The Bounce Test

by Estee

Rating: everyone
Tags: Shining Armor, Slice of Life, Flash Sentry, Iron Will, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Princess Cadance
Length: 23917

As far as the worst squad member in the short history of the Crystal Guard is concerned, every new day is the one when he'll finally be fired. Because the only thing Flash Sentry truly knows about his life is that it shouldn't have brought him here.

He's been reassigned so many times as to have a file thicker than his armor. There are ponies who doubt his ability to cross a room without creating a disaster, and he's one of them. Banishment to Moon is in fact too good for him. He's the single least suitable member in the history of the Crystal Guard, and history had better be prepared to take on eternity if it's ever going to see him surpassed. Because Flash Sentry starts every morning with a silent declaration of I'll get fired today and goes to sleep on I'll be fired tomorrow.

Or maybe that's more of a prayer.

(Part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. This story takes place after the events of Post Negative Comments Only, so reading that one first is highly recommended.)

Now with author Patreon, SubscribeStar, and Ko-Fi pages.

Cover art by Harwick. Please contact him for commission rates.

Published 2017-02-22 22:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2017-02-24 21:10:47 UTC

Without Mirrors

The little office was as close to the center of the castle as possible, impossible for any direct ray of sunlight to reach. It was mostly in the name of keeping the rainbows down.

The pegasus standing in front of the desk understood the reasoning, and not just because he'd overheard two of the

not my companions, not my squad, not my -- anything...

Guards talking about it. While that higher rank, command position, and just marriage should have theoretically saved the Captain from some of it, the fact was that his officer had the same problems which practically everypony in the Equestrian delegation had to deal with every day. (The pegasus hadn't managed to adjust to a single one of them.) And high on that list was light -- or rather, what happened to light after it touched the walls, the furnishings, and every last pony among the native population.

For light to contact a surface in the Empire was generally for that illumination to fracture -- but if it reflected through the proper surface, it could also intensify. A crystal coat would just bounce that beam somewhere else, while those of the Equestrians -- well, one of the first things everypony had learned was that if they started to feel oddly warm, it was time to move. (The lesson concerning being very careful about where you placed your paperwork -- well, some had been later to that one than others.) But even when the visitors were being cautious, they could often find themselves trying to practice that caution while stumbling around half-blind, frantically blinking in the desperate hopes that it would somehow make their vision clear a little faster -- because there were also times when that light would go directly into their eyes, and the frequency of those occasions was generally at least seven times daily. (For the pegasus, closer to twenty.) The few doctors who'd had a chance to examine the crystal ponies had found an unusual layer within their irises, something which seemed to fully protect them from the toll everypony else so casually paid while stumbling into the walls of the city. The Equestrians were just trying to introduce the concept of 'sunglasses' to a species which didn't need them, generally in bulk.

Of course, there were other ways to fight the problem. Considerate crystals would wear thin layers of cloth while among the Equestrians, cutting down the local number of reflective surfaces. Curtains were very much in imported fashion, along with wall drapes, tapestries, screens, carpets, and the occasional full-wall painting. But still... at any moment, there was a chance that a stray beam would find just the right surface, get past every defense the new arrivals could construct. There was no way to completely avoid it, because you needed light to see, even when the pegasus just wished he could close his eyes and let the darkness wash over him in waves of angry sound, with what had to be yelling (the Captain had to yell at him eventually, should have done it so many times already) driving those shadows deeper and deeper, until the pressure finally sent him out the door.

He was standing on the thick carpet of that office: an unnecessary luxury for a Solar or Lunar officer, a first line of defense in the Empire. He theoretically had the option to look at some of the wall hangings, or inspect a few of the wedding photos on the Captain's desk. But he knew where the Captain wanted his gaze to rest: on the unicorn, and nowhere else. And so the pegasus looked straight ahead as the light rebounded around the room, fracturing and recombining with every fresh impact, filling the air with the current possible minimum of rainbows.

I wonder what it'll do when it hits the sweat in my coat.

In theory, his armor should have been good for hiding a little of that. In reality, it was mostly good for keeping the little drops from evaporating, allowing them to drip down his body until they united as small rivers which generally flowed out around his forelegs. (He tended to keep his front knees slightly bent, just to make sure it would wind up as the forelegs. His existence was already humiliating enough.) He could feel the moisture gathering on his skin, with not enough of it soaking into the fur.

The Captain's horn ignited. A drawer opened, and a bubble of glowing field brought a file up to the surface of the desk. This wasn't a casual thing: the file was twice as thick as the pegasus' armor and might have been able to take a rather heavy kick if only it hadn't been put together with the intent of inflicting damage. As such, watching it emerge was rather like witnessing somepony donning the world's most solid pair of diamond-edged hoof daggers.

The pegasus forced himself to look at the Captain, waited, and listened to the thought echoing within his own mind, the same one he had every morning at the moment he first opened his eyes.

I'll get fired today.

"I just want to make sure I have all the facts straight," Captain Armor said as his field began to flip through pages. "Now, as I hope you recall, when last we met, I decided to try you out on law enforcement duty." A little too sharply, "You do remember that?"

"Yes, sir," the pegasus tried, followed by immediately hoping for a chance at better last words.

"Looking out for basic things," the Captain continued. "As most of Sombra's laws have been repealed and we're still drafting most of what should be enforced. Nothing which would take very long to memorize."

The pegasus forced a nod. The Empire didn't have a police force of its own -- or rather, it hadn't had one which operated in the open, not for a very long time. The early parts of Sombra's reign had used those ponies who were willing to betray their neighbors in exchange for a chance at the illusion of power. The latter portions had mostly taken place after Sombra told his secret police that a pony who would betray a neighbor was one who would consider doing the same to their leader, which was a horrible thought to be having about somepony you were supposed to love. And so he'd put together a two-stage operation for dismissing them: first from the job, and then from existence.

The Empire needed to have so many things replaced or repaired, and the latter started with the morale of its citizens, few of whom were emotionally capable of truly keeping an eye on their own. So while the Cabinet both tried to put together an effective training program and searched for the ponies who could fill it, the Guards were filling in the gap. With the exception of the pegasus, who generally only wound up doing so after inevitably falling into the newest crack.

"According to this report," the Captain went on, "you were patrolling Geode Park. On hoof, as the natives still have trouble with shadows falling across their bodies. You apparently decided, in a move which would normally qualify you as a true police officer, that your hooves were tired and you wanted to take a little weight off them for a few minutes, which is understandable after a full day in armor. Also, the witnesses report, at least for those who can remember something which isn't the final crash, that you weren't wearing your sunglasses."

"I lost them, sir."

"Again," the Captain stated.

"Yes, sir." He didn't know what had happened. He'd taken them off with the intent of dipping them in a fountain and rinsing them clean. He'd heard a sound off to his left, looked towards it, wound up temporarily blinded (for the eighth time that day, sunglasses or no) and by the time his watering eyes had cleared, they'd vanished.

"How many is that now?"

"Six."

"Six this moon," the Captain said.

Oh. "This moon, sir? I thought you meant this week --"

"-- and that would be why you sought out some shade." Pages flipped. "In the shadow of a statue. One of those Sombra had put up as a monument to himself. The ones we're still removing. In fact, at least for the park, you found the very last statue, which was apparently supposed to be gone shortly before you -- had your encounter." More paper moved, fast enough to shift the strands of carpet in a sweat-tinged breeze. "Now according to the crew, they'd been working hard all day, they were running low on energy, and they'd just managed to get it partially out of the ground before they figured out they were too exhausted to finish. So, being ahead of schedule anyway, they lowered it back and left it there. They departed. Then you came along, saw a statue which certainly casts a rather significant shadow, and being tired, leaned your body against what the excavation crew is estimating was eighty bale-weights of stone, at least when it was still intact. What do you weigh, Private? In armor."

"About a bale and a half, sir." Pegasi tended to have a little less mass than the other two major Equestrian species.

"So confirm for me," the Captain said. "Tired. Probably tired of dealing with Sun on both crystal and crystals. A little sore from a day in armor. You saw the statue and decided its shadow, as something which doesn't terrify you, created a good place to rest. Do I have all that right?"

"Yes," the pegasus reluctantly said -- then, because one of them was going to say it anyway, "And there were children. Playing at the bottom of the little hill, sir. It's the first time I'd seen anypony playing in the park, and -- I just thought I would stop and watch them for a few minutes, sir."

(There had been another reason for his having stopped there. Exactly there. He hadn't recognized it in time, hadn't realized what he'd truly been listening to, and could never tell the Captain about any of it.)

"Oh, yes," the Captain nodded. "The children."

Silence settled across the office, or rather, pummeled the pegasus until the increasing pressure drove down the crest of his mane.

"Sir," the pegasus finally said, "it could have been so much worse --"

"-- you're a bale and a half in armor," the Captain cut him off. "Minus something right now for lost water weight, but let's say that's where you were at the moment you leaned your full mass against the base of an eighty-bale stone statue. If I was about to work the final total of that equation, would you say I had everything prior to the equal sign right?"

"...yes."

"In that case, Private," the Captain said as he reared up, planted white forehooves on the desk, "why don't you explain to me how a pegasus weighing in at a bale and a half knocks over an eighty-bale statue by leaning against it, sending it rolling down the little hill you mentioned and scaring the horse apples out of about fifteen colts and fillies. Because I am trying to do the math and none of it is working out, not even when I try to add in the rather surprising and constant variable that is you."

The pegasus couldn't say anything. There might have been nothing to say at all, at least not that he wanted to say, not even in the face of what was coming, the inevitability of what frankly should have happened so much earlier than this. He couldn't explain himself to another pony, not with the only reason he truly had to give.

It was bad enough that they all knew he was the worst Guard in history. He didn't have to tell them how just badly he was broken. And so the words only sounded within him, the sentences he'd started repeating to himself even as he'd flown down to help the terrified children.

I was tired. I'm not used to being on my hooves that long, not on ground and not on crystal. It's not the same as clouds. I get sore. And I wanted to rest, and then I knew I wanted to rest in the shadow of the statue, and then I thought that if I leaned myself just right against the stone, it would rub against that one place where the armor irritates my skin.

I don't know why the statue toppled.

I don't understand how it toppled over me. How I could have turned into a fulcrum point, where the top hit the ground and the bottom rose up without any of the weight crushing me, and then it just went end over end down the hill.

But it toppled away from the children. They just heard the noise, and looked up to see a giant stone Sombra moving, and it -- brought things back for them. I'm sorry for that, I am, but it could have been so much worse and...

I wanted to rub a sore spot in the shade, where my eyes wouldn't sting so much and maybe I'd feel a little better for a while. I could pretend I felt better.

Only it wasn't me who wanted to do that.

"I was looking over your file," Captain Armor said. "That takes a while. Especially getting through all the transfer requests."

The pegasus didn't move.

"It's amazing, really. How every single commanding officer you've ever had has begged to have you transferred out."

He couldn't move.

"Refresh my memory," the Captain ordered, "because it all starts to blur together after a while. Pundamilia Makazi. What happened there?"

"I -- knocked over a vat of potion."

Eight more pages turned. "Right. The one which takes three years of tending to make. Constant tending. The zebras work in shifts under Sun and Moon because if it's left to itself for more than twenty seconds without magical attention, everything goes wrong. They were showing it to the ambassador you were accompanying. On bottling day. Just before she got the first taste."

He winced, which at least counted for movement.

"Then there was the Appleloosa assignment," the Captain continued. "It's a very neat trick, defiling a buffalo's burial grounds. You do know how obsessive they are about land ownership? And how they continue to assign those rights to their dead? How upset they get when they discover somepony's crossed that line? They had to reconsecrate from scratch. Two weeks of singing and dancing. Very loud singing, more than enough to reach our settlement -- and incidentally, all of that also goes on continuously under both Sun and Moon until it's done. What exactly is your fascination with long shifts?"

"Sir, I was just inspecting the border and it looked as if --"

"-- oh, and the palace." He was approaching the last page, what the pegasus so hoped would be the last page ever. "That's the one just before we got you. I understand that Princess Luna picked you out of her bath. Eventually."

He'd been half-deaf for three days following the rescue. It had been a combination of waterlogged ears and being Canterlot Royal Voiced for twenty minutes within echoing marble.

"Why did you become a Guard, Private?"

"My parents were both Guards, sir." He suspected it was an answer the Captain already had, along with being the only one he'd ever believe. "I was a -- legacy hire."

"Oh, right. Bulwark and Tower. Before my time, but I've heard of them. It's hard not to hear of legends." With brief thoughtfulness, "You were born rather late in the marriage, then." Followed by, with a surge in volume and the corona around the horn finally beginning to show spikes, "And now that we know how you started -- looking at this file and everything recorded within it -- why are you still a Guard?"

Let it happen. Please, please just let it happen...

"I think it's the same reason, sir," he submitted in every way. "My superiors thought that because of who my parents are, there had to be something of them in me. And then they sent me to where somepony else could look for it. Somewhere else."

"This is the Empire," Captain Armor softly stated. "There is nowhere else."

It was coming. The pegasus could feel it.

"One time is happenstance," his most recent (and last) Captain quoted. "Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action. You are, shall we say, accident-prone. Disasters follow in your wake, generally about two tail strands behind. And anypony can have one bad moment. Two is understandable. The truly unlucky might get to three, and calling that pony an enemy would be often somewhat unkind. But what term would you use for a pony who, if left to himself, would soon fly past the half-century mark while still accelerating?"

