didn't enjoy the answer, but then again, she was right in the middle of a financial crisis.  This delay was going to cause cancellations as panicked parents would withdraw their students.  She grunted and stood up to leave, heading back towards her office.  Probably to go have a breakdown where nopony could see her.
"I'll go take another look at bodies at the morgue," I said to Wintermere.
"How will that help?" he asked.
"A much closer look," I said.  He didn't know what I was talking about, but accepted it anyway.
"All right then, you'll have whatever you need," he said.
I started off towards the gym exit, and found Midnight sitting around the corner, holding her tail with her forelegs.
"Shouldn't you be in the barracks?" I asked her. She shook her head.
"I didn't want to think it happened again," she said.
"What are you talking about?" I asked her.
"I heard this happened in Ponyville, but I wasn't there at the time.  Saw the bodies though," she said, "gray, just like those ones."
Why hadn't I heard about this?
"When did this happen?" I asked.
"Couple months ago," she said.  She wasn't looking at me, she was looking through me.
I thought quickly.  That was around the time I had to go deal with a sudden cluster of infections.  I had dozens of puzzle pieces, but I was still missing a few more.  A picture had begun to form, but what was missing?  There was an objective to all this, a pattern, but I didn't know what it was.
"That makes you the closest thing I have to experienced," I told her.  She swallowed.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Midnight, much as I hate to say it, I need your help," I said.
"What, like a partner?" she asked.
"More or less.  You got a real sword yet?" I asked.
"Yeah, Ms. Scythe gave me one," she said.
"Good, get anything you need, we're going to the morgue," I said.
> Chapter 14
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I kept us walking on the way to the morgue.  I would need to talk to Midnight directly without any wind interference, I needed to know everything she knew, no matter how small.
"Tell me what you saw in Ponyville," I said.  If I kept it simple, she'd elaborate on the details she thought were important, which could help her remember.
"Couple of foals, little things, not even in school yet," she said.
"Those were the victims?" I asked.  She nodded as we walked.
"I didn't know them myself, but my parents knew their parents.  Nopony really talked about it much, it was kind of a shameful fact," she said.
"Did you find out who did it?" I asked.
"No," she said.
We walked in silence for some time.  The nearest hospital was the one attached to the mental hospital I had visited before, but I would need to bluff my way into the morgue.  No way they're let two dopy army cadets just trounce around in there.
"Did they ever find out what killed them?" I asked Midnight.
"I never heard, though I did hear they cremated the bodies the night after the murder," she said.
"Really?  Why?" I asked.
"I don't know, maybe they always cremate them?  I don't spend a lot of time in cemeteries, Miamore," she said.
The hospital was coming up a block away, and I still didn't have a plan.  I had neglected to get any sort of permission from the captain and a letter from Celestia was probably out of the question.  Night had fallen, she was probably asleep anyway, and me walking in with a letter out of nowhere would probably yield suspicion of a forgery even if I could wake her up.  Once again, it was time to improvise.
"All right, just follow my lead," I said to Midnight as we stood in front of the doors.
"How?  What are you going to do?" she asked me.
"Lie a lot," I said.
The hospital lobby was busy, far busier than the mental addition's lobby.  A tired looking nurse and a few assistants were filling out paperwork while a dozen or so ponies in all states of disrepair sat on benches or tufts of cloud.  One of them had a cast and a black eye, I noted, but was smiling and quite cheerfully chatting with what I guessed was his marefriend.  Everypony else looked miserable.  Probably with good reason.
"Name, injury, health number," the nurse said as we approached the counter.
"Actually we're just looking for the morgue," I said to her.
"Follow the hall on the left, turn when you see the sign," she said, and went back to her paperwork.  She didn't even care.
We navigated our way down the hallways, past rows and rows of patient rooms, most of which had closed doors.  I wasn't really interested in anything in them, and the few with open doors looked empty anyway.  Finally I saw the sign labelled 'Mortuary' pointing to a big set of brass double-doors.  The air took on a noticeable chill just outside of it.
Midnight arrived just ahead of me and pushed through the doors first.  It was like walking into a freezer, a wave of cold air rolled past us and into the hallway, forcing me to shut my eyes before they started to water.
The room was empty, in a way.  There were no ponies inside, perhaps the coroner had already gone home for the day, and the door hadn't been locked.  The body bags I had seen the guards carry the corpses away in were stacked in the corner, and the bodies were sitting on metal carts along one side.  There were also rows and rows of floatstone slabs which presumably came out of the wall if pulled on, probably loaded with bodies.  I didn't want to countenance that, I needed to stay focused on the task at hand.
"Midnight, watch the door, okay?" I said to her, "make sure nopony comes in."
"Why?" she asked.
"You'll see in a second," I said.
I wasn't going to be able to hide myself while doing this work, but I felt I could trust Midnight not to go blabbing about this sort of thing.  This was mostly a guess because I assumed she was like Minty.  She could keep a secret, probably, as long as I made sure to tell her it was a secret.
I closed my eyes and began to concentrate, but something felt off, very strange.  It was quite distracting, and interrupted my spell.  It was like something knocking on the side of my head when I closed my eyes.
"Whoa," I heard Midnight say.  I looked at her, and realized the invisibility spell had stopped anyway.
"That's why," I said.
I turned back around and tried to clear my head, ignoring the distraction and focusing enough to bring up the other sight.  It came slowly and haltingly, but I managed to bring it about just the same.
The parade of strange occurrences continued, as the other realm had taken on the appearance it does around a victim of the corruption.  Only Midnight's form was here, all the other wisps of light kept their distance, but why?  I could see no tar on the bodies, this place was clean, more or less.
I picked one of the bodies and gave it a closer look.  While the green fluid had faded in normal light, I could see it here, plain as day.  It was traced all around the body, in various patterns and designs running over nearly every inch.  Only a few spots on the back had no fluid at all, and the tail was clean as well.  It was the same story with the other body, and the green runes reminded me of the object I had sent Celestia.
That knocking hadn't gone away, though I tried harder to ignore it.  It was like somepony pounding a drum, or perhaps a heartbeat.  Come to think of it, it was a heartbeat, it was in the same rhythm as my own heart, but I was hearing it from somewhere else...
No, I was not hearing it.  I was feeling it.
It was getting louder and stronger too, making it harder and harder to concentrate, until I let the sight drop from sheer frustration.  Midnight was watching the hallway outside the door, trying to look professional as she did so.  I would need to report this to Tia, even if it meant waking her up.
A clang startled the both of us and we turned to see the source of it.  The body farthest from me, the cart it was on had bumped into the wall and let out a metallic ringing sound.  I hadn't remembered bumping the cart.
I think I saw it move.  My heart stopped.  These fillies were dead, but I was certain now I could see it the body moving.  The other one started to move as well, and not in the way a pony is supposed to move.  They were shuddering and shaking, slowly and quietly trying to stand up, the only sound they made was a rattling on the carts leaving a hollow ringing noise.
I backed away, nearly bumping into Midnight, who had stood stock still the whole time.  I glanced at her to see her face, but was not surprised to see the expression.  It was the same one I had seen many, many times, back in the old days.  Terror, confusion, horror, all mixed together to leave a stunned and helpless pony, unable to act.
"Midnight, wake up!" I shouted at her, and that snapped her out of her trance.
"What, what's happening?  They're dead!" she shouted, looking at me with a panicked expression.  Now I could see her eyes up close, and I could tell the fear was all the more real as she pieced together why they had cremated the bodies back in Ponyville.
"Ignore the heads, cut off the limbs, and don't let them touch you," I said, standing up on my hind legs and unsheathing my sword.  She did the same, but did not look the more confident for it.
Finally the beating sound had reached its full power, and the corpses stood up of their own accord.  Their eyes had remained closed this whole time, and only now did they open them.  That glassy stare, the unfocused look.  It was my dream, my nightmare, come to life.
The one closest to me came at us first, charging at us, wings flared, that damned unchanging stare.  I used the hilt of my sword to deflect the charge to the side and the filly tumbled off towards the wall, slamming into it with a sickening crunch.  I thought I had broken its neck on the impact, but that didn't stop it, it stood back up and leaped at Midnight.
She knocked it back down with her sword, gashing open its chest.  No blood came out, nothing came out, the ripped flesh just hung off the now exposed bone and the filly leaped at Midnight again.  The other one had stood up by now and came after me, these fillies were small and incredibly fast.  It leaped into the air and flapped once to get up to my eye level, so I repaid the gesture by cutting its nose clean off and dodging to the side.  It passed by me and landed, spinning in an instant and aiming a kick at my leg.
I didn't dodge in time, and the little filly's tiny leg connected with my own.  It was incredible, the weight of the blow suggested a pony four times her size as my leg gave out and I fell over.  The filly tried to stomp on my head, I rolled away and stood back up using the hilt of my sword as ballast.  Midnight was doing no better, though she blocked her attacker's body with her blade, the sheer force knocked her over.  Thinking quickly, I grabbed one of the metal carts and rolled it towards her attacker.
She didn't hear it clanging as it sped towards her, in fact, I wondered if they could hear anything at all.  The cart hit her in the back and tumbled over, forming a temporary block in front of her as she turned her attention to me.
Both fillies attacked me in tandem, and I didn't try to counter.  This whole time they hadn't changed that grim expression, the eyes didn't follow me as we fought and there seemed to be no brain activity whatsoever.
One came at me from the left and I danced nimbly out of ranged of the punch she threw, the other tried to intercept me but I leaped back as soon as she did.  Midnight stood up behind them and jumped forward, bringing her sword down on top of the filly I had cut earlier and bisecting it neatly in two.
The filly's body felt apart completely, I could see exposed bone cut like it was jelly, but no blood or organs tumbled out.  The corpse seemed to be made entirely of bone, skin, and grayed out fur coat, perhaps only the eyes remained.
Now outnumbered, it was no challenge to distract the remaining filly and carve it up.  Midnight slapped it with her forehoof to get it to turn around, and I cut its legs off from behind.  Though it couldn't walk now, it attempted to flap in order to keep attacking, so we cut off its wings.  It then tried to shift its weight and roll at us, continuing to make hostile actions despite being completely unable to.  I sliced it in half and it finally stopped moving.
Midnight had gone into shock by the time I had confirmed both bodies weren't getting back up, probably a mental defense mechanism.  This was the sort of thing nightmares were made of, and I couldn't let her know I was as confused and scared as she was.  She'd need to believe I knew what I was doing or she'd have a breakdown.
"You're Princess Cadence," she said, sitting down.  I supposed a change of subject wouldn't hurt.
"Yes I am, pleased to meet you," I said, offering a hoof.  She didn't shake it.
"I was gonna say you looked a lot like her, but I didn't want to be rude.  I figured you got that a lot," she said.  She hadn't taken her eyes off the corpses yet.
"Glad to know my disguise was one of convenience," I said, smiling.  Her expression was stony.
"What are these things?  Were those the fillies from the school?" she asked.
"Hmm, those were their bodies, but not their minds.  I'm still putting the pieces together myself, but I'm close.  Very close," I said.  I wasn't, but it wouldn't hurt for her to think I was.
"I want to go home, I don't want to be a soldier anymore," she said, finally taking her eyes off the bodies and focusing them on the floor in front of her.  She sat down and let her sword hit the ground beside her.
"Midnight, I need you.  You're now the second-most experienced soldier at this, even Captain Wintermere doesn't know what you do," I said.
She just stared at the floor.
"Please?" I said.  She looked up.
"Am I going to have to cut up more corpses?" she asked.  A tear came to her eye, she blinked to try to hold it back.
"I don't know," I said.  I hadn't even really regarded them as corpses when they attacked us, for me it had been just another battle.  This must have been Midnight's first real fight, and such a sick one at that.
"Okay, okay.  I can do this," she said, standing up again.  She sheathed her sword, I did the same, and she turned to look at me.
"But if I help you, you have to promise to stop fluoridating the tap water," she said.
"Deal."

Though we had butchered them up pretty badly, I could still make out what pieces went where when it was time to examine them.  We organized the parts into the shape of the original but kept the limbs split off from the body.  I did not know what animated these things, and I did not intend to it happen again.
The green markings had faded somewhat by the time I looked again with my sight, while Midnight watched the door.  I noticed they ran all over the body on the inside as well, touching the bones and muscle, but only being inscribed on the muscles, not the bones.  I wondered if the markings were related to the ones on the object I had seen again, before it occurred to me what they really meant.
I decided to experiment a bit to confirm my theory.  I leaned over the body I was examining and squeezed a muscle.  It was cold and clammy, but as I squeezed I could definitely see the green lines glow slightly brighter.  Next, I tried to rub the lines off.  It took some effort, but they did fade eventually, without leaving a stain on my hoof as I did so.  I tried rubbing off some more of the fluid from the muscle, until I had gotten most of it off.  Then I squeezed the muscle again, and it wouldn't move at all.  It was like squeezing a rock.
