Guard Flutter

Chapters

Guard Flutter, Part II: Insight Leads to Judgement
Guard Flutter, Part III: The Promotion
Guard Flutter, Part IV: Outpost 51
Guard Flutter, Part V: The Demotion
Guard Flutter, Part VII: On The Edge of Collapse
Guard Flutter, Part VIII: Facing Oblivion
Guard Flutter, Part IX: The Mysterious Mare
Guard Flutter, Part X: Divisions, Divisions
Guard Flutter, Part I: Above and Beyond Duty
Guard Flutter, Part VI: Tank Makes a Friend

Guard Flutter, Part II: Insight Leads to Judgement

Elsewhere, the mind of Tank the tortoise eased itself around unfamiliar words and concepts. Geometry, for instance.

Wearily, the long wrinkled neck stretched over the lip where the hard sandstone stopped. Two rheumy eyes gazed downwards, and their gaze oozed with glacial patience along the jagged slope and past the towering stacks to the hazy suggestion of a river below.

Angles and lengths were slowly being enveloped by the syrup-thick thinking process of Tank’s shrivelled old brain.

Up until now, slopes hadn’t been a problem. The winding roads and the occasional cobbled streets had given him lumps and cleavages and bumpy bits, true, but all that had been solved by the ancient tradition of ‘proceed with the left foot, then proceed with the right foot’. Even when someone picked him up and put him somewhere else, all he had to do was keep walking until he was back where he started.

Although he was vaguely aware of vast distances being travelled, it had all blurred in his mind. Suggestions of green verges and hedgerows became the impressions of rocky wastes and endless heather. Dotted like punctuation across the voluminous tome of his travels, the gulps of puddle water and munches of leaves were almost completely forgotten. Only when his throat began to rasp and his stomach squeeze in protest would the memories come to taunt him.

He blinked, squeaking slightly when his eyelids unglued themselves from each other. A howl of wind came from the gape of the canyon.

One foot rose from the dirt. The joints of his leg creaked and the scaly skin crackled with the squash and the stretch. With infinite patience, the tortoise hoisted the tiny limb over the lip and pressed it as hard as he could into the face.

It slipped. The bottom of his shell tapped the sandstone. Slow as a thorn bush shrinking away from a fire’s heat, Tank hauled the leg back onto his level. Both eyes groaned like old wood in order to keep pace with the grit tumbling out of sight. They fell onto the sliver of black that was the river.

Of course, all things had been easier with the Big One around. There had been straw, and there had been fresh lettuce leaves, and there had been a box. There had been a world inside that box. Each helping of lettuce had been all the food that had ever existed, at least until he forgot about it and the next helping came along. The water bowl was magic, never vanishing no matter how many times he drank from it.

Such wizardry!

There had been shadows on the wall, and he had stood with reptilian comfort and watched the shadows dancing on the wall, and he had known that this was the entire world, and he had learned much about the nature of the box, filled as it was with shadows and magic and the face of the Big One.

And then one day, the Big One had seized him around the shell for a moment in what his mind believed was called a hug. Then she was gone.

He could remember that day clearly. Although he could not remember how far back it had been. Time meant so little to him now.

There had been another Big One after that day, and the wrong lettuce, and the wrong shadows, and even – though he couldn’t quite pin down why – the wrong water.

The world was suddenly wrong.

The Big One was gone.

Gone. But where?

Over time, as the breakfasts and lunches and suppers had flashed by, and as he had pondered over the existence and non-existence of the Big One, and as the sheer wrongness of the new Big One – the false Big One – had started to awaken an ancient evil in his chest he called ‘irritation’, it had finally occurred to him that maybe there was more world outside his box.

Tank craned his neck to the left.

The canyon stretched far to the horizon, zigzagging its way with the lazy grace of a river.

He craned his neck to the right.

It looked exactly the same. Overhead, a hawk screeched dramatically, presumably rehearsing for a more worthy scene.

A slight horror was beginning to seep into his mind. So far, regular-enough scavenged leaves and drinks had kept it at bay, but it was dawning on him that walking and walking and walking even more were, whatever their advantages, somewhat limited tactics.

His nostrils, encrusted with slime that he hadn’t been able to wipe off, flexed and eased back into place. Among the strange fireworks of scent and smell, he caught the whiff of an odour that brought his mind back to the box. He remembered that smell. It was the smell of the Big One. The true Big One.

He concentrated on his geometry.

Angles and lengths gave way to something more complex. He paused only to munch hopefully on a few tufts of grass, which were sitting on the lip as though contemplating suicide. Above him, he was aware of a general lightening of the sky, but it couldn’t offer him any suggestions, so he took no further notice.

What a world it was that battered his poor old senses! Tank tried to force the gurgles and gales and shrieks of the last few days into a coherent whole, but then there’d be strange voices, or an alien thing with wheels would come over the horizon, and he would be thrown again. It had taken him days and days to block out the strangeness and focus on the familiar. His mind was still echoing with the shock of getting out of his box. Not one world after all! He could hear his old thoughts booming at him from a more childish time of his life. Lots of worlds! Big worlds! Worlds within worlds! Worlds so packed and noisy and smelly that they ceased to be worlds and simply mashed together into a messy void with neither meaning nor sense.

Millstone teeth pressed against each other in his tightening jaws. The cheeks made a leathery sound as he braced himself.

The last numbers clicked into place inside his head. He saw the new words before him. Something called “trigonometry” came to the fore.

It had been thought by a younger Tank, several days ago, that the nature of reality was empty, and one could only proceed by a leap of faith, or in his case a careful step of faith. His older self of several steps ago had dismissed this line of mental enquiry as a form of madness, but as he leaned over the lip, the Tank of the present moment was seeing a new light shine on the concept of madness, and he thought, Why not?

Before he plunged forwards, Tank eased his body to the side and then ducked into his shell.

The tortoise rolled down the slope, the rim of the shell cutting across the bedrock and bouncing off the crags and jagged edges.

A few minutes later, the shell tumbled beside a gurgling riverbank. It turned and spiralled inwards, blurring into a ball for a moment, and then settled down.

After a few seconds, Tank peered out into another new world, and waited until it stopped spinning.

In the alley, Lady Carcarass slipped out of the doorway and guided it shut behind her. Business tonight. That meant no prying eyes if she could help it. Certainly not when she had more than one job to juggle. No, it was best kept on the sly.

Both talons clicked on the cobbles until she carefully gloved them. Even her wings were sheathed in soft velvet so as to leave no whoosh in the air. She slunk away, shifting from shadow to shadow with many backward glances and much flexing of her feet and digits.

The alleyway opened to nothing more than a gap between two gardens. One silvery tree reached from one to the other, creating a natural corridor laced with spider webs and dotted with hovering crane flies. She licked her beak and paused to force the balaclava over her face. Both of the towering blocks were silent; there were no lights on in the windows or doors.

Once she emerged into the street, she peered around and pulled the hood of her robe over her head.

There were no stragglers on the paths, though each street lamp stood watch over a waiting carriage. Above her, there were no flying citizens.

Lady Carcarass smirked to herself under her own hood.

She had no interest in sharing the spoils, after all. Lord Tirek was a clever one, however much he tried to hide it behind civil words and meek gestures. A bit of investment, he’d said, in the right place, and given to the right people. It would pay beautifully in a few weeks’ time, and they would no longer have to peer over their shoulders so often, worrying over the guards or the squadrons.

Not that she didn't believe him. Tirek could tell the truth when he wanted. But long years spent ducking and dodging the streets, and even longer years spent ducking and dodging plots and arguments, had lent her a certain mindset for just such an occasion. And right now, it was screaming that someone, somewhere, was going to end up in jail. Or worse.

She had no intention of being left behind. After facing the republican members of the Council, she felt that the Lords and Ladies were child's play. They were too comfortable. Too jittery. Too unimaginative.

No, she wasn't going to be caught out by the likes of them. Some other schmuck could be sacrificed. Clever of Tirek to gloss over that particular detail in his speech, but it would be necessary to the plan, and in any case loyalty was not a survival trait among the Lords and Ladies. As soon as they realized the wolves were on their trail, they'd throw someone off the sleigh.

Not if she got there first.

Anyway…

She made a decision and headed across the street.

As she stepped forwards, she passed rows and rows of pathways, some wide enough to allow a good-sized griffon or pegasus to stride down, some so thin that only a hoof could fit in them. The road itself was divided up similarly, but the chalk and the paint had long since been scuffed and riddled with potholes.

The second alley was dingier than the first. There were no gardens, no overhanging trees, nothing more than sheer wall on each side. As she strode down it, her eyes flitted to the boxes and crates left lying outside a back door. She gasped as a puddle splashed under one of her gloves, and then she tutted and tried to shake it dry before continuing. From up ahead came faint lyre music, tinkling on the ear and tapping gently on the mind as though stepping through something delicate and precious.

Lady Carcarass frowned. Minstrels? At this hour?

At once, she pressed her back against the wall. The unseen musician plucked on, presumably lost in a world of timid notes and bold symphonies.

It could just be an odd citizen. Goodness knew there were enough of them in this city. Still…

One gloved hand reached down and clamped around a black-painted hilt. The dagger slid out with no gleam; she’d made a point of coating it with a dull sheen hours beforehand. All of her jewellery had been placed in a pouch on her belt. Dark and ghostly, she drifted along the wall. Each paw on each hind leg pressed itself on the compacted soil.

At the corner, the lyre music came more hesitantly, as though the musician was becoming suspicious. Lady Carcarass held her breath and her poise, gave a second to prepare her muscles, and leaped out. The dagger rose.

In the faint light of a street lamp, the lyre rested against a bench made of cream-coloured planks. The dagger was lowered slightly. Lady Carcarass cocked her head.

Three of the strings plucked themselves.

Instinct screamed at her, seized her head, and yanked it round, back up the alleyway. A figure stepped out from behind the crates.

At first, it looked pegasus-shaped, but what she’d taken to be wings was a cape fluttering in the slight wind. The entire figure was dressed in clothing as dark and complete as possible. Most of its face was concealed behind the brim of a wide hat. Beyond that, she couldn’t make out much.

Silently, the two regarded each other. Only the cape moved; the figure stood with its head cocked, appraising her with a puppy-like curiosity. Lady Carcarass stood in the act of stabbing the sky.

Behind the griffon, the lyre plucked a few more notes and then fell silent.

“Lady Carcarass…”

The voice echoed around her. No matter where her gaze leapt, however, she could spot no other figure, above or below. Briefly, she broke the trance and glanced behind her.

It was only a blink of time. Yet she turned back, and the alley was empty. There hadn’t even been a whip of the cape.

She ran.

Up the street, the dagger sheathed and jangling on her belt, Lady Carcarass weaved between the carriages and ducked into yet another alleyway. She didn’t pant. She’d run hundreds of times before.

“Lady Carcarass…” echoed the voice. “You have committed many terrible crimes…”

Down the alley, across another empty street, past the corner… she spread her wings and vaulted over the hedgerow, trampling a flowerbed on her way to the shed, which she hopped onto and used to spring onto the neighbouring thatched rooftop.

“You have ruined so many lives… drained so many souls…”

Despite herself, part of her mind fussed over the echoes. Ruined? Drained? What lives? What souls? Was this some sentimental claptrap?

“It is the day of judgement, Lady Carcarass. You will be brought to account. You must pay for your crimes.”

From chimney to chimney, she moved so fast that no one would have seen anything but a blur over the rooftops. No matter how hard she ran, the echoes never sounded any fainter. One gloved hand clamped over her ear, rubbing against the balaclava as she went. With a final spring, she landed on an iron gate and threw herself onto the grass.

Only then did she stop to pant, leaning on an iron park bench and lit by the glow of a park lamp overhead. A little further ahead, she could see the pale beginnings of a path through the grassy area, but beyond that was shadow.

Something fluttered in it.

The figure stepped calmly onto the path. Each step was easy and smooth. There was no sign it was even slightly put out.

“Judge, jury, and executioner, Lady Carcarass,” said the echo.

With a shriek of alarm, the griffon reared up. The throwing knife shot through the air. There was a thump of metal hitting something soft.

As Lady Carcarass stared and lowered herself, the figure seemed to stiffen where it stood. Tilting its vast brim, it peered down at the hilt sticking out of its chest. A sigh echoed around them.

“What in the name of…” The griffon began to back away.

One foreleg reached up and yanked the knife out of its chest. The blade was completely clean. There was barely a hint of a rip in the fabric.

As the knife bounced off the path and disappeared into the grass, Lady Carcarass whipped off a glove. She lunged forwards, wide-eyed, with a panicking screech. The figure didn’t move until she almost seized its neck in her talons. Then the cape enveloped her.

Beyond the iron gate, the streets were empty and dimly lit. The breeze nudged at the padlock, making the loose hinges creak. The path was empty. The grass seemed undisturbed. Lying just outside the patch of light, the abandoned knife was the only testament of the last few seconds.

A dark foreleg reached out and dragged it out of sight. Silence ruled once more.

Guard Flutter, Part III: The Promotion

On the foredeck of the Bellerophon Alpha, flag ship of the armada and pride of the Wonderbolts, the pegasi and griffons jumped out of the way as Captain Rainbow Dash streaked through the crowd and skidded to a complete halt. Both wings were stretched out to their fullest extent, and all four hooves bunched together in an attempt to not fall off the edge and onto the lower deck.

She tried to smirk as though nothing had gone wrong whatsoever. Each wing beat gently at the tips so as to subtly tip her back and away from the drop. A few mutterings behind her were ignored.

One foreleg shot up into a salute. “Captain Rainbow Dash, ma’am. Five times squad champion at the Academy Skyball Tournament, Order of Hurricane Force Ten Class, and eight times finalist for the Heart of Gold Award for Outstanding Gallantry. Need I say more?”

The officer beside her grunted. “I dunno. Need you?”

While the officer picked up and reshuffled his scattered papers, it occurred to Captain Rainbow Dash that there was a certain something lacking in his response. It wasn’t that she had no idea what it was. It was that she’d rather hoped he wouldn’t care that much.

From behind her, she distinctly heard someone whisper, “Isn’t that ‘Rainbow Hash’ from the Academy?”

“I thought they called her ‘Rainbow Smash ‘N’ Bash’? Or was it ‘Rainbow the Trash’?”

“No no no, I distinctly remember it as ‘Rainbow Oh-My-Gosh-I-Just-Gave-Myself-Whiplash’.”

She coughed in order to drown it out. “You know why I’m here, come on. I was sent for?” she prompted, watching the officer fuss over his paperwork. “By the Major?”

Over his glasses, the officer glared at her. “Ah, I see. Disciplinary hearing, was it?”

Rainbow’s wings lowered slightly. “Eh? No, it’s about the new post opening up.”

“Demotion, then. Or did somebody lose a bet upstairs?”

“Never mind. I’ll walk it myself.”

Rainbow cruised over to the hatchway and clambered down the rungs. As she went, she could still hear the unseen whisperers trying to thrash out her old school nickname.

None of it mattered, really. They called her lots of things back then. Clumsy, stupid, rash… Well, she was, if she was honest, but that was just the small stuff. Nothing had been broken. OK, nothing anyone cared about, but they had ponies to fix that. And she could take it on the nose, or wherever she'd hit herself this time.

The warmth of the ship smothered her as she hopped onto the timber floor and strode through the doorway to the corridor. Other creaking, hinged entrances and exits met her every few steps, all of them shut, but occasionally a pegasus or a griffon would wander past and duck into one, or a door would burst open as someone hurried across to another chamber. One or two nodded at her or gave polite smiles as they passed, but she was mostly ignored.

A wall of white stepped out in front of her. Before she could react, it had seized her in a hug like an avalanche.

“RAINBOW DASH!” yelled the wall, making every bone shake under her flesh. “RAINBOW DASH! KNOCKS ‘EM DEAD WITH HER RAINBOW FLASH!”

She squirmed in a futile attempt to dig herself out of the snowdrift. “Awesome… to see you too… Bulky. Do you mind… letting me… breathe… for a mo?”

“SORRY! GOT CARRIED AWAY! IT’S SO AWESOME TO SEE YOU AGAIN, RAINBOW DASH!”

“I know.” Rainbow finally prised herself free of the death grip. It took a few seconds to pop back into shape.

She stepped back and peered up at the straining veins and deranged grin of Bulk Biceps. He was technically a pegasus, though there’d been a long and bitter dispute that had seen him briefly classified as a white bull, as a stunted elephant, and in one notable case as a living siege weapon.

Behind him, a second face popped into view. There was no mistaking that face either, if only because there were few faces that could achieve panoramic vision without turning around. The head shook itself, righting its gaze long enough to focus on Rainbow.

“Oh wow,” breathed the owner of the new face. “Rainbow Dash! Look Bulky! The actual Rainbow actual Dash!”

“Add ‘actual captain’ to the resumé now, Derpy.” Rainbow beamed at her with her most dazzling smile. “Hey, wanna see the scars I got while I was in the Cygnus Range? Look. I got this one while I was in the mouth of an arimaspi. Bet you ain’t seen one like that.”

“Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow,” said Derpy, while her left eye wandered off to find something shiny to look at. “I wish I had scars I could show to people. You could tell us stories about them.”

“I could, Derpy, but show ‘n’ tell will have to wait. You guys know if the Major’s in, or what? She wasn’t on the deck.”

“YEAH!” They covered their ears in the face of Bulk Biceps’ gale-force yell. “RIGHT HERE, CAPTAIN! GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR NEW ASSIGNMENT!”

The two of them stepped aside, revealing the doorway they had been guarding. Rainbow nodded at each of them before pausing to slick back her rainbow mane and to crack a few joints in her legs. Only then – and after stiffening her back and tightening the fold of her wings – did she burst through the doorway.

Rule one, she thought, is act cool. Act cool enough to freeze air. Everything is chill in your presence. Yeah… OK…

She began to thaw, however, at the sight of the desk opposite. The room itself was sparse, nothing more than a timber cube with a lone shelf to her right and a porthole to her left that looked out onto the black night. A few fireflies bumped against the glass; the Major shifted the jar aside and looked up from the papers on her desk.

“Captain Rainbow Dath.” The smirk was not improved by the pink goggles that stared at her like the gaze of some giant insect. “Well, well, well. Heard tho much about you through the grapevine.”

“Yes, ma’am. Heard you’d heard about me through the grapevine, ma’am.” Rainbow Dash stiffened and stood to attention opposite. It was warmer than she’d expected. Her uniform was starting to itch.

Major Fleetfoot placed a hoof on the desk and slid a few papers across. Rainbow glanced down at them, catching her name a few times and hoping it was all good. It was hard to tell with Fleetfoot.

“Theemth you’ve been recommended for promotion, Captain Rainbow Dath,” she continued, the smirk still in her voice even as it disappeared from her face. “If you athk me, it’th way overdue. You mutht be very proud of what you did in the Cygnuth Range. I remember it wath a tricky campaign before you came along.”

“Glad to hear it, ma’am.” Rainbow ignored the bead of sweat dribbling down her forehead.

“Of courth, in thome wayth it wath even trickier oneth you did come along,” continued Fleetfoot. “There have been complainth, you underthtand. You’re not an easy pegathuth to get along with, or tho they thay.”

Rainbow opened her mouth to protest, but caught herself just in time. I got promoted anyway, she thought. I got promoted anyway. Just sit tight. That’s all you have to do, Rainbow. Keep your trap shut.

“Thtill…” Fleetfoot shrugged. “That wath an amathing rethult at the end. How did you know to break into their treathure vaulth and uthe it againtht them? If you don’t mind my thaying tho, tactical thinking ithn’t your thtrenth.”

There was a hook at the end of the statement, but as laughable as it was to dodge, Rainbow still found herself thinking: Tactical thinking isn’t my strength, is it? Not smart enough to plan ahead, am I?

Aloud, she said, “It wasn’t hard to figure it out, ma’am. They love gold and shiny things. You can get ‘em to do anything if you hold it over a bottomless pit.”

“Not bad.” Another shuffling of papers; Rainbow wondered if Fleetfoot was disappointed. “And thome of the moveth you pulled off! Hadn’t even heard of motht of them. You’re a mare of many thurpritheth, Rainbow Dath.”

Behind her barely suppressed grin, a worm of suspicion wriggled in Rainbow’s mind. Everything was coming up Rainbow Dash. It was too good. Not that it was too good for her, obviously, but she wasn’t sure where the complaints fit into it.

“Thethe are your paperth.” Fleetfoot’s wings curled forwards and cupped the sheets in an apparent pose of supplication. “It’th a bit boring, I know, but everybody hath to go through thith thtuff before they get to the goodth. And ath your thenior commanding officer, it’th up to me to athign you to your new thip.”

This time, the grin broke through in full. The idea of commanding her own ship was just too much. It was like being a foal again, except this time the toys were the size of buildings and full of real people. Old tactics and memorized moves flooded back into her mind. Her wings shivered slightly with the urge to flap.

“Thank you, ma’am!” she said, fighting to keep the quiver of excitement out of her voice. “I won’t let you down, ma’am!”

She tucked the papers under one wing, saluted, and about-turned to scurry to the door, already giggling under her breath.

“Jutht a moment, Captain! Leaping off the cliff a little quickly, aren’t we? I haven’t even dithmithed you yet. And there’th the matter of which thip I’ve jutht athigned you. Don’t you want to know it’th name?”

Rainbow’s ears burned red. She was fully aware that they called her a loose cannon sometimes, but one of the problems of being a loose cannon is not noticing you’ve just gone off into someone’s wall until the dust clears.

“Sorry, ma’am,” she said quickly. “My new ship, ma’am?”

Is it the Iobetes, she thought frantically, or the Gorgon? Tell me it’s the Gorgon! That one’s like a tank in midair, and the shark balloon is as radical-looking as it gets. It’s got a blade on the top! A real blade!

“Thure. Ath of this moment in time, you will be captain of the Leucippus. You thould be proud; it’th a good thip. Got a new crew fresh from the thity. Thorry, did you thay thomething?”

Memory dredged a black pearl from the mud of Rainbow’s mind. Leucippus… she’d heard of that one, but something flashed in her head alarmingly, and it bothered her all the more that she didn’t know why.

“I said, ‘Is there anything else, ma’am?’” Rainbow repeated.

Fleetfoot nudged the jar with a wing and shook her head slowly. “Nothing cometh to mind. Thomething bothering you, Captain?”

Rainbow frowned harder, almost crushing her eyes under the weight of her brow. Leucippus… they called it the White Horse, but it had something to do with someone or other… Someone had told her about it.

“It’s been a while, ma’am,” she said quickly. “Wasn’t there something big about that ship? Like something everyone knows about it? It’s gone clean out of my head, ma’am.”

Fleetfoot shrugged again, and the smirk rose up briefly. “All I know about it ith that the latht captain went down a couple of rungth very, very rethently. Nothing elthe cometh to mind.”

A few minutes later, Rainbow was marching out of the room, her chest almost lifting her hooves off the ground through sheer pride, when her memory came out of nowhere and mugged her.

She pressed her hooves into her face, groaned at the top of her voice, and fell back and sat down heavily, right there in the corridor.

“Fluttershy!” she shouted at nothing. “She did it! Oh, heck no. Gosh darn it, darn it, darn it! Tell me she didn't.”

Moaning again, she wiped her face down. Of course, the peacekeepers had lots of ways of getting the brightest and the best up top, but still.

“For Pete's sake, tell me she didn't!”

A few passing pegasi gave her funny looks until she glared at them and sent them scurrying away. This was not their business.

Still, she kept her mouth clamped tightly shut until she was out of the ship and flying well clear of the armada, below the endless stars and towards the blue sea of stratus cloud stretching away to the moon.

It was not a good night for Lord Buffet, either.