He knew what the term was. Fired.

"Everything you've done," the Captain said. "Everything which just seems to happen, with you at the center every time. There's a mark for luck, Private, although I've never been fortunate enough to meet somepony with one. Perhaps there's also one for disaster, or for luck which goes wrong at the worst possible moment. And when I add this entire file to your bed..."

The pegasus blinked.

"Sir?"

"It's a little thing," the Captain continued. "And yet, when I add that little thing to everything else, it feels like the last thing. Nopony says anything good about you. Nopony among the Crystal Guard says anything about you, unless they happen to be laughing. I told you on the first day you arrived in the barracks, Private: when you make your bed, I expect something so solid as to let me bounce a bit off the sheets. Or a Crystake, here. You have been among your barracks-mates for a few moons now, with all the things which happen to and around you -- and your bed still isn't properly made. I generally expect to see a new arrival up to standards within three weeks, but with you..."

The Captain had mentioned it, on the very first day, right after introducing him to the rest of the Guards, while standing within the barracks, next to that soon-to-be-cursed bed. And the pegasus hadn't understood.

Oh, he'd understood the goal. And he could see that every morning, after he got back from toiletries, everypony else had accomplished it. Sheets tight enough to bounce a coin off, or in this case, a little crystal shard. But he didn't know how it was supposed to be done. He'd tried pulling with his teeth, nudging with his head, balancing the mattress on his snout. Nothing ever worked. He could make a bed, certainly -- to normal standards: slightly rumpled, looking somewhat inviting if not for the barracks (because he was always on edge in the barracks, had been from his first day and didn't know why) and the fact that everypony else had pulled their beds away from his. He didn't know how to make a bed to the Captain's requirements. As far as he could see, only a field would do it -- and the Captain had forbidden the use of unicorn telekinesis for mere bedmaking.

"You have been everywhere," the Captain quietly finished. "Under just about everypony's command. It's hard to travel the world at your age, Private, and yet you've done your best, through doing your worst. But this is the Empire. The last possible stop."

It was happening.

He was finally going to be free.

"So --"

-- and the hoof knocked on the door.

Captain Armor's expression froze.

"Don't move," he told the pegasus. Then, towards the door, "What is it?"

The crystal panel swung inwards. "Captain?" the Empire's head of Education said. "The meeting is about to start. Your wife asked me to make sure you'd be there. On time."

The Captain seemed to swallow most of his sigh. "All right, Tanza. I just need a few --"

"-- and on time," the blue-black crystal mare finished, "was three minutes ago. Are you coming?"

After a long moment, "Yes. Right now." He reared back, dropped to floor level and came out from behind the desk, began trotting towards the door. "Let's go see what today's crisis is."

Tanza sighed. "It's not much, Captain. Mostly just the new discovery."

He nodded. "We'll work something out." And then, just before he would have gone into the glittering hall, "You. Follow me."

The pegasus slowly turned. "Sir?"

"We're not done," the Captain declared. "And until we do finish, I want you where I can keep an eye on you. So you're attending the meeting."

"Sir --"

"There's nothing classified that I'm aware of," his final officer stated. "And in the event that you manage to be everything your file says you are in the middle of the Cabinet, there's an alicorn on the premises. I'm almost sure she's up to stopping you. This is an order, Private: Follow. Me."

And Flash Sentry, standing within the last place he could ever go, with what he saw as his final fate only briefly postponed, followed.

Upon Reflection

The goal had been to create the most transparent administration in history. But that was still in progress, so for now, the Cabinet was settling for being the most translucent.

One of the reforms instituted in the days following the drafting and passage of the Empire's new constitution was to open just about every proceeding to the citizenry. It was unrealistic to expect that everything could be brought into the open, and that had been explained to the crystal ponies while those laws were being drafted. There would always be such a thing as classified material, secret briefings and information which shouldn't be under the hooves of citizens just yet: there was no way to avoid that. But unless such an event was taking place, the Cabinet would do its best to operate in the light, for it was Sombra who had kept things within the shadows, sometimes letting a pony know when a law had been created through dragging them into the laboratory after the newest rule had been unwittingly broken, a procedure which did a lot to prevent subsequent lapses on that rule and thus encouraged a steady stream of fresh laws for ponies to break.

So one of the many new buildings under construction was the Dome: a cross between a stadium and a gallery, where the Cabinet would sit in the center and any crystal ponies who wished to watch their government in action could rest on the benches and keep an eye on everything. But the completion of that huge structure was some time off and so for now, the Cabinet had told ponies they could trot into the castle instead.

It usually didn't happen. The castle hosted too many bad memories for the crystals: it took an act of will just for most of the staff to show up in the morning. (The Cabinet was looking for another, less intimidating building, but a certain number of practical security measures needed to be in place: nothing suitable had presented itself, and nopony among the populace could work all of the required enchantments.) But still, every so often, a particularly curious pony would check in with the Guards, then slowly move through the halls until they reached the crystal walls which contained the Cabinet -- and for the most part, those exceptionally courageous individuals would stop right there, watching a group of blurs silently debate policy within the rainbows.

So in theory, it shouldn't have been unusual for a non-Cabinet member to have been within the room, tail tucked into the closest corner-equivalent as he listened to what was truly starting to feel like the endless minutiae of getting the realm galloping again. But in practice, it was a very rare event. And to have the occasional scraping sounds of armor against crystal, little scratches put into the wall as Flash did his best not to fidget by channeling the impulses into a series of unsteady twitches...

They looked at him sometimes, the eighteen arranged around the table, when the sounds of the scratches began to approach something closer to a screech. They'd looked at him when he'd first entered, all of them, and then the majority had dismissed it: the Captain had entered and brought a Guard. There was probably a reason for that, the Captain would tell them what it was if he wanted to and if not, they had the freedom to ask at any time they wished -- which meant nopony had done it yet. Instead, the Captain had taken a place at the table and the meeting had resumed, followed by going on, and on, and on...

Flash wanted it to be over. For all of them to stop talking and finally release the Captain to what was sure to become yelling, the shout which would push him out the door, towards the train, and into freedom. But they knew nothing of his desires, and so none of them tried to cooperate. They just kept presenting their viewpoints. Arguing with each other. Debating with the Cabinet's head, and he occasionally spotted a tiny smile playing across her lips when somepony tried to verbally counter her.

But for the most part, they just talked.

Flash knew there were benefits to granting the crystals the right to watch their government in action. For starters, every case of insomnia in the Empire could be potentially cured within two hours.

"And lastly," the head of Construction semi-lied, for it was the last thing for him and him alone, "I'm pleased to state that we have officially begun to grow the cinema." All of those sitting around the table smiled: those on benches and the one who was just casually sitting on a few pillows which he tossed on the floor before every session. "I supervised the initial bravais myself and laid down the majority of the lattice. Now, it's going to take some time to finish, especially for a building of that size, and --" he looked briefly disgusted, mostly with himself "-- I'm sorry to say that it's all just for the shell. I still haven't figured out how to make the screen work. Given the way the projectors function, with the images being sent onto crystal... well, we're going to need a whole new bravais to make something which won't distort them, and that'll take time. I'm hoping to have it solved by the time the roof fuses."

Princess Cadance softly smiled. "Painite, we've been over this. There is nothing wrong with just hanging a sheet --"

"-- oh no, Pibto!" the forepony immediately declared as a gesturing foreleg of the darkest red anypony had ever seen distorted every rainbow it could reach. "This is the Empire's cinema, and as such, it will be done to the Empire's standards -- through our efforts, and ours alone. It will be perfect." Followed by, with open disgust, "And not his 'perfect'. He insisted that everything look perfect, Pibto, and far too quickly for true perfection to emerge. And so most of those who survived were the ones who could create a lattice good enough for illusion, with all the flaws --" the word was spat "-- hidden. Not that they survived for long, because the error would always become visible with enough time. I am still finding and trying to fix the flaws from the latter stage of his regime, created after all of the other true builders had been executed. He wanted beauty. I will provide perfection."

Cadance tilted her head slightly to the right, looked vaguely pleased. Flash simply stared at an alicorn who had just been called 'Pibto' to her snout and taken it.

It was, as he'd overheard (because few ponies paid much attention to whether he was around or not, or cared), meant to be an acronym of minor endearment, created after Cadance had abdicated the throne to (eventually) become nothing more than the head of the Empire's Cabinet. Princess-In-Barely-Title-Only. Rumor had claimed that she didn't seem to mind anypony using the term: some among the Guard felt there were times when she even preferred it. But to see her be so casual with it was to try and picture how Princess Luna would have dealt with such a thing, and...

His personal memories of Princess Luna were fairly brief, and decidedly loud.

"All right, Painite," Cadance smiled. "Keep us updated on how that's proceeding. Just remember that the cinema was the most citizen-desired new business for the Empire -- so if you're still having trouble with the new bravais when it's time to open, please consider using a standard screen sheet until your own kind is ready. Just to keep ponies from waiting too much longer."

The architect snorted. "Settling..." he muttered, with the word barely understandable.

(There were many things which the majority of Guards barely understood about Painite. How he'd ever survived the multiple stages of Sombra's purges was generally first on the list, and anypony who had a chance to speak with him would repeat the same entry all the way to the bottom.)

"And that brings us to new business," Cadance said. (Flash tried not to fidget.) "Now, I understand that while I was with the Saddle Arabian ambassador yesterday, telling him that I would use the official face-hiding headdress for being in his presence immediately after he took what I'd just decided was an official public dunking in the fountain for mine -- we're still at something of an impasse there, he's threatening to leave, and as we agreed upon an hour ago, I'll threaten to let him -- there was a discovery. But that's just about all I've been told, other than that it wasn't an immediate crisis, the briefing could wait until now so we'd all hear it together, and --" she took a slow breath "-- for most of you, this might be hard to hear. So if anypony needs us to stop for a minute so they can get their bearings back, we'll stop. And we'll all understand if somepony has to leave. Shining?"

The crystal ponies around the table made up for Flash's badly-suppressed fidgeting with twitches to spare. The Captain's field took notes out of his left saddlebag, and the individual directly across the glittering table leaned forward.

"We found another one of Sombra's laboratories," the Captain steadily began -- then paused. "Lapis?"

"I'm... okay," the little shivering mare lied.

"You don't have to be here," Cadance gently told her. "Not for anything involving a laboratory."

"I -- should," the former secretary eventually said. "It's over, Cadance. It happened, and -- it's not happening any more. Please, Captain -- go on."

He looked around the room. "Everypony?" Several forced nods. "Everyone?" That response was decidedly more solid. "All right. Here's the basics. The statue-clearing crew working on the west side of the capital uncovered the tunnel when they took out one of the more solid pieces. They were only able to get close enough to determine what was on the other end. From what they could see, it's not one of the sites where he did --" and even the Captain swallowed "-- biology work. This one may have been for experimental spells. Most of the evidence there is in the fact that we can't get that close. And we have to figure out how, soon."

The light pink crystal pony (whom Flash vaguely remembered was named Poudrette) forced herself to inhale, somehow made words emerge on the other end. "I know you've been dismantling them, Captain, and -- we appreciate the efforts you've all made to give the bodies a proper burial. And of course we all want every last one of the laboratories gone as soon as possible."

"We keep hoping," Musgrave quietly said as the tears ran down his dark purple face, "that each new one would be the last... What's the issue with this one? Is it anything we can help with?"

"I'm not sure anypony can help," the Captain said. "Nopony can get close. Because the proof for it being a spell workshop is in what happens when ponies try to approach. One pony can get all the way up to the door, and might even be able to go inside. But as they approach, sparks start to build up around their bodies. That seems to be harmless, at least from the tests we did on everypony who came out of the tunnel: all the thaums had drained, and there were no lasting effects. But that appears to be the visual result from a spell building power as a pony gets closer. There's different colors, along with different speeds of buildup for individuals: both seems to be dependent on species. Unicorns get it quickest and worst. And the more ponies who approach at once, the faster it happens. One can get to the door. Two have the same intensity when they're nine body lengths away. Ten would be shooting sparks out of the tunnel entrance and into the sky. And we don't know what that spell does when it goes off, or even if it'll do what it was supposed to, because..." He took a breath. "It's the decay problem."

Several ponies winced. Three shivered. One asked for a moment, and Flash nearly found himself with company until she spotted him through streaming eyes and tucked herself against another part of the wall until she'd recovered.

The Guards had been briefed on the decay problem. Very few workings were truly permanent. Some of the standard efforts from the crystal ponies seemed to hold longer than anything else, exponentially increasing the duration of even an earth pony's Cornucopia Effect -- but Sombra had been a unicorn. Distorted, self-warped, trying to take himself across the line into something else -- but a unicorn, and one who'd decided that his best solution to a personal alicorn invasion problem was taking the long view. In some ways, the Empire had been skipped across the centuries -- but the spells which had made that happen, spells nopony alive understood, treated the entire duration as running in real time. It meant that in the end, every thaum should have drained, and rather quickly. The Empire should have phased back in long before it actually had.

Sombra had found a way to solve the problem. (Nopony knew how that had been done either.) But after he'd found the solution, he'd applied it to more than the Barrier. He'd wanted to make sure his personal defenses would still be up and galloping on the other end, and so he'd tied them into that solution. A solution which, with the death of the caster and end of the Barrier, was breaking down -- and taking everything which had been linked with it.