These are circuits.
Something had painted this stuff all over the body and then, somehow, made it come to life.  It could send signals to expand and contract all over the body, making the muscles move even if the creature was dead.  It made them dense and incredibly strong, immune to pain, like fighting a living rock.  The faceless ones had returned, not as themselves, but as us, using our bodies as their own.  
Perhaps the process hadn't been perfected, perhaps I was jumping to conclusions here, but I could not shake the feeling that this wasn't an accident.  The trap, the bodies, it was like these had been purposefully set up to try to kill me.  There was an intelligence at work, though I did not know where or who.  Had they found an accomplice?  One of their own?  Or perhaps their master had finally taken a more direct interest, the thought was enough to send a chill down my spine.
We left the bodies on the carts where we had found them, after fixing the room back up somewhat.  I made sure to leave a note for the coroner to cremate them, stating they may have contained some residue of the disease which killed them and they needed to be incinerated to prevent it from spreading.
I didn't know if we could cover this up at all, by now rumors would probably be spreading.  Dead foals tend to get noticed, and the scene was not accidental looking when I had found it.  Still, those bodies needed to be burnt, and I'd need Celestia to look into other cases of murders involving color being drained from the body, among other things.
I had a feeling the worst was yet to come, an overriding sense of dread that hung in the very air itself.  Perhaps it had always been there, and it was only now that Midnight and I could feel it, as we flew back to my residence to regroup.
> Chapter 15
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	As we arrived back at my home, I thanked Midnight for all her help and tried to send her on her way.  To no surprise at all, she was not keen on returning back to the school, so I let her stay with us for a little while.  I certainly wasn't going to let her sleep here, because that would put no less than seven of us in the same house, which was probably a violation of a bunch of laws and just way too many ponies (and flamingos) in one place.
Everypony was in the living room when I came in, though it was quite late.  Minty and Squeaky were both reading physics books, I could make out 'quantum' and 'oxidizers' on the titles, but otherwise the fonts were too small.  Both looked up as we entered, and said, simultaneously, "Wow, you look like hell."  They shot each other a look before turning expectantly back to me.
"It's been one of those days," I said.  Midnight nodded.  It was probably best not to alarm them, if they'd believe me anyway.
"Did you hear about the murders at the school?  Were you there?  What happened?" Minty asked.
"Word gets around fast in this town," Midnight observed, "mind if I grab a drink?"
"Knock yourself out," Squeaky said, motioning towards the kitchen.
Fluttershy and Rainbow were both here, and both were refusing to look at me, as if I had had something to do with this.  Labamba sat between them, trying to console them.
"I checked it out myself," I said, answering Minty's questions.  "Not a normal case, and class is cancelled for a while, so I'm on filly duty until then."
"Did they really kill two ponies?" Squeaky asked.  I nodded.
"I was a few seconds short, there wasn't anything I could do by the time I got there," I said.  Nervous looks overtook their faces, Squeaky and Minty exchanged another look.
Finally, Rainbow spoke up.  "Did the boogeypony get them?" she asked.
"The what?  No, of course not, what are you talking about?" I asked her.
"I didn't see it, but Fluttershy said she did.  She said she hid and it left her alone.  We didn't go in the halls at night after that," she said.  Fluttershy was nodding, but still didn't want to look at me.  Labamba put his wing over her and squawked.
"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?  Do you know what this means?  There's a flipping monster on the loose!" I shouted, though I caught myself and calmed down before I sent Fluttershy into a panic.
"I didn't think it was real!  You know how she is," Rainbow said.
Pieces, pieces, more pieces falling into my lap.  I probably wouldn't have believed her either until now, but it fit perfectly.  Something got the fillies, did something to them, and then resumed its disguise or otherwise hid from my sight.  It would strike isolated targets, or lure them into places like the basement and go for the kill.
My head was spinning, this was all so wrong.  Fluttershy claimed to have seen it, would that have been during the break when nopony was in the school?  It moved around too, it had struck in Ponyville and possible elsewhere, or there was more than one.  This whole time I had had no damn idea, it was enough to make you throw up.
"Hey, you're out of drinks," Midnight called to us from the kitchen.
"Just use the tap there, cups are in the cabinet," Squeaky called back impatiently.
Midnight appeared at the entry to the kitchen, looking right at me.
"Is it true you're putting stuff in the drinking water?  You owe me an answer," she said.
Squeaky looked confused at that one, "Does she know about the... thing?" she said, pointing to her forehead with her book.
"Oh yeah, she's cool.  Midnight, if there was a conspiracy to drug the water supply of an entire city, I would think I would know about it," I said.  She was not accepting that answer.
"That, or you're not high up enough to be let in on it," she said.
"I'm a freaking Princess!  You don't get much higher than that," I said.
"Oh sure, because the Princess runs the government, right," she said.  I could see Minty from the corner of my eye, and she was certainly not disagreeing.
"Everypony, this is Midnight, she's a cadet from Ponyville," I told them as an introduction.  She waved.
"I installed the tap myself, there's nothing wrong with the water," Squeaky said, and that was enough for her.  Midnight disappeared and I heard the sound of the faucet squeaking.
"You know, I bet she's right.  I tried the fountain at the university, water tasted terrible," Minty said.
"The water tasting bad does not mean there's a drug in it, Minty, and besides, I think a conspiracy would do a better job about getting a tasteless additive," I said.
"No she's right, that stuff tastes awful," Squeaky said.  Rainbow nodded too.  So did Labamba.  "I don't drink it myself, I take a water bottle from the clouds here," Squeaky finished.
"I don't notice anything, and how did the conversation turn to this?  Fluttershy, can you tell me more about the boogeypony?" I asked her.  Labamba squawked again.
"He says she doesn't want to," Minty offered.
"Okay, fine, I have some letters to go write," I said.  I left Midnight in their company while I wrote up a letter to Tia to be sent that morning, when she woke up.  I would need her to analyze the cloth of fluid I had gotten, and tell her to check into color-sucking monsters that created walking corpses.  It's a good thing she trusted me, because I was sounding like a real nut now.
I saw the twins go past my door towards their bedrooms and the light in the living room get turned down.  When I got out, I saw the fillies were already in bed and Midnight was looking awkward in her beaten up cadets shirt.  I could tell she was in no hurry to leave.
"Come on, we need to get you back to the school," I said.
"Really?" she asked, looking uncertain as always.
"Midnight, right now there are two dozen terrified and confused cadets in the bunks there.  They're worried and scared because two murders got committed right under their noses and we have no idea who the killer is.  I need somepony there who can protect them, and you're the only one who can.  You've seen them, we can beat them," I said.  The confidence came back to her face, slowly inching up as he expression lightened.
"Yeah, we beat em didn't we!  Bring em on!" she said with a grin.  It was a tough front to put up, but she had to fool herself into thinking she could handle it, otherwise she'd never get any sleep.  I saw no need to dissuade her.  We flew back to the dorms tower and said goodbyes, with her promising to keep watch here for the boogeypony.  We shared a laugh, and I departed.
Sleep that night came uneasily, and I had no dreams that I could recall.  All I could make out from the fog of unconscious was a vague hostility, somewhere far away, waiting.  It could wait as long as I could, forever if it had to, for its moment.  Then it was gone.

The weeks passed uneventfully after that, though we did not relax ourselves, we had no choice but to let the enemy make the first move.  I personally trained Midnight in the techniques I had been using to fight the faceless ones, though I could tell she lacked confidence now.  It was not something practice could overcome, I hoped she would be able to face her fears when the next battle came, and it would come, though I did not know when.
Celestia had told me that the only thing on the tissue I sent was a glass-cleaning fluid, there were no traces of anything else.  Not only that, but there was no residue left at the murder scene either, I could find no traces of it on the floors where the bodies had lain.
I took to looking after Fluttershy mostly, and Rainbow whenever she felt like staying with us.  She would frequently go off on her own to do something all day and often into the night, and never felt like telling me what, where, or with who.  I was in no position to force out an answer either, it wasn't like she came back injured, and she was staying with me on a contingency basis.  If she wanted, she could leave at any time and I'd be unable to stop her, though I think she enjoyed having a warm bed to sleep on and a reliable food supply.
Fluttershy refused to speak about the so-called "Boogeypony" anymore, and would hush up whenever I mentioned it, so I gave up that line of inquiry.  She wasn't the most courageous pony under the best of circumstances, though it ate at me that there was possibly vital information right under my nose and I couldn't get to it.
Celestia had told me she was looking into other cases of this color-sucking murderer, and said she was doing so personally.  What that meant was that she wasn't getting back to me, leaving me stuck in Los Pegasus trying to hunt down a monster of which I had no description, couldn't sense normally, did not know its habits, and did not even know whether it was still around.  For all I knew, it had already moved on after the attack.
Worse, I had no idea if this was related to the bearers or not.  I had a sneaking suspicion the Boogeypony had some specific target, given its intelligence, but I was at a loss for it.  My best guess was that it was hunting down ponies who could be the bearers, though I hadn't felt anything unusual around the fillies who had been killed either.  What if it was already too late?  What if one of the ponies who was supposed to save the world had already been knocked off and I had been seconds away from stopping it?
The school remained closed, and there were no further incidents within its walls, or anywhere else in the city, come to think of it.  The entire world was quiet, my services seemed no longer needed, at least for now.  Celestia hadn't sent me any reports of outbreaks and my own senses told me nothing was amiss.  I had offered to take Fluttershy to veterinarian's lessons at the bird sanctuary, and she had jumped at the opportunity, on the condition I would stay with her since Rainbow had been more and more aloof.  When Labamba hurt his leg during one of Minty's rocket tests, Fluttershy patched him back up and had a grand old time doing it.
Squeaky's project had been advancing as the year went on, and she was constantly showing me the latest prototype of whatever.  She asked me a few times for magical assistance, but only for diagnosing what was wrong with the receiver or amplifier matrix or whatever other nonsense terms she was spouting.  I wasn't even sure what my magic was doing, she just asked me to pick things up or shake them and took away from that what she needed.
Minty's rockets would still routinely explode, but the dust was getting less annoying as she would  test them on isolated cloud banks instead of in the middle of the city, on pain of a savage beating by the rest of us should she refuse.  I didn't know what the laser-crystal thermo guidance controller did or how it worked, all I knew was that the rockets took her less and less time to rebuild and she got really excited every time they turned.
The science fair was coming up early next month, and I had made plans to take along the fillies to go see the twins' exhibits, when we received a letter from Gabby.  The same day, one of her bands was on tour and would be visiting the city, so she asked if we would have time to visit with her.  Of course I told her we would.

Finally, I received some crucial information from Celestia, as the days dragged on.  She told me had something important to investigate, but that she had also finally found Gazzo's family, or what was left of them.  He had a wife, but their daughter had died at some time in the past.  I left Fluttershy in the care of Labamba for a few days, and went to go pay my respects.  She was heartbroken upon hearing the news, but I could see tragedy was something she had gotten accustomed to, and I made sure she knew she would be taken care of.  She was with foal, I could tell, though she didn't mention it to me as we spoke.  I wondered if it was the last gift Gazzo had left for her, or perhaps it was another tragedy in the making, either way, it was no further business of mine.
> Chapter 16
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"Princess Celestia?" Twilight asked, looking out the stage coach as we got closer to the city.  I think she was concerned by the dark rainclouds looming over the structures, perhaps because Canterlot took steps to avoid scheduling rainstorms during the day.  Stalliongrad, by comparison, did not mind having clear nights and rainy days, it was just their custom.
"Please Twilight, you must refer to me as Ms. Petalfeather while we're here," I reminded her gently.  I had taken on my alter-ego to conduct this latest investigation in peace.  For the previous month I had been working diligently to track down these strange occurrences Cadence had told me about, and everywhere I went I had met resistance in my official form.  Not the sort one might expect, but rather, every sycophant within a hundred miles felt the need to tell me what they thought I wanted to hear.  I would have much preferred to travel undisguised, but at this point necessity demanded it.
Cadence had informed me of a curious set of murders that occurred at the school as she was seconds away, completely under her nose.  I assured her I was not angry with her, but I don't think that helped too much, as she was not accustomed to feeling so powerless.  Worse still, the murders had become quickly well publicized, meaning the flood of rumor drowned out most of the useful information to be gathered.
At first I gathered official documents concerning a set of similar incidents in Ponyville.  The bodies had been discovered by a passing night watchpony, and taken to the urgent care center to be pronounced dead.  Shortly after, while the watchpony was alone with them, he had claimed they had started to move, and had thrown them into the crematorium in panic.  While he had been suspended and placed under psychiatric observation, the story was eerily similar to the one Cadence had described, so I had quietly revoked the suspension and given him a brief interview.  He spent the whole time insisting it was very much real, but otherwise provided little in terms of new details.
