The Mare in the High Castle

by ponichaeism

Rating: teen
Tags: Dark, Alternate Universe, Main 6, Coco Pommel, Thriller, Drama, Changelings, Trixie, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Mystery, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Science Fiction
Length: 157031

Under the eternal moonlight, a hoofful of strangers cross paths on the streets of Canterlot, capital of the Empire of the Moon, over the course of one eventful day.

"Hello, hello, hello, this is Thorny Bends coming at you live on Radio Free Canterlot, and from where I'm sitting, folks, the Land of the Eternal Moon is looking lovely. Well, except for that nasty smog cloud rolling toward us from the coast, but hey, that's the price of progress. Still, if you're heading outside you might want to think about an Easy Breezy-brand respirator, guaranteed to make the air taste like new. Buy yours from all major retailers today!

"As I'm sure you all know, it's been almost a thousand years since the founding of our great civilization. And as the big day approaches, I sure hope the High Castle set their clocks right. I'd hate to find out it was really last Thursday. Ha! But seriously, folks. I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about our fair Canterlot, and I've realized it isn't just somewhere we all live. It's what we build together into something greater as we all reach for the moon. A symbol for a way of life and a state of mind. So, in honor of the thousand years, I'm taking an eye in the sky peek into the lives of the ponies on the streets, and a few in the penthouses too. I don't often do real news on this show, but these are some genuine equine interest stories, folks. In their own small, unique way, these ponies are as vital to the city as the princess of the night herself. So settle down, get comfortable, and don't touch that dial.

"You won't want to miss this, I guarantee."

Published 2014-06-07 00:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2014-10-27 18:31:16 UTC

Chapter 1

The Land of the Eternal Moon was calling, and Donut Joe answered.

Ghostlike, he wandered through his empty and silent shop with a broom, sweeping the dirt and dust off the checkerboard floor tiles. On the other side of the plate glass windows, Canterlot slept soundly. But soon enough, the city would wake up and come alive for another day. His neon 'Open' sign would light up and beckon ponies in. As he moved among the tables, he imagined his regulars sitting at them, filling the place with smiles and laughter. He would move from customer to customer, taking orders and pretending he hadn't overheard them say this place right here, on this quaint little corner in Canterlot, was their favorite donut hole.

He swept out the final corner and leaned on the broom, gazing around the shop. His eyes went over the spotless white walls, the friendly knick-knacks hanging on them, the line of red-cushioned swivel stools bolted to the floor, the counter behind them fronted with pink-and-green tiles. Hadn't missed a single spot. Everything looked beautiful, and why shouldn't it? It swelled his heart with pride to think of how much effort he put into making this place look perfect. That was why ponies from all across Canterlot loved to come here: they could see his blood, sweat, and tears on every shining surface.

Metaphorically, of course.

The door chime's sweet song sounded. Joe realized he hadn't locked up after entering, but then again he rarely bothered to. The princess kept things nice and peaceful here in the city.

“Sorry, we ain't exactly open yet,” he said, frowning.

“Oh, I see," the unicorn coming in off the street said. He glanced at the unlit neon sign next to the door. "Entirely my fault."

As the other unicorn started backing out of the shop, Joe studied him: beige-coated; tilted fedora on his head; slick pinstriped suit jacket over an immaculate white dress shirt; shiny black briefcase sticking out of his saddlebag. Class act, all the way, Joe thought, putting the broom aside. Folks are so considerate round here.

“Nah, you can take a seat. The first batch of donuts are still in the oven, but I made some coffee if you want it.”

The businesspony sat on his haunches on a swivel stool. “That sounds real nice.”

Joe walked behind the counter and ignited his horn. He magically poured some coffee into a clean mug. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Two and one, please.”

While Joe poured them in, he asked, “So where do you work?”

“Oh, I'm a loan officer for the Bank of Equestria.”

“Sounds like a real cushy job.” Joe remembered the day some fifteen years ago when he dressed in his finest and slicked his mane back, then walked into a nearby Savings & Loan to borrow the money to open his donut shop. Borrowed it from a stallion just like this one, who made his living investing in honest, upstanding folks. As Joe magically set the steaming coffee cup down and slid it over, he asked, “How's business?”

The customer slid a coin across the counter. “Booming, thank you.”

“Sorry, I ain't got any change in the register yet.”

The stallion raised the cup to his lips and said, “Keep it,” before sipping the steaming coffee.

Joe slid the coin off the counter, then ducked down and came back up with a glass-covered tray of leftover donuts and set them on the counter. “They're from yesterday, but I eat 'em for breakfast and they taste just fine. Can't afford to waste 'em, you know? Take a few, on the house.”

“Oh, thank you,” the customer said, taking one and nibbling on it with his coffee.

Joe made one of the donuts levitate as he filled the register with coins and bills from the safe, occasionally pausing to take a bite from it.

The pony at the counter asked, “So, are you going to see The River Runs Wild tonight?”

“Nah, I never liked those musicals. They're so unrealistic. All that singing and dancing out of nowhere.”

“Well....maybe. But sometimes it's good to get your mind off things, though. When work is stressful, I mean.”

“This shop is many things to me, my friend--" Joe shut and locked the register. "--but stressful ain't one of them.”

He finished off his donut and went to the jukebox in the corner. When he plugged the cord into the outlet, its multicolored neon tubes lit up. He levitated a coin out of his apron, slid it into the slot, and hit the button for "Rockafilly". Stuttering guitar chords filled the shop. The song was the anthem and namesake of the whole rockafilly sound, a wild new style that took him right back to his discotheque days. Electric guitars had replaced the brass horns, but the swing rhythm had survived intact. Judging by how long the song had topped the charts, and by how many coins the jukebox had raked in for him, evidently he wasn't the only young stallion who missed strutting out onto the dance floor and cutting a rug with the pretty fillies. Although when he got a look at his face in the jukebox's glass, hovering among the stacks of sleek black forty-five RPM discs, he lamented that he wasn't so young anymore.

But hearing the old sound he'd loved resurrected for a whole new generation made him feel young again. Young and new, if only slightly. He tapped his hoof in time to the beat, feeling the old urge to give himself over to the dance boiling under his skin. But he didn't dare, not where his customers could see him. He had a professional image to maintain.

The patron took another sip of coffee. “I suppose it must be different, working in a cozy little corner malt shop like this. Well, we all have our duty in society. Our place, and our part to play. I suppose musicals have their place too, for harried accountants like me to unwind at.”

“The city takes care of its ponies,” Joe said, walking over to the neon sign. “And our princess takes care of the city. Everything flows from her.”

“Too true.” The customer put down the coffee cup and wiped the crumbs from his lips with a napkin. “Well, I have to run, but that was delicious. I really should swing by here again.”

“I'll look forward to it, friend,” Joe said, waving goodbye as his new patron left.

He flipped the switch on the sign. The neon lit up, broadcasting those beautiful words to both old customers and new: 'Open'. It would bring them inside, but he was the one who made loyal customers out of folks just passing through. Made them want to come back, again and again. Even if he hadn't literally laid the floor or erected the walls, and even if the chairs and tables came direct from the LeFarrier Corporation's restaurant division, and even if the knick-knacks were bought from the Whinnydom-Neighson catalog, it was his hard-earned coin -- along with a generous loan from ponies who recognized his rock-solid work ethic -- that paid for the construction and furnishing, and allowed him to paint himself onto every corner of the shop until the space was all his, an empty vessel he could fill up with the friendly and honest service he prided himself on.

Two regulars came in for their morning coffee and donut. Joe waved to them from behind the counter as he pulled the first batch of donuts from the oven and used his magic to sort them into the trays behind the counter. When the coins and bills started changing hoof, a few lines from his favorite book came to him:

'Just as there is a seed of the earth, there is also a seed of the mind, and the name we call it by is money. Every time a coin changes hoof, it is planted, grown, and harvested in a process that can only unfold in our higher mental faculty. The fertile ability to take a circle of metal and uplift it into something more, something celestial, is the line that demarcates equinekind from the lesser animals, driven by base passions intimately tied to the chthonic realm of the dirt and the tree. Unlike the seeds of the ground, the sowing of money can never be ceased, for its potential is infinite. Every time a coin lands in a pony's possession, they are free to sow their dreams by passing that coin on to the next pony, who helps bring those dreams into existence. We are, all of us, a chain of unicorns working together to build dreams by passing coins from one to another, like seeds sprouting ad infinitum. That is the covenant we hold with Equestria as it beckons us to its service, to build this eternal city of dreams.'

When he was young and just starting out on his own, The Wealth of the Wellspring and the ponies in it had been his best friends and his closest companions. Within the book's eighteen hundred pages he had found the blueprint for building everything he now owned. That included the epic three-hundred page speech, the length of a novel in its own right, where the book's mysterious central figure lays out the unquestionably true and, what's more, only path to success in Equestria, as if he had directly consulted with the princess on the matter. And since it was barely more than twice the price of a regular book, there was a tremendous sense of value as well.

He magically lifted two used cups off the 'dirty' rack and cantered to the sink at one end of the counter, flush against the plate glass windows. As he washed them out, he looked at the city as it came alive. Something electric thrummed in the air, a vibrant feeling of potential he couldn't quite explain, other than it made him smile with sheer optimism. The call of Canterlot was going out. Today, he could already tell, was going to be a good day for business.

And it was the High Castle that made that possible.

If he angled himself just right, he could see the fortress itself between two tall buildings across the street. It stood above the city proper, on the side of the mountain. The vertical and angular walls resembled the body of a bird of prey, wings folded tight as it stood on its perch, and the dominant central tower was the head, with hooked beak and heavy eye. Ferocious and protective, the princess watched over her nest from above, keeping them all safe from harm.

Everything Joe possessed flowed from her. Like his favorite book said, she was the wellspring of his good fortune. A bridge between the divine moon and the ponies in the city. Long ago, when dreams ended as the moon set, the princess blazed a path skyward for them, making the moon eternal. She showed them how to raise themselves ever higher, until they too could touch her moon. That ascent was marked on every coin in Equestria; the princess's profile was stamped into one side and the moon dominated the flip side. Through that association, the money became something more. A promise of prosperity for regular unicorns like him. He worked hard for every coin, and under the shelter of his princess's wings, those coins had been his reward.

He finished washing the cups out and put them on the 'clean' rack. One of his regulars called his name, a smile lighting up her face. There were a lot of nice folks who knew the value of hard work and how much he put into this place. And more of them streamed in through the door every minute. As the shop came alive around him, Joe couldn't wait to meet every single one.

He was right here for them, on this little corner in the city of Canterlot.

Rarity had only had time for four hours of sleep, and the burn was inflaming her already overstressed mind. Half-mad from fatigue, she felt like Captain Fairweather, protagonist of Cynic DeKey's Brave the Blue Sea. Dozens of draft schematics ranged far and wide over the table, overlapping haphazardly and pushing each other up along their fold creases like cresting waves. She was a captain of industry at the wheel of her ship, the S.S. Rarefaction, and everypony on-board depended on her to steer them right. But she couldn't escape the terror of being aimlessly adrift. Somewhere in this vast and treacherous sea, buried like sunken treasure, was the one design anticipating exactly what ponies would be raving about in a year's time. The dress that would symbolize an age. A product to blow her competitors out of the water. Now, the only problem lay in finding it. She scoured the designs, pushing the rejects away and pulling the potentials close, dreaming of making waves. One particular green dress came to mind, and she shuffled the diagrams around to search for it. The waves shifted, but she couldn't find the treasure she sought. Finally, in a fit of aggravation, she jumped atop the sea and walked across the water, her muzzle close to the tabletop, hunting the design like a mariner searching for whales.

The door opened and Coco Pommel called, “Rarity?”

“Quiet!” Rarity shouted, not looking up. “Busy. Ah, there it is!” She stalked over to the design she wanted, near the far corner. But after studying it for a moment, she decided it really wasn't all that great after all. Certainly not good enough to beat out the competition in a city already overfull with fashion. She turned to Coco, pushing her unkempt mane out of her eyes, and asked, “What is it?”

“It's almost 7 o'clock.”

“And....?”

“And you need to go into the office before the tour of the art exhibit starts.”

Rarity reared back and then pounded her forehooves on the table. She'd forgotten all about the exhibit. In the corner, a forgotten turntable spun aimlessly, its needle stuck in the end groove, spiraling into infinity. Now that she noticed it, the static crackling from the speaker sounded rather loud. How long it had been since the record ran out? The only thing she remembered were dresses. An endless pile of dresses to sail through, searching for a safe port. She shuddered and shook her head, bringing herself back down from the dreamy heights of the moon to earthly reality, then hopped off the table.

“Walk with me,” she said to Coco.

She magically lifted the record off the platter. It hovered in front of them as they walked through the door and entered the sprawling, spacious, two-story living room of Rarity's penthouse, designed and decorated by Magnus LeFarrier himself. At the price she had paid, he guaranteed she would love every inch of the place. He hadn't disappointed her. From the fake rock and wood panels ringing the lower walls, to the tiered hardwood floor rising up to the lush indoor garden at the back, and finally the glowing chandelier in the image of the moon hanging from the faux cloud-capped ceiling, the penthouse was simply second to none. Her gardener, Smokey, tended to the palm fronds and bushes rising from the inky mulch, lending them vitality by touch alone. Pure earth pony magic. Rarity had never seen a room so alive and in touch with glorious nature.

She sent the vinyl record flying across the room, past the enormous window taking up a whole wall. The record descended onto her sound system and, with a burst of magic, she flicked the switch and dropped the arm onto the groove. The intro to Sunday in the Park with Georgian Grande came from carefully concealed speakers, expertly placed to give the music the richest and fullest sound possible as it filled the penthouse. Of all Cynic DeKey's musicals, throughout the years this one had remained Rarity's absolute favorite, and how could it not? The struggle of Georgian Grande to create his art in the midst of every other pony trying to tear him down was something Rarity could relate to very well indeed. Pausing in the center of the room, she closed her eyes and opened her ears. The string section swelled up to a grand and bright brass blare. Oh, how energetic and inspiring! She swayed to the sprightly brumph of the horns, which lent the song such a propulsive patter. The pitch perfect sound of inspiration. How many times had she listened to this album while creating her dresses? The music had a way of pouring into her ears and burrowing into her brain, allowing the ideas and emotions buried inside it to escape and flow forth.

Her private cook stood in the open kitchen, off to one side of the living room. She gestured for him to bring over her oatmeal. It was seasoned with exotic and expensive spices that, like the fragrant and aromatic cup of coffee he also brought, came directly from the territories. But no amount of imported food and drink could ever replace the deft hoof her cook used. She had recruited him from one of Canterlot's finest restaurants, and he'd been worth every bit.

While scarfing down breakfast, rejoicing in the divine music, and waiting for the coffee to wake her up so she could face another day, she asked Coco what else was on her itinerary.

“Work at nine, where you'll select your second favorite dress from the new line and wear it on the gallery tour from eleven until two, when you have a quick meeting with the CEO of General Horsepower to harry him into accepting the merger. I've drawn up some arguing points for you, by the way. After that, you see your shrink at three, then head back to the office to get your favorite dress from the new line and wear it to the premiere of Cynic DeKey's new musical, The River Runs Wild. Curtains up at seven.”

Gulping down the last of her oatmeal, Rarity asked, “What would I do without you?”

“Get a new assistant.”

Rarity studied the skyscrapers of Canterlot through the window. Those towers of light, built and powered and maintained by thousand of ponies working in tandem. Full of ponies like her, running businesses, building dreams, reaching for the moon. She spared a thought for all the unicorns running around without such a wonderful assistant who made all that possible. Her eyes went higher, to the High Castle above the city. Did the princess herself have an assistant half as capable as Coco? Sturdy, dependable Coco Pommel.

A framed oil painting of Rarity's lovely parents hung on the wall. Gone long before their time, sadly. But the words of advice they gave her remained in her memory. When Rarity was young and just learning how to spend the family fortune wisely, they admonished her to always treat her workers well. If she did that, her workers would treat her well in return. That was her duty, how she kept the promise of Canterlot alive. And so, for the past twelve years she strove to live up to their words. Perhaps it was her way of keeping them alive. And she must've done something right, because now she had everything a pony could ever dream of.

Except a few more hours in the day, obviously.

“Another assistant, yes," she said finally. "But a better one? I think not. Now, I'm going to freshen up. Be a dear and tidy up the designs, then pick one to go into mass production.”

“Which one?”

Rarity grinned. “Surprise me.”

After a moment of apprehension, Coco, too bashful to smile back, simply nodded. “Will do, ma'am.”

But before Rarity left, she took one last look out the window at the buildings of Canterlot, the gleaming city that sat at the heart of the eternal night.

Where dreams came true.

“This is Canterlot calling.”

Twilight Sparkle woke up shouting. Every nerve, every instinct screamed at her to gallop away from the raging fire torching her coat and mane and burning her body to ashes. She pushed herself off the sweat-stained pillow, panting and terrified, her legs so tense and taut they hurt. She couldn't think with all the blinding panic consuming her. But the longer she stood on her bed, the more she wondered where the heat had gone. Why it was so cool and dark, and the ground below her hooves was so soft. Gradually, her dream dissolved into fragments that mixed with the real world around her. The two ran together and became thoroughly confused as they dueled for control of her senses, but gradually reality reasserted itself.

“Welcome to the EBC World Service," the radio on her night table said, “transmitting to Equestria and beyond at the top of the dial.”

Just a dream, she thought. Her shoulders sagged and her head lolled. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped from her mane. Her lungs ached as she panted heavily for breath. But it was alright, nothing was going to harm her. Here she was, back in the real world. She gently settled down and laid her chin back down on the pillow. Her eyes lingered on the wall across the bedroom, that familiar slab of bare gray that greeted her every morning. She knew its subtle paint variations and smudges very well by now. With one leg still in the dream world, it seemed so flimsy. Like she could give it a push and watch it fall away. Watch the whole room break apart. But what would she find behind the facade? The raging fire? Or a cold and empty void? The thought of floating forever, cold and alone, made her want to scream all over again.

The radio continued: “In the capital, the eternal night is looking lovely so far, but an alert from the coast tells us a nasty smog cloud is inbound from Las Pegasus. Pegasus crews are standing by, and we'll have an update on their status later on....”

Twilight dragged herself off the bed and stood dizzily in the center of the bedroom, her senses distorted by the weight of sleep. Her bones cracked loudly when she stretched. She reset the radio's alarm for 7am the next day. Another day, just like this one. And the last one. And the day before that.

She padded on unsteady legs into the combination kitchen and living room of her condominium-apartment, but when she reached the doorway she was struck once again by how lonely the conapt looked.

All the furniture came wholesale from the LeFarrier department store. The ads in the newspapers and magazines depicted a stallion relaxing in a recliner with a smile on his face, implying LeFarrier-brand furniture was guaranteed to make her so happy. But not once did the alleged 'living' room ever stop feeling utterly empty and destitute. An eerie stillness pervaded it, suffusing the air with dread, like a permanent vigil for the dead was being held. And since she was the only pony living there, that meant she must be the dead one. In fact, the only two signs of life in the whole place were the haphazard pile of books on her (LeFarrier-brand) coffee table, and the neon billboard across the street shining through her window shades, flickering an eternal advertisement for Lorca-brand Canned Watermelon. Twilight had bought a can from the supermarket once. It did not make her as happy as the smiling mare on the billboard.

The framed pictures on the walls were from the Whinnydom-Neighson vintage gallery, a matching set of 'authentic reproductions', the mail-order catalog informed her, of theater posters from almost a century ago. The set was promised to add a touch of class to any room. But the performances were all dated from long before she was born, and after hanging them on the wall she came to understand she had no reason to commemorate shows she hadn't attended and had no memory of.

Records lined the bottom shelf of her (LeFarrier-brand) wall unit, right under her sound system. All ready and waiting to be slid out of their sleeves and spun on the turntable. The music wanted to be free, set loose to impose an artificial, pony-made harmony and melody on the chaotic, lifeless static of real life. She had all the records that topped the charts, each with its own unique emotional texture designed to stimulate and simulate a distinct emotional reaction: Rockafilly, by the Swinging Colts; Sunday in the Park with Georgian Grande and Brave the Blue Sea, by Cynic DeKey; even her own giant-hit discotheque album, a relic from before the clubs were shut down. And good riddance, she thought viciously. As a young mare, how many times had she gone out to dance at the discotheque, only to end up standing against the wall, feeling miserable that she couldn't be like the others? That she couldn't move as smoothly and gracefully? That her hyperliterate young self couldn't speak with the kind of dumb wit those idiotic other colts and fillies found endearing? As envy slowly poisoned her young heart, she couldn't see any reason to go out when she could stay home, put the record on, and feel the exact same way.

The ads told her she needed all these things, furniture and art and records, to be happy. Yet the conapt resisted her every attempt at making life from lifelessness. It remained silent, sterile, sullen. Nothing suggested any areas for improvement. It was the most passive-aggressive apartment she'd ever seen.

Twilight went to the kitchen counter and juggled getting a pot of coffee burbling and pancakes frying on the stove. When she opened the cabinet to get the flour out, last night's bottle of hard cider drew her eye. About a fifth was left, and her taste buds immediately salivated for it. It whispered to her that it, and only it, could take away the ennui plaguing her. Could let her enjoy music and art again, without her meddling and over-analytical mind getting in the way. Could make the pain stop and let her be happy as long as the buzz lasted. There was magic in that bottle.

But she had work to do. She took the flour out and slammed the cabinet door on the hard cider. To drown out the alcohol's call, she focused on humming a tune to herself until the blobs that would soon be pancakes merrily sizzled in a pan. That accomplished, she wandered to the coffee table, distantly aware of the radio still playing in her bedroom. Her mother's beautiful leather-bound edition of Starswirl's Storm lay open on the table. Her favorite play. On the page facing the text, a woodcut illustration showed the famous sorcerer harnessing the spirit magic of breezies to work his illusion on the vain, greedy king. Twilight wished powerful magic like that still existed. Magic that let great sorceresses and sorcerers wield amazing spells more powerful than simple levitation. Spells capable of changing the whole world.

On a whim, Twilight hoofed to act five, scene one, and started reading from line one hundred and five:

I lingered in that twilight state of grace

Where such dreams did appear to me anon,

Whisp'ring sweet revelations and ideas

And of a way to end all suffering.

But there was no twilight anymore. In the eternal night, the word didn't refer to anything. It had become an abstract concept learned through description rather than experience. Just like 'morning' literally meant the time after the sun crosses the horizon to the point it reaches its apex in the sky, yet now it simply meant the time after ponies awoke but before they went to work. 'Year', as well, was an outdated construct. How could there ever be a year without the moon moving? Yet all through the centuries the concept had been maintained for tax cycles and production quotas and because it fit how natural getting eight hours of sleep a day felt. All these words survived by warping and mutating from the meanings they originally referred to. She lived in a world where nothing meant what it said it did.

Once, long ago, Twilight asked her mother about her name. "I named you Twilight because 'twilight' meant hope,” her mother had explained, smiling down at Twilight and warming her little filly heart. “Ponies used to long for twilight, because it meant the day was over and their suffering would end.”

But what hope did Twilight have now? Tears welled up in her eyes. Her chest felt like it was being wrenched apart. Across the room, the cider called out to her again. Resisting the urge, she instead stared at the living room, at all the things the ads told her to buy. But she couldn't quell memories of all the happy times with her mother, and her father, and....

“....Shining Armor's unfortunate death,” the radio in the bedroom said.

Twilight gnashed her teeth and ignited her horn. She swung around to face the wireless through the open doorway and magically twisted the tuning dial to 108.5 so hard it almost broke off. Radio Free Canterlot was the one and only station she could rely on to drown out the creeping dread, the knowledge she was all alone now. Alone with all these things that were supposed to make her happy and were failing miserably. Sure enough, a familiar voice came from the speaker grille. Twilight smiled in gratitude as she twisted the volume dial to fill up the conapt, then went back to the stove and tended to her pancakes.

“Hello, hello, hello, morning folks and bedbound slowpokes,” a mare with a low, husky voice said, “this is Thorny Bends and her Lovely Friends coming at you live on Radio Free Canterlot. So, we're coming up on the thousandth year, huh? I just hope the High Castle set their clocks right. I'd hate to find out the millennial was really last week, and we all missed it. Ha! But seriously, we all trust the High Castle here. After all, it's been almost a thousand years since our beloved princess ushered in the eternal night. Where does the time fly?”

“Probably somewhere out of transmission range,” Freepony Young, her sidekick, quipped, “so it doesn't have to listen to this awful show.”

“Very funny, Freepony.” Thorny's voice was droll. "You're a real jokester."

Lightly and airily, he replied, “Not as much of a joke as you, Thorn. Problem is, I can't figure out if the joke is on me, too. After all, I'm stuck in here with you.”

“Tell you what, the joke is on all of us. The biggest, grandest joke of all. The one you spend your whole lifetime trying to figure out, until you're old and gray and gnarled. Then, and only then, do you realize what the punchline is.”

“So enlighten us, you mad prophet, you. What's the punchline?”

“The punchline is that you just spent your whole life trying to figure the joke out, and now it's all over. Your life, that is. The question ate you alive, like one of those snakes nibbling on its own tail. Round and round we go, from birth to death, struggling to decipher the big ones: What's it all about? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? Why do I have to suffer all this pain just to get to the good bits? But have no fear, Freepony, because I think I've finally put my hoof on it.”

Twilight cocked her head and tilted an ear up to catch the coming revelation. A shiver of anticipation went through her.

“So what's the answer?” Freepony asked with considerable scorn.

Thorny chuckled. “I'd love to tell you, but first a little word from our sponsors, Horselover-brand Artificial Fat....”

The radio launched into an advertisement, making Twilight sigh loudly. Right when you think you're about to find out the answer, she thought angrily, they throw a commercial at you. Well, that's one way to stop ponies from tuning out, I guess.

She stepped away from the stove and poured herself a steaming cup of coffee. Unfortunately, it was brewed from locally-grown beans. She tried to save a few bits, and now she was paying for it. While sipping it and savoring the rush, if not the lackluster taste, she checked the daily planner hanging on the wall. Under 'Friday', she'd written: 'Work till 1:00. Session with psychologist at 2:00. Then groceries.' The stove timer went off, letting her know the pancakes were ready. She took them off the pan, dropped that into the sink, and shut the range off. As she sat down at the (LeFarrier-brand) kitchen table to eat, she checked the clock. Its arms pointed at 7:05. Two hours to go before work started. Two hours that were really meaningless, considering the unbroken night outside the window. Those hours meant nothing except what ponies agreed they meant. Her pancakes tasted meager and unsatisfying. She couldn't decide whether to blame that on the ingredients or her own incompetent hooves. But she finished them in a few huge bites anyway, after going through the trouble of making them. She looked around the empty apartment, feeling the boredom and despair settle over her like a shroud, and wondered what she would do until Thorny Bends came back from the ad break. In the cabinet, the bottle of cider called out to her.

It's seven in the morning, Twilight, she told herself, but the bottle called louder and louder, her only company in this lonely conapt. The only thing that gave her the courage to be carefree and to smile at the world. It filled her thoughts until she relented and thought, Eh, might as well finish it off. She drank the cider down swiftly, bracing herself to answer the call of Canterlot. But as the liquid burned down her throat, a lyric from the album Rockafilly came to mind:

'I've never felt so much a like-a....'

"....singing the blues!" the boutique's radio crooned. An earnest announcer then spoke over the rollicking beat. "Next month, the Able Archer Memorial Auditorium is proud to present the most rocking-est concert event of the millennium, the Swinging Colts! Buy your tickets now, before your rocking friends all roll away!"

Before the radio could continue, the salespony returned to the sprawling sales floor of the Guild, one of Canterlot's trendiest fashion boutiques. The store was done in a baroque style, with polished marble floors, soft electric lights inside fake candles, and gilded designs on the plaster walls, like a palatial guildhall from five hundred years ago, during the Reawakening. The unicorn salespony stopped and reared back, holding up a sleek and glittering blue dress in her fetlocks. Trixie Lulamoon stopped lounging on the couch and sat up. Her eyes widened by degrees as she beheld the curling, wavy accents inlaid into the fabric and the short, fluffy feathered train that curled like sea foam. The dress was the very image of an ocean wave.

"And this is the latest Rarefaction-brand design," the salespony declared.

Trixie imagined sporting that beautiful dress to the Chariot theater for opening night. Basking in the astonishment of the socialites. Blockbuster, the sensational star of the stage, would fall to his knees in awe of her grace and style. The thought made Trixie so giddy she trembled. With her horn aglow, she ripped the dress from the salepony's hooves, paying no attention the unicorn's flustered scowl. She was the one paying for the dress, after all, and the customer was always right.

A full-length mirror occupied the back corner. Trixie trotted past the dummy mares and stallions modeling the boutique's expensive wares, forever frozen in perfect poise. At the mirror, she held the dress against her body. The colors accented her coat and mane admirably. On her, the dress was bound to turn heads, especially with the Rarefaction name attached. There was no fashion designer in Canterlot whose brand commanded more respect and opened more doors for little old Trixie Lulamoon. Today, she was an insignificant archivist. But she knew, deep in her heart, she was destined for great and powerful things. It was her calling.

"I'll take it," she declared dramatically.

The salespony smiled. "Do you have credit with us already?"

"Oh, Trixie always pays cash for her dresses," she said casually. The salespony, caught off-guard, named a very large price for the dress, but Trixie merely replied, "It won't be a problem. I'm going to see if this one fits."

Without waiting for a reply, she cantered towards the changing rooms. When she passed through the doorway, the baroque decor gave way to a bland, thoroughly-modern hallway with linoleum floors and white drywall. The radio played through a round speaker grille in the ceiling. Trixie was delighted to hear the station was done with the commercials and had returned to the rerun of The Galloping Gossips she'd been enjoying. It was her favorite radio sitcom, and this was one of her absolute favorite episodes, too. Her idol, the quick-witted and even quicker-dismayed socialite Blanche Shockley - "It's pronounced 'Bee-lan-shay Show-clay!'" as the good old mare herself often corrected - was advising her galpal, the perpetually neurotic and terrified Rose Wilting, on how to carry herself while talking to the stallion she had long admired from afar for the first time.

"Just remember when to strut, and you won't be in a rut," Blanche explained in a singsong voice. "The strut, Rose, is the best weapon in a mare's arsenal. Use it wisely, and all the stallions will be rushing over to talk to you before you can say what's what. You'll emerge from your cocoon like a beautiful social butterfly."

"With those great big bulging blood-shot eyes of hers," their irascible and acid-tongued friend Sally Lander said, "she'll be more like a social cicada."

While pushing open the door to dressing room eight, Trixie cackled along with the studio audience. Even through she knew the line by heart, it was the waspish and near-shrieking delivery that made it so uproarious. Oh, how she wanted to run in those high society circles, gossiping to her confidants about everypony else and living the comfortable life. She gazed into the mirror, picturing herself strutting into the latest garden party, being the envy of every mare and the object of desire for every stallion. Even Blanche Shockley herself, the very definition of poise, would bow down before Trixie's fabulousness. In her imagination, it was such a glorious sight having the Galloping Gossips in awe of her. She would be the mare at the head of the herd, and every pony would lag behind her, sick with envy.

"You're late," Lightning Dust said.

Trixie glanced at the reflection of the other mare, dressed inconspicuously, standing in the corner behind her. Nonplussed, Trixie shrugged herself into the dress. "It takes a while to find an outfit that really says 'Trixie!'"

"Here," Lightning Dust said. "Your monthly allowance."

She reached into her saddlebag, took out a wrapped roll of coins, and placed it on the shelf that ran along the dressing room wall. With a flick of her fetlock, she sent it rolling along the counter until Trixie stopped it with her hoof. Trixie lifted it up and examined it, feeling the heft of all those bits. They had a satisfying weight. A sturdy weight.

"I'm afraid I'll need a little more," Trixie said. "This won't quite cover the dress. The rich life isn't cheap, you know."

Expectantly, Lightning Dust pulled out another roll and sent it along the counter into Trixie's outstretched hoof.

"Much obliged." Trixie smiled at Lightning Dust's reflection, then went back to admiring her own. "Do you have any special instructions for me?"

"Same as always: observe and report."

"One of many things Trixie excels at."

Lightning Dust flashed her a fake, indulgent sort of smile, eerily like the one the salespony gave her.

"If you say so," Dust said.

Trixie twirled around with a flourish to face the other mare and struck a pose. "How do I look?"

"Great," Lightning Dust said with an utter lack of enthusiasm. She headed out of the dressing room, pausing at the door only long enough to say, "If there are any developments, we'll get in touch."

Then the door slammed shut behind her, and Trixie was left alone with her beautiful, beautiful new dress. Yes, do be in touch, she thought. As long as you bring me some more of those wonderful bits, I'll be looking forward to it oh so very much!

Chapter 2

Once, the photograph had been straight and the marble pegasus in it had soared majestically upward. But the single strip of peeling yellow tape that kept it fixed to one side of the bathroom mirror had worn away with age, making the photo slant until the fearless flier, sculpted in ancient times by Galloptea, was angled towards the floor. It wasn't fair. She was so bold and brazen, with her stone wings spread wide, and yet she, the pinnacle of physical perfection, was doomed to fall.

Fluttershy had taped the photo there years ago, hoping it would encourage her to work-out like a madmare at the gym and bulk up her wing strength. Make her into a real pegasus. Dozens of them, magazine ads and newspaper pictures and postcards and recruitment posters, went up all around her apartment, surrounding her every minute of every day.

She wiped the steam off the mirror and spread her own wings, those feeble and pathetic things. She frowned at herself.

Over the years, the tape had worn off one by one, and down they came. She didn't bother picking them up again unless it was to put them in the trash. Now, the photo on her mirror was the only one left. The only one still flying.

The longer she stared at her reflection, the bigger the lump in her throat got, until it was too big to swallow down again. Her downturned eyes, her cowardly yellow coat damp from the bath, her pink mane dangling in wet strands that hid her face; nothing about her suggested strength. Quite the opposite. Even at a glance, she looked more likely to shrink away than stand up and fight. Though she had wings, she was most definitely not a pegasus.

You're supposed to have no fear, she thought savagely. You're supposed to guard the eternal night. But you were too much of a wimp for the army and you couldn't fly fast enough for weather patrol, so now you're stuck with the Bureau of Harmony, where even weaklings like you can do their duty. You have nopony to blame for this but yourself.

That didn't stop the gnawing in her stomach, though. The burning, acidic feeling, like she was about to throw up, that came to her every single morning. If it was only desk work, she might be able to handle it. But every time she went in to the office, there was a chance they might send her out on assignment, and that was what dug into her nerves like a spear. She thought yet again about quitting, but who would hire her? She was timid and quiet in job interviews, and she certainly didn't have what it took to fight to the top of the job market. Not to mention pegasus ponies rarely landed jobs that didn't play to their strengths. Security, transportation, and weather, in other words.

The radio was still playing in the living room. "....Canard-brand Osteological Vitamins," an announcer said, catching her ear, "when used as directed, are guaranteed to cure those unsightly aches and get you back in tip-top shape! Ponies who use Canard have nearly twice the bone strength of those who don't! Our loyal customers agree." Testimonials chimed in: "When I got tired just walking down the street, Canard got me up and on my hooves again!" "I feel healthier than ever, and it's all thanks to my little bottle of Canard." "Hi, I'm Thriftier Spend, owner of Super-Duper-brand supermarkets, and I've sworn by Canard for years. That's why I'm pleased to announce a special low price at all my stores across the nation! This is a product that ponies need, and when ponies need it, I got it. And remember...." The Canard-brand jingle played as he finished: "'When getting up is hard, reach for Canard!'"

But Fluttershy had used the stuff for a whole year, and it hadn't done a thing to make her wings stronger. All it did was drain her bank account.

Then, blessedly, the voice of Thorny Bends returned: “Welcome back, folks, and aren't Canard-brand Osteological Vitamins great? I think they're swell. They really put the vigor back in you, like those old patented tonics used to promise. This really is a land of plenty, you know? Now, before the break, we were talking about questions. The big questions. But really, don't we know the answers already, deep in our bones? The pegasus ponies know it. No matter how high they fly, they always hit that glass ceiling, don't they? Sure, most ponies don't come right out and say the winged ones are just the brawn, that they shouldn't soar to the top because they don't have the brains for upper management. We all just kind of silently agree that it's their duty is to get along out there and do their part for the good of us all.”

“So when are they coming to arrest you, then?”

“Ha ha. But be serious, Freepony. The pegasi follow the orders, not give them. We call that duty. Legends say that in the old days, ponies got a mark on their flank when they realized what path they were supposed to take. A custom-tailored destiny. The meaning of life. Nowadays they say that's a myth, and that our way is better. Simpler. Now, we just have rubber stamps, 'Accepted' or 'Rejected', that the corporations or the High Castle stamp on our job applications. 'Sorry, colt and/or filly, no openings here. It's the market, you see. But best of luck, though!' It's much more efficient now. You don't have to spend time searching for who you are. You just become what they need you to be. Another wonderful facet of standardization: one size fits all; use only as directed; follow the duty we need you to fulfill. Couldn't be simpler. And you know me, I'm all for simplification.”

There was always a faint incredulity to Thorny's voice. A whiff of irony, like she couldn't believe what she was saying either. Fluttershy pictured her raising her eyebrow - though she couldn't ever remember seeing a picture of the DJ - and smiling. Thorny was in on the joke. It was a brilliant way to get around the Midnight Guard. Thorny Bends felt like a friend, regardless of how much a pony agreed with the High Castle. A much better source of inspiration than those pictures of pegasi.

Relieved that somepony else understood what she was going through, she smiled at her reflection.

After a light breakfast, Fluttershy walked out the front door of her apartment building. She paused on the sidewalk as a stiff breeze blew through her still-damp mane, making her shiver. Canterlot was the center of the nation. When the weather patrol brought warmer air in from around the world, it all congregated here. This was the crossroads of the winds, the focal point where they all converged, and it seemed like those winds got a little colder every year. Down the street, a crew of earth ponies in bright orange vests watered and tended a row of trees planted next to the curb. Those meager trees always wilted a little more with every passing year.

The final winter, she thought with a shiver of dread.

She told herself that was just a conspiracy theory. During the Reawakening, some mathematicians studied the past five hundred years' worth of crop yields and concluded the magic was fading away. The EBC and her own schooling condemned it as a misinformed lie, but the EBC and the schools always followed the High Castle's lead. And despite the exploding population, every year the High Castle bragged about the increase in weather patrol recruitment, yet all that extra horsepower never made the wind warmer.

Oh, well, she thought finally, that has nothing to do with me. If it's real, then the High Castle will protect us. That's what it's there for. All I want to do is get work over with and go home.

She started walking up Cavalcade Street and passed an abandoned lot, a relic of another winter: the Winter Brigade. The ponies who first dusted off those old books and began to whisper about the final winter.

The gaps in the warped wooden fence allowed her to see the twisted wreckage of a building toppled twelve long years ago. Had it really been that long? she wondered. When she was just a filly, she looked out the window to see fighting in the streets down below. Some memories a pony never forgets. They stay as vivid and vital as the instant they're formed. And the brief, scattered impressions of the Winter Brigade clashing with the Civil Force was one of them.

Now that the economy was improving again, the city could rebuilt itself and slowly heal the scars of the Rising. Put it in the past, where it belonged. The High Castle said the economic crash had nothing to do with the Rising, but as she slipped past two bulky pegasus ponies in gray fatigues standing guard on the street, she reminded herself that the High Castle also said the Civil Force had never shelled a building, when she knew for a fact that wasn't true. But the Rising was down and the economy was up. It was a brand new Canterlot, like the slogan said. A row of identical posters had been pasted onto the fence, covering up the broken view of the ruined building. They told pedestrians that, 'In harmony, we stand as one'. Below a bold illustration of the pony races in their natural harmony, in the corner, was the Bureau of Harmony's logo.

A canary-yellow autocarriage rolled around the corner and down the street. She raised a foreleg to hail it. The taxicab pulled to the curb, its engine idling, while she pulled the latch down with a hoof to open the rear door. She climbed in and sat on her haunches on the padded seat.

“Where you headed?” the pegasus in the driver's seat asked her.

Maybe I should become a cab driver, she thought idly. But what if her fares expected her to chat with them? She could never handle that. Avoiding his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, she mumbled, “Um, Bureau of Harmony, please.”

“You got it."

He put his forelegs through the holes in the steering wheel, stepped on the gas pedal, and deftly maneuvered the cab into the morning traffic. She stared out the window and tried to look deep in thought.

"Some weather," he called over his shoulder. "Supposed to be a whole bunch of smog coming in later."

"Oh," was all Fluttershy could manage. "Is that so?"

"Yeah. They say it's good for the environment. Keeps the cold out."

Even though Fluttershy was a pegasus, she knew nothing about the weather. She only knew how to work in an office. Should she bluff her way through the conversation? She didn't really have the energy to keep up a conversation, and the hack might know more than she did. He might think she was pathetic for being so ignorant. So she kept her mouth shut and watched the buildings go past. Most of them had been rebuilt, but a few still bore scars. An empty lot here, a shuttered storefront there. They rode in silence, the city muffled by the glass, plastic, and steel of the autocarriage. She felt so cut off from the world. Like she was inside a tomb. She swallowed heavily and tried to bury the thought. Thorny Bends and her Lovely Friends would've lifted her mood, but the hack was busy driving, and she didn't want to be a bother or attract too much attention to herself. She dreaded to know what awful things he was already thinking about her, behind those scornful eyes that demanded to know why she was so cowardly and weak. All she could do was cower in the back seat.

The cab drove past Perky Pet, at the bottom of a building on the corner of her street. She instead thought of the adorable little bunny trapped inside his cage somewhere inside its walls. Just a few more paychecks and he would be hers, forever and ever. Until the winter comes, she thought, and shivered a little at that.

As if the hack had read her mind, he turned the radio on. But he hadn't read it very well and tuned into The Galloping Gossips instead of Thorny Bends, a sitcom about the wacky misadventures of a catty yet close-knit group of high society mares. Fluttershy didn't mind too much. She would never be part of the high life, but there was always the radio. She could hear all about it and imagine what it was like. Of course, in her imagination, she could have to be a unicorn, but that didn't bother her either. She certainly wasn't cut out to be a pegasus.

Hoarsely, Blanche said, "Rose! What am I going to do with a forty-foot parachute at a garden party?!"

"Y-you said to bring a parasail! Your exact words!"

"She said a parasol, you dolt!" Sally Lander shouted.

"....a parasol?" Rose asked. "You mean I ran around to every sports outfitters in town for nothing?"

"Yes, a parasol!" Blanche said. "A frilly umbrella you carry around to complement the exquisite antique dress you aren't wearing. That was the theme of the party, Rose! Were you even listening to me?"

"Well, I was a bit distracted with daddy's fussing, if you'll recall!"

"Did you try giving him his bottle?" Sally shot back.

As the driver and Fluttershy were finally united by laughter, his a boisterous chortle, hers a slight chuckle, she thought wistfully, Being the idle rich sounds like fun. Just a neverending string of garden parties and vacations and chauffered hovercarriages. No office jobs for those lucky mares.

The moment Rarity set hoof on the rooftop of her skyscraper, the wind went to work on her mane. She clamped down tight on her wide-brimmed hat, trying to protect her newly-coiffed hairdo, and pulled the stylish black trenchcoat tight around her body.

“Here are the talking points I mentioned,” Coco said, taking long-legged strides to keep pace. “For the meeting with General Horsepower.”

With her close-cropped mane, Coco had nothing to fear from the strong wind. Rarity was jealous, but only slightly. She took the folder and made a mighty effort to keep it closed until she could slip it into her designer saddlebag. They climbed the corrugated metal steps up to the concrete landing pad. The warning lights ringing its perimeter blinked red against the skyline's jagged golden spires. The illuminated city gleamed in streaks off the lush navy chrome of her sleek hovercarriage. It rested silently on the pad while her pegasus pilot, dressed in a windbreaker, fueled it. When he saw her coming he yanked the nozzle out of the tank and dragged the hose snaking across the concrete out of her way.

Rarity spared a thought for the delightful irony: these top-of-the-line hovercarriages, only invented fifteen years ago, had brought General Horsepower to the brink of ruin because nopony could afford them after that dreadful economic crash. Nopony except the wealthy, like her. And now she was swooping in on one to buy the bankrupt firm out. Under her guidance, though, that would change. General Horsepower's profits would grow so high they'd touch the moon. When she was done with this city, it would truly be, like the High Castle's slogan said, a brand new Canterlot.

With a spark of her magic, she made the latch on the rear door come undone. The door swiveled open vertically like a scissor blade. She and Coco climbed into the back and sat down while the pilot closed the door after them, then climbed into the front and settled himself behind the controls. The hovercarriage hummed to life as he flicked the ignition switches and cycled the jet engines up.

He checked the radar scanner, then announced, “Airspace is clear. Taking her up.”

The engines rumbled and thrust against the concrete. They lifted the vehicle up and into the eternal night sky. As it rose, the pilot angled it towards downtown and pushed the wheel forward. The nose dipped as the hovercarriage swooped forward, through the dense canyon of skyscrapers. It rushed past a billboard erected on top of a nearby building that declared 'A Brand New Canterlot for a brand new millennium!' and continued into the canyons of steel and glass and concrete that made up the city.

"I'd like to listen to the radio, please," Rarity said.

"Sure thing," the pilot said. "Which station?"

"Radio Free Canterlot."

"I'm, uh, not familiar with that one. What's the frequency?"

"108.5."

He fiddled with the radio on the instrument panel, dialing it past the disjointed clamor of chattering ponies and snippets of music until the voice of Thorny Bends emerged from the hiss of the static.

"....question to end all questions: what is it that separates ponies from animals?"

Long ago, Rarity read The Wealth of the Wellspring. Despite her distaste for the protagonists, all those self-important ponies with no generosity whatsoever, there were some very poignant bits. Like the part about money being the seed of dreams, and how that set ponies apart from animals. She wondered if Thorny Bends was a fan of the book.

To her pilot, she said, "Delightful, thank you."

The pegasus stared at her in the rearview mirror, eyebrows raised incredulously. "You want to listen to this?"

He was young and fresh and straight from the company motor pool. Rarity missed her old pilot, who had just retired; a stoic old warhorse who flew perfectly and didn't ask questions, especially about her taste in radio programs. She found Thorny Bends and her Lovely Friends a much-needed breath of fresh air among all the hot wind piping from radio speakers around the city, especially those gossipy talk shows that poured over every petty rumor circulating throughout the nation.

"Need I remind you who's paying your wages?" Rarity asked sweetly.

The pilot gave a shrug and returned to his flying. Satisfied her taste in entertainment wasn't being mocked, she resumed listening to the transmission. As she stared out the window, her eyes relaxed and her mind drifted, taking in the city going past.

"....it's not our ability to use tools," Thorny was saying, "it's not our opposable fetlocks that let us pick things up, and it sure isn't the herd mentality that lets us band together. Animals can do all these things. So how are ponies different? What makes us so special? I'll tell you what, folks: we can use symbols. We can say, on a very basic level, that one thing stands for another. We don't just think about symbols, we take them and make them and share them with each other. In the end, that's all language is: taking a certain noise from the vocal chords or a set of lines on paper and saying they're really something else. And with language, our thoughts can travel through space and time and last for eternity. Symbols let us embrace a higher rationality and become part of something larger and grander: civilization. That is what animals can't do. Sure, our pets can learn a few words if we say them enough times and associate them with simple tricks in order to get a treat, but they can't make the great leap our symbolic minds can. No intuition. Animals just act on instinct, live in the here and now. They can't grasp the meaning behind my words."

"In that case," Freepony chimed in, "I envy them."

Rarity suddenly became aware of the flashing neon billboards outside. From every rooftop and the side of every building, they shone and left streaks of light on the curved hovercarriage windows. Each one peddled its wares to the already overcrowded real estate of the watchful pony eyeball. They glowed in bright and vivid colors, an autocarriage maker here, an expensive cider manufacturer there, clamoring for attention over every other advertisement. All those symbols competing for attention. Which one would she pay attention to? But the question was instantly settled: as the city's premier dressmaker, her discerning eye was razor-sharp. It would pick out only the most fabulous of them all. But what if all those inferior ads try and tear the most fabulous one down? she thought with a sudden shudder. She told herself that was crazy. Billboards were just billboards. Her frightful reaction made no sense. But the uncomfortable feeling, unable to be fully articulated, lingered in her mind, shapeless and formless.

An instinct, she suddenly comprehended. Like an animal. But I'm more than an animal, she thought. I have my thoughts. My 'higher rationality'.

"And this goes far beyond just language and writing, folks," Thorny said. "We are defined by symbolic acts and gestures and objects, and that definition is what we carry with us when we interact with others. In the end, we're all made of symbols...."

While the cab idled, Fluttershy stared up at the hovercarriages darting overhead. Their running lights shone against the night sky like shooting stars. I wish I could fly, she thought. Real flying, I mean, in a hovercarriage. Ha, these measly little wings of mine would probably break if I got more than ten feet off the ground. I wish I could afford a hovercarriage so I didn't have to wait in these checkpoints.

She looked through the front windshield to see how many vehicles were in front of them, waiting to pass. Only three left, luckily.

The sound of rain came from the radio. "Well, it looks like my parasail came in useful after all," Rose Wilting declared. "With this makeshift tent, Blanche's decorations are safe from the downpour!"

"Quick thinking, Rose," said another pony. "But what if there's a breeze?"

The long agonizing silence that followed was slowly replaced by the studio laughter growing more uproarious, and then the sound of a stiff wind and flapping fabric being pulled taut. A distant elderly stallion shouted out, confused, then yelped for Rose.

"Oh, no!" the other mare said. "Rose, the parasail's ropes snagged your father's chair!"

Rose gasped. The sound of hooves hitting grass came from the speakers. "Hold on, daddy! I'm coming for you!" She grunted. "There, I've got you!"

"But....but who's got you?!" her father asked.

"Wha....? Ah, ah, AH!" Rose's voice trailed off into the distance, as the sound of flapping fabric and wind whipped her away into the sky.

"Oh, no!" Blanche moaned. "My decorations are getting all wet!"

Faintly, Rose hollered over the wind, "Blanche, help!"

"Is that Rose in the sky?" Sally asked.

"ROSE!" Blanche shouted at the top of her lungs. "CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

"Yes!"

"IT'S PRONOUNCED....BEE-LAN-SHAY!"

The studio audience roared with laughter as the ending theme, a snappy violin piece, played. Fluttershy checked the clock on the cab's dashboard. Eight o'clock already.

The cabbie turned the radio off as she rolled the cab up to the blockade. The brakes squealed as it stopped, and the hack rolled his window down. Fluttershy pulled her ID booklet out of her saddlebag. She glanced at the two armored pony carriers that blocked off the street, except for a slim gap an autocarriage could squeeze through. More than anything, she loved to read books about the ancient natural world. In the woodcuts, creatures called 'bears' walked about hunched over on all four legs. The APCs reminded her of those illustrations a little. That is, if bear legs ended in big crushing wheels half as tall as a pony.

Behind the sawhorses marking the cordon line, pegasus ponies in the gray fatigues of the Civil Force ambled around. Some kept watch with alert and steely eyes, while others just stretched or chatted to each other. But even the ones who didn't seem all that invested in their duty had daggers in their eyes when they glanced in her direction. Their contempt pierced her coat and skin, dug into her, hurt her. Several pony-shaped shadows waited on the rooftops, watching for pegasi who tried to fly past without going through the checkpoint. Atop the tanks, the Civil Force troops sitting at the turrets waited for something to shoot at. Memories of cannons just like those pounding the apartment building down the street from her own came to Fluttershy unbidden and refused to be banished again.

A pegasus in a black patrol uniform with golden trim walked up to the driver's side window. A large emblem of a winged skull was embroidered onto his dark purple beret. It scowled down at her, as ugly as death itself. When he moved, the muscles bulged under his skin. Power was coiled in his wings, waiting to burst out. She whimpered as the stallion's eyes casually swept over the cab's interior, then returned to the cabbie.

“Destination?” the Shadowbolt officer asked.

“My fare's headed for the Bureau of Harmony,” the hack said as he gave his passport over.

The officer flipped through the book while more Shadowbolts walked around the cab, inspecting it. Meanwhile, the Civil Force lingered in the background, ready to rush into action if necessary. Fluttershy's heart hammered in her chest and pounded throughout her head as the weight of all those eyes came down on her. She had never felt more like a shoddy, misshapen imitation of a true pegasus.

The officer in charge passed the driver's passport back, then strolled to Fluttershy's window. She rolled it down and gave him her own passport. Her hoof trembled badly. Surely he would notice how nervous she was and give the order for her to be arrested. They would drag her away, to who knew where. Locked away, never to be seen again. But who would miss her? Nopony at the Bureau, that was for sure. Sweat made her mane sticky and threatened to drip down across her face.

Keep calm, Fluttershy. He won't keep you here long as long as you don't act suspicious.

The Shadowbolt officer took a good, long, agonizing moment to check the booklet over. Then he gave it back and waved to the other officers at the checkpoint. To the driver, he said, “Alright, you're good to go."

The hack thanked him, rolled his window up, and put his hoof to the gas pedal. He maneuvered the autocarriage into the gap between the two APCs, which filled the cab's window as it scraped past them. Soon the checkpoint was behind them and Fluttershy could breathe again.

She went through the same ordeal every workday, but it never got any less nervewracking.

With all the morning traffic backed up by other checkpoints here in the heart of the city, there was no telling how soon they would make it to the Bureau. As they wound through the streets, Fluttershy stared out the window again. Billboards bombarded her from every building, so many of them that the driver could take the same street for a week and she could read a whole different set of them each time.

'The settlements are waiting for you!' one exclaimed. On it, a dusky sky stretched out behind a smiling family. Fluttershy shuddered at the thought of moving out to the territories. Working for the Bureau was terrifying enough for her. She certainly wasn't brave enough to travel out there, under the edge of the harsh sun, and become a settler. Even if the Bureau of Public Health deemed limited exposure to sunlight safe in small doses and with the proper precautions.

The next billboard that passed by had a photo of a model prancing in a pretty dress, showing off how beautiful Rarefaction-brand dresses were. She looks so stylish, Fluttershy thought. They say the clothes make the mare. Maybe a Rarefaction dress will make me look that beautiful. Then she thought of what kind of price tag a quality dress like that would carry, and suddenly felt more strapped for money than ever. She thought about the little bunny waiting to be taken home instead.

Another billboard drifted past her eyes. A line of stoic pegasus ponies in flight suits stood in three-quarter profile against a starry backdrop. The distant streak of a rocket arced towards the horizon of the large moon hanging behind them. 'In the first millennium, we carried ponykind across the world. In the next millennium, we'll carry ponykind beyond it. The Icarion-9 rocket engine, launching in 1010. Auriga Heavy Industries: our wings are yours.'

Finally, after nearly forty-five minutes of driving, the cab entered the roundabout in front of the squat stone Bureau of Harmony building. The tall, slender, graceful princess dominated the grassy center of the circular road. Her stone figure wore a suit of eloquent, antiquated armor. Fluttershy had seen pictures of the original on display in the Equestrian Museum, and the representation was perfect in every painstaking detail. She remembered the celebrations seven years ago, for the eight hundredth anniversary of the Crusade of 192. The statue was built to commemorate the princess leading her knights into battle against the heretical Legion of Discord. Fluttershy stared up in awe at her princess. Now there was a mare who knew what needed to be done and did it. Eight centuries ago, she took it upon herself to destroy the pagan statue the Legion idolatrized, for the good of her realm. She didn't cower in fear, as Fluttershy could tell just from one look at the statue. The princess's wings were fanned out firm, her lips and jaw were set, her head was held up, her one foreleg was raised to stride forward boldly. The worthless and insignificant Fluttershy couldn't take her eyes off that perfect figure. Especially since the cab was revolving around it as it circled the roundabout.

The hack weaved in-between two other autocarriages and stopped at the front entrance of the Bureau. Fluttershy looked at the meter, then pulled some coins from her saddlebag and passed them over to the hack. She didn't wait for him to count out her change. He could keep it, a token of apology for tolerating her pathetic presence. She hurried out of the cab and darted up the stone steps into the lobby, keeping her head down as she slipped into the back of the line for the security checkpoint. Her eyes flicked to the large poster on the wall, illustrated by well-defined pegasi heroically pursuing hunched-over, slimy, evil-looking black creatures with fragile wings, that read:

'If you see a co-worker behaving erratically, THEY MAY BE A CHANGLING IN DISGUISE. Alert the proper authorities at once.'

The mare in front of Fluttershy waved to two laughing stallions in dress shirts walking in the doors. They drifted in front of Fluttershy and struck up a conversation with the other mare, and when the line moved again Fluttershy realized they'd cut in front of her. That's alright, she thought. They can go ahead of me. I'm sure they're in a hurry and just didn't see me here.

When she finally reached the security desk, Blue Baton, a middle-aged pegasus security guard, took her passport. He asked, “Hey, kiddo, how you doing?” as he looked her papers over.

“I'm, um, fine,” she mumbled.

He gave her a form with three randomized security questions: 'Hometown?', 'First Kiss?', and 'Favorite Radio Program?' She took his proffered pen between her teeth and scribbled 'Cloudsdale Air Base', 'None', and 'Thorny Bends and Her Lovely Friends', then gave the paper and pen back. He scanned her answers and compared them to his own book before nodding in approval.

He touched her paper to a flame and then set it in an ash bowl to burn. “You're good to go."

“Thank you,” Fluttershy whispered.

She took her identity papers back and slipped past the desk, down the hall, and into a waiting elevator that took her to the fifth floor. When the doors opened again, the old familiar rows and rows of cubicles greeted her. All at once she felt the weight of hundreds of eyes on her. She started to sweat. It'll be alright, she thought. You've done this a thousand times. Just put your lunch away, then go to your desk and start your paperwork. Nopony's going to stare at you or laugh or do anything. She went to the break room, took her wrapped-up veggie hoagie out of her saddlebag and put it into the refrigerator, and then headed back out to her cubicle. It was one among hundreds, indistinguishable except for the picture of adorable rabbits tacked to the wall. They never failed to brighten up her day.

“Good, you're in,” Vinyl Scratch said from behind her.

When Fluttershy turned around, she saw her manager looking as bored and listless as ever. The only frivolity Vinyl allowed on her immaculately pressed outfit was a set of musical notes running down her tie. Fluttershy took solace in the small comfort that at least one pony in the office treated everything with contempt, rather than just her. It made Fluttershy feel almost normal.

"Yes, Ms. Scratch?"

“Don't bother getting settled.”

Oh, no, Fluttershy thought, her eyes widening. Please don't send me out on assignment. Anything but that. I'm begging you, please!

“We're sending you out on assignment,” her manager said.

In Fluttershy's chest, a great big gaping chasm opened wide and swallowed her whole. Surely Vinyl could see her trembling? Could see how much she hated being sent out on assignment?

“Rarefaction Industries has some stock they need you to inspect. A full list is in here.” Vinyl Scratch levitated a folder onto the desk. “Move along, they'll be expecting you soon.”

Fluttershy slunk back to the breakroom to get her lunch. Maybe she could feign sickness? But she had already done that twice this year, and between that and her bout of the feather flu, she had no sick days left. They would fire her. Would that be so bad? At least they couldn't send me out on assignment again. But for a cowardly pegasus like her, where else would she work? How would she save up enough money for that adorable little bunny rabbit from Perky Pet without a job? Even though the pay was paltry, a government job was a lifeline she couldn't afford to refuse. The princess took care of her ponies when the job market didn't.

Inside the breakroom, Quarter Pounder stood by the fridge eating a veggie hoagie Fluttershy distinctly remembered making just a few hours ago. He froze in guilt when she met his eye by accident, but she quickly dropped her gaze and slipped out of the room again. It's alright, she thought. He was probably just hungry and didn't notice it wasn't his. No need to get angry.

As the elevator took her back down, she pulled the folder out of her saddlebag and glanced at the red cover. It felt much heavier than it looked. She got tired of carrying the weight and stuffed it back into her bag. You're a pegasus, Fluttershy, she told herself sternly. This is your duty. You're lucky to have this job, so you could contribute to your nation in your own measly little way. Now buck up and get this over with like a pegasus should.

Under the sprawling main building of the Equestian Museum, which lay in the shadow of Mt. Canterlot's peak, the Canterlot Archives went deeper still. Down there, Twilight Sparkle could leave her worries, her fears, her sorrows, even herself behind on the surface. Insulate her mind from the world at large, tune herself out and turn onto the radiant knowledge, accumulated over centuries, pulsing from between age-worn covers. The books and the secrets they held were the only things that mattered. She did not. The Archives were a temple to the written word, and she was an acolyte who had carved her own heart out to become a vessel for pure wisdom. Here, insulated by countless tons of dirt and stone, priceless works of art dwelt in blessed silence, just the way she preferred it.

What a supreme irony, she thought. The fruit of the mind, kept safe under the earth. Oh well, at least it's very high underground.

She walked down the hall of the annex. Her elongated shadow contracted and expanded on the cobalt-blue wall and mahogany floor as she passed from electric sconce to electric sconce. Her hooves clacked in the still, dusty air, her steps ringing out and echoing to the ceiling twenty-five feet above. To her right stood the enormous stacks, their shelves filled to overflowing with books and scrolls. Each one was a treasure trove full of forgotten secrets and overlooked tidbits begging to be brushed off and studied. She could spend an entire year just working her way through one aisle.

Save the dreams for when you're asleep, Twilight, she thought. But then she remembered she had dreamed about the Canterlot Archives. Running through the endless stacks, searching for a way out. All in all, not a pleasant dream. She would rather forget it, all things considered.

She reached bookcase #H-821, where the master reference books told her The Sculptures of Galloptea was located. She squeezed into the narrow aisle and tilted her head to scour the titles as she edged on down the row. When she found it, she let loose an "Aha!" in triumph. Using her magic, she pulled it off the shelf and flipped the large book open. A breathtaking photograph of "The Ascent" dominated the first page she opened to. Stunned by its beauty, Twilight soaked up the exquisite detail.

The vast world tree rose up behind an ancient priestess, her veils trailing behind her as she lifted herself into the sky. The tree's fruit was the stars hanging in the heavens, dotting the cosmic dome. She reached for them, smiling in delight, even as she stood atop a pillar which, unbeknownst to her, had large cracks running up its sides.

It was an ancient myth, probably predating even the founding of Roan itself. It spoke of ponies from the dawn of time who believed they could attune themselves to the cosmos and become transcendent beings, but in their hubris they strained the pillars of ephemeral creation until they cracked and broke. The world lay in ruins, its cosmic supports destroyed. The sun stood still in the sky. The seasons froze and the crops refused to grow. So the ponies, infused with the primordial energy of creation they had sought, took up the burden of maintaining the world to heal the damage they had done.

Twilight especially loved the poetic ring of ponies having to actively take part in the upkeep of the universe and, in doing so, ascend upwards and unite with the cosmos. Of course, the myth was just that: a myth. The sun and the changing seasons weren't natural at all, as the prosperity of the Land of the Eternal Moon proved. But the mythmakers, limited by their time and place, may have foreseen the essential metaphysical truth of Equestria's founding in their own way. In allowing every Equestrian to take part in the ascent upwards, the princess had concluded what the ancient Roanans started. She had brought ponies a world in which they could all reach the moon. 'The pinnacle of pony history,' the High Castle said.

Then why did all the powerful magic fade away--?

Shut up, Twilight, she thought to herself furiously. You shut up, right now. Maybe there never was such a thing as powerful magic like that. You learned about it from a play, after all. Just a myth. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Our princess came along after all these fairy tales and swept them aside.

She slipped the cider bottle out of her saddlebag and took a swig to drown out the nagging voice in the back of her mind. It was bringing her down. Making her feel like she had that morning. The alcohol went down hard, spread through her stomach, and climbed up to her head and made it tingle. She smiled in satisfaction and popped a breath mint into her mouth. Then she stowed the cider bottle back into her back and, using her magic, lifted the book up and shut it. The thundering clap resounded throughout the stacks and the vaulted hall. She walked back into the cavernous rotunda of the Canterlot Archives, the center of all knowledge in Equestria.

Every single book and scroll in the nation - and since the founding of the Empire of the Moon, many from beyond its borders as well - had passed into its possession at some point or another. It had been created after the proliferation of knowledge during the Reawakening led directly to the first civil war. In the aftermath, the princess issued a decree for the creation of a central repository where all texts would be cataloged and reviewed before passing into general circulation. In the modern era the Midnight Guard had taken up the duty of reviewing texts, but the grand Canterlot Archives still kept all the master copies in one of the eight separate annexes radiating out from the rotunda. Marble columns and gilded gold frescoes ringed the room. The domed ceiling, laboriously carved out of the mountain rock, depicted a vast starfield. Each constellation had been embodied by an illustration, so that snarling tigers and brave hunters and great sailing ships and capricious gods danced across the stellar expanse. Underneath the painted eternal night, hundreds of research desks were arranged in concentric circles, where other archivists bent over the ancient texts and poured over their wisdom.

Twilight arrived at her own desk and cleared out a space in her mess of notes for the enormous book, while secretly hoping the mare in the research desk across from hers wouldn't open her mouth. But, as usual, Twilight had no such luck.

“Is that Galloptea I spy, hmm?”

Twilight sighed softly. “Yes, Trixie.”

Trixie put on a disaffected frown and inspected her hooficure. “Well, I always thought she was a little melodramatic, myself.”

Swallowing down her contempt, Twilight said, “Galloptea was a master of the form.”

Trixie huffed. “If you say so--”

“I do. And so does everypony else.”

"That's not what they said when she was alive. You do know the story, don't you? It's sad, really. They said she used dark magic to make her statues so realistic, and in Ancient Roan that was strictly forbidden by the Law of the Ancestors, their sacred book of law. The penalty was death, and they executed her for it. But if you ask me--"

"I didn't."

"--it sounds more like somepony else was just jealous they weren't as good as her. After all, a rival sculptor made the initial claim against her. Ponies do get so jealous and petty in the shadow of the great and powerful, don't they?"

"Fascinating, Trixie," Twilight said, deadpan. "Are you done?"

Trixie lowered her foreleg and stared across the desk, her narrowed eyes boring into Twilight. “What are you sticking your nose into ancient art for, anyway? Weren't you supposed to be working on proposals for the planning committee? You know, in honor of the Empire's millennial celebrations? Remember?"

Blood beat in Twilight's temples. Perhaps it was just Trixie's bloated ego irking her to no end, but Twilight heard the possessive in that sentence loud and clear. "The Empire is not a thousand years old," she said, her teeth grinding. "It's a thousand years of eternal night. The Empire was only declared forty-five years ago."

"Officially declared. A thousand years ago was the Empire's symbolic founding."

"Semantics."

"Ha! You're going to lecture me about being a pedant?"

"Anyway, I thought that maybe, just maybe, patterning the designs after ancient art would be a nice bridge to ponydom's past.”

“Let's see if it floats past the planning committee.” Trixie buried herself in a thick book. “And if it doesn't, I'll be here to pick up your slack.”

Twilight felt like throwing a book at the arrogant pony, the thicker the better. Or, more than that, she felt like having another drink. The cider in her saddlebag demanded she take it out and drink it. Only then would this maddeningly mundane world go away. Struggling to keep calm and ignore the thirst in her suddenly-dry throat, Twilight put the book of Galloptea's sculptures on her desk. Hard work would keep her occupied. She flipped the book open to The Neigh of Victory.

It's even more beautiful than I remembered, she thought. Galloptea's muse really went the extra mile on this one.

The photo took up an entire page, its detail ultra fine. She could make out every stroke of the chisel and every crack and nick left by time on the sculpture. A pegasus with one hoof on her defeated enemy threw her head back and neighed. Such exquisite detail on the taut muscles, the fanning feathers, the creases of the face. Her expression really captures the essence of triumph. Twilight felt a cathartic thrill in sympathy with the victorious mare. She could've spent an hour staring at the picture, losing herself in its marvelous details. The ancient historians, though sometimes unreliable and contradictory, all seemed to be in agreement that Galloptea slipped into trances while she worked, going mad with the passion to make her statues perfect, as if possessed. Twilight felt the artistry pouring off the page, and was almost as entranced with admiring Galloptea's art as the sculptor herself had allegedly been while making it.

Twilight threw herself wholeheartedly into designing her preliminary design proposal, arranging the text and sketching out the area where a duplicate of the photo would go, until she had made it perfect.

It's such a beautiful statue, she thought, how can they say no?

Chapter 3

“That is, hooves down, one of the ugliest pieces of so-called 'art' I have ever seen,” Upper Crust said.

“Oh, I agree,” said her husband, Jet Set. “It's positively revolting.”

I think it's quite striking, Rarity thought. But she didn't dare say that out loud, not where the other socialites could hear her. Nevertheless, the statue commanded her attention: the exaggerated lips twisted in agony; the tiny eyes set beneath a brow raised so high it was anatomically impossible; the limp and drooping wings. It was hard not to feel a tug of sympathy for the sculpted pony. The exaggeration of its features only made the torment in its heart all the more apparent.

But Rarity's sense for a camera pointed in her direction was unrivaled among the Canterlot elite. She felt the photographer draw near and subtly angled herself towards him. She scoffed loudly to draw his attention. “If I wasn't so partial to this beautiful dress, I'd tear it off and burn it this very instant,” she declared, taking hold of its hem and holding it up where everypony could see. With delight, she heard the camera's shutter snap. Another moment in time, captured on film forever. For emphasis, she added, “That's how filthy just looking at this disgusting thing makes me feel.”

Thorny's words from that morning came back to her: We define ourselves through symbolic gestures. It was true, she mused. Of course, that didn't mean the gestures had to be genuine. Her company's marketing division had taught her that.

The other socialites murmured agreement with Rarity before shuffling on to the next exhibit. But Rarity lingered a moment to take in the room, now that all those prying eyes weren't watching. A very familiar swing song, with a raucous beat and whirls of spirited trumpets, came from a turntable in the exhibition room's corner. She knew it very well from her youth in the discotheque. The pitch and tone had been altered to make it sound harsh and piercing, almost unbearably unpleasant. Not at all like the smooth sound of the original recording at all. Paintings hung on the walls, all of them eschewing the clean lines and realistic composition the traditionalists embraced in favor of expressionistic figures and heavy emotional texture. Slogans in quotation marks were crudely scrawled around them in sharp and jagged foot-high letters: 'The mess of sloppy rhythm and melody called "swing" or "jazz" mocks the order we hold dear'; 'This alleged art is as lawless as the Winter Rising'; 'The sick mind infects healthy minds and drags them into the dirt'.

In front of the contorted pegasus statue stood a brass plaque. 'Titled "The Martial Spirit", this piece was deemed by its unicorn sculptor a "statement" about General Able Archer and his conduct during the battle for Khymerzj in 963. However, society at large only had question marks about the sculptor's own military valor. Fortunately for Equestria, the newly-formed Midnight Guard proscribed and arrested her shortly after this statue's unveiling in 967. All her works were destroyed except this, as an example of the sickness infecting civilization. See how the noble stature of the pegasus, defender of the civilized world, becomes twisted and limp, mocking their innate virtue. This is how the pegasus ideal is seen by warped minds.'

Laying it on a bit thick, aren't we? Rarity thought as she followed the group into the next room. As soon as she passed through the archway, a white unicorn standing off to one side caught her eye. The tall, sturdy-looking stallion was part of the group, but at the same time he stood apart. There was an edge to him, Rarity sensed, something imperceptibly wild and rebellious. Something most ponies would never notice unless they had their eyes wide open. The stallion gave her a sly half-smile, as if he had tuned into her thoughts and knew exactly how she felt about the exhibit. His wavy blue mane fell around his head artfully, and his mustache had an odd curl to it so that it was almost, but not quite, rendered comical.

She was about to approach him when Jet Set called out her name and waved to her from the other side of the room. Rarity glanced back at the white stallion, but he'd busied himself looking at the art. Rarity briefly entertained the thought of going to the white stallion anyway, but the stiff-looking gray-coated unicorn standing next to Jet Set did not look like a patient pony. She reluctantly trotted over to join them.

“Ah, Rarity.” Jet Set gestured to the stallion. “This is General Mace. He's been meaning to meet you.”

“So you're the little filly who'll soon be making tanks and planes for us,” the gruff stallion said, his cold eyes twinkling. “Just thought I'd size you up for a little bit.”

Rarity gave him a cordial smile. “Well, weapons manufacturing is only a small part of what General Horsepower does.”

“True, but that's the part that concerns me, so forgive me if I'm a little parochial.”

She glanced at his dress uniform, a slightly darker shade of gray than his coat, out of the corner of her eye. One of her subsidiaries had a contract with the High Castle to make uniforms for the Empire, but she couldn't place this one. There were so many different military and intelligence branches it was hard to keep them all straight by their uniforms. They all blurred together, and most of the designs had been drafted by the various branches themselves. She didn't have much of a hoof in her subsidiaries' manufacturing. Only the profits.

“Are you with the army?” she asked.

“The gend-armerie, actually.”

“Oh....?”

Seeing her lack of recognition, he said, “I command the Civil Force. Praetor Mace, at your service."

I should have known, she thought. That uniform does look rather the same shade as those gray fatigues the street troops wear.

"That means if something happens here on the homefront," General Mace explained further, "I'm the pony who puts it down. I keep our little herd together, heh heh. You've heard of the Winter Rising, of course?"

"Of course. Though it was twelve years ago." She let out a coy, fillyish chuckle. "I was only a young mare then, more interested in dancing with colts at the discotheque than the family fortune."

"Well, not to brag," he said, his tone indicating he was about to start bragging, "but I'm the reason you blossomed into the beautiful mare you are now. The High Castle was so impressed with how I commanded the ground forces that put the Rising down, they promoted me to general on the spot. Right after they ripped the medals off my predecessor, that is." He gave her his attempt at a casual friendly smile, which was downright frightening and yet also somewhat hilarious in its incongruity. "So keep on my good side, you hear?”

The unicorn was starting to irk Rarity. 'Not to brag', hm? The Winter Rising had indeed been terrifying to live through, but in retrospect it was all rather obvious how it would turn out. The street fighting was mercifully short, as the Winter Brigade simply wasn't large enough to take the city. Most of them had died trying to hold the EBC radio station or the radio mast at the peak of the mountain, in a vain attempt to sound the call for revolution to Equestria at large.

Yet this stallion fancied himself a tactical genius for overseeing a foregone conclusion. She supposed he had spearheaded the closure of the discotheques too, which had nothing to do with the Winter Rising. Except for the High Castle's claim they encouraged 'moral perversity'. But to a young mare, the discotheques were the absolute best import from Unicornia, far more than the food or the fabrics. The joke was on this General Praetor Mace, though. Now, twelve years after the High Castle shut down the discotheques, the Midnight Guard was loosening up and letting swing-inspired music pass through the censors. 'Rockafilly', the radio called it. If a name like that didn't announce its intentions for so-called 'moral depravity' right up front, nothing did. Perhaps in time the discotheques would reopen, too. While she was still young, preferably.

Hoping to end the conversation quickly, she said, “I'll, um, be sure and do that."

But Mace wasn't so easily gotten rid of. “That's a beautiful dress,” he said. “One of yours?”

“Why, yes. It's from my new line.”

“My wife wears nothing but Rarefaction. She swears by it.”

Turning on the charm, Rarity said lightly, “Oh, I do so prefer hearing she swears by my dresses than at them."

Praetor gave a deep, booming belly laugh, but it didn't soften him at all. When he finished, he said, “Oh, no, not at all.” Trying to sound innocently curious, he asked, “So what made a fashion designer such as yourself buy out General Horsepower?”

“The merger isn't a done deal yet, general. They still might pull the deal off the table.”

“They're all a bunch of nerds and eggheads.” He smirked. “I'd rather deal with a fetching young filly like you any day, so if they do that, just give me the word and I'll do something about it.”

Is this his idea of being suave? Rarity thought. Ugh. But she flashed an effortless, well-practiced smile and said, “And as for the fashion designer part, with the profit my company is pulling in, I've decided to expand my investments. General Horsepower has been ailing ever since they sank all that money into their hovercarriage line. And then, when the war ended, they were left with all those brand-new fighter jets and nopony to buy them."

"What a dreadful waste to see those beautiful things scrapped," Mace lamented. "We bought some, but the treasury was just as cash-strapped as General Horsepower."

"The treasury might've recovered, but General Horsepower didn't. And so, when the firm finally declared bankruptcy, I thought to myself that ponies will always need autocarriages. It seemed like a sturdy market to go into. The arms division was just a....fringe benefit.”

“I see.”

“Don't worry, general. Your tanks and planes are in safe hooves.”

“And quite lovely ones at that,” he said. “Tell me, Miss Rarity, have you ever read The Empyrean Herd?"

She hadn't read the book herself, but in Equestria it was impossible to escape its shadow. That professor of hippology from Manehattan, he was the first to lay out the theory of degeneracy. That the biggest threat to societies - "entrenched herds", as he dubbed them - was not invasion by itself, but the gradual rotting of their morals and values from within, which left them listless and weak and unable to defend themselves. The constant threat of the 'hippoid', something in the likeness of a pony, encroaching on the pony form. Replacing it with a counterfeit that had none of the true pony's lunar divinity. It was enough to make Rarity gag.

But back in 958, with an inevitable war looming on the horizon, The Empyrean Herd was the book Equestrians needed to muster their martial spirit and face their enemy in battle. A war over the fate of the settlements became something much grander: a war for the very survival of pony civilization itself. In that capacity, the book worked a little too well. Her eyes flicked to the exhibits of degenerate art that surrounded her. For the past forty years, the Equestrians had used that book to face every 'enemy' since then. Could that hoary professor, with his thick glasses and tweed jacket, have foreseen what his little non-fiction book would become? The fervor it would inspire in ponies?

"I've heard so much about it," she said, "but unfortunately, I haven't had the time." Or the desire to read that wretched thing.

"It's a very insightful book," Mace said, his eyes aglow. "But don't take my word for it. Read it for yourself and you'll see. The Empyrean Herd will open your eyes to what's ailing our society, and what we need to do to keep it safe. As one of our city's premier businessmares, you, more than most, need to be aware of the truth."

There was sharp steel in his words. Rarity didn't doubt he would personally condemn every single degenerate to death if it came down to that. He would probably volunteer to swing the sword himself. His coldness shook Rarity, deep inside, but she kept her smile up nonetheless.

“I'll keep your recommendation in mind, General,” she said as evenly as she could manage.

"I hope so." Mace gestured to the tour group, who were heading for the next room. "Well, it looks like the tour is moving on. I wouldn't dream of keeping you from seeing all the wonderful degeneracy. Good bye, Miss Rarity."

He gave her a cordial smile, which was as unnatural as ever, and then turned and stiffly walked out of the gallery. Rarity felt like the statue from the last room, the Martial Spirit, after having to deal with him, but she suppressed her shudder. Jet Set, who had watched the entire exchange in silence, had a definite gleam of awe in his eye as he stared after the departed general.

“Quite a pony,” he said.

"Yes," she said. In her head, she added, But quite what?

She had a few choice words on the matter, but it wouldn't do her any good to elaborate. Instead, she cantered through the doorway and into the next room. Her eyes picked through the crowd, but she didn't see the white stallion anywhere. Spirits sinking, she walked over to Upper Crust and described him. When she was done, the other mare gave her a lofty, disparaging scoff.

“Oh, Fancy Pants? I did think it was odd of him to grace us with his presence. He doesn't usually run in these circles, if you catch my drift.”

“What sort of circles does he run in?” Rarity asked.

Upper Crust subtly nodded to the degenerate art on display. “Of course, nopony's proven anything,” she said. “He owned one of the most popular discotheques in the city. Some say his was the most immoral of them all. The very definition of what the High Castle was railing against. But owning a discotheque wasn't illegal then, so he got off scot-free. I heard the Midnight Guard investigated the art gallery he owns now, The Barnyard or the Stable or something, but he came up clean. All perfectly naturalistic and traditionalist. Yet still, rumors will persist.”

“My dear, you shouldn't believe all the rumors you hear. I've heard some whoppers about myself, actually.” She said that very pointedly, since she was certain Upper Crust had started a few of them.

“Be that as it may, I certainly wouldn't want to be seen frequenting his gallery. I would hate to have a few more rumors spring up around me.”

With that, Upper Crust turned and joined her husband in jeering at the art, leaving Rarity to spit silent curses at her. Her blood boiled under her skin. These ponies are so two-faced a-and duplicitious! Always putting on a simpering smile while they plot to destroy you! What felt like steel wires wrapped around her chest and squeezed her lungs and heart until she couldn't breathe and her blood refused to flow. Remember what the doctor said: take control of your lungs and focus on your breathing. Put everything else out of your mind.

In and out. In and out.

Bit by bit, serenity came over her and she could breathe again. She wondered what had become of Coco. After glancing around, she spotted her trusty assistant standing off to one side, staring up at a viciously ugly statue of an elongated unicorn that towered over her. Rarity joined her assistant's side and stared up at the snarling face. At this distance, Rarity noticed the statue was made of reworked tin cans patched together and welded into place. The plaque indicated it had been made around the same time as the Winter Rising took place. Light gleamed off its razor-sharp horn.

"Sorry, ma'am," Coco said, becoming aware of Rarity's presence.

"It's alright."

Coco pulled a pocketwatch out of her saddlebag and checked the time. "Um, we should leave. We're supposed to meet the executives from General Horsepower very soon now."

"Good," Rarity said. "I've had just about enough of this place."

Then she saw the photographer look around for a subject to shoot. Like flicking a switch, she effortlessly slapped that broad smile on her face and put a swagger in her step, offering herself and her company's beautiful new dress up as prime photographing material. Coco slipped out of the shot before the camera lens could find her. The photographer circled around Rarity to find the best angle, but it was only when the shutter clicked that Rarity realized the statue was now behind her. What would the other socialites think of her, smiling for the camera with that hideous imitation of her own kind in the background?

She should have looked disgusted, but it was too late now. The picture was eternal.

In the corner, a grandfather clock ticked away. Twilight's eye lingered on the second leg as it jerked from one second to the next. On and on. Counting the seconds she was paying for and yet not using. She let her gaze drift across the wood-paneled office to the window behind the sprawling desk. The shades were slightly askew. Between the slats, the city lights illuminated the night in spite of the thickening smog. Then her eye went to the impressive array of plaques and diplomas on the wall. And then she had nowhere else to look but at the white-maned and bearded stallion across from her, sitting on his haunches in a high-backed leather chair.

The doctor's eye studied her keenly. “Are you ready to tell me about your dream?”

Twilight drew in a long, deep breath, and when she exhaled she let her head loll until her eyes were pointed at the leather couch under her. She studied its creases and gradients, hoping to find some inspiration for how to begin. “I'm in the dark,” she said slowly, struggling to find the words to capture the faint impressions of memory. “I don't know for how long.”

After another lapse into silence, he prodded her by asking, “Can you see anything?”

“Not at first.” She closed her eyes, recalling the moment that shadow shroud was pierced, when light bloomed like a cosmic eye opening. “After awhile, there's a light, far away.” A primordial flame, wearing a majestic corona, kindled itself on the edge of the world, where it could survey the infinite waters of its domain. “That's when I realize I'm flying, and really fast, towards it.”

How could she fly without wings? It puzzled her as she hung in mid-air between the sea and the sky. Her reflection floated below her, fragmented by the churning ocean. In the dark, unable to see or hear, she had no reason to believe she wasn't on the ground. But now the light revealed she was rushing towards the threshold of the burning magnificence.

“And how do you feel when you see this light?” the doctor asked.

“I know it's not right. Unnatural, somehow. But at the same time, I can't turn away.” She had no wings. How could she divert her course? “I'm stuck heading for it.”

“And what happens next?”

Was she even flying? Maybe the ocean was a calm waterfall and she was falling down. Or perhaps, since there were so many universes she visited in her dreams, in this one ponies fell upwards. A sudden conviction had come over her. Though the laws of physics in the real world told her that objects rising straight up from the surface of a globe would diverge, in her dream everything would converge at the lynchpin around which the cosmos revolved. All things drawn to the center by some magnetic force. Towards that light, the apex of the dreamworld.

“The light grows brighter,” she said. “I can't stop flying towards it.”

She headed for the brilliant oblivion that painted the sky orange like an avant-garde artist working some surreal charm. The sky was never orange. She wanted to scream that this world was wrong, but the light blazed so bright. An intense, high-pitched hum and an ear-splitting roar drowned out her voice. She narrowed her eyes against the vivid splendor, but the light pierced them regardless. Tears of blood trickled down her cheek from the twin lances of heat and light searing her eyes. The droplets landed on the face of the waters, turning the sea red in an instant, which mixed with the orange sky until the whole world blended together into the same color, a dizzying, electrifying vermillion. Everything, water and sky, wave and cloud, melded into a monochrome void surrounding the one fixed point in the entirety of the cosmos: an orb shining brighter than the rest.

Twilight started to choke up as she remembered crossing the event horizon. “It starts burning me, but I don't care. I just want what's at the....the heart of the fire. That's all I care about.” The fire reached out and enveloped her. The darkness had been so devoid of warmth and vitality, but here, in this burning heart, she felt alive. That pain was a small price to pay, and she didn't even care about her coat catching fire; everything else bowed down and gave way to the magnificence of the celestial fire radiating life. It was too massive to comprehend consciously. Her body was as tremulous as a bubble against its ferocious majesty. It burned through her as she fell upwards into the divine inferno, stripping away her flesh and bone to reveal her inner spark.

“And what do you find at the heart of the fire?” the doctor asked.

“That's just it: I don't know.” Dark shapes flew all around her, keeping abreast of her, shadows against the light. The things she wanted to leave behind refused to let her get away. She galloped on the aether to make it to the source of the fire before she was ensnared, but the shapes were too fast. Before her eyes, they assembled themselves around her. She was trapped. Her hooves hit against the hardwood floor. A ceiling arched overhead. Cobalt-blue walls blocked the light. She was in a labyrinth of shelves, among the thousands upon thousands of dusty books in the stacks. “I'm in the Canterlot Archives.”

His notes rustled as he checked them. “Your place of employment, correct?”

Twilight nodded. “And I run and I run, but....”

She galloped through the maze as fast as she could, but despair was seeping into her heart. She ran through the rows in search of that vibrant light, still faintly shining through the cracks and seams of the walls, trying to break free of the world that had erected itself around her. But the light faded just as gradually as it had brightened, leaving only a cold and empty void lurking behind the walls and ceiling and floor. She stopped, tears streaming from her eyes, lost in the twisting maze and unable to feel the light.

“....but you can't find the sun,” the doctor said.

A chill went through Twilight. She lifted her head, and the dream world dissolved like a wisp of cloud in the wind, leaving not a rack behind. “I never said that!" she protested. "I didn't say 'sun'!”

He raised a hoof. “Twilight, this is a safe place. You can speak freely here. I want to help you, not turn you over to the Midnight Guard.”

If she couldn't trust her doctor, she would never get better. So she took another deep breath and nodded in assent. Her voice shrill, she said, “Yes. The sun. And I charge at the wall to break through, to get back to the....to it, but it's gone. There's only the darkness. I-I start falling down into the void. And that's when I wake up.” She put her head in her hooves and rubbed the bags under her eyes and the tears welling up. “Tell me, doctor. Why do I want the sun so badly? Solara Invictus used it to scorch the planet and destroy anypony who defied her, but in my dreams it just feels so warm and welcoming.” Her face cracked as she started sobbing. “I don't know what's wrong with me, Doctor. I mean, I do. I'm a....”

"Yes?" he asked, a fount of calm.

"I'm a degenerate," she wailed. "I'm sick."

“It's alright, Twilight. Have you ever had anti-lunar thoughts before?”

“Never! I love our princess. She freed us from the ravages of the sun. She founded this city, where we could reach for the moon. She's our savior.” However, even as the words, those stock cliches from a thousand books, slipped from her lips, they rang hollow in her ears. She made an attempt to wipe the tears away, but they kept coming. “I just keep thinking about my favorite play.”

He glanced down at his notes again. “Starswirl's Storm? Which part?”

“When Starswirl is about to appear onstage, playing the part of the king. I can't stop thinking about what he says to Clover the Clever, about how an illusion can be realer than the real thing if the crowd wants it to be. What if I only believe in the eternal night because I tell myself to? What if it's just a role I play to fool everypony else? Everything is so abstract. So many words that don't mean anything. I recite them on command, but they don't feel true."

“Do you remember the context of that scene?”

“Of course. I know the whole play by heart. Starswirl pretends to be a better king, hoping the real king will follow his lead.”

The doctor smiled at her, an island of shelter in the violent tempest of her emotions. “He creates an ideal for the king to live up to. The perfect king. Yet despite the obvious brilliance of the playwright, he was writing for an audience in Manehattan during the Reawakening. He couldn't have foreseen how the same ideals he preached would lead to disaster years later. But you're the scholar, so you tell me: how did the Reawakening start?"

"It was, uh, the late fourth and early fifth centuries. The dragons were raiding the countryside and burning crops. The farmers couldn't grow food fast enough to replace the losses, even though the knights were going on yearly dragon raids. So the Duchy of Manehattan started importing food from overseas. From Unicornia. They grew very rich from the trade flowing through their city, and ideas from overseas started to follow, ancient knowledge from the ancestral pony homelands."

"Go on."

"Uh, the sons and daughters of lords who had little to no chance of inheriting, they headed for the cities and started managing the city's economy. That was the origin of the urban scholar class. They started all the guilds of craftsponies and artisans and the philosophy societies. 439, that's the date they say the Reawakening officially began. Soon, the royal family of Manehattan became patrons of the movement. They adopted Unicornian ideas about free trade that allowed the city to prosper. From there, the knowledge spread all throughout Equestria."

"And yet in the end, it sparked a civil war that split the nation in half."

"Because Ermine Dew, the Duchess of Fillydelphia, died young and without issue in 512. Both the Duke of Manehattan, Noble Sail, and the Duke of Hollow Shades, Albus Rex, were related to her through her mother and father, respectively. They both tendered a claim for her throne."

"Why?"

She suddenly realized her tears had stopped and her sorrow had abated. What a brilliant trick, she thought. "Albus Rex was a reactionary. He feared free trade would take away the power he had. To keep the dying feudal system going, he went to the High Castle, who backed his claim. The incensed Noble Sail accused the High Castle of stagnating society and pledged to raise the sun by any means necessary. He imported 'companies of adventure', big mercenary armies, from the Pegaponnese. They clashed with the princess's knights all across the eastern part of Equestria, burning the already fragile crops to cinders. The two sides fought each other to a stalemate.

