//-------------------------------------------------------// Starting from the background. -by Alkarasu- //-------------------------------------------------------// //-------------------------------------------------------// Prologue. The Library. //-------------------------------------------------------// Prologue. The Library. Shelves. Dim light coming from an unknown source. Dust, or more like the smell of dust. And books - hundreds and hundreds of them, stacked neatly at the shelves, lying in small piles where there is no place to shelve them properly. Some small, some large, some so huge you can take their covers for a small door - especially since most of the bigger ones have a lock on the cover. Some have titles you can read, some are written in a foreign languages, some don't have any indication of what they hide under the bejeweled covers. Thick and thin, old and new, the books are everywhere, they own the place and you can only feel yourself a guest, rudely intruding in their domain. Shelves go as long, as you can see, and your mind is filled with the anticipation and dread that your life is not enough to even scratch the surface of the knowledge stored within. Especially if you are aware, that all this wonderful sight to behold is just a part one of your lucid dreams, and the one thing you know about the dream is that no matter, how lucid it is, no matter, how hard you try, you can't read a thing. Even the letters on the covers will start to slip and move once you start to pay any real attention to them. You know, the words are there, you know, you are capable to read those words, but if you want to actually read - wake up and go to the real library. Though this one seemed strangely off. A lucid dream is not a new experience to me, I do have them pretty often. There are places I end up in more, mostly based on my favorite books and movies, there are some bizarre places I prefer not to remember ever again, but up to that point it was never something like that. Every place had this distinctive dream feeling to it. Something that is not exactly real.  Something always betraying it as a well drawn, well written moving picture. Something looking too good or too bad to be true. Too many or too little details here or there, the landscape slowly shifting while you look the other way, the meaning of what's happening coming without an explanation. This library was solid, detailed, with no sign of dream decay or buildup, and, most certainly, not based off any of my previous experiences, be it a book, a movie, or a personal encounter. Well, everything is a first someday, even such a useless thing as a dream library. I'm not sure how much it is the case for other people, but my lucid dreams tend to be on a long side. It's hard to measure time in a shifting dream world, but sometimes it takes what it feel like days to wake up. It's nothing bad, if it's some kind of an adventure my mind decided to make me part of after a glimpse on it in some media. It can get pretty boring in a place with nothing to do - like that time, when it brought me to the shore of the ocean, with a small hut, an elderly fisherman couple and the magical goldfish they managed to royally piss off. It felt like a week there, and with nothing to do, but to look at the waves and hear the old fisherman retelling the tale of his encounter with the goldfish, interrupted only by the occasional appearances of his grumpy wife demanding him to go to the fish and make amends. It was terribly boring, but at least there was someone to talk to, even if not on many topics. A library with the books I can't read and with no one to talk to was bound to be much worse. While thinking all this inspiring thoughts, I was lazily examining my surroundings, and something was starting to bother me more and more, like some kind of thing you see, but it still have some way to really get to your attention. I had examined several covers of the books nearby, none with anything interesting written on them, when it struck. Nothing interesting written. To know that you must be able to read. I was reading the covers all this time, and only my knowledge that you can't read in a dream stopped me from realising it! A library in a dream, when there never was one, a place, that is a dream, but looks about as real, as anything real, and now - an ability to read in a place, that makes reading impossible. It was a dream, no second thought about it, when you get this lucid stuff often, you learn, how to tell the difference. Yet, the books had readable covers. Probably, readable contents too. And there was so many around. I knew, that someday I'll dream myself into some paradise! Now, to be in a library and not to read a book or ten is a mortal sin, right? Right. So, I grabbed the first book from a nearby shelf and opened it to check, if it wasn't some stupid dream prank. "Once upon a time, in a magical land of Equestria..." waaait a moment, WHAT? It can't be that book, right? I mean, it's not like it has been even written! It was just a picture of the cover, an "Once upon a time..." and some narration! Yet, here it was, heavy brown ornamented cover in my hands, with gold unicorn on it, the gem in it's eye gleaming deep blue, and the words, that was still fresh in my memory, telling the story of the alicorn sisters and their ancient conflict, written on it's thick pages and illustrated by the very same pictures I've seen only yesterday. "Studying history? A good start!" congratulated me a deep voice from behind. I turned around, glimpsing something white and blue, and woke up. //-------------------------------------------------------// 2. On Bears and Borders //-------------------------------------------------------// 2. On Bears and Borders Despite living my entire life in a country with the highest world population of the brown bear, I've never met one in the wilds before - the last sighting of one around the place I live was about the time my grandfather was born. So this one was either pretty far away from it's usual hunting grounds, or I was pretty far away from mine. It was quite an interesting thing to contemplate, but before I had a chance even to start formulating the problem, I already was halfway up the very same pine I've fallen through some time previous. Now, the ones, who struggle with the alien appendages of an unfamiliar body, rejoice! There is a way to take away all your problems in one instant and make you more proficient with the use of the body, than it's original owner! And if you think, that the bear isn't working, you just not using enough of it. "Impressive!" congratulated me a bit startled Strict. "Never thought I can climb the tree while not using my wings, but in this situation it looks like a faster way." "Tha... that's a bear!" panted I in response. "Indeed it is," agreed the armoured nuisance. "I fail to find the words to express my astonishment with your unnaturally keen observation skills. "It's not funny!" My entire attention was still on the bear, that only now had recovered from the shock of my sudden departure and started to sniff around. "On the contrary, it's hilarious. A noble Royal Guard covered in sap and pine needles,sitting on the branch, is always funny, especially if no one is around to inform the Commander." "Even if that noble guard is yourself?" the bear was visibly losing interest in us, which is to be expected, the damn animal should be already peacefully hibernating by now. "I blame it on you anyway, so yes. Also, I can't fail to note, that you are, seemingly, traded your fear of height for fear of bears, and that's very nice of you." "F-f-fear of what?" Of course, he just had to remind me that! The moment he mentioned it, my old acrophobia immediately tried to kick in and made me shift around, kicking small branches and pine cones down on the bear. The bear roared in response and started to climb the tree. While it wasn't as fast, it was still progressing towards me, and the branch I was on looked strong enough to support a bear. On the positive, it looks like my acrophobia really do have an ursaphobia and don't hang around while the bear is present. "Now may be a good time to fly away," hinted Strict, trying to hide concern in his voice. "And how I'm supposed to do that?" "Flap the wings, silly. And faster, it's getting closer!" With no better ideas present, I spread the wings and gave it a try. Several flaps later (and about a meter closer to the bear) it became apparent, that the wings don't produce any lift at all, and do about the same for a flight, as if I was flailing the arms while being human. That surprised Strict into several seconds of shocked silence (and about two more meters for the bear). "I think I know, what's wrong," he said finally. "You don't want to fly." "I do want to fly! I want to fly as far away from that bear, as it is possible! And I'm very sad, that I can't teleport!" I screamed, which startled the bear a bit and it slid a couple of meters down. "And to use pegasus flight magic you need to want to fly. Not from the bear, just to fly. It doesn't work another way." "Well, forgive me for being scared of flight in general!" "I can forgive you, but the bear wouldn't." The bear was closing to our branch and wasn't looking happy with the exercise. "I don't want his forgiveness!" I suddenly felt the fear evaporating and being replaced with anger. I flapped the wings angrily and suddenly the air around us was filled with the extremely low sound, as if someone tried to use an enormous subwoofer to play a lowest possible note it can manage. Sudden gust of wind from above pressed me into the cracking branch nearly crashing my ribcage, and the bear fell tumbling to the ground. There it stood up, let off a pained roar and hastily retreated to the woods. "And they said I wasn't suited for a weather duty!" the excitement in Strict's mind voice was palpable. "What was... that?" While my eardrums was still ringing, the fact, that the bear was no longer around, was enough reason to forget about them, the pain in the ribs, and in all the other parts, that was injured during my descent from the cloud. "That, my accidental friend, was about 12.4 wingpower concentrated in one fine downward gust. And if you will ever tell anyone, that pegasi magic is capable of that, I will have to kill you and whoever you spill it to. It's strictly confidential, Princess-eyes only. Even Commander Shining don't know about these combat techniques." "How come every other winged horse don't know them then? Didn't look hard to me." Yes, I did remember about the branch up the pine situation, but this was so interesting! And the bear was gone anyway. "That's because before I discovered the merge and blocked it, this information has already leaked to your side. This is an extremely advanced technique, I spent a year training for it. Mostly in hospital." "Wait, what merge?" now, that was some relevant information, for a change. Unsettling, but the whole "transformed into abomination of nature" is unsettling, so what's new? "Since the transformation some kind of magic is trying to merge our minds, as it did with our bodies. I've noticed it about a day ago. And since you are not cleared for any of the information that is contained in my memory, I cannot allow it, so I took some measures. Still, I'm afraid, some has already slipped to you, and my measures wouldn't last forever. It's very powerful magic. Yet, there is a chance we can resolve this before the merge will begin again and I'll be forced to destroy us to prevent the leak." "Slow down a bit, please, I'm taking notes here," I hope no one in audience can tell, where did I get this quote. "You telling me, that something I still getting comfortable to believe is exist at all, is trying to make us into a some sort of brain cocktail, and you intend to kill us if it's succeed? While the first part is bad, the second is not making sense at all!" "And that's exactly why you are not suited for my line of work, and, therefore, will never be cleared to most of that information. Especially considering your mastery on keeping secrets." Well, I do tend to answer questions with, probably, a bit of disregard of secrecy and privacy, but I'm not THAT bad, honest! "If I won't have any other way to prevent you from spreading royal secrets to the first pony, who bothers to ask, I will eliminate the risk physically. But I really hope we can solve that without commiting suicide." "You and me both," and when I'll get my... hooves on the person responsible, his death will be fun to watch. "Now, do you plan to keep everything locked away, or, maybe, there is some things I can know without the risk of you killing me if I talk about it? If you hadn't guessed yet, I'm kind of new to all this pony stuff, and there just have to be some harmless civilian knowledge in every