Wildfire: Lighting the Flame

“Trade Wind, over here! Cloudy Skies, five hundred feet up at your ten position! Quickly let’s move like we’re being paid for it!” Silverbolt smiled wryly to herself as she watched her team mates quickly react to and carry out her orders. Although technically not their boss in anyway the younger pegasi automatically deferred to her age and experience in most ‘on-the-job’ matters.

When the whole weather team was given the very daunting and dangerous task of creating a class ten thunderstorm that was scheduled to cover all of the Residential, Market and Educational Districts of Canterlot, Silverbolt’s team mates definitely deferred to her.

“Cloudy, no!” Silverbolt yelled at the top of her lungs and flew up to the young stallion’s level. “I said, your ‘ten’ position, not your ‘two’!” She didn’t want to scream, but she had to in order to make herself heard over the noise of the gale force winds howling around them.

Facehooving at his mistake, the third that day alone, the rookie slate grey stallion adjusted his position with a deep red blush creeping over his cheeks. “Sorry mum!” He yelled back, very thankful his light grey mane was cut short, stopping it being blown into his eyes by the raging wind. He was also thankful Silverbolt didn’t report his many mistakes to their superiors.

Silverbolt smiled. They all called her ‘mum’, just because at forty seven she was the oldest mare on the weather team. In a stark contrast Cloudy was just nineteen, fresh from Cloudsdale’s flight school. Just how the nervous young pegasus even graduated was a total mystery to the more experienced mare. Flying next to him, getting closer than was strictly allowed by regulations, given the strength of the winds whipping around them, she placed her yellow hoof on his shoulder. “Hey…just relax, and concentrate, okay?”

Cloudy smiled shyly and shot her a grateful look, “Um…thanks mum. I’m sorry, it’s just…it’s scary.” He meant it too. This wasn’t like the flight and weather simulators back in Cloudsdale. He had quickly learnt that no simulator could replicate the subtle buffeting on your primaries, or the unexpected cross wind, or the terrifying random micro bursts that could slam the unwary to the ground in seconds. More to the point, no weather simulator could make the young stallion feel this level of fear now he was faced with an eight hundred foot monster of a roiling black cloud that they were fighting to control. If he bucked it up there was no reset button.

“Cloudy Skies, I know it’s scary.” Silverbolt shouted over the noise. “It scares me too!”

The slate grey pegasus wasn’t expecting that. “It…it scares you, mum?” He asked incredulously, as if nothing was allowed to scare the experienced mare.

“Of course it does!” She yelled. “We’re creating a class ten thunderstorm! I’m terrified! Use that fear to make you sharper, faster, better. Now, get to your ‘ten’, and compress your section! It’s still only a class seven, we’ve got three more levels to go!”

Nodding somewhat reluctantly Cloudy flew off to his position and used his wings and hooves to mould the cloud, to force the edges back against each other just so, so that like dominoes one area of cloud would affect those near it. Running his hooves over the cumulonimbus he could feel the build-up of the static charge as they worked the cloud from different angles.

‘Luna damned rookies…they’ll be the death of me,’ Silverbolt thought to herself as she watched the young flier finally start doing his job. Casting a glance down below she saw Trade Wind exactly where she should be, the sky blue mare doing her part, compressing the cloud at its base. Flapping her yellow wings Silverbolt flew the three hundred feet up to the top, and started to trail her hoof in a groove around it, creating safe outlets for the excess lightning. As she worked she had to admit, Cloudy had a point. This cloud was damned scary. Still, they were almost done. Looking back at her work she saw the tell-tale flashes inside the cloud, felt the build-up of the charge. The cloud was behaving just as it should as it entered class eight status.

Circumnavigating the cloud one more time Silverbolt caught sight of the high school below her. She smiled a wide smile to herself as she hovered in place near the top of the cloud. The most precious thing in the world…no, the entire universe, was currently in that school, no doubt watching her right now rather than paying attention to her work. ‘Let’s see…it’s Wednesday at two p.m., she’ll have math.’ Silverbolt laughed out loud, the noise immediately lost amidst the storm around her. If she had math class then Wildfire would definitely not be concentrating. Frowning she got back to work with the cloud. It wasn’t funny. Already she and her husband, Cold Front, were scheduled to see her principal about it on Friday.

~ ~ ~

Sat at her desk in the classroom of the school, Wildfire was bored. Faced with this math problem she was very bored. Looking at it again she spat her pen from her mouth and grunted in frustration. ‘One hundred and twenty minus fifteen multiplied by five…who the buck knew that?’ The young twelve year old pegasus had been staring at this question halfway down her paper for the last ten minutes. If she was honest with herself she could look at it for half an hour and still be no closer to the answer. Of course it was the number’s fault for sliding around the page like that. How was she supposed to answer it when then question kept changing. It was so unfair.

Casting a glance over to her left she saw Dusk Melody hard at work, his pen moving across the paper so fast she could swear smoke was coming from the nib. He might have been her best friend of many years but at that precise moment she hated him with a passion she usually reserved for Blitzwing the class bully. Wildfire resented the ease with which the midnight blue pegasus just ‘got’ it, while after months of study she herself was no closer to understanding it than she was to unravelling the secrets of the universe.

It wasn’t that she was thick, far from it, but math and its associated gibberish was just that. Gibberish. Wildfire sighed as she picked up her pen once more, wishing some sort of answer would leap forth from her uncooperative brain. Another ten minutes and the best she had come up with was a doodle of her mum flying around a cloud, and a picture of Blitzwing being struck by lightning, his mane all stuck up and pointy.

With her head propped up by a hoof she looked up and out of the window she was sat at, she saw the storm being created outside and her mum’s team hard at work. Sighing despondently she dearly wished she was out there flying with the tiny yellow speck she loved so much, instead of being stuck in class room Tartarus. Entirely distracted by watching her mother, Wildfire didn’t hear the teacher calling time on the math paper.

‘Looks like a class nine…’ she thought worriedly to herself. Despite the numerous times her mum had assured her there was nothing to worry about, all those times her mum had held her hoof in the rain and kissed her ear, had told her to close her eyes and feel the storm, deep down Wildfire knew different. All those times they had stood together, wings and tails entwined as the rain had bounced off of them, she could feel the unbounded fury of the storm. The sheer unbridled power of the tempest. Her mum had promised her she could control it. Had promised her she could manipulate the storm.

Idly she started writing out a poem that had just leapt to her mind as she watched her mother mould and sculpt the cloud. Wildfire paid no attention to the teacher as he started to levitate the math papers back to his desk. Already the math problem was a distant memory, who needed to what one hundred and twenty minus fifteen multiplied by five was anyway? Watching the building storm she was completely inspired.

“she loved the rain

the splitter splatter sound

every drop makes

were music to her ears

she loved the thunder

the ferocity of its roar

gave her the strength

to hold on for a while more

she loved the lightning

the beauty of each stroke

containing the lethal power to hurt and kill

yet remain in inexplicable beauty

in short she loved thunderstorms

a mixture of rain thunder and lightning

just like her inner conflict of thoughts

and emotional turmoil

she compared herself to thunderstorms

not that she was a beauty

but she believed that

it depicted the words she wanted to say”

“Hmm…it’s good, but it needs an ending…it needs ‘something’…” Wildfire tapped her pen to her chin deep in thought as she gazed out of the window.

“What it needs, Miss Wildfire,” the math teacher said as his shadow loomed over her desk, “Is for you to direct your attention to the task at hoof.” His stern frowning gaze bored into her, earning her a few sniggers from the other ponies in the class. “Do you have the answer?”

“I…um, well…I er, it’s um…” Wildfire looked about her, wringing her hooves together she glanced around the class room hoping sudden inspiration would leap up and bite her blank flank. “I, um…it’s…” the yellow pegasus cast her brown eyes down at the floor. “I…I don’t know, Sir. I’m sorry…”

“The answer, Miss Wildfire, is forty five.” He replied as he turned on his hooves and walked back to his desk. “Coincidentally, it is also the amount of time you’ll spend in detention at the end of the day.”

~ ~ ~

“Damn!” Silverbolt swore to the roiling tempestuous heavens. Something was seriously wrong with this cloud. She hadn’t noticed at first, when the lightning charge they had been generating had been of a lesser intensity. As the thunderhead passed class eight things had started going south very quickly.

“Trade Wind! Get out of there you idiot!” She yelled as loud as her lungs could manage, and winced as a stray lightning bolt erupted from the charcoal grey monstrosity of a cloud, narrowly missing the sky blue mare by the barest of margins. Folding her wings she dropped the few hundred feet to barrel into her and carry her away from the danger zone.

“Mum!” Trade Wind shouted into her saviour’s yellow ear, “That cloud’s defective! It can’t contain the charge!”

“I know!” Silverbolt screamed back, her voice barely audible over the winds and the thunderous lightning. Her team was in serious trouble. “Get to the weather factory, get help, now!”

“What about you, mum?” Trade Wind asked, not prepared to move without her mentor.

“I’m going back for the rookie.” She yelled, giving Trade a good hard shove. “Now go! Get help!” Silverbolt ordered as several flashes of forked lightning burst forth from the base of the cumulonimbus and hit various spots on the ground, one strike hitting and exploding a clump of three trees in a shower of burning bark. “Now!”

With the second shove Trade Wind took off like a bullet from the barrel of a gun, her sky blue body disappearing into the heavily leaden skies in a matter of moments. Silverbolt sighed with relief. That just left Cloudy Skies. Turning to face the out-of-control cloud the experienced mare actually wet herself with fear. In all her years she had never faced anything like this. “Buck!” Reflexively she dodged a lightning bolt that seared her primaries as she flew about in search of the slate grey stallion.

High gale force winds buffeted her yellow wings, the turbulence almost making flight impossible as she searched for the young pegasus. A strong updraft caught her right wing and she rolled with it to the left, simultaneously diving to avoid another bolt of lightning. ‘I can’t keep dodging like this!’ She chided herself. Already out of breath she knew sooner or later she’d be out of luck too.

“Mum! Help!” Silverbolt caught the very faint scream from somewhere below her. Risking a momentary hover she scanned the lower levels of the cloud, and the sight made her blood run cold as ice in her veins. Roughly three hundred feet below her the safety grooves she had carved into the defective cloud were malfunctioning cloud were spewing out an arcing ball of lightning that had the stallion pinned to a small piece of the cloud.

“Cloudy…move!” She screamed in panic.

“I…I can’t…I’m scared!”

‘Buck! Buck!’ A split second of indecision tore at the older pegasus as she hovered above him. She could see that piece of cloud wasn’t going to hold much longer. “Clou…” she started to yell before a far greater danger presented itself. Near the surface of the cloud a dull glow appeared, created by the intense charge… ‘It’s gonna blow!’ Without sparing a moment longer Silverbolt folded her wings and dived, covering the distance in a matter of seconds as the glow grew brighter and began sparking dangerously.

‘Just a little further…’ Silverbolt was just twenty feet away now.

A lightning bolt shot out of the cloud, missing the cowering stallion by scant inches.

‘I’m coming…hold on!’ Silverbolt stretched out her forelegs and impacted the rookie pegasus in his barrel, dissipating the cloud and jolting him to flight. “Go! Get out and don’t stop flying!” She screamed as she shoved him hard, forcing his wings to work.

‘Right, my tur…’ Silverbolt angled her wings and turned herself to fly away from the monstrous cloud.

She never made it.

A tiny sliver of static electricity arced from the cloud and hit her between her wings, momentarily paralysing her flight muscles.

Frozen, Silverbolt turned in mid-air, her momentum carrying her around to face the cloud.

The sparking cloud, unable to hold it, discharged a class ten lightning bolt.

Paralysed there was nowhere for Silverbolt to go.

‘Wily…’

She barely had the time to see it coming. Within zero point two of a second the electrostatic surge hit the pegasus square in the chest, just inches below her heart. A microsecond later and one hundred and ninety thousand volts at over two hundred thousand amps blasted through her body.

Not even a second later it was over.

Silverbolt fell from the sky.

~ ~ ~

Ms. Raid, Our investigation to date. We followed up on the coffee shop where they remember Ms. Darkstar being there, but nothing usual about her. When pressed he did say she pranked him, which is common, with a comment on the free donut and coffee, while he claims to have only given her a coffee. We have requested that the hospital do a deeper toxicology test on Ms. Darkstar's blood from her admittance.

Mr. Front was not at home, but we did locate him in Las Pegasus. The hotel said he had checked in there last Wednesday. We were unable to speak with him at this time. Mr. Front has one 'drunken in public' citation, but no arrest record. There was no records in regards to Ms. Wildfire and Mr. Front. Most of Ms. Wildfire's issues were with the University.

We have sent the DNA samples retrieved from Ms. Darkstar to the Equstrian database, and expect it will take a few days for further information. Unfortunately, as expected, there have been no eye witness accounts for Friday night when Ms. Darkstar was found.

Will keep you up to date, Detective Hoofbeat, CRPD.

With a wide nasty devious smile on her muzzle Amethyst Glory logged off from her emails. This email, forwarded to her from one of the ‘associates’ of the moronic stallion Cold Front, made her Tuesday morning. That Cold Front had nurtured a lasting association with a pony within the Canterlot Royal Police Department was displaying a stroke of genius she had sincerely thought beyond him.

Whomever this ‘Nightstick’ stallion was, to Amethyst he was clearly the brains of his friends. She was pleased that this email confirmed, to her in any case, that the matter with the white unicorn was resolved. Closing down the police trail assured there would be no follow up investigations, effectively secured all possible loose ends. Of course, the forwarded email had been saved for future use, her security, in case there would be any repercussions.

With that piece of business attended to and taken care of, Amethyst turned her attention to the two other ponies in her office; her two lieutenants, Lotus Stripes, as ever sat on the seating pad to her right, and likewise to her left was sat Amber Leaves. Literally as different as chalk and cheese; Lotus, the huge green earth pony, sat immobile on his pad. For all intents he could’ve been a statue. Amber, the orange unicorn, on the other hoof was moving around on her pad, her forehooves stepping in place from one to the other in time with her heartbeat. The one thing they had in common was that neither of them were able to lift their heads and look the director in the face.

“Why?” Amethyst let the simple question hang in the air as she leant forward so her elbows of her forelegs were resting on her desk and her hooves were under her chin.

Casting a furtive glance at each other with a shake of their heads, Lotus and Amber remained silent. They both knew full well to what the director referred.

Upon receiving no answer, Amethyst scowled deeply at the two other ponies. “Why…” she asked again, in a dangerously silky voice, “Is it not broken yet?” Pausing for a moment she levitated her glasses off of her muzzle to clean them before delicately replacing them. “Furthermore…it has refused to write the letters I have requested.” Amethyst lowered her muzzle and looked at them both over her half-moon glasses. “I am disappointed. Very. Disappointed.”

Still Lotus and Amber sat in silence. An uneasy, worried silence. A ‘disappointed’ Amethyst Glory was something neither of them wanted. At all.

“Tell me,” Amethyst asked quietly, “What are you going to do to make me a happy pony?”

When Lotus didn’t answer, Amber Leaves cleared her throat, drawing the director’s attention. After receiving a raised eyebrow to continue the amber unicorn drew a deep breath as she phrased her reply in her head. “With respect, Warden, I believe we are taking the wrong approach with this one.”

Amethyst contemplated this for a brief moment she nodded to the other mare. “Elaborate, please, Miss Leaves.”

Fully aware of the hateful stare being directed at her from Lotus, and the scrutiny now coming from her boss, Amber almost balked. Doing her best to push the huge green earth pony out of her mind she instead focused on the intense stare of the purple unicorn. “Well…so far we have concentrated on physically hurting he…it.” She corrected herself just in time, “We have hurt it, threatened it, punished and rewarded it, to little or no result. It…It has quite a tolerance to physical pain I’ve rarely seen before, it’s like its proud, of what it can take.”

Amethyst sighed deeply as she cut across her. “I am aware of this, Miss Leaves. You have a solution, yes?”

“Yes Warden,” Amber nodded, “I…I believe I have.” She took another deep breath, “I think it’s time we concentrate on picking apart any mental issues it might have, phobias, fears, insecurities…and wear it down that way.”

“Hmm…” Amethyst considered this, “Your idea has merit, Miss Leaves. However, I need its will broken, not reduced to a vegetable.”

“Yes Warden.” Amber retreated to her seating pad and resumed her pacing from one hoof to the other.

“Now…these letters. I want them written by tonight. Mr. Stripes, take its left wing and break it piece by piece until it agrees to write them. When it has written them, and only when it has, you may use it to pleasure yourself.”

Now Lotus looked up and smiled his sick twisted smile. “Yes Warden.”

~ ~ ~

From her class room window Wildfire watched it happen. She saw her mum hanging uselessly in the air. She saw the cumulonimbus discharge its lightning bolt. Within a split second later she saw her mother illuminated against the huge charcoal cloud, saw her wings spasm out wards as the massively powerful electrostatic surge hit her mum square in the chest.

In less time than it took to blink her brown eyes it was over.

Wildfire watched helplessly as her mum fell from the sky.

“Mum!” Wildfire had leapt over several intervening desks to pound impotently on the double-glazed class room window. “Mum!” By now everypony in the class were pressed against the glass, avidly watching what was happening. “Mum pull up!” Wildfire screamed at the glass.

Silverbolt fell from the sky.

“Mum please!”

Lower and lower the pegasus fell, her wings stuck out at odd unnatural angles, the ground rushing up to meet her.

“Mum!”

From where the class room was situated on the first floor of the school building, Wildfire and the whole class had a clear view of the nearby sports field. Silverbolt dropped like a stone, lower and lower, until finally she hit the playing field. Wildfire felt her teacher’s hoof at her shoulder.

“Mum!”

“Mum!”

“Mum!” Wildfire jerked herself awake in her cell, lifting her head from her tiny shelf of a bed. Breathing heavily she shifted her weight to her left to relieve the pressure she felt on her cracked right ribs. Her right wing, broken four days earlier had, mercifully at last, been placed in a rough cast and bandaged tight to her barrel. ‘Took them long enough though…’ Wildfire though resentfully, thinking of the whole day they had left her whimpering on the floor of her cell.

Automatically upon waking up Wildfire reached her left forehoof under her bed and felt around for her book.  Nudging it with her hoof she smiled and pulled it up to her bed. With the memory of her mum’s death still in her mind Wildfire opened the black leather cover and flipped through the parchment pages of her book until she reached her mum’s section. She found the poem she had written out in her math class that morning so long ago. Simply titled, ‘Thunderstorms’, she lowered her head to the page and from memory recited the poem.

