The Elements Of Elements

Chapters

The Old Problem (Celestia, Luna)
Inevitable (Applejack, Twilight)
This Platinum Cape (Trixie)
Mr. Rich And The Barnyard Bargains Go Experience (Mr. Rich, Rarity)
Natural Conducters (Ratchette)
Twilight Sparkle And The Totally Obvious Complete Non-Mystery Of The Seventh Element (Pinkie, Twilight)

The Old Problem (Celestia, Luna)

"...and now the new Protoceran ambassador wants a private tour of the butcher shop! With me at his side the whole time. I swear, Luna, I don't know if this is a sincere desire to congratulate Mr. Gristle on managing to establish the place in the heart of Canterlot or just an attempt to prove himself above me in the dominance chain by making sure I accompany him and proving he can stay in there a lot longer than he believes I can..." Celestia slowly shook her head, ignoring the statuary in the castle alcoves in favor of a (inner) vision which she'd only gone over six times instead of something approaching six digits. "There has to be a way to cast a hidden air purification spell, right? Because even if a griffon can't feel the magic, he might notice a change in the airflow if I keep shifting most of the atmosphere away from me..."

A faint scraping noise made its tentative way down the hallway, unsure of its place in potentially interrupting the evening trot-and-talk. There were times when the sisters needed to give each other little briefings, tiny nuggets of knowledge to be passed between Night and Day. In the deep past, they had often left each other notes. For the modern age... seconds used for reading words was time not being spent in each other's company, and so they went on an instinctive tour of a structure for which the elder had gone beyond mere memorization and the younger was still trying to find out where all of the best semi-recently added hiding spots were.

"I am unaware," Luna replied from a place just a little too far behind her sister, something Celestia hadn't caught on to yet: the elder was far too self-distracted from the stresses of a too-long day and had yet to pick up on how carefully her sibling was moving, the continuing dropback, all the little pauses and scrapings and shivers, in part because Luna was being so very careful about hiding every last tenth-bit of it. "And since you are consulting me on the issue, I can presume the Archives had no entry on the subject." The same noise, only with a little more weight behind it -- followed by a faint, mostly-stifled gasp of all-too-temporary relief. "But think back to your battle training, sister: find something with a different, long-lasting odor and apply a few drops of it under your nostrils. We used bay leaf more than once, as I recall, and the scents should not mix... too..."

The trailing hoofsteps dropped further back. Stopped completely. The scraping sound, as far as levels of attention-seeking were concerned, went from an accidental waft of breath against fur to a full hoof-tap against a ticklish spot. But the decibels of momentary comfort did not follow, and so stone shifted as something more than normal earth pony strength was brought to bear against it. Rocked...

...and the echo, satisfied that it had the floor, took its sweet time before departing.

Celestia slowly turned. Luna was four body lengths behind her, frozen next to the alcove which had once held a not-particularly-objectionable statue representing the final meeting at the Treaty Of Menagerie. It now contained something rather similar, only considerably more scattered and with a few strands of blue fur providing an unexpectedly artistic contrast.

"What just happened?" As questions went, Celestia felt it was a fairly simple one, with no unexpected complications visible on the answer horizon.

Luna twitched, and the only reason it wasn't a spasm was the tremendous, all-too-visible effort which kept the reaction down to a full-body shift, approximately six tail strands to the left.

"I... tripped."

"Tripped." Not a question at all.

"Yes," Luna steadily replied, or at least as steadily as she could with semi-tangible tail trying to lash against her entire body at once, which was accomplishing absolutely nothing. "Tripped. As you are well aware, I have four legs. When a pony is especially tired, as I happen to be after once again being shortchanged on sleep, it is a number which virtually guarantees the occasional tangle --"

The dark eyes slowly went to the right, eventually locating the new subject of Celestia's steady gaze. The elder was looking at the shed fur, and just about nothing else.

Luna twitched again. This one had more of an anticipatory note to it.

"Oh, Luna," Celestia sighed. "The old problem?"

"No." The reply had been immediate, something more than insistent and, incidentally, was also a completely obvious lie.

"We can take care of it right now," Celestia gently smiled, or at least as gently as she could manage while silently preparing every resource she had for the chase. "I can stay awake for a few more hours, and I'm --" carefully "-- almost sure I remember where..."

Nearly every successive word which had been waiting for birth perished under the weight of Luna's dark stare. Celestia sorted through the bodies in a desperate search for survivors and found but one.

"Um," Celestia said.

"You were," Luna slowly said, "about to say you remembered where you put the chains. Would that be correct?" Her wings were half-flared. All four non-tangled legs were braced to charge, and Celestia couldn't tell in which direction. The horn hadn't ignited yet, but at the moment, that last part seemed to be a matter of time.

A second trembling hoof poked out from the mound of verbal corpses. "...yes?"

"No."

Reinforcements arrived and, just to save time, set up in front of the overflowing triage station. "Luna, we have to take care of it right now, before it gets any worse. You're almost up against the wall already, I can see you trying not to rub, and you know what happens when you stall, I remember, and..."

"It has been," Luna forced through grinding teeth, "a long time. But not long enough for me to forget how the supposed and short-term thing which you laughably consider to be a cure...."

"Not long enough for me to forget," Celestia quickly kicked the words in, watching them bleed out in front of her. "Not long enough for me not to remember how much you suffered. Luna, please, we just have to -- get it over with. You know you'll feel better afterwards..."

Starkly, "After the chains."

There was only one volunteer left for the verbal charge, and it had already written its will. "...yes."

"It has not been long enough for me to forget that."

They looked at each other for a while. More twitching got involved, with some of them from Celestia as she tried to figure out which way to move first and found her own body trying to beat her to it.

The fallen statue attempted to contribute, but the tiny impact of what had once been a stone scroll didn't have much to add.

Openly pleading now. "Luna -- it's the only way."

Her sister blinked.

"Is it?"

There had been more curiosity than distraction tactic in the tone, and so Celestia listened, still very prepared to be extremely wrong.

"A long time," Luna repeated. "Long enough for things to -- progress. Perhaps... there might be another option now? I am willing to investigate, sister, especially if it means leaving the chains to rust in peace."

"Another option..." Celestia considered. Things had advanced...

"Which we will investigate... in the morning," the younger proposed.

"We can wake them right now," Celestia reminded her. "It's their job, Luna, it's why we kept them on -- because they can be trusted, and -- "

"-- they are difficult enough to understand when they are fully awake. I can withstand another night of this in hopes of a more capable diagnosis."

More staring.

"You won't run?"

"I will not run." The unspoken 'yet' was the loudest word.

"And if they don't... have anything?"

There was no vocal answer, and after a full minute, it seemed there never would be.

Celestia tried to remember how the teleport tracer spell worked. Then she tried to remember if the teleport tracer spell worked, followed by successfully bringing back the recollections of every last time it hadn't.

"All right," the elder finally said. "Morning."

Luna nodded. And they resumed their trip down the hallway, with the younger now openly rubbing her flanks against most of it.

The diagnosis took four seconds.

"Artemis verifoma," Doctor Vanilla Bear told them. The white head quickly turned away from the lens which had been magnifying the view of Luna's fur sample, and the diagnostician among the Royal Physicians smiled. (The rapid movement failed to shift the ridiculously-thick mane. Nothing ever did.) "And I was worried that it would be something important!"

Luna twitched, which mostly substituted for the partially-suppressed snarl.

Chocolate Bear's field exerted, and several delicate pieces of medical equipment were evacuated towards the ceiling. "Not that this isn't important, Princess!" the bulkier of the two unicorn stallions rapidly interjected. "Any problem of yours is our top concern! Unless there's another problem with your sister at the same time --- which isn't to say she's more important than you are -- or that... we can't..." Helpless brown eyes darted towards his partner. "...prioritize...?"

"Are you trying to get us fired?" Vanilla Bear hissed. The attempt at private communication went about as well as it ever did: not at all.

"No! I'm just trying to point out that we have a duty to both of them, and it just happens that Princess Luna needs our help today!"

"But what if it came down to both at once?" a suddenly-frazzled Vanilla asked. (None of that touched the mane either.) "How are we supposed to choose?"

"By medical priorities, as always!" Chocolate shot back. "Most critical condition first!"

"And if it's identical?" Vanilla neurotically drove on, sweat beginning to soak both coat and garment. "If both of them had the same disease or wound at the same moment? We only have time to treat one, the entire world depends on our getting it right, and we -- we would have to..."

His head tilted up, and slightly to the right.

Celestia took a moment to enjoy the silence and, in the name of efficiency, also used it for repressing the sigh. "And he's gone," she observed. "So, Doctor Bear --" this towards the still alert and very nervous surgeon, "-- the old problem actually has a name now..."

"Never mind the name," Luna twitched. "I much prefer those I cursed it by. Does it have a treatment?"

Chocolate -- smiled. It was a sincere one, and the total relief which beamed from every bright tooth only added to the sudden lightening of the atmosphere. "Yes."

Celestia's posture shed several thousand bales of burden and the prospect of one cross-continent pursuit. Luna wasn't quite as ready to commit yet. "A simple one, Doctor? Something which does not involve -- extreme measures?"

"There's almost nothing easier," Chocolate reassured them, "Honestly, Princesses, it's become a more common issue among the populace over the years. The more cases we had, the more we could use to test possible cures. After a while, we had something standardized. Other than size and skin area, I'm sure there won't be any issues with an alicorn body, not with all three races going through the same condition and the treatment working equally for all!"

"This has happened to another ponies?" Celestia asked, openly surprised. "How many?"

"Vanilla would know the numbers better than I would," Chocolate said, "but it's not exactly an epidemic. It's just one of the consequences from having more ponies active during the night."

"...oh?" Luna carefully asked. Far too carefully.

Chocolate was too lost in the joy of Problem Solved (and Perceived Exile Averted) to notice. "Oh, it's a nasty little rash -- a minor fungal infection, really -- but it can be cured! If you want proof, it's standing right in front of you! I had it myself when I was an intern and got stuck on the Lunar shift for six moons! You see, it only develops in ponies whose skin doesn't get enough exposure to sunlight --"

The temperature in the private office dropped by eight degrees. Ice coated every hovering instrument. Chocolate Bear found his jaw frozen open with hooves ice-bound to the floor, but only metaphorically.

"Sunlight," Luna softly said.

Most of the surgeon's decibels had entered exile ahead of him. "...yes..."

"So the treatment -- is to be exposed to sunlight -- for some period of time?" Volume and temperature were dropping in concert now, and the race to see which reached absolute zero first would come down to the nose. "What would that period be, Doctor? Days? Weeks? Moons spent under Sun, with my schedule overturned in order to allow Sun to dapple my coat, with the itch of a minor fungal infection compared to the ever-increasing --"

"-- it's a cream!"

Celestia's field, which had been busy with both clearing the ice and propping the surgeon up, flickered slightly. "A cream? That's it?"

"Selenium-based!" Chocolate Bear gasped. "Rub it on the affected areas twice a night! Leave it there for ten minutes and then rinse it off! Repeat until cured! There's a -- little bit of a scent to deal with... but..."

Luna blinked. "And -- that is all? A simple cream?"

"I can run out and fill the prescription for you in ten minutes!" Chocolate Bear insisted as all four knees sagged into the welcome support of Celestia's warm field. "Fifteen if the lines are long! Eight if I tell them it's for -- okay, I won't tell them who it's for, I know you want to keep this private, even if ponies might -- well, they're going to pick up on the --"

"-- a cream..." Luna cut in. "That is truly all there is to the treatment? Selenium against the skin?"

A nod. The stubble from the shaved mane shifted more than his partner's construct ever had.

Luna smiled.

"The wonders of the modern age," she said, "can be rather smaller than advertised -- and all the more wondrous for it. Write your prescription, Doctor Bear. I look forward --" a glance at Celestia "-- to my first dose. How long until I feel relief? Will my Open Palace session this evening be tolerable, at least in physical comfort?"

"The rash itself won't clear immediately," Chocolate shakily said. "But the itching will be mostly suppressed at the first use, and it'll get even better after. Trust me, Princess -- trust us. We know what we're doing. And I'm sure you can deal with the... well, I told you, there's a... scent..."

"Yes, you do seem to be proving yourself capable once again," a half-rapture-lost Luna happily agreed, and rubbed her right flank against the hyper-raised examination bench. "To the waiting room, then..."

Celestia turned to follow. They both heard the subtle sound of an overly-coiffured mane shifting down and to the left, although only because the head which somehow managed to take its weight it had moved.

"...but where would we even start looking for the Bearer of Coin-Flipping?" Vanilla asked the universe.

They ignored him.

They were standing at the edge of Luna's bath (or at least, one was). The cream had been applied, with both sisters taking part in the coating: it was always a little tricky to use one's field on any part of the body which couldn't be directly seen, and even with the siblings at mutual labor, some very awkward twisting had been involved.

"Seven minutes, Luna." It was all Celestia was willing to risk.

"There is... something of a burning sensation," Luna thoughtfully said. "A very mild one, as if one's skin had somehow just tasted a rather weak specimen of pepper. I suppose that could not be entirely escaped. Still... it is so much better than the chains..."

Celestia smiled. "I'm glad you thought to ask," she told her sister, and then went back to holding her breath, right up until she decided another quick sentence was needed. "I never enjoyed using them, you know that..."

Luna snorted. "What value of 'enjoy' are we measuring to, Tia? Every equation I can work has your statement falling somewhat short of truth..." She twitched, but even that had begun to ease over the course of the first treatment.

"I didn't." How much oxygen could she take in through her mouth without Luna noticing?

"I have a distinct recollection of your expression. I had a very long experience of it while I was bound. Several times."

"Luna, I never --"

"-- you have a very subtle smirk, do you know that? I suspect most ponies never notice it at all. But for one who shared a bedroom with it..."

"I didn't."

The younger shrugged, and the "As you say," was merry. Foresight had peered into the future and found a horizon without a single shadow cast from hard-forged links. "Hmm... Tia, from where you stand, do you detect something of -- that scent we were warned of?"