Normally, the bulls from the nearby Quart District would have kept away from the main avenue, but he’d caught two of them standing as bold as brass on the corner, eyeing up passing citizens and occasionally sidling up to any oxen who happened to stop at the omnibus sign. The nerve of some people, and on his patch too!

With a bovine moan, he stopped outside the apothecary and turned his square bulk to face the two minotaurs flanking him. Bulls would have been more appropriate, but it was always better to get bodyguards with thumbs. They had more options.

“The Quart District,” he said in a whisper that made the ground shake, “is becoming a nuisance.”

Both guards nodded. There wasn’t much point in explaining any further. There was only one response they were likely to give when it came to nuisances.

He watched them go, and then stepped through the entrance with a tinkle of the bell. The two minotaurs he’d sent for earlier were inside waiting for him; they moved into position as he trundled down the aisle. No matter how much he tried to force it, or how often he turned to check on his guards, he couldn’t shake the leaden weights he felt in his guts, all four of them. Of course, he didn’t miss Lady Carcarass, the stuck-up harpy, but she was still one of the Lords and Ladies. There were such things as standards.

Behind the till, the changeling blinked at them stupidly. Lord Buffet didn’t bother hiding his own shudder; tolerance was something that happened to other people.

“What happened to the other one who ran this place?” he bellowed. “Mister Gordy, wasn’t it?”

The black head tilted back to take in the minotaur mountains either side of him. With a click, the changeling adjusted its posture and leaned forwards to bow its head.

“I’m sorry. He passed away last week, Mister Buffet,” it squeaked. “In his will, he gave the shop to my partner Rotgill. Rotgill’s out for lunch at the moment.”

Lord Buffet sniffed, making his golden nose ring bounce. “I wasn’t aware the old griffon was friends with your sort. And why don’t you change into something more respectable? No offence to your kind, but you must admit you do look out of place in an apothecary.”

A flicker of a frown flashed across the changeling’s face, but a growl issued from one of the minotaurs, and it hastily switched into a respectable pegasus guise. Lord Buffet noted with approval the black and white blobs on the body and mane. Traditional bovine colours, he thought. Very respectable.

“Now,” he said as carelessly as he dared, “let’s get down to business, Mister…?”

“Slimeball, Mister Buffet.” The changeling gave an apologetic smile. “And it’s Miss, by the way. Um, if you don’t mind?”

“Miss… Slimeball. I don’t know if you’re aware of your predecessor’s arrangements,” continued Lord Buffet, “but when you and your partner inherited Mister Gordy’s Apothecary, you also inherited certain obligations.”

“Ah!” The changeling tapped its snout with a hoof and ducked out of sight. “Two steps ahead of you, Mister Buffet! Here we are.”

A paper bag was dumped on the counter. Lord Buffet noted the clumsy scrawl on its side which, if he was generous and tilted his head and squinted, looked vaguely like his name. With a curt nod to the leftmost bodyguard, he waited until the jars and pills had been rattled and brought up to the lamplight for inspection.

“Full prescription, sir,” murmured the bodyguard.

Despite himself, Lord Buffet was impressed. But then they did say that changelings were like hive creatures – bees, wasps, termites, naked mole rats – and presumably that extended to their busy work ethic too. For once, his smile was genuine, or at least genuinely polite.

“A pleasure doing business with you, Miss Slimeball. I see this apothecary has a bright and steady future ahead of it. Come.”

One of the minotaurs sniggered. Lord Buffet turned to leave, and was caught out when the changeling gave a slight cough.

“What?” he said curtly.

The changeling extended a hoof and flexed the forelimb twice at the wrist. “Um, that’s two green gems, Mister Buffet.”

The bull gave him a look. It was a look designed to stretch out the seconds into hours and to petrify the very air between him and his target. It was a look that, when spotted by his bodyguards, stirred them from their menacing reverie and got them flexing their arms and cracking their knuckles. It was a look, Lord Buffet liked to think, that combined the command of a whisper with the subtlety of a raised fist.

Shadows fell across the changeling.

“Oh dear, Miss Slimeball,” rumbled Lord Buffet with a shake of his horned head. “And you were doing so well. Let me and my associates explain the obligation to you.”

Knuckles cracked above the cowering head of the pegasus, whose whole body turned completely pale.

“Mister Gordy provided us with a valuable and enviable service. My poor stomachs do cry out for remedy, Miss Slimeball, and for an ox, that’s no small matter. In return, we ensure that Mister Gordy has a business. We help this establishment by giving it an edge over its competitors. We provide it generous protection from the criminal elements of the city. We, in short, ensure that this valuable and enviable service exists.”

“B-B-But… But…”

Changelings really were stupid, he thought huffily. Even with two minotaurs hovering over it, the thing’s still stammering to speak.

“Don’t try and extort me, Miss Slimeball!” he bellowed. “If you do that, then my obligations to the apothecary are at an end! A lot of bad things can happen to an ailing apothecary, Miss Slimeball.” On an inspiration, he added, “Republican Carcarass turned her back on her obligations too. And look what happened to her, out here in the dark streets! You wouldn’t want that to happen to you, would you?”

A squeak escaped from the changeling, which by this point was so pale it was almost shining. Oh well, he thought, I’ve made my point.

“Good thing we cleared that up. Now, if there are no more silly interruptions, Miss Slimeball, I shall take my leave.”

Out on the street, he strode with sweeping limb and firm hoof on the paving slabs. Tufts of grass grew up along the edge where the other citizens preferred softer ground, but Lord Buffet believed a tougher terrain made tougher feet.

As he swaggered along the street, his mind turned back to Lady Carcarass. Of course, he had no actual idea what had happened to her, but frankly he felt a republican had no business in their kind of business anyway. The Lords and Ladies didn’t need mealy-mouthed softies like that in their inner circle. They needed tough steaks like him, noble breeds with history and a firm foot on the ground. Even Lord Tirek was only a conniver, a cunning bit of copper wire where a lead pipe would work just as well. Why, his latest scheme was lunacy itself…

Lord Buffet’s self-congratulatory train of thought trundled along its familiar rails, and it took him a while to realize a street light had just gone out. His train of thought tipped dangerously for a moment.

“Eh?” he said. One of his bodyguards had mumbled something.

“I said where we goin’, Mister Buffit?”

“Lord Buffet!” he bellowed. “And I don’t like your tone. Now, your companion here –”

When he turned, there was no other minotaur in sight.

As he cast his glare around the empty street, he heard the faint notes of some string instrument nearby. The train of thought crushed it under its wheels, and he snorted and strode onwards, muttering threats and complaints under his breath.

Behind him, the tread of hooves stopped. No one was there when he forced his own four hooves to turn him around.

Both bodyguards were gone.

A frown creased his brow, and a chill began to creep over his flat back. His line of work demanded round-the-clock protection. He suddenly felt as though he’d just lost two limbs. Blinking stupidly, he became aware of the music again, still tapping out a gentle tune nearby.

“What? What?” he mumbled. “What the deuce is going on?”

“Mister Buffet,” echoed a voice.

Had he been a daintier creature, Lord Buffet would have leaped up into the air. As it was, he almost rose off the path, but the crack in one of his legs made him wince when the weight crashed back down on it. A tiny but determined flow of music tiptoed on the edge of his hearing. Another street lamp went out. He became increasingly aware of how alone he was on this street.

While a bull is perfectly capable of holding itself in check and thinking things through, there were stereotypes that saturated the minds of the city, and Lord Buffet’s mind was rather indulgent when it came to stereotypes. He snorted, seeing imaginary capes waved at him with insulting flutters, and began charging, the sheer bulk of his outrage almost burying the sharp squeak of fear trapped in his bovine brain. Lowing, he thrashed out with a horn and upturned a carriage, crashing wood briefly drowning out the rising crescendo.

Then the lights went out.

The music stopped. Lord Buffet stumbled as he tried to bring his half-ton body to a standstill.

When the lights came back on, he was standing in the middle of the street. He winced at the rush of light forcing its way through his surprised eyes.

A cape fluttered ahead of him. It trailed behind a pegasus-like thing leaning against a lamppost, each right leg crossed over its left leg. The wide-brimmed hat obscured its face, but in any case the creature was dressed in dark purples that in this light gave it the quality of a living shadow.

“Mister Buffet,” echoed a voice all around him. “You consume this city. You eat lives and devour the peace and happiness of others. You turn others into gluttonous monsters too. What have you to say for yourself?”

Panic began to creep over the bull’s old mind. Lord Buffet snorted and pawed at the ground.

“Who are you?” he murmured, while around him the armour of self-righteousness and certainty was blasted away. “You think you’re Father Time in that ridiculous outfit? What? What?”

The head rose up to appraise him.

Under the brim, two blank eyes peered out. The mask was complete, leaving nothing but the vague shape of a pegasus’s muzzle to the imagination. Not so much as a hair poked out of the dark fabric.

“Judge, jury, and executioner,” echoed the voice, “Mister Buffet.”

With a final defiant bellow, Lord Buffet charged at the shadow. Such was his speed that he barely took in the sudden shifting of the stranger’s limbs before the cape smothered his view and he was plunged into darkness. Metal smacked him sharply between the eyes. He was thrown back, the momentum tearing out of his chest and face before he fell unconscious.

Guard Flutter, Part IV: Outpost 51

Fluttershy spread out her wings and landed with a squeak on the hard cobbles. Beside her, Derpy and Bulk Biceps landed with bumps and grunts, shaking themselves down before falling into step on either side.

They were on shore leave at the moment, or so Captain Rainbow Dash had told them all. She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but it sounded like she could do whatever she wanted, so questions schmestions.

“IT’S BEEN A LONG WHILE!” Bulk swung his massive head around, taking in the towers and the crowds of the square. “LOOK AT EVERYTHING! IT’S SO BIG AND RICH AND TIDY NOW!”

“I remember the wonderful sweet shops,” said Derpy, her voice lost to a delicious dream. “Remember when we used to come here all the time, and we used to get loads of mix-and-mismatch bags, and we always went to Mellifluous Way, and I found a cake in the bottom of mine? Mmmm-mmmm, that was a good day for me!”

Fluttershy forced a smile onto her face. She remembered too, though most of the sweets had been too strong for her taste buds. Mellifluous Way to a pegasus was like a honey vat to a fly. Literally so: even the flies fought and kicked each other to get in.

It didn’t matter that she was now Lieutenant Fluttershy. Being Captain Fluttershy had been too much, and everyone knew it, including her. Things were better off this way. For a few moments, a few precious moments, she was just Fluttershy. No dark cloud was going to last long over that warm front.

“I liked the park,” she tried to say. It came out in a muffled undertone, but she was pleased the words could at least be dimly recognized.

“That’s right! The park!” Derpy beamed at her and focused with one eye while the other examined a nearby statue. “Do you reckon we could go there again? I think we were there for hours last time, looking for all the little animals and things.”

“WANNA SEE EVERYTHING!” Bulk Biceps’ tiny wings were a blur of excitement. “YEAH! LET’S LOOK AROUND ALL OVER!”

“Oh, OK.” Derpy shrugged. “We could do that too, I guess. Where did you wanna start?”

Fluttershy looked out at the crowd massing around the central plinth. There seemed to be a lot of shouts and cheers, and part of her warmed at the thought of so much collective joy and unity. Then she thought about what exactly they’d be shouting and cheering, and it got a bit chilly.

As she approached – with Derpy and Bulk Biceps trailing behind her, gaping slightly and cocking an ear each – the crowd died down and she could see, through the mass of waving wings and bobbing heads, the minotaur standing astride the great marble plinth. On the shore of the great sea of faces, she could make out many species mixed in. Not just pegasi and griffons, of course, but changelings, oxen, centaurs, and other minotaurs all punching the air with their various appendages. Overhead, a swarm of breezies hovered uncertainly. Phoenixes had perched on branches in the nearby trees or on parts of neighbouring statues.

Scattered among the crowd, a few goats were forcing their way in random directions, sweeping their gazes from side to side as though looking out for intruders. A ring of them encircled the plinth around the speaker.

For his part, the speaker was waving and gesturing with gusto, almost swatting nearby citizens and goats with his enthusiasm. Even this far away, she could clearly hear the words as though standing right next to him.

“This city,” he boomed, spreading his arms wide, “is overdue for a shakedown! You heard it here, folks! Crime sweeping through our streets, our walls shakin’ with monsters burstin’ in! Those in power should smell the flowers!”

A cheer rippled across the crowd. Several griffons roared with approval, briefly scattering the panicked breezies. Fluttershy crouched instinctively, and a goat bleated with surprise as it meandered past.

“You all heard the terrible tale of the latest and the greatest, our own Republican Carcarass! The biggest and the baddest snatched her away in the middle of the night! A mystery for history! We can’t even trust the shadows anymore. This masked menace could be anyone and anywhere! Doin’ the crime, duckin’ the time! And ladies and gents and everything in-between: If it happens at the top, the crime’s gotta stop!”

While the crowd cheered, Fluttershy cast around and soon her gaze alighted on a nearby breezie. With a cough, she attracted its attention. Now if she could remember her lessons in Breezie well enough, this might not be a total embarrassment.

“Excuse me?” she said, cursing herself for her slight accent, “but what crime is he talking about?”

The fey speck with wings fluttered down to her level. “You must be joking, little pegasus with the pink hair. You are new in town?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No, I just came back from the Bellerophon Armada? I’m on shore leave again?”

At once, the breezie softened its tone and bowed in midair, its gauzy wings flapping hard in embarrassment. “Ooh… ah… Begging your pardon, Miss. I did not know. You are not in uniform.”

“It’s OK? It’s nothing?”

“Well, Republican Carcarass disappeared one night and never turned up for work. No one knows where she went, but they say some people on the south side saw a mystery figure running around the streets. It might have been her – it looked a bit like a griffon – but no one knows for sure. They say she has been kidnapped!”

“Oh dear? That is just terrible, isn’t it?” Fluttershy frowned. “But I thought Republican Gruff was the republican for griffons?”

“Nah. He retired months ago. Well, that crime is what this guy is on about. The mystery figure, I mean.”

Fluttershy peered at the shouting minotaur. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but who is he? Is he a republican too?”

“No bother at all, Miss! Yes, that is Republican Iron Will, Miss, for the minotaurs. He came in after Republican Copper Bottom got kicked out for stealing from the treasury.”

“I see? Thank you? You’ve been very helpful?”

“A pleasure, Miss. By the way, you speak good Breezie, Miss, though next time you will have to put a little more stress on the last word.”

Fluttershy tried to ignore her own blush. On the plinth, Iron Will threw another sweeping gesture at the audience and his associate goats ducked out of range.

“And I say to every one of you here,” he thundered, “the biggest and the smallest… Who, I ask, who are the ones who’ll stop them bad boys stone cold dead? Iron Will knows, and Iron Will knows that you knows it too! We need the guards, we need the squads, we need to send in the guard squads! Our coppers and peacekeepers give it up so we can sleep soundly in our beds and blankies, but they need us to give it up for them! Will you give it up for them!? I said WILL YOU GIVE IT UP FOR THEM!?”

Cheers and whoops and applause broke out, with much stamping and roaring and the occasional green flash from excited changelings. As ever, the goats wandered among the moving splashes of colour, bleating at each other as they passed. Another passed near Fluttershy and gave her a longer glance than she felt was necessary before moving on.

“Iron Will supports our peacekeepers! Iron Will supports tougher laws and prison doors! Iron Will supports clean streets and heroic feats! Iron Will says NO to crime, NO to grime, and he says it ALL the time! What’s the way to make ‘em pay? It’s a crackdown, fool!”

Overhead, the breezies began to light their antennae in joy. A lone sheep in the crowd reared up.

“And Iron Will is so confident in his initiative that Iron Will is going to pledge all the treasure he earns from the ‘Iron Will On Tour’ Tour to the Peacekeeper’s Fund, and he! Keeps! Nothing! Iron Will wants the trust of the city, so Iron Will shall GIVE to the Trust of the City!”

Cameras flashed instantly. Cheers overwhelmed them.

At this, the sheer noise and flurry of colour was too much for Fluttershy. Groaning, she staggered aside, bounced off Bulk Biceps’ elbow, and accidentally knocked Derpy into a nearby plinth.

Stone cracked around them. As one, they peered up at the statue rocking overhead. With the inevitability of a meteor strike, it swelled to fill their vision and then crashed down hard into the pavement. A cobweb of cracks spread out under their three hooves.

Further along, the crash shook the next statue, which creaked and toppled and finally hit the one next to it.

It was impressive how many fell over.

About twelve in a row.

Then silence.

Fluttershy turned to find the entire crowd staring at the three of them. Iron Will was squinting forwards to try and make them out.

“Oh no…” she breathed, and tried to hide behind a curtain of her own pink hair.

Rainbow exposed herself fully to the night air, and the rushing sounds brought life to her limbs.

There was the city laid out below. Spirals and criss-crosses and zigzags and parallel lines marked the constellations underneath, while the red tinge of the stratus cloud hung over the lot and over her. Thermals rose up, pushing her wings back and flicking at the tips of her feathers. Only a tilt of her wing later, she was twirling through the column with her rainbow hair flapping angrily.

Once, the city had been called “Pegasopolis”, but centuries of revolutions, protests, and creatively bad mismanagement had transfigured it into the much less catchy “Outpost 51”. Rainbow wasn’t mad about history, but she’d picked up a few titbits here and there. There’d been a Pegasus Empire, which had made her sit up, but it was only the seventh greatest empire in history, so she’d slumped over her desk again. Outpost 51, if she remembered it right, was where the pegasi first met another sapient species. Which one it had been, though, she wasn’t sure.

The Forum loomed. She aimed for the fountain in the middle, tilted back, and let her hooves down to skid along the surface, trailing white crests and two waves like twin arrows. The peacekeepers never taught her this trick. She'd taught herself most of her more unnecessary moves.

With a spring, she cleared the foals gaping at her and landed on the lawn surrounding the circle of stone. A few small hooves stamped in applause and she was greeted with young smiles and adoring gazes.

“When you’re done showing off,” said a stallion behind her.

Rainbow spun round and accidentally flicked a gob of water from the sodden tip of her tail.

“Oops,” she said. “Sorry. Keep forgetting about that.”

Thunderlane glared and wiped his face down. “And you always have a go at me when I fluff a trick. The horseshoe’s on the other hoof now, Rainbow.”

“That’s Captain Rainbow Dash to you!” Rainbow puffed out her chest and smirked at the gasps from the gaggle of foals. “And don’t you forget I’m telling you what to do when we get back.”

“Ha!” His backtalk exhausted, Thunderlane shrugged carelessly. “While we’re here, might as well brush up on some of our history. Museum visit? I heard they got a section on the early Wonderbolts. That could be useful.”

“Are you kidding? We’re taking a break! I’m not doing homework on a break.” She pushed past him, nose in the air. “I’m gonna go see what’s happenin’.”

“It’ll bite you in the croup one day!” he yelled after her retreating back. “They’ll test us when we’re not expecting it! You’ll see!”

Like you won’t fake a cough when that happens. Rainbow shook her head, guffawed under her breath, and marched across the open ground while clusters of creatures gathered around her.

Many of the clusters were babbling to each other, some throwing their limbs around as though trying to mould an argument in the air. She heard snatches, but though she knew some of the words, she didn’t know what they meant when she heard what else was being said.

“You see, the essence of being is what grounds reality, so you must axiomatically believe in it before you can…”

“No, the very notion of morality depends on the existence of a moral agent with desires and beliefs…”

“Don’t be daft. There is no fundamental choice, because deep down, the nature of cause and effect trumps everything you’re going to do before you…”

“Huh,” said Rainbow, and she kept going.

The others on the ships used to talk about this place. They called it the Forum, though it looked more like a big square full of chatterboxes to her. Pegasi from olden times had built more like them – as Rainbow understood it – so they could chill and hang out and ask the Big Questions, and they were still used for all that stuff, only with the other species joining in. Big Questions, she’d been told, with a capital B and a capital Q. “Philosophy”, they’d called it.

Rainbow steered well clear of the Big Questions. She barely bothered with the little ones, and a word like “Philosophy” had one too many syllables for her liking.

Where the grassy verge gave way to the cobbles, Rainbow passed a row of bollards and stood back to let an omnibus trundle by, its yoked oxen lowing with the effort of slowing down. To her right, the queue that had built up by a wooden post clambered up the steps to the large carriage’s entrance, and after a few seconds, the oxen trundled on and heaved the omnibus with them. Rainbow thanked the stars for making her a pegasus and trotted across the cobbles. Fancy getting stuck in one of those giant boxes, just to cross from one side of town to the other.

Opposite, the pegasus Raindrops glanced up from a map on the path and grinned at her. From the establishment behind, a trembling warble tugged at the heartstrings of all who heard its despairing notes, though the language was complete gibberish to Rainbow’s ears.

“Found any grub worth getting?” said Rainbow. “I could eat a silo.”

“This place behind me looks good, don’t you think?” said Raindrops.

The tables under the tarps could have been carved from glaciers, so immaculately white were their covers. White walls with black timber gave the establishment an old-fashioned look, its upper storey bulging out into the street. Over them all, the ebony made the golden, curly lettering stand out bold as brass. It even smelled faintly of rosebuds and fermented grape juice, tinged with exotic perfumes that made Rainbow sneeze.

“Boring,” she said.

“What’s wrong with it? It’s famous, it’s classy, everyone raves about it. Look.” Raindrops tapped the map with a hoof.

Rainbow winced at the flowery letters on the sign. It looked like a den of stiffs. The nearest table housed two goats with brass bells tied to their necks as they peered through a monocle apiece and bleated haughtily at each other.

“Gustav’s Gourmet?” she read aloud. A twinge in her head made her take a step back. “Seriously? Look at it! I don’t think it’s changed so much as a chair in the last thousand years!”

“It’s vintage!” Raindrops beamed up at her.

“Can’t they get a decent singer? You know? Someone more upbeat?”

“I saw the chalkboard outside. It’s the world-famous City Guard performing, and that’s Red Velvet Cake. Singing…” Raindrops turned her head round to squint at the board. “Singing ‘When the Rains Come, They Come Down Hard on My Head’. I think that’s what it translates as. They’re a new group with an eye on the old classics.”

Rainbow threw her wings up in a helpless gesture. “Can’t we just go somewhere, you know, normal? With bar fights, or music you can thump your head to? Somewhere cool. Pick somewhere cool.”

Rolling up her map with her hooves, Raindrops grinned the grin of one who knows she’s playing the trump card and loves watching everyone else’s faces when she does so. “General Spitfire used to come here to eat all the time. Can’t do cooler than that, now can you?”

“Aw come on. That’s not fair. This joint just isn’t me.”

“Whatever you say, Dashing Captain Rainbow Dash. It’s my turn to pick, so nyah-nyah. In we go.” The front door swung back, and Rainbow noticed gloomily that it even had stained glass. Stained glass, for Pete’s sake.

With a groan, she added, “Fine, but you’re paying the bill, and I ain’t going easy on you.”

“Come on! The others already got a table.”

Rainbow stopped for a moment, groaned at this news, groaned even louder at the implications, and tried to set her face to casual. They'd mention it. Sooner or later, they'd mention it.

She took a deep breath, hoped like heck they didn't mention it, and went inside.

The interior was just what she’d dreaded. There was a chandelier that made the eye water trying to keep track of its every detail. The “carved glacier” look of the tables put her in mind of a wedding reception, and there was too much pink on the walls. Every other person in there was decorated with a saddle or a glittery dress or cuffs and collars. She felt her skin crawl and realized she hadn’t washed since yesterday.

A pegasus on a candlelit table at the back waved at her, and she noticed a few others from the peacekeepers. Rainbow slipped between the tables, wishing she’d at least thought to pack a decent jacket in her saddlebag, which now felt like a bulbous growth on her side.