“she loved the rain

the splitter splatter sound

every drop makes

were music to her ears

she loved the thunder

the ferocity of its roar

gave her the strength

to hold on for a while more

she loved the lightning

the beauty of each stroke

containing the lethal power to hurt and kill

yet remain in inexplicable beauty

in short she loved thunderstorms

a mixture of rain thunder and lightning

just like her inner conflict of thoughts

and emotional turmoil

she compared herself to thunderstorms

not that she was a beauty

but she believed that

it depicted the words she wanted to say

she loved them so much

she chose to die on the day

there was a thunderstorm outside

pouring out things she never said”.

Only this time, the poem had its end.

“Why mum?” Wildfire asked bitterly into her book. “Why did you leave me?” She sniffled, her shoulders rolling with her grief. Silence. Of course silence was her reply. Nothing ever answered her, and she knew nothing ever would.

“AAAAGH!” In a fit of temper she seized her book and threw it to the floor of her cell. “I hate you! It’s all your fault!” She screamed as she heard the book hit the tiles. Slumping back to her relatively uninjured left side she thumped the wall with her hooves, overwhelmed with the anger and pain running through her. “Damn you mum!” She yelled as she thumped the tiles with her right hoof, causing it to bleed.

Just then she heard the metallic grating sound of the lock turning in her cell door. She didn’t whimper. She didn’t get up, gasp or flinch as she heard the door swing open. From the heavy thudding hoof-steps she knew it was Lotus who was entering her cell. She could tell he was alone, and from the quickness of which he slammed the door shut behind him she knew he was eager.

Her ears swivelled and followed the hulking stallion as he walked alongside her bed and dropped the food bowl in front of her. Breathing in through her nose she couldn’t smell the now-familiar celery. Sniffing at it again she wrinkled her nose and fought the urge to retch. Whatever the hay this was smelt truly awful. “Wh-What…what’s…this?” She asked hesitantly, bracing herself for a stiff punch that never came.

“You’ll see, little bitch, when you’re hungry enough.” Came the nasty reply to her left side.

“It stinks.”

Lotus chuckled, imagining what her screams would sound like in but a moment. “The dogs don’t complain, bitch.” He laughed at the noticeable hitch in the pegasus’s breath. “Now…” he said simply as he laid fresh paper and a pen under her muzzle. “You have letters to write for Warden Glory.”

“No.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Without any warning he moved his left forehoof across his chest, almost touching his right shoulder, and swiped it hard in a descending motion that impacted just behind Wildfire’s left ear. Momentarily stunned she wasn’t able to react when she felt his right forehoof seize the primaries of her left wing and drag them downwards to the floor.

“Aaah…” with a pained gasp she felt his heavy right hoof step on her extended feathers, trapping her wing in its outstretched position and keeping it taught. All too late she realised what was about to happen. Ineffectually she tried to struggle, but ceased almost immediately when slivers of pain shot up her wing bone. “N-No…no, please…please don’t, I…I’ll write!” Wildfire started to beg, desperate not to feel this excruciating pain again. “Please…I’ll write whatever you want, I swear!”

“Oh…I know you will, little bitch, and you’ll do it with another broken wing.” He smirked, watching the delicious sight of her squirming for a second more before he bought his left hoof crashing into her left wing.

~ ~ ~

One forty in the afternoon on Thursday the twenty fourth of September, and the warm autumnal sun shone through the double glazed windows of coma room five zero one, giving light and warmth to the two occupants inside. One, a white coated unicorn mare with a long grey mane, lay in her bed nearest the large window unmoving in the same position she had been in for the past seven months. The times Darkstar had moved was when the nurses had come in to exercise her legs for her. Nineteen when she had been admitted being only an hour from death following what could only be described as a most horrific attack, the first week of July had seen her twentieth birthday come and gone in the coma room. Though the birthday banner was long gone by now, the birthday cards from Air Raid; her brother Brightstar and now fiancé Moonbeak, Cyclone, Slingshot, even from the hospital staff Aqua Splash, Sunny Hills and Pureheart, were still there arranged on the window sill.

The other occupant of room five zero one was currently stretched out full length on her own bed, lime green muzzle deep in her lunch. Eating with the ferocity of one who hadn’t eaten in weeks Air Raid attacked her deep seasonal salad bowl of; cubed and roasted butternut squash, watercress, chickpeas, hazelnuts and crumbled feta with a vengeance. Against the onslaught of the twenty three year old pegasus the poor salad never stood a chance. Although her muzzle was splattered with little bits of squash, her blue mane was held out of the way in a high pony tail. She minded to keep up her appearance and keep herself looking tidy, ever since Moonbeak had bent her over her bed and spanked her lime green flanks a deep red.

Sparing her unconscious friend a brief sideways look from the depths of her bowl Air Raid smiled. After so many months the casts on her broken legs were gone, the bones all healed. The many bandages covering her numerous other wounds were all off, her abrasions had healed perfectly. Other than the stump of a horn poking through her grey mane and her fancy platinum inhibitor, it looked for all Equestria like she was asleep.

Turning her attention back to the now visible bottom of her bowl Air Raid spied out a cluster of hazelnuts and a piece of feta. Determined to scoop them all up she dived in. So determined was she to get this last mouthful she entirely missed the white unicorn flex her left forehoof and her eyelids twitch.

“Air Raid!” The lime green mare jumped so high she almost flew as the door to the room burst open and Nurse Sunny Hills rushed in, galloping straight to Darkstar.

Composing herself Air Raid looked up, the piece of feta in her mouth. “Whussup?” She asked as her friend moaned softly from her bed.

“Motion sensors went off.” Sunny explained as she busied herself around the bed, checking her pulse and temperature. “Quick, hold her, talk to her while I run her through her exercises.” Sunny instructed, her magic glow surrounding the waking mare.

“Darkie! Oh crap...Darkie it’s me, Raid!” She shouted, almost knocking her empty salad bowl to the floor as she bounced off of her bed and bounded over to her bedside. “You're ok!” Her voice was just shy of an excited yell in the white ear as she held her left hoof in hers.

Sunny Hills pushed a button on the wall behind the bed to activate the emergency intercom system. “Dr. Splash, Dr. Stormer to room 501A immediately, please.”

Tears of happiness were rolling down Air Raid’s green cheeks, a barely contained smile on her muzzle. “I can’t believe it! Darkie I knew you'd wake up!” In these brief short seconds she felt the weight of the past seven months-worth of worry, stress and uncertainty slough off her like a snake shedding its skin, all the doubt, fear and misgivings she’d had suddenly didn’t seem to matter very much right now.

Darkstar’s eyelids continued to flutter to a half open position, her yellow eyes struggling to focus on where she was. Lying there in a semi awake state the one thing she was aware of was the voice in her left ear. She couldn’t turn her head to see, but she knew who it was. “Uuugh...R-Raid...” she croaked out in a whisper, her voice not sounding like her own.

“Hmm…MMmmm…yep…” Sunny muttered to herself as she checked off some notes on the chart she held in her magic. “Breathing normal, pupil response normal. Caution her to not use her magic.”

Air Raid leant a little closer, squeezing Darkstar’s left hoof as she did so. “Sweetie,,,it’s me...listen, don’t try casting anything, alright?”

Darkstar tried to turn her head to the left to face her friend, “Raid…car...amel...Raid…” she groaned, her voice still sounding strange in her own ears.

At that moment, Dr. Barn Stormer, a pale blue unicorn stallion and duty physician, cantered excitedly into the room, returning Air Raid’s raised hoof of greeting. Over the past months he’d shared many off duty black coffees with the lime green mare in the cafeteria, and found her quite erudite and charming. “What have we here Nurse Hills?” He asked in a rich Vanhoovan accent as he came up to the bed, “Oooh, she is waking up, is she?”

Air Raid lowered her hoof from greeting the doctor and gave her waking friend a puzzled look, “Caramel, sweetie?”

Darkstar managed a brief nod, “Donut...was...uuuh...donut…”

“You want a donut?” Air Raid asked, making a mental note to buy Darkstar her own bodyweight in caramel donuts now she was awake and more or less herself.

Darkstar shook her head slightly, a grimace on her face. “No...Java...” she closed her eyes a few moments then opened them again, trying to focus on the strange room she was in.

Air Raid took her hoof again, stroking her mane, “Yes, hun. We'll go to Java's as soon as they let you.”

Darkstar sighed deeply, “You’re…not listening...” she finally managed to focus the room around her, to look beyond the edge of the bed, as she did so her yellow eyes went wide as saucers, her pupils shrinking in fear. “Nyati stallion!” She squeaked, her voice breaking as she tried to push herself back and away.

“What’s happening?” Dr. Aqua Splash asked as she entered the coma room, she noticed Dr. Stormer back up and step away from the bed, the barest hint of a frown on his pale blue face. “Oh, she is awake.” She smiled with relief in her eyes, grateful that was all the emergency was.

“Yes, and I've triggered a negative reaction.” Dr. Stormer quickly explained, “I'll let you take over Dr. Splash.”

Suddenly concerned for her fragile friend, Air Raid squeezed her hoof to try and reassure her everything was okay. “Darkie, it’s…”

“Kupata mbali! Kupata mbali na mimi!” Darkstar screamed in utter terror, interrupting and shaking her foreleg free from her concerned friend’s grasp and pointing it at the pale blue stallion.

“I'm sure that is Zebran,” Sunny Hills muttered, brushing her white mane out of her eyes as she observed Darkstar’s terrified reaction and scribbled fresh notes on her clipboard. “I can get her an interpreter.”

“She uh...languages was her Uni major...” Air Raid explained hesitantly, “Darkie, it's me, it’s Raid...sweetie what's wrong?”

If Darkstar heard the lime green pegasus at all she gave no sign, she just stared fearfully at the stallion as he turned and trotted out of room five zero one. “Get…away…from me…” she said quietly, breathing heavily between each word as Aqua Splash calmly and slowly moved alongside the yellow nurse at the right side of the bed, opposite to Air Raid, their backs to the window.

“He's gone, Darkie he's gone, sweetie…” Air Raid whispered, trying to calm the white unicorn down.

With her breathing steadily returning to its normal state Darkstar weakly pushed herself up to a half-sitting, half laying down position, her back supported by the large pillow under her. Hesitantly she looked, really looked, at Air Raid sat to her right. “Raid...the green one?” She asked, through a sudden fog of confusion. “And…not the green one,” she said confidently as she looked over at the note-taking unicorn nurse.

“I have it nurse.” Aqua said as she took the chart from her colleague with a definite non-to-subtle nod of her head in the nurse’s station.

“I'll be monitoring from the station.” Sunny announced as she exited the room with a flounce of her white tail.

Darkstar’s brow creased as she watched her leave, “Wait…wh...where's Wily going?” She asked uncertainly, confusing the nurse with her old friend.

Air Raid shot her a worried look, “That's not her, Darkie.”

Thoroughly confused, the white mare gave her friend a questioning look, “It's not? But…she's yellow?”

Air Raid gave her a look full of sympathy, “No sweetie...Wily's still missing.”

“Missing?”

Trying her best, but ultimately failing to hold a sigh of frustration, instead she smiled a fake smile to cover. “Yes Darkie, she's...still missing.”

“We need to find her…” Darkstar cocked her head, a look of confusion on her face, “No, no finding...but we need...NO! No finding, we know better...they'll hurt us!”

Air Raid was about to ask her what she meant when she saw Aqua Splash hold up a paper with 'ask her who hurt her' written on it. “Who...Darkie, who hurt you?” She asked.

Darkstar looked at her friend, “The donut...it was the donut! We didn't think, it looked so good, it hurt us...yes, the donut did it, NO....it was cold, so cold...winter came, and the cold hurt us!”

Lowering the paper and scribbling some more, the doctor held it up. 'Just talk to her. Want me to call Brightstar?'

Air Raid gave her a worried look. “Who...who's 'us', hun?” She asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Darkstar looked at Air Raid suspiciously, her yellow eyes narrowing, “Don't tell her, she'll hurt us...it's Raid we can tell her, DON'T tell her.” Seemingly arguing with herself she eventually glanced back at the worried pegasus with a wide smile, “There's just me, Raid.”

“Um...yeah, Doc...you’d better call Bright.” Air Raid said absently.

Moving to the far corner of the room, standing next to one of the empty beds, Doctor Splash dialled the contact number on her chart, hoping the pony would pick up.

Thankfully the phone was answered in two rings, “Y'hello?” Came Brightstar’s deep voice from the other end of the line.

“Mr. Brightstar, this is Doctor Aqua Splash.” She introduced herself, “I have news. Your sister is awake, but she is still trying to orientate herself.”

Brightstar could barely contain his joy, “Darkie's awake? Really?”

“Yes, just moments ago, Ms. Raid is talking with her, but she is still quite disoriented.”

“Disoriented, how bad?” Brightstar asked, his initial joy waning somewhat at the doctor’s tone. “Has she said who hurt her?” He asked, eager to know just who it was who had done this to his sister.

Aqua shook her head, even though the gesture couldn’t be seen, “No sir, nor do I expect her to do so anytime soon. It will take time to evaluate her condition now she is awake.”

“But...” he started before his voice went faint as his attention was distracted by his two kittens’ latest drag out fight. “Athena! You leave Zephie alone!” He yelled before lifting the phone back to his ear. “But…she's awake...surely she knows who hurt her?”

“Mr Brightstar,” Aqua Splash sighed deeply, it was never easy with emotional relatives, “She did wake up from a seven long comma just moments ago, so far she thinks she just left a coffee shop.”

Forcing himself calm, Brightstar apologised, “Sorry...sorry Doctor, how is she?” He asked as he heard Air Raid’s faint voice in the background ‘you're not an earth pony, Darkie, you can’t use your magic’; followed by his sister’s voice asking, ‘why?’ Then she spoke louder ‘why!?’

“She is panicked, I'm letting Ms. Raid bring her down, but we will use a sedative if she loses control.”

Brightstar didn’t have to think, “We'll come over,” he started before once again going faint as he just caught his daughter taking a swipe at her younger brother. “Right, time out ‘Thena!” The royal blue unicorn stated as he seized her in his magic. “Is there anything we should know?”

“Nothing I can add, I'm sure Ms. Raid will contact you.” The doctor said kindly, “It will take time to get a full evaluation. You've waited seven months, we should know something when you get here.”

Brightstar smiled in spite of how he felt, “Very true, thank you Doctor Splash, we'll get...” whatever he was about to ‘get’ was forgotten when he heard Air Raids’ voice, again in the background, ‘Darkie please, sweetie’ followed again by his sister, this time Darkstar sounded agitated, ‘Wewe si Air Raid! Wewe ni tricking us!’

“Very good then Mr. Brightstar.” Aqua Splash said calmly, giving no indication to the raised voices behind her. “I'll let Ms. Raid know that you'll be coming to Canterlot.”

“Is she alright?” Brightstar asked, full of concern for his sibling, “I heard her shout…”

At that moment nurse Sunny Hills poked her white-maned head back into the room and, with a brief nod from the neon blue doctor lit her horn, casting a spell that surrounded Darkstar, causing her to glow in her magical grip and then fall fast asleep.

“She is afraid, Mr. Brightstar.” She explained carefully, “She was in a coffee shop and now is here. She speaks Zebran very well, but you can hear she has calmed down.”

Walking straight to the now sleeping unicorn’s bed Sunny Hills held up a yellow hoof for silence before Air Raid could open her mouth say anything.

“She's good at most languages,” Brightstar said quietly by way of explanation, “We majored in them at Uni.”

“Very good then, I need to return to my duties.” Aqua said as she concluded the brief call, “I'll have Ms. Raid contact you. Bye.” Hanging up she finally turned to face back into the coma room. “Clear.” She said with a grateful nod to the nurse for her quick thinking.

“She is trying to force her magic past the inhibitor,” Sunny reported, “I had to sedate her.”

Aqua Splash trotted back over to the bed, replacing the chart at the end there. “Understood, she is panicked. I want a full CAT scan done now.”

Sunny Hills nodded, sending her mop of a white mane into her eyes, which she brushed aside, “Okay, I'll get her prepped.”

Turning to Air Raid, she asked, “What is your opinion? You've known her for a long time.”

Now that was a very good question, one the lime green mare wasn’t at all sure she had the answer to. “My opinion?” She asked rhetorically as she watched the nurse busy herself around her friend’s bed, “If she hadn't just woke up I'd say she was pranking us. That...” she pointed to Darkstar’s sleeping body, “I don't know who that is, but she's mad as a box of frogs.

“Hey…just because she is sedated, doesn't mean she can't hear you.” Sunny sneered with thinly veiled contempt.

“I’m sorry...it...she's, just not what I expected, that's all…” Air Raid apologised, looking away from the irate unicorn.

“Could it be magic feedback, do we think?” Aqua wondered aloud.

Nurse Sunny Hills nodded her agreement, “It’s possible, but this is more a self-denial coming to realization. I recommend…wait…” she trailed off as a thought struck her.

Aqua Splash smiled to her nurse as she had pretty much the same thought. “Yes, she seems adverse to stallions. Ms. Raid, I’m afraid I don't have her sexual orientation on the chart.”

Air Raid replied without thinking, “She...she's straight....but...what was all that 'us' stuff? It was like she was arguing with herself.”

Nurse Hills didn’t look up from her task as she made a few notes on her chart, “That confirms a negative feedback loop, what with the rape and her horn being cut off.”

Aqua turned to Air Raid and laid a comforting hoof on her shoulder. “Yes, she is trying to deny what happened to her. Sort of self-argument over reality. Nurse Hills, can you get me a list of mare psychologists please?”

“Yes doctor.” The nurse added another note to her list of ‘to do’ jobs, “Let me put a sedative in the drip so she stays down for a few hours.”

Aqua smiled, very grateful to have such an efficient nurse under her, “Thank you. Ms. Raid, now would be a good time to take a break and talk with your friend, Mr. Brightstar. As of now we can't really elaborate on what is going on. After the scan we may know more.”

“Yeah...I uh...I could use a cafeteria coffee I guess.” She stood from her seating pad with a reluctant smile. As much as she wanted a black coffee, the doctor’s hoof felt really good on her shoulder. “I'll call Bright while I'm there.”

“It will be about two hours to finish the scan and another one to two before she wakes again.” Aqua said gently as she stood with her.