"But after five years, the treasury of Manehattan ran out. The high taxes and harsh living conditions stirred discontent among the scholars who had been his biggest supporters, and without payment the companies of adventure refused to fight and the city couldn't import food. The princess's armies, driven by notions of fealty and duty instead of money, marched on Manehattan. Noble Sail stowed away on the last departing ship, too broke to even pay for his fare, and good thing, too: Albus Rex was the first Duke to reach the city. He and his vassals sacked the city, flaying ponies alive and hanging them from the walls. It took a bill of attainder to make him stop, threatening another dynastic dispute over the throne of Hollow Shades. Meanwhile, Noble Sail lived the rest of his life in obscurity as an accountant in Unicornia. They only found out what happened to him after he died. A brooch from his father was found in his possessions. His only heirloom."

"Spoken like a true scholar. Now, what happened after the civil war?"

"Um, everypony just kind of agreed that the feudal system was broken. Unable to rule the country effectively. The lords who started the conflict protested, of course, but the whole nation was sick of war. The princess turned to the disaffected scholar class. She decreed a new kind of government in 523. The country would be run by bureaucracy, which would replace the system of duchies and vassals."

"From the ashes of the two warring sides arose a fusion of them. A stronger, better nation emerged from conflict. Struggle is the way we become stronger, and our modern nation is the result of a thousand years' worth of it. When we won the war against the Griffons, did we adopt any of their theories on government?"

"Of course not."

"Their loss proved how disastrously wrong their ideals were. When two nations go to war, we determine which one's ideals are superior by whichever one survives the conflict, and how they did it. Which one had the willpower of an inspired citizenry behind it. Because this process of conflict also works on an individual level. When our princess was young, the tyrant Solara Invictus filled her head with terrible, unspeakable lies. She wanted to chain our princess's potential for her own selfish ends. But through the princess's struggle she discovered her own convictions and found her inner strength. If she hadn't, she never would have been able to stand up to the tyrant and free herself. Thus, the so-called 'unconquered sun' was brought low and struck down. The eternal night began. And since the eternal night and the ascent of the pony race has lasted for a millennium now, weathering all kinds of disputes and grievances, it must be superior. Do you see? This is the world she made."

Twilight glanced at the lights of Canterlot shining through the window. It's beautiful, she told herself. The height of pony civilization.

The world Luna made.

"In the play," the doctor continued, "Starswirl created a new ideal for the king to follow. Although some of the Reawakening's ideals were short-sighted and wrong, there is still some truth to them. Like Starswirl in the play, our princess has created the perfect ideal for us. One of strength and virtue and moral purity, tempered with a profound respect for the higher nature of the moon and the natural order that it shines down on us. The prosperity of our civilization proves that it is, indeed, the one true path. The ideals of the Duchy of Manehattan and the play written to lionize them did not survive the conflict they created, yet they still made enough of an impact to prove that they weren't unsalvageable. The conflict is what revealed it."

"So you're saying this struggle I'm having is....a good thing?"

"We all find ourselves tested, Twilight. Our unconscious mind is instinctive, untamed, prone to laziness and immorality. Left unchecked, it becomes the antithesis of the moon's divine rationality. That's why we need our princess to be our evenstar. Our guiding light. She gives us an ideal to live up to. Only through being tested do we find out how strong our resolve to become that ideal runs. The unconscious mind sometimes does things we don't intend, but that can end up helping us in unexpected ways. If you master yourself, you will emerge from the conflict a stronger pony.”

“But my dream,” she asked. “What does it mean for me and my conflict?”

“What do you think it means?”

She hung her head. “Bad thoughts. The sun is my own bad thoughts. They're trying to consume me, and I can't turn away from them.”

“You can, Twilight. Draw strength from the struggle of our princess. I believe in you.”

Twilight had never actually seen the princess, so instead in her mind she concentrated on pictures, which were more detailed. Her indigo body was regal, graceful, utterly without doubt. Inspiring. Her stellar hair streamed out behind her like the cosmos themselves. Twilight concentrated on the image she must aspire to. She had to put aside herself and attune to that image of the princess.

“Fight the impulses,” the doctor said, “and you will emerge a better pony.”

I don't know how much longer I can deal with this, Fluttershy thought.

When her hour-long lunch break came around, she gladly took to wandering the streets to put as much distance between herself and the Rarefaction factory as possible. Just the thought of all the ponies, all the strangers she had to come into contact with inside that place, made her sick to her stomach. She might have vomited that hoagie right back up if she still had it. But the cold air outside was bracing as it went through her mane and coat. It did her some good as she headed out of the industrial sectors, away from the red-brick factories and the enormous smokestacks spewing out smoke that thickened the gathering cloud cover. With most of the city at work, the hoof traffic was light and the checkpoints were almost empty. She breezed right through them and arrived at the edge of the city center by two-fifteen.

Ahead rose the massive marble Arch of Triumph, dominating the center of the massive roundabout at the heart of the city. Spotlights that were aimed skyward ringed its base and lit up its sides before continuing upwards to touch the underside of the growing cloud cover. The great war against the Griffons had ended in 971 with an overwhelming victory for Equestria after eight years of conflict. She hadn't been born by that point, but when they started construction of the Arch they told her very young self it was supposed to remind the nation of their victory and the unbridled prosperity that followed. But now, all it reminded her of was the work she carried out for the Bureau just to afford her little bunny.

The world she lived in was the cost of Equestria's victory.

Her stomach rumbled, bringing her back down to earth. Leaving the factory had done her a world of good. She just might be able to handle eating now. At the next intersection, a neon sign caught her eye, beating out the neon billboards that bathed the sidewalk and street in bright colors. 'Donut Joe's', the shop was called. A cozy-looking place, from what she could see through the windows. The door chime rang as she hesitantly crossed the threshold. The stallion behind the counter gave her a slight smile while cleaning the countertop with a rag. She wasn't worth a full smile, she knew, as she crossed the shop. No, it was infinitely better if he didn't bother too much about her. She preferred that to the hate and contempt that normally came her way. The swivel stool squeaked as she sat down on her haunches atop it. Her tense back itched with the brunt of all those accusatory eyes at her back from all the other customers. She hunched her shoulders and shrank in size as much as she could.

"Um, donut, please," she said.

"Sure thing. What kind ya want?"

The stallion moved aside and gestured to the rows of fresh donuts behind her. So many choices confronted her, frosted and plain and sprinkled and jellied. She pointed at a plain glazed, figuring a pony couldn't go wrong with the basics. He picked up a pair of tongs with his teeth, used them to slip the donut off the shelf and onto a plate, and slid it in front of her.

"Eat up," he said cheerfully. "Anything to drink?"

He's smiling and cheerful, but it's all fake, she thought, shaking her head to refuse his offer. He hates me, deep down, I know it.

"If there's anything else, just give me a holler," he said, moving on to the next customer.

Fluttershy bent her head down and took a bite form her donut in silence, set apart from the soft buzz of conversation that filled the donut shop. They were right to shun her. What could she offer to a conversation? Nothing. Just like she couldn't offer anything to the army or the weather patrol. The only thing she could offer, her job for the Bureau, was ripping her apart inside.

Behind her, the door chimes went off and a quick rush of noise from the city slipped into the shop. "This is all very, ah, quaint and all, ma'am, but why here? Wouldn't someplace more upscale be appropriate?"

"I did a bit of research on the sly, and apparently this is Lead Sell's favorite place to eat. I took a gamble and assumed if the meeting happened someplace he feels comfortable, he'll feel less threatened and cornered, and more likely to sell."

"But what if he feels the opposite? What if he feels too secure and decides not to accept?"

"That would be the definition of a 'gamble', Coco."

The two ponies who'd entered moved towards a booth at the edge of Fluttershy's vision. She couldn't help but glance their way. One of them, a silver unicorn, looked maddeningly familiar. Judging by her beautiful outfit, she was some influential mare about town whose pictures often graced the newspapers. But Fluttershy didn't have much use for newspapers these days.

She looks so beautiful, Fluttershy thought. Such poise.

When a young stallion in an apron asked for their order, the mare casually flicked her head back, allowing her purple mane to flow out behind her like water. She gave him a broad smile that made his knees wobble. The unicorn mare had never had a trace of doubt in her life, and why should she? She was bold and confident and commanding, everything a unicorn should be. She breezed through the world effortlessly, and on the weekends, she probably got into crazy adventures involving garden parties and parasails. To her, affording that adorable little bunny in Perky Pet would be a trifle. Everything always turned out alright for mares like her. Mares who weren't degenerate, like Fluttershy. Mares who had to push papers for the Bureau of Harmony and go out on assignment just to feel like they were contributing something to civilization. Just to feel like they earned their place in the eternal night.

Fluttershy ate the rest of her donut in dour silence and laid a coin on the counter. She dragged herself off the stool and towards the door, where two more unicorns in business suits entered. They took one look at the degenerate little pegasus and dismissed her in favor the booth with the beautiful mare.

"Interesting choice of locations," one of them said.

"Oh, really?" the mare asked lightly. Her voice was the height of self-assurance, playing on the other unicorns expertly, reading them like open books. "I just wanted to choose someplace casual. We're just having a little talk, after all...."

Feeling slow and clumsy and awkward, degenerate to the core, Fluttershy pushed the door open and walked out into the night, where the smog gathered and rolled through the streets in wisps.

Twilight kept her eyes focused on the wood-paneled walls as she dredged up the twelve-year-old memories. "At the discotheques, I always felt so...." She sighed. "I don't know. I just hated that I couldn't move as gracefully as the other fillies."

"Why would that bother you so much?" the doctor asked.

"I just wanted them to notice me," she said softly. "I mean, aside from 'Oh, wow, let's all gawk at the terrible dancer!' With all the other mares out there who were much better dancers than me, who would....care about me? Who would notice me? Who would want me around? I tried and I tried. I struggled, like you said, but I never got any better at it. My brother would've helped, but he...." She squeezed her eyes shut and dipped her head. When she spoke again, her voice was choked with grief. ".... he was busy working for the Midnight Guard. His duty to the city came first."

"I see," the doctor said. Then, abruptly, he asked, "When's the last time you had a drink?"

She sensed the trap, but he had taken her by surprise. She had no time to prepare herself and could only respond by instinct, and that instinct was to cover up how degenerate she was. She was so pathetic she couldn't deny the bottle for a single day. She still felt the faint dull throb of sobriety inside her head.

The lie surely sounded false and hollow, but she committed herself to it anyway: "Last week. I haven't touched the stuff since the Wednesday before last."

The doctor checked his notes. "Ah, an improvement, I see. Would you say the temptation to drink your troubles away is getting stronger?"

"I....I suppose. Now that I'm trying to kick the habit."

"Earlier, you expressed the feeling that you don't know what's true. Would you say the alcohol helps you with that?"

"I guess. When I'm intoxicated, it feels like I....don't care so much about what's true. That I can lie to myself better."

"And yet you haven't had any since last Wednesday. You've resisted the temptation." He stood up and laid a forelimb on her shoulder. “That's why I have faith in you, Twilight: you're stronger than you think.”

She wondered if he was lying now, but she concluded she didn't care. It felt good to have somepony believe in her, even if she was lying. It gave her the feeling she might actually be able to succeed. To make the lie come true. She wiped the remnants of her tears away and found the courage to smile at him. “Thank you, doctor.”

He checked the grandfather clock. “We'll talk more about how you can sublimate these impulses into socially acceptable forms at our next session, alright? For now, just focus on recognizing them. And, of course, avoiding the temptation to drown your sorrows.”

“Yes, doctor,” Twilight said.

She rose off the couch, the smile still on her face. I can do this, she thought as she headed for the door. I can make the ascent, like the princess did. I'm strong.

When Twilight walked into the waiting room of the doctor's office, she met a silver unicorn coming in through the door, an earth pony in tow. Twilight recognized the unicorn. Radiance? Charity? Something like that. A useless socialite who sucked up attention by looking and acting like she was better than everypony else.

"Looks like you were right," the fawning earth pony said. "Excellent call, ma'am. They folded like laundry."

"Oh, it was nothing, Coco. You just need to have a knack for understanding how ponies think."

"Of course, ma'am."

Twilight felt a swell of rage at the mere sight of this pompous unicorn. All these high class ponies, with their smiling faces slapped on billboards and neon signs as they shoved their wares into her face, set Twilight's teeth on edge. She slaved away in the Canterlot Archives for the good of the Empire, an essential but thankless task, while these mares could gallavant around having garden parties and galas. This was what she was struggling for? This was the height of pony civilization?

The other unicorn artfully tossed her mane out of her eyes, then noticed Twilight. “Hello."

Why Twilight was so angry, she couldn't say. Was it because she wanted to waste her time with cocktail parties and grand galas and looking fabulous? But she would never have the opportunity. She was stuck being Twilight Sparkle, a clumsy archivist who couldn't dance or command attention. She could never walk into a room and have everypony stop and fawn over her. The loss of all the things she would never do or be gave Twilight a forelorn heartache.

"He's a miracle worker, isn't he, darling?” the other unicorn asked.

Still, best to put on appearances, as fake as they may be. “Oh, yes,” Twilight gushed, smiling. “He works wonders.”

Pieasov Mind pulled open a drawer in his desk, revealing his bulky portable radio. He magically lifted the microphone out and planted it on his desk, then flicked the switch and twisted the large dial until he got the right frequency. The radio's innards clattered as the scramble modulation circuits kicked in, making the signal a distorted mess to anypony without a keyed decoder in their own radio.

“This is Agent Alphane,” he said.

The speaker crackled, then a voice broke through. “Shadowbolt HQ. Go ahead.”

“I have an update on case file F121, codename Clayhooves. You asked me to keep an eye on her specifically.”

Over the radio came the sound of fumbling paperwork. “Alright, go ahead.”

“In today's session, the subject displayed unconscious, deep-seated anti-lunar tendencies. She doesn't seem to have made the connection consciously, but I feel these may be a displacement of her feelings about her brother's untimely....accident.”

He spat the last word out with disgust. As a healer of ponies, he had no love for the Directorate. But they had the power to ruin his practice and his life, in deviously creative ways the Midnight Guard couldn't even dream of. The Guard - the ideological police - at least possessed a fervent dedication to the Empire and its ideals. His position would be secure. State security had no such qualms. He suspected the reason the Directorate was headed entirely by pegasus ponies was to circumvent the nobleness of the Guard and create competition among the intelligence agencies. Now, everypony in Equestria was caught in the middle of their power struggle. There were even rumors the Shadowbolts assassinated the former head of the Midnight Guard, which was most likely why they wanted his sister surveilled.

Forget the war with the Griffons or that folly from twenty years ago, he thought. The deadliest battlefield is right here on our doorstep.

“Is she....terminal?” the voice asked.

Pieasov rubbed his cheek, wondering what to tell them. He couldn't display too much autonomy, or they would think he was undermining them. But if he told them too much about Twilight, she might end up dead. He was on the precipice now. “She's not terminal. Not yet. I may be able to save her. Inform the Colonel she should be placed under surveillance.” Pieasov nodded to himself; that seemed good. Tell them to do something, but something that was also nothing.

“Will do,” the voice said. “Who's next?”

Pieasov Mind leaned back and stared through the shutters at the High Castle, standing guard over the eternal night. Thick smog was rolling through the city, obscuring everything. “Codename Golden Mare. She's in for social anxiety and panic attacks.”

Shadowbolt HQ snickered. “Let us know if there's anything juicy.”

“I'm here to help these ponies,” Pieasov said. “If you want gossip, attend a garden party like on The Galloping Gossips.” He snorted with disgust as he magically turned the radio off and stuffed it back into the drawer. He didn't even care if there were recriminations. He felt sick to his stomach at the callous arrogance of the Directorate.

Where's the compassion? he thought.

He hit the button on his intercom and said to his receptionist, “You can send Miss Rarity in now.”

The highest of high society came through the door, beaming like the moon and fluttering her eyelashes at Pieasov. “Why hello, doctor. How are you?”

As Rarity took her seat on the couch, he felt a stab of anger at her. He knew such an animal instinct was beneath him, but he couldn't help it. He read the papers and was familiar with the sitcoms that glorified and idealized high society antics. And now he'd spend the next hour listening to one of them whine about how hard her fabulous lifestyle was with all the other ponies gossiping behind her back. As the Shadowbolt Directorate's unwilling agent, who could get his patients killed with a single wrong word, he wasn't feeling charitable towards her problems.

Or maybe he was just jealous. After all, he wasn't sure if any of his patients had been or would be killed because of him. Maybe he was just using that as an excuse for his jealousy over her life glamour and high society. A life he would never have, and income he could never dream of.

Perhaps he couldn't stop his bitter feelings from coming, but he could control them with his lunar rationality. His duty to the Empire was to help ponies overcome their problems and contribute to their city, not to be jealous of those who had fame and success. Everypony all had a part to play in the collective upward ascent of the city, and his part was as a trained psychologist.

Where's the compassion, Pieasov?

Chapter 4

The interrogation room door swung open. An elongated rectangle of light swept over the darkened interior until it settled on the sole occupant. Huddled in the corner, the Changeling stirred weakly, raised its head and hissed. Its obsidian chitin was dull and dented. The membrane of its wings was cracked and dried.

The Colonel stood in the doorway. Her shadow stretched out across the length of the room, from her hooves to her beret-topped head, framed by the light from the observation room behind her. “Lights,” she called over her shoulder. The ponies in the observation room flicked the overheads on. The Changeling snapped its eyes shut and winced against the harsh glare; the Colonel's mirrored shades protected her eyes quite well. She strolled into the room, past the table, while the thing shied away from the light. But it had nowhere else to go except to burrow further into the corner. She stopped and loomed over it.

As she stared down at the misshapen degenerate creature, for a brief and fevered moment she sensed her true power. And it wasn't just hers; it came from the Shadowbolt uniform she wore, too. In a flash of insight she perceived herself as a primal force made mundane, like the old legends about ponies becoming one with the universe. She was entropy, responsible for breaking the thing down into its component parts. She was a debaser. Her duty to the moon was to return the Changeling to the earth from which it had sprung. It did not have the lunar divinity inside it. All it could do was corrupt the empyrean city they had built.

And then the moment passed. Her perception of events returned to normal.

Her stern, set scowl dissolved into a grin. She asked, "How you doin' down there?" She walked to the wall and leaned against it. "See, it's like this: I know you don't want to be here. Honestly, I don't really want to be here, either. I've got better things to do with my time. More important things. So how's about you do me a favor and tell me the cover identities of the other Changelings in Canterlot, and I'll be on my way. Alright? No hard feelings between us."

It hissed at her again. Its ears were folded, however. It was terrified.

The Colonel sighed and threw a leg up in exasperation. "Somehow, I knew you were going to say that." She rolled her eyes and shoved herself off the wall. "Alright. If you wanna do this the hard way...."

Lightning quick, she grabbed the Changeling and hauled it up off the floor. It thrashed against her grip, but it was too weak to do any real damage. She took hold of its head and slammed it down onto the table. A terrific clap like thunder resounded throughout the bare walls of the interrogation room. One of its fangs splintered. The pieces sprayed everywhere from the force of impact. Its chitinous muzzle cracked and dripped ichor over the table's surface. The Colonel pulled its head back up and held it aloft.

"I'll ask again," she said, her voice flat and dry. "Who were you here to meet?"

The Changeling tried to hiss, but the ichor in its mouth made it gag. With a weary sigh, the Colonel brought its head down and slammed it into the table again, once, twice, thrice. The last time, she drove it into the surface so hard that, when she got her hooves clear of it, it rebounded and toppled backwards, landing on the floor in a heap. She casually sauntered towards it while it crawled away, leaving a slimy trail on the floor. With one stomp, she broke the chitin on its hind leg. The thing howled in pain, which made her stamp down harder. At least it stopped moving.

"Ready to talk yet?" the Colonel asked.

It drew its forelegs in front of its face while shivers wracked its degenerate hippoid body. Something came from its mouth, but the Colonel couldn't hear it through the ichor welling up from its guts and dripped out its mouth. Rather than bend down, she took her leg off the Changeling, grabbed it, and picked it off the ground.

"What was that--?"

The thing took a swing at her, obviously intending to catch her by surprise, but the blow was graceless and clumsy and barely grazed her. Its hoof did, however, hit her shades, making one lens crack. Half her vision was hinted, while the other half saw the room much brighter, although jagged from the broken pieces still in the frame. She sprang into action and bodyslammed the thing into the wall hard enough to force all the air out of its lungs. It slid to the floor, spent and wheezing. Taking a step back, she calmly removed the shades and inspected them.

“I liked these shades,” she said faintly. She held them out so the thing could see what it had done. "These were my favorite pair." When it gave a sickly wheezing hiss in response, she shrugged and said, “Well, you know what they say. An eye for an....” In one deft motion, she shot forward and jammed one of the glasses' hooked tips into its eye. “Eye.”

The Changling screeched at her and flailed its forelegs to knock her away, but it was too late. The fluid from its punctured eye dribbled down its cheek. The Colonel causally tossed the ruined glasses over her shoulder, then pulled her purple beret off as well and flung it aside. Without rushing, she started unbuttoning her dress uniform until it hung open.

“You're starting to annoy me," she said. "Can you please tell me who were here to meet, so we can both get this over with?"

The thing was gingerly touching its ruined eye socket. Its mouth wormed up and down in horror.

With an impatient groan, the Colonel grabbed the Changeling, picked it up off the ground, and slammed it into the wall. She leaned so close to its face they were practically muzzle to cracked chitinous muzzle. The disfigurement she had wrought on it didn't faze her in the slightest. It wasn't a real pony. It was a hippoid, closer to an animal. And animals had to be trained until they knew who their master was, or else they would be put down.

"Pretty please, will you tell me?" she asked.

The Changling spat in her face, which made her flinch. Mostly because of the smell. The Changeling had been in the room for three days without a bath, and its ichor was rank. The Colonel wiped her face clean with her sleeve, then stared at the thing. Tension, thick and heavy, filled in the air as she wondered what to do next. Then, she pinned the Changling's head to the wall with her left foreleg and raised her free hoof.

“If you can't see this is going to end with you spilling your guts to me, then maybe you don't need that other eye after all."

The unruined eye widened. But in the glassy blue orb, she still saw the resolve of defiance; it wasn't going to crack. Well, not just yet. She grinned at the Changeling as she reached forward to gouge away--

“Colonel Dash!”

On hearing the very young voice from the doorway, she paused, her hoof an inch from the bubble of the Changling's quivering eye. “What is it?” she asked, her eyes not leaving the Changling.

The filly said, “Um, they told me to get you.”

The Colonel smiled at the thing in front of her, then let it go and let it collapse to the ground. She spoke down to it, “Looks like this will have to wait. Try and entertain yourself until I get back.”

She strode to the door, scooping up her beret as she went and settling it on her head in one smooth and effortless motion. The filly in the doorway looked awed as she approached. The Colonel vaguely recognized her as one of the cadets from the junior officer training program. From the looks of her, the rookie wasn't far out of diapers. The Colonel paused at the threshold, then turned back to the Changeling.

She asked, “By the way, do you like music?”

The Changeling panted heavily before working up the effort to hiss in response.

She stepped into the observation room and went to a record player on a table. Its wires were spliced into the interrogation room's intercom. She pulled a vinyl record from its sleeve. Leaning around the doorframe so she could see into the room, she placed it on the turntable and dropped the needle. The song 'Rockafilly' started blaring at ear-splitting volume. The thing howled and clutched its head in pain. She grinned as she swung the door shut and locked it, then hit the lights and plunged the room into darkness. The music was still incredibly loud, even through it was muffled by the walls.

“Listen up, rook,” she said to the cadet as she buttoned her dress shirt back up. “You have a job. Every twenty minutes, I want you to come back here, flip the record over, and play the other side.”

“Yes, ma'am!” the cadet said, snapping her hooves against the ground as she saluted.

“So, uh....” She racked her brains for the filly's name, but came up with nothing. "Umm...." She gestured at the rookie, but the cadet just tilted her head and raised her eyebrows in confusion. The Colonel jabbed her hoof at the cadet, then swept her leg up and down, from the filly's hooves to her purple mane. The rook still didn't get it. "Uhhh...." The Colonel motioned for the filly to spit it out.

Understanding brightened the cadet's face, then it darkened again. But she hid her wounded feelings well and declared, “It's Scootaloo, ma'am. You, um, showed me around last month.”

“Right,” the Colonel said. “So, Scootaloo, what wild goose chase does Spitfire have us on this time? More Griffon sightings? Cragodiles in the sewers? What?”

“Actually, the radio room sent me. They received a report from Source Alphane about Armor's sister.”

“What?!” The Colonel's nostrils flared. She grabbed the filly by the shoulders. “Why didn't you say so in the first place? What did the report say?”

The rook's eyes widened as she was shaken. “All he said was he recommended putting her under surveillance.”

“We already have her under surveillance!”

The filly swallowed heavily, panic rising in her eyes. “Uh, I, um, I, uh....”

“Did she confide anything about Shining Armor's current whereabouts to her shrink?”

The filly dropped her gaze and looked around the room, as if a clue would be written somewhere, then looked up and asked, “Isn't....isn't he dead, ma'am?”

With a great groan, the Colonel let the rook go, brushed past her, and headed out of the observation room and into the bullpen. “Isn't anypony in this organization on the same page?!” she hollered. She strode out into the space between the desks and swept her eyes over the other officers. She pointed at Soarin. “You!”

Major Soarin looked up from his box of Donut Joe-brand donuts, crumbs falling from his lips.

“You have a job: I want you to go around to every single Shadowbolt in this building and make sure they all know that Shining Armor is still alive, and more importantly, that we're supposed to be finding him.” She pointed at the filly, who lingered near the door to the interrogation room. “That includes the rooks!”

From across the room, the cadet called, “Uh, it's Scootaloo, ma'am!”

The Colonel glared at her, then flapped her hoof in the filly's direction. “Whatever!” She faced Soarin, who hadn't budged from his box of jelly donuts. “Well, what are you waiting for, jelly belly?! Yes, you! Go! Now!” When he took a tentative step away from his desk, she encouraged him by shouting, “That's it! Just like that! Come on, I have faith in you!”

“Colonel Dash,” said a gruff voice from behind her.

“What?!” she exclaimed, spinning around to face the challenger. But she immediately dropped her voice into a respectful tone when she saw who it was. “I mean, yes, ma'am?”

Spitfire stood in the doorway to her office. The medals pinned to the front of her dress uniform gleamed in the lights. “Let's have a talk,” she said, then walked back inside, leaving the door ajar in invitation. On its frosted glass was written: 'Spitfire, Director-General'.

The Colonel trudged after her. Though before she entered, without even looking back, she called, “I still outrank you, Soarin, so don't you dare sit back down in that seat!”

Spitfire took a deep, long drag of her cigar. The Colonel stood in front of the desk and watched the smoke curl up into the silent air, just like the thick smog she saw through the window that obscured the city and the High Castle. On the General's desk, model pegasus ponies and airplanes, sculpted paperweights, and several books on military history were immaculately arranged alongside her paperwork. Her peaked cap was resting at the desk's front, facing the Colonel. The silver insignia of the winged skull spanning its front grinned at her.

After a long silence, Spitfire said, “You're still fixated on the Shining Armor situation.”

“Because he's not dead," the Colonel stated, eager to defend herself. "You saw the report, same as I did.”

“All that report said was the wreckage of his hovercarriage was too charred to determine if there was a body inside. It's a big leap from that to conspiracy theories about his survival.”

“We're the Shadowbolts. We make conspiracy theories for breakfast and get everypony to believe them by supper.”

Spitfire smiled. “True. Very true.” She leaned forward and tapped the cigar's ash into an ashtray. “I used to like that bravado of yours, Colonel." Then she turned around and looked out the window, as if she could see the High Castle through the smog. "When they gave this agency to me, they thought what it needed was young blood. The High Castle said all the old warhorses cluttering up the ranks were too stodgy and set in their ways to be useful. So I did what they asked. I gutted the upper echelons and got some new blood pumping into the place. But perhaps I took things a little too far. My colleagues on the Defense Council said you were too young to promote to Head of Internal Security, and I'm starting to think they were right. See, I thought you had the right attitude for the job, but ever since you became obsessed with this, it's starting to irk me. One of several things, actually."

The Colonel bristled at Spitfire trying to change the subject, to make everything about her rather than the mission. “It was the Midnight Guard who put out a press release stating Shining Armor was dead. The report doesn't support that.”

Spitfire twisted around and glowered at her. “Well, Colonel, obviously if he hasn't reported for work after his vehicle blows up, it's a fair assumption he's dead. Do you, or do you not agree?”

“Somepony inside the Guard is covering for him. Helping the world think he's dead.”

“Somepony like Cadence, you mean.”

The Colonel sealed her lips, to which Spitfire smirked and launched an offensive. “Now let me make one thing perfectly clear: I never sanctioned a hit on Shining Armor.”

“He must've rigged the hovercarriage to blow by himself--”

“Uh huh. Right. Hold on while I get some new batteries for my bullcrap detector. It's run dry at the moment. Now, while I appreciate an enterprising spirit and an ability to think outside the box, I will not have my officers pulling off autonomous operations like that inside my Directorate without my explicit say-so. Hear me?”

Softly, the Colonel said, “If you won't, somepony has to.”

“What was that?!”

The Colonel found her courage and fought back. “You heard me. Did you forget why they wanted to get new blood in this place? It's because the Directorate failed to see the Winter Rising until it was too late." She pointed out the window. "You're so busy looking for Changlings that it's blinded you to the threats from our own species. Degeneration doesn't just come from outside. It also comes from within."

Spitfire scoffed. "Somepony just read The Empyrean Herd."

"We need to put more resources on internal threats, and that includes our so-called 'sister' service, who've been working to undermine our operations at every turn. Who spooked Source Mustang during Operation Glue Factory? Who told him we were about to set him up to take the fall?”

“You were about to set him up to take the fall.”

“Yeah, but who told him? I ran that operation every step of the way. I had access to him locked down tight. And I know I sure didn't tell him.”

“Did it ever penetrate your thick little skull that maybe he pieced it together on his own? As soon as I saw your proposal, I told you that operation was bad news, but you insisted you could make it work. You're lucky I went to bat with the Council for you on that fiasco.”

“There's no way Source Mustang was smart enough to figure out we were playing him. Somepony got to him and turned him against us, and only two ponies knew his dead drop protocol: me, and the liaison from the Midnight Guard. Miss Perfect Pegasus Cadence. Who used to be our liaison to the Guard before she jumped ship for...." But the Colonel realized what she was about to say and stopped herself. She finished lamely, "For a nice cushy job with the Guard.”

Spitfire stubbed her cigar out forcefully. “You are on thin ice with your accusations, Colonel. I practically had to get on my knees and wash Sunset Shimmer's hooves before she'd accept my sincere reassurances the death of her boss wasn't our doing.”

“Why would you degrade yourself like that for a unicorn--?”

“She's a pony, Dash, just like you and me.”

“She's a unicorn! We're pegasi! There's a world of difference. Our wings mean we're closer to the divine moon than they are. And the princess of this city is a pegasus more than she is a unicorn. The unicorns just want us to think otherwise so they can chain us to the ground. So we don't fly higher than them.”

“That's your problem, Colonel. Right there. The moment you start spouting off about superiority, you upset the balance of this city. In our Empire, every pony race needs to pull their weight equally. It's not degeneracy corrupting this city, it's the idea of degeneracy itself. It's turning us against each other." She sighed and sat on her haunches on the leather-backed chair behind the desk. The chair that marked her as the leader of the Shadowbolt Directorate, like the throne of an old duke from the feudal era. "Of course we make the Midnight Guard edgy. The unicorns think they need to manage us pegasus ponies every step of the way, whereas the Directorate clearly doesn't. We don't prove them wrong by striking back at every injustice, real or imaginary. We prove them wrong by doing our jobs. This isn't about fighting battles, Colonel Dash, it's about picking them. The most important quality in a Shadowbolt is subtlety, something you sorely lack. The Midnight Guard are better equipped to deal with ideological issues. State security is what we're allegedly in charge of, and that means Changelings. That's an order, and I won't hear another word about it.”

“But--”

“Not. Another. Word,” Spitfire said. “Dismissed.”

The Colonel opened her mouth to protest, but when she saw Director-General Spitfire's raised eyebrow daring her to speak out of turn, she stormed out of the office. The eyes of the Shadowbolts in the bullpen watched her keenly. Soarin hadn't parted himself from the box of jelly donuts at his desk. She swept over to him and grabbed the mirrored shades from his shirt collar.

"Hey!" he protested.

"My pair got broken," she said, slipping them onto her face. "If anypony asks, I'm checking one of my dead drops."

She headed for the exit, passed through the lobby, and descended the steps of Firefly Center, headquarters of the Shadowbolt Directorate. It was a little early, but Major Dust would be debriefing Source Witchcraft later, and the Colonel had something to discuss with her. If Spitfire wouldn't listen to reason, Lightning Dust would.

The murky, acrid air billowing through the city tingled the nostrils and the tip of the tongue, tasting and smelling faintly of coal and oil. The streetlights, those lonely sentinels of the eternal night, bloomed in the haze, while the buildings down the street became as indistinct as serpents and leviathans under the water's surface. On a billboard, a neon cartoon pony held up an Easy Breezy-brand respirator while winking at the pedestrians. Her smile invited them to buy one at a special low, low price, fit it securely over their muzzle, and delight at how much better the filtered air smelled and tasted.

Twilight Sparkle turned away from the ad and walked stiffly down the street, wrapped up in her own mind. I must become like the princess, she thought firmly. I must master myself and raise myself to the moon.

But the moon wasn't visible. Neither was the High Castle. She imagined it standing on the mountain above. It was also a kind of billboard, she saw. The princess's glowing royal image winked at the ponies below and invited them to buy Luna-brand Mindset, guaranteed to make the world seem one hundred percent better. After all, the princess of the night was the embodiment of the moon, everything that was right and just in the world. In turn, that natural law flowed from her to the land she ruled over, forming a bridge for their ascent.

We're all buying the princess's vision from the High Castle and selling it to everypony else we meet, Twilight thought, feeling half-mad. She was dangerously sober by now, and her thoughts had a bitter and sarcastic edge to them. We're walking billboards for the Land of the Eternal Moon, advertising its greatness with our own success and happiness.

But that product, the Empire of the Moon, was one Twilight had to have, no matter the cost. Luckily, it was absolutely free. All she had to do was hold that ideal of the princess in her mind. It would show her how to undertake the struggle, the same uphill climb the princess once had to make, a thousand years ago, to found this city.

While she wrapped herself in her thoughts, her hooves carried her to the red-bricked building of the Super-Duper Market. It stood alone in a vast, nearly-empty parking lot. Its neon sign glowed in the mist and its inner light spilled out through the rows of glass doors. As she passed through them, they parted automatically for her, welcoming her inside. She made some room in her moon-filled mind for her grocery list.

She harnessed herself to a metal shopping cart and set off down the aisles. But the deeper she went into the twisting labyrinth, the more an unsettling loneliness stole over her. She didn't pass a single other pony. Her only companions were the sound of her hooves clacking on the polished linoleum, the squeaking of the cart wheels, and the hum of the hanging light strips and distant refrigerator units. Everything else was silence, absolute and complete. She told herself it was just after three o'clock. Everypony was still working, doing their duty for the city. She craned her head back, staring up the height of the towering aisles for what she needed. The slogan of the Super-Duper Market said, 'If ponies need it, I got it,' and it was true. Everything a pony could ever want was on those shelves, aisle after aisle of them, a whole labyrinth. The shelves were so full of products they all seemed to lean over her head very precariously. You're crazy, she told herself. It's just vertigo. A trick of perspective. The aisles stood as straight as straight could be, like canyon walls. But the thought of being trapped in a canyon only made her creeping disquiet worse.

To quell the feeling, she stared down at the floor and forced herself to think of what she still needed to get. But the polished floor, where she stood on her own reflected hooves, captivated her. She was supporting herself in mid-air, and below her was a whole new world waiting to be explored. Surely it was more interesting than the one she lived in.

Focus, Twily. She stopped in her tracks. Twi, I meant. Why would I say 'Twily'? The answer, of course, was obvious: he used to call her that when they were young. Before he....

Oatmeal, she suddenly thought. I need oatmeal. Like an aimless pilgrim, Twilight wandered to and fro. She avoided the imported stuff, from the settlements overseas. Those always carried a hefty price tag, and she was trying to save money. A conapt like hers didn't come cheap. So she sought out a box of this or a cup of that, always buying domestic. She refused to let her thoughts wander, trying to shut out the emptiness while her cart filled up. Be like the princess.

But there was too much interference from the supermarket. The crippling loneliness was embedded in its very walls and drowned out the princess's transmission. The store was so empty she felt like she might be the only pony left alive, stuck in a clockwork world that kept ticking away in futility. What happened when there was nopony left to wind it up again?

Get a grip, Twilight, right now.

The deeper into the market she went, the more cut-off from the outside world she felt, like she was digging her own grave.

I'm being tested, that's all, she thought.

But tested by whom? There was nopony around her. Only the can and boxes on the shelves. They sat there, watching her and waiting for her to pick them up and take them home. Commanding unicorns and heroic pegasi and diligent earth ponies adorned the labels. Those cans and boxes were all she had for company. All she ever had for company. Pictures of ponies, not ponies themselves. Voices on the radio, instead of voices in her home. The friendliest ponies in her life were the billboards on the streets, smiling and inviting her to share in their abundance, for a very low price, for this week only, while supplies last.

Cold sweat broke out on Twilight's brow. The shelves on either side of her looked very unstable; she was hesitant to take anything off them in case they came tumbling down. For all she knew, the world might come tumbling down after them, and the cosmic stagehooves running around behind the backdrop would be exposed.

There are no ethereal breezies waiting in the wings to work their charms and change the scenery. This is real life, Twilight. You've just been reading Starswirl's Storm too much.

And why not? The play and the ponies in it were her best friends, now that Shining Armor was....was....

Apples! she thought viciously. She gritted her teeth, on the verge of hyperventilating, and trotted to the canned fruit section, past a pyramidal display of Lorca-brand Canned Watermelon. She scanned the shelves for her favorite brand, keeping an eye open for the quaint little woodcut of an idyllic pastoral market on the label. There: F&F Consumables-brand Apple Sauce. But the closer she looked at the label, the more the hanging light strips glinted off the shiny paper and into her eye. The ancient woodcut, probably dating from the feudal age, leaped to life for the briefest of moments. The stalls on the dusty dirt field and the ponies milling around them came alive as they shopped and laughed to one another and the ponies selling their food. Everypony were so close and friendly. It made the supermarket seem that much emptier. But when she blinked, the label was exactly as it was. As it always had been.

Get a grip, Sparkle.

She looked at the back label. 'All natural', it said. That was good, natural was good. Then below that, the instructions:

1. Open can with can opener (sold separately)

2. Pour contents into bowl

3. Consume

Caution! Use only as directed

There was no expiration date on the label, so she checked the top. And there, in the bare metal circle, she spied somepony looking over her shoulder. A familiar blue-and-white-striped mane. She dropped the can and spun around.

She was alone. As alone as she'd ever been.

Sweat poured down her face and dripped off her muzzle. She felt dizzy and her back muscles were taut and itched with tension. The shelves closed in around her, teetering precariously over her head. She had to finish up and get out, because the place was driving her insane. She pulled a forelegful of F&F apples off the shelf, dumped them into her cart, and took off at a brisk pace to finish getting what she needed.

Physically needed, anyway. What she truly needed, she couldn't get.

On the factory floor of the F&F Consumables building, which was crowded with both great big churning machines and weary earth ponies, the workers heard the windows rattle and the walls rumble. It started softly at first, but the whine rose in intensity, getting louder and more ear-splitting. It crescendoed in a fever pitch, then screamed overhead and shot off into the distance. Most likely, Applejack reckoned, wiping the sweat from her close-cropped mane, one a'them newfangled rocket planes shuttling ponies in from the coasts. The airstrip was just past the industrial sectors, separated by huge drainage channels for rivers of waste runoff and industrial byproducts, miles of imposing chain-link and concrete fences with watchtowers and spotlights, and frequent security patrols.

For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it'd feel like to travel on a rocket plane, soaring through the clouds at hundreds of miles per hour.

Don't ya dare get a notion, she warned herself. Never in a million years will ya board one a'them things, so best strike it from yer head. This ain't some magical fantasy world where everything is wonderful all the livelong day, like in the stories. This is the real world, and ya best get used to it, ya hear? For right now, yer life is apples, and don't ya forget it.

Applejack let out a weary sigh, and let her notions go with it like the hot air they were.

A crate was rolling down the conveyor belt towards her. Its stencils revealed it'd come from Appaloosa. She took a crowbar in her teeth, wedged the flat end under the lid, and used her forelegs to pry it loose. The lid popped off. She leaned over and pierced the airtight plastic wrapping. The apples inside were small, hard, tough. The smell was bitter. Her senses were tickled by some intuitive sense that the apples were wrong. Stunted and sickly. But she ignored the thought. There was only so much the earth ponies in the homeland could coax from the ground without sunshine. This wasn't the settlements. Her kind were determined to make things sprout from the hard, lifeless ground, and she admired them for that.

She upended the crate into her hydraulic press. The apples rolled out and settled into a pile in the trough under the masher. After tossing the crate onto a pile to be wheeled out, she yanked the lever to bring down the mashing plate. It squeezed the apples until they were a nice, thick paste in the bottom of the trough. To her hungry stomach, they looked so juicy. She hadn't eaten since yesterday evening.

Just mash 'em, Applejack. You'll be up fer some extra ration credits soon enough.

She fiddled with the pump machine. From a pipe extending into the masher trough, thick and gooey Horselover-brand Artificial Fat solution spewed into the apple mash, mixing with the yellow-orange of the apple pulp and the red of the skins. Her bosses used it to get more volume per can. If Flim an' Flam can figure a way ta save a bit, ya can bet they'll do it. Food was scarce in the homeland, and the scam proved profitable. Once the automated pipe stopped spewing the artificial fat out, she pulled another lever that opened the drain and sent the mixture pouring into the blender below the trough. As it whirred to life, beating and pulverizing the mix into a fine, edible paste, her thoughts started to wander again, and they turned decidedly melancholy.

She reached up and scratched around the uncomfortable hunk of metal in her ear, wondering what life in the settlements was like. The farming was bound to be more fruitful, for sure. But how was it for her kind? The commercials made it sound like paradise, but they were also trying to sell the trip to unicorns. 'Sign up now fer yer free earth pony workers!' she thought sarcastically. 'They're all hard workers and they never, ever complain!' She scoffed, but she couldn't stop the sinking feeling inside. How did the Bureau of Foreign Affairs decide which earth ponies should go? Was it at random, or did a pony have to volunteer? Was it a punishment, like being given the stick, or a reward, like being given the carrot on the stick?

Her brother would probably know how to go about it, but she didn't feel like getting a lecture. Boy howdy, ain't nopony able ta talk an' talk like Big Mac can.

Applejack probably couldn't go, anyhow. She'd never farmed a day in her life and wouldn't have the first clue about what went where. Her family left the countryside and moved to Canterlot during the industrial boom centuries ago, when life in the city was better for earth ponies. Not great, but better.

And then....the Rising. Her breathing and heart rate quickened as she remembered the sight of her parents swinging from the trees lining the March of Triumph, along with a hundred other broken and bloody Winter Brigadiers. That was the day the pegasus ponies demonstrated the lengths they would go to in order to keep the 'peace', and it wasn't something she was about to forget. She glanced around at all the other weary, broken earth ponies. Many had lived through the Rising, and they weren't apt to rise again. Not this generation, anyway. And considering some of the horror stories she had heard from her brother about life in the Equestrian fields, it stunned her to think the city ponies were the lucky ones.

Fer a thousand years now, they went and blamed us fer not makin' enough food, she thought. Fer a thousand years, it's all come down on us. Every time something happens, we get the brunt of the blame. When that book, The Empyrean Herd, came along, they finally had the perfection explanation why, and when the Winter Rising happened it was as good as confirmed. After the Rising, the pegasus ponies had free rein in dealing with 'degeneracy'.

The machine buzzed as the finished apple mix dribbled into a steel canister. She capped it and sent it on down the assembly line to the next station.

What's the point? she asked herself, not for the first time. Of anything?

But the answer came to her instantly: her family. Through thick and thin, they held her together and gave her a reason to go on. It made the bad bits – pretty much everything else - tolerable. She smiled thinly to herself as she got to work on another crate. Together, they could weather anything. Even if it wouldn't put food in their bellies, it kindled the flame of love in their hearts, which was so much more important than nurturing the body.

The medical suite's white tiles and shiny metal surfaces gleamed under the flourscent lighting. The small room was cold and sterile, with a faint blue tint the same color as a pony's face during asphxyiation. A grim thought, for a grim place. Fluttershy shuffled her hooves, wanting more than anything else in the world to leave the Rarefaction Industries factory. But they weren't done yet, not by a long shot. It was enough to make her cry.

Another pony came in, escorted by two pegasus overseers. An elderly green-coated mare, with white stubble dotting her shaved head. A poor, scared little thing, like the critters in Perky Pet. The pegasi led her to the examination table and helped her up onto it. When she lay on her stomach, her head and ears sagged. Her eyes, set in deep wrinkles, looked from one face to the other, too tired to be terrified. She only had weariness left in her. Poor thing, she's so old she can barely keep her head up, Fluttershy thought. Don't worry, soon it'll be all over with. Earth ponies were so helpless and scared all the time. Fluttershy felt a kind of kinship with them. When she spoke to them, all her nervousness melted away, almost like she could understand and communicate with them on a deeper level.

The unicorn doctor pulled a stethoscope from his white lab coat and checked the old mare' heartbeat.

“So what brings you here?” Fluttershy asked, stepping forward.

“Well, last week, I-I went and collapsed,” the mare admitted, full of shame. “I was at the sewing machine, like I was supposed to be, and the room was all a'hot and stifling, and a'fore I knew it, down I went. Hit my head on the floor. But they was nice an' gave me a whole hour break a'fore I had ta start workin' again."

“When was your last meal?” Fluttershy asked.

“Supper, yesterday. Been tryin' ta save up money fer some more meals, but it's mighty hard.”

“Aw,” Fluttershy cooed in sympathy, rubbing the mare's hunched back. She ignored the doctor's impatient look. “Well, you just hang in there, alright?”

She wished she could give this mare, or any of the earth ponies she dealt with when she went out on assignment, a decent meal. Even if it went against the rationing laws. But the Bureau would fire her, and then how would she afford her little bunny?

Well, at least she won't ever know another hungry day, Fluttershy thought sadly.

She took the clipboard off the table and looked at the documents she'd received from Vinyl Scratch. Under the stylized logo of the High Castle and the words 'Bureau of Harmony, Livestock Division', she scanned the text and confirmed what it said. 'Stock #AC-219-41. Movement status: free range. Employer reports productivity falling under minimal threshold. Liquidation authorized under paragraph 7 of Racial Harmony Law of 988.'

Fluttershy checked the metal earmark stapled through the old mare's ear and confirmed it was the same number. Swallowing heavily, she gave the nod to the doctor behind the old mare's back. He crossed to the medicine cabinet. The loud creak of its hinges opening sent spikes of pain into Fluttershy's eardrums. She flattened her ears against her skull. When the door was fully opened, she saw her reflection in the glass, twisted and distorted. The doctor pulled out a bottle, its label covered with complicated, clinical chemical terms. Nowhere did it say, in plain and simple terms, what it did. He shook the bottle until a small pill fell out into his up-turned hoof.

“What's your name?” Fluttershy asked the elderly mare. She was owed that much.

“Granny Smith.”

“You just relax now, Granny. We're going to give you some medicine, and you'll feel right as rain, alright?”

The mare nodded slowly, her head shaking, as the doctor came back with the pill and a glass of water.

“Drink this,” he said, his words terse, his demeanor smooth and with no wasted movement.

She took it and drank it down with the water without hesitation. Fluttershy wondered if she knew what the pill was. Earth ponies were sometimes reassigned if another firm could afford to license more workers from the High Castle; did this mare think the ponies who left their desks and never came back were being sent somewhere else? Going on to better things? In a sense, they were: the World to Come was waiting. Or maybe the old mare just knew it was her duty to obey her guardians without question. She had lived through the Winter Rising, after all.

My race, Fluttershy thought sadly.

The sudden impulse to take the bottle and swallow every last pill in it, to sail away to the World to Come and spare her heart and soul from any more, overcame her. But if she did, who would give these earth ponies a last bit of dignity and respect? Certainly not the doctor or the pegasus overseers, that was for sure. No, she had to keep subjecting herself to this. Maybe it was a filly's foolishness, but she thought the touch of kindness she offered these earth ponies made all the difference for them in their final moments. Even if it was destroying her on the inside.

Just think about the adorable little bunnies, Fluttershy, she thought as the mare settled her chin on the examination table. Fluttershy ran a hoof through her shorn white hair. Snowy white hair, like the little bunny she would soon own, and care for, and love. She could not save these earth ponies, but she could save her little bunny.

“You have a family, Granny?” she asked.

“Yessum, ma'am. Three beautiful grandchildren.” She yawned suddenly. “Sorry, awful impolite of me.”

“That's alright. You've had a long day.”

“Long life, more like. Seen an awful lot of things....”

“You've worked hard, haven't you? All your life?”

“Yessum,” Granny Smith said, her eyelids fluttering as she sank down. She yawned again. “The World to Come don't let nopony in who ain't worked....long and hard....for it....” Her breathing became labored.

This is it, Fluttershy thought. She's going....

“Just think of how beautiful it'll be, you and your family all together there.”

“....best grandchildren....anypony could ask for....”

“You rest now, Granny Smith. You've earned it.”

The earth pony breathed a few more times, long and laborious. Then she was still, her last breath leaving her in a soft sigh. In the silence that followed, nopony moved. They watched the body closely, because sometimes the unconscious mind spasmed as it fought against the Tetroxide-D in one last desperate attempt to live. But Granny Smith's body didn't move. It had been waiting for this moment for a long time now. Now her spark of life had gone up to the eternal moon. Put out to pasture in the World to Come.

One of the pegasus ponies lifted the body up, slid a body bag under it, and then dropped it again. It thumped heavily against the examination table.

“Alright, take the body away for cremation,” the doctor said, utterly disaffected. “How many more of these are there? I have tickets for The River Runs Wild tonight and I want to be ready early. Parking is going to be a nightmare.”

Fluttershy checked her clipboard again, and what she saw made her want to start bawling. “Five more,” she mumbled. She had to do this five more times before she could go home.

As they zipped the bodybag up, Fluttershy took one last look at its calm, serene face. Already a statement had been drafted and mailed to the little ghetto hovel she surely shared with her family. She would've gone out there and done it herself, face to face, but watching the old mare die once was enough. She couldn't stand to see it happen a second time in the eyes of her family. When she finished filling out the paperwork and tucked it back into the folder, she waited for the next earth pony to enter.

She wondered what to do after work. Stare wistfully at the pet shop window? Sit home alone, thinking about Granny Smith's last moments? Maybe she'd go see the new show, The River Runs Wild, at the Chariot Theater. Trotten Pullet was in it, and Fluttershy had loved Pullet since her supporting role on the radio comedy, Derby and Me. If she hurried, there might still be some cheap seats left. It was settled, then; she'd go and laugh and forget about her job and her life. For a little while, at least.

The next earth pony was escorted in. He was much younger than Granny Smith. His wiry body was taut with tension, but one of his legs was withered and discolored. He limped heavily, and his skills with a sewing machine were probably next to useless.

Fluttershy's thoughts turned to the mare who owned the factory. I hope you're happy with this, she thought. Wherever you are.

“Oh, I love it!” Rarity squealed.

She's so happy, Coco thought. Her heart leaped with delight as her mare circled around the finished dress standing in the center of her office. She didn't let it show on her face, though. It wouldn't do to let Rarity see her as anything other than calm and composed. She had to remain collected at all times. Coco existed to serve, not to indulge in base, emotional passions; her purpose was to plant the foundation of the Empire, a foundation the unicorns managed and the pegasi defended.

“It's just so marvelous,” Rarity said, eyes shining. "I'm so impressed with all my workers. I should do something nice for them.” She put a hoof on her chin, then turned to Coco and asked, “What do....your race, ahem....like?”

Coco didn't answer immediately. She walked to the window overlooking the factory floor. Below, rows and rows of earth ponies were hunched over sewing machines, doing their duty for Canterlot.

She had been a manual laborer, once. Her duty was to clean the floors of an industrial waste plant. But unlike some earth ponies, she had never blamed others for her situation. She had taken responsibility for her own life and worked hard to better herself, to make the ascent upwards. The promise of the city. It rewarded those ponies who gave their all. After sending application after application to the Bureau of Harmony, she had gotten a chance to prove herself when the inspectors came and interviewed her. She went above and beyond simple duty and strove to embody everything an earth pony should be: diligent and tireless and quick-witted, sacrificing her petty selfish desires for the good of the Empire. And in reward, she had earned the supreme right for an earth pony: the removal of her earmark. If the mares and stallions down there on the factory floor hadn't gone anywhere in life, it was their own fault. She had nothing but contempt for ponies who refused to better themselves. Those who blamed others for their problems would never get to make the ascent and frolic in the lush pastures of the World to Come.

Turning back to her mare, Coco finally said, “Can you hear the earth ponies sing, ma'am?”

Rarity tilted her head and raised an ear, listening intently for a moment. “I'm afraid I don't hear anything but the sewing machines.”

“Exactly,” Coco said, allowing a sliver of a smile to show. “Listen to those machines joining together in rhythm, cadence, melody, harmony. From that, a music emerges. That is the song of the earth pony, and we sing it with every motion of our hoof. What we love most, ma'am, is to serve. And you've already given us ample opportunity for that.”

“Very poetic, my dear.”

“You're too generous.”

“But still,” Rarity said, trotting to the window beside Coco, “I should do something for them. Maybe I could upgrade their ration credits? Is there a wholesale discount, maybe?"

Coco did some quick calculations in her head, then announced, "With how many earth ponies you're licensed for, it would cost about seven times what your company makes in a year. And besides, ma'am. Earth ponies are of the dirt."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Rarity asked, her voice rising in indignation.

Coco knew well enough by now that her mare hated the idea of degeneracy. That the earth pony race, by its very nature, was more earthly than the unicorns and pegasi. More bestial and impulsive, and less in tune with the divine moon. It sickened Coco to think that her ancestors had interbred with those hideous beasts, the Griffons. That she had their blood inside her, no matter how diluted. Chimerism: the source of racial degeneration. But in the end, everything had worked out for the best. That closeness to the profane earth had allowed them to grow food for Equestria, even if the princess sometimes needed to employ harsh measures to keep their more degenerate instincts in line. Like the rationing, once a wartime measure for all Equestria, made permanent for the earth pony race after the Rising.

But Coco's unicorn was her all, and if Rarity didn't want to hear about degeneration, Coco would have to discuss the matter indirectly.

"What I mean is," she explained, "for every hardworking earth pony, there's one who'll take a mile if you give them an inch. Giving them more food without them earning that right would only make them work less and drive down production."

Rarity paced to the other side of her office and thought a moment. Then she spun round, her face lighting up. She clapped her hooves together. "Perhaps a new line of couture! A discount line for earth ponies, and one free dress for everypony who works for me!”

“I don't think that's wise, ma'am. We wouldn't want to encourage the development of a distinct earth pony culture, would we? After all, the Winter Rising started small, with...." Coco nearly said 'them'. Struggling to sound objective, she announced, "With some members of my race donning their own homemade fashions. Creating a distinct culture for themselves, apart from normal Canterlot culture. That led to gathering in discotheques and mingling unsupervised with impressionable young unicorns and pegasi."

"I enjoyed 'mingling'."

"Not all unicorns have your purity of heart, ma'am," Coco said. She allowed herself a brief smile, to please her mare. "Look at the Winter Rising: the lack of a strict hoof controlling the city's culture emboldened some earth ponies to take control and declare a revolution, and the youth culture that sprang up around the discotheques supported them wholeheartedly. And since fashion is inevitably tied to culture, giving earth ponies the means for a separate culture would only put them in a revolutionary mood again. Make them think they can exist apart from the greater glory of Canterlot."

Those traitors, Coco thought. It was their fault life was so difficult for her now. The Racial Harmony Law would never have been written in the first place if the earth ponies who formed the Winter Brigade had just learned how to play by the rules of society. The rules that got hardworking ponies like her where she deserved to be. Coco just thanked the moon that her mare didn't bother much with the logistics of the company. She wondered if Rarity even knew the Bureau of Harmony was euthanizing earth ponies who failed in their duty. It wasn't a government secret, exactly, but neither was it advertised on the EBC or spoken of in polite company. Rarity always had her head in the clouds, close to the moon. Perhaps she knew, on some abstract level, but Coco Pommel was the pony who tended the foundation of Rarefaction Industries. She was the one who allowed her mare to soar, and to raise Coco in turn.

"I know you have only the best of intentions, ma'am," Coco said, "but think practically. Some ponies will be more than happy to take advantage of your generous nature."

"Good point." Rarity rubbed her cheeks with her hooves. “I hadn't thought of that. Oh, this is hard! Like getting a gift for an aunt you haven't seen in decades.” She worked the dress off the display pony and carefully laid it in a plain white box on her desk. “I'll think of something later. Right now, Coco, be a dear and fetch me that accounting paperwork. I want to finish it before the day's done.”

“Right away, ma'am.”

Coco left the office and walked along the catwalk and into the office complex built on the side of the factory building. She knocked on Golden Hoofshake's office door. The alabaster stallion raised his head from his ledger. When he saw her, he narrowed his eyes ever so slightly. She knew Hoofshake had no great love for earth ponies, ever since his own accounting firm had been burned down during the Winter Rising. She couldn't say she blamed him, but she was disappointed that no matter how hard she worked, he couldn't recognize that not all earth ponies were degenerate. Some of them actually put in the effort to make the ascent upwards.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice cold but calm.

He may not have liked her, but he could put his feelings aside in the name of doing business. Coco was not herself right now, but rather a representation of Rarity, and that shielded her.

"Rarity would like the D23 paperwork, please."

He got up and went to a file cabinet, rifled through it, and plucked a thin folder out. He gave it to her. She flipped it open and checked that most of the relevant information had been typed into the spaces already. All the forms required was Rarity's signature. Coco thanked Golden Hoofshake and left the office. She was halfway back to her mare's office when, out of nowhere, she thought of Surrey Polomare.

Why her? she wondered. Why now?

Coco's gait slowed a little bit, as the shame filled her. She remembered the heft of the rusty iron bar in her fetlocks, the long hours waiting in the alley beside Surrey's ramshackle little ghetto back-to-back house, the fear in the usurper's wide eyes when Coco brought the bar down and broke her hind leg clear in half. But she deserved it. The interviewers from the Bureau stated to Coco's face that there was only one position open, and she sure wasn't going to let a fraud and a cheat like Surrey Polomare get it. Surrey didn't care about serving; all she wanted was the reward. She was a smiling face who only told ponies what they wanted to hear, not help them. The Bureau of Harmony euthanized Surrey for that, she thought, shaken a little. For being too lame to work.

But Surrey Polomare didn't deserve to ascend. Coco was the genuine one, and she deserved the position more. Besides, all that was in the past.

So is the Winter Rising, she thought, feeling a chill from nowhere. And yet....

Coco Pommel shook her head. If she truly thought she had earned her place, then she shouldn't stand around while her unicorn was waiting. She picked up her pace and walked back across the catwalk to Rarity's office, high over the rows of earth ponies bent over their sewing machines.

Chapter 5

He was haunting her. No matter how fast she ran she couldn't outpace him. He stalked her behind the backdrop, moving silently among the cosmic stagehands, while she was stuck onstage, in the limelight, with the machinery propelling the universe concealed from view. He knew all the shortcuts around the reality through which she moved. The empty, soulless medium. No wonder he could intrude on it so easily. If it had no soul, then the nearest soul energy would be drawn in as the universe attempted to reach equilibrium. It was simple physics.

She couldn't remember the way out. The aisles twisted and turned, still daunting and alien despite years of her shopping there. This place was so enormous, because if ponies needed it they had to have it. Everything except a way out. Why bother? A pony could spend their whole life in this maze and never need to leave. Everything they needed, under this roof. The supermarket was all.

But she had to get out. Faster and faster she ran, away from the soulless market and its lost soul. She broke into a gallop, straining herself against the shopping cart weighing her down. She cast another glance over her shoulder, at the towering shelves all around her--

Twilight abruptly stopped running, and wasn't sure why.

Her hooves weren't even on the ground anymore. Her first panicked thought was that the ghostly pony had snagged her and carried her away. But then she hit the polished floor and grunted from the impact. The shopping cart upended itself and spilled her groceries everywhere. Lying limply on her side, she fumbled with the harness until she got it loose and tossed the straps aside. Getting to her knees, still shaken and dizzy, she looked around for the phantom who had attacked her.

But it was just an earth pony, a little yellow one, who'd gotten in her way. Twilight's lips curled up in an instinctive sneer. What good are they?! she thought instinctively. The desire to clout the filly came over her, but assaulting a corporation's stock was a major faux pas. Driving down their productivity could land her in trouble if they filed a formal complaint.

Groaning, the filly in the green apron looked up. When she saw Twilight's glare, she jumped to her hooves and dropped her wide, staring eyes to the floor.

“Look what you did,” Twilight snapped as she dusted herself off. She gestured to her groceries lying on the floor. "You spilled my cart."

“Yes, ma'am, Ah'm sorry, ma'am,” the earth pony mumbled.

Twilight ignited her horn and magically took hold of the filly's earmark. She dragged it closer, making its owner keep pace to keep her ear from being torn apart. Twilight made a note of her serial number. “Put all this stuff back in my cart, PG-164-65, and maybe I won't tell your manager about it.”

"A'course, ma'am." The earth pony scampered to the overturned cart, righted it with a mighty heave, and eagerly piled the cans and boxes back in, nearly tripping over herself to get it done in haste. “Absolutely, ma'am.”

Twilight turned in a circle, taking in the towering labyrinth of the supermarket, and demanded to know, “Where's your bathroom?”

The filly immediately pointed down one aisle, her whole body as tense and stiff as a signpost.

Twilight kept her chin in the air and lightly trotted in that direction. She kept her eyes peeled until she saw an enormous restroom sign on the far wall. Quickening her pace, she burst through the door and locked it behind her. Safe now, she thought, slumping against the locked door. Safe from the enormous, terrifying supermarket. It was much too big for her, a monolithic edifice that utterly dwarfed her. It wanted to swallow her whole. Consume her.

Like the sun in her dreams.

Twilight was so small, so insignificant. All these things wanted to devour her and rip her to pieces. She shuddered and shook, feeling the terrible weight dragging her down. That terrible weight she could no longer bear. All she wanted was to be left alone. Give up her burden. No more pain swelling up inside her until she couldn't contain it anymore. Tears burst from her eyes like a dam breaking. She sank to the floor, ignoring the dirt and filth on the tiles.

She hated the supermarket. But if she hated it, that meant she also hated civilization. What was a supermarket but the very spirit of her princess's civilization? This wasn't just a building, it symbolized the Land of the Eternal Moon and its bounty. A cornucopia. Everything a pony could ever want was here, under this one roof, in the Super-Duper Market. That was the promise the princess's world offered.

Then why did she hate it so much? Why did it feel like she couldn't find what she wanted, no, needed?

Twilight pounded the back of her head against the door, as if she could drive the evil thoughts out by force. Jolt herself out of her frame of mind and back into the right one. This is a test, she told herself. I'm being tested. If I come through this, I'll know how strong my love for civilization is.

But she was dangerously close to breaking. She couldn't go on like this much longer. Why did the test have to keep going? Wouldn't whatever was testing her know the answer by now? Or did it want her to break? Did it want her to submit and admit she was irrevocably degenerate? Would the Midnight Guard, the same organization her brother gave his life for, come knocking on her door and drag her away? Or would they turn a blind eye and let her suffer in this agonizing silence?

She couldn't say which was worse.

Why does life hurt so much? she thought.

She'd been keeping the tears dammed up for so long. When they ran down her cheeks, bit by bit her misery went with them, flushing itself out of her system. When they were all gone, she was left an empty shell of a pony in a dingy supermarket bathroom. She dabbed at her eyes, wiping away the last few droplets clinging to her lashes, then got up and inspected herself in the mirror.

Her eyes were still red, but that would fade in time. Everything did, save the eternal night.

To such ponies yonder, of stoic eyne,

As they think on these words and deeds of mine,

Wrappéd in this fine cloak of acting craft,

Tell me, Clover, the design their minds draft?

Those lines, those divine lines, sprang into her head like a radio transmission. The brilliance lit up Twilight's mind: Starswirl lectured his apprentice, Clover, in rhyme, because such words caught the eye and ear most sublime.

“Starswirl,” she whispered to her reflection, “plainly you know as well as I/that an answer cannot be by your lips/too long contained. So tell me now without/your verbal art, what you seek to instruct?”

What have I done to deserve a filly,

Whose mind is as dull and witless as this?

But listen now, I will recount most plain

My meaning, for your help I need anon:

The thinking faculty, our high reason,

Is by some virtue known to each alone,

Sealéd inside our skull like treasure keep

With map stowed safely out of others' reach.

We oft parade those bangles that we love,

And so it is with thoughts that spring to mind.

But baubles dull, and all the thoughts unwise,

Are kept down deep to stay the scorner's wit.

So speak you now, of what is real or not,

If this lesson you have unart'flee got.

As we all trot across the worldly stage,

Or turn our eyne to words of bygone age,

Tell me, is it the mare whose thoughts are guessed

Who is soothfast, or one with thoughts expressed?

The irony of that passage never failed to amuse Twilight. Here was a play written about the greatest sorcerer of all time, and yet he could only be known through what was written by him or about him. How much was the truth? Was any of it true? Even when it came to his own writings, she wondered what secret thoughts lurked in his brain, hidden between the lines, forever unwritten. Secret thoughts about how evil the sun tyrant was? Thoughts doomed to be forever unexpressed because Solara's armies would round him up as a heretic? Whatever Starswirl really felt on the inside hadn't survived. Those thoughts died with him. Now, unicorns like her argued over whether he should be proscribed as a savage chained to an outdated and unnatural philosophy or whether his ideas could be salvaged as the product of their time.

More words, those arguments. Words about words. An ever-increasing mountain of them, all stored in the Canterlot Archives deep inside Mount Canterlot. A mountain inside a mountain.

It was language that made ponies more than animals, allowed them to grasp complex and abstract concepts and share them with others, with their foals, with all of pony history yet to happen. Written or remembered language allowed them to survive death itself. All of civilization, its history and principles and legends, were nothing but books full of words, written by or about somepony. Even art depended on language. Every piece of artwork needed a name affixed, so the artist could shine on in the minds of ponies. Language allowed ponies to communicate aesthetics, to exchange supplies and materials, to gather together in movements and art circles, to put into communal words the emotions that worked in them so strongly.

What were ponies, then, but the words they left behind after their death?

Civilization needs to survive, she thought, or we're nothing more than animals.

"It's not civilization that's the problem," she whispered. "It's them."

The revelation blossomed inside her mind, lending her a comforting feeling of safety and security. She had heard the theory of degeneracy, of course, but her encounter with the little earth filly who had tripped her up had lent it a certain weight for her. Shoved it into her face, almost. It was a small instance of a larger pattern, repeated ad infinitum throughout history, that she only now began to perceive in its entirety. For a millennium, earth ponies had been sabotaging Equestria by making sure the Empire of the Moon was underfed. That was why their muzzles had to be put to the grindstone, so they would do their duty. And now, after the start of the industrial age, when they had migrated to Canterlot en masse to work in the firms and corporations the unicorns had built from the ground up, they carried that laziness and contempt for civilization with them.

Though The Empyrean Herd was written in 958, it said nothing about the degeneracy of earth ponies. If fact, it said nothing about racial degeneracy at all. It was full of sneering contempt for Griffon civilization and championed the virtues of Equestria, the eponymous herd, but it was not contextualized as an actual racial distinction, merely a weakness of spirit and values. That came later, when the book entered widespread circulation, and even then, equine degeneracy was still a fringe belief. After all, if the earth ponies farmed the food, they must still be governed by natural law. Part of the herd, at their rightful place in the fields. But the racialist application of degeneracy had shepherded Equestria through the war with the Griffons, holding ponydom together as the fate of their nascent Empire was put in peril by the degenerates on their border. And after the Golden Roost fell and the Empire emerged victorious, the book took on a new role as a guiding light, demonstrating how and why Canterlot was the pinnacle of civilization.

It was only when those earth pony agitators started bucking against the High Castle and the natural order that they were labeled 'degenerate'. And the idea certainly made theoretical sense: in the fifteen years after the war, Canterlot enjoyed a golden age of prosperity. What other reason could there be for hating it? Their desire to upend natural law was irrational in the extreme. There must be a defect in them, everypony assumed. And when those agitators formed secret revolutionary gangs like the Winter Brigade, plunging the entirety of Canterlot into peril, it only proved the theory absolutely correct.

But to the best of her knowledge, no serious scholar had ever labeled the pegasus race 'degenerate'. Their duty was to be led by unicorns, their managers in civilian life and their officers in military life, yet that had never been contextualized as a racial deficit. Yet the more Twilight mulled it over, the more the shape of it made sense. Pegasus ponies had wings, and so did Griffons, suggesting the two had interbred in ancient history, just like earth ponies. Like Griffons, pegasi were unfit to rule themselves; the Griffons had lost the war, whereas the pegasi led by unicorns had won it. And like Griffons, pegasi were crude and boorish, and overly aggressive without refinement.

Like that Shadowbolt Directorate. She couldn't say if she ever believed the rumormongers who whispered they had murdered her brother. But they were the only agency not managed by unicorns. Wild and untamed. Were they, too, a degenerate race bucking against the natural order? It was so obvious, now that she saw it. The unicorns were the stewards of the other pony races because they and they alone were untainted by a degenerate body. The whole of history was ripe for reexamination.

Was that what her brother's ghost wanted to warn her about? That he had been murdered by the guardians of society?

Perhaps she would write a book. A new Empyrean Herd for a new age. Yes, she thought, tingling with delight. She would write a book of her own, laying out exactly how this world was going wrong. Of course, the pegasus ponies were the backbone of security and defense. Had other ponies recognized this and not mentioned it out of politeness? And who would make the pegasi do their duty, if they rebelled against their unicorns?

Ah, well, she had plenty of time to figure out how to set this world right and write it down. She hadn't felt this hopeful during the entire six months it had been since her brother's death.

By now, the redness in Twilight's eyes had faded. Armed and armored with this new knowledge, she left the bathroom and entered the supermarket once again. She saw it with fresh eyes now. Not as an indomitable edifice, but as a mighty structure rotting from within. The product of earth ponies failing to do their duty, and pegasus ponies failing to do their own duty to make earth ponies do their duty. The product of a world where righteous unicorns struggled to uplift the degenerate races trying to drag them back down to the ground.

When she returned to shopping cart, she found that little earth pony had neatly stacked her all groceries inside it. Yet Twilight felt the filly's degenerate impulse to sabotage everything she represented seething behind the filly's smile. She bowed as Twilight harnessed herself to the cart again.

“Lead me to the check-out line,” Twilight demanded. She had to be firm if the earth pony was to know her place.

The earth pony deepened her bow, then jumped to her hooves. Her place was to serve, and she did so eagerly. She darted down the aisle, leading the way forward for her worldly master. Twilight followed at her leisure, until the path led her down the hard cider aisle. She slowed her pace and stared at row after row of those sweet brown bottles. They whispered that only they could give her the courage to face this new world she had discovered and to steel herself against the indignities of the degenerates. Twilight gave a quick glance around the store, to see if anypony was watching, then swiped a bottle and stuck it in her saddlebag. If nopony knew it was stolen, if nopony could connect the deed to her name and legacy, then she figured it was the same as a thought unexpressed. Lost in time, forever.

Besides, she thought, this place was rotted from the inside and it had tried to swallow her whole. It was a symbol of the princess's noble work being corrupted by degenerate instincts. It was only fair that she, whose duty it was to reverse that decay, deserved a bottle for herself.

Now where had that little earth pony gotten to?

Ah hate ya, ya stuck-up unicorn, Apple Bloom thought. You and yer whole rotten kind.

But when the unicorn ambled out of the aisle, pompous and preening, Apple Bloom slapped a smile on her face. That was expected of her. An earth pony quickly learns to smile and tell unicorns what they want to hear or she doesn't make it very far. But her thoughts were her own, and she filled them with curses and jeers. Sarcastically, she thought, Take yer time, why don't ya? But it was part of her prank, having led the lost unicorn to the exact opposite side of the checkout lanes from the only one occupied by a cashier.

“That register aaaall the way down there is open, ma'am,” she said, pointing to the far end. "Happy ta be a'service!"

The unicorn stuck her muzzle in the air and strode away without so much as a 'thank you'. Apple Bloom was tempted to take a can off the shelf and chuck it at the unicorn's head, watch it bash against her stupid skull and burst all over her. Apple Bloom's fake smile slowly became a real one as she imagined the unicorn's long, unshaven mane doused with soup or Lorca-brand Canned Watermelon.

Then she was gone, and Apple Bloom had to get back to the business of stocking shelves. It was almost five o'clock. She wondered how her sister dealt with the humiliation. Big Mac had his plans and Granny Smith was too old to think right anymore, but her big sister just sulked and kept to herself all the time. How did she deal with this life without exploding?

Apple Bloom's legs and back ached fiercely from eight solid hours of work, but she was an earth pony. Her kind were strong, stronger than unicorns and even pegasi; she could deal with it. 'Earth ponies always get by,' her parents had once written. She had read all their papers and pamphlets from the Winter Brigade. 'They are like the earth itself: the hegemony can move it, throw it, beat it, and burn it, but they cannot destroy it. Not ever. The hegemony can break an earth pony's back all they want, but they need the earth pony race, for without it they don't have a ground to stand on. So we earth ponies scrape by and endure their indignities, one day at a time, and work in secret towards the brighter future that we know lays ahead. And it will not be found in their moon or in their World to Come. It will be found in the first rays of the rising sun.'

Or so Apple Bloom told herself. But in truth she would've loved nothing more than to collapse onto the floor and fallen asleep right then and there. It was about as soft and comforting as her worn-out bed at home.

When she returned to the intersection with her spilled trolley, she found her unicorn manager, Cost Cutter, standing over it and the pile of cans on the linoleum. When he turned to face her, the red tie dangling in front of his starched white dress shirt whipped around before settling back down. His balding head gleamed in the lights.

"What do you call this?" he asked sternly.

"It wasn't mah fault, Mister Cost Cutter, sir! There was a unicorn, see, an' she ran into me, an' Ah--"

"Alright, alright," he said, holding a forehoof up to silence her. "Just get it all cleaned up and on the shelves."

"Yes, sir! Thank ya, sir!"

When the whistle blew, Applejack dropped her crowbar and wiped the sweat from her brow. Five o'clock. Another eight solid hours of work done. The other earth ponies sagged and exhaled heavily, but there was only so many times in the day she could sigh, and while work might be over for them, her night was just beginning. She shut her machines down, punched her timecard, then trudged over to the rapidly forming line of earth ponies snaking out of the boss's office, waiting for their paychecks. Time whiled away while she waited. Her stomach tightened a little more with every passing second as she thought of what came next.

Don't think about it, AJ, she told herself.

Now that the furor of the machinery had died down, she could hear the radio playing in the office. "....artificial limbs, dentures, glass eyes, whatever you need to be whole again. I'm Doctor Eldritch, and for the past twenty years me and my partner Doctor Hoofer have been working with unicorns after major traumas. We've helped hundreds with our prosthetics, custom-made from cutting-edge materials on a pony-by-pony basis, to ensure they fit you. If you haven't been feeling yourself lately, we're here to help. Hoofer/Eldritch-brand Prosthetics. Lifetime guaranteed. Ask about our affordable payment plan. Don't let the stigmata of disfigurement follow you around. Come see us today."

And fer us earth ponies, she thought bitterly, soon as we get a leg in the gears, the Bureau a'Harmony comes right 'round an' puts us down fer bein' unfit ta work.

The commercial ended and a snippet of music, a high-pitched rat-a-tat-tat that gave way to booming and self-important brass, came from the tinny speaker. "Aaaand welcome back to Yako Financial News! This is Yakking About Business, and we're your hosts, Lee Reynard...."

"And Kit Soon, and for those of you just tuning in, we're joined today by a great guest, great entrepreneur, all-around great mare, Vixien Volpony! So, Vix, before the break, we were talking about the loan market. You know, you got these, uh, these banks...."

"....giving loans to earth ponies," Lee Reynard added. "And the High Castle gives them tax breaks to do it!"

And fer us earth ponies, Applejack thought again, soon as we go an' criticize the hegemony, the Midnight Guard comes right 'round ta put us down fer bein' unfit ta work.

"The banks try and spin it as helping avoid another crash like the one in 986," Reynard continued. "But that's ridiculous."

"Yeah, everypony who has half a moonbeam in their mind knows the economic crash had nothing to do with the Winter Rising. That was just an excuse the Brigade peddled to run wild."

And fer us earth ponies, Applejack thought for a third time, soon as we make ourselves a bid fer freedom, the Shadowbolts come right 'round ta put us down fer bein' unfit ta work.

"Absolutely. So we have all these banks giving earth ponies hoof-outs, but that isn't going to help them, it's going to hurt all of us. If you don't give them a reason to work harder, nothing is going to get done. In fact, leave them idle for too long, they get rebellious. That's a fact. Look at what's happening out in Las Pegasus right now. Lots of earth pony agitation and unrest after General Horsepower's plan to build a factory fell through. Vix, what do you think?"

"Well, you know, my family has been running the imperial pens for over ten years," Volpony said. "After the one-two kick of the economic crash and the Winter Rising, when the High Castle reinstated the Edict of 674 and made earth ponies wards of the state again, there was this big question of, 'What now? How do we do this?' The government was busy fighting the war and didn't have the money. So my family came along and petitioned the High Castle to privatize the whole thing, and the High Castle agreed. I've spent ten years running my fair share of earth pony labor farms, and I've come into contact with a lot of them. And I found out that the only kind of hoof-out an earth pony really needs is one holding a cat o'nine-tails."

The three of them laughed over the radio, making Applejack's blood boil. She scoffed angrily, but the burning blush that spread across her face threatened to turn her fury into tears. She tried to tune it out, but it was hard with those jeering voices cutting her to the core.

"If only things were that easy here in the city," Kit Soon quipped. "No bank loans. No hoof-outs."

"If only. I have a dog," Volpony said, dwelling with pride at the mention of her luxury pet, "and I love him, but every so often he'll come to the table and look up at me, his eyes begging me for table scraps. And that's what earth ponies and hoof-outs remind me of, you know? Soon as they smell 'em, they come over and start sniffing around, and sometimes you just gotta roll up the newspaper and smack 'em in the snout and say, 'No! No hoof-outs for you.'"

"Exactly. If you want to eat in this city, you have to earn it with hard work."

Applejack was close to the office now, with only a hoofful of ponies separating her from the door. A commotion caught her attention, and she gladly focused on it. Leaning around the line, she saw a stallion inside the office arguing with the unicorn boss, Mister Billows.

"Hey, what is this?!" the earth pony asked, waving his paycheck in the boss's face. "Where's the rest of my wages?"

Mister Billows looked up from his ledger. "Your employers have a pressing need to combat this company's flagging productivity." His flat and unempathetic tone picked up slightly, casting blame at Applejack and her kind. "To that end, they have deducted a small portion of your wages towards the invention and implementation of a F&F-brand mechanical feeding device, which will allow you to eat while you work."

"They've already cut our lunch breaks from ten minutes to five," the stallion said. "Now they want to cut them entirely?!"

"Look on the bright side: you'll be paid for eating your lunch now. And the food pellets for use with the device have already been certified with the Bureau of Harmony's Rationing Division and will be available for purchase directly from Flim & Flam at very, very affordable rates."

The stallion slammed his hooves on Mister Billows' desk and shouted, "This is ridiculous!"

A pegasus overseer detached himself from the wall and strode over to the stallion, scowling with barely-restrained menace. The stallion looked like he was going to stand up for himself, but only for a moment. Then he hung his head, his fetlock tightening around his paycheck, and slunk away from the boss.

Even though AJ was a ward of the High Castle, like all her kin, they wanted her to be glad they had kept the wage system going. A slice of civilization, they called it, that separated Equestria from the other degenerate races. But that didn't fool her for a second. It had been in place since before the Edict of 674 was reinstated, and the High Castle kept it going because they had nothing to lose. The money just went to the unicorns anyway, after they conned earth ponies with utility bills and overpriced rationed food and mandatory inspections by the Bureau of Harmony to prove they were fit for work. And when their wages couldn't cover it, the banks were all too happy to loan a few bits. The unicorn bank officers waited in their little kiosks in the pawn shops and decrepit little convenience stores that sprang up all around the ghetto, with smiles full of daggered teeth and pegasus security guards hovering nearby, for an earth pony at the end of her or his rope to wander in and sit down and beg for a few coins to keep them going through the eternal night.

Applejack's teeth ground together. They're all up there on the radio, complainin' away 'bout banks lendin' us money at twenty-five percent interest? Banks that just want ta get us all into a whole mess of debt and take us fer all we're worth?

But when her turn came and she stepped up to Mister Billows' desk, she took her paycheck and left the factory without a word. Complaining was no use when the unicorns held the reins, and she needed to save her breath. It was a long way back to the ghetto. Back home, at least the stores would cash her check and sell her whatever food her ration status would cover, and mayhap a little more for the right price. But only because the Bureau of Harmony gave them tax breaks to operate there. When 'respectable' unicorns stuck to their principles and refused to serve her, the less scrupulous moved in to gouge her and her kind for all they were worth. The princess sure does provide fer her city, she thought sarcastically as she passed a sign hanging in a small store front that read, 'ABSOLUTELY NO UNATTENDED EARTH PONIES INSIDE THE PREMISES!'

As Apple Bloom's trolley emptied and the stock went up on the shelves, the supermarket slowly filled up with customers. The unicorns and pegasus ponies always needed directions to this or that, because even though the store was meant for them they could never find their way around it. Whenever she came across the occasional earth pony assistant, towed along by her or his unicorn, a secret smile always passed between them. The earth ponies had to be smarter than those they served, just to survive. They were the ones who knew the supermarket like the back of their pasterns.

Once the last box had been put on the shelf, she made her way to Cost Cutter's office and he grudgingly let her go home for the day. Apple Bloom took a pencil in her mouth and signed her hours in the log book, then collected last week's meager paycheck from the boss. She hung her apron inside her locker and pulled her saddlebag out. After she buckled it around her middle, she put her paycheck inside and checked to make sure her passport was in there, in case she ran into a checkpoint.

There was almost always one at the ghetto's entrances, but these days it seemed like the Shadowbolts were more interested in Changelings than earth ponies. All the roadblocks were in the city center, where some new musical was opening. As for Apple Bloom, she didn't care whether it was the EPLF or the Changelings, so long as one of them blew up the unicorns soon.

She found her passport booklet and flipped it open to check the ration card taped inside. The holes were nearly punched out, and a new card wouldn't arrive until the first of next month. Meanwhile, her stomach was rumbling, but that was alright. She knew a place to get some food where she didn't need a ration card. She left the Super-Duper Market by the back door. On the sidewalk, the air was thick with smog. Autocarriages zoomed past in the mist. A neon sign of a spinning vinyl record beckoned to her across the street, but she resisted going to it. Not only would a record from a store here eat up most, if not all, of her paycheck, any record that made it past the Midnight Guard's censors held no interest for her. She also knew a place to get much better records. They might not sound as good, but what they had to say more than made up for it.

“No, no, no,” Rarity said, pushing the report away. She stared into the full-length mirror in the corner of her penthouse's living room and continued accessorizing herself with her beautiful new black dress. “I want to cancel the proposed factory in Las Pegasus, and refurbish the General Horsepower factory in Detrot.”

Golden Hoofshake ignited his horn and magically levitated the folder onto the glass coffee table. “I understand what you want, but the Governor of Las Pegasus had assurances from the High Castle itself that the factory would proceed before General Horsepower declared bankruptcy. They'll be expecting you to honor that.”

Absently, Rarity said, “It's my money to spend, and my business to run. Not the High Castle's. When the Griffon war started, they said free enterprise and private initiative is what separates Equestria from the enemy, remember?”

“And look where such a soft hoof got us: the Winter Rising. Now, the High Castle protects your enterprise, remember? The Civil Force? The Midnight Guard? The court system? They safeguard our society, and if anything should threaten it...." His voice darkened and turned malevolent, surely recalling the destruction of his business by earth ponies during the Rising. "....they put a stop to it. Don't make yourself into a threat, Rarity."

She magically lifted a pair of black earrings to her ears, but they were too dull and looked more grayish when compared with the deep black of her dress. And they were too angular and not curving enough to go with its looping stitches. Distantly, she said, “Well, I'm sure we can make an arrangement that'll make both Las Pegasus and the High Castle happy.”

“I don't think so. Haven't you been listening to the radio recently?”

“Only Thorny Bends.”

In the mirror, she saw him tilt his head. He asked, “Who?”

Rarity levitated another pair of earrings to her ears. “Oh, she has this show, Thorny Bends and Her Lovely Friends. One of those radio personality-driven shows. She does have a tendency to ramble, but I find what she says most refreshing, so I don't mind.”

“Well, if you'd been listening to the EBC or Yako Financial, you'd know Las Pegasus has been having some, er, setbacks with their livestock. They want the new factory to put the earth ponies to work before they start rioting.”

“Do we have anything in Las Pegasus?” Rarity asked. She made an excited squeal when she found the perfect pair of round obsidian earrings. “Rarefaction, I mean.”

“A few exclusive boutiques. Nothing industrial.”

“It would be much more cost effective if we opened a Rarefaction factory instead. We could employ just as many earth ponies, and without the overhead and infrastructure development we'd need for autocarriage manufacturing.” Rarity smiled to herself as she brushed a few stray hairs back into her mane. Just think, Rarity: your flair for fabulousness, spreading across Equestria from sea to shining sea. Sharing your gift with all the lucky young fillies and colts. And keeping those poor earth ponies from suffering because of a few bad apples who refuse to do their fair share of the work. And your name will forever be known as the captain of industry who rescued the city from a dreadful economic slump. They might even build a statue in your honor!

Yes, expanding Rarefaction is a most generous gesture.

Golden Hoofshake shrugged. “If you think they'll go for it....”

“Let me worry about that, darling. It's my company.” Rarity finished brushing her hair and gave it a liberal spraying of hair spray, then stepped back and surveyed her work. “I'm the one whose neck is on the line, after all.”

The bedroom door creaked open. A set of heavy hooves stomped down the tiered wooden floor. “Are you ready?”

When Rarity turned and laid eyes on Blueblood, she gasped. Trotting quickly across the living room, she yelled, “Oh, no, no, no! What are you doing?!”

Taken aback and deeply confused, he shied back and asked, “What? What is it?!”

“You can't wear that!” she snapped, waving a hoof at his double-breasted velvet shirt. “You wore that to the opera last week!”

Defensively, he said, “I had it cleaned!”

“But ponies will be watching! Taking pictures! Of us! Think of what they'll say if a premiere fashion designer's boyfriend is sporting the same outfit he wore last week!”

"But I like this outfit!" His eyebrows drew together as his forehead creased. “D-do you think I should wear something new?”

Rarity wanted to kick him in his idiotic face, but she reined herself in and maintained a sense of decorum. Her voice was strained as she said, “I think that would be wise.”

“I'll go find something new,” he said before leaving in a hurry.

He makes me so mad, she thought, turning to the window dominating the wall of her apartment. Skyscrapers glowed like pillars of light, making the thick smog glow golden. What did I do to deserve such an idiot? He's from old money and he's not unpleasing on the eye, and the ponies adore him, so....

On a little table in the corner lay an ice box. She hesitated briefly, then decided that a night out with Blueblood would try her patience abominably. Using her magic, she poured a nip of cider into a glass and sipped it while she waited. The liquid burned sourly-sweet on its way down her throat, but when it kindled that fire in her stomach, the kind that slowly spread through her body and made her tingle, she really didn't mind. She offered a glass to Golden Hoofshake, but he declined and took the opportunity to make his goodbyes and wish her a good night at the show. When he was gone, Rarity turned back to the window.

I wonder how big Sweetie Belle has gotten since I last saw her, she thought.

It couldn't have been more than four or five months ago, since the school year started, but it felt like ages. It pained her to send Sweetie off to boarding school, but her hooves were far too full. She simply didn't have the time to raise her sister properly. She barely had enough time to raise Rarefaction properly. The academy in Manehattan had come with excellent recommendations, and for how much money it had cost her over the past seven years, she expected her sister's education to be top of the line. Of course, that didn't stop ponies from coming up with all kinds of stories about Sweetie Belle. Trying to wheedle money from the family fortune. She didn't involve herself much with all that. She had plenty of baseless gossip in her own life. No, that was a matter best left for her publicists. The price of fame and fortune was that everypony else wanted a piece of it. That was the universal solution to her problems, it seemed: just throw money at it to make it go away.

“Oh, Coco!” she called.

Her personal assistant came trotting over. “Yes, Rarity?”

Rarity glanced at the clock. “We're meeting Sweetie Belle at the theater, correct?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Coco said. "In the lobby."

Distantly, Rarity murmured, “I do so hope she's not delayed.”

Below the Auriga Cloudraker's nosecone, just barely visible through the windshield, was a dense swirling smog. “Better get on the horn to CAC,” the pilot said, his forehooves stuck through the holes in the control wheel, keeping the rocket plane steady as it blasted through the starlit sky. "Make sure they have us on radar."

Next to him, the co-pilot lay on his stomach on his own moulded acceleration couch, its straps holding him down tightly and keeping his wings pinned to his flank. He leaned forward, over the instrument panel, to peer through the swirling, impenetrable haze, looking for the telltale glow of Canterlot. But the roiling ocean of cloud cover, mixed with the smoke and fumes coming from the factories clustered on the mountain shelf, offered him a vast expanse of nothing.

“Where's the warning beacon?” he asked.

The pilot scanned the horizon before pointing to a tiny red dot. The warning lights of the EBC radio mast at the peak of the mountain, standing just high enough to stick out of the smog. A faint golden glow blossomed in the heavy cloud cover, just barely visible from the rocket plane's cruising height of 70,000 feet.