A second set of incidents had occurred at Cloudsdale sometime later, with the same modus:  a colt and a filly, roughly Twilight's age, found drained of color on a tennis court in the evening.  The caretaker who found them had thought them dead, but they got up and wandered off into the darkness before he could get close.  The bodies were recovered the next day, having plummeted to the ground sometime in the night but not having been destroyed on impact.
While I had thought that was the final incident, I had heard a rumor of another case in Stalliongrad, but one which had no official investigation or witnesses.  Everything was off the record, though I wasn't sure why.  It was the only lead I had, so I followed it, arranging for Twilight and myself to be visiting under the guise of a private tutor teaching her protege about Stalliongrad's long industrial history, which was not too far off the mark.
The stagecoach took another bump and Twilight bounced along with it.  She hadn't pulled out a book the entire journey, instead staring out the window at the city as we got closer or asking me questions about it.  Her geology kick had turned into a chemistry fascination, followed by industrial chemistry and now, machining and the history of inventions.  She soaked up knowledge like a sponge and never filled, though never seemed to stop and ask herself when enough was enough.  Oh to be young again.
I told Twilight some more about Stalliongrad, about how the city had been the first site where a major coal seam had been discovered and heavy industry had practically sprung up around it.  It was a city of hammers and steel, populated mostly by earth ponies living in apartments in great red-bricked complexes.  As we pulled in to the hotel we were staying at, Twilight said not a word, instead taking in the square, no-nonsense architecture.
"We're here ma'am," came a voice from outside the carriage window, the voice of the cabby who had agreed to pull us here.
"What do I owe you?" I asked him simply.  Twilight made a gurgling sound but quieted quickly, as she strained to control herself lest she go bounding off into the city to search it.
"Thirty-five for the distance, plus five for luggage," he said flatly.  I passed him the cash and a nice tip, to which he tipped his cap and nodded at me.  As he pulled away to look for another fare within the city, I took Twilight over towards the front desk.
This was, to put it politely, not the finest accommodations available, but one cannot live in finery forever.  Stalliongrad had a number of lovely hotels, but our purpose required simplicity.  Two ponies in thick overcoats stood near the desk, one reading something while the other kept lookout.  Our eyes met briefly and he nodded, whispering something to his cohort as I approached the counter.
"Reservation for Petalfeather?" I asked the clerk, a very short little mare, she looked like a filly.  Perhaps the owner had left his daughter to watch the desk.
"Hm hm," she said, humming to herself as she pulled up a book from behind the counter and plopped it down in front of me.
"Pe, pe.  Petal.  Petalfeather?" she said, pointing to my 'name' and a blotch of ink.  It seemed my room had been changed several times since I had made the reservation.
"Is there a problem?" I asked her.
"No, no problem.  Key is right here," she said, passing me a key labelled '114'.  The overcoated ponies made note of the number and left through the front door without a word, as Twilight and I carried our bags down the hallway towards the room.
Twilight stood expectantly in front of the door, but something seemed off to me.
"Twilight, step back a bit so I can get the door," I said, loudly.  I had to make sure anypony inside the room would hear me, as I quietly casted an amplifier spell.  Twilight's eyes widened as she made mental notes of what I was doing.
The amplifier spell would increase every sound coming out of the room so long as I held it in front of the door.  I levitated my key over to the lock and turned it, and as I did, I heard something on the inside shuffling around, confirming my suspicions.  By my guess, it was coming from somewhere off to the left.
I had to hold Twilight back, as I don't think she realized there was any danger here, and was more curious than anything else.  I let the spell fade as I entered, peering around carefully until I spotted the outline of an ear sticking out from behind a chair in the darkness.  Moonlight shining in from the windows arrayed on the far side had betrayed his position.
I gave no warning, lifting up one of my bags and suddenly flinging it at the head I could see.  It rebounded off and broke open, scattering my clothes everywhere as I stepped back and fired a flare spell into the room, lighting it up with blinding intensity, but no sound.  It seemed only the one ambusher was present, and before he could recover I was already on top of him.  Twilight, in the excitement, followed just behind me, ready to help in any way she could.
"Waugh, lemmego!" he shouted, with a thick eastern accent, as I got a good look at him.  A fairly young stallion, barely of age, lay on the floor beneath me, thrashing in vain.  His face had a rough look for one so young, and his mane was unkempt, a thick oily black.
"I'll let you go if you talk," I said.  I needed to keep this brief, as the guardsponies would be here any minute.
He remained silent, and stopped struggling.  "I take that as an agreement," I said, stepping off him.  He glanced at the doorway, but decided he couldn't make the run, and looked back up at me.
"Who are you, and who sent you?" I asked.  He looked up at me, puzzled.
"This is Sergei's territory, and you didn't make an offering.  I'm just a messenger!" he pleaded with me, and as he did, a knife fell out of his bushy tail.
"Do all messengers carry concealed weapons?" I asked him.  He looked up bashfully.
"Not mine, I forgot it was there," he said.  Given the state of his hair, that wasn't an outside possibility.
"I'm not looking for trouble, okay?  Whoever this Sergei is, tell him Petalfeather is off limits," I said, and as I did, the two ponies from the lobby appeared at the doorway.
"Ma'am, is everything all right?" one of them asked.
"Just peachy, the bellhop was just about to leave.  Here's your tip," I said, levitating out two bits and putting them on his forehead.  I let him stand up, and he shook himself off before walking out of the room, shooting a glance at me as he did so.

"Sergeant Salnikov, at your service," one of the coated ponies told me, as we went about cleaning the room up.  He flashed a badge, hidden under his coat, and nodded towards his partner.
"That there is Golovkin, but he doesn't speak much Equestrian.  I do most of the talking," he said.  Stalliongrad was a bilingual city, but Salnikov didn't have an accent.  Probably an immigrant, but it wasn't my business.
Twilight, for all the days' excitement, was battling sleep as she poked around the hotel room, exploring.  Her eyes were getting droopy, yet she and Smarty-Pants stuck their heads everywhere, taking in every tiny detail.  She didn't speak though, and barely even acknowledged anypony's presence except to go around them.  When she got focused, it was as if the rest of the world didn't exist.
"Who's this Sergei?  Why did he send somepony to break into my room?" I asked Salnikov.
"Sergei?  He's a small-timer, trying to break into the big-leagues by roughing up everypony he can.  He won't be bothering you, I'll see to that," Salnikov said, as he checked the inside of the closet, next to the door.
"What's the security situation?" I asked.
"We'll have two uniformed troopers in the lobby, one undercover watching the door, another on the roof, and one watching the street.  You'll have more cover than the most celebrities, Miss Petalfeather," he said.  He wasn't aware of my cunning disguise, but he followed orders to the letter, smartly and professionally.
"Twilight, could you come here a moment?" I asked my student as gently as possible.  She was reading the tag on one of the pillows on the bed, probably so she could ask me about washing pillows and what temperature of water to use.  She ambled over smartly at my request.
"Now, you remember how to use this?" I asked, as I opened up one of the luggage bags we had brought, and brought out a small necklace with a bit of crystal on it.
"Just break it if I think I'm in trouble," she said, happy to have remembered it.
"Very good.  Be sure to wear it as long as we're here," I said to her.
Twilight was probably aware, at least on some level, of what the pendant actually did.  I had an exact copy elsewhere in the bag, and exact is meant literally.  If one broke, so would the other, and by breaking it, she would be telling me I needed to drop what I was doing and find her.  The enchantment was relatively simple to perform, but I wasn't up for teaching duplication magic to just anypony, especially not a filly.  It tended to get hairy fairly quickly, and the results were extremely messy if the spell was used on a living creature.
"All right, I have to leave you for the rest of the evening.  Mister Salnikov here will be just outside if you need anything.  Can you put yourself to bed?" I asked.
"But I'm not tired!" Twilight protested.  I noticed she wasn't blinking normally, but was instead blinking one eye, and then the other, to prevent both from closing at once, lest she fall asleep.
"Oh well, don't stay up too late then.  I'll try not to wake you up when I return," I said, winking at Salnikov as I left.  He rolled his eyes and took up his position in the hallway outside the room, nodding at his partner who removed his coat to reveal a pair of wings.  While Stalliongrad had been founded by earth ponies, it was a metropolitan city.  However, in many circles, the so-called 'exotics' or 'outsiders' were not welcome, so an undercover guardspony would need to hide himself.  The thick overcoats these two wore were a testament to the harsh, insular society that had grown up here.
I nodded at the two uniformed, armored troopers and said a few pleasantries as I passed the lobby.  My destination tonight was a nightclub called 'The Furled Brow'.  According to the official documents, a terribly mangled body had washed up downriver, a suspected mafia killing, and that was all.  The body wasn't identified, no official report was filed, the guardsponies just let it fall off the face of the earth.  I had been informed that they had also somehow lost the damn thing, taken from the morgue in the middle of the night, and it was that which aroused my suspicion.  The morgue had been locked, and the lock had been broken from the inside.
The body may not have been identified, but there were only a few assassins in the city that the guard hadn't arrested.  Obviously, I couldn't go putting a hit out in order to find a murderer, but I could find a murderer's friend, and one such pony frequented this particular nightclub.
It became fairly obvious, fairly fast, what sort of club this place was.  I walked without incident most of the way across the city, and it was around eight that I reached the street with the club on it.  I had had to find a secluded alley way to lower the sun, but I was fairly certain nopony had noticed.  The streets in this run-down part of town were empty and barren, the buildings showing decay and the shops shuttered.  The club itself wasn't much better, the sign advertising it was lit up, with several of the lights broken, and the lettering had faded with weather.
A mare wearing far too much makeup took my coat at the door and gave me a beaten-up menu, though I wasn't particularly hungry.  A single waiter in a cheap black suit was meandering easily between a number of tables seating droopy-eyed guests, navigating flawlessly in the low light.  The air stunk of alcohol, and I could barely make out the stage on the far side of the room.  There was a stool on it, but no entertainment at the moment.
Fortunately, my quarry was not difficult to spot.  A pony walked out on the stage from behind the curtains as I made my way over to a booth in the far corner, she cleared her throat and mumbled something unintelligible.  The audience didn't react, with one exception.
"Ivan Yershov?" I asked him, a tall brown pony sitting on the seat cushion, eyeing the stage, or more accurately, the mare on it.  His cutie mark was a hammer striking a block, and his amber eyes had thick bags under them.  His mane was a dark red, muffled by a brown flat-cap on his head.  His eyes focused on the mare with intensity, but not an amiable intensity.  There was something peculiar about his expression, but I could not quite put my hoof on it.
"Not now foreigner, she is to sing," he said in Russian.  I spoke enough to get by, but my accent had probably given me away.
The pony on the stage cleared her throat and began to sing what sounded like a lullaby, except she wasn't singing any words, just notes.  It was slow and gentle, and I could see Ivan bobbing his head along with the notes.  The other guests looked like they were about to fall asleep, but Ivan was greatly interested in it.
After a few minutes, the singer finished her set and took a bow, mumbling something else I couldn't make out and walking off stage.  The audience didn't applaud, they just resumed their idle chatter.
"Like something I've heard before, reminds me of my mother," Ivan said.
"I hate to interrupt -," I started to say, doing my best to put together the Russian translation.
"Foreigner, you murder the language.  I can speak to you this way," he said with a flat expression.  Guess my Russian needed more practice.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Is not to apologize, I have to wait for her next song.  Entertain me," he said.
"I'm looking for somepony, and was told you know him.  Hector?" I asked.
He had been scanning the room as I spoke, but as soon as I said the name, he had stopped for a moment, before continuing.  "Lots look for Hector, none find him.  What makes you think I know?" he asked.
"I've been told you're a friend of his," I said.
"Yeah?  And who tells you this, he is wrong," he said.  He turned away and glanced at the stage again.
"The singer, who is she?" I asked, figuring I could change the subject until he warmed up.
"She is no great thing, just something I like, yes?  Let me have this," he said.
"Maybe I could talk to her for you, you know, quid-pro-quot?  I always know just what to say," I said.  He turned back to me.
"I am not familiar with phrase, squid pro quo.  No matter, she is not a mare who talks, yes?  Only sings," he said.
A pony and a zebra came in the door and shooed away the hostess as she tried to give them a menu.  Ivan saw them and turned to me.
"I am sorry foreigner, I must go," he said, as he stood up quietly from the table and walked towards the backstage entrance, making sure to keep facing away from the two  who had just entered.  They saw him anyway, and doubled back outside, probably to go to the backstage exit.  It didn't take a genius to see what was coming next.