“Got to get up earlier than that, Dash,” said the pegasus. “I had to wait for you all over again.”

Rainbow sighed with relief. If Lightning Dust was taking this in her stride, then so could she. The pair of them exchanged smirks and gave each other quick nods of respect. Beside Lightning Dust, Gilda was sitting stiff-backed and hunched up as though trying not to touch anything. The griffon relaxed slightly at the sight of her.

“Hey Dash,” Gilda said with a smirk, while Lightning Dust took a sip from a straw. “Get held up on the way here, or something?”

“Nah. I was just chillin’. This city’d make a killer obstacle course if we ever got the time.”

“My thoughts exactly!” Lightning Dust sucked the last of her drink and pushed the glass away. “Name the challenge and the place.”

“How about a rooftop chase before breakfast?” said Gilda, and she shifted so that Raindrops could pull up an extra chair for Rainbow Dash. “Just the three of us. One side of the city to the other, freestyle, and No. Tricks. Barred. Just gotta learn the layout first. That’s it.”

“Hmm. Interesting. But let’s make it a blind course,” said Lightning Dust, “right after dinner, and you got yourself a deal.”

“What, and get a stitch halfway?” said Rainbow as she sat down. “Forget that. I’ve been chasing things for weeks. I wanna kick back, at least. Gotta give these bad boys their beauty sleep.” She flapped her wings a couple of times.

Gilda smirked. “Two against one, Dusty. And I got the captain’s OK, so chew on that.”

Lightning shrugged. “Please yourself. But don’t think because you’re captain now, Rainbow, I’m gonna go easy on you forever.”

“So hey! Captain Dash!” Gilda thumped Rainbow’s back so hard she almost knocked the pegasus off her chair. “The official captain of cool! Not bad goin’ for a pegasus.”

“Yeah, congrats to the champ!” said Lightning. “I’d give you a toast if we had any drinks left.”

Raindrops waved to a passing waiter – a griffon in a suit with tails – and a few minutes later, they were each staring down their various mugs. The handles on them were extra wide to allow a hoof to reach through and grip them.

“To Captain Rainbow Dash,” said Raindrops, raising hers, “and to a long and prosperous career.”

The others repeated it, except Gilda and Rainbow who snuck in silly words and sniggered to each other about it. Soon, they were all gulping down from various mugs, eyes briefly flaring at the taste explosion. Gilda was the first to finish.

“Whoa,” she said in a gasp. “That’s… good cider.”

“Yeah,” gasped Rainbow, who finished next. “Holy guacamole, I’ve got shivers. This stuff is like that god custard, you know, from the ancient myths?”

“Ambrosia?” said Lightning, suppressing her own gasp.

“Yeah! That! I want another one!”

“See?” said Raindrops, who had taken her time with hers. “This place ain’t that bad, is it?”

Gilda peered across the tables to the stage opposite, where a pegasus in a satin dress was warbling her way through a skulking tune. “The music still sucks, though. You know what this place could do with? Tiger Tiger. They’d wipe the floor with these guys.”

“Eh, they’re OK,” said Lightning. “Got nothin’ on Pigasus, though.”

“Are you mad?” said Raindrops. “Here Be Dragons could blow Pigasus away in their sleep. Who else could combine classical scores with modern anarchy like it was nothing?”

“Ha! Have you even heard of the Mephisto Mob?” said Rainbow Dash. “They put the ‘awe’ in ‘awesomeness’ and the ‘rad’ in ‘radicalness’. I dare you to listen to their openings and not feel like you could fly to the moon and back. Here Be Dragons just got style and nothing else.”

There were snorts of disapproval from around the table as the quartet began talking fast and loud over bands and songs and which of the four of them had the worst taste of all time. A few nearby patrons peered around at them, but as she talked, Rainbow was surprised at just how relaxed it was in Gustav’s. The plush seat was pretty comfy, and now that her gaze jumped from table to table, there were normal pegasi and griffons among the dressed-up gatherings. There was a polite stamping of hooves and talons as the band were given some applause, and then they kicked things up with a much jazzier number, this time in normal lingo.

“Ah,” said Lightning. “Now that’s more like it.”

So far so good, Rainbow Dash thought. No one's mentioned it.

Yet.

“Sweet. So Rainbow Dash,” said Gilda. “What are you gonna do now you’re captain? Do you have to kill somebody?”

“Very funny. I want some more of that cider, for a start.” Rainbow waved at a passing waiter. “Er, garkon, garkon, voolah voo plus cider, silvoo play.”

“Make that two ciders,” said Lightning.

“And you don’t have to do it in Gryph, you know,” said Raindrops. “They can speak normal.”

Rainbow Dash put an elbow on the table and leaned on it. She could feel the ache in her chest again, and no matter how much she tried to talk, it never went away. Not completely.

“Hey, I gotta learn something,” she said as the indifferent waiter drifted away. “They make you do more egghead stuff when you rise up in the ranks. It’s not like I just kick butt all the time.”

Lightning Dust watched the stage absently. “Wasn’t Thunderlane talking about going to the museum for the Wonderbolts exhibit? You could go with him.”

“I said that I gotta learn something, not that I’m desperate.”

“It’s pigswill, anyway,” said Gilda. “They told us all about this stuff in Flight Camp. ‘In the year of whatever in the land of who-cares, So-and-So set up this-and-that in order to do the blah-blah-blah.’ How’s that supposed to help?”

“It’s a pride-building exercise,” said Raindrops. “We learn about our history together, and we take pride in being a part of it. That’s how I understood it.”

Gilda shook her head at the folly of pegasi. “It’s easier on the griffon side. All they do there is point you at a straw pegasus and say ‘Turn that into chaff in six seconds, and you’re in’. Then they tell you how you could do it in four, and then you gotta do it in three. Then you gotta fly like a pro. You know, claws-on training, and stuff.”

“Hooves-on stuff, in our case.” Lightning reached for the mug of cider before the waiter had even put it down. “Ah well, your loss, Rainbow. No point whining about it.”

“Yeah.” Rainbow stared gloomily into the mug being placed before her. “No point.”

The City Guard on the stage finished their jazzier number, and the tables around them stamped harder and whistled with gusto. A couple of waiters stopped to clap their talons appreciatively before hurrying back to their errands. Near the edge of the stage, one changeling got out of his seat and jumped forwards. Red Velvet Cake leaned down and let the changeling whisper in her ear.

Evidently, it was a good request, because she then babbled to her fellow musicians excitedly, and a few seconds later they were silently creeping up on the tune.

A hush fell across the restaurant. The steady pace, the low notes, the rhythmic beats of each instrument, all of it built up and rose to the ceiling and then crashed down on the spectators in a sudden frenzied chase of musical chaos and excitement. Red Velvet Cake was getting applause before she’d even finished her first line.

Rainbow Dash sighed into her cider, sending ripples across its surface.

“Oh come on,” growled Gilda. “You’re not still sore about that yellow dweeb, are you?”

Raindrops moaned. “Not this again…”

“Well maybe I am!” Rainbow rounded on her, wings drawn like swords. “Maybe I am sore about it! How’d you like it if you were made captain, and it turned out the pegasus in front of you got kicked down for it?”

Gilda blinked up at her in surprise, and only then did Rainbow realize she was hovering in the air.

Lightning glanced away from the stage for a moment. “I’d say it was about time. Face it; she just didn’t have what it takes. Even you can’t deny that.”

“I’m not denying it!” Rainbow almost knocked her mug over with an elbow, but Raindrops snatched it up and yanked it out of reach. “I’m saying… Well, it’s like… I dunno, but how can you be so… so cold about it!?”

“Get real, Dash. We all saw it coming a mile away,” said Gilda, her own wings spreading wide. “What do you care, anyway? You kept saying you couldn’t believe she got that high before you did.”

“I know that!” Rainbow ground her teeth and groaned in frustration. “But she happens to be a friend of mine!”

Gilda blew a dismissive raspberry. “Yeah, right. That’s why you keep saying what a lamewad she is whenever she’s flying.”

“I never said she was a lamewad!” Something like inspiration hit her boiling mind. “It just… This feels like stealing…”

Lightning chuckled and waved her down. “Enough with the guilt trip, Dash. You’ve done nothing wrong. Think about it: Flutters goes back to something she can do, you get put where you belong, and once the storm dies down, life goes on as normal again. Everyone knows how the game works, right? Flutters just lost a round, that’s all. If she’s got what it takes” – the smirk was rather telling – “then she’ll get another chance.”

But Rainbow couldn’t shake it off. The ache, which had been dying down just then, flared up in full force at the sight of that smirk. Her head swore the words were totally correct, but the rest of her insisted it was wrong, wrong, wrong, and she didn’t know why. She was fighting so hard against it that she groaned with the effort.

“I gotta go,” she said suddenly.

Raindrops gagged. “But I haven’t even ordered food yet!”

“I’m not hungry. I’m gonna take a flap or two before the thermals go down.”

“You’re such a doofus at times, Dash,” growled Gilda. “Just get over it.”

“I am over it! I just need some fresh air! That's all! I'll be back before you know it!”

Without a backward glance, Rainbow shot over the heads of the matrons and out the door, snapping up to shoot into the sky. Part of her knew she was going to get it in the neck later, but it was shouted down by the rest of her. Soon, through the flow of the cold and the buffeting push, the troubles began to wash away from her, and they fell, like the ground, further and further behind.

Guard Flutter, Part V: The Demotion

The pegasus Spitfire was an odd case among the Democratic Republicans of the Council, for the simple reason that she wasn’t one.

Ever since the days of the Pegasus Empire, when promotion usually involved cornering a nation in a dark peninsular and then mugging it, “being military” and “being a pegasus” had largely been treated as synonymous. On one of the walls in her office, the face of General Firefly the First peered down across a millennium. It had filled the blank space, had glowered down at every one of her predecessors, and had unfortunately been bedecked in an outsized bearskin and opera collar that had ceased being the height of serious fashion about a century before Firefly’s birth.

Whenever she came in here, General Spitfire stopped, turned to salute the oil painting, and then strode over to her desk to begin stamping paperwork. Thankfully, her modern uniform was a skin-tight affair with a simple pattern of azure and gold, made of the finest breezie cloth, capable of withstanding arctic bite and desert baking heat, and easy to wear under casual clothes in case of a call at short notice.

Shore leave meant little to her. There were always papers, and the others in the Council often ducked holy-days and vacations just to keep their positions in the race. Every day, General Spitfire sighed and buckled down.

This day, there was a knock on the door. Without looking up, she stamped another sheet and barked, “It’s open.”

Iron Will filled the office. The fact that he was hunched over, twiddling his thumbs and pulling at his tie did little to diminish his sheer volume. Spitfire had to lean back to take him in.

“Well well well,” she said cheerfully. “If it isn’t Iron Lungs himself, here in the flesh.”

“I told you not to call me that,” said Iron Will, who was trying to make his whisper sound less like a yell. “Listen. We got a situation here.”

Spitfire’s smile widened and she put her forelimbs behind her head to get more comfortable. “Don’t we all, Iron Will? You’re talking to the general who just got back from the Cygnus Range. Before that, I was at Medusa Falls trying to keep the Snakeheads under wraps. And I still haven’t lost all the burns from the Great Dragon Purge before that. Please tell me when I don’t have a situation.”

“It’s about one of your officers,” said Iron Will. “We had a… a bit of a misunderstanding.”

This time, the smile vanished. “A misunderstanding?”

“As in I just arrested her for destroying half of the statues in the Square.”

Spitfire buried a hoof in her own face.

She was a quick thinker, but even if she’d had a cognitive speed limit that a snail would’ve laughed at, certain premonitions came ready-made for the occasion. This one was yellow, with soupy eyes and curtains of pink hair and the genial, quiet contentment of a calm spot in the middle of a hurricane.

A pair of sunglasses lay on the desk. Smooth as oiled clockwork, she snapped them open and placed them on her snout. Only then did she look over them to Iron Will’s wet nose.

“Did you,” she said as though discussing shot put techniques, “jump forwards and hoist her up?”

“I immediately jumped forwards and hoisted her up as high as I could!”

“And were you making a speech about the need for tougher –”

“For tougher crackdowns on the criminal elements of the city? You bet your whole treasure hoard on it.”

Spitfire sighed. “So it goes without saying that –”

“I caught a vandal and made sure everybody knew about it to show how big a deal the new deal was.”

They stared at each other. Then Spitfire reached up and folded her sunglasses and carefully put them back on the desk. The lack of smile on her face was now total. Even her red eyes were blazing with something completely unlike good humour.

“At what point did you find out she was one of my officers?”

“When I used my office to fill out the imprisonment forms. I asked her who she was so I could fill it in. Speaking of forms, there’s too much paperwork. Iron Will ain’t no pencil-pusher. Iron Will just hires ‘em. Them pencil-pushing pretty people just take down the law laid down by Iron Will. Heck, Iron Will is the Law! I AM the Law! The LAW!”

Iron Will tried to rise, and bashed his head against the ceiling. Bits of plaster stuck to his upturned horns.

“Sorry,” he rumbled. “Got carried away. Anyway, she’s still there now. As soon as I heard her name, I slipped out to get a glass of water and rushed here to tell you the whole thing.”

“It’s cool.” Spitfire hummed to herself. “That ceiling’s needed a do-over for weeks. As for the officer, if she’s still in your quarters, then I’ll come and talk to her. Leave it to me.”

Iron Will saluted, knocking a hole in the wall with his raised elbow.

“Of course,” continued Spitfire, “she’ll have to be disciplined. But so long as the others don’t find out who she is, then I think we can get out of this without egg on our faces. Just give me a few minutes.”

As soon as Iron Will had manoeuvred his way past the door frame and the lock clicked into place, Spitfire’s autopilot sputtered and died. With a groan, she kneaded her forehead and tried to smother her flaming mane.

Of all the times in all the places that Fluttershy could’ve picked, she’d picked this one! Right when the peacekeepers had just come back to a hero’s welcome! Right after weeks and weeks of trying to figure out where the arimaspi base had been hidden! Right when Fluttershy had already dropped down a rank for that idiocy with the chimaera!

A part of her softened, and it tried to rub the red mist from her vision. It wasn’t really fair to take it out on this one pegasus. The Council were the ones who’d blow up a lone incident and ignore an amazing victory. A few years ago, she could’ve just rapped Fluttershy around the hocks without issue and then let bygones be bygones. In the end, they were both peacekeepers, both leading the citizens and facing the Council.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a good career move. She’d given up telling the Council that they weren’t being fair. Not these days. When she said something was “fair”, it looked to them like it meant “soft and lazy and probably sentimental”. When they used it, it looked to her like it meant “brutal and savage and misleadingly called the 'realistic choice'”.

She’d demoted pegasi for accidents, and that was if no one was hurt. As General of the Pegasi on the Council, she had to run a tight ship, or run aground. There were no middle positions. Not when she could so easily be replaced by pegasi less resistant to the Council's “hang someone” mentality.

Most got the message soon enough; the rest were on their way out. The Council? They’d sent a starving mare to prison for stealing a loaf of bread. That was almost a decade ago; the pegasus was still there, awaiting a trial she’d never had. Where was the “fairness” in that?

It occurred to General Spitfire that she hadn’t seen her mother for almost a year. Perhaps it was time to write a letter? She frowned and shook the thought out of her head. Time for personal matters later.

Breathing to steady herself, she pocketed the sunglasses and strode across the office to follow Iron Will. Right now she needed a friendly face, even if it had a tendency to shout a lot.

Not for the first time in her life, Fluttershy wondered what had come over her. She didn’t even really like being in the peacekeepers. There was far too much excitement, and far too many ways to get a bruising.

She was staring down at her hooves on the hard oak chair, but simply because they were the only things in the room that didn’t bother her. Iron Will’s caravan – his "office" – was a museum in and of itself. Maces and axes and armour plates hung from brackets along the walls, and the centre of the room was a raised square with four corner posts where ropes had once been suspended from. Dimly, she remembered that Iron Will had once been a champion fighter. A few trophies and bronze laurel wreaths glinted from a display case behind his desk.

The only light in the room, though, was the firefly jar next to the paperwork. After a few minutes, she gingerly reached across and unscrewed the lid. Little lights flitted hither and thither, and for a blissful time she watched the tiny stars dance around and above her. Then, being unimaginative insects, they returned to the jar, and Fluttershy shrank back into her own world.

The form lay unfinished on the desk. She resisted the urge to look at it; it was going to be rough enough as it was, and there was something furtive about the act that made her shy away from it, whimpering. They’d probably give her extra years if they caught her trying to read other people’s documents.

With a start, she heard the door snap open and then slam. A clatter of hooves moved to the space behind the desk. She looked up.

Oh my, she thought. Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my…

General Spitfire didn’t speak for a long while. The staring contest began to burn Fluttershy’s eyes, and her gaze retreated to her hooves for medical attention. Spitfire didn’t so much as twitch.

“What are we going to do with you, Newbie?” she said at last. “I suppose it would help if I had some idea of what you did, exactly.”

Fluttershy could feel the words crouching in her head. They knew what they were doing. Just tell the truth, they were saying. We’ll get it over with. Give us a signal, jump into the deep, anything. But even they didn’t really believe it.

What was she going to say? She’d jumped into a statue because she was the sort who’d jump if a mouse squeaked at the wrong moment. There was no way to make that look good on a form, and she blushed at the thought of trying.

“If that’s the way we’re going to play…” Spitfire slipped on her sunglasses and pulled the sheet towards her. “Let me guess: it was a total accident because something or someone gave you a fright?”

Fluttershy forced herself to nod a couple of times. They said Spitfire could corkscrew entire mountains and deliver messages from one side of the world to the other. A pegasus who could do that probably wasn’t happy to sit in an office for hours on end, shuffling reports.

“Let’s see,” said Spitfire. “You’re not a regular in towns and cities, are you? I think I remember you came from some quiet cottage in the Square of the Pegasus, am I right?”

And she probably had a whole city of pegasi to take care of. That wasn’t something you could just drop for one pegasus’s sake.

“Am…” she finally whispered. “Am I… going to… I mean, do I… have to pay for another statue?”

“Hm?” Spitfire looked up. “You say something?”

At this point, Fluttershy sighed and felt her insides collapse. If she was quick and got it over with, Spitfire could get back to work. A part of her brain screamed and panicked, shouting about food and drink and giving up buying a good book for a few years, but it was rapidly outvoted.

“I’ll… pay for the new statue,” she said in a defeated voice.

To her surprise – and sudden hope – she heard Spitfire give a chuckle.

“The statue?” said Spitfire. “You can’t tell me you’re worrying about one simple statue at a time like this?”

The sudden hope ducked back behind the stage curtain, flushing with embarrassment. “But… I could’ve hurt someone…”

“True, though from what Iron Will told me, only yourself. It’s not about getting the money for a new statue. We could probably go without one old, cracking, mistreated statue anyway. Which reminds me: I’ll have to find out which of the Council is in charge of that. Right now, our real issue is the reputation of the peacekeepers.”

Alarm bells went off in Fluttershy’s head, but whether through lack of use or some kind of mental problem, she couldn’t tell why. She looked up, and finally noticed that Spitfire had removed her sunglasses.

Oh dear… she thought.

“You see, Newbie,” said Spitfire, “we’ve just come back from saving the world from a terrible enemy. We’re being hailed as heroes out there. But a few weeks ago, and up to a few days ago, everyone was complaining about what a bunch of thugs we were, and how we should have pulled out first chance we got. What do you think will happen if they learn one of our returning heroes was caught vandalizing statues?”

An answer popped into Fluttershy’s head. She was itching to say it. However, Spitfire was giving her a look that said, “I know what your answer is, and I’m going to dock you a lot of points if you say it.” Fluttershy’s head swam, knowing it had seconds to scrounge up an answer, but having no clue as to what it looked like.

“They’ll… be… mad at me?” she tried.

“Think politics.” Spitfire leaned back in her chair, hooves behind her head. “Today, they’ll be saying ‘I always knew they were thugs in the peacekeepers.’ Tomorrow, they’ll say, ‘And I bet the arimaspi job was their fault too.’”

“But isn’t this just my fault?” Fluttershy blushed, and pressed on. “I don’t understand. The other peacekeepers didn’t do it.”

“Wrong, Newbie! Wrong!”

Fluttershy fell out of her chair and hit the edge of the arena; Spitfire was hunched over the desk, giving her a stare that a cockatrice would’ve backed away from.

Groaning, Spitfire came round and heaved her back onto the chair. Fluttershy shook the whole time as more words bowled her over.

“When you knock over a statue, the peacekeepers did it! When the town crier shouts your name, the crowd hears the peacekeepers! When you so much as sneeze, it’s the peacekeepers who blow your nose with a hanky!”

Fluttershy raised a shaking hoof. She was aware of hundreds if not thousands of different groups of animals, including the ones most people couldn’t see without special lenses. She’d never forgotten the first time someone had shown her two identical warblers in a cage, and she’d pointed out their species, subspecies, and regional variety right before freeing them. Which was why it pained her whenever she was confronted with a political animal and had no idea how to react.

“Yes?” Spitfire retreated behind the desk and waited for Fluttershy to stop making the chair shake.

“When you say the… the peacekeepers all do what I do…” she said, chewing her lip for a moment. “Is that just me, or is that everybody?”

“In a word, yes.”

Fluttershy coughed. “Doesn’t that seem a bit… well…”

“I know what you’re thinking. It’s not nice, and it’s not fun, believe me. Iron Will’s an old… ally of ours. He’ll understand, eventually. Once you get a word in edgeways. But there are a lot of people in the Council who don’t like us, and they’ll look for any excuse to make our lives harder, and the worst part is that a lot of them have the brawn to make up for the brains they don’t have.”

“That sounds terrible!” said Fluttershy, and then she remembered where she fit in all this and wished she’d just evaporate there and then.

“You see how it works now?” said Spitfire, and she straightened up. “So here’s what we’re going to do. A lot of people know that someone knocked over a statue in the Square. They don’t know it was you, and memory isn’t the public’s strong point. So officially, it was done by a civilian, probably a changeling in disguise. Iron Will got ‘em bang to rights. But just in case anyone does have a decent memory, you’ll have to keep out of the way for a bit. Style your hair different, wear a different uniform, hang out with another crowd.”

“But –” Fluttershy began.

“And frankly, in case it acts as sufficient deterrent for you to get your act together, you’re being demoted as of this moment in time.”

Spitfire leaned forwards and squinted at her with keen interest.

In the grand scheme of things – Fluttershy herself had to admit it – she was a pegasus with very little brain, and whatever they said about pegasi being warmongering thugs, she was aware that pegasi good enough to stay at the top for so long were pegasi with brains leaking out of their ears. In theory, there were also nice pegasi at the top, though the top never struck her as a place she ever wanted to visit, much less move to.

Nevertheless, her brow creased with effort. Pegasi got demoted all the time, true, but…

“Demoted?” she breathed.

“That’s right. Demoted.”

Fluttershy groped for a word in the sudden blank fog enveloping her mind. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

“Again?” she managed.

“Again.” Spitfire gave her a curt nod.

“Already?” was Fluttershy’s next desperate gambit at conversation.

“Private Fluttershy,” said Spitfire in a leaden voice. “When you go up in rank, we invest a lot of faith and trust in you. You squandered a lot of it. And then you squandered some more.”

“By accident?”