“There she is,” the pilot said.

The co-pilot reached overhead, to the radio box, and hit a switch to open a channel to the communications center at the foot of the radio mast, overlooking the landing strips that hung off the side of the mountain. Into his headset, he said, “Canterlot Air Control, this is Raptor Airways Flight 662 inbound. Authorization code 3221AB-2. Requesting clearance to land.”

The radio crackled. “Copy, Raptor 662. You're cleared to land on strip three. Be careful, though. The Civil Force are in the middle of some maneuvers not far from you, and the visibility out there is for s--” Static crackled over the headset. “--and may our princess's moon guide you down safe.”

“Thanks, Canterlot. We'll try not to set any records for most daredevil landing. We wouldn't want you colts and fillies to have a heart attack worrying about us.”

“Heh, copy that,” the tower said.

"We'll call you when we start our approach."

The moon was in view through the windshield. On a whim, the co-pilot kissed his hoof and touched it to the windshield right where it shone over them. That old gesture of good luck from his days in the Equestrian Air Force. The pilot's wings bristled at his side as he gave his co-pilot a sidelong glare. They'd been flying together long enough that the co-pilot could sense what he meant plain enough: 'How dare you think we need luck while I'm flying this plane.'

“Haven't seen the cloud cover this bad for a long time,” the pilot said.

“It's passing right now,” the co-pilot replied. “You can tell from the way it's swirling around down there. All this smog may look imposing, but it'll blow away pretty quick. Trust me, during the Griffon war I went on bombing runs a lot hairier than this.”

As they headed towards the red dot on the horizon, the co-pilot thought back to those days in the air force. He had been barely older than a colt when he climbed into his baby, the HK2, as it waited on the airbase runway for him. Strapped himself down on his stomach in the cockpit at the forward end of the sleek rounded fuselage. Felt the powerful Auriga jet engines blast him down the runway and lift him into the sky over the islands of the Pegaponnese archipelago, on the fateful day General Able Archer ordered the invasion of Khymerzj to commence.

As the HK2 screamed through the sky, bound northwards, he saw the moon to his left. That radiant orb was all the way down on the horizon, so far away now. He put his hoof over it, longing for home. Yet he was dutybound to be out here, with the sun pounding the cockpit from the opposite end of the world, where the degenerates lived. The sun was the source, the High Castle said. That blazing, raging inferno just over the curve of the earth warped everything living in its light. He had been terrified of becoming like the pegasus ponies still living in the Pegaponnese, passive and weak and unwilling to fight the hordes living on their doorstep. Degenerate, just like the Griffon race. A shiver of terror struck him every time the sunlight warmed his coat.

His fighter jet carried him over the grassy plains where General Archer was readying to march on the border and begin the invasion of Khymerzj, disguised as a routine war game in the idyllic Pegaponnese archipelago. The pegasus ponies came from here, he thought to steel himself. The noble warrior spirit of his ancestors gave him the strength to go on, to fly through the sky on that fateful day. To finally reach the city of Khymerzj, a brutish city of dingy bricks and squat, ugly towers. There was no denying it had been made by degenerate minds. He watched the tiny dots of Griffons standing below stare upward, until he and his wing released their bombs and started pounding the city, blowing the primitive defenses to dust and ash. The stone walls couldn't protect them from Equestria's technological ingenuity, a product of the moon's higher rationality, nor could the walls protect them from Able Archer's forces. The army struck like lightning and felled Khymerzj in no time at all.

Despite the Griffons' pretenses at martial spirit, aimed at ejecting the ponies from their newly reclaimed homelands, the degenerate Griffon mind and body was no match for the full might of Equestria. For eight years, the Air Force pounded Gynnhazja Bakal, 'the Golden Roost', with air strikes while the ground forces made their slow advance through the treacherous deserts, snowy forests, and daunting mountains, heading for the palace of the Griffon King. It was nestled in the mountain peaks, made of pale golden oval-shaped buildings inside a fortified wall, like a nest. The Griffons had superior numbers on their side, and the horde harried the Equestrians the whole way there with their primitive catapults and black powder explosives.

In their desperation to halt the air wings, the Griffons had taken to facing the fighter jets unarmored. They would fly in waves out of the sun, which grew higher on the horizon the further east they went. Swallowing down his rising panic, he dodged and weaved through the downpour of slow-moving Griffons. They swiped at his plane's fuselage with swords and spears before he screamed past, all while he desperately tried to swat them out of the sky with his blazing machine guns. He remembered all too well the screams of his wingponies over the radio every time a lucky Griffon hurled a spear, a rock, a sword, or even a leg or head into his or her engine intake and made the plane blow up under them. The downed jets crashed in fiery streaks into the snowy drifts on the side of the mountains.

Towards the end, the Griffons managed to cobble together their own aircraft by studying the recovered wreckage of Equestrian fighter jets. But those pathetic wooden things were no match for the EAF. The Griffons had neither the technical know-how nor the developed industrial base to make proper airplanes. Industrialization was the hallmark of civilization, and the degenerate's instinct is to shun and corrupt civilization. All the Griffons could make were inferior copies because they themselves were inferior copies of ponies. He, on the other hoof, had the might of the Equestrian nation behind him, powering him, giving him wings. When the ground forces finally reached the Golden Roost, with the degenerate sun high in the sky, the Griffons had been too exhausted to continue fighting their natural superiors. They declared unconditional surrender then and there. He had gone into the war little more than a colt. Eight years later, he had gone home a stallion, no longer afraid of the sun. He had stared right into it and the degenerates it spawned, and emerged victorious. Its degeneration couldn't touch him.

The pilot was saying something to him, rousing him from his remembrance. "Huh?"

“I said, you should go tell our passenger to buckle down."

"Right," the co-pilot said.

He pulled off his headset and unbuckled the straps across his back that held him to his acceleration couch. He buttoned up his dress shirt, tightened his tie, and donned his peaked cap. The more professional he looked, the better, he supposed. Then he slipped on his mirrored shades, another holdover from the EAF, and maneuvered carefully through the tight cockpit crammed with instruments. He opened the door, allowing him into the rocket plane's passenger section. He ducked under the bulkhead, and it was well he did because an empty glass came flying at him. It shattered against the wall. Pieces rained down on the thick carpet. The loud noise and flying projectile triggered some deep instinct to take flight, and his wings fluttered open slightly. As if he could fly anywhere in this cramped metal tube.

'Being brave isn't about not wanting to fly far away from the battle.' An ancient memory came back to him. His wing commander lecturing all of them in that cramped little briefing room in the Pegaponnese airbase. 'It's about defying that instinct. The higher calling we fight for are what make ponies more than degenerates, like the ones we're about to drop this ordinance on.'

Likewise, being brave wasn't marching up to the little brat who'd thrown the glass and throttling her, but bucking up and acting courteous to her. He bit his tongue and put that fake public relations smile on his face with what he considered admirable restraint. “Is there a problem?” he asked. “Something I can help you with?”

The filly's personal servant stood in the aisle running between the rows of couches. The light brown stallion beamed at the co-pilot and, in a country drawl, said, “Not a thing, sir, not a thing.”

“Shut up, you dirt-eater!” Sweetie Belle screamed, standing on top of her safety couch.

She lifted up her in-flight pillow by her teeth and threw it. It hit the fuselage with a soft thump. Thank the princess that she and her entourage are the only passengers on this flight, the co-pilot thought. If I had to deal with a hundred passengers complaining about her, I'd blow the emergency door open and fly back to Canterlot by myself. Luckily, Raptor Airways had long ago learned to schedule all her flights as impromptu chartered flights. Her family was certainly wealthy enough to afford it.

“Now, now, Sweetie Belle,” the earth pony said. His shorn mane revealed a bald spot that gleamed in the electric lights. “Why don't we do as the nice pegasus says?”

“Because I don't want to!”

Urgently, he leaned forward until he was almost groveling and asked, “Then what do you want?”

Heaving for breath, Sweetie Belle gave her servant a glare of death. “I want Rarity to meet me at the airport!”

The co-pilot's wife fawned over trashy gossip magazines, full of pictures of Sweetie Belle being a perfect little angel while modeling her sister's dresses and attending galas in Manehattan. But from the rumors he'd heard, Rarefaction paid out plenty of hush money whenever Sweetie Belle threw one of these tantrums, enough to make it worth anypony's while to put up with her and not give her any bad press. He wondered if he could afford a hovercarriage after this run was over.

“I told you,” her servant said, “we'll be meeting her at the theater. There'll be a hovercarriage waiting at the airstrip and everything! W-won't that be nice?”

“I don't want a hovercarriage,” Sweetie Belle shrieked, her voice rising sharply, “I want Rarity.”

The earth pony dabbed a bead of sweat from his brow. “But Sweetie....”

“That's Sweetie Belle to you, and don't you forget it.” Her face turned red as she raged. “Don't you forget what you are! Just 'cause you had that earmark taken off, don't you forget the High Castle just gives you dirt-eaters away. There's a thousand more exactly like you, cheap to hire....and cheaper to get rid of.”

When the earth pony breathed in, it sounded like a whimper. His knees started to buckle and sweat dotted his brow.

Sorry, buddy, the co-pilot thought, them's the breaks. Stepping forward, he firmly stated, “Miss Belle, we're about to start our descent into Canterlot. I'm afraid you'll have to buckle yourself into the safety couch.”

“I don't want to!” she screamed.

“That's apparent, ma'am. But it's for your own safety, so I really do have to insist.”

“You can't make me do anything, I'm a unicorn! You're a pegasus, so you have to do what I say!”

Slick as oil, the co-pilot said, “We're also in charge of protecting and transporting you unicorns, and I can tell you right now that these are top-of-the-line Auriga-brand XK102 rockets propelling this plane. In order to stop on the runway before we fall off the other side, we're going to have to fire retro rockets. And when those babies light up, if you're not buckled into your couch, you'll shoot forward and hit that bulkhead--" He pointed to the cockpit door behind him. "--so fast you'll become a very flat filly.”

Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared. “You wouldn't dare.”

Quickly, efficiently, coldly, he stated, “If we don't dare, then we keep circling until the plane runs out of fuel. These rocket engines propel us through the air at an average speed of 1,500 miles per hour and burn through fuel like there's no tomorrow. As soon as we run out, we plummet to the ground in a spectacular wreck. This plane is going down either way, so I suggest you strap yourself in.”

Faced with his unflappable demeanor, the filly admitted defeat and laid on her safety couch. To her assistant, she screeched, “Strap me in, Filthy!”

“Certainly, Miss Belle, certainly!” he cried as he rushed over.

The co-pilot headed back to the cockpit, dreaming about the hovercarriage he wanted. Maybe a General Horsepower? He could probably get one cheap, since they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Then he remembered there was talk of Rarefaction Industries buying the firm out. He didn't feel like taking his money and giving it right back to Sweetie Belle.

“Still in one piece, I see,” the pilot said.

The co-pilot shut the door and laid down on the acceleration couch. He strapped himself back down. “You just got to let these unicorns know who's the boss.”

“There was talk about her sister buying shares in Raptor Airways, meaning she might technically be our boss soon.”

“She can be boss of the company, sure. But not of this plane. As long as it's in the air, we're the bosses.”

The pilot sighed. “So maybe we should just keep flying, then. What's stopping us?”

Trying to forget about that looming divorce, hmm? the co-pilot thought. “Fuel, mostly. But responsibility has something to do with it, probably. It's like...." He stared at the radio mast on the horizon and marshaled his thoughts. "Being the boss means a pony takes responsibility for the plane, fulfilling their duty to whomever entrusted them with it. If they're not responsible, everypony crashes and dies.”

“Touche,” the pilot said. He reached up and opened a radio channel. “Tower, what's the status on those Civil Force maneuvers?”

The co-pilot put his headset back on and heard the tower say, “Uh, what we got from their office says they'll mostly be staying west of the city, near Cloudsdale Air Base, and up out of hovercarriage range. They're doing some kind of war game, with the Air Force playing the baddies.”

“Isn't that kind of dangerous?” the pilot asked.

“Hey, we don't like it either, but General Mace is the chair of the Defense Council. Even after we brought him today's weather report, he still gave it the go-ahead. He thought that if it took place in Canterlot airspace it would seem more real for his pilots. And you know how he is; tell him he can't do something, he calls you a degenerate who's stabbing the nation in the back.”

“What about the princess? Doesn't the High Castle have anything to say about this?”

“Not that we've heard, Raptor 662.”

Incredulous, the co-pilot asked, “Who even has an air force besides us, anyway?”

The tower replied: “Mace is two steps away from going out and giving the Changelings one, just so he has somepony to protect the city from. Anyway, we've got the fighters on radar right now, and they're not that close. As long as they stay within the bounds of their area of operation, they shouldn't come anywhere near you. There's an air corridor you can cruise right through. Just align yourself with a vector of....three-two-five and you'll be fine.”

"Alright, tower." The pilot pressed a switch on the console, and the co-pilot heard his voice echo from behind the cabin door. "This is your captain speaking. We're firing the retro rockets in thirty seconds, so make sure you're strapped in tight and all loose objects are stowed in the compartment under your seat."

The co-pilot took off his shades and peaked cap and stowed them in a bin besides his couch.

The pilot spent the thirty seconds muttering to himself and shaking his head, then when the count had elapsed he turned to his co-pilot and announced, "Light 'em up."

"You got it."

The co-pilot laid his fetlock over the retro rocket throttle and started to push it forward while the pilot cut back on the main thrusters. There was a mighty boom as twin lances of fire shot from the small engines mounted on either side of the Cloudraker's front. The two pilots were instantly thrown forward and would have smashed their faces to a bloody pulp on the instrument panels were it not for their acceleration couches. Shockwaves ran along the whole fuselage and a high-pitched whine filled their ears, but gradually the shaking abated and the almighty hoof of inertia pulling them forward slowly let go. The pilot pushed the control wheel forward. The nosecone dipped and aimed itself at the glowing cloud cover over the golden glow of Canterlot. The rocket plane descended and pierced the veil of smoke and mist.

As the Cloudraker plowed through the murk, slowing down due to the retro rockets, the obscured blot of light brightened and spread out in the wall of cloud cover. Then, suddenly, the illuminated skyscrapers rising from the shelf carved into the mountain swam into view. They cast golden rays that created an ocean of pale gold out of the clouds. The pilot nodded at the illuminated strips out past the industrial zones. They jutted out perpendicular to the mountainside, supported by enormous metal girders. The drop at far end of each airstrip was just barely visible at the edge of their vision. What lay beyond was not.

“There's the landing field. Taking her down.” He angled the Cloudraker towards strip three's landing lights.

As the rocket plane descended, the High Castle grew larger in the windshield. No matter how much the co-pilot tried to focus on flying, every time he made the Canterlot-Manehattan run he was always conscious of the fortress looming larger-than-life over him. It always made him acutely aware of what a technological marvel the Cloudraker was. Auriga Heavy Industries would never have built it if not for the High Castle. They were fervent about new technology, calling on ponies to press boldly onward into the future, their imagination and ingenuity the only limit. On the princess's wings, the dreams of Equestria were carried.

Canterlot Air Control broke into his moment of admiration. “Uh, Raptor 662, just a head's up. I'm looking at the radar here, and it seems an air force fighter has left the training area. It may, repeat, may be in your vicinity. Wait....looks like a few Civil Force fighters have broken off in pursuit.”

The co-pilot's foreleg muscles tensed on the instruments. “How many are 'a few'?”

“Four. We're trying to get them on the radio now.”

The co-pilot craned his neck and swept his eyes across the windshield, trying to see any shapes moving in the smog. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He turned to the pilot, who gave him a grimace, while keeping his forelegs as rock-solid as ever, holding the control wheel steady and the rocket plane on course.

Suddenly, a Skystriker fighter jet whined overhead, its exhaust close enough to make the Cloudraker shudder.

“Geez!” the pilot yelped, but still his hooves stayed steady.

The fighter jet left a noxious black vapor trail in the golden clouds. Four GH-41s then screamed past in perfect formation, dogging the Skystriker as it arced through the sky over the city. They effortlessly fell into a single file line as their prey slipped between two Civil Force dirigibles floating out past the city, kept as aerial observation platforms after rocket technology rendered them obsolete. The five planes zoomed out of sight, lost in the ocean of smog, leaving only the two airships puttering along slowly like flying whales.

“Good news, Raptor 662,” the tower said. “Looks like those jets are leaving your airspace now.”

“Yeah,” the co-pilot said, wiping sweat from his brow. “That's some great news.”

The pilot nodded in sarcastic agreement, then said, “We're on final approach, tower. We're coming in.”

Chapter 6

“You ever get the feeling you're stuck in a dream?" Thorny Bends asked.

“Every time I realize you're so popular, Thorn,” Freepony Young replied.

Twilight's gales of laughter rang out to the ceiling of her conapt. As she rolled around on her couch, she tried not to spill any cider out of the nearly full bottle she clutched in her fetlock.

“It seems there are these fighter jets out on maneuver,” Thorny said. “Apparently the Civil Force sent a memo around, but this is the first I've heard of it. And it got me thinking: you ever stare at something for so long you stop seeing what it actually is? You just take it for granted. Planes, right? All those hundreds of thousands of parts that have to work in absolute harmony to make them fly. All these technological innovations, built on top of each other. It's a miracle, really. And now they're talking about building cities on the moon? To me, it seems like only yesterday that hovercarriages were the latest thing. It's like....when did they start talking about building cities on the moon?”

“Since they came out with the Icarion-9 rocket engine.”

“I know that. But when did that happen? Was I asleep when they announced it? All the details seem to fly by, as insubstantial as a dream. And I wonder how I got here, to this place and time. Am I just sleepwalking through life?”

“Thorny, I think it'd be better for all of us if you got lost on your way to the studio once in a while.”

“Shut up, Freepony.”

Twilight was in the middle of another swig of cider. She snorted with laughter and felt the drink come back up through her nose. She hacked and couched, trying to get the burning feeling out of her nostrils. Cider was getting all over her couch, but she couldn't help it. It just seemed so very funny.

“Anyway. The River Runs Wild opens tonight at the Chariot, seven o'clock sharp,” Thorny said. “It's supposed to be some real knock-out stuff. Cynic DeKey's best work yet, or so the ad copy I'm looking at says. I don't know when I'll get to see it, but it sounds like just the place to get away from life's little hassles for a good, solid two hours.”

“Maybe I should go see it,” Freepony said. "I just remembered I'm on this show, and now I got this urge to get away.”

Drolly, Thorny said, “Ha ha. We'll be right back, folks, after a message from our sponsors: Eco-brand Billboards, for all your signage needs....”

As Twilight tuned the advertisement out, she went back to the stack of paper in front of her. She had come home expecting the ideas to fly from the tip of her pen down onto the page, but all she had were a few half-formed ideas, such as, 'wings = degenerate(?) look up history of griffons at work'. Not her most productive writing session, for sure. She felt the potent ideas swirling around her head, but she couldn't get them out right without breaking them into indecipherable fragments. She sighed and pushed the paper away. Plenty of time to work on it later, she thought, taking another mouthful of cider. I need to take a break. I need to get away from this a little while....

Get away....

Thorny's words came back to her. If she needed to get away, she should go see the show. It was knock-out stuff. She liked Cynic DeKey's musicals well enough, and with a bottle of cider to keep her company she might even enjoy it. This late, she probably wouldn't be able to get good seats, but the Chariot Theater was built to be huge and there was usually enough overflow and cancellation tickets to snag a spot. It was five-thirty now; if she hurried, she might be able to make it through the checkpoints in time for the show.

It was settled then. She would go out, clear her head, then start work on her magnum opus tomorrow. The musical might even give her some inspiration.

She slipped off her couch and stood. Suddenly the walls spun and she grayed out. She had drank more cider than she realized. Planting her hooves in the carpet, she leaned against the wall until the dizzy spell passed. Once she was steady again, she aimed a spell at her coat rank, but she missed and had to trudge over and grab her scarf by hoof and wrap it around her neck. Her saddlebag was on the floor next to the door. She grabbed it and strapped it around her middle. But when she headed for the door, she paused. I forgot something, she thought. Casting an eye over her shoulder, she saw the cider bottle sitting on the table.

Twilight took it and shoved it into her saddlebag. Just in case.

Once she'd rode the elevator down and walked out of the lobby, she stepped outside. The wind was brisk and cool as it stung her cheeks, inbound from overseas. It pushed the smog out of the sky, revealing the occasional glimmer of the beautiful starlight overhead. Her hooves clapped against the concrete while she wound her way through the city to the Chariot Theater.

A fine layer of rotting debris seemed to cover every square inch of the ghetto, like dust. Every time Applejack looked away and then back, something else had broken to pieces and littered the ground. Nopony ever spent the time to tidy it up, nor did anypony care to. All the earth ponies were assigned to factories and work details in the other sectors, where the unicorns and their factories were, and when those weary pilgrims returned they ached far too much to tidy up their own home. They just let it rot and crumble to dust around them. The whole place was filthy and disgusting, in no fit state to be lived in.

Several pegasus ponies flew past high overhead. Weather patrol, helping the wind along and clearing up the last of the smog, most likely. However, Applejack didn't want to take any chances with prying eyes, and raised her canvas cloak's hood and pulled it over her face. She sidled up close to a wreck, crouching in its shadow, and waited until they passed.

The windshield of the autocarriage was broken and bashed in; its occupants had been dragged out kicking and screaming. The wreck had been left there for twelve years now, a relic of the Winter Rising. When the factory workers had joined the revolution, she dared to hope it would usher in a new age. That hope was quickly dashed when it turned out they were more interested in getting back at their bosses. Meanwhile, on the other side of the battle, the militias had been even more brutal than the Civil Force. Made up of soldiers home from the war, they were merciless. They were the ones who'd strung her mother and father up from the trees. Some small part of Applejack even thought her parents deserved it, despite how much she hated herself for feeling that way. But the mob her parents inspired had dragged the two ponies out of this autocarriage and beat them to death, maybe unintentionally, maybe on purpose. She couldn't remember their names, but she certainly knew who their daughter was. Life had a cruel sense of irony, because it was that mare who owned Rarefaction Industries, the company that worked her Granny Smith to death and then some.

Ah hate 'em, she thought bitterly of her parents. Who in their right mind could bring a foal into this kind a'world? Me an' Big Mac an' Apple Bloom, we're all stuck here a'cause a'them. Stuck livin' a life that don't give us so much as a speck a'dignity. How could they do such a thing? Livin' a miserable life an' bringin' a foal into it just a'cause ya want ta feel some love. Ah ain't never heard of a more selfish reason ta do a thing.

The skies were clear now. After a quick glance around the street she darted down a side alley. The garbage was piled against the walls like cliffs, leaving only a thin valley in the center to walk down. The windows were cracked and grimed with filth and the shutters and doors hung askew on their hinges. She craned her head back until she could see the High Castle under her hood. She imagined the princess of the night sitting down to a nice meal, grown from sun-starved soil by nothing but the sweat and tears of earth ponies with broken legs and broken backs. AJ, on the other hoof, had to do questionable things in the slim hope that things would get better one day.

It's for the family, she told herself firmly. It's all for the family.

She slunk up to the heavy wooden door reinforced with iron strips and took another peek back, then raised her hoof and knocked. The sound reverberated throughout the hallway beyond. A metal plate slid out of the way and a stone-coated pony's eyes narrowed. On the surface, he had the old familiar earth pony look she'd seen her whole life: the shaved mane and one ear weighed down by the earmark. But this stallion was different. He always had his easy, low-slung smile, like he knew something other ponies didn't.

“And who might you be?” he asked.

Applejack pulled her hood back. When it hit her earmark, a jolt of pain shot through the side of her head. He let loose an "Ah" in recognition and slid the plate shut. Applejack waited while he opened the door. Dim light from the other side spilled into the alleyway, and Caballeron stepped aside for her.

“Ah, we were just about to begin. Hammer, he is expecting you.”

She walked past him and into the shadowy hallway without a word. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling and disused crates were stacked against the walls. The stylized logo of 'Magnum Smelting' was painted on the wall in faded paint. Once this had been a shipping dock, owned by the unlucky ponies who had perished outside. The Winter Rising was what caused all the unicorns to pack up and leave the area. What made it into a ghetto in the first place, that and the system of checkpoints and earmarks and passports that popped up after the Rising.

In the meeting room at the far end of the hall, a single bare lightbulb hung from the exposed piping crisscrossing the ceiling. She slipped past Cup Cake and her husband, Carrot Cake, hard at work in what they jokingly called 'the bakery'. All these bright an' sunny names earth ponies give their foals, Applejack thought, tryin' ta add a touch a'class. As if a happy name will balance out the misery. The Cakes were the cooks, making their confection, only their sweets required a very specific kind of cookbook.

A voice came through the meeting room doorway: “Make sure those timers are working right. We don't want this thing going off in our faces.”

Hammer's voice was always more youthful and higher-pitched than AJ would've expected from a mean-looking pony like him. But she wasn't fooled a bit; he was as tough as they come. When he faced her, the light bulb make a shadowy valley of the scar running down his face, all the way from his shaggy black hair to the bottom of his white-coated muzzle, turning what had once been rugged good lucks into an ugly ruin. Half of his ear had been ripped off. Applejack couldn't say which she would prefer: being free of an earmark, or being able to pass checkpoints and pegasus patrols. For Hammer, though, the choice was already made, though whether he made it himself or if it was made for him was something AJ couldn't say.

It was a dangerous life, living off the grid. From pretty much the moment an earth pony was conceived to the moment they died, the Bureau of Harmony kept detailed paperwork on their workings, their comings and goings, their movements, all coordinated through the checkpoint system and the ration system. A few ponies had tried to get around it and raise their foals in secret, but it was largely pointless. All earth ponies were required to have a fitness exam by the Bureau every month, and if they didn't go, that was the end for both mare and foal. Unless a pony ran, in which case she'd be running for the rest of her life. Hammer ran, for reasons only he knew. So far, he had made it, but he carried the scars with him still. We're all marked, Applejack thought. Some a little more'n most. And someponies, they're marked on the inside.

“You're late,” Hammer said bluntly.

“Had ta cash mah check,” Applejack replied. She took the meager pouch of coins out of her saddlebag and tossed it onto the table. "Unless ya don't want it fer the cause? 'Cause Ah could sure make do with a few more bits."

His eyes went to the wall, which was covered with maps and newspaper clippings and surveillance photos detailing their plan in all its foolhardy glory. He smoothed out a map of the city with every checkpoint marked in black type. Along the bottom was written the date, along with, 'Bureau of Public Works. CONFIDENTIAL.'

He asked, "The checkpoints?"

"Ah took a quick look on the way," she said. "Seems the map is legitimate. Although Ah wasn't tryin' ta get anywhere close ta the city center, a'course."

“Good,” Hammer said, smirking at the plans. “That'll make it all the sweeter when we pull this operation off right under their noses.”

“I wouldn't call it sweet,” she said. “Bitter, more like.”

“You getting cold hooves?” he asked sharply.

“A'course not,” she shouted back as she stared him down. “How could ya say such a thing? That don't mean we have ta celebrate blowing up a bunch of innocent folks, though.”

Hammer lowered his face. The overhead light made his scarred face into a mess of shadows. “They're not innocent. All of them conspire with each other to oppress us with everything they do, and worse, they've convinced themselves it's all perfectly reasonable and natural. If we want to win this war, we can't afford to be innocent.”

She scoffed. “War? Ah was under the impression 'war' was where ponies march out in uniforms and attack one another.”

He jabbed his forehoof at her. “When the Equestrian Army invaded Grazembezi in 979, they thought they were in for another war like the Griffon war. A stand-up fight where they could roll in, take the capital, and conquer the nation. But that didn't happen. It was a capital in name only. There was no centralization in Grazembezi. After the laughable muster of the official military, the army's main opposition were irregular militias that rose up everywhere, struck like the wind, and then blended back into the villages they'd come from. For fifteen years, the High Castle bled troops and money into that sandpit with no end in sight. Every time they killed one militiapony, every single one of his relatives took up arms and joined the next battle. In response, the Equestrian High Command declared that the distinction between civilian and combatant was too blurred to have any meaning. Every civilian was fair game for the army. They rounded up entire villages to destroy the militia's infrastructure." His voice turned sour. "I've seen pictures of what they did to those zebra they captured, and even worse ones from when the army finally pulled out. So let me ask you: why shouldn't the same standard apply to the Equestrians themselves? These 'civilians' are the ones tacitly giving the military and arms companies like General Horsepower authority. They're not innocent, and we need to overthrow them by any means necessary.”

Applejack was tempted to point out that was the same justification the history books said the princess used to overthrow the alleged tyrant Solara Invictus in the first place. But she knew Hammer would react badly to that. So instead she said, “Shouldn't we be better than them, though?”

“The moral high ground isn't actual high ground, Applejack. You don't win a war by being nobler than your enemy, you win it by being more ruthless. As the zebra learned.”

Applejack turned to the coffee pot, took the handle in her teeth, and poured herself a cup. After she replaced it on the heater, she called over her shoulder, “What about all them earth ponies who'll be there?”

His voice darkened. “You mean the ones who sold our their race to cater to the unicorns? They justify our oppression by presenting a carefully fabricated personality to the unicorn hegemony. They're part of the system, and they deserve no mercy.”

“They're just tryin' ta get by in the world. Make a better life fer themselves.”

“Then they dug their own graves,” Hammer said. “Either an earth pony is conscious of their status, or they aren't. End of story.”

At the cold ferocity in his voice, Applejack started to shake. The coffee cup in her fetlock spilled its contents, which dripped onto her foreleg and burned her. She seethed and dabbed at the wet spot on her coat with a napkin. Then she sighed and called over her shoulder, “But why a theater, Hammer? Some folks just want to relax an' forget about their day--”

“Forget?” Hammer snarled. “Forget?! That's why they go into those theaters, Applejack. To drown themselves in fiction and forget about the consequences of their actions. But they don't get to forget what they do to us. And I swear, tonight will be a night at the theater to remember.”

Oh, I bet it will, she thought.

"You know, I'm starting to doubt whose side you're really on," Hammer said.

"Yers, Hammer," she said with a sigh. "Ya know that."

"I wonder," he said, before turning to the map again.

"Is Caramel ready?" Applejack asked.

For a long moment, Hammer said nothing. She glanced over at him as he studied the map with quiet ferocity. Then, he announced, "Caramel's not doing it. You are."

She was so startled by the news that the coffee cup slipped from her fetlock and dropped to the floor. For a few moments she sputtered as she worked out something to say. She finally said, "That wasn't the plan, Hammer."

He turned away from the map and faced her, his eyes blazing with fury. He stated, "I'm changing the plan. You know it well enough to be the courier, so I want you to do it. And just so you know...." He took a few steps forward, stepping out of the bare bulb's light, his voice dropping into a menacing register. "....I'll be watching you every step of the way, Applejack. And you just keep in mind that I know exactly where your family lives. You understand me?"

Her mind raced frantically, trying to see a way out of this, but in the end she was trapped. She had no choice but to nod. She figured it was best to commit herself to the operation and do her best to allay Hammer's suspicions before he followed through with his threat. His wrath was a terrible thing to behold.

“Caballeron!” Hammer shouted, storming past Applejack.

“Yes, mon frere?” Caballeron asked, entering the meeting room. “What is it I can assist you with?”

“The papers.”

Caballeron went to a saddlebag slung up on a wall hook by its strap. He riffled through it until he pulled out a cardboard box that he laid on the table. He opened it, revealing a bundle wrapped in tissue paper inside. He carefully unwrapped the brand-new letter of transit from the High Castle. It authorized one earth pony to transport a load of sealed building material through checkpoints, with the proviso that the bundle was not to be exposed to air or tampered with in any way.

“It's mighty fine work,” Applejack said, admiring the detail that had gone into artificially wearing and tearing it. There was even a light coffee stain on one edge. It was the perfect fake precisely because it didn't look too new, or so it seemed to her untrained eye. “You trust this forger, right?”

Caballeron closed his eyes and waved a hoof, sweeping away her concerns. “My friend in low places, he is better at making papers than the High Castle itself. Unfortunately, his work does not come cheap, nor does his silence.”

In this world, Applejack thought, a pony's gotta make a living any way they can.

Hammer said, “I understand. Take him his payment, and tell him his business is appreciated, as usual.”

“Right away,” Caballeron said. “Au revoir.”

He swiftly left the meeting room, leaving Applejack and Hammer alone in a deep and agonizingly uncomfortable silence until Cup Cake entered.

“The candy is all ready to go,” she announced. “Carrot is loading it into the empty sacks now.”

“Excellent,” Hammer said, taking the opportunity to walk away from Applejack. “Tell Thoroughbred to ready the cart. We're going to take this war right to the unicorns' doorstep.”

What's all this 'we' talk? Applejack thought. Ah'm the one yer forcin' ta go through wit' this, by threatin' ta do somethin' unspeakable ta mah family.

"Oh, I'm sooo jealous of your new dress," Lyra Heartstrings squealed.

"Of course you're jealous," Trixie snapped. She smoothed out the collar to make the dress appear even more beautiful to the other patrons standing at the little round tables surrounding them. "That's why I bought it, remember? To turn heads."

"I wish I could afford something so beautiful like that. And tickets to the show tonight, too! Where'd you get the money?"

"Ponies just recognize my superior work ethic," Trixie said with a shrug. She tried to think of how Blanche Shockley or Sally Lander would respond. "I don't know how it is where you work, but when a pony has my skills and - dare I say it? - fabulous good looks, she rises to the top like the cream of the crop."

On the stage at the rear of the music hall, which was draped in red velvet curtains and crowded with a full band, the lights went down as a slender mare in a gorgeous silk dress that shimmered in the limelight stepped up to the freestanding microphone in the center. She batted her long lashes and golden eye-shadowed eyelids at the audience. Trixie felt the heartbeat of every red-blooded stallion in the crowd double.

"This one's for all the colts in the audience," she said with a wink.

The band began to play a popular ballad, infused with the proper tonality and achingly melodic. A counterpoint to the loose, sloppy swing they used to play in the discotheques when Trixie was young. The discotheques were popular, and Trixie had gladly taken part in that scene. Then the Civil Force shut them down and the Midnight Guard instead emphasized traditional music hall entertainment, tonal and melodic, instead of the discord of swing. Now, Trixie took part in that with the same enthusiasm. There were moments - not many of them, but a few - in the late hours of the night while she tossed and turned and tried to sleep where she wondered if she only liked whatever was popular and acceptable. Whatever society at large liked. If she even had an identity of her own.

The mare reached the chorus, and her voice soared. "And all through the years, I kept myself pure....for you. Only for yoooouuuu...."

Trixie marked the time as five-forty. She had to leave soon if she was to make it to the Chariot Theater in time. She scanned the crowd, looking for the familiar mane of Lightning Dust, yet she still hadn't arrived. She turned around, glancing towards the bar near the entrance, which was raised above the dining area. And behind the railing, her eyes found Major Dust, and another mare with a multicolored mane who wore mirrored shades. She had been dealing with the Shadowbolts long enough to recognize one, even if she was dressed in plainclothes. How dare Major Dust keep me waiting like this! Trixie thought. But Lightning Dust noticed her stare, and broke away from the other mare. The Major walked along the wall, inviting Trixie along with a look.

"Be a pal and get me another drink, would you?" Trixie said to Lyra. "I need a little fresh air."

"Wuh....uh....sure," Lyra said.

Trixie got up and walked among the little round tables and the ponies standing at them. The stallions were still enamoured with the sultry mare on stage, while the mares were torn between appreciation and annoyance. Trixie's first priority, however, was Trixie. She followed Lightning Dust down the back hallway and into what was marked as a storage room. A portly pegasus stallion moved to block her entrance.

"Sorry, staff only," he said.

"It's alright," Major Dust said. "She's with me."

The stallion let Trixie pass and enter the small safe house and observation post that took up the back of the club. Sitting at a bank of radio and recording equipment was a sweaty pegasus stallion with thick horn-rimmed glasses, a ruffled black mane, and a white dress shirt open at the collar and rolled up at the sleeves. He looked up, a cigarette dangling from his lips, to watch Trixie pass in all her fabulous. He didn't look like he got out much. Past the bank of equipment and shelves full of technical gear, Major Dust waited at a table for her.

"Let's get started," the major said.

"Certainly."

Major Dust gestured at the technician, who turned to the bank of equipment and fiddled with it until a reel-to-reel tape recorder began to spin on its spindle. He nodded at Major Dust, who pulled a microphone sitting on the table over and placed it directly between her and Trixie. She gestured for Trixie to start. Trixie was an old hoof at this by now, and needed no prompting.

"On Monday, Sparkle arrived at work a little late. Nine-ten in the morning, by my reckoning. I could tell right away that she had been at the sauce....that is, that she had been drinking, although she took great pains to cover it up and act like she was completely sober...."

"I kept myself puuuure.... only for youuuuuu!"

The band slowed down as they slid into the finale of the song, their instruments stuttering over the singer's rousing high note, until they ended in an upbeat staccato chord change. When it was over, the silence was quickly filled by every colt in the music hall whistling and stamping his forehooves on the ground in boisterous approval. But the Colonel stayed by the bar, as far away from the stage as she could. On the outside, she was ice. But those lyrics, 'I kept myself pure for you,' they cut her deep and twisted her up inside. She gestured for the bartender to bring her a drink. He knew what she drank, a gin and tonic with a twist of lime, and mixed it up for her right away; she had been the one to put this place on the Shadowbolt payroll, and he was eager to please her.

Pure, she thought with a scoff.

They called it 'racial degeneration' to mix races, even when it was between a pegasus and a unicorn. Whenever the Colonel thought about it, she couldn't help but feel like the unicorns were laughing at her and her race. Passive-aggressively calling them degenerates and making them feel like they were inferior. Her fetlock tightened around her drink until the glass threatened to shatter. We are the superior race, she thought. And it's about time the unicorns learned that. But with Spitfire still in the way, blocking her every move, it would be much too hard. She took a heavy gulp of her gin and tonic, steeling herself for what came next.

She nursed her drink for perhaps five minutes, well into the singer's next ballad, when Major Dust rejoined her. The Colonel glanced over the railing that separated the bar from the tables. Source Witchcraft walked back to her table and swiped a drink from the outstretched hoof of another mare. 'Source Blabbermouth' is more like it, the Colonel thought.

She turned to Major Dust and asked, "Did Source Witchcraft have anything useful for us today?"

The Major gave her a decidedly sharp look. "Of course not."

The Colonel chuckled and went back to nursing her drink. After she had turned the glass around a few times, she said, "I think it's time we cut Witchcraft loose. She's sucking up our operational budget and giving us nothing of value."

"She's also the only agent we have that's relatively close to Sparkle. And Sparkle is the only lead we have to Shining Armor who isn't currently employed inside Obelisk House."

The Colonel's lips curled as she thought about Obelisk House, an antiquated palace dating from the Reawakening, when Canterlot became more than just a tiny castle town and transformed into a full-fledged city, named for the obelisk that stood in its courtyard.

Its courtyard! the Colonel thought, tensing.

The Shadowbolts were formerly the intelligence wing of the Civil Force, but had been split off into their own agency in 951 and tasked with keeping track of the waves of pony immigrants and Griffon visitors during the uneasy friendship of the Griffon Kingdom and the just-founded Empire of the Moon. For their headquarters, the High Castle had commissioned a featureless stone building on Firefly Street. It was part of a new wave of architectural design, the 'bedrock' movement. A lot of fancy, and almost invariably unicorn, hot shot architects designed it and contemporary buildings like the Bureau of Harmony headquarters to 'reflect the foundation pegasus ponies build for society', was how they put it. It had the look and personality of a stone brick. Normally that wouldn't bother her. But ten years later, when the Midnight Guard was founded to maintain the High Castle's official ideology in the face of devastating war with the Griffons, the High Castle had simply given them the disused mansion. Like they were snubbing the Directorate by making their headquarters look pathetic when compared to the grandeur of Obelisk House, despite the Directorate being the older of the two agencies.

Because it was headed up by Major Shepherd, she thought.

Major Shepherd had been head of the Civil Force's intelligence wing, and the highest ranked pegasus in the Equestrian history. He had saved the life of some high-ranking official from an assassination attempt and been rewarded with an officer rank, a first for a pegasus pony. When the Shadowbolts split from the Civil Force, rather than bring in a whole new cadre of unicorns to be the officer corps, Major Shepherd had insisted he be promoted to the head of his own agency. And the rest of Equestria had never forgiven him for daring to rise as high as a unicorn.

"Obelisk House," the Colonel mumbled. "If only we could get an agent inside there, I'm sure we could find out who's sabotaging the Directorate."

Lightning Dust raised an eyebrow. "Spitfire will never, ever sanction an operation to get inside Obelisk House. She will shoot it down the instant the proposal crosses her desk. And there's no way you could pull an op like that off without access to agency support and agency funds."

"Exactly." The Colonel raised her glass to her lips. "Spitfire will never sanction it."

"What are you getting at?"

The Colonel finished off her gin and tonic, then dropped it on the bar top. The bartender came up to her and asked if she wanted another, but she waved him off. "I'm on duty right now, thanks," she said. When the bartender walked away, she turned to Major Dust and nodded at the exit. They both got up and left the music hall, the music, and Source Witchcraft behind.

"I just got back from a dead drop," the Colonel explained. "My source inside the Earth Pony Liberation Front left me a message. It says the attack is a go. It's going to happen tonight, at the Chariot Theater."

"And....?"

They went to the designated hovercarriage parking spaces. Once they climbed into the Colonel's staff hovercarriage and shut the doors, the Colonel smiled at Major Dust. The gin and tonic made her feel bold. "And I say we let it." While she warmed up the rocket engines, she said, "Think about it: an earth pony terrorist cell attacks the heart of Canterlot. We swoop in at the last moment and save the day, but not before a whole bunch of unicorns see the fireball go up right in their faces. Let them feel the heat on their muzzles." The engines finished cycling. The Colonel checked the radar and then, with a tap of the thrusters throttle, the hovercarriage lifted off the ground and swooped forward. "Then we go on the offensive, telling the Defense Council all about how we could've stopped it, if only Spitfire hadn't blocked us at every turn. If only Spitfire recognized the threat when we brought it to her attention. It's perfect. Spitfire already gave us all the evidence we need to prove she's derelict of duty. Remember that memo that went around last month, telling everypony to prioritize the capture of Changelings?"

"You want to pull off a putsch and depose Spitfire?" Major Dust said, sounding somewhat impressed. "Have long have you been nursing this?"

"The thought struck me when my source first brought the possibility of an attack to my attention. Come on, Major. Yes, we both joined the Directorate at the same time. Yes, Spitfire was there for us at the beginning. But nowadays she's hopelessly out of touch. You know that and I know that. She won't even listen anymore. She is letting both us and the city down. The unicorns are playing their elitist game to sabotage us, and she won't let us strike back. But we have a higher loyalty than to Spitfire. Our loyalty is to the High Castle itself, and the pegasus alicorn who rules from it. She tasked us with keeping the state safe, and that includes from the unicorns and their power plays."

"Tell me what you need me to do."

"The way I see it, there needs to be three of us. I used a cutout, disguised as a disaffected clerk from the Bureau of Public Works who needs a few bits, to sell them a map of today's checkpoint configuration. They'll limit their route to the one with the fewest roadblocks, to minimize the risk of detection. And I drafted that map myself to make sure that's the March of Triumph." She gestured out the window with one hoof, at the magnificent arch below, in the center of an enormous roundabout. A wide and tree-lined cobblestone pathway went across the grassy circle. "There's only one checkpoint on that route. One of us needs to be waiting at it for the bomb to come through, and then shepherd it through the city. The second one needs to be in place at the Chariot, to wait for the bomb to arrive. And the third needs to babysit a tactical team at the EPLF staging area in the ghetto. We'll use one of our own teams."

Our tac teams may be only a fraction of what the Civil Force can muster, the Colonel thought, but they were created to keep sensitive operations in-house, and that pompous buffoon General Mace just loves to stick his muzzle into things that don't concern him.

"When it's close to the deadline, we hit the staging area and use what we find there as a pretext for evacuating the theater. Then, when everything comes before the Defense Council, I say I had a lead that Spitfire shot down. I went behind her back and authorized the operation anyway, and it's a good thing I did, because hey! Bombing."

"What if they don't promote you? Director Shimmer might block it."

"Sunset Shimmer also wants the Shadowbolt Directorate to fail. She'll support my promotion because it would give her the utmost pleasure to undermine me. She thinks I won't be able to cut it, like Spitfire. And General Mace may be a racist, but he's easy enough to predict. He favors actions over words. When the attacks happen, he'll demand Spitfire's head. If and when she tries to blame us, he'll ignore her. But he appreciates competent and duty-driven pegasus ponies, and when he hears all about how I saved those civilians, he'll support my promotion too. The other two, the Director of Firefighting and the Director of Public Works, will go with whatever those two decide. And then I'll be the new Director-General of the Shadowbolts, and Colonel Lightning Dust will be the new Head of Internal Security, given free rein to go after the unicorns dragging our Directorate down into the dirt."

"You've put a lot of thought into this."

"It's my job. And I love my job."

"Who's going to be the third?"

The Colonel dipped the hovercarriage down towards the parking lot of Firefly House. She said, "Fleetfoot, hopefully. I know she's just as unhappy with Spitfire as we are."

“I'm not so sure about this,” Fleetfoot whispered. She raised a foreleg, as if to step backwards.

As the Colonel finished donning her Shadowbolt uniform again, she leaned around the corner and glanced down the hallway. Framed in the door to the bullpen, Director Spitfire hovered over Soarin's desk, reading his report on Changling physiology, ideal cocoon environment, and prime targets for nests. A very dry read, the Colonel knew from experience. There was no telling how long it would hold the Director's attention, and even with Major Dust standing on lookout, there wasn't much time to win over Major Fleetfoot and still pull off the operation. The Colonel turned her attention back to the Major, whose ears had folded flat against her skull.

“You said it yourself,” the Colonel said, jabbing a hoof at the other mare. “Spitfire doesn't have her head in the game anymore.”

Fleetfoot slumped her shoulders and let her head drop. “Yeah, but....a coup d'etat?”

"We're not overthrowing the state, we're protecting it. If we don't do this and do it now, then Canterlot will crash and burn around us. And all the while Spitfire will be peeking under every little pebble for Changelings.” Snorting, the Colonel stepped forward violently, making the other mare jump. “You think this is easy for me? Spitfire took me under her wing and trained me since I was a rook. But she's lost her edge, and no amount of sentiment will cover that up. We're not kicking her out, she's already left us behind. Us, and the whole Directorate.”

“The High Castle vested her with authority,” Fleetfoot said. “They want her to lead.”

“That's just it: she's putting on an act for them. Telling the High Castle she's getting results. We're the only ones privy to how much she's letting our mandate from the High Castle fall apart.”

“So we kick her out by....violating our mandate to protect Canterlot ourselves?”

“I don't know if you've realized this yet, but this job is all smoke and mirrors. Secrets and shadows. Spitfire fabricates one lie to flout for the Defense Council's benefit, so we fabricate another to expose that first lie to them.”

Fleetfoot gave a disdainful little wrinkle of her muzzle. “And two wrongs make a right."

“No. Two wrongs cancel each other out. Or, more accurately, they course correct. Spitfire is leading us all off course. This little lie we make will put us right back on the straight and narrow.” The Colonel softened her voice. “Look, I'm not asking you to lead a mutiny. All I'm asking you to do is to put a tactical team on standby at a set of coordinates. That's all. And when the inquiry happens, you tell them I had reliable intel on a threat. I brought it to Spitfire, who shot it down as unfounded, and so I confided in you behind her back. Which is one hundred percent true, in a way. Just not a chronological way. You're absolutely shielded from any of this going awry, so long as you keep your muzzle clamped until the inquiry.”

A set of hooves clacked on the linoleum. They both launched into an improvised conversation about possible Changeling sympathizers in Canterlot. The Colonel glanced over at the intruding pony casually, but it was only Lightning Dust, and she raised her hoof to silence Fleetfoot.

"Spitfire's in her office again," Major Dust said. "We need to get this moving. It's almost six o'clock."

The Colonel bored her eyes into Major Fleetfoot. “Moment of decision. Are you in or not? We can't pull off this operation without you, Fleetfoot.”

For a long moment nopony spoke. The heavy silence weighed on Fleetfoot's shoulders. Her lips quivered, like she wanted to burst out crying. Then, squeezing her eyes shut and curling her mouth into a grimace, she nodded rapidly. The Colonel put a hoof on her colleague's back, to her lend her strength.

“We won't forget this, Fleetfoot. Now giddy up and get going. You remember the coordinates, right?"

"The old Magnum Smelting place in the ghetto."

"Right. There's a great observation spot not too far from there. A ten-story tower. You'll know the one I mean. Let's go over it again: you task Squad C for backup, because if there's one captain who will follow orders and won't ask questions, it's Captain Rapid Fire. You tell them I sent you to follow a lead. When the time comes, you radio them and say you saw suspicious activity and order them to raid the place. You go in, take one look at the place, and send out a general alert that there's a bomb threat at the Chariot. We'll take care of the rest."

Fleetfoot nodded in understanding, but she couldn't quite meet their eyes.

"One more thing," the Colonel said. "If, for any reason, we need to abort, I'll use the phrase 'ten seconds flat'. That'll be our cue to roll up the operation like it never existed. Fleetfoot, you move on the staging area immediately, while Major Dust and I will take the courier into custody and isolate the bomb." The other two Shadowbolts nodded at the Colonel, but Fleetfoot's was a little more hesitant than Lightning Dust's. "Major Dust, you go with Fleetfoot. Make sure she gets settled in properly." And doesn't have a last minute change of heart, the Colonel thought to herself.

"What about my secondary position at the theater?" Dust asked.

"We know what time they're going to set the bomb to go off, and I'll be shepherding it the whole way. Plenty of time for you to finish with Fleetfoot and hightail it to the theater. When you get to the secondary position, you'll radio me and say, uh...." Her wandering eyes fell on a glass display case full of athletic awards for the annual interdepartmental competitions. Her own trophy for the aerial relay caught her eye. 'Fastest speed on record', it said. “The code phrase will be, 'That's a new academy record for....' something. I dunno, we'll wing it.”

“It's what we do best,” Lightning Dust said with a grin.

“You said it. And remember, the abort phrase is 'ten seconds flat'."

“Got it.”

"Then get going."

The Colonel's two subordinates nodded a final time and took off for the stairwell, towards the tactical teams' ready room. The Colonel watched them go and readied herself for the operation to come. But a set of hooves in the hallway behind her made her turn. A shadow fell on the wall near the corner, heralding a pony approaching from the direction of the bullpen. It was Director-General Spitfire who rounded the corner.

“Colonel Dash,” she said. “I've been looking for you. What's the status on the Changling in custody?”

Thinking quick, the Colonel replied, “It hasn't been very chatty, ma'am. But something about its silence seemed very, ah, smug. Like it knew something was about to go down.” She tried to work a hint of dismay into her voice; Spitfire might've been going soft, but she'd been working with the Colonel long enough to know how she would react. “Ma'am, I'd feel better if I was out there, on patrol. Helping keep this city safe. I just don't feel very....useful in these conditions.”

Spitfire gave her one sharp, piercing look, then said, “Alright, fine.”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

The Colonel stiffly walked away from Spitfire. She almost made it to the door when the Director called out her name. The Colonel froze at the tone of Spitfire's voice; the brusqueness had softened, and a trace of genuine emotion had seeped in.

“I'm worried about you, Colonel,” she said.

The Colonel turned her head just enough to stare at her superior out of the corner of her eye. “You shouldn't be, ma'am.”

“Yes, I should be. This little obsession with Shining Armor and the Midnight Guard is leading you down a very dark path. Come back to us, alright? Because if you keep this up, I'll be forced to dismiss you. And I've worked with you long enough to know that civilian life wouldn't agree with you.”

After rolling some barbed retorts, fortified with irony, around on her tongue, the Colonel finally settled on a safe and simple, “We can agree on that, at least.”

“Think about it,” Spitfire said, before walking back to the bullpen.

The Colonel raised a foreleg to open the door. But her hoof hovered near the handle. It's not too late to abort, she thought. Just wait a half-hour, then radio Lightning Dust and whisper those three little words: 'ten second flat'. You don't have to go through with this.

She dismissed it as foalish sentimentality, and in one smooth motion she placed her purple beret back on her head. Her feelings towards Spitfire were confusing her rationality and objectivity. A true pegasus lets nothing get between her and her duty, she thought. Absolutely nothing. She pulled the door handle down and entered the stairwell, fully committed to the operation.

Chapter 7

The Shadowbolt's contempt came through loud and clear with every word he spoke: “What's your business crawling out of the ghetto?”

The sullen ochre stallion lifted up his leather messenger bag and showed the embroidered postal service logo. “I'm a mailpony, in case you couldn't tell.”

“Since when did they let dirt-eaters be mail ponies?” a Civil Force soldier off to the side jeered. "Can any of you even read?" His compatriots laughed.

“Papers,” the Shadowbolt captain said. “Now.”

The stallion glanced around the checkpoint, and at the hostile, mocking eyes ringing him. He wasn't worried, though; the only hostile eyes that did worry him were the ones a pony can't see, not until a spear is sticking out of a buddy's back. Slowly, almost leisurely, he dipped his face into his bag, took out his passport by his teeth, and let it flap open. The Shadowbolt tore the booklet open. His every muscle tensed up as he got ready to drag the stallion away. But as the captain read through the passport, his jaw slowly dropped open.

“Oh, I'm-I'm so sorry, Sergeant Sentry,” he stammered. “I didn't realize you were one of-of....”

Filled with loathing, he finished the captain's thoughts: “One of us?”

“Wi-without the wings, I-I just assumed....”

The Shadowbolt reminded Flash of his younger self, and Flash hated him all the more for it. The minion wore horseshoes far too big for him, just to prove how important he was in society at large, by lording it over some little checkpoint at an insignificant intersection. A big shot in a small pond. Flash wanted to twist around and give the Shadowbolt a taste of his hind hoof, but he reined the impulse in. He had a more important mission to accomplish, and he couldn't jeopardize it.

“Go right on through,” the captain said generously, stepping aside.

Without a word, Flash snatched the passport back and slunk through the checkpoint. The Civil Force soldiers and Shadowbolts saluted him.

And why not? He was a veteran. A hero of war, like on the recruitment posters he spent his childhood idolizing. Brave pegasi out to defend the homeland from the degenerate hordes tearing down pony civilization. He hadn't met any degenerate races in the coat before he shipped out, but he heard about them on the radio, both in the news and in the action serials he loved, so it must be true. Those big, bold words, 'ENLIST NOW', were a simple enough command to his colthood self, and a real pegasus always obeys orders, no matter the cost.

He approached the March of Triumph, the enormous roundabout that circled the grassy park with the colossal Arch of Triumph, built to commemorate a war Equestria had unquestionably won. When he came home, the High Castle hustled him and the other rescued POWs into convertible autocarriages to parade them down that very same street and under that very same arch. He had waved at the cheering crowds, allowing the civilians to wring some small victory from the unmitigated disaster the Grazembezi war had turned into after fourteen long years. For the first time, Flash had felt like a hero to the adoring ponies of Equestria, and it was intoxicating. Now he walked the empty road alone, with only a distant memory of the cheering crowd to fill the empty space. He passed a work detail tending to the trees, under the stern eyes of pegasus overseers. The earth ponies' orange vests and earmarks glinted in the rows of lamps along the cobblestone March. Suddenly Flash didn't feel like a hero anymore.

He noted how bold the stone pegasi on the colossal Arch looked. But then, they had been shaped to look that way, just as he had been shaped by this city. Born in '72, right at the start of the rush of optimism that followed the Griffon war, he had grown up in an age of unbridled economic prosperity. The Empire's overseas holdings were finally secure, there were plenty of goods to go around, and a vibe of optimism and joy gave life to the world. Everypony felt so bold and invincible that when the High Castle announced in '79 they were marching into Grazembezi to combat degeneracy, everypony cheered. The Empire of the Moon had weathered the war with the Griffons and come out stronger for it. That was how societies stayed fit, they said. And as the war went on and on with no end in sight, that spirit of optimism made them turn a blind eye to the cracks that slowly appeared in the economy, the Empire's foundation. In the end, the golden age was eroded away and revealed as nothing more than gilding.

Of course, he was no better. Back then, the only thing he was worried about was his generation's war ending before he had a chance to prove himself a real pegasus, like his father had during the Griffon war. Flash enlisted the moment he turned eighteen, eager to prove himself to a nation reeling from a monumental stab in the back by the Winter Brigade. He had gotten his wish. As they drove him down the March, he finally felt like a hero. All it cost him was a pair of wings.

He passed beneath the Arch and came out the other side. Atop the buildings at the far end of the roundabout, he spied a billboard for Croup Steel. 'The Backbone of Equestrian Might,' the slogan said, over a heroic-looking picture of tanks rolling over a hill. The Grazembezi war only ended six years ago, yet already they had started putting the gilding back on the city and declaring it gold.

And meanwhile, the bodies were still rotting away on the far-off savannah: gassed with Chemical BLUE, sprayed with chemicals to speed up decomposition, and left to rot in the harsh eternal glare of the sun. Decomposed over the past six years into chemical heaps to make way for the eventual settlers. The zebra wanted their homeland back, he thought morosely. Well, now they're part of it. Permanently.

Flash Sentry shrugged the weight of memory off his shoulders and patted the mail bag at his side, reassuring himself that both it and the precious cargo it contained were still there. It was the only weapon he had left, the only hope for the city. They made him give up his service weapon when he came home, and with no Canterlot bullets what else could he do?

He walked away from the Arch of Triumph.

The adorable little animals in the window watched Fluttershy from their cages. There wasn't much else to do in their cramped little terrariums. Each layout had only a single decoration: slithering snakes draped themselves over fake deadwood; squawking parrots stood in plastic leafs mimicking the dense and leafy foliage; chittering squirrels scurried through woodchip undergrowth; brilliantly scaled fish darted through artificial coral reefs. Just one little manufactured piece of the long-gone wilderness they had thrived in, now all torn down for massive tracts of farmland, plotted out in blocks and grids, with no untamed wild forest to break the orderly rows. There weren't many critters that could survive in the brand new Equestria. Insects and rats, for the most part. It took a lot of work to raise pets in captivity, and price tags hung off the terrariums with some heft.

But it was alright. Fluttershy had checked and double-checked her math, and she only had to work for six more months, living with a fair amount of frugality, to afford the adorable little bunny she'd set her eyes on. Something to cuddle with and care for, that would cheer her up when she was down. Wouldn't that be nice? she asked herself as she listened to the pet sounds muffled by the plate glass window.

When she entered, the bell over the door rang. But Perky Pet's owner didn't appear. Alone in the shop, she walked between the aquariums and terrariums and vivariums and birdcages. Barking and yipping came from a slightly ajar door marked 'Employees Only' on the far wall, behind the counter. She slowly approached the bell on the counter, but the narrow opening caught her eye. Feeling like a trespasser, she looked inside and got a brief look at a gaunt and scrawny brown dog. Its legs were splayed out and its tongue hung from its muzzle as it panted.

"I've sunk too much time and money into you, you mangy mutt, for you to quit now," the owner said. There was a sharp thwack and a high-pitched whine as a rolled-up newspaper smacked the dog's skull, and Fluttershy cringed in sympathy. The owner said, "You don't get the food until you learn how to be a guard dog, got it?" But the pitiable little dog just whined and shrank back into the corner. "A killer instinct, you don't have."

The owner was about to hit it again when Fluttershy quickly slammed her hoof down on the little bell. The hoof of fury paused, its shadow on the wall hanging over the terrified dog. She was overcome with the urge to run into the back room, scoop it up, and take it home with her. But it was beyond ridiculous. She could barely afford a rabbit; a dog would break her bank account. The door creaked shut, and then there was another whine and a thud followed by the click of a cage door shutting.

He just threw that poor doggie into its cage, she thought in dismay.

She could just barely hear his harsh whisper through the door. "If you don't shape up, Winona, then one of these days I'm going to break your neck and throw your flea-bitten carcass into the trash. No, the trash is too good for you. I'll throw you onto the highway and watch you become roadkill."

The door swung open again and he he stepped out of the back room, flashing her a smile. He looked almost normal. "Hello again," he said.

"Um, hi," she mumbled.

"Come back for another look, huh? Got a great deal on a turtle, if you're interested. Just imported from overseas."

"No, that's alright," she said. "I know who I want to take home with me."

Shrugging, he said, "Your loss."

He ducked behind the counter and came back up with a terrarium and laid it on the countertop. Unlike the others, this one was in a very sorry state. The glass was dingy and dusty and its walls were no more than one foot by two feet. The only prop was a fabricated hollowed-out tree stump that stood alone in the center. Fluttershy smiled as she leaned in close, until her muzzle pressed against the glass. “Come on out,” she cooed. “It's alright.” Erect white ears and an adorable little bunny face poked through the hole atop the tree stump, his jaws working as he munched on carrot chunks. “Aw, you little angel,” Fluttershy said. The bunny threw a bit of carrot at the glass, then scampered back inside the safety of his tree stump.

"I don't know why you want him so much. Of all the rabbits that passed through here, he's by far the worst. Bad tempered and badly behaved. I've spent years running this place, and I know for a fact that animals are just born the way they are. No amount of training can change them." His voice turned bitter. "No matter how much you try."

Having listened to him earlier, she had no doubts about exactly what he meant. But she knew, deep in her heart, that the bunny was just scared and lonely.

"You'd do much better with something smaller," he added. "More manageable."

"I'll be happy with him, thank you."

“In that case....listen, kiddo.” His voice went weighty, his expression grave. “I'm sorry to tell you this, but he's eating up retail space. I have a very valuable mongoose waiting to come in and nowhere to put it. Now, I've been keeping him here because I like you. I think you're a nice filly. But I can't keep him here forever. I'm sorry, but if you can't pay for him by the end of the month, I'll have to put him down. I can't hold it off anymore."

Her eyes refused to leave that innocent little bunny, so blissfully unaware of what would happen to him. Made bolder by his plight, she said, "Could you maybe lower the price a teensy bit, then?"

With a sigh, he explained, "I'm sorry, but I have to be firm here. If I start giving you discounts, everypony will start asking for them. You think this business makes money? Animals are a luxury, and they're not exactly flying off the shelves. If I start slashing prices, I'll be in the red. And I'm the only pet import/export business left in town, too. The others all closed up shop after the crash of '86. I can't afford to go below market value."

"But if you're only going to put him to sleep, then why don't you just....give him away?"

His eyes went cold, and she knew she had crossed a line. The offended owner asked, "Excuse me?"

"Um, I only meant--"

"Do I look like a Griffon to you? I fought a war to keep those degenerates from getting their grubby little claws on this city, and now you think I'm just going to give him to you? Without earning it?"

"I--I only--" Her eyes switched rapidly between the stern owner and the little bunny in the cage. The innocent little critter who would soon be pumped full of chemicals until his heart stopped. Or, more likely, have his neck snapped. His white fur would be stained red with blood, and so would she. His innocence gone, he would turn black and wither and dry up and decay, all because she had failed him. Fluttershy failed everypony, sooner or later. What a useless guardian she was, and a poor mockery of a pegasus. Great big tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn't care anymore. She turned and galloped out of the shop.

As she left, she called out, “I'm sorry,” although whether it was to the store's owner or the rabbit, she couldn't say.

By the streetlamp's glow, Scootaloo stared at her reflection in the storefront window. Her image was faint, hovering like a ghost in the middle of the foals fawning over all the toys: unicorns magically playing with pegasi soldier action figures; gawping at big cardboard books about the Empire of the Moon's glorious founding, with a drawing of the princess of the night dramatically leading the charge on the cover; little pegasi with toy drums and toy mounted machine guns and model helicopters. And all around the toyshop, their parents. Watching over all the foals, giving them encouraging smiles, opening their wallets to buy them their toys.

None of those foals would ever go to sleep on a hard cot in an overcrowded orphanage with bare, barren walls and peeling motivational posters. None would be shepherded by a hoofful of strict matrons and patrons struggling to manage hundreds of foals at once, and who could barely remember their names. None would ever wonder who their parents had been, before they died in the Winter Rising. None would have to endure taunts from the other orphans about not being able to fly, or worse, listen to them make up lies that she was the foal of earth ponies. A degenerate, unworthy of the name 'pegasus'.

She ground her teeth so hard it felt like they'd crack.

But it was alright now. All those taunts had just made her stronger. Look at her now, with her astonishing black uniform. All her life, she'd seen Shadowbolts walking so proudly as they wore the black and purple. And here she was, with her very own uniform. The black fabric, the purple trim, the beret tilted to one side. She couldn't believe it; her life now felt like some kind of fantastic dream after the nightmare of the orphanage.

But a sudden trickle of terror crawled over her skin. What if she woke up and found it was all gone? What if she was stuck back in the orphanage as just plain Scootaloo, and not Junior Cadet Scootaloo, Shadowbolt?

This is real, Scoot, she reassured herself. She nursed delightful thoughts of strutting back into the orphanage and flaunting her success, maybe even lining a few of the foals who'd bullied her up against the wall so she could have her revenge. Not one of them, not even the biggest bullies, would dare fight back against a pony wearing the black and purple. She dug her hooves into the sidewalk, savoring the imaginary impact on those pathetic ponies' faces.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized she had no desire to set hoof in that place again. She just wanted to put her tail to it and never look back. Move on to bigger and better things. She had better and bigger things to do, and those miserable foals in the orphanage could hear about her on the news and get even more miserable, knowing that she had blazed right past them. For her, the sky was the limit, and the uniform was her wings. It marked her as part of a long and proud tradition of guardians, responsible for keeping the eternal night eternal. She wasn't about to let the Land of the Eternal Moon down.

I'm a Shadowbolt now, she thought. It made her want to cry tears of joy, but only foals like the ones inside the toy store cried. She, a Shadowbolt, was no foal.

“Cadet,” a voice called, “if you're done admiring your reflection, maybe you'd like to get back on duty?”

Scootaloo twisted around and snapped to attention, stomping her hoof on the concrete sharply. Standing by the blockade, the chestnut Major Caspain stared down her white-striped muzzle at Scootaloo, who inwardly cursed at herself for drifting off. She hadn't meant to daydream, but nopony had given her anything to do for twenty minutes now, and there was only so long she could stand around looking serious.

“Yes, ma'am?” Scootaloo asked, eager to prove herself.

Caspain nodded up the street. “Go get me a coffee.”

“Yes, ma'am!”

Scootaloo trotted up the sidewalk, squeezing past one of the idling armored personnel carriers parked across the road. Its rear ramp had been lowered onto the sidewalk, and she peeked inside. In the cramped interior, between the cages full of equipment and the radio console, two mares and a stallion in gray fatigues exchanged battle stories while waiting for the call to action.

Action, she thought. I'd love to see some action!

Past the checkpoint, the road split apart to ring the Arch of Triumph. When she was very young, she remembered the orphanage taking her and the others out here, to see a parade of heroes home from the war. After the disgrace of the Winter Rising, the city worked hard to make its heroes feel welcome and respected. Just a tiny foal, she had pushed against the sawhorses, a tiny part of the surging and roaring crowd, waving her little flag up high. That beautiful and beautifully simple indigo flag with a large round moon, dead center. The flag all those heroes fought for, every pegasus pony who put on a uniform. Everything the Empire of the Moon stood for was contained in that flag, and it was a sight to behold.

Spitfire was neck-deep in the expenditures reports when the record player came to her favorite movement. She pushed away the pile of paperwork and drew her mildly warm coffee cup close as the voice of Palfried soared out of the record player in her office. Oh, the power, she thought. He can really bellow. His razor-sharp voice was raised in a plea to the heavens that rose above the thunderous brass, begging the warrior-goddess for favor on the eve of battle, for the prophesies said he would soon fall on the battlefield. Such a simpler age, when all a pony's enemies were right in front of them and heroes rode out to meet them with valor. Completely unlike the cloak-and-dagger that was Spitfire's stock-in-trade. If only she had a warrior-goddess to beg favor from. Well, there was Luna, but it would take her weeks to get an appointment, and she would feel not only foolish but incompetent if she had to ask the princess of the night for advice about her job.

The angelic chorus of the shield-mares rang out in answer, and in her mind's eye Spitfire could practically see the light of the moon breaking through dense clouds, to fall upon the warrior in his gleaming armor. "Oh, son of the moon," they sang, "no enemy's blade shall fell you tomorrow, and no enemy shall ever do you harm."

And it was true, no enemy did him harm.

He was betrayed by his vassal.

The coincidence struck Spitfire rather suddenly, and it hit her so hard she shivered. This was her favorite opera, so why hadn't she remembered that before she put the record on? Palfried's sworn vassal had been his first and most staunch bannerpony, yet when Palfried gave command of the western host to his rival, he put his spear through Palfried's flank when they started to ride into battle. A chill went down Spitfire's spine. She got up and turned the record player off before it could unnerve her further.

She walked to the window and stared out at the city. She first saw the opera in the mid '80s, right before the Rising. In the prosperity that followed the Griffon war, all sorts of foreign culture from the settlements became in vogue. Like those discotheques. She herself was indifferent to them, but some ponies far more traditionalist than she pushed back. A huge wave of traditionalist revivalism swept through the city. The Tale of Palfried astonished her. All the fury and tempest of the stage, the heroic endeavors, and the ultimate tragedy, all of it washed over her and swept her away. She loved it.

And then, not much later, the Winter Rising broke out and cut at the heart of the city.

I remember now. They said the Winter Brigade stabbed us in the back because the opera was on everybody's mind. We all felt like Palfried that year, trying to fight a war while being betrayed from behind.

The opera happened first, and then we shaped real life around it.

Just like some ponies could sense rain in their joints, Spitfire had attuned herself to the atmosphere of Canterlot. She could sense trouble ahead. Something about the night felt wrong, but she couldn't put her hoof on what, other than Colonel Dash's off-putting behavior.

She sighed and told herself she was just being superstitious. The expenditures still needed going over, so she went back to her desk and plunged back into the stacks of paperwork.

Source 'Witchcraft'? she thought, reading over the details. 'Trixie Lulamoon, archivist, Canterlot Archives'. What is Miss Lulamoon doing to deserve all these bits? She cross-referenced the agent with actionable material and came up with nothing. The Treasury is already on my tail about going over budget. If they audit us and see this money being sunk into a source who isn't giving us results, they'll hang me out to dry. Who's her handler....?

Ah, Colonel Dash. I should've known.

On a hunch, she got up and crossed to the file cabinet, pulled a drawer open, and pulled out a red folder. She flipped it open and checked the file inside. 'Shining Armor. Born: 965. Deceased: 998. Formerly Director of Midnight Guard.' Sure enough, after she scoured the pages she found, 'Next of Kin: Twilight Sparkle, sister. Born 973. Archivist, Canterlot Archives.'

Dash!

She threw the file back into the filing cabinet and slammed it shut with a swift kick of her hind leg. Over on the desk, she scrawled, 'Cut expenditures to Source Witchcraft, immediately'. She downed the last of her coffee, which had gone from warm to lukewarm, and spat a few loose grinds back into the cup, gagging at the bitter taste. She set the empty cup down next to a little statue on her desk. The pegasus taking flight caught her eye, and made her wonder when the last time she had flown was. Far too long. She spent most of her time here working, or at home with a big pile of red folders. She didn't have the time.

An irrational urge to jump out the window and soar into the eternal night crossed her mind, but she balked away from it. She was in charge of defending Canterlot and would never abandon her duty. Not even if it meant dismissing the mare she once considered a daughter from the service.

What happened to you, Dash? she thought, leaning back on her haunches. Is this my fault? Did I steer you wrong somewhere? I wanted you to sit in this chair when I retired, and maybe that....blinded me somehow. Did I not teach you right?

No, it's the unicorns. They're the ones who style themselves the leaders of society, pass themselves off as paragons, yet all they do is squabble amongst themselves and condescend to us pegasi trying to keep harmony in this city. They make power plays and grant favors to the ponies who agree with them, and that is the toxic attitude that is filtering down to my cadets. The unicorns are turning them against me with all this talk of racial superiority and degeneracy.

She gave a long and weary sigh. Nothing to be done, except the best I can do.

There was a knock on her door. She looked up and saw a shadow through the frosted glass.

“Come in,” she said.

The handle swung down and the door creaked open. “Director?” asked Soarin, his tone anxious, “It's, uh....the liaison from the Midnight Guard is here.”

Great. Just great. She groaned and then said, “Tell Cadence to wait. I'll be there in a moment.”

Soarin mumbled something and closed the door again, leaving Spitfire alone with her memories again. Cadence. Another pony who had turned against her. Was that her legacy? A string of failed proteges who hated her guts?

After shuffling around red folder and delaying long enough to give the impression she was knee-deep in data analysis, Spitfire pushed herself up from her chair and walked out onto the bullpen floor. And there in the center, standing prim and proud and impervious to the staring eyes surrounding her, was Cadence, as tall and slender and graceful as Spitfire remembered. Her demeanor was aloof and professional, wrapped in a stiff and severe business dress.

“Cadence,” Spitfire said with fake enthusiasm. “Not just dropping in on some old friends, I take it?”

"No, Director-General Spitfire. I'm here about your office's wanton contempt for the Midnight Guard.”

Spitfire felt a headache coming on. What did Colonel Dash do now?

But Cadence instead asked, “Tell me, if you would, why didn't you inform the Guard you apprehended an infiltrator?”

Spitfire cocked her head. “I did. I sent out a government-wide memo.”

“Three days after you apprehended it. Need I remind you of Subsection 36? Each and every interrogation session must have a representative of both our agencies present if the threat--”

“I know what Subsection 36 says. But that only applies to threats that involve both our jurisdictions. A foreign spy isn't an ideological matter, therefore the Midnight Guard have no claim.”

With an arrogant air, Cadence said, “On the contrary, we have an important claim.”

Spitfire scoffed. “How, exactly, is this ideological?”

Cadence strutted forward. She lowered her voice and sharpened it into a razor's edge, intending to cut to the bone. “That Changling was here to meet somepony. Am I right so far? Or is that something that slipped past your entire analysis wing?”

“We're ahead of the Midnight Guard. As always. We haven't gotten a name yet, but we will soon enough.”

“And while we're waiting for the Directorate to get its act together, the whole Empire is on edge. You're focused on finding Changlings, and that's admirable. Anything more might be a little too taxing for you. But you see, our burden is greater by far. We have to deal with the demoralization Changlings invoke. The wellbeing of our society depends on a certain mutual trust in each another. If that trust disappears, so does society. Everything breaks down, and chaos reigns in Canterlot. Now do you see how this is an ideological matter?”

What are they teaching her over there at Obelisk House? The fine art of splitting hairs? “Changlings may be able to mimic forms, but they can't mimic memories. Our safeguards work well enough to keep saboteurs out of sensitive areas and the higher echelons of Canterlot society.”

“That may be, but sometimes the shadow is more frightening than what's casting it. You said apprehending enemy agents is your job, and I agree. But dealing with the threat they pose to our ideals, that's our department. Now, if we're done squabbling over our individual purviews, I'd like to interrogate the prisoner.”

Spitfire remembered when Cadence and Dash joined the service. They went through training together, and grown into capable Shadowbolts together, and all under Spitfire's watchful eye. And now, both had left the shelter of her wings and struck out on their own paths, and Spitfire didn't like what she saw. The unicorns were getting to her cadets, stealing them away from her. Her thoughts turned to all the other ponies she trained. How would they turn out? The same? Was this her fault after all, for not doing a better job teaching them? She wasn't old, but she certainly felt it. Old and weary of this life, of seeing everything she tried to shape for the better turned to ash by the ponies above her.

Too tired to argue anymore, she said, “I'll see to it you have get you need.”

“Major Caspain wants a coffee,” Scootaloo said.

She was a Shadowbolt now. Defender of the city. She could've barked the orders, taken what she wanted. She had surely earned that right. But when all it took was a word and a uniform to get the same thing, it made her feel so much more respected. Powerful, even.

“You got it,” the beefy stallion, 'Joe' by his nametag, said. “One coffee coming right up, on the house. Anything else I can get ya?”

“Uh, yeah. Lieutenant Scootaloo wants, uh, a jelly donut. And a hay smoothie.”

The unicorn turned to the shelf of donuts behind the counter. “Coming right up.”

“Thank you, citizen,” Scootaloo said with a low, rumbling, firm-sounding voice. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

While she waited, her eyes wandered across the donut shop, passing over the unicorns and pegasi eating at their tables. Everything looked neat and orderly, which she chalked up to her presence. But there was one solitary pony in a corner booth who caught her eye. He sat in a booth next to the window, taking bites from a veggie sandwich and occasionally glancing outside. What she saw about him made her blood run cold. The stallion had neither wings nor horn, and yet he was here with the good ponies. Well, she thought, we'll see about that. She straightened her uniform before stomping over to him.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

The pony, whose coat was almost the same orange shade as her own, froze in mid-chew. His eyes slowly swiveled around to look down at her. He swallowed slowly, almost deliberately, and when the food had gone down his throat he said, “Eating.”

“I see that. But why are you here? Earth ponies are under strict ration.”

He dropped the sandwich and faced her, his eyebrows rising incredulously. “How old are you?”

The lack of fear and respect put Scootaloo off-guard, made her acutely aware she didn't have a truncheon or any other weapons. Made her feel like a cadet, instead of a real Shadowbolt. Her eyes darted to the other patrons, most of them unicorns. Some were watching her, watching her respect drain away at the hooves of this arrogant earth pony.

“Old enough to be a Shadowbolt,” she declared to him.

When he glanced down at her cadet's uniform, she took a good hard look into his eyes, and for the first time she saw a distant, haunted, stony look in them. They returned to her own eyes, so utterly unimpressed it gave her chills.

“I fought zebras in Grazembezi,” he said casually. “If you want to intimidate me, you'll have to do a better than that.”

“How did you--?”

Before she could finish, he planted a foreleg on the top of the head and dragged her closer. She struggled, feeling the flush of shame rush through her, but she was powerless. He was gaunt and lean, but despite that his grip was like steel. It swiveled her head around until her eyes forcibly fell on the ugly scars that stretched across his back.

“Take a good look,” he said. “That's where my wings used to be, until a zebra with a machete hacked them off. Had enough yet?”

“Yes,” she shouted.

He released her, and she staggered backwards, flustered. Her eyes darted sidelong around the diner, taking in the mares and stallions mocking her with their slight smiles. She adjusted her uniform while he returned to his sandwich. But the more she looked at him, the more pity took hold of her. She felt ashamed for getting mad at him, who had sacrificed so much.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't think--”

“Yeah, that seems to be a problem with ponies in Canterlot,” he muttered, not caring she had no idea what he was talking about. He looked at her once more, calmer now. “Don't ever take your wings for granted, kid. Not for a second.”

She dropped her gaze to the checkered floor, the words tearing straight into her. “They don't work,” she said softly.

“Huh?”

“My wings,” she said, climbing into the seat opposite him. She hung her head. “They're useless.” Longing to hear words of advice from a fellow crippled pegasus, she started telling him her story: “The foals at the orphanage, they said my parents were earth ponies. Most of us were orphaned by the Winter Rising. When it was over, the High Castle sorted out all the foals by race. But sometimes, they say that if ponies have ancestors who broke the law and mixed races, sometimes a foal will be born as a different race. And since my wings are too weak to let my fly, I might as well be the foal of worthless dirt-eaters.” She looked up to him.

The pegasus started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut by pure strength of will. His lips roiled in disgust, his jaw worked furiously. Finally he asked, “And what about me? In your eyes, am I no better than an earth pony?”

“That's not what I meant! I mean I'm not a true pegasus because I could never fly in the first place.”

He leaned forward, over his plate. “Listen up, kid, because I'm going to tell you a secret: it doesn't matter if your wings work, it doesn't matter if you even have wings, it doesn't even matter about what's in your heart or whatever the inspirational junk on the radio says. There's only one thing that determines who's a pegasus pony and who's not.”

“Oh?” she asked, her eyes widening. “What?”

He pointed out the window to that remote fortress where the princess watched over them all. “What the High Castle says you are. If they say you're a pegasus, you're a pegasus. If they say the Shadowbolts are in charge of state security, the Shadowbolts are in charge of state security. If they say this shop is owned by Donut Joe, this shop is owned by Donut Joe. Whatever they say, on their reams and reams of paperwork, is the truth."

"What about the truth that comes from the moon?"

His voice went lower. "Have you ever talked with a moonbeam? Be practical. Stop thinking so much about higher ideals or righteous duty, and start thinking more about where your position in this society comes from.”

“But,” Scootaloo said, “there has to be something more, that we have a duty to. If there isn't, then....we're no better than earth ponies.”

He cast his eyes out over the other patrons, possibly to see if they were trying to overhear him. But instead of answering, he nodded at the counter, where Donut Joe was magically lifting up a cup tray with a coffee and a hay smoothie alongside a plastic bag with a jelly donut in wax paper.

“I think your order is ready,” the other pegasus said.

She slipped off the seat and trudged towards the counter. Her hooves hit the floor loud and sharp in her ears. But she hadn't gone more than five feet when the pegasus called out after her. She looked back at him, sitting in thought, thinking of one last thing to say before they parted forever.

“I stood up for the Empire," he said. "I did my duty...." There was so much he wasn't saying, but he gave no hint of what it was. His lips curled up in a smile. "Once."

She let that sink in, then half-heartedly thanked him with a short nod. Then, more commandingly, she stood up straight and gave him a salute. He only stared at her with his gaunt face and haunted eyes. Scootaloo took the order from the stallion behind the counter, balanced the tray on her back, and left the little donut shop. Though not without one last look at that lonely soldier, who had returned to eating his food in a heavy and brooding silence.

The street outside was nearly empty. This was near the city center, and the checkpoints were backed up so that only a trickle of pedestrians could get through. The bag she threw in the garbage. She crammed the jelly donut in her mouth, chewed it a few times, then swallowed it in one gulp. Facing the Arch of Triumph again, she clutched the smoothie in one fetlock and sipped it while she worked her other leg double-time to make a good pace. She reached the road ringing the park and took a right, circling around the Arch that stood guard with its legs planted firmly in the ground. It could never be pushed over, not ever. It was too solid and strong. Just like the pegasi, and the Empire of the Moon they served.

'Once', he said. He did his duty 'once'. What did he mean? Did he mean he served his Empire, and we disrespected him so much that it wasn't worth it?

Yes, Scootaloo was sure that was what the stranger meant, and it made her feel ashamed. She comforted herself by swearing she would never let a degenerate go unpunished.

Fluttershy had stopped in at Perky Pet to lift her spirits, only to have them crash and burn instead. Now, she walked down Broadcrest Street with an ache in her body that tensed and knotted her muscles. When she stood still, she thought it would hurt less if she moved. But if she moved, all she wanted was to stand still again. She was uncomfortably outcast in her own skin, slinking through the neon-lit eternal night.

A pegasus pony on a recruitment billboard loomed over the world, wings fanning out majestically to shield Equestria. A pair of stoic eyes judged Fluttershy, like all the other pegasus ponies did, every single one of them. She looked away from the billboard, across the street, but the same picture stared from a row of posters pasted to a construction site fence. Over and over, the same mare, with the same wings shielding the same world. Everywhere and everything. She was the only pegasus besides Fluttershy who existed, but unlike Fluttershy, absolutely perfect.

A block down the street, there was a buzz of commotion from the checkpoint cordoning off the road. A line of autocarriages idled in the street while ponies waited on the sidewalk in a ragged line to pass through. All four of her knees shook at the thought of all those eyes falling on her and finding her lacking. She made up her mind to abandon the show and go home, by herself, alone and unwatched in the dark, surrounded by empty walls that once held up pictures of fit pegasi now gone bare because she couldn't overcome her weakness.

No! she thought. Those ponies, with their staring eyes, terrified her, but staying cooped up in her apartment was worse. Trapped in-between her four walls, thinking of that poor old Granny Smith, as the misery slowly crept in until she couldn't breathe. She had to make it to that show.

After making sure she had her passport, she walked the long and lonely stretch of sidewalk to the back of the line. Past the storefront display windows with ponnequins that stayed eternally fit. Past bookstores with covers featuring tearful lovers parting in airport terminals, one of them off to war. Past music stores with records sleeves showing perfect formations of soldiers marching to the beat of old brassy parade standards or valiant opera heroes like Palfried riding into battle. After awhile, Fluttershy bowed her head and put her eyes on the cracked sidewalk, just so she didn't have to look at all the pegasi surrounding her.

She drew close to the checkpoint. Don't run away, Fluttershy thought. If you look like you're running, they'll chase you. You've done nothing wrong. Just walk up to them, show them your papers, and be on your way.

But still, the checkpoint unsettled her. All those Civil Force soldiers in riot control gear with grilled helmets and body armor, or the Shadowbolts in black uniforms with purple berets, were alive with an electric current of energy. She felt it too, but it wormed itself into her nerves and instilled in her a mad, instinctual urge to bolt. But she was more scared of them hauling her off for questioning, so, with her heart beating heavily, she swallowed her fear. She got in line behind a unicorn and focused on keeping her body from shaking.

I'm a good pegasus, she thought. The Bureau of Harmony gave me a duty, and I carry it out. That makes me a good pegasus.

The line behind her swelled faster than the ponies at the front could be waved through. Soon they were pressing at her tail, jostling her, chatting to each other quite happily. The haphazard line became ragged and messy, like a wriggling centipede. She was almost at the front, near the crossed APCs, when the line shuffled forward and she heard something hit the ground at her hooves. A passport. The unicorn ahead of her hadn't buckled her saddlebag very well, as one side hung open like a slack mouth, its contents drooling out.

“Excuse me,” Fluttershy said softly.

The unicorn didn't hear her. The line pressed at Fluttershy's back, jostling her forward, derailing her train of thought, and all she could think was that the unicorn would be arrested without a passport. She stooped down and picked it up before she knew what she was doing.

“Excuse me,” she said a little louder.

She tapped the unicorn on the side, making her spin around. Fluttershy caught a whiff of hard cider on her breath and craned her head back slightly as she held the passport up. The unicorn's eyes were large and and watery, like there was a harsh wind blowing in her face but she couldn't look away. Fluttershy avoided looking her in the eyes, until her visions hovered somewhere around the mare's chin. She shrugged so her hair would fall in front of her face.

“I, um, I think you dropped this.”

“Hmm?” the unicorn said. She patted her saddlebag, her foreleg movement exaggerated and uncoordinated. She noticed the bag wasn't buckled. She mumbled, “Thanks,” though she didn't sound very thankful.

Just as the unicorn reached over and swiped the passport, a shrill whistle pierced the night. Fluttershy and the other mare flattened their ears against their skulls and winced at the sound. I was just trying to be nice, she thought. They'll understand, even if it is technically illegal to handle another pony's papers. They have to understand that. Two Civil Force soldiers thundered over, riot gear jostling as they hustled in front of Fluttershy and splayed their legs. The other ponies in line backed away from Fluttershy and the unicorn very, very quickly. A Shadowbolt officer swiftly strode between the gendarmes.

“Step out of line, please,” he said.

Fluttershy wanted to reply this was all a big misunderstanding, but her lips and vocal cords wouldn't obey her. They simply blubbered at the steely-eyed ponies in riot helmets and body armor.

It was just a mistake, Fluttershy thought. All a mistake. They'll believe me.

The unicorn didn't seem all that scared, though. Coldly, she asked, “What's the charge?”

“It's a crime to handle another pony's documents. Come with us for questioning.” The Shadowbolt turned to Fluttershy, whose stomach twisted in knots. “Both of you.”

“Since when do you care about the law?” the unicorn muttered, though it sounded more like a thought she hadn't meant to say out loud.

The officer froze. “Excuse me?” he asked, his voice as cold as hers. He pulled a truncheon from his belt and held it loosely in his folded fetlock. "What did you say?"

“I am a unicorn,” she said, voice rising in drunken confidence. “You wouldn't dare use that on me, because I am superior to you, featherbrain. We run this city, when all you degenerates try and do is tear us down. The Midnight Guard are twice the ponies you thugs are--”

The longer she rambled, the more the stallion's grip on the truncheon tightened, until he raised it and brought it down on her head, quick as lightning. The thunderclap of the impact drew a hushed gasp from the crowd. The dazed mare clutched her head, staggered back into a storefront, then bounced off and slumped to the ground.

“Oh, no!” Fluttershy squeaked.

She reared back in alarm. Her wings fanned out and started flapping to propel her backwards, but she overshot, lost her balance, and fell to the concrete. More Civil Force soldiers swarmed over. The crowd yelled and screamed, ducking away from the stampede of pegasus ponies. Gendarmes rolled Fluttershy over and wrestled her to the ground, forcing her wings closed. She didn't have it in her to resist; she went limp and let them hustle her over to the ground next to the unicorn and threw her down. The other mare let out a groggy moan as her half-closed eyes rolled around under their lids.

“Shining Armor,” she mumbled, “he'd take....all you on....”

Chapter 8

Scootaloo hurriedly finished her smoothie and tossed it into a trash can. In a shop window, she adjusted her beret, because the other Shadowbolts wouldn't respect her if her uniform wasn't perfect. Stay cool, Scoot, she thought. She slipped around the corner and swaggered down the sidewalk, back to the checkpoint blocking off the March of Triumph. Major Caspain stood at the barricade, inspecting a pony-drawn cart at the head of a line of autocarriages. Scootaloo waited to the side while the major gave the pony harnessed to the cart a stern scouring. A heavy black cloak was draped over her body, but the hood was pulled down, revealing a shaved head and an earmark. The earth pony's coat was orange, almost the same color as her own and the stallion in the donut shop. But she and the stallion were heroes of Canterlot, and it enraged her that this degenerate looked so much like them.

There was a word adults used sometimes, from that old book The Empyrean Herd. What was it? 'Hipploid', or something like that. A thing which looks like a pony, but isn't.

What was this dirt-eater doing here, thinking she had any right to be out of the ghetto without an official work detail?

“Ah'm sorry, ma'am, Ah truly am,” the earth pony said, bowing as low as she could. “But Artie Deco, he's mah boss and a right proper architect, he wants me ta get this here wagon over to the construction site, quick as can be, so's it can be all ready fer tomorrow.”

Don't listen to her, Scootaloo thought. She's lying! All she wants to do is tear down our city!

Major Caspain lifted up a letter of transit and inspected it closely. “'Not to be exposed to air. Signed, Bureau of Harmony.' What's your cargo?”

“Cement. A newfangled kind of cement. It hardens real quick when it's opened up.”

