Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Rating: teen
Tags: Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Alternate Universe, Original Character, Comedy, Adventure, Crossover, Human, Main 6, Cheerilee
Length: 284016

Not every human in equestria gets turned into a pony.

An aspiring rationalist gets punted into Equestria - and instead of being turned into a cool griffon, or powerful dragon, or even a standard pony... discovers he is now a milk-cow, part of the herd.

Part of the Chess Game of the Gods crossover.

Published 2012-06-21 01:24:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-10-25 00:23:47 UTC

Introspections

I had all four legs tucked underneath me, and looked out the window, watching the scenery go by, and looking at my reflection. Or trying to, at least. My eyesight was no better, and possibly worse, than it had been when I'd been human - somewhere north of 600/20. Anything more than fifteen, twenty centimetres from my eyes started getting blurry - and even if I knew how to read Equestrian ideographs, I couldn't tell them apart even on the train station's big signs. I hoped it was just a matter of my eye's lenses, which could be fixed with glasses - and that it wasn't something more fundamental, such as my brain's optic centre no longer having the ability to resolve fine visual detail.

Even though I still thought of myself as me, changes to my brain were far from being impossible. I was pretty sure that my head wasn't shaped anywhere near a human's - the horns alone would do that. But as further proof - there was my tail. I turned my head to look back along my body, and swung my new appendage left and right a few times. I could feel it just fine, and could move it - so the sensory and motor homunculi in my brain had to have been tweaked to do that. What other changes might have been made to my mind... were disturbing to think about.

And that was only the start of the issues I had to think of. I was - or had been - an atheist, for the simple reason that I'd investigated the various religions, and hadn't found a single piece of evidence that anything supernatural at all existed, let alone any given faith's particular version of it. I tried to apply the same skills of rationality and critical thinking to that area as to any other - and so I'd worked out some pieces of evidence which would convince me that I was very likely wrong about nothing supernatural existing. One of my favorite examples went along the lines that many religions claimed that it was possible to heal injury and disease; but there were also many people who would cheerfully or unwittingly claim something was such a healing which wasn't. So I would want to see something fairly definitive, such as a limb being regrown; and I would want to experience it directly, to avoid all those potentially misled or misleading middlemen. And since I didn't want to have one of my own limbs hacked off just to see whether or not someone could miraculously grow it back... I proposed that if I ever grew a nice, long tail, I would be entirely willing to reconsider my position on the matter.

My tail wasn't exactly long, but it was as firmly there as the rest of me.

I waved it back and forth again, and as it brushed against my hind end... I might as well face up to another aspect of my change. I was about as female as it was possible to be - the rather large, fleshy protuberence hanging between my hindlegs being about as un-male an organ as existed. I could get raped. I could get pregnant. I could die of pregnancy-related complications. Not to mention I could still catch rather embarrassing STDs. So if I really did want to keep on working on my plan to live forever, with minimal risk... I was going to have to stay chaste. (Or was that celibate? I always got the two mixed up.) And to make sure that I avoided impaired judgment and reduced inhibitations which might lead me to break that - I'd have to stick to being a teetotaler, with no alcohol, drugs, or other intoxicants.

And all of that was besides the point, if I didn't figure out some rather important basic aspects about reality. There seemed to be four main possibilities. In decreasing order of how probable I thought they were:

One, that my memories of being a human were true, and my present experience of being a cow wasn't. Dream, hallucination, coma-induced nightmare, what-have-you.

Two, my memories of humanity were false, and my experience of a cow's life was true. That I'd been bonked on the head or something a couple of days ago, and got some wires crossed. This was the option I'd described to Twilight Sparkle, without getting into too much detail about what my jiggered memories actually consisted of.

Three, that both my memories and my current experience were false. Call this the Matrix option - maybe some hacker had fiddled with a few entries in a database, and accidentally swapped my consciousness from one illusionary world to another.

And four... that both memories and experience were true. That I really had been a human, and really was now a cow.

Now that I was finally looking at all of these head-on... did they do me any good? What predictions did any of them make about experiences I could anticipate, and how did those predictions differ from each other? What tests could I do to tell which, if any, were actually true?

The dream option was pretty useless for prediction. Any dream could be entirely consistent with any given set of rules of reality; if this option was what was really going on, there didn't seem any way to tell. Might as well table this one for the duration, then. Similarly, the Matrix option didn't really give me any handles to work with - the rules of reality might stay the same, or they might change, or who-knows-what could happen. Stick this one on the backburner, too.

But the other two... those two options did differ in one important aspect. If my memories of life as a human were the result of brain malfunction, then it seemed likely that putting those memories to the test would show them to be a confused, mis-matched jumble, which would fail rather firmly if I tried to use them to predict how reality would unfold. But if those memories were true - then I should be able to come up with a test, something which the local population wouldn't expect would work, but which my memories said should - and if it did work... well, that would be the first step in a very long road - but, hopefully, one which provided the rewards of understanding how things worked well enough to be able to nudge events to my desired outcome.

So what I needed most... was some test - something relatively quick and easy to perform, something within the available technology, something I'd be able to convince the Princesses to let me try - and see whether I had any idea at all about how this universe worked, or if I was a mad cow who should be sent somewhere I wouldn't pose a danger to others.

As the train slowed and the conductor called out my stop, I thought about the various episodes I'd seen of a cartoon which described a world very similar to the one I now found myself in, and about various small details... and as I stepped onto the platform, thought of at least a couple of experiments which just might fit the bill. Now, if only I could convince at least one of the local god-queens that it would be worth letting me try one...

Patronized or Patronage?

"Your Highness." I imitated the bowing position I had seen ponies take in front of Princess Celestia - and promptly fell flat on my side. I was a fairly substantial mass of beef - even that short a fall hurt. Fortunately, one advantage of being surrounded by a large number of guards was that they could spare a few to help me get back on my hooves. One even put my hat back on for me, and I muttered a quick thanks to all involved.

Once the floor show was over, the Princess said, "My faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, has reported that you believe you can gain my interest in thirty seconds."

"It's fairly simple, Your Highness. Even if there is only a one in one thousand chance that I am right, and a further one in one thousand chance that I can help - there are millions of ponies, cows, and other intelligent beings in Equestria whose lives could be at risk. And, if I am wrong, the cost of letting me find out should be quite small."

She looked tired - which, on a being who, depended on who you asked, raised the sun, or was the sun, or was able to fraudulently convince a whole kingdom she had a connection to the sun, was very much not the effect I was trying to achieve. "How small?", she gently inquired.

"A grad student." A brief pause, and she looked... curious? It was better than a moment ago, at least. I added, "Not permanently - I could just use some hooves, or a horn, that can move things better than I can. And can guide me through your higher educational system to find what I am looking for."

We were pushing the half-minute mark, but the alicorn mare didn't seem in any rush to have me kicked out. "What are you looking for?"

"A limit to local knowledge - and to see if my strange memories tell the truth about things nopony knows."

"And if they do not?"

"If I'm wrong, nothing happens. I go to a mental hospital - peacefully, quietly. I'll enjoy it. But if I'm right, and my memories do prove to contain some truth, both about dangers and how we can stop this thing... Your Highness, you will have saved the lives of millions of your little ponies."

She smiled down at me. "Then, my dear, it seems you have work to do."

I looked down at the grey-bodied, white-mained, blue-eyed unicorn, and she looked back up at me. "I'm Micro Scope," she introduced herself, and a quick glance down her flank showed that her cutie mark matched her name. "And I have no idea what's going on, other than that I'm supposed to help you. Nobody's even told me your name yet."

"I'd love to help with that - but I'm not sure I know it, myself."

"If this is a secret security thing, I can live with that. Would be helpful to have something to call you, though, like to catch your attention if there's a fire or to tell you to duck."

I tried to shrug, which ended up being kind of a bob of my head. "I've been called 'My Dear' and 'Miss' a lot, lately."

"'Miss' isn't a name. 'Missy' could be one."

"Wouldn't have been my first choice... but I suppose I can live with it."

"Great! With that out of the way - what can I do for you, Missy?"

"That's a very good question, Micro. I could use a pair of hooves and a guide, at least. I don't know you well enough to know if there's more you can do for me."

She started, "I graduated from-"

I lifted a hoof, interrupting her. "Credentials are only useful if I know and trust whoever gave them to you - and that they're relevant to what I can use. Unfortunately, the sort of thinking which could actually help me is taught rarely-to-never, as far as I can recall."

She smiled. "Try me."

I considered giving her a simple quiz on practical Bayesian probability theory - but decided it might be worth really testing how she thought. "Very well. We shall play the 2-4-6 game. I have a rule which fits some triplets of numbers, but not others. 2, 4, 6 is a triplet that fits the rule. If you would like, I can go get somepony to write down the rule so you know I'm not changing it."

"Don't worry about it."

"Alright. Now, you give me triplets of numbers, and I say 'yes' if they fit the rule, and 'no' if they don't. When you've given my as many triplets as you feel you need to, you stop and guess the rule, and I tell you if you're right or wrong. Have you got all that?"

"Seems easy enough."

"Okay, go for it."

"4-6-8," said Micro.

"Yes," I said.

"10-12-14."

"Yes."

"1-3-5."

"Yes."

"Minus 3, minus 1, plus 1."

"Yes."

"I've got the rule," she said triumphantly.

I held up a hoof. "Before you guess, I'm going to tell you something else about this game. If memory serves, even among people with the most advanced degrees, only a fifth get it right."

She frowned, then brightened again, apparently thinking of something.

"2-5-8!"

"Yes."

"10-20-30!"

"Yes."

"I've got it! First I thought they had to go up by two each time - but now I know the rule is they have to go up by the same amount each time, not just by two!"

"Is that your final answer?"

"Of course!" she instantly responded.

I sighed - I'd had hopes for her. "I'm sorry - the actual rule is: 'Three real numbers in increasing order, lowest to highest.'"

"But-!" She started. She frowned, said, "You-!", shook her head, then tried again. "That's really the rule you had in mind from the start?"

I nodded at her. "That's why I wanted it written down - but yes. Don't worry, I still need a guide and assistant - and perhaps you can show me you can be more useful in reality than in a game."

We were in a vaguely Roman-style bath somewhere in the palace, and I was surprised at how nice it felt to have my udder sponged down with a cool, damp cloth. I guessed that all those glands busy turning my body's resources into milk tended to get heated from their work, and tried not to think about the fact that I'd been, effectively, naked amongst a society of nudists for the past couple of days.

Micro and I were discussing the limits of Equestrian science, such as it was. I'd covered some of the basics of things I'd remembered from the show, confirming they knew about basic mechanical force and physics, and had moved to the next chapter in my mental textbook. I remembered from the episode where Twilight tried to figure out Pinkie Sense, and the party-pony had been hooked up to a gizmo with flashing lights and wires. "Moooving right along - 'scuse me - can you tell me what would happen if I took a jar of acid, put a copper strip in one side and a zinc strip to another, and ran wires from those strips into a jar of water?"

"You're talking about a battery, right?" I nodded, distracted by thinking about my unexpected vocal tic. I almost didn't notice as Micro's horn glowed, and the cloth she'd been using on her own hide shrank to a tenth of its dimensions, water squirting out of it, before it expanded again. As she went on about the dissociating water thing, I cleared my throat to interrupt her.

"Micro - I don't have very good eyes. Did you just wring out your towel?"

She smiled across at me. "In a way. My special talent is making things smaller. Would you like to see?"

I looked around, then just picked up my sponge, balancing it on my hoof. I gauged its weight, then nodded to her... and she looked at it, her horn glowing, and my sponge not only got a lot smaller, but also a light lighter. Water trickled down my hoof as she explained, "It's tricky, but I figured out how to shrink just the solid part without shrinking the water," and went on - but I'd closed my eyes and shuddered. Sure, I'd seen the episode with poison joke, where Applejack had turned into Apple-tini... but now that I thought about it, I realized that I'd been assuming the episodes broadcast in the human world were, at best, stories told by an unreliable narrator. But if objects really could have their mass changed...

"Are you alright?" Micro asked me, and when I opened my eyes, she looked concerned.

"Sorry. But what you just did - what you do on a regular basis, if that's your talent - that violates Conservation of Energy. That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signalling."

"... What?"

"Sending information into your past light-cone. Time travel. How can you do that?""

Micro's lips were twitching now. "Magic."

"Magic isn't enough to do that! You'd have to be a god!"

Micro blinked. "That's the first time I've ever been called that."

"And even 'magic' isn't a real answer. It's just a word with no moving parts - saying it's the answer doesn't let me make any predictions I couldn't before. It's like drawing a map, labeling a blank spot 'stuff', and trying to use that to navigate!"

From some things I learned later, I can reconstruct a conversation I wasn't a party to:

Princess Celestia said to Micro Scope, "She saw you shrink an object - and from that one fact, she deduced that time travel was possible?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

The Princess of the Sun looked to the Princess of the Moon, and the latter said, "We should have a longer talk with her, my sister!"

Celestia winced at the volume, but nodded in agreement.

"Please, do not worry about bowing," Princess Celestia said with a smile, as I was escorted into something much closer to a sitting room than the large audience chamber. She was curled up on a couch, and Princess Luna was standing by a window, looking out at the nighttime sky.

"Thank you, Your Highness." At her nod, I settled my bulk onto a cow-sized cushion. "I'm afraid that I haven't finished talking with the pony who's been helping me, let alone started the experiment yet."

"That's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"What else is there?"

"You."

I blinked. "What about me?"

"You have told many of my little ponies that you believe yourself to be insane - but Micro Scope tells me that you have a keen mind, and are well-versed in a number of topics - even if you are also woefully ignorant about others."

"That... seems to be true, Your Highness." I couldn't blame Micro for being a snitch - in fact, I'd pretty well expected that that was her main job, and helping me out was secondary to that.

"And so, whether you are insane or not, I would like to know more about you."

"I don't think I can honestly describe where I was more than a day or so ago, Your Highness."

"A few of my ponies are even now asking the herds near where you were found if anypony like you has gone missing, or been seen in passing."

"Thank you, Your Highness. Wherever I am from, I couldn't have traveled very far from a dairy without my udder getting over-full."

She gave me an odd look. "What do you mean? Is your back hurt, so that you cannot drink from yourself?"

I paused, blinking. I looked down along my flank, tried reaching my head... and, yes, I could stretch far enough for my mouth to reach my teats. I didn't do anything quite so crass in front of the local divine royalty - but it looked like if I had to, I could live without anyone else emptying my udder for me. It seemed that Daisy Jo and her herd hadn't been telling me quite the whole truth - or, maybe, they just didn't want to tell me anything that would encourage me to wander away from the herds - or, more charitably, maybe they hadn't thought of it. "Er, no, your highness. I just - well - didn't think of it."

The two Princesses looked at each other, then both looked at me. "I see," said Celestia. "Well, as you are now aware, it is not certain that you would have needed to be near a herd every day; if you came to Ponyville through the Everfree Forest, nopony would have seen you." I nodded, and she continued, "But to return to my point - I would still like to know more about you."

"What would you like to know?"

"To start with - what would you like to do with your life?"

"Ah, of course. Goals and means." And whether I posed any sort of threat to her, or her ponies, or Equestria. I wriggled a bit, settling into my cushion. "At the risk of needing to explain something, I'll try to summarize my thinking. Just about anything anypony wants to accomplish requires at least one thing to be true - for at least some intelligent beings to still be alive to see that accomplishment. I would like to live forever, or at least closer to that than I currently expect to; and I don't want to spend that time insane from loneliness, and to have good company, and to have people who can help me up when I fall, and to help me face the various dangers in the world... so my core ethical goal is to do whatever I can to maximize the chances of the long-term survival of sapience."

Both Princesses were looking at me as if I'd... shrunk a towel. Celestia opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "That is a ... surprisingly enlightened philosophy."

"For a cow?" I said, before I even thought of what a bad idea it was to ask that.

"For anypony." Luna came closer and settled on a chaise next to her sister, who continued, "And - have you given any thought about how you might go about doing that?"

I paused, then went ahead and asked, "Are you really asking, whether I plan on doing monstrous things?"

She smiled, and was that a twinkle in her eye? "If you like."

I nodded, then took a breath, working out how to phrase this. "I have made one serious oath which I consider to still be in effect. The reasoning behind it would take a while to describe, it uses certain complicated terms and assumptions... but to describe it in brief... I've promised to try to never start a fight, or steal, or use fraud, or use censorship, if I can help it; to try to repair any damage I do; if I don't agree with someone about whether I did do any harm, to find a neutral arbiter and abide by their decision; to work to clarify what sort of rules are involved; to act in the common defense of anypony who lives by similar principles; and more recently, I've added a clause to try to use the principle of proportional force, to minimize the overall harm done when I do try defending anypony."

The sisters turned from me to look at each other, and Luna said, "She is telling the truth as she understands it, Celly." They'd had a lie-detector on me? Well, there was another reason to avoid deliberate fraud, even aside from the standard ones about long-term rational self-interest. And if Luna was still using the Royal Canterlot Voice... did that mean that the episode with Nightmare Night hadn't happened yet? If it hadn't, did that mean it was going to happen, regardless of what I did?

As I was wondering just how much predestination I might be stuck with, Celestia was still smiling, and before I could come to any conclusions, she said to me, "Even if you are insane, then, as you said to my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, it seems to be a useful sort of insanity. You are welcome to stay as long as you like, and to seek what care or perform what studies you feel worthwhile. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us."

I may be as socially oblivious as a nerd can be, but I managed to detect the dismissal therein. "Thank you, Your Highnesses."

I spent the next few hours tossing and turning in my room, unable to fall alseep... until I sighed, gave up, and went in search of the royal dairy barn. As soon as I was settled between two other bovines, listening to their breathing and inhaling their combined scents, I immediately dropped into slumber.

Settling In

First thing next morning I went to see the vet. She wasn't actually called that, but she was a medic specializing in large non-pony animals, sentient and otherwise, and I didn't feel quite right thinking of her as a xenobiologist. And since Doctor Fluff called herself a vet, a vet she was.

She looked at my horns, checked my teeth, prodded my udder, did a few unmentionable things around back, tested my reflexes, and so on. All the while she kept up a constant chatter of near-nonsense that went in one ear and out the other, but was distracting and calming - probably the whole point.

When she was done, she told me I was a healthy heifer, that I'd never given birth (so at least I didn't have to worry that I'd left a calf behind somewhere), and that while naturally a cow didn't start giving milk until she was a mother, there were a fairly common set of spells for dairies - one to start milk, another to stop it, and some more complicated ones. Apparently I hadn't been taking proper care of myself the past few days; I was supposed to eat for six hours a day and chew cud for eight. My milk production was down because of that - with my breed, age, and health, I should be milked three times a day, producing six gallons, or fifty pounds, of milk daily. She mentioned that twelve pounds of milk makes one gallon of ice cream - so I tried thinking of my production as being 32 pints of ice cream per day... and it was still just very weird. Another detail I learned then was that I could keep track of my output as I was milked by counting - there were three hundred fifty squirts in a gallon.

When she was done she sent me along to an optometrist... and in less then an hour, I had myself a pair of glasses which improved my vision tremendously. It wasn't perfect - it seemed I was astigmatic, and it would take a while to make lenses for that - and there was still an odd optical effect on all the edges I looked at, but now I could actually make out faces instead of blurs of colour. The frames were thick and clunky, but fairly strong - I might even be able to put them on and take them off with my own hooves.

With all that out of the way, it was time for my daily milking - well, according to Doctor Fluff, my first milking of the day. I checked in at the royal dairy, and got a personal account set up. On Earth, milk cost about a dollar per litre at the store, and if I was going to be making 6 gallons a day, that was around the equivalent of twenty-five dollars a day, which gave me a rough comparison for how much a bit was worth.

I tried not to think about the fact that this very evening, the Princesses might be eating 'my' cheesecake.

I tried waiting patiently, chewing cud, silently counting squirts, and listening to the gossip of two cows who were in at the same time I was. They were gossiping, mostly about a new bull one had met who wore a nose-ring, and who'd worked in a bullfighting ring and at a rodeo - apparently, all very scandalous behaviours.

I tried not to think about the fact that the cow to my left, who was brown, seemed to be producing chocolate milk.

Finally, now that my time seemed to be my own - at least until the next time I needed to get emptied - I went in search of Micro Scope.

"So if we want to measure the speed of light accurately, we'd not only need as accurate a survey as possible between the mountain-tops, but also as accurate a clock as possible, to determine how fast the disc is spinning." Sure, it was a nineteenth-century experiment, and with trains and occasional blinkenlights, Equestria could be described as having nineteeth-century technology... but with magic thrown into the mix, it was hard to match their development with a precise Earthly parallel. I continued, "So it can be done - but it would take the two of us at least a few days to put together. Let's call that a backup plan."

"You have something easier in mind?"

"I do - and, in fact, your cutie mark is what made me think of it. I'd like to take a look at some very small objects in water, such as pollen grains that give off dust, on the order of three ten-thousandth of an inch, under as powerful a magnification as we can manage. If we can see them, I believe I can make certain predictions about the overall statistics of their movements..."

I was stealing from the best - Einstein himself used this process to, eventually, show that Brownian motion was the result of atoms jostling the particles around, the size of those atoms, and that heat was kinetic motion of those atoms... and if the results were what I hoped, and if I could re-derive the same math, I should be able to prove that my memories contained useful details. And if I were proven wrong... well, I could always ask Doctor Fluff about asylums. Hadn't there been a pony in a straightjacket in a recent episode, when Rainbow Dash had been in a hospital?

That evening, after sunset and third milking, Princess Luna asked me to join her - not in Night Court, but in private again. Where I discovered a platter of various vegetarian foods, sweet tidbits - and, yes, cheesecake. Luna, naturally, chose to float a plate of the latter to herself, and ate forkfuls as we talked.

"I have learned of things which I have decided to impart personally to thou.

"Before you continue, Your Highness - may I ask a personal favour of you?"

"Thou may ask."

"I have developed a headache over the day. Would it be possible for you to not use the Royal Canterlot Voice this evening?"

"That- That is entirely reasonable."

"Thank you, Your Highness. Please, go on." I nibbled on a few of what appeared to be candied flowers.

"I have- I have been passed some of the reports from those ponies who are investigating thy appearance. The news is not good. There have been a number of disappearances of cattle along the boundaries of the Everfree Forest in recent years. Some match thy description. At least once, an entire herd vanished. While efforts have been made to search for and recover them, they have, generally, been concluded to be enslaved or - permanently missing."

"You mean deceased, don't you?"

"I do. I hope that this is not distressing to thou, but if thy memories contain a clue as to how you survived when others did not, or how thy escape was managed - then I assure thou, that nothing of thy actions would be held against thou."

"It's not - that is, my memories aren't about anything like that." I thought about telling her what I did remember - that I was from another world, where this one was nothing more than children's entertainment, her very voice used as a gag - and wondered whether that would alter her actions, causing her to do things other than what she'd been shown doing on the show - and if that would affect the connection between Equestria and Earth - and decided that the benefits were outweighed by the potential risks. At least for now. So I said, "I think it's in both of our best interests if I do not tell you much about them right now."

She tilted her head at me, and set down her empty plate. "Odd. Thou truly believes that."

"I do." My brow wrinkled. "And your horn was not glowing - you weren't casting a spell."

"Not of the unicorn sort, no. But thy kind has long been associated with my sphere - and while it shines on us both, that connection can be enhanced, in certain ways."

"Does that mean that I can also tell how truthful you are being?"

A flash of white teeth, a gleam of dark eyes. "Were I to try to deceive thou, while I am doing so... perhaps you could determine the means. Accurate memories or no, thou seem to be capable at solving problems."

I hazarded a guess, "You were watching the windmill test?"

"Merely the final portion. I still do not understand the point of it - any unicorn can create a brighter light, for longer, without requiring lodestones and wires in a complicated arrangement."

"Old saying: 'The wonder of the dancing bear is not how well it dances, but that it dances at all.' The point was not to create a practical light source - it was to see if any light at all could be made. Once the principle was proven to my satisfaction, there are all sorts of potential improvements - though I don't know if an air-pump designed to create soda-water can really create a sufficient vacuum for my purposes." I frowned. "And just because those improvements can be made... does not necessarily imply that they should be."

"Why not?"

I started to answer, stopped, frowned, and considered... and re-considered... and finally said, "I seem to be faced with a choice. On one hoof... Equestria is a society that has, if reports are accurate, existed for thousands of years, with one or two immortal alicorns guiding matters for the long-term. I'm reasonably sure that over the centuries, the two of you have learned a number of secrets which you hold tightly, rather than reveal them to everypony."

"That is a... reasonable conclusion," she said, hiding her mouth behind a cup of tea.

"On the other hoof... in order to achieve any of my significant goals, such as extending my lifespan, I need to learn all sorts of things - so many, that it would be impossible to learn them all in time if I had to research them myself. I need an entire community of ponies, cows, and other folk who are interested in searching for the truth, and who have a stable enough society to perform that search, without having to worry too much about being enslaved or eaten. And the side-effects of that knowledge... are very unpredictable. And whatever positive benefits of that knowledge - there will be negative costs, as well. Those costs may be minusucle compared to the benefits, but pretending they don't exist at all would be irresponsible."

I waved a hoof. "For example, instead of a windmill, I could use the spinning of a water-wheel; and more efficient water-wheels could be made by building a concrete dam, allowing for many more applications... but also carrying the risk that the dam would break, and the reservoir created by the dam would change the landscape - and if the system worked in one place, it could be applied in many others, multiplying the effects, both good and bad."

"If thou discovered thou did not like the bad effects, could thou not take the knowledge back into secrecy?"

"That's not-" I started, then paused. "I was about to say that that's not how knowledge works - but I'm not entirely sure that's true. Given the changes to a pony's mind that can be done with a 'want it need it' spell, or with love poison... then it's at least possible that the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle."

"Those are an... interesting selection of examples."

"If you say so. Right now I'm thinking of 'Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change' - and that I only have a few decades to try to arrange the necessary changes. But that presupposes the question - is finding out how to avoid death, for myself and anyone else who acquires the knowledge, worth the cost to society as a whole?"

"Did thou not previously state that the continuation of life as a whole was more important than any other consideration?"

"That sounds like something I'd have said. But I'm not sure that's the level of negative consequences involved - and there is another important detail I haven't even mentioned yet." I looked at her - really looked, at the four-legged, six-limbed creature, whose horn was glowing to telekinetically manipulate a teacup, and who at least plausibly was capable of manipulating entire celestial bodies. "Such as whether you and your sister will allow me to make the attempt in the first place; or if either of you believe that your own long-term goals would be better served by, say, putting me safely out to pasture somewhere, where I would live out the rest of my days doing nothing more than turning real estate into milk."

She didn't say anything to that, simply took another sip. Then she set the cup down, and looked at me - really looked, with the moon shining down through the windows on us both. "Thou seemst to enjoy puzzles. And thou hast claimed that shrinking means travel through time is a possibility." I blinked at the change in topic, but she was the celestial monarch, and entitled to her eccentricities; so I just nodded for her to continue. "Let us say that there is a spell, which can permit the caster to travel back to near where they had been standing a week before, for the span of a minute or two, before returning to the time from whence they came. The riddle is this: what is the best use that such a spell could be put to?"

"With that information - I'd say none at all; the danger of changing the past and erasing the future, replacing one set of people with a near-identical but very different set, or even worse, causing a paradox which means the entire universe disappears and never existed at all in the first place - far outweighs any possible benefit."

"Assume that that is not a danger - that what happens, happens."

"I would want to be very sure about that. Moreso than simply accepting even your word on it. But assuming that... then whatever benefits can be made, can be made greater by overcoming its limitations. Say, by casting the spell repeatedly, to travel back further."

"Say that any caster can only use it once in their lives."

She seemed to be getting awfully specific about the details of this spell, a fact which I filed away for later consideration. "Then set up a relay. One caster waits for a caster from the future to appear and deliver a message; and then they cast the spell themselves to go back further, to relay the message even further back - possibly all the way to the first pony who became part of the relay."

She had been lifting her cup to her lips, but it paused, half-way. "Go on."

"You would have to assume there would be the occasional interruption, so a lack of a message from the future doesn't necessarily imply a disaster - but if, say, you'd gotten a set of messages from the next year or so, and none from after... then it might be worthwhile to be a bit cautious about events immediately after the last message."

She was starting to give me a look, but I didn't notice at that point, as I cheerily went on. "Of course, it would also help if nobody else knew you were getting accurate messages from the future, so it would be worthwhile going to significant efforts to hide that. Partly, to emphasize that you consultat various oracles and prophets, whether they actually work or not, in order to offer some plausible explanation for actions you take which make the most sense if they are based on future knowledge. But also by concealing the existence of the spell itself, and its use - even from the ponies using it, if they can cast it without knowing its effects. For example, by hinting to them that they are part of a secret long-distance communications system. And whether or not they know the spell, the knowledge of what the messages they carry mean should be concealed from them. For example, the early selves of the ponies who are to be tasked with a message could be made to wear blindfolds and earplugs, so they neither see their future selves nor hear the message; and perhaps even hidden inside a box, so their future self does not see their past self. And the message itself could be encoded, such as by writing some books where a given set of numbers corresponds to a given meaning, and having the messengers memorize the numbers without knowing what those numbers mean. You could even-"

"STOP!"

My jaw closed with a clack of teeth - and I saw the glow of Luna's magic around it... and realized that she was now standing on all fours, with her wings flared, glaring down at me. She somehow both whispered and used the Royal Canterlot Voice at the same time. "This is not the time, nor the place, to speak of such things. Had I known what thy answer would be, I would never have posed the question. Thou are not to speak of any of our conversation - I must awaken my sister to consult with her."

I felt a tingle in my tongue, accompanied by a glow from inside my mouth - which, as I discovered, seemed to be a spell preventing me from talking at all, limited to the sounds a cow from Earth could make. Luna strode out the door, and at her words, a collection of guards came in to start staring at me.

Welp, I figured, I'd really stuck my hoof in it that time.

With nothing better to do, I started chewing my cud - and wondered if that was what I'd be doing for the rest of my life...

Layer Cake

Luna didn't come back for a while, and I'd had a long day, so I decided to get some sleep. I wasn't able to talk, but with a bit of hoof-pointing, pantomime, and in one case, just grabbing an amused guard's armour and dragging him into place, I was able to create enough of a 'herd' next to my cushion so that I actually could fall asleep.

I was woken up while the moon was close to the opposite horizon. The guards were extremely polite, but also insistent that I go with them. Even if I was able to resist them, I didn't have anyplace better to go at the moment, so I allowed myself to be led. Eventually, we made it into the basement, and arrived at a door that seemed no more interesting than any other door, and I was ushered within.

Plain the stone walls, bright the magical lights, glorious the two equine divinities. Once the door was closed, both their horns glowed, and they swept various magical energies across the walls, ceiling, floor, each other, and myself. Finally, they seemed satisfied, and Celestia nodded. "We should be able to talk reasonably freely," she told me, "without fear of being overheard."

"Mooooo?" I lowed.

Luna looked abashed, and her horn glowed for a moment, as did my tongue. I wiggled it a bit, then hazarded, "Myyes?". Not quite as clearly enunciated as I usually managed, but it was still speech.

Luna's brief embarrassment turned into a glower. "We are going to talk, now. Thou arrivest without a past, with strange knowledge, and a claim of insanity - and when presented with a tool, thy first thoughts are the use of code books and secrecy. Who art thou?"

My ears had flattened at the onslaught of the Royal Canterlot Voice. I saw a brief twinkle in the Sun Princess's eye - it seemed that Trollestia was still avoiding telling Luna that the R.C.V. was centuries out of fashion. Luna seemed annoyed with me, and telling her would likely make her moreso, so I didn't have anything to gain by mentioning the topic at this point. So I simply cleared my throat, and replied, "Your own lunar magic should have told you that I have been completely honest with you."

"Yes - but thou art keeping secrets from us!"

"Of course I am."

My agreement seemed to briefly derail her line of questioning, and Celestia stepped into the silence.

"Why?" she asked, calmly.

"Because I think it's in all our best interests to."

That seemed to give both of them pause. This deep underground, Luna's moon wasn't shining down on us, so I didn't know if she was still using her truth-sense on me - but even if that wasn't the means, it seemed very likely that the two of them would be using something with a similar effect.

Celestia finally spoke up, "We are the Princesses of Equestria. It is not your decision to make whether we should know something."

I snorted - a lot more impressively than I was used to. "Of course it is. I take responsibility for my own choices, and my own actions - and my own inactions - in all senses of the word."

"Then we seem to be at something of an impasse."

"Of course we're not. I'm sure you have all sorts of ways to get me to talk, if you wanted to use them."

Celestia's eyes gleamed as she said, "I suppose we could go next door, to where I keep all my torture equipment."

I gave another snort. "If you're the sort of monarch who would use torture, then it's even more important that I not tell you. Besides, even without all the ethical problems with that - there's the simple fact that torturing people for information just plumb doesn't work. The poor people who have to suffer such things will say anything to get the pain to stop, and the only way to confirm anything they say is by checking other sources - and if you've got access to those other sources, then you didn't need to use torture in the first place."

The two of them were looking at me oddly again. Luna said to Celestia, in what passed for a conversational tone, "She has thou there, sister." And then, in an actual whisper, "And is not next door where thou keepest thy 'exercising' equipment?"

Celestia scuffed one of her hooves on the floor and coughed. Then she focused back on me. "I find it... disturbing that you seem to be so well acquainted with how useful torture is."

I sighed. "If you're looking at it that way - you're probably going to become more disturbed before you become less."

She tilted her head, then offered, "I could offer you a million bits for your knowledge."

I blinked, and seriously considered that for a moment. "Assuming that we could work out the practical details... nnnno, I don't think that would be best. I don't think even that amount of mere cash would suffice to get me what I want - and if it can't do that, then it would probably be more useful directed to your various government expenses. Besides, if I accepted, you could offer me five bits, and we'd just be haggling."

Celestia tried another tack. "If you are truly trying to act in our best interests, then would you be willing to swear a personal oath of fealty to myself and my sister, to do as we command?"

I winced at that. I turned to Luna, and said, "Please forgive me this response, but - would it have been a good idea for me to swear such an oath to you, a thousand and one years ago?"

Luna looked pained, and looked away from us both, which was answer enough; and I gave the rest of my attention back to Celestia. "I am willing to swear an oath to abide by the ethical principles I believe in - and I already have. I could swear an oath to abide by principles I don't believe in... but since I don't believe in them, I would be swearing to do what I thought was evil - and I won't do that."

"You do realize that you are being a most frustrating cow, do you not?"

"There are worse things than a frustrated Princess."

"Then perhaps I should ask - under what circumstances would you tell us all that you know?"

I remained silent, thinking about the problem. Luna had recovered her composure, and was looking back at me... and that jogged my memory. "That depends on something I don't know. If I were to tell you, and you agreed that it would be better if I hadn't... is there some way to grant such a wish? Some sort of spell to erase a memory?"

Luna spoke up, "There are several such, of varying sorts. Some to cause permanent forgetfulness, some to cause it for a time, some to cause it until some exotic phrase calls the thought to be recalled once more."

I nodded. "Then if you are willing to promise to use such spells, on yourselves or each other or however it works, I would be willing to tell you much more than I am right now."

Celestia smiled. "That is a very fair condition, and I am quite willing to do so."

The two of them so promised, in a formal but private fashion I myself promised not to spread beyond them if I could help it.

I muttered to myself, "I should have taken the million bits, too," gaining a smile from them both, then started out, "If my memory is correct - and at this point, I believe it is - then as of a couple of days ago, I had been a male all my life..."

A number of hours later - interrupted mainly by their need to raise the sun and lower the moon on schedule - I had finished telling what I felt best to tell, conclusions had been drawn, a plan created... and the two Princesses fulfilled their promise, and wiped their own memories of nearly everything that we had said. They wrote notes to themselves about what they'd decided should happen next.

I walked out of that basement a free heifer - of sorts. I was now officially a government employee, tasked with finding better and more efficient ways to preserve foods, so that surpluses could be better stored in case of famines or other disaster. I was given some lab space in the palace's basement, and had an excuse to wander through Equestria to chase after unusual reports.

(As it happened, I actually knew of at least one such food-preservation method not in use in Equestria - though it would probably be a bad idea to actually pursue it. Irradiating food killed all pathogens, allowing sealed foods to be stored nearly indefinitely, didn't seriously degrade nutrients, and didn't actually make the food radioactive - but also required knowledge of radiation, and I was pretty sure that I didn't want to share Marie Curie's fate.)

If somebody thought I was being too much of a goody-goody, I could reluctantly admit that I had a more personal reason for the job - in addition to landing a big government contract, I was hoping to make an obscene amount of money by applying what I found commercially, as well. But that was just a minor secret. A bigger one was that the food-preservation job was mainly a cover; and that the real truth was that I was actually likely a traumatized, mildly insane survivor of a herd-abduction, and my real government job was looking into any such enslavements of Equestrian cattle - and of ponies, and of other creatures.

And that secret was, itself, hiding a deeper secret: one that the Princesses themselves had made themselves forget for at least weeks at a time. And this was that I had convinced them that it was worthwhile to search for some ethical means of achieving immortality, for myself and for their little ponies, if such could be found; and that even the search for that was best done quietly and secretly, in case other beings caught wind of it and tried engaging in a similar search but without the ethical constraints.

But all those stories, while containing at least a kernel of truth, were hiding the deepest truth of all: that my arrival in Equestria was not the result of some accident of nature, some lightning-bolt out of the blue that had sent me tumbling across worlds; but was, it seemed, the deliberate act of some powerful being... a being whose identity, location, powers, and motives were completely opaque, and who was capable of doing at least one magical feat beyond even the Princesses themselves. And it was a truism that there was very rarely 'one' of anything in the universe, so if one such being existed, there might be others - and letting any one of them gain even a hint that we had any idea that any of them existed could result in much more severe consequences than a mere memory-charm.

And so the Princesses arranged their memories so that they would have no recollection at all of them, so that there would be no change in their behavior should they be watched by any such beings, and that memory charm was itself hidden inside the shallower memory charm about the search for immortality, which was disguised by my job as an slavery investigator, which was disguised by my interest in personal profit, which was disguised by my job as a food preservation researcher...

... and, at all levels of that, I was still going to need help from others. If for nothing else, to have somepony to lie down next to when I needed to sleep. I wondered if I could get Micro Scope assigned to me on a more permanent basis; her interest in small things might be useful in checking to see if any given form of pasteurization really had killed all the bacteria... and perhaps she might become trustworthy enough to join in one or even two layers of the deeper plot...

... though after her involuntary haircut from the windmill the other day, she might be as likely to buck my snout in as give me the time of day. Ah well - there was a risk in everything, and maybe I could butter her up with some butter, or custom ice cream, or some other dairy product...

Bovine in black

Micro didn't kick my head off - quite - and she wasn't happy about being transferred to some brand-new department, especially one run by a mad cow... but I had enough leeway in my budget to offer her a substantial raise from her post in the university, which, fortunately, turned out to be just what was needed to convince her. I gave her the job of getting the new lab set up, while I ran some errands around town, collecting a few things - the first of which was a cart to carry everything else in. A portable milking machine was just the start - travel food, a tent for rainy nights, a first-aid kit, fire-making tools, and everything else a traveler could need, plus a kitchen sink. (Yes, I actually did pack a kitchen sink. Not a ceramic one, more of a collapsible canvas basin - but it would work as well in a kitchen as anywhere else, and since I'm the one writing this, I'm calling it my kitchen sink.)

When that was done, I confabbed with Micro for a bit. "My first stop is going to be Ponyville. It's not too far, and I already know some of the ponies there, so it will be good for a practice run."

"You're the boss, Bossie."

"Hunh. I think I actually prefer 'Missy'." She shrugged, and I continued. "I may be your boss, but I want you to be happy with what you're doing. You've got two main options right now. One, you could come with me, to be my field assistant, and we hire somepony to keep an eye on our home base here while we're gone. And two, you can stay here, and focus on the lab work, and I'll keep an eye out for somepony else to hire to come out with me."

"It should only take a couple of days to get everything here set up. Once that's done - what would whoever is here be doing?"

"Since we're just getting started... I think the most important data to collect are some baselines on existing preservation techniques - how long they keep for under various conditions, and how quickly the nutrients degrade, and so on. It will be a lot harder to figure out if any new method of preservation is any better if we don't have anything to compare it to."

"And you say you're going to... Ponyville?"

"This time, yes."

"Then I think I'll stick here, at least for this trip."

"Works for me."

One train trip later...

"Hello, Aloe. Hello, Lotus."

"Welcome to the Ponyville Day Spa!", said the pink one with a bright smile - I didn't actually remember which of them was which. "What can we do for you today?"

"I'm not... entirely sure; but I do have a general idea - I plan on doing some traveling soon, and I want to be able to look my best - so if you can show me how to use any given product with my own hooves, I would be happy to buy a supply of it. As well, of course, as paying for your time in teaching me, and today's treatments."

The blue one ducked her head behind a curtain. "Roxie! Prep a three, twelve, sixteen," she pulled her head back out and looked at me, then called back, "and an eighty-seven!"

After being pampered in ways I had never even considered being possible, and collecting a variety of ointments, unguents, potions and lotions to take back to Canterlot with me... the more important reason for my spa-visit appeared: Rarity entered for her 'usual'. "Why, hello, my dear!" she gushed, as Aloe (or Lotus) continued painting my left forehoof, and Lotus (or Aloe) hurried over to start plastering green mud over Rarity's face. "I haven't seen you in days - did you make it to Canterlot alright?"

"Thank you, I did," I said. "And everything went well - I am now actually employed for talents above and beyond simple dairy production."

"That's just wonderful, darling! I'm so glad things worked out for you."

"So am I. In fact, I was planning to come see you - when I saw the Princesses, the hat you gave me helped me feel like a truly civilized being, instead of just a wild bovine who had walked in off the fields, and helped me keep my composure." Even behind a mud-mask, I could tell the fashionista was beaming. I saw Lotus (or Aloe) carrying over a platter with some cucumber slices amongst other things, so before she was blinded, I continued, "In fact - now that I have a steady income, I was hoping you could help me with more clothing than just a hat."

The words 'income' and 'clothing' caught her attention, and she waved away the cucumber to look up and down at me. "Do you have anything in particular in mind?"

"I do have certain ideas. My frame is, well, more generous than the average pony's, and shaped somewhat differently - and so I would need an expert hand to tailor something that would fit well. In addition, my new job is likely to involve a lot of walking..." I lifted one hindleg, and gently prodded my udder with it. "And too much jiggling can get to be painful. What I'm really hoping for is a design for some sort of supporting foundation under-garment, perhaps based on a shaped cup held up by straps going across my back; I've been thinking of calling it a 'Bouncing Reducer for Udders', or 'bruh' for short..."

When creating a quick accessory to give to a stranger, Rarity was a fashion expert.

When being properly paid to put her talents to full use, including a technical challenge which could potentially open a whole new market to her, she was a frickin' genius.

We settled on three main overall outfits, not including swappable accessories (such as sunglasses and scarves) and patches for in-field repairs. The first was designed primarily for practicality, and for walking-around - protection from sun and wind, durable materials, a nice earthy tan color. With the full-brimmed hat, I looked something like a forest ranger in it. Number two was pure business professionalism - she took my descriptions of a Blues Brothers type suit, and I couldn't actually tell you how she did it, but she put together a version that not only fit onto my bovine body, but fit well. The third one, I hesitated and hemmed and hawed over doing it at all, before Rarity threatened to make it anyway and just give it to me if I didn't accept it. I was still getting used to the idea of being female at all - and what Rarity insisted on, and which I eventually allowed her to take full charge of - was a dress which not only showed that I was female, but showed off my full femininity. If you've ever seen the movie 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', try to imagine Jessica Rabbit if she were a quadrupedal cow, but still wearing that slinky red dress. I didn't know that I could slink. And wasn't sure that I was ever going to want to again. But I accepted the whole package, and packed it away in my cart, just in case.

While we were in the privacy of her shop, I did ask for a few minor alterations to the basic outlines we'd agreed to in the spa. "It's a big, wide world out there," I said to her, "and every filly needs to keep a few surprises up her sleeves... just in case." And so with a clever bit of sewing, she put in secret pockets... well, pretty much everywhere. As long as I had a stitch of clothing anywhere within hooves' reach, I should also have a useful tool, or seven.

Dressed up in my professional black suit, set off by the white shirt and a couple of blue accessories, I made my way to Sweet Apple Acres, for a talk with Applejack.

"If any of our research pays off," I told her, "then we should be able to accept as many excess apples as you can produce. The price won't be as high as in the open market - but having a guaranteed buyer even during a market glut should help you collect a nest egg for any times when you under-produce, such as after a disaster or disease outbreak."

"That'd be a load off my mind - all our minds - if you can pull something like that off. And I hafta admit I like the thought of Apple Family apples helping feed those who've been in trouble and can't feed themselves for a bit. But that's a pretty big 'if', about you coming up with some new-fangled technology."

"And that brings us to the other reason I'm here. I'm less interested in finding that 'new-fangled' technology myself, then in doing whatever it takes to get it found. I know that the Apple family is large, and spread throughout Equestria - so I'm hoping that you can spread the word to them all to keep an eye out for any sort of new inventions, food-related or otherwise, so that I can come take a look at them. I'm quite willing to pay a finder's fee, and, of course, their farms would benefit as much as yours would once we get the ball rolling."

"That makes a whole lot of sense. I can pass along what you're telling me lickety-split, no problem."

I paused for a moment, taking a sip of apple juice, before finally settling on how to phrase this. "There's... another thing that I'd like to ask you to ask your family about... but it's not part of the food-preserving project. It's more personal."

"I'm listenin'."

"Doctor Fluff said that I probably have trauma-induced amnesia, and may never fully recover my memories around what happened to me." Since Applejack was the bearer of the Element of Honesty, I was trying to be extremely careful about telling her true things - for all I knew, she had an innate lie-detector sense. Doctor Fluff had told me exactly that. "She thinks that I was likely abducted with my whole herd, taken by Diamond Dogs or some other predator into the Everfree Forest, where... well, I'd rather not describe her speculations. But - while I'm traveling around looking for food technology... I also want to look for ponies - or cows, or donkeys, or anyone else - who goes missing in a way that might mean they've been abducted; and for any who appear with odd gaps in their memories, or who are behaving oddly, the way I did. I'm not asking you to put any of your kin in any sort of danger - but if possible, I'm hoping they'd be willing to pass on news of that sort of disappearances and appearances, as well as news of technologies."

"Do you think you can help any such folk?"

"I don't actually know - but I do know I won't even have a chance to, if I never hear about them."

"Don't you worry none, sugar - having kin helping others is what we Apples do best. I'll make sure the whole family keeps a close eye out for anything that can help you and your'n."

"Thank you most kindly, Miss Applejack."

"Hello again, Spike. Is Twilight in?"

"Hi! Yeah, she's studying in back. Again." I slipped him a piece of amethyst I'd pocketed for exactly that purpose, and clopped through the library until I found the unicorn. She was flipping from book to paper notes and back, muttering to herself, until I cleared my throat.

"Oh. Hello there, is there something I can - Oh! It's you." She seemed a bit cautious of me - understandable, given I'd told her an aphorism about rebuilding corpses on our previous encounter.

"Yes, it's me. I came to thank you for your help - thanks to your letters, I was able to convince the Princesses that some of my ideas were worth pursuing, and they officially hired me to pursue them."

"That's great. I think." She offered a hesitant smile. "You're welcome."

"I'm hoping you can help me again - something closer to your own job here, with all your books."

"Yes?" Her ears perked up with interest.

"I'm going to be traveling a lot, so I'm not sure how to arrange this, but, well..." I took a breath, and finally blurted, "I want to learn how to read."

She squeeed.

At Fluttershy's, I just left a gift basket on the doorstep. Seemed the safest approach.

As an experiment, I stood in the middle of a park, with no building, pony, tree, or lamppost anywhere near me. I commented aloud, "Gee, I wonder if I could arrange a party-"

Pinkie's head suddenly popped out from between my forehooves, the rest of her being somewhere underneath me. "Did you say you were planning a party?"

I didn't bother spluttering and asking how she could have possibly gotten where she was, or heard what I'd said - the simple fact was that I was able to predict that she could and would, and that prediction had turned out to be accurate. The 'how' could wait. At least for now.

"Almost," I said down to her. "Actually, I just wanted to ask you something about balloons."

She slid out from underneath me, and started bouncing around. "Ooh, ooh, do you mean the big balloons like Twilight rode in the first time she got here, or balloon animals, or balloons shaped like animals, or-"

"Actually, it's not balloons balloons, but before I ask you... can you keep a secret?"

"Can I keep a secret? Can I keep a secret? ... wait, can I keep a secret?"

"Maybe if you Pinkie Promised...?"

"Oh! Yes! Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!"

I allowed myself a moment to wonder where the cupcake had come from, then said, "Right. I expect to be doing a lot of traveling, and while I'm not planning on anything happening, it's better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it, so, well..."

I stopped myself, then leaned forward and whispered into Pinkie's ears. Her eyes widened, and I coughed and looked away, blushing from nose to udder. She giggled, and said, "Oooh, those sorts of 'balloons'. Don't worry, Auntie Pinkie has you covered. All you have to do is go to the Quills and Sofas store, and-" She whispered back to me.

Suffice to say that I followed her directions precisely, was somewhat surprised to find a part of Ponyville that would never ever never be shown in the cartoons, and made sure that I was going to be prepared for whatever situation I faced - even situations that I was pretty sure there wasn't a chance in Hades of actually coming to pass.

Rainbow Dash was the hardest of the Mane Six to track down - turned out she'd been napping on top of a cloud the whole time. She grumbled some, but with a bit of overdone praise about how she was the awesomest flyer in Equestria, she was at least willing to listen to me.

"You can face down any danger, and probably can kick the tail of any monster that comes anywhere near Ponyville in ten seconds flat, right?"

She puffed up her chest and lifted her wings. "No 'probably' about it!"

"That's great! I wish I was more like you. I really do - I'm going to be traveling back and forth across Equestria, and there's probably going to be all sorts of dangers... and you're probably not going to be anywhere near to kick the tails of any monsters I come near."

"Yeah, it's a shame not everypony can be me - wait, what am I saying?"

I coughed, and hurried on, "So what I was hoping - I know I can't be you, or even come anywhere close to being as cool as you - but maybe, just maybe, you might know a pony who knows a pony who can show me how to be a little like you, just enough so that I can at least try kicking a few tails, so that I can be sure to be able to come back to watch you be twenty percent cooler than anypony else in the sky..."

"So - what, you're asking to learn how to fight?"

"Well, uh... yes."

"Don't you cows have your own way of protecting yourselves?"

"Kind of - but it mostly involves being in a herd, and circling around so we all have our horns pointing out. Not really an option when we're on our own."

"I dunno." She circled to my side, and prodded my ribs with a hoof. "You're kinda chunky there - are you sure you're up to putting any effort into it?"

"I'll put it this way - if my life is going to be on the line, I'm willing to do just about anything that doesn't kill me to survive."

"You say that now. But I know a guy - more muscles than wings or brains, but he knows how to exercise. Once you build up your core some, then maybe you can try something fancier."

"You have no idea how glad I am to hear that - right now, anything would be an improvement."

My final stop in Ponyville... was the barn where Daisy Jo and her herd lived. It wasn't their home just because they liked barns - given the wholesale price of milk, and the overall economics of Equestrian society, it was actually the best living space they could afford. I wasn't sure how I felt about that - okay, I was sure, I was disturbed on a whole number of levels by the various implications... but I couldn't think of anything I could do about it right now.

They were fascinated by my suit, and covetous of my bruh, and curious about my job, which I described as being "to explore strange, new towns; to seek out new foods and new forms of preservation; to boldly go where no cow has gone before." I didn't get a laugh.

As we settled into the evening milking routine, I asked about the dairy magic I'd heard about - most importantly, if there was any way to get those spells cast without a unicorn being right there. None of the cows had heard anything of the sort - they'd seen milking machines powered by unicorn magic, which a unicorn could charge up and then walk away from - but for any actual spells, a unicorn had to do it... and, usually, a unicorn with a dairy-focused cutie mark and special talent.

And so it seemed that escaping those limits of my biology wouldn't be quite as easy as I'd hoped. Though, perhaps, if Micro wanted to stick to the lab, maybe I could hire a dairy-'corn to come with me for the fieldwork...

Strolling

I got up even before farmer's hours that morning, since while my business in Ponyville was done, there was still one more equine I wanted to visit before returning to Canterlot.

From what I had been able to gather, Zecora was still at the stage where she was visiting Ponyville once a month, and all the Ponyvillians still feared and misunderstood her. I didn't remember exactly when the episode introducing her had been broadcast compared to the others; or even if the broadcast order was the order that events would unfold in. And I definitely didn't know what would happen if I deliberately tried to use my knowledge of events from the show, rather than merely of characters from it. But before they'd erased their memories about it, the Princesses had agreed that it would be worth the risk to at least fiddle around the edges; not to try to change events, but to try to gain some useful leverage, so as to better build up our knowledge and resources when we eventually faced the mysterious power(s) who had dropped me here.

And so I had brought a couple of copies of a particular tome from Canterlot. One was now discreetly tucked into the shelves at Twilight's library - and the other copy was tucked into my saddlebag.

I wasn't sure how dangerous the walk to Zecora's was going to be. The zebra herself seemed to thrive quite well, well into the show; but it was still in the Everfree Forest, and I couldn't assume that I had any sort of plot immunity. So I took what precautions I could think of - I made sure several cows and ponies knew my intended route and estimated timetable, and assumed that the trip would be at least as dangerous as walking downtown at three in the morning.

By the time I made it to the patch of poison joke, I had managed to relax some. I really wanted to get some samples of the blue flowers to experiment with - but with magic involved, it wasn't safe to assume that simply avoiding direct physical contact would avoid their curse. I was planning on bringing up the topic with Zecora, if things went well.

Other than scaring myself silly a few times at what turned out to be entirely innocuous noises, I arrived at Zecora's hut in good order. During the latter part of the walk there, I tried to think about her perspective - why she did what she did, what she might be hoping to gain, and what I might be able to do to help her gain it. I also tried to reason my way through what I thought I knew about her, but from the perspective of her being a living, breathing person instead of just a cartoon character. For example, my thoughts on her rhyming went something along the lines of: As a cartoon, it's an amusing verbal tic. But if it's something she really does... people don't do things without what they consider good reason. Speaking in rhymes likely takes a lot of time and practice, and so the subjective reward would have to be worth all that effort. But people - especially pony-type people - also like to think of themselves as good, who do good things for others; so maybe she does it because she thinks she's doing us good by doing so. I can't really think of any actual demonstrable benefit others get from hearing rhymes, so maybe... it's a subjective benefit? Is she trying to make us feel good by doing so, by, I don't know, it being some sort of demonstration of respect? Say, that words are important, and so putting extra effort into making words rhyme shows that you are willing to make your words count?

Therefore, upon entering the clearing, I called out,
in as clearly enunciated a phrase I could shout,

"Hello the house, and hail the home!
Is someone here, or have you gone to roam?"

From within the small domicile, soon, by and by,
came her response, a shouted reply:

"Welcome. Welcome! To my humble abode.
What brings you this far, down this lonely road?"

"I seek knowledge, and wisdom, and all that good stuff;
and having heard of your appearance, I got off my duff."

There was a brief pause, some clanking and sound
I couldn't guess at, like nothing in town.
then the famous zebra opened her door and stepped outside.
She was smiling - and at that, so did I.

"Then greetings to you, my honored guest,
won't you come in and take a brief rest?"

"Thank you, good mare, and I humbly accept.
I've been walking here steadily, since I last slept."

She led back within, giving me sidelong glances
as the two of us settled into comfortable stances.

"I admit to surprise, to receive such a visitor.
Ponies' reactions to me have made me quite insecure."

If she was willing to use that as a rhyme, I wouldn't complain
This was, after all, her culture, her home and domain.

"I have reason to believe that response will not last;
and that their respect for your skills shall be unsurpassed."

"I wish I could believe that you speak the truth,
that I need not return to the land of my youth."

That would be a bad thing - if Zecora left now,
it would throw the entire timeline out of whack with the show.

"Please do not worry, my hostess, good mare;
I don't want your tail to droop on your cute derriere."

She gave me a sharp look, but I plowed on, oblivious,
that my words might be interpreted as a come-on lascivious.

"I bring you a gift, to help cheer you up,
I hope you agree, when you examine it close-up."

I nudged my saddlebag open with my mouth and my nose,
and gently pulled out the tome I'd picked to disclose.

"Are you sure you wish to part with such a fine-looking book?
And not use it yourself, these recipes to cook?"

"I must sadly admit my reading skills suck.
More good would come if you into its pages do tuck."

"Then thank you, my dear, this is a well-chosen present -
your thoughtfulness gives me a feeling most pleasant."

"Before you believe me to be too altruistic,
I also come here for reasons opportunistic."

"You did mention a search for wisdom and knowledge;
I can teach certain things, but am not a college."

"'Tis not just a student to be, I've a notion,
but I have some problems I hope can be improved with a potion."

"And what sort of draught do you come here to seek?
Do you wish to lose weight, or enhance your mystique?"

"Nothing so ordinary is what makes me shudder.
Instead, I wish to have control over my udder."

"Ah, I see; your kind's milk does indeed
control most parts of the life of your breed."

"It's not as great a problem as once I did fear,
but still an annoyance I'd like disappear."

"Is it simply to dry up your flow that you wish?
Or is there still more to your kettle of fish?"

"To stop, and to start, and if you can help with
any feminine problems I can't even name forthwith."

"Perhaps in the name of being clear what you mean,
'tis time, from the rhyme, yourself you should wean."

"Are you sure? I assure that if you prefer
I'll demur and will concur for these rhymes to occur."

"Please,
cease."

I took a breath, and when I let it out in a small laugh,
glad I no longer had to worry about gaffes.
Zecora joined in, and with the ice broken,
we took the time to make all our thoughts spoken.
She considered, and consulted, and checked her herb guide,
and told me tomorrow to return where she did reside.
I said that in that time I could send for a package
to be sent from Canterlot, amongst the train's baggage.
If there was something she wanted from the pony's own capital,
such as rare plants, or references typographical.

We parted with smiles, and I returned on the trail
I'd gone on that morning, and relief I did exhale.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But the tail of a lizard, and statues of deer.
My heart, into my throat it did leap,
as I shouted for help, and tried not to weep
as my hindhooves took on a solid gray shade
and as my legs turned to stone, I trembled, afraid
that my quest now would end, my death now arrived.
My flanks, then my ribs, all the way up my neck,
there was nought I could do the progression to check.
I had no escape from this petrifying trap,
And the last thing I thought was, simply, "Cr-!"

Relations

-Ap... proximately how much time had passed, when I woke up, I couldn't tell - it could have been seconds, or days, or years. Celestia's sun was hidden behind the tree canopy - and I couldn't even tell if it was in the same place, since at some point between when I finished turning to stone (for lack of a better word) and when I returned to flesh-and-blood, I had been tipped over - I found myself lying on my left side.

I rolled onto my belly, and gave myself a once-over, whereupon I discovered that my tan walking-about outfit had a rather large blood-stain on the left flank. I wasn't feeling any pain, so I didn't quite start freaking out - and relaxed even more when I saw that I had been lying on top of what was now a very flat, so dead that "pining for the fjords" wouldn't begin to cover it, ex-cockatrice. I ran through what had just happened, and as best I could figure, I hadn't had all four legs solidly on the ground, so when I'd been statue-fied, I was unbalanced, and just... fell right on top of the thing.

My guess about the timing was confirmed when Zecora galloped in, loaded for Ursa. Screeching to a four-point stop, she looked at me, at the pathkill, and snorted. She started muttering to herself in a language that sounded vaguely like Swahili, or at least what cartoon imitations of Swahili sounded like, and trotted over much more calmly. "You, wait - look straight." She pushed my head with a hoof to look forwards, and not having any reason to disagree, let her. She stepped over to the critter, whereupon I heard some rather disgusting noises - I supposed it wasn't every day a herbalist had the chance to collect ingredients from such a source.

She appeared in front of me, holding a small vial in one hoof (I really wished I knew how all the ponies could pull off that trick), and declared, "Don't think: drink." She practically shoved it in my mouth, and I swallowed the thick, coppery-tasting liquid almost without thinking.

I coughed a bit, and glared at her as I figured out the taste. "Wait, was that-?"

"There is an old tale, which I don't give short shrift:
Slay dragon, drink blood, receive a strange gift."

I started to turn back to look at the cockatrice, but Zecora was blocking my view. "Does that even count as a 'dragon'? It had a chicken's head!" Even if taking the time to rhyme was a sign of respect - I was still trying to avoid freaking out over the fact that I had just been turned into something like solid stone, and except for some absolute dumb luck, I might have ended up that way permanently. Well, maybe not - Zecora had heard me shouting, and she seemed to know about cockatrices, but my imagination was coming up with all sorts of possibilities I had just barely escaped from. Either way, I was a bit too stressed to try to figure out how to speak in couplets.

"All wyverns and drakes and other such creatures
are descended from dragons - you can tell by their features.
Their power is strength, just like griffons' is speed,
and hooved ones, like us, in magic do lead."

I figured it was probably around time I pulled myself to my hooves, so I did. "You and the ponies, maybe - but not one cow I've met seems to have a magical bone in our body."

"I will admit, of your kind, I am a bit puzzled.
Earth ponies do things for which they're not muscled;
perhaps bovine magic is of a similar kind,
subtle in use, not easy to find."

"Or, maybe, it's simpler - and we just don't have any?"

"I find such an answer very hard to believe.
All alicorns' children, their gifts did receive."

"What do alicorns have to do with anything?"

She gave me a funny look - and then she expressed a series of clever rhymes I can't quite fully remember, and it would do her a disservice to falsely reconstruct. The overall gist was a sort of origin story I'd never heard a hint of on the show, or even from those production crew who'd posted online. According to this legend, there was a sort of ancient ancestral species, which had split into three less-ancient ones who each took a third of the power. Dragons and strength; alicorns and magic; cynogriffons and speed. They all had less-powerful descendant species, the cynogriffons had died out during a climactic battle, Celestia and Luna were the only known true alicorns left, and all-in-all, it was a fairly typical myth pattern about there having been a golden age in the past form which things had only gotten worse.

"And now that I have your education improved
it is time to return to my home that I moved.
Please try not to get in trouble again
for I'll likely not hear if you're dragged to a den."

I nodded, and turned to the path heading back to Ponyville - and, fairly suddenly, really really didn't want to be by myself. "Er - maybe I should go back to your place..."

"Shoo, and be off, and do not worry as such.
You've slain your first dragon, and few claim as much.
Just let me know if you find magic within you,
and whether it's blood-strength, or all cows have it too."

And that was the end of that. She went her way, and I reluctantly turned to go mine. My trip out of the forest went a lot slower than the trip in - I paused at practically every step, and jumped at every shadow. While I was passing through the safe trail through the middle of the poison joke patch, I heard and smelt a set of carnivores coming near, and only through sheer force of will kept myself from bolting and running straight away through the blue flowers, which would have added some unknown level of interestingness to my life. Instead, I simply laid right down, keeping my head, and the horns I kept forgetting I had, aimed in the direction of the meat-eaters; and either they didn't see me, or they didn't like poison joke any more than I did, because they just kept on moving. I couldn't even tell you what they were, they never came into actual view.

Finally arriving at ponyville, my first stop was to get my clothes laundered - Rarity would likely swoon if she saw them in their current state - and my second to get a message written to Micro Scope back in Canterlot, to have her ship Zecora's requested shopping on tomorrow's train. But after that was all done, I was out of busywork, and had nothing to distract me from my thoughts. I tried settling onto a bench in a park, to see if I could mindlessly chew some cud, but just couldn't get comfortable. So I got back to my hooves and started wandering aimlessly around town... and eventually noticed a pattern to my aimlessness: wherever the largest collection of ponies happened to be, that's where I seemed to be wandering towards. I didn't feel any particular need to chat with them, or join with what they were doing, or act in any way extroverted - I was just finding it most... comfortable to be in the middle of a crowd.

As I circled around town hall, I tried to think about this as rationally as I could. It was a change in behavior for me - at the least, a change from my behavior as a human. I'd once gone a couple of weeks without saying a single word to another living person, and hadn't even noticed. Previously, I'd been able to predict, at least roughly, my feelings and actions. But now... it was more than just not being able to sleep without hearing other cattle or ponies. Maybe it was some magical effect from the cockatrice blood. Maybe that jolt of adrenaline as I came close to being dead had kicked my body's instincts into full gear. Maybe I was finally experiencing the full emotional reaction of getting torn from the only world I'd believed existed; shoved into a body which couldn't even pick up a quill; punted into a society in which I was, in a way, a second-class citizen, not to mention a functional illiterate; and generally made confused about pretty much everything I experienced, large and small. But the upshot was... all the plans I'd been scheming and plotting and preparing had one teensy little assumption that was coming into question: that I knew myself, at least to a certain extent. Now... now, I could no longer avoid facing the idea that more of me might have changed than just my physical body. I was afraid of things I hadn't been before. I wanted to be around others in a way I never had. I was... well, the simplest way to look at it was that I was Missy, a cow, not just a human stuck in a cow's body. I didn't know if I was ever going to meet the being who'd punted me into Equestria; or, if they did, what might happen to me... so I had to not just face, but truly acknowledge, that it was not just possible, but likely, that this was the me I'd be spending the rest of my life as, and the world I'd be spending it in. Never to see anything of Earth again: My family, the people I knew on the Internet, every human who was a complete stranger, the cafe I liked reading in at three in the morning, the university, Canada, Toronto, dollars, science-fiction movies... the only way I'd ever taste a hamburger again was if I became a cannibal.