All over the Empire, spells were coming apart. It wasn't happening in that many places: just the few which Sombra had used for his most personal magics. They didn't all decay at the same rate. Some of them harmlessly discharged their energy as simple light, sending beams and false fireworks into the sky. Others... didn't. And experimental spells decaying, security measures created by Sombra...

"We need to get in there," the Captain said. "We need to figure out what's going on and see if there's any way to counter it. But I can't send anypony inside without risking a trigger. And we can't take anything out. Sombra -- well, the securing spell existed in his time, and what he did with it..." A slow head shake.

Musgrave just barely mustered a frown. "I think this is one of those vocabulary problems, Captain. Securing? That sounds like you're using it for something other than just a general term of security."

He nodded. "Sorry, Musgrave -- it's something you wouldn't have, at least not in that form. For unicorns, it's a working which you use on objects: typically things you don't want stolen. Once it's in place, unicorn fields slide off that piece -- any field except that of the caster, or anypony they authorize. Nopony else can levitate it, and the more recent versions leave it behind when somepony tries to teleport out. You can't even surround a rope, circle it, and try to tow. No pushing with another object. Either way, the field winks out."

"Using magic to make something resistant to future magic," Musgrave slowly nodded. "I understand. Yes, we have something similar, but not under that term. So what did -- he do?"

"Projected fields wink out," the Captain said, "when they cross the doorway. I couldn't surround an object from a distance. I couldn't even get a bubble into the room. And that's just one of the reasons we couldn't use this."

His horn ignited, and the Captain's field flipped the edge of his right saddlebag. The energy rummaged for a moment, and then the disk came out.

It shimmered softly in the light, but no rainbows bounced from its surface. Instead, they ran across it in a manner which reminded Flash of spilled soap, a film coating the electrum surface, pooling along the edges where the runes had been carved, and settling into the shallow depression in the center.

Cadance blinked twice, then switched to direct staring.

"Captain," she said, and all those in the room knew her mere use of the word indicated a pony who wasn't completely happy, "did I miss a briefing?"

He forced a half-smile: only the left side of his mouth twitched up. "Sorry, Cadance. We found this two days ago, while we were cleaning out what we were hoping was the last of the laboratories. And yes, it works, as well as they ever did. Even after this much time. He didn't make it, and whoever did built it to last."

"Captain Armor," Lapis shyly said, "I know that if you're bringing it here, among us, we shouldn't be worried about it. But we don't know what it is. Just that it's old, and -- not something of his."

The Captain nodded to his spouse.

Cadance forced her gaze to move away from the disk. "The original name doesn't matter," she said. "The best way to think of it is as an analyzer. It's a device which can feel spells, compare them to whatever it's encountered before and try to see if there's any similarities. We think they're from the Pre-Discordian era: no device-maker alive knows how to construct or repair one, and nopony's willing to take apart the three which are left to see how they work. If the Empire has one -- even with no exposure to workings over all that time, Shining, we have a treasure."

The Captain's field lowered the disk to the center of the table. "Given where we found it, the obvious conclusion is that Sombra was using it for his own investigations. And if we could get it in that room..."

"It'll analyze the spells?" Tanza asked. "Tell us exactly what he did?"

Cadance shook her head. "It'll give us points of comparison based on what it's been exposed to before. It might recognize a base working at the heart of the alteration, but it won't reason out what the changes were and how that might affect the final result. It can't think, Tanza, and it can't extrapolate. It'll just give us something to build on. And if it does identify any bases, something which can be countered, and we can get somepony in the room..."

"We can't have somepony kick it in and then tow it out later?" Alexa asked: the mare's first words since she'd wrapped up her twenty-minute Commerce speech. "Just -- oh, what's the word -- lasso it? Without magic?"

"It only works when it's being touched by a living being," the Captain replied. "And it has to be close to whatever it's analyzing. Two hoofwidths, maximum."

"And we can't just try to bury the place or blow it up," Painite observed.

Several ponies, including Flash, openly shuddered. They all remembered what had happened on the only occasion anypony had tried that.

"So I'm open to suggestions," the Captain said. "We should have some time before the spells break down to the point where they're dangerous: my best unicorn got as close as he could, and he believes we're not at the critical limit yet. I trust him on that, enough to use this meeting instead of calling an emergency one during the night. But I still put the Guards on the problem --"

But not me. Nopony told me.

Not that there was much of a need to ask a pegasus about exactly how he'd solve a unicorn issue. But even as a general briefing, a notice that anything was going on, he'd been told nothing at all.

"-- and nopony has any ideas."

It triggered the words they'd all known would be coming.

"I'll go in."

Which were immediately followed by the other words they'd mutually foreseen. "No. You won't."

"Captain," Cadance said, with as much tension as any had ever heard in her voice, "as head of the Cabinet, it's my responsibility --"

"-- to lead the Cabinet," he shot back, and his right forehoof slammed into the floor, leaving the rest of his words to be half-shouted past the resounding musical note. "He was fighting off the Princesses! He put the entire Empire into abeyance just from trying to get around them! If those spells are set up to detect anything, it's an alicorn -- and I can't even shield you from the outside: we tried that already with a kicked object, and it would ruin the readings anyway! You are not going in there, Cadance."

"And how," the alicorn softly asked, "were you planning on stopping me?"

He looked directly at her.

"Official vote, by show of limbs," he said, gaze never shifting from her face. "All against Cadance going in, raise one."

Flash counted. Seventeen. One abstention.

"As per the Constitution," the Captain said, not even looking to see if any limbs had been raised at all, "the head of the Cabinet has been overridden by majority. You're not going in. I don't know who I can send in. It's not an order I want to give, not when we don't know what could happen. Anypony is going to be at risk --"

-- which was when the snort filled the room.

It was a vaguely amused sound: it often was. (Flash had heard it before, always from a great distance, and the sound had a way of carrying across any amount of ground and sky.) The sapient who'd just made it leaned forward a little more, shifting on the pillows he'd tossed onto the floor, and the little tie fell away from his broad chest.

"Well, there's your answer," the rough voice declared.

The Captain immediately turned. Blue eyes locked onto yellow.

"Want to explain that?" the Captain not-quite-asked.

It triggered another snort, and the other party leaned forward a little more, awkwardly resting his elbows on the table, which required a considerable amount of torso bend.

"Anypony is going to be at risk," said the Cabinet's head of Assertiveness Training And Emotional Recovery. "What about anyone?" And with that, Iron Will smiled, snorted a third time, and looked completely satisfied with himself.

The Captain blinked.

"None of my people made it up here while the other guy was in charge," the minotaur reminded them. "He kept us all out, remember? Can't set up a working to detect something you've never really dealt with, right? I'm betting I can waltz right in there without anything happening, if anypony teaches me how to waltz first. I take the analyzer, I walk up to anything you want figured out, and then I stroll away whistling. If somepony can teach me to whistle." He thought about that a little more. "Probably not going to happen. Our mouths are a little different. So just show me where the tunnel starts, and I'll --"

Far too softly, "-- are you kidding?"

"Nah," Iron Will pleasantly declared. "Now, you said it's on the west side --"

"-- you're moving too fast," the Captain cut him off. "Give us some time to figure out something from the outside."

The rest of the Cabinet was silent. Watching, as was Flash. Letting them have it out.

Flash had heard... well, it was easy to hear the rumors, when nopony cared if you were listening. That the minotaur and the Princess were friends? Yes, everypony accepted that, and the biped had made an impact since being invited into the Cabinet. He was part of the reason there were children playing in the park again: because he had taught them about not being afraid. Simply staying around the youngest long enough to let them know someone so very different was no kind of threat had created multiple breakthroughs on its own, and he was the one who had reached out to the other nations and summoned the slow, steady flow of psychiatrists who were beginning to set up shop among an endless supply of patients. He had helped, more than anypony had ever dreamed of.

But there was another rumor. That the Captain wasn't used to having... a rival.

Oh, there was nothing romantic involved. Flash had been posted to the minotaur nation for a while (as he'd been posted just about everywhere), and so knew that physical (non-wrestling) pony-minotaur relationships only existed in the most ridiculous of fiction and cheapest of jokes sprung on friends who'd been set up on truly blind dates. You could find members of both species who would love each other as something more than family, build their homes next to each other or even unite them as a single building -- which included the miniature model in front, where the dead would reside. There were even handfasting ceremonies now and again: the oath which promised a lifetime of something beyond friendship. But attraction... they were too different. A few ponies in every Equestrian generation would marry griffons. Others looked to zebras. Most quadrupeds would have a pony somewhere willing to give them more than a glance. But in all of known history, there had been two minotaur-pony unions, and both had been purely for legal purposes as a friend did the only thing they could to protect the one they cared about.

Iron Will wasn't physically attracted to Cadance, nor could be the reverse be seen as true. But they spent time together, as friends. And the rumors said the Captain, who'd apparently had to get through a lot before even winning a first date, wasn't happy about having another male around.

"Decaying spells," Iron Will shrugged. "I had enough ponies in my town to know that's bad. And I also drink with your best unicorn, enough to know he is the best -- but he's also not your sister. He gave you an estimate, right? Estimates are just that, Shining. He's giving you his best guess. And it's the best guess you could ask for, but it's not perfect. It's not something you can completely rely on. We got this far. Let's not push our luck past that."

"What do you call going in there?" the Captain challenged. "A casual stroll? That is pushing your luck. That could set off a disaster --"

"-- the spells focus when somepony gets close, right? Just let me walk towards the door. See if they focus on me. If nothing happens, I go in."

"There are more security measures in existence," the Captain shot back, corona surging to a full single as spikes cascaded along the edges, "than ones which rely on magic. I'd think a minotaur would understand that. You weren't here when we had to disarm Geode Park. You know that maze you like to hold your training sessions in? I've seen where you put the middle benches. Right where one of my squad almost lost a hoof. And even if there's nothing physical or mechanical in there, there could be other spells, past the border. Things we can't feel because we can't get close enough, things you won't be able to read the analyzer for. You. Are risking. Your life."

Another shrug. "It's mine to risk. Longer we wait, more ponies you're risking."

"I order you," the Captain said, "not to enter."

The minotaur's little smile turned into a full-fledged grin. "Citizen of Mazein, Shining. Not part of your chain of command, can't be pressed in as an necessary expert during an emergency. You can't order me to buy a round for the house."

"I can block you," the Captain said.

"You really want to try leaving a long-term shield near decaying spells? See how Sombra's energy interacts with somepony who's got your strength? And if you restrain me, I'm pretty sure I can complain to my embassy, and then they'll -- oh, right: that's not set up yet. So as the only representative in the Empire, I guess that means I pretty much am the embassy." Without looking in that direction, "Cadance, on behalf of Mazein, I'd like to register an official complaint..."

The smallest of the alicorns briefly closed her eyes.

"Iron," she quietly said, "you weren't here for the early stages. We found... the worst of it then. All the things which led to the funerals, for bodies which we could barely identify as ever having been alive at all. If you go in there, anything could potentially happen to you. Anything you can imagine, and all the things nopony wants to. Anything at all."

"I know," he steadily replied, finally looking towards her. "I talk to the ones who were at the funerals. About the ponies they lost. I talk to them every day, Cadance. And that's why I'm going in. To make sure it doesn't happen to anypony else."

The Captain slowly, painfully pressed his left forehoof against his matching temple, as if trying to push the headache back in.

"Nopony can get you out," he told the minotaur. "Not from the outside. I can't shield you, nopony can grab you with a field and as heavy as you are, that would have been a pretty small number to start with. I can't even have a full squad close and keeping an eye on you. At best, I could station one other pony in the approach tunnel, close enough to watch, far enough away from the door to not trigger the spells. If you get in at all. Everything about this is an 'if'."

"Okay," Iron Will seemed to acquiesce. "So in that case -- one Guard. Watching from the tunnel."

The minotaur's head turned. Yellow eyes looked to the left.

Flash felt the exact moment his own breathing stopped.

"I'll take him," Iron Will said.

The Captain stood up without standing up. Flash never saw a knee move. His officer had been on the bench, and then he wasn't.

"Somepony else."

"He's here," the minotaur shrugged. "I'm guessing you trust him a little if you're bringing him in during this briefing. Might as well find out why --"

"-- anypony else."

"Also, if I'm going with anypony else," the bemused biped pointed out, "then I guess I'm going in, huh? But why don't I go with him? Don't think I've had a chance to meet him yet. A couple of guys spending a little time together --"

"-- outside."

The yellow eyes blinked.

"Come again?"

"I want," the Captain half-hissed. "To talk to you. Outside."

Iron Will shrugged. "Fine." He stood up, strode towards the door, opened it for the unicorn who angrily walked out under the gap created by the huge arm. The door closed behind them. And it could be said that they talked, as long as the observers were willing to use so mild a term as 'talked' to describe the all-out verbal war which surged into existence at the moment the resealing crystal cut off all sound.

The Empire's government wasn't completely transparent, but it was translucent -- and so it was possible to watch a blurry version of the argument, which everypony did. Arms gestured, hands weaved strange patterns into the air. The Captain, who didn't have the same anatomy to work with, went with a series of tail lashes added to flattened ears. At three points, he reared back onto his hind legs, allowing his forelegs to express their own gestures, along with just keeping him from having to look so far up all the time. Both males proved to be capable of doing a lot with hoof stomps and when each saw that they were equal there, they promptly tried to outdo the other.