Scootaloo put the coffee cup down on a sidewalk bench and ambled around the cart hitched to the earth pony. A tarp covered the top, strapped down with cords. The sweating dirt-eater's eyes went to her, pleading with her not to look under it and expose her for a liar. But an earth pony knew better than to question a pegasus. Scootaloo hooked a hoof under the tarp and started peeling it back.

“Is there a problem here?”

Scootaloo jumped. The tarp rustled as it fell back into place. She spun around and stood at attention as her idol, Colonel Dash, strolled over; she gaped in awe at the Colonel's easy command of attention and the confident way she carried herself. . A new pair of mirrored shades covered the Colonel's face, and when she looked down at Scootaloo, the filly had never felt so small as when she saw her tiny reflection.

“Colonel Dash,” the major said, also snapping to attention.

“At ease,” the Colonel said. She faced the earth pony and cocked her head ever so slightly. The earth pony, sweating and shaking, stared back with slightly narrowed eyes. Scootaloo got the odd feeling something else was going on, but she couldn't put her hoof on what it was. Who knew what was going on behind the shades concealing the Colonel's eyes?

“Colonel,” the major said, “she claims to have documents from the Bureau of Harmony.” She held up the letter. “I was suspicious about its authenticity.”

Colonel Dash took the papers and read them over, then raised her head and gave the earth pony a sly, knowing look. Scootaloo waited for Dash to snap into action and beat this earth pony back into her place any second now. Her hooves itched to see her idol in action.

“Cement, huh?” Dash asked.

“That's right, ma'am,” the earth pony replied.

“This late at night?”

“Mason Stone, mah boss, wanted it out at the construction site, ready for tomorrow.”

“You work in construction?” Colonel Dash ambled around her in a circle. “You don't look like you do construction. No callouses from holding power tools, no cement stains on your coat.”

The earth pony's ears fell, and her eyes followed. “Ah'm just a delivery pony, ma'am. Ah haul carts.”

The Colonel stopped circling the suspicious dirt-eater. She closed in until they were nearly muzzle to muzzle. Her grin deeped. “Is that so?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the sweating earth pony said as she shrank away from Colonel Dash. “Just like that.”

The air was tense, like the world hung by a thread and a single gust of wind would rip it down. The Colonel stared at the disgusting earth pony, sweating and shrinking away. Get her, get her! Scootaloo thought.

Then, abruptly, Dash turned to Major Caspain. “Do you remember that memorandum Spitfire sent around last month? About the run-up to the millennial celebrations?”

Major Caspain nodded sharply as she straightened her pose, slightly put off by the Colonel's sudden interest in her.

“What did it say?”

“Um, prioritize the apprehension of Changlings. All other concerns secondary.”

Colonel Dash put her tail to both of them. “Let her pass.” With a hint of sarcasm, she added, “That's an order from General Spitfire.”

“Thank ya much, ma'am, thank ya,” the earth pony groveled.

"Get out of my sight," Colonel Dash sneered.

Though she was reluctant to move, Major Caspain stepped aside and allowed the dirt-eater to slip through the blockade. Her cart wheels rolled on the asphalt behind her. The Major waved the next autocarriage up and inspected the driver's papers. Scootaloo grabbed the coffee and passed it to her. She took it with the briefest of thankful nods.

Colonel Dash, meanwhile, had wandered over to the sidewalk and stood under a red neon sign mounted on the storefront. To the departing earth pony, she gave a long look. Then her gaze wandered around the bustling checkpoint until it fell on Scootaloo, who tried to stand up straighter. A wordless moment passed between the two of them, lit by the vivid red glow. Scootaloo felt uncomfortable seeing her nervous crimson self reflected in the Colonel's shades. She had no idea what she could say to the most heroic pony that ever lived, but she took a stab anyway:

“I think you were right, Colonel.”

Dash frowned. “Right about what?”

Sounding bolder than she felt, Scootaloo announced, “That earth pony was up to no good, and you should've arrested her. Spitfire should know better than to get in your way.”

“That's General Spitfire to you, rook,” the Colonel said coldly.

How could Scootaloo be such a fool? Now her hero was angry with her. She wanted to cry out in apology, or just plain cry, but she stood at attention and held the tears in. She was tough, like all true pegasi, and true pegasi don't cry.

“Rook,” Dash called.

But then she paused as she thought about what she should say. It reminded Scootaloo eerily of the stallion in the donut shop. Just tell me what you're thinking! she thought. I'm old enough to handle it! But before she finished her thought, the portable radio slung into her belt interrupted her. She whipped it from its holder and held it near her ear, but as she spoke her shades never turned away from Scootaloo.

“Go ahead.”

“This is the checkpoint on Broadcrest. We have a situation you should be aware of. There was an altercation between the officer on duty and a unicorn civilian. When we radioed the incident to HQ, they told us there was a flag on her file. We're supposed to get in touch with you."

"Who is it?"

"Name is Twilight Sparkle."

The Colonel's ears stood fully upright. "....I see. What's the charge?"

"Public intoxication and assaulting an officer. She dropped her passport on the ground and another pony, the pegasus in line behind her, picked it up and passed it back to her. The officer in charge wanted to question them for suspected passport forgery, and claims she became belligerent and attacked him first. I doubt it, though. Anyway, we performed the field tests and neither of them are Changlings. It seems like a genuine mix-up, though Sparkle was highly intoxicated when we arrested her. So what should we do?"

Dash pursed her lips and stared up the mountain, at the High Castle. Wondering what the princess would do, maybe. Scootaloo marveled how, even when deep in thought, the Colonel was so collected and confident. So mesmerizing. So sure of herself.

“I'm sending Major Dust to you," Dash said. "When she gets there....let her go. Do nothing."

"Yes, ma'am. And the other one? The pegasus we apprehended, too?"

"Let her go too. We don't want Sparkle to get suspicious."

"Suspicious, ma'am?"

"Just do it, alright?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The Colonel lowered the radio and held it to her chin while she stared into the distance. Then she raised it again and said, "Major Dust, do you copy?"

After a moment of silence, another voice said, "This is Major Dust."

"Go to channel six."

"Copy."

Colonel Dust twisted the dial on the radio to the scrambled channel, then spoke into it, "Is the hatchling in the nest?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm on my way back."

"That sounds like a new academy record for getting settled."

After a moment of silence, the voice said, "Yes, ma'am."

"I need you to do something for me, and it supercedes all other orders. Get over to the Broadcrest checkpoint, as soon as possible. Clayhooves has been spotted, and this isn't her usual pattern. The checkpoint is waiting on you to release her. When you do, shadow her from the air and find out where she's going. She may be meeting our boy."

"But what about....?"

"I can handle things here if I need to. It's little more than babysitting. But Clayhooves....finding out where she's going is far more important. If I have an emergency, I'll let you know."

“You're the colonel, ma'am.”

"I'm glad we agree."

The radio fell silent. Colonel Dash stuffed it back into her belt. She didn't speak, and neither did Scootaloo. Scootaloo wanted to know what her idol was thinking, but she was also terrified of making her angry again. Who knew what thoughts were behind those hidden eyes, so remote and unreadable? The Colonel stood in front of the winged moon symbol stenciled on the APC, so it appeared the wings fanned out on either side of her body. Those unbreakable wings. Scootaloo straightened her neck and tried to stand a little taller, to wear her uniform well and make herself look a little more respectable.

Suddenly, Colonel Dash's shoulders sagged. She said, “Rook, you can go home now.”

“But....what?” Scootaloo's heart wrenched in her chest. “Why?”

“Because I'm ordering you to. It might get....hairy later on.”

“That's why I want to stay, ma'am!”

“Are you disobeying a direct order?”

Scootaloo opened her mouth to protest, then bit down on her tongue and clamped her jaw shut.

“Take the rest of the night off,” Colonel Dash said. “Enjoy not having any real responsibility. It won't last. Go on, go.”

Sadly, Scootaloo said, “Yes, ma'am.”

Trudging away from her idol, she let her head droop down until her muzzle almost scraped the sidewalk. Her beret slid to one side of her skull, but she didn't have the heart to fix it. Her chest felt all clogged up, like she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. She ripped her uniform jacket open and let the cool breeze caress her coat. She beat the streets, heading away from the bustle of the checkpoint, towards the apartment she shared with her foster parents. The sound of Shadowbolts protecting the city and doing their duty as pegasi, faded away.

She looked up, and by sheer chance saw that earth pony strolling along the March of Triumph, weighed down by the cart. She headed for the arch that representing the courage and bravery of pegasus ponies. A roaring violent rage filled Scootaloo. But Colonel Dash had let the earth pony go because the useless General Spitfire had said to, and Scootaloo didn't want to make her idol angry. But she couldn't stop an earth pony by herself, no matter how feeble degeneracy had made them. Feeling very small, Scootaloo slumped her shoulders and slunk along the sidewalk ringing the roundabout.

There had to be something she could do.

A hoofful of laughing ponies wandered out of a bar up ahead. Their Civil Force uniforms were unbuttoned and hanging loose around their bodies. They might have been off-duty, but the oaths they swore to keep the city safe were always in effect. They would help her keep the Land of the Eternal Moon safe!

Was that your good deed for the day? a tiny voice in the Colonel's head asked. Sure you don't want to walk the rook home and tuck her into bed, too?

She's just a foal, she thought.

A memory came to her unbidden, of Spitfire training her when she was nothing more than a fresh-faced rook. She shoved it out of her mind and gave the command over to Major Caspain, then spread her wings and lifted herself off the ground. It felt good to leave all her problems on the ground for a little while, tune them out in favor of the air rushing through her mane. But another thought abruptly popped into her mind: Is that rook going to replace me someday? Maybe I should take care of her first.

Listen to yourself, Colonel. She's barely out of diapers.

She drew close to the eternal moon. Everypony spent their whole lives reaching for that pale gray orb, and the promise of prosperity and good fortune it offered. It hung there, always watching over them, offering itself up to anypony who reached up and grabbed hold of it. All they had to do was struggle against their degenerate earthly impulses.

Nopony gets anywhere by being weak, she thought, spying the Croup billboard across the roundabout. Spitfire has gone weak, and she's going to lead us all to our doom. If I want to fix that, I need to be strong like Croup Steel.

She landed atop the sturdy and solid Arch of Triumph and walked to the far edge, to observe the thoroughfare running under the monument. Far below, the small speck of an earth pony walked on, lashed to a cart carrying the explosives that would hopefully net the Colonel a promotion to General. She pulled her binoculars off her belt and scanned the distance, homing in on a neon flurry of marquees in the distance, past the rows of city blocks. Now, there was nothing left to do but wait and watch. She unclipped her radio from her belt and settled down to wait. She turned the dial away from the police channels, towards the civilian bands.

A fanfare burst from the radio. The Colonel was about to tune away from it, but she stayed her hoof for a moment. The trumpets dipped down and cleared the airwaves so a stallion could holler a rapid-fire advertisement: “In honor of the upcoming millennial celebrations, Cynic DeKey is proud to present a tale of our princess's triumphant victory over Solara Victa. The River Runs Wild is the story of an industrious and free-spirited unicorn who struggles with keeping her farm intact under the ravages of a tyrant's iron hoof. Nothing in the world could have prepared you for this musical extravaganza. Marvel at the adventure, thrill at the danger, be swept off your hooves by the romance! And don't forget to roll in the aisle laughing at the sensational Trotten Pullit! The River Runs Wild, opening tonight, only at the Chariot Theater! Where memories are made!”

Oh, there will be some memories made tonight, don't you worry about that.

She tuned the radio to frequency 108.5. Thorny Bends would keep her company in this cold and lonely night.

Fluttershy cowered against the wall, her upturned eyes fretfully watching the Shadowbolts swarming around her. Headlights from the street splashed around on the sidewalk, turning the Shadowbolts into twisted and terrifying shadows that played on the red bricks, as sharp as knives. Ready to cut into Fluttershy, document forger. Passport thief. Changling. She knew she wasn't one of them, but did they? How well did their tests work? Would they have to torture her to find out for sure?

She shrank down, trying to turn to ooze and melt into the cracks in the sidewalk.

Next to her, the unicorn seethed, semi-conscious. She mumbled something about the Shadowbolts being murderers, which Fluttershy was not too happy to hear in her current condition. Always keep your own hoof on your own papers, she thought repeatedly. They'd drilled it into her head after talk of the threat posed by Changlings first surfaced. Always always always keep your own hoof on your own papers.

The unicorn woke suddenly by jerking up and pushing herself away from the building. Her eyelids flared open. “Y-you can't do this to me!”

Oh, no! Fluttershy thought. Don't draw their attention!

Luckily for Fluttershy, the comment went unnoticed by the security forces. Unluckily, the unicorn repeated it much louder. A Shadowbolt officer strode over and loomed over the two of them huddled on the sidewalk. A two-tone golden mane spilled out from under her dark purple beret.

“What was that?” she asked.

“You can't do this to me,” the unicorn said. “Yuh-you're supposed to serve us.”

The Shadowbolt clucked her tongue, like a disapproving mother. “Is that so? Would the little unicorn like some tea?”

“I'd like you to release me.”

“Hmph. Well, I guess it's your lucky day. Get up and get out of my sight.”

The unicorn blinked in surprise. Her eyes narrowed, searching the other mare's face for some hint of deception. But the Shadowbolt officer just threw the unicorn's confiscated saddlebag at her. The unicorn caught it instinctively, then stared at it. She got to her hooves, knees shaking and wobbling. When she straightened her legs, she swayed briefly, but her balance returned before long. The unicorn's horn lit up as she magically took the saddlebag and strapped it back around her body.

“My commanding officer dismissed the charges,” the Shadowbolt explained. “Because of your brother's sacrifice. Now go on, before I change my mind."

Without a word, the unicorn held her chin up and walked down the sidewalk and through the checkpoint. The Shadowbolt looked after her, then opened her wings, sturdy and powerful, to take flight. She flapped once, twice, close enough for Fluttershy to feel the wind they created brush her face. But the officer remembered Fluttershy existed and whipped her head around to lock eyes with her, and something flashed across her face. Disgust? Pity? Fluttershy couldn't tell.

Whatever it was, Fluttershy was deeply thankful the pegasus said, “You can get along too,” and then lifted herself up and flew into the night.

Fluttershy saw her own saddlebag lying on the ground, near the APC. Nopony was paying much attention to her, so she crept forward and stalked over to the saddlebag, reached a trembling forehoof out and snagged the straps, then backed away. She didn't dare turn her tail on the angry swarm of security forces, buzzing like hornets. She tensed herself to run if anypony made any sudden movements, and backed towards the opening carefully, so careful--

Her tail hit something. Somepony shouted. Fluttershy twirled around, her heart leaping into her throat. But it was only the purple unicorn, rubbing her temple. Her bloodshot eyes met Fluttershy's, and a look mingling contempt and despair flared up inside them. Then the unicorn gave Fluttershy a rough shove, but she was still very uncoordinated.

“Watch where you're going, featherbrain.”

The unicorn turned stiffly on her hooves and strode away, occasionally wobbling to one side. But rather than hate her, Fluttershy pitied her. She looks like she could use a friend. But definitely not me. I'm so weak and spineless, I'm not fit to be anypony's friend.

With one last look over her shoulder, to see if she had attracted anypony's attention, she slunk past the checkpoint.

Applejack felt a stranger in a strange land. She had passed precious few of her own kind on the cold city streets, and the unicorns and pegasus ponies threw her hateful glares that silently demanded to know why she was dragging her carcass through the part of town where only good folks lived. Why she was reminding them, with her very presence, that earth ponies still existed. Perhaps it'd be different if, instead of a heavy canvas cloak, she wore a work detail vest and went about cleaning up the trash with a pegasus hovering nearby. Working hard to make the shining city shine. Maybe then they'd be glad to see a dirt-eater like her.

What did they see in her? The Winter Rising? Did they expect her to tear out her earmark and occupy the radio stations, sounding the call to rise up against cruelty and injustice? That was her parents' war, and it ended with both of them swinging from the trees. No, nowadays the earth ponies' war was rolling a cart full of explosives into a crowd of innocents, then lighting the fuse and hightailing it. The only weapon ponies like Hammer had to fight with. But it wouldn't work, she knew. The hammer would fall on Hammer. Just like the aftermath of the Winter Rising, the precious hoofful of rights the unicorns deigned to give earth ponies would dwindle a little bit more.

But what else could she do, with Hammer threatening her family? The only thing that let her get through this awful life with her sanity intact?

No way out. No way free. Nowhere to run.

Sighing wearily, she rolled the cart on down the sidewalk. She had ta've known Ah was carryin' a cart full a'explosives, she thought. Ah saw it in her eyes. So why didn't she take me inta custody?! Everythin' would bea whole bunch easier if'n she'd jus' arrested me. Ah could'a been free a'this terrible, terrible burden. But she let me go, and now Ah got ta carry it.

She walked down the March of Triumph, past her kin tending to the trees. The earmarks, the shaved heads, the looks of defeat; she knew that face intimately. And these trees, the ones lining the cobblestone road that ran through the grass, she knew these trees very well, too. This was where the militia had strung her parents up, with a hundred other Winter Brigadiers. Left to rot and to swing in the wind. And the irony of it was that her parents had already told her why, in great detail, when she was younger:

After the first civil war, some five hundred years ago, the High Castle had done away with feudalism and let the unicorn bureaucracy run society, and it worked out swell for a while. But then the Moonblight started to rot the crops away, and a terrible famine swept the land, leaving everypony on the verge of exhaustion. The princess discovered some provincial bureaucracies were hoarding food from the High Castle. Enraged, she called up an army of pegasi to march on them and take the food. The fighting trampled all over the precious crops they were supposed to be nurturing and left the whole nation even more starving, and the treasury went broke from the cost of importing food from overseas. As the army marched, they plundered the rebel towns and farms and burned them down, even though the earth ponies in them only did what the unicorns told them to, like always. Her kin were summarily executed by the thousands, because they always got the brunt of the blame whenever there wasn't enough food. The soldiers strung them up from the trees they tended, right alongside the apples and cherries and oranges.

'Strange fruit', they called the swinging bodies.

When the fighting was over and the rebel lands surrendered, the High Castle brokered a peace with the unicorns, but all the earth ponies got was an edict. The Edict of 674, making all earth ponies wards of the state, because only the stern hoof of the military could keep the earth ponies in line and 'encourage' them to produce more.

Of all the advertisements she passed on her way up the March of Triumph, only one had earth ponies on it: a billboard high up on an apartment building advertising Daemo-brand Livestock Solutions. A professional-looking unicorn mare with a hair bun and cat's-eye glasses glanced down sternly at the pedestrians. Company owner Lacey Daemo herself, according to the label under her. Along the length of the billboard, hundreds of miniature earth ponies spelled out the company name and arranged themselves into its logo in perfect, orderly rows. 'Absolute Discipline', the tagline said.

Nowhere to run.

With the military transformed from a temporary militia to a permanent professional institution in charge of managing the country, the bureaucracies were slimmed down and a lot of unicorns found themselves out of a job. In a fit of insight, they capitalized on the bankrupt economy. That was the start of the corporations, when they resurrected the old guilds from the Reawakening. They started small, as circles of unicorn craftsponies drafting new ideas and machines, but it grew and grew until their ideas sparked first an agricultural and then an industrial revolution, and their industrial age was still going in the present day. Coal power, steam power, electricity, all products of the corporations. And of course, the military was their first and greatest customer. Tanks, locomotives, airships; all the better to transport materiel across the enormous expanse of the nation. Cannons, explosives, armor, all sold for profit, an arrangement both sides were exceedingly happy with. The pegasi had weapons to keep control of the nation, and the unicorns had their bits.

And as the corporations' ideas became more complex and needed more hooves to come to fruition, as always, they turned to the earth ponies. They petitioned the High Castle for hooves to work the assembly lines, and the High Castle had graciously granted it. And so the earth ponies were shipped from their farms to the cities, to build the weapons the pegasi used to keep the princess's peace. But after the military sank money into a few too many costly disasters, the industrialists had another grand idea: repeal the Edict of 674 a little bit. Loosen the leash on the earth ponies and let them pick where they wanted to work. That way, the more successful a firm was, the more earth ponies they could afford to hire.

'Freedom', they called it.

'A choice between slavedrivers', her parents named it.

But, again, the High Castle went along with their petition. The earth ponies were provisionally freed and given the semblance of choice. But on every corner, there was the military to keep order. To remind the earth ponies of where their freedom came from. Soon, they split the urban military garrisons off from the military proper and renamed it the Civil Force, but a change of name didn't change what they were or what they did.

And on that day twelve years ago when the Winter Brigade rose up for freedom, for true freedom, the Civil Force had been right there to beat them back down into the dirt. To show them who had the power. And the militias, all those soldiers come back from overseas, were all too eager to string the Brigadiers up from the trees, just like they had three hundred years ago. Strange fruit.

Nowhere to run.

Heh. Ah ain't a stranger in a strange land, Ah'm strange fruit in a strange land. She laughed at that, but it was little more than a broken, harsh scoff.

She crossed the intersection of the street that circled the park and the March of Triumph. Down the March, which led straight to the base of the High Castle itself, she saw the marquee lights glowing from around a distant corner. On the corner was a unicorn with a little souvenir cart. A foal toddled away from his parents, who were looking at the knick-knacks, and crossed AJ's path. It smiled up at her and drooled happily. He was too young to speak or understand the warnings about earth ponies. He was just a lump of unformed, unshaped clay. His father stepped away from the souvenir cart parked on the sidewalk and shoved AJ roughly away, even though she hadn't moved an inch. The foal's mother scooped him up and hugged him tight, whispering soothingly in his ear. The three of them backed away from her. The foal waved at her, but she didn't dare wave back. They'd punish her for that. They'd punish her most everything.

She looked at the souvenir cart, and the mustachioed owner. He glared at her with unbridled contempt, cursing her silently for driving away his business, commanding her to stop looking at his ware sin case she infected them with degeneracy from a distance. The souvenirs spread out in front of him, little glass and pewder tchotchkes shaped like the city's landmarks. There was a little Arch of Triumph, a High Castle, a Princess Luna, even one of the whole city on the mountain. Did it have a tiny Applejack on its streets, wandering aimlessly through a pointless existence?

Nowhere to run.

She stared up at the mountain above. Why is this mah life? she wondered as the unicorns and pegasi skirted around her, like a pile of dung left on the sidewalk. They make a big deal outta 'choice' and 'personal responsibility', but the only choice they give us is ta do what they say, no matter the cost. Her gaze lifted until it came to the pale moon, like a heavy eye staring down at her. No matter how much AJ tried to suppress it, the despair in her heart swelled until she couldn't breathe. The urge to flee swelled up inside her. To unharness the cart and run like the wind, take her family and sneak out of the city, braving the danger and hide in the countryside. Ponies were made to run across the open country, not live in these cages of glass and steel and stone and concrete. But the countryside didn't exist anymore. It was a long-gone legend that lived only in her heart. Now it was all factories and tracts of farmland patrolled by pegasi. Nowhere to hide from the Civil Force. The buildings around her loomed a little taller and pressed in just a little tighter.

Maybe Ah should just take the bomb somewhere quiet, set it off, and get all this over with. Forget what everypony else wants outta me, a'cause Ah can't take this anymore. There ain't no other way outta here. Life is just hardship and pain, and lies we tell ourselves. Lies about glorious revolution or some kinda 'World to Come'. Lies so's we can keep going, hoping there's something good ahead. But there never is, is there? There ain't no way outta life but death.

But she wouldn't do it. She could already tell. Not with her family out there to despair over what she'd done, and possibly be hurt by Hammer for her failure. No, she had to press on, through life's little torments and indignities. For Big Mac and Apple Bloom and especially dear old Granny Smith, who'd already lost a child during the Winter Rising. Applejack couldn't bear the thought of her sweet old granny outliving a grandchild, too. It'd just about break her heart to pieces.

Applejack picked her head up and started walking again.

Sudden rough hooves grabbed her from behind. She tried to gallop away, but the cart was too much of a burden, so there was nowhere to run to. The forelegs lifted her off the ground and ripped the harness away. She kicked and fought to get free, but only kicked empty air. With a heave, she was thrown to the sidewalk. Her flank slammed into the concrete, wrenching her spine. She planted a foreleg on the pitted, cracked ground to lift herself up, but when she put her weight on it, her knee buckled. She fell to the sidewalk, face-first.

“Awful long way from your hole, huh?” a chuckling mare asked.

Applejack raised her head. A half-dozen pegasus ponies stood over her, wearing either scowls or smirks of delight. They wore Civil Force uniforms, and wore them very proudly indeed, with their chests puffed out in self-importance.

“Ah-Ah got papers,” Applejack mumbled. She nosed her saddlebag open and drew out the forged letters of transit with her teeth. “The High castle, they give me permission ta be here--”

One of the pegasi snatched the letter, crumpled it up, and tossed it aside without reading a single word. The paper ball rolled over near the sales cart's wheel. The owner looked up from it to the pegasi, his lips worming up and down.

“Well,” the mare in charge said, “we don't give you permission to drag your degenerate carcass through our city.”

“Hey,” the souvenir cart owner said, “if she's got papers, maybe you should let her go.”

The mare turned to him, her brow drawing down into a steely snarl. She flared her wings out dramatically, extending them to their full length, and stalked over to the sales cart. The unicorn shrank back slightly, all his racial dominance fleeing from him.

“Help,” Applejack croaked.

The unicorn's eyes flicked to her, then back to the mare. He licked his lips, preparing to speak, but before he could she reached out like lightning and slammed his muzzle down into the cart's counter. He shot back up and fell away.

"Every day we're patrolling these streets, putting our lives on the line,” she growled, her dark eyes never leaving the unicorn. "We sweat and bleed so wimps like you can run your little factories and trinket booths. So don't you tell me what to do, understand?”

The unicorn hesitated for a moment, then scampered to his hooves, turned tail, and fled down the March of Triumph.

It was useless, Applejack realized, taking in the pure hatred etched on those faces. Everything else in the world seemed to fall away except the self-conscious pounding of her heart. It knew it would likely soon stop beating, and wanted to remind her of what she would lose. But no matter what she said, nothing would stop them. They'd just call her a liar. They were on a war path, looking for a battle to fight, just like the rest of the pegasus race.

Little better than animals, the lot of them.

That's-that's not true, she thought. They....had their heads full a'lies, that's all. Ma an' pa said so.

Right before they were....killed by 'em. Giving in to her hatred lent her a small bit of comfort, of vindication. She might die, but she was right about the pegasus ponies.

Stop it, she thought again. Ah'm no better than they are if'n Ah think that.

The pegasus mare faced Applejack again, eyes blazing with anger. She scooped a glass keepsake made to look like the city on its mountain. Then she plucked up a roll of tape lying next to the gift boxes and walked back to the circle of pegasi.

“Hold her up,” the mare said. Two of the pegasi wrestled AJ off the ground. They pulled her forelegs out, painfully stretching all the muscles in her chest. She struggled a few times, but they held her firm. “Now,” the mare in charge said, striding over with the keepsake held in an upturned hoof. “Open wide, dirt-eater.”

Oh, no, Applejack thought.

Her entire body broke out in pinpricks. Her stomach tied itself in knots. Sudden tears leaked from her eyes. They were going to give her a glass jaw. She renewed the struggle to free herself, but the pegasi tightened their grips and stilled her. They were too powerful, and she was so tired. As the other mare approached, Applejack shook her head, begging her not to, but the gesture was feeble and heartless.

“Aw, you scared?” the pegasus cooed.

She put on a sympathetic smile and stroked Applejack's cheek tenderly. Then she slammed her forehoof into Applejack's chest, making her gasp. AJ tried to grit her teeth, but the pegasus was too quick. She yanked open AJ's mouth and shoved the glass souvenir inside. Applejack practically had to unhinge her jaw to stop from biting down on it and shattering it. The sharp points and curving edges of the Canterlot model on her tongue and cheeks felt fragile between her teeth, just waiting to cut her mouth and throat to ribbons and make her drown in her own blood. All it was waiting for was a blow to break them into tiny glass daggers. The mare ripped a strip of thick tape off the roll and pressed it over AJ's mouth, sealing the glass model inside.

“Doesn't taste as good as dirt, I'll bet.”

Applejack's eyes were so wide, they felt about ready to fall out. She wordlessly pleaded with the pegasus ponies, begging them not to, but she found no empathy.

“This'll all be over soon,” the mare said, turning around and raising her hind leg. Preparing herself for the final kick.

“Wait,” another pegasus said. Applejack looked to him in desperation, hoping against hope he'd grown a conscience. But the pegasus only asked, “What if the horn gets help?”

The mare looked around the street, which wasn't crowded, but neither was it empty. The ponies passed them by, deliberately not paying any attention to the six Civil Force soldiers. “You're right,” she said. “Let's find a nice, quiet place.” She grinned at Applejack. “Where we can be alone.”

The pegasus ponies pulled her forelegs, sending her flying onto her back. As they hustled her away, dragging her along the sidewalk, she struggled to break free and also not accidentally swallow the glass model in her mouth or bite down and shatter it. She kicked the air with her hind legs, trying in vain to get free, but she found no purchase, could land no blows. The pegasus ponies dragged her into the shadows of a dark alley.

Nowhere to run.

That earth pony better get what she deserves.

Why wouldn't she? When Scootaloo went to the soldiers, they seemed very concerned when she told them about the suspicious dirt-eater. After stuffing her uniform into her saddlebag, that is, so they wouldn't question why she didn't take care of the problem herself. It hurt her pride to feign helplessness, but when the safety of the city was on the line, Scootaloo considered the price worth it. She was a good pegasus for putting a stop to that.

She rounded the corner onto her street. Her apartment building stood ahead, and a light shone in her kitchen, halfway up its fifteen stories. Probably her foster parents sitting down for dinner. I wish Colonel Dash was my foster parent, she thought. Light Breeze and Crosswind were nice enough, but fell pretty short of the pegasus ideal. Middling, at best. How could she look up to weather patrol ponies? She liked them, yes, but respect had to be earned, and she couldn't fully respect ponies who were given wings and yet spent their lives kicking clouds around. Some ponies just wasted their racial heritage.

On the sidewalk, a pegasus lifted off and took to the air. Scootaloo watched with envy as he soared up to a balcony on the top floor. No flying for her. Just stairs, all the way up, she thought with a groan.

Her ear caught a noise from the pavillion across the street, a grassy park where the ponies of the neighborhood could keep fit. She crossed the street, keeping alert and watching the shadows for the source of the noise. Softly, she trend the grass and pressed between the ring of trees surrounding a marble statue of Princess Luna, valiantly leading two soaring pegasi at her flanks into battle. There, in the statue's shadow, a dark shape with its muzzle pressed close to the dirt moved.

“Poke!” the shape said. “Poke!”

Scootaloo watched from the treeline. Every time that simpering, lisping voice spoke, she ground her teeth a little harder. She stalked around the trees, getting closer to see what he was doing, angling herself so the colt was framed against the moonlight streaming down from the sky. His muzzle was against the ground, and he reached out with a hoof and tentatively poked the dirt. It wasn't until he started singing a song from the radio, one of those Cheerilee and Her Orchestra swing songs from the High Castle's official stations, that Scootaloo realized what the foal was doing.

“This is how we make our garden grow, we must make the flowers grow fast, not slow.” Rumble hummed a jaunty brass riff. “Because a flower that ain't blooming, means a unicorn out there is fuming!”

Scootaloo couldn't bear to look at him poking his hoof in the dirt and disgracing the wings on his back. Her jaw hurt from grinding her teeth so much. Every single thing he did filled her chest with a great and terrible loathing, an itching, crawling disgust. The taint of degeneracy, infecting her from a distance. Rumble's brother, she dimly recalled, had been executed for treason. A defeatist, they called him. Degenerate. Rumble had weakness in his blood, and there was no place for weakness in the Land of the Eternal Moon. Her fury rose in her chest and choked her gorge. But there was power in anger: the passion to reject and stave off degeneracy, and change things for the better.

Rumble prodded the dirt experimentally and called out, “Poke!” again.

“What are you doing?” she called.

Rumble shuddered and spun around. When Scootaloo drifted from the treeline and into the moonlight, he shuddered. She wished she had put her uniform on, to make the effect even more terrifying for the little snot, but it was still stashed in her saddlebag. It didn't matter, anyway. Even without it, the pathetic foal cowered against the statue's pedestal, shaking himself to pieces, as she slowly approached him.

“Nuh-nuh-nothing, Scootaloo,” he said, huddling over. “Nothing.”

“I asked what you were doing, not what you are. What was that song you were singing, huh?”

She stopped over him, brought to fury by his babyish coat, so tender and soft.

“Ch-Ch-Cheerilee and Her Orchestra,” he said.

“Isn't that dirt-eater music? I swore I saw a pair of wings on you.”

Scootaloo had to admire the bravery the little snot had in saying, “I l-l-like it,” to her.

“Are you a dirt-eater?” When he didn't answer, she shouted, “Well, are you?!”

He flinched and sobbed, “No.”

“Then what are you?”

Rumble swallowed heavily. “A p-p-pegasus.”

Scootaloo's dropped her voice to a soft whisper. “Oh. Is that so? You're a pegasus, but you listen to music meant for dirt-eaters? And you go around here, in front of my home--”

“It's my home, too,” he squeaked.

“Don't interrupt me,” Scootaloo sneered. “You come around here, making my home degenerate by pretending to be an earth pony. That's going to cost you.”

“Please, no....!”

Should've thought about that before you betrayed our race. There was no sympathy in her for a pegasus who casually threw his birthright away like that. Stabbed his nation in the back. She bolted forward and grabbed him. As he thrashed to get free, she dragged him to the grass and threw him down.

“So you wanna be a dirt-eater, huh?” she yelled, digging up clumps of earth and shoving them into his sobbing, whining mouth. “Here, eat up!”

He tried to spit the dirt out, but she kept shoving it in until muddy spittle dribbled down his lips and chin. Then she put her hooves on the back of his head and shoved it down into the upturned earth, rubbing his face in it. He struggled to get free, but never made a move to fight her directly, which only made her angrier. No pegasus spirit. That body was wasted on him. And yet, despite that, his wings still worked. They beat the air to lift him off the ground. But she was still stronger.

“Might as well rip these off,” she said, grabbing his wingtips in her fetlocks and bending them back as she sat on his back. “A dirt-eater isn't going to need these, is he?”

He mewled his pathetic cries and spat wet earth out. A real pegasus wouldn't cry like that. Rumble could never guard Canterlot, could never do anything to help his society. His wing bones reached the breaking point. Just a little more pressure, and they'd snap in half. Go ahead, she thought. Why should he have them if he's not even going to fight back? Nopony owes him anything. Nopony gets anything if they're not willing to fight for it. But she didn't want to spoil her fun so soon. She relented and let go. He scrabbled around in the dirt, where he belonged, before jumping to his hooves and making a run for safety. She gave him a swift kick in the flank as he scurried away and sent him sprawling face first into the grass. Her eyes watered up, she laughed so hard, but she wiped the tears away in time to see Rumble run out of the park, crying.

Scootaloo waited a few moments, then got up and walked towards the apartment building, feeling big and tough and distinctly pleased with herself. Was this how Colonel Dash felt, when she kept the city safe? One day, maybe she'd find out, but for right now she was hungry.

Chapter 9

“....what sets us apart, see,” Thorny said, “it's....we create things with our mind, and then we bring them into being. All those adorable little critters in our pet shops, they cost a leg and a leg, right? But despite that, they can't do a thing that comes so easily to us. They can't capture reality....all this....through the power of art. They're stuck in their little glass cages, pacing around or slithering around or ruffling their feathers, unable to communicate what they see. But we, we ponies, we share our thoughts, our feelings, our-our-our perceptions. That's all an artist's style is. Their unique vision of the world? The artistic version of an accent. Here in Canterlot, art speaks the dialect of 'realism', that we....we take reality and capture it and display it 'as it is': the virility of pegasus ponies, the intelligence of unicorns, the hard work of earth ponies. That's the foundation of society, and our art represents that, as faithfully as a photograph.

“But even then, every artist has their own lingo, their own tics. They stride up to that canvas, and they ask, 'Hey, how are you doing?' And the canvas, get this, it speaks back to them. 'Draw a mountain here,' it says, 'and a moonlit lake over there.' But it's all in their heads. They....vomit their subconscious onto the blank slate. Just like the darkness, the canvas is waiting for a pony to project themselves onto it. One painter gets more of the detail in the form. Another gets the interplay of light and shadow. And we take all these dialects of reality and hang them in an exhibition next to each other, and we....pretend they're all the same. That they reinforce one another, even with their slight differences.

“But if you take a pony away from what's real, though, have them spend their lives staring at illusion after illusion that reinforces each other, who's to say the illusion won't replace reality itself? Does it then become a new reality?”

“In that case,” Freepony Young cut in, “I'm going to get working on a reality that doesn't include you.”

“I'm going to use my powers of illusion and pretend I didn't hear that.”

The Colonel chuckled into the eternal night.

“And while I do that, folks, why don't we hear a word from our sponsors: Foucolt-brand Architecture, for when you need to build structures that'll stand the test of time.”

The Colonel groaned. It seemed like they had just come back from a commercial break. She tuned the radio away, let it become one with the wind whispering past the top of the arch. Wind that all converged on this city, pushed clear across the world by pegasus power.

She took up her binoculars and scanned the street. The route the bomb would go down was visible for the most part, but there were a few blind spots where tall buildings blocked her view, and she had lost contact briefly. Should she go down and scout around? No, it was too risky. The Liberation Front might have their own eyes on the bombs, watching from the shadows. They were unusually well-equipped for earth ponies, which begged further investigation. Further investigation which would not be forthcoming from Spitfire's desk.

Another reason why I'm doing the right thing, she thought savagely.

She lowered the binoculars and slumped against the parapet, exhaling all her worries in a heavy sigh. Next to her crouched a gargoyles, and she stared at it in profile. Gargoyles were supposed to be ugly, but the pegasus's stone figure was heroic and beautiful, its scouring stone eyes watching over the city. The Colonel felt the pegasus above her, in a sense, as she lingered in the shadow of its outstretched wings as they blocked the moon. But it's cold and aloof features made her feel beneath it. Little more than an earth pony, in fact. They were so high, and she was so low and insignificant. When she had walked to the parapet, its silhouette laid in her path. She stepped over the shadow, but as she did, the shadow also covered her. It was above and below her at the same time; she was in the middle of it. Covered with shadow. Shadow everywhere. The Colonel was one with the darkness. As a Shadowbolt, her whole life was spent in it.

She shuddered, wondering where these thoughts were coming from. They didn't feel like hers. But out there, in the middle of a commercial break, she had nothing to occupy her except the stunning view of the city and the lonely wind.

Focus, she thought. You have a job to do.

But how could she? Nothing to do but let her mind ramble. The radio continued to drone on, cutting into Thorny Bends's transmission time. Thorny Bends would understand her, if only she came back soon. It was a powerful experience, listening to her. She talked like she knew everything about the Colonel and her personal struggles.

The Colonel looked up at the beautiful gargoyle throwing its form across her, and though it was pitted and worn, she was shocked to see it resembled Spitfire, on that long ago day at the Academy. Long-ago and half-forgotten memories came to her. But against the dark and lonely night, they seemed as vivid as the day they had been made. Spitfire strolled past the line of recruits, totally and completely sure of herself. The director-general would weed out the strong from the weak before she placed the responsibility for defending Canterlot on their shoulders.

“You think you got what it takes?” Spitfire had asked them.

“Yes, ma'am,” Dash replied, swearing that she would never be weak.

“Oh, really? You look like you're going to limp home at the first bruise and cry to your mommy.”

“Just try me, ma'am.”

“You sure?” Spitfire asked, looking down her muzzle at the young mare, like the gargoyle did to the Colonel she had become. “Because when you offer yourself up like this, I'm gonna make it hurt, and hurt bad.”

With no hesitation, Dash declared, “No pain, no gain.”

Those four words could just about be Dash's motto. Struggle was how society kept fit. Kept from degenerating. The grand struggle of life itself. So when Spitfire blew the whistle right in her ear, she refused to flinch. She could take the shrill pierce. She refused to stop, not until she was at the top. At Spitfire's side.

“Listen up,” the director-general said. “Dash here has just volunteered you all for one hundred laps around the field. Now wing it!”

No pain, no gain, Dash thought then, as the Colonel did now.

But there was something else in the gargoyle's eye. It almost looked like bleak sadness. An accusation, and a condemnation. It's your fault, Dash thought. You refused to keep up, not me.

She suddenly came back to herself and realized she was talking to a piece of stone. But she couldn't help it. Where those stone eyes fell on her, they made her coat stand on end. And the way the moon lingered behind the gargoyle, it almost seemed like it was in agreement with Spitfire--

It's not Spitfire, it's just a statue, she thought, feeling her sanity ebb away.

To distract herself, she took in the unruly, tumorous mass gathering under the illuminated awning of the distant theater, just barely visible over the buildings. All of them waited for the mock battle against the tyrant Solara Victa to take place. But she, on the other hoof, was freezing her tail off fighting a real battle, and this war wasn't nearly as neat or glamorous as musical theater made it out to be. They haven't got a clue how we protect them and keep them safe. From themselves, if we need to. The sacrifices we make let them stay all cozy and secure in their theaters and office buildings. The pegasi are the real power in Canterlot. But soon enough, they'll understand that....I hope.

But still that stone Spitfire glowered sidelong at Dash, cutting right through her justifications, no matter how noble, with that madness-inducing stare of accusation.

It's been too long, she thought, the mane on the back of her neck standing on end. She picked up her binoculars and scanned the route again. It shouldn't have taken this long for her to reestablish contact, and doubt settled over her thick and heavy like a funeral shroud. I shouldn't have retasked Lightning Dust, she thought with dawning horror. It had seemed so important at the time, but looking back, how could she have thought that? Sometimes scarifices had to be made. Dash had done what Fleetfoot accused Spitfire of: not having her head in the game. Of course letting Sparkle go was the right call, in the middle of an operation. So why hadn't Dash made it? Why did she only realize what was important now, when there was nothing left to do but fret and worry?

She raised the binoculars again and scanned the route.

Nothing.

Come on. If you want to lead the Shadowbolts, you have to make calls under pressure all the time.

She turned the radio dial away from Radio Free Canterlot and towards the channel Major Dust was on, but a thought gave her pause. If she let Dust know she made the wrong call, how was she any more professional than Spitfire? A leader had to have her head in the game. She couldn't let Dust know she'd messed up. She turned the radio off and put it back on her belt, pledging to fix this mess herself.

Unless you don't have what it takes? Maybe Spitfire was right: this is just a sad, pathetic obsession--

Dash gritted her teeth, breathing heavily and feeling like a rook again. A weak, stupid rook making rookie mistakes.

She hated this lonely waiting, without the radio, without action, without anything to focus on to. It gave the thoughts a chance to creep in. Those degenerate thoughts that cut away at her like a million tiny daggers when she was by herself. They made her weak, and she hated being weak. She spread her wings out wide she dived off the Arch, streaking through the night and out over the city below, hoping it wasn't too late.

When they reached the winding alley's dead end, they threw Applejack down to the grimy, filthy concrete, among the piled up garbage. She went limp, ignoring everything but the glass in her teeth. She had hold it firm, but not so firm she shattered it. So far she'd managed. But why bother? Soon enough they'd break it for her. There was no way she could fend off a half-dozen pegasus ponies all by herself. Her fate was not hers to decide, and never had been.

Just give up, AJ, a voice in her head thought. It'll only hurt fer a little while. That is, Ah hope.

“Lift her up,” the mare in charge said, cracking her neck.

Two of the Civil Force soldiers grabbed AJ's forelimbs and pulled her off the trash. The alleyway was slanted shadow, the other ponies barely able to be seen. The bones in Applejack's forelegs and her ribs strained, but the pegasi kept pulling until she stood nsteadily on her hind legs. Their leader came closer, a malicious smile on her lips. Sweat dripped down AJ's forehead and saliva swamped her duct-taped mouth. The mare put her hooves on the sides of Applejack's head. The hard edges dug into her coat, squeezed her skin. The pegasus yanked her head this way and that, inspecting her.

“Look at that face,” the pegasus said, rolling AJ's head around. “It's not like a Griffon face, all beaked and feathered. It could almost be a pegasus face. But there are tiny little differences. The broad muzzle, the low brow, the freckles. Still, she almost looks like a real pony.” She pinched AJ's earmark in her fetlock and pulled. “Good thing we have this to tell us what you are, isn't it?”

Applejack wanted to scream at her ear being stretched out, made thin and fragile, but with the tape no sound came out. The pegasus pulled harder, driving Applejack down to the ground while the others held her upright. The only way AJ could relieve the pain was to tilt her head to the side until it was nearly at a ninety degree angle.

“I said, isn't it a good thing?”

Through the muffling tape, Applejack screamed.

Mercifully, the pegasus let go. AJ's ear hurt even more when it returned to its rightful place. A thin trickle of blood ran down from the torn skin. Her lungs worked overtime to force enough air through her nostrils. She thought at them not to bother, but her lungs were stubborn things, desperate to keep hanging on to life.

“When we're done with you, nopony will have any trouble telling that face apart from a pegasus's.”

The pegasus mare stepped back, into a shadow. Her eyes gleamed in the dark as she looked over her shoulder. Applejack readied herself for the blow that'd tear her face and throat to shreds. In her mind, she felt the impact of the hard hoof, the cuts and slashes of the glass, the choking sensation of blood stopping up her throat. Would she survive it? Did she even want to survive it? The leader stretched her hind leg, preparing herself to kick. She raised her hoof to judge the distance until it was so close it made Applejack's eyes blur. The pegasus took it in, then stretched it out again, getting limber. Just do it! Applejack wanted to shout, but she was voiceless and powerless. She was already dead, she just had to wait for time to catch up to that fact. Her thoughts drifted away, back to the earth pony ghetto. Was her family sitting down to a nice meal right about now, wondering what sort of errand she was on? Saving her a slice of the meager food available to their kind? Gathering around the rattling heater, leaving a space for her? Was old Granny Smith asleep in her rocker, like a wizened old angel?

The pegasus mare's hind leg shot out, straight for Applejack's jaw. AJ screamed through the tape and tried to wrench herself away, but the other pegasi held her fast. Here it came, here comes the end.

But the hoof stopped an inch from her face. The pegasus cackled, though Applejack's heart leapt. Maybe they weren't going to do it after all, maybe they were just getting their kicks by frightening her out of her wits....

“Just warming up,” the pegasus in the shadows said. She coiled her hind leg again. “Are you ready, dirt-eater?”

Of course Applejack wasn't ready. How could anypony in their right mind be ready to die like this? But it was the end. The end of her sad, pitiful life. Why couldn't she have been a pegasus? What miserable, cruel power that be had made her an earth pony? Were they just tossed out at random when a pony was conceived? Why was this her life, and her death? But she had no time to ponder the mysteries of the universe. Not now. Or ever again.

The grinning pegasus mare's leg shot out, coiled with power, aiming to put an end to Applejack. And this time, it was once and for all.

But it didn't. Her hoof halted with the loud slap of skin on skin, hoof on hoof, echoing around the dead-end alley. It was too dark to see, with all the heavy shadows, but a flurry of motion in the darkness put the other Civil Force soldiers on edge. Their leader spun around roughly, taken off-guard by rough hooves that fanned her wings out. With a sharp snap, the bones broke in half, and she screamed out in pain as the pony in the shadows shoved her forward. She landed in a heap in the scarce, slanting light.

"Who's there?!" a pegasus shouted into the shadow.

As the stallion stepped into the light, he kicked the fallen mare's peaked cap up into the air, snatched it, and hung it carelessly askew on his head. He smiled a mad grin as he said, "Flash Sentry, Sergeant, 76th Thunder Battalion." He tossed a rolled-up ball of paper to the ground at Applejack's hooves: her letter of transit. “I was in the area and I couldn't help but notice you escorting your target away. Need a hoof?”

Applejack wanted to cry out, but the tape and the uncomfortable hunk of glass in her jaw stopped her. Who was this newcomer? Would he save her? She wanted to believe it, even though she'd been living far too long to depend on the kindness of pegasus ponies. But as the stallion stepped fully into the light, he didn't have any wings. Was he a pegasus, like he claimed, or not?

The Civil Force troops looked at one another. Then, the three of them who weren't holding Applejack tight rushed this so-called Sargeant Sentry as one. He ducked under a kick thrown by the first stallion, caught him by the head, and swung him around until he went sailing right into a window and broke his muzzle. The reinforced glass cracked into a star shape, and the Civil Force stallion collapsed to the cracked concrete, bloodied and dazed.

Another stallion swung for Flash, but like his name suggested he moved almost too fast for the eye to see. The corded muscles along his legs and body moved swiftly and precisely. Sentry's attacker threw out a hoof to strike him, but he smoothly deflected it and punched the attacker right in the face. Then, not missing a beat, he followed through on his swing by spinning round until he planted his forehooves on the ground and gave the other pegasus a roundhouse kick that slammed his head back. The Civil Force stallion stumbled backwards.

The mare with the broken wings came to her senses and lunged at him from behind. Without missing a beat, and without even looking, he caught her swung foreleg, pulled her across his back, and slammed her into the ground. She flopped down and rolled limply on the trash-strewn ground. An eager young mare rushed Sentry, slashing out with her wing in a swift knifelike jab. Effortlessly, Sentry bent his knees and ducked under the wing. The pegasus flashed out with the opposite wing, aiming low to take Sentry unaware. But Sentry's coiled knees shot up. He jumped over the bladed wing and punched the pegasus in the face as he came down.

In the moment of calm that followed, Sentry reached up to adjust the stolen cap on his head, making sure it was still artfully askew. Then he started hopping in place on his hooves, steeling and unlimbering himself like a boxer. His grin welcomed all who thought they could take him. His face became something insane, a mad grin for a grand cosmic joke.

Three of the soldiers came to their senses and rushed Sentry at the same time. Rather than take them on, Sentry jumped again, this time bringing his hooves down atop the head of the middle one and leapfrogging over his back as the soldier went to his knees. AJ didn't have time to do anything but breathe hard through her nose before this Flash Sentry planted his forehooves on the concrete, twisted in midair, and kicked the two pegasus ponies holding her tight square in the faces with his hind legs. The mare hit the brick wall and slid down, while the stallion's head connected with a fire escape. Both were instantly knocked unconscious.

Applejack herself fell to the ground. Hurriedly, she ripped the tape off and spat out the glass model. Canterlot shattered to pieces on the cracked ground. The balled-up letter of transit was right in front of her; she swiped it and stashed it in her cloak. Then she looked up to see Sentry grappling with the pegasus mare who had been the ringleader, and hopped to her hooves to help him.

“No!” he shouted. “They can execute you for striking a pegasus. Just get out of here while I hold them off.”

“What about you?!”

“I'll be fine,” he said. She noticed the scars along his side. He twisted the mare, angling the pegasus ponies to one side of the alley and making a gap between himself and the wall for her to slip through. “Get out of here.”

Applejack, flush with adrenaline, lingered for a moment while she thought of something, anything she could do. But so much was going on, so much to take in, she couldn't handle it all. But she finally had somewhere to run: away.

“Thank you,” she said, then turned tail and ran out of the alley before the others could get her. She ran back through the twisting alleys, hoping she remembered the way. Shadows rushed around her; the shadows of a fire escape, a dumpster, a skyscraper overhead. The shadows reached for her, consumed everything around her. They conspired to bleed into one another until the shadows were the only thing that existed aside from her.

But before long she burst out of the alleyway, right back where she'd started. Her cart waited for her, the empty harness waiting to be picked up. She was safe. Relatively. Trying to act inconspicuous, she picked up the cart and walked off the rush of blood coursing through her veins.

A shadow crossed the moonlight on the sidewalk in front of her, a silhouette on the sharp line of a building. She looked back. For a second she thought a shape crossed the moon, but then it was gone.

An APC thundered around the corner. Its brakes squealed as it came to a stop. The back dropped open and more ponies in gray fatigues swarmed out, only these ones were wearing riot gear as well, with grilled helmets and thick body armor. They swept out around the street; in the distance, she saw the unicorn who'd owned the souvenir cart milling around and watching.

"Put the weapon down!" one of the Civil Force soldiers yelled at an earth pony, wearing a bright work detail vest and standing in the shadow of a tree planted along the sidewalk. A pair of hedge clippers hung loosely from the earth pony's fetlock. The other Civil Force soldiers ringed him and drew their truncheons. Before he could process what they were yelling, one of the riot troopers bodyslammed him from behind, knocking the hedge clippers away. A soldier fell on him and started beating his head with the truncheon; it only took three swift blows before Applejack saw the blood gleaming in the moonlight.

Run. Now. Before they see you!

She pulled the cloak's hood up and over her head and walked away as fast as she could, before they noticed her.

“Shameful,” the unicorn major said as he paced in front of the line of captives sitting on the sidewalk, all their hooves bound with manacles. He was an old warhorse, with a thick moustache that curled slightly at the ends. He tugged at it as he fretted. “Absolutely shameful. Seven pegasus ponies, good and proper ponies sworn to defend their nation, turning on each other and inciting lawlessness. And over what? A dirt-eater. Disgraceful.”

“It was his fault.” The mare with the bandaged wings nodded at Flash. “He was the one who stood up for that--that--”

“Enough! Your commanding officer is an old friend of mine, and he will surely have a heart attack when he hears about this. In the meantime, you can calm down in a holding cell. Take them away.”

Gendarmes lifted up all the ponies except Flash and walked them to an idling paddy wagon. They shuffled slowly, their hooves caught by the chains. The rear door swung shut and the autocarriage rolled away, leaving Flash alone with the major and a hoofful of gendarmes in riot gear.

“What happened?” the major asked pitifully, glancing down at Flash's passport. “They might execute you for social discord. Why? Why risk your life over a dirt-eater?”

“She had papers. She was on assignment from a unicorn, and had a reason to be here. I was keeping order. Funny, I thought was your job."

The major's nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply. “I don't like your tone, son.”

“Really? My mother always told me I had perfect pitch." Flash was tired of this ridiculous stuffed-shirt. He would welcome the judges. He only hoped he had stashed his mailbag in a secure spot; he had no way to tell when he would be able to get back to it. If they found what was inside....

Ah, let them. They may kill me, but at least I'll die spitting in their faces, and that's a good way to go out.

The major gave a signal for the gendarmes to lift Flash off the ground, but before they could hustle him away a voice called out, “And where do you think you're going with him?” Flash and the major turned to see a Shadowbolt in shades strolling down the sidewalk. A multicolored mane spilled out from under her purple beret.

“Colonel Dash,” the major said courteously enough, but nowhere near compliantly. “Is there something I can do for the Directorate?”

She came to a stop and waved a forehoof at Flash. “For starters, you can unhoof my agent.”

“Your agent?” the major asked, his voice sounding as confused as Flash felt at the moment.

“Is the perimeter secure?"

The major bristled at that. "We swept it very thoroughly indeed, have no worry."

"In that case, yes, he's my agent. I sent him in to rescue the earth pony. She's part of an operation.”

“Another agent of yours?”

“No,” Colonel Dash said. “A possible target. I sent Might in to protect her.”

“Might?”

“Max Might. Him.” She nodded at Flash.

The major lifted up the passport. “Says here his name is Flash Sentry.”

Dash groaned, tilted her shades up, and rubbed her eyes with her hooves. “What is this, amateur hour? Do you really think I'd send an undercover agent around with his actual identification?”

The major turned to Flash. “Is this true?”

Flash glanced at the stoic colonel, then back to the major. “Yes, sir.”

“And you didn't mention this why?”

“I'm a clandestine operator. So deep cover it's out of your pay grade. Besides, I have Colonel Dash watching over me, to bail me out of trouble.”

“So if we'll all done here,” Colonel Dash said, “I'd like to get back to my operation, please.”

“Fine,” the Civil Force major said. “But I'd appreciate a little more interdepartmental cooperation. Would it kill you to send a memo around the next time you'll be in our area of operation?”

“Major, we're always in your area of operation. You just never realize it.”

The major curled his lips up and gave her a brief look of distaste, then walked back into the APC with his troops. Flash stood by the curb and watched as it rumbled to life and rolled away, then turned to the Shadowbolt, wondering where to start with his questions. But she, staying calm and ice cold, preempted him.

“Well, agent,” she said, “good work salvaging my operation. Let me show you my thanks for your help....and for keeping it on the quiet, alright? You have a bank account?”

Flash turned away from her, keeping his lips sealed.

“Nevermind, then. I'm sure we have it on file somewhere. We have everypony else's.”

“Keep your money,” Flash spat. “I don't need it.”

“Everypony could use a few extra bits here and there. That's the way the unicorns like it.”

“Let me rephrase that: I don't want your money.” He started walking away from her. "Or your thanks."

He felt her stoic presence behind him. “I took an awfully big risk on you, Flash Sentry. I'll have my eye on you, so in case you change your mind, just remember that I owe you one, alright?”

Flash kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead and walked on. After a moment, he heard the flap of wings as the Shadowbolt lifted herself off the ground and flew away. Then he breathed out slowly, wondering if he did the right thing. But in this city, who could ever tell?

Applejack felt the Chariot Theater long before she saw it. It burned like an invisible fire, and the closer she came to the flame the hotter it scorched her. She sweated and itched, uncomfortable in her own skin, but that wasn't anything new. The ads, billboards, and posters surrounded her, for Croup Steel and Flicka Mining and Farrierben Pharmaceuticals. They pressed themselves against her eyeballs and forced their way into her head, united in praise of Canterlot, glory be to it. Here it was, the heart of the free world in all its glory, where divine natural law ruled. Where ponies made their own destiny with the sweat on their brow and the coins in their purse. As long as they had a horn or wings.

She felt the chains weighing her down. The chains of love that bound her to her family, shackling her to those other ponies she couldn't help but love. It was so heavy she could barely move. So what could she do? Everypony wanted to chain her down, and she had to let them, pretending she had some kind of choice in the matter. She couldn't even save her own life. She had to rely on the pegasus ponies to do it for her. Her life, and her death, were in everypony's hooves but her own.

“Excuse me,” a dark voice from a dark alley called. “Do you know the way to the Chariot Theater?”

The cart's wheels squeaked as Applejack stopped. In the mouth of the alleyway, Hammer beckoned to her from the shadows, wearing a heavy cloak like her own.

She scowled at his easy smile and said, “That's not funny. Not a bit." She checked the street, but nopony was paying any particular attention to her. Except, for a moment, she thought she saw another shadow pass in front of the moonlight, but when she scanned the rooftops and the sky, there was nothing. "How'd ya get here, anyway?”

His scarred face, just barely visible under his hood, twisted as he grinned wider. “I have my ways.”

“Uh huh. And Ah sure do hope you have a good explanation for why ya didn't just take this here confection yerself.”

He sighed and indulged her. “There wasn't enough room to transport an entire cart. And anyway, I couldn't risk being spotted at a checkpoint. I told you, I've had a few run-ins with the Directorate before. So how was your trip in?”

“Hairy,” she said. “Very hairy.”

"The night is still young," he said. "It's not time yet. Come on, I know a quiet place where we can relax."

He turned and melted back into the shadows. Applejack took one last look around the street, unable to shake the feeling she was being watched. Yer just spooked, she thought, and followed Hammer into the darkness.

High above the street, on a rooftop steeped in shadow, the Colonel watched the two ponies disappear into the side alleyway. One of them was new, concealed by a cloak. Probably the mysterious leader of the Earth Pony Liberation Front. But if she was curious, she quashed it. She had to get her head in the game now. And so she stood and watched, brooding and silent, and left the radio off.

To Flash's relief, his mailbag was right where he'd stashed it. And good thing, too. There were too many watchful eyes in the city. Like in the cafe. That filly, he thought, remembering the little thug in the Shadowbolt cadet uniform. He had longed to set her straight, but with all the other ponies watching him, what could he have said that wouldn't have gotten him arrested? Everypony watched everypony else, their eyes wide open for the slightest sign of disloyalty, skepticism, unpatriotic behavior.

All for the Empire of the Moon, huzzah! May the Empire never end.

He walked through the night, weary and aching from the fight.

That filly, he thought again, but with pity this time. Living in this toxic city. What would she be like someplace else? Someplace that wasn't the Empire? Would she still be a little thug, stomping around in self-importance? Or could she have grown into a decent kid?

Nopony would ever know, he guessed. How could they? A pony only got one live in one world. No time to waste on what-might-have-been-if-only.

She's a little thug, and that's that, he thought savagely.

Of course, so was I, once.

He remembered Thunderlane then, all of a sudden, and it hurt. The searing pain of the jagged scars on his back had faded long ago, but even at its worst it never hurt as badly as the memory of Thunderlane did at that very moment. As he walked down the city street, a disquiet settled over him, and in every pane of glass he saw his past reflected back at him. He had nothing else to occupy him, nothing but his memories and the city. They ran together and became one, because they had always been one. He had gone overseas to make sure these stones would never fall. The city was a part of him, and of everypony else who lived in it. Everything he had fought for, bled for, suffered for, it was all here, embedded in the streets and buildings themselves. As he walked through it, he also walked through his past.

Flash walked on, and in the window of a record store, he saw boot camp. The constant running, the push-ups, the weapons training. They told him the pain at the end of the day meant he was getting fitter, and he was glad for it. He signed up to be shipped out as soon as he was eighteen, in 990, but that was the tail end of the war, only three years before it was over. Back then, the thing that worried him most was that his war would be over and he wouldn't get a chance to prove he was a true pegasus.

In the window of a laundromat he saw the golden Grazembezi savannah, the air hazy from the sweltering heat that seared his coat and skin, making him feel dirty and unclear as he soldiered so far away from the eternal moon. Even though the army gave him his shots to protect him from the sun's ravages, once in the eternal sunlight, it was impossible to escape the creeping feeling that crawled across his sweat-soaked skin. Especially not with the mosquitoes buzzing everywhere, sensing the blood about to be spilled. But there was Thunderlane, right beside him, always ready to entertain him with a joke about him and his girl, Blossomforth, in the communal showers.

By the glow of an electronics shop, Flash saw the zebra who had died before his very eyes.

Far from the glorious battles on the radio serials, he and Thunderlane had gotten their first assignment on a highly boring patrol route along the concrete walls surrounding the Flicka mining consortium mines. After eleven years of occupation, the zebra who worked the mines were well and truly broken. Degenerates, his drill instructor and his commanding officers had called them, who stole the land from ponykind's ancestors and had to be kept under a watchful eye so they couldn't steal Equestria away, too. But they all worked with eyes humbly downcast and lived off the scraps the company provided them, more worried about surviving than destroying him. It was disappointing, how mundane and routine it all was. Where was the action? he wanted to know.

And then, one blazing day, he got his wish.

Inside a bakery window, among the cakes and muffins and loaves of bread, he saw the militia rising over the hazy ridge, riding full force towards the mining camp with crude machetes and spears slung over their back. They had no technology, not like the massive mining complex at Flash's back. Another mark of degeneracy, they told him. But their weapons would kill him dead regardless, only a lot less efficiently than a hoofcannon shell to the face, and wasn't the point of technology to be more efficient? But despite Flash's best attempts, he wasn't feeling the efficiency. Thunderlane had already unslung his hoofcannon from around his back, shouldered and sighted it, and fired at the advancing line of zebra. Mushrooms of fire sprouted on the rank of battle and flung the bodies caught in them in every direction. But Flash struggled to unsling the two-foot-long steel tube off his back. The strap was stuck, the hoofcannon's barrel was pointing downward, and he still couldn't see with the sun in his eyes. He fumbled back towards the wall, until something slammed into him and drove him to the dusty ground. He rolled around and stared up at the snarling zebra rearing up against the sun, a dark silhouette with burning edges swinging a humongous machete. Terrified of those degenerate hooves touching him, infecting him.

Flash turned his head and saw, in the windshield of a parked autocarriage, the zebra's upper body blowing apart from the impact of the shell. And behind its smoking corpse, there was Thunderlane, dropping his hoofcannon and running over to haul Flash, whose coat was slick with blood, off the ground and hustle him into the compound behind the thick concrete walls.

When Flash dreamed that night, he saw the zebra explode over and over again, but in the morning he told himself it was alright: those were degenerate body parts, sickly and weak, as opposed to the strong and virile body of a pegasus. No need to feel bad about it.

Instead, he gave Thunderlane the stashed bottle of cider he had trade his Captain Combat comics for, and toasted his best friend before the entire mess hall back at base.

Flash crossed the street, and on the corner ahead was the large, curving glass building of the Second Bank of Equestria. In it, he saw the ambush that had decimated his patrol, some two years later. Another zebra loomed large over him as he lay among the bodies of his patrol. Flash never could tell the zebra apart, and this one looked just the other one. He raised his hoofcannon to fire, but lost consciousness before he could pull the trigger, and Thunderland wasn't there to save him that time.

Flash regained consciousness in fits and starts, until he woke up inside the hut. The sloping little hut, so unassuming, yet so terrifying. The militia commander looked him over, checked his dog tags, conferred with the others. Then, together, they stretched him out on the floor. He struggled, thrashed, pleaded, spat curses, but with a thwack, the machete came down and his skin and muscle and tendon and bone split in two. He saw them casually throw the wing that had been a part of him all his life aside, discarding it like it was nothing. Then they took the other one. But if there was one comfort, Thunderlane wasn't there to see him weep. A real pegasus never wept, no matter the circumstances. But as he spent the day chained to the floor, shivering and sweating and aching and empty, he realized he wasn't a pegasus anymore. He was nothing.

A better part of a year passed for him inside that hut, wondering what was happening in the real world. Occasionally, the zebra would ask him questions. He had no answers, but that didn't stop them. They would beat him and starve him, but he refused to tell them anything. He might not be a pegasus, but he was still a pony. Still superior.

We certainly got our revenge on them, though, didn't we? The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He passed the marble front of the Flicka mining consortium's headquarters, and in the lobby's glass doors, he saw the day when he had been rescued at last. He woke to the sound of jets flying overhead and the zebra shouting in their guttural, ugly language. Heard the explosions outside, as helicopters moved in and blasted the compound to pieces. The troops swept through the camp until they stumbled upon him, alone and starved and exhausted, and there at the front was Thunderlane. "Think I was going to leave you behind?" he asked. Flash would have wept at the beautiful sight of another pony after all those months, but all his tears were gone, dried up by the harsh and degenerate sun.

Home, he had thought. I'm finally going home.

They bundled him into the idling helicopter, the last POW they'd been searching for. It lifted up and swooped away, just before the jets screamed past, leaving strange white contrails in the hazy sky. He turned to Thunderlane and asked what was going on.

"Just spraying for pests."

As the air force jets, and dozens more like them all across the skies of Grazembezi, pumped gallons and gallons of Chemical BLUE over the savannah, he felt a vague sense of triumph. Of debts owed finally being paid. Of victory. Canterlot was still standing, and that was what truly mattered.

He passed a photography studio, its windows full of smiling foals and wedding pictures and family vacations. The technology to capture moments in time forever, for better or worse. In the glass, he saw a very different sort of picture, the ones leaked from the military's chemical warfare division, still stamped 'confidential' across the bottom. The vets in the support group had started passing them around to each other, to take a small moment of unbridled vindication. Flash remembered the them well; when finally they landed at his hooves, he stared at them with a creeping revulsion.

They showed the military's chemical crews cleaning up Grazembezi for the eventual settlers. They grinned at the camera in their billowy chemical suits. And behind them, the corpses. Piles of dead bodies with jagged stripes of black and white and legs sticking out at odd angles. There were close-ups, too. They had never told Flash the details, but one grizzled old veteran with no hind legs gleefully filled Flash in as he looked those terrible photos over. The gas constricts the muscles and suffocates the unlucky equine who breathes it in, and curls up the limbs until the victims are stuck in the fetal position, and distorts the facial muscles until they're pulled back in a shocked-looking expression, all widened eyes and drawn lips. An expression of pure terror as the gas rolls across the savannah. That grizzled old vet said it was nicknamed the 'Chemical Blues'.

The cleanup crews evidently found it too much of a hassle to disentangled the stallions, mares, and foals who'd huddled together for one last moment of closeness as the gas shut down their bodies. So the military piled them all up, all the dead zebra hugging each other tight, a whole mound of entwined legs and blood-stained eyes and muzzles reaching to the sky.

Another degenerate race swept into the dust pile, Flash thought in the present, an ironic twist on thoughts he once had in earnest. As soon as the settlers move in, all those corpses and the dirt they're in will make some fine farmland.

For the Empire.

Despite his revulsion, Flash had refused to give in. He told himself they deserved it, they had it coming, they were evil. That sympathizing with a degenerate was in itself degenerate, and he, who had bled for his nation, was no degenerate. Of all the mares and stallions in the veteran's support group, Thunderlane was the only one who spoke out. Once he saw those pictures, Flash saw his best friend collapse. That was the only way to describe it. Like he had been slowly hollowed out, until his facade couldn't take it and he imploded. He cried in despair that ponies were the real degenerates, and in a fit of rage Flash slammed him into the wall; overcome with terminal intensity, he beat Thunderlane down, and every time the pony cried out, Flash beat him harder. Traitors are traitors, he told himself. A true pegasus stood resolute against degeneracy. The betrayal was the worst part of it; he had trusted Thunderlane with his life, and now here he was stabbing Flash in the back. Stabbing his city in the back. Destroying everything they fought for.

And so, he had dutifully gone to the Midnight Guard and told them, still burning with betrayal.

"A pony will do anything to protect the land he lives in," he told the officer. But when he tossed and turned sleeplessly in bed that night, it struck him suddenly that the zebra who had mutilated him lived in Grazembezi. Even more frustrated, Flash got up and took the full bottle of cider out of his refrigerator. By the time he passed out, it was half-gone.

Thunderlane wasn't at the next support group, nor the next one.

It only got worse from there. The creeping, crawling horror followed him into the civilian world and stalked him from the shadows. It was the same feeling he got all those years ago, in the hot sun of Grazembezi, that raised the hackles and set him on edge. They were scheming against him and his civilization in the shadows. A confederation of degenerates, pony and not, secretly attacking the righteousness of Equestria from all sides. Jealous of the the pony values of diligent hard work and upstanding moral character, and the success it brought them. They would never know the lunar divinity or the World to Come, and so out of spite they schemed to make sure nopony else would, either. They had already tried to take his city once, in the Winter Rising, and had been soundly defeated by the militia and the Civil Force. So now they plotted to erode the pillars of society in secret, with their degenerate art and questioning Equestria's moral righteousness.

He, Sgt. Flash Sentry, had to stand firm against the hordes, like those valiant knights in olden times enshrined in myth and legend who strapped steel armor on and crusaded against dragons. He might not have wings, but he was still a centurion, a modern-day knight crusading for his princess. He would meet vile, insidious speech with the language that trumps all others: physical force. Every time they tried to tear down his Empire, foundation of his life, the stronger he built it back up. Because otherwise, what had he lost his wings for? What had he slaved and sweated on the savannah for?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

All his life, the pegasus ideal had been a shining guide to life itself. There had to be a reason for what happened. Why he felt so miserable all the time and drank too much. He refused to believe it was anything but the degenerates stabbing the nation in the back, and that propped-up belief was the burning core of his being, a flaming passion, and every time somepony threatened it, Flash pushed against them with vigor in his bones and the glint of murder in his heart.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," the ponies of Canterlot said to him when they saw what had happened to his wings. And at first, he thanked them graciously. That was the protocol; anypony who said that was a true Equestrian.

But then the doubts started to creep in, first in the dead of sleep, and eventually in the beautiful glow of the moon. The doubts gnawed their way out of him every single second, and try as he might, he couldn't get them back in. Everywhere in the city, he saw the piles of zebra bodies. He knew they weren't really there, but his senses told him so. And to keep the rising tide of revulsion down, he grew ever more fanatical. He saw the shadows of daggers poised to stab him in the back everywhere, and it drove him to a nervous breakdown. The two halves of himself couldn't mesh together, and they were starting to break the machine of his mind.

Ploughshare, they called it. He remembered those bleary photos on the cover of the underground magazine the degenerates put out. Where they organized their secret plots. The dead zebra haunted him, and wherever he turned there was a discarded copy in an alleyway or on a park bench.

He was a soldier, he figured. Maybe if he had an enemy, his life could feel normal again. If he could take the magazine out, they would call him a hero for this act of valor. He obsessed over it, sneaking into the ghettos to hunt down the source, spying on the ponies he suspected had something to do with it. Canterlot itself became enemy territory to him, but he didn't know where the enemy was coming from. The sun was blinding him from all directions now.

But the more he poured over the magazine, the more it began to work in him. Everything he read in its pages convinced him of its truth. Convinced him the pieces did fit together, if only he held the right ones. Real life was an enigma, but Ploughshare was the key to deciphering it. And so, when Flash Sentry finally found the source of the magazine, it wasn't to commit murder but rather to get on his knees and beg to be a part of it.

"Thank you for your sacrifice," the ponies of Canterlot said to him when they saw what had happened to his wings. But he longed to tell them it was only a sacrifice if it meant something, and a few more tanks and planes rolling off the assembly line and a few more tons of ore in the hooves of the Flicka mining consortium didn't mean anything. But they would report him to the Midnight Guard, like he had once done to Thunderlane. It was the perfect marriage: the military-industrial complex running society and the persecution complex ruling the individual. The military-industrial-persecution complex, then. Both fueling the other, on some unspoken and perhaps even unconscious agreement, fanning the flames and gorging themselves on the equine wreckage.

So he bit his tongue and resisted doing anything rash. He couldn't afford to bring undue attention down on himself, and his passive-aggressive attitude was already skirting the line between wisdom and stupidity. Not even a veteran like him could get away with handling the kind of contraband in his bag. The Midnight Guard execute him as a degenerate, like they did to Thunderlane, if they found out. Like he did to Thunderlane, it pained him to admit. But he carried on, for the sake of Thunderlane and all the others like him.

And also, he suspected, for his own sake as well. Sometimes he thought he wanted to go out like the soldier he always fancied himself as, with a smile on his lips and defiant scorn in his heart. He would stick it to the hegemony, let their fury rain down on him. The other parts of him, the more practical parts, tried to quash it, but Flash still felt a giddy thrill at dying in glorious battle.

He passed out of the city center and ended his wandering at a little art gallery near the theater district. Its flickering and dilapidated neon sign announced it was 'The Stable'. He pushed the door open and climbed a dingy concrete stairwell, deliberately left unrepaired, like he was walking into a factory. He pushed the second floor door open and entered a bare loft with exposed girders and support beams. The place was fairly full, because the outlandish art was always just on the right side of respectable to draw a crowd. He himself had no eye for the stuff, but he had other business to attend to. He pushed open a door marked 'Employees Only' and brazenly walked inside, then down the hall to an unmarked steel door. He rapped on it until a panel slid open and a pair of eyes appeared. Then the slot closed again and the door swung open.

“Thanks, Bulk,” Flash said.

He squeezed past the portly pegasus bouncer, a stallion with wings so stunted they had rejected him from the army. Cast out from his military family, he'd found solace here, in this den of rejects. Still, Flash would've preferred even those measly things to the scars on his back.

“Is he in?” Flash asked as he headed for a cabinet against the far wall.

“Yeah!” Bulk shouted after him.

Flash pulled on a copy of 'To the High Castle: On Having a Personal Relationship with the Princess of the Night No Matter How Far'. The legendarily overwrought and sentimental tome was guaranteed to never be touched, not even by die-hard loyalists. The mechanical workings connecting the book to the wall clicked open as the lock released. He went to the side and heaved the bookcase aside on its rollers. A door with a crudely drawn sign reading 'Members Only' greeted him. He entered the room beyond and emerged onto a grated catwalk overlooking a second gallery. The real gallery.

“I say, come on down,” a pony called up to Flash.

Flash trotted down the corrugated steps and brushed past bizarre statues on pedestals and freestanding walls full of astonishingly abstract paintings that would give the Midnight Guard aneurysms before they could even shout 'Degenerate art!' The ponies inside the gallery were an eclectic mix: unicorns in odd fashions, relaxed pegasi sipping drinks, earth ponies mingling easily.

Good thing sewer maintenance is all done by earth ponies, Flash thought. If the security services found the secret entrance down there, they could roll us up like a map. Flash approached a booth in the corner. The pony who had called out to him sat on the other side of the table, sipping a glass of cider and smiling lightly. A slender unicorn mare lounged beside him and watched Flash approach with cool disinterest.

“Did you bring the latest issue?” Fancy Pants asked.

Flash reached into his messenger bag and dropped the stack of Ploughshare magazines on the table. With a grim smile, he said, “I'd say I've actually got a few issues.”

“Don't we all? Then perhaps we should get down to business and do something about them, shall we?”

Chapter 10

"What do you think?" somepony asked.

Flash concentrated very hard on not spilling the drink he'd gotten from the bar, then glanced where the other pony was gesturing, at a twisted and very abstract sculpture made of recycled garbage. It didn't look like any shape or figure Flash could put his hoof on, no matter how hard he concentrated. Finally, he turned to its maker and asked, "What....uh, what is it?"

The other pony gave him a curious look. "It's art, man."

"It's, uh, it's pretty abstract, but it's....good. Really good." He gave the artist a smile and pried himself away, back towards Fancy Pants's private booth. In one near corner of the Stable stood an easel holding a large canvas. On it, bits of photographs cluttered the space. All of them, pegasi and furniture and windows and autocarriages, had been carefully clipped out of magazines and advertisements and newspapers and arranged with an artful anarchy, fixed in place with a keen eye and a dab of glue. Every time Flash came around, a little bit more had been added to the blank white canvas, until it was at present an unruly mess of clashing photos with contrasting shades and light sources and film grains. Yet even to Flash's unartful eye, there was an indescribable sense of deeper order to the chaos. He couldn't put it into words, but all the pieces clicked together as a whole somehow. The eye took it all in just the way it was supposed to.

Fancy Pants, standing so still his white coat made him look carved from a block of marble, stared at the canvas for a long moment, utterly transfixed by the work he had created. His eye lingered on one piece of the collage where two foals sat at a cafe using two straws to drink from the same fountain drink. They smiled coyly at one another, simpering and earnest. A rose-colored portrait of an idyllic childhood, sickening-sweet. But inside the fountain drink were pasted pills from a Farrierben Pharmaceuticals ad, floating in the root beer float they were drinking.

As he sat down, Flash felt a brief pang of mourning as he wondered what it was like to make something. To bring a thing into being from nothingness. He was no artist, and never would be. Would never craft art with his own two hooves. It must be like having a foal, he thought. Another thing he would never do, although that one was by choice. Perhaps, if by some miracle they succeeded, he would reconsider, but he didn't consider it terribly likely. All he knew how to do was fight. He raised the cup to his lips and drank a sip, but then gave a shrug and downed the whole glass in one go, because he couldn't think of any reason not to.

"Aha," Fancy Pants murmured suddenly. He turned back to the table and took his copy of Ploughshare. It was the only one left, after he had passed the others out to his patrons. Either to be read or to be made into art; he wasn't picky. He used his magic to lift up a pair of scissors and painstakingly cut out one of the articles. Then he turned back to the canvas and magically laid the article on an unfinished area, a large photo of a living room straight from the Whinnydom-Neightson catalog. He shifted the article around slightly, measuring it against some invisible criterion Flash would never in a million years understand, until he found the proper place, slathered glue on the back, and pressed the newsprint firmly to the canvas.

"Yes, yes," he said to himself. "And then, the parents from High Life Magazine, walking through their living room blissfully unaware of the subtext reigning over them....and put the hats on them from the department store catalog....yes, yes, to juxtapose the fashion with...." He pasted an imaged of a happy family, mother, father, and foal, in the living room over the article, then lapsed into silence again as he stared at the collage, making intuitive leaps and seeing patterns that Flash's mind never would, until he called out, "What do you think, sweetie? Should I deck the family out in all their accoutrements, or is that just overkill, do you think?"

Across the table from Flash, Fleur-de-Lis yawned. "Whatever you think is best, dear."

Fancy Pants gave the art another long hard stare, then shrugged and said sprightly, "I think it speaks for itself, really."

Flash took a glance at Fleur, taking in her pale pink mane, then gave her a spare, hard smile when she looked his way. She didn't seem to care much about the art, but she reveled in the scene, or as much as her cold and aloof demeanor could revel. Always friendly, but never friends, he had noticed of her. She made connections and then filed them away for future reference. Not for the first time, he wondered what difference there was between her and the high society socialites of Canterlot. The art, the scene itself, was radically different, but the social climbing was the same.

Maybe there will always just be some ponies who use others as a means to an end, he thought. Making connections to get ahead in life. Maybe these two sides aren't as different as they seem. Or rather, they can be used by some ponies in a way that isn't that different. It's just two different cultures, but under the surface they work the exact same way.

It was an idea he had gleaned from the pages of Ploughshare, and it was one he grasped much more easily than art, because it was to do with science and physical laws, which were as rigid and unyielding as aesthetics was fluid. Flash pulled the mutilated copy of the magazine close and leafed through it.

'Once upon a time, the construct of serfdom sufficed to explain why the unicorn hegemony alone was fit to rule the land. Wealth, education, and technology were consolidated in castles and managed by the unicorns, to be parceled out to pegasus knights fighting for honor and chivalry and other assorted ideological constructs, but none was left for earth ponies, who toiled on their rural farms, isolation consigning them to ignorance. No access to new ideas or concepts will stagnate the mind just as a pond will stagnate from a blocked flow of water. But with the changing forces of production in society, and the industrial revolution they created, has arisen an increased demand for earth pony labor. In conjunction, stricter legal and social measures designed to ensure our cooperation have only brought us together and put the industrial instruments of freedom at our hooves.'

Flash flipped a few more pages, to an article about the expanding Empire. He would've preferred to read it more closely, but he was only killing time until Fancy Pants was finished, so he chose to whet his appetite in the meantime.

'But the more one examines this ideology of reclaiming territory historically considered 'pony', the more apparent the cracks become. Decades ago, when the military invaded Unicornia, one could make the argument that it was historically unicorn. After all, Equestria was founded by Unicornian exiles. But Saddle Arabia? Less so. And what about the terrain and climate of Grazambia suggests ponies were driven out by zebras, as the High Castle said?' Flash was the one who had pointed that out in the first place; it was nice to see his ideas in print. 'But when one justification fails a subtler one inevitably rises up to bolster it, taking hold of the hegemonic dialectic like wildfire. The concept of 'degeneracy' was the oil the gears of the Empire desperately required in order to keep turning. As its usefulness increased, it became the catch-all rubric for all thoughts and ideas the High Castle needs to destroy.'

Once more, Flash flipped through the magazine, but he stopped in the middle of an article on the recent bankruptcy of General Horsepower.

'As always, behind the facade of ideology the material forces of production are hard at work. This permanent state of war inflates demand for weapons and technologies - Would we have rocket planes if we didn't need to drop bombs? Would we have radios if we didn't need to coordinate troops? - and the labor to produce them is deliberately and forcefully undersold by the High Castle under the guise of 'patriotism'. As long as the food shipments continue, this economic slavery is considered justifiable(!) Enormous economic power is concentrated in the hooves of weapons manufacturers such as General Horsepower. When disastrous business decisions drove the firm to bankruptcy, did they close their factories? Of course not; another firm is set to buy them out. Soon, production will continue as if it had never been interrupted. The toiling workers have no respite, while the unicorn managers will happily profit from selling their labor to the pegasi military. We are told the arms industry serves the army, but both are merely heads of the Hydra: the High Castle itself, and the social framework that supports it. These aspects of society cannot be examined separately, but as part of an interconnected whole.'

The article ended with a dire warning:

'With such an awesome power against us, we cannot hope to defeat it through force. Violent insurrection, like the Earth Pony Liberation Front preach, will only serve to goad the pegasi and unicorns into defending their social framework, allowing them to trample the earth ponies with the full support of the public. Their crusade will bring the hammer of the High Castle down on all of us. The key to victory is dismantling the will to use the weapons at all, by defying the High Castle with what it fears most: the printing press and its ability to quickly and easily spread free thought.'

As Flash continued to read through the magazine, his thoughts drifted to the tireless pony behind them, who churned out an issue once a month, every month. Wrote everything, managed the layout and printing, made use of his endless and effortless inventiveness. Here's another pony who creates, Flash thought, and I just ferry the stuff from one place to the other.

He recalled his trip into the ghetto a few hours ago, ambling past the red-bricked back-to-backs that made up the earth pony quarters, making his rounds in row after row of cramped houses squeezed next to each other. They were made cheap and stuffed with families, sometimes fifteen earth ponies for each narrow slice of living space. It was like living in a bread box, but somehow they coped. He, on the other hoof, had an entire apartment. For his sacrifice. Just thinking the word made a bitter taste in his mouth.

When Flash started working for the royal mail, he requested the earth pony ghetto for his rounds, explaining that without wings he wouldn't arouse much suspicion. His boss consented, not suspecting the real reason Flash had volunteered: as a veteran, and a very pitifully wounded one at that, he could get in and out without attracting much suspicion. He had just the right profile for the task, straddling the between high profile and no profile. He could blend it with both earth ponies and pegasi, and that offered certain opportunities. And there was one stop, a very important stop, that he was interested in. As he stepped up to this particular door, one of many identical doors along the back-to-backs, he glanced around to see if anypony was watching him. It was a toxic place, where the High Castle turned earth ponies on each other and then offered them money to spy on their neighbors. But he didn't see anypony taking an undue interest, so he pushed the handle down and darted inside.

As he closed the door, he called, “Hello?” The lights were on, but there was no answer. He works the early shift, Flash thought, worried, so he should be home by now. “Anypony here?” he called again, louder.

He tip-hoofed down the hall, peeking into the tiny dining room and even smaller living room, but the place was silent. He opened the basement door and clomped down the steps, listening intently and wondering if the place had been raided and the Midnight Guard were hiding out of sight, licking their lips and snickering to themselves about the dumb pony blundering right into their trap.

The basement was dim and poorly lit. He fumbled around until he reached the cabinet resting against the wall. Putting his back into it, he pushed it aside. It rolled along on its hidden wheels. He ducked through the crude hole in the wall and stood up straight in the 'offices' - if they could be called that - of Ploughshare, hollowed out from the earth itself and supported by exposed wooden beams that made it look like a mine shaft. The printing press stood in the corner, its editor having disappeared. Flash rounded the corner of the L-shaped room and found the desk unoccupied. A mock-up of the next issue's cover lay on it.

“Could use a proofreader,” said a booming voice.

Flash jumped, his instincts screaming at him to flee. The bones that once anchored his wings to his body gouged streaks of pain along his back. He spun around to face the intruder, standing shadowed in the ragged hole in wall. But when the figure, dressed in his familiar boots and braces over an oil-stained button-up shirt, stepped into the room, Flash relaxed.

“You scared me,” he said.

“Well within my rights,” Big Mac replied, striding towards Flash. “Seems to me yer trespassing.”

“Hey, nopony answered the door.”

“Maybe Ah was out back.” Glowering, Mac added, “Or maybe Ah don't want yer kind 'round here.”

“What, dashing and handsome?”

“Ah was gonna say a wiseacre.” Big Mac's face split into a grin.

“'Wiseacre'? Sounds like something your granny would say.”

As Big Mac rounded the desk, he said, “Don't you be badmouthin' mah Granny Smith. But Ah really could use a proofreader. It's a mite long-winded, as it stands.”

“It's a propaganda tract, Mac. That's what they all sound like. You think that's bad, try reading the Equestrian Army training manual. You get a heaping of ideological propaganda mixed with instructions like, 'Aim towards enemy.'”

“Ah never said Ah expected pegasi to be the brains of this here operation, and Ah said so plain enough in the magazine, didn't I?”

Flash clutched a hoof melodramatically to his chest. “Mac, you're injuring my racial soul. Anyway, a propaganda tract is a fount of graceless information delivered in great big dollops. If you want style, write a novel. Or better yet, a musical. I hear the new one is pretty good.” He held out a foreleg. “Care to accompany me?”

“Ah'd rather have ten different earmarks stapled into mah ears.”

Flash had to admire Big MacIntosh. He had a rare passion and ferocity for an earth pony, yet it was tempered with good humor and a breezy attitude. He refused to be cowed by the system, and the act of defying them, even in secret, must be a powerful freeing feeling from the soul-crushing despair. He could empathize; helping the cause in his own small way was the only thing that made him feel alive anymore.

Flash shrugged. “That's your loss. Well, I have to get back on my rounds, but do you have them, or not?”

Big Mac pulled a stack of neatly wrapped Ploughshare issues, wrapped in plain brown paper, out from under his desk and gave them to Flash. After Flash stuck them down deep in the bottom of his messenger bag, he pulled out the Apple family's mail and passed it to Big Mac.

“Hmm,” he said, catching sight of the topmost envelope. “Bureau of Harmony. Wonder what they want with you.”

As Big Mac took the bundle, he remarked, “Probably 'bout Apple Bloom. Ah ain't got a clue how she landed that cushy position she's got. Ah just hope it don't go ta her head. We got too many earth ponies with a false consciousness as it is.”

“Well, I best get along,” Flash said, heading for the hole in the wall. “Next week, then. Unless you're coming to the Stable?”

“Too risky to make the trip now, with the EPLF. Word on the street is they're plannin' something, so watch yerself, you hear?”

“You know me,” Flash muttered as he walked out. “Always on the lookout for the enemy.”

It was certainly true, but what he didn't mention was that half the time he wanted to rush right for them and meet them in battle. It was a stroke of luck that Shadowbolt saved me, he thought. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to me?

Of course, the Shadowbolts never do anything unless there's something in it for them. I doubt I've seen the last of that Colonel.

Fancy Pants was speaking to him, he realized. He stirred himself and looked up at the other stallion. "Huh?"

"I say, wake up, Flash."

I am, see? My false consciousness is all gone.

Fancy Pants had already covered the easel with a tarp to protect it. It lurked behind him, concealed, as he stared down at Flash. "I think that should do it. We don't wish to be late, do we?"

"I still don't see why you need me," Flash said, staring down at his hooves on the tabletop.

"Security. I know it seems a rather base use of you, but it is a skill you have. I need a pony to watch over us while I make contact. If this all goes well....think of the help it could bring to the cause."

"I guess so."

That's all I'll ever be, he thought. Never an artist or a thinker. Always a soldier. Then he thought, But at least I know what's worth fighting for now. He looked around the art gallery. This....this is freedom. Even if I don't understand it, I know that much at least. He stumbled across a hidden reserve of determination, and stood up from the table flush with confidence.

"Let's ride."