pegasus life. Like, for example, some everyday tree climbing skills we can use to get off this branch?" Bears may heal the fear of heights, but not permanently and I felt, that the time I can be that high up without consequential freakout is running short. "Up to this day I was pretty sure no pony can do that without magic, wings or some special equipment. At least, I never hear about anything like that," Strict "voice" was really apologetical this time. "We can always just glide down, if you let yourself just a little of..." "!" Now that voice was new. At least, this one was not a bear. This one was much, much worse. This one looked like a military. With the gun. And the dog. And with the scariest astonished smile I've ever seen. "What a horse doing in tree? How do you think, Muhtar?" Now he was talking to his dog. Good time to run away, for someone who could. "You understand him?" Strict sounded almost as surprised as the soldier down below. "Of course I understand him! He's speaking my native language!" I decided not to say that aloud. Since Strict can think at me, I can think at him, no one can stop me. "Hey, , !" the soldier called to someone else. " yourself, ! here my ," was the response, and one more military man, this time a lot more dirty, arrived at the scene and looked up at me. "!" "Now, if you excuse me..." I attempted to interrupt the stream of the infamous "we do not swear with it, we talk with it", but the military had other ideas. "Hey, that horse can talk! !" "!" Agreed his colleague. The dog barked something, that, probably, contained some in it somewhere. Well, in this case... " horse can talk and will be to ask, if any of you know, where the this horse is." "See, you just had to ask politely!" berated me the guy with the dog. "You are at the border of our beloved Motherland, and Finland. The border is about a hundred meters that way. If you intend to cross over to the - be my guest and their problem. If you are going the other way, we'll have to take you to the station, where everyone will be , as we are the border guards and we take our job seriously." "You wasn't wasting time, wasn't you?" I thought to Strict, imagining the map with our approximate location and starting point. "I got the intel, that the Princesses is in that direction," he thought back at me. "The North Pole is in that direction, and it's winter there already. We'll have to go through..." "Hey, horse, so where would you go? We have a patrol to finish!" It appears, that the guy without the dog was the less patient one. "Thanks, , you were very helpful. I think I'll go to the , this horse have some business in USA, so I'll have to go too." "! How many of you are there?" "Two. But you can't see the second one. Now, if you excuse me, I have a national border to breach. So long, and safe," with that, and with no further thought, I jumped off the branch and glided between the trees in the direction soldiers pointed to. The last words I've heard before leaving the country for the first time in my life was: "...and we never drinking that again!" "Woof!" I was about a kilometer into Finland, when my way of travel finally caught up to my brain. //-------------------------------------------------------// 3. Take off. //-------------------------------------------------------// 3. Take off. There are not many things I like more, than a good walk in the forest. It's good for health, it's relaxing, it's fun. There are not many things I dislike more, than a good walk in the forest in late autumn. Probably, the only thing to compete is the same forest during the early spring. And the reason is the same one. Mud. By the time I stumbled out of the forest to the small farm, surrounded by the empty fields, I had mud on me in several layers, with a lot forest trash and, judging by the smell, at least one deceased rodent somewhere in it. The very sight of my wings was so horrible, that every look at them produced an angry rant from Strict, made up mostly of the words, that would burn paper, if you'll try to write them. On top of that, I was hungry like I never ate in my life - thanks to pegasus fast metabolism. Naturally, a northern forest this late in autumn contains nothing edible for a pony. So the farmer I met near the farmhouse was presented with the sight worthy of a horror story. The farmer himself, on the other hand, was as generic Finnish farmer, as it gets - blonde hair and beard, pale blue eyes, tall, wide, calm as a glacier. He met my arrival with a raised eyebrow, and when I made an attempt to talk to him, displayed the most of the emotions I've seen from him - he raised another one. Then he sniffed the air and, without a word, motioned me to go to the side of the house, where a watering hose was connected to a wall outlet. It took him at least half an hour to wash all my forest trophies away from me, and then he spent about an hour watching me cleaning the feathers under the strict guidance of Strict - raising an eyebrow every time I failed an "easy move, that every foal knows from the moment of birth" and snapped back at my invisible tormentor not bothering to do it quietly. Overall it seems he had a good laugh, but his face would have passed acceptable at any funeral as well. As he never attempted to talk to me, I assumed he doesn't know any of the languages I used around him, so our communications was rather limited. That, however, wasn't a big obstacle in our big friendship, as after he noticed, that I have finished with the wings, he gave me the best present I ever received in my life - an entire haystack. The groan I've heard from Strict was far less than amused, though. "What's wrong? You won't say that pegasi is allergic to hay now, won't you?" I asked, slowly approaching  the haystack. "No, quite the contrary. It's a healthiest food you can imagine," the amount of ice in his "voice" was enough to bring about an ice age. "That's exactly the problem. You see, if you aspire to be in the Royal Guard, you must be healthy and fit. And if you want to be healthy and fit, you train well and you eat properly. Which means that uncooked hay is your number one food. Since I've got my cutie mark and my path to the Guard was set, it was practically the only food I've ate. Unfortunately, I like cooked food and I hate hay since the moment I've tasted it for the first time. Fortunately, you seem to like it, so it shouldn't be a problem." "Actually, humans don't really eat hay," I confessed. "We usually eat animals that eat hay." That confession made Strict very silent for a while, so I got to the problem at hand - food. Which was the problem because my current body was of the pony who hates hay, and, as I discovered with the first bite, that was not a psychological issue. I don't know, how it is possible to make equine tastebuds this way, but that hay tasted as horrible, as if I was still human, sans the instinctive retching. On top of that, hay is not very filling, so to get fed you need to eat a lot of it. It took at least a half of haystack, that was the size of myself, to silence the stomach, and it felt like I needed another half to actually feel sated. Well, it wasn't actually that bad, as I was very hungry, and I tend to ignore the taste of the food anyway. What was bad came just about the moment I was preparing to finish of the remaining half of the hay, appearing from behind the haystack and looking at me with it's bright blue eyes. The Bad was about five years old and was smiling at me. And the next moment I was hovering good three meters above the ground, wings spread and locked in position, cold shivers going down my spine, while the little girl below giggled and called to me. I understood the word - "pony" sounds about the same in the most languages. The farmer looked at me with both eyebrows raised and a possible hint of a smile. I slowly drifted to the roof of the nearby barn, landed and slowly folded the wings, taking some time to understand, why and how I was able to pull that off. The first one was easy - little girls can be really scary when they are obsessed with something, and that show, from which Strict fell off on me, it's target audience is about that age. The second one was a bit out of my area of expertise, though. "Care to explain how I did that?" I asked, trying to figure out a proper way to lie down with all the extra legs. For some reason I suddenly felt very tired - despite being fresh even after the trek through the muddy forest and up to the moment I took off. "You... eat... ponies?" Was the response, pretty weak and stuttering. "That's what you think is important?" I attempted to roll my eyes while not getting them off The Bad. "You said you eat sentient species and that's not important how?" Now his "voice" was much stronger and way angrier. "I never said we eat sentients. I said we eat animals who eat hay." "But... It's... How... You mean, you have non-sentient herbivores?" Less anger, more surprise. Good. She found the ladder. Bad. "Not a single sentient herbivore until the last week, when this pony invasion started." She's not strong enough to lift the ladder. Good. The farmer is moving in to help her. Bad. "That's insane! Your world is insane! But that explains why I wasn't able to talk with the cows." The farmer is not helping, he's getting her home! Excellent! "You tried to do what? Poor cows. But that is a good story for a better time, right now I prefer to hear more about how it is possible to fly with no flapping." Great, now she's crying and I feel guilty. "Why? It's a complex technique with no practical application, and you can't do even the simplest of useful ones. Wait, where are we?" "On the roof. Why it's complex and hard?" Like the most users I have to work with, Strict was able to keep to the point only with constant nudges. "Because it requires a lot of concentration and it tires you down really fast. How did you managed to get up here?" And, as every single one of those users, he slips from it every second sentence. "I've performed a complex technique with no practical application. Now, why it tires you down fast? You don't move a muscle." "Because that's how the magic works. More concentration equals more effort. Don't ask why, I'm a guard, not a scientist, and it's probably classified anyway. You did what???" The next couple of minutes was filled with Strict trying to come up with some new and creative insults to me, as he found it less than amusing, that I was evil enough to walk us through the mudbath and nearly ruin his precious wings, while a single smile from a little girl makes me fly like a Wonderbolt without even trying. At least, it took his mind off the human dietary preferences. While he was venting, I spread the wings and attempted to recreate the feeling I had twice by that moment - the feeling of flight. Sure enough, I was able to lift myself from the roof a bit, but was forced to land almost immediately, as a wave of fatigue overcame every part of my body. The same attempt, but with flapping the wings, had shown more promise - I was able to not only lift off the roof, but also to glide down to the road, that went from farm to the unknown, with no noticeable effort. From there I had waved a hoof to the farmer, who returned the wave with the smile, and trotted forward,  plans of further travel already forming in my mind, accompanied by the poetical swearing of Strict. That guy sure knows how to swear, I wonder, if they teach it in the Guard. //-------------------------------------------------------// 4. Gator glide. //-------------------------------------------------------// 4. Gator glide. So here I was, trotting down the road in a location I can narrow down to a country, on my way to a place a third of a planet away, with no supplies of any kind, with no knowledge of local language, and with my current intended method of transportation locked by my own well crafted phobia. An angry voice in my head wasn't showing any sign of exhausting the stream of colorful and extremely educational insults and was the reason to believe, that time is of the essence - because either he'll kill me when the merge would become inevitable, or I'll go insane of his constant grumbling. Future looked bright and interesting, as it hadn't in years. I already had some plans how to remedy that. Especially since Strict, as every other person I've ever met, was eager to supply me with all the info I can't normally even dream to mine from someone so bent on keeping secrets. I'm quite sure, that some pieces between those insults wasn't intended for the ears of common alien folk like me - true history of those Wonderbolts happened to be quite a story, of a kind, that is doomed to be a secret at least until the last of those, who was present there, is dead, and she is supposedly immortal. Small road, that led me from the farm, soon flowed into a