"No," Celestia lied.

"And from where you are standing now?"

"No."

"I ask because you have backed up approximately six body lengths since we began."

"Nothing, Luna."

"Seven body lengths." She took a deep breath, then quickly let it go. "Is that the selenium, do you think?"

"I couldn't say," Celestia replied, trying to hold ground while failing to convince herself that her subtle mouth-breathing wasn't coating her own tongue with the stuff.

"It probably is," Luna decided. "So it has a scent. Interesting. Memorable, to use the kindest of words. Well, I can stand that better than the chains as well."

Celestia nodded.

"Odd how it seems to get stronger over time," Luna mused. "Not that it matters, as it will be rinsed away in a minute or so. And then to the Open Palace session, where the only agony will come from listening to the stupidities of those who insist on using me as a substitute for civil court judgment..."

Another nod. A minute (or so). She was sure she could hold her breath for that long.

And hold still.

Completely. Still.

"Eight body lengths," Luna noted, and then jumped into the bath.

Luna had yet to find any true enjoyment in her Open Palace sessions. In theory -- or at least, in the sales pitch which Celestia had originally used in getting her to begin hosting them -- they were supposed to bring laughter, joy, revelation, wonders, and a chance to attend the occasional wedding. In reality, they worked out to be an near-endless parade of arbitration sessions with the occasional bad joke thrown in. Which was still better than winding up with a Real Problem, but it did tend to grate against one's coat after a time (the first three minutes, and not in a way which would ever relieve itching), especially when the doors opened to admit a new disputing pair and she caught sight of the line stretching all the way to the Lunar Courtyard. Possibly beyond.

Tonight's queue had been as bad as any for count, and possibly stupider for complaint. The initial highlight had been two earth ponies, each of whom owned a dog. One male, one female, and that also applied to their companions. The ponies did not get along. The canines had Gotten Along to the point where their Getting had produced one very large, extremely wriggly, and not-at-all-trained puppy, who had demonstrated happiness, affection, and a complete lack of bladder control all over her throne room. The citizens wanted to know which of them she felt it should belong to and, after ten minutes of listening to their mindless reasons as to why she should not choose the other, she'd come very close to proposing they throw it into a mirror pool. Fortunately, that had been the longest single session of the night.

In fact, each session after that had become successively shorter.

Or perhaps progressively.

"And then she..." The green pegasus, who had become increasingly greener since entering, took the tiniest breath it was possible for a pony to use and live. Then she took a smaller one.

"Yes?" Luna asked, false patience well beyond frayed. "What did she do, citizen? In factual detail, please. If only for the change of pace."

"She..." A glance at the trembling wings of the blue mare on her right. "Well, why don't you tell the Princess, Skyvault? They were your actions. You can tell her what they were better than I can!" And held her breath again.

"No, you do it, Elfive," the smaller mare hastily insisted as her coat marched on towards aqua. "You were watching me, right? I don't have eyes outside my head!" Which was all she could do on one breath, and so she took another. Just not for long.

"I trust your memory," Elfive raced.

"I trust yours more!" Skyvault rushed.

Neither one seemed to have a followup.

Luna stared at them. "If my own memory still serves, this was originally about a forgotten debt, yes?"

They both nodded.

"One forgot to pay the other back, and the one who gave the loan supposedly failed to recall the true amount of interest she had requested?"

Again. Their rib cages seemed to be caving inwards.

"And since your recollections are now so clear, is it possible that each remembers all of those facts?"

Even more quickly, with eyes beginning to water.

"Then why do you need to be here?"

They blinked at each other.

"We don't!" both pegasi gasped --

-- which released the last of their oxygen. And neither would take more in.

They mutually broke for the door. They put every bit of collective wingpower they had into leaving the Lunar throne room before their lungs collapsed on themselves. They almost made it.

Luna had the fainted bodies removed. The opening doors wafted a bit of atmosphere into the hallway and cut the line in half again, a process which was beginning to approach fractions.

The doors closed. No Guards announced the next supplicant to the throne. Nopony knocked to be let in, perhaps because doing so would have left that worthy balancing on one-quarter of a hoof.

Luna looked at her Guard. The only one left in the throne room. She had started with four, two of whom were on a wake-up juice break which, given the amount of time since they'd left, seemed to involve growing the necessary plant from seed. The third had declared a sudden requirement to look after her children which, given that the pony making that claim had been Swingshift, also indicated a desperate need to start the necessary pregnancy.

Nightwatch uncertainly looked up at her. Feathers vibrated.

"Princess?"

"Nightwatch," Luna steadily asked, "do you happen to see my wings?" She flared them out slightly, just for greater emphasis.

"...yes?"

"Many ponies," Luna mused, "upon seeing my horn, tend to think of me as being more unicorn than anything else. Sometimes exclusively unicorn. Even with my wings fully visible, that aspect of my being is often disregarded despite the most prominent evidence possible being on constant display. Odd, is it not?"

"...yes," the deep black mare repeated. Silver eyes risked a blink.

"I can trigger lightning, corral storms, redirect wind. None of it matters. Horn, therefore, unicorn. An advantage in a fight, as so few remember to watch for pegasus techniques."

"Yes," Nightwatch risked.

"And you yourself, as my Guard, are aware of my capabilities in that general category of magic, correct?"

"...yes." A little worried this time.

"So you would recognize that I have been able to feel you shifting the local atmosphere away from yourself all night?"

Nightwatch winced.

"Princess..."

"Where are you getting the fresh air? The private feed current was originally pulling from the ceiling, but as the odor has filled that part of the room and possibly every section for my wing of the castle before imposing on the Solar, I cannot readily imagine where you are currently reaching for it, especially with such slight wing movements and minor shifts of feathers..."

"I'm sorry..."

"You are a very talented mare, Nightwatch."

"...thank you."

Luna sighed.

"Is it that bad?"

"Worse."

"One would think the water would have removed the scent."

"Yes."

"And the six kinds of soap I used after the initial rinse."

"Yes."

"Instead, they seem to have merged into something worse. Nightwatch, do you know anypony who has used this cream in the past?"

"Yes, Princess. Some of us... call it Lunar's Disease. We're kind of prone to it if we don't get some Sun on our off-days."

"And how do those ponies deal with the scent?"

"I don't know, Princess."

Patiently, "How would you, knowing ponies who deal with the problem, not be aware of their solution?"

"I... don't talk to them."

"They are not your friends?"

"I can't talk to them while they've locked themselves in their homes for the five to eight days until it's safe to come out. And after that... they don't want to talk about it."

Slowly, Luna closed her eyes.

"Nightwatch?"

"Princess?"

"Go to my bath. There is a rather large bottle near the edge. I am certain you will recognize it. Read the label, then come back to me."

Wings flapped. Atmosphere shifted. Luna tried to track Nightwatch's airfeed again. Then she tried to take it over.

After a while, the doors opened again, then shut rather quickly, mostly from desperate outside pressure.

"I read it," Nightwatch sadly said.

"Good. I believe the Doctors Bear had to recalculate certain factors to account for my body mass and skin surface area. Given that, what did it say for treatment time?"

"Twelve to twenty-three days."

"Oh."

"Or... longer..."

Luna looked at the chains.

"Forehooves first, I think." she sighed, and spread herself out on the floor, barrel flat against the marble. "Then the restraint over my horn, the bindings around my wings, and finally the back legs. Did you at least have the cuffs repadded?"

"As soft as I could make them," Celestia assured her. "Luna, I'm sorry..."

Luna didn't answer. She just presented her hooves for cuffing.

Celestia slowly bound her sister. Secured the far ends of the chains to the heaviest anchors they'd been able to find, rechecked the area to make sure there was nothing which could be damaged and nopony about who could watch. The soundproofing spells were already set up, and would likely need reinforcing about five minutes in. "Luna... are you sure? Now that we have another way..."

"Eleven to twenty-two additional nights of being unable to have anypony near me," Luna too-calmly said, "added to a certain prior duration, would be rather more than I care to deal with at this time. Tighten the restraint, please."

Celestia did, then lowered herself to the floor in front of her sister, as close as she could stand to be. Then she forced herself to shift two body lengths closer.

"When you are ready," Luna said, and closed her eyes.

Celestia's horn ignited. The yellow corona flowed forward, surrounded her sister, coated every last inch of the regalia-free form before the glow intensified.

Then it intensified again.

And again.

The secured area became subtly warmer.

"It itches."

"I know, Luna." A few more lumens were added.

"It is... worse than itching now."

"That means it's working." Did she need to add more? It had been so long, she didn't remember the exact amount of power required... A full double corona, then. Just to be safe. Plus a little more.

"And that would be the burning starting to come in."

Celestia made herself get closer still, stretched out her right foreleg, gently touched a glow-covered shoulder.

"Tia, it hurts..."

Whispering now. "I know, Luna, I know..."

The younger began to twist against the chains. Anchors shuddered. Bindings stretched. Dark sparks flew from the base of the horn restraint.

"And you are smirking!"

"Luna, your eyes are closed..." As they had always been closed.

The first burst of thunder only served as a final underscore of the words. "I can feel it!"

But she did not push the elder's hoof away.

Inevitable (Applejack, Twilight)

Slowly, with exceptional care, Twilight's field lowered the slim gold rectangle onto Applejack's upturned left forehoof, then winked out.

"All right," the librarian cautiously said, then took a quick glance out the window at the heavily overcast sky before returning to her focus to the metal. "Now, according to the brochure, all you have to do is say the name of the periodical you want, and then either the page number or section. And since it would take at least a moon to get the one you want shipped... well, if you want to be the pony who gives it the first trial..."

Applejack gave the rectangle a rather dubious look. "An' this is an improvement 'cause...?"

"It could be any magazine."

"It could also explode."

"...that too. It's your call, Applejack."

The farmer looked at the rectangle. Then she looked at the International Library Exchange Request Form. All sixty triplicate-bearing pages of it.

With the urge to bolt riding in every tail-twitching syllable, "Gimme... The Protoceran Whole Seed Catalog. In Equestrian. Table of contents, iffin y'please."

The rectangle glowed -- and the gold flashed into white, with black text flowing down the surface.

"It works!" Twilight gasped -- then grinned. "It was seven hundred bits, but it -- Applejack?" Because she had just spotted the mixture of confusion and annoyance which was starting to narrow green eyes.

"This ain't a catalog."

"...sorry?" Another glance out the window. Back to the gold rectangle.

"Looks like somepony's diary."

Twilight's field jerked the dense metal back. "It's... oh, dear, it's... um..."

"Yeah."

"I didn't even know Caramel was dating again."

"He is."

"Or that he wrote down..."

"That's at least half the breakups, Twi. Y'gotta get into the gossip more often than y'do. An'..." The narrowing eyes went into full squint. "Y'know that picture of your brother which y'finally hung up in the loft?"

"...yes?"

"Don't look at it."

Twilight looked.

"Ah told you not t' --"

"-- I know!" Twilight accelerated into a half-gallop, raced past Applejack, came to a stop in front of her personal notebooks. Pinkish energy frantically flipped pages. "And these are recipes! And --" full gallop this time, stopping at the linguistics shelf "-- hoofball stats! I don't --"

This time, the purple eyes narrowed.

"She's at it again, isn't she?"

Applejack indulged in a long sigh. "Looks like. Y'want me t' yell this time?"

"No, I'll do it..."

And one last run, up the stairs to the loft, where her field flung the balcony doors open, and the unicorn galloped to the maximum altitude of "outside" she had available.

"RAINBOW!"

Which got her a snicker. "What?"

"STOP HACKING MY CLOUD!"

Author's Note

Non-'verse "canon" as @#$%.

And one storage commercial over the line.

This Platinum Cape (Trixie)

The typical first reaction of a pony who got a look at the inside of the caravan was to ask if a book had recently exploded.

In this case, 'typical' didn't represent a particularly large sample size. A rather small one, actually. For all intents and purposes, Trixie effectively lived on the road, and it was a lifestyle which didn't exactly help when it came to forming the kind of relationships with other ponies which would make her think inviting somepony inside was a good idea. Even on those rare occasions when she both felt the need for a more temporary form of companionship and was in the right place to arrange it, the meeting would typically take place at the other pony's residence or workplace: there simply wasn't that much room in her caravan and much like her chosen life, Trixie's personal style of itch-scratching interaction tended to be regrettably mobile.

But for the rare pony who got inside, even for a few minutes...

There would be notebooks. Dozens of them, as many as Trixie felt she could comfortably haul, a quantity which she always swore would be enough to get her through the longest trips without overflow, at least this time. And inevitably, she would reach the point where she was once again proven wrong, with every blank page filled, ideas still streaming through her head, and nowhere to record them but... the walls. There was always the walls, along with the ceiling, the undersides of what scant furniture she'd been able to cram into the limited space and, on one particularly desperate day, the interior of her hat. And whenever she reached a new settled zone, her first act would be to find a stationery store, buy new notebooks, transcribe everything, ship the best of it to her personal central hub so she could visit it if the need truly arose, edit and index and scrub down the walls while swearing that her latest purchase would last this time.

It wouldn't. Her mind wouldn't allow it. For Trixie dreamed. She dreamt of magic, even while awake, and those dreams needed to be captured, imprisoned in ink to keep them from getting away. Once, during the most desperate of her nights, she had left the fully ink-covered interior and spent hours under Moon sketching in the dirt around her caravan, trying not to listen to the growls which sometimes seemed to be getting a little too close to the road, focusing as much of her attention as she dared on the crystallization of the dream, knowing she was close enough to the next settled zone to grab some fresh paper and come back by late afternoon. And then it had started to rain.

Eleven hours crouched under the best shield spell she'd been able to raise, trying to block every last thought-destroying raindrop. Because it was what her mark asked of her. Trixie wrote on the walls because writing had to be done.

And tonight, she was in the caravan because that was where the most recent writing was. She just didn't want to be, in case any residual magic had soaked into the wood. But she was out of notebooks and she didn't trust herself to memorize everything she'd written down, not when a single error could...