The first checkpoint Apple Bloom ran into was right at the edge of the ghetto, just as she guessed it would be. That would be the only checkpoint, too. Once she was through, it was smooth walking all the way home. Shadowbolts couldn't care less about what one earth pony did to another earth pony, so long as they stayed in the ghetto. She tapped her hoof impatiently, listening to the pegasus ponies complain about not being stationed in the theater district like everypony else. From what she gathered, they wanted to see some stars. Give me a loose paving stone, she thought, and I'll show you some stars.

“Maybe Rarity,” one soldier said. “I'd love to see her pearly white coat. I hear she goes to the theater a lot."

When she ain't workin' mah poor Granny Smith half to death, that is.

The line whittled away until there was nopony left between Apple Bloom and the Shadowbolt in charge. She gave her papers over and stood as still and non-threatening as she could manage. The pegasus lifted up her earmark and compared the serial number to the one in her passport. Apple Bloom gave her a great, big, dumb smile.

“Get along,” the pegasus said, more bored than anything. She stepped aside and waved Apple Bloom through.

That was the one and only time Apple Bloom was glad to obey a Shadowbolt. She walked between the two tanks, her coat standing on end as she imagined them suddenly lunging forward and crushing her. But she passed right them safely and made her way into the heart of the miserable dump she lived in; regardless, she smiled at it. It was home, after all, and was almost reassuring. If a pony made some graffiti in the unicorn or pegasus districts, it would be cleaned up almost instantly, and if the pony got caught they'd be sent to the Midnight Guard. But here, on these broken-down buildings, low to the ground and sagging lower, a pony could make a mark and count on it still being there tomorrow.

It would never change, and sometimes a pony needed something like that in her life. Home was something to grab hold of and hang on to in a turbulent world. The unicorns spent an enormous amount of effort on making their city look nice and neat. Big Mac told her they couldn't stand to be rotten on the outside because it reminded them of how rotten they were on the inside. Earth ponies didn't care, though. They knew they were pure of heart, so what was outside them didn't affect them at all.

On a street near her home, Apple Bloom saw another filly, Silver Spoon lounging on her stoop. The other filly had been sad ever since her best friend had left the ghetto and gone on to higher society. Right now, her father was serving some rich unicorn; Apple Bloom hated him for being a traitor to the earth ponies. But Silver Spoon was alright in Apple Bloom's eyes. They exchanged a smile and wave as Apple Bloom passed. Silver Spoon might not have her friend anymore, but earth ponies were never alone as long as they had each other.

With aching legs, Apple Bloom finally trudged into her house and let her saddlebag fall to the floor just inside the door. She hoped her big brother would have some great new idea to share. When he spoke about the struggle of the earth ponies for freedom and dignity, he became so passionate and animated and talkative. It warmed her heart to see him like that, to hear him explain all about the nobleness of the earth pony. Fighting the good fight for freedom. He was all anypony could ask for in a brother.

But to her surprise, she found him sitting at the kitchen with his head in his forehooves. Something's wrong, Apple Bloom thought. Wait. Is Big Mac....crying? Icy shivers up and down her spine. In all the years she'd been alive, through all the things piled on them, after all the oppression they'd weathered, she had never seen her older brother cry. Not until now.

Then, suddenly, she thought, Where's Granny?

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

He pushed the letter across the table, but that little scrap of paper was so terrible, so heavy and wearying, she didn't dare try and lift it. Instead, she backed away until she hit the wall. The room spun around her. She got so disoriented she fell to the ground and started crying herself. The only time she stopped was a momentary pause out of pure shock; it happened when Big Mac raised his hoof and brought it down on the table so hard it split in half with a terrific crack. Both halves fell against each other and slammed into the floor.

It was just like like a house breaking apart.

We'll make them pay, Apple Bloom thought. That Rarity, and anypony else who's responsible. We'll make them pay.

In the heart of the theater district, at the intersection of the two widest and most traveled streets, a marble globe of the moon rose from a thick pedestal that held it above the round traffic island. Twilight imagined looking down from the High Castle and seeing that statue at the center of everything. All the streets in the city radiated out from it. It was the very center of the free world. But, to her annoyance, the only thing her mind could compare the imaginary sight to was a target....or a dead fly in a star-spider's web. Straddling the orb, the princess of the night posed heroically and faced the night. In her marble eye gleamed the grand dream she was about to make reality. Her wings were spread wide, surrounding the little ticket booth nestled in the globe's eclipse. That squat and round hut, with its bright red neon sign, sat comfortably under the aegis of Luna's fanned feathers.

Some savvy unicorn, not too long ago, figured he or she could make a ton of money if they bought up the tickets to all the different shows wholesale and resold them from one central booth, putting a middlepony between the theaters and the patrons. All for a cut of the profit, naturally. Society didn't consider that scalping tickets, although Twilight couldn't say why. She was overcome with that unsettling, disconnected feeling again, the one that had haunted her in the supermarket. So many ponies putting themselves between consumers and what they need, then charging for their willful obstruction in the name of 'convenience'. Taking advantage of the freedom the free world gave ponies.

Her thoughts turned, as they usually did, to the bottle in her saddlebag. Standing in this long line, she was sobering up, and she didn't enjoy it very much. All these thoughts she had, picking the world around her apart; she would give anything for them to go away. Her tongue thirsted for the sour-sweet touch that would dull the pain of seeing the world's mechanisms exposed. How they pushed her around and pulled her until she broke. Why couldn't her mind just stop? Why did it have to do this to her? All she wanted was to watch a show.

“Attention, theatergoers,” a voice called from a speaker mounted on the ticket booth. “All standby and cancellation tickets for The River Runs Wild have been sold out. Sorry about that, folks.”

Half the line protested, offering mutters and moans and yells of frustration. Twilight ground her teeth, her pounding heart making her tremble. She spat silent curses at the ponies who went to the theater because it was trendy and fashionable. The place to be seen, and to see celebrities. They had no appreciation for true art, and never would. Worse, they cluttered up her world. How much better would it be if they all were culled? Placards for the shows being sold were mounted over the box office windows. As she watched, a pony hung a 'Sold Out' sign over The River Runs Wild. She gave the other shows a brief glance, but none appealed to her in the slightest. Sure, her tiresome brain told her musicals were designed to invoke emotional states in the observers, but at least Cynic DeKey's had plenty of delicious intellectual grain to chew on. More than she could say for any of the other shows advertised. Why did the heathens have to flock to the one good show, instead of all the musicals more suited to their intellectual barbarism?

Twilight drifted away from the dwindling line, wanting to kick somepony in the face. Who are you kidding? You're no fighter. You're not even strong enough to stand up to those Shadowbolt thugs--

Shut up! she thought savagely.

As she passed the tail end of the line, she saw a familiar face. That yellow pegasus who almost got her arrested. She'd been behind Twilight the whole time. Twilight pointedly looked away, a seething resentment in her chest compelling her to beat the pegasus bloody. If she hadn't almost been arrested, Twilight was sure she would've made it here before the tickets were sold out. From the corner of her eye, Twilight saw the pegasus's eyes and head drop, although her slumped posture told Twilight it was more out of cowardice than anger. Twilight was sure this pegasus wouldn't put up much of a fight. But she had no great desire to meet the Shadowbolts twice in one day, and walked away stiffly before her violent impulses got the better of her.

She slunk away from the line and into a side alley, looked around quickly to make sure nopony was watching, and levitated the cider bottle out of her bag. She took a long, hard swig. The prickling buzz spread from her head to her hooves. The tension stretching through her head and body eased. She capped the bottle and put it back.

“Hey, you,” a voice whispered.

She raised one foreleg off the ground, ready to run, but the stallion was at the mouth of the alleyway, and it was a dead end. But the other pony was scrawny and reedy, and wore a greasy yet nonthreatening smile. A bowler hat was slung down low on his head, as low as he could get it with his horn in the way. He offered her a greasy smile and magically fanned two tickets in front of her.

“I, uh, saw you on line over there. You just looked so upset you couldn't go to the show, and it nearly moved me to tears, I must admit. Well, it just so happens I ain't able to make it tonight. Perhaps we could, uh, make a deal to our mutual benefit?”

Twilight lowered her foreleg and frowned at the scalper. “How much?” When he named almost twice what they cost at the ticket booth, she snorted and said, “Ridiculous. I'm not paying that.”

He shrugged and magically moved them towards his vest pocket. “What a shame, what a shame! But alright. Maybe somepony else would be interested....”

Twilight turned in the general direction of her conapt. Her lonely, empty, silent conapt. Was getting away from that, if just for a little while, worth a few more bits? “Make it the box office price and a half,” she said, “and you've got a deal.” She faced him, her expression hard and impassive, refusing to budge on her offer.

After he took a moment to size her up, he smiled again and said, “You got yourself a deal." He lifted the second ticket up and magically waved it around. "Say, uh, you don't have a gentlecolt you want to invite, do you?”

“No,” she said coldly. “Just me.”

“Ah, well. You know what they say: The tempest of love is violent.”

“Starswirl's Storm,” she recited. “Act three, scene two. 'This storm, tempest of love, flinches not from/barraging all we holdfast in our breast/so that such as cannot safe passage find/are left broke on sweet shore of paradise/under banyan of heavenly delight.'”

“Couldn't have said it better myself,” he scalper said.

“Just give me the ticket,” Twilight said, pulling some coins out of her saddlebag. She closed the flap before the cider bottle could call out to her again.

“Much obliged,” the scalper said as they exchanged the tickets and coins. “Enjoy the show.” He slipped past Twilight, looking for another pony he could bilk money out of, like the parasite he was.

Twilight made it half a block before the cider's cry became too loud to bear. The crowd was growing bigger the deeper she got into the theater district. She slipped into another alley and drank from the bottle again, longer this time. It burned down her throat and settled in her stomach, where it then spread to her head and swirled around her brain, churning up her thoughts and emotions, mixing them together and diluting them with each other.

Hoping to draw a strength form the bottle that she didn't have while sober: the strength to go on, to fight back against the loneliness and the dark thoughts.

Creaking floorboards broke the silence of Granny Smith's dark room, but Apple Bloom kept her face buried in the soggy pillow. It was only Big Mac, or maybe Applejack had come home. She had sobbed for so long she hadn't paid much attention to the front door, or the time. The figure hovered, its breathing soft, watching over her. For just a little while, she pretended it was Granny Smith. As soon as she looked up, she would see her dear old granny standing there, wondering what AB was doing in her bed. And Apple Bloom would smile with relief and tell her dear old granny she'd had a terrible dream. And Granny Smith would smile and rub her head and tell her everything would be just fine.

“Ah reckon we should pack all a'this up,” Big Mac announced, breaking into Apple Bloom's beautiful illusion and ruining it forever.

“Don't you dare!” she shouted into the pillow. “Not a single thing.”

He didn't say anything more, but Apple Bloom pictured the frown on his face perfectly. He had never been sentimental. He always had to break things down and pick them to pieces. She finally lifted her head off the bed and let her eyes wander over Granny's things. The room was meager, but Granny had taken what she'd been dealt and made the space her own. The frilly pillows, the ceramic pigs dancing on the lace dresser covers, the family photos on the wall. Granny Smith had collected all these things, touched and arranged and poured her heart into all of them. The four walls, the furniture, the furnishings; it wasn't just a room, it was a puzzle with a Granny Smith-shaped hole in the center, waiting for the mare herself to come back and complete it. Even if Apple Bloom knew she never would return, there was still the outline of Granny Smith. If AB could figure out why all the pieces had come together the way they did, maybe she could figure out Granny Smith herself. Maybe that way, she would stay with Apple Bloom forever.

Big Mac's hooves stamped against the floor until they stopped and the mattress sank down. he sucked in a breathe, held it in his lungs, then exhaled. Always quick with words, her big brother was, but when it came to basic equine comfort he tripped over his own tongue. “The paper,” he said finally, “it don't come cheap. Some a'these should fetch a good price, Ah reckon.”

The magazine, then. Teary-eyed, Apple Bloom started snickering, because that was so like him. Always about the paper. His passion. All these relics Granny left behind, they were only things to him, things to be bought and sold. “You sound like a unicorn,” she said. “Since when did you care about getting a good price?”

“Just because Ah hate them don't mean we can escape from them,” her brother said. From his tone, he was wounded by her comment. “Now, it wouldn't be a very effective system if it were so easy fer a pony ta get around it, Ah figure. We have ta abide by it to survive. You think Ah like it? Cuz Ah don't.”

She couldn't take this anymore. Why couldn't Mac understand she didn't want to hear about money right now? She slipped off the bed and walked for the door, leaving her brother sitting on the bed, staring after her. “If'n ya touch any of Granny's things,” she said, “Ah'll fight ya off tooth and hoof.”

She went to her own room, tucked into a corner beneath the sloping roof's exposed rafters. She hadn't decorated it like Granny Smith had. She was young still, and it took months - a lifetime, really - to save up enough money to buy the comforts of life. And all the while, the unicorns tried their hardest to scam and wheedle that very same money out of an honest earth pony's hooves with bills and bills and bills: sky-high rent for broke-down buildings, rationed and stale food, medical check-ups. Besides, she didn't really care much about decoration, not like Granny Smith had. An old fuddy-duddy, her granny used to call herself; the memory brought a smile to Apple Bloom's lips. Granny didn't have any special skills, so she labored and saved up money and bought things to put around her room instead of spending it on something important. Apple Bloom supposed she took after Big Mac, no matter how much she wanted to deny it at the moment. She had no use for decoration. Instead, she spent her money on something far more important: her beat-up record player and the stack of records leaning against it. All of them were made from discarded X-Rays photos taken from a hospital. The irony of listening to an illegal record pressed onto an X-Ray of a pegasus's broken wing amused Apple Bloom to no end. All of it was made from trash the unicorns and pegasus ponies threw away, but the garbageponies were all earth ponies, and after two centuries of being forced to work in factories earth ponies had learned a lot about how machines work. The stupid unicorns had no idea what the earth ponies were doing with their trash.

She pushed up her mattress and scooped out a paltry pile of coins. They were all the bits she'd managed to save from her paycheck after the family bills were paid, but there wasn't enough.

Apple Bloom started to cry all over again.

It all came back around to money, just like Big Mac said. It didn't matter if it was a coin in the hoof or just the idea of it in the head, the money loomed large over everything. Everything was all about working to get some more, but for an earth pony there would never be enough. It was about that stupid mare whose face in profile was stamped into every coin. Her mark watched over everything they bought and sold, just like the moon on the flip side watched over the entire city every second of every day.

Apple Bloom grabbed her saddlebag and stormed out the door, bawling. She passed Big Mac as he left Granny's room, and thankfully he didn't say anything to her as she went inside and stared at all her dear granny's things. Granny Smith had helped raise her, but Granny Smith was gone. The only thing left of her were these things she had spent her whole life working to buy, and now all that work had put a price tag on each one. A price tag she could cash in. She tried to think of it less like she was selling Granny Smith off, piece by piece and more like she was paying Granny's work forward. And anyway, she didn't have to like it. Everypony had to abide by the way things were, just to to survive.

Big Mac is right. As usual. But that didn't mean she had to like it.

One by one, she started putting everything she could fit into her bag.

The Buckston factories had stood silent and unloved as long as Apple Bloom could remember. Their broken tiled windows were like smiles with teeth knocked out and their smokestacks slowly lurched to one side, struggling against the weight of the world. A gloomy layer of filth had settled over the red brick walls, turning them a dingy brown. The wind rattled the rusty chain-link fences sealing off the cracked and empty lots. A warped and cracked sign still hung from one: “'Where there is discord, may we bring harmony' - Director of Industrial Development Minorca Hatcher”. The mare in question, with a bouncy red bouffant the aging sign had turned brown, looked dreamily into the distance next to her words.

Once, earth ponies tended the forges and attended the assembly lines in all these factories, as far as the eye could see. And though their lives were meager and their prospects small, her sister said the earth ponies had in pretty good in comparison. Just like rural earth ponies buck the trees to get the fruit to drop, here in Canterlot the earth ponies bucked the machines and made goods for the unicorns to sell. Then the Winter Rising happened, partly because of low wages and hazardous machinery. But their parents were willing to fight for her and Applejack's future, and they both died for it in the Battle of the EBC Radio Tower, struggling to lead the Brigade to victory and sound the call to the rural earth ponies, to get them to rise up and overthrow their masters. Instead, they had been crushed into the dirt by the Civil Force and the militia and silenced forever.

Apple Bloom's first memory, in fact, was cowering in her crib at the shouting outside and wondering when her parents would come back. There was her sister, reassuring her everything would be alright. But the parents she'd been so worried about? Only a vague impression, a hazy memory, dim shadows of ponies.

She had grown up alongside the checkpoint system, after the pegasi had rounded up earth ponies from all across the city and marched them past the line to seal into the ghetto with their brethren. The unicorns, meanwhile, grew scared of working in earth pony neighborhoods, even with the Civil Force to protect them. The factories were still standing, but now they were empty shells. All the machines inside them, the heart and lungs and stomach of the factories, were swiftly disassembled and moved to the new industrial districts, where the pegasi patrolled often. The earth ponies didn't have enough money or resources to make more big machines like those, so the factories had withered and died and the ponies had stopped bucking. Most of them, anyway. Despite all that, earth ponies were hardy. Over the years they had slowly reclaimed the neighborhood, and traces of life could still be found in Buckston.

Apple Bloom trotted towards a doorway set into the side of a factory that, unlike the others, seemed slightly better cared-for. The windows had all been repaired with glass tiles taken from other factories, and ropes anchoring the smokestack to the ground kept it from falling over. A bustling thrum came through the walls as she approached. She knocked on the steel door and waited until a plate slid aside, allowing a pair of eyes to peer at her. It quickly slid shut again, but the door itself opened a moment later. A grizzled earth pony with an overbite peered around the lot and gestured for her to slip inside. The door banged shut once she was through.

Apple Bloom walked into the massive bazaar that filled up the carved-out heart of the factory. She passed what used to be an office in one corner, now converted into a small discotheque. On the makeshift stage, Octavia and the Kelpies were inventing a whole new kind of music before her eyes. At a window bossponies once used to watch earth ponies work, Apple Bloom instead looked in at the angry gray mare singing her angry song. This majestic new sound sounded kind of like the new rockafilly music that the unicorn radio loved to play recently, but this was louder and faster and the distorted electric guitar that made it sound so raw and rebellious. Dangerous, even. And she loved it that way. It made her want to stand up and throw paving stones at the nearest Civil Force soldier. The cry of injustice, silenced during the Winter Rising and drowned in blood, had risen again, and AB was happy to raise her voice with the sound.

"Well, you can read my lips," Octavia wailed, "no new axes....for earth ponies to swing. Just bury the hatchet....and get to working on the vision thing! Oh, yeaaah!" The drums pounded and the electric guitar rang out in a heavy chord as they went into the chorus. "Keep on buckin' in the free world!"

“Yo, Blooms!”

Apple Bloom turned away from the window. Weaving through the crowd of ponies in the bazaar came her cousin, Babs, who reared back and grinned in welcome. A gold chain dangled from her neck, glittering against her saffron coat.

“Hey, Babs,” Apple Bloom said.

"Keep on buckin' in the free world!" Octavia sang behind them.

Babs Seed effortlessly slipped her foreleg around Apple Bloom. Pulling her close. She asked, “Watcha doin' here, filly?”

“Ah got some stuff to sell.”

“Aw, you want some floral?” Babs lifted up the chain around her neck. The golden links were fashioned like flowers. “I can get you a good deal on some floral. Turn every colt's eye in the room.”

“Nah, Ah'm not looking fer jewelry.”

“Floral ain't just jewelry, Blooms. You wear this, ponies know you got connections. And down here, connections mean everythin'.”

Apple Bloom could guess what she meant by 'connections', but she chose not to. 'Ah don't want ya hanging around with Babs anymore,' Applejack told her. 'She's fallen in with some rough ponies, and the Suns of Buckston are near enough the roughest.' Big Mac, as usual, explained it in his own way: 'Someponies want ta make things better fer their kind. But some of 'em are so blinded by false consciousness they exploit other earth ponies ta make things better fer themselves. Some of 'em join the Midnight Guard and collaborate with the unicorns, others join the criminal gangs that thrive in the gutter.' But if Babs was involved with all that, Apple Bloom refused to pry. She didn't want to know about it. Babs was her cousin, and she'd always been nice, so it was only fair she be nice back. And if Babs could help her with her problems, then so be it.

“It's all about knowing the right pony,” Babs said, poking Apple Bloom. “And you, you know me. Now what are you lookin' to sell?”

“Some a'Granny's things,” Apple Bloom said. Her voice cracked. “She, uh, she passed away.”

“Aw, no,” Babs said, her lips wavering. “Not Granny Smith?”

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, holding back the tears.

Babs gave her a tight hug. “That's all right, Blooms. That's all right. We're strong. We'll get through this.”

“Yeah,” Apple Bloom said, wiping away her tears and sniffling. “We'll get through it all right.” She opened the flap of her saddlebag and showed Babs the things inside. “Ah gotta get rid of her things. We need the money.”

Babs nodded emphatically. “Course. Absolutely. I'll getcha a good deal, don't you worry. Come on.”

She led Apple Bloom into the bazaar, weaving through the thick crowd of ponies jostling for standing room. They walked past merchants selling their wares from rugs on the ground, from tables and carts, and even a few freestanding booths for those rich enough. Hanging pots and pans clattered together, rugs and paintings hung from poles, a dizzying array of glitzy saddlebags lined shelves, colorful lanterns and electric lights clustered together and gave off a multicolored glow like the ancient legends of rainbows, exotic foods smuggled in from the territories gave off delightful smells that tingled the nose; and above it all was the constant roar of ponies calling to each other, clamoring for discounts and haggling over prices.

Babs stopped in front of a kiosk. The pony behind the counter, a light brown stallion with darker black stubble covering his head, looked up. Bags ringed his eyes, but that was hardly unusual. Almost all the earth ponies in the bazaar had to pull double duty working for the unicorns, then come home and make more goods with almost none of the tools, money, material, or time, for selling at the bazaar. And as Apple Bloom looked over his furniture, though she wasn't an expert, she thought the craftsponyship was pretty good for something he had bucked together in his basement.

“What, uh, what can I do for you, Babs?” he asked, fidgeting a little.

Babs inspected some of his ceramic figurines. “I seem to recall, Davenport, that you, ah, owe my associates some favors. After your little accident.”

“You and the Suns know I'm good for it, Babs.”

“Just what I like to hear,” she said, breaking into a smile. She put her forehooves on Apple Bloom's shoulders and gently pushing her forward. “This is my cousin, and she's got some items you might be interested in. And you're gonna give her a good deal, hear me?”

“Sure thing.”

Apple Bloom laid all of Granny Smith's things out on the counter and let Davenport inspect them. As his eye hovered over the figurines and the frilly lace coverings, Apple Bloom gave them a mournful gaze. Granny's things, gone. The ones she'd picked out herself, from this very bazaar, to decorate her world. A part of Granny was in those things. She bought them because she saw something in them that was kin to her soul. And now they were being sold. Granny Smith was being sold.

“I can give you thirty-five bits,” Davenport finally said.

That's how much she's worth, Apple Bloom thought. Only thirty-five bits.

“That's it?” Babs asked coldly.

“Hey, it's been a slow week. You can check my lockbox if you want, but frankly thirty-five bits is already way too much for what she's selling. I wouldn't go a bit over twenty-five if it wasn't a favor for you, Babs.”

“What do you think, Blooms?” Babs asked. “Want me to make him up the price?”

“Nah,” Apple Bloom said sadly, “thirty-five is fine.”

“You heard the pony,” Babs said to Davenport. “Thirty-five bits.”

Davenport ducked behind the counter, made a click as he unlocked his lockbox, and came back up with a hoofful of coins. He laid them on the counter and pushed them over to Apple Bloom. It's not too late, she thought. Tell him to keep his money and take Granny Smith's things back. Keep them for her. Keep her alive with them.

Ah can't. We need the money, badly.

Apple Bloom scooped the money off the counter, everything Granny Smith had been worth, and put it all in her saddlebag. She thanked Davenport and walked away, her head drooping and her ears fallen. She felt so lost and alone in the middle of all these ponies, with those thoughts about her Granny in her head. She just wanted to finish up and go home.

“Hey, wait up,” Babs said, trotting alongside her. “Listen, about Granny Smith, I, uh, I was thinking about swinging by. Paying my respects.”

Apple Bloom stopped in the crowd of ponies and faced her cousin, “Ah....don't think that's such a good idea.”

Babs cocked her head. “Why not?”

“Applejack and Big Mac, they said some things about ya. About the ponies ya've been hanging out with. The....Suns of Buckston, they say. They don't want ya coming around any more. Ah'm not even supposed ta be hanging out with you.”

Babs remained silent for a moment, looking both vengeful and wounded at the same time. Then she said, “Is that so?”

"If'n it was up ta me, Ah wouldn't care, but....Ah'm sorry,” Apple Bloom said, tearing herself away. “Ah'm tired, and Ah just want ta go home.”

“Yeah, sure,” Babs said. “Well, maybe I'll see you around anyway.”

“Definitely,” Apple Bloom said, trying to spare her cousin's feelings.

Apple Bloom headed off into the crowd, looking for the one stall she knew very well, situated way back near one corner of the factory floor. As she approached the counter of the kiosk, two gated doors lined with records in cheap wax paper sleeves glued together from hamburger wrappers were spread out on either side.

“Hey, little filly,” the owner said. She smiled warmly.

“Is it in yet?” Apple Bloom asked, rearing back and putting her hooves on the counter.

“Sure is.” The owner pulled a record out of a stack beside her and slid it across the counter to Apple Bloom. “Six bits.”

“But it was only five bits last month.”

“Sorry,” the mare said. “Times are tough right now. Bills are going up, and I got to keep on bucking.”

"I understand," said Apple Bloom, who did indeed know that very well. She passed a few coins to the kiosk owner, thinking about how unfair it was that everypony needed so many of these little lumps of metal just to keep on buckin'.

Chapter 11

'Flicka Jewelry.' Under the picture of a mare whose face was lit up with love at her stallion's gift of a diamond horn ring, the black billboard read, 'Love, guaranteed.'

Neon lights played across the curved glass of the hovercarriage window as they flew through the theater district. Rarity looked outside at the vibrant canyon full of flashing marquees and glowing billboards fighting for space in her eyeballs. Several of them caught her eye, blazing advertisements for soft drinks and expensive ciders guaranteed to put smiles on happy unicorn faces, upscale stores where both of those could be bought, and deluxe hovercarriages with drink compertments that could hold them and keep them chilly. She suddenly wanted a drink; luckily, she had all she needed already. As she ogled a huge billboard advertising her new fashion line, positioned right on one of the most prominent corners in the theater district, she asked Coco to mix a cider and soda. When it was done, she sipped it as ladylike as she could in the jostling hovercarriage. A blissful buzz swam through her, putting a smile on her face just like the ads guaranteed.

She stared out the window at the theater marquees, which seemed so much more alive now, as they advertised whole new worlds she could slip into. All she had to do was walk through the doorway. But there were so many, and so close together. She'd didn't have enough time to wander through all the different worlds, not with her busy, busy life. No, time was a precious commodity, and she had to content herself with only one. But she couldn't go wrong with Cynic DeKey. He was a unicorn she could always rely on to make this wearying world go away for a little while.

Raising the glass to her lips, she got only a mouthful of ice and frowned at the empty glass, unable to remember drinking from it more than once. Her body had drank - practically inhaled - the whole thing without her being aware of it. Ah, she sarcastically mused, the wonders of the unconscious mind. What would my doctor say about this?

Across the hovercarriage, Coco shuffled papers and asked, “Have you seen these operating costs for Las Pegasus?”

Rarity groaned. “Please, I've had enough business for one day.”

Coco gave a disapproving murmur. “Well, ma'am, I wouldn't presume to question you.”

Why can't she stop nagging me? Rarity thought, staring at the fusion of multicolored lights out the window. I know she's only trying to help, but I....that is, we spent the whole day working. I just want to relax and unwind for one night without all this fuss.

In the window's reflection, she saw Blueblood sitting next to her and fiddling with his curled mane. Ruining all the hard work her well-paid stylist had put into shaping and crafting his hair so it meshed perfectly with his golden yellow crushed velvet jacket and retro-cric frilly lace cravat. She turned to glare at him and said, “Stop that!”

“But this isn't me,” he whined. “I would never wear my mane like this. It's too....icky.”

“It goes better with your outfit. My outfit, actually. I designed it for you, remember? By this time next week, every stallion in Canterlot will want one, because of you. So pipe down and let me create the future of fashion, would you?”

He huffed and pounded his forelegs onto the seat padding. Rarity turned back to the window, nursing a seething contempt that spread through her until she wanted to kick him out the door. The hovercarriage door, that was. Watch him fall to the ground, his long golden mane streaming in the wind.

The high pitch of the engines descended until the vehicle came to a stop, thrusters rumbling to keep it aloft fifty feet above the autocarriages packed onto the asphalt. Outside, the marquee for The River Runs Wild shone brighter than any other. Out the front windshield, a line of hovercarriages idled in front of hers, waiting for the ground crew to wave them into the landing space in front of the theater.

In the front, her driver was listening raptly to the radio. "....look all around us," one of the characters said over the sound of a tropical jungle. "Nothing but ocean for thousands of miles in every direction. But us, our airship crashed here, on this floating island in the clouds, and we all emerged....without a scratch. We're here....in this place....for a reason. Now, why can't you believe that?!"

"Because feelings and intuition aren't proof, Keye. We crashed here because our airship went down, and now we're stuck with each other. End of story."

"One of these days, Flock, you'll feel differently. You'll open your eyes to the magic of this place, and when you do, you'll thank me."

"The only way that'll happen is if they stick us in the same insane asylum. First, of course, I'll have to get us rescued. But you, Keye? I couldn't rescue you from yourself if I tried." There was the sound of hooves stomping through the jungle, and the character's breathing became fainter.

"Funny," the other character said, "I was about to say the same thing to you."

There was a staccato blare of horns, and then an announcer declared, "WILD will return after these messages."

Rarity raised her voice and asked the driver, "How much longer will we be?”

“We're about ten vehicles from the front,” he called. “Shouldn't be long.”

"Darling, would you mind changing the station, then? Please?"

He gave her a sharp look, but he held his tongue except to ask, "108.5 again?"

"Yes," she said, catching sight of Coco giving her another disapproving look. I pay them, I can listen to whatever I want. To the driver, she said sweetly, "Thank you."

“....but then something strange happened. I headed for the next room of the exhibit and found myself right back at the entrance where I came in. I wondered if that part of the exhibit. Was it supposed to represent the chaotic nature of degenerate art? The space reflecting the things inside? But, man, I looked down at my map and it hit me all of a sudden: I'd been reading it wrong the whole time. And everypony else, all those ponies in my entourage, right? They all followed me around blindly. I turned to my assistant and saw in his eye that he knew the whole time, and I got on his case and demanded to know why he didn't tell me. 'We just follow you,' he said. None of them corrected me, not one. It seems famous Thorny Bends, star of the air waves, is beyond reproach."

"Gee, Thorn, I never got that memo."

"Let me write out another copy, and I'll staple it to your forehead, how about that? Anyway, so the pony in charge read the map wrong. Big deal, right? But it is a big deal, and lemme tell you why: what is a map?"

"Something that gets you from one place to another. Like, say, me getting the heck out of this show."

"It's a smaller version of reality. It's, it's, it's just like art, when you get right down to it. Lines on paper that stand for walls, roads, objects of interest. It speaks the same language as our words, which are another set of lines on paper that stand for something else. We use all these different kinds of these maps to, you know, orient ourselves in the world. Let us know where we stand. Of course, here's where the problem creeps in: the world is a big place. Except for maybe Princess Luna, nopony can see it all in one lifetime. We may have cities on the moon soon, but even then those brave settlers will only see a single side of our world at a time, and from so far away all the little details will blur together into a smear of shadow. The world is just too big and complicated and three-dimensional to see everything at once. So we need these maps to let us take everything in at once. Princess Luna, who's been shepherding our world for almost a millennium now, gave us an atlas of the world. Now, picture in your mind the whole of Equestria.”

Rarity did as Thorny asked, summoning the image of Equestria into her head.

“You got it in there good? Alright. Now, did you think of the rolling hills, covered with farmland and the imperial pens? The hills dotted with mines? The sprawling cities? Or did you think of the map of Equestria hanging on your old kindergarten wall?"

Rarity was dismayed to realize she had, indeed, thought of the map that used to hang in her classroom.

“You probably didn't even realize there was another way to think of Equestria, did you? The map represents our nation better than the nation itself does. But no map can show everything. Details get lost in compression. Things undiscovered remain uncharted. The unknown lurks off the margins. 'Here There Be Dragons', and so on. That's the price we pay for the ability to see all of reality: we have to rely on the map more than actual reality, because we can't....we can't wrap our heads around all of reality at once.

“But the map, my friends, is never as good as what's on it. Can you stroll through a map of the Whitetail Woods national park? Go skiing on a map of the Crystal Mountains? Sail across a map of the ocean? Of course not. But here's the kicker, folks, here's the thing that's going to keep you up at night: if the map is the thing that's really real to us, then what does that make all these supposedly 'real' things that exist in the world around us?”

I don't know, Rarity thought, perplexed and very much on the edge of her seat. What does it make them?

“Well, folks, let me tell you....” Thorny said.

Squirming with excitement and trepidation, Rarity thought, Yes, yes, do go on!

“....right after a word from out sponsors, Baudrillard-brand Cartography.”

Rarity cursed so loudly she made everypony else in the hovercarriage jump in their seats. When they all stared at her, slack-jawed and startled, she blushed deeply and apologized in a sheepish whisper.

The hovercarriage in front of hers dropped down, guided to the landing space near the red carpet by a pegasus crew on the ground wielding light cones, like at an airport. Rarity sighed softly to herself; they would land before Thorny Bends came back from break. Rarity would miss what sounded like the most stupendous revelation, the one to end all revelations! What she wouldn't give for another ten minutes to sit and listen to the radio. But no, what would the ponies watching, gossiping, snapping pictures say about her? The iron hooves of public opinion hustled her onward, into the neverending whirlwind of flash bulbs and loose lips. Was there a transcript she could purchase? When she got home she'd get in touch with Radio Free Canterlot and ask. Perhaps invite Thorny Bends to the gala she was planning for the millennial celebration. It was always in Rarity's best interests to be seen with the most popular ponies.

Her hovercarriage was now free to land, and it descended and settled on the ground. The crew darted in and undid the latch, allowing the door to swing upwards. The old familiar sound of flash bulbs and adoring crowds poured in. Blueblood climbed out and waved, soaking up the attention, but Rarity lingered and gave Coco a look that was half-grimace and half-gratitude.

“Here we go again,” she said wearily.

As always, Coco had a peppy smile, an inexhaustible well of good cheer and energy. “You've done this plenty of times before, and you look as elegant as ever.”

Rarity blushed. “Thanks, Coco.” She looked down the red carpet, at the twin walls of ponies pressing against the velvet ropes clamoring for her. The thought of Coco not being at her side filled Rarity with dread. Coco had always lent her a word of encouragement when she was feeling down, good advice when she was at a crossroads. And now she had to part from Rarity and use the service entrance? It wasn't fair.

Be bold, Rarity. Be like the princess, when she freed Equestria from tyranny.

Making up her mind, she took Coco by the foreleg and pulled her off the seat. “Come on, let's go.”

Coco's smile disappeared. “What? But....ma'am, I have to--”

“Not if you're with me,” Rarity said.

Coco's knees began to shake. “But think of the image it'll send....”

“You're such a fabulous assistant I'm proud to have you by my side?”

Coco's mouth flapped open and then shut wordlessly.

“Just stick right by my side,” Rarity said, “and nopony will say a word. Who'll stop me?”

Blueblood extended a hoof to help Rarity out of the hovercarriage. It was the proper gesture expected of a gentlecolt when the cameras were watching, but she saw the impatience writ on his face, under his smile. She put on a well-practiced one of her own and gave the crowd a great big wave. They erupted into a wall of sound as she slipped out of the vehicle on a graceful, dainty hoof. Then she pulled Coco, who was hunched over and had her ears flat, out alongside her. Behind them, the hovercarriage's engines thrust against the landing pad and rocketed it up into the sky.

Nowhere to run.

Smile, wave, sashay. Rarity had long since stopped thinking about walking the carpet. Smile, wave, sashay. Don't forget to subtly flaunt the dress. Smile, wave, sashay. It was second nature to her now. But all the while, her mind dwelled on the unheard revelation and drove her crazy. Was the DJ at this very moment disclosing it, unheard? She knew it was a foalish notion, but she hated how ponies needed radios, those expensive and complicated boxes of wires and screws, to hear transmissions. Radio waves were all around them, or so the engineers said. Why couldn't ponies listen to them naturally?

Her body continued to go through the mechanical motion of smiling, waving, and sashaying. As long as she kept her poise, it didn't matter what thoughts were in her head; the photographers couldn't get in there. Only what was recorded on film mattered to them and to the city.

Next to her, Coco peered around, expecting the rocks to pelt her at any moment. But Rarity was unrepentant, even though some of the faces closest to the ropes were shedding their smiles and replacing them with looks of confusion and doubt. The clicking of cameras only accelerated. The only thing more salable than a picture of a celebrity was a picture of a celebrity breaking the rules. Still, she didn't care. She wanted the whole world to know what she thought of Coco Pommel, assistant extraordinaire. They followed the red carpet up to the grand entrance it fed, the center set of three double doors.

But two soldiers in gray fatigues stepped away from their posts on either side of the double doors. Ponies like these were everywhere, yet they had a habit of fading into the background until the moment they called attention to themselves. They planted their hooves firmly into the red carpet and held their heads erect. She angled herself to walk around them, but they blocked her and Coco. Around them the crowd hushed. The clicking of cameras intensified yet again, lending Rarity a great deal of strength and commitment. Blueblood shrank away, eyes bulging, she would stand up for her earth pony, and all of Canterlot would see that. But when the cameras were on her, Rarity took charge.

“It's alright, ma'am,” Coco said. “I'll go around back--”

“You're not going anywhere,” Rarity said, throwing her foreleg around Coco and pulling her assistant close. To the soldiers, she said, “Coco is with me, and I happen to be acquainted with General Mace himself. If you don't step aside, I assure you, he'll hear all about this. Now, please step aside.”

The soldiers' forehooves came to rest on truncheons sticking out of their saddlebags.

Go ahead, she thought, filled with absolute confidence. See who looks better in the photographs: fashionable Rarity, talk of the town, with blood on her face, or the sneering pegasus wielding a bloody truncheon.

In the silence the cameras clicked away, capturing the situation Rarity had created. The two soldiers begrudgingly woke up to the whirring shutters and exploding flash bulbs and skirted their eyes over the crowd. What thoughts ran through the crowd at this? Would they consider it scandalous? Probably to some jealous hags who just wanted to tear her down, like Upper Crust. But Rarity had faith everything would turn out just as she intended. With all the photographers selling these photos, maybe she could inspire other unicorns to stand up for their servants, and in turn inspire earth ponies to be better servants and get ahead in the world. An advertisement for a kinder, gentler Canterlot, splashed across the front of every newspaper and magazine in Equestria. A place where unicorns and pegasi respected their earth ponies instead of herding them into ghettoes. They could dismantle these checkpoints, make the ghetto habitable, even reopen the discotheques.

Anything was possible if a pony dared to dream it. The problem was getting everypony else to follow them.

To follow her map, as a matter of fact.

It was quite possible the Midnight Guard would investigate her, censure her, maybe even proscribe her. But recriminations could wait until tomorrow. She had come to the Chariot to watch a show, and she wanted to leave politics at the door, not be confronted by them at that very same door.

“Is there a problem?” asked the concierge, stepping out of the building. The lights gleamed off the bald patch on his skull, above his horn. “Why, Miss Rarity,” he said nervously. “What a delight.”

“Yes, I do have a problem, actually. These gentlecolts won't let us pass.”

“Well, ma'am, it's, uh, you see....”

I do see, but I still want to hear you say it, she thought viciously.

“It's all about keeping out the, uh....that is, making sure the, um, right crowd....is left out. Um, let in, I mean.”

“Oh, so you don't think I'm the right crowd?” she asked, affecting a haughty tone.

He broke out in a nervous sweat as his eyes flicked away from Rarity, taking in Coco, then returning to the fashionista. “That's not what I meant, of course not. Of course you are, I mean. Naturally. But your, ah, 'companion', she, uh, she is....not.” Lamely, he added, “I don't make the rules, ma'am. The board of directors does."

“I see. And what would the board say if a certain patron of the arts were to donate, say....” She licked her lips and stared up at the facade. “Five hundred thousand bits to this fine, fine establishment?”

“Fi-five hundred....?”

“Oh, silly me. I meant to say five million.”

The concierge let a strangled yelp out of his throat and lost his ability to speak in anything but a stammer.

“Do you think they'd install a plaque for that?” Rarity asked, touching her hoof to her chin with innocent grace. On the inside, she thrilled in watching the concierge look like he was about to faint. "So....?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at him. "What do you say?"

He took another look at all the dumbfounded and confused faces in the crowd, and looked up at the stone-faced soldiers watching him with impassive eyes like marble with irises painted on. Sweating and trembling as much as Coco was, he stepped forward and whispered, "Please, I could....I could be investigated by the Midnight Guard for this! I could be arrested! The name of the Chariot Theater would be tarnished!"

"Oh, silly me, I forgot to add the last zero at the end!" she said with childlike innocence. "Fifty million. And that is my last offer."

The concierge looked like he was about to cry. "I....I must insist on...." Quickly, he said, "The check first."

Rarity smiled sweetly and took her checkbook out, ignoring the growing chorus of booing and the occasional threat from the crowd. She gaily wrote 'Fifty million bits' in a looping cursive font; it was a fairly big hit from her pocket, but the satisfaction of playing the situation precisely the way she wanted it to go was its own reward. Besides, she was confident she would earn the money back by next month.

Suppose there's a boycott, though? she thought. What if my profits plummet?

It was still worth it.

Once he had the check, the concierge peered at it closely and inspected the date. When he was finally resigned to the fact that it was real, he finally let out, “Let her in. At once.”

Rarity flashed him a smile and made to move past him, with the terrified Coco in tow. The Civil Force soldiers looked like they were going to stand their ground, but in the end they obeyed the unicorns and stepped aside, disgust roiling their features at the sight of Coco.

"Come along, Blueblood," she called. Then she gave the crowd one last wave and called out, “Ta!”

The shutters kept clicking, but the ponies in the crowd were either sedate, confused by what had happened and whether they were still supposed to cheer for her, or fuming with anger at the sight of an earth pony walking in the main entrance. But Rarity, her foreleg slung around Coco, gave her personal assistant a squeeze. If she had to, she'd do it all over again. Even if it was brought to her attention that every single other earth pony who had ever been foaled was swine, Coco Pommel had helped Rarity every step of the way to success. She'd never have got where she was if the industrious earth pony at her side hadn't been with her. This was the least she could do.

In the lobby, her darling little sister waited off to one side, shuffling from one leg to the other, waiting with the rest of her entourage between red-and-gold pillars. Sweetie Belle wore the little purple ensemble that accented her mane perfectly. Of all the dresses Rarity had designed for Sweetie Belle's stay at boarding school, it was her own personal favorite, and her sister looked adorable in it.

“Ooh, ooh, Rarity!” Sweetie Belle called, her eyes lighting up. “Rarity, I'm over here! Rarity!”

Rarity let go of Coco and glided up to her beaming sister, whose angelic face was split in half by a wide grin. “Rarity, I--!”

Photographers were slipping inside to keep snapping pictures of her. Smiling, Rarity nuzzled Sweetie Belle's cheek and subtly angled her sister's face at the camera lens. Click, snap, flash. Another image, forever impressed on celluloid. Frozen in time. Only film is eternal, Rarity realized. It can be so fake, so constructed, but at the same time it's also the truest and most lasting thing. These thoughts in my head, nopony knows those. But everypony will see those photos and remember what happened. I'm the one leading them through the gallery now.

Then she thought, I've been listening to too much Thorny Bends.

For some reason, it seemed like a splinter of the DJ had lodged itself inside Rarity's head and was stuck on repeat, putting thoughts in there Rarity herself would never have thought. She didn't mind, exactly, but it was a bit disconcerting, wondering where Thorny ended and Rarity began.

As she and her entourage walked across the lobby, Sweetie Belle called out her name. The little filly hovered at her side, trying to get Rarity's attention. Just like all the posters on the wall, all the advertisements and the brand name soft drinks and candy behind the unsightly abomination of the concession counter that ruined the theater's classical décor. Everywhere, flashing signs clamored for her attention, demanding a place inside her eyeball. It was all too much. Far, far too much. She was suddenly very tired, and found the facade increasingly harder to keep up.

“Rarity,” her sister said, “Rarity, I--”

“Not now, Sweetie,” she said, rubbing at a brewing headache inside her skull. Her voice came out a little more brusquely than she intended, so she softened her voice and added, “I've had a long day, and I just want to relax and watch the show.”

Sweetie Belle's ears flattened. She let her head sag and her legs drag on the floor. “Alright,” she said dolefully. “If that's what you want.”

At the sight of her sad sister, Rarity reached into Coco's saddlebag and brought out a gift-wrapped box. "Maybe this will cheer you up," she said. "Go ahead, open it."

Sweetie Belle took the package and tore the wrapping off. The shiny black box inside had 'Flicka Jewelry' embossed on the lid. Sweetie opened it to reveal the exquisite diamond necklace Rarity had picked out for her, imported all the way from the territories. But rather than Sweetie Belle's face lighting up with love and gratitude, she remained curiously blank. That's not what the ads guaranteed at all.

"Don't you like it?" Rarity asked. "It cost quite a lot."

"I like it fine," Sweetie Belle said sharply.

“Oh, look, there's Rich,” Rarity said.

Sweetie Belle peeked up and saw her personal assistant trotting over, his sagging back laden with a tray of food from the concession counter. All the junk food made Rarity apprehensive. She wasn't sure what she thought about the practice. Such things were fine for a discotheque, but it spoiled the theater's rarefied air. Such things simply didn't mesh with the classy dresses and monocles. Was the theater was going downhill from its glory days? You sound like General Mace, she thought, feeling worse than ever. Glory days of what? Making earth ponies use the service entrance? Stringing them up from trees?

Panting, Filthy Rich stopped in front of Sweetie Belle and bent his forelegs. It looked uncannily like bowing. Another one of Sweetie Belle's entourage, a pegasus bodyguard, hovered nearby to escort the earth pony and make sure he was accounted for at every moment in this land of the unicorns. I bet they came in through the service entrance Rarity thought. Shame they didn't wait for me.

Sweetie Belle swiped a soda cup off the tray and slurped it. Her face screwed up with rage and she threw the cup at her earth pony. “I said grape, not orange,” she snapped. “Useless dirt-eater.”

“Sweetie Belle!” Rarity exclaimed. The cameras, Oh dear, the cameras! Are there any around, taking pictures? No, musn't look, mustn't seem desperate. But she's ruining everything I worked to construct just a few short minutes ago! “That is no way to talk to your servants!”

Her seething sister rounded on her. “How should I know what kind of talk you like and don't like? I haven't seen you in a year!”

“What has gotten into you, Sweetie?” Rarity demanded.

“Oh, forget it,” Sweetie Belle sneered, turning around and flicking her tail at Rarity. “Get over here, Filthy.”

“Yes, ma'am!” the earth pony gasped, trotting over while trying valiantly to keep the food balanced. Together, they walked up the marble staircase and into the auditorium at the top.

Rarity give an apologetic look to Coco, but the earth pony just stared back at her. I....did the right thing, didn't it? she thought. 'We just follow you', the pony on the radio had said. 'Because you pay us,' he had surely finished. Well, there's naught to be done now. Whatever happens, happens. But it will happen tomorrow, because I'm tired and I want to watch the show tonight. She turned and followed her sister up the steps and into the auditorium.

Caught up in the crowd, Twilight swayed with its power. It was mob rule, where irrationality overwhelmed normal ponies through sheer passion. The multicolored marquee lights and multihued coats exploded against her aching, watery eyeballs. All the colors swirled like the sea, surging and ebbing around her and wrapping her senses in a haze, sweeping her away in fury and fervor. The dense passion of thousands of bodies pressed together, right up to the velvet ropes. Jostling against her, boxing her in.

She hated all of them. Simpering, celebrity-seeking leeches. All of them, she thought with malice, wanted nothing more than to catch a peek of the celebrities. To delight in the latest fashions and the latest celebrity flings, hungrily watch their social superiors commit a faux pas and have a hearty laugh as they tear their fallen idols down to feel better about themselves.

The actual art? Irrelevant. A vehicle for gossip. A prop, a backdrop for petty starlets.

But some kind of osmosis was taking place, infecting Twilight with the crowd's mindless cheer. She wanted it to stop, to purge herself, to control her own body, but she was powerless before the onslaught. She was weak, just like when the pegasi had savaged her like the brutes they were, and she hated it. She pushed her way to the entrance. There were three sets of double doors, but the red carpet cordoned off the center one, leaving one free on either side. On the wall right before the doors, a beautiful hoof-painted poster was in a glass display case. It depicted a unicorn standing tall and staring boldly into the distance with a grim sneer of determination on her face. She and the stallion behind her, whose face had an anguished grimace, stood contrasted against the solar fire scorching the landscape. A tagline was scrawled under the show's name: 'A Sensational Epic of Sound and Fury!'

Twilight entered the cavernous lobby decked out in alabaster and gold trim. She handed her ticket to the pony in the booth beside the door, who tore a piece of off and gave it back to her. “Enjoy the show!” he said with a plastic smile. When she moved off, she heard him say the exact same three words in the exact same tone, like a machine: “Enjoy the show!”

She crossed the room and joined the concession line. Her hooves dug into a plush red carpet with golden concentric designs. Overhead, an enormous crystalline chandelier with thousands of electric candles dangled from the central point where the intricately-carved arches of the vaulted ceiling met. A majestic spread-winged Luna, divided in four by the rib arches, stared down sagely. The antiquated architecture was awe-inspiring. But in a burst of insight and insanity Twilight saw a maze of cables snaking behind the gilded ceiling, powering the chandelier. Running like veins through the whole building, just out of sight. The mural was a beautiful facade for a twisted, mechanical nightmare.

Stop it, she told her brain. Right now.

But her brain wouldn't listen. It was in that dreamlike limbo between drunk and sober, that twilight state where the bits and pieces of thoughts occupying her head collided in new and unexpected and sometimes outright depressing ways. Her mental inhibitions were failing, allowing her unconscious material to bubble to the surface, yet she still had the presence of mind to recognize what was going on. Twilight and her doctor had discussed this at length over the past few years. He firmly recommended she stop drinking cider and focus on overcoming the thoughts that tormented her. But that hadn't worked, because the thoughts always crept back in. So she took the liberty of giving herself a new treatment: drink and drink and then drink some more, until the thoughts were dead and buried beyond her recollection. So far, her miracle cured had worked wonders.

As long as she had a chance to take her medicine regularly.

"....and then she just barged in with a dirt-eater right beside her," a stallion in front of her said. "I mean, I never....her....?"

"Right through the front doors of this place?" his friend said.

"Yeah! It was disgusting!"

"And yet you're giving this place your money anyway."

"Hey man, I already bought the tickets. I want to see the show. Hey, you think I can demand a refund after the show?"

Letting a dirt-eater come through the front doors? Twilight thought. He's right, that is disgusting. All part of the plot, I suppose. The pegasus ponies let earth ponies worm their way into high society, until the moment they're all poised to strike and destroy civilization. Another piece of evidence for the book.

A prickle went all up her back, from her tail to her neck. She felt a presence behind her, and something about it rankled her. Pretending to take in the lobby's decor, she casually let her head drift around until she looked over her shoulder. What's she doing here? Twilight thought, immediately putting her eyes front and center on the concession stand again. She didn't dare look back again, at the cowardly little yellow eyesore right behind her, eyes firmly on the carpet, shoulders slumped in bitter defeat, hoof pawing at the floor so much Twilight expected her to dig a burrow any minute now. It seemed like the whimpering, huddling pegasus had dogged Twilight the whole way to the theater, like some invisible tether had joined them together.

But why?

Maybe she's a spy for the Shadowbolts, Twilight thought, her heart thumping in panic. Her leg muscles itched and burned, ready and waiting to run. The walls seemed to press in around her, the air grew so heavy it pushed down on her. The whole arrest was a set-up. They sent her to follow you and she's only pretending to be meek, because have you ever seen a pegasus who was that much of a wimp? It must be a put-on, a facade. There's no other way she could've gotten into a sold-out show like this.

....the scalper did say he had another ticket. Maybe she got it from him.

Of all the ponies, what are the odds he'd pick the very same one who nearly got you arrested? And why would one of them be dumb enough to put their hooves on another pony's passport? And nopony in their right mind would ever think a weakling like this was a spy, so it's the perfect cover. Twilight wanted to check again, make sure the pegasus was really and truly there, study her demeanor for any signs of a hidden agenda. But she refused, because looking back would only tip her off that Twilight was suspicious.

Best to ignore her. Or pretend to, anyway. But as the line dwindled, the shadow of her lingering presence frayed Twilight's nerves during the long wait. Her hate grew stronger with every passing second, until finally she reached the concession counter in a state of rage. She glowered at the row after row of prepackaged candy wrapped up in cardboard and plastic waiting for her. The eyes of advertising mascots gave her wide smiles, begging her to buy them and tear them open. All those happy, grinning mascots who conspired to interrupt Thorny Bends with their useless ads just as the DJ was on the verge of delivering an important truth. Twilight's lip curled up instinctively, and she huffed under her breath.

“Popcorn,” she demanded.

She dropped some bits on the counter and let them fall where they may. The cashier gave her another plasticine smile, then turned and scooped freshly made popcorn into a red and white striped box. Made right in front of my eyes, she thought. This popcorn is real. True. Not a simulacrum.

The cashier put the down, still with that plasticine smile on his face. “Will there be anything else, ma'am?”

“A hay smoothie,” she said.

As he turned to the smoothie machine and filled a cup, Twilight saw a sticker next to the hay mix swirling around in the tank window: 'Made with imitation hay'. The cashier put the cup down in front of her, like he expected her to drink something made of imitation hay. But she felt that pegasus watching her, felt those eyes on her back, scrutinizing her. Isn't that just like a pegasus? Watching you only when you aren't looking. Well, I'm not going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me make a scene and reporting it to her superiors. Twilight would have to drink her fake smoothie and grin. Just another fake smile in a world full of them.

“Is that all, ma'am?” the cashier asked.

“....yes,” Twilight said, pushing her pile of bits over.

But of course it cost more than that. Theater food always did. She dug around in her saddlebag and pulled out more coins, sensing the pegasus behind her take mental notes of her disorganization. Twilight wanted to turn around and scream that she was very organized, but didn't dare. That was what the pegasus wanted, wasn't it? To trick Twilight into making a fool of herself. To make Twilight seem like the irrational one. She knew it was impossible, because the idea had only come to her a few hours ago, but it felt like they were trying to sabotage her book - her expose - before even a single word had been written. She put the money on the counter, swiped her things away, and hurried up the stairs and towards the propped-open double doors into the auditorium. Away from the deceptive little pegasus.

Twilight crossed the threshold into the theater, where the world of the musical lurked behind the red curtains. What did the scenery look like? It could be anything, really. The world beyond was endless possibility. An overture came from the orchestra pit, a jaunty tune running under the excited murmur of the ponies waiting with baited breath, slowly immersing them into the mood. Seat Z-15 was along the back wall. She edged past the ponies sitting on their haunches in the seats. As she went, the music morphed into an ominous war march. Sudden fear gripped Twilight. She realized that behind the curtains could be anything.

Even the black void from her dreams.

It was insane, she told herself. There was a set back there.

But how could she ever know what she couldn't see with her own two eyes?

Get a grip, Twilight. Overtures have all the songs from the show in them. It's a showcase of the musical's mood, that's all.

She set her food down on seat Z-15's forelegrests and settled down on her haunches. The world she lived in couldn't be swept away soon enough. No more Shadowbolts, no more empty conapt, no more deceased brother. She munched the popcorn and sipped the smoothie as she waited for the lights to go down. It might have been made with artificial hay, but she had paid for it, so she might as well drink it.

Something yellow moved in the dim auditorium beside her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the pegasus sit down right next to her. Fuming, Twilight's head filled with rage at the conspiracy ensnaring her, tearing her down. Destroying her.

Wait....if that pegasus is sitting there, that means the pegasus did get the ticket from that scalper. His tickets were right next to each other.

....maybe, she thought.

She conceded to the rationality of the argument. But then again, manufacturing rational pretexts was how these spy agencies operated.

What if....?

'What if.' Ha! What if dragons could be brought back from extinction and house-trained? In life, there's a hundred thousand different what-ifs, covering the gamut of possibilities. You can say 'what if' about anything you want, but unless you have the evidence to back it up, it's meaningless. Now shut up and open your eyes.

Her nerves on edge, Twilight sat uncomfortably and waited for the show to begin.

'What if?'

Trotten Pullet's life revolved around that phrase. The art of artifice, pretending to be something she was not and treating fake consequences with absolute realism. The faculty of imagination was her guiding light, and her success would be measured by how truthfully she answered the question. How well she informed the audience 'This is what!' in a way that rang true in their ears.

Waiting in the wings of the Chariot Theater, she was fraught with anxiety. Her heart was in her throat and she felt like she was about to vomit. The buzz of the other players, scurrying towards their marks, filled the backstage like radio static. She knew the sound well; her career had started on the airwaves. The torturous, drawn-out crawl of the countdown was an intimate companion, whether it was to airtime or to curtains up. The moment of truth, of do or die, blazed ahead of them all like a raging flame, and as time brought them all closer to it, it grew hotter and more intense. Ponies could either be energized, or horribly burned by the fire.

For Trot, it was a little of both.

Sweat from the lights ran down her shaved skull and dripped off her muzzle. It made her costume stick to her coat. She marveled how such a professional piece of work could be made to look so ragged and dirty. The company's contract with Rarefaction Industries was well worth it.

All those months of planning and rehearsal, distilled down into this one night. Opening night. Every movement, every line, every note had to be flawless. A movement made on the stage couldn't be taken back; the theater wasn't like writing a book, where an author could scribble out her mistakes and start over, pouring over the text and agonizing about the words, sight unseen by any eye but her own. A performance in the theater had to be a perfect confluence of acting, lighting, props, scenery, special effects, and all of it on the fly. It was ephemeral; it lived only in the minds of the audience. One wrong move would ruin the illusion for them. And tonight, it was the cream of the Canterlot elite. They decided not only government and economic policy and social standards, but the very worth of a thing itself. Tomorrow night she could screw up all she wanted, but first appearances set the stage for everything that came later.

To calm herself, she breathed slowly and reflected on the world of the play. From her vantage point she saw the stage sideways: both the facade the audience saw, and the machinery behind it, the lights and the fly ropes and the trap doors. A monologue from her favorite play came to mind. She whispered it softly to herself, and in her imagination strutted out and acted the part of Starswirl, commanding his illusions:

O, light'd orrery of this my stage,

Know you that subtle is the craft of mage:

Illusion cast by wond'rous dramaturge,

Who works his wonder fleet like thaumaturge.

He sets the stars to spin in firmament,

And fixes firm the meaning that he meant;

O, constellations set by watchful eye,

Bold shape drawn out from yonder starry sky

That turns pond'rous about the worldly rim,

An orb now set in centerstage by him

Whose hoof in motion sets solar ballet

To dance across the sky in joyous play,

To spin and whirl to some music divine,

The magic of the spheres that do incline

To Breezy charm that plays upon his theme

And binds those sprites of hill and lake and stream.

A disquiet settled over Trot. She could have gone on and done the entire monologue, probably even the whole play, but why bother? Starswirl was a unicorn, and nopony in their right mind would cast Trotten Pullet as the most powerful sorcerer the world had ever known. Even if a playwright was inclined to it, which none of them were, the Midnight Guard would see to his or her arrest, surely, for flaunting the natural order. Trot may have been a star of the stage, but like the monologue said, she was only part of a constellation. They all were. Cynic created the world onstage, and he made them all orbit around his ideas. The pony in charge had the final say. And on that stage, the most an earth pony could hope for was to play who and what they were.

I'm so lucky to be here, she told herself. This is more than any earth pony has a right to. I should be thankful the High Castle gave me this opportunity.

Trotten Pullet always tried to look on the bright side. At least she could make the audience laugh. They loved laughing at her antics, and she in turn loved to make them smile. But she had to put aside Trot right now and become Brownie. It wasn't hard; Cynic wrote the role especially for her. He was such a generous unicorn to an earth pony like her. Fresnel Glow had it hard by comparison, having won the part of the determined River Wilde despite going through her third divorce and an addiction to antidepressants.

Trot commanded herself to become.

She emptied the brains out of her head and filled her skull with a new set of memories. A new paradigm of thought, according to her favorite book on acting. It involved laying a new decision-making structure, influenced by the study of mathematics, over her normal one. Analyzing all the little intricacies of how her present actions would be informed by a new set of past memories, and what effect it would have on her actions. What would the character see, or not see, in the world around them? What neuroses would develop? All she had to do was plug in the imagined memories of a character and let the new paradigm work itself out. An algorithm of memory. She'd spent many a sleepless night analyzing the technique. Being an earth pony in the middle of unicorn high society left her with a lot of time to study her craft.

The stage manager called for the players to take positions. The curtains were about to rise. Show time. Trot wasn't in the opening number, so she stepped aside and watched the crew as they finished adjusting the props and scenery so the fake farmstead looked as authentic as possible and made a final check of the special effects to ensure they went off seamlessly.

Hooves hit the polished hardwood floor behind her. Blockbuster roughly shoved her out of the way with a snide, “Move it, dirt-eater.”

There was plenty of open space on either side, but nonetheless she stepped aside and let the slim, tall unicorn, whose strong, outthrust chin was level with her ears, pass. He walked with a proud and gallant step, all too aware of his own very secure place in life. Trot shrank away, nearly folding over, until Knight Errol playfully hit her on the side.

“Cheer up,” the blue pegasus said, smiling. “You're our dirt-eater, and I know you'll knock 'em dead.”

“Thanks,” she said, resisting the urge to be offended. Knight had always been nice to her. “You too.”

“Always.”

He spread his wings and lifted himself up into the flies, leaving her earthbound. She stared after him as he disappeared among the lights and the drop scenery, feeling alone. But, to stave it off, she took her copy of the musical's book out and ran through her lines and lyrics one final time, reassuring her that her memory wasn't playing tricks on her, and that everything was exactly as she remembered.

Memory, she thought. That's really all we have, isn't it? Just memories of past emotions, experiences, teachings. That's what influences our present, determines who we are. Yet we actors and actresses live - and get paid - to put all their memories aside and adopt new ones all the time. Put aside who we are. What are we, then, if our memories are as ephemeral as this?

Author's Note

September 22nd, 2004.

Never forget.

Chapter 12

The overture ended with a flourish. The lights dimmed. A quiet came over the crowd, and soon the only sound in the collective hush was the minute shuffling of haunches on seats. In the dark, Twilight gave a brief sidelong glance at the pegasus next to her. The little yellow eyesore, reduced to the barest outline in the dark, had her attention wholly focused on the curtains. Twilight wanted to reach over and throttle her, take her revenge on the pegasus for revealing her weakness to the Shadowbolts, but she was too strong to give in like that.

I am strong, she thought. I know I am.

With a rustle, the curtains parted. The rustic front yard of a plantation was revealed. A dim blue pallor covered the backdrop of a palatial mansion, suggesting early morning. The lights brightened and bathed the stage in a warm, gentle glow. Off in the distance, a crowing sounded. Already, Twilight thought the musical was off to a bad start. Ugh, such a hackneyed opening. Maybe a few ancient sources say roosters 'crowed' at dawn, but there's no evidence it was a real thing, and furthermore, if it was real, nopony even knows what it sounds like nowadays. It's a cliche for 'morning' repeated so often it has no meaning.

Then she wondered why she was expecting historical realism from a big-budget musical. Just shut up and enjoy the show.

In the light, she got a better look at the bizarre mishmash of the manorhouse. It was a colonial-style red brick mansion, the kind she'd seen pictures of out in the settlements, mixed with antiquated Cloudsdale architecture, fronted by ridged columns and a triangular awning over the portico. Neither of them were marble, but they were painted to resemble it from a distance. She wondered what kind of impression she was supposed to get. Familiar yet alien, was her best guess.

Don't guess. You're not supposed to think about this stuff, you're supposed to feel it. Unconsciously. Not analyze it and pick it apart.

I can't help it, she thought in despair. I can't help myself.

Bells tolled from the mysterious reaches of backstage. The doors slowly opened, revealing a darkened passage. A spotlight homed in on it as a mare stepped out of the doorway and into the light, taking a moment to gaze around the idyllic grounds as the bells continued to ring. The lights glittered off her radiant dress, shimmering a watery blue, totally unsullied by manual labor. Her eyes soared out over the audience.

“When I was just a filly in my swaddling clothes,” the mare sang in a plaintive acapella, lifting her dress up to her knees as she descended the portico steps. “Mother told me of the river free....”

Her clear, strong voice carried across the auditorium, amplified by the speakers. When Twilight squinted hard, she saw a microphone against the pony's cheek. Why do you have to do that? she thought, cursing herself. Pick apart the illusion?

I need a drink, was her response. She sighed and sat back to watch, her tongue getting drier by the second.

“It was proud and wild and went where it willed,” the mare sang, “as it carved a path to the sea.” When she reached the bottom of the steps, she bowed her head in mourning. The string section started a faint, mournful keening under her acapella.

“It's all gone now, dried up by the sweltering sun, but when I look around this land....” She raised her head, her features lighting up with hope. “It left its mark as it refused to go quietly, a beacon for our merry band.” Her voice rose as the orchestra swelled, triumphant, behind it. Lending power to her words, making them soar like a bird. Twilight leaned forward on her seat a little. More unicorns trooped out on stage, arraying themselves behind the actress, though they stayed out of the spotlight. As she sang again, the brass section started to blare, sending out major chords that set the audience's heart pumping and ready to kick their way to freedom.

“We work the soil and we till the land,” she sang, “for a faraway mare with delusions of grandeur!”

And as Twilight watched, the raw power of her voice and the harmony of the chords began to work in her. The artificiality of the backdrop and the music, it didn't matter. The mare onstage transmitted a vivid spark of power direct to Twilight, right across the auditorium, so fiercely it struck her down to her core. She's so fearless, Twilight thought, entranced by the actress's determination. So confident of herself. She doesn't let lesser ponies hold her down or push her around.

The mare's bold clear voice rang out, “She scorches our land on a whim and a fancy, but she'll soon learn unicorns are a force majeure....!”

That sustained last syllable shot up into the upper registers, until Twilight half-expected the glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling to shatter. Her lips twitched up in a spontaneous, irresistible smile as the string section fluttered up in arpeggios and a dolorous drum boomed throughout the auditorium. It pounded its way into Twilight Sparkle, making her heart beat inexorably in time with it. It snapped down, Boom-bam....Boom!. Her legs itched and twitched, demanding to join the measured march.

There is magic in live theater, Twilight thought. Just like Starswirl's Storm always said. All these other ponies, sharing the emotion, the moment, the spectacle....and the ponies onstage, reveling in it.

“'River', mother used to say to me,” the mare sang over the drums, “'you must be as the river free. Unburdened and untamed and forever proud of who you're destined to become'.”

Destiny, Twilight thought. Not duty, but destiny.

“'Don't ever let them tell you, what you should think or do. And if they try, just remember you're the river and they're....pond scum'!,” she sneered.

The brass section started downward, a haphazard flurry of horns like water splashing down the rapids, and it swept Twilight along. The chorus raised their voices, booming along to the brass and underscoring River's sharp, clear voice. “The river lives on in your heart,” they sang together, “so let it wash away the lies she has constructed! Let it take you where you want to go, and forget all you've been instructed!”

“River!” she called, and the chorus thundered in response like a bolt of lightning: “River!” As the brass climaxed in frenzy, the chorus and the mare in charge finished: “Let the river run free and you will see....!” A drawn out blare of horns, then: “It knows just which way to go and which way to be!”

'Which way to be', Twilight thought dreamily. If only there was a way we could know that in the real world, life would be so much simpler.

But she stifled those thoughts. She wasn't interested in thinking about the real world right now.

The tumult continued onstage, but to Rarity, sitting in her booth high over the action, the empty bluster of noise faded away until it was like a rumble of distant thunder outside the window. An overwhelming, spirit-puncturing dissatisfaction took hold of her. She sank down into her seat, tuning out the new character strutting around the stage and introducing himself with the second verse. She couldn't find the effort to care. All she could think was, Surely this can't be the new Cynic DeKey? An opening number was supposed to signal the tone of the whole show, and this one was so abominably off-putting. Where was the charm, the wit? Everything was so earnest and melodramatic. Had DeKey – Perish the thought! – aimed at the mainstream for the millennial? It was the only way she could reconcile the great and unique artist with this middle-of-the-road bore.

It's only the first number. Plenty of time to turn this show around.

But somehow, she doubted something so miraculous would occur. All the best DeKey musicals had a sense of intimacy, a closeness of heart and mind, even in the most crowded theater. Little slices of life he offered up, full of foibles and little character moments, relaying by both a keen and incisive eye and a playful sense of humor and empathy. Not this roaring bombast, loud and noisy and hollow and empty.

“When I was just a colt in my father's clothes,” the stallion in the gray double-breasted suit sang, “Looking at myself in the mirror, the spitting image of my father stared back at me, and I saw myself a little clearer.”

She groaned at the on-the-muzzle lyrics, which completely paled in comparison to Lemish, the painter from Sunday in the Park with Georgian Grande, who spent all day every day perfecting his self-portrait, only to notice another imperfection each and every morning, rendering it perpetually half-finished as he struggle to iron out the blemishes. DeKey used such a deft hoof to show the audience Lemish's own inner doubt about his self-worth. Totally unlike a character taking stage and singing about his inner struggle to the audience. It was almost like DeKey was scared they wouldn't understand it if it wasn't painfully obvious and painfully forced.

Rarity rocked back on her haunches, eyes glazing over. Perhaps when the opening number was over, things would improve.

Perhaps.

At the very back of the theater, Fluttershy's eyes swept across the ponies arranged on stage, searching through the red and blue and green coats for Trotten Pullet. Funny old Trotten Pullet, who could make everypony laugh with a single pratfall or one absurdly-worded remark. That capering, cavorting pony of infinite jest, spreading good humor everywhere she went. She needed to appear soon, because the more Fluttershy watched all those unicorns singing about unicorn problems, the more she needed a laugh.

Why did there have to be so many of them on the stage? None of them looked like her, went through what she did. This was all so far beyond her. She felt limited, like the wings of her imagination had been clipped.

The strong-jawed stallion onstage sang out, “We forge our own way across the green earth....”

The lead actress faced the left side of the auditorium and took up the next line: “But we're bound by a mare with delusions of grandeur....”

The stallion sang to the right half, “Who demands with a smile the fruits of our hooves!” Then, they boldly harmonized, “But when will she learn, unicorns are a force majeure?” Their faces were mirrored grimaces of passion that creased their features and signaled they were ready to weather whatever may come. To guide the unicorns towards success.

Always the unicorns, in charge of everything. So in sync with each other. So perfect, always so perfect. And here was Fluttershy, trespassing in their world, as helpless and powerless as she had always been.

The thought startled her. She should've been used to it by now, but seeing it reflected so clearly onstage shook her. It was a moment of pure, crystallizing clarity about her place in the world. The more she watched, the more the reality sank in. Although the story took place in a weird, skewed world where ponies expressed themselves by spontaneously bursting into song, there was a profound truth in it, mirroring the terrible knowledge she held in her aching heart: the unicorns owned her, body and soul. Her wings sagged against her sides. She felt so ashamed of them. Maybe if she had been born a unicorn, she wouldn't feel this way. Even an earth pony would be preferable. At least then she would grow up knowing how little power she had over her own life, as opposed to the subtle shame of not living up to her race.

Anything but a pegasus, with all the pressure the unicorns used to push her around. Tears sprang up in the corners of her eyes. But she mustn't cry, not where all these ponies could see her. Then they'd only consider her so much more worthless than she already was.

“'Ash, let the magic go free and you will see....!” bellowed Blockbuster as the orchestra reached a crescendo that ended the chorus. “It knows just which way to go and which way to be!”

Blockbuster was the most brutally handsome star of the stage, and Trixie Lulamoon's head was filled to the brim with dreams and schemes of how she would 'accidentally' bump into him. She, the fabulous socialite would approach him at some afterparty and compliment him on his performance. He, in turn, would compliment her on her dress and ask if he had seen her at some other high society gathering, because a mare with her beauty and grace wasn't easily forgotten. Giggling, she would accept the compliment coyly and recommend they go out on the balcony for some fresh air. Soon enough they would be blissfully married, and all the most fabulous and influential ponies in the city would attend the ceremony and gape in awe at how much more sophisticated she was.

And then....happily ever after for Trixie Lulamoon!

But first, she had to become the most fabulous and famous socialite in the city. As the orchestra warmed up for another verse, she snuck a peek over her shoulder at the rows of private booths ringing the theater. Intermission. That was her chance. She would mingle with the rich and famous, wiggle her way into their good graces until it seemed like she had always been there, and make it so they couldn't imagine life without her ever again. Just like an episode of The Galloping Gossips. But instead of another verse, the orchestra hit a nerve-wracking dissonant note, sending shudders through Trixie's nerves. She whipped her head around and saw the two unicorns onstage bowing their heads in agony. The soundscape they were in the middle of twisted and distorted. The lights dimmed until two spotlights illuminated only them, forcing everypony to look at their plight.

“In this world, sad to say,” they sang in a minor-key harmony, “your birthright is not assured. Stolen by thieves in the sunlight, like a ship unmoored.”

The brass section quieted until it was like a heartbeat, a little muffled thump-thump, thump-thump, while the strings continued their harsh and dissonant squeal. Trixie's chest tightened, squeezing air from her lungs. No, it can't be. Ev-everypony has to get what they deserve! That's how societies are supposed to work!

The Blockbuster and the actress raised their faces into the spotlights. The music intensified behind their rising voices, a pounding heartbeat that made Trixie want to run, because the walls were closing in on her, confining her to the tiny, insignificent little corner of existence she lived in.

“When will the sun set on this world and the mare who rules it?” they sang. “When will the fire burn itself out on the mare who fuels it?”

This all happened in the past, she told herself. This doesn't describe our world at all! Not one little bit.

The music resolved itself into the familiar chords of the verse, the third so far. And if it was the third, then most likely it was the last, because musical numbers, like life, had certain patterns ponies could depend on. The rest of the unicorns on stage, still shrouded in darkness, joined Blockbuster and the other mare as they all raised their voices in unison:

“When we were colts and fillies sweating in the sun, our parents told us how things are. There's a rhyme and a reason to the changing season, a natural way that's turned bizarre.”

Yes, Trixie thought. The natural order. Unicorns who are destined to become socialites will become socialites, just as surely as the sun is the source of all evil.

The lights dimmed and plunged the stately homestead into darkness. A glowing orb descended from the rafters, spewing out sizzling smoke that spilled out over the stage. It pooled at the hooves of the actors and actresses and fell over the edge like a waterfall. Her dear Blockbuster strode forward, walking on the surface of the sea of mist, until he stood at the end of the stage and looked out into the audience. Her heart leapt when she noticed he was looking directly at her. His proud, strong voice carried to the roof.

“The sun burns too bright in the sky for us to see, and she thinks that'll cow us!”

Trixie grinned, delighted. But then that mare her husband-to-be was forced to share the stage with also stepped forward, angling herself in front of Blockbuster. Truthfully, the mare had been hogging entirely too much of the stage already.

“She can burn us and blister us, but we won't stop,” she sang, “and we won't bow to her excess!”

Trixie could only lament that Blockbuster would have lent that line so much more gravitas. Oh, well. At least she had her imagination, in which the lights shone on Blockbuster and Blockbuster alone. Suddenly the brass thundered and plunged down into a sinister register. The lights went wild, flickering and strobing, making the audience jump with fright. A silhouette inside the orb raised its wings, and its shadow fell over the audience.

Over those dissonant chords, Blockbuster – and, woe be to Trixie, everypony else was horning in on her stallion's ravishing tones – sang, “We water the land with our blood, sweat, tears, for a faraway mare with delusions of grandeur, who tries to keep us in the dirt with our fears. But she has yet to learn ponykind is a force majeure!”

The brass section blew out a powerful blast. The silhouette inside the sun recoiled in pain at the sword-like truth of the lyrics. Trixie gave a curt, triumphal nod in approval, but it quickly gave way to confusion and awe as Blockbuster rose into the sky.

How did he do that?! she asked herself. He's not a pegasus!

Then she saw the platform, hauled skyward by cables, that raised him up from the mist. It resembled a chunk of crystal. The lights flickered, revealing the plantation had been wholly replaced by crystal formations, like the legends of the long-lost crystal city far to the frozen north. A land rich in myth and mystery, where some of the Histories said the princess gained the knowledge and magic she needed to overthrow the tyrant Solara Victa's rule.

But however high Blockbuster rose, he couldn't get above the others. The chorus and that other mare rose up on their own crystal platforms until they were level with the orb, and with Blockbuster. As the orchestra busily built up to the final chorus, Trixie settled into her seat, an enormous grin splitting her face, able to tell from the mounting power behind the fluttering horns that this would be a good one.

There was a knot in River's chest, and for a long while it had pulled tighter with every day. Trapped her and choked her. Drove the breath out of her lungs. Made her feel like a cage had been closed around her every waking moment of every day, getting tighter and tighter, until she was at the breaking point. But now, with the music and the chorus of ponies at her tail lending their voices to hers, the knot was cut in two and fell away. It couldn't bind her any longer. It absolved her misery and gave her the strength to stand up tall. Solara tried to turn the unicorn race against each other, so they would suffer in loneliness, but it hadn't worked. River had the collective strength of the unicorn race at her side, a mighty tempest that cut through the evil thoughts in her head like a transmission emerging from the tortured static of dead air. If 'I'm a unicorn and was born to lead' was her life statement, this was the exclamation point it surely needed.

“Oh, when the river runs free....” she sang, one hoof raised to the sky. Her voice harmonized with the steamroll of the brass section until that last drawn-out syllable, “free” filled everywhere and everything. And what a sweet sound it was. All she ever wanted was to be free.

The splendid stallion Ash lent his voice to hers, singing over her final syllable: “And when the magic shines brightly....”

And then, as one, in a quick cadence over the booming beating of the drums and brass, they declared, “We can change the face of the world that she would keep for her plaything.”

Solara could ruin their bodies and cloud their minds, but she couldn't get rid of the self-sufficient truths underpinning reality: freedom; happiness; the hierarchy of society. Those she could never destroy, try as she might, because they were always there for ponies to see them, if only they opened their eyes. The tyrant could only abuse those ponies to the point they couldn't see what was right and true, until they accepted her degrading illusion as something real. She had to warp their view of reality, because she was powerless to warp reality itself. She, River, had the power to change the world back, to tear off her veil and reveal the truth.

Not just the power, but also the duty to her race.

From her crystal platform, River reached a foreleg out to Ash, willing her soul to bridge the divide. “We won't let her tell us....”

Face creased with agony, he sang back, “We should live in service....”

River reared back and pressed her forehooves to her chest, while Ash stomped angrily. They turned to the watchers and sang along with the chorus, “She can beat one lone pony down but when we stand as one uprising—!”

Inspiration kindled a fire in her soul. In a fit of passion, she wailed over the tremendous wall of sound: “Oh, yeah, she will find....!”

The chorus crashed down around them like some ancient thunder spirit, filling the room with the shockwave of stuttering brass and fluttering string. The music exploded in a torrent of uplifting chords. The sun orb blew apart in a spectacular pryotechnic display. Only the unicorns remained, lifted high over everything on their crystal platforms.

Their voices called: “Let the way of nature be free as it breaks through the lies she constructed--”

BOOOOOM!

A tremendous explosion tore through the auditorium. The illusion collapsed around Twilight Sparkle. She scrambled out of River's skin just as quick as she scrambled out of her seat. She tried to jump to her hooves but got tangled up and twisted her fetlock painfully. The ponies in front of her, all the way to the stage, likewise screamed and shouted at the sight of the broken sun orb and the lighting rig that had held it up crashing down. Darkness and smoke enveloped them, except for the sparks shooting across the stage like a storm of lightning and rain. The pegasus sitting next to her flared a wing open right in Twilight's face, slapping her in the cheek. Twilight shoved it roughly aside as she dislodged her leg and stood up in the aisle.

But something gave her pause. It was odd; the chorus, although much closer to the explosion, still worked at sustaining their last note. And the ponies in the orchestra pit weren't moving at all. They just sat in their seats, like they were waiting for something....

And then the spotted face of the moon descended down from the sky, where the sun orb had been, shining a pale light that revealed the unicorns right where they had been, floating on their crystals in the sky. Sure enough, the orchestra and the chorus let out a heavenly major chord as the moon took the sun's place. Everything became clear to Twilight: it was only special effects. Stagecraft, that was all. That old breezy magic. The falling light rig must've been guided down by wires. An illusion, a fake, designed to give the audience a thrill.

The audience breathed a collective sigh and settled back into their seats. Twilight sat back on her haunches, a wave of relief coursing through her. Scattered memories of Wizzley World, out in Los Pegasus, came to her. Going there with her family as a little filly, wandering through the colorful castles and the quaint Mane Street of Equestriatown. The whole musical reminded her of Wizzley World, in fact: a perfect, magical world where things were always perfect and beautiful. Sure, a pony had to pay a little bit for the privilege of delighting in a worldly paradise, but nothing was free. Only Griffons and Solara Victa thought otherwise. Everypony had to pull their fair share. She remembered riding the roller coasters, her little heart hammering in her chest as the little metal car climbed to the top of that first, big hill. Soon it would plunge groundward, giving her a mighty thrill her regular life could never provide. They were fake thrills, because the car stayed on its rails, but they were convincing fakes, and they broke her out of her boring life well enough.

The agonizing wait, though, it was very nearly too much....until Shining Armor's hoof closed over her fetlock as she tightly wrapped it around the safety bar. He gave her a wink and a smile as the wind streamed through his mane, letting her know he was there for her. That her parents were waiting at the end of the ride.

A chill came over her.

All three were waiting for her. At the very end.

She wiped the tears away and tried to bury herself in the musical once again. But the memory haunted her still. That old memory, dredged up from the past. She told herself, Stop thinking about it. Just focus on the musical. But how could she? The separation between audience and actors had been shattered and trampled over by that last stunt. She would always be wary about it happening again. She was forced to watch the musical as a musical, not a self-contained world. In fact, it was coming apart at the scenes, revealing its fictitious nature. The orchestra lost cohesion as individual instruments played arpeggios and countermelodies, forming an untamed and feral, freeform stampede of music that barreled over the audience. And through it all, the moon shone over the world of the stage, bathing everypony in its pale, cool light.

“When I was a foal, my mother said,” River sang in tandem with Ash, who sang the same line with 'father' in place of 'mother'. Then they sang, “'Ash, let the magic shine brightly!'” and, “'River, let the river flow free!'” before both finishing in unison, “And you will see so clearly the way things ought to be!”

These harmonies are spectacular, Twilight thought, though her feelings were detached, intellectual, and passionless. They really sell the idea of these two ponies being of like minds.

As the music rampaged into a climax, the two leads ad-libbed over its churning, frothing aural tempest, crying out many an “Oh, yeah!” and “You will see!” and riffing on previous lines. Then, from the chaos, the orchestra swelled into a cohesive whole again as they powered into the final, harmonious chord. The chorus sang:

“Let the river....

“Let the river....

“Let the river....flow....freeeeeeee!”

Like a tempest, the music climaxed and the stage lights strobed. Then they went out and plunged the hall into darkness as the red curtain dropped over the stage. In front of Twilight, the audience went wild, leaping out of their seats, whistling, pounding their hooves against the carpeted floor. As the stage crews busied themselves reassembling the scenery for the next scene, a mare with light green hair and a bright golden coat stepped between the curtains. The remnants of the curling mist licked at her hooves. When she turned her face up to the audience, her expression was grave and foreboding. The prologue, Twilight assumed. There to set the stage for the rest of the musical.

“'Who is Lily Gild'?” she asked.

The burning stage lights beat down on Trotten Pullet. She crouched on her mark, hidden from the audience by bales of fabricated hay. A bright and poppy tune, driven by a twinkling piano and staccato brass bleats that bounced raucously between octaves, arose from the orchestra pit. The strings and woodwinds tweeted airily to the seesawing beat, cutting between chords just a touch too quickly, threatening to sweep her away in the swagger. But she had to resist; her cue was barreling towards her like a rocket plane, and half of successful comedy rested in absolute control of body language.

“Somepony tell me what I should do,” Fresnel Glow sang over the rollicking beat, “All these earth ponies are driving me crazy! Lounging around while on the clock, sowing their seeds so haphazard and lazy.”

Ha, Trot thought. I've never slacked off a day in my life.

“Almost like they've no recognition of the headache they give me,” Fresnel sang, “as I try and get this farmstead in the market competitively.”

But Trot was enslaved to the demands of the audience. They wanted her to be Trotten Pullet, and their wallets paid her salary, meager as it was. So Pullet she would be, capering and cavorting like they wanted her to. You have it good here, she told herself. Cynic wrote a whole song, just for you! So stop being Trotten Pullet and become Brownie. She'd never think something like that. She would be thinking of food. She briefly mused at the irony that she had to work so hard to put on the act that she didn't work hard at all.

The chorus drew to a close and her cue drew close. Out on the stage, another verse began, this one structured like a conversation. In a rapid, clipped delivery timed to the music, Fresnel asked, “Where, oh where can that lazy pony be? I do declare that it's a quarter to three!”

She heard the sound of Knight Errol's hooves as he stepped forward. His wings fluttered as he ruffled them nervously, just like she'd seen countless times during blocking. Except he wasn't Knight Errol anymore; now he was Fayton, the chief pegasus overseer to River Wilde. “Have no fear, miss,” he declared, “I'll find her and quick!”

“Don't be afraid to show her the stick!” River Wilde finished.

This is it, Trot thought, tensing as she slipped into character, throwing Brownie over her own self like a cloak. Behind her, she heard Fayton slink in her direction. To him she was perfectly visible behind all the bales of hay, but the audience didn't know that, and this was all for their benefit. All part of the act, the theatrical illusion. The machinery behind the scenes, keeping everything running, wasn't for them to know. Only what their eyes told them mattered.

“Hey there, Brownie, now tell me where you're at?” Fayton called out. The orchestra played short, sharp string plucks in sync with his comically exaggerated hoofsteps. This was a funny scene, after all. So very funny. “You know how Miss River gets when she's upset! So come on out and let's get ourselves to work, and hurry please, Brownie, before she goes berserk!” he yelped.

She knew from rehearsal what came next: Fayton, by some divine intuition (in truth, he'd read the script), turned and trained his eye on the stacked hay bales, an expression of suspicion and understanding flaring to life in his eyes and on his face. His hooves were light and quiet on the stage. The music dipped down to a light patter in sympathy with Fayton as he crept towards her. She felt a painful pull on her tail as Fayton dragged her roughly away from her hiding spot, but she expected that. An earth pony didn't get very far in the theater if they didn't acquiesce to some slapstick. Become, she thought, filling her mind with the character she had rigorously constucted while pouring over the show's book. She commanded the machine of her body to shut off the instinct to free herself or flinch in pain. Pretending to snore very loudly, she used her imagination and simulated a dream. When Fayton let go, she let herself go limp and thump to the floor. The first inklings of laughter came from the audience. They sprang up again, louder, when she let a thin dribble of drool spill out of her mouth.

“You lazy little pony, it's time to get working,” Fayton sang. He stood over her, trying to sound firm and bold and failing completely. She knew his practiced expression would be one of barely-concealed panic. “As your overseer you know I despise all this shirking. What about all the seeds you're being paid to sow? These fields won't till themselves, just so you know!”

“Fayton,” River called from across the stage, “have you found that good-for-nothing pony?”

“Yes, River, but I'm afraid that she's, you see....not very willing for me to get up and rouse.”

Like a banshee, River's voice cut through the air: “Are you a pegasus or are you a mouse?!”

Fayton's voice became louder as he turned back to Brownie. He raised his volume and put on the act of acting tough to conceal his meek, yet earnest, core. “Brownie, now I'm afraid I really must insist, you get yourself together and in the midst, of your fellow earth ponies working the fields, oh so nice!”

Trot let her mouth loll open, and the drool dribble out. She murmured sleepily, “Jus lemme finish dis here....big ol' bowl of rice.”

“Brownie!” he shouted over the peals of laughter.

Like a marionette, she leaped to her hooves. The orchestra played a sprightly, uplifting hit. She feigned panic and shouted, “Boy howdy!” in surprise. She spun around, making her eyes go wide and confused, controlling the well-oiled machinery of her body expertly. She made her legs collide with each other and fell, face-first, to the floor. The orchestra played a downward counterpart to its upward hit as she took her pratfall. The laughter rolled over the stage, a wall of sound that washed over her like a wave and warmed her heart. They loved Trotten Pullet so, so much. And she, for her part, loved them too, for giving her this life. All it took was just a little bit of laughter. Just a bit.

“Good mornin', Miss Rivvah,” she sang along to the music as she got up off the stage.

As River stomped over to her, she called out, “Wipe that grin off your face!”

Brownie turned to the audience, her eyes still wide in surprise, and lifted her forelegs up in a sweeping shrug. She moved with exaggerated slowness, communicating her sluggishness with each and every motion. “Is dere sumtin' wrong?”

“You're slacking in the race!” River shouted, incredulous.

With a shrug, Brownie sang, “Wat race is dis? Ah didn't know!” Her two great passions in life were sleeping and eating, and if there was some kind of race going on, she wanted no part of it.

River twisted away from Brownie and pressed her hooves to her temples. Agony twisted her face into stark horror. “The race to keep pace! To keep up with demand. It's that old eternal chase. Staying profitable--”

“Golly Miss Rivvah, about dat, I ain't know a ting, and in races Ah always fall flat. So excuse me if Ah....” Brownie gave a wide, eager to please grin, trying to placate this mare who was fussing herself into a headache. “....jes sit dis one out.”

River's aimed a look of pure contempt and loathing at Brownie. Fuming, she sang, “You'll do what I say, you lazy lout!”