Air Raid shifted uncomfortably on her hooves as she stretched her legs from being sat down for so long. “Doc...I’m sorry for my mood, it's just...waiting seven months and now she's asleep again.”

“At least you won't have to wait another seven months.” Aqua said sympathetically. “Now is the longer time of recovery. Will she be moving to Fillydelphia?”

That made Air Raid pause for a moment. Throughout these past seven months she had assumed, wrongly maybe, that when her friend awoke she would be staying with her. She hadn’t considered the possibility that she’d want to move. “Maybe, though she's lived in Canterlot all her life, I read on the Interweb it's good for coma patients to have familiar surroundings.”

“Yes, and family. If you can be family then it should be alright.” She said as another nurse entered the coma room to help get Darkstar ready to move. Air Raid watched them quietly as they both worked like a well-oiled machine; they didn’t get in each other’s way, they knew just what they were doing, and working as one they swiftly got the prep work done – Tartarus, a couple of times they didn’t even look at each other, they trusted themselves in what they were doing – as she watched Air Raid was reminded very strongly of the way she and Slingshot had operated together.

Air Raid snapped from her reverie, “I guess me and Bright need to have a chat about that,” she gave a sad smile at the thought of Slingshot, and how poorly their last meeting had ended. “Well, coffee time!”

~ ~ ~

Air Raid was still thinking about Slingshot as she trotted into the hospital cafeteria, idly she wondered if her co-driver had made good on his threat to find another driver by now. Deep in her gut she hoped he hadn’t. What they had wasn’t just driver and co-driver, they were a team. Further thoughts of the stubborn pink stallion were wrestled from her mind by that flighty Mistress known as ‘coffee’, especially the wonderful, delicious scents coming from the Starcolts.

“Hey Cinnamon!” She called out with a friendly smile as she approached the counter.

“Hi there, enjoy your lunch?” Cinnamon chirped happily, her face all smiles. “Black coffee and three sugars?” She asked, already switching on the machine to prepare the order without waiting to be told.

Air Raid grinned a wide grin, “Anypony would think you knew me, hun.” She looked about as a sudden thought struck her, “Hey...where's that orange waitress? Autumn...something...I haven’t seen her about for a while.”

Busy prepping the black coffee the waitress released a tearful sob, her tears rolling down her cheeks. “I don't know, no one knows. She never picked up her foal at camp...” she sniffed, wiping her face with her foreleg and slapping on a fake smile. “Let me get your coffee.” Another few moments later and Cinnamon served up coffee, still with the smile firmly in place, though it clearly didn’t reach her eyes. “Here you go, hot and fresh.”

Air Raid sniggered, “Just like me!” She was about to flash the waitress a smile when she could’ve sworn she sniffed again. “Hey...Cin, you ok, hun?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine, just thinking of Soft Wind. He's only six and staying with his aunt now.” She replied, collecting herself with a practised ease as she moved to the next customer, all smiles and sunshine. “Hello, what can I get for you today?”

“Damn...” Air Raid said aloud under her breath as she turned and took her coffee to what had become her table in the corner of the cafeteria; so regular a feature was she in the hospital. “I liked her too…a lot.” Taking her familiar seating pad, her spot, by the table she took a mouthful of her black coffee. ‘Gonna be fun calling Bright…’ she thought as the bitter sweet liquid slid easily down her throat, leaving its aftertaste in her mouth. Delving a hoof into her bag she retrieved her phone and scrolled through her contacts to Brightstar’s number. ‘Here we go…’ and pressed the green ‘dial’ button.

“Brighstar's phone.” Moonbeak’s high shrill voice answered the call after just three rings. “He's tied up at the moment and this is Moonbeak, how can I help you?”

Air Raid sniggered, her mood lifted instantly as she knew that the unicorn was most likely literally as well as figuratively tied up. “Hey Moon, it's your favourite pegasus!”

“Raid, it is good to hear from you again.” Her voice went faint then for a moment, which told Raid she was talking to somepony in the room, “Love, Raid is calling back. Yes I was coming, but we can do that later.” Then only slightly louder she said, “Here is Bright.”

“Thanks...hey Bright, I assume I'm interrupting something really fun?” The lime green mare asked, still giggling like a filly.

Brightstar flicked the phone to speaker, “Yes, but this is important, what's the matter?”

Finally recovering from her giggle fit Air Raid took a sip of her coffee, “They've sedated Darkie, they're giving her a CAT scan thing right now.” She explained, filling her friend in on what had happened.

“They tried that on Bright, but they could find nothing wrong.” Came Moonbeak’s voice dripping with sarcasm from the background, “They could find nothing at all.”

Quick as a flash Brightstar retorted, “I told them they were scanning the wrong area, but they insisted on scanning my head.”

Air Raid almost spat the mouthful of coffee she was attempting to swallow. “Anyway, you're coming over? I think Darkie should see you.” She said with a snigger, having won the brief battle to spit or swallow.

“I have a gig I can't skip on Saturday.” The griffon whispered in Bright’s ear, kissing up it to affectionately nip the tip. “You go, and the kittens and I will join you on Monday.”

“Alright my love,” Brightstar said as he gently returned the kiss, “Raid, I'll be on the overnight express. Hey…how was she, really?”

Air Raid took a good long moment to think about her answer to that, draining the rest of her mug as she did so. “She's....I dunno, Bright. One minute she's ‘Darkie’, our Darkie, then the next she's like that Gollum from that film Wily liked.”

“Really?” The royal blue stallion asked, his voice about to break with emotion as Moonbeak choose that moment to wrap her powerful dark grey wing around her fiancé, “Doctor said she was 'orienting herself'…” He said as he nestled into the warm feathery hug.

“Well, you'll see when you get here mate,” Air Raid replied somewhat vaguely, “I don't want to say anything over the phone now, she’s been out seven months, and it’s only been a few minutes.”

“I'll help you pack.” Moonbeak purred, having no intention of packing just yet as she tenderly nipped her stallion’s shoulder. “You getting a hotel for us?”

“MMmm…Yes, I'll get one sorted.”

“Hey...you can stay at mine?” Air Raid offered.

“Raid...no offense, your apartment is a huge wash basket of laundry without Wily.”

Air Raid was about to come back with an amazingly witty and pertinent retort when she actually remembered the state of her apartment. “Yeah...good point, well made…well if you're done trashing my place, I'll let you get back your sexy times.”

“See you in the morning, Raid.”

~ ~ ~

Three hours later and the late Thursday afternoon saw Air Raid shooting across the white marbled floor of the Canterlot Royal Hospital’s reception so fast she was practically a blur. Casting a glance upwards from her ever-growing stack of paperwork Nurse Pureheart gave her a welcoming wave from her desk as she drew level with it. Screeching to a halt she returned the wave and changed direction to head over to the receptionist. “Hey Pure!” She greeted when she was a few steps away, “Good afternoon?”

Pureheart nodded with a smile, “Indeed it is, Ms. Darkstar should be coming out of sedation in about thirty minutes.”

“Awesome!” Air Raid pumped her hoof in utter joy. “Hey Pure, look at these, I bought her something of hers.” Reaching a lime green hoof into her saddlebag she pulled out the set of crimson red silk socks with three black stars on the side and showed them to the nurse.

Pureheart giggled behind her hoof, “I'm sure they will appreciate that in the cafeteria.”

“Hey now,” Air Raid smiled readily, “Darkie'll do it to, she'll happily dance anywhere.”

“I look forward to that and the many, many coffees you owe me.” Nurse Pureheart gave a light tinkling laugh as she returned to her stack of work.

“Deal, Pure!” Air Raid flashed her a smile as she headed off down the winding corridors, by now she was practically on muscle memory autopilot as she climbed the stairs without necessarily looking where she was going, back to coma room five zero one. “At least...I hope she'll dance anywhere…” she thought aloud to nopony in particular as she alighted the fifth floor.

“Hi!” So lost in her thoughts was she that she didn’t notice a sun yellow shape appear so suddenly at her right side, so unexpectedly the pegasus jumped a clear foot in the air, and came down breathing hard. “After you check in on Ms. Darkstar could you please go to Doctor Splash’s office?” The shape asked as it manifested itself into the yellow unicorn nurse.

“Eeek!” Air Raid let out the shriek, though if questioned later she’d deny it, and immediately tried to cover with a smile. “Oh, um...yeah sure...is everything ok?”

Sunny Hills placed her hoof on the green mare’s foreleg, “I think it best if the doctor explains it, Ms. Raid.”

“Alrighty then,” Air Raid passed by the yellow unicorn with barely a nod as she once again entered what had been her second home. 'Once more unto the breach', she thought, a little sadly.

Darkstar was sleeping peacefully on her side, snoring ever so gently with her back facing towards the large window. Carefully, as if she was afraid her hoof-steps would wake her up, Air Raid walked up to the left side of the bed and took her seating pad there. As she gently stroked her grey mane she noticed the inhibitor was different than before. It was still platinum, but there were little gold lettering inscribed on the surface. “You're just trying to see how many of those you can go through, aren't you?”

There was no response from the sleeping mare, of course there wasn’t. Air Raid wasn’t expecting one, of course. By now after seven months she was used to sitting there beside her friend talking to herself.

Once more Air Raid reached her lime green hoof into her saddlebag and almost reverently laid the crimson red socks across her friend’s fetlocks. “I bought your socks...you remember your special 'desire spell sexy socks', right?” She remembered them, of course, and the dance Darkstar had performed back at Dusk’s suite. Without meaning to and before she realised she was weeping. That was the last time they’d all been together in their little group.

In spite of her melancholy Air Raid grinned as another memory came to the fore, one of them all passed out in a drunken pile in Dusk’s suite, all in one great pile on his huge bed. “Last time you slept that deeply we'd been at the moonshine all day, remember?” Her smile faded a little at the sheer lack of response. “Oh...please remember Darkie, please!” Stroking a hoof through her grey mane an idea came to her. “Here...this might help...” she carefully slid the silken socks onto Darkstars's forelegs. “See, just like old times, right?”

As Air Raid continued to tenderly stroke Darkstars's mane she was reminded of the night she and Wildfire had shared on that low flying cloud; it had been over a year now since that first date. “Oh brave new world

that has such ponies in it…” she whispered, thinking of the line from ‘The Tempest’ that she had misquoted. Wildfire hadn’t believed her when Air Raid had told her she had a literacy degree. With her mind on Shakespony’s play she leant to her white ear and recited one of her favourite passages, one she had quoted to Wildfire after she had passed out on the cloud.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

Sighing deeply Air Raid slid off of her seating pad and turned to leave the coma room, wondering what the doctor could possibly have to tell her now. She highly doubted she could take any more bad news with regards to her friend; already she wasn’t the mare she had been before. ‘You selfish bitch…’ the thought came unbidden to her as she turned into the corridor leading to the doctor’s office. Was she selfish? For wanting her friend back? Perhaps she was. Was she selfish for feeling cheated that after investing so many months her friend wasn’t the same? Maybe she was.

So busy was she with internally debating with herself as to whether she was selfish or not that she didn’t realise she was face to face with the closed office door until she actually was. Reluctantly she raised a forehoof and hesitantly knocked on the door.

“Enter,” came the doctor’s muffled reply from within.

Cautiously hoofing open the office door Air Raid entered, walking as if each leg was attached to a leaden weight that was each hoof. “You wanted to see me, Doc?”

Aqua Splash didn’t look up straight away, she finished typing the bottom of the page she was working on before placing the sheet on her ‘done’ pile. “Yes, please have a seat,” she indicated one of the two seating pads on the other side of her desk.

Air Raid moved slowly to the seating pad nearest the far wall of the spacious two tone dark and light blue office, if her hooves were leaden before, now they were ton weights. Aqua stood from her own pad and moved from behind her desk to sit next to the lime green pegasus. “The CAT scan came back with nothing unexpected.”

Air Raid struggled to meet the neon blue doctor’s eyes as she spoke. “So, uh...what’s the score?” She asked uncertainly, “Sunny said had something to share?”

“Have you stopped in to see her before coming to my office?” The doctor asked as she laid a reassuring hoof on Air Raid’s own.

“Yeah, she looked like she did on 'moonshine day'.”

“The sedation is strong, she will come around in…” Aqua paused and looked up to check the wall clock. “About fifteen minutes. She has a level eight inhibitor on now. It has a feedback relief. Now when she tries to force her magic it will have a calming effect instead of an agitation effect like earlier.”

Air Raid smiled and relaxed somewhat, both from the relative good news and from the surprisingly soft hoof stroking her own, “Oh yeah, I was going to ask about that shiny new accessory Darkie was wearing.”

Reaching across her desk with a wing Aqua retrieved her clipboard full of notes. “Now...I have a list of mare psychologists for you to choose from; Ponyville there is Ruby Tuesday, Vanhoover there’s Lighting Bug, Las Pegasus has River, in Trottingham we have Black Quill and finally in Manehattan there is both Requiem and Sureheart.” Pausing, Aqua Splash tore off the piece of paper with the list of names and contact details on it and passed it in her hoof to the green mare. “After talking with Doctor Dreamweaver, a stallion here at the hospital, he recommends either Lighting Bug or Black Quill for this case. Just thought you should have a solid list to choose from. You can pass this to her brother also. Distance is the problem. He had nothing negative to say about Ruby Tuesday who is close.”

Gratefully Air Raid took the list and folded it away into her saddlebag. “Is there none here in Canterlot?” She asked, hoping that there would be.

Aqua shook her head for a definite ‘no’. “Doctor Dreamweaver wouldn't recommend any, as most here are stallions and, as we saw earlier, Ms. Darkstar has an aversion to stallions.”

Air Raid ran her free hoof, the one not being held by the doctor, through her blue mane and snorted out a short laugh. “Heh...no, I don't think Darkie would like that. It looks like being Ponyville then.”

“I'll give you all the contact information after we’re done.” Aqua flicked through another page of her notes and again she squeezed Air Raid’s foreleg. “Now as to why, which I'm sure you're wanting to ask.”

Now the lime green pegasus looked around a little uncomfortably. “That uh…was going to be my next question, yeah.”

Nodding sympathetically Aqua took a deep breath, “Based on the episode she had and results of the scan Doctor Dreamweaver believes she is trying to repress what happened to her by blaming it on a different mare. He wouldn’t say it is Dissociative Identity Disorder, but thinks there is a strong case for it. This can happen when a pony tries to disassociate themselves from a very painful memory.”

A little light bulb went off in Air Raid’s head, “That's why she was arguing with herself and thinking she was an earth pony?” She asked, getting a little confident now things were making sense.

“Again, we can't say that definitively. There was a lot of feedback from trying to force her magic with the level seven inhibitor and broken horn. I don't think she is aware her horn has been cut, or is aware on a subconscious level and thus thinks of herself as an earth pony now.” Aqua Splash turned the page over and consulted her notes, this time her breath hitched. She really didn’t want to tell the other pegasus this. “This…this leads me to believe she was awake when they cut off her horn.”

“Sweet Luna…damn...” absently without thinking she moved her right foreleg from the grip of the neon blue doctor and rubbed her hoof along the length of the ugly scar at the base of her left wing. “That must've really hurt.”

Aqua nodded sadly, deciding to keep the knowledge it had been severed with an almost blunt knife, to herself. “Yes, it is cutting into core nerve endings. So, for you it is important to observe, and to be very honest with her to the point of bluntness. How she moves forward is dependent on a lot of factors, but acceptance is a main one.”

Air Raid nodded without looking at the doctor, “I understand Doc, I can be straightforward and candid to the point of indelicacy.”

Aqua got up and made her way back around her desk to her computer. “I would expect no less.”

Air Raid smiled as she stood up from her seating pad. “Have you seen me race?” She asked with a cocked eyebrow and a confident smirk.

“Yes I have.” She said as she logged on her p.c. “I knew you when you first walked in.”

“Then you know I can be hard-hitting when I need to be, Doc.”

Switching through a few screens the doctor jotted down the email addresses and extension numbers of Ruby Tuesday and her staff. “You can always contact me or Nurse Sunny Hills.” She said as she slid the note over the desk. “She is a leading expert on horn injuries.”

Air Raid paused at the office door. “Um...how long will she be here, now she's woke up?”

“As long as she doesn't have a meltdown, she can leave tomorrow morning.” Aqua flicked through to the discharge screen and peoceeded to fill in the general details. “She will be weak and find walking difficult, but she needs to exercise. We did what we could while she was in a comma, but now she needs to put weight on those limbs.”

Still at the door Air Raid asked, “What if she freaks out at my place?”

“Easy, you can bring her back here. Just call nine one one.” Doctor Splash smiled as she filled out the preliminaries of Darkstar’s discharge. “I wish both you and Darkstar well. Don't hesitate to contact us if there is any issues.”

“Thanks, you too.” Then the lime green racer grinned as an idea struck her. “Hey, if you ever want a run up the Long Hill Climb, gimme a bell, my treat.”

“Thank you for the offer, but my administrators would freak over me doing such a thing.”

“So would my sponsors, that’s what makes it fun!” Air Raid giggled as she left the office to go back to coma room five zero one, hopefully for the last time.

~ ~ ~

Brightstar cursed the Canterlot weather ponies, cursed every single one of the whole brigade, battalion, division, he happily damned the whole weather system to the depths of Tartarus as he got out of his cab and stepped into the car park of the Canterlot Royal Hospital. Within milliseconds of exiting the cab he was soaked through to his very bones by the horrendous torrential downpour that hit the ground so hard it bounced knee-high into the air. Lighting his horn with a sigh the royal blue stallion surrounded himself in his bright yellow aura, his magic creating a shield against the staccato drum beat of the rain. Yawning deeply he checked his watch as he started walking slowly towards the imposing edifice before him.

‘Eight a.m.,’ he thought through the fog in his brain. While he was usually well awake by now, what with tending to the two kittens as well as helping his fiancé, lover and Mistress get ready for her workday, the well-travelled journey on the overnight express hadn’t been exactly restful.

Pausing just outside the hospital’s impressively carved white limestone façade Brightstar lit his horn a second time, summoning an extremely hot gust of air that dried him, his saddlebags and his dark grey-and-white collar while the incessant rain continued to impact his shimmering shield. Once the spell was complete and he was suitably dry he floated his phone from his bag and quickly wrote out a text for Air Raid. ‘Walking into the hospital now, meet you on the fifth floor.’