Deep under Moon again. Trixie was often awake under Moon, something which had begun when she was a foal and never really changed since, to the point where her mother had joked that half of her daughter's mark was simply for being awake at all the wrong times. But the truth of the matter was that Trixie had chronic, cyclical insomnia, something no medicine ever worked on for more than a few weeks before her dreams once again sent her out of rumpled blankets in search of something she could write on. She was used to working on very little sleep, mostly, although collapses under Sun always happened eventually. She traveled under Moon and tried not to think about how close some of the growling was, that there was nopony in the world who knew just where she was or could come to help her and, if the growlers managed to breach the road's defenses, whether she could make that last dream work in time to save her life.

She was working by firelight, a tiny, flickering glow within the wooden walls making the freshest of ink glisten. It normally would have been the glow of her horn's corona, but Trixie wasn't going to use her field until somewhat later in the process. All of her devices and conveniences (three) had been removed from the caravan, temporarily abandoned in the mud. Everything portable which she suspected might have absorbed a few stray thaums from proximity to repeated magic use was gathering stains outside and tonight, that included her hat. It was her, a few specialized tools designed to be operated by mouth alone, her cape, and a tiny spool of fine-spun metal wire.

That last was deceptively quiet as it rested in its place on the little table. It didn't jitter. It never jumped. The only way it moved was through her own efforts. She would be perfectly all right as long as it stayed that way.

Those who entered the caravan often asked if a book had recently exploded.

One mistake, and whoever was unlucky enough to find what was left of her home would be asking the same question about Trixie.

There were three ways to improve field strength, and two of them worked. Or at least, there had been three up until this night, the final hours under Moon when Trixie's dreams were on the verge of leading her to a fourth.

Field strength was fixed at birth, and there was just about nothing to be done about that. Field dexterity... simple (and then increasingly complicated) practice served to improve that, and Trixie did what she could there: the books which lied about being able to make her stronger were occasionally surprisingly good at allowing her to manipulate a larger number of objects than ever before -- the masses of which would inevitably add up to her rated maximum lift.

Her learning capacity had been described by her first tutor as breathtaking, and she had yet to find her own limits there. Her field dexterity was slowly, steadily improving. But her field strength was -- above average. Well above, actually. She would have easily been able to gain admission to the Gifted School if circumstances had permitted her to even try. It was more than enough for daily life, easily sufficient to tackle any number of spells, more than what well over ninety percent of the populace would ever be able to reach.

It...

...wasn't enough.

Because Trixie dreamed. All the time.

Half her mark: a stylized crescent Moon. The other half: an ancient channeling tool which nopony had created in generations: a device designed to allow fine focus for which the enchanting process had been lost. Because Trixie was a channel for magic.

She dreamed. And in her dreams, her horn's corona danced. Her field twinkled, spiked, flared, surged and dimmed, did whatever was necessary in order to bring about the new. She dreamed, and the world changed. There were times when she changed. When the most basic of concepts seemed to alter, when she could make fire which flowed like water, air with the weight of earth, stone that flickered with liquid heat. In her dreams, it was all so easy...

Trixie could dream of anything. They weren't always the things she wanted to dream of: there were times when ideas simply came to her, and just about as many when she found herself desperately trying to chase down a single desired concept only to find her path heading anywhere except her intended destination. But ultimately, she had dreamt into reality some of the most powerful, subtle, and complex spells ever to exist --

-- none of which she could actually cast.

Her field strength was well above average. She could do more than just about anypony else, could learn more than just about everypony else. But she wasn't an alicorn. The reach of her mark exceeded her corona's grasp.

Trixie dreamed of things she would never be able to do, and when she woke, her tears diluted the ink.

She had... learned to deal with it, or thought she had. Boasting, public display -- that helped. Let everypony see what she was capable of, so that they would never wonder what she couldn't do. It had allowed her to get on with her life, stay on the road, let the tears remain private -- for even in those rare times when she found somepony she could scratch the itch with, Trixie never stayed overnight. She had reached a state of rough truce with her own talent, where she could pretend it did not torment her too much... a truce which had held until the day the caravan had rolled across the border into Ponyville. And then she couldn't even pretend any more. Not after seeing the pinnacle, learning you didn't have to be an alicorn to possess the raw power of one, found the winner of the blood lottery and decided that one was fully unworthy of the draw, having all that strength and no dreams to chase down...

Her own field strength wasn't enough. She couldn't even pretend any more. She'd woken up crying every night for moons after fleeing Ponyville. She'd barely slept at all. Her confidence had suffered, and with magic... with her confidence ebbing, her performances had suffered. The crowds had begun to laugh at her errors, which had led to even less confidence and laughter at what was now public failures, and once she'd started to fail...

Trixie wasn't strong enough. Could never be strong enough on her own. And yet the dreams still came.

Three ways to make herself stronger, two of which were real. Field dexterity exercises never led to strength. Booster drugs... worked. To wit, the chemical-herbal mixtures provided an extra five to fifty percent of the user's original strength, a boost which typically lasted for about fifteen minutes. They always had some degree of visible side effect: Trixie had seen students in her own school using them to try and get past finals, both of whom had been forced to remove their sunglasses, displaying the blacks of their eyes to the entire class. And they put strain on the user's body, for the new strength had to come from somewhere. A five percent mix might leave the pony who took it slightly groggy for an hour or two after it wore off. The most common fifteen percent concoction, which Trixie had tried, left her light-sensitive with a twinging horn, a state which had lasted for three days. (She had tried it twice. On the first dose, she'd assumed she'd just gotten a mix which was slightly off. After the second, she'd decided she was on to a pattern and stopped there.) A fifty percent boost -- that pony would either be begging to die or no longer have any need to make the request. And that was assuming the mix had been right, for a truly wrong one might just kill the pony right there...

(She'd tried to dream of new mixes. It hadn't worked. Her talent wasn't for potions, and the zebras she'd consulted didn't know how to work with unicorns.)

And then there was a third. Trixie knew a lot about the third now, might know more about it than just about anypony alive, at least for those with lifespans which weren't potentially measured in millennia. That worked. It worked spectacularly. But...

...not yet. She wasn't willing to try that just yet. Because she was convinced that, knowing what was coming, she could stay on top of it, she could retain control, but -- not yet.

Instead, she dreamed. And her dreams had told her about the potential for a fourth.

It was only somewhat likely to kill her.

That which lived had the potential to channel magic. So did that which never had.

Silver: that was the most common carrier of thaums, magic surging through fine-spun wire. But it wasn't an automatic process: silver had to be treated before it would serve as a channel, and ponies had experimented for centuries trying to find the best means of creating that treatment. They had succeeded. Silver was stable. It was safe. Oh, it occasionally had problems if the enchanter was going through an off-day, the wire went out of alignment, or certain other spells were allowed to get too close -- but on the whole, silver was pretty much the go-to material for a device creator who needed that power to flow. And there were other materials as well. Gold: hard to work with and it only stored a little power, but a few ponies favored it for low-impact castings. Titanium: so hard to refine, and thus just at the start of its explorations. Aluminum was somewhere in the middle. Copper was generally for pegasi: magic which conducted instead of projecting found its best servant in a metal which did the same. Iridium: precious on a level which almost went beyond the realm of Trixie's dreams. But they all required their own spells before they would do anything. They all needed treatment.

And then there was platinum.

Platinum was the natural conductor.

You didn't need to treat platinum to make it carry magic. It would do so all on its own. Platinum would happily carry magic within itself, stored it... well, that was part of the problem, with a significant part of the rest coming when that capacity limit was ultimately reached.

Nopony had ever found a truly large deposit of platinum. There had been several suspicious craters doting the landscape where the metal might have once existed, although there were a few ponies still insisting those had been produced by meteors.

Platinum absorbed magic. Slowly, drawing it in from the very environment, microthaum by microthaum. And as the truest natural channel, it would carry that power wherever it was carefully directed to go, without losing any of it to maintaining the workings which were normally used to make channels viable at all. It made devices more efficient. They could be made with a lower power base, because the platinum would provide the difference. The owner never had to pay a unicorn for fresh thaums because given enough time, those devices recharged themselves. And given too much time added to an enchantment which was anything less than perfect...

Poorly-worked platinum... the best possible result was an explosion, one where all the magic stored within would randomly work itself out on anything in the area which had survived the initial blast: a backlash made somewhat more wide-ranging and decidedly impersonal. Worse things could happen. Worse things had happened. It didn't take that much research to find the legends or, in a number of cases, somewhat smaller craters. A few examples had been taught in school, mostly as sterling moments of Why You Should Never Do This. You needed to fill out paperwork when you were buying platinum, and most of it consisted of sworn declarations of intent (which Trixie had lied about) added to contact information just in case anypony needed to find what was left of your body. For that last, she'd simply given them the address of the caravan, at least for where it was currently parked.

Trixie had dreamed. Of devices (usually not her area: she could occasionally work with them, but enchantments were nowhere near her specialty) and conveniences and channels of all sorts. And her dreams had asked a simple question: what if platinum works with more than enchantments? It had to, right? It wasn't as if there had been devices just wandering by the earliest proto-mines. Platinum absorbed from everything: ponies who spent too much time around large quantities (which were hardly ever gathered) would complain of dizziness, find their magic weak and talents less likely to function. And if it could absorb from anything... well, all magic was ultimately the same, wasn't it? It was all thaums in the end. Platinum gave those thaums back to the operation of devices: the inanimate fueling the enchanted.

Why couldn't it power the living?

Let it absorb magic. Then let that power be channeled into her own field, and...

It had taken some time to plan out the details, along with most of her ceiling. Much of that time had been spent in doing research (Trixie was exceptionally good at research, to the point where she occasionally wondered if it was a minor aspect of her mark), and it had come as no surprise when legends in the form of the darkest campfire stories suggested she hadn't been the first to the idea. And because she traveled, she'd stopped at a few of the places where it had supposedly been tried before.

There had been an earth pony, a farmer. He'd felt that lacing the soil of his land with platinum wire would amplify the Cornucopia Effect, make the plants grow faster and provide a few extra harvests each year. Trixie believed she'd found that land, and refused to approach closer than three body lengths beyond the reach of the longest snapping vine. Even that had been abandoned after the middle ranks (which still somewhat resembled raspberries, at least in the way that the ocean during a storm somewhat resembled a puddle during a drizzle) flung their thorns.

At least one pegasus had supposedly made an attempt. Wrap the wire around this feather and that, then push everything she had into speed and fly. There was a legend about that, and it was the story of the first comet. Trixie had certain doubts about the veracity when it came to celestial origins and none about the former existence of that pegasus, not after she'd pulled the last surviving pinion cradle out of the canyon wall.

There had been a story about a unicorn who had cut open her own skin to wind wire beneath. It had been the one which Trixie had most been hoping wouldn't be true. It was, and the nightmares still hadn't stopped.

There were many stories, and about a third that number of true sites. They all ended badly.

But Trixie dreamed...

Part of the process was strictly mundane. For this, she was adding extra layers to her cape, an inner coating of insulating fabric, folded double, and then a softer piece to rest against her coat. The platinum would be sewn into the middle space. (She could sew, at least well enough for everyday purposes: it saved expenses when her traditional performer's outfit became damaged or worse, tomato-stained beyond all hope.) She'd decided to have the metal resting against her back and flanks -- but not too close to the hips, for the same reason she hadn't really considered using it in her hat. You treated platinum to carry only the magic you wanted carried (although those workings only operated on relatively small amounts), and that meant she could force it to not absorb from her -- but having it right on top of horn and mark had still felt like a truly bad idea.

But then there were the treatments to consider. Some of them were chemical, and those were fairly safe, as long as she left a door open to let the fumes out and the sounds of not-very-distant growls in. (She tried not to twitch at those growls. There were stages when twitching might be the last thing she ever did.) But others were magical, and to enchant platinum, even in the not-quite-raw state which was found in the best, most risk-taking thaumaturgy shops... it wasn't a casual process. The metal would eagerly pull in the magic, and in doing so, just might take the whole working apart. It might negate the safety aspects while leaving everything else intact, and there was a chance that the caster wouldn't truly find out until the power was tapped for the first time. There were ways to stay safe, but every last one of them required her absolute concentration, and the wild zone on both sides of the road wanted to let her know it was hungry.

(She could have pushed on for the next town, the one where she'd hoped to have a show after Sun was raised: she'd been close enough to make it. But she'd stopped. If something went wrong... well, it would be just her, the caravan, and perhaps anything which had breached the protections at exactly the wrong time.)

The wire had to be bent. Carefully. Some of those bends resembled stars, and her sense of humor was just puckish enough to have her place those formations under the shining ones on her cape. It had to be aligned, and in this case, it had to be done in a way which allowed a little degree of flexibility: no matter what she did, the cape would be far stiffer than usual, wouldn't move properly and there were ponies who would notice that difference if the illusion she was hoping to have running ever slipped. Creating a completely frozen garment would just make it worse.

There were procedures for all that. For treatment, for bending, for alignment. Tested ones. Dangerous -- but proven.

And then there was the dream. The thing no unicorn might have ever tried. Worked out from first principles to first application, initially attempted in what would potentially be the last seconds of her life.

The platinum would collect the power, store it. Trixie would pull that energy out, add it to that of her own field. And it would make her stronger. As strong as the dreams needed her to be.

Trixie stopped.

She looked at the carefully-bent wire. At the opened layers of the cape. At the little mirror near the tiny basin which served as both drinking bowl and to store her washing water. At herself.

Slowly, she backed away from the whole thing. Stepped outside, looked at where her possessions sat in the mud. The places where the wheels, forever breaking on the road and forcing her to try and master wheelwright skills along with everything else, were mired. The tomato stains on the caravan's walls, not quite washed off by the recent rain or her own desperate scrubbing or... anything. Anything she'd been able to try...

She gazed up at Moon, her oldest and most constant companion, and it still had no words for her.

