Friendly Fire

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Chapter 10
Chapter 35

Chapter 2

Hey sis, you still up?

It took him several hours to send the text. But after a long shower, an unhealthy meal of too much comfort food, and a few minutes quiet meditation he found the evidence and memories of his adventure remained. Maybe the girl’s appearance could be rationalized away, maybe even her behavior. Her voice had been different, so there was that. But nothing he could come up with could explain the twisted stick of polished wood that still made his fingers tingle every time he touched it. Jacob determined he had to talk to someone about his experience, or else he might not know if he was really just losing his mind. There was nobody in the world he trusted more than his sister Michelle.

what is it pipsqueak ;) Her response came with a pajama-clad selfie, which he had expected. You want a midnight run? I told you that junk doesn’t work with my new diet.

The old nickname made Jacob’s hands stop shaking. No, I’m not hungry. I was just wondering if you’ve heard anything strange tonight. I think something serious might’ve happened.

they caught some animal by the Schofield Apts, but nobody got hurt. something else happen I should know about ???

He didn’t respond right away, running one hand along the smooth surface of the wand. It had been made of hardwood, then stained and varnished like a prop from a Harry Potter movie. If only he could believe that was what it really was. I think I may’ve seen it. There was no doubt about it in his mind, of course. No way to forget those gaping jaws and sharp pointed teeth. Yet Michelle wouldn’t recognize it by name, nor would she know the identity of the one he had met by the river. And some other things. Michelle, I think I might’ve lost my mind tonight. None of what I saw makes any sense, but I still think I see it.

Her response took a little longer this time. Do you want me to come over?

No, I don’t think it’s urgent. You’ve got that tennis game tomorrow anyway, I don’t want you to be tired. I could tell you about it tomorrow if you think you could still give me a ride.

Ya I can still take you to your nerd club. I’ll be by at eight.

He didn’t respond again, though not for lack of desire. Jacob wasn’t sure he could face his big sister if she agreed with his assessment of his own sanity. But he still wanted, needed to talk to someone! Jacob was still wary after the warnings he had received not to trust the authorities, so he took a few extra minutes hopping onto his VPN and cycling through identities with TOR. The extent of his information security skills exhausted, he hopped onto a popular fandom forum and scrolled through threads. Things had slowed down here now that the show had ended, though that didn’t mean it was silent. He had to go back a page before he found a thread talking about “the disappearances,” which he had always dismissed or ignored before now.

Not this time. OP claimed to be in Dallas and told a story about taking a trip home for a funeral in the family. He claimed to have returned to a city with most of his friends missing (all Bronies). Jacob’s eyes glazed over as he scrolled over most of the replies—either obvious trolling or speculation about who might be responsible, none particularly insightful. Jacob didn’t bother dressing up his post with anything, just gushed through his keyboard a little.

“I know nobody’s going to believe this…” He wrote out the details of his encounter, including everything he remembered that couldn’t identify him.

He felt better after, even if most of the comments he got were either making fun of him or else more obvious trolling. It didn’t matter that anyone believe him, that wasn’t what Jacob had wanted. Typing everything out had made the memories more clear in his mind, less easy to dismiss. He switched VPNs and cycled through a few more TOR identities as he watched the thread, as much because he had nothing better to do as because he was really afraid of getting caught. Caught for what? I haven’t done anything. Well, aside from starting a fire in a public park, but that hadn’t been on purpose!

As was always the case with the site he had chosen, it was hard to tell sincere replies from the trolls. Plenty of people suggested he call the cops and report the whole experience “if he really thought it was real,” since he was probably a danger to himself and others and would need to be put somewhere safe. Yet of all the others, one more stuck out, mostly because of how different it was. Like his own, the poster hadn’t bothered for anything more than a screengrab from “Party of One.”

“Don’t let these ponies tell you you’re crazy,” it read. “That’s just not true! Crazy ponies see things that are crazy, but what you saw makes sense. Keep what Twilight gave you, because she wouldn’t have given it to you if you didn’t need it. I wish I could say you’re safe, but it would be even worse to lie. Don’t trust the ones in black suits and fancy cars—even though they want to help, all they can do is make things worse. Just hang on until the real help gets there and everything will be okay!”

By the time Jacob drifted off, it was not to a peaceful sleep. Jacob had never had nightmares before, but he had them now. Visions of snapping teeth, glowing eyes, and worse. Timberwolves were far from the most frightening creature the show had ever depicted. Now his imagination rendered each with frightening realism.

He woke to the alarm, in time for his ride to campus. It didn’t take long, seeing as several of his most important possessions had been shredded by a wolf.

“So what was that text about?” Michelle was already wearing her uniform, and sipping at an overpriced fruit drink as she pulled up in front of his apartment. Her beater of an Accord could barely roll forward along the road these days, but it was a car, which was more than he had.

“I don’t think you’d believe the answer.” He sat back in the passenger’s seat sans his usual backpack and gear, closing his eyes. It was way too early to be awake. Why can’t tennis games be scheduled at a reasonable hour?

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t believe you if you told me.” They started driving. Michelle was an insane driver, the sort who never drove slower than fifteen over the posted speed limit and always changed lanes when she felt like it was the right time. “Like, I’d sooner believe you had a winning lottery ticket stashed away under your seat—hell, a golden ticket for Willy Wonka’s factory would even make more sense.”

Michelle shoved him on the shoulder with one hand, hard enough that he jerked. She didn’t look apologetic. “Did… whatever it is… really happen? Or are you just after some attention from your big sis? If it’s that, I could probably cancel some of my plans for after the game…”

“No!” He answered before fully processing what she had said. “I mean yes.” He cleared his throat. “Yes, it’s real. No, you shouldn’t cancel. You usually go celebrate with your doubles partner, don’t you? That’s more important.”

She shook her head in mock sadness. “It’s one or the other, little bro. If you’re honest, I’m sure I’ll need some time to unpack whatever you’re about to say. I can always get hammered in the evening. Maybe… after you’re done with those nerds. So what was it?”

His hand wandered down to one of his pockets, and he pulled out the wand. He ran it between his fingers as he met her eyes, and tried to speak in the clearest voice he could. “The animal last night, the one you heard about. I was the one it attacked.”

Michelle jerked on the brakes so hard he smacked the dashboard. He was lucky nobody was behind them, or else they might very well have been hit. She didn’t start driving again, stopped dead in the street. “Are you okay? You look okay… were you texting from the hospital last night? This is why you’re always supposed to send a selfie!” She jerked his wrist away from the stick, drawing back the sleeve of his shirt. As if to check for a plastic hospital band he wasn’t wearing.

“No!” He jerked his hand back, fully conscious that he wouldn’t be able to fight her if she forced anything. “Drive, Michelle! We’re in the middle of the road!” Someone honked loudly from behind them, swerving to avoid them and making rude gestures as they went. “It didn’t hurt me. Look, that isn’t the crazy part. People are attacked by animals all the time.”

“What is?” She started driving again. Traffic was a little heavier than normal as they turned onto the road leading to campus. Few of the cars had “approved parking” stickers on their windows.

Was there another game this morning he hadn’t known about? “It wasn’t an animal, it was a monster. Like… straight out of a movie. A pack of wolves all made of wood.”

If Michelle doubted him, she showed no sign. “How’d you get away?”

“That’s… Someone helped me. Someone who already seemed to know they would be there and knew how to fight. She told me… told me that worse was coming.” They were passing the outer campus buildings now. The trend of more people he had observed earlier seemed to be carrying over to more people, all of them adults in business attire. Much of the parking lot was already full as they pulled in, and even Michelle had to find a lonely spot in back.

Michelle didn’t open her door, for which Jacob was grateful. He wouldn’t have kept going if she had. “Did you tell the police? No, I would’ve heard about that. You were afraid they would think you were crazy, so you didn’t say anything.”

He could only wish that was the answer. “Not quite. At the time, I wasn’t really thinking. I wanted to call the cops, like anybody would. But this girl, she… she fed me this conspiracy theory about how the police were out to get us or whatever… and she’d just saved my life, and I was so freaked out…”

Michelle reached into the backseat, grabbing her tennis bag. “You want me to take you to the police station instead? Or… go with you to campus police?”

“No.” He looked away. “I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t think she was lying. If that… makes any sense.”

“Not really. But… if you don’t need to talk to the cops, then I should get to the game.” Michelle didn’t open the door so much as kick it open. “We can get together after. You can go over the whole thing then, okay? Maybe after your nerd club?”

He followed, a little more subdued. He pocketed the stick as he went. “Yeah, sure. I’ll tell the gaming group I’m sitting it out this week. Good luck with your match.”

She hugged him, then jogged off towards the athletic buildings. This left Jacob with several hours to kill before the club and no laptop to kill them with. He debated taking a nap in the car, which had no working locks so wouldn’t be causing him trouble even without the keys… but decided against it. The sun was already rising, and in another hour or so the heat in a car would be unbearable.

So he wandered towards the library. He wasn’t in a hurry, not with so much time to kill. It had opened hours ago, and would have computers for him to use. As he walked, he noticed more of the trends he had seen on the drive in. Lots and lots of older people were here today, looking busy and important with their fancy clothes. This wasn’t particularly surprising: one department or another was always having a conference at his school, that came with studying somewhere so important. He saw no sign of anything really unusual—campus police rode by on their bikes, groundskeepers raked through another batch of fall leaves, and students wandered about half drunk with tiredness as they made their way to studying or tests they didn’t want to do.

After the night before, Jacob expected his day to be interrupted by a rampaging swarm of Parasprites, or maybe an unexplainable thunderstorm. He saw neither, nor anything else that couldn’t be explained with human activity. It was a little harder to tell if anyone with unusual hair might be connected to his experiences, considering how popular dyed hair had become (particularly among female students).

He never made it. As Jacob neared the library, he felt a sudden touch on his shoulder, and very nearly jumped out of his skin in shock.

A tall woman in a black pantsuit stood there, holding a leather portfolio out in front of her. A glance at the topmost page rewarded him with another shock as he saw his Facebook profile picture printed there, along with a dozen other extremely familiar people. “Excuse me, but are you Jacob Blackwell?”

He nodded, “Y-yeah?”

The woman shut her portfolio, reaching into her vest with that same hand. She drew out a badge, and flipped it open for him to see. “My name is Agent Avery, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Could you please come with me? I have some questions for you.”

Chapter 3

“O-oh.” Jacob started walking in the direction she had indicated, towards the administration building. He walked slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. There was no missing the handgun holstered on this woman’s waist. “Sure. About what?”

She didn’t rush him, but she did follow very closely, close enough that she could’ve grabbed him if he tried to run. “About your involvement with a club here on campus.” She opened the portfolio again, this time holding it out so he could get a clear look at the images inside. It was more social media photographs, each and every one of them taken from club members.

She seemed able to read his reaction, because she didn’t even wait for a response. “You do know them, then.” She rested her other hand on his shoulder, meeting his eyes. “Son, we have good reason to believe you and the rest of the ‘Campus Bronies’ have been targeted by a terrorist organization. Maybe you’ve heard the headlines.”

“I… haven’t missed that we’re going missing all over.” He didn’t speed up, even as Agent Avery kept gently pushing at his shoulder. The longer he spent with her, the more he felt that the girl last night had been right. He felt like he was trapped, and it was about to get much worse. “You think it’s the same people?”

“Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate. “It’s possible they have already made contact with some of you. I can’t tell you anything about their motivations, but I do have some images of suspects here…” She flipped a few pages forward, then held out the portfolio again so he could get a clear look.

The list of “suspects” could very well have been taken at any of the popular fandom conventions. He saw “Twilight” near the top, and recognized her purple hair and pink stripe at once. There were perhaps two dozen images there, taken from cell phones and security cameras and maybe drones, all at varied angles and varied levels of clarity. “Any of these people look familiar to you?”

“Ma’am, are you… are you sure this is right?” He stopped walking, folding his arms in mock suspicion. “I don’t know if anybody has told you this, but… it seems like all these people are imitating characters from My Little Pony… the show we like. A few of them are even copying outfits from the movies where the characters are human. People dress up like them all the time.”

She sighed with exasperation. “We were aware. If you had met any of these individuals, I suspect you would remember it clearly. Reports suggest they claim to be the individuals they represent. They also make use of psychoactive drugs to induce suggestibility. People who meet them often report seeing impossible things, and they genuinely believe these memories they report.” She snapped the folio closed. “Please Mr. Blackwell, if there’s anything you could tell me about them, it would go a long way to keeping you and your friends safe. Failing to cooperate with me wouldn’t just be a crime, it would also be a step towards guaranteeing that the same disasters that happened in other cities happened here. Hundreds of people might be protected if we can head things off here.”

Jacob looked away, unable to meet the agent’s eyes. They were almost to the administration building, even with the way he had dallied. Like all the school’s paths, this one was surrounded by beautiful flowerbeds and reddening trees. There was nobody within earshot, though dozens of people within ten meters or so, all watching less-than-covertly.

There was no chance of running. But if they brought him in, somehow Jacob knew they would be able to identify the wand he was carrying. He dismissed the claim of “psychoactive drugs” immediately, even though it would have done a fantastic job of explaining what he had seen. Even if it would be nice to explain away his experiences with drugs, it wouldn’t actually match what had happened. He had encountered “Twilight” before getting anywhere near close to her. Jacob had never done anything stronger than alcohol, yet he had never felt that his thinking was impaired. There was no lost time in his memory either, and there was physical evidence of what he had seen.

“I don’t know any of those people,” he lied, his voice flat. “Beyond knowing their characters from the show, I mean. I could tell you all about that. But a quick Google search could give you as much of that as you wanted.”

Agent Avery visibly tensed at his response, returning her hand to his shoulder. “I’m afraid I still need you to come with me. We have some higher resolution images waiting in a classroom we’ve appropriated. After that, we’ll be taking you into protective custody for the next week or so. Until we’re sure the danger has passed.”

Jacob would’ve turned and run right then if he thought he could get away. Of course, even if he could outrun someone who, beneath her pantsuit, was as tight as steel cable, there were who knew how many other obviously-not-students all around them. There would be no getting away.

Someone walked past him the other direction, actually looking like a student with a too-short skirt and fishnet stockings. “Duck,” she whispered, at the second she passed him going the other way.

Jacob didn’t think. He feigned a trip, arcing down onto his belly with a gasp of mock-surprise.

Everything happened at once. Something flashed in the air above him, so bright and loud his ears started to ring. Something thumped to the ground behind him, though he didn’t see what. “Kid!” A hand with black-painted fingernails reached near his face, and he took it. He stumbled shakily to his feet with the stranger’s help, though he didn’t have long to look around.

The illusion of ordinary activity all around him had been dissolved. More than a dozen people were removing concealed weapons, and shouts sounded through the school. Students screamed and ran, and he was in the center of it.

The girl, with a black skirt and black hair, stepped in front of him like a trained attack dog guarding her owner, hissing quietly under her breath. “Don’t move, kid.”

“Stand down!” someone shouted. A large man sprinted towards them from across a planter, trampling the struggling flowers as he went. In front of them, Agent Avery was on her back, clutching at her head and moaning.

“Here we go.” The whole world blurred past, as though Jacob had just hopped onto the back of a speeding pickup truck. Gunshots were pitched down so low their sharp barks sounded like timpani drums as buildings and people whipped past him fast enough to make his head swim and his insides start to turn over. With everything else around him stretching, only the girl remained in perfect focus, as though she were standing still, a look of intense concentration on her face and a short length of wood in one of her hands.

They stopped. Jacob pitched sideways at the sudden deceleration, which was accompanied by a bang louder than gunfire. He heaved out onto the sidewalk, hacking up bits of banana and bile for at least a minute.

“Sorry about that.” They were in a back alley somewhere, he couldn’t have guessed where. There was nobody around but the girl, who still had the stick as she glanced periodically towards each entrance. “If it makes you feel any better, most ponies puke their first time.” She handed him a little water bottle, and he drank without question, clearing away a little of the nastiness. “Don’t try to get up too fast. You need more time to recover after… after so much of a shock to your system. We’ll have time… I took us three miles from your school. It’s way too big for them to search.”

“We…” Jacob rolled sideways onto his butt, leaning back against a dirty brick wall for support. “We were really loud coming in. Bet you fifty bucks somebody called the police by now.”

The girl swore under her breath, then wrapped her arms under one of his shoulders and hauled him into a standing position. She was stronger than she looked—an obvious necessity considering Jacob was at least twice her weight. “Alright then. You can rest in my car. Just… use those damn legs…”

He did, or he tried. He found they weren’t responding quite the way he had expected, twitching oddly at first as he tried to make his way forward. By the time they were halfway to the edge of the alley he was walking again, albeit leaning on her for support. He found his words again by then too, though he could only croak horsely. “What did you do to that agent?”

“A lot less than she would’ve done to you, I promise.” Just outside the alley was an old Beetle, in better condition than Michelle’s car but not by much. She opened the door for him, then hurried around to the other side and climbed in herself. They drove off just as he heard the first sirens coming down from the other direction. “It’s too much energy to do any permanent damage. I had to save my juice in order to get us all the way to the car.”

Jacob glanced briefly back, but it looked as though they weren’t being followed. They turned a corner, cutting across back roads and staying away from any of the regular connections. “You’re not Twilight. I thought she was coming back.”

The girl laughed—she didn’t lose control of her vehicle while she did it, as Michelle might’ve done. “Who do you think you are, kid?”

“I…”

She just laughed again. “Look, sometimes important ponies get involved, but that’s mostly when the rest of us can’t cope with the odds. Throwing a princess at the problem is what you folks ‘round here call the nuclear option, alright? She got a good look at the place, called it safe, so they sent in a regular crew to get the lot of you out.” They weren’t taking any of the roads Jacob knew to get out of the city, so he couldn’t be sure where they were going. Only that they were leaving the parts of town students normally frequented. “I’m Harley, alright? It’s fantastic to meet you. Just don’t shake my hand, you’ve got some puke on yours. There should be some napkins in the glovebox, probably should take care of that…”

He found she was right, and wiped away the slime as best he could. “I’m Jacob.” He had about a thousand questions he wanted to ask. In the face of so many, he selected the one that seemed the most urgent, feeling a little more confident as his stomach settled from the… teleportation. “When you say ‘the lot of you’ do you mean other… Bronies?” The word sounded so absurd he didn’t even want to use it, yet he had no choice. “The lady you attacked was from the FBI. She… had come to protect us from some sort of attack.” Like what you just did, he thought, but didn’t finish.

Her laugh was bitter this time. “We’re targeting you? Says the game hunter about the ranger trying to get their prey out of danger.” Her eyes narrowed, and she glared out the windshield as she drove. “Look, it’s not my fault you all came up with such a silly name for yourselves. Yeah, you’re mostly the ones we’re here to save. You and anyone else who gets ‘exposed.’” She said the last word with particular disdain. “Enough that they would be in danger too.” She stopped in front of a rusty warehouse door, which began to slowly retract as their car neared it. “Welcome to the hideout.”

They drove inside—the space was almost completely empty, save for some lights in the distance. They drove across the dark space until they came to a lounge of camp furniture next to an open bathroom door.

“Your hideout sucks.”

Chapter 4

“Yeah?” She glared at him. “I’d like to see you do better with five hundred cash and two hours’ notice!” She parked abruptly, then gestured at the circle of chairs. “You wait here, it’s safe. I have to go out and rescue more of you clueless ponies.”

He didn’t open the door, instead glaring up at her. “I think I’m owed a little more than that. After… possibly looking like an accomplice to… whatever you’re doing.” It wasn’t that he believed anything Agent Avery had said, not yet. This warehouse might be shady, but it didn’t look that secure. He could probably knock down several sections of wall if he shoved hard enough.

“Yeah.” Harley rolled her eyes. “How about this: play dumb. If they catch you, the only thing that will keep you safe is not claiming you saw anything you shouldn’t have. Act shocked, act afraid and confused, and do more of that vomiting stuff. If you can convince them you’re not ‘contaminated’ then you’re not in danger.” She revved the engine, flicking one hand towards the door again. “Now, get out. I’ve got six more names on my list here, and they aren’t going to save themselves.”

He didn’t get out. Not that he wasn’t tempted. Maybe complying would mean he would be safe in the next few hours. It might even protect him from legal liability, since so far he hadn’t actually done anything. He could very well claim he had been kidnapped if he got caught now. This was the moment of decision: he could either help the ones who had (so far) shown him literal magic, or the ones who claimed to be protecting him from them. He didn’t take very long to make up his mind. “I could help you. So I can’t fight, and I can’t do… magic. Obviously not. But I know the people you’re trying to save. Go alone, and there’s a good chance they won’t cooperate. Bring me, though…” He shrugged one shoulder. “They’ll cooperate. Plus you can explain what’s actually happening on the way.”

Harley didn’t look annoyed. If anything, she seemed impressed. “You sure about this, kid? Ponies get killed doing this. You’ve got no obligation to help when you don’t even understand.”

He nodded. “When you got me away from the admin building, about a dozen people pulled guns and started shooting at us. Both of us. That’s a pretty funny way of protecting me, like they claimed. I guess… I guess what I’m saying is I believe you. You’ve shown me things I can’t explain, they only tried to arrest me. I think I know who’s side I’m on.”

“Alright kid, let’s save some lives.” She held up a phone for him to see. “You know any of these names?”

He took it, scrolling through half a dozen pictures. They had names and some had addresses, though not all. “Yeah, I know all of them. Since… they’re my friends and all.” He dug out his own phone, holding it vaguely up in her direction. “I have most of their numbers in here, and quite a few addresses, but I don’t know where all of them live.” Like any club, Jacob was closer to some of its members than others. None of his closest friends in the club were in the file, and neither was his own name. Why did she rescue me if I wasn’t on her list?

“Who do you think would be up this early?”

He held up the screen, showing the face of an older member without an address. “This guy lives in a complex near mine, and he’s always up. Probably studying something by now.”

“Good. Give me directions.” She swerved back around, to the automatic door, and slipped back out onto the road. He started to direct her, pulling out his phone as he did so. Grab supplies for an adventure and be ready to leave in ten, he sent.

Eric’s response came in seconds. You want to go downtown again before club?

Sortof, he responded. It’s more serious. If you have anything super important, bring it.

Is Danielle coming?

She hadn’t been on Harley’s list. She’s invited. You should text her, she’ll probably be more willing to come if you do. She seriously needs to be ready, though. This is urgent.

Ok.

Jacob looked up from his texting. “You know, I could send out a message to the whole group with this. If we’re in danger, I could warn everybody all at the same time. Maybe send out a notification to come to that warehouse…”

“No!” Harley pushed the phone violently down into his lap. “I promise they’re watching everything to do with your ‘club.’ We don’t need an army waiting for everyone we try to rescue.”

“Hmm.” Jacob frowned, then fiddled with his phone, switching off his GPS. Just in case. “What about… I could tell them the meeting was canceled. Warn them not to come to campus. Maybe… let them know to get away from home and act inconspicuous. Something like that.”

Harley looked contemplative. “Would they believe you?”

He wouldn’t have believed himself if he had heard the full story of what he had experienced. “No. But… I bet I could get the president to cancel the meeting. Tell him… our room’s taken by a conference on campus, or something. He’d believe me about that. Wouldn’t it be better if people stayed home instead of wandering into danger like I did?”

She nodded. “Sounds like a smart lie to me. You sure there aren’t holes in your legs I can’t see?”

He rolled his eyes and got to work with his message, though it only took some of his concentration. With the rest of it he kept focused on Harley and her driving. “So, you call everything ‘ponies.’ Even people who clearly aren’t.”

“I knoooooowww.” Her words stretched with exasperation. “It’s infuriating, isn’t it? Live around them long enough and they’ll get you doing it, even though you know it doesn’t make sense. Less now than ever.”

He grunted in response at the unhelpful answer, then pressed the “send” button to President Tim, then looked up again. They were almost to where Eric lived, already passing through residential areas where speed was restricted to half of the usual. He kept his eye out for more of those unmarked, black cars, but couldn’t see any. Thank God. “So where did you people come from, anyway? Please don’t say Equestria.”

“I’m not from Equestria.” Harley’s hand tightened on the wheel, her movements becoming a little more jerky. “I’d rather not explain the whole thing right now, kid. I’ll just have to do it again once we find the rest of our names.”

Jacob really wanted to argue. Harley’s angry expression convinced him not to, in the end. He had never seen her look this angry before, not even when she had got them away from the agents. He didn’t probe. “More practical question, then.” He dug out the wand, holding it up for her to see. “Twilight called this a wand. I saw you use one earlier, too. I didn’t think it worked that way.”

“She gave you one?” Harley softened immediately once he changed subjects, staring openly at it. “Shit, you must be way less pathetic than you look.”

He folded his arms. “That doesn’t really answer the question.”

Harley rolled her eyes. “You see a horn on either of us? No. That’s why.”

“Oh.” He turned it over in his fingers, observing again how much like a horn the wand really looked. It was clearly made of wood, yet it could’ve come off the head of a unicorn. Or… well, no. Maybe an Alicorn’s horn. “I guess things are more egalitarian than the TV show? If anyone can just use one of these…”

“Unfortunately not. That propaganda you’ve been watching all this time got plenty wrong, but none of the basics. If a pony can’t cast spells, giving them a wand won’t let them.” He opened his mouth to question, but she shushed him before he could get any words out. “You’re human, kid. Your rules are different. Generally your rules are not doing magic ever.”

“I think I did some last night.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I think I lit a Timberwolf on fire. I think it was me, anyway.”

Harley looked sidelong at him from the driver’s seat, then nodded. “I could see it. The princess could’ve been leading you on, but that isn’t really her style. She wouldn’t have a reason to get you thinking you can do things you can’t. Maybe that means you can pull your weight on this rescue team after all!”

He pocketed the wand again, glaring. “Whatever. See if I don’t save the whole club by getting the meeting canceled. Save them from… something.” He gestured to a set of apartments. “That’s the one, Harley! Get us to the building by the pool.” He fumbled with the phone again, texting, I’m waiting with a friend in a Beetle by the curb. Get out here ASAP.

Harley pulled the car up along the red curb, though she didn’t put it into park. She raised her hands defensively. “I wasn’t being serious, kid. Honestly, you’ve already done more than several of the ponies I’ve been partnered with. Just keep the trend going until we’re riding home safe.”

She jerked suddenly on the wheel, with such force that he found the fear returning. They didn’t actually go anywhere though, and as he looked around he could see only Eric coming down the sidewalk towards them, rolling a suitcase along behind him. “Does this guy own a general store or something?”

“No, but he usually brings board games to the club. Guess he assumed we were still going to make it.”

“I thought you said you could get the meeting cance—” She didn’t finish, because at that moment Eric pulled the door open and clambered in. Eric looked like someone who had been bullied in high school, skinny and dark-haired and short. He still had that sound to him, like he hadn’t quite learned how to make ordinary conversation.

“Hey Jacob.” He shoved the suitcase in in front of him, then snapped the door shut. “Who’s your friend?”

“Harley,” she answered for herself, before revving violently backward. So much that Eric looked a little uncomfortable. He was too shy to actually protest. “Welcome to the escape van.”

“This isn’t a van,” he responded, as though he might genuinely believe she didn’t know. Jacob caught a confused glance, as though he were trying to ask: “Should we be here?”

Jacob nodded as emphatically as he could. “Will Danielle be ready?” They started driving again, and he resumed giving directions, pointing Harley towards the other end of town.

“Yeah.” Eric frowned at the messy car all around them, with its ripped fabric seats and questionable stains. “What’s this adventure about, anyway?”

“You didn’t even tell him?” Harley glared sidelong at him. “Seriously?”

He shook his head, then looked back. “We’re, uh…”

“Saving your damn lives from lifetime imprisonment or maybe outright dissection,” Harley finished, speeding a little in her annoyance as they got back onto a main road. “You know, not like you should’ve been told how important it was or anything.”

“You didn’t even tell me that.” He matched her glare without nervousness or shame, then looked back. Poor Eric looked like a mouse with nowhere to run. “Look, it would be crazy to explain right now. It’s… there was a shooting on campus, okay? The bad guys are targeting us. Like, our club specifically. I still don’t know why… but Harley here saved me. They might know where we live, so we’re trying to get as far away as possible.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” He looked back, meeting Eric’s eyes. There was no need to lie or even stretch the truth after getting shot at himself back on campus. “Unfortunately.”

“Was that so hard?” Harley shoved him, so hard he almost dropped his phone. “If you’re going to join a rescue team, you’ll have to get used to giving ponies bad news.”

“Ponies,” Eric repeated, and they both ignored him.

“I didn’t say anything about joining.” He rolled his eyes. “We’re almost there. See those identical gray houses coming up? She lives in the last one in line. The one with… six police cars out front…”

Chapter 5

“What did you say they were gonna do to us?” Eric asked from the backseat.

Harley swerved down a nearby side-street, then pulled an immediate left. “Depends: how weird is this girl?”

“Very.” Jacob answered before Eric could, since he knew full well he would defend his best friend. Eric’s judgement of “weird” wasn’t to be trusted. “She’s sweet, but—”

“If they think there’s any chance she’s been ‘contaminated,’ she’ll be locked up. We haven’t been able to find where they take them. It’s hard to know without seeing her whether it’s a human weird or a pony weird, but… that’s just the problem. The bad guys can’t tell even when they’re a few feet away.”

“Um, excuse me…” Eric’s voice was nervous. “Did you just call the police ‘bad guys?’”

“Not quite.” Harley slowed as they made their way past backyards. There was no way to know from the houses which was the one they were looking for, except that it was the one on the end. They stopped well out of clear sight of the fence, and Jacob could see several more sets of flashing lights on that side. What the hell had Danielle done to warrant a response like this?

“They’re taking orders from someone. Or maybe those guys are? Look, it’s complicated.” She reached across Jacob’s lap, fishing something out of the glove box. An expensive, industrial-looking radio. She twisted it on, and immediately static started to buzz.

“Control, this is Harley. Is somepony there?”

A few seconds and Jacob heard a familiar voice on the other end, albeit fuzzed a little by the radio. “Go Harley.”

“Need some serious help here, Control. At least a dozen police, maybe more. Who can you give me?”

There were a few painful seconds of static, then. “Harley, how many refugees are they guarding? I’ve got a bugbear tearing up a government housing section and some kind of raid happening in the dorms. If I disengage anyone, people die.”

“Clear, control. Harley out.”

“Wait!” For all he had seemed timid before, Eric’s calm was suddenly gone from his face. “We can’t leave Danielle!”

Harley glanced between him and Jacob, her frown deepening. “I… alright.” In a flash of motion, she flicked the car door open. Despite her speed, she barely made a sound as she landed, hurrying along to the trunk and opening it. Only seconds passed before she returned, looking so different Jacob hardly recognized her.

Harley was dressed in a fairly convincing police uniform. She even had the duty belt, gun and all. She looked older too, and much more solidly built. It was the best, fastest disguise Jacob had seen in his life. Even her voice was different; slower, more confident. “Shrimp in back is our getaway driver. Jacob, you and that wand be ready to cover me.”

“What’s the plan, exactly?” Jacob drew out the wand again, turning it over in his hands. “I’m not going to hurt a policeman.”

“Then don’t!” she hissed, straightening again. “There are thousands of spells that don’t do damage. Pick one of those.”

“I don’t know any—” The new “policewoman” vanished, with a flash of light and an implosion of air, before he could finish the question. He sighed. “Better get up here Eric. So far everything that girl has done has been way too fast. If she thought we need an escape driver, she meant it.” The wand’s tip started glowing again, that same pale yellow it had the night before. With such bright sunlight all around, he could only see it when he stuck the end under the shade of the dashboard.

Eric complied, hurrying into the driver’s seat. He looked a little nervous as he felt the controls: Jacob hadn’t even known he could drive. “As long as we’re saving Danni. We… are saving her, right? Not just becoming accomplices in some kind of…”

“Eric, did you notice the way Harley teleported right in front of you?”

He shivered, looking away. “I thought I saw… but I couldn’t have. She’s got to be a… hypnotist or something.”

“She took me along last time she did it. Any—“

There was another loud bang, accompanied by a flash so bright Jacob was momentarily blinded. “Drive!” Harley’s voice came weakly from the back of the car. “Quick!” She sounded extremely weak, even more than she had the last time. Jacob realized with growing dread that meant Harley wasn’t going to be helping them. Last time she had teleported, it had taken several minutes for her to recover. He had been too busy vomiting to count how many, but…

Shouting echoed from the direction of the house, and a policeman finished climbing out into the alley, landing in the street. He aimed a handgun towards them, but didn’t shoot.

“Reverse,” Jacob instructed, his voice firm but not shouting. He knew from a hundred hours of Left 4 Dead that yelling at Eric would only make him freeze. “There was another alley just behind us, probably connects to Main.”

Eric had gone white, shivering all over. Yet he glanced behind them, and saw their car now had four occupants instead of three. Something changed in his face, and his hands stopped shaking. They zoomed backward, tires screeching as they scraped up against the curb a little. He went further than the alley, then shifted back into drive and floored it. They scraped the side of a brick building in his haste to turn, and came out violently onto the main road.

It was a small miracle they had come out during a red light and not into oncoming traffic. “Where do I go next?”

Harley didn’t answer, and might not for some time yet. Jacob’s mind spun, considering the implications of what they had just done. They had been witnessed speeding away from what was probably now a “crime scene”. There were half a dozen cars parked out front. Some of those would be ready to drive soon. He didn’t hear a helicopter, but if they got into a car-chase that wasn’t far away. Eric’s clarity would not last long. Jacob himself wouldn’t have done much better in his position. “North! Go right at the light!”

He did. Jacob forced himself to tune out a dozen distant sirens, not all of which were coming from the direction of Danielle’s house. He kept the wand ready across his lap, quite sure he wouldn’t know how to do a damn thing with it if called upon, but focusing on escape instead. “Uh… uh… there! That parking garage right there!” There were no police on the street with them. Dozens of witnesses, but if they only needed long enough for Harley to recover…

“The theater one?”

“Yeah!” There was no attendant, only an automatic ticket machine. They slowed painfully as they took their ticket and waited for the bar to rise. Jacob watched out both back windows, and only just saw the flashing lights as they made their way inside. “Not take us to the top, but not all the way up. I figure we’ve got enough stars for a helicopter by now.”

Eric obeyed, his arms rigid on the steering wheel as he did so. Sirens got louder, then quieter again, though there were so many…

Another voice spoke from the back, feminine and apparently amused. “Did you take us in here because of how you escape the police in a video game?” Danielle sat up in the back-seat, pushing Eric’s suitcase down to where her feet were supposed to go as she did. “I don’t think it works in real life.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be puking or something?” Jacob only barely restrained his annoyance, though part of that was from not having a good retort. Danielle was a delicate girl, not quite five feet despite being almost thirty. Strangers often mistook her for fifteen, though that wasn’t what annoyed Jacob just now. She did look a little green, and she held onto the side of the car for support, but that was all.

“Eric’s not that bad.” She leaned on the side of the car, and was still breathing hard enough it took her a little longer to continue. “Maybe if Michelle was driving. Your sister missed her calling as a street racer.”

Sirens continued to sound from outside. Most rose and fell quickly as they slowly rounded their way up through the five-level lot, which was already deserted even on level two. The theater hadn’t opened yet, and wouldn’t until ten. “It looks like it worked, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you nudge Harley? The, uh… girl in the oversize police uniform?”

Indeed, it seemed whatever makeup or prosthetic she had been wearing hadn’t survived her teleporting, because she looked about the same size as before. Same black hair, same college-age features. The uniform hadn’t gotten any smaller though, and so it now looked baggy and absurd, particularly where it bunched over her shoes. “She’s the one who knows what we’re supposed to do.”

Harley’s eyes looked a little glazed, not seeming to completely see the world around her. “Did I hear right that you drove us into a dead end?” She didn’t have the strength for anger, just mild annoyance.

“Yeah. Into a parking structure out of sight. I know the police didn’t see us.”

“Did anyone see us? Just because it bought us a minute or two for them to ask around…”

“Oh.” Harley was right about one thing: the sirens hadn’t ever gone away. They would’ve been able to hear from the echo if any had driven into the structure behind them… but it was only a matter of time. There had been a half-dozen pedestrians on the street when they turned. “What do we do then, Harley? If we can’t wait for it to blow over?”

“See my radio?” At his nod, she continued. “Get us close to open air… so the cement doesn’t block it, then… flip the switch labeled ‘EMERGENCY’.”

They began hearing noise from the bottom of the parking garage right as they made it near the top—there still weren’t helicopter sounds, but they played it safe and stayed under-cover. Of course, not being found from above wouldn’t matter at all if they had been located from below. Jacob flipped the switch, holding the antenna near the window. The chatter returned, though he couldn’t make much sense of it. It was in another language, or maybe in code. Why had Harley used plain English before?

“Thanks for getting me out of there.” Danielle was looking down at her lap, frowning. Apparently she hadn’t finished getting ready, because she was still wearing Pinkie Pie pajamas. Now that they weren’t running, Jacob could make out the beginnings of some bruises on her face, and some tears down one of her sleeves.

“Thank us when we’re safe,” Harley muttered, though she did look a little happier for the gratitude. “Everybody out. We’re going to wait on top where they can see us. No extra weight—I’m talking to you, Eric. They won’t be sending a carriage, so that means no cargo.” She opened the side door, and fell over onto her hands-and-knees. She slipped out of the uniform as she rose, revealing all her old clothes underneath. As the rest of them got out, she took only the wand and the radio, making her slow way up the ramp and into the light. There were no cars up here, no people. Only a few other buildings, and their windows.

Jacob followed, feeling more nervous by the second. He ignored Eric, where he was helping Danielle follow as well. He kept pace with Harley as she made her way to the edge of the parking structure, and peeked down on the streetward side. There was a police blockade waiting for them on the only exit—four cars all parked so that even a muscle-car would have no chance of forcing through them all. Officers milled about, not apparently going in. Unless they plan on sneaking up on us. Of course, they could’ve tried to get out themselves, into the theater. But somehow he knew there would be officers guarding that exit too. “Guess it was a pretty rotten escape plan. I just… didn’t think we could outrun them in that little car of yours.”

“It wasn’t the worst,” Harley said after a minute, slumping down against the side of the structure. “They probably won’t come in here until backup gets here. SWAT, if we’re lucky. ECU otherwise.”

“ECU?” He slid down beside her, mostly so he wouldn’t be visible to the police below.

“Pretty sure it’s ‘Extranormal Containment… something.’” She shrugged. “About the worst thing that could happen right now, short of something magical. ECU doesn’t take prisoners—once they show up, ponies die. To be fair, it’s pretty much the only defense against magic. They used it back in Equestria too, when Griffons or whoever went to war. Kill a wizard quickly and she can’t enchant you.”

Eric and Danielle sat down in front of them—Danielle still seeming a little sick, Eric just terrified out of his wits. “I think someone’s coming up. Don’t know who, but it sounded like a big engine running real slow.”

“ECU then.” She sighed, covering her face in her hands and moaning quietly. “They’ve got trucks with lead plates everywhere to block out magic. It sorta works. It’ll work for any spells we could manage.”

“We could go up another level.” Jacob gestured to the ramp, which rose only a half-level above the place where cars would emerge from inside, where their own car blocked part of the ramp. “At least they won’t be able to see us right when they come out.”

“Sure.” Harley got up, brushing herself off as she did. “If it can buy us a little more time, that’s all we can hope for.” They hurried up the last section, all of them trying to stay close enough to the center of the building they wouldn’t be visible from the bottom. It worked, though of course it wouldn’t do a damn thing if there were snipers setting up on taller buildings around them.

Even Jacob could hear the dull throb of an engine from below them now, along with concrete crunching on tires spinning nice and slow. He flicked his wand through the air a few times, to almost no effect. Nothing but the tip glowing a little brighter.

Harley just sighed. “Kid, you can be better with that then I could dream of—if you had a few years, good teachers, and better discipline. Maybe a minute with me, though? We don’t stand a Parasprite’s chance even if you somehow whip out some cutie mark level shit.”

There was another long silence there, broken only by the sound of a large vehicle tuning the last corner just below them.

“You have weird expressions.” Danielle got suddenly to her feet, not swaying anymore. “Let’s not make it easy for them.” She made her way to the overhang, where a concrete wall solid enough to stop a car protected anyone from accidentally driving off the top and onto the lower section. She braced herself there against the wall, posture square in the way of someone who has spent many hours in a gym. Then she pushed.

What came next was almost more remarkable than watching Harley teleport. Danielle—petite, thin, weak Danielle—shoved against the cement with the force of a hydraulic press. She grunted and her thin muscles strained with what Jacob expected to be no effect at all. The strongest man on Earth shouldn’t have been able to push over that wall, never mind a scrawny woman. Despite everything he thought he knew about the strength of reinforced concrete, despite everything Jacob thought he knew about Danielle, the wall started to crack. There was a terrible groaning sound, and then a crash as half the wall came loose. Quarter-inch steel rebar screamed and snapped as the several-ton mass came crashing down—right onto a slowly-emerging truck that looked like it was built for chasing storms.

Even so, the several-ton stress smashed it down with more screaming metallic protest, though it looked like much of the stone had been swept aside by its angles and the interior hadn’t completely caved in. Damn thing must be built like a tank.

Eric stared ahead like he couldn’t really see what had just happened, looking past Danielle to something invisible beyond her. Jacob felt similarly.

Harley started cheering. “Guess we know why the police were giving you so much trouble.”

Danielle brushed herself off as she made her way back, looking a little shy. “It’s… actually been that way for months now. Since… about the time the movie came out.”

Another voice spoke from behind them, which Jacob didn’t take for possible since it was only open air back there. “Excuse me.” Something touched down on empty parking lot beside them, and he turned just in time to see… something he didn’t think was possible. Four people, wearing blue uniforms like flight suits, goggles, and helmets. Of course, they also had wings emerging from behind them, which changed the look from “air-force pilot” to “Wonderbolt Cosplay.” At least they hadn’t done the “horse ear” thing out of their helmets. Only the figure in front had his visor up enough to see his face, and the bright blue and white hair that grew there. “Harley, Control only had an evacuation tea—”

“That’s perfect!” She gestured emphatically towards the three of them. “ECU is down there.” She gestured right as a bright orange flame burst through the ruined side of the vehicle. Cutting their way out?

“Alright then.” Each of the people behind him produced a sturdy-looking cloth harness, which appeared to be attached to them by tether. “Humans, we’re going to fly you out of here. I suggest you don’t look down—even if you’ve got the sky in your blood you’re probably not used to it yet. If you cause trouble for my ponies, they’ll fly you by your harness.”

They all held still as their rescuers clipped harnesses to them with straps around each limb. “Arms around my waist,” instructed the one in front of him, which Jacob could then identify as female from her harsh voice. “Don’t obstruct my wings or we’ll both die.” He obeyed, and found she returned the grip with one just as fierce. Despite her being a little shorter than he was, he found the ground suddenly jerked out from under him. Jacob tried not to see it, but couldn’t help the reflection in the helmet.

Just like a lot of things that day, their flight was impossible. He could not explain how organic wings so small could lift one person, let alone two. He couldn’t explain how they rose fast enough to escape the accurate range of guns shooting at them, or how the clouds seemed to be rushing up to meet them. Jacob wasn’t afraid of heights, but even he started to shiver at their utterly-unsupported rise: away from danger at last, and into the unknown.

Chapter 6

Jacob did a better job not looking the higher up they got. He felt his phone vibrate from his pocket, but didn’t dare reach for it to find out whatever message he might be getting. The latest in a string of impossible events was apparently being lifted into the air by winged… people… and carried up so high that his head started to spin. His grip started to slacken about the time he felt something paradoxically solid beneath him again, and the strong arms no longer carrying him. There was a few more seconds of fierce wind, then metal snapping closed, and he looked up.

It looked a little like they were standing inside a fairly large Learjet, save that it was far too squat. Soft tan carpet was set onto the floor, along with a double row of leather seats, all empty. Jacob barely managed to stay standing as his rescuer disconnected him from the safety harness and made her way into the back of the craft with her fellow pilots.

“We weren’t supposed to be making rescues this early in the day,” their blue-haired leader said to Harley. “You want a ride back down?”

“I’ll go myself in a few,” she responded, apparently not as winded by the flight as the rest of them. “Got to get these three situated first.”

“Suit yourself.” He walked away, past the empty seats into a rear section of the vehicle. He slid a metal door shut behind him, concealing whatever might be going on beyond.

“Where are we?” Eric stood by the wall, glancing out one of the little round windows. Jacob followed his eyes, but he couldn’t see anything more than a sky full of clouds.

“Close to straight up. I’m not a pegasus, so I couldn’t give you exact altitude.” Harley helped Danielle to her feet, who seemed to be the worst off, helping her to a chair. “Keep your head elevated, drink plenty of fluids, and don’t move too quickly. I’d tell you not to eat anything heavy, but I already know there isn’t anything.” She turned away. “Earth gives us a world of culinary marvels and all we have are prepackaged grocery store salads.”

“I guess you still don’t have time to give us answers.” Jacob followed her to the first row of seats, though he didn’t actually sit. It was enough to hold the wall for support and not move too quickly. For his part, Eric had already recovered and didn’t look even a little light-headed. “Like how we’re still up here even though I don’t hear an engine.” That was the worst part about it so far—they didn’t seem to be more than drifting slowly, yet he heard nothing. No jets, no roaring props, nothing.

“Unfortunately not.” She started walking backward, in the direction their rescuers had gone. “Control is up here, but she’s far too busy running things to be bothered right now. But… we always keep a pilot, even if we aren’t flying.” She pointed in the other direction, towards a food preparation area and a metal door. “Smart money says the pilot is losing her mind in there. She won’t have a damn thing to do, but Twilight says we always have to have somepony ready to fly after last time…” She shook her head. “Look, I’m sorry I keep doing this, but I promise it’s almost over. Once we finish rescuing all the lost ponies, we’ll take you somewhere safe and answer every question you have. I swear by Celestia’s…” She choked back a laugh. “Never mind. I just swear, okay?”

“Okay.” He sighed, but didn’t argue. Jacob still wasn’t sure he had chosen the right side. But if he was going to even pretend, then he had to accept that rescuing his friends still on the ground was the most important thing. “One quick thing before you go: is my sister in danger just because she knows me?”

Harley considered a moment. “Princess gave you the wand last night, right? There aren’t stories about you doing weird stuff going around?” When he shook his head, she continued. “She’s probably safest left alone, then. They’ll take her in for questioning, but… just being family isn’t enough. What they call ‘contamination’ doesn’t run in families.” She turned away, raising her voice as she made her way towards the rear door. “Bother the pilot if you have any more questions! Ask for her autograph first and she might even answer some!” She heaved the door open a moment later, then snapped it closed.

Jacob turned to his friends, where they rested in the front row. Eric appeared to be sponging sweat from Danielle’s brow with a napkin, and the poor girl was already holding a barf-bag. “You want to come with?” he asked, not so much to either one of them as at them. Eric just shook his head.

“You could figure out what we’d want to ask. Unless you know more than we do.”

“Not much more.” He walked away, fumbling with his phone as he went. He had made it to the metal door by the time he got it out, and he glanced over the message. It was a Facebook notification, informing him (and the rest of the club) that the usual meeting had not been canceled, but moved to a public park in town at the same time. He didn’t have service anymore, so there was no way for him to reply. Well this doesn’t help at all. Maybe the pilot knows who I can warn about this.”

He banged on the metal door, still holding the phone as he did so. “Is someone in there?”

There was a sound of something rustling from within. Papers falling, or maybe books. “Y-yeah!” The door opened a crack. “We’re not flying, so the cockpit’s open. What’s up?” Though the voice itself wasn’t familiar exactly, there was something in the tone Jacob thought he recognized. His current theory was that they had picked characters from the show to imitate, or maybe to model themselves on. He would reserve judgement for when he learned how they were doing magic. Or what it even is for that matter.

The young woman inside was exactly what her voice suggested: lithe, fit, and rainbow-haired. What Jacob had seen on “Twilight” the night before could very well have been darkness, yet on this girl there could be no mistaking it. The rainbow of colors was impossibly vivid, yet lacking the plastic look of a wig. Either she had the best dye job he had ever seen, or… or something. She had wings too, with blue feathers. She was slouching a little in the seat to avoid crushing them.

The cockpit itself had two seats, and was filled with advanced-looking electronics. True to what he had suspected, most of it was off. “What’s up?” she repeated, straightening out disheveled hair with a few sidelong strokes with one hand. “Whoever you are.”

“Jacob.” He stepped inside, moving into the space the copilot would’ve used. “Are you really Rainbow Dash?”

“The one and only.” She stretched both wings, folding her arms behind her. “You come in for my autograph?”

“Yes,” Jacob answered without thinking, offering the back of his phone towards her. “But this was the only thing I got out. Got a permanent marker?”

“Somewhere.” She fished around under the chair, coming up with a hardbound flight log. She removed a Sharpie from within, twirling it around between her fingers. She signed, then passed the phone back. He could barely read her penmanship, swept together and blurred as it was.

She looked like she expected him to leave, but instead Jacob sat down in the chair and turned the phone over. “I don’t have anyone to tell…” He opened up the Facebook message. “Harley seemed to think that it was Bronies in danger. If that’s true, the club is still meeting today. It’s been moved to a park…”

“Really?” She looked a little more alert. “The egghead probably cares.” She scooped up something from the ground in front of her: a helmet with a headset in the front. Her tone changed as she spoke into the radio, all traces of relaxation gone. Unfortunately, Jacob couldn’t make out a word of it, except for his own name mixed in with whatever… language, code, something… they used. It didn’t sound remotely like English, yet Dash apparently spoke fluently, her words sounding elongated and almost animal. It didn’t take long before she slipped the helmet off again. “Twi thanks you for telling us. Super useful in… whatever…” She slumped back into her seat, the helmet clattering to the ground beside her.

Jacob frowned out the window. The sun was very bright up here, but there was some sort of coating on the glass. It didn’t seem as bright as he expected. “We aren’t moving.”

“Well… technically, we’re drifting…” She looked up at the controls. “South by southeast at a speed of about five knots. But no, not much.”

“How are we staying up?” He felt so silly bringing it up, yet he did anyway. “In… In the show, pegasi can walk on clouds. Is that what we’re doing?”

She shot him a grin. “Not bad. It’s the same sort of spell for holding machines and cups and stuff on clouds, only bigger. Little weather magic to keep this huge cloud-system together. No engines, no heat, no fuel.”

“Why is…” The words came before he could think, coming out so quickly that he didn’t think of the emotion making its way into his voice, or the way his vision was splintering a little with tears. “Why is this happening? Some of us don’t even like the damn TV show all that much. But it’s been less than a day, and I’ve been shot at twice. I don’t know what’s happening to the rest of my f-friends, but if it’s anything like what they were doing to Danielle it isn’t good. What the hell did we do?”

“Nothing.” Her words were suddenly flat, almost emotionless. “That’s why we came.”

“W-what?” Nothing made sense, and this conversation so far was not making it any easier.

“Look, if I tried…” She sighed, pulling her helmet up into her lap. “We’re kinda responsible for helping you all manifest your powers. It was supposed to be nice and slow, take a real long time or whatever, and nobody was supposed to freak out. It seemed like that was how it was gonna go… but then things changed. Now instead of passively tolerating you as you slowly spread the magic around, your whole world is fighting us. You’d think after living thousands and thousands of years without magic you’d be thrilled to have it, but apparently not!” Something beeped from within the helmet, and she started settling it back onto her head, still talking as she went. “You can get the details when we get to Unity, but all that you really need to know is that it’s our fault, and so we feel like it’s our job to clean it all up.”

“Why not just tell everybody?” he said, frustration growing in his words.

She didn’t answer, though her face seemed to be darkening by the second. “Bucking hell, are you sure?”

A second later and Harley came pounding down the hall, clutching at her side. Her clothing had changed again, to one of those blue jumpsuits. She had reddish wings, wings Jacob knew hadn’t been there from the tightness of her top earlier. Of course that wasn’t his first thought under the circumstances. “What’s going on? My radio just went out!”

“Change of plans.” Rainbow buckled herself in. “You ponies get strapped down, we have to leave right now.”

Chapter 7

For the second time that day, Jacob followed his instincts instead of his senses and buckled himself into the copilot’s seat. Harley cast him one frustrated look before she vanished out the door and snapped it closed. Jacob unclipped the helmet from the back of the chair even as a dull roar rose from above them, the unmistakeable sound of rotors as they started to spin.

“What the buck are you still doing here?” Rainbow asked, flipping down the polarized visor. She went to work on the controls like a skater on fresh ice, not even seeming to see them as she worked. The ground jerked and they pitched forward, yanking free of something. “You a pilot?”

“Studying to be an architect, actually.” He plopped the helmet down on his head, and found it brought with it a barrage of sound. Screams of pain, shouts and orders, none of which he could understand. He pushed the mic up and out of the way, just in case it might catch some of his words. “I’ll shut up and not get in your way.”

“Celestia help you if you don’t.” She glared at him with icy anger, then pitched them violently forward off the cloud. So much for preflight checks, or any checks he knew. They shot forward faster than he would’ve believed such a massive object could even travel. The room full of seats had made this thing look like a large business helicopter, but the sudden angle and violent acceleration told another story. No commercial craft could’ve survived the mistreatment Dash gave them.

Jacob was true to his words and only watched as they made their way out of town. He couldn’t tell the distance, but it looked like they were heading towards the middle of a barren, disused field. Sandy desert would’ve been unbroken were it not for several little flashes of light far below. Teleportation? He half expected a flight of fighter jets to shoot them down, but nothing like that happened. They landed without incident about a hundred feet away from the struggling crowd.

“Now, get out.” Dash pointed at the door emphatically. “Take a proper seat this time, or I’ll leave you stranded on a cloud.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He removed the helmet and hurried out about the time the outside doors were slammed open and he got a good look at the crowd.

Well, not much of one. There were only about ten people, none he actually knew. All had strange eyes and hair, though that was not his first concern. Jacob offered his hand to help the first climb up into the helicopter, and found the person he helped was bleeding and could barely stand. The whole crowd looked like that, and seemed very much like a group in shock. A few moments later the last of them made their way past him, and he slammed the door shut.

“You know any first aid, kid?” Harley’s voice, offering him a pair of gloves and a mask. “Turns out we’re the only ponies on our feet.”

The ground lurched as they took off. Several of the injured fell over, moaning. Jacob took the gloves, and put them on along with the mask. “I’m, uh… I got my First Aid merit badge…” He shivered, glancing out the little window at the empty desert. “Where’s the rest of my club? They should’ve been together right now…”

Harley’s voice was grim. “I count eleven ponies in here, us exempt.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “There should be twenty-one.”

He suppressed a whimper. He needed to know what had become of his friends, but he couldn’t rightly insist on answers when his inaction might kill someone. Of course, if their injuries were that severe, there wasn’t much he could do. “I take it you’ve got a first aid kit somewhere?”

She lifted a steel box from beside her, then clanked it back down again. “You’ve already got a better one.”

Someone hurried over from the other end of the aircraft as they continued their ascent: Twilight. She was wearing a flight uniform similar to the one Rainbow had been wearing earlier, and had bright purple wings Jacob hadn’t seen on her before. She also had a wand of her own. She exchanged a greeting briefly with the one who had brought the rescue team and flown them up to the helicopter, though she didn’t use English.

After a few harsh words exchanged, she turned and met Jacob’s eyes. “Do you still have…”

He held it towards her. “You want this back?”

“No.” She barked something to Harley, again in that language he couldn’t speak. Harley responded sounding bitter, bowed, and set the box down. Then Twilight approached him. “You did pretty great with fire. How about some healing magic?” She nudged him along towards whom he could only assumed was the most severely injured of the lot. The man, maybe forty, had taken at least two bullets to his chest and was seeping dark blood. His breaths only came raggedly.

“You should have Harley do it.” He gestured back towards her with the wand. “She’s better with magic than I could possibly be. She can teleport and everything!”

“Harley can’t do healing spells,” she said, as flatly as though she were commenting on the weather. “So she’s going to triage things along the line until we can get to them. Medicine isn’t my special talent, but there was a required course in the Academy…” She dropped to her knees on the plush carpet, and he did the same on the victim’s other side.

Jacob’s horror had no description. Blood so thick he had never smelled before, let alone seen the ruin that high-caliber rounds could make of a person. As Twilight removed scraps of cloth, he had to look away to keep himself from vomiting. He squeezed the wand hard to keep himself from running away.

Once at Boy Scout camp Jacob had been a few feet away from a friend who cut off his own big toe with an axe. The blood, the screaming, the sound of the blow as it fell, had given him nightmares for weeks. He might have trouble sleeping for years after this. Not only that, but his own friends weren’t even here… except for Eric and Danielle, who he only sort of knew. The two of them huddled together in two of the seats, too shocked and horrified by what they saw to even react intelligently.

“You going to be okay?” Twilight’s voice again, cutting through the fog.

He shook his head. “I’ll still try. Even if I don’t think I can be any good.”

“You can.” Twilight slipped something out of her pocket and into her free hand: a knife, with an obsidian blade and a handle wrapped in glittering metal wire. “Just do what I do. Watch carefully.” He jerked reflexively away from her as she cut a little into one of her own arms, just deep enough to draw a few drops. She let them fall onto the gaping wound in a way that made him gasp again.

“Mixing blood is really, really bad,” he muttered, mostly by reflex.

“Bleeding to death is worse than bloodborne diseases,” she responded, resting her wand just above the injury. She started speaking. It wasn’t English, yet somehow Jacob found the words had meaning anyway. “Our blood together, to give life where it was taken. Injured soul, listen and stay.” What began as a feeble glow from her wand became a brilliant purple flame, so bright it echoed in her eyes. “Be whole.”

Her wand flashed, and suddenly the injured man was gone. Filling some of that space were the torn wreckage of his clothes and… a pony. Jacob almost didn’t believe what he saw and very nearly screamed. He slid back, dropping his wand and beginning to hyperventilate. It was an adult unicorn from the look of it, belly bloody and greenish coat missing in places. There was no more wound.

“Hey.” Harley’s voice was clear. He felt one hand on the back of his head, forcing him to look at the pony. Look until the shape stopped blurring. “Hiding from the truth makes it worse, believe me. I should know…”

Another few seconds and he could think straight again. Amidst so many shocks, poor Jacob was very close to his limit. A little more stress and he might very well curl up into a catatonic ball and not move again. “Okay. I think… I’m good.” Harley scooped up the creature in her arms, carrying him away.

In this case, Jacob was grateful not to have to look for long. Even so, he had noticed one thing about the creature that had seemed a little different from the show: he had been small, much smaller than he expected. So much for counting pixels on Angel, or any of the other estimates the fandom had used.

The sight of blood and death dismissed such an absurd thought, and he followed Twilight to their next patient. “You weren’t supposed to see that,” she muttered, sounding frustrated. “But you didn’t have a breakdown, right? You still with me refugee?”

“Yes.” He glanced briefly at Harley’s retreating back. “What happened just now?”

“Everypony who came here from Equestria has an illusion just like that. There are several ways to kill it—too much magic too fast is the easiest. You saw the same thing start to happen to mine last night, when I had to fight without a wand.”

“Excuse me, Princess…” The patient between them had bright orange hair, and red-brown eyes. She also had a broken wing and a pained expression. “Maybe teach later and heal now before I bite my tongue off?”

“Sorry.” She blushed, then handed him the knife. “Do what I did.”

“Uh… I’m not sure if I know what you did.” He looked down at the patient: the woman was in her mid-thirties and looked like someone who had spent her whole life in the military. She also had a bullet in the shoulder that had apparently missed her collarbone but kept going through her wing. “I don’t even remember the words!”

Twilight gestured meaningfully at the knife. “Start with the blood, get a little in the wound. No bond between ponies goes deeper than blood.”

“I’m not a pony.” He wiped the blade on his tee-shirt anyway, preparing it.

“No, but blood is the same thing for us as it is for you. Don’t worry, it won’t be enough to hurt her.”

“But I’ll be enough to hurt you if you don’t hurry up.” She glowered up at them both, one hand gripping the leather cushion of a nearby seat so hard it had already torn in a few places.

He obeyed, feeling a brief sting of a sharp blade, then squeezing a few drops down into the woman’s shoulder. She didn’t react to the bizarre practice, only looking impatient. “Now what? Hold the wand up, and… could you give me those words again?”

“No.” Twilight answered flatly. “Memorized spells come with patterns, diagrams, raw materials. When you can’t memorize, you use this instead.” She tapped her chest, right above her heart. “Creation is dust, magic is the only truth. Use the same will that let you see a pony for what he was and heal Spitfire here.”

That didn’t sound very helpful. Still, the longer he held the wand above her wounds, the more he felt the need to act. He had already mixed their blood, after all. “What happened to my friends?” he asked her, his voice level. “Did you fight for them?”

“Y-yes,” she croaked, clutching at her wounded shoulder with her other hand. Blood soaked into her flight-suit, soaked into the carpet so thick it pooled. She might still bleed to death if they didn’t act quickly. “Couldn’t… their weapons… never seen them before! They killed so fast…”

It was a vague answer, but enough. Twilight said that magic was willpower, well… he could get some willpower to help someone who had fallen trying to save his friends. Even if she failed. Of course, he didn’t know the strange language these people used, so he couldn’t do what Twilight had done. He felt silly, but just spoke in English, holding his wand just above the wound. “Take my blood and breathe,” he commanded. “You have felt enough pain.”

It wasn’t as miraculous as what happened with Twilight’s spell. His patient didn’t change back into a pony, or have all her wounds magically disappear. She sighed and fell limp, relaxing at last. Still breathing, but no longer bleeding. It was enough.

Fatigue hit him harder than it had the night before, and he slumped backward against the wall of the helicopter. He felt a brief pain as he smacked against the metal there. Yet in that pain, there was also understanding. For just a second he saw through the illusions, through matter itself even to what was beneath and the damage torn in threads of fate. No injury was severe enough to obscure the pattern that belonged.

“Sorry.” Jacob shook himself once, rolling up his sleeves. He didn’t give Twilight her knife back. “Let’s help the rest.”

Chapter 8

Jacob felt very tired when he was done, his extremities cold and his skin pale. Even so, he felt good. Lives would continue because of what he had done, even if they might be… ponies. He still didn’t understand that, and just now he was too tired to care. He slumped into one of the window-seats and barely thought about anything. Clouds and blue sky gradually darkened as they flew, but he didn’t mind. His whole life had been uprooted, possibly with dire consequences, and he couldn’t feel anything but quiet satisfaction with his work.

“Twenty bits say these ponies are back in Equestria a week from now.”

“Huh?” He blinked, and found Harley in the chair beside him. She too was looking out at the clouds, still looking a little bitter.

She lowered her voice, whispering into his ear. Not that it mattered: the only people in the main cabin with them were resting hurt ponies and his own friends. Twilight, somehow not as drained as he was despite healing just as much, was now up in the cockpit with Rainbow Dash. “There wasn’t a single refugee in your regular meeting spot or the park. Nopony came back from the classroom, so we can’t know what happened there. But the park was an ambush. Ponies died…”

“These will be better soon,” he answered, a little defensively. If he didn’t talk about his missing friends, maybe he wouldn’t have to cry. “They shouldn’t even need a hospital. I felt it…”

“Not that easy, kid.” Harley gently turned his head back at the resting people. No more had changed (back) into ponies, yet even so all looked shocked. Those who were still awake stared blankly, seeing nothing. Just as he had seen their physical injuries, now he saw a pain that went deeper. Deeper than any spell Twilight had shown him, anyway. “Don’t be fooled by appearances. Just because these ponies look like humans don’t mean they’re as tough as you. Equestria has care centers for ponies coming back from Earth. Only two of the damn Elements are still going out, and one of those is a princess. What does that say?”

“Oh.” He sighed, slumping back into his seat. “All that pain for nothing. I can’t…” He sniffed. “Is it really just the three of us?” He glanced back at Eric and Danielle—both sleeping now on the other side of the cabin. “You think I lost my friends too?”

“Not forever.” She kept her voice low, though by then it was quite clear nobody was listening. “One day we’ll track down where they take all the ponies we don’t find in time, and we’ll get them out. Maybe after today you’ll want to help.”

“That… That’s possible?” He twirled the wand around in his hand again. “I’m pretty useless. Never contributed anything worthwhile, not even to the damn fandom.”

Harley smacked him. Not very hard, but enough that his face stung. “No self pity on the aircraft. Your life is hard enough without lying to make it worse.” She leered at him, and Jacob realized for the first time she had unusually sharp canines. Almost like they had been filed, though there was no sign of physical damage. How could that be natural? “Lots of the ones going out on rescue missions were rescued themselves, once. This boat has an Equestrian crew, but there are three human crews for every one of ours. We just go in where it’s the worst. As you had to see.”

There was silence between them for some minutes. The helicopter seemed to be slowing down, though he couldn’t see anything but clouds on his side. “Thanks.” He eventually met her eyes again. “For saving the three of us. After seeing this—” He gestured back at the injured where they rested. “If the ones you’re fighting are willing to do that, then I picked the right side.”

“Don’t mention it.” Harley perked up a little even so, some of her weariness gone. “You’ve already paid your keep, Jacob. If you want to run away to green fields with the rest, I say you’ve earned it.”

He wanted to ask what she meant, but didn’t get the chance. At that moment they twisted violently to the side, and the castle came into view for the first time.

Well, castle was his first impression. It was more like a military fort really, something that could’ve been built in the eighteen hundreds. Except that the stones and mortar were fresh, and there were modern-looking artillery embankments set into the higher levels instead of old-fashioned canons. The grounds looked to be about a square mile, a mile of huge trees and flowing grass and what could very well have been a fancy private school. The fortification itself was several stories tall, complete with battlements and a banner flying high over a tall center tower. A flag he had seen over and over on the show, clear to him even at this distance.

There was also a runway, which was where they were going. Just past the furthest edges on all sides ended in sheer cliffs, and past that only an ocean of clouds. Somehow, the “ponies” had built their fortress at the top of an enormously tall mountain. Where were they, anyway? Were they even still in the United States? How long had they been flying? He couldn’t answer any of these questions, except to know that there was still a little light so it couldn’t have been more than a day.

“Ponies, this is your captain speaking.” Rainbow’s voice sounded a little wary over the intercom. “Brace for landing. Do not disembark, a medical crew is already waiting on the runway. Thank you for flying with us.”

“Rainbow, I don’t think n—” Twilight’s voice cut briefly over the intercom, then faded again.

Time blurred a little after that. They landed on solid ground, people in white rushed to the side of the aircraft and unloaded the wounded. They came for him too, though he insisted on walking using his own legs. He was dimly conscious of his fellow not-victims following behind, in shock almost as much as he was. He perceived little of what the grounds might be like other than that there were lots of people. Someone led him down several hallways and flights of stairs, to a small bedroom joining onto a central hallway. Someone gave him fresh clothes and told him where to find the showers, but he ignored both and slept instead. This time, he was too tired to dream.

Eventually he woke, smelling perhaps a little of blood and a great deal of sweat. He found the showers and used them, scrubbing until it hurt. The new clothes he had been given fit well enough, though it was really just a gray jumpsuit similar in cut to the flight suits the people with wings had worn. Similar, but not identical. He wasn’t even all that surprised to notice something strange as he changed, but his curiosity made other things more important and he didn’t dwell long.

There were no windows, only flat white LED bulbs in the halls to light his way. Even so it didn’t feel confined or uncomfortable, for there was plenty of art and potted plants and both were unnaturally cheerful.

He found the only two familiar faces waiting by a little fireplace and eating plates of breakfast. Like him, they had changed from dirty clothes to plain jumpsuits, though they weren’t the same colors. Danielle’s was green, and Eric’s white. By the look of things, there were twenty private bedrooms attached to a common room of sorts, complete with kitchen and enough space for everyone. Some of the tables were freakishly short, and had only cushions. He didn’t wonder why.

“You woke up after all,” Danielle called as he sat down, saluting him with a fork weighed down with omelet. “We weren’t sure if you would.”

“Yeah.” Jacob would’ve said more, but it was at that moment he realized just how famished he was. He pulled his plate into his lap and didn’t even bother with the utensils, scooping everything into his mouth with one hand.

“Told you he would be hungry.” Eric had barely picked off his own plate, and he scooted a little bit away from Jacob with disgust once he started eating. “Guess… all that magic wore you out?”

“How do… you know about that?” he asked, not bothering to slow down. “Did someone come and finally explain what the hell is going on?”

“No.” Danielle glanced once at the door to the common room, which Jacob hadn’t bothered to open. “And they wouldn’t let us leave to find out, either.”

“Then how…”

“We were ten feet away when you two were doing the daughter of Jairus thing.” Danielle rolled her eyes. “If it wasn’t magic, then neither was Harley teleporting me around. Or when they flew us into the sky to a helicopter sitting on a cloud.”

“They didn’t actually do a Jairus thing, Danni. It didn’t look like they brought back anyone from the dead.”

She shrugged. “Whatever. He got the idea. We were still hoping you might know more than we did. Eric says she got you first, so maybe you’ve put together more than we have.”

“A little.” He sighed down at his empty plate. “If someone wants to cook me another one of these, I could explain while they work.”

“Sure.” Eric rose, heading towards the kitchen. “I’m glad you liked it.”

They all followed him, pulling up chairs at the bar-style table overlooking a kitchen big enough to cook for fifty. The fridge was stocked and the modern-looking appliances all worked—evidently they had expected this place to be lived in. Not a surprise. I bet they planned on putting the whole club here.

Jacob recounted everything he knew, starting from the moment he had met Twilight and they fought the Timberwolves. His audience listened attentively, interjecting at all the right places. By the time he had finished the story, he finally felt full.

“So that settles it,” Danielle announced, when he was done. “We actually know quite a bit.”

“Really?” Jacob raised an eyebrow, pushing the empty plate back towards Eric. Without a word, he started on the dishes.

“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “Equestria is a real place, though we don’t know whether it’s another universe or another planet or maybe even another time. It really has ponies on it, that at least resemble the ones from the show. Despite evidence to the contrary, the show itself has to be treated as some form of communication. You said Harley said the ponies were guilty about how we were being treated?” She didn’t actually wait for his response. “So maybe the show itself is connected to what causes powers to manifest. I know I wasn’t Superwoman before I started watching…”

“But I didn’t have any powers just from watching,” Jacob argued. “So far I haven’t had any powers at all except when Twilight’s around.” He slipped the wand out of his back-pocket, twisting it around through his fingers. He had done the same thing with many a pencil in grade school, the wand wasn’t really that different.