larger road, that, in turn, brought me to a small town with a name I can't properly pronounce, besides I'm quite sure an attempt will summon the Old Gods or something like that. The locals seemed to ignore small winged horse walking into town - and soon I've discovered why. A dark gray mare with a very dark blue mane and batlike black wings had practically fell from the sky near me, immediately assaulting me with a long speech in Finnish and a hopeful stare from her giant yellow eyes with vertical pupils. Her sudden appearance even forced Strict to stop the swearworks. "Wow, now this is unexpected!" he commented, after the newcomer finished with the speech and looked at us expectantly. "Congratulations, you've just accidentally met a pony of the kind, that even most of Equestrians had never seen. And she's even speaking to you. Be proud." "I am proud, but what does she just said?" "I have no idea. When I've seen her last, she was speaking proper Equestrian." "Sorry, but I can't understand a word," I told the mare to break awkward silence. She groaned and, while raising her forelegs to the sky, produced even longer irritated speech. Some words in it caught my attention. "Perhaps you can speak this one?" I've asked, hoping, that and are not the only words this one knows from my native tongue. "You speak Russian? Me speak Russian, not good. Me can understand it good," replied the strange one, relaxing. "Me don't speak English. You go America, yes? While her Russian could be better, it was good enough to understand and, if she wasn't lying, she could understand me pretty well, so that was a solution for our language problem, at least, while she's around. It felt like a time to make a friend. "Yes, that's where we are going. My name is Alexander, by the way. You may call me Alex." "Nice to meet you, Alex," answered Strict, with some acid in his voice. "Glad you can fill me in on that so soon." "You never asked. Also, you somehow understand Russian now." "I don't. I catch partial meaning from your thoughts." "Please, take me with you!" pleaded the gray mare, making the cutest face a creature of the night can muster. "Me must find a way to heal this! "Excellent, now we have to take her with us, sighed Strict, for some reason less than happy with the prospect. "Why? She can be useful, but if you don't want to take her, I think I can talk her out of it." "She is a lieutenant of the Royal Guard, Princess Luna's part of it," Strict sighed once more. "With no ranking officer present from my own chain of command, I have to obey her. And, since you are using my body, so should you." "Sure, you can go with me, if you want. You may be better on your own, though. I can't fly and have no supplies, or money to buy some, so it'll take me quite a while to get anywhere." "Me have money! Me have supplies! Me help! Just get me out of here!" now, she sounded really desperate, and that ignited my curiosity - I assumed, that she had only wanted to get out of predicament of sharing a spooky body with someone she can't even understand, but her insistence proved, that there was more to the story. After all, she claimed to have everything required for travel, yet she asked a total stranger to take her with him. I have voiced my concerns to Strict, and he agreed with me, mentioning, that back in Equestria he would've already called a unicorn guard to perform a changeling check, whatever that is. "Miss, I'm quite sure you are better prepared for travel, then I am, so pardon my curiosity, why exactly do you need me? I'm pretty sure you can make the trip faster on your own," for the lack of unicorns around, I've decided to use the good old "ask directly" approach. "The law! No pony can travel alone! You do not know?" "No, and I will be grateful if you'll explain." "When ponies started to appear, people got scared. Some think ponies a threat. Some want ponies dead. So, they made a law that no pony should travel alone, so they can be protected. But everyone here is scared of me. Me fear they will harm me if me stay, and me be caught travelling alone, me transported back here. You travel alone, so they catch you too." Now, when put that way, it was quite clear, that I had even more problems, than I've ever imagined. Of course, some degree of panic I did expect, but noticeable ponycide was, by my calculations, several weeks down the line, with laws, limiting ponyfied people rights, even further away. Well, as always, my take on average person xenofobia was off. Probably, need one of my own to really understand it. I scratched the back of my head with a wing and surrendered to the cruel world messing up my plans once again. "I guess, we have no choice then. Gather everything you may need and let's go. What's your name, by the way?" "Me name Maire Hannele Hämäläinen. Be right back!" and with this she vanished in a puff of smoke. "Why do everyone else get the competent ones? angrily screamed Strict, while I was trying to get my jaw off the ground. "She gets one, who can fly and use her stealth movement talents, and I get a creep, that can't look down his own height without getting the shivers! That's not fair!" "Life is pain. I'm missing my opposable digits, a good chunk of my understanding of the world, thanks to you and your magics, and I fell of a cloud a couple of hours ago, so we're even," I had answered, still trying to process what's just happened. "I assume, that trick is something only chosen few are allowed to know about, so you'll kill me if I ever talk about it?" "No, that's just Blue Mist's special talent - stealth," replied Strict. "She can hide an entire platoon in the mists during the night. And she uses her skills for late night guard checks. Spooked half of the Guard senseless by now. Unfortunately, Their Highnesses find that amusing, so it's just a matter of time before she spooks all of the remaining ones, me included." "Sounds like you guys like to sleep on a job. Anyway, what's with the bat ponies? I don't remember seeing one in that pilot, and never heard any mention of them before." "You've seen only a small glimpse of our life, so it's very much expected, that you don't know about them. To be honest, before that Nightmare Moon incident, there were probably only a dozen ponies aware, that they exist. They are nocturnal and was always closely affiliated with Princess Luna, so you can imagine, why they were avoiding everyone for the last thousand years." "Hmm... if you put it that way, I'm really surprised they wasn't hunted to extinction by angry mobs. Serving a kill-crazy goddess of evil is enough to start a good old witch-hunt. They must have really good hiding... Whoah! Don't you EVER do that again!" "Sorry! Sorry! Me no know, how me do it! Me can't stop! apparently, Maire was startled no less, than me, when she appeared right next to me, carrying full saddlebags on her back, and another pair on one of her forelegs. "No one can see me when I move." "That's Blue Mist for you, all right. " laughed Strict. "Some think, that she can teleport around like a unicorn." "That can come handy sometimes, I guess. Too bad you can't understand your pony, she must know, how to control it. Well, since we are ready, let's go." I did put the saddlebags on my back, wondering, where Maire had got them on such a short notice, and sighed, looking how she took off, clearly expecting me to follow. While the autumn sky did look inviting enough, compared to walking, I was still pretty sure, that anything above two meters will make me freeze in panic. Still, walking all the way was going to take too long, and with no idea on how long Strict can fight the merge (or even how he can fight it in the first place), time seemed of the essence, and there was that one idea I got from an old anecdote. "Seems like I'll have to fly after all," I sighed, unfolding the wings. "But for it to work, I'll have to adopt an alligator style of flying." "Great, now you are going insane," groaned Strict. "Alligators can't fly!" "That's where you are wrong, winged horse, that's where you are wrong. Alligators are natural flyers. They fly better, than any other creature in universe. They just do it very-very low." //-------------------------------------------------------// 5. The less you know - the better you sleep. //-------------------------------------------------------// 5. The less you know - the better you sleep. ~~Thorsday, 14-30, 61°00'43"N 28°24'00"E, South Karelia~~ One of the undeniable benefits of the civilisation is the ability to track the time. One of the downsides of that in our modern age is that when someone decides to go on the calendar, he the life of all of the poor IT staff, who need to work overtime to compensate for inevitable system crash. Good thing is that we had a week to prepare for our very first Marsday, yet the sheer amount of recoding, reconfiguring and rechecking over that week was exactly what had put me into three days long sleep. And that is with some unknown force of voodoo making most of the work for us. I suppose, by now full introduction is overdue - at least, that was what's Strict demanded, when we settled into slow, but still much faster, than walking, glide right above the road. Can't blame him, really, all he was going by was some scrapes he got while the merge was still underway, and that was the memories of the last week, he was mostly unable to understand it. My full name is Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (yes, just like that one and no, not related to that one). I'm 32 years old, live with my parents in a small town not far from Moscow, work as a software designer, tend to spend most of my time online. The last part is the reason, that while I hadn't really watched the pony show up until last Friday, I most certainly knew about it, and did a little research on the overactive fandom it created. To be honest, I was preparing to get into it for quite a while - and yes, I really do things like preparing for an obsession, especially the one I have reasons to believe to be inevitable. I like to be prepared for anything, so I may have a contingency plan for things you won't expect - like a sudden invasion of the Ruinous Powers, or rock-skiing in Antarctica (note to self - the last one needs to be reworked to account for the hooves). One of the downsides of it is that people think I can't get excited about anything - and the truth of it is one of the main downs of my life, another one being my tendency to be well informed and willing to share the knowledge. But that (aside from people around always trying to use me as an avatar of Google) was not that bad, until a certain throne room door accessory with a bag of state secrets decided, that it's the quality I deserve death for. "Sounds pretty boring," commented Strict, when I finished telling him the story of my life. "And you don't sound too happy about it either. What's with that?" "Yes, my life is mostly boring, and I spend a lot of my time trying to keep it that way," my answer wasn't very excited either. "So thanks for making it a bit more fun, I guess." "I can't even tell if you are serious about it. After your freakouts with the heights and the bear, I'm really surprised, how calm you are right now and that you don't even think about getting back home. I can't imagine myself being this calm in your place, and I have been trained for emergencies for my entire life." "Oh, very serious. You gave me something I'll never let myself to have, and did it in a way I can't get rid of it, as I would normally. It's the only thing I really enjoy, so I'm very grateful." "And what's that?" asks Strict with interest. "Thanks to you, my life got something in it that don't make sense, for once. There is no fun in making sense, you know, yet that's what I'm good at." Minutes passed in silence. I couldn't see his face, but I could feel the shock I had put him in. Strange, considering I hadn't said anything remotely shocking. Then, very carefully, with a hint of dread and a hefty dose of suspicion in his voice, he asked: "Could you repeat the last one, please?" "Which one? About no fun in making sense? Why?" "Because I know one person in the world, that liked to use exactly that phrase. The person, that tops the very short list of the ones I'm supposed to attempt to kill on sight," now, there were more dread in his voice, mixed with grim resolve to do what needs to be done. "You are Discord, aren't you?" "Dis...who? I do remember that name mentioned, but I've attempted to avoid spoilers. That's some kind of villain, right?" Looks like I did it again - I tend to unconsciously pick up quotes from random places and then use them as if it's my own thoughts. Very embarrassing when someone gets the origin before myself, but in our world, where you can't get any respect for your smarts without quoting someone constantly, helps to