For a time, she simply listened to growls and screeches, the sounds of little deaths in the night.

And then she went back inside.

Glow shone through the open door.

It had been her best performance in moons.

She hadn't done anything special yet, nothing over what she could normally do. You didn't lead off with the grand finale, for the rest of the show wouldn't be so much afterglow as afterthought. So far, it had been pretty much just routine -- except that they were routine things which she'd been struggling with in public, with her confidence so low. And now, with the illusion-coated cape seeming to shift naturally with her flamboyant movements, her confidence was back.

A few basic tricks, just to show everypony she had the basics. Pick out a seeming rube or two from the growing crowd (an earth pony majority town, a place she'd never visited before) and try a few casual insults, because there was nothing like cheap heat for luring in even more of a crowd and she could always let everypony in on the true joke at the end. Step it up, going through mid-level magics, and her field danced, her corona surged and dipped at need, she wasn't doing anything special, not for her, but the cape was on her back and...

There had only been time to run a few tests, for the process of proper working had taken her nearly all the way back to Sun again, and the true proof would only come when the results were used during a performance, when the true resonance of her emotions went into what she was hoping would be her boosted spells. But she'd been able to check enough that she'd been willing to risk going out in public without worries of hurting the audience. The enchantments appeared to have taken. The platinum had already pulled in a decent number of thaums, and didn't seem to be heading for an overload. None of the basic checks she'd run had led to an explosion. The power was just -- waiting. And when she'd tentatively tried to project her senses towards it, she'd felt something --

-- but then it had been performance time. And the resonance had to be right. The joy of being on stage. The basking in admiration, applause, notice, recognition. It was a crucial part of the working, that she be in the emotional state of living her dreams. And so the truest bench test was the stage test.

The micro-teleports were over, and Trixie gave a levitation tip of her doffed hat to the audience. She wasn't sure how many of them recognized what she'd actually done. She'd never been able to work out the process of teleporting herself, but objects... if it was exceptionally small, close, unshielded, and she knew exactly where it was... Trixie was fairly sure nopony else had figured out how to move something without having to personally bring it with them, and she was equally sure most of those watching her thought she was just making little illusions flash in and out, at least right up until the moment she blinked a quarter-bit off somepony's upturned hoof.

He gasped. She winked, flashed it back while maintaining the cape's illusion under all of their snouts, something so few ponies would be able to do given all the complex movements of simulated fabric and the need to have other workings going at the same time.

Applause broke out. True applause.

It felt good.

She felt like herself. For the first time in moons.

Trixie curtsied, and thought of a dream.

Her emotions arced, carried magic with them, channeled nearly every hope she had left. She tapped.

And there was something there.

She could feel it. The extra power. Not much, because she hadn't used too much platinum for the start and there had only been a few hours to charge, but the power was there and a portion of it seemed to be moving towards her. Trying to merge with her field. Becoming part of her own magic. Enough to push her past her limits, to cast the next spell, to make them remember and love her, and that love would feel so warm --

-- she felt rather warm, actually.

Especially along her back. And flanks.

And in the now-vast audience, somepony giggled, a split-second before Trixie smelled the smoke.

She didn't want to look, not in public. She had to look, especially with the heat building, and so she glanced backwards to see her cape in the first stage of catching on fire.

When she thought about the event, long after the show had failed and -- other things had also failed, she recognized that she probably should have screamed. Let ponies know she was in trouble, that she needed help. But she didn't want to break her stage persona, not even for that, and so she desperately tried to fully separate field from loaner thaums, reaching out to the platinum, trying to figure out what was wrong and fix it on the spot. But the smoke kept coming from the top layer, her back was becoming far too hot, and nopony in the audience moved to help her, because they thought it was all part of the act. And when her magic reached the platinum, she felt the power surging around and around, cycling while mostly moving past an exit it was unable to truly use, that cycling was getting faster and the moment she realized that was also the moment she felt the burn.

Her field tore the cape from her back, and ponies gasped as they both saw and smelled the results. She flung it into the air, as high as she could, getting it away from everypony before --

-- it didn't explode.

It did exactly the reverse.

She released what remained, unable to keep it levitated with the pain searing across her nerves. The audience stared at her, as the recognition that something had gone wrong began to spread.

Somepony laughed.

Then another.

More joined them.

They didn't all laugh, not while an off-duty nurse made her way to the stage and helped Trixie limp away. It was simply all she could hear.

She had taken the caravan just far enough down the road to be sure nopony in town would, or could, follow her. She'd parked, again in fresh mud, for it had begun to rain as she'd departed. And now she was in front of her little mirror.

Trixie wasn't looking at herself. Not yet. She was examining the burn plaster on her back. First-degree, the nurse had told her. The fur would grow back, and there would be no scarring. She had gotten the cape off in time, and the nurse had been very clear on what would have happened if she'd waited so much as three extra seconds. But beneath bandages and medicine, stars were temporarily embossed into her skin.

There had been very little to do while waiting for the hospital to release her, as nopony had asked about just what had taken place, not in an earth pony majority town with hardly a unicorn anywhere. The assumption was that something had simply gone wrong with her performance, and she let them make it. But it gave her time to inspect what was left of the cape after the implosion, conducting a silent postmortem on the failed enchantments right up until the moment somepony finally showed up with her paperwork, and then there had been a little more on the road, at least after she'd gotten out of tomato range. She knew what had happened.

The dream had been a true one. It simply hadn't had enough power working with the vision to manifest properly.

The enchantments were fine. The problem was with the pony.

There had been three ways to improve field strength, and now there were four. One didn't work. The second could kill her. The fourth was beyond her ability to execute.

Finally, she looked at the mirror, and never truly saw the pony looking back. She only saw the dream.

"Fine," Trixie whispered to herself. "So it'll just have to be the bucking Amulet..."

Mr. Rich And The Barnyard Bargains Go Experience (Mr. Rich, Rarity)

"...so anypony trotting out between the enchanted rhodium poles will pay you instantly! The spell automatically scans the enscorcelled price tag we placed on the test items, then teleports that exact amount in bits out of their saddlebags and into your till box! You'll never have to pay another cashier again! Now admittedly, there is some degree of ongoing expense for fresh tags, but compared to actual salaries for ponies who do nothing more than shift bits..."

"It isn't going to work."

"Of course it works! I wouldn't have come to you as my first prospective customer if I didn't know it worked! I went through hundreds of tests in my workshop, so I know everything I've told you is true! And frankly, just between the two of us, you know you wouldn't have let me set up the test if some part of you didn't believe it worked..."

"I let you set it up because I want you to see why it won't work. I'm certain you understand the magic involved, and that the enchantments all function well enough for a trial gallop. But you spent an hour on that little sales presentation, and there wasn't a single second of your practiced speech which made me believe you understand the first thing about ponies."

"I understand that your savings from the first season alone should add up to --"

"-- see that unicorn mare approaching the entrance? Just watch..."

"Give me a moment, darling: as long as we happen to be passing by, I should really pick up some fresh gem polishing cloths -- oh, hello, Mr. Rich! Whatever is that strange little endcap display about? I see my cloths, but I fail to recognize the purpose of such a random-seeming assembly..."

"We're testing something, Rarity. Would you mind taking the package and trotting out?"

"...without paying?"

"You'll see."

"Very well... Here we go, then."

*five bits*

"Oh! I felt the weight vanish from my saddlebags! How very innovative! I will be sure to inform Twilight at the moment I see her. And off we go, I suppose -- oh, wait... my pardon and apologies, dear one, but now that I am in the proper place for memory to surface, I recall that our basket was somewhat lacking in napkins. Back in we go --"

*five bits*

"...what? Why are my saddlebags lighter still? Was I just charged twice? Well! I understand that there may be a degree of experimentation in progress, but to pay ten bits for basic polishing cloths...! I am something of a hurry, Mr. Rich, and so we will have to discuss this later, especially as I must now devote time to finding another source of napkins. But please understand that a discussion will be taking place. Goodbye."

*five bits*

"-- I... am sorry, Spike, but I believe I will have to delay my arrival at the picnic somewhat. I suddenly have a certain need to speak with the manager. Immediately. And as he happens to be right inside the doorway --"

*five bits*

"-- MR. RICH!"

"Give the lady her bits."

"...yes, sir."

"Then remove the poles."

"...yes, sir."

"Also, I happen to like having cashiers. Good luck in your future endeavors."

"I -- also had an idea for a customer loyalty program."

"Really?"

"They loyally pay two thousand bits a year and when you're having a sale on overstocked items which nopony has any real interest in buying, you let them into the store half an hour before anypony else."

"Get out."

Natural Conducters (Ratchette)

The only pegasus device mechanic in the history of Equestria silently looked at the yellow earth pony filly who had just dared to enter her fix-it shop again (and done so as the first pony to enter on that late summer day, just barely after the sign had been flipped to Open, with no time to spot or block her), and marveled at the visibility of her own anger.

Ratchette, when in the presence of other ponies, was rarely angry. Her rage was generally reserved for the inanimate: those things which should have been within her capacity to repair and just weren't cooperating: being alone in the workshop (for she was just about always alone in her workshop) on such occasions gave her the freedom to unleash vocabulary. The full range of such expressions borrowed heavily from the other nations just from her desperate search to find something foul enough. An all-out verbal blast from Ratchette tended to tarnish any nearby silver, and occasionally felt as if it was making devices force themselves back into an operational state just so the enchantments wouldn't have to go through that again.

But with ponies... all too often, she would be shy. The first filly impulses to investigate devices had been seen by her family as merely curiosity being aimed in a strange direction, and had eventually led to their simply being indulgent on the matter: something which had become expensive in a hurry, as it had taken Ratchette quite some time before she'd started to put things back together in working order -- but her House had money and her parents spent a little more freely on her, because she was the last. Even as a young adult, she knew they still saw her as the foal of the family: the sheer difficulty of her birth had guaranteed there would be no others.

Her family had accepted her curiosity and, in time, her mark. Just about everypony else in that ancient pegasus settlement hadn't, and so Ratchette, only seen as pretty until ponies realized she was just pretty weird, gradually slipped into the social shadows. She was seldom good with ponies when it was one-on-one, didn't have a dating life so much as an intermittent series of spectacular disasters, and when it came to customer relations... Ponyville was, in some ways, still getting used to her, and Ponyville was also adding residents to its population with every moon. There would always be somepony new venturing without forewarning into the town's only fix-it-shop to inquire about device repair. Somepony who wasn't expecting a pegasus to be in that profession (and why would they have any reason to, when she was the only one?), and reacted accordingly. Ponies who wouldn't recognize or understand her mark, who doubted her capabilities, who didn't know why they should risk turning their property over to somepony who could only work on the physical elements of a device, a pony who would never be able to cast the most simple working...

During such meetings, all she could do was be polite. Try to verbally demonstrate that she knew something. Hope that, in the end, yet another stranger would be willing to take a chance on her. And try not to shiver too much.

She wasn't in a position where she could be rude with anypony, even when so many seemed to feel they had a Sun-granted duty to berate her choice in occupations: a number very close to the total for those who felt the need to post a public notice of her own race. She couldn't afford to alienate a single potential customer: for the most part, she just listened as they openly dismissed her. Ultimately, those who took the chance tended to come back: others simply snorted and headed for the train, and all she could do was watch them go.

But the earth pony filly wasn't a customer. It could be argued that she was the exact opposite of a customer and if you didn't want to look in that portion of the dictionary, the word disaster was always available.

"Get out."

It was something she had longed to say. So many ponies should have been on the receiving end of those half-hissed words, and even with a single target, it felt so good to say it at last, when it was deserved...

The filly's head dipped, ears rotating back and down. A yellow left forehoof awkwardly scraped across the floor, just before she risked a step. Forward.

"Ah... Ah jus' came in t' --"

"The last time you came in," Ratchette harshly reminded her, "you were here to steal."

The next words were pure instinct, an automatic reaction worn into the filly's mind by the groove of endless repetition. "Ah was borrowin' --"

-- and she stopped.

"Yeah," Apple Bloom softly admitted. "Y'take something behind somepony's back an' they don't know, even if you're gonna bring it back later... it's stealin'. Ah stole the thing for the balloon."

Ratchette took a slow breath, moved one hoofstep closer down the narrow aisle between parts. The shop had a way of being crowded even when there was but a single pony inside: shelves, racks, scattered (but numbered and labeled) pieces of projects in progress, tools hanging from the walls and ceiling, open housings with exposed interiors and edges. "Ms. Bennett trusted me with her device." The most crucial part of a balloon's operation: the channel for the magic which changed the air inside the fabric shell, made it into something which could lift. "It took a long time before she would trust me with anything. I hadn't had the chance to do more than look at it --"

(Which was a lie, just as automatic as the filly's earlier denial. She'd had the chance to touch it, and so had known that a particularly rough landing had wreaked minor havoc on the internal alignment, some of the wire needed to have its coils adjusted and the phlogistinator had to be shifted three tail strands to the right...)

"-- and you stole it. You used a malfunctioning lifter to try and get a mark for aeronautics, and what Chief Rights brought back from the crash site may be completely beyond repair. Ms. Bennett needed eight moons of ponies recommending me before she would stretch a single foreleg across the doorway, and when she found out that her lifter left the shop while my tail was turned, what happened to it..." The possibility of a lawsuit had been mentioned, if so casual a word as 'mentioned' could be applied to what might be a still-echoing scream. "You're not welcome in here. Not any more. If your family has something they need repaired, your grandmother or siblings can drop it off. You --"

"-- Ah'm sorry."

The words had been soft. Pained. Spoken mostly to the floor, and the grease stains absorbed most of the volume.

But Ratchette had been in Ponyville for just about two years, and so as words went...

"You've said that a few too many times," she told the little filly. (Or no longer quite as little: Ratchette was on the small side for a pegasus, and the earth pony was finally starting to enter her growth spurt.) "Too many to be believed. Even without your sister herding you around town to say it to just about everypony..."

"She..." A tiny gulp of air, followed by a much more open swallowing of fear. "...ain't back yet."