Sitting by Darkstar’s bedside up in room five zero one Air Raid on the other hoof had enjoyed a very pleasant night. Since the white mare had awoken from her sedation at five forty five in the p.m. yesterday afternoon there had been almost no incidents with the troubled unicorn. Now every single wire, tube and needle had been removed from her friend they were sat together on her bed watching the downpour outside. Upon hearing her phone beep the message alert she quickly read it with a smile and slid herself off of the bed.

Immediately Darkstar reacted to the sudden unexpected movement, reaching out a hoof for her. “Raid, where you going?” She asked, not wanting to be alone…she knew bad things happened when she was alone.

Putting her phone back in her bag, Air Raid quickly leant back to the bed and gave her outstretched hoof a bump. “I’m going to meet Bright, he's come to see his sis!”

The suspicious look Darkstar shot her friend didn’t go unnoticed, “Don't be long...yeah don't leave us like you did before, we remember...um, sorry…” she whimpered audibly, suddenly afraid that Air Raid would shout at her, as she pulled her hoof back to her mouth. To her immense relief the green mare simply smiled at her as she turned and left the coma room. ‘She’s up to something…it’s just Raid…DON’T trust her…’

Happy relief was evident all over Brightstar’s face as he saw his friend enter the hospital’s fifth floor reception area. Not as big as the ground floor counterpart it was just as lavishly decorated. “Hey Raid,” he greeted, “Where is Darkie?”

“Hey hun, good trip?” Air Raid asked as she returned the greeting with a bone-crushingly tight hug.

Extricating himself from the fur and feather filled hug Brightstar offered her a smile that in no way whatever reached his yellow eyes. “Long and I didn't sleep well on the train. Let's go, I don't want to wait any longer.”

“Bright…” Air Raid stepped in front of him and put a hoof on the broad dark blue chest, “Just a minute hun, I need to…to warn you…”

“What's wrong?” Brightstar interrupted her, his brain switching from ‘default’ to ‘panic’ mode. “Has something happened!?”

“Hey...ease off the gas there...nothing's happened.” She gave what she hoped was a warm comforting smile as she shook her blue-maned head, “It's just, Darkie, since she woke up, she's a little...unstable.” Taking a deep breath she continued to explain, “She either randomly switches to Zebran, or starts arguing with this 'other self' in her head.”

Brightstar eyed her warily, taking a miniscule step backwards. “Are you saying she is... is crazy?”

“Aqua Splash said it was something called…” she paused for a moment to remember what it was she had been told yesterday. She had been so bombarded with information and various ‘do’s and don’ts’ it was hard to sift through everything. “Ah, yeah, Dissociative Identity Disorder, that’s it. Apparently she's deflecting a repressed harmful memory...but yeah, she sounds pretty crazy, Bright.”

Brightstar fidgeted, his bodyweight pressing against the hoof at his chest in an anxious effort to push past his friend. “I need to see her so I can fix this!” He exclaimed, still panicking.

“How hun? This isn't a quick fix thing...she's hurt up here!” Air Raid used one of her wings, her left, to tap the side of her head.

“I don't care!” Brightstar shouted, little yellow sparks flying from his horn as his panic began to give way to anger.

Air Raid sighed as she moved her left foreleg from his chest and draped it over his shoulder. “I know hun, I know, c'mon.” Her left wing joined her leg, pulling the stallion into a hug. “Just...don't get too close too quick, alright? Unicorn stallions kinda 'set her off', if you know what I mean.”

‘Unicorn stallions set her off?’ The thought stunned the royal blue unicorn to his core. The implication was plain, of course. Brightstar knew just what was meant by that simple sentence. “I'm going to kill him.” He said quietly and simply.

Once more Air Raid sighed. They’d performed this dance so often over the past few months she knew the steps by heart. “No. You. Are. Not!” She thumped his shoulder hard, making him wince. “Bright...look, you can't go after him. We can't touch him. You saw that police email. He was in Las Pegasus with a mare that’s given him an alibi!”

“I don't care anymore!” Brightstar stomped his hoof, “He did this, even if he didn't do it in person.” He was about to stomp his hoof again when he sighed, all his ire seeping out of him like a squeezed sponge. “Fine, fine…I don't want my wedding to be in a jail cell.”

Air Raid gently rubbed her hoof and her wing up and down unicorn’s left side. “I know it was him, you know it was him. All I care about now is Darkie, you and Moon.”

For a few long moments the only sounds between the two very close friends were the sounds of Air Raid shushing and Brightstar weeping quietly into her shoulder. Minutes passed in this manner, the world turned around them, ponies moved past them paying them no mind. Presently Brightstar lifted his head, “I'm good, let's see my sister.”

Air Raid kissed his cheek, kissed away his tears. “Good boy,” she smiled and gave him a little wink. “Now…behave or I'll tell Moony on you.”

“Yeah right,” Brightstar smiled, drying his yellow eyes. “You just want a spanking for being a tattle tale.”

Blushing a very bright red Air Raid muttered, “Maybe,” and was still blushing profusely as she turned and led the way to the coma room.

“Announce me, Raid.” Brightstar whispered with a none too small amount of reticence as he paused and waited outside the room.

“I will...you talk to her as you come in, 'kay?” Air Raid replied as she trotted into the room, making sure she made her presence known, and that the white unicorn could see her well in advance on her way to her bed. Even though she was a mare she was wary of suddenly startling her. “Hey!” She smiled in the manner of one talking to a foal, “I said I'd be back, right?”

Darkstar didn’t return the smile. Briefly she looked at Air Raid as she entered the room, then she looked away out of the window at the pouring rain hitting the glass in a steady rhythm. “I told you she'd come back...so, she'll leave again, they all leave...stop it, please!”

Air Raid quietly took her familiar seating pad on the left side of the hospital bed, guilty that she was already feeling uncomfortable as she watched her friend turn her back to her and start muttering to herself under her breath, rocking back and forth on her bed. “Hey, Darkie,” she said, cautiously breaking the uneasy silence between them.  “I got a surprise, Bright's here, to see you.”

Darkstar snapped her head around at the sound of a new set of heavy hoof-steps to see who had entered the room behind her. The first thing she registered was ‘stallion’. Immediately ceasing her rocking motion she pushed herself backwards to her large pillow. Yellow eyes met yellow eyes and even though she flinched away she smiled. “B-Brightstar…” she whispered in recognition, her tentative smile widening a little.

“Hi sis, good to see you've woken up, sleepy head.” Brightstar greeted his sister with a cheery wave of his hoof as, following his friend’s instruction, he spoke to her calmly on the way to her bed. Drawing up alongside the pegasus he took the seating pad next to her, making himself comfortable. “Hey Darkie. Sorry Moon couldn't be here, she is coming on Monday.”

Darkstar stared at her brother, stared at him long and hard. Her eyes slid in and out of focus and she cocked her head as if in deep thought. “Moon…Moonbeak, she's...the griffon you left us for...NO, don't say that!” She snapped, her tone switching at the word ‘no’, becoming desperate, almost pleading.

“Aaah…” Brightstar paused, taken aback by the sudden switch in his sister’s manner. It was indeed as Air Raid had described, as if she were two ponies, both fighting to speak at once, both distinct and different, yet both of them living in his sister’s head, using her voice. “We, aaah…we are getting married and I'm hoping you'll come to the wedding.”

“Wedding? Darkstar smiled a wide genuine smile, looking for that split second totally at ease like her old self. “We'd love to!” And, just like flipping a switch she changed, “Depends,” she sneered nastily, “You gonna recite sappy poems there too?”

“Depends,” Brightstar retorted, “Are you going to write them for us?”

Darkstar gave her brother a nasty sneer, “Wildfire was the poet, get Raid to ask her...” almost straightaway a meeker ‘her’ replied, “Hey, that was mean...” beside her Air Raid sniffled at the cruel jibe about her missing ex, she looked away as she raised a foreleg to her eyes. “Raid, I'm sorry!”

Ignoring the distress of his friend sat next to him Brightstar leant closer, an eager gleam in his eyes. “That is a good idea, I'd love to ask Wily, do you know where she is?”

Subconsciously Darkstar pushed herself backwards away from her brother as he got closer. “W-we...I...I...f-found h-er...” she stammered as she recalled the fleeting memory of months ago, but then, “SHUT UP!” She switched, her muzzle pulled back in an angry snarl. “S-she's, Canterlot...” meekly she shook her head, oblivious to the worried glances that were exchanged to her right. “SHUT. UP!” She screamed, spit flying from her mouth before she took a couple of deep breaths. “H-Home...home…” she gasped clutching her head with her hooves before snapping her head up, “Hatujui! Nyamaza!” She yelled, her stump of a horn lighting as she tried to cast a powerful illusion. The light from her horn hit the platinum ring and the gold lettering flared brightly, absorbing the energy and redirecting it back down the core of her horn, the soothing feedback sending her fuzzy.

Brightstar stopped in his tracks “I haven't given up on her and I'm not giving up on you. I’m not sorry I moved to FIllydelphia, if you want you can move there too.” He said kindly.

With a slight swoon to her Darkstar looked at Brightstar with a blank expression. “Bright...Filly...when did you move to Filly?” Slumping back in her pillow she sighed happily, “She's quiet at last...”

Sensing something had changed in his sister Brightstar smiled, “I moved to be with Moonbeak and her kittens. I love her Darkie. I want you to be at the wedding.”

“I really would love to,” Darkstar said quietly, starting to sound at lot like herself after the wild outburst. “Bright…I'm...sorry about her.”

Brightstar moved forward off of his pad and took a step closer to the bed. “It's okay sis, I love you and want you to be a part of our life.” He said in his deep reassuring tone.

Much calmer Darkstar reached out with her right foreleg, stretching her hoof to touch her brother. “So...you make a scene in restaurants on purpose?” She asked with a smile as she searched her memory, remembering something she heard while she had been sleeping. “That sounds like fun.”

Brightstar grinned, pleased he was finally getting through to the pony that now looked and sounded like his sister. “Yes, I do, and it is fun for both of us. I like some discipline in my life.” Feeling more confident he stepped closer, his forelegs now on the bed itself.

Smiling like the cat with her cream Darkstar leant a little and gently stroked her brother’s royal blue cheek. “I...I'm glad you've finally found your griffon...” as she stroked his fur Darkstar’s eye twitched once then twice.

Watching the exchange between brother and sister closely Air Raid moved fractionally towards Brightstar, ready at a moment’s notice to pull the stallion away. “Bright, step back hun,” she warned him quietly.

Hearing the whispered warning Brightstar froze in place where he was, but didn’t retreat as Air Raid suggested. “I'm sure you'll find the one too Darkie, just give it time. So we going to your place when they let you out of here?” He asked calmly and smoothly, not once taking his eyes away from his sister.

“Bright...” Air Raid’s voice was barely audible now.

Darkstar shied away from the proximity of the stallion, recoiling and cringing as far back on the bed as she could go. “I...don't know...I don't want to be alone...” her eye twitched twice more, whimpering slightly she could feel herself waking up inside, the tumultuous, wild…’thing’ inside her head recovering from the calming effects of the feedback ring. There was nothing she could do about it…she couldn’t control it. This ‘thing’ that spoke with her voice and looked like her was just too strong. “WE are not alone, she has us, and we stand by us...” she growled indignantly.

Brightstar sighed in exasperation as this ‘creature’ returned, “Yes Raid?” He asked irritably.

“Who's hungry?” Air Raid chirped sparkily, doing a very good impersonation of Cinnamon from the cafeteria. “I know I am, and Darkie needs her exercise!” She said, hoping her exuberance would serve as a distraction to calm both of her friends, although she really did feel for the stallion’s irritation.

“I haven't had anything to eat today.” Brightstar’s stomach agreed with him, giving a loud rumble. “We going to the cafeteria?”

“That's what I was thinking, you up for a walk, Darkie?” Air Raid asked, pleased her distraction had worked.

Sitting up straight in her bed at the mention of food Darkstar smiled enthusiastically. “Yes, we think we can manage a walk.”

Not wanting to go out of his sister’s field of view as she got off of the hospital bed Brightstar moved aside and around to give her clear access to the door without going past him. Giving them both a nervous smile as she stood on wobbly underused legs Darkstar took her first step in seven months. Seeing her walking unsteadily Air Raid immediately moved to her left flank to support her.

Also noticing his sister in difficulty at once Brightstar stepped back towards her to take up her right flank.

As Brightstar got closer to her Darkstar instinctively stiffened up, her heart racing in fear. She breathed deeply, drawing succour from Air Raid at her left she eased up, relaxing as her brother got nearer to make contact with her side. Casting her eyes downwards she muttered, “But…he’s our brother…” stamping a hoof she snarled, “He’s a stallion!” Trembling slightly she looked downwards again, “He wouldn’t hurt us…”

Walking either side of her, as if they were tip-hoofing upon literal eggshells, Air Raid and Brightstar shared a look between themselves over the back of her head. Mouthing to each other they shared but a single word.

“Crazy…”

~ ~ ~

Six thirty in the a.m. of Monday morning. Half an hour before Celestia was due to raise the sun, the land was still shrouded in the darkness of night. Few ponies were awake at this time, save for the emergency services and the overnight trains. One such house that was could be found at the end of Mane Street in Canterlot’s posh Upper Residential District. To live here you told the rest of Canterlot you were either minor nobility or wealthy. Or both. The large four bedroom apartment that had its great room lights on belonged to a young mare who was very definitely the latter, despite her parents’ best efforts. A self-made mare from skill rather than inheritance, Air Raid really didn’t fit in to this neighbourhood in the least.

Though usually alone in her spacious apartment since her (ex) marefriend had suddenly gone missing, this particular Monday saw her sharing with two other ponies. One, Darkstar, was thankfully still sleeping up in the room she had chosen as hers – or ‘theirs’, as the case seemed to be – and the other, her brother Brightstar, who was currently looking as awake as Air Raid felt.

Both mare and stallion had been awake now for the better part of an hour, although they had shared barely a few words between them. Were it not for the stereo in the corner they would be sat in silence, neither of them wanting to discuss the elephant in the room that was the thankfully sleeping unicorn in the bedroom above them. While most of the weekend since her discharge from the hospital had been pleasant, Darkstar’s instability had been ‘trying’ on them both, to say the least.

The disc in the stereo, The Beautiful South, which had been Wily’s favourite band (and the only thing that found its way into Air Raid’s stereo since her disappearance), started to play a song called ‘Prettiest Eyes’ just as Brightstar’s phone rang. Reaching for the remote control she turned the already low music down slightly as the stallion picked up his phone in his yellow aura, a tremulous smile playing over his muzzle when he saw who it was.

“Hi love,” the relief in his voice spoke volumes. The three and a half days since he’d last seen his fiancé had felt like several lifetimes.

“Okay, it is all sorted out here and I'm on the train.” Moonbeak had been reluctant to leave the kittens with her mother again, Athena had been looking forward to the adventure of a long train ride. “Due in Canterlot about three in the afternoon.”

Nervously Brightstar stroked his hoof through his black mane, “Do you think you can take a taxi to Raid's place?”

Although he couldn’t see it he was sure her emerald green eyes had just narrowed dangerously. “Why aren't you picking me up?” She asked in reply, her shrill voice taking on a decidedly icy edge.

“Love, I would, but things are a bit…’touchy’ with Darkie.” He explained with the tactful use of the euphemism. Of course he had filled his fiancé in on everything that had happened, and while they had all agreed silently between them that Darkstar was crazy, none of them had said it out loud.

“Raid is there, and you know how ponies are with me.” Moonbeak said flatly, not in the mood for any backchat from her stallion after having to get Athena and Zephyr to her mother’s nest this early.

“Fine,” Brightstar caved, also not in the mood to really argue. “Fine, I'll come get you at the station.”

“I knew you'd see it my way love.” Brightstar could practically feel her superior triumphant smirk as she hung up the call, not waiting for him to reply. Usually this sort of thing would be sending the right signals to the right places, but not this morning.

“Moon twist your hoof Bright?” Air Raid asked with a little smile, speaking for the first time in almost an hour as her friend carefully lowered his phone to the table next to the empty coffee mug. “You want a drink of anything?”

Brightstar didn’t answer at first. His yellow eyes focused on a middle distance between the two of them, momentarily taken by his thoughts about his sister. It seemed unreal that family history was repeating itself. It was all happening all over again. “I'm worried Raid.” He said eventually, still focused on the table. “I think it is…best if Darkie stays here with you. I just don't know, with the kittens and her, at home.” He shook his head with a grimace, as if every word had cost him a piece of his soul to utter. “Coffee please.” It had…but he had his family to consider, not just his sister.

“Oh?” Air Raid asked with a raised eyebrow as she got up and trotted across the cream carpeted great room to the black tiled kitchen area to prepare the coffee, if she was brutally honest with herself she was secretly very pleased with her friend’s statement. “Well...I'm kinda glad to hear that mate really, I got used to being around her in the hospital.”

Brightstar followed her over carrying their coffee mugs in his yellow magical field. “She was quieter then…” he muttered under his breath, floating the two mugs over to the coffee maker just as the water boiled.

Hearing the stallion’s mutter, whether she was meant to or not, Air Raid turned to face him with empathy all over her muzzle. “I know what you mean...” she pointed a forehoof to the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Sit.”

Obediently Brightstar eased himself onto one of the seating pads around the black marble-topped breakfast island and rubbed his temples with both hooves. “It…has been a long weekend with Darkie talking...” the royal blue stallion trailed off to a deep sigh as Air Raid placed a steaming mug of coffee in front of him. “Thanks for the coffee hun.” He said with a grateful look.

Taking her own fresh mug of black coffee and placing it next to his Air Raid sat on the seating pad opposite her friend. “C'mon Bright, what's really up?” She asked as she reached over the marble and placed her hoof on his. ‘I have a shrewd idea…’ Air Raid thought to herself.

Brightstar nursed his coffee with his left hoof as he considered his reply. “I’s…It's just... I look at her and all I see is Shinning Star in that room.”

‘Bingo…’ Air Raid gave herself an internal pat on the back as her theory was confirmed. It gave her no pleasure, being right, it just meant she had as much of an idea as to what to do as Brightstar did. Namely none whatever.  “Yeah.” The lime green mare admitted as she sipped her coffee. “I was thinking something similar, if I'm totally honest.” She said, thinking of Darkstar and Brightstar’s mother residing in Canterlot’s Asylum.