There was only one thing I could think to do. To heck with the timeline.

I cleared my throat, and tried to remember how the melody went. "It's true some days are dark and lonely... and maybe you feel sad..."

A familiar pink blur hopped down from a rooftop and finished the line. "But Pinkie will be there to show you that it isn't that bad!"

What ensued was a completely scrambled-up version of the song I remembered - probably had to do with starting in the middle. But with dozens of ponies joining in the impromptu parade and sing-a-long, I felt part of something larger than myself, and that seemed to be exactly what I needed right at that moment. Everything went quite well...

... right up to the moment I discovered just how bad an idea it is for a cow to play parkour on straw rooftops.

Entrenchment

Fortunately, Ponyville's hospital was reasonably well-equipped to handle a broken leg. Unfortunately, even with magical medical assistance, I was going to be off my feet for a few days, in a wheelchair a lot like the one Twilight had when she was investigating Pinkie's Pinkie Sense. Had that happened yet? I wished I'd paid better attention to the episode lists.

While I was getting patched up, I had a doctor write and send a note for me: to have Micro send a pegasus with the packages, instead of just shipping them on the train, since I was in no shape to head back to Zecora's hut myself. I also didn't want to lose my potential advantage of knowing about Ponyville's possible future by getting events too mixed up, such as by introducing Zecora to Twilight too early. So I avoided getting any Ponyvillians involved in the Zecora business, and when he arrived, had that Canterlot outsider fly to her place, taking the things she'd asked for plus a relayed apology from me, and then bring back the potions she'd made for me... and not mention anything himself to any of the locals.

At the same time, I had another idea, and the patiently amused doctor wrote down my thoughts that if the stonifying ability of a cockatrice could be analyzed and harnessed, if it could be applied to non-living food as well as living creatures - then that could very well be exactly what we were looking for. A silo full of grain turned to stone wouldn't rot, wouldn't be eaten by parasprites, and so on. So her next task was to prep the lab for cockatrice-based experimentation, and if I wasn't back soon, to start looking for a way to get hold of a cockatrice to start experimenting with.

That night, instead of being stuck in a hospital bed, the docs wheeled me over to the barn - seemed they had some experience with insomniac lonely cattle. Since I was now trying to settle into my existence as Missy... I started paying more attention to the other cows as individuals, and not just background members of the herd. I tried learning their names, and distinguishing features - and while I was doing an extremely poor job, they let me know they appreciated the effort. I even tried paying attention to the gossip; seemed I'd missed the big story of the day while I was out in the forest, some passing griffon had made Pinkie break a Pinkie Promise, been raped by Rainbow Dash, and stolen a library book. I decided that gossip that obviously ridiculous was quite worth ignoring, and went to sleep.

Back in Canterlot the next day, I began setting things up for the long haul. While I worked through Twilight's learn-to-read program, I also hired an Earth pony, one Page Turner, to act as secretary, and, well, to read aloud what I couldn't read for myself yet; such as newspapers, so I could get a feel for what ordinary Equestrian society looked like, so that I might be able to tell when something actually unusual happened. I started making contacts among various of the Canterlot government agencies, ministries, secretariats, and other such departments, arranging for information to be sent to flow to my inbox. I wanted to ask Luna to give me some pointers on abacus use, since it was actually easier to slide beads on a string than to try to write with a hoof, but she was out that day - according to rumor, visiting Blueblood who was passing through Stalliongrad. I consulted with Micro Scope. I got ready to make and distribute some one-time pads, for when I knew enough Equestrian writing to be able to write them. I got filing cabinets set up for dossiers.

Put it all together, and what I was building was the nub of a core of an intelligence agency - an extremely small one, since I didn't have any idea about whether it was possible to trust any pony about my deepest reasons, and the less-deep reasons didn't let me officially justify hiring too many ponies - so I was holding out for the most trustworthy ones who could be found. The trouble there was that ponies like that were already in positions of trust. So I was having to teach myself, quickly, the political game, so I could try to find ways to convince the various local nobs that it was in their own best interests to let me have the ponies I needed...

... and then Blueblood returned.

To be honest, I can understand part of his reaction. I was an absolute newcomer to Canterlot society, and was in the process of forming a personal power-base that wasn't beholden to anyone below the Princesses themselves, let alone to him; and I hadn't been very quiet about the fact that I was hoping to get my hooves on some of the geographers who were part of a department he was the official head of.

On the other hoof, his reaction was entirely disproportionate to those causes - and he seemed extraordinarily offended that I was not only not a unicorn, but not any sort of pony at all.

It wasn't entirely obvious at first. I was still new enough to the whole backroom political process that an increase in the amount of stalling and refusal didn't register with me. But when ponies who'd happily agreed to pass along data to me, from fast-breaking updated news reports to simply adding my office's address to standard distribution lists, started clamming up... I was able to figure out that somepony was deliberately trying to shut me down. I was fortunate that Blueblood was such a complete prat - because while the bureaucrats he'd put pressure on grudgingly gave in to his demands, they also freely and cheerfully admitted to me who'd been doing the pressuring.

In fact, they were also happy to help me arrange for a personal one-on-one meeting, with promises that the two of us wouldn't be interrupted unless I wanted to be. That stallion had built up some serious ill-will among everyone he came in contact with. So I considered, and made a selection of preparations to ensure that no matter what Blueblood did, I'd be able to take the best advantage possible. That is, not to ensure that events would follow the one path to victory, but that all paths led to victory.

Blueblood was in the middle of his breakfast when I entered the dining room. He grunted, "Just set it on the table." I spat a folder full of papers next to his plate, and he frowned. "That's not the cream."

"No, it's not," I said, and he finally looked at me. I'd gone for my official-type outfit, the Blues Brothers suit.

"Ah. The milkmaid with delusions of grandeur."

"Really? You're starting with petty insults?"

"Nothing more or less than the truth."

"Then take this for the truth it is - it's in your own long-term self-interest to lay off."

"How could it possibly be in my interest to let someone like you divert resources from more important uses?"

"I'll try putting this in terms you understand. I'm one of those foolish people getting ready to risk my own neck to support the society which supports you. If I do what I need to do, you'll prosper; if I don't, you're making it that much more likely a disaster will impoverish both yourself and all the ponies whose backs you stand on."

"And I should just take your word for that?"

"I didn't expect you to - but I was hoping you'd be smart enough to check in with the Princesses before sabotaging one of their pet projects."

"As if they would truly take an interest in making better ice cream. Cake, perhaps interest Aunt Celestia."

I paused, and took another look at him. "Do you even know what I'm supposed to be doing?"

"Something about improving the dairy's foods." He yawned dramatically, waving his hoof in front of his mouth.

I facehoofed. "You were spending that much political capital, and you didn't even-!" I mentally chucked away three-quarters of my preparations, the ones which assumed at least a minimal modicum of intelligence on Blueblood's part. "

"Are you quite done here? I do have a hooficure appointment to get to."

"Not quite. I'll offer you a political carrot. I care more about what I'm doing than getting credit for it. Let me do my thing, the way I need to do it, and I'll be sure you get the accolades for whatever positive results come from it."

"Hm. Tempting, a bit. But I'd get even more credit if I run you out of town and take your whole department - such as it is - for myself."

My tail swished - not just angry that he was talking about taking my stuff away from me, but that he was too stupid to see how pointless and destructive this whole thing was.

"That assumes you can do anything with my group without me."

"Of course I can - I am a unicorn, bred for generations to manage the little ponies. And you - well, just look at you. You should be under the stairs at best, and even better out back eating the grass and making my cream."

I glared. "In that case, it's time to mention the stick I was hoping to avoid. Yes, I am a cow. I also know all the cows in the royal dairy - and am fast getting in touch with every herd across Equestria. If you really annoy me, do you think you will ever be able to trust any dairy-based food or drink brought to you?" A pocket in my suit contained some poison joke extract, just in case I felt the need to adulterate some of his food while I was there.

"Now that is an amusing threat - not quite amusing enough to make up for this dreadfully dull conversation, but better than nothing."

I ground my teeth - rather impressively, given their usual cud-grinding job - and grated out, "Very well, then. Don't think this is over, not by a long shot." I turned away from him, ignored his 'ta-ta', and as I took a couple of steps away from him, quietly muttered, "And here I was expecting the slavers and diamond-dogs to be my biggest problem."

Before I took another step, there was a clattering from the table, and the Prince galloped around in front of me. "Say that again," he demanded, in much shorter and sharper tones than his previous exaggerated Bahstahnian drawl.

"I said nothing I worthy of repeating. Even if I did, it was accidental, and not meant for your ears, you interfering parasite." It was his turn to grind his teeth, so I played out a little more line. "You've made it abundantly clear that you're more interested in stomping on those you consider your lessers - which puts you squarely in my crosshairs along with - well, you don't care who, now do you?"

It looked like I'd finally managed to kick enough sand out of the gears in his thick skull to get at least something resembling a thought process going. "You're not with the dairy at all, are you?"

I yanked hard to set the hook. "Well, we call ourselves The Dairy, these days, anyway." I made the capitalization very clear.

He wrinkled his nose, as if he'd bit into something sour - or come too close to a dairy's outhouse. "I need to go talk to Auntie Celestia."

Right on cue - because she'd been listening in the whole time - the Sun Princess walked in. "Good morning, my little nephew. Did I hear my name?"

I got a dirty look from Blueblood, which I accepted as the praise it indirectly was. He said, "Auntie - is she really working on something to deal with those nasty, dirty diamond dogs, like the ones who-" he glanced at me, and clammed up.

Celestia looked at him sadly. "Even if she were, this is not a good time to talk about it. I believe you have a hooficure appointment? But I will say that I would be most disappointed in you, were I to learn you had done anything at all to impede Missy's work at The Dairy." Celestia could pronounce capitals even better than I could.

Blueblood glared at me, looked at Celestia, had a whole series of expressions flash across his features, and then simply turned and left the room. I let out my held breath.

Celestia glanced at me as she lifted a spare strawberry covered with whipped cream from the table to nibble on. "Not entirely elegant - but I do not believe you will be troubled from that quarter any further."

I grimaced a little. "I could have been a lot more 'elegant' if he'd been smart enough to let me. And now that I've had practice, I should be able to be a lot subtler in the future." Especially since, in the future, I'd be able to collect even more information on the people I was dealing with; though knowing that Blueblood had recently been attacked and nearly kidnapped by diamond-dog slavers had let me get his goat.

"Tell me - would you really have carried through with your 'stick'?"

"If he pushed me far enough... the hard part would be arranging to target him and nopony else - but, yes, I'd be able to make sure he'd never be able to eat any milk-based product again without breaking out into blue spots, having his coat grow out into a floor-sweeping shag, or something even less enjoyable."

Celestia looked at the cream on her berry, and nonchalantly set it back on the table.

And with that hurdle out of the way, my arrangements started to go quite swimmingly again... at least, until Twilight's letter, of two days later, dropped a bombshell that scattered my whole plans to the winds.

Smithereens

I didn't actually get to see Twilight's letter - that went straight to the Princess. But Applejack had said she'd let me know about anything relevant to my expressed interests - so I got a letter from her.

Dear Missy,

Twilight's gotten a bee in her bonnet about this Griffin the Griffin character, and thinks he's going to go a bit overboard trying to do something about this slave thing. So she's got all us Elements packing to go convince him to play nice. I kinda agree with what he's trying to do, but I'd like him to have a better way to go about doing it.

My brother Big Mac can keep in touch with you 'til we all get back. I don't know how long I'm going to be gone from Sweet Apple Acres - Spike and Twilight think Griffin is an alien, and she's been spending the past few days trying to figure out how hooves work, so somebody's got to go along and make sure they keep their hooves planted on the ground.

Sincerely, Applejack

After reading that, I put a gold star on The Dairy's dossier for Griffin, marking him as being one of my best candidates for being someone else dropped into Equestria. After all, according to the wanted posters, he'd teamed up with both Gilda and Trixie, as the captain of some sort of pirate group; and from a metafictional perspective, Hasbro would probably want one of their established characters to be in charge - a toy of 'Pirate Captain Gilda' sounds like a hotter seller than one of 'First Mate Gilda', after all. I tugged on some of the strings of my expanding comm network, to add Griffin and his group to the list of things I was to be kept informed about.

With that taken care of, AJ's letter reminded me of another detail I'd had on my mental back-burner, but hadn't had a chance to do anything with. Why was it that every pony I'd met could pick things up with their hooves, and yet I couldn't? I looked at my forehoof - sure, it was two-toed instead of one-toed like the ponies... but according to Zecora's origin story, both cows and ponies were descended from alicorns. I wasn't going to quibble about the biology of that - if the quadrupedal Cakes could have a hexapodal pegasus for an offspring, then we were already far away from any sort of Earthly vertebrate, and I couldn't assume that an alicorn couldn't have bovine children.

I decided to arrange my schedule to have some time specifically to try to figure out my hooves. And so, later that afternoon, I was relaxing in the dairy, with a collection of small objects in front of me. I tried willing, and concentrating, and using fingers I didn't have, and tried not trying, and so on and so forth - and couldn't lift even a single sugar-cube a single millimeter.

Since none of the easy stuff seemed to be doing the trick, I went for something that would take a little more time. I cleared everything away, and with some effort, I got a single candle positioned in front of me and lit. The two other cows of the royal dairy whose shift I shared came over to take a look at what I was doing - Lulubelle, a black-and-white Holstein (compared to my brown-and-white Guernsey appearance), whose output was three times mine; and Melanie Rose, one of the Jersey-like chocolate cows.

"Would you like me to open a window?", solicitously offered Lulubelle.

"Thank you, but it's not the light I need. I'm trying to see if I can empty my mind while I look at the flame."

The two of them looked at each other, then settled down in front of me, Lulubelle to my left and Melanie Rose to my right, so all our heads were together. They leaned forward, and M.R.'s right horn touched Lulubelle's left, Lulubelle touched her horn to mine, and then M.R. leaned over to complete the

I noticed the candle had burned down and extinguished itself; and I noticed that I was noticing a candle; and after a little while, finished noticing that I existed. I looked around, and Lulu and M.R. weren't around anymore. I remembered something I hadn't paid any attention to at the time - Lulu had said, 'Isn't the candle a bit much for her first time?', and M.R. had said, 'She'll be fine', and the two had gotten up and left.

I'd tried meditating before, in various ways, but... well, nothing like this had ever happened. My mind had gone completely... well, it had just gone. I'd never experienced the like... well, that wasn't entirely true. Back in grade school, the first time I'd ever fought back against a bully, I'd immediately been enrolled in a karate class to redirect any future violent outbursts into more socially acceptable channels. But I'd discovered that whenever I was put face-to-face against someone else to practice, I didn't exactly do what I was supposed to. For example, if we were supposed to practice simple blocks, but a punch to the face pulled a few inches short was also considered a 'win', then without any conscious effort on my part, I'd discover my fist consistently ending up a few inches in front of my opponent's nose. I didn't try to do it, and even when I tried not to do it, my body just did its own thing, while my conscious mind didn't do any sort of thinking. At that young age, I found the whole idea of not thinking disturbing enough that I arranged to stop taking those lessons.

I wasn't sure what had just happened, but it seemed to start the instant our horns made a circle. I wanted to ask the other cows a lot, so I picked up the candle stub and put it with the other items, and-

waitasec.

I reached out with a hoof. I pressed the hoof against the burnt-out candle-stub. I picked up the stub. It was as easy as that.

What the hay was going on here?

I didn't find Lulu or M.R., but did see 'Granny Locoweed' hooked up to a milker (she didn't produce much, even with unicorn spells, but insisted on continuing to contribute as much as she could), and went to intrude on her. She smiled as she saw me coming. "Becha've got a lotta questions, young'un."

"... Yeah."

She looked up and down at me. "Ya really don't remember yer parents tellin' you anythin' about anythin'?"

"... Let's just say 'no'."

"Now, how did my grandmam say it to me... um, 'Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of bovinity.' That ring any bells?"

"Only completely irrelevant ones. I'm not sure I like where this is headed."

"Nothing to like or dislike about it. It just is."

"... Maybe this would go better if you just assumed that I had as little idea about what you were talking about as if I was, say, a pegasus turned into a cow?"

"Hrmph. Kids these days, no respect for tradition. But if ya want the dumbed-down version, fine. You've seen unicorns do magic, right? The think hard, their horn sticks straight out from their forehead, spiraling, an' it glows, and stuff happens." I nodded, on familiar ground. "Well, we've got two horns - but flat 'stead o' spiraling, and curved 'stead o' straight. Completely backwards from unicorns. So like all the hoofed folk, even them what hasn't got horns, we've got our magic - just backwards from what unicorns do it. One unicorn thinks a spell that goes outward. Lotsa cows get together, an' the magic comes to us comin' inward to our thoughts."

"Oh... kay. I guess I can make some sense of that. Um... what all can we do with magic?"

"Send me to Tartarus if I ever find a girl that listens. We don't do anything. The magic does. Or doesn't. Mostly doesn't. From what I saw, your head was empty as a bucket with a hole in it. Surprised you didn't burn your eyes out, lookin' at that candle. You think if we could actually control magic we'd be livin' in barns and dairies?"

I noticed... that I wasn't asking the sort of questions I usually would... I wasn't thinking about all this, looking for implications and advantages and hidden aspects, the way I had been everything. But even noticing that, I was having trouble kicking my brain into gear to start. "So..." I concentrated. "Where does that leave us?"

"Same place you were yesterday, girl. 'Cept now, any time you wanna relax and stop thinkin', you know you can ask."

I thought about that... and was immediately attracted to the concept. Just letting myself go, truly becoming one of the herd, no more worries, no more planning, no scheming. Eat, chew cud, give milk; eventually, getting old enough to take Granny Locoweed's place myself, dispensing wisdom to young calves, until the day I...

... I shook my head. That wasn't right at all. I didn't want to die - I didn't want anyone to die, if I could help it. And I could help it - or, at least, I could try... and if I happened to die trying, well, how much worse could that be than dying of old age? Letting my individuality go... just meant that I really would die, just that my body would walk around for a while. This whole group-thing... even wanting to avoid it, I still wanted it, the way I'd once occasionally had a hankering for having a soda to cool off instead of water. I was going to have to treat this horn-circle thing the way I did sugar, or some more serious drug - and swear off it.

Granny Locoweed had been watching me closely, and slapped a knee with one hoof as she laughed. "Ha-ha! I knew you had it in you, girl. You're no more going to get stuck drooling your cud on the floor than I did - that's why they started calling me Loco, you know. You just made up your mind to go cold turkey and stay inside your own head, didn't you?" I just nodded, with a half-smile at her reading. "Well, it's not gonna be quite that easy. I've been keepin' an eye on you - you didn't have a single drop o' magic in you when you got here, an' you've got some now, doncha?"

"Um..."

She bopped me between my horns. "I mean your hooves, girl! You couldn't pick stuff up, and now you can, right?" I just nodded again. "Well, that's from the bit o' magic that poured inta ya. Won't last that long, 'specially if you use it much. So the more you want t' use yer hooves, the more time you've gotta spend in a circle with your brains melted out yer ears. Then again, I hear you're a clever heifer - if anyone's gonna find a way outta that li'l trap, you're as likely t'be the one as anyone. Oh - and try not to spread any of this around. There's been trouble in the past, with those as'd use the knowing of us fer their own good and fer our bad. They say you had a bad time before getting here - I'm sure you won't have any trouble imaginin' how much worse life could get fer our kind."

I took a moment to consider what would have happened if Blueblood had known, say, how to zap me into mindless complacency at his pleasure - and shuddered.

Granny started unhooking herself from the machinery. "Right. Well, I've got other young heifers to try to buck some sense into. You've got a better head under yer horns than most, so I'll let you chew yer cud on it yerself fer a while." She went off to do her thing, leaving me to consider all of this.

So - turned out I really was as magical as any pony... but if I used it too much I'd become a Lotus-Eater. And if I wasn't careful about secrets, I could get turned into one anyway. Not the greatest news, but not the worst - I now had that much greater an understanding of how things worked. As long as I kept my wits about me, anyway. Things could be a lot worse.

"What do you mean, I'm pregnant?!?"

Sucker-punch

"It's nothing to be upset over," Doctor Fluff said reassuringly. "I will admit that impregnation while still in full leche is rather uncommon - if I were you, I would have rather sharp words with whichever unicorn induced your lactation without properly balancing your remaining hormones."

"Doc."

"Since you have an independent income, we should be able to reduce your milk output in just a few days without causing any uterine disturbance - or, if you prefer to remain on active dairy duty, I can prescribe some nutritional supplements."

"Doc!"

"I have some pamphlets here on pre-natal care-"

"Doc!"

"Yes?"

"Could you please be a little more specific about why you think I'm pregnant?"

"Ah, of course. It's fairly simple, really. As part of my initial examination of you, last week, I checked your level of innate magic, by pressing a special crystal like this one against you, to measure it's glow. Here, I'll measure mine right now - see? That's about a seven, according to this pocket chart. Your first reading was, well, extremely low - but since you weren't dead, standard practice is to round up the reading to one-half. I double-checked that crystal on myself, just to make sure it wasn't the crystal not glowing. Today, your reading was about a three. The only time I have ever seen that big a jump in innate magic levels is when there's a new life in the mix - that is, a new baby growing inside you."

I facehoofed as she continued her explanation, finally managing to interrupt her again. "Doc! This is all very fascinating - but I'm not pregnant. I haven't even done anything which could get me pregnant."

"Are you sure? I have to admit that most curriculums are sadly deficient when it comes to describing certain innate, if embarrassing, biological facts-"

"Doc!" I took a breath and let it out, mostly to give myself time to think about how to give the vet an explanation that she would accept, but didn't reveal any of the growing set of secrets I seemed to be collecting. "My magic level is... well, I wasn't expecting it to change, but I'm fairly certain that it's just a side effect of some of the research I'm doing. Shouldn't be anything to worry about. I'll add some protocols to keep track of the magic levels of anyone involved, and take into account anything and everything you can tell me about what levels are safe. Fair enough."

She stared at me and blinked a few times. "Well, if you're sure you don't want the nutritional supplements, just in case..."

"I'm not pregnant!"

"Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Pregnant? You?"

My education into Equestrian writing had progressed to the point where I could safely use a restaurant's menu; and at the moment, I was entertaining an off-duty member of the Royal Guard, a pegasus named Frozen Cloud, who had a very Rainbow-Dash-ish sense of humour.

"Don't get me wrong, but the only way you'd have a calf was if the dad glued forms all over his body and stamped 'confidential' on his forehead!"

Okay, maybe not quite like Rainbow Dash.

I tried to join in with, "I'm not that bad. As long as he stretched some abacus strings between his horns."

"Well, he would have to have some big 'uns for that - but no, Missy, you're just not interested in anything that hasn't got a full set of foot-notes and end-notes."

"Mm... maybe you're right." I picked up my glass of apple juice, enjoying my ability to perform that simple act at least as much as the beverage. "I've got a lot on my plate at work, and even if I wanted to, I just don't have the time for... anything like a relationship."

"Who said anything about a relationship? I was just talking about bucking-" I interrupted with a cough, and she continued, "- great times being had by all." While 'The Hitching Post' might be the perfect place for ribald humor, I still wanted to keep certain of my delicate sensibilities intact, if possible, or at least only let them get bruised a bit. She continued, "You know, if it's because there aren't too many bully-boys around town, I could pass your name along to a few stallions I know who aren't averse to a little cross-species-"

So much for delicate sensibilities. "Anyway!" I cut off whatever she was going to say. "Anyway," I said again in a more normal tone, "I was really hoping we could talk about more than what goes on, or doesn't, on the far side of my udder."

"Hey, whaddaya know, she admits that there is something-" I coughed again. "Okay, okay, line drawn. So what's on your mind?"

"Backups."

"Come again?"

"When Plan A fails, and Plan B fails, and Plan Q fails, eventually you need a Plan Z."

"Oh, right. Backups. What about 'em?"

"I'm making 'em, and getting ready for 'em - but I can only do so much on my own, before what I'm doing starts bumping against what the Guard does."

"That's what your liaison is for, isn't it?"

"I'm thinking a bit bigger than just getting ready for an escaped cockatrice."

She tossed back her hard cider, and gestured to the peg-legged bartender for another. "Lemme guess. This's got something to do with that Dairy project you're not keeping that much of a secret?"

"Something like that," I admitted.

"So why not just head straight to the top, and talk to Shining Armor?"

I grimaced - there was absolutely no way I would even try to explain about 'major characters' and plotlines from another dimension. Before I got chucked into Equestria, I'd only heard the barest rumors about the forthcoming episode featuring Twilight's brother's wedding - and in the name of not fiddling with the timeline if I didn't have to, I'd been avoiding him. Probably moreso than I should have been, but now I was stuck with the consequences of that. "It's... complicated. It's nothing against him as a Guard, but - I'd rather try to work this out without him, if I can."

"You're going to have to do better than that."

I sighed. "I know, I know." For a moment, I considered taking advantage of the fact we were in a bar, and discovering if liquid courage really worked. But just for a moment - then I remembered how easy it really was for me to be able to stop thinking, if I wanted, and silently re-confirmed my decision to keep my brain cells as intact as possible. "To start with - I know his sister. She introduced me to the Princesses. But some of the information I'm dealing with... doesn't show her in the best light. Nothing that reflects on her as the Element of Magic, but... trying to convince her brother that his sister isn't perfect, and to act based on that... well, it seems easier to work out the plans with other ponies and then just get him to sign off on the finished product, without bothering him with all the little details about how the plans were hashed out."

"Mm. I guess I can see that. Not saying I agree with it, but I can see it."

We made arrangements for having a more formal meeting somewhere just a teensy bit more secure than a bar, and then with the actual business out of the way, I got to listen to Frozen Cloud's estimates and inferences about every single stallion who came into eyesight - and a few that didn't.

Even without cars, I got to play designated driver. Frozen Cloud was far too drunk to fly, and almost too drunk to walk. As a pegasus, she was pretty light, so we thought about just draping her across my back; but since she insisted on going home under her own power, she just leaned against me the whole way, with nothing worse happening than her tripping over her doorstep.

After I left her tucked into bed, and started heading back to the palace... things got worse.

I heard hoofsteps following me and some muttered conversation, which I do not deign to repeat in full - one of the least objectionable snippets was "She's just another milker. Who's she going to tell?"

I sighed, and turned to stare in the direction of the group, a quartet of unicorns. I said, "You really don't want to do this."

Two of their horns lit, their magic pulling my hind-hooves wide, then holding them in place.

As they came closer, sniggering, I politely inquired, "Do your mothers know what you're up to? Last chance."

They didn't stop, and as they came nearer, I saw something was funny about their eyes; it reminded me of that 'hearts and hooves day' episode... so on the off-chance that they were being brain-washed or the like, I decided to go for the rather less lethal Plan D-2 instead of going all out with Plan B-1.

"Missy the cow, you stand here accused of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, assault, aggravated assault, assault and battery, aggravated battery, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly pie, assault causing grievous bodily harm, mayhem, practicing medicine without a license, and littering. How do you plead?"

Rehabilitation

Fortunately, I was allowed to bring approved educational materials while I served my sentence - and, by some means or other, every element of Twilight's self-teaching reading course passed every criteria for being approved for such a purpose. I wasn't sure if that was luck, a reasonable set of criteria, or if she was so detail-oriented that part of her checklists for assembling educational materials included making sure they could still be used while their audience was arrested. There wasn't exactly much else to occupy my attention, so I decided to become as literate as I could by the time I got out of jail.

On the second day of my sentence, I was told I had a visitor: my accountant. Since, as far as I knew, I'd never hired an accountant, this sparked my attention. The visiting room had an ordinary prison guard on the outside, but the inside had a member of the Guard watching over things; and the pony waiting for me was small, female, dark blue unicorn with a medium blue mane and tail. Her cutie mark was a moonbeam shining through a cloud. As I approached the table, her horn glowed, lifting an abacus from a saddlebag... no, wait - it wasn't just any abacus, it was Abacus. I blinked, and gave her a careful look up and down before settling down at the table. "Well, hello there," I essayed. "I have to say, I wasn't expecting to see you."

She smiled back with complete innocence. "Did you think I had forgotten you? I came by to let you know that you do not need to worry about the fine - I was able to locate more than sufficient refundable tax credits to cover your fine."

"Really, now. That's - good news, then." I wasn't sure where this was going, so let her take the lead.

"In addition, given the importance of your work to the government, I feel confident that I should be able to make arrangements for your community service to be served concomitantly with your job."

"That's nice."

"In fact, I might even be able to arrange for your prison term to be served non-consecutively - one or two days a week for a few months."

I held up a hoof. "Now hold on,"

The Guard interrupted, calling out "Clear." And my 'accountant' shimmered and changed back into the much taller form of Her Royal Highness, Princess Luna.

She was still smiling at me. "Perhaps you would like a medal? Or how about a title? 'Baronet Missy' has a nice ring to it, and it would be so entertaining to watch as you took a seat in the Barn of Lords. I do believe Prince Blueblood might have a stroke." She wasn't using the Royal Canterlot Voice, so I assumed she was trying hard to be discreet about her presence here.

I facehooved. "Ma'am. I mean Miss. I mean Your Highness. I mean- oh, you know what I mean!"

"Too much?"

"If it pleases your royal majesty - I'm trying to maintain a reasonably low profile. Getting mixed up with a public court case where you imposed a sentence that changed the inheritance of several noble titles has already put me in more newspapers than I wanted to be seen in."

She pouted, exaggeratedly. "What's the good of being a Princess if I can't give things from my toybox?"

"If you want to play with toys and turn the peers upside-down, take that title and give it to Granny Locoweed."

She tilted her head, looking down at me with mild befuddlement. "You really don't want it?"

"I may have to play the political game, at least a bit, to accomplish what I actually consider to be important - but if that's what my day job turned into, I expect I would rapidly go quite mad."

"And adjusting your sentence?"

"Would be an obvious bit of royal patronage for somepony who's supposed to be a fairly ordinary cow. I'm treating this as a field test for letting The Dairy run without me being in direct contact for a few days, before I'm gone for a much longer time."

"Ah. I hope you are not leaving us because of what those... ponies in terrible need of lessons on friendship... did. Canterlot is really a very safe place."

"It's not that. Or if it is, it's only a small part. Going away will give all this ruckus time to die down, and my part in it to be - well, if not forgotten, at least shoved into the corner of background news. And - now that I've got all this information coming in to The Dairy... at the very least, I'll need to start investigating some of it in person, if for no other reason than to start calibrating an evidence-reliability metric I've been working out."

The royal nostrils flared in a brief snort. "You're as bad as Twilight."

"If Your Majesty says so, then it must be so."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"We already made arrangements for just about everything I would need." I thought about the spell she had used on a couple of my attackers, turning them from he's to she's - and took a long moment to consider asking whether the Princess could cast it in reverse. I might still be stuck as a bovine, but I could at least get back to my original gender... and I weighed easing my personal gender-identity issues against the possible complications that being granted such an un-hidable royal favor could introduce to my larger projects... and, reluctantly, set the idea aside.

I did have something else that I could ask Luna to do for me. "There is a certain project I had been meaning to get started, but which I haven't been able to figure out how to introduce under the auspices of either The Dairy's public or private sides. But as a quiet royal initiative..."

She nodded in understanding, and I went on. "It involves the production of a certain dangerous alchemical substance. Improper care and handling can easily lead to the loss of a hoof, or worse - but when finished, it has a number of applications. The final product consists of about two-thirds cellulose nitrate, which is produced by exposing cotton fibers to an equal blend of sulfuric and nitric acids; about one-third glyceryl trinitrate, which is made by adding glycerol to a similar acid mix, subsequently gelatinized with ether; and about one-twentieth part paraffin or petroleum jelly. There are a number of precautions which need to be taken in order to prevent accidents of various sorts..." I went on describing how to manufacture a generic sort of cordite from raw ingredients - sure, black powder was a lot easier to throw together, but why settle for an inferior product - and wondered whether it would be a good idea to also have Luna be in charge of putting together a hoof-compatible pistol and individual cartridges... but decided to handle that end of things myself. Most likely, I could get away with having a few lab-techs in the Dairy get the individual pieces put together, compartmentalized so none of them knew what the whole project was. I might have to get a bit of help figuring out a decent trigger which could be aimed and worked with hooves, but had a few basic ideas based on the chest-mounted cameras I'd seen in use.

The next time somebody decided I was a helpless milker, I wanted to have more options than fancy footwork and pulling clever little tricks from hidden pockets - I wanted to be able to stand my ground and simply defend myself, and defend anyone I was with.

Luna had listened to my instructions with wide eyes. "And so, while there are extensive engineering applications, the wide availability of unicorn magic means that Equestrian society might be better served if this substance does not enter into general use. In fact, you may wish to cast a memory-charm to forget anything about it, though you may wish to make a note that glyceryl trinitrate can be a valuable medicine for certain heart ailments, as it acts as a vasodilator."

I stopped, having finished. She simply kept staring at me for a long few seconds, then abruptly shook her head. "I... will need to consider this carefully before I even think about giving you an answer. I am strongly tempted to cast that memory charm on both of us."

I bit the inside of my cheek. "I would recommend against that, Your Majesty - depending on what dangers Equestria faces, it may need every short-term advantage it can get." She looked dubious, and I remembered that she'd already memory-charmed away her knowledge about my original species and homeworld, so I smiled at her. "Besides, I already came up with a signal to send myself if I feel there is a risk of a memory-charm being used on me, and have sent it to myself. If I notice that signal but I fail to remember sending it..."

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, just underneath her horn. "Maybe I was thinking of giving you the wrong title - how would you like to swap places, and be the Princess and deal with... all this?"

"What, and give up showbiz?" She glared at me, so I answered more seriously, "Think of it this way - while everyone is looking at you and Princess Celestia, dazzled by your glory," she snorted, so I skipped to, "that means I can sneak around behind them without anyone noticing."

She heaved a sigh, looking around at the jail's visiting room. "Things seemed a lot simpler, not too long ago - all we had to watch out for were pony-eating monsters and megalomaniacal villains with obvious weaknesses. The entire... tone of events has changed, of late."

That was an observation which was uncomfortably close to certain of my own suspicions about what was going on - ever since I'd heard Twilight's suspicion about the leader of the Griffin Pirates, I'd been more and more certain that the world I found myself in was diverging further and further from the light-hearted entertainment of candy-colored equines it bore such a superficial resemblance to. So I cautiously diverted her attention from that: "Perhaps this might ease your mind - I consider my initial deal from our first meeting to still be in effect. If you ever feel that my thought processes make me a danger to those around me, or that I'm likely to cause more harm to Equestria than good - then just say the word, and I'll head straight to the mental asylum of your choice."

She looked at me, at the door leading back to the prison, and then back to me. "Thou truly trust my judgment that much?"

"Well - I'd say that I distrust myself that much. I need to have somebody who I can check my understanding of reality against, to make sure I'm not wandering into a true disconnect from the facts... and, since the overall community of peer-reviewed research journals seems to be somewhat lacking, and," I hesitated, then just spoke my mind, "and since you have some first-hoof experience in this sort of thing... who would be better?"

She considered all that for a very long moment... then smiled mischievously. "In that case - I'm going to find something to decorate you with. If not an official medal - maybe some horn-covers, or a royal warrant of appointment as a supplier of cheesecake and ice cream to Celly. Or shall I just send some strapping young Royal Guards to visit you with some of Pinkie Pie's special balloons?"

My eyes widened in shock, and Luna laughed delightedly as I glanced nervously over at the Guard who'd been carefully not hearing a single word of the entire conversation. By the time I turned back to her, she was back to being an ordinary-sized unicorn 'accountant'.

"Now there's a challenge for your clever little mind - to come up with something I can do for you - oh, very well, to you - before I think of the perfect thing."

The rest of the day, I didn't get anywhere near as far on my studies as I'd initially hoped.

Hard Time

The next day...

Only in Equestria would even the prisons have built-in stages for regular talent contests.

And only in a world where the laws of physics as they are known on Earth apply only intermittently would I be found wearing a long red evening gown, singing to the accompaniment of a jazz band with the lights turned low... and not only being on key, but doing well enough to get wolf-whistles and hoof-pounding applause from the bulls. And from the bovines.

(Author's note: Imagine this body wearing this outfit, doing this song.)

You had plenty money, nineteen twenty-two.
You let other women make a fool of you.
Why don't you do right... like some other men do?
Get out of here, get me some money too.

You're sittin' there and wonderin' what it's all about.
You ain't got no money, they will put you out.
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here, get me some money too.

Now if you had prepared twenty years ago,
you wouldn't be a-wanderin' now from door to door.
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here, get me some money too.

I fell for your jivin' and I took you in.
Now all you got to offer me's a drink of gin.
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?
Get out of here, get me some money too.
Why don't you do right, like some other men do?

If Equestria ever gets in contact with Earth, one of my missions is going to be to make sure that nobody ever knows I ever did anything of the sort.

When I got back to my cell, I was carefully removing the various face paints according to Aloe and Lotus's instructions - I didn't have a sink, but the guards seemed to have no thought that I shouldn't be allowed to bring a full makeup case and mirror with me. Even the stone walls were painted an ever-so-slight shade of pink, so that I couldn't help but wonder if Hasbro had once considered a 'ponies in prison' playset, or maybe there was some sort of morphic resonance with all the pink toy aisles on Earth.

Both my ablutions and my musings were interrupted by the call of "Visitor!" Looking up, the guardpony expanded, "Your intern is here to see you. Would you rather talk here or in the visiting room?"

Since I hadn't hired an intern... I shrugged, said, "Here's fine," and started folding up that sparkly red dress, opera glovesocks, and wig.

In a few moments, a Royal Guard had taken a position on this inside of my door, said "Clear!", and a cheerful unicorn mare walked in - white body, pink mane, and a cutie mark of a sun hidden behind a cloud.

I groaned and put both hooves over my eyes. "Hello, Princess."

"What? I know not of this Princess you speak of - I am merely Sunny Skies, a simple intern hired by-"

I lifted one foreleg just enough to peek at her. "Ahem."

"Oh, you're no fun. Though you are a good singer - I didn't know you had it in you."

Deciding I'd already died and was now in the worst possible place, so things couldn't get any worse, I un-hid my head and went back to my packing. "I didn't, either. But I get better privileges for 'good behavior', like playing along with the local social events."

I glanced at her, and she was inspecting her flank. "How did you recognize me so quickly? Did I mess up my disguise?"

I thought about telling her about Luna's near-identical getup from the other day, but instead said, "I've just started assuming that the most ridiculous explanation I can think of for anything I encounter is the right one. Seems to be working so far."

She un-did her disguise and plopped the royal heinie on the floor, tilting her head quizzically one way, then the other. "I think I could have you arrested for lèse-majesté for that."

"Only if you revealed who Sunny Skies was - I'm guessing this isn't the only time 'she' has been seen somewhere around Canterlot. Is there something I can do for you?"

"If you had thirty seconds to give a piece of advice to one of the Royal Princesses, what would it be?"

Without hesitation, I said, "Those of your little ponies who do better than others will likely seek to give their children even better advantages - including by convincing the lawmakers to pass one little exception which gives them a great benefit, and inconveniences the rest of your ponies by less than a bit each. There will, in fact, be very good reasons given to permit such loopholes. But if you want to ensure that as many of your little ponies as possible have, at a minimum, the necessities they need to survive, you should resist any such efforts, and try to roll back and repeal any that are already in place. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Hm - I had enough time to finish with something about 'half of knowledge is knowing the questions' or 'peace if possible, the truth at all costs'."

"And if you were granted more than thirty seconds to continue explaining?"

"Hm... Not all of your ponies have as much friendship in their hearts as others. And some of those less-than-loving ponies will be rich and powerful ones. Perhaps they own a mine, and the land around it, and seek to hire some ponies to work in it... and decide to save money by building houses on that land, to rent to the workers. And put in a store where those workers can buy their goods. If they do not understand friendship enough... they just may decide to, oh, use the excuse of 'simplifying accounting' or 'increasing security from outside robbers' by paying their workers mainly with scrip rather than bits, which can be given right back to them when paying rent and buying at the store. And then preferring to hire workers willing to be paid in scrip. And then increasing the rents and store-prices. And evicting anyone who wasn't willing to accept the new system. And then cutting corners on safety standards. And deciding that since they owned the houses, they had both the right and authority to control not just what was done with the houses, but what was done inside them. And that the workers should work longer hours for less pay. And that anyone who complained too much should be shown the errors of their ways, even if doing so required the administration of pain, just like how a parent spanks their child. And arranging so that the local members of the legal profession, of the courts and of the constabulary, were friendly folk who happened to agree with the way they were doing things. And-"

"I knew it!"

My description of a variation of a Gilded Age robber-baron mercantilist being interrupted, I took a moment to gather my thoughts. "Knew what, your majesty?"

"I have figured out exactly where you come from."

I recalled that her memory of that particular detail had been hidden with a memory charm... but since I didn't know all that much about that sort of spell, I wondered if perhaps it was imperfect, and had started leaking. "You have, your majesty?"

"You don't need to play dumb with me anymore, Missy, for now I know that you are from... The Future!"

While I was trying to figure out whether to correct her, deceive her with some other story, or to allow her to believe this idea as - what was it now, a sixth layer of misdirection? - she continued, "We have tried your idea of relaying the time-jump spell," wait, that hadn't just been a hypothetical exercise?, "and have gotten news from four jumps in the future - a month's time. Admittedly, the only news we have received from our future self is that 'We're trying to relay the time-jump spell now', but-"

The Royal Guard interrupted, saying, "Incoming." Princess Celestia instantly vanished, replaced by Summer Skies, and she stopped talking about time travel.

One of the prison guards called out, "Visitor!" again, I called back to show them in, and after a few security doors opened and closed, in walked... another Royal Guard, followed by Princess Luna in her own unicorn disguise. My cell was getting a bit too crowded to breathe in, so I moved onto my bed. The two Guards eyed each other, and presumably after some sort of telepathic communication, one of them stepped back outside.

As the two disguised princesses looked at each other, I cheerfully spoke up, "I don't know whether the two of you have met. Sunny Skies, I would like to introduce you to my accountant. And, my dear accountant, I am pleased to present to you my new intern, Sunny Skies." I got a death glare from each of them for my trouble, so I just sighed, and rested my chin on my crossed hooves.

The light mare said to the dark one, "You missed a truly entertaining performance. I don't believe she plans on ever doing an encore."

The dark mare said to the light one, "A pity that I will only be able to see it in dreams." I blinked - wait, what? Could Luna look into - she interrupted, continuing, "But I had to finish some other errands before coming here." She squeezed by 'Sunny Skies' up to next to me, and stuck her nose into her saddlebag. She pulled out an odd, squarish black object, which she... immediately plunked on top of my head? "Congratulations are in order. You have, very likely, just saved your first life - the first of many to come. I believe you have met 'Granny Locoweed'? She has been having heart troubles, and today had some acute chest pains and shortness of breath... which were rapidly eased by the application of glyceryl trinitrate, as you described. I took the liberty of transcribing your lecture and having it converted into the proper format, and had it submitted for review by certain high-level administrators the Royal Canterlot University."

She pulled out a small scroll tied with a ribbon and dropped it onto my forehooves. Her smile was a sight to send most people screaming into the night, and I had a sudden very strong urge to go visit, say, the Southern Rainforest. She said, "And so I wish to congratulate you: Doctor Missy."

Sunny spoke up, "Should we start calling her 'Doc'?"

I covered my head with my forelegs again. "So from now on I'm going to have to keep telling everybody with a splinter that I'm not that kind of doctor..."

Sunny also offered, "Or she could get her a job at the University, and she can be Professor Doctor Missy."

Luna said, "To help you celebrate... I brought you some socks!" As I felt something woolen being tugged onto my hooves, and Sunny started talking about what sorts of post-nominal letters could be thrown into the mix, I began wondering if it would be worth breaking out of jail, finding that time-travel spell, going back a week and hitting myself in the head with a frying pan to keep me from going to that bar. Whether I changed history or annihilated the universe from paradox, I'd be keeping any of any of this from having ever happened...

Slack

It was only by the skin of my teeth that I avoided becoming saddled with The Honorable Captain Judge Sir Professor Doctor Missy, DSc, PhD (Canter), QC, ARA, FRSC, FCIC, CChem, FWCF, Esq... I was able to keep them from throwing in some ecclesiastical titles by stating quite firmly that I was an officially ordained minister in the First Church of Atheism. I wasn't sure whether they thought I was joking, lying, insane, or telling the complete and utter truth, but they didn't bring up that topic any further. However, keeping my name short enough so that I could actually spell it came at a cost: I had to promise Luna that I'd do an encore. I was able to beg off on an immediate performance by saying I'd have to practice, but it looked like I wouldn't be able to put away that sparkly red dress for good just yet.

There was mention made of founding a new order of chivalric knighthood based on the oath I'd described on my initial meetings with the Princesses, but I couldn't tell if they were joking, lying, insane, or telling the complete and utter truth. And as the two princesses bid their farewells and left, I still wasn't sure if either of them knew who the other really was, or if they were both just still playing along with each others' gags.

I mused that a millennia-long life might make anyone act a bit odd.

Most of my fellow inmates seemed to be in for poor impulse control: getting into fights, petty theft, vandalism, public drunkenness, and such - pretty much all of a kind with my own official conviction for littering. During the length of my stay, I didn't even find anyone locked up for tax fraud. More serious convicts either didn't exist (unlikely, even given the sugar-bowl-like world this was), were housed elsewhere, or were taken care of in more direct fashions, such as had happened to my attackers. Pretty much everyone involved was basically treating the whole thing like a big time-out, to give them time to calm down and get them enmeshed in The System that was supposed to help them get onto their hooves.

Everyone but me were ponies, and maybe three-quarters were unicorns. As the only non-equine, I was the subject of some curiosity - but enough rumors about the circumstances surrounding my crime were floating around that it was a very polite sort of curiosity. Anything I didn't want to talk about, didn't get talked about - at least, not anywhere I could hear it.

The food was... dull. Probably designed to help make sure prison wasn't somewhere ponies wanted to go, if there was any way to avoid it. Before arriving in Equestria, I hadn't been a vegetarian; I was quite comfortable eating meat. (I was also comfortable not eating it, and had been experimenting weekly with various styles of scrambled tofu.) Faced with the dullest sort of grasses and hay in prison, I was starting to get a hankering for some concentrated protein - enough so that I was considering redirecting my dairy production to my own stomach. That would probably be the proteiniest thing I was going to have a chance to eat, as long my species stayed consistent. Even if, a number of years ago, I hadn't made a conscious decision to try to avoid eating anything that could ask me not to (hey, I was an SF fan, and liked to be prepared for any eventuality) and a number of the ordinary critters in Equestria seemed to possess a disturbing level of self-awareness, there was the minor matter that my bovine stomach and its microbial flora were designed to process plant matter.

I wondered if, if Griffin the pirate was another ex-human, he was spending any time worrying about how intelligent his food was... and decided that if we ever did come into contact with each other, that item would probably be pretty far down on the list of things to talk about.

One thing about being imprisoned - with my day-job on hiatus for the duration, no distracting food or things I could build... I had lots of time to think. And there was a whole lot to think about. For just one example: I now had my fully-finished glasses, giving me vision roughly as good as my human body's eyes had been with their glasses - and so I could no longer dismiss the odd visual effects as some sort of 'fringe interference'. Colors were bright and even, and just about everything had actual outlines. When I looked at my forehoof from the front, I saw lines along its sides; when I looked at its side, I saw lines on its front and back. The other inmates had the occasional photograph or newspaper clipping - and the images had the same sorts of outlines. I had a pretty good understanding of photons, from simple optics to how Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, expressed in terms of energy and time, described the limitations of how virtual photons appeared and disappeared in certain ways which created the familiar properties of electromagnetic fields... but I couldn't come up with any way that the sorts of photons I knew could be jiggered to cause the effects I was seeing.

For the first time in a number of years, I didn't understand a rather significant part of how the universe worked, or even how to figure it out.

I was used to being able to describe... well, just about anything, from first principles. I knew how not only a light switch worked, but how cathode-ray tubes worked, and radio, and computers' logic gates - given enough time, I just might be able to re-implement a design for the 1980-era Commodore 64, perhaps the last computer which could be fully understood by a single person in its totality. I could describe the history of the universe from a few moments after the Big Bang to any given present-day event. I knew how the heavens worked, and was hoping to eventually travel to most of the places I'd seen in my telescopes. I understood how social systems arose from the underlying neurology, how biological systems arose from the underlying chemistry, how chemistry arose from the underlying physics. But now...

Now, I couldn't even explain how I picked up a sock from the floor.

I found this to be rather irksomely annoying. I could live with being a cow, I could get used to being female, I could even acclimate to Equestria itself having a tangible existence - but a complete absence of information on the fundamentals of how reality functioned? Intolerable!

I had access to plenty of paper, I could now hold onto a quill pen, and the prison was happy to supply plenty of writing paper... so in a combination of Equestrian writing, which seemed to be well-suited for being written by hooves, and in English to cover my remaining gaps in the local writing system, I tried writing down how I might be able to figure out some of those answers. I scribbled out flowcharts, made diagrams, jotted checklists, arranged tables, and, generally, imitated Twilight when she was focused on a new project.

Eventually, I came to a conclusion that I had two main paths open to me - fortunately, they were non-exclusive and could be pursued simultaneously. First was to try to kick an Equestrian version of the Enlightenment and scientific revolution into high gear. Second was to personally investigate anomalous situations in hopes that figuring them out would supply much-needed data to fill in the holes in my model of reality. For example, just having the surface portion of the Royal Dairy investigate cockatrice-based stonifying on a purely practical level was a good start - but it would be even better to understand what was actually involved in the petrification process and its reversal. And if I found some reports on some other form of magic with similar effects, which might be useful to compare to the animal-based version, then it just might be worth the time, risk, and resources to go collect data on that.

(Of course, that entire reasoning process was made slightly suspect by the fact that I had a rather strong urge to be almost anywhere outside the prison - the southern direction seemed particularly attractive, possibly because that was the last place I'd heard Griffin might be found.)

And once I understood enough of how this world's reality worked, and even better if I understood how this world related to the one I'd been born in, then... why, then I just might be able to do something of real value. Extending one life for a few years with a simple drug was a small start - what if nobody had to die of old age unless they wanted to? If defending a town from the monster-of-the-week was a worthwhile task... how much more so was mitigating the existential risks that threatened to wipe out all sapience? And even if I failed, and fell - if I could at least inspire other people to continue in my wake, to finish the Baconian project of empirical inquiry - then that would be almost as good as having done it myself.

Of course, I'd rather stay alive to do it myself, if I could.

One way or another, though - once I got out of the slammer, I was going to be doing some traveling.

Of course, I was still in the slammer, for at least a few more days. And while I could happily spend days at a time holed up with nothing but papers and reading material, now that I was relying more on my own devices to accomplish things like scientific inquiry than on general existing societal supports for the same... I also had to consider whether or not doing so was the best use of my time.

And thus I considered my various fellow inmates of the filly's wing of the Greybar Hilton.

Most of them were as bashful and embarrassed about their crimes as a kid who got overenthusiastic and did a tackle during flag football - they knew they'd messed up, and were appropriately apologetic about it and trying to figure out how to keep themselves from doing it again - even if for no other reason than to avoid getting locked back up. They were, all-in-all, perfectly ordinary ponies, just a little too far out on one side of the bell-curve.

But a few... seemed to be just hovering on this side of a more severe punishment. I looked at the outline of my hoof, recalled something I'd said to Celestia the other day... and decided to perform a small experiment to test that hypothesis.

The next morning, after the obligatory communal shower, which was a lot less interesting than it sounds (and only partly because everyone was running around unclothed already), I cautiously examined my potential targets during breakfast. There was the filly who kept playing the harmonica; the one who kept an array of girlie filly pics on her cell wall; the one who kept stealing a spoon to spend her time 'digging a tunnel' (though rumor had it that she'd just made herself a luxurious little basement love-nest); and similar cliches, who after some thought, I dismissed as being one small step up from the background ponies.

And then there was Red.

Red Hot Chili Pepper, to be precise. A pale-bodied pegasus, her fire-engine-colored mane was what had given me my inspiration for my cabaret rendition the other night. Of all the ponies I'd seen in prison, she seemed to be the quietest, and who took the time to consider her few words before giving them. I timed my showering and drying and such so that I was just behind her in the chow line, and took a spot at the table next to hers.

After a few mouthfuls, I glanced at her, and asked, "So... what're you in for?" She frowned at me, so I shrugged and smiled a little. "Sorry. I just always wanted to say that."

She nodded, took another mouthful of hay, finished it, and then answered, "... I ripped the tag off of a mattress. How about you?"

"Littering."

This time, we both smiled at each other.

A little later, I said to her, "My life has gotten strange in some very particular ways lately. Enough so that I'm actually willing to entertain the idea of looking at it from a narrative perspective - as if it were a story. In which case - it's possible that from the perspective of whoever is pulling my strings, the main reason I ended up in prison was to collect a plot-coupon of some sort which would be useful later on. Like if one day I was captured and put under a truth spell, I could honestly say that I spent some time in the clink."

"... Or if you happen to meet someone who joins you in your quest."

"Exactly. The trouble is - I've also read stories where someone who joins up like that ends up betraying the hero at a critical moment."

"... A hero's life is never easy. Do you see yourself as one?"

"Not really. But I do have some time to kill here, and I have a job waiting for me when I get out, at a place which is rapidly expanding, and can use all the hooves we can get. So I thought I'd see if you might be looking for work when you get out."

"... I might. I'm certainly not going back to the weather team."

"Sounds like there's a story there."

"... There is. But I'm not due to be let out for another month, even with good behavior."

I muttered, "Man, they must really take their mattresses seriously..."

"What?"

"Nothing. But sentences can be adjusted, when doing so is for the greater good, so let's assume that's manageable. There's still, um, how can I put this delicately..."

"... You want to know if I'm a crazed convict who's going to try to eat your liver while you're asleep?"

"Not in so many words, but that's the general sentiment."

"... It's easy enough to look it up in the papers. So to start with - I'm from Cloudsdale. Worked in the weather factory. Brewing up the rainbow pools..."

17 Minutes Later.

"- which is why pants should be forsaken whenever possible."

"Maybe by a flyer, but the very idea of a sunburned udder gives me the heebie-jeebies..."

After that explanation, of course I was willing to hire her - contingent on it actually being confirmed by the relevant newspaper accounts (which it was) - and use a bit of my growing back-channel influence to get her remaining sentence converted into community service which could be served out by being my aerial gofer. Even if it did mean that I was never going to look at plumbers the same way again...

Packing

Back on Earth, every so often I'd get the urge to just drop everything and leave. Hike, bike, or hitch-hike; with nothing but what was in my pockets, or my bug-out bag, or everything I owned in a trailer... something just pushed me to want to go. I'd only immediately given in to such impulses on rare occasions - which formed a couple of rather parent-worrying incidents in my youth - but had, over the years, channeled that general feeling into learning how to hike-camp. I'd even figured out how to do a sort of moving meditation, able to clear my mind fairly well after just a few kilometers.

Once Red and I were kicked out of the prison, I still had that feeling of wanting to leave, to hit the road. Not just any road - one hour I'd feel a pull to the far west, another the near north caught my attention. I kept finding myself rationalizing, looking for reasons to justify setting my target-of-the-moment as the destination for a journey, only to work on a brand-new set of just-as-attractive reasons once the place I wanted to go to shifted. Since that was obviously no way to make an actual decision, I avoided my own oddly changing biases by the simple expedient of passing the buck. As part of the agenda for seeing how far The Dairy went off the rails while I was gone, I added a note about seeking input about the first actual field trip.

It was an interesting discussion, in its way; I was able to help the staff get a better idea of The Dairy's overall mission criteria, and I was able to get some fascinating suggestions about things we could try to do - and places where a personal visit could elicit the most potential benefit.

Besides making some pegasus-based suggestions, Red did give me one further idea for a piece of gear to whip up before we headed out. I had my suits modified to hide not just one, but two hoof-controlled pieces of weaponry. For in addition to packing heat, I was going to be packing heat: a spray bottle filled with concentrated chili pepper extract. Having a handgun - oh, very well, hoofgun - gave me one force option, but it was a rather strong one. Pepper spray gave me another one, for those situations when I wanted to deter somepony without killing them. Would have given me a way to deal with my attackers without going to the extremes that had landed me in prison.

There was, however, one piece of gear I was completely unable to lay my hoofs on: an airship. Having one would make it a lot easier to travel, without being limited to the few existing railways. However, even with governmental backing, I only had so much in my budget - and airships were expensive enough to only be the playthings of Fancy Pants or Blueblood. I'd been focusing my pocket-empire-building efforts in the bureaucracy, and hadn't made any in-roads into high society; and while I might have nudged Blueblood into being a neutral bystander than an enemy, the de-stallioning incident had probably put me on the bad side of the rest of the local titled noble families.

Since, oddly enough, Blueblood was the closest thing I had to a contact in those circles, I made a formal-and-polite request to talk with him, and he stiffly-but-politely accepted. I entered his study, a classic Victorian brag-fest, the only thing missing being various taxidermied creatures. "Missy," he nodded to me from behind his over-sized desk.

"Blueblood," I nodded back.

"That's Prince Blueblood," he said sharply.

"Then that's Doctor Missy."

"You can't expect-" he started, then cut himself off, closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them. Interesting. "Please accept my apologies, Doctor Missy. I was unaware of your matriculation."

"That's quite all right, Your Highness."

He placed his forehooves together on top of his desk. "Now then - what can I do for you today?"

"I could use an airship. I understand that your social circles tend to contain the ponies who own them. I was wondering whether you could help me get my hooves on one."

"I'm afraid that's quite out of the question."

"Very well, then. Thank you for your time."

Business concluded, I started rotating my bulk to head back out, when I heard a confused, "What? Wait!" I turned back to look at him, and tilted my head. He said, "You're not going to - that is, that's all you wanted to ask me?"

"It's all I'd planned to, yes."

He rubbed his head, just under his horn. "Doctor - if you have a few minutes, please sit down."

I raised an eyebrow, but was curious enough about his out-of-character behavior to want to see what happened next, so I complied. This was his show, so I didn't say a word, to see what he would do.

It took him a few moments to realize that I wasn't going to ask him anything, so he sighed, and said, "Princess Celestia has said that I would do well to give you the respect due to a foreign dignitary of uncertain rank, perhaps somewhere between Knight of the Realm and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary."

"Hm... I think I can see why she would have said something of the sort."

He was obviously holding himself under careful control. "Perhaps if you told me more about what you needed a sky-vessel for, I might be able to do something for you."

An entirely reasonable question. "There are a number of sites which I intend to investigate, from Manehattan to Appeloosa. If I have access to an airship, I can set my itinerary up one way; without one, I need to make other, much slower plans."

He rubbed his chin. "In that case - I should probably inform you that several airships have been sent to assist with an outbreak of hydras in the south, and most of the remainder have had their schedules stretched to cover the gaps. Even new construction is being rushed, such as the largest and most luxurious vessel ever to be built, for its maiden voyage across the Ring Sea, simply to free up the construction capacity to build more."

I winced a little, and muttered to myself, "Sounds like a real Hinden-tanic."

"Hm?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Hm..." He levitated a quill and made a quick note off to the side, before returning his focus to me. "Where was I... yes. Due to the chaos, there are nearly no airships which can be directed to an arbitrary route, and those which can are dedicated to specific purposes."

I nodded. "You have been... unexpectedly informative, and I appreciate your taking the time from your busy schedule to let me know all this."

He winced as if I'd struck him. "I hope that your... experience has not given you a false impression about Equestrian nobility."

"... Let's just say that it is part of an overall pattern I recognize."

"That hardly seems likely."

"Blueblood - you need to understand one thing about me if you want to have a useful conversation. I view lying as an act of violence roughly equivalent to slashing your car...t's suspension. But unless violence is already required, or if I need to do so to save a life - I do not lie. Don't think I even bluff." I stared at him coldly, until he looked away.

He frowned, then glanced around the room, at the bookshelves and knick-nacks. "She isn't listening in and waiting to pounce again, is she?"

Curiouser and curiouser. "I didn't make any arrangements this time, but she might be listening on her own accord."

He nodded calmly. "She's more likely enjoying some of your cheesecake, at this time, then."

'My' cheeseca-? Oh, right. I fought down a blush, and slightly rattled, asked, "Why do you ask?"

"There was something else that she said about you. And me." My eyes widened in horror, and he shook his head. "No, nothing like that. She said she was... disappointed in me. That I... lacked something vital to ensuring the future of my bloodline... and that if I was smart, you might be able to help me find it."

Ah. Now I saw the direction Celestia's hoof was nudging things. But since I couldn't make Blueblood live through the same day thousands of times, or send him back to magic kindergarten, if I was going to do anything of the sort, it was going to be my way.

As I was figuring that out, Blueblood was continuing, "So perhaps if I were to locate some alternative transportation for you, you might be willing to engage in some quid pro quo...?"

I held up my hoof, frowning. "It's not... that simple. I believe I know what she was referring to; but simply telling you what it is would do you no good, as you would either not believe me, or not understand. You are missing... certain underlying information, of a sort that I don't believe I can teach you by simply talking about it. Given what I know of your life - you would have to not just listen, but do certain things you would currently find incomprehensible and pointless."

He was looking at me sharply. "So you can help me, but won't."

I snorted. "On the contrary. Maybe I'm mistaken. So let's try the fast fix - if you can let go enough to do this, then maybe... So. Go out, take the first beggar you can find, take him or her home, feed them, give them a few hundred bits, and help them find a job."

"What?"

"Right now. Chop-chop."

"But," he frowned, "the first beggar? What if he's... well... unsanitary?"

I sighed. "And time's up. Sorry - there's no easy fix for what ails you."

"But there is a fix."

"Yes."

"And you know what it is."

"I... think I do."

"And you can help me with it."

"Er. I'll put it this way - I expect that, on your own, you have maybe a one in twenty chance of figuring this out. If I agreed to try to help you... maybe a two in five chance."

Almost whispering, he said, "So little?"

"If you'd gone out when I'd said to, my estimation would be a lot higher."

"And... in your honest opinion, is this something I need to learn, to ensure that the Bluebloods continue through the fifty-third and later generations?"

"... are you sure you want to know the answer?"

"I must know."

"If I answer, what I say will likely make you furious and insulted and hurt."

"Tell me!"

"Since you've asked me three times - on your own head be it. If you don't figure this out, I don't expect your line to have another generation, and would be astonished if there were two."

He nodded firmly. "Then it's settled."

"What's settled?"

"I will take you on my airship, the Alicorn, and in return, you will do whatever you need to to educate me on this mysterious matter."

"... I thought you said all the airships were busy or tasked."

"As an Equestrian Prince, I am required to remain near rapid transportation in case of a royal emergency - and ever since that unfortunate incident near Stalliongrad, the Alicorn is tasked to remain near me."

I started shaking my head. "No. Oh, no, No way, no how, no chance, nada, uh-uh, noperino, and that's final!"

My hooves were hanging over the railing, and much more than my cud was on its way down (and down, and down...) to the forest ground. I groaned, "I should've tried inventing motion-sickness pills before we left..."

And Perhaps The Horse Will Sing

"Fly me to the moon,
And let me play among the stars.
Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
In other words, hold my hand!
In other words, darling, kiss me.

"Fill my heart with song,
and let me sing forever more.
You are all I long for, all I worship and adore.
In other words, please be true!
In other words, I love you!"

As I crooned to the audience in the darkened nightclub, I ran my mind over the sequence of events that had led to me doing Manhattan cabaret...

"You are quite insane, you know that?" Blueblood said to me.

"Quite likely," I agreed. "But that has nothing to do with this."

"You can't seriously expect this to work."

"That's just the point. Right now, I honestly don't know what will happen - and whatever does happen, will be useful evidence one way or the other."

"This whole notion of 'narrative causality' is nonsense!"

"Then you have nothing to lose by standing right there, do you?"

He glared at me. "It is... uncouth to even be associated with such proceedings."

"Then the sooner I'm done, the less opportunity there will be for anyone to see you, won't there?"

"Fine. Let's get this over with."

I nodded, and looked around to make sure preparations were complete. We were halfway to Manehattan, and I'd had the Alicorn drop us off in the middle of a field, with nobody else anywhere nearby, and then back off a safe distance. Satisfied that nobody was nearby by myself and Blueblood, I coughed, cleared my throat, glanced up at the calm, clear blue sky, and stated clearly, "It's probably nothing."

Nothing happened, so I continued my litany. "What are the chances of that happening?" A light breeze ruffled the grasses. I announced, "Nothing can stop us now!" Blueblood stared at me from underneath his ruffling mane. I cried out "It's unsinkable!", staring at the rapidly-forming 'mare's tail' clouds. "Mwa-ha-hahaha," I added.