“By accident, yes, but it’s squandered all the same. We can't have incompetency rewarded when the citizens of the capital look to us for their protection. You wouldn't want to trust your life to someone with butter-hooves. Look, you've got guts, I grant you that. You've done great work for us. But that doesn't excuse clumsiness and recklessness. That business with the chimaera was totally against protocol, it wasn't authorized, you did it in direct violation of our orders to secure the Cygnus base, and if it wasn't for Private Gilda's intervention, it would have been a suicide mission. You know this. Having a big heart doesn't excuse you from lacking the brains to match. That costs you trust. So now you’ll have to earn some more trust from us.”

“I-I’m b-b-being… d-d-demoted tw-twice?” Fluttershy’s lip trembled to the point of incomprehension, leaving only a few squeaks. There was bad, yes, she could stomach bog-standard badness on her record, but this? This was historical. Two demotions on the same day!?

“Until you can convince me your promotions were not mistakes. I admit we might have been too hasty in helping you rise high, but considering the feats you've pulled off… Look, let's make this simple. There’s already a demotion form filled out for you after that chimaera incident.” Here, Spitfire did not entirely meet her eye. “But a captain dropped to a lieutenant and still causing chaos is too awkward to bandy about. Meanwhile, anyone asking questions is going to wonder just how badly we need our heads examined. We can hardly fiddle with the paperwork, even if no one else is going to read it. Now, a lieutenant to a private –”

“B-B-But, but…” said Fluttershy, having gotten control of her gaping mouth at last.

“– is less of a problem; the lieutenant rank is always the first proving ground for a rising officer. I just have to write that on the report, just in case inquiring minds want to see it. A lot of people will just assume one demotion rather than two demotions in a row. It’s basic psychology.”

“Basic… what?”

“There might be someone obsessive enough to ask for everything about you, but this isn't the first time we've disciplined a lieutenant, and frankly who’s going to care about yet another? The message is that thugs don’t get very far under my command.”

“I’m not a thug… Please, I’m not –”

“And Newbie,” added Spitfire in a colder tone. “Fluttershy. It’s about time you really listened to your friend Rainbow Dash, don’t you think?”

The embers of defiance, never hot to begin with, faded and died in the hearth of Fluttershy. She hung her head, wishing there was a noose attached.

“Y-Yes, ma’am,” she whispered.

Spitfire tapped the desk for emphasis. “Fair's fair, I’ve been far too lenient towards you, Private. I had hopes for you. I'm going to take my medicine from the rest of the Council over this, and that's fine. You’ve got potential, I’ll give you that much. But the fact is this isn’t a game. It wouldn't be an easy one to play, in any case. I can’t keep covering up for you. Now, once shore leave is over, you’ll report to the Leucippus under Captain Rainbow Dash’s command. I suggest you learn something from her example. You’re dismissed.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Fluttershy to her hooves. “S-Sorry, ma’am.”

Even as she said the s-word, that other part of her – the one that had been nodding along with Spitfire’s speech – gave her a figurative clip round the ear. Surely, she’d only said that to pluck at the general’s heartstrings. Trying to soften her superior up and get out of trouble: that was what she was doing. As if she wasn’t already getting less rope than she deserved.

Feeling sick, Fluttershy slunk out of her chair and tiptoed to the door, wishing she hadn’t caused everyone this total waste of time.

Guard Flutter, Part VII: On The Edge of Collapse

Rainbow Dash watched the red streak of grimly lit darkness: watched the city. Up here, it looked so earthy, like she was flying over oil-soaked soil. Towers and wedge-like roofs stuck out as rotting teeth from buried, scattered compost.

It’s always dirty, she thought. All that mud and rock and stuff. Just all that… stuff. The stuffness gets everywhere.

Higher, higher, higher she went, but still she was staring down at the black grime. Each light only showed just how grimy it was, like how a mud-splattered slab of white marble looked dirtier than an actual mud pool. Higher and higher and higher, but the sheer darkness was now all that was left, surrounding the lot.

They always said it was OK. There was water, and clean plants, and people washed the temples so they sparkled with metal. But it was still earthy. It clung. She just had to look at it, and it clung to her brain until she had to go up and away from it.

Rainbow flipped over, ignoring the stretch on her skin, the tug around her eyelids, and the way her hair rippled across her back and chest.

Over her head – or rather, under her now, for her hooves hovered near it and she could see the city if she tilted her head back far enough – the cloud glowed with a hellish tint. It was the same redness, too close to the browns and the fiery colours of the city, but in the smoothness of the clouds and the wisps around them, she could kind of see the air. It was ghostly, or like a welcoming spirit.

It didn’t cling. Now that she was approaching the sky, it washed over her, and then she stopped and it was there, everywhere and nowhere at once. The tingle of gravity fell over her bones, and she spread her limbs wide, and she spread her wings wide, and she fell.

Far below, the lights of the city stayed as small as stars, but she could almost feel the incoming gravity as though the entire planet were gearing up to smack her.

She used to stay in the air a lot. Not that she was that much better these days, but back then she hated the earth.

A long time ago, she’d learned to stay away from the ground. The soil pulled her down all the time. Dust clung to her stubbly fur. Mud seeped in and she used to wriggle and moan as though it were a poison.

Some pegasi had told her she could never get away from it. The world was too big. It would pull her back down in the end.

“I don’t care!” she used to shriek. “I can fly up all the time. All and all the time, if I want to! I’ll go up to the clouds and live on them instead! You’ll see!”

And they’d laughed and ruffled her hair, and she’d blushed, and then they forgot about it.

Gently, the rushing wind peeled away the memory, and she narrowed her eyes against the flailing locks of her hair.

Rainbow Dash flipped over, and now she could see the stratus. Smoke lit by the fire underneath. She liked smoke. It was just a cloud with class. And fire; now there was something magical about fire. She wasn’t the sit-and-watch type, but she could watch a fire dance and curl and glow in the midst of shadows all day. She sighed and then breathed in, and she felt the life rush through her mouth and down her throat. Her lungs were almost bursting with a surge of energy. It stretched all the way to her limbs and she felt herself, her mind, her comforts click back into place.

A few flakes of white snow drifted by…

Young Rainbow Dash was so unkempt that her rainbow mane was nothing but a spiky tangle of colours, with no order to them at all. She hovered at the front gates that arched over her, that swung back like the maw of some alien beast. There was the plateau, a monolith that filled her entire future, and perched on top was the ancient pegasus temple. She could already see tiny dots flitting around it like flies.

She glanced up at the letters carved over her head. Pegasine wasn’t her strong suit, but she knew the word “Flight” when she saw it.

Rainbow Dash gulped.

“OK,” she mumbled to herself, “OK, Dash. This is it. Act cool. Don’t do anything silly. It’s just a camp, right? Lots of foals go to camp. Everyone does. No one fails at camp, so you should be OK, right? You should be OK. You can’t fail. They’d laugh at you if you failed. They’d hold you back, that’s all they’d do. You’d stay behind, forever and ever, until you get it right…”

She slapped herself around the face.

“Come on, Dash! Deep breaths. Deep breaths!”

Keeping an eye on the carved letters in case one fell off and crushed her – silly, yes, but, well, maybe it wouldn’t happen, but it might, and she didn’t want to be the one when it did, right – Rainbow tilted herself forwards, and her hovering became a drift over the white, unblemished snowscape. She was already beginning to pant short and sharp pants. Perhaps she shouldn’t have hovered all the way here.

No one had come to see her off. They were busy, or something. They were always busy.

The foal, blushing and curled up in front of her wings, drifted across the endless white. Someone shrieked from the top of the plateau, and she stopped, hovering higher again and cocking an ear.

Two shadows rushed over her. She looked up to catch a pair of foals zipping out beyond the plateau wall, and then they curved round and disappeared back within its range.

“Whoa,” she said. They could’ve fallen and broken their bones. How brave was that? Maybe she’d try it.

Her gaze shifted. The wall of granite was ridged, but there were no holes where hooves could wedge themselves. She glanced left and right, but there was no ledge or sloping path either.

“I have to get up there,” she muttered. “But how? I’ve never flown that high before. And look at it! It’s a big rock! What if there’s an avalanche? I could DIE.”

A catch caught in her throat. She shook herself down, resembling for a moment a chickadee throwing off the rain. More snowflakes tumbled softly down around her.

“I’m so cold…” she murmured. “What if I freeze before I get up there? AND they’ll all come and watch. Well, not if I don’t make a sound, huh, Dash?”

More giggles and shrieks of joy followed. From the lip, a head poked out quickly, and then ducked out of sight. Rainbow’s heart, already at a hummingbird’s pitch, now beat so fast and so hard it was a fire in her chest.

“They’ve SEEN me! They know I’m here! Come on Dash! Show ‘em what you’re made of. But what if I’m made of fail? I might never get a chance again. They’ll send me home. They’ll say, ‘Look! That’s the pegasus that failed! She can’t do anything right!’ Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh…”

“Hello?” said a whisper behind her.

Rainbow screeched and leaped behind a boulder, wings now locked behind her back. She cocked her ears, waiting for another jump of sound, and then her brain caught up. It had been a foal’s voice. She clambered up and peeked over the boulder.

A pair of blinking wide eyes peered back at her. “It’s OK,” it whispered. “I’m not scary. At least, I don’t think I am. Uh… Do I look scary to you?”

When Rainbow raised her head, she saw the rest of the filly. It was the colour of cream, and so gangly and stick-legged that it seemed like a puff of breath would’ve blown it to bits. The pink hair put her in mind of cascading clouds near sunset.

“I was up there. I saw you.” The pegasus pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Hm. It was you, wasn’t it?”

Rainbow cocked her head. The other filly did the same. Blinking in surprise, Rainbow took a few steps backwards, almost stumbling off the edge of the boulder, and at this, the strange filly glanced up.

“And you’ve got all kinds of stripes in your mane. I’ve never seen that before. Two stripes, yes. No stripes, lots of times. Lots of stripes? No. Not ever.”

Cautiously, Rainbow’s wings whirred into life again. She rose up, and then yelped at the stab of pain and dropped into the snow. At once, the cold began biting into her skin. With a thrashing of limbs, she leaped onto the top of the boulder and tried to rub the irritating clumps of snow off her wet fur.

“Oh my goodness!” The filly hopped forwards. “Are you hurt? Let me get that for you so you’re clean again.”

The filly reached for the snow and began brushing it down, but Rainbow batted her away and continued rubbing. It was nearly all off anyway.

“My name’s Fluttershy,” said the filly.

Rainbow ignored her and turned back to the wall of rock. More squeaks and shouts came from above, and she felt her face burn.

The filly shuffled through the snow to walk around the boulder and face her. Rainbow watched with envy as legs that should’ve snapped cut through the white froth with ease. She felt her own legs shivering, and tried to force them to stop.

Her wings blurred, but the stab of pain made her yelp and she stopped at once. What was wrong with her? Already, she’d got a cramp, and they said new foals had to fly to the top all on their own. It was some kind of test.

When the filly tried to peer closer at her rainbow mop of hair, Rainbow leaped off the boulder and tried to run around the plateau, away from her. Stubby legs were scolded in the mush. Gritting her teeth, she tried hopping over the lot, and on the fourth leap her chin went too far down and she was stung up her nostrils. Immediately, she curled up and tried to squeeze the pain out. She had to cover up her eyes; they were getting all hot and blurry.

“Do you want some help?”

The filly was leaning down like some tiny giraffe. Rainbow sighed and curled up tighter. Skin peeled away from the bowl of snow she’d formed around her.

“Go away,” she said.

“But you have to fly up.”

“I’ll fly up in a minute. Go away.”

The filly frowned down at her and stamped a hoof; Rainbow half-expected it to crack. “I’m not leaving. You hurt your wing, didn’t you?”

Rainbow growled, but in her tiny voice it sounded more like a deep croak. “No,” she lied.

“Well…” The filly cast about for inspiration. “If you change your mind, I’m right here. And I’m not leaving until you do.”

The blizzard picked up, slicing through the air and leaving trails of white dots and slashes. Rainbow curled up tighter until her head was touching her belly.

When the gusts passed on, she uncurled and saw the filly standing and glaring at her. Rainbow sighed the sigh of one who knows she’s been beaten.

“You’re not going away, are you?” she said gloomily.

“Uh-uh.”

Rainbow glanced around in case anyone else had joined them, and then looked up to check the plateau. “Look, I can fly up this thing all by myself if I want to. I’m not… weak, or anything. I’m just tired.”

The filly didn’t move.

“I flew all the way here, you know,” Rainbow added, just in case the filly hadn’t got the message. “Not every pegasus could fly all the way here, and I live far away, like really far away. And I did it by myself, too.”

The lack of movement on the filly’s part continued unabated.

“I was… born to fly. I could go up to the clouds in my sleep, if I wanted. And one day, I’m gonna fly around the whole world. I won’t be tired then, you’ll see! I’ll be amazing.”

Nothing had changed about the filly’s policy of non-movement. Rainbow heaved herself out of the hole and sat up. She was now feeling the chill creep up to her jaw, and it was an effort to stop her teeth chattering.

“I’m cold,” she whispered.

Finally, the filly smiled. “I flew up to the clouds once.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped. She’d never have guessed this filly could so much as fly against a breeze.

“You!?” she managed to say.

“It was pretty. There was all white everywhere, like snow but not so cold. And there was no wind up there. And I saw stars. Oh, they were so beautiful. I think there were hundreds! Hundreds and hundreds of shiny little stars. And I saw the… con… st’lations. I think I saw the bear one.”

Now her face was burning again. Rainbow rubbed a foreleg and glanced up the plateau.

“Since I’m tired from all that flying just this one time…” Rainbow gulped and forced herself to continue, “could you… maybe give me a lift?”

The filly hummed thoughtfully.

“Just this one time,” Rainbow added.

With a smile, the filly nodded. Rainbow felt herself prickle at the sight of that smile. She wasn’t sure she could trust it yet.

Wincing at the sting of cold, Rainbow hobbled a couple of steps, but the filly leaped forwards and ducked her head to let her clamber up. Sitting on coat hangers was less lumpy and uncomfortable, but Rainbow swallowed her discomfort. It was warm on her back too. She’d never been this close to someone else before. It felt wrong.

“Here we go,” said the filly.

A breeze tickled Rainbow’s front limbs, and she turned to see the yellow wings become a fan-shaped blur. Snowflakes tumbled out of their wake. A moment later, the jolt told her she was going up.

Rainbow didn’t dare look over the edge. She’d never actually been this high up before. The sight of the rock wall streaming past set her mind into a panic, and she could hear the laughter and thought they were mocking her overhead. It didn’t take long before she shut her eyes tight, and then she clung on harder when she started slipping off.

“What’s your name?” whispered the filly gently. “It’s OK. You can get off when we’re at the top. We’ll be OK then. Just don't tell anyone what we did. We might get into trouble if they think I helped you cheat.”

“R-Rainbow Dash.” She shook herself down. “Uh. Th-Thanks. Flutterby, was it?”

“No, silly. Fluttershy. Flutter-shy. See? Just keep saying that, and we’ll get to the top in no time. It’s a trick I picked up, whenever I get scared.”

“I’m not scared!”

The wind whistled through her ears, which were stiff. Long since, her nostrils had frozen and couldn’t smell anything no matter how much she sniffed. Never mind her mouth; that felt like a mouse had curled up and died in it. She’d never been so tired before.

“OK…” She held on tighter, and despite the frosting on her back, her front burned as she squeezed. “Fluttershy, Fluttershy, Fluttershy…”

“Fluttershy,” Rainbow whispered. She opened her eyes.

There was the wall of red cloud. With a flip, she was glaring down at the boulevard rising up to swat her. Wind rippled across her belly. Both wings burst into life.

Flocks of pigeons and crows fanned out ahead of her, squawking with fright. Rainbow seized her momentum and threw herself upwards. She shot across the buildings, and she almost felt the edges of the chimneys under each of her splayed limbs, and then she tucked them in and fought harder against the wind until the streets and the people became blurs and impressions on the edge of a rushing world of grime.

Now she was a creature of air. Never still, never tied down, always rushing like the winds. She was a ghost looking down on the little lives of mortals…

There was a flash of chimaera.

Around her, the air screeched as Rainbow forced herself to curl round and fan herself out as though to embrace everything. In anger, the air slugged her with the force of treacle. It snatched itself out of her lungs, slashed at her eyes, braced itself against her torso. Gritting her teeth, the blur of rooftops resolved themselves into flashes of activity as people ran or galloped or flapped across the streets among other people.

In the next one, she saw it crouched low. A foal was stumbling in a pathetic attempt to flee. Now she was slow enough to catch the scream.

“HEY!” Rainbow shouted.

She threw her limbs forward for the impact. At the noise, the tiger’s head whirled round in annoyance and the snake swayed as though trying to hypnotize her.

Ignoring her, the goat’s head leaned down and bared its fangs at the foal, who tripped and fell onto his face.

Rainbow landed with a thump between them.

“Get lost!” she yelled.

Tiger, goat, and snake rose over her with the inevitability of a tidal wave. Growls, bleats, and hisses of irritation met her words.

“We came back for more,” said the tiger head, and it bent its muscular forelimbs. “Why shouldn’t we have a shot in the city of a hundred species?”

“YYYeeeaaahhh!” bleated the goat’s head. “I thought this was the land of freeeedoooom. We should be freeee to do what we liiiiike.”

Rainbow pawed the cobbles. “I said get lost! You blew your chance when you tried eating people! I said beat it!”

“Or what, tiny?” roared the tiger. Flecks of spittle rained on Rainbow’s face, but she didn’t so much as blink.

“Keep pushing your luck, and find out!” She crouched low for the spring.

“Well,” hissed the snake. “You sssssaid it. Not ussss.”

Roaring, the chimaera lunged, but her jaws snapped on thin air, showering sparks. Horns scythed after the rainbow blur, and the lightning strike of scales missed the tip of Rainbow’s tail. As the giant threw its weight back for another attack, the whirlwind of colour rose up around it.

“What’sssss your issssssue with ussss?” hissed the snake while the goat tried to snap at the rainbow tornado. “Why musssssst you pick on usssss outssssssidersssss?”

In frustration, the tiger raised a paw and swiped blindly into the vortex. Its goat leg lashed out behind it. All three heads turned and swung to try and spot the body among the blurs.

“There!” Snake fangs snapped, almost snagging the hoof before Rainbow could pull it back.

A second lunge threw Rainbow into the tiger’s mouth, but she sprang from its tongue and was lost again to the twister. Rainbow’s third attack bounced off the lowered horns, but the goat was too slow to strike back.

The impasse was getting to the creature. A final roar of impatience, and the chimaera leaped through the spectrum and blocked the foal that had been crawling towards the end of the street.

“That one’s a little too spry,” growled the tiger. “You’ll be the first to go.”

“Yesssss. They alwaysssss try to keep usssss down,” hissed the snake in the foal’s ear, ignoring the whimper. “But you’ll be a good little dear and keep nicccccce and ssssstill for my sssssisssstersssss, won’t you?”

It ducked; Rainbow soared over the snake, her leading hoof missing the back of its head, but in turn she jerked away from the tiger’s paw, and then drew back from a second swipe.

“Doooon’t bother with thaaaat one!” bleated the goat. “Taaaake the fooaaal!”

“For once, sister,” growled the tiger, “I agree with you.”

The foal squealed and covered his face.

Both paws stamped down onto the cobbles. When the tiger raised them to check, the foal was gone.

“WHAT?” she roared.

The snake turned around to spot Rainbow hovering nearby, the foal clasped between her hooves. Rainbow blew a raspberry and rose out of the path of its angry leap. Paws and hooves skidded across the tiles of the nearest roof.

“Poniessss are all hypocritesssss,” hissed the snake sadly, while beside it a tile dropped to the street. “We only want to exxxxpresssss oursssselvesssss. That’sssss what you alwaysssssss talk about, issssssn’t it?”

“I’m giving you to the count of ten!” shouted Rainbow. “Get out of my city!”

“There are mooooore fooaaals where thaaaat one came frooom!” yelled the goat. “And you’re still aaaaallll alooooooone.”

The tiger grunted and heaved itself further up. All four limbs were now fully erect, and the creature turned to focus on the hovering figure. Muscles strained as it tried not to provoke any more sliding tiles.

Rainbow smirked and blew a raspberry. Under her chin, the foal buried itself in her chest. Even the goat roared at this one.

“One!” she yelled down. “Two!”

“Come cloooooooser, little peeeeeeegasus.” The goat grinned up at her. “Weeeee waaaaant to give you a taste of ooooouuuuuur cultural tradiiiiiitiiiiions!”

“Three!” Rainbow glanced around, but she couldn’t see anywhere safe to drop the foal off. With her front hooves full, she couldn’t do much more that deliver a few rear kicks. And there was no way she was letting the thing out of her sight.

It was dawning on her that she might have made a tiny little error on this one.

“Four!” she yelled. “F-Five…”

“Isn’t it shameful, sisters?” purred the tiger, and its eyes gleamed with malice. “And this is what we get for trying to join the civilized ones!”

“Six…?”

“Yeeeees,” bleated the goat. “IIIIIIIt’s blaaaaatant preeeejudiiiiiice!”

On the edge of her vision, she noticed a few heads poking around corners and out of doorways. Quickly, she counted about a dozen potential targets. Too many to keep track of at once.

“Seven!”

The goat and the tiger chuckled. They were watching her with a growing calmness, and even with interest. There was no sign of the snake; it must have ducked behind the body.

“Eight… Nine…”

The snake cracked like a whip.

Rainbow dodged the lobbed tile, but at the same moment the beast lunged, and when she dodged again, the goat’s teeth clamped around her tail and threw her down into the square. Paws and hooves bounded on the cobbles. Rainbow rolled and there was a squeak as the foal was thrown away from her. Something flashed over her head, and when she whipped round, the chimaera was galloping over to the bundle of fur lying on the ground. Spectators screamed and retreated out of sight, or stared in gaping horror.

“NO!” Rainbow threw herself into a gallop.

The foal screamed and scrambled to its hooves. Behind the thundering chimaera, Rainbow shot into the air, passed the undulating snake; she seized the scaly tail, dug her hooves into the cobbles, and pulled as hard as her aching limbs would allow.

Slow down, she thought urgently. Slow!

Up ahead, the foal’s wings were flapping in panic. Tiger jaws spread wide. Sparks leaped from Rainbow’s rear hooves through sheer friction against the ground.

There was a snap.

The tiger growled in confusion. All four limbs pumped and stretched, but the creature was going no further. Wide-eyed, the tiger watched as the foal scampered into the open doorway, and the pegasus there slammed it shut.

Rainbow barely had time to sigh in relief when she shrieked; scaly coils snapped tight around her, lifting her clean off her hooves. She bared her teeth and struggled to free herself.

“Bad move, pegasssssussss,” hissed a voice in her ear.

The goat’s head turned around and smirked at her, fangs glinting under the street light. Rainbow was still struggling and growling in frustration when the snake curled round and brought her up to the tiger’s mad eyes.

“You know,” growled the tiger, “this is why my sisters and I hate pegasi!”

“Yeeeeaaaah!” bleated the goat. “You all think yoooouuuuu’re the heroes and weeeeee’re the monsters, but you never think how deliiiiiiiiciiiiiiiiiiooooooouuuuuus it is to eat filly flambéééééééé!”

“SSSSSSSo closssssed-minded,” sighed the snake.

Rainbow tried to stretch herself out of its grip. If only she could get a wing free, or a leg…

“You! Won’t! Hurt! Anybody!” she shouted.

The tiger snorted in her face. “EXCEPT YOU!”

Jaws opened; hot breath blasted over her like a furnace. She snapped her eyes shut –

Guard Flutter, Part VIII: Facing Oblivion

Under the silver needles of the Moonstone Pines, the breezie floated up from the golden head of the giant daisy and chattered away with its squeak of a voice. The tips of its curly antennae hummed and throbbed with bioluminescence. Both its twiggy legs dangled from a body the size of a grape. Yet its mane and tail flared in its wake with the grace of lilies on a pond, and its wings – delicate as a cobweb – drifted through the heady air in lazy, undulating beats.