“Well, enough of that.” Brightstar announced, firmly pushing thoughts of his mad mother out of his mind, “May as well get breakfast ready…”

Just at that moment they froze as they heard a loud slam echo through the apartment from behind them bringing a halt to any further conversation between them. Slightly panicked they shared a worried look, shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders as they tried to work out what if anything Darkstar had heard of their talk. Another door slammed, this time the one from the bathroom, and Darkstar stalked quietly into the kitchen area. If she had heard anything of what her brother and friend had been discussing she gave no sign of it as she took the third empty seating pad at the breakfast island. Quickly recovering herself Air Raid slapped on a wide smile to her muzzle and tried to sound as cheery as she could. “Hey! Good morning!” She cheered, praying that her sincerity didn’t come across as fake as it sounded to her. “We uh, were um...letting you sleep, sweetie.”

“I was just about to make breakfast, would you like pancakes or waffles?” Brightstar asked, his own smile about as false as his friend’s was.

“Did you…um, sleep well, Darkie?” Air Raid asked, taking up the empty coffee mugs and taking them to the sink.

“Pancakes.” Darkstar muttered simply, shooting her brother a foul look that threatened to curdle the milk he was going to make the pancakes from. Pointedly ignoring Air Raid she looked down at the black marble island top as the stallion got up and floated out the eggs, flour and milk to start cooking the pancakes.

“Darkie...” Air Raid asked again, this time a little louder, “Did you sleep ok…”

Without looking up from the island top Darkstar quietly interrupted her. “Shut up...you two were talking about us…”

With his back to his sister and very grateful that he had something to occupy himself with, Brightstar replied, “Well yeah. I was talking to Raid about you staying in Canterlot instead of moving to Fillydelphia. You grew up here so it is more familiar to you.” He said as he flipped the first set of three pancakes in the pan.

“Liar...shut up!” Darkstar shouted, still resolutely looking at the marble top, “You don't want us, we heard...told you he'd hurt us…”

Air Raid sat back down and slowly reached her hoof out to the white mare. “D-Darkie, no...That's not what we said at all, hun.”

“Darkie, please calm down.” Brightstar sighed as he served the pancakes to a waiting plate and started to cook three more. “If you really want to move, then say so!” He exclaimed, angry that they’d been overheard earlier, and at how his sister was talking. He desperately wanted to grab her and shake her, but he knew that was out of the question. Instead he settled for slamming Air Raid’s cupboard doors as he put away the flour.

“Yes...we'll be calm, we’ll be quiet just for you.” Darkstar muttered sullenly. ‘They don’t want you. Not your brother or your friend. They hate you. They hate us. I’ll keep you safe…trust me Darkie.’

“Darkie...we were talking...” Air Raid said hesitantly, her hoof still on her friend’s being utterly ignored, “You can always stay here if you want to, you know that.”

“Okay then!” Brightstar called out, switching off the electric oven. “Pancakes are ready. You want maple syrup Darkie? We have strawberry jam also.”

“Maple syrup.” Darkstar murmured almost inaudibly, her yellow eyes glued resolutely downwards as if scared to look either of the other ponies in the eyes. ‘They hate us, you know they hate us…they’re scared of us…we aren’t normal…you’re a freak!’

Brightstar shrugged as Air Raid gave him a concerned questioning look with a nod to the sullen white mare. “Syrup it is then!” He said loudly, levitating up the three plates, knives, forks and maple syrup in his magical field. “We can eat in the dining room, get some use out of it.”

“Just cuz I usually eat here in front of the telly…” Air Raid stuck her tongue out at the royal blue stallion as she slid herself off of her seating pad and moved around to gently nudge the white mare’s shoulder. “C'mon Darkie, you'll feel better with a full belly.”

“We'd feel better if we were wanted.” Darkstar said petulantly as she stood from her pad and followed after the lime green mare towards the dining room. ‘Crazy…that’s what they call you. You’re crazy Darkie…’

Brightstar brought up the rear with the food and utensils floating in front of him. “We both want what is best for you, and that is to live with one of us.”

Upon entering the dining room Darkstar sloped onto the nearest seating pad to her and propped her elbow on the mahogany table to hold her head up. “What if we wanted to go home?” She asked, already sure of the answer she’d get.

Air Raid sat opposite her at the other side of the dining table and breathed through her nose, almost snorted, “You can't, we've discussed this!”

Darkstar wasn’t disappointed, she knew she wouldn’t be. “Because we're...crazy.” She said glumly.

“Raid, if she is that desperate to leave us then who are we to stop her?” Brightstar asked almost rhetorically as he floated the food to the table and magically set the cutlery beside each plate. “She is an adult.” He said, taking his own seating pad while shooting his ‘adult’ sister a sideways look that screamed he thought anything but, “But it will be you that's doing the leaving Darkie, not us.”

In silence Darkstar started to eat her first pancake, ignoring the knife and fork she picked it up in her much-weakened yellow aura and took a bite of it that way instead. Although the inhibitor siphoned off most of her magic, enough made it past the lower level ring to just manage a foal-level levitation…if she concentrated really hard. “We don't need them, go home...no, it'd be just us...” she argued straightaway, cocking her head as if she were talking to a pony next to her rather than in her head. “So? *I'll keep you safe*...no!...but...NO!” She shouted loudly, making the other two flinch as she thumped the dinner table with her forehoof. “Raid...we'll stay here, please.”

Halfway through his own pancake Brightstar tried very hard to hide the relief on his face. “You've made a good choice there sis. Raid is one fast pony.”

“Hmm…” was all the sound the white mare made as she picked up and ate her second pancake. ‘Your own brother doesn’t want you…who wants a crazy half-unicorn?’

“Yes!” Air Raid pulled a hoof-pump over her pancakes, “Girlie sleepover, every night!” She whooped with glee, genuinely happy to have another body in the house, even if it was a little wacko.

“Yes, I can just see it now.” Brightstar chuckled, rolling his yellow eyes at the thought as he picked up his pancake.

“Yeah…” Darkstar said very quietly. “We'll have fun.” ‘You see it the same way you see our mom in me…crazy little pony!’

“Um…anyway, Moon will arrive at three this afternoon.” Brightstar said brightly, catching his sister’s instant switch and wanting to change the subject. “We can go out for dinner if you’d like?” He asked optimistically.

“That's a good idea Bright,” Air Raid agreed, the lime green pegasus also glad of the subject change, “Darkie you can finally meet her!”

“We've met her...” Darkstar said simply, her tone strangely flat, devoid of any feeling. “We remember when we were asleep.”

“Sweetie, that's not what I meant...” Air Raid began before the troubled unicorn interrupted her.

“We know what you meant.” Darkstar said, cutting across her friend somewhat mechanically. “Don't want it....” she muttered as she looked at her third and last pancake sitting on her plate. “We want it over...hush! ...we've had enough!” She shrieked, sudden feeling re-entering her voice. ‘End it…we’re crazy…it’s for the best.”

Completely misunderstanding Brightstar thought she meant the pancake, “It's okay, you don't have to eat it all.”

“I'll take your plate, Darkie.” Air Raid offered helpfully, not wanting her friend to exert herself.

Darkstar held up her white hoof as she stood from her seating pad. “We can do it, Raid.” She said with a distinct grimace as on the first attempt of lighting her horn the magic puttered out like a snuffed candle, not making it past the inhibitor.

Air Raid shared a quick concerned look with the royal blue stallion, “Darkie, it's no trouble…”

“We said…” Darkstar muttered dangerously before stomping both forehooves in a violent flash of temper. “Sisi. Tunaweza. Kusimamia!” She her white furred muzzle pulled back in a snarl as she screamed, her bright yellow magic surging past the inhibitor, creating her old illusion of her voice sounding at a pony’s ear, this time it appeared at both Air Raid’s and Brightstar’s at once, stunning them both with her sudden vehemence. “We. Can. Do. It…” she gasped, all at once considerably calmer as she lifted her plate in her weakened magic.

For a few long, quiet moments neither of the other two ponies made a sound, they were hesitant to even breathe. Presently Brightstar released the breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding. “You have come a long ways with your magic, you um…you think you can take a second?”

Darkstar shot her brother a scathing look. “Of course we can.”

“I know you can, sis.” Brightstar forced a smile as he finished the last bite and left the fork off of his plate.

Struggling to levitate over the second empty plate, Darkstar floated it to her own she stacked them together. Squeezing her eyes together and shaking with effort she lifted the plates in her fluttering yellow aura and trotted to the kitchen as Air Raid finished her last mouthful, and shared a meaningful looks at Brightstar.

Brightstar looked back at her and over at the closed kitchen door with a shrug. “Her magic is coming back and that is a level five inhibitor she is wearing.”

Air Raid averted her grey eyes with a deep sigh. “Bright…I’m…I'm really worried, Bright.” She groaned while in the kitchen Darkstar despondently set the dishes in the sink.

“I'm worried too, but we need to give her time.” The stallion agreed, “I hope you understand but I'm happy she is here with you.”

“Bright, of course I understand, like I said, I'm grateful for the company.” Air Raid admitted, still looking away from her friend. “Since…since Wily it's been too quiet here on my own.”

Darkstar shook as she rested her head against the kitchen cupboard door, tears in her eyes. ‘I was right…they don't want us...I told you…’

“She will be safer here with you.” The royal blue unicorn asserted as he used his magic to float all the cutlery on top of Air Raid’s plate. He knew he was more or less signing over his sister to his friend, but he really didn’t know what else to do. He cast his gaze around the seldom used dining room, searching for inspiration from the hardwood wall panels or the deep red carpet. Nothing sprang to his aid. “I know Moonbeak would welcome her in Fillydelphia, but it is a strange city for her, Raid.”

Air Raid caught his meaning at once, and her empathy for him shot up a million degrees. “And, you have little Athena and Zephyr to think about.” The lime green mare gestured with a hoof to her friend. “You've seen just how easy it is to set her off, with it just being you and me.”

Crying now with her eyes open Darkstar shuddered as the tears rolled down her white cheeks. “Of course they don't want us...nopony wants us...” she gasped out in between each wet sob. ‘They don’t listen to us…they don’t believe us…they don’t care, they just want us quiet so we don’t upset them.’ As the poisonous little voice whispered in her head her hoof came to rest on a kitchen drawer, the one in which Air Raid kept her knives. Pulling it open she saw the long sharp stainless steel blade of thee carving knife glinting up at her. “We're just…a burden…” she cried through her tears of despair.

Brightstar nodded eagerly. “We would of course figure out something if we had to, but this is the best solution for her.”

Air Raid smiled over at her friend, “You know I'll look after her hun.”

“We...we're just a burden...” sighing deeply Darkstar channelled what little power she still had and lit her horn, lifting the knife in her unstable magical field. “Bright doesn't want us...we're crazy...we're mad...yes we are…” with that desolate, empty thought in her head the white unicorn reared up to her hind legs and put both of her forelegs on the black marble-topped work surface in the kitchen and rested the blade against the backs of her forehooves.

“Hun...she'll be safe here, and you know you can visit whenever.” Air Raid said reassuringly, then burst into giggles, “I'll even tidy up for you first.”

“We aren’t a burden…” Darkstar sighed as she slowly, very slowly, drew the knife in a long deep cut over both of her fetlocks. “shhh…it's the best way, Darkie, it’s done now.”

“I hear what you're saying, Raid, but you have a life too.” Brightstar smiled, “Take her to the track, and if you need bits we can send you some.”

Air Raid laughed out loud, “Take her? She can sit next to me on the hill run.”

“Aaaah...” Darkstar sighed with pleasure as she stood, almost mesmerized, watched the crimson blood start to flow from the long clean cut she had just made across her forelegs. “See Darkie? Doesn't that feel better?...y-yes...do it again…” she encouraged herself as she struggled to pick up the blood-stained knife in her magic and slashed her fetlocks once more.

Brightstar joined his friend in her laugh, both ponies in the dining room blissfully oblivious to the drama unfolding in the kitchen. “I think she'd like that, zipping around the track with some crazy mare.” He chuckled at Air Raid’s pout, “Might put Slingshot out of a job.”

Air Raid snorted out a laugh, “It might stop him being such a thorough ass though,”

“MMmmm....so much better…” Darkstar sighed, dropping the knife with a loud metallic clatter as she slumped to the tiled floor.

“Hey…” Air Raid’s laugh died suddenly on her lips, to be replaced by a look of deep concern. “Is it me...or has she been gone a while?”

The closed kitchen door did absolutely nothing to muffle the loud resounding clatter of the knife as it impacted the ceramic tiles of the kitchen.

Brightstar’s eyes went wide with panic. “Darkie!” Without thinking he immediately teleported to the kitchen, and a split second later Air Raid heard a panicked, “Ghaaa! Raid! There is so much blood!”

“What?” Air Raid leapt up to her hooves and galloped through the door to the kitchen. “Darkie!!”

Slumped and bleeding against the lower cabinet door Darkstar looked up at her brother dancing on his hooves in an utter panic, and at Air Raid’s stunned expression with a tired smile. “Sisi ni...si mzigo…”

“Raid…do something!” Brightstar shouted, now in a full panic.

Quickly sizing up the situation, ignoring the stallion for the moment Air Raid knelt in the growing pool of blood by the fallen unicorn and stroked her grey mane from in front of her eyes. “Bright, those towels, bring them over.” She instructed clearly and calmly, pointing with her wing to indicate the ones she meant. “I'll hold them tight on her, quick!”

With Air Raid knelt in front of her Darkstar muttered, “Sisi kupumzika sasa...” her yellow eyes began to droop, growing too heavy for her to keep open.

“Darkie no!” Air Raid yelled, her own panic threatening to take her. “Stay awake!”

Brightstar meanwhile, still prancing in a panicked dance that would, under any other happenstance be funny, was frantically trying to find the towels the green mare had asked for. “What towels!?”

Air Raid didn’t look up. She didn’t take her eyes away from the white mare, not once. “The tea towels, there, to the left of the stove!” She pointed again with her wing to the two cream towels. “Now!”

“What do I do?” Brightstar yelped as he finally grabbed the requested towels in his magic. “Raid, what do I do?”

Focused on the bleeding white unicorn Air Raid used her wings to hold Darkstar's cut forelegs above her head to hinder her circulation, slowing down the flow of blood. “Wrap one each around each leg, over the cuts, tight!”

‘So much blood!’ Obediently Brightstar used his magic to wrap the towels and help the pegasus support his sister’s legs. ‘So much blood…’ he tried without success to put the scene from his mind and detach…but there was so much blood…the royal blue stallion wobbled, looking unsteady.

Satisfied her friend was for the moment in no immediate threat with the towels magically tied tight around her fetlocks Air Raid at last chanced a glance over at her brother and saw him unsteady, “HEY! Snap out of it!” Noting the faint tinge of red already on the towels, she started to feel the panic. “Nine one one, now!”

Acting as if in a daze Brightstar released his hold on his sister’s raised legs and used his magic to float over his phone to him. “R-Raid…is she going to be okay?” He asked, a mix of fear and confusion in his voice as he dialled the emergency services.

“Sure!” Air Raid found the lie came remarkably easy to her lips as she knelt in her seldom-used kitchen, her lime green knees stained crimson with her friend’s blood, holding her legs up in the air. “Just get on that ambulance, we got this, right?”

Unsupported Darkstar’s head slumped forward so her chin rested on her chest as a tiny little trickle of red seeped from under the towel on her left leg. “Let...us...go…” she was so faint she practically exhaled the words.

“Help! Ahh, my sister is bleeding! Ahh, oh…” Brightstar flustered into his phone, almost giving in to his building hysteria as he hurriedly gave the operator Air Raid’s address – he had to try twice, the first time he gave them his Fillydelphia address – in the Upper Residential District. “Hurry!” He pleaded desperately. “Oh…oh I don't know…” to Air Raid he asked, “Is…she breathing?”

“Yep!” Air Raid called out, “She's still here, both of the crazy bitches!”

“We want…” Darkstar gasped as again her yellow eyes drooped to below half open, “Sleep...”

“NO!” Air Raid screamed, bringing her left hoof across her muzzle in a hard slap.

“Yes! I don't know, there is blood everywhere…” utterly distraught Brightstar slumped to the tiled kitchen floor, his fluttering aura barely able to hold his phone to his ear. “Please hurry, I can't lose her again.” The operator hung up but still he held his phone up to his ear.

“How long?” For a long few minutes the stallion didn’t answer, prompting Air Raid to yell out, “Bright! How long!?” Brightstar held on to his phone, staring off at something that wasn’t there, looking anywhere other than at his stricken sister. He didn’t answer, his mind wanting very dearly to shut down and pretend this nightmare was just that, and that he was still asleep in his chosen room at Air Raid’s house. “Brightstar!” She screamed the question this time as she squeezed the towels harder. “How. Bucking. Long?”

Recovering slightly Brightstar’s yellow eyes managed to focus on the lime green mare. “Soon…she said soon.”

Air Raid was about to chew out her friend for being so utterly and completely useless, wondering briefly if things would’ve gone differently had Moonbeak been here to command and direct him better than she herself had done, when the sound of distant sirens reached her ears. Sighing with relief that professional help was almost here the lime green pegasus bit back the scathing comment she had been about to unleash, “Bright, go out there and guide them in, 'kay?” She directed clearly, pointing to her door for emphasis.

Giving his friend an unsteady look, as if he’d just been pole-axed, Brightstar shook his head, trying to clear whatever fog was there. “I…I can do that…” With a considerable amount of effort the royal blue stallion heaved himself to his hooves and walked out of the upmarket apartment with the enthusiasm of one walking to his execution.

‘Luna dammit!…’ Air Raid thought as she turned back to Darkstar with an angry snarl. “Damn you Darkstar! What in the name of Tartarus were you thinking?” She spat, seriously fighting the urge to add a black eye to her friend’s current injuries. After seven months of sitting by her bedside praying for her to wake up, renting the next bed to her for over two hundred days that had cost her over one hundred and five thousand bits Air Raid was determined she wasn’t going to die here on her kitchen floor. “Darkstar!” She yelled in her face, roughly shaking her.

Jerking her eyes open Darkstar looked through the lime green mare rather than at her. “There's no light...they always say there's a light…”

“In here, quick!” Brightstar rushed into the kitchen with two paramedics following closely behind him; one, a pegasus stallion whose name badge said ‘First Aid’ and the other, a unicorn mare called ‘Blood Pressure’. Quickly they shared a look between them as they sized up the scene in the now cramped little kitchen.