The Prince was starting to look worried, so I threw in, "At least it isn't raining." The clouds had thickened to a nimbostratus, and after a couple of seconds, I was rewarded with the first drops of a shower. Cheerily, I pointed out that "Things couldn't possibly get any worse." Distant lightning flashed.

I pointed my hoof at Blueblood, and said, "He only has two days left until retirement." Thunder boomed from right above us.

I wiggled in place, took a deep breath, and incanted the final and most potent line: "What could possibly go wr-"

Blueblood dived forward, clamping my muzzle shut, shouting, "Don't!" He looked right up. "She didn't finish it, it doesn't count, right? Right?"

The clouds grudgingly started fading away, so I said, "Mm mf mph mm-mph me?"

"What?" He let go of my mouth.

"Now do you believe me?" I asked politely.

"Of course not," he stated firmly.

"Then let me go through to the finish."

"No!" He looked upwards with a slight cringe.

"Why not?"

"I... just don't. Please?"

"Tell me why I shouldn't, and I won't."

"I- I... I'll admit that you seem to know some sort of strange magic."

"Mm... it's a start, I suppose."

"I'm not going to agree with any of the rest of that nonsense you blathered."

"At this point, I wouldn't expect you to. But you do agree that I know something you don't about how the world works?"

He mumbled, I coughed, he finally gave a minuscule nod, which I presumed was the most I'd be able to get out of him at this stage. So he called the Alicorn back, and we re-boarded to head back on our way... though I did seriously consider just walking the rest of the way. Ginger tea helped, some. Not enough.

Blueblood tried to hide himself away in his cabin, but I followed him right in. If I was lucky, not being able to see the horizon would help with my motion sickness. If I was unlucky, then hopefully he kept airsickness bags handy. If he didn't, he just might realize why they were a good idea, even if he himself didn't experience any such symptoms.

He glared at me, but I calmly informed him, "If I am to determine what method has the best chance of helping you, I need to know certain things about you, your behavior, your goals, and suchlike." He nodded cautiously, so I continued, "So - let's say that I told you you could solve everything you needed solving, if you painted your body a bright blue and your mane a bright green - and kept them that way for the rest of your life, without ever once explaining why you did so to anypony else. How would you respond?"

He gave me a look. "I'd say you were being completely and utterly foolish."

"Ah - so you think that avoiding association with a seeming fool is more important than ensuring the continuation of your bloodline?"

"What?"

"I'm trying to gain a better understanding of what your priorities are."

He ground his teeth. "There is no way that defiling my coat with such garish shades would in any way contribute to my bloodline."

"Have we or have we not established to your satisfaction that there are things I know how to do that you do not? Because if not, I have a few other ideas on how we can test narrative causality-"

"No!. No. That will not be necessary."

"Good. The point is not just that I know things - but that there are things that you do not know. And that I can use that knowledge make plans for how to cause things to come to pass, in ways that you would not expect."

"I don't..." He frowned.

"If you prefer, think of it this way - it's possible for you to become an even greater and grander Prince than you are now. But in order to do that - you have to admit that, right now, you are not all that you can eventually be."

"I will make no such statement in public."

"At this stage, I wouldn't expect you to."

"Then - very well; it is at least remotely feasible that the future Prince Blueblood will be an... improvement from the current one."

I smiled. "That wasn't so hard, now was it? Now if you'll excuse me for a few moments, I think I'm about to borrow your wastebasket..."

By the time Manehattan was in sight, I was pretty sure all four of my stomachs were completely empty, so I watched our approach from the Alicorn's bow. The architecture mostly reminded me of being from around 1900, or earlier - but then over to the side was an ersatz Statue of Liberty. Red fluttered over, landed, and leaned on the rail beside me. "Never seen the Statue of Harmony before?"

"Can't say that I have," I agreed.

"Kinda gaudy, but it really helps bring in the tourists."

"Are you from here?"

"Nah, but I spent some time apprenticing with the local weather teams."

"Kinda envy you your wings."

"I'm kinda glad you don't have any - otherwise I'd still be out of a job, wouldn't I?"

"That's one way to look at it."

"So - once we get there, what're you actually planning on doing, other than teach His Royal Pain how to keep everyone from wanting to throttle him?"

"Hit a few libraries, grab a few things that are easiest to get in a big city, and start investigating certain reports and rumours, recent and ancient."

"Okay, I'll bite: 'ancient'?"

I closed my eyes, frowned, then mentally shrugged. "The more I know about how the world works, the more ability I'll have to do stuff. A few years ago, I put together a chain of logic suggesting New York-"

"Neigh York."

"-right, Neigh York, would be the secret location of a rumored form of magic. At the time, I didn't believe those rumors were true. Now, though... I have a lot less reason to disbelieve them."

"What sort of rumors?"

"Many names for the same thing. The isle of the Hesperides, where a tree of magical apples was said to grow. Avalon, meaning 'apple-isle'. Idun's golden apples. Stories from disparate locations, all of which contained inferences that happened to be pointing in the same general direction. And here, before us, we have... The Big Apple."

"You're joking."

"Not at all. It's not my highest priority, but I do plan on keeping an eye out for any interesting or unusual fruit trees while we're here."

"So if that's just a sideshow, what's the main attraction?"

"I'm trying to trace back through the path the leader of the Griffin Pirates took - see if I can find where he came from, if there's something unusual about that spot. And learn whatever I can about him on the way, since we might not be able to find that place."

"So... basically, just looking around and getting stuff and asking questions? Nothing exciting?"

"That's the plan."

I was galloping down the alley as fast as my hooves could carry me, the baying mob of maddened ponies close on my heels.

All I'd done was start humming a song, kind of curious if events would line up into a musical number, the way they'd had a tendency to in Ponyville. But, I now supposed as I skidded around a corner, if I was experimenting with applying tropes, then I probably shouldn't have tempted fate beforehand.

And I probably should have picked a song I actually knew all the lyrics to... instead of one where I was going to clumsily taper off in the middle, turning the (magical?) choreography into a shambles and upsetting several food-vendor carts.

Seemed like even in the big city, ponies took their spontaneous musicalism quite seriously.

I took a left - and found myself in a dead-end alley. A single closed door was the only potential escape, and was, astonishingly unlocked; so I hurried through and slammed it closed, locked it, and leaned against it breathing heavily...

... whereupon the house-lights dimmed, and a spotlight snapped on, focused on me.

To my right, a piano, with player; to my left, assorted light-jazz instrumentalists. Who were all staring at me curiously.

Just as the audience started muttering, I remembered a song I really did remember all the lyrics of, and on my first note, the band joined in.

I was going to have to be a lot more careful in the future, if I ever tried fiddling with, let alone relying on, the fact that some of the rules this world seemed to be run on more closely adhered to the patterns of fiction than of physics... or else I just might turn into an object lesson for some future protagonist that they should prefer using brawns to brains.

After my first number, I couldn't quite find a way off the stage, and so was obliged to continue with What A Wonderful World and Straighten Up and Fly Right, before I could finally plead the necessity of wetting my throat. Somepony else came up to sing, and I clambered down, and could finally actually see where I was - some sort of restaurant-type nightclub. I'd been following up on certain clues and hints about Griffin that had been passed along to The Dairy, but other than a pony in the gem market who hadn't wanted to say anything without a much bigger bribe than I had available to spend, all the leads had been complete dead-ends, instead of partial ones.

The barfilly asked, "What'll you have?"

"Water, please - or juice." She frowned at me, so I explained, "Anything I drink comes out in the milk," pointing a hoof at my udder. That seemed to bore her, so she just nodded, and I took a seat at an empty table, wondering if the angry mob had given up looking for me yet. When the barfilly came back with what smelled like apple juice, she was accompanied by an earth-pony stallion who sat mostly facing me. "You've got some nice pipes," he said, after setting his own glass on the table. "Not great, could use some training - but nice."

"Thanks - I think."

"I have a few ins with some local music producers-"

I held up a hoof to interrupt. "Sorry - I already have full-time employment."

"Perhaps you mistake my meaning." A couple of Big-Mac-sized ponies, dressed in black, loomed up behind him. "This is a private club - and three quick numbers, done by someone with just nice pipes, aren't enough to keep me from having you arrested for trespassing. Or having you thrown right back out into whatever you were running from."

"I see. In that case, what would you consider fair compensation for my... intrusion?"

"Perhaps we should go to my back office to... discuss it?"

I glared firmly at him. "Not with you, not for money, and very definitely not now."

"Whoah, whoah, I didn't mean anything like that," he tried to reassure me. I remained unreassured. "Though if you were willing, I wouldn't say no to-" I glared harder. "Fine, fine, ya lousy-"

I interrupted his grumbled insults by standing. "I believe I should take my leave. Good evening, sir." I glanced over at the pair of bully-boys. "And as I am leaving, peacefully, there is no reason for either of you to touch me, and I will take it amiss if you do."

They looked at each other, then their boss. "Just get her out of here," he growled.

A few moments of being cautiously not touched later, I was out the front door, whereupon Red soared down to join me. "I've been looking all over for you. What were you doing in there?"

"Nothing I should have been. Here," I held out the juice glass I was still holding. "I believe that we should have this tested for drugs, love potions, sleeping magic, or anything of the sort - and to find a non-corrupt constabulary who will be willing to shut the place down and make arrests, should anything be found."

As she took the possibly-adulterated beverage, Red was giving me a strange look, of the sort I was becoming accustomed to. "On the plus side," I said to her as I started trotting down the street, "it turns out I really am a better singer than I thought I was."

Behind me, I heard a shout of, "There she is!" I sighed, and pushed off into another gallop...

Trading Up

After one of those harrowing moments of grabbing a ladder danging from a hovering vehicle, things calmed down for a little while.

The Alicorn cruised northwards along the coast, with me, Red, and the crew's lookout keeping an eye out for anything that looked griffony or piratey or the like. When we reached Equestria's border, Blueblood refused to go any further. I wanted to argue with him; at the very least, I wanted to cautiously experiment and find out if I really was only able to think while within Equestria proper; but I was still feeling a pull to go westerly... so I didn't argue as hard as I probably could have, and thus we turned west, cruising along Equestria's northern border for a while.

While I may have been denied my chance at experimenting, I still faced the opportunity to try to take Blueblood and... well, if not reform him, at least try to mold him into a pony with enough competence to actually be a political ally of, when it suited his long-term goals to do so. Even that would be a step up from someone who would treat Rarity like a serving-maid for no particular purpose. Some careful questioning elicited enough details from him that I was able to put together a picture of his political viewpoint, such as it was. He seemed to be under the impression that ancient Unicornia was an ideal society, a golden age, and everything would be perfect if everypony went back to just staying in their proper place; and that the present fallen situation was the result of over-ambitious pegasi and earth-ponies giving bad advice to the Princesses.

He didn't actually seem conscious of any of that, so my conclusions were more from inference than outright statements - but the hints I was able to extract from him fit the pattern set by former plantation owners, neo-nazis, the French nobility around the time of their first revolution - pretty much any human group who used to have absolute power over others, and wanted it back. The disappointing thing was that from the books and newspapers in Blueblood's shipboard library, he wasn't alone in his position; he was certainly at the extreme end of the political spectrum, but there were plenty of unicorns who felt the same way he did, and were just more subtle about voicing it. It was tricky, trying to find a way to increase his general competence at being a tolerable pony to be around without also giving him a greater ability to more firmly impose a hierarchy whose lack of social mobility could lead to a Rome-like collapse.

For example, while I was on the front deck, watching the landscape roll by, and Blueblood lounged on a deck-chair sipping a drink, I essayed, "Are you familiar with any stories of high-ranking nobles who, facing certain doom, sent their children off with trusted servants to be raised in secrecy?"

"But of course. It's quite common amongst the bit-dreadfuls popular with the masses, but there are a few actual historical cases they are based upon, such as the Earl of-"

I coughed, interrupting. "Good. Now then - since you admit that nobles have been hidden amongst the commoners... how can you tell whether someone is really just a commoner, or is actually a noble in disguise?"

"Those with true breeding will rise to the top, naturally, to claim and reclaim their titles."

"Ah - so you're suggesting that receiving a title, or even just being offered one, is strong evidence of already-existing noble blood?"

"Naturally! I'm so glad that you understand this, unlike so many of your kind."

With a small amount of effort, I kept a straight face, allowing me to say quite calmly, "Do you remember how I try not to lie, unless I'm also willing to kick you or worse?"

"...yeeesss?"

"Then know that I am being utterly honest when I say this: Princess Celestia offered to grant me a noble title, and a seat in the Barn of Lords."

"What?!? But-! That's-!"

As amusing as his sputtering was, I had a point to make. "I did gently refuse her offer - but only because I have plans that would be disrupted by it. I suspect that if I were to change my mind, she would be quite willing to renew the offer."

"You cahn't be serious! You aren't a noble of any kind at all!"

I stared at him calmly. "If you wish to test my honesty, then there's an easy way to prove it - just ask Her Royal Highness herself. Do you want to test me?"

He stared at me, glassy-eyed and incomprehending. I was pretty sure I'd just broken something in his brain - something that needed breaking, hopefully - but before I could find out whether he'd pull a Rarity-like swoon or, wonder of wonders, actually try to understand what he'd just been told, we were interrupted by the lookout calling, "Dragon off the starboard bow!"

Even with my glasses, I had to squint to make out the distant shape rising from behind a hill. The Alicorn was built for long-distance speed, not sprints or intense combat; but it was able to defend its royal cargo from ordinary menaces - and as it got closer, the dragon seemed less menacing than most. Its scales were slate-grey, the back ends of its wings were ragged and torn, and there were significant gaps in its dentition. The great dragon migration had already passed through Equestria towards the southwest, so it seemed that this one might have been to old, sick, or injured to take part in it... which might mean that it was also a very hungry dragon. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could really do if things came to combat - sure, I had my smallarms, but this was more of a capital-scale event. I wasn't even packing a parachute, and didn't place any confidence that Blueblood would be willing to use his magic to save more than his own hide.

There was a boom from belowdecks, and a cannonball soared off in the general direction of the dragon without coming close to it - a warning shot. The dragon veered to its left, so that it wasn't coming straight at us, but was still getting closer. It started circling us; and as I turned, I saw Blueblood's blonde tail and royal fanny disappearing into his quarters. So much for nobility being able to seize control of any situation. Red had been napping belowdecks, and the crew seemed to have some sort of standard procedure for this sort of thing, which seemed to involve not going anywhere the dragon could see them...

... which left me as the only living thing in sight on the whole airship.

Whoops.

Under the rather watchful gaze of the dragon, I trotted over to where Blueblood kept his megaphone, picked it up, and used it to shout out, "What do you want?"

A rumbling growl came back, "Food."

Without much to lose, I asked, "What kind of food?"

The rumble returned, "Meat."

This was pretty much the first time I had to really and truly face the fact that I was several hundred pounds of beef on the hoof. It wasn't exactly a happy thought. I kept turning to keep the megaphone aimed in its direction, "Nopony here wants to be eaten. You should go hunt elsewhere!"

It passed around the back of the ship again, out of sight behind Blueblood's rooms, then, thankfully, reappeared around the side. It - he? she? - rumbled, "Can't. Dive."

I focused my attention on its wings - and realized they were a lot more damaged than they'd looked at first. Frankly, I couldn't see how it was still in the air - well, even aside from the fact that it didn't seem to have enough wing surface area for its mass in the first place. I megaphoned, "Do you want to trade?"

"Maybe."

"Do you have something to trade?"

"Gold."

I considered that... then replied, "Let's talk."

It took a bit of effort even to arrange things to where we could talk. I wasn't going to go anywhere near a hungry dragon without several cannons aimed at it, if I could help it, just to make sure it stayed honest. I tried convincing Blueblood that it was a royal tradition to face up to a dragon, and this one seemed reasonably peaceful and harmless - whereupon I heard him lock his door. With a bit of backup from Red, I was able to convince the crew that as the sponsor of this trip, I was next-in-command after Blueblood - they seemed more like pleasure-yachters than naval-ponies, with no sense of true chain-of-command in them, so I was able to get away with it. The dragon landed, and the Alicorn hovered nearby, with a broadside loaded and aimed. If the dragon really was willing to put up with all of this - it really must be in more dire straits than it was trying to let on. And must be a pretty unusual dragon, to be willing to ignore its pride long enough to negotiate with ponies. Or with a cow, as the case may be.

"I'm called Missy," I told it. I'd joined it on the ground - but still wasn't getting anywhere close to its claws and what remained of its teeth, just in case its hunger overrode its memory of the ship's cannons. "Is there anything you would prefer to be called?"

"Grey," it rumbled, eying me and the small cart I'd brought.

"Very well, Grey. Do you have some way to prove you can pay?"

It twisted its long, sinuous neck, and bit at the middle of its back, amongst the spines there; it pulled out something shiny, which it tossed in my direction. A rather dented crown rolled up to my hooves. Fair enough.

"And you do know we are entirely willing to shoot you to pieces if we even think you'll try to eat any of us?"

I didn't say anything, which I took for assent. "You may not be able to hunt - but do you happen to know where some, um, meat is? And by that I mean nothing that can talk."

Grey considered for a few moments, then raised one claw to point in a direction, roughly northwest.

"What do you plan to do afterwards? If you're going to eat any ponies or cows or the like, well..."

"Rest. Heal. Hunt."

"You know, if you want, I think I could arrange for the ponies to trade with you regularly - maybe not even for your gold, but for fire, or helping lift things, or-" Grey snarled, and a lick of flame vented from his (I just started assuming 'he') nostrils. "Fine, fine, it was just an idea. Something to keep in mind for the future. It's a lot easier to get other people to do things for you if they don't have to worry you're about to kill them."

I shoved the cart in Grey's direction. "Here's most of the protein we have on hand. Mostly eggs and tofu. Not meat, but should help hold you over for a while." If nothing else, it was a fair trade for the crown.

And so it turned out that the first real use I made of my hoofgun wasn't to defend myself from an attacker, but to hunt and kill some non-sapient animals for food, to use to make a mutually-beneficial trade where every person involved ended up better off than before.

As perfect an example of a positive-sum game as that might be - I still found it disturbing how easy it was.

Once we were on our way again, Blueblood nonchalantly exited his cabin, and tried to insinuate that some portion of the proceeds belonged to him - most likely all. I couldn't resist taking a certain delight in completely and utterly refusing any such suggestions at all. He finally gave up when I suggested, "If you disagree, then we can go back and ask Grey who he thinks he gave the gold to..."

Red and I tried admiring the wearable pieces in one of Blueblood's many mirrors, but I couldn't help laughing at myself, and we packed it all up. The box of shiny stuff might come in handy some day, as a form of funds not reliant on the Princesses and governmental funding, but I didn't actually have any use for the stuff right now.

As I was leaving the secure part of the cargo deck, I heard a new shout of "Dragons!". This time the hatches were locked with me belowdecks - and this time, the warning shot was followed by a full broadside. I galloped to try to find a porthole, hatch, or some way to find out what was going on; but by the time I did, it all seemed to be over - a couple of small reds were flapping as hard as they could away from us, and a third was spiraling down and down.

Red squeezed next to me to take a look for herself. "Guess they weren't interested in trading."

"Guess not. Surprised there are so many still around here, instead of off with the great migration."

"Maybe they didn't hear about it?"

"Maybe..." I remained unconvinced.

Once the all-clear was given, I suggested we change course away from the border. Blueblood was all to happy to agree, which made me suspicious that it was a bad idea... but I was still feeling a tug to go somewhere else, currently in the southwest, so decided that even idiots could agree with a few good ideas, and we turned back into Equestria's interior.

That evening, I was trying to teach Blueblood certain practical social skills through the medium of poker, with the assistance of Red and a couple of off-duty crewponies. I was finally able to keep some food down, even if it was a light broth, and my mood had improved tremendously. I'd even given up the ginger tea in favor of simple water, and as the improvised chips moved back and forth, finally felt as if I could actually relax for a bit. There wasn't a blessed thing I could really do until we hit Appaloosa, and even Blueblood seemed to have mellowed enough to bring us a round of drinks from his personal wet bar - and, he knew enough of my preferences to put a glass of apple juice in front of me instead of something harder. I anted up for the latest hand, with a pair of sevens in the hole and another in the flop, took a sip of my apple juice...

... apple juice?

... I frowned, and blinked...

... and the next thing I remembered being aware of, I was stretched out in Blueblood's bed, the morning sun was shining on us through his portholes, and Blueblood himself was using his magic to comb his hair and tie his bow-tie.

My ensuing shriek was likely heard all the way from the buffalo campground to Miss Cherry Jubilee's private rooms...

A Discouraging Word

If I'd known where my hoofgun was, Blueblood very likely would have started sporting several new holes in his fancy white coat. Fortunately for him, nothing of the sort was within reach, so after my loud reaction, I pulled the sheet over me up to my neck, and grated out, "What. Happened."

"Nothing of consequence."

"What. Happened."

"Perhaps I'm not the best one to explain. Miss Pepper, would you come out here, please?"

There was a classic flushing sound, and Red appeared, peeking her head around the doorframe. "Are you back to being you?"

"What. Happened?"

"After you drank the juice, you started acting all weird."

"Did I... did he... did we?"

"Oh, um, no. You didn't do anything with him. You kind of, um, started chasing after me..."

Blueblood piped up, "Though you did ask me to marry you."

Red said back, "Actually, she asked you to marry us." I facehoofed, and she added, "And by that, I mean perform a marriage ceremony. He was actually our chaperone, a perfect gentlemen. Other than being a complete idiot and putting that tainted juice anywhere near the normal stuff and not bringing it to a police station."

Blueblood huffed. "I believe I am no longer needed here," and left the room.

I took a breath, and maybe half a notch more calmly, asked Red, "Did the two of us...?"

"Nah. You said a lot of nonsense words like 'shmoopy' and we ended up cuddling - and that's it. No offense, but I'm not really interested that way in anypony who can't join me on a cloud."

I rubbed my face. "I suppose... things could have gone a lot worse. I'd like to apologize to you for... anything and everything."

"No biggie."

"Of course, he still deserves to be keelhauled for being that careless with a mind-altering substance. Or maybe introduced to some of Zecora's more interesting brews. Maybe I could convince the Princesses to turn him into a scullery maid..."

"When you decide which, let me know - I'll hold him down while you kick."

Sometime during the night, we'd arrived at Appleoosa. It wasn't actually the town of ponies I was interested in - rather, it was the buffalo. I was still trying to come up with a suitable vengeance on the Prince, and as a first installment, insisted that he walk with me to the buffalo's camp. From what I remembered in the show, and what I'd been able to read in the Canterlot libraries, they were a very close cognate to the Plains Indians I was more familiar with - which is what I was here to look into.

I was keeping an eye out for Little Strongheart or Chief Thunderhooves as the two of us walked into the camp, remembering them from the cartoon - but it was actually some of the buffalo ladies and their children who started talking to us first. "Ooh," said one mother to me, "It's been a while since we've seen one of you. Go on, little ones." She waved a hoof, and three or four of the near-babies wobblingly tottered towards us - and, I abruptly realized, were aimed not just at me, but at a very specific piece of my anatomy.

I thought I'd been getting used to having my udder emptied three times a day - but that was by a machine. I knew that udders were actually designed for what these little ones had in mind - but the thought of letting them do what they seemed to be planning with mine was pegging my 'awkward' and 'uncomfortable' meters at their highest readings. I quickly tried to think of a reason to politely decline without causing any sort of insult - and was actually able to come up with a pretty good one.

"I'm sorry," I said, trying to block off my teats with my hooves, "but I drank something bad last night - a potion. It's probably tainted my milk, and I don't want anyone drinking it until it's had time to clear up." The little ones tried pulling puppy-dog eyes, but I kept my resolve firm, and their mothers called them back. Crisis averted.

Blueblood didn't say a word the entire time. I gave him a dirty look, and we continued into the camp.

We found Little Strongheart and the Chief, and introduced ourselves. I explained, "I believe there is a large danger approaching, and I am seeking knowledge on its nature, and how it might be dealt with. The ponies have one perspective... but my kind, the cattle, do not seem to have any information they do not; and I have only been able to talk with a single zebra. Your people are the first non-pony culture I have had a chance to visit... and I am hoping you have some way of learning things not used by the ponies."

Thunderhooves grunted, and Little Strongheart pointed at Blueblood. "And him?"

"He is... I guess you could say that he's my student, in a way - though I still haven't managed to teach him even that a full cup has to be emptied before you can pour something new into it." I was about to bop him with my hoof, when a rather more evil idea occurred to me. "He is also a Prince of the ponies, and this could be considered a royal visit from his people to yours. I'm sure he would love to learn more about your people... Say, do you think you might be able to arrange for one of those experiences where he has to fast, sweat in a steamy lodge, maybe hit himself on the back with tree boughs, until he starts seeing things that aren't normally there?"

Blueblood piped up with a "What? Sweat? What about my mane?"

Thunderhooves grunted, "I know the sort of ritual you speak of, and it is good that the ponies' Chief has come to learn of our ways." A minor herd of buffalo thundered by, sweeping Blueblood along with them as they went. "Little Strongheart, take her to the old woman."

I was soon brought to a tipi containing a grey-coated, withered and wizened buffalo wrapped in a blanket, smoking a pipe, who Little Strongheart whispered to, before leaving the two of us alone.

The woman didn't seem in any hurry to speak, but after a few minutes of nothing much happening, I spoke up, "Is this where I have to fast and bake in the sun and so on?"

She snorted. "Hardly. That's the men's ritual. They like showing off how strong they are. Us women are much more practical. Here." She hoofed me the pipe; I'd never touched so much as a cigarette while I was human, so I hesitated. And kept hesitating. The old woman glared at me and said, "Well?" So I put the pipe to my lips and cautiously inhaled some of the smoke...

"Took you long enough to get here," said a new voice.

I noticed that I had hands again. But I still had hooves. A lot of my original human self was overlapped with my newer bovine shape - only they were both the same, and there wasn't any overlapping at all. Realizing that I wasn't exactly in even the approximation of reality I'd been in a few minutes ago, I paid attention to my surroundings - and, instead of an old buffalo woman, there was a rather scrawny canine figure sitting in front of me. A coyote.

"Man," he said, "you've really had a number pulled on you."

I was having a bit of trouble sorting out which shape of mouth I had, but managed to ask, "Did you..?"

"Me? Not hardly." He stood up and trotted around me, looking me up and down. "If I had the oomph to pull one of you here and stick you even in as lousy a body as that, do you think I'd be picking up scraps from this crowd?"

"Dunno. Don't even know if you're real."

"Does it really matter if I am, or if I'm a hallucination, or some sort of manifestation of the collective unconscious?"

"'Course it does. Truth's important."

"Your obsessive-compulsive focus on the truth is what got you into this mess in the first place."

"An' I should believe you because...?"

"You shouldn't. It's a bad idea to believe anything I tell you. I'm not even supposed to be talking to you."

"Then why..?"

"I'm one of the original rule-breakers, babe. Or man. Speaking of which - tell you what, give me a quick roll in the hay and I'll swap you back to being the 'he' in 'herd'." He rolled onto his back and waggled his legs, showing himself off. "Or maybe not so quick - I can keep going and going and going..."

"You're obscene."

"And ever-ready. And you're sweet. I'm not hearing a 'no'..." I shook my head(s). "Pity. Well, if you're not here for that quick fix, how about a full shamanic initiation? I could have some spirits cut open your belly, scrub out your insides with wire brushes, and sew you back up all nice and purified."

"Is all that really necessary?"

"Course not! But most everyone who comes by here expects something of the sort, Duracell-brain."

"Pass. And I'd really rather skip any mysterious riddles that can only be guessed after they're of any use."

"Well, don't you just love squeezing the fun out of every-"

He was interrupted by a large, black bird flapping down and landing next to him. With a glare, the new arrival said, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Just the usual - putting the new blood through her paces, offering worthless riches and foolish wisdom-"

"You should know we've got more important things-!"

"And who's gonna stop me, featherbrain?"

The raven pecked, the coyote snarled, and in moments they were rolling around having a grand old brawl. I edged away, and said, "I'll just go over... this way," and since they didn't seem to notice, moved away from the melee.

I tried paying attention to the background landscape, but it was ever-shifting, synesthesiac, and often literally impossible to describe in words - so since any attempt I make to do so will give a completely false impression, it's probably best I don't even try. After a little while, the bird hopped over next to me, and commented, "Sorry about that - I wasn't expecting you until later in the day. He really should know better than to try to meddle in affairs larger than he is. Now, what was I planning on answering..."

I interrupted, "What information would help me the most, that I wouldn't have figured out in time by myself?"

"What?"

"You were aiming for the mysterious riddle, or the grant a wish but twist it to be what you were planning on doing anyway, or some other such shenanigans, weren't you?"

"Do you know who I am?" It spread its wings grandly.

"Nope. And I bet if I work at it, nobody else will, either. I wonder what happens to a piece of the collective unconscious when everyone forgets about it?"

Its feathers ruffled, and it preened at them. "You don't have to be rude about it."

"I'm very likely hallucinating - within what I'm still keeping long-shot odds as being a hallucination itself. If you're not going to help me, I've got better things to do with my time."

"Then I've got something to tell you." It gestured with a wing, so I leaned my head in closer, and closer, and the bird leaned into my ear...

"WAKE UP!"

It was morning - earlier in the morning, so presumably a later day. I felt like what everyone had always described a hangover felt like.

I saw Blueblood's airship sailing away.

He'd left a letter; stripped of the flowery header and footer, it read:

I now understand what you were trying to teach me. The education system has fallen so far that most ponies and cows don't actually know the benefits of being in their proper places; and so in order to get them to do what I want, I have to describe how what I want them to do matches up with their poor, misguided notions of what they think is in their best interests. It's all so obvious now, but I never would have figured it out without your help. I'm off to Canterlot to put all this to good use.

When I finished trudging back to Appleoosa itself, there was no sign of Red - hopefully, he'd just set sail while she was napping.

I wrote a letter of my own, to Princess Celestia, which summed up to:

I think I broke him. Sorry.

That royal pain-in-the-tail didn't even have the decency to leave me my milking machine, let alone my box of gold, let alone fare for a train ticket... I decided that the next time I saw him, I was going to murderize that misbegotten lump of applejohn, boil-brained, craven, doghearted, errant, fly-bitten, gudgeon, hasty-witted, ill-nurtured, joitheaded, knavish, lily-livered, mammering...

Over Troubled Waters

Fortunately, while my plans hadn't specifically been prepared for being stranded by an idiotic Prince who sailed away on an airship with my equipment, my money, and my gofer, the general groundwork I had laid was now starting to bear its fruit. Appleoosa was one of the nexii of the Apple family, who had, if unknowingly, volunteered to become part of The Dairy's communication network. Braeburn was quite willing to spot me the cost of a train ticket, and to pass along one of the coded messages back to The Dairy's central node in Canterlot - which both updated the ponies working there on my current location, and released some funds to recompense Braeburn.

Some of my gear was sent from Canterlot. I also got a letter from Red - she'd woken up halfway to Canterlot, and had made it there just fine, and had kept the impossible-to-over-insult Prince from making off with anything of mine. She also said that a half-hour after docking, there was an explosion aboard the Alicorn; nopony had been hurt, but Blueblood's cabin had been gutted.

Given the dragons that had attacked us at an earlier scheduled point on our trip... I made an educated guess that somebody was extremely unhappy with either Blueblood or myself. He was the more obvious target, since he was so eminently dislikable; on the other hoof, arranging for a dragon attack and a bomb required at least a minimal amount of competence, and if anyone really was trying to stop me from doing my thing, they'd need to be at least minimally competent to even be aware of me.

I decided that it might be healthiest to be a bit unpredictable about my location for a while.

The tugs and pulls I'd been feeling to travel in various directions didn't seem to have any obvious pattern, so I decided to try following them, and see if anything happened, or if I arrived anywhere interesting.

The next few days were... actually fairly dull. I took note of which direction I was feeling like traveling that day, checked the local travel arrangements to see how far that way I could get - most often stagecoach, train a few times, sometimes my own hooves. Half the time the tugging direction would change by noon, and I'd see if I could make new travel arrangements.

I did take the opportunity to pass messages back and forth with Canterlot, checking the local connections in the Dairy's comm network, whether that was one of the local cattle herds, a member of the Apple family, someone who reported to the government bureaucracy, or a more subtly-connected pony. I investigated some rumors, checked a few sites with tales of unusual events - but didn't find anything relevant to any of my interests.

Which left me a lot of time to think.

Not that I'm complaining about having the opportunity to do so - running my mind over the evidence I have available to me is, after all, kind of my thing. And I certainly had plenty of grist available for my mental mill. For just one example - whether my experience with the buffalo had involved supernatural beings, figments of my own imagination, outpourings of a collective unconscious, or something even less describable, the coyote had been... well, he was being so blatant I couldn't even call it 'dropping hints'. He'd basically been outright calling me some sort of battery. After a bit of consideration, I concluded that that might have something to do with the thing that had happened to me at the Royal Dairy, when the other two cows had touched horns and my mind had gone kind of blank for a while. Before that moment, I hadn't been able to pick up anything with my hooves - after that time, I'd been almost as handy as any other pony. Something had happened then, maybe involving some sort of transfer of magical power... but given that my mind was very precious to me, and also given what had happened with that love potion, I was feeling rather reluctant to perform any experiments on the matter.

But thinking can only take you so far, without the right sort of evidence to think about.

Eventually, I decided that this directional impulse I was feeling was worthy of investigation in and of itself. I couldn't think of any reason for it myself - but perhaps someone more familiar with unusual Equestrian magic could. So I stopped my aimless wandering, and took the next train to Ponyville. Twilight and the rest of the Mane Six were still out chasing the Griffin Pirates - but my destination was just a little into the woods: Zecora's hut. Having a little better idea about some of the threats that could be found even on that fairly short excursion into the Everfree Forest, I went loaded for bear (or Ursa, as the case may be) - and just in case there was another cockatrice in the area, wore mirrored sunglasses.

My practice with rhyming turned out to be all for nought - for I could not find the zebra I sought. (And that's enough of that.)

While I was politely and non-invasively checking to see if Zecora might have left a note, the directional urge I'd been feeling changed direction again... and this time it got a lot stronger; I could barely resist the urge to walk right into the wall. In my recent wanderings, I'd noticed that the longer I followed such an urge, gradually, the stronger it got; I guessed that either something about it was cumulative, or it had something to do with range. With how strong it was right now, if it was range-based, it could be right nearby.

I wanted to find out why I was some sort of malfunctioning homing pigeon-cow - but while that was true, it was probably mainly a rationalization to do what every part of my body was yelling at me to do anyway. Whatever self-justification I used, the result was that I left Zecora's hut behind and followed the pull.

My path turned out to be straight down a clear, unobstructed path, heading in the direction of one of those oddly skinny mountains that were all around the Ponyville/Canterlot region. As I got closer, I got the feeling that even if I stopped walking, I'd simply slide along the ground, the way Rarity did when she was discovering her cutie mark. Every cow I'd seen had been a blank flank, so I was pretty sure that wasn't what was happening. What disturbed me the most wasn't the idea that I was going to go this way whether I wanted to or not - it was that I wanted to go this way, whether I wanted to want that or not.

After a walk where the most ferocious critter I'd seen was an opossum, I finally arrived at... what appeared to be an ersatz Stonehenge - a circle of standing stones, worn from ages of being beaten by the weather. But what interested me much more than ancient architecture was the figure in the middle. The fact that the robed person was floating a few feet off the ground caught less of my attention than the fact that said figure was bipedal... and much larger than Spike. In fact, the last being I'd seen shaped anything like that... was the odd lady who'd drop-kicked me into this world and this body. So if I'd been feeling a pull towards her for... over a week, now?... and since there was a distinct lack of any other human-shaped species in Equestria... I placed a pretty high probability that this was the very same woman.

Assuming that was right, there was little point in my re-introducing myself to her, so instead, I started by describing how I was feeling. “There’s an old parable, about a young monk who asked an old one what the point of monking was. The older one threw the younger into a river, and held him down until he was almost dead, and asked what the younger one wanted, who gave the obvious answer - ‘Air’. If that had happened to me - I’d have said that I wanted to understand why he’d did that.”

The floating human-type figure threw off her hood... revealing an entirely different face than the one I was expecting. Not a classical Mediterranean beauty, but instead... more of a Gothy teenager. I blinked, then calmly commented, “I have absolutely no idea who you are.”

She responded, “Of course you don’t, mortals never were good at seeing the truth.”

'Mortals'? Great - probably another coyote-type, here to deign to drop pearls of wisdom couched in obfuscating riddles for hidden purposes. Welp, one of the best ways to deal with incomprehensible mysticism is to stick straight to the forms of rationalism which can winnow out truths. I told her, “Seeing is over-rated. If I saw the sky was green, and multiply replicated independent scientific experiments said it was yellow, I’d have a strong suspicion it was yellow, no matter what my eyes said.”

She rubbed her head, not seeming especially pleased with that, and changed the subject, "Don’t blame me for that, you brought me here."

"That seems unlikely - I was just following the pull, which led me to you."

"Your annoying psychic calling is interfering with my powers. I un-buried this entire temple from a rockslide, just so we could meet.

“Um... Thank you?”

Whatever intellectual repartee I might have been about to continue with was interrupted before I could say anything more coherent. There was a flash of light, and then there was a second human-type woman, standing near the first. This woman's face matched the stranger who had punted me here. Only this time she was wearing a white toga, a Greek helmet pushed up to reveal her face, and holding onto a spear. If I had to play mythological twenty questions... she seemed to be Greek or Roman; was too warlike for Hestia of the hearth or Demeter of spring; didn't ooze the raw sensuality of Aphrodite; didn't seem quite as maturely regal as Hera was supposed to be; and Artemis would more likely be carrying a bow and arrows. Of the major figures, that left... Athena. Or Minerva, if you prefer the Roman edition. Of course, there were plenty of minor figures in Greco-Roman myth, most of whom I'd never have a chance to identify - and there'd been a couple of millennia since those myths had been written down, which left plenty of room for further generations of godly-type folk. And, of course, that assumed this was a god at all - just because she could teleport was no reason to assume divinity. Twilight could teleport.

I muttered, “What... ‘If Jesus, then aliens’?” Just because I'd been chucked into Equestria, I didn't have any particular reason to assume the existence of any other fictional and/or mythical entities as being real enough to interact with.

I'd been busy playing Name That Deity because the two of them had started arguing as soon as the second one had appeared - and only partly in English. I did catch that the untanned one 'felt no attachment to this mortal', presumably meaning me, and 'didn't view her', meaning me again, 'as family'.

This is probably a good moment for me to mention that I have an unusual perspective on the Greek gods. Before I got bovinified, I was a bit of a genealogy nut. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I'd been able to trace one set of ancestors to various European noble families, eventually going all the way back to Emperor Charlemagne himself. I also discovered that, according to the genealogists of Charlie's time, he himself could trace his ancestry back through the kings of Troy, who traced their line all the way back to a mortal who'd been sired by Zeus himself. Putting it all together, then if all those records could be believed, then Zeus was my
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
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great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-
grandfather. 120th-great grand-dad, for short. What was odd to me was that nobody else seemed to have bothered putting the same information together - as far as I'd been able to tell, I was about the only person who'd mentioned, even in jest, that the genealogical data indicated an actual relationship with the Olympians. Ever since I'd put all that together, I always had an extra layer of interpretation when reading about Zeus and his family, as I considered what it would be like if such beings really were my own multi-great aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Not that I actually believed the Greek gods existed in the first place. By that point, I was well into my rationalist/atheist/humanist stage of development. Which was rather firmly derailed when I found myself with hooves, horns, and a mutually-trolling relationship with a pair of royal alicorns. And now... now, I was having to face the fact that much more was going on than my having once been on Earth and now being in Equestria. This same woman before me had been back on Earth, as well - and not only did that imply that there was a lot more of a connection between there and here than I'd thought, but... well, if this really was Athena, and she'd been back on Earth - then I might have been rather thoroughly and embarrassingly wrong about the lack of anything supernatural having been going on back there.

The argument showed no sign of getting any less heated. Whatever the foundations of reality might be, people are still people, and I'm a firm believer in arranging for positive-sum games where everyone benefits - and keeping people talking to find out how they can benefit each other is just the sort of thing I'm happy to do. So, just a bit cautiously in case of thunderbolts or turn-the-mortal-into-a-snail magics that might be let loose, I stepped closer to the pair and cleared my throat. "Pardon me," I said as they stopped talking and looked at me, "but it sounds as if the two of you are disagreeing about something both fundamental and important. Perhaps the service of a neutral arbitrator might be of some assistance in keeping the peace?"

Athena - I'll just call her that for short - smiled, and said something I couldn't understand to the floating goth - who quickly cut her off, finishing with an English, "Okay, okay." Said goth looked at me. "So what is it that you actually want?"

I've worked out my long-term ethical goals to a reasonable degree of completion, so I didn't have to hesitate to answer, "Primarily, to ensure the long-term survival of at least some sapience. Secondarily, if I can help it, to live for some approximation of forever personally. And various lesser sub-goals, such as spreading such immortality as far and wide as possible, and trying to do all that through ethical means. Assuming some standard tropes, I'd really prefer to avoid achieving immortality through sacrificing innocent lives."

She considered that for a brief moment, then said, "I do know a method to gain immortality that, while not easy, would require no sacrifices or unethical research."

I wrinkled my forehead, considering what options she might mean - and thought of one of the more obvious ones. "I hope you're not referring to the proposed existence of a soul that survives after death."

She seemed amused. "And what if I was?"

I winced. "Souls are... bad science. If they existed, then why does damaging the physical brain alter personality, or remove actual cognitive capacities? Not to mention, if souls really existed - then why does anyone get sad at funerals? Sure, the person who died would be going far away, but you'd eventually be re-united, so it wouldn't be horrible - but that's not the way people actually act."

She stated, “The soul is not something that can be explained, only understood. I will give you this wisdom: whether you believe in the afterlife or not, you’re right.”

I sighed, and said, "With any and all due respect: bullcrap. So, if you don't mind my asking - do you know of some method other than an 'afterlife' for living forever?"

She simply stated, "If immortality was easy, there would be no gods", then smiled, and added, "Besides - I would say that, right now, you, little cow, are quite unworthy of anything of the sort."

I shrugged. “‘Worthiness’ is, like beauty and value, an entirely subjective valuation. Just because you say I’m unworthy of anything has no more intrinsic value than Paris giving the golden apple to Aphrodite." I glanced at the toga-clad woman I was still hesitantly identifying as Athena - who had been one of the failed contestants in that little contest, and added, "No offense.” She smiled instead of turning me into a bug, which I took as a good sign.

The goth had been looking thoughtful, and then posed the question: "You seem to think if there was no death there would be no war, but you're wrong. I ask you this, could you live with yourself if you created a world where people were constantly maiming and mauling each other only to never experience the release of death? Would you have a choice?"

I answered. “Where there’s life, there’s hope - including hope of a better life. When people die, they’re gone forever - and if things ever do improve, they would forever be denied that better world, and everyone in that world would be denied their joining in.”

She whispered, almost too quiet to hear, “Death was never the end for me.”

Athena coughed, and said something in a language I didn't know. Goth-chick sighed, held out a hand, frowned at it... and with a flash, she was holding onto a golden whistle on a chain of a similar material. She tossed it at me, and, a bit confused, I managed to catch it on one of my horns. She told me, "When blown, this will summon a group of Wardens to your aid."

“... ‘Wardens’?”

She smiled coldly, “Everything your parents ever warned you to be afraid of.”

“Smoking strangers whose faces stuck like that and are now muggers?”

“Hollywood really took the romance out of it, what happened to being afraid of the Boogey Man or zombies?”

“We grew up. At least, some of us did. And started actually shining lights into the dark places to see what was really there."

She sighed, then continued, "I warn you, however, that this whistle can be used by anyone. And the Wardens will not differentiate between who they kill."

“... And just when will they stop killing?” I had visions about accidentally releasing an undead plague that emptied Equestria of all life. I didn’t want to offend someone with Greek-god-level power by refusing a present, if I could help it; but I’d rather face deific wrath then such a worse case scenario, and would seriously consider facing such wrath than have to handle a gizmo of destructive power on the order of a nuke.

She just smiled at me. "Do you think she," hooking a thumb at Athena, "would let me give it to you if that would happen?" As I tried to think of a cogent reply, she added, "I'm about done here."

I managed to pipe up, "Er - if you don't mind my asking, I've read a few stories, and... what is it that you might want in return for such a... ah, generous gift?"

"I've already received my payment." With those suitably enigmatic words, there was another flash, and she wasn't there anymore.

Which just left me and the world-crossing woman with the toga, helm, and spear. "Er... Athena?"

"Yes?" she smiled at me. Looked like my guess had been right all along. Assuming she was telling the truth. And wasn't some other person with the same name and fashion sense. And so on.

I opened my mouth to ask a question - but hesitated, given how many were crowding for my attention. So I settled on one that covered them all: "What, in the name of whatever holy items might be relevant, is going on?"

Her smile disappeared. "A new Game has started."

"... ooohh-kay?"

"The last two such games were in Mu and Atlantis."

"I thought - or used to think, anyway - that they don't exist."

"They do not - anymore."

"... I think that I don't like the sound of where this is going."

"Few Players of such Games care what happens to the board after they're done playing with it."

"I really don't like the sound of this."

"I have no interest in this Game's Prize. But it gave me a rationale for placing a piece on the board, for my own purposes."

I rubbed my forehead with a hoof. Out of all the people on Earth, she'd picked... me. Sure, I fell at the extreme end of the bell-curve for a number of metrics, but still... "Why me?"

"By the Rules of the Game - I could only select from those who would agree to be sent here. Out of that small group, you... stood out, to me."

I looked at my hoof, "Why re-enact what Zeus did to Io?"

"I'm afraid my time here is about up." She stepped closer, placed one surprisingly small human-esque arm around my typically oversized bovine neck, and gave me a brief hug. "May both the Fates and Fortuna look kindly upon you, grand-niece." I shuddered briefly at that, and she was gone.

... I seriously considered joining a herd and letting my brain get zapped into oblivion, so I wouldn't have to try to figure out... well, everything. For a few seconds, I considered it, anyway. Then I sighed, tucked the whistle's cord around my neck and the whistle itself hidden under my shirt, and turned to start walking back towards Ponyville...

(Authour's Note: This chapter is a crossover with Forevermore's story, Skeleton Jack.)

Charmed, I'm Sure

What in the name of Zeus's zillion zany zoophiliac zingers do you do when a goddess tells you that she selected you to save the world?

As it turns out, in my case, it's heave a sigh, and then start heading out to try to save the world.

I stopped in at the Ponyville spa, and had Aloe and Lotus give me a dye-job - filling in all the white parts of my coat with red, so that I stopped looking like a Guernsey and started looking more like a Jersey. I stuffed all my clothes and gear into panniers, save for the somewhat mysterious Warden-whistle, which I kept around my neck; that, I hid underneath a red bandanna (admittedly closer in size to a towel) tied around my neck. I was remembering that explosion Red had mentioned in Blueblood's airship; if it had been set off by somepony targeting me, I didn't want to make it too easy for them to recognize me on my return to Canterlot.

Once back in the capital, even though I didn't look like myself, I was able to arrange for a private meeting with both Princesses fairly rapidly, by using the pre-selected passphrase 'Lion's Pounce'. I'd picked it as an easily memorable version of Ponce de Leon, the fellow famous for searching for the fountain of youth, which tied neatly into the Princess's superficial memory charm. Once the two of them had performed a basic set of wards to prevent ordinary eavesdroppers, I told them, "Without telling me what it is, please select some sort of codeword or form of writing or other sort of signal you can send to yourself, so that you can write a letter of instructions to yourselves to read once you put your memory charm is put back in place, which you will know is from you, even if you no longer remember the reasons behind what you wanted yourselves to do." Once such preliminaries were taken care of, they removed their memory charms, and recalled that they had agreed to help with my search for an ethical form of widespread immortality, and knowing how dangerous such discussions could be, they went to work casting their full spectrum of privacy magics. At which time I told them, "Now, you will probably want to remove your other memory charm, which is locked with the phrase 'correct horse battery staple'. Whereupon they finally recalled everything I'd previously told them about me, Earth, humans, and so on.

Sure, it was a completely paranoid and overdone system to keep something secret that who-knew-how-many extra-Equestrians could blow open with a single sentence. But, as of yet, nobody knew that the Princesses knew anything about it - and only the Princesses, a Greek goddess, and a magical Goth teen knew I had anything to do with it. And even if the general secret became public knowledge, the fact of my involvement in it could still be a secret worth keeping - and the only way to keep it was to be overly paranoid about it even before it turned out to have any actual value.

I filled them in with all that had happened since we'd last had a chance for a fully in-depth conversation, and once we were on the same page, said, "And so, if we can believe her, then not only am I probably not the only extra-Equestrian being running around... but we may very well be facing an extinction-level event - or even an existential risk to all sapience in Equestria."

The two of them looked, as you might suppose, quite unhappy at the idea.

"Before I came to Equestria," I mused aloud, "all the evidence pointed to our single world as having the only sapience in existence - and that if we died out, there might very well be no other sapients who would ever take our place. And that there were no escape hatches, like other universes containing their own sapient species. Naturally, I've had to revise my opinion on that - but the same sorts of reasoning that applied when there's a single sapient species in an entire universe can also be used for figuring out what's the best thing to do for this world's people.

"To start with... and this is a hard step for many people... is to accept that the possibility of complete failure exists - that at some point in the future, Equestria and everything living in it may cease to be. Not just forced to deal with everlasting night, or even reduced to a few huddling survivors, or even all life turned to ruins - but utterly and completely gone with nobody to ever remember that there was ever an Equestria at all. Because until such stakes are truly accepted - then we will have a hard time considering all the available means to prevent such an occurrence.

"There's a saying one of my teachers liked to emphasize: 'What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.'"

"There seem to be three overall scenarios. One, that no matter what we do, Equestria and its people will survive; in which case making preparations won't do any serious harm. Two, that no matter what we do, Equestria and its people are doomed; in which case we might as well spend our time making preparations as doing anything else. And three, that it's possible that what we do can make a difference between whether Equestria's people survive or not - in which case it becomes very important that we make the best possible preparations we can, in order to maximize the odds of survival."

"One option that should be considered is a next-to-worse case scenario... that Equestria itself, the place, cannot be saved - but, perhaps, some of its people can be. If I, and the other pieces in this Game, can be sent here... then perhaps groups of your little ponies can be sent elsewhere. I don't know if you already know of some sort of world-crossing magic, or if you have a program underway to research one; but if you don't, then I suggest you start, and begin preparing at least one Alpha Site where Equestrian civilization can be continued."

"'Alpha Site'?"

"A term from one of my world's fictional stories, about the discovery of a gate leading to far realms - and to dangers. In case any of those dangers turned out to be too dangerous to their home, they started placing small colonies in hidden places - the first and most well-developed was the Alpha Site, the second was the Beta Site, and so on."

"One thing that I have noticed about your ponies, both directly and from reading, is that when danger threatens, most of them tend to... well..."

"... run around screaming?"

"That, yes. If we're going to be faced with something that puts all of Equestria at risk - then if there's something that can be done to minimize that particularly useless response..."

"We have oft despaired of our little ponies who were lost in crises, due to their equine nature. Dost thou think that we have not tried to improve it?"

"Possibly - but Earth has had wars and disasters for millennia, but careful studies of effective civil defense are only around fifty years old. If we're lucky, we might be able to import some of that recent knowledge. For example - maybe efforts can be made to, well, train your ponies, so that instead of running around randomly, they'll try to run to designated emergency shelters. Getting them off the streets, allowing the professionals to do their jobs without the average citizens being in the way, may be of even more benefit than the shelters themselves."

The Princesses looked at each other thoughtfully, and I continued, "And if more of them can be trained to do something useful in at least one type of emergency situation... all the better. And this doesn't even have to be training explicitly for such emergencies. For example, I was once a member of the 'Boy Scouts' - well, a 'cub scout', anyway - which was mainly about enjoying camping and hiking; but also taught self-reliance, first-aid, handicrafts, and all sorts of other things. We could try making a list of hobbies, see if we can come up with anything remotely related to that hobby which can be useful, and then seeing if we can encourage local hobby-groups which happen to emphasize those extra uses as much as can be done without making the hobby less enjoyable. And maybe add more first-aid to school curriculums."

I considered, then added, "For those ponies who are able to avoid running around, but aren't able to join the Guard full-time... one fairly recent innovation in some places on Earth are CERTs: Community Emergency Response Teams. They hold down their normal full-time jobs, and in their spare time, they train in basic disaster response skills. Things like coordinating with the local fire-fighters, peace officers, paramedics, and other first responders; raising funds for extra equipment, helping with more advanced first-aid and crowd control; running messages; providing food and water for the professionals; guard dangerous sites from wandering civilians; help with evacuations and shelters, and light search-and-rescue; and anything else that needs doing, helping to free up the professionals. When a disaster strikes locally, they gear up to do whatever they safely can until those professionals arrive. If even one such team can be put into place somewhere before a Game piece does major damage there, then many lives might be able to be saved.

"If we want to make it more appealing... back on Earth, zombies are a fictional monster, considered silly and kind of cute by some people - but there are still plenty of stories of zombies causing apocalypses. So some people have started up zombie defense clubs, getting ready to defend themselves against such an attack, which they know will never happen - but which also happens to prepare them for all sorts of other bad things that could happen. I don't know whether zombies really exist here in Equestria, but maybe we could pick some sort of boogieman that's known to be harmless, and put together some clubs to protect against them..."

"The way your communications networks currently work - it can take weeks just to send a letter from one end of Equestria to another, and a similar length of time to mobilize a response. I don't suppose that the magical flame thing you use to send letters to and from Spike can be mass-produced?"

Celestia shook her head. "It is a specialized spell, gradually woven into his being from his hatching."

"And Twilight just leaves him behind as she travels weeks away. There's one more reason I usually rank her second to Fluttershy..."

I trailed off from the odd looks I was getting - Luna was smiling rather ominously. I hoped that whatever she was thinking would be hidden by the double memory charms by the time we were done. I coughed, and continued, "So - if more magical communication is infeasible... then it may still be possible to shave off comm-times with a few non-magical tricks.

"Over in the Appleoosa area, they've got a system of stagecoaches. A group of ponies will pull a coach as far as they can at their fastest speed, to the next station; and then stop and rest, while a fresh gang of ponies is hooked up to the coach to keep pulling it. Swap out the heavy coach for a light bag of mail, and probably the earth ponies for pegasi - and it should be easy enough to arrange for a 'pony express' for high-value mail. It may even be able to pay for most of its own expenses, by also carrying regular mail that the senders pay a premium for, for such fast delivery.

"Another option requires somewhat more infrastructure to be built, so would take longer to put into place, but could send messages almost as fast as Spike can. On Earth, this was developed from signal towers - though here, maybe it could work even better with permanent clouds. Instead of a single signal-fire waiting to be lit to warn of danger, these towers had, say, lamps whose lights could be hidden with shutters, which could blink open and closed. These towers, or clouds, would be placed as far apart as possible while still being able to see each other's lights, even if just through a telescope. One tower would get a message from the ground, and start blinking its light in patterns, each pattern representing a letter or number; and the next tower in line would see the patterns, and blink its own lights for the next tower; and so on, until the message reached its destination.

"If either or both of these could be implemented - then whatever happens in Equestria, from its borders to its heart, could be communicated to you many times more quickly than they currently can - allowing you to start coming up with the best response that much sooner."

"Now, once you know what's going on, it would also be useful to improve the range of responses at your disposal to deal with events, and the rapidity with which they can be deployed. My wishlist would probably start with Project Thor, but since I haven't found any hint that anyone other than Nightmare Moon has ever been sent into orbit, let's see if we can come up with something a bit more modest and feasible..."

"For example - there is a group of people on Earth called the Swiss. They are well-known for trying to avoid getting caught in fights - but being very, very prepared for any such fights that happen. For example, all their bridges, roads, tunnels, and other such infrastructure is built so that it can be easily and quickly demolished in order to prevent its use by any enemy invading their land..."

The Princesses and I discussed various ideas; and when the time they could spare me was up, we came up with a new set of pass-phrases for next time, they wrote their letters to themselves, and they re-cast their doubled memory-charms.

Whereupon I hunted down Blueblood. Not entirely literally; while I did wear Chekov (yes, I'd finally given a name to my hoofgun), that was just in case somebody started taking potshots while I was near him, or if he decided his political fortunes would be bettered without my interference. (After all, for all I knew, he was the one who blew up his own airship quarters.)

Given how he'd left me high and dry with the buffalo, I wasn't feeling any particular urge to play the niceties with him, so when I found him luncheoning with some pretty mares who were fawning over him, I simply stated, "We need to talk."

"You can see I'm busy - perhaps another time."

"That's alright - with the right medication, that little problem you picked up could be cured in just a few weeks."

In seconds, the two of us were alone, and Blueblood was giving me a pained look. "I thought you said you didn't lie."

"Unless violence or life-saving were involved. I'm quite willing to punch you in the snoot right now. But as it happens - I do believe you have a problem which can be cured with the right medication; unfortunately, I doubt any responsible medical professional would be willing to prescribe a sufficient dosage."

He sighed. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"If there is, you've made it abundantly clear you have no interest in doing so. However, I do have a thought on something you can do for you, which also happens to fit in with some of my own plans."

"Mm?"

"I want Equestria's population to have more education. It seems reasonably to conclude that the current level of education compared to the level of taxes to pay for it has gone through a lot of arguing in the Barn of Lords, and reached something of a steady state which would be hard to change. I have an idea which could effectively increase governmental revenue, in a way other than a standard tax... but I don't know whether or not it's actually a good idea. So I'm giving you the opportunity to present it to the Barn as your own idea. If it works, you get the accolades. If it doesn't, you can blame your over-enthusiasm for it on youthful exuberance."

"I'm listening."

"Consider that every Equestrian child gets, on average a few extra years of schooling; at the end of which, they spend six months or a year in, let's call it, National Service, in which they get to travel to some interesting part of Equestria and help do or build things which benefit Equestria as a whole - receiving, in return, wages that are somewhat less than would be required to hire ponies to do the job normally. Helping at hospitals. Building homes for the poor. Any other feel-good projects you can get your staff to come up with. The difference between having these projects done the current way, and the cost of the wages for these eager young-adult ponies, can be considered just as much a profit for the government as instituting a tax would be."

"And if I have no interest in this... proposal?"

"Then I go look for some other noble who'll put it forth for me. But since giving ponies extra time in schools in which they have a chance to learn about Unicornia, and having more ponies working under direct government control, seem to be highly compatible with the social goals you've expressed, I thought I'd give you the first offer."

"And what was it you get out of this?"

"Like I said - a higher-educated population. Besides - I've got a lot more on my plate than trying to push a single domestic policy, so I'm trying to delegate this to the ponies who specialize in figuring out if such proposals are worthwhile or not."

"I will have to consider it."

"That's fine. You should also consider that I'll be approaching another noble to be the sponsor of another policy, to compete with this one: Voluntary Service. And a third, to argue the case that no such Services should be implemented at all."

"That hardly seems the way to get anything done."

"Like I said - I don't actually know which of these, if any, is the best policy. So I'm going to let you ponies in the Barn of Lords hammer it all out for me. If you make the best case, for National Service, I'll work with that; if Voluntary Service wins out, ditto; if neither does, ditto."

What I wasn't going to tell Blueblood was that I was also treating this as a test for the Barn of Lords. If they took any of these ideas, and passed a version which benefited one or more individual nobles at the expense of Equestrian society as a whole... then I would be able to work on subverting, reforming, or replacing that legislative body with a completely clear conscience.

Balances and Counter-Balances

"Welcome back, Doctor Missy," Page Turner smiled up at me as I returned to The Dairy. "You have several messages - but our Royal Guard liason, Safe Guard, has requested to speak to you, in terms that I believe translate to 'now'." I thanked her, collected my mail, and went looking for Safe; I hadn't met him in person yet, but as there was a single unicorn in golden armor talking to some of the ponies on the cockatrice safety crew, I was able to make an educated guess. Having spotted my approach, he'd already started winding his conversation to a close, so when I asked him, "Is my office good?", he just nodded and the two of us trotted in.

I tossed my mail on my desk, gestured to the hay and water I had handy, said "Help yourself," and finally stretched my bulk out on one of the conversational couches, gesturing at the other. He seemed to prefer to stand. "What can I do for you today?"

"Apparently, the question should be, what can I do for you." I blinked, so he continued, "After your latest meeting with Their Royal Highnesses, the Guard was informed that an additional set of projects are to be initiated under the auspices of The Dairy, and that we should cooperate to the fullest extent possible."

He was continuing to glare at me through his golden helmet, so I said, mildly, "You don't seem to be very happy about it."

"I am not."

"... Would you care to go into more detail?"

"It is against Guard policy to insult civilians."

The corner of my mouth twitched, but I fought myself back to a straight face. "Safe Guard - I have a great deal to do, and I have no idea of how little time I may have to do it in. If I am to have a hope of accomplishing anything useful, one of the most important things you can do for me is to worry only about telling me the truth, as you see it, without worrying about whether I will feel unhappy or insulted about it. So whatever it is you want to tell me but feel you shouldn't - I request you tell me anyway."

"Very well. What I have heard of the projects, I have no problem with. It is you that I am concerned about."

"Me?"

He pulled a notebook from somewhere inside its armor, and flipped it open. "No records of you exist prior to three weeks ago, whereupon you appeared in Ponyville, claimed some form of insanity or amnesia or both, made contact with the Element Bearers, and convinced the Bearer of Magic to fast-track you a meeting with the Princesses, whereupon you arranged for a meeting whose contents not even the Guard are privy to. With royal approval, you formed a superficial organization, a secret organization, and began collecting resources and personnel. You broke your leg attempting to jump from one roof to another," he glanced at me, "though I'm probably going to let that one slide, given the nature of the Bearer of Laughter." He looked back to his notes. "You were involved in a violent incident involving several members of noble families of the Conservative coalition, resulting in several changes in inheritance and a brief prison term for yourself. You arranged for another prisoner to receive early release, were given a doctorate under unusual circumstances, traveled with the Prince of Canterlot to Manehattan, sparked a riot, engaged in trade with a foreign dragon involving somehow acquiring a large quantity of meat for it, met with a group of Buffalo who recently threatened to trample Appleoosa, spent several days traveling throughout that region and meeting with various individuals of high and low character, and just had another royal meeting resulting in several new policies." He flipped the book back and tucked it away. "The only reason you're not a suspect in the bombing of the Alicorn was your confirmed presence in the Appleoosa region at the time it occurred - otherwise I would have insisted you be placed in a holding cell for questioning as soon as you returned."

I mused, "I had no idea you were keeping such close tabs on me." Of course, that hadn't stopped me from acting as if somebody might be spying on me... though I'd initially suspected it would be someone more along the lines of the woman who'd turned out to (probably) be Athena.

"Frankly, Doctor Missy, if your initial statement that you are simply insane is incorrect, then at the very least you pose a danger to yourself and those around you - and I am not ruling out the possibility that you are an agent hostile to Equestria itself."

I considered, then slowly nodded. "Given the evidence you have available to you, that seems like a reasonable conclusion. In that case - why are we talking here, instead of an interrogation cell?"

"Because Their Royal Highnesses have given other orders - and as of yet, I lack any concrete evidence that you have committed a crime or otherwise broken your parole."

I scratched my chin with the edge of a hoof as I thought about how to try to handle this. "Would you be willing to accept that there's at least a possibility that there are things you are currently unaware of, which give good explanations for everything which currently causes you to be suspicious?"

"I already do."

"Good, that's a start. In that case - would you be willing to change your current job's focus somewhat - perhaps handing your current duties to another guard - and focusing primarily on making sure that my actions end up causing no unnecessary harm to civilians, or those around me."

He blinked, and his glare altered a bit, now looking somewhat more like a combination of confusion and curiosity. "You want me to watch you?"

"I have many long-term plans to work on - but while I'm keeping my focus on them, it's very possible that my attention will slip far enough away from the present that, if I'm left unchecked, I'll accidentally do something even stupider than jump onto a straw roof. You seem to have a sensible head on your shoulders, and be willing to work with odd situations... so I'm willing to grant you a veto over anything I do, in the name of, er, safeguarding innocent lives - within a couple of conditions."

Dryly, "I can't wait to hear them."

"One, that once I listen to your objections, then based on information you lack, I may decide that more lives would be saved in the long term by proceeding; but I promise to at least listen to you first, and to take your concerns into account, and that I won't overrule you frivolously."

"Only if you agree that if you overrule me, I can ask one of the Princesses to consider overruling you."

"I think I can live with that. Two - you need to accept that I'm still going to be keeping secrets from you; at least unless the Princesses themselves agree you should be told, which I rather doubt will happen."

He frowned. "I don't like it."

"I don't expect you to. But even your knowing that I do have secrets above your clearance level is a secret in and of itself - and this condition is a deal-breaker. If you can't accept that I can't tell you everything, then I'm not going to let you have veto-power over the rest of my doings."