Which temporarily made Ratchette go silent. She knew the Bearers had left Ponyville, teleported away to a mission -- one for which no two ponies could agree upon a suitable rumor. She'd trotted past a library under temporary new management and without one of the only ponies she could occasionally speak with working on endless reshelving within, had been unable to go inside.

The Bearers were away and if you listened closely, it was possible to hear an entire settled zone holding its breath.

Apple Bloom was a trotting disaster zone: so much time spent in what was sometimes literal crashing failure could make it hard to see her any other way. But in that moment, she was also a child who didn't know if her sibling would ever come home. And as Ratchette's two years of residency had eventually made her aware, whose parents hadn't.

The pegasus took a breath, and felt something within herself soften. The decision hadn't changed: the filly was no longer welcome in her shop. But no matter how much Apple Bloom might have earned it, this wasn't the time for rage.

"You stole from me," Ratchette quietly said. "You admitted it. How am I supposed to trust you? Why are you even here?"

"Because..." Another little hoof scrape: this time, some of the stain adhered. Still not looking up. "Ah... wanted t' say some things."

Ratchette, mostly against her better judgment, listened.

"That... Ah was sorry. An' Ah know how much Ah've said it. Y'missed a whole year of me sayin' it. Got to the point where Ah didn't even hear mahself sayin' it. Ah know nopony believes mah words anymore, an'... that's on me. Can't count on words no more. If'fin Ah'm gonna make things right, Ah gotta do things. An'... Ah'm... Ah'm..."

Another gulp, which failed to choke back the pain.

"...Ah'm out of the Crusade."

Ratchette blinked.

"Ah'm done." Still without making eye contact: the filly hadn't looked directly at her since slinking into the shop. "So there won't be no more disasters, not from me as part of that. Ah can't do it no more, 'cause Ah... Ah finally realized that when you say 'one more time' over and over, it adds up t' forever. Ah can't. An'... you're one of the last ponies Ah hurt, you an' Ms. Bennett an' Golden Harvest, 'cause Ah know Chief Rights told you where we crashed. Other two won't talk t' me. Nopony wants t' hear me no more. But y'ain't... y'told me t' get out, but y'ain't kicked, so maybe... maybe you'll let me say the next thing."

It was like listening to an addict on the first day they'd declared themselves as going sober, and doing so in the center of a pub.

Softly, "And what's the next thing?"

Orange eyes winced shut.

"Ah told mah brother Ah was comin' here. An' why. So y'know. He didn't tell me t' do it. This is mah idea. All mine. Nopony's fault but mine. So..." Forcing each syllable now. "...if y'say no -- it's jus' t' me. He understands that."

Ratchette waited.

The next words weren't so much dredged up as unearthed, a forced burial being reversed one mouthful of dirt at a time, with most of the concealing material coating the tongue. "Ah... owe you. Ah owe money t' a lot of ponies, 'cause of everything Ah did in the Crusade. You're the latest, an'... Ah..."

Her eyes opened, and the yellow head forced itself up just enough to look at Ratchette's front knees.

"...Ah... sometimes, Ah... look at things an' Ah think 'bout -- how t' make 'em better. Only Ah didn't try, 'cause it was borin' an'... if Ah was borin', then Ah wouldn't have nopony no more. But Ah'm out of the Crusade, Ah am --" and with that came the first tear, clear blood shed from an intangible hoofblade wound which had been aimed at the heart "-- an' Ah owe you. Ah want t'... work for you, if'fin you'll let me. A few hours a week. Last of the summer, an' then after school starts. Big Mac says it's okay, bein' away from the chores. He's... kinda known it wasn't gonna be a farmin' mark for a while, an' if Ah've got a chance, a real chance, he wants me t' be where it might happen. Where there's an adult watchin'. Where maybe Ah can read more than two pages before Ah say Ah know the book, where Ah finish somethin', doin' it right, and..."

Which was where words temporarily ran out, and her head dipped again.

A thousand future explosions went off in Ratchette's imagination, and none of them had survivors.

"You want to work here." There were times when, even while locked into nightmare, you had to pause and count the exact number of monsters who were about to eat you.

"Not for pay," Apple Bloom weakly tried. "No bits for me, anyway. Until Ah've worked off what Ah owe you. An' maybe if Ah can finally let mahself be right, right instead of scared, Ah can put things t'gether and make them better in front of somepony who knows 'bout that kind of stuff. Ah know your mark is devices, an' Ah know Ah can't do that 'cause after Ah heard what yours did, Ah thought maybe we could all... well, everypony heard that boom. Ah won't touch the magic stuff, Ah promise. But y'fix gears. Wind springs. Y'designed that spider y'wear on your face, the one which moves stuff for you, an' Ah think maybe Ah could --"

"-- you've said a lot of things," Ratchette interrupted, and just doing that would have been a shock -- if she'd been talking to any other pony. "You've apologized. I think you've apologized to me nine times in two years." There had been only one theft. There had been many more Crusades.

"But Ah mean it. An' Ah know Ah can't say it no more, Ah've gotta show --"

Ratchette repaired unicorn devices. Tried to fix things which so many insisted she could never understand and, in the event of something truly going wrong, had no workings to save herself: just excellent reflexes and what would hopefully be a clear path to the exit. Device repair, even with a qualified unicorn, was one of the highest-risk professions in Equestria, and a vacancy had been available in Ponyville because the last shop had crash-landed in the Everfree. The proprietor's body had never been found.

She could keep a normal pony away from such moments, ask them to wait outside while the risks mounted, make them understand that there were things they could never touch. Have them only work on the items which were purely mechanical in nature, a restriction which would be keeping them safe. A normal pony would understand that.

But this wasn't a normal pony.

Ratchette's mark had placed her the width of a single tail strand away from death. She didn't need anypony accidentally shoving her across the final gap.

"-- you're not welcome in this shop any more, Apple Bloom."

There had been no anger in the words. She had made a simple, calm statement of fact. And in return, the filly, finding no mercy in sound or floor stains, began to turn around in the narrow aisle, lowered gaze not really paying any attention to the process.

"Ah..." The tiny sob briefly cut off the rest. "Ah thought that maybe... maybe somepony who's kinda different might understand what it feels like, tellin' yourself that maybe y'can be somethin' --"

Which was when Ratchette's reflexes took over.

Her wings flared out and she went aloft, placed her body just barely above the filly, lowered short-cut copper tail and whipped the yellow flank.

Apple Bloom, startled, jumped -- away from the exposed edge of the open housing, the metal which her lack of attention had nearly seen her rub against.

"What? Ah -- why did y'do --"

Ratchette quickly landed in front of her, got her left forehoof under the filly's still-lowered chin, and guided that gaze around to the little ridges of serration which ran along that edge.

Orange eyes widened.

"I have to pay attention in here," Ratchette said. "All the time. You won't. Go home, Apple Bloom."

She carefully flew over the filly, clearing the aisle, and the not-as-little-any-more spine-dipped body began to work its way out -- then paused, just in front of the door.

"The... copper thing. The one with the three wheels. Ah... think maybe... it would go better if there was one more right in the middle, takin' the weight. One which could rotate all the way 'round. Ah think --"

Stopped.

"-- Ah'm stupid," Apple Bloom softly decided. "Ah think Ah'm bein' stupid. An'... Ah'm... Ah'm sorry..."

Which was when the last of her resolve splashed against the floor as water and salt, in the moment before she galloped from the shop.

Within the closed-off rear of the establishment, several things which were not tools had been hung on the walls. Ratchette's diploma was the one which received the most sheer disbelief: she only showed it to ponies as a last resort, typically while praying that they didn't realize it had come from a correspondence school. A first-aid kit had yet to see any real use: Ratchette was always careful, and so had developed the bad habit of using the gauze to deal with some of the more tricky oils, while bandages sometimes held parts together until the stronger adhesives could be retrieved. And then there was the national weather schedule.

It was actually easier to get a schedule for all of Equestria than it was to acquire that moon's sheet for a single different settled zone: such things were typically only distributed to those residents. But ponies whose occupations involved travel needed to know what had been set up for just about everywhere, and so the Weather Bureau made comprehensive works available. In Ratchette's case, her work kept her in Ponyville, and most of the parts she ordered from Canterlot were requested by mail so as to avoid having to deal with the shock which occurred when feathers rustled within a supply house. And the desire which arose in so many pegasi in times of high emotion, the instinct to return home... she felt that would be just like her techniques: in both cases, if she tried to access that which was virtually non-existent, something was guaranteed to fail.

But she still thought about home. The only ponies she wished to see were those tied to her by blood: everypony else had effectively vanished from her life, and she dearly hoped things would stay that way. But she missed the ocean: lakes and rivers just weren't the same. And as much as something deep within her had forever felt discomfort when she tried to rest upon clouds, just looking down from the edge of her house and seeing what the weather was doing to the sea...

So she had a national weather schedule. And every so often, she found herself looking down its many columns until she found:

Cameo Cumulus: mostly sunny, seasonal temperatures, leeward breeze.

It was normal for her to check that. But over the last few days...

Trotter's Falls: heavily overcast, dipping temperatures and increasing humidity during the day. Severe thunderstorm overnight until Sun-raising: all associated weather advisories in effect.

There were times when gossip was slow to reach Ratchette: she worked alone, most customers didn't stay long, and... well, it was the sort of thing which frequently required friends. She wasn't entirely sure she had any. Stile helped her with designs and the construction of the results, but they weren't friends: just two ponies who regularly delivered challenges to each other's talents. She could, to some headache-inducing degree, talk about magic with Twilight (and longed to go into the library again, see a familiar face to go with those still-so-strange new wings), but it was typically all they talked about. Just about every other relationship she had was client-mechanic, which occasionally turned into screamer-target. The majority of the remainder came from her infrequent attempts to date, all of which had currently ended, and none of them well.

She spent most of her time in the workshop, and so hadn't heard about her first friend having gone missing until a day after everypony else. Nopony had thought to come and tell her, because she hadn't told anypony: the name of the midwife who'd delivered you wasn't a typical subject for conversation. She was aware that there were a few of his scattered within Ponyville, and he'd even suggested that she speak to a few during his only visit to her in that settled zone: something which had taken place deep under Moon, with nopony around to see. But she was shy. She didn't want to seek them out because when she approached ponies, it was giving them the chance to judge her immediately, as opposed to the better-paced torture of waiting for somepony to enter the shop. She knew Pinkie was one of his deliveries, she'd had her welcoming party, and... well, it hadn't been as painful as she'd expected, not with company. But the baker was open and welcoming and almost effervescent and Ratchette... wasn't. So she hadn't approached, it had left her a day behind on the news and just when she'd been on the verge of finding a way to close the shop and get on a train, the next part had arrived at the speed of flight: Doctor Gentle had been found. There was no need for her to join a search which had ended.

News said he'd been found. Rumor claimed he'd been injured. And so, if only through the weather schedule, Ratchette found herself turning to Trotter's Falls, with the feelings produced by something much stronger than instinct.

I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him. And I don't know if he's okay...

He would probably tell me to stay here. Look after the shop. That he had enough ponies worrying about him and I had to think about my own life.

He was so proud of me, when I told him I was going to open my own repair shop. When he came here and I could tell him it was starting to work out. He always understood...

He would have wanted her to stay: she was sure of that. And because he loved her enough to wish that, she still wanted to go.

"Excuse me?" A nervous voice, which was a tone Ratchette was far too familiar with -- but she didn't recognize the pony, not from sound alone. That meant somepony who was coming in for the first time, and that could lead to so much... "Is anypony in? I... I kind of need help. Fast." And when no reply came immediately (because Ratchette was still mustering the strength for a first-time meeting), "I'm -- willing to pay extra for same-day service. Or even tonight. As long as it's ready before Sun is raised tomorrow. Um -- is anypony --"

Which was when Ratchette took a breath, wished she was cleaner (always a futile wish when working), and opened the door to the shop's public area before stepping most of the way through the frame: wings visible, but with her hips blocked from sight.

There was a brown earth pony mare there (a rather dingy shade, the sort of thing where anypony who fully dropped down onto the right soil might turn into a speed bump upon the first blink), about halfway down the main approach aisle. She was moving carefully, and had to: not only were her saddlebags full, but she was one of the largest mares Ratchette had ever seen. Not quite on Snowflake's scale for strength (although the muscular development might have been at seventy percent of that rather singular example: some of the finer details were hidden by dull clothing and skirt) or Big Macintosh's for height (more like eighty-five), but not that far off either.

Equally brown (but slightly filmy) eyes blinked.

"...oh," the mare decided, with nerves now dipping into misery. "Um... will the owner be back anytime soon? Because this is probably going to be a really long repair, and it's not a wonder: it's a device. I need the work started as soon as any unicorn returns --"

Here we go. It was a thought which never gained any comfort through repetition.

"I am the proprietor," Ratchette tried: tones as even as she could make them, fighting the urge to move backwards. "And sole employee." Which was followed by the move which never worked: as she watched the sheer shock moving across the mare's face, rapidly closing in on the jaw while working out exactly what kind of denial would be unleashed, Ratchette took one additional step forward. Just enough to bring her mark into view. "As you can see --" -- and won't understand...

Another, much stronger blink.

"That's an Equiportent diagram," the mare stated -- and took her own step forward, as the low music of her voice ascended from shock to amazement. "Your mark is an Equiportent diagram. You've got a thaum flow route on your flanks!" With rising excitement providing additional boost, "How can you have a device mark? I mean, that's obviously a real device mark because I've been looking at it for more than five seconds and it hasn't vanished or had the dye drip away, but you're a pegasus and that's a device mark! How is that even possible? What was your manifest like? Sun and Moon, I want to hear that story! Because if it's possible for a pegasus to get one, then maybe --"

Her head briefly turned, looked back along her right flank, to whatever the skirt was covering. Came forward again, mouth opening --

-- and blush started to rise under that dingy fur.