Around it, other breezies were taking to the air. Lights filled the little hollow beneath the huddle of pines. Giant daisies stared upwards in awe. Pairs of breezies united among the slow swirl. A spiral caught on, and soon the dance had begun in earnest. On the pond, their lights bobbed and rippled between the surfacing heads of the black catfish that gasped as though at the sheer beauty of it all.

On the grassy bank, Fluttershy had lain down with her front hooves dipped in the water. The lights and the gauzy wings were mirrored on the surface of her red-stained eyes. She was singing under her breath.

“What is this place, filled with so many wonders?
“Casting its spell which I am now under…?”

A catfish nudged her hoof by chance; she got a glimpse of its gleaming back before the scales slipped into the reflection of the dance. Despite herself, she smiled.

“Thank you, little catfish,” she whispered. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”

Before long, however, the frown eclipsed her good mood.

She sniffed, and another bloom of sweet pollen and plant musk transported her through her nostrils to the midst of the ancient forests. It conjured heaps of leaf litter, and the whir of insect wings, and tickling legs crawling on her. She almost giggled at the memory, but the weight on her brow was too heavy to lift and the lips sagged under the weight.

“Remember what Derpy said,” she told herself. “No matter how dark the cloud gets, there’s always a silver lining.”

She tried to ignore her inner voice that piped up at this point. It was insisting that a cloud blocked by another cloud could have no silver lining at all, and anyway it wasn’t much good if the silver lining was on top of a storm cloud and you were standing under it.

No, that couldn’t be true. There was a silver lining in this, wasn’t there? Something good had to come out of a double demotion, right? Unfortunately, the only lesson her mind had come up with so far was; “Don’t get a double demotion.”

The spiral of breezies began to break up. Now the jiggling lights showered over the flowers. Pairs began to land as softly as snowflakes on the padded flower heads, golden seats overlooking the pond and the gleam of catfish backs and heads.

How could she cope with this sort of thing? She was a private. Privates were newbies who hadn’t figured out where the little fillies’ rooms were kept. There were plenty of side roles she could have been bumped into. Why exactly had she been dropped and buried like a rotten apple in a compost heap?

All the petals glowed under the breezie huddles. The sight of the “starry night” under the solemnly bowed pines bowled over her senses with the force of cotton, and her little worries and frets were blown away. There was only the quiet beauty sleeping beyond her hooves, stirred only by the soft breaths of dozy catfish.

By her left wing splayed over the grass, two of the breezies held each other gently between their tiny forelegs. Muzzles like wheat grains nuzzled each other. Their curling antennae intertwined with a balletic grace. All four of the glowing tips brightened, brilliant as the heart of a firework.

“So romantic…” she whispered. “So breathtaking…”

Her eyelids skimmed across the surface of her corneas. Baring her teeth, she stretched her mouth in an animal yawn and shook her neck down. Slowly, she lowered her chin to her hocks, and let the darkness settle over her as a blanket clean of woe or worries.

The infinite stars. The endless night…

From afar, they glinted with the promise of exotic jewels across the midnight sea. Her mind imagined them up close; other moons, other worlds like hers, some with tiny pegasi gazing back at her and dreaming of Fluttershy’s…

Below her, a raspy voice was shouting her name. Young Fluttershy sighed and let herself fall through the clouds, through fog and mist and the dew that clung to her feathers, down to the white world where the land was laid out and a young Rainbow Dash was flitting from spot to spot. She was only inches from the underbelly of the stratus layer, but at no point did she make any effort to rise through it.

“I changed my mind,” said Rainbow Dash in a huff. “This is stupid. I want to go back to bed.”

“No! Don’t go back now. If you turn back every time, you’ll never see it for yourself.”

A brittle chuckle escaped the foal’s mouth. “Yeah, I think I can live with that.”

As gently as she could, Fluttershy reached down and hooked her forelimb around Rainbow’s. Ignoring the filly’s protests, she rose through the curling tendrils of cloud, yanking whenever she felt any resistance down her limb.

“There!” she said. “Look how lovely it is!”

She turned to watch the face next to her; Rainbow froze, then drew back gasping. For a moment, Fluttershy thought the filly was about to dash back down. A twinge of doubt went through her mind.

“Are you OK?” she said.

“It’s…” Rainbow stammered. “It’s so… so… big! And shiny…”

“Do you like it?” Fluttershy rubbed her hooves together. “You do like it, don’t you?”

“All this space… right here, where no one can see it… So much space…”

Fluttershy was beginning to feel bits of her twitch. This wasn’t how she’d expected it. A suspicion crept into her mind.

“Oh, I didn’t think,” she said. “You’re upset, aren’t you? Let’s head back. Forget all about this.”

“Forget all about it?” Rainbow woke up and rounded on her. “What are you talking about? I’m never going back!”

Fluttershy could’ve been whacked around the head, and she wouldn’t have felt so off-kilter. “What? You mean you like it?”

“LIKE it? I LOVE it!”

Before Fluttershy had so much as blinked, the rainbow flashed past, around, and above her, darting to and fro as Rainbow tried to take it in from every angle. The blue hoof pointed.

“There must be HUNDREDS of ‘em! THOUSANDS! I’ve never seen so many at once! Ooh, ooh, what’s that big one? Right there? What’s that one? Is that a star too?”

Fluttershy followed her awestruck gaze. “That one’s called the moon. But… You’ve never seen it before?”

“How far away is it? Can I touch it? Hold on a sec!”

“WAIT! Don’t fly towards it!”

But Rainbow was already zooming across the cloud plains, and she knew instantly there was no hope of catching her; Rainbow moved like a bullet. Panting and straining, she forced her tiny wings to throw her after the disappearing dot, and then shrieked with alarm when the dot shot back and Rainbow’s wide eyes and grin almost smacked into her.

“It must be MILES away!” Rainbow rubbed her hooves with glee. “Has anyone ever touched it?”

“Well… No, but –”

“Then I, Rainbow Dash, do solemnly swear that I, Rainbow Dash, will be the first! Forget going round the world; Airheart and her followers did that already. Bet none of them would dare try to touch the moon and back. Oh! Oh! Even better! The stars!”

This conversation was making Fluttershy feel mugged. “The stars?”

“Yeah! I bet they’re even further away than the moon! Think of how many awards I’d win if I brought back a star! I mean, look how small they are. I think I could carry one easy-peasy.”

A burst of blue wings later, and Rainbow was off. Fluttershy was staring at nothing, and she wheeled round to try and spot the flashes of colour as Rainbow zipped from cloud to sky to staring at the moon. Around her, the stratus layer was slightly ridged, and she could tell by stopping to check the swirls that the cover was drifting northwards.

“We should be getting back soon,” she whispered, and then she shrieked when Rainbow almost bashed into her side.

“This place is AWESOME!” The mass of hair zipped round to her other side, making her own locks hit her face with the turbulence. “I’m never going back down again!”

Then, she yawned and shook herself down. The silence of the night rolled in, the moon was staring down among the fresco of stars, but what impressed on them both – now that Rainbow Dash was settling down – was the void.

There were no sounds that tickled their ears. What little wind there was had died away. Not a scent was in the air they breathed. Never changing; no one was there to change a thing. Despite the feeble stars and the lonely moon, the sky was full of nothing but the cold, dark, silent stillness of oblivion.

Rainbow’s ears drooped. She backed away slightly, but Fluttershy placed a stick-thin leg across her withers, and she held firm.

“It’s… pretty,” the blue filly said. “A bit empty, though.”

Behind her pink curtain, Fluttershy glanced down at the featureless grey. “That’s why I like it.”

“Could get boring. You come here all the time?”

Fluttershy drew back her leg from Rainbow and shook her head, her fringe swaying. “I can’t do it every night because it ruins my sleep. If I close my eyes, though, and dream really hard, I can see every star in the right place without leaving my bed.”

“Wow. You ever dream about flying up to one?”

“Uh… no. I just like looking at them.”

“Well, you must do something in your dreams. Do you draw pictures in the sky, or do you jump right in like it’s a big swimming pool, or do you see giant monsters and alien ponies coming down in big airships? That’s what I’d dream about.”

Fluttershy sighed impatiently. “None of that stuff, silly. I just like looking. I don’t like touching it.”

“Wow. You’re weird.” Rainbow smirked. “Come on. You can tell me. I told you about my dreams. You know? Fighting monsters, flying all over the world, rescuing damsels –”

“Damsels? What’s a damsel?”

Rainbow shrugged. “I dunno. I think it’s like a princess.”

“Isn’t it some kind of fly?”

“Don’t be daft. It doesn’t look anything like a fly. They’re always pegasi in my dreams. And one day, I’m gonna fly around the world, and now I’m gonna fly to the moon and the stars and bring one of ‘em back. I’m gonna be a firefighter, and a peacekeeper, and an explorer. I’m gonna be whatever I want to be, and I’m gonna have a castle made out of clouds…”

While the filly prattled on, Fluttershy let her gaze wander back to the shining moon, its pure glow not enough to cover the dark blemishes and pockmark craters that dotted its circle face. She was wondering; could a pegasus fly all the way to the moon? She’d never heard of anybody trying, but maybe that was because pegasi liked to stay close to each other, and no one really wanted to go that far away from towns and cities and other creatures.

Her flapping wings began to ache. If only she weren’t such a weak flyer… that moon looked so enchanting…

“– and then I’m gonna find an evil unicorn, and I’m gonna give ‘em what-for, and then I’ll – uh, Flutters? You OK there?”

Fluttershy blinked – the spell was broken – and she turned back to Rainbow. “What?”

“I was saying,” said Rainbow in a huffy tone, “how I was gonna beat up a unicorn. Or do you have some better dream you’d like to share?”

“No, no. I like looking at… stuff.” Fluttershy flushed red.

Rainbow yawned theatrically, even patting her mouth for the complete effect. “Bor-ing. Who’d wanna dream about just looking at stuff?”

“It ruins it. I don’t like ruining things.”

They hovered there, surrounded by tiny and quiet reminders of oblivion. Rainbow shuddered as she gave it a final glance and broke the silence.

“It’s bigger than big,” she said. “Bigger than ‘huge’ or ‘immense’ or ‘colossal’, even. I don’t think they have a word big enough for this place… Come on, let’s go. You look like you’re gonna drop dead any moment.”

Fluttershy was feeling a little tired, she couldn’t deny it. With a final wistful look around at the starry night, she ducked down into the clouds after Rainbow Dash. The two of them descended in silence until the academy loomed out of the fog, brightened as it was by the thick icing of snow.

She couldn’t help sighing in disappointment. There’d been all that lovely space to sit in and contemplate and savour, and the filly had kept trying to stuff it. Anything that came to her at all: words and flying and trying to shove herself into every little thing. And even her generous soul had to admit Rainbow had a voice like a yipping puppy.

Fluttershy opened her mouth for one last attempt, finally having the courage to speak. “Rainbow?”

“Hm?” The filly was stretching a forelimb, apparently trying to copy a superhero’s pose.

The flickering flame in her chest dwindled, but she blew on it impatiently. In spite of her less than commendable arrival – cheating by ascending on the back of another filly – Rainbow was a legend among the cadets already. If anyone could answer, it was her. The flame flared up.

“I was thinking… I’m not… like the others… Um…”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, you… Being you, I mean… I thought… Are you…?”

“Yeah?”

But then the flame died. She closed her mouth again. “Oh… N-Nothing…”

Rainbow raised an eyebrow, and then shook her head. “Ha! You’re one weird pegasus, Fluttershy. I’ll race you back! One-two-three-GO!”

The gangly filly watched the streak vanish into the whiteness, and sighed. That was typical Rainbow Dash.

And Fluttershy woke up.

She raised her head, but the pond was calm now and the breezies had long since retired. Underneath her, the grass tickled her belly and limbs, and her hooves had adapted to the water and no longer felt the wet chill.

Beside her, Cloudchaser lowered a hoof and turned to face someone else with the words; “There, you see! I told you we’d find her here!”

Another pegasus – Meadow Flower – peered around the standing intruder and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. You make it look so easy.”

“Me?” Cloudchaser shook her head, scything the air with her spiky locks. “Not at all. Fluttershy’s easier to figure out than a three-piece jigsaw puzzle.”

At this point, Fluttershy felt it prudent to sit up. She wasn’t presenting herself to advantage lying on the ground at their hooves. Yet, while Cloudchaser’s eyes splashed with a watery triumph, Meadow Flower’s darted about as though trying to land on the hidden trick.

“Can I help you?” said Fluttershy in the sharp tones of one hoping to hear the answer “No”; it had been such a pleasant dream, cliché notwithstanding. “I am on shore leave.”

“We know,” said Cloudchaser, and the black eyeliner stretched as she gave Fluttershy a winning smile.

“It’s more we were hoping you could help us,” said Meadow Flower, glancing nervously up at Cloudchaser. “You see, Cloudchaser and some of the others all agreed to meet up somewhere to give Rainbow a toast. For, uh, becoming captain.”

Fluttershy’s face hardened. “I see. And that includes –”

“That includes you, Lieutenant Fluttershy.” Cloudchaser gave her a black wink. “Although don’t feel you have to come along. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, after all. We’d quite understand.” She gave the dark hollow a once-over and stretched her winning smile into a smirk.

“Well, there’s that,” admitted Meadow Flower, “but we also wondered if you actually knew where Rainbow Dash was? As in right now?”

“Can’t give the captain a toast if there’s no captain there, can we?”

They stood over her, one spiky and cool, the other as offensive as pastels.

The peacekeepers were not, in essence, all that different from the old armies of the ancient Pegasus Empire. True, the modern corps had an opt-out scheme that didn’t involve death or getting pelted with tomatoes the rest of your life, and there was a much tighter security net of pension schemes and insurance and the best medical care, free of charge. But it was, when one came down to it, the Empire’s hired muscle, still flexing its wings and shaking down people who refused to pay them, even though they now called it “tax” rather than “protection money”.

Fluttershy felt herself drawing back slightly, despite her annoyance. Oh, Meadow Flower was hardly any better than she was, but Cloudchaser – if you didn’t know her very well – looked the part. She was slightly leaning to her left as though giving ponies shakedowns was just another Tuesday.

It didn’t help, of course, that everyone knew she spent most of her time styling her mane with buckets of goop. That sort of thing really ruined the “radical” image. And she was, in practice, a bit of a poser.

“I can’t help you,” Fluttershy said shortly. “But if you all agreed, how come you’re searching all over the place?”

Meadow Flower shrugged helplessly. “Eh… You know how it is. Everyone gets ideas, shore leave only comes every so often… And it really was a last-minute thing.”

“I was busy,” said Cloudchaser.

“To be honest,” said Meadow Flower, “you didn’t have to spend quite that long in the dressing room. I mean, how long can it take when all you need is a comb and” – she caught Cloudchaser’s sideways glare and hastily added – “Shutting up now.”

“It’s not my fault if you all left without me. Didn’t I tell you how long I’d need with the wiring? Besides, image is important.”

As Cloudchaser went off on another of her ready-made “image is important” lectures, Fluttershy cocked her head and wondered once more about the state of the corps.

She’d learned once that ancient pegasi used to leave their foals out on a hillside overnight as an early test of strength. The fact that she was still alive to learn this was testament to how quickly the practice had died out.

Yet it was still true that the pegasi swam and walked and flew in military culture, no matter that the pegasus in question was probably meeker and feebler than a breezie with a head cold. The point was that it took all sorts to make up the peacekeeper service; with a recruitment policy summed up as “If you’re born, you’re in”, that was all but inevitable.

In another life, Meadow Flower might have been happier out in the countryside idyllic, with slower but steadier work that kept her in regular contact with soft and fluffy things. In this life, she held the record for worst ever recovery from a stint on the Dizzitron machine, which was impressive when even Fluttershy had managed to scrape a respectably dire ten seconds and most foals could average nine.

As for Cloudchaser, it was hard to imagine her as anything but background, even with her black eyeliner and a hairstyle like a cloud of thorns. Privately, Fluttershy thought she tried too hard.

Her gaze wandered to the gap in the branches, and as it did so, she could’ve sworn she saw a dot shift across the red sky.

Seconds later, Derpy rose into view, waving her limbs madly. “You guys!” she was yelling. “You guys! I found Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash! Look! Look! She’s up there!”

All of them squeezed through the gap and peered up. There was no mistaking it this time; the dot was a pegasus flapping hard as she passed the tallest rooftops. Next second, she’d shot across the city and vanished out of sight.

“I can still follow her!” yelled Derpy.

“Well? Come on, then,” snapped Cloudchaser.

They hurried after the silhouette, noticing as they did so the rainbow streaking out behind it. None of them were going to impress any bystanders with their speed. Fluttershy and Meadow Flower would’ve been faster if they’d galloped, except that the winding streets would have hampered them. Derpy kept stopping to shake her eye back into place. Cloudchaser – still leading, all the same – was trying to keep her hair from disintegrating against the headwind.

“Typical Rainbow Dash,” she muttered.

“She’s turning around! She’s turning around!” Derpy shook her head to focus again. “Maybe she’s seen us?”

“At that distance? Not a chance.”

“Look at her move.” Meadow Flower sighed. “I wish I could move like that. That Dizzitron would’ve been a breeze if only I could move like that.”

Fluttershy didn’t need Derpy’s shriek this time; she’d seen the streak duck down into a random street, though at this range it was still hard to tell rooftop from rooftop, and she just hoped Rainbow reappeared somewhere close by.

Rainbow probably just wants to be alone, she thought. She spends so much time with the other pegasi. Maybe, if she just had a few hours to herself… Maybe she did want to see the stars, after all…

Beside her, Meadow Flower was panting with the effort to keep up. “I need a breather. Can we stop? She’ll only turn around and shoot towards the other side of the city, knowing her.”

Derpy “oohed” and “aahed” overhead. “Now she’s spinning in a circle! No, sorry – ooh, ooh, a twister! Come on, we’ll miss the show!”

“I don’t know where she gets the energy,” said Meadow Flower. “It’s like water off a duck’s back to her.”

“Mmm hmmm,” said Fluttershy, but not with much enthusiasm. She had a longing to creep away and slink back to the pond, where the catfish had nudged her hoof and the giant daisies gazed up as though waiting for the clouds to clear. Everything was much less demanding back at the dark hollow.

Derpy gasped. “Oh, there’s someone else with her… A big someone else…”

“It’s not Bulk Biceps, is it?” said Cloudchaser.

“No… it’s a big thing just jumped on the roof. And there’s Rainbow Dash over it! I think.”

“A fan, I’ll bet.”

“I… don’t think so…”

A dark cloud passed over Fluttershy’s face. That hunched back, the thing sticking out of it, clicked a few tumblers inside her brain. There was a hairline suggestion of a waving tail at this distance, but no one colour stood out. It definitely wasn’t the white of Bulk Biceps, and the only possible citizen of that size was an ox. Even then, a really big ox. Its outline was all wrong…

Ignoring their cries, Fluttershy burst past the three pegasi just as the thing and Rainbow vanished. Alarms were going off in her head. On the edge of her hearing, she could just make out the echo of a loud roar. She was now several chimneys away… Five… Three… She cleared the rooftop.

Her mind went numb with shock.

The chimaera struggled to run in place – a foal had just fled from it and disappeared into a nearby house – and a second later she heard Rainbow’s shriek. The thing turned; wrapped tight in the snake’s coils, Rainbow was struggling, her wings and forelimbs pinned down to her sides.

Fluttershy’s world turned into one electric shock…

She leaped.

Ponies were running against her, her own hooves pounding the cobbles several yards back, but her mind was already there, hearing the snake’s hiss. From far away, Fluttershy heard the tiger growl something about hating pegasi, and the goat bleated mockingly. There was another hiss, Rainbow squirmed and groaned –

“You! Won’t! Hurt! Anybody!”

“EXCEPT YOU!” roared the tiger.

Fluttershy shot between Rainbow Dash and the widening mouth –

Some seconds later, her brain woke up.

Dreamily, she noticed the warm haze leaving spittle and dew around her fur.

All four of her legs were aching and quivering, and there was so much pressure on them that she felt they were a slight squeeze away from shattering. Blackness gleamed at her, but there was enough light coming in from behind to show the fleshy pinkness of what she’d initially taken to be a cave.

Her legs were splayed. Each hoof had latched onto a wedge just behind the gums. Her tail trailed out over its fangs and lip.

The thought crept down her spine. She was in its actual mouth.

Sheer surprise kept the scene still long enough for her to take it all in, but the rumbling growl was pushing it out, and her stunned mind finally clicked back into place.

“Oh my…” she squeaked.

The chimaera began to shake. Fluttershy felt one of her hooves slipping, and she screamed out and shut her eyes as every quake and rattle and splatter of slime rocked the bones of her legs. Any moment, the darkness would snap.

“RAAIINBOOOWW DAAAASH!” she shrieked, and then her voice box gave up and she was trying to shout her way out of her own body –

The jaws snapped.

Fluttershy shot out of the square, and the legs of Rainbow Dash tightened around her forelegs and chest as she soared up and over with Fluttershy in her grip. She glanced down at the chimaera, all three of its heads peering up at them and roaring, hissing, and bleating with rage. Her mind bloomed with a wonderful, overpowering lightness of being.

“Oh thank you,” she burst out. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you…”

“We’re not done yet,” Rainbow yelled over the turbulence. “I’m heading back in.”

The lightness of being smacked into a wall. “WHAT!?”

“One chimaera GOING DOWN!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

They shot down.

And then Rainbow Dash dropped her gently down onto the nearby rooftop, and landed with barely a flutter next to her. Circling round were Cloudchaser, Meadow Flower, and Derpy. From the street below, boxes smashed and crates were thrown high into the air.

Cloudchaser was nursing the drooping morass that was all that was left of her style. “Darn you, Meadow Flower. That gel doesn’t come cheap!”

“Aw, come on. We had to knock that snake away from Rainbow somehow. That thing was like a vice. And it got her out, didn’t it? You can puff up your hair later –”

“OK.” Rainbow pointed at each pegasus in turn. “New plan. Cloudchaser; you’re up front with me. Keep its heads distracted. Meadow, go for the snake. Roundup tactic four seventeen, got it? Derpy, Special Delivery.”

“Sp-Special Delivery!?” The mismatched eyes lit up.

“Special Delivery. You got it. Now GO! GO-GO-GO!”

As quickly as they’d spoken, Fluttershy blinked and she was alone on the rooftop. Screams and smashed crates were thrown up from the street below.

“Uh…” she said. “Guys? Guys?”

Two paws crashed onto the tiles below her, and she squeaked in fear. The tiger’s head licked its lips and braced its muscles, hauled itself up, and leered at her.

Yowling, it sank out of sight. Tiles slid down after it and smashed on the street. She heard Rainbow and Cloudchaser shouting.

Beneath the lip of the roof, tiger and goat growled at each pegasus as first Rainbow Dash and then Cloudchaser zipped smartly out of range of its swipes. Rainbow moved like a shark, cruising easily around the beast, then firing herself up for a gouging lunge and sleekly curving away for a second attack. Now, she spread her wings wider and flapped harder, shifting to a seagull-like approach, beating her wings over the heads in a frenzy, and ducking down as though pecking at them. A leap, her wings spread wide, and she was gliding with insulting ease clean across the creature’s broad back.

Fluttershy leaned over the edge, transfixed at the sight.

From behind a crushed stall, Meadow Flower went for the back of the beast; the snake’s head spun round and hissed at her. She drew back and then shifted around it, eyes level with its own. A giant goat hoof stamped; Meadow Flower rolled out of its path. Whimpering, she drew back and scampered to another stall for cover.