He didn't answer for a little bit, and I was starting to wonder if he'd refuse - before he finally said, "I'll provisionally agree - dependent on my checking with Their Royal Highnesses on the matter."

"Fair enough. The last condition is more of a practical necessity - I expect I'm likely to have to go places where a Royal Guard would be unwelcome, and whose suspected presence may lead to disaster. If you want to continue to keep an eye on me there, you're going to have to be able to take off the armor and go undercover."

"I think I can live with that," he echoed - and was that the ghost of a smile?

"Good!" I declared, getting to my hooves. "And if you're going to be spending this much time with me, and keeping this close an eye on me - then I can clear up at least one of your minor mysteries for you."

I led him to one of our more sound-proofed rooms, had him park on one end, and nudged a wooden training dummy to the other side. Rejoining him, I explained, "When I fought off my would-be rapists..." I paused to see if he'd comment, but he just gave an infinitesimal nod, so I continued, "it was mainly a combination of tricks and clever gadgets, which gave me enough leeway that my uncoordinated thrashing with my hooves was able to accomplish something useful. But had that been a truly serious fight, against a trained opponent - I would have been toast. So I arranged for a particularly clever gadget to be built. Here - I suggest you put these on," and pointed to some construction workers' ear-protectors, "while I demonstrate." He didn't seem especially willing, but when I put my own pair on, he reluctantly did the same.

Chekov was, in essence, an M1911A1 automatic pistol, based on my memories of a number of 3D models and internal-working videos I had examined, while I had been investigating the phenomenon of 3D-printers back on Earth; with the design somewhat modified for Equestrian manufacturing techniques and for use with hooves instead of hands. It has a sort of chest-mount to hold it in place, based on pony photographers' cameras, as well as a loop on the grip so it can also be held with a hoof; and the trigger and guard are comically oversized. The room we were in was where I'd gotten what practice I'd managed to accomplish in; so I already had a feel for the range and my weapon's characteristics. I 'drew', triggering the chest-mount, let my breath half-out, and squeezed three times. Our ear protection held the reports down to muffled booms, and three holes appeared in the dummy - one in the head, two in the torso - and Safe said something; through the earmuffs, I couldn't quite make it out, but if I had to guess, it sounded something like "By Celestia's milky-white teats!". I re-holstered, making a mental note to clean Chekov before I went to bed, took off my hearing protection, and indicated Safe should do the same.

I walked over to the target to investigate my aim more closely, and Safe Guard followed - silent, but with his eyes wider than they had been. I calmly continued my explanation, "It would be about as hard as building a railroad to build enough of these to arm every stallion, filly, and foal in Equestria. While I am extremely in favor of ensuring that every female has the means to defend herself against a would-be rapist, whether or not they could fly or cast unicorn or magic; part of Luna's conditions in helping me to build this was that I undertake no such program on my own - to let the Princesses make the decision about whether Equestrian society would be helped or harmed by having widespread access to such things." I glanced at him. "I agreed, on the condition that outside of experimental models, once this knowledge was out, they weren't to try to limit it to just an authorized class of users, such as the nobility or military. There are all too many ways Equestrian society could go wrong if some ponies could use these against others, and those others could not defend themselves in kind." I considered, then shrugged and added, "If you'd like, I expect I can get one made for you."

"No, that's... alright. I think I'll stick to horn-blasts for now."

I nodded agreeably. "I'll leave the offer open, in case you change your mind. Anyway - this is how I gathered the meat to trade to the dragon. Non-sapient meat, in case you were worried." At his expression, I half-smiled. "Just because I can't digest the stuff doesn't mean I'll refuse to deal with someone who can't digest anything else. And going hunting seemed a lot less likely to get ponies killed than trying to fight off an adult fire-breathing dragon."

I looked at the dummy, and frowned at my shots' placements - hooves were harder to aim with than hands. "Mind you, this weapon does have its limitations. Such as, unlike a horn, it can be taken away. So if a serious fight develops... even with Chekov, I may very well end up worse off than I did with those would-be rapists." My brow wrinkled as I thought, and I glanced at him. "Perhaps you might be able to help me with that."

He pulled his attention away from the bullet-holes. "I am already dedicated to guarding you from threats."

"That's nice to hear - but not quite what I meant. Would you happen to know if there are any exercise programs or training courses, which cover self-defense and combat for bovines of the uddered persuasion?"

"There... may be something relevant in the Guard training manuals."

"Good. Just because I'm stuck with this body doesn't mean I have to be stuck with it in its current state." I sighed. "What I'd really like is to be able to have a vehicle in orbit I could call for supporting fire from, but I'll take what - um, what are you looking at me like that for?"

"I recently read a report about a pony in Manehattan who is designing a 'Space Carriage' he claims can travel to other stars. I dismissed it as a simple deluded crank, but... um..."

I chuckled a bit. "... Now that you've seen me, you're more willing to accept that even deluded cranks can come up with useful ideas?"

"Something like that."

"No worries. I'll bring the thought up with Celestia the next time I talk to her. In the meantime - how about we go back to my office, and we can talk about some ideas I've had for letting the Guard send messages more quickly..."

Some time later, while I was taking a walk through one of the palace's gardens to help clear my mind and relax, when I turned a corner, Floaty Goth teen was there in front of me.

"Hello," I greeted her cheerily. "Here to tell me I'm still unworthy of living forever?"

“You think you’re the first one to try this? Countless others before you have attempted to defeat Death, some by violence, some by chains, others by cunning. You’ve heard the stories of Hercules wrestling Thanatos to the ground when he came for a queen, and of Sisyphus, who tricked Him into giving him a little more time? What you’re doing is far from original, and if you ever reach the end of that path, you’ll see why they failed.”

“It’s certainly an old aspiration, going back all the way to Gilgamesh, and probably well before then. The difference is - now we understand enough of how the universe actually works that we’ve got an actual shot at doing this. And our knowledge is only growing greater, faster with each passing year.”

“Hmph, you understand nothing, mortal. Living forever? There’s a reason we kept it to ourselves.”

“Those who have something others lack always seem to have a reason to keep it for just themselves. Funny, that.”

“You are young, you will learn.” She disappeared back into the shadows.

To the thin air, I gave my parting shot: “Well, yeah, that’s kind of the whole idea...”

(Author's Note: This chapter is a direct crossover with Forevermore's Skeleton Jack, and an indirect crossover with BlindTeller's "I want to run!", whose Chapter 9 is set some time after this chapter.)

Truth and Consequences

After a long afternoon working at The Dairy, it was finally time for me to head on over to the dairy. As professional as my suit made me look, I was still a cow wearing clothes - and enough of the locals' casual approach to nudity had worn off on me that I was looking forward to taking all my clothes off and having a good scratch, getting my udder emptied, and then curling up with the cows in the royal dairy herd for a good night's sleep. It was astonishing what you could get used to after a few weeks, if you didn't have much choice in the matter.

However, as I walked into the room with the milking machinery, I was mildly curious to see an unfamiliar unicorn, a pale green mare. None of the other cows were being milked right at the moment, so I simply said, "Hello, there," in passing, and continued towards one of the stalls.

As I started fumbling with my suit's fasteners, the pony piped up, "Please, let me help you with that." I blinked at the unexpected offer, but since I was still relatively clumsy using my hooves, I decided to treat her offer as being as innocent as Rarity with a measuring tape, and nodded my acceptance. Her horn glowed, and the various individual pieces of cloth unfastened themselves, floated up, and folded neatly away; all I had to do was lift my hooves now and then, and shake my head when she was about to lift off the whistle. I nodded my thanks to her, finished entering my stall - and her telekinetic aura surrounded the milking machine's hose attachments, placing them onto my teats. That was a bit more familiar than I'd been expecting; I tended not to let anyone touch my body, even by proxy, whenever I could avoid it. But as the pump started, I started letting down, and I felt the relief of my built-up pressure dropping, I was willing to let this slide.

Normally, I'd have brought up some cud to chew to pass the time, but it seemed a bit rude to ignore a pony who'd just helped me, so I instead said, "Thank you. I'm called Missy; what's your name?"

She giggled lightly. "I know who you are - and I'm Pleasant Dream."

"I'm pleased to meet you, Pleasant Dream. What are you doing down here this evening?"

"Why, waiting for you, of course."

"... I'm sorry, have we met before?" I tried to lean around the side of my stall to get a view of her cutie mark, but the milking machine's hoses pulled me up short.

"No - but I'm here to do anything you might want me to do. And I really mean anything." She batted her eyes.

"Er..."

"I know that you don't like to sleep alone - but you don't have to stay down here. When you're done, why don't we go up to one of the palace's bedrooms, and you can sleep with me?"

"Er..."

"And we can pretend those nasty stallions simply don't exist, and relax, just us fillies..."

"Er... Pleasant?"

"Please - call me Dreamy."

"... I'll consider it. Anyway - uh - while your offer certainly sounds nice, and kind and generous... well... how can I put this delicately?"

"Go ahead and ask me whatever you wish."

"... Right. Well, in that case - while I think I'm getting the 'what' of what you're doing... I'm still a bit hazy on the 'why'."

"Can't a pony offer to help a friend out of the goodness of their heart?"

"Certainly they can. But I just learned your name - are you really sure we're that good of friends yet?"

She giggled. "Oh, I didn't mean me, you silly. I meant your real friends - the ones you're making with all the higher-ups."

I closed my eyes for a moment and sighed. When I re-opened them, she was still there. "Which higher-ups would those be?"

"Oh, I don't know - does it really matter? Loves Together said somepony wanted you to feel special, and he knows I like helping ponies feel special, so here I am!"

Great - so now I knew there existed pony prostitutes. Of some sort. For all I knew, all she was thinking of really was just literally sleeping with me, and it was my own dirty mind filling in anything further... but, well, now I was suddenly thinking of some of the general sorts of stories I'd heard about what went on in the halls of power, such as the Washington beltway - the incumbents bringing all the new lobbyists and brokers into the fold, parties with women and drinking and drugs, the old-timers just being friendly with the newbies and showing them the ropes until the newbies were indistinguishable from those old-timers... so that the whole arrangement could keep on keeping on without any significant waves or ripples from any reformers who wanted to chip away at the privileges of the powerful.

I supposed that I should have seen it coming - I'd talked to Blueblood about a policy proposal, and a few of the more progressive members of the Barn of Lords to find one, a recently-inherited Countess, one Placid Stream of Oxford, who was willing to give the Voluntary Service notion a fair try. And after that trial - it looked like I was on at least one noble's radar, even if I didn't know who it was. Somepony who wanted to make sure I was no more of a disruption than any other potential reformer, starting by showing me what I could have if I played the political game the usual way.

I didn't even want to think what the Equestrian version of upper-class drugs might be.

And on the other hoof - the mare curiously watching the machine do its work might just be an overly-friendly pony with an underdeveloped sense of boundaries, who kept up with the local gossip. And whose feelings I could hurt if I handled this badly.

In the end, I just went for a lot of saying 'no thank you'. I think I did hurt her feelings some - but unless I was actually willing to go sleep with (or 'sleep with') someone I had just met, I didn't think I could avoid making her at least that unhappy.

Trying to figure out the hidden motives of an unknown pony politician who might not even exist was enough to send my mind a-tumbling, whirring around fast enough that I knew I wouldn't be able to get to sleep anytime soon. So I sighed, and decided to go look for something that could help me sleep - maybe some warm milk, or hot chocolate, or some lemon, ginger, and honey tea. Celestia's sun hadn't set yet, so I thought that maybe I could find a nearby restaurant or cafe - surely I wasn't the only one who worked in the palace who would want such things. I debated about heading out fully-clothed and fully-armed, but figured that if I stayed really close to the palace, there'd be enough Guard's in earshot to intervene if anything went south. So I adjusted my glasses, hid the Warden whistle under another scarf, tucked in a few bits, and trotted off to investigate the places I'd overheard mention of in the palace.

After a couple of duds, and a bit of asking some of the high-nosed unicorns for directions, I finally found a place with potential. It was no Tim Horton's, but served beverages hot and cold, had booths big enough for me, and seemed to be host to a crowd a couple of notches down from the unicorns who couldn't see where they were going. I made a mental note to bring something to read next time, but for that night, simply sipped my hot apple cider with cinnamon and clove, stared out the windows, and did some pony-watching.

A pair of Big Mac-sized stallions trotted in, a heavily-muscled blue earth-pony with a couple of crossed blades on his flank, and a carefully-coiffed grey unicorn with a standard star-burst, and settled into the booth beside mine. They started talking quietly to each other, which I politely did my best to ignore. Once they'd gotten their drinks, they started looking at me, saying rather disparaging things, and breaking out in laughter - only to glance at me, wait a few moments, and then start again, with an even filthier comment in a louder tone.

I continued drinking my cider and looking out the window, thinking.

Finally, the earth-pony clambered out to stand in front of me, glaring. "What, are you deaf as well as blind?"

I focused my gaze on him. "If a statement made about me is true, then it is true, and there is no purpose for me to be upset about the truth. If a statement made about me is false, then it has no more meaning than the sound of the wind whistling through the trees, and there is no reason for me to be upset about the sound of the wind."

My response didn't seem to be what he'd expecting; he frowned and blinked, then glanced at his companion, who waved a hoof at him to continue. "Well, I say that you and all your milking kind should be kicked out of Canterlot back to where you belong!"

"To which I respond: You are as entitled to your opinion as anybody else."

He placed both his forehooves on my table and glared down at me. "I don't think you take my meaning." He leaned in. "Leave, and show everyone you're just as much a coward as every other cow - not even willing to defend the good name of all your kind."

Deliberately slowly, I picked up my mug and took a nice, long sip of the cider - I at least half-expected it was going to be the last sip I was going to get out of it, so I made sure to get all the enjoyment from it that I could - including an extra little frisson from forcing the pony to wait. Finally setting it back down, I looked up at him, and said, "To use the ultimate weapon: I won't."

"Then challenge me!"

"I won't."

"Get mad, get out, get up - do something!" He pounded on the table, obviously frustrated. I looked around, saw his companion getting up to stand next to him, and most of the rest of the ponies simply watching the goings-on curiously - didn't look like I was getting any help from there.

"Why should I?"

The unicorn sneered, "How much good do you think you'll do when every single noble knows you have no honor?"

"Ah," I sighed. "That sort of 'honor'. I prefer to demonstrate that my word is my bond."

The earth-pony growled something which, while it didn't use actual curse-words, was about as obscene and insulting as I could imagine, involving my supposed parentage and the details of my conception. I was actually rather impressed, even if it sounded kind of well-rehearsed, rather than something he'd come up with on the spur of the moment. The only reason it lost a little something was his assumption that I'd grown up bovine - an entirely reasonable assumption, but an insult involving my mother's udder just didn't catch me as strongly as a truly focused insult could have. I tried to figure out some way to de-escalate matters. I tried going for abstraction, to try to get them focused on intellectual matters instead of their obvious feelings. "Whether or not that's true, I'm at least ignorant about some particular details of the local version of the code duello. From what I read, a gentlecolt or noble-pony can challenge any who they feel have stained their honor - but I have not investigated what happens after that."

The unicorn was giving me a funny look - which was at least better than the earth-pony's expression. He said, "The challenged pony offers the terms of the duel - and their seconds, if any, set the place, time, and are supposed to try to calm-"

The earth-pony glared at the unicorn and growled, "What the buck are you doing? Help me make her mad already!"

I raised my brows. "So that I will then challenge you, and you may set the terms to something you know you will beat me at?" I considered all that had been going on recently - and decided to alter the course of events slightly. "It would be a shame indeed if I were stupid enough to go through with such obvious suicide. I would have a greater chance of surviving if I were to point out that the two of you are bachelor stallions, working closely together, and speculating on your lack of female companionship and implying just how close the two of you really are-"

My jaw snapped shut just in time to avoid dental damage as a pair of hooves swung for my face, one from each of them.

I smiled - in a way. "I believe that that counts as a challenge from each of you, does it not?"

I wondered just how much I'd be able to get away with here - but I had a rather strong suspicion that without taking matters into my own hooves, these two ponies wouldn't have settled for a mere cupcake-throwing match. The unicorn, who was the member of the pair who apparently had the two brain cells to rub together, was starting to look a bit worried - I guessed that I was really throwing him off his script.

"I am not from Canterlot," I said, putting it mildly, "so you may be unfamiliar with the forms of competitive physical effort I, as the challenged party, will choose."

The unicorn glanced at the crowd, who were gobbling this whole thing up as if it were a multi-part series finale - which, given there wasn't any such thing as a TV in Equestria, it may very well have been, for them. He growled, "Just get on with it already."

"Very well." I glanced from the one to the other and back, and finally said, "I choose the Test of Bone, and the Test of Blood." This time both of them looked confused, and the rabble-rabble sounds of our audience rose a couple of notches.

I stared at the earth-pony's eyes. "For you, the Test of Bone - a way for the two of us to prove to all and sundry which of us is more willing than the other to win, and which pits our bodies' strength against each other."

"You mean, like wrestling?"

I snorted. "Hardly. It's quite simple, really, though we might need some help from the audience for the materials. We lie down next to each other, on our sides. A platform is placed on us - if nothing more suitable is available, a door each will do." He looked completely befuddled at this point, as did most everypony else. "And then equal weights are placed on top of both of us. As long as both of us can call 'more weight', more is added. If we continue long enough, our pelvises will shatter, our ribs will crack, our lungs will begin to collapse - but all you have to do to win is be willing to suffer more agony and permanent damage than I am. If I am able to keep up with you for long enough, then you will never walk again, may never stand up again - but you will have the satisfaction of having proven that your body was once able to out-perform that of a mere cow's. Surely that victory is worth whatever price you may pay? That is, is it not, the reason you came here - to put me in my place? Or were you expecting to be able to do so at no cost, with no consequences to yourself?"

By the time I'd gotten to 'never stand up', his eyes were wide and knees were quaking. I decided to go easy on him, so I picked up my half-empty mug, and deliberately placed it onto my other hoof. "There - the first weight is placed, I have begun. All you have to do to continue is say those two little words: 'more weight' - and we can proceed to see who can continue breathing the longest. Or..."

"Or?" His eyes flared with hope.

"Or, I will allow you to surrender before you start - if you publicly declare that not only have I not insulted you, but you owe me a debt of honor, the repayment of which we will discuss in private." He looked torn, so I added, "And which, I promise, you will be able to repay by actions that are both honorable and ethical."

"That!" he said. "I pick that one!"

I nodded. "We'll talk more in a moment - I seem to have another challenge to a duel to deal with, first." I turned to the unicorn, who had turned pale at my description of the 'Test of Bone', which I had made up on the spot based on some of my memories of Earthly witch-hunters' interrogation techniques. "Now, the Test of Blood. I am guessing that somewhere nearby are a pair of blades. Somebody," I said to the crowd, without taking my eyes off the unicorn, "please bring them here." The unicorn looked calmer - perhaps he was expecting a more traditional sort of duel. He was in for a disappointment. "We will also need a pair of clean, empty buckets, as similar as can be managed." He looked confused, and worried again.

In just a few seconds, the implements were passed to my table. "Again, this test is quite simple. Pick whichever weapon you prefer." He immediately grabbed one with his hooves, and I slowly and deliberately selected the other, holding it with my right forehoof. "All you have to do," I put my left forehoof on the edge of one bucket, "is bleed more than me." I used to be a regular blood donor, so I had a few mental tricks to deal with what I was about to do - with a delicate swipe, I opened up the top couple of layers of skin on the part of my foreleg I thought of as my forearm. Blood welled out, trailed down by hide, and started dripping into the bucket, with an irregular pat pat pat-pat. "You're bigger than I am - you can probably lose a lot more than I can before you lose consciousness."

He looked at me, at my leg, my knife, my blood dripping into my bucket, at his legs, his knife, his bucket, his legs, back at me... and his nerve broke. He flung down the knife, having it land point-first in the floor. "This is a travesty!" he shouted. "This brings shame to every duel that was ever fought!"

"You came here. Tried to insult me. Tried to get me to challenge you. Wanted to fight a duel on your terms - fight in a way you've obviously practiced many years for, when I've never done anything of the sort." Finally, I lifted myself to all fours, ignoring the blood dripping onto my hoof. "And you have the gall to call me dishonorable!?" I pointed my hoof at his knife. "Pick that up. Or announce you owe me the same debt of honor he does." I tipped a horn at the earth-pony. "Or let all and sundry here know you never had any real 'honor' to begin with!"

He blinked, and looked around at the now-silent crowd. He reached down to the knife, and I tried not to change my stance - if he actually took me up on this 'test', then this would be a lot harder than it needed to be - so I pointed my left hoof at it, using the swing of my foreleg to splash some drops of blood onto it, and onto his own leg, as I declared, "Pick it up." He winced...

... and his shoulders slumped.

I'd won.

Yay me.

I cleared my throat. "Would somebody be so kind as to pass me some bandages?"

The three of us stood in the back of the cafe, next to the entrance to the powder rooms, with all the other patrons having decided to move to the front when I glared at them.

"Let's start with your names."

The unicorn's jaw dropped. "You mean - you don't even know who we are?"

"Would I have asked if I did?"

He started laughing at that - and it was my turn to look confused. "The Great Rudolfo and the Terrific Paul - bested by a cow who doesn't even know who we are!" This sent him into paroxysms of laughter.

I waited patiently for a few moments, before clearing my throat. "Duelists for hire?"

He rubbed tears from his eyes, and answered. "I would never put it so crassly."

"Then how would you put it?"

"Sometimes a lord notices she has a problem. She lets us know. We solve the problem. She feels favorably disposed towards us."

I sighed. "How badly were you supposed to injure me?"

The earth-pony - I still didn't know if he was Rudolfo or Paul - said, "Put holes in you. If you lived, you'd think hard. If you didn't, that was fine, too."

"And I expect both of you are quite good enough to poke holes in me without any real risk of injury to yourself?"

The unicorn nodded. "Quite. We are Great and Terrific at what we do, after all."

I rubbed my forehead. "All I wanted was a quiet drink, and end up in something out of Cyrano de Bergerac. Fine. The way I see it, each of you owes me a life. I could have taken yours - and didn't; so now you owe me the equivalent. Any disagreement?" I looked from one to the other, and they stayed quiet. "But I'm not greedy. So here's what I offer: until such time as you prove to me that you have saved at least one life, then each of you remains in my debt. I'm quite willing to let each of you decide how to go about it: as long as that life would not have survived without you, that'll count."

The earth-pony asked, "You mean... like a body-guard?"

"That would work. Or you can go hang out at a beach to try to save someone from drowning. Or hunt down a monster that would have killed somepony. Or go a-doctoring. Take your pick."

They glanced at each other, then back at me. The unicorn spoke up. "You really didn't know who we are?"

"Of course not."

"Then I believe I can immediately fulfill your condition for at least one of us, as there are certain other facts which will likely kill you if you don't know them..."

Hidden Agenda

Safe Guard was none too pleased when I tracked him down and told him about my 'duels'.

He was even less pleased when I told him what I planned to do next.

The problem-space I had to deal with was initially large, but I had enough conclusions to narrow it down considerably.

First, the simple act of hiring 'Mutt and Jeff' indicated a certain minimal amount of competence by the hirer - and given the terms they'd been hired with, of ruthlessness. If the explosion on the Alicorn was related, then an even greater ruthlessness was indicated.

Second, there were only so many things I had done which, to a pony (or person) of that minimal competence, would warrant a response of that level. A mere passing insult to some noble boffin wasn't enough - with the chance that the Amazing Duo might not succeed, there had to be some definite and concrete gain that would have accrued by my having had holes poked into me. Something bigger than mere bureaucratic empire-building - Blueblood had already shown me the level ponies played at for those stakes, and this was something else entirely.

Assuming that the memory-charms the Princesses had been using had kept well, and assuming that I'd been able to keep my own secrets secret, I was only able to think of two motivations that could fit. One, revenge; most likely related to my near-rape and the de-stallioning; and two, profit, in that something I had done, or was doing, threatened to take a significant amount of bits away from somepony.

What Rudolfo told me, if it was true, not only narrowed down the motivation, but also pointed to the specific ponies. Of course, it would be rather foolish for me to take the unicorn's word at face value, so my plans not only had to deal with the ponies, but also confirm they were really the ones I had to worry about.

My first step was to talk to The Dairy's equivalent of Q section, to see if they could put together some Earth-inspired pieces of kit for me by morning.

My second was to write certain letters, and get them sent off - including a couple of 'in the event of my death' ones I really hoped wouldn't be needed.

My third was to hunt down Blueblood for a quick chat, which went something like this: "Blueblood, you know how your rooms on the Alicorn were blown up? I have a lead on how that happened, and am willing to investigate it, at no risk to yourself - but in exchange, I want to have dibs on it for when I need to travel fast."

My fourth was to get a good night's sleep... but since I didn't want to put the other cows in the royal dairy at any further risk, and since I still hadn't figured out how to fall asleep when on my own, I made a reluctant sort of proposal to Safe Guard, which included the words, "and I really mean sleep". With a roll of his eyes, he accepted, and the two of us spent the night in a Guard officer's quarters.

The next morning...

When I got up, I realized I'd neglected to make preparations to be milked. I thought about the milking machines waiting in the dairy - and I thought about the explosion on the Alicorn - and I reluctantly came to the conclusion that it would be safest if I avoided any pieces of machinery I was known to often use. Which meant that if I didn't want to spend the day with pain in my over-filled mammary glands distracting me, I'd have to make other arrangements. One option was to drink my own milk - but that idea still felt weird to me. So I made another carefully-phrased, cautious inquiry of Safe Guard, and got another eye-roll of agreement.

Telekinetic milking tickled.

Once that was done, and once I was able to look him in the face again without blushing, it was time to move on. I hit The Dairy to collect the kit, my traveling suit, and my new badge indicating I was a Royal Inspector. (The backside mentioned something about 'of Dairies, foodstuffs, and sundries', but I didn't have to show the backside if I didn't feel like it.) I thought about bringing along Red, or Page, or any of the other ponies I'd been collecting... but reluctantly concluded that if my plan worked out, I wouldn't need them; and if it didn't, then there'd be little they could do to help, and they'd be put in danger unnecessarily. So it was going to be just Safe Guard and me.

Or so I thought - as the two of us left The Dairy, we found the Terrific Paul and Great Rudolfo waiting for us in the dairy. Rudolfo explained, "I had a feeling you might try something like this. And since it's what I told you that made you do it - I'd hardly be able to say that I'd saved your life if you get yourself killed from it, now could I?"

Paul added, "What he said."

Safe Guard and I glanced at each other, and I decided that we wouldn't be in much more danger with these two along than without them - and at the least, I could modify my plan slightly so that they could help open a few doors. So our little party doubled in size...

... but Safe Guard insisted they walk in front of us, not behind.

It turned out that Rudolfo not only opened doors, but his word that I 'wanted to talk' sped us through layers of security it would have taken Safe Guard and I hours, at least, to push through - all the secretaries and assistants and bladder-flappers who take it as their job to prevent random strangers from interrupting the higher-ups they guard.

Eventually, we made it to the top - or, at least as close as we were going to get. With carefully muted fanfare, we were ushered into the presence of the eldest daughter of Her Grace, Alabaster Pillar, the Duchess of Roan (on the border with Gem Fido), who was a Viscountess in her own right. Marble Pillar was relaxing on a couch in her private garden, taking her breakfast, enjoying the crisp early morning sky marred by only a single cloud, with household guards discreetly in the background and multiple servants not-so-discreetly everywhere else. I refused various offers for foods and drinks - no need to tempt fate - as the quartet of us approached and stood before her.

"So," said Marble, languidly, "what might I possibly be able to do for the good Doctor and her friends today, that you went to such troubles to see me?"

I examined her pale white coat, white main, white horn, and near-invisible white cutie mark of a piece of classical architecture, and said, "While they may not have done what you asked," nodding at the two duelists, "I did get the message that you are unhappy with me. I don't feel like having to watch over my shoulder - so what would it take to prevent any more 'incidents'?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you-"

I held up a hoof with a sigh. "Please. We are both women of the world - and we both have other things we want to be spending our time on."

Marble turned her head to one of her guards, a unicorn who stepped forward. His horn glowed, ran over Safe Guard and me, and he stated, "No weapons, magic items or spells on any of them. A few obscure enchantments, but nothing that seems to be relevant."

He backed off, and Marble turned back to us with a rather sharper gleam in her eyes. "Since you seem to prefer a proletariat level of bluntness, I shall oblige. I know all about your secret group inside the dairy, and what it is for. I know why you are doing it, so I know I won't be able to convince you to stop. All I want is for you to put the whole thing under the direction of the part of the Equestrian Guard that is already tasked with looking into such matters."

Safe Guard stiffened, so I tried to distract from his reaction by saying, "I have several projects going on inside the dairy - which one are you referring to?"

Marble sniffed. "Don't be obtuse. Simply combine your investigations into raiding, the gem trade, slavery, and such with those in the Guard who already have expertise in such matters - and I am sure there will be no further 'incidents'."

Safe glanced at me, I nodded at him, then back at Marble. "I believe we are done here, then?", and started turning around.

"Not quite. Remove it." Several of her guards quickly approached, surrounding me; one reached inside my clothing, to which I strenuously objected - and removed the wire-recorder I had taped just in front of my udder. After a quick examination, this was passed to Marble. "Clever - a completely non-magical sound recording device, I believe?" I simply glared at her. "Astonishingly smaller than a phonograph - I could probably make quite a bit of money from examining it to determine how it works, and selling my own. But since I prefer not to risk this conversation becoming public..." Her horn glowed, and the aura crunched the kit-bashed piece of machinery into scrap, then small pieces, then powder. "There, that should suffice. Now we are done."

Safe Guard and I were escorted rather firmly out of the Viscountess's presence, and I commented to him, "I'm going to have to run a better background check on my techs."

Elsewhere...

Red bowed to Princess Luna. "Your Highness - this is something called a 'parabolic microphone', and this is a 'wire recorder'. I received them along with a letter from Missy, to fly to a certain location and use them to record a conversation..."

Shortly...

In Luna's presence myself, I continued explaining, "... are some of the largest importers of gems from the diamond dogs in the north. If The Dairy does manage to curtail the dogs' slave raids, that would at the least reduce the rate of production - and due to the fine balance of power with the dragons, may even lead to a complete stoppage. If - and this is still a conjecture, but it fits all the evidence - if Roam has used her gem-gained wealth to arrange payments, so that the portion of the Guard tasked with stopping such raiding is... ineffective, then The Dairy's existence as an independent entity is a threat to that income stream."

Luna was... very unhappy. "I find it difficult to believe that any of my little ponies would have so little love in their hearts that they would be willing to do anything of the sort."

"I know. I wish I had been able to get a more concrete confession - but I wish a lot of things. With the evidence we do have - do you at least agree that even if we can't simply convict the Duchess and Viscountess of treason, we at least have sufficient justification to... keep an eye on them, and to work to minimize how much they can interfere with The Dairy?"

"I believe I can accept that much. But what will you do about the Viscountess's demand?"

I smiled. "An experiment."

That evening, the Alicorn, repaired to functional order even if the royal bedchamber was still a blackened mess, gently glided through the air as its engines were tested. As it happened, its path took it directly above the Canterlot mansion of the Roamish noble family, who were having a private dinner to discuss extremely private matters. I double-checked the wind, our altitude, and the machinery... and pulled a handle.

Down from the airship drifted a fine mist, invisible, odorless, and generally undetectable - and consisting primarily of extract of poison joke, gently spritzing every pony there, as well as coating most of the plants and surfaces of the garden area.

I'd sent a letter to them, to be delivered in the middle of the night: "I am afraid that I must decline your suggested merger. Since this response would mean that you would likely escalate, I have taken the liberty of doing so first. A cure exists, I possess it, and I am willing to share it with you should you ask me politely for it. I will point out that I came up with this plan on less than a day's notice, without using any significant resources. Should you consider escalating further from this point, I will also point out that I am a completely mother-bucking crazy bitch who is entirely willing to kill you and your entire family should you press me and keep me from wiping the scum of slavery from Equestria - and that I have others ready to do so for me, should something mysteriously happen to me. Sincerely, Anonymous."

Cleaning House

I guessed that if Twilight Sparkle, darling scholar of the Canterlot community, wasn't able to recognize the effects of poison joke, then it would be that much harder for a family of non-scholars to figure it out. But just to reduce the odds of the Roam clan figuring it out, I made discreet arrangements for the Canterlot Archives borrow any available copies of 'Super Naturals: Natural Remedies and Cure-Alls That Are Simply Super'. And, just in case the family wanted to try to cover up their afflictions, I sent some letters to the various gossip rags and other newspapers about the cursed mansion. Depending on how long the volatile parts of the extract lasted, and various magical factors I couldn't predict, then anyone who visited that place might end up with a poison joke curse - the whole place might have to be abandoned, or torn down and rebuilt. Especially if they decided not to ask for help. (Given that I'd just used up nearly my entire supply of poison joke, and I was worried about depleting the species, I figured I might as well leverage the maximum possible effect from its use.)

It took them until noon to ask for help. This time both Safe Guard and I went there fully armed, in our respective fashions. At the mansion's outer gate, a couple of guards - I guessed new ones, since they looked unaffected - passed us through the throng of non-flying reporters. At the inner gate, another couple of guards stepped towards us; during my last visit, this was where I'd been checked for weapons. I glared at them and Safe Guard's horn lit up.

"Try it," I growled, "and I'm turning around and leaving." The two inner guards paused, looked at each other, and one went inside - I guessed for further instructions. I idly checked my forehooves for cracks for a minute or so, then turned around anyway. I commented to Safe Guard, "I guess they don't want our help after all."

Just as we were about to head back into the newsherd, the missing guard galloped back and shouted "Wait!"

I heaved a dramatic sigh. "Help, no help, help - I wish they'd make up their minds."

Without any searching, we were allowed all the way back into the house's sanctum, the garden. (Part of the reason Safe was wearing his full armour, and I had my full suit on, was to help us avoid getting poison joke ourselves, should we brush up against a misted surface.)

One of the interior guards had his frame had ballooned up with so much muscle that he could barely move his forehoof an inch. Another had fared somewhat better - he'd gone in the other direction, and was now the size of a foal. But what happened to the mistress of the house, the Viscountess Marble Pillar, was a mystery - she was stretched out on a reclining couch, but had blankets covering her up to her neck. Her eyes glared with both fury and fear; if I wasn't careful, she might just decide to kill us all anyway, just to try to save face.

Once we were standing before her, I reached within my jacket to withdraw a small bottle. "The cure," I said, "a single dose's worth, to prove I have it, and that it's not poison. Instructions are taped to the side." I set it on the tiles and pushed it forward.

"What. Do. You. Want." said Alabaster, biting off each word.

"World peace, immortality, and a free fireworks show every Sunday," I quipped. "Barring all that - how about a simple peace treaty. You have your political goals, and I have mine - and if we work too hard against each other, we'll waste all our time and energy fighting, and have none left to even try for what we want. So let's keep the conflict to what the average pony thinks of as 'legal' or 'within the bounds'. You stop trying to murderize me and my ponies, keep the overt blackmailing down to a dull roar, and generally don't do anything nasty that can, even in theory, be traced back to you; and I don't put my mind to coming up with something truly awful to do to you. And since I have good reason not to trust your word, and you probably don't know me well enough to trust mine - we don't bother even trying to rely on our words. I hear the Princesses know some good honesty spells - I believe that I'd be able to convince one of them to use such so that we know the other is being honest about intending to keep her word."

"Completely unacceptable."

"Ah - so you are so determined to retaliate, that you can't honestly promise you aren't going to? In that case, I believe I am done here." I picked up the bottle and pocketed it, started turning, then paused, and looked back at her. "Oh, yes - I was going to mention, I was in a bit of a hurry when casting this curse, so I was a bit sloppy about it. I wouldn't be surprised if anypony who visited your house in the next few weeks ended up cursed, as well."

I turned away again, and Marble said, "Wait!", with some odd, un-pony-like movements under her blankets.

This time, when I turned back, I gave her the full glare of my anger, powered by my knowledge of the horrors of slavery on Earth - even the present-day forms of it - and that this creature before me was involved in that. "No! I will not wait, dilly-dally, loiter, or tarry! This is not a negotiation. Every time you try to haggle I will increase my demands. My price has just gone up to you also giving me a full list of whoever you've subverted in The Dairy, and how. If you don't like my chosen enforcement method, then come up with another one I can accept - or else you can just stay that way for the rest of your life!"

"Exchange of hostages."

"As if you would send anypony you cared about - and I have no intention of putting anypony I am responsible for under your power."

"Exchange of spies."

"Interesting - but are you really willing to let one of my ponies observe all your discussions, on pain of my assuming you're plotting to kill me if you don't?"

"Buy-in."

"Pardon?"

"My family is rich. I can offer you a share of that income."

"I already have access to as much of the royal treasury as I need."

"For your job, yes - but wouldn't you like to have a little extra for yourself?"

"Wealth can be useful - but not at that cost."

"How about... a newspaper?"

"... er?"

"Full editorial control over the Daily Canterlot."

"... as interesting as that sounds, I think you're veering somewhat from the point. Your paying me some amount of cash or goods doesn't create any incentive for you to stop doing unpleasant things to me and mine. It sounds like you're just trying to placate me enough to buy the cure, after which you'll be just as happy to off me as before. I'm starting to feel annoyed again. Safe, let's go."

The two of us turned to leave, and this time, Marble's shout of "Wait!" was ignored. As we got closer to the garden's exit, she called out again, "Stop them!" A pair of guards with matching bat-wings - I wasn't sure if they were natural or poison-joke-induced - landed in front of us.

I said to Safe, "Shall you or shall I?"

He said, "I'm curious how well yours works."

"Alrighty, then," I said, faced the two guards - and pushed the plunger of my home-brewed pepper spray.

Turned out that it could use some tweaking. While the two guards were rolling around on the ground, hooves on their faces, a tear of sympathy escaped my own eyes. Or maybe two. Not being completely sadistic, I called out, "Rinse their eyes out with water, and they'll be all right, eventually."

Marble yelled back, "You can't leave me like this!"

"Of course I can. I don't believe I will be returning here - or that I will be accepting mail from you. If you wish to talk again, come and see me."

As my backside once again faced her, Marble shouted, "Alright!" I paused, and she continued, "You win. Honesty magic. Full list. Whatever you want. Just - fix me!" Her gestures dislodged some of her blankets revealing that instead of a typical pony foreleg, she had some sort of flipper. She hurriedly pushed her cover back into place.

I sighed. "Send me a copy of what you plan on swearing before the Princess. It should fit on one page - it could even fit on one line. Anything that looks like a legal document, I'll send back to you. Depending on how annoying you are about the whole process, I will consider allowing you to partake of the cure before you stand before the Princess. Safe, let's go."

After we left, and had gone a reasonably safe distance, I nudged Safe into a cafe. I sipped at my tea, and stared out the window, at the landscape stretching out from the base of the mountain. Conversationally, I told him, "I don't know if I can do this."

"What, get one of the Princesses to verify a promise? That doesn't seem too hard - you've got them wrapped around your hoof, by all reports."

"Not that. Well, not entirely that. I've been dropped into a game with pretty high stakes - maybe even the highest - and so far I've been able to pull things off by the skin of my teeth, with a bit of luck, of creativity, and by knowing a few tricks that aren't in general circulation yet. But I'm running out of tricks - and I'm just starting to bump up against the ponies who, well, are actually competent at what they do."

"Are you asking me for reassurance?"

I shook my head. "Not really. I'm just... not really prepared for all this. I'm a scholar, not a manager - what I've really wanted to do ever since getting into Canterlot was to bury myself in the royal archives for a few years. What I've ended up doing is getting other ponies to bury themselves in there, and pass along condensed reports - and once the next wave of expansion of The Dairy comes through, what I'm going to get is reports condensing those condensed reports. I can't even take a hike through a meadow without being trailed by messengers, worrying that I need to be closer to the center of things in case of an emergency, and that I really should be spending my time trying to figure out my next clever trick... and that if I don't get back to work, the whole thing is going to crash and burn."

"Are you really that indispensable?"

"At the moment - I think so. Maybe in some months or years, assuming things keep going that long, the top people at the Dairy will have gotten used to my wacky ideas, and be able to work with them without my having to kick them the right way around every few hours... but right now, if I have to go into the field for, say, a week, by the time I get back the civil defense shelters will have been transformed into seed shelters built by somebody's cousin of substandard materials for too much money, the scouting program will have morphed into political indoctrination camps, and the nobles in the Barn of Lords will have torn everything else to pieces trying to get something for themselves. And if I don't figure out how to take a break every now and then, I'm going to go crazy - really crazy, not just 'I think I may be crazy' crazy."

He took a sip from his tea, then said, "So go crazy."

I blinked. "Care to expand?"

"The things that you're doing - they're important, right? Helping to save lives in new and interesting ways?"

"Right..."

"And the ponies who don't like what you're doing are treating you like a new player in the game, and starting to build strategies around you."

"Seems so."

"So don't let yourself get buttonholed as just a player. Be a force of nature - something they can't predict, something that does things so grand that they just get swept along in your wake."

"... I'm still listening."

"Not even I know what you did to that Viscountess, or how. So build on that. Become the Mad Cow, who charms the Princesses, turns her enemies into frogs, and, so I hear, has a decent singing voice." I felt my face heat. "Do the things the Guard hasn't been able to do - including becoming a raging inferno when you come back from a vacation, if your staff mangles things as bad as you're predicting. Have a full-time job and be a full-time mother." At my expression, he added, "If that's something you want to do."

"Let's just say I'm still getting used to the idea that I can get pregnant, let alone that I might be an actual mother. But for the rest of it... do you really think I can pull off something like that?"

"Lemme put it this way: What've you got to lose by trying?"

I considered his suggestions. Finally, I said, "I think I'm going to need to find a steadier supply of - er," I glanced around at anyone who might be listening in, "some of my 'curse' ingredients. I wonder if anyone's invented hydroponics yet?"

Consequences and Truth

"What do you mean, I can't use the name 'pony express'?"

"It is quite simple - it is a trademark used by my clients. While it is used less often than 'friendship express', it remains in effect, and any use of it without my client's permission would lead to severe legal consequences."

"And what would it take to get that permission?"

"Something on the order of ownership of the entire operation, I believe."

I sighed. "Fine. We'll come up with another name."

"There is still the matter of your previous unauthorized use of the term, and payments owing therefrom-"

"Don't push your luck."

"Hrmph!"

"As you can see, the typical monster rampage tends to last under one day, and nearly all last under one week; by reducing the shelter food and water requirements from two weeks to one, we can slash the costs, increase the capacity, or both."

"Hm... I still want to have at least some shelters capable of fortnight-level accommodations. Maybe we can set multiple tiers of shelters - bronze star for at least one day, silver for a week, gold for a fortnight. That could also let ponies start building lots of bronze-level shelters at a low cost, and upgrade as they have the funds."

"Are you sure you want to complicate the requirements that way? Perhaps an additional set of studies..."

"Look, when a hydra comes rampaging into town, as long as following the shelter signs gets me to somewhere I won't be eaten, I'm probably not going to be worrying about the complicated details. A one-day minimum seems like a good start, and anything above that is a bonus."

"Yes, ma'am."

"I don't know why you wanted it - but here's your report on the minimal amounts of food and resources required to establish a self-sufficient island colony, capable of creating its own daughter colonies."

"Hm... I don't see anything about minimum population size."

"Is that important?"

"Too small a founding population can lead to inbreeding. If I remember right, the rule-of-th... er, the rough-and-ready rule is fifty individuals for short-term survival, five hundred to prevent inbreeding, and five thousand for long-term survival. Please take this back and try again, with that in mind."

"And here's our logo for the Boogieman Defense Squads!"

"Um... I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it kind of looks like, um... "

"Oh. Oh! Ah. Well, that was entirely unintentional, I assure you. Do you think anyone else would notice?"

"Yes. Yes, I'm sure they would."

"Ah. Back to the drawing board, then, I guess."

"So, what's next?"

"Flower appreciation club."

"... Not flower arranging club? Or flower growing club?"

"Nope. They just like looking at pretty flowers."

"Um. That doesn't really give us much to work with. I've heard of flowers bred to bloom in different colors if the soil contains certain substances... but I'm guessing you haven't got those here."

"Can't say I've heard of them."

"Okay. Hm... How about, um, taking long walks to look at flowers, and while they're walking, they keep an eye out for... anything unusual?"

"I haven't got anything better."

"Okay, add 'em to the scout pile. Next?"

"Flour appreciation club."

"You're joking."

"Nope."

I sighed.

"Thank you for coming to see me, Miss Cheerilee."

"It's my pleasure, Miss, er, Missy. And thank you for paying for a Canterlot vacation."

"There is one thing I'd like to ask you while you're here."

"If it's about becoming a personal tutor, I'm afraid that I'm quite dedicated to teaching Ponyville's children full-time."

"That's precisely why I wanted to talk to you - you are the one pony I know on the front-lines of Equestria's educational system... and you get to deal with some of the most, ah, rambunctious colts and fillies. I have the Princess's permission to try to work out some improvements to the curriculum - I'm particularly interested in expanding a unit on first-aid procedures. But I'd also like to present it in a way that doesn't, um, encourage the little ones to take additional risks. So I'm hoping to pick your brain for any ideas you would care to offer..."

"Ah, so it's to be a working vacation..."

"The purpose of guerrilla warfare is to continue resistance in those parts of the land occupied by an hostile force, or to continue the fight after the defeat of the regular Guard. However, guerrilla units require a nucleus of experienced troops, to serve as instructors and leaders..."

"No, we need to have all the towers using the same signal system, to avoid slowdowns from converting from one to another."

"But that semaphore-arm system you rejected is so much more graceful!"

"Grace has its place - but is a secondary concern to cost, speed, reliability, and expandability. Starting with a six-shutter system requires only a fraction of the cost of swing-arms, and can be easily upgraded to eight shutters, or more, once the operators have gotten the hang of the starting system."

"But... the elegance."

"Look, if you want to work on the semaphore system on your own time, and present it as a competing system, go right ahead - but I'm still going to need that list of simplified Equestrian letters sorted by frequency of use, to work out a decent binary encoding system..."

"But green vests with yellow stripes clash with my mane! I'm an autumn, not a spring!"

"I think I've figured out why the Princesses troll so much - it's the only way they can keep sane. I've been at this for less than a month, and I'm already just about off my rocker."

"Mm," Red agreed, tossing a piece of popcorn into her mouth. "You do need to relax more."

"What do you call what I'm doing now?"

"I'd hardly call this relaxing. Good air time with that last pie, though."

"You haven't seen anything yet. Pull!"

“You know, I granted immortality once.” Floaty Goth Chick was sitting in a tree branch high above me, playing with a golden scarab. She looked tired and...old.

I made noises of polite interest.

“It was before your time, before Rome. I was young, and I was in love. I begged the gods to make him forever young, so that we could be together forever. They granted my foolish request, and we were happy. But then he changed, he became cruel, and cynical as the years pressed down. He wasn’t happy being the husband of a goddess, sitting on a small throne in a corner of the Underworld, watching my father conduct his business. He wanted to be like me. I granted him godlike strength and invulnerability, I taught him magic, and he was content with his new powers. But time changes us, and he desired a kingdom of his own.” She trailed off, her eyes growing haunted.

“It sounds like something other than his immortality might have been the problem there.”

“Humans are meant to change, to evolve. The roots of his corruption were buried deep in his soul, it is true, but the same could be said of any mortal. Humans were not born when Zeus breathed life into a clay figurine, they were spawned out from the Sea of Chaos alongside the gods. There is Good and there is Evil in even the most pure heart, and time will eventually wear away until only one remains.”

“Assuming that by ‘Sea of Chaos’ you mean the randomness of mutation filtered by the process of evolution through natural selection...” I smiled up at her, but then turned back to being serious as I continued with my main point, “Going only by what you have told me so far... this fellow sitting in a throne in the underworld... did he have any opportunity to actually make positive changes, to improve things for the people around him - to make a positive difference in his life and actually be Good?”

“Good is a matter of perspective.” I snorted but remained silent. She continued, “But if you mean that was he allowed to participate in the dealings of the Court, then the answer is yes. He was my husband, my love, and he was wise. My father listened to him, but the abode of the Dead is no place for the living. You speak as if we gods do nothing for the world, but you are wrong. We defend you humans from the monsters, the hydra, the Minotaur, the demons of the Pit, they are real and they are contained by us.”

“Are we to eternally be children then? Or will there ever be a time when we start defending ourselves?”

“You truly are blind. There have been countless mortal heroes: Jason, Theseus, Perseus, sons of Man all that stood against the darkness to bring forth a brighter dawn.”

“Precisely my point. Single individuals, granted gifts by the gods - when they weren’t being played with by them - who the rest of individuals surrounding them depended on. What about the carpenter who repaired the hammers that built the Argo, or Perseus’ cup-holder? Their names are forgotten by humanity - but if they had been granted the same gifts, the same opportunities, who is to say that the brighter dawn might not have been brighter still?”

“Do you not have that already? A child with a handgun is mightier than the most vicious, battle-hardened lion.”

“And the knowledge that allows such weapons has also led to penicillin, to a dozen men having walked on the Moon, and many more improvements to ordinary life... improvements that could have eased much suffering had they been known even earlier.”

“There is truth in what you say, but you are forgetting something. Do you think this did not occur to us? You will recall that it was Prometheus who taught the use of fire to your kind, and saved you when you would have been devoured by the wilderness.”

“And was punished with having his liver eternally plucked out by Zeus for doing so - at least until a poisoned Chiron gave up his immortality to ease that sentence. If the idea of improving humanity’s lot occurred to the Olympians, it wasn’t a well-received idea.”

“And when has it ever been said that the gods were faultless? We are capable of making mistakes, but the burden we bear is that those mistakes might doom an entire species! What would you do if so much as a sneeze caused a star to explode?”

“Besides invent antihistamines - one of the basic principles to managing existential risks is to spread out any vital resources, such as a single planet holding the entirety of sapient life - so that any single mistake does not cause total and utter devastation. And to arrange matters so that each vital resources is capable of protecting and managing its own affairs without your help, so that they can concentrate on what’s important for them, managing their problems to the best of your ability; freeing yourself to manage your own issues.”

“In one breath you condemn us for not helping you more, and in the next you argue that you should be left alone to your own devices.”

“The same problem faces any parent trying to raise a child who can be self-reliant. The only difference is that you don’t seem to see yourselves as parents, just... game-players, and us as toys rather than having the potential of becoming something in our own right.”

“You are not wrong, but you are not right either. Some see the lives of mortals as nothing but strings to be pulled, a game to be played, but remember Prometheus. Remember the punishment he endured to save you. If that is not love, than what is?”

“I have nothing but respect for Prometheus - in the times I believe that the supernatural might exist, I’ve considered his acts as a model to aspire to. But there seem to be all too few Prometheii, and all too many Zeuses and eagles.” I gave a quick glance upwards, at the possible gods who it had turned out might be up there after all. “No offense.”

“Zeus is a young god, granted not as young as me, but you will recall he was the last child sired by Kronos. A boy king thrust upon a throne and called to war on the day of his birth, it tends to skew one’s perceptions a bit.”

“Which brings us all the way to the present - should I simply allow the Zeuses of the world to arrange things the way they wish... or shall I work to make the lot of humanity - and ponies, and cows, and all other sapience - as great as I possibly can manage?”

“Even gods need heroes.” With that cryptic statement, she disappeared with a hollow boom. It was only then that I'd realized she’d been missing an arm.

I gave a parting statement to the vanished goddess, in case she, or anyone else, was listening: “But what happens when the heroes no longer need gods?”

(Author's Note: This is another crossover with Forevermore's Skeleton Jack.)

Royal Reform

Luna raised an eyebrow. "I see thou hast brought some visual aids."

"They say that a picture is worth a thousand words - and both of us have all too little time to spare for these private chats."

She lifted a cup to her lips, and sipped some tea. "Then by all means, proceed."

"There's an old saying - 'If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.'"

"I believe I remember that one - wasn't it by the fellow who put de cartes before de horse?"

I shuddered. "That one has to be old, even for you."

"Mm, perhaps so. Pray, continue."

"To try to focus on what I have in mind today... why bother with law?"

"That seemeth simple enough - so that all may know what they should not do."

"Are you sure? It seems fairly obvious to me - don't hurt other ponies, or take their stuff from them. There - two laws to replace all the rest."

"It hath been some time since I hath played the game of So-cart's Questioning, but I do not mind it. More detail is needed as a guide for questionable circumstances, such as when it is unclear which ponies own a thing."

"Alright; then once that guide is set... why do we still need a body of lawmakers?"

"I know all too well that words change in meaning over the years - perhaps they exist to keep the language of the laws concordant with the current language."

"And here's my first visual aid. Here is a copy of the law on murder from two hundred years ago; and here is the current version of the same law. Some of the words have changed - but mostly, it is the same. Just how many lawmakers do we need to employ, to change a half-dozen words over two centuries? Couldn't the Diarchy simply hire a linguist every decade or so to report on any potentially troublesome words?"

"Perhaps - but a number of new ideas arose during my absence, such as the various forms of companies and corporations, and the law had to be extended to take into account things that had never been thought of when it was first written down. The tax laws alone are, if thou will forgive the phrasing, a nightmare to consider."

"And thank you for taking this conversation to where I was hoping to eventually steer it. Tax laws seem to be a kind of different beast than criminal laws - the latter are about how ponies interact with each other, while the former are about how they interact with the government."

"I could poke many holes in that - but, as thou did say, we only have so much time."

"So why have taxes at all?"

"To pay for those services which benefit Equestrians as a whole, which individuals cannot pay for themselves. The Guard, hospitals, schools."

"How do you tell how much Guard is enough? Or when you've hired not enough, or too many, hospitals or schools? I know some people who suggest that the whole set should be paid for privately, instead of through government."

"A combination of advice from long experience on the part of myself and my sister, and discussions to build consensus amongst those with the power to pass the tax laws."

"In other words - the point of the Barn of Lords isn't really to determine criminal laws, but to balance the competing interests of the nobility about money?"

"That seemst a fair, if blunt, description."

"Let's try a scenario. Let's say all the companies start out being taxed at the same rate on their profits. But one noble has a business in, oh, tree-farming. So she points out that her business takes years and years to grow the trees, which means that it's harder to get bank-loans to fund her operations - so it's not really fair that she's taxed at the same rate. So she proposes that in order to encourage the obvious benefits of tree-farming, she should be taxed at a lower rate."

"I have seen many such proposals over the years - and many of them have been accepted."

"Then you'll also have seen proposals where such a tax break increases the profit of one small group by, say, a hundred thousand bits; while some complementary measure increases the general taxation to cover that amount, so that every taxpayer has to pay a small amount extra."

"That is how such taxes tend to be paid for."

"And the Barn of Lords is supposed to, in general, talk with each other to find ways for competing interests to agree. Say, the tree-farmer promises to vote for a similar tax break for the fishermen, if a noble of the seacoast supports her own exemption."

"That is so."

"And this is supposed to find the best overall set of compromises for Equestria's people as a whole."

"Again, that is so."

"So who argues for tax breaks for cows?"

"Pardon?"

"Or donkeys, or sheep, or buffalo, or any non-ponies who live peacefully in Equestria's borders, and are subject to its laws. Who proposes tax breaks that benefit them, or argues against measures that increase taxes on them without any commensurate benefit?" Luna was looking at me like I'd grown a second head - I double-checked to make sure I hadn't, since in this world, it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. I carried on, "Or even going back to criminal law - if the buffalo have been using a piece of land for centuries, and a bunch of ponies move into the place and start building things that keep the buffalo from using the land... when ponies, and ponies alone, are writing the law, who do you think the law will say the land belongs to?"

"But surely-"

"Last year. Appleloosa. Peaceful discussions failed. The buffalo tried to stampede the town flat. It was only after the stampede was already in progress that a deal was struck." She winced. I continued, "If you truly believe that Equestria's laws provide equality of opportunity to all, regardless of species, then you surely expect that checking the data will reveal that, statistically, cows and ponies will have roughly equal distributions, relative to their populations, at any given income level."

"From thy tone, I am guessing that thy visual aids demonstrate otherwise."

"I'll put it this way - if barns are so great to live in, why don't ponies prefer them to houses?"

"Thou maketh a point - and I will be sure to take a close look at thy data, when Abacus and I have the time."

"That's fair. I have other items I could bring up, such as the fact that since the law-makers tend to be nobles, then they will naturally pass laws which favor nobles over non-nobles, such as in permissible responses when one pony believes another has defamed their name, or stained their honor, even if the statement was the complete and literal objective truth. But I believe my overall point is clear."

"Perhaps thou should say it aloud, so that thy clarity may be doubled."

"The Barn of Lords is in need of some serious reform."

"I believe I overheard my sister proposing to ennoble thou - or another cow of thy choosing, when thou refused."

"That... would solve a few of the problems - but it's more of a short-term patch than a true solution."

"What wouldst thou consider to be a 'true' solution?"

"I've come up with a few possibilities. For one, I've been doing some reading on some of the changes that have been made to Equestrian government over the years - how the Withergamot developed into the Curia regis, the royal council; which then split into the Day Court, Night Court, and the Barn of Lords. But that was only one of the four royal councils to the Diarchy. The ordinary courts are still in existence - but the other two, the Magnum Concilium and the Commune Concilium, while not having been summoned or met in centuries, were never formally disbanded - and, at least in theory, can be reconvened at any time without significant upset to the foundations of Equestria's government. And given your recent return after your millennium of absence - it would be entirely reasonable for you to summon one of them, as you might find them more familiar than the modern arrangements."

"So you would replace the Barn of Lords with mere vote-grubbing politicians?"

"Not replace - supplement. Right now, many folk have no voice to speak for them in government - and at least getting a vote-grubbing politician is the start of having some say. And as the current Barn of Lords doesn't necessarily use the same procedures as the original Curia regis, a revived Commune Concilium doesn't have to use the same procedures as the original - and there are some options which can be chosen to make such a body a truer representation of the voice of the people, such as proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post districts, or approval voting rather than a plurality system. I've written down some of the math showing the pluses and minuses of the variations I've been able to remember."

"That is still a... significant undertaking."

"It's really more of a warm-up. Another possibility is to create a set of High Laws which other laws must follow, and which are harder to change than ordinary laws. For example, one High Law might say that all Equestrians have the right to say what they believe to be the truth - and that any ordinary law which tries to make saying the truth is illegal, transgresses against the High Law, and the High Law takes precedence over that ordinary law, rendering it null and void. Again, I've got a list of sample laws - one being that all Equestrians are equal under the law, regardless of species."

Dryly, Luna asked, "Is that all?"

"I do have another set of proposals, for more ordinary laws. For example, that because of the trust placed in the lawmakers, they have to be held to a higher standard than ordinary Equestrians - and so anybody who finds evidence of wrongdoing by a lawmaker should receive as much protection as possible from the lawmakers, to avoid reprisals from the people in power. That one might have to be implemented more as a Royal Decree, since I don't really see the current crop of nobles voluntarily voting to place additional limits on their own power."

Luna held up a hoof. "Enough. For now. Until today, I thought that simply reforming the tax code and the procedures of the Equestrian Revenue Service was the most complicated task facing me in the decade following my return. I need to think on the issues thou hast raised, before even considering thy proposed solutions."

"That's an entirely fair and reasonable response, given your position."

"'My position?'"

"Would you care to sleep in the royal dairy barn, rather than your royal bedchamber, come the dawn?"

She eyed me oddly, and I wondered if I'd pressed my luck a step too far. "Perhaps," she said, and that was more of an acceptance than I'd expected - maybe I really was getting through to her. "In the meanwhile, hast thou any lighter topics of conversation to while away the eve?"

"Perhaps," I echoed with a smile. "There is something I've been wondering, and perhaps you know the answer better than anypony..."

"Yes?"

"Do you have any idea how far away the stars of the night sky are?"

Turned out that Luna really was willing to give the barn a try - after all, she'd slept under far worse conditions during the fight against Discord. It also turned out that the hardest part of the whole procedure was getting the household staff to not revamp the whole place to royal sleeping-quarters conditions for her.

The second-hardest part was suppressing the rumors that she was doing so because of some sort of illicit affair between her and me. Which would have been a lot easier if Luna herself hadn't started hinting at those rumors herself. And wasn't helped by the fact that, out of all the sapient creatures I'd met since being transformed from male human to female cow, if there were any I was going to have some sort of affair with, Luna was either at or near the top of the list. I mean, sure, she was a hooved quadruped with magical powers who'd lived for millennia; but she was also intelligent, had a sense of humor, was the right gender for my semi-confused mind, didn't live too far away, and actually did understand discretion when it suited her. Maybe her doing some trolling by spreading the rumors was a way to make me confront the fact that I actually could let myself get attracted to her... or maybe she was just trolling.

One thing I was fairly sure of was that I wasn't interested in joining in a 'traditional' cattle family: polygyny, a herd with a single bull and several cows and their calves. But taking that option off the table didn't leave much left - there weren't very many ponies interested in close relationships with cattle, and even among cows, I didn't really know enough to join an all-female herd, romantically. Now that I was thinking of it, I didn't really know any cows, ponies, or the like well enough to call them my friends. Sure, I had acquaintances, but they were pretty much all through my job - either employees, or ponies I had to deal with professionally. In a world where friendship could be turned into an actual physical force, such as the Elements, or even just the Hearth's Warming Eve magical floating hearts, that... might be a worrying sign. And the lack of any real social support might have explained a good portion of my still-increasing stress levels.

Back on Earth, I'd been something of an urban hermit - a happy loner, an introvert who'd made that work for him. But now, I had to make advance arrangements just to get any time to myself - and the time I wasn't by myself, I was among people I couldn't completely trust, couldn't completely rely on the way the Mane Six could rely on each other in the cartoons.

It was a pretty pickle, and I didn't know where to even start looking for a solution. Even Twilight's friendship reports started with the assumption that she had some friends to report on - and I didn't fancy teaming up with an assortment of strangers to face a world-endangering evil, purely as a trust-building exercise.

And so that was why I figured that maybe it would be a good idea to try to discreetly find out the answer, as to whether Luna really was interested in pursuing matters the way she was spreading rumors about the two of us.

And so that was how I found out that the answer was a very firm, if polite, 'no'. And that was a significant reason for my deciding to leave Canterlot for at least a few days, for both of our embarrassment - alright, almost entirely mine - to have a chance to cool down to the point where I could at least look at Luna without blushing.

Higher and Lower Education

With the rumors that were going around, I didn't feel like giving Blueblood a chance to needle me, so the Alicorn would be staying in port. I didn't know of anypony who could cast the cloud-walking spell on me, and the Friendship Express (aka the Pony Express(R)) only went to so many places... and about the only one that contained anypony I actually knew was Ponyville. So I accompanied Cheerilee on her way back, with the official excuse of continuing our collaboration on improving the curriculum. It was even true, in a way, in that I was still trying to remember and write down everything I could about Montessori methods, gifted programs, and everything else I could think of about schools in which the students actually wanted to learn.

On the train ride back, as we talked, Cheerilee gave me the occasional odd glance, before finally saying, "Alright. Out with it."

"Out with what?" She tapped a hoof impatiently, so I sighed. "Fine, fine. I made a... rather significant social faux pas. So I'm taking some time to let it die down."

"How 'significant'?"

I winced and rubbed the back of my head with a hoof, not wanting to explain in too much detail. "Well, er... a rather high-placed figure was making some jokes, and I wanted to find out if there was some underlying truth to them, and I did so... clumsily. Very clumsily."

"Ah. That explains this, then." She reached into a saddlebag, and pulled out a newspaper. My mouth dried even before I saw the headline - "Princess in Cow's Bed" - and the picture, of Luna stretched out rather casually on a couple of hay bales.

I tried banging my forehead into the train-carriage wall, but all that accomplished was getting my horns stuck in the wood.

Cheerilee cheerfully continued, "It's actually a sweet little fluff piece, about how the Princess is taking the time to get to know how all of her subjects live these days. I don't believe you're even mentioned at all. No, wait, there you are - in a list of cows living in the royal dairy."

"Maybe I should just go back to being a hermit. Um..." I tried tugging my head free. "could I get a little help here?"

In Ponyville, Cheerilee invited me to her house, where we snacked on some light sandwiches while discussing her current students, and how she tried to encourage each of them to grow and blossom - and some of the problems each one had in doing so. A lot of it could be guessed from the show - trying to give Silver Spoon more and healthier friends than Diamond Tiara, trying to find ways for Diamond Tiara to relate better to the other fillies, Snips and Snails having trouble keeping up and so acting out to get attention, Featherweight growing into his role as student paper editor, the Crusaders tending to turn whatever they focused their attention on into shreds and splinters, Twist wanting to spend more time in the family shop than at school, Pipsqueak trying to make friends after moving in from Trottingham, Dinkey Doo being teased because of her mother... and, to my surprise, close to thirty others. The schoolhouse was only built to hold around a dozen students at a time, so most attended half-day classes, three or four times a week; Cheerilee said this let her spend time with each one, and to adjust the lessons to each group of foals, and gave all of them plenty of time to spend with their families, to play, and to go explore the world on their own. She'd heard of larger, full-day classes, in the big cities, but didn't like them - which is why she stayed in Ponyville.