"I was... talking too fast, wasn't I? And about all the wrong things. It's just that -- I've never seen a pegasus with -- I said that already, I said that..." A powerful foreleg came up, and the hoof went into the owner's face with exacting lack of true force. "...and your mouth is just hanging open, I know I just offended you and I'm sorry --"

"-- in my whole life until just now," Ratchette forced out from the depths of deepest stun, "seven ponies knew what my mark represented. What it meant for me to have it. And most of them denied it. You... you know an Equiportent diagram on sight?"

"I like devices," the earth pony weakly smiled, mostly past the blocking hoof. "I -- kind of have to. I work with them all the time. I appreciate them. But -- you can't cast. How can you repair if you can't --" the blush intensified. "-- I'm doing it again..." The hoof carefully went down, didn't come back up for a second impact. "Look -- I'm being stupid. I say stupid things when I'm amazed. So I'm sorry for everything I've said, and everything I'm probably going to say, but -- I have something which isn't working, I know how complicated it is to fix, and I need to get it fixed today. Or by tonight. Tomorrow's Sun-raising is too long. I can't stay in Ponyville past tonight and stay on schedule. So I'm going to show you what it is, mostly because that'll put something in my mouth and I'll stop talking and..." Her fur was now on the verge of backlit glow. "It's... this."

Her head went back again. Teeth quickly flipped the left saddlebag's lid, rummaged, gently withdrew a hoof-height (and double that width) disk, one with an upper surface of glass, which had silver and iridium rimming the edges -- and outlining the borders of a severe dent, something roughly circular and so large as to have the top and bottom of that circle invisibly gallop off top and bottom. A lifeless needle shifted under the glass, swaying with nothing more than the motion --

"-- a thaum compass," Ratchette breathed, and just barely. "You have a thaum compass. That's one of the rarest devices there is! They're so hard to make..."

The earth pony quietly nodded, with the disk held fast between gentle teeth.

"May..." Ratchette no longer had to force herself forward. The injured device was practically pulling her along. "...may I touch it? So I can take a closer look?" Upturned a forehoof, presented a surface for balancing. Hoping.

The mare quietly deposited the compass onto that steel-grey hoof, adjusted the centering before full release. "It's not the charge," she said as she stepped back again. "It took a hard knock while we were traveling." Then, much more quickly, "While the compass and I were on the road. And I really do need it fixed here, going to Canterlot is -- I need it for Canterlot, and..."

But Ratchette was listening to something else.

charge level high but thaums unable to move alignment disrupted core elements in contact separation required

The enchantments were fine: it took a lot to make a thaum compass, and just about as much to magically disrupt one. The internal structure had simply been rearranged somewhat by the impact. And Ratchette had never fixed one, had barely gotten to see one --

-- which meant she wasn't going to pass up the opportunity.

"By tonight?"

"Or faster."

"It won't be fast." This was going to be all kinds of finicky. Delicate. Problems would almost be lurking in ambush, waiting to pounce. "This is hours of work, minimum. And I'd have to put everything else aside. Everything. You'd be my only client for the day."

"And you're already booked," the mare miserably decided. "I --"

And there is no way I'm giving up that experience to a Canterlot shop! "Take it off my hoof and we'll go into the back. I need to clear some space..."

She wound up clearing quite a bit of it, for the mare insisted on staying.

"This is risky," Ratchette had told her, with somewhat more firmness than she was strictly used to mustering. "There's a lot of power in here and right now, it doesn't have anywhere to go. If I can get it fixed, it'll flow down the normal channeling route. But if something goes wrong, it could get out into the open -- and then you're dealing with pure thaums working themselves out on whatever they hit."

Only the mare's mouth had moved, and that into a smile.

Ratchette had then realized she needed to say something more terrifying. "Have you ever seen a unicorn with Rhynorn's Flu make the mistake of trying to cast? Imagine a hospital. In Canterlot. With all the Princesses sick. And they all try to do something at the same time --"

"-- I'm pretty quick," the mare had told her. "Well, for being big, anyway. And there should be some warning, right?"

Bleakly, "Seconds." It was a risk Ratchette was willing to take, but to ask anypony else... "And it's a plural because we might get two."

Still smiling, "You said 'we'."

Ratchette blinked. The earth pony had a way of making her do that.

"I'm pretty quick," the mare had repeated. "I'm also too big for you to move. And this is probably going to be my only chance to see what a thaum compass looks like inside. I don't have anywhere to be in Ponyville, and I'd rather not be anywhere other than here. The risk is all mine and if you've got some documents you want me to sign saying so, I will. So -- please?"

And she'd stayed. (The disclaimer documents never came out, largely due to not existing.)

Ratchette was arranging the tools necessary for opening the housing. (She owned them all, but had never needed to use the majority. There was no day-to-day need for anything this refined, and so she'd seen no need to build them into the jaw-mounted machine which served as her closest approximation to a unicorn field prosthetic.) The earth pony, who didn't have very much room in which to wander, had somehow managed to find a way of facing Ratchette's diploma.

"Correspondence school," she instantly identified, and Ratchette winced. "I've seen the advertisements in magazines. They took you?"

"They..." And now her own blush was starting to rise under steel-grey fur. "...don't have a section on the application for 'race'."

The mare's snort released a blast of pure amusement. "But you would have needed to give them a unicorn's field signature --"

"-- somepony I know." Fortunately, the receiving mailing address was in Canterlot, and so nothing had faded beyond reading by the time her repaired samples arrived. "But I did learn how to repair all kinds of devices at home..."

"Actual devices," the mare said. "That's got to be a story."

Copper eyes briefly closed, and Ratchette shrugged. "It really isn't. I always liked devices. I took apart just about everything in my house, trying to figure out how it worked. Then I put one back together, and there was my mark."

The other fillies and colts thought I was strange. Then they knew it. But my family is the most powerful pegasus House in the world, so they couldn't say or do anything too openly. They just found other ways of letting me know how they felt, over and over, until they chased me out of the clouds I didn't want to touch.

Openly curious, "Can you work with wonders, too?"

Ratchette shook her head. It was a common assumption: pegasi had their own enchanted creations, and some of those who came into the shop for the first time decided that the true owner had decided to branch out their repair services through hiring a specialist. And a wonder repairpony was normal. Accepted.

But with wonders... it was the same as it was for just about every bit of pegasus magic she'd ever tried to perform. Failed. She could fly, although not with any true speed. Standing on clouds was automatic, and could produce automatic revulsion. And full concentration added to rapidly flapping her wings to the point of near-exhaustion -- would raise a slight breeze, some of which might have been produced by the frantic flapping of wings.

But lightning, heat shifting, moisture coalescence and dispersal... nothing worked. The only result she'd produced was a deep-rooted feeling of inner illness, one which grew progressively worse as she continued to try. Some pegasi were weaker than others: that had always been true, and Ratchette's natural field strength was just barely measurable. It would, and could, never improve.

And when she touched a wonder, with the core of her soul straining to listen... she heard nothing. Nothing at all.

The mare thought that over -- then sighed. "I --" Stopped, reset. "I was just thinking about -- what it would be like, to be a earth pony with that mark. To break through a wall hardly anypony ever notices. And then I realized it would be mostly like what happened out in the main shop. That ponies would freak out, and some of them wouldn't stop..."

The words, the acknowledgement, the understanding reached out to her, and Ratchette turned, just in time to see the mare's ears dip --

-- there was a hint of dark green at the base of those ears, made visible only by the movement --

-- with shame.

"Sorry," the mare quietly offered -- and then, with head now lowered (which was actually just about mandatory for the two of them to truly look at each other), "But I still wish I had your mark."

Ratchette blinked.

"I really like devices," the mare sincerely stated. "Seriously. More than I like most ponies." Now awkward, "They're easier to deal with, and at least there's usually a reason for a device to explode in your face."

The mechanic, who so often had trouble working through the most basic dealings with ponies, was frequently more capable of some brief degree of communication with the inanimate while telling herself that at least she didn't have to worry about a device understanding her or thinking her strange, looked at the earth pony. Looked at her more openly than she had viewed just about anypony in years. And wondered whether, even with somepony who just seemed to be passing through, she had found a friend.

Her left forehoof came up and after a moment, she made the trembling stop.

"Ratchette." The most basic introduction. Something the mare would have seen on the shop's sign. But she hardly ever made the first move, not even in Ponyville, and the mare was just looking at that presented hoof, very visibly thinking...

A much larger hoof came up, pressed against her own.

"Starki."

And they talked.

They were talking.

There was a thaum compass on her just-cleaned workbench (for nothing would have let her risk having it be stained), and the conversation was still the most wonderful thing in the room.

Sun had been lowered. Moon had been raised, and both events had happened some time ago. In both cases, Ratchette had barely noticed. The only concession to time passing had been a nod towards the little area where she kept her I'm-working-too-late-again supplies, and they'd divided the food. Most of the chewing had been a little too fast, so as to clear their mouths for more talking: it had produced one rather embarrassing (and, once the laughter stopped, acknowledged as impressive) burp.

She should have been tired: even with the repair hours she sometimes kept, she just didn't work this deep under Moon -- and beyond the meal, her only breaks had been spent in the bathroom. But Starki needed the thaum compass, and the process was more or less on schedule: Ratchette was currently sure she would finish about five hours before Sun-raising -- about an hour to go overall, if things remained on pace.

(She wondered what time it was in Trotter's Falls, and if her first friend was awake, helping a newborn into the world. If he was truly all right.)

I don't want to finish.

She tried to push the thought away, found it quickly flowing back.

I'm going to complete this repair. A thaum compass. I got to work on one. That's enough.

Except that finishing meant Starki would leave. The talk would end, and it felt as if it had been so long since she'd just been able to talk...

"Finding, selling, and trading devices." Ratchette was still amazed by that, and so it was a topic they had returned to frequently across the night. "What a life. All the things you must get to see! Just to be in the same room as an analyzer...!" A privilege she'd never experienced.

"Trust me, I tried to get a lot closer than that," Starki sighed, disgruntlement producing a brief roll of filmy eyes -- followed by a forehoof coming up and briefly rubbing at closed lids. (Ratchette had noticed more of that happening as the night went on, and presumed there was some sort of minor infection at cruel work. The eye wash station had been offered and rejected.) "But there's some things... well, no matter what you do, you can't get everything. And I tried everything I had -- well, once I knew it was real."

Which was why repairing the thaum compass was so crucial. Starki had no feel for unicorn magic, and so had to rely on a device to tell her how many workings were in the area, along with their approximate strength. (It had other, related functions, but in this case, those were the most important ones.) Ratchette could easily picture con artists (the brothers came to mind) selling something non-functional which had just a touch of glow placed upon it -- glow which would fade shortly after the laughing liars got out of range. Without the compass, Starki would be dealing with ponies who could easily lie to her: possessing a working one was just about a necessity for an earth pony to be in the profession at all.

And that's why she needs it working before she reaches Canterlot. Whatever she's trading for or buying there, she has to be capable of examining it. She must have some appointments right after the first train arrives.

Not that Starki had said as much, but it was just so easy to imagine.

And that's why her saddlebags are so full. I wouldn't leave anything at a hotel.

Copper eyes widened.

"Ratchette..." The big mare's voice was awkward again. "Thank you. For doing this. For clearing -- everything. It -- it means a lot. You don't know..." A deep breath swelled the wide rib cage. "It's important. That's all I can say. Getting this fixed was the most important thing in my life right now. You saved me."

"It's okay. It's what I'm supposed to do." What her mark had intended.

"And -- look, I know this is going to be a weird question, but..." She nodded towards the steel mask which covered most of Ratchette's snout, all the springs and clamps, the triggers and switches set in front of her jaw. "When you were going for the wire and moved that one -- thing... I saw you had what looked like an older version of that."

"It's a lot more basic," Ratchette admitted. "I save it in case the main two break down at the same time. And there's a pair of the old ones, just in case."

Starki chuckled. "Yeah, you're a mechanic. Backups for the backups -- which makes this a little more awkward. Can I buy one of those old ones off you?" With her words quickly accelerating, "I'm not going to sell the design or try making my own. Even if I was that much of a jerk, I know you've got to have diagrams which prove who the rightful inventor is. I just want one for myself. To try and learn how to use it. I think it would really help me with some things. And maybe startle a few unicorns along the way."

With the perpetual exception of Stile, she had allowed one to leave the shop only once, and Twilight's attempt to conquer her case of Rhynorn's through an ill-advised (but strongly-insisted) self-teaching session had left every last switch locked up. She had never considered selling one.

So she thought about it.

"I don't know how much to charge."

"Dangerous words," Starki grinned, "in front of somepony who trades for a living."

Which brought them to what she'd just been thinking about. "We could trade..."

(She was teasing. Mostly.)

Starki blinked, then rubbed at her eyes again. "Say what?"

"You've got more devices in your saddlebags right now, don't you?" And now that she was paying attention...

...nothing. Which was slightly odd: normally, she had to be touching a device in order to have any chance of a true feel for it, but when they were gathered in quantity, she occasionally picked up on their grouped presence.

Several seconds of extremely (and oddly) awkward silence passed.

"A -- few," Starki said. "I just don't like to advertise. My saddlebags are even enchanted to stop unicorns from trying to get some idea of how much I'm carrying. It's a good working: I can open the lids without signatures leaking out. But this stuff is -- committed. I can't go swapping any of it out."

Both parts of the explanation felt perfectly sensible. "I know. But with a pony who just happens to be carrying a thaum compass -- I'd love to see some of it."

"It's... not great stuff," Starki declared. "Most of it's pretty boring, especially for somepony like you."

Ratchette decided she was being teased, and it was the first time in years where that treatment had felt good. "I bet you've got something..."

The earth pony fell silent. Remained so, for the increasingly horrible duration of a near-eternal minute.

Did I say something wrong --

"Yeah. There's one thing you'd probably like." A cautioning forehoof came up. "But just one, or we'll be here until next moon. Give me a second..."

Her head went back, and the right saddlebag lid was flipped. Ratchette briefly stopped working, waited.