“Victim is a...a…unicorn,” Blood Pressure stated matter-of-factly, taking Darkstar’s legs in her green magical hold as Air Raid moved out of the way to give them room to work and she managed to get a proper look at the stump of the white horn just showing through the grey mane. “What level is that inhibitor?”

First Aid made a couple of notes, “Looks like about two pints on the floor,” he said quietly, reaching into his kit. “I'll get the plasma ready.”

“Level five, Ma’am,” Air Raid replied as she moved around the breakfast island to stretch a comforting wing around the shivering Brightstar. “We've staunched the blood flow as much as we could.”

Blood Pressure spared Air Raid a cursory nod. “We have nothing higher, slit fetlocks?” She asked curtly.

Air Raid nodded, as grateful for her friend’s body heat as Brightstar was for hers. “Yes, Ma’am, both of them.”

First Aid worked quickly and quietly, efficiently inserting an IV line in a vein of Darkstar’s hind leg. “Got plasma and fluids in, Blood.” He reported to his team mate as the green magic intensified around the tightly wrapped towels, both now soaked through.

“Hmm…” she muttered as she quickly removed the hastily applied towels around Darkstar’s slowly bleeding fetlocks to allow her to apply gauze and bandages. “Double cuts.” She noted in her curt manner.

“She’s showing signs of shock.” First Aid commented. “Breathing is okay.”

“Damn…” Swaying slightly Air Raid squeezed her friend tighter in the hug and placed her hoof on the breakfast island’s marble top for support. “We, we had no clue she'd try anything like this.” The lime green mare shook her head and sniffed back a tear as her roiling emotions threatened to at last overtake her.

“I'll levitate to the wagon.” Blood Pressure stated as First Aid nodded in agreement, moving ahead of his partner to clear the path to the outside. Surrounding Darkstar in her green aura she gently and carefully picked her up and started to evacuate her patient. Pausing at the door she turned back to the shaking stallion and the pegasus whose lower hind legs were still stained red. “Canterlot Royal is the closest. You all can follow.”

“Thanks, Ma’am…” jolted to activity as the two paramedics left her house Air Raid untangled herself from the hug she had shared with her friend. Grabbing her car keys from the kitchen dresser she turned to see Brightstar stood where she’d left him, she doubted he’d even blinked. “Bright, in my car hun, c'mon, we know the way!”

“I can't do this.” He moaned as the sound of screeching tyres signalled the ambulance’s departure. To say he was stunned was an understatement. Brightstar was practically catatonic. “It's mother all over again.”

Torn between screaming out loud, walking out and leaving him stood in her kitchen or thundering over and seizing the immobile stallion by his grey and white collar Air Raid ultimately stomped her hoof hard into the ceramic tiled floor in an attempt to rid herself of the frustration she was feeling. “Keep it together Bright,” she said, hoping her tone was as kind out loud as it was in her head. “Get your phone, get in my car, we need to step on the gas!”

“I got my phone.” Brightstar hung his head, completely subdued and defeated. “I...I just want to go home.”

“Uuugh…” Air Raid let out a frustrated grunt full of annoyance, and at this moment, resentment, and she walked back to her friend, punctuating each hoof-step with a stomp of her hooves. “Bright, sweetie, I love you and I feel for you but get the buck in my car!”

“Okay…” Brightstar moved, albeit sluggishly, towards the open door.

Getting behind him Air Raid gave him an almighty shove with both hooves to the reluctant stallion’s flanks. “C'mon, the ambulance has left, we need to go!”

“Okay…” he muttered, barely moving after the impetus of the hard shove had died away. Growling in deep annoyance Air Raid shoved him again, this time not bothering to stop with just a shove, she pushed him roughly all the way to her Fiesta and even opened him the door. “Get in.” She said simply as she zipped around to the driver’s side door.

Sat side by side in silence for the first few moments of the drive, the only sound between them that of the monstrously powerful engine a few feet from their seats roaring as Air Raid revved it up through the gears, they started on their way into the autumnal Monday morning and ultimately to the hospital. Brightstar glanced over to the pegasus, who was absorbed with the slow business of getting them from the side streets to the main road. “Why?” He asked her simply.

Air Raid didn’t look back at him as she turned the wheel to steer the car onto the main road. “I don't know Bright, who knows what's going on in her head?” She commented as she hoofed the accelerator and finally moved up into the car’s fourth gear.

Brightstar slumped against his seatbelt, his head in his hooves. “I…I can't...I can't put her away like I did mom.”

Air Raid sighed as she drove, very grateful the traffic was light this morning. “Hey...it might not come to that.”

“Really!” Brightstar exclaimed vehemently, all of his frustrations busting forth as a dam bursts its walls. “You’re going to watch over her every second!?”

In response to this sudden outburst Air Raid jammed her right hoof down hard, causing a camera to flash as she sped up. “Yes! If I have to! Yes!” ‘Because I’m not losing Darkie like I’ve lost Wily and Cy…’ she thought with a grim determination.

Just as quickly as it had flowed so too did Brightstar’s temper suddenly ebb away. “I'm sorry…Raid, I’m sorry, I just don't know what to do!”

Sparing her friend the briefest of looks Air Raid gave him a tiny smile. “Hey, it’s cool. You did good back there, real good.” She wasn’t really surprised at how easy the lie left her lips. Truth be told he had been as much use as a chocolate engine cover, but now wasn’t the time for such honesty. “Not a lot we can do about it till we get to my second home.” She said as she screeched full speed around a corner.

“Is it okay if I just go back to Filly with Moon when she gets here?” Brightstar muttered as another speed camera flashed.

“Sure.” Air Raid replied without looking at the royal blue stallion. The question didn’t amaze her. She had been expecting something similar to this. “You gonna ring your lady when we get there?” She asked a little coldly.

Brightstar sighed in the passenger seat so often occupied by Slingshot, fully aware that with his previous question he had all but given his sister up. “Sorry, I don't know what to do.” He admitted glumly, “I don't want her to see Darkie like this. I just...I don't know.”

“Yeah well, you'd better think of something, we're here.” Air Raid replied bluntly. A little too bluntly, as she pulled into the car park and selected a space near to the entrance from the – thankfully - almost empty lot.

The lime green mare’s insensitivity lit the stallion’s fire once more. “You have no idea what it's like!” Brightstar snarled.

“What? What what's like?” She asked while killing her engine. “Accidentally hurting yourself?” She asked as she opened her car door and got out into the slightly cold morning sun. “I do understand actually." She said, thinking of the deep ugly scar on her left wing, her lasting souvenir of the time she had tried, thankfully unsuccessfully, to remove her useless wings.

Brightstar just sat there, seemingly unaware they had stopped or that the engine was turned off. “Watching someone you love going crazy.” As he said the word ‘crazy’ he began to cry.

“Hey...” She scooted quickly around to the passenger side and pulled open the door. “No, you're right. I don't know what it's like. I never will either.” Air Raid laid a hoof on his shoulder, “I’m sorry.

After a few moments of quiet sobbing Brightstar got out of his friend’s car and wiped a foreleg over his eyes to dry them. “I…I'm coming.” He hiccupped through a final sob before hitching the fakest smile the pegasus had literally ever seen.

“C'mon…” Air Raid pulled him into a very tight bone-breaking feathery hug. “Be strong now, cry later, ‘kay?”

Brightstar nodded with a hesitant smile that was a lot more genuine than the one before. “You don't need to tell Moon about my meltdown, please?”

“Tell her what?” Air Raid returned the smile with one of her own and nuzzled his cheek as she ushered him towards the hospital’s grand entrance. “I didn't see anything, I was busy earning new speeding tickets for my collection.” She snorted a laugh and opened the doors for him to enter first.

~ ~ ~

Twenty five minutes later in the waiting room of the hospital’s ER and Air Raid decided she was thoroughly and utterly bored. Bored to tears, bored to death, bored, bored and thrice bored. Even the trip to the vending machine outside for its awful coffee hadn’t supplied the change of scenery she had desired. Somewhat understandably maybe Brightstar had been sat in a moody desolate silence and when spoken to, when Air Raid had attempted conversation, had given nothing but monosyllabic replies causing her eventually to abandon the idea. In desperation she turned to the stack of out of date glossies and newspapers for her salvation, only to be disappointed there as well. The – by now a year out of date – issue of the Canterlot Centennial was still there, brazenly flashing its sensational front page headline ‘University Student Blinded in Horror Attack’. Morbidly Air Raid found herself actually reading it, drinking in the details as though they were blessed water after a trip to the desert.

Another twenty minutes passed in silence; without realising it Air Raid had read and re-read the passage about the actual moment Wildfire had been blinded at least seven times, possibly more. Having reported that Wildfire had instigated the attack by purposefully winding up Mr. Blitzwing, Air Raid had screwed up the newspaper and threw it across the room, resolving that if she ever met the reporter, a stallion called Gossip Column, she’d give him a story to report.

Ten long agonising minutes passed like ten unbearably slow years until eventually the waiting room door opened and a stallion she recognised entered. Air Raid was so pleased after nearly an hour of bored silence she could’ve tackled him and given him a huge sloppy kiss. Instead she restrained herself as Doctor Dreamweaver sat next to her. “Hello Ms. Raid” The pure white stallion greeted her with a smile, “Can you tell me what led up to this?” The psychologist asked gently.

“Oh, hey Doc,” Air Raid smiled and offered her hoof as he brushed his eggshell blue mane from his crystal blue eyes. “Well...” she sighed deeply. Having reflected on just that very thing this past hour she had a shrewd idea what had set it all off. “I kinda think it was our fault. Earlier, back at mine while we thought she was sleeping, we were talking about her.”

Doctor Dreamweaver caught this immediately, “What do you think she overheard?” He asked, his tone was kind but direct and to the point.

Again Air Raid sighed. She really didn’t want to admit what she was about to admit. She took a deep breath. “The...the bits…where we spoke about how…crazy we thought she was, and about how it was best she stay with me rather than go to Filly with her brother.” She said hesitantly.

“Have you thought about a therapist for her?” Dreamweaver asked, reaching into his saddlebag for his clipboard and pen to make notes.

“Yeah, I was thinking about that mare in Ponyville, Ruby Tuesday.”

Brightstar looked up from his stupor, finding his voice at last. “Raid…who is this guy, how is my sister?”

“Oh…right, sorry…” Air Raid gave a faint blush, “Brightstar, this is Doctor Dreamweaver. Doc, this is Brightstar, Darkie’s brother.”

Dreamweaver turned to face the obviously distraught stallion, “Hello Mr. Brightstar. I'm a psychologist here at Canterlot Royal.”

Air Raid scooted over to sit between the two stallions, laying a hoof tenderly on her friend’s shoulder. “Bright, he's recommended one in Ponyville we can take Darkie to...so uh, Doc, how's she doing?”

Dreamweaver scribbled some fresh notes in his clipboard then searched through it for some older ones. “Ah!” He exclaimed as he flipped the paper to the right page. “She is sedated for now; we have put a level six inhibitor on her too, the wounds were not too deep, blood loss wasn't too severe. Paramedics said you both reacted very quickly.” He paused for a moment to let what he’d just said sink in. Air Raid nodded quietly while Brightstar sat there looking sick. “As for her state of being though, I don't know. Ms. Tuesday is new to the practice. After studying the case history of the Archlibrarian Twilight, she wanted to work in Ponyville.”

“So…what happens next though Doc, when she wakes up?” Air Raid asked, “Her mum's in the asylum, has been for years, and Brightstar's on about heading straight back to Filly later today.”

Dreamweaver nodded, “Ms. Darkstar is going to need a lot of supervision until she has been evaluated.” He said as gently and kindly as he could.

Air Raid’s ear’s pricked up, catching what he’d just said. “What kind of supervision, exactly?” She asked cautiously, “We were discussing her staying with me.” The lime green mare said tentatively, “Earlier she said she wanted to stay with me.”

“The kind where she is not alone. At all.” Doctor Dreamweaver explained very simply. “After Doctor Tuesday has seen her, she will modify that. For now I personally consider Ms. Darkstar a high suicide risk.” The pure white stallion scribbled some more notes, these for the Ponyville psychiatrist. “She can stay here in the coma room until you meet with Doctor Tuesday, that way she is under direct and constant observation.”

Brightstar shot the doctor a deeply resentful look. “You think she is crazy?” He asked sullenly, looking for all Equestria like he wanted to be anywhere but there in that waiting room in that hospital.

“I think she has suffered from severe trauma and is deeply afraid of suffering more.” Dreamweaver replied in his curt, no-nonsense manner. “Sometimes, in that state, ponies don't see any real options.”

“So...what's the worst case scenario after Ruby sees her?” Air Raid asked, both wanting and not wanting to know the answer.

“The worst case scenario, Ms. Raid, is that she tries again and succeeds in killing herself.” Doctor Dreamweaver laid it out plain and simple, pulling absolutely no punches. “A bit less than that is having her committed to the asylum. Then, you can look at the other end of the spectrum, where she can live a normal lifestyle. Everything depends upon her upcoming evaluation.”

~ ~ ~

Seven in the a.m. and as Celestia raised the sun its golden rays illuminated the landscape across Equestria, invading their way into home and workplace, creeping unwelcome into the bedrooms of the night shift worker and the parent taking care of the night feed. In Las Pegasus, the famous ‘City in the Sands’ where nopony ever slept, the occupants of the Palomino Hotel’s Bella Suite were up well before the sun. Well, one of them was anyway. The large luxury hotel was the chosen venue for the 2026 Weather Conference and, as such, was playing host to just under two thousand pegasi chosen to represent the weather factories from every city in Equestria. It was a very big deal to be asked to attend the two day event; Cyclone just wished it’d start later in the day.

It had still been dark at six thirty when the alarm had sounded, rudely rousing the black mare from a delicious dream in which the Princess’s friend Fluttershy was her nana and she was her adorable little big filly. Grunting in frustration she rolled over in her bed, ignoring the alarm and the warm wet feeling in the nappy she was wearing in an attempt to return to the dream.

“First in the shower!” Clear Sky; her roommate, friend, colleague and all-round annoying morning pony yelled exuberantly as she cancelled the alarm with a hoof and slid out of her sumptuous bed, giggling at the sleeping lump in the bed beside her on her way to the en suite bathroom.

Cyclone yawned into her pillow and opened her bleary blue eyes. “It's all yours hun…” she muttered pointlessly to the now empty room. ‘Coffee’ she thought as she heard the toilet flush and the shower run. ‘Need coffee.’ The thought spurred her on to get up and eventually after ten minutes climbed herself out of the bed with another deep yawn, the heavy wet nappy sagging in her pink onesie. Peeling the all-in-one garment off of her she sat herself on the thick carpeted floor of the suite and changed herself into a clean dry pastel pink nappy as she heard the shower stop and the fur dryer come on.

“Ah that’s better,” standing now in her clean fresh nappy Cyclone sighed happily and quickly disposed of her wet one before her thought process returned to coffee. “Clear, you want coffee hun?” She asked, but got no reply above the sound of the dryer. Luckily she knew her friend liked it black and she hurried over to the small but lavishly equipped kitchen area to prepare it and a milky one for her.

“Is that coffee I smell?” Clear asked eagerly with a sniff as she emerged from the bathroom.

“Sure is hun, hot and fresh, like me.” Cyclone smiled, indicating the steaming black coffee with a hoof.

Clear Sky giggled, “Fresh all right.” Trotting over to the breakfast bar the light grey pegasus fluffed her bright pink mane into its naturally ‘unruly’ look that took no time at all to maintain, and made Cyclone wonder how she did it, before taking the coffee. “Thank you Cy.”

“You're very welcome,” Cyclone smiled as she blew the steam from her own brew and took a small sip. “It alright?”

Clear Sky took a mouthful of her hot drink and mulled over her answer. “Well, it’s better than the cafeteria.” She replied with a smile.

Cyclone rested her now half full mug on its coaster and sniggered, “It could pass through you and still be better than the cafeteria, hun.”

“Hmm, you may be right.” She agreed, taking another sip of her black coffee with a giggle.

Cyclone chuckled a moment longer before a thought struck her. “You looking forward to your presentation?” She asked, referring to the reason they were both here representing their respective departments.

“I am,” the Head of Cloud Production said with a smile, “Our cloud production is extremely economic and, our coverage of the farming community is spot on.”

“And, our...” Cyclone started then paused as she had to think exactly what her own report was about, despite only finishing it on the train from Canterlot the day before, “Ten year report thing...is pretty good too.”

Clear Sky giggled at that. “I was going to ask how your, Ms. ‘I'll do the report on the train’, presentation is turning out?”

“I've done it!” The black pegasus replied indignantly as she drained the remainder of her mug and took it to the sink. “I even made a little shiny power point thing with bullet points and everything!” She finished proudly, like a student announcing her completed homework.

“Any mention of Princess Twilight?” Her friend asked, putting her own empty mug in the sink as well, “You know when she came on the scene the on time went to one hundred percent. Say something about that or you'll hear from her. Once we worked the kinks out Cloudsdale’s held that for ten years now, and no other factory can match it.”

“Uh huh I've included her, don't worry.” Cyclone asserted as she flicked the coffee maker on again to make them both a second mug each. About what Misty said last night, I do know Twilight a bit.”

“So I gathered. I forget you grew up in Canterlot. Is she a reachable as she seemed last night?”

“Oh totally. When I was at Uni she was the science professor. Taught classes once a week.” Cyclone answered over her shoulder, rinsing their two mugs out.

“It’s hard to believe. I remember before her ascension when she came to Ponyville.” The light grey mare giggled like a little filly at the memory. “Dash was taken with her even then.”

Cyclone joined her in her giggle fit just as the coffee maker boiled. “Yeah, they’ve been together forever, alright. Not that I spoke to her much outside school.” She added, placing the cleaned mugs under the machine. “Now Luna, there's a fun pony.”

“I guess knowing Dusk would mean you'd know his mothers.” Clear agreed, taking the newly poured black coffee in her outstretched hoof, “Did Princess Luna do foal play with you?”

Regrettably Cyclone shook her head, tossing her turquoise mop of a mane about, “No hun, I've only been into it a year and a bit, my friend Air Raid was my nana the few months before I moved to Cloudsdale.”

Nodding, taking a drink of her coffee, Clear Sky pursued the subject. “After you wore that to work and Misty Morning said that it was no problem, I looked up stuff about it on the net. Seemed strange at first, but then it is a harmless bit of fun between adults.” She added with a giggle, “You do tune in well to actual foals though. Dawn really enjoyed playing with you and her dolls.” She said with a genuine smile, referencing the previous evening when they had visited her brother’s place in Las Pegasus and Cyclone had played with her niece.