maintain the intelligent facade. Never attracted murderous pegasi before, though. "Spirit of chaos and disharmony, previous ruler of Equestria. But you should know, since it's you." "As fun dude, as he sounds in your description, sadly, that's someone else. You've met him before?" "Once. When he attempted to regain his throne several month ago, he pulled some 'pranks' on the entire Guard before he was defeated by the Elements of Harmony," Strict paused, then sighed. He loves sighing, it seems. "Fine, fine, you are not him. You are too stupid and you can be scared." I stifled a yawn and asked: "I suppose then, that Discord guy is smart and fearless?" "He's immortal master of chaos. The only thing strong enough to stand against him is the Elements of Harmony, and even the Elements don't kill him," yet another sigh, accompanied by yet another yawn. "What is there for him to fear? As for the intellect part, he is considered one of the smartest known beings. No offence, but you don't look even like a someone in a top million." "Yawn. Well, that was rude and I now officially hate you. Also, thanks for the information, I think this... yawn... the hell?" Constant yawning was starting to get annoying. Maire, who started our travel soaring high above us, also slowly descended to our level and looked pretty tired. "Look's like our nap-time is overdue," commented Strict, observing her behaviour. "Oh, right, you don't know. Us pegasi are not really built for stamina. We are more of a burst type, you know, unlimited power one second, total exhaustion the other. Even those who train, like me, can't go through the entire day of flying without taking a nap or two to let magic to recharge. Nothing too long, but if you don't want to fall asleep in-flight, you'll need to land pretty soon." The road we followed had rolled among the late autumn farmlands, so it took only a few moments to locate several huge hay bales, left on the field for some reason. The top of the round bale was just enough to accommodate one small pony with a certain amount of comfort - not that I gave a damn about comfort at the moment, it seems, that when pegasus need his nap, he can fall asleep on nails without much trouble. Maire, moving much faster, than I had allowed myself to, landed on one of the bales and was sound asleep even before her wings folded. I, personally, blacked out the moment my hooves touched the hay. The next second I stood at the same point in the library I left several hours ago. Strict was nearby, looking at something behind the shelves to the right. The sheer horror on his face was something I wasn't willing to see in my own dreams. Deciding to see for myself, what's wrong, I stepped to him, and fell flat on my face, tumbling over my own feet. After half of a day of walking on four, that was probably to be expected. Not bothering to regain an upright position, I crawled to the shelf edge and peeked around. As it appeared, the library was not as infinite, as I assumed it to be, at least, in that direction. Few more rows of shelves further there was a wall - thick stone wall, composed of large boulders. "Was" is the key word here, as something managed to blow a huge hole in it, collapsing the closest shelf under a boulder, the next one leaning on it's remains. Beyond the wall there was a big green lawn, nicely trimmed and with a statue of an armored man riding a winged horse in it's center. On the other side of the lawn stood a three-story high hi-tech building, glittering in all of the polished glory of metal and glass. All of it, except a sizable hole in a place of a window on a second floor. In front of the building, there was a line of short wooden poles, sticking from the ground, and connected with strips of yellow "Do not cross!" tape. "...the hell?" was all I was able to ask, looking at all of that nonsense. Strict looked at me, his left eyelid dangerously twitching, and I attempted to clarify. "What's happened here?" "That is... over there," stuttered the terrified pegasus, pointing at the hi-tech building, "that's me." "What do you mean that's you?" "It's written right there!" again, he pointed his hoof, but this time I've noticed, that he meant to point out not the building itself, but what looked like an entrance - a set of big sliding doors with a sign above. Unfortunately, the symbols on it wasn't even remotely resembling letters from any language I've ever seen. "Are you sure that's what's written over there?" "Are you illiterate or what?" at least part of his fear was suddenly replaced by anger. "It says 'Locked Script' in plain Equestrian!" "Says someone, who introduced himself as Strictly Classified," I knew, that he lied that time, but was sure, that his real name was of our least concerns that time, or mattered to someone except himself at all. "And if it wasn't that obvious, I most certainly can't read plain Equestrian." "I... You... can you pretend I hadn't said that? Please?" Strict, or, rather, Script's face reddened despite all the fur in a look of utter embarrassment. "It may not look important to you, but there are rules about that." "Sure, you can go by any name you like. I keep my full name hidden all the time. Actually..." I crawled through the hole and looked at the library from the outside. As I expected, from the outside it looked like an old library, with decorative columns, statues and all that. It was three story tall, and above the entrance there was my name, written in big, fancy blackened metal letters. Unlike Script's building, this one had no signs to keep out, in fact, the door was open and welcoming anyone. Both buildings encircled the lawn from one of the sides and were connected by one of the walls. "Well, I may be stupid, if you are any expert, but it doesn't take Einstein to get the symbols here," I admired the scenery once more and crawled back inside, where Strict (if he want's to be called that, I'll humor him) was still sitting near the boulder visibly nervous and embarrassed. "You get some ultra-modern datacenter to represent your mind, I got a dusty old library for mine. I can live with that, even if it's more logical in reverse. But who and why is shooting something from your mind into mine? Is it something symbolic, or an indication of brain damage?" "I don't know. I did find what had caused all that, though," answered Strict, "but I have no idea, what is that." The item in question was peacefully lying near the boulder, and with no visible damage, despite it had smashed through the thick window glass, demolished even thicker rock wall and drilled the hole through one of the rocks in the process. It also poked through a small paperback book, which somehow stopped it's progress. I hadn't ever seen a hard drive that resilient. The mobile rack box it was packed into didn't had a scratch on it. The book, on the other hand, was pretty much ruined. The title on the book explained one mystery, the label on the box - another. Both explanation combined was something I'd rather miss. The book title was "Bipeds: Keeping your balance." The label on the rack read "Pegasi locomotion for dodos". Further experiments had proven, that my ability to stand upright unassisted was indeed ruined with the book. Every attempt to dislodge the drive from the book was unsuccessful as well, it seemed like someone glued the rack inside the hole. "Damn, I was bad at it as it is," I sighed, putting the book on the shelf and observing the boulders slowly crawling towards the hole in the wall. "Now if we'll ever fix this, I'll have to learn to walk again." "You mean you know what is this?" Strict raised the brow in disbelief. "I have a good guess. Those books around is a visual representation of my mind. This hard drive is a part of the same for yours. And the hole is the representation of how your expertise in moving around has overwritten mine. It seems that strong enough emotion can break through whatever 'defence' you had put up against the merge." "You mean the merge is still happening?" now, Strict was back to the concerned state. "I mean that if something scares me enough to require some of your expertise, we merge a bit. In a way I don't really like." I made an attempt to sound concerned, but was interrupted by a familiar feeling. I nearly heard the pieces of a puzzle clicking into places. It felt like a preliminary one, but given the circumstances that was much better, than nothing. The floor of the library shuddered a bit. The armored pegasus springed on his feet, looking around for a threat, and giving me suspicious stares. The latter I could understand - at such moments I tend to scare little kids with my notoriously blank look "What was that?" asked Strict, when the tremors of the building receded. "That was me making some sense. Not a lot of it, but for now we'll have to roll with it. Sorry for the quakes, it looks like my brains going full on looks like that from here," I sighed and sat more comfortably, leaning on a huge book. "I don't know about the nature of your 'measures', but from what little we can see around here, I may only assume, that it doesn't really stops the merge, it moves it's beginning to a later date. And that is really, really bad, unless we can solve our little problem very soon." "Why?" pegasus sat across me, looking puzzled. "Because it doesn't move the final date. The merge will happen by that date in any case." "And that's bad, because...?" "Look at this book here. This is the merge while it happened in a moment. I now possess a significant portion of your knowledge about moving in your body, probably, all there is. That explains my sudden ability to walk and fly with no need to learn. But  at the same time my own knowledge on how to move my own body is lost, most likely - with no way to restore it short of the way I got it in the first place. If we'll separate immediately, I wouldn't know how to walk. Now imagine the results of your entire knowledge colliding with mine the same way. It will either drive us both insane, produce some terrible abomination of a mind, or simply kill us instantly, which in this situation is the way I will prefer it. I don't know what is causing this, but for us to have any hope in surviving it all you'll need to restart the merge soon. If my calculations are correct, you have about four days to do it." While Strict was busy digesting our new situation, the shelves around us slowly dissolved and were replaced with the harsh and poorly lit reality of early northern evening. It was starting to rain. A significant part of the bale I slept on was missing, my dry throat and a terrible aftertaste in my mouth giving a thick hint on where it went. //-------------------------------------------------------// 6. Polar evening. //-------------------------------------------------------// 6. Polar evening. ~Thorsday, about 16-00, South Carelia, Finland~ It's too boring to look at something that doesn't make sense and leave it that way. Everything can make sense, everything can work if you look at it from a proper angle, or find a correct set of rules it works off. All you need is enough information, and then it clicks together. Well, at least, it's like that for me. The results... those are not always pleasant, of course. What had clicked for me at that point was of that variety. All the outcomes was bad, and I'm not sure, which one was worse. Strict going suicidal was bad, but Strict going stubborn was bad as well. And the merge, even under the best possible conditions, was not looking too good either - we seemed as compatible as a matter with an antimatter. Of course, there was always a chance we'll find a way to separate, but the best shot for that one was an ocean away. Paint in over a mild indigestion from eating the "pillow" I've slept on, cold rain and annoyed screams of a batpony, and you'll get pretty good idea, how I was feeling after waking up. Screams was of the more pressing concern, though, as they was extremely loud (up to the point of knocking off the last leaves from the trees nearby), and made my body react before I was even awake - when I've opened my eyes, I was standing in what could be only a position of attention, pony version. It appeared, that Marie had suddenly mastered perfect English and somehow picked up an attitude of Drill Sergeant Nasty in the process - along with the most colorful parts of the Equestrian swear dictionary. From what I was able to discern from an assault on my eardrums, she was very unhappy with me missing some mark for the whole ten seconds, being lazy chicken and a useless illegitimate offspring of a hornless unicorn, a wingless pegasi and a mule. "I love this mare," sighed Strict, apparently enjoying the stream of obscenities. "she really knows how to wake you up properly. And hers is the closest one to Royal Canterlot voice besides the Princesses themselves." "Royal