“Well, you didn’t have that.” She snatched it out of his hand, and immediately the little glow at the tip went out. Not changing color, as had happened when Twilight put it in his hand. It just went out. “Wingardium Leviosa.” She flicked it at him, in a fairly good imitation of the gesture used in the Harry Potter movies. There was no effect.

She sighed, then tossed it back. “A little disappointing, but I expected that. You should come over and try when you’re done with the dishes, Eric. Maybe you’ll have more luck.”

Jacob didn’t say anything, but he did pull the wand protectively into his lap. Before their flight, he would’ve gotten rid of it without a second thought. Now, though… it felt special somehow. Personal. It was a tool by which the impossible might happen. Death could be prevented if only he kept it within reach.

“Sure.” He didn’t sound very optimistic. “Why would it work for me if it doesn’t work for you?”

“Source material.” Danielle picked up a clean spoon from the counter and casually tore it in half. “Can either of you do that?”

They tried. They couldn’t.

Jacob found he suddenly understood. “Equestria has ponies with different abilities. Except for Alicorns, they don’t overlap. You’re suggesting it might be like that for humans as well. But… that wouldn’t make any sense! For ponies the limitations are physical, aren’t they? Some ponies have horns, some have wings, and some… are built stronger or something.” He shrugged. “Whatever. Humans don’t have wings, we don’t have horns, and we’re all built about the same. Why would we have their limits?”

“I… I dunno.” She sat back down, grumbling. “It looked like pegasus ponies keep their wings even when they had one of those illusion things. That probably means there aren’t human equivalents of flying ponies, since none of us have biological wings.”

“Unless they just get real light or something,” Eric offered. “And maybe just flap their arms.”

They laughed. Even Jacob did, despite the pain he felt. Or maybe because of it. He had already tried to call his sister, but his phone didn’t have service. There was a wifi network here, but he didn’t have the password, and there was nobody to ask. Hopefully someone would be coming for them soon.

“We got off track,” Jacob said, when they had all finished laughing. “We think the show is giving people powers?”

“Maybe. Or maybe being around powers, or maybe both. I got mine a few months back and I never saw any magic, but you didn’t and Eric still hasn’t manifested anything. Anyway, we know other stuff too. We know you can travel back and forth between Equestria and Earth, because of what Harley told you. All that figured out, we narrow down our questions quite a bit. Why is the government trying to stop magic, why haven’t the ponies come out to the world about this, and what do we do about it?”

“The last one is the most interesting.” A familiar voice spoke from the table behind them, so close Jacob nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard it. He wasn’t all that surprised to see Harley sitting there. “What do you do about it?”

Chapter 9

“So if everyone here is really a pony, you must be a Unicorn.” Danielle seemed the least surprised that they weren’t alone, or at least the best at hiding her surprise. “Right?”

“Nope.” Harley leaned back in her chair. “Just because most of them are ponies doesn’t mean we all are. Not many of the other races came to Earth… and believe me, I’d kill for someone with some actual backbone for a partner on rescue missions… there are a few.”

“I’m surprised you aren’t back out already.” Jacob tried to keep the pain out of his voice and mostly succeeded. As nice as it was to see a few people he knew had made it up here, there was no escaping the much longer list of friends who hadn’t. Who had been taken by a group that was willing to kill people in the streets of his city without restraint. “Seems like the number of rescue-people out there helping took a big hit.”

In answer, Harley buried her face in her hands, moaning once with obvious frustration. “Sunset gave what’s left of the crew mandatory administrative leave. When I insisted I still be doing something, she put me with you three.” She looked up, then shrugged one shoulder. “The whole organization is still in shock from yesterday. Without enough ponies to spare for an official introduction, I’m your new advisor until I can go back onto assignment in… thirty damn days.”

“Oh, good.” Danielle pulled out a chair as Eric came back from the kitchen. “Does that mean you’ll stop telling us there isn’t enough time and answer our questions?”

“Yes,” she groaned. “Though I can’t answer everything, and I can’t guarantee you’ll like the answers. The rule most ponies don’t like is the one about the signs.” She gestured at the table, to a symbol printed onto the metal. “Twilight’s Cutie Mark… if you see it on a door, it means that area is forbidden. Whatever’s past there is too dangerous for you.”

“Same kinda deal: don’t use your own magic outside of class if you can avoid it. Flying around the halls, blasting magic around, all that kinda stuff… Whenever you can, save your strength for the classes. Your older selves will be grateful you did.”

“When can we go home?” Eric interrupted, his voice barely a squeak. “I have classes Monday. Jacob does too.”

Even Jacob could guess the answer to that, though he didn’t give it. Harley sighed. “See, this is what I was talking about with answers you didn’t like. You… kinda can’t leave yet. It’s part of the charter Sunset has to follow, from Celestia herself.” She said that last name with more disdain than respect, though she was talking too fast for Jacob to ask about it. “Not until you have learned enough about your own abilities and the dangers you face should you leave. There’s a sortof ‘coming of age’ thing we do here, not important now. It can take a long time, and most people still don’t go back.”

She folded her arms. “You saw the consequences first-hand. Your own government, and those of all its allies, are actively hunting you. If they find you, it’s jail for life. If they think your friends and family know anything about you, they might face the same treatment.”

Jacob wanted to ask how something so big could be happening without anyone knowing. Wanted to, except he could already guess the answer. “Will that ever change?”

She shrugged. “I’d say ask the princesses, but they predicted we’d already have strong diplomatic relations by now, sending thousands of pony teachers to Earth so you could incorporate magic into your way of life. You’d get magic, we could take some of your technology… Ponies hadn’t been that excited since Princess Luna came back.” She shrugged. “I guess I should give you the options. Everypony gets the same three choices, and even if you won’t have to decide for a long time it’s good to know so you can be thinking about them.”

They all watched, none daring to interrupt her. Jacob felt the stress of the day before return in force. He couldn’t go back to class. His family would think he was missing, or maybe a straight-up criminal. His whole life had been derailed. He almost wanted to scream, except he knew anger would only make things worse. A quick glance to the side was all it took to see that his friends looked similarly distraught.

“One, you already know. Once you learn what you can do enough that you aren’t going to hurt yourself, you go back into society and try to live again. We can’t really help you at that point, and we don’t hear from lots of those people again. Maybe they’re safe, maybe they aren’t… I dunno.”

“Option two, you stay here for training. Eventually you join rescue operations, or help us find the other ponies, or anything else we might be doing. Lots of positions need filling, and you natives tend to last longer than Equestrians.”

They were silent for a long time. Eventually, Danielle asked, “You said there were three.”

She nodded. “Come away, oh human child, with a fairy hand in hand. For this world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

“People do that?” Danielle asked.

“Many.” She sounded wistful. “It’s a dream for some, an escape for others. A few get bored and want to come back, but there’s such a waiting-list to use the mirror it might not happen for the next fifty years. That’s the key to understand if you want to go. Make sure you’re sure, because it’s the hardest decision to take back.”

“So if we stay…” Jacob started.

“No matter what you choose, you’ll be moved in with some other ponies. Living alone like this is the worst. There are classes for your individual talents, along with some stuff correcting all your misconceptions.” She lowered her voice to a mutter. “You’d think if they were going to make the effort to produce propaganda, they’d at least have got their facts right.” She looked up. “A month or so and you’ll be able to decide what path to take. Either more training, back down to Earth, or out to Equestria. Mist, iron, or silver. Take your pick.”

“What do you…” Eric hadn’t met her eyes yet, and he still didn’t. “How do powers work, exactly? I can’t do anything special.”

“That’s why you’re wearing white.” Even so, she seemed to be relaxing as they changed subject. “You guys were right about powers being restricted. At least from what I’ve seen, humans always hit the same range of abilities ponies have. The most common are the three you already know about: flying, magic, and strength. They’re mutually exclusive, there’s no way to decide or to switch between them. You just have to hope you’re happy with what you are, because it doesn’t change.”

She reached, tugging on Eric’s sleeve. “Every human on Earth can manifest abilities if they’re exposed to enough magic. When you’re ready, there’s a test you can take and you’ll know. Still, scrawny little kid like you, my money’s on feathers.” She folded her arms. “Go ahead and ask around: nopony can guess powers like Harley. It’s a talent of mine.”

“I’m short too,” Danielle argued. “But I can’t fly. That isn’t fair.”

Harley shrugged. “I’m the wrong one to complain to about things being fair, believe me. It wasn’t my decision to contact this damn colony, it wasn’t my decision to try to bring magic back, and it wasn’t my decision to start killing your own people.” She gestured vaguely up. “Sunset’s office is at the top of the biggest tower, can’t miss it. She takes complaints between noon and one PM on even-numbered Tuesdays.”

“We’ll need some time to think about what to do. Guess we’ll have that.” Jacob frowned. “How do you fit in?”

“Advisors mostly just answer your questions. Go to classes with you when I can, help you make an informed decision about where to go. Other advisors could tell you about Equestria, help you make up your mind about it. I don’t actually know much about Equestria, but I’ll do my best.”

She got up, stretching. “Anyway, I think we should start with a tour. You’re stuck up here, so you might as well get to know the place.”

That was what they did. It took a few hours to see the whole thing, and they weren’t rushing. Despite its remote location, “Castle Unity” seemed to have every amenity Jacob could think of. There were facilities to house about ten thousand, all off-grid and self sustaining. Not just what he saw on the surface, but a full dozen levels underground, of which their own living area was only one among many. Similarities to the architecture he remembered from the television show came through clearly, though they weren’t allowed to see most of the lower levels. Because they were “too damn tall.”

They did get to see the mirror room, albeit behind a layer of protective glass as thick as an aquarium tank. Jacob couldn’t help but imagine the gate room from SG1, it was hard to see anything else with so much circuitry and defenses all centered on the portal. It was bigger than he had expected, fifteen feet of worked metal and glass. As they watched, fresh produce appeared from glass that rippled like water, rolling along a conveyer waiting and into several receiving carts. He wondered if the apples had come from Sweet Apple Acres, but didn’t dare ask.

Of course, far more interesting than buildings and even magical gates were the other people. Unity was nowhere near its capacity, which made it feel a little like a school during summer break. Yet what people they did meet were almost universally friendly, men and women that were all generally on the younger side but not always. Hair and eye colors ranged the same spectrum as the show, though a significant majority had the “normal” shades he was used to. A handful had wings, though a stranger section still had horns. The growths looked like they had to hurt, no matter how cheerful the ones who had them acted. He wasn’t brave enough to ask about them, though he had no doubt they could serve for wands given the way their bearers could levitate objects. Though there were no crazy skintones or insane proportions, the Equestria Girls movies had been right about one other thing: the Cutie Mark symbols everyone wore on their clothing. Lots of people had them, even otherwise ordinary humans without wings or crazy hair or anything.

It was about this Jacob had to ask, no matter how embarrassing it was. He caught Harley alone in the hallway leading to their temporary living area, stopping her with a gentle touch on the shoulder. “Hey Harley, can I, uh… ask you something?”

“Yeah.” She folded her arms. “If it’s to confess your love, I should warn you—”

Jacob shoved her, glaring. “Not funny. Actually, it’s…” He lowered his voice, blushing. “I think I might have a Cutie Mark.” He glanced down, where the strange pattern like a bright tattoo was covered by the jumpsuit. “Is that normal?”

“Really?” Despite what she had just said about love, her hands went straight for the zipper of his jumpsuit. Jacob was too fast, and was out of her reach.

“You’ll have to trust me, it’s there.”

“Well…” Harley folded her arms. “Guess I lied that you’d have to wait a month to choose. Getting a Cutie Mark is what makes you a legal adult in Equestria, so it’s what Sunset uses to gauge when a refugee is ready to decide what to do. You could leave tomorrow if you wanted.”

“I don’t actually know anything!” he insisted, his voice a harsh whisper. “And I don’t want to leave. Right now Eric and Danni are the only part of my old life I’ve got left. I know they’ll want to stay together as much as I do.”

She nodded. “I’ll get you an appointment with the quartermaster. You probably noticed how much ponies like their Cutie Marks.” Again she sounded bitter, though it didn’t seem like her feelings were for him.

“What are you Harley?”

She turned away, acting like she hadn’t heard the question. “I’ll see you all tomorrow for the first day of class. We’ll transfer your quarters in with another group after that… try not to burn the place down tonight.”

Chapter 11

Danielle found the appointed place for her first lesson without Harley's help, or the company of her friends. Eric's first day would bring his test, and no classes at all until after that. She had already seen Jacob's magic, and there was nothing of strength in it. So she found herself wandering the grounds alone, searching for some large gathering of fellow humans set up (for some reason) somewhere in Unity's orchards.

Despite the great height at which Unity had been built, so high in fact that she had yet to see below the clouds, all kinds of plants grew without difficulty. Danni hadn't set foot in a farm in her life, yet even she knew the climate an orange tree needed wasn't the same one an apple thrived in. Yet as she wandered through the orchard, she found only strong, healthy-looking trees.

Danielle stopped for the fourth time to inspect her schedule. Her whole day was blocked off for "Training with Earth Pony Instructor," but it only said "Orchard" under location. She had seen Jacob's schedule, and it might've looked like any college student’s were it not for the names of the classes.

That's probably for the best. If my parents heard I was a dropout again they'd probably have aneurysms. At least she wouldn't be coming back from Unity with crippling student debt.

The further she wandered, the louder the sound she could suddenly hear. Something thumped loudly, followed by the sound of plants rustling. The sound repeated, sometimes joined with grunts and groans of effort. Had she been anywhere else in the school, she would have ignored them. Seeing as she was supposed to be in class, she followed them. Maybe they've got those metal things football players slam into over and over.

They didn't. Instead, she found something so predictable she almost couldn't believe it. A girl a little younger than her, with boots and a comical cowboy hat and everything, was harvesting fruit. She was harvesting fruit by kicking tree trunks. Several wicker baskets lay behind her, some empty and some full.

Even if she had never seen those awful movies about human ponies, she would have recognized Applejack. "Lemons?" she asked, approaching slowly enough that the girl could see her coming. If this was Applejack, she wasn't shy. She grunted, bracing her back against the ground as she kicked.

The baskets gathered around her filled with fruit, in defiance to anything Danni had ever known about harvesting, or plants, or even gravity. Almost none of them spilled.

"Well, yeah." The girl rose, brushing the dirt off her back and replacing her hat. "I reckon' it's still hot enough for lemonade. Plus we gotta start thinkin' about makin' preserves if we want lemon anything fer winter."

"And you're..." It was almost beyond belief. She hadn't met Twilight in the woods, or spent an hour alone with the pilot. "Applejack?"

"The one and only." She spit into her hand, wiped away some of the dirt, then stuck it out to shake. "Okay, that may not be completely true. I reckon you ponies like dressin' up like us and pretendin'."

"I know what you mean." She took the offered hand, though she felt a little uncomfortable doing it. "Danielle Hicks, but everyone just calls me Danni."

"Oh." She blushed, looking sheepish. "It's not class time already, is it?" She glanced once though the trees, searching for the sun. She found it, then her frown deepened. "Shucks, I'm real sorry. I get a little lost when I'm workin', you know how it is."

"I..." She didn't. "If you're the teacher, maybe you can help me find the classroom."

Applejack nodded. "I sure can." She bent down, scooping up several of the full baskets. Hundreds of pounds of fruit, yet she didn't so much as strain. "Grab the rest ah those baskets and follow me."

She did. Danielle found what she had already known, that her strength was practically inexhaustible. So she followed Applejack through the orchard, carrying twice her own weight in fruit.

"So Danni, what did they tell ya about what you'd be doin'?"

"That ponies put together classes for humans on how magic works. We take a few months to learn the basics, then—"

"Well, lemme stop ya right there." She didn't stop walking. Danni was grateful for that; she was fairly sure she would fall over as soon as she stopped moving. She felt incredibly unbalanced, and that one sidelong movement might dump hundreds of pounds of lemons all over the place. "Maybe bein' cooped up in some classroom helps unicorns learn their thing. But fer what you've gotta learn, it'd be a darn waste. Yer class is right now, with me. After today, I reckon you ought to be ready to be learning by doin'. That's what sets us earth ponies apart from... well, unicorns anyway. Book learnin' don't make me no better in a fight, and it won't make you no better neither."

Her eyebrows went up, though she knew Applejack wouldn't be able to see her face through all the baskets of fruit. "You're the earth pony. Humans learn from classrooms all the time."

"Yeah?" Applejack sounded doubtful. "You tellin' me you'd rather be cooped up in those walls studyin'?"

"No."

She didn't see Applejack dump the fruit so much as hear it, and a few seconds further she made out the outline of shortish wagons with metal mesh on the sides, gradually filling with lemons. She spilled her own inside, and despite her fears most of them made it. She smiled in spite of herself, tossing the empty baskets into Applejack's pile.

"That's what I thought." They were at the edge of the orchard. Just past them was an athletic stadium, albeit one with only three rows of bleachers and only on the other side. It was mostly training equipment, and a few hundred people in similar tank tops and shorts going through their exercises.

Wherever they went, Applejack drew polite greetings, but then people got out of their way. It seemed she got preferential selection of the equipment. Yet the area they seemed to be walking towards looked poorly suited for any exercise Danielle knew about. "All the facts you need about... about having earth magic, I can teach you in an afternoon. After that, it's just about practicing what I taught ya'. Most of it's about knowin' yerself, yer body, and nature. There ain't no substitute for real experience."

Applejack led her to the training area: a raised platform about fifty feet long. It looked like the working of an insane architect, as numerous different substances had been set into the dirt, each about five feet wide. In a rack were several different wooden sticks wrapped in padding. Applejack took one, but gestured to the first part of the platform when Danielle tried to take one. "No, yer' place is there. Stand on the grass. And take yer' shoes off."

She did. Applejack tossed the stick high into the air, catching it again. A little crowd started to gather, training interrupted so they could mutter and point at her. Danni did not like what that implied for her next few minutes. She tossed her shoes aside, then stepped up, feeling awkward to have so many eyes on her. "What's this about?"

Applejack approached the edge of the platform. "You wouldn't be ready fer my class if you hadn't shown some power yet. Those baskets were proof." She swung as hard as she could, aiming straight at Danielle's knee.

She whimpered and retreated a little, but she was much too slow. Applejack's swing connected, in a way she knew should've broken bones. There was a harsh crack, and a brief sting, and splinters flew around her, the inch-thick stick broken where it had struck. "W-what happened?" She stared down, bewildered.

"This is the lesson ya' came for, ain't it?" She gestured to the next patch of ground, apparently ordinary sidewalk cement, picking up another stick from a nearby bucket. Instead of hitting her, she tossed it to Danielle. "Break it."

She did, snapping near two-inches of hardwood with little effort. "I already knew I could do that."

"I bet." Applejack walked a few more feet down, forcing her to follow along the upper platform. Some kind of tile. "So did ya notice yer strength comes and goes? How, sometimes you can run a marathon, and other times you ain't no stronger 'an anypony else?"

She nodded. "I thought I was imagining it at first. The times when I felt strong, I mean. The weak times make sense... I'm one of the shortest people I know, and I've never visited a gym I wasn’t trying to take for team Mystic. Have you ever smelled those places?"

"Yeah." Applejack gestured around them. "When I was just a filly, Granny told me her most important story. See, when all the animals and types'a ponies were made, each one got somethin'. There's lotsa borin' stuff in the middle about unicorns getting wisdom and pegasus ponies getting the wind and all that, but when it was all done it was just us earth ponies left, and all the gifts were gone. But the first earth pony... nobody knows her name anymore, on account of it bein' so long ago... when she was goin' home to her farm, afraid of what might happen to her living in a world with so many powerful neighbors, the ground heard her. She'd taken such good care of the earth on her farm, you see. She'd cared for all the flowers, and made sure all the animals were fed, and never cut down more 'an her fair share of trees for fields. So Earth was plumb grateful, and mighty worried about what might happen if she lost her best friend. That's when she gave us our gift: nothin' flashy, nothin' to write about in no books, just a promise."

Applejack swung hard, this time at Danielle's head. Again wood splintered, without anything besides a little sting. "A promise that she would take care of us. That we'd always have her blessing so long as we kept her close."

Danielle had read a story similar, though it'd been about something Greek. Hercules had been in it... why couldn't she remember? "So earth ponies... and I guess humans like you... get power from the ground. You've got a little pond a little further down, you're going to have me stand in it and then knock me around and show me it hurts, right?"

Applejack nodded. The stick was a lot smaller this time, more of a twig just long enough to reach up onto the platform. "I still gotta' do it. This kinda magic isn't about knowing, it's about feeling. Knowing yer' limits, mostly. Other ponies can be mighty fragile if ya aren't careful. And worse, you are too."

Danielle made her way into the cool water, and wasn't surprised when the stick smacked her. She winced, and found her arm went red almost the instant she'd been hit. Exactly what she would've expected before all the magic started. "So being wet..."

"Not just wet." Applejack got a little closer, so she didn't have to call so loudly. Conversation around them was getting louder. "Up in the air, or on somethin' weird."

She gestured at the next few platforms: a wooden floor, then carpet, then thick steel like deck plating. At least that platform was the last.

"Almost everythin' we build with comes from the earth at some stage, so you might think anythin' would be okay fer keepin' in touch." Standing on wood or carpet still hurt, though not nearly as much as the water had. The metal, though... that was worse than the water. Applejack didn't hit very hard, yet still the stick she had chosen stung fiercely. Maybe even more than she was used to.

"Why?"

"Nopony knows for sure. Best I reckon it has somethin' to do with metal being made from Earth's bones. All those vehicles you ponies make to go fast... cars and planes and whatnot... they're mighty dangerous to folks like us. When yer' inside, yer as fragile as anypony else."

She took one last stick, and shoved this time. Danielle fell, tumbling painfully off the platform. Yet she didn't scratch herself, and rolled to a stop at the bottom only dirty and annoyed. Mostly at all the laughter.

Applejack helped her up. "That's... basically it. Fer the rest of yer time, you'll be doin' all sorts a things with the others. Can't know yer limits until ya push em."

She looked around, at the assembled crowd. Most of them looked like her—ordinary, maybe even scrawny. A few had strange hair or eyes, like the ponies did. Equestrians in for practice too, no doubt. There weren't any other obvious tells. "If I have questions... am I allowed to ask you?"

"Sure!" She laughed. "If ya don't mind me tellin' you to figure it yerself, sometimes. That's how we do most things, round here."

Thinking about the prospect actually made Danielle a little more excited.

Author's Note

Fair warning: The fimfiction google docs importer appears to be tripping balls at the present time, so I expect some of my tags may have been lost. If it looks like a character's thought just floated its way into the narration in this chapter, that's probably why.

Chapter 12

Jacob nearly dropped his books as he made his way into the common room that night. "Eric?" His friend had wings, in soft blue but with bright accents down the edges. There was no mistaking biology when he saw it, though it was almost lost in the little changes. His friend was wearing a blue jumpsuit now, which explained the holes.

"Y-yeah." He nodded shyly. "It's... yeah."

Instead of surprised, Harley just looked satisfied. "They only had to shock him twice."

"Then push me off a cliff." Eric sounded only mildly annoyed. "Turns out clouds really are as soft as they look."
"Yeah, so it turns out she got the full set." Danielle's hair was still wet and wrapped in a towel, as though she had just showered. "Only got three out of the whole club and she got one of each. Pretty lucky, even if it means none of us will ever get classes together."

Jacob was hardly listening. This latest observation combined with what he had been seeing over the last day, and what he had experienced himself. Some of his fellow humans had wings, but some also had the strange hair and eyes going. He had eaten lunch with just one such individual, a former YouTube analyst who had disappeared right around when the movie came out. She'd had wings and crazy streaks in her hair that looked plenty natural to him. She wore a Cutie Mark on her clothes too, like the one the quartermaster was sewing for him.
Harley." He interrupted whatever his friends were saying, glaring at her across the table. "You said before our own government was targeting us. They saw magic as a dangerous contamination, didn't they?"

She nodded, looking a little uncomfortable. "Yeah."
Why? What dangerous thing does magic do?"

She pushed a little away from the table, shuffling uneasily.
Danni and Eric were staring at him. "What's wrong, Jacob?" Eric almost sounded hurt. "Aren't these wings awesome?"

"They are." He tried not to let his anger with Harley make it into his words to Eric. "It's just that I think Harley hasn't been telling us something important."

"What haven't I been telling you?”

“I think... I think magic makes us like them." He was talking mostly to his own friends now, gesturing at Harley. Of course, she could've gotten away if she wanted to. How hard would it have been to run?

"Jacob, stop," Harley said. She didn't sound upset, or angry. Her tone was flat. "We can have this conversation, but if we do, you guys all have to meet with Sunset after. Just... fair warning."

Danni glared at her. "Well, that settles it. Go on, Jacob."

Though Harley's tone made him a little nervous, a little encouragement from his friends was all Jacob needed to continue. "Some people get wings, some of them get the whole crazy hair thing going, or even horns and stuff. Some people get Cutie Marks."

Harley fumbled with a phone, then set it down on the table in front of them.

"They do?" Danni was incredulous. "Are you sure they don't just... pick them? Spend lots of time around ponies, and I bet there's social pressure."

"I'm quite sure." Anger gave him the confidence to overcome embarrassment, and he showed them. Showed them the golden thread and broken scissors that now stood out from his skin with a thin layer of colored coat where no hair ought to be.

Anger kept him going, though he couldn't have said at what. Did Jacob regret choosing to side with ponies? "Harley, how far does this go?"

Embarrassing or not, Jacob's display seemed to make the point. Eric and Danni were staring at her now. Eventually the pressure seemed to get to her, and she looked away. "It's... look, there's a reason we don't put you around too much magic at once. There's a reason you never spend time around regular ponies, and why your classes on magic are only a few hours each day."
"It's a time and severity thing. Like how you can get a few X-rays no problem, but if you work in an X-ray lab you have to be behind radiation shields or else you'll get sick. Same thing with magic. A little exposure over time, or even a few seconds of something intense, won't do anything. So long as you follow the rules you're taught, and never push yourself beyond that, you'll be fine."

"What happens to the people who screw up?" Danni asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "They... die? Radiation poisoning?"

"No!" Harley and Jacob answered together, though with very different tones. Harley was the one who explained, though. "Jacob is correct: too much time around pony magic can make you all the way into ponies. We usually avoid telling refugees about it, since it can be pretty scary..." She sighed.

"Here's the truth: follow the rules, and you won't be exposed too much for anything permanent to happen. But break them even for a little while, and it's just like other kinds of radiation poisoning. The damage is permanent. The only 'treatment' is to become a pony completely, then go through the portal. Starswirl worked powerful illusions that can make any pony appear close to human, and those illusions will work for you too. It's what I'm doing, it's what all the ponies from Equestria are doing. There are quite a number of refugees living in Unity right now that have already done it. They're often the ones most strict about magic exposure rules. Because they know what will happen to you if you don't follow them."

"But why would this even happen?" Jacob stared down at the wand in front of him, and felt suddenly like he had been running around with the fuel rod of an active reactor. He wondered if his skin on that leg would start glowing. "Wouldn't it make more sense if magic just killed us? Why change humans at all?"

She shrugged. "Now you're talking existential questions. Brainy stuff like that is for Sunset Shimmer or one of the princesses. I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to."

"But..." Eric continued, finally catching on to Jacob's reasoning. "But treating us like we're dangerous and ponies like... terrorists or whatever... makes a little more sense like this. It's super contagious, permanent, and life-changing. Just ‘cuz you ponies have rules here in Unity doesn't mean humans will follow them anywhere else."

"I... think you're working with a little bit of a misunderstanding here." Harley walked a few steps to the left, plucking a banana hanging on the rack. She didn't peel it, though. Jacob had never seen her eat. "I've been on Earth longer than most ponies, so I've picked up some stuff. You wanna talk radiation, let's talk radiation. There's radiation in this banana, because one of your planet's potassium isotopes happens to be radioactive. But I don't think it's even possible to overdose. You could eat bananas until you were sick"—she tossed her own back onto the counter with disdain—"and not get radiation poisoning."

"I don't get it," Eric started. "What does that have to do with what Equestria did?"

She paced back over to them. "Equestria wasn't sending enough magic to change anyone. It takes real powerful spells... the kind we have here, sure. But it would've taken you many years to make them on your own. Even then, it's the difference between eating bananas Equestria sent you and building your own particle accelerators and standing in 'em. Somepony else brought the monsters here, somepony else founded the Lighttenders, and somepony else has been working very hard to make ponies seem like your enemies. So if you're going to hate Equestria... and I've been there, believe me, then at least hate them for things they've really done."

She slumped back into her chair then, apparently spent.

There was silence at the table for several minutes, before Jacob cleared his throat. "So... we follow the rules, and we're safe? No more changing?"

Harley nodded.

"So what was it you said about us needing to see Sunset earlier?"

"So long as you don't have any more radical things to talk about. It's... just you, though. Normally it happens when you get your Cutie Mark, but I kinda didn’t tell her so you could spend more time with your friends..."

He glanced once from Danielle to Eric, then rose. "Sounds good. I'll let you two know what she tells me, don't worry."

They made their way through to the stairs, then went down. There was little activity this deep, though that might just have something to do with the time. People here were even more insane with how early they got up than many of his teachers back at university.

"You're probably going to lie to them," Harley said as they walked, conversationally.

"I doubt it. I wasn't super close to Danielle before, but now..."

"That's not what I mean." They got off the stairs, then made it less than a dozen steps to a pair of armed guards. He had seen more than a few in Unity, manning the fortifications, guarding the lower sections. They always looked stern, like many of the show's repeat guards had seemed.

Apparently they were expected. "Already, Harley?" One of the guards rose from his slight lean against the wall, looking between Jacob and the girl. "Two days?"

She glared back at him. "This kid is part of the reason anypony came back from Colorado Springs. Maybe finding ponies who adapt should be less freakish than finding losers who muddle around magic for months and never get anywhere."

The other guard holstered his gun over one shoulder, sticking out his hand. Harley handed over her phone. He pressed it to the wall, which beeped loudly, and the door clicked. "Thanks." He put one hand on Jacob's shoulder, looking him in the eye. "Spitfire was my first instructor in the academy. Tough old nag, but... she's already walking again thanks to you."

"It was mostly Twilight." He looked away, feeling awkward. "Give her the credit."

They made their way deeper into the mountain, a similar direction to the one they had gone on his first day in Unity. To the portal, then. There were two more guards outside, and this time they weren't human.

Jacob's first time seeing healthy ponies, and all he could think of was how adorable they looked. They had large, elevated platforms to stand on, but even so they looked far more cute than threatening. They resembled the show quite closely indeed, if the ponies had been maybe two feet and dressed in cute armor. They had no weapons, though both of these guards appeared to be unicorns.

"Is Sunset—"

The guards both shook their heads. "The door is shut, that means the Regent is occupied. When she opens the door, you can come in."

"Right, well..." She took Jacob's hand, tugging him down the hall. "I'm going to take this human out of blast range, if you don't mind. Holler when she's ready."

They didn't argue, and neither did Jacob. He still had a little trouble looking at the ponies without feeling strange. The fur on his Cutie Mark itched like crazy, and he felt unsteady. It was very much like what he had felt before.

"This feels a little unnecessary," he muttered, once they had found a spot about fifty feet away, out of sight around the corner. He slumped against the wall, hands in his lap. "If all Sunset does is lecture newbies who figure out your extremely obvious secrets, she can't have much free time."

"Not that." She gestured at his butt again. "I already told you, it's about the Cutie Mark."

"Whatever." He turned away, staring at the unmarked, carved wall. "I think my point still stands."

"Well..." She glanced once around them, then lowered her voice to a whisper. "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we're pretty dreadful at this. We try to narrow things down to the ones ready for magic, but even so we actually rescue less than half of you. Lots of those ponies weren't ready for a big change. But who can even blame them? It's not like you asked for this. Damn princesses didn't warn you, how were you supposed to know the propaganda was real? Err... real enough."

"You keep calling it that. In my class today they called the show an iterative thaumic-inducing historical transmission. Are you... Isn't it real?"

"Oh, it's real." She rolled her eyes. "Just remember who writes the history books." She leaned close to him, whispering into one of his ears. "The victors. So they put in some of their heroes, some significant events, whatever. Just don't treat the whole thing as gospel. Make decisions based on bad information, and you'll make bad decisions."

"Harlequin, are you still out there? Sunset's ready to see you."

Harley groaned, and she kept her voice low. "Same thing with Sunset. She's not a liar, but she's the Regent. Of course the system has to make itself look great. You don't have to swear fealty just because she's got a lightshow."

"Uh..." They started walking, Jacob feeling his low-level excitement gradually change to unease.

Chapter 13

Jacob made his way into the office alone, waving one last goodbye to Harley as she called that she would be “waiting outside.” It was a fairly large space, with one massive window facing into the portal room. Mirrored glass, though he had seen only the reflection from that side.

There was a table by the window, and two chairs, though the room's only occupant was behind her desk. He saw dark mahogany, polished glass surfaces and several fancy computer displays. The shelves held more than books, though his eyes had trouble looking closely at any of the objects there. He thought he had seen a few from some of the episodes, though.

Sunset Shimmer looked very much as he had expected. A little older than Twilight had been, though not by much. Bright hair, pale skin, and even brighter eyes. She had ditched the leather for something more formal. What she wore looked like a fancy navel uniform of sorts, with medals and ribbons and even a little band of metal around her ears. They called her the Regent. Guess the show must not have done a good job with her.

"You must be Jacob?" She pushed a manilla envelope away from her on the desk, then rose and offered her hand. "Congratulations on your Cutie Mark. I'm told the tailor will be done with your new garments by tomorrow. It's an important day for you."

Jacob took the offered hand with as much amusement as shyness, not meeting her eyes. As the other ponies he had met, she didn't sound anything like the voice actor who portrayed her, though she seemed to have some of the same intonations. Her appearance, while not exactly the same, was immediately obvious even without the sun Mark sewn over her breast. "Harley seemed to think so." His tone was flat, neither submissive nor angry. Unlike Harley, this pony really was involved in the decisions that had unraveled his life. How closely, he didn't know yet. "I'm surprised you're not a pony. You have ponies outside..."

"Sit." She took her own chair again, and he obeyed. "Does wearing this mask change what I am underneath?"

"No."

"No," she agreed. She pushed something towards him, a little green scrap of cloth. There was a medal on it.

Jacob lifted it off the table, feeling its unusual weight. The medal ended with a red and white ribbon at the bottom, and was set with Cadance's heart Mark. "What's this?"

"Only citizens of Equestria can be granted recognition for their acts. Reports of your behavior made it to me, but we had to wait. It's recognition for the heroism you demonstrated getting your friends to safety, and saving mine."

The medal itself looked silver, though it was a kind of silver he had never seen in person before. White gold, maybe? Or platinum... It sparkled like something more valuable than tungsten, that was for sure. "Your ponies were saving my life, and the lives of my friends, weren't they? Of course I was going to help in return."

"Everypony says that. But when our world crumbles and everything we knew is taken away from us, many break down. We become afraid, or angry. If Twilight told me the truth before she left, you did not do either. That's—"

He interrupted. "Don't take this the wrong way, Miss Sunset, but isn't Twilight a princess? I don't really understand much about ponies, but..."

She didn't look upset. "They all ask that. Twilight is a princess in Equestria, and so her position is valuable and her work important. But ever since I got the mirror working, I have been more involved with your civilization than anypony. Twilight wouldn't want my position—and neither would any of you refugees. Believe me, it sucks."

"Your movies kinda sucked."

She laughed, and the illusion of dignity was broken. "My influence on the corporation had been slipping for a long time by then. It's a long and interesting story, but not one for today." She cleared her throat. "Did Harley tell you what getting your Cutie Mark means?"

"It's important," he answered. "She always seemed to think it was important. Gave us... more rights or something. She said I could leave once I got it, if I wanted to..."

"And she was right. Though... a little more forthright than I might've been." She rose, walking past him towards the portal in the window. She didn't turn around. "Reaching this point in your development so soon is rare Jacob, so forgive me if some of this doesn't make sense. Most refugees do not arrive here so traumatically, so they usually develop more slowly."

"I... okay." He got up, following her. Standing, he was about an inch taller than Sunset, though he didn't get nearly close enough to be sure.

"Discovering your Cutie Mark is more than it ever was in the television show you've been following. It is your proof of adulthood, proof of citizenship... most importantly, it is proof that magic has accepted you."

"You're right." He followed her gaze to the mirror, though he could see nothing through it. He hadn't been able to see anything last time, yet through the fruit had come. "I don't understand."

"I'm sorry if this is traumatic." Sunset had a wand in her hand, so fast he hadn't even seen her fingers move. Like most wands, it was shorter than his own, a little stubbier. It still glowed, a flash of green so bright he had to cover his eyes.

The world shifted. Jacob couldn't see hands anymore, couldn't see his clothes or Sunset's or most of the objects in the room for that matter. There was a pony in front of him, made from orange light with a bright sun on her flank. She didn't seem small or cute anymore, but mature, powerful, confident. The kind of pony who could stop an army if she needed to.

Gray transparent walls rose up around him like monoliths, and Jacob himself was so very small. His hands were numb, rough stone touching four very not-hands. He wasn't holding a wand anymore, because he didn't need it. He had his own.

Sunset's voice echoed strangely in the space, yet it didn't sound pitch-shifted up the way the guards outside had sounded. "When those we save grow far enough to acquire Cutie Marks of their own, we teach them this difficult truth." She gestured, and one of the walls suddenly wasn't there. Instead there was a shimmering outline of green light, making room for them. Somehow, Jacob knew how to follow, and follow he did. Through the wall into the portal room, where plain glass had changed too.

While all the machines around it, all the conveyors waiting in the floor and machine-gun turrets folded aside in storage, all of those were transparent, the mirror itself was clear and solid. Instead of glass, Jacob saw straight through to the other side, to the sun and green grass and sweet-smelling flowers. "The difficult truth is this, Jacob. You have already seen magic enough to change the rest of the way. So far as anyone is concerned, you aren't human anymore."

He whimpered, though he managed to fight back anything more. "N-no. I don't want..."

"I am Celestia's appointed Regent. No pony of hers will be forced into fighting a war, even if their hooves are badly needed." They were right beside the portal. Had they even walked there? She gestured, and her hoof passed through the edge, lighting up with an alien sunlight. "You may go now, and leave us to fight for you. Or... you can stay." She walked down the ramp again, back towards the office. The wall was still missing. She stopped after only a few steps, though. "Stay with us, and you may die. You will be required to take up your wand to fight for your fellow ponies. If you stay, you aren't a refugee, but a citizen. A soldier."

Jacob took one last look at the golden grass, smelling the sweet scent of the flowers that came from beyond. Somehow he knew that if he walked through that door, nopony on the other side would judge him. He had already saved his fair share of lives, or at least helped. He could go and... if not get his life back, at least get another life worth living over there.

Then he remembered Michelle, a sister he might never see again. She might be his only living family, but so far as Jacob was concerned, that was enough. To say nothing of the other life he had left, the years he had already invested into school, and the career he had wanted to do. Did Equestria need human architects?

He turned away. "I don't want to go... but I don't want to hurt anyone, either. I might not make a very good soldier."

"Most of us don't." He followed Sunset back into the office. "You did very well already. If you thought magic was useful before, imagine how effective you will become once you actually learn it. Princess Twilight has gone back to Equestria, but there's still a war. The ponies here could use another doctor."

"Yes." He nodded, and with that his decision was made. "I'm staying."

Something flashed, and all the world returned to normal. Jacob found the furniture had shrunk back down to the height he expected. The window into the portal room was intact, and his clothes were right where he expected them to be. Sunset too had returned to her human body, showing no sign that anything had just happened.

"Welcome to your princess's service, Jacob." Instead of shaking his hand, she embraced him. "You won't regret this."

"Uh..." She broke away quickly, for which he was grateful. "What was that, just now? Was I just..."

She nodded. "And still are. Whether you ever look that way permanently is up to you. The rules, I'm sure you already know. If you want to stay human, then stay away from magic. It can..." She blushed, turning away. "Well, sorry about the eyes. It's always a gamble, such a powerful spell... but they make great contacts! You could even order some with your new stipend. I'll, uh... make sure the first month is a few hundred higher than normal."

Jacob turned to face his reflection in the window, but couldn't see much. It didn't hurt, and he wasn't blind. "I get a stipend?"

"Along with new duties." Sunset handed him a thick folder, the same one she had been looking at earlier. "You may remember the losses we suffered bringing in your group. We're accelerating your training. We need you. And your friends too. So if you could help them find their Cutie Marks too, I would be very grateful."

"Yeah," he answered, taking a step back. "Just... before I go, one more thing."

"Yeah?" She sounded more nervous than she had been before.

"I'm sure I'm... wanted on the outside, or presumed dead, or something. I'm sure you'll want to lecture me about how everyone's better off thinking that. Just pretend you gave me that lecture, and then I'm going to ask again: can I get in touch with my family? Harley said you were the only pony to ask about that."

"Well, uh... yes." She took her seat, and didn't meet his eyes. "There's an ID in that folder... it can open the door to the internet cafe downstairs. Just know that we heavily monitor outgoing traffic to keep our location secret. Anything you say won't be private, you can't talk about anything that might be used to find Unity, and if talking to your loved ones puts them in danger, we can't rescue them." She looked sympathetic as she said that last.

"I understand. And all that's fine. I just want my sister to know I'm okay."

And Jacob was careful. He couldn't know how Michelle was doing without some kind of direct communication, anything that might be tracked to him. Yet there were other forms, forms he could be sure would remain well-hidden from whatever government entities might be tracking her. Using his brand new money, Jacob made a new Amazon account, and ordered up several of the worst movies he knew of. Double Down, Samurai Cop 2, and Space Cop were very unlikely to trigger any kind of watch-list or monitoring software he knew of, except perhaps for those with even a modicum of taste.

He and Michelle had never had any of that, though. Watching bad movies had been one of their favorite bonding activities, and those particular titles some of their favorites. Instead of ordering them to wherever he was living—God only knew what country they were in, let alone where—Jacob ordered them delivered to his sister's roommates, and put an Amazon gift-note in asking they actually be given to Michelle instead.

Jacob spread these movies out to once a month, and resolved to make them his way of making sure Michelle knew he was okay. Unfortunately, communication would go only one way, but that would have to do for now. Everyone he talked to had horror stories of what happened to relatives and loved-ones of those who had joined, and those stories usually began with open communication even though they all knew it was a terrible idea. Jacob didn't abandon the idea, he just resolved to consider it a little longer. Until he came up with some way to contact her that wouldn't clue in anyone watching her that she had made contact with him.

He had very little time to think about it, no matter how important it might be to him. Sunset hadn't lied when she said she had moved him forward in his training, because suddenly the empty classrooms where he was told about the dangers of poking eyes out with horns were replaced with a single group always packed into a little basement room, where they learned magical healing from an Equestrian expert in the field.

There were textbooks, printed the size of paperbacks but with obscenely small text, memorization, homework... basically everything he had left behind. Except now he wasn't trying to become an architect. As fascinated as he was by the method the ponies had used to build their fort at the top of a mountain, and the way they locally manipulated weather so it was always veiled in clouds and yet never cold or windy, he knew that wasn't what Celestia's "army" really needed.

That they were at war they were never allowed to forget. The number of people in Unity seemed to be always dwindling—several other small groups came in about their size, and all joined into a single living area for displaced refugees, yet no bigger batches came in. Either they weren't trying to save big clubs worth of people, or... they weren't succeeding. Either way, it was abundantly clear to Jacob that this was not a winning war.

After the first month, Eric got his Cutie Mark, and made the same decision Jacob had. After the third, Danielle still hadn't and she was getting frustrated.

December was a frustrating time all around, really. Harley was sent back to duty, though she had only dark stories to tell from that time and seemed to hang out with the three of them whenever she was "at base." If she had any more successes with rescue, she didn't mention them, and her mood deflated along with the rest of Unity.

Jacob studied magical theory with the same rigor he had ever learned multivariable calculus or CAD. The magic he had wrought on the flight over had been powerful stuff, and maybe had helped to save some lives. Even as circumstances turned him from a student architect to a prospective field-surgeon, he did his best to keep up on what he had been studying back at University. There was the remote chance that he would one day be able to return.

The chances of that seemed more and more remote with each passing day. Though he didn't dare try to log into any of his old accounts, he did do public access reading for the newspapers of Colorado Springs during the time he had been dragged away.

The front page for that Saturday's paper had an image of a burned-out classroom, and the headline "41 Dead in University Lab Explosion." Sure enough, his own name was among the dead, though there was no mention of what club had been meeting at the time, or anything about government involvement. A few weeks later talked about a memorial service on campus, and grief counseling offered to students. And just like that, we've been erased from existence.

Chapter 14

Elise knew she should be proud. It was rare she had cause to wear her uniform, and even rarer she had the privilege of changing her rank insignia. Special Agent Avery had saved more lives in the last six months than any surviving field agent. Her strategy—hunting down the targeted class and putting them into preemptive custody—had cut kidnappings down from 3/4ths to 1/10th in just a few months.

Now that the champagne was gone, the congratulations were over and her fellow agents had all returned to work, there was only her and her immediate supervisor left in the headquarters ballroom.

"I said not to drink too much," Director Pierce joked, setting down his own empty glass. "How'd you do?"

"Fine, sir," she responded, not even a little bit buzzed. "I guessed you would have something for me when the festivities were over." She lowered her voice a little, though there was nobody around to overhear. "We both know promotions only bring more responsibilities without much better pay. I'm guessing it isn't more of the same, though."

He nodded. "You're too valuable to put into danger on containment missions anymore. We have rookies for that, and they can study all your mission reports on the subject." He rose, and she did too. "As of now, you're moving from containment to sterilization. Time to bring the fight to them."

"Really?" Avery straightened her uniform subconsciously as she followed him from the room. "We finally tracked the incursions?"

"No." Pierce's answer was matter-of-fact. "But you will. We have an idea, but I haven't been given the details. Over my pay grade."

"But..." she began. The halls of Headquarters were deserted this late into the night. Even so, she had to be very careful with what she said. "Don't you answer to the Joint Chiefs?"

"Officially, yes. That isn't who you're meeting with, though." He stopped in front of a nearby door, unmarked except for its number. Avery had no idea what was behind it. "The Joint Chiefs might write our orders, but she writes our checks. You'll recognize her once you step through that door..." He reached into his pocket, handing her a sealed slip of paper.

"Your new orders. The senator has your new mission. Obey her orders as you would mine."

Avery unsealed the sheet and read it quickly. It was a slightly more official-sounding version of exactly what Pierce had just said. She slipped it into one of her uniform-pockets, then saluted. "Yes, sir."

"Very good." He waved, then set off down the hall. "My hands are off this one, Avery. Means you have full requisitions clearance for anything and everything you need. Please don't ask for anything that will make the bean-counters want to lynch me six months from now."

"I won't, sir." She opened the door.

The room beyond was more or less what she had expected: a hastily-reconfigured storage closet. All the shelves had been removed, though there were still marks on the carpet from where they had stood. In their place was a pair of large metal objects, which looked just barely wide enough to make it through the door. Both were approximately square, and slightly larger than the steel containment cubes she used to bring in critically contaminated individuals.

Of course, there was no getting over the one standing beside them. Not just Pierce's supervising senator, though she was that. It was Senator Maria Hunter, presidential hopeful, strong frontrunner, and general revolutionary. She was one of the tallest women Avery had ever seen, her hair long and black with a few streaks of gray. Either by virtue of treatment, surgery, or good genes, she had few wrinkles, and could have easily been mistaken for someone half her age. She dressed as she always did in her TV spots and advertisements, in a stylish black pantsuit with a flag on her breast, and a little symbol of her political party on the other.

Avery had never seen her more than a few feet from a dozen aides, secret service, and other helpers, yet there wasn't a single one waiting in the empty room. That doesn't mean they aren't watching. "Special Agent Avery." She waved to a chair across from her, just beside the covered objects. "I'm so glad you could make it."

"Senator Maria Hunter." She saluted, though the gesture was not necessary. Most civilians didn't seem to know that, and enjoyed the respect. The senator appeared to be one of those. "Forgive me. If I'd known I was keeping you waiting, I would have left the party early." She sat.

"No, no." She spoke with a voice like dark chocolate, smooth and unusually rich. So it was true, they didn't doctor it for her advertisements. She really did sound that way. "I understand your service has been vital over the last three months. You more than earned that celebrating, regardless of what it meant for my schedule."

There was an awkward silence then, as the woman looked her over. Avery sat with back straight and arms folded, respectfully silent. She resisted the urge to look at whatever had been brought in here, instead focusing on the blank wall to Senator Hunter’s left. "Director Pierce said you have new orders for me. Something ‘need to know,’ because he couldn't tell me what it was."

"That's correct." She reached into her vest, removing a plain envelope, unsealed. "The details are all right here. Even so, I would rather explain it. You can have this when we're done, but... I find a conversation face to face eliminates the possibility of misunderstanding."

"Alright, ma'am. I'm listening."

"To the point." She chuckled, setting the envelope down on one of her legs. "Very well. I'll begin by informing you of the basics of the mission. No one could force you to take an assignment like this, chain of command notwithstanding. If you accept your assignment, you may not later refuse. Do you understand?"

She wasn't sure it quite worked that way, but... Avery got the idea. It wasn't that she couldn't refuse a mission—it was that this woman would destroy her career if she did. And possibly get her incarcerated until the information she was told was no longer secret. That could be a lifetime. "I understand."

"You have been assigned to containment." The woman continued. "So you won't know many details of how the sterilization team has been doing. Sparing you the details, we have tried every conceivable method for locating the point of incursion."

"I've heard that much. We think it moves, right? So it isn't ever in one place long enough for us to track the damn thing down."

"Right. The best minds have considered a number of methods. We've tried letting kidnappings succeed, for instance, but planted tracking devices on those who go missing. We've tried having our own pose as victims—either they don't come back, or the enemy can somehow tell them apart. We've tried tracking their aircraft... you get the idea."

She nodded again. "Am I being assigned to the team plotting the next strategy for finding them? With respect, I don't want to be behind a desk, ma'am. Not while this country is under attack."

The senator smiled. "No, no. I'm aware of that, or else you might have been reassigned months ago." She cleared her throat. "Suffice it to say we've conceived a way to plant you with the next group, a way we're sure will succeed. Combined with new tracking methods, you will ride along with the enemy to their stronghold, reveal its location to us, and escape again."

Only the most dangerous mission possible. She might not know all the details, but Avery knew that none of their agents who had managed to hide along with the kids their enemy was stealing had ever come back. Maybe they were still alive, being held to one day exchange for the prisoners they held in containment. Avery didn't know, because they didn't negotiate with terrorists.

That explained why she wasn't being forced into it. A mission guaranteed to put her in danger and with a serious chance of getting her killed wasn't the sort of place you sent an agent who wasn't a volunteer. Forcing someone up against their own mortality was the fastest way to get defectors.

"Do we still think the contamination all originates from a single source?" Avery asked, her voice flat.

"Yes. If you succeed, you won't just save American lives. You'll end the whole war."

"I'll do it."

"Are you absolutely sure? Our proposed method will be quite unpleasant. I have no doubt it will be the most difficult thing you've ever done."

"I know what you plan to do," she responded, still flat and confident. "I've been fighting for nearly eight months now: I'm well aware there's only one way to guarantee they'll take me. I would have to be infected. Severely."

Senator Hunter tensed immediately, clutching at the envelope on her leg. "We still haven't found a cure. Even if you are successful, even if you survive, you might end up in containment with all the others. You would still be a danger."

Avery shrugged. "If it means ending this... then it doesn't matter what might happen." She looked away, her whole body tensing. "I'll do it."

"Very well." Senator Maria Hunter tapped her ear, along an earpiece Avery hadn't noticed until that moment. "Send the technicians in."

The door opened mere seconds later, and a pair of scientists entered. They wore the same uniforms that her own department's staff wore, though they had no identification badges and had hololens masks over their faces. They nodded respectfully to her, though neither spoke. She couldn't see their real eyes, so couldn't guess how sincere their respect really was.

"You've already guessed what they're about to do to you. Before that, I'll give you the rest of the details."

Avery nodded, ignoring the technicians as they removed the cloth covering both containers. One was an unmarked crate, and they started to work on its many latches. The other really was a containment pod, exactly like the sort they normally used to contain the critically infected. Waiting for me.

"We've tracked another serious contamination to Ohio State University, and we suspect the enemy is already on the ground. Instead of deploying a ground team, we're going to drop you in."

"You pull back everyone and it’ll tip them off," Avery offered. "We've been creaming them. If suddenly they scoop everyone up without a fight, they'll be suspicious. More than... I'm guessing they already will be."

"Maybe less than you think." Senator Hunter handed her the envelope.

She opened it quickly, revealing a photograph along with several pages of information about one Allie Langford. It was quite the extensive file.

"We took her into custody about a week ago, and we've put together all of that. Since the infected seem to bear little physical similarities to the people they used to be, they shouldn't know you're too old or that you're not really her. Memorize everything on those sheets while my men get the equipment ready."

She heard them at work. Though she wasn't watching closely, she could see they had already opened the crate, ready to receive her. Every now and then there was a strange sound from behind her, like glass or metal clanking onto something heavy.

She tried to ignore it as they spread gel on her skin and applied contacts as though she were having a brain-scan. Avery knew nothing about research efforts into the infection, though it didn't surprise her the labcoats had an artificial way to induce it. It's always easier to harm than to heal.

Her alias was a good choice—a well-liked but not particularly intelligent member of Ohio State’s Brony community. She was an exchange student from Canada, so didn't have any local family to know uncomfortable specifics about her life that she wouldn't be able to tell. She wasn't actually a student at Ohio State, but at the local cosmetology school. She had a list of friends’ names, a few recent events she should know about, and Miss Langford’s other interests and favorite things. She memorized it all with the ease she always incorporated mission details.

By the time she was done, the technicians had removed her shoes, loosened her collar, and applied a dozen contacts at different points of her body. They were all connected with shimmering wire, wire that led back to something she couldn't see.

The taller of the two technicians removed a well-worn wooden box from the crate, about the size of a jewelry box, trailing cable all the way. They handed it to the senator, then bowed and retreated from the room.

"You're staying?" she asked, her tone a little less polite than it had been. Knowing she might very well be about to die had a way of cutting into her formality. "Aren't you afraid of exposure?"

"No." There was something sinister in that voice. "You've learned by now there are varying susceptibilities. More of our field agents have to be recalled because they're showing early signs of infection than are killed in battle. Like you, I am resistant. It's part of why I was appointed to oversee the war." She rose to her feet, holding the box in both hands. She flipped open the lid, which was on a little hinge like a jewelry box. Light came from within, light Avery shied away from out of reflex. She knew the glow of dangerous radiation when she saw it.

"I'm sorry if this hurts, Agent Avery. Know that even if you fail, you will be making a great sacrifice for your country, and it will be remembered."

"I understand." Avery looked away, closing her eyes. She didn't want to see this happen. Maybe if she wasn't watching, it would bother her less. It was all she could do to resist the urge to tear the contacts off and run for her life.

I can't, she thought. They're going to stop killing kids because of me. What's more important than that?

Senator Hunter had been lying when she said it might hurt. It did hurt, tremendously. Avery started screaming, and she kept screaming until merciful unconsciousness finally came.

Chapter 15

"We're ready for this," Danielle repeated, for maybe the tenth time. They were walking between the buildings of a busy apartment complex, but nobody paid them any mind. They were all the right age to be living there, after all.

"Sunset thought so." Eric walked just in front of her, his wings hidden in a backpack he had cut the back out of. It worked, though she could still make out the strange shapes poking through the fabric. That, and she just knew it must be super uncomfortable.

"It's not a big deal," Harley called back, twisting her wand about between her fingers. Clearly she meant what she said, because she was the only one of their number wearing a fandom shirt, albeit with the bottom twisted and tightened so that the Chrysalis design was barely visible. "Not only are there a dozen ponies screening the complex right now, but we have Princess Twilight back as our coordinator.

"Are there... any monsters here?" Jacob kept pace with her, dressed a little more inconspicuously, though she could see the tip of his wand emerging from the inside of his jacket. "Something brought us, right?"

"It's always magic." Harley alone seemed to know where she was going, following the subtle twistings the wood made in her hand. Danielle didn't really know: no wand had ever done a damn thing for her. "There's more here than we've ever encountered. More than a monster. Smart bits say there's a pony in there."

"How?" She couldn't help but be indignant. "You haven't been in touch with this group, have you?"

"No..." Harley sounded defensive. "But they had the propaganda, same as anypony else. It's theoretically possible for them to work it out on their own. It doesn't happen often, we're talking spontaneous princess level here."

As they neared their destination—the apartment clubhouse—Danielle could hear the familiar sound of Brony music coming from within, and found it quite comforting. The ponies themselves didn't seem too keen on Electronic, at least not the ones who lived in Unity. "So why are we going in instead of someone more experienced?"

Harley lowered her voice. "Can you think of an easier first rescue? If one of them is already a pony, odds are they're spewing magic like a skunk sprays stink. We walk right in, explain everything, then we get the whole group out before anypony's the wiser."

"Sounds simple." Danielle shoved past them both, an effort that required a fair bit of control. If she wasn't careful, she could shove her friends through a wall. Much of her training wasn't so much to get stronger as it was to learn how to use her strength.

"Have it your way." Harley glared at her. "You do the talking. I'll just step in if it looks like you're losing control of the situation."

"Won't happen." She made herself sound confident as she clicked the door open. Well, tried. Rather than clicking to show it was locked, the door went a few inches then struck something soft.

Someone grunted from within. "Can't come in!" a voice croaked, suppressing a whimper. "Come back later!"

So obviously not anything official. They would've just locked the door. Danielle braced her shoulder on the door, then started walking. It didn't matter how heavy the person was on the other side, or how determined. She heard something screeching, and several people stumbled backward away from the doorway as she opened it.

See Bronies one place, see them everywhere. As she swung the door open, the little clubhouse came into view, all beige paint and surplus furniture. Some of that furniture had been pushed into her way, though she easily shoved her way through all of it.

The space wasn't terribly large, just big enough for two dozen people or so. It was only a single room, though there was a kitchen off to one side and lots of furniture packed around a few big TVs. A fairly comfortable space for a party, made moreso by the snacks on every table and the constant music.

"I said keep people out!" someone called from the kitchen, their tone filled with frustration.

"We tried!" a large kid said from just beside her, falling onto his back next to the old couch. "They're too strong."

Danielle had no intention of standing there and waiting for these Bronies to come to the wrong conclusion. That she had found the right place she didn't doubt, and even more fortunate, there was no sign of police or anyone else official. Perfect. "Excuse me!" she shouted over the murmurs and the music. "There's a pony here, right? We've come to find the pony, but we don't have much time."

Silence fell, silence except for the dull thumping of the music. If they hadn't been watching her before, every eye now turned, though she was still one of the shortest people in the room and blocked by many heads.

A young man responded, a little less confident than he had sounded the first time. "Over here."

They hurried over. Anyone who was a little too slow, Danielle encouraged, clearing the path for herself and Jacob. Eric and Harley hovered back by the exit, but she didn't listen to anything they said. Harley hadn't needed to give this mission to her for Danielle to decide she was going to take charge. It was high time she do something worthy of the rescue they had given her.

She found the pony in the kitchen, wrapped in blankets and pillows stolen from furniture around the room. She was surrounded by at least half the crowd, protecting her as much as they stared in wonder. The other half of those assembled here seemed more afraid than entranced, and they kept their distance.

"How did you know this would happen?" The one who had spoken before was a tall, wiry kid who couldn't have been nineteen. Yet only he seemed to have the courage to address her. "Are you responsible?"

"No." There was such confidence in her response that the kid's next question died in his mouth before he could ask it. Danni dropped to her knees, making her way down beside the pony. "Excuse me, are you alright?"

"Y-yes." The speaker sounded less afraid than everyone seemed to expect, yet all pony voices were higher than human. This made her sound more childish than she probably was, and maybe more afraid too. She was an earth pony, with a dark mane and spots around her hooves. Her Cutie Mark was some kind of bird perched on a twig, though she didn't inspect it long. It hurt too much that she didn't have one, despite the three months she had been living with them.

"Good. Just stay there—we'll get you out soon." She rose.

"They sound like they came to kidnap Allie," someone whispered, close enough that Danni could still hear.

She answered before the tall kid could, not caring that she wasn't even at a height with his shoulders. "No, we haven't." She jumped up on the couch nearby, in a single smooth leap. Better coordination might not be as flashy as strength, but it could be just as useful. "Could somebody cut the music?! It will make explaining this easier."

Someone did, and soon the room was well and truly silent. From the ground, the pony sat up on her haunches, watching with interest. Less shock than I expected. Guess some magical prodigy would be better at being something new than a regular person.

Jacob stood just beside her—even standing on the ground, he was about her height now, which was positively infuriating. "We don't have much time, everyone. We're sorry this has to be so rushed, but there are some very good reasons."

They explained. By now, there were even more historical examples of missing bronies to point to. It didn't matter if someone went to meetups or not, was in a club or not, they weren't safe. The bigger gatherings seemed particularly vulnerable, so much so that many campuses had banned them "for student safety." It seemed this one had followed the general trend of just meeting somewhere else.

Many still doubted the validity of the danger. They could do little more than bear heartfelt witness of the things they had seen, demonstrate a little magic, and pray people got the message. It was a horrific thing to ask someone to leave their life behind—Danni knew better than most.

It seemed positively fantastic luck on their part they had managed to get here so far ahead of their enemy that there weren't any soldiers to fight or police to run away from. She thought that, about until she started hearing sirens. Sirens that, almost at once, were drowned out by the constant roar of a helicopter's blades.

"Pony!" She shouted, hopping back down.

"Allie," the pony answered, suddenly a little tentative. That put her reaction about on par with the rest of her friends, who were starting to shift uncomfortably.

"Right." She lowered her hands. "With your permission, I'll carry you. You probably don't know how to move yet, and I'm the strongest one here."

"You're..." She trailed off, then sighed. "Fine."

Danni scooped the pony into her arms as she might've done to a large cat, supporting her legs with one arm. Where the sight of one of the strange creatures had confounded her a few months ago, she found them easy to ignore these days. The insane and disturbing both could become mundane. She made her way towards the single exit faster than most club members.

"If you go to the police, you won't be safe!" Harley's voice carried over the confusion, over the distant sirens. "And you won't get to change your mind!"

"We have an airlift waiting!" Jacob added, kicking the door open. As Danielle knew to expect, there were about a dozen people already waiting in the parking lot, all winged pegasi ready to lift. The massive evacuation helicopter sent clouds of dust scattering all around it, and was so loud she almost couldn't think. There was a helmet waiting for her up there that would make the sound less overwhelming, but she would have to make it up.

They spread out, circling around the locals who chose to stay. Not all of them did—a few screamed insults, or tried to persuade their colleagues not to listen to them. "These are obviously the ones kidnapping us!" shouted the same one who had been reluctant to let them see the pony in the first place. "Promising to be able to help with 'magic' is one thing, but stealing us away on a helicopter?"

"They're flying around, Chris," someone argued. "Could they really be bad?"

"That's the stupidest reasoning I ever heard!" He stomped towards Danni, his posture becoming more and more hostile with each step. "You can't take Allie!" He made to reach down for the pony she was carrying, glaring at her. "Give her back!"

To Danni's surprise, Allie reacted before she could, snapping at the outstretched fingers. "Hey Chris, back off! You can do what you want, but I trust them."

"Oh." He deflated. "Really, Allie? You're gonna side with them?"

"Yes."

"You hear that, everyone?" Danni raised her voice, holding her up a little so they could see. Unlike her, these humans hadn't really adapted to the sight of a pony for themselves. They were painfully adorable, but they were also a little difficult to look at if you weren't ready for them. "Allie says she trusts us! Allie says she's coming with us! Trust her, and you'll be safe! Go that way"—she gestured towards the flashing lights coming down the road—"and you'll never see your families again."

The pony in her arms seemed to scrunch down at all the attention, looking away from the little crowd. Danni didn't question why she looked so uncomfortable, not when she could already hear distant echoes of “This is the police, remain where you are!”

Many of the naysayers appeared convinced by their words, because they hopped into the arms of waiting pegasi and soared up to the helicopter. Rather than shooting at them, police seemed to be shooting at the aircraft—with no effect at all. A little shimmer kept the bullets away, deflecting them well away from the massive spinning blades.

"Time to go." She turned to see Eric, backpack on the ground and wings exposed, offering one hand to her. "I got you."

"You sure?" She raised an eyebrow, searching for another “pegasus.” They seemed to be mostly concentrating on the new refugees, leaving the rescue team to their own devices.

"Yeah!" He didn't wait, wrapping his arms around them both and taking off in a flurry of flapping wings. His flying was unsteady, erratic, and not half as fast as the trained pegasi helping others into the helicopter. His grip was weaker too, and already she started slipping.

Danielle sighed and wrapped her legs around his with a viselike grip—far weaker than she would've had on the ground, but strong enough to take the strain off him. Strong or not, she didn't think either of them would survive the fall if Eric dropped them. "See, this is what I mean!"

They made it inside a second later, Eric collapsing onto his knees beside her and breathing heavily. "They... make that look so much easier..."

"You did fine." Someone pulled Eric out of the doorway, shoving him roughly into a seat. A second later Danni felt someone grip her by the shoulder and do the same, then help the pony out of her arms.

It was Princess Twilight, a headset on her head and a wand in her hand. She passed Allie to one of the pegasi like a sickly child. "Take her to medical." They did.

"Is that everypony?" Twilight asked, making her way back towards the open door. Wind rushed outside, and the sound of gunfire had become quite regular. The cops were trying to shoot them down.

There was a loud bang and a flash, and suddenly Harley and Jacob appeared beside her. Harley wilted immediately from the strain, though Jacob caught her. "The rest won't come!" he called, urgent. "We were the last."

"Ponies didn't come?" Twilight shook her head in frustration, then gestured sharply. The doors began to close. "Thunderlane, get us out." She looked around the helicopter, at the flurry of activity, the absence of injured, and so many full seats. "Let's not stick around for them to take away our victory."

Chapter 16

Jacob learned that day there was a bar somewhere near the roof of the largest structure in Unity, where there was always enough of “the good cider” for every pony returning from a difficult or successful mission. The four of them got a table near the balcony, where those who could fly were free to come and go. “That was about the smoothest mission I’ve ever seen.” Harley toasted with a rough wooden mug, and they all drank (except Danielle, who only had water).

The excitement was infectious, blush on his cheeks notwithstanding. He had heard something similar moving through the whole of Unity as news of fifty-two refugees brought to safety was passed around. Jacob could share that enthusiasm, even if he didn’t feel as much like they had earned it. It seemed more like whoever points us at ponies for rescuing should get the credit. They were the ones who found an actual pony that the bad guys hadn’t found yet. The “bad guys” everyone (including Harley) were notoriously tight-lipped about. Maybe she would be looser with what she knew after a little alcohol and a little success? “So who’d we just beat? It can’t be the police, right? Police wouldn’t have known to come in force.”

“Nah.” Harley set her drink down. “Not the police. We’ve been over that before. Those ponies end up in our way because of the ones they have to listen to.” She gestured vaguely with one hand out the balcony and over the grounds. The large crowd of new refugees was all out there, getting a tour. Well, all except the pony.

Now that he knew the consequences of magical exposure, Jacob had no more desire to break the rules and hadn’t tried to visit the small sections of Unity where ponies without human features spent their time. No doubt the poor Allie was getting counseling right now, or maybe coming back through the mirror so she could get one of those solid illusions the ponies used. He was a little vague on the details for those, though he suspected it was some kind of reverse of what was going on with himself and other humans who spent too long around magic.

Danielle spoke up, her voice quiet enough that those at other tables might have trouble hearing. “So who are they? I get why someone might want to stop us—exposing the world to magic that can change all of us against our will is something lots of people would want to fight. But… maybe if we knew more about them, we could help you come up with even better ways to fight.”

Harley narrowed her eyes at her a moment, then shrugged. She gestured for them all to lean closer, and they did without objection. “So, you gotta take this with a drop of love, because we can only guess about lots of this. Say what you want about magic, but ponies are next to useless with espionage. They know way more about us than we know about them, and we still don’t know who their sources are. Probably not anypony in Unity, but it seems like they know someone from Equestria. Not to mention they”—she tensed—“don’t let themselves be captured alive. Every one of the important ones has a false tooth right here.” She gestured into her mouth, at one of the back molars. “They’ll kill themselves rather than let us interrogate them. Smart bastards.”

“Would you torture them or something?” Eric asked.

She laughed, and took another long swig of her cider. “You kidding? All we’d have to do is take them back to Celestia and have her ask nicely to know what we wanted. Works every time.”

Jacob doubted that very much, but he wasn’t about to say so when it wasn’t what he actually cared about. “So what do you know?”

“We’re pretty damn sure the ones in charge are all part of the same group, called the ‘Light Tenders.’ That’s about the most we’ve ever gotten out of one before they…” She shook her head. Though she had a stronger stomach than most ponies, even Harley had her limits. Jacob didn’t press her, waiting for her to continue on her own. “So ponies have dug up as much of the history as they can find. Damn near nothing. Ancient buggers, we’re talking at least a thousand years ago. All the old legends about them describe their start as a branch of one of your religions that were all banned for… something or other. Only they escaped getting killed, and kept on doing their thing.”

“That’s the stupidest, vaguest crap I’ve ever heard.” Danielle pushed over her empty glass.

“I know!” Jacob couldn’t tell if Harley was amused or upset. “Imagine the face on the Princess of Libraries when she couldn’t learn something from books. I can hardly imagine the crisis of faith.”

She drained her tankard in another few drafts before she continued. “We’ve found bits and pieces of their writing and it’s all the same sorta stuff. Basically, how their saint showed up to tell them that humans were weak compared to all the monsters and stuff out there. Their saint could show them how to fight them.”

“Lots of people believed in that stuff back then,” Eric said. “Demons, dragons, trolls…”

“Well I guess you were smarter back then!” She held up her glass. “Wench! I require more booze!”