I politely excused myself from the waiter who had come by to take my order, and walked outside myself.  Dark clouds obscured the moon, but the threat of rain was an empty one, the clouds having already expunged themselves earlier that day.  I looked around to try to spot a glimpse of where the thugs had gone.  I heard murmuring coming from a nearby alley and quietly made my way over.
Peering around the corner, I saw the zebra and the pony on either side of Ivan, though they hadn't noticed me yet.
"A very pretty friend you have, shameful if she got hurt," said the zebra.
"Is no friend, just came up to me.  Leave her alone," Ivan said.
"You think us stupid?  Drop disguise Hector, we have job for you," the zebra said again.
"I not work for you or anypony, I told you I am done.  Leave me alone," Ivan said.  The pony pulled a small bludgeon out from under his cap, and held it menacingly in one hoof while the zebra moved to get behind Ivan.  Or Hector.
"That's quite enough of that," I said, stepping around the corner and into full view of the three.  The zebra pulled out a knife and brandished it at me.
"Girlyfriend fights for you?  Sad," said the Zebra, as both of them started advancing on me.  Ivan's face went pale white as he watched me, standing in full view, making no effort to retreat.
The zebra screamed and dropped his knife, which was a reasonable reaction to the spell I had cast.  I had simply charged the knife with electricity, and the shock it had given him had probably numbed his leg.  He slumped over before regaining his balance, and the pony took this as an excuse to charge me.
I didn't feel like showing off, so I just levitated up a garbage can and slammed it into his head from behind, simple, but effective.  The blow caused him to fall flat on his face, and he stood up with a freshly broken nose.
"I'll let you leave if you leave Ivan alone," I said.  The two looked at one another, then dusted themselves off and turned around.
"Is not over," the zebra spat back at me as they disappeared around a corner leading deeper into the alley.
"You hide much I see," Ivan said.
"As much as you, Hector?" I asked.  He shushed me, and motioned for me to follow him.
He led me a few blocks away, though I had no idea where we were.  All the buildings looked the same muddy brown, and some looked to be abandoned entirely.  The few ponies I did see made a point of crossing the street to avoid us as we walked past.
Finally, Ivan led me to what looked like a blown-up factory, bricks lay everywhere and ancient iron machinery lay smashed in a collapsed heap.  He smiled at me as he led me inside and to the back, where a small brown door waited for us.
"Before you ask, I used to work here before the boiler exploded.  Quite a time, that was," he said, in a perfect Equestrian accent.  The Russian was completely gone.  There was a lot more to this pony than met the eye.
"Did you have anything to do with that?" I asked with a wink.
"Ma'am, you impugn my honor!  No, but the lads who did found a few things out about me that they decided were useful," he said.  He then felt around some bricks nearby before producing a hidden key, and used it to unlock the door.
"It's not much, but it's all I have.  Make yourself at home," he said, opening it.  Inside was what used to be the forepony's office, except the window had collapsed.  The only way in was the doorway.  He lit a candle on the floor and revealed a pile of hay which was presumably a bed, and a bookshelf with faded, dusty books on it.  The only one I recognized was a play, "Octred IV", as the other books were in Russian and I couldn't read it well enough to translate.
"It's safe to speak here?" I asked him.
"That and more.  You were looking for Hector, well, you've found him," he said.
As he did, his shape blurred and a greenish tinge swept over him until another pony stood in his place, one I didn't recognize.
"At your service, ma'am," he said.
"A changeling?  I'm sorry, I had thought you were wiped out," I said.  He winced.
"No, though that would be a useful thing for you to believe.  There are a few hives here and there still," he said.
"Then why are you here and not there?  You're a long way from home," I said.
"I have no home, I am an outcast, so I live here and work here," he said.  Though he kept his expression flat, I could tell it was an act, even if a very good one.
"And you're in deep with the mob?  Can't you just leave it all behind, change who you are?  Isn't that what changelings do?" I asked.
"It is not so simple.  The singer, she has finally started to like Ivan, and Ivan likes her too, see?  I would spend my whole life as Ivan if she liked him, but these thugs, they found out and now they have me do jobs for them, or they will hurt her.  So I am Hector, and I do terrible things, then I slip away from the dragnet," he said, sighing.
"I thought the changelings had a rule about not killing, or is my information outdated?" I asked.
"That you know of us at all is interesting in itself.  Perhaps I am not the only one who changes his forms?  No matter, whatever rules I had to follow were gone when I was exiled," he said.
"Okay, I get the feeling you haven't told anypony about it, so you may as well tell me," I said.
"It is difficult to keep a secret for so long, isn't it?  Are you sure you want to hear my story?" he asked.  I nodded.
"Very well, though it is not as complex as you think.  Some time ago, our old queen became ill and it was the duty of every hive member to select her replacement.  I backed the wrong candidate, and so I was exiled," he said.
"Oh really, and there's no more to it than that?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I must say I most vociferously backed that candidate, but only because the alternative was worse.  She is power-hungry, and cares nothing for the old ways.  When she came to power, she had to make sure inconveniences, like me, would not stop her.  I was given a choice, death or exile, and so here I am," he said.
"Interesting, and just where is this hive?  Is it in Equestria?  Do I need to be concerned?" I asked.
He laughed.  "There are some rules that none of us break, not even that one.  So, now that I have told you, you must tell me.  Why are you looking for Hector?" he asked.
"About a year ago, somepony was brutally murdered, their body torn to shreds and dumped into the river, and then the body was stolen from the morgue before it could be identified.  I'm interested in that body, and since I don't know whose it is, I figured I'd find out who made it," I said.
"And you suspect I am the one who did it?" he asked me, but not with surprise in his voice.
"You'd be a good place to start," I said.
"Since I am laying it all out, I can trust that you will believe me on this.  Yes, it was my job to kill that pony, his name was Igor Istomin, if you care," he said.
"I do, I need to make sure his family gets the news," I said.  He shook his head.
"They do not care, I have already told them myself.  I am not a monster," he said.
"If you're not a monster, then why'd you tear the poor fellow apart?  The report said he'd been cut dozens of times before being drowned," I said.
"I killed him, yes, I admit it.  I cut his throat and let him bleed, I tried to make it quick.  I thought for sure he was dead, and I went to get the blocks I was to tie to his legs before submerging him.  That way, his body would not float to the surface, you see," he said.  I nodded.
"When I got back a few minutes later, he stood up.  His blood was all over the floor, he was covered in it, but he was standing, and he was angry.  I kept cutting him and he kept attacking me, until I pushed him into the river and ran away.  I swear to you, he was dead when I did that," he said to me.
"And did you steal the body out of the morgue?  Was that part of the contract?" I asked.
"I did no such thing, perhaps the mob did that to keep ends from being loose, but it was not me," he said.
"Hmm," I said, putting my hoof to my chin.  This all fit with what Cadence had told me, somehow, but I was still missing any sort of motive.  I'd have to let her figure the rest out.
"I take it you do not believe me?" he said.
"I do, and you've been very helpful.  I suppose your reward will be walking free from here," I said.  He looked confused.
"You would have turned me in?" he asked.
"You're a murderer, no matter whose face you wear, but I can forgive it for extenuating circumstances.  My only requirement is that you take your singer friend out of town, someplace safe.  This can't keep going on," I said.  He nodded.
"I have a plan, but I need to do some things first.  You will see, there will be no more Hector here or anywhere," he said, practically begging me to believe him.  It was only his lot in life to be a liar, even if he didn't want to be one.  Changelings, I had thought they went extinct.
I returned to my hotel room to find everything in order, with Twilight asleep in bed and nothing out of place.  With no time to lose, I composed a letter to Cadence and sent it off, hoping that it was enough.  It was all on her now, and time for me to return to being Princess Celestia.
> Chapter 17
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	It was an uncharacteristically hot day as I laid down on a cloud, relaxing and soaking up the sun.  This was one of the few remaining hot days before the winter came, but in Los Pegasus, it's always hot, or at least warm.  It doesn't snow, even on the ground, but the cloud layer always stays balmy and warm due to some moisture lensing effect the twins would probably know about.  Fluttershy, Labamba, and Rainbow were playing with one another in the small lot in front of our house while I lounged and watched, left alone to my thoughts.  I saw a grey-colored mare wearing a mailpony's outfit swoop down from the sky and land just across from us, checking something on a clipboard.  She walked around the fillies and over to me as I eyed her.
"Package for Miamore?" she said.  I couldn't see her face too well under the huge sunglasses she wore, but she seemed to be looking past me.
"I'll sign for it," I said.
"Sign here," she said, extending out the clipboard with a pen hanging from a string.  I grabbed it and signed, then she flipped a page on the board.
"And here," she said.  I signed it.
"And here," she said, pointing further down the page.  I signed that too.
"And here," she said again.  I signed the damn thing again.
She paused.
"And here," she said.  I signed it and she dropped the package in my lap, flying off without another word.
The package had been sent from one Victoria Petalfeather, though Tia hadn't told me to be expecting anything in a letter recently.  I went inside before opening it up for privacy reasons, with the door closed firmly behind me, I tore it open to reveal a box with a letter attached.
The letter revealed everything she had learned from an investigation in Stalliongrad, nothing particularly different except the age of the victim and the fact that the body wasn't recovered.  That had been our last lead.
I sighed and opened the box to reveal the same Ziristone artifact I had sent to Celestia some time ago.  It looked the same as ever, that curious black shape with green trim that changed should you glance away, even for a moment.
Her letter explained that she hadn't figured out anything more about it, and that she was sending it back to me, as she was at a total loss for what to do.  That didn't encourage me at all, for I was in the same sinking boat.  I left it in the box for a moment and tried to gather my thoughts, I wasn't going to get any more evidence, and I had to do something before the monster struck again.
I had figured at least a few parts out, but there was something crucial missing:  the motive.  Why?  The faceless ones had always just brutally attacked everything they came in contact with, and through sheer strength overcame us.  These new ones were every bit as powerful but no longer willing to attack except against the vulnerable and defenseless.  Why?  It made no sense, to have power and not to use it.
My gaze shifted over to the artifact again, a haze surrounded it as the green substance danced over its surface.  It must be related, after all, I had pulled it from the body of one of these villains, but it seemed insane to shove a magic-absorbing rock inside them.  Then again, according to Celestia, the rock was 'full' and couldn't absorb any more magic, so what was the point?  Was it like a kidney stone?
As Squeaky would always say, if you know what you have, think about what you don't have.   But that only left me with motive, and I couldn't guess at that.  Then she'd laugh at me and tell me to stop thinking so narrowly, and that it's not meant to be taken literally.  So I thought about what I didn't have.
Reports, that was one thing.  I didn't know how long the attacks had been going on, and we had a total of three official reports and one unofficial one, with the body count at seven.  In addition, there was some correlation of outbreaks and attacks, so I could presume there were more bodies out there, undiscovered.  Imagine that, lurking out in some dark corner of Equestria was a mutilated corpse, ready to attack an unfortunate traveler.
Except the reports of that hadn't happened, that would be something we'd know about.  Instead, it was like these walking bodies fell of the face of the earth.  They must be going somewhere, but where?
Wait.
Oh my.
I felt like whacking myself on the head for my idiocy, why hadn't I seen it sooner?  Ten-thousand years ago, we defeated the greatest threat the universe has ever known, and bound it deep within the earth.  We felt that the binding was not enough by itself, and also encased it with as much magic-absorbing Ziristone rock as we could, to prevent its influence from leaking out, yet leak it did.  That this artifact was probably from that same seal was very likely, given the rarity of the rock, but some random miner who didn't care about his personal safety could have extracted it.  What I hadn't thought of was what would happen to an absorptive rock if you left it for ten-thousand years, absorbing something.  Eventually, it was going to fill up.
The green markings now made more sense, as this rock was probably filled to the brim with magical energy derived from our ancestral enemy, corrupting it so utterly as to make it dangerous even for a pony to touch.  Evidently I was immune, or perhaps just lucky, but that was besides the point.  The faceless ones could still not breach the seal, but now they didn't have to, there was a way for their influence to spread beyond it in the form of these rocks.
I didn't know what the Boogeypony was, but if I was right, then - well, I did not want to be right.  I reasoned that, lacking bodies of their own, they had sent out a creature to get them bodies.  To bring them back and implant them with these rocks, and then to shape and twist them into the familiar nightmares I had faced so many times.  For all I knew there was an army of these things, a new and more powerful breed of nightmare that I could not sense and could not see with my vision, waiting somewhere in Equestria for its chance to overrun us.
Correct.
"Who said that?" I asked, looking around.  The room was empty.  I looked outside to see Fluttershy riding Labamba around while Rainbow practiced aerial somersaults, clearly they had not said anything.