what? What is she's so pissed off about?" "Royal Canterlot Voice. An ancient spell of volume amplification, used to inspire royal subjects, display the power of the Crown and scare enemies into submission. Won us at least one war. Originally created by pegasi. Mostly forgotten by now, though, and that's a shame. As for the reason of her displeasure, we are on a mission, therefore our naps are timed by the regulations. We overslept for ten seconds, that's not a very big deal, but normally it's punished by an extra shift of some unpleasant duty. She, of course, is totally oblivious to the fact that she went to sleep about twenty seconds before us, so technically, it's her who is breaking the norm," Strict giggled. "Nice to hear that, but is there any way to make her shut up? I fear our eardrums can't take it much longer, and your stupid reflexes don't let me move a muscle!" "Lucky you, the punishing speech is also timed, so she'll stop in about a minute. By the way, whoever is responsible for the sun here? I can't help but notice, that the day gets shorter." "Considering how far north you managed to get us, I'm surprised we still get any daytime at all. You sure you are not allergic to hay after all? I don't like that feeling in my nose." "It's not a hay, it's a straw, and I'm not... wait, what feeling? Oh, for the love of ! Strict suddenly lost all the cheerfulness in his voice. "Spread the wings upwards, lower the ears, open the mouth and inhale deeply. NOW!" I did as commanded, and the feeling similar to itching, but not itching at all (I can't really describe the difference, but trust me, if you ever feel it, you'll know) had strengthened, not only in the nose, but also on the wingtips and in the left ear. Strict groaned and muttered some words I don't know the meaning of. "...AND WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, SERGEANT? YOU ARE TO STAY IN A POSITION OF ATTENTION WHILE I'M TALKING TO YOU, YOU LAZY !" Maire, or, as I assumed, Blue Mist, had noticed my movements and found them surprisingly unamusing. I can only pity those who had to meet that Royal Whatever on the battlefield, if this was friendly watered down version of it. "Sorry, but your sergeant is currently unavailable. Could you please stop screaming at me?" Now that I got at least part of the control of the body from the reflexes, I decided to at least try to save some of my hearing. "WHAT ARE you talking about? You are not trying to play me for a fool here, sergeant?" Her stare was very intimidating, but at least she stopped knocking my ears off, and that gave me some of the much needed confidence. "I wouldn't dream of it. I'm sure I know who you are screaming at, and I may want to do that later myself, but while he is yours to command, I'm not. This whole situation is bad as it is, without you trying to use the authority you don't really have." "So you claim, that you are not Strictly Classified, Sergeant of the Royal Guard?" asked the mare of the night, eyeing me with suspicion. "While I'm somehow currently in his body, and with his mind in here as well, I'm most certainly not him and prefer it to stay that way. Where is Maire, by the way? She was in control just before the nap." "If you mean that annoying voice in my head, that speaks some kind of bird language, she's asleep. Very well, I would believe you for now, but be advised, citizen, I am watching you like a griffin. Don't try anything funny. Now, could you please  state your name, occupation and what the hay happened to us? You seem to know at least something." That last question was in almost pleading tone - not really surprising, considering she was in the same situation Strict was in before I woke up - in a strange land, with no means of communication, but, unlike him, not even in control of her own body. "No time for that!" suddenly interrupted Strict, ignoring his commanding officer distress. "Tell her that the weather teams here went code-four and we have to seek shelter, FAST. "Code what? Weather teams? What are you..." "FAST I SAID!" "Sorry, but your impolite subordinate had asked me to tell you something about weather, code-four and that he's a moron," I informed Blue Mist, trying to ignore the urge to strangle myself in a hope to get that insufferable horse in my head. "Code... ! Ask him, how long!" Adding the urge to strangle her as well to the list, I had listened to Strict's response. "He says about twenty to forty minutes, with the first gusts coming in five. Now, could you please explain..." "No time! We need to find some shelter, fast! Where is the closest town?" "Should be something down the road, I guess, they have them pretty close out here. So what's the..." "Shut up and FLY if you want to live!" with that, she took off, not even bothering to look if I follow. Now, that is motivation I needed the whole day. Not that it can cure the fear of heights, but I gave it everything I could with whatever limited height and experience I had. Despite it being nearly completely dark by then, in five minutes we got to some kind of logistic terminal and dived in the roadside shop nearby moments before the "first gusts". Outside, the wind struck the side of the building, shaking it and nearly ripping the door we just went through off it's hinges. A lightning bolt flashed just outside, setting the tree ablaze and shaking the building with thunder once more. "Tell that useless piece of , that he's up for a remedial course when we are back in Canterlot," panted Blue Mist, falling on the floor in exhaustion. "That's a five, at least." "He says that the first gust was six, but the rest will be softer," I translated annoyed pegasus. "Also, he recommends you to try to do your weather assessment yourself next time, if you don't trust him." "You wasn't supposed to say the last part!" moaned Strict. "They can't feel the weather like the proper pegasi, and mentioning it makes them mad! "...and our smartass Sergeant gets to guard Philomena for the rest of her next cycle," announced batpony, picking herself up and smirking. "Now, you may start explaining. It looks like the weather will keep us here all night." //-------------------------------------------------------// 7. Time to meet the fans. //-------------------------------------------------------// 7. Time to meet the fans. Funny thing about the scale the Equestrian Royal Guard uses to grade the weather is that it have no grades for the weather that happens on it's own. It also don't have any means to separate one good weather from another, everything class zero are considered good on account of it being safe. One to three is a weather that is bad, but necessary - rains to water the crops, snowfalls to protect the plants from the winter, winds to move the clouds en masse, those kinds of unpleasant necessities. Four and five are the grades reserved for when those responsible managed to mess up and produce something like a thunderstorm with tornadoes instead of a sunny day with a gentle breeze. Usually it involves somebody facing some consequences, and means a decent (quite probable in case of a class five) chances for anyone caught by this kind of weather to win a free funeral. The scale goes to twelve. Everything above five is classified. Yes, Strict can find a way to put that word in a conversation about the weather. Most of this relevant information he reluctantly passed to me during our mad dash for cover, so when Mist looked at me for answers, I was ready to provide them instead of asking some urgent questions of my own. Quite naturally, universe hates answers, people giving answers, and ponies receiving answers. I wasn't even able to catch my breath, when three very big figures approached us from beyond the store shelves. The looks on their faces made my ears drop, while my face attempted at most fake looking smile it ever made, and failed miserably. The armbands each of them was wearing left no place to wonder why they were not looking very happy with us. While the organisation those four letters represented was as new, as the pony epidemic itself, it made perfectly clear to everyone in the world that they don't like anything pony-related. Our luck brought us right in a store crawling with P.A.P.A. activists. And we were trapped inside by the class-four thunderstorm, that shouldn't be even possible at this time of year at this latitude. Not enough to let my inner hero out (damn that guy and his endless pursuit of an honorable death), but pretty close. I guess, here I must explain, why I was so sure, that P.A.P.A. was bad news. After all, they made every attempt to show, that while they are not happy with the ponies, they are not happy in a completely non-violent way - being loud, but otherwise harmless lunatics. Several days into all this mess, when I was neck-deep in some very nasty part of the code I wrote couple of years ago, not expecting, that the number of days in the week can sometimes go up to 356 (rather naive assumption on my part, I know), I got a call. One of my acquaintances has asked me if I was interested in joining the noble fight against the alien invaders horde. I can't recall our conversation in any detail, it's a miracle I could even remember it happening at all, but the general idea of it was that this noble fight wasn't supposed to be non-violent. On the contrary, he was very open in his desire to do harm to any brightly colored quadruped he can get his hands on. He had also mentioned the name of the organisation behind this "holy crusade". I'm not sure, which long and bumpy road I sent him on (I'm not usually the most polite man when someone interrupts my work, especially when I got one three hours long sleep in three days), and I had dismissed him as a normal overreacting guy of the kind that tend to flock together in case of an interesting times to cause some minor mischief. Still, the People Against Ponies Association was in fact violent when they thought they can hide it from the general public, and I knew it. I had got a chance to reaffirm that knowledge, because those guys looked violent enough. To their defence (as much as I don't like to defend some violent nutcases), they made an attempt to negotiate. Not that it had much success, considering their native tongue and our translator being incapacitated at the moment. Still, their gestures was plain enough - they wanted us to leave the store immediately, or else. It was a tough choice. On one hand, the thunderstorm combined with the blizzard isn't the weather anyone would want to be anywhere near. On the other hand, it's very hard to refuse three big angry men while your eye level is at level with the middle of the smallest of them. Strict is a big stallion, if the size of Mist is of any indication of a normal pony height, yet even that is pretty small compared to a normal human. He's a little pony, after all, emphasis on "little". "Can we survive in that?" I asked, glancing out of the window at the swirling snow and lightning flashes. "If you have a set of a guard armor, fully charged, stashed nearby, we can last an hour or so," answered Strict with a shudder. "Maybe two, if we can find a place to shelter from the wind. Like we are now, we have minutes. At best." "Can we take those guys out?" My next question was hurried by the impatient nudge from one of the P.A.P.A. guys. Mist, for some reason, just sat there, paying no attention to our predicament, leaving us to resolve the situation as we see fit. "I can, probably, wound one or two, before the third one gets us, it's too tight quarters for us here. Not that it'll do any good, as you are the one in control. Too bad Mist isn't..." At that moment, the ferocious lieutenant of the Night Guard decided to come to senses. She blinked, looked around as if seeing it for the first time, and let out surprised yelp as one of the goons decided to help her to the exit with the hard nudge. Her scary yellow eyes focused on the offender and she let out the most angry speech in Finnish I've ever heard, sprucing it up with some colorful, if not very well articulated obscenities from Russian and, surprisingly, English, yelling all of it on top of her lungs, but, thankfully, below Royal Equestrian. The offender and his friends was so taken aback by the assault, that they looked almost apologetic. Almost. The moment she paused to inhale, the biggest one hit her on the side of her head, knocking her clear out. Then, my inner hero finally decided to wake up and I did probably the stupidest thing I've ever done - I've grabbed the limp form of the batpony and darted out of the shop as fast as I could, ramming through the door on the way out and nearly losing consciousness in the process. Outside the blizzard was thick enough for me to immediately lose any sense of direction, so the next few minutes only the good will of the universe saved us