The “wench” was a teenager about seventeen or eighteen, with pink-red hair and a fierce glare on her face. She slammed a new tankard down in front of Harley so hard it chipped and a little slopped out onto her front. “Oops.”

“Apple Bloom?” Jacob couldn’t help but ask, though he couldn’t meet her eyes for very long. He had seen the damage an earth pony could do in Danni, and she wasn’t even a pony.

“If my sister would let me do anything more important, I would.” She took the empty tankard in her arms, then stalked off.

Harley didn’t seem to notice. “But you’re right, they’re pretty damn rare here. We used to be positive the only ones here must have come from Equestria at some point, or been dumped here by irresponsible wizards. But…” She took another sip. “The monster mash always seems to show up in town when we get there to save you refugees, and that just doesn’t make sense. True, they need magic to live, and you guys can be a helpless new source… but it’s a damn strange coincidence to keep happening over and over.”

“So who knows? Maybe they’ve been catching and taming the damn things, so they can send them in like shock troops whenever they visit. Assholes seem to have figured out the pony bleeding heart thing, so props for that I guess.”

“The real point is that the Light Tenders got it in their heads that we ponies are the latest threat to ‘humanity’ or whatever. And we’re not sure who, but we’re pretty sure they’ve got hooves in the American Military and the Canadian Parliament and lots of other places. Cuz no matter where we go, there’s somepony to stop us. Well… except for the poor countries, but most of them didn’t really get hit by the propaganda anyway, so it’s pointless.”

“Is that really all you know?” Jacob was indignant. “You’ve been fighting them for a year, and you aren’t even sure who you’re fighting?”

Harley shrugged. “It’s all I know. The important ponies haven’t gotten a spy in who came back, big surprise. If they’d take my damn suggestions, I’m sure we’d have all their damn secrets by now. But no, we’re too good for getting help, never mind that the new enemies shoot to kill while the old ones only maimed.”

Something loud echoed over the grounds, something that froze every conversation and song and game in the bar to dead silence. Though Jacob had never heard one in person before, he recognized the noise at once: an air-raid siren.”

“Shit.” Harley got to her feet before anyone in the bar, though there were many others not far behind.

Chaos exploded around them, ponies screaming and tables falling over and glasses shattering. Harley alone remained where she was, holding still as people practically trampled each other to get to the door.

“What’s going on?” Eric shouted over the din, loud enough that they could all hear it.

“It’s never happened before!” Even Harley sounded afraid, though she hid it far better than most of the ponies around them. “It means we’re about to be under attack, and it’s calling everypony to battle stations.”

The ground abruptly shook, so violently that more of the glasses by the bar mirror fell and shattered. It was like an earthquake, but more abrupt than any Jacob had ever known. Only Danni managed to stay standing, and her only just.

“Oh, and we’ll probably try to lose them in a storm.” The ground was still moving, though the acceleration seemed constant now. Jacob could get up without too much difficulty, staggering towards the balcony.

People scattered in all directions: guards in human and pony shapes both rushing to the little buildings along the edge of the grounds. Guns ground and rotated up into position, though that was far from the hardest thing to see.

All of Unity—grounds, ramparts, bunkers and all—was moving. The hand of God seemed to be speeding them through the air, leaving clouds behind. And just clouds, too. There was no mountain… probably there hadn’t ever been.

Danni helped Eric to his feet. “What are we supposed to do, Harley? They never prepared us for an attack!”

“Uh…” She looked down. “Maybe… get inside? The lower levels are probably safer. Oooh, we could get to the mirror! That way, if we need to evacuate, we could!”

“We’ve been at war for how long and you don’t know what we’re supposed to do if we’re actually attacked?” Danni sounded angrier than Jacob felt.

Harley was indignant. “It’s supposed to be impossible! All four of the princesses worked together enchanting this place. Someone who already knows where it is has to lead you here, and we’re always moving, and…”

“Hey.” He glared at both of them, then drew his wand. ”How about we figure out what went wrong after we live through it?” Anger could wait until they survived.

Chapter 17

Jacob couldn’t have said how deep within Unity they were before he heard the first explosion. The air seemed to shake, his ears ringing despite who knew how many feet of intervening stone. Cries and whimpers echoed up from deeper into the castle, not all of them human.

He tried to keep himself calmer than the other voices, following Harley down the stairs. “Unity has guns, it has guards. Ponies were ready for an attack, weren’t they?”

Harley looked back, and her expression was grave. “A year ago we were. Until we tricked your gadgets and figured out how to disappear.”

“It sounds like you didn’t do as good a job as you think you did,” Danielle said, chuckling nervously at the end.

“Apparently not. If ponies get hurt because of this…” Harley’s voice remained dark, though the anger didn’t seem to be for them. “Nevermind. You three won’t suffer, even if I can’t help them all.” The crowd had come to a stop, backed up so thickly in the stairs Jacob couldn’t see the ceiling.

“I wish everyone would stop calling us ponies,” Eric muttered.

Harley ignored him. “Here!” She tugged them violently to the side, to one of the many little hallways that ended in an electronic door. They couldn’t open it, but her badge did, and with so much chaos nobody gave them a second glance.

There was another explosion, much larger this time. The ground shook, and nearby a bookshelf fell and shattered. They waited in the doorway for the shaking to subside.

“This place doesn’t look very magical,” Danni said, once the shaking had stopped. “Why wouldn’t we be allowed in here?” Indeed, it looked exactly like the housing areas further up in Unity, save that there were more portraits of ponies here. They were adorable, but not nearly so hard to look at as the ponies were in person. They had all been looking at pictures of ponies for years, after all.

“The only room with magic is the portal. Anywhere else is only magic because of the ones inside it.” Harley seemed to know where she was going, because she didn’t even slow down as they made their way through the empty room. Food trays were abandoned at their tables (or fallen to the floor), and they had to climb their way through. The whole room shook again, and this time Jacob thought he could hear other sounds. Jet engines, roaring as loud as they had ever done in the air shows he loved as a kid. This time the lights flickered, though they came back on after only a few seconds.

A few seconds of more screaming from the stairs.

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, nowhere.” Harley grinned weakly, then kicked a heavy metal door set into the kitchen wall. It swung open with a foul smell.

“God, you’re joking.” Danni stopped beside the chute, sticking her head briefly inside, only to pull it out again. “Is that big enough for humans?”

Harley nodded. “Us three, no problem.” Then she looked at Jacob. “The giant here is going to have to magic like he’s never magiced before.”

The room shook again, showering dust down on all of them. The lights went out, and this time they didn’t come back on.

Jacob drew his wand, and willed it to light as unicorns frequently did with their horns on the show. It worked of course, and his stick lit up as bright as a maglight. Harley did the same, though her own wand was green and so had a strange way of making shadows. Something whimpered from the room, a sound so pitiable that he could hear it even over the sound of distant panic.

“Only joking!” Harley gestured. “Danni, rip the door off. The pipes are plenty big.”

“Sure.” Danni bent down, and metal groaned. It came loose. “But this only works in movies.”

“Girls, I think someone’s in here with us,” Jacob muttered, wandering towards the sound.

They ignored him. “It will! Waste treatment is on the same level as the portal! I’ve been shoved down one… I mean, I know it’s safe—”

He ignored them right back. “Is someone in here?”

He didn’t hear words, but he did hear the whimper again, and that was enough to go on. Soon he found the source of the noise, in the first bedroom closest to the kitchen.

Sort of. The rooms at the end of the hall were stacked, like those cell-hotels from Japan. The rooms inside looked the same as their own, except that all the furniture was sized for the adorably-small ponies. Smart use of space I guess. “What are you still doing in here?” he asked, to the pony cowering by the doorway.

At first it looked like she was going to cower back into the room, which would’ve made it impossible for him to follow. Then the room shook again, and cannons started firing. The booms were distant, but Jacob recognized them, and the pony seemed to as well.

It was Allie, the pony they had rescued only yesterday. “I was… sleeping…” She whimpered, looking around. “Are we under attack?”

“Yes.” Jacob offered his hand. “Come with us. We’re going to try to get to safety. We can carry you.” He winced involuntarily as he said it, expecting that maybe she would remind him that they had made a similar promise only a day before. She didn’t. The pony looked to be in very bad shape, with a disheveled mane, a matted coat, and no clothing to speak of. Even the eagle on her cutie mark seemed a little mottled.

“Okay.” She didn’t resist, and he might’ve thought she was a stuffed animal from how limp she went in his arms. Ponies weren’t big, and they weren’t heavy either. He didn’t need Danni’s strength to carry her.

Danni and Harley were gone, though Eric still crouched by the vent, gesturing urgently at him. “Hey, we gotta go!”

“I found someone who didn’t run.” He held up his burden so Eric could see. “What are you still doing here?”

He flexed his wings. “Apparently I’m supposed to go right in front of you and use my wings to slow the fall.”

“Does that work?” Jacob leaned down, poking his wand into the dark space. He saw only dirty metal, and a near-vertical shaft.

“I have no idea.” Eric’s wings fluttered nervously. “Harley said it’s mostly about using the magic to make us lighter. So long as I do that, we’ll land soft. I know what she means. I’ve fallen from all kinds of heights that would’ve killed me before and only got a little bumped up. The ponies on the show did it too.”

“Alright.” Jacob lowered his voice. “I think my friend should carry you. He seems less likely to die from this.”

“Why are you doing it, then?” The pony didn’t protest and climbed into Eric’s arms without much objection. “Not that it will matter. We’re all going to be dead anyway.”

“Harley saved our lives,” Jacob said. “If she says this is our best chance, then it’s our best chance.”

“You people are insane.”

Eric rolled his eyes. “You’re a talking horse talking to a kid with wings and another one lighting up the room with a magic wand.” He got down on his rear, then slid towards the opening as though he were getting onto a water-slide at a theme park. “We’ve got to go at the same time.”

Jacob followed, though he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about going at the same time when his friend had wings that would hit him in the face. But then came another explosion, this one punctuated by the sound of small-arms fire and at least one other, smaller explosion, which shook so long it seemed the walls would start caving in. After that, he pressed his wand up against his chest and got ready to possibly fall to his death.

They dropped in at the same time, and Jacob found the ground curved after a fairly short distance. It still felt like they were being shot out of a cannon, but at least they weren’t being shot straight down. The stench and disgusting slime hardly even seemed to matter when he was so terrified.

It didn’t take very long. Eventually he felt his legs make contact with something soft, and the blurring speed started to fade. The floor curved down again, and dropped him into a pile of slime.

Then he smelled it, a mixture of food wastes of all kinds. Was anything broken? Nothing hurt. Unfortunately he was surrounded by nastiness, which felt as though it would seep down over his face. It was already too dark to see.

Jacob took his wand in hand and focused his will into light—without effect. No terrible surprise, considering how much crap was apparently around him. “AWAY!” A wave of sunflower light exploded from in front of him, and took half the mountain of garbage with it. Enough that he could finally see again.

Poor Eric was trapped beneath him, along with his pony companion. Jacob clambered towards the only other light source, then offered his hand to help Eric free. “T-thanks!” He whined. “If we did that and still die, I’m gonna be mad.”

“You aren’t going to die.” There was a sloshing sound, then a rush of water. Jacob found he didn’t even mind it might’ve just shorted out his phone—anything to feel a little more clean. “Well, unless you get infected. None of you ponies have open wounds, do you?”

Another explosion answered before any of them could, this one far louder and deeper than any that had come before. Jacob wanted to cover his ears, as a huge chunk of the ceiling cracked down the center, raining splinters of stone.

More screams, this time screams of pain. Then the floor dropped out from under him.

There was no sky, no external reference for how fast they were traveling or in what direction. There was constant screaming now, and a hundred little explosions from further above. An ocean of garbage swelled towards them, freed from the restraint of gravity. With his concentration went the light from his wand, plunging the room into darkness.

This is how I die.

Someone gripped his hand, tugging him forcefully. He felt several other bodies close, familiar and all as dirty as he was. “Defy the gate,” Harley muttered, her voice a panicked rush. “Sideways tread, outside step, 1000, 25…” BANG!

Air roared into his ears like a predator. The darkness was gone, and Jacob was tumbling. He saw the ground, the sky, and the ground again, rushing up to meet him. There were some other colored blurs falling with him, though he couldn’t tell who was who.

Far away, there was another massive explosion, grinding with rock and soil as it went.

Jacob tried to spread himself out, maybe slow his fall or at least stop the spinning, but to no avail. Just because it worked in movies didn’t mean he could do it in real life.

He did manage to keep hold of his wand, the only thing he could do as he fell. He would still have it when he died.

Then he felt hands on his shoulders, and he stopped spinning with a jerk. It was Harley, tugging with all her might on his arms. She had wings—transparent fairy wings pierced all over with little holes. It was barely enough, but it was enough. They started to slow. “What about the pony?” He shouted, quite ineffectual.

Harley didn’t seem to hear. “Eric has Danni! They’re just behind us!”

“Does he have Allie too?!”

Harley’s eyes widened. “Why would he?!”

Chapter 18

They landed. It was rough, rough enough that he fell over sideways, probably from a sprained ankle. He rolled in the dirt, slicing open his clothes and skin on twigs and rocks and rubbing dirt all over the wet slime that covered his body. Yet at the bottom of a little hill he finally came to a stop, and Harley beside. He offered his hand to Harley. “You okay?”

She seemed barely able to stand, weakness clear in her face. “Lost my damn wand with that teleport.” She held up one hand, which had numerous splinters and a pattern of ash around it. “What were you saying just now?”

His answer was interrupted by a violent shaking at their feet, coupled with a deep, resonating crash. He turned, though he already knew what he would see. Some distance away, the massive chunk of earth that had been Unity finally finished falling. It held together about as well as a cake might’ve done, the little frosting of buildings and plants on top crumbling to dust. Forest animals roared, flocks of birds scattered, and the landslide just went on and on.

Eric landed with Danielle just beside them, quite a bit more gracefully. Rather, Danielle seemed so sturdy that she was able to absorb the brunt of the landing and protect Eric from injury without too much difficulty. There was no relief in Eric’s face, though. Only horror.

Horror they could all share as their home of the last three months crumbled to charred ruin. Far above, a bomber escorted by a half-dozen fighter jets made another pass, bombarding the ruin with explosives. There wasn’t much left to destroy.

“Hey, uh… Jacob?” Danielle sounded distant and grim. “I… there’s a pony behind us.”

Jacob barely heard Danielle’s voice as he turned. Little of the rubble had fallen here—there was a new mountain rising a mile in the distance, a death so overwhelming he couldn’t even imagine it.

Yet for all that, he could suddenly see nothing but the pony on the ground in front of him. She had landed in the soft soil, avoiding any of the trees or bushes that might’ve impaled her. Even so, it was like something out of a horror movie. Blood everywhere, bones splayed at horrible angles and visible through the flesh. Yet as he watched, her chest rose in vain effort, as she struggled to draw one more breath.

My fault.

He met the pony’s bright blue eyes, and knew that face even with a fractured skull. He kept walking towards her.

“We can’t do anything for her!” Danielle had Harley slung over her shoulder, her form shriveled and pained. “Jacob, there’s nothing you can do! We have to get out of here!”

The best human surgeons could not keep this pony alive if they had her in the world’s best hospital. Jacob felt her feeble life draining away with agony beyond description. Whatever miracle had stopped her from dying immediately had been no kindness.

Jacob didn’t have a knife, but he didn’t need one. He was already bleeding from his shoulder, and he let some of that mingle with the blood of the fallen Allie. “I’m sorry I saved you for this,” he whispered. “You probably would’ve been better off getting caught.” To make it out here, she must’ve been caught in the teleport—then been separated from Eric in the fall? It was hard to know. Jacob himself had been so overwhelmed he saw very little until the landing.

It hadn’t really been his rescue. Even so, his eyes streamed with an agony of guilt. How many of those he had rescued had made it through the mirror?

There were two types of healing magic. The first was diligent study, mastering the anatomy and rote spells that could repair any damage if performed properly and with the right ingredients. Jacob had learned many of these, at least those concerned with first aid.

Allie was well beyond that. Her body was ravaged with a thousand wounds, and many of them were killing her in different ways. Bones were broken, organs smashed, blood drained away. So many different deaths.

There was another kind of healing. “You can’t die,” he commanded, and the wand he held burst into brilliant sunflower life. He kept walking towards her, ignoring the gore, ignoring the agony.

He spoke the words to a spell, though he lacked the ingredients, lacked the knowledge, lacked everything. “Stay the hooves of the pale mare a little longer. She will take you in the end, but not today.” She was still breathing. Light filled her, pouring like a liquid from the wand. It was more magic than Jacob had ever felt—more than he had experienced with Sunset Shimmer, more than any teleport.

“Ignore the swaying of distant grass, the heart of time and its endless herd can wait another lifetime.” The light was so bright he couldn’t see anything anymore, anything but the pony. Jacob didn’t falter, didn’t hesitate or entertain even a shred of doubt. “Breathe deep.”

She did, with a feeble death-rattle.

Jacob dropped down to his knees beside the ruined pony. “Feel the Lightgiver’s touch on your back.” Little sunlight made it through the ash and smoke that still filled the sky. It would have to do. “Hear no more Banshee, she will not scream for you tonight.”

“G-g-od.” The pony’s voice was filled with agony. “I d-deserve th-this.” But she could speak. That meant it was working.

“Love repairs the broken.” He rested one hand on the side of her head, feeling the soft coat marred with dirt and blood. He didn’t know what this pony thought she deserved, but he didn’t care. “Threads frayed remember the tapestry as it was. They remember the strength Earth gave them, the freedom of the sky, and the wisdom of magic.”

Torn flesh slurped, bones cracked, and the poor pony started to scream. Jacob held her still as light washed over her. His own strength was the price, but he did not care. “Share your pain with me, Allie Langford. Share my breath, and Celestia’s fire in my veins. The herd grows stronger as it suffers together.”

Jacob knew pain as he had never before imagined. Something greater than the human kept him awake, forced to endure a little of what this pony had known. If his will broke now, the spell would fracture and kill them both. He had to stay awake, even as he felt his life draining away. There was good reason ponies in Equestria didn’t employ magic like this on a daily basis: it could easily kill you.

Eventually the pain ran out, and his will hadn’t. Though his hands shook, Jacob could still speak. “Be whole.”

The last words of the spell, never learned but known nonetheless, released the magic at last. The light went out, and Jacob fell over sideways, his breathing ragged. The world went dark.

* * *

Mind who you rob.

Time became meaningless. Jacob felt himself being moved, saw lights passing before his eyes, rough fabric, distant voices. He felt like he was moving, though it was hard to say why or where. It was even harder to care. How many people he had known and respected had been killed right in front of him? It was so much easier just to let go, let the whole world melt away.

Then he woke up, jerking so violently that he struck his head and fell back with a stab of pain from his forehead. Something crayon-red fell in front of his eyes, and he tried to pull it away—only to learn that it was attached to his scalp, and all he was doing was yanking it out.

“Did someone move in here?” Danielle’s voice came from nearby, though he couldn’t immediately pinpoint from where.

“Yes.” A sliver of light came from the end of the room. He sat up much more slowly, feeling his way up with a hand. The ceiling was low, but not as low as he had expected. Then something on his head touched the roof above him, stopping him. “Dammit.”

“Hey Eric, I think Jacob’s waking up!”

His eyes were still a little blurred, yet he could make out a few more details. He was in a bunk-bed, and not a big one. There was a window behind him, and darkness outside. There were another two beds across from him, equally cramped, with only a foot of aisle space to get between them. Jacob himself was on the bottom bunk, dressed in clothes he didn’t recognize and no longer smelling like garbage. Most of the light came from the doorway, where there was a miniscule kitchen and an old TV mounted to the ceiling.

The way the ground bounced and jostled as he sat up was enough to tell him where they were: a trailer. Jacob rolled sideways into the tiny aisle, catching himself before he could smack into the ground. “This sucks.”

“N-no!” Danielle reached out, then yanked him to his feet. “It’s not that noticeable!”

“Sure it isn’t.” Jacob’s eyes widened as he realized he was now the shortest one in the truck. “Since when did you get taller?”

Eric spoke from behind her, sounding nervous. “Should we shout for Harley to stop?”

“She already said there was nothing she could do. He has to go all the way before the mirror can do anything.”

“There probably isn’t a mirror.” Jacob straightened, pulling his arm free. He almost fell over, but the doors were small and the walls were close. Danielle retreated into the little kitchen, giving him space.

Eric had the same expression she did: pained sympathy, as someone might wear while visiting an ailing relative in a hospice somewhere. He was also taller than Jacob now. “Is Allie okay?”

“She’s… still alive.” Danielle gestured back into the bedroom, at the lower bunk across from where he had been sleeping. “Hasn’t woken up yet.”

He went back inside, and checked the sleeping pony quickly with one hand. He didn’t have his wand anymore, yet he found he no longer needed it. There was life in this pony. At least for the moment, it was enough.

He made his way out again and shut the door, not wanting to wake her. “Is there a mirror somewhere? I wanna see the damage.”

“By the sink.”

He made his way over. There was very little space to stand. All the furniture was squashed against the walls, and even still it felt cramped. Well, it would’ve if he had been his proper size.

The reflection staring back at him was… wrong. Jacob found himself touching his face, arms, making sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. He checked more than once for a VR headset, but of course he would’ve felt it. Getting the Cutie Mark had been frightening, but it had been a fairly minor change. This wasn’t.

It was very hard to tell if he had just gotten smaller, or if he was somehow younger too. The two things had gone together until now, but how could he tell? He had to be about four feet now, horn not included. That added another seven inches or so, curling bone about on par for what a unicorn might’ve had on the show with a head as large as his. He didn’t touch it much, just enough to feel that yes, it was glued onto his head. Despite how absurd it looked, it didn’t hurt.

He wasn’t just shrunk, his proportions were different, though he couldn’t say if he was more youthful or just more athletic. His hair had gone from black to absurd red, a strange compliment to the yellow of his eyes. There was also a lump in his pants, which he quickly discovered to be a matching tail. He had been dressed in clothes that looked stolen from either a hipster or a hobo, it was hard to tell which. At least he wasn’t alone in that regard.

His companions were unchanged, save that Eric had some stubble and Danni looked more grim. He could understand why.

“I’ve got some questions.” He reached over and opened the mini-fridge. The only thing inside was a large basket of apparently wild-picked grasses and berries. He shut it in disgust. “The hell is that? Wait… actually, no. I don’t care.” He slumped down against the back wall, looking up at Danni and Eric. He already felt so small that a few more inches didn’t make a difference. “How are we still alive?”

Chapter 19

They stopped in an empty rest stop surrounded by forest. Jacob felt incredibly fortunate that there was nobody around to see how stupid he looked. Not that it matters. I won’t get better.

“Hey!” Harley poked her head in the door, gesturing at the sink. “I saw garbage bags under there. Get one and come with me.” Her eyes wandered to Eric and Danni. “You two, watch the pony. Jacob and I need a word alone.”

He followed her out into the rest stop, letting the familiar forest smells surround him. They headed towards a brick restroom.

“What’s this about? Dannie and Eric already explained the way you teleported us far away from the blast, but… I’m not sure I’m comfortable with stealing cars.”

“Are you comfortable surviving? There’s not a chance we could have made it far enough away on foot.”

“I guess,” he muttered.

They made it behind the bathrooms, in front of an old-looking vending machine, before Harley embraced him in a tight hug. So tight he struggled to breathe for a few seconds, feeling incredibly childish. “That was a damn fine thing you did.” She let go.

Jacob just shrugged. “I told her to come with us. Her getting hurt was my fault.” He reached up, feeling the strange growth on his forehead. “You sure I should be out here? If somebody else parks here…”

Harley just shrugged. “They’ll probably just think you’re a loser.” She searched around on the ground, hefting the largest stone she could find. “Cover your eyes.”

He did, and she smashed the rock into the glass face of the vending machine. “Hey! We can’t just…”

“Can’t steal?” Harley yanked the garbage-bag out of his hands, and started stuffing it with the junk food from inside. “We’ve got bigger problems than petty theft right now.” She lowered her voice to a mutter. “It’s not like it’s for me anyway.”

Jacob stepped backward, ringing his hands together. He had always felt uncomfortable to see rules broken, even silly ones. “I’m glad you stopped to explain things to me, but did we have to come out here alone? Eric and Danni already know everything, don’t they? They lived it.”

“They don’t know this.” Harley dropped the bag, and reached deep inside her pocket. She pulled something out, something that smelled dreadful and had little red-brown bits clinging to it.

Jacob couldn’t identify the object at a glance, save that it was made mostly from stainless steel and had a coil of wire attached not unlike an antenna. “Where’d you find that?”

Harley handed it to him. “The earth found it, actually. When that pony hit the ground, it must’ve fallen out of her guts. Your magic didn’t put it back in, since it wasn’t supposed to be there to begin with.”

“What is this?” He turned it over in his hand, and found a tiny barcode etched into the side. That was it, though, no other markings. “A pony pacemaker?”

Harley laughed bitterly. “Not damn likely. That wire that’s all bundled up was spread out when we found it. Think about it—for the first time ever we pick up a full pony from the outside. Unbeknownst to us, she’s got some kind of implant hidden in her insides, something ponies don’t know how to look for. A day later, they show up at Unity with an attacking force too big for Twilight’s shield spells to protect us from. From where I’m standing, it sure as hell doesn’t look like a coincidence.”

“When I was healing her…” Jacob muttered, his voice low. “She said that she deserved it. I didn’t know what that meant, thought maybe it was just delirium. You think she could’ve been a conscious spy?”

Harley shrugged. “No way she didn’t know she’d been operated on. She might not have known what they did. Or maybe she did, and we have a pony who might be responsible for the death of hundreds.”

He handed the implant back, wiping his hand on the strange pants. Probably stolen too. “We can worry about that when she wakes up. I have a few other things I’m worried about. Like, how’d we get here?”

Harley went back to stuffing the garbage bag with stolen snacks. “Stole the pickup-trailer from a farmer’s house about ten miles from where Unity went down. Some army assholes were on the ground, but their containment circle was too small. We got you out and we’ve been driving south ever since.”

“What about…” He reached up, feeling the horn with one of his hands. As before, he was careful not to touch too firmly. “What am I? I look like a squashed and melted freshman from those awful Equestria Girls movies.”

Harley almost dropped her bag. She grinned down at him, then reached out and ruffled his bright new hair. “The story goes Sunset wanted those to be a guide for humans when they first started manifesting, so they’d know what to expect.”

“She did a lousy job.”

“Yeah, it was pretty shit.” Harley hefted the bag again, and started back around the building. He followed along beside, wanting to offer to help but unsure he could actually lift that much weight anymore. “You already know what happened: blast out enough magic to bring back the dead and of course you’re going to melt yourself in the process.”

He hadn’t thought about it at the time. It wouldn’t have changed his mind about helping, though. “So why aren’t I pony? How much more of a freak will I get before I just…”

Harley shook her head sadly. “The transformation is never quite the same twice. Only the destination.” She slowed a little, since they were getting so close to the pickup. There didn’t seem to be anyone else parked, or anyone driving along the highway in either direction.

He got a good look at the pickup-trailer they were driving, a rusted ruin with Alberta plates and at least one tire that was almost flat.

“You know how big humans are compared to ponies, so there’s some serious adjustment there.”

He glared up at her. “That’s one word for it.”

“Yeah, well. Ponies age a little more gracefully than humans do. You probably noticed in that damn propaganda how most ponies were either adults or withering away, not a lot of gray area in-between. Most ponies look real good until they get to the end, then they don’t. That’s partly why you look like such a joke right now. Unicorns usually have that elfin, graceful build, and being a stallion won’t save you.”

“I get it.” They had made it to the door at the back of the trailer. Harley seemed to be waiting for him to open it for her, but he didn’t yet, not wanting the others to hear his last question. When he spoke, it was in a whisper, touching one hand to her arm. “Harley… what do we do?”

“I don’t know, kid.” She set the bag down and hugged him. Jacob hugged back, as tightly as she had held him earlier. “I won’t lie to you, things look like shit.” She was whispering too, right into his ear. It was easier now that his head was the perfect height. “The old radio frequencies are all dead, no code or anything. Haven’t been able to get onto the internet yet to see if maybe some of our web stuff survived.”

They slumped down together onto the ground, right behind the truck. If Eric and Danni noticed, they didn’t come out to comment. Harley went on. “Next town over I’ll steal us something new to drive, and we’ll make a break for Seattle. There’s a safehouse there, and last I checked some ponies I rescued real early on were still stationed there. I figure they’ll be more tapped into what happened. At the very least, it’ll be somewhere for us to crash while we get our flanks straightened out.”

“Okay.” It felt strangely comforting to be touched, something Jacob had very little experience with outside of his few girlfriends back in high school. While there was nothing romantic in being close to Harley, there was something intimate. If that made any sense. Probably a pony thing.

“Oh, and I kinda stole your wand.” She removed it from her pocket, showing it to him. “I figured you wouldn’t mind, since you don’t need it anymore…”

“So long as you take good care of it,” Jacob muttered, seriously. “I’m going to be human again as soon as humanly possible, and I’ll need it.”

“Sure,” she chuckled, then rose, helping him to his feet after her. She didn’t remind him that the mirror had probably been destroyed, and for that he was grateful. There was no need to remind themselves of such awful news.

* * *

Harley’s plan proved easier to implement than Jacob had feared. The National Guard, or the helicopter shooting rockets, or the tanks blocking the road, or the SWAT detachment to kill them while they slept, never came.

Another hundred miles and Harley parked them in the woods, then walked away. She came back a few hours later, with an old van and a satisfied expression.

The van sucked, but according to Harley it “wasn’t stolen,” though she refused to elaborate. No police pulled them over, and somehow she was able to keep putting gas into the van.

They listened to the radio all the way down, though nothing seemed relevant except for mentions of a “pipeline explosion” somewhere in Alberta which had killed a few of the locals. No mention of a war, or military action, or people becoming ponies.

The only one who really had trouble during the rest of their trip was Jacob himself, since his horn proved difficult to conceal. Harley found an extremely absurd straw hat in a thrift store, and that seemed to work, except that anyone who saw him seemed to think he was even more of an idiot than the horn probably would have led them to believe.

Jacob had never seen Seattle, but what he saw from the van’s tinted windows was about what he expected. Tall buildings, clean streets, and ceaseless traffic.

No sign that perhaps hundreds of innocent people might be dead.

Harley took them to one of the dirtier parts of town, far from the clean steel and hipster coffee shops. For the first time in his life, Jacob found that was exactly where he wanted to be. Far from the gentrification and the traffic of tourists was also less regular police patrol, fewer delivery drones, and less attention in general.

Harley drove them into an alley that looked like it didn’t have any cameras. “You’re gonna love my last group. Before they up and got themselves thrown out of Unity, they were putting lots of other rescue crews to shame.” She parked next to an unmarked steel door, so the side door was right up against it.

“I didn’t know that was possible,” Eric muttered from the passenger’s seat, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching them. “What happened?”

“I kindof have a habit for rescuing freaks and troublemakers.” Harley’s face darkened. “When we first started, smarter mares than I thought it was a good idea to keep the whole ‘transformation’ thing a secret. The rules were way stricter then, so that you’d never even catch a glance of a pony.”

“Well that’s stupid,” Danielle said. “Why the hell would they want to lie like that?”

Harley got up from her seat, then pulled a threadbare shade down over the front of the van, obscuring them. “Magic is… well, not really my specialty. All I can tell you is that ponies who know it’s going to happen—it happens way faster than ponies who don’t. Never tell a pony, and so long as they keep following the rules they might stay human forever.”

“So they… found out?” Jacob made his way to the door, climbing over the back row of seats. Not that he could be the first one out—he had a feeling he wouldn’t be out among the public for some time to come. Not until he could get an “illusion” from a mirror that might not even exist anymore. “And told everybody?”

“Yeah.” Harley’s expression got brighter, proud even. “Big ponies in charge forgot about human nature. Ponies might accept rules and know that they’ve got a good reason, but you all… you’re not so complacent. You always want to know why.” She opened the door, swinging it so it blocked their view from the street. Not that many people were watching.

“Obviously things are different now. Once they told everyone, the rules got changed. These days we don’t volunteer it, but anyone who wants to know gets the truth. It seemed to be working all right.”

Jacob didn’t think so, and not just because Unity was now a mountainous pile of rubble. There was still something about this whole “magic” thing he hadn’t figured out. If only his whole world hadn’t ended again, he might’ve had the chance.

Chapter 20

Jacob hurried into the open door just behind Harley, carrying the still-unconscious pony in his arms. Despite being much closer to her size than he had been before, he had little enough trouble lifting her weight. How crazy will it be to actually be that small? The drive hadn’t changed him that he knew, though sometimes he woke up in the morning with a horrible impression that the world had grown even bigger during his sleep. At least compared to his friends, that change seemed to be in his imagination.

Past the first door was a hallway of cheap apartments, though he didn’t actually hear sounds from within. “Shouldn’t we run or something?”

Harley didn’t whisper back, nor did she speed up. “These are all empty. Patron of ours bought the whole building. I think last I checked he’s using it as some kind of tax write off—some trick about letting the place go derelict or something.”

“So we’re hiding one kind of secret behind another?”

She grinned at him with pointed teeth. “That’s the best kind. Plus, I called the crew the last place we got gas. They’re okay, and they’re expecting us.”

Harley reached the stairs, then started to climb. He followed, through a building that clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time. It was hard to keep up, and as they reached the second floor Danni nudged him on the shoulder.

“You want some help with her?”

“No.” His grip tightened a little, pulling her warmth just a little closer to his chest. Not knowing what better to do, Jacob was carrying her like a cat. “I got her.”

They hadn’t told Eric and Danni about what they suspected about her. Harley had taken a few good photos of the device with a “not stolen” camera, then slipped it under a truck heading the other way. Just in case.

The second floor looked as abandoned as the first, with questionable stains and bits of trash. The third and fourth were similar, only a few lights still flickering to give the hallway any illumination at all.

The top floor was no different, save Jacob could hear just a little more noise coming from somewhere. Music?

Harley waited patiently for him to catch his breath at the top of the stairs. “If we needed to, we could house a hundred ponies in this building without a problem. There are places like this in every one of your big cities I’ve ever been to. Though… mostly they’re empty, waiting for ponies to need them.”

“Must be expensive.” Eric easily caught up with a group restricted to Jacob’s slow pace. Wisely, he didn’t complain either.

“Expensive he says.” Harley laughed. “Kids, your society assigns arbitrary value to colored rocks. You think we had to beg and steal?” She laughed bitterly. “Nor will we. Even if the world caves in around us, we’ll die rich. Whatever that’s worth.”

“That’s good.” Danielle kept pace just behind Jacob, her eyes constantly scanning the building around them. As though on the alert for an attack. “Shame you didn’t do what everybody else does and just buy the country.”

Harley shrugged. “A few more years and the brilliant strategic minds ponies have leading them might have figured that out.”

Harley stopped in the middle of the hall, at one door among many. There were mysterious stains on the bottom half of the door, and a spray-painted gang sign covering much of the top. Harley ignored the handle, and instead started to hum loudly and out of tune.

Jacob winced at the butchery of such a familiar melody. “That isn’t how that goes!”

“He’s right,” Eric said. “The cats outside my family’s barn sounded closer.”

Harley grunted, folding her arms. “Damn ponies and their damn musical locks,” she glanced over her shoulder at Jacob. “You’re practically there, you do it.”

“Uh…” He knew the melody—he was fairly certain any fan of the show would’ve. “I can’t sing either.”

Their guide only rolled her eyes. “Horseapples you can’t. You watched the damn propaganda, didn’t you?”

He sighed, then hummed “Winter Wrap-up” as she had apparently been trying to do. Jacob had no ear for music, and couldn’t have carried a tune with a bucket. Yet he found the notes came exactly, and he fell into time without even realizing it. He grinned in surprise, and even started to sway a little.

Something clicked, and several mechanical sounds rattled from behind the door. Jacob felt a hand on his shoulder. “We get it. You can stop.”

He blushed. “Sorry. I don’t know what…”

“Yeah.” Harley glanced sidelong at him. “What did I tell you?”

Despite its veneer of crumbling wood, the door actually proved to be quarter-inch steel, mounted onto some hydraulic mechanism via a large swiveling lock. “Hey, we’re here!” she called into the room, then stepped back. “You all get acquainted, alright? I’ll go ditch the van, then be back.”

She slipped out into the hallway, dodging swiftly past him. “Oh, and don’t leave the door open! I’ve got that damn song on my phone if I can’t get it.”

There was a short entry hall, maybe five feet, which opened into a much larger space just beyond. At a glance it looked like the housing bays in Unity, with rows of smaller bedrooms surrounding a central kitchen and recreation area, with common bathrooms for the sexes on either side.

The space was much larger than it had seemed—though it apparently had no windows, it was brightly lit from skylights above and filled with growing things. What he had taken for music from outside was actually coming from a little circle of couches, where three people were playing Super Smash Bros. on a widescreen TV.

“Hey!” Danielle called, waving a vague hand towards them. “Ya’ll just gonna keep playing?”

Jacob ignored her, making his way to the first empty-looking bedroom and depositing the pony within. “You’re gonna have to wake up sooner or later,” he whispered.

She didn’t wake up, and he shut the door quietly behind him, just in time to get a good look at this particular group of Harley’s “rescues.”

They were about as intact as their own group, which might have been less impressive if they hadn’t been around magic for so much longer.

The tallest and most human of the group was a young woman with batlike wings and big, dark eyes. She also seemed the most casual, looming over the other two. Beside her was an earth pony stallion with a coat of electric yellow and a mane of smattered blues.

Though Jacob would’ve wished his own condition on no one, he couldn’t hide his relief that the last of their number was another freak. A pegasus girl, though she was even shorter than he was and seemed to have hooves instead of feet, and ankles that seemed to bend backwards. That looks like it hurts. She didn’t have a coat yet anywhere else, wearing human clothes instead, but her hair was soft pink and her eyes were as freakishly big as his own, and she had a tail too.

Months ago, he would’ve been disgusted by such gross mutations, perhaps mixed in with a hearty dose of pity. Now, though… he couldn’t imagine a prettier girl for all the power of his imagination. Jacob found himself looking at the floor as he made his way over to the center of the room, to stand beside Danielle and Eric.

“I’m Jackie,” said the tallest, human-est of their group. “If any’a you wake me up before noon, I’ll force feed you the bugs I catch for dinner, so help me God.” She relaxed. “My little sister here is Katie, corrupter of souls.”

“Hey!” She shoved Jackie hard, though there was very little anger in it. “Ignore her, she’s just mad I taught her to fly.”

“I’m Stalwart,” the stallion added, his voice level. “It’s good you made it okay.”

“I thought you were all like us,” Eric blurted. “Why do you have a pony name?”

Stalwart shrugged. Jacob saw his cutie mark then, a pair of iron cross beams in a rusting, solid ‘x’. “I don’t get that person back. Holding on is only lying to myself.”

They introduced themselves quickly, along with a brief explanation about the pony they had stuffed away into one of the bedrooms.

“What the hell happened?” Jackie eventually asked, when they were finished with the basics. “We heard that somebody brought Unity down, but…

“It seemed too awful to believe,” Katie added. “Who would shoot down a flying sky castle? Why would you even want to?”

“We probably know less than you do.” Jacob sighed. “We were inside for most of the attack. Sounded like really modern fighter jets and bombers, though.

“Well, we can wait until Harley gets back to go over everything,” Danni said. “Now that… I’d nominate her for leader if we wanted to vote.”

There were quiet mutters from both sides, and no disagreement to be heard.

“Where is she, anyway?” Jackie asked.

“Getting rid of the van,” Jacob said. “She never let us come with her whenever she was doing something like that.”

Jackie nodded knowingly, then gestured to a table with a few laptops and large piles of paper on it. “Harley has some strong opinions about ponies and stealth. I could barely get her to take me, and I’ve got these badass wings.”

Katie stopped halfway between the table and the kitchen. “Are any of you hungry? We’ve got snacks and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Jacob answered without thinking. The others nodded too.

“Cool. I’m guessing just one vegetarian? The rest of you look like you’re probably still normal.”

“Wait, hold on.” Jacob raised an eyebrow. “You have meat here? In a pony safehouse?”

“I know, right?” She sounded longing. “There’s this awesome barbeque place that does amazing ribs just down the street. I can still remember how sweet they are…”

“Then why’d you stop?” Food was such a trivial question, particularly with the severity of their situation. Yet in the months he had been in Unity, Tofu and bean burgers were the closest he had ever had to meat. His first taste of it recently had been the jerky Harley frequently stole for them.

“Because it tastes like death?” She sounded confused. “How can you still eat it?”

He shrugged. “Guess my tastes haven’t changed.”

“Lucky bastard.” She turned, flicking a bright pink tail as she went. “Alright, make that no vegetarians. Got it.”

A few minutes later and they were all gathered around the table, with stuffed sub sandwiches and cold soda. It was a nice change after the endless junk-food to feel fresh lettuce and tomato crunching in his mouth, and drink something that was actually cold.

They chatted quietly while they waited for Harley to come back, about the safehouse and how long they had lived here. Jacob learned there was a gym downstairs, and a garden on the roof shaded by high walls. He learned Jackie had made quite a name for herself selling the emergency stock of gemstones to the city’s underground, taking less than half the worth of the stones in exchange for friendship and protection.

Katie sat beside him, and Jacob found himself focusing on her, fascinated by the bizarre way her body fused pony and human anatomy. Of course, he also had to not look like he was staring. “So how long have you guys been into this whole… mess?”

She shrugged her wings. “Oh, maybe… nine months? That sounds about right. Guess you’re newer?”

“About three.”

She coughed, nearly dropping her drink. “You must have broken way more rules than we did.”

“Just one spell,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “I don’t know if there was a rule about it. Probably not.”

That was when Harley walked in. “Glad you all are getting along,” she said, taking the last empty chair at the two tables they had pulled together. “Given the portal to Equestria might be destroyed, we might become some very good friends.”

“Now that she’s back,” Danni didn’t wait for anyone else to speak, clearing her throat. “Could you guys please explain anything you’ve learned since Unity went down? Do you have, like, radios or whatever?”

“Yes…” Jackie flipped open the lid of an expensive-looking laptop covered with tacky pony stickers. “There are sixty-three safe houses on the network. Let me update ours for you guys…” Jackie typed for a second, glancing at each of them.

“Harlequin, Danielle Hicks, Eric Lowe, Jacob Blackwell, and… a pony?”

“Allie Langford,” Jacob offered, without even having to think.

“Right.” She typed for another few moments. “We’ve seen a surge in the last six days.” She turned the screen around, a meaningless pile of numbers from this distance, but they did look like they were getting bigger. “Five hundred and twenty ponies listed. About double what it was before whatever happened at Unity.”

“So there were some survivors!” Eric beamed. “Beyond the ones who got to Equestria, some ponies escaped!”

“I would expect so.” Harley fumbled with some of the papers on the table, flipping through the manilla folders one at a time as though she were only half-interested in what they contained. “There was a princess in that castle. A few dozen out of that damn academy. The bigger the name, the more ponies they could get out.” She looked over at Jackie. “Has Sunset returned? Who’s in command of the safehouses? What are their orders?”

She shook her head slowly. “We’ve got messages from some of the other safehouses, apparently ponies are coming back from Unity pretty shaken up.”

“You would be if you saw it.” Jacob’s voice was flat. “A lot of people died in one place.”

“A lot of ponies,” Jackie corrected. “Let’s not forget what they stole from us. Not just our safety, but our bodies too.”

“Whatever.” Jacob leaned forward—he didn’t have much choice, since like Katie he was on his knees in the chair instead of his butt. It might’ve made him feel like a kid, but at least he could see over the edge. “What matters is what we do about it.”

Harley met his eyes, and he nodded. “We may have information about the attack that no other ponies do. When somepony eventually takes command, they will probably value the information we can learn.”

“Learn from what?” the earth pony asked, looking between them. “Did you catch videos from your cameras or something?”

“No,” Jacob answered. It felt like the right thing to do, since he was the one who had saved her life. “We caught a mole.”

Chapter 21

"Why can't you do it?" Jacob asked, glancing worriedly down at the little pot with its sprig of oregano. He had his wand back too, though he was fairly sure it wouldn't do anything.

"I told you already." Harley nudged him forward. "Just because I can do some magic doesn't mean I can do all of it. I'm not a pony."

"But I've seen you teleport!" Jacob set the plant down at one corner of the diagram they had chalked on the concrete, the last of the raw ingredients he would need. The book was still open—one of a handful of titles on unicorn medicine found in the safehouse library, and it seemed to know how to treat almost anything.

Allie was at the center of the diagram, resting on a pile of blankets and still unconcious. Of the safehouse's other occupants, only Katie seemed to be watching, though she was also playing something on her 3DS.

Harley loomed over him. "I'm a damn changeling, kid. Soulsucking, lifebreathing, parasitic horror. We can't give a fucking thing, only take."

"Bullshit."

She folded her arms. "Excuse me?"

He did the courtesy of responding in the same whisper, so the whole room wouldn't hear. "Not… about you being a changeling, that makes sense. The other thing…" He whimpered, something he never would've done three months ago. It was all he could do to suppress his tears. "You saved our lives multiple times. You could've left us and ran yourself, you could've left us to fend for ourselves, could've left us at the safehouse even. You didn't. You're always telling us that moping and self-pity aren't allowed, well you shouldn't break your own rules."

Harley didn't answer. Jacob watched her, not breaking eye contact. A few tears made it down her face before she could wipe them away with the back of her arm. Jacob reached out and rested a hand on her arm. All the while they were quiet enough that only Katie was watching.

"We didn't choose to get our lives stolen. You didn't choose how you were born."

"I know." She squeezed his hand, unmoving for another minute. He didn't rush her. Eventually she cleared her throat, and seemed to brighten. "Anyway, it's true we can't do healing magic. And many other kinds. That means healing is on you."

Whatever else he might think about Harley, Jacob trusted her. Even if it meant he would have to take Allie's life into his hands again. Healing magic probably doesn't kill by accident, right? It would be pretty bad at healing if it did.

"Alright." He sat down a foot away from the resting pony, on the other patch of bare floor, holding the book in his lap. "You ready?"

In answer, Harley drew back the hammer of her revolver, and pointed it at the pony on the other side.

"Try not to actually use it." He glared. "Last time I had to save someone, it gave me a damn horn. If I lose my feet because of you, I'll kick you with the stupid stubs."

"They aren't stupid!" Katie's voice came from behind him. "It's easier to balance with hooves than you think!"

He winced, remembering she had been listening. "I didn't mean it! Or, I did mean it, but not about you…" He groaned. "Sorry." He didn't trust himself to say anything else, or to look back at what she might be doing. At least she didn't get up to leave.

"Just remember your classes," Harley said. "It'll be easy."

"Oh, sure." He ran his finger down the page again. "Unicorn doctors train for six years, but three months is fine."

She bared her sharp teeth at him. "Putting it off won't make it easier."

Jacob groaned, then started to read. The words came easily to him, and so did the sensation of magic. Pressure started just behind his forehead, accompanied by a faintly yellow glow from his horn. The sound of video games faded into background static, and light from outside the circle became mere shadow.

There were many reasons someone might not wake up. According to the books, the most likely cause for Allie was backlash from the powerful spell she had experienced. It also happened to be the easiest potential cause to fix, since it didn't represent real damage to her body. She kept breathing, so her brain can't be that damaged, right?

"Three gifts for the suffering soul," he said, then gestured to them in turn. Though Jacob had serious trouble with levitation, it came easy enough this time. "Water from the sky, life from the soil, and fire from the ether. Remember the harmony that was." They turned to ash before his eyes. The water clouded, the candle charred rapidly down, and the oregano shriveled to black stubble. "Unseal the lock, break the secret seal, and let me in."

The appartment was gone, with its concrete floors and the sound of video games. Harley's gun, Katie's smell, all of it.

For the second time in his life, Jacob was a pony, fully and completely. His coat was brown, with cream color on his muzzle and near his hooves. He was naked, though just now it seemed not to matter.

Concrete walls rose high around him, a hallway in a giant's house. There were steel doors here and there, and sometimes water or worse liquids seeped out from under them. The lights above were flickering and inadequate, driven by gas generators and thick cables.

He knew where to go, if only because the hallway faded to blackness behind him but seemed to continue as he went forward. He couldn't reach the knobs on doors that had them, and wasn't strong enough to push them open besides.

He passed through a massive door left open, bigger than he would've expected on a bank's safe. On the other side the dirt and fluids were clean, the floors polished and the lights bright. Not much further and he reached an empty waiting room, as he would've expected to find in a hospital. There were no people, only the sounds of distant screams.

There were lots of locked doors and one that was open. He picked that one, and followed it until the floor changed to rough stone. Cells rose around him on both sides, cells too small to house a human prisoner. But perfect for a pony. The fronts were acrylic, and each one was cloaked in shadow. Occasionally he saw a vague outline shrunk into a corner, but tapping on the glass produced only agonized screaming.

He nearly wet himself the first time it happened, and so he didn't repeat the experiment. If this was real I'd have to get these ponies out. There were more sealed doors, and a few open ones. He took ramps between levels, past tens of thousands of cells.

Eventually he saw his first human figure, pushing a cart down the hall. "Hello!" he shouted, waving with one hoof. With a jolt of terror, Jacob realized he recognized this woman. She was the same one who had nearly arrested him, the one who had perpetrated the end of his normal life. Had she made his target suffer too?

The woman didn't so much as look back at him, continuing forward. She was pushing some kind of wheeled cart, which banged and creaked as it went.

"Hey!" Jacob started into a trot, not having any trouble with the movement despite having never done it before. It was still hard to catch up—human legs were long! "What are you doing down here?"

This time the woman answered, though she continued forward at a meaningful trot. "Put her away."

Her. He looked down, and sure enough the crate she was pushing did look big enough to hold a pony, even an adult stallion like himself. They weren't exactly giants. If I'm a pony, Allie must be too.

"Where are we?" he asked, managing to keep pace even though he was getting winded.

"Containment."

"Why are you putting her into containment?"

"Protect the world," she answered. "If the infection spreads, the whole world could end."

He gritted his teeth. "You aren't real." No answer. "Alright then." Jacob blasted her. Unlike the real world, he didn't actually need to know a fighting spell. He just willed a blast of energy from his horn, with all the confidence he had ever used when healing. It came, and pierced the woman like she was a hologram. She screamed, but there was no blood. Cracks spread down her human shape, and she exploded into mist.

The cart didn't fall over with her gone—there were tracks set into the floor. It creaked to a stop along the ramp, and then the sound stopped.

Jacob walked up to the edge of the cart, inspecting it. A crate was clipped to it, made of sturdy metal and pierced with air holes. He couldn't actually see in, though. "Are you in there, Allie?"

There was a muffled noise from inside, and a little motion. If it was words, he couldn't understand them.

"Don't worry Allie, I'm a boss at lucid dreaming. I've got a dream journal and everything."

He searched for some kind of locking mechanism, but found none. Only a control panel, one stationed too high up on the box to reach. This might've been a serious obstacle, if he were really here. Fortunately, none of this was real.

Jacob imagined a knife he had read about once, one Subtle enough to slice through bone, steel, and universe alike. It clattered to the ground in front of him, its metal blade shimmering like oil on water. He didn't touch it, but instead drew on magic again. What he couldn't control in real life was easy here in imagination, and it levitated into the air with ease. He moved it slowly towards the cart, then cut through the boxy frame. It split without resistance, and the whole thing banged to the ground.

"Get down on the bottom!" he shouted. "I'll cut you out!" What would happen if he used an imagined knife on a real mind? He didn't want to find out.

There was no response. He moved the knife up to the edge of the crate, and as before it cut without the slightest resistance. Sparks emerged from a few of the crate's air holes, none of which could touch him. He cut only along the top, opening a pony-sized hole in the top of the crate.

He caught the free section in more magic, then tossed the lot to the ground far out of reach. "Alright Allie, you're free."

There was a long silence. "My name's not Allie, it's Elise."

"Okay Elise." He didn't know what the one inside the cage might mean, but it didn't really matter. The book had been very clear that only the real person would be able to argue with him. Figments, like the scary woman, could only answer basic questions and keep doing what they were doing. "You're free."

There was a sniff, and the sound of muted tears. "I don't… don't deserve your help."

"That's the second time you've told me that." Jacob advanced, his horn glowing again. He lifted the whole crate off its broken cart, with strength he suspected he would never have as a real unicorn. He set the box down on its side, so that the window was facing him. "I still think it's wrong."

Sure enough, it was Allie inside, curled up against the back of the padded crate. Intricate circuitry and engineering were evident in the design, but just now he didn't care. Allie was his only mission. She looked pathetic, her mane matted as though she had been crying for a long time. She was crying now, though there were traces of annoyance in her.

"You wouldn't have saved me if you knew," she said, looking up at him through the opening. She didn't actually move. "So many lies… but it was too late, couldn't take it back…" She shivered, burying her face in her forehooves. "Just let me die. You shouldn't have stopped it before."

"I didn't know." Jacob walked to the edge of the crate, but he didn't actually try to climb in or pull her out. There wasn't really enough space for two adult ponies in there, at least not without getting quite intimate. "But I think I know now. Somehow you knew coming to us was going to lead the army too. Maybe this is the place they brought you, to put the tracking device under your coat where we wouldn't find it."

She jerked, looking up again with shock. "How do you know?"

The truth was that they hadn't been sure before exactly what the thing was. Allie's reaction seemed like strong confirmation, though. He acted as though it was. "It came out when you, uh… landed." He winced. "We were attacked the day after you got there. We didn't have to be geniuses to suspect you."

She was crying openly now. "You were supposed to be horrible people! Cutting the infected apart, selling their organs to finance your expansion! Slaves to the world's first intelligent virus. Monsters living in your own filth, mutating into those horrible things that kill in so many horrible ways…"

"Is that how they got you to betray us, Allie? Feed you all those lies about what ponies were like? You were so in tune with the magic the show gave you that you changed entirely on your own, and you still believed ponies were capable of that?"

"My name isn't Allie!" she shouted, a little anger making its way into her tone. "I am Special Agent Elise Avery, member of the FBI's recently established Extranormal Containment Task Force. I've been trying to protect the world from you since the first infections started over a year ago."

Avery. The name matched a face, a face he had very recently blown away with magic. It had been a little strange that in a place that looked like its people were missing, one human would have stuck around when all the others vanished. But if that human was the dreamer too…

The same human that had tried to arrest him. She had taken his life away, then destroyed his new one too. For a moment, Jacob thought about turning his back on her and leaving her to her fate. His spell would only work if he could convince the sleeping soul to come with him willingly, after all. If he walked away, she might stay in a backlash-induced coma until she withered away. "You're right, Elise. Maybe you do deserve to die."

Then he looked in on her again, and saw how awful she looked. Saw the regret in her eyes strong enough that she had crawled into her own mind and prayed for death. Jacob didn't know if what he felt was something human, or some new aspect of himself imposed by the transformation.

Either way, compassion conquered anger. His stiff posture relaxed, and the glow growing at his horn faded. Was this how Celestia felt before she sent her sister to the moon? Only Jacob wasn't here to punish. "But punishing you wouldn't help the ponies who died. They gave you love and care, gave it to me and all my friends when all your goddamn people wanted to do was lock us away somewhere like this." He gestured over his shoulder at the cells.

"Maybe one day, Celestia will judge you. But not today. Today it's time to start repairing the damage. You aren't just some helpless victim, who maybe saw a few things as she was doped and operated on. You're one of them. You know how the ones hunting us operate. You know their goals, and maybe you know where they take our friends who they steal away." Again he gestured around them, at the endless cells.

"Of fucking course you feel bad about what you did. I think that's because you actually wanted to protect people, but you found out too late you were on the wrong side. Well if there's anything left of whatever nobility made you want to protect people in the first place, listen up." He reached in with his magic, lifting her out through the hole and dumping her out on the ground in front of him. Elise didn't resist, but instead held still, her whole body shivering. She wasn't that heavy.

"Maybe if you'd done something that wasn't as bad you could just die and be done with it. But you've done too much harm for that. Now 'Special Agent,' it's time to fix some of the harm you caused. You can't bring back the dead, but maybe you can do good by them and prevent more deaths. So get off your ass and help us save some people."

She whimpered, struggling to wipe away her tears. Jacob offered no comfort to her, as he had done to Harley only a little earlier. Unlike the changeling, Elise's pain was deserved.

Then she straightened, rising to her hooves. "Okay."

Chapter 22

When Jacob emerged from "Avery's" room, he was leading the little pony along. She followed stiffly behind, hooves clopping on cement. Even halfway to melting into one himself, Jacob still marveled at just how little ponies seemed in person. At least Equestria wasn't lying with the name they chose for their "propaganda."

Their little meeting had been adjourned for the healing magic, but even without saying anything his return attracted attention. "You're back, Jacob?"

"Yeah." He stopped near the center of the room, glancing around. Some of his friends were playing video games, relieved to be doing something familiar. The others were chatting with them, apparently happy to have newcomers to their refuge.

Katie clopped her way over too. Jacob was impressed she could even walk without falling. So far as he knew, horses didn't use their tails for balance like other animals did. Of course, ponies weren't really even animals as he was used to using the word. And I'm going to be one of them soon. "You did it? Harley was right, you do have a healing cutie mark."

"I… think I do," he admitted. "But I don't want to talk about it right now." He straightened. "Hey everybody! Put down your crap, Special Agent Avery here has decided to help us!"

The pony winced as he spoke, but it wasn't like there was anywhere for her to run. She didn't try. It didn't take long for people to circle up around them, dropping controllers and conversations alike.

"Why didn't you kill yourself?" Harley asked, fingering one of her teeth. "We haven't managed to capture one of your people for interrogation before. You aren't just going to lead us on before swallowing poison, are you?" Her eyes narrowed, and the wand in her hand started to glow a faint green. "I can take all those teeth out if you think there's a chance of that, Jacob."

"No!" He put out one hand, though he didn't think he would actually have to do anything. "That isn't going to happen. That isn't the kind of thing ponies do, Harley."

"No." She grunted, making her way to the table. "I guess it isn't."

"They were supposed to rescue me," Avery whispered. "A team was supposed to break in and extract me before they attacked. I guess… I guess they didn't."

Jacob helped the pony over to the table, and lifted her up onto a chair, before taking his own seat beside Katie.

"So the evil government conspiracy cuts away liabilities and loose ends as soon as they're not useful anymore." Jackie rolled her eyes. "Have you ever seen a movie, pony? That's like, act two."

She stiffened, glaring across the table. "My organization made the best possible decisions we could with the intelligence we had." She rose, propping her forelegs up on the table. Maybe it made her feel a little taller, but it only made her look more adorable.

How are we supposed to get anything done when everything we do makes us seem cute?

"I want to be clear about this: I haven't surrendered to you. I'm not going to compromise any ongoing missions or reveal agency information to you, except where I think it can help you correct our mistakes and get the correct information distributed."

Nobody questioned her. Harley cleared her throat. "At least give me your word you won't lie to us. Don't think we haven't thought that this wasn't your plan all along, to infiltrate whoever survived what you did to Unity and make sure we were wiped out for good. You won't be getting anything from us, and you'll be watched around the clock from now on. At least until you're shipped off to some Equestrian penal colony."

"Will they still be able to do that?" Eric asked, his voice low. "With the mirror probably gone—"

Jackie threw a pencil across the table at him. "You were listening to the 'not sharing information' part, right?" She gestured angrily at Avery. "This pony might not be the one who destroyed Unity, but without her they would've failed. I'm not even sure we should give her food!"

"We will," Jacob said calmly, with confidence that wouldn't allow argument. "That doesn't mean we have to befriend her, or keep her in luxury. But we can at least give respect to an enemy who wants to clean up some of their mistakes. We aren't her judges." He folded his arms on the table in front of him, though his head barely cleared the edge. "I didn't save her damn life twice only for her to die as a prisoner of war, got it? If she tries anything, you feel free to do what you want. But if she cooperates, then anyone who touches Elise has me to answer to."

Silence. Jackie and Stalwart both glared acid at him. Eric and Danni at least seemed supportive, though they didn't seem happy. Harley alone was unreadable. "Okay." He turned. "Why don't we start at the beginning, Special Agent Elise Avery… Why don't you explain for us exactly what bad information you think your department is using. What convinced you to want to help?"

"First, we considered contamination and mutation the death of the individual… or the suppression, for the really optimistic. We knew that old memories survived, and that's what my infiltration needed. I just needed to repeat what I'd memorized and be brought into your fortress. My implant is subdermal. That's probably the first thing: we need to relocate as soon as possible. You'll need a Faraday cage to keep me in, or—"

"No need,” Harley interrupted. "It came out when you, uh, landed. That's how we knew you were evil in the first place."

Avery bristled at the term, but sat back in her chair anyway. "That's good. I'm sure finding somewhere else this well stocked wouldn't be easy. That's… not a question. I'm not trying to gather intelligence on your remaining resources." She straightened. "I've never been one for existential questions. But I feel like myself—except for the physical aspects. I remember my whole life, I don't feel suddenly compelled to… anything. Whatever this disease is, it doesn't kill the infected. That's the first thing."

"We were also wrong about you. We always thought…" She whimpered, blinking away tears. "I didn't… find what I expected. I didn't even think I'd survive to be rescued. They probably didn't either."

"What did you always think?" Jacob asked, as patiently as he could. "Something about the way ponies behaved?"

She nodded. "We've treated this infection like the outbreak of an… intelligent disease. Those who haven't yet succumbed sometimes learn useful skills for use in the field. But the progression of contamination releases energy, and that energy is eventually spent. When that happened…" She looked down at herself, and her voice cracked again. "We didn't think you kept these creatures intact. They're the most dangerous, most contagious form, but you were always the most protective of them. We thought they might be feeding… whatever was at the heart of this. Some monster in the heart of your fortress, manipulating and enslaving you. And when you weren't useful anymore, eating you."

"We aren't manipulated or enslaved," Jackie called from across the table. "Everyone of us your agents ever fought in the field chose to help over living somewhere safe."

"Conscripts make great cannon-fodder," Harley muttered bitterly. "But terrible spies."

"I know." Elise seemed to try and sink down into her seat. "You're just sick people trying to take care of each other. Trying to stop the ones who should be on your side from taking you away." She slammed one of her hooves down on the table, without effect. "I've always hated the way we treated you, but I could justify it before. We were at least keeping you alive, which was more than would happen if you got loose and eaten by…" She shook her head. "This whole thing would've been talked out! I don't understand why we didn't just talk to you in the beginning! You clearly know how to take care of your own, you weren't plotting to spread your infection, but had your own rules to keep it from spreading!"

"You say what we all think," Stalwart called across the table. "Before Unity was destroyed, the ponies would've happily negotiated. They only wanted us to be safe. That was all we ever wanted."

"I know." She whimpered. "I know now."

There was a long silence. Jacob glared anyone down who tried to speak, giving Elise time to recover. She would be able to give them her information on her own terms.

It worked, because eventually she recovered and looked up again, huge eyes staring around the room. "Any information I have goes bad as soon as they know you have me. We remember the early days of the war, with how effective our people could be broken. I guess now I know why… you people were the ones doing the right thing, not us… but either way, there's one place they can't move as easily as anything else. Containment, where they keep all of you. There's a contingency plan in place to… burn the whole thing. It has to be the first place you go, and soon."

She leaned forward, resting her forelegs on the table again. "Bring me a map, I'll show you where it is. You can get your people out."

* * *

A few hours later, and Jacob hovered behind Harley, watching her draft a message. He didn't know what computer system the ponies were using to coordinate. Whatever it was, he had to assume the enemy hadn't broken it yet.

He read the tail-end of Harley's message with a quick glance. "Mounting a rescue should be our first priority, even if we don't know what to do with the ponies after we get them out. If we don't mount this rescue, my informant believes the ponies inside may be killed.”

“I reiterate I was using my natural gifts during the entire exchange and am confident the informant was being truthful with us so far as she knows it. I would remind my fellow survivors that losing every single pony the Light Tenders ever captured is too serious a risk to take even with these odds."

"I suggest a meeting immediately. If anyone in Celestia's service survived, I leave the decision to them. Otherwise, each safehouse should respond to this message if and only if you are able and willing to assist. We will probably need all safehouses to take in rescued ponies once we succeed either way."

She signed with another few lines in unreadable letter salad. "What's that?"

She looked up at him. "Oh, just the usual 'Glory to Celestia, long life to the republic crap. Ponies always sign with it." She sent the message, then spun her rolling chair around.

"Is that… the pony language?"

Harley laughed. "Is English the human language?"

Jacob nodded, understanding. "Is it the same one that ponies sometimes used when they were speaking in code?"

"Yeah. I guess you could call it a genetic language, but that's too simple. It's magic, and you've got to be a pony to speak it. Or… close. A few close cousins like me can study it by listening, even if we didn't get born with it stuck up in our brains."

Jacob pulled over another chair. Messages seemed to be flying back and forth on the computer behind Harley, but she was ignoring them so he did too. "What about other things? Equestria has griffons, minotaurs, zebras…"

"Except for the zebras, nope."

"Then why not write the whole thing in code? If that makes sure no human could read it…"

"Celestia's ponies always did. But we can't rely on the ones in charge being from Equestria right now. Jackie would be in charge here if I hadn't come back, and she can't read it." She leaned back in her chair. "If you ask me, it's a useless code, and I'm damn sure they've already broken it. Elise proves they're willing to use ponies as tools when they need to. Every single human is a potential translator."

Jacob wanted to learn more about this strange new magic, but didn't get the chance. The computer beeped loudly, something it hadn't done yet. Harley stiffened and rolled around to face it.

A message had opened, filling the screen with English letters. "This is Sunset Shimmer: what resources do you have available to complete this mission?"

Harley typed quickly. I have a detailed breakdown of the location, defenses, and procedures used in the prison. My safehouse has two earth ponies, one trained thestral, a unicorn doctor, several untrained fliers, and me.

The response came very quickly now. "Based on what you know of their defenses, what would we need to get inside?"

Jacob leaned closer, watching Harley's fingers blur across the keyboard. The prison is built to human standards of defense, which means most of its protections are above-ground and stationary. We stand no chance of defeating them. We have a pony with intimate memories of the facility—a gatecrashing team could sever the prison's nerves with explosives and not much risk. My source reports only twenty guards or so in the facility at any one time, most of them prison wardens. Five warponies and the gatecrashers would be enough if we could move soon.

"The database suggests you have at least one unicorn in your safehouse right now. Could you make the gatecrashing team?"

Harley laughed out loud, then met Jacob's eyes with a blush. "She wants…" She didn't finish, hunching down over the keyboard again. Not a chance. They're all untrained. My doctor has a cutie mark for saving dying ponies, and that's about all he's good for. I don't think he can teleport.

"I'm standing right here."

Harley looked up at him. "What, am I wrong? Do you even know what a gatecrasher is?"

He grunted. "They said teleportation was too advanced."

"It is."

There was a response waiting for them on the screen. "We could still use him if something goes wrong. And your earth ponies, will they help? It's in our best interest to involve as few ponies as possible in this: right now the enemy believes we've been eradicated. I wish to send the message that we are only a few vengeful survivors. This rescue should give our scattered ponies a chance to relocate."

She gritted her teeth. The earth ponies are both ready. My doctor is halfway pony and may be a liability. "No offence," she added, but didn't type. I do not think fliers will be useful for this mission. I also don't know anywhere large enough to bring this many ponies without attracting attention. I didn't know we had anywhere that big.

"The less any one group knows the better, in case one of our groups is captured. I will do the gatecrashing myself, and find a few more ponies for the attack team. Can you be ready by tonight?"

Chapter 23

The safehouse wasn't just a safehouse, but an armory. Harley led them to a closed door that looked like all the other bedrooms, and unlocked it with her Unity ID card.

The room practically hummed with magic. Harley stopped in the doorway, glaring back at Jackie and the others. "The rest of you stay out. This room is hot."

"This is horse shit, Harley."

"You should've seen how we got out of Unity," Jacob muttered.

She ignored him. "Why the hell can't I come with you? You're taking a known traitor and a unicorn who can't levitate, but there's no room in your squad for an infiltrator who actually knows what she's doing?"

Harley looked sympathetic. "Jackie, we'll be underground the whole time. There won't be any chance for stealth either, we'll be blowing the defenses to hell before we even start. There's no reason for you to be there." She gestured behind her with one hand. "Two earth ponies, for breaking our way through. The traitor we need to find our way.

"So what about him?" Jacob recoiled, though very little of her anger seemed aimed at him directly. "At least I can shoot straight! You know how to shoot, Jacob?"

"No," he admitted. "And I don't want to."

"See! If you can take a useless kid you can take me!"

Harley turned away, walking along the room. It was perhaps fifty feet square, with tall metal lockers on the perimeter. She opened the first one, where a vaguely humanoid manikin served to hang several bits of jewelry and fine cloth. Jacob would've guessed it as some kind of fancy LARPer's costume, except that his horn itched just to be looking.

Harley folded her arms. "Jacob won't be part of the infiltration—he'll be hanging around in back in case we need healing. Can you turn an exploded sack of meat back into a pony?"

From just beside him, Avery winced. Jacob still didn't know how much of her near death she remembered, though he hoped it wasn't much. Jacob did remember, and still had nightmares. "She wasn't that bad."

They ignored him. "Jackie, we'll need you soon. The way ponies have been running things isn't going to work anymore. Sunset lived, and she's already making changes. I don't know much more than that. But I have a feeling breaking rules back in Unity is about to be the least of their worries. Just… hold on a little longer, okay? You won't be any use to anypony if you get killed in action on an assignment where you couldn't even help."

She slumped against the doorway. "Fine. Just… you better come back safe." She shut the door behind her, leaving Danni, Elise, Harley, Stalwart, and himself in the armory.

"So what is all this stuff?"

"We've been modernizing," she muttered, slipping the necklace from around the dummy and around her own neck. "Equestria has been peaceful for so long that only its princesses remember how to fight a real war."

"You could say that again." Danni walked over to the locker, watching closely as Harley put a bracelet on each wrist, then slung the cloak over her shoulders. It was quite small, only hanging to the small of her back. Would've been a perfect fit for a pony though. "Didn't changelings get an army to their capital and almost win?"