It also seemed that she mainly covered reading, writing, arithmetic, with a few excursions into other topics - but when a foal had what I considered a grade-school education, they graduated. A few of the more scholastically inclined went off to a higher education in one of the big cities, but for the most part, the only further education in Ponyville was self-study at the local library - and all too few ponies were all that interested.

By the time we started discussing how to fund increased education, and I was trying to think of how to politely broach the subject of adding calves to the student body, my udder was starting to feel painfully tight, and Celestia's sun was getting close to the horizon. "Maybe we should pick this up tomorrow," I said. "I need to go get milked, and I'm sure you have more things to do, now that you're back from your vacation, then spend all your time with just one sloppy ol' cow."

"You don't have to, if you don't want to."

"Well - I kind of do, really; my udder waits for nopony."

"What I meant was - I can milk you right here, myself. If you want."

I blinked, and glanced at her hooves, and thought about them manhandling my udder - and felt just a teensy bit uncomfortable. Other than my couple of trips to the spa, and getting myself hooked up to the milking machines a few times each day, I simply hadn't really let anypony touch me. "Er - I'm not going to say 'no' - but I am going to point out that I have a very bad record at picking up subtext and social cues; so if you have anything in mind more than that..." I trailed off, feeling at least as awkward as that had sounded.

"Oh, don't worry about that. I'm just happy to help you feel better, and maybe get some free milk." I felt relief, with only a tinge of awkwardness. "While I shop at Quills and Sofas as often as the next filly," aaaand all that awkwardness came rushing back, "and I was quite experimental when I was younger," aaaand there was a stack of mental imagery surprise right there, "I wouldn't do anything like what you're implying," awkwardness receding, "at least not while we were both so tired after the train trip." And a spike of anticipatory awkwardness for any future chats. "I also have a spare bedroom you can use, if you'd like."

I focused on that latter item, to try to pretend she hadn't said any of what had come before. "I'm afraid that I don't know why, but when I'm by myself, I can't seem to fall asleep."

"Oh, that's alright - you can sleep with me, then."

I rubbed my head with a hoof, trying to think of not only how I should respond to that, but how I wanted to respond to that, when she suddenly burst into girlish giggles. "Oh, if you could just see your face!"

"Ah. Oh, I see. Okay, you got me. Aheh."

"I have to keep up such a perfect facade of respectability when I'm anywhere my students' families might see me, I can never let my hair down - or even pull a small prank like that one."

"That's quite understandable."

"Let alone do anything with another consenting adult that falls outside what they consider 'traditional norms'. But we're all big girls here, and I was telling the truth about my experimental years - so whatever way you want to sleep with me, or don't, that's fine. Just make a choice and let me know what it is, and we can go from there."

I blinked, and blinked again... and tried to seriously consider the options I was now facing. And I made my choice.

We just slept, okay? I don't know why some people have to take a perfectly innocent sleepover and start fantasizing about all sorts of razza-frazzin' hossenfeffer...

The next morning, she helped me empty my udder again, and then trotted off to the market to buy some groceries, while I went through the Dairy paperwork that had followed me from Canterlot via the first leg of the new Pegasus Express.

I was tempted to go look through Cheerilee's house for wherever she stored her purchases from Quills and Sofas. I resisted that temptation easily.

When Cheerilee came back, we had breakfast outside, at a table and some chairs she had set up behind her house, with a view of Carousel Boutique and the park to our left, and the schoolhouse to our right.

"So," she said, "You've really never...?"

"Let's just say that the rumors of my head being messed up aren't completely exaggerated - and it didn't exactly help that the closest I've come so far was a gang-rape."

"How about kissing?" I shook my head. "Cuddling?"

"Cheerilee - I sleep, and I mean sleep, with other people because I can't sleep if I don't. As far as my memory goes, you're the first person I've even let touch my udder to help with it. And just about everyone I meet, is through my work."

"Well. We can't let that continue."

"Pardon?"

"Whether or not you were insane before, if you keep up like that, you're going to end up completely bonkers within a month."

I sipped at my tea. "I can't say you're wrong. I just don't know what the solution is."

Cheerilee's eyes started twinkling. "I think I know how to help you find out." She held her hoof to her lips and gave a taxi-cab whistle, then shouted, "Oh, girls!"

Around the corner of her house galloped... Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle. My eyes widened and I whispered to Cheerilee, "You can't be serious."

She ignored me, having dropped effortlessly into her role as teacher.

"I'm sure all three of you remember Missy, who helped me teach a few weeks ago."

Apple Bloom piped up, "I do!"

Sweetie Belle added, "Me too!"

Scootaloo, "Kinda, I guess."

Cheerilee kept smiling cheerfully, and continued, "Missy has been having some trouble making new friends, so I thought that the three of you might be able to use your experience at crusading to help her find an activity where she can meet new people she can be friends with."

Three capes appeared out of... somewhere... and the trio slapped hooves. "Let's Go Cutie Mark Crusaders Matchmakers!"

I whispered out of the side of my mouth, "If I survive this, I'm going to kill you."

She whispered back, "Try, and I'll break out the padded hoofcuffs."

I tried to figure out just how serious she might me, which was enough of a distraction for the Crusaders to grab hold of my hooves and start dragging me to my doom. Doom, I say!

"Well, that was nice," I said, as I handed the bits to Mrs. Cake, and the rambunctious trio dug into their chosen treats. "I was afraid you were going to start dragging me from one random activity to another."

Apple Bloom pulled her mouth out of her confection long enough to say, "Nuh-uh! We've been at this long enough that we've found all the hard ways to do things, and now we know how to avoid 'em!"

Sweetie Belle piped up, "Almost all of them."

Scootaloo, "Some of 'em, anyway."

Apple Bloom admitted, "At least a few."

Sweetie Belle, "Anyway - it helps a lot if we can narrow down the choices before we start dragging you all around town."

Scootaloo, "That way we can focus on the stuff you'll have the most fun with!"

Sweetie Belle, "Or at least save the dull stuff 'til later."

Apple Bloom, "So, what do you like to do?"

The terrible trio looked up at me with their ginormous eyes, hooves holding pencils over notebooks, and I realized it was my turn to say something. "Um. Well. I guess you could say I'm a lot like Twilight Sparkle, with a good part of Fluttershy. I like reading, doing scientific experiments, taking long walks in nature, and cute li'l critters. I'm not really much into fashion or parties... is that a good start?"

They'd been scribbling furiously as I talked, though their notes looked like, well, actual scribbles to me. Apple Bloom asked, "How about making stuff?"

"Hm... I can think of a few things I'd like to try to make, out of copper wires, crystals, and a few other pieces."

"Like jewelry?"

"Not really - there are gadgets like 'spark-gap transmitters' and 'crystal radio receivers' that I almost remember how to build. If I could put together a decent pump, I might manage some form of vacuum tubes, which "

"So - building small, fiddly complicated stuff, not just carving wood or making houses or stuff like that."

"That's about right.

Sweetie Belle, "How about music?"

"I have sung a few songs in the past few weeks. I think I remember once being able to play a few musical instruments, but I don't know if I can actually handle any with my hooves."

She beamed. "We can work with that."

Scootaloo took a turn, "Do you like any sports? How about racing?"

"Sorry, my dear - I don't think I've got a competitive bone in my body. On those rare occasions when somebody stuck me in that sort of thing anyway, I've been known to help out one of my competitors who've been having trouble, instead of going for the win myself."

She frowned. "That's not- that is, you shouldn't... uh, should you?"

I shrugged. "It's one of those complicated, grown-up, you've-gotta-decide-for-yourself sort of things. Besides - I've only just started trying out the daily exercise routine Safe Guard figured out for me, and it's going to be a good long while before I'm in anything like decent physical shape."

They ran through a list of other activities, from gardening to ghosthunting to golfing to hang gliding to board games to pinball to puppets to papermaking to poetry to pony watching. Finally, they seemed to run out, or maybe run down, and confabbed over their notes. I sipped my own, mercifully nearly-sugar-free drink, and waited for the results.

Apple Bloom seemed to be the designated spokespony. "Since you're not trying to get a cutie mark-"

Scootaloo, "Can cows even get cutie marks?"

Apple Bloom bravely soldiered on, "and are trying to make friends instead - we think we've got just the thing for you to try first:"

All three chimed in: "Theater!"

They looked at me expectantly, so I rubbed my chin with a hoof, thoughtfully. "Well, I do remember once being part of a stage lighting crew..." At their looks, I added, "When I was smaller. A lot smaller." That seemed to satisfy them, so I continued, "And if one thing doesn't work, there's a lot of other things I could try, while still getting to know the same people..." And for their benefit, I added, "And I'm pretty sure it's not something I'd have come up with myself, any time soon." They beamed.

"So, what sort of theater group did you have in mind?"

They drooped. "Well, um, er, that is..."

Sweetie Belle broke the mumbling, "They kinda stopped letting us in after the time we tried to be Cutie Mark Crusader Concessionaires."

Scootaloo grumbled, "I still say that could have worked, if somepony hadn't started shouting to offer hot dogs in the middle of that pony's solilielolu... speech."

"Well, if they do let me on stage, I'll be sure that the three of you get in - as part of the audience."

As Cheerilee and I entered the practice stage area, I seemed to be just on cue to catch the start of a song.

I am the very pinnacle of Ponyville society,
My dresses have a tendency to live in notoriety,
From cradle to the grave I will live firmly in nobility,
And I feign a British accent to the best of my ability.
It's practically agreed by ev'ryone in the majority,
My many escapades just serve to further my authority,
I'm only speaking to you with the utmost of sincerity...
A gem amongst the rough like me is something of a Rarity.
(A gem amongst the rough like she is something of a Rarity.)
(A gem amongst the rough like she is something of a Rarity.)
(A gem amongst the rough like she is something of a Rari-Rarity.)

Both my clothing and my style are simply beautifully elegant
I'm really rather generous when left inside my element
For as long as I remember I was great for the proprieties
For I am the very pinnacle of Ponyville society.
(For as long as she remembers she was great for the proprieties
She is the very pinnacle of Ponyville society.)

Despite my inclination to get a little too obsessive
(It's gotten to the point where it is actually excessive)
I try my very hardest to improve my generosity
Although many times it's lead up to the birth of a monstrosity
I'd like to think of myself as surprisingly intelligent
Though I'm going to digress here as that thought is quite irrelevant
Ev'ry fibre of my being holds a front of being affable...
Anyone who says otherwise is merely acting laughable.
(Anyone who says otherwise is merely acting laughable.)
(Anyone who says otherwise is merely acting laughable.)
(Anyone who says otherwise is merely acting laugha-laughable.)

My huge amounts of class are very obviously apparent,
So obvious, in fact, it's almost totally transparent,
Despite my nervous bouts and regular fits of anxiety,
I am the very pinnacle of Ponyville society.
(Despite her nervous bouts and regular fits of anxiety,
She is the very pinnacle of Ponyville society.)

As we stomp-applauded, I thought to myself - I might be able to work with this. A Gilbert & Sullivan parody certainly sounds like it'd take more effort, more interaction, and be more sanity-saving than 'Baby Got Flank' or 'Sexy Naughty Bitchy Rarity'.

A gruff pony with a clipboard and a beard (how did that work, anyway?) approached us. "Yes?"

Cheerilee answered for me, "Missy here is here to find out if the theater is for her."

He glanced at me. "Been on stage before?"

"I've sung in front of an audience, if that's what you mean."

"Fine. Go on up, show us what you can do."

"Now?"

Cheerilee nudged me. "Go on - I'm sure you'll do fine! And even if you don't - what have you got to worry about?" I recalled a certain mob in Manehattan, but declined to tell her just what I did have to worry about.

In a few moments, I was in the middle of the small stage, with the local troupe all looking at me. I thought back to Ella Fitzgerald, to They Might Be Giants, to the Animaniacs... but then I looked down at Cheerilee, into her eyes looking back up to me... and - to my best guess - the local magic which prompted bouts of spontaneous musicalism took hold of things, for I found myself starting to sing something else entirely, with the accompaniment appearing on cue from the local strolling players without any prompting from me...

My head is stuck in the clouds
She begs me to come down
Says, "Girl, quit foolin' around"
I told her, "I love the view from up here
Warm sun and wind in my ear
We'll watch the world from above
As it turns to the rhythm of love"

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun, you're mine
All mine
Play the music low
And sway to the rhythm of love

My heart beats like a drum
A guitar string to the strum
A beautiful song to be sung
She's got blue eyes deep like the sea
That roll back when she's laughing at me
She rises up like the tide
The moment her lips meet mine

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun, you're mine
All mine
Play the music low
And sway to the rhythm of love

When the moon is low
We can dance in slow motion
And all your tears will subside
All your tears will dry

And long after I've gone
You'll still be humming along
And I will keep you in my mind
The way you make love so fine

We may only have tonight
But till the morning sun, you're mine
All mine
Play the music low
And sway to the rhythm of love
Play the music low
And sway to the rhythm of love
Yeah, sway to the rhythm of love

The clipboard-toting pony said, "I don't care if she's got three horns and no legs. If she can memorize at least a couple of lines, we'll keep her."

The part of my attention that was paying attention to him said, "Job. Canterlot."

He went on with something about taking what he could get, but I just got down from the stage, and settled into the seat next to Cheerilee's. I said to her, "I think I'm completely out of my depth."

She answered, "Songs don't always pan out. They just... take something that could be, and show it."

"So... there is something that could be?"

"Maybe. But I have ponies to teach, and you have your job in Canterlot - and I don't think either of us want to give those up."

"So... is that why that song was the song that... happened? 'We may only have tonight'?."

"Do you want to have tonight?"

"I don't know. And by that, I really mean that... I don't know. But... I think... I wouldn't mind... finding out."

Investigation

It was fairly easy to peel the Alicorn from Blueblood. I was able to completely ignore the insinuations he made about the rumors of something between Luna and me, since I now had a pony I was actually spending time with. My blase reaction put the Prince off his stride, so when I pointed out that he hadn't put the Alicorn through a test flight since it was repaired, he was quite willing to let me take the risk for him.

Safe Guard had been mildly annoyed that I hadn't taken him with me to Ponyville, and mildly pleased that I'd kept up with his exercise schedule. Red was almost as eager as the Crusaders for me to dish on my Almost Very Special Somepony - and her, I was a lot more willing to talk to about it than with the fillies. For the first time in my life - either of my lives, come to think of it - I actually had something to talk about in a gossip session.

After both Safeguard and I searched through the Alicorn for anything suspicious, and neither of us found anything, we finished preparations for launch that evening, and headed out on a night flight, to arrive at Hoofington in the morning. I spent some of the evening puttering around with a small telescope, and an amateur astronomy guide. While Luna had told me some things about the night sky, and I assumed she believe them, that didn't necessarily mean they were true; though they did provide a good starting place to look into it. Despite the existence of telescopes, local astronomy was closer to the classical Greek model - the star-like lights which moved around, such as the ones that had lined up for Nightmare Moon's release, were just called 'moving stars'; there were at least a few constellations that were familiar, such as Orion; and everyone around me was completely convinced that the sun and moon revolved around the world. The annoying part was, they could very well be right. I wasn't expecting to solve the mysteries of the cosmos that night - but I was at least getting more familiar with the local equipment. And without any significant city-glow, I was getting to see the sorts of vistas I'd had to go camping in the backwoods back on Earth to get even close to.

"What's with the red light?", Red asked, as I was working out when a particular nebula would re-appear from behind the Alicorn's balloon.

Looking up, I smiled. "It doesn't interfere with night-vision as much as white light," I explained.

She settled down next to me, and poked one hoof at the telescope. "And what's all this business?"

"The bottom half helps stabilize a telescope - to keep it pointed in the same direction, even when the airship rocks or turns. This part here," I poked my hoof at another bit, "is an 'equatorial mount' - it's only useful for astronomy, not for looking at the ground. It helps line up the telescope with the way the stars turn overhead. Do you want to take a look?"

"Sure," she agreed, and bent her head to focus on the eyepiece. "Wait, were you looking at a big blur?"

"Whoops - sorry. My glasses were getting in the way, so I set the telescope's focus so I could see without them. Here, let me fix that." I put my glasses back on, looked through the eyepiece, and got things squared away. "There we go - try again."

"Wow - so what I was looking at before, that's how bad your vision is without your glasses?"

"'Fraid so."

"I think I'd be afraid to get off the ground, if my eyes were that bad - if I had glasses and they fell off, I'd be a sitting duck. Flying sitting duck. You know what I mean."

"It's not that bad - unless you were zooming at a zillion miles an hour, I guess."

"Still. So, what am I looking at?"

"One of the moving stars - sometimes it's the evening star, sometimes it's the morning star, depending on which side of the sun it's on that season."

"Mm."

"There's a joke running around the Canterlot astronomers - Celestia has the sun, and Luna has the moon, and if Twilight Sparkle ever turns into an alicorn, this is what she'll take control of." Red pulled herself from the telescope to look at me, and I shrugged. "Maybe it's funnier if you've met her."

"Mm." She looked away, over the railing; the low, red light making both her white coat and red mane look almost the same color. "You're good at keeping secrets, right?"

"You haven't heard me spill any, have you?"

"... I suppose that's close enough. I think I've figured out who set off that explosion in the staterooms." We'd stopped calling them Blueblood's rooms, since he wasn't using them.

"And who have you focused in on?"

"Prince Blueblood."

"Oh, reeeally, now? That would be... fascinating, if true. What brought you to this conclusion?"

"A few things. Before, when you were, um, after drinking the love potion..."

"I believe the technical term for my state of mind then is 'twitterpated'."

"Okay. So, while you were twitterpated with me, and I was, well, dealing with that, Blueblood tried to get into your luggage, and I think he did open some of it."

"Remind me to invent better locks. But go on."

"And he knew about the medicine you invented, and later on he saw you head out and come back with all those... animals for the dragon..."

"Ah, I think I see where you're going - that he wanted that weapon for himself?"

"Something like that."

"Hm... well, one of the problems with trying to take shortcuts to knowledge, is that if you don't understand the underlying principles, then you could end up in a world of hurt. ... If he was the culprit, then he's lucky that all he lost was some furniture, and not some essential body parts."

"What will you do?"

"Right now? Nothing. In the morning, send a message back to The Dairy to have someone try to see if Blueblood has a secret lab or something like that somewhere. And whether or not one's found, keep your theory in mind whenever I'm dealing with him."

"I thought you might say something like that." She shifted position, and turned my shoulder into a pillow. I raised a brow - we'd been kind of careful to avoid anything resembling a possible romantic gesture towards each other, since my temporary twitterpating. But if she felt comfortable enough around me now to relax - well, I wasn't going to complain. "Always got two plans ready, and three tricks up your sleeve."

"That's hardly accurate," I said. "Those are only the plans and tricks I've let you see." That got a giggle from her.

After a companionable silence, I spoke up, "You should probably get some sleep - somebody should be up to tell Safe Guard that I'm not going to be joining him for exercise at dawn."

"Mm-hm." She snuggled up a bit. I - carefully avoided shrugging, but there seemed no harm in letting her stay on deck with me, and I'd even be able to get to sleep myself with her next to me... and so the eve passed, with the gentle rocking of the airship, the creaking of the rigging, an acquaintance-and-employee-turning-friend dozing beside me, and the stars in my eyes.

The next morning, Safe Guard armored up, I suited up, and Red fluffed up. While she could just glide to the ground, Safe and I had to be lowered down. He was able to use his magic to stabilize himself, but I pretty much had to dangle in the breeze, trying not to think about what a good idea it would have been to invent parachutes already.

Safe was our ticket to the local Guard outpost, where we interviewed the white pegasus who had directly encountered our persons-of-interest. The official report was that two days ago, a snake-like creature had been hang-gliding, carrying a pony; the hang-glider had collapsed, dropping them in a local lake; and the guard had escorted them to the local hospital. That pony, one Violet Melody, and several others, had recently been abducted by diamond dogs; hearsay implied that the remaining ponies had escaped and were expected to arrive, or be found, shortly.

The hospital's Doctor Morphine (What sort of name was that for a colt, I wondered) seemed to be big on doctor-patient confidentiality, but Safe's status as a Royal Guard and my Inspector's badge managed to pry from him that Violet's injury had been at least several days old by the time he treated it, and that she'd been discharged to return home. Her file had been forwarded to a city called Coltogne - which, I was told, was famed for its perfumes. I managed to avoid face-hoofing.

Checking the local transportation stations soon revealed that, yes, a 'green and white slithery thing' had purchased a ticket for Coltogne - and maybe a pony had bought a ticket for the same place at the same time, who knew?

And so we got ourselves hauled up to the Alicorn, to follow the trail to Coltogne - depending on wind and weather, we'd likely arrive in late afternoon, or early evening.

Coltogne's city hall had a directory, in which there was a single 'Violet Melody' listed, so the three of us made our way to the indicated address.

I knocked on the door, which was soon answered by an earth-pony mare, with a near-white coat and a violet mane. "Miss Violet Melody?" I inquired. At her hesitant nod, I pulled my badge-holder from my dark suit, and held it up to her. "I'm Missy, an Inspector, and this is Safe Guard of the Royal Guard, and this is Red Pepper, my assistant. I'm given to understand that you were recently abducted by diamond dogs?" She nodded again, so I said, "I'm hoping that I can ask you a few questions about that incident - is now a good time?"

She nodded a third time, and led us to a back room with a large window facing the evening sun, and waved us to seats. As Red took down notes, Safe and I asked her to describe what had happened, and when she brought up her serpentine rescuer, we asked leading questions about him. While she was talking about how he'd made some shackles fall apart, in walked - er, slithered - the very subject of our discussion.

He was built a little like a centaur - from the waist down, he had a long, bright green snaky body, but from the waist up was more of a whitish color, and fairly humanoid, though his face had a definite reptilian cast to it. He wore a sort of kilt - which I wasn't sure how he kept up - and a tunic. He called out, “Hey Violet, who are your friends?”

She answered, “Hey Marty, these are someponys... err, some folks who are new to town, and they were curious about our strangest new resident, no offense.”

“None taken, I’m decidedly strange compared to most folks around here.”

I interrupted the light banter with, “Hello, Mister … Stewart was it? I am called Missy, and I was hoping that you could answer some questions.”

He looked at me - a cow in a suit - and looked rather unhappy. I supposed that I did rather resemble an Equestrian version of an MIB. His expression flattened out, and he said, “What’s your business here, and why are you packing heat?

I was somewhat curious about the 'packing heat' phrase - while I was wearing my gun Chekov, it was holstered inside my suit. I made a guess that my pepper-spray was leaking, and that Marty had a nose sensitive enough to pick it up. I responded, “To answer your second question: it’s a dangerous world out there. Some stallions already tried to rape me once, and I have no intention of allowing anything of the sort to happen again.”

“It is indeed. I don’t blame you for carrying a little heat. I would too, if I were in your situation. Your statement implies that they failed. What happened to them?”

I grimaced at the recollection. “They lost their stallionhoods, their inheritances, their titles, and their good names.”

“They got off lightly. Had I been around, they would have lost their lives.” The three ponies in the room all tensed up at that statement, presumably at the fact that he was quite willing to kill. I was unhappy as well - when a functioning justice system is available, taking the law into your own hands is a recipe for all sorts of disaster.

I tried to steer the conversation onto something less traumatizing. “Going back to your question: My business is to look into ways to improve Equestria, such as by locating threats and figuring out ways to deal with them... such as slave-raids by diamond-dogs, and individuals who are able to deal with large numbers of such raiders without any help.” I had a thought on how to keep things even calmer, so added, “Safe Guard, Red, why don’t you go talk with Violet, while I talk with Mister Stewart here?”

Once we'd split up, I took another look up and down at Marty, and said, “I’m afraid that I don’t believe I’ve seen anyone of your species before. I am guessing, like most sentient reptiles, you are one of the groups descending from dragons, rather than alicorns or cynogriffons?”

“I have absolutely no idea. I’m the first of my kind I’ve ever seen. Me being related to dragons? Completely possible. I doubt I’m related to an alicorn, and what is a cynogriffon?"

“They resemble wolves with wings, and seem to have gone extinct after creating the more well-known griffons, and the more canine races such as the Diamond Dogs.”

“That makes no sense taxonomically. Winged creatures don’t devolve into true bipeds, at least in my experience.”

I muttered, “Guess he’s never seen Spike.” In a normal tone: “I’m not a true expert on biology - I’m just going by what the specialists who’ve studied such things have said.”

“That makes sense.”

I tried to recover my science-cred. “Of course, with magic involved, then the ‘natural selection’ part of ‘evolution by natural selection’ can take some otherwise completely implausible turns. But perhaps we are straying from the main point...”

“Ah magic, truly the wonder explanation for what we don’t understand. Magic really makes science its plaything, but yes, we are straying from the point.” He took a sip of his tea.

I thought, 'Just give me a bit of time, and I’ll get science to make magic sit up, roll over, and beg...'

After some light conversation, I bit the bullet and asked what I really wanted to know. “Do you know anything about... The Game?”

He answered, “What game?"

I sighed. “... Nevermind.”

We talked further, as he gave his side of the slave-rescue thing, I tried to figure out whether he posed any sort of threat to Equestria, and I tried not to give away anything that would hint that I hadn't been born a female bovine.

Eventually, I got enough of a feel for him, or at least for what he wanted to present of himself, to ask, “Mister Stewart - was your rescue of Violet and the other ponies a mere whim of the moment, or do you bear a particular dislike for slavers?”

“Ma’am, my feelings on slavers borders between hatred and psychopathic rage. I would have done what I did to those slavers without a second thought where the situations reversed, or an inverse of said situation.”

Pleased, I continued, “There is a, I’ll call it a network, of people working to improve Equestria from the inside. Finding ways to deal with enslavement raids and attacks is a particular concern. Assistance of several sorts would be valuable - anything from your passing on word of a situation which could be dealt with by other members, to passing word to you of situations in your own field, to, depending on a lot of specifics, more material support. Even if you wish to avoid making any specific promises, it would cost the network nearly nothing to send you a note of something happening in your area - giving you the option of doing, or not doing, whatever you see fit.”

“I would be more than happy to help. I don’t know how much field work I could do, but if you need muscle I’m more than capable.”

“Muscle would be helpful. One of the emphases of this network is in rapid reaction - in learning what’s going on in Equestria as soon as possible, and if possible or necessary, dealing with it before the Royal Guard has pulled their armor on... but given the peaceful nature of most ponies, there are many more who are willing to just look and talk rather than act.”

Marty shrugged. “Trust me, I am very willing to act. I could in fact facilitate the moving of information and material very quickly. I can make a gateway that allows for instantaneous transportation, and can enter the world of dreams to send out information.”

I perked up. “I have a particular interest in improving communications and transportation. Would it be possible for me to convince you to allow these abilities to be studied more closely, to see if they can be applied more generally?”

“As far as I can tell, I am the only one on this planet who can create gateways and travel the world of dreams both. Princess Luna, with her status as ruler of the night, might be able to travel the dreamworld as well, but I can’t see asking a princess to be a messenger boy to end well. As for application, assuming you are willing to risk someone being cut in two, I can travel instantaneously to any point on the map. Well, instantaneously assuming I know my current area well. I can skim to that same point, but it’s not as quick or as efficient.”

“Hrm. I will... keep the limitations of your ‘gateways’ in mind - perhaps they might be better suited for sending non-living resources and materiel to a site, so that whoever is dealing with an incident can travel light and fast.”

Marty looked a little confused. “Why would it... Oh, you think that the gateway might cut someone who would go through it in two. When I make a gateway, I more or less poke a small hole in the fabric of space-time that allows me to travel instantaneously between two points. The space occupied by the hole at those two points will cut anything that is currently there. Well, almost anything. It won’t cut heartstone, but that’s the only thing it won’t cut. Sending material and personnel through after the gateway is woven is completely safe, assuming I don’t stop channeling the gateway.”

“So a gateway is essentially a magical wormhole?”

“Yes, that sums it up perfectly.”

“Is your control precise enough to open the other end at a specific location, or, say, ten feet above ground level, to avoid any such unfortunate accidents?”

“That is a possibility, and I can also create a chiming sound to warn of imminent opening of a gateway. If you have people on the ground who know what the random chime means, I won’t need to do a three-meter drop.”

I took a few seconds to consider what he'd said so far, then said, “I will also admit that after having thought on it for a few moments, I have a mild concern about your dream... thing. I do not wish to offer you any offense, but you do not, yet, have the clearance for some of the information known by various members of the network - information that could cost lives if spread. Is there some way you could demonstrate what the limitations of this oneiric mental connection might be?”

“I can tell you, and I can visit your dreams tonight if you so desire.”

“Tell me what you can do, and then I’ll decide on whether or not I want you to visit my dreams.”

“Alright, if I so desire, I can send my consciousness or my body into the world of dreams, or what some cultures call Tel’aran’rhiod. While in this world when sleeping, your conscious willpower decides a lot of things about you; clothing, or a lack thereof, what you look like, all sorts of things like that. Most people accidentally visit Tel’aran’rhiod at some point in their dreams throughout their lives. People like me, who consciously visit Tel’aran’rhiod, can affect a lot of different things. I could go to a forbidden section of a library and read classified knowledge, read through the Princesses’ paperwork, or figure out what I’d look like if I was pink.” He looked amused at the ponies' reactions to that last phrase. “I can also skim the surface of someone’s dreams who doesn’t ward them, and see what they are dreaming about. If they have knowledge of dreams, they might note my presence, but most would not. I can also drag people into Tel’aran’rhiod, but I’d rather not, as the world of dreams is a dangerous place.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“In a normal dream, you get a cut on your hand, you wake up and might remember the cut from the dream and the pain, but there is no physical evidence that it happened. Do that in the world of dreams, and you’ll wake up with the cut, and all the bleeding that might have occurred with it. Same with dieing, you die in Tel’aran’rhiod, and you die for real.”

“You mention ‘warding’ - is that something anyone can do?”

“I’m not a unicorn, so I can’t say whether or not they could ward their dreams, but close proximity to me while sleeping does transfer the protection of my own wards. I’ve known of powerful unicorns in the past, so it might be possible by unicorns that know a specific spell or have a specific talent for dreams.”

We continued talking for a bit, but that covered the most significant points. Even when the ponies rejoined us and described their own conversation, I was still trying to determine how I could figure out how truthful Marty was being, whether he had any abilities at all, and how those abilities would affect my various plans. I'd already taken into account that some unicorns could teleport short distances - but Marty was describing an alternate method for much longer-distance travel... and, even if it turned out not to be useful logistically, his description of slicing things at the far side of the gate as it opened offered some interesting tactical options. Or, if he ever decided he didn't like me and what I was doing, some rather frightening ones. And while I may not have ever heard the word "Tel’aran’rhiod" before - but if he was telling the truth about even a part of what he could do, it was an absolute security nightmare. Once I got back to Canterlot, I was going to have to open a whole new project to research anything the ponies knew about dream-warding.

At this point, it was starting to get late, so I borrowed Red's notepad long enough to write down some initial contact procedures, and tore the page out to hand it to Marty. We profusely thanked Violet for her cooperation, and made our farewells.

That night, I had an odd dream - possibly spurred by the talk I’d had about other people visiting my dreams. A man came up to me, who looked like a less snaky version of Marty, asked "What would you do-o-o-o, for a Klondike bar?", and looked at me expectantly.

I countered with “Where’s the beef?”

There was a quick flurry of “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up”, “This is your brain on drugs”, “Just do it”, “Got milk?”, “Tastes great, less filling”, “Don’t leave home without it”, and a half-dozen other taglines from Earthly commercials.

Like I said, odd.

When I got back to Canterlot, I put everything I could think of into Marty Stu’s new file - and put a big gold star on it, just like the one on Griffin the Griffin’s file.

(Author’s Note: This chapter is a crossover with Keairan’s story, A Marty Stu invades the Multiverse.

I'm not a psychopath, I'm just very creative

Cheerilee was rather amused when she saw my latest invention - I'd used my bovine bulk as the support for a framework to hold a book in front of me, so that I could read while I walked, even without hands. "If Twilight Sparkle ever sees that," she giggled, "we'll never see her face again."

"She has magic - she can already levitate a book with her wherever she goes," I countered.

"Just try not to walk into any trees. or ponies. Or walls. Or-"

"I get the idea. Don't worry, it's a lot easier than it seems - peripheral vision is a lot more useful than you'd think, and I've got this set at a height so I can look over it at anything in front of me. Besides, the only time I've ever walked into a pole was when someone deliberately came up from behind and startled me."

"So you've made one of these before?"

I started to answer, then paused. The cerise-bodied mare looked at me with wide innocent eyes, only wanting to know more about me and help me... and I looked away from her, trying to think of what I could say.

"Missy," she came up and pressed her neck along mine. "I know your job means you have to keep secrets, and I understand that, and I'm fine with that. But your memory... every time you start talking about your past by accident, you look like you've just been caught with your hoof in the cookie-jar. I don't know how much you really remember, but - please take this the way I mean it - I think you need to talk to a mental health professional."

I sighed a bit. "You're entirely right," I agreed. "I probably do need to. But - I can't."

"Is it a doctor thing? Maybe we could start by going together-"

I shook my head. "It's not that. It's just - a lot of what I remember, or don't, is tied up with my job. And any doctor I talk about is going to find out a lot of the secrets I have to keep. So - I can't."

"Is your job really more important than your own peace of mind?"

I took a moment to take that question seriously, and to consider it. Finally, I answered, "Yes."

Cheerilee pulled back, and looked at me with slightly narrowed eyes. "This Safe Guard you work with - he's in the Royal Guard?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"And he has secrets of his own to keep?"

"I expect so."

"And if he's hurt in the line of duty, the Palace will give him the best of care?"

"Of course."

"And if he ever needs to see a doctor of the mind, instead of the body...?"

I blinked. "Oh, of course," I said. "I hadn't thought of that. I could kiss you for that alone." And I did, and she kissed me back, until she finally pushed my chest with a hoof. "Don't procrastinate. Go make an appointment, now."

"Yes, Miss Cheerilee," I chuckled.

I was stretched out in the couch I'd been told to wait on. On the other side of a folding paper screen, a door opened, a set of hooves approached, and there was the sound of a pony settling into a chair or something of their own. From over there came a stallion's voice, "You may call me Doctor Brown. As far as I know, you are a female cow of adult age with a high security clearance, who I only know as Patient Forty-Two. I am cleared for Confidential, Secret, and Top-Secret data, but not for Top-Secret code-word compartmentalized data. If you feel that, at any point, you have revealed information beyond my clearance, you may request a memory-charm to erase my memory of some or all of a session." He went on in this vein for a bit, describing the various procedures in place to ensure I remained as private and anonymous as I wished, and the ways I could back out of the whole thing if I felt I needed to.

Once that was all out of the way, he asked, "So then. How can I help you?"

"That's a very good question. If I knew the answer, I'd probably know enough to be able to help myself."

"Perhaps you could start by describing what brought you here."

"My - well, marefriend, I guess you could call her. She has no clearance at all, and I've been having trouble talking about my past. A lot of it impinges on classified aspects of my work, and I'm still sorting out what I can talk about, and what I can't."

"Go on."

"About five weeks ago, there was an... incident. It's best I don't go into too much detail, but a major aspect is that afterwards, I was left with memories that are... in many details, completely incompatible with the obvious facts of reality. But these memories also contain valuable, useful information. It goes all the way to little things - such as, say, I distinctly remember Neighagra having always been pronounced Niagara, until I mentioned it to someone after Day Zero, and they corrected me."

"Since you say these... memories of yours contain useful data, I'm guessing that you're going to be ruling out any attempts to recover what your memories before - Day Zero, you called it?"

"Good guess. As some bonus blows to my psyche, in the time since then, I've... well, if I tell you, you'll probably be able to guess who I am."

"Even if I do, you'll always be Patient Forty-Two to me. And as I said, if you're uncomfortable with my knowledge at the end of the session, we have a unicorn who knows the memory charm on standby."

"Fair enough. In that case: I was almost raped, I was sent to jail, I was chased by a mob, I was almost dosed with a love-potion in a bar, I ended up accidentally drinking it and don't remember chasing after one of my employees, I came face-to-face with a dragon and had to kill some animals for it to survive, I was abandoned in Buffalo country by my airship pilot, I went through a Buffalo ritual and had a vision, I was challenged to duels which would have killed me if I hadn't been extraordinarily clever, at least half of what I thought I understood about reality turns out to be completely false and I don't know how much I can trust the other half, I'm running a set of government programs directly under the Princesses themselves, I met someone I thought was just a legend but who claims I'm kin, and, oh yes, all of Equestria itself may be in mortal peril and I may be the only one with the knowledge to prevent it from being destroyed."

"Is that all?"

"Not in the slightest. I was petrified by a cockatrice, and... well, I could keep going for a while."

There was a short silence. Then, "Maybe we should set up appointments for you to see me two times a week. Or three. Yes, three sounds good."

"I am going to have to go out on fieldwork on short notice."

"My office specializes in working around such limitations."

"That's fine, then. As long as you don't try to convince me that everything is the result of some suppressed Freudian sexual urges, or that I have to face my unconscious archetypes in order to reach self-realization."

"Are you sure? I took a doozy of a dream-analysis course last year..."

"If I start having problematic nightmares, that's one thing. But try it without good cause, and I might feel pressured to lie to you about what I'm dreaming, which would defeat the whole point."

"Fair enough. I'd like you to get in touch with me, as soon as possible, night or day, if you start experiencing such nightmares - or depression, lethargy, mania, or any other psychological symptom. I can give you a list before you leave."

"Seems reasonable. So... uh... what do we do now?"

"Now - we start working on solving your problems."

"I can get behind that attitude."

"Since it seems your marefriend was the trigger for your having made your appointment, let's try starting with her."

"That's fine. Um... I'm not sure 'marefriend' is the right word. We knew each other from work, but then there was this song, and now, well, we've started cuddling and kissing, and... well, is it really a good idea to base a relationship on a musical interlude?"

"It happens more often than you might think."

I sighed. "One of these days I'm going to figure out how to tame that sort of spontaneous musicalism, so its power can be harnessed for good, instead of just... cropping up and making stuff happen."

"A laudable goal - but I think you're straying from the point."

"I guess. I'm just... well, even without my memory-thing, this is all new to me, and I don't really know what to expect, what's going to happen - what I'm supposed to do..."

"I'm getting the sense that being in control of things is important to you..."

"Well, of course - figuring out how things work, to control them, is what I do."

"And how has that been working out with you and your romantic partner?"

"Uh... well, like I said, this is something I don't understand - so I've pretty much been letting her take the lead..."

And so we talked, and talked some more - and wonder of wonders, this particular psychologist didn't seem to pay any attention to cutting things off as some arbitrary length of time expired. And... it helped. Maybe. Didn't seem to do any harm, anyway. And since me going crazy would be a bad idea all around, and this was one of the top possible ways to prevent that... three days a week, depending on availability, it was.

When I went back to Cheerilee's, I brought her a giant bouquet of flowers.

She said they were delicious.

Experimental Method

That evening, I got a note from some of my contacts in the Royal archives that some new information on one of my subjects of interest had come in - specifically, Griffin the Griffin had sent some letters to the Princesses, which were now being filed securely away. Fortunately, I was on the Princesses' good side, so those letters weren't entirely secure from me. Most of them, I wasn't sure what to make of - they seemed to be nothing more than trolling. If there was a hidden code in them, I wasn't able to suss it out in ten minutes of consideration. The closest I could come to a hard conclusion was that either Griffin had been around Ponyville during Nightmare Night, or he was a brony, or had been in contact with someone who was.

There was, however, one letter which deserved further consideration:

Dear Princess Celestia,

Rather than my usual letter, I'm writing to tell you that I've figured out how to use magic. Considering that I'm not a unicorn, this is a rather large achievement. As for the details of my discovery.... NOT TELLING! What's wrong? Jealous?

Sincerely, Griffin.

If non-unicorns, even non-ponies, could use magic... then that could be a significant advantage, to whoever knew the secret.

There were a few main possibilities - that Griffin was lying, that he was mistaken, that this message had some content beyond the surface meaning... or that he was telling the truth. The first three would be hard to tell apart, but the latter was thought-provoking; I could grip the former into a group called the 'No Magic' option and call the latter 'Magic'. No, wait, there was plenty of other magic around the place - make it 'Magic' and 'More Magic'. It was possible that figuring this out requires some sort of resources Griffin had that weren't available to me; or that he had a source of surprising knowledge which required background understanding that I lacked - these would also fall under mere 'Magic'. But if that wasn't the case - then it was at least possible that a random brony dropped into Equestria would have some knowledge the locals lacked, which would let them figure it out - meaning that simply by having learned it was a possibility, I just might be able to now figure it out myself. Might.

Assuming Griffin was a brony, or had talked to someone who was, then it was probably safe to assume that he didn't know about Solomonoff's Lightsaber, the mathematically formalized version of Occam's Razor, since that wasn't a very common idea even on Earth; but he likely knew about the general idea of the scientific method. He might also know about other Earthly ideas about magic which might be relevant - myth, ancient religion, ordinary religion, pop-culture religion, pop-culture fiction, less mainstream fiction such as role-playing games, and/or skeptical inquiries that tested claims of spoon-benders and charlatans.

Running my mind through what I'd read, watched, and listened to about all of those... and looking through them through the filter of what I'd seen so far of Equestria... then a reasonable preliminary conclusion that "magic" involved some sort of power, like electricity, which could be gathered, collected, and occasionally released in clever ways that resulted in useful effects. Most of the hooved folk could pick things up with their hooves, despite their lack of fingers. I hadn't been able to until that time the other cows in the dairy had zapped my brains out - maybe I hadn't been 'charged up' until then. When unicorns exerted magic, there tended to be a glow around their horns... and, come to think about it, I didn't actually know what unicorn horns were made of. Maybe magical power was best channeled through some sort of hard, carbon-rich material, including keratin and bones? I might have to do some inquiry into respectful research using body parts, of animals or ponies - given ponies' vegetarian natures and dislike of killing, it was entirely possible that was something nopony would have looked into, while an ex-human might have.

Going back to human-based knowledge... then, assuming the magic-as-electricity analogy was at least partially right, I could think of four or five ways humans had come up, in myth and fiction, to fiddle around with magic. One was magic that came from the self - like psychic powers, or like Twilight had described unicorn magic to Pinkie when trying to research Pinkie Sense. Another was magical power stored in things rather than people - magical plants like poison joke, or the traditional +1 sword, or a ring of invisibility. Another was magic that was all around - maybe the whole world was a magic-item in a sense, or maybe magic power flowed through currents like ley-lines, or it was just kind of a free-floating 'stuff. Another was that magic wasn't all around here, but could be called from afar - opening portals to some other dimension. And maybe ordinary people or ponies didn't have much magic, but they could call upon more powerful beings that did - the ancient Greeks had invoked their gods to protect them, many modern-day Catholics made requests of saints, and many ponies called upon Celestia in times of need. Any of these could be the way Griffin had found.

Another thing to consider is that even if Griffin found a way to use magic, that didn't mean it was a way everypony could use. If he was another human dropped into Equestria like I was, then that might be enough of a difference from the locals to let him - and maybe me - use magic that the locals couldn't. Maybe the method used to drop us here left open some sort of residual gate, which was something that magical power could be used for. Or maybe he was able to just call on his Game patron, whoever that might be, to do stuff that said patron wouldn't do for just anypony. I thought about my self-described game-player and multi-great-aunt, Athena... and decided to hold off on starting to beg her for favors. I thought about the gateway-thing... and, at least at this stage, the only way I could think of to tell the difference between that, and between some sort of inherent magic, was if I found a way to use magic that other ponies couldn't.

Which left, as areas of research, personal, item-based, or universal magic. Personal magic - if I could play unicorn, and will for something to happen, and it did, then that might be how things worked. Universal magic - if I could use magic in one place but not another, that would be evidence for that. Item-based - if I could find the right animal, vegetable, or mineral, and use magic with it but not without, then this one was likely the winner. (Of course, more than one of these could be true at the same time, but at this point, figuring out even just one was challenge enough.)

One of my favored rationalist philosophers once wrote: "When there's a confusing problem and you're just starting out and you have a falsifiable hypothesis, go test it. Find some simple, easy way of doing a basic check and do it right away. Don't worry about designing an elaborate course of experiments that would make a grant proposal look impressive to a funding agency. Just check as fast as possible whether your ideas are false before you start investing huge amounts of effort in them." So, what could I do that would be a quick check of any of these?

I didn't have enough data to tell whether any locations were more or less magical than others - but I just happened to have created a small bureaucracy dedicated to researching whatever odd projects I came up with. So I wrote a letter to the Dairy, asking for a set of maps of known magical, cultural, historical, or legendary importance, at a variety of scales. If I was able to see any interesting patterns therein, I could proceed from there. Otherwise, whatever experiments I ran in one spot, I'd simply have to try in other places as well, to see if any worked better in one place rather than another.

For personal magic... was there anything I could really try that countless cows, jealous of unicorns, wouldn't have tried before? Probably not - but, perhaps, an ex-human might be able to succeed where they failed. I collected a few items, and made a few more simple ones - candles, dice, some quickie Zener cards, a pendulum, and the like. I doubted that when Griffin talked about 'magic', he was referring to some process which tilted the odds by five percent, so I wasn't going to worry about looking for a faint signal among experimental noise - I was looking for something reasonably dramatic and unmistakable. And so, with Cheerilee's amused assistance and bemused cooperation, we played some simple games - trying to light a candle, or put one out, or lift one by concentrating; predicting the roll of dice, or influencing them as they fell; ditto with the swing of a pendulum; guessing cards before, during, or after the other drew them.

Needless to say, we failed totally and completely at every one of those tasks. But at least I established a baseline for future reference. And spent some enjoyable time with Cheerilee, which was always a good idea, whatever the excuse.

I considered what I knew about supposedly 'real' magic, in its various forms. The Golden Dawn had put together what was probably the most comprehensive synthesis of magical symbolism, rites, and techniques, based on principles dating from antiquity; and most modern-day pop-culture magic, such as crystal-healing and lighting candles, were simplified versions of those same ideas; with Wiccan rituals falling somewhere in the middle. Depending on how elaborate you wanted to get, such things involved purifying the body and mind, establishing a ritual space, entering the right state of mind, using the right physical tools, speaking the right names and words, moving in the right gestures, exerting one's will, and... something was supposed to happen. It had been a long while since I'd looked at any hermetic texts, even longer since I finally found an actual Egyptian-English dictionary, Hebrew qabalah had always left me cold, and I'd never figured out Enochian in the first place. The closest I remembered to anything of the sort were from old editions of D&D which actually listed what magical components and words spells used (before the "D&D is Satan!" crowd made TSR turn things softer and fluffier), Harry Potter pseudo-Latin, and similar nonsense. Which might not necessarily be nonsense here; I didn't actually know what sources Griffin might have used as his inspiration. Similarly, I wouldn't be able to demonstrate a magical gesture to save my life. (And I certainly hoped it never came to that.)

Thus, while I might not have been able to do much if those were significant aspects of magic, I could make some good attempts at some of the others. So we took one of Cheerilee's spare rooms, and gave it a good spring cleaning. Then the two of us took a bath. (Ponyville was essentially a nudist colony, and the two of us had spent most of our time together in the buff, so one would think there wouldn't be anything special about bathing together. One who thought that would turn out to be wrong.) Finally, we spent a nice long while meditating and clearing our minds.

After all that, we gave the magical tests another go. With identical results.

A quick test of location-based magic would be easy enough - just bring along the test materials and try again elsewhere, like when I headed back to Canterlot, or perhaps I could take a day-trip back to the henge where I'd met Athena and the floaty Goth girl. But item-based magic... had some possibilities. If body-parts were the key, then I'd probably have to wait until I got back to Canterlot, where I'd be able to try various things discreetly, without needlessly upsetting anyone. But I knew quite well at least one plant that could do magic - poison joke - and one animal - the cockatrice who'd stoned me and then been squished. Unfortunately, such things were rather dangerous to fiddle with, due to their natural defenses. But one of the more popular forms of pop-culture magic on Earth was using crystals - and here on Equestria, gems that would be priceless back there were cheap enough for Spike to eat. Cheerilee didn't have any just laying around the house, so we went for a shopping trip, picking up various sundries as well as, well, just about one of each kind of gem or crystal that was being sold - with The Dairy picking up the tab.

Back at Cheerilee's, after a dinner, a scrub-up, and a quickie meditation, we tried fiddling around with the crystals in various ways. Trying to push our will through them, simply focusing and concentrating on them, aiming them, holding them in different ways, rubbing them, stroking them, and generally making great fools of ourselves. We didn't mind - nobody was watching us but each other, and even if we weren't accomplishing anything, at least we were having fun not accomplishing it together.

Eventually, Cheerilee had to head to bed, to be up in time for school, but I was able to set my own schedule, and still had some things left on my list to try out. So we kissed each other good night, and I kept on trying all that I'd been able to think of.

Somewhen after midnight - I'm not exactly sure when - I was getting a little punch-drunk from being awake so long. (Which didn't bode well if I ever had to try to fall asleep without anyone nearby.) So I'd gone from 'try everything I could think of' to 'try anything that won't wake up Cheerilee or scare the wildlife'. I juggled. I sang. I tried standing on my head. I tried using two different crystals at once, the way you needed two different metals to get a battery to work. That latter reminded my about my general thought that magic might be like electricity... and I remembered the vision of the coyote claiming I was a battery... so I grabbed a couple of pieces of copper wire, taped them to the ends of my horns, and touched the ends to a piece of amethyst.

Immediately upon doing so, I lost my train of thought, but when I focused on what I was doing again, I noticed that the purple crystal had broken in half.

I assumed I'd finally managed to bang it enough to cleave it along an internal flaw, so I simply picked up a nice little sapphire, and stuck the wires to it again.

When I brought my attention back to matters at hoof, I saw that the blue carborundum had also shattered, this time into a few pieces.

"Hm," I said, "That's funny..."

(Author's Note: This chapter is an indirect crossover with Chapter 32 of BlackWing's story, Griffin the Griffin.

Interview with a Zebra

Udders are an annoyingly unbreakable alarm clock, for which there is no 'snooze' button; but after Cheerilee helped me with that, gave me a farewell kiss, and went to work, I was able to catch a few more z's. When I finally did get up for real, I collected the latest batch of mail from Cheerilee's mailbox, sorted through it, and sighed. I was going to have to head back to Canterlot today anyway, before she got home, even if I didn't have some rather significant questions to ask Granny Loco and the other members of the royal dairy herd.

I got off at the Canterlot station a little before noon - and a fresh new batch of Pegasus Express mail arrived just as I made it to my office. One piece had been sent just that morning, from Marty Stu; apparently, he'd found a zebra who'd been doing some anti-slavery work of his own accord, and thought it would be a good idea for us to meet. Oddly, they weren't in Coltogne, but some place called Mustang, around a hundred thirty miles southwest of Canterlot. (I had a brief surge of nostalgia for the metric system, and wrote down a quick note to study the feasibility of importing it to Equestria, to aid in scientific research.) There was a personal note from the zebra as well: "Alea iacta est". I frowned at that - it looked like Latin, but I didn't have the luxury of Google Translate anymore, and my Latin-English dictionary was as lost to me as the rest of my bookshelves. Was it a saying? A quote? Ah, yes - that jogged my memory. Caesar crossing the Rubicon: 'The die is cast'. ... Odd sort of message.

Still - odd or not, the Dairy's network was small enough, and contained so few active agents instead of news-reporters, that even a single new active anti-slavery activist was worth pursuing. Page Turner let me know that Blueblood was currently entertaining several eligible young noble fillies in his private quarters. I considered what that might mean, shuddered, and decided not to interrupt; instead, I just wrote him a not that I was borrowing the Alicorn for a quick trip, and would probably have it back by morning.

I decided to bring along Safe in case the zebra was a bit too unhappy with somebody working with the current power structure, and Red to do any flying that needed to be done. Which led, as we undocked, to Safe dragging me out of the office and away from my self-prescribed paperwork, to start what he called 'the next stage' of my exercises - graduating from simple physical conditioning to starting to learn how to defend myself. "After all," he said, "you can't expect to win every fight by stabbing your own leg." Red, finding the entire operation hilarious, provided color commentary... until Safe drafted her, too, at which time I gleefully returned to her the same comments she'd been lobbing my way.

And so the afternoon passed. I discovered that while ponies sweated like horses, cows didn't, and the best I could do was panting like a massively oversized dog. Splashing water on my hide helped some, but Safe grumbled, until I described to him the times (when I'd been human) I'd gone through heat exhaustion - and that I had no intention of collapsing in a heap before my interview. So I ended up getting some of my paperwork done anyway.

As we approached the city of Mustang, the crew called out warnings of an unfamiliar airship hanging in the sky. As we got closer, we could see it was something of a rust bucket, the gondola resembling a sailing ship with some random plates bolted on, and the balloon being rather tattered; pretty much the opposite of the Alicorn's top-of-the-line fancy appearance. But it made no hostile moves, so the crew just kept a wary eye on it, and double-checked that the Alicorn's cannons were ready to be rolled out in a jiffy.

The meeting consisted of myself, a cow in a dark suit; Safe, in guard armor; Red, with her feathers; Marty, looking as serpentine as before; and two unfamiliar zebras, a Diamond Dog, and a griffon.

I introduced my side with the simple and polite statement, “Hello, there. I am called Missy, and I am an Inspector. This is Safe Guard, a member of the Royal Guard, and this is Red Hot Chili Pepper, my assistant.”

Marty nodded to one of the striped fellows, said, “This is Ivan, the zebra I sent you a message about,” and then leaned back and watched.

The indicated zebra looked at me, eyes wide, and nervously asked, “Is that a gun? What did I do to deserve a gun?” He slowly started backing away.. “And geez, who designed the suit?” He continued to back away. “I uh... have to go get Boss and the others...”

I noted that Ivan, unlike Zecora, didn’t seem to be interested in rhyming. To try and keep this discussion from ending before it started, I tried simply standing calmly in place. “As I have no relevant warrant, this is an entirely voluntary meeting. If you would prefer other people to be present, that is entirely acceptable.” I lifted my right forehoof, holding it out and ‘palm’ up, in an attempt at a peaceful gesture. “The suit is an original by Rarity Designs. As for my self-defense tools, I am not a unicorn, and their magic is much more versatile than my mere gadgetry.”

He nodded slightly, but kept looking in the direction he'd started going. “Right... What do you want?”

“In general, to keep Equestria’s people safe and prosperous. At the moment, I’m investigating reports of unusual slavery and anti-slavery activity, and I recently received a report that you might be strongly on the anti-slavery side of things.”

He looked around. “Yeah. If you are talking about Rej, than yeah. Against slavery.”

I nodded. He seemed a bit calmer, but I didn't want to do anything to startle him off; so I decided to try letting him take the conversational lead. “Good. In that case, feel free to tell me what you have on your mind, and what I can do for you.”

“Building supplies and someone with some sort of knowledge of how to build. Also, bug repellent.”

“That seems tame enough... dare I ask what sort of bugs you need repelling?” I had images of movie-scale 'Starship Troopers' insect things swarming across the landscape...

“The kind that stops fleas from getting on dogs. I think Boss is getting fleas and I really don’t want to add another problem to The Scourge.”

“Ah, small bugs." That was something of a relief. "I think I can dig up something for that. But... dare I ask about ‘The Scourge’?”

Ivan blinked. “It’s my airship. Did you not spot the really bad looking balloon?”

“I did - I was just worried that you were talking about some other ‘scourge’ you were fighting against.”

“At lot has been happening at my island, but I’m starting to fix it up. Before long, I’ll even be able to offer a safe refuge for others on it.”

This caught my immediate interest - another term for 'island refuge' is 'distant backup site', and I had yet to discover an added level of backuping that I didn't like. So I jumped in and asked, “For how many ponies, for what length of time? What would be required to upgrade the existing facilities to the new Bronze-level emergency-shelter standard, or even Silver or Gold?

He might have looked a little overwhelmed as he returned, “What is your definition of Bronze level emergency shelter?"

I tried to calm back down, and stick to the facts. “A Bronze-level shelter contains the food, water, medical supplies, and other necessities to allow a specified number of ponies - or other people - to survive for twenty-four hours. Silver is for a week, and Gold a fortnight.”

“I could probably get it to silver once it is fully rebuilt. Gold wouldn’t be that hard, I think.”

That seemed like a good start, so I started digging for more details. “Who else knows about this island? What’s the distance and travel-time? What are the potential obstacles to completion, and what are your estimates of the probabilities of those obstacles coming to pass?”

“And a bunch of slavers that I plan on taking care of shortly. I have to rebuild the island from the ground, an eldritch horror thing decided to rise up and destroy the buildings. In my floating rust balloon it is a few hours, between three and four, off the coasts of the volcanic wastes.”

That gave me at least a momentary pause. “‘Eldritch horror thing’? Is that going to be a common occurrence in the area?”

“If it was, would I be trying to retake the island? I’m not insane. I think. I just occasionally have delusions a spider is in my head talking to me.” He seemed to be half-joking about that last bit. But I wasn't sure which half, so I gave him my carefully-practiced Spock raised-eyebrow. “Uh... No, I actually have a God spider thing in my head messing with my thoughts. He has a top hat and a monocle and he is really creepy. Any ideas?”

“I’m afraid that I’m not very familiar with such matters. I do have some contacts in the psychological profession, and if you’d like, can put you in touch with a local professional who can provide the best help ponies can offer.”

“Right. Sorry I brought it up. So... any gods contacted you slash dwell in your head? I’m just asking because I don’t want to be the only one.”

I reluctantly considered the option that Ivan might not be stable enough to be useful, at least without getting fixed, first. “While I do have certain psychological issues of my own, as far as I can tell, the only people inside my mind are all me.”

“Right. Great. So, how did a cow get in charge of all of this? Like, Gary, is all powerful and how did you convince him to help you out?”

I blinked. “Gary?”. Marty made a brief gesture, and I guessed that he was who Ivan was referring to. So I shrugged. “And I’m hardly in charge of all this, I’m just doing my part, the best I can, under the Princesses.” This was at least technically true, as on the organization charts, the Princesses were higher-up than I was. Plus, it was a good idea to imply that the network was vaster and secretier than it really was, just to give any potential opponents who Ivan might leak info to a second thought about trying to take us on.

He looked blankly at me. “There’s more than one princess?” He muttered something under his breath, maybe, “Dang it.” Then he looked back at me. “I uh... I said that out loud, didn’t I.”

“You did." Since he seemed a bit unfamiliar with Equestrian government, I decided to fill him in. "Officially, Equestria is a diarchy - a monarchy with two co-equal monarchs. One was absent for quite some time, and so generally acts as the junior partner, but that’s more along the lines of an unwritten constitution than a definitive feature.”

He looked at me with wide eyes and raised brows. “Right. So. How about them totalitarianistic bodies?”

I paused for a moment to try to figure out what he might be trying to mean with his odd phrasing, then gave my best shot at an answer, “I’m not sure what you mean - most places outside Equestria’s borders tend to be rule-by-the-strongest, which is fairly totalitarian, if on a small scale.”

A nod. “Right. So... Would you happen to know what the Difficulty check of getting any useful information out of you is?”

Now that was an interesting phrasing. I was long familiar with Dungeons and Dragons - so long familiar, in fact, that I'd never really gotten the hang of Third Edition and later. But, I also knew enough about role-playing games in general to be able to at least hazard a guess at the precise meaning. Of course, if Ivan really was making a reference to an Earth-based pastime, then that was a rather significant item - and, at least at this stage of our relationship, I had nothing to gain by giving him any concrete clues about my own former humanity, and the knowledge therefrom. So I feigned partial ignorance of what he was talking about by answering, “Er... I suppose very hard, if there’s a chance that information can put other members of the network at risk - otherwise, as easy as I can make it.”

He closed his eyes. “So... Purple Flurp is the one that likes parties, right?”

I eyed him a bit oddly - if he wasn't human himself, or maybe just had talked to a human, then as a zebra from the islands, it seemed reasonable for news on the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony to have gotten garbled in translation. “I’m not entirely sure of who you’re talking about - do you mean the Bearer of Laughter, Pinkie Pie?”

He sighed. “Right. And you wouldn’t know what a computer is, would you?” He scuffed the ground with a hoof.

Ding-ding-ding. As soon as I got back to the Alicorn, I'd be adding a gold star to Ivan's file, just like the ones on Marty's and Griffin's. However, since all that I'd yet learned about The Game was that it could, potentially, lead to Equestria's destruction, as had happened to Mu and Atlantis, I didn't want to reveal my status as a game-piece to somepony who might end up trying to blow up the planet in the near future. So, to answer him, I reached into Red's saddlebag, pulled out an abacus, and said, “I’m reasonably skilled at computation myself. Is there a particular problem you’d like solved, or are we now playing the non-sequitur game?”

“Non-sequitur game. Do you happen to know that the snake hasn’t already been a snake and where his name comes from?”

He looked both unhappy and hopeful, but given the choice between letting him continue to be unhappy, or increasing the risk of all of Equestria's population getting killed - I could live with unhappiness. I assumed that by 'the snake', he was referring to Marty, so replied, “According to the information we’ve gathered, he hasn’t actually given his name, only a title that sounds like one - so I’m afraid I can’t really tell you anything about his name.”

Ivan sighed. “Yeah...”

The conversation continued, with Ivan dropping a few more D&D references that I carefully failed to respond to, while I, in turn, tried to ask some more leading questions, to draw out anything Ivan knew without revealing my own previous species.

Eventually, I decided that, voices or no voices, Ivan could still be useful. (And, after all, if there really was a god-type being communicating with him telepathically, then simple psychological help probably wouldn't be of much assistance.) So I finally leaned back, looked up at the sky for a moment, then back at him and said, “After listening to all of this... I’d like to extend to you an invitation to join the same network that Marty and I are members of. You could become a stringer, receiving news relevant to your interests, in exchange for passing along anything you know that’s relevant to our general mission.”

“Sounds... interesting?”

The hook wasn't quite set, so I let out a little more line. “There is another option available to you which may be of some interest to you. While the network has been building up our stringers and communication infrastructure, there is something of a shortage of active agents who are able to actually go out and investigate the various reports collected - and even fewer who have the ability to do anything about what they discover. I know you have your island to consider - but if you are willing to spend some of your time away from it, traveling in your airship through Equestria and the neighbouring lands, you could do some valuable work - anything from confirming a report to, if you’ve a mind, directly dealing with those slavers we’re able to locate.”

“What sort of neighboring lands? Also, would you happen to know how to reproduce gem effects? I have this idea involving frequencies around 40 hertz I want to test out. I know that it can disable a diamond dog, practically. I don’t know of its effects on cows or most creatures, but I do know that it wreaks absolute havoc with dragons and dogs. Maybe griffons as well. I was thinking we could... like... hook up a pipe that could blast out the frequencies and aim it at things? Maybe find a way to throw it as a bomb or something?” He stopped talking for a second and his eyes lit up. “You are trying to find all of the humans, aren’t you!” He slammed his mouth shut.

Once again, I raised my brow at his seemingly scatterbrained jumping from topic to topic, near manic in intensity. “I’m afraid that I’m not familiar any research into gems or frequencies that the relevant part of the network might be researching, I can easily provide you with a map and atlas, and I am quite curious what brought you to ask me if I’m looking for ‘hyumins’. May I ask what you know about them?”

His eye twitched. “Uh... I really couldn’t think of a reason why you would form a completely separate guard system like what you are working with instead of just reforming the present system. Clearly, there would be a reason why you would need to be separate from the regular guard. Considering...” He pointed at my chest, near where I kept Chekov holstered. “I’ll assume you have access to some sort of advanced technology. You wouldn’t want that advanced technology roaming free, eh? And well, why else would a cow come after me?”

I kept as absolutely straight a face as I could manage. “Do you have something against cows?” I also made a mental note to try to get my suit’s lines fixed, to try to reduce the visibility of the bumps Chekov made in it when holstered.

He shook his head. “Not really. I’m just curious on why and how you got advanced tech unless you have access to advanced tech, from say, another world or something. Unless you had someone who knew how to make it with you.” He nodded after that. “The point is, if you are going to be spreading the advanced tech, I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m afraid that anything that you are referring to as ‘advanced tech’ is, at best, proprietary information from the network, for internal use only, short of an imminent civilization-threatening catastrophe.”

“Right." In a hushed tone, he asked, "Then you wouldn’t want to know that they use the old recipe for yellow glaze, right?”

If Ivan at least had human-sourced knowledge, if not being a former human himself... “‘They’ who?”

“People who use glaze. You know what yellow glaze is made of, right?”

I did, in fact, know that a number of classical glazes, including some that were yellow, were made of urania - aka uranium dioxide. But that’s a purely Earth-based piece of knowledge which I felt it wasn't in my current best interests to reveal I possessed. So I sidestepped. “I’m afraid that pottery isn’t my field - and whatever the differences between our cultures may be, I do have other tasks which take up a lot of my time, so perhaps we can focus more on the topic at hoof...”

“Right. My island certainly doesn’t have a mine that exported that and that is certainly why I’m not worried about it.” He nodded. “So what were we talking about?”

“Um...” I had to take a moment to rewind through the conversation to find where it went off track. “Arranging for you to run some seek-and-destroy missions on slavers, if you’re interested, I believe.”