At one point, the Captain's approach seemed to change. The smaller blur appeared to be speaking more slowly. The minotaur put a hand under his own chin, listened. The Captain nodded, went on for several minutes. The minotaur nodded back at the end, then said something. Words which, judging by the bull's posture, had been completely calm and casual.

The Captain's forehooves slammed into the floor. And seconds later, they did the same to the door.

"Private," the Captain said, and the tension in his voice nearly cracked the table.

Flash scrambled to his hooves. "Sir?"

"Do you think you can stand in a tunnel without collapsing it?"

"...yes?" Flash eventually tried, and then wondered if he'd just unknowingly lied. All he had to go on was previous experience and while it was true that he'd never collapsed a tunnel, now that he thought about it, that seemed to stem from lack of opportunity. It might just be a matter of time --

"I have doubts," the Captain tersely stated. "Prove them wrong. Let's go."

True Polarization

"I want to make sure," the Captain slowly said, "that everyone has all this straight."

Flash was back in the Captain's office, silently sitting on the carpet. (Sitting at attention, for the nothing that was worth.) It had taken hours before the doctors and thaumatologists released him, and then two more before the inspections had wrapped up for Iron Will: nopony was used to working with minotaurs, and so extra time had been required before anypony had felt comfortable with presenting an all-clear. But as soon as Flash had exited, he'd been told the Captain wanted to see them both at the earliest possible opportunity. He'd been in the Guard long enough to know that meant something which would require a teleport from the hospital, and he'd just barely managed to explain his personal order to the big bull before a pair of pounding hooves had begun to comply with it.

Oddly, the only true injuries were to Flash's shoulder and neck: the force of impacting the minotaur had put too much pressure against his body, and much of that bruising had been produced by his own armor. As for the spells... Iron Will had started moving again shortly after coming out of the tunnel, and the protests hadn't taken much longer to emerge as the Captain forcibly field-carried them both to the hospital (with the bull claiming he could walk all the way). Flash had told everypony there about what he'd felt happening within his body, and the thaumatologists had verified that he'd been hit by something -- but whatever it had been, the spell hadn't had enough time to finish its work. Once they were both away from the source, things had begun to fade, and then...

"You've both been cleared?" the Captain asked for the second time.

They nodded. The minotaur's was nearly on a level with Flash's: Iron Will was sitting on the floor again, although there hadn't been any pillows available.

"And you stand by your stories," he continued.

Another nod.

"Stories which state that everything was proceeding normally until Mr. Will here saw something on the wall. Something which seems to have had an entrancement effect worked in. You don't know if the pattern was always there or if magic placed it once he'd been in the laboratory for a while, and Private Sentry never saw his eyes, so we can't try to backtrack the exact spell from that." The Captain's right foreleg stretched out, and the hoof pushed a few new papers around. The white horn remained oddly dark. "We can't try to backtrack much of anything... but it isn't there now, and given what happened -- well, we'll get to that. But it isn't coming back."

There didn't seem to be any need for nodding to that.

"There was nothing unusual happening before the diagram?" the Captain inquired with what seemed to be a little too much care. "Nothing either of you can recall?"

Iron Will slowly shook his head. "Just two guys talking."

"About what?"

Flash's heart nearly stopped.

"Guy stuff," the minotaur expressively shrugged. "About a girl. Shining, I was just going from piece to piece, using the analyzer, and then -- that thing caught me. Your Guard flew in to rescue me, and he got me out. I saw him get me through the doorway without snagging my horns and I still don't know how he did it. And pushing me all the way to the exit..." The huge muscles of the chest expanded from the breath, slowly moved back in. "He only came in to get me. That's it, Shining. He never would have crossed the frame if I hadn't gotten caught."

"I recognize that," the Captain neutrally replied. "I am in no way faulting Private Sentry for his decision to retrieve you --" paused. "You saw him get you through the doorway?"

Another breath. "You ever have one of those dreams where you're sort of -- watching yourself? Like you're a little away from your own body and you can see and hear everything that's going on, but you can't make yourself move?"

After a long moment, the Captain slowly nodded.

"I knew I was caught," Iron Will softly said. "I could feel it. But I couldn't say anything, not what I wanted to. I couldn't get out of it. All I could do was -- watch. It's -- it feels like being --" and abruptly, with increased speed, "-- let's get back to the main subject, okay? I'm gonna talk this out later with a professional, because I want to make sure it doesn't stay inside. And I already told the docs and spell experts: they'll both have papers for you tomorrow, and they'll probably say more than I ever could. But right now, it's getting pretty late for everyone, and I think we all need some sleep."

Flash thought about his bed. Then he thought about the barracks which contained it, and felt a nerve go on edge.

"We'll keep this fairly short," the Captain agreed. "At least for this portion. I just want to make sure you're both straight on what you haven't gotten to hear yet. The theory about what happened down there. The aftermath."

Flash forced his breathing to steady, and couldn't seem to do the same for his heart.

"The analyzer," the Captain told them, "came out with you: you never completely lost your grip. Now, when I briefed Iron Will on how to use it, I told him which runes he could touch, and in what order, because I spoke to the thaumatologists after it was discovered. They told me what they knew about operating it, and so I told him. From what they said, you usually didn't have to worry about pressure on the wrong rune, not after it had been set to do its job. There was just one thing you couldn't do."

Oh no.

And without mercy, the Captain continued. "A sequence of very light pressure, across specific runes, in a very short time frame. What they called the sequence for initiating a catastrophic dump. Because analyzers partially work by temporarily sampling any thaums nearby, so there's a procedure for getting rid of whatever it's taken in. Just in case it somehow got something bad and couldn't cycle it out normally. I warned Iron about that sequence. And only Iron. Because Private Sentry was never going to use the thing, or touch it, or set something off by accident. In fact, nopony's ever done a catastrophic dump, because the thaumatologists are afraid it'll delete the internal memory of every working the analyzer ever took in. They know how it's done -- but since there were only three known to still exist, nopony's been curious enough to find out what actually happens when you trigger that rune sequence. Now -- would either of you care to guess the exact order of symbols Private Sentry touched when his foreleg slid across the disk?"

The pegasus felt the wince freeze on his face, and no amount of effort seemed to shift it.

"So we now know," the Captain concluded, "what a catastrophic dump feels like, from an eyewitness. A hundred thaumatologists across Equestria will want to thank you, Private, right before some of them try to take off your head. I deliberately didn't tell your medical personnel about what had happened to the disk because I'd rather not clean up after a murder today. They might kill you before you got to tell them how that energy apparently clashes with any workings -- at least for those cast by Sombra, things nopony should treat as completely normal magic -- which happen to be in place within a small area. How that clash quickly turns violent and, after a few seconds, incendiary. But shortly after that, the conflict reaches a point where everything -- cancels out. Once the tunnel had cooled and everypony had stepped past the melted sunglasses, I sent a few Guards down it. Carefully. And they found that there is not one lingering thaum present in that area. Every single working has been neutralized. We won't ever figure out the spells Sombra was using from our own senses because there are no spells left. Even the faintest residue is gone."

Iron Will leaned forward slightly, adjusted his hands against the carpet. "How's the analyzer?"

"Sitting in a room by itself for a while," the Captain replied. "I'm told it's got platinum inside, so it might recharge if we give it some time. But until it gets some power back, we won't know what happened to the memory. Maybe it's got something left. It could be everything or nothing. But we don't know. It's a question for another day. Or given how long it takes them to charge, another moon."

Which was when Flash went to his most frequent vocalization, the word which never worked.

"I'm sorry, Captain," he said as his eyes sought the carpet, coming to rest on the minotaur's large fingers instead. "I know there could have been a lot of things in there, things nopony today understands, and... I cost everypony that knowledge. That was me. I didn't mean --"

He heard the minotaur inhale, start to open his mouth -- but that was when the horn's corona flashed: light, and then no light. No projection, no workings, just a simple signal for attention: stop.

They both stopped.

"The Cabinet's head of Assertiveness Training and Emotional Recovery," his officer said, "still has both of his legs, for their full length. I'm sure he considers that to be a worthwhile trade, and I --" there was a second where his lips quirked "-- am not going to argue with his priorities. Yes, we may have lost the analyzer's memory, and that includes what we could have learned about some of Sombra's workings -- possibly including things we might encounter in another laboratory, should we be unfortunate enough to locate another one. But if we do get another one, we can study that. I don't know where to find a working minotaur tibia. Now -- everypony --" a brief pause "-- and everyone has had a Tartarus-freed day. We're all tired. I just wanted to make sure you two knew, from me, how it ended down there. Now that it's safe for ponies to go in and out, we're going to empty the place tomorrow and give the horns a proper burial. So Iron -- go home. Get that sleep."

The minotaur slowly stood up. "In a while," he told them. "There's a couple of things I want to do first."

It brought a head tilt from the Captain as the unicorn gazed up. "Getting a drink?"

"For starters," the big bull replied. "Plus some talking. But I'll get to sleep eventually." The left hand gestured towards Flash. "What about him?"

The Captain took a slow breath.

"You're relieved of all duties for tomorrow." he told Flash. "I already told the rest of the squad. I'll meet you in the barracks two hours after Sun-raising. We're not done talking. Dismissed."

They both left the office. The minotaur silently went one way, the pegasus slowly trotted down another, too tired to consider flight. Eventually, he reached his barracks, deep under Moon, and found everypony else had already fallen asleep.

Flash made his way to bed as silently as he could, forcing himself past exhaustion and that edgy feeling and the certainty that somehow, some way, he'd screwed up everything from this day too. It took some time (and one hoof-skidding near-fall) before he managed to get there, tucked himself uneasily under his blankets, and finally fell asleep with the same thought he had to conclude every day of his Guard life.

I'll be fired tomorrow.

And in the morning, it once again turned into I'll get fired today.

The first thing he saw when he finally pushed his head up was that everypony had already left. He'd slept through the morning wake-up call, all the Guards getting up and ready for their shifts, all the little jokes which he was never a part of unless they were being made at his expense. Unconscious for all of it, and there was a moment when he wondered if he'd been out for another week.

The second thing he saw was the minotaur, whose weight was putting an impressive dent in the mattress of the somewhat-neighboring, perfectly-made bed.

"Guess you needed that," Iron Will said. "I was gonna wake you in another twenty. It's about an hour before Shining's due, in case you're wondering. I thought he shouldn't catch you sleeping, even when he knows you're tired."

Flash tried to stretch, winced at the pain in shoulder and neck. "Thank you."

"I tried to thank you back in the bubble," the minotaur told him. "And in the hospital, before they started the tests, and after I got out. I'm not sure you ever heard me. So -- thank you, Flash." He paused. "I'm -- still talking to ponies. But I'm starting to think that maybe no one says that enough."

Or ever, especially when there was never a true reason for it. "I cost everypony the analyzer. There's only four in the world and I brought it back to three."

"They don't know yet." The words had been oddly sharp -- but the ones which followed them were softer. "You go right for the negative, don't you? You saved my life. I'm thanking you for that -- again -- and you don't really take that in because you're thinking about a piece of metal and spellwork. There's four of them in the world, and maybe only three are working now. But there's only one of me. I'm gonna be a lot more focused on me."

Flash couldn't find a response for that, and so pushed himself out of bed.

Iron Will stood up, turned around long enough to smooth out his dent. "Getting some breakfast before he comes down here? Because I brought hay. Good hay. The imported stuff. The Empire's crops aren't quite up to it yet."

The pegasus sighed. "Maybe. If there's time. I have to get washed up, make sure my armor and body are at inspection standards, make my bed..."

"Oh, yeah. The bed. Shining mentioned that, while we were arguing. How you couldn't do it."

Of course the Captain had. Flash silently began to work on that portion of near-future failure.

"Want to know the secret?" Iron Will casually offered.

Flash slowly glanced back over his sore shoulder, and saw the minotaur was grinning.

"There's a secret?"

"Yeah," the big bull said. "I'm not military, but I talk to most of your squad. I drink with a few of them. And it's about the same two things a lot of military stuff centers around. Orders and unity."

He blinked. "I... I don't get it."

"You have to know when an order is stupid," Iron Will said. "And that's when the squad pulls together in unity, going behind their Captain's tail to get things done. You can't make a bed with your hooves and mouth to those standards, Flash. Nopony alive could unless they had a mark for it, and I don't think that would be a great mark to have. It takes a field. The unicorns in your squad wait until nopony's looking and then make the beds for everypony. Them making yours is how you know they've accepted you as being part of the squad."

He felt his heart sink into his ribs. "They've never made mine. Ever. Anywhere."

"I figured," the minotaur admitted. "And maybe that'll change. Maybe it would have changed today, but you slept through it --"

Part of Flash didn't want to hear that, and nothing within him was capable of believing it. "And I can't do it. I'll never do it." His gaze shifted, leaving him morosely staring at the rumpled sheets. "There's no way --"

The cracking sound filled the room, and Flash nearly jumped before looking back to see Iron Will unlacing his fingers.

"These," the big bull said, rubbing at his knuckles, "are called hands."

They talked for a few minutes, while there was still time to do so, and Flash didn't truly take in most of it. But one part immediately stood out. The minotaur had asked him how he'd gotten into the Guards, and he'd provided the usual answer. Then he'd asked how Flash was still in the Guards, and there was a standard response for that too. But those had been followed by a third question, something no one had ever asked.

"Why don't you quit? There's no minimum term of service for a Guard. If you think you're this bad at it, you could just fly away."