"They did." She spoke through gritted teeth. "Ponies didn't even have an army back then, just the ceremonial Solar and Lunar Guard. They knew more about looking fancy and pulling chariots than they did about fighting."

The pony beside him was timid and nervous, as she always seemed to be when addressing anyone else in the safehouse. That, and a powerful sense of guilt. "Are you talking about that pony TV show? The one made for little girls?"

"It's real," Jacob said.

Harley froze halfway to the next locker, laughing. "What the oversimplifying unicorn beside you means to say is that propaganda is based on true events. It paints Equestria as more of a paradise than it really is, glosses over some of the mistakes while emphasizing the strengths of some of Equestria's ruling elite. Humans have had countries do that before too, trying to get people to move in. 'Come to Equestria, with no heavy metals in the rivers and sunny weather on a schedule. Stop by for a postcard at our scenic POW camps.'” She slammed the next locker open, her whole body tense. "Jacob, get over here. You're next."

He approached. "What does all this do?" Maybe Harley would relax a little if they changed the subject.

She did. "Before I got distracted, I was trying to explain the way ponies have been learning how to fight again. Humans… might not be equal to a skilled pony in their element one for one, but that's not how you fight. You've got powerful hardware, an infrastructure that's constantly innovating, and emotional endurance few equestrian ponies can manage." Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at Elise.

"Unfortunately, ponies can't change their nature. They haven't been hardened like humans, so they came up with magic to do it instead. These are the tools we've been using to help reduce our casualties." She leaned down, wrapping the necklace around his neck. A cool gold chain, with an uneven shard of quartz at the end. "This first one powers everything. Unicorns charge them with magic, but I don't know how. These bracelets… they bring stability, wrapping magic around the human illusion so it doesn't crumble as easily. Only the spellcasters usually wear them." The bracelets tightened around his much-smaller wrists, not sliding off right away as he had expected. They were also made from gold, and seemed to glow with the same yellow as his magic once he put them on. "Last is Celestia's mantle, and the protection of the sun." She settled the clasp around his neck, where it hung a little bigger on him than the one she was wearing. All white cloth, but with gold thread around the edges. "Stops bullets, poison gas, even explosives. So long as you've got magic to fuel it. If you run out, it's just rags."

"This… explains some things," Avery muttered.

"I'm sure it does, bastard." Danielle shoved her way past the pony. "Harley, is any of this useful for the ones with earth pony magic? I've checked, I'm already bulletproof."

"Unicorns often innovate for themselves before they aid their friends." Harley skipped several lockers, giving nothing to Avery. Jacob thought that was a tactical mistake, but didn't say anything. "But they have come up with one useful innovation. They're quite difficult to make, so… don't lose these. There might not be any more without Equestria." She removed another necklace from inside, with a chunk of rock hanging from a rusty-looking chain. It was a chunk of obsidian, glowing as though red hot. Jacob felt no heat as she walked it past him to Danni. "Put this on."

She did. "What is it?"

Harley shrugged. "I don't know how they're made. What they do is let you stay connected to the earth no matter where you are. While you wear it, your magic is nearly inexhaustible.

"Seriously?" Danni looked down at the necklace, flexing one of her hands. "Woah." She stumbled back, eyes widening. "It's… so big…"

Harley shrugged again. "It's worth your weight in bits a hundred times over." She opened the next locker, then sighed. "Only one here. You two decide among yourself who wears it."

"We just decided." Stalwart nodded at Danni. "You're still human, you're more fragile than I am."

"Says the cat horse." Danni didn't argue though, tucking the necklace under her shirt. It was still visible as a faint glowing from within. She cracked her knuckles. "Let's kick some ass."

"Sunset should be here any minute." Harley sat down on a bench in front of a set of drawers, opening each in turn. She removed little brown wrapped squares, along with a box of electronics. She worked quickly, her hands moving with total confidence as she put things together from the plastic box and stuck each piece into another package.

Jacob gaped, stumbling backward. It wasn't as though a few more feet would make a difference if she screwed up. "I-is that…"

"Humans are so clever," she said. "We'd have already lost if we couldn't turn their weapons against them."

Jacob didn't reply, because at that moment he felt something building in the air. The sensation came first from his horn, though it spread rapidly through his whole body. "Hey, clear the center of the room," he called, on a hunch. "I think they're about to get here."

"Yep." Harley was making a little pile of armed explosives, each one complete with a faint green LED blinking in rhythm. "Good call, kid. That's exactly what that is."

Light grew in the empty space between two benches, along with enough magic to put pressure on Jacob's forehead and make his whole body shake. Instinct demanded he look away, shield his eyes from whatever was coming. He ignored it and watched anyway.

Air exploded out from the center, ruffling their clothes and slamming the open lockers closed, and suddenly there were three more people in the room with them.

One was another earth pony, apparently wearing a similar necklace to the one Danni now had, and little else. Another was about as human as Jacob, though he lacked a horn or wings.

Then there was Sunset. Jacob actually fell, slumping down a locker and onto the floor. Equestria had another Alicorn.

Sunset still wore something like a human disguise, though it wasn't doing a very good job. Her horn had grown another foot or so, and her hair looked like it was on fire, rising up around her in plain defiance of gravity. Orange light like the embers of a pyre hovered around her, seeming to keep her a few inches off the ground.

The wings might've been doing that. One full and healthy, larger than Eric's or any other pegasus pony's. The other charred and burned, mere bones. Yet light surged around them, burning the same shade as her horn.

Harley swore loudly, stumbling onto her knees and lowering her head. "R-Regent? I didn't know you'd been promoted."

The light of the teleport faded, though Sunset's unnatural brilliance remained. Jacob felt an unnatural heat radiating away from her, and the room started getting warmer.

Someone banged on the closed door. Someone with Jackie's voice. "Is everything okay in there?"

Sunset sighed. "Not in any way I imagined, Harlequin."

Jacob could feel what had driven Harley to bow: magic was power, and power like this was impossible to ignore. But before he could straighten, the one who had been Sunset just shook her head.

"Nobody do it. Princess Celestia has given me no title. You don't need to bow."

"But…" Harley got to her feet, retreating towards her pile of bombs. "How is that possible?"

"I couldn't explain." Sunset finally landed. The charred wing had black marks that seemed to make it onto her back, wrapping around her shoulder. It hurt just to look at. But if Sunset Shimmer was in any pain, she didn't show it. "Not to you." She looked away, towards Avery and himself. Only just then did Jacob realize the earth pony was cowering behind one of his legs. "We have no time to waste. Pony, are you the one called Elise Avery?"

She nodded.

Apparently she had been right to be afraid. Something yanked her out from beside him, so fast Jacob had to catch himself against the wall. Elise screamed as she was lifted into the air, limbs kicking vainly at nothing. She stopped mere inches from Sunset's face. "Do you know what I had to see, Elise?"

The pony squeaked, too weak to form words. Everyone else was frozen, Jacob included.

"I watched ponies killed by the ones they had come to save. I heard foals scream as they were crushed to death." The air got hotter, from “no air conditioner” to “summer in Death Valley.” Sweat started to soak Jacob's shirt through, but that hardly seemed to matter. "Do you know what that's like?"

Jacob had no idea how Elise still had the strength to speak. With such wrath in front of him, he wasn't sure he could've done anything more manly than piss himself. Yet Elise spoke anyway. "Yes. I thought that was what I was volunteering to prevent. I was wrong."

"You were." Sunset dropped her. Jacob jerked, but he was too slow to catch her. Or… maybe not, because her fall stopped. She practically floated the last foot or so.

But some of the heat was already gone from Sunset's hair, as though it were settling back under gravity's familiar grip. "You don't agree with what happened." Sunset sounded as though she were getting weaker. "You stayed inside to try and keep the signal blocked. But you didn't warn us. If we had known, we could have taken measures to protect ourselves. Ponies who were dead would be alive." She turned her back on Elise.

"No, you aren't the pony who murdered my friends. You're just a pony who stood by and watched."

"There's a special place in hell waiting for me I'm sure." Elise coughed. "But if you send me there, you won't be able to rescue the contaminated still trapped in containment. At least wait until I get you in."

"You only wish." Sunset walked away from her, towards Harley. "One day, when this war is over, I'm going to make sure you get a meeting with the family of every pony who didn't come home."

She shook her head. "Harlequin, are we ready? Equestrian citizens are counting on us."

Chapter 24

Danielle withdrew from Sunset as she started cutting the air with her hand. She could think of no other word for the way her hand had sliced the air like paper, glowing with Equestrian magic as she went. With each cut another of Harley's bombs would shoot through the air, through the hole she made to somewhere Danielle couldn't see.

"Breaching team, get ready!" Sunset hovered a few feet above the ground, and the air around her was so hot Danielle could practically see steam rising all around her. "I'm sending you into the center of the prison! There will be wardens. If you are successful, return to where I sent you after two minutes."

She didn't say what to do if the area wasn't safe, and nobody asked. Danielle cracked her fingers one at a time, then slid a pair of brass knuckles onto each hand. The metal did very little compared to the strength of her bones, but it felt better to be wearing them.

"So much'a what an earth pony does is about what they think they got in 'em," Applejack had explained. "If ya’ think that ya' can't do it, yer probably right. But if ya' don't give up, anythin's possible."

What might've been a trite platitude when used by anyone else was actually true about magic. Danielle had shattered concrete, twisted metal into pretzels, and shot herself without more than a bruise. If earth ponies could do that, maybe they could work out a successful jailbreak somehow too.

Danielle stood in front, next to the other earth pony wearing a necklace. She heard a small voice beside her. "Name's Steelshod." He offered his hoof up to her, speaking quietly.

She had to lean way, way down to reach, but she did anyway. Someday I'm going to be grateful when humans do that for me. Unless she never got her cutie mark. Maybe she would never change. "Danni."

"You ever teleport across a continent before, Danni?" He spoke quietly, though when she was concentrating she could hear the little voice over Sunset and Harley and Elise as they placed, transported, and detonated a series of explosives.

"Harley took us a few miles to get away from Unity, when it…" She whimpered, trailing off. "Never further than that."

"Pale Mare take the ponies who did that," Steelshod said, his head lowered with respect. "We will be her hooves." Had she a pair of pony-sized ears, Danielle might've heard Steelshod low and gravely, like some kind of badass hero. Instead it came off like a six-year-old trying to do an impression of one, and she almost laughed. Would've, were it about something less serious. "I just want to warn you: it's even worse than short distances. Get ready."

She wasn't exactly sure what ready meant. Without anything better to do, Danielle tried to feel down to the earth beneath her. Unfortunately she was on the fifth story of a building, and so reaching down was pointless. How it had worked on Unity, which had apparently been flying some of the time, she had no idea.

Danielle concentrated on the necklace instead, pleading with nothing for the strength she lacked. Danielle wasn't afraid to pray, no matter how many would mock her for it. Getting strength from earth wasn't really like that, in that the earth always answered when she asked, if it could. There was no waiting, or second-guessing what something was supposed to mean. She asked for strength, and so it came.

The ground felt suddenly feeble beneath her feet, as though it might crumble away. Her clothes too seemed so thin and frail, ready to tear away with minimal effort. She was a rock, ready to be planted in the path of a river and divert it somewhere better.

"Now!"

Danielle was cast adrift on the void. Not zipping forward through space, passing through objects as it appeared when Harley moved her around. Pressure crushed against her chest, pressure so overwhelming she started to choke. Or would have, if she had a mouth. She had no body, no eyes, yet somehow she could still feel. She shot forward faster than she could comprehend, around the rim of a whirling sphere with gravity no longer strong enough to bind her. A vast emptiness speckled with stars surrounded her, the final destination of even a minor miscalculation of teleportation. Had Sunset's anger offset her spellcasting enough to send them flying off into space?

Then she landed. The teleportation brought with it the sound of a tremendous explosion, which sent anything not nailed down flying around them in all directions. Chairs and papers and desks slammed into concrete walls, and several of them stuck.

She was standing in a waiting room, or somewhere that had looked like one until just now. The plain, wide bars of LED light strips were all dark, though there was a faint red glow still coming near the base of every wall. It was enough to see by, though it kept the room in constant gloom. Computer terminals by one wall were dark, and a few trailed cables but no sparks.

However awful the jump had been, Danielle found clarity returned faster than the others described it. The strength of earth surrounded her now, not just from the necklace. She didn't even need it down here. A shame that pony magic arbitrarily restricted human users as much as pony ones.

There were four of them now—Sunset's two, plus Stalwart and herself.

"For Equestria!" Steelshod was the only one to shout, though even so his voice boomed through the room. It no longer sounded cute, even if there was something absurd in seeing something so small move so fast. He charged straight for a steel security door, slamming into it with his shoulder. Metal screamed in protest, at least until she followed his strike with a shove of her own, pulling in strength from all around her. Metal snapped, glowing briefly red along the seam as they tore it right out of the doorway. She felt only a brief sting, one quickly swallowed by the strength the earth shared with her.

Someone started shooting, from several different sides at once. She felt the impacts like flies striking her chest at high speeds, piercing her clothes but nothing else. Harley's promise proved good: while she wore the necklace, the ties that bound her to the earth couldn't be shattered by little bits of metal, no matter how hard they hit her.

There was little time to assess the situation. Past the door, soldiers crouched around corners and behind fallen desks, firing with large black rifles. Most of them wore masks, covering their eyes and the rest of their faces too. They had a few more seconds to shoot before the ponies crashed into them.

Danni struck a man twice her size with a kick that sent him flying across the room into a wall. His partner turned his gun on her, and emptied the magazine point blank into her side. This time it hurt, about like what getting hit with a paintball felt like. She gritted her teeth, yanked his MP5 out of his hands, and broke it over his mask.

Screams and gunshots continued in the confined space as the unprepared soldiers were beaten to a pulp. Danielle wasn't sure if she killed any of them, though she tried not to think too much about the sounds bones made when she struck them. For all that she was smaller than even the shortest soldier, they might as well be made of balsa.

"Block those doors!" Steelshod eventually shouted, gesturing to a pair of sturdy steel doors at the far wall of the waiting room. "Spy said any reinforcements have to come from the surface, and they'll come through there!"

Danielle was privately annoyed that she hadn't been given all the spy's information, but resisted the urge to start ripping up furniture. The doors swung inwards, so it wasn't hard to choke them with an absolute mountain of desks, chairs, and scrap metal ripped right out of the walls. She tossed all with equal concern across the room, before joining the other humanoid-shaped earth pony in dragging the fallen soldiers into a side-closet. Most were bleeding, and some moaned as they were moved. These people need a doctor.

She thought that, but she knew they wouldn't get one as she twisted the long handle into a knot, crushing the locking mechanism, stretching the door a little into the wall for good measure. We only have a few minutes until reinforcements find a way here that doesn't need the lift. At first there would be soldiers, but sooner or later something would arrive that could get through their makeshift barricade. There were numerous more advanced defenses: turrets emerging from walls, an array of cameras and suspicious-looking vents, but none of them were doing anything.

"Sunset is coming in!" Had it been that long already? Danni covered her ears just in time for another explosion, this one accompanied by a gentle breeze of warm air. It didn't bring crushing force to knock things over, as the last one had.

"Report!" Sunset stayed in the air, expression urgent. She wasn't wearing anything enchanted, at least not that Danni could see. She didn't seem to need it.

Steelshod stopped right in front of her, but he didn't do anything formal like salute. "We got fifteen guards, princess! No idea what happened to the scientists, but we haven't seen any of them. Atrium is secure!"

"Advance into the prison." She didn't waste time with formalities. "Elise, explain what we're up against!"

The earth pony was the only one who looked out of place. Even pathetic-looking Jacob had grim determination on his face and that robe on his shoulders. Elise only looked ashamed. "Cells are stacked three high. 'Earth ponies' are on top, with only acrylic on all sides. The cells don't have doors—each one has a latrine and a food-delivery system and nothing else. They have to be opened slowly, with a bulky machine. It was… They thought it would prevent a large jailbreak. There are automated defenses, and several ways to destroy the prisoners if a breach was detected."

They started moving forward, the whole group orbiting around Sunset Shimmer like planets around a star, even if it was Elise who knew where she was going. "We should have stopped them with the bombs we sent. Your first priority should be the inner six cells in every block—these don't have any airflow other than the ventilation system, which we severed."

"Are there more guards waiting for us in there?" Steelshod asked. "If we got fifteen?"

Elise shrugged. "Don't know. Probably not, though. We relied mostly on automated defenses, since anyone who spent time near the infected would be contaminated eventually."

Sunset gestured at another set of sturdy steel doors. She ignored the others obviously leading to medical labs or living quarters, except to run her hand along them as she floated past. Where she touched the metal melted away like chocolate, trapping the occupants inside. They would hope so, anyway. "Clear it, Steelshod! Sweep to the end and meet us back at the entrance!"

Danni joined him at the front as they shattered another set of doors, thundering past them and onto the plain concrete floor.

If the violence she inflicted on jailers was difficult for her, then seeing the cells for the first time was agony. The jail itself seemed to be a single unbroken room, gently round and spiraling upwards. The outer wall all the way up was transparent, and covered with thousands of transparent cells. There was a stench about the place, of rot and pain and unwashed animals, with emaciated forms she could only see as outlines through the front of each cell. There were no obstructions, none except for a massive machine resting on the tracks. They found a terrified technician cowering behind it, unarmed and with his face covered by a mask.

Danni ran past him as the other earth pony on two legs took him captive. On and on she ran, and it wasn't just the awful smells that assaulted her. It was the voices too, the faint moans of prisoners on end cells where air was shared with the central passage. Many of them were calling for help—her help. The cells went on forever, seemingly thousands spiraling along in an unbroken sheet that wrapped up and up until the cells ended in construction equipment and unfinished stone. There were no soldiers hiding here either, at least not that they could see.

"Celestia help us." Steelshod slumped briefly against some kind of drilling machine, staring back into the room in horror. "How could… how could ponies do this?"

"I don't know." Danni walked past him, to the industrial level she suspected had been used to grade the sloping floor so flat. It had a massive steel blade, twenty feet long with a gentle curve towards the top. "But I know how it's ending." She yanked. The level protested a moment, listing towards her as bolts screamed in agony. They burst, and several tons of sharp steel came loose in her hands.

Danni had seen thick acrylic before, during family vacations to the aquarium. The cells seemed to be made from the same stuff, though this was cloudy and unpolished instead of the clear stuff used for display. It was still thick enough to contain fifty feet of water… or a single pony. She advanced on the wall, toting her makeshift weapon. The incredible weight made the concrete floor crack a little where she stepped, though thankfully the ceiling was at least fifteen feet, plenty high enough that she wouldn't catch her weapon if she was careful.

"That won't work!" Stalwart trailed behind her, his voice sympathetic. "I know you want to get them out, but you can't possibly cut them each open one at a time! There's no way we can hold out that long!"

"It doesn't make sense that we can stop bullets." She grunted, adjusting the incredible load she carried. Even with the necklace this thing was a strain. Not on the magic coming to her, but on her body itself. She felt a little like a straw being forced to contain a river. The water itself strengthened her, kept her strong against an ever-increasing flood, but she shivered to think what might happen to her when the flow finally stopped.

It doesn't matter so long as it lasts. Danielle didn't know what drove her, but she didn't stop to think. If she thought about it, she might doubt she could do it. If she doubted, it wouldn't work. Stalwart retreated from her, along with the other earth ponies. Even Steelshod seemed to be watching her, pointing at something she couldn't see for the benefit of the last earth pony, whose name she didn't know.

"Get away from the exit!" she bellowed, and found her voice carried perfectly well through the tight space. As perfectly as it ever had. She made sure the ponies near her had obeyed (they had), then brought her blade down as though it were a sword. Glass shattered, though not with the sound she was used to. It sounded more like huge sheets of ice crunching together. Instead of lancing across with cracks, the area around her strike went cloudy with the stress, and a few massive square chunks tumbled down.

That was the first step. Danielle let the huge chunk of steel fall to the ground at her feet, making sure that she was well out of the way when it hit. Of course, her work had only begun.

The shouting and moaning of ponies trapped within the prison faded to another sound, anticipation. Could they feel what she could? They would.

"See?" Stalwart called, from a little further away than before. "Maybe Sunset has a plan? You can't do that for all of them!"

"You can't fill a basket with apples by kicking a tree." Danielle dropped her brass knuckles then advanced into the opening she had made. It was big enough for the three ponies in exposed cells to escape, but she didn't help them yet. There were still thousands imprisoned. "You can't burrow instantly through rocks. Magic breaks the rules, Stalwart. Nothing says we can't break them a lot." She braced herself against the solid stone uncut behind her, settling her hands on the surface she had cut. The glass was about a foot thick, and probably sharp too. Not that it could cut her now.

I'm going to get these ponies out. Before someone comes to stop us. These weren't just Equestrian captives. These were fellow humans, the only half of the ones who had gone missing. The ones who had found a prison waiting to keep their powers in, instead of new friends. It wasn't fair.

She let the magic consume her. Her body lost focus in her mind, and instead she saw larger things. Tectonic plates as they ground together, storms that could crush whole cities, and the constant violence that was at the heart of the planet. Compared to all that, what was a little plexiglass?

Danielle screamed, then charged forward as though the wall were a curtain. It didn't break instantly away from her arms, as everything she thought she knew about force suggested it would've. A deafening bang shook through containment as a wave rippled through the glass, a wave that shattered as it went and ripped glass away from the stone. Whole chunks of it fell forward, before sliding down the gentle slope. It took nearly thirty full seconds for the cacophony to stop. Closest to where Danielle had been standing, little of it was even attached to the wall anymore, but covered the ground in an ocean of broken shards.

Danielle felt something painful around her neck, a little explosion from beneath her shirt. Her shirt caught fire and she tore it off, even as she stumbled away from the cells. The Equestrian necklace was a flaming wreck, and it came off from around her along with the shirt, still in flames.

It felt like crossing the finish line of a race. The incredible effort of the event finally over, her body was free to relax. She barely managed to stay awake long enough to hear the cheering. The world got bigger, sounds drifted out of focus, and everything went dark.

Author's Note

Well, things far into the story and it's time for stuff to go down.

Chapter 25

The prison was in ruins. Their attack team fled as the earthquake started, retreating into the doorway as thick acrylic shells exploded open of their own accord. Sunset blocked the doorway, intercepting shrapnel in a transparent barrier that seemed to cost her little effort or concentration.

"What happened?" Harley stared on in shock, wand wrapped tightly in her hand. "How did four earth ponies do that?"

Sunset watched not with joy, but satisfaction at least. "We're underground, in their domain. Somepony got clever. This will greatly simplify things for us." The floor was covered in a transparent ocean of broken acrylic, flowing and bunching up towards the bottom. "I will make the gate. The rest of you pass the message along that the strong should help the weak. These conditions are… deplorable." She looked at Elise, who never met her eyes. "We'll settle this debt, but not today."

She lowered her shield, walking back into the prison. Glass scattered from around her as though driven by an invisible wind, the ground going clear as she made it to the blank, stone inner wall. "Harlequin, watch my back. The rest of you, get out there and help. If I need you, I'll call."

They did. Jacob was grateful for his height now, because the sea of glass would've been much harder to navigate so low to the ground. Elise didn't seem to have too much trouble, but she was also an earth pony, easily capable of jumping between or kicking aside the pieces too big for her to clear. Jacob didn't need to be told to know he shouldn't let her out of his sight. There was no better time for her to escape back to her old masters than now.

Elise didn't try to run. Instead they approached ponies as they emerged from their cages, sometimes helping the weak climb down from upper cells, sometimes only talking. "Help everypony out!" he always said. "If you see somepony too weak, carry them. Make your way back to the front, but don't run or bunch up. Nopony will be left behind."

"I don't know how we're going to get out." Agent Avery walked with small steps, her tail drooping and her eyes always on the floor. "We already knew some of the infected could… apparently defy the laws of physics. But there are just about nine thousand con—" A pause, as she looked around. "Ponies down here. Even the… the burned one… even she can't take that many, right?"

"I don't know," Jacob answered, honestly. "I think she would have brought more help if she thought she needed more. In Equestria the princesses can make the sun rise in the morning, so I wouldn't put it past her to get these ponies out." The crowd of ponies grew thick on the ground, many crying with relief and talking together and chatting excitedly about the imminent escape. They didn't stampede down to the exit, for which Jacob was grateful. Though it would be the most adorable way to die.

By the time they were halfway up, the message he had given had already been passed along, and there was no need to keep giving it. "You think it's strange?" he asked, hoping their conversation would be lost in the crowd. "That they're so calm?"

"No," Elise said. "We haven't given them the nourishment to be energetic. They're fed just barely enough to stay alive, and any who try to break out even once are kept drugged."

"Damn." He could see it too, though he hadn't wanted to earlier. See the way so many of these ponies looked sickly and shriveled. Fur was missing in mottled patches, and the smell. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting at that alone. Food and water these ponies may've had, but clearly showers had been considered superfluous. "Didn't you say you were from the FBI? Aren't you supposed to be protecting us?"

"We are." She glanced briefly back, at the little symbol on her flank. It looked familiar, though it was greatly simplified from any government insignia he knew of. "I thought we were. I still think keeping the infection from spreading to the general population is the right move. I just don't think we've been doing it the right way."

"We were doing it the right way," Jacob muttered. "Without killing anyone or locking them in boxes. The worst thing we ever did was let ponies run away from their problems to Equestria, instead of sticking behind to help each other."

"I'm… still not convinced that place exists," Elise said. "Not that there isn't a doorway that things come through, that's obviously real. But… couldn't it be somewhere closer?" She lowered her voice, forcing him to stoop to hear her over the excited ponies thronging through the room. "Our intelligence indicates the infection comes from Earth. One woman, 1983. There's a casefile I would show you if…" She shook her head. "I doubt they'd be too happy to see me in headquarters now. Point is, are you sure this 'Equestria' is real? There are easier ways to explain this than getting other worlds involved."

Was he? He had seen things come through the mirror all right, but he hadn't gone through himself. "The ponies have never lied to me," he eventually said. "They didn't volunteer everything they know, but that's not the same thing. They've been explicit about Equestria. Harley, the one who saved me originally, spoke about it like it was real. The things the others said always agreed, even if they interpreted it a little different. I may not know where it is, or maybe even what… but I'm sure it's real. If I didn't still have my sister out here somewhere, I probably would've run away. Before…" He shook his head. "Doesn't matter now. That's not gonna happen. I doubt the portal could've survived what your friends did to Unity."

Elise looked ashamed again, and well she should. But she didn't get to respond, because a little explosion sounded from the front of the room. Jacob jolted upright, spinning around on his feet. "We better investigate."

"Okay!"

"Clear a path!" Jacob ran close to the wall, taking huge strides that carried him over a few ponies at once. They heard him and obeyed, moving away from the wall, though the space was so thick with them now that some ponies couldn't even get out of the cells, and were bunching up in the lowest row as the entire floor was covered with them. Elise kept up with him, though how she managed not to drop far behind with the ground so thick with obstacles and her body so new he couldn't even guess.

He wrapped around and around, passing more and more agitated ponies. "Stay back!" he called to them as he went. They seemed to be speeding up the closer to the bottom he got, though he couldn't say what was motivating them. It wasn't like there was anywhere for them to go.

The further down he went, the less stale the air seemed to become. A breeze seemed to go with him, though it hadn't been there before.

They reached the bottom. Directly opposite from where the cells started, a new doorway had appeared, at least twenty feet across. His eyes fuzzed as he tried to look through it, as plain concrete melted into tropical sand. The sound of waves and the harsh light of sun overwhelmed the nearby emergency lights, accompanied with the occasional squawk of a gull.

The apparent doorway stung to see—the way it passed through such a thin wall, and the sky blended with a wall of rough stone. His horn burned again, and his stomach turned, but he managed not to fall over.

That was good, since ponies were pouring through the doorway like water from a broken dam. The flow seemed to be getting faster and faster by the moment, though the ponies were too weak to run. He was grateful for the fresh air, as it gave some relief from the smell.

Sunset stood between the doorway and the new barrier, glowing wings spread in defiance to… someone. "You have no right to these ponies!" she shouted, loud enough that dust trickled from cracks in the walls and ceilings. "They are Equestrian citizens. As Equestria's Regent, I—"

"Am a fool." Jacob stepped to the side to get a look at the speaker. A thick-looking woman, with mottled red hair and pockmarked skin. "You give away your freedom to fate, and what does it get you? The 'privilege' of more service." He couldn't have guessed at an age, except that she looked like a pancake left to cook too long. The voice didn't quite match the face, high and musical, though it was a discordant sort of music.

The woman spoke with a mouth of strange, half-rotten teeth, and though she wore unmarked military-style fatigues, they were hidden by a black robe and an exaggerated crescent around her neck.

She gestured. Sunset's shield came into blinding life again, overwhelming the light of the distant island with sunlight searing like July. Even so she flinched, and the force of the gesture drove her back a few feet. She drooped a little in her flight after that, panting from the effort. "See what your service earned you? Loyalty to impotent rulers gave you an illusion of strength."

"I don't know who you are," Sunset grunted, through gritted teeth. "But do that again, and I'll show you how my ponies felt when yours burned Unity."

"I'm the warden," she cackled. "The real one, not the overinflated windbag who thinks he is." Her eyes turned dark as she watched the current of ponies filing out. Jacob was tempted to join them, but instead he joined Harley, squeezing her hand in silent greeting. Two of their earth ponies stood behind Sunset's barrier, though there was no sign of Danni or the other mostly-human one. Probably still helping with the prison-break.

Harley squeezed back, though she broke away. She seemed to be edging her way to the wall, near the point where Sunset's shield was weakest.

The woman couldn't be Sunset's own height, though she was probably several times her width. She raised a hand again, this time pointing towards the doorway. "If you don't tell them to stop, I'll turn them all to slugs."

Sunset laughed, though the sound was forced. "There are thousands of us, Warden. I dare you to threaten my ponies again."

The “warden” ground her teeth together in frustration. "There are stronger masters than yours, princess."She said the word like a slur, spitting to one side. "Masters who don't fear the Imperial Art. You don't frighten me."

Bang! The report of gunfire jabbed into his eardrums, causing him to jerk away from Sunset towards the other wall.

The strange woman froze, her arm still raised in some mystical gesture. A crater had appeared in her forehead, oozing blood. Bang bang! Harley fired two more shots as unerringly as the first, a snubnose 44 clutched in both hands. "You scared of being dead?" Harley emptied the other three cylinders into the corpse, firing from just behind where Sunset's shield ended.

"Where the hell—" Jacob muttered, still shivering from the gore. "You had a gun?"

"Well duh." She flicked out the cylinder with practiced grace, dumping spent rounds at her feet even as she slid a quickloader in with the other hand, tossing that aside when it was empty too. "Sunset already blasted her with magic, and that did jack shit." She grinned. "But why would a wizardly type account for bullets when only her side uses 'em?"

Sunset ignored them, turning to face the ponies. She raised her voice, calling up into the ruined prison. "Please move as quick as you can without trampling one another! We have a way out down here, but it won't last. We need to get out as quickly as possible."

"Uh…" Jacob reached up, tugging on one of Sunset's pant-legs. "I think it's still moving!"

It was. The mound that had been a woman had started to melt and writhe, losing some of its concreteness and letting the uniform deflate. It was like rot, though accelerated to such speed that Jacob felt his stomach turn again.

Sunset glared down at the space the woman had been as an ocean of tar swelled into the hallway behind, as though preparing to roll over them all. "For Unity!"

The tunnel turned into an oven. Jacob looked away, shielding his eyes from the light and stumbling away from the magic. He felt his clothes get a little looser even as the little hairs on his arms seemed to char right off. He would probably have lost his eyebrows too, if he hadn't made it to the doorway by then.

When the heat finally died down, the passage had a floor of half-melted lava and the walls glinted like glass, but there was no sign of the body or the creature.

The flames settled from around Sunset's hair as she landed, breathing heavily and with the glow totally gone from her. Yet in place of the magic there was something else: satisfaction. "That's for the way you treated my ponies," she said. "Let's see your master get your atoms out of stone."

Chapter 26

"You feel like being a hero, uh…"

"Eric." Eric sat in the corner of the room, a sketchpad in hand and a lump of charcoal in the other. He had lost his old one in Unity, with its thousands of charcoal drawings in various stages of completion, but that didn't mean he would be discouraged. “And no, I don’t.”

Jackie landed beside him, ignoring his answer and instead glancing over his shoulder at the drawing. "What's that?"

On the first page, Eric was taking his time with a cover page. He had drawn a detailed image there, one that now followed him every minute of his life. A thin brush with a handle wrapped in thread, painting a half-finished cloud. "My Cutie Mark." He turned it to face her, holding it up a little so she could get a good look. With any luck, the accuracy of his drawing would remove the need to "ask to see it." Jackie seemed the type.

"Oh." Jackie rose again, leaning against the wall beside him. Her wings stretched and flexed behind her. "What's it for?"

He closed the sketchpad. Eric couldn't keep drawing anyway, not with someone watching him. "Not sure. I got it the first time they took me into Unity's weather factory." He clutched the notebook close to him, looking away from Jackie. He might be about her height, but he still felt nervous. Jackie was a stranger and a girl, and the combination made it very difficult for him to be near her without getting uncomfortable.

"You got it during your first weather lesson?" She put her hands on her hips, glaring. "Please don't tell me you're some kind of naturally gifted weather magic master, or I might puke all over your book."

He chuckled, setting it on the ground behind him. "Nah, I'm useless at weather. I can barely bust clouds after three months of practice. Damn good at optimization, though."

"Huh?" Jackie stuck her head to one side. "Is that French?"

He really did laugh that time. "N-no! Nothing like that. I'm just good at figuring out how things fit together. Remember the Big Board?"

"The one with all the numbers and maps?"

"Well, the way they were doing things might've worked for keeping Unity hidden, but it was an absolute waste of water. It didn't matter that I can't actually make any, a map's a map. Once I got a good look I just couldn't walk away without making a few changes…" He looked around the room. Both of the ponies left behind were here—Katie had been standing behind her sister with her arms folded the whole time, listening.

He blushed, looking down. "Sorry. I didn't mean to… how'd you get yours? Whatever it is."

Jackie shook her head. "I don't sign up for that much pony at once, Eric. Any time I feel like I'm suddenly good at something, I run the other way. Safer that way."

Katie walked up to join them, looking a little more eager. "Were you and Jacob close?"

"Uh…" Three months ago, the answer would've been “not really.” Now, though… "We're pretty good friends. Why?"

Jackie turned, curious. "That's a good question. I hope the answer's worth delaying our superhero adventure time."

Katie whined, retreating. Her hoof-feet clopped a little as she did. "Jacob has string on his cutie mark too. Sorta like the Crusaders with their shields."

"I never much liked those shields," he admitted. "It felt like it took away from the uniqueness of the individual…" He trailed off. "Who cares? Unity's gone, the mirror's gone, none of that matters. We'll never get to see Equestria now. Our friends might be dying right now trying to rescue ponies who don't have any hope any—"

Jackie slapped him. It wasn't as painful as the time Danielle had done it, though it still stung and made him stagger back, clutching at his face, shielding it with feathery wings. Stupid instincts. What sense does it make to hide behind your most delicate limbs?

"Nope, nope, none of that." Jackie turned away, heading for the stairs in the corner of the room. "Didn't Harley teach you not to do that?"

"Just come on," Katie whispered, offering her hand. He took it, following her towards the stairs. They went to the real roof access, not the boarded and blocked one that opened on the hallway.

"Sorry." Eric sniffed, and felt a little better. Ponies were like that—physical contact made everything easier. Katie was mostly a pony already, at least if her childish shortness and hooves suggested what she was rapidly becoming. "It's hard."

"Yeah." She nodded. "We know."

"That's why we stay busy!" Jackie called, kicking open the roof-access door at the top of the stairs. There was a ladder there, which she started to climb.

Katie went next, though she mostly relied on her wings and her hands, since her hooves gave her such poor grip. Eric didn't watch too closely, since that would mean staring straight up her skirt the whole way.

"Stay busy doing what?" Eric climbed out onto the roof beside them, not winded from the climb as he might've been a few months ago. Eric didn't shiver in the night wind either, though it was quite chilly here.

The rooftop was exactly what he would've expected, flat and frequently broken with air conditioners and pipes running everywhere. Mixed in with all of these was a metal storage cupboard, though it had been turned on its side to blend in with the other conditioners. It was to this Jackie had gone, opening it and digging through.

"Oh, being superheroes." She lifted several colorful masks from within. Eric's eyes widened as he saw them. Dark blue cloth, with light blue plastic goggles underneath. She tossed one of them to Katie, along with a wide-brimmed hat. "You can fly, can't you."

"Yeah, but…" He shook out his wings in the chill, dislodging a few broken feathers. He hadn't been taking care of them properly since Unity fell. Flying would be a little harder because of it, though he was fairly sure he could still do it. "Aren't we trying to stay hidden? Playing superhero isn't very stealthy."

Jackie tossed him another mask, complete with hat. "We won't get caught! You have any idea how hard it is to spot someone flying above you in the dark?"

He shook his head. "No idea."

"There's a night vision spell on the mask," Katie said, her voice a little muffled from the mask. "You should put it on."

He did. The elastic obviously hadn't been sized for a man, but Eric was small enough he could stretch it a little and still fit. It had holes for pony ears, but he didn't have any of those.

The world tinted blue with the mask on, but no longer looked like night. Instead of having to squint to see his companions off the contact glow from streetlights, Eric could see them clearly. Colors washed out, but that was all. These masks were far better than any real night vision he had ever tried. He didn't put on the hat.

"We're part of something bigger, Eric." Jackie picked up a satchel from in the cabinet and slung it over her shoulder. "Haven't you been following the news?"

"Not really." He tossed the hat aside. "Unity didn't get any newspapers, and I spent all my computer hours on Overwatch."

"That figures." Jackie locked the cabinet back up, then straightened. "Well, being seen is part of the old plan. Agents on the outside dress up and do a little supernatural shit wherever we can. We're trying to make sightings so common that they're useless as leads."

"That works?"

Katie nodded—it was easy to tell them apart, even with the similar modified jumpsuits and masks. "They've tried to catch us in town before. But we don't go around that often, or stick around. Bad guys haven't thought of anything better for catching us than drones."

"We're way faster than drones." Jackie took a running start, wings flapping energetically. She might not have any feathers on hers, but the magic was the same. Her skill was impressive, and her speed beyond anything he could match.

"You two go ahead." Eric took a step back, towards the ladder. "I don't want to go out there right now."

"What?" Katie frowned at him, body frozen in preparation to run. "Why?"

"We don't know how long they'll be gone!" He took another step back towards the ladder. "Someone should be here, in case they get back hurt and need help." He shook his head. "I'm not really one for going on adventures."

Jackie looped over the building. He could only see her thanks to the mask, which he tore off and tossed onto the ground near the metal container. "You coming?"

"No," he said again, a little more firmly. "You two go ahead. I'll fly with you some other time." He lowered his voice, blushing. "I stayed in the weather factory for a reason."

"Alright." Katie sighed, then sprinted forward a few steps. She took to the air with a quick spin, then lifted steadily up.

Jackie hovered down, though not close enough to land. "You sure? Flying will make you feel better."

"No it won't." He didn't sound petulant or argumentative. Just like someone stating a fact. "Having my friends back will."

He waved, then slipped down the ladder, slamming the cover down over it as he went. Eric didn't dislike either of these ponies, far from it. But when he was stressed, it was easier to be alone. Certainly not going on some crazy adventure with people he barely knew.

They didn't try to drag him back, for which he was grateful. Eric had neither the desire nor the ability to go out on some reckless mission. He couldn't blame Jackie or her sister for not knowing that yet. It was a shame he couldn't do something more to help these ponies.

I chose a side and it's losing. He had no way to know how the jailbreak was going, and really nothing he could've contributed even if they had taken him. Jackie might've fumed about the way they had been left behind, but for him at least it had made sense. He might've asked to be allowed to stay behind if Harley hadn't already wanted him to.

The safehouse was enormous, much too big for one person. Fifty people could probably live here, or twice that many ponies if they didn't mind sharing bedrooms. Why bother setting up safehouses to take care of so many if you were only going to keep a few people in them?

Eric got bored of wandering around, and so he wandered into the computer room. There were several extremely-modern machines inside, all locked with the customary security measures. Eric sat down at the center one, cracked his knuckles, and keyed in Harley's identification.

Several large screens filled with the interface of the EQS. Only full-time field agents were supposed to have access—Harley didn't know he had learned her ID back in Unity, but she hadn't changed her password since he had memorized it.

It used to be that a global map would take the center of the screen, with cities of interest marked in red. Eric doubted every field agent could see as much as Harley could—she apparently had access to the location and strength of every safehouse the ponies operated, and list after list of successful operations. Unfortunately, all that information was gone. He couldn't see the missions anymore, or the location of safehouses, or any of that. The magical books were all still there, along with the show and lots of other historical information about Equestria. Most of it was in the language he couldn't read, but that was a separate problem.

A few news cables were available, one of them less than two hours old. That would have been right before the rescue mission.

"Ponies of Earth," it began. "The rumors of Unity's fall are all true. Many of you will be worried over loved ones serving there at the time of its fall. There is no way to give you a casualty list, or to assuage your fears. I can say with confidence that many of our ponies did escape. Princess Twilight Sparkle kept the portal functioning until the last, and many of your loved ones may be safely back home in Equestria."

"We will hope the princess escaped through the portal before it was destroyed, since we could not find her body in the rubble. The other Elements all escaped, they are no longer with us on Earth. As of this moment, we're all of Equestria left on this planet. We don't know how long it will take relief to come, if that's even possible without building a new portal on this side."

"I don't need to remind you that a surrender is not possible. With no guarantee of relief from Equestria, we must win on our own."

"As Celestia's appointed regent, I declare the Earth colony in a state of rebellion. Your orders to remain inconspicuous and respect the refugee governments is rescinded. Where Celestia hoped to avoid chaos by acting gradually, we cannot possibly hope to survive against the brutal war the Light Tenders are waging."

"In the war to come, we won't be able to rely on Unity for supplies and information as we once did. As of this moment, each group of you is another cell, to fight this war in your own way. Protect who you can, destroy the Light Tenders and their monsters however you can, and protect your own."

"We will rebuild the bridge. We will protect the refugees who have taken this world for their home, even if that means protecting them from the ones they think they can trust."

"Fight well. Make Celestia proud."

“-Regent Sunset Shimmer"

Chapter 27

There had been no time for Jacob's talents during the prison raid: however many sickly ponies there might've been, there was no way to find them and help them when there were so many just trying to escape from a small space.

Then they escaped. Jacob was one of the last to pass through the doorway, when the sound of shouting and pounding on metal was loudest and they were helping the weakest through. He stood right beside Sunset on the other side as the doors were breached, giving the finger with both hands to the soldiers who broke in.

Jacob found himself on an apparently uninhabited tropical island, somewhere warm and apparently still daylight. It might've been one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen, lapping waves and jungle plants and all, were it not for the huddled masses crowding every inch of beach.

Well, the sickest crowded the beach. Those who were strong enough washed themselves in the salt water, which had gone much cloudier than he had first seen it.

It was still a little tricky to tell ponies apart, but he was pretty sure he could identify Stalwart, waiting near Sunset and not looking dirty. "Hey, what happened to Danni?" He would have thought finding one of four humans in their whole group wouldn't be that hard, but he couldn't see her. Just Sunset, Harley, and the other earth pony somewhere in the distance, tending to a sick pony. What he should be doing.

"Nevermind. Is she okay?"

Stalwart nodded. "Sure, she's okay. Unconscious from what she did to get all the prisoners out."

"Does she need a doctor?"

"No, I don't think so." It was easier to see the pony's expressions than it had been before. He still had the bracelets on Harley had given him, but they hadn't stopped him from changing. How much longer would he still have two legs? With the mirror gone, would he ever be himself again?

It wouldn't stop him from working now. He didn't know what Harley and Sunset were talking about, though Sunset looked drained and weak. They probably weren't going anywhere soon with Sunset in that condition.

Of course, this island didn't have any food he could see, but that was a problem too big for him.

With the majority of the healthy either washing or just enjoying their freedom to walk more than a few steps, the sickly were easy to find. They lay covered in their own filth not far from where the portal had been. Many were shriveled, or had open sores seeping sickly fluid. Their eyes were cloudy, their coats washed-out and weak.

You aren't an Alicorn, he thought, or thought he did. You can't help them all.

He tried anyway. Jacob had been little more than a waste of space so far: the least he could do was try and make his being here mean something.

He walked between the sick and dying without even a wand this time, gauging how healthy they were by feeling at the magic with his instincts. Those who seemed better off than they looked he passed by with only a few kind words, while those who seemed seriously sick warranted more attention.

He worked rapidly, making conversation with the healthy ponies that eventually started to follow him around. Explaining what he knew about their situation and the state of the world so the ponies could pass it along. He found Elise following closest of all, keeping the crowd away from him and assisting the ponies with whatever her animal body could manage.

It was draining work. Jacob's method of healing might be effective, but it was personally costly. Each pony stabilized made it a little harder to stay awake and keep working. Unlike the earth ponies, there was only so much magic a unicorn could contain at one moment, and no source he could just pull from forever.

Eventually it got dark outside. The air got cold, and ponies huddled together for warmth. Ponies didn't go hungry, but he didn't even bother asking how. He practically dragged himself between them, not even conscious of the fact that he had lost his shoes when he no longer had anything to hold them on his legs. Only the next life mattered.

"Jacob?" A familiar voice cut through the haze of a hundred healing spells, one that he had known much better over the last few months. Danielle. He stopped walking. Where was he even going?

"Where are you?" He looked around, but couldn't see another human anywhere. Only at the beach, now packed with groups of ponies all huddled together against the chill.

"Right in front of you," said a cream pony with a soft green mane and a Cutie Mark like a broken chain. "I only just woke up."

"You're smaller," he muttered. And she was, though not as much smaller as a pony should be. "How'd you shrink so fast?"

"Too much magic too fast." She shrugged. "But from the story I heard, it was for the best. Sunset needed all her magic for a fight or something, right?"

"I didn't know ponies could do things like that." Elise was still beside him, looking nearly as worn as he felt.

Jacob could barely hear the words. Everything seemed fuzzy and melty, no doubt a symptom of just how much magic he had used. None of the ponies he had helped had been seconds from death, as Elise had been, but so many lesser treatments could still wear him out just as completely.

"Me neither." Danni shoved him gently. He stumbled and fell onto his rump without much resistance, his feet sliding strangely through the sand. It felt strange, as strange as the tail he still wasn't used to, but one blur was not more offensive than the next. "Jacob, Harley sent me to stop you. If you try to do any more magic, you're going to kill yourself."

He tried to rise anyway. "There are still—"

Danielle pushed again, with far more strength than he could manage. Her small size didn't stop her from being strong. Well, the pony that had her voice. Jacob couldn't really tell it was her beyond that—nothing physical about the pony had carried over. She was as naked as most other ponies, her hair and eyes were different, so what was there for him to see?

"Not for you." The pony climbed into his lap, resting one hoof on one of his kees. "You've done your part."

"I have to go," he said again, his voice weak and pitiable. He tried to muster the magical strength to lift her off, but couldn't manage more than a few useless sparks. "They need help. You saw how they were treated."

Elise cleared her throat. "Jacob, what kind of service would it be to the ponies who might need you tomorrow, or next week, if you die to heal a few more tonight? How many more will die later because you kept working now?"

He stopped fighting. "Oh."

"Yes, oh." She sat down on her haunches. "You find somewhere to rest and you sleep, soldier. The moon…" She glanced up, then back to him. "It's nearly midnight. You should get a good five hours until sunrise."

"Okay." He didn't "find somewhere," he just leaned back and dropped onto the sand as though it were the finest pillow in the world.

Jacob woke up when the sun did, just like everypony else, though he didn't want to at first. Sleeping out in the open, even in such a hospitable environment, meant that he woke up sore all over and soaked through with dew or sweat. He had apparently chosen a spot of sand just on the edge, where jungle roots crept as far into the inhospitable land as they could, and so his tail was thoroughly mixed with twigs, sticks, and other refuse.

He didn't just feel starving, but strange. His pants were torn ragged, his legs didn't seem to fold the right way beneath him, and the air was warmer than he expected. Too warm, in fact. What had happened last night.

Jacob opened his eyes to find much as he had feared. The legs half-buried in the sand were the same satyr-like monstrosities that Katie had back in their safehouse. His looked different, a few different shades of brown instead of the blue coat she had. Still, looking strange did not apparently mean they hurt, even if they ended in flat, blunt hooves. The beginning of the end. We're all sacrificing our humanity on this altar.

His final memories from the night before were hazy, but he still remembered Danielle, as a little pony forcing him to rest. As he moved gradually from sleeping to awake, Jacob wondered what he might've thought about his life a semester ago. Would he have been able to imagine a future where he woke up surround by naked ponies that had been his friends, after surviving an attack on a top-secret government bunker?

Danni was already awake, munching on… god, he had to be imagining it. "Danni, are you eating a bush?" He sat up, not trusting his legs for anything more yet, yawning like a cat. "I must still be dreaming."

The pony blushed, turning around to face him and tucking her tail between her legs. "It tastes horrible, if that makes a difference. But it's either that or eat nothing. The others are doing it, and they haven't started puking all over the place yet."

He grunted, rubbing the grogginess out of his eyes. "I… am I dreaming about the whole…" He gestured down at his legs. "Those are real too, aren't they?"

"Afraid so."

He sighed, flopping onto his back. He closed his eyes, but there was no hope of sleeping again. He could hear the dull murmur of thousands of pony voices mixed in with the ocean, and he was far too light a sleeper to get through that. "Have you talked to Harley? Know what the plan is?"

Danielle spoke next from much closer to him, and without a mouth full of leaves anymore. "Sunset Shimmer is preparing another door. We'll be going with them."

"I don't want to leave Eric behind." He sat up again, a little unsteadily. "We've apparently earned some time behind the lines after a mission like that, so no risking our lives for awhile. There will still be plenty of work to do… somewhere."

"Where could possibly be big enough for all these ponies?" Elise asked from his other side, staring in wonder at the multicolored beach.

Jacob thought it looked a little like a terrible accident at a crayon shop. With some exceptions, it seemed as though the ponies couldn't be happier. They had no real food, and no source of water he could see. But compared to their freedom, it didn't seem to matter.

"Sunset said… something." Danielle shrugged. "When she was making the portal. Some… unfinished second base. We'll be the ponies finishing it."

"I hope it has real doctors." Jacob shook his head, as though trying to shake loose something stuck inside it. "I tried my best, but ponies need long-term care and I can't give them that. I only know magic."

"Magic's all ya need!" Harley came suddenly into view from the trees behind them, grinning at him. "If the delicate little princess is done with his beauty sleep, Sunset wants a word. You two too.” She gestured into the trees, away from the thick gathering of ponies. "It shouldn't take long."

Chapter 28

They had to travel a little ways into the jungle to reach Sunset Shimmer. Jacob wasn't surprised by this—it made sense to get away from the literal thousands of refugees when you were doing time-sensitive work to get them home. It made as much sense as coming here to a hospitable (and apparently empty) island, in case their mission did not go well or they were somehow tracked.

Of course the traveling itself was far from easy for him. Standing took help, and he fell almost immediately back onto the sand to twitch and flail like a beetle knocked over. After a few tries he managed to walk with Harley's help, finding the gesture came more easily the less he thought about it.

The island had a jungle of brilliant greens and sparkling leaves, which grew thicker the further they went. Harley seemed to be following a trail she knew, because he wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between one patch of huge trees and the next. Tropical birds danced in the air above them, while the air grew damper and more fruity. Insects buzzed, forming a cloud just out of reach. Jacob picked up half a dozen mosquito bites between the beach and finding Sunset.

What he didn't expect was for the new princess to be dressed so strangely. She wore Danielle's old pants, though they had been ripped into shorts and tied at the waist. More scraps of cloth wrapped around her chest, binding under her wings. She didn't seem to pay any notice to it, concentrating on her work.

Sunset huddled over twenty feet or so of soil, cleared of leaves and plants and apparently leveled to make drawing in it easier. Intricate patterns had been traced there, similar to the ones he had watched her make to get them out of Containment. She drew with a stick taller than he was, tracing intricate patterns with skill. "Brought the others, Princess," Harley called.

"I'm not a princess." She rose, stretching both the whole wing and the bony ruin. She towered over Jacob now, two full feet at least. How much smaller am I going to get? "Just unlucky." She nodded to them, gesturing to a few fallen logs closeby. The other human-ish earth pony was here, along with Steelshod. Having brought Jacob, Danni, Elise and Stalwart, they had everypony who had gone on the jailbreak mission.

"I'm almost done with the gate. We'll be able to go through to Imperium and let the response-team out to help the refugees."

"Imperium?" Harley choked, eyes widening. "Isn't that place still a hole in the ground?"

"Yes," Sunset answered through gritted teeth. "But it will be our hole. Somewhere the refugees on the surface won't ever be able to find us." She set the stick down, brushing the dirt from her hands. "Before we left, I wanted to commend each of you individually for your contribution to this mission. After Unity... Well, we needed a good victory. You five just secured the largest victory for Equestria since the start of the Liberation War."

Danielle raised one of her hooves from beside him, clearing her throat. "E-excuse me Sunset, but... I think I speak for everypony when I say our group doesn't want to be separated. We don't want to go to wherever Imperium is if that means we can't see the others again."

Sunset listened while she spoke, then nodded. "I understand. I will send someone to bring them, so your group can stay together." She cleared her throat, straightening. "Now, if we were in Equestria, I would have medals for each of you, and a handsome reward from the crown. Unfortunately the medals and the handsome rewards all burned in Unity..." She tensed, her hair taking on that strange magical life again. It didn't last, settling back into plain red after a few moments. "Anyway, I have honors for each of you. When we win this war and stand in Equestrian halls, I will make sure they're awarded."

"Danielle, do you know what you did for the cause yesterday?"

She nodded. "I got my Cutie Mark. Got shrunk down into..." She sighed. "A pony. Guess that was the price."

"If we were in Equestria, they would probably write songs about a spell like yours. Thousands freed in a second. I knew we'd find a way, but... I never imagined that way would be you. As of this moment, I promote you to the rank of Knight in Her Majesty's Order of Earthbreakers. Equestria only ever had six at once... You'll be the first ever from Earth."

"Thanks, I guess..." Danielle looked down, blushing. Well her ears and tail drooped, anyway. It was easy enough to tell what emotion she was feeling. Ponies were like that—hard to look at for too long, but very easy to read. "I was just doing what somepony had to."

"And you did it well." She gestured to Harley, who stepped forward.

"Save it." Harley folded her arms. "I don't need empty honors."

Sunset ignored her sourness. "Through the authority Celestia granted me as Regent of Earth Colony, I pardon you of all past crimes, and declare your sentence served. You're free."

That did it. Harley practically fell over backward, though she did manage to stumble a few steps back and catch herself on one of the logs, looking dazed. "I'm... I'm..."

"And you, traitor. There is no pardon for what you've done. The one crime you can't take away is murder. But... You did help us erase some of the pain you caused. Thousands of citizens are free because you gave us the location of that prison." She advanced on the resting pony, who seemed to shrink away, hiding her face as best she could. Elise couldn't go anywhere, not without wings or a tail to hide behind. "You didn't have to do that. We would not have tortured you, or forced you." Sunset lowered her head in a sign of respect. "You are no longer our prisoner. If you wish to go, you've earned your freedom too. We can't send you back to the enemy—you know too many of our secrets. But you could make a home of this place. It has fruit, clean water, a hospitable climate... You don't have to stay with us."

There was silence. Eventually Elise rose to her hooves, looking up far bolder than Jacob could've managed. Sunset no longer seemed enraged, as she had before. The hatred had been replaced with a sort of grudging respect. "I'm not afraid of being a prisoner," she eventually said. "I never liked the way we treated the ones who were contaminated. Maybe the next place they build will be more humane... But either way, I want to stay." She turned, glancing back at the rest of them. "You all just kicked the hornet's nest. I don't think you even realize what's coming for you now."

Sunset bristled, but didn't argue. No one dared interrupt her. Little pony she might be, but none had ever looked fiercer than former Special Agent Avery. Eventually she continued. "You can't win a war against this entire planet, no matter what secrets I told you. Pony 'magic' is... impressive... But there just aren't enough of you. Even with all those thousands—" She flicked her tail towards the trail, and the distant beach where the sound of conversation still drifted towards them. "You're still outnumbered a hundred thousand to one."

Sunset nodded. "We don't plan on fighting that kind of war. Before Unity, we hoped there wouldn't be a war at all..." She trailed off. "If you wish to stay, we'll be grateful for any information you choose to give." She turned to the rest of them. "I planned on awarding the rest of you Luna's True Silver Star for honor in military service, but you'll have to wait for the medals." She sighed, then picked up her stick and turned away again. "The only thing I can offer you right now is more work, and the promise of being the first to be given access to Equestria once we open a new portal."

"What about being human again?" Jacob spoke nervously, though he had nothing to be ashamed about around Sunset. It wasn't as though he hadn't done all he could the night before. "Harley told us a few months ago that the spell that lets ponies look and feel human was built into the portal. That means a unicorn had to know it at some point, right? Starswirl, if the show taught me anything. Could you or someone else cast it on us, so we could be ourselves again?"

Sunset looked down at him. It was hard to tell the expression on her face. Pity? "Jacob, you aren't..." She seemed to struggle a moment for the right words, twisting her stick up into the air and twirling it as she thought. "I know it's confusing to all of you, but being a pony won't be foreign to you for long. Look at your friend, she lost the illusion yesterday and she's already walking. It will only feel strange to be in the middle, because what you are now is unnatural. Once you spend a week or two as a pony, I doubt you will want to change back as much."

Jacob grunted; he wasn't about to remind Sunset of all the ways they had contributed, remind her that maybe they deserved to be returned to their bodies at the very least after helping to liberate all the ponies in Containment. He didn't say that outright, though. He had done the least to help with the escape, and he wasn't about to ask for anything for helping medically. That wasn't something he wanted recognition for, that was just what he was supposed to do.

Harley came to his rescue. "I think the kid makes a good point—not just about them, but about the war. I know we aren't your advisors, and you don't have to listen to what any of us say, but it seems to me that sooner or later every pony there is will have their illusion gone. Except for those of us who didn't sign our souls away, you can't just bring it back because you want to. It will probably be more important for us to be able to recreate illusions than to contact Equestria."

Sunset looked thoughtful. "My advisors are either in Equestria or dead, Harlequin. And you are probably right. Unfortunately the pony left in our organization who knows the most about shapeshifting magic is you. I'm afraid you may have just earned yourself a transition from field operations to R&D."

Harley laughed openly, resting one shoulder on Jacob's shoulder. "If I'm lucky, there might even be a whiteboard in your new R&D, maybe with a candle or two."

She glared. "Don't make me regret freeing you, Harlequin. I know you believed in our mission enough to serve your sentence here. You could've chosen a rock farm if you wanted it to be easy, but here you are."

"I believe in the ones who need our help." She squeezed Jacob's shoulder briefly, then let go. "Hopefully you find some new advisors somewhere in Imperium."

Sunset nodded, then made her last few strokes into the dirt. Something pulsed beneath her, energy gathering around the opening, and Jacob retreated instinctually. No matter what Sunset said, he had no desire of speeding his transformation any more than he had to. I wonder if Katie will look less weird to me now.

"Just like before, take a few steps back." Sunset lifted into the air, though only one of her wings actually moved. The wind began to whip about them, twisting stray leaves into a tempest without touching the marks. The sky darkened, the sounds of the remote refugees on the beach faded away and space tore open.

Jacob looked away until it was done, finding the effect nauseating even when he wasn't going along for the ride. When he opened his eyes again things didn't get much better: it looked as though the ground had opened into another world, because the "floor" through the opening seemed perpendicular to the ground where he was standing. Through the gate was a vaulted chamber of stone so large that even the sunlight streaming through didn't reach its greatest height. Many voices came from within, along with the sound of heavy machinery, vehicles rolling, and other such sounds. Many little lights twinkled through the opening, though the only thing directly through the hole appeared to be an expanse of rough black stone.

"Come on." Sunset jumped, and her arc curved strangely as she passed through the "hole," landing on her feet in a crouch. Her voice came through clearly.

Even as she did, the sound of dozens, hundreds of people appeared in the space beyond, shouting and running. They appeared behind her a few moments later, forming up into orderly rows. Ponies and apparent humans both, all wearing obvious rescue gear. "Come on through," she gestured to them all. "The rescuers are going to wait until you're all through, so that you make it sometime before next week. Don't smudge my lines."

They came. Jacob didn't know what to do, so he just let himself fall forward through the hole. The whole world jolted sideways mid-jump, and he slammed into his face, sliding several feet forward before he stopped. Instead of laughing, one of the yellow-uniformed rescue people rushed over to him and helped him to his feet.

The others soon followed, with varying levels of grace. Sunset ushered them sideways, out of the way of the portal. No sooner were they out of the way than the rescue crew ran a platform of sorts through the opening, and started the arduous task of clambering through it in single file.

Stone rose around Jacob even more enormous than he had imagined. It felt strange on his hooves, which were proving quite a bit more sensitive than fingernails. He wasn't juggling plates or anything, but he could feel the contours pressing against him from below. When he stepped on a pebble just the wrong size, he felt it and jumped, almost falling over again.

"I can't stay with you all." Sunset was leading them towards the largest source of distant light. The closer they got, the brighter the lights and the louder the sound of machinery became. Jacob glanced once around in a circle, but he couldn't see walls or ceiling no matter where he looked. Just how big was this place? "I'll be placing you in the care of Imperium's first quartermaster. She's new, but she's the only pony who isn't getting her hooves dirty somewhere else."

"We understand," Danni answered. "Just don't forget about sending someone for our friends in Seattle."

"They will be here tonight," Sunset said, as a single figure holding a lantern began to take shape from the gloom. "I promise. The mission tonight might... We'll get them out of harm's way first." She stopped, then nodded at the newcomer.

Jacob recognized her even before Sunset began her introduction. "My new quartermaster, Apple Bloom." She gestured. "She'll see to your new assignments."

Apple Bloom looked... different. Her skin was dirty now, her hair much shorter and cut irregularly. She wore a green jumpsuit tied in a few places to make it fit tighter, and a pair of sturdy, half-melted boots. Her eyes were hard, uncharacteristic for her apparent age somewhere near sixteen. How could someone change so much in less than two weeks?

Even at her young age she was taller than Jacob, though the difference was less dramatic than Sunset Shimmer. "Did you get them out?"

Sunset nodded. "These ponies are heroes. Make sure they're treated like it. The earth pony there, Danielle, put her with the Earthbreaker trainees."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Turns out Earth's earth ponies are as tough as ours." Sunset turned away, away from the direction of the portal or the way they had gone. There didn't seem to be any lights in that direction.

"I wasn't an earth pony before I did it," Danielle muttered. They ignored her.

"Thank you again." Sunset lowered her head respectfully towards them. "When night comes, and this whole cavern is filled with ponies, you will be the reason they're safe, and not dying in cages somewhere." She lifted into the air again, and shot off into the darkness. The glow of her ghost-wing illuminated her for a few moments, but that too faded.

"Welcome to Imperium." Apple Bloom offered her hand to each of them in turn. "Let's see what we can do for a couple'a war heroes."

Chapter 29

“Well if it's all the same, I think I'd like to get back to duty," Steelshod said, nodding off towards the loudest sounds of machinery. "We don't need any special recognition, Quartermaster. Unless you see things different, Miles."

The other earth pony nodded his agreement. "Maybe an extra ration of ale for building crew four. If you can find any in the stockpile."

Apple Bloom nodded. "Sure. But don't ya hold yer breath fer much after tonight—it's gonna be hard enough to find enough hay to keep all these ponies fed."

"We won’t." Miles waved and walked off.

"Good work, Danielle," Steelshod called towards her. "You ever want a proper name to go with that cutie mark, come find me. I'm sure we'll be able to think of something after today."

"I like my name just fine," Danielle squeaked, not loud enough for him to hear.

Apple Bloom cleared her throat. "Well, welcome to Imperium, the first new pony city on Earth! Well… under earth, if ya gotta get technical. But ya'll get the idea."

"Strong name," Jacob muttered, looking around him in a slow circle. His eyes were starting to adjust to the dark, giving him the general outlines of huge, blocky shapes of structures in the direction they were going. "Do ponies name their cities the way they name themselves?"

Apple Bloom nodded. "I reckon they do, on account of this place sittin' here empty for a year, ponies hopin' they wouldn't need it. Now we need it."

"Congrats on your promotion." Harley smiled politely. "Didn't know working a bar promoted into resource management."

Her expression hardened a little. "Don't, Harley. I'm not in the mood."

"Don't matter." Harley tapped her gently on the shoulders. "We've got to keep our spirits up somehow."

"How are we going to feed all those refugees?" Jacob glanced behind them into the darkness, in the direction they had come from. He could still hear activity, though not actually get a good look beyond a few blurry lights. "Unity needed Equestria for supplies, right? If you don't have the mirror anymore…"

"Let me worry about it." Apple Bloom turned and started walking again. "Short answer is we'll use more magic than ponies normally do. Back in Equestria we're used tah makin' anything we need. When it's to change seasons, we just get it done. It's already happening: earth ponies working on breaking the rock into soil. Feel the breeze? That's the pegasi. If the unicorns ever get off their sorry flanks, we should have some light down here too."

It sounded completely impossible to Jacob, but it wouldn't be the first impossible thing he had ever seen done. If ponies could do half the things they had done on the show, he supposed creating an impossibly huge, flat cave was well within their power.

Apple Bloom took them to an enormous structure apparently cut from rough stone blocks, rising high above them. There were numerous lights along it, illuminating the area all around. He saw shelves and shelves on one side, and on the other a field of strange pale grass where ponies grazed. There weren't very many, despite the structure being so large that he had first thought it the base of a skyscraper. It wasn't that tall, but it was enormous.

"I didn't know Earth had any caves this big," Danielle said, her voice awed as the square building drew closer. It didn't have much in the way of decorations, not the elegance of Unity, but it was made from solid stone and had an Equestrian flag flying overhead. "It feels like this place must be miles across."

Apple Bloom grinned as they took the steps, and humans and ponies alike stopped to salute her. She seemed to enjoy the attention. "Ah don't know the whole story, except that there was a big ol’ cave here when we started. Unicorn geologists found it, and we made sure it didn't have any connections to the surface. There literally ain't no way for the crazy colonists to get at us this time, no matter how much they feel like murdering ponies."

The building had a pair of huge stone double doors, swinging open and waiting for them. Aside from the doors, the rest of the place looked like a construction site. Fresh concrete floors instead of uneven stone like outside, but there was still chalky sheetrock for walls and naked wire along them. For all that they were underground this building had numerous electric lights, of the power-efficient LED variety.

Apple Bloom led them immediately to a large table, which had fortunately been kept low enough to the ground that even the ponies among them could still see it. "I take everypony here first, so if you get lost you can always find us." She gestured at the center of the round table, which had a grid faintly carved into it.

It was a map of the cave. "The circles are every kilometer. We're standing in the exact center. If you ever get lost before we turn the sun on, just look for the spotlight. It goes on every hour, and you can follow it back here."

Jacob stared at the map in wonder, resting his hands against it. It was quite large, large enough for all of them to get a good look. Apple Bloom seemed to expect this, because she stood where she was with arms folded and waited patiently. According to the scale she had given, the cave was about six kilometers in diameter at its widest point, though it was much smaller in others. It wasn't a perfect sphere, and dark sections indicated areas that couldn't be traversed. A massive underground lake appeared to take up about half the space. Even so, the building they were standing on seemed so small when viewed from the angle it was displayed. "Unfortunately this is the only building we have. Construction only started again a few days ago, when…"

"We know." Jacob didn't make her finish her sentence.

"So anyway, we've got the neighborhood here. Sunny Hills, it'll be called. Right now it's just 'rocky lumps.' Most of it we're turning into farms, pulling out all the stops magic-wise. I don't really know how construction is working… I just make do with what they give me, I don't actually plan it."

Jacob was the first to find the strength to talk. "Danielle's right, Earth doesn't have any caves this big or this deep. If they ever got this big, they'd collapse because of the pressure of the rock above, right? Not to mention the heat, or the air, or…"

Apple Bloom shrugged again. "Diamond Dogs know how to dig their tunnels. I don't know how they made it—maybe magic. I know we have to worry about heat and air, but that's part of the magic somehow. Ask Twilight, she…" She trailed off, turning suddenly away and wiping at her eyes. "I mean… nevermind. I guess it's just a mystery." She turned back for the way they came. "There's a few bedrooms downstairs left over from the Dogs who built this place. Since ya'll are heroes and whatnot ah guess I'll get a few of the rooms converted for you. Shouldn't take too long. Just be mindful with the resources in the central office—just because there's running water in the pipes doesn't mean it will keep running if you waste it."

Jacob opened his mouth to ask if there would be separate rooms for the men and women, but stopped himself. They were about to fit over ten thousand ponies into this cave somehow. If he asked, they might actually give it to them. No way.

Apple Bloom took them to the room, about twenty feet square with a little bathroom attached and half a dozen tiny cots that stunk a little of dog. Other than that and a few plain metal desks (all at pony size) the room was empty. Still, it had light, it had warmth, and presumably safety as well. After losing Unity, this would be a fine change.

"No assignments or anything," Apple Bloom said, standing just inside the open door. "Ah just wouldn't feel right after what ya did. There's a lounge down the hall, straight ahead and to the right. Same thing with the food in there as the water: use as little as you can."

"Thank you." Jacob didn't know what else to do, so he saluted. Not stiff or anything—Equestrian military or not, he was no soldier. "Is there anyone we can talk to if something goes wrong?"

"Me. Bottom floor, Quartermaster's office. Ah'm around most’a the day. I'll have blankets and, uh… new clothes sent for. Take the day off—tomorrow there will be work. Oh, and Sunset was saying earlier we should check online when we got the chance tonight. Apparently she has something planned."

"They have internet here too?"

Apple Bloom turned, walking backward away down the hall. "Yeah! Real fast, too. Netflix even works!"