Then River turned back to the audience. The orchestra went into the second part of the number, a more frentic riff on the first half, with sharp stabs of dissonance to punctuate River's mounting frenzy. Brownie, unperturbed, relaxed against the hay bales. For her, life was always good. As she watched her employer run herself ragged with stress and worry, she wished River would see that too.

“I've got piles of taxes and they don't come cheap,” River sang to the audience, her voice effortlessly gliding into full-on singing. She trotted all across the confines of the stage, turning sharply and twisting around as she came up to the edges. “Solara's parasites will throw me into the ditch in a heap! Evicted from the land I was born on, a laughingstock they'll cast scorn on.”

Meanwhile, behind the facade of Brownie, Trot took a moment to go over her next few lines, while the spotlight was firmly fixed on Fresnel Glow. On the stage in her mind, she went through the motions her body would soon perform. The intricate rhythms and cadences needed to go off exactly, or else she'd pull the whole show down.

“....all parasites, each and every one,” Fresnel sang, “bowing to the mare behind the sun.”

My cue, Trotten Pullet thought.

“But de sun makes de plants go blossom and bloom!” Brownie sang, waving a dismissive hoof at River. On the street, talking back to a unicorn like that would get her locked up by the Civil Force or the Midnight Guard. But this was the stage, where such a contemptible act was tolerated, even encouraged. It was all part of the show, after all.

“Lies she spreads so she can weave her loom,” River countered, snarling with condescension, “creating her tapestry of mighty lies, snaring us all tight like helpless flies.”

The music quickened its tempo, shaving off some of the extra notes that gave flavor to the chord progression, until there was just a smooth flowing waterfall of chords that went in lockstep with the tighter banter between Brownie and River in this musical passage.

With an exaggerated shrug, Brownie sang, “Ah dunno if Ah believe all dat.”

“You? You're an earth pony, with the intellect of a gnat, in no way fit for philosophy!”

“Ah'm so hurt Ah could sho'ly weep.”

“But in spite of your lapses, you're lucky you're cheap, much cheaper than my taxes. So if you'd like to get gabby, you just won't get paid!”

Trotten visualized the mechanism of her body from the outside, concentrating on making her eyes go full circle. They stared on River, went to the ground, then to the upper reaches of her mind, finally turned to the sky, until they finally returned to River. The audience roared with laughter at Trot's pitch-perfect comedic timing. “Golly, when ya put it dat way,” she sang, breaking out into a smile, “Ahm happy ta do what you said!”

Look at her, Twilight thought in disgust. Little knives pricked her skull as the cider left her system. Look at Trotten Pullet rolling around on the grass when she should be working. It's their fault the dream of Canterlot isn't coming true. The degenerates. All of them. Her head was aching now. If it hadn't been for that little earth pony in the supermarket tripping me up, I never would've taken that bottle. She made me do it. They smile to your face, but they're always plotting away behind those eyes.

As the useless pegasus tried and failed to catch Trotten Pullet on the stage, Twilight thought, If it weren't for the earth ponies, Shining Armor would still be alive. Their little Winter Rising was what created this security crackdown. They gave the pegasi all the power. It's their fault my brother is....

Dead.

Tears streaming down her muzzle, she watched the degenerate earth pony stab River Wilde in the back and turn the unicorn's best laid plans to so much worthless dirt. Just how the earth ponies liked it. Oh, but every time they do, there are the pegasi, pretending to do something about it.... she thought. I hate them all. The earth ponies and the pegasi, they're in this together, I know they are.

Twilight's eyes flicked to the pegasus behind her. Look at her. I bet she's thinking about the best way to destroy me.

From the moment Fluttershy's eyes had first rested on Fayton, the pegasus overseer of River Wilde's plantation had captured her attention and captivated her so much that it seemed like nothing else in the world existed. At last, here was somepony like her that she could relate to. A giddy thrill shot through her when she saw the all-too-familiar expression on his face and in his body language: he was a reluctant pegasus who put his bravest face on every morning and tried to do his duty the best he could. A huge grin stretched across her muzzle as Fayton crashed around trying to catch Trotten Pullet, who hopped around utterly oblivious and in constant danger of getting into an accident. A zippy xylophone melody underscored her capering.

As Trotten took a hop, a skip, and a jump over a stack of barrels, Fayton took to wing and raced forward to push the rack of rusty pitchforks away before she fell onto them. He succeeded, but crashed to the ground hard. He had just pushed himself up when the blissfully unaware Trot land on his head, and then she skipped off and finally left the stage. The curtains dropped on the farmstead, leaving Fayton sprawled out on the stage. A hoofful of pegasi, all buff and agile, strolled across the stage and sang a boisterous work song that sounded almost like a military march. As they passed Fayton they casually gazed down at him, contempt and sadistic glee on their faces.

Fluttershy, though, cringed in sympathy for that downtrodden pegasus. Her heart crossing the auditorium to him. She wanted to fly right down there beside him and give him a nuzzle. And....maybe a kiss, too. Her heart beat faster and faster as she gazed at the way his sandy mane artfully fell across his brow. He pushed himself up off the ground, and there was something so effortlessly noble about his failure. And moreso, his determination to keep trying to please River, even though earlier she told him to his face that she only hired him because she was too broke to afford somepony better.

Fayton tried to keep pace with the other pegasi as they marched across stage, and he tried to join in their song, but he constantly lagged behind them all. He stayed that way until they left the stage, trailing after them.

Poor Fayton, she thought, doing his best with all the other pegasus ponies silently criticizing him all the time, telling him he's worthless with their stares. And poor Trot, who's just a little scatterbrained. All earth ponies are. They need us to watch out for them, and that's all Fayton is doing: watching out for her. Letting her be the best earth pony she can possibly be, stopping her from hurting herself or others. And no matter how hard it gets, he never, ever stops trying.

The curtains rose on the next song, and the plantation's yard had been transformed into a busy marketplace. Sadly, Fayton was nowhere to be seen, and instead it was River Wilde who made her way through the bustle, singing a song about how wonderful it was when ponies came together in the spirit of commerce. Fluttershy couldn't join in her optimism; she was too busy wondering when they would get back to Fayton.

As the toneless and tuneless parade of forced humor and shallow sentiment marched on, Rarity found her attention wandering. She wondered if the others socialites in the booth could see how bored she was, and what they would think about it. What sort of gossip would they come up with?

But this show. How could she keep focused on it?

Cynic aimed for a crowdpleaser and he missed. He completely and totally missed, she thought, mourning over the stallion who'd sprouted all her favorite musicals from the garden of genius that was his mind. This is so bad, I'd dare to call it satire. But it's so earnest. Is that part of the satire, or is he truly being earnest? He's always been rather, well, cynical, which is what makes the moments of restrained sentiment in his other works that much more powerful. But here, he's laying everything all out. There's no art. It's just a forced, artificial musical. He obviously didn't write this to please himself.

It's vulgar, she thought, finally wrapping her mind around the core of the issue. His other works are so artistic, and my own artistic sensibilities respond to that, despite us working in different mediums. We enjoy the challenge of creation, and using our creations to surprise and delight others. There's no artistry to this, no challenge. Not when every character just thunders out what they're feeling. It's "for the masses", crude and artless and meant to be consumed as smoothly and easily as possible.

Is that what Cynic is trying to say? Is he trying to make us, his true fans, dig deeper into the alienating effect of the musical by the very nature of its forced emotion?

....or maybe it's just unintentionally awful. Happens to the best of us, I suppose.

Wait, something's happening.

She returned her eyes to the stage as the orchestra suddenly stopped playing, bringing the song to an abrupt halt. River Wilde looked around the market as two ponies detached themselves from the crowd and nimbly shuffled towards her.

“Hey, have ya heard?” a mare asked, in a singsong voice.

“Heard what?” River responded in confusion.

“The word!” the mare said instantly, to keep the beat going.

The other pony, a stallion, said, “She hasn't heard? Absurd!”

“Become part of the herd,” the mare said, grinning at River.

The drums began to snap a slinky rhythm, with plenty of hissing hi-hat. A low, thrumming beat descended from the horn section, which the two ponies circling River moved to.

“Have ya heard the word of a mare most intelligent?” the stallion whispered.

'Most intelligent'? Rarity thought, rolling her eyes. In this play? Fat chance!

When River turned to look at him, the mare jumped behind her and whispered into her ear, “She won't talk down to ya or make ya wanna lament!”

As the two ponies continued circling around River Wilde, they turned to the assembled crowd and began to include them in the song.

“She's a ponyist with a knack for saying what's what,” the stallion said, pointing to them.

“On yer face she'll put a smile, in your gait a strut,” the mare finished, with a strut to demonstrate.

“She won't drag ya through the mud like Solara wants....”

“....Or make ya feel like a dirt-eater down in the ruts.”

Rarity's brow drew together in confusion. This is just distasteful now. I don't remember Cynic ever being especially harsh towards earth ponies before. In fact, nopony writing musicals today has ever captured the foibles and flaws of the upper echelons of unicorn society half as well as he does. But this racial snobbery doesn't suit him at all. Some of the hardest workers I know are earth ponies! Where does he get off casually slandering them like this?

The stallion continued, holding his forelegs out in a sweeping, graceful gesture of inclusion, “Hers is the highest celebration of unicorns around....”

“....And it's got none of that 'love lowly ponies' sound,” the mare sang, shaking her head as she brushed past the rim of the crowd.

“It's a kind of word that makes ya proud to be horned,” the stallion said, traipsing back to River and slinging a foreleg over her back.

“In this crazy world where your horn gets ya scorned,” the mare sang as she embraced River's other side, gently flicking her horn.

The stallion swept a forehoof out towards the audience, his eyes alighted with the distant horizon. “She writes the kind of tales about minds most superior....”

The mare mirrored his movement, and between them both River looked very confused. “All mares and stallions who are proud to stand up for....”

The stallion stared at the side of River's head. “The right to be free of the jealousy of lesser minds....”

The mare did the same, making River look nervously from one to the other.

“The right to be free of the jealousy of lesser kinds....”

Together, the two ponies gave River a sudden spin and sent her twirling towards the front of the stage.

The stallion declared, “And this brilliance springs from the mind most skilled....”

The music cut out suddenly as the mare finished, “....of a certain great mare by the name of Miss Lily Gild!”

Once River stopped wobbling and regained her balance, she shook her head and faced the audience. “Well, uh, that sounds terrific,” she said nervously. “But....who is this Lily Gild?”

Behind her, the two ponies shared a grin. Then they faced her and the audience, nodded, and said in unison: “We're glad you asked.” They began to strut again, creeping up behind River. “Who.... is....Lily Gild?” they chanted. “Who....is....Lily Gild? In a world so unfulfilled, we ask 'who....is....Lily Gild?'”

The drums came back in, with much more bite this time. The thrumming brass became more intense as well, and had more swing to it. The circle of ponies in the marketplace turned to each other and started to chatter to one another excitedly. Some looked at the two ponies and joined them in a chorus that rose over the babble.

“That's the question we've all heard sweeping the land,” the two ponies sang. “Everypony asks just who is this reclusive firebrand? She's a mare who knows the way to live in civility, so unapologetic about her success and ability. Her books fill unicorns with a righteous sense of ethics, with each new philosophy from her bag of tricks. All Solara's hack writers and mouthpieces unskilled, could learn a thing or two of truth from Miss Lily Gild!”

Pity she's not here to write a better musical, Rarity thought, supremely bored.

Trixie slumped down in her seat listlessly, waiting for her beautiful Blockbuster to come out again and upstage all these wastes of space.

Chapter 13

Onstage, the cast were singing, 'Who is Lily Gild?' but 'Who cares?' was all Sweetie Belle had to say to that. This whole night was annoying her to no end. It wasn't fair. Rarity was her sister, and sisters were supposed to listen to sisters. But here was Rarity, the worst sister in the world, refusing to meet her at the airport, making her wait in the theater, and now ignoring her completely. Sweetie Belle almost preferred being back at the academy, even with all the other stupid fillies. It was better than sitting so close to Rarity, and yet being ignored. She fidgeted in her seat and huffed in boredom, waiting for the night to end so she could go back to Rarity's penthouse. The music faded into a drone, over which the ponies in the darkened booth started whispering to each other. Sweetie Belle didn't care about that anymore than she cared about the show, but they were so close she couldn't help but listen.

In the row in front of her, one asked, “Was this Lily Gild a real pony?”

“I don't know,” the stallion replied. “In Thornhoof's Brief History of Canterlot, it says some tracts appeared about the same time Solara was vanquished. Cryptic pamphlets filled with vague hints about a new spiritual revolution in Equestria. They were all signed 'L.G.'”

A third pony whispered, “I read those pamphlets were slander devised by Solara.”

"You're wrong," a fourth said.

"How so?"

"Slander is spoken. When something is printed, it's libel."

“Weren't the Ponicrucians against both princesses? I read they were scholars who visited the Varnetian Academy in Unicornia and came back committed republicans.”

“All the better the Empire shut that place down.”

“The Academy was closed down over a thousand years ago, long before the Empire was founded. Probably before the Ponicrucians existed, even.”

“Nopony knows who they were, let alone if they existed at the same time as the Varnetian Academy."

"Those pamphlets could've been written hundreds of years before Solara fell, for all we know.”

“I read Starswirl was a part of the movement, so that dates it.”

“I read that he wrote a scathing indictment of it.”

“What was it called?”

“Uh, 'A Treatise on....' something, I don't remember. I think it was a lost work.”

“No, it wasn't. I remember what you're talking about. But wasn't that him railing against a literary society that savaged one of his books?”

“But if he was a Ponicrucian, wouldn't it make perfect sense that he writes his indictment in code?”

“Well, anyway, I think we can all agree on one thing: Cynic DeKey may be using the Ponicrucians for inspiration, but it's obvious he's getting in a few cheap shots at a certain present-day author.”

“Cheap shot?” the first pony asked, somewhat offended. “This is rather faithful, actually.”

“They've been delivering a monologue about Lily Gild through song for the last...." He checked his pocketwatch. "....ten minutes. If being a thundering bore is faithful, excuse me if I lapse.”

“The Wealth of the Wellspring is a cornerstone of modern economic philosophy--!”

“Shush,” the mare sitting next to him said. “Jet, just watch the show.”

Sweetie Belle realized that nopony had cared about the ponies chatting to each other. So why couldn't she talk to Rarity, then? She turned to her sister and tugged the sleeve of her dress. “Rarity?”

Rarity, lost in thought, became aware of Sweetie Belle for what felt like the first time. “Don't be rude,” she said, glancing around at all the well-dressed ponies sharing the booth. She absently fiddled with her mane, fixing it and shaping it as she often did when she was about to wade through a sea of paparazzi. “Other ponies are trying to listen.”

Sweetie Belle knew that was a lie, but Rarity hadn't been paying attention to what was going on around her. As usual.

“But I want to talk to you about school--”

“I'm not going to tell you again, Sweetie. Shush.”

Sweetie Belle snorted and whipped her head away from her sister. She thought, She cares more about the other ponies and how she'll look in dumb newspapers than she does about me. That was the final insult; she couldn't bear this any longer. Slipping out of her seat, Sweetie Belle declared, much too loudly, “I'm going to the bathroom.” When Filthy got up to follow her, she declared, “Filthy, stay.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said quickly, planting his haunches back on the seat.

She stomped out of the booth and into the hallway that wrapped around the balconies. She walked past the velvet curtains and marble columns lining the walls, under the eyes of busts of old playwrights. The occasional staff member or theatergoer she passed gave her a brief glance, and then walked on. She kept her eyes peeled for a secluded corner until she noticed an unassuming door with 'Employees Only' on the front. It looked promising. She took a quick peek around, making sure nopony else was in this stretch of corridor, then bent the handle down and swung the door open to reveal a dark storage closet lined with metal shelves. She slipped in, closed the door behind her to keep the prying eyes away, and nestled herself between a stack of cardboard boxes and the far wall. From out of the folds of her dress she pulled a portable radio.

What a joke this night was turning out to be. She had missed the newest episode of her favorite radio show because she had to attend her stupid academy. And then, she missed the afternoon repeat because Rarity wanted her to come to Canterlot. And yet, despite Sweetie's sacrifice, now that she was at the theater Rarity had done nothing but shush her and ignore her, make her feel like she was nothing. She never wanted me to come, she only wanted the dress I'm wearing to be seen. Sweetie Belle refused to take it anymore. Why bother sitting next to a sister she tried her hardest to impress - in vain - when she could go to a place where her friends were waiting for her?

She tuned the radio to the station to catch the evening repeat of her show, while thinking, Rarity probably won't even notice I'm gone.

The last thing in the world she expected was that the clog of anger and rage aching inside her chest would suddenly swing around and turn into a sudden knifelike piercing that cut her to the core. Make her feel fragile and hollow and easily broken, so easily it made her tremble and shake. Her eyes itched and burned, ready for the flow of tears. Her breath came in ragged gasps. She couldn't get enough air down past the knot in her chest. The mix of fury and sorrow filled her up until she was at the breaking point. She was about to shatter, and she hated feeling so powerless.

The tuning knob clicked into place. The soft static of the radio gave way to an advertisement. Sweetie Belle sat in the shadows and waited for the familiar voices of her dearest childhood friends to come on, waited for the moment she could close her eyes and drift away on the radio waves to the world of The Princess's Pride. Waited for those magic words to sound:

“Once upon a time, in the magical land of Gauleonia, there ruled a wise king named Charlemane....”

With the shade drawn, only a sliver of light could come through the window, but Apple Bloom preferred it that way. She huddled in the corner, staring into the darkness, which she could paint whatever she wanted onto. Any place, any time, any thing, any pony. No more being forced to stare in horror at the real world. She didn't have to believe in it anymore, not here, not by herself. There would come a time, later, when she would have to face it, but any moment she could put that off was a moment well-spent.

On her cheap, beat-up turntable, the record spun endlessly. The needle was still in the end groove and sent harsh crackles out of the speakers. She didn't want to get up. There was a weight on her back, an enormous weight that came with being Apple Bloom, but her new record wouldn't flip itself over and play the second side on her own. She wearily pushed herself to her hooves. Moonlight gleamed off the revolving grooves, cut into the X-ray of a unicorn's broken muzzle. She pushed the arm up, flipped the record over and put it back down, then replaced the arm on the outside groove of side B.

She settled back down on the floor and waited for the new chapter of The Forgers of the Future to start.

“There is a spectre haunting Canterlot,” the record proclaimed, barely audible over the crackling, “the spectre of we who shrug off our chains and forge the future....”

Posters of Captain Daring-Do covered Scootaloo's room, concealing the starkness of the pale yellow walls. She paced back and forth, wings itching and fluttering. As a pony of the skies, walls went against everything she was. They made her earthbound and useless, and kept her from her freedom. I'm not useless! she thought harshly. But everywhere she turned, the walls waited for her. In every direction, left and right and back and forward and above and below, they blocked her way. This whole city was full of walls, some standing a hundred stories tall, with walls and walls and more walls inside them. Why wasn't she flying away from them? Her heart wanted desperately to know. Her brain told it that her wings did not work, but the burning flame in her heart would not listen. It only cried out to be fed.

She looked at the clock. Just one more minute! The radio on her nighttable, though silent, was ready and waiting to speak to her, and she couldn't take it any longer. She marched across the room to turn it on. Captain Daring Do was her new favorite show, and because it was meant for teenagers and adults, there wasn't any of that baby stuff. It was totally mature and awesome. She flicked the radio's power switch.

“--soaring through the skies,” it said.

Shocked, Scootaloo recoiled away from the speaker grille. Was it trying to mock her?

“Raptor Airways,” the advertisement said. "Fly the eternal night with us."

It's just an ad, Scootaloo. That's all.

“Promotional consideration for Captain Daring-Do has been provided by Raptor Airways,” the continuity announcer said. “When Daring-Do flies, she flies Raptor! When we last left our intrepid heroine, custodian of the secret documents that could save the Empire of the Moon from destruction, she had just set off across the treacherous desert....”

Scootaloo smiled to herself, laid on the rug, and settled down to listen. The last episode, where Captain Do had unmasked a traitor inside the Equestrian Army, had been fantastic, but it ended with her plane being shot down and about to crash into the Changeling desert, far away from the hoofful of good Changelings who had helped Equestria win the war with the Griffons. Would she make it to safety?

Scootaloo both loved and hated cliffhangers like those, but they sure did get her to tune in the next week. She had a feeling this episode would be even better than the last one.

Had the queen's crusade been worth all this?

Darkness and pain were all Pupar knew. One shrouded his good eye, the other consumed the empty socket where his second eye used to be, and seeped in through the cracks where the chitin on his leg had been broken. Mercifully, though, the noise had stopped. He didn't know why, but he wasn't about to question a bit of good fortune thrown his way, the first in a long while. He was so far away from the Great Mother, but sometimes he still felt her, so close to him. Was this her work?

His ears, bruised and battered by the pony music, had finally stopped ringing and he could almost hear again. But there wasn't anything to hear, not in the darkened interrogation room. Nor was there anything to see. Out of his good eye, that is. The other eye, the one he'd had since he was hatched, would never see anything again. He gingerly touched the dried liquid caked around his eye socket, then swallowed down the urge to vomit. Perhaps the darkness was better; being able to see would only make him realize how much he'd taken his sense of sight for granted.

He started to feel strangely lonely. He had one eye and nothing to see. He had ears and nothing to hear. The music at least made him feel like the ponies outside the door were paying attention to him. That they existed, even. Now he couldn't even he sure of that. Maybe nothing but darkness and pain existed. Maybe all of life was just a fever dream in this abyss, and he was all alone, totally and completely. The only being in the universe. Certainly it was an appealing notion at the moment.

This pony world was so alien to him. All those imposing steel buildings, so far removed from the desert he'd known for most of his life. The polar opposite of the Great Mother desert. Where she was soft and curvaceous and warm, this city was hard-edged and cold. There was no real love here. Not enough to sustain him, at least. So why was he even here? Why was he in this place?

A great chasm of despair opened inside him, one that threatened to swallow him up and bury him in a black hole of yawning horror. It was his duty to the hive, the queen had told him. All for the good of the tribes. The ponies, she said, had manipulated the brood into fighting their war against the Griffons. The brood did it gladly; they had lived next to those filthy mongrels since history began, and it would've been harder not to hate them for the cullings, when the Griffons rode out and hunted the brood down for sport.

But the desert had been kind to them, even if it was a harsh kind of kindness. The tribe had been forced to make their own niches in the inhospitable terrain. Wellsprings of life, carved into the enormous monoliths rising from the sands. The great pull of community had brought them all together and united them as one hive, one tribe, even as the raids intensified. Oh, the Griffons said it was because the brood sneaked into their cities in disguise and stole their love and lovers, but ever since Pupar was a broodling he had heard all the stories about the Griffons being born liars, and he was smart enough not to trust them. Besides, even a larva could see the hole in the Griffon's claim: how could the tribe have struck first if the Great Mother Desert had only given them the gift to save them from the hatred and scorn of the Griffons?

Never trust a Griffon, the tribe had told him all his life. But they never said the same about ponies. The war with the Griffons had ended long before he was hatched, but he had seen on occasion those strange creatures of wild colors standing in the hollowed-out cave of the communal hall. They were dressed in finely-stitched uniforms, all identical and all identically blasted by the sand and wind. Standing erect, the ponies held their heads and ears high and proud, unfazed by the desert. Pupar had been a bit awed by them. What luxury they must come from, he thought, what a wondrous world that had given them this poise and attitude. The ponies' leader offered to help all the hives in their eternal war against the Griffons, and the old queen had blithely accepted. It was a sign from on high, she said, from the Great Mother Desert.

Ha! What a joke.

And after when the Griffon Kingdom crumbled and the ponies rolled into the land, with their settlements, the new queen had stood up and cursed the old one. The communal cave fell silent. The old queen, whose chitin had grown cracked and worn with age, creaked as she turned to face the new queen, shining and strong.

“Those ponies were not sent by the Great Mother to aid us,” the new queen said. “They used us to harry the Griffons so they could steal everything they owned. Soon, they'll come for us, too.”

The old queen had offered empty words about trusting the desert, but the new queen ignored them. By then, Pupar was older and wiser, and when the new queen left to form her own hive, he had followed her. But she had not led them away from the ponies; no she led them straight into Equestria. Their lives would not be easy, she warned them, but neither would life under the hooves of the invaders. The old tribe had grown lazy and indolent after the culling of the Griffons, and the ponies were content to let them get fat and weak, ignoring the harsh lessons the desert taught them. When the ponies came, the old hive would crumble and accept it meekly.

And yet. Here he was, years later, and the ponies had not done a thing to the desert. Their tanks and planes had not tread on the sacred sands, had not blown the hives to pieces, had not crushed the old tribes under their hooves. In fact, they seemed to be more worried about him, him and his queen sneaking into pony society in disguise.

"The zebra have bloodied their muzzles," the new queen had said. "They have no stomach for war right now, but it will not last. Conquest is in their blood."

But maybe she was wrong, after all. Maybe she led them all astray. He even heard her contemplating attacking first, to goad the ponies into invading the Great Mother. A harsh lesson to the old hive and a call for what warriors remained to rise up. She had prophesied war, and now she would rather start one herself than be proven wrong. The prospect terrified him, and he longed for the desert, for home, for the old tribe.

So why was Pupar resisting the ponies so much? Why did he continue to fight the new queen's war? Why not just tell the ponies everything? But as soon as he doubted himself, the answer came to him, shining like a light in the darkness:

Because of her.

Imaga had been part of the same brood as him. They had both followed the new queen out of the real desert and into this desert of the soul, to fight for the future of their race. He had loved her since the day he had learned the word itself. He felt a giddy thrill at the way her chitin gleamed in the light. The speculara of her wings as she spread them. Her graceful, slender fangs. She was in this city too, somewhere, though he didn't know where. All he knew was that it was somewhere high up, a position that needed to be protected and concealed from the ponies above all else. The lives of the new queen's tribe were a neverending string of things that could not be said. He had never told Imaga how he felt, never asked her to come away with him and start a new hive somewhere far, far away from both the ponies and the new queen.

I should've told her. We could have left them to their 'war'.

But Imaga was gone now, hidden somewhere he couldn't know, her beautiful face hidden beneath a disgusting pony's skin and coat.

Sing to me, O great mother,

Of the hero of thesands

Who did tread most far and wide,

Against his heart, distant lands.

Give to me the grace divine

To sing of all the danger

Waiting for his weary heart

When he wandered, a stranger.

Pupar wondered why the ode had come to him know, a long time from all those nights by the campfire in the communal cave, listening to the storyteller recite it orally. Imagining the travails of that great and mighty wanderer, the subtle and cunning Lepideus, as he went from land to land in search of the way home to the desert and his queen. How, along the way, he had drawn the hatred of the lands he went through, until he had pleaded to the Great Mother Desert why he had to bear their scorn. And so she had gifted him with the ability to change his face and body, allowing him to walk among the many equines of the lands, hidden.

The more he thought about it,so far from the desert, the more he realized the ode had never left him at all. He was made from it; his whole tribe was cut from its cloth. The tale weaved itself through their culture, threaded itself right through their lives, their very way of life itself. It told them everything they needed to know about their lot in life: how they hid their faces, how they were hated and despised by the other races, how they were always looking for the way home. Pupar was Lepideus, on his endless journey. And in that moment, so far away from home, he finally realized it.

His voice was weak and wavery, but he was alone in the darkness and there was nobody to mind. To keep himself company, he took up the ode and began to sing: “O subtle Lepideus....”

With a grating screech, the door swung open. Brilliant light filled the room, making Pupar wince and shield his one good eye from the white blaze. He hissed softly, trying in vain to scare away the ponies whose hooves he heard hitting the floor. They had come to pry the secret out of his head: where his handler could be found. He felt them standing over him, glaring at him with hate-filled eyes. Bit by bit, his vision adjusted to the light . His head had to turn unnaturally so he could center them in his vision, now half what it used to be.

He didn't recognize the tall, slender pink pegasus at first. Not until she said, in her haughty voice, “Hello. We're going to have a little chat.”

As soon as understanding came, a lightning bolt of recognition hit him. Pupar averted his eye and affected a sullen attitude. Mustn't think of her. Mustn't give the slightest hint I know her. It might unravel everything. He refused to even think her name, in fear that his tongue might slip and reveal it. He didn't know her, he couldn't know her. Because if they knew what she was, it would lead them back to....

Imaga. Beautiful Imaga. His queen.

When they tried to get him to talk, he refused. He pretended he was Lepideus, lost in this strange world, surrounded by equines who wanted to destroy him. He was a hero, and would not forsake the Great Mother Desert or his queen. She asked him questions she knew he could not answer, making his struggle much easier. He almost thought he might get through this.

"This is useless," she said finally. "It's not going to tell us anything. Tell Spitfire I'm having it transferred to Obelisk House for enhanced interrogation."

"But...."

"Did I stutter? Go. Now."

As the Shadowbolt left the interrogation room, the pink pony grabbed Pupar and dragged him to his legs, and he almost thought she meant to free him. But then he felt her subtle hooves pressing something into his own. He took a quick glance down at the tiny little pill, and he went numb. He understood why she had come to him now.

It was Tetroxide-D.

Standing there, on one broken leg, he shuddered and quickly wrapped his fetlock around the pill. I don't want to die, he thought. Not without telling Imaga how much he loved her. There was still time for them to run away together. All the time in the world. The ponies began to march him out of the interrogation room, to spirit him away for 'enhanced interrogation'. If the Shadowbolts had brutalized him this much, he shuddered to think how 'enhanced' the Guard's hospitality could be.

Tell them what she's doing! he screamed at himself. Save yourself!

But no. He couldn't take the risk that, through her, they would uncover Imaga. His love, whom he was so far away from. 'How I long for those sweet sands,' Lepideus once said, long ago. 'And that sweet hoof of my queen.' Pupar's home was simply at his queen's side. He knew that. But it all felt so far away now. He was never going home, he realized.

When they marched him limping out the interrogation room and into the office, full of ponies with unbuttoned dress shirts and loosened ties, one turned to them and asked, “What are you doing, Soarin?”

Pupar's escort held up a sheet of paper. “The, uh, liaison to the Midnight Guard here, she's authorized to take custody of the prisoner.”

“Does Spitfire know?” the other Shadowbolt muttered.

“If Spitfire has a problem,” the pink pony said, a sickly sweet drop of poison in her voice, “you're welcome to direct her to my office. Now, can we go?”

But as they marched him out of the room and into an elevator, the pink pony gave him a sly smile and a curt nod. Willing him to go through with it. There was steel in her eyes, a secret message that he would be taking that pill, one way or the other. He had no choice, really. He had to do it. Give up his life. For Imaga. It was the only way to protect her. They couldn't get any information out of a corpse. The pink pony was trying to spare him from that, really. This way was surely easier than going through with the terrible betrayal on the horizon.

He was a hero, like Lepideus before him. And he was coming home.

He feigned a coughing fit and slipped the pill into his mouth. Suddenly and painfully aware it was one of the last things he'd ever do, he bit down on the pill. The taste was surprisingly sweet. Hard to believe it was poison. The elevator doors opened and Pupar let himself be marched out into the parking garage, savoring the feeling in his legs - even the pain in his broken leg had a certain sweet feeling - the weight of the air, even this dark, oil-stained air, as it caressed his chitin. Soon he would feel nothing at all, and he was overcome with the urge to cram as much sensation into his last few moments as possible.

One of his knees buckled. He fell to the concrete. The ground was rough and hard, and it hurt, but he devoured the pain hungrily. Soon there wouldn't be any pain. That should've been a good thing, but he had grown accustomed to the consequences of living. Soon, he wouldn't be. Pain was essential for life. Without it or the threat of it, how would a pony even know they were alive? They would be like the old tribe, growing fat and weak.

“Enough messing around,” the pony named Soarin said, trying to drag him upright. “Time to go.”

How right you are, he thought.

He raised his head and grinned at the pony, full of spite for his kind. But in the shadows, he suddenly saw that even ponies had a kind of beauty. His failing mind told him he was just savoring sensation will he still had it, and that they were as ugly as they'd ever been.

The pony cried out, “What the....?”

Pupar started to convulse as his body fought to keep living. His good eye unfocused. There was nothing for him to lock his vision on, nothing real and solid his world could revolve around. Everything became a blur. Nothing was real. Nothing could be known or felt. The fever dream called life was over. His part in this crusade was ended.

And he found he didn't mind much at all.

As the rousing ending theme punctuated Captain Do's shout of disbelief, Scootaloo jumped up in shock, her mouth gaping. Her mind reeled as it wondered how Captain Do would make it out of this sticky situation alive. Would she make it out? Scootaloo imagined herself lost in the desert with a broken wing and being hunted by the Changelings she thought were the allies of Equestria. Where would she go? What would she do? Scootaloo didn't know; but then, that was why she listened to the program. Captain Daring Do was much more quick-witted and clever and courageous than she was.

Those Changlings, they're evil. Pure evil. Even though we helped them win their freedom from the Griffons, they betrayed us and try to steal everything good away from us. She wanted to punch one, right now, for doing that to a pony who was so amazing and had more courage and honor than a whole evil tribe of those monsters. Never trust a Changling.

Apple Bloom paced all around her little room, energized by the amazing record. She went to the window and stared out at the buildings downtown. Hearing all about the triumph of the Forgers of the Future, taking the fight to the unicorns, made her want to go out and blow up some buildings herself. They made it seem so easy. She desperately wanted to show the unicorns that they couldn't control her, that the earth ponies would never take oppression laying down. Those evil, sneering unicorns had always tried to take the labor away from earth ponies, since time began.

But Apple Bloom refused to let them. She would follow the lead of the Forgers of the Future, and stand up to the unicorns. They just got to go and steal everything that belongs to us! Viciously, she thought, Never trust a unicorn.

Sweetie Belle stared at the spot on the floor where she'd thrown the radio down in horror and anger. Its broken pieces littered the linoleum. The bulge in her throat prevented her from breathing properly. A flush went through her cheeks. Sweat dripped from her mane as she heaved and huffed. The rising tide of anger in her chest was too much, far too much for her to hold back. It welled up inside her, making her shake and tremble. To make her hooves stop beating against the ground, she trotted from one end of the supply closet, back and forth, but it wasn't enough to get the rage out of her body.

How could Bayard Avon, creator of The Princess's Pride, do this to her? How could the best show on the airwaves betray her so badly? Didn't she spend all that money – her money! - on the toys and the books and the bedcovers? Didn't she deserve better than this? The pain of betrayal burned.

Why, she asked for the thousandth time since the program ended, why did Charlemane knight Oliger - Oliger! - as his Pawladin instead of Roarlando? Why?! Roarlando deserved it so much more! He was brave and courageous, a true knight who always fought for his princess's pride with everything he had. On the other hoof, Oliger was an annoying jerk who always acted so smug about how virtuous he was, always pointing out these 'flaws' in his younger brother's behavior that weren't really flaws at all. What was so wrong with punishing the servant of Primella the seamstress when all the dresses the servant stitched were horrible? Why shouldn't a servant be punished for not obeying its superiors? But there was Oliger at the end of the episode, spouting a stupid lecture about how only the master can punish their servant, just like only the parent can punish their child. But somepony had to show the servant he was wrong, and Primella wasn't pony enough to do it herself!

But nopony ever took Roarlando's side, not even his brother. Oliger was always quick to tell him how wrong he was, and that made Sweetie Belle so angry she wanted to scream. He's always trying to keep Roarlando down, she thought savagely. Never trust a sibling.

In a fit of rage, she lifted a cardboard box off the ground, heaved it, and threw it against the wall with a cry of fury and exertion. It collapsed on impact and sent packaged cleaning supplies falling to the ground. No use; the rage was still there, and it hurt so badly as it coursed through her body and made her temples pound, tearing her insides to shreds and stretching those shreds to their breaking point. Roaring, she lunged for the shelves and pounded down on them so hard they buckled and slipped free of their metal hooks. They all came tumbling down, spilling their contents all over the tiled floor. When all the shelves were off, she gave the shelving frame a running shove and sent it falling backwards. It crashed on top of a floor buffer, which started spitting sparks everywhere. She grabbed a piece of shelving that had fallen off and held it in her fetlocks like a bat. She reared back and started swinging it at the cabinets on the wall, imagining they were Oliger, who deserved being punished for keeping his little brother in all this emotional pain.

Lost in her mist of fury, she couldn't remember when the other ponies appeared. She only noticed them when they wrested her off the ground. While she struggled to get free, they carried her out of the storage closet, and she didn't have the strength to fight them off. But she kept thrashing and trying to break free, because they didn't have the right to hold her back like this.

Nopony did.

The billowing clouds rolled across the rim of the world as far as Fayton could see. He basked in the gentle moonlight glow. The wind blew back his mane and tail and slipped across his coat, cool and soothing after the blazing, torturous sunlight that scorched his body and burned his eyes. The serene circle of the moon was a perfect symbol of a higher perfection. It watched over him as he took his midnight flight. His shadow fell, distorted, on the clouds below, stretching and warping to their contours.

Down there, far below the cloud cover, were all the ponies who mocked him, spit on him, pushed him around. But up here, he was free of everything but himself. He could never leave behind his thoughts, his memories, his failures in the past. They would follow him always. And so, with this burden in his heart, he drifted through the clouds aimlessly, letting the winds carry him where they wanted him to go. He was so lost and alone, and had no other way to go than where the trade winds blew him. Trade winds that whipped around the dome of the sky like so many stringed instruments fluttering in an orchestra. And the stars twinkled like a piano, a forlorn melody to a measured, sadly sweet ballad.

“So why must I burn myself,” he sang into the night, “and others with my desire?” He twisted and turned into the night, imagining the sky consumed by the scorching sun. “An amorous passion so wrong, a blemish like the fire, of the sun our destroyer that hangs in the sky above. Why must I be the doomed one, doomed to feel this love?

Under the ever-watchful eye of the moon, his only confidant, he took a deep breath, then launched into the song's final chorus with gusto, letting his most intimate thoughts spill out, some wind to join the air coursing around him. The brass section joined him, to grant his words extra oomph. He folded his wings and took a gentle, graceful dive into the clouds.

“Why do I feel like the evenstar has been struck blind, by the harsh unwanted glare of sunlight?” He turned away from the watchful eye of Luna and let his vision wander across the river of stars streaking through the sky. “How will the stars guide my voyage across the firmament, if the sun consumes and devours the night?”

He broke through the cloud cover again and burst into the sky's upper reaches. The colossal eye in the sky watched him. He turned to the serene orb and felt the radiance of the princess behind it. Although she lived in Canterlot, through the moon Luna watched over her ponies and guided their way when they were lost and confused. So why did he still feel this way? Worthless? Scorned by all the other pegasi? Given dirty looks wherever he went? Why couldn't she tell him what he should do to make the pain stop?

“Tell me how to go on when I feel in my heart of hearts,” he sang, “a sensation so heavy I can't take flight? And how can I fight these feelings dwelling inside me, feelings of such sweet joyous delight?”

A smile lit up his face as he flapped his wings and lifted himself into the sky, closer to the moon. “Ooh, it's something unnatural, and it makes me shiver....” He spread his forelegs wide and flapped his wings to carry him higher, trying to embrace the serenity of the moon. “Oh, I know it's wrong....” In a flurry of mad passion, caught in the turmoil of his emotions, his voice rose and he belted out, “Oh, yeah, I know it's wrong....!” Nopony was watching him, but felt compelled to ward off their criticism nonetheless. “Yes, yes, I know it's wrong!” A nameless feeling, an unsettling restlessness without reason or purpose, had settled over Fayton, making him a--

“Oh yes, I know it's wrong....but I'm in love with River.”

Huh? Fluttershy thought. She blinked heavily, again and again, in shock as she tried to wrap her mind what Fayton, turning in tight circles over the dry-ice covered stage in front of a painted backdrop of the night sky, had sang.

That's not what I thought the song was about at all, she thought, supremely disappointed.

Meanwhile, the crowd had erupted into harsh and angry whispering. Shocked gasps and confused mutters punctuated the buzz. As if to reinforce what he'd said, only in a more tender tone of voice, Fayton sang once more, “She's something unnatural, and she makes me shiver. Yes, I know it's wrong, but I'm in love....yes, I'm in love....with River....Wilde....!” As his voice trailed off, so too did the orchestra come to rest, with only the twinkling piano left to play one, final, drawn out melody, before ending on a gentle chord of resolution.

The lights dipped down, and the excited and angry buzz of the crowd increased tenfold. In the dark, the more Fluttershy thought about the song the more sense it made in retrospect. 'Flying high, I head for the stars, wanting to break free, but I'm trapped in this world, part of the cosmic orrery. Reaching the limits of my flight, I fall to the ground. The thoughts take control, and they make me earthbound.' Clearly, it referred to Fayton's panic at his love for River, not his shame at being a weak pegasus - even if she thought that would make a much better song - and his fear at having all these thoughts in his head that he just couldn't control. Thoughts that made him feel weak and powerless and ashamed of himself.

The purple unicorn beside her spat, “Disgusting.”

Fluttershy wondered why the audience was so angry....?

Oh, wait, River is a unicorn, she remembered. Oh. Ohhh! Her heart began to beat rapidly as her mind wrapped itself around the implication. She pressed her forehooves against her slack-jawed, gaping mouth. They wouldn't, would they? Have a pegasus and a unicorn in love? That's....that's beyond taboo! They could all get arrested by the Midnight Guard! She looked around, half-expecting soldiers to burst into the auditorium and start rounding up the stage crew. No, not Fayton! she thought, feeling a terrible wrenching in her stomach, that of her whole world falling apart. He's the best part of this whole musical!

Finally, the musical had given Rarity something to make her sit up and take notice. It was nearly halfway through, but better late than never, she supposed. Her mind reeled at the audacity of portraying a mixed-race relationship on the lighted stage, in full view of the most powerful unicorns in Canterlot. Bold and daring, just like the Cynic DeKey she knew and loved, and a slight smile turned up the corners of her lips at the offended murmuring of the crowd. Of course, it could've been much worse. One of them could've been an earth pony. She could just imagine the uproar over that! Rioting in the streets, perhaps?

True, the division of the races was one of the Empire's sturdiest cornerstones. 'Everypony in its proper place', or so the poster said, as well as that other one about 'Dilution of blood becomes dilution of duty'. And in school, she remembered seeing in her textbooks all the awful pictures of the warped and deformed foals interacial relations produced.

But still, better to be daring than safe, she had always thought. And now, here Cynic DeKey was, openly flaunting everything the High Castle held dear. And, truth be told, Rarity was on the edge of her to see where this went. Here was the playwright remembered from his earlier work, gleefully toying with his audience every step of the way.

What will he do next? she thought, but she didn't have to wait long. In the row below Rarity, an aghast Upper Crust said, “Really? Giving Trotten Pullet dramatic material? Do they expect us to take this seriously?”

If it annoys you, Rarity thought, I do believe I shall give it a standing ovation.

Rising strings came from the orchestra pit, sharp pizzicato plucks that made each chord sound like a determined hoofstep up a steep mountain path. Her eye was drawn to the spotlight on the stage, where Trotten Pullet stood alone, her bittersweet voice calling out, “Mah name is Brownie Bay, an' Ahm heer ta recite, it's mah dooty ta brighten up Miss Rivvah's night. It don't mattah none, if she be sad oh blue, cuz carryin' her burden is jus' what Ahm heer ta do.”

Rarity stared at the earth pony in the spotlight, transfixed by her lone voice, so meek and yet so strong at the same time. It touched a nerve inside Rarity. When backed by the staccato strings, her voice filled the echoing hall with such sweet tones. They had a hidden beauty that transcended the crudity of the earth pony dialect. A revelation of the soul. A deep and abiding sense of understanding kindled itself in Rarity's heart as she watched the earth pony laying down her actor's mask to let genuine emotion out onto the stage. Like Rarity, she was surrounded by falsehood, but here and now she had the chance to let her own true inner self shine, and it was glorious.

“'Cuz Ah luv ta make ya smile, smile, smile,” Trotten Pullet sang, her voice and the strings growing bolder. “It sho'ly fills mah heart wit' moonlight all de while! 'Cuz all Ah really need's a smile, smile, smile, from dis happy mistress o'mine!”

In the dark, where nopony could see them, Rarity gently laid her fetlock over Coco's foreleg. In a flurry of shadow, her trusty assistant twisted in her seat to look at Rarity, but the fashionista just shook her head and whispered, “Thank you.”

A sliver of light from the stage sank into the contours of Coco's face and etched out a puzzled expression. "For what?"

“For being there,” Rarity said. "For me."

“Um....you're welcome, ma'am. But it's just my duty.”

Rarity patted her trusty assistant's foreleg, then took her foreleg back and settled into her seat to watch the rest of the show before intermission happened. It was getting quite good now, though she couldn't say if she enjoyed it more for for its quality or because of how much it annoyed the gossipy socialites around her.

“Ugh,” Blueblood moaned beside her. "This is atrocious. And worse, it's boring."

Rarity's thrill deflated as she gave the fool sitting beside her a sharp glance. What a boorish bore, she thought, suddenly and deeply repulsed by the thought of spending another night with him. Of driving home and having to listen to another word out of his mouth. And, perish the thought, marrying him. She felt like throwing up when she brought up the mental image of their wedding. Blueblood may have had a handsome face, golden mane, and alabaster coat, but there was nothing worthwhile under his skin. Nothing inside his thick skull. He was just a null, a void. Hollow and empty, with barely enough brains to function.

I can't stay with him, she told herself. I would kill myself sooner or later. But how to break up with him?

Her image had to be maintained at all times. Fearless and unrelenting, like when she dealt with the concierge. Appearances were everything in this city, and she couldn't ever make it seem like her relationship with Blueblood was going off the rails. Her reputation would be tarnished, and every time she set hoof into another boardroom they would talk about that behind her back. Mock her and insult her. Erode her bargaining power. It was dog eat dog in Canterlot, and only the toughest Diamond Dogs got to the top.

Send the message that you don't tolerate fools, she thought. Competent and business savvy earth ponies, yes, but not fools.

Trotten Pullet's solo number ended then, and the curtains fell on the stage. Every pony in the booth turned to one another and furiously tried to get their opinions out first. Two actors came out on stage to trade lines, but the audience drowned them out. She heard Upper Crust say from the row below them:

“Is this what passes for entertainment nowadays? Shameful. We should walk out and demand our money back, Jet.”

Of course you wouldn't think it's entertaining. Nopony is gossiping about everypony else and dragging them all through the mud to satisfy their own bloated ego. You cow.

“Uh, sure, sweetheart,” Jet Set replied. He was slouched down in his seat and made no move to get up. “Soon as it's over, alright, dear?”

“How are we supposed to make a statement against it if we wait until the end?”

“Oh, it's not that bad.”

“Not that bad? Jet, what if our foals saw these filth? Assuming they weren't traumatized, they might start getting ideas about mixing races.”

Rarity stared at the stallion by her side, busy adjusting his outfit until it sat right on his body. If I had a foal with him, he or she would despise me when they grew up, for dooming them to be related to Blueblood. She began to chew her bottom lip in anger, but the booth door opened and interrupted her thoughts. Rarity turned to see who it was. Two ushers trooped into the booth, silhouetted against the electric lights in the hallway. They walked right for her, and Rarity was acutely aware of every other pair of eyes watching them. Staring down their muzzles at her.

“Miss Rarity?” one pegasus asked.

“Yes?” she asked diplomatically.

The pegasus ponies stepped aside to reveal a very sullen Sweetie Belle, her face flushed and twisted in a scowl, her body trembling like she'd just run a few rounds at the derby. Rarity's eyes went to her sister's seat, and in her confusion she expected to see two Sweetie Belles. But the seat was empty. She realized then that she couldn't remember her sister coming back.

“We found her wandering around,” one of them said.

Already the whispers started, so low as to be almost inaudible. The seed of a dozen different ghastly rumors took root in those fertile old minds, spinning any number of lies.. After her strong showing at the entrance, being so collected and self-assured, what would they say when she was revealed to be a hypocrite who couldn't keep her own sister in line? The pegasus gave Sweetie Belle a light tap on the flank, to get her moving towards Rarity. Well, at least they're discreet about it. Although I did just give them enough money to buy this building ten times over, so they should be.

Summoning up an iron tone of voice, she commanded, “Sweetie Belle, you sit your haunches down right this instant, and don't even think about moving until the end of the show.” She had to undo the damage, make it clear that who was in charge here.

“But Rarity, I--”

“That wasn't a question,” Rarity snapped, hearing the whispers around her increase in intensity and volume. “Right this instant.”

Sweetie Belle's lips curled back and her teeth snapped together, like she was about to start yelling back, but Rarity gave her a firm stare. The mischievous little filly planted her tailbone in the seat and, as Rarity commanded, didn't move an inch. What did I do to make her hate me so much? she thought. She gave her sister one last glare, then turned to Blueblood, whose dull, wide-eyed face made her want to slap him.

How could I ever have my own foal with Blueblood? she asked herself, settling back into her seat. She ignored the other ponies in the booth and stared fixedly at the stage. I can't even deal with the one my parents left for me.

Chapter 14

The pegasus violently turned to face the audience. Every muscle in his neck and body was tensely corded under his skin. His voice threatened to go hoarse as he wailed out his lyrics, while the lights above the stage strobed and the orchestra sustained a discordant shriek to reinforce his fragile and fragmenting mind. “Oh, arrow of time, how you've gone and wounded me! How could you do this, pin me to this point in history?!”

Snarling with disgust, River shouted: “You moral degenerate, don't you go and shirk the blame! You disgusting pervert, don't tell me you can feel no shame!”

Fayton gave an anguish roar and twisted away from her, the agony on his face at having to see her quite apparent. “Oh, time's arrowhead, it's struck me and lodged in my breast. No matter what I do, I can't heal this aching hole in my chest!”

“Don't pretend, you fool, that this is all right. You mighty, mighty fool! Don't say it's alright, just because you follow Solara's immoral rules!” The music swung up into a swell, and over the rising tide she sang, “That doesn't make it alright! It's day and night!”

The music abruptly and radically changed to a melodic hymn. The other unicorns, gathered in a semicircle around the two leads, tried to bring some calm and harmony to the scene. “Whatever happened to our happy home? What happened to this place we worked so hard to build? Oh, Solara, you've torn us apart! Torn down all these things that we have willed! Always hoped that we'd find a place, where we could live in sweetest harmony. But your heavy hoof divided us, your wicked ways have turned pony against pony.”

With a great cymbalic crash, the orchestra laid into a tortured, drawn-out reprise of the chorus to “Something Unnatural”. Fayton sounded like he was being gutted with a spear as he screamed: “Oh, it's something unnatural....”

“You got that right!” River shouted in a curt punctuation to his melody.

“....and it makes me shiver!” Fayton's voice cracked as he went into the upper registers. “But I'm in love....”

“Don't you dare say those words again!”

He stared into her eyes across the great gulf of the stage. “I'm so in love with you, River!” The music climaxed and then petered out, leaving the two of them in a torturous awkward silence. “I could never love you like I want,” Fayton sang softly over the void of sound. He opened his wings and took to flight, hovering over the stage. “So I'll love you the only way I know how.”

River took a step forward, the fury on her face softening. “Fayton....”

“The call for revolution went out, and all that's left is to answer it now.”

He flew away into the darkness of the wings. River turned away with a exasperated sigh. The gentle strains of the strings ran under her words, providing a sad undercurrent to her lyrics: “You poor little deluded fool, you're as different from me as the night is from the day. And just like the night is taken, Solara has warped your mind and she swept you away. But is this my fault, too? I can't help but ask if I'm partly to blame. Do you think that this is love, when all along I met your hard work with shame? Did I betray your instinct, that all you pegasi are bound to strive for, with the anger inside me, so that it warped your poor mind into an unnatural adore....ation? For somepony above your station? Oh, poor Fayton, the tyrant Solara has driven us all to ruin, and I live for the day when the sun is eclipsed by the moon!”

In the dark, Rarity gave Coco Pommel a sidelong glance, seeing her faithful assistant by the dim light from the stage, all the lines on her face filled with the etchings of light. You need to take care of your wards, if you want them to take care of you in return. That's how a society works.

A solitary piano took up the burden of the music, once more playing an accompaniment to the chorus of ponies gathered around River. “Whatever happened to our happy home? What happened to this place we worked so hard to build? Oh, Solara, you've torn us apart! Torn down all these things that we have willed! Always hoped that we'd find a place, where we could live in sweetest harmony. But your heavy hoof divided us, your wicked ways have turned pony against pony....” The twinkling piano finished its sad march and ended on an unresolved chord, and on that note the lights dropped out and the curtains fell on the sad, sad scene.

The house lights came back on. Intermission, Rarity thought. In the pit, the musicians launched into a soft intermission piece, muted enough to allow the audience to talk. And talk they did. The room filled to the ceiling with the buzz of conversation, some excited, some confused, and some very, very angry. The voices overlapped and fused into one wave of sound, which comprised every frequency, yet said nothing the ear could distinguish.

She leaned slightly closer to Coco and asked, “What do you think of it so far?”

Her assistant's eyes rolled around, first going to the stage, then the ponies all around them, before finally settling on Rarity. For a long, lingering moment, Coco studied in the expression in her face. Wondering what to say, perhaps?

“Well, go on,” Rarity said.

With a sharp intake of breath, Coco's eyes slid off Rarity and rested on the mass of ponies below. “I think the show holds some very important equine truths that society, um, needs to hear.”

“Mhmm. Now, what do you really think?”

Her eyes went immediately back to Rarity, and she shrank away on her seat slightly, as if overpowered by radiance. She swallowed down a lump in her throat, then said, “I wish it would be more....balanced in how it portrays....us.” Made bolder by Rarity's lack of anger, Coco's voice became firmer. “We're not all lazy and lack, uh, proper work ethic. Only some of us. Well, most of us. But you can't judge every single one of us by that.”

Rarity's thoughts returned to what Thorny Bends had said earlier, while she was in the hovercarriage. Rarity dwelled there for a moment before softly murmuring, “That's the price we pay.”

“Ma'am?”

Rarity roused herself. "Nothing. Nevermind." She stretched her forelegs, then slipped off her seat and twisted her spine until it gave a satisfying crack. She took a quick look at the socialites around her, saw none she particularly wanted to talk about the show with, and headed for the door.

Behind her, Sweetie Belle called, “Rarity!”

The fashionista spun around. She curled her face into a stern and ominous scowl and, by pure force of will, commanded the attention of the other socialites. “I told you not to move an inch after that disgraceful display, and I meant it. Now, sit down and be quiet.”

Satisfied she had taken charge of the situation, had saved face in front of all those vicious social climbers who would clamber over her corpse if she should show even a bit of weakness, Rarity walked out onto the marble hallway. Clusters of ponies had gathered together to chatter, their drinks levitating at their sides. Black suit jackets with muted ties for the stallions, white dresses and fine pearl jewelry for the mares. All cut from the same cloth. Every pony scrambled to look more ostentatious than the pony next to them, while still staying safely within the acceptable margins of style. They took no risks, not a single one of them, until somepony else showed them the way. She recognized a few of her own dresses, but nothing she particularly cared for. There was always a demand for this sort of safe and boring dress outfit, and it was the financial backbone that let her imagination run wild on her more fanciful dresses.

She headed to the balcony overlooking the lobby, where even more ponies milling around and talked. She lingered a moment by the railing to listen to the undercurrent of fear, worry, and anger the rush of voices possessed about the declaration of love Fayton had made.

“Enjoying the show?”

Startled, Rarity looked over her shoulder. Fancy Pants walked to her side with a slow, casual gait, clearly meant to communicate he was a pony who took his time and sauntered at his own pace; his dark-blue velvet vest, orange cravat, and white dress shirt with bell-bottoms reinforced his casual disregard. He gave her one of his sly and secret smiles as he stepped into the spot beside her, keeping his eyes pointedly fixed on the ponies over the railing, who milled around the main floor of the lobby.

“I was a little bored for most of the first act,” she admitted. Something about Fancy Pants' casual disregard for the opinion of other ponies made her feel at ease, as if she shouldn't care what he thought, either. “I won't say it's better, but it's certainly more interesting now.”

“They seem angry, some of them,” he said, sweeping a foreleg out at the sea of ponies below. “But they'll return for the second act. They always do. It's just pony nature, to want to see every story work out for the best. A happy resolution to an unhappy shock, all tied up in a neat little bow - something I'm sure you're familiar with.”

“As a fashionista, you mean?” She looked at him.

“Yes, there's that." He met her eyes and gave her a mad grin. "There's also that scandalous dress you're wearing, too.”

Suddenly self-conscious, Rarity asked, “What do you mean by that?”

“Don't play coy with me. The only reason a pony wears a dress like that is to shock the small-minded.”

She looked down the length of her body, frantically searching for anything that could be misconstrued as scandalous. “Wh-what do you mean?!”

“Look at the seams,” he said, leaning close to her ear to whispered as he pointed out the looping stitches on her flank. “Fashioned to resemble wings. And down there.” He pointed to the oval-shaped loops on the hemline. “Like the petals of a flower, rising from their stems. You did design this dress yourself, correct?”

Rarity stared in astonishment, every blink heavy against her eyes. “I....did, yes. I n-never noticed anything of the sort before!” But he was right; once she saw it, it was impossible to unsee. Her dress had all the markings of the other two races subtly worked into its design. No, more, than that: it implied alicorn status. And there was only one alicorn in the world. “I didn't do it on purpose,” she mumbled.

“Of course you didn't,” he said jovially. “Not consciously. But somewhere, deep in your mind, you knew perfectly well what you were doing. I can see it in your eyes, on your face. Even if you can't. You want to let everypony else know how you feel. You're screaming out your little broadcast to the world at large.”

Filled with horror, she slowly lifted her head to look him in the eye, terrified he would turn her into the Midnight Guard, but all he did was wink back at her. She whipped her head around and put her eyes forward again, taking in the lobby below.

“Luckily, the ponies who would turn you in to the Midnight Guard are too crude and boorish to notice it. No, they rarely see anything they don't want to see. Their subconscious refuses to let them. But you! You are so very different, my dear. And like with art, I enjoy ponies who are different." He leaned close until his lips were almost touching her ear. She felt a hoof ruffling her dress. Well, he's certainly straightforward! she thought angrily, but then realized he had stuck something down into her dress, something that now nestled against her side. It felt like....a magazine? He whispered, "Perhaps I'll see you at my gallery one of these days, hmm?”

“S-sure.”

He pulled back and held his head up straight. “Enjoy the rest of the show,” he said.

With that, Fancy Pants walked away. Rarity snuck a glance over her shoulder and saw an an orange earth pony some twenty feet away, watching the whole scene. When Fancy Pants walked past him, the earth pony fell in alongside his master. They talked as they walked alongside the balcony.

Rarity headed for the bathroom, attempting to stifle the dread creeping under her skin and coat. All those eyes around her, watching her all the time, taking pictures of her. What if one of them saw the dress for what it was?

So what? she thought. I've made my opinion on earth pony rights very clear by now.

But this went beyond earth pony rights – it was her very image, the one she worked so hard to control and cultivate that was being ruined. This dress, it-it flaunts the basic standards of racial decency! And worse, I didn't intend this at all! I didn't control it, didn't choose it. My mind and body are revolting against me!

She shoved open the door to the filly's room, drawing the eye of the other mares carefully attending to their make-up in the long mirror over the gleaming white sinks set into black marble. Her throat felt heavy and stick as she swallowed the lump in her throat down and slowed her frenzied pace. She walked into the nearest open stall, shut and locked the door, and reached into her dress to pull the magazine out. It had a bleary photograph on its black-and-white cover, and the text slanted unnaturally. Obviously it had been made on the cheap. Ploughshare, the name read.

The underground magazine. The illegal magazine.

A note had been taped to the front: 'In case you get bored.'

I should rip it into pieces and flush the pieces away, she thought. And then I should rip all the seams out of this dress.

Why, though? She couldn't quite answer. A parade of excuses went through her mind, telling her that if the other socialites found out, they would despise her. So? I already despise them. As long as I'm not caught, who would ever know?

That was the moment that decided it. She would keep the magazine, keep the dress the way it was, and go to Fancy Pants's gallery as soon as possible. She already hated these high society idiots she was surrounded by. Why should she care what they thought when she was alone or with like-minded ponies as well? And the thought of walking among them while displaying her contempt in a way they would never notice thrilled her. She stuffed the magazine back into her dress, right against her heart, and down low enough that the skirt would hide it. After flushing the toilet so as not to draw any attention, she walked to the mirror, right between two other mares adjusting their make-up.

But, on closer inspection, the stitching on the dress wasn't nearly as obvious as Fancy Pants had made it out to be. The stitches blended in perfectly in with the fabric, even in the harsh lighting of the bathroom. In the dark auditorium it would be completely indistinguishable.

The blue mare with wispy white hair standing next to Rarity gave her a look.

“Spilled my drink,” Rarity explained. “Luckily, I didn't get any on my dress.”

“Hmm. Good thing, too. I think it's a very beautiful dress.”

Rarity took a look at the socialite's own. Smiling at the mare, she asked, “Rarefaction?”

“Why, yes. Do you like their dresses?”

Rarity gave her a smile and leaned close to whisper: “I should. I own the company.”

The blue mare's expression changed into one of complete and utter delight. She stood up straight and adjusted her composure; Rarity knew the telltale signs of a social climber when she saw one. The blue mare's haughtiness morphed subtly, adopting a tone of inclusion, as if to sneer at everypony else while reassuring Rarity that she, too, was part of the elite.

Let's see if she notices anything out of the ordinary, Rarity thought.

“What do you think of the show? Isn't Blockbuster just the most supreme actor of the stage? Ash is simply the best character in the entire play!”

Ash is an idiot and a follower, Twilight thought. He doesn't have a single thought that River didn't have first.

She swayed in the confines of the bathroom stall, surrounded by the inane chatter of all those gossipy fools cluttering up her theater. A place for genuine art, not their vulgarity. She raised the bottle to her lips, then tilted her head back and took another quick swig. The cider burned against her tongue and stung the back of her throat, then worked its way down to her stomach and sent a soothing warm tingle through her body. Smiling in satisfaction, she rocked back on her hooves. A gentle sigh of relief escaped her.

“The other characters are utterly forgettable,” that maddening – and maddeningly familiar – voice announced. Where Twilight had heard it before, she couldn't say; it was lost in the blur of her senses spinning around her. The voice moved towards the door, announcing, “But Blockbuster just breathes such vivid life into his creation!”

Where have I heard that voice before?!

Nowhere. All these useless mares sound the same. They are the same, in fact. They're mass produced, like....like all those cans and boxes in the supermarket.

Twilight capped the cider bottle on her third attempt and slipped the bottle back into her saddlebag, nestling it near the bottom to keep it safe and safely out of sight. Time to face the crowd again. She used her magic to flush the toilet so she didn't arouse any suspicion, then pushed the door open. It nearly swung into the face of another mare gossiping with her socialite friend about some mare named Rarity, who had apparently just left the bathroom, and a sister she had who was out of control. Twilight couldn't care less. She washed her hooves, then headed for the door and out into the lobby, focusing intently on not stumbling around like a common drunk.

Intermission. Great. One whole hour of idealizing interracial romance left to go. All the unicorns who had a hoof in putting on this show are sick. Traitors to their race. Urg, just the thought of kissing an earth pony, with those misshapen muzzles and ungainly large fetlocks and bulging flanks, just makes me want to throw up.

She came to the base of the stairs and lingered there a while, readying herself for the climb. She stared down at the carpet underhoof as she went up, concentrating very hard on putting each leg where it needed to go, but on the way up, when she was almost at the top, her head clouded up from the cider and her thoughts wandered.

Interracial romance is disgusting--!

The point of her horn slammed into something. She rebounded and nearly lost her hoofing. For one dizzying moment, as her heart pounded into action and made her shake harder and faster, she thought she was going to fall and braced herself for the impact. But before she went down, a foreleg reached out to steady her. A very secure foreleg, tight with muscle.

“Whoa, you okay?”

She turned her eyes upwards and saw, waiting for her at the top of the stairs, a breathtaking stallion of the shade most glorious of that saffron bright that the wizened old tomes said shaded the sky when Solara's orb made its descent; he was a perfect complement to broadening twilight not only in that regard, but also in that fortuity had conspired to light half his face while the other half was rendered in a very alluring darkness, a torrid shadow that beckoned her to make the descent into the stormy seas of his eyes. The ambient light, in its magnanimity, caressed the strong sure lines emboldening his face and highlighting the noble sculpt of his muzzle. His stature was proud and erect, with concealed power hidden in every movement like a stormcloud waiting to burst and unleash the steaming rain of rapturous passion.

Get a hold of yourself, Twilight. There's no need to go all purple prose about him, she thought, lying to herself most grievously. He's just....some stallion.

But alas, caught by surprise as she was, she neglected to notice the most apropos distinction between the two of them: his lack of a horn. Shuddering with revulsion and swallowing down the bile rising in her throat, Twilight violently jerked free of his grip and shoved her way past him. She tried to move at fast as she could, but her own traitorous body hobbled her, both from the cider and from the shock of the orange stallion's striking appearance.

“Get away from me,” she snapped as she passed him. “You filthy dirt-eater.”

When she had taken a few drunken paces past him, he called, “I'm not an earth pony.”

Twilight brought herself to an uneasy stop, her knees buckling quite badly, so that she had to command them to lock in place to stop from falling over. Her nostrils flared as she drew in one calming breath after another. Then she turned her head ponderously over her shoulder, refusing to go too fast, to appear too eager. When he came back into sight, standing sullenly where he had been, she saw he told her the truth: he had been a pegasus. Once.

“So what?” she asked, sneering. “What's the difference?”

“There is no difference,” he said quaintly, with a peculiar tone and a faint smile that hinted at some irony known only to himself. “To you, I mean.”

“You're absolutely right,” she said.

She turned her tail to him and walked back into the theater, making a valiant attempt not to lurch from side to side out here, where all the pathetic wretches could see her in her moment of weakness and chatter to each other about a pony who was far better than they would ever be. By the time she reached the doorway, she was shaking very badly indeed. She convinced herself it was only the booze, but deep inside her, far below all all the thoughts she was aware of, a twisting and burning agony pricked her heart. And it wasn't from revulsion. She took a quick glance back and saw, not without unconscious delight, that the stallion stood in profile, not aware of her. She had a moment to study his sturdy body and firm form. And study she did, in great detail.

You're disgusting, she thought. You're the real traitor to our race.

Her breath and pulse continued to quicken, until she couldn't stand the agony raging inside her anymore. She turned away from the temptation of degeneracy and darted through the doorway, every beat of her heart like a nail being driven into her chest. This....this lack of self-control. That's how Solara worked. She preyed on ponies by forcing awful ideas down their throats until they started to believe them. And here she was, entering the theater where she hoped to drown these torturous thoughts, only to see them paraded out in full view of everypony. Why should she willingly subject herself to anymore of this? I need to have hope. Hope that everything will work out for the best. And that I'll come through it all the stronger. She slipped down the row along the back wall of the theater, towards to her seat. That disgusting little yellow pegasus glanced up briefly as Twilight squeezed past, but thankfully her eyes returned to the stage after the briefest of glances.

That's right, Twilight thought. Don't you dare look at me.

Twilight dropped into her seat, sighing as she relaxed and took the weight off her weary legs. The theater was still dark, and it wasn't quite showtime yet. The cider buzzed as it worked its way through her body, relaxing all her nerves. These seats felt so soft now....

"....so the dirt-eater says, 'I read in A History of Dragons that the last dragon was hunted down in the year 401.' So I say, 'That's amazing!' She says, 'It is?' And then I look her right in the eye, and give her a great big pause, and then I announce, 'Yes! I had no idea you could read!'"

As they stood near the bar off to one side of the lobby, the blue mare brayed laughter so hard she nearly spilled her drink. Rarity chuckled along with the joke while secretly wanting to throw the contents of her cup into the mare's face and walk away. She didn't know what was worse: that the mare thought the joke was the height of hilarity, or that Rarity wouldn't realize it had been stolen straight from The Galloping Gossips, only with 'dirt-eater' instead of 'Rose'. There's nothing inside this mare, Rarity thought. She's all surface, nothing more than an affectation for the benefit of the ponies she wants to impress.

Rarity's thoughts returned to Trotten Pullet's bravura solo performance.

'It don't mattah none, if she be sad oh blue, cuz carryin' her burden is jus' what Ahm heer ta do.'

....such power, such emotion, breaking through the fourth wall. She would be a star of the stage, if she weren't an earth pony.

Then make her one, she thought to herself. Make her a star. You have the capital to make it happen. Ask her to perform at your millennial gala.

Overcome with confidence, she finished off her drink and put the empty glass back on the bar. "Well, it's been lovely chatting, but I'm dreadfully sorry. I must dash. I have some business I must attend to before the show starts again."

"Where are you going?"

"Um, backstage."

The other mare's eyes lit up with a gleam as starstruck as the night sky. Rarity instantly knew she should have said something, anything else, but it was too late now.

"You can get backstage?"

"Well, not officially, but....they wouldn't dare turn me away."

The other mare slipped a foreleg around Rarity's neck. "Let's go, then!"

Ugh, why didn't I come up with an excuse to get rid of her? She and the other mare walked towards a roped-off area marked 'Staff only'. The blue mare mumbled something to herself under her breath, something that sounded like, "Just remember when to strut and you won't be in a rut," over and over again. Rarity saw a familiar face up ahead, standing near the velvet ropes blocking off the corridor.

"Yes, yes, I know," the concierge said, "but she offered us fifty million bits! The owners are always going on and on about how unprofitable this theater is. If I had turned her down, they would have fired me anyway! It was such a small thing, anyway. What was I do to?"

"Is there a problem?" Rarity asked.

The concierge jumped a foot straight up into the air and spun away from another familiar face. General Praetor Mace, in his Civil Force uniform, gave Rarity a look that had very little of the comfort he had showed her earlier. The two soldiers who had flanked the door stood behind him.

"Miss Rarity," Mace said with a cold courtesy. "I see you're still expanding your investments. Into the theater market this time."

She met him with a matching iced calm. "It was just a donation, from a patron of the arts."

"Quite a large donation," he said.

"I have a very large love for the arts."

"And yet, not a very large love for the pillars of society."

"Is there a law against allowing an earth pony to use the front door?"

"Not in those exact words," he admitted. "Although that can change very easily."

"Well, if it does, do be sure and send me a memo. Are we done here?"

The general gave the concierge a fiery glare, then sucked in a breath and faced Rarity again. "We're done. For now. But something tells me this isn't over yet. Just so you know, I'm going to be sticking around until the show ends, to make sure the law is given its proper due. Come on, boys." He brushed his way past Rarity and led his troops out the door of the theater.

"M-m-miss Rarity," the concierge said. "How pleasant to see you."

"Hello. I was wondering, if it wouldn't be too much of a bother, if my friend and I could just pop backstage for a bit and meet the actors?"

The concierge's face turned red at the mention of 'too much of a bother'. "Aha, well, you see, the play will start up again soon, and...."

"Please?" Rarity batted her eyelashes at him.

He turned an even deeper shade of red, then barked out, "Fine. That will be fine. Rush!" A young unicorn with a red vest, barely more than a colt, popped his head out of a doorway. The concierge said, "Rush, would you please escort the mare backstage? If you need me, I'll be in my office." He ran away as fast as he could without attracting any undue attention.

In a squeaky voice, Rush said, “Hey, wait a minute. You-you're....”

She fluffed her mare and flashed her eyelashes at him. “Why yes, I am. I do so love the show, and I was wondering if you could take me backstage?”

He grinned and stepped aside for her and the blue mare. Another admirer, Rarity thought. As they walked down the hall, he spouted anecdotes about the Chariot, but Rarity wasn't listening. She was going over everything she would say. He led them through the backstage, where all the unused props and scenery were left lying around. Here a column, there a piece of fence, strewn haphazardly around the exposed red bricks and iron girders of backstage; they were like lone monuments sticking out of the sands of the desert. And all the ponies, half in stage crew t-shirts and half in costume, were all nomads making their way through a different play every six months.

I've really been listening to too much Thorny Bends, Rarity thought.

The blue mare gasped, and Rarity followed her eyes to see Blockbuster rehearsing with a copy of his script. She squealed to herself and tore away from Rarity and the usher. But she slowed down as she approached, smoothed out her dress, and then causally wandered over to the actor.

“Tell me, if you'd be so kind,” Rarity said, “where's Trotten Pullit? I would very much like to meet her.”

His bumbling attempt to charm Rarity melted into sneering condescension. "The dirt-eater? Why?"

"I have a....business proposition for her."

“She's over there,” the usher said. He nodded through the crowd, to the spot where Trotten Pullit was relaxing on a crate. As they came closer, Rush said, “Hey, dirt-eater."

When he spoke, Trotten Pullit instinctively snapped to attention. The look on her face plainly spelled out she was fretting about what she'd done to deserve being punished. “Yes, sir?” she asked.

“For some moon-forsaken reason, a pony wants to talk to you you.” He waved a foreleg at Rarity.

“Thank you,” Rarity said. “You've been very useful. You can go now.”

The usher's ears fell. Plainly he hadn't expected to be brushed aside so soon. He opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it and slunk away across the backstage.

"I'm Rarity," she said. "I own Rarefaction Industries." An awkward silence settled over them, despite the stage crews bustling and the actors rehearsing. All of that faded into the background as the unicorn and the earth pony stared at one another. “I-I thought your song was beautiful,” Rarity finally said.

Trotten Pullet's eyes narrowed slightly. She was on the lookout for a catch, but she didn't dare defy a unicorn. Rarity wanted to reach out, to reassure her and tell her she wasn't going to hurt her, but her vocabulary had momentarily deserted her.

“Thank you, ma'am,” Trotten said courteously. “But it wasn't mine. I just sang it.”

“You made it yours, though,” Rarity insisted. "You-you poured your soul into it."

Uncomfortable, Trotten asked with the utmost propriety, “Is there anything I can do for you, ma'am?”

Rarity paused for a moment while she marshaled her conviction. She said, “I'm throwing a celebration in honor of the thousandth year of eternal night. Would you like to attend?”

“Celebration?” Trotten asked in confusion. “You want me to come?”

“As a performer,” Rarity said. “To sing. Or....whatever it is you want to perform. I consider myself more of a patron of artists than the arts, so I'm not terribly picky.”

A desperate longing illuminated Trotten's eyes, some instinctive desire to accept immediately. But there was an equally strong streak of caution there, the kind of caution instilled by deep and lasting scars. She asked, “Won't it just be unicorns there?”

“And pegasi.” I know. It'll freak them out, she thought gleefully. Then she kicked herself. She wasn't doing this to mess with her peers, she was doing it because it was the decent thing to do. Obviously it was. But suddenly, she hoped she was doing this for all the right reasons, and not just using them as some vague justification her mind had cooked up to cut the ponies she hated down to size.

Would it matter? A good deed is a good deed, regardless. No, no, I'm being completely altruistic.

“It's my party and I liked your song,” she said, a touch more boldly and defensively than she wished. “Watching your performance, I felt something....real. Something true. I very much liked what I heard. It was beautiful. Now, would you like me to book you, or not?”

Dazed, the earth pony said, “Al-alright.”

“Excellent," Rarity said, adopting the same tone she used for company meetings. It made her feel more comfortable that way. "Meet me in the lobby after the show and we'll discuss it further, at my leisure.” Rarity left the earth pony standing there, and she got to wondering if her generosity knew no bounds. She was halfway to the door when she noticed the blue mare with the wispy white hair sobbing softly to herself in the corner.

"What's wrong?" Rarity asked.

"He wouldn't even look twice at me," she moaned. "I strutted and strutted, just like Blanche Shockley said, but he just told me to go away. Me. He said I wasn't worth knowing." She pulled at the fringe of her dress, then dropped it and turned her teary eyes to Rarity. "What was the point of buying your stupid dress, then? I demand a refund!"

"You'll have to talk to the store you bought it from. I don't handle that personally, sorry."

"Oh, I will? You can blow millions of dollars on a dirt-eater, but I, a unicorn, buy your dress to make my dreams come true, and it doesn't work, and suddenly you don't have any money?"

"It's my money, if you'll recall. I can spend it however I wish."

"You're a traitor to your race," the mare sneered.

"You know," Rarity snapped, "I'm tempted to say that the reason your life isn't working out like you planned is because a pretty dress is no match for your awful attitude, but then I remember the ponies I deal with each and every day, and all of a sudden I'm stumped as to why those hideous ponies would shun somepony equally contemptible."

Rarity turned on her hoof and stormed off the stage, leaving the crying mare behind. She's not worth it, Rarity thought.

A sudden commotion on stage roused Twilight. I must have drifted off, she thought. She sat up in her seat, wondering what she had missed, but the only thing onstage was a light shining through the slit between the curtains. It poured out and rolled across the empty seats. There was no audience, not anymore. Twilight was the only pony in the room. Even the orchestra pit was empty and silent, but from far off she could still hear music. An impassioned high-pitched aria. Coming from behind the curtains, she realized. The light and the music seemed as one. She rose from her seat and walked down the aisle, gliding so unnaturally smoothly. Time slowed down around her, distorted and distended as if she were gliding in an aquarium. All she saw shimmered and glimmered. The whole world was watery and insubstantial, like a bubble, except for that light shining through the curtains. Shining from beyond.

What was she doing? Why was she going towards it? Wouldn't the heat and light evaporate this whole watery world? Take away everything she knew?

Maybe the world behind the curtains is more substantial than this one, she thought. More real.

She passed through the orchestra pit. All the instruments lay silent, nopony present to make music from them. She would have tried, but she was only one pony. How could she make an entire orchestra's worth of music? She let them rest and headed for the music that needed no instrument. She climbed atop a grand piano and jumped over to the stage; her hooves made sharp thwacks on the laminated wood floor. She glided to the opening between curtains, feeling the light and heat grow more and more intense as it hit her face and threatened to evaporate her. But she went on, because maybe she didn't need her face and body after all. She plunged into the thick curtains, pushing through them like the stories about soldiers in Grazembezi traveling through the dense jungle foliage.

But when she emerged, however, she was shocked to find a tribal village behind the curtains. A zebra village, made of round huts with conical thatched rooftops and little freestanding shelves made of gnarled sticks. Clumps of parched yellow grass arose from mats, strewn around artfully to give the impression of a savannah. At the far end of the stage was another set of curtains, and Twilight saw the light was actually coming from there, yet curiously it was no more or less bright than it had been. She crossed the artificial village and rammed her way through the curtains, only to arrive in yet another layer of the stage sandwiched between two sets of curtains. This time, it was distinctly Roanan. Marble columns with cracks running down them stood in a semi-circle around the small and stark and very angular marble buildings. A fluttering red banner adorned with twin laurel leaves hung down the side of the tallest building.

Again, the light came not from in here, but the new set of curtains on the other side of the stage.

How deep does this go?!

Quicker now, Twilight galloped to the third set of curtains and ran through them at full speed. But, to her dismay, she only found herself in yet another slice of the world at large. Cath-Hay this time, as the bright red and yellow pagodas with curling corners and an expertly crafted little plastic garden set on a fake moss platform informed her. She scarcely took the time to take it in before she was on her way again, towards the light that neither dimmed nor grew stronger. But when she emerged from the curtains a fourth time, something so odd happened it made her stop in her tracks. She was back in the zebra village again, but instead of little shelves made of sticks, there was the Cath-Hayan garden.

Where am I? Grazembezi or Cath-Hay?

She couldn't tell; the two settings conflicted with each other. Lied to her. To reconcile the confusion, she went through the curtains yet again, only to now arrive in a world where the Roanan temples had taken the place of the huts. But the Cath-Hayan garden was still there. The conflict between worlds still existed. She went through another layer, towards the light at the end, but in this new world all three of the settings had been superimposed over one another, cluttering up the stage into a confusing nightmare.

“Roanan columns and pagodas don't go together!” she shouted. “Why can't any of these just be like real life?!”

Twilight took to flight again, on and on into the curtains, not bothering to look. Out of the corner of her eye, she became aware of the jumbled mess of sets crumbling to dust, stricken by the forces of entropy. The further she got into the tunnel of nested worlds, the faster she ran, until at last she realized her hooves no longer struck wood, but the soft crunch of sand. She slowed down and caught her breath, and as she did she gazed at the wood grain of the stage. It had morphed into a desert that covered the conflicting pieces of the three very different worlds. They all listed to the side, blasted and half-covered with sand. The stage itself had consumed them, because only the stage itself was truly real. These props were just relics, buried by the desert of the real itself, waiting for some wanderer to come across them, excavate them, offer conjecture about their significance.

Symbols mean something.

The thought appeared in her head with no warning, and on the surface it seemed so self-explanatory as to be childish. But the more she thought about it, the more apropos it was, and the more surreal her thoughts turned. A symbol had meaning. Another symbol had a different meaning. If two symbols with different meanings were juxtaposed, like Roanan columns and Cath-Hayan pagodas, then what did that mean? Did they cancel each other out? Was one objectively truer than the other?

Depends on the context.

But what was 'context' but an array of symbols? More and more symbols, repeating into infinity, surrounding Twilight every moment of every day. However, symbols had to be consistent to reinforce one another. That was key. They had to add up into one overall picture. Incongruous symbols violated the sanctity of the context. Shook the pony mind. Forced it to snap itself out of its slumber and adopt a defensive stance, so that it could piece together the truth and resolve the tension. Because the pony brain thrived on stability. A stable life means security as part of the entrenched herd, free from predators and from scarcity of resources. Part of stability was the unity of symbols and their meaning. Symbols allowed ponies to know where they stood. Let them know how to navigate their way through this world, to orient themselves. The big picture, in other words. This was all about preserving the big picture. It was about making sure nothing violated the willing suspension of disbelief, not only in the world of the stage, but in real life as well.

Twilight realized there was still one more curtain left to go through. In the inner recesses of her heart, she felt the absolute certainty this was the final curtain, which, when lifted, would reveal all the secrets. She crept closer, feeling the heat and the light and the music grow stronger. The light had reduced this, the closest layer to it, into a desert of meaningless symbols; what would it do to her? She shielded her eyes against the brilliance and reached out with a trembling hoof. Griping the edge in her fetlock, she took a deep and steadying breath, then tore the curtain away and revealed the backstage area behind the world.

A swirling orb of fire dominated the back reaches of the stage. Its flames were the energy source for all the machinery in the wings, the lights and the ropes, the trap doors. That's not possible! The moon is the fountainhead of Luna's divine power. Why is the sun back here, driving everything?

But despite her initial shock and confusion, the orb had a kind of hypnotic quality. She stared up in awe at the flames dancing across the sun's surface. Its perverse beauty had an undeniable fascination. Twilight raised a hoof towards the event horizon, the outer radius that divided the outer glow of its radiance from the overwhelming power generating it....

No! she thought suddenly, drawing her foreleg back. It hypnotizes and it burns and-and it scorches the land and....Solara used it to enslave ponykind. Be strong, Twilight. Strong like River Wilde. Don't give in to the temptation of degeneracy! Don't betray your civilization!

She chewed her lip as her hoof wavered at the fringe of the sun.

But how can something so beautiful be so wrong?

Twilight's hoof pierced the event horizon, and the incandescence poured around her, over her, through her. She reached out to embrace it.

“FIRE!”

Twilight woke with a gasp and jerked upright in her seat. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was, or why she was there. This didn't look like her bedroom. But through the buzzing in her head, it all started to come back to her. She looked down at the stage, where ponies in heavy golden armor and snarling golden dragon helms ringed River Wilde, who darted to and fro in panic.

They chanted their solemn refrain again: “FIRE!”

She rubbed her face and wiped away the beads of sweat dotting her forehead. Just a dream, she thought, as the real world settled back into place and she settled back into her place inside it.

Though she was slow to awaken, her mind blossomed to the potent symbolism of the faceless golden horde harassing River down below. It all unfolded in an instant, like it had existed preformed in her mind, only waiting for the proper moment to bring itself to her attention, fully-formed. This was not only a war against Solara, but a war for the future itself. River, from a quaint but relatively modern frontier plantation, was struggling against ponies in heavy armor, dragon helms, and vivid orange tabards, symbolizing the distant past. The age of fire, and of Solara Invictus. Two time periods were dueling for supremacy: the past and the present.

“FIRE!” the choral horde chanted.

“Oh, the fire burns and it rages!” River wailed.

“FIRE!”

“Oh, all for the war that she wages!”

To the tune of a discordant war march, with each chord a stab in the ears, more armored ponies tromped across the stage hefting heavy crates on their backs. They broke into the circle around River and upended their cargo at the protagonist's hooves. Although Twilight knew it was just a story, and could tell from the way they landed that they were just props made of plastic, she still got a visceral shock when hundreds and hundreds of books tumbled end over end and filled the center of the circle.

Her jaw gaped in awe. No, they can't burn all those books! They just can't!

“FIRE!”

“You can't stop the message!”

“FIRE!”

“You can't stop the presage!”

The rear of the stage exploded in a dazzling display of light, so bright it made Twilight shield her eyes. A winged mare was faintly visible in the fiery maelstrom. “Burn it all!” the mare's demonic voice commanded.

“FIRE!” the armored ponies chanted.

From the stage, a half-ring of fire erupted and surrounded River. She reared back in panic and twirled around to seek out some way to escape, but found nothing. The stagecraft was all-too-apparent to Twilight, but she couldn't resist the illusion. The threat to the books was what sold it to her. She couldn't look away with all those precious books at stake. She bit her hoof. As the evil mare cackled, her soldiers turned and walked away from the raging inferno, leaving River alone with the raging fire and the mare who controlled it.

No! Twilight thought. The books!

A rebel yell broke through the war march and dashed the evil music to pieces: “River!” The war cry filled the auditorium. The orchestra swelled in a triumphant ascending chord progression as a spotlight revealed Fayton, his wings arched out proudly, standing on a jagged rock decorating the stage. The familiar sigil of Luna's moon lay on the tabard he wore over his armor.

“Fayton!” River cried.

The pegasus brimmed with confidence and determination. How much did I miss? Twilight wondered, but before she could think on it further, Fayton leapt into action and swooped towards the ring of fire. With a nimble dive, he landed beside her and threw her onto his back. “Hold on tight, River, because here we go!”

“But Fayton, can your wings carry us both? Can you carry the weight of the two of us?”

“Been thinking about what it's all worth. Life and love and duty and all that. And I've made a few observations. The only purpose to life is in duty, to be followed without reservation. Don't you see it needed to be this way?! I needed to run from my love for you, because in running away from myself, I found out what I'm supposed to do.”

“What?!”

“Fight for you, like any true pegasus would! It's time to do what a real pegasus should!”

With that, he took to the air and arced up and over the rim of the circle of flames. But it was all-too-apparent that he couldn't carry their combined weight, because he couldn't fly high enough to avoid his legs and his underside being scorched by the fire. He screamed in agony and dropped to the stage again, smoke rising from his armor. The pegasus beside Twilight gave a little squeak of terror. River hit the ground and rolled away, then picked herself up and ran to Fayton's side. She cradled him, and his head rolled back until he was looking up at her.

“Look at what you've done, you silly little colt,” River sang, smiling through her tears. “You've got your brand-new armor all scuffed up and dinged. Now we'll have to go back to the princess of the night, and she won't want to hear how it's been all singed.”

“Never let it be said that we were the geniuses behind this operation,” Fayton croaked.

“No, you're just the heart and the mighty soul of ponykind's salvation.”

The music shifted into a slow, sorrow-tinged reprise of “Who is Lily Gild?” Fayton craned his head around and looked at the raging fire and the books fueling it. “Well, hey, would ya look at that sight inglorious,” Fayton sang softly. “It cuts to the heart that she'd be so vainglorious.”

“All the great speeches that the great ponies spoke. All of our history has now gone up in smoke. All our knowledge is over the precipice!”

“Let it go, then, because it's lost to the abyss. But that's not the end, not as long as we're alive. In every time and place, our stories always thrive. So fill the world up to replace the old.”

“We'll start with the saga of Sir Fayton the Bold. In our brightest hour, how glorious he rode! For the rest of time, that's all that she wrote....”

In the end, Twilight thought, it all comes back around to books. Books are pure knowledge, stamped in ink. Thoughts of great minds, feelings of great heroes, communicated across time. Theater is empheremal; ponies rehearse and use technology and electricity made by other ponies to bring a script to life. Otherwise theater doesn't exist. But this musical acknowledges that. Despite the spectacle it produces, it's proudly proclaims the power of books.

In watching the pegasus's death play out, Twilight couldn't quite say the theater was powerless. A tremendous sense of relief was generated by the impact of his death. That tightening knot slipped loose. The tension in Twilight was gone as the conflict of interracial romance neatly worked itself out, and despite how real or unreal it might be, that was good enough for her.

No, this can't be happening! Fluttershy thought. He has to get up! They can't kill Fayton off!

But on the far-distant stage, way down below, a dying breath wheezed from his lips: “Oh, it's something unnatural, and I wish I knew it sooner, but it'll be alright, because I'm so in love with this lunar....” He broke out into a violent coughing fit. His head wobbled up and down in a rapid flurry. When it calmed, he struggled to speak, but his voice was very hoarse. River leaned closer to listen to him.

His jaw clenched, Fayton spat out: “The dawn of this lunar age.”

And with that, it was over. Awestruck, Fluttershy watched that guardian of the night go limp in River's forelegs. His noble life was extinguished like a candle.

How could they do this to Fluttershy? Finally, here was somepony who understood her fear and terror at this world, and the cruel ponies behind the musical had to take him away. How would she be able to face the world tomorrow?

But a sudden and, until now, undiscovered wellspring of calmness and assurance sprang up inside her. Deep in her mind, some part of her had surveyed the shape of the musical. The layout of the action. At once the truth was revealed to her, and it fit together pleasantly well. You'll do it the same way Fayton did: be brave, despite the fear, and plunge on into danger like every good pegasus does. Danger isn't just on some distant battlefield; it also means braving the things that terrify you in everyday life. Let Fayton's example guide you and it'll be alright. It doesn't matter how scared you are. If you do your duty everypony will think you're a brave pony anyway. They don't know what's going on in your head.

But what if I get hurt? Emotionally, or....worse.

They wouldn't call it a 'sacrifice' if you didn't lose anything, would they? And putting aside your personal failings for the good of your nation is the noblest sacrifice there is.

She sank down in her seat, mulling over this turn of events, but down below Brownie Bay took the stage to join the vengeful River Wilde as she cradled Fayton's corpse. Fluttershy pushed the morbid thoughts from her mind for now, because she could use a laugh after this tragedy of epic proportions.