He looked at me. “Say... you wouldn’t happen to be a guy, would you? It goes against the cliche that I would find a boss that would offer me something great that is of the same gender that dominates the land. I mean...” He snapped back to the topic. “Right. Where would it be?”

I took a moment to twist my head to look back along my body, and made sure that my udder, while clothed inside my suit, was unmistakable for anything else. Satisfied, I turned back to Ivan. “You mean, where are the slavers you’d be hunting? I’m afraid I didn’t bring the big status map with me - but it’s mainly along Equestria’s borders, though there’s an increasing amount of incursions in the interior. It might be worthwhile to send your airship on something like a circuit around Equestria, and have the local members of the network send up updates for their regions as you approach, to allow you to set your specific targets based on the most up-to-date local data.”

He looked to be thinking it over for a moment. “Problem. I have four people, counting myself. Operating an air ship is hard with four people, and taking out slavers is hard with four people. I’m going to need something to convince me it is worth it to send myself after these mutts.”

“Not all are canine - but that’s quite understandable. I’d rather ensure you had the maximum chances of succeeding, as well. Provisions and materiel, access to an airship repair dock, bits to cover expenses met along the way, including reasonable wages - I can probably arrange to put you in contact with some freelancers who enjoy risking their lives. Is that a good start?”

He smiled. “Yes. That would help.”

(Author's Note: This chapter is a crossover with 7-4's story, "I Hate Dogs".)

Noyaux

Without any internet, or even television or radio, newspapers were a handy way of watching for any happenings that escaped the reports of the Dairy's still-growing network. Or, at least, to get an idea of what the publishers thought about current events. Today's biggest headline was the debate in the Barn of Lords between the Greens and the Blues, who roughly split the votes between them, and were, very roughly, conservatives and progressives - though in a distinctly ponyish way. Even the progressives saw absolutely nothing wrong with the privileges they gained as nobles, and the staunchest conservatives were much more into providing social services than the Scandinavians of Earth. The current kerfluffle was between the National Service being promoted by the newly politically-active Blueblood, whose radical idea seemed to be suggesting that he was considering a switch to the reformers, whose caucus was already putting together a proposal for Voluntary Service, while the other party simply sniped at both ideas.

The second story was that Princess Luna had expressed a desire to seek the advice and suggestions of the non-noble ponies, and was assembling a conference to help determine the best way to re-convene the Commons given the changes in sensibilities since it had last met.

Over in the gossip pages, note was being made that the Pillar family of Roan was showing off how wealthy it was by completely demolishing their Canterlot estate in order to build a brand-new edifice, being designed by the hottest architect - were new manses going to replace airships as the new form of flaunting?

In the business pages, there was talk about some proposed dairy subsidies, which I had rather mixed feelings about. For one, the money raised would go directly to helping cows such as myself; for another, it was exactly the sort of 'help a small group at the expense of the whole' politics which led to thousand-page tax codes and the rich having all sorts of loopholes to exploit at the expense of everypony else.

Lifestyle: How to find a qualified surveyor to check if your basement can qualify for a Bronze-shelter or better tax break.

Ads: Pepper spray, so ponies of all sorts can feel safe walking through Canterlot at all hours. Self-defense courses also available.

In short, pretty much ever single item in the paper, I knew more about than the reporter did. I supposed that was one measure of progress, of a sort.

The Pegasus Express brought me a piece of time-sensitive news; the Duchess, Alabaster Pillar, mother of Marble Pillar, was traveling from their family estate on Roan to Canterlot. While the network was functioning exactly as designed, it was still early days - and so I was only getting the information an hour ahead of Alabaster's arrival. Still, that was an hour more than I would have had otherwise. Just to be on the safe side, I announced to The Dairy that we were having a security drill, and to get ready for an attack both from external forces and from hidden infiltrators. (I'd taken the list Marble had given me of her infiltrators, and gently nudged all those ponies into their own, separate section, where they were free to chase each others' tails all they wanted. But that didn't mean other nobles hadn't acquired their own moles.) Just because Marble had tried to arrange for me to become a holey cow didn't mean that Alabaster would do anything similar - but just in case she would, well...

Micro Scope had been working on a delivery mechanism to install in the Alicorn for jellied flammable oil - why yes, I did enjoy the smell of napalm in the morning - but when the drill started, her first job was locking down the secret sections of the labs and getting the ponies working there to safety. Page Turner had a similar task, only focusing on the various pieces of classified documentation floating around. Red Pepper kept aerial overwatch - I still hadn't gotten any wireless telegraphy to work, but she carried a lantern with a shutter to flash an Equestrian version of Morse code. Safe Guard was theoretically in charge of preparing a counter-attack, and I acted as general staff to create an organized response to anything unexpected... and I decided that the two of us should try a reconnaissance of the "opposing force".

We made it to the train station just a few minutes before the train from Roan arrived. Amongst the various guards, servants, luggage-handlers, and various hangers-on was a mature mare, a white-coated, white-maned unicorn, with a near-invisible white cutie mark; her identity was confirmed when Marble Pillar appeared, and pressed necks together in a light hug. As they broke, Alabaster looked in my direction, and if I wasn't mistaken, smiled. She spoke to one of the aforementioned hangers-on, who approached Safe and I.

Her accent wasn't Canterlotish, but still seemed highly affected. "The Duchess invites you to speak with her at your convenience."

I glanced at Safe, shrugged, then looked back at her. "There's no time like the present. Perhaps as soon as she's had a chance to go to the Roan house in Canterlot and unpack?"

She looked a bit uncomfortable. "She, ah, has chosen not to disturb the renovators, and will be residing at the Draycolt Hotel for the duration of her visit."

"The Draycolt it is, then."

Another hanger-on looked down her snout at Safe, then at me. "There is no need to bring your guard into the presence of the Duchess."

"That's an interesting opinion," I commented. "If there were, say, at least a one-in-twenty chance that an assassination attempt would be made upon the Duchess in a meeting, would she consider a guard necessary?"

"That is a gross insult to-"

"Are you familiar with LaPlace's Sunrise Formula? I may be getting the name wrong."

"Excuse me?"

"You are excused. It's a piece of math that tries to answer the question, if all you know is how many times the sun has risen so far, what are the odds of it rising tomorrow? It's a very simple piece of math, generalizable to many situations which only needs two inputs - the number of opportunities there have been for something to happen, and the number of times it has happened. I have had fairly few dealings with Roan and its agents so far, and at least one has involved an attempt on my life. Mathematically, there is a far greater than five percent chance that somepony will try to kill me before I leave."

"How dare you-"

"The formula is the number of successes, plus one, divided by the total number of opportunities, plus two. I have encountered Roanish and Roanish-hired ponies perhaps a total of a dozen times so far. Do you need me to lead you through the computation?"

An amused voice came from inside. "Oh, do let them in, Clarice."

Reluctantly, the obstacle (whose name, I guessed, when spoken unaccented, was 'Clear Ice') backed out of our way, and we cautiously entered the lavishly-decorated sitting room, which contained a suit of armor in each corner (presumably containing live ponies), Alabaster and Marble reclining on couches, and a third such couch facing them. I opted to stand.

Alabaster said, "You really must forgive her," and she stopped when I raised a hoof to interrupt her.

"I really don't," I said back.

There was a brief silence, and then Alabaster sighed. "Perhaps not. Is this really how you feel about us?"

"I am entirely willing to extend trust and the benefit of the doubt to anypony I meet. I have this tendency to retract all such unearned trust at the first attempt on my life."

"Ah." Alabaster looked at Marble, who squirmed a bit, then back at me. "Is there anything I can do to regain such trust?"

"That depends. Are you willing to allow your daughter to face charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in a court of law, and whatever the sentence is, permit it to be performed?"

There was a long silence. I finally broke it by saying, "In that case, if the rule of law is not an option, then we revert to the rule of pony - whichever pony has the power, makes the rules. Have I made it sufficiently clear that any attempts on my life can be met with disproportionate retaliation?"

"You are referring to the 'curse' placed on the Roanish Demesne in Canterlot?"

"If that is what you are calling it, yes."

She frowned a bit, then asked, "Is there a way to remove it?"

I tilted my head, considering, then straightened. "If you haven't already heard, I prize honesty very highly, and try to tell the truth in all situations-"

"-Save for when violence or saving lives are involved."

I nodded. "So I trust you will believe me that I was in something of a hurry, and so was, how should I put it, slightly sloppy. I was trying to strike a balance between having nothing at all happening, and having the entire Demense burn to the ground with all inside. What I ended up with was... slightly stronger than I had intended."

Dryly, Alabaster said, "I understand that my daughter has turned into a sea-pony three times this week alone."

Marble muttered, "I hate swimming..."

I cleared my throat, continuing, "That said - yes, I do know of a way to remove what you call the 'curse' completely, instead of merely offering a cure to affected ponies as they ask me for it." Both of them brightened. "But, at present, I do not know of any reason to do so."

Marble glared at me. "But what about that list I gave you? And-"

I glared right back. "That was the price of the cure, not the removal."

Alabaster gently cleared her throat, drawing our attention away from each other. "Perhaps a reason can be arranged?"

I looked at her, and said, simply, "Perhaps. But I'm not sure you can provide a sufficient reason."

The Duchess looked at her daughter. "Dear, perhaps you should go check on the obvious excuse to get you to leave."

The corner of my mouth twitched, Marble blinked, and then she grumblingly left the hotel suite.

Alabaster looked after her, and said, "Children," with a sigh. Then turned back to me. "Now that it's just we adults - what is it that you want?"

I hesitated, frowning, before finally saying, "While I know the answer to that - telling you isn't as easy as you think. I could describe some of my short-term goals, at the risk of misleading you about my long-term ones. Or I could give a short description of some of my long-term goals, but doing so runs the risk of insulting you. Or I could take the time to fill you in on some of the background of my long-term goals, minus the details that would endanger some of my information sources, though that might take a while."

"Well, when you put it that way, of course I have to hear the whole thing."

"Alright." I paused a moment to try to organize my thoughts. "To start with - what would have happened had the current Bearers of the Elements of Harmony failed to stop Nightmare Moon?"

"Then I doubt either of us would be here talking now - with an eternal night, all the crops would die, and everypony would have long since starved."

"Perhaps it might interest you to know that one of the projects I'm overseeing involves the creation and growth of crops using artificial light sources, requiring no sunlight whatsoever."

"Really, now." She gave me a more speculative look.

"Quite so - we're having some good success with an algae-based life-support system, but, needless to say, few ponies enjoy the taste. Still - if I had started this program, say, five years ago, then while Nightmare Moon triumphant would have been a great tragedy, it wouldn't have led to the end of all life in Equestria. On the other hoof, if I had started that program, but then some young noble had arranged for my death before it finished, then there would have been a good chance all ponies would be dead."

"So... you are preparing in case Princess Luna becomes Nightmare Moon again?"

I shook my head. "You're thinking far too small-scale. That is simply a single scenario which leads to the end of all pony-kind; there are many, many more that I can think of in moments - and even more that cannot be described at all, before they happen. But an interesting thing about the known dangers is that making preparations for any one of them tends to increase the odds that we can survive any of the other known dangers - which at least implies that such preparations may also help deal with unanticipable dangers, as well."

"So... you are making plans to ensure Equestria's survival? That seems simple enough, and didn't take long to explain."

I smiled. "That is merely the grand overview. Going into details is... complicated. As just one example - I'm only a single cow, and can only spend so much time working on solving such problems. It would be very useful to have a large number of ponies who are able to perform similar work. However, in order to do so, ponies need to have a certain minimal level of education - a level higher than is commonly achieved. And so it is worth my while to take some time away from my immediate researches, in order to push for the longer-term goal of having more ponies who can take some of the load from my shoulders."

She began eying me with an odd sparkle in her eyes. "And the Barn of Lords has just started debating ways to fund an increase to education without raising taxes. I think I begin to see a hidden hoof behind some of the news."

My smile got wider. "I can neither confirm nor deny any connection to such debates. To continue my point - would you accept that the current collection of noble houses could, perhaps, be described as having found various ways for their families to survive and prosper in the conditions that Equestria has enjoyed for, oh, the past millennium?" She considered that, then nodded. I continued, "And if conditions were to suddenly change, so that those time-tested solutions no longer applied - and, in fact, did more harm than good?"

She frowned. "I do not see where you are going with this."

"It's simple enough; if a new Discord-level disruption happens, then what ponies will need to survive will be a certain... flexibility, the ability to stretch their imagination to try new things which were previously unthinkable. Having a social system allowing for rapid adaptation to new conditions, even if doing so leads to certain entrenched interests losing the advantages they've enjoyed for centuries."

Her gaze was flat. "Are you suggesting a revival of the pre-Equestrian earth-pony mob-ocracies, or the pegasus military hierarchy?"

"Not at all - unless those happen to be what works. Since you're bringing up pre-Equestrian societies, let's try this. Princess Luna and Princess Celestia, while unaging, are neither omnipotent nor unconquerable; what would happen if both of them were, say, gravely injured and unable to perform their most basic duties?"

Her forehead wrinkled. "I suppose... that the Barn of Lords would resume the task of the ancient Withergamot, and begin raising and lowering the sun and moon ourselves."

"One of the most powerful unicorns alive, the Bearer of the Element of Magic, has no title, no place in the peerage. Would the Barn refuse her assistance in keeping the celestial cycle in proper progression?"

"I... am not sure what you are driving towards."

"When one of the Princesses creates a new noble title, does that mean that the pony suddenly gains some prowess they previously lacked, or is it merely a verification of something inherent in that pony that already existed?" She stared at me silently. "Should a Princess strip a pony of a title, do they abruptly lose their magical power, or does their reduced political status simply reflect their innate nature?" I paused, waiting for a reaction; when none was coming, I drove the point home. "Having a title, a place in the Barn of Lords, is merely a recognition of noble status - but there are ponies who are just as noble who are not in the Barn, and ponies who do not deserve such titles who are."

"The Commons revival."

"Simply because the Barn, collectively, is the backup for the Princesses does not necessarily mean that they are the best at coming up with laws and budgets to present to them for Royal approval - nor does it mean that they will come up with all the ideas that are worth considering. A single idea may be all that stands between pony-kind's flourishing and its utter destruction."

"So you believe."

"So I believe. As I said, I have to be careful about what I tell you, in order not to endanger my sources."

"So I am supposed to just trust your word on it?"

I shrugged. "That's entirely up to you. Unlike your family, I have not betrayed the inherent trust ponies share in each other by arranging for your daughter's death - and I believe that I have demonstrated that I had ample opportunity to. Perhaps, at some point in the future - far in the future - you will have demonstrated enough strength of character to overcome the evidence I currently possess leading me to trust you as little as I do, and I might be more willing to place the fate of innocent, valuable ponies in your hooves. In the meantime - you have my demonstrated, and demonstrable, honesty to consider.

"Very well. The records describing you go back as far as your appearance in Ponyville. If you are so honest, will you tell me where you were before then?"

"Perhaps. Let's assume that I had a family who I care about - how much would their lives be put at risk by my saying who they were?"

She opened her mouth to respond, paused, frowned, and essayed, "I'm not sure. That formula you described to Clarice - does it apply?"

"It could - but that formula is merely an elementary starting point, most useful for ponies who know a little basic arithmetic. A much more powerful tool for such things is Bayes' equation, which itself is merely an approximation of Solomonoff Induction. But in this case, I think we can skip the math, and deal with it qualitatively. Say you knew a secret, which, if you told me, would put Marble in a slightly increased danger of being killed. Would you share that piece of information in casual conversation, without careful forethought?"

"Likely not." She paused, looking out a window, before turning back to me. "So far, you have said things which are disturbing, but not quite insulting. So I ask you to tell me - honestly - what have you been thinking of saying that you believed I would be insulted by?"

"Are you sure you want to know?"

"I don't see why not. Tell me."

"When I do not want to tell someone a truth, but the only consequences of learning it are to them, I double-check with them, and then have them ask me a third time."

"This is becoming tiresome. Tell me."

"You have asked me three times - well, told me to tell you, which amounts to the same thing. So I will." I pursed my lips, then explained, "In a certain rainforest, there is a sort of monkey, called the noyau, plural noyaux. They have abundant food, and no predators, so they don't have to spend any significant time foraging, or have to keep a lookout for danger. Instead, what they spend their time on is... social display. Each one spends all its time working to show off that they're bigger, better, and stronger than all the other monkeys. This has gone on for many generations - they know no other life, they cannot conceive of things being any other way. So when a family of predators does find the place and move in, or a volcano erupts... well, it doesn't go well for them. This is a pattern, a way that living things can organize themselves, and isn't limited to monkeys. Among certain fractions of Equestrian society, there is sufficient wealth that hunger is never a concern, nor do they perceive any danger from any outside force... all they see is each other - and so they spend vast fortunes on showing off to each other how big their fortunes are. They do not produce anything useful, anything which might actually help ponies survive in the face of the dangers they do not recognize. If these pony noyaux were to suddenly cease to exist, then the rest of Equestria would have a greatly increased chance of survival - not to mention increased prosperity. If you haven't felt any insult yet, the particular insulting detail is that, given the evidence I currently have available to me, the Roanish nobility are more likely noyaux than not."

"I'm not sure I've ever been insulted in quite so... scholastic a fashion before."

"You should be glad I stuck to mammals. There are plenty of other forms of life which I could draw comparisons to, but my doing so would likely lead to you blasting my head off before Safe Guard could twitch."

"We could hardly have that happen - it would cost a fortune to even try to cover up." She smiled at me. I didn't smile back. She sighed. "Perhaps that was in poor taste."

"'Perhaps'?"

"Regardless - there is still the matter of your curse on my Demesne, and what it would take to have it removed."

"I suppose there is."

"Can you give me an idea of what you would consider a fair price?"

"Hm... if I didn't do as you ask, how much would it cost you to rebuild?"

"A significant dent in our cash reserves."

"That sounds reasonable."

"You can't be serious - if I gave you that much, there would be no point in it. How about a smaller sum? Our loss would be your gain."

"What you're offering, I can get elsewhere - so I might as well ensure that my lesson to you remains as expensive to you as possible."

"Perhaps you don't understand - I am still offering you a million bits."

"And I thank you for that offer... because how many people have ever existed, who can honestly say that they've turned down a million bits on ethical grounds?"

She blinked, then chuckled. "Perhaps none at all, before today. But if mere money has no value to you..."

"I didn't say it has no value - just not enough value."

"Ah. Then what does have 'enough' value?"

"Can you offer me anything that will measurably increase the chances of Equestria's long-term survival?"

She paused, frowning. "I don't know."

"That's a start."

"Pardon?"

"Knowing that you don't know something is the first step to figuring it out."

"Hm. You do have the sound of a librarian. So if bits aren't what tempt you - perhaps books are?"

"Mm... I do have free rein of the Royal Canterlot Archives."

"Ah - but what about books that have never been put into those archives?"

"... you have my attention."

The Ball of Cute Tool ...Who?

As Alabaster and I walked out of the Palace, Princess Luna's honesty magic having confirmed the details of our bargain (which had been fun to write out, in order to be clear to us without letting the Princess herself know about our private shenanigans), I felt a thump on my head. Rolling my eyes up, I discovered a red sphere wedged between my left horn and my skull. A filly galloped up, and asked, "May I please have my ball back, ma'am?". I lowered my head to where she could reach it, and as she galloped off, I saw that she had a cutie mark, a hammer and wrench decorated with smilie facies and hearts.

Alabaster sniffed audibly. I raised an eyebrow. She elaborated, "She should be in school."

"Hm. Do you know one of the fastest and best ways to teach yourself something?" She looked at me without answering, so I elaborated, "Be unafraid to play with it."

"That hardly seems dignified."

"I didn't say it was the most dignified way. What is more important, maintaining an appearance of 'dignity' at all times, or having the power that comes from knowing how something works?"

"You say that as if they were mutually exclusive."

"There's less than nine thousand hours in a year, and more things to know than can be learned in a century. If you take ten hours to learn something when you could have taken twenty, you've got ten extra hours to do other things. If you take thirty hours when you could have taken ten, you've just used up twenty hours of your life for no good purpose."

"Ensuring one's peers continue to respect one is a very good purpose."

"That depends on who those 'peers' are. Do they provide more benefit to you than the opportunity-loss you suffer by limiting yourself to their expectations?"

While we still weren't friends, or friendly with each other, or even anything near anything of the sort - it was a reasonably pleasant experience to at least have a conversation with somepony who was at least moderately competent.

"And here is the primary text I believe you will find of interest." A good-sized trunk was now sitting in the middle of Alabaster's hotel-suite sitting room. I found it mildly interesting that she'd brought it with her - it suggested that she'd known enough about me even before she left home to bring it with her. Her horn glowed, the trunk unlatched and opened, and there within it was a leather-bound tome whose title was... well, if I could read the antiquated style of Equestrian lettering... the "Equinomicon".

My heart sped up. This wasn't like finding a mint-in-box Optimus Prime toy at a garage sale for five bucks - this was finding the big guy himself with a "For Sale By Owner" sign in his window.

I wanted this book.

I needed this book.

I... noticed something odd in my glasses - the reflection of my eyes had changed. My irises were drooping in the middle, down to a point, like a heart-shape.

I considered the book - and I still wanted it, I wanted to rub it all over my body. I wanted to have its babies.

I thought about some of the descriptions of books with similar titles, and the potentially lethal Alien-esque consequences of having such a book's babies. I still wanted 'em.

I considered that Alabaster hadn't touched the trunk or book herself, and wondered just how much poison might be slathered on the book's pages, and of how many different kinds... and, carefully, I thought that I not only wanted to have the book now, I wanted to keep having the book tomorrow, and next year, and a thousand years from now - and that if I were dead, I wouldn't be able to have the book at all, let alone have its babies.

I noticed that I'd stopped walking towards it, my nose just a couple of paces away from its most-likely-pony-hide-cover. My nostrils flared as I couldn't resist inhaling its scent. I very carefully ran my mind over the available options to ensure that I would be able to keep having it for as long as possible. I was most likely under a mind-affecting spell which was clouding my judgment about certain matters, which would likely result in my death much earlier than my unclouded thoughts would lead to, thus leading to my being able to spend that much less time having this book. Therefore, in order to spend as much time with the book as possible (and its babies!), my most urgent priority was to have the mind-altering spell removed.

I focused myself on that thought, keeping it at the forefront of my mind, as I shaped my mouth to speak the words, "Close. The. Trunk."

There was a long pause... and then, finally, the trunk's lid glowed in Alabaster's pale telekinetic aura, and closed, shutting off the view of the book I wanted to spend the rest of my hopefully very long life with (and babies!). I focused on my eyes' reflection - still heart-shaped.

I managed to speak, "Let me guess. This book has a reputation for driving those who read it mad. And you were going to conveniently neglect to mention anything of the sort."

I dragged my eyes away from the box containing my precious, to look at the mare whose current use to me was measured precisely in what she could do to help me hold onto said precious for as long as possible. Her expression was rather different from what it had been a few minutes ago, in the distant before-time which was ignorable save for those events that had brought me to where I could finally meet my text. "You wanted books that you would value more than a million bits. This is a tome which, I believed, you would prize more than that money." She looked up and down at me, and I took in her apparent confusion as a datum to use to manipulate her to maximize my future time with the book. "I'm... not sure... that is, you..."

My mind was running through various conversational paths to find the one that had the greatest chance of attaining my goal. I stated, "You merely failed to take into account the fact that, by the standards of ordinary ponies, I am already quite mad. However, I have tamed that madness, and yoked it to make it useful to me. I am," I had to force myself to say the words, keeping my long-term goal of eternal ownership of the book in mind, balancing the risk of immediate loss of it against the risk of near-term death and loss of it that way, "on the verge of canceling our bargain due to this abuse of trust and faith. Do you have a counter-spell for the immediately-obvious symptoms?" I gestured a hoof in the general direction of my eyes. She started to shake her head, and I bared my teeth in a rather un-bovine, predatory snarl. "In that case I have a Princess to go see. Safe, if you would kindly levitate this trunk to bring with us?"

Alabaster's alabaster-white face paled a notch. "Wait!", she hurriedly stated. "A counter-spell is unnecessary - all you have to - er, all an ordinary pony has to do, is be kept from looking at it for an hour. But - they have to be kept from seeing it. You... I don't understand how you're not tearing that trunk open to get at it, so I don't know whether that would work for you."

I smiled at her. She paled another notch, so I stopped smiling. "Perhaps one day I will tell you." I ran my thoughts along the path that in order to extend my life to spend centuries or more with the book, it would be helpful to acquire as many resources in the short-term as possible. "In the meantime, I think it is safe to say that despite your plan, this book alone will not satisfy your debt. Were you forethoughtful enough to bring additional offerings?"

She was - but the Equinomicon was the only book, the other trade-goods she'd brought were just in case I was more susceptible to other enticements than I was to books.

"In that case," I tapped my chin as if in thought, "I believe that I shall take this as a down payment - and once you have finished bringing me sufficient books to finish your side of the bargain, I will uphold my end, and 'remove the curse' of your Canterlot house. I trust that you will agree that is as fair an approach as is possible, under the circumstances?"

She wasn't happy - but she didn't disagree. I had Safe levitate the trunk as we exited the hotel, and once we were out of earshot, I whispered to him through clenched teeth, "I think I'm going to need you to discreetly tie me up for the next hour or so."

When I walked into Cheerilee's home, I was still sporting a headache that matched some of my nastier migraines, even after swallowing a hooffull of horse-pill-sized painkillers.

When she saw me, her eyes widened and she hurried over in concern. "What's wrong?" I probed my feelings - my desire to be with her, to help her, to make her happy paled in comparison to how strongly I had wanted to hold onto that book... but while that artificial desire was gone, leaving a mental void, I still wanted Cheerilee to be happy.

"Work," I announced blandly. "Do you have any idea how troublesome it is to arrange to have a book copied, without anyone else coming into physical contact with or seeing it?"

She paused, blinking, forehead wrinkled. "...How?"

I sighed. "A complicated little machine that takes photos."

I turned to grab my saddlebags with my mouth, which was the moment a rather enormous insect flew down and landed on my back. A beetle-type thing the size of a turtle, yellow-bodied, red-backed, with antennas whose tips flared out into a flower-like spread.

About all I could say was, "What."

Cheerilee giggled. "Oh, that's just Lady. She's been my pet for years. I've just been too busy to take proper care of her lately, so she's been at my sister's, but now that there's two of us here...?" She looked at me hopefully.

I rubbed the back of my neck with a hoof, which I'd been doing a lot that day. "I'm too exhausted to refuse anything you might suggest today."

She brightened. "Then how about we go swimming? Relaxing and floating in some water might help you feel better..."

"Um..." I looked down at my hooves. "I don't know whether or not I know how to swim."

Turned out cows could float - at least, well enough that with a mask and snorkel, I could just let myself hang in the creek's water without exerting a muscle, and watch the minnows and small fish go about their business, while Cheerilee stretched out on the bank and watched to make sure I didn't drift too far downstream. And she was right - my head did slowly start to feel better.

Which, of course, is precisely when the wandering monster appeared.

Quivers

The creature looked like Discord had crossed an armadillo, a cricket and an airplane - it was around the size of a pony, with a rocky, segmented hide, a couple of feeler-tentacles in front, and a tail with, I kid you not, a propeller on the end. Even though I was wearing a snorkel and facemask instead of my glasses, I could make out that much. It looked to have been trundling along the streamside path, and was now making a beeline for Cheerilee.

I quickly ran over my immediate priority list: primary, avoid myself or Cheerile dying; secondarily, avoid any serious injury to either of us, and prevent the thing from going into Ponyville; tertiarily, avoid minor injury; and, for bonus points, find some way to make some positive use out of the thing. My immediate resources were rather limited - I was in the middle of a stream, with nothing but my own bovine body, and the aforementioned snorkel and mask; and, on a more abstract level, my mind and my voice. Well, things could be worse - I already had a plan, a backup plan, and a backup backup plan. I started taking in a deep breath-

"Cutie Mark Crusaders Knight-Defenders of Love!"

Well, there went three perfectly good plans.

The trio burst from some shrubberies on the Ponyville side of things, and, from somewhere, had picked up sets of armor - well, pots and pans with straps riveted to them - and were holding swords - at least, they looked like swords - in their mouths. They were running straight for the creature, Cheerilee was trying to shout something at them, something happened and all three weapons disintegrated...

... and then the critter squawked, the ground erupted, and an armored something rather larger than any of the cast so far erupted, taking hold of it in shark-like jaws. The Crusaders tumbled to the ground - except for Scootaloo, who was sent into the creek - and Cheerilee finally started running away, leaving behind the picnic blanket, and the picnic basket, which contained both lunch and Chekov. The... land-shark-thing was practically swallowing the propeller-tail thing whole, save for said tail being bitten off - which implied that it could swallow a pony without chewing, too, if it had a mind to.

Scootaloo's armor and now-waterlogged feathers were giving her some trouble, so I churned my legs and tried to paddle her way as fast as I could; and in moments she was clinging to my back and coughing up water. I made a quick guess that a tunneling creature wouldn't be especially fond of water, so finally spat out the snorkel to shout, "Everypony start swimming!"

In moments, all three of them, plus Cheerilee, were using me as a floatation device, and we watched as the whatever-it-was disappeared back underground. A quick check revealed no serious hurts, just a couple of skinned knees and some very frightened quadrupeds.

Apple Bloom cut to the chase, "What were those?"

Cheerilee scholastically answered, "The smaller one is a 'rubigon', most famous for its habit of magically corroding iron and eating the rust. The larger is a 'bulette', and, well, you saw what it does. I haven't heard of any sightings of either in this area - rubigons are said to prefer underground places, such as mines."

If I hadn't been busy paddling to help support the extra weight, I would have facehoofed. I'd actually had a toy of the 'rust monster', one of the variety of monsters created in Dungeons and Dragons specifically to annoy delvers into the deeps - there were disenchanters to zap magic items, things that looked like floors that ate adventurers, things that looked like chests that ate adventurers, things that looked like ceilings that ate adventurers, things that looked like stalactites... well, basically, there was something of anything that'd try to eat the adventurers, just to make them paranoid. But if something Gygax had invented out of whole cloth could be found here in Equestria... well, come to think of it, was that really any more incredible than Equestria existing in any real sense at all?

Still, with that critter eaten, that still left us with the other. I proposed, "Would one of you ponies kindly dive down to grab a stone or two?" A couple of rocks were duly brought up, and tossed onto the path - resulting, as I'd feared, in a second eruption, with the land-shark thrashing around a bit, presumably looking for its prey. After a few moments, it sank back down out of sight again.

"Scootaloo, I don't suppose you can fly with waterlogged wings?" A negative. "And Sweetie Belle - I'm guessing you're not quite strong enough to lift any of us with magic?" Another negative. I sighed. "Well then - we don't want to get eaten, we don't want anypony else to get eaten, and I don't want to spend the rest of our lives in the stream. I do have a weapon on the bank which might be capable of killing it..." I paused, seeing the expressions of the Crusaders. "... which I have no intention of allowing any of the three of you to come anywhere near, until you have demonstrated the ability to treat an object capable of killing a pony with the respect and care that it deserves." Their expressions drooped back down. "Also, my eyes are bad, but it looked like that... bulette had some sort of armor on it, and I don't know whether or not even my weapon would work through that. So let's put that plan on the back-burner, just ahead of keeping on swimming. Any other ideas?"

I very carefully did not mention the whistle around my neck - the blowing it to summon the 'Wardens' would rather defeat the purpose, as there would be no guarantee that any of the ponies I was trying to keep alive would survive.

Scootaloo, "Rainbow Dash isn't here - but can we call some other member of the weather patrol for help?"

We looked up into the cloudless sky. I said, "Looks like not right now - but if anyone sees anypony in the air, don't hesitate to give a holler."

Cheerilee then suggested, "Do we have to kill it? What about that pepper spray you gave me? It's in the basket, too."

"Hm... It's an option - but we don't know how well it would work on something like that. If we do try it, I'd want to do it in a way where none of us are put at risk if it doesn't drive off the bulette."

Sweetie Belle, "Can we get up to the trees?"

We considered the nearby foliage, and came to the conclusion that while some of us might be able to get up into one or another tree, such as a nice big willow drooping over the stream's banks, we wouldn't be able to get anywhere from there. "But," I said, "if we get tired of swimming, we could rest there for a bit."

Apple Bloom contributed, "How about flooding it? Can we dig a hole from the stream to its tunnel?"

"I'm not much of a digger." I smiled, "But maybe we can get it to do the digging for us."

A bit more guided discussion, and we decided that we didn't want any of us to be swept down into the tunnel with the flooded water, so everyone who wasn't involved in trying to draw the bulette would wait up on that willow tree. After some very polite argumentation with Cheerilee about who was the better swimmer, I 'won' by stating that if she was going to stay in the stream, I would, too, to be sure I was close enough to pull her out. Sweetie Belle gave a mighty effort of magic, and was able to lift the picnic basket and bring it over to the tree. I strapped on Chekov's holster, making a mental note to make sure the barrel was drained before trying to fire it and to give it a very good cleaning after dunking it. Cheerilee kept hold of the pepper spray, as a backup.

We split up the sandwiches and scarfed them down.

I let go of the over-hanging branch, and paddled close to where we'd last seen the monster. Taking a deep breath, I dove, and kicked a few times at the bank. I surfaced, breathed, dove, and tried again... and the mud slid away, the water pushing past me into a rapidly-widening hole. The bulette stuck its head into the stream, but was washed back. I paddled for all I was worth, grabbing hold of rocks and roots sticking out of the bottom of the creek to pull myself along...

... and felt a searing pain in my left hind hoof, and was yanked back. I turned my head far enough to look, and the Celestia-cursed thing had grabbed hold of me and was pulling me back with it. I carefully aimed and kicked with my other back hoof, striking it in the eye; it let go, and slid back out of sight - and the suction pulled me into the hole after it. I tried swimming back out, against the current, but my breath was rapidly running out... so I took a chance, and instead, worked with the water instead of against it, hoping to come across some side-tunnel or other opening or at least for the tunnel to get big enough for me to push up and grab a breath... my lungs were bursting, and my vision started to tunnel out...

... and as the water drained downwards, I pulled myself into a horizontal tunnel, gasping.

It was almost completely dark - I could barely see my nose, let alone my hoof. The only sounds were the rushing and gurgling of water, the smells were of damp earth, and, thankfully, there was no sign of the bulette, or of any other creature.

Some of the water was over-flowing, and continued down the empty tunnel - but unless I wanted to try swimming upstream, or following the water down and down into the unknown, that was the only path open to me. I investigated my ankle - it was bleeding, but didn't seem broken or strained; since I had a rather distinct lack of bandages or antiseptics, I'd just have to hope for the best.

I could either stay in one spot, and hope for rescue; or head down the tunnel to see if I could rescue myself. I decided that if I came to a spot where it looked dangerous to continue, I could just turn around and come back. Still, I took the time to use my forehooves to try to carve an arrow in the dirt floor, pointing down the tunnel, with an Equestrian 'M'; and another along the wall. If anypony blocked off the draining stream to come looking for me, hopefully they'd know which way I'd gone. I also took the time to make sure Chekov was drained, and that the draw-mechanism still worked.

In the dark, in the quiet as the stream faded behind me, I cautiously advanced, step by step, trying to avoid falling down any other holes in the floor. Other than that, I didn't have much else to occupy my mind, so I thought. The spot where Cheerilee and I had been swimming was about as far from Ponyville proper as Fluttershy's cottage, and also in the direction of the Everfree from it, though in a different branch of the stream. So it was quite possible that both of the critters we'd seen had just wandered in from that non-pony-controlled zone. On the other hoof, this tunnel was bigger around than that bulette had been, and at the spot the stream was draining into, the tunnel went in three directions - back, fore and down - which would be tricky for a single animal to have dug out. I recalled the episode where Rarity had been captured by 'diamond dogs', and tried to recall any details about where those slavers' tunnels had been in there; and, failing to come up with anything, tried to think of any reports from the Dairy's network about nearby incidents; and came up similarly blank.

I had no idea which direction I was going - I could be heading directly towards Ponyville, or the Everfree, or Canterlot, or some random direction. I couldn't even see far enough to tell whether the tunnel was slightly curving.

Every so often, I drew another arrow and 'M'. I conserved my strength, settling onto the floor to rest anytime I felt the least bit tired. I counted both steps and heartbeats, to keep track of time and distance, which was tricky enough to keep my mind busy.

After what I estimated to be an hour and two kilometers, I was pretty sure I wasn't anywhere near Ponyville anymore.

After four hours and six kilometers, I wasn't just tired, I was sleepy. There didn't seem to be any significant changes to the tunnel, no sounds, no hints of extra light - but there also wasn't any hint of anyone nearby for me to have the company I'd learned to accept I needed to sleep. But a longer rest couldn't hurt, so I folded myself up in the side of the tunnel, taking some deep breaths.

I felt a sting in my neck, and rubbed a hoof at the errant bug, but before I could swat it, found myself drifting into a doze without even the sound of nearby breathing to settle my mind...

When I awoke, it was to light bright enough to see all around me - and given what I could see, my first and most prominent reaction could best be described as thinking 'Aw, crap.'

The Blue Well

The good news was that my bad leg had been bandaged. The bad news was... well, pretty much everything else, really. My hind legs were hobbled, tied together so that I could only take teensy little steps; and the hobble-rope had been tied to a ring set in stone, further limiting my movement. There was more rope around my muzzle, held on by a loop around the back of my head, and a piece of metal tugged at the corners of my mouth - a bit and bridle. Chekov and its holster was gone, though the warden-whistle was still around my neck.

I was in a rough-hewn stone room, lit by glowing crystals set high in the walls. A half-dozen carts and wagons were in sight, parked along the walls; and a similar number of exhausted-looking ponies were collapsed in the middle of the room.

A bipedal canine walked in, grabbed a trunk from a wagon, hefted it onto a shoulder, and carried it out.

Some time later, another diamond dog, this one wearing a backpack, padded in, glanced at the ponies, then at me. Seeing my eyes open, it approached. It poked my flank, then my udder, then gave one of my teats a rough squeeze. I complained as best I could, which was little more than a plaintive 'moo'. The dog took off the backpack - and I saw that it was actually a papoose, containing four wriggling pups. I complained again, but the dog just shoved the basket of babies under me - and in moments, all four had latched on and started drinking. It was actually kind of a relief - I must have been out for hours - but I wasn't going to admit that, even if I could.

The adult dog went to a wagon, pulled out a bale of hay, and dropped it in front of my head. Then left.

Whatever escape plans I might hatch would be poorly served if I starved... so I reluctantly reached out to grab some of the strands of hay, and start working them around the bit.

The diamond dogs kept unloading the carts, and after a while, pushed a pony or two to start pulling boxes out of the room, too. It didn't look like they'd been around here very long (wherever here was), and were unpacking. Maybe the rubigon and bulette had been the previous tenants.

If they were from outside Equestria... maybe they didn't even realize I was a talking cow. ... Not that that did me much good at the moment, since with that bit in place, I wasn't a talking cow.

A couple of them came in, carrying Chekov and the holster, and one of them pointed out where it had been attached to me. They were poking and prodding at the gun - I was mildly relieved to see the safety was still on - and from their mumblings to each other, they seemed to think it was some sort of camera, which they had no use for.

I hoped they'd just drop the thing in front of me. No such luck.

One of the ponies brought a bucket of water. I tried to waggle my mouth and hooves at her, but she didn't make any sort of response.

I drank.

I ran all sorts of escape plans through my head - but given that I couldn't even talk, almost all of them foundered before their first steps. I couldn't even start trying to persuade the diamond dogs of anything, if I couldn't start talking.

The whistle dangled temptingly around my neck - all I had to do was be willing to condemn all the ponies around me to death, to make the decision for them that life as a slave wasn't a life worth living, and I could probably get myself out of all this mess.

Another option was to play the closest I had to nonviolent resistance, and stop eating until my milk dried up - which would likely lead to my quick death without causing any significant change.

I seemed to have time, so I ran my memory over everything that had happened to me since I landed in Equestria...

... and recalled that I just might have another option available to me. I looked at it backwards and forwards, and didn't see any reason not to give it a try. I made an effort of will, a conscious decision to implement the plan...

... and my straining ears heard what I'd hoped for - the steady clop-clop-clop of a platoon of Guardsponies approaching. A few diamond dogs ran past the doorway, then the guards started passing by. A half-dozen peeled off into the chamber I was in, most of them stopping by the slave ponies - ex-slave ponies - to offer water and care to them, while one unicorn headed straight for me.

As his telekinesis untied the knots binding me, he said, "All is proceeding to plan, ma'am. The Blue Well intelligence source was right on the money." I stood - and the pups' gums slipped from my teats, and they started whining. I looked down at them... and sighed. The unicorn levitated a quartet of milk-bottles he'd brought, from under his armor straight into their mouths. "We can leave whenever you're ready, ma'am."

Some time ago, after a discussion with the Princesses, I'd set up the filing system so that any information arriving from the future would be classified with code-word WELLS, after good old Herbert George. Blue happened to be my favorite color, so any messages from my future self were BLUE WELLS. At the time, I hadn't known whether or not any such messages would ever be received - but I'd set up the bureaucracy to be able to verify and respond to them, if any did.

I guessed that, in some iteration of the timeline, I'd managed to make an escape under my own power - but that version of me decided that the cost of doing so was high enough to be worth rewriting that bit of history, and so had a unicorn use that Starswirl spell to send a message to their earlier self; until, eventually, a stable time-loop resulted, in which the Guard got orders to arrive just at the moment I heard them. I made a mental note to keep this timeline intact by arranging to send the appropriate message back.

Chekov was retrieved from a rubbish pile, still needed a good cleaning, and might never be the same; and after the diamond dogs' claws had done their thing, the whole harness would need to be re-made. The ex-slave ponies were being given as much care and compassion as they needed - though everyone needed some help to pass through the section of tunnel where pepper-spray had been fired, driving away the diamond dogs and their sensitive noses.

There was a hole drilled through the ceiling, through which a team of unicorns were levitating things up and down, serving as a sort of magical elevator. In mere moments I was above ground, looking up at the early-morning stars.

Cheerilee was both relieved and furious. I mostly kept saying "You're absolutely right," and variations thereof.

I sent word to the Crusaders that I was alright.

And I got a summons from Princess Luna.

"There are," she said, "only so many unicorns who art capable of performing that spell. Every message thou sendeth means a message that will not be able to be sent later."

"Would you like me to not send it, then?"

She shook her head. "For this case, we shalt consider it to be a 'done deed', in order to avoid... troubles with time. But should thou desireth to employ such a technique in the future, for thy personal gain - do not be surprised if no message will have been sent, for anything short of the troubles to Equestria as a whole thou hath been making thy preparations to defend against."

"In other words - I should plan to solve my own problems in my own time, without any quick-fixes from my future. Gotcha."

"... Dost thou know their names?"

"Whose?"

"The pups."

"I didn't hear any names. Was there anything in the WELLS message about them?"

"Merely that there would be four hungry infants."

"Do you have any plans for, uh, John, Paul, George, and Ringo?"

She winced slightly. "I almost wish thou had not just dubbed them - for the remainder of their pack remains at large, and having committed organized raids against my little ponies, it would be a simple matter to state that said pack has, by its actions, entered into a state of war with Equestria. But if these four are truly innocent of their parents' acts... then we are left with the responsibility of determining what is to be done with them."

"I'm guessing that you're not planning on raising them yourself?" She gave me A Look, so I continued, "then it looks like you're looking for somepony to adopt them." Having a certain premonitory inkling, I hurriedly continued, "Somepony with plenty of free time, somepony who's good with children, somepony who's already done extensive research into diamond dogs... somepony without a bunch of highly-classified secrets in their head..."

Luna looked at me with gentle amusement. "Thou art being a tad obvious."

"I'm bad with kids. Really bad."

"Still," she mused, "they have drunk of you."

"Never changed a diaper in my life, and have no intention of starting."

"Thy future self did mention them in thy message."

"I have a distinct memory of being allergic to dogs."

"Were I to put the question to thee direct - wouldst thou refuse?"

I grimaced, and tried to think of a way to wiggle out, but finally admitted, "No." I looked sidelong at her. "But surely there's somepony better?"

"If so - then find them. Until thou dost - I commend them into thy care."

"I think Cheerilee's going to kill me."

"Is she not excellent with the young?"

Why was I not surprised Luna knew about her? "Well, yes - when she's working. And then she goes home, far away from children, and is able to relax. Or was. ... Maybe I should just go back to staying with the herds."

"I am sure thou shallst make the best decision possible. And I am thus confident in leaving them in thy capable hooves."

I was wrong - Cheerilee didn't kill me. Not quite, anyway. But she did declare certain conditions. One was that we make an honest effort to find more species-appropriate parents, which I was all too happy to agree with. Another was that it was obviously untenable to pretend we were just roomies working together on curriculum reform - so I was to find a way to allow the news of our currently-rocky romance to spread without her getting fired. I said I'd see what I could do. And a third was that since they were 'mine', I was to take care of their feeding whenever I was in the vicinity... with a significant look at my udder. I sputtered a bit, and hemmed and hawed, but only got another Look, so finally agreed.

It was astonishing how many pony orphanages and foster-parents had absolutely no interest in having anything to do with diamond-dog pups.

The Parent Trap

Back in Ponyville, in Cheerilee's, the two of us spent several hours talking about plans for the future - a good deal of said discussion being done while the four diamond pups were cushioned in a basket under my udder, suckling at will. We guessed about what other ponies would think of them, how hard it would be to get them into school, whether they had any built-in instincts which would make them incompatible with living amongst ponies, what changes we'd have to make to our own lifestyles, how much diapers would cost, and so on and so on.

So it was entirely natural that, sometime after late midnight, I woke up to a stranger shuffling and snuffling inside Cheerilee's house, approaching the bedroom... and when I flicked a light on with my hoof - there was a diamond dog. If I wasn't mistaken, it was the very same one who had been wearing the papoose carrying the four pups in the first place - and if I wasn't further mistaken, 'it' was a 'she'.

We looked at each other for some long moments, then she started glancing from me to the basket of pups and back, with the occasional glance at Cheerilee, who had a pillow over her head and hadn't woken up yet.

The dog leaned her staff against the wall, and made some gently downward gestures with her hands, and some soft shushing noises. It occurred to me that she might still be under the impression I was an unthinking beast. I looked at Cheerilee, gave her a silent apology, and got to my hooves, my bandaged leg twinging only slightly. I had an opportunity to learn something here - and maybe do some good.

I deliberately positioned myself so my udder was above the pups' basket, and the light and noise had woken up at least one - I thought it was Paul - enough for him to latch on. The adult dog looked mildly frustrated, but I didn't interfere as she cautiously padded into the room, carefully detached Paul, and gathered up the basket. She turned to leave as silently as she came...

... and I walked after her.

Her eyes widened - she obviously wanted to get in and out without making a fuss, without waking anypony up; and here I was, the good little wet-nurse animal being exactly the puppy-like obedient follower she'd likely wanted earlier. I followed her into the hall, down the steps, and into the living room, ignoring every silent gesture she made for me to stay put or go back.

Once we were in the kitchen, and she was approaching the back door, I judged we were far enough away to be able to make a little noise without waking Cheerilee. So I said, "Wait."

The series of expressions that flashed across her face were fascinating.

I wanted to keep control of the conversation, so I continued, "You came back for them." She started to nod, so I also mentioned, "You love them very much." Another start of a response, which I interrupted with, "You want what's best for them." Inexorably, I rolled on, "Things are changing out there. You tried moving here, but the ponies found you." I finished with, "So why do you think they'll have a better life out there than in here?"

She stared at me for a long moment, then turned back towards the door. I casually mentioned, "I can shout for the guard." She turned back to me, baring her fangs and growling. "If you wanted to kill us to get them, you already could have. You came quietly. You hoped not to be noticed." I paused, and offered, "That can still happen."

She finally spoke, the first words I'd heard from her. "What. Do. You. Want."

"The best possible future for everybody - including," I lifted a hoof to point at each pup in turn, "John, Paul, George, and Ringo here." She glared at me. "Since you left them in my care, I have named them. I have nursed them. I have a stake in their future."

"Ponies. Will. Kill. Them."

I shook my head. "Ponies might try to kill you - and they might be hurt if that happens. If you can read, I have a paper from the ponies' Alpha of Alphas, saying that all ponies should treat these four as if they were my own children... unless I find someone who can give them a better life than I can. I can raise them among ponies, so they will not be hunted - so they will not have to spend their whole lives digging gems for dragons. I can teach them to read - and, when they are grown, if they truly desire to live with a pack, I can let them go. I can offer them... opportunity. What can you offer them?"

She started shaking her head. "Words. Too many. Just. Words!"

"What can I do to prove myself?" I glanced around at Cheerilee's cheerfully cluttered mess, and amongst all the other items, saw a clipboard. "If you do leave - then at least let me give you some paper. I'll write things on it, so that any pony who reads it will know the pony Alpha of Alphas wants the pups taken care of by me - so if you ever change your mind, or if anything ever happens to you... Well. You don't have to ever use it - but just having it will mean the pups will have an opportunity they wouldn't have otherwise."

She didn't say anything, just stared at me, so I carefully made my way to that clipboard, and wrote some impromptu 'birth certificates' for the four pups. I hoofed the results to her, commenting, "One for each of them." She glanced at them, then tucked them into her vest.

I suggested, "You don't have to leave. But if you do - I can walk you out of town, and make sure no guard tries to attack you, thinking you're raiding the town."

She grinned toothily at me. "Got. In." She took a step backwards, out the door - and in a moment, wasn't there anymore.

I closed and re-locked the door, and as I went back up to bed, I tried to think of how I was going to explain all this to Cheerilee in the morning.

It turned out I didn't have to - the two of us were awakened by a pounding on the front door, which turned out to be a guardspony, who reported that a diamond dog had been caught inside town - but had been carrying paperwork that complicated things, and my presence was being requested in town hall.

In the middle of town hall was 'my' diamond dog, who it seemed wasn't quite as good a ninja as she'd thought she was; surrounded by a whole passel of ponies pointing various weapons, farm implements, and the occasional random object at her... and at the basket at her feet.

Mayor Mare was adjusting her glasses, looking at the papers I'd written out, which described each pup, named them, named me as their official guardian by royal appointment, and that I was granting their birth-mother temporary custody. (After all, it wasn't like I was going to have been able to stop her, short of getting her killed.) "This is all very irregular," Mare was saying to a couple of other local-governmental ponies - none of whom looked to be happy to be dragged out of bed before Celestia's sun rose.

"And don't forget all those tunnels," pointed out one of them. "Who knows how many of them are waiting right under our feet to jump out at us?"

"Oh, there you are," said Mare. "I wanted to ask you-" I interrupted by hoofing her the paperwork I'd gotten Luna to have her court sign off on - while a verbal order from a Princess counted as a royal decree as much as anything else, it was a lot easier to deal with the various bureaucracies to have such things written down. Mare adjusted her glasses to read it, finally saying, "I see."

"Is she under arrest?" I gestured at the circle of ponies

"Well - as best as I can tell, she's wanted in connection with the kidnapping of... well, you."

"There's no mens rea. Where she's from, cows can't talk and aren't people - she wasn't trying to kidnap a person, she just found a loose cow wandering around. And I'm willing to drop any charges about that, since I'm pretty sure she's not going to make the same mistake again."

"There's also the matter of questioning her in regards to the slaver diamond dogs who escaped capture."

"Do you really think that she is going to be willing to say a single word that would betray her pack?"

"At the very least, she broke curfew!"

"... Alright, I'll give you that one." Ringo started crying, which set off the other three. "Excuse me," I said, and none-too-delicately shoved my way between a pony wielding a rake and one brandishing a bowling pin. "'Scuse me," I said more delicately to the diamond dog, and positioned myself above the basket - and all four pups immediately stopped crying as they latched on, the only sounds they made now that of noisy suckling. Yes, I'd been a cow for less then two months, and I still found simply being milked as embarrassing as all get-out, let alone being directly nursed from - but, at least this one time, I took that emotion and used it, standing in place, glaring at each and every pony around me. Almost all of them coughed and shuffled their hooves and found something very interesting to look at somewhere other than anywhere near where I was, and in short order, the only equines left were the bureaucrats and the actual guardsponies.

The Mayor coughed delicately. "Miss Missy," I decided not to correct her about forgetting that I was technically 'Doctor Missy', "we can't really allow anypony with a history of enslavement to simply wander through Ponyville unchecked. And while your... dedication to your... adopted... um... family... is commendable... well..."

"You're looking at this entirely the wrong way," I declared. "Assume for a moment that there are going to be some diamond dogs passing through the area every now and then. Wouldn't it be to Ponyville's advantage if there was a pack of diamond dogs already resident in the area, if that pack didn't do any enslaving, and kept out any diamond dogs who did? Even if there was no direct economic interaction, the simple increase in security would benefit every voting pony in the area."

Mayor Mare raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't object, so I turned to look at the adult canine I'd basically shoved away from her own pups. "From what I saw, your pack traveled a great distance to get here. I'm guessing none of you are enthused about the idea of traveling further. If all you have to do to stay, without being hunted and chased by ponies, is not enslave them... wouldn't that be worth that price? You don't have to feed the maws of dragons anymore - just yourselves, and that, I think, you can do without needing pony slaves."

I turned back to the Mayor. "If I'm wrong, and you let her go - then there's already her whole pack out there, and would one more member really make all that much difference? But if I'm right..."

A certain odor began wafting from the basket. I sighed, and looked back at the diamond dog whose name I still hadn't gotten. "I will admit there's at least one thing you can do for the pups better than I can. I only have hooves, while you have hands... kinda. Fingers, at least. Spare diapers and changing stuff are in the bottom of the basket."

I got another sharp-toothed smile from her. "Go. Right. Ahead."

I sighed, and as I started trying to get at the supplies without pulling the quartet from their breakfast, I muttered to her, "I'm going to take this into account when we negotiate visiting rights..."

Words, Words, Words

Of course, nothing involving so many people and issues so close to the heart could possibly be that simple.

Mother-dog couldn't necessarily speak for all of her pack, and there were various details to try to get settled before they became problematic, so a meeting was set for noon, at the willow-tree where I'd gotten sucked into the tunnel. Both she and the Mayor insisted that I be there. There was a mild discussion about where the pups should go in the meantime, but since I wanted there to be no hint of any coercion for the meeting, I argued they should go with her for now.

I tried explaining to Cheerilee, "Maybe they'll just leave and not show up - in which case they're no longer a problem. Or maybe they'll show up and everything will be hunky-dory, in which case there's no real problem. Or maybe they'll try to show up and kidnap everyone there - in which case I'd rather you were somewhere safe, and weren't anywhere near the place."

Cheerilee pointed out, "She came into my house. I don't have a place I feel safe anymore."

"If not here... what about the school, and your students?" She gave me a dirty look, but didn't argue further. I wasn't happy about where our conversation left off - but it would be a lot easier to try to mend hurt feelings than to stage another rescue operation.

Downstream from the willow, the creek was running low - half the water was still draining down into the tunnel. A few relatively discreet guards waited on the path to Ponyville, while Safe Guard accompanied the Mayor and I.

At the appointed time, momma-dog appeared, along with all four pups - and a large male dog, who carried a spear rather than a staff. He walked right up to me, looked me up and down, and huffed. He glanced at momma-dog, who nodded, then back at me. "So. You wove words that kept Amethyst alive, got her let go." I nodded agreeably. He huffed again. "Don't look like much."

I smiled benignly. "Truth is more important than appearance. Perhaps I could tell you the story of the Test of Bone and Test of Blood." He hunkered down, looking nonchalant but with ears perked attentively, so I told him the story.

I got a couple of chuckles out of him, but when I was done, he gave me another look. "Fancy words about fancy words. I could eat you and words would not stop me."

My mind revved into rapid gear, and I decided that Chekov might not be a sufficient demonstration... but, perhaps, I had a unique opportunity to try something rather more spectacular. "Words might not - but the power of the truth behind the words might. Pick a demonstration, something impossible for me to do from this spot, something I cannot do without magic."

He looked around, and as I'd hoped, gestured at the hole in the side of the stream. "Water in tunnel annoying."

My smile got wider. "Very well. Would everyone please step away from there, please? ... Thank you. Okay. Let's see if this works. Three, two, one..." There was a nice choomf sound, a thud felt in our chests, a sudden cloud of dust - and the small explosion had sealed the hole closed.

It had occurred to me that I hadn't actually seen the message sent by BLUE WELLS, and hadn't actually written the message yet - so at least in a sense, I still had the free will to choose to write something in the future that would affect my present... such as burying an explosive and timer in a particular spot.

The diamond dog was giving me a much different look than he had a few seconds ago. (As was momma-dog, and the Mayor and Safe Guard. Fortunately, the pups didn't seem to have minded the noise.) I just might have looked a little smug. "Are you hungry? I'm hungry. What's your favorite fruit?"

He was looking at me cautiously, but answered, "Blueberries."

I nodded, and calmly recited, "Three, two, one..." He managed not to wince as the countdown finished. I added, "Look behind you."

I had noted, as the diamond dogs had not, that just after the explosion, a lunch basket drifting down from the sky on a small parachute had landed behind them. When he lifted the lid, inside were some blueberry pies. His gaze flickered from me, to the pies, to the streambed, and back. "If you can do that... why didn't?"

I sighed a bit, and settled my bulk down onto the grass. "It's complicated. I may be able to do almost anything - but I can't do everything. There's a... cost, I'll call it that, for such tricks. I've recently paid that price for something else - so, I can still do six impossible things before brunch. Like get some ponies and some diamond dogs talking to each other, and to take each other seriously. Would you care for a slice, Mayor?"

A cow who could do magic, including summoning edible food out of thin air, was enough of a wild-card to make both the Mayor and the Alpha a bit cautious around me - so, mostly, I let them talk. I was a great believer in the power of talking, and only had to clear my throat a few times when they started heading off on tangents.

Meanwhile, momma-dog, who it seemed was named Amethyst, had nothing more to do than I did, so she took the pups out of their basket, set them on the grass near me, and kept an eye on them as they crawled around and investigated the place.

She made sure she had my attention, and pointed at the small crater. "Can. Teach?"

I nodded, keeping my own eye on the quartet as they sniffed and tussled. "Almost anyone can learn - but almost no-one is willing to learn. Um... I'm guessing you mine a lot of different gems, and there's different tricks for different types of gems." She nodded affably, and picked up John by the scruff from gnawing on Paul's leg, before dropping him back onto the grass. "Imagine trying to teach someone those tricks, when they don't even know the difference between quartz and diamond. You have to teach them things that seem boring and dull and useless, before they know enough to learn the more interesting and useful stuff."

She considered that for a long while, occasionally flipping a pup onto their back to tickle their bellies. Then, "Will. Teach?"

"I'm... willing to try." I frowned, judging how best to phrase this. "The ponies' Alpha of Alphas talk to many prophets, and oracles, and soothsayers, and fortune tellers - and they have lived long enough to be able to tell apart many true ones from many false ones. There is a... great storm coming, of sorts - one that threatens all alike, whether they are pony, or cow, or diamond dog, or any other species. Some of the winds of that storm have already started blowing - they might even be what nudged your pack to leave its former home to come here. I am trying to do what I can to prepare for it - but even if I could do six impossible things before every breakfast, I'm still not sure I can do enough to make a difference." I used my hoof to roll Ringo around a bit, and he happily, if toothlessly, fought back by gumming my hoof. "Any time ponies spend fighting dogs is time they can't use to prepare for the storm. Any ponies whose lives are lost fighting, are ponies who can no longer help prepare. So it's worth my time to try to stop such fighting before it starts."

"What. About. Dead. Dogs?"

"I would rather avoid those, too. I'm hoping... well, I don't know exactly when the storm will arrive - it may be tomorrow, it may be a generation from now. Probably somewhere between. Maybe only a diamond dog can come up with the idea that can head off the storm - so I'm hoping there's some way to convince your species to not only live in peace with the ponies, but to... contribute. But before that can happen... peace is a good start. Even if it's just peace between a single village and a single pack - it's something to start building on. And," I pulled my tail out of George's mouth, "if I do die before the storm comes - there should be someone else working on it. The ponies are doing their thing... maybe these four," I pursed my lips and blew onto Paul's nose, which set him blinking, "can help the diamond dogs work on things, however is best for diamond dogs to prepare."

After a few more moments, she got up, and went over to the Alpha, interrupting his conversation with the Mayor. After exchanging some words, she came back, and settled back into the grass again. She glanced at me, and said, "Come. Live."

"You mean... me, live with you?" She nodded, so I considered, my brow furrowing. "I'm... not sure that's the best idea." At her look, I hurriedly added, "That's not a 'no'. It's... me not being sure. I'm doing a lot of traveling lately, looking for ways to prepare for the storm."

"So. Travel. But. Live. With. Us."

"Um... another thing is, well... er... you know how when you found me and these four, it was in a house, and there was a pony there, sleeping?" She nodded. "Well, um, she and I, that is... we're kind of... livingtogether..."

Amethyst looked rather amused at my sudden tongue-tied-ness. She got up for another consult with the Alpha, and when she came back, suggested, "She. Live. Us. Too."

"I don't think she'd agree - she's the local school-teacher."

"She. Teach. Us?"

"Um... maybe. I'm still trying to get the local school to accept calves as students."

The Alpha and Mayor broke apart, and the latter trotted over. "We seem to have an agreement. They'll stay in their tunnels, and we'll stay out of them, and that should be that."

I winced. "Is that all? Have you made any arrangements in case that agreement's broken?"

"I don't see that it will be - we'll just post warning signs, and ponies will know not to go in."

"I can name at least three reasons that won't work: CMC Delvers."

From a nearby bush came a filly's whisper, "What's a 'delver'?"

Mayor Mare winced. "I take your point. Well, back to the negotiating... um, basket."

It was a long afternoon.

When suppertime approached, the two community leaders broke apart, with plans to resume talking the next morning. I commented, hopefully, "It looks like the two of you can keep going without me, right?"

They looked at each other, at me, and simultaneously stated, "No."

I saw an interminably long period of such boring talks stretching ahead of me - so I tried to head them off at the pass. "Let's cut to the chase. If - I guess I should say 'when' - a disagreement comes up, then you promise to try meeting and talking over the whole thing, before either group takes any sort of drastic or violent action. Right?" I got a couple of reluctant nods. "Then everything else is just details."

The Alpha grumbled, "Talking is just talking. Ponies will never say they're wrong."

The Mayor started to hotly object, but I cleared my throat, she glanced at the small crater, and fell silent. So I said, "They might say the same about you. But I bet you'll be surprised at how often simply laying out all the specifics of how both sides see a problem can let people find a solution."

"And if wrong ponies still won't say they're wrong?"

I shrugged. "Then, I guess, all you've lost is a bit of time." I glanced up at the distant mountains for a moment, at Canterlot perched on the side of one, then back down at them. "It would be useful if you could agree ahead of time that if you can't come to an agreement yourselves, to find a neutral arbitrator and abide by whatever they decided - but I doubt either of you would be willing to do so. You'd need somebody you could trust, who had a long history of fairness and honesty, with experience in this sort of thing, somebody who would be willing to rule against either side based on the merits of the case rather than the species of the litigants..."

The two of them did that silent glance-communication thing again, and the Mayor said, "You're absolutely right."

The Alpha said, "Agreed."

I perked up. "Excellent! I can draft a letter to the Princesses to be ready to settle things for you... uh... why are you shaking your heads? ... Aw, come on, I already have a job!"

Idyll

Life was... surprisingly, and pleasantly, dull, for the next while.

That willow tree became the center-point of my life. First, it was just a handy meeting-spot between the equines and canines, and the grass was comfortable enough. I had a trunk of books sent over, both to use as references for legal precedents and for my private reading. After a scheduled rain-shower put a damper on some proceedings, a tent was thrown up, quickly replaced by a sort of gazebo. Not to be out-done, the diamond dogs dug a nice, comfortable underground meeting room. I had to quickly put a stop to plans to try to continually one-up each other, managing to keep things down to a small, Greco-Romanesque villa, a sort of small reference library with some reclining couches, a good shelter-basement, and some secure document storage for the Dairy-based papers. Within a few days, somepony had planted flowers in front, and someone else had installed a bird-bath

I commuted to Cheerilee's house as we tried to patch up our differences - after a few days, we felt comfortable enough to start sleeping (and yes I do still mean sleeping) with each other again, now and then, but we were still very conscious about the differences in behavior and opinion we'd finally found.

I also supervised the expansion to turn Sweet Apple Acres into a backup for the Dairy should something happen to Canterlot, continued regularly visiting Canterlot itself, and even made a couple of trips to the diamond dogs' digs, to better familiarize myself with their assumptions.

I kept up with the exercises and katas Safe Guard assigned, reviewed the scientific reports sent by Micro Scope, and initialed almost anything Page Turner sent my way. I'd finally kicked the Dairy into good enough shape that it looked like it could keep on keeping on without my continual input. I still sent them any new ideas I came up with - for example, I finally recalled the encryption system that Bruce Schneier had come up with that allowed a harmless-appearing deck of cards to be used as the key - but, with a relief, I was able to hand over most of the mere bureaucratic administration to those ponies who excelled at and enjoyed that sort of thing.