“Get over here!” Rainbow yelled at her. “Meadow, for Pete’s sake!”

“Sorry! Just nerves!”

The snake barely had time to snap back when Meadow Flower galloped forwards, seized its head, and pulled. Cloudchaser dodged backwards and the paws hit the ground with a skittering of claws. Meadow Flower weaved around the first leg, curled round the second, and swung towards its haunches, yelping each time a limb stamped too close.

Rainbow was there. She gripped another part of the snake and the two of them gave an almighty yank. With a yowl, the snake-like tail tightened. The beast, suddenly hogtied, swayed and howled and toppled. It smashed onto its side.

“Whoa,” breathed Fluttershy.

“Special Delivery!” yelled a voice overhead. She glanced up.

Only when the chimaera had righted itself did the empty crate land with a smack.

Two paws and two hooves poked out from underneath it. From inside came growls and bleats as the thing strained to free itself. Rainbow Dash pursed her lips at the sight.

“What?” she said. “No anvils?”

“I couldn’t find any.” Derpy flew down to join them. “Anvils are pretty rare.”

“Ah, I guess it’ll have to do. OK, nice work everybody – Meadow Flower.” She glared at the apologetic mare next to her. “Now, let’s knock this thing over. Ready? Brace yourselves.”

Planks flew across the plaza, one almost striking Cloudchaser across the head.

“My mane!” she yelled. “Not again!”

Fangs punctured the side of the crate. With further bites, a head-sized hole was ripped out of the wood.

“Everybody now!” Rainbow yelled. “HUT HUT HUT!”

It was at this point that the tiles gave way. Fluttershy scrambled on the lip for purchase. Wings and limbs blurring with the effort, she hovered for a few terrifying seconds. Then she dropped.

Next moment, she had hit all four hooves on the edge of the crate. The whole thing – Fluttershy, crate, and chimaera – swung down. She saw the cobbles rising up to meet them.

When it crashed, she had skipped off smartly and landed with a stagger. Tipping over again, the crate brought the thrashing limbs up and pointing skywards, and then it rocked back and was still. Now the crate itself was the right side up, which unfortunately for the chimaera meant its occupant was now upside-down.

The other pegasi gaped at the result.

“Or I guess that works too,” said Rainbow Dash.

“We did it…” breathed Meadow Flower. “We actually went and… did it…”

“What’s wrong?” Cloudchaser had paused in the act of pushing her hair up; despite her words, she spoke as though only dimly aware of what had happened. “I thought we were… peacekeepers…”

“Yes, but we’re only… well… not that good.”

“Bulky!” Derpy pointed; beyond the growling crate, the white pegasus was touching down. “You caught up!”

“About time too,” muttered Rainbow Dash. As though a trance had just been completed, everyone snapped back into reality. Bulk Biceps smiled weakly. Wings that would’ve looked more appropriate on a bumblebee buzzed on his back.

The crate shifted a few inches. Wood splintered inside it.

Rainbow gestured to the shaking planks. “Bulk Biceps, if you please?”

The gigantic face was completely blank. “HUH? IF I PLEASE WHAT?”

“Just throw it, will you, tough guy? Put those giant muscles to work for a change instead of kissing ‘em?”

“OH. OK!”

They watched from the rooftops. Bulk Biceps was built like a rhinoceros, but in his hooves the crate still dipped precariously and he was grunting and groaning as he came up to their level.

“How do you think he’ll do it?” whispered Derpy to Meadow Flower. “Shot put, javelin, or hammer throw?”

“That thing? Hammer throw, I’d say.”

Fluttershy grimaced behind her curtain of hair. Now that the prospect of being eaten had passed, older pangs that had been hiding at the back of her mind now came out, dusting themselves off and straightening their ties. It seemed a shame, when she really thought about it. If only it had listened to her, if only it could at least try to control itself, then they wouldn’t have had to work so hard to stop it. If only it was nice…

She glanced fearfully at her colleagues, but they were all too busy watching the show to read her mind. Guilt flared up, mostly because she was harbouring thoughts that, with the best will in the world, they would only laugh at. At best.

But now a much older, much darker set of pangs stirred from the depths of her mind, and they showed her a picture. It was a picture of her, with limbs splayed and hot breath all around her and a wet, fleshy cave right in front of her. She was almost there for a moment; there was the certainty, the ice cold certainty, that one snap, one failed leg, would have been enough.

There’d been foals that hadn’t been so lucky. She had to fight to control her breathing.

Let it fly, she thought.

Bulk Biceps let go with a grunt. It was a good throw. They didn’t move until the crate was a dot disappearing into the darkness beyond the city walls. They imagined the thump.

“And stay out!” Rainbow shouted after it. It wasn’t stellar-grade repartee, but it captured their general mood.

“YEAH!” Bulk snorted.

“Woohoo!” cried Derpy.

“Very nice, but what do we do if it comes back?” said Meadow Flower, twiddling her hooves.

Rainbow thumped a hoof. “Well, Meadow, that’s when I’ll get really mad. Come on, troops! Let’s MOOOOVE OUT!”

“To the nearest security base,” Cloudchaser insisted, still moodily pushing her hair up. “We’re supposed to report this incident.”

“Fine. If you say so. TROOPS! TO THE BASE!”

The pegasi around her preened themselves in her wake. Troops. Now that sounded good.

“Where is the nearest base from here?” whispered Derpy. Bulk Biceps shrugged.

Far behind the disappearing – and newly christened – troops, Fluttershy was alone. She glanced down at the wooden wreckage on the street and watched the emerging pegasi shuffle, sadly, around the remains of their stalls.

She sighed, but duty called. She left to catch up with the rest of the pegasi.

Guard Flutter, Part IX: The Mysterious Mare

The pegasus Lady Pitt, wearing a silk dressing gown and four carpet slippers, huddled up on the seat of her rocking chair.

“What?” she rasped, breaking off to explode in a fit of coughing and sneezing. “This punk got Carcarass and Buffet?”

“Our people saw… bits of what happened,” said the breezie clerk at eye level. “We’re good at hiding and watching. There was this weirdo. All dressed in black. Got both times. No idea who it is, though.”

“You can guess the species, though?” Through the rasp, there was a pleading cadence. “I mean, there are only so many shapes to choose from.”

“Hmmm. Pegasus, I would’ve guessed, or maybe changeling, or griffon. Whatever it is, it’s very odd. My people saw Lady Carcarass go at it with a knife, and you know what a devil she is for close-quarters fighting. Yet it had no effect.”

“Ridiculous. Your people must be mistaken.”

Lady Pitt regretted the words instantly. True, breezies were delicate creatures. Mere puffs of air could send one tumbling to the ground, yet they survived by doing what most delicate creatures did; keeping out of the way. This one, however, was inflated with the pumped-up assurance of experience, job security, and – here, the breezie winced at another attack of coughs and sneezes from her employer – lack of disease.

The breezie smiled haughtily. “My dear Miss Pitt,” she began.

“Lady Pitt, if you don’t mind.”

“I thank you. My dear Miss Pitt,” continued the breezie, “we are not all treacherous backstabbers who’d switch allegiances for a treasure chest. My people were born and bred by Nature to spot the slightest discrepancy, to live in the teeth of the odds with only our own kind to trust. If they say they saw a mystery mook survive a stab wound from Lady Carcarass, then that is exactly what they saw.”

Lady Pitt threw herself back and rocked the chair, partly out of exasperation, and partly because she felt a cough attack coming up.

There had always been the risk. Vigilantes popped up every now and again, everyday creatures who’d decided that the security squads and peacekeepers weren’t quite fit for the job of cleaning up the streets. The smart ones usually gave up after a few arrests – their own. The not-so-smart ones turned up weeks later in a hospital bed, or in extreme cases a coffin.

Security being what it was, they were now a dying breed, which struck her as a shame. It was fun to watch the squads and the vigilantes going after each other instead of going after the likes of her.

More pressing was the competition.

Of course, the Lords and Ladies were above that childish nonsense, having discovered the delightful world of cartels, but others were not so progressive. Lord Zinc himself had replaced a minotaur who’d gotten on the wrong end of a local marketing dispute, or to be more accurate a punch-up over selling rights. For some species, it was still a matter of kill or be killed.

But even the murderously ambitious too were now a dying breed. Any hired help who’d pondered over a promotion scheme was quickly taught the error of their ways. Often several storeys above ground level. With one hand clasped around their legs.

Stability, after all, was everything. Once the game was going your way, of course.

So what would a “mystery mook” have to gain, taking out a griffon and an ox? It didn't make sense, unless the thing were a hired assassin, but the Lords and Ladies had not needed to use those for a long time. What was the point? You took care of your own patch and forgot everyone else's. Interdepartmental scrapping just meant adding to the stress, especially if the rest of the cartel got wind of what you were doing.

No, she doubted the Lords and Ladies were involved. They were too comfortable to suddenly start getting unnaturally complicated. Ambition and greed had passed them by years ago.

Lady Pitt glared at the breezie. No, this nonsense had to stop.

“Now look here, you,” rasped Lady Pitt. “I’m the keystone of this organization. If I go down, the rest of you are coming with me. We know things about your people that would make your eyelashes curl. Only my constant care and control keeps ‘em in check. Do you understand?”

The breezie clerk nodded curtly. Brash as she was, she wasn’t suicidal. “You have nothing to fear. Everyone down to the sewers is out looking for this creep. There’s no way we’ll miss so much as a stray thread.”

“That’ll do.” Lady Pitt waved her off. “Unless there’s anything you wish to add, then buzz off. I’ve got work to do.”

“Good luck, Miss Pitt.”

“Oh, and send in Mister Plum Pudding on your way out.”

“With pleasure, Miss Pitt.”

When the door slammed, Lady Pitt rocked the chair back and peered up at the hunched form of the centaur. This one had purple fur and a grey, wispy beard dangling from his jaw to his chest, but his eyes burned like emeralds in a fire.

“You,” she rasped, “are late.”

“Sorry, Boss,” said Mister Plum Pudding. “Had to take the long way round. The city’s getting jumpy these days.”

“As are most of the Lords and Ladies.” A shark’s grin spread across the pale face. “Ah well. Now you’re here. To business.”

The sack, she’d noticed, was not very big. All the same, it rattled the china tea set as Mister Plum Pudding dumped it unceremoniously onto her breakfast table. The brim slumped over the lumpy mass of its contents. One of the centaur’s hands disappeared inside it and came up full.

Crystals gleamed between his clenched fingers. First the glow was green as an emerald, and then a sulphurous yellow, before finally settling on a rusty orange. She noticed with interest how the shifting spectra were the same on every stone. Licking her lips, she flapped a hoof to wave him down. All the stones vanished back into the sack.

“Ooh,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“You should have worn gloves.” Lady Pitt rubbed her muzzle with the back of a hoof. “There’s an old legend that says these things love to be together. Childish nonsense, I know, but sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a seed of truth buried in the compost heap.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“They never run out of power. Apparently, it’s some sort of psychic vibration, or some mystic mumbo-jumbo like that. Think of how long a con like that could run for.”

“Yes, Boss.”

“We’d only have to make sure we stole them back again, that’s all. The mind fills in the blanks. No one even really understands how they work. And of course, we’re really doing the city a big service, if you think about it.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Lady Pitt pouted up at him. “You’re not a centaur of much imagination, are you, Mister Plum Pudding?”

“No, Boss. Sorry, Boss.”

“Take it as a compliment of your work ethic, Mister Plum Pudding. You may go.”

The centaur bowed. “Thank you, Boss.”

The door slammed behind him.

After his hoofsteps had died away, Lady Pitt rocked her chair back and forth, playing with her own hooves. Occasionally, she found herself turning towards the sack slumped over her table.

They called them Dark Stones among the traders. Presumably, it was to satisfy some cretinous sense of street humour, given their constant glowing, but the city believed them, at least officially. Evil, they called the stones. Corrupting. Underhanded. Even she wasn’t entirely convinced they were wrong.

But then what wasn’t, when you got down to it? Take the peacekeepers. Their entire job was to do evil deeds on behalf of the good citizens, beating down and fighting against anything that disagreed with them. That required kicking butt. Hardly anyone liked having their butts kicked, but it was for the good of the city, so that made it all right.

What was it to her that the stones ruined lives? They didn’t always do so. From what she’d heard, the lives that were ruined were on their way out anyway, so they might as well go out with a smile, if a vague, dreamy, rather unfocused one. Some of the lives ruined themselves trying to get hold of the stones. There was just no helping that kind of mindset. It was hardly her fault there.

The bag didn’t move. All the same, her focus on it became fresh and invigorating, as though she’d just noticed it breathing for the first time. Both hooves reached across and spread the rim apart.

She was a public benefactor, just like the peacekeepers. Not every client was a dead-end schmuck; in fact, most of them were Joe Public, no more remarkable than a random individual plucked from the street. You couldn’t tell just by looking at them. You couldn’t even tell just by living with them. They differed in only one respect: they had a hole to fill, or a hunger to satisfy. Her role as crusader of the public cause was to feed them well and fill them up. In return for compensation, of course.

Lady Pitt paused to wipe her nose again, and then licked her lips.

They were very nice stones. It wasn’t a good career move for anyone else, but if Lady Pitt could be sure of anything, she could be sure of her own iron constitution. A foreleg wormed through the collection, and as it did so, the heat of it crept through her skin. Shivers crept up her spine. Power flowed and warmed her from the inside out. Wonder and joy and merriment beckoned to her, blew sweet kisses in her ear, welcomed her to a new experience like no other. She tilted her head back to stop the inconvenient snot dribbling down it –

Saw the figure drop from the rafters.

The sack smacked onto the carpet, spilling its glowing contents. She almost tipped the rocking chair over. Four hooves hit the floor behind her, and she tried to fly out of range, but with a crack of joints and a groan was forced back into the clutches of gravity.

“GUARDS!” she screeched over her sandpaper throat. “GUARDS!”

“Lady Pitt…” began the echo around her.

She didn’t wait for the speech. The door slammed behind her.

Down the steps two at a time… across the empty corridor… Where were the guards? Where were the guards when she needed them?

“You can’t run away,” continued the echo, “from the consequences of your actions, Lady Pitt.”

She tripped and tumbled down the steps. As soon as she hit the bottom, sheer terror propelled her onto her hooves and she took the next flight with wings outstretched, straining to break any potential fall. Another door slammed behind her. She threw herself into the side door and kicked it shut behind her.

The figure stepped out of the shadows. It reared up, cape billowing, to engulf her.

Lady Pitt moaned, but she still had enough strength to force the door open and throw herself out into a corridor that seemed much longer than it should’ve been. She braced herself to gallop.

Unfortunately, the coughing fit chose that moment to burst out of her chest.

The troops spread themselves out along the street. Overhead, Rainbow Dash and Cloudchaser flew onwards, the former cruising at only half-strength, the latter struggling to keep up.

“I’m thinking about writing my memoirs,” said Rainbow Dash as though it didn’t make her grin uncontrollably. “How’s this for a chapter?”

“Not now, Dash.” Cloudchaser struggled to rearrange the framework under her beehive. So far, the beehive was putting up a terrific fight.

“The war hero arrives at the city! Streets throng with adoring fans – going AAAAYYY, AAAAYYY – and the proud Lieutenant – humble, but awesome, in her peacekeeper uniform – rises the steps to accept the captain’s gold medal! She ventures into the city, alone, mysterious, pondering on the vanity of all things… deep stuff, you know, to keep ‘em interested…”

“It’s gonna take ages to put this right.” Cloudchaser tried twisting the knots together, and ended up getting a dollop of stray gel in one eye. “Why didn’t I bring a mirror? Or some spare gel?”

“And then BAM! There’s the chimaera, fangs slobbering, chasing after a helpless little kid…”

“I was there. You don’t have to tell me. You could give me a helping hoof with these tufts, though.”

“And then I sprang into action! Bam! Pow! Kersplat! I sent that monster packin’! Because that’s what a captain does before bed. Just for fun. Aw yeah.”

“Am I even here right now?” Cloudchaser yanked a stray hairclip out, taking a chunk of white hair with it. “Ow.”

“Oh, lighten up.” Rainbow flipped over, now performing a cheery backstroke in midair. “A bit of rough and tumble never hurt anybody. Hey. How’s that for a chapter title? Rough and Tumble. Playful, but punchy.”

Cloudchaser sighed and went back to bashing at her beehive. “This isn't just vanity, you know. Peacekeeping is a question of style and hard-edged imagery too. You gotta look like someone's idea of a hero. Better than a scruff off the street. Not that you would understand.”

“Pfft. Style's what you do, not what you look like. I don't care how my mane looks.”

“So I see.”

“Anyway: Rough and Tumble, or Rough and Ready? Both sound good to me, but what do you think?”

Further below, Derpy hopped and chuckled from rooftop to rooftop, wings splayed to keep her balance while Meadow Flower flapped along under her shadow. Occasionally, Derpy bashed her head on a chimney she didn’t see coming, or knocked startled cats off the edge. She was humming a cheery tune, with a lot of enthusiasm that, to a generous judge, almost passed for talent.

“Is anyone actually going to remember this?” Meadow Flower mumbled to herself. “I remember the bit about the crate, but didn’t we have to account for the broken market stalls too? I’m sure that was important.”

“I’ll remember it,” said Derpy, surfacing briefly from her song.

The look on Meadow Flower’s face was a strange mix of twisted mouth and concerned eyes; her skepticism of Derpy’s memory clashed horribly with the thought of actually bringing it up.

“That’s… good,” she ventured. “Does anybody else remember? I mean, maybe we all have to give something in. Now might not be a great time, but have I mentioned that perhaps I let slip that I haven’t really filled out a report like that before? I mean, I’ll say what I can, but if they want to go into detail, well…”

“Don’t worry,” said Derpy with a chuckle. “I can tell them what you did, if you want. I’ve got a memory like one of those really hard things that can’t crack very easily.”

As she hummed along, she frightened a flock of sparrows into flying up. Everyone heard the yelp of alarm. And the crack.

Meadow Flower landed on the roof and peered down the hole where Derpy had just been. “You mean diamonds?” she called down.

“Yeah,” said Derpy’s echo. “That’s the thing I was thinking of. Wow, this place has a cellar.”

“I know. I can see it from up here. Want some help?”

“I remember we saved a lot of lives today. That is the big thing. And we didn't break too many things. That'll count in our favour, right?”

“Um, hopefully. Want some help?”

“No thanks! It’s OK! I’ve found a ladder!” Something crashed inside. “Uh… Yes please, thank you!”

At street level, Bulk Biceps and Fluttershy trotted along at a comfortable pace, each respectively resembling – in grace and general weight difference – a white hippopotamus flanking an Afghan hound.

“YEAH! WE’RE AWESOME!” Bulk Biceps snorted. “HOORAY FOR THE TROOPS!”

Despite herself, and despite the memory of the smashed stalls, and above all despite the recurring image of a hot, pink, gleaming cave opening up before her and straining her limbs and promising her, if she slipped, instant and irreversible darkness, one tiny errant slip away from being trapped forever in a realm of nothingness…

Fluttershy shook herself down. No, she thought. Well, yes, there was a monster, but now we've beaten it. Can't I just enjoy it for once?

She swallowed. The peacekeepers had not stopped to clean up the resultant mess. There was a general, ungrateful sense that this was not part of the job.

But… at least there wouldn't be a bigger mess now, right?

Come on, Fluttershy, she thought. For once. Listen to Rainbow Dash. What would she say?

“Yeah,” Fluttershy mumbled with a giggly note in her voice. “We kinda were awesome, weren’t we?”

“WE’RE NUMBER ONE! AND TWO AND THREE AND FOUR AND FIVE AND SIX!” He cast about for inspiration. “PARTY AT MY PLACE! DRINKS FOR ALL!” he added, on the grounds that this usually got a cheer.

“Your throw was very good.”

“YEAH!”

“It's good to know there are strong pegasi to keep people safe.”

“YEAH!”

“And no one got hurt. That's the important thing.”

“YYYYYEEEEAAAAHHHH!”

Fluttershy lapsed into silence. If she spoke, she’d probably never stop struggling to gush words like the rest of them. Still, they were having an effect. She could’ve walked so high she’d be trotting over the rooftops without so much as unfurling her wings. Some intoxicating giddiness was tickling her chest and making her come over all giggly.

Good heavens! Rainbow Dash must feel like this all the time. No wonder the poor girl can’t keep still; if she didn’t keep moving, she’d burst with the sheer surge of energy.

“MAKE WAY! MAKE WAY FOR THE HEROES OF THE CITY!” Bulk was now in full military mode, hooves trotting in synchronized step and chin stuck out proudly. “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR! KNOCK ‘EM DEAD! WIPE THE FLOOR! KNOCK SOME MORE! THERE’S A DOOR! SOUNDOFF! KNOCKDOWN! ROCK ON! GO!”

Despite herself, she thought back to the sight of the crate tumbling over, and imagined the chimaera inside, the creature that had laughed at her pleas and hunted her among dark trees, rocking about inside it. The fact that it was an accident was nothing. Across the years, some stick-thin and wide-eyed filly was silently cheering her on.

A wide-eyed filly with hopes. Still there. Still watching.

“WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!” yelled Bulk Biceps, who by now was shouting at some fantasy world only he could see. “THIS SHOW MUST GO ON! WE WILL ROCK YOU! UNDER PRESSURE! OGRE BATTLE! WHOO!”

A pall came over her. She hadn’t realized the filly was still watching. And before that chimaera, there had been years and years of her keeping her head down and trying to pretend the gold badge of captaincy on her sleeve hadn’t been an accident, and that one day the thing wasn’t going to be snatched away.

She giggled less and less until the tickly feeling gave up and died.

Fluttershy glanced up at the other troops, and noticed two silhouettes moving towards them. Lightning Dust and Gilda had just caught up with them; the pair had probably spotted Rainbow and Cloudchaser from a mile away.

If she hadn’t already sobered up, the mere sight of those silhouettes would’ve driven every last gallon of wooziness out of her head.

Not those two!

Habit jumped at the helms and she jumped behind the reassuring wall of flesh that was Bulk Biceps. With any luck, neither of them would think to check behind him.

“Looks like the captain rounded up the elite forces,” she heard Lightning Dust say. There was a smirk in her voice.

“Hey,” said Gilda coldly. “What’s up?”

“HAHAHA! You guys!” A swoosh that could only be Rainbow Dash zooming at them; Fluttershy peered between the columnar legs and saw the two staring at the new captain in complete bafflement. “It was the most amazing thing EVER! You’ll never guess what just happened!”

Rainbow stopped doing cartwheels in midair and stared back at them, upside-down.

“Well go on,” she said. “Guess what just happened!”

Gilda was pretending she couldn’t see anyone, and had folded her forelimbs stroppily.

Meanwhile, Lightning Dust cast her frown about the squad. There was Cloudchaser, who by this point had resorted to holding her mane up with her hooves; Meadow Flower, who was patting the soot off of Derpy’s fur; Derpy, who was smiling inanely from under a “jaunty hat” that on closer inspection turned out to be a chimney pot; and Bulk Biceps, who even standing still gave the impression of shouting. Fluttershy briefly ducked out of sight.

“You… had a drink?” said Lightning Dust.

“Dusty and Gildy,” Rainbow said, gesturing to her impromptu squadron. “You are looking at the heroes returning in triumph from a campaign of derring-do and dangerous deeds!”

“We caught a chimaera and kicked it out,” said Cloudchaser carelessly. “Whoop-de-do. Can we please go somewhere with some hair gel? This thing looks like I stuck it in a water barrel.”