Jacob dropped onto the cot near the door, then whimpered as he ended up sitting on his tail. At least being so low to the ground meant that his legs didn't dangle uselessly. He was also small enough now that he probably wouldn't hang off the cot, which was nice. "Well. Guess the ponies had a backup plan after all."

"Smart bits on Princess Twilight." Harley sat down on the edge of the cot next to his, watching Jacob with concern. She also seemed to be watching Danielle, though there was still mostly suspicion for Elise. "Everypony said Sunset Shimmer knew humans better, and they were probably right. But when it came to actually running a country, Twilight was your mare. Apprenticed to Celestia. When all of Equestria had gone soft and weak, Celestia was still ready to fight."

Elise walked awkwardly to the furthest corner of the room, choosing the most remote spot near the bathroom, where she wouldn't be close to anyone.

Danielle hopped up onto the cot on Harley's other side, standing as tall as she could. She was just about at eye level with him now, at least with him sitting down. "You know ponies better than we do, Harley. Do you think they can really do… this," she gestured vaguely up at the ceiling.

Harley sat still, obviously thinking. Eventually she nodded. "Ponies always ran the whole climate themselves. Stories say they used to move the sun sans Alicorns, too. Besides, if we've got a few gatecrashing teams, we could always steal what we need from humans. Gate into some emergency food stockpile in the middle of the night, or the bottom of a grain silo or something… The only way I figure the ponies here would be in real danger is if the unicorns all get mysteriously ill."

"Something's been bothering me, Harley." Jacob spoke slowly, trying to put what he had been feeling into words. Coming to Imperium had helped, he was sure whatever strange impression he was getting was getting stronger the more time he spent around the Equestrian ponies. Sunset and Steelshod and even Apple Bloom weren't used to self-censoring the way Harley did. Ponies just weren't that good natural liars.

"Last time something bothered you, you lost your eyes, remember?" She leaned back in her cot, resting her back against the wall. She closed her eyes. "Shoot. You're probably barking up a stupid tree."

"I'm sure Eric could say it better. He's better at patterns than I am." He fumbled for a moment, but Danielle only stared. Stalwart was even less help, dropping onto a far bunk and falling asleep again after only a few moments. "I think it's about magic, whatever it is. Like, why do humans change into ponies when there's magic around? I thought about it… thought that maybe magic might be intelligent somehow, steering things towards becoming ponies. But changelings are around magic, and all the other things on the show were around magic. It wasn't like Spike turned into a pony, and he lived with Twilight for years."

Harley didn't laugh. "Oh, that. I wouldn't worry about that, Jacob."

"Why not?" He straightened, glaring at her. "Ponies taught us, ponies took care of us, but I'm sure we don't know the whole story. Ponies are all about diplomacy, but they still failed to convince the people in charge to be peaceful. Just think about what goddamn magic like mine would do in a hospital! I'm sure there are thousands of people who would rather be partway turned into ponies than dead."

"That's a good point." Danni sat down on her haunches, not losing much height. She didn't seem to be tripping over herself. It was just the way Sunset Shimmer had said—human form was natural, but being a pony seemed natural too. He hadn't seen her fall over once, despite the way he struggled to balance on his hooves. Katie must've had a gift for it or something, because he hadn't seen her fall once.

"The other thing I never understood was why ponies came to Earth in the first place," Jacob continued. "Sunset told me the Equestria Girls movies were crap, but there must've been a reason. A country as old and stable as Equestria doesn't just wander into a complex alien planet just because."

"Not just wander." Stalwart wasn't asleep after all, but sat up from across the room, staring at Harley. "Equestria made contact with Earth, designed the show and the broadcasts and made them to activate magic. They put on a show like they're galloping in to rescue all the helpless 'Bronies,' but really we're their victims. They made us into what we are. They made us targets. Rescuing us isn't heroic, it's damage control for damage they caused!"

Harley rose to her feet, though she didn't move to the door. "Have I ever lied to you ponies?"

Jacob shook his head. The others all showed their recognition of that same fact, each in his or her own way.

"When I told you not to go after something, wasn't it for your own good? Was I ever just shitting with you?"

Again the same reaction, though Jacob hesitated. He had given up his eye color to meet with Sunset, but that hadn't been so bad. Except that if he had listened, he would've had longer to think about whether he actually wanted to join the cause or not. Denying the opportunity Harley had offered to let the matter drop had been giving up the chance to have possibly months to think of what he would do.

Harley took his hesitation for assent. "The important reason ponies came is that they've got little bleeding hearts and they can't help coming to those in need. Any deeper than that, and it's only gonna cause misery."

Jacob was sure he was close to putting together the pieces. Once Eric got back, maybe… but then, she was probably right. He would be happier if he didn't learn whatever this was, if she said he would be. Unfortunately, that didn't help his curiosity even a little. Not knowing a fact did not make it less true. "Will you tell us anyway, if we ask?"

She hesitated, then sat down again. "Wait until your friends get back. If you're unanimous, I'll tell you. Or you can try an’ ask Sunset when she gets back."

"I want to hear it from you." He didn't even hesitate. Danni nodded as well. "But I like the idea of waiting for Eric, and Stalwart's group too. It's gonna be cramped in here, but… I think cramped is better than lonely."

Chapter 30

True to Sunset's word, Eric and the rest of their party arrived before nightfall. They stumbled inside in a daze, with even the savvy Jackie walking in wide-eyed and staring.

Katie was in front, collapsing on the nearest cot and staring down at her hands. "This place can't be real…"

"That's how we felt," Jacob said, rising to his hooves to greet them. None had belongings, except Eric with his sketchpad. Vagabonds and pilgrims. "You must like it down here, Jackie. Bats like caves, right?"

"Oh yeah." Jackie grinned with her strangely pointed teeth. "Just give me a few hours and I'll be hanging from the stalactites and dropping down to suck the blood of unsuspecting ponies." She reached into her pocket, pulling out a store bought package of beef jerky and holding it out towards him. "Hey Jacob, want some of my—"

The smell hit him like a brick to the nose, a brick that had been left in a corpse for a few weeks. He gagged. "I didn't know jerky could go bad like that!"

"It didn't." Jackie tossed it into her mouth and chewed exaggeratedly. "But freaky bats can eat meat."

"Don't torment him, sis," Katie called. "Also, you don't know that! You don't even have a tail yet."

Danielle nudged his leg from behind, and he straightened. "Eric, you should know…" He gestured to the pony half-hiding behind him. "Danielle got smaller."

Eric looked down, eyes widening. He dropped to his knees, reaching out.

She hugged him, and Jacob looked away, focusing on the others.

Katie kicked vaguely out towards him. "How are the hooves, Jacob?"

"I'm still falling over sometimes," he admitted. "But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be."

"Told you!" She hopped up onto her hooves without swaying, or even needing to catch herself on the back of the cot. "It isn't so bad. Even if it looks weird."

"Not forever," Danni called up towards them. "You'll be like me before you know it. A tiny, useless pony."

"Do you regret being part of the jailbreak?" Eric asked, rising.

"No." She sighed. "Someone had to get those ponies out. I just wish those bastards hadn't broke the mirror. I'd already have my body back otherwise."

“Well they did.” Jacob sighed, shifting from one hoof-leg to the other. “I wish we still had it too, believe me. I think I’d finally take them up on the ‘go all the way so we can change you back’ offer now.”

“I wouldn’t.” Katie touched the side of her head with one hand. “I might have hooves, but my head is still the same. Ponies have smaller heads—how do you think everything fits?”

“Easy.” Danielle kicked at the ground, her voice bitter. “Just dump out everything and replace it with little rainbows and singing flowers. It stores much more compact than a complex society with its own history and…” she trailed off.

Of course none of them were taking her seriously. Whatever else they might be, ponies had nearly turned Earth upside-down. If anything, it was only their depiction in the “propaganda” that was oversimplified. Ponies might have a different social default, but he only had to look at Sunset to discredit any suggestion that they were in reality what they had been in cartoons.

Ponies know how to fight a war. They’re fighting one now, against my old civilization. The fact he thought of it that way terrified him almost as much as Sunset Shimmer’s fire had done. Jacob had never been overly patriotic, but he had thanked his veterans and he believed in the ideals that had founded his country, and western democracy in general.

The real question is whether I can help ponies fight my own country and actually be fighting for the ideals I thought my country stood for. It wasn’t an easy question for him to answer, not when in his mind the FBI had been the ones to fire the first shot. When Harley ran, and a dozen guns were pointed at him, Jacob’s mind had been made up.

Harley saved me from another cell in that prison. Jacob said farewell to his friends, then walked away down the hall to stew. This building might be the capital of a great city one day, but for now it was empty and unfinished and would give him the privacy to think. Long hallways were lit at regular intervals with white, featureless light.

His own hoof steps sounded loud and unnaturally echoey in even the widest hallways, not to mention strange. Two legs could not make the correct-sounding pattern with hooves, so he never sounded like a pony. He didn’t sound like a human either, which made perfect sense. I gave that up months ago. What would Michelle think of him now, stupid tail and all? Would she laugh and embrace him anyway, or treat him like a monstrous freak as the government did.

Because it’s trying to keep people safe. The prison was cruel and inhumane, but it worked. 10,000 out of 350 million was remarkably successful in terms of casualties.

Sunset had sounded like she was doing something important. Now that his own government (at least, perhaps others too) had declared open war by destroying Unity, what would Sunset do? Hiding in deeper crevices waiting for death didn’t seem to be the answer.

“Hey,” someone called from behind him: Eric. His short friend was now nearly a foot taller than Jacob, and despite being spindly seemed thick by comparison. “You got a minute to talk?”

“Sure.” Jacob slowed down a little for him to catch up—not that he needed to. Pegasus ponies were the fastest breed, everyone knew that. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to tell you about something. Wanted to know what you thought, before I told the others.”

“Sure.” He stopped and turned. They were in an empty stretch of stone corridor, lights occasionally flickering overhead. The ground was rough, and everything smelled damp. It’s probably not good I can’t smell the ‘horse smell’ anymore. “What is it?”

Eric shuffled about, glancing down the hallway around them in both directions. When he spoke, it was in the quietest, most nervous whisper. “Sunset sent a secret message to the surviving pony leaders. I used Harley’s password to read it.”

Jacob’s eyes widened. He had known Eric to be quite ruthless when it came to information security—a few years back, when the club had tried to make an RP MUD of their own, he had logged the passwords from test accounts and used them to teach a painful lesson in not reusing passwords. Jacob had been one of those affected, and it hadn’t made Eric popular.

Hacking, or guessing, or whatever he had done to learn Harley’s password, sure didn’t sit well with Jacob. You didn’t steal from someone who had saved your life. “What did it say?”

Eric hesitated. “You ever feel like they aren’t telling us everything?”

Jacob rolled his eyes. “We just had this conversation before you arrived. We already know the ponies are keeping things from us. Based on the pattern we’ve been seeing this whole time, I’d take a guess that they’re not telling us things that they think might be damaging somehow. Or at least something that would make us less useful.”

Eric nodded, then dug out a slip of paper. “Read it.”

He did, as quickly as he could. He passed it back when he was done, having committed the basic ideas to memory already. “Earth colony in a state of rebellion,” he repeated. “Protect the refugees who have taken this world for their home.”

“Yeah.” Eric slipped the paper back into his pocket. “So what colony are they talking about? Not Unity, it wouldn’t make any sense for us to be the colony. We followed Celestia’s rules, at least the ones they told us.”

Jacob now understood why Eric had been nervous about being overheard. He did hear activity coming from somewhere in the building, many footsteps moving closer. Had the ponies discovered the theft already, and now they were here to punish?

No, they were still far away. Probably on the ground floor. No one was coming for them. “It sounds like Sunset is saying the whole planet is a colony. But what sense would that make?”

“Maybe the ponies are alien invaders?” Eric suggested. “They consider us conquered already, even though we’re not?”

“No.” Jacob shook his head vigorously. “They haven’t really acted that way. Maybe the show was something an invader would’ve done, but the rest…” He trailed off, thinking back to the rescue missions, to the hundreds of ponies that had died to save painfully-small-feeling numbers of humans in exchange.

“What about the refugee thing?” Eric didn’t give him much time to think. “They’ve always used that word, and they all have different reasons why.”

He was right again. Jacob had to grip onto the wall to stop from toppling sideways on his hooves. He had to remind himself it was only his second day with them. I can still adapt. “They make sense together. Refugees flee… something, and they make a colony somewhere else when there’s nowhere for them to go. The ponies seem to think that colony is Earth.”

Eric’s eyes widened. “How old did Harley say the Light Tenders were?”

“Ancient Greece. The Masons claim to be that old, but there’s no proof.”

Eric’s enthusiasm was undimmed. He started pacing in the hallway, his wings twitching and flapping about to punctuate his words. “A pattern doesn’t need to be true to exist. If the ponies believe it, that’s all that matters.”

“Before you got here, we were trying to figure out why humans only change into ponies around magic, where there are so many other magical creatures out there. It might also explain why they’re so determined to help us, and maybe even why they felt justified barging into Earth and screwing things up.”

The sound of distant activity hadn’t stopped—pounding footsteps were now very near. Jacob turned, just in time to see a large crowd of soldier-ponies. The ponies passed down the hall, not even looking at them.

Those who still had enough humanity were carrying crates, while those who didn’t were just standing guard.

“I’ll investigate.” Jacob hurried forward, as quickly as he could with stumps instead of feet.

“Yeah.” Eric slipped back around the edge of the hall, out of sight. Jacob didn’t resent him: he had long known Eric didn’t like to put himself in danger.

We didn’t feel like we were in danger before. It didn’t take him long to clear the distance to the end of the hall. Even so, with as fast as the soldiers were moving, he only caught the tail-end of the group, where Sunset and a few pony soldiers were shepherding a group of the most helpless, uncoordinated ponies Jacob had ever seen.

Even as he watched, one fell on her face, exclaiming in a barely-audible pony voice, “Cy-y-y-ka!”

Sunset answered in the same language: "Держись, недолго осталось!” She helped the struggling pony to her hooves. The pony snapped at her hand, but Sunset was too quick to bite.

He might not understand the words, but he did recognize the biohazard logos on some of the crates, and the expensive-looking lab equipment. “Guess your mission went well,” he said, just loud enough for Sunset to notice him.

“You could say that.” His fears she would be angry melted almost immediately. She rose, stepping over some of the ponies and letting the crowd gradually move away from them down a different hall in a direction Jacob hadn’t explored yet. The soldiers took one glance at her, then continued on.

She wasn’t flying, but her wings still glowed a little of their own accord, along with her horn. “I’ve been studying humans since I first came to Earth. Celestia wanted me to study war. Rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”

He glanced once more at the retreating backs. “If you need the room Apple Bloom gave us for your new lab…”

Sunset smiled, patting him gently on the shoulder. “We already had one. They just didn’t know who they were working for. We can’t risk their discovery and destruction before they finish their work.”

Sunset turned, walking away after them. The way her hair billowed about behind her seemed to tell him that she didn’t expect him to follow. Things might be much less formal in Imperium than they had been in Unity, but now she had even more ponies to supervise, not less. Not only that, but she was a princess. The more of a pony he became, the more significant that seemed.

He spoke up anyway. “Sunset, are you going to kill my sister?”

That stopped her. She turned around again slowly, expression shocked. “What are you talking about?”

“I have a big sister, Michelle. She’s a senior right now at my old school,” Jacob continued, unable to meet her face. There was too much fire in her eyes, fire that he couldn’t help but fear would be turned on him next. One did not provoke the sun, even when you had a just cause. “Is fighting back going to hurt her? Do I have to kill one family to save the other?” He was crying. Jacob didn’t cry in public, or at least he hadn’t. He cried now, though, imagining his sister burning as the warden had done.

Sunset embraced him. He didn’t try to pull away, despite his misgivings. The heat that radiated off her wasn’t aimed at him, and her greater size wasn’t a threat either. Jacob knew in that instant he was safe, without knowing how he knew. “I won’t fight my war with innocent ponies, Jacob. We’re fighting the ones who murdered the ones who came to save.”

“There won’t be endless prisons where we treat our captives like animals and wait for them to waste away. The worst that we’ll do is show them the truth.” She let go. “Let them see their own reflections and see if they want to keep hurting us.”

Jacob blinked as she pulled away, wiping his eyes with the back of one sleeve. “W-what does that mean?” His voice cracked, but he forced himself to keep going. “When ponies say we’re ‘refugees,’ what do they mean?”

Author's Note

So a wee bit of bad news for everyone.

I was moving this week, and next week is the beginning of a new semester. As a result of all this going around, I have been unable to complete (and then edit) the story content for next week of Friendly Fire. Rather than scrambling just to get something done, and submitting chapters I later regret, I've decided just to take the single week off. I'm sorry in advance to everypony, and I promise to resume normal publication after one week.

-Starscribe

Chapter 31

It had to be at least two in the morning, maybe later. It was hard to know without a clock. Their entire group huddled together in the center of the little bedroom, hanging on Jacob's every word. He was still a little dazed, his mind turning over everything Sunset had told him in the hall. He had rushed back immediately to share it with his friends—they had as much right to know as he did.

"Before you explain it Jacob, think about how you feel right now." Harley folded her arms, looking stern. "Don't try to bullshit me either, because I'll know. You can't just unlearn something. In our experience, telling people never helps."

"It doesn't matter." Danielle sat on her haunches, staring down at the floor. "It can't make us mutate much faster, can it? Most of us are already close to ponies."

"That's not what I said." Harley turned partly away, propping up her legs on the next cot over. "Nothing supernatural about learning this. Just existential horror, and sleepless nights. There isn't a night princess to watch over your sleep here, little pony."

"I still want to know," Eric said. "I have suspicions, but I want to know what Sunset told you." The others all agreed, closing the circle even closer.

"It's about damn time," Jackie muttered. "I always knew this horse thing was too good to be true. This is the part where you show us how we've actually been working for evil robot overlords, right?"

Jacob shook his head. "The only lies they told were by omission, so far as I noticed. It's not the Equestrians who are the lie, it's Earth. Just… I can only do my best to tell you what Sunset explained. We don't have any way of knowing it's true."

"It is." Harley rolled onto her belly, her face muffled in one of the pillows. "I can't watch. You guys were happy and safe and now you're gonna be afraid and angry and you might never feel normal again."

Jacob didn't disagree. Even so, he knew if he had been ignorant, he still would've wanted to know. "So not everything the show taught us was a lie, it was just sanitized. Discord really did take over, it was just way worse than we saw. More than chocolate clouds and star trek villains making lives confusing. Ponies… and every other kind of life, really… depend on the physical laws staying the way they are to survive."

"Ponies didn't just lie down and take it. Some fought, and they died. When that didn't work, lots got together and searched for somewhere to hide, somewhere with so little magic Discord wouldn't want to follow them. They found Earth, thousands of years ago. I got a little confused by the timeline, but… that's not the most important part anyway."

"Nopony knows for sure, but Sunset thinks that's why Greek mythology seems to have so much in common with the way pony magic actually works. So many of those ancient heroes would make sense as earth ponies in disguise, using their magic to try and help people."

"Why didn't they just live as ponies?" Danielle's voice again, nervous. "If Earth was safe, why would they need to hide at all? It's not like the Greeks would have been much of a threat to a species that can fly, levitate, and shatter buildings."

He had asked something similar, so Jacob was prepared to give the answer. "Earth had no magical life when they arrived, but ponies themselves are magical. If they grew and spread across Earth, it would have eventually attracted Discord’s attention. In the end, it would only give him two planets to rule over instead of one."

"When they came here, there wasn't a mirror yet. Starswirl invented that later on. The instant they arrived, they found the only intelligent species on Earth and worked out a way to join them. The ponies willingly gave up their magic, and made themselves human. Instead of living together, they mixed themselves up with as much of the world as possible, spreading the magic out so Discord wouldn't see."

"Once he took over, Discord discovered what they'd done and started sending all sorts of nasty monsters to wreck things on this side. Even if there wasn't enough magic to sustain him here, he still wanted to ruin the refugees’ lives."

"This is… kinda where ponies had to guess. Discord never came himself, so we don't know what happened back then. All we know is that the former Equestrians still had their powers, though the spell that made them human could only contain so much before it fell apart."

"Well it makes sense." Harley sat up on her bunk, frowning at them all. "Monsters show up at the gates of the city, so of course you get together as many people as you can to stop them. Humans might not have had magic back then, but if any of your history books are true, they were ruthlessly determined. Humans didn't run away and let shit walk over them, they fought until the monsters were dead. Your planet used to have gigantic mega-predators, but your ancestors wiped them out with pointed sticks. Killed every last one of them, and every other animal they thought was too dangerous."

"The Light Tenders," Jacob explained. "An ancient society founded by the original colonists, to make sure the knowledge of how to fight the supernatural survived. Kingdoms fell and empires rose, but the Light Tenders would survive."

"A lot can happen in time. Apparently they survived, even when Discord got turned to stone and the monsters stopped. And all those years, ponies weren't just hiding around humans, but joining their societies. The spell they put on themselves wasn't just an illusion, it was strong enough that they could breed with humans, and their children would inherit it. The nameless spell would feed on their magic, sustaining itself even when magic itself was forgotten."

"But that long ago…" Eric began. "If these colonists bred with us thousands of years ago… everyone would be related by now."

"Not just related," Harley spoke up, as much an exasperated sigh as an answer. "Ponies breed true. Zebra and a pony is a pony. Pony and a changeling, that's a pony. Pony and a Diamond Dog…" She wrinkled her nose. "I'm not sure why you'd want to, but that's a pony too."

Jacob let that sink in a minute. Sunset hadn't given him that chance, so he waited for the others to wrap their heads around what it meant.

Eric got it first. "There might only be a few actual humans left on the whole planet by now. Those far out pacific islands, maybe."

"Yeah," Jacob said. "That's why magic always makes ponies out of us. Magic doesn't transform. It just rips apart the spell that makes us think we're human."

"Damn." Jackie leaned back against the wall, her strange bat wings extended on either side of her . "All this time I thought that the pony shit was incidental. But we're just… what, ponies pretending we're people?"

"No," Stalwart spoke for the first time, rising to his hooves as he did. He didn't have a chair or a cot in the circle, he'd just been sitting on the floor. The extra height was the only way they could even see him. "We're people. If Sunset and the ponies are right, and ponies got mixed up three thousand years ago or so, most of mankind's most important developments have happened since then. Jesus, Napoleon, Muhammad, Shakespeare, Lincoln…"

"I don't get it," Katie muttered. This whole time she had sat on the edge of her cot, rocking gently back and forth. She barely even whispered.

"If Sunset's timeline was right, it means that almost everyone and everything we associate with humans had pony blood. I haven't seen a history text in nine months, but I can only think of two people who still have personal influence today who are older than three thousand years. The Buddha himself, and King David. I'm sure there are other important ones whose names we don't have anymore. Whoever invented writing, whoever came up with beer… none of that's the point."

"I see what you're saying." Jacob smiled slightly. "You're saying that most of what we think of as human has always been… whatever kind of half-breed we are. So there really isn't any reason to freak out about it."

"And some people have more of it in their blood than others," Harley cut in. "The propaganda or maybe a few little spells was all you with a great deal of pony ancestry needed. Mostly pony meant you had very little resistance. Your little illusion spell had to work so hard to keep your own magic in check that outside exposure would quickly short it out."

"So aside from the Light Tender questions…" Danni turned, facing where Elise rested in her corner. "Did you ever learn anything about them?"

She shook her head. "Never even heard the name. But… come to think of it, lots of the senior officers had this patch on their uniforms. Like the eye of providence, but the design was a little different. I got one, the day I…" She looked down at her hooves. "They day I got promoted."

Danielle nodded, then went on. "So that only leaves why the ponies didn't leave damn well enough alone. We were doing just fine on our own without ponies coming in to make the world more complicated."

"That's what I said!" Harley exclaimed. "When they told me about this operation. Even the dumbest larva knows not to tamper with something that works."

Jacob waited for her to finish. Harley would probably know the answer, but he had just heard it from Sunset, so felt like he ought to be the one repeating it. If the ponies deserved condemnation, they would at least get it for something they had actually said.

"Ponies come from a pretty peaceful place. Equestria had its problems, but nothing like Earth. Starswirl made the mirror, and so ponies would check on us every now and then. Our world scared them, and apparently they decided that they had the solution to all our problems."

"We were magical creatures without magic. An important part of who we were was strangled by a spell we didn't have any say in making. They started laying the groundwork, testing ways to induce magic at distance. The first few attempts weren't successful… but the last one was. Each one tried to bring useful information about their world, though it had to pass through lots of people first and the truth didn't always make it."

"The original plan was to take it real slow, spread out as much magic as possible at a real low level, so everyone would start getting affected. But that didn't work. Somehow, people already knew the ponies were coming. They were prepared to fight, with knowledge they shouldn't have about pony weaknesses. Instead of the most susceptible people becoming the first recruits, they were locked away to rot. They wouldn't negotiate, wouldn't even hear a surrender, just killed every pony sent to talk. And that takes us to today."

"And it doesn't make sense," Eric said. "The ending part. It doesn't agree with their apparent motivations. If the Light Tenders are trying to protect humanity from supernatural danger or whatever, if they knew ponies were coming and somehow had a way to find them when they got here, why the hell would they let ponies make the TV show?"

He rose, shaking his head. "It doesn't make any sense. Back when it first came out, it wasn't like there was a worldwide web where information could go to live forever. Shut down the studio, and there's no more propaganda. Why not stop ponies then, before they could infect people?"

Jacob's eyes widened. He hadn't thought of that. "Maybe… they didn't notice? The first few attempts were failures. After all that time, they probably didn't know to recognize ponies themselves, let alone in marketing shows to sell children plastic dolls."

"So why not stop FiM then? They must recognize it as a vehicle for magic by now! Why haven't they strangled the fandom by the roots?"

"We were trying." Elise spoke up again, a little exasperated. "But when I left, we thought the television show was only a circumstantial detail. Exposure didn't make mutation that much more likely, but exposure to extranormal manifestations almost always did. With so much of that, we were always focused on eliminating the greater threat."

"We had already strangled the show itself with mediocrity and careful manipulation of a few of the executives. All we had to do was wait for it to fade into obscurity. Trying to ban an idea has always been one of the worst ways to discourage it."

Eric looked uneasy. "I feel like we're still missing something, but I don't know what it is."

"Maybe we are, maybe we aren't." Jacob stood up. In the past, doing so would've made him look more imposing and authoritative. Now that he had gone most of the way into a pony, he was still shorter standing than most of them were sitting down.

He kept going. "We had this conversation before, when we decided if we were going to help ponies or not. I think it might be time to have that conversation again. We need to decide if we still want to help."

Chapter 32

"I'm not sure any of that makes a difference." All eyes went to Jackie. "So maybe the ponies believe we're like them. Maybe they're right, maybe not. But I can tell you something we don't have to wonder about: there are people trying to kill us. I think they've made the call for us."

Katie shook her head. "That doesn't mean we have to help them fight. We can keep things going back here without needing to… do whatever Sunset plans on for her war. What is she planning, anyway?"

Jacob shrugged. "Harley can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the ponies had a plan going for a real war."

"More like a backup plan." Harley sat a little straighter. "I can't tell you very much. You're getting into Luna's territory. All I know is it relied on making it so people couldn't fight us anymore. Stealth, information control. Breaking humanity's will to fight by showing them what you all just learned, showing them over and over until they see it's true. Not really the killing kind of war, which is good. That's such a wasteful way to fight."

"I'm not sure I want to fight any kind of war," Jacob admitted. "Not the same as not wanting to help. Making this place… Imperium… making it somewhere worth living seems like a noble goal. I think that's somewhere I'd like to stay."

There were murmurs of general agreement, though Stalwart and Jackie remained quiet until they were finished. Jackie raised a hand until they all shut up. "That's a good idea for now, you're right. I think in the end we'll have to man up and pick a side. Decide if we're going to stick up for the way we grew up or the ones saving us. Because… because the other side isn't as kind and understanding as the ponies. I don't think the pony way of fighting will work—in the end, we'll have to pick if we want to crawl away and hide, or prove we've got the will to survive and fight."

"I'm not saying any of you have to pick now, or even this month. Just… think about it."

Elise nodded. "I think she's right. You ponies don't have a chance of just convincing the powers that be to give up, not after what you did. Humans are so great at demonizing people when it seems like we have a good reason."

No one argued.

"I guess that's where we stand, then." Jacob slumped into his empty cot. "Tomorrow we'll get our assignments, and we can hope that Sunset's strategy will work without us." He covered his face with a rough-feeling pillow. "Maybe Sunset's strategy will work, and we'll never have to fight."

Life in Imperium was not smooth and structured the way Unity had been, with regular meals and classes and rules. Despite the cave's apparent size, it soon seemed filled with sprawling campsites. Anywhere that wasn't being used to grow food was being used to house ponies.

Their names and faces were known among those they had rescued, and Jacob could seldom wander through the camps without teary ponies cheering and celebrating. They were soon all eating the same flat paste of wheat berries and barley, which wasn't as offensive as he might've expected but still made his stomach squirm after the second straight week.

Some things remained as true for ponies as they would've been for a similar group of humans, and boredom was one of those. Though at first many of the ones they had rescued were in very poor health, a few weeks of clean water and stable (if boring) food nursed most back to the point where they could contribute.

Whenever Jacob wasn't studying, he went out and joined them. The cave rang with song almost every day, as groups of ponies baking bricks from cave clay and slicing stone blocks with magic kept inventing new tunes to keep themselves amused.

Jacob couldn't help himself. He sang along to "Make this Cave a Home" and "Work is Easier with Friends" and a dozen others, without ever knowing where the words had come from. It felt good, though he never got the same satisfaction Danielle or Stalwart seemed to.

Sunset seemed to get the message that they weren't interested in fighting anymore, because she didn't ask for their help with any more missions. Occasionally he served shifts at the medical tent, and sometimes they brought in ponies that had obviously been shot or otherwise injured, but that was it.

Despite their apparent physical disadvantages, even large numbers of formerly-human ponies were more than capable of getting work done. More than that, magic often did the job of heavy equipment or specialized hardware. What an earth pony couldn't do, a unicorn probably could.

The unicorns’ most significant contribution took about three weeks. Jacob wasn't part of it—he was too useful as a doctor, even a bad one, for him to devote his time to anything else. There was no announcement—he went to bed to a world lit by dozens of standing construction lights, and woke up able to see the sky.

Imperium might be almost unfathomably large, but it wasn't large enough for the sky to turn blue. It was strange to see something yellow out his window, with scraggly uneven rock behind it instead of blue. The clouds almost made it seem as though he were looking at the real sky, if he squinted his eyes just so.

With that single improvement, life in Imperium was transformed. The "sun" might only be some complex spell, sustained with unicorn effort and Sunset to "raise" it, but ponies weren't meant for living in dark, cold places. The spell brought enough warmth that Jacob no longer used his blanket at night, and enough light that every part of the cave seemed almost lit with daylight. Only the pegasi complained, since it was in fact a gigantic fireball and amounted to a very serious hazard in the sky if not carefully avoided.

Other changes came more subtly. His body didn't get any worse, not since he stayed out of the most serious magical needs, but attitudes changed. Ponies that had been depressed and reserved opened up. Songs became more common, and struggling plants surviving only on magic alone drank in the light and spread. Only the most remote sections stayed dead for long, where the light from their fabricated sun didn't quite reach.

After a full month of expansion, what had been an empty cave with one structure was a growing town with over a dozen. Houses were last priority (since they were already inside anyway), but workshops, classrooms, and factories went up in a little circle around the capital building that quickly became known as the "industrial quarter". Much of the rest of the land area that didn't have tents on it was soon swaying with grain, and another week later Jacob got his first taste of not-emergency-rations.

Jacob was privately grateful they weren't being told about the war—and maybe a little grateful that he didn't even see Sunset more often than not. She may've been an ordinary unicorn before, by some definitions of normal. But that illusion was totally shattered now. As Celestia before her, her power literally caused the sun to rise in the morning and set in the evening. If ponies were trapped down here for many years, would she live for thousands of years as Celestia had done? Would she become as mythical to his descendants as Celestia had been to Equestria's ponies?

Jacob perfected his short-range teleportation after the first month, and used it to wander places he wasn't supposed to go. He enjoyed finding his way to the top of the capital just after sunrise, where he had an excellent vantage of the cave all around and could watch ponies as they rose.

Jacob could never tell if he was just imagining it, but it always felt warmer when he climbed up onto the building. Well, teleported up. He had become far more athletic since he had left his real life behind, a combination of hard work and a superb diet, but he doubted that would make much difference when he had no hands to climb with.

He usually wasn't interrupted—Eric was the only one who might've come looking for him, and he resisted any attempts to wake him before noon as though under the assault of a hostile army.

Yet the second week after the sun turned on, Jacob heard someone land on the platform behind him, and jerked so suddenly he nearly fell from the top. He sat on the edge of a wide dome, exactly far enough where he could brace his hooves on the ground and not slide down the curve. If he did start to fall, the chance of him being able to teleport before he hit the ground was very small.

He didn't fall, though his tail flicked around wildly and he whimpered in shock. Neither really helped him, though the pair of gentle hands that yanked on his shirt did. "You didn't see me coming?" Katie's voice, and her hands. Jacob recognized both. It did nothing to settle his racing heart, though no longer falling to his death helped.

"I was watching the ground," he answered, glancing back at her. "Most unicorns need line of sight, so I figured if anyone was going to catch me up here I'd see them coming."

Katie rolled her eyes. "The sky's above you, Jacob. A third of us can fly, and we're the ones more likely to notice someone sitting on a building who shouldn't."

Katie hadn't changed much in the last few weeks, except maybe to get prettier. Like Jacob himself, an extremely vigorous lifestyle and restrictive diet was improving her build and athleticism by the day, though she hadn't had as much ground to cover as he did. Like him, she hadn't become that much more pony over the two months. Stress and serious magical exertion seemed the most likely cause, and all of them had remained back in Imperium.

"I honestly didn't think of that." He chuckled. "Guess humans are all like that. That prison was a fortress from the outside, but they never thought we'd be able to just teleport behind everything and shut down their last defenses. Being a pony doesn't get rid of those strange ways of thinking."

Katie shivered. Clothing was quite scarce in Imperium, with what little they had usually reserved for those going topside. Katie had a single jumpsuit, which she had trimmed off sleeves and legs. The thin fabric hadn't been made to contain a half-pony, even if it would've been sized right for a human her height. "I'm glad I wasn't there. The stories they tell about the inside…"

"They're true," he said. "I've seen dogfighting dens on the news that were cleaner."

"It's a good thing we have Sunset." Katie set her head gently on his shoulder. He was a little more strongly built, though not as thick as even a female earth pony. Katie didn't complain. "What are you even doing up here?"

"Watching the morning." He didn't complain either. Katie was much more secure in high spaces, even her hooves seemed to grip better. "The farming ponies are already out there, coaxing their fields. Weather team's started… you probably came from there, huh?"

He didn't see her nod, but felt it against his shoulder. "There isn't much to do. Limited air volume, and right now the only really important thing is keeping the crops watered and ponies happy. They won't even notice I'm gone."

"Good." Katie didn't move away, not even when he set one hand gently around her waist. She only clung to him, bringing with her a little of her pegasus warmth. Pegasus ponies apparently ran a few degrees warmer than unicorns, which were just a little warmer than earth ponies. The difference was so subtle he had only learned it from the doctors. "About you having some time, I mean. Not about your work being boring."

She smiled, squeezing once. "I got it." She looked back out over the edge, down at the cave. It sloped very gently away from the capital on all sides, an effect only visible now that the whole thing was lit. It seemed almost as though they were at the peak of an incredibly gentle mountain, with a few squat buildings and then endless farmland beyond. While above them the sun wouldn't quite reach the edges of the cave, so looking ahead almost made it seem like they were outside.

"Do you think it's weird?" Katie asked, after ten minutes or so of near silence. "That… I mean…"

"Not weirder than anything else." He didn't make her finish. "I think it would be weirder if ponies were less like humans. If ponies spent their whole lives alone."

"No such thing as humans," she corrected. "Remember?"

That wasn't quite true. It was an easy oversimplification, the one her older sister favored reminding them every time she left on another mission. Jacob didn't like it, but he never would've told Katie so. "So it isn't weird."

"Guess not." She lowered her head back onto his shoulder, taking his hand. Without even meaning to, Jacob found his fingers weaving with hers. "Just don't tell Jackie, alright?"

"Don't tell Jackie wh—" she kissed him.

Chapter 33

Danielle always panicked right before casting the Earthbreaker spell.

She paced around a patch of bare rock, in the most remote corner of Imperium where the sun rarely shone. Huge sections of Imperium had now been planted and cultivated, and none of those would work.

Other ponies knew to stay away, as much because of the constant noise as because of the lumpy craters ripped from the ground and massive piles of rubble everywhere. The broken rock could never be used twice—something about the magic prevented it, but with a little work could be transformed into gravel for cement. Danielle liked the days when they just assigned her to rock-crushing. Such strength with bare hooves might feel strange even after nearly half a year with it, but at least strength made sense.

What Earthbreakers did was something else. There were only three of them in Imperium, including her. Something inside always twisted at the prospect of the damage she was about to cause, though that part wasn't enough to stop her practice. Some day she might have to fight for the lives of those she loved. The knights, living contradictions or not, were her best chance of doing good.

"That's a good spot," Sheltered Lilly said, nudging her gently with her snout. "You've paced it three times already. I think it's free enough from cracks to start." Lilly was one of the oldest ponies Danni had seen, with a bright pink mane that had faded pale and a few wrinkles in her skin. Unlike Granny Smith, age did not appear to translate to actual weakness—Danni had never won a race or wresting match against her during any of their training sessions. Her Cutie Mark was a delicate pink flower growing from a cracked boulder. Like her Cutie Mark, she was as much sensitivity as strength.

"You should go first." Danni pawed at the ground. Lilly was right of course, the stone here was strong and good, perfect for her magic. Lilly retreated twenty feet or so, then sat down to watch from a safe distance. Sure, look as calm as you want. You've been doing this for decades, not weeks.

Danielle felt the spell burning in her chest even now, like embers of an old campfire kept alive during a long trek. They waited in her chest where Lilly had placed them, just as she could pass the spell to another earth pony. The process had been agonizing, and strained even her supernatural toughness so badly she had returned to her bedroom bleeding the first night and not left her bed for days.

She could use the Earthbreaker spell without fear for her safety now, so long as she made sure not to run out of magic. You want to suffocate in a cave barely as large as your body? Or maybe get crushed to death under several tons of rock? Then run out of magic while you're in an Earthbreaker.

The magic wasn't the kind unicorns did, which of course was impossible without a horn. Danielle settled herself securely onto the ground with all four hooves. She closed her eyes, willing the magic in her chest down into her hooves and her connection with Earth. "I swear on rock and soil to do only good," she said. "My hooves will guard what grows and never destroy that which lives well in its own way. Be my strength, my shelter, and my speed. I will be action, flexibility, adaptation."

The words weren't English, but Danni had learned them through much repetition. Getting the words exactly right was absolutely essential, for reasons she didn't understand. Just another of magic's unique quirks.

She started to sink. What had been firm stone began to yield before her hooves. Solid rock squished and flattened like mud, gurgling and slurping under the pressure.

As usual, she started to panic about the time it passed her knees. Ponies were already close enough to the ground that she didn't have very far to go. There was no moisture as she might've expected with quicksand, but also far less give. Though the rock would melt and distort to let her pass, she could not move it any way she wished.

She started to struggle as she sank down to her belly, jerking and twisting to try and free herself.

"Relax, pony! You cannot stop the tide once it begins to rise," Lilly called from her resting place about fifty feet away, still well out of reach. "Remember what I taught you, and you'll be fine. You've been here half a dozen times before."

And it felt like I was going to die each time. Nothing supernatural about the sensation, not the way the magic had felt that burned her insides and caught some of her coat on fire. This was an entirely mundane claustrophobia, as the stone rose up her body, hugging tight to her pony shape. The higher it went, the less freedom she had to move. It wouldn't hurt her, wouldn't crush her or strangle her, but it was very hard to believe that when all she saw was the world getting further and further away.

She sank down to her neck, and for a few moments she saw the world as an ant might. Uneven stone, broken with the fallen corpses of previous attempts. No ponies had died in the training on Earth, at least none she had been told about, but Lilly hadn't lied about Equestria's history. There had been a time when this magic was known more widely, and numerous ponies died in the attempt before they could master it.

The sound of insects and distant conversation and the faint breeze all faded away as Danielle was wrapped entirely in a cocoon of stone. She kept sinking, now utterly frozen. For these few seconds she would be unable to breathe, unable to do anything at all. No sensation other than the blackness, and the cool touch of rock on her coat.

She stopped struggling. Movement would take precious air, air she couldn't afford to waste. Instead she held perfectly still, not even breathing. It felt a little like she was floating through space, weightless in the sense that she was equally supported from all sides. The spell surged within her, its magic reaching out to claim more and more of the rock. It always felt like something was watching, though she lacked the air for speech and couldn't ask.

Danielle might be the one floating, but it was someone else's sea.

The next part was the hardest. Lilly had never described it, nor did she have an explanation for why it troubled Danni while other ponies didn't struggle with it.

She had to force the magic around her into its finished shape, breaking free of ordinary rock to use the power she had channeled. She fought and strained and grunted, trying to understand how to will the stone into the shape she had been told.

Earthbreaker ponies had to look like ponies, that was the way it worked. Danielle didn't imagine a pony when she thought about herself—when she woke up in the morning, she still expected hands. When she remembered her dreams, she was always on two legs and standing where she had stood her whole life.

Eventually though, she managed to hold the image in her mind long enough to feel sensation returning to her body. Well, the thing that would be her body for a little while. Suddenly she wasn't stuck motionless inside a stone prison, but was instead wrapped up inside something with the consistency of dry soil, gripping her tight but without much strength.

She stretched along her body as Lilly had taught, and the sound of cracking stone like gunfire echoed around her. She moved lengthwise, extending each of her legs in turn. Each one brought another avalanche of cracks and shattering stone, shaking free of her body with rock's characteristic brittleness. Enormously strong in compression, but terribly weak when twisted.

The more she shook free, the more her sensations seemed to return. Her vision came in as a blur, then solidified into a rocky sky and stone all around her. The smell of dirt. Strangest of all was the pressure against her skin, no longer seeming to be trapped inside rock. She felt solid stone clinging to her like soft clods of dirt, and shook herself free as she might've as an ordinary pony.

Except she was not an ordinary pony anymore. Danielle rose to her hooves a full twenty feet above the ground, each step shaking the ground beneath her stone form. Her Cutie Mark was chiseled into the proper place, but the rest of her fur was only roughly detailed stone taking the pony shape she had within.

Somewhere, like a frighteningly realistic case of double vision, she could still feel herself trapped in rock that swallowed her like a perfect cocoon. But those sensations seemed strange and distant, right along with the desire to breathe.

"Good, good!" Lilly was so small on the ground beneath her Danni had to squint a moment to find her among the shards of broken rock. "Wait a moment, I’ll join you."

She didn't take half as long to complete the process as Danni had, picking a spot of smooth stone and splashing down inside like it was water. It seemed like mere seconds later the frail pony broke free as something far larger, rising to her hooves as a mature, healthy-looking pony at massive scale beside Danni.

Having someone else to look at always brought home just how insane the process was. To look up into the face of a massive carving of stone come to life, shaped vaguely like a pony she knew but with a skin of marbled mineral veins and eyes like sparkling gemstones. The stone didn't behave the way she expected it to—there were no seams, yet it seemed to bend without breaking. Rock was not meant to be so plastic, and yet she watched it in the way the pony turned to look at her.

"What is it today?" Her voice was strangely downshifted by the magic, utterly unrecognizable as anything but monstrous and strange. "More running drills? Swimming? Climbing?"

Aside from how gray and featureless she looked, it was almost possible to look up at Lilly and pretend they were still small. It was easier to move if she treated it that way, and didn't imagine herself trapped in a magical mechsuit. That illusion would last about as long as it took to go anywhere ponies were living and working, when the terrifying reality of the spell would come crashing down again.

"You haven't shattered in three days." Lilly walked past, shaking the ground with every step. Bare stone would not crack or crumble under their steps, thanks to the same magic that made these bodies work in the first place. "I think it is time to make you useful. We are needed to help install roofs on some of the first housing blocks. A few hundred pegasus ponies could do it, or just the two of us."

They didn't run—even skirting around the edge of the cave, they were far too large within the protection of their spells to move quickly and not risk serious injury to anypony they met.

"I'm still not good about being delicate. What happens if I crush the roof? Or the whole building?"

Lilly shrugged. "Then they'll have to build a new roof, I suppose. And you will have a large crowd of very angry ponies."

"Maybe you should just do it. I'm not ready for this. Or we could get someone from off duty to help. Bedrock, or Golden Grain?"

Her own steps came a little ponderously. While the body was the proper shape and proportions, the density and balance was all wrong. The first time Danielle had tried to run, she had fallen on her face and shattered into a million pieces. It wasn't the fall itself that broke the spell, anything that broke her concentration could do it. Otherwise, an Earthbreaker was nearly indestructible.

"I think having more serious consequences for failure will teach more restraint than using rocks and empty fields. If you make a mistake, the ponies will forgive you. You're Freedom, The Broken Chain, you fought a thousand monsters before freely giving your humanity away for them. You could squish a pony and they probably wouldn't notice."

There was more than a little sarcasm in Lilly's voice. While it was true that many of the ponies they had saved did look up to her like that, Lilly and the other Earthbreakers had never once fawned over her. She had never asked, but Danni was quite sure their achievements back in Equestria were even more impressive. "The sooner they forget about all that, the better. Anypony would've done what I did. I just happened to be the one close enough.”

Lilly laughed. It sounded a little like the rumbling of a distant volcano. "Think that if it helps you, young pony. We both know it isn't true."

More and more ponies passed them as they made their way around the camp. The trip didn't take long—even at a walk, Danielle's armor of stone was so large and strong that it took strides thirty feet long. They got less stares the more they practiced, as the ground-shaking rumble they produced became more common.

About halfway across camp, she heard distant screams. Not ponies screaming about them, for that was a sound far closer and more immediate. This noise was much further and far worse than the simple fear ponies displayed around the Earthbreaker armor.

"Something's wrong." Lilly tensed, then broke into a gallop. The gesture boomed and shook with terrible violence, and with each step it seemed like her body was going to shatter. Danielle did her best to follow, though it took the whole of her concentration to stop from breaking into a pile of rubble each time she came down with three of her hooves. She didn't break, though she was soon gritting her teeth and whimpering with the strain of it at each step.

The alarm sounded a second later, exactly like the air-raid siren that had echoed through Unity on the night it fell. Danielle picked up the pace, closing some of the distance between herself and Lilly.

There was a different alarm for drills, so no mistaking this for anything but a genuine attack.

As they crossed around the perimeter, running sometimes only a pace away from the rock edge of the cave, or from the shore of the black-water lake that surrounded Imperium, ponies began scattering before them. They didn't have to work very hard to avoid them, since ponies seemed possessed of their own initiative, and their own destination.

They passed through fields, doing their best not to step on as much of the crop as possible. They passed through construction yards, where material was stacked and equipment resting for its next use. Eventually they reached the gradual spiral of young buildings that was to become a neighborhood, the one they had intended to come to in the first place.

There were hundreds of ponies here, though most of them were running away in fear. They had to slow to a stop anyway—even with the ponies doing their best to avoid the gigantic statuesque Earthbreaker ponies, they were still so small that they often didn't realize just how much room Danielle and Lilly needed to maneuver.

As they got closer, cries of fear became shouts of relief. "The knights are here," someone called, and cheers echoed from around them.

Danielle ignored both. "Stay behind me." Lilly's voice was curt as she made her way towards the half-finished buildings. Something snapped and gurgled and slurped from just behind them, something Danielle could only see in vague outline.

Then she got a little closer, and her towering stature rose above the pony-designed housing structures, giving her a clear view of the monster.

It was easily twice as tall as she was, or it might've been if it stood on hind legs alone. It was vaguely draconic, though not like any she had ever seen before. It looked shriveled and half-dead, with scales coming off in clumps and others gone white and discolored. It wore nothing except a faintly ceremonial necklace around its neck, with a rusting iron pendant like a moon glittering there in the artificial light.

There were dead ponies at its claws. It was hard to tell how many, there was so much blood. There was also an opening in the wall behind it, where the stone had evidently crumbled away to let the monster pass.

"The pretender sends more capable servants than the guards." It had six limbs, not counting the rotten wings clinging gangrenous to its back. With one of its pairs of legs, it flicked something towards them— broken guard armor. There were still bloody bits inside. "Please, come. There is much to discuss."

Chapter 34

Danielle didn't feel much like discussing anything with someone who had clearly just murdered several ponies. She snorted, scratching at the ground, but Lilly shoved her with one hoof. She forced her to slow, advancing closer in the calm. There was no way to communicate securely now—anything they said to each other, the monster would surely overhear.

"What are you?" Lilly asked. "I've slain dragons before, but none like you. Did your master leave you out in the sun so long you started to rot?"

Danielle stood just beside her, as straight and brave as she could. The siren kept going—Sunset would surely be sending reinforcements any moment now.

The monster stopped playing with the dead. It rose up onto its hind-legs, stretching more than twice as tall as either of them. A massive creature, all spiked claws and glittering fangs. It had a voice more horrible than any Earthbreaker, a voice that spoke the words of a thousand dead. It was impossible to assign it gender, or even emotion. "The creature you served taught you delusions and lies if she promised you would find safety beneath the earth." It began walking towards them, making no attempt to avoid the corpses of fallen guards and construction ponies as it went. "The true monarch of this planet can find you no matter where you flee in her domain."

"Your master isn't even the shadow of a princess." Lilly did not retreat, instead settling herself in a defensive stance. "Celestia will not allow you to rule over her ponies, no matter what planet they've taken. She will come for us."

Danielle tried to imitate Lilly's stance, though she doubted she would be much use. She hadn't fought before—if she could barely keep up the Earthbreaker thing while she was running, how could she possibly manage while someone was trying to kill her?

The dragon ignored her. "Your princess is away. I waited here, killing, until someone arrived who could give your surrender. You two should do nicely. Submit to me, and your ponies here can serve a real ruler. Resist, and I will keep killing until you finally send someone to give the surrender. It is a very simple arrangement."

Danielle felt the bite of horror in her chest. Was Sunset away? The princess had many missions on the surface, it was true. But how could the dragon know more than she did?

"I have a counter-proposal: I send you to Tartarus, and you die." She charged. There was no restraint now, no worrying about the ponies that might be blocking the path without realizing it. No minimizing the damage she did to the cave or to anything living in it. Lilly rocketed forward in a charge that shook the structures all around them.

Danni ran just behind her, roaring with animal rage. She focused on her shoulders, on the impact she knew would be coming. Lilly was faster than she was, closing the distance in mere seconds. She struck with a cataclysmic crash, shattering sheets of stone and sending the dragon toppling back.

Danielle darted past her, lunging for the dragon's neck. She didn't know anything about pony combat, but she did know that most things needed to breathe. She would take its neck with all the force she could muster in the Earthshaker armor.

The dragon looked frail and helpless, its limbs splayed under the force of the attack and stone dust coating much of it. Danielle didn't expect resistance.

The dragon caught her with two of its claws, both about her shoulders. Just as she was turning the force of her charge into an attack, the dragon rolled under her, turning her own charge against her and slamming her face into the bare cave floor.

Pain exploded through Danielle's stone body, at least for the second she managed to hold it together. Huge claws twisted and ripped at her, and one of her stony limbs tore free with unimaginable pain.

The stone body shattered. It was made to do this—exploding in such a way that the large rocks would blast away from the pilot, and they wouldn't immediately suffocate under tons of rock.

Even so, Danielle found herself back in the dark and the cold of broken stone, her whole body aching from an impact that would've turned a weaker pony to goo.

Instead of Lilly's bemused face to rescue her from the rubble, she saw only a pair of jaws so large they could swallow several ponies whole without scratching them on the way down. "You are all like this." The voice blasted her with rotting air, scattering dust and pebbles. A sharply pointed claw reached in towards her, prying open a chasm in what had been the Earthshaker's torso. "Magic greater than you are may let you pretend strength, but not well. We are not all so easily fooled."

A gigantic hand reached for her, glittering scales only inches away. Was this the way she would die?

Something took the monster in the torso, something that shook the rock around her and sent little pebbles cascading down the ruined slope that had been her spell. "I SAID DIE!" Lilly's voice, though it was completely unrecognizable to her now that she wasn't wearing the armor. There was no mistaking the pony form that rolled overhead, at the same scale as the dragon even if it wasn't quite so large. They rolled together, crushing supplies and half-finished buildings alike as Lilly took the dragon away from her and towards the cavern wall.

Danielle could barely see straight. She was mostly unhurt, as damage to the armor had little impact on the pilot. Even so, she was still dazed. She crawled out of the rubble, dragging herself along the ground. Even that took much of her strength, occasionally stumbling or rolling a few inches.

Behind her the terrible battle raged. Lilly was far better at this than she was, blocking strikes with stone limbs and turning her superior weight whenever the dragon tried to grapple her. Even so the outline of the pony quickly broke beyond recognition, the stones becoming rough as each successive blow shattered whole chunks of rock. Only magic held it together even that much, magic Lilly would not have in unlimited supply.

Ponies cowering in other unfinished buildings were beckoning her to their shelters, faces urgent. She ached, her magic felt drained, and she was beaten. Beaten without even landing a single blow.

The earth shook. She looked up to see Lilly go down, one of her stony limbs shearing free as the dragon tore it at a particularly devastating angle. "Such a meaningless waste of strength!" The dragon had both shoulders now, and slammed the stone pony to the ground with a horrific crashing sound. "You denied my master's mercy, so accept her vengeance!"

How could Lilly even keep her form together? She kicked out vainly, but the dragon just curved its body, leaning out of reach.

Where were the guards? She looked around and found only a few, helping the construction ponies around her escape. None fought, and from the ground she could see why. This wasn't like fighting human agents, or even evil witches. The dragon was something elemental, able to kill where it wished.

Their greatest had already been destroyed. Would they be coming with tanks, or trebuchets? Danielle had seen neither in Imperium.

She couldn't just stand there, listening to the monstrous creature bellow, "See what I do to your champion!" The pony body crunched under the grip of its claws.

Something snapped, and the dragon slammed the shattered chunks of Earthbreaker armor back together. A little spray of blood splashed out from within, so far away she could barely see it clearly.

"This death waits for each of you eventually, if you will not submit to Earth's true ruler! It is better to be a slave than know the end of all pleasure that comes with death!"

The dragon rose up again, towering onto all fours. "Bow to the servant of your queen, and she will accept your penance. Ponies were always meant to serve.”

Ponies screamed, fled, and some even obeyed. The dragon had been bruised and bloodied, yet it still managed to stand without even a limp. It noticed her.

"The other one." It smiled again, wicked teeth glittering. "You didn't even strike me, so I think I could be made to forgive." It moved forward towards her, crossing the distance with terrible speed. "Bow. Set the example for your pitiful herd. Show them where ponies belong."

Something broke in her too. Perhaps if she had been a pony, watching something so horrible might've broken her. Most of the surviving construction ponies were already on the ground, their faces low. Would submitting to the monster really save their lives?

Maybe the ponies really were content to win their survival with subservience. Danielle only stood straighter. It didn't matter how long she lived like this, she was still a human underneath. A human who would not bow.

Danielle was clear of the ruin of her armor, though only just. The ground here was uneven, a poor mingling of several different rocks. No good for what she needed. Just a little further back, though, a stretch of granite laid bare by excavators, probably to serve as a foundation. It would be perfect, if she could get there in time.

She ran. Strength flowed up her hooves, filling her to bursting and giving strength to bruised limbs. She repeated the words of her spell as she ran, praying to God that Earth would accept them.

"No mercy for you either then? Watch and see where fighting gets her, ponies of 'Imperium'!"

She cleared the broken patches in a few strides, painfully conscious of the dragon's gigantic steps behind her. If it caught her before she could get the spell started…

There was no fear now, only rage. Rage at this monster, and whatever greater horror had sent it. Frustration that the ponies of imperium hadn't expected an attack like this, or had anything more than a few guards to defend them.

But they did expect it. They have you.

She took the last few meters at a jump, aiming her face straight for the ground like a diver into a pool. Danielle felt no doubt, nothing but complete confidence in the magic burning in her chest. Earthbreaker armor was not meant to be worn again so soon—spend too much time with stone, and ponies could forget that they were flesh. Danielle ignored that warning now, and closed her eyes as she went down.

She didn't strike, but slipped through the rock as though it were muddy water. Help me. The magic raged about her, through her, filling the rock all around her and giving it life again.

There was no struggle to force herself into a different body—somehow she had skipped it this time. Her senses returned, and the dragon was looming just above her, claws prepared to grab and rend her the instant she emerged. She would be torn into pieces before she could even stand on her hooves.

She found something else in the rock with her then, something she hadn't noticed before. How she hadn't noticed while swimming in it, she couldn't imagine, yet with earth pony senses she felt it clearly. A faint, diffuse ore, a few rusty crystals in every rock.

Iron.

Without knowing what she was doing, without even knowing how, Danielle willed the earth to give up its secret wealth into her hands. The shaft of a spear settled into hands she hadn't known were there. Not hooves? How?

She didn't stop to think. If she did that, the ponies of Imperium might very well be subjugated before Sunset could arrive. At the very least, there would be much more death than just some guards and an instructor she had come to respect.

Danielle thrust the spear-point out of the rock above her, shoving it with all the strength she had. Rock parted easily, sloughing off like an old cocoon. The dragon was already watching the ground, and moved too fast to do anything more than startle it. The creature fell back, avoiding the force of the blow instead of staying to strike her.

Danielle shattered the ground around her and climbed free like a Titan being born. Her new body didn't have hooves at all, but a familiar set of arms and legs, a familiar torso, and long hair of bright golden rock. She was easily at a height with the dragon now, so much of her mass spread into her old lengthy form. She still had no clothes, though like with the pony body there was no suggestion of any reason to worry about that.

Danielle no longer felt trapped in a body that didn't make sense. She no longer wobbled to stay on her hooves, or threatened to shatter at the mere suggestion of stress. She brought the spear down beside her with a resounding thump, then raised it again and aimed the point at the monster. "Maybe you came here from Equestria, where ponies were weak and submissive. You won't find Earth so easy!"

The dragon righted itself, spiked tail lashing out behind it. Then it lunged, no trace of amusement on its face. Arms spread wide as before, ready to grip her stone body and rip it apart.

Danielle might not know how to fight as a pony, but that didn't matter anymore. She had a human body back, and something sturdy to put in her hands. She could fight.

Danielle feigned a clumsy strike with the spear, only to twist it violently down at the last second, tripping the dragon even as she jerked out of the way.

The monster went down atop an unfinished building, which immediately exploded into bricks and splintered wood. She followed quickly, and before the dragon could rise she thrust the point of the spear into the ruined housing structure. She braced it against her shoulder, slamming it down with all the weight of her own body for leverage.

The dragon screamed and thrashed from within the ruin. Her spear had pierced its chest and sunk into the foundation, pinning the struggling creature to the ground. It screamed so loudly even Danielle felt the pain from within her armor, and something slow-moving and black seeped out from around the spear.

Danielle watched until it finally stopped moving, bracing the weight of her armored body against the spear and holding it firmly in place. Eventually the struggling stopped, and she turned.

Ponies weren't bowing anymore, but cheering. For a few seconds anyway, until the excited cheers turned to shrieks of horror.

Danni turned to see the draconic form rising from the wreckage of the building, the spear still protruding from its chest. The scent of rot was fierce now, worse even than its breath had been. A few splintered bones emerged from the wound as well.

"You see futility. You cannot kill her champions, for we are dead already. Yours, though…" It cleared the space between them in a single leap, arching down on her from above with jaw extended.

Danni went down with a cataclysmic impact, showering the area around her with stone. She felt the pain only distantly though, even as the jaws smashed and tore at her head. The spear pressed to her chest as claws hacked and tore at her with animal frenzy.

She nearly shattered under the impact. Not yet. These ponies didn't have anyone else—her fellow Earthbreakers weren't here, and neither (apparently) was Sunset. If she did not defend these ponies, no one would.

Danielle ignored the pain, ignored the damage to her stone body, ignored the raking claws. Her hands snapped up, catching the dragon about the jaws as they threatened to crush her head and end the spell.

She screamed, and cracks spread through her body from the effort. Whole sections of rock crumbed out from her limbs, but that didn't matter. Danielle shoved, forcing the jaws to open wider. Her head was free, and the dragon's claws were now focused entirely on her arms, scratching and tugging and struggling against them, trying to get her to let go.

She didn't let go. "We won't be your slaves!" The jaw cracked, showering her with more sickly black goo. She surged, and tore the rest of the way.

The limbs stopped struggling.

This time, Danielle smashed the corpse at her feet, and used her own ruined body to crush the dragon's head. She tore it free of the neck for good measure, then yanked the spear free for another strike. She took her time, pacing around the monster until she found the place its heart should be. She stabbed clean through again, pinning the ruined body to the ground.

Only then did her energy run out. Danielle barely made it three steps before whole sections of the Earthbreaker armor started falling away, and she tumbled to the ground in an avalanche of no-longer-animated rock.

It didn't matter. She had done what fate required. Imperium's ponies would stay free.

Chapter 36

Jacob felt less confident the closer he came to the recording studio. He could hear distant voices, see studio lights shining down the hall, but that didn’t make things easier. What do I think I’m gonna do, tell an Alicorn she’s wrong to her face? Sunset Shimmer felt an enormous debt to him, and to the others who had rescued the imprisoned ponies. That gratitude was infused anew every time his magic saved one of her ponies. But that wasn’t the same thing as having the confidence to tell a pony as powerful as she was that she was wrong.

He kept walking anyway. He needed nothing more than the image of Michelle's face in his mind, legs propped up on her couch after another bad-movie marathon. Attacking at random was going to target people like her. People who should be allowed to keep living their lives.

What would Twilight have said about Sunset’s plan? Pity she wasn’t alive to consult. For all his doubts, there was another voice, a voice of shame. The voice that whispered to him that maybe Sunset was making the right choice. They were fighting for survival, and she was an Alicorn. Who better to know what they should do?

He found the door hanging open, ponies and humans in various states of ponification moving about in the usual patterns of video production. He was unfamiliar with most of it, though he recognized enough to know that Sunset had recreated a semi-professional level of production at least. It would’ve been adorable to see ponies moving about with makeup trays or levitating microphones, were it not for what Sunset was filming.

It was a mostly empty set. Sunset stood beside a green-screen, hovering in the air with flaming wings and flashing eyes. There was nothing of special effects in the way even her clothes started to sizzle, and one of the lights near her exploded in a shower of glass.

“Those you trust to protect you sent soldiers to slaughter my friends. They captured and imprisoned your families, and left them to rot like carcasses.” He saw from a display facing him what Sunset must be seeing, images superimposed on the green-screen beside her. The siege of Unity, apparently taken from some of its many security cameras. Humans bleeding and dying. Containment, though there were only a handful of photos, probably taken from Sunset’s own cell-phone. He had wondered who she had been texting three hundred meters underground. Then fresh images, from that very day. The dragon, ruined buildings, and the corpses. It was enough to make him recoil, though he stuffed a fist in his mouth to keep from gagging.

“We will find those responsible, and deal justice to them. What you are experiencing now is not vengeance for their actions.” She landed, approaching one of the other cameras more calmly. Jacob was just glad she wasn’t pointed at him or the open door anymore. “You suffer because it is the only way to protect the ponies of this planet. When there were a few of us, we were hunted and slaughtered though we only asked for peace. Now there are millions. Don’t let them subjugate you as they did your missing families.”

“If you are watching this video, then with it we have published two lists. The first is the names of every pony we have managed to save—your loved ones taken for as long as two years. One day soon, you will be able to see them again, and hear their witness that we have treated them well.”

“The other is a longer list—the name of every person we know of we couldn’t save. The murdered.”

“We will not abandon you as your own planet has done. You will be found, and taught your new powers. Flight for the wings, magic for the horns, and strength for ponies with neither.”

“You are not insane, and you are not alone. Equestria thanks you for your role in protecting the lives of its citizens.” She held still, staring directly into the lens. Then someone shouted, and several of the stage lights went out.

Ponies rushed around with renewed production fervor, many of them looking as disturbed as he felt. Sunset Shimmer had sounded every bit as passionate as when she was back in Containment. Not a person at all, but a force.

She was walking right towards him. All the military sternness was gone from her face, and she smiled down at him. “Jacob! I understand you preserved a good friend of mine the doctors had given up for dead.” She clasped him on the shoulder, her hand burning with heat. “Your service is as valuable as ever.”

He nodded, trying to find the words he had been searching for. When he stormed from their little barracks, he had been so confident. Katie had smiled at him as he left, looking so proud. He couldn’t let her down. Couldn’t let Michelle down. “This video you’re making, is it about something that already happened?”

Sunset stopped, glancing once down the hall before answering. “Not until tomorrow morning. It’s the dead of night in the US and very early morning in the parts of Europe we’re focusing on. It happens tomorrow, then we give another day before we make our statement. No more letting the Light Tenders silence us before anyone can even hear our story.”

“Couldn’t we…” He looked away. “Just tell the story? If you have a way of getting videos out you think people will watch before they’re taken down, we could just use that. Skip whatever you have planned.”

The Alicorn straightened, then looked him over with those dark, confident eyes. “You didn’t see the whole thing, did you?” He shook his head, and she continued. “It’s twenty full minutes long. We explain everything, and use real ponies as proof.”

“Sounds perfect.” He relaxed a little, grinning in spite of himself. “That’s exactly what we need to do. Even the parts you thought were hard for us.”

“If we thought it would work.” Sunset sighed. “You’ve seen how good humans are with movie production and special effects. If you saw a video of a pony a year ago, before you joined us, would you think that everything you understood about the universe was a lie, or that you were watching some kind of film trickery.”

He didn’t really have to consider. Of course he wouldn’t have believed anything that absurd, video “evidence” or not. He had seen video evidence of hauntings and bigfoot, but that hadn’t convinced him either. “Jackie said you were giving a lot of it away… Some kind of transformation…” he shook his head. “Whatever. Couldn’t you at least keep the attack limited? Get a military base, maybe. Instead of civilians who don’t even know we’re at war.”

Sunset pulled him around towards the studio, wrapping one arm around his shoulders. He didn’t squirm, though his flesh recoiled at her touch. This person wanted to attack innocent people. It didn’t feel right. “No matter how big a single attack was, they’d make it go away. With Containment gone, I don’t expect our enemy to be capturing ponies anymore. They’ll slaughter us.”

“Two attacks might be the same way, or three, or ten. I don’t know what resources they control.” Film people hurried around them, tending to Sunset’s makeup, straightening her collar. They ignored Jacob completely. “So we attack everywhere. We free a million ponies, or two, or five. Maybe our virus spreads over the whole planet, and the problem disappears…” She shook her head. “I don’t think that’s likely. Humans are too versatile for that, or you’d already be extinct. They will stop it, eventually. Our only hope is, by then, there are too many people for the Light Tenders to kill.”

“When that happens, the surface will be safe again. We won’t have to hide in caves, because there will be so many more ponies. We can recover the shards of the mirror in safety, and bring Celestia here to greet her new subjects.”

“Your masters taught me: supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. This way might be… unconventional, but it also won’t cost lives. When we’re done, the Light Tenders won’t be able to kill us. We will win the war without fighting.”

“I don’t like it.” He pulled away from her, shivering at how cold he felt despite the spotlights shining all around him. “It’s brilliant, it might even work, I dunno. But the way we win matters. If you do this… even if we win, and ponies are safe… you’re going to make people hate us. Maybe forever.”

Sunset tensed. All around them, the crew’s conversation faded to silence, and many eyes watched them. Sunset folded her arms. “If the way you win matters, is it right to save the lives of the dying? You’re making the decisions of an Alicorn, rewriting their fates and using necromancy on their bodies. Is the magic evil when the result is a pony who doesn’t have to leave the ones they love?”

He tried to come up with an answer, but his lips only stumbled uselessly over the words. Necromancy? Rewriting fates? What was Sunset Shimmer even talking about?

The princess advanced towards him, resting one hand on his shoulder. He tried to pull away, but her grip was too strong. He was no earth pony, to resist the will of an Alicorn. “Lifeline, I know you aren’t the only one who is uncomfortable about this. I haven’t asked for your help—I only ask for your trust. Princess Celestia gave me this planet, and I intend to honor her trust. I will take the responsibility, I will take the guilt, and you can keep up the good work saving ponies. Alright?”

“Yeah.” He bowed, lowering his head. “I understand, princess.”

She didn’t correct him.

Jacob got out as quick as he could, hurrying downstairs. He met Eric and Danielle in the lobby, Eric carrying Danielle in his arms. She didn’t look very awake.

Eric was. “You look like you saw a ghost,” he said, stopping in the hall. The pony he was carrying didn’t even twitch.

“You could say that.” Jacob stopped, glancing around them. There were other ponies here, a steady flow of traffic into and out of the capital. Few of them went downstairs though, considering how little housing was down there. “Is Danni doing better?”

He nodded. “She wasn’t hurt to begin with, just exhausted. Earth pony magic is usually just being able to do physical stuff well, so it’s hard to tell.”

“Walk with me.”

Eric followed without objection, down the stairs and into a supply closet on their floor. It had held emergency food rations once, but they had eaten all that. Jacob shut the door behind them, resting his back against it. So far as he knew, no one had seen them go in. “What’s wrong?”

Jacob explained as quick as he could.

Eric’s confusion quickly changed to horror, as his grip on Danielle got tighter. He was shaking by the time Jacob finished. “What… what the hell are we supposed to do? We could try the Internet cafe, but they screen everything people post… probably no one would believe us…”

“I don’t know.” Jacob rested against the empty shelves, but he was still nearly two feet shorter than his friend. “Even if we can’t stop this, we have to do something.”

“That’s why we’re hiding in the cupboard.”

He nodded. “I’m not sure about Harley. I’ll talk to her. Katie will agree with me, we can get her help. Jackie looked pretty upset too. Not sure about the others…” He started pacing back and forth. “You have Harley’s identification, right?”