I went back inside, believing I had imagined it, and put my face close to the rock.  I couldn't feel any disturbance, something about the rock itself must have been disrupting my senses, but I could still think, I could still outsmart these things.  I held the rock up.  Who the hell are you?
Fear.
The voice came again, deep and from everywhere at once.  It was not a spoken word, it was felt, like the bones of your body vibrating to create the tone.  Was it the rock?  Was it talking to me?
Despair.
I wanted to slap myself for the second time that day, for being so stupid.  The answer was right here, because if this rock could absorb evil thoughts, it could absorb good ones too.  It could hear me as I thought next to it, and I hadn't had the presence of mind to even try that earlier.  If only I had relied on myself instead of getting Celestia to do it, maybe I could have saved those fillies.
The rock didn't say anything this time, but I swear I heard something giggling nearby.  I spun around quickly, but the room was still quiet, the occasional laugh coming from the three friends playing outside.  It was not them I heard, because I had heard that laugh before.
It came again, louder, but I could see nothing around me that would be causing it.  I ran into my room and grabbed my blade before barging back into the living room.  I wasn't sure how this worked, but I wasn't going to be unprepared like Gazzo had.  I owed him that honor for his sacrifice.
No sooner had I thought that then the laughing got louder, responding to my confidence by mocking me.  It had no body, but it didn't need one, because why would it?  It could destroy me through cruel mockery, I was incompetent and foolish and I knew it, and the guilt was mine alone.
No!  Listen you stupid rock, I'm going to make you wish you had never crawled out of that dank pit you called home.  I'll drag you back to hell myself and cast you in with your creator to rot for the rest of eternity, you hear me?  I'm not afraid of you!
The laughter stopped, replaced by silence.
	Come to the water treatment plant.  You'll see.
The rock sat on the floor, I had not touched it, yet I could see it start to vibrate.  It shook and shuddered in place, practically bouncing off the ground as I stepped back, unsure.  The green covering retreated within and then the rock stopped, sitting in place as a black ball.  I saw the top of the rock form a crack that propagated in and all around, an the rock disassembled itself before my eyes.  It left only a few shards of black clay on the floor.
The door flung open and Minty and Squeaky came charging through.
"Cadence!  Time to go, are you ready?" Squeaky asked me, as I turned around, bewildered.
"Time to go where?  Ready for what?" I asked.  Minty sighed.
"We have to go pick up Gabby at the depot and then head to the science fair," she said, shaking her head, "don't tell me you forgot."
"That's today?" I had forgotten.
They walked past me into their rooms and emerged a moment later with thick white lab coats on.  Minty was wearing goggles by Squeaky wasn't.
"Most of my stuff is already there, we can just take the luggage with us," Minty said, and the two walked side by side, forcing me out the door by giving me no room to go around them.
"Are you coming to the science fair?" Squeaky asked the fillies out in the yard.  Rainbow kept on flying around, ignoring them, but Fluttershy seemed able to speak.
"Mister Labamba says he's busy," she said.
I decided to not wonder what else a flamingo would have to do that day.
"And what about you two?" I asked.
"A science fair?  Puh-lease, I wouldn't be caught dead there," Rainbow said, taking a break from her stunts.
"I'm gonna show off the rocket you know, this is the big day," Minty said with a wink.  Rainbow grabbed Fluttershy by the tail and carried her up in the air, nodding at us with pink hair stuck in her mouth.  Fluttershy let out a peep but didn't say anything, so I guessed they were going.
While I needed to check out the water treatment plant, and badly, I also would never lose the twins since they'd just assume I was shirking on bag carrying duty.  We made it to the air-bus depot in record time and stood around for about ten minutes waiting for Gabby's taxi to show up.
At first, I thought the six-seater cart was empty when it arrived, carried by a very disinterested looking mare, but after it landed, Gabby stuck her head up and looked around for us.  She then whacked something next to her and one of her band members looked up as well.
She looked just like she had last I had seen her, still tall, still imposing, but some of her edge was dulled by the oversized parachute she had strapped to her back and the ill-fitting shoes she was wearing.  Minty stifled a giggle as Squeaky threatened her with her hoof, a warning not to make fun of Gabby.
"Can you guys make it to the set by yourselves?" she asked as she disembarked, a suitcase plopped onto the cloud as another pony stood up.
"Yeah yeah, we're cool.  Cool," he said, though he seemed dizzy from the way he was slurring and repeating himself.
"Are they okay?" I asked as our party approached Gabby.
"They stayed up all last night partying, I'm amazed he can form words at this point," she said, turning to us.  She closed the distance and gave me a big hug, out of nowhere, and whispered in my ear, "Don't let me fall or I'll kill you."
"Missed you too Gabs," I said.
"So, science fair, parade, concert, home?  Is that the plan?" she said, picking up her suitcase in her mouth.  Squeaky walked over and took it, placing it on her back to carry, as Gabby's was occupied by a parachute.
"Yeah that's the plan, I think," I said.
"She forgot all about it," Minty said, doing her best to taunt me.  Evidently Minty couldn't tell I had other things on my mind.
"Whatever, what's with the kids?" Gabby asked.
"We're not kids!" Rainbow protested, but given that Gabby was ten times her size, she quieted down as Gabby puffed out her chest.
"Don't mess with me and we'll get along great, shorty," Gabby said to Rainbow.  I couldn't tell if that slighted her or not, as Rainbow was trying to size up the giantess standing before her.  Gabby was probably the tallest pony she'd ever seen, after all.  Wait 'til she gets a load of my sister.
We started off after Gabby pulled out a guitar and an amplifier from the luggage compartment and dumped them on our backs.  The guitar fit snugly under my scabbard, I was still carrying my sword openly in public, but I had a cadet's badge on the strap so nopony really cared.
Gabby regaled us with the tales of her exploits with this band of hers, Neon Bludgeon, and how they were constantly getting into trouble with the law, skipping town without paying debts, and getting into drunken fights all the time.  It was her job to at least keep the guard from hunting them down, and to get them safely between events.  Her face told the rest of the story, wrinkles and crow's feet had started to creep in.
"So I've noticed you're not scared of heights anymore, what happened?" Minty asked as we walked along.  Rainbow was hovering while the rest of us walked, I don't think she felt all right if she wasn't airborne.
"First, you shut up about that, yeah?  Second, I had to help with a concert in Cloudsdale last month," she answered, "Terrible city, full of awful ponies."
"What's so terrible about it?" I asked.
"They don't give a fig about easy access laws, I had to get a friend to carry me just to get between our hotel and the concert venue two blocks away.  Ridiculous," she said.
"Well you'll love the science center, it's all stone, right downtown.  It's like being in Canterlot," Squeaky said.
"Oh crap!" Minty suddenly shouted, and we all stopped and looked at her.
She quickly looked at the rest of us before settling on me, the least heavily weighed down.
"Cadence, I left some, uh, tags back at the house.  Can you go grab them for me and meet us down town?" she asked quickly.
"Sure sure, what do they look like?" I asked.
"They're these little brown things with strings on them, in my room.  You gotta get them before they cut the ribbon or I'm totally screwed," she said.
"Parade doesn't start for two hours, Minty, you'll be fine," Squeaky said, but Minty still looked like a panic was inches away.
I let the rest of them keep on walking towards the center of town while I flew off back to our house, moving at twenty times the speed.  Gabby could probably keep up if she was running, but walking was so much slower than flying otherwise.  Then again, it's hard to chat when you're flying, so it's not all good.
When I arrived at the house, I found Midnight standing in front of the door, looking awkward.  She looked up as I arrived, then back to the house, then back to me.
"Wait, you're out here?  Then who's in there?" she asked as I approached.
"A burglar probably," I said jokingly, but Midnight looked ready for a fight.  I unlocked the door and walked inside.
A pink flamingo sat in the living room, surrounded by ducks.  In front of each duck was a set of playing cards, and there were poker chips scattered about.  As I entered, every set of eyes in the room turned to me, and for a moment, we simply met each other's gaze, before hell broke loose.
Midnight had walked in behind me, wearing her recently-acquired private's badge.  For all those arrayed before us, she must have looked exactly like an off duty guardspony, and the jig was now officially up.  Labamba stood up abruptly, and as soon as he did, every duck decided it was time to make a run for it.
Feathers flew, quacking became deafening, and I learned exactly what it looks like when a flock of birds all panic at once.  The ducks ran in every direction, bumping into walls, each other, and a few bumped into me.  One or two made for the door during the chaos, another genius figured out there was a window in the kitchen and flew out of it, but most of them just ran around scattering poker chips and cards all over the house.  Labamba stood motionless in the center, looking at me as I looked at him, as the crowd of ducks thinned itself as they slowly made their way out of the house.
Finally, it was just him and me.
"Were you... hustling ducks at cards?" I asked him.  He squawked.
"I don't care what you do in your spare time, just have this cleaned up by the time we get back and I won't tell Minty," I said.  Labamba squawked again and flared up his wings, while Midnight and I went into Minty's room to fetch the tags she had left on her bed.  They looked a lot like tea-bags, a little brown pouch held something metallic and was attached to a small bit of carved wood by a piece of string.  Evidently they were important for Minty's rocket project, but I couldn't say why.
Midnight and I left wordlessly as Labamba was cleaning up the living room.
"What was that all about?  Why are you carrying a guitar?" she asked me as soon as we had left the house.  I stood in the yard but I didn't want to take off quite yet.
"How about you answer my questions, namely, what are you doing here?" I asked her.
"I was gonna ask if I could skip patrol tonight," she said sheepishly.
"Going to a concert or something?" I asked her, she looked away.
"I kind of have a... date," she said.
When she said that, I got a crazy idea.  She was here, right now, with me.  She had her weapon with her, as she was required to carry it as long as she had her badge on.  I had my weapon, and we had quite a lot of time to get these tags downtown.
"All right, we'll go on patrol now so you can go on your date later," I said.  She lightened up and a smile came across her face.
"Thanks!  But where are we going to sweep in the middle of the day?" she asked.
"The water treatment plant, do you know where it is?"
> Chapter 18
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	"So, when did they give you that badge?" I asked Midnight as we flew towards the far northern side of the city.  I knew she had it around a week ago, but she hadn't been wearing it at all, just her beat-up old cadet's shirt.
"About two weeks ago, but I'm still technically on probation, because of the school thing," she said.
"You just needed weapons training, and that was it?" I asked.
"Yep, couldn't get it in Ponyville.  I think that's the plant up there," she said, as the clouds parted and we saw a series of pure white buildings with huge circular tanks in them.  There were about a dozen tanks sitting on one end of the cloud the buildings were on, with huge pipes connecting them to something in the main complex.  I could also make out a loading dock, with a number of clouds attached to the floatstone by tether cables, probably for processing.
As we approached, the only thing I could hear was the gentle whisper of the wind, no talking.  I couldn't see any ponies going about their business down there either, the plant was probably deserted because today was a holiday.  There were probably a few ponies inside, a skeleton crew to keep things running, but the rest were likely going to watch the parade downtown.
We landed on the side nearest the loading dock, the cloud pieces casting long shadows as the Sun started going down earlier and earlier each day.  Winter would be upon us very soon, there was a mild chill in the air now, where it had been hot hours before.
"Why'd you pick this creepy place?" Midnight asked me as I ambled over to a sign marked, "Warning, hardhat area ahead!".
"Call it a hunch," I said.  I pushed on the door but it was locked.  Nothing stays locked for long, not to the mighty Princess Amoria!
I was about to smash the door open, because that would have been dramatic and made me look like an action hero, when Midnight walked up and pulled on it.  She gave me a disapproving look as it opened, because it was a pull door and not a push.  I'm an idiot, I admit it.
Inside, all the lights were off, but fortunately, the lack of any observers meant I could use a light spell and get away with it.  My light was a pale glow amongst the darkened corridors, I tried to dampen it but it was difficult to control.  With a bit of effort I got the light to be just as intense, but more focused, like a flashlight, and that was about as good as I was going to get it.
We padded down the corridors, aimlessly.  Midnight looked bored, but I was on edge, because I knew there was something here, I just didn't know what.  Perhaps we were meant to find another body, as a taunt, but no matter, I needed to be ready.
Suddenly I heard the sound of somepony walking, and fairly close to us.  It was odd, because I hadn't heard them walking at a distance, nor could I see their light from around the corner.  It was peculiar, and I instinctively cancelled my light spell.	
"Hey, what'd you do that for?" Midnight whispered to me.  It was almost pitch black as I heard the hoof-falls get closer.  There were definitely not a lantern present, whoever it was could see in the dark, and I realized that we would not be hidden by blackness.