"It's my parents," Flash quietly admitted. "They were legends when they were on the Solar staff, and they still have Guards drop by their home, old ones and new, to talk about the things they did or ask for the stories. If I quit... it just looks bad for them. It's already bad enough, having me. I know something about what happened everywhere got to them, with all the ponies who visit. I don't write home any more, and --" He stopped, thought about the unopened envelopes in his horseshoe locker, and then tried to forget them again.

"It's better for them if you're fired?"

"If I quit," Flash slowly said, "that's my opinion. If I get fired, then it's a Guard admitting I shouldn't be here. They would respect that more. They'd understand. And -- this is the last stop. The Captain said so. There's nowhere else I can go."

"Did you think you'd be any good when you joined up?" The question seemed to be sincere.

"You know how some ponies say you can find out who you truly are in the Guards?"

"No," the minotaur readily admitted. "Never heard that one. Sounds like a recruiting slogan."

It had been. "I was hoping they were right. And I was wrong about myself. I only got the first half." He sighed. "You -- really didn't tell the Captain?"

"No. I'm still thinking, Flash. Still talking. And even when that's done -- maybe a little longer, I think I've almost got the shape of it -- he doesn't have to know everything."

His blood started to chill, and no heat could ever be shifted in. "But you're going to tell him something."

"If this is what I'm starting to think it is -- if you're what I think you are --"

Equestria's biggest mistake. A broken pony with a mark which didn't work. Something everypony would know. "-- he'll be here soon. You'd better go."

The minotaur sighed.

"And that's why I'm not ready yet," he said. "Because you are not going to believe a red-tinged thing without evidence, and a lot of it. But I'm almost there, so after you wrap up with him -- you've got the day clear. So come find me in the park, after my morning training session. I think I'll be ready by then. And maybe after a few drinks, you might be ready to listen."

Flash waited by his bed.

It wasn't easy. He didn't like being in the barracks on a normal day, and now the Captain was coming in. To speak with him, although that might not take place in the barracks. It might be a trot-and-talk, all the way to the train station.

Yes, he'd saved Iron Will's life -- somehow. Made enough mistakes that they'd added up into something cohesive, an accident with benefits. But that accident had broken the analyzer. There had to be a price paid for that.

At least my bed is made.

It was a dark thought, as was any humor within it. He had one thing right, and he hadn't even done it. He understood what the minotaur meant, but -- nopony at any stop had ever helped. Nopony had ever accepted him as part of the squad. Yes, he kept to himself, but that was trying to minimize the damage, and then when the accidents inevitably began...

His armor was polished. He had cleaned himself to regulation standards, although the base of his mane was still slightly damp. He felt he was as ready as he was going to be, for whatever came, and he was wrong.

"Private," the Captain steadily stated as he trotted into the barracks. "I see you're ready. Now, before we start: I had the night to sleep on everything, and I've spoken to the Princess. She feels, that in light of your recent --"

-- and he stopped.

"Your bed," the Captain said. And for the first time, the first with any officer addressing him in a way that didn't end with passing over the completed transfer forms, Flash saw something almost like a smile on the unicorn's face.

"Sir?"

"Your bed," the Captain stated, "is made. Expertly."

Only Flash hadn't done it, and the ponies who were supposed to hadn't...

"Yes, sir." It seemed to be the only thing he could say.

"Well, then," the Captain shrugged. "Before we do anything else..."

His horn ignited, opened the lid of his left saddlebag, rummaged for and removed a little shard of crystal, one which was almost completely clear. It was transparent enough to let anypony see the pattern of silver flecks within, the ones which, when translated from Ancient Crystalia, represented the number five.

"For lack of bits," the Captain told him, "we'll use the local currency." His field lowered the money to the bed, winked out. "But be careful with it, Private, because nopony's figured out how to bring the minting procedure back yet, which is why we've been keeping all the coin collectors out of the Empire. We can't afford to lose too many. Literally."

Flash blinked.

The words had been -- casual. They had almost sounded like a joke.

"Let's see if it bounces," the Captain said. "You do the honors."

Flash leaned forward, carefully took up the shard between his teeth, thoughts distracted by that strange tone in the Captain's voice. The words which weren't angry, which didn't seem to be heading in that direction at all...

Whip it.

He felt the thought. He knew what it was, recognized the source, and did so after he'd whipped the shard into the mattress at the best speed his quickly-turning head could manage, boosted by the takeoff and wing downbeat he hadn't even recognized as they'd been happening.

The shard bounced. It flew off the mattress, went for the ceiling on a line which lacked any degree of arc, hit the crystal roof point-first. And with a little cracking sound, it stuck there.

Unicorn and pegasus stared at it for a moment. And because they were both looking at exactly the right spot, they saw it starting to happen, a split-second before the much louder cracking sound hit their ears.

Neither spoke. One galloped, one flew, moving just ahead of the spreading horizontal chasms overhead, backwards-rotated ears hearing tiny falling pieces bouncing off properly-made beds all over the barracks. Flash automatically swooped down, pressed all four legs against his final officer's ribs, got him off the floor and into the hallway --

The hallway turned out to be the border.

Flash went low, released the Captain from the pressure lift, landed. They both looked back at the much-lower ceiling, which was all anypony could see of the now-buried room, and both glances were completely involuntary.

The Captain took a breath. Any energy gained from it was immediately transmitted to an instant double corona which was spiking more heavily than anything Flash had ever seen.

"I would normally tell you to get your things," he hissed, "but I don't think I'm willing to risk waiting for the three days it'll take to excavate them. Get to the station. Get on a train. Get out. You are discharged from the ranks. Permanently."

He flew. He fled. And he never looked back, for to do so would have been to let the last crack reach his heart.

A pegasus, underlying bruises darkening the fur of exposed shoulder and neck, stood on the empty platform and looked at the schedule again. None of the words had changed over the last three hours.

He'd left the armor behind in the castle, just about shedding it on the wing. Armor was for Guards, and he was... just a pony. A broken pony, one dealing with a truth of the world: everypony might care about getting you out of the area at something beyond a military definition of 'immediately,' but nopony could magically summon an extra train. There just wasn't that much traffic between the Empire and the rest of the world yet. Most of the passenger cars typically ran at something very close to empty, and the railway scheduled accordingly. He had been waiting for three hours, and he would have to wait for one more.

A ticket had been claimed, on government business: a Guard had that right, and -- one who had just been discharged was allowed to do the same, for as long as it took to get home --

-- he didn't have a home. He had lived at his postings. There was no apartment waiting for him anywhere, steadily draining salary through rent charges for a pony who never managed to even drop by and dust. He could -- go to his parents. They would find out sooner or later, after all: he would be able to beat the news if he went directly to them. It might even be better, hearing it from him. But after that... there was nowhere waiting for him. No job he knew how to do, nothing where he was confident in his ability to make a living, unless somepony wanted to hire a professional saboteur, albeit one who couldn't plan out his results.

The dark internal humor didn't make him laugh: nothing could have, and so he checked the unchanging schedule again. It was something to pass the time.

What could he do? His techniques weren't bad: unless somepony in the ranks directly intervened on a hire, there was a certain minimum standard for a pegasus Guard's magic, and he'd passed it. But it didn't qualify him for being part of a weather team. He wouldn't be much for sales. Politics seemed to be out. Scouting, perhaps. Wild zone exploration could bring all sorts of disasters down upon him without anypony else around to worry about, and if he wasn't any good at the profession, at least he wouldn't have to worry about it for very long.

He had bounced a crystal shard off a bed and collapsed a ceiling. He felt as if he should have been vaguely impressed by that: it was a scope of disaster beyond what he typically created, and that took some real work. But the next glance went to his mark, and he hated the icon, hated it with everything he still had left to give. No words of apology echoed in his mind.

But nopony was hurt.

Which wasn't for lack of chances.

There was nopony else on the platform. There might be later, as the train got close to arrival. He wondered if anypony would recognize him without the armor, as that was so often all anypony saw when they looked at a Guard. If they had heard the newest story yet, if any of what had never been his squadmates would come out to say a few last words to the pony who'd buried their possessions. Have a few last kicks.

I'll let them.

He looked at his bruised shoulder, which might have been orange, or yellow, or even some sort of brown. And he waited.

"You."

He heard the word a moment before the wings, and looked up. Two Guards were hovering overhead.

"You're wanted in the palace," the mare said. "Now."

It didn't surprise him. A few criminal charges might be justified, or there could be a whole line of Guards awaiting their chance at a kicking.

He slowly took off, flew behind them. And if the mare's face had seemed confused, it was probably because she didn't understand why she hadn't been permitted to just blast him with lightning on the spot.

They led him to the Cabinet's meeting room (with crystal ponies staring at him as he passed through every hallway: the newest story had clearly already done some traveling), and there he found the rest of the squad. The kicking party was a well-organized one.

Ten seconds after he'd stepped in, standing still near the table and wondering why nothing had begun yet, he got his answer: the door opened behind him, and he looked back to see the Captain, whose expression had never changed from the furious, trotting in. And right behind the pony who'd been his last officer was the Princess, who was followed by Iron Will, forever angling himself to get through doors, and finally Painite entered the room.

The Captain spoke, and the words weren't for Flash. It was as if Flash wasn't even there. "Why are you doing this?"

The minotaur silently held up the file, a little more than twice as thick as Flash's former armor. It looked as if a few new pages had been recently added. One was partially sticking out from the back of the folder, and the fieldwriting was easy to recognize.

"Shining," Cadance gently said, "he asked me for this. The entire squad, you, me, and him." That with a small nod to Flash. "Iron has his reasons. Please give him a chance."

"I gave him a chance." This head movement was also in Flash's direction, but it was more of a whip. "Because you felt that after what happened in the tunnel, he'd earned one. I agreed with you. And you saw what happened. The ruins of what happened." (Flash's head dipped. Nopony noticed.) "If there's a mark for disasters, we're looking at it right now, and the best thing we can do is get it out of the Empire while sending a warning to every nation, just in case he tries going back to any of them --"

"-- it's the mark."

Flash looked up, towards the soft, serious voice. Everypony did. The bull nodded, just once.

"But you've got it wrong," the minotaur continued. "Everypony does. Flash has it wrong, and I wouldn't have believed that was even possible. But he's too close to it. You're all too close. I'm a little further away. I can step back, get the full picture. And I've been thinking. Talking. And now I know what I've been thinking and talking about. Everypony needs to hear this. You need it, Shining, and Cadance had better goring hear it, and I want his squadmates to know exactly what they've been bunking with. I thought I had the shape of it. Then the ceiling came down. Flash didn't meet me in the park. I found out why, I talked to one more pony, and I knew."

The empty right hand gestured backwards.

"Painite," the bull asked, "tell them what you told me."

Four legs of the darkest red anypony had ever seen moved their owner forward.

"I am," the crystal pony stated, "the Empire's last true builder, the only one who survived Sombra's reign, and I may be the last for some time, until the talent manifests in the next generation. Most of you know that, and recognize that it is why I was granted the Cabinet's post for the head of Construction. But now I need you to grant me something else. The trust that you would give an Equestrian with a builder's mark. To believe I fully know of what I speak, and to do so without question." He turned slightly. "Captain Armor, will you grant me that? You have the most reason to doubt, and so I have to ask that you try and grant me that."

"When it comes to construction," the Captain eventually said, "I trust you."

A small nod. "On Iron's request, I inspected the collapse and tracked it back to the fracture point. I then used my own magic on that area, and learned everything I could. The impact of Private Sentry's borrowed shard set everything off: you all believe that, and may continue to do so, for it is true. He caused the ceiling to collapse today."

The stallion paused.

"Otherwise, the roof would have caved in sometime next week."

The simultaneous group blink was the loudest sound in the world.

"...what?" the Captain finally asked for all of them.

Painite snorted. "It was flawed, Captain. Catastrophically so. The area you use for your barracks was grown in the latter stage of his regime, when only the appearance of perfection was essential. It is the sort of thing I've been inspecting for and trying to solve. But whoever created that lattice... the alignment was improper. The pounding of hooves, the vibrations of speech and laughter -- everything spread the flaws, cracks invisible to Equestrian senses. With all there is to do, I wasn't due to go over that area for moons to come. Nopony else would have seen it. Nopony could have stopped it. Private Sentry hit the center point, set everything off -- but without him, the normal passage of life within the barracks would have exacerbated the problem to the point of collapse all on its own."

Several Guards abruptly sat down.

"Personally, I would have given it a week," the builder repeated. "And most likely during the night."

Followed by all of the rest.

Iron Will stepped forward, occupying all of the sudden silence. "I pulled his file out of your office," he told Shining, "and you can yell at me all you like later. But I needed to read the words. I wanted to see the original reports. And it was there, over and over. 'Nopony was hurt.' 'No one was hurt.' He's at the center of everything and no one is ever truly hurt -- because of him."

Flash finally found the strength to blink.

"Sir," he said, "that isn't --"

"Shut up," Iron Will said.

It was an order from a Cabinet member. He shut up.

"I said you were gonna need evidence," the minotaur told Flash. "The pieces of ceiling in the barracks are the last pieces I needed." And suddenly, with increased volume, "You're too close to it! You're too ready to believe the worst of yourself, no matter what happens, even when you've just saved my life! But I put those pieces into this file, with all the other pieces..."

He spun on a single hoof, and yellow eyes focused on the Captain's blue ones.