Eric nodded. “Maybe she’s a good spy, but she hasn’t changed her password in four months.”

“I want you to go over the database. Look for anything unusual, anything we can use…” He stamped one foot in frustration. “Damnit, I’m not sure what you can even look for! We can’t give the ponies away, or we’ll all be slaughtered. But I can’t stand by and do nothing while Sunset Shimmer ‘greater goods’ one or both of our species into the ground.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Eric eventually said. “Maybe there’s something we can use. But… there might not be anything useful.”

“Examine the political stuff too.” He stopped pacing. “Maybe if we can’t stop her, we can get her deposed or something. Celestia wouldn’t be happy with her attacking innocent people, would she?”

“Not the one from the show.” Eric reached down, stroking Danni’s mane. She didn’t notice, though she did seem quite relaxed in his arms. “But the show wasn’t the whole truth.”

“We might be able to learn from Harley. She didn’t seem to like Equestria much—I bet she’ll be as negative as possible.”

“But that might not be the truth either.”

“Yeah.” Jacob slumped back against the wall, burying his head in his hands. Somewhere far away, terrorists were transporting poison. What he wanted to do was warn the president, and have his warning be taken seriously. But there was no time, no way, and no chance he would be believed.

They were helpless.

Author's Note

Having trouble with the importer again, so watch out for stray italics. It wasn't me I swear!

Chapter 37

Eric stayed up all night, Jacob with him. Mostly he kept watch at the doorway, and checked on Danielle where she slept on one of the chairs. No one came to use the computers, or to find the missing ponies. If only they had a specific list of targets, they might’ve been able to call in threats or something, get people out of public places.

They sent a few covert warnings, in ways Eric explained would be “very difficult to track.” Jacob didn’t understand what he was doing, so mostly he watched. He searched police department email addresses from various cities, and typed up the most comprehensive warning he could. Would anyone believe them? Would Sunset catch them and punish them as traitors?

The second one was a resounding no, at least that night. As Jacob searched and typed, Eric dug through files, searching for a list of targets, searching for anything they could use. After many hours, he slammed his head on the desk, whimpering. “I tried, Jacob! I tried, but it’s just not here!”

Jacob jerked into a sitting position, wiping a little drool from his mouth. “W-wha?”

“It isn’t here. I used every search I could think of, short of reading it all myself. Dug around in the metadata, poked at the security… nothing!” He shoved the keyboard away.

“You really didn’t find anything we could use to stop this?”

“Nothing.” He sighed. “Their laws and code of conduct is as complex as any big country’s, but I got the gist of it. Only Celestia herself can change regents. It isn’t an elected position, she can’t be impeached or deposed. You can read over it yourself, see if there’s something I missed, but… it’s clearly a monarchy. Not a constitutional one, either.”

Jacob felt like his head was full of cotton. “Well, if Celestia really was thousands of years old, she probably would know better than regular ponies…” He shook his head, trying to dislodge the sleepiness. His horn hurt whenever he did, but in this case that was an advantage. “I’ll read it when I have time. Put it on my drive or whatever…”

“Sure.” Eric did a few more things on the screen he couldn’t see. “It won't help us, though. Not unless we could bring Celestia here. But I don’t think we’d have had this problem in the first place if she was here.”

“Is there… anything else?”

He shrugged. “Nothing I could find in one night. Not to mention that most ponies don’t seem to trust Harley much. Even if there is something, she might not have access.”

“True.” Jacob got to his hooves again, clutching at the edge of the desk. “Nothing interesting? No hidden files, or future missions, or…”

Eric hesitated, considering. Eventually he turned around, hands going to his keyboard. “Just… something strange in the filesystem. It’s probably nothing, but…”

Jacob walked over, looking over the screen. “Explain it like it’s 5AM and I don’t know anything about computers.”

Eric grumbled, his wings flaring briefly. “That’s code for ‘I’m lazy and don’t want to have to think about it.’”

“I did say it was 5 AM.”

“So, you know that files have more to them than the parts you actually use, right? Like, if you have a song on your hard drive, there’s maybe a few and maybe quite a few bites holding additional information. The Linux distribution running on—”

Jacob put up a hand. “Skip all that. What did you find?”

“Every file made before three months, fourteen days ago is a little larger than it should be. Everything newer than that, no problem.”

Jacob thought back. It didn’t take much consideration. “That was the fall of Unity. Maybe… its computers were better or something?”

Eric shook his head, bringing up a console window with a few lines of text. “I tested that theory. I output the raw bytes of a few different files. See this string?”

He read it, or tried. It wasn’t exactly English. “

6861636c2062672076706763206f706720686564646d20616e206e7667666f202037352e393532343333202d33322e343634383937

. The hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but it’s the same in every single file from Unity. Maybe nothing… some kind of OS overhead unique to their custom kernel or whatever. Maybe not. Probably not what we need, but you did ask for everything.”

“If it was a code, could you break it? You’re the one who was good enough at patterns to notice it in the first place.”

Eric pressed print, waited for the printer to spit out a copy of the message, then closed out the computer. “Not tonight. I think we’ve done all we can for one night.”

“Probably for the best we’re not around, anyway. If they start tracing that something happened, at least we don’t want to be in the lab when they come looking. We can’t very well stop Sunset if she turns us to stone.”

Jacob caught a few hours of sleep before his morning shift. There was no way to catch up on all the missed sleep, as much because there was work to do as it would be suspicious if any of the night’s activity had been detected.

The day passed without the slightest hint of trouble, either for them or the surface world. Jacob spent that day in the clinic, hiding his exhaustion with frequent cups of coffee and doing menial medical work.

He got off as soon as he could, and started searching for the one pony he knew he could trust to be furious about what Sunset was doing and want to help: Elise.

It took some time to find her. Like most ponies (including himself on good days), she lacked a talent that could be directly applied to daily life. That meant a basic assignment based on her race and Imperium’s very real survival needs, which for her was in a field.

Jacob rarely had time to visit the farms anymore, but even he was impressed with what he found as he wandered in the direction he had been told she would be working. What had been solid stone was now broken into soil, sloughed into clear furrows and lined with irrigation ditches. The soil was rich and dark, and seemed almost to hug his hooves as he walked, cool and comfortable.

He was tall enough to see over the working ponies, most of which were naked and splattered with dirt. Jacob could only be glad he wasn’t one of them yet.

Elise was pacing through the young trees in the growing orchard, without any visible tools other than muddy hooves. What was she doing, anyway? He squinted, but even with his glasses it was impossible to guess. She didn’t seem to be weeding, for there were no weeds. She wasn’t fertilizing, though he had heard disturbing rumors about so called “night soil” being used all over the fields. So what was she doing?

“Ho, Elise! Got a minute?”

She looked up, looking suddenly self-conscious. Her ears flattened, tail tucking between her legs, though she wasn’t nearly as minuscule by comparison as she had been when they first met. “You never come out here.”

Jacob scanned the trees around her as he advanced, searching for ponies who might overhear. He didn’t see any. Whatever work there was in the orchards, it apparently didn’t take that many ponies to do. “What’s the point of planting an orchard? Don’t most fruit trees take years before they give you anything?”

“Not to a pony.” Elise reached out, yanking on one of his arms. Though he had to stoop for her to do it, the strength was tremendous, and he was forced to stumble along behind her. Twenty feet or so down the row, they came to a tree a little taller than he was, with tiny buds bristling from some of its bushy limbs. “See that?”

He nodded. “It hasn’t even been three months. I didn’t know earth pony magic was that good. I guess it does explain how such a small population of farmers fed a whole country like Equestria without modern fertilizers or genetic engineering. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“I figured.” Elise sat down by the tree, staring up at him. “If you’re hoping there’s something I can do, there isn’t. They let me work, but they don’t trust me. My actions got ponies killed…” Her ears drooped again. “Not only that, but I’m the one responsible for this escalation. It wasn’t the ponies that started by attacking as many innocent civilians as possible, that was us.”

“From what I can tell, my infiltration cut the ties between an extreme appointee and the moderate homeland that was keeping her wrists bound. In some ways, everything Sunset does is my fault.”

Jacob sat down across from her, against another nearby tree. He couldn’t put his weight on it, for fear that the delicate trunk might snap. “That doesn’t sound rational. Taking the blame for Unity is one thing, at least you knew what you were doing. Sunset and the ponies who helped her are responsible for their actions, not you.”

She shrugged, looking unconvinced. “I know you care about your patients, but I doubt you came out here to inquire after my psychological health, Lifeline.”

“Not you too with the nicknames.” He folded his arms. “Eric and I don’t plan on sitting around and doing nothing about this. Sunset went from protecting innocent people to attacking them.”

“You think an awful lot of yourselves.”

“Didn’t you work for guys who destabilized entire countries with just a few well-trained agents?”

Elise grinned ruefully. “No, that’s the CIA. Completely different organization. We have the better dental plan.”

Jacob tensed. “How can you be so calm? You know what’s happening up there, same as we do! You should be just as upset.”

“I am contemplating. Every angle I’ve considered is a no-win scenario. To betray this place to my organization would be a slaughter.”

He nodded. “They did try to kill us with a dragon monster yesterday. They probably already know where we are.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” Elise rose, eyes scanning the orchard around them. Jacob jerked, realizing he had been ignoring their surroundings since he had sat down. “I believe any attack on Imperium would involve a nuclear device. Deep underground like we are, no access to the surface… a minor earthquake would be an issue for the geologists, and conspiracy theorists would talk, but it would probably be enough to kill even the most dangerous individuals.”

He shivered. Even the attack on Unity hadn’t been nuclear. Could unicorn magic heal radiation sickness? “What do you think of Sunset’s plan? Will your people forget about us if there are a million ponies in the country, and they’re impossible to contain?”

“No.” No hesitation. “We had a contingency for runaway infection. Jurisdiction would transfer to the National Guard for containment. We’re talking martial law, curfews. FEMA gets involved. My department is removed from every responsibility except finding and destroying the source. The… five hundred agents, last I was there… would all be looking for you. For us, now.”

“Could we surrender?”

“Remember the part about the nuke?”

He stood up, kicking at the ground in frustration. “That makes as little sense as what Sunset’s doing! If there are millions of ponies, it’s already impossible to contain. They’ll do magic, they’ll spread it… they can’t be planning on murdering millions of citizens!”

“No.” She watched him from her place, still calm. “But if we had the power to spread it once, we’ll have the power to do it again. They won’t allow it.”

“I don’t suppose your people had a cure to being a pony in those top-secret labs of yours.”

She laughed again. “Unfortunately not. We had a test that could identify people likely to be resistant to magic, but that might not even be useful. Unless you know more about the biological weapon.”

“Only that it’s contagious.” He turned, staring up at their artificial sun. Pony magic could be astoundingly powerful. How much good could it be doing if they didn’t have to hide in a cave? “What would you do? If you were in charge, I mean.”

Again, she didn’t hesitate. “If ‘Equestria’ is a real place, I would take my entire population there immediately. Wait until the public is adjusted to the presence of ponies, and the hunt for Imperium is abandoned. Thirty years ought to be long enough.”

“Thirty years,” he repeated, dumbfounded. In thirty years, his sister might very well be a grandmother. His whole world would be gone. “What if we can’t get back?”

“Then… try and get mixed up into the victims. They’ll find us eventually—but there’s no reason all the ponies we helped out of containment have to die. Move somewhere smaller—this place is a liability. Ditch anyone without essential skills, then weather the storm. If we can.”

He nodded, then dug out a sheet of printer paper from his pocket, opening it for Elise to see. “Do you know anything about code breaking?”

Chapter 38

“You’re sure about this?” It took less than two hours—two hours for Elise to finish looking over the code and for him to gather together the other members of their growing conspiracy. Katie had agreed to come without question, but she hadn’t been sure about her older sister. They weren’t sure about Harley either, though none of them actually knew where she was.

Elise gestured pointedly at the scribbles she had made on the page. Her mouth writing was impressive for being so new, better than he could’ve done, but he still had to squint a little to read the characters.

“Positive. Eric had already translated the hex values into letters, but that wasn’t the code. Based on the vowel placement in the—”

Jacob interrupted her. “Eric, do you agree with her interpretation?”

He nodded. “I think she’s right.”

Elise glared up at Jacob. “You aren’t going to let me explain?”

“I don't understand.” He gestured back at the page. “The first part is simple enough, ‘I hide the frozen moment until the floors are swept?’ After that it’s… just a bunch of numbers.”

“Very specifically formatted numbers. Not another code, a set of GPS coordinates.” Elise extended a hoof, pointing. “If I remember anything about navigation, this is either Greenland or some icy wasteland of the Atlantic ocean. Only the southern coastal areas see any significant human presence—if this was anywhere else, it could be sitting out in the open and not have a soul to notice it. Whatever it is.”

“Whoever.” Eric smiled slightly, clearing his throat. “With respect to Agent Elise, I believe she missed something important. Well, not missed. She correctly discovered that the keyword used to encode this message was ‘Twilight.’”

“For the pony general who coordinated most of the war. A sensible, if obvious choice.”

“I believe it was a signature.” He pointed again. “This message was not effectively coded, Jacob. It took Elise under an hour to crack it, and that was as an outsider. There are computer-based codes that can take billions of years to crack, even with the best computers. Whoever put his message in the computer wanted to be found.”

Jacob raised a hand for silence, pressing his ear to the door as someone walked past. There were voices from outside, but the words came through only muffled. They didn’t try to open the door, and after a few more moments he lowered his hand. “But if they wanted the message found, why wasn’t it saved as a message? Who would put that on every file in the database?”

“Not just every file.” Eric’s smile got a little wider. “I went through it all again this morning. Not only do they all have the message, but I couldn’t find a single one that doesn’t have a modification record from the day of the attack or later. Even the read-only system stuff had been changed.”

Elise’s eyes widened, but Jacob only shrugged. “That’s bad?”

“No!” He shoved him. “The oldest edits I could find were all from the exact same moment—4:32 PM. We don’t know how big the pony database is, but one of their technicians back in Unity gave me a number in the hundreds of terabytes. Not super huge, but way too big to alter all at once. Either someone faked it, which is possible, though I wouldn’t see a point… or they used magic.”

“That’s my theory. Twilight’s body was never found, Sunset said. No parts of the mirror, either. Sure maybe it got lost… or maybe she got away, right at the last second. Maybe she knew we had been betrayed, but didn’t want anypony to know she made it until we had figured that out and got rid of the leak.”

“And yet, here she is,” Katie muttered, bitter. “Infiltrating even now.”

It was such a strange thing for her to say, Jacob’s eyes widened. “It could be. I guess she thought it was better we hide long enough that we had time to start digging around in files, assuming it was even her. Twilight would know about Imperium—if the mirror was still intact, you’d think she’d have offered it to us as an escape route by now.”

Eric shrugged. “I can only tell you how the pattern looks to me, and that’s what I see. You ponies get to decide what we do about it.”

“At least it isn’t the ‘now we have to betray everyone’ kind of secret code. If Twilight really is alive, it might be just what we need.” Elise sat up, looking more enthusiastic by the minute. “She might’ve gone out on lots of missions, but I never saw her hurt anyone. Just shields and teleports.”

“Twilight’s call sign was ‘Control’ for good reason,” Katie said. ”Just because a pony doesn’t lift her hooves doesn’t mean she isn’t killing. She was always more strategic than Sunset. We dismantled whole armored units with some of her maneuvers.”

“You went on missions with Twilight?” Eric looked over at her, raising an eyebrow.

Jacob abruptly pulled his arm free of her, glaring. “Katie, what did I promise to do for you when we got back to civilization?”

Jacob hadn’t promised anything, but he sounded like he had. Predictably, “Katie” looked more nervous than hurt. “That you’d... introduce me to your sister?”

Danni advanced suddenly towards her from behind, standing beside Jacob and the door. “Don’t run.”

“Where is Katie?” Far from getting angry, Jacob only felt more drained. They really were terrible at this conspiracy business. “She’s pulling late shift on weather duty again, isn’t she?”

Katie’s outline started to fuzz, sparkling with little flickers of blue magic. She got taller—taller than he was, adult human height again. It was an unnerving thing to see, and an even stranger one to feel. Changeling magic and the pony variety were quite distinct. Harley wasn’t any more pony than she had been before—of all the Equestrian advisors, she was the only one who could teleport, blasting foes with a wand and transforming when she wished, without losing her illusion. “What gave it away?”

“You aren’t Katie.” He blushed, his tail tucking a little between his legs. He hadn’t exactly admitted his feelings for her to any of the others. While he had always known Eric had a thing for Danni, both he and Katie had been going out of their way to hide what they were doing from her elder sister (and by extension, everyone else).

“Well, I’m no Queen Chrysalis either. Ten minutes with any prey animal in the world, and she could have their spouse and children throwing the original away as the imposter.”

He shivered, trying and failing to banish that thought. “Did Sunset suspect us? Did she send you to spy? Warn her if we tried anything?”

She laughed. Harley shoved him backward into the shelves—not hard enough that it would have stopped him normally, but hard enough that he struggled with only hooves to hold him up. “Jacob, you’re some of the ponies she trusts most. Danni helped the ponies escape containment, you routinely save the lives of her subjects. Your idea of a betrayal is to hide in a pantry and plot ways to rescue one of her best friends.”

That gave him pause. It was true, he had been unwilling to do anything that might put Imperium’s ponies in danger. They wouldn’t be revealing their position to the Light Tenders, assuming they didn’t already know. But he did want to depose her. Maybe he hadn’t said as much with “Katie” around. “Since you’ve decided to join us, do you think Sunset would let us go if we asked? Have ourselves a little field mission?”

The others all glared at her, but Harley was unabashed. “You, not a chance in hell. Sunset intends to keep you close until you burn your soul right out with those healings of yours. Danni, you could go if your training was done. But until then, Sunset isn’t going to want the magic that made you go to waste. Earthbreakers aren’t cheap.”

“I know,” she muttered, eyes fixed on the ground at her hooves. “I remember vividly.”

“I go on missions all the time, when I’m not getting poked and prodded by the hornheads. Er, uh… no offense, Jacob.” He just shrugged, and she continued. “Elise is a traitor, so they’d never let her out on her own. Any attempt to get her out would be seen as a betrayal, considering who she knows. Eric, you’re the only one without an essential function, so you could probably persuade her. Katie could too—with so little weather to make, one pair of wings is much like another.”

Jacob found himself tensing up again, his hooves scratching involuntarily at the ground. He forced one hand out of a fist. “No offense, I assume?”

“No offense,” she repeated. “But if all you want to do is bring Twilight here and hope she’ll mellow Sunset out, just tell her about the code. Explain what you think it means, and let her send the team.

Jacob shifted uneasily, shaking his head. He had already considered this angle, and rejected it. “We don’t want to take a chance that Twilight’s interpretation will be shaped by anyone’s interference. Unless she’s a totally different person from the one the show illustrated, I’m afraid she might be manipulated into seeing things Sunset’s way.”

“You know her better.” Danni looked up, rocking back and forth on her hooves. “Are we wrong?”

Harley looked contemplative, but eventually shook her head. “Twilight Sparkle governs by regulation and code. She’s read every book on leadership, but being able to recreate them isn’t quite the same skill. There’s no law for deposing a ruler without Celestia.”

“We know,” Eric grumbled. “We went through the laws first. We couldn’t find anything.”

“They can’t imagine a world that doesn’t have their immortal rulers in it,” Harley said, shrugging one shoulder. “When missions to Earth started, most ponies refused to come, afraid of what would happen to their ‘souls’ without Celestia around. Like, if they died or whatever.” She laughed, her voice bitter. “They called us primitives.”

Jacob cleared his throat. “So you don’t think Twilight would try to stop Sunset, if she were here?”

“She would try to get in touch with Celestia. Getting the mirror setup, or crossing over without one. If anypony could make a portal without the mirror, it’s her.”

“So it has to be us,” Jacob repeated. “We have to find her, and convince her that someone has to stop Sunset.”

Eric was suddenly quiet, his voice almost a whisper. “What would Celestia do? Would she approve of Sunset’s methods?”

Again Harley looked contemplative. “Her motivations are difficult for me to understand. If you think I did a poor job imitating Katie… she has a sterling reputation. Deep historical, cultural, and religious significance… not to mention she’s immortal. Equestria didn’t become the most powerful country on our planet because it sat there giving out free hugs to every army who tried to invade.”

“Her Solar Guard… some of the most dangerous ponies you’ll ever meet, and she’s the one who taught them how.”

Jacob raised an eyebrow. “You mean the useless ponies who stand around holding spears or shields they never use and run away terrified from a single changeling?”

For once, Harley did not laugh. She wasn’t even smiling. “Tell me, human, why would an immortal keep guards who couldn’t protect her?”

“For appearances. Important people always have attendants.”

“True. Celestia and Luna have those. The Royal Guard are really a glorified gentlecolts club for highborn stallions who want to wear fetching uniforms and practice weapon spells on weekends. The pegasi pull her carriage, the earth ponies are some fairly skilled engineers… but none of them know how to fight. In the invasion, they hardly amounted to a distraction. If you want a judge for their incompetence, we didn’t even have to kill them.”

“The Solar and Lunar Guard are… a bit different. Nopony knows for sure who they recruit from, except for rumors. Ancient pony heroes of lore, who sleep when they aren’t needed, then rise to defend the realm. Sounds like horseshit to me, but you never know.”

“They’re skilled, determined killers. Two of them drove the entire changeling army from Canterlot. They killed hundreds of my sisters. I…” she slowed, blinking tears away. “Only lived because I’m a coward.” She stopped then, staring blankly at the floor.

He was still angry with her for breaking into their secret cabal, but not angry enough that he would ignore obvious pain. Maybe it was being so much of the way into a pony that made him soft, or maybe he felt too much debt to her after she had saved his life. Whatever the reason, Jacob reached out and embraced her. He wasn’t tall enough to do it as an equal anymore, but that didn’t stop him from trying. He didn’t say anything.

“You ponies are all alike,” Harley eventually squeaked, resting one hand on his head. “One day you should tell me where you get all that love from.”

“If I ever find out, I’ll let you know.” He felt awkward standing there, but he didn’t hold on for long. Once he was sure Harley had recovered, he broke apart. “I think we’ve made our decision. Hopefully we can get the real Katie and Jackie involved. I’d feel better with their help.” He looked up at Harley. “Do you think you could use those changeling skills of yours to get us to the surface?”

“Sure, but… it’s pretty shit up there after what we did. It won’t be easy to get around. We won't be able to teleport right to those coordinates. We don't have any ponies in Greenland. Gatecrashers would only send us to territory with a safehouse or an existing set of supply caches for us to fall back on. That means we have to somehow get passage out of either the US, Canada, Australia, or the UK. Air travel is probably grounded all over the world after the attack. Our planes have stealth magic, but... good luck getting Sunset to lend us a pilot.”

"What if I knew a pilot? Are the aircraft hiding up there standard enough a human could fly them? Do you know where to find them?"

Harley nodded. "Sure, sure. If you know a human who would be willing to airbus around this freakshow." She gestured at them. "We'll probably seem like some new mutation of the bioweapon to an average person."

"I know someone who might be willing to overlook that. I've got a pilot in my family."

"Oh hell." Danni winced, covered her face with a hoof. "You can't possibly mean..."

"I do." Jacob was grinning. "I think it's time to visit my sister."

Chapter 39

Jacob had never gone to the Gatecrashers before. He knew the way only in the sense he remembered the way Jackie and Harley always went, when they had a mission to go on.

Getting there without being noticed involved a great deal of planning—separating their group into several smaller factions, each of which would carry some of their gear, crossing Imperium at different times until they eventually joined up just outside the building.

The Gatecrasher building was one of the bulkiest, ugliest structures in Imperium, very clearly designed for function over form. Five foot cubed blocks of stone were mortared together with dark gray, making a single chamber about a hundred feet in any direction. There was only one doorway, and it was there they gathered.

Harley had checked out (or stolen, Jacob didn’t ask) the gear they needed without much difficulty, and so the near-nudity was abandoned in the favor of something more practical.

Passing for human was the name of the game, and it was possible for nearly all of them. Jacob and Katie both dressed as children, with shoes carefully designed to attach to hooves and imitate feet. Only his horn resisted concealment entirely, though at least it wasn’t Alicorn sized.

The rest of them were either more human, or Danni and Elise, who were complete ponies.

“Are you all sure about this?” Harley stopped them just outside the Gatecrasher building, folding her arms. She wore black, tactical clothing, and carried a dark satchel over one shoulder. “If we’re wrong, and it isn’t Twilight, we’ll have nowhere to go but into a safe house, and who knows how many of them are safe anymore.”

Jacob folded his arms, searchings his friends’ expressions. Jackie, Katie, and Danni were all resolved—only Eric seemed upset. Stalwart alone wasn't there-- as much because he thought resisting Sunset was insane as because he wanted someone to stay behind and explain what they were doing when word inevitably got out that Imperium's greatest heroes (and its greatest villain) had all ran away.

“I don’t want to go,” Eric admitted. “But if there are more puzzles waiting for you, you all don’t stand a chance without Elise or me.”

“How flattering,” Harley said. “Any other doubters? It isn’t gonna be pretty up there.”

Katie smiled ruefully. “Assuming you can get us up at all. Four ponies who have never gone on missions to the surface before. Won’t that be a little suspicious?”

She nodded. “Ponies always mistrust me. That might sound bad, but here it’s an advantage. So long as I can direct their skepticism at something other than our mission, they’ll think they’ve outwitted me even though they’re doing exactly what I want them to.”

“How very changeling of you.” Jacob shifted in the uncomfortable child’s clothes. The bright colors and tight fabric suited someone about six or seven, which matched their height well. It would work, so long as no one looked too close.

“Couldn’t be any other way.” She shouldered her satchel a little higher, leading the way into the building. There was no more time to rehearse, no more time to plan.

Through a pair of massive wooden doors, so large it took three of them pushing at once to get them to swing, was a room almost lightless. The artificial sun left glowing blue afterimages in his eyes, and he very nearly fell over.

Walking with his tail wrapped up and his hooves tied to stupid shoes did not improve Jacob’s dexterity. He supposed he would just have to get used to it. At least it won’t happen again. If I’m ever human again, the illusion won’t fall off in little pieces. He had nearly seen an illusion fail on his very first day introduced to this mess, and Twilight hadn’t started to transform.

“Hold still,” Harley whispered back. “Wait until your eyes adjust. You don’t want to trip and fall into a rift.”

“What’s a rift?” Jacob kept his voice at the same low whisper, squinting to try and see around him. He couldn’t yet, though he could feel something. His clothes seemed lighter than they should, as though they were hanging loose from his body. How could that be?”

“Asks the unicorn.” Harley sounded almost amused. “Haven’t they been teaching you about teleportation? I’ve seen you pop onto roofs and cliffs a few times now. It’s… think of what you do, only permanent.”

He gasped. Jacob didn’t understand the magic completely, but he knew a little. He knew that every time he teleported, it worked by wedging a little magic into the world and using the crack. The flash of light and blast of air that came with a teleport was the crack re-sealing behind him.

“The wider the rift, the further ordinary unicorn ponies can send you. Since we’re underground in the middle of an ocean, we need a huge one not to exhaust any of the Gatecrashers.”

“What are you doing here, Harley?” A voice came from nearby, a vague blob forming into the outline of a pony. The voice was male, and the pony was mostly covered in a loose white robe. The whole thing seemed to billow about him, drawn towards the center of the room. Jacob now knew why.

“Getting this humanitarian crew to the surface,” she said, imitating their gruffness with equal measures of frustration and boredom. “You got today’s mission reports, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” The pony stepped closer. Jacob could dimly make out blue fur from within the robe, mane shorn almost flat. The eyes were unusually large, even for a pony. “Nopony is to leave. The chaos on the surface is too great—” Would he recognize Elise? She'd done nothing to disguise her appearance, since doing so would be an obvious tell they had something to hide.

“Dammit.” Harley stamped at the ground. “First Sunset gives one of her best mares a shit escort job, next they lose my paperwork on the way in. It’s three kilometers back to Capital… and by the time we get back, there won’t be any damn Gatecrashers on duty… Dammit!” She advanced on the pony, practically glowing with anger.

“It isn’t our fault,” the pony answered, retreating a little. His voice echoed strangely in the dark space, as none of their voices did. “We only follow the orders the princess gives.”

“I know!” Harley took a few, exaggerated steps past him. She seemed to be intentionally raising her voice a little louder with each word. “It’s not your damn fault, Slipstream. Just like it won’t be your damn fault when Sunset comes bellowing at me that we left a VIP to be captured and executed by the Light Tenders.

The pony hesitated. “If it’s… that important, I could send you right back to Capital. You could find the princess, then fly back with the release. I’d tell the others to wait for you before we went off-shift.”

Damn. A sensible compromise. Jacob froze, his heart seizing up. This was where he wouldn’t have known what to say. He occupied himself by looking away, trying to take in the rest of the chamber. The floor wasn’t flat, not the way he had first assumed. It seemed to be sloping gently down, vaguely rounded and curving once it left the corners. It was almost as though the room were a cloth, with a lead weight resting in the center and drawing the whole room down. He felt like he was being dragged down, though the pressure was so light that it wasn’t frightening. Even with awkward stumps he could escape, if he needed to.

There were little red lights set into the floor, forming little circles and rings that wouldn’t disrupt night-vision but still measured out… whatever it was the ponies here were measuring. In the corners of the huge room, like the one they had entered, were diverse and smaller rooms, one in each corner into which he could not see.

He might not have a clue what he was doing, but Harley didn’t skip a beat. “Thanks for the offer, Slipstream, but I don’t think it will be fast enough. I’m not sure if you noticed—” she gestured over her shoulder at the rest of them. “These are some of the biggest damn heroes in Imperium I’ve got with me. They’re needed upstairs, desperately needed. Even this conversation could have ponies dead.”

The pony, Slipstream, looked between each of them, his eyes getting a little wider as he did. It seemed he did recognize them. Except Elise, who he barely even glanced at. “I guess you could… get me your release when you get back.” He sounded uncertain. “Where are you going anyway?”

This was the tricky part. The closer to civilization they went, the more likely their request would be approved. Sending them to the interior of an island nation where ponies had no presence was a hopeless endeavor. Hence the destination. “Colorado Springs,” Harley said. “The closer you can get us to the university, the better.”

“Return trip?”

“Six hours at two kilometers north of wherever our ingress point ends up.” A lie, of course. A lie that might very well buy them six hours before anypony came looking.

“Follow me.” Slipstream turned, cloak billowing about him as he did so, drawn strangely down towards the bottom of the room. They walked around the outside wall, towards one of the other walled sections. “You sure this VIP is worth it, Harley? Before we lost contact with the surface…”

Jacob had to bite his tongue to resist asking them about it. The internet had gone down just a few hours after the attacks had supposedly started. Jacob, like the rest of his group, believed Sunset had done so to prevent ponies from discovering the horrors she had caused. After all, the majority of ponies in Imperium had been human once.

Harley just nodded. “We’re ready. We have our token victim if the authorities find us, and the rest are wrapped up tight enough that they aren’t obviously deformed.”

Slipstream still moved stiffly, only his tail emerging from the back of the robe. “You’re the ones at risk. But I guess this group isn’t new to risks. Is that you back there, Jackie?”

“Last time I checked,” Jackie called. She had become subdued since her last mission. She didn’t really joke anymore, and her eyes remained haunted. “Someone has to keep these ponies alive.”

“I don’t doubt your ability.” The pony slowed a little as they reached the doorway into the little walled-off area. As they left the sloping floor onto flat ground, the gentle pull at Jacob’s clothes faded again, until it was only a memory and he couldn’t be completely positive he had experienced it at all. “Just your wisdom. It’s a fool time for a vacation.”

The little room ahead appeared to contain several more unicorns, along with nothing but candles for light. Each wore robes, and had the same strange, echoing voices that Slipstream had. Their guide conversed with his fellows in hushed voices, and finally they started filing past them into the center of the room. Each one was carrying something, be it rolled maps, lit candles, or bits of glowing crystal. There were seven in all, and though the age of ponies was difficult to guess, each of these seemed old and mature in a way that wasn’t physical.

“Will ten seconds be enough?” Slipstream led them down at the back of the group, along ground that sloped more and more dramatically the closer they got. “A public place at evening, will be difficult to explain.”

“Leave that to us,” Harley said. “We’ll make ten seconds work.” The ground sloped further and further with each ring of LEDs they crossed over.

Eventually it was difficult for him to hold steady, not without Jackie to hold his arm. Katie was stable on her own, though she had months more of practice. Even so, he glared. She glared back, sticking her tongue out at him.

Slipstream nodded, then gestured for them to wait. A flat platform waited near the innermost circle, raised on stilts above the strange crater. The unicorn waited until each of them was on it securely, then hurried off to join his fellows. The other ponies circled around the very center of the room, their huddled forms wrapped in white and nearly invisible there.

Harley spoke in a hurried whisper. “The portal will appear right in front of us. When it does, we have ten seconds to jump through. Jackie and Eric will go first, followed by Danni, Elise and Katie, then Jacob and me. If you’ve transported with a princess before… it won’t be like that.”

The unicorns started chanting. They sat near the edge of a precipice, their horns glowing. Jacob felt weighed down, tugged and pulled towards something in the center of the crater. The rift, he assumed, though he could see nothing there. Seven unicorns in the dark, their horns glowing seven different colors. It almost made a rainbow, if he squinted hard enough.

“Exhale, close your eyes, and don’t think of anything.”

“Huh?” Eric shifted in his shoes, leaning down over the edge, then looking back. “Why would that matter?”

“Because it hurts less that way,” Jackie answered.

Something flashed in the air in front of them. For a fraction of a second, Jacob imagined he could see the rift itself, a swirling emptiness set on devouring all light and energy and matter that got close. Then the light of unicorn magic grew stronger, forming a glowing, rotating barrier around the edge of something just below them.

Like a pool of black tar, swirling counterclockwise without smell. Air rushed suddenly around them, and the tug of gravity grew much more intense. Demanding. Hungry.

They ran. There was no time left for thought. Jackie dragged Eric by the collar. Danielle and Katie both seemed nervous, but they followed right behind. Harley didn’t even have to drag him. One shove, right into the small of his back, and Jacob went tumbling, screaming as he fell.

Chapter 40

He fell.

Jacob couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. He could feel though, feel his friends close to him in that void, passing through to the same destination. His lungs burned—he hadn’t been able to exhale the way Harley had suggested, and so they burned.

He tried to move, struggle, scream, anything. Nothing worked. It was almost as though he didn’t have a body at all. Is this where I die?

It should be. How many lives have you stolen already?

Jacob stumbled to his feet on the pavement of a familiar street. Air flooded into strained lungs, and for a straight minute all he could do was hack and cough. He felt hands on his shoulders, but he ignored them.

Someone set something in one of his hands; a plastic water bottle. He tilted it back, gargling for a few seconds before spitting it onto the pavement and taking another sip.

The pain subsided into a dull ache, and the rest of his senses came back. Sound first, to the distant sirens and shouts and many faraway voices. His own friends, concerned for his safety, though he couldn’t make out words yet.

He wiped pained tears away from his eyes, glancing around. He was on the surface again, somewhere downtown. The streetlights were dark, the street nearby absent of cars. Most of the lights were out too. After adjusting to the darkness of the Gatecrasher hall, Jacob could see quite clearly in the gloom. A nearby shop window had been shattered, and the inside looked looted.

The moon shone in the sky like an old friend, almost bright enough to see on its own.

“What the hell happened here?” Danielle hadn’t needed to recover from the jump, and her little voice was furious. “It looks like a warzone.”

“Lots of colleges were targets,” Harley said, voice low and eyes downcast. She drew Jacob’s old wand from a pocket, offering it to him before taking a new one from the satchel, along with a menacing bit of black metal. Jacob’s eyes widened as he recognized an MP5, stock retracted and an extended magazine already in place. She slung it over her other shoulder with a frightening level of familiarity. Jackie imitated her, drawing a similar weapon from concealment in her jacket and hanging the strap over her shoulder.

“I thought you said guns were silly when we had magic,” Jacob muttered, wrapping his arms around himself.

“They are.” Harley drew out something else, a compact black canister, and screwed it onto the end of her weapon with practiced ease. “But these are for people to see.”

Jackie attached her own silencer, and the gun made weighty metal clicks as she took it into both hands. “Not all of us have magic, Jacob. But bullets are a spell anyone can cast.”

Katie stared, watching her sister with growing concern. Her hood had fallen backward, and her mouth hung open. “How often have you had to use that?”

Jackie didn’t answer.

“I wasn’t lying when I told the Gatecrashers we would be keeping you ponies alive.” Harley met his eyes. “Let’s go find our pilot. You’re certain she’ll be cooperative?”

“Absolutely.” Jacob squeezed the wand, reassured by its familiar weight. He slipped it into his pocket. He would’ve kept a wallet and a phone there, six months ago. He had no more use for either. “Assuming I can convince her of who I am, and we can steal a plane. We'll have to find a video store by the way... that's the easiest way I know to convince Michelle of who I am, given the whole... freakish monstrosity of nature thing I've become.”

“You worry about the first part, and I’ll worry about the second.” She scanned up and down the street they were on, looking nervous. There hadn’t been anyone at first, sidewalk deserted. Now, though, tiny eyes watched from windows above them, and voices seemed to be getting closer. “We’re too a big a group. Danielle and Jackie, go with Jacob. Keep him alive. Everypony else with me. Call me on the usual frequency when you get her, Squeak. I’ll give you rendezvous coordinates then. If anything happens, the airfield address is in the notes I gave you.”

Jackie nodded. “Be safe.”

Harley smiled. “Have been so far. Oh, and Jacob, the plane is a Gulfstream G650. If she can’t fly one…”

“She can.” Jacob didn’t actually know that—or the first thing about aircraft, for that matter. They would be well and truly screwed if he was wrong. He gestured to a nearby street, a main road that would take them closer to campus and the nearby dorms where he lived, and the three of them separated.

They found a video store first, less than a block away. It had already been broken into, so Jacob was able to move quickly. He tucked a single Blu-Ray into his jacket, then hurried out to join Jackie and Danielle.

“Your sister is a pilot?” It was hard to tell with only moonlight, but it looked like Jackie was blushing. “What is she doing in school?”

It was a nice distraction. It was horrifying to see how much could change in the city he had known in less than a week. There were no bodies in the streets, but there were broken shops, the corpses of dead cars smoldering, and others left abandoned. Few windows had lights.

“Michelle is… the smartest person I know, but she’s always been flighty. First she was positive she wanted to become a pilot… went straight into that, paid her way through with three different jobs… and got there. Then a few years went by, and she decided she’d rather be on the engineering side instead. Dropped everything, came back to school, and…” he trailed off. “You’re not listening to me, are you?”

“Into the alley!” Jackie shoved him by the shoulder down a side-street. Danni followed with far more dexterity, even reaching up to brace her body against his legs and stop him from falling.

“I don’t need to be shoved around! You could’ve just said something.” Jackie kept tugging, until they were around the corner.

“I hear an engine coming towards us! Someone probably heard the implosion when we gated in. We should stay off the road. Nobody else seems to be around.”

There was an engine, he could hear it now, getting louder by the moment. Not an ordinary civilian car, with a sound like that. “There’s probably a curfew,” he whispered. “Elise mentioned something like that. The National Guard would enforce martial law anywhere there was contamination. Judging from… whatever that was back there, I’m guessing somewhere in town got attacked.”

Something passed the open alley. He caught olive drab in a blur, one of those cloth-covered personnel trucks trundling on past where they had been standing. “Well unless we plan on fighting the whole army, we’re going to have to sneak our way over. Are there any… less obvious paths we could take?”

He nodded. “How about the river trail?”

It took them over an hour to make it across town to the trail. Jackie seemed to have a sixth sense for when they were being watched and when it was safe to cross, because they were never stopped or forced to use their weapons as they made their way over.

The river trail itself was exactly as Jacob remembered it. In this case, that was an enormous advantage, since it was surrounded by tall trees and unlit for most of its length.

“It’s a shame we can’t just fly,” Jackie said. “We might be there by now.”

“That might not be safer.” Danni wore nothing and carried nothing, though like most ponies she seemed to have gotten over it by now. “We’d be much more visible. Without any streetlights on, everyone is probably more sensitive to noticing something in the sky. Even if they aren’t all bats.” Of course, there was also the matter of the Earthbreaker amor, which Jacob knew she could call upon with a moment’s effort if she needed to. She hadn’t so far.

Jackie only grumbled. “You’d be surprised. Fly quiet enough, and most people don’t even bother looking up. They’re just not used to—anything in the sky is always a bird, or an owl, or whatever.”

“That’s probably gonna change now.” Jacob had to take two steps to every one of Jackie’s, and there was definitely a struggle to it. “Assuming my town wasn’t the only one where the attack worked, there are going to be ponies all over now, right? That will probably change the way people think of… everything.”

Danni didn’t seem to be having that same difficulty, even though she was a full foot shorter than he was. She just trotted along, hooves making a steady sound on the sidewalk. “It’s probably too much to hope for that we’ll find the mirror and be able to change everyone back, huh?”

“It’s a question of whether the ponies are willing, I think,” Jackie said. Her hands never left her gun, though she wasn’t holding it at the ready anymore. “If the spell can be done once, it can be done again, maybe without the portal. You could set up stations to get the spell turned back on. But… there’s also the matter of how contagious the bioweapon really is.”

“You think… think it could infect us?” Jacob asked, suddenly wishing he had brought better protection.

“You’re picking a dumb time to ask that.” Jackie laughed, bitter. “If you have a Cutie Mark, then it won’t infect you. Only humans who haven’t got that far are vulnerable. You can’t be a carrier, either. If what they explained to me isn’t just some pile of lies like the rest of it, then it feeds on the magic of the spell directly. Unless the ‘human’ spell is almost or completely intact, it’ll die right away.”

“Freaky,” Danni muttered. “They’ve been on Earth maybe twenty years, and already they’ve appropriated one of our worst ideas ever to use against us.”

“Yes.” Jackie’s steps slowed a little, her expression haunted. “Some questions they couldn’t answer for me, and those were the scariest of all. Like… how long does it stick around in your system after you’ve changed? Will exposure to a victim be dangerous weeks or months later?”

Jacob shivered. “Ponies are already contagious if you’re just starting out. Maybe not… ‘minutes’ contagious, but they are hard to look at. You probably remember, Jackie, since you only just got your Cutie Mark. Back when they were shocking and unexpected and you wanted to look away without knowing why.”

She nodded. “Maybe that’s why the ponies didn’t think much of this whole ‘bioweapon’ thing. It’s basically the same as what they do just by being themselves, only faster.”

“Sunset may’ve thought that.” Jacob slowed a little on the path, squinting down at their destination. Someone was waiting on the path, several dark shapes. “I think she made a terrible mistake. People might’ve accepted us as peaceful before, but… if she really sent out that video taking credit… everyone is going to hate us.” He stopped completely, pointing. “Jackie, what do you think that is?”

Her eyes narrowed. “That is three ponies and two humans, with bandannas wrapped around their faces and weapons out. Looks like… all earth ponies, no uniforms.”

“Guess we know the city was hit,” Danni muttered, her voice distant. “I was hoping all this might be some… unrelated disaster.”

“They see us too. Looks like none of them have guns, so that’s good. Also, those ponies are trying to wear clothes. They’re going to be tripping all over themselves.”

Jacob drew the wand. He didn’t need it, but it felt better to have something in his hand. He wasn’t even really sure what would happen if he tried to use it instead of a horn. “We have to go that way. Right behind them is the apartment complex. She was still living there as of two weeks ago.”

“You’ve been in touch with her this whole time?” Danni asked, indignant.

“Sortof. We… buy things at each other. I started by sending her bad movies, but she didn’t have any way of talking back to me. So she opened up a PO-box and had her roommates forward the…” he trailed off. “It sounds really boring when I put it that way.”

They were getting close now, close enough that the people blocking the path were within earshot. “Hey punks.” Jackie lifted her weapon with both hands, making some menacing sounds with the action. “Out of the way.”

The two humans needed no more encouragement. They dove for the nearby bushes, dropping their weapons as they went. They didn’t go far, though.

The ponies didn’t move at all. Up close, Jacob could see that all three were earth ponies, with more than a few minor injuries visible through their comical clothing. The chaos made them give up the law, but it couldn’t take away their modesty. He almost laughed, or he would have if he didn’t feel at least a little bit responsible for what he was seeing. Sunset’s weapon had caused this. “Maybe we aren’t afraid of bullets anymore,” one of them called up at her, a stallion with a deep voice (for a pony) and a few chipped teeth. Though Jacob couldn’t see it, he imagined a Cutie Mark of some brass knuckles, or maybe a dropped bar of soap.

“Maybe you should be afraid of us.” Another of the ponies, a spindlier mare with a bandanna covering one of her eyes, called up. “Maybe you drop everything you’re carrying right there, and we let you live. Maybe.” She stepped forward, where a large fallen branch leaned over the edge of the trail. She stepped on it with a single hoof, and the whole thing shattered. It was thicker than her torso, but earth-pony magic made short work of it, exploding it into bits of tinder and fragments of wood.

“There’s three of us, and you only have one pony. Think of your kid and give us your shit.”

Jackie tensed, her voice furious. “We don’t have time for this.” She turned to face Jacob and Danni. “Do we have to fight them?”

Danni stepped forward, facing the group with cool confidence. She was smaller than any of them, probably younger too, but that didn’t seem to weaken her resolve. “You’re all new at this, from the attack probably. I’m real sorry it happened, none of us wanted it. Get out of our way, or I’ll beat you to a pulp. It’s one or the other.”

They lunged. All three went for her, the “human” targets apparently forgotten. Jacob and Jackie retreated out of the way, though Jackie kept her weapon ready, watching the treeline around them. They wouldn’t be taken by surprise by the missing two humans, that was for sure.

The three earth ponies might be new at what they did, but they were fast and had the same magic Danni had. It should’ve been a losing battle.

It wasn’t. Danni caught one charge with a slide-tackle, lifting the pony off the ground a little and bucking him straight though a nearby tree. The other two moved to surround her, coming in for blows of their own. Danni landed, planted her hooves, and took each without flinching, before responding with another tug. She got under ponies, or lifted, before trying to do any damage of her own.

It took less than a minute. Three thugs moaned in various states of injury, buried in piles of half-broken wood. Danni stood over them, glowering. “You shits are lucky we have more important stuff to worry about. Rob us, yeah right? If that was what you wanted, there’s half an empty city to steal from. No, you aren’t after loot. You’re lucky I don’t kill you.” Their human allies didn’t come back. Jacob was fairly certain he had heard them flee at some point during the fight, though Jackie was still alert in case they had been wrong.

“But you won’t kill them,” Jacob said over her. “Because we have somewhere to be and you’ve already beaten them. I think our new friends here have learned that magical strength doesn’t guarantee a victory when everyone has it. You’ve done enough.”

Danni’s nostrils flared, her tail flicking back and forth in obvious anger, but she nodded. After a few more tense moments, she settled onto her hooves and relaxed. “Alright, let’s go.”

They left the wounded thugs on the trail, hurrying up into the apartment complex. Like much of the world, it was dark, though Jacob could make out faint light coming from the inside of many windows. Blankets, sheets, or other coverings had been used to block out as much of the light as possible, but he could still tell.

Despite the months, Jacob knew exactly where to go to find Michelle’s apartment. The little sign next to the window still had her name, though some of the other roommates’ names had changed.

Jackie slipped her gun halfway back into her jacket, and Danni stepped back around the corner. Jacob would have to face this alone.

He knocked.

Author's Note

Oh, and for those few who maybe haven't seen it, if anyone is wondering what sort of stuff happened during the attacks I never depicted in the story directly, read this little short I wrote about it some time ago: Casualties. While I hesitated to call this story a sequel to that one since they have totally different tones and everything else, it does give a direct look at what Sunset's bioweapon actually did that this story won't provided. Just so people know in case someone hasn't seen it somehow.

Oh, and by way of having figured things out, I'm pretty sure this story will have a total of 10 weeks of chapters. This means we have two weeks left before it's over, assuming I am wrapping things up correctly.

Chapter 41

Something moved inside, and he leaned to one side to try and peek through the window. Cardboard had been taped up, covering up all but a silver. Jacob thought he saw a pair of eyes squinting down at him for a second, even as something rustled inside.

He knocked again, then listened closely. Maybe pony hearing was that much better, or maybe the people inside just weren’t as quiet as they thought they were. “The kid isn’t leaving.”

“We can’t just leave her out there.” His insides twisted at that, but of course he wasn’t going to protest now. He was dressed like a small child.

“Could be a trap. You see anyone lurking around the porch?”

“Trap for what?” That was Michelle’s voice, a little louder and clearly dismissive. “If someone wanted to cause trouble, why not use the window? We’d make the same amount of noise either way.”

The door swung open, and Jacob was suddenly looking up into the familiar face of his older sister. She towered over him now, over twice the height and apparently much older. Light spilled out of the apartment, though it seemed a barricade had been built just inside, a barricade of toppled couches and tables. She was wearing a disposable surgical mask across her face and plastic gloves on her hands.

Michelle rested one hand on the door, ready to close it at a moment’s notice, the other hand not-so-casually holding her 9mm Smith & Wesson Shield, not aimed at Jacob but also only a few inches too low. “Kid, you shouldn’t be out after dark, especially now. What are you doing here?”

Jacob moved very slowly, doing nothing that might be misconstrued for drawing a weapon. He was, after all, no earth pony. If Michelle shot him, that would be that.

“I have a delivery from Jacob,” he said, moving very slowly as he drew out a reflective Blu-ray case, offering it up to her with both hands.

“What?” Michelle didn’t lower the gun, but she did let go of the door, bracing it open with her body instead, so that she had a hand to take the case. Her eyes got wider. “The… HD remaster of Manos Hands of Fate?” She gestured inside. “Come in, kid. It’s not safe at night.”

Jacob stepped inside without resistance, tugging at the edge of his hood. It wasn’t easy to remove—concealing a horn had taken a great deal of preparation, and he hadn’t exactly put the outfit together with the intention of easily removing it. “Don’t take your masks off,” he muttered, as he fumbled with the hood. “Some ponies tried to rob me at the river bridge. I can’t be infected, but I might be carrying for another few hours.”

They hadn’t started taking their masks off, but all the same he could see suspicion on their faces, particularly the two girls he didn’t recognize. Only Michelle had a gun, though the others had makeshift weapons of their own—a kitchen knife in one case, and a can of mace in the other.

He got the hood off, pulling his hair and horn free. Michelle gasped, openly staring. There was no confusing his bright red hair or gold eyes for the person he had been, unfortunately. Maybe four months ago, when he had only started to change, but… little of that person was left.

“What are you? Who are you? Why are you here?”

Jacob shifted nervously between his hooves, wringing his hands together. There was something more than a little intimidating about being alone with three armed, strong-looking humans. “You, uh… you won’t believe most of the answers.”

Michelle set the movie down. “Tell us anyway.”

He took a deep breath, leaning a little against the door behind him for strength. “You guys got hit with the bioterror thing here, didn’t you?”

Michelle nodded. “Pine Creek High. Some of the students and staff had spread it pretty far before the police cracked down on everyone.” She lowered the weapon, clicking on the safety before tucking it away in her waistband. “Wait, if you didn’t know that… how’d you get into town? Was the quarantine lifted?”

In answer, Jacob concentrated on the space next to him, focusing his magic. He hadn’t used any since the mission started, which helped. Magic demanded to be used. The teleportation across such a short distance was easy—no difficult sympathetic connections need be drawn when he could see the destination.

“I skipped the quarantine.” He vanished in a flash, reappearing with a little rush of air almost instantly. He was breathing a little heavier, but that was all. All three of them stared—the brunette with a kitchen knife dropped her weapon in shock. Overt magic was difficult for humans to see. Considering Sunset’s weapon might change them far faster than he could, Jacob wasn’t too worried about exposure. “Mich, imagine someone had… a natural immunity to the weapon. Imagine they’d been exposed… nine and a half months ago, let’s say. Imagine you used to call them ‘pipsqueak’. Imagine they’d been sending you the worst movies ever since, just so you’d know they were still alive.” He sniffed, and tears started streaming down his cheeks.

Jacob wasn’t about to stop now, and kept on even though his voice started to crack. “Imagine he’s been hiding all this time, afraid that the ones who hurt him might want to hurt you too, but now it’s too late and you’re the only one who could help. Imagine—”

He didn’t get any further. Jacob nearly fell over as something warm lifted him from his hooves with a gasp, in a hug he hadn’t felt for months but remembered perfectly anyway. The same hug that had comforted him when he had actually been a child, and Michelle had taken care of him when their parents only swore or threw empty liquor bottles.

“Jacob?”

He nodded, hugging her back. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t feel the floor anymore, or that they were betraying Sunset, or that they might be hunted and killed by the Light Tenders before they made it back to Imperium. For a few moments at least, he felt safe.

“Sorry it took so long, sis. Until… until recently, I was afraid you’d be hurt if I said anything…”

She put him down, glaring. “I’d like to see anyone try, pipsqueak.”

Jacob wanted to tell her everything, the way he might’ve done for one of his parents if he’d still had any. He didn’t.

“I don’t know how much you know about what’s really going on…”

“As much as anyone.” One of her roomates, the girl without a weapon anymore, hopped over the barricade. Like Michelle and her companion, she was dressed in dark, practical fabric, with a mask over her face and gloves on her hands. “Nobody’s said anything since the president’s official statement. Everything’s still closed. FEMA’s giving out food, but how long can that last?”

Michelle nodded. “You don’t look like you resisted very well, Jacob. You’re, what, three feet tall? And that voice…”

He glared up at her. “It took a long time to get this bad, okay? It starts with being able to do magic… and that’s not why I’m here.” Danielle and Jackie were still hiding outside the apartment. They were two of the most capable ponies he knew, more than a match for any lowlife that happened to notice them. “Mich, can you fly a Gulfstream G650?”

She seemed taken aback. “I, uh…” She nodded. “That’s one of the more popular long-range private jets. Our fleet had six of them when I was…” she trailed off. “Why?”

“It’s why I came. My friends and I… let’s just say we know a lot more about what’s going on than you do.”

“Which you’ve come to explain in detail, I expect.”

He looked away. “We could explain it on the way. But the important thing is that we want to stop the pon— the people who are attacking people. We know how to do it, but we need a pilot.”

Michelle turned away, hopping over the barricade. “Let me get my flight bag.”

Jacob hurried over to the edge, though he couldn’t quite see over it, let alone have any hope of climbing it. “It’s gonna be dangerous! Really dangerous! If we get caught, we’ll be in the worst prison ever!” Assuming they don’t just shoot us down.

But worrying about how they would actually fly out of a country whose air traffic was likely monitored if not entirely grounded was a subject out of his expertise. The ponies had used human aircraft all over the US and managed to stay hidden somehow. Presumably they could use those same methods. Hopefully Harley knew them.

Michelle emerged another minute later with a black canvas bag over one shoulder and a dark jacket over her tank-top. “Don’t care. Do you think I need my gun?”

“Yes.” He didn’t even pause. “We were attacked getting here. We still have to get to the airfield.”

“Michelle, are you crazy?” The other girl, the one who still had her weapon, sounded more than a little nervous. “You’re going off into the night on the word of some freak…”

“Yes.” Michelle’s voice was cold. “I am. And don’t call him that.”

“I won’t be for much longer,” Jacob offered, smiling weakly as he fumbled with the hood. This was the reaction he had expected from Michelle. Never in his life had she not been willing to drop everything to help him, no matter how serious the situation might be. “Where we’re going might have a cure. If we can find it, I’ll be myself again.”

“If that isn’t a good reason, I don’t know what is.” Michelle hopped the barrier again, landing a foot in front of him. “Do you need anything before we leave?”

“No.” He shook his head. “But you should probably grab cold-weather gear, now that I think about it. We’re flying to Greenland.”

A few minutes later and they were outside. Jacob had hidden his head and face again in the fabric, though his own work was far and away inferior from the work Harley had done back in Imperium. Michelle had a large duffel instead of the canvas bag, though it still didn’t slow her down. She had always been the athletic one, and the strong one, and the confident one too.

Jackie and Danni emerged from the bushes as soon as the door shut behind them. Jackie didn’t have her gun drawn, for which Jacob was immensely grateful. “Hey Jacob, is this…”

“My sister, Michelle. Michelle, this is Jackie and Danielle.”

“Hey,” Danni waved weakly with one hoof.

“Pleasure.” Jackie didn’t shake her hand. She was already holding a radio, of the black industrial variety with an antenna longer than it was. “Hart, come in. We got the sister, over.”

A few seconds of static came over the line, then Harley’s voice. “Good work, Squeak. We secured a vehicle, where can we meet you?”

Jacob leaned closer, gesturing for Jackie to press transmit. She did. “If you remember where we got my first friend, we could meet you there. It’s really close.”

Jackie looked like she wanted to stop him, but quickly relaxed. As soon as she let go of the button, he added, “I know people could be listening! I’m not stupid!”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “No, but you’re trusting. Most ponies are.”

The radio barked again. “We can do that. Will have to travel more slowly, patrols passing through town. Will call you if we’re coming hot. Let us know if you’re seen. Out.”

Jackie turned down the volume a little, pocketing the radio. “Well? I assume you know where you told her to go.”

“Yeah.” He started walking back to the trail, though thankfully they would be traveling the other direction. “This way.”

Jackie drew her gun again, and Michelle quickly did the same, eyes alert. Probably not as good as Jackie, but… at least they had another set of eyes that could see through the dark. “Hey… Jackie, you seem human,” Michelle said, her voice a whisper. “Aren’t you worried your pony friend with infect you? I’ve got extra masks if you don’t have any.”

“No.” Jackie didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m not as human as I seem. There are wings in this backpack I’m wearing. It’s… mostly hollow.”

“Oh.” She shook her head in wonder. “Why isn’t the news talking about immunity? For that matter… Jacob, if you’ve got some resistance, shouldn’t I have it too? We are related.” She reached for her mask with her free hand.

“No!” He jerked, his voice a little louder than he meant. It echoed off the trees in the quiet, making him feel even smaller than he really was. “It doesn’t work like that, sis. It’s a learned immunity. You’ll pick it up if you’re around us long enough, but you haven’t been yet. Danielle probably isn’t carrying it, but she did beat the crap out of some ponies who did…”

“That makes no sense.” All the same, she lowered her hand. “But this whole horse thing makes no sense. Wasn’t your nerd club about little horses?”

“You best start believing in pony stories,” he muttered. “You’re in one.”

“No.” Michelle gestured with the gun, though she never actually pointed it at him. “I’ll crash the plane. I’ll do it, don’t think I won’t.”

Chapter 42

Harley pulled up in a car so quiet Jacob didn’t realize she was there until she rolled down the window and called out from a street over. “Hey guys, let’s go.”

They hurried over, Jacob bringing up the rear (as was always the case) as the slowest and least-coordinated. “How did you get here so quietly?”

“Prius. They’re pretty much silent if you’re under 25.”

Katie opened the side door to the back, and they all piled inside. He introduced Michelle, and they set off.

Jacob found himself cramped in the middle beside Katie, which might’ve been a position he enjoyed more without his sister less than a foot away. “Well it’s a shame our illegal conspiracy doesn’t have higher vehicle standards.”

“Nothing’s more important than stealth.” Harley kept the windows down, moving with all the lights out. She had somehow put out the running lights as well, so the only sign of their passing on the unlit streets was the faint crunching of tires on pavement. “We can speed up once we’re onto the back roads.”

“Springs is in quarantine,” Michelle called. “All the major highways and side-roads are blocked. I don’t know how well they’re watched at night, but nobody gets out. It doesn’t matter if you’re mutated or not, they won’t let us pass.”

“Won’t let us.” Harley’s old grin returned. “Just as naive as your younger brother was when he started running with us. Honey, they haven’t even let us live for the last nine months now. Ponies they caught were hogtied and tossed into a pit to starve.”

“You all look un-starved.” Michelle’s eyes narrowed as she looked over at Jacob. “Well, maybe you didn’t feed my brother enough…”

“Your brother got sick of silage,” he grumbled. “They blew up our floating castle resort, and we’ve been hiding in a hole of our own ever since. You couldn’t digest the only food they have for us, and I don’t even want to. Harley is the healthiest because she has all of us around.”

“I don’t even want to touch that.” Michelle shifted in her seat, adjusting the duffel she had brought. She fished around for a minute, pulling out an aviation radio.

“I haven’t been following things super well, but all non-essential flights are grounded. Most other countries have closed their runways to American-originating aircraft. I assume you already know this. You should also know my FAA medical stuff expired three months ago, and I haven’t flown in a year. Not to mention the damn weather—I don’t have a clue what’s happening between here and Greenland.”

“We won’t be seen,” Harley said, absolutely confident. “Well… people can still see the plane, but that’s it. Radar, sonar, stuff like that… it won’t see us.”

Michelle stiffened. “My… brother did tell you I’ve flown small commercial jets, right? Not Air Force Stealth Bombers.”

“Magic.” Katie grinned up at her from beside Jacob. She didn’t have a hood—there was no horn to hide, and her pink mane was too long to stuff away. “How we do lots of things. Half of us in this car can fly.”

“With varying levels of competence,” Eric added. “You’d probably be better at it than I am.”

Michelle stared up at him, eyes narrowing. “Wait a minute… I know you. Aren’t you one of Jacob’s nerd friends? You’re from the club that blew up too!”

“He is,” Danni said. “Me too. The gas explosion was a crock of shit, though. Dragged into a secret government prison is more accurate. At least half of those people are still alive down in… the place we’ve been hiding. We rescued ‘em.”

They left the densest parts of the city, passing slowly through suburbs now. The only light in the car was the subdued glow of the GPS, which Harley seemed to be using to navigate their way around all the large streets. More than one larger vehicle passed on big streets—they would park, hunker down, and wait for them to pass. Nothing seemed to notice them.

“It sounds like you’ve been having all sorts of adventures, pipsqueak. Could’ve invited me, like, months ago. Fighting terrorists, rescuing political prisoners… more fun than aviation engineering.”

Jacob winced at the nickname, withdrawing a little into his seat. It had been a great joke, back when he had been six inches taller and twice as heavy. Now, though…

Katie grinned. “Oh my god, that’s perfect! You’ve even got the patches—”

“Shut up!” He shoved Katie a little. She was still grinning mischievously at him. “There’s probably a real Pip Squeak out there somewhere, and I bet he’d like to keep his name.”

“Adventure isn’t the word I’d choose,” Jackie said. “Lots of us are dead. Even if you live, you give up your humanity in little bites until it’s gone. Just look at your brother.”

“But you want to stop the people attacking! The, uh…” She shrugged. “I don’t know who they are. Seems like a worthwhile cause. Looking for a cure, even more.”

“We can hope.” Harley leaned in over the wheel, squinting at flashing lights visible down the road. They were on a fairly minor tributary by then, two lanes without streetlights. Even so, there was a pair of police cars visible in the distance, blocking both lanes of traffic. Human outlines with gas-masks on their faces stood around them, armed and watchful.

“I was hoping they wouldn’t be… dammit, fine. Guess we have to jump. Brace the newbie.”

“Sis, teleporting sucks the first few times you do it. Be ready to puke out the window.”

“Great.” Michelle tensed, tucking her duffel between her legs. “So you have supernatural powers, but they induce nausea. No wonder they didn’t want you as Disneyland attractions.”

They slowed to a stop on the road. Harley reached out the window, resting one hand on the car’s metal frame. She stared at the map, concentrating on its various lines. She held a wand tightly in her other hand, and the green glow began to build. “The silent road opens, the old gates swung wide. We step together.”

The world jerked, blurring past Jacob in a nauseating rush. He was prepared for it by now, his stomach tensing instead of spilling its contents. He closed his eyes against the rushing scenery and the lights, and in another moment their vehicle dropped.

They fell nearly six full inches, landing with a painful jostling of the suspension. Jacob and Katie, without seatbelts, were tossed around the most, though most everyone else stayed where they were.

They were on another stretch of dark road, with no more light in front of them but distant voices behind. Harley started driving, her skin much paler. She didn’t stay slow this time either, but let the car pass over the threshold of silence. She still didn’t need the lights, which became much more terrifying as they approached highway speeds. Harley kept to the center of the road, rolling up the windows as air began to rush around them.

“That wasn’t an illusion.” Michelle hadn’t vomited, but she was panting, rolling down the window and letting her head hang out. Her words came in raspy, pained gasps. “I thought maybe there was some trickery involved, or hypnosis, or…”

Jacob reached out with one hand, resting it on her shoulder. “Unfortunately not. Magic is real. Along with… lots of other things I wish weren’t.”

“What, like the man-eating monsters?” Danni rolled her eyes from a few inches away in the cramped seat. “But almost getting eaten is such an adventure each and every time.”

“We’re almost there.” Harley pointed out the window, at a distant light off the side of the road. It looked like an industrial building next to a few more rural, old-timey houses. None had any sign of activity, nor apparent vandalism. “It’s in the barn back there. Runway is just outside it. There’s a generator to turn it on, plus all the fuel and stuff. I… don’t actually know how any of it works.”

“You just happen to have a private jet waiting to be used in an old barn?” Michelle pulled her head out the window, eyes narrowing. “We’re talking a hundred million, maybe more.”

“Money was never an issue.” Jackie reached into a pocket, rummaging around before coming up with a fistful of precious stones. Even in the faint light of the GPS, the sapphires and rubies glittered, each one bigger than a thumb. “Want a few million dollars? I’ve got way more.”

Michelle took one of the offered stones, holding it in front of her eyes, tapping it with a fingernail, and even biting at it. Nothing scratched or dented it. “Shit.”

They pulled to a stop beside an old, apparently-unlit house. “Everyone who isn’t helping get it ready, move your flanks into the barn there. Stockpile is there if you think you need anything. I’m sure our pilot will have the jet fueled and ready for loading right away.”

They unloaded, all relieved to be out of the cramped car. Lights came on as they walked into the barn, with its electronic door that opened for Harley’s card. Despite the rural exterior, the interior was clean concrete, a hanger complete with the usual complement of airplane-servicing equipment. Jacob didn’t recognize any of it, except for the large tank built into the floor, and its enormously-long, thick fueling hose.

The G630 was a gorgeous little jet, with ordinary civilian markings so far as he could tell. No sloped wings, or angled body, or anything else he would’ve expected from a stealth airplane. Maybe it really is just magic?

Michelle lowered the passenger stairs, and he was the first inside. The interior was expensive leather, and quite clean despite who knew how much time of disuse. Jacob found his way to one of the empty seats in back, hopping up and resting his head on the side of an armrest. Katie soon joined him, climbing up into the same seat. It no longer seemed cramped.

“Your sister is a lot like you,” she said, sounding as drained as he felt. “Brave, determined, clever…”

He glared at her. “If you’re trying to make me forget about the pipsqueak thing, it won’t work. Michelle is pretty awesome, though.” He yawned. It had to be two in the morning, maybe three. He had already had his whole Imperium work day, on top of this whole stealth mission adventure. It was hard to keep his eyes open.

Katie didn’t protest. Within a few minutes, they were both asleep. Jacob felt dim motion in his resting place, along with the warmth and steady breathing of his companion. Eventually there was a rush of acceleration and a blast of noise, but he kept his eyes closed and tried to tune out both.

When he next opened his eyes, there was pale blue light coming from the windows. Katie was already gone, apparently woken before he did. Jacob found the restroom, cleaned up a bit, and stripped away what remained of his disguise. Hooves and tail and furry legs felt much better when they weren’t trapped under silly kids’ clothes, to say nothing of how much better he could balance.

They were very clearly in motion. The front section of the plane was the busiest—everyone but Michelle was there, watching Manos on the large plasma screen set into the wall. Their expressions ranged from boredom to outright shock.

Jackie glowered at him. “Oh, there he is.”

Harley was sitting beside her. Jackie had popcorn, but the changeling only held her hand. “Hey kid, why the hell did you give your sister this? Was this some kind of… unhealthy joke?”

“No!” He walked over, staring up at the screen from the side. “This movie is good because it’s bad! Lots of people think it’s the worst movie humans ever made.”

He walked through the gathering, not having to duck under the TV as he made his way towards the cockpit. “We’ll try something milder next time. Manos is… a little too heavy for most people.”

The cockpit door was open, and Michelle was at the controls, sipping on a can of coke. She looked up as he came in, then dropped her can. “Shit! What happened to you, pipsqueak?”

He blushed, tail tucking involuntarily between his legs. “I took off the disguise. I didn’t look like a kid because I’m younger, I looked that way because ponies are small.”

“Well that sucks.” She snatched the can from the ground, though the white carpet was already stained. “And now I’ve spilled all over their expensive airplane.”

“Just focus on the flying.” He made his way to the copilot’s seat, clambering up into it. “We don’t really care what happens to this plane.” He lowered his voice, mischievous. “There isn’t a runway where we’re going.”

“Yeah, I heard that.” She shook her head, eyes wide. “Your friends are batshit. This whole situation…”

“Yeah.” He nodded, looking out the window. Wilderness, snow-covered tundra, with distant mountains of black rock. No sign of human activity anywhere. “That’s fair. You get used to it after awhile, and the supernatural becomes mundane. Speaking of which… where’s your mask?”

She shrugged. “Harley made it clear I can’t get it from you guys. Once you mutate past a certain point… and she’s right, clearly.” She held up one hand. “Still got these things.”

“Hey, me too!” He held up his own, though it was quite a bit smaller. Not to mention his fingers were starting to feel a little stiffer than he liked. “Hands are one of the last things you lose, right before you’re down on four legs for good.”

“I hope you’re right about a cure.” She didn’t seem to be doing much in terms of flying, though her hands were on the controls. “Life for ‘ponies’ doesn’t look like it’s gonna be good. Word is there are three million of them, between us, Canada, and the UK. Absolutely nuts.”

“A cure is secondary,” he admitted. “Mainly, we’re trying to stop the ones who caused it from making any more ponies. Depose their leader, install a better one. What happens after that is out of our hoo— hands. Out of our hands.”

“If you say so.” Michelle sat back in her chair. “I still think you should’ve got me involved sooner. I would’ve put my degree on hold for an adventure like this.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, staring down at his hooves. “I probably should’ve.”

Chapter 43

Their jet had no parachutes, nor any way of landing in the Arctic wasteland below them.