"In here, quick!" I hissed, picking a spot where I knew there was a door, a few inches away.  I tapped it and it opened, though I could not see it, and I had no idea what had been on the other side.  I hadn't checked the door's label before I turned the light off.
My eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom, but I could still only see the outlines of things.  I closed the door as quietly as I could and tapped Midnight on the shoulder so I knew where she was.  "Quiet," I said in the lowest whisper I could muster.  She said nothing.
The air grew thick around us as we waited in what was probably a broom closet, though just large enough for us both to stand.  I heard the hoofsteps get closer and closer, until they seemed to be standing just on the other side of the door.  I heard Midnight hold her breath, and I did so myself, and the total silence around us reminded me again of what Squeaky would always say:  What was not happening?
Breathing.  Midnight and I weren't breathing, but I should have been able to hear it on the other side of the door.  I couldn't, whatever it was wasn't breathing.
I held my breath for close to a minute before I heard the steps continue down the hallway, and we waited for far longer before I pushed open the door and dared to step out.  Nothing reacted, and I cast my light spell again.  The hall was empty, Midnight stepped past me and kept going down the corridor with me following just behind.  Clearly this was no time for conversation, and her face no longer betrayed boredom.
I didn't know where we were going or what we were looking for, but now I knew there was something here.  We wandered around the building, aimlessly checking corridors all marked for the storage of various machines I could only guess at, before we happened upon a set of offices.  Names marked in wood adorned the doors, which had opaque glass covers.  I was drawn to what I thought was the faint orange glow of a lantern behind one of the doors, as we got closer I was reminded of what had happened earlier in the basement, so I drew my sword to prepare for the worst.
The glow was coming from inside an office, but the light was too low to make out what the name on the door was, as I cancelled my spell to avoid giving us away.  I nodded to the outline of Midnight as we took up positions on either side of the door, and counted to three quietly.
On the count of three, we burst into the room, Midnight slamming the door open and I, leaping in with blade drawn.
Inside was a very bewildered old pony looking at pieces of paper on the desk, no doubt terrified at the two armed mares suddenly in his office.
"Wha-who are you?" he asked, and in the dim light I could only see his mouth and the very edges of his face.
"I'm asking the questions around here!  Who are you?" I asked back.
"All right, you've got me.  My name is Eddy, and I broke in.  No need to get violent, I'll come quietly," he said, and as he did, he moved into the light and I could see his face.  He wasn't lying, it was certainly him.
"Midnight, open that skylight," I said.  Had Eddy been the murderer?  After all, he had been present both before and after my basement encounter, and being staff at the school meant he'd have access to every victim.  Perhaps I was wrong, maybe he just looked like Erdrick.  One way to find out.
Midnight opened the skylight and let what was left of the evening Sun into the office.  The illumination showed me with my very-much visible horn.
Eddy didn't speak, his eyes went wide and he just stared at me in disbelief.  Some time elapsed before he spoke again, and his voice now betrayed his true accent again.
"Princess, but how can sis be?"  he asked, then he coughed.  "Did you find a cure for aging?  If so, please tell me se secret."
"Sorry to do this to you Erdrick, but I had to make sure I could trust you.  Why are you here?  What's your connection to all this?" I asked.
"Do you two know each other?" Midnight asked as she landed and shut the door behind us.
"You could say sat, yes," Erdrick said, "Take a look at sis."
He pointed to the paper that sat before him on the desk, and spun it around so I could look at it.  It was an inventory list, an invoice of various chemicals they purchased for use at the plant, but it didn't look out of place to me.  Chlorine, fluorine, calcium, bromine, tellurium, these were all just names to me, I had no idea what they meant.
"So, is this unusual?" I asked.
"I have been on sis trail for a very long time, and I can tell you it is very unusual.  Look at sis, five-hundred tons of ground up apatite, is sat not far too much for sis place?" he asked me.
Midnight spoke up, "That sounds like a lot, but that's for the whole city.  Maybe that's not so much?" she asked.
"Maybe, but according to sese records, sere was no apatite in use before a year ago.  Suddenly, see plant gets a new administrator, and sese orders start, yes?  And sis administrator, he comes from out of town, to replace the old one," Erdrick said.
"What happened to the old one?" I asked.
He shrugged.  "Vanished," he said.
"Furzer, see see company sat it comes from?" he pointed at another invoice, with labels for the various chemicals and numbers of bits, probably corresponding to how much they cost.  The label next to the apatite read, "TB Industries".
"Am I supposed to know what that means?" I asked him.  He shook his head.
"Sey are a front, Princess, please believe me.  See ponies who do this, I have known of them for decades, and always they do strange things I cannot explain.  Sey hide semselves, too, but why?  Nosing illegal, but still hidden.  Sis time, they are doing somesing to see water," he said.  Midnight gasped.
"I knew it!" she practically shouted.  I waved a hoof at her to quiet her down, and she checked the hallway through the glass on the door.  No movement.
I hadn't even heard of this, any of this.  How long had Erdrick been doing this?  Since I met him?  Earlier?  How was all of this connected?
Just then, a little bell sound played from somewhere, it carried through the entire building.  I looked up to see a speaker nestled in the corner of the room, an intercom, though I hadn't noticed any others in the dark.  This was a very modern building to be hooked up as such, those are expensive, as I recall.  The bell sound played again, lower this time, with a crackling sound of interference underneath it.
A voice spoke, though I had never heard it before.
"Could Princess Amoria and her little fan club please report to filtering station three?  Amoria to filtering station three. please," the voice said.  The intercom went silent again.
"See building is supposed to be empty for see holiday..." Erdrick muttered.
With no further need to hide, the three of us made our way down to the filtering station.  It was easy to find, as there were signs on the walls with arrows that lead us to it.  The station was one of the large buildings I had seen from the air, circular with a big vat of water in the middle and pipes leading in and out.  When we entered, I noticed the skylight had been opened, whereas it hadn't been when we were coming in.
A quick recon showed the room to be empty, certainly no ponies inside, but I remained on edge.  Whoever was doing this knew we were here, and could well have set a trap for us.
Erdrick, despite his advanced age, was as spry as a young buck, and flew up onto the catwalk that ran over the vat in the center.  I followed, and I got a good look at the room as I did.
There was a catwalk made of steel with railings that ran around and over the vat, as well as a lifting crane on one side.  Next to the crane were a number of bags with chemical labels on them, no doubt they were too heavy to hoist and needed the crane to get them into the vats.  There was a control room in one corner which had no ground entrance, perhaps the regulators hadn't bothered to make it earth-pony accessable since this was an industrial area.
Erdrick looked around on the catwalk, and surveyed the water as well, but it looked like normal water to me.  He then took interest in the control room and flew over to it, while I went down to check the chemical bags as Midnight had taken an interest in them.
"What's in these bags?" I asked her, she was studying them closely.
"This is that apatite stuff, it's a fine white powder," she said.  Some had spilled on the floor next to it.
Suddenly the vat started making a loud whirring noise, and it was so loud it became impossible to talk.  Midnight followed my lead as we flew up to the control room to see Erdrick looking dumbfounded at the levers and switches.  The din was just dampened enough that I could yell at him and still be understood.
"What did you do?  Turn that off!" I shouted.  He shrugged.
"I touched nosing, it did sis by itself!" he shouted back.
"Look!" Midnight shouted, and poked me in the head.  All three of us turned to look out the interior window of the control room, giving us a view of the top of the vat, as a pony clad in a white labcoat walked out onto the catwalk.  I hadn't seen him come in, nor had I seen him before.
He turned to us and smiled, and as he did, the machine stopped for a moment and the room became quiet again.  He then spoke, but it was not a stallion's voice, but a mare's.  Very low, but still definitely not his own voice.
"Princess, and what a surprise, Erdrick!  So glad you could find out all about my plan just in time to fail to stop it," he/she said.  The grin came back, as I struggled to place the voice he was speaking in.  I had heard it before somewhere...
"Look at his eyes," Midnight said.  I did as she asked.  They were unfocused, like he wasn't actually looking at us, just looking in our general direction.
"Who are you?  What plan?" I shouted out the window at him.  He just kept smiling, as the machines whirred to life again and the room became deafening.
He looked down into the vat, then back up at us one last time, before pitching himself over the side.
In an instant, I had bolted out the door and flew atop the vat, but I was far too late.  The machines in here were some sort of stirring device, using a metallic net to move the water around.  I could also see a tube connected to the feeding device at the top of the vat, and I guessed that the chemicals were fed into the water and stirred into it here.  As a result of these enormous mechanisms, the pony's body had been destroyed utterly, it was like he had been ground into powder and dissolved in the water.  I couldn't even make out any bones, it was like he had been made of fluid.
And with that, I had finally deduced the Boogeypony's plan, just in time to fail to stop it.
> Chapter 19
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	I didn't even know what to do or how to do it at this point, but I knew I had to do something.  My instincts were yelling at me to rescue my friends and escape, to grab them and fly out of town as fast as we could, but I couldn't just abandon all the ponies of Los Pegasus.  Whatever was going to happen was certainly going to happen soon, or else we'd not have been let in on this plan.  Right now, the murderer was taunting us.  It was convinced it had won.
"Did sat voice seem familiar to you?" Erdrick asked Midnight, and she shrugged.
"Could have been anypony.  Princess, what do we do now?" she asked me.
I thought for a moment, running through all the variables and possibilities.  If my theory was right, everypony in town was probably already infected, and I wouldn't have been able to tell even if I were right next to them.
"Midnight, are you feeling okay?" I asked her.
"Same as ever.  You don't think -" she started.  I nodded.
"... What if this creature spiked the water supply with corpses, like those of the fillies we fought?" I asked her.
"Vat vould sat accomplish, besides being disgusting?" Erdrick asked me.
"Wouldn't that make everypony really sick?" Midnight offered, but I had thought of that.
"Not immediately.  If I'm right, then this creature can manipulate the muscles of a body as long as it has some sort of contact with that fluid.  So, if everypony drank it..." I said, trailing off.
"Ew, gross.  I totally don't want to end up like that," Midnight said, shivering. Erdrick was lost in thought.
"Sen vhy has sis not happened yet?  If it can control see whole town, vhy not do it?" he asked.
I made a leap of logic, right then.
"Glory!  It's taunting us, it wants to make a big impact all across Equestria!  And what'd be the perfect time to do that?" I asked grimly.
"Tax Break!" Erdrick shouted.  Midnight and I looked at him, confused.
"Sat vas see voice I heard, vasn't it?" he asked us, referring to the voice on that the pony had spoken in.  I admit, it sounded quite similar.
"She is scheduled to give a speech at see ceremony sis evening, ve have no time!" he shouted, and before I could say anything more, he ran out the door and flew out through the skylight, leaving Midnight and I dazed.
"Now what do we do?"  Midnight asked me.
"Evacuate?  I don't want to have to butcher the entire town if I can avoid it.  Perhaps the control has some sort of distance limit, and we could get everypony outside of it?" I theorized.  It was desperate, and could backfire easily.
"Yeah, or we'd just wind up spreading infected ponies all across the country," she said.
"Whatever we do, we're not doing it here.  We need to get downtown," I said, and the both of us ran from the control room to follow Erdrick out the opening in the roof.

The Science Center was three blocks diagonally away from the ribbon ceremony where the parade was to start, though its route went right outside it.  As we flew towards the center of town, I could see great crowds lining the streets, all the way along the parade route, right up to the Science Center.  I sent Midnight ahead to try to warn the twins, maybe she could save them in time, or at least get Gabby someplace safe.  I didn't want to think about having to cut them to pieces if I couldn't save them...
As expected, Tax Break and a bunch of other business-dressed ponies were standing on a stage which had been erected in front of the ribbon.  A crowd, larger than the rest, had gathered to hear a speech which was due to begin any minute now, and I banked downwards towards the stage at full speed.
I landed right on the stage, and none of the security ponies made any effort to stop me, as I realized my horn was still showing.  I didn't care, I didn't need my disguise anymore, I had to stop Tax Break.  She trotted over to greet me, and I noticed she didn't have a parachute on like she usually did.
"Princess Amoria!  I'm so glad you could make it," she said, with a familiar grin on her face.  Now that I heard her again, now that I saw her smiling like that, there was no doubt in my mind hers had been the voice I heard.
"All right, whatever your plan was, I'm here to stop it," I said, as I stood up and drew my sword.  The crowd seemed to think this was some sort of a show, and began to applaud.
"My dear Princess, if you could stop it, then I wouldn't have told you about it," she said, as she waved her hoof to indicate the gathered crowd, "and even if you did, what about all of them?  I hope you've figured it out, I'd hate to have to explain it."
"Some sick mind control poison, or maybe something worse, and you tricked everypony into drinking it," I said, snarling.  I hefted the sword to threaten her, but she was as calm as ever.