What emerged was -- well, it had to be small: she could barely see a hint of iron (and that was rare to see as part of a housing: it couldn't conduct at all) sticking out of one side of Starki's jaw. The end of some kind of rod. Added to iron, that didn't leave many possibilities, and the single most common just wasn't going to be in the casual possession of --

-- the mare made her way to the workbench, carefully set the piece down on an empty corner, stepped back and smiled.

"I'm betting," she decided, "you haven't seen one of these in the wild. Not when it isn't in the middle of being used."

Ratchette hadn't. She had only seen two: one had been in operation, and a second might still be at Ponyville's police station, inside the evidence locker.

She'd never had one in her shop. She hadn't worked on this kind of device. She wasn't legally permitted to.

A Tarsus Key.

Enchanted locks were among the most common devices to exist. The most encountered version was used by unicorns, and it was designed so that the lock could be opened by the owner's unique field signature alone. It was easy to set a freshly-made device and depending on the manufacturer, moderately to ridiculously difficult for anypony else to get it open.

But unicorns died. Unique field signatures passed into the shadowlands. (Less often, somepony would be away on vacation or business at exactly the wrong moment, or a unicorn would contract Rhynorn's just in time to lock themselves out of their house.) Businesses, homes, personal safes... they would remain locked. A Tarsus Key's purpose was to serve as a forced reset, bringing the lock back to the state where a new owner's signature could be imprinted upon it.

They were invaluable for locksmithing, the settlement of estates, and just getting through your front door when your horn refused to do anything but spark. They were also one of the most potent thieving tools in existence, and so ownership required a license which was registered with the government. Repairing them had a similar requirement, and as for manufacture...

Ponies didn't just trot around with a Tarsus Key. Anypony found with one had better be ready to present papers on demand. And to have one in her workshop...

"This can't be here." An automatic reaction, instinctive and fearful, even deep under Moon with nopony around to see. Ratchette often felt as if she operated on the bare edge of acceptance to begin with, and to deal with this... "I can't have this in --"

"It's okay!" The words seemed to emerge a little too quickly. "It's just you and me, right? You're not working on it and I'm not using it."

"But you own it!"

And she was just about to ask if Starki had the license with her when the earth pony spoke. "No. I don't."

Those words had been perfectly even.

"You --"

"I'm just carrying it. Somepony got out of the business, somepony else needs a new one. From somepony with a license to somepony else who's got one. You don't need paperwork to serve as a courier."

It didn't sound right. Ratchette felt as if some things had to be shipped under secure delivery, and a Tarsus Key would have to be one of them. But she'd been talking to Starki for so much of the day and night, she didn't want to openly question a pony who felt so much like a friend...

"It's a great little device, isn't it?" asked the mare. "There's so little out there which can work with signatures. Sometimes I think that if the hornheads just considered a little tweak --"

She didn't stop talking, and a stunned Ratchette wasn't capable of interrupting. There was another word, and it was lost in the crashing impact of the shop's inner door being kicked.

"Are you in here?"

Starki froze and her eyes went wide, wider than Ratchette had ever seen anypony's eyes go. Wide enough to see a faint ring around the edges of the eye itself.

"...no..."

It was a small sound from such a large mare, and the little word soaked the air in fear.

I...

They had been talking for hours. Ratchette had barely left the room, and so she hadn't turned the lights off in the building's outer portion, any more than she'd locked the door. Not that it would have stopped the new mare, because the next sound was of the door being kicked open.

"It's been hours! Is it getting done or what? What do I have to do in order to get what I want?" Hoofsteps coming down the aisle, huge hooffalls -- ones which were strangely uneven. "We've got to get out of here, you know that! I wouldn't have even stopped here if we didn't have the bucking Canterlot job coming up! And if you think I'm just going to keep waiting for you...!"

"Don't move," Starki whispered. "Celestia's tail, Ratchette, stay back here and don't move..."

The earth pony took a breath -- and her features harshened. The open friendliness which Ratchette had spent hours basking within inverted, became a snorting, hoof-stomping expression of hatred against the world as she half-pushed past the mechanic, almost slammed her way through the door...

"It's almost done!" she told the new pony. "I've been watching her! She's good! We've got maybe another hour and then we're out of here!"

Most of the way through the door. She was standing in such a way that her large body blocked just about all view of what was behind her, which included Ratchette's much smaller form. A body which was now involuntarily trying to make itself smaller still, resisting the urge to curl up in defense against such an outpouring of rage.

"If she was good," the new mare half-roared, "then you would have been back already! Hours ago! I've just been waiting, and I'm sick of it --"

"-- it's complicated! You know what thaum compasses are like! And keep it down! The other businesses are closed, but some ponies sleep over their shops! You don't want to wake --"

That's a lie. No ponies live at their shops here. Even I go home --

"-- let me see it."

Starki's breathing stopped. Just for a moment, and in exact concert with Ratchette's.

"She's busy," the earth pony said. "It's not going to go any faster if you see it or not."

"Or maybe," the other mare shot back, "she's screwing it up and you don't want me to see it because you remember what happened the last time there was a screwup."

"It's an hour! One more --"

The other voice abruptly turned soft. Calm and cool. Down into the depths of the ocean, where ponies drowned.

"Are you going to make me kick you again?"

"No..."

The shop had no rear exit. There were windows, and none of them were large enough. Ratchette had never been the kind of pony who'd felt an architectural fondness for a skylight. There was exactly one way out, and it was past Starki. Above her. But the doorway was so narrow, she had almost no room for acceleration, she was a poor flier and to have her wings against her body when passing through, without having had any time to pick up speed, the hanging tools gave her a tiny corridor to use in the first place...

The other option was to vault the earth pony. And given Ratchette's size added to her lack of physical strength, it was equally impossible.

"Because making me kick you is why we're in this bucking place to start with!"

"I know, but --"

I have to get out of here. I have to get the police. I have to --

"Then move!"

More heavy hoofsteps, faster ones -- but not as fast as they could have been. Still uneven. And Starki's legs went into fearful retreat as the smell of grease and oils in the shop was drowned out by the scent of her fear.

If she didn't think about the Princesses -- something which wasn't going to happen when so much of her mind had just dropped into desperate prayer -- then the earth pony now filling the doorway was the single largest mare Ratchette had ever seen. Most of the light from the public area was blocked by the massive form, leaving Ratchette cowering within shadow.

(She had slept through most of the Return, and done so on the coast. She had only known a short time of existing within darkness that should not have been. She had never asked Twilight what it had felt like, and would never have to.)

Brown eyes, slightly filmy, looked down at Ratchette. Openly regarded her as a particularly foul piece of gum found stuck to the bottom of a hoof, and with the same intent to scrape.

"What the BUCK is this?"

Ratchette couldn't see Starki any more. Only hear her, the sudden harshness gone now, replaced by desperation. "Look -- just look at her --"

"-- it's a bucking feather duster! With a steel spider on her snout! You've been making, wasting time with a featherbrain when you know we can't be here? Since when do you go for mares? Since when did you want me kicking --"

"-- look at her mark, just look at her mark, the compass is on the workbench, she's only got about an hour to go --"

Ratchette, trembling, rib cage heaving, all four knees trying to collapse, forced herself to look up. It was a process which took some time, with so much to go over along the way. Copper eyes traveled across dingy brown fur, moving up the forelegs --

-- that bulge. A little dome under the skin.

That leg was broken. But the break was never treated, or given a binding by somepony who didn't know what they were doing. It healed wrong.

Two big earth ponies. One carrying devices. A Tarsus Key...

The thaum compass can find magic. Tell when a device is real.

After you use the key as the first step towards reaching it.

The library. The attempted robbery in the library a few moons ago, when Twilight was sick. A pair of earth pony sisters and

I've been talking to one of them

for hours

in my shop

and the one who tried to kill Twilight is right in front of me.

And she'd looked for just a little too long.

"Oh," the huge mare softly stated. "Seeing something familiar?"

Ratchette's eyes had reached the mare's face now. Features which would never be attractive, not contorted by bunched muscles waiting to release that tension on anything in sight. Ears flicked back, showing off a different hue at the base because even with help, that place was so hard to reach with fur dye. The rings of color-distorting contacts around her eyes.

"An hour," Starki nearly screamed. "She just needs another hour!"

"A. Bucking. Pegasus," the other mare whispered. (She hadn't looked at Ratchette's mark. She never would.) "You knew how dangerous it was for us to be here, after the last time. And you made me kick you anyway. Then I had to wait in the wild zone while you went feather-dusting. And now I'm seeing something on her face. Something which says she keeps up with the news..."

"She won't talk, she won't talk, she --"

Which led to a simple statement, one which came from the heart of what Ratchette finally recognized as madness.

"-- corpses don't talk."

The mare charged.

There were things Ratchette could have done, and it could be argued that all of them would have failed. She barely had any room to fly and wasn't particularly good at it: without fine control, an attempt to dodge straight up would have ended with her skull going into her own tools. She had no time to charge back and lacked the mass to make it effective. Things suitable for improvised weapons, at least in the sense that they were denser than her own flesh, were within mouth reach -- and even with her reflexes, to go for any of them would have given the huge mare time to reach her. To trample.

She had a split-second left to breathe under Moon, one in which none of her prayers had been answered, and used it for saying goodbye to her family.

Which was when the big body vaulted over her head.

Starki wasn't as large as her sibling. But she wasn't all that far off, and she'd pushed. Both earth ponies went back through the doorway, scraping their flanks along the side, tearing dull clothing and putting a rent in Starki's right saddlebag. Screams rang out, ones nopony was close enough to hear.

"She was almost done! If you'd just waited, you told me you would wait --!"

"It's you or her!"

There was an additional note of punctuation to those words, produced by a kick going onto ribs. An explosive grunt of pain burst from the impact. Metal scattered. Things fell off, over, and around. Somewhere within that was a body hitting the floor.

The only way out is...

She needed the police. She needed to do something. Anything, and none of it could be done without getting out.

She forced herself back to her hooves: her body had automatically dropped as Starki had gone over her. Went through the doorway --

-- and the huge mare, softly smiling, was blocking the exit.

Starki was lying on her right side, eyes half-closed. Breathing, but with that action just about all she was capable of. Her left saddlebag was splayed awkwardly across her flank. The right was empty, with its contents having fallen out through the rent. Scattered across the shop.

That's...

...Luna's mane, that's a rammer...

It was perhaps seven body lengths away from her. It was partially in the aisle, somewhat nested among the fallen tools and knocked-over pieces and serrated edge of that one open housing. It was made from ivory (nearly the only device in the world which incorporated ivory, all of which had to be scavenged) wrapped with platinum wire, just about the exact shape of a curled sheep horn, only wider than a pony's head and with an indentation for a front knee.

But it hadn't been made for her. There had been no hours in silent contact with the device, forcing it to reattune for a new owner. And so it was also completely useless.

"It's you," the huge mare softly told Starki (and Ratchette's terrified mind, some of which was distantly evaluating the damage while realizing she would probably never get the chance to repair any of it, finally realized the name had to be a fake one), "or it's her. Maybe it'll be both of you, if you keep insisting on making me kick you. Trying to fight... what were you thinking? Do you ever think at all, coming to a feather duster for repairs? So it's Canterlot, then, hiding from Princesses and police while we close the deals, and I'll have to kick the truth out of ponies instead of using the compass like you wanted. That's how things get when you make me kick you." The huge body released a tiny shrug. "What is it about this bucking settled zone? First the library, and now a pegasus..."

The door is blocked.

I can't fight her. She's too big. I could get something to head-toss into her eyes, some oils, but the contacts give her a little protection and I'd have to turn my back to get anything at all.

I don't have wind, or heat, or lighting.

I could try to fly as fast as possible. Crash through the window. If I didn't hurt myself so much that I knocked myself out of the sky. Through spell-reinforced glass.

I could...

Starki wasn't trying to get up, and so just about all of what Ratchette could do was die.

Over her head. Push the door open.

It was the only chance.

She took off, tried to get up speed, pushed, did everything she could to accelerate, there was a moment when it felt as if she was going to do it and --

-- the huge mare, softly laughing, leaped.

Giant hooves went into Ratchette's shoulders. Negated all momentum as the impact went deep into her muscles, made her scream as the sheer force sent her backwards and down.

She fell. Fell among parts and labels and crashed, broken tools. The prosthetic flew off her face, landed near the wall. She lay within the debris of the only things which had never questioned her. The silent acceptance from pieces of dead matter, welcoming her in the moments before she truly joined them.

A new scent reached her snout. There was blood in the air. Somepony was bleeding...

...me. It's me.

She'd barely felt the cut which landing on the open housing had put into her left foreleg. Long and shallow, across the kneecap, with red steadily flowing. A river which smelled of rust and liquid iron.

Starki was two body lengths away. Still not trying to get up. And the huge mare was approaching now. Taking her time.

"I'd say this won't hurt," she whispered, "but I hear Honesty lives in this town. No point in offending Honesty! So it's going to hurt. A lot. For wasting my time..."

She tried to move, even if movement would do no good. Just so she wouldn't die lying there. The bleeding foreleg slid across metal, unable to grasp or kick with enough force to matter or

recognize recognize recognize

charge level full

attunement complete

target acquired

action?

The coolness of hollowed ivory radiated through her wound, with the rammer on her leg and words which came from outside her being resounding through her soul.

And Ratchette smiled. It was a peaceful sort of smile, the reconciliation which only exists on the edge of death, where the world has already gone mad and nothing which happens next has to make sense any more. Sense was for later, and there probably wouldn't be one. She was simply having a dream, what was probably an already-impacted skull going through a few last thoughts before the mind entered the shadowlands and as such, she simply went with it as she struggled to her hooves, just barely able to do so with her shoulders so pained.

The huge earth pony -- let her get up. She was no threat.

Then the mare saw the rammer. Attached to the left foreleg.

She blinked. That was her only initial reaction. She blinked.

And then she laughed.