Despite the tone of the words – and the murderous glare they earned her from Rainbow – they had an electric effect on the squad. Meadow Flower and Derpy contrived to stand to attention as though offering themselves for inspection. Bulk Biceps raised a hoof in salute. Even Cloudchaser herself couldn’t resist a smirk of satisfaction.

“Not bad,” conceded Lightning Dust. She turned to Rainbow Dash. “And on your first night as captain too. What are you gonna call that chapter in your memoirs?”

“Well…” said Rainbow. “There you have me.”

“This is all so sweet and everything,” growled Gilda, “but can we go now? Shore leave doesn’t happen every day, you dorks.”

From below, Fluttershy watched the flying pegasi drift onwards. To their right, a tower leaned over the scene, a ghostly block of shadow behind the harsh lantern lights. As she watched, a figure flashed past one of the windows.

Through the gap between Bulk Bicep’s legs, she heard the glass shatter.

“Uh oh,” she said.

“WHAT?” Bulk Biceps peered under his belly. “WHY ‘UH OH’?”

Shaking slightly, she pointed up the height of the tower, but a second later it didn’t matter. The silhouette shot through the shower of shards, right down to a street below, and then vanished out of sight. There was a crash of wood.

“Look!” she yelled.

Up at the broken gap, a second figure shot down, this time on a ruler-straight trajectory that looked entirely deliberate.

“ANOTHER PEGASUS!” Bulk Biceps stretched his neck up at it.

“And it’s…” Meadow Flower squinted. “Running down the tower?”

“Looks like trouble! Come on!” cried Rainbow Dash, who didn’t waste any time. Exchanging a shrug each, Gilda and Lightning Dust followed.

“Oh. Are you sure?” Fluttershy said. “I don’t mind… wasting a little time…”

“SOMEBODY’S IN TROUBLE, SOLDIER!” Bulk Biceps, along with the rest of the squad, disappeared round the corner in the direction of the crash. Fluttershy stopped crouching now that her cover had got up and run away.

“Yes.” Fluttershy gulped. “Me.”

No one came back. She glanced up and down the street, but not a soul was around. A faint breeze coursed through the thoroughfare. It was exactly the sort of dark and lonely road a weak and helpless mare should never set foot in.

“Oh my goodness,” she moaned, and she galloped after the shouts. “Please please please let it be nothing bad.”

They emerged in another alleyway, the whole squad crowding through the narrow gap, and the pegasus screamed and ran right into them. She was coughing and spluttering fit to burst.

“Help me! Help me!” Hacking coughs and a burst of a sneeze sprayed them with phlegm and slime. “For goodness’ sake, help me!”

After throwing a terrified glance behind her, she threw Derpy aside and shot out of sight down the street. They watched her go.

“Wow,” said Cloudchaser. “I’ve never seen someone so sick move so quickly before.”

“The poor thing,” Fluttershy whispered. “She’s scared to death.”

“Er, girls?” said Derpy. “I hate to burst in, but I think there’s a bad guy.”

They turned back to the alley.

Standing at the far end, regarding them with the blank eyes of its dark mask, the figure didn’t move. Its head was cocked curiously. Under the wide brim of its hat, its face was cast into shadow, so that even the near-blackness of its purple costume was reduced to an empty hole around its upper face, as if someone had cut a head-shaped chunk out of the universe with scissors.

The squad admired the fluttering of its cape. Even in their pumped-up state, they knew style when they saw it.

Rainbow was the first to shake off the charm. “You! Stop right there!”

The figure didn’t move. Cape fluttering behind it, the figure continued to stare as though unable to comprehend their mere existence. Something about it creeped Fluttershy out. It looked unnaturally still. Even a reptile would’ve been breathing slightly.

“Um… Good!” said Rainbow. “Now, Lightning, Gilda; if you’d do the honours?”

“You mean catch her and take her in?” said Gilda.

“That’s what I said, wasn’t it?”

“Huh. Obviously. Fine.” Gilda traipsed over to the figure, shadowed all the way by a mildly amused Lightning Dust. “OK, tough guy, party’s over. Don’t try any tricks, and I might just keep you in one piece.”

She gripped a forelimb with one set of talons.

To her credit, she grabbed the kicking leg in mid-strike. Much as Fluttershy hated to admit anything the slightest bit nice about Gilda, the griffon was no fool.

Lightning gripped the other two legs, which flexed slightly, but the effort was half-hearted. The figure was still staring at them, but except for the offending back limb, Gilda and Lightning Dust might have grabbed hold of a statue.

Only then did Fluttershy notice she hadn’t breathed for the last minute. Along with the rest of the squad, she let out a heavy sigh of relief. Derpy wiped the sweat off her sooty face.

“You have the right to remain silent,” droned Gilda to the air. “You have the right to be arrested, get thrown into prison, blah blah blah. OK, on three. One. Two. Three.”

The figure blurred.

“What the –”

Suddenly unsupported, Lightning Dust and Gilda fell forwards. Two skulls cracked. The pair reeled and sat down with a single thump.

The blur resolved itself into the figure. It was now several yards ahead of the pair.

As one, the squad took a step backwards.

“Uh…” said Rainbow. “OK… OK… Uh, Bulk Biceps. Front and centre. We’ll go for strength this time.”

“FRONT AND CENTRE! GOT IT!”

“What are you doing!?” squeaked Meadow Flower. “Don’t bother with a one-on-one! Just rush her!”

“I’ll help!” Derpy grunted as the chimney pot fell over her face. Echoing slightly, she continued, “Front and centre, Derpy!”

“Wait…” Fluttershy took a step backwards.

“I’m still tired,” said Cloudchaser. “I say we get this done as soon as we can. Count me in.”

“Wait.” Fluttershy raised a hoof. “I think…”

“YEAH! RUSH THE BAD GUY!”

“Yeah!” they shouted.

“Wait!” Rainbow yelled, but the wall of troops surged forwards, and Fluttershy scrambled for the nearest corner and peeked around it.

Lightning Dust and Gilda shook themselves down and jumped into the circle around the figure, who had deigned to move and was now looking from one pegasus to the other. As one, the pair jumped up and covered any aerial retreat, allowing Bulk Biceps, Derpy, Meadow Flower, and Cloudchaser to close in, stalking with the prowl of lionesses. Talons snapped out, wings flared up; Derpy pushed her chimney pot up, her frown of rage marred by the wandering eye trying to get a look at her own ear.

“Hey!” shouted Rainbow Dash. “I’m the captain here!”

“NOW!” yelled Bulk Biceps.

All six of them shot at the figure’s head. A second before it was lost to the scrum, Fluttershy swore she saw the hat flash.

The thing moved like a shadow.

The instant the scrum disappeared in a cloud of dust, punches, kicks, and yelps, hat and figure slid out and galloped down the narrow street, heading straight for Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy bit her hoof.

Gilda was the first to break out. Talons snatched at the cape, and she yanked and ripped right through it and lost her grip. She went tumbling backwards and vanished into the ball of violence. Lightning Dust had already appeared; the figure continued galloping and found her blocking its way. It jinked to the right, but Lightning Dust was there, blocking its way again. The figure skidded to a halt.

“Gotcha now!” she said. Her hoof met the muzzle so fast it didn’t seem to pass through the space in-between.

Her smirk faltered. The figure, her hoof still in its face, had seized her leg in a double-limbed grip. She tugged backwards. The leg didn’t so much as slip.

“Hey!” she said, suddenly panicking and tugging harder. “Let go!”

Now Cloudchaser and Bulk Biceps charged in, leaped, spread their wings –

Collided with Lightning Dust. Fluttershy winced at the smack.

After the bodies thumped onto their backs, the figure turned round, but this time Derpy and Meadow Flower blocked her path. Derpy was now bereft of soot.

“Um,” she said. “What’s next Rainbow Dash?”

“Oh for Pete’s sake!” Rainbow spun round; glared at Fluttershy, who half-ducked behind the wall. “Get me back-up! Pronto! We can’t let that thing escape!”

When she turned back, Derpy was blundering around, the chimney pot rammed down to her shoulders. Muffled moans came from behind the cylinder of pottery. At least Meadow Flower had managed to grab onto its cape with teeth and a hug, but she was a blur as the figure leaped from wall to ground to other wall and off the side of Bulk Biceps, who was still prone. Gilda tried a second lunge. There was a blur. Gilda lay prone next to him.

On the last bound, the figure suddenly dug its hooves in. Unfortunately, Meadow Flower’s body was working under the assumption that bounding was still in progress. She hit the other wall upside-down and slid headfirst into a bucket of water.

There was no mistaking the sweat on Rainbow’s face this time. “Fluttershy! Go! Now!”

“But what about –”

And then the figure was on them.

Blur met rainbow in a frenzy of colour. Fluttershy’s eyes watered just trying to keep up with either of them. One moment, she thought she saw Rainbow gripping it in a headlock. The next, she swore the figure had a rear hoof planted in the small of Rainbow’s back.

“R-Rainbow…?” She took a step forwards.

For a moment the pair blurred back into normal time, Rainbow flying above its head, and the figure crouching for a leap. Another blur, and the figure had shifted to the right. Rainbow blocked its escape. A third blur; Rainbow blocked its left exit. It leaped at the wall; Rainbow was as unshakeable as a shadow, even when it blurred back onto the street.

The hat flashed.

Rainbow and Fluttershy blinked. The figure had vanished.

“What the hay? Where is it? Where’d you go? Get back here!”

Ignoring the groans and protests of the stirring remains of her comrades, Rainbow darted to and fro, trying to spot some trick or sign of a blur coming back. Fluttershy’s brain was still trying to catch up with what just happened when she noticed a slight flash behind her and spun round.

The figure – the figure – was standing right there.

Up close, it seemed even more fiercely pegasine, and yet so completely alien. Its face was one stretch of royal cloth with no slits for nostrils or mouth, or even any suggestion that it was designed to do anything so mortal as to eat and breathe. Each eye wasn’t simply another patch of fabric, but stiff and tinted and, despite the lack of pupils or irises or any of the usual ocular devices, totally and utterly focused on her. It was an insectoid corpse, recording every second of her existence.

The whimper leaked out of her.

It wasn’t just the dead interest that made her feel like a breezie staring at the wrong end of a hoof. There was the way it seemed to weigh down hard behind it. Tons of intelligence and high-mindedness and cool, calculating discipline bore down on her through those dead eyes, straining to leave her a smear on the ground. It was a stare with an amused snort of contempt.

Fluttershy shrank down and hid behind her own forelegs.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she said.

They weren’t good last words, but the sheer sincerity behind them put many a philosophical retrospective to shame.

When she dared to raise her front hooves, the shadow was gone. She hadn’t even heard it move.

Cautiously, she looked up and down the street, but there was no sign of the figure. She backed into the narrow street, gaze darting everywhere, including the walls and windows and the reddish tinge of the overcast sky.

Around her, the squad were stirring and pushing themselves back onto their hooves or talons. The only two actually walking were currently staggering about with bucket or chimney pot wedged firmly on their heads. Rainbow was up high, scanning the streets for signs of activity.

Fluttershy was only vaguely aware of two approaching silhouettes in the distance; Raindrops and Thunderlane were travelling as the crow flies, and the crow in this case was the captain.

A few threads of purple cloth were caught under her hoof. She bent down and sniffed at them, but no incriminating odour stepped forwards.

Her gaze drifted over to Lightning Dust, who was dusting herself off and trying to pretend nothing of consequence had happened. Lightning Dust, she knew, had once beaten the Dizzitron challenge at its maximum setting. It was a setting mainly used to practise for supersonic jet storms, and had been known to reduce veterans to a thin paste on the ground. Everyone knew the record on the machine belonged to Rainbow Dash, but that was still only at the standard setting…

Fluttershy wondered what figure could move faster than either of them. Short of breaking the laws of physics, any fugitive trying it should have exploded under the sheer force. It had not just blurred, but blurred out of reality and back in again.

There was something terrible and wrong about this. But it was also uncomfortably familiar.

She was still puzzling over it when Rainbow Dash rammed into her and started shouting at anyone who was awake.

Guard Flutter, Part X: Divisions, Divisions

Around the Bellerophon Armada, with the near-hundred airships floating under the sea of cloud and over the forest of city towers, orange streaks blazed through the air like comets. Only a few dozen phoenixes were out, but they screeched and chirped to each other, some briefly coming together for synchronized flights, others seizing each other and twirling under the force of gravity like upside-down ballerinas. Many of the flock were content to trace orbits around the ships, occasionally veering across and towards the swollen balloons, the slight sways of the rigging, and the creaking hulls overshadowed by the red sky.

Fluttershy peeked out of the porthole, following the flights of the nearest birds. A phoenix flashed by the thick glass, tracing purple streaks of afterglow in her eyes which she blinked out.

Behind her, the rest of the squad were standing around the office, ignoring even the opposite portholes and focusing entirely on the desk. Despite being apparently distracted, her left ear was cocked that way in a don’t-mind-me-I’m-casual fashion that deceived nobody.

“Whoa. And after it made its escape, what did you do then?” said Lieutenant General Soarin.

Rainbow Dash was standing to attention right before his desk, almost lifting her own hooves off the floorboards. She was frowning. Not with any particular irritation or uncertainty, but because she’d be darned if she wasn’t going to look the part of a captain.

“We searched the area for signs, sir,” she said to the wall behind Soarin. “I briefly brought Raindrops and Thunderlane up to speed, and then set up a perimeter with everyone except Fluttershy. I sent her out as a runner to the nearest base for backup. By the time they arrived, we’d completed our search.”

The squad exchanged tentative glances. At least Rainbow had been tactful enough to leave out the shouting, whining, and general noise that had littered itself all over an otherwise glowing account.

Soarin peered over his desk with concern. “Not even a sign of the pegasus being chased?”

“No sir. The backup squad took our statements, and then sent us away. I thought it best to keep you in the loop, sir.”

“Hmmm.” At this, Soarin spread his forelimbs in an expansive gesture. “Well, fair's fair. It could have gone a lot worse. Well done, guys. You did a good job, especially with that chimaera. That could have been nasty.”

But we managed to make it even nastier, thought Fluttershy, shuddering. The sudden image of Rainbow Dash struggling against the snake's coils, inches from a sabre-toothed maw, grinned at her as a cruel reminder.

On telling Soarin, Rainbow had been a little bendy with the truth. Part of Fluttershy didn't blame her. There were some things that should not be relived in the telling.

Finally, Fluttershy turned around.

Surrounding the desk in a semi-circle, the squad stood a little straighter than before. Among them, Lightning Dust barely suppressed a grin, and Derpy and Meadow Flower didn’t even try. It hardly mattered that Rainbow’s account made it sound like the figure had simply flashed past them; any balm for sores was all right by them, and Soarin saying “Well done” was worth a weekend at the spa.

She slipped in between the ranks, waiting for her cue. Flashes of light crossed her mind. Good as her memory was, it was shaking with stage fright.

I’ll just wait until they mention it, she thought, and then I’ll put a hoof up politely. That’s all. It’s not a crime to talk to everybody, not even the Lieutenant General.

“This pegasus, though,” said Soarin to the room at large. “Could anyone identify her?”

There was a general shaking of heads, though Raindrops and Thunderlane simply stared off into space. Derpy, though, had let her ears droop. Blank as her face now was, it was easy to tell what she was thinking through her ears. They could’ve written poetry, they were that expressive.

The Lieutenant General shrugged. “Never mind. Sickly and green; I'm sure she won’t get far. I bet the ground squads are getting an ID from the tower anyway. More to the point is our mystery perp. The masked figure.”

Rainbow reached for the saddlebag on the floor and then held up the threads cupped in one hoof. “Fluttershy found these on the ground. They must’ve ripped out when Gilda grabbed the cape. Could be a clue, sir.”

“Not bad. Body shape?”

“It looked like a pegasus,” said Cloudchaser. “But it moved so fast –”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Gilda. “It could’ve been a changeling, or a short griffon.”

“Yeah, but it looked pegasine,” said Lightning Dust. “None of us saw it fly, though. If it had wings, then they were tucked under the cape the whole time.”

Fluttershy coughed quietly. “I think it’s a unicorn.”

All of them stared at her. Seeking authority, she focused on Soarin’s surprised eyes, and then looked up to his right ear when her own eyes watered.

“What makes you say that, Shy?” said Soarin.

“When it moved so fast, there was a flash on its head like a unicorn horn,” Fluttershy continued. “It did it once before we started, and then again when Rainbow Dash tried to block it.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Cloudchaser, shaking her head. “Unicorns can’t move like that thing did. That thing had pegasine speed.”

“Ahem,” said Gilda.

“Oh, come off it. I don’t have to keep adding ‘And griffon speed too.’ You know what I mean.”

Gilda gave her a sidelong glower, beak turned up.

“Maybe. But then again, maybe not. Maybe you were mistaken?” said Raindrops. “Maybe in all the chaos, you just thought you saw a flash?”

“I know what I saw,” said Fluttershy insistently. “It was magic. That’s how it disappeared at the end. With a spell.”

“YOU SURE?” said Bulk Biceps, cocking his head.

“Yes. I’ve seen unicorn magic before. I’d know if it I saw it again.”

“When was that?” said Thunderlane.

Fluttershy didn’t respond. She didn’t dare look at Rainbow Dash.

This generated some murmuring, but Soarin nodded. “That's keen observation, Shy. It looks like we’ve got a lead. There are some unicorns in the city, but not many. We have to keep tabs on them, given the power issues and security risks, but I don't remember them being a problem before now.”

“How many unicorns is ‘many’, sir?” said Rainbow Dash.

“Off the top of my head? It's been a while. I think four are officially registered within the city bureau, and two of them live together. A fifth one technically lives outside our jurisdiction, but they're close enough to unofficially count. Unicorns aren’t exactly a common species, even globally. At least our list of suspects will be short.”

“Uh, yeah, but then,” said Meadow Flower, “what about unregistered ones?”

“Baby steps, Meadows. Baby steps. OK, take the rest of your shore leave off, people. I’ll hand this over to Spitfire, and she can decide –”

Lightning Dust nudged Rainbow in the ribs. After a quick mutual glance, Rainbow said, “With your permission, sir, I’d like to continue the investigation with my squad.”

Despite the groans this generated, Soarin peered over his desk at her with concern. “Wait, really? Even on shore leave?”

“Yes, sir. We got the ball rolling, sir. I wanna be there when it stops. Besides, we’re the ones with the headstart, and we know what it’s capable of. Right now, we’ve got an advantage, and we’re faster than the ground-based squads.”

Besides, Fluttershy was thinking, most of us are at the bottom of the pack; what does it matter if we lose out on time off? And it’ll look good if Captain Rainbow Dash gets there first. She suspected the same thoughts were lighting up the insides of Rainbow's mind. Certainly, she looked a lot more puffed-up than usual, and on a pegasus with feathery wings, that was no small thing.

Soarin gave a slight grin. “Neat. You’re that keen, are you?”

“Yes, sir.” Rainbow saluted. Lightning Dust grinned and nodded.

“In that case, I’ll spare the other squads an untimely recall for now. You understand I'll still have to inform General Spitfire about this? All right. Lieutenants, step forwards.”

Lightning Dust, Thunderlane, and Raindrops stepped smartly forwards, forming a line on either side of Rainbow Dash. Lightning had a side all to herself.

At this, Fluttershy glanced away. She could feel the stares burning into the back of her head, and it was a while before she realized she was staring at her left hoof.

A few seconds of muttering and murmuring began to rise up. Her cheeks burned.

“OK,” said Soarin without missing a beat, “I’ll bet the ground squads are already looking over the tower after that disturbance, so that just leaves us with one missing pegasus and one mystery masquerader to deal with. We could always send out a city-wide search for the perps, which I'll take care of. In the meantime, the obvious suspects are your targets for now. We could check in on those unicorns to start off the investigation. And since that festival’s starting up tonight” – here, he glanced out the window at the streaks of orange burning past – “try and keep it discreet, guys. OK?”

They nodded.

“Right on! Lieutenant Lightning Dust, you take Private Meadow Flower for unicorn number one. Lieutenant Thunderlane, you take Private Cloudchaser for unicorn number two. Lieutenant Raindrops, you take Private Derpy and Private Bulk Biceps for numbers three and four, since they live together. Now, we’re not throwing around accusations yet. That's not how it goes. Just get their statements, ask about their recent activities, see if you can get their aural hue while you're at it –”

“AURAL HUE?” said Bulk Biceps.

Soarin chuckled. “Don't worry, Bulks. Lieutenant Drops, if you’d be so kind?”

Behind Raindrops, Gilda sniggered and waggled her talons in imitation of a chatterbox.

Raindrops herself breathed in cheerfully. “Gladly, sir! All unicorns have a signature colour whenever their horns light up to perform magic. It’s not always easy to spot, but no two unicorns have the same hue, so it shouldn’t be too hard to identify each one.”

Swiftly, she glanced around. Gilda's talons dropped fast and the griffon suddenly radiated utter innocence.

Glaring at the latter and then beaming at the former, Soarin nodded. “Textbook answer. Shy? Did you get the colour?”

Fluttershy coughed and looked up. “I think it was purple-ish? But it could’ve just been the fabric.”

“It was wearing a purple hat, to be fair,” said Meadow Flower helpfully.

“OK, then. And watch your six. If you see anything suspicious,” said Soarin, drawing himself up, “then report it immediately. No glory-hounds, understand?”

Gilda raised a hand. “Uh, sir? What do I do?”

“Hm?” Soarin raised an eyebrow. “Oh yes, there was a fifth unicorn, wasn’t there? You and Private Fluttershy can take care of that one, if you don’t mind.”

Private, Private, Private. The words of doom echoed all around. She heard them under the whispers and the murmurs. Private? Private! Private.

Fluttershy almost staggered. How could he have just blurted it out like that? How could she face them now?

And now she was stuck with Gilda.

Gilda glared at Fluttershy, who turned away and was suddenly dreading the next few minutes. It couldn’t be delayed long enough. It wouldn't be delayed long enough, not if she had all eternity to delay it. She'd probably drop dead of fright. She was trying not to tremble, because Wonderbolts didn't tremble and she wasn't going to fall now, she wasn't going to faint, she wasn't going to crack. She couldn't. She mustn't. She shouldn't.

“I’ll go with them,” said Rainbow Dash quickly.

Fluttershy looked up at once, and found to her horror that her own vision was blurred. Hastily, she blinked herself clear.

Unfortunately, Soarin shook his head. “Sorry, Rainbow. As captain, it’s your duty to write up the report for the incident tonight.”

A look of horror crossed Rainbow’s face. “Report? Me?”

“That’s how it works up top. Someone’s got to do the paperwork, and it was your squad acting. Everyone here is under the Leucippus. If it helps, you can use this desk, but it has to be in either my tray or Major Fleetfoot’s tray before dawn tomorrow. Trust me. It's best to get it out of the way.”

Rainbow cast about urgently for an escape. “But – can’t I just write it up after –?”

“While it’s fresh on your memory, Captain.” He drew up a pen and a form, and laid them down on the desk. “In the meantime, I’ve got business to attend to. Save for Captain Rainbow Dash, you’re all dismissed.”

They saluted and turned away. While the squad ambled, shuffled, stumbled, or scurried out, Fluttershy felt herself shrink away as Gilda sullenly fell into step beside her, not so accidentally budging her aside as they approached the door.

Fluttershy whimpered. She waited patiently for Gilda’s tail to disappear, and then took one last look at Rainbow hunched moodily over the desk before Soarin stepped in the way and she hurried out, hoping she wouldn’t have a heart attack.

It was small level work for a small level squad. The Leucippus crew – even the likes of Lightning Dust – weren’t the cream of the crop. No member was there who didn’t have a serious flaw to their character somewhere.

All the same, there was an electric feeling in the air. The squad buzzed with excitement. Stuff was happening. They were getting involved!