“This is really stupid.” Michelle was dressed in cold-weather clothes, along with everyone else. How she had changed while monitoring the plane, Jacob was too afraid to ask. “There’s a research station a hundred miles from here we could land safely and not trash a 65 million dollar plane.”

“Yes, let’s add creating an international incident to our list of crimes,” Jackie muttered, flexing her wings. They poked out from the back of her jumpsuit, through two slices in the weather-resistant fabric. “Not to mention giving away to everyone looking for us exactly where to track us down. After fighting our way free, we’ll have a search party after us.”

“Stealth is more important,” Harley agreed. “You have the autopilot set, right?”

Michelle nodded. “I can have it flying back to the Atlantic right away, though… I’m still not sure how you think you’re going to open that emergency door. There are at least three reasons why that can’t happen. Even flying down this low, we’ve still got a pressurized cabin, and safeguards that won’t allow any door to open while the landing gear is raised.”

Harley seemed to be ignoring her. “Everyone grab your buddy and hold on. Flyers, follow me down. I’ll get us within a thousand meters, or I’m a drone.”

Jackie took hold of a panicked Michelle, even as Eric held Danielle, and Katie took both of his hands. This was a little less haphazard than an emergency jump: each of them had harnesses, straps that would keep them from drifting apart in flight.

“I have another question. What happens when we find this thing we’re looking for? Our jet will have ran out of fuel and crashed into the Atlantic by then. Do we plan on freezing to death in the snow?”

“Put in the autopilot correction, Michelle. We’re ready to jump.”

“If we’re right about who this is, she can teleport us all back to safety herself,” Jacob called after her into the cockpit.

“Great.” Michelle came back, then held still as Jackie started strapping her down. “I think I liked you better when you played it safe, pipsqueak.”

The jet swerved gradually left, beeping echoing towards them from the cockpit.

“She doesn’t have any idea, does she?” Katie asked, her hands tight on his. They were the closest of any of the pairs, and not just because they had a similar size. “But at least if you had died, I wouldn’t have had to watch that movie. My god that was terrible.”

“Well, when we get back to Imperium, maybe the internet will be turned back on and we can play more Overwatch together.”

“Psh.” She grinned sideways at him. “You’ll just keep playing Mercy every single game.”

“Brace!”

Jacob closed his eyes against the rush, and that helped with the nausea. The world exploded back a second later, with a roar of nearby engines and a tsunami of wind. Katie remained firmly attached to him, as they tumbled through the air.

Someone screamed, though he couldn’t have said who. They were torn about through the air, clinging together as Katie fought to right herself. Jacob could feel her moving, feel the way she gradually bore more and more of her wings to the air, slowing them.

There could be no words in the terrible tempest, and indeed Jacob could barely breathe. Black filled his vision more than once, threatening to steal his consciousness. He felt disoriented, lightheaded, confused… how had he gotten so high? What was holding him, why was he falling?

No answers came. At least the confusion didn’t last—eventually his breathing came easier again, and the fuzziness in his vision started to fade. Katie was still holding him, her face just a few inches away, apparently concentrating as they flew.

“Hey Katie,” he called, weak. “What was that?”

“Altitude,” she answered, her glance briefly jerking to the air above them. “The air is too thin. You blacked out.”

“Great.” He glanced past her, down towards the ground. He could see little more than white, rushing towards them at speed. Much slower than free fall speed, though. Jacob had flown with ponies enough times to know he wasn’t in danger. Pegasus magic was as real as what he did, or what Danni did. “I don’t think I like flying. I’m not sure if I’ve ever told you.”

“You hadn’t.” Katie grinned at him. “Maybe I should drop you for a minute or two. For payback.”

“I’d… prefer you don’t. I don’t think I can put my own pieces back together.” There was silence for several minutes, then, “Hey Katie, when are you gonna tell Jackie we’re dating? Are you that embarrassed?”

She stuck her tongue out. “I’ll tell my sister if you tell yours.”

“That’s not really fair. My sister is confused and barely recognizes me. Your sister is dating a bug. I bet Jackie already figured it out, anyway. I know Harley knows…”

“How?!”

“Changelings sense love, duh.” She glared, and for a second it seemed like she was going to drop him. She did something else instead.

* * *

The snow was cold all around him, though that wasn’t the worst part. Snowdrifts rose as tall or taller than he was, unbroken by human or animal tracks as far as he could see. Little white bumps with faint black ridges had risen to become mountains, insurmountable.

He had one advantage: Jacob was so close to being a pony that his body was lighter than a human would’ve been at his size. So long as he picked unbroken snow, Jacob could walk atop it without sinking through. Katie, Danni, and Elise could too, so the four of them walked side-by-side without too much difficulty.

That did not stay the cold’s bite. All of them had dressed for this, but even so Jacob found himself wishing for fur wherever the freezing air touched his bare skin. His legs, without delicate toes and with a pony’s coat, did far better than his arms and hands.

The more human among them had a harder time. They tried to fly a little, but the cold air had disastrous effects on Jackie and Harley’s wings both. Eric probably could’ve flown, if he weren’t so weak on his wings that trudging through the snow at the back of the line was easier for him.

Harley kept a dark gray device in her hands at all times, leading the way. “Still think we should’ve landed and hiked a hundred miles, human?”

Michelle shook her head vigorously. “I still think we’ll die if we’re caught in this after dark. Unless one of you has one of those tent things from Harry Potter, where you pop it open and it’s like a huge house inside. Then maybe we’ll be okay.”

“Unfortunately not.” Aside from their steps, it was deadly quiet in the plain. No birds called, no animals moved, no water flowed. Only their steps broke the silence.

“How much further, anyway?”

The changeling turned to glare down at him. “Watch it, kid. I’ll turn this conspiracy around.” Her expression broke into a smile. “Less than five hundred meters. We’ll be there in no time.”

There were no hills in front of them, no rivers, not even any trees. And it wasn’t just Jacob—the whole party started to slow, since it was abundantly clear there was nothing in front of them.

“I swear, if this is one of those dumb trail things…” Eric said. “Like if someone wrote a clue onto the ground under the snow up there… unless you think we can teleport back up to the plane?”

Harley laughed again, so loud the sound echoed all around them. “Sure, yeah. Forget eight variables, let’s go with sixteen this time. Three of which are unknown and constantly changing.” She rolled her eyes. “Maybe Twilight Sparkle could do that, but not any other pony I know. Not even a queen has brains like that.”

They continued in silence for the rest of the way. Despite an apparently short distance, the cold and the rapidly waning sun made it feel much longer. Eventually, Harley stopped walking, gesturing at the ground at their hooves. “Okay ponies, we made it.” She gestured down at the empty snow, as devoid of footprints as anywhere else. “If this is the part where we discover Elise bullshit her way through the code and got us killed, I’m going to be a very unhappy bug.”

“I didn’t,” Elise grumbled. “Eric verified my calculations. I wouldn’t have come out here just to freeze to death.”

Eric nodded his agreement. “She got it right. Doesn’t mean the code was taking us anywhere meaningful, though. It could have been lying.”

Jacob took one look around them, and couldn’t help but agree. No trees, no obvious shelter, and no running water he could see. The wasteland continued in all directions until the mountains on all sides obscured his view. They had survival gear—as much as the largest group members could carry. But how much could a folding stove and a few survival blankets do for uninhabited wasteland? “If you can’t teleport us onto the plane, maybe you could get us to the research station? That’s supposed to be… a hundred miles?”

Eric and Michelle had started doing something with the snow in front of them. Danielle advanced to help, and with her strokes huge waves of white flowed out of their way. He ignored them.

Harley did too. “Why don’t you do it, Jacob. You can do short jumps, now. You tell me how easy it would be to go a hundred miles without a rift.”

He sighed.

Katie squeezed one of his hands, watching Harley too. “What if we, like… all got together and sang you a song about how much we believed in you?”

“Sounds delicious.” Harley pocketed her device, rubbing her gloved hands together against the cold. “But power doesn’t mean distance by itself. Diminishing returns.”

Katie tugged on his arm, and he turned back. “What?”

Her eyes were suddenly wide, wings spread. She didn’t say anything, just pointed ahead of them.

He looked, expecting to see a pack of gigantic wolves, or maybe an army of polar bears. There was neither. In fact, there wasn’t anything but a pile of snow. Eric, Danni, and Michelle were gone. “Uh… Harley?”

She followed his gesture, then hurried ahead into the place they had been. She took three steps, then tripped, tumbled forward, and vanished below the snow.

They hurried over, crowding around the opening Danni and Eric had been digging, though neither left the protection of the snowdrift.

A fissure in the stone below the snow stood out clearly against black rock, with little veins of quartz glittering in waning sunlight. It was easily wide enough for even the largest humans, though not wide enough to give them a good look at whatever was below. Only a long, long fall.

“Guess everyone else beat us down.” Katie turned, and without needing to say anything Jacob reached out and unzipped the wing holes, guiding each one through the opening.

His sister was down there. Jackie, Eric, and Harley all had wings, and the earth ponies were tougher than a bag of nails. Michelle was neither. “Let’s go.” He held on without the harnesses this time, as Katie scattered powdery snow around them. The chill dagger of the air gradually dulled as they sunk down into the rock, and light itself faded to a glow.

“This sucks.” Katie winced as her wings struck the side of the cavern, and their fall got faster. “Not… quite… big enough…” She fought on, Jacob tugged his hood down with a free hand, then lit his horn in an even golden glow. The light did nothing for the chill following them down, but even that felt trivial. Whatever opening they had found was a far warmer place than the wilderness of Greenland.

Rocky ledges slid past them as the world dropped out of sight. Eventually the space below them seemed to open a little, and Katie could do a better job controlling their fall.

They landed in a massive dark space, extending for hundreds of feet forward and with a ceiling lost in the gloom. Jacob’s horn did a poor job lighting it, even when he concentrated on the glow as much as he could.

Just a few feet further were all their missing friends, looking bruised but uninjured. Even Michelle was standing on her own, suggesting she had been caught or helped on her way down.

He expected a little campfire, maybe some magic plants Twilight might’ve been using to survive. There would be a makeshift camp here, and a wary but relieved Alicorn with a magic portal.

That isn’t what he saw.

Jacob and his friends stood in a ruin carved from stone, with a vaulted ceiling at least a hundred feet above and massive corinthian pillars lining the wall. Not simple rock either, but shining white marble. It held up a ceiling of the local volcanic rock.

A mosaic had been set into the floor, its colors faded but design intricate. Most surfaces had writing, though Jacob couldn’t read or even identify the languages.

“Well, that wasn’t what I expected,” Harley said.

Chapter 44

“This can’t exist.” Eric slung his satchel in front of him, flipping it open. He lifted out a tablet and started scrolling through its contents with one hand. “It defies everything we understand about archeology. This is late Roman construction, on an island they never knew existed. If there were colonies in Greenland, we would’ve known. Their ships never could have crossed the ocean.”

Jacob made his way over to one of the pillars, inspecting the writing. They were unfamiliar shapes, like sticks rotated and overlapping in various positions. He had seen them before, though he couldn’t say where. “What kind of writing is this?”

Elise trotted over to the pillar beside him, looking up. “It’s called cuneiform. Maybe our first writing system, though there is some debate.”

Jacob glanced once down the chamber. It was about two hundred feet long, with an arch-like doorway on the other end that seemed to be sealed with something. No rot or decay that he could see, though that might be a product of how long it had been sealed. “Twilight Sparkle didn’t make this.”

“No, she didn’t.” Harley was still on her knees, staring down at the floor of dusty mosaics. “I didn’t think it was real either, Eric.”

Jackie stood beside her, one hand resting on her shoulder. She seemed to be looking at the same patterns. “There are ponies on the ground.”

There were. Jacob hurried over, clearing away some of the snow with a brush of telekinetic force along the ground. There were three images, their figures distinct and recognizable. Jacob did not know much about historical art, though he would’ve judged them far closer to Renaissance than Roman. Dimensions, perspective, and shading were all preserved.

The first depicted a crowd of ponies, with members from each of the three basic tribes. They looked beaten, bruised, clothes threadbare and many had wounds. In the very center of the image was a pale earth pony with a pink mane and no cutie mark. She looked frightened, desperate, clawing for the offered hoof of a vague, smoke-like entity.

Harley recoiled from the image, hissing under her breath and retreating to one of the pillars. “This is it. Queen Chrysalis always said… but the ponies were always so convincing. They made their own version sound so plausible.”

Jacob followed her to the second image, passing between the massive stone pillars. The same crowd of ponies now looked strong and healthy, with a village behind them. Each one had a little red thread around their flank, wrapped around their Cutie Marks. They had them now, every single one tied to the intricate web of red connecting to the same smoky creature as before. The white pony now had a familiar Cutie Mark, a bright stylized sun Jacob had seen a thousand times. “What is this?”

“Fate.” Harley glared down at the smoky creature. “That’s the closest word you have, but it doesn’t fit. Ponies sold themselves to her in exchange for their lives. Before anything you know about them. Before Hearth’s Warming, before the princesses… we were weak. No more magic than anything else, and much smaller.”

“We?” Jackie asked.

Harley didn’t respond. “The way we tell the story, it was some Minotaur warlord’s slave who met her. Her master had beaten her sister to death, the story doesn’t say why. Fate offered many things. Magical might to defy the dragons, life for the sister, and a new story to live.”

“I’m gonna see if I can get this door open!” Michelle called from the other end of the room. “You all keep on with your scavenger hunt or whatever.”

Jacob ignored her. As he looked closer, he could see a second figure behind the earth pony, a pale blue one with the moon on her flank. “What does your story say ponies gave in exchange?”

“Choice.” Harley spat. “We became characters in her story. Many heroes, but all pawns.” She started walking forward again, crossing the distance to the third and largest of the murals. “My progenitors rejected Fate’s deal after their parents had accepted it. They regained their freedom, but were cursed forever. Worse than what they had been when they started. Doomed to wander as hated parasites forever.”

Jackie hung on her arm, comforting. Or trying, anyway. She didn’t interrupt, and Harley continued. “This third image… it isn’t part of the story.”

An empty doorway of curving metal seemed to be welcoming a flood of ponies, still bound by their Cutie Marks, though looking despondent. A crowd of barely-clothed humans with primitive farming tools circled on the other side of the door, one of them with a hand extended towards the ponies. The scene seemed to depict the flow of time as he looked right, and huts became a little town, with ponies and humans working beside each other. The city grew bigger the closer to the wall he looked, and the threads binding the ponies got smaller. Eventually there were no ponies at all, only humans with strange hair and lots of broken shackles at their feet.

Harley dropped to her knees in front of the illustration, looking between it and the assembled humans. She spoke very quietly now, almost reverently. “The queens said there were others who had rejected Fate. We only knew they had escaped, where the slaver’s hooves couldn’t find them.” She looked up, and met Jacob’s eyes. “Humans aren’t her slaves—you don’t have Cutie Marks without ponies around to destroy the spell.”

“But… that isn’t what they told us.” Jacob shivered, forcing himself to look away. “Discord took over Equestria, they said. Ponies hid their magic so he couldn’t find them.”

“Maybe they did.” Harley rose to her feet again, with Jackie’s help. “Maybe they didn’t. I don’t think this temple would lie, though. This version of the story…” She gestured back at the other two illustrations. “Celestia has erased it. The books that tell it are all forbidden in Equestria, and only my kind remember.”

“Does that mean a changeling called us here?” Eric hadn’t followed them through the room, but he had apparently been listening. He held a tablet between his hands, taking pictures of the writing on the pillars, of the illustrations from different angles. “Twilight wouldn’t be trying to share illegal information, would she?”

“I doubt it. A changeling wouldn’t know about this place any more than the ponies did. Whoever called us here… knows Earth well. Princess Twilight might know secrets like that, but there are other princesses. The code could have been waiting for us to find for a long time before Unity fell.”

Jacob heard distant noise—a storm brewing on the surface, he suspected. That would fit with the little flurry of snow down from the opening. Just now, he couldn’t be bothered to care.

“This doesn’t change our mission here!” Danni called out towards them from the door, her voice frustrated. “Maybe you should stop worrying about abstractions and see if you can help us get this open?”

“Help you?” Jacob repeated, doubtful. “Danni, can’t you just knock it down?” He hurried up the steps. A round door was set into the wall between two arches, cut from what seemed like a single disk of stone sliced into smaller, interlocking sections. They moved under Eric’s hands, though there didn’t seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to it.

“Tried. I couldn’t kick it down. Didn’t even chip when I kicked it.”

“A place this ancient wouldn’t have survived without magic preserving it,” Harley said. “That magic would also prevent accidental or intentional damage.”

“Well, on the bright side, there are only five rings with ten symbols each. There are only 9.7 million different options to try,” Elise said.

“I’m not trying an exhaustive search!” Eric glared. “But I don’t speak cuneiform. It would probably be easier to unlock this door if I could read the combination.”

Eric had his tablet on the ground beside him, along with an open notebook covered in scribbles Michelle was making. An attempt to transcribe the door combination. “Elise and I will crack this. Everypony else, just… give us space.”

“He said every-pony.” Katie elbowed Jacob in the ribs, though there was less childish humor on her face than had been in her voice.

They waited. The storm outside got bad, blowing down periodic gusts of wind and snow. The interior had been toasty warm when they entered, but the longer Eric worked the colder it got. Eventually it became too much effort for him to keep his horn aglow, and they substituted Jackie’s electric lantern.

Jacob dozed, and he wasn’t the only one. Katie wasn’t worried enough about being seen to keep her distance, because they rested together, still bundled in their winter clothes but conserving heat as best they could.

The sound he woke to was not the wind, but the roar of helicopter blades. They echoed down from above, painfully loud in the confined space. He wasn’t the only one coming to unhappy wakefulness either—Jackie and Harley were both scrambling to their feet, drawing weapons. Elise sat up straighter, though she of course had no guns that could be operated by a pony.

“What the hell is that noise?” Eric was still working at the door, the ground around him covered in a hundred ripped sheets. Each one of them was covered with notes. Michelle sat against the wall with the tablet in one hand and a pen in the other, looking tired and dazed.

“That is a V-22 Osprey!” Elise called. “In case anyone here is wondering, Denmark doesn’t own any. I bet it flew here from Thule Air Base…”

“It shouldn’t have been able to follow us here,” Jacob said. “We didn’t land, didn’t even stop… How would they know where to find us?”

“What do we do?” Eric didn’t have to shout as loud—the helicopter was spinning down, its engines slowing. There was no windstorm above them anymore either, only silence.

“Get to cover behind the pillars!” Elise gestured to the far sides of the wall. “There’s some irregularity there, someplace to hide maybe. If it’s the Extranormal Containment Unit, they’ll probably breach with some kinda flashbang and come in shooting. Close your eyes, and cover your ears as best you can. You’ll still hear me.”

Harley had her MP5 ready in both hands, eying the cavern’s dark opening with suspicion. “Do you know how they fight?”

“Yes.” She looked to Jackie. “Put that lantern somewhere safe—they’ll all be coming down with vision, so if it takes a hit we’ll be the ones who go blind. Danni, by the wall. I think our best chance is for the rest of us to harry them long enough for them to send their reinforcements down. Once that happens, you do your stone monster thing and crush them.”

“We’re trapped in a cave.” Michelle made her way to the nearest pillar, though she drew her handgun. “Couldn’t they just drop a big bomb down here and wait for it to turn us into paste?”

“They used to do things like that.” Harley didn’t take cover, though she did take her new wand and hold it along with the gun. “But the timing has to be perfect. Unicorns can shield, or teleport it back at you. If they do drop one down, this won’t be much of a fight. I’ll return it to sender.”

There were distant sounds from above, though none loud enough to clearly identify. Metal ground on rock, boots crunched on the snow, and eventually something bounced and rattled down the rock. They all had cover by then, those who were going to fight in front of middle pillars, while those who weren’t crouched in back. He was one of those, along with Katie and Eric. Jackie and Harley had both flown, concealing themselves in the shadows near the roof. Only Elise stood in the middle of the room, unsheltered and unprotected. She had a flashlight in her mouth, and Jacob watched as she shone it towards a little silvery something as it rattled to a stop at the entrance.

It wasn’t a bomb, but a tiny metal box with thick wire running all the way up. Jacob didn’t have to wonder what it might be for very long; no sooner had it stopped bouncing than it started to talk, the voice loud enough to echo through the vaulted chamber. “I know you’re there, ponies. You probably think I’m here to kill you… but that isn’t so. Do I have your permission to come down? I would like to talk.” The voice was deep, rich, and slow, the voice of an experienced politician.

“Hell no—” Harley called, but Elise interrupted her. She shouted so loudly, that Jacob doubted a microphone would’ve been necessary for the speaker to hear her, even outside the cavern.

“Yes! We are willing to negotiate!”

Jacob couldn’t see where Harley was hiding, since he had put out his horn, but he was sure he could feel her glare as she whispered. “The fuck are you thinking? The Light Tenders haven’t ever kept their word before.”

Apparently the speaker couldn’t hear, because she continued. “Are you certain? If any of you act with violence towards myself or my guards, it will go badly. Be more unified in your answer.”

Elise whispered right back, unabashed. “That is Senator Maria Hunter. She was my boss’s boss… head of the oversight committee that controlled all containment and purification work on the planet. If she’s here, then she’s brought overwhelming odds. I would not be surprised if there was an atomic football riding in that helicopter, in case you want to try and teleport that back before it goes off.”

“Why would a senator be out in the field?” Jacob muttered.

“We should hear her out,” Elise continued. “It’s our best chance.”

Harley grunted. “Fine.”

Elise stepped forward, raising her voice again. “We will stand down! We are not surrendering to you, but we promise nonviolence during negotiation.”

“Good, good.” The voice sounded pleased. “On my way.”

Chapter 45

Metal ground on stone above them, an ominous, sustained rattle. None of them spoke: there were no plans to formulate, nothing to do but hide and wait. Eventually something whined and scraped on stone, and something rattled down the shaft. A steel cage of sorts, apparently winched down by cable. There were two soldiers inside, both in something like riot gear, massive weapons over each shoulder. Jacob had never actually seen the ECU in action, but he recognized the patches on their shoulders.

They hopped out of the cage, advanced into the cave a few steps, then raised their weapons to an alert, but not overtly hostile stance. They didn’t aim, but they were clearly ready to do so at a moment’s notice.

“What kind of gun is that?” Jacob whispered into Katie’s ear, pointing with one hand. The massive weapons were four feet long, connected with thick tubes to the backpacks of the soldiers holding them. A thin layer of condensation trickled out of the barrels, sinking down towards their feet.

“ATR,” Katie whispered back. “It’s basically a lightning gun. Earth ponies can stop bullets, but they aren’t as good with electrocution. The electricity screws up your brain, so unicorn spells are fried too. They don’t work too well on flying ponies, but ponies who can fly can also be shot with regular bullets, so…”

Someone reeled up the cage again, scraping and bumping along the wall as it went. It took another ten minutes for it to finally reach the ground again. It did so with a third armored soldier and an apparently ordinary woman.

The third soldier disembarked first, before assisting the woman through the now-melted snow pile and into the chamber. She wasn’t wearing a military uniform, though she did dress in sturdy, rugged clothing. She was surprisingly fit-looking for a politician, though there were clear lines of age on her face. Her hair was black, her face imperious, and her expression disdainful. She carried no flashlight, but one of her soldiers set a powerful propane lantern on the ground in front of her, illuminating the chamber far more clearly than their weak electric lantern could. No light came from above, though moonlight did faintly glow in the shaft behind her.

“Who am I negotiating with? I see you all hiding: someone come out and speak with me.”

Nopony moved. Jacob could feel a little of why—something about this woman wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t just unarmed in the presence of very dangerous ponies, and she hadn’t just come out to a field mission when she wasn’t even supposed to be in the military. She was more than she seemed, and he had to figure out how.

Jacob rose. He straightened, then stepped out from behind the pillar. Harley probably would have done their negotiating, but she was still hiding near the ceiling and apparently didn’t want to give her position away. As he crossed the room, he kept his hands out where they would be clearly visible, well aware of the weapons tracking him.

He passed Elise, and she joined him, walking beside him as they neared the senator on the far side of the room.

“Stop.” The command came out distorted from a soldier’s helmet, but still understandable. They were still about twenty feet away, but the command was absolute. He stopped.

This close to Senator Hunter, Jacob would’ve sworn that the light wasn’t acting properly. It was much darker behind her than it was on his side of the spacious chamber, even if the lantern was only a few steps in front of her. It wasn’t just darkness behind her, but power too. Power, and confidence, and danger as he had only felt near Sunset during her rage.

“Good, good.” The woman surveyed them, eyes widening a little as she apparently recognized Elise. “Special Agent Avery? You’re alive?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Elise met her eyes without flinching, just as she had done to Sunset before. “When the command center was evacuated, I was saved along with many other refugees.”

The woman’s eyes darkened. “What happened in Containment was your work? The perfect counters to each and every one of our security measures.”

She nodded again. “Containment was a violation of the Geneva Convention’s standards for the treatment of prisoners of war. It was a shame to our organization and our country, Ma’am.”

Her expression straightened into a hard line, and she met Jacob’s eyes instead. “And who are you? The leader of these rebels? The one who subverted one of my agents.”

“Yes.” He barely even remembered that spell, cast so many months ago now. Elise had held the knowledge, but he had to save her twice to get it. First from her fall, and then from her own insanity. “I am. And you’re Senator Maria Hunter. I voted for you in the last election. I thought you were one of Colorado’s best senators in a long time.”

Her expression softened a fraction. “Being politically active won’t save you, pony. Besides, that’s only who I was. That isn’t who I am.”

Jacob shivered, unable to meet her eyes any longer. They were already dark brown, but the gloom seemed to thicken and congeal around her, casting distorted shadows on the rock behind. “You thought to find the Temple’s ancient gate and flee to Equestria? I’m afraid you wouldn’t have found it so welcoming even if you made it.”

The Temple? That sounded like a fitting name, he supposed. “How do you know about it? The Light Tenders are supposed to destroy everything from Equestria. You see us as carriers of an intelligent disease, don’t you? None of this is supposed to exist.”

She laughed. One of the soldiers even chuckled, though the sound was muffled from within the thick riot gear. Jacob stared, but he couldn’t see a single patch of exposed skin. All three soldiers were massive, hulking creatures, but their armor fit them perfectly. There were no weak points for him to exploit.

“If you actually believed anything Agent Avery told you, then you’ve filled your mind with the same obfuscation we created for those we had working in the field. Of course Equestria exists. Despite the best efforts of its enemies, despite the weakness in its throne and the absence of its most powerful protector, it survives still.”

“Why did you come down here?” He folded his arms, trying to sound confident. “You said it yourself, we’re trying to evacuate. The world is too dangerous for us, so we’re leaving. You won’t have to worry about us again.”

Her laugh was much less friendly this time. “Oh no. I won’t be sending the pretenders such good stock. My kingdom requires the competent, the brave, and the strong. Some of you cower, but that is not a strike against you. Ponies are wise to cower. You might too Lifeline, if you knew who I was.”

He froze, unable to breathe for a few seconds. How the hell did she know that stupid pony name? Could Elise have been a traitor all along, and led them all the way here to give all that she had learned to their enemies?

No, he decided. Her body was still rigid with hostility, and none of it for him.

And just like that, he knew. “You’re…” He retreated, staring up into the woman’s dark eyes. “You’re Nightmare Moon.” He knew it instantly then, without a shadow of doubt. The Alicorn power he had sensed from her was no mistake of his perception. “The reason humans knew how to fight ponies.” He looked to the soldiers. “You found the Light Tenders and mobilized them against Equestria.”

“You see now what I would be giving up. You see why I had watchers at this Temple. The old glory will be mine, Lifeline, and you will help me take it.”

He wanted to spit in her face. Elise didn’t move either, only glared. He could barely move his mouth to speak. “Why would I do that? It doesn’t matter how powerful you are, or how important you are. You’ve been hunting ponies down, killing them. You’re the reason there isn’t peace with Equestria right now, I bet. I would still be in school if it weren’t for you.”

“I’m sure you all have similar stories.” She didn’t sound angry, or like her confidence had faltered even a little. “It’s true you’ve all suffered a great deal, but you assign responsibility incorrectly. I didn’t invade this world. I am as much a refugee as you are.” She gestured at the soldiers just behind her. “I did not come to trample your laws and subjugate you. I was fairly elected after a life of public service, as you already observed. You should critically consider who you’ve really been serving since you joined this war. Unless you think bioterrorism qualifies your princess for nobility.”

He opened his mouth to object, or maybe to defend himself. They had come because of that exact reason, after all. To find better leadership for Earth’s ponies after what Sunset had done. But he didn’t say that. It didn’t really matter what this person, or pony, or whatever she was, thought of their motivations. The only thing that mattered was whether or not he could convince her to let them go.

But Maria, or Nightmare Moon, or whatever she was didn’t let him speak. She went on advancing slowly towards them. The soldiers didn’t react, just watching as she walked towards them. “I don’t ask for charity from my subjects, Lifeline. Swearing your hooves to me would bring power.”

He could see it now, feel it. Magic that wouldn’t just save the dying, but restore them to health. His touch would take the wreckage of broken people and make them well again. It wouldn’t matter if they had “died” before he arrived or not. He would never be too late ever again. No other families would have to give up their parents as he had. There wouldn’t be any more orphans.

The vision faded. “The world I’m building will need skilled ponies. Thanks to your friends there are now many ponies to choose from, but they’re still ignorant and weak. Your strength could ease the transition, and protect the people you love from short-sighted rulers. Equestria’s millennia of peace will come to Earth in time.”

Someone set a hand on his shoulder. He jumped, but it was only Katie. “But you’re Nightmare Moon,” she said, her voice flat. “We don’t know very much about you… and maybe ponies lied about who you were… but it didn’t seem like you were trying to bring peace. You were just trying to take over. It seemed like you just wanted power for yourself.”

All trace of Senator Hunter’s smile vanished then, her glare far more intense than any she’d had for Elise. “Be careful, mare. Your civilization was a dream when I was betrayed. Don’t speak ignorance to me about events I lived.”

Jacob stepped protectively between Katie and the towering woman. All humans seemed giant to him now, but her especially so. Maria Hunter had to be at least six feet, if not taller. The darkness around her thickened and gathered with her anger. “I have not appointed myself queen by right of immortality. Imperium derives from strength. Celestia stood no chance without the Elements as her crutch.”

“Imperium derives from the consent of the governed,” Elise spoke flatly. “That’s the human way. Or… our way. And we won’t serve you. We won’t sacrifice centuries of democracy for an autocrat, no matter how peaceful she says she can make the world.”

“Do you all feel that way?” she asked, her voice icy cold. “Do you all refuse my gifts?”

“Yes.” Jacob hadn’t known it until that moment, but he knew it now. It didn’t matter what this being said. Her actions were what mattered. She had left ponies to starve and die in their own filth. Not only that, but she openly admitted to wanting to rule the world. Claimed it was hers by right. “We do. Let us leave in peace, we don’t have to fight.”

She turned away, dismissive. “Not for me.” She waved one hand in the air as she made it back to the cage. “Kill them.”

Chapter 46

Something exploded. The ceiling shook above them, raining down small pebbles. Something heavy and metallic clanked and rattled down the opening, landing only a foot away from the cage. It was some kind of winch assembly, half-melted and warped by the force of something massive.

Jacob didn’t stare up into the opening with shock as the guards did, but took Elise and Katie by their shoulders and concentrated. The teleport came far easier than when he was screwing around jumping onto buildings. A flash, and they were behind a pillar again, out of the line of fire. Mere seconds later and the space they had been was filled with crackling energy, from the point of a soldier’s weapon. It struck the mosaic floor without damaging it, though the little layer of dust caught fire briefly.

“Oh, was that your helicopter?” Harley’s voice called from somewhere above them, obscured in darkness. “I think that C4 might’ve gone off a little too close to the fuel tank. My bad.”

Jacob might’ve screamed in frustration that Harley should’ve waited until the senator got into the helicopter, but it was a little late for that now. Someone opened fire, the reports of low-caliber-rounds echoing through the chamber and momentarily deafening him.

Hunter’s soldiers retreated, forming up around her and sheltering her with their bodies. Sparks from missed shots showered down around them, apparently without effect. “You will pay for that, parasite!” she bellowed, her voice far louder than any earth pony’s. The darkness there was so horrific, so terrifying, Jacob very nearly collapsed. “Death will seem a kindness after I tear your wings from your back thread by thread!”

The battle began. Jacob cowered, along with the other non-combatants, keeping his head down and his body as small as possible. It was all he could do to stay alive long enough to treat the survivors.

* * *

Danielle embraced the stone. Ever since she had abandoned Lily's advice about forcing a pony shape, it came very easily to her. The sound of screams, of gunfire and terrified ponies, all these were enough to speed up her transformation. Whatever Harley said about magic protecting this place, the stone around it did not resist her. The fire spread, consuming black rock and shaping it into the body of an Earthbreaker.

Danni shattered the surface of the rock like a giant breaching the ocean. One of the nearby pillars got in her way, but a single shove sent it toppling across the cavern, crashing down with terrible force. The earth shook, but miraculously, the pillar did not shatter. One of Hunter’s soldiers was not so lucky. His armor might stop bullets, but it didn’t stop a hundred tons of white marble.

The other two opened fire on her with their strange lightning weapons, carving deep gashes into the surface of the stone. They stood without faltering as she advanced on them, legs spread and weapons screaming with the force of their assault.

It might be a great weapon for killing ponies, but it was a very poor one for killing ponies wrapped in rock. There was metal in the stone, metal that made for a far better conductor than her body. Before they had made more than a few gashes in the rock, she had crushed both of them with a few quick strikes. That only left the senator. Where had she…

Something took Danielle in the chest with the force of an angry Falcon 9 rocket. She screamed, limbs flailing and cracking against pillar after pillar as she was rocketed back into the far wall. She hit, and her whole world went white.

Only the incredible magic of the earth kept her alive. Even so, she could barely move within the armor. Limbs twitched at her commands, but before she could lift one, something would tear it from the socket. She screamed more pitifully each time, blinking away imagined pain to see what was assaulting her.

A nightmare. Senator Hunter barely resembled her original form, ghostly wings filled the air behind her with darkness, and a horn on her forehead stretched several feet away, crackling with magic. Someone shot at her, but their flashes of small-arms sent bullets that stopped before they reached her. “You see your mistake?!” she shouted, and the whole cave shook. A few larger chunks of rock cracked and tumbled down, sending her friends scattering.

She whimpered as, for the second time, her limbs were severed by deadly assault. Her concentration was a little better this time, and she was able to maintain the spell in the face of the illusionary pain, protecting her true self inside the stone torso. It wasn’t much, but at least she would be harder to kill that way.

The sound of gunfire had stopped, and the sound of ricocheting bullets no longer filled the air. “You think I need soldiers? You think I would allow any of you to live after raising hoof against me?” Another pillar cracked and tumbled down, slamming against her stone body. It hurt, but Danielle was already tuning out the illusory sensations by then. The stone cracked, but didn’t yield as the guard’s body had done. Danielle was still intact.

Something took the senator in the chest, something that took her crashing back down to the ground. Danielle couldn’t get a good look, but she could hear Elise’s voice, full of rage. “You can’t have my country!” Something like a small grenade exploded, and the cave was abruptly flung into darkness. It was the lantern. At least one pony and one human screamed in pain, and dark flames roared.

“Kill the host!” Harley’s voice, panicked. “You can’t kill the thing inside! Just don’t let it take you when it doesn’t have a body!” Danielle could no longer see anything, and with a sigh she released the spell holding her Earthbreaker together. It exploded outward in a shower of rock, and cool air rushed into the cavity it made. She still couldn’t see anything; her bulk had crushed their own electric lantern, the flames were gone, and the temple was in ruins. Preservation magic was no match for an Alicorn.

Danni struggled out of her armor, searching the darkness for where the Senator had landed. A faint green light—Harley’s horn—pointed her in the direction she needed to go.

Harley and Jackie stood beside one another over the body of a fallen pony—Elise, with a dozen chunks of stone stuck into a coat charred by fire. Harley had her wand, and Jackie… was that a sword?

The senator’s clothes had been charred by something, and one of her ghostly wings was now missing. Whatever injuries she had, though, she still stood straight. “The pretender sent a legion of her finest. Equestria’s fallen on hard times if all it can muster is a parasite, one of my own misguided progeny, and an incompetent Earthbreaker.”

“I think the math works out,” Elise croaked, struggling to shaking legs. “A legion of ponies, seven humans. Sounds right.”

Hunter only laughed. “You really believe the nonsensical patriotism your nation instilled? Do you remember what it made you do, Agent Avery? Your civilization is a myth. You don’t even know what you are!”

Danni crept closer, keeping low to the ground, stepping only when she spoke. Keep her going, she thought, praying Harley would somehow notice. Her and Jackie both could see in the dark. Would they see her?

“We know.” Jackie raised her sword, swiping it sidelong through the air. “Your soldiers carry iron weapons because they cut spells. Can we cut the spell you’re using to possess that woman?”

More dark flames, devouring light instead of creating it. The woman shouted with rage, and for a moment Harley and the others were engulfed.

The flames only lasted a moment. The mosaic beneath them crumbled to chalky white dust, along with the stone behind them.

Her friends still stood. Jackie had shoved the sword into the stone, wrapping one arm around Harley’s. The changeling, meanwhile, had her wand extended, somehow channeling the flames through the sword into the ground. The iron glowed bright red everywhere but the handle, and a cloud of metallic steam rose from it. Danni had no idea what they had done, and it didn’t really matter.

It was almost long enough. She was behind the senator now, preparing for a strike. She would only get one—it would have to be deadly. If the Nightmare’s flames could melt stone, then it could kill an earth pony too.

“I created you!” she bellowed, glaring at Jackie. “The strength in your blood is my gift! So many of my children fled when I was defeated because the others rejected you! Your friends loathe and fear you, nightborn! You owe them no loyalty!”

“Fuck what ponies did,” Jackie said. “My friends aren’t like that. The world hates us because of you, but ponies took me in! It’s not the ponies I hate!”

Maria screamed again, raising her hands for another blast of flame. Jackie and Harley tensed, preparing for whatever channeling they were doing. It was the perfect opportunity.

Danni leapt. She struck the woman in the back, kicking with all the bone-shattering force her little body could muster. Could a human spine withstand the force of an earth-pony kick?

No. Hunter went down under her assault, dropping to the ground. Only, her magic wasn’t stopped. Instead of a wave aimed at her friends, it rebounded against her, boiling around Maria. Danni lurched out of the way, but she was too slow. The fire was everywhere. It burned so fast, there wasn’t even any pain.

* * *

“Jacob!” Eric’s voice sounded terrified, more panicked than Jacob had ever heard him. “Jacob, Danielle needs you!”

Jacob clambered out from behind a broken pillar, shedding his shredded coat as he did. “Where is she? I can’t see anything in this mess!”

“With me!” Eric screamed, furious. “Get over here, dammit!”

Jacob stepped. His horn flashed, and he cut his way through the intervening space, teleporting to the sound of Eric’s scream.

His horn lit up, giving Jacob the first clear view of the aftermath. Eric was on his knees beside the cracked rear wall.

Harley stood over a ruined, charred heap. Two bodies wrapped together—a charred earth pony, and a human with part of her lower body missing. Only the bones remained. Clothes, flesh, even the nearby rock had crumbled to ash. Jacob reached out with his magic, searching for a spark he could fan back to life. He sensed nothing.

Eric screamed up at him. “What are you waiting for? Do something!” Tears already streaked the dirt on his face.

Jacob felt his own eyes start to water. “E-Eric…” he croaked. “There’s nothing to heal.”

“You’ve healed dying ponies before!” He lurched forward, gripping Jacob by both shoulders. Eric was twice his size, and his grip was powerful. He shook Jacob violently, screaming at him. “It’s the one thing you know! It’s your damn Cutie Mark! You’re the only pony who can!”

“He can’t!” Something yanked Eric away from him. Jacob retreated, heart racing and eyes wide. His arms were still sore where Eric shook him.

Harley held Eric back as he struggled. “Magic can’t bring ponies back to life! It doesn’t matter how good he is, not even Celestia can do that!”

Eric melted in her grip. “Danielle!”

There was no lack of blood. Jacob hadn’t been hurt much in the fight, but he’d taken a few scrapes avoiding tumbling pillars. He rubbed some of the blood on his fingers, and focused on his subject as he always did. It was easy to picture Danni healthy and alive, though it was harder to see her as anything other than a pony.

His magic stretched and strained, but there was nothing there. Whatever Sunset Shimmer had said about necromancy, Jacob could not bring back the dead.

Jacob slumped against the rubble of one of Danni’s severed stone limbs, breathing heavily. Everything felt numb. He cried. I’m sorry Danni. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.

There was very little to bury, and no way to dig a grave through the stone. Danni alone had strength like that. It was all they could do to find a corner of the temple, and cover what was left beneath the rubble of shattered mosaics and broken pillars.

No reinforcements came—Harley had evidently killed all of them when she detonated the helicopter. The Nightmare’s host had been an important senator, and she would certainly be missed, but no one had the strength to go on. They rested together near the shattered doorway, near the corpse of Danni’s last Earthbreaker.

* * *

When Jacob woke, there was sunlight streaming in through the opening on the far end of the cave. He had been wrapped in a blanket, and apparently needed it, because the air fogged from his breath. Something warm was beside him on the ground—Katie. She didn’t wake as he rolled out and got to his hooves. Two of them still, though it was hard to say how much longer that would last. His fingers were still numb after the healing, and they hadn’t improved.

Harley alone was awake, staring at the locked door. Or rather, where it had been. The force of Danni’s collision with it had shattered the rock, and huge chunks near the bottom had opened. It was wide enough for a human to crawl through, and easily big enough for a pony. “You aren’t asleep?”

“Changelings don’t sleep,” Harley answered, her voice flat. “We rest, and we feed when we’re weak, but it isn’t the same. Dreams come from her.” She gestured behind her at the mosaic. “She can’t lie to us.”

“Why’d you always have a bed?” He stopped beside her, though he still felt dwarfed.

“Convenient place to rest a few hours each night. I normally listen to music, but…” She lifted a piece of twisted plastic and glass from her pocket. A ruined cell phone. “Got destroyed in the fight. Guess I won’t be bringing my tunes back to Equestria.”

Silence. Someone was stirring from among his sleeping friends, though he didn’t turn around to see who. “Thanks for… taking care of the others back there. I didn’t have the energy left when it was time.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “No problem, kid. I might be a bloodsucking parasite, but I can set a broken wing with the best of ‘em. Besides…” She gestured into the cavern ahead of them, leading deeper into the depths. “It’s through there to the portal, already checked it out. We can get everyone to a proper hospital.”

“You think Nightmare Moon was being honest with us? You think it goes to Equestria?”

Harley nodded. “The Temple is clear about it. If we’re unlucky, it lets out in the middle of nowhere. Castle of the Two Sisters, maybe. But I’m intact enough that I can fly for help. Katie might be able to come with me.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper. “What about Michelle? My sister… she’s still human. What will happen when she comes with us?”

Harley shrugged. “I’ve never seen a human in Equestria before, but it shouldn’t be impossible. The big problem… besides how big she’ll be… is how much magic is everywhere. The rest of you ponies will be ponies within a few minutes or hours of arrival, even Jackie and Eric. She might last a few days, maybe. But we don’t have a choice. If we don’t get out of here…”

“I know. It’s either freezing to death or getting caught by the military. We still have a message to get to Equestria… even if Twilight Sparkle wasn’t waiting here for us.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know about you, but if I had to camp out in a snowy cave or use a portal to get back to civilization with warm beds and hot food, I know which I’d choose.”

“You usually bring your hot food along with you.” He smiled weakly up at her.

“Best part about my job.” Harley returned the grin. “Now, help me get everypony up. I blew up her first batch of reinforcements, but eventually we’ll have more. I want to be in Equestria before they get here.”

Author's Note

sorry

Chapter 47

They didn’t have far to go to reach the portal. A little crawling for the humans, and they found themselves in a much smaller cavern, quite warm and comfortable despite the chill of the temple behind them. There was a great deal more cuneiform writing on the walls they couldn’t read. Eric still had his working tablet and took pictures of each one. He didn’t really want to—nothing seemed to matter right now, but he forced himself to move. Danni wouldn’t want me to give up. She’d want us to be safe.

Jackie and Harley lingered in back, setting more explosives around the ruined entrance so they wouldn’t be followed. No one in their party seemed eager to speak. This temple had become sacred ground.

At the end of the brief hallway was a shaft about fifty feet around, empty as far below as he could see. Empty except for the island floating in the middle, twenty feet out. Lush grass grew atop it, along with a sturdy oak tree that concealed the roof of the cave. Just past it was a doorway, an arch of stone that met a curving branch. It was easily tall enough for a human to pass through without stooping, though he couldn’t make out many details from this far away. There were lots of little white flowers growing on the platform, oblivious to the dark and the isolation.

Eric found the gap not near the discouragement it had been. Heights still bothered him, but even a bottomless fall couldn’t scare him when he had a mission on his mind. He forced his fingers around the stem of the biggest flower he could find, then took off to fly back across the gap. A few quick beats of his wings and he had landed. “Excuse me.” He nudged Harley’s back. “I need to get past you.”

“Why?” Harley turned, looking up. “We already liberated everything useful from back there.” Then she saw the flower.

Eric crawled through the opening, not caring if he scuffed his arms so long as the flower made it. It didn’t make much difference. Almost the instant he stood up a layer of frost formed on the petals, and a little brown appeared near the stem. He ignored his shivering, and walked to the little pile of rocks and rubble they had used to “bury” Danni.

He cried some more. The others had mourned with him already. Danni’s death had crushed everyone, but none of the others could feel the pain that he did. Eric watched the flower die, and saw the face of his best friend.

He set the flower down on the top of the rock pile. “Thanks for saving us.” Months and months ago, Jacob had showed up to save him from the ECU. Together they had saved Danni, and formed the bond that carried them through losing everything. Their lives, their species, the whole world. When Eric was afraid, Danni had always been there. When Danni forgot why they fought, Eric had always been there to remind her.

“Someday soon,” Danni had said. “You’ll be a pony too, and we can be together. If we’re going to have everything taken, at least we can enjoy our new world together.”

Something flashed, and the dirt at his feet scattered in a burst of wind. Eric turned, and sure enough Jacob was standing a few feet away, expression solemn. “You come to remind me we need to go?” Eric couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He had calmed down since the battle—on an intellectual level, he understood that there was nothing Jacob could’ve done. The magic Nightmare Moon had used killed her before anypony could’ve prevented it. Even so, he couldn’t help but feel resentment towards his friend.

“No.” Jacob kept his eyes on the stones. “I just…” he gestured behind him with one hand. “Portal is working. We might not come back. I wanted to say goodbye.” He looked down at the rocks. “Danni always helped keep us together, didn’t she? When Unity fell… I think I would’ve lost my mind without her.”

“Yeah.” Some fraction of Eric’s resentment evaporated as he pictured Danni then, standing beside the rocks and glaring at him. I kept you alive for almost a whole damn year, she might’ve said. We stuck it together this whole time, don’t give up on our friendship now.

Instead of curse at Jacob, Eric nearly started to cry. He sniffed, then cleared his throat. “Do you think ponies have souls?”

Jacob didn’t look at him, didn’t answer for a long time. “Danni was the religious one,” he croaked. “She never doubted it.”

“Y-yeah.” The words weren’t coming easy. “She prayed every night, out loud and everything. You’d think learning our whole world was a lie would’ve made her question her beliefs, but…” He shook his head. “It all made more sense to her. She seemed thrilled by the idea that Samson had been an earth pony, just like her.”

Another long silence. The wind was starting to blow above them, and almost at once Jacob started shivering. Most of them had lost cold-weather gear in the fight, but Eric’s pegasus blood made him more resistant to the cold. Unicorns had no such advantage.

“Whenever I heal someone…” Jacob’s voice was barely a whisper. “I feel something. It’s hard to describe, kinda like a… breath. Or a wind. Something trapped inside them. If they’re hurt, it might be real faint, just a spark… and when a pony’s healthy, it’s a bonfire. Maybe that’s what a soul is? We’re going to Equestria, you could always ask the princesses. Apparently plenty of ponies worship them.”

“Not me.” He smiled weakly, wiping at his face with one arm. “Danni wouldn’t like it.”

They left, hurrying back to join the others. Eric passed explosives in the cramped tunnel opening, and only Harley remained on the other side of the gap. Harley looked up to reprimand him, but though her mouth opened, no words came out. She blinked, then wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “Every time I think there’s no hope for your species… every time I think ponies are cruel and selfish and not good for anything but a meal…” She mussed his hair. “Where does that love come from?”

He shrugged. “I miss her.”

“Me too.” Harley hugged him. “She was a good kid. Equestria won’t be the same without her.”

“No, it won’t.”

“This portal doesn’t look like the one back in Unity,” Jacob called, as soon as they had landed back on the floating island. All his friends were there, and the weight had apparently driven the floating island down by several feet.

Eric watched Jacob hurry up to his sister. She smiled down at him, then reached down to fix his hair. They were obviously close, close enough that just being near each other made them stronger. Danni and I were that close, he thought. Closer.

He could almost hear her reprimand him again, but it was just his imagination. If souls did exist, hers apparently wasn’t in a hurry to visit.

“That’s because it’s nothing like that one.” Harley approached the edge of the portal. It had an event horizon, a darkness which swallowed their flashlight beams and the light from Jacob’s horn with equal ease. Yet they could lean around behind it. It had no volume, no depth. Only a sense of powerful, constant magic.

Michelle looked sick, and she seemed to be staring at the tree. The only thing that wasn’t hard on her.

“If it works, we should get going,” Jacob called. “Michelle isn’t doing so hot.”

“Speak for yourself, pipsqueak,” she whimpered.

“Right. Jackie, Katie, you’re first. Same thing as the Gatecrasher trip, but worse. This teleport has to cross five dimensions instead of four, so expect it to be that much stronger. Land and get out of the way, and keep watch. Equestria is safer than here, but I don’t know where this portal lets out. Probably another hidden temple.”

Jackie hugged Katie briefly, then raised her weapon and vanished through the portal. The instant they crossed the blackness they vanished completely, gone without a trace.

“Jacob, have you explained the whole magic deal to your sister?” Harley asked.

She answered before Jacob could. “I might end up one of you little horse-creatures if I go. But if I don’t, I get picked up by those military guys when they come looking for their last team. Or I freeze. Both of those suck, so a diet of grass and hay it is.”

“You probably won’t have to eat grass.” Harley smiled reassuringly. “Only ponies in poverty do that. After what we did, Celestia probably has a mountain of gold waiting for us. It’s pastries and champagne from now on, baby.”

Michelle blushed, but Jacob just glared. He shoved, and she vanished into the portal in front of him. “Don’t you get any ideas about my sister,” he warned. “You already have one girlfriend.”

“I suspect you have misconceptions about changeling relationships, kid. If you think we’re monogamous, well… would you eat just one kind of food? Even your favorite can get bland, if you don’t mix it up.” She waved the detonator at him. “Go on through, and don’t come back. Only living things can take stuff through a portal, but you wouldn’t want to come back out right as a bomb goes off.”

Harley lifted the bright orange piece of metal and plastic in one hand, and flipped a plastic trigger-guard out of her way. “You two are last, I’ll be right behind you.”

Elise met Eric’s eyes then, her eyes distant and pained. She nodded. “Ready?”

“Yeah.” Eric had no hatred left for Elise. The attack she had caused on Unity had not killed the one he loved. Not only that, but she had fought, been willing to put herself in danger, and even saved Danni’s life at one point during the fight. It hadn’t made a difference in the end, but… the attempt was noble.

He stepped through.

* * *

Jacob had felt nothing as he crossed inside the portal. There had been no strange chills, and no spaghettification as differing tidal forces stretched his body an atom wide. Rather, the world had gone instantly silent as he was yanked inside, as well as utterly dark. No stars, no sunlight, not even the light of his horn pierced the void. He didn’t suffocate, didn’t freeze, nor indeed could he feel his own body.

There was nothing, and it went on forever. Jacob tried to shout, but nothing happened. Tried to cast a few spells, but the magic wouldn’t come. No healing, no communication, nothing. He tried to get the radio from his pocket, but he had neither hands nor pockets.

Michelle is here somewhere. Katie is in here, and Eric, Elise, Harley and Jackie too. Is this what it’s like to be dead? All dead because I insisted we had to do something to stop Sunset. He couldn’t cry, or feel any of them nearby. We should’ve just told Sunset about the code and left well enough alone. She might not have investigated, but at least we’d still be safe in Imperium. Danni would still be alive. This sure felt like death, no warmth in his body and no heartbeat in his veins.

What would the only pony city be saying about its heroes now that they had run away? At least he wouldn’t have to be there to find out.

You don’t belong here. The thought felt foreign, yet it came from within, not the endless nothingness. He had heard it before.

We didn’t want to come. We were trying to find Twilight. We weren’t trying to run away to Equestria, but we ended up in a fight and didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t speak without a voice, but he could think. The strange speaker had always managed to hear his thoughts before.

It heard him now. You cannot accomplish your purpose in the void. You don’t belong here where nothing is made and nothing is unmade.

Shouldn’t I be suffocating? Or freezing to death, or baking from radiation, or something just as awful? Why am I still alive?

There was a long silence. Jacob worried that perhaps he had frightened away the voice. He would’ve been thrilled to have it gone before, and indeed it had always left him alone eventually. Now, though, with literally nothing to keep him company, he longed for it to remain. There was, after all, the distant hope it might help him. He had no reference to know how long it took. He felt no pain, no hunger or thirst, or tiredness. It was as though time itself was merely a hallucination, or perhaps a memory.

Space implies place, time, entropy. None of these exist in the void. All is circumscribed upon itself, without end or beginning.

If that’s true, who am I talking to?

Another long silence, this one punctuated by a few bubbles of alien emotion. Amusement. You lack the vocabulary to describe me. I am inside you—I am a force, a god, an inevitability. I am none of these things. I am the projection of your imagination within the void. I am the expression of inevitability. I spin the webs, I make the heroes, I tell the stories. I am Anake.

Am I in one of your stories?

Ever since the most ancient ponies dedicated themselves to me, you have been mine. Competence, magic, and purpose I gave. A mark for each and a place in my story. Your planet had forgotten this, but it is starting to remember. The old magic wakes, and I make of you a draught of the old wine.

You’re the slaver we came to Earth to escape, aren’t you? The one who puppets ponies around on strings. You steal their free will, the most fundamental part of being human.

The voice didn’t sound angry in its response. If I were a slaver, would I have allowed my slaves to cast off their shackles? If I took away their freedom, how could they have succeeded? How could your whole planet, billions strong, have ever come into being? Your misunderstand my gifts.

The speaker gave him no chance to interrupt. Ponies gave me all their dead-ends, their failures and false starts. In exchange, I showed them where they were strong, or created strength from weakness. Each one another hero for my story, threads joined together in success and triumph. Just look at your world. Your bodies may have changed, but your nature has not. Deep down under that hairless skin are ponies longing for the purpose I would give them. You invent yourselves religions, mythologies, and superstitions, but you would need none of that if you remembered me.

I gave you purpose, Lifeline. I gave you a rare trust—to spin a few of the threads yourself. I knew I had good stock in you, and in the ones you brought. When you wove together, the three of you made for the weft in a beautiful tapestry.

Why couldn’t I save Danielle? I’m part of your stories, like you said. I’ve got the damn Cutie Mark for saving people, don’t I?

Why do you assume the decision would be yours? Broken Chain chose to strike when the demon parasite was at its most vulnerable, knowing she might become a target herself. In some ways, you might say she chose her fate. In the hall of the martyr there are few cowards.

She didn’t choose to die! She would’ve let me save her! Danni had practically her whole life left! We would’ve been in Equestria soon, safe from the damn war!

If she had not acted, you would all be dead. My Broken Chain broke many chains in my service. It is a fitting end that she would die breaking the back of the one who would enslave my friends.

If Jacob could’ve spit on the voice, he would have. We’re not your friends.

If he expected his words to wound, he was sorely mistaken. The voice only seemed pitying. You will see the truth before your story is told, Lifeline. You have my word.

Jacob liked the sound of that even less than he felt like this being’s friend. He now had some idea why his own ancestors might’ve wanted to flee to Earth, and to let their children be born human for a chance at freedom. He could even see why Harley’s kind might want to take on their curse in exchange for freedom. Are you ever going to let us out?

Never. Always. Now.

Jacob was alive again. Sensation came with such speed that he was completely disoriented—deafened by a wave of noise, in agony at the pressure of his clothing on skin and the cool air outside. Revolted by the smell of damp air and his own unwashed body. He tripped, convulsed, and couldn’t get his legs to respond correctly. Something grabbed him, holding him down, but he only felt more trapped, and struggled harder.

Harley hadn’t been lying, that had been much worse than the Gatecrasher teleport. It took some time more for him to sort out his senses—sound first. “Jacob! Jacob stop struggling.” He did. He thought he had gone blind, until he realized his face was actually covered with fabric. The voice was Harley, complete with a slightly strange reverberation that hadn’t been there when she was on Earth. “You’re on four legs, Jacob.”

That explained why he couldn’t see his hands. He fought, and stretched, and eventually could see an opening just above his head. Where his neck had been. Something ripped, and a strange limb appeared above him, dark and reflective and with a few holes. “You okay? Seems like the less pony someone was, the more screwed up their brains are.”

Jacob took the hoof, and struggled to an upright position. Sort of. His back felt strange, like he should feel himself bent over, but didn’t. His spine didn’t protest, nor did it feel like he was hunched.

Harley watched him for another few seconds, appraising. She was a very strange sight—pony sized and shaped, but with obvious insect qualities. She had a frill instead of a mane, and lots of holes in her limbs. “You gonna fall over on me, pansy?”

“No.” He wasn’t sure he meant it. “Where are we?”

“The other side of the portal.” Elise spoke from beside him, her voice low. She hardly seemed to see him, and was instead staring off into the distance. “Guess the portal really did go somewhere.”

“Obviously,” he muttered. Harley’s prediction had come true: they stood on a floating island not unlike the one they had just left. The same single tree grew here, the same species of white flower. The portal seemed to have doubled in size from where he looked at it, but… that was just a matter of perspective. Pity he didn’t have a mirror. Though Eric had fallen not far away…

The screen to his tablet was off, and in its polished surface he could make out a fully pony face. Brown coat covered with paler blotches, just like his lower body had been. Somehow, his body no longer looked unnatural, and he didn’t feel the desire to wince when he moved.

Where was his sister? A human ought to be easy to spot with her obvious difference in size, but he couldn’t see her. Only several piles of too-big clothes and abandoned possessions lying where they fell.

“Welcome to Equestria. This isn’t what I expected, but… we’re still breathing. That’s something.”

Jacob nudged a furry shoulder poking out of Eric’s clothes. It felt alive, but didn’t stir at his touch. “Eric’s frozen, I can’t wake him up.”

“Probably shock from… whatever just happened.” She lifted up into the air, dropping her duffel. Her wings buzzed, and seemed to fit her insect-like body far better. Jacob didn’t even feel afraid. “I’ll get help. Do what you can to help them wake up.” She flew off into the dark, leaving them alone.

Chapter 48

Time blurred. Elise couldn’t say how long it took for Harley to return, flanked by a squadron of guards in gold uniforms. They brought stretchers, one for each pony, and forced even her to lie down. They passed through a dark temple, through twisting caverns lit only by flashlights in the gloom. Mesmerizing lights flickered in front of her eyes. An hour or two of uneasy sleep on the Temple floor had done very little to overcome the fatigue of battle. Eventually, she slept.

For most of her life, Special Agent Elise Avery had been focused primarily on survival. Her beds had been stiff cots, sheets rough and threadbare, when she had a bed of her own at all. Living with the ponies had not been much worse: Unity had felt like a cave, and Imperium actually was a cave. The draft was very cold at night.

Elise rolled sideways, yet when she stretched she could just barely reach the edge with a hoof. The sheets were soft, and smelled faintly of sage and linen. She wasn’t sore, wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty. Something was seriously wrong.

Elise tensed, preparing for violence, then opened her eyes.

She was in a hospital, if a hospital had a ceiling at a comfortable height, soft pastel paint with heart-shaped molding, and dated-looking equipment. An IV was wired into her left foreleg, though it seemed only to be dispensing saline water. She felt tempted to tear it out, but resisted. She didn’t actually know how to remove an IV, and didn’t fancy the idea of stitches.

There were a few chairs, and a window on the wall beside her. What had happened to the others? She wouldn’t call them her friends. Fellow travelers, perhaps.

This must be a pony hospital. I wonder where they put me… The IV would restrict her movement, but it was looped above her on a metal stand, so she reached up, unspooling a little more plastic tube. She rolled sideways, and looked out the window.

It was like something out of the Islamic Golden Age, but grander than anything that had actually been built. A city stretched out far below her, carved primarily of the same white stone. Colorful spirals, domes, and minarets rose over buildings ranging from a few stories to a dozen. Huge stones glittered in the sun, sparkling mosaics of crystal and precious stone instead of ceramic tile. Banners flew in air lacking the smoky haze of many modern cities, just as she saw no motor vehicles in the street.

But what the streets did have were ponies. Not comically small ponies, moving through a gigantic world that towered over them. Properly sized ponies, with buildings and doorways and carts all the right size. Indeed, there was no sign at all that she had ever been shrunk.

Elise had traveled to Equestria. She fumbled with the window for a second, before wedging her hooves in and sliding it upward. A pleasantly chill breeze passed through her mane, carrying with it the sound of many voices and the smell of delicious meals cooking.

For two years I hunted and captured ponies to save them from being eaten by a disease, she thought. But I was saving them from paradise. In exchange, I gave them squalor and captivity.

Something moved behind her, a faint squeaking she only heard thanks to her improved hearing. Elise jerked to the side, facing the door, though her fear had mostly fled.

The pony at the door wore a white cap with a familiar red cross, and nothing else. She jumped a little at Elise’s quick motions, eyes widening in momentary fear. She had a pastel yellow coat, along with a soft pink mane. “Oh, you’re awake! I hope I didn’t wake you, I didn’t mean…”

“No trouble.” Elise sat back in bed, resting her back between the pillows. She held still, hoping it would stop the pony from leaving. It did, and the mare visibly relaxed.

“I was just making sure you were okay,” the pony muttered, looking at the floor. “Hourly checkup. How long have you been awake?”

“Not very long,” she admitted. “Where am I? Is the group I came with here as well?”

“This hospital was set up special for Earth ponies. I, um… ponies from Earth. We had shut the wing down, but then you all showed up…”

“You all?”

The mare nodded, moving to the wall where a clipboard hung by a stud. She removed it with her mouth, scribbling notes.

“Are any of them awake? Which room is Jacob in? He has a scissor mark on his flank with some string.”

The nurse shook her head. “Both pegasi and unicorns are still asleep, and they can’t be disturbed. The others are awake, but I’d have to check a few things before you can see them.” Her expression was no longer fearful and submissive. “You can’t get out of bed until I say so.”

“Okay.” She sat up a little straighter. “Just… check whatever you have to check. I want to see them.”

It took nearly twenty minutes of poking and prodding for the nurse to finally let her out of bed. She took a battery of measurements, some with mundane medical tools she recognized and others with obviously magical crystals that she very much did not. She removed the IV, wrapped a length of bandage around the foreleg with a cotton ball, and gestured at the door.

“You can’t leave the hospital yet, so don’t go anywhere past this hallway. Don’t open any of the closed doors, or I’ll be very cross with you. Your friends will be up and on their hooves before you know it, and the best we can do to encourage their recovery is to leave them alone. Got it?”

“Got it. I won’t leave or try to visit any of the ponies who haven’t woken up yet. Promise.”

“Good.” She opened the door. “This is still your room. We usually let ponies out as a group, so they don’t get separated. You’ll have to stick with us until all your friends are better.”

Elise followed her out into the hall. Like the room she had been in, it was painted inoffensive colors and made of stone, though there were also electric lights high on the ceiling above. She could already hear voices, Jackie’s and Harley’s coming from a few doors down.

Elise was used to her hooves by now, and she was proud of how she managed to make it all the way into the room without falling in front of the native.

She froze as she crossed into the doorway, very nearly dropping sideways onto the floor. Seeing Jackie as a full-on pony wasn’t that strange, with her light blue coat and lighter mane.

No, the shock came from seeing the one she recognized instantly as Princess Luna, sitting across from the bat and the changeling apparently engrossed in conversation. Her vision fuzzed a little at the edges as she took in her appearance—a mane that stretched downward into infinity, fractal stars and a curtain of misty night. She was taller than Elise even sitting, and would probably be twice her height standing up. She wore a few shards of metal regalia, a dark collar and silvery horseshoes.

Her organization had known about these creatures, in the sense that they had been preparing for their arrival on Earth as the greatest danger humanity might face. Their power was suggested to be so great that only a nuclear blast, caught unexpectedly, would be enough to destroy them. Once an agent met one of them, it was said that their minds could be completely rewritten. Their intellect was unfathomable, and their ability to rewrite so complete that the victim would not even know it was happening.

She wanted to run. Would’ve run, if she thought it would make a difference. But there could be no escaping from a being like this. No avoiding the judgement she richly deserved. This is for Unity, she thought. This is for all the ponies who died because I believed a lie.

Elise dropped into a bow and waited for death to come. It didn’t.

“Rise, pony. You are welcome to join us.” Luna turned, and for a moment the endless depths of night seemed to be examining her. That ethereal mane twisted and circled near her, though it did not burn where it touched. “You know us already, I see. Who are you?”

How could she not know? Of course, Elise realized then that her ideas about Luna were based on the doctrine of her organization. Intelligence that had come from the ones the ponies called “Light Tenders,” and could not be trusted. “I’m… I’m Elise Avery.”

“Ah.” Luna rose to her hooves, surprising the other two with the swiftness of her motion. “My apologies, loyal subjects. We shall continue this conversation another time. Avery and I must have words together, words meant only for her.” Friendliness and joviality were all gone from her eyes, and Elise found instead only the frigid depths of space.

She does know. Elise gulped, but did not retreat. This moment had been a long time coming, and deserved.

Luna strode past her to the door, obviously expecting her to follow. She did, and the princess snapped it closed behind her. “You will walk beside me, criminal. If you run, I shall drag you in irons. Is that clear?”

“Yes.” She couldn’t meet those eyes, but even so she stood straight. Elise deserved whatever punishment the ponies had waiting for her. Even if she hadn’t been responsible for the fall of Unity, Elise would still deserve the wrath of this pony. She had been sworn to protect the people of the United States, but had captured and killed them instead. She had done terrible things to prevent an outbreak that had ultimately happened anyway.

Despite the nurse’s admonishment that she wasn’t supposed to leave the hospital, Elise followed the pony princess down a series of spiral staircases, passing several guards in the process.

“I expect only the truth from you, Special Agent Elise Avery. You will give it to me, and I will know if you are not.”

“Yes.” She followed close behind, having to trot to keep up with Luna’s walking pace.

The castle was lavishly decorated and luxurious. Marble floors, fine wood furnishings, and art as fine as anything on Earth. Except the figures in every piece were equine instead of humanoid. Crystal chandeliers lit flowing chambers, and uniformed servants were everywhere.

“The changeling Harlequin gave me an extensive report of what has transpired on Earth. Do you assess her report as honest?”

She looked away. “Harley has no reason to lie. I expect anything she told you about me is correct.”

They started climbing a tower. The stairs were small enough for her to climb each one with ease, but they seemed to go on forever. There were very few windows, and Elise began to rely on Luna’s mane to see. “You worked for the Light Tenders. You willingly gave up your human form so you would be rescued by our ponies and lead them to Unity. Correct?”

“I worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not the Light Tenders. The rest is right.”

“There’s a difference?”

“Yes!” She tensed. “I don’t care what anyone told you, the FBI’s only job was to keep the country safe. Keeping Americans safe matters to me.” She turned slightly sideways, displaying her Cutie Mark. “This eagle here is the symbol of my country. I don’t think you ponies have any other truer statement of purpose than that.”

Luna stopped in the darkness, staring at her. Elise wished there was somewhere to hide from those eyes. She stepped closer. “If this ‘FBI’ mattered so much to you, why did you betray it? I’m told the captives are all free thanks to you.”

She whimpered, but didn’t look away. Elise deserved her pain. “I never doubted we should contain the spread of ‘magic’. It was a threat to our species, and our way of life. But… I learned I’d been lied to about almost anything else. Your organization most of all. Your claims to be helping and caring for the transformed were all accurate. I hate you for spreading your infection to Earth, but I don’t hate those who were infected. Protecting them is the reason I took a badge in the first place.”

The princess eventually looked away, and started up the stairs again. “I see the guilt you carry. I know you sometimes lay awake at night, remembering the screams. You do everything you can to erase your mistakes, but nothing works. You’re soiled forever, and you feel it any time anyone looks at you. You see pity and contempt and you remember anew how damaged you are.”

Elise felt the tears on her face, though she couldn’t remember crying. It had been a very long time since she had ever cried, let alone in front of an enemy. Basic had broken that instinct, taken away that part of humanity a long time ago. “I know ponies didn’t get out when Unity burned. I now I am responsible for their deaths. Even if my help destroying Unity was under pretenses that would not have made it wrong… I was wrong. I took lives that can’t be given back.”

They reached the top of the tower. An intricate mosaic had been set into the wall, created by what seemed like the very same school of art that had created the Temple. It depicted a pony like Luna, but much darker. She crushed armies beneath her hooves. Shattered cities at the head of a dark army of bat-winged ponies. The mosaic filled the whole space, yet only in a remote corner could she find another pony, sheltering a single city of terrified ponies under her wings. Unlike the Temple, this illustration was in brilliant colors, with a single domelike window at the top of the tower to light the whole space.

It was some kind of observatory, at least if all the telescopes and star maps on its various tables were any guide. “I couldn’t either. The ponies I murdered have been gone for many years. The families I stole them from are gone, and their descendants many more generations on. But still the pain remains. There is no one to tell me what I must tell you.”

How had such a big pony moved so fast? Suddenly she was beside Elise, with no sign of an intervening teleport. “I forgive you. Equestria forgives you. You’ve done everything you could to repair the damage you caused… drop your burden.”