from the possible collisions with trees, buildings and such. Up until it run out and we crashed into something, plowing through and finally blacking out on the other side. This time, unlike the others, there were no library and, even more surprisingly, no gates to the afterlife. After some time I just woke up to the cold winter air, some snow and a massive headache. Apparently, crashing through the solid objects don't kill pegasi. It just makes them wish it did. Still, I was alive, I had no P.A.P.A. goons around me, I still held Blue Mist in my arms, and something was protecting us from the weather - which, judging by the sounds from the outside, was still showing it's bad mood, so overall my suicidal stunt was an unexpected total success. I had several whole seconds to bask in the light of my victory before the mighty smack to my head returned me to the land of the unaware. This time there were no library either. Waking up the second time was even less nice, especially as the first sight that I've encountered when I've opened my eyes was slightly glowing and very apologetic eyes of my companion. Did I mentioned that the batponies are scary even in the daylight? Well, in the dark they are downright terrifying - you can't actually see the pony, just very big, yellow glowing eyes. It's so scary, that it even made me jerk away. Right into something solid and unyielding. The darkness claimed me once again. No library still, and this time when I finally woke up, it was already morning. Strict was yawning in my head loudly, and Mist was curled by my side on a large stack of wooden boxes. Pale morning light poured through the small two-pony-shaped hole in the side of a large freight container we were in. From the looks of it, outside there were no sign of the countryside we were in before the storm. There were no land in sight at all. Somehow, we made it to the sea while asleep. //-------------------------------------------------------// 8. Where a shovel may be involved. //-------------------------------------------------------// 8. Where a shovel may be involved. The world was pain. The world was blur. The world was ringing in the ears, vertigo and overall nausea. The world also contained a certain cheery pegasus that I really, really want to hit with something heavy the moment he gets into his own, separate head. "Rise and shine, Alex, we have a world to save!" chimed the foul creature. "The sun is up and we must thank Celestia for the new beautiful day!" "I'm not sure we can really blame it on her," I replied with a groan, trying to lift my head and to not throw up in a process. "Why are you so happy all of a sudden?" "I'm always happy in the morning. What's wrong, Alex? You sound unhealthy." At least, he had the decency to sound a bit concerned. "Have you ever felt like someone is trying to use your head as a tennis ball?" "More times, than I care to admit. Why?" "Because someone just won some big tournament with mine," I groaned as naturally, as my mind voice could allow. "And it feels like he's going for an encore." "Hmm... that would explain this ringing noise... and the..." Strict went into incoherent mumbling for a moment, and then laughed. "Oh! Great news, my friend, you just got something that divide a colt from a stallion! "A herd of six and fifteen foals?" I admit, in my state I wasn't thinking very clearly. "What? No, no, eww!" Stricts voice shuddered at some unpleasant image. "It's not the Paleopony Period, you know. For a pegasus the rite of passage is his first real concussion." "That's a most asinine thing I've ever heard, and I had once worked as a first line tech support," was my immediate reply. Probably not very honest, but hey, I was the one suffering a rite of passage there. "That's tradition. Most of them are like this," replied the evil one, adding a feeling of a shrug to the words. "Normally it happens when you are able to fly good enough they start to let you visit the ground on your own. Clouds are more forgiving than trees, houses, or mountains. Don't worry, it'll pass in a day. Just don't go to sleep in the meantime. And don't wake up Mist, she looks like she sleeps off hers. Lucky mare, she have a chance to not even notice it." This reminded me of the second member of our suicide team, that happily (and rather loudly) snored next to me in the nest, made of... magazines? Looking around once more I discovered, that about a half of the container we were in was filled with crates. One of such crates was broken, probably during our landing, and it contents were used to make a bed for a batpony. The nest was neatly made, showing the skill Maire wasn't supposed to have, so apparently, Mist was in control during that. Another hint on that was the contents of the magazines. I highly doubt that Maire would've thought of making her bed out of high quality porn. The mare herself, though, was not looking that good. Her coat was messy and tangled, her mane and tail was one big knotted disaster area, she had multiple shallow cuts on her legs and her head sported two rather painful looking bumps - one, apparently, from the P.A.P.A. hospitality. Still, most of the cuts were covered in bandages and band-aids, even the bumps were treated with some kind of ointment. No matter how much Blue Mist were hurt by our "rescue", she was persistent enough to only pass out after taking a good care of the immediate concerns. Quite unlike that one guy I know, shame on him. In fact, looking at myself I've noticed, that my own wounds were treated the same way. Considering that she had done that with hooves, mouth, suffering from a head trauma and in complete darkness, made me really envious of Maire. She had gotten the competent one. Well, at least Strict can punch holes through sheet metal with his head and live, so maybe it wasn't so bad. Looking at the hole we made, I've noticed, that for some bizarre reason someone had taken the normal steel door of a freight container and replaced it with plywood. Still impressive, but my respect for white pegasus durability went down a bit. In any case, we were impossibly lucky to ram into the only container in Finland, or even in the world, that had such an "upgrade" and hit dead center of the plywood door on the first attempt, while flying blind. Also, the container was only half-full, with most of its empty space situated right in front of our entry point. When the sheer improbability of this event had caught up to my concussed brain, I thought that I've heard a content chuckle. It wasn't me, Strict or Maire/Mist, the voice was all wrong (still, somehow familiar), and there were no one in the container except us. I've shrugged that as unimportant and probably just a trick of my imagination, and made an attempt to make at least some sense of our current situation, while searching the saddlebags, that we managed not to lose in the blizzard, for some food. My first discovery was that I don't really know how to use hooves for anything above walking. The second one was that I'm not that good at thinking while recovering from a concussion. Strict was not a big help with the hooves part, he was nearly shocked into silence by the idea that someone may have a problem with grasping things with his limbs. But even with his helpful insight on how every foal is better in being him then me, the old and bumpy road of trial and error have prevailed. Maire was kind enough to get the bags with one simple clasp and a zipper, so it took me only ten minutes to figure out how to properly open the container. Inside there were a simple medical kit, most likely the one the bandages came from, four wallets (one for each bag), a water bottle, and several fist-sized cloth bags, tightly filled with a mix of grains, dried berries and nuts, the sight of which returned Strict in the good mood. It even managed to lift mine a bit, after a day on hay and straw the thing tasted divine. Surprisingly, contents of just one bag was enough to completely silence my stomach, a big surprise after the amount of hay required to do the same. After breakfast I climbed back into the "nest", trying to ignore the pictures on it's sides. Pegasi may be cold-resistant, I had no problems with being exposed to the cold air despite not having any clothes, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy being warm for a change. And at that moment the only way to get warmer was to lie side-by-side in the confines of the nest. Considering I woke up inside of it, Mist or Maire had no problem with a little cuddling for the warmth. "Man, that food was good," I said with a content burp, enjoying the feeling of a full stomach. "Mist must be one good cook, despite all her high military facade." "Mist can't cook at all, if you wouldn't consider her home cuisine food, of course", immediately retorted Strict. "You wouldn't believe what they eat in those caves of theirs. Have you seen her teeth? There is that nut, looks like coconut, but with harder shell, to keep rockbiter rats away. They bite right through it like the thing is made of paper! I nearly lost half my teeth the first time she cooked for us. It also have a strong laxative effect on the pegasi. No, whoever made that meal, that wasn't her." "Couldn't be Maire either, I'm pretty sure humans can't eat raw oats. Wait, she cooked for you? Why?" "Well, you know, it is a custom for a married couple to share a meal now and then. Of course, being in the Guard, we rarely cook for ourselves, still, it's nice to do once in a while. Too bad I can't eat what she makes, I'm not much of a chef myself. Suddenly, all the effects of the concussion went on pause. "Married?" That was, probably, not the smartest question, but I needed a bit of a time to really process the implications. "Erm... yes? Strict answered cautiously, catching something in my voice. "Any reason you couldn't fill me in earlier?" "Umm... classified? weakly whispered the winged ass, finally realising, that I'm not happy with the revelation at all. "Yes, right. And I'm an orc's mother-in-law. You do realise what I made poor mare to go through because you failed to mention this little bit? I was wondering why she winces every time I speak, nothing pointed at the reason. Well, now we have a reason, and man, it's a good one! She met someone she knows, someone she cares about, and that someone is suddenly not what she had expected, but me. Guess how long it took for her to realise that I can talk to you? Damn, you nearly made me turn her away! " Strict had fallen silent. After a long while, I heard a quiet whisper from him. "I've screwed up, didn't I?" "My best guess is yes, you did," I sighed, feeling the sudden clarity leaving it's place to the concussion dizziness. "I'm not in any state to help you right now, but when she wakes up you better not only be sorry, but also know how to say it to her." Suddenly, Mist stirred beside me and groggily opened her scary eyes. "He's sorry?" she asked me, yawning. "Sounds sorry to me," I admitted, still unsure, how much of my angry monologue she had heard. "Buck him for me and say, that when we'll get home, he'll get the shovel. Now, please, pipe it down and let me sleep," with that she turned and resumed snoring. "Well, that went well," I had to admit. "I don't even want to know what the shovel means, but seems like she's more forgiving than I've thought possible." "That's because you don't know what the shovel means. Still, it could've been a flugelhorn, so I guess, she's not that upset," Strict's mood had considerably brightened. "In fact, since we're are clearly in an unfriendly environment, and on what can be considered an official mission, we are on duty and are supposed to conceal our personal relations." "Hold on to that thought, it may save you from the flugelhorn. Now, since you are now aware of how keeping vital information from me could bear unwanted consequences, could you please try to share at least some of it? You can't be all that confidential, your country can't be all that secret, there ought to be at least something you can tell!" "All right, all right, you win," groaned the secretive pegasus. "It's just that my job is keeping secrets. My entire life purpose, my destiny, if you like it more that way. I have to keep a lot of secrets, so it's not very easy to discern what is a secret and what isn't. It will be better to start with a little history, so you'll understand, why there are things I can't tell you. "It all began back when the three tribes were yet to find harmony, peace and, of course, Equestria itself. It was an age of strife, unrest and, more often than modern historians care to admit, war. Pretty much every disagreement ended in an armed conflict. It never lasted for too long, even back then every tribe needed the other two to survive, but since it was happening for a long time, ponies got pretty good at