"Close enough, though it's much better than a mind control agent.  No, this is what I came up with to deal with you and your talents.  You see, I've been planning this for a while," she said.
"How long?" I asked.
"Decades," she answered.
"Just who the hell are you?" I asked.  I figured maybe I could stall her long enough for Midnight to get away, or maybe just long enough to think of something else.
"Well you call me Tax Break, but that's just one of the many faces I wear.  Perhaps you'd like to call me General?" she said.
"We took care of all of you.  Discord, the Windigoes, everyone.  Try again," I said, calling her bluff.
"No no, not like that.  You see, I am not like they were, I am not weak.  I am hewn from the perfect form of my master, I can assume any form I so desire, I am without vulnerability.  I am the General of its armies, and unless you've got some compelling reason why I should keep taunting you, I'd like to bring my plan to fruition," she said.
"Here's a compelling reason!" I shouted, and quickly brought my sword down to cleave her head in two.  The flesh split apart like it had been made of butter and the two sides hung in the air as the crowd gasped.  The entire city went silent.
Her head started to reform itself, in under five seconds she had reformed her face into a scowl.
"You're dumber than I thought, did I waste my time trying to outmaneuver your intellect?  No matter, it begins, now!" she shouted.
And with that, a wave of darkness rippled through the air around her.  It was like reality was being warped as a pond is when a rock is thrown into it, and everywhere that wave touched, the ponies who felt it began to change.
It was not as I had feared, though, for while it was still terrible, it was reversible, at least that's what my instincts told me.  Whatever jamming field General had been using had been broken, and I could sense every single pony who was affected in the entire city.  It was nearly all of them, a few visitors were still clean, that was about all.  It was like I was surrounded by an army of enemies, and then the screaming began.
The ponies were not under General's direct control, but rather began to attack one another, and the buildings around them.  Perhaps there was not enough agent in them, or perhaps that had never been the plan, but regardless, the entire city was now descending into madness.  Their eyes became unfocused, their coats became grey and they screamed, oh how they screamed.  A terrible din that would only stop as they began to strike one another, desperately destroying everypony near them.
General began laughing, in exactly the same tone I had heard in the basement.  He, she, it, it was everywhere.  Every pony was a plaything for it, every pony an amplifier for that maniacal laughter.  As I looked back at the body of Tax Break, it had begun to show its true form, a great beast made of blackness whose weight crushed the stage beneath us.
I leaped back and took to the air, as the creature began to get larger and larger.  The screaming didn't stop, it got louder as the creature continued to expand.  First, it was the size of the stage, now the size of a building, now two.  It was huge, impossibly huge, and what could I do to stop it?  It melted its legs back into its body and sprung enormous tentacles out, each larger than a tree, and simply leveled the building that was next to the stage.  I don't know if any ponies were in it, and I could do nothing to have helped them.  Totally powerless.  I ran.
I flew towards the Science Center, all thoughts of fighting back erased completely.  I had to get out of here, grab what could be saved and flee, tail between my legs.  Totally outplayed, and now so many were going to suffer for it.  What a failure I was.
The Center was in chaos just like the rest of the city, though the residents kept their battle on the ground, thankfully.  The streets were a throng of ponies assaulting one another as I landed on a balcony and kicked open the glass doors within.
Surprisingly, the inside of the building was relatively clear.  I guessed most of the ponies had been outside to get spots to watch the parade, there were a few unconscious ponies laying on the floor.  Fairly close to the middle, stood Gabby, protecting Rainbow and Fluttershy as another pony in a lab coat screamed and charged at her.  Midnight appeared from behind a divider with Minty and Squeaky behind her, as Gabby spun around and bucked at just the right time, catching the pony in the chin.  He fell over and struggled to stand up, as Gabby recognized me and tried to decide what to do.
She bent down near the pony and grasped his foreleg in hers, and then twisted and pulled until I heard a distinct snapping sound.  The pony made no further attempts to stand up, it seemed he had passed out from the pain.
"Cadence, what the hell is going on?" she yelled at me.
"I really screwed up, really, really, really screwed up!  This is all my fault," I shouted back as I ran up to them.
"What?  How?" she shouted, as I noticed that my friends were all right.  Perhaps they had been unaffected due to our having to install a local faucet, I guessed, though the fillies should have shown a reaction.  Perhaps they had been flushed out over time,  I didn't exactly have time to interview them.
"Princess, are you here?" I heard a pony shout from the balcony I had come in on.  There, standing before me, was Erdrick again, except this time he was wearing a Wonderbolts uniform, complete with goggles.  The familiar blue with yellow lightning trim, that was the uniform his team had given him when he retired.
"Erdrick!  Come on, help me carry Gabby out of here," I shouted, but he shook his head.
"I am so sorry, I failed you.  My followers were just as vulnerable as any, and I did not realize it in time.  Now, sey have only compounded the problem, and I can do nothing but watch as my city is destroyed," he said.
"Soon, sere will be novhere left to run, sis creature has an army greater than any see vorld has ever seen.  My whole life has been a vaste," he said.  He hung his head, and though his goggles were too opaque to see behind, I could see the drops of water on the bottom that betrayed his tears.
Gabby spoke up, "Oh will you quit crying?  So the entire city is in the middle of a death match, it's not the end of the world."
"I believe sat it literally is the end of the vorld, miss,"  Erdrick said.
"No it isn't, because we're still here, and as long as we don't give up, we haven't lost!" she said.  She seemed sure of herself, but nopony else did.  I wondered how long we had left.
"Cadence, we can handle ponies, but what was that about a monster?" Gabby asked me.
"Tax Break, she was one of them, the whole time," I said.  Erdrick shook his head, I hung mine.
"She's mutated into something huge, a creature the size of a tower.  Not even an dragon would have a chance against it," I said.
"Who said anything about a dragon?  You've got me, I'll go straighten it out," Gabby said.
Seeing Gabby refusing to give up was kindling hope deep within me, I felt like if I could go down fighting I'd not have wasted my time.  Perhaps I could find something important out and pass it along to Celestia, maybe we weren't defeated yet.
"Go and recon it, we'll stay here and keep everypony safe.  Dark lady, help me barricade these doors!" she shouted at Midnight, and the two of them started grabbing furniture and walling up the Center's other doorways.
"Allow me to accompany you," Erdrick said, and we made out way to the balcony.  It was a street level balcony, we were only a hair's length away from the roiling brawl but the madness had evidently made the combatants forget they could fly.  It was a sea of fighting hooves, heads, tails and manes,  I could scarcely see any individuals in the chaos.
We took off again and flew high above the city, to get a better look at the monster who was gleefully smashing buildings.  It was methodical, it had leveled half a block now but seemed to be taking care not to crush any ponies.  Perhaps it intended to unleash them on another city later, or perhaps it would turn them into a proper army for its faceless followers, by absorbing their bodies.  In either case, the civilians were a peculiar kind of safe for now, we needed to stop the damn thing from destroying the city itself.
I swooped closer to get a better look, but the beast looked just like the many other faceless ones I had encountered.  It was black, a roiling mud-like substance made up its body as hints of green crystals could be seen periodically on its body.  The night would be its natural camouflage and I didn't think the city would last until the morning, nor could we try to fight it until then.  I had no time to beg Celestia to keep the sun up either, for I'd never find something to write a letter on in time, we had barely half an hour.
Hope had been dying as I sized up the creature, but something inside me said to keep trying, keep thinking.  Erdrick flew closer as I stayed back and thought, I noticed the creature's tentacles tried to swat him out of the sky but he expertly dodged around it.  Still, one bad dodge and he'd be done for.  He was unable to find any weaknesses in its body, and flew back up to me with a dejected look on his face.
"Vat veak point could sis sing have?" he asked me.
"I've fought these before, but they don't have a weakness.  You just slice them up until they cannot be sliced anymore, they're like putty," I said.
"If it vas made of putty sen it could not stand up like sis," he said.
It occurred to me that maybe this creature only resembled the faceless ones of old.  I had a hunch, so I closed my eyes and concentrated.
The other world was in complete chaos, a million orbs of light with the black corruption staining them, the connections between them flowing wildly around.  I'd never be able to clean them off in time, hell, I'd have a hard enough time cleaning one off with it fighting the way it was.  But, that wasn't what intrigued me.
Deep within the creatures body was another stone, a Ziristone ball just like the one I had found earlier, except much larger.  It hovered in the center, rotating on an invisible axis in accordance with the movements of the body outside of it, each crushing motion reflected in the ball whirring in place.  The creature did have a weakness!
"Erdrick, I know what we have to do, and it's crazy," I said.
"I vould hope so, as I cannot see a path that is sane," he said.
We flew back to the Science Center and landed on the same balcony as before.  Gabby and Midnight already had most of the doors blocked off, while Minty and Squeaky were poring over something hidden behind their bodies.
"Minty?" I asked her, and she looked up suddenly.
"Cadence, I know what you're thinking, but hear me out," she said.  I cut her off.
"I need to borrow your rocket," I said.
> Chapter 20
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Minty beamed with pride, and turned to her sister.
"See?  See?  She wants to do it too!" she shouted, while Squeaky rolled her eyes.
"I'm on board with it if you are," Squeaky said to me.
Erdrick approached them and pushed them aside to reveal Minty's science project, a rocket about the size of a pony with huge tail fins to help navigate.  It had nine different thruster ports now, last I had seen it only had one and was much smaller, but Minty had clearly been working on it.  She moved to the front and yanked the nosecone off with her mouth and dropped it.
"So, good news, bad news, which do you want first?" she asked as she shoved her head into the opened rocket.  She got it most of the way in, but her ears were still sticking out.
"The good news," I said, and Minty tried to talk while he head was still in the rocket.
"Mmsnsnmslalams," she said.  Squeaky whacked her rump with her hoof, and Minty pulled her head out.
"The good news is I can rig it up for a hell of a bang, I already put a bunch of fireworks in here, just gotta tie them to the fuel source," she said.  I noticed her face had some soot on it.
"So what's the bad news then?" I asked.
"Well..." she trailed off and looked at Squeaky, who returned a confused look.
"I never did solve the navigation problem," she said, looking ashamed.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"Do you still have those radio tags?" she asked me.  Midnight overheard us and trotted up, pulling the tags I had given her to store out of her shirt pocket.
"Radio tags?" Squeaky said accusingly.
Minty took a step back, to make sure she was firmly out of bucking range.
"See, I came up with a plan, right?  I tuned it to home in on a radio frequency using a receiver I kinda, borrowed, from Squeaky," Minty said apologetically.
"So that's where it went!  You made me stay up all night building another one!" Squeaky yelled.
"So these tags, right?  They send out a signal and the rocket flies towards it, that's how you aim it," Minty said.  Squeaky looked ready to kill her, but relented as she realized what Minty had done, inadvertently.
"You built a micro-transmitter and stuffed it in this tag?  Minty, you're a genius!  How did you solve the nano-feedback issue?" she asked, and Minty looked confused.
"Nano-what?" she asked.
"We don't have time for this.  How do we use the damn thing?" I asked.
"First, I need a few minutes to reset the charge timers to all go off at once," she said, and she trotted over to the rocket and pulled a plate off the top.
"Squeaky, can you help with the receiver?  I need it calibrated to this tag, the red light will come on when it's locked," she said, and Squeaky went over to the nosecone and started shifting something around inside it.
"Fluttershy, can I borrow you for a moment?" she asked the yellow filly, who had been observing this whole thing.
"I don't know..." she said.
"Look, I had Labamba do it before, but he's not here and I need somepony with tiny hooves to move these jumpers," she said.  Fluttershy looked at the ground.
"Come on, can't you see this is important?" Rainbow said to her.  Rainbow gave her a hug to cheer her up, and while she still looked uncertain, she walked over to the rocket and hopped on top.
I watched them work for a few minutes while Gabby checked over the barricades.  Her face took on a concerned look as she checked the large double doors that led into the main lobby.
"Do you hear that?" she asked Midnight and I.  Erdrick and Gabby led us over to the double doors.  I heard a thumping sound, and I noticed it was a lot quieter outside.
The thumping came again, louder this time, and it was on the other side of the doors.  It came again several more times, and all four of us guessed what was going on at the same time.
A hoof smashed through the door above the barricades and started waving at us, trying to grab us.  We stepped back in unison as another from a different pony crashed through.  Clearly General had decided we'd lived long enough, and was exerting some form of control over the victims.  The barricade wasn't going to hold out long.
"Minty, work faster!" I shouted at her as I pulled out my sword.  Midnight shot a look at me before drawing her own.
"Just a few more minutes!" she said, then she screamed.