"I talked to the crew who put that statue back down," he said. "They admitted they were tired. They went out and looked at where the base was planted. The ground was packed more solidly in one corner. They put it back down on top of a hill, and they put it down with a lean. A subtle one -- but that thing was going more and more to one side with every hour. Wonder how long it would have taken before somepony noticed? Was it gonna go over before the ponies got back to it, late the next day? Because I looked at that packing myself, I saw the direction, and you're not a minotaur if you don't know something about force. It was going to tumble straight down the hill -- right into where the kids play. Until somepony comes along and leans against it..."

Cadance's hind legs went out from under her.

"The zebras' potion," Iron Will stormed on. "There's a fun one. Couldn't talk too much about that one because we don't have any zebras around, but we do have a couple of Guards who've spent time in Pundamilia Makazi, and that potion's just a little bit notorious, isn't it, Checkpoint?" (The mare who'd led Flash in managed the smallest of nods.) "I asked her what would happen if it went without stirring too long, and she said she thought it went inert after twenty-one seconds. But if you didn't get back to it within a minute, it's supposed to turn into poison. And maybe that's an exaggeration, ponies not understanding that type of zebra magic. Maybe it just makes you really sick for a while. But she was sure about the only way you could tell how it came out: you drink it. And I'm thinking that over three years, maybe somepony lost track of time, or got distracted, or anything where more than a minute ticked off the clock and nopony knew. Flash didn't know. His mark knew, and he knocked the vat over, the same way his magic put him in a place where somehow, the statue collapses away from the kids. The Appleloosa stuff? What if somepony else was out there before him, defiled the place and the buffalo didn't know it? That's a disaster, because they'd never reconsecrate. It means somepony else needs to get caught, maybe somepony who's just going along the border --"

I saw tracks, I was sure I saw the remnants of tracks, the last before the wind wiped them out

"-- and then they can fix things! Oh, and let's not forget the kudu," Iron Will snorted. "The King's son got a little teenager-feisty and challenged a pony without a horn to a head-butting contest two months before it was even the right season, because the kid's an early bloomer and probably a slow thinker. Flash doesn't want to start a diplomatic incident and dodges straight up, the kid goes into a wall and breaks a horn, Flash gets kicked to his next posting before the King can throw a fit. Well, kudu challenge horns don't break like that unless the male is sick. You know how you find out you're sick? By the time the horn breaks on its own two moons later and shows you the first symptom, it's too late for the cure. Who wants to contact that nation and see if the doctor who checked the break diagnosed the prince? Who wants to verify that the kid's only still alive because he charged down Flash, just because there was a pegasus in what he'd decided was the wrong part of the palace? I could go on, Shining: I could go all over the world checking my theories. But here's what I'm completely goring sure of: every time he starts an accident, it saves lives. Has anypony really looked at his mark? Ever? He's a shield! Here comes the lightning, and then out of nowhere, there's a pony it can hit instead of you!"

He slammed the file down. Reassignment requests scattered all over the crystal floor, and the most recent came to a stop against Flash's motionless forelegs.

"That," Iron Will quietly finished, "is one of the greatest talents I've ever heard of. That might be the best talent a Guard could ever have. To be in the right place at the right time, and if breaking something is what gets the job done, then something gets broken -- but ponies live, Shining. Having that talent under your command should be the best dream you could ever wish for, and you just discharged the pony who has it from the Guards. A pony who doesn't even know he has that magic, a pony whose face is telling me he's doing everything he can inside not to believe." And, quickly turning, "Listen to me, Flash. You brought down the ceiling. Your magic set that up. But you brought it down in the day, when there were only two ponies around, awake and on their hooves and ready to get out. I bet that without you, that thing would have collapsed at night. It would have crushed every Guard in their sleep. And without the shard... your flight would have been a little off, you would have hit your armor against the right point -- it would have been something." More softly, "You're a shield. And if a shield doesn't know why it's getting hit, why anypony would ever hit it, then all it understands is that the hits hurt and they don't stop."

Flash tried to breathe. Tried to think, and wondered if the thoughts were his own.

"I'm not --"

"I could set up a disaster to prove it," Iron Will declared. "Already got a few in mind. But I know the Empire: it'll provide. And when it does -- we need a pony here who stops it. Shining -- you told me this is the guy who couldn't get your restraint off in time, when Cadance had gathered the crystals and things were starting to go bad, before Lapis spoke up. What were you going to do when you got free?"

"Raise a shield," the Captain softly said. "Protect the castle. And -- we already knew I was going to have trouble getting it anchored and hardened quickly, there were so many ponies out there on the edge of panic, and if they'd seen magic..."

"I was there," Painite quietly told them. "Among the herd, feeling their fear take over my thoughts. I know what we would have done, Captain Armor. We would have panicked. A stampede. Ponies would have been trampled in the scramble. Ponies -- would have died."

The builder trotted forward, to where Flash's frozen body sat.

"Thank you," he said, and gently pressed his right forehoof against Flash's chest. "I think -- somepony needs to say 'thank you'. More than they have."

Iron Will nodded. "Until he hears it."

The first Guard stepped forward.

The fourth one nuzzled him.

The Princess kissed his forehead.

The Captain, as the last to approach, simply looked at him for a time, then rested a raised foreleg against the uninjured shoulder.

"I understand you're out of work," his final officer said. "Have you ever considered the employment opportunities and chance for advancement available in the Guards? Some ponies say that's the best place to find out who you truly are..."

He was in Geode Park, watching the children play from his viewpoint at the top of the hill.

Move closer.

He trotted down the slope, because the Princess had told all the pegasi to always be careful about where their shadows fell. The approach eventually brought him to the edge of the play area, near something new: a flat circular platform with pronounced ridges along the edges. Some of the children laid down on the crystal formation. Others reared back, braced their forehooves against the ridges, and then tried to two-leggedly trot as fast as they could, making the ones who were resting entertainingly dizzy. The trotting was something which took some practice, but the children learned quickly, and a giggling filly stumbled her way off the ride as the circle came to a stop, reeling as she tried to figure out where her hooves were supposed to land.

The stumble turned into a stagger. Then something approaching a not-quite-falling continual tumble, until --

He gasped, winced at the impact against his armor. On the average, crystal ponies were a little smaller than Equestrians, and that included their children. But they were also oddly heavy.

"Sorry, mister!" the filly awkwardly offered, now standing over his fallen form. "I didn't see you! And I was all dizzy, and it was fun, and -- you're okay?" Innocent purple eyes blinked at him.

"'I'm fine," he told her. "Go play."

"You're sure? I'm -- not in trouble?"

"No," he assured her. "Besides, being dizzy is fun."

She eagerly nodded, scrambled back to the others. And Flash waited until she was no longer looking at him, then got up and carefully scraped his hooves against the park's natural dirt, searching for the other source of impact. It didn't take long to uncover the mostly-buried fragment of sharp-ended crystal, especially since the point was barely a tail strand below the surface.

He looked at it for a few seconds, thought about what it would have done to a filly who'd fallen on it, then pulled it out of the ground with his teeth and took it to the trash.

The pegasus turned away from the refuse container. Watching the children again.

"I'm here," he whispered. "Be safe."

And Flash Sentry smiled.

Reversed Images

The brown walls of the tunnel were made of crystal, and as the pegasus looked down through the uncovered entrance hole, every facet reflected failure.

Flash had received an extensive briefing packet upon his arrival in the Empire, and he'd made sure to read all of it. He always did, with every packet which had awaited him at the brief pauses during hundreds of gallops of reassignment-forced travel, because if he knew what he was getting into, there seemed to be slightly less chance of bringing it all down on top of him. And by the time he'd figured out that was never going to be the case, reading the packets had become habit. Besides, it gave him something to do on the long nights when nopony would talk to him.

The Empire's briefing had mentioned the tunnels, as they were a potential issue in a number of Guard duties. Not all of them had been found, some of them effectively went nowhere, and none of them led out.

In the early part of Sombra's reign, there had been resistance. Not immediately: he'd done an incredible job of masking his true intentions while he'd been taking over, along with carefully, silently removing those who'd had the strongest suspicions. But after the mask had been kicked away, once the atrocities began to mount, some of the crystal ponies had started to plan out means of fighting back. Ponies who wanted to resist needed means and places to gather and plan, and so tunnels had been carved throughout the Empire, running between the homes of what had never become the kernel of an army. The secret police had uncovered just about all of those ponies, because pretending to be somepony who was willing to fight was the best way to infiltrate. And once they had been purged... the next group of crystals had desperately pushed towards the border storms, believing that a tiny chance of emerging from the cold alive was better than a certainty of warmth, shelter, and shadows. None of them had ever made it.

The tunnels were something the Guards had to be aware of, because nopony had found them all. They were a potential risk to citizen security, as an entrance could open into just about any home. But there was another hazard to their existence, because Sombra had never been a pony to waste resources. Magic was exploited, corpses were experimented on until he reached the point where he needed a fresh corpse (created through an equally fresh law), and as long as he had tunnels, he was going to use them.

The majority of the tunnels were short: little cylinders of crystal and stale air within the earth. But some connected. There was a minor network running under the Empire, if you knew where (or how) to look. But at any moment beneath the surface, you could never be entirely sure if you were in one of the crystals' tunnels, or in one of those which had been claimed as his. Places where he'd been experimenting with new spells, traps, methods of both rooting out those who might resist him and creating part of that never-ending supply of corpses. And Sombra, who understood security and knew having an immovable Heart was bad enough, had scattered his workshops, using the tunnels as just one more means of doing it. Nopony could ever be sure of where to search for their loved ones, or pick a place where they could lurk in wait with any degree of safety. Decentralization had contributed to his reign and, following his death, made it impossible to know if the last of the shadows had truly lifted.

Flash had been silent all the way to the entrance, and part of that came from bracing himself. The strength required to face whatever was about to happen took nearly all resources away from speech, and those words would have been pointless anyway. He couldn't protest an order. He couldn't tell the Captain about -- everything. He didn't understand why his officer was sending him down into the tunnel at all, not when the Captain knew how Flash could seemingly make anything go wrong. Not when there was another life at stake.

But the rest of that silence... when Iron Will had picked Flash out at the Cabinet meeting, the pegasus had felt a thought going through his head. It was still there.

Don't say anything.

And he didn't know if that thought was truly his.

They were in the sunlight, minotaur, pegasus, officer and a small cluster of Guards standing a short distance away. Only the first three were close to the hole, and just enough Sun got past them to glitter off the facets far below.

Iron Will was sitting in the street, large hands moving around each other, steadily tying a series of knots into the thick rope he'd requested after getting his first look at the drop. "Almost done," he announced. "Another minute, maybe. Been a while since I did this, and I'll need to test it before we lower it down there."

The Captain nodded. "All right. Final review, then." He glanced back at the other

real

Guards. "Is the evacuation complete?"

"Yes, sir," the largest mare said. "All citizens are out of the area. As you ordered, we added an extra two blocks to the original radius, just in case."

Another nod. "Good. Let's hope that's enough. Private?" Flash forced himself to look at his officer. "You have one job. You watch him. And you may not even have to do that because Iron, if the sparks start building around you --"

"-- I clear out," the minotaur said. "Not arguing that, Shining. I'm basing this on the spells not reacting to me." The left hand, still holding rope, raised up enough to tap a bent horn. "This doesn't light up. Can't cast, can't counter. So if there's magic, I leave."

"And you're careful in there," the Captain repeated for the third time. "Touch as little as possible. Let the analyzer do the work. Watch where you step. Don't go charging around like a --" and abruptly stopped.

Iron Will just grinned. "Okay, I know that was about to be as speciesist as Tartarus. Let's hear it, Shining. Like a what?"

After enough time had passed for the creation of three more knots, "...like a bull in a cordial shop," emerged from between the Captain's teeth.

"Oh." The minotaur's skin flushed under the short fur. "Yeah. Seriously, if the castle is gonna keep buying from that place, either they've gotta start making deliveries or we need to send somepony a lot smaller for pickup. Lapis, maybe... okay, done. Somepony fly this edge up to the top of that building and anchor it? Let's see if it'll take my weight."

A pair of pegasi cooperated, and Iron Will moved. The Captain watched closely, as he was one of the few who had the field strength for a rescue if something went wrong. Flash had a little more trouble observing the process: there was a lot of Sun bouncing around the area, and some of it was trying to get past his latest pair of sunglasses. But he saw enough to recognize that the quick construct was holding, even though the process was still awkward: even with hands doing most of the work, hooves trying to find purchase on curving, swaying hemp was something which required extreme care.

"All right," Iron Will decided as he stepped back onto the road and the pegasi carefully lowered the rope ladder behind him. "It'll hold. So let's go."

The Captain looked at the minotaur. Then the hole. Over to Flash, and then the hole again.

"I don't like this," he said.

"Yeah, we've been over that," Iron Will stated. "It's still happening."

"I don't have armor which fits you. We could hammer some more things out into rough pieces if we just waited --"

"-- can't wait."

"You'll use the hoof guards?"

That triggered a snort. "Buckets."

"Use them." It hadn't been an order: it couldn't be with a minotaur. But it was as close as the Captain could come. "I've disarmed his traps. I know how much Sombra loved to take part of a leg off below the hock. Ponies limping on three hooves and a stump must have made him laugh. And you're two hooves short on that to start. I know they're just crystal buckets you can tie to your legs, and I know you'll have to get them off if you need to try running or climbing that thing in a hurry. I still want you wearing them."

The response felt oddly soft. "All right, Shining. I'll use them."