The black pegasus gave a little shrug as she sipped her own milky coffee, “Well, between us and the gatepost I am a little incontinent, I uh...'experimented' with some zebra made potions back in Canterlot shortly after I got into the whole adult foal thing.”

“Zecora?”

“That's the one.” Cyclone agreed, “She made me these potions that regressed me mentally to about three. It was fun, mostly.”

“Zecora has been a fixture in Ponyville forever. She is very reliable too.” She said, draining half of her mug in a single swallow. “You ever gone back to her to see if she could reverse the effects?”

“No...” She raised her milky coffee to her lips then put it down again, looking away with sadness in her blue eyes. “I haven't been back since I had to move.”

“Silly Filly, Cy.” Clear Sky said as she drained her second mug of its contents. “You really should see her again. Let her know the side effects and I'm sure she can fix it.” Standing up she cocked her head towards the door and the elevator. “Ready for breakfast?”

“Sure thing hun,” Cyclone smiled as she emptied her mug. “I can use something more filling than my bottle. Besides, I kinda like using my nappies, makes me feel just like a filly.”

Clear shrugged, holding the door open. “It's your life.”

“To food!” The black pegasus grinned as her belly gave a loud rumble. “Hopefully it’ll be bigger than last night's offering.” She commented as they walked side-by-side down the short hallway to the elevator.

The light grey mare reached for the button to summon the elevator and raised an eyebrow, “You saying my brother didn't do a good job?”

Cyclone paused for a moment as the doors opened to admit them both to the spacious elevator, suddenly worried she had upset her friend with a careless remark. “Oh no, Clear, I just meant the food here last night at the mixer was tiny. The spread at your brother's place was awesomes.”

Laughing as they started to descend towards the lobby and the adjoining breakfast hall Clear Sky playfully nudged her in the barrel. “I knew what you meant, but it’s still fun to tease.” She snorted out a laugh at her friend’s return raspberry and draped her wing over her in a feathery embrace. “Aw…don’t be like that, you can plan your revenge over the breakfast buffet.”

~ ~ ~

“I’m bored!” Cyclone, dressed in a long pure white dress with white shoes and purple earrings and blue diamond necklace, slumped on her seating pad rolling her eyes in frustration.

“Look,” Clear sighed, equally exasperated at her friend’s incessant griping. “We had to come down early so we could catch security ponies and get these pads next to the Princess.” She explained, for what felt like the millionth time, smoothing down a wrinkle in the bright green dress with silver accents with a silver shod hoof with green accents.

“Fine…” Cyclone rolled her eyes and straightened her primaries, just for something to do as they waited for the first presentation, again for what felt like the millionth time. Truth be told after meeting her last night she was looking forward to seeing Twilight again, and she resolved to try and get some answers about Darkie.

“Good, and do try to keep your hooves off the Princess.” Clear Sky giggled from her seating pad numbered four. “I don't want the Captain going through me to get to you.”

Again Cyclone rolled her blue eyes, “I'll do my absolute best not to mount her the moment she sits down, hun.” She smirked, straightening an imagined wrinkle from her white dress.

“Somehow…that is reassuring.” Clear was about to add a little more sarcasm to her retort when she was cut short by the arrival of Princess Twilight and her wife Weather Captain Rainbow Dash. A pegasus stallion, clearly security from the ‘Stallion In Black’ suit he wore, entered with Dash and Twilight. Moving with a purpose he strode past the group followed by Rainbow Dash who took the fifth seating pad next to Clear, while Princess Twilight took the second seat on the right of Cyclone. There was a small commotion as the two noted dignitaries unassumedly walked in the hotel’s presentation hall and took their places.

“When’s your presentation CS?” Rainbow asked, settling comfortably into her own pad.

Even though Clear knew the schedule by heart she still checked the timetable anyway. “Two O'clock, RD.”

Rainbow Dash performed a picture perfect roll of her cerise eyes. “This is really cutting into my nap time, you know right, Clear?” She asked with a good natured dig of her elbow to her friend’s barrel.

Cyclone, who had stood up out of respect when Twilight had sat down, seated herself back on her pad with a nervous smile. Last night’s unexpected meeting at the mixer notwithstanding, it had been a good sixteen months since she’d seen the alicorn. “Professor Twilight, good morning, it’s nice to see you again.”

Twilight offered a smile to the young pegasus, “Good morning Cyclone, I trust you’re well?”

Clear Sky returned her cyan friend’s smirk with one of her own, “I’ll have you know my presentation on Cloud production is extremely entertaining.” She stifled a giggle as Dash muttered ‘Yeah, right.’

Taking a deep breath Cyclone opened and closed her mouth a couple of times as she rephrased her question in her head. “Um...Professor, if you don't mind, I want to ask you about Darkstar?”

“I'm sorry, Cyclone,” Twilight replied with a sigh, “But there really isn't a lot I can tell you.”

“Okay, I admit my talk is an insomnia cure,” the light grey mare chuckled, “But at least I'll be up there so you'll have two seats to nap in.”

Rainbow sniggered, “You know me CS. I need a cloud or an apple tree for good sleep.” She finished with a not-so-subtle wink.

Cyclone giggled at Clear and Rainbow’s friendly banter despite how she herself felt. It was rather infectious. “But...you can tell me something, right?” She asked earnestly, “I'm kinda out of the loop over in Cloudsdale.”

Twilight gave the black mare a rather pointed look that was so full of meaning Cyclone shrank back in her seating pad. “And, who's fault is that, exactly, Cyclone?”

“What are you talking about egghead?” Rainbow asked from where she was sat while Clear looked on with barely disguised curiosity.

“Oh, nothing for awesomazing ponies.” Twilight gave her wife a disarming smile. “Cyclone here was just asking about her friend Darkstar, you remember her?”

“The white unicorn, right?” Rainbow asked, to the alicorn’s confirming nod, “Ah, yeah, carry on. Anyway, happy to see you've moved up in Cloudsdale, CS. When will you take Misty Morning's job?” She asked with a twinkle in her eyes.

Now it was Clear’s turn to roll her eyes. “No time soon, Thunderclap is in line for that.”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Cyclone tried to get Twilight’s attention again as the presentation hall began to fill up with weather ponies from other factories all over Equestria, so too did the general hubbub of background noise increase as well, making general conversation difficult. “So um, about Darkie...how is she? The last I heard she'd woken up.”

Twilight hesitated for a moment, considering her answer as several managers and middle management ponies lined up for a brief meet and greet. “I'm really not sure I'm the one to tell you.” She replied finally, before leaving the black pegasus thoroughly exasperated as she started a conversation with a red coated stallion with a heavy Vanhoovan accent.

The rest of the morning passed in much of a similar vein. Clear Sky and Rainbow insisted on continuing their back-and-forth banter, one winding up the other with jibes of taking easy work now they’re getting older, and the other threatening to have them transferred to the Crystal Empire. At least four times Cyclone tried to speak with Twilight about her friend, and on every occasion she barely managed a few words before the next pony in the seemingly never-ending line would interrupt with what the frustrated mare saw as a pointless introduction and some inane crap about whatever aspect of the weather service they provided. Once when Twilight waved her away Cyclone was so infuriated she actually raised her voice to the Princess, prompting Clear to remind her of the use of the ‘indoor voice’ and that there was time in-between presentations.

A moment later and Twilight held up her hoof to halt the greeting line as Thunderclap, Clear and Cyclone’s colleague took to the stage to begin the first presentation of the day on the ‘Everfree Forest and the Way it Affects the Local Weather’. A few minutes into it and Rainbow leant in and started to tell Clear her anecdote about the time they had faced a Hydra…’I had to kick a hydra's ass when Twi went all crazy and charged it th...’ unfortunately the rest of what was no doubt a humorous tale was cut short by a glowing lavender horn and a matching band of power circling Rainbow’s muzzle, holding her mouth firmly shut.

Thirty minutes later and Thunderclap gave a deep bow, the dark grey stallion concluding his presentation with the proof of his claim that the weather in and around the Everfree is only getting wilder, causing Rainbow to sigh that meant ‘the egghead will want to spend a month in that forest.’

With the break in the presentation finally here at long last Cyclone once again started asking Twilight about her friend Darkstar, prompting Clear, whose curiosity was getting the better of her. “Pardon me Cy, but what is wrong with this Darkstar you keep asking about?”

Cyclone looked at her friend and took a deep cleansing breath, “A year ago, just after I came to Cloudsdale, Darkie was abducted and attacked. She was beaten almost to death, 'abused', and had her horn cut off.”

Clear gasped, hanging her mouth wide open in shock. “Woah, isn’t…isn't that like a major crime? I mean, I'm not up on modern laws, but don’t they execute ponies for that?”

“Not that I know of,” Rainbow said with a hint of regret in her voice, “And, that really pissed Luna off.”

“They should!” Cyclone stomped her hoof, her frustration getting the better of her in an explosion of temper. “Just go and arrest Wily's dad for buck’s sake! We all know he did it!”

Twilight gave a deep sigh from her pad next to the black mare, she’d had all this with Air Raid months ago. “Speculation is all very well, Cyclone, but we need actual hard evidence, not haphazardly thrown about accusations that cannot be proven.”

“Can't Darkie just tell everypony who did it?” Clear Sky asked from where she was sat, not really sure what exactly the problem was. Surely if she’d been attacked and assaulted then surely she would’ve told the police.

Twilight gave another, deeper more irritated sigh, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a hoof. “Miss Darkstar's testimony, even IF she could give a coherent one, is unreliable and inadmissible as evidence, you know that 'Miss' Cyclone.

Clear put her light grey hoof on her friend’s black one in a petition for calm. “Cy, this may not be the best time to argue over this, the next presenter is coming up.” She raised her hoof and pointed to the yellow crystal pegasus flapping up to the stage with the clipboard in her hooves. “Look it’s Short Feather,” she consulted her program, “She’s giving a talk on Crystal Empire weather patterns!”

Almost immediately before the crystal pony could open her mouth Rainbow Dash was up and flying to the buffet table, having decided she’d had quite enough of being sat still, she used her belly as an excuse to be somewhere else. Asking Twi what she wanted she’d said ‘anything but a quesadilla’…of course Rainbow resolved to bring her back two of them.

Once Short Feather had finished her presentation on the Crystal Empire’s weather and how it was affected by the presence of the Crystal Heart, Cyclone took the opportunity to get herself and Clear a dreaded cafeteria coffee. While otherwise universally reviled, at least here at the Palomino Hotel the coffees were as excellent as everything else. Flying carefully back to their seating pads with the hot drinks so as not to get any on her white dress Cyclone placed her milky coffee in the cup holder and checked her schedule as Twilight returned from her hunt of the buffet table. “It’s the Saddle Arabian, Kalifa Sana, next hun. You like Saddle Arabians…” she gave her light grey friend a not-so-subtle wink.

Mention of the Saddle Arabian presentation immediately got Clear’s attention, her ears and wings perking straight up. It was no secret in the office she had a ‘thing’ for them. She loved everything about them; their accent, their height and stature…especially how very tall they were, almost alicorn height. Her undisguised enthusiasm diminished somewhat though when a rather statuesque chocolate brown mare walked serenely out onto the stage. “Aww…It's a mare?” She sighed with a pout and went back to nursing her black coffee.

Two seats across to the right and Twilight was skimming her notes excitedly as the Arabian mare was getting her presentation ready. “My last visit to Saddle Arabia was very insightful. How they transfer the Warm Front from Cameloo for Winter Wrap Up is fascinating, not to mention all the ways they have to prepare cactus for eating is...oh…she is starting now. Shhh.”  Even though she was the only pony speaking she still shushed them when Kalifa began her talk on how the Saddle Arabians tailor a warm front temperature to meet the needs of the receiving party from twenty one degrees to twenty nine degrees Celsius.

To Cyclone’s left Clear Sky was losing a battle to stay awake while to her right Twilight was taking extensive and detailed notes on the technical talk. A little between the two, Cyclone was interested but also a little bored, she started daydreaming about Luna rutting her stupid in front of the whole crowd. Twenty minutes later the presentation continued on to how the Arabians insulate the front from losing heat while moving. Lost in her daydream the black pegasus barely heard Twilight mutter, 'That answers that question' and she scratched it off her notes.

Kalifa ended her talk to thunderous applause, led by Twilight clapping her hooves. “I can use this for the next Winter Wrap Up planning!” She said with a delighted smile as a rather official looking pony came on to the stage to announce an hour long break for lunch. “Cy, you and your friend want to join me for lunch?” She asked with an amused smile as Clear Sky was drooling on Cyclone’s shoulder, snoring gently.

Cyclone, while still awake, was herself far away in her lusty daydream. “Harder goddess...please I'm yours…” she murmured just loud enough for the Princess to hear. “Ahem...uh...yes, Professor...we'll join you.” She wiped away her own drool leaking from the corner of her mouth as Twilight giggled.

“Good, the Palomino has set me up with a private room.” She smiled as she gave Cyclone an amused look. “You may want to nudge Clear Sky, she’s made your shoulder all damp.”

Cyclone blushed so hard she was sure the alicorn could both see and feel it, even through her black fur. “You...uh, didn't hear all of that, did you?” She asked sheepishly as she dug her elbow into Clear’s ribs.

The Princess of Friendship merely kept up her serene smile. “Wouldn't be the first time I've heard such from your group. I wonder if those days will return.” She gave a little knowing wink as she got up from her seating pad and left with her guards.

~ ~ ~

“Well, the second day of the conference is going great!” Twilight smiled when they were all assembled in the small beige coloured meeting room just off of the main hall, containing a buffet table a million times more luxurious than the one outside, and that wasn’t exactly low end. “Here are your notes on the Crystal Empire, Clear. I'm amazed at the effect Cadence and the Crystal Heart is having on the weather zones. I need to talk to her about that and see if it can apply to the Everfree Forest.”

“Hey babe,” Rainbow grinned as she entered the meeting room having miraculously reappeared from her ‘mysterious’ absence. “How’s your day?”

Twilight gave her wife a sideways glance. “Lunch, which I see you managed to make it back for.”

“Wouldn’t miss food for the world.” She chuckled, looking over the five star private buffet with very hungry eyes. “Hey Clear, and ah…Cyclone…how’s it going?”

“Oh…it's going very well, Captain, thank you.” Cyclone replied with a slightly embarrassed smile when her stomach chose that moment to give a loud rumble, looking at Twilight though a more pressing thought struck her. “Professor...I um...want to ask you for a pass to enter Canterlot, to visit Darkie for a few hours, please?”

Twilight raised an eyebrow at Cyclone. “You want to see anypony other than Darkstar and Air Raid?”

Cyclone shook her turquoise-maned head by way of a reply, “No Professor, I um...I don't want to go anywhere else, thank you.”

Twilight lit her horn and in her lavender aura levitated out a piece of parchment from her saddle bags and along with it an enchanted quill. Floating them in front of her she quickly but carefully wrote out the note, being sure to include her own credentials. Creating a third magical field Twilight brought out her own personal seal, that of her cutie mark combined with Rainbow’s, and sealed the folded piece of parchment before floating it into the black pegasus’s own bag. “Make sure you wear something that covers your cutie mark. Use ground transport from the station to Air Raid's house. Only if there is an issue with somepony who is not law enforcement ask to see law enforcement and use this note. Otherwise there is no reason to use this note. Understand?”

Cyclone nodded without hesitation, a tremulous smile playing over her lips as the Princess placed the sealed note in her bag. “Thank you, thank you so much!”

“Maybe a visit from you will help her, and it will certainly help Air Raid.” Twilight floated away her quill and seal back into her bag next to all the conference notes she had already made and inspected the buffet “I'm ready to eat now.”

Walking along the table Cyclone sniffed, breathing in the wonderful smells of the prepared food. ‘Spring rolls!’ she thought with a hungry grin, pilling five of them on her plate while Clear and Rainbow both went after the two flavours of quiche on offer. Twilight on the other hoof went for the hayburgers and salads. For the next twenty minutes the only sounds in the meeting room were four hungry ponies devouring the sumptuous buffet. Cyclone went up another two times to restock on her beautiful spring rolls while Clear dug in like she’d never ever eaten before in her life.

“Now that was food!” Rainbow leant back in the pad she had been sitting on at the table, punctuating her statement with a delicate belch of appreciation.

“I do like what the kitchen turns out.” Twilight agreed, making several mental notes – complete with cross checks – to compliment the staff and recommend them to the other Princesses when they stayed here next.

“That was amazing!” Cyclone sighed contentedly on her own pad, patting the distinct bulge that was her belly, glad her white dress wasn’t form-hugging. “Dusky didn't do food very often, but to be fair the drink was good.”

Rainbow sniggered, “That’s because Dusk serves Luna's moonshine. We need more of that, Twi.”

“Oh…should I tell Applejack you don't want any more of her cider?” Twilight chuckled as her wife’s eyes went wide with shock at the mere thought of no more Sweet Apple cider and squealed a definite ‘NO!’

Cyclone joined in with a laugh of her own, “Now there's a drink that causes as many problems as it solves.”

Twilight paused as she considered getting another plateful of hayfries. “Are you sure you don't want to visit another pony when you're in Canterlot Cyclone?” She asked, already halfway out of her pad.

“Well, I would like to see my dad, I guess.” She replied, suddenly looking downcast as a melancholy thought took her. “Wily would be my first choice but we still don't know where she is.” She finished a little bitterly, thinking of her lost friend.

“Yes,” Twilight said, a definite arch to her voice. “And, her father stated she is safe and doesn't wish to reveal where since the accident. That is his privilege.”

“Uugh...” Cyclone groaned long and low, torn between a desire to stomp her hoof in frustration and not wanting to make a scene. Ultimately she settled for an angry mutter, “Yeah, it's his privilege alright…”

“I'm sorry Cyclone,” Twilight nipped her mutter in the bud immediately. “I know it is frustrating, but even I am not above the law.”

Cyclone lost her temper. She didn’t mean to, she couldn’t help it. Leaping to her hooves she stomped all four. “It's manure! We know she's not in Filly! She has no family there! You’re a Princess, can't you do something?” The black pegasus yelled as she stomped her hoof again.

The moment Cyclone started to raise her voice Rainbow was on her hooves. “Nopony yells at my wife but me.”