it. We had filled Tartarus with most of its current inhabitants during that era, despite them being scary monsters and evil demigods. That was the time when the word 'pony' was one of the scariest words around. "But at last, that story with windigoes happened, Equestria was founded, the princesses took the throne, and suddenly there were peace everywhere. All of the weapons, all of the combat magic, all of the knowledge of war, became useless but still remained dangerous. Now, what I told you before, it is in every history book, the next part is not. It's not a secret, it's just deliberately forgotten. Weapons were mostly destroyed, of course, but the knowledge, while being much more dangerous, was also much more valuable. It was considered a waste to get rid of it. Who knows when ponies may need it again? But to leave it widely available was too risky, so it was divided and hidden. Hush The Mute, my ancestor, was the one who came with the way to keep it handy, but still out of sight and with the way to limit the access only to those who would not misuse it. Since that day his descendants keep his legacy and the horrors our race came up with, hidden. At least it's so for the pegasi, but I know, that others also have their ways." "Sounds too paranoid for me. It was how long ago, hundreds of years? I interrupted. "Thousands, answered Strict. "Even better. What kind of secrets could it be? How to sharpen the sticks the right way? "How to destroy an entire town with an army of one well trained pegasus, for example. You've seen one of the ways to do it yourself, that's the weakest of the tricks stored in there. Alex, I don't know about humans, but us ponies, when we're good at something, we are really, really good at it. Be it making rainbows out of a cloud or ruins out of a city. In fact, there is a way to do it all at once. Every pony possess powerful magic, and every kind of it is insanely dangerous if you know how to properly misuse it. "We'll have to return to that magic stuff later, it sounds like fun. But please, continue." "That was pretty much it. My duty is to keep it hidden, so please, don't even ask. It's not like you can use it anyway," this reply made some pieces click together. "Why can't I use it?" "Most of those techniques require years to learn. Some require a certain set of hereditary traits my body does not possess. And all of them are based on the basic knowledge of the pegasi magic you don't have." "So, basically, all that highly secret knowledge no one should know about is a pile of useless outdated junk? "No! It's... it's... Damn you, Alex, and your Tartarus logic! Yes, it's useless, most of the time. But only most, and keeping it hidden is only a part of my real job. There is always a chance somepony will stumble on something from it. It was discovered once, after all, it can be done again. Why, only recently the Sonic Rainboom was reinvented - and believe me, there are not a lot of things more dangerous than that one. When something like that happens, I have to inform the Princess of the possible consequences and take measures to prevent it from spreading. That's why when I'm on duty, I'm rarely out of her earshot, unless someone else from the family is covering that. "Mostly it's pretty boring administrative work - you know, a filly who have the right magic for the thought projection, or somepony breaking Mach 3 in Cloudsdale residential areas, handled by shifting some papers around. That Rainboom case was the biggest in centuries. Half a family had to spread rumors that it's a fake the first time that filly did it, and Her Highness had to claim it's something only one in many generations can do when she did it again. Good thing Celestia have the benefit of everyone believing her, that cursed mare doing rainbooms almost daily now." "Enough with that, then. I don't understand half the terms you are using, and I have a feeling, that if I'll ask you to explain, you'll just claim it's a secret. Let's get back to the history. You mentioned some story with the windigoes, what's that?" What followed was a long recollection of Equestrian ancient history. It was pretty interesting, but it is not relevant to this story, so I won't put it here. It took us a few hours, and that, surprisingly, was enough for the concussion to fade. Pegasi heal fast, if you believe Strict. Mist were peacefully snoring all the time, and from the looks of her, also got better. Her awakening was what interrupted our history lesson, mostly because it was Maire who woke up. Her last memory was of falling asleep on the bale, so she was surprised to find herself in a completely different place, and sharing a "bed" with a stallion. She added some new bruises to my extended collection, threw the "bed" overboard, and refused to talk to me for at least a full hour, sulking in a corner of the container. By the time she decided to listen to my explanation, it was nearly night. By that time a realisation hit our concussed brains. We were on a ship. And we had no idea where it was or where it headed to. //-------------------------------------------------------// 9. High Seas. //-------------------------------------------------------// 9. High Seas. ~~Threesday, 03-30, 55°57'03"N 0°18'23"W, North Sea~~ I've stared on the pile of paperwork in disbelief. Maps, cargo roster, crew roster, something I don't even recognize, several books, a pile of driver licenses and a cat. Why the cat? I have no idea, but Mist insisted that bringing the cat was necessary. As well as every single piece of paper with words on it not locked into the container. I can't argue, she's the competent one - it took her only an hour, and no one on the ship have noticed her, but since she was not sure what to look for, she took it all. And the cat. We already knew we were on some kind of ship, but the question of location and direction remained. Location was easy - since Maire was kind enough to pack GPS navigator. To find out where our small (only about 4x3 containers, with our being central in the front row) ship was taking us, we needed to gather the intelligence. Mist volunteered. Now, there was one little problem with what she managed to find, and that wasn't even the cat. The papers were, probably, very interesting and very useful, but none of us were familiar with basic Chinese they were written in. The maps was not much help either, since the lines on them made no sense to me. The only thing that was legible in all of that was one copy of Denmark's Customs declaration (in English), that listed our container full with canned peas, designated to Qaqortoq, Greenland. I'm no expert in this, but even I can see signs of a contraband when I see them. Also, it was quite clear, that the cargo of explicit peas we were riding was never intended to go to Greenland - who goes there this late in the year? From this, another problem arose - since those guys was up for no good, the last thing they would need on their boat is some witnesses, especially, of the kind that have seen "the peas". Of course, it was late night, but even then soon someone had to notice the missing papers and start searching the ship. Our location wasn't ever hidden well - the only reason we went unnoticed for so long was that no one really looked and the ship crew was small. Mist brought seven licenses, so that was likely the whole crew, not counting the cat. We needed to leave, and leave soon. Luckily for us, the weather was fine, the moon was full, and we were only about a hundred kilometers from the shore of Scotland. Nothing two perfectly healthy (if a bit sore) flying horses can't cross, right? Wrong, if one of the horses is nearly flight-incapable. Even with the weather being calm, the waves were high enough to not even risk our trick with flying low - Strict was adamant on that touching the water would end up badly. And flying high... I wish I could. We still have packed our saddlebags, but spent nearly an hour on top of the container waiting for me to build up enough courage to take off. Thankfully, the universe still hates me, or we would be there still. During one of the unsuccessful attempts to force myself to fly, when I've crouched down for jump, the window in the back of the ship suddenly flew off the hinges with a loud bang, zipping right above my head. If I wasn't crouched, it would've decapitated me. Following it, came rather small pony stallion, white in color, with dark mane and yellow eyes. He skipped to me, jumped on my back and shouted into my ear frantically: "你在为瓦亭？飞走！" I have no idea what that could mean, but my already not very stable position, combined with his jump and the startle he gave me with his shout was enough to tumble me overboard. That was good, since the guy that appeared in the window next was armed and put several bullets through space I just vacated. He was briefly pacified by Mist throwing the cat at him. Since my wings were already spread, instead of letting sea claim us both I began flapping them and we shot from the ship, followed by extremely unfriendly screams of the crew and the cat, and some gunfire. Mist have caught up to us a moment later and guided me into a turn to the west. As it became clear, my fears are not that powerful over the dark night waters of the Atlantic, since I was able to maintain safe altitude without freaking out too much. The weight on my back wasn't welcome, though not impeding my ability to fly. There was one thing interesting about my passenger, and when I became sure that I  can maintain the flight, I had to ask. "Who the hell are you?" "That's Mountain Sage, if I recall correctly, he's in Earth squad, under Captain Solid," chimed in Strict. "The only member of the squad to naturally have Guard's colors, except for the eyes." "Me Ren Shan," answered presumable Mountain Sage. "Me not speak English, very. Grateful for safe." "Oh, just my luck, another language barrier," I groaned in frustration. Mist wobbled a bit in the air, then slowed down to fly side-by-side with me. "Alex, what wrong, why we fly over sea?" she asked, eyeing Ren carefully. "Cutie mark is mountain sage flower, special talent - speleology. Have two older brothers in EUP. Loosely related to Pie family," Strict decided to continue his personal files recital. "Me need shore, we fly, yes?" asked Ren, poking my head with a hoof. "Why you have this strange pony on your back? Is he somebody you know?" Maire wasn't giving up on my attention either. "Orders are to monitor him as a possible keeper of the Earth tribe weapon knowledge." "You understand, right?" "Are you sure it safe to fly him this way? Maybe we go to ship instead?" "SHUT UP EVERYONE!" There are not many things in the world that I hate more than several people talking to me at once and ignoring each other. There are probably even less that can ignore the mighty roar of Royal Canterlot. Even the waves below seemed to flatten for a moment. "Hmm... never knew I had the talent for that one, commented Strict. "Neither did I, but seriously, shut up. It's hard to understand him as it is." "Now, Ren, could you, probably, explain, why you were in such a hurry to leave?" I finally asked now-shivering stallion on my back. By the time Ren have finished telling his story (and it took a lot of time, since he wasn't kidding about not speaking English, very), we realized, that our already quite impressive list of close calls was expanded once more, and with a big one. I'm not sure what was in those containers,  but that stuff was much hotter than contraband porn. The magazines were just the top layer, the fun stuff was in the bottom, and it was something big. So big that the bribed customs officials haven't even looked in the direction of the containers when they were flown by a plane from Finland to Denmark, and then loaded onto the ship that had to take them to Canada. That's probably the best thing in it, since it saved us from being discovered. Ren knew that for certain, since he was the captain of the ship, up until the moment he became Mountain Sage. For some reason (I wasn't able to decode it), his crew was less than happy to discover that fact, and the only thing that saved him from becoming fish food was that he noticed us through the window. Now he was set on to punish them for such disloyalty by selling them off to the local authorities, and for that he needed our help to get to the shore. The shore in question was already nearby, and soon enough we landed on brown grass near some kind of parking lot not far from the water. Since it was still early morning, no one was around, so no uncomfortable questions were asked. We were getting good in smuggling ponies across the border via sheer dumb luck. That was the point where Ren have left us, though. His drive for revenge pulled him off to the nearest police station, and we still had the ocean to cross, and no