And there’d be Dash, back from a campaign of excitement and forced to write reports. That was her idea of torture.

In fact, Rainbow seemed strangely gloomy and quiet, she noticed. But Fluttershy felt duty tugging at her neck like a leash, and reluctantly threw herself off the deck and began gliding over the oily fires of the city, the shrieks of the phoenixes crisscrossing her mind.

Guard Flutter, Part I: Above and Beyond Duty

Lord Zinc the minotaur pursed his bovine lips and, with a swill of his wine glass, peered beyond the tinted windowpane to the city lights outside.

Everything was dark: the overcast night with its reddish hue like crimson silk; the shadows waiting in ambush around the firefly lanterns and hunched streetlamps; the void beyond. Mazes within mazes were laid out below him. He fancied that he could reach out and scoop up every last alley and avenue with a sweep of his arm.

With a quaff of his Pinot Noir, he handed the glass over to an unseen servant and moved away from the view. Light and dark passed across his face while he strode parallel to the wall, window after window standing to attention on his left. Under their dim beams, the faux ermine collar glowed around his neck and the jingling gold nose-ring flashed.

His ear twitched; a nervous giggle came from his right.

Lord Zinc glanced sidelong at the chair where the changeling buzzed and twitched in barely concealed excitement. His own muscular snout wrinkled at the sight, but smoothed down when he passed the next chair. Here, the griffon Lady Carcarass sat up in the pose of a noble gargoyle, cutting the air with her discipline. Beside her was the standing Lord Buffet, the ox delegate with his horns sheathed in steel. Beside him, the phoenix slept on its perch, one eye blazing open as he passed before its lid slid over again to extinguish the glare.

The empty chair was ebony and carved from backrest to clawed feet with ancient runes. He scraped it back and eased his bulk onto it, wincing slightly as his spine protested. To his left, the pegasus was leaning on the round table. Only her eyes moved, flicking up and down as though searching for a rip in his suit.

The grin stretched from his slightly perspiring nose to his bulging cheeks. Both hands clasped each other over the table. With a kind of unstoppable momentum, his head shifted upwards so that his gaze beamed across the table, past the circle of heads, and up to the mass of hair opposite that was the centaur delegate.

“Unusual circumstances,” rumbled Lord Zinc. “I don’t recall the last time we were all together like this.”

Lord Tirek stirred. His four hooves pawed at the carpet, scuffing the blocky figures embroidered into it. Both hands clawed at the tabletop as though determined to tear through the polish.

“The last time this happened,” came a wheezing voice from under the hood, “the Lords and Ladies were falling. We must be more careful this time. This time, there must be no fall at all. Disaster awaits those who do not heed my warning tonight.”

Around the table, various delegates murmured and sniffed at him. Lord Buffet chortled and stamped a hoof.

“Behold the Prophet Tirek!” His chortle, like his voice, boomed and rattled the windows in their frames. “He sees disaster written in the stars!”

“Disaster?” The changeling’s hard skin crackled as he shivered and jittered on the chair. “What disaster? We’re doing well for a disaster. Where is it? Where is it?”

“If you would let him finish,” said Lady Carcarass in clipped tones, “perhaps we would find out.”

One at a time, the delegates settled into silence. The phoenix opened one eye again. As soon as all were still, Lord Tirek placed two spidery hands on the surface, poised as if to strike with venomous bites.

“It gratifies me,” he said coolly, “that you regard my advice with such high emotion. Clearly, the Lords and Ladies are not as implacable as they seem. I know on what foundations your fortunes rest, and I know with what force those foundations can be cracked.”

Lord Zinc waved a hand irritably. “Riddles are all very well, Tirek, but I don’t intend to spend the next hour listening to them. Can you cut to the chase?”

With a stiff nod that was almost a bow, Lord Tirek flashed him a grim smile. “As you wish. Here are your foundations.”

His hand leaped into the folds of his cloak, and a block was flicked out and bounced across the table, skittering past the stares of the delegates to halt before the minotaur’s folded arms. This time, the phoenix opened both eyes and raised its head.

Humming faintly and blurred with a slight but sustained quiver, the gemstone’s glow turned the tabletop beneath it a faint blue. Even as they watched, it faded to a purple, and then flared with a fiery red before shifting to a brighter orange and then a blinding yellow.

Lord Zinc unfolded his arms and clasped the prism in the palm of one hand, almost smothering it. As he did so, a warmth flowed through him. Every part of him began to feel like it was merging with the crystal; he was puzzled that his skin wasn’t aglow. Despite himself, he found his breath taken from him, and the world poured in, welling up inside him. He smiled up at the others. He wanted to reach over and embrace them all. Tears burned behind his gaze, and he was seeing the fullness of the room, every pigment on the table, every feather and strand of hair, every subtle shade from the darkest shadow to the now-blinding shaft of light…

A wing shot out; it struck his hand. The crystal clattered away from him, hopping across the table. Instead, a spidery hand snatched it from the surface.

Lord Tirek smirked. “The physician should not take his own medicine.”

The pegasus lowered her wing. She hadn’t looked away from the centaur the entire time. Beside her, Lord Zinc slumped in his chair and wiped a hand across his snout.

“Tonight,” continued Lord Tirek, “the great ones of the city will decide whether or not this stone” – he held it up for a second and then tucked it away – “shall become a priceless treasure to our citizens. And I see you already know about that.”

He waited for the hisses and growls to subside. Under the shadow of the hood, the two yellow embers in the two black coals blinked and darted from face to face.

“Good,” he said. “Very good.”

Lord Zinc peered around at the delegates among the shadows. On the back of a second pegasus, a much smaller face glared out at the world. Further along, the ram gnashed his teeth. Nearest to the centaur, the changeling flashed green and switched from a black equine mockery to a perfect grey copy of a pegasus. All of them, he noticed, had the gold ring on them somewhere, be it as an earring or as a bracelet bound to a foreleg. He nodded and focused on Lord Tirek again.

“We certainly don’t want that,” Lord Zinc rumbled, “but it’s hardly a disaster. After all, isn’t it already a priceless treasure? We made it so. We are the pioneers. There’ll be others.”

“Not like this one.” Lord Tirek shook his head and a smile oozed over his face. “Believe me; this one is worth holding on to. Nothing quite reaches in, quite cleanses the soul, like this radiant stone. That’s because it holds the key to a great source of energy. Such power, my fellow Lords and Ladies! Such dreams, encased in crystal! No. You must protect it at all costs.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” said the ram in a bleating tone. “You think we can honestly staaaaand against the might of the grrrrrrrreat ones?”

“Frankly,” said Lady Carcarass, “that is suicide. And we don’t have to coerce them. I find a little persuasion works wonders for those with a stubborn disposition.”

“Especially,” said Lord Buffet, “if it comes in treasure chests, eh?”

This earned a knowing chortle from around the table, which Lord Tirek joined briefly. Across the table, only Lord Zinc and the pegasus had stayed silent. They exchanged glares, and then focused once more on the centaur.

“If the great ones seize control of these stones,” said Lord Tirek while the others quietened down, “then they also seize our necks. You cannot beat them, you cannot bribe them, you cannot sweet-talk them into doing your bidding. Your only choice is to abide by their wishes.”

Lord Buffet bellowed with irritation. “What a leader! What an inspiration! No decree of theirs has stopped me before, and I have no interest in letting one stop me now.”

“I did not say,” said Lord Tirek coldly, “that we should abide by their decree, my bovine friend. I say we should abide by their wishes. It is no secret that they have misgivings about these stones. They are lingering doubts that are holdovers from the previous times. So it has always been.”

The phoenix cawed and ruffled its feathers.

“What are you saying?” said the pegasus at last.

Lord Tirek grinned. “We have always been here to serve the city. We heed the call of duty, do we not?”

Around the table, there were mutterings and nods of agreement. A few members straightened up where they sat.

“My Lords and Ladies” – he leaned forwards, and the yellow embers in his eyes flared for a moment under the lights of the city – “let us go above and beyond the call of duty.”

Lord Zinc folded his arms and listened while his ear twitched and his lips pursed. The centaur droned on, and as they listened, their eyes gleamed with the vision laid out before them. Lord Zinc held back. He smelled the unmistakeable stench of rodent. For a moment, his gaze met that of the pegasus, and in that moment when her eyelid relaxed, he knew he had found an ally.

He gazed beyond the glass to the labyrinth of streets.

A second later, he could’ve sworn he saw one of the shadows move, but there was nothing there when he stared into it. A few seconds passed. He turned back to the centaur, and found the yellow embers burning brighter than ever before.

The shadow burst out into the light of the lantern. Fluttershy cried out and zipped out of range as the claws sliced empty air.

“Listen,” she whispered urgently. “I can help you out in any way” – she backed off from another swipe – “if you would just calm down. Please.”

Her wings were a blur, and she was panting with the effort. Her forehead scrunched up trying to keep all the words in her brain. It didn’t help that the azure uniform was itching in all the wrong places to scratch. It didn’t help that they’d tied the lantern to a rod that bounced too much, and tied the rod to a harness that was too tight across her midriff. It didn’t help that, beyond her circle of yellowish light, the blackness was total. What really didn’t help was that her comfy bed kept popping up in her mind’s eye. She hadn’t seen it in days.

“I represent” – she yelped as a close swipe almost snagged on her harness – “I mean, I’m a part of the Bellerophon” – she breathed in to avoid a second swipe and hovered overhead – “the Bellerophon Armada, and as a represent – as a part of the Bellerophon…”

Here she closed her eyes, forcing the words to the fore.

“I extend a hoof of friendship” – she raised her voice at the roaring that sprang up – “and assure you that… that I come in peace and goodwill! It is also my duty to offer aid and to protect my fellow…”

She squealed as a pair of fangs slashed through the light inches from her face. In a panic, she spun round, trying to shine her lantern on any angle from which the darkness might leap up at her.

“Excuse me!” she yelled. Her voice was much higher than usual; that swipe had nicked a cheek. “Can you stop doing that, please? I’m trying to help you! I’m serious!”

The roaring died, and three voices chuckled from below. Fluttershy wiped her brow, smearing locks of her pink mane along the veneer of sweat. She peered across at her black sleeve, where a rip in the fabric had left the bronze pin hanging on a frayed scrap.

“Th-Thank you,” she said. However much she squinted, though, there was still no sign of movement from the blackness. “I… I suppose I could skip the speech, if that’s what’s troubling you?”

Gamely, she tried a chuckle back. Her heart wasn’t in it, though, and was currently thumping for an escape hatch through her spine. She lowered herself to a circle of gleaming mud, fringed by reeds that flared before her lantern. The cracks and gouges of a nearby trunk rose out of the shadows.

“OK, pony,” growled one of the voices. Hastily, she swung round, trying to spot it among the faint suggestion of a ring of trees. “We may come out and say hello. But what will you do then, little pony? You want to take us away and hurt us.”

“You’ve done some bad things,” said Fluttershy as smoothly as she could. Her eyes darted in their sockets, trying to pick out movement. “I understand, really I do. You don’t want to be punished, but it’s the right thing. It’s only fair.”

Something caught her eye between two trunks, but when she turned to face it, it had vanished. Her heart tried frantically to smash its way through her back. Both wings had to fight to stop themselves locking up and freezing.

“And whaaaat,” bleated a second voice, “if they huuuurrrrt uuuuus? Weeee don’t waaant to be huuurrrrt.”

Fluttershy took a breath, and gasped as a flare shot up from three feet away. For a moment, the swamp was revealed, a stretch of mud and reeds and trees sagging and dripping around her. Then it faded away.

“You’ve hurt innocent people,” she said with some bite in her voice, but now she was rising slightly and backing away, and she softened her tone. “Please! You understand why we have to do this, right? It’s what’s good for everyone… mostly, I guess.”

“SSSSSSome would ssssssay,” hissed a third voice, “that it’ssssss in our naturesssssssssss to hurt otherssss.”

A flicker on the edge of her vision; Fluttershy spun round as a few leaves drifted down. At once, she tilted upwards to raise the light, but the branches were beyond her field of view.

“Don’t worry about that. If you give yourselves up, we won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you” – a gulp escaped her – “but we can’t have people getting hurt anymore. So please give yourselves up? We can help you. We’ve helped lots of people. You don’t have to do this.”

“Interesting,” said all three voices. Right in her ear.

Fluttershy screamed and ducked as tiger paws rushed over her. She hit the mud and galloped, narrowly dodging a snap as a snake shot for her tail. Trunks flashed by, lunging at her from the darkness. With a cry, she bounced off one, leaped off another through sheer terrified momentum, and stumbled over half-submerged roots before a row of flames flared up before her, ripping through her night vision and blinding her for a moment. She held up a hoof, cocked her ears for the sounds of thundering feet…

There was nothing for it. The heat rippled across her back. She reared up. Both wings unfurled, and she waved both forelegs in an attempt to look ready to lash out. Through the purple afterglow, and beyond the blinking lights, she saw the tiger’s sabre-toothed grin, the goat’s head leering over its shoulder, and the shifting of muscular striped forelimbs and squelching back hooves. From far behind it came a hiss.

“I call the yellow rump!” roared the tiger’s head. “It’s the juiciest part, and so soft and chewy! I must have it!”

“No faaaaiiiiir!” bleated the goat’s head. “Yooouuu said IIII could have the rump! Thaaat’s the beeeest biiiiit!”

“You can have the crunchy, marrow-filled bonessssss,” hissed the snake’s head. “Lotssssss of lovely bonessssss for you. I’ll have whatever remainssssss. Agreed, sssisssterssss?”

“Booones sounds gooooood. Agreeeeeeed!”

“Agreed!” The tiger-like front crouched for the pounce. There was a thud from beyond the circle of light, as of distant thunder.

Fluttershy glanced around desperately. More flares shot up around them, gleaming in the creature’s many eyes. Behind her, the heat crackled on, but even without it, she could feel herself starting to die from sheer tiredness. She rose up in the hope of it backing down, but her wings were struggling just to keep her off the mud.

“Can’t we talk about the needs of a safe and happy society?” she managed to squeak. “There’s nothing wrong with coming quietly! We’ll feed you while you’re staying! Beans and cheeses and eggs and nuts! Lots of lovely things! You don’t have to –”

The chimaera leapt.

And the arimaspi tackled it in midair.

Behind her, the flares died away, and the scene was plunged into pure darkness. Roars and hisses and bleats and shouts broke out like violent ghosts. Fluttershy felt a fleck of mud sting her in the eye.

A set of talons grabbed her around the hoof and forced her forwards, right into the glare of a griffon in uniform. The griffon threw her into the canopy and pushed her through the branches and leaves, snapping several and snagging others in her hair.

Fluttershy spat a wad of cobweb out of her mouth. “Wh-Wh-What j-j-just…”

“Don’t jabber, you dork!” yelled the griffon behind her, and she noted that it didn’t sound bothered by the branches at all. “Come on, while they’re both distracted!”

The lantern bounced into Fluttershy’s snout, and she bit her lip. Not her, she thought. Please tell me they didn’t send her.

They burst out of the greenery and were now in the void. There was darkness below. There was darkness above, though as she wiped the leaves and tangled locks out of her face, Fluttershy noticed a reddish tinge. All around them was a ring of darkness, except for one patch where she saw, like stars in the night, the distant dots of the city.

Her griffon had let her go and zoomed past her. “Command wants you,” yelled the voice. “Now! So get moving, dweeb. I won’t tell you again.”

Far below her private circle of lantern light, the yelps and growls of the two combatants echoed over the canopy. Fluttershy moaned and waited a few seconds before heading straight up. She could only put so much distance between herself and Gilda before the latter had to come back to fetch her.

Whimpering as she went, wincing at the popping in her ears, and waiting every few seconds to get her breath back, Fluttershy rose up to the layer of cloud and was soon surrounded by red wisps, which died away.

There was the sky. Midnight blue washed over her. Alight with stars, the world around her twinkled and flickered. She found it easier to breathe, and didn’t stop rising. Sweet gales rushed over her, streaming her pink mane and tail behind her. Despite herself, despite her lowly aches and pains trying to drag her down, her spirit filled with light and spread out to merge with all the space. For a breathless moment, she was weightless.

A gibbous moon peeked down at the fluffy mountains, the aura of silver aglow around it. She could see the dark crescent beside it.

And then she twirled round, saw the airships closing in, and landed on reality with a thump.

“Oh dear,” she whispered. In the gale, the rod quivered. The lantern patted her in the eye.

One airship was leading, its swollen balloon draped with a purple tarpaulin and decorated with the eye and vast lips of a mournful whale. Under its white belly, the ropes looked impossibly thin holding up a ship fit for a mansion. Two jagged flippers hung down from either side of the hull, but otherwise the ship was a bow like a proud and jutting snowplough, or the guard of a gigantic steam train. It forced its way through the air. Far behind it, the black dots and silhouettes of other airships closed in. Smaller figures zipped from ship to ship. The armada contained dozens, possibly close to a hundred ships; Fluttershy had never found out the exact number.

They were on their way home.

Oh, no. What a way for me to finish, she thought.

Sighing and slumping, she eased herself out of the way of the bow. Gold, silver, and bronze words shone down from its moon-eclipsing bulk as her lantern bobbed over them, and all of them were “Bellerophon”.

Guard Flutter, Part VI: Tank Makes a Friend

Tank the tortoise crested the hill and found himself staring at the city. He had to stop for another lifetime while he strained with tree-like patience to encompass it.

His tiny reptilian mind struggled to comprehend the vastness of the city. Oh, there had been vast vistas aplenty before now – vast deserts, vast mountains, vast roads that never seemed to end – but he’d grown around those types of vastness and then simply marched on. They were vast tracks of nothingness, which he’d found oddly reassuring. It was easy to feel philosophically smug about being the only… well, the only being in a vast world of nothing.

True, there had been towns and villages. He would never forget finding himself in his first village, a mass of blocks and statue-like Big Ones – all of them false, he noticed – towering over him, canyons of streets, and flowerbeds like ancient savannahs.

Every town and village had been so twisty and compacted that each one must’ve taken a lifetime to cross, which was odd because looking back, they now seemed to be little more than brief fireworks between miles of open sky. They were punctuation in the saga of his travels.

Besides, the False Ones – he no longer credited them with the “Big” epithet – had left no impression on him whatsoever, despite his initial intellectual interest.

But here was the city, and if up to now he’d crossed planets and suns of bewildering complexity, then this time he was coming to terms with finding his first galaxy. Lights spelled out constellations even here; it seemed to be a glimpse into the night sky, as though some giant had pulled back the cloud just enough to peek out. It ran from horizon to horizon. All around it was darkness, which meant the city lights reached out and gripped his head and stared back no matter how many bits of him wanted to flee.

For the first time in his journey, he stopped dead and gaped.

In that pause, his life was laid out before him. There was the peaceful slumber under the Big One, savagely torn apart by a change of routine that had hit his entire body; the burning throbs from the depths of his belly which prodded him and haunted him with images of the lost Big One; the explosion when the world turned out to be merely one among many in a cosmic panoply that had tormented yet fascinated him. Against all that, he was just going to find the Big One and return to his slumber?

Despite himself, he plodded onwards, and for an hour or so kept himself occupied by deducing from basic principles the existence of rice pudding. It didn’t take long, however – for a tortoise – to notice how the darkness began swallowing up the lights until they were a veneer.

There was the inevitability of continental drift on his face as his scales cracked and rumbled their way into a frown. He felt the chill flicker within his heart, and examined it with detachment. For want of a better word, he called it “doubt” and tried to file it away for later study. It flickered on nevertheless.

What was he going to do? So far, his mind had gone forth determined to find the Big One, but now he was coming to terms with the fact that this was not just all riding on him, but all riding on him riding on a dogma: that the Big One made things Good.

The Big One had always been there, and things had been good. The Big One had left, and things were bad. Now, he was close to the Big One – the scent was insistent even when he tried holding his breath – and a hundred thousand new thoughts had flooded into his mind, and the dogma supporting it all was cracking under the weight.

There was also the small matter of the city wall.

Tank had solved most of his problems – lack of water, lack of food, too many ponies milling about – by pointing due Big One and walking. Even small wooden fences and stone garden walls were simply minor nuisances, at least compared to a body that never stopped groping for footholds or digging its way under things. It helped he had a mind perfectly capable of wandering off for several happy hours at a time. Patience was not so much a tortoise virtue as a tortoise’s ground state of being.

This wall, however, was where the sky ended. Go no further, it said. You cannot walk on sky. For a moment, his relentless front legs placed themselves on the surface, but they soon slid off and his mind went blank.

Several more hours passed while it went fishing for a clue. After a little while, his inner self sighed wearily. This, it decided, was not a wall. This was a Wall. It might even be the Wall at the End of the World. A part of him found this strangely thrilling, but it was up against the rest of him, which was noticing how long it’d been since his last lettuce leaf.

Perhaps there was a way around the Wall? His legs began to turn him around for the onslaught, and at this point, he caught the flash of pink just on the edge of his vision. Intrigued and starting to feel hope well up inside him, he forced himself to turn around further.

Beside him, the creature stared back. Thoughts rummaged around behind his eyes and turned up a file: duster. Big duster. Big, pink, yellow, orange, red duster. Big, pink, yellow, orange, red duster with blue eyes.

At this point, his memory ran out of file, so he craned his neck and peered closely. Two clawed feet had splayed their toes as though afraid the sky would suck the body up any moment. The wings shuffled, revealing large patches where something unkind had apparently pulled feathers off. Lastly, he turned his attention to the thing’s head, which was beaked and pointy and had an obvious underbite.

Bird? His memory scratched its head.

If so, a peculiar bird. It was about as tall as the False Ones, but each time it moved – and it moved a lot, twitching and jerking back and forth to examine him with its blue eyes – embers trailed in its wake. It pecked his shell; instinctively, he began to pull his head in, but the bird made no further attempt on him, and he cautiously eased back out. Feathers were sticking out all over the thing; avian ways were beyond an old reptile like him, but he suspected birds weren’t supposed to be that scruffy.

The thing made a noise that sounded to him like “rowl?” He blinked up at it politely until it made the noise again.

Then he lost interest and made to turn around. No good ever came of mixing with anything except the Big One, and birds did nothing but peck and tweet. He had no time for pretty scenery. The Wall awaited him.

However, he only managed two steps before talons clamped around his shell and jolted his body. At once, he withdrew every extremity. Tortoises may be patient, but they knew when not to hang about.

Shutting his eyes against the rising lights, he was hit by gravity up and down as a totally different dimension opened around him. His emotions were hitting his insides. Even his thoughts had given up to the maelstrom of chaos that his fear had kicked up.

He had no idea how long he waited in the darkness. Scarcely had his maelstrom mind slowed to something resembling a mere traffic of gales when the talons let go and he couldn’t tell up from down anymore.

To his shock, he hit something soft. And carried on living, and that was what really blew his mind away.

Lights surrounded him, and he knew at once that he was within the untouchable city. Paradoxes and contradictions jostled and scrambled for purchase inside his dizzy mind.

Nearby, something made a noise that sounded like “rowl?”

He listened keenly.

“Rrwark! Rrwark! Rowlowlowl, rowl? AARK!”

Tank the tortoise nodded. Words of wisdom indeed. Truly, he was in the presence of an unfathomably great intellect, which had magnanimously purged him of his old and childish life before delivering him, reborn, unto the City at the End of the World. Brimming over with testudine gratitude, his lips ached towards a smile and he paid closer attention to the blur closing in, thoroughly ready to learn many secrets from his new mentor.

Whereupon the bird coughed. It landed with a shower of feathers and a splat. It coughed again.

“Rowl?” it moaned.

Thus blessed by the great mind, Tank withdrew into his shell and set to work unravelling the mysteries of the cosmos.