The sapients looked at each other for a few seconds.

And then, in full hearing of the Guards, "Don't take him."

Ponies often spoke about Flash as if he wasn't there, perhaps in the hopes that it would somehow make that true.

"He's coming," Iron Will said. "We already talked about this."

"I've got eight Guards here. Any one of them is willing to go down there with you. I'm --"

"-- we talked about that, too."

Flash was looking at the Captain when the strangely quiet words hit, and so saw the single second when the pain was visible. And then it was gone.

"I don't understand why you think he needs to be down there," the Captain stated.

"I don't either," the minotaur shrugged. "Haven't had a chance to really think about it yet, not through all the details. It's just a feeling. Almost a thought. Some of what you were saying..." He trailed off, shrugged again, then bent down and began to gather up the ladder.

"I told you about him. All about him."

It sounded as if two of the Guards had just swallowed back nervous laughter, and one hadn't even bothered to try.

"I know," Iron Will replied. "And that's why I'm thinking. Let's go."

This tunnel was one of the larger specimens. Sombra had sometimes needed to move corpses in bulk.

Flash flew in first, which was awkward: the entrance wasn't quite wide enough to accommodate a full wingspan, which meant he had to go into a dive and then immediately pull out of it. Similarly, the minotaur had some issues in getting his shoulders past the hole, and some hasty angling was required before the horns were clear. But eventually, all hooves were resting on crystal again, and the Captain's field carefully lowered their equipment: the analyzer (in a heavily-padded saddlebag), two glowsticks, a pair of rope-tied buckets which had been ordered to serve as hoof guards, and two hastily hammered-out pieces of mostly-flat metal with shorter lengths of rope connecting them. Iron Will picked that up and carefully got those ropes balanced across his shoulders, allowing the metal to cover most of his torso and back. (It still took some angling to get past the horns.)

"Anything happens to me," he said, "somepony take care of my goats." And started down the tunnel.

Flash, uncertain of whether to hover behind him or trot, turned to follow --

"-- Private."

He turned back, glanced up, saw the Captain staring down from reluctant safety.

"If anything happens," the Captain ordered, "get him to where I can see him. I'll lift him out. I could have lowered him, but..." A small head shake. "I want him alive. Unhurt. You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can you do that?"

Flash couldn't answer. And after a moment, the Captain looked away.

They both took off their sunglasses, all the better to see within the tunnel. Flash couldn't seem to spot where he'd put his down.

Sunlight followed them, bouncing from facet to facet. The glowsticks (one looped to Flash's right foreleg, the other around the minotaur's left wrist) weren't completely necessary: the original investigation of the tunnel had proven that illumination traveled a long way, even if it kept progressively tilting deeper into brown. But you never knew where the shadows might linger.

The travel time was short, and not completely silent. Hooves brought music from the floor, and the little notes changed as they bounced off the walls, deepening into something darker. (To Flash, it sounded much like a buffalo funeral dirge, at least the first three hours of it.) Neither spoke. They simply pushed on ahead. Watching, listening, waiting --

-- the little flare of light alerted him, and Flash turned just in time to see the first spark manifest over his folded left wing. It hovered there, shifted slightly over the feather. He tried another hoofstep and found it moved with him, just before the second spark appeared a hoofwidth away.

A shadow fell over him, and he managed not to start: it was just the shade from the minotaur's horns. "Guess that's the spell's border," Iron Will said. "And that's the doorway."

He gestured down the tunnel, and Flash looked.

It was a simple open crystal frame. There was no actual door present, and there had probably never been one: after all, any future corpse which had come this far was welcome to deliver itself. But the crystal in this area wasn't translucent: the brown of dravite had darkened into something they could no longer look through, and so the gap was the only means they had to scout the interior.

There were shapes on the other side of that doorway. Some of them could be identified in the light which reached the interior: a bench, several currently-open clamps for holding things exceptionally still over a workstation, one ancient device which was meant to concentrate light on a small spot. Others were unfamiliar and unusually for Sombra, just about none of them were bloodstained. Not one of the biology workshops, then.

But... there was something at the very back wall, a shape Flash couldn't quite make out with the light not entirely hitting it, something all the worse for being almost recognized...

The minotaur was inspecting himself: arms, legs, hands. He even lifted the metal sheets to check his torso. "No sparks," he reported. "And you've got the white, same as Shining said for the other pegasi. So let's see..."

Iron Will took another step forward. Then one more, and one more...

"You see anything on me?"

"No." The first thing Flash had ever said to him.

"Then I think we're looking good. Give me a few seconds here..." The buckets were donned, and another hoofstep was attempted. The left leg immediately began to slip, and the minotaur quickly braced a hand on the tunnel. "Think I found a flaw. The traction's gonna suck. Not like hooves on crystal were great to begin with." A small snort. "I take at least one tumble a day. I've been thinking about getting some shoes put on, just for as long as I'm up here. I don't know how the refractors do it." Another, smaller step: this one held.

Flash didn't know either, and the rumors said the doctors were still trying to work that part out. (For his part, even with more legs to work with, the daily tumbles averaged to four, many of which were triggered through landing.)

"How close do you wanna get?"

He blinked. "Sir?"

"Don't call me sir," the minotaur sharply replied. "You're the Guard. How close do you want to get to the door, for when I'm inside? Sounds like your call to me."

Flash tried to reconcile the idea that someone was asking for his judgment of a situation. Then he decided the minotaur just didn't know about him yet, a split-second before remembering that the Captain had provided a briefing.

"A -- few body lengths away," he finally said. "Maybe two. The Captain said one pony could come all the way up, but two body lengths is enough that I won't cross the line by accident." He knew about triggering accidents, and all the means by which he never seemed to prevent them.

"Then let's do it."

They advanced. The larger body remained spark-free. But white steadily clustered over Flash's fur, tail, flanks and wings. It wasn't enough to make him glow: the sparks didn't shed that much illumination. But it was still enough to subtly change the color of his coat, which had started as -- well, some ponies felt he was a light orange, while others considered his hue to be more of a muddled cream or distorted brown, he'd overheard a Guard describing him as some shade of yellow...

His fur didn't even know what it was supposed to be.

By the time they got within two body lengths of the doorway, Flash's skin was starting to feel slightly odd, as if his body didn't entirely fit inside it any more. Like he was shrinking away from himself. He stopped, and the sapients looked at each other.

"Ready?" the minotaur asked.

Flash forced a nod.

Iron Will stepped forward, tilting head and body to get through a doorway which hadn't been designed for minotaurs, and went inside.

Nothing happened.

The minotaur's exhale resounded through the tunnel.

"All right..." he breathed. "Looks like we're okay. Can't promise it's gonna stay that way..." He reached into the saddlebag which he'd chosen to wear over his left hip, took out the disk. "This is kind of weird."

"Sorry?" Take out the question mark and it was the most dominant vocalization in Flash's vocabulary.

"Just holding this thing. Pre-Discordian. Far as I know, I've only touched one other thing that old."

It begged the question, and Flash was surprised to hear himself voicing it. "What?"

"The world." One big hand slowly moved the disc towards something Flash couldn't see: on the wall to the left of the doorway. "Okay, it's working. Taking it slow..."

Flash took off for a moment, hovered and angled his body, trying to see what the minotaur was trying to analyze. It was just enough to spot a glint of light coming off the thin edge.

"What is it?"

"Razorwhip. I think. One of those tail-mounted ones you see in museums. It's been modified."

Flash swallowed. "Modified... how?"

"The new barbs probably stay in the skin after impact. But I'm pretty sure the dried poison's gone inert."

And that was all anyone said for several minutes. The minotaur slowly moved around the workshop, waited until one edge rune on the disk flashed dark green and then shifted to something else. Flash hovered, landed, changed angles as best he could to keep an eye on everything, and felt helpless.

He didn't know what he was doing here. Why the minotaur seemed to have insisted on taking him after he'd been briefed, after he'd found out what a nightmare (capital possibly justified) Flash was, how everything the pegasus touched or approached or even just leaned against for a moment turned into disaster.

He was... afraid. Afraid for the minotaur, for whatever had to go wrong, for what he wouldn't be able to stop, for what he was practically guaranteed to cause.

And all he could do was watch, as the sparks shifted across his skin and his muscles retreated towards his bones.

At least his thoughts were mostly quiet, outside of the fear. That meant he was reasonably sure they were his.

I should go back and get somepony else. Anypony else --

Stay.

"So how'd you get your mark?"

Flash blinked. "Sir?"

"I said -- oh, never mind..." The next sound was a mix between sigh and chuckle, and he watched as the minotaur slowly moved the disk over one of the miniature spotlights. "Look, it's too goring quiet down here. I want some stories. And if there's one story every pony's got, it's 'how I got my mark'. And I ain't seen yours before. Shields, yeah: Shining's got one. And lightning bolts, here and there. But I haven't seen them superimposed. So what's the story?"

Iron Will was no part of the Guard. Flash had never heard a rumor about his having had a military career: the minotaur had supposedly opted for college. But the biped was an official part of the Cabinet, and so Flash's mind received the question as an order. "There was this girl --"

The minotaur chuckled. "Oh, this'll be good. I've never heard a bad story that started with 'There was this girl'."

Flash took a breath, watched the sparks shift around his hovering torso as he prepared to prove the minotaur wrong. "We were at flight camp together. And we -- the entire group -- were still just going through the basics. But she was ahead of everypony else. She could fly better than anypony in the cabins, better than some of the instructors. It was like she'd never even needed camp at all, not for flight, but -- that wasn't why she was there. One night, after all the counselors and safety ponies had gone to bed, she woke a bunch of us up and said -- she'd seen something. What we weren't supposed to learn until we were older. She'd worked it out, how it was supposed to be done. She didn't say what it was: she just teased us until we wanted to find out. And then she took us out over the lenticulars, got us past the camp's border -- I guess she was scouting it for a while, figuring out how she'd sneak away, and..."

The minotaur was starting to frown.

"...she had worked it out. She'd gone there before bringing us, gotten the entire area ready. And then she went up, started flying to each little cloud just above us. Pushing her hooves into them and setting off the lightning."

Softly, "I'm not gonna like where this goes, am I?"

"Sir?"

"It's your face. Most ponies remembering their manifests get this misty look. They're remembering one of the best moments of their lives: they can't think about it and not be a little happy again. I thought this story, of all stories, would be the one which cheered you up. And it's going the other way."

They looked at each other, across a few body lengths and the intangible barrier of the doorway.

"I can stop," Flash said, and it felt like an apology.

"Don't," and that too arrived in his ears as an order. "Lightning in flight camp? Was it your first year there? Even I know that's way young."

He managed a bare nod. "She'd figured it out, though. Well, I guess with her name, it made sense that she'd get there early." He didn't like thinking about it. About her. "And we were all just watching her set it off, over and over again, because it was fun at first. We weren't supposed to be doing that at our age, and we were sort of doing it through her, I guess. We'd -- gotten one over on the adults. But she just kept going, and -- the bolts were going everywhere. They started -- getting close. Crashing through the clouds a few body lengths away from our hooves. Some of the kids were starting to scream, and she kept going. I saw her face in one of the flashes, and -- she had this look, like she knew she was scaring us and she didn't care. She didn't care about anything, and the lighting was getting closer, she had so many clouds set up, and I..."

It isn't flying any more. She leaps between close-spaced clouds, and her face is cool and calm and considers consequences as something which happens to other ponies. She is showing off, and the increasingly terrified nature of the audience doesn't matter. If they don't like it, they can leave, and whether they flee or wind up being carried away is immaterial. The next bolt goes through the vapor a mere body length away from the smallest of the fillies, who screams, and he sees the next leap, where it's going to land, how her hooves are angled and his wings flare out, he pushes into the fastest surge of short-range flight he will ever experience, he gets between her and the filly who wouldn't let her have the already-claimed best bunk on the first day, she sees where he is and the fearful body behind him, there is a single moment in which she can still stop --

-- her hooves slam into the cloud.

"...so I don't remember my manifest," Flash quietly finished. "I woke up in the hospital and I had my mark."

The minotaur was silent for a few seconds.

"What happened to the girl?"

"Nothing," Flash bitterly replied. "She did something to nearly everypony there while I was unconscious. Said something. I guess a few ponies were scared enough to go along with it, enough that there were too many stories for anypony to sort out the truth. By the time I got out of the hospital, camp was over, and I never saw her again. Just a few of my cabinmates, who told me what had happened, how they got me out while she was -- still trying to tell them to leave me there. But nopony in charge ever believed that. The last time I heard her name was somepony mentioning that she'd gone out for the Wonderbolts. I know she was good enough to pass the practical audition. I'm just hoping she never made it through the Academy."

"Me too," Iron Will quietly said. "But -- gore it, you took a direct lightning hit as a colt and you're still hovering..."

The words emerged from his soul. "I screwed up."

The minotaur blinked. "Huh?"

"She was scaring ponies. She might have never hit anypony if I hadn't gotten in the way. She was missing by less and less, but she was still missing --"

"-- as a kid, even a talented one," the bull interrupted, "you're gonna hit something eventually." He was approaching the back wall, and the glowstick began to work through the shadows.

"She would have missed."

"You don't know --" and then, very softly, "-- oh."

They had both seen it at the same moment, in the brown-shifted light which made the tunnel feel so much like being within a sewer, and so there was a second where neither could breathe.

"They're unbreakable," Flash whispered. "He -- he couldn't have..."