Elise did cry now, embracing the pony princess and shaking all over. “I didn’t mean for it to happen! We were supposed to be killing monsters!”

“I know.” To her great surprise, Luna’s form was soft and she didn’t push her away. Instead there was a wing over her, and a feeling of stability Elise had never known. “Few ponies would be evil if they could not justify their actions with imagined virtue. It doesn’t matter. You’re forgiven.”

Elise didn’t speak again until her eyes had dried and her shoulders straightened again. She did feel better. Was that just the pony instincts talking? “What happens to me now?”

Luna shrugged. “Equestria is a big place. I have no doubt you will find a life for yourself somewhere.

Chapter 49

Someone knocked loudly at his door. Jacob looked up, and reluctantly lowered the book he had been holding in his magic. Marble Epitaph the Lesser’s Exhaustive Equestrian History, Volume 3 of 16. Jacob pulled the blanket a little higher over his body, covering everything worth covering. In some ways Sunset had been right—adjusting to being smaller and differently shaped had not taken very long. Jacob didn’t stumble when he walked, and didn’t feel like he was ever craning his neck.

That did not translate to overcoming the nudity taboo. Danielle had managed that quick enough, probably because life in Imperium had given her no other choice. Jacob had a choice. He could stay in bed and hide under the sheets, and so that was what he did. It wasn’t like the ponies walking in would judge—few if any of them had any clothing, and none of it covered anything important. His own sister was the only one he had to worry about, and she couldn’t visit him at all. It was hard to make visits when you were comatose.

Equestria’s pleasures beaconed at the end of a long-fought war. Anytime he wanted Jacob could look out the window and find not only a peaceful nation, but one he had always dreamed of seeing. He was a criminal on Earth, or at the very least suspected of being one. His parents were dead, his only relation was here. How hard would it be to cut his ties for good, wash his hands of the affair, and trust the princesses to deal with it?

But did finding our way here make a difference? Will Celestia stop the war?

Someone knocked on the door outside again, a little louder this time. “Come in!” Jacob folded his hooves awkwardly in front of him, trying to look comfortable. It didn’t really work—ponies weren’t built for lying in beds like humans could.

A single pony entered. At first Jacob didn’t recognize her, though her colors and Cutie Mark were both familiar. Her flowing mane had been cut very short, and her left side was covered with deep scars that still exposed bare skin. A few cuts remained on her face as well, and there was a patch over one eye. Her tail, like her mane, had apparently been cut completely off, and only recently returned.

“T-Twilight?” He sat up a little straighter. “You’re alive?”

She chuckled, and there was an unhealthy rasp to her voice. “Barely.”

“So you…” Jacob tried to fill in the gaps. “You knew where that Temple was, and ran away there once Unity fell?”

She nodded. “I knew there was a traitor in Unity—there wasn’t any other way we could’ve been discovered. I didn’t want humans knowing I had lived, or that there might be other portals to Equestria. I couldn’t risk leading them to the Temple.”

“But why would you lead us there? It doesn’t paint a very favorable view of your princesses. It… kinda makes it out like they sold ponies out. And humans too I guess, by extension.”

“Sunset was supposed to find my message,” Twilight admitted, though she didn’t look away. “Nothing in the temple is… entirely unknown in Equestria. Obscure, but… I don’t think most ponies would see it the way you do. Celestia and Luna saved us. We wouldn’t have been born without them. Separatists like the ones who built that Temple might see ponies as slaves, but most of us see Cutie Marks as gifts. If ponies knew the princesses were the source, they would honor them even more.”

He frowned down at his book. “Is my sister awake yet?”

Twilight shook her head, though she did seem a little relieved he wasn’t going to press the subject. “The best doctors in Equestria are seeing to her, but… I didn’t expect humans to follow me. Unlike the broken mirror, the Separatists expected their trips to be mostly one-way. Their children weren’t supposed to come back to Equestria. From what we can tell, the magic of the trip destroyed the human illusion completely. But don’t worry, she’ll receive the best possible care. She’ll recover.”

“What about the rest of us?”

“Free to leave tomorrow morning. After everything you did, well… you probably won’t be surprised to hear that you’re of interest to the Crown. Luna has asked that I plead for your help. Capturing… well, not Nightmare Moon exactly, but the entity that created her… will do more to secure peace between Equestria and Earth than anything else we could do. We close the Light Tender’s view into Equestrian magic, and we stop the monster from claiming Earth as her own personal domain.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “But I’m still not a fighter or a spy. Do you… need me to convince Harley or something? Did she turn you down?”

Twilight shook her head. “You’re the first who has been told about this. I thought since you were the one who planned to find me, you should hear it first. Not only that, but you should be the one to decide if your friends have to even find out.”

She turned towards him again, showing her scarred side. “I know how awful the war is. Earth is… well, let’s just say I’ve seen enough for a lifetime after Unity. But Equestria still needs help. So long as the Nightmare is out there, Equestria is in danger. She might eventually persuade humans to turn your devastating weapons on us… or maybe she will somehow isolate Earth from rift travel, and damn the human population to her rule. Once we remove her, we believe peace is possible.”

“Luna plans on traveling to Earth within the week, along with Equestria’s most powerful warship. She wishes to bring advisers on Earth who can assist with the Nightmare’s capture or destruction. There are thousands of Earth ponies resettled in Equestria, and many would be willing to come and advise the princess. Many of them might be more competent than you, more knowledgeable than you, and more magically powerful than you.”

“But your ponies have one thing they don’t: our trust. So many refugees have fled to our shores that we cannot be confident of their goals. Luna wants Jackie’s and Harley’s infiltration skills, Elise’s experience with the enemy, your healing ability. Eric and Katie…” She shrugged one shoulder. “There is space for them as well, though they lack any specifically required abilities. They might still have useful input, though we doubt they would ever leave the airship.”

Jacob didn’t even hesitate. “What does Princess Luna plan to do about Sunset when she arrives on Earth? Is she going to continue using Sunset’s methods?”

“No.” Twilight met his eyes. For once, Jacob didn’t look away, searching for any sign of deception there. He didn’t find any. “Celestia would never condone what Sunset did. For better or worse, the damage is done. The attacks will not be repeated, and we will assist humanity in combating the virus in any way we can. Maybe we can help them come up with a vaccine, or—”

Jacob interrupted her. “Twilight, didn’t you send the ‘historical broadcast’ to Earth in order to make us all into ponies? Shouldn’t you be celebrating what Sunset did?” He didn’t sound happy himself, though. Only angry, bitter.

“We designed a pattern to evoke magical development in humans. We expected the process to take decades. Humans would not need contact from Equestria, you would discover your powers on your own. Without monsters or ponies around, it would take a very long time for any of you to manifest. It might take a generation. There would be no psychological trauma when you had that long to accept reality. Not to mention all the ponies featured in the broadcast would’ve had the time to move on with their lives…”

“So yes, Lifeline. We wanted to give you your birthright back. Could you have watched and done nothing while your own kind suffered and died by starvation and preventable disease? Denied ponies the chance to learn and explore their magic?”

He opened his mouth to say yes, but stopped himself. How many lives had he saved since becoming a pony? How many more would he save?

Twilight didn’t wait for him to answer. “Our intended method would have been painless and non-disruptive. No internment camps, no wars, no deaths. Slow enough that those who wanted to avoid it could have kept their distance, separating to avoid exposure. The human experiment could continue.

“Whatever you think about ponies, think of the alternative. The Nightmare already holds political power on Earth. She is immortal, patient, and powerful. Do you want her to rule over your planet?”

“No,” he admitted. He didn’t say that he wasn’t sure Earth needed their help to deal with her. Humanity had faced many threats in the past, and survived them all. Because of people who had the power to make a difference. Like you.

She turned, heading for the door. “I’ll let you think about it. If you’re going to tell them, do it tonight.”

* * *

As soon as he got up the courage, Jacob made his way to Katie’s room.

The door struck something soft as he opened it, though thankfully not very hard. Jacob released his magical grasp on it at once, recoiling in shock and concern. “Is someone over there?” He could see something bright on the other side of the door, the same greenish as Katie’s coat. Uh oh.

“Yes,” Katie grumbled, rising slowly to her hooves. She stuck a hoof in the door, then swung it open.

Jacob blushed immediately, tucking his tail between his legs even as his ears flattened. The reaction was instant and entirely unconscious, yet he felt it all the same. The pony body knows how to work on its own, or else my breathing and digestion and heartbeat would’ve all killed me a long time ago.

“That’s why you knock, idiot.” How Katie could stand there without looking embarrassed, Jacob couldn’t know. She was as naked as he was, though admittedly for a mare there was less to see from straight ahead. Of all the ponies who reminded Jacob of the taboo, being around Katie was the worst. That was why he had been avoiding her. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t come.” She stepped sideways, gesturing inside. “Come on then.”

“You knew I was coming?” Jacob complied, though his steps were still slow and his tail refused to obey. Hooves clopped with each step, and he shuddered at the thought of somepony from one of the other rooms emerging to see him from behind. They didn’t.

“Well duh.” Katie turned away from him, walking over to the window. “My sister has been spending time with Harley since they got here. I figured you’d realize sooner or later you shouldn’t leave me alone.”

Katie didn’t keep her distance, but rested her head on his shoulder. She was very beautiful—lithe and slender in ways that did not translate to the human form. Jacob didn’t know how he could possibly even feel an attraction so soon, and on some level worried for his sanity. Yet the transition had been gradual enough, except at the end. Did she see him the same way?

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Mhmmm.”

It felt natural to have her head on his shoulder, anyway. It was a shame he had come for something so serious. It was nice just to feel her there, and have the window before them. Katie’s room was on the other side of the building, so instead of facing down at Canterlot proper it looked out over the castle gardens. They were sprawling affairs of perfectly manicured plants, and had far more in common with Versailles than the few episodes he had seen them in. A few ponies enjoyed the benches or the flowers, but their colorful forms were easily lost in the greenery.

That gave him an idea. “Hey Katie.”

“Yeah?” She looked up at him, something unfamiliar in her eyes. It wasn’t embarrassment exactly… it wasn’t any emotion he knew how to recognize. Jacob hadn’t been this close to anyone before.

“Do you care about breaking pony rules?”

She grinned. “You sound like Jackie. I never tell her no. Just so long as you don’t plan on spray-painting ‘Sunbutt' onto the wall somewhere.”

Jacob pointed out the window with a hoof. “I’m pretty sure I could teleport two feet with a passenger. If I took us through the wall, do you think you could fly us both down to the garden?”

“Yes.” She grinned slyly at him, then spread her wings. The soft feathers brushed him as she flapped, just a few times until she was up in the air. Katie took off from nothing as though she had been doing it her whole life. “I can carry way more now that I’m not a lumbering human. Same amount of magic, fixed mass. More lift this way. That’s aerodynamics.”

“Okay. But how do I hold on without getting in the way of your wings? Humans might’ve been ‘lumbering’, but we were way better at carrying things.”

“Says you.” Katie reached down with her forelegs, then scooped him up. The ceiling wasn’t high enough for her to go very high. Even such a low flight scattered her few possessions and rumpled the bedding. They were probably making noise, too. “Do it!”

Jacob hardly felt secure, hanging just a few inches off the ground by Katie’s forelegs wrapped under his own. But on the other hand he was also very close to her, and close contact like this would likely provoke other sorts of reactions. Fear was an excellent motivator.

They appeared twenty feet or so away from the window, hovering in the air exactly as they’d been hovering in the room. Nopony spared them a glance.

Now Jacob hung suspended over a two-hundred foot drop. “Down, down!” he called, the fear becoming considerably more intense. “I can’t fly!”

“Relax.” Katie sunk for the first few seconds, but soon her wings caught them for a glide. Cold air blasted around them, mixing up his tail and mane and chilling all his previous fears away. “I won’t drop you, unicorn.”

It could happen, though he wasn’t about to correct her. He didn’t complain anymore, just focused on watching the ground as they got closer. A few ponies noticed them, staring as they made their way down from the castle, but none said anything. The few guards standing still at the garden entrances didn’t even blink at them.

Jacob felt far better once his hooves finally touched grass. He fell onto his back with a wave of relief, clutching at his chest. “That… was a little more adventure than I was counting on.”

Katie stood over him, grinning. “Aren’t there spells that let unicorns fly? I don’t know why you’d still be afraid of heights.”

He realized he was lying naked on his back a few feet away from Katie, and immediately jumped to his hooves, embarrassed all over again. “That was difficult magic for Twilight. Assuming the episode was true. It’s hard to tell the difference between parts of the show that were supposed to teach us and the parts that were just there for flavor.”

“The show did a poor job capturing this place,” Katie mouthed, breathless.

Jacob looked around, finally taking the time to appreciate the garden from the inside. There were a thousand different plant smells, which were at once sweet and appetizing at the same time. I never thought what a garden might be like to a grazing animal. I bet the arrangement and the taste are related somehow. He didn’t think to put it to the test in Celestia’s royal gardens, though.

Jacob had visited botanical gardens before. He had also grown up in a desert, with sparse pale vegetation. The comparison to Equestrian flora was a poor one. The greens were deeper, the splashes of each flower more vivid and alive somehow. Birdsong drifted gently through the trees, and it sounded somehow more friendly than he was used to. The birds weren’t just singing, they were singing for an audience. For him.

The grass was softer than any carpet, and didn’t feel dirty to his hooves. Indeed, it seemed grass was the paving material of choice within this section of the garden, not cement or gravel.

“It did,” he finally agreed.

They wandered a long time through the garden, enjoying its masterfully sculpted avenues. “Danni would’ve loved it here,” he said. “She was always more into the show than the rest of us. Eric didn’t even watch, unless we had an episode on at the club. I did, but I could never tell if I was actually enjoying it or not.”

Katie nodded. “Danni told me she kept an autograph book in Unity. It didn’t survive, but… she was sure she’d get all the important ponies eventually.”

He sighed. “I wonder how many ‘Bronies’ from Earth have tried that.” The garden had other visitors, but nopony bothered them. No guards came looking for them.

Several hours passed, and they were lounging under a cherry tree. The fruit was ripe, and every now and then he would reach up to pluck one with his magic. Using telekinesis was practically second nature to him now, even for non-medical tasks.

“Something’s on your mind,” she said, only for him to interrupt her with a cherry. She lay beside him, one wing resting on his back. She kept talking through it. “I know it’s something. You’ve barely talked.” She spat the pit at his hooves.

“Well, uh…” He sighed. “If I tell you, it will bother you too.”

She shoved her shoulder up against him. “Don’t care. We’re gonna be released tomorrow, right? We’ll be on a train to that refugee settlement, starting a new life. Whatever’s bothering you can’t be that bad.”

“So long as it isn’t called ‘Bronytown.’ If it is, I’m getting right back onto the train.”

“Me too.” There were cracks in her smile.

Jacob realized then what they meant. “You… don’t want to live in Equestria.”

She shook her head, and a few tears slid off her coat. “It’s not that. When Harley saved us from a whole squad of the ECU, I always thought it would only be a few more months before I could go home. But we waited and waited and now it seems like I’ll never see my parents again.” She cried. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen them.”

Jacob held still, lacking wings but unwilling to pull away from her. He knew enough to know when a pony needed help.

“We could go back,” he said. “I don’t know if we could stay, but… I bet if you asked, you could at least say goodbye.”

“What, when you take Michelle back?”

He shook his head. “Michelle… I don’t know what she’ll want. Right now I’m worried she won’t even wake up. But I’m her only family… she might not want to go back if I’m here. Besides… Earth is pretty much in the shitter right now.”

“Y-yeah,” she sighed. “So when?”

He told her. It took him longer than Twilight, and he didn’t know how to answer all of her questions. He tried, though.

“So if we go back, we’re soldiers again.”

He nodded. “Advisors too. Princess Luna is Equestria’s most experienced general, but she only has literary experience with Earth. Most of what she knows she learned from books or interviews with refugees. She wants a few humans aboard in case something comes up she doesn’t understand.”

“Makes sense.” Katie looked as deflated as he felt. “So we see the promised land across the river but we can’t cross.” She looked away. “I’m homesick for my family… but I’m even more sick of fighting. I’m sick of running, I’m sick of hiding and breaking the law. Just for awhile, I want to live. Go outside, smell the trees… go back to school, even. You know?”

He looked up at the garden all around them. “I do, yeah. Back when I thought we were fighting for the good guys… it was easier. But now that I know the truth… it just seems like everyone’s been a dick to everyone. I think the only way to win is not to fight.”

“I think you should tell the others. Let them make their decisions. Jackie will… probably want to fight. Harley will go with her. The rest…” She shook her head. “Poor Eric. Is he doing okay? Are you? I wasn’t really that close to Danielle…”

He shook his head. “No. He’s not. I’m not either. They say you need time with these things… I guess that’s what I need.”

“He can live across the street from us in… not Bronytown. Somewhere with a real name.”

“From us?” she asked.

He looked away, scraping at the ground with one hoof. “You said so yourself, Jackie will probably want to fight until the war is over. You wouldn’t want to live alone, would you?”

In answer, she kissed him again.

Epilogue

There was no such thing as Bronytown. As it turned out, Jacob was wrong on many of his predictions. They weren’t shipped out to one of the refugee towns. He hadn’t been the only one to turn Luna down, either. Every single one of them but Elise had wanted time to recover. Some would join the fray again when that time was over… but by then, the very worst of the war would probably be resolved, for better or worse.

Instead of being sent to some distant town where they wouldn’t bother natives, they had all been given apartments in the same complex on the more modest end of Canterlot, along with a rent-free contract and a stipend consisting of all the wages they had earned while serving the rebellion on Earth.

None of them were done with Earth for good. Katie still wanted to see her family again, Jacob wanted to make sure the Nightmare didn’t take over, and many of the others wanted to help… but he was done with fighting for the time being.

As it turned out, the whole building had been set aside for ponies similar to them, former humans the Crown wanted to keep close. Their adventuring equipment, laptops and tablets and so on, became big screen TVs in their new apartments.

Canterlot’s ponies were not universally kind. Many of the upper class looked down on the refugees as barbarians or primitives, and would refuse service to any they identified. Many more were curious and inquisitive, and would happily trade a meal or a minor trinket for stories about life on Earth.

Jacob adjusted quickly, even to the nudity thing. He got himself a vest and some boots, and that made him feel much better, regardless of not actually covering anything. The Crown had arranged further training for each of them—each in their areas of interest. None had turned them down, and he soon found himself in school again. Only this time, it was unicorn medical school.

He spent his evenings with Katie, who moved in with him about the time Harley had moved in with Jackie. The wildest of Brony dreams became their daily lives.

There were two dark clouds on their horizon. The first was Earth—they were sent regular updates on the war, information that few ponies in Equestria had access to. Gathering together with all the old crew and reading Luna’s mission reports became a weekly ritual, and the news was not often good.

The second cloud was Jacob’s alone, though the others were all sympathetic and did what they could to help. That cloud was his sister, Michelle.

When the others had all recovered, Mich had remained comatose. She was completely a pony, a unicorn like he was with a lighter red mane and palomino coat, though hers was white and brown instead of two different shades.

Unfortunately for her, proof of family resemblance did not translate to help waking up. Michelle would take food, she would toss and turn in her sleep, but that was it. Pony doctors far more skilled than Jacob ever was told him over and over it was some kind of thaumic shock, the result of overwhelming exposure without preparation beforehand, but it would pass. There was nothing they could do but wait.

For their first week in Equestria, Jacob hiked up to the hospital every day to visit her and leave new flowers. He continued to visit for the next few weeks, until eventually he found her waiting in a wheelchair with flowers on her lap and an annoyed expression on her face.

“‘Bout time you got here,” she muttered, glaring up at him from her seat. “The doctors kept saying you usually visit around six, but it’s almost eight.”

He didn’t even ask how she had recognized him with just a glance. He hugged her tighter than he had ever hugged a pony before. He probably cried too—ponies did that way easier than humans. Or maybe he was just broken.

Maybe not, because she did too.

“Sorry… class went a little late tonight, and you’re never up anyway… I didn’t think you’d notice. I can’t believe you’re okay!”

She sat back in the wheelchair, glowering. “You do see me, right?” She held up one hoof, shoving it against the side of the wheelchair. “I have stumps for arms. I have stumps for legs. They’ve been feeding me nothing but hay soup since I woke up. What part of that is okay?”

“Right.” He blushed, pawing at the ground with one hoof. “It does suck at first, and I was ready for it. Since you’re not…” He shook his head. “I’m sure we could get you back to Earth quick enough. I bet if we asked, Princess Luna would even send you back to Springs.”

“As a horse?”

He shook his head. “I doubt it. There’s…” He wasn’t going to go into any existential truths with her, not on her first day awake. “There’s a spell to make you human again. You have to stay away from magic once you use it, but other than that it should work indefinitely.”

Michelle seemed to consider, looking down at her lap with its several bouquets of flowers. Some of them were the ones he had left last night, but not all. She leaned down, took a sunflower in her mouth, and started to chew, smiling at the taste. “Are you going back?”

“Nope.” He walked away from her, to the dark window. It might be night outside, but Canterlot was still alive out there. Cafes and restaurants wouldn’t close their doors for hours yet, and many of the evening’s plays and other entertainment hadn’t even started. It was a world with only basic access to electricity and nothing even resembling the internet, but it was also safe. “Not for at least a year, anyway. I turned down a deal from a horrible monster and then helped kill her. She’d probably remember me.”

“Then…” she talked through her chewing. “Get over here and push my wheelchair. I’m not spending another night in this damn hospital.”

He almost started crying again as he turned around. “Wait, you’re gonna stay? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she repeated. “I’m not digging this horse thing at all, but if you can get used to it, I’m sure I’ll be tap-dancing and playing piano in a week. I… haven’t figured out how to walk yet…” She looked down, suppressing a whimper. “But it can’t be that hard, right?”

I never had to learn. “I’ll teach you. Oh, you’ll love our apartment! We got the one with an extra bedroom, since we knew you’d be well again eventually. We’re on the fourth floor of this wonderful place in the Horseshoe district. There’s a bakery on the first floor, and every morning the smell of—”

She shoved a hoof into his mouth, silencing him. “We knew?” She looked sidelong at him, eyes narrowing. “You telling me you’re into horses or something, pipsqueak? You living with someone? How long have I been out, anyway?”

“About a month.” He tucked his tail between his legs, looking away. “And maybe I am now, so what? You can act all high and mighty with me, but see if you’re not seeing someone a month from now!”

She put up her forelegs, defensive. “I was only kidding, pipsqueak. I’m happy for you. I was beginning to worry you’d never date again.”

He started pushing her. “Well, Katie is wonderful, and she’ll be thrilled to see you well again. If I can’t teach you any important pony things, I’m sure she can.”

“Well, there is the matter of the bathroom. I think I’d rather learn from her than you, all things considered. Now that I won’t have a team of nurses.”

There was still some administrative stuff to get worked out, and it took them just over an hour to get out of the hospital. He was a little guilty to be keeping his friends waiting—this was “Earth News” night, after all, but there was no way to call ahead. A few of them still had working cell phones, but Equestria had all of zero towers. Somepony called a carriage for them, which hurried them through Canterlot’s moonlit streets to the Horseshoe district.

Michelle didn’t sass him once during the ride. Her eyes were open too wide as she took everything in, mouth hanging slack-jawed. At his request, their driver took a roundabout route through the city, giving Michelle the tour. They stopped by a take-away pizza shop as well, since it was always his responsibility to bring dinner home on nights he visited his sister.

“Why does everyone call you Lifeline?” Michelle asked, when they had waved goodbye to the carriage driver and were standing in front of the apartment. “You could just introduce yourself with your real name.”

“I could,” he agreed. “And then they’d know I was a refugee and wonder if I was going to rob them or something.”

“Huh?” He started pushing, levitating a few pizza boxes behind him. The smell wasn’t just wonderful after hours in the hospital, it was familiar. He had ordered specifically with no hay, same as every night he got pizza.

“Refugee is the word ponies use for ponies from Earth. It’s often derogatory—we’re seen as clumsy, unfriendly, or even dangerous by lots of the city ponies here.” He pushed the door open, then headed to the elevator. The apartment had it mostly for moving furniture around, and ponies had to operate it themselves since there was no permanent operator on staff, but Jacob didn’t mind. What was one more object to levitate?

“See, I’d have thought there was a perfectly good word for that already: Human. You know, what we are.”

He chuckled. “Y-yeah, well… we’re not humans anymore. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that, but… humans don’t have four hooves and tails or magical horns.”

Michelle rolled her eyes. “And ponies don’t have real elevators. Do you really have to crank us all the way up?”

He nodded. “I usually just teleport up, but if I did that you’d probably puke all over the floor. Katie just flies up to the balcony… but neither of us will ever be doing that. Welcome to the unicorn master race.”

Her face paled. “That better not be a thing.”

“It isn’t.” He laughed. “It’s an old Brony joke… nevermind.”

Her expression was incredulous. “You’re living in a whole world filled with pony stuff, and you’re still calling yourself that? Doesn’t being a ‘Brony’ just mean you’re just a regular person?”

He shook his head. “No way. Even in Equestria we’re still a little weird. Ponies are just too nice to tell you so.”

“Unless you tell them you’re from Earth, in which case you can’t catch a taxi and they’ll hide their purse.”

He sighed. “It’s not perfect. Nowhere that exists could be perfect. But it’s pretty nice.” He reached the top floor, locked the elevator into place, and pushed the protective cage open. Only when he had rolled Michelle safely onto solid ground did he release the mechanism, letting the whole thing settle gradually back towards the ground floor.

“Like, just wait until you see the apartment. We’re talking penthouse, tastefully furnished with all the amenities.”

“Except for pants.” She grinned, glancing back at him. “I notice you left yours at home.”

“No pants,” he agreed, embarrassed all over. Not that he was embarrassed most of the time. Ponies didn’t make a big deal out of it, so he had stopped. It took someone from Earth to remind him. “I actually don’t think I own any. You probably noticed already, but ponies aren’t particular about the nudity taboo. The only clothes here are either protective or formal.”

“Yeah.” She glanced down at her hospital gown again, apparently relieved. “I’m not sure I’m down for that either. So maybe I’ll join the horse club for a while and make sure you don’t get into trouble, that’s one thing. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna sign up to pretend I’m an animal.”

He shrugged. “You’ve got plenty of money waiting for you, we can go shopping tomorrow.”

“No, we won’t. You are miserable to shop with. Maybe that girlfriend of yours, though. Does Katie have good fashion sense?”

He winked. “I think she’s beautiful no matter what she wears. Even if it’s nothing.”

She shoved him with a foreleg, and he very nearly dropped the pizzas. “I’m beginning to wonder if the horniest guys in the world didn’t set this place up. Naked all the time, heads staring right into people’s junk no matter where you look?”

He reached the door. There was no lock—few doors in Canterlot had them, that he could see. Nopony seemed worried about it, or even to understand his questions when he asked. “Wrong again.” He smiled slightly. “Equestria is a Matriarchy. The same two mares have ruled it for… a really, really long time. Lots of the parliamentary positions are held by mares too. It’s really only the more progressive districts that would consider running a stallion. We’re considered—” He found a hoof shoved into his mouth again.

“Please stop. I’ve had enough of horse today for you to start with horse politics. I don’t even want to know.”

He shrugged, and pushed the door open, helping Michelle along. “Sorry I’m late, everypony!” he shouted into the room ahead of him. “I brought someone special!”

Michelle glowered at him, but not much noise came from within. Except for Eric’s voice. “I hope that someone special includes something edible, because we’re starving in here.”

True to his description, the apartment was smartly furnished, with dark wood and comparatively modern decorations. The photos on the wall were all landscapes, and free of pony-related interruptions. He and Katie had chosen only furnishings which would help them remember Earth.

The open-plan building had a dining room near the kitchen, with comfortable cushions instead of chairs. Instead of a table, there was a stand for Katie’s tablet, its thick charging cable vanishing into the floor. It had been a large model even for human use—as a pony, it was big enough for four ponies easy. A tight squeeze for a bigger group, but they managed.

His friends weren’t eating off it now, but were crowded around both sides, watching as Katie and Harley went back and forth at a game of virtual air-hockey. Like Jacob himself, they had all long abandoned the pretext of human modesty, and could have been any other group of ponies. Except for the changeling. Harley couldn’t be herself on the streets of Canterlot, but she had nothing to fear in his apartment.

Harley was the first to look up, taking her hoof off the touchscreen. Katie scored, and the tablet filled the room with sound, but she didn’t seem to notice. There was a flash, and she was suddenly only a few feet away, glancing between them.

“Michelle?” she asked. “She’s on her hooves again?”

“I’ve never been on hooves,” Michelle corrected, forelegs folded in front of her. “I wouldn’t have been so eager to fly you guys around if I’d known I was flying myself into a lifetime supply of petting zoos.”

“Oh good, you’re okay. You won’t mind if I take these, then…” Jackie snatched the pizzas out of Jacob’s magic, carrying them over to the table. Katie unrolled a thick cloth over it, and just like that the tablet was gone.

The pegasus made her way over as the others descended upon the pizzas, greeting Michelle with a polite handshake. “I’m happy you’re awake, Michelle. Your brother has been really worried about you.”

“Yeah.” She relaxed a little. “That’s the pipsqueak. We had things rough growing up, so… we’re used to keeping an eye on each other.”

“Does that mean you’ll be sticking around Equestria?”

She nodded. “For the time being. I think waiting until things have quieted down on Earth is a good idea. Just… how are things going over there, anyway?”

The room got a little quieter then, and nopony rushed to answer her.

“Better,” Jacob eventually answered. “The terrorism is over. Princess Luna has diplomatic ties with the UN, apparently she’s helping the WHO come up with a vaccine for the virus in exchange for certain guarantees about the transformed humans. No word on a cure or Nightmare Moon’s location, yet. Political situation is…”

“Horse shit,” Jackie supplied, through a mouthful of pizza. “Virus got to South America and two countries collapsed. Nopony has a clue what’s going on in Venezuela, and parts of Africa are worse, Madagascar's closed its borders… apparently the only country without any ponies is North Korea. Lots of wealthy, spineless people are running away to the hermit kingdom. Half the Middle East has probably exploded by now, internment camps across Europe…”

“Damn.” Michelle visibly deflated in her seat. “Worse than I thought.”

“Yeah.” Jackie scooted closer to Harley, who wasn’t actually sitting close enough to reach the pizza. “Get in here. You look hungry.”

The night went on a long time, longer than Jacob should’ve stayed awake, longer than any of them probably should’ve. Jackie and Harley alone didn’t seem to get tired, since both of them had only woken a few hours before.

Even Michelle seemed to relax as the evening wore on, joining in with the board games when Eric brought them out, and laughing at their terrible jokes. She was still weak though, and eventually asked quietly if she could be taken to bed. Katie helped her with the shower and everything else, which left Jacob alone in the master suite, lost in a comfortable mattress and staring up at a pinned photo of his brony club, which he had printed back in Imperium.

I wonder if any of those people still have two legs. He had met several since liberating Containment—they’d been psychologically damaged by their time there, but ordinary life was helping them recover. By the time he saw them next, they might very well be themselves again. Maybe.

Earth still needed him. Jacob still didn’t know if he was a pony or a human, regardless of what he had been told about ancient spells. He felt more and more like a pony every day, but his guilt was growing too. Sooner or later, he would have to help.

Not tonight. He heard the door open in the dark, though there were no hooves on the ground. A few seconds later and Katie was perched in bed next to him, smelling like soap and drooping a little with moisture. “Thanks for helping my sister, pigeon.”

“No problem.” She slumped weakly into the covers beside him, splaying out wings and limbs alike. “Were we really that bad with the nudity thing when we first got here?”

He rolled up next to her. “We had months to get ready. Michelle got all of it dumped on her at once.”

“I know.” She gestured faintly at her back with one hoof. “I think I twisted my back at weather practice. I’ve been waiting for a massage for hours.”

Jacob was exhausted, but he didn’t say anything, just twisted to the side and lifted himself up onto his hooves. “You know there are places for that. You didn’t have to wait.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. But I doubt they’d do as good a job. None of them remember hands, so they can’t do the unicorn pretend to make it seem like they have any.”

It was the same kind of magic as levitation, careful pressure just as a hand might give. Jacob thought he had gotten pretty good at it, and not just from practicing on Katie. “Okay, fine. How’s this?”

The war wasn’t over back on Earth. Equestrian monsters still surfaced every now and then, and Luna’s negotiations moved painfully slow. He felt a little guilty for not helping, but… nights like this made it easy to forget the guilt.

Living in Equestria was medicine enough to heal the wounds of war. He still missed Danielle, but that pain was starting to fade. Enjoying life here seemed a fitting way to remember the pony who would have enjoyed it the most.

If Earth still needed him a few more months down the road, he wouldn’t say no. Just not tonight.

Author's Note

Well everypony, that's the end of Friendly Fire. It's been quite the adventure getting this far-- I've enjoyed your feedback, your predictions, as we journeyed through this story together. This isn't the sort of story I anticipate writing a sequel for, unfortunately, but... for those who just can't get enough, I do have a discord chat room for that very purpose. It's fairly active, and I'm online pretty often, so if you'd like to drop by, feel free to click here!

Other than that, I'd like to thank my editors for all their help getting here, particularly Two_Bit who was so diligent in making this story possible. Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave a comment. You're what kept me going on this story, even through difficulty. Thank you so much!

Chapter 1

Between the late hour of his last class and the isolation of the river trail, it was a rare night when Jacob met anyone else on his walk home. Despite his age, there was always something that made him nervous whenever he heard another set of footsteps.

When he heard footsteps running towards him down the path, he got a little tense. Old growth pine and fir grew here, obscuring the orange of streetlights and splitting moonlight into patchwork shadows. Jacob slowed a little in his walk, wishing he had a can of mace or something.

As the footsteps approached around the bend, he could make out a feminine figure, and not a threatening one either. He’d never heard of late night robberies conducted by young women with purple and pink hair. Whatever else there might’ve been to see of the stranger was lost in the gloom and the trees. Except for her determination.

“You idiot!” she screamed when she was perhaps fifty meters off. She waved her arms, gesturing energetically to the direction behind him. “You’re going the wrong way!” As she got closer, Jacob could make out her clothing. Skirt, stockings, comically cute blouse. There was something painfully familiar about this outfit, but why could he remember it?

“What are you talking about?” Jacob’s hand came down from his backpack without the mace. He turned around, facing in the direction she indicated. “Did the dam burst? I haven’t heard any sirens.”

“No!” She reached him. Jacob found she was about six inches shorter than he was, with a mature, fit build. There was no telling how long she had been running, but she showed no sign of fatigue. The girl shoved hard on his back, forcing him to stumble forward. She was stronger than she looked. “You people really are determined to get yourselves killed, aren’t you?”

Jacob started running, though of course, he was nowhere near as skinny as she was and wouldn’t be able to keep going for very long. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!” He ran anyway, proud he could at least keep pace. “If it’s not a flood, what is it? There’s never anything… bad on the trail!”

She had something in her other hand, something Jacob hadn’t seen until then. A stick, twisting and curling up from the bottom to the top like a wooden animal horn. He leaned a little bit further away from her. “Honest question: how are you still alive?” She gestured violently at a nearby bridge, which spanned the fifty feet or so of the river and branched off into several student apartment buildings. He had already crossed it to get this far. There was nobody near it, not this late at night.

Jacob slowed down, clutching at his chest. He wasn’t running so much as jogging as he reached the junction of bridge and trail, taking a few steps before stopping to clutch at his side. “I still don’t… Is this a hidden camera show?” He looked around, searching the trees nearby for the hidden cameras that might be showcasing his foolishness to the internet. There were none, only the gentle rustling of the trees behind them in the wind. No lights or hidden figures with ghillie suits to keep them out of view.

The girl looked incredibly frustrated as she slowed to a stop. “I suppose some of this is more our fault for interfering. They might be here for me.” She slid past Jacob, blocking the edge of the bridge.

“That isn’t an answer.” He was still breathing heavily, though after a little time to collect himself the momentary flash of adrenaline that had brought him here was rapidly melting into annoyance. The bridge had a light on the other side, not quite so tall and bright as a streetlight but enough to light up his companion a little better.

In that light, the strange shade of her hair was as clear as the absurdly bright skirt and stockings she wore. Not to mention that familiar symbol on the dress. He gasped. “Hold on! Did you come from a convention I didn’t know about? That’s why you looked so familiar—Twilight Sparkle, right? That’s the most faithful cosplay I’ve ever seen!”

She turned, rolling her eyes. “Look, maybe if you want to look at something, you should look that way.” She pointed with the stick, down into the trees on the trail. “I’m not the one trying to kill you right now.”

He looked, growing more and more frustrated at her continued lack of answers. His frustration changed to fear as he saw the second familiar thing of the night.

What had looked like the rustling of the trees was, in fact, some sort of golem made from wood. Several actually, wolflike shapes made from branches and bark. They were as gigantic as actual wolves, not quite at a height with him but easily longer. Gaping jaws had teeth of broken sticks, and living vines seemed to grow all around them. Their eyes were the worst—not leaves catching moonlight, but glowing yellow pits. They were all fixed on him, as though the girl wasn’t even there.

Even if they weren’t made of flesh, Jacob knew enough of canines to recognize their posture. These creatures were hunting, and he had no doubt about the target. “W-what?” He staggered back from her, shaking his head. They couldn’t be real. He had seen those creatures before, though not in any place that he had ever believed was real. He had seen them on a children’s show.

They were Timberwolves, and they were coming to kill him. “It’s not real.” He shook his head, and as he did the shapes seemed to blur away, fading slowly back into the trees. The longer he fought, the more he could believe that something horrific wasn’t coming to eat him.

“No!” The girl kicked him in the shins, hard enough that he stumbled.

The pain brought Jacob’s vision back into sharp focus. Not only that, but it helped him see something else he had been ignoring. The girl’s stick was glowing, with a faint purple light that seemed to start a little past the tip. The girl caught him before he could fall on his face, shoving him sideways so he could catch the bridge to steady himself.

Now that he knew they were there, Jacob recognized the Timberwolves’ cries for what they were, no longer mistaking them for the wind. “I’m sorry it has to hurt and confuse you so much, but there isn’t time to bury your head in fantasy right now.”

“That’s fantasy!” he screamed, suddenly finding his voice. Wolves pounded down the path, perhaps a hundred meters away now. They didn’t bother to hide—either they realized he had noticed them, or they didn’t care.

“I wish.” She reached out, settling her stick into his hand with one of hers. The instant she let go the purple glow faded, becoming a faint yellow spark barely visible against the light behind them. “You don’t know how to use this, do you? No, of course you don’t. You couldn’t see Timberwolves about to rip out your throat without somepony pointing them out.”

He might’ve laughed at the absurdity if it didn’t look like he might be about to die. “We should keep running! Get into the apartments—” He started across the bridge, only slowing to a stop when he realized she wasn’t following.

“They’re coming for you, Jacob Blackwell. Do you want others to die as they fight to reach us?”

He whimpered, hands starting to shake as the wolves got closer. He might’ve pissed himself if there hadn’t been a girl his own age around to motivate him to senseless bravery. “What was the point of coming here?”

She ignored the question. “I won’t let anything happen to you, okay? My friends and I fight monsters all the time. Just stay behind me and blast anything that comes at us from the back.”

“With what?” He already knew the answer as he stood there, though. It was in his hand.

The Timberwolves charged as they broke into the light, narrowing their shoulders as they bore down on his companion. There were three of them, each one big enough to take his head in one bite. They accelerated rapidly, and he wanted to run, or maybe jump off the bridge into the river.

But the girl didn’t budge, only muttering quietly to herself. “3… 380…1” Her hands moved through the air too fast for him to see, trailing light like a long-exposure photograph. The lead Timberwolf was close enough for him to see sappy saliva dripping from its jaws.

Violet light flashed into existence all around them, so bright and brief that he barely had time to take in the perfect sphere, only just surrounding him and the entrance to the bridge. The lead wolf was already charging at them as fast as a car, and it was far too late for it to slow down or stop. The beast struck with a sound like a rotten log rolling down a hill.

Wood and gooey sap exploded out in all directions, throwing the other two monstrosities off the edge of the bridge and into the lake at either side, whining with strangely canine calls of pain.

The girl dropped to one knee, clutching at the edge of the bridge for support. For a second it seemed almost like she started to blur at the edges, more light fuzzing up from some inner surface he couldn’t see—but then she gritted her teeth, apparently concentrating, and the effect faded.

“You didn’t just…”

“I know!” Below them, one of the wolves was scrambling up onto the shore. It was too much to hope for the foot-deep water to wash a person away, much less something as sturdy and dangerous-looking as a mythical beast. “The timing has to be absolutely perfect! A variation of even half a second might be enough to avoid it, or dissipate the force more evenly so the monster survives.” She giggled, half-hysterically. “It’s kind of amazing it keeps working.”

“They’re climbing out of the water.” It felt strange to be the one pointing her back to the dangerous reality of the situation around them. “One on either side…”

“Oh.” She pulled herself up, though she had to lean on the side of the bridge for support, and looked more than a little pale.

“Are you okay?” He didn’t watch her, instead backing up so that he had his back near her, crouching lower than the edge of the bridge.

“Will be…” He wasn’t imagining it, she did sound winded. “This can be your first lesson; magic always has a price. Don’t think that just because you can use big numbers for the variables means you’re actually ready to cast the spell.”

“Uh…” Under any other circumstances, Jacob would’ve thought very poorly of the sanity of anyone who spoke like this outside of any of the LARPs he attended. His last few minutes made him very reluctant to call her out on any strange claim. Survive first. Answers second. Jacob hadn’t ever fought a bully on the schoolyard, let alone a monster on a bridge. If they had come from the same side again, he might’ve taken the path behind the bridge and run for his life, leaving the girl to her fate. The wolves wouldn’t give him the chance to be a coward tonight. “It’s circling around on my side! What am I supposed to do?”

“I gave you a wand!” She sounded exasperated. “Honestly, you’re a confusing choice for first victim. There wasn’t anyone more dangerous in this whole city?”

“Apparently not.” Jacob found his grip on the little stick was getting tight as the monster scrambled up the steep slope to the path. It tore great divots into the ground with each step, ripping up bushes and cutting into the bark of trees.

Was he imagining it, or was the stick glowing brighter the tighter he held it? “Look, there aren’t wands on the show, ‘Twilight.' Maybe I’d know what I was supposed to do if there were!” Of course, there weren’t humans on that show either. While he had more important things to notice than the girl’s race, he was pretty sure she had ordinary skin and proportions. Despite the hair and the outfit, and apparently the magic.

“Just throw something!” He couldn’t see what his companion was doing with the monster on her side, though he was no longer worried. After seeing what she had done to the last one…

Throw something? The wolf stalked down the bridge, inch-long claws scraping into the planks. The whole thing gave a little under the weight, metal groaning. What did he have to throw? Jacob slipped off his backpack and threw the whole thing at the wolf with all his might. Hundreds of dollars of laptop and textbooks flew straight at the Timberwolf’s head.

It caught the backpack, shaking and tearing it apart at the seams. Pencils and torn pages and coins tumbled out onto the bridge, some of them bouncing and rolling into the river. “Dammit!” Jacob was vaguely conscious of the girl leaping forward into combat with the second creature, but was too concerned with his own danger to pay much attention to her.

A little fabric remained in the monster’s jaws as it advanced, along with a little silver rectangle he knew all too well. “You put that down!” He didn’t even know why he screamed, but scream he did, his whole body tightening with anger.

Glass and circuits crunched in its jaws, and it roared again. Never mind that the next bite might very well be around his throat, he was suddenly seeing red. Well, red and yellow. The light coming from the wand was unmistakable now, brighter than the streetlight. Jacob didn’t think so much as act, aiming the wand like a rifle with both arms. “Go AWAY!”

It was suddenly the Fourth of July. The poor wolf caught like dry kindling, screeching and yowling in agony. Flaming bits rained down from it as it turned to run for the river. It didn’t make it, collapsing to a charring pile in the undergrowth, like a forgotten campfire left to burn out overnight. The blaze didn’t spread, though the surrounding bushes started to steam.

The fatigue hit him like a wave, and Jacob found himself slumped over the railing. Sensation fogged around him, and he was only dimly conscious as his companion finished fighting her second wolf. He heard the voices of fellow students as well, probably roused from their apartments by the sound or the flames. At least a few of them would have windows with a view of this bridge, though he was fairly confident none would be able to make him out at this distance. Just now he was too tired to care.

“Hey.” Someone shook him by the shoulder. It was the girl again—she smelled like lavender. The world came back into focus, her voice turned back up from the background roar. Well, almost everything was in focus. The girl herself really did seem blurred. Inky light bled away from her forehead, trailing purple in the air behind her. Her hand felt only half-solid, like a bubble he might crush with too much pressure. “Good work.”

Jacob made his way forward and picked up the apartment keys from where they had fallen, slipping them into a pocket along with his phone and wallet. Other than that… it didn’t look like any of his other possessions had survived. “You look like crap.”

“Y-yeah.” She gestured vaguely at the wand. “I really should’ve… brought two of those.” The blurring was spreading from her head, very slowly. Beneath it was only light. Of her own wolf, there was no sign, save for more splintered ruins on the bridge. Whatever she had done had been as final as his own defense. “I’m quite alright, don’t worry. I’ll just need to make a detour to get this illusion fixed, that’s all. No matter how it looks…”

“So, is this the part where you explain why TV show monsters tried to kill me?” He was catching his breath now, though his whole body still felt weak. Whatever he had done felt far worse than running all the way to the bridge had felt. It was more like walking several miles in winter, a numb fatigue in every part of his body. The worst of the pain was in his head, though. Too bad his aspirin went into the river.

There was a little light from the buildings now, moving slowly closer. Flashlights? He could still hear voices, but in the near distance was something more distinct: police sirens.

The girl noticed too, because she watched the far end of the bridge with obvious fear. Again she gripped at his shoulder, shoving him back onto the path on the other side of the bridge. This time, it was towards his home instead of away from it. “Listen carefully. Do not contact the human authorities. Do not let them find you, especially with that!” She snatched the wand from his hand only to shove it into his pocket.

“But aren’t the police the ones who can help? Or at least animal contr—”

“Quiet!” She shoved him further down the path. “You are aware of the disappearances of prominent…” She lowered her voice a little, almost with disgust. “Bronies?”

They stumbled together from the bridge, back onto the path. With the fire behind them and no light sources to track, it seemed the apartment residents weren’t following further. There were red and blue lights blinking through the trees now though, and more authoritative voices ordering students back to their homes.

“Yeah.” Jacob’s heart went icy cold. “I’ve read the headlines. It’s coincidences, that’s all. Crime happens, so of course sometimes that means Bronies get unlucky too.”

He couldn’t even look at the girl without his eyes getting sore from how strange she looked. He could still hear her, though. “I will be back with reinforcements and we will get you all to safety.”

“But…”

“You need to run again!” She pointed, her whole arm starting to fuzz. “I’ll hold them here, but if they see you they will go looking! Your internet friendship book make you all very easy to find!”

Hold them here? Was this girl seriously talking about fighting the police? Of course, they were coming for the bridge, bright flashlight beams cutting through the gloom. “Okay!” He started backing up, still watching her. She wasn’t much more than an indistinct smudge of purple light at that point. “At least tell me who you are!”

“You already know!”

Jacob wasn’t sure he did, but he ran anyway. He wasn’t close enough to see what had happened when the police arrived. He did see a spectacular flash of light from where he had come, so bright that it cut through the trees and set the animals to screeching in protest.

He made it back to his apartment without encountering either the authorities or monsters.

Chapter 10

Before her, the metal crate thrashed and rocked on its wheels. Agent Elise Avery continued pushing as though she couldn’t hear it, her steps smooth and confident. There were no others in the deserted corridor, and nothing to slow her down other than the occasional crack in the concrete. Thick cables had been tucked away along one side, broken only with the occasional makeshift light strip bolted to the wall. The further she got the more dilapidated things became, with whole sections of steel bulkhead half-rusted-away from the water they had found dripping through the bunker when they arrived. The only other movement Avery saw were the occasional scurrying rats, darting out of sight as she made her way past their hiding spots.

Activity echoed somewhere ahead of her, the sound of many voices and machines and something even stranger. Avery approached with confident professionalism, something she had learned in her decade of service.

Men waited at a blast door up ahead, men with plain uniforms and very large guns. Neither one had name-patches, unit insignia, or anything else that might hint at what branch they had come from. “ID.” The taller of the two, with arms as thick as her neck and short black hair, lowered his weapon and extended one hand.

Avery stopped, though the crate she carried on its steel roller kept rocking back and forth under internal pressure. The box itself was made from near-solid quarter inch steel, except for a locking mechanism and some air holes. It was starting to deform from internal force, buckling along one of the welds. It was a good thing she was almost there.

Avery removed a plastic card from her pocket. The guard took it and started fumbling with a reader he had been carrying.

The other one, with slightly longer blond hair and a slightly more human build, leaned a little closer to try and peer into the crate. The holes were all too small to show him much, by design. “You people must have a hell of a time catching those things.”

She shrugged. “It gets easier.” Was the other guard purposefully fumbling with the scanner so his companion could get a longer look? Eventually she heard the unmistakable tone of the portable scanner as it approved her ID.

The other guard handed it back, even as the huge door unlocked. His companion began the tedious job of drawing it open, old steel creaking and shuddering under the strain. “Welcome back, Agent Avery.” He saluted.

She straightened, returned the salute, then continued pushing. The crate wasn’t shaking nearly as much as it had been earlier—maybe its occupant was finally exhausting his inhuman stamina and wouldn’t give her any more trouble through the rest of the night. She could hope, anyway.

The transition from ruined test bunker to active laboratory came instantly, with swept floors, bright lights, and new furniture. There were armed guards in every room, standing alert with high-powered taser rifles instead of conventional weapons.

The time each new live subject was a fascinating curiosity to be studied (sometimes dissected) was long gone. Whatever could be safely learned from those who had succumbed to the infection had all been learned by now. She could’ve passed off her capture to an orderly, as most of her fellow agents did.

Instead, Avery checked out a protective mask, which she strapped on over glasses and face as she continued rolling her cargo through to containment. The mask did no more to filter the air than civilian-grade surgical masks, though that was not its main function. Instead of showing her the real world, the facility around her was represented with a close visual approximation. Furniture and other objects (such as her cart) were also represented there, while people were no more than reddish blobs that warned her not to collide with them.

Thousands and thousands of cells had been built into a cavern large and deep enough to have once contained nuclear tests. Despite the vastness of the space, each cell was barely large enough for its occupant, and many produced foul smells indicative of no recent cleanings. Yet to her eyes she passed only walls with a slightly different pattern, without having to see the occupants inside. The mask covered her ears as well, though not well enough to block out some of the noise.

Instead of the catcalls or anger she might’ve expected in a prison for humans, the containment facility held only sounds of misery. What little she heard sounded so pathetic, so helpless, that it tore her up each and every time she came here. Sixteen of those voices are here because of you.

Eventually she found the waiting cell, about halfway to the end. A large apparatus had been affixed to the front in place of the thick resin that served as a cell door to the occupied sections. It was perhaps the size of a small car, and made of alloys far sturdier than steel. The pushcart’s clips attached automatically, and a few more gentle nudges caused it to attach to the crate as well. The sound of rushing air heralded the crate opening, followed by clicking as the internal restraints were loosened.

Even by the standards of the most dutiful agents, Avery was done. Yet she insisted on one final procedure, one entirely her own. Indeed, removing the mask while in containment was a violation of protocol that would have put any of its wardens under immediate investigation. She was no warden.

As she lifted her mask, Avery was assaulted by the familiar barrage of sensations. Wails, moans, and despairing cries echoed all around the vast space. Barnyard was the least offensive odor that she detected, no longer contained by the mask. Even the worst of the smells couldn’t prepare an observer for what she saw.

They came in every color, more vivid than ever van Gogh had painted. Where her mask represented them only as gray blobs, her real eyes gave her no such mercy. Metal ground mechanically as the apparatus pulled in the containment crate, then dumped its occupant into the cage. It pulled the proper door into place even as it ground sideways along its track to the next one, giving Avery an unobstructed view of her “rescue.”

He looked almost like a horse, if a horse was scaled down smaller than most dogs. No horse ever lived with a coat as orange as this one, or with bright red stripes in its violet mane. None ever lived with a tattoo-like marking of a controller on either flank. Of course, the worst part was the eyes. Despite a much reduced size, there was apparently no reduction in intelligence. Avery’s job would have been far easier if she was just capturing dangerous animals for the pound.

This one had been a fighter. His eyes were a little glazed from the nitrous oxide that had been blasted at him during the opening procedure. Yet somehow he managed to stand anyway, and face her through the foot-thick acrylic. “Celestia will come for me.” His voice was higher than an average human’s, though not as high as her own.

“You stay here until we find a cure,” Avery met his eyes for a solid second, before fumbling with her mask again. “Then you can go back to your life.”

“This doesn’t seem like a very nice hospital,” the little horse said. She ignored him, replacing the mask and turning away again. Her duty was done. If these poor souls weren’t going to get a trial, then the least she could do was give them their sentence in person. It only seemed fair.

She expected to be back out within the hour and on a plane to the next contamination site by nightfall. What she didn’t expect was the gentle tapping of someone’s hand as she finished filling out her paperwork.

Avery looked up and found the site director standing beside her. The man was more than double her age, though she almost couldn’t tell from looking at him. His hair had a little gray, but that had been there the day she had seen him lecture in the academy ten years ago. Agents joked that Director Lee was too tough for age to sneak up on him. Any attempt time made to weaken him had been met only with laughter.

“Welcome back, Avery.” He was the only one in uniform, suit precise enough that it might have been ironed twenty minutes ago for as sharp as it looked. It was matched by similar sharpness in his face. He had a salt-and-pepper beard, and smelled a little of chemical sterilizer. A likely symptom of too much time spent in the lab. “I see you’ve brought back another patient without injury.”

Things were generally informal with the site director. He wasn’t her direct superior after all, only someone with which she frequently interacted. There was no need to waste time with petty formality where their organization was concerned. “We’re developing new techniques,” she answered, glancing uneasily around the shared office space. She discovered as she did that the pair of scientists eating lunch in one corner had gone, along with the guards. If Lee had cleared the room, he meant to talk. “I didn’t even have to touch the last one. Far more effective than a physical confrontation.”

“I’m very glad.” He pulled a chair from the table next to hers and slid it nearby, seating himself. He set a tablet down on the table’s surface beside him as he did, though Avery didn’t so much as glance at it. “Six months ago and we were lucky to get a few refrigerated… pieces back from what you had to leave. I can’t say I never felt we might be doing a poor job protecting the American people when we could only study and incinerate the infected.”

Avery shivered, remembering the aftermath of those initial encounters. Her organization had lost a third of its field agents during that time, either to violent injury or… worse. “The little purge was harder on us than it was on them,” she replied, her voice quiet. “You can’t spend six years training someone who won’t survive six months in the field. It wasn’t sustainable. That’s why new strategies are so important. So far as I know, Colorado Springs is the first time we’ve had a better than fifty percent containment rate. We still have a lot of learning to do if we’re going to keep this from spreading.”

Lee looked grim. “What happens when we get a breach in India, or the Philippines, or anywhere else with a high population and no strong national defense?”

There was a brief silence. Avery didn’t return to her form, though she was almost done and was very eager to get out of the Containment Center. Even if it might mean flying off to some unknown location, to face death all over again. “I think that’s a question above my pay grade, sir. Maybe your boss has an answer to that.”

“I’m sure she does.” Eventually Lee slid the tablet across the table between them, clearing his throat. “Director Pierce asked me to give this to you.” He scanned one thumb on the reader, then pushed the tablet the rest of the way over to her. Government logos filled the screen, along with a prompt to scan her own finger. She did, and immediately the screen filled with briefing information. She read quickly, committing each screen to memory.

Her heart sank. “Why is it always the college towns?” She never would’ve dared be so frank with her own commanding officer, but Lee was not. “I know it’s a tragedy no matter who they target… our citizens are important no matter who they are… but one of these days couldn’t they go after a prison or something?”

Lee shook his head wistfully. “It’s a matter of demographics, Agent. So long as our enemy restrict themselves based on the interests of their victims, every attack is going to start around young people.”

“You don’t think…” She lowered her voice a little; after all, Avery knew full well she was treading into dangerous territory. Even thinking about extranormal events could be hostile to the mind, which was why they went to such lengths. “Maybe it isn’t a causal link? Sometimes it feels like we’re coming at this backwards. They aren’t targeting people to contaminate, they’re going after the ones that already are.”

Lee stiffened. “It’s been explored. About a year ago. We used a representative sample, and only 1% later developed signs of degradation. Not significantly greater than the population as a whole.” He sighed. “Whatever might be said of our understanding, we can be confident exposure to existing anomalies is the most likely mechanism of transmission. That’s why us here in Containment are very eager for you agents to track down where this whole mess is coming from. We can only build so many cells before we run out of space.”

“I’m not part of that conversation.” Avery rose, taking the pad under one arm, and gathering up the finished paperwork. “Talk to Director Pierce about it. I mostly just save kids.” Well, I try to save them. I don’t always succeed. She had only failed once on her last mission, when a terrified boy was snatched away from her near-rescue only feet from the admin building. There was no telling what had happened to him—there were far too many others for any of them to laser-focus on a single individual. She still wondered what the enemy did with the people they stole, wondered what their lives might be like. So far as she knew, in the year since the first incursion, not a single one had ever been recovered. God rest their souls. “If there’s nothing else, Lee, I suppose I have a plane to catch.”

“No.” He rose as well, and saluted. She returned the gesture. “Keep doing good work, Avery. You’ve already saved more lives than most of us. See if you can save a few more.”

Chapter 35

Jacob heard the sirens. He jerked upright, away from Katie and into a proper sitting position. He might've spun flailing from the edge of the roof, were it not for the little pegasus, who caught him with concern. "What's that?"

It didn't really surprise him Katie didn't recognize the sound. She had never been very concerned with anything outside of weather. "It means we're under attack. There could be casualties. I need to get my things." He rose, forcing his mind to clear. Despite the blaring siren, he found it much easier to do than when he had come up here. "Meet me by the doors in a minute, yeah? I can't take passengers yet."

Katie frowned, her wings spreading. She nodded. "Sure."

Jacob pictured the barracks, saw his bed and the locker he had left open that morning. He smelled the sweat of too many bodies in too small a space, the plain concrete floor. Then he stepped. Magic flashed around him, motion blurring all around him as he zipped across the most direct line between the room and the floor. Air exploded as he emerged, throwing the blankets from his cot and scattering paper from his desk.

The room was empty—even Eric was out and working somewhere, and Jackie was on assignment with Sunset and Harley. There was no need to explain himself as he dug into the dresser, searching for his vest. It hung exactly where he left it, brilliant white except for the red cross on either side. The vest was made for a pony, and so the fit was wrong—fortunately, the spindly human build of his body was actually an advantage, letting the vest sit around his arms without restricting his movement.

The red satchel resting under the bed came next, though the weight was a little hard on his shoulders. Ponies, even unicorns, were better at carrying loads than humans were, and so he couldn't carry the satchel all the time without straining his shoulders.

Jacob now had nearly six on-and-off months of pony medical training. How he had never thought to explore that path in his previous life he didn't know, but it was getting easier the more he learned. He probably knew as much as a human EMT—not enough for anything lasting, but better than just crossing his fingers and praying the magic would do what he wanted it to.

He didn't teleport back out of the barracks, though he could have. He would need every drop of magic for whatever waited.

Katie was waiting for him just outside, standing still in the sea of ponies rushing back and forth. Even as Jacob emerged he felt the ground shake under his hooves, and had to stop to catch his balance before he could keep running. He didn't fall, as he might've done a few weeks earlier. What could shake the whole cave like that?

Katie gestured urgently for him as he made his way over, letting the waves of ponies part around him. How much longer will I be taller than most everyone else? "Did you hear what's going on?"

She nodded. "Some kind of… creature. It broke in near the place they're building houses, rampaging."

Jacob gritted his teeth. "I guess they're trying to relocate ponies to the other side of the cave."

She nodded. "I pretended to leave for the guards, but came right back when I heard you coming up the stairs.

"Heard me?" Jacob blushed. "How could you…"

She grinned. "You're the only one lumbering around on just two hooves. It's easy."

"Right." He sighed. "You probably shouldn't come anyway, now that I think about it. I'm sure it's dangerous."

"Didn't I tell you about how my big sis and I were superheroes for a few months?" She spread her wings, glaring at him. "Sounds like maybe they need superheroes."

He sighed, but didn't argue. Jacob didn't know the first thing about fighting dangerous things. If Katie did, well…

They ran. Technically it was only Jacob who did the running, while Katie flew along behind him, apparently unarmed. They ran against the flow of traffic, as hundreds of ponies ran in a panic away from the direction of… something.

It was loud, whatever it was. The whole cave shook, and occasionally little bits of rock would tumble down from far above them as deadly rain. If Diamond Dogs had really dug this cavern, then they had done fantastic work, because very little of what fell was big enough to seriously hurt a pony.

Nopony tried to stop him, not with the obvious medical insignia on his vest. By the time they made it, the battle was over.

Half the apartment blocks had been crushed to rubble, and the gentle hilly slopes had been ripped up by incredible force.

There were four obvious bodies, though only one of them was flesh. Guards and medical ponies swarmed over the site, keeping back onlookers with stern looks and the butts of spears.

They let Jacob pass inside the line without a word, and he found his way to Imperium's lead doctor. Bonemender was directing several of his assistants as they erected a medical tent, which was already surrounded by the injured. He waved to Katie, hoping she would find her own way to be helpful, then hurried inside.

"Oh good, Lifeline." The medical unicorn wore a white coat and a pair of cracked glasses. All the medical ponies used that same nickname, finding it much easier than calling him by his real name. "Mostly minor compression injuries. Broken bones, that sort of thing, you're not ready." He gestured with one hoof off in the other direction, near what looked like a gigantic, deformed pony statue, crushed and ruined. He wouldn't have known what he was looking at if he hadn't watched Danni practice a week or so ago. "We only have one pony in critical condition—Earthbreaker pilot. See if you can save her—Celestia knows I couldn't."

He nodded, running off in the indicated direction. The second statue was a little further off from the first, and looked far worse. There was a crew of guards waiting around it, with a body-bag already between them. They looked sick. "What happened?"

The ruin of the Earthbreaker armor towered above him, even standing on two legs. The torso seemed obviously cracked down the center, much of it in ruins. It had fallen back open on its own, like two halves of a split shell. Only one of the guards had the stomach to speak. "Lilly. She should be dead already, but… still moving. I don't think there's anything you can do, Doctor…"

"Lifeline." He sloughed the satchel off his shoulders, and made to climb the slope of gravel and broken stone leading to the opening. He hadn't been allowed to use his mundane medical abilities, or his trained magic. But the magic of a Cutie Mark… no training was required for that.

Jacob's stomach twisted as he saw the ruin waiting inside the shell. Blood coated every surface, and numerous bones were exposed. It was almost worse than what he had seen of Elise, after her fall from altitude. Almost.

Jacob wasn't overwhelmed as he had been in the past, either by the blood or the pain. He had seen enough now in the war with humanity that it wouldn't break his concentration.

There was plenty of blood, no need to draw any from the injured pony. He ran his palm along the sharpest bit of bare rock he could find, drawing a few drops from the scarred flesh there. If he weren't already shrinking into a pony, his hand would be in very poor shape after a few years. It didn't matter now though, not when he would only have hands for a few more months at most.

There was nothing routine about the way he healed, even if the process had become familiar. Each and every life he saved was a new struggle, a contest of wills between himself and the mysterious something that dragged away the dead and dying.

You aren't going to rob me again. You wouldn't do that.

"I would," he muttered back, advancing into the rock. He had to hold onto the rock with both hands, bracing his hooves against the rough surface. He didn't dare move what was left of Lilly. It seemed as though she had been crushed within her armor—hadn't Danni said that wasn't possible?

The spell wove around him, magic filling the space and setting the stone aglow. Without really meaning to, he was pushing the ruined armor aside, giving himself more empty space to work with. The rest of the world faded away—the crowd of first responders, the guards watching from the widening opening. All were mere noise now, outside his perception.

All creation is balanced. Life cannot be given without being taken elsewhere.

Jacob ignored the thought, or voice, or whatever it was. It came to him whenever he tried to save someone who probably should've died. Only Lilly's earth pony magic had kept her around this long, just like with Elise. Just as with the traitor, it would probably be better for her if he did let her die. What kind of agony was she feeling now? He was about to find out.

Jacob had been stretched and expanded by many spells and much practice, so a single healing didn't incapacitate him for weeks as it had in the past. A full ten minutes passed in the shelter of that rock, each new word helping the destroyed earth pony to regenerate a little more of her broken flesh.

Eventually he stumbled from the opening, gesturing over his shoulder. He could barely stand up straight, but that seemed quite an improvement over the unconsciousness that had swallowed him the last time he tried a healing like this. "The pilot…" He gestured to the guards, who just stared at him. "She still needs care. Might be weeks before she can walk again on those legs…" After trying to heal so many pony legs, Jacob had a much better idea why farmers had just shot horses who broke a leg.

"You're delirious from magic," the lead guard said. "Spellburn. She can't be alive."

Jacob ignored him, gesturing over his shoulder again. "Be extremely gentle. She's holding together about as well as a hunk of rotten fruit."

One of the other guards slipped past him, and exclaimed, "He's right, sir! She's together again! The bits are still everywhere… Celestia, how is this possible?"

"I don't know." He dragged his hooves along as he made his way back to the tent. "I've never met her."

Bonemender found him as he slunk into the tent, eyes expectant. "Well?"

Jacob nodded. "Hardest since I got here. You should probably take a look at her, though."

Bonemender looked awed. "Be careful with that gift, colt." He rested a hoof briefly on his side, looking up seriously at him. "I've seen the like before. Ponies like you burn themselves out too soon."

"I won't." He looked around the medical tent. In the time since he had left, two rows of cots had been set up, with medical ponies tending to the most severely injured. "Where's the other pilot?"

Bonemender pointed at the cot on the end. He saw Eric before he recognized the pony, perched precariously on a stool and watching the bed with concern. Jacob made his way over too, and he only limped a little. He stopped by the edge of the cot. "How's the other hero?"

"She killed the dragon herself," Eric muttered, dumbfounded. "Everypony's talking about it. That's why one of the stone things looks like a person and not a pony."

"Should've… done more…" Danni whimpered from the bed. She was covered in numerous lengths of bandage, but none of the injuries looked severe. Little cuts and scrapes were to be expected from anyone who spent too much time around Earthbreaker armor, particularly if they drained their magic in one. "Lilly… she died because of me…"

Jacob pulled over another stool and sat down himself. Ordinarily he would've left it for someone else, but just now he was sure his legs would give out. "If you mean the other pilot, she's alive. As alive as anyone crushed into a pancake could be expected to be, anyway."

Danielle's eyes jerked open, fixing on him. "Your work?"

He nodded. "It's my special talent. Personally, I'd feel better if I never got the chance to use it. Maybe when the war ends, I'll never use it again."

The pony started to cry. She reached out with a feeble hoof, and Jacob took it. "Thanks. Sheltered Lilly was a good pony—she didn't deserve to die because her partner didn't know how to fight."

"Her partner shouldn't have been expected to defend Imperium at all yet," Eric muttered, annoyed.

Danni glared up at him. "Don't you dare, Eric. The guards tried to defend us! Didn't you notice all the bodies? There had to be twenty dead out there!"

"I wasn't criticizing them…" He sunk a little lower in his seat, covering himself with his wings. "Where the hell was Sunset?"

Jacob shrugged. "An important mission. Nopony will say where, but it's apparently a big deal. Over fifty ponies are up there right now, working on it. The best ones in Imperium."

Eric grunted. "I hope she blows the hell out of whoever sent that dragon-thing."

Jacob shook his head. "We know that isn't what they're up to. You saw the scientists same as I did, Eric. I don't think they're going to 'blow up' anyone."

Jacob stayed to help around the medical tent, though he wasn't trusted to do anything more than act as a nurse. That was just fine with Jacob, considering how worn he already felt. It was too much effort even to levitate small objects after helping Lilly.

A few hours went by, and Jacob was eventually relieved. By the time he made his way out of the tent, the stone corpses and the organic one had all been cleared away, one burned while the others had been dragged away by earth-pony strength. There was a wagon waiting for him and the other doctors back to the capitol building.

He found their little barracks was abuzz with activity when he arrived. Jackie and Harley had returned, and both looked as worn as he felt.

"You've got to hear this!" Katie pulled over a chair for him, and he dropped into it. Danielle and Eric were still missing, but the rest of their group was there.

He sat down. "Must have been something important, if it took our only princess away."

Katie wrinkled her nose at him. "You smell like a hospital."

"Yeah." He looked past her. "What news from the real world, Jackie?"

Jackie herself seemed too dazed to speak. Harley did instead. "We've been flying all over the place, distributing canisters of"—she gestured vaguely—"some sort of chemical. We've been spending the last few days with some of the nastiest people you could imagine."

"Was it the stuff they've been growing down in the lab?"

Harley nodded again. "A bioweapon."

"God." Jackie slumped, her head in her hands. "It's happening right now! They're… setting it off. We gave away so much of it…"

Harley wrapped one arm around Jackie, comforting her. "It's alright, Squeak. Nobody's gonna get hurt. That isn't what it does."

Jackie didn't answer, only curling up further.

"What does it do?" Stalwart asked. "I can hardly believe a princess would resort to blatant acts of terror to get our way, but…"

Harley kept holding onto Jackie, letting her rest in her lap. That seemed to bring some small comfort to the half-batpony, who stopped shaking after a little while. She still didn't speak, though. "She didn't give us the specifics. Just that it's a contagious way to strip away the human illusion spell. It's supposed to only take a few minutes."

"Damn." Jacob rose to his hooves, tense. "Did Sunset come back with you?"

Jackie nodded. "Upstairs… recording studio…"

"I'm going to have a word with her." He turned and hurried from the room, hands clenching into fists.

Fighting for their survival was one thing. Jacob accepted that as a necessity the other side has visited on them. Just today ponies had died in the war. That didn't mean it was okay to target regular people who didn't even know they existed.

It wasn't right.