"Oh, come on," she softly said. "It's not yours. And even if it was, you have no idea how to use it."

Ratchette's smile became more distant. Almost dreamy.

action?

"That's okay," she half-whispered. "It knows how to use itself."

A river of copper glow rushed around the rammer, flowing along the bloodstained platinum.

This was followed by bursts of cerulean spheres, nearly all of which went into the huge mare's face.

repeating

Rammers weren't complicated. (When you got right down to it, most weapons weren't.) A unicorn with decent field strength added to the learning capacity and discipline to learn the right working could project their field as a series of rapid-fire small bubbles for a short time, ones which had a curious density to them. Somepony of Twilight's strength could knock ponies back. Whoever had enchanted the rammer had been rather predictably working at a lower level of power, and so the device produced a result which was more like being caught in a major hailstorm which had decided it really didn't like you.

"WHAT?" It was partially denial, mostly disbelief, and all of it was conducted while staggering backwards -- something which was actually rather hard to do, and impossible during those moments when the mare was reared up on her hind legs, trying to swat the bruising spheres from the air with huge hooves. "HOW ARE YOU --"

She slammed her hooves down, began to charge forward --

REPEATING

-- and froze, frantically turned her head, trying to protect her eyes, her snout tucked low.

"WHAT THE BUCK ARE YOU?"

The dyed tail whipped into sight as the mare turned around, the huge body knocking still more things over as spheres slammed into her hindquarters --

-- and she charged out the door, with the uneven hoofsteps pounding their way into the night.

There was the sound of metal being shoved across a floor: Starki was finally trying to get up. Ratchette turned, looked at what had to be the younger of the siblings --

-- and saw incomprehension.

Fear.

Terror.

"You..." the bruised mare gasped. "You..." Began to force herself towards the door.

And within Ratchette's mind, what had been seen as dream began to take on the horror of reality.

The words emerged in a desperate rush, with the copper glow winking out. "Starki, don't, please, don't..."

"I -- I can't... I..."

"You don't have to! You can --"

The earth pony, the mare she'd started to think of as a friend, looked at her. One filmy brown eye, one green.

"-- it's worse."

"I'm not! I swear, I'm not, I'm --"

"-- she's so much worse if I'm not with her...!"

And then she was gone.

The only pegasus device mechanic in the history of Equestria momentarily stood motionless and bleeding within the wreckage of her shop.

disengage?

There must have been a yes, something far below the edge of her inner hearing, for the rammer dropped to the floor. Or perhaps she simply never registered it against the sound of four legs collapsing, which was followed by the scream.

The scream broke through the night. It went on for a long time, with portions of it echoing out to the parts of the settled zone where ponies did live over their stores. Ponies who, when they raced forward to see what was so horribly wrong, were very surprised to see the front lights on in the fix-it shop, and the battered, bleeding pegasus who'd just barely managed to force herself through the door.

It took less than two minutes to find a cart for her, plus five more to reach the police.

Sun had been raised, and the thaum compass still had an hour of repair work to go.

Ratchette hadn't slept. Once the emergency medics had finished treating her, she'd been in the police station for about two hours: somepony had galloped to the home of Miranda Rights and woken up the police chief to personally take the report. It hadn't been a particularly long one, as it mostly talked about an unexpected customer who'd stayed around for most of a day and night, plus the psychotic sibling who'd lost all patience to the assault of continuing madness. There weren't a lot of details about the fight itself, because the one providing the account had chosen her own form of crime. Lying to the police could result in charges if such was discovered. Telling the truth currently seemed worse, especially when she had very little idea of what its ultimate form actually was.

No additional portion of fact would come out until the thieves were caught, and such was likely to be disbelieved. It seemed to give her some time.

"You screamed," Miranda had read from the filled-out form.

Ratchette had nodded.

"And that made them run, because they thought more ponies were on the way." There didn't seem to be any questions lurking in that.

Again.

"Ponies who did arrive," the chief had noted. "You're an impressive screamer."

No response.

"They tried to kill Twilight," the unicorn had reminded her. "Or at least the one did. And then you. But she had to drive them off, and you just screamed."

She'd stayed quiet. It had seemed to be a workable tactic, plus there was just about nothing she could say.

"You think the younger is...?"

"Trying... to control her."

"When she can't be." A stark statement. "If she really loved her sister, she'd turn her in..."

But love doesn't work like that. And neither does fear...

Miranda had looked at her for a while. Just -- looked.

"Don't trot much for a few days," she'd finally said. "Maybe a few weeks. I don't like the looks of those bruises: some of that probably reached the bone. Even flying, try to touch down on your hind legs and then slowly hover-dip the fore into position."

She'd nodded.

"I'll have somepony take you home, along with getting you the extra pain medication. Get some sleep."

"No. My shop."

"I've got ponies there, making sure nopony goes in. It's safe."

"I have to pick some things up. And... check something. My shop, Miranda. Please."

Some worry, mixed with exasperation. "You'll go to bed after?"

"Yes," she'd lied.

She'd picked a few things up. She'd checked something. And then she'd gone somewhere else.

As such things went, it wasn't a particularly long flight, but she was tired, even the lightest touchdown she could manage left her wincing, and it took place far enough away from the front door to make things worse. Simply knocking was an agony.

The stallion listened for a while. It didn't take long, as she had very little to say.

"She ain't gone anywhere today." More slowly, "Nopony to go with. I'll go get her for you."

"Thank you."

"Look..." The big earth pony paused in mid-turn. "You're hurt. If somepony's been hurting you --"

"I've already been to the police. There was --" Stopped. "I'm sorry, but... I just want to talk to her first. I haven't slept, and... I have to tell her something. Before I try to sleep." There would be nightmares, she was sure of that, and every one would echo the question which had been haunting her for hours. "Please?"

He looked her over again, finally nodded, stepped away.

Ratchette waited. Raised her left foreleg, looked at the bandaged cut. One of the reasons she'd gone back to her shop was to be among devices, and... it had been normal, or at least the never-confessed status which she considered normal for herself. Some of the ones she'd touched had provided a feel for just how they were broken: nothing more.

The blood. It's in the blood...

And then there was a yellow earth pony filly looking up (if not by quite as much) at her from the doorway.

"Big Mac... said y'wanted t' see --" which was when the forced reserve broke. "-- what happened? What happened t' you? Did somepony --"

"-- I put the wheel on."

Apple Bloom stopped.

"The center one you suggested, with the full rotation. I pushed it around for a while. The steering's better."

The younger pony waited, bow vibrating with something more than fear.

"You can start tomorrow," Ratchette told her. "Or today, if you want to show up in the late afternoon and help me clean up, because I have to sleep. But you do exactly what I tell you, or this won't work. It's straight mechanical engineering for you. No devices. Understand?"

A very small, mostly-disbelieving nod indicated some degree of wide-eyed acceptance.

"We'll work out your hours then." She forced herself to start turning away. "See you later, Apple Bloom."

And from behind her, there was a tiny "...why?"

Ratchette stopped.

"Because somepony who's kind of different," she told the air, unable to look at the filly, "should understand what it feels like, to tell yourself that maybe you can be something..."

She took off, slowly flew away. Looked down at Ponyville as she passed over it, and wished to never have come. Perhaps to never have been.

Even when that somepony doesn't know what she is any more.

Twilight Sparkle And The Totally Obvious Complete Non-Mystery Of The Seventh Element (Pinkie, Twilight)

One gentle, warm, and oddly quiet early summer day, Pinkie poked her head into the library to find a bored Twilight perched on her bench behind the checkout desk. There were no other ponies present at all: not a single browser, reader, or dedicated misshelver trying to find out how many deliberate mistakes it took to get thrown out and thus hopefully collect the pooled betting money waiting three streets away, presuming he lived that long. Those ponies, with Spike at their side, had looked at the first truly perfect jump-in-the-lake day and then gone off to expend their efforts in that direction, which mostly meant trying not to land on top of each other.

"Twilight, are you busy?" Even more quickly than usual, "I mean, I know it looks like you're not doing anything, but there could always be research on your mind, or you could be working out a spell in your head, and I guess there's always those thought experiment things, but if you aren't, I kind of have a question I have to ask you. Actually, it might be a really-really important question. There's a tiny chance -- really tiny -- maybe I need a smaller word... that it could be the most important question ever... but probably not really..."

Twilight wearily glanced up, blinked away something which had rapidly been approaching sleep. Her eyes didn't make it all the way open on the rebound, but the smile which followed that effort reached the corners of her mouth. "No, Pinkie. It's completely dead in here. What did you need to know?"

Pinkie smiled back -- but the question emerged with surprising caution. "What do you know about the seventh element?"

Twilight blinked again.

"The -- seventh element?"

"Yeah. Everything you might know about it. Because --"

And then Twilight was completely awake.

"I know just about everything about the seventh element!" She practically vaulted her own desk on the way off the bench, came to a full stop one body length in front of Pinkie in a stance which still had her tail vibrating with excitement. "And for you to be asking... about that of all things -- it's really important to you, isn't it? Even really-really important!"

"Yeah! Because there's some ponies --"

"Well, just for starters, did you know it makes up most of the atmosphere? I know everypony focuses on what we actually use, but the majority is that element! And it doesn't seem to be doing any harm. In fact, some scientists think plants get some benefit from it. I know they take in carbon dioxide for their breathing, but there's these little nodules along some of the roots and we think they're processing -- well, it's not really my area of study, but when it comes to the elements, you just can't go wrong with a foundation in the basics!"

"Twilight?"

But listening had been overridden. Lecturing had the floor.

"We don't do so well with it, though. I mean ponies. You know those experimental diving spells some ponies have been working on? Well, it turns out that when you take all the air and compress it down into the storage devices, then breathe it in once you're down there... it's not good, Pinkie. The stuff builds up in your body. They say it's like being drunk. You start making stupid decisions..." She shivered. "Nopony's been able to stay down very long because they might get too stupid to remember they have to come back up. And you can't come up too fast. Ever. I don't even want to tell you that part yet..."

"Twilight, I'm pretty sure we're not talking about --"

"So let's talk about the positive stuff! You can snuff out fires if you flood an area with it, although you have to really enclose it first and make sure nothing else gets in. If you put it in the right kind of tubing and ask a pegasus to run just a little electricity through it... you have to see it glow, Pinkie. It's almost the exact color of my coat. It's beautiful -- not that I'm saying my coat is beautiful or anything, I'm pretty much just -- but when you see it glowing like that..."

Pinkie risked getting a little closer.

"It'll also combine with just about anything! Admittedly, some of those combinations -- aren't too good. There's one which seems to make pain go away for a while and Pinkie, you'll love this, if you breathe enough of the new stuff, it makes you laugh! I'll see if I can get you some of that, just to show you. Under controlled conditions. But with other stuff... it likes to... explode. A lot. But I guess it's kind of like baking: you never know what the ingredients will do together until it all comes out of the oven, right?"

Closer still.

"But here's something most ponies don't know, Pinkie. Hardly anypony at all, because it takes really powerful magic to do it. Luna's magic. She showed me a few moons ago. If you get it cold enough -- really cold -- so cold you can't even imagine --" almost whispering, filled with the thrill of a secret shared "-- it turns into a liquid. And some of the things you can do with it before it evaporates again --"

-- and found Pinkie's left forehoof jammed against her mouth.

"Twilight?

The librarian blinked.

"What are you talking about?" Pinkie asked, and lowered her hoof.

"...nitrogen," Twilight eventually said. "What -- what were you talking about?"

"The seventh element! Of Harmony!"

It was the single most expressive blink of Twilight's life, which was really saying something when compared to the entire body of work.

"I said there was a tiny chance it was important," Pinkie reminded her. "And you know as much about the Elements as pretty much anypony other than the Princesses, so I thought I'd better --"

Twilight sighed. "Pinkie."

"What?"

"There is no seventh Element of Harmony."

"You're sure?" Pinkie sincerely asked.

"Completely. I read the books. I studied the legend. I was in the ruins. With you. There were six Elements. And I guess you could say there were only six there and maybe there were more somewhere else... but do you know what the final proof is?"

"Other than there being six pony virtues and one Element to match each, which I always thought was a little silly because ponies can be virtuous in a lot more ways than just six and --" she spotted Twilight's expression "-- you were saying?"

"There are six Elements -- and only six -- because we used them. Right then and there, remember?"

"Yeah..."

"And what happens when we're missing an Element or a pony?" Twilight patiently cued.

"They don't work!"

Twilight nodded. "So if there was a seventh -- or more -- and anything was missing, nothing would have happened, and I'm pretty sure we'd all be dead right now. Six Elements, Pinkie. No more. Hopefully never less." She sighed. "Why would you even ask that question?"

"Because from what everypony's been saying, there's a bunch of ponies galloping all over Equestria saying they're the seventh!"

This blink didn't quite measure up to the last, but the sigh made up for it. "That's -- just... stupid. Why would anypony do that?"

"Well," Pinkie thoughtfully said, "since they've mostly been saying it in bars and clubs and on dates, I thought they were probably just trying to trick other ponies into giving them free drinks."

"Oh."

"And sex."

"...oh."

"Mostly sex."

"..."

"But I wanted to check with you. Just in case. Because, you know, sometimes the world can be a little weird. But I really like the way you explained it to me! I can repeat that to just about anypony else and know they'll believe me! So I'll just tell a few ponies I know that if anypony tries pulling that on them, they definitely should not have sex with that pony. Thanks, Twilight! I want to see if I can go find a few of them before my lunchtime ends! Maybe at the swimming hole, right? See you later!"

And with that, Pinkie trotted towards the doors.

Twilight helplessly stared after her. Forced her gaze away from the bouncing curls of Pinkie's tail, briefly took in the sight of an empty library. One which was going to remain that way for the entire day.

"...Pinkie?"

The baker glanced back.

"...did you... want to know anything... about oxygen?"

Pinkie looked at Twilight. The doors. Twilight again.

She smiled.

"Sure!"

And they settled in for a while, until Rarity wandered in and quickly got them switched to carbon.