"He didn't," Iron Will replied, every word forced into the air. "He cut away the base of the skull."

The minotaur turned away from the rack which held the severed unicorn horns, disk held low. After a few moments, he found something else he could put it close to, and so did that.

"It's not biology experiments," the bull quietly said. "It's a weapons shop. But there's all kinds of weapons..." Just as softly, "We'll bury them. As soon as Shining tells us it's safe to take anything out, we'll bury them." A deep breath and then, with more volume, "That's still a Tartarus of a mark, though. But I can't figure out the talent. I mean, the obvious conclusion is that you've got one for taking on lightning, but there's so many different interpretations for some of the common icons, and with something like yours --"

Tell him.

Flash spent his life listening to his thoughts, and so didn't act on many of them. But there were times when he slipped, and they typically came just before every accident, disaster, and subsequent transfer. He was stressed, the sparks were making him feel strange, plus everything which had brought him into the tunnel had started just before he would have been freed. And if it had been a pony within that horrible room, he might have found a final moment of resistance, slammed his jaw shut after the first word. He could never tell a pony. But it was a minotaur...

He'd been placed in a position where he could create one more nightmare, he was distracted, and that was why the thought got through. A thought which wasn't truly his.

"-- my mark talks to me."

And the words, once released, could never be taken back.

Iron Will slowly turned. Stared at the pegasus whose face had just frozen in horror. Trapped in crystal.

"...what?"

"I didn't say anything!" Flash desperately tried to recover. "Maybe some sounds from the outside got down --"

"-- you just said," Iron Will semi-repeated, "that your mark talks to you. I know your voice. It's the only other one down here. What do you mean?"

"I'm..." He was starting to hyperventilate, and his lungs felt as if they were getting smaller with every breath. The hover was barely being maintained because every wingbeat was trying to accelerate, getting ready to flee. "I'm... please, you can't tell the Captain, you can't, I'm not crazy --"

"I know you're not."

The words had been calm. Measured. Flash couldn't hear a hint of lie, much less deflection or the forced stability which came when someone was trying to talk the clearly insane into stepping within the padded room or into the pegasus-immobilizing confinement known as a freezer. But he couldn't be sure, he didn't know...

"You were in Mazein," Iron Will said as he maintained direct eye contact. "So you know we're not exactly a one-species society. There's a pony minority. I had ponies in my hometown when I was growing up. Not really that many pegasi around, but -- enough ponies, and some of them were good friends. So I know that sometimes, a mark can sort of guide you, when you're doing something connected to your talent. And I've heard it described as something kind of like a whisper -- at least, that's the best term Twister had. She said it was really more like hearing things with your soul. But it wasn't language. Just -- feelings. Impulses, intuitions." He took a deep breath. "I know you're not crazy, Flash, because I've seen crazy ponies and so have you, just before the lightning hit. But you're the first pony I've ever heard call it talking, with actual words involved. What does it say?"

He landed, with so much more than gravity pulling him down, because he'd said the words and so there was truly nowhere he could ever go. And then he told the minotaur about the rest of it, because there was no way it could have made things any worse.

"I... have thoughts," Flash quietly said, staring at the floor and seeing the myriad faceted reflections of a failure. "And some of them aren't mine. I get impulses to -- do things. They're usually subtle, and I watch for them, I try to ignore them -- but I can't get all of them. I can't even spot them most of the time. And the strong ones are thoughts. Words. My mark thinks, and -- it tries to think for me. When I follow what it wants... that's when all the big accidents happen. I..."

Every word was the hardest of his life. Things he'd never told his parents, or all the officers. Anypony. Because it shouldn't happen, because nopony would believe it could ever happen.

"...I'm not sure what my talent is," he finished. "I wasn't conscious when my mark came, I didn't wake up for a week after the lightning. I just know it wants me to do things, and when I slip, when I cooperate by accident because I wasn't listening closely enough, everything goes wrong. So maybe it is a mark for disasters. Or the lightning did something to me, or I'm just -- broken."

He had realized, rather early in his so-called career, that saying those words to any officer would have gotten him very definitively fired. They also had the potential to have him committed into an asylum, or simply barred from sane pony society for the rest of his post-Guard life. And so he'd never used them as a solution to his nightmare, because they would have just made things so much worse.

Flash had wondered just how bad his life could become if he'd ever told somepony, and the visions which rose from his imagination had locked him into silence. But now he'd told someone...

"Shining briefed me about you," Iron Will finally said, eyes still focused on Flash's face. "All the places you've been, and most of what went wrong there. He was using it as an argument against bringing you down here. The argument. He even tried to plant himself outside that doorway for a while."

"Why --" He tried for another breath, wondered if that one would fight back the tears. "Why not have him --"

"-- because," the minotaur cut him off, "if something went all the way wrong -- Cadance can't lose both of us. And he knows that. But he hates hearing it. I'm guessing he's afraid that one day, he'll have to do something risky, he'll hesitate because he's thinking about her, and then ponies get hurt. And he hates sending anypony where he won't go, because that makes him feel like a coward. He's never talked about it, but... I'm a psychologist, Flash. Lots of people don't believe that, but you don't get into my profession without the courses, not if you want to know what you're doing. I can figure out some of what's going through heads, sometimes, even pony ones. And with Shining -- he keeps a lot of himself locked down until he gets to Cadance. A lot of the military types do. But he can't hide all of it. So I know something about how he thinks. And I know you're not crazy. I've seen crazy. But when he told me about you --" and then there was a little chuckle "-- which includes what got you kicked out of Mazein..."

Instinctively, "I'm sorry."

"Nah," Iron Will shrugged, and metal bounced against his chest. "Wasn't my house, and no one got hurt. But when Shining gave me the last of it -- well, by then, he'd agreed that I had to go down here. Didn't like it, but he saw my point: that if you're not a pony, you can't trigger a spell meant to be set off by ponies. He just didn't want me down here with you. Because he doesn't exactly love me. We're not friends, and I don't think that's gonna happen for a while. But he doesn't want Cadance to lose me, so he told me all about you, all of the accidents... and it started me thinking."

Flash swallowed, and tasted salt from where the tears had run into his mouth. "About what?"

"I don't know," the minotaur admitted. "It's deep thought. I haven't told myself what it's about yet, because I'm still trying to work it out. There's just something in all those stories, when you hear them one after the other. I don't have a mark, but I still have intuition. And after he finished, I told him I wasn't doing this unless it was with you."

The pegasus blinked.

"Which," the bull finished, "is what really pissed him off. In case you were wondering. That and knowing he had to let me."

"You know," Flash slowly stated, "that I'm a disaster. That bad things happen everywhere I go. And you decided -- that you wanted me down here, where anything could go wrong, and I just told you my mark doesn't work, the one thing every pony can count on works against me --"

"Yeah," the bull cut him off. "And now I'm thinking about that, too. Doesn't change the job." He turned to the right, and bucket-covered hooves awkwardly shuffled. "Some of the other Guards talk about you."

"I know." He'd managed to keep the words from being bitter, even when they'd left their taste on his tongue.

"Didn't put it together with your face. I hadn't seen you before today."

"The Captain -- isolated me on assignments. After the first week." He was still reeling inside: unfocused, dizzy in a way which had spark-covered hooves barely steady against the floor. He'd confessed...

Move closer.

His legs shifted forward. (The sparks intensified.) He had to keep a closer watch on the minotaur, even through wet eyes.

"I was thinking," Iron Will said, "that every one of those stories, for the Guard stuff, has the same line in it. Once you change a few words."

Still reeling, trying to figure out if there would be anything left of his life once they reached the surface, "'Flash Sentry was there.'"

A careful head shake, with the range of motion restricted to keep the horns from hitting anything which was hanging from the ceiling. "'And nopony was hurt.' Or 'and no one was hurt.' Over and over."

Take off.

He was too unsteady on his legs. It made more sense to hover.

"That can't last. Eventually, I'm going to get someone. That statue could have toppled towards the kids. I can't stay too close to ponies. I don't --"

"Hold up." A big right hand had just been raised, palm out towards Flash. "I just saw -- something..."

The volume had dropped a little on the last word. The tone had risen.

"Sir?"

"Over on that wall." A little gesture, the smallest one the minotaur had made. "Didn't see that earlier. That's -- interesting. That is really interesting." Bucket-covered hooves shuffled forward. "Think I'm gonna get a closer look at that..."

He sounded fascinated.

No, it was worse than that. He sounded relaxed.

Urgently, "Sir, I can't see what you're looking at." He was shifting his body, trying to change the viewing angle, and his thoughts slipped him that much closer to the doorway.

"It's okay... I'll just take a good long look and then I'll -- tell you what it --"

Flash turned his head, trying to see, and that was when the first of the sparks went into his eyes. It forced him to look away. To look down.

He would never fully see what was on the wall. He could tell that there was a design painted there, but all he could make out was the edges. Nothing could ever bring him to describe the colors and when he tried to think about the geometry of the triangles, he would realize that one of them had been bent through two hundred and seventy degrees.

Most of what he saw was Iron Will, and that was from the metal-covered pectorals down. How the minotaur's arms had gone slack, the analyzer limply dangling from the fingers of his left hand. The complete ease in the big body's posture, as if he was prepared to stand where he was for a very long time.

Long enough for the metal blade now slowly unfolding itself from the floor, taking aim just below knee level, to make certain he would never stand again.

"SIR! IRON!"

The minotaur didn't respond.

And then Flash, moving on something which could be called instinct, a pony who could no longer afford to differentiate between his thoughts, went through the door frame.

Decaying spells fully registered a pony body, surged. Magic which had laid in wait for centuries found a fresh target. Thaums sizzled, light inverted, the shadows peeled from the walls, and the world went mad.

The sparks around his body coalesced. He was covered in glimmering white, he could barely see, there was just shadows and one of them was shaped somewhat like a minotaur, he was trying to fly when it felt as if his wings were collapsing on themselves from the outside in, bones were grinding against each other within his joints and he heard himself scream in pain, something else which the minotaur didn't respond to --

-- on instinct, the signal was sent to his eyes, which no longer cared to work with light. Light was necessary for reading, making out faces and features and every little bit of the world. But he was a pegasus, and that meant he could gauge ion charges at a glance, steer on the heat which the magic of his species shifted across the seasons. And until that moment, he'd never known it was possible to deliberately close the light out and let the rest of his vision guide the way.

It wasn't perfect. He couldn't think with the pain screaming across inverting nerves, but he didn't have to. The minotaur was a patch of warmth. He was holding something slightly cooler, which his fingers had slightly heated along the edges. There was a cold thing rising from the floor. He had to get the warm thing away from the cold thing. That was all.

He didn't have much time or distance to get up speed, but he'd already been in the air when it had started. It helped.

He drove an armored shoulder into the metal-covered back, and his mere bale and a half, charging across the distance, was still enough to stagger the minotaur. Bucket-covered hooves stumbled, the big body slipped forward, and the cold thing swung, the blade missing by a distance Flash never wanted to measure.

But the spells were still reacting. His feathers were vibrating, his tail shivering so quickly as to make the base feel as if it was about to shake off his body. The minotaur wasn't talking, wasn't trying to move on his own and Flash was still aware of his own screams, he tried to recover from the impact but his shoulder was hurt, impacted even through the armor, he slid down the wide back and felt his left foreleg slide across something round and carved with runes along the edges...

What happened next wasn't light. It wasn't heat. It wasn't anything he'd ever experienced and it was nothing he would ever go through again. Something came off the disk. It was the smell of music. It was the heat of sugar. It filled a room of pain and fury, drove the shadows back. The energies were pushing at each other, and he heard something crack. Much to his surprise, it wasn't his wingbones: the sound had been a wooden one. One of the workbenches had shattered. Then something on a wall exploded. And more cold began to rise from the floor.

There was no time to think. No time to plan. Just a minotaur who wouldn't answer him, just barely standing and sliding a little towards that horrible image, far too much mass for Flash to ever dream of lifting, he couldn't carry the big bull, he couldn't do anything.

The minotaur slid forward a little more.

All he could ever do was make things worse.

Slid.

He didn't have time for that either.

After the next disaster (just a few hours away), after he'd been fired and sent to the train station to await the final ride -- only then would he find out how it had looked from the outside.

Nopony saw all of it. There was a period when nopony could see much of anything, because there had been a high-pitched noise, a whistle neither pony nor minotaur mouth could make, and then the light (not white, not prismatic, not anything) had surged out of the hole. The few who'd been looking directly at it wound up continually wearing sunglasses for the next three weeks, even at night. Everypony else had to blink away dazzle and tears, and then the Captain had moved first, getting to the edge just in time to see.

It was speed and force, somepony would say later. Flash had pushed himself into the minotaur headfirst, in just the right place to make the bull fall backwards, and had done so while flying so fast that the seconds it would take for the big body to drive him into the ground were instead ones where they were both sliding. The bucket-covered hooves skidded along the crystal tunnel's faceted floor, Flash put everything he had into acceleration and trying not to lose altitude too quickly, but it was a losing battle, and he started to feel the surrender coming at the moment the warmth of Sun touched his fur.

He began the final drop, skidding past their only hope. Felt the weight beginning to press against his neck.

And then there was a faint tingle against his skin, as if a limb had started to fall asleep and brought his entire body along for the ride.

The Captain's field bubble yanked, twisted to angle them out of the hole, and brought them both to Sun eight seconds ahead of the flames.