A stallion had figured out the balcony was open, and had come in through it during the commotion.  Gabby shot towards him, faster than I've ever seen, and tackled him, knocking him down just as one of the doors on our side gave out and a dozen ponies came in.
They weren't fighting each other, they formed rank and came after us, leaving me little choice.
"Try not to harm them Midnight!" I shouted, and smacked the first pony with the flat of my sword.  He crumpled and fell over, but his head wasn't bleeding from where I had hit him.  Midnight caught the next pony and dropped her sword almost immediately, but used it to her advantage and headbutted him in the chest while picking it back up in one motion.
Gabby came back to help as the four of us wrestled with the invaders, trying to stun them without hurting them.  I cut a few up by mistake, and as soon as I could, ripped off pieces of their clothing to wrap around the wounds.  We'd need to sort this out fast and find a doctor or they'd risk bleeding out or getting an infection, I thought, as I lured another close and socked him with my forehoof.
Another shout came from behind us, but we were too far away to do anything about it.  A mare had found her way in from the balcony and was advancing on the rocket-team, but Rainbow had already moved to engage her.  She was five times the filly's size, and yet, Rainbow was not scared at all.
She flew straight at the attacker and uppercutted the assailant from below.  Before she could recover, Rainbow had looped around behind her and grabbed her rear leg.  She grabbed the other leg with her own rear legs, and then flapped her wings, causing the mare to lose her balance and fall over.
Erdrick flew over to help, but something strange happened as he did so.  Rainbow grabbed the mare's head and brought it close to her own, not in an aggressive way, in fact, I still couldn't figure out what she was doing.  It was like I had blinked at the wrong time, and a split-second later, the mare was laying on the ground again, except she wasn't grey.  Her coat had returned to a dull red, her mane a bluish-white, and she was unconscious.  Erdrick broke off his approach and returned to the fray, and I couldn't look any longer lest I neglect my own front.  Gabby tackled another pony and I stood over her to protect her while she fought with him, eventually lifting him up and tossing him out the door.
More ponies were gathering up outside, and Gabby hefted a nearby table which had been overturned in the fighting.  She quickly propped it up against the door and held her body in front of it, while the rest of us dealt with the remaining attackers.
"Done, got it!" Minty shouted at us.
"Get to the roof!" I shouted back, and they picked up the rocket after replacing the missing panels and flew up out the balcony window.  I held the table in place while everypony else made for the balcony, only dropping it when I saw they were outside and ready to go.
Midnight and I had to carry Gabby up onto the roof, but it was relatively safe up here.  The Science Center was a four-story building, and it seemed only a few of the victims were capable of flight in their modified state.  We had a precious few moments of peace to make the final preparations, as the beast was now only a block away, methodically tearing up the buildings and smashing them.
"Now, one of you is going to have to stick this tag on whatever you want the rocket to hit," Minty said quickly, passing me the brown teabag-like tag in question.
"You can't do it from afar?" Midnight asked.
"Sorry, I never did figure that part out," Minty apologized.
I took a quick look around at my friends, all assembled here.
The beast was close, there wouldn't be a lot of time, and whoever went to drop the tag would be in incredible danger.  A single hit from a tentacle would break every bone in your body, and all of us knew it instinctively.
Gabby couldn't do it, she couldn't fly.
Minty and Squeaky?  I could never separate the two.
Fluttershy?  Rainbow?  They had their whole lives ahead of them.
Midnight?  No, I couldn't ask her to do that.  Not when I could do it myself.
I swallowed hard and looked at the little tag.
"If I don't make it back..." I started.
"Don't talk like that," Gabby said, "you'll be fine."
"I'm serious.   If I don't make it back... just, tell my parents I loved them.  Tell Tia I..." I said, starting to choke up.
Erdrick spoke up.  "Princess, if I may," he said.
"Erdrick?  But what if.." I started.
"Madam, I am as quick as see day I was born, I'll have you know.  If anypony is going to risk it all, it might as vell be see vone vith see least risk," he said.
"Take this, then," Squeaky said, and gave Erdrick a little squat black box.
"Vat is sis?" he asked.
"This is the radio I was going to show off at the expo.  We'll need to tell you how to arm the rocket from as far away as possible, and we don't have a lot of time," she said.
"Test test," the black box crackled in Minty's voice, as she spoke into a much larger version a few meters away.
"Midnight, let's help him carry this thing," I said.  She nodded grimly as the three of us picked up the rocket and took off.
As we flew up above the city, I saw Squeaky and Minty carrying Gabby away, flanked by the two fillies, in a straight line away from the creature.  It overtook the building next to the Science Center, destroying the bottom floors in one swing of its tentacles and causing the building to collapse like a layer-cake.
The radio crackled to life again.
"Listen up, you press the little red button when you want to talk to me.  Say 'over' when you're done, because you can't hear me when you're transmitting.  Over," Squeaky's voice said.
"What do we do now?" I asked, taking the radio from Erdrick and holding down the red button.  As an afterthought, I added, "Over."
"Put the tag in front of the rocket and listen for a little beep.  If you hear the beep, it's locked on, over," she said.  Erdrick put the tag right in front of the rocket and a distinct beeping came from within the nose cone.
"There's a little green wire on the base of the rocket, and it runs into a little compartment.  Open that up and make sure the three vials are full of liquid, over," Minty's voice said, as she took over the arming process.
"Full of liquid, over," I said.
"Flip the switch next to the vial that says O2, and wait until it turns red, over," she said.
Erdrick flipped the switch, and a few seconds later, the vial turned red, a light behind it shining through the glass.
"Now flip the one next to N2 and wait until it goes red, then flip the last one, over," Minty said.  We did as she asked, it took a few seconds for the other lights to come on.
"Ready, over," I said.
"Close that panel and make sure the green wire is sticking out.  As soon as you pull that wire, the rocket will launch, so drop the tag and get ready.  Get as far away from the target as you can, I don't know how big the blast will be, over and out," Minty said.  The radio died down.

"Sis is it," Erdrick said, adjusting his goggles and holding the radio ahead of him.  The rocket was armed, and he had the tag in one hoof and the radio in the other.
"We'll hold it, go drop the tag," I said.  Midnight and I held up the rocket while Erdrick nodded and swooped away.  We lost sight of him as he banked between buildings to get closer to the creature, and we waited for several very long seconds for him to return.  At last he did, flying up out of the buildings again.  He waved at us as relief came over me, he made it, and this was going to work!
"Get clear ladies, I vill take care of see launch," he said, and he hefted the rocket all by himself.  I could see the strain it was taking on him, but for such an old pony, he was handling it incredibly well.
Midnight and I flew off, leaving Erdrick and the radio hovering in midair, about a half a mile away from the creature.  We flew in search of our friends, who had landed on a tall building a ways away, and did not turn around until we had landed with them.  Squeaky looked confused as we did.
"Did something go wrong?  Why hasn't he launched it yet?" she asked.
I turned around to see a speck, still hovering where we had left him, holding the distinct outline of the rocket.  The radio crackled to life.
"I'm very sorry my friends, but see tag vould not stick.  Sere vas no other vay," it said.
"Erdrick, what are you talking about?  What's wrong!" I shouted into the radio.  Screw 'over', screw it all, Erdrick what are you doing?
"I vould have liked to know you better Princess, give my regards to your sister.  Sis, sis is for all my little ponies out sere.  Let sem know sat Erdrick Van Der Belt fears nosing and vill live forever in glory!" he said, and the radio went quiet again.  I saw a speck fall away from Erdrick, a mile away, and I saw his outline climb on top of the rocket.
"Erdrick!"  I shouted, but he had dropped the radio and couldn't hear me.  He pulled the wire and the rocket sputtered to life, loud even at this distance, and quickly gained speed.  He was bent over it, holding the tag in front of the nosecone to guide the rocket and turn it as he went, clutching onto the missile as it arced through the air, downwards towards the beast.
It turned and noticed him as he shot towards it, it clumsily swung a tentacle and missed completely, he was far too fast for it.  The missile slammed into its body and was absorbed into it, along with Erdrick riding atop it, and for a second the creature stopped moving entirely.
It ruptured, the creature split into two as the incredible force of the blast tore it open and blew pieces in every direction.  The explosion, though muffled by the body of the creature, was still enormous enough to hear, deafening as we threw ourselves flat and covered our ears.  Simultaneously, every pony in the entire city did the same, but for another reason, they screamed silently as the corruption was forcibly purged from their bodies.  I felt a wave of it wash past me and cleanse the city, I could feel no disturbance after it had passed.  The creature was dead, and its hold over Los Pegasus, dead with it.
"Erdrick, you idiot," I said, as I stood up.
I turned around to see my friends all huddled in a group for mutual shelter.  The sun, behind them, had set and cast the entire scene in a glowing orange as they stood up, one by one.  Rainbow had stood first, she stared silently at the crater where Erdrick had met the creature, her eyes transfixed.  My friends were checking themselves over for shrapnel wounds though Rainbow was not.  I circled around her to make sure she hadn't been wounded, and I saw her face as I did.
A single tear adorned her eye.  She blinked and scattered it away.
> Epilogue
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	All across Equestria, volunteers came, flooding into the city or sending what resources they could.  Erdrick's national organization, a group of charities, that was his legacy.  Los Pegasus had suffered terrible wounds, yet with all the extra help by an entire country, it would be back to its full glory within no time at all.
The total body count was in the thousands, and many more had suffered severe injuries.  Broken legs, broken necks, bodies crushed in the wreckage, volunteers spent weeks sifting through the rubble.  Considering everything that had happened, though it was still a catastrophe, it could have been much worse.
The funeral, the actual funeral, was a small, private affair.  My friends attended, as did my sister, who gave a eulogy which moved us to tears.  She had spent so much time corresponding with Erdrick, though she hadn't had the chance to formally meet him, that she could not help herself.  She cried over his coffin, an empty coffin, for the body was never found.
Erdrick's passing had moved many more, but it was spelled out in his will that any large ceremony was not to be held.  Instead, we threw ourselves into a memorial to him and all the others lost in the Los Pegasus disaster, his name one of many etched into a stone monument erected on the spot the monster fell.
We made no attempt to cover up what had happened, nor would we even if we could.  The official explanation was the real one, that an ancient enemy of Equestria had schemed for years to poison the water supply, and unleash a creature into the city to obliterate it.  The press reacted as they usually did, spreading more rumor than fact, despite our best efforts to correct them.
Rainbow and Fluttershy didn't stick around long after the funeral, I completely lost track of them.  Midnight, who had been reassigned to her home town of Ponyville, would write to me a few years later, telling me that the two had moved there, with Rainbow taking a job as a weatherpony to support them.  Midnight told me she had attempted to forge her identification papers to make herself seem older, enough to qualify for the job.  Fluttershy practiced her veterinarian skills there, though not in any official capacity.  I decided it was best if I didn't go visit them.  I had a feeling our paths would cross again eventually.
Squeaky and Minty, despite having their projects destroyed along with everypony's else's, were given first place for reasons I need not spell out.  I left them to return to Canterlot to comfort my sister, and they would both eventually graduate with honors from the University of Los Pegasus.
Twilight, though curious about the events, never did ask me about them.  I think the wrinkles that had grown on my face told her what she needed to know.  Instead, I found her poring over the news articles discussing what happened, and she'd clip them out and keep them in a book.  She never discussed the book with me, either.
The Hummingbird Flight School, after the infamous attacks, made a full recovery after one of Erdrick's charities, Fliers for Freedom, took over and remodeled it.  It retained the same staff, but became a public school, not a private one, for anypony to attend regardless of credentials.  To this day it is regarded as one of the best in the country, but without the accompanying price tag.
Gabby and her band, Neon Bludgeon, became rock sensations and went on tour around Equestria, though this was some time after the disaster.  We still see each other whenever her path brings her around to Canterlot, though she has much on her mind.  I've heard she gets into fights at bars along with the band, though, and as she said, "I need something to keep me sharp."
I have heard tell that Squeaky's invention, the wireless transceiver, had caught on slowly.  They're quite expensive to build and the technology is fairly unreliable, but everything has to start somewhere.  Minty's experiments in rocketry, however, have not caught on as much.  She told me once that she hopes to put a pony on the moon someday, but I told her she'd have to make a rocket that doesn't explode first.  She winked at me when I said that.
Mister Labamba continues to room with the twins, though they've since moved back to Canterlot and live in their own house in Twilight's neighborhood.  I still don't know what the deal was with the ducks and the playing cards, and he remains as stone-faced as ever whenever I see him.
As for myself, this is where my journey ends for the moment.  I've been meaning to relax, focus on my own life a while.  A certain stallion has been making eyes at me, and life is too short to put it off long.  Erdrick and Celestia have shown me not to miss these chances.


Continued in Part 3:  Forbidden Deeper