“The tryant Solara Invictus has driven us all to ruin,” an angry River Wilde sang, signaling the start of a new song, and the coming confrontation. “But I live for the day the sun is eclipsed by the moon! It's time that we took up the fight for natural rule. It's time to take the fight to the tyrant most cruel!"

"It's time," Hammer said, checking his pocketwatch.

"Are....are you sure?" Applejack asked. She shivered and huddled in the little cul de sac at the end of the alleyway, while he lifted up the tarp over the wagon. She heard a little twist and a click. Such a small thing, barely audible. And yet it meant the fuse was lit; the whole cart would go up in flames in just thirty minutes. And if she hadn't got it into place by then, so would she.

“Well?” Hammer asked.

For mah family, she thought. “I'm ready."

“Good.”

Applejack harnessed herself to the bomb once more, and once Hammer made sure they were clear, led her out of the alleyway. The glow of the theater district and its marquees was bright, a raging inferno that took up the street ahead. She hoped the explosives in the cart wouldn't catch fire and ignite from the blaze. They certainly felt restless and ready to destroy her. As she started to walk, time distorted until it was stretched thin and became less than real. She stole glances at the the pony next to her, that fiery stallion with anger in his heart. The neon lights set flame to his scarred face, blazing blue and red and green and yellow. He was going up in flames, and she couldn't help him. There wasn't a choice she could make to save him. And on the contrary, he could destroy her easily, set fire to her and watch her burn if he knew the thoughts she had locked up inside her head.

Think about who you're doing this for: Big Mac, Apple Bloom, Granny Smith. The thought of Granny Smith gave Applejack the strength to go on. She had to make a better life for her family, no matter the cost.

Applejack rounded the final corner, and there the Chariot come into view. Her destination. She lingered on the sidewalk, unable to take her eyes off that crossroads of her life. Could she, would she, should she go through with it? Knowing what would happen in the end? Again, she desperately wished they had arrested her at the checkpoint and taken this terrible, terrible sould-rending pain away. Taken this awful act out of her hooves and forced her not to go through with it. The cart was obviously carrying a large quantity of explosives. The documents were blatant fakes. Surely the Colonel knew that before she waved Applejack through. And yet Applejack had been given the all-clear to blow up a chunk of the unicorn sectors.

It boggled Applejack's mind.

She couldn't go through with this. It would bring the force down on her own kind, just like Big Mac predicted. But she had to go through with it all the same, because Hammer was staring at her. Under the cloak, his sullen eyes burned and brimmed with fury. How could she refuse to follow through with this when those angry eyes pierced her skin like spears? So many eyes surrounding her, all of them on her, commanding and demanding her, every moment of every day. Pushing and pulling her like some massive tidal force, back and forth. And if she tried to swim against it, they would all tear her apart. There was no way out. No way but sweet, blessed death, and it was looking more and more appealing by the moment.

“You know where I'll be waiting,” Hammer said.

He turned and walked away, his black cloak melting into the darkness of an alleyway. Now she was alone with her burden. She sighed and turned to the Chariot, starting the long march into the shadow of death and misery that hung over the theater like a stormcloud on the horizon.

Perched on a rooftop like a bird of prey, the Colonel pulled her pocketwatch out of her jacket by its chain. Bomb was armed at 9:33pm. Assuming my intel is right, it's a thirty minute timer. So....10:03pm. She spread her wings and flew to the next rooftop, keeping her eyes fixed on the deadly cargo down below.

Chapter 15

Of all the ponies on the street, Applejack was the only one who could feel the storm picking up in intensity. The tempest of misery and pain emanated from the Chariot theater and stung Applejack's face. It made her sweat, teared her eyes up, and wore on her body like the whipping wind as she struggled towards its heart. Her breath resounded in her ears as if it were rolling thunder, while her head grew light and her vision sparkled like flashing thunder. How much longer could she struggle against this torrent? Would she pass out?

What a relief that would be!

But she struggled through the invisible wind. Hammer was watching, and she shuddered to think what such a pony fueled by rage would do if she failed him. Of course, she also shuddered to think what the unicorns would do to her family if a bomb exploded in the heart of their city. Somehow, she suspected all the excuses in the world would pale before that, no matter how true they might be. She shuddered at the thought that her days were numbered, that she was a pawn playing a game she didn't even know the rules to, that her life was not her own.

All in all, she did a lot of shuddering these days. Meanwhile, through the storm, the Chariot approached.

The minutes dragged on and on into agony.

"I can't wait," Cup Cake said.

“Me either,” Carrot said, his voice gruff and scratchy from years of inhaling chemical fumes.

Together, on the roof of the Magnum Smelting plant, they gently swayed in place as they waited for the fire flare and the plume of smoke to erupt from downtown. She patted her husband's warm foreleg, wrapped around her neck. His presence set her tortured nerves at ease. She twisted her head to get a glimpse at his strong, sure face. Despite the years of weary toil that had sagged his ears and recessed his eyes, and the pitted skin and stained coat from a lifetime of waste byproducts dripping onto him, and the scars and faded bruises from pegasus truncheons, in her mind's eyes she saw his beautiful inner self. He shone in this dark ghetto, and she wanted to shine with him. She leaned closer and rested her head on his neck, waiting for the sunset to bloom on the horizon, if only for a moment.

A bottle clattered in the alleyway below, hit something metal, and rolled across the stones. Cup Cake jerked away from her husband as the echo filled the air. The irresistible pony urge to bolt and run until she could run no more ripped through her, but she wrangled herself under control.

“I heard it too,” Carrot said, his ears erect.

He scanned the buildings around them while Cup glanced over the parapet and scoured the street below. Her eyes went to all the dark and shadow-laden corners, out of the pools of light from the few street lamps that still worked. Holdovers from the days before the Winter Rising, those old soldiers lining the streets. But her eyes couldn't pick anything out from the darkness.

“Was this a mistake?” she whispered. Panic clawed at her insides and dug into her nerves. “Coming up here? Did we....?”

“Shh,” he whispered back soothingly. “Everything's going to be alright. Let's go back downstairs.”

As he turned to go, Cup followed his lead, but a flitting shadow leaping out of an alleyway caught the corner of her eye. She spun around to follow it, and she was certain she had seen a pair of wings and a beret, but then it melted back into the darkness that it came from, and she couldn't say if it had ever really been there in the first place. But what they were doing, their mission, it was far, far too important for her to dismiss her suspicions outright. Not when there was a chance the warehouse was compromised.

After swallowing heavily, she said, “I think I saw a pegasus.”

He froze in place, one hoof off the ground, his muscles tensing. His breath began to rattle in and out, as if a chilly wind were descending on the two of them. Barely turning towards her, he asked, “Are you sure?”

“I-I don't know. It might have just been my imagination.”

He broke into a trot and headed for the wedge on the rooftop, where the entrance to the stairwell was. “Let's get back downstairs and tell the others. We'll let them decide.”

As she trotted behind her husband, she gave a panicked glance over her shoulder, dreading the moment her eyes would land on the pegasus streaking out of the shadows towards her--

Carrot began to yell, but then his voice was suddenly silenced. When she faced him to make sure he was alright, he was nowhere to be seen. “Carrot?!” she yelled into the night. Then, like a bolt of lightning from the clouds, something shot down from above, wrapped itself around her, and lifted her hooves off the ground. She thrashed and twisted in its grip, but the ground was dizzyingly distant now. The roof she had been on moments ago was just one square among many in the moonlight. If she wrangled herself loose, she could fall to the ground and kill herself before they could torture her for information. At night, she comforted herself with the idea that she could do it; could give her life for the cause. But up there, in the wind-whipped sky, as she was seized with the desperate urge to run where there was no ground, her bravery deserted her. She wanted to live more than anything else in the world. Just the thought of hitting the ground at impact velocity was too much to bear.

So she stopped struggling, but to make up for it, she screamed into the night. An ugly, primal neighing that made her throat sore. She kept it up until a foreleg closed over her mouth and clamped it shut. She screamed into the fine coat. She wanted to bite down on the skin in anger, but she didn't want to fall, either.

Up and up and up she went, into the dizzying sky, until her abductor arced back towards the ground and landed gently on a roof of a ten-story apartment building that had been abandoned during the Winter Rising. The pegasus shoved her roughly to the ground. She kicked around to get free and run for the stairwell, but the pegasus was well-trained. Her limbs were soon expertly twisted and forced around until he had slipped the manacles on and fastened her legs together. Trussed up like a pig, she thumped onto her side, helpless to move. Her eyes rested on her husband, lying near her and fighting against his attacker. But with one short, sharp kick, his head hit the floor and he was unconscious.

“Carrot!” she screamed, but a kick rained down on her and caught her in the jaw, breaking it with a searing lance of pain. She lay there dazed, unable to think of a plan, unable to ever move. She stared up in helpless horror as the two pegasi, those cruel killers, talked about her and the love of her life like they were insects scurrying across the ground, waiting to be crushed.

"We found these two, Major Fleetfoot," one said. "Colonel Dash's lead must have been right. They were on lookout. The others will notice they're missing, sooner or later."

"We better hope it's later," a mare in a Shadowbolt uniform said. "Something suspicious is going on down there, and I don't like it."

"We should go in."

Cup Cake's spirits revived themselves enough for her to make a feeble moan of protest, but the pain lancing through her broken jaw made forming actual words unbearable. The harsh eyes of the Shadowbolt and the implied violence shining in them made Cup Cake seal her lips, trailing her moan off into a whimper. Then the Shadowbolt pulled her pocketwatch out of her vest and stared at its face.

"Captain Rapid Fire, ready your ponies." The Shadowbolt's inequine eyes returned to the other pegasus. "We're going in."

It was all too much for Cup Cake to deal with, far too much. All their best laid plans, dashed to pieces. The Shadowbolts must've known the whole time, and here she was thinking the EPLF could have ever fought them. The life of an earth pony was never their own, not ever. Crying to herself, Cup Cake rested her temple on the ground, trying to sail away into the darkness, away from the pain and the horror and the indignity of it all.

The Shadowbolt put her pocketwatch away again.

Right on time, Applejack thought.

The crowd outside the Chariot Theater buzzed around her: paparazzi with cameras slung around their necks waiting for the show to end and the stars and starlets to emerge; ushers repositioning the velvet ropes; valets guiding the traffic building up in the street; a few unicorns who had ducked out to smoke while the show finished up. They glared at her with unmitigated contempt, but with a flash of her documents, a Civil Force soldier brusquely directed her to a fifteen-minute unloading zone near an alleyway. What are you doing? she thought. Can't you see these papers are fake as can be? Arrest me! But Hammer was surely watching from the shadows. He would know how she had betrayed him. So she slunk away to the unloading zone, under a sign mounted on the theater wall that read: 'To Stage Exit.' She maneuvered the cart into a space between a few others, unhitched her harness and stepped away from it.

And that was that. Such a small act, with such enormous consequences.

Inside the wooden frame, the timer was ticking away to oblivion, waiting to destroy the cart and the ponies who would be walking past it. A vile black cloud hung around it all, but she was the only pony who could see it. The only pony present who knew its evil contents. Why weren't the Shadowbolts swooping in to disarm it?

Before she walked away, she took a good long look at the High Castle, perched above the city. It, too, watched her like a hawk from on high, ready to devour her like a field mouse if it should move from its roost. Everything in this city was trying to kill her. Including herself. It was all she could do to stay alive.

Applejack checked to make sure nopony was watching her unduly, then walked away from the terrible burden. Across the street, through the bumper-to-bumper traffic, away from the theater, she went. After a block, she looped back around and ducked into an twisting alleyway. Even the alleyways looked nicer in the unicorn part of the city. All the trash went in dumpsters, all the windows were intact, with no bars across them, no rude graffiti scrawled on the brick walls. Paradise, she thought sarcastically. Hammer waited for her at the end, in a slanted shadow, in front of a chainlink fence allowing them to see the front of the theater. While it was still intact and unbloodied.

“It's done,” she said.

He replied, “Excellent,” and then turned to the theater. “And now, we wait.”

Ah reckon ya ain't gonna like what ya'll see if ya do, she thought bitterly.

In the lone spotlight, amidst the ashes of the fallen tyrant's devastation, River Wilde eulogized acapella: “In the end Fayton choose how he lived and died.” The glowing orb of the newly eternal moon shone down on her and her alone, rendering the cast assembled around her in darkness. Though she was ostensibly addressing them, in truth she sang to the audience, offering them wisdom gleaned from a life of hardship and hard-won victory. “He was free to embrace the goodness in his heart. The natural order connecting us all far and wide. The unnatural love he held surely played its part.” She held up in her fetlock the hoof-written copy of Lily Gild's manuscript. “And though he may be dead and buried and gone, in the hearts and minds of the ponies he freed, his sainted memory will carry on, as we canter on, down the road to Canterlot, his name will be our creed!”

This quiet and melancholy interlude had broken the showstopping final number in half, and while a quiet moment of reflection wasn't unappreciated, the return of the finale would be the perfect end to the evening. As the quickening instrumentation came on, propelling River's words like a lapping river, Twilight thought, Here it comes. She could barely sit still, she was so giddy for the grand finale. Giddy to see that glorious mare rise up and triumph over the ponies who thought she was weak. But she wasn't; River was so, so strong. The strongest mare in the world, and she was victorious.

“No, Fayton, we will never forget!” River wailed. “We'll never forget what you accomplished....” Ash began to harmonize with her. “In freeing us, in seeing us, as we are and always shall be....” The whole chorus of ponies in the darkness joined in: “Because of him, we're free. We're free! We....are....free....!

The interlude effortlessly flowed into the thundering chorus once again, bringing a grin to Twilight's lips. As the brass cut loose, the drums snapped out a rhythm, the woodwinds piped a delightful flutter, and the strings broke out into major chords, everypony on stage sang out loud and clear: “Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free at last! All the pain, all the tears, thanks be to Luna, are in the past! Free at last, free at last, thanks be to Fayton, we're free to see! Brand new world, brave new world, where we will know, who we should be!”

What triumphant, joyous, celebratory music! The distilled sound of victory incarnate, played in honor of everypony who had ever struggled through life. This musical, its procession of chords, was an aural journey through the ups and downs of life itself. A psychopomp through the underworld of the soul. And here Twilight was, emerging back into the moonlight like a moth from its cocoon. And what was there left to do but dance to her heart's content, just like the expertly choreographed parade on display down on stage?

“So let's gallop on down the road to Canterlot,” River sang at the forefront of the marching cavalcade. “The sun has set forever on this blessed plot! Let's build a city to shine for eternity! Let's build a city in natural harmony!”

Ash stepped forward to take the reins of the next verse. He bellowed out, “Where you're free to be you, and where I can be me.”

Swinging her body with exaggerated exuberance, Brownie Bay bounced across the stage to him and River, singing, “Where we's be takin' are place in de high-arkee!”

“A brand new dusk....” River sang.

“....for a brand new night of pony,” Ash finished.

Together, they finished the verse by singing in unison, “The moon is shining down on our new liberty!”

“Hey,” Thoroughbred called. “Are the Cakes back yet?”

With a mighty heave, Serf Supper lifted the last crate and piled it onto the wagon bed. He wiped the sweat from his brow, glanced around the empty, soon-to-be-abandoned storeroom, and then shook his head.

Thoroughbred muttered under his breath. “Well, if you see them, tell them to get their flanks moving.”

“Why? What's up?”

“What's up? What's up is that we're supposed to have all this stuff ready to move to the new hideout by the time Hammer gets back. That's 'what's up'. You know how he gets. And seeing how we're all yoked together in this, I don't really feel like picking up the Cakes' slack.”

“Hey, you know what the pegasus ponies did to Carrot Cake. Give 'em a break, alright?”

Thoroughbred moaned. “And what about Caballeron?! He disappeared hours ago. Has his miserable carcass turned up yet?”

“Hey, calm down. Stop taking everything as an insult against you.”

“Seeing how you and I are the only two actually doing any work around here, how am I not supposed to take it as an insult?”

“Has anybody ever told you you're just a miserable pony?”

The snarling Thoroughbred opened his mouth to speak, but Serf would never know what he was about to say. At that moment, the grimy skylight exploded. Glass rained down and littered the cracked concrete floor. The fresh moonlight streaming in lit up the room and made elongated winged shadows dance across the walls. Thoroughbred and Serf, deeply spooked, ran. Serf bolted into the hallway and galloped for the side door, but when he was halfway there it blew inward. Shadowbolts, judging by their black uniforms and purple berets. They poured into the cramped hallway, blocking the way forward, truncheons held up in raised fetlocks. Coming straight for him.

Serf turned back the way he had come, but the pegasus ponies who'd flew through the skylight had already blocked off his retreat. They wrestled Thoroughbred away, back towards the meeting room. The pegasi who'd come through the door marched up behind Serf. With rough hooves they grabbed him and pulled him deeper into the compromised hideout. He let them carry him away. He was far too shocked and stunned to do anything about it.

They brought him to the meeting room where, only a few hours ago, Hammer had set the plan in motion. All the others were there, surrounded by Shadowbolts. Those visions of death all had uniform expressions of contempt on their grim faces. The ponies marched Serf into the room and threw him down beside the quivering Thoroughbred. Serf looked around, counting the faces. No Cakes, and no Caballeron either.

“I suppose now you torture us,” Serf said.

But the Shadowbolt in command, pale blue with a coiffed white mane, didn't ask a single question of them. She just had her minions drag the crates back in and open them. Sorted through all the incriminating evidence they hadn't had a chance to get rid of. All the maps and newspaper clippings and diagrams. She didn't need to ask anything; the evidence spoke for itself. Yet she didn't seem surprised at what she found. It was too early for the bombing to have happened, and there wasn't anything in there which would identify the pony carrying the bomb. A maddening thought appeared in Serf's mind as he tried to make sense of what was happening:

Why wasn't she asking what she could do to stop it?

Onstage, the assembled company bellowed out one final refrain of “FREE!”. The sonorous drums pounded under it and the orchestra sustained its final chord at full blast, until the wall of sound filled the auditorium completely. Nothing in the world existed beyond that single, triumphant chord. Not even Twilight, who held her breath for its duration so she did not miss a single vibration. It was everywhere; it was everything; and it was joyous on the ears. It washed over her, undoing the knot in her chest and purging all the bad feelings in her heart until she was left feeling clean, new, reborn. Happy, for once.

Then the song ended and silence settled in. The hall was plunged into darkness for a moment, but the stomping of hooves on the floor and the cheers and hollers rendered the air alive once again. The lights went back up as the curtain call began and the cast took their final bows, but Twilight wasn't particularly interested in watching. She got up and headed for the door, edging past the yellow pegasus as she went. The pegasus was crying at the scene.

You'll cry a whole lot more when I'm done with you and your worthless race, Twilight thought, because she was the strongest mare in Equestria, and she had a book to write.

Be brave, Fluttershy thought to herself. Be bold.

She sat in the dark, chewing over the moral arc of his journey. It was one of ascent, and of the flight upwards. Not being stuck on the ground, like she was. Always lifting oneself higher and improving oneself. Using the courage Fayton's story had lent her, Fluttershy stood up and headed for the exit. With that image of bold Fayton in her mind, she felt stronger; his presence and his struggle comforted her in her time of need.

Be like Fayton, she told herself. You certainly haven't gotten anywhere by being yourself, so leave you behind and become more like him.

After the actors had all left the stage, Rarity got up to go. Coco Pommel was right at her side, as always. Sweetie Belle, though, sat sullen and morose, only getting up after Rarity gave her a stern and sustained stare. Her little sister slid off the seat in a distinctly unladylike way and slouched after Rarity, her pony servant in tow. Together, they all headed for the lobby and waited for a moment at Rarity's request; she glanced at the ornate clock over the ticket booths.

It read ten o'clock exactly.

And there, nervously walking into the lobby, was Trotten Pullet. Rarity swept up to her and said, "Come now, my dear, and walk with me. We have so much to discuss. Tell me, have you ever ridden in a hovercarriage?"

Rarity and her entourage headed for the door.

Crouched on the rooftop, the Colonel roused herself when she saw the ponies begin to emerge from the Chariot. She pulled out her pocketwatch and checked the time. Then her eyes went to the unassuming little wagon nestled among the others in the unloading zone. The wagon she had shepherded all the way from the ghetto. The crux of her plan. The one device that, despite the chaos and insecurity it would temporarily inspire, would inevitably prove to be the saving of the city.

Thirty minute fuse, she thought. Armed at nine thirty-three.

She twisted the knob of her radio on and lifted the mic in her fetlock, holding it close to her mouth. But she didn't depress the send button. Not yet. In her other fetlock, she held the pocketwatch and obsessively watched its hands tick away. In an operation like this, timing was everything. Had to wait, inspire the right amount of panic. Make them feel the searing heat of the flames. Below, the crowd spilled out messily onto the sidewalk, filling the air with the buzz of a thousand overlapping conversations. All of them, so happy. So secure in their lives. Completely unaware of how quickly everything could turn to dust if ponies like the Colonel weren't looking over them.

Well, they'll learn. She eyed the crowd and estimated how this would all play out. Not yet. A few more seconds.

Wait for it.

The Colonel held her breath.

Wait for it....

She started to tremble with anticipation as the crowd swelled and the hands of time slipped away from her.

Now!

She held down the send button. “All units, all units, this is Colonel Dash. I have conformation of a threat at the Chariot Theater, repeat, a confirmed threat on the Chariot Theater, by elements of the Earth Pony Liberation Front. There is a bomb only seconds from going off. All units, evacuate the area, immediately.”

She let go of the button and waited for events to unfold. For a few seconds, everything continued as it had been. Blissfully unaware of their impending doom, the crowd continued to chatter and saunter in front of the theater. Then, faint stirrings of action began to take place. Civil Force troops galloped through the crowd to gather together and autocarriages turned their lights and sirens on. The civilians at the fringes of the crowd watched the bustle with confusion and surprise, while the ones in the center, insulated, kept on happily chatting.

All it takes is a few words, the Colonel thought with burgeoning awe, to set all this motion into action. She grinned. Like telling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater.

Twilight Sparkle had been so preoccupied with standing up straight that she didn't hear the police sirens until the crowd surged suddenly and she was almost knocked over.

“What's going on?” she asked nopony in particular.

But the ponies around her didn't hear her, and the sounds of stomping hooves and panicked yelling for friends and family members drowned out her voice. Twilight didn't feel so strong anymore. She turned her head this way and that, but the sudden motion made her alcohol-drenched head become light and airy. Clasping her hooves to her temples, she staggered along with the flow of the crowd, but towards what, she couldn't have said.

“No, no, no!” Colonel Dash shouted. “What are you idiots doing?!”

This wasn't protocol; this wasn't supposed to happen. She had gone over the guidelines from the Bureau of Public Works until her eyes bled, and they said, in no uncertain terms, that for evacuation from this part of the city, civilians were to be directed towards the open park on Broadcrest. Away from the bomb, in other words.

But now these fools from the Civil Force were abandoning the plan. The corralled ponies were being herded right into another Civil Force unit who was trying to evacuate them according to the actual protocol. All those civilians were now caught between two forces going in opposite directions, and stuck right next to the bomb. And it was going to explode any second now. She was the only pony who could see that, because of her vantage point.

She raised the radio mic again to order Lightning Dust to take control. Then she remembered she retasked Major Dust, and that she wasn't in her position. There was nopony to clean up this mess Dash had made. She backed away from the parapet, perspiring and hyperventilating.

You can take control.

But....but right now, nopony knows where I am. What if, at the inquest, they figure out I was too close to the Chariot? That I knew too much? That I knew where the bomb was ahead of time? This whole thing I've worked so hard on could unravel! No, I can't do it.

The Colonel began to slip away into the shadows before some keen eye saw her up there.

But she hadn't taken two steps before a pile of dead bodies haunted her imagination. She had been prepared for a few casualties, sure. This couldn't be too clean. But dozens? Hundreds, even? No, that went far beyond the pale of good conscience. Dash rapidly turned around and made for the theater to help, but again she froze in indecision.

The big picture, the war for Canterlot's soul, depended on all this going down perfectly. The higher the death toll, the more convincing it would be to sell Spitfire's incompetence to an outraged Defense Council looking for somepony to blame. The easier it would be for the Colonel to get what she wanted. Nay, what she needed to save this city.

Looking back over her shoulder, she beheld the moonlit sky. The moon beckoned for her to fly away, into the all-encompassing night. The Colonel opened her wings and spread them out to take flight.

But a heavy dread weighed Dash down. Those ponies are going to die because of my stupid mistake. It's all my fault, I didn't think this through. I sent Lightning Dust off after Armor's sister, even though I should have kept her on-task....

In her absolute lowest moment of self-loathing, Colonel Dash thought, Spitfire was right: it's not about fighting battles. It's about picking them. And I picked the wrong one last time.

She whipped her head around to face the Chariot theater for the final time. I have to make this right, Dash thought, galloping to the parapet and leaping over it with her wings gracefully spread out wide. She sailed over the crowd, heading for the nearest Civil Force officer, then folded her wings and dived to the ground. “Stop!” she shouted to the unicorn over the shouting, jostling crowd. “You're pushing them into another team! Go the other way! We need to get these ponies away from the theater!”

Dash tensed herself for the unicorn, wearing a haughty expression, to fight her attempt at command. But, mercifully, she took one look at Colonel Dash, folded, and directed her troops to let the crowd pass. Like a dam breaking, the civilians surged towards her and around her. With a wide wave of her foreleg, Dash gestured for them to move quickly.

Before her terrible mistake cost them dearly.

First one way, and then the other, the crowd abruptly changed directions. The dizzy Twilight was thrown off-kilter. The thinning crowd ran past her, but she was having enough trouble telling all the directions apart. They blurred together into a smear of color, and the simple act of moving made her want to heave. She struggled to get her bearings as she lagged behind the tail end of the crowd.

“Come on,” Hammer whispered. “Come on!”

“Yer really looking forward ta this, ain't ya?” Applejack asked.

“I want to see them pay for what they've done to me.”

His fiery eyes surveyed the crowd of innocent ponies at the cusp of death, delighting in the cloud of darkness that hovered over them, blackening their life-filled bodies. His lips curled up in a maniacal grin. Hammer was too far gone to be saved, Applejack concluded. But then he surprised her. When the crowd thinned on the street, his grin dissolved. AJ stared at him, confused, as his mouth hung open. He lunged forward, but the chainlink fence blocked his way and clattered when he hit it.

“No!” he shouted. “Twilight!”

What in the hay is that supposed ta mean? 'Twilight'? That some kinda victory cry?

“Twilight, get away!” He slipped his forehooves into the links and rattled the fence. “Run, Twilight!”

Applejack grabbed him. “Hammer, this ain't the way it's supposed ta go down, ya hear?! Let's go!”

But Hammer struggled against her grip as she dragged him away, down the alleyway. He took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs:

“TWILIGHT!”

Twilight's ears perked up as the shout broke through the blur of sight and sound fogging up her senses. A distant voice, but one she knew so very well. An impossible voice, calling to her from the grave.

“Shining Armor?!” she called back.

The silence lasted long enough for her to think she imagined it, but then the call, even more distant this time, came back to her: “Twilight!”

The alcohol was slowing her down, making her numb and dumb, but she wasn't going to let that hold her back. A Civil Force pegasus tried to grab her and push her along with the crowd, but when he laid his disgusting hooves on a unicorn of her stature, she shoved him away and strode past him. She staggered back the way she came. As she went past the abandoned limousines, their running engines breathed smoke from their tailpipes like sleeping dragons. Her dearly departed brother was out there somewhere, and she wasn't even going to let a little thing like dragons stop her in her pursuit of Shining Armor.

It was only a vague intuition, a sense of a presence no longer present, that made Fluttershy look back. But when she did, sure enough, that purple unicorn was walking backwards, ignoring the pegasus ponies shepherding them to safety. She's going to be in trouble, Fluttershy thought. Her first thought was to keep running away, to save herself. But then she asked herself one simple question: 'What would Fayton do?' It was a pegasus pony's duty to safeguard unicorns, and now one of them was in danger. One of them needed saving.

Fluttershy wasn't necessary anymore. Instead, she fixed Fayton's image in her mind. She ceased to think about what Fluttershy would do and instead became that valiant pegasus like slipping on a suit of armor. It was her duty to help the unicorn, even at grave personal peril. And if she did, then everything would work out for the better. Nopony would look down on her, even if she should die in the attempt. At least she had done her duty.

Feeling bolder already, Fluttershy slipped past the soldiers and galloped after the unicorn. Fayton was firmly at the reins of her mind and body. Before she had a thought, first it passed through her own litmus test of how Fayton would react, because that was what was expected of her race. He was everything a pegasus should be.

And then the world exploded.

The sidewalk erupted in a tremendous pillar of fire that gouged out pieces of the building and sent a pile of brick and stone collapsing onto the concrete. If Fluttershy had still been herself, she would have run away like a coward, but Fayton's instincts were what came to her, and he was so very brave. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. The ferocious fireball ripped through the air and the metal autocarriages, which detonated as the flame touched their gas tanks. The massive explosion ripped one autocarriage door free of its hinges and sent it hurtling and spinning through the air. Its sharp twisted edges were on a collision course for the unicorn's head. But the unicorn didn't see.

Fluttershy used her paltry wings to give her an extra boost and took flight, the spirit of Fayton making her soar.

One moment, Twilight was running. The next, thunder clapped right next to her ears, even though it wasn't cloudy at all. Something heavy jumped on her back and pushed her to the asphalt right before a rush of sweltering heat roared over her head. A razor-sharp whistling whipped past her and crashed into the windows of a parked autocarriage, sprinkling her with broken glass. As she went down, her head collided with the autocarriage's side. Its impact reverberated throughout her skull, dulling every sense tenfold, like her head was being submerged in water. Her knees collapsed and sent her plummeting to the pavement, face first. With a crack, she heard the bottle of cider in her bag break on impact.

The blackness filled her vision.

"No!" Hammer screamed. "Twilight!"

He stared in horror at the plume of black smoke rising into the sky. He refused to budge. The hypocrisy of it all enraged Applejack so much she smacked him across the face for making her follow through with this. For putting all this blood on her hooves. But he didn't fight back. He didn't even seem to notice the blow. He simply staggered back from the impact and fell to the ground, his eyes still fixed on the smoking flower of destruction growing strong and bold, which he had planted the seeds for.

"Fine," she spat at him. "Stay here, then. Ah hope the Shadowbolts get ya."

Applejack left him there on the ground and ran down the alleyway, alone.

Twilight rolled onto her back, and the weight on it slipped off and thumped to the pavement next to her. Her bleary eyes laid to rest on the moon, hanging so far overhead. Its pale light streamed down through the night, crossing the celestial fabric of the firmament. Her vision started going blurry. She was underwater now, and sinking deeper. She blinked rapidly to get her eyes to focus through the murk. With a thrash, she grabbed the side of the autocarriage and hauled herself to her hooves. She couldn't feel her legs very well, and the blurriness smoothed out all motion until it felt like she was floating through the sea. The whole world was made of shimmering water. Just like in her dream.

Thick black smoke billowed around her, polluting the currents.

On the ground, a familiar yellow pegasus rolled around and moaned, clutching her wings. The stench of singed feathers filled Twilight's nose. Dazed, she stepped over the pegasus and wandered down the street. She staggered past other ponies, all of them rendered in vivid orange from the fire and deep silver from the moonlight. They wandered as aimlessly as her, looking like fish in an aquarium, gaping at something they couldn't comprehend: the world beyond the tank.

Twilight became aware of a strange tingling running through her body. Like an electrical charge. It made her feel lighter, almost as if she could fly without wings. It had dwelt within her ever since that something had pushed her down. The pegasus? No, couldn't be. A pegasus pony would never try and save her; they only wanted to stab her in the back.

Her knees gave out suddenly. They scraped the street as she fell down and bowed her head.

The dim figure of another mare appeared over her and gave her a steadying hoof. Twilight looked up, straining her eyes to see through the smoke shimmering sheen of the world. The mare was vaguely familiar, but Twilight's fragmented brain couldn't pick it out of the sea of faces swirling through her head.

Something about the dress piqued Twilight's messy and addled attention, though. It was all black, but it shone nonetheless. A hidden quality within its form was shining, although it was buried deep. It was as solid as a rock, while the world flowed around her. The concealed quality shone in a hue of seven different colors at once. She struggled to remember the name ancient tomes gave to the phenomenon, when it appeared in the sunlit sky.

A rainbow.

The hidden fundamental form behind the dress's outward appearance blazed bright in the rippling world, like the moon streaming through the fragmenting surface of the water. Some kind of energy is animating this dress. Twilight's thoughts were detached and dreamlike, existing not just inside her head, but coming from somewhere else at the same time. They floated much like the world around her did. A deeper and more harmonic form is buried inside, struggling to get out. A light in the darkness. The shimmer of the watery world became blurrier and murkier, but that hidden form shining behind all things and everything shone all the brighter and firmer.

A strange thought burst into Twilight's head. A snippet of a transmission that leaked through the water walls, like her mind was just now able to tune into a station on a different wavelength: “Your destiny's uncertain, and that's sometimes hard to take. But it will become much clearer, with every new choice you make.”

Twilight shuddered and clapped her forehooves to her head. The world became slightly more firm. She, however, was far from stable. She launched herself to her hooves, but she swayed so badly just standing still that the pony with the shining dress needed to help her stand up.

“Are you alright, dear?” the silver pony asked from a million miles distant. “Do you need help?”

It wasn't until Twilight saw Trotten Pullet standing right next to the silver unicorn that she understood. Buried inside the dress was an alicorn. And it was burning bright behind the water. As bright as the sun in her dream....and the alicorn burned, too....

No! she thought suddenly, shaking her head in revulsion. Not like the sun. Never the sun.

“What's going on?” she asked, hardly recognizing the words she was speaking. They felt distant and strange to her ears. Muffled, almost as if by water. She then answered her own question, although she hardly knew why she said what she said. The words came to her all at once, and she said them without knowing why. They just bubbled out of her. “No, don't bother explaining. Only Thorny can make it make sense. As long as there aren't any commercials!”

"This is no time for Thorny Bends," the other mare said. "I think you need a paramedic...."

Twilight pulled herself free of the helping hooves and staggered away from the mare, lurching dangerously. Out there in the city where dreams came true, that blazing alicorn was transmitting, and Twilight was receiving. Twilight needed to find the source, wherever and whatever it may be. Luckily, she felt the pulse of the broadcast right behind her eyes, guiding her, growing stronger the close she got. The world blurred and slurred around her as she walked, like she was at the forefront of a massive tidal wave, but the signal in strong and clear. Twilight walked into the night, absolutely determined to learn the truth. All around her, the street signs and street lamps and storefronts and benches and autocarriages, all these attendant props in her reality, became unmoored and floated in the watery world, seemingly more jarring and out of place with every step she took.

She lurched down a side street, the whole world twisting and turning around her like a whirlpool. She leaned heavily on the wall when her legs failed her, seeking shelter from the raging vortex. Everything around her dripped and melted and ran together, swirling into infinity, but the burning alicorn in the distance was still there to guide her. Like a lighthouse seen from the sea floor, its beam playing across the surface. The street narrowed as it went around a bend and turned into an alleyway. Its twists and turns became tighter and tighter until Twilight burst out on the other side, onto a wide street with very low buildings. Fortunately, the watery shimmer of the world seemed to solidify somewhat when the brisk breeze brushed her face. She took a few steps out into the street, but with nothing to support her she started listing wildly. She had to give up on her relentless trudge, if only for a minute. She had to sit down.

A nearby wooden sign caught her eye: 'Donut Joe's'. Food seemed like a good prospect. Marshalling her strength, she walked toward the little shop on the corner. A bell over the door announced her presence. Quaint and plain inside, the shop seemed cozy enough.

“Evenin', Twilight,” a stocky beige stallion behind the counter said. “Long time no see.”

Did she know him? Sweat dripped down her face as she tried to remember, but all her thoughts swam around her skull, so hard to catch hold of. She made a noncommittal grunt and shuffled towards the counter.

“Here for the parade?” he asked.

“....parade?” Every word was a struggle for her to say. “I just want a donut.”

“Well, you came to the right place.”

She was almost at the marble-topped counter when she noticed all all the stools were occupied. What she saw made her blood go cold. Sitting between the unicorns and the pegasi were earth ponies. And their manes, as well, weren't shaved according to regulation. Nor did they have their earmarks.

Twilight marched over to the nearest one. “Get up,” she sneered, “you filthy dirt-eater.”

He gave her a long, slow, almost contemptuous glance over his shoulder. When he finally spoke, it was only to say, “Excuse me?”

She grabbed him and tried to pull him off the seat. “This is my seat. I am a unicorn, and I demand you obey me!”

But to her surprise, he raised his hoof and pushed her away. An action punishable by execution, but none of the others seemed to care. The dirt-eaters remained where they were, the pegasi didn't so much as lift a feather, and the unicorns let this mockery go unpunished.

“Watch it, horny,” the earth pony snapped.

“Twilight?” the beige stallion asked. “What's gotten into you?”

She picked herself up and addressed the crowd. “You better believe I'm going to get the Civil Force down here and shut this place down.” With that she sprinted out the door, looking eagerly around for the nearest gray uniform she saw. But she couldn't find any. Only pedestrians, casually walking down the street. Walking completely at ease. Unconcerned. And, it was strange, but the more she looked around, the more things started to nag at her. Autocarriages, for one. Where were they? Where was the noise, the smog? These were still the unicorn sectors, surely. She hadn't passed any checkpoints. She had to be in the city center still. And, for that matter, where was her saddlebag? It was no longer on her, and she couldn't remember it ever falling off.

Then she looked up, and an unsettling disquiet came over her. Where were the skyscrapers? This whole city was so low to the ground. Just plain wrong. All of it, so wrong. Where had her city gone? Then her eyes went higher, to where the High Castle should be, and with a sudden shock she saw it wasn't there. Totally gone, like it had never been built. In its place, situated right in the city itself, stood an alabaster castle with golden minarets.

Just where the hell was she?

This strange city was like a bad dream, and it was only through sheer force of will that Twilight kept going on her long and unsettling slog through it. Breathing heavily, she sought out something familiar, a safe harbor in this alien world where she could take refuge. But in every corner lurked bizarre perversions of the real Canterlot: the pony-drawn carriages were the only vehicles on the cobblestone streets; the advertisements were subdued and subtle, if they were present at all; the earth ponies and the pegasus ponies happily walked side-by-side. Twilight's nerves were extremely on edge. She kept her gait tense, ready to power her legs and run if something untoward should appear.

After she passed between two pegasus ponies, one of them whispered, “Isn't that the princess?”

“Nah, it can't be,” the other one said. “She doesn't have any wings.”

Twilight gave them a withering glower. Not looking where she was going, she plowed right into a unicorn with a jet black mane, who grabbed her and shook her. His eyes were narrow and folded over, but they went wide as he declared, “Twilight state obtains!” She bucked wildly and threw him off, but he didn't seem to know or care. He staggered past her and continued walking, mumbling to himself, “This hypnagogic condition....” as if she didn't exist.

As she watched him go, she got a jolt. There was a symbol on his flank: six horizontal lines, the top and bottom two unbroken, whereas the two in the middle were split in half. Here eyes went to all the other ponies she could see, and sure enough, they all had those marks as well. The marks the legends spoke of, revealing a pony's inner destiny. They know who they are, she thought.

But there was no mark on her own flank. She did not know who she was, obviously.

I do! I'm Twilight Sparkle, a unicorn and archivist in the Canterlot archives. Sister of Shining Armor.

An unsettling suspicion came over her: that described what she was, not who. 'Who' was a question that ran deeper still. The thoughts streamed into her head, surprisingly lucid, and clicked into place and made sense instantly, as if she had already known them. Had always known them. If she tried to substitute the question of 'what' for the more essential 'who', it would only be a lie. A lie directed at the self. When she was a filly and her mother had caught her in a lie, Twilight had felt shame. So it was now, only the shame was magnified by how long and how well she had lied to herself.

This is ridiculous, she thought suddenly. I know who I am.

She began to walk again, for lack of anything else to occupy her mind, but it felt like her true self was still pondering the question back there, and now Twilight was leaving her behind because she didn't want to know the answer. She had split herself into pieces and buried the inconvenient parts deep down in herself. But those pieces still existed down there, shaping the contours of the bedrock of her mind and influencing her unconscious.

Who am I, then? she asked herself passive-aggressively.

And then she saw. The black-and-white photograph stared at her from a newsstand. Her own mirror image drew her eye. Cautiously, she approached the stack of newspapers. On the copy on top, there she was. Smiling, happy, surrounded by other ponies. Familiar ponies. That yellow pegasus was there. So was the silver mare, and Trotten Pullet as well. Two others she didn't recognize. An eclectic group, all in all. The headline read, 'Princess Twilight Guest of Honor at Summer Harvest Parade!'

“If you want it, it's yours,” the elderly earth pony behind the counter said. He picked up the paper and held it out to her. “After the way you whooped Tirek, you deserve a whole lot more than that, princess!”

He's....just giving it to me? What does he think, I'm some kind of Griffon?!

Stop lying about who you are, Twilight.

I....I'm not!

She took the paper, and again that electric feeling ran through her. Had been running through her the whole time, she realized. The closer she got to the center of the city, the stronger it became. It mounted so gradually she didn't notice it. Now it radiated out from the paper, which shone with that same rainbow sheen the silver mare's dress had had.

What's going on? she thought to herself. She looked up from the newspaper and saw herself again. In the window of a bookstore, this time. She went to herself and took a long, hard look into her own eyes, wondering who was staring back at her. She stared so long, in fact, that she didn't realize quite what she was staring at. She blinked and her eyes refocused. The Unabridged Starswirl's Storm rested on a shelf inside the bookstore. She walked inside the shop and went to it, its cover new and unblemished, resting on its stand. Once she lifted it up and flipped it open, she got the shock of her life. And considering how her day had been going, that was saying something.

Some of the passages were familiar, but others were not. She knew the play inside and out, and the oddness of this new text jarred her terribly. Stripped away the sense of comfort she had always felt from it. She flipped to Act V, near the end, and glanced at an ancient woodcut of Starswirl the Bearded casting an illusion of a giant flaming heart onstage while Clover watched from the wings. The caption was reprinted directly from the original woodcut. 'The Mage reuells inn delighting his apprentife Clouere the Cleuere with the Arte off the MAGICKE OFF FRIENDESHIPPE.' Confused, she turned to the text for illumination.

Like sprouting seeds that bloom with loving touch

A kindness done is planted and grows such

That from its trunk a bough does shoot and sprout

A hundredfold for what from seed grew out.

What sceptered jewel could shine so bright as this,

The magic that does guide us in our bliss

To kindle each and every others' flame

And light the fire of friendship to tame

The cold and ice. It binds us close in love,

Transmitting from a higher point above,

As we all crew this land, like swiftest ship,

United by our magic of friendship.

A....magic of friendship? Trembling, Twilight shut the book and put it back down. But she couldn't put what she had just read away as easily. The magic of friendship, binding ponies together in love. When that pegasus had pushed her down....had saved her....the electric feeling had appeared. Was that what the passage meant? Was that the magic of friendship? She still felt it, deep down inside her, in the core of her being. That electric feeling resonated there. One of the pieces of herself she had cut out and buried, so very long ago. And it was the source of these evil thoughts she was plagued with, she realized. That fragment. That spark inside her. It was trying to get out.

No! She reared up violently and neighed, to the puzzlement of the pony behind the counter. She turned tail and galloped outside, but that earth pony with the newsstand was still there, and he was still watching her. She wanted to kick him, to beat him down and show him his rightful place. I am a unicorn! I am superior to the other races!

But a quiet, calm part of herself asked, Why?

Twilight's hooves clacked against the cobblestones as she fled deeper into the city, trying to outrun the evil thoughts. Because I am!

Stop lying to yourself. How are you better?

BECAUSE I HAVE TO BE! They're the ones ruining the promise of Canterlot for me! They're the ones destroying my city! They're the ones making me miserable!

But the thoughts would not go, and she didn't have a bottle of cider to drown them out with. They pounded in her head with the intensity of the sun: And yet this city, where all three pony races are equal, seems just fine.

She had to run faster. Get away from this place before it infected her. It's not real. It's just an illusion.

The only illusion is the one you constructed for yourself. You're the one making yourself miserable, by buying into the garbage the High Castle is feeding you.

But it's true!

It's not true. It's just convenient for you to believe, because that's how you get the things you need: food, shelter, entertainment. Part of the entrenched herd, remember?

Twilight wanted desperately to look for something, anything, that would prove the evil thoughts wrong. But everything about this world reinforced them and exposed how wrong she had been. This place was made of love and light, and it filled the air. How could she fight against such overwhelming power? She could only give in and accept it into her heart. Bursting into tears, she skidded to a halt on an arched overpass over a gentle babbling brook, feeling broken and battered. The fireflies in the street lamps, dutifully lighting the city, cast their luminescence over her. But she hung her head in shame and stared down at her own shadow.

What a fool she had been!

All around her, she sensed the electric feeling, like it was an ethereal radio transmission she could tune into, if only she bothered to receive it. It was a carrier signal that superimposed itself on the static of her soul, made her primed and ready to receive. It filled the air, invisible and yet warm and bright and alive nonetheless. She looked to the skies, at the alabaster castle, and felt an inexorable call. A summons from this strange new castle. There was nothing of the old world she could cling to here, so with a dreamlike stillness she wandered over the bridge and down a small path, feeling the glow of the lights ahead brighten. All around her, streams of ponies came together into rivers, all of them following the same path as she. They formed a vast ocean of life and light at the center of the city, under the magnificent new High Castle. Inside those walls, Twilight sensed the source of the transmission that flowed forth and united them all. It's coming from the mare in the High Castle, she realized. It all flows from her.

The parade rolled past the congregation, quaint old rickety wooden floats decorated like fruit and vegetables. The harvest was the source of life, and in this world where earth ponies stood as brothers and sisters to the other races, it sprouted from the earth abundantly. And the marching ponies moved in perfect clockwork synchronization, because they were all tuned into that sublime transmission as well. It joined them together in a most splendid harmony.

The whole city. It was so beautiful.

“Twilight!”

As the night sky came alive with fireworks, the name struck her, standing in the midst of this vast gathering, like a wayward rocket and detonated with a dazzling flash. She spun around, searched for the pony who had spoken. But the oceanic crowd pressed around her tightly, cheering at the parade floats, roaring with delight, full of love. The bright and beautiful lights of the city and of the fireworks and of the ponies overwhelmed her eyes. They blinded her to distinction, so that for a moment it seemed like the world was made wholly of light. Undeterred, Twilight pressed forward. She had to find that pony who knew her name. The pony who knew who she was. But which way should she go? She started to go left, then doubted herself and chose to go right instead. But the doubt sunk in again, and so she stood in place, full of shame at herself, in stark contrast to all the happy, smiling, cheering ponies around her.

“Hey, Twilight!” a different voice called.

She took off at a canter, trying to make it to where the spot the voice had come from before it disappeared again. But the ocean of ponies, as the waves yielded to her mad dash, were like an ever-shifting maze. She couldn't tell which way was which. She was so, so lost.

“Oh, Twilight....”

She raised her head and saw through the crowd, very close by, a familiar coat. A very familiar coat. She plowed through the waves of ponies until she broke through into an open area. He rmouth dropped open as, again, she saw herself from a distance. But it was her, no doubt. The same unicorn that stared back from her mirror every morning. Only....she was so beautiful it took her breath away. She walked so carefree, free of her burdens, free of the pain and fear, and surrounded by the five friends from the newspaper. It was a beautiful sight. She was a beautiful sight.

But....why couldn't Twilight be as beautiful? What happened to her beauty?

That's not you, she thought, looking at the mark of destiny on her other self. She knows who she is.

Twilight was off at a gallop, convinced that if she could only talk to herself, she could ask who she was and who she should be. But, at the same time the six other ponies casually walked away, no matter how hard Twilight galloped she couldn't close the distance.

I need to know who I am!

She cut to the side, trying to head the other Twilight off, but blundered right out of the crowd and accidentally found herself in the middle of the parade route. A troupe of jugglers, fire-breathers, stilt-walkers, and tumblers expertly danced down the road, leading the way for a massive parade float. Not missing a beat, one of the grinning dancers grabbed her and traipsed around with her in a tight circle, then let go of her and sent her spinning off until she felt like she would be sick, only for another dancer to grab hold of her and wheel around with her. The blaze of light and color blended together around her. The world was a whirlwind of light in her eyes. She and the tumbler tumbled under a fire-breather exhaling a stream of flame into the sky like dragon's breath. Then the tumbler sprang up again and hoisted her up into the air, displaying her to the crowd. As she saw those faces smiling and cheering at her, the awe of the moment overpowered her. They were cheering for her, unicorn and pegasus and earth pony alike. They loved her.

What did I ever do to deserve this? she thought.

No, I haven't done anything. They think I'm the other me. But maybe....it's not too late to find out how I can become her.

She jumped free of the tumbler's raised hooves, then leaped atop the parade float. She galloped past the ponies atop it waving to the crowd, and climbed to the peak of the cornucopia rising from the rear end. Her eyes swept over the crowd, seeking out herself.

There she was! Far away, across the pavilion, walking away from the parade.

A fluttering above her head caught her attention. Sturdy-looking balloons shaped and colored like fruit were tethered to the cornucopia, and the breeze was heading in the right direction. Twilight grabbed the binding rope loops that held the flock of balloons together, then kicked at the knot holding them to the float. It broke off, and she went up and up and up, into the sky. The wind took her over the heads of the crowd, who murmured in awe, and then lifted her up into the night.

The wind blew straight and true, and sure enough she was almost upon herself. But a sudden updraft picked up. She got ready to let go of the ropes and drop down, but....she was awfully high now. And to her surprise, she was getting higher by the second. The ground was now a dizzying fifty feet below, and she couldn't survive that drop. The balloons were more uplifting than she anticipated.

My other self has wings, she thought. If I were her, I could fly down. But....I'm not.

She hung on for dear life as she sailed right over the heads of her other self and her five friends. The crowd watching the parade became an indistinct glowing blur of light, a lantern in the darkness of the night. The balloons took her up, past the golden minarets of the High Castle, and again she felt the radiance of the mare within. She burned with warmth, like the sun.

But the balloons kept taking Twilight up and out to open skies. A stiff breeze pushed her away from the mountain shelf the city had been built on. The great mountain itself was wholly in her vision now, and she beheld Canterlot in its entirety, that beacon of warmth and love, that city seated upon the mountain, burning in the dark.

But something was wrong. The moon was especially bright tonight. So why was the countryside shrouded in darkness? Why was the city, growing fainter by the moment, the only thing shining? Almost like the world was....receding. The balloons carried her higher, towards the moon. She lunged forward in a panic, trying to hold onto the city. But there was nothing below her. To keep herself from falling, she was forced to keep her fetlocks wrapped around the ropes. Tears streamed down her cheeks, tears for that fading city of light, but all she could do was call out to it.

“No, come back! Don't go away!”

But the night swallowed her words. The world blurred, like water, and grew murky and indistinct. All that was left of the city was a faint glow on the horizon, fading away, lost in the ocean. All around her, the rippling darkness grew ever more intense until it was everything. Just her, and the darkness. The eternal darkness, consuming her once again. She would float in it, forever. The light of the city shrank into a pinprick. When it was on the cusp of fading, she thought she would never see anything ever again.

But then, at the moment before it blinked out of existence, the point exploded in an eye-searing flash of white light that banished the darkness. It gouged into her eyes like searing lances of fire. She threw up her foreleg to shield her face; the balloons had faded with the rest of the world.

Is this sunrise? she thought.

She slitted her eyes and squinted at the raging heart of the white void. And there stood a burning tree. Shining jewels dotted its upper branches, forming a pentagon. Her other self's mark of destiny was in the very center, at the heart of the tree. And below that, on the trunk, the sun and then the moon, leading down to the roots, where were planted firmly in the material world.

“I don't understand!” she called.

Her eyes were still wet, but it no longer felt like tears. It was too sticky. She touched her cheek, and her forehoof came away wet with blood. She had been crying tears of blood. They were splattered all around her eyesockets and dripped down the coat covering her cheeks.

"Behold."

Twilight, shocked by the sudden appearance of the voice, turned around. There, in the middle of the white void some ten paces away, stood another mare. There was something maddeningly familiar about the way she looked, but Twilight couldn't place it. In fact, what was most astonishing was just how normal she was. Average, really. And there was something familiar about her voice too....as if Twilight had heard it all her life.

"Behold," the mare said, "the Princess Twilight Cometh."

"I'm....going to be a princess?"

"A princess, yes....and a queen. The queen of queens! Princess of the cosmos, slayer of demons, and Lordess of Light. And all the world shall be your dominion, and the light shall never fade from an iota of it while you rule....but first, you must shine."

"H-how do I shine?"

The other pony raised her foreleg and pointed at the burning tree.

Twilight had a moment to contemplate the spectacle before she fell. But she wasn't falling down, she was falling away from the tree. The law of gravity had no power here. The only thing she knew was that this was the nexus point. In her own world, everything that rises would diverge, but in this place, everything that rises must converge. Now, though, she, she was falling, falling, falling, and the light around her slowly faded. The stark white void of the world rippled like water, melted away, and morphed into the dark murk of the ocean, and she was powerless to stop her descent....

Chapter 16

Twilight woke with a gasp and a shudder, face-down on cracked asphalt. The taste of weeds filled her mouth. She spat out a clump of the parched yellow grass that had sprouted from the cracks, but the taste still lingered on her tongue. Her body aching and battered, she sat up and hunched forward. Memories of a golden city where everypony knew who she was and loved her for it danced through her head, fleeting and obscure yet so very vivid and alive. A smile grew on her lips and her heart pounded with joy. She had gone to sleep, but now she was awake again. She could bask in that glorious city once again.

She raised her head and looked across the disused lot, cracked and decayed and worn, and her joy quickly turned to ash. Out there, in the city, autocarriages rumbled down the streets and coughed out noxious fumes. Hovercarriages flew between enormous steel and glass skyscrapers. The air smelled of gasoline and rubber and plastic and the fetid stench of sewers. The grim High Castle stood over the city, and the moon, that eternal moon, was fixed in the same place it had ever been.

Tears brimmed in her eyes, but she was far too weary to cry anymore. She picked herself up and walked out of the abandoned lot, feeling the oppressive weight of the world settle over her yet again. Misery and desperation radiated from the bricks and stones of the city.

It's not fair! she thought.

Now that all these signs and symbols of the city were arrayed against her again, it was so easy to lie to herself about the way of the world. It was just a dream, Twilight. Nothing more.

B-but how could I see those ponies who have been crossing my path all day as my friends? It has to mean something!

You saw them because they were on your mind today, that's all. Nothing more.

As she walked down the sidewalk, she passed two Civil Force soldiers in riot gear beating a bloodied earth pony with truncheons. She could scarcely find it in her to care. This city wasn't worth it. Her head drooped as she walked, and she passed the time watching her shadow.

“Yes, I knew him,” Rarity said, a lump in her throat. “He was my pilot.”

Now he wasn't much of anything. Just a fried mess of hair and skin lying on a gurney. One eye was still open, in the middle of the blistered and bloody ruin of his face. It stared up into the night sky, at the princess's moon. The other eye had been burned away by the searing flash of her hovercarriage igniting around him. A paramedic thankfully pulled a sheet over his body.

“His papers went up in the fire,” the Civil Force soldier asking the questions said. “Do you know his next of kin?”

I don't even remember his name, she thought. “I-I'm sorry, but I can't....Please, call my personnel department in the morning. I'm in a frightful state right now.”

“Of course.”

The soldier mercifully left her alone, to confer with ponies who had 'Bureau of Public Works' on the backs of their navy blue windbreaker jackets, studying the wreckage of the theater. Rarity ignored the buzz of activity and went back to her entourage, where it became obvious from the looks on their faces that, once again, Coco was the only pony who was on the ball. The rest of them just looked shocked and shaken. Sweetie Belle's stream of tears and sobbing hadn't abated in the slightest. Rarity wrapped a foreleg around her and pulled her close, ruffling her mane.

“I've tried to hail a taxi,” Coco said. “But, as I'm sure you can see, ma'am, they're booked solid for right now.”

“We could always walk,” Rarity suggested.

Blueblood looked at her like she was mad. “You can't be serious?”

“You're a pony,” she replied sharply. “You have legs. Use them.”

“A pony of my stature--”

"Most of which is you puffed up with hot air." Rarity had kept on her hatred and revulsion for this cad dammed up tight, but now the dam was broken. “I'm leaving, Blueblood,” she stated. “I'm walking home with my family, and you are not coming with us, and you are especially not sharing my bed tonight, because frankly, your stature doesn't count for nearly as much as you think it does.”

As his face contorted with outrage and confusion, Rarity felt like one of the Galloping Gossips. She took a moment to enjoy in the boggled look in his eyes, then shepherded Sweetie Belle away. She left Blueblood there to think of a retort, which she knew was far beyond him. Coco walked right alongside Rarity, while Filthy Rich and Trotten Pullet trailed along behind them all. They made their way through the crowd, but a hoofful of ponies stepped into their path. General Mace stood at the forefront of his soldiers, stone-faced and sour. He gave her the merest attempt at a smile, then quickly dropped it.

“General Mace,” Rarity said curtly. “Sorry we don't have time to chat, but as you can see my sister is out of her mind with worry, and we need to go home.”

“Well, you're perfectly free to leave.”

Rarity smiled at him. “Thank you.”

But when she tried to walk past him, he reached out with his foreleg to block her way. “I said you're free to leave.” He eyed Coco Pommel, Filthy Rich, and Trotten Pullet. “The dirt-eaters, however, stay here.”

She was far too tired to put up with this. “I'm sorry?”

“Word has it that this revolutionary act was the work of earth ponies, stabbing our great civilization in the back. Revealing the hatred for civilization that festers in their racial soul. A barbaric act like this requires coordination, and so I've ordered all earth ponies at the scene be taken into custody while their loyalty can be assessed by the Midnight Guard. If 'loyalty' is the right word." He sneered. "More like....seeing how well their bestial instincts have been tamed.” While he spoke, several of his soldiers came up behind the group. They stood to either side of the earth ponies, waiting for the general's command.

“Coco Pommel and Filthy Rich have been at my side the entire evening,” Rarity protested. “They had nothing to do with it. And I'm sure you don't think Trotten Pullet managed to help with this, as an entire audience will vouch for her whereabouts.”

Now, he actually did smile, and it was an ugly thing to see. “You see, Miss Rarity, you practically bribed your way through the front door with one of these dirt-eaters, disgracing the good name of this theater in the process.”

“Are you accusing me of--?”

“Leaving aside their racial loyalty, maybe these dirt-eaters are innocent of this particular betrayal. If so, the Guard will get the truth out of them. They're very persuasive.” Not caring that Coco and Rich were standing five feet away, he proclaimed, “But in my experience, if you don't keep a firm hoof on the reins, earth ponies go wayward. They work their way into your good graces with flattery, then when you indulge them, they exploit you for all you're worth. In your case, that's quite a lot, if you don't mind me saying so.”

“I do mind you saying so. And they would never 'exploit' me. I treat my staff very well.”

“Perhaps that's the problem, Miss Rarity. Treat them too highly, they'll start thinking they're more than they are. Let them run free, their work ethic degenerates and brings down all we build.” He nodded at the carnage on the street. “But if you are firm and harsh, they will never forget what they are. They will never raise their hoof to their worldly masters. How you treat your dirt-eaters from this point on, Miss Rarity, may decide the history of our city. So you should think long and hard about what you want to say to me the next time our paths cross, because it would be very easy for me to raise a security concern with the High Castle and make your ability to do business very, very difficult.” To his soldiers he said, “Take them away.”

Rarity whirled around and stared at Coco, Filthy Rich, and Trotten Pullet as the Civil Force soldiers grabbed them and started hustling them away, towards a waiting paddy wagon. Through the open rear doors, she saw a dozen earth ponies already crammed into the back, shivering in the chains that kept them bound to the seats.

“I'll make this right,” she promised them. “I swear I will.”

“Don't worry about us, ma'am,” Coco called. “We'll be alright.”

Trotten Pullet flashed her a smile, but it was a weak and feeble thing. Filthy Rich was too terrified to do anything but whimper. The soldiers dragged the three earth ponies to the paddy wagon, roughly lifted them up and shoved them in, and cuffed them. Trotten Pullet met Rarity's eyes again, right before the doors closed, and again Rarity felt that sliver of invisible empathetic connection bridging them, until the doors slammed shut. Rarity was powerless to help her wards. A soldier gestured at the driver, who drove the paddy wagon down the street, moving slowly as the crowd parted for it.

“Well, Sweetie,” she said. “I guess we're walking home.”

She set off down the street, her weeping sister at her side and her pegasus bodyguard following close behind. She paused a moment to look over the line of half-opened bodybags beings inspected by the Civil Force. Although they had probably died in two different places, it was some small comfort to Rarity to see that the blue mare with the wispy white hair finally got to lay next to her beloved Blockbuster.

She thought my dress would help her, Rarity thought. But my dresses can't help anypony, not in any way that counts. Nor, it seems, can my money, although for a few hours I entertained that delusion. So. What can I do, then?

She moved on. As always, paparazzi flocked at the edge of the police cordon. Her lip curled in disgust. Vultures looking for carrion, they were, a surging tide of scavengers beating each other out for who could snap the most provocative and lucrative photos. Who could make the biggest payday feeding off the misery of others, so mares like Upper Crust could swallow it down hungrily and ask for seconds, to feel better about herself. Supply and demand. All these ponies, so desperate to claw their way to the top. Which, paradoxically, made them the lowest equinity had to offer.

“Rarity!” “Did Blueblood die?!” “How loud was the explosion?!” “Who died?!” "Where were you when it happened?" "Did anypony die?"

Her bodyguard cleared a path through the wall of ponies. Rarity girded herself, and then pressed her sister close to her side and plunged into the flock of vultures, shielding her eyes against the flashbulbs exploding in her face.

When Twilight reached her conapt building, the flight of stairs seemed a mountain after her very long day, and as she trudged up them, not once did she get the feeling she was converging with anything. Finally she was at her front door, after what felt like a million years since she'd last passed through it. Through the empty and silent apartment she went, to her bed. She laid down and tried to drift off to sleep, hoping she would see that beautiful city again in her dreams, but sleep would not come. She tossed and turned as the seconds ticked away, first under the blanket and then on top of it, but her eyes refused to stay closed. They burned, but they would not extinguish themselves. Even a brief fit of sobbing did nothing to help her sleep. Eventually, she just lay on her back with her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

Only one place is supposed to look as beautiful as that city: the World to Come. Was I....on the verge of death? Is that why I went there?

You didn't 'go' anywhere. It was just a dream, brought about by trauma and probably a concussion.

Am I a good pony? Will the World to Come wait for me when I die?

You are a good pony. You've done whatever your city asked of you, haven't you?

I'm just doing whatever gets me food, shelter, money, employment. I don't know who I am. How can I know if I'm a good pony?

But in the World to Come, she knew who she was. Her other self was already there, waiting to explain. This cold and violent land held nothing for Twilight Sparkle anymore. It was just something that got in the way of her happiness. She couldn't stand another second wallowing in the cruelty and pain and misery, not while that golden city was waiting for her. So she got off the bed, shoved the door to her conapt open, and went to the stairwell again.

The words still rang in Hammer's ear: “Ah hope the Shadowbolts get ya.”

The sound of sirens echoed across the city, each one a shrill accusation directed at him. He trudged through the back alleys of the city, hooves scraping the ground, wondering if there was some sort of spirit of irony watching over ponykind. It watched them play their little games, as if the world was its own private stage, giving it a helping hoof every once in a while, steering these ponies into doing stupid things like accidentally blowing up the only family they had left.

What he had done to annoy it?

This is ridiculous, he thought, cold and numb from his long walk of despair. It's like the kind of tragedy you'd find in the playhouses I just blew up. I tried to strike at the hegemony and instead killed my only sister. It's too ironic to be real.

He reached a small sewer maintenance shed nestled between a deli and an apartment building, checked to make sure he was in the clear, and unlocked the chain-link fence with a ring of keys - a memento from his days as head of the Midnight Guard - and then locked it behind himself. In the corner, a grate was laid over the entrance to the sewers. He pulled it aside and climbed down the steep metal stairs, stifling the uncomfortable sensation he was descending into Tartarus, where the myths said only the most cruel monsters were sent to be imprisoned. If anything, the stench would surely mark this as a den of caged monsters. When he lowered the grate behind himself, the pale rays of moonlight were swallowed up by the dark, now very nearly absolute. He picked up an electric lantern hanging on the wall and flicked the switch to turn the feeble light on. He held the lantern up in one fetlock and walked through the sewer on three legs, his boots sinking into the raw sewage with a wet squelch.

Oh, how he wished he still had his horn.

When he was recovering from the explosion, the doctor he had recruited to the cause said he might be able to save it, even though it was too damaged to ever regain its full power. But no, he had ordered it cut off. All the better to sell the illusion that he was dead. To sell his new life as Hammer, by cutting away the ties that bound him to the old one.

Like Twilight, he thought.

He sighed and pressed on into the darkness. The overpowering stench and the heavy darkness hung around him like a weight around his neck. His penance. The city's penance. As his eyes lingered on the shroud of shadow ahead, his tortured mind superimposed the photos on it, like it was celluloid. Those mangled, black-and-white striped corpses, their lips curled up in chemically-induced smiles. Piles of them. The laughing troops, posing for the camera. Alive with the thrill of vindication after slogging through the jungles for years. Seeing the enemies who had hurt them and wounded them lying lifeless in the dirt. He vomited the first time he saw the photos, some two years ago, after requesting them from the army. Or maybe it was three years, now. Saw the pony race in all its capriciousness, and watched as the carefully maintained garden of half-truths he had cultivated to make his life look pleasant wither and die.

The first thing he did was secretly leak the photos. But the outrage he hoped to inspire never materialized, outside of ponies like Big MacIntosh and his circle. Earth ponies who already knew what the situation was, even if they were too weak-kneed to do anything meaningful about it. So then Hammer had started recruiting. He had been a consummate intelligence officer, and he easily recruited a new network of agents, only this one was intended to destroy the hegemony instead of save it. Running his real agents on the Guards's books, hidden inside his cover networks....foal's play. All the while, working to subtly subvert the High Castle. Doing things like letting that Rockafilly racket pass through his censorship division, or secretly funding and collaborating with the eccentric Fancy Pants and protecting his gallery from being investigated too thoroughly. Everything had been going too smoothly, he had thought afterwards. Something was bound to come along and throw a wrench into the works.

The bomb in his hovercarriage had taken him by surprise, to be sure. But once the shock wore off it didn't take much work to slip into the guise of Hammer. He had already been running the Earth Pony Liberation Front as a shell organization for his agent network. So he had just changed the front, the fake, into the real thing. And then he could continue fighting the Empire of the Moon, this cradled city and its cradled hegemony. All of them ran around like their lives mattered, while silently consenting to wholesale slaughter. The whole of the Empire was a machine, a factory assembly line designed to slaughter the rest of the world and fatten the unicorns running it. Like him. The stallion he had been once, blissfully unaware of his role in the machine. Tricked into thinking he was doing good. That he was a good pony at heart.

What a filthy lie.

I'm so sorry, Twilight, he thought. I should have told you. Tried to convince you to join us. Then, you wouldn't have....

Hammer arrived at the base of the stairs, into slanted rays of moonlight coming through another grate. Up above was the earth pony ghetto. Home, for him now. But before he could climb the metal stairs, he heard a shuffling in the shadows. He raised his hind leg, ready to lash out and protect himself if he had to. A shadow moved in the shadows, and it almost lost its head. In the nick of time, Hammer saw it was only Caballeron, his mane messy and his coat covered with a sheen of sweat.

“Do not go up there,” he said, his eyes bright with terror. “It is a bloodbath.”

Hammer's heartbeat quickened. “What happened?”

“It was the Shadowbolts! I had just met your--"

"Shut up!" Hammer shouted. He waved Caballeron to follow him deeper into the sewers. "Just in case they're listening."

"I was on my way back to the hideout when I saw them raiding the building," Caballeron said. "I hightailed it out of there very, very quickly, mon frere, and watched from a distance. They dragged out some of the others. Thoroughbred, he was one. Serf Supper. I came here to warn anypony coming back."

Hammer pounded his hoof on a rusted water pump. The thud reverberated dully in its hollow innards. It happened too quick for them to have investigated the bombing, so they already had their eye on us. They knew all along. I can feel it. Getting the bomb there was too easy. We played right into their hooves and did whatever dirty work they wanted. At the realization, he collapsed against the wall and sank down to the dirty floor. Twilight died for nothing.

If this was a musical, Twilight thought during her ascent up the stairwell, or if it was a book, or a radio serial, I could just stand up and announce that this world is so very wrong. And everypony would listen to me and realize that I, and I alone, was right. I could get through to the ponies of this world. Tell them about a better way. Lead them into the light.

Because the author wrote them that way.

But this isn't a book. This is real life, and it's messy and nopony can ever agree on anything. So we go to theater halls or we sit in front of our radios and for a little while we go off to another world where the author is the only voice speaking. To delude ourselves into thinking that somepony is at the reins in the real world. That everypony is following the same set of values. To forget that we can't control anything about our own lives. Hah. We're pathetic! We use fiction as a salve, because we've been so burned by this world and the other ponies in it.

She shoved the door to the roof open. But there is always one choice that we do have. Always.

Twilight approached the little stone ledge of the parapet and looked over the edge. It was a long way down to the street. She climbed atop the parapet. The wind streamed her mare out behind her head. She prepared herself for the voyage to the World to Come, as there was nothing for her in this one anymore. No family, no friends, no love. But out there, beyond the crude fabric of this disgusting and mundane world pressing in around her, she saw the sun shining through the seams. The source of all light.

I wonder if my brother is waiting for me on the other side?

With a smile on her lips, Twilight closed her eyes and prepared to jump.

'In case you get bored', the note had said. At the moment, for Rarity nothing could be truer. She was bored of Blueblood, bored of General Mace and his boorish ilk, bored of this whole city and the ponies in it. She craved something different, something exciting, something that would make a difference. And so, she came to the Stable, which wasn't all that far from the Chariot, and stood in the glow of the tacky flickering neon sign that spelled out its name in a looping cursive font. Her bodyguard looked at her quizzically, but she told him to take Sweetie Belle back to the penthouse.

"I'll be along soon," she lied.

She looked around the street. A few paparazzi had trailed after her and were busily snapping photos, but most of the parasites had made the assuredly agonizing decision to stay at the Chariot and snap pictures of the massacre instead of chasing after a socialite who might actually threaten to have pony failings every once in a while. Her value had temporarily taken a dive, and her place in the public interest was supplanted by a scene of bloody carnage. She wasn't sure if she should be disgusted or pleased, or both.

She pushed the door open, walked up a very shabby-looking staircase with exposed cinder clocks painted a sickly off-white, and entered a wide open gallery space, presently empty, that looked like an unfurnished loft. Tastefully tasteless pieces hung on the walls. Just the sort of thing the Midnight Guard might raise an eyebrow about, but nothing patently illegal or immoral. She took in the stark, unfinished decor briefly, but it wasn't the art she had come here for.

At the far end of the floor, Fancy Pants turned towards her. "Rarity, my dear," he said from across the length of the gallery, sounding pleasantly surprised. "So glad to see you're not injured. It was just dreadful what happened."

She trudged across the floor towards him. "Something even more dreadful just happened. The Civil Force arrested every earth pony at the theater for interrogation."

The saffron stallion who had accompanied Fancy Pants to the theater shared a look with him, said, "I'll spread the word," and then took off into the back room.

Rarity was left alone with Fancy Pants. She pulled the copy of Ploughshare out of her dress and waved it at him. "Well," she said, feeling empty and drained of emotion, "I'm bored now."

He grinned at that, which made the ends of his handlebar mustache lift up. "My dear Rarity, I have a saying: boredom is counter-revolutionary. Step into my parlour." He gave her a theatrical bow and gestured for her to step into the back room of the gallery.

Rarity went inside without a single look back.

It was the weeping that gave Twilight pause. At first, she thought it was just the wind, but the longer she listened the more she knew she was wrong. There was somepony else on the roof, and he or she was weeping. Yeah, the world will do that to you, she thought wryly. She hopped down from the parapet and scanned the roof, until she noticed a shaking figure in the shadows all the way on the other side of the building, making a pitiful whimper into the night. Twilight cautiously padded over, and when she rounded an air conditioning unit she saw a gray pegasus sprawled out on the ground, getting her blonde mane all dirty.

“Are you....alright?” Twilight asked.

The pegasus lifted her head up, seemed to think it over for a bit, then ponderously shook her head.

Twilight thought, She's a bit slow on the uptake. She asked, “What's wrong?”

The pegasus swayed from side to side, gesturing emphatically and almost violently with her hooves. “I was flying home from work, and I bought this big box of muffins, but I opened it to eat one while I flew, and the whole box fell and now I can't find it!” She wailed, “I always lose everything. I'm so stupid! That's why they all say I'll never be a good pegasus who goes to the World to Come!”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Twilight whispered, “it's alright. Don't cry.” She looked over the rooftop and almost immediately spotted the box atop the stairway booth. She ignited her horn and magically levitated the box over. “Here it is. See? Everything's alright.”

The pegasus gasped in surprise and pulled the box close, almost like she was hugging it. She cried out, “You found it!”

Twilight shrugged. “Sometimes you need to look up, every once in a while.”

The pegasus opened the box and held a muffin out. “Want one?”

Taken by surprise, Twilight blurted out, “Sure.”

Together, she and the pegasus sat down and ate their muffins in silence. Twilight looked at the happy pegasus and felt that tingling electric current run inside her again. That feeling that pervaded the other Canterlot, which they called the Magic of Friendship, It was still there. Even under the weight of this cold and cruel world, the magic was still there. Ready to be brought back to life. Maybe it had been trying to bring itself back to life for a thousand years. Guiding the course of events as best it could. How else to explain how she could keep crossing paths with the ponies she was friends with in this other world? The seeds of the other world could be buried in this one. Or maybe vice versa, she couldn't say. It was late, and she was tired, but for the first time she felt a sense of hope for the future.

If I can show ponies this....magic of friendship, instead of just lecturing them about it, then maybe....maybe they'll know that it's right and that it's real.

“I have to go now,” the gray pegasus said, finishing off her muffin and standing up. “But thanks for finding my muffins!”

Twilight smiled. “You're welcome.”

She took to wing and waved at Twilight as she soared away into the night.

I had that vision for a reason, Twilight thought with certainty. And it wasn't to throw myself off a roof. She picked herself off the ground and started dusting herself off. She was in the middle of doing that when she realized what she had to do next.

“....reports are still coming in, but obviously this is, uh, quite a tragedy for our city, and our way of life. We're about to, uh, go live to the scene, where we have word the Shadowbolts are preparing a statement for the public.”

In the dark, tears rolled down Scootaloo's muzzle. She hadn't moved an inch since the emergency broadcast had interrupted regular programming. From the speaker grille, transmitting live from the Chariot, she heard a clamoring crowd under the reporter's voice. All she could do was listen in horror.

“It's pure chaos here, as you can imagine, but, ah....oh, here comes Colonel Dash, of the Shadowbolts, and it looks like she's about to address the press.”

Scootaloo's ears perked up when the Colonel's voice came over the airwaves. That brave pegasus, Scootaloo thought, her heart twisting in her chest. The Colonel struggled to sound unemotional, but Scootaloo could hear the disgust and outrage in her voice all the same. She's wondering why the dirt-eaters would do this to us, too!

“Of course we're still looking examining events, but our current evidence indicates the explosives were an industrial-strength demolition compound. About fifty pounds of it were loaded into a wagon parked in front of the Chariot theater and timed to explode at the end of the show. So far, sixteen civilians perished in the blast, with another twenty-six wounded. Our most promising lead points to earth pony separatists looking to rekindle the Winter Rising as the culprits.”

The whole world spun around Scootaloo. She clenched her jaw when the words 'Winter Rising' hit her ears.

“Stay home and stay safe, if you can,” the Colonel continued. “If you have to go out, bring anything suspicious you see to the attention of the nearest Civil Force soldier right away. With any luck, we'll apprehend the culprits before another tragedy like this one happens.”

Scootaloo jumped to her hooves and paced along the confines of her room. She shut off the radio before it could bring her any more miserable new. The Winter Rising! One wasn't enough for those dumb earth ponies? They just had to do it again, over and over. They would never stop, ever. Not until they took away everything good and just in the world. She breathed heavily and sweated even more heavily, but the air was stifling. She couldn't catch her breath no matter how hard she tried. This room was too small for her. She stormed out of it, went right to her front door, and shoved it open.

“Scootaloo?” a voice asked from the living room. “Where--?”

She let the door swing shut before her father could finish. Her foster father. She didn't have a father anymore because of the Winter Rising. They had taken her parents away from her.

She went down the stairwell and shoved her way through the front door, enjoying the feeling of the breeze caressing her coat. She could almost imagine the tragedy hadn't happened. That the terrible blow hadn't been struck. But it didn't last; once her ears became familiar with the wind, she picked out the distant sound of sirens. In her sprawling imagination, she pictured herself having stayed by Colonel Dash's side. She had seen the one clue everypony else had missed, the one thing that stopped it before it had happened. Spied the evil earth ponies skulking through the darkness, had leaped into their path and stopped their dastardly deed before the final blow had been struck. And then Colonel Dash had congratulated her, told her how brave and amazing she was, how Scootaloo was a true pegasus....

The clop of hooves on concrete brought Scootaloo back to the real world. Down the street, a familiar gray colt trudged along the sidewalk. He had a brown paper grocery bag balanced on his back. That degenerate, Rumble. He kept walking along towards the building, staring down at his shadow on the ground, until he came to Scootaloo's hooves and looked up in surprise. His eyes widened when he saw her.

“Rumble,” she said.

“S-scootaloo. I-I didn't d-do nothing.”

She looked out over the park, and the city beyond. “I wanted to apologize,” she said. She looked at him again. “I'm sorry about before.”

He tilted his head. “Y-y-you are?”

“Yeah.” She walked past him, down the sidewalk. “I have something for you. To show you how sorry I am.”

He took a hesitant step backwards. “You do?”

“Absolutely.” She stopped at the alleyway and smiled, gesturing down the dark passage. “It's right in there.” When he didn't move, she said, “Well, come on.”

Rumble edged closer and peered into the alleyway, but he stayed well away from it. Coward, she thought.

“It's in the back,” she said. “Keep going.”

He stared up at her, he watering eyes wide, his body shivering. “I really need to get these groceries back to m-my mom.”

“Rumble, I'm trying to say I'm sorry,” she said, sounding hurt. “Are you going to be rude and mean and not let me do that?”

Reluctantly, he padded into the alleyway, peering at each and every shadow, until he reached the dead end. In a tiny voice, he asked, “W-w-where is it?”

“Right here.” She was at his tail, and she twisted around, raised her hind leg, and kicked him square in the head. He dropped like a stone, the bag of groceries spilling everywhere onto the stained and broken concrete. She walked over at a leisurely pace until she towered above the pathetic colt, shuddering on the ground.

“I thought you wanted to say you were sorry!” he wailed.

“I am,” she sneered. “I'm sorry I didn't do this sooner.”

She straddled him and started punching him in the face with her forehoof, battering his feeble little skull until blood ran from his split lip, eyebrow, cheekbone. He cried out, but she ignored the degenerate moaning and kept pummeling him. A real pegasus would fight back. Each blow was a relief to her agitated heart. It felt good to get the tension out of her body, stop the ache that spanned her chest, to do something, instead of nothing. How could she show him any mercy after what his kind had done to her city?

“You stabbed your race in the back,” she sneered, punching him harder. “You betrayed us all.”

He shrieked like a newborn foal, throwing up his forelimbs to fend her off. But she knocked them aside and kept striking him. He wriggled around, trying get out of her grasp like a worm. A disgusting worm. She wrestled with him, making an effort to pin him down, but he was surprisingly agile. Because pegasi were supposed to be agile. Maybe he was more like a pegasus than she was after all. The thought burned her mind to cinders. Screaming wordlessly to drown out his shrieks, she snatched up a loose bit of paving stone in her fetlock and brought it down on his head with all the force she could muster. Once and twice it fell, but on the third time his head snapped back and collided with the ground. There was a dull thump, a wet crunch. Suddenly, Rumble fell silent and went limp.

She got off of him and stared down at his slack-jawed and eerily peaceful face. “Get up,” she said, wiping the sweat off her brow. She kicked him in the side after he didn't respond. “I said, 'Get up!'”

Her kick had rolled him over. His limp limbs flopped to the concrete and his head sagged on his shoulders. He still didn't move. Blood poured from a wide gash on his skull, through which she could see bone glistening red in the dim moonlight. She took a step backwards, her mind reeling at the sight of the body.

I killed him, she thought, stunned. He went out like....like a candle. The most staggering thought was how frighteningly easy it was. How fragile the equine body could be.

Had anypony seen? She looked all around, but the alley was empty and the windows either dark or curtained. She ran away from the body, because they might see it without understanding how dangerous Rumble had been. How he was destroying the city. They might only see a dead pegasus. Not a dead degenerate.

Who were they to judge her, though? She was a Shadowbolt, guardian of the city. They didn't have the right.

Nevertheless, she climbed the steps into her building and went back inside.

Apple Bloom had been with her Granny Smith, and it was happy and beautiful, but an excited buzz that came up through the floorboards from the living room stirred her from her sleep. Nestled in her warm blanket, she felt no great desire to move from her spot, but a few snippets of converstaion caught her ear. “--Shadowbolts say--” one pony said. “--blame Hammer--” another added. “--hegemony will come down on us, and hard--” a third explained. And then, through her window, she heard more voices. The whole ghetto was waking up, it seemed, so she might as well see what all the fuss was about. She sat up in bed and threw the covers back. A sinking sensation came over her when she remembered her granny was dead, and the urge to cry gripped her yet again. But she pushed it away, suddenly very interested in what the voices were going on about. She crossed her room to the window and threw it open. Outside, ponies stood on their doorsteps and leaned out of their windows, just like her.

They listened to the stallion running down the street and yelling at the top of his lungs. “Hammer kicked it off!” he shouted. “Revolution's starting! We're taking the city! Yee-haw!”

Some of the ponies looked giddy, while others were obviously displeased with this turn of events. Most of them, however, just looked confused. Struggling to catch up with whatever was happening, they either went back into their homes or drew together in the street to talk to each other. Apple Bloom shut the window and went downstairs, where she found her brother and some of his folks gathered in the kitchen, standing in the empty space where the table used to be. She had arrived in the middle of a lull in the conversation, where all the ponies present gave each other long and wary looks and the tension hung thick in the air.

“This is going ta escalate, and right quick,” Big Mac finally said.

“You got that right,” somepony else added. “We all on the precipice here.”

Sleepily, Apple Bloom asked, “What's goin' on?”

“Nuthin' ya need ta worry 'bout,” her brother drawled from the other side of the room. “Jes' some discussing we need ta do. Ya go right on back upstairs and back ta sleep.”

But Apple Bloom refused to be pushed around like a foal. She stepped forward and asked, “Are we rising up?”

“We ain't,” Big Mac said, scowling. "Ah ain't got a clue who's been putting funny ideas in yer head--"

She snarled, “Don't ya'll brush me off like that! I wanna know what's going on!”

“Foals,” somepony muttered.

“If we rise up, they'll just beat us back down again,” a tired-sounding pony said. “That's the way it goes.”

But her brother was maddeningly silent, all the way across the kitchen. Silent and watching her. It was driving her mad, so mad she couldn't take it anymore. Her whole body shaking with fury, she shouted at him, “You may have forgot what they did ta mah Granny Smith, but Ah sure didn't!”

She wheeled around and galloped out the front door, willing and eager to do her part for the cause.

Rumble had made his own fate. If there was anything in the world Scootaloo was sure of, it was that. If he had been stronger, if he had been a true pegasus, if he hadn't been complicit in this new Winter Rising brewing on the horizon, then he would have been....

Murdered, Scootaloo. And you killed him.

He deserved it! she thought savagely.

She raised a hoof to open her front door when she noticed the blood dripping from her hooves. Horrified, she looked back and saw the hallway covered with bloody hoofprints leading right to her door. No! she thought, squeezing her eyes shut to drive out the thoughts, those terrible thoughts that stung like knives. When she opened her eyes again, the hoofprints were gone. The carpet was unsullied, and so were her hooves. With a sigh of relief she pulled the handle down, opened the door, and entered her apartment.

“Scootaloo?” her foster mother asked from the dining room table, voice fraught with worry.

Scootaloo snapped, “What?”

“Where did you storm off to?”

“I just needed some air.”

“Haven't you heard the news on the radio? There was an attack. You need to stay inside until the Shadowbolts sort everything out.”

Did you forget? I am a Shadowbolt, and I sorted everything out.

But she only said, “Fine,” to her foster mother, and then went back into her room. Her uniform and beret, laying on her desk, caught her eye. She went to it and stared at the black fabric and the golden braiding. It wasn't just the fabric, it was what it meant: security. Being a hero. Stopping the bad guys. She laid a hoof on it, but again her hoof came away bloody. Rearing back, she jumped away from the uniform as blood started oozing from its seams and dripping all over her carpet. She galloped into her tiny bathroom, turned the faucet on, and frantically washed the blood off her hooves. But there wasn't any blood there. She was perfectly clean after all.

She felt like she was going crazy. Which of these two worlds was real: the bloody one or the clean one?

But when she looked at her reflection, the blood was still all over her hooves. Unreachable, untouchable, unwashable. Taunting her from afar. Enraged, she turned and kicked the mirror so hard it shattered and pieces rained down everywhere. Some of them pierced her pastern, right above the hoof. She screamed in pain, helpless to stop the blood pouring out of her cuts. She had made the bloody world into reality while trying to stop it. Her mother rushed in, took one look at the crying Scootaloo curled up on the floor, and scooped her up. Thoroughly disgusted with herself, Scootaloo was keenly aware of what a stupid foal she must look like.

“I-I slipped,” she lied. “I slipped and tried to grab hold of something, but the mirror broke.”

“It's alright,” her mother said, stroking her mane. “You're alright. I'll make you feel all better.”

Despite how much she prided herself on being a Shadowbolt, the offer was surprisingly reassuring to Scootaloo. Letting somepony else take care of her for a little while sounded fantastic. For the moment, she didn't feel quite so old as she imagined herself. Through the windowpane, though, she heard a mare start to wail. It was a terrible sound that pierced the soul, full of the agony of the world, and it was coming from the alley down below.

You're old enough, Scootaloo thought.

As soon as Apple Bloom entered the bazaar, the first thing that stuck her was the revolution rock Octavia and the Kelpies were playing. A large crowd had gathered around the band, drawn by the allure of the defiant musical protest. All Apple Bloom's questions disappeared as she listened to the fiery mare sing: “This is the sensation that's causing a riot! Run out and tell your folks they got to gather round! Don't let them tell you you got to be quiet! Can't make a revolution without making some sound!”

This place they had reclaimed from the hegemony was the closest thing to a community they had. So many other ponies had had the same idea as her, to come here to find out what was going on. Once, her brother had explained to her that throughout history the village market was where ponies congregated. The lifeblood of civilization was where the fruits of production intersected. It was the same here in the ghetto as well, with all these ponies listening to the music. Just like the record she bought a few short hours ago, this music was also a product, sort of. A work of art. Only this was given away for free, and that spirit of giving made it all the more precious to Apple Bloom. It made her want to give Octavia something in return for this gift.

It made Apple Bloom want to give her the revolution she sung about.

The band launched into an extended bridge, laying into their instruments with inspired passion. Octavia swayed to the music, her eyes uplifted to the ceiling, losing herself in the joy of the moment. Apple Bloom let that song of freedom be her backing track. But only for a moment. She had come here for a reason, and so she tugged the sleeve of the mare next to her.

“What's all this goin' on tonight?”

“The Liberation Front, they did it. They finally did it.” The mare grinned. “That Hammer, he went and blew up a theater. Dozens of dead unicorns, I heard. Oh, I bet it was glorious. They're saying this is the start.”

“Start of what?”

“The dawn.”

“Ah can't hardly wait,” Apple Bloom admitted.

Somepony ran through the crowd and leaped onto the stage, waving his arms for the band to stop playing. Some of the audience booed him, but the band seemed to recognize him and they abruptly stopped playing. He turned to the audience, his face flushed and distraught.

“It's the wings! They're right outside.”

The crowd surged towards the exit and struggled to file through the door all at once. Apple Bloom, by virtue of her small size, easily slipped under the other ponies and was one of the first ones out on the street. She could only stare in horror as Civil Force APCs slowly rolled down the street, sending spotlights sweeping out over the faces of the crowd. Pegasus ponies in riot gear with hoofcannons slung over their backs trooped alongside the enormous wheels in perfect lockstep.

A voice from a loudspeaker mounted on one of the APCs called: “On the authority vested in him by the Eternal Marshal of the Empire, Princess Luna, General Praetor Mace has issued Proclamation 1081. The city of Canterlot is now under a state of emergency. Return to your homes immediately. A curfew is now in effect for all earth ponies. Public gatherings of three or more who are unrelated by blood are outlawed permanently. All non-residential structures in this sector will cease operations until their loyalty is assessed.”

Apple Bloom stole glances at the sullen silence of the crowd. The angry and defiant flames in their eyes. The clenching of their jaws and the violent twitches of their legs. Every time we get a leg up, she thought, the unicorns and the pegasi take it away from us.

“Return to your homes immediately,” the voice repeated, “or, under the authority of Proclamation 1081, you will be arrested.”

The blinding spotlight swept over them again, so bright it washed out Apple Bloom's vision. She waited until it flew past, then stooped down and picked up a loose paving stone. This here's fer ya, Octavia, she thought. This is yer revolution, right here. Aiming it carefully, she tossed the stone right into the head of a soldier. It rang hollowly against the mare's helmet and made her stagger and fall to her knees, while the other troops spun around and shouldered their hoofcannons. The APC ground to a halt and its spotlight swept over the crowd again. The soldier got to her hooves, shook her head, and stomped over to the crowd around Apple Bloom.

“Who threw that?” the brute screamed. “I said, who threw that?”

But the crowd said nothing. They only stared back in defiance, and Apple Bloom was the most defiant of them all. At least, she thought she was, but maybe that was the stallion who had the misfortune to chuckle at the soldier. In that last moment of silence, his chortling was all that Apple Bloom heard. Then things started to happen very fast, so fast she couldn't keep up with it all. The brutal pegasus, breathing heavy, lunged into the crowd and dragged him out into the street, beating his head with a truncheon. "Arrest all of them," she screamed. "We'll torture it out of them!" But the other earth ponies, terrified at being rounded up and tortured, either fought back or broke and bolted away.