While I'd been picked as a neutral arbitrator for any disputes between Ponyville and the pack, things were still early and hesitant enough that no such disputes had yet arisen - and I'd made it clear that I wouldn't be spending all my time in the area, and expected them to find some makeshift way to maintain the peace, some temporary solution to whatever problems they had while I was gone.

Which all meant that, finally, I'd cleared enough of my immediate responsibilities from my plate that I could finally spend time doing that which I enjoyed most: reading, hiking and thinking about what I'd read, and then reading some more.

The Pillar family had started sending copies of texts supplementing the Equinomicon - fragments of a book by the ancient unicorn sorcerer Eye Bon, a few pages from "Colts of Ghouls", even down to individual lines from "Mysteries of the Wyrm". A partial translation of the 'Ponyape Scripture' caught my attention due to references to Mu - which Athena had described as having been destroyed in a previous Game. My response to each item was, roughly, "Do you believe you could pass an honesty-check with Princess Luna, that you have offered fair compensation?". Since the texts kept coming, bit by bit, I assumed the answer was still 'no'.

I finally got back results from one of the research projects I'd farmed out to the Dairy - which, combined with some of the information I was puzzling out from the Pillars' books, was thought-provoking, if not immediately useful. A thousand years or so ago, it seemed there were four immense ley-lines across the face of Equestria, which all met at a single point - the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters. Since that time, those lines had drifted, and now met at a different place. Depending on the accuracy of any individual source, then sometime between a hundred years previously and a hundred years from now, that intersection was located... in Ponyville.

I came up with the idea to take a quick field trip to the Castle's ruins - maybe an Earthly skeptical eye would be able to notice something that local archaeologists wouldn't have thought to look for. I mentioned this to Cheerilee...

... and before I really knew what was happening, an entire expedition had been arranged, including foals to be shown Equestrian history, guards to watch for dangerous wildlife, the Pegasus Express gaining a temporary spur to keep the paperwork flowing, a few engineers hauling carts with the materials to build at least one bridge, Amethyst bringing the pups, and for all that I could tell, Trixie and a traveling circus.

Needless to say, with all those other ponies running around, and me introducing some of the less-Daring-Do aspects of archaeology (drawn mainly from all the episodes of "Time Team" I'd watched), I barely had enough free space to even look at the castle's architecture, let alone do any serious searching for hints and clues about anything important. (And I didn't want the Crusaders anywhere near the Warden whistle, so I kept that locked in a box in my luggage.) I seemed to be the only one who was unhappy with the trip, though, so I tried not to let my disappointment show. Cheerilee wasn't fooled at all; when we settled down together in a tent for the night, she ignored my initiation protestation that nothing was wrong, so I finally sighed, and explained how I'd been hoping to learn something about magical geography, such as by looking for any surviving alignments... but that now I'd probably have to fob the full investigation and mapping off on yet another sub-project manager. She hmed, and looked thoughtful, and we settled in for the night.

The next morning, over breakfast, Cheerilee showed the students what it was like to take a one-square-yard area, and really start investigating it properly, inch by inch, brushing every rock carefully to see if it was actually a piece of an artifact... and before very long at all, the whole class was more than happy to head back to Ponyville. She gave me a wink as they started packing up, and I gave her a short hug I didn't care who saw.

At lunchtime, I saw Amethyst bite into her namesake, we got to talking a bit about crystals, and how they tasted to diamond dogs, and how easy it was for them to chomp them. I mentioned that the best I'd been able to do was break them into pieces. She seemed curious, so I dug out some wire, attached it to my horns, stuck a spare piece of blue quartz between them - and in a few moments, noticed Amethyst looking at me, and the sparkly gravel, oddly.

"What?" I asked.

"You. Did. Not. See?"

"See what?"

She appeared to consider her words, before finally picking one: "Sparkly."

I shrugged. "I don't see much, when I'm using my horns."

"Ever. Stop. Half. Way?"

"You mean - half way before the crystal breaks?" She nodded, so I shook my head. "Haven't tried it. Be a bit tricky - maybe you could pull one of the wires for me, at the right time?" She nodded again, so we gave it another try with a fresh piece of blue quarts... and this time, instead of a broken, shattered, or powered crystal, we were looking at a crystal that practically shone from within.

Before I could say much, she tossed it into her maw, and gave a few crunches. She seemed pleased with the results, commenting only, "Tastier."

I supposed that if nothing else worked out, I could try getting a job as a chef for diamond dogs.

Now that I didn't have to rush around to make sure the Crusaders weren't about to knock down a precariously-perilous remnant of a tower, and suchlike, I was able to simply walk around the ruins and grounds. I had a map pointing to the nearest other sites I believed were, or once were, on ley lines; and surveying gear to check anything that seemed to closely line up with them - though knowing where the sun was, I didn't even need a compass, for this much.

What I kept coming back to was the big display pedestal in the entrance hall - the one with six arms, which had held at least five of the orbs containing the previous Elements of Harmony. If I wasn't mistaken, some of those arms lined up with the original ley lines - and if so, then the directions the other two pointed in might be worth investigating.

But there was also... if those five or six orbs had held the Elements of Harmony... then what was that larger, pearl-like orb, still in the center of the structure, currently draped with moss? Was it just a decoration, or a marker, or something simple like a magic light-bulb, or... what? What would it take to find out? I wasn't a unicorn like Twilight Sparkle, who could levitate things and had the 'spark of magic' - the closest thing I seemed to be able to do was be a battery, refilling crystals or whatnot that I... touched with my... horns.

Hunh.

The engineers were investigating a distant piece of the ruin to see if it could be shored up, the remaining guardsponies were patrolling the edge of the clearing outside the castle, and Amethyst was curled around the pups as they all took a nap out front... so none of them were close enough to be in any real danger. And I'd put as many things into motion as I'd been able to think of - so I could, now that I thought about it, put myself into danger without worrying that doing so would necessarily put all of Equestria at risk... if there was some reason to.

And what better reason was there then to find out something new, something which might help everyone in Equestria from Cheerilee and the pups to the most distant zebra?

My curiosity becoming irresistible, I put my hooves up on the pedestal, leaned my head in, and touched the tips of my horns to that orb.

It started glowing. Brighter, and brighter, and brighter...

I opened my eyes. I was on my back, looking up through the castle's missing roof at the blue sky. Amethyst leaned into my field of vision. "Still. Alive?" She poked my in the side with one claw, and I winced. "Good," she stated. Then she tilted her head. "Where. Get. Necklace?"

I blinked, and twisted my neck - and there, indeed, was a golden circlet around my throat, with some curlicue decoration; in the very front of which was something as round and unfaceted as a pearl - but instead of being pure white, was blue, and green, with a scattering of white streaks here and there.

"Hunh."

Ow ow ow

If I'd managed to evoke some sort of mysterious seventh Element of Harmony - or, for all I knew, a mysterious first Element of Individuality, or of Rationality, or who-knew-what - then that wasn't a piece of information I wanted broadcast far and wide across Equestria. So I said to Amethyst, "I thought I'd try something new. I should probably put it in my luggage. I reached with a hoof behind my neck to find a hook or something, but couldn't quite catch it. "Maybe I'll take it off by the camp." My bandage-wrapped leg ached more than usual as I got back to all fours.

At the camp outside the castle, I wasn't even able to open my tent. The mysterious force that let me use my hooves as hands the way other ponies did just wasn't there anymore, reducing me to pure dexterity to do anything - and I wasn't especially dextrous. Amethyst seemed rather amused when I asked her to help me with the simplest tasks, even just opening a drawer. I'd previously gained that hoof-power when a couple of other cows had touched their horns to mine; my mind had gotten zapped to oblivion for a while, but after an extremely embarrassing time dealing with the camp's sanitary arrangements, I was convinced getting my hoof-mojo back was worth a few hours of something like samadhi.

I hadn't really gotten to take a look at the back half of the castle, but I did have the directions pointed at by the Elements pedestal, not to mention my new accessory (which I tried to imply to Amethyst wasn't new at all, and tried not to imply even existed to anypony else)... and the nearest herd of cattle was in Ponyville... so I made some excuses about my leg bothering me, and that I thought I should get it checked out soonish, and started down the trail back to civilization.

Unhappily, it turned out my excuses were much more accurate than I'd believed them to be.

By the time I and my escort had gone half an hour from the castle, the bite from the bulette (which had just chomped on a rust monster), which had spent some time soaking in unfiltered stream water, was now turning an angry red, with ugly-looking swelling. It was becoming too painful to put any weight on, and trying to walk on three legs was incredibly slow - while I gave it a try, it was barely another half hour before a cart arrived from back at the castle expedition, onto which I was duly loaded up.

I took some pain-killers from the first-aid kit (don't leave home without it), which made the gallop to the Ponyville hospital tolerable, if not exactly pleasant.

My case seemed to baffle the local medical establishment - I'd been healing up just fine until now, with any potential infection handily under control.

By this time, the pain was a constant, throbbing companion. I tried to make a joke about just chopping it off and fitting me with a peg-leg, and privately wondered how long it would be before I was serious.

There was one rather obvious happening between when my leg had been fine and when it hadn't... and even the best unicorn spells were, at best, temporarily masking some of the torture... so I broke my personal notions of security enough to have a private discussion with a doctor, asking if perhaps my symptoms could have been exacerbated by magic... exhaustion, or depletion, or whatever the term might be. He hemmed and hawed, and I finally got him to admit that he didn't know, but it certainly wouldn't have helped any of the healing spells that had been put on me.

I was stuck in a hospital bed. (Well, if I'd really wanted to try, I could have gotten out, but I didn't exactly want to.) So I asked Red Pepper to ask Daisy Jo to ask some of the members of the local herd to come visit me.

When they arrived, I ended up not having to say a word. I tried picking up my hospital-bed blanket with a hoof, and failed miserably. They looked at each other, then formed a small circle, heads-in, and leaned forwards...

Blessed relief.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that there's more to happiness than the simple absence of pain - don't you believe 'em, unless they've got a whole philosophical system behind 'em to back 'em up.

The doctors were pleased that their efforts had near-miraculously brought my infection back under control. But they still wanted to keep hold of me for observation, in case of another flare-up. With the addition of one piece of furniture to my hospital room - my trunk of reference books and reading material - I was willing to oblige them.

Cheerilee had visited while I was zoned-out. She'd left behind a bouquet of red clover flowers - simple, but one of my favorites. They were quite tasty.

I compared the Elements pedestal to my maps, and was easily able to match up four of the six branches with the old placements of the four large ley-lines. I checked the fifth, extending the line it was pointing towards... and, at least within my rather large margin of error, the first significant place it was pointing to was easy to find: Ponyville itself. I almost expected the sixth to be aimed towards Canterlot, but it was entirely the wrong quadrant - close to due south. There didn't seem to be anything noteworthy anywhere near that line, on any of the maps of Equestria I could find. One more mystery to add to the pile.

And speaking of mysteries - I now took the opportunity to take a much better look at my necklace, and its inset stone. Having just buried myself in maps of all scales, right away I noticed something about that round, blue-and-green-and-white orb... the central part of it was a near-perfect map for the maps of Equestria and the nearby lands. Given that ponies had explored a rather unhappily small area outside of their homeland, it was entirely possible that the remainder of the stone was a match for the rest of this world's landmasses and seas.

I remembered from the first My Little Pony episodes that the Elements worn by the Mane Six matched their cutie marks. As a cow rather than a pony, I didn't have a cutie mark - so perhaps this was a sort of default setting for this Element. Or maybe it showed what my cutie mark would be if I had one.

An hour or so later, I noticed something new - the white streaks weren't laid out quite in the same arrangement as before. I hazarded a guess that they represented clouds - though whether they bore any relation to the planet's actual weather would take at least a few days of observation of the stone and collecting reports from all across Equestria.

The photo-copied Equinomicon was an astonishingly boring read... especially since most of the subject matter seemed to be concerned with explaining how there were beings who lived outside of Equestria, of various levels of malevolence, and how to try to summon and control them. I had a healthy skepticism that the rituals for 'controlling' extra-Equestrian beings would actually work, but since the idea of "Cutie Mark Crusader Cthulhu Cultists" alone was enough to send shivers down my spine all the way to my tail, I put most of the pages back into secure storage, retaining only those that I hadn't yet been able to puzzle out.

And so, that evening, as I flipped through papers describing unspeakable-to-pony horrors (which were really rather mild, compared to some of what humanity had come up with) under the moonlight, occasionally poking at what might be an ancient artifact of powerful magic, with a horde of doctors and nurses outside my closed door to keep me in and everyone else out...

... the CMCs helped a giggling Cheerilee in through my window. And, wonder of wonders, the trio closed the blinds, and went away, though Scootaloo nearly had to be dragged by the other two. (I tried not to imagine what sort of cutie mark she might acquire if she did stay.)

I didn't accomplish any further paperwork that night. Though I suppose you could say some research was done.

(Author's note: Have toothache. Seen dentist, getting root-canal Monday. Might have influenced chapter.)

Playing Games

"Safe Guard," I said, musingly, "Your assistance and instructions have been exemplary - and because of that, I'm considering increasing your Dairy security clearance level."

"But I'm already at the highes - ah. So secret that even the existence of the level itself is a secret?"

"And that sort of quick analysis is why it might be worth risking the additional exposure that informing you would bring."

"So it's still only a 'might'?"

"It's very much merely a 'might'. For just one example," I waved a hoof, "I don't even know whether you would be willing to accept memory charms to remove the most troublesome knowledge, when your possession of that knowledge creates more risk than potential benefit."

"If I were convinced that that were the best way to serve the Princesses - I would do so without hesitation."

"I believe you. Which brings us to another question - do you serve the Princesses absolutely and without question?"

"I would be offended at the question, if I hadn't learned enough about you by now to know that you intend no insult."

"So that's a 'yes'?"

"It is."

"Hypothetical scenario - both Princesses get turned into Nightmare Moon and Nightmare Sun. Would you still do as they say?"

"They would no longer be in their right minds - so I would do my best to do as they would have ordered, were they still capable of doing so."

"Hm... new scenario: The Princesses are unconscious. You can save either their lives, or the lives of everypony else in Canterlot. Which do you choose?"

"I..." He frowned. "I do not like this scenario."

"No rush. Think it over, and let me know if you come up with an answer. In the meantime - I've recalled a little game I'd like us to try to play."

"This is the '15 Game'. We start with the numbers 1 through 9 between us, and take turns claiming them. The goal is to be able to take three of your claimed numbers, and have them total up to 15 - not two, not four, but three. That means that having 1, 5, and 9 would be a win, but having 1, 2, 3, and 9 wouldn't count, nor would having 9 and 6."

"Seems... simple enough, in the absurdly complicated way you do things."

I smiled. "Ready to go?"

"Very well. 2."

"1," I instantly shot back.

"Um..." He considered. "3?"

"5," I countered without hesitation, "And now, at worst, I'll tie.

"Let's see - you've got 1 and 5, so if you got 9, you'd make a 15 - so I'll take 9 myself."

"4," I said simply.

"Er... what's left?"

"6, 7, and 8."

"Er... 8?"

"6," I announced, "and I win, with 4, 5, and 6."

"Hm. I was trying to keep you from doing anything with that 1."

"One you took the 9, that 1 wasn't going to be part of any winning trio I made. Care to try again?"

"Is there a point? You've obviously memorized some sort of strategy."

"Actually, I've never played the game before right now."

Safe stared at me for a long moment... then announced, "5. It's right in the middle, it's got to be good for something."

"It's certainly the number that's part of the greatest number of winning combinations. 3."

His brow furrowed as he concentrated, before eventually announcing, "9."

"1. Two of the remaining numbers will allow you to win, if you play perfectly; one will ensure my win; one will guarantee a draw; and one might allow me to win, but will more likely result in a draw."

"How do you know all that?"

I smiled serenely at him. He growled, then said, "6."

"Ah, the more complicated one. 4."

"So - you've got 1, 3, and 4. And what's left is 2, 7, and 8. You need a high number to get anywhere near 15, so I can ignore 2. What you've got adds up to 8, so... 7?"

"You almost pulled off a draw. 8 - which lets me assemble 3, 4, and 8 to make 15."

"Going to let me in on the secret?"

"If you really want me to tell you, I will. However, I think you would be better served if you worked it out for yourself."

"Fine. Can you at least give me a hint?"

"Hm... why don't you start by figuring out all the winning combinations?"

"This is starting to feel an awful lot like elementary school again..." Despite his complaints, in short order he'd scribbled out the list:

159
168
249
258
267
348
357
456

"Yep," I agreed, "that looks about right. You could use that as a cheat-sheet in the game. Kinda big and hard to remember, though." I looked at him expectantly.

"You really think this is something worth spending my time on?"

"There's a larger lesson this is illustrative of, yes."

"Fine." He started fiddling with his papers and numbers, and not knowing how long he might be at it, I grabbed the top item in my inbox to review.

After ten minutes or so, he stopped and stared at his paper. He squinted, ran his hoof over what he'd just written, then gave me a true glare. "You coltuva... we were just playing tic-tac-toe!"

I raised my brow. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure. Stick all the numbers on a tic-tac-toe board right, and they all add up to 15 - so when you pick three in a row, you get a winning combo."

"That's right!" I agreed. "Now why might I have put you to all this trouble to figure that out yourself?"

"... are you trying to push me to figure more things out on my own?"

"Mm, in general, yes, but I had something more specific in mind."

"That with the right secret, you can win anything?"

"Definitely not. I'll try showing why not in a moment. But for now - it's that if you have the right knowledge, a seemingly complicated problem can be transformed into a different problem, which you can already have the solution for. Or at least part of a solution. Let's try looking at a few other games."

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course you do - you can walk out that door right now, and neither I nor the doctors will stop you."

He sighed. "Let's get it over with, then."

"Okay. To start with - here's a couple of dice. The rules are - you roll one, and I roll one, and whoever gets the higher number, wins."

"Doesn't seem like much of a game."

"What can you do to improve your chances of winning?"

"Um... nothing."

"Precisely. Now here's a different set of dice, with different numbers - this one, which I give to you, is numbered from 1 through 3, twice; and this die, which I'll keep, is numbered 2, 3, and 4, twice. What are your odds of winning now?"

"Not as good as before. And I still can't do anything but roll and hope for the best."

"Excellent! An exact analysis. Snakes and ladders?"

"Still just rolling and seeing what happens."

"True. So let's go for something more complicated - one-deck Blackjack, where you're given all the time you want, and all the note-paper you desire, as you try to decide whether to stand or hit."

"Well - I suppose I could note down all the cards as they're shown, and work out the exact odds for what the next card would be, and then do whatever gives me the best chances."

"Very good. So how about going back to tic-tac-toe?"

"Once you've worked out how to play - well, you always know what the best move is."

"Checkers? Assuming you were as immortal as the Princesses."

"I... guess you could still work out all the possible games, and find out whatever the best strategy actually was."

"Chess."

I got an unexpected smile from him. "That's my favorite - I was even in a few tournaments, before I joined the Royal Guard."

"We'll have to play, sometime. For the moment...?"

"Well - there are a lot of possible positions on a chess board. It might take even longer than the Princesses have lived to figure them all out."

"Much longer, I suspect. So if you can't do that...?"

"Then - you work out the best lines of attack you can find, and study your opponent to find out what they're weakest against."

"Poker."

"Not really my game. It's all bluff and counter-bluff - the cards almost don't matter."

I nodded. "We can get into it more another time. So - what general sorts of strategies have we mentioned so far?"

He considered. "There's none at all, just taking your best chance; and there's analyzing the game for whatever strategy is best; and there's analyzing your opponent for whatever works against them."

I nodded again. "Seems about right. So here's the big question: if someone ties you to a chair and forces you to play a game you never wanted to... what should you do?"

"Beat the manure out of whoever's forcing you."

I smiled - truly happy. "I do believe your clearance is going to be approved, after all. There's just one final test to go through."

White: Safe Guard
Black: Doctor Missy

1.e4

Safe: "Eh, let's just start with a Kings Pawn opening."

1... e5

Missy: "I can live with a King's pawn game, they're common enough."

2.Bc4

Safe: "Okay, how about a Bishop's opening?"

2... Bc5

Missy: "If you can remember how to run through classical variation."

Safe: "What, are you just mirroring all my moves? Can't you come up with anything better than that outdated defense?"

3.Qe2

Missy: "Going defensive already?"

3... Nf6

Safe: "At least you're not going for an amateurish open game, even if you did block your own queen."

4.d3 Nc6

Safe: "I've got thirty-eight possible moves, to your thirty-six - and I have three more squares covered than you, as well. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Missy: "It's still early."

5.c3 Ne7

Safe: "Retreating so soon? Bo-ring. All this defense is foolish for you, and the opening's almost over."

6.f4 exf4

Safe: "Why do you know such a classic opening, anyway?"

Missy: "I'm happy as long as I avoid the obvious mistakes I could have played."

7.d4 Bb6

Safe: "You've just lost half a move with that defense."

Missy: "Maybe - but it's the only move I could have made without losing a major piece or position."

8.Bxf4 d6

Safe: "You're looking really uncoordinated - I've got superior position and defense, and am up eight squares on mobility and coverage."

9.Bd3

Missy: "Now who's giving up a half-move to continue their defense? If I were you, I'd have attacked my knight, a sacrifice but getting better control of the center - and picking up half a move."

9... Ng6
10.Be3

Safe: "Tremble at my impenetrable defense!"

10... 0–0

Missy: "You're playing white - by the time the opening ends, white's not supposed to be defending. And now I've got a clear advantage in the center."

11.h3 Re8

Missy: "And now you're guaranteed to lose at least a minor piece - and since you still need to castle, you're going to lose another half a move later."

12.Nd2 Qe7

Missy: "Looks like you're trying for a queen-side castle... but I have a three-kill lane in the center which you can't defend against."

Safe: "But if you take it, you open yourself up to a quick mate."

13.0–0–0 c5

Safe: "The opening hasn't gone well for you - I've still got a clear advantage."

Missy: "Except there are over a dozen different gambits to try, now that we're hitting midgame."

14.Kb1 cxd4

Missy: "What are you trying?"

Safe: "Isn't it obvious? I'm in a strong counter-strike position - if you make one wrong move, I can end the game."

15.cxd4 a5

Missy: "I still can't figure out why you moved into a defense."

Safe: "It's not mystery - your play is inexperienced, and when you attack, you'll make a mistake, leaving me free to win."

16.Ngf3 Bd7

Missy: "Time to start worrying - you made some mistakes yourself early, and now you need to start losing pieces, and can't attack with so many majors blocked."

Safe: "Eh, soon as you take my rook-pawn or bishop-pawn, my attack will be unblocked."

17.g4 h6

Missy: "And now my king is better defended than yours."

18.Rdg1

Missy: "Wouldn't moving your pawn to g5 have been stronger?"

18...a4

Safe: "Who needs that strength, when your pawn-feint is so obvious?"

Missy: "It may be obvious, but you can't attack it without losing another half-move by moving to defend."

19.g5 hxg5

Safe: "Your king's in danger, from a Queen-support attack, but mine is perfectly safe."

Missy: "You're clearly losing, but I'll admit that was a decent sacrifice to free your rook."

20.Bxg5 a3

Safe: "Locking up your pawn was a really stupid move."

Missy: "If you say so. Forces you to lose another half-turn, though."

21.b3 Bc6

Safe: "What, you're going on the defensive, now?"

Missy: "Unless I'm suckering you in. Can you tell which it might be?"

22.Rg4 Ba5
23.h4 Bxd2

Missy: "I don't think I like your gambit - so I'm doing something else entirely."

Safe: "You're delaying a turn and sacrificing your bishop, just to make me change my defense?"

Missy: "And forcing either your knight or queen to be totally out of position."

24.Nxd2 Ra5
25.h5 Rxg5

Safe: "Ah, now I see your plan. You're fulfilling the Bishop's game, taking an unimportant piece for your rook."

26.Rxg5 Nf4

Safe: "I've been setting up my rook-queen attack for a dozen moves - and now you've finally made your mistake. You've given me a clear advantage here to mate!"

27.Qf3 Nxd3

Missy: "And so the endgame begins - a race for a mate."

Safe: "Not much of a race; all you've got is a slow knight attack, supported just by that blocked pawn - compared to my big rook-queen attack."

28.d5 Nxd5
29.Rhg1 Nc3+

Missy: "Check. Why didn't you go after my knight, and end the mate-threat?"

Safe: "I wasn't afraid of it - and it would have lost me position and time."

30.Ka1 Bxe4

Safe: "I know that was a botch - you could have used your knight instead of the bishop to capture that pawn, I'd have had to move my rook to g7 to check, and you could have had... a slightly better chance of winning."

31.Rxg7+

Safe: "Check. And you've only got a single move."

31...Kh8

Missy: "And after making it - almost certainly checkmate in seven for me, checkmate in eight for you. Too little, too late."

Safe: "What? Where?! I don't believe you - you're just trying to psych me out and get me to surrender early."

Missy: "I don't mind playing it through if you don't."

32.Qg3 Bg6

Missy: "I planned this sacrifice many moves ago."

Safe: "You were right about one thing - I do get to mate you in seven more turns."

33.hxg6 Qe1+

Safe: "Wait, what? You're sacrificing your queen?"

Missy: "Certainly. It buys me just enough time."

34.Rxe1 Rxe1+
35.Qxe1 Nxe1
36.Rh7+ Kg8
37.gxf7+ Kxh7
38.f8=Q Nc2+
39.Kb1 Nb1 mate.

Missy: "Checkmate."

Safe sighed. "I guess I don't get that security clearance after all."

"What? Of course you do. The test wasn't to beat me - though that certainly wouldn't have hurt. It was simply for you to show you had a reasonable level of skill at strategizing, of adapting to unexpected events, of trying to find new solutions to old problems... and all that jazz. Though in that queens-and-rooks exchange, you really should have avoided the whole thing - you could have won, if, instead of taking my queen, you'd moved your knight next to your king, and then promoted your pawn to a knight."

"Mind if we work that through?"

"Not at all."

34.Nb1 Kxg7
35.gxf7+ Qxg3
36.fxe8=N+ Kf8
37.Rxg3.

Safe snorted. "So when you said checkmate in seven..."

"... I was trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Seems to have worked, too - though I doubt I'll manage to pull the same trick on you again. Anyway - we're going to need to get a conference room properly secured, so that we can get your promotion effected without too many voyeurs trying to listen in. Isn't that right, girls?"

There was a long silence. Finally, a small, girly voice whispered, "How did she know we were here? I was sure we were hidden and silent..."

I wasn't going to tell them that their camouflage and stealth had been absolutely perfect - I really hadn't seen or heard the slightest trace of them. After all, there was playing the basic rules - and then there was playing the players.

Research Ethics

"So," I said, "with the costs of guarding, of raiding, the risk of escape and of punitive raids - is holding ponies enslaved really worth all the effort?"

Amethyst tilted her head, and replied, simply, as was her wont, "Yes."

I resisted the urge to facehoof. "Then how about this - wouldn't you be able to get a lot more work out of ponies who were happy with the job they were doing, and save a lot of costs if you didn't have to keep watch over them and constantly acquire replacements?"

"Maybe. But. Ponies. Hate. Digging."

"Ponies are willing to do a lot of things they hate, if you pay them for it."

"Pay?"

"Yes, it'll increase your costs compared to enslaving them - but it should be less than your current expenditures."

"Ponies. Hate. Dogs. Too."

"Most dogs, yes - but a lot of ponies are willing to change their minds about individuals. And your pack, with its peace agreement, has the unique opportunity to convince ponies to like you more than before."

She finished gathering up the quartet from my udder. "Will. Talk. To. Alpha."

"Please do." I'd hoped for a bit of a stronger positive response, but this was about the best I could realistically have expected - after all, she was from a culture in which slavery had been a successful adaptation for, as best I could tell, centuries, while I was proposing what was, to them, an untried, untested, and generally risky new way of doing things. The fact that they'd been willing to relocate in search of better opportunities, and that they'd been sane enough to not fight to the death against a mass of Guard ponies, was what gave me any hope at all - but it was still going to be a long upward struggle to pull the birth-mother of my semi-adopted pups into the Enlightenment.

In the new digs under the Sweet Apple Acres barn, in the securest location outside of Canterlot, hopefully proof even against CMC Ninjas, I'd gathered the newly-promoted Safe Guard along with Micro Scope.

"Now that the two of you are cleared," I said, "either or both of you are now able to take over this level of the Dairy's operations in case I become incapacitated. Which means that I don't have to treat my life as being the most important thing in Equestria, and can take reasonable risks, when the chance and scale of reward is sufficient."

Safe, "You're not planning on doing anything foolish, I trust?"

I shook my head. "Nothing of the sort - but if an opportunity arises in which I can be the best Dairy agent to investigate something, I just might be willing to head out and do more than be the spider lurking in the middle of my web."

Micro, "Nothing wrong with that - arachnids are some of the loveliest creatures around, when you can get up close to look at them."

"I'm sure they are - but they're not the topic of today's meeting, unless you've got some sort of species slaver-killing super-spider to unleash...?"

Micro, "Nothing so dramatic."

"Alrighty, then. After poring through as much of the information collected by the Dairy as I can, there seem to be two items which might be worth my while to personally investigate. One of them is somewhat broad and general - something's stirring up the diamond dogs, enough so that our new neighbors decided that a long journey across half of Equestria, into an unknown location, was preferable to staying where they were. Something that can make them that unhappy is something it could be useful to have explicitly on our side."

At their nods, I continued, "Secondly - after examining the ancient castle of the royal pony sisters, and checking various geographical references, I've found what seems to be an unknown and unusual geographic location, in the middle of the Great Southern Rainforest - a site which may have some sort of connection to the Elements of Harmony, the most powerful magic in Equestria. The more that we know about the Elements, the better they can be applied, making them more useful even if not any more powerful. So my playing Daring Do might also be a sufficiently valuable use of my time."

Micro, "Why not hire Daring Do herself? She's supposed to be somewhere in that forest. And if not her, there are plenty of pony archaeologists who wouldn't mind taking a crack at it."

"Because of this." I took out a locked wooden box, twisted a key, pressed on certain secret points to engage one set of latches rather than another - and opened it to reveal the necklace. "This may very well be linked to the known Elements of Harmony - and the way I discovered it implies that it might be as connected to me as any of the Elements are to their Bearers. So to have the best chance of figuring out more about the Elements - this, and I, should be part of any such investigation."

Safe, "Are you asking us to help you pick which one to go look at?"

I grimaced. "Not... exactly. Before I even think about investigating either item, there's another piece of fundamental information I need to get a hold of - and depending on what it is, I might not be able to do either." I sighed. "Equestrian cattle are as smart as ponies. Extra-equestrian cattle are as almost as dumb as rocks. Since there's probably been some migration of cows either way over the centuries, this suggests that whatever the difference is, it could easily affect existing beings. That is, there is a small, but very non-zero chance that if I ever leave Equestria, I will instantly lose all sapience - becoming nothing more than a mindless animal, all that makes me 'me' ceasing to be."

Safe frowned. "That doesn't seem very likely."

"Say that there was a one-in-a-hundred chance that if you crossed a certain bridge, your head would get chopped off. Would you be happy to trot across it?"

Safe, "I suppose I take your point. So are we here to be prepared if you go mindless?"

"I... hope not. I'm actually here to get your advice on an ethical question."

Micro, "'Ethical'?"

"When the potential negative side-effects include the possible extinction of self, is it ethical to use sapient research subjects, even if they are fully-informed, voluntary, and being extremely well-paid?"

Micro: "Surely somebody's tried looking into this before."

"If they have, I haven't been able to dig up the results."

Safe, "If such information isn't in the libraries or archives - perhaps you could ask one of the Princesses?"

"I think they've been a little put out with me since I pulled off my impossible day - ask me later and I'll explain why - so I've been trying to fly under their radar lately."

Safe: "What's 'radar'?"

"Uh... beneath their notice, then."

Safe: "So - on the one hoof, you have a possible experiment which may risk lives; and on the other, you might be able to avoid having to do the experiment at all by being uncomfortable when you ask some questions. I think it's pretty clear what the ethical choice is."

"... I can't think of a single reason you're wrong."

"Hi, Spike!"

"Hey, Missy." While Ponyville's library didn't have any of the secret or esoteric texts from the Royal Archives, or the Pillar family collection, it still had plenty of general references that helped fill in background information on Equestria for me. So since Twilight had seen fit to leave the little dragon behind when she went off looking for Griffin, I'd ended up becoming one of his biggest customers. "Ready for that history book on Pegasopolis yet?"

"I'm still digesting the one on Unicornia. Actually, I was wondering if you might be willing to take a letter..."

Dear Princess Celestia,

I am thinking of running some errands outside of Equestria's borders. However, I have heard that that might not be the best for my mental health. Do you think that learning new things is worth the stress and risk?

Hopefully,
Missy

In merely a few minutes, during which I was trying to untangle how the various noble titles of ancient Unicornia had evolved from actual descriptions of jobs to various iterations of ranked hierarchies, Spike belched out a reply.

Dear Missy,

New knowledge is almost always worth a little trouble. Still, why don't you come for a visit before you go very far?

P.S.: You can let Spike know that my faithful student, Twilight Sparkle, and her friends, are now on their way back to Ponyville.

Your friend,
Celestia

When I read the second line, I got a rather loud cheer from the baby dragon - who immediately started panicking about all the chores he'd been leaving undone, and dove into a pile of checklists to find one he could use. I discreetly made my retreat.

It seemed like Princess Celestia would be willing to provide the information, so I didn't worry about getting any of her memory charms removed, and kept the conversation focused on the slavery-fighting level of the Dairy. I was also rather hesitant to talk about the possible seventh Element, so decided not to bring it up just now, and instead talked about possibly investigating the disruptions to extra-Equestrian diamond dog packs as my motivation.

"... and so I'd rather work to outfit a non-bovine expedition than go myself, if I wouldn't actually be able to contribute anything useful."

"My little cow," she said, a phrase that sounded rather odd on the ears even in her gentle tones, "you need not worry quite so much about this. The reason the information you seek is not in the public libraries is to help protect bulls and cows such as yourself. Unlike most Children of the Alicorn, you live best when swimming in the sea of ambient magic, but you are quite capable of living without it. An Equestrian cow who becomes gravid outside of Equestria's magic may not have sufficient magic in her body's meridians for the baby's brain to grow into full personhood; but a cow who comes into Equestria from outside will soon have more than enough magic flowing within her for any calves she bears to be as intelligent as any other Equestrian cattle."

"... It must be a bit odd, to grow up as an intelligent cow with a non-intelligent mother. Still, I'm not planning on having any family any time soon, if ever, so I shouldn't need to worry about that, right?"

"Your mind does not depend on magic, merely on your brain, so leaving Equestria does not mean that you will instantly lose your intelligence. However - your brain's good health does depend on a certain level of magical flow running through it... but, fortunately, all cattle are very good at storing a great deal of magical power within your meridians, and so you can spend weeks at a time outside of Equestria's borders without even noticing the slightest decrease in that flow - which would happen long before such reduced flow harms the functioning of your brain. Still - I would recommend that you return to Equestria as soon as your business outside it is complete. And that you not breathe a word of this to anypony else, and think very hard about even telling other cows."

I wasn't sure whether I bought the idea of magical 'meridians' flowing through my body, but given the existence of magic at all, I wasn't willing to rule it out, especially if it made useful predictions, such as how to keep my brain and mind in good working order.

I also didn't want to bring up the fact that, not too long ago, I really had exhausted all my magic in just a few moments... so I was going to have to make my own arrangements to deal with such a situation. Maybe I could do something with the crystals - if I could use my horns to pump magic into them, maybe I could find a way to drain the magic back out to refill my 'meridians'. Failing that... maybe I could find an excuse to bring a few willing cows along, so that if my own magic reserves were emptied, we could all form a quick circle to replenish them.

Or some other solution - now that I had at least a general idea of at least a rough theory, I had enough leverage to explore all the options available... and I didn't even have to ask for volunteers to serve as experimental test subjects for investigations of unknown levels of lethality.

Hopefully, I never would.

And in the meantime - Onwards, For Science!

Such Sweet Sorrow

I had tried a few small experiments in Canterlot related to spontaneous musicalism - and, after what had happened in Manehattan, my primary concern for such had been to minimize the negative consequences if anything went wrong - ideally, to none at all. Fortunately, nothing serious had happened, and I had gathered evidence supporting a few useful clues. It was definitely some sort of magic, if not a 'spell' as was cast by unicorns, and seemed to require some minimal conditions to happen at all... and, most interestingly, seemed to work best when it wasn't forced. (Music that directly fired off some magic seemed to be another phenomena entirely.)

And so, as I prepared to bid Cheerilee farewell for what would likely be a couple of weeks, I... nudged. I didn't explicitly make preparations; but I... made subtle arrangements, to open up potential opportunities which the musicalism could naturally take hold of and weave into itself. For example, instead of simply hiring a band, I found the weather ponies who stacked up excess clouds, suggested a location where they could store them on a particular day, found a group of pegasus instrumentalists, and had a pony point out to them that there would be this lovely group of clouds they could settle on to practice at a particular afternoon. A delivery truck which could - not necessarily would, but could - happen to drop a florist's excess inventory for the day at the right time and place. Looking for birds which might be due for release back into the wild around the right time. Ribbons. Bubbles. Fireworks. Pretty much every romantic cliche you could name, I didn't make certain would necessarily happen at just the right time and place - only nudged matters just enough that, if the musicalist field (or however it worked) 'wanted' to, then they could.

And so I brought Cheerilee aboard the Alicorn, fitted both of us with the new designs for parachutes that even I was willing to entrust my life to... and, hoof in hoof, I took a deep breath, sang the first three words... and the two of us stepped out into mid-air high above Ponyville, for an experience I hoped would be as memorable as possible.

I'm flying high, but I've got a feeling I'm falling,
falling for nopony else but you.
You caught my eye,
and I've got a feeling I'm falling.
Show me the ring and I'll jump right through.
I used to travel single, oh,
we chanced to mingle, oh,
Now, now I'm a-tingle over you.
Hey Mister Parson stand by:
for I've got a feeling I'm falling,
falling for nopony else but you.

Oh honey, oh honey, I never felt this way.
Romantically I'm up in the air.
Its funny, so funny, me taking it this way.
Don't know if I should,
but gee, it feels good.
I'm flying high, up in the sky, but I've got a funny feeling that I'm falling,
falling for nopony else but you,
and you know it too.
You caught my eye,
and baby that's why,
I've got a funny feeling that I'm falling.
Show me the ring and oh boy I'll take it from you.
I used to travel single, oh,
we chanced to mingle, oh,
Now, now I'm a-tingle over you.
Oh Mister Parson stand by:
Don't leave me now;
I've got a feeling I'm falling and how,
falling for nopony else but you!

That's all!

As it turned out, Cheerilee had also come up with an idea for our farewell party... one that ended up making me almost as nervous as she had been when she'd taken a leap of faith in me.

"I'm sure you remember Lily," said Cheerilee.

"Of course," I nodded in the direction of the pink-coated, amber-maned filly, who had her namesake flower tucked behind one ear. I was a bit confused about why she was in Cheerilee's living room with the two of us, but always willing to be polite. "I've seen her working at the florist's, along with Daisy and Roseluck."

Cheerilee stepped closer to me as she continued, "I know how you are really, really hesitant to even think about seeing a bull or stallion in anything like a romantic way." That seemed to come rather out of left field, but I nodded again. "And you know about my more experimental years, when I didn't have to try to hard to look like the perfect teacher in every way. Well, the 'Flower Sisters' were some of my very best friends then."

"Er..." I had a thought about where this might be going - but if it was... well, let's just say that I'd be even more clueless than usual in such social situations where I had to deal with actual feelings, including my own, instead of focusing on getting a particular job done.

Cheerilee leaned up against me, comfortingly. "I'm not saying we should merge our little herd with theirs right away..." My eyes widened about as wide as possible, and I think I may have made an 'eep!' noise, as she continued, "but we can at least find out whether or not there are any easy-to-find obstacles, or whether or not any of us 'click'. And if we don't - we'll all still be friends, and can still help each other look for anypony who'd fit well with any of us."

"Um..." I said, with all the brainpower I could muster. Finally, I managed some actual words. "I know I let you take the lead in - well, just about everything about us - but, well... I'm not really sure I'm, um, ready for even the idea of having more than one mare in my life." I managed to boot up enough of my memory to recall some advice podcasts from Dan Savage. "I don't want to stop you if that's the sort of lifestyle that makes you happy, but..."

She held up a hoof to my lips. "I knew you'd panic like this. I'm not suggesting that we take her straight up to bed with us - though if you want to..." Seeing my expression, she continued, "just to have a pleasant evening together, with a friend who might - or might not - eventually become more than just a friend. Dinner. Drinks. Talking. Maybe you can bring out your telescope to show her some of the stars. Maybe she can show you something gardening...y. See if you're comfortable feeding the pups in front of her, and if she's comfortable helping you change their diapers. Just... see. For me?"

"How can I say no? Just... I'd be happier if I knew I had an escape-hatch - that if things get to be too much, there's some way to bring it all to a quick close, without causing anypony any offense..."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "If that's what you want - then your safeword is 'halogens'."

The three of us had a pleasant dinner, based on an adaptation of my personal recipe for kitchen-sink spaghetti. The ponies grew tomatoes, basil, oregano, marjoram, and thyme, which were the only absolutes. From the pony point of view, the secret ingredient which made it a hit was finely-ground textured vegetable protein - that is, a pony-digestible analogue for ground beef. There were a few predators who lived in pony society who wanted to enjoy the taste without shocking their neighbors, and I'd been able to find a little hole-in-the-wall shop in Canterlot who supplied such products at only marginally obscene prices. I didn't mention that particular aspect to Lily, just that it involved wheat gluten and soy protein and careful flavoring and such -

We talked about current events, other ponies, and Lily finally revealed the story behind why it was such a ridiculous idea for Big Mac and Cheerilee to ever get together - for once, it was her turn to blush instead of mine. I stumbled awkwardly, more than once, when the subject turned to issues where I still hadn't finished putting together a decent cover story; but Cheerilee, mindful of my various psychological troubles and my three-times-weekly appointments with my p-doc, helped bridge those gaps for me, turning the talk back to safer grounds. Like what ponies considered to be 'experimental'. After just a few minutes of hearing that, my tail was pulled rather protectively downwards - I was astonished that any mare involved in that particular subculture retained sufficient internal organs to breathe, let alone reproduce. (I made a mental note that unicorns must have had some extremely specialized healing spells.) But since it was 'just us girls' (yet another blow to the rapidly-dwindling reserves of the originally male aspect of my psyche) here, they seemed to have no reservations introducing me to concepts I'd only previously encountered when I'd deliberately gone a-browsing in the darkest corners of the Internet.

But as the two of them did the dishes in a sink a little too small for me to help, their heads together and giggling about some in-joke, I took a mental step back to take a new look, and... despite my having to be dragged to each and every new relationship-type thing Cheerilee thought of... I didn't actually mind the dragging, even if I did mind it. If I knew how to explain the way I felt, I probably wouldn't need to be dragged in the first place. Ah well - whatever was going on in my head, step by step, I was figuring out better and better how to make Cheerilee happy. I finished the non-dishes clean-up, and in short order, found myself in the backyard, my forelegs crossed on top of the fence as I looked up at Luna's moon... and whether it was from my becoming more attuned and responsive to the local spontaneous musicalism effects, or just something arising from my own heart, I found myself singing...

Love was blind to me, now it's kind to me,
Love has opened my eyes.
Since it came to me, life's a game to me
With the sweetest surprise.
I never knew how good it was to be
a slave to one who means the world to me.

I loved that mare from the start,
And way down deep in her heart
I know she loves me, Celestia knows why
And when she tells me she can't live without me
What wouldn't I do for that mare?

She's not an angel or saint,
And what's the odds that she ain't
With all her faults I know she'll get by
I'll be so true to her, she'll never doubt me
What wouldn't I do for that mare?

Oh, when she lets me lean my weary head on her shoulder
I close my eyes right there and wish I never grow older

I'll never leave her alone,
I'll make her troubles my own
I love that mare as nopony can
I'm just no good when her hooves are about me
What wouldn't I do for that mare?
Oh, what wouldn't I do for that mare?

I'll never leave her alone,
I'll make her troubles my own
I love that mare better than I do myself
I'm just no good when her hooves are about me
What wouldn't I do for that mare?
Oh there's not a thing I wouldn't do for my mare.

That's all!

I heard a trio of soft, dreamy sighs from a nearby shrubbery, and as I smilingly shooed off the CMC Romance Writer Researchers to find some other target of investigation, I mused to myself that I wasn't sure that I agreed with everything I'd just sang, but... I wasn't sure that I disagreed with it, either. And... if nothing else, I didn't see any reason not to let matters develop to where that particular song did precisely describe how I felt.

Celestia hadn't needed to warn me about magic-based brain damage if I stayed out of Equestria too long - I was already trying to think of ways to cut my forthcoming expedition as short as possible, to come back as soon as possible to Cheerilee. And... if that was what would help keep her happy, adding 'and company' to the end of that last sentence.

No, Lily didn't stay overnight. And that's all that I care to describe about that night.

The next morning dawned bright and early; and since the sooner I left, the sooner I was likely to get back, I went to get myself hauled up onto the Alicorn as soon as possible: Onward, to adventure!

Geeking Out

They say that adventure is filled with long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I had every intention of minimizing the time spent in terror... and I had so many thoughts bouncing around in my head, that I could be locked in an empty, unlit room for a month and be thinking of novel connections and new ideas without pause the whole time.

(I found it privately amusing that I was being an 'adventurer' in more ways than one. The word itself originally applied to ships, which, instead of merely running cargo along an established route or being hired to carry something from point X to point Y, actually had the captain buy some cargo outright to carry on their journey, in hopes of at least offsetting costs. Doing so 'added' to the profit of the journey, the 'venture'. I knew all this because when I'd been in high school, I'd put my savings into buying HBC shares - the Hudson's Bay Company, the oldest remaining chartered corporation still running, which had once governed a greater land area than the Roman Empire had at its height. Its official name was still the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay", and since I wasn't the governor, I'd had a legitimate excuse to call myself a 'real adventurer' since before I could vote, as long as I didn't mind making a joke depending on an absurdly obscure piece of etymological trivia.)

Naturally, I had no intention of simply sitting still during the trip. While it was a relief to be able to hand over the paperwork to the Dairy's new acting director while I was gone, I was still bringing along a couple of projects likely to keep me distracted whenever I didn't have anything better to do. One was classified SHORT ROUND; other than leaving some backup notes in Canterlot, I was bringing the whole setup with me. I'd raided Canterlot's royal research museum, its institutes of higher learning, and even a few rich geology buffs, for samples of every different type of crystal I could find. I wanted to see if I get get a quantification of how much magic they could store - and once I had that basic measurement under my belt, I could start poking around with things like how quickly any of them could gain or lose magic, how long a light-diamond would shine on a given charge, and all that other lovely basic undergrad-level physics stuff.

Of course, since the only reliable way I currently knew to charge up a crystal was from a cow's horns, and none of my fellow bovines had agreed to come along, the only way I had to charge these crystals for testing was to use the magic stored in my own body. Since that involved my mind going bye-bye for a few moments, this also meant I had to cobble together some sort of mechanical gizmo which would automatically disconnect the crystal from my horns while I wasn't able to. But even more limiting was the fact that I only knew of two ways to recharge my body's magic - slowly from Equestria's general magical field, and quickly from other cows' horns. Since I didn't want to run out of the magic that kept my brain in good working order once we left Equestria proper and entered the rainforest, I wouldn't be doing any of these experiments there.

So, for the more tropical part of the trip, I'd also brought my equipment for CAT WHISKER, my attempt to put together a working radio receiver. I was pretty sure I had a transmitter, at least one good enough for Morse-code type wireless telegraphy; but that didn't do me much good without something that could pick up what was being transmitted. I'd once been a cub scout interested in electronics; I'd ended up with a ham radio license; and I was pretty sure I'd figured out at least a few designs for a crystal radio that would work. All that I was missing was a single component: a diode, or as the Brits put it, a rectifier, something that would let electricity flow through easily in one direction but not in the other. Equestria didn't have a semiconductor industry; and while they had air pumps, such as to blow up balloons, they weren't good enough to create the sort of vacuum that allowed vacuum tubes. So I was going back to an even earlier technology: touching two different materials together, running current through them, and looking for a combination that worked well. The classic version was to take a crystal about the size of a knuckle, such as germanium, and to gently press a thin wire (the "cat's whisker") against a particular spot on it with a particular pressure. Unfortunately, even back on Earth, this had been an incredibly fiddly process - even for crystals of a type known to work, most particular crystals had flaws rendering them useless for this purpose; and each crystal that did work had a particular sweet spot the whisker needed to touch, and the pressure it was touching with could be neither too low nor too high. Here in Equestria, the problems were magnified - for just one thing, there was no 'Germany' to name germanium after. Much more importantly, significant aspects of physics were different - I still hadn't figured out the reason everything everypony looked at had outlines, only that it was a physical phenomenon which persisted into photographs; when meant that photons behaved differently; which meant that the overall electromagnetic field those photons were a part of behaved differently; which implied that the subtle electric properties of any given substance could easily differ from those on Earth; which meant that even if I found a chunk of germanium, it might not do what I needed.

To give a sense of the scale of the problem - I could either press a metal whisker against a crystal, or two crystals against each other. I easily had a dozen different types of whiskers, and a hundred crystals. For each crystal-wire combination, I had the choice of picking exactly where on it to try (call these parameters 'latitude' and 'longitude'), how hard to press the whisker, and depending on what configuration I used for the rest of the radio, up to four different variables to adjust that altered arcane properties such as 'inductance' and 'capacitance'. If I was trying a crystal-crystal combo, I also got to choose how large an area of facet to have push together. Multiply that by the number of crystal combinations... and I might end up having to learn many more than 10,000 ways to not make a radio before I made my first one. I could only hope that there were actually a large number of settings which could do the job, and that I'd stumble onto at least one of them sooner rather than later.

And, of course, there was always the possibility that I wouldn't be able to make a functional radio at all. In a universe where it was a reasonable hypothesis that one or more local mammals were able to shove around major celestial bodies, it was entirely possible that the closest I'd ever get to wireless was through a crude, mechanical switching of terahertz-level pulses - that is, blinking lights on and off at ponies.

I really wanted to do better than that.

The Alicorn didn't head due south straight away. Micro Scope said that she had a relative in Stalliongrad, an archaeologist who'd done some work there in decades past, and who might have some unpublished papers and maps that could help us. Since this particular expedition was planned to be a peaceful intelligence-gathering one rather than investigating dangerous bands of diamond dogs, and since Safe Guard needed some practice running the Dairy, and since Micro was interested in collecting some fresh specimens from the rainforest while we were there, he stayed behind and she came along. I was going to miss the fast-paced games of chess with Safe - postal chess through the Dairy network, while we were still in range of it, was fun in its own way, but not quite the same.

As we neared the city, Micro admitted that while Copper had helped inspire her own interest in the sciences, he was also something of a character, and we'd probably have the best chance of getting any useful information out of him if she went to see him by herself. The crew had every intention of staying aboard the Alicorn for the whole trip, come what may; when left me, Red, the four pups, and Amethyst at loose ends for a few hours. (Before I'd left, I'd been going back and forth over whether or not I should bring John, Paul, George, and Ringo. It should be a reasonably safe trip, but it was still a trip into semi-unknown jungle. I'd finally simply talked to Amethyst about it - and I really do mean 'to' her, since she didn't say a word in response. By the time I finished describing everything I was thinking, she had simply started packing her things, tucking various extra items into her vest alongside her crystal-snacks, and when the time came, she carried the pups to the boarding ladder. It was rather hard trying to puzzle out the thought processes of a woman who never used two words when one would suffice, and preferred none to one.) I could have stayed aboard myself, doing the same experiments I'd been doing on the trip there and would be doing when we left... but that seemed a bit silly to me. So we all went down to do all the stupid tourist stuff that people going to Stalliongrad did.

While the city was no Manehattan, it did have a selection of museums and theaters, some parks, a planetarium, a whole lot of industrial infrastructure including a canal and railways. But what we ended up spending almost all of our time at was the circus. With Red the pegasus to show we were harmless, the four pups got stuffed into a quadruple-seat stroller pushed by the bipedal member of our party, and there was juggling, and clowns, and acrobats, and contortion, and non-sapient animal acts like juggling bears... all of which were part of a story. It was like going to the theatre for a musical, only with more random interruptions with seltzer-squirting pony-clowns. I was unfamiliar with the fable, and tried to focus on the details of the plot - it was something about a villain who captured good creatures and transformed them into monsters, such as turning a quartet of ponies into dragons to pull his chariot, and who wanted to pull a Nightmare Moon to create eternal darkness; and who was defeated by a rainbow of light brought by Applejack the earth-pony, Spike the baby dragon, a unicorn named Twilight, and a collection of less familiarly-named compatriots. Amethyst and the pups seemed to enjoy the circusy trappings and animals, and Red perked up at the songs and ate more snacks than the rest of us combined. I didn't really have any way to find out how old this particular story was, and how much it might have been updated since Princess Luna's return.

We picked up an embarrassing amount of souvenirs... and the pups got some rather funny looks from Micro when we got back and she saw them in their t-shirts.

"So how'd it go?" I asked.

"Could have been better, could have been worse," she hedged. "I've got a trunk with some of his papers and maps and so on that he thought might help us. I'm pretty sure there's more he could have said, but didn't want to talk about to me."

"Shall I go have a visit in my more official capacity?"

She shook her head. "I don't think that'd work. I mean, I'm family, and this is as much as he was willing to help me out - I can't imagine that his attachment to the government bureaucracy is stronger than to his own kin."

"Well, it's some, at least, and hopefully there's more in there than we already had. Want any help going through it?"

"I think I shall try sorting through it all first myself, to see if some proper organization can narrow the range of what to focus on."

"Fair enough. You know where to find me if you need anything."

When I began dismantling the SHORT ROUND gear to start fiddling with CAT WHISKER, one of my first tasks was to get a baseline reading, of a would-be diode that didn't actually do any good. The simplest way to do that was to stick two crystals of the same type together, such as my favorite sapphires; which, pretty much by definition, would pass current as easily in one direction as the other.

Except, in this case, the readings I was getting not only weren't the same in either direction - but, according to my test instruments, I was actually getting more power out of the component than was going into it! Obviously, I was doing something wrong - possibly even my electrical meters themselves were faulty. So I put the circuit I was testing aside, rebuilt it from fresh components, pulled out the backup meters, stuck in a new pair of sapphires - and, this time, got exactly the null results I'd originally expected to see. I didn't want to have a similar problem cropping up in the future, so I tried the original test equipment on the new circuit - and got the proper readings. I started swapping in components, and everything was fine - until I plugged in the first pair of sapphires. Again - no current at all passed in one direction, and something like twice the input current came out the other way.

I temporarily ignored the impossibility of those results, and swapped one of that pair for one from the other pair, and still got the super-diode effect. I tried the other two - and got the ordinary null result. I tried the remaining combinations, and whenever one particular sapphire was used, got the effect, but didn't with any others. I tried pairing it with a ruby, and it still worked... for about two more minutes. Then the effect disappeared entirely.

I took a moment to set my tools down and think. As far as I knew all my mineral samples were the same; all that I'd been doing with them since I got them... was...

... charging some of them with varying amounts of magical power. Including one test sapphire.

I unpacked the SHORT ROUND gear I'd just put away, stuck a sapphire into the timer-box, stuck my horns in, and when my head cleared in a few moments, took that sapphire and plugged it back into the CAT WHISKER test circuit. The results were obvious and immediate - it was once again a super-diode.

I put everything down very carefully, and then went to unlock the safe containing the encryption keys - I wasn't entirely sure what I'd just found, but if it had even a fraction of the potential I was imagining, it was more than worth using up a page of the one-time pad to send the details back to the Dairy at Canterlot, just in case the Alicorn went down in flames in the next couple of minutes. I handed the encrypted text to Red, who flew down to what the maps said was a nearby stringer, who'd be able to pass it along towards the Pegasus Express, and on from there.

While Red was out doing her thing, I thought, and I thought, and I thought some more. One of the main limitations of Earthly crystal radios was that they got all of their power from the radio signal itself, which meant a very limited range - depending on the transmitter power, most likely a scant few tens of miles, or less. But if a magically-charged crystal could serve not just as a diode, but as a built-in amplifier (at least for as long as the charge remained)... and, now that I thought about it, there were a few other electronic uses to which such an amplifier-crystal could be put... including to the makeshift transmitter design I was using. I took out my drawings of circuit patterns for transmitter and receiver, came up with a new symbol for an amplifying-diode... and tried laying out a new set of designs. They were obviously no good, so I grabbed more paper, and tried again. And again, and again. Eventually, I figured out something that was marginally satisfactory - but could still be made better. Red came by and talked for a bit, and I waved in her general direction and muttered something positive. Amethyst came by, and I adjusted the way I was working to make room for the pups to nurse. After a while, she brought them back to nurse again. I started putting together some physical implementations of some of the circuit designs I'd been drawing, so that I could start measuring how well the super-diode effect worked, and for how long, at various voltages, currents, and other electrical properties. I refined. I modularized. I noticed my head was starting to twitch to the left every time I had a useful thought - unfortunately, it was also twitching to the left when I had a non-useful thought, too. I put a transmitter circuit at one end of my workbench, a receiver at the other, and got a satisfying buzzing from the latter. I asked Red to ask the crew to do some woodwork to put together some cases. I dug up some manuals on how the ponies had learned were good ways to build buttons to be pushed by hoofs, but not by accident.

Finally, I folded a set of wiring into one case, latching it closed; then did the same to a second. I grabbed one and carried it outside, onto deck - it was night. I didn't try wondering which night, I just hunted down Red, who turned out to be back sleeping in the stateroom behind the room I'd been working in. "You've memorized pulse-code, right?" I asked, as she blinked blearily up at me.

"Uh... yes?"

"Here," I shoved the milk-jug-sized box towards her. "Put the earphone in, and start flying away, so we can see how far away you can still hear the pulse. You should be able to pulse back with that button... wait, do you need your hooves to aim while you're in the air? Hold on, I should add a strap to the case so it can hang around your neck, so you only need one hoof. Or your chin - well, I'd need to move the button, but this is a circuit test instead of an ergonomics one, so that can wait for the next surface redesign. Which I'm trying to hold off on until I can see if I can put the crystal in series with itself without generating a feedback resonance that would end up shattering the crystal if not exploding it - don't worry, this design doesn't have anything of the sort - or if I'm going to definitively need more than one, in which case I'm going to try to put them all onto a single removable card for easy replacement." My head twitched left. "Why are you still here? Do you need to grab a bite to eat first to make sure you have enough blood sugar? I'm not sure how far you'll need to fly - this might stop working at any distance more than the length of the airship, though I'm expecting it to be a few hundred yards, which is reasonably decent for a first-generation walkie-talkie. Or flyie-talkie, in your case, though that doesn't rhyme at all and would make for terrible branding, if we ever go commercial, which I rather doubt we should any more than we have with Chekov. I think we have some cake frosting in a tube in the pantry which you could suck on to get maximum calories in minimal time-"

She finally used both hooves to clamp my muzzle shut. "When's the last time you slept?"

"Mm mph." She carefully loosened her grip on my mouth. "I dunno. I've been kind of focused the last... while. What time is it?"

"Three in the morning."

"Okay. ... What day is it?"

"Right - that's it. Here. Get onto my bed. There you go. Lie down. Hand me that... whatever, and I'll just put it down here out of the way. Close your eyes. If you're not asleep in five minutes I'm going to get Micro to dose you with - anything that'll knock you out. The pups can drink bottled for a while. Don't make me sit on top of you or tie you down - you know I can and I will."

"I think I left my soldering iron on..."

"I'll take care of it. Now: sleep!"

I slept.

Rain, Rain, and More Rain

When I woke up, it was raining. And hot. And damp. And raining some more. (In fact, you can pretty much assume it was raining the whole time we were anywhere near that rainforest, even if I forget to mention it from time to time. My glasses were either fogged or streaked, my coat was soaked and dripping, towels required extra effort to get dry for their next use (and before they started getting moldy), papers had to be weighted to keep from curling up, and so on and so forth.)

I saw the wireless was where I'd left it, so wandered out onto the deck (only partially sheltered from the rain by the balloon). I leaned over the railing to get a good look down, at the trees, trees, and more trees we were gliding over. I thought a bit about the last few days - sure, I'd made a discovery which had the potential for changing the face of Equestria, and/or giving the Dairy a tactical, if not strategic, advantage over every possible opposing interest group... but it wasn't really like me to go on a days-long, monomaniacal sleepless project-binge. The closest parallel I was able to think of... was when Twilight snapped after the parasprite invasion or was about to miss her deadline letter; or when Applejack tried to harvest the whole orchard by herself; and, of course, Pinkie went a bit off her rocker when she thought everypony forgot her birthday, and Fluttershy occasionally raged, and Rarity had her histrionics...

... now that I was looking at it, there seemed to be a certain tendency to unbalanced insanities in the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. If I wanted to be able to keep my own priorities straight, maybe I should try putting that necklace right back where I found it. Assuming that would change anything - I didn't even know if I was a 'Bearer', let alone if I could stop being one if I tried. Trying to find out any such important little details was, after all, what I was hoping to accomplish with this little jaunt.

A gust of wind sent a patter of rain droplets across the deck and over me, and I found myself starting to sing...

What does it matter if rain comes your way
and raindrops patter along?

The rain descending should not make you blue
The happy ending is waiting for you

Take your share of trouble, face it and don't complain
If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain.

Happiness comes double after a little pain
If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain.

What if your love affair should break up,
as they sometimes will
When you kiss and make up, boy what a thrill!

Sadness ends in gladness, showers are not in vain
If you want the rainbow, you must have the rain.

Look for brighter weather, oh watch for the Sun again
If you want the rainbow then you must have the rain.

Pull yourself together, whistle a happy strain
If you want the rainbow then you must have the rain.

So if your lucky star deserts you, and if shadows fall
Even though it hurts you, laugh through it all

Be a cheerful loser, you have the world to gain
If you want the rainbow, why, you just must have the rain.

That's all!

Red's voice popped up from behind me. "You done?", she asked, in a tone dryer than anything else in the area.

"Er," I blushed a little, "I think so," not just referring to the singing. "How bad was I?"

"Right up to that last bit, not too bad. Had to prod you to get you to eat enough, but you didn't seem to mind whatever we did, as long as you could keep on doing your... whatever. We kinda thought you were just being, well, you, with your secret projects and all that."

We watched a flock of giant, feathery mosquito-things, bigger than robins, circling around above a pond. "Maybe I should have brought my psychologist along."

"Eh, I'm sure she can take all the time you need to fix your head once we get back."

I was about to correct Red's assumption of my p-doc's gender, then decided it didn't matter. "I give you my advance permission to tie me to a bed whenever you feel you need to." Red coughed, which made me snort. "If that's what you're thinking, there's a certain pony in Canterlot who would want to have very cross words with you if you tried." I paused, then added, for honesty's sake, "At least, without asking her first."

Red coughed some more, which is likely what covered up other sounds, for I was suddenly thwacked right between the horns. Amethyst glared down at me. "For. Being. Silly," she explained.

"Yeah, I probably deserved that. I, uh, didn't do anything... that is, the pups are all alright, right?"

Amethyst saved words by simply nodding. Red filled in, "You didn't really play with 'em much, but kept 'em well-fed."

"I remember that much, at least, I think." It seemed a bit weird to me that it didn't seem all that weird that I was a sort of wet-nurse. Of course, I was a cow in a flying airship talking to a pegasus and a bipedal dog, and I'd just spent a few days inventing electronic circuits which were physically impossible on Earth... so my weirdness-meter was probably gone all to Tartarus and back anyway. After a few moments of companionable silence, "I think," I said, "I'm going to get something to eat - and then," I looked at Red, "are you up to seeing if me going insane for a bit resulted in something useful?"

"Eh," she shrugged, "the weather's not great for my flight feathers, but it's what you pay me for, right?"

Turned out the twin wireless sets kept on transmitting pulse-codes to each other as far as Red was willing to fly from the Alicorn - a few miles, at least - with no sign of any signal fade.

I wasn't sure if I could adapt the circuits I'd built for actual voice - modulating a carrier-wave was significantly more complex than simply turning that carrier-wave on and off - but even this much was... a lot more than I'd hoped to accomplish. Even if the magic-charge on the sapphires did fade out in the middle of our testing, rendering both units useless until they recharged... and I didn't have any intention of using my own finite reserves to charge the things while we were outside Equestria, at least not unless I had to.

"Say, I haven't seen Micro since I got up - what's she doing?"

"Sleeping," Red answered. "While you were building these, she was going over her uncle's papers, plotting our course, and generally keeping in charge of the crew."

"Remind me to have bonuses get paid all around, once we're back in Canterlot. And when she wakes up... unicorns can recharge light-diamonds, right?"

"Who else can?"

"Think a 'corn might be able to recharge the sapphires?"

"One way to find out, isn't there?"