Twilight put a calming hoof on her wife’s shoulder. “Dash, it's okay. Cyclone, the fact that Cold Front told your group a lie as to where she is isn't a crime. Officially he is not saying where she is. He does have correspondence to show she is okay; I saw a letter three weeks ago. Wildfire’s braille has improved. Cold Front claims that Air Raid caused Wildfire emotional distress and wishes to keep her location secret because of that. By my requesting to see the correspondence is more than he has to give, but he gives it willingly and I have confirmed it is Wildfire’s hoof writing. You need to let it go and think about Darkstar.”

Cyclone struggled to breathe evenly, forcing herself to calm down with every exhalation through her nose. “I...I apologise…for my outburst, Captain, Professor.” She forced out through several long deep breaths.

“Who knows? Maybe Cold Front will change his mind and let you see your friend again.” Twilight said, not a little unkindly. “Trust, like the broken mirror, is a difficult thing to rebuild.”

~ ~ ~

“I wish you well too, Cyclone.” Twilight gave her a warm smile as the black pegasus got up from her seating pad to get up on the stage and deliver her own presentation, the one she had completed on the train the day previously.

“Thanks Professor,” Cyclone reached a wing to her bag and retrieved her notes as she made her way to the left past Clear Sky, who offered her a hoof-bump – which she returned, of course – and made her way up the steps to the stage. Looking out into the sea of assembled pegasi she readied the laptop, entering her user name and password to call up her prepared talk.

Giving Clear a little wink she flipped to the first slide of twenty as she introduced her speech on the ‘On-Time Record of Cloudsdale’s Seasons’. In her introduction she made sure to reference Princess Twilight’s key role she played in getting Ponyville’s first ever on time spring season started, and the roll-on effect it’d had on the cloud city’s own seasonal production. Cyclone smiled as that little reference earned her a roomful of applause, as well as a blush and a royal hoof wave from the Princess herself.

Giving a discreet nod in Twilight’s direction, Cyclone went on to talk about the beneficial effects of the weather being so on time, comparing it with previous pre-Twilight records and how its better now, and how, for the tenth year running Cloudsdale had managed to hold all the seasonal weather records in Equestria. She rounded it off twenty minutes later with a mention to all weather pegasi, and how everypony’s job was a vital contribution that every single creature benefitted from.

As the hoof-clapping applause and rumble of stomping hooves sounded across the presentation hall Cyclone took a low bow to soak it all in. The exhibitionist in her loved this, and she didn’t want it ever to end…that is until an olive drab stallion stood up in the middle of the hall. Pointing an accusatory hoof at the stage he proceeded to ruin Cyclone’s afternoon. “That is all well and good, but I'm with the Canterlot Centennial and I'd like to know why a foal abuser is even at this conference!”

The utter silence in the huge lavish hall following this statement was so complete that one could’ve heard a single hair fall from the coat of a pony at the far end and hear it land on the carpeted floor. A split second ago Cyclone was in her element owning the stage. Each and every pair of eyes in the room were flitting between her and the stallion as the colour drained from her, her black fur paling under the sudden scrutiny. “I…I’m not…one of those…” she mumbled, her tiny voice carried by the microphone she was wearing.

Haunted by a past more than twelve months old Cyclone didn’t notice Princess Twilight stand from her seating pad and face the stallion. “Your name, reporter from the Canterlot Centennial?” The alicorn asked calmly.

“I'm Gossip Column your highness, and I've seen the report!” The olive stallion identified himself with a flash of his I.D. badge that was affixed to the lanyard around his neck.

“Really?” Twilight asked, seemingly unimpressed, “So you have the arrest record on hoof?”

“I...I'm not...” Cyclone crumbled to her haunches as tears started to leak from her blue eyes. “I…”

“You certainly have the wrong pony!” Clear Sky leapt to her hooves, her indignant voice loud enough to cut over her distraught friend as she came to her defence, “I trust Cyclone with my niece!”

“No, she was released on a technicality!” Gossip answered the Princess, ignoring Clear completely.

“So…you have that release notice on hoof?” Twilight asked, fairly sure already what the answer was going to be, and she wasn’t disappointed when the reporter started to founder.

“Ah, well…no,” the olive stallion stammered before rallying himself with a comeback. “But, I did interview the stallion of the filly she abused!” He yelled a little louder, drawing the assembled crowd’s attention.

“So, you interviewed somepony with a grudge against pegasi?” Thunderclap came to his colleague’s defence, the dark grey stallion demanded as he flapped up to the stage to stand in front of the mare now crying freely behind him.

Completely unprepared for this level of defence Gossip decided to change tack, and decided to attack Cyclone from a different angle. “No, no, she was dressed as a filly at the time!” He called with the conviction of one who had just won a major debate as the black mare covered her face with her legs, her shoulders heaving with her tears.

“So you have issues with how ponies dress?” Twilight responded, quick as a whip-crack. “I suppose you think ponies wearing nothing is lewd?”

To say Gossip Column was stunned was an understatement. This kind of assassination was his speciality. “I never said it was lewd! Just that it is deviant for an adult to dress as a filly!”

“So you think Manesy was a deviant in 'The Baby'?” A random stallion shouted from across the hall, to a scattering of cheers and whoops.

“No that was a movie!” Gossip yelled with a stomp of his hoof, “This is real life!”

“Yeah?” Clear Sky shouted back as she flew up to the stage to stand on the other side of her crying friend while Thunderclap used his wing to help her to her hooves. “Well Cyclone is better in real life than you are with unsubstantiated claims!”

Losing his temper finally Gossip pointed his olive drab hoof at Cyclone as Thunderclap and then Clear Sky began to lead her from the stage. “She should not be free in polite society!”

“Polite society doesn't read your newspaper Gossip, so you have little room to talk about such things.” Princess Twilight said in the coldest voice she could muster, to the rumble of muttered agreement from the assembled ponies.

Rainbow Dash chose that opportune moment to burst into the hall, drawn from her sneaky nap on a cloud outside by the sound of Twilight’s raised voice “What the hay is going on in here?” She asked, immediately drawing herself up against Gossip as Clear Sky and Thunderclap both led Cyclone from the room, steering her through the large ornate doors that Rainbow had left open.

“To our room, Thunder, quickly.” Clear said as she draped a light grey wing over Cyclone’s flank to join that of the dark grey stallion, wrapping the quietly sobbing mare in a warm comforting feathery blanket. Blinded by her tears the black pegasus allowed herself to be guided by her two friends. As the doors closed behind them Cyclone heard Rainbow yelling at the damned reporter, heard the diminishing voice of the Princess calming the whole situation; all that ran through her mind was how fired she now was sure to be. Her four hooves felt like leaden weights attached to the end of her legs, holding her down just as sure as that day in Canterlot was going to hold her back and haunt her the rest of her life.

~ ~ ~

Many thoughts ran through Wildfire’s head as she stood trembling in the office of Amethyst Glory. Her hooves echoed on the cold ceramic tiles of the floor, though this wasn’t what was making the small pegasus tremble. No, what caused her to tremble were the cold metal shackles secured just a little too tight around the ankles of her four hooves, definitely not padded, the bare metal was already starting to chafe at the skin under her fur – these in turn were held to the tiles by eight inch chains connected to D rings in the floor, these short chains held Wildfire’s forelegs a few inches wider apart than shoulder width. The heavy bare metal collar cinched around her neck was joined to the D ring in front of her by a twelve inch chain, forcing her head down in an awkward bowing stance just to get some slack.

‘What have I done now?’ Wildfire thought miserably, not even daring to whimper into the tiled floor. ‘Then again…I don’t need to do anything, do I?’

Across the office on the other side of the desk and with closed eyes Amethyst Glory sat on her seating pad, her half-moon glasses folded in front of her on top of a small mountain of paperwork. Propped up by the elbows of her forelegs she massaged her temples with her hooves and the bridge of her nose with her magic in a vain attempt to alleviate the sheer amount of frustration she was experiencing. She let out a tiny groan, more than a whimper but less than a deep sigh, to give vocalisation to the emotions she was feeling. It wasn’t enough. Nothing she was trying was or would ever be enough.

The only other sounds in the office, besides the never-ending incessant ticking of the antique wall clock was the low steady breathing of the titanic earth pony who was currently occupying the seating pad to the right of the director. Lotus Stripes carefully looked up over at Amethyst in the middle of her self-calming routine, looking out of the corners of his eyes like he was a colt afraid of being caught in wrong doing. Sitting to her left in her usual position the unicorn Amber Leaves was, unusually, not pacing in place from hoof sat on her own pad. Just like Lotus she was casting nervous glances at the director.

The reason they were both sat so scared on their seating pads?

Amethyst Glory was angry.

Actually Amethyst Glory was very, very angry indeed. So angry was she that bright green sparks were shooting from the glowing crackling green nimbus of power illuminating her horn. Never before had she allowed herself to be this angry, this volatile, in front of her staff. Opening her eyes Lotus and Amber shrank back even more from the angry unicorn. Her bright green eyes were literally glowing with her barely controlled rage.

Forced into her awkward kneeling position, chained in front of the warden’s desk, even Wildfire could feel the sheer amount of magical power just a few feet away. ‘I’ve never ever known Mistress Amethyst this angry before…’ deep in her being Wildfire knew whatever it was that was about to happen, when it did, it would be bad.

Struggling to contain and focus the vast roiling tempestuous energy raging within her Amethyst Glory glanced from the cowering chained ‘thing’ in front of her to the stack of papers to the side of her on her desk. Selecting just the top-most piece of paper she lifted it in her glowing green aura. Turning it over and around she saw it was filled with hundreds of carefully placed braille dots. The writing on this paper would’ve been incomprehensible to her just a few months ago. However, since ‘something’ had been bought to her attention, she had taken lengths to learn.

Angling the piece of paper so the raised dots were facing upwards Amethyst levitated the piece of paper over to the bound pegasus.

Straining against her bonds, her muscles on fire from the awkward angle, the fur on the back of Wildfire’s neck stood up on end from the amount of magical power as the paper got closer to her muzzle.

Without bothering to be gentle Amethyst roughly pressed the paper against the yellow pegasus’s nose, rubbing the dots all over her, making sure she felt each and every letter on the paper. “Explain this.” She said simply, clearly, each syllable punctuated with a spark of raw power.

Wildfire felt the braille letter shoved roughly against her nose. She recognised it, of course she did. She herself had written this very letter something like eight, maybe nine, days ago. “It…” having not spoken in days, Wildfire’s voice sounded odd in her ears. “It…it’s the letter you asked me to write, Mistress Glory.”

“Read. It.” Amethyst ordered.

Wildfire’s blood ran cold in her veins. She knew her game was up. She knew she had been caught. “R-Read…i-it?” She stammered.

“Read. It. Now!” Amethyst screamed, stomping a hoof on her desk top as a wave of power from her horn scattered everything on it to the tiled floor, and Lotus and Amber shivered in fear on their seating pads.

Bowing her head in abject terror Wildfire hesitantly started to read the letter aloud.

“Hi everypony!

Everything is fine with me, I promise.

Like, I'm beginning to feel better out here in Filly.

Pain isn't as big of a trouble for me anymore,

Most of the time it just hurt a little, enough that with meds I can ignore it

Even if it's tougher at night, it works.

Ponies here in Fillydelphia are real nice, I’ve made a few good friends who

Let me hang out with them whenever I have time so I can learn about everything here.

Everything here is busy, learning my way about, I have plenty to do.

And, that's fun, to be occupied that is.

Spending time with my mum’s family is also pretty fun.

Everything here is okay, I love you all but I’m moving on with my life.”

Quietly, Wildfire finished her reading of the letter, quaking in terrified silence of what was to come.

“Very good.” Amethyst said, her voice barely audible. “Now explain this.” She said simply as she ran the first letter of each line slowly over the pegasus’s nose.

Barely able to stand now from sheer fright Wildfire was on her knees, trembling and shaking uncontrollably. “I…I…” she babbled incoherently, she lost control of her bladder, her urine spraying onto the tiles behind her. “M-M-Mistress G-Glory I’m so-sorry!”

“Read. The. Letters.” Amethyst’s voice was now a low snarl, that of a feral animal.

Wildfire by now had lost the ability to stand at all. Her bladder was still releasing as she started to recite the letters. “H, E, L, P…M, E…P, L, E, A, S, E…”

“Help. Me. Please.” Amethyst repeated slowly and carefully, spitting out each word with venom. “Help. Me. Please.” For a long, drawn out terrible moment, but for the clock, there was utter silence. Nopony spoke, nopony even dared to breathe, as the crackling sparks around Amethyst’s horn continued to flash.

“REeeaaAAAAARGH!” With a deafening, ear-splitting, roar that was a release of months upon months of pent up anger, frustration, resentment and hate Amethyst leapt from her seating pad and with a blinding flash of her green magic she split her carved mahogany desk clean in twain, sending the pieces into the walls of her office, leaving her a channel leading to the terrified pegasus.

Amethyst stalked forwards, each stomp of her glowing green hooves shattering the ceramic tiles into fragments under-hoof. Stopping mere inches from the chained pegasus her glowing horn lit the heavy metal collar cinched around the yellow mare’s neck, surrounding it in a bright green glow. With the slightest thought in her head Amethyst levitated the collar upwards with such force she ripped all the chains holding Wildfire in place from their mountings in the floor, and holding her just by her neck she bought the mare up to her face.

“Luna damn you Wildfire!” She screamed in her face, before her left forehoof connected in a viciously hard slap to the right side of the struggling mare’s muzzle, so hard it sent a tooth flying from her mouth. “I’m done with you!” Spit flew from Amethyst’s mouth as she screamed, “I know your true fear, Wildfire!” Her horn shone brighter, surrounding the whole of Wildfire’s body, chains and all, in her green aura, before sending the poor mare flying backwards across her office to crash through the double doors and out into the hall to land in a crumpled whimpering heap.

For a few short seconds in the aftermath of the outburst, the only sound was the clock, and Amethyst’s heavy breathing as she struggled to regain some semblance of her self-control. “Lotus…Mr. Stripes…escort that ‘thing’ to Room Thirteen. Now. Be quick about it or you will be in the next room, understand?”

“Y-Yes, W-Warden Glory, right away!” Willing some movement back into his unresponsive legs, Lotus Stripes rose from his seating pad as if in a stupor, he stumbled uncertainly from the devastated office to seize the ruined chains still secured to the shackles around the hooves of the fallen mare.

Back in the ruined office Amber Leaves sat in awed immobility on her seating pad, her stunned eyes wide as saucers, her mouth hanging comically open as her brain attempted to process the scene that had just played out. In her years working with Amethyst Glory she had never so much as heard her raise her voice, let alone react like that.

Chuckling nastily Lotus, the massive earth pony, dragged the somewhat insensate Wildfire behind him down the hall of Helping Hooves Care Home, heading towards Room Thirteen. He knew full well what was waiting for the pegasus in that room. He also knew that when it was released from that room it would not be the same. A tiny spark of sympathy deep within him hoped for her sake she would finally break from the experience. Another, louder spark hoped she wouldn’t. He did enjoy torturing her.

“We've reduced your rent, little bitch.” Lotus sneered nastily as he dragged her down the hallway. Wildfire heard his voice but didn’t really process what he was saying, she was struggling against the drag of the chains, to little avail. “Where you’re going will solve your storage problem,” He barked out a loud rough laugh as he reached a door marked simply ‘Thirteen’. “You'll have no problem sniffing your own ass in here.” He said as he wrenched open the door.

Twisting the chains in his right forehoof Lotus pulled Wildfire roughly up to her hind legs as he threw her bodily into the only thing in room thirteen; a three and a half feet square and two feet high wooden box lying on the floor in the middle of the room.

“Wha…what’s…happening?” Wildfire asked aloud, sense starting to return to her. She reached out a hoof and she hit the inside edge of the box she was sat up in. Wherever she was…it wasn’t her cell.

“Lie down, bitch!” Lotus shouted. Not waiting for her to comply he slammed one door shut with a dull thud, and then quickly shut the other on her muzzle, earning a muffled squeal from inside the box. Wasting no time at all the huge earth pony then slid two metal bars into their respective grooves at the top and bottom of the box, locking the doors shut tight.

Standing back he admired his efforts. Sealed tight in the box nopony would even know it was there were it not for the whimpered squeals now emanating from the two circular air holes cut into the tops of the doors.

Inside the box Wildfire had at last recovered enough from Amethyst’s violent expulsion to test the boundaries of where she was now. Extending her hind legs her hooves soon hit solid wood with a dull thud. ‘No…please, no!’

Starting to sweat and hyperventilate she raised her forelegs above her head and found nothing but wood there not mere inches above her. ‘No, no…no!’

Sweat began to pour from her body, her heart beat like a drum, feeling like a cannon blast in the silence of the box. Instinctively Wildfire tried to sit up. Her mouth went bone dry as her head didn’t make it more than six inches before she hit the wooden doors. Pushing her hooves upwards they too hit the doors. ‘I’m trapped…I’m trapped…I can’t move…no…no!’ Her fear was confirmed…she couldn’t fully stretch out in any direction.

Suddenly she felt the top of the box lurch upwards, as the bottom moved backwards. Wildfire shivered and trembled as chills ran up and down her terrified little body. After a few seconds the box stopped moving, coming to rest at what the pegasus guessed was a forty five degree angle. She jammed her hooves to her mouth as a wave of nausea made her retch.

Wildfire’s chest went tight, she started choking from abject fear and dread, she was sweating and nauseous…the sides of the box were getting closer, and closer…squeezing the very life from her. “Please…please let me out!”

“Hey little bitch,” Lotus Stripes sneered ignoring her, banging his hoof on the doors as he locked off the ratcheted winch holding the box at its new position, “We put a window in. Smile for your audience!” He laughed loud enough for her to hear, of course there was no window, but it didn’t know that.

“Pleeeease!” She screamed, thumping and scraping at the inside of the doors, doing nothing but making the earth pony laugh even more. “Let me out, pleeease!” She begged, barely able to breathe as she clawed uselessly at the doors…now she knew her terror was on display through a window! ‘No! What have you done? What were you thinking? NOOOOOOO!’

Laughing loudly Lotus walked slowly away, making sure his diminishing hoof-steps could be heard.

“Please let m…” Wildfire paused, from within the angled box she could hear the hoof-steps getting fainter and fainter… “Don’t leave me! Please! Come back, let me out!” In her blind panic she clawed at the doors until her hooves started to crack and bleed.

Leaving the door to the room wide open Lotus laughed as he walked away, Wildfire’s terrified screams sweet music to his ears.