real legal means to do that, since officially we weren't even in the country. We were arrested before we left the town. Apparently, Ren got too carried away in selling accomplices. //-------------------------------------------------------// 1. Where I need to wake up some more. //-------------------------------------------------------// 1. Where I need to wake up some more. Most guides to the lucid dreams recommend to recall the dream before you open your eyes - so it will remain in your memory and the experience wouldn't be lost. That's a really good habit to have. And that day it had saved my life. Complete recollection of a dream takes several minutes, helps to get fully awake, and, overall, is a good way to make peace with the fact you need to wake up at all. The last part is necessary for any "owl" person working "lark" hours, like me. Also, it helps not to leave your bed before you look at what's around. Normally that last part would be irrelevant. After all, it's not like someone sleeping on the floor can fall from it. Normally I can't be woken up by the sun, there is no way it can get to the part of the room where my sleeping place is. Normally I don't wake up chewing a cloud. Not that I mind, that's the second thing that saved my life that day (and clouds do taste way better than pillows). Still, that was rather new to me. The third thing that was responsible for my well being was what met my eye when I decided to release the cloud and rub my eyes to confirm, that the cloud was not a dream leftover, but a real thing. It was a rather painful decision, you can check it with anyone who managed to get a hoof in the eye. Yes, a hoof. Dark red, to be precise. At the end of what supposed be my arm just last evening. That made me pretty certain that this was just another dream - and one of the more weird ones. You know, the ones where you suddenly sprout extra arms, wings or, like in this case, hooves. Like the library before it was unpleasantly detailed and realistic. Not every dream bothers itself not only to provide you with some alien appendage, but to detail every single hair in the snow-white fur, covering it, with light cracks on the surface of the hoof it ends with, and with well-worn horseshoe to complete the illusion. Well, even in a dream there are not much point to lie around looking at the hooves, so after confirming that I'll have to manage this one without the fingers, I had lifted my head from the soft white substance of a cloud and looked around. Now, I must confess, there is one thing that normally scares me enough to lose all sense and do something very stupid. I'm very afraid of heights. Looking more than two meters down send chills down my spine, and a roof of the second floor is a place I can spend an eternity at, unable to force myself to move. This cloud was what looked about a hundred meters off the ground, above a dense forest. The only thing, that stopped me from panicking and falling off was that I had confirmed it as a dream, and in a dream heights don't scare me. At least, not that much. So, instead of dangerous panic, all I felt was a mild adrenaline rush. And a loud "bang!", that came from behind. Turning my head, I've discovered, that the hooves was not the last part of this dream. Wings was, apparently, also a part of the deal. It seemed like looking down was enough to involuntary spread them, so now the long white feathers trembled lightly in the breeze, ready to take me anywhere I might want to go, at least, if I'll manage to learn how to operate them before the unavoidable wake up call. Oh, the joy of the dream flight, where you know exactly how to move around! How I long for you! Why, why had you deserted me in my time of need? Not that it was that much of a surprise - after the library and waking from one dream right into the other, but in was unpleasant anyway. After all, all I had in my disposal was a little patch of cloud I was on, and to get anywhere I had to fly, or, at least, fall, the latter being out of the question due to this weird dream making the pain actually painful. And the wings, predictably, ignored all my attempts to move them, though, at least, I managed to feel the tension in the muscles, that held them spread. "It would really help if you'll stop freaking out about the height, you know," said the voice, that was previously talking to me in the library. "I never ever heard that you can put a pegasus in a wing lock with the fear of heights." Quick glance around confirmed, that I was still quite alone on the cloud. Well, disembodied voices is a pretty common thing in the dreams. Some even make sense from time to time. Best not to ask them who they are, though, they tend to disappear on that. "Pegasus as in a winged horse from the Greek mythos?" "More like the winged ponies in that show you got that book from, but yes, I think, I can see some similarities," The Voice agreed. "And in this dream I just happen to be one of those?" it was pretty obvious, of course, with this body's flexible neck I was able to have a pretty good look, but it never hurts to confirm. "A dream?" The Voice asked, apparently, surprised. "Oh. Well, yes, you can say that... Actually, a dream, right. Yes, that's exactly what it is. You are a pegasus in a dream. Now, considering..." "Great. I knew that watching it before going to bed was a bad idea. Now I get to spend some time dreaming myself as a character I don't even remember from it. Wasn't the white one in there a unicorn or something like that?" "You mean you remember only one white pony from there?" now The Voice sounded hurt. "There was also that princess, I guess, but she had a sun tattoo on her butt, and that's a book with a lock on mine," I pointed the obvious. "You sure you don't recall m... anypony else?" "There was probably some at the background, but who ever looks there? It's not like they'll place someone important in the back for an entire episode. Why it's suddenly so important now, anyway?" "It's classified. Er... I mean, you'll probably understand later. Now, isn't it a good time to leave this cloud?" That sounded like a nice idea, and I decided to overlook that "classified" remark. All that talking apparently calmed me enough for my body to overcome the wing lock, as the wings relaxed themselves from the spread position and, finally, decided to stop ignoring me. With a little trial and error I managed to find how to flap them properly, and was able to move myself and the cloud closer to the treetops. The Voice had no objections to this safe approach, and even gave some useful tips on how to properly angle the wings to control my descent. In a short time the cloud reached the upper branches of the dense forest, then touched a top of a tall pine. And then, dissipated. On a positive side, now I can tell, that a pegasi are pretty light for their size and surprisingly sturdy for their mass. A fall through a tree doesn't kill or cripple them, just brings them pain. A lot of it. On a negative side, they are capable to feel pain in places unimaginable to humans. A fall through the crown of the large pine hurt in all of those places, and all the others. A dream that allows it's dreamer to be in that much pain and not to wake up from it, should be outlawed. Actually, is it even possible? Is it possible to lose your consciousness while asleep? "That's unexpected," The Voice greeted me when I opened my eyes again. I was in the library, and not far away from me was standing a white pegasus pony with blue mane and tail, wearing a set of gilded armor. The Voice, apparently, was his. "And you are...?" my frustration from the fall was compensated by the fact, that this dream was kind enough to give me my body back and take away the pain, so I was able to remain quite calm. "Strictly Classified," the pegasus replied, looking at the books with visible interest. "What's so classified in your name?" I think, my irritation on this one was justified. "Nothing. It's just like that. Part of a long and proud family tradition." "Wait, that IS your name?" Talk about weird parents. I wonder, what's an acceptable short form of this one. "Yes, weren't you listening?" good, I'm not the only one unhappy here. "Before you ask, my father's name is Big Secret, his father's is Completely Confidential, and the one, who had started it all, was the one and only Hush The Mute. If you want to joke about it, think again, I had enough of it in training. You may address me as Strict, if you want a shorter variant." "Don't worry, I've met enough people sensitive about their names," I replied, a bit startled by the outburst. "I'm more concerned about the weirdness of this dream anyway." "This isn't a dream, you just lost consciousness from the fall," Strict replied, examining one of the larger books. "But it is a good chance to fill you in on a situation without the risk of your panic killing us both." "Can you do that? Can you be knocked out in a dream?" I asked, already expecting the answer to be less than pleasant. "I don't know. We might have to try it some other time to find out. Right now it is not important." "So... that wasn't a dream?" now I was just delaying the inevitable revelation. "As far, as I know, it wasn't." Treetops, slowly passing by beneath. A hundred meters of clean air. A cloud dissolving under me, plunging me  into the branches. Not a dream. Muscles are getting tense, sweat is getting cold. Shelves around are moving closer, leaning onto each other. I slowly lay on the floor and curl into a ball. Vast expanse of a forest below is filling my sight. Time stops. I don't know, how long I was dead to the world, but everything passes and fear is no exception. After an eternity, full of cold and unforgiving void, color returned to the world, and I had slowly unrolled into a sitting position, leaning on a nearby bookshelf. I'll have to do something about it, it's embarrassing to just lose it like that. "Better?" the voice of Strict was, for a change, filled with genuine concern. He was sitting nearby, with a book in his hooves. My freakout was, apparently, a long one, he was halfway through a pretty thick tome. "Not really. But I can at least move now. You should probably run, I will try to strangle you if you won't." "Why would you do something stupid like that?" Strict raised an eyebrow and turned the page with his wing. "You were lying to me! You nearly killed me! You need a better reason?" "Imagine, what have had happened, If you knew, that it wasn't a dream up there," he calmly answered, making no attempt to run. I tried to imagine. I had to fight a very strong urge to curl back and die. "Why was I up there anyway? And why I was suddenly a pegasus?" nice move, brain, if something makes you cringe in fear, let's talk about it some more. "Now, that's a good question. You was up there because yesterday it was a place where I went to sleep. Based on what I was able to get from you memories," he pointed a hoof to the book he was reading, "you fell victim to something you have seen in the news." "But there was no reports of that anywhere nearby! And it was supposedly affecting fans of the show! I've seen only two series of it, I'm not a fan!" "Look, it's not like it was my doing, ok?" snapped Strict, slamming the book closed. "Imagine my feelings, when about three days ago I woke up in some weird room made for some weird creatures I never heard of, in a world so insane that I thought Discord is back and made everything and everyone crazy! And nopony around, who can at least understand me! You are the first person in three days I can speak to!" "I think it wasn't very fun," I admitted, losing the last bits of anger. "That leaves one question open - where was I all this time?" "You were asleep. Right here, on this very spot. Every night I dream about this place, and every night you are here, sleeping. I thought it was something linked with the transformation, but then I've got a hoof on some of your recent memories, and it appears, that it was just you being tired and an extremely heavy sleeper. Now that you are awake, you are the one in control of the body." "So... three days ago I was transformed into you while asleep, but was so tired, that I just slept through that, letting you run around scaring people for three days, then I awoke and suddenly I'm in control and you are just an annoying voice in my head and an armored pony in my dreams. Had I missed anything?" "Except for the annoying part, that's pretty much it," confirmed the white nightmare. "And I'm afraid, but we'll have to talk about it a little later, it looks like you are regaining consciousness." As he said it, the library around me dissolved into a gray mist, and I slowly opened my eyes. Right in front of my face I had seen a biggest and meanest looking bear I've ever seen, sniffing me with interest. Please, make it a dream!