Some of them grabbed the earth pony with the bloody head and pulled him back into the crowd, and others dragged the soldier down to the ground and started beating her. More pegasi rushed forward to help her, but the crowd as a whole, as angry as they were, rushed forward as well and met them. Suddenly everypony clashed with somepony else, struggling in the street, beating each other bloody. It was all too much too quickly for Apple Bloom, who backed away from the sudden tidal wave of violence.

“We're under attack!” a pegasus cried as they all fell back to the APCs.

The earth ponies rushed forward, intent on killing the pegasus ponies and ripping apart the APCs. But before they could reach the armor-plated tanks, the cannon barrels unleashed cracks of thunder and flashes of flame, and the soldiers fired their hoofcannons into the crowd, again and again, blowing innocent earth ponies apart in sprays of blood and bone. “Oh!” Apple Bloom screamed in horror as she watched ponies she knew fall to the ground, splattered with their own blood. The crowd screamed along with her as they retreated from the cannon fire. Apple Bloom didn't look back as she ran from the tempest, away from the pain and the agony.

“Cease fire!” a frantic voice yelled in the distance. “Right now! Uh, return to your homes, dirt-eaters! That's an order!”

Apple Bloom tried to outrun the crowd, but she couldn't outrun all the images in her head, taunting her. All those ponies falling down dead, because of her. Because of one little rock she threw. Their spilled blood was all over her hooves, too.

No! she thought viciously. It was all their fault! If'n they hadn't been all a'comin' round here with tanks and guns, then it never would've happened. Or so she told herself, but the memories of the bloodshed were stubborn and did not leave her head easily.

"Gotcha!"

With a flap of his wings, the pegasus swooped down and snatched her off the ground. She thrashed and struggled, but his forelegs were strong and they didn't yield. Before long, she was high up in the sky, so dizzyingly high she thought she might faint. He shook his forelegs, as if he meant to let her go, and Apple Bloom screamed and clutched tight. He just laughed at that, laughed and laughed, and she didn't dare think bad of him, in case he really did let go. Eventually, he swooped back down to the ground where the APCs had stopped. The bloody and broken bodies still covered the ground, lying in a spreading pool of blood. Apple Bloom retched and vomited from twenty feet up. Her tongue tasted acid and her throat burned as it sprayed all over the street.

Then pegasus dropped her from five feet, and the asphalt slapped her belly. All the air went out of her. It was all she could do to roll over onto her back and curl leg legs close to her body.

"There's the little dirt-eater who started all this," the pegasus who had abducted her said. "She's the one who threw the rock."

The soldier she had hit scowled and stomped over, her bloody truncheon in her hooves, but her commanding officer held her back. "Let it go, Lieutenant. We take her to the Guard for processing, like all the others."

As they picked her up and hauled her into an idling paddy wagon, with two dozen other earth ponies stuffed into the back, she thought, Ah guess Big Mac was right after all.

That did escalate mighty quick.

From her bed in the recovery ward, the pegasus with the bandaged wings stared out the window on the far wall. All around her, other victims of the bombing who were hurt much worse moaned and sobbed, their faces covered with bandages, their coats burned and their skin bleeding, their expensive dresses and suits cut to pieces by the doctors. But the pale yellow pegasus looked relatively unhurt. She just sat there calmly and stared, lost in thought, at the glowing city outside, awash in neon lights and flashing billboards.

This was the closest hospital to the Chariot, and Twilight had taken a gamble coming here, but she was glad to see it had paid off. But now that she was here, she couldn't think of a single thing to say. Not a word. It was all so strange to her. How could she put into words the enormous gratitude, and the weight of the debt, that she owed to this pegasus? She had never been very close to other ponies, besides her brother. What did ponies with friends say when they were with each other? This was all so alien to her it made her want to scream; her books hadn't prepared her for this. In books, the author could control everything the ponies in a conversation felt and did. But this, the real world....it was all so chaotic and random. What if the pegasus despised her for her injuries? Or for the way she had acted earlier?

So Twilight had hung back by the door to the admitting area, watching the pegasus and saying nothing. On her way in, she had lied and said she was family. None of the staff bothered with her; they were too busy dealing with the wounded ponies.

What finally moved her was the memory of the electric flow of the magic of friendship coursing through her body. It was a nice feeling, and Twilight very much wanted to feel it again.

When she stepped forward, Twilight mumbled, "Umm...."

The pegasus looked her way and blinked, stunned into silence.

"I just wanted to say....thanks," Twilight said, feeling foalish and self-conscious. "F-for saving my life."

"Oh." The pegasus chewed her lip, then averted her eyes. "Y-you're welcome."

And just like that, silence descended over the two of them again. A stifling silence that choked Twilight's breath and wore her to pieces. In a desperate bid to keep the silence at bay, she stepped forward and said, "Are-are you hurt? I mean, obviously you are, but....are you alright?"

"Y-yes." The pegasus lapsed into silence once more. Then she mumbled something that sounded like 'Fayton', and then became possessed of a sudden courage, enough to raise her head at any rate. She looked Twilight in the eyes and said, a little bolder, "I'm fine, thanks for asking."

"That's....that's good." Twilight, you idiot, she said. This wasn't turning out how she expected, but she wasn't sure if it was her fault or not. The pegasus seemed to be waiting for Twilight to say something, but she didn't know what. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. So....I guess I'll go then. Now that I know you're safe."

"Alright."

Was it just Twilight's imagination, or did the pegasus sound sad?

As Twilight turned to go, some of the staff wheeled the moaning stallion in the next bed away, and in the quiet Twilight heard a very familiar voice coming from a radio on the bedtable next to the pegasus. So familiar it made her stop in her tracks to listen. "....in the end, we're all just a bunch of lost and lonely souls, crying out in the night," Thorny Bends said. "Looking for....what? We never know until we find it."

"Uh, I know what I'm looking for, Thorn," Freepony Young said. "A way off of this show."

"There is no getting off of this show, Free. We're all stuck here together, clinging to each other for companionship, so we might as well make the most of it. Read any good books lately?"

Twilight turned back to the pegasus lying in the recovery ward bed. "Is that....Thorny Bends?"

The pegasus cocked her head and pursed her lips. "Do you....like Thorny Bends and her Lovely Friends?"

"I love Thorny Bends," Twilight gushed. "I've never heard a radio program like it. It always feels like--"

"--like she's your best friend," the pegasus finished, "and she's always on the same page as you."

"Yes, exactly," Twilight announced, feeling a smile sprout on her face. And there it was, that spark of electricity coming to life inside Twilight. The magic of friendship. And she could tell, from the gleam that lit up the pegasus's eyes, that she felt it too. Twilight held out her foreleg and said, "I'm Twilight."

The pegasus stared at the outstretched hoof for a moment, then reached out and shook it. "Fluttershy."

Twilight magically dragged an unused chair close and sat down on it. "Did you tune in that one time when Thorny said....?"

Chapter 17

"What's the use of trying?"
"Buck up - never say die. We'll get along!"
-A gamine & a factory worker, Modern Times

"The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow. Into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us."
-The Jewish Barber, The Great Dictator

Cavalcade Street had seen better days, to be sure. Much effort went into rebuilding the city after the Winter Rising, but this little corner, formerly a stronghold of the middling middle class, had slipped past the influx of time and money, resulting in a lonely row of crumbling brownstones. Somewhere near the center of the block, foot-high letters ran down the side of one building in particular, advertising 'The Triple Crown Hotel'. Applejack walked into a fading, peeling lobby covered with a thin veneer of upkeep. The furniture seemed fifty years out of date, and the kitschy paintings on the walls looked even older. The unicorn behind the desk looked up from her magazine. The cover said it would reveal 'All the juicy details about Rarefaction's new line!' The unicorn didn't say anything as Applejack passed. She only pursed her lips, then returned to the glossy magazine.

A creaking elevator took Applejack to the eighth floor. As she rode it up, she looked at the key in her hoof. 'Triple Crown Hotel Room #812' was etched on the dangling metal tag. When the elevator opened, she stepped into the shabby hallway and headed for the room. She stuck the key into the keyhole and swung the door open, so that the dingy hall light could reveal the room in all its glory. Once she shut the door and turned the bare overhead bulb on, she pulled her cloak off and threw it across the bed. In the mirror she looked clean, but she felt the dirt and filth covering her from head to hooves.

She turned the radio on and tuned it to the Equestrian Broadcasting Corporation as she filled the bathtub up.

When it was full, she sank into the lukewarm water and let it wash the grime away.

A raging headache filled Spitfire's skull. She entered her office in the hopes of seeking respite, but Cadence's pink, yellow, and purple mane was the first thing she saw when she went through the door. In the window, among the city lights illuminating the blanket of darkness outside, Cadence's reflection locked eyes with Spitfire, who groaned inwardly. She'd forgotten her former officer was still prowling around Firefly Center, what with all the confusion pouring in from the Chariot.

“Problems?” Cadence asked.

“The Defense Council summoned me. There's been a bombing at the Chariot, and I need to give a report.”

“My, my. This just isn't your day, is it? Of course, it hasn't been your time for quite a while.”

Spitfire snapped, “What do you want, Cadence?”

The pink mare still didn't turn around. Spitfire stared at her prissy reflection.

Cadence was a head taller than most other ponies, and with the way she carried herself, she had a way of making it felt very keenly. “Something's nagging me. See, if the Changling had a suicide pill on him the whole time, why did he wait until he was leaving to take it? Why not right after his capture? Because I seem to remember from my time with the Directorate that we pegasi can be very inventive with torture, in ways unicorns just don't have the stomach for. Do you really think unicorns would be able to break him where pegasi couldn't? There's only one solution that fits the facts: he felt safe here. Despite the, er....wear and tear of Colonel Dash's interrogation, he didn't fear for his life. It was only after transfer to a different division that he lost his will to live.”

“Are you accusing the Directorate of having been infiltrated?”

“Between that and this bombing, things don't seem to be going very well for you, do they?”

“For all I know, you gave him that pill.”

“Of course,” Cadence said, finally turning around to unleash the full force of her haughty sneer. “Let's blame the Midnight Guard. We all know about your petty rivalry with us. There have already been casualties. Curiously, only on our side. So far. I do hope the Council believes you, Spitfire, because I sure don't.” She stormed past Director-General Spitfire and headed for the door. “If you'll excuse me, I have to go tell Sunset Shimmer she won't be getting that prisoner. I'm sure she's already at the council chambers, so try not to keep her waiting.”

I've had enough of this, Spitfire thought. She called out, “What did I do to deserve this?! I trained you since you were a cadet. Why do you hate me so much, Cadence?”

Cadence froze at the door, secret thoughts running through her brain. When she turned, a repressed fury was barely concealed on her face. She answered, “What did you do? Nothing, Spitfire. You haven't done a single thing.”

Cadence put her tail to Spitfire and stormed out of the office, leaving the Director-General alone. Spitfire's eyes went over the plaques on the walls, the books of military history on the shelf, the meticulously arranged little statues of heroic pegasus ponies in flight. She had a feeling she wasn't going to be seeing too much of this place from now on. I spent too much time putting my personal touch on this office, and too little time putting my personal touch on my cadets. Sighing, she went to the file cabinets and started digging out folders with information that she could use in her defense. She didn't find much, But somewhere along the way, she began to think she didn't want to find anything, either.

The moon was behind the High Castle, and it cast a long shadow over the Colonel's work. The operation was over, and now came the aftermath. A melancholy reflection on what she had wrought into being. She stood in the mouth of an alleyway, a chain-link fence at her back; apart from the spectacle she had created, away from the photographers capturing the scene for posterity, to stuff in files and slap on newspapers and reprint in history books. Every photo captured heroes at work: industrious fire crews extinguishing the last of the fiery car wrecks and inspecting the integrity of the Chariot's gaudy marquee; medics finishing up with the dead lying in bodybags on the sidewalk; soldiers talking to the shaken witnesses, piecing together what happened bit by fragmented bit.

Dash didn't feel like a hero. And if they learned how she had wrought this, they wouldn't think of her as one, either. Would they ever know the whole truth? The secret motivation that drove her? That their wonderful city teetered on the brink because of Spitfire's failure of leadership? And if they did learn, would they stand by her?

Probably not. At the most, some might say her intentions were noble, if not her actions. But others, rank hypocrites, would condemn her after seeing their friends and family wounded or dead in the street. The same ponies who happily let soldiers gas zebra villages, safely out of sight and out of mind. But when war came to their city, shoved into their faces, they balked. The unicorns wanted it both ways at the same time, and would throw her to the Windigoes as soon as it was convenient.

And it killed the Colonel that she had to make sure the same thing happen to Spitfire.

The responsibility rested on her shoulders, right where her wings were. After all, wings were the bearers of burden. What separated her from the earth and unicorn ponies. They were her burden, and her blessing. She turned her eyes up to the High Castle, and the mare inside it. Dash had sworn her loyalty to the princess of the night, who once led a war to bring this city into being. Would she understand what Dash did? Not only did, but had to do?

It terrified her to find out, but the night demanded action. And it was called 'action' because there was no time to think, only to act. Act on instinct, from the deepest and purest part of a pegasus's racial soul.

With a flutter, Major Lightning Dust swooped down and landed gently beside her. Softly, she said, “Worked like a charm."

“A good luck charm, I hope. What's the situation with Armor's sister?”

“I tailed her all the way into the theater. She didn't notice me, but neither did I notice anything out of the ordinary. Other than her massive alcohol problem, but that's nothing new." Major Dust scoffed. "She seemed to like the musical, though."

"What happened afterwards?"

"When everything started going down at once, I lost her in the crowd. I don't know what happened to her or where she went.”

" If she's alive, she'll turn up. We certainly have enough ponies on our payroll keeping an eye on her. Right now, we should focus on the task at hoof.”

“Speaking of, General Mace just left. The Defense Council is already meeting. They're moving fast.”

“Fast is good. We like fast." The Colonel pointed to a skyscraper that tapered to a point. "Sunset Shimmer's penthouse is a few blocks over. This all happened right on their doorstep. You better believe they're moving fast. They already recalled Fleetfoot to testify about what happened in the ghetto. I'm sure I'll be next.”

“What do you want me to do, Colonel?”

“Get over to Rapidfire and his tactical team. They're still at the old Magnum Smelting place. Make sure the situation in the ghetto is working out to our advantage." She put her shades on. With the glass in front of her eyes, she felt masked from the world. Remote and distant. And that distance was sorely necessary in her line of work. "Tie up any....loose ends.”

“No problem,” Dust said drolly as she took to wing and flew off.

The Colonel was about to take flight as well when a Shadowbolt lieutenant whose name she couldn't remember called her name. He huffed and puffed as he trotted over and delivered a sealed envelope. “The office sent me here to find you. An interdepartmental memo arrived for you. It's marked urgent and eyes only.”

She ripped the letter open. With wry amusement, she noticed the contradiction between the 'Urgent!' stamp on the envelope and the timestamp on the document inside. Typical, she thought. But as she read on, her mood turned increasingly sour. Well, this complicates things a little bit.

When they ripped the hood off of Trotten Pullet's head, she blinked against the sudden light and looked around. She was astonished to see where they had brought her. Of course they had brought her back here. The warehouse had once been full of shipping containers, but it was empty now, its owners having shuttered it up and closed down shop. The dark gray concrete floors she had once dutifully mopped were the same, though. She knew them so well she swore she remembered some of the same cracks running along them. I always did a good job, she thought. The Bureau of Harmony would never have looked at my application to join the theater company otherwise.

The Civil Force soldiers were shouting at the mare next to her; the cream-colored pony who had been Rarity's personal assistant. One of them swung his truncheon into the wall only inches from her head; she screamed and trembled as it hit the cinder blocks with a dull smack.

"I said, where's your earmark?" the soldier shouted.

"It was removed, sir," the mare said, nearly sobbing. She kicked at the air as she tried to worm into the wall and make herself smaller. "I'm a good earth pony. I do my duty."

"If it was removed, show me the documentation!"

"I...." When he swung the truncheon into the wall again, even closer to her skull this time, she shrieked. "It's at the p-p-penthouse! I don't carry it with me!"

"What's your number?! NOW!"

"Uh, um, C-C-CG 139-72."

The soldiers stood up and stared down their muzzles at the earth pony quivering on the ground. "Don't expect to go anywhere anytime soon," he said. "There's a whole lot of dirt-eaters ahead of you we still need to process."

They moved off, into the crowd. It was true, Trot saw; the warehouse was very large, as she knew from all the hours it took her to clean it, but it was full to capacity with earth ponies. Sweating, shaking, scared earth ponies, huddled together on the ground, under the watchful eye of the patrolling pegasus ponies strolling through their ranks. The earth ponies here weren't just from the Chariot, either. There had also been some rioting in the ghetto, too, and the Civil Force had plucked earth ponies from the streets all around the city during the crackdown and the ensuing curfew. Some of them still wore their bright safety vests. That didn't seem very fair to Trot, but then she remembered the city she lived in had a habit of redefining what was fair every decade or so, and it usually didn't favor earth ponies.

There's not nearly enough room for all of us in here, she thought.

She turned to the little shivering filly beside her, who kept retching but had no food in her belly to bring up anymore. Trot ran a hoof along her back and whispered, "Shh, it'll be alright."

The yellow filly looked up at her with bags under her eyes the size of saddlebags. Her little mouth hung open slightly, and her breath was hot with the sickly sweet smell of vomit. She had to concentrate for a little while before her eyes could focus on Trotten. I hope whatever world you're off in is a better one than this one, Trot thought.

She cooed, "It'll be over soon."

"They're all dead," the filly said in a drawl. "All of 'em."

"Shh, shh, shh. That's no way to talk." She pulled the filly close and hugged her. Softly, Trot began to sing. "My name is Brownie Bay, and I am here to recite, that it's my duty to brighten up your night. It doesn't matter much, if you are sad or blue, because carrying your burden is just what I'm here to do."

"How can you do that?" the mare next to her asked. Her red-rimmed eyes stared straight ahead, razor-focused on a point on the far wall of the warehouse. "Some of us actually try and....show how good we can be to our masters and mistresses. But you, you traitor, you cavort on stage like a fool, destroying everything we good earth ponies have achieved."

"I've only ever done what the unicorns asked of me," she replied. "That's how they want us to look. Who am I to argue with that?"

"You could say no," the mare spat.

"Hey, being an actress is the only thing I've ever wanted to be. The only thing. Listening to sitcoms on the radio was the one thing I looked forward to after a long and hard day of work. I told myself, one day that would be me, delighting and entertaining the whole city. Making the ponies love me. And now, they do. Would you throw your dreams away, just because they asked you to do something you don't like?"

"Well, your race doesn't like what you do."

Trot was quiet for a long moment as she marshaled her thoughts.

"If you want to survive in this city," she said, "you have to cut pieces of yourself out. Carve yourself out of your body, and think about what you looks like through other ponies' eyes. Become what the ponies in charge of all the food and money -- and, yes, love -- want and need you to be, if you want even a tiny piece of what they have. Take your part, play your role, on the great stage of society." She thought, How did Thorny put it this morning? "It's just another wonderful facet of standardization: one size fits all; use only as directed; follow the duty they need you to fulfill. Life consists of nothing but acting. And me?" Suddenly full of confidence, she said, more to herself than to the other pony, "I'm the best actress in this city."

That shut the other mare up. As she sulked in silence, Trotten Pullet continued stroking the poor little filly's mane, until the soldiers trooped over to her and ordered her to come with them. She gently laid the filly's head on the hard concrete ground and went with the soldiers, giving the sulking mare only the briefest of looks. Eyes burning with tears, the cream-colored pony avoided the glance and instead stared at her hooves.

The commanding officer had set up shop in the disused management office. The unicorn pushed aside her paperwork and took a long look at Trotten Pullet. Then she said Trot would be discharged shortly, as long as she answered a few simple questions honestly. Trot couldn't say anything about honesty, but she knew how to answer questions exactly how a unicorn wanted them answered. She prepared herself to use a subtler version of the Brownie Bay smile, although she also brought to mind something altogether more somber and serious, in case she wasn't selling it well enough for the unicorn to buy it. Trotten Pullet could be whoever or whatever they needed her to be.

She was the best actress in the city, after all.

Ten minutes later, she was on her way out the door, with a piece of paper in her hooves that officially discharged her from Civil Force custody. She passed a steady stream of earth ponies being herded into the warehouse, far more than the building could ever hold. Soon they would be packed to the walls, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. They would only arrest her again. She gave her discharge papers to the pegasus pony at the door and was waved through, out into the bitter night once again.

Distant sirens sounded from the theater district, and over the tops of the buildings flashing lights from the emergency vehicles flickered red and blue and yellow in the night, like the sparks of invisible fireworks. It was almost beautiful, but it was tainted terribly by the knowledge of what had caused it. A chilly wind rose up and cut her to the bone. Bracing herself, she started walking through the city. She had no time to waste on idle speculation; the paper would only waive her curfew for an hour, and she had miles to go yet.

'No matter the cost, this city we built must be protected.'

Those valiant words, spoken so long ago by the princess of the night, ringed the seal of the Canterlot Defense Council, painted on the wall above the entrance to the council chambers. A wooden relief was carved into the closed doors, depicting two pegasi in profile. They arched their wings, which fanned out gloriously and barred Spitfire's way. The councilors had started without her, which was definitely not a good sign. She pushed them open. They creaked enormously and echoed through the hall beyond. Everypony turned to watch her enter; she wondered if they had closed the doors on purpose, to make everypony stop and stare at her in accusation the moment she walked in. On the fenced-in stand in the open space between the rows of audience seats and the councilors, Major Fleetfoot looked over her shoulder at Spitfire.

What is this? Spitfire thought. What did you do, Fleet?

The Director-General took the council chambers in, gauging how badly this would all go for her. The princess's throne, at the center of the raised semi-circular councilor's table that faced the doors and the audience, was as empty as it had always been. She couldn't remember a single time the princess had attended a session. But the throne was always left there out of custom, to remind them of where their power flowed from. So it was bad, but not bad enough that Luna would get involved herself. That was a small comfort, at least. Praetor Mace, appointed by the High Council as chair of the Council and hence Grand Marshal of Canterlot, sat just to the right of the throne. Spitfire locked eyes with him. Although he was stern and avaricious, the jape with the closed doors wasn't his style. Her eyes went to the opposite side of the throne. Yes, Sunset Shimmer was definitely calculating enough to do it, and Spitfire saw by the twinkle in her eye that had given the order. To mock and humiliate her.

“Glad you could join us,” Shimmer said.

Spitfire gave her a sullen glare as she crossed in front of the hoofful of ponies observing the meeting, Cadence among them. Spitfire headed for the table, to take her seat next to General Mace. The Director of the Fire Brigade pushed his chair in to let her pass.

“Director-General.” Sunset Shimmer's voice was theatrically loud and calculated to cut deep while retaining an edge of formality and innocent criticism. “After all your years on this council, I'm sure you know the protocol.”

The statement hung in the air, its vagueness practically begging Spitfire to ask in confusion which protocol she meant. But Spitfire knew very well which protocol she meant: a pony under investigation forfeited their right to sit on the council. “Is this an inquisition, then?” she asked pointedly.

Across the table, next to Sunset Shimmer, the Director of Public Works said, “I think it's a little too early--”

“Should it be an inquisition?” Shimmer asked. “Are you under the impression we need to render a verdict?”

“Don't you play games with me, Shimmer.”

“Enough.” General Mace's voice boomed in the hall. “Before this meeting, I came from a scene more devastating than any war zone. Dead mares and stallions on the streets of our beloved city. Our security, our very way of life, shattered. And I've seen this before: winter is rising again. I will not let this city degenerate into lawlessness and anarchy again. If a change of leadership of the Shadowbolts is what it takes, then so be it. Have a seat in the audience, Director-General.”

Flush with shame, Spitfire slunk away from the table, towards an empty spot on the row of benches. She met eyes with Fleetfoot as she passed, but officer could hold the stare for long. Spitfire trudged towards the audience, and Cadence's poisonous smile. Spitfire sat down heavily and watched her career go down the drain.

“Continue, Major Fleetfoot,” Mace said.

“Uh, Colonel Dash, she, um, approached me. She told me about how she, ah....”

“I understand it's hard, testifying against a pony you think you owe your loyalty to,” Mace said. “But your loyalty is to this city and to your princess above all. Remember that, even if someponies don't.”

“Right. Anyway, the Colonel confided in me that, um, she had actionable intelligence on the EPLF, but that, uh, she said Spitfire was blocking her. That she was ignoring the intel.”

She never showed me any actionable intelligence, Spitfire thought. She never showed me any intelligence, period.

“Um, her exact words were: 'Spitfire didn't have her head in the game.' The Colonel wanted authorization to pursue, um, where the intel was going. But all Spitfire cared about was Changlings. And, she, uh, shot down the Colonel.”

“And while she busied her time with Changlings,” Mace rumbled, “the degenerates crept up and blindsided us.”

Fleetfoot blinked heavily. After a second, she said, “Uh, sure.”

“We heard a report of some activity in the ghetto earlier,” the Director of Public Works said. “Can you give us any more details?”

“Yeah. After Spitfire shot down the Colonel's lead, she....that is, the Colonel decided to follow through with it anyway. She asked me to send a team to a suspected safehouse the EPLF were using. The old Magnum Smelting plant. I tasked Captain Rapidfire to hit it as soon as we saw some suspicious activity. And, uh, we did. We kept the whole thing off-book, because Dash didn't want Spitfire to find out about it and overrule her. Luckily, her intel was right on the money. It was the staging area for the bomb attack, and it had detailed information on their target. Because of Colonel Dash, we were able to save lives.”

Spitfire seethed to herself and slunk down in her seat. The lies hung heavy in the air and weighed her down, but a sudden loud slam made her sit up and perk her ears upright. It had been the doors closing behind somepony. She turned in her seat to see who had left, and with some confusion realized Cadence's spot was now empty. She looked at Sunset Shimmer, who was just as confused by the abrupt exit. The others hadn't paid the departure much attention, though, and continued questioning the major.

“What was the nature of Colonel Dash's intel?” the Director of the Fire Brigade asked.

“I'm not privy to that. Uh, sorry. It's on a need-to-know basis. Eyes only.”

“We can ask Colonel Dash about that when she testifies,” Sunset Shimmer said. “Now, in your professional opinion, do you consider Colonel Dash reliable when it comes to matters such as these?”

Of course Shimmer would be interested in that. I'm too smart for her to manipulate, but Dash....Dash is a little hothead. And anger makes ponies pliable. Easier to predict how they'll react. Shimmer already knows who she wants to replace me with. And if she's looking for revenge for Shining Armor, getting me out of the way is the first step towards destroying the Directorate. And as far as that racist Mace is concerned, I might as well have planted the bomb there myself, while Dash appears as the brave pegasus ennobling her race by her virtue. Dash played me. Played all of us, it looks like. She can be cunning when she wants to be, when she has time to think and plan, but get her blood pressure rising and all that goes out the window.

Fleetfoot said, “The Colonel has always been a little enthusiastic, yes. But, uh, she has a killer's instinct. Um, that is, a killer instinct, I mean. She knows what needs to be done and she does it.”

“And Spitfire?”

“She, ahem....” Fleetfoot trailed off and bowed her head.

The atmosphere in the council chambers thickened and grew tenser and denser as the silence wore on. After it grew so heavy as to be unbearable, Spitfire jumped to her hooves and announced to the councilors:

“I'd like to make a statement.”

General Mace's face twisted as he snarled. He was livid at the audacity of her interruption. “Sit down, Director-General.” His voice softened in a pretense of formality. “You'll have an opportunity to make a statement later, at the appropriate time.”

Spitfire sat back down and thought, After they've heard all these blatant lies against me. It doesn't matter, anyway; they've already made up their minds. Or at least Sunset and Mace have, and they're the two who count.

“Well, Major Fleetfoot?” the Fire Brigade Director asked.

Fleetfoot twisted around and stared across the hall at Spitfire. Pure panic swirled around behind the major's eyes. A helpless dread. Spitfire had seen it numerous times in her officers before, although mostly in combat situations where Shadowbolts had the benefit of a clear enemy to fight. Here and now, in the courtroom - and Spitfire had no doubt this was both a trial and a combat zone - Fleetfoot had to use her own initiative and choose an enemy from among friends, and it was tearing her apart. Spitfire wondered what kind of expression her face was sending back to the major. Calm insight? An authoritative parental figure? A superior who believed wholeheartedly in her hoofpicked few? The Director-General had spent her whole career cultivating and working to exude these emotions at all times. But now, she couldn't shake the feeling her own inner turmoil and doubt was creeping into her expression. She felt totally helpless at not being able to see or control what was on her very face.

The major faced the council again. “In my professional opinion....” The major gave a decisive sigh, committing herself to what she was about to say. She raised her head and stood up straighter and prouder. Her voice turned confident, almost savage. “In my professional opinion, this agency is in shambles. We're completely unable to fulfill our mandate because of weak-kneed leadership. This attack tonight should be placed squarely at her hooves. She has consistently undervalued pertinent threats brought to her attention by her officers, because of her paranoia about Changling infiltration, and she has willfully blinded herself to the threats from our own species out of naivete. Last month, Spitfire drafted a memo about security arrangements in anticipation of the millennial celebrations that prioritized finding and arresting Changlings, to the exclusion of all other threats. Major Caspain confided in me about a suspicious earth pony with a cart matching the description of the cartbomb being stopped at a checkpoint, but they had to let her go because of Spitfire's operational orders. Further loss of life tonight was only averted by Colonel Dash directly contravening those orders. And Dash was right to do so, because Spitfire doesn't just not have her head in the game, she hasn't the slightest clue what the rules or who the other players are.” There was a stunned pause as the council struggled to digest the sudden stream of vitriol. Then, as a final blow, Fleetfoot added, “And that's just my professional opinion.”

As one, the councillors laid eyes on Spitfire. Her stomach was in knots and her breathing was shallow. Sunset Shimmer's eyes light up with delight, and a smile flitted at the edge of her lips.

The red-faced General Mace's jaw and lower lip twitched. “When our security is as ramshakle as this, can we really blame the bestial instinct of earth ponies for thinking this city is theirs for the taking? Never in all my days have I seen a pegasus fail her racial duty so miserably--”

Spitfire slid off the bench and called, “I'd like to make that statement now.”

“Denied,” General Mace stated.

Spitfire was now beyond caring. Their eyes bore down on her, commanding her to slink away and accept what was coming to her. But she refused to give them the satisfaction. Undaunted, she stood up straighter. “Oh, don't worry, my statement is only one sentence long: you're a herd of absolute fools.” An aghast buzz filled the meeting room, but she shouted over it. "None of you have a clue how to keep this city safe. This council has nothing to do with defending Canterlot. It's about defending your careers. You're all too busy with your little agendas and schemes to open your eyes. But don't feel bad. You'd fit in well with Colonel Dash. This whole inquisition is a sham. She never once approached me with intel about a threat by the EPLF, only vague suspicions. Suspicions about you, Shimmer. She seems to think you've faked Shining Armor's death, and your agency is sabotaging the Directorate because you're jealous of pegasus superiority. And I have to say, even though Colonel Dash went off the deep end, now I finally start to get where she's coming from.”

“Of course you would say that,” Mace declared, exasperated. “You thought you could assume the role of a leader - a unicorn role - and now that everything is going wrong, you shift the blame--”

“We are as you made us!” Spitfire yelled. “All our lives, you tell us to be guardians, loyal and strong, fighting for the Land of the Eternal Moon without hesitation or reservation. As strong as the statues and as bold as the propaganda posters you put everywhere, telling us what to do, what to feel, what to think, even when you're not around. You pile all these expectations onto us and mold us like clay. Tell us we need to be the perfect pegasus, or we're nothing. So we do it, because we all want this city to be proud of us.

“But you! All you unicorns do is bicker and squabble, whether in the tabloids or in the courtrooms, and through it all you have the audacity to claim you have a natural instinct for leadership. You're a bunch of racists and careerists, selling anypony else out for the favor of the High Castle - which, by the way, is home to a pony just as much a pegasus as a unicorn - to satisfy your own selfish whims and desires. You all try and claim you're better than the ponies you climbed atop to get where you are. Ponies like me, who never stopped protecting this city for a second. That's all my honor is to you: a stepping stone on your career paths.

“Want to know why this attack happened today? The truth, I mean? Even as the Bureau of Harmony churn out posters about racial harmony, you all failed in your duty to uphold it. You're just as responsible as the earth ponies who bombed the Chariot, and you're doubly guilty because social harmony is supposed to be managed by you. This is the example you set. This is the world you made. One where each and every pony stabs each other in the back to eliminate competition for the coveted top spot. For the power and prestige it gets you. The power to get you what you want, and make what you want to happen, happen.

“But when you ignore the duty that goes hoof-in-hoof with that power and it all blows up in your face you turn around and blame somepony else. And since everypony else is fawning over you for their own promotion, they agree with you. Unquestioning. Setting the climate of opinion is the real authority you wield, not anything that comes from Luna's empty throne. You have no idea what true honor or sacrifice is, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think I've been trying to protect that for you.

“Colonel Dash was right, in the end. Earth ponies really are the biggest danger to unicorns there is. They might just give you the culling you so rightfully deserve.”

General Mace shouted for order over the uproar.

Spitfire continued, “You call them degenerate, but you made them that way with your greed and incompetence and terrible stewardship of this once-great nation. And now, they've seen through the lies, just like me. They don't have any need for your authority or your blessing. Neither touches them. Neither moves them. Neither affects them. And in the face of that, I am powerless to do anything. But at least I'm pony enough to admit when I'm beat. So consider this my official resignation.” Spitfire tore off her medals and threw them on the floor in disgust. “Before I go, though, I want to put in an official recommendation for my successor. I want it to be Colonel Dash, because this is exactly the job she deserves to have.”

Having gotten all that off her chest, Spitfire was unbridled and unburdened by worry. She felt almost giddy. She savored the snarling, stupefied looks on the council's faces, then turned her tail to them and walked out of the council chambers, wondering where she should retire to. Maybe she should head for the coast and meet up with some old friends reassigned to the Directorate field offices around the nation? No, the more space she put between herself and this den of vipers, the better she'd feel. Maybe she should head overseas, to the settlements. Yes, the more she thought about it, the nicer the territories sounded.

Once she was through the doors, which slammed shut with a resounding boom, she started to cross the antechamber. As she approached the stairwell doors across the lobby, Colonel Dash rushed through them, only to stop and stare as Spitfire casually strolled towards her. They met at a distance of a few paces apart and regarded each other for a moment. Though she wore a pair of mirrored shades, Dash's emotions were written all over her face: trying so hard to be as bold as ever, but it was defiance masking deep-seated apprehension. Fear, even.

I raised her from a cadet into a Shadowbolt, she thought. A lump grew in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Shaped her like clay. Maybe I'm not as different from the Defense Council as I'd like to admit. I'm sorry, Dash. For failing you so badly.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” Spitfire said as she brushed past her former cadet. “I'm sure you'll do better in this city than I ever did.”

Colonel Dash said nothing as Spitfire entered the stairwell and started her descent. The stairwell was tall, and gave her plenty of time to work her thoughts out. Pack up her things from the office. Cancel her utilities and get the rest of the year's rent refunded. Clean out her bank account. Board the next rocket plane heading away from Equestria, destination unknown. She stepped out of the municipal building and descended the broad stone steps, pausing at the sidewalk to breathe the crisp, cool air. The wind stirred her mane and brushed her coat, refreshing after the heat of the inquisition and the stuffy council chambers. Like being born again. And once she left the city and headed for the unspoilt land, the air would be even clearer. General Spitfire, former Director of the Shadowbolts, smiled to herself while she walked away.

She never looked back.

It was impossible to say how long Applejack soaked in the tub. After the long and bloody day she had just had, she was content to drift and stop thinking and passively listen to the news coming from the radio in the other room. But sometime after she had sailed off, a knock on the door brought her back to shore. About time, she thought while getting out of the tub and toweling her mane off. She threw a bathrobe on to dry her coat.

“....and in more breaking news,” the EBC radio announcer said, “the Director-General of the Shadowbolts, Spitfire, has stepped down from duty in the aftermath of the devastating attack. The Directorate issued a press release citing irregularities in her recent performance, but stressed that this in no way diminishes her years of faithful service to the city of Canterlot....”

“Who is it?” she called through the door.

The voice on the other side was brisk and cold. “Shadowbolt Directorate. Open the door.”

The radio on the counter continued talking. “....still preliminary, but her successor has been named as....” Heart pounding, Applejack put her eye to the peephole, not daring to breathe. “....Colonel Dash, formerly head of Internal Security for the city of Canterlot....” Through the curved glass, a warped a pair of mirrored shades stared back. She recognized the rainbow-colored mane with a purple beret atop it. “....now promoted to Director-General of the Shadowbolt Directorate....” Applejack exhaled slowly to steel herself and control her shaking, and then she opened the door. “....and the pony in charge of state security for the whole of Equestria.”

In the hall, the Director-General tipped her shades down and stared at her. There was a silence as Applejack wondered what to say in the scant few moments before the Shadowbolt took hold of the conversation. All sorts of conflicting emotions surged in her chest and head, vying for her voice. Which one would be the best leg forward? The most reasonable? The one that would make this turn out for the best? Aw, nuts ta that, she thought.

“And just what in the hay do ya call that?!”

The Director raised an eyebrow. “Can I come in?”

Suppressing the temptation to slam the door shut in her face, Applejack stepped aside and let the Shadowbolt inside. She strutted to the middle of the room and looked around while Applejack checked the hallway.

“Relax,” the Director said. “Nopony's watching. Aside from us, obviously. The owner and staff are on our payroll. I wouldn't have put the key in your dead drop if this place wasn't secure.”

Applejack shut the door, crossed to the bed, and sat down. She found it very hard to stand all of a sudden. The springs squeaked as she settled into it. The Director kept her distance and dug around in her belt. She pulled out a stack of ration cards and tossed them onto the bed, next to Applejack. To the earth pony, it felt like the clouds had opened up and let down soothing rain after a sweltering dry spell. But it was a bitter, polluted rain, as she reminded herself of what she did to deserve them.

“Extra ration credits for you and your family,” Dash said. “As promised. Who's got your back, huh?”

She stared up at the Shadowbolt, at the eye-masking glasses over a grinning mouth. Wondering what was going on in there. The urge to know overwhelmed Applejack, and so she risked biting the hoof that feeds to ask, “Why didn't ya pull me out at the checkpoint? Ain't ya supposed ya be stoppin' that kind of thing from happening?”

Smoothly, the Shadowbolt explained, “All part of the operation. I wasn't expecting you to be the courier, true, but it didn't matter. You played your part, and you played it well. You don't need to know the rest.”

“And what about all that stuff Ah heard on the radio? All that 'bout yer boss bein' fired and you bein' promoted?”

The Shadowbolt's easy grin faltered a bit. “There are consequences, sure....”

“Ya made me betray all those folks....ya used me ta get yerself a promotion, didn't ya?"

The Shadowbolt grew agitated, which Applejack considered a sign she had cut to the heart of the matter. “You know,” the Director said, “honesty is a virtue, but career advice is not the kind of 'informing' that's in your job description.”

'Job description', Applejack thought bitterly, lowering her eyes. As if Ah ever had even the slightest choice.

“How many ponies....died?” she asked.

“Eighteen, so far. Some of the wounded are critical, so maybe more.”

All that blood on mah hooves. She asked, "What about Hammer?"

Director Dash looked wholly unconcerned. "The leader of the Earth Pony Liberation Front? We didn't pick him up, if that's what you mean, but I'm sure it won't be long. Although, truth be told, he might be useful if he could be turned. What do you think the chances are?"

"Not likely at all."

"Then what do you care about Hammer? You knew when I sent you in there that I was going to bring it down eventually. Unless....you didn't actually get attached to him, did you?"

"No," Applejack said, though she couldn't tell if that was a lie or not. Certainly there was a fair amount of pity she held for him. He was just another wounded earth pony, like her. “Ah hope it was worth it, Director Dash. Ah surely do.”

“You just worry about yourself. You did exactly what your city and your nation asked of you. Those ration credits should help mitigate any bad feelings. Your part in this operation is over.”

“Until ya decide ta come 'round and make me do some more a'yer dirty work.”

The Director bared her teeth and, snorting, flared her nostrils. For a moment, Applejack thought the pegasus was about to charge. But by degrees she calmed herself. Her rough posture broke, and the tenseness in her body flowed out. She sat on the bed next to Applejack, who kept staring at the wall, uncomfortably aware of the pegasus's wings brushing against her side.

“We all have to make sacrifices,” the Director said, her voice curiously distant and high-pitched, like a foal. “Just like you, I've done....questionable things.” She shrugged. “You think I wanted to let that bomb explode? Kill all those ponies?”

Applejack said nothing, and in the silence the only sound was the radio chattering away. She waited for the Shadowbolt to continue.

“You ever listen to Thorny Bends?” Director Dash asked. “All this time you've been my agent, I never asked.”

Unsure where this was going, Applejack said, “All the time, actually.”

“You know how she....sometimes says this city is greater than all of us?” Dash asked. "It's something we build together into something greater, as we all reach for the moon?”

“Ah mayhap have heard her say sumthin' of the sort.”

“It's true, you know. This city is greater than you, and it's greater than me, too. In its name, in its honor, sometimes we have to get our hooves dirty to make sure it continues being great. That's the burden of the pegasus, Applejack. Not many dirt-eaters can ever know how that feels. Now, you're one of the few. The lucky few.”

Thorny Bends was Applejack's lighthouse in the fog, her solitary beacon of hope in this miserable city. A voice in the eternal night, letting AJ know that no matter where she was she was never alone. That there was a pony out there, somewhere, who understood her. Was in tune with her. When Thorny says that, it don't mean 'greater' as in 'better'. It jus' means this here city is bigger than us all, fer better or fer worse. Clearly, the pegasus didn't have the insight into the true meaning of Thorny Bends that Applejack did. But Thorny's words were rich in irony, and that made them easy to misinterpret.

“Should Ah be honored?” Applejack asked, only half sarcastically.

The Director chuckled. “We don't do this for honor, Applejack. We do it because it's our duty.” The springs squeaked as she got off the bed and back on her hooves. “It's what has to be done, to keep this city great. Now, I've got to dash. We'll be in touch.” Dash crossed the hotel room, but when she neared the door she froze. “Oh,” she exclaimed. “Right.” She turned back, frowning, and pulled a folded letter in an opened envelope from her saddlebag. After a bit of hesitation she held it out, but she seemed to shy away from it at the same time. Her ears flattened against her head. “There's one more thing, actually.”

In all the times Applejack had met with her handler, the former Colonel never struck her as the bashful type. This newfound reluctance sent a shiver down Applejack's spine. She swiped the letter from the Shadowbolt's grasp and looked at the envelope. It was from the Bureau of Harmony. Her thoughts whirled around as she wondered what it could be, until she looked up at Dash for an explanation.

“I, uh, I didn't know,” the Shadowbolt mumbled. “I would've stopped it if I'd known.”

Prickles of fear danced under Applejack's skin. She immediately shrugged the letter out of the envelope, which she let fall to the floor. The letter unfolded. Her eyes darted across the little black words stamped on the crisp and new paper, struggling to wrap her mind around them. What the symbols communicated to her. But the meaning inherent in them was far too large to see at once. She could not comprehend it all at the same time. To make matters worse, the letters swam round her vision, too fleet to be grabbed hold of. She realized it was because she was crying. Why was she crying? she asked herself in numb disarray.

Then she understood, and the knowledge horrified her. She wished she'd never learned to read, not if plain little words on paper could wound her this much. Her mouth slack with horror and unable to form words, she stared up at Director Dash, who had delivered this misery to her. Applejack let out a harsh sob, an ugly cry she couldn't believe had come from her throat. She let her head fall into her hooves, crushing the letter still clutched in them.

“I had a flag in her file,” the pegasus said, shuffling her hooves, her voice rising defensively. “They were supposed to contact me, before they....performed any action....but they didn't. Typical paper pushers, they're just a bunch of--”

“Get out!” Applejack screamed. She couldn't stand another justification from this boorish pegasus, fighting to protect a city who would do this to her poor, sweet Granny Smith. “Get out a'my life! Ah ain't spyin' fer ya'll no more!”

As quick as lightning, the pegasus lunged forward. Her hooves roughly raised Applejack's head until the earth pony's vision was filled by a scowling blue-coated face with huge black voids for eyes that reflected Applejack's crying head back at her.

“Listen up, alright? You can blame me all you want for something that wasn't my call, but before you make a decision you'll regret, think about this: everything good in your life came from me. When the Midnight Guard were about to raid your brother's little underground rag, who put a stop to it? I did.”

Applejack lowered her gaze and stared at the faded green design on the walls. A'course she did. By recruitin' me into being a spy, betrayin' mah own kind fer the safety a'mah family. When one pony does it ta a business executive, they call it 'blackmail'. But when a Shadowbolt does it ta a dirt-eater like me, it's 'duty'.

“I could shut him down,” the pegasus said. “Would you like that? Or better yet, know what job your sister was scheduled for before I got her that position at the Super-Duper Market? Wiping grease off industrial engines. It's a nice job, one I'm sure she'll like a lot. Because of the toxic cleaning chemicals, the average life expectancy is about forty. It's never too late to send her back there. Do you want to be responsible for throwing her good future away?”

There ain't a single good future fer our kind. Not in this city.

The Shadowbolt Director swiftly backed away from the broken mare. By the time the pegasus was at the door, she had almost resumed her composure, but she was still slightly flustered. “Think about what I said. I hope that when you've calmed down you'll see things my way. Don't burn any bridges just yet, because I'd hate to sour a good working relationship.”

The Director-General walked out the door, leaving Applejack alone with her misery. But it was for the best. Applejack's life was nothing but secrets and lies, and there were more and more of them every day. Director Dash was the only other pony she could share them with, and at the moment she hated the Director's rotten guts. So that just left Applejack alone with her lies. As usual.

She crawled under the covers and tried to make the world go away for a little while.

The only light in the room was a spotlight, shining down on the table Apple Bloom lay on her stomach on. Still groggy, she raised her head and tried to move, but her heart hammered in her chest when she felt the straps holding her legs down. She tried to pull them off, but they wouldn't come loose, no matter how much she struggled. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep in the warehouse, with all the other earth ponies jammed in tight. Was she still there, or had they moved her? She couldn't tell. Beyond the circle of light, everything was pure darkness.

"Let me go!" she shouted.

A high, sweet, sing-song mare's voice, strangely familiar, came from out of the shadows. "I'm afraid I can't do that, Apple Bloom."

"Why not?!"

"Only you can free yourself from your chains."

Apple Bloom blinked as she tried to wrap her mind around what the mare meant. Plainly, she could not free herself, because no matter how much she pulled, the straps stayed tight. Still, she gave it another shot, but the bindings still did not come loose.

"You've been a very bad girl," the mare in the shadows said.

"Ah don't care."

"Oh, but you should. Don't you want your princess to be proud of you?"

"She ain't mah princess, and Ah hate her, I do!"

"What would she think, to hear one of the ponies she loves so very much say that?"

"Love? She keeps us down!"

"No, no, no, you've got it all wrong, Apple Bloom. She seems harsh and hard because she loves us and wants us to become stronger. We don't become stronger if we don't fight for it. We don't conquer ourselves by being indolent. We don't strike off our chains with hate for our liberator, the glorious princess of the night."

"Just let me go!" Apple Bloom wailed.

A shadow among the shadows stirred and it stepped forward. "No. You must let yourself go. Let go of your false self, and let the lunar divinity fill you up inside."

"Go away!"

But the shadow moved closer still. "When I'm done, little Apple Bloom, you'll learn how much the princess of the night loves you, and how much your own love for the princess is buried under all this hate and mis-education." Then, and only then, did the shadow pause. "But first, a question."

"W-what?"

"....do you know why the Shadowbolt Directorate would have a flag on your file?"

The question baffled Apple Bloom to no end. Shadowbolts? Flags? Files? All she wanted to do was go home. "Ah ain't got a clue what yer talking about."

The shadow stood there, cloaked in the greater shadows, utterly still. Then it seemed to shrug. "That's too bad. But we'll have the truth, sooner or later. We always get the truth." And then the mare stepped out of the shadows and into the thin circle of light, and Apple Bloom was wracked with terror so badly the whole table started to shake. She knew the face very well. Every earth pony did. Its thin, razor-sharp smile and cold, withering, disapproving eyes stared at them from books and propaganda posters all around the city, and her voice came from the government propaganda channels on the radio all the time. There wasn't an earth pony foal alive who didn't live in fear of the Iron Matron of the Midnight Guard.

"I'm Miss Cheerilee," she said, "and I think it's time for your lessons to begin."

In the darkness, Apple Bloom started to scream.

By the time the Director returned to the office - her office, now - she found that Spitfire had already cleaned out all her personal effects. She had been very thorough. None of the statues or pictures or books remained. Even her ashtray was gone. The room looked so bare now, empty and lifeless. It's not her office anymore, the Director thought. You're free to make it yours. She took off her beret and shades and dropped them on a table near the door, while making a mental note to call up the tailoring company and have her measurements taken for a Director's dress uniform. She dropped the folder she had gotten from the Analysis Wing on the bare, empty expanse of a desktop, now clean and clear of the mountains of paperwork. Then she shuffled around the desk, towards the chair Spitfire had sat in since the day the Director had joined up, as an insignificant little rook. Spitfire's own little throne, like the princess's seat in the council chambers. Now it was the Director's. All hers. She reached out a trembling hoof and laid it on the seat back. She couldn't physically touch the history and the power, but she felt them all the same, all the way back to Major Shepherd. She was now the wellspring of Shadowbolt authority for the whole nation, the fountainhead of state security. The whole agency was hers, and the thought of the power and responsibility awed her.

“She didn't say a word,” Lightning Dust said from the door, startling the Director, though she refused to let it show. “I had just returned from the industrial sectors when she breezed in here, packed everything up, and left.” Major Dust closed the door and crossed the room. “How was your meeting?”

The Director gently laid her forehooves on the desktop and spread them out, tracing all the minute bumps and dips in the lacquered wood. Getting the feel of her domain. “The council played right into our hooves. It went down exactly as we predicted it would. They named me the new Director-General pretty much the moment I got there.” The Director sat on her haunches in the chair. She settled into the seat and leaned back, giving Major Dust a slow, satisfied smile. “Now, we can keep our our city safe the right way. And the number one step is finding Armor and root out whoever is helping him sabotage this agency. Anything on his sister?”

“I made a call to one of our sources. The night guard at her apartment building. He says she wandered in not too long after the attack, with what looked like weeds in her mane.”

The Director laughed. “Sounds like she had a rough night.”

"Want to make it rougher?"

"No, no. We need to reassess everything. Go over her file with a magnifying glass, task Source Bellum with working up a new personality profile, find or fabricate somepony we can work into her good graces. I certainly don't think Source Witchcraft is going to cut it.”

"Well, of course she's not going to cut it. Not unless the dead rise from the grave." Seeing the expression on the Director's face, she explained, "Witchcraft is dead."

"Who?"

Major Dust lifted up a foreleg and pointed the hoof at the Director. "You."

Not sure what her subordinate was getting at, the Director's expression turned stern. She leaned forward, one eyebrow raised, and commended the major to speak using nothing but silence.

"It was the biggest opening musical in Canterlot since, well, the last Cynic DeKey show," the major said, her voice flat and unaffected. "Trixie Lulamoon was one of the ponies caught in the blast. And so was the actor, what's his name....?"

"Knight Errol?"

Major Dust shook her head. "No, the other one. Blockbuster, that's it. He was the only one who was irreplaceable, though. The rest were just minor socialites."

"Including our one source close to Sparkle." She leaned to one side of the chair and let it spin gently. "We really shot our own hoof off, didn't we?"

"Well, you said it yourself. Witchcraft gave us nothing."

"True. But Sparkle doesn't seem to have any friends, so that makes getting close to her much, much harder."

Major Dust nodded at the folder on the desk. "What's that?"

The Director roused herself and stared down at the file. "This? Just a pony I was thinking of recruiting as an asset." She flipped it open. A glossy military service photo was clipped to the paperwork. "Sgt. Flash Sentry. He, ahem, came through for me when I needed it, even though we'd never met. I offered him money, but he turned me down."

"So when you say 'recruit'....?"

"I mean I'm going to use my winning personality to convince him of the error of his ways." The Director smiled at her subordinate. It all seemed to be coming to her so easily, now that she didn't have to worry about Spitfire. She flipped through Sentry's file again. "Says here the good Sargent is a suspected courier for Ploughshare. They think he smuggles copies out of the ghetto and takes them to that degenerate art place."

"The Stable."

"That's the one. Do we have any assets inside there?"

"None. The Analysis Wing thinks they have contacts inside the government who tip them off, because every agent who's tried to penetrate the place is turned away. But we haven't really tried very hard. The Midnight Guard can waste their time with that. We have a city to protect."

But still, she thought. He saved my agent. I could fabricate a tearful reunion between them, where she thanks him so much for saving her life, and then I, pretending not to know he's involved with the Stable, ask him to show his patriotism and help his nation. Send the two of them in places where we can't get to. There's a workable plan buried in here somewhere. I don't know what it is yet, but I can feel it.

"I still want him placed under surveillance," the Director said. "I want to know his movements, I want to know his habits, I want to know--"

There came a knock on the door. When the Director called, "Enter," the door opened and somepony she couldn't see passed a memo to Major Dust. The major walked back to the desk, her eyes going over what the piece of paper said.

"What is it?" the Director asked.

"An act of providence. It's a report from the radio room. The night guard at Sparkle's place tipped off one of field officers that she was on the move again. The officer followed her to the hospital where they took the victims of the bomb attack. Seems she met up with the same pegasus pony who got caught with her at the checkpoint and offered tears of gratitude for, quote, 'saving her life', unquote. Wonder what that was about?"

"Did they seem particularly close while you were following her?"

"Close in proximity. But their interaction was negligible."

"I see." The Director leaned back in the seat, briefly in thought once again. Then, abruptly, she closed the folder on Sgt. Flash Sentry. "You're right, we do have a city to protect. Tomorrow. It's been a very long day, and I'm going home to get some sleep. In the meantime, you're in charge of Firefly House. Make sure you keep on eye on the fallout from the Liberation Front. After all, you wouldn't want to neglect your duty as the new head of Internal Security, Colonel Dust.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Major Dust said with a salute.

“You deserve it. You stood by me, every step of the way.”

“It was my duty, Director. Our loyalty is to the city and the princess who rules it.”

The Director got out of the chair and stood up, yawning. “Too true. Radio me if there are any earth-shattering developments.” She walked to the door alongside the Major, but when Major Dust continued into the bullpen, the Director took a lingering last glance back at her new office. She smiled to herself. Then she flicked the light switch off, bathing the room in deep shadow.

Hammer poured the contents of his saddlebag onto the table of the tiny, rat-infested apartment that served as their emergency safe house. He sorted through it all, looking for whatever he could use. The money, he noticed first, was a pittance. A few coins, nothing substantial. Have they cleared out the caches of money we hid away already? He didn't know, couldn't know, how much of his network would be compromised. And he was unsure who he could go to. He had plenty of old contacts, but they still thought he was dead, which was information he desperately wanted to contain. He felt so blind, flailing around randomly in the dark. He had no intel, nor a support system he could rely on. Very few of his ponies knew about this safehouse, but he didn't know who had been rounded up and who had been broken by torture.

The only useful thing in his saddlebag was a telescopic baton. He clutched it tightly in his fetlock and paced around the room. The walls were too close for Hammer. Much too close. Space was at a premium in the ghetto, where the population kept going up but the cordons around the neighborhood did not. He was trapped in what felt like a coffin. Every time a rat scratched in the walls, he jumped. Every time a rusty pipe creaked, he went to pieces. Every time the clock ticked and one of his compatriots hadn't shown up, he lost another shred of sanity.

And then the door burst open.

His years as an intelligence officer instilled in him impeccable instincts. He twisted towards the door, clicked the safety catch to extend the baton, and swung it at the intruder. The intruder ducked and the steel baton crashed into the door, splintering it. He pulled it out and got ready to swing it again, but a flash of a pink and purple and yellow gave him pause. He froze, the baton raised over his head. Breathing heavily, he matched eyes with the terrified pony on her knees.

“Cadence,” he said. All at once, he sagged and nearly went limp. All four of his limbs shook so badly he felt about ready to collapse. He tossed the baton aside, picked her off the ground, and nuzzled her. “Don't do that!”

“I'm sorry,” she moaned.

"I was so worried about you. Ever since I found Caballeron hiding in the sewers, I thought they might have followed him and found out he was meeting you."

“No, there's been nothing on my end. But I heard about the raid and I-I had to see if you were alright. Oh, I'm so glad you are!”

“I'm not alright. Everything is gone, Cadence. Everything.”

“We'll rebuild, Shining Armor. We built the Liberation Front, we built the networks, we built everything once, and we can build it all again. As long as we're together, I don't care what happens.”

“Me neither.”

“We can do anything.”

He stroked her long, beautiful mane. In a flash, a whole set of memories from another lifetime came to him. The first time he saw the beautiful pegasus who was now in his forelegs. The new liaison from the Shadowbolts, they told him. He remembered all those long, hungry looks they had secretly passed to each other on the sly in those boring departmental meetings. The moment he finally kissed her, after months of suppressing the amorous passion that blinded and overwhelmed him. And then, much later, the time in a dingy little hotel room just like this one when he had asked her to transfer to the Midnight Guard so he could mitigate the fallout if their relationship should become public knowledge. It was, after all, highly illegal, and the Guard were the ones in charge of enforcing racial harmony laws. But after he had seen the pictures of all those dead zebra, how could he keep believing in this city? It gave him some small measure of comfort and vindication to defy the system and snatch these hidden moments for himself from under its watchful eyes.

Of course, he had had a deep and abiding affection for pegasus mares before he saw the photos, too. There was something irresistible about them. The cavalier way they reacted to danger, how they followed their passions and soared to new and dizzying heights, instead of staying earthbound and mundane. The downside, of course, was that the stubbornness and willfulness that made them great warriors also made them utterly intractable, even fanatical. The mare he had loved with all his heart before Cadence, before the pictures that changed his life, had been that way. Too stubborn to see the truth of this society. And after he had seen the photos, he suspected she was too ruthless and pragmatic to care if he showed them to her.

Not like Cadence. Beautiful, passionate, compassionate Cadence. As long as Hammer had her, and she had him, they could accomplish anything. They could rebuild everything. They could take on this corrupt city.

They might even win.

The Director's hovercarriage sped through the air above the city streets, sirens blazing. When the call come in over the radio, bringing those sweet words, "Director, we've located Shining Armor," to her, she had instantly spun the vehicle around and headed for the location, determined to take charge and end this once and for all. She jetted the controls and piloted the vehicle around, searching for a landing spot, before finally spying the othervehicles idling on a rooftop. The moment the landing struts touched down, she jumped out, leaving the hovercarriage to idle, and cantered over to Lightning Dust as the newly-made Colonel briefed a Civil Force tactical team.

“He's in the building across the street, ma'am,” Dust said. “He doesn't have a clue we're here.”

The Director went over to the weapons crate, picked up a hoofcannon, loaded it with shells, and slung it across her back by its strap. As she strapped on body armor over her chest and withers, she asked, “How many pegasus ponies do we have ready?”

“All of them. They're all at your command, Director. Every single one of them, all ready and waiting to take him down.”

“Fantastic,” the Director said. “We go in hard and fast, and we get him.”

“At your command, ma'am,” they shouted.

“That's what I like to hear,” she said to Colonel Dust. Then, to the assembled ponies, she shouted, “Saddle up!”

With a mighty heave, two Shadowbolts hefted the battering ram at the wooden door of the target building. The ruined slab burst inwards and fell down the shadowy room beyond, splinters raining down everywhere. “Go, go, go!” the Director shouted as they breached the darkened room. The Civil Force soldiers fanned out as they poured inside and plunged into the darkness. Some of them took up standing positions near the door and unslung their rocket cannons, aiming the barrels at the interior, waiting and watching intently. The Director went through the door next, into the long, low room. She trotted right out into the center of the room, absolutely convinced she could take whatever he would throw at her.

A shadow shifted at the far end.

“Show us your hooves!” Dash shouted. She unslung her hoofcannon, hoisted it over her shoulder, and aimed it at the figure. “Right now!”

“Uh huh,” he said boldly, but he made no motion to surrender.

“What was that?!” Dash shouted back.

“Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh,” he said. There was something familiar about the intonation, too. She couldn't put her hoof on what, though. “Uh huh, alright,” he said exuberantly, then he started shuffling and lurching towards her in the darkness.

“Back up!” she screamed. “Get on the ground, now!”

If he heard her, he didn't heed her. He kept strutting towards her. She pulled the action lever on her cannon back, but the boom didn't happen. She tried again. It only clicked feebly at her. She stared up at the advancing figure, who kept up his slow saunter at her. Beads of sweat ran down her face. She threw the cannon down in disgust and turned to her officers.

“Open fire!”

But her officers just looked at one another, shrugged, and threw down their cannons. They started swaying in place, gently at first, but they built up speed until they jived in place.

“Stop dancing and open fire!” she screamed.

But it was futile. They weren't paying attention. Why would they, when they could discotheque? In the corner, Colonel Dust turned to her piano and made a run down the keys before laying into the same swinging groove played by the stuttering guitars and thumping bass that burst from the far end of the room. Sweating profusely, Dash turned back to the figure in the shadows. The overhead lights snapped on, revealing a music hall like the one she had met Source Witchcraft in earlier. But rather than a stately, demure music hall, this one was a lurid red-orange, and had a multi-tier stage with flashing lights on the fronts. An enormous backpiece made of a pyramid leading up to an eight-pointed star loomed tall over everything, stairs and stage both.

And there he was, her target, her prey, her quarry: Shining Armor. In a pale blue suit with flaring cuffs. Jiving down a set of steps, knocking his hooves together as he bopped down the stairs to the beat, like a music hall act. On either side of him, rows of Cadences stood on the tiers in creamy dresses, swaying to the music and singing harmonies into a row of microphones. Shining Armor reached the bottom of the stairs and spun around once, his coattails flying out behind him. He planted his hooves on the ground and stopped, staring directly into Dash with his big blue eyes.

“Once upon a time I recall you were mine all mine,” he sang.

“All mine,” the Cadences sang over a funky guitar riff. “All mine, all mine, all mine!”

“And I wonder how I ever could've been so, so blind!”

“So blind! So blind, so blind, so blind!”

“But now my little bird has gone and flown the coop, leaving me broken as I drive 'round in my coupe, wheeling all 'round these lonely old streets to search, for where my long gone baby's made her newest perch!”

“Don't fly away!” the Cadences added. “Oh, oh, oh....don't fly away!”

Shining Armor wailed soulfully as he strutted closer to Dash, then twirled on his hoof and started shuffling nimbly from side to side. The Cadences joined him in stepping from side to side as they added their harmonies to his. Again Dash tried to raise her cannon and fire at that degenerate, that wingchaser, but it refused to do anything but click harshly.

“I wish my baby would fly back home to me,” Shining Armor sang, “cuz I want her back.”

With a dip and a shimmy, the Cadences sang: “I want my baby to fly on home to me.”

Shining Armor drew closer, his stoic, intense face wearing heavy on Dash's posture. “I wish my baby would fly back home to me....”

Dash bowed her head, tears falling from her eyes.

“....cuz I want her back,” he sang.

“I want my baby to fly back home and see.”

He was close now, so close the heat and warmth radiated from him. “I can change, I can change, oh, yes I can change, cuz I want you back.”

“I want my baby to fly on back, not flee.”

“I can change all my ways for you, and then you will see....”

The tears were heavy on her eyes, but Dash raised her head and gave in to that gnawing sensation rising in her chest, clawing to be free.

“....I want you back,” she whispered.

He was so close now, grinning at her, his white teeth huge and gleaming. But when she reached over to grab hold of him, he started swaggering backwards, making his way back to the rows of Candences, who sang: “I want my baby to fly on home to me.”

When he reached the stand, as one the dancing troupe surged forward and laid their forelegs across him. Taking Armor all for themselves. He grinned at Dash from across the music hall, surrounded by those oh-so-perfect mares, who were grinning at her too. Taunting her. Dash dusted the ground and then charged at Shining Armor. Along the way, she started screaming at the top of her lungs.

She was still screaming when she woke up, settled in her penthouse bed. She wrestled with the sweat-slicked crimson blanket and threw it aside. She rolled to the edge of the bed and took her head in her hooves, waiting until she calmed herself. One of her windows was opened slightly, and a distant radio played “Fly On Home To Me”, by the Swinging Colts.

The Rockafilly album, she thought. That's why the song sounded so familiar.

Though the effort was great, she trudged over to the window and shut it, cutting off that song, then padded into the kitchen and poured herself a shot of cider to help her fall into a dreamless sleep. She cursed whoever had left their window open and left that song playing. Dreams about Shining Armor were the last thing she needed. She tilted her head back and downed the shot in one gulp. When it was drained and the bottom of the cup was held up to the night, her eye caught her reflection staring back at her, warped by the glass.

What was so wrong with those eyes? she wondered as she lowered the cup to the counter and put her forehooves on it, bracing herself as the cider flowed through her. This has nothing to do with....us, she thought suddenly. I'm hunting him down because.....because he's a menace. To this city. To the Shadowbolts. I'm protecting the agency, that's why I'm doing this. Not because he....

But Dash couldn't finish the thought. She walked into the bathroom, opened the tap, and splashed some water on her face. When she raised her head, she came face to face with her reflection again. Were those eyes too aggressive? Too callous? Too mocking? Why couldn't he stand to look into them anymore?

The fact that he and I....has nothing to do with this. Not at all. I'm not some dumb filly with a schoolyard crush.

She felt the tears coming on. Before they could fall, she lifted her foreleg and slammed her hoof right into the mirror. With a sharp crack, the whole thing shattered and shards of glass fell down into the sink and settled there. But it was no use, because now her own face stared up at her from each one of them, a thousand times over. Those sullen, angry eyes glared at her in silent accusation. Eyes far too cold and hard and cruel to love, a thousand times over.

She staggered back out into the kitchen, swiped the bottle of cider off the counter, and went to the window. She hit the knob for the radio as she went, and the familiar, reassuring voice of Thorny Bends came over the airwaves. And as Dash took swig after swig from the bottle, slowly numbing herself, she stared out at the city she had been given custody of. Her glorious city. All its skyscrapers and billboards and marquees, glowing in the darkness of the eternal night, under an eternal moon.

"....so, in the end, what is a city?" Thorny asked.

"Is it a collection of buildings, built from the ground up, where we live and work? A place we all make together, as we reach for the moon? A way we organize the means of production, mediated through all these symbols we construct?"

In her penthouse suite, an angry mare stared out at the city, that eternal city, glowing in the dark, and wondered if she could carry the burden of protecting it.

"All of these are true in their own way. But, over the course of this very, very long day, I've come to realize something. We can have a thousand different definitions of what a city is. And all of them can still be true. And yet, so very wrong."

A fearful pegasus who found the strength to be brave walked through the doors of a hospital, and though her wings were bandaged, she felt like she was soaring for the first time in her life.

"Because I finally know what this city is."

A mare whose eyes were opened to the beauty and splendor of the world went beside the pegasus, and as they walked together the two of them felt like they'd known each other all their lives.

"This city is us. When we stare out at it, we're really staring at ourselves. This is the world we made."

In a little ghetto hovel, the greatest actress in all of Canterlot recited, "I lingered in that twilight state of grace/Where such dreams did appear to me anon/Whisp'ring sweet revelations and ideas/And of a way to end all suffering."

"The productive factors of society, running along underneath it all and making sure we get what we need....food and shelter and love....that's the unconscious mind, regulating the body's processes, keeping the heart beating and the lungs pumping and the muscles moving, and also deciding when it's time to eat, time to sleep, time to huddle together for companionship."

In a hidden art gallery, a unicorn who had the world given to her on a silver platter swore she would not rest until its bounty was passed out to all the ponies of the city.

"And all these words, all these ideas, all these ideologies we make and share with each other until they're nearly as omnipresent as oxygen, that's the consciousness of this great beast. They tell us why we eat, why we sleep, why we love. And more importantly, they allow us to agree on these things with each other. They let us share what it's all about, in other words."

In a shabby hotel room, a broken mare sobbed into her pillow, wanting to end it all and yet unable to, because in her heart she knew that in the greatest darkness the tiniest light will seem as bright as the sun.

"Microcosm and macrocosm. They're not just for the universe at large anymore. But it also works the other way, too. We are the city we make. We reflect it in everything we do, think, and feel. What does it say about our city when we live this schizophrenic existence? We are divided. Our unconscious is like a wild and untamed animal, and our consciousness desperately clings to what it needs to believe, so it can keep things going the way they are. Keep getting the resources and the love it wants and needs. Because it's scary when we can't count on what we need being there for us. And so, we turn a blind eye to how much this city is divided and dying because of that clinging."

And above it all, while the stars shone in a glistening milky band in the sky and the pale white moon gleamed through the strands of clouds passing in front of it, the pony who had brought this world into being looked down on her creation.

"We're like....millions of little brain cells, each of us with our own task to fulfill, so we can keep this lumbering beast moving. We carry with us all the ideas that came before, filtered through the ages, selected by countless unconscious minds in order to fulfill the most basic drives of society, and eventually the more complex ones as well. Ideas without a need for them are scorned and rejected, but when a great idea becomes necessary, it will come into being. Nopony can say where or when, but when they look around....there it will be. And it's up to us to recognize it and accept it, as a united city, as a united organism, because otherwise this disease of disunity will ravage us mind, body, and soul. This city doesn't want to die, folks. It wants to keep living, to keep evolving, and most of all....to keep moving forward...."

"....hey, not a bad speech."

"'Not bad'? Is that all you have to say, Freepony?"

"Eh, it had its moments."

"Well, folks, that's Freepony Young who's spent the entire day nagging me, like my very own personal subconscious. Say good night, Freepony."

"Good night, Freepony."

"And I'm Thorny Bends, coming at you live on Radio Free Canterlot, and I'm calling it a night. Because tomorrow is a brand new day, and who can say what it'll bring? Thanks for tuning in to the show, and good night, folks. Catch you on the flip side."

When the jukebox in the corner started playing “Rockafilly”, Joe looked around for the pony who had put the bit into the machine, but they were long gone by now. Probably put the coin in the slot and forgot about it when they left. The machine was an expensive deluxe model, with a queue capable of holding ten whole songs.

Right now, the only customer left in Donut Joe's was an alabaster stallion with a long flowing blond mane crying into his coffee, and he didn't look in a dancing mood. “She left me!” he sobbed, as he did every once in a while. Them's the breaks, buddy, Joe thought as he washed some dirty cups out and hung them on the racks. Every time Joe offered a kind word, the unicorn ignored him. He was off in his own little world. Joe checked the clock on the wall. Twelve minutes to midnight. But with how much money he'd raked in, Joe didn't mind waiting for this one last customer. His assistant was in tomorrow, and Joe could sleep as late as he wanted and dream of all the money that was, at this very moment, stuffed into his overflowing cash register.

The bell chime's sweet song sounded. Joe looked up to see one of his occasionals wander in, a stallion by the name of Soarin. His black uniform shirt was halfway unbuttoned, and his purple beret was stuffed into his golden epaulette. He wandered over and collapsed onto a swivel stool.

“Glad to see you're still open, Joe.”

“Not for much longer,” Joe said, walking behind the counter to the customer, “but what can I do for you?”

“Been on guard duty for hours now. It's gonna be a long night.”

“I heard the sirens earlier,” Joe said. “Then my business just died all of a sudden. What happened?”

Soarin's face fell. “Aw, geez. You haven't heard? There was a bombing in the theater district. Almost twenty ponies died.”

Joe's jaw fell open, and he had to grab the counter for support. “W-what?”

“They say it was the earth ponies, don't you know? There's blood and bones all in front of the Chariot. Timed to happen right when the show ended."

Joe swayed in place, suddenly dizzy, as he glanced around the shop he had built. The life he had created for himself. The sudden terror that some earth ponies with sinister faces would blow it all up, like wild animals. Take away what he made. Leave him with nothing. He dropped the dirty cup into the sink, planted his hooves on the porcelain rim, and leaned over it. He squeezed his eyes shut, feeling a yawning pit of despair open inside his chest, right where his heart was.

“I hope you get those savages,” he said softly. “Round them up and lock them away forever.”

“That's the plan.” Soarin leaned over the counter and lowered his voice to say, "There's not enough room here in the city, but I was talking to some stallions from the Civil Force, and rumor has it that General Mace gave the order to build these camps, way out in the middle of nowhere. Maybe even overseas. And they're going to load all the degenerates on trains or boats and ship 'em all away. That way, all of us in the capital don't have to worry about them revolting again, like the Winter Rising. Heh, not they they aren't revolting already! Ha ha!"

Joe spun round and faced Soarin. He pointed a forehoof at the pegasus, guardian of civilization. "You....you get them out of my city, you hear me? You take them all, and you get them out of my city." He sprang into action, boiling fresh coffee, to do his part for the city. If this stallion was going to stopping those animals, Joe was surely going to help him in return. That was what civilized ponies did. The only thing that disappointed Joe was that all he had to offer was the food he made with his own two hooves. He piled it in front of Soarin. It still wasn't enough, but it was all he had.

“She left me!” the other customer suddenly cried out. “I'm all alone now!”

Soarin turned to him, his head cocked. “Hey, wait a minute. Aren't you....Blueblood?”

The stallion raised his head and sniffled. “Y-yes.”

“You survived a bombing,” Soarin called out, incredulous, “and you're complaining about getting dumped?”

“I have a right to my pain!”

“You're lucky to be alive!”

“I don't feel lucky.”

Soarin smacked the other pony in the head so hard he fell off his stool. It took the alabaster stallion a moment to realize he'd been upended, but a moment was all he had before Soarin gave him a swift kick in the flank. “Go on, get out of here,” he sneered. “I had to help sort out fried body parts today, you unbelieveable crybaby.”

Still sniffling, the stallion slunk towards the door and left the shop. The coffee finished burbling. Joe poured a cup for the Shadowbolt and set it down on the counter in front of him.

Soarin shook his head. “You believe that guy?”

“Some ponies just don't have the proper perspective on things,” Joe said.

“Too right.” Soarin poured half the creamer into his cup, then downed it all in one go. He reached into his saddlebag for a coin while he said, “That was delicious, but I gotta get back.”

“On the house,” Joe said solemnly.

“Thanks, man. You're the best in town.”

Joe smiled, but he didn't feel very happy at the moment. “I try.”

Soarin started to get off his seat, but he paused when he was halfway up. He got off the swivel seat and turned back. “One more thing, Joe. Uh, I dunno how to say this, but, uh, I heard about some of the things the Midnight Guard are planning for tomorrow. You know, public safety ordinances, and things like that.”

“Uh huh?”

Soarin waved his foreleg at the jukebox and said soberly, “They're about to ban this rockafilly stuff as a degenerate influence. Public performance and private. They're going to say it's hazardous to the moral health of the city. The official announcement is tomorrow, but you might want to take care of it tonight, if you get what I'm saying. Don't want ponies to start whispering. Maybe saying you're behind the times on purpose.”

Joe stared at the jukebox, belting out the final strains of “Rockafilly”. That swinging sound. How could something like that ever be considered as a degenerate influence? It was so fantastic! So vivid and alive. But if he didn't get rid of it, if his customers thought he was defying the Midnight Guard, his income would plummet. The reputation he worked so hard to create would be tarnished. Nopony would come around to his friendly little place anymore. The song ended, and silence reigned. He gave Soarin a curt nod in thanks.

“No problem,” the pegasus said. “Hey, maybe you want to put on the EBC? That way you'll know what's happening all the time. Anyway, thanks again for the coffee.”

The bells jangled as Joe's last customer slipped outside, into the eternal night. Joe locked the door after him and turned the buzzing neon 'Open' sign off. He went to the jukebox and bent down to unplug it, but on a whim he instead fished a coin out of his apron and put it into the slot. He selected 'Rockafilly' again, and the song started playing like it had never stopped. He let the rollicking sound play as he counted the money from his register. The money he had drawn in by simply being the best and most upstanding entrepeneur he could be. Soon he had all the cash arranged in neat little rows on the counter. It added up to a quarter more than he earned yesterday. With all this money, he might be able to afford more staff. Refurbish his apartment. Buy a new autocarriage, or maybe even a hovercarriage. With cash like this, he could do anything he dreamed of. And it all flowed from the pockets of his loyal customers. Customers he had to keep, he realized. His eyes went to the jukebox.

By the time he had all the money stowed in the heavy-duty safe, the final strains of "Rockafilly" faded from the jukebox speakers. Inside, the disc spun its last, revolving around in place like the days going by. And yet today was the last time that wonderful sound would come from the jukebox. He unlocked the neon-tubed frontpiece and swung it out of the way, then started pulling the sleek black forty-five discs out. He piled up anything that could be remotely considered part of the rockafilly sound. There weren't many, but the ones he pulled out were some of the best. And the biggest moneymakers, too.

He held the stack in his forehooves and he briefly considering taking them home, hiding them away, maybe listening to them with headphones on his own sound system when the occasion struck. But he couldn't. Suppose he was careless and word got out? Suppose he forgot about them, only for an unsuspecting pair of eyes to find them and start whispering about how unloyal he was? Suppose the urge to dance overcame him, and he told himself it was alright to listen to it out loud 'just this once', which would inevitably become all the time?

No, he thought as he stared at his reflection in those shiny black discs. Better to remove the temptation entirely. A tear dripped down onto the vinyl. Would he ever hear that sweet sound again?

He broke the stack of records over his knee. The hidden music etched and encoded onto them was destroyed instantly. Black shards fell from his hooves and littered the checkerboard tiles. All those fragments of a lost sound, and of an bygone age lost in time, soon to be forgotten.

His time.

Lost because of them. Earth ponies. They took all this away from him, this glorious new sound that made him feel so young and vital. He would never feel that way again. Those lazy dirt-eaters, he thought, they may bring the plants outta the ground, but they sure suck the life outta us hard-working ponyfolk. I hope they get what they deserve.

But through it all, Donut Joe was a citizen of Canterlot. The city took care of its ponies, and the princess of the night took good care of her city. She protected them all through the Midnight Guard and the Shadowbolts and the Civil Force, and together they made Joe's prosperity possible. And sometimes, she demanded he make sacrifices in exchange for that protection. Rockafilly was one of them. Now it was gone, and maybe forever. The future was hard to tell. Day in, day out, year in, year out; all of time went round and round in cycles, like the spinning hands of a clock. Spiraling ever onward.

He looked outside the plate glass windows and saw a world as black as shadow with glints of light, like a vinyl record. He he took comfort in that. Because when the first track revolves around to its end, and the silence comes in, there's still a whole track list full of songs yet to be heard. He might not have rockafilly, but at least tomorrow he would still have his shop. And so, he got his trusty broom out, thinking that some things in life were worth sacrificing. Ghostlike, he wandered through his empty, silent shop, sweeping the shattered record fragments off the checkerboard floor tiles.

Tomorrow, the Land of the Eternal Moon would call again, and Donut Joe would answer.

THE END OF THE MARE IN THE HIGH CASTLE

***

Dude Letrotski has always tried to look on the bright side. Even though he lives in a city of eternal night, where his earth pony race is held as chattel, he's found there's always a silver lining if you just look hard enough. But his optimistic streak will be sorely tested when his unicorn employer tasks him with venturing into the seedy underbelly of Canterlot in search of the unicorn's missing wife.

As the intrepid amateur sleuth makes his way towards the heart of the mystery, he'll find its reach is far bigger than he ever would have thought. The city of Canterlot is the battleground for a hidden war between ruthless pegasus intelligence officers, Changling saboteurs striking from the shadows, earth ponies waging a terrorist campaign of liberation, and unicorn industrialists blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes. The whole place is a powder keg just waiting to blow, and the only pony who can put out the fire before it all goes up might just be Dude Letrotski.

But first, he will have to figure out a few other mysteries. Like, how does a radical new art collective known only as the Elements of Harmony fit into all this, and why does all their art - about an idyllic fictional world where Solara Victa defeated the princess of the night - seem to be priming the city for a new world order? And what of "spark", a psychedelic drug that lets its users "go electric" and experience visions of "the electric mare", the mysterious Sister Mercy, enigmatic central figure of the Mercyism movement? And why does reality seem to keep collapsing around Dude when he isn't looking....?

All that Dude Letrotski can say for sure is that it's going to be one very, very long day.

The story of The Mare in the High Castle will continue in....

Do Hippoids Dream of Electric Shetlands?

APPENDIX: "Free/Canter On", the complete lyrics

"FREE"

A joyous, racuous showstopping finale in the vein of a rock opera.

VERSE 1
[ASH & RIVER]

Just glance up at the sky and you will see

Nature's way has returned in utter harmony

That hateful sun has blighted its last day

Everypony can now turn to each other and say

[ASH] You're free to be you....
[RIV] and I'm free to be me
[BOTH] Free to take our place in the hierarchy
[RIV] A brand new dusk....
[ASH] for a brand new day of pony
[BOTH] The moon is shining down on our new liberty

PRE-CHORUS
[BOTH] Now that we're all free of our shackles and chains

Now that we're all free of our heartaches and pains
[ASH] No, no more of her taxing lies
[RIV] We all refuse to compromise
[BOTH] Now that we mesh together like a mise-en-scene

Now that we mesh together like a well-oiled machine
[ASH] No more of her cruel slaveries
[RIV] Keeping us down with fresh levies

CHORUS
[COMPANY]

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free at last!

All the pain, all the tears, thanks to Luna, are in the past!

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free to see!

Brand new world, brave new world, where we will know, who we should be!

VERSE 2
[BROWNIE]

Free from de pain, oh, it makes mah hair curl

Havvin' to find mah own way in dis wurld!

But now Ah kin get down on mah knees an' pray

Ah ain't got no mo' worries dis moonlit day!

[PEGASUS CAPTAIN]

It's in my blood and courses through my veins

An irresistable duty to protect the great chain

The chain of being that harmonizes ponykind

United we stand, united we fly, united of mind

PRE-CHORUS
[ASH & RIVER]

Now that we're all free of our shackles and chains

Now that we're all free of our heartaches and pains
[ASH] We've had enough of her outrage
[RIV] It's long past due time for a change
[BOTH] Now that we mesh together like a mise-en-scene

Now that we mesh together like a well-oiled machine
[ASH] No longer forced to conspire
[RIV] Against our true heart's desire

CHORUS
[COMPANY]

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free at last!

All the pain, all the tears, thanks be to her, are in the past!

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free to see!

Brand new world, brave new world, where we will know, who we should be!

"CANTER ON"

A sparse interlude in the finale, in three sections.

SECTION 1 (march-like cadence)
[LILY GILD]

The princess of the night has sounded the call

To join her on that mountain on the horizon

To build a shining city that will never fall

Never blister and boil under the harsh sun

[RIV] So canter on down the road to build that city

An eternal capital to last the eternal night

Don't you be lazy or forget your propriety

There's work to be done before our respite

[BRN] Yessum, ma'am, Ahm hearin' ya loud an' right

Wit mah hooves Ah'll raise up dis new city

Shinin' on dat hill, shinin' powerful bright

Thanks aplenty, ma'am, for dis here opportunity

[ASH] So canter on down the road!
[PEG] Yes, sir! We will obey!
[ASH] Like lightning and thunder, a hammer at the forge,

To make sure your wards shall never go astray,

You'll craft our new world....
[PEG] and lead the charge!

[ASH] Those are my boys, always fly brave and true,

As you lead the way into our brand new society

Be bold and proud....

SECTION 2 (quiet and reflective)

Hey, River, why so blue?

We're about to build the most perfect city

[RIV] I can't get the fallen Fayton out of my head

It was unnatural for a pegasus to love me

He broke every natural law with what he said

Yet all I can think of now is his bravery

[ASH] River, you know, as Lily says with insistence,

All things under the moon have rhyme and reason

A part of the natural order framing existence

His forbidden love allowed this changing season

[LIL] He was a pegasus and his bravery can't be denied

It was a thought of you that drove him to demand

Freedom from Solara, and though he may have died,

He ushered in the night under our princess's command

[ASH] Perhaps it was destiny, his forbidden love,

Because of it he died a brave hero's death
[LIL] All things serve the natural order above

Even gentle treasons whispered on our breath

SECTION 3 (growing bolder, building up energy)
[RIV] You would call him traitor? That noble pegasus?
[ASH] You called him so. Unnatural, didn't you say?
[RIV] Only because he believed in love between us
[LIL] No difference. Both treason and social decay

Are symptoms of a sick ruler who uses force

To corrupt a kingdom she wishes to crush

Rather than live with his unnatural remorse

Fayton chose to lay down his life saving us

[RIV] A hero he was, and ever shall be, in my heart

I refuse to cast him as a traitor to our cause

No, he'll always be a noble little upstart

His courage to do what's right gives me pause

In the end, Fayton choose how he lived and died

He was free to embrace the goodness in his heart

The natural order connecting us all, far and wide

The unnatural love he held surely played its part

And though Fayton may be dead, buried and gone

In the hearts and minds of the ponies he freed

His sainted memory will carry on, as we canter on

Down the road to Canterlot, his name will be our creed

No, Fayton, we will never forget!

We'll never forget what you accomplished....

[RIVER, ASH, & LILY]

In freeing us

In seeing us

As we are and always shall be....

Because of him, we're free....

We're free....

We....are....free....!

"FREE (REPRISE)"

CHORUS
[COMPANY]

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free at last!

All the pain, all the tears, thanks be to Luna, are in the past!

Free at last, free at last, thanks to Fayton, we're free to see!

Brand new world, brave new world, where we will know, who we should be!

VERSE 3
[RIV] So let's gallop on down the road to Canterlot

The sun has set forever on this blessed plot

Let's build a city to shine for eternity

Let's build a city in natural harmony

[ASH] Where you're free to be you, and where I can be me
[BRN] Where we's be takin' are place in de high-arkee
[RIV] A brand new dusk....
[ASH] for a brand new night of pony
[ALL] The moon is shining down on our new liberty!

[RIV] So let's gallop on down the road to Canterlot

As you raise those spires we'll inspire you lot
[BRN] You got it, Miss Wilde, and you sho'ly will see

Dat wit guidance we ain't gun be no mo' lazy

[LIL] So let's gallop on down the road to Canterlot
[RIV] I won't let Fayton's sacrifice be all for naught
[ASH] The greatest city there ever was or ever shall be
[RIV] With the blood of patriots we are forever free!

PRE-CHORUS
[ASH & RIVER]

Now that we're all free of our shackles and chains

Now that we're all free of our heartaches and pains
[ASH] An eternal night, an eternal age
[RIV] We're forever free of our cage
[BOTH] Now that we mesh together like a mise-en-scene

Now that we mesh together like a well-oiled machine
[ASH] That lifts us up so much higher
[RIV] To the point where we aspire

CHORUS
[COMPANY]

Free at last, free at last, thank the princess, we're free at last!

All the pain, all the tears, thanks be to Luna, are in the past!

Free at last, free at last, thanks to Fayton, we're free to see!

Brand new world, brave new world, where we will know, that we are forever free!

APPENDIX: "Something Unnatural", the complete lyrics

"SOMETHING UNNATURAL"

A power ballad in the style of "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" by Sir Elton John and "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles.

[FAYTON]

It's something unnatural, and it makes me shake

Oh, I know it's wrong, and it makes me quake

On the day I first took wing, I was told it was my duty

To uphold the natural order, which has a kind of beauty

The stars in the firmament, and the moon up in heaven

The way things ought to be, in such pure perfection

Now I don't know where to go, all I see is blue yonder

Lost with no direction home, and so I'm left to ponder

As the sun burns my feathers, the thoughts twist my mind

It's all I can do to stay aloft, because I'm flying blind

Why do I feel like the evenstar has been struck blind

By the harsh, unwanted glare of sunlight?

How will the stars guide my voyage across the firmament

If the sun consumes and devours the night?

Tell me how to go on, when I feel in my heart of hearts

A sensation so heavy I can't take flight?

And how can I fight these feelings dwelling inside me

Feelings of such sweet, joyous delight?

It's something unnatural, and it makes me sway

Oh, I know it's wrong, but it won't let me get away

Flying high, I head for the stars, wanting to break free

But I'm trapped in the world, part of the cosmic orrery

Reaching the limits of my flight, I fall to the ground

The thoughts take control, and now I'm earthbound

I just want to fly away and leave these thoughts behind

Spread my wings and soar away from this life confined

By thoughts that disgust me, thoughts that make me ill

But they've taken hold so firm, of the reins of my will

Why do I feel like the evenstar has been struck blind

By the harsh, unwanted glare of sunlight?

How will the stars guide my voyage across the firmament

If the sun consumes and devours the night?

Tell me how to go on, when I feel in my heart of hearts

A sensation so heavy I can't take flight?

And how can I fight these feelings dwelling inside me

Feelings of such sweet, joyous delight?

It's something unnatural, and it makes me shout

Oh, I know it's wrong, but it won't let me out

Earthbound, I raise my eyes to look for the evenstar

It makes me sick to see that it's fixed above your door

Is it the trade winds or destiny, or is it just my heart

That binds me to the earth, so we will never be apart?

To break gravity's pull, two wings must work in tandem

Birds of a feather flock together, or misfortune strikes them

Going off in all directions, like gears that cannot turn

Nature made us separate for reasons we can't learn

So why must I burn myself, and others with this desire?

This blazing conflagration, a blemish like the fire

Of the sun, the destroyer, that hangs in the sky above

Why must I be the doomed one, doomed to feel this love?

Why do I feel like the evenstar has been struck blind

By the harsh, unwanted glare of sunlight?

How will the stars guide my voyage across the firmament

If the sun consumes and devours the night?

Tell me how to go on, when I feel in my heart of hearts

A sensation so heavy I can't take flight?

And how can I fight these feelings dwelling inside me

Feelings of such sweet, joyous delight?

It's something unnatural, and it makes me shiver

Oh, I know it's wrong....

Yes, yes, I know it's wrong!

Oooh, I know it's wrong....but I'm in love with River

She's something unnatural, and she makes me shiver

And I know it's wrong....but I'm in love with River!