Once Micro was back among the living - yep, she was able to pour some magical energy into the sapphires, and it only took five tries for her to be able to focus it all into just one sapphire of a super-diode pair and not the other. Once she had that - she was able to keep a wireless set in one room going continuously, until the one in another room ran out. If I'd thought to bring a second unicorn along, so each one could keep a wireless set's super-diode powered continuously... then we just might have been able to keep both sets working indefinitely.

(In case I haven't been clear on this point, I should probably note that the magic-power wasn't being used for the actual transmitting - the wireless set used ordinary, non-magical batteries for that. No actual power was needed to receive the signal, or to power the ear-phones; what the magic-power was powering was the single piece of equipment which transformed the wireless signal received by the antenna into a different sort of signal which the ear-phones could turn into sound-waves. The wireless boxes we were currently experimenting with took advantage of the magical super-diode's amplification to make the buzzing easily audible. If I was willing to go back to the trial-and-error method of matching crystal against crystal, I might be able to find that something other than sapphires would last longer for a given magical charge, or I might even find an Equestrian version of an ordinary diode which didn't require any magical power at all - but this was the one functioning system I'd been able to find so far, so it was the one we were trying.)

Micro was taking care of navigation, and every time she went off to check our course, she seemed less happy. I asked about it, and she said, "I think Blueblood got gypped in the repairs. We not only keep drifting from our course, but that drift is getting worse and worse - at first it was just a fraction of a degree more than could be accounted for by wind and instrument tolerances, but now, when I checked our course, we were a whole five degrees from what I set us to. If this keeps up, the next time I go look, we'll have drifted further. Annoyingly, it's not even the same direction each time - half the time we're drifting to port, half to starboard. It's taking more and more effort to keep heading directly towards the target location you indicated... I'm expecting that something is going to break outright and have to be repaired."

"Do we have the tools and materials?"

"As long as the gasbag's envelope stays intact, we should, and there's no sign of anything wrong with that."

I thought about it. "Maybe it's not the ship. Ponies don't come this way too often, but they do wander around every now and then... and there's no sign on any pony-drawn map of anything near where we're going."

"So?"

"So... maybe ponies getting too close are... pushed. Nudged away. If they weren't specifically aiming for our target coordinates, they may not have even noticed."

"Do you think someone's trying to keep us out?"

"I... don't know. Maybe it's a natural phenomenon - well, as natural as things get on this planet." I frowned. "Safety first - we do have children aboard. But, while keeping us safe - see how close we can get."

'As close as we can get' turned out to be 'about five miles'. At that point, if the Alicorn were pointed precisely in a certain direction, it moved slower and slower, as if heading into a strengthening headwind, until it stopped; but just a slight turn either way, and it would slide sideways, until it was aimed elsewhere. It wasn't like a hard force-field, but still wasn't letting us make any headway in the air. So the rest of our investigation would have to be on the ground. I was going, of course - and I was going to wear the Elements necklace, and bring along all my usual assortment of gizmos and tricks. The pups weren't coming, which meant Amethyst was also staying. The crew were staying. Micro and Red went back and forth a bit, until they finally played a pony version of rock-scissors-paper. Red won (or possibly lost - I didn't ask) - so she was coming down with me. She'd also carry one of the wireless sets, to send back reports on our progress, so there would be some record of how far we got if we were eaten by grues before we made it back.

The tree canopy was far too thick to be sure of a safe landing by parachute, so I once again found myself being dangled by rope, like a worm on a fishing line, while Red casually flew around and around and around...

I later had it on very good authority that around this time, Cheerilee was occasionally heard to sing to herself when she didn't think anyone was around, such as this number...

When night is creepin'
And I should be sleepin' in bed
If you were peepin'
You'd find that I'm weepin' instead

My lovin' Missy left her filly again
Said she'd come back but she forgot to say when

Night after night, I'm cryin'
Missy, won't you please come home?
Missy won't you please come home?
I'm so lonesome

No one can fill that vacant chair
Home isn't home when you're not there
No need to knock, the door is open for you
Please, Missy

Even the clock keeps tickin'
Missy won't you please come home?
Missy do you have to roam so very long?
There's lots of other fillies who would like to be foolin'
Haven't slipped yet, but I'm liable to droolin'
Missy, Missy, won't you please come home?

Please, daddy
Even the clock keeps tickin'
Missy won't you please come home?
Missy do you have to roam so very long?
There's lots of other fillies who would like to be foolin'
Haven't slipped yet, but I'm liable to droolin'
Missy, Missy, won't you please come home?
That's all

Personal Priorities

After taking a few moments to reassure Red that I was doing just fine, I quickly rejoined the woody alicorn. After walking next to her for a few long moments in silence, I asked, "Was the purpose of those... tests really just to delay me?"

She didn't bat a slit-pupiled eye. "This time, perhaps. More usually, they are to prevent mortals from becoming an annoyance by visiting too often, by filtering out all save those who are worth my paying attention to as individuals."

My forehead wrinkled. "By which you mean... those who are either decent enough individuals to pass, those who are evil enough to kick the sap out of your Forest Guardians, or those who are clever enough to bypass them?"

A mere fraction of a flicker of a smile. "Something like that. Where are the Bearers of the other Elements of Harmony?"

"The last I heard - trying to convince an air-pirate to be less violent."

"Why are you not assisting them with that?"

"I was doing something else when they came up with the idea and left... that, and I hadn't become a Bearer yet."

"Interesting."

We continued down the path. I noticed that she didn't lift her legs to step over the smaller roots that curled across it; her hooves and legs passed through them as if they weren't there. The plant growth was quite solid to my hooves, so I had to focus a bit more on my walking than usual to avoid tripping and stumbling.

She inquired, "Is there a motto that you live by?"

"Actually, there is: '"Why should I believe that?" is the most important question'."

"Hm... no, that's not right." I was about to object, when her eye turned to look at me, and said, "Perhaps there is a cultural movement you are a part of, which separates you from other Children of the Alicorn. An aspect of your identity you would hold to in the face of all who lack a true understanding of its benefits."

"I... suppose there is. I'm not used to thinking in those terms. Maybe... hackerdom, in the classic sense? The Baconian project? The Enlightenment?"

"This first one you mentioned - could you describe how a member sees the world, differently from those outside it?"

I took a moment to ruminate on it. "Maybe: Tomorrow can be better than today, if you can figure out how to make it that way."

"Ah." She smiled. "That is one mystery solved."

"That's nice." I waited a few long moments, and when she didn't seem inclined to say anything, "Which mystery is that, then?"

"The identity of your Element, of course."

I ran our conversation through my mind, and suggested, "Ethic of Hard Work?"

"Who would work at all, if they had no hope of making a better life? Here we are." We had been walking alongside one of the train-sized roots for a bit, and had now come to where it lifted from the ground entirely, revealing a dark opening underneath. "There are caves under the World Tree. In some caves are springs or wells. You said you came to learn; this path takes you to a well which, if you drink from it, is said to give the Wisdom of the Ages."

"Said by who?"

"The one who drank from it - a one-eyed stallion, I believe. Frenzy? Fury? It was some time ago..."

"Did he share what he... 'learned'?"

"Not with me."

"Do you have any actual evidence that he was wiser after drinking than before?"

"None comes to mind."

"Then while I thank you for the suggestion - I think I shall respectfully decline at this time, pending any further testing that is permitted to determine the validity of the claim. I have enough to worry about with my mind already."

"You refer to your species' dependence on magic for intelligence?"

"Oh - you already know about it."

"Of course I do. You need not worry - there is more magic here in this grove than is spread throughout the realm of Celestia."

"It's back to 'the realm of Celestia and Luna', now, if you hadn't heard."

"Ah, yes. The change in the moon. Thousand-year habits are hard to break."

"I'll... take your word for it. I wouldn't mind finding out personally, but I haven't learned a decent trick for such immortality yet."

"Hm... in the heights of World Tree sits Amalorg. She possesses a seed, which, with her presence here, has extended her lifespan well beyond its allotted span. Were you to take that seed from her, you could gain such longevity for yourself."

I squinted through my rain-dotted glasses up towards the enormous tree's foliage. "Is there just the one seed?"

"Yes."

"And would this... Amalorg die without it?"

"Eventually."

"Then taking it from her, calculatedly, would be a form of capital punishment - and I do not consider myself competent to sit as her judge, jury, and executioner. I may change my mind, eventually, when the snows of age start chilling my bones - but while I'm still young enough to enjoy the freedom of my conscience, I would prefer to act in accordance with it."

"Of what use is your conscience, when it will die when you do?"

"Who says it will? If the principles I live by are conducive to the continued existence of society, then assuming society survives, it will tend to consist increasingly of people who share them. And if those principles do the opposite, then I wouldn't want them to be perpetuated anyway."

"That assumes 'society' continues at all."

"Well, yes - but I have every incentive to hope it does, and try to help it to."

"Why not simply ignore it, and graze whatever grassland suits you?"

"I'd be dead many times over without it. It passes on useful knowledge, such as how to cure diseases. Positive-sum exchanges, trade with useful resources from distant places, the community of scientific inquiry, the common defense... whether I bear an Element or not, even if I was a completely heartless and emotionless creature, it would still be in my rational self-interest to support community."

"You are a very strange little cow."

"That almost goes without saying, I'd think, given that I'm guessing very few cows ever come here at all."

"Perhaps."

"I do appreciate the offers you have made for me, even if I haven't accepted them. While I'm here - is there anything I can do for you?"

"Perhaps. Do you have any powerful magic, other than your Element?"

"Not really - I can sing, and get other ponies to sing and dance along."

"That tends to works rather poorer outside of Equestria compared to within it. Are you a powerful warrior?"

"... I'm afraid not, though I do have a few tricks up my sleeve."

"Perhaps you are a stealthy sort, sneaking into places others would keep you from?"

I glanced at myself. "With this bulk - er, not so much."

"Can you call upon plants or animals to do your bidding?"

"... I can tell a possum to play dead." My attempt at joke fell flatter than roadkill.

"What is it that you do, then?"

"Mostly - move information from where it's known to where it can do good... and I seem to be a fair hoof at digging out useful secrets. I've also accepted responsibility for raising some pups, who are waiting for me back on my air-ship."

"I see." She looked off into the distance. "Perhaps there is a small item you can deal with better than I."

She started walking again, and I perforce followed. She led the way to a new under-root opening, and walked into it without hesitation; I did hesitate, but I also went along. After merely a dozen body-lengths or so, she stopped in front of an alcove in the dirt wall - in which a trio of adolescent ponies were curled up, sleeping. It was too dim to make out their colors, but it looked like a unicorn, a pegasus, and an earth-pony.

The alicorn said, "They passed through the edge of the forest I tend, and drank from what they should not have. I would have left them to their fate, but that spring is sensitive, and would have caused annoyingly widespread difficulties if polluted by corpses. So I placed them in hibernation and brought them here, to await Celestia's next visit, to return to her. But she has not come in some time - so perhaps I shall entrust them to you, instead."

"Are they poisoned? There is a medical kit on the air-ship, and a unicorn who knows some healing spells, but..."

"What affects them is nothing so mundane - but from what I have learned of you, is well within your capabilities to deal with."

"... Care to be a little more specific?"

"Not really." Her woody horn glowed for a brief moment. "They will now awaken after they have left the grove, and when you and you alone are near them. That should suffice." Her horn glowed more steadily, and the ponies lifted into the air. She turned around and carried them back to the tunnel's entrance - and as I followed along, back towards the wall of thorns.

"I get the feeling," I said, "that I'm being dismissed."

"I do have an entire forest to maintain. If you wish to return after you have finished with these three, I will not stop you."

With the tunnel through the thorny vines closed behind me, Red asked, "So was there any treasure?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Who was that who hovered these three out here?"

"You know, I never thought to ask her name." I eyed the sleeping ponies - red, white, and blue - then looked out at the jungle, and said, "I think we're going to need the block and tackle."

They'd been hauled up to the Alicorn, and settled into what was nominally my sleeping room. After Micro had given them a cursory exam, which confirmed the alicorn's statement that they didn't have anything medically wrong with them, I chased everypony out and closed the door.

They opened their eyes, looked at me...

"Goddess...", they breathed in awestruck tones, apparently at my astonishingly average appearance...

"Er... what?"

The Ideal

"I apologize," said the blue earth-pony, "if the limits of my mortal mind led me to perform beneath your otherwise exemplary predictions, oh divine beauty."

"If you wish to punish any of us," said the white pegasus, "we will gladly accept whatever form of correction you deem most proper."

"I wish I could talk as fancy as they do," said the red unicorn, "but since I can't... you're just so perfect, and I'm not - we're not - and I wanna do anything I can for you, an' everything, an', an'..."

I cleared my throat - and all three of them froze in place, in positions of perfect attention. The way they were acting - well, it obviously wasn't natural. I wasn't exactly sure what the alicorn had dropped in my lap, so I'd start out by trying to collect a bit of information. Starting with the basics: "What are your names?"

The blue one expounded, "Whatever thou wishest to call us, that shall be what we shall be known as."

The white one added, "We can brand your symbol upon our flanks, to show all that we are yours."

The red one contributed, "I'm, or I was Brick, and they were Navy and Blanche. Or are. Or however it works now."

"Let's just skip over the whole idea of body-modification for now - where are you from?"

Navy, "Gallopoli was our home ere the dawning of our understanding of thy glorious nature."

From the maps I'd looked at, that was an Equestrian city near the southern border, close to where the Great Southern Rainforest merged into the Black Marsh.

"What," I asked, "led you to leave there?"

Blanche explained, "We were collecting data for my Master's of Magic thesis that certain configurations of ley-lines could cause a form of natural spell, like a unicorn's but on a much grander scale. We found a place where the magic swirled in a pattern around a pond, and were taking readings all around and over it."

Brick, "And, I, well, fell in. And I'm not much of a swimmer, so I started drowning, so they both came in to try and help me, and they fell in, too."

Navy, "After which point I am sorry that I cannot tell you that which you undoubtedly already know, for the next moment I was conscious of anything, it was beholding thy gracious beauty and bountiful form."

It sounded to me like they'd found some sort of pond full of some sort of love potion... and if the alicorn had been telling the truth, she'd rescued them to keep them from making the water undrinkable, and was now dumping them on me instead of having let them fixate on her.

"And," I cautiously probed, "the first word you said upon awakening... what led to that?"

Blanche blinked, "It's nothing but the obvious truth - you're so much more than we are, or can ever hope to be..."

I decided to give a try at a first nudge towards reducing their... religious fervor. "Other ponies don't share that opinion; in fact, given the evidence they have available to them, they might think you were, well..."

Brick piped up, "You mean, made bonkers by getting dunked in a whole lotta love potion?"

I blinked. "Wait, you know that's what happened?"

Navy, "Of course - at least, that is the sequence of events available on the mere crude, physical plane, which can be seen by the unenlightened. On a more abstract plane, such linear chains of cause-and-effect are merely the echoes allowing for the recognition of the sublime truth of your perfection, in much the same way that our entire previous existences only exist to allow us to have pasts leading up to the now."

"Ah." I tried, "And on the 'mere physical plane' - would there be a mere, physical way in which the effects of the love potion could be reversed?"

Blanche smiled. "Even if any of us wanted anything of the sort - it is highly unlikely. We did not merely take a sip of it - we were immersed in it, we inhaled it, it suffused our every part and piece. I know of no magic which would un-do our understanding of your true perfection."

That was... pretty much the opposite of what I wanted to hear. It sounded like the three of them had imprinted on me like little birds - only moreso, making me less their mother and more their Madonna. Maybe Celestia knew some trick to fix this sort of thing - but I didn't. And it would take a little while before we could get to Equestria, let alone Canterlot, meaning that we were likely stuck with these three being this way for some days... which had certain rather practical implications.

"I see." I shifted my hooves a bit. "I am not going to say I am actually any form of divine being; I will say that if I were one, it would shortly become obvious to you through my behavior that I am trying to travel incognito as just another mortal. With all the flaws and faults that are inherent to mortality, from a lack of understanding to an incipient crack that's been developing on my left hind hoof. So if I'm not able to convince you to change your hearts, I'm going to at least ask - not demand, not order, just ask - that you try to restrain your own behavior, in public, to what would be compatible with me being just another mortal."

Brick said, "I don't know if I can, but if'n that's what you want, I'll give it my best try."

Navy pronounced, "Thy merest whim is taken to our hearts to be the most stringent commandment."

Blanche brightly inquired, "Can I play the role of your mortal fillyfriend?"

I coughed lightly. "I - already have a mare who is in 'the role' of my Very Special Somepony."

Blanche smiled. "Of course you do - but surely your love is more than bounteous enough to overflow from merely a single other vessel, and is entirely capable of being the foundation for an entire herd..."

I glared at her, and her smile vanished. "Not without talking to Cheerilee about it, first." As I saw her start groveling, pressing her face into the floor, I relented - I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to find the right way to deal with these unfortunate ponies, but sending them into paroxysms of mortification (Navy's sesquipedalian loquaciousness seemed to be rubbing off on me) probably wasn't it. "In the meantime - I have a course to set. Some parts of the airship are off-limits, for security and for your own safety, and are clearly marked, and you should keep out of the way of the crew while they're working, but otherwise, you're free to move around, within reason."

"So what's the verdict?" Red asked.

I stared over the railing, down at the endless sea of trees passing beneath us. "Massive love-potion overdose - and I'm the first one they saw."

"Huh. What're you going to do about it?"

"Nothing I can do - I'm hoping Princess Celestia knows how to fix it."

"Going to take advantage in the meantime?"

"As little as I possibly can, without breaking them. For now, I'm going to double-check that the workshop's properly secured even though it's locked - I shouldn't have to remind you that our passengers are uncleared for anything sensitive, let alone CAT WHISKER - and then I'll dig out those supplies from the Ponyville spa, and see if they've got any good hoof treatments."

Ever have a hangnail? Imagine that your nail was the size of a hockey-puck, and you had to keep on walking on it anyway. I'm exaggerating, but not by much; as a cow rather than a horse, my hooves were two-toed, rather than one-toed - but that did mean there was more than twice as much chance for something to go wrong. Like a stone caught between the toes which had put pressure on the hooves for a while, which, even after the stone had been pried out, meant that there was just enough difference to potentially lead to further problems; in my case, resulting in a diagonal crack rising up from the bottom of my hoof toward the back of it. I hadn't been taking proper care of it while I'd been monomaniaing in the workshop, so there was a real risk that I'd manage to get a good chunk of it breaking off. It was my bad leg, too, the one that had been broken when I fell from a roof and then had been bitten by the bulette and gotten infected when my magic drained.

I'd made Aloe and Lotus's day a few weeks ago by buying a travel-case of close to one of everything they offered. I pulled that case out onto the deck, where the best light was, even with the spattering of rain; set up a deck-chair and parasol; and had started looking through the inventory for anything to keep my left hind-hoof's outer toenail from getting any worse.

"May I?" Blanche cautiously trotted toward me. I waved vaguely at the lower part of the chair, which I wasn't using at the moment. She sat down next to me, and shivered a moment. "I... I know you are doing things for your own reasons which I'm too far beneath you to understand, and that we're in public here, so I just want to say - thank you for taking us with you, and for... helping us, in whatever ways you decide to." She lifted one hoof, starting to reach for my left hindleg, which I had stretched out in front of me. "May I?", she repeated. Cautiously, I nodded, and she touched my leg, the part under the hock that structurally corresponded with a human foot - and she shuddered again. This was rapidly getting awkward, so I was about to cut the whole thing off, when she looked at the various jars and asked, "Are you looking for hoof oil?"

"I'm looking for hoof... anything," I admitted. "I was shown all of these once, but it was a while ago."

She dipped a hoof into the case, immediately pulling out a vial with a picture of a hoof on it. "May I... apply it for you?"

"That's not necessary," I tried to demur.

"I know - but I want to. Please, my... ma'am. You can just lean back and close your eyes, and let me take care of this for you."

I sighed a little - I wasn't really comfortable with this at all, but it didn't seem to be all that harmful, and maybe it would help get it out of her system. Or maybe that was all a rationalization. The upshot was - I honestly wasn't sure what the best answer would be. So I made my best guess at how confident I was that one answer was the best, rolled some mental dice... and said, "As you like, then."

I leaned back, put my hooves behind my head and closed my eyes. I heard her open the jar, and felt her start rubbing her hooves on mine. A few moments later, Micro's voice said, "Having fun, are we?"

I opened my eyes to look at her and say it was all a bit of harmless hoof care, saw Blanche, and blurted "Gyuh." She froze in place, lips locked around my hoof.

A little later, as I was nursing the pups, Amethyst was fiddling with the ice-box. "Bottle. Missing," she stated. I started to get an unhappy feeling, which was confirmed when she added, "Smell. Blue. Pony."

When the pups' bellies were round and they dropped off to sleep, I went hunting for Navy - and eventually found her, asleep, curled up around the empty bottle and muttering something like 'drink of her' or 'drunk on her'. With a sigh, I collected the bottle, then went to help Amethyst move the pups' supplies to a locked room.

"... the whole point," I was trying to explain to Brick, "isn't that just because I know more than past thinkers, that I'm the best that is, was, and ever can be. It's that, if I'm very, very lucky, I'm going to become a past-thinker who future thinkers will be able to surpass themselves. The people I honor most, I try to honor by taking their work and doing better with it than they were able to - and to try to become a milestone in the road of progress like them, another person others honor by doing better than I ever could. If you insist on following me, then this is a teaching I consider to be of utmost importance: that you shouldn't just try to emulate me in every way possible, you should try to outdo me."

At her blank look, I sighed. "Someone once wrote a short poem on this... let me see if I can remember it...

"I am your hero!
I am your master!
Learn my arts,
Seek my way.

Learn as I learned,
Seek as I sought.

Envy me!
Aim at me!
Rival me!
Transcend me!

Look back,
Smile,
And then—
Eyes front!

I was never your city,
Just a stretch of your road."

She still looked rather dubious about the whole concept - I was 'perfect' in her eyes, and 'better than perfect' didn't seem to be an idea that came naturally to her - but was willing to try.

I woke. I opened my eyes. In the dim light of the moon, I glared down at Navy, whose muzzle was pressed against my udder. I declared "No," with absolute and utter finality.

A commotion rose from on deck, and I quickly locked down the workshop, and hurried to see what was going on. It turned out to be Blanche and Red glaring at each other and shouting, both of them with wings raised high. "Step back, both of you," I stated, taking on the role of 'boss'. Blanche did immediately, and after a second, Red did the same. "Red, the short version."

"She said I was so lucky for you I should work for free - and used a bunch of colorful words for that - and said that if I didn't, she'd take over. She's not going to, is she?"

"Don't worry - your job requires a security clearance she doesn't have." I turned my attention to Blanche, who basked in the glow of my gaze as it settled on her. "Would you care to add anything?"

"She left out the part where I offered to do all the things for you she never could."

"I see. Perhaps I didn't make it sufficiently clear before; but this vessel is flying under the flag of Equestria, and as such, Equestrian laws and customs remain in effect aboard it, regardless of where we are. As the highest ranked official aboard, if need be, I will have you clapped in irons - or thrown over the side." I only considered the latter an option because she was a pegasus.

"What about flogging?"

"Pardon?"

"If I do something bad, but not too bad, would you... whip me?"

"... No. No, I will not." She pouted.

Brick whispered, "Ma'am? I thought you should know... Navy's been asking if I know any transformation spells. She wanted to know if I could turn her into a filly. Or into a diamond dog. Or into a male. Or all of them at once."

"... Can you?"

"No, ma'am. I'm best at dowsing, and other earth-type magics. But I thought you'd probably want to know she's looking for... well, I think she wants to be one of those pups you nurse."

"... Thank you for letting me know."

"Ma'am?"

"Yes?"

"We're all terrible disappointments to you, aren't we?"

I gazed at her, then shook my head. "No. No, you aren't."

Navy had asked if she could do some painting, and since that seemed a much healthier outlet than anything she'd done so far, I'd helped her look through the ship's stores for something approaching a surface to paint on, and suitable pigments. She'd happily ensconced herself in a spare room, not letting anyone see what she was doing... until she finally unveiled her creation for me, and waited for my reaction.

It was of me... at least technically. And in a technical sense, it was extremely well executed. The wings and halo could be taken as artistic license. The four nursing pups were accurate enough, though my rounded, obviously pregnant belly was taking the 'mother goddess' theme a bit far. But the way she'd inserted herself turned the whole thing, well, pornographic.

What would you have said?

After I caught Blanche trying to pick the lock to the workshop - fortunately, I'd (re-)invented a better lock - I decided that enough was enough, and brought all three back into the room they'd woken up in.

"I possess," I declared, "certain information that all three of you lack. Because I know these things, I have decided that my best course of action at this moment is to act as if I were an entirely ordinary mortal cow. Therefore, I must treat you the way such a mortal cow in my position would treat you, given the behavior you have exhibited. Given the pool you fell into, this also means that I must treat you as if you are not entirely in control of your own actions. While this means that no criminal charges will be filed, I must treat you as if you were potentially a danger to others, and to yourselves. Given the relatively limited resources available aboard an airship, I have relatively few options available to me - and so I am asking for your help in maintaining the appearance of your 'punishment', at least until I bring you to the Princesses. After that point - further options become available.

"Navy, the pups have an importance you are unaware of," and I was unaware of, too, but no need to belabor the details, "and need all my milk at this moment, but after the Princesses see you... there are possibilities. I do know that Princess Celestia knows a spell to change a pony's gender, so if you still desire to be male then, then that may be an option.

"Blanche - there simply isn't the right equipment aboard the Alicorn to put together a decent set of disciplinary instruments, which would allow you to be tied, whipped, flogged, tickled, pinched, pierced, and otherwise dominated not only once, but safely enough to continue such for years. Princess Celestia has an entire room dedicated to torture equipment," aka exercise machines, "which may become available for use after the Princesses see you."

"Brick," who was actually behaving fairly sanely, all things considered, "I have a reference library containing texts I think you will want to read - and, after visiting the Princesses, if you still want to learn all I have to teach, then I should have sufficient time to help you assemble an entire text based on my thoughts on metaphysics, ethics, politics, rationality, and such matters.

"In sum - my current main goal involving all three of you is to get you to the Princesses. If something happens and my plans go awry, leaving you to your own devices - you are to try to reach the Princesses on your own power.

"In the meantime - unless you wish to suggest something else, something which an ordinary mortal cow would be willing to consider, I expect to confine you to this room. Yes, Blanche, you may wear hoofcuffs. Any other questions?"

That night, I dreamed that Princess Luna told me, "You're lucky - their devotion is magically induced and might be magically curable. And there's just three of them. And you aren't actually a goddess with the power to control celestial bodies and possibly kill every living thing on the planet if you got mad enough. And you haven't had to deal with such ponies for thousands of years."

"So," I answered, "you troll ponies to try and make them think of you as less than divine?"

"Partly. Also to help stay sane. Getting all the Royal Guards into a conga line is a lot more socially acceptable than trying to create night everlasting, and relieves almost as much stress."

"I don't suppose I can get you to have Celestia meet us in Stalliongrad, to bring this whole thing to a finish that much sooner?"

Her grin became impossibly wide. "You should be glad I don't send you into Navy's dream, to play the role she has you in there."

"... Is this where I say 'thank goodness for small favors'?"

"Shall we go watch, at least?"

"If I say 'no thank you', would that in any way influence your actions?"

"Mmmmmaybe."

"Tell you what - if you can stand what I suspect Blanche is dreaming about, then we'll see about Navy's dreams."

"Spoilsport."

"If you'd prefer, we could go to Brick's dream, and I can try delivering a lecture on the ethics of spying on a pony's dreams when lives aren't at stake, with sub-lectures on how to tell whether or not a pony is competent to make a decision about whether or not to grant permission, and what the appropriate compensation might be if an unethical choice in such matters is made..."

"Oh look, I think it's time for me to lower the moon..."

"Wait, I haven't even started to mention about how to decide when to bring the breach of privacy of an ordinary pony by a head-of-state to public awareness, or the necessary prerequisites for mathematically determining the optimal-"

Pit Stop

"The point," I was saying to Brick, "isn't even necessarily for the revived Commons to provide better laws than the Barn of Lords. If you narrow your eyes and blur what you're looking at, to look at what the various governmental bodies do rather than what their officially claimed function is, then when you look at the highest appellate courts, the judges get together, write down some rules on a piece of paper, and everybody follows those rules; the Barn of Lords designs an annual budget for the government bureaucracies; and so forth. The Guard, the media, foreign ambassadors, the largest businesses - all of these affect how the government operates, in ways that aren't necessarily obvious. Having ordinary ponies vote for members of the Commons, supposedly so that their representatives can come up with better laws, doesn't mean that the people are going to take over their government - especially if those representatives have no significant incentives to do what the ponies vote them in want. One valuable result will be as a check on the power of the Barn of Lords, which seems to be sorely in need of an additional leash; because if the Princesses decide they prefer a proposal put forward by the Commons rather than the Barn, then the Barn will have an incentive to adjust their own proposals to be closer to ones that are preferred by both the Princesses and the average citizens, even if doing so comes at the financial expense of some of the Lords - thus, at least potentially, limiting the amount of tax-moneys they funnel into their own pockets rather than being used to benefit Equestria as a whole. Leading to a more prosperous Equestria, which then becomes more capable of having the resources available to deal with any given problem-"

"River ho!" I was interrupted, by one of the crewponies. I took a moment to consider that I really should try learning their names, then bid the trio a quick farewell, leaving them in what had originally been my bedroom before it became their lockup. Red and Micro were already on deck, watching over the railing, and I asked "What's the word?" as I joined them.

Red replied, "Need to grab some water - ballast and drinking." I nodded in understanding; Equestrian airships used a lot of magic to get into the air, and dumping water was a magically-cheap way to lighten a vessel for quick climbs. Water barrels were also reasonably easy to shift around the ship to keep the overall load balanced, and avoid the awkwardness of trying to do anything aboard while tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

"Anything I can do to help?"

Red shook her head. "This is the sort of thing they've practiced - best if we stay out of their way. I'm going to get some exercise in, while I don't have to worry about falling behind." She leapt out into the air, spreading her wings.

Micro suggested, "Want to head down and help me collect some samples?"

I demurred, "Barely chasing off one manticore was plenty for me, thanks. Don't forget, there's plenty of microbial life in the local water - and you won't be able to do any more research if you end up as something's lunch."

"Well, I don't feel like waiting around inside - this is the closest we've gotten to a bit of sun since we left Equestria. Got any ideas for something to do?"

"Maybe I'll think a bit more about my next move in my postal chess game with Safe," I considered.

"Why not play against me?"

"Well... how can I put this delicately..."

"Are you implying I'm not as smart as you?"

"It's not a matter of generalized intelligence - there are certain habits of mind which are difficult to acquire outside of certain fields..."

"Just get out the board."

White: Missy
Black: Micro

e4 d5

Missy, "Planning on getting me to chase the queen all around?"

exd5 Qxd5

Missy, "Sure you don't want to take that back, and bring your knight out to f6 instead?"

Micro, "I'm sure."

Nc3

Missy, "Then I'll just force your queen to shove over."

3...Qa5

Missy, "Mm, not bad, unless you want to move it to d6 instead."

d4 c6

Missy, "Again, bringing your knight out to f6 would have been a good move - sure you don't want to take that back and try again?"

Nf3 Bg4

Missy, "You should be worrying less that I'll push my pawn to h3, and more that I'll move my queen to d3. You really don't want to move that knight to f6 at all, do you? Bishop to f5 would also be a decent move here, if you want to try a different approach."

Bf4

Micro, "Now who's making a move worth taking back? Even if you don't move your pawn, moving that bishop just about anywhere else seems a good idea."

Missy, "It may not be a popular move - but it solidifies my ownership of e5."

6...e6
7. h3

Missy, "Since you closed that diagonal, I might as well break the pin on my knight."

7...Bxf3

Micro, "Then I might as well take it."

Qxf3

Missy, "As long as you're willing to suffer the consequence."

8... Bb4

Missy, "Mm. Aren't you being a bit optimistic? There's an old saying, you're supposed to develop your knights before your bishops."

Be2 Nd7

Missy, "I'm not saying that that's a bad move, in itself - but I am doubting your plan. You might be able to do something if you finally move your knight to f6, next."

a3 0-0-0

Missy, "... No, really, knight to f6 is the better move here."

Micro, "Just play the game already."

Missy, "If you insist. Here, let's kick into high gear, and I'll offer you the exchange."

axb4 Qxa1+

Missy, "Just because I'm offering it doesn't mean you should accept it. Sure you wouldn't rather move your queen back out of danger instead?"

Micro, "Sure I'm sure."

Kd2!

Missy, "In that case - here, I'll offer you my other rook, too."

12... Qxh1

Micro, "I'll take it."

Qxc6+

Missy, "And if I give you the chance at my queen, as well?"

13... bxc6

Micro, "You're seriously sacrificing both your rooks and your queen? What are you hoping to accomplish?"

Ba6#

Missy, "Checkmate, of course."

Micro stared at the board. "Okay, so maybe taking every piece you're willing to sacrifice wasn't the best idea."

Missy shrugged, "I'm not offering you sacrifices for your benefit."

Micro, "So what would have happened if I hadn't gone for your second rook straight away?"

Missy, "Care to find out?"

12...Ne5
13.Bxe5 Qxh1
14.Qxf7 Ne7
15.Qxe6+ Rd7
16.Bg4 Rhd8
17.Qd6

Missy, "Forced checkmate."

Micro, "There's gotta be a way out of that trap. Maybe if I..."

14... Rd7
15.Qe8+ Rd8
16.Qxe6+ Rd7
17.Qe8+ Rd8
18.Bg4#

Missy, "Checkmate."

Micro, "Okay - when I lose the same game three times in a row, it's time to take a break."

I nodded. "As you wish."

"So - if it's not 'generalized intelligence', why do I keep losing?"

I frowned. "I can think of an answer - but I'm not sure it's something you can change about yourself. Or, to be more precise - that you would want to."

"Hit me."

"Let's see... I suppose one way to look at it is means and ends. We're outside of Equestria, no longer in the region directly protected by the Princesses. But there are still people, some of whom are pony-shaped, some who aren't. And they have to protect themselves from the various monsters, gangs of slavers, and other threats. If they do poorly at this - then they will die, their children will die, their grand-children will be stolen to become slaves, and worse. With me so far?"

"Outside of anything related to chess, certainly."

"Imagine that you're somewhere down there on the ground, and have been chased into a corner, along with your most loved family-member. A diamond dog is approaching you with their spear, covered in the blood of other ponies. You can't run, and if you do nothing, you will die and unspeakable things will happen to your kin. You're exhausted, and the only way you have left to defend yourself is something that would most likely kill the diamond dog. You are faced with the single choice: die and leave your kin to a slaver, or kill the slaver. What do you do?"

"Kill the slaver, of course."

"Good. You've just saved yourself and your kin. Now you gather together with the few other survivors, and put together some defenses - a palisade, or somesuch. Looking out, you see some other members of the slaver band off in the distance, chopping at trees. Most likely, they're building siege engines to take down your wall. If you attack them immediately, you can probably keep them from destroying your little haven; if you don't, you'll likely be overrun, with the standard unspeakable consequences for all of you."

"Can we send someone out to parley?"

"Okay - you send a pony out to try negotiating. They eat her."

"What?!"

"This is an extension of the original kill or be killed dilemma, just with a little less certainty and on a larger scale."

"Then - attack, I guess."

"Very well - you launch your pre-emptive strike, and there are deaths on both sides, but most of your ponies survive. You network with other groups of survivors, and share intelligence. You learn a large band of slavers, hundreds strong, is approaching - if they attack any one of your pony groups, that group will be annihilated, and they will be free to move on to the next. But - someone comes up with a plan. If a small group of ponies gains the attention of the slaver army, then they will be able to draw them to a prepared location, where you can ambush and destroy them. However, this will come at a cost: every last one of that distraction group would die. You happen to be in charge - you can place the order to have a group placed at the spot to be sacrificed."

"So you're saying I don't have this... willingness to kill - that is, to let good ponies die?"

"You tell me."

"I guess I'd end up doing the sacrifice thing. But I wouldn't like it."

"Nobody said you should. So that army is taken care of, but there are others, and the conflict comes to a peak. Finally, you locate the secret slaver headquarters - in the middle of a town of ponies who are entirely innocent and unaware of anything at all about what's going on. If you try to evacuate them, or even just tell them, then the slavers will very likely catch wind of it and scatter through hidden tunnels, to regroup in an unknown location. Or, if you launch an immediate massive attack, you can most likely end the slaver menace once and for all - and all you have to do is be willing to kill some innocent ponies-"

"No."

"No? If the slaver commanders escape, they will rebuild their armies, the war will drag on and many more ponies in your army will die, and more will be killed and enslaved by the slavers..."

"I said No! I refuse to even consider having such blood on my hooves!"

"Even if the very best data you have suggests that not doing so will lead to even greater death and destruction?"

She jutted her chin out. "Even if."

I nodded peaceably. "And that is why you lost the same chess game to me three times in a row. There is a saying: 'the thought you cannot think controls you more surely than the thoughts you speak aloud'. At the moment, it appears that you cannot believe that there is a situation where the most moral choice is to deliberately cause the death of an innocent bystander - and you're even uncomfortable with the idea of ordering your own troops, or pieces, to do the job they volunteered for, to obey your orders even unto death if you judge the benefits to exceed the cost of their sacrifice. If you become able to overcome this reluctance - then you might start beating me at chess."

Amethyst was playing with the pups just inside a door. "Maybe. You. Can. Raise. Them. After. All."

"Now," I said to Brick, "Where was I. Ah, yes, the Commons. Back in the days of ancient Unicornia and Pegasopolis, the Earth-pony tribe elected their leaders. In general, this didn't lead to results any better than the other two groups, but it did have one advantage which I suspect was its chief benefit. If the ponies who were elected managed to make the voters really, really mad at them, then those voters could, at least in theory, chuck the whole system out and start a new one. Records are sketchy, but it seems reasonably likely that this happened a time or two - which placed a limit on the excesses of the earth-pony leaders, a limit not shared by the unicorns or pegasi. Some time later, when the three groups' governments were united under the authority of the immortal alicorns, this final extreme was no longer feasible; and so, with that limitation on the elected ponies' actions removed, they became indistinguishable from the Barn of Lords - and, offering no noticeable benefits but costing the taxpayers a certain amount just for upkeep alone, were pretty much deemed redundant and fell by the wayside. In the upcoming conference on reviving the Commons, I'm hoping to describe certain measures which could be put into place which would create the same sort of practical limit on the representatives' power, without having to throw out the Princesses' authority as well..."

Little Town on the Prairie

We'd finally crossed the border back into Equestria - and the rain had slipped away, though the clouds hadn't, quite.

I was in the workshop, doing one of the most important, if least glamorous, parts of the CAT WHISKER project - writing out the documentation so that other ponies could replicate my work, and build pulse-radios for themselves. As I was trying to figure out how to describe the importance of the capacitance of the antenna without actually using any technical jargon, a hoof knocked on my door. I swept all the papers into the document safe before seeing what was what.

Red informed me, "Slight problem. You know the rebuilding for NOVA BURST?" I nodded - that was the pseudo-napalm dispenser I'd had built into the Alicorn, a version of which had dumped the concentrated poison joke on the Pillar estate. "Looks like somepony hammered some nails in the wrong place - the port overflow ballast tank's got a leak."

"Anything we can do about it?"

"Well, we didn't need it yet, so we can just dump the starboard overflow ballast tank to match. We can try making a field repair - and now that we're back in civilization, we can buy some decent lumber and hardware to make it, instead of making do with chopping wood ourselves."

"Hm... Our schedule is still flexible - and Blueblood would be annoyed if I gave him the Alicorn back in less than perfect condition, and might be less amenable to future borrowings. So let's get that hardware. Will Stalliongrad have it?"

"Of course. Actually, just about any town we stop at would."

"Then let's find a town to stop at."

"You know," I said to Red, "the way things've been going, I at least half expected to find the town under siege by monsters, or putting up guards against slaver raids, or that it had some sort of deep dark secret that we'd happen across, or was the site of some noble's plotting, or some individual who wanted to escape their boring life by joining our merry band. But - everypony here farms, or helps the ones who farm, and they just seem... reasonably happy about the whole arrangement."

"So?"

"It's just... nice to know that at least some of Equestria is living up to its promise."

Jiggity Jig

Stalliongrad was the same as we'd left it. Micro Scope wasn't sure whether it would be a good idea for anyone but her to see her uncle, Copper Scope, when she gave him back his trunk of maps and papers; but since this time, him getting annoyed wouldn't result in him not helping us right then, and I might be able to persuade him to help us in the medium-term, Micro accepted my rationale, and I accompanied her.

I probably shouldn't have.

Despite my best efforts at finding a common ground on academic matters, he bristled at me from the moment we were in the same room. Maybe it was a fear that I'd be a bull in his china shop and knock over some priceless, millennia-old artifact; maybe it was something less complimentary to him; maybe it was my official suit; maybe I was entirely off-base in my guesses. The upshot was that if I was the sort of person willing to take offense at what others said, I had every opportunity to. He never actually said anything which was unambiguously an insult - but after a few minutes of stiffly smiling as Micro looked more and more strained, I did the best thing I could, and made my escape, with the excuse of having lots of airship paperwork to do.

What I actually did was head to a bar.

I was never a 'bar' sort of person before coming to Equestria, and since then, I'd had a few rather negative experiences in them - avoiding a lethal duel by the skin of my teeth, leaving another one to almost get raped, and picking up a spiked drink in a third - but there didn't seem to be any causal reason that going to a bar would necessarily cause me problems, even if I was in a universe where physics was occasionally bent to suit a song's narrative purpose.

Stalliongrad, unlike Canterlot, seemed to have a lot more non-ponies wandering around the streets; and, unlike Ponyville, had businesses too large to fit into a two-story wattle-and-daub house. The place I ended up at was 'The Hall', which seemed to be at least as popular with the non-equines as anywhere else I could see. It also looked to be a converted theater, with the original seating leveled out to make a main room, though the stage was still there - and still in use, when I entered by a jug band that wasn't taking itself at all seriously.

The bar itself was being run by a stallion as purely red as Big Mac, though not quite so big. "What'll you have?"

"Got anything dairy-safe?" Given the multi-species clientele, it was a fairly safe bet that he'd have something suitable for cows who had to worry about everything they ate ending up in their milk. There was an extremely limited customer base for alcohol-derived milk.

"Coming right up," he said, and efficiently pulled out a glass and a bottle of something. "Two bits."

I hoofed them over, and peered curiously at what he poured. "What is it?"

"Why, 'tis green, of course." An entirely accurate, if not exactly helpful, response. "The local cows swear by it."

I gave a sniff, and a cautious sip. Kinda minty, texture like a shake or a smoothie. "Works for me," I agreed.

"So," he said, "if you don't mind a cliche - what's a pretty cow like you doing airshipping to a town like this?" I raised a brow. "Not too many cows here wear clothes like the cow who came down from the pride of Prince Bluebood do," he explained.

I stalled for a moment by taking a sip of green. "Among other things," I finally said, "I'm looking for places I can give a subsidy to, for building a shelter in their basements."

It appeared that barmen rubbing rags along a bar as they chatted with a customer was a cross-universal phenomenon. "Expecting something to happen 'round here that we'd be needing a shelter?"

"Expect, no. Planning for anyway, yes. Fillydelphia would have been in better shape after the parasprites, if the shelter program had been in place by then."

"'Tis true," he agreed. "And I'm nigh certain that the owner here would be happy for a bit of extra cash, even if it is governmental."

"Perhaps I should take a few moments to meet him before I go."

"Perhaps you should." He wiped his hooves clean, then stuck one over the bar at me. "Bright Red, proprietor and manager of The Hall, at your service, milady."

While Copper Scope had been a bust, I consoled myself that I might have nudged another pony to become a member of the growing Dairy network - even if he didn't yet have any idea that that was what he would be becoming. The only further flaw on the proceedings was a few drunks who assumed that I was taking a break from working next door, a place called 'The Hitching Post', where the only reason that the employees weren't described as earning their money on their backs was due to most local species being quadrupedal, so they charged extra for 'seapony style'.

I restrained myself. They would be perfectly fine, in a few hours, assuming they had enough sense to rinse their eyes out. I told them that, but they seemed a bit distracted.

By the time I got back to the Alicorn, the excuse I'd given to the Scopes turned out to be true after all - Stalliongrad was well within the Dairy's communications network, and was the first place I'd expected to stop on my way back, so all my mail was waiting for me here. Most interesting - the Pillars informed me that they had a text which they believed I would value sufficiently to remove the curse, and they were entirely willing to allow a Princess to confirm they were telling the truth.

While we waited for Micro to finish, Red asked, "Say - mind if we swing by Cloudsdale on the way back? I've still got some stuff in storage there I've been meaning to move, now that I'm living at Canterlot full time. I didn't have any reason to refuse, so I told the crew to adjust our planned course accordingly.

Thus, when we left Stalliongrad, we didn't follow any of the usual airship routes... which meant that we passed over a somewhat unfamiliar section of ground, in the general region between Canterlot and Ponyville. Which led to Amethyst interrupting my newspaper reading by stating, "Smells. Funny."

I was quite willing to accept that other species could sense things I couldn't - and that some of those things could kill me. So I put the paper aside to focus on her, and what she was saying. "Can you tell what direction?" She considered, and pointed ahead, and a bit to starboard. I nodded, stood up, and shouted out: "Yellow alert! Crew to battle stations! Civvies to quarters! Red - you've got good eyes, work with Amethyst!"

Five minutes later, I called off the alert. There didn't seem to be any obvious danger - just a rather confusing sight. At the base of a tree in a petrified forest, at the bottom of a cliff, lay a skeleton. A rather large skeleton - from one end to the other, it seemed to be longer than my grandparents' old ten-story apartment building, half again. The carnivore's skull alone was bigger than a house. And the whole thing was partially transparent, and sparkly.

Something had killed an Ursa Major (or was it 'the' Ursa Major? I'd need to look into that), some weeks ago.

Micro commented, "That's the biggest baculum I've ever seen."

I glanced at her, then back down at the remains. "It - the whole skeleton, I mean - is impressive, I'll give you that. Is it valuable?"

"Are you kidding?" She glanced at me, then relaxed. "Right, the amnesia thing. Well - you know how ponies and cows are made of matter, with some magic running through them?" I nodded. "Star beasts are, as far as I know, made of magic, with just enough matter to let them stomp a village into the ground. The smallest clawtip down there could have enough concentrated essence-of-starbeast to power this whole airship for a year. Of course, there's not much that can kill one of them, so there haven't been many opportunities to study them..."

She was practically drooling. "Alright - so it's valuable. Both power-wise and knowledge-wise. And if it just fell and broke its neck, we might be the only ones who know about it. Or maybe whatever killed it will be back in ten minutes. I don't think we've got a tarp big enough to hide it - but if you want to stay and poke around, I can drop you off with anything we've got you could use, and then send Safe Guard to bring you anything else you need, plus enough guards to protect you, and it, from anything short of anything capable of killing it."

"I'll - we'll - be rich! And famous! Okay, you don't want to be famous, so - I'll be famous! It's a little out of my usual field, but the journal articles alone will ensure my name echoes forever down the halls of science!"

"I'll take that as a 'yes'. I'm going to add the proviso that your first priority is keeping yourself, and the ponies, alive, and that means being ready to bug out if anything that seems like it could be what killed it comes close. After all, it's hard to publish in a scientific journal if you're dead." I considered. "While we pack up a lab and lunch for you - see if you can find the smallest piece you can - a tooth, a clawtip, a shard, whatever - for me to bring with me. I don't know whether to call our mission to the giant tree a success or failure or what... but I can use a piece of a starbeast for all manner of excuses and diversions, if need be."

We didn't spend long in Cloudsdale. Other than sending a quick note to Safe Guard through the Pegasus Express, Red's stuff was already packed into boxes, so we maneuvered the Alicorn as close as the city air regulations would allow, and she got some of her neighbors to help fly her stuff over.

With the spot the flying city was at the time, Ponyville was closer than Canterlot, so we swung over that way first. For entirely good reasons other than my getting to see Cheerilee, though I couldn't really think of any at the time. Amethyst volunteered to be dropped off with the pups, and after talking to the love-potion-dunked trio, I agreed to let them out of their cell for a bit of fresh air on the ground, as long as they behaved themselves - and the threat that if they didn't, they wouldn't be allowed back onto the Alicorn and would likely never see me again. Given their reactions, that seemed to be a sufficient threat to cow even Blanche.

As I approached Cheerilee's, my hooves clip-clopping on the street, I was able to clearly overhear as she sang:

Who's that knockin'? Don't stand outside there, come on in here!

I just had a sort of feeling this morning
something good was gonna happen today.
Now there comes a sound without any warning.
I just know it's good luck coming my way!

Goodness gracious, can it be? Somepony's coming back to me.
Who's that knocking at my door?
I've been waiting oh so long, I'll just die if I'm wrong.
Who's that knocking at my door?

I know it can't be the mailmare, the coal mare, the ice mare, they've been here today.
Can't be the grocer, the butcher, the baker, they don't knock that way.
If my sweetie's there outside, my arms and my heart are open wide.
Who's that knocking at my door?

Me oh my, my oh me, guess I'm having company.
Who's that knocking at my door?
See the time? Eight o'clock. Sounds like a familiar knock.
Who's that knocking at my door?

I know it can't be the milk mare, the gas mare, the bread mare, who always collects.
I hope that it isn't the butter and egg mare, who writes out those checks?
If it's my sweet used-to-be, gonna lock her in, lose the key.
Who's that knocking at my door?

Can't be the plumber, the peddler, the parlor, cause I've paid those bills.
I hope that it isn't the doctor, the dentist, they can't cure my ills.
If it's someone that I've known, gonna make her feel at home.
I said, Who's that knocking at my door?

That's all!

I can't really say whether the song arose because of my approach, or my approach was retroactively induced by the song... since time travel exists and information can be sent to the past, I've been having to do a bit of re-evaluating of my understanding of cause-and-effect.

Still, whether cause preceded effect or vice versa, once Cheerilee opened her door and actually saw me before her... we fell into a duet:

I hate to think what might have been if we had never met.
Why should I suppose that this could be?

The weary days, the lonely nights, are easy to forget,
since I am here, and you are here with me.

Here we are, you and I.
Let the world hurry by.
Even while I waited, somehow, dear, I knew,
you'd find me, I'd find you

Here we are, alone together.
What matter whether we wandered far?
And though we haven't got a bankful,
we can still be thankful
that here, that here we are!

Here we are, you and I.
Let the world just hurry by.
Even while I waited, somehow, dear, I knew,
you'd find me, and I'd find you

Here we are, alone together.
What matter whether we wandered far?
And though we haven't got a bankful,
we can still be thankful
that here we are!

That's all!

I thought, 'Tomorrow I'll be at Canterlot, dealing with nobles engaged in an immoral gem/slave trade, with Princesses who only know what was really going on some of the time, with trying to find a cure for three ponies who rather literally worship me, with trying to come up with yet one more plan to try to stave off Equestria's impending doom at the hands of the other game-pieces... but today, today I'll spend some time with the mare who helps to remind me why all that fuss and effort is worth it on a personal level, as well as the abstract 'it sure would suck if everypony died' rationale.' Even on that totally impersonal level, I knew that people were easily motivated more by a single individual than by a crowd of millions, and that if the horse-apples hit the windmill then I was going to need every advantage I could, including maximizing the effort I could put out by maximizing my emotional connection to at least one pony to protect... but I didn't actually reason things out that way. I wanted to spend some time with Cheerilee; and I could; so I did.

(Author's Note: This chapter is a post-mortem crossover with strangephantasm's story Fudge: A Minotaur's Lament.)

Conversion Conversations

I decided to pay absolutely no attention to the trio of pony heads that tried to peek in through Cheerilee's windows. And, somewhat later, when I left, I carefully ignored the fact that my three rescuees were trussed up with the Cutie Mark Crusader Who-Knew-Whats sitting on top of them, staring down with rather severe expressions.

The three adult ponies loved me so much they worshiped me. I didn't know if there was a word to describe how the CMCs felt about their teacher.

We arrived in Canterlot as the sun set, and the palace staff had made arrangements for me to meet the Princesses - a couple of times, as I had several different issues to deal with, with them.

Firstly was a quick meeting with Princess Luna and the Pillar mother and daughter, Alabaster and Marble - the latter of whom was once again in the seapony form the poison joke had repeatedly given her. She was in a wheelchair, with a damp blanket covering her lower half, but didn't seem to be taking any pains to hide her fins this time. Before I could ask, her mother shoved a wooden box, about the size of a couple of large pizza boxes stacked together. "Here," Alabaster stated. She glanced at the Princess. "Are you checking, Your Highness?" At Luna's nod, Alabaster turned back to me. "It took a rather extreme amount of trouble to locate and acquire - but I am firmly convinced that you will find that this book's information is at least as valuable to you as your stated price."

It was my turn to glance at Luna, who nodded. "She speaks the truth, at least so far as she understands it."

I nodded, then turned back to the Pillars. "In that case, I will arrange for, as you put it, the curse on your house to be removed. When I do, I recommend that you remember the punchline to the old joke: 'Itemized bill: Hitting it with a hammer, two bits; Knowing where to hit it with a hammer, nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-eight bits'."

That earned me a glare. Alabaster rose up to put her forehooves on the back of Marble's chair, but the daughter whispered something to her, there was a brief conversation, and with a snort, Alabaster hopped back down and left the room without another word.

Marble glanced at the Princess. "I would like to talk to Doctor Missy for a few minutes, Your Highness; there is no need to trouble you with the details, if there is somewhere else you would prefer to be." Luna glanced at me, I shrugged, and the Princess left to wherever it was that Princesses went between meetings.

I looked at Marble with a raised eyebrow.

"The short version: I want to surrender to you."

I blinked, and frowned. "There is no need - the cure is yours for whenever you ask, and when the curse is removed, you shouldn't need it any further."

She smiled a little. "That is only the single battle. I have been... collecting information on you - and I desire the entire war between you and my family to stop. Unfortunately, Mother will not stop. She sees you only as a mere cow who has humiliated her entire family, and will stop at nothing to destroy all that you hold dear, and then you. I believe that if she does so, you have both the ability and willingness to sweep our entire House away, with neither compunction nor remorse. I do not understand the nature of your power - only that you have it, and that at least some of it comes from an accurate oracle or prophet - something else my mother would not stop until she got her hooves on."

This... wasn't anywhere near the direction I had expected this talk to go, but I was at least glad for having put as many layers of security over BLUE WELL and the other Dairy projects as I had, and tried to rally to the conversation at hoof. "What, exactly, are you proposing?"

"For one thing - I need to make a clear and permanent break between myself and my mother. Her tactics have served our family well in the past, but they are precisely the wrong ones for dealing with you. I am quite aware of her species preferences, and that if I ceased to be a unicorn, she would consider me lost - so I am going to tell her that the cure no longer works on me."

"I'm not going to be able to support you in such a deception."

"Yes, we know you avoid lying - except when lives are at stake. This lie will prevent a vendetta between you and my house from destroying many lives - is that not worth bending your commitment to the truth?"

I frowned. "It would be - but the chain of causation between the lie and the lives saved is tenuous and weak... and I haven't even started trying to think of some other, less deceptive plan to accomplish the same end. Not to mention that with the lie you describe, your mother might go to extreme measures to find a way around - including kidnapping you and stealing a sample of the cure, just to be sure it really doesn't work."

"Then perhaps I will simply tell her that I have come to prefer being a seapony to a 'true' unicorn, and that if she tries to turn me back, I will find a way to get myself cursed again. You wouldn't need to be involved in that at all."

"Now that you have told me of it, I already am. I consider 'lying' to be a specific case of a more general act: that of deliberately distorting somepony else's understanding of the universe."

"It wouldn't be a lie, or a distortion - exactly. When I was first transformed, I hated everything about this shape - even just swimming. But now, after some time with it, I've... well, I may not be especially fond of it, but I've gotten used to it."

With a rather strong effort, I kept all expression from my face. "Yes," I said, "I've read that is a common reaction of ponies magically turned into other things." I tried to turn the conversation to another direction. "You do realize, I hope, that even if I accept your 'surrender', I'm not going to trust you one whit. You did try to arrange to have me killed, and so on."

"I quite understand. About the best I'm hoping to get out of this is for you to think of mother and I as being separate individuals - and that I have no plans to share in her guilt in anything she does from this point forward."

I considered. "That," I finally said, "is something I can work with. If no further evidence arises of collaboration between the two of you, then I'll try to treat you as an innocent - well, as innocent as any other pony I know has acted unethically but hasn't been convicted and has no connection to a given incident. But I suggest that you stay as far away from your mother as possible."

"I will not even be returning to our Canterlot residence. I have discussed certain aspects of this with Princess Celestia, and will be taking employment inspecting Canterlot's reservoir, so that I will not need to touch the family's funds even for basic support. It will not endear me to most of my family's traditional allies, who see anything resembling manual labor as being beneath nobility - but what I lose from them, I may more than make up for in sympathy from others, as I act as 'such an inspiring role-model', 'making the best of' my situation, and all that. When I eventually inherit my full title from mother, I could end up with even greater support amongst the Barn than mother ever did."

"That's... nice for you, I'm sure. If you'll excuse me, I seem to have a book to put somewhere safe before my next meeting." I felt a rather strong urge to wash my hooves.

"Princess Celestia - how long has it been since you visited a certain brown alicorn who lives with a tree almost as large as all of Canterlot?"

"You've seen Terra?" Well, at least I finally got her name. "How did you find her?"

"A very nice dodge - but you haven't answered my question."

"Perhaps... a year. Maybe two."

"Put another way - not since Princess Luna returned?"

"I suppose not."

"She saw the change in the moon. I'd suggest both of you go say 'hi'... sooner, rather than later, given how easy it is for an immortal to find a reason to postpone things."

"I will take your advice under advisement."

"Good - in the meantime, there's the matter for which I sent the message to request this meeting. Three ponies with a massive love-potion overdose - and I was the first being they laid their eyes on."

"So I read. It should be possible to cure them; there is a risk, but it is a small one, and the main difficulty is the energy required for the disenchantment. Using magic to remove love is much more difficult than inducing it."

"Actually... I wanted to talk to you about that."

"About what?"

"About whether altering their minds that way is the right thing to do."

I got a very cold glare from her. "I had thought better of you, Missy. Surely you are aware that the affection they are showing you is not real, and they have their own lives to return to."

"Your Highness - would you be willing to let me remove the love you feel for your sister?"

"That is an entirely different thing - that arose naturally, not as the result of magic."

"And no magic was involved in bringing Nightmare Moon to remember Luna's love for you?"

There was a brief pause. Finally, she said, "Perhaps I should allow you to explain what it is you have in mind."

I nodded, thankfully. "I'm not saying that we need to leave them as they are - just that we may not need to change them. From what I remember of psychological texts, the most important thing to consider in an intervention is whether a condition negatively impacts their life. It's the difference between a pony who likes making checklists, and one who can't function without making them. If any of these three are still competent to make their own decisions and direct their own lives - then do we have the right to alter their minds against their will?"

"If we do not, then the way that they previously thought will not come back. Their original self would want us to return them to that state."

"And if we do, then the way that they think now will go away, and not come back. And the self they are now would want us to return them to this state. Is it so completely unambiguously obvious that having them the one way instead of the other is better than the other, so that we shouldn't even consider the possibility that we're wrong?"

"I am guessing that you have something in mind?"

"Possibly. I'm hoping for your advice - you have much more experience in various legal matters than I do, which I'm presuming includes determining whether or not a pony is competent to handle their own affairs."

Her eyes sparkled. "I believe I may be able to find something. Tell me more of these little ponies..."

"Hello, Navy," I said. Princess Celestia was seated on a small throne, and I was reclining mostly on my side, on a floor pillow. I wasn't exactly happy with this plan - but I had asked for Celestia's help with this, and this was how she'd decided to intervene.

The blue mare was trembling in place, looking from me to the Princess and back. For once, the wordsmith was tongue-tied.

I continued with the script Celestia had given me. "We have been discussing how to deal with you. Some of the suggestions have been to return you to your previous life, or," I casually rubbed a forehoof down my ribs and onto my udder, "whether I should consider allowing you to-"

I was interrupted as Navy blurted out a cry of "Madre!" and dove through the air at me.

Just as her muzzle surrounded one of my teats, Celestia calmly said, "Sleep," and with a glow of alicorn magic, Navy collapsed. Celestia glanced sidelong at me. "I believe the results are clear enough?"

I nodded, as I pulled myself out of Navy's mouth. "If she has that little self control, even right in front of your royal presence - change her back."

"Hello, Blanche," I nodded at the white pegasus. She wasn't trembling, but was rather tense, all four hooves planted widely. "We have been discussing your case, and how best to deal with you."

"Am I to be... punished?"

Celestia answered, "No, my little pony. I do not believe you have done anything of your own free will which deserves punishment. I would like to undo the magic which has affected your mind-"

"No!" With a sudden leap into the air, Blanche spread her wings. The Royal Guard spread their own - but Blanche dove away from the Princess, tucked and curled and broke through a stained glass window.

Both Celestia and I sat there, bemused, as the sounds of a full-fledged chase came from outside. As the noises faded into the distance, Celestia said, "Well - I certainly wasn't expecting that."

"I told you she was fixated on getting me to pay attention to her, no matter what it took to get my notice."

"You did. I assume that when she is captured, you have no objection to my curing her?"

I pursed my lips as I looked at the window. "I think you mean 'if' she is captured, but yes."

"Hello, Brick."

"Hello, Missy, Hello, Your Highness." The unicorn gave a bow to me, then to her - this meeting was already going rather differently.

"Princess Celestia and I have been discussing what we should do with you."

"Have you decided yet?"

"Not quite yet. The Princess has suggested that we counter the charm which makes you love me."

"If that's what you decide, then I'm sure it's for the best." She gave a brief shudder. "But... I'd rather you didn't."

I glanced at Celestia, who raised an eyebrow at me. I turned back to Brick. "One thing we're trying to figure out is what would be best for you, personally."

"Can I say what I think about that?"

I nodded. "That's what you're here for."

"Okay." She took a breath, then let it out. "Before the pool - I was pretty much a slacker. No real goals, just kind of grazing through life. Navy and Blanche almost had to drag me to go along with their project. If you turn me back - I'll probably go back to doing that sort of thing. But since I learned the truth about Missy," and her eyes sparkled, "from the moment I first open my eyes in the morning, I try to think of what I can do to make her happiest with me. I've put more effort into studying in the last few days than I did in all of college put together. Just from what she's taught me so far, I already know that I can make more of a difference than I ever thought I could before - and I have so much more I can learn from her, to do even more with my life."

My eyes widened, and then I double-facehoofed. "Holy shamoly, we've got a cure for akrasia!"

Celestia politely inquired, "Huh?"

I started to inhale to speak, but Brick beat me to the punch. "The state where a pony knows they really should do something, but somehow just don't get around to doing it. One particular form of it is usually called 'procrastination'." She looked a bit smug at having the definition so ready - a feeling she might be entitled to, since I'd only mentioned it once, in passing, to Navy, while Brick had been working on a paper-and-pencil puzzle I'd given to her.

Brick looked at me. I looked at Celestia. Celestia looked like she had indigestion. "I am not happy," she said. "Leaving a spell in place for a long period is not a choice to be taken lightly. There may come a time when it has become such a part of the pony, that it can no longer be removed." She looked down at Brick. "I am going to want a full psychological evaluation to determine whether or not what you say about yourself is accurate. And if I ever decide that this enchantment does you more harm than good, I will immediately remove it. Is that clear?"

Brick said, "Missy?"

I had to clear my throat a time or two before I said, "I have no objection to what she said."

Brick's smile was an instant of pure joy.

My frown was an instant of pure disgust.

I was looking at the first few photographs of the pages of the book the Pillars had given me - and was seriously debating whether I should burn the whole thing.

The book was the scientific journal, for lack of a better word, of a pony from a few centuries ago. Whoever wrote it, was a unicorn whose talent was transformation magic... and who wanted to know what some of the limits of such magic were.

Like what would happen if he turned a pony into water, and then someone drank her.

Or if a pony were turned into a tree, who had a branch removed. Or a branch grafted in from another tree.

Or what would happen if a pony were youthened to precisely one day old - and then youthened by a further 48 hours.

There were charts. Plots. Careful recordings of every aspect of every experiment, and the results.

There were precise diagrams of every result.

Some ponies ended up with absolutely no detectable harm done to them. Not even after a full dissection.

Some weren't so lucky.

I put the papers away. If nothing else, my possessing this text meant that nopony else had it. It was even possible that, buried somewhere in the pages, was information that could one day be useful.

I was still very, very tempted to burn the thing.

The Princesses and I were sipping hot chocolate in a sitting room, with the foot-long sliver of Ursa Major bone on a table between us. Luna had been especially disturbed to learn that the Star Beast was dead - she said that she could guess the exact date that it had happened, but hadn't paid attention to the reverberations that had happened to her night sky, as she'd still been encouraging the stars to get used to her being in control of things again. (Or, at least, that's the way she put it.)

And once that had been talked over - the three of us allowed ourselves a fairly relaxed chat about anything and everything under the sun and stars.

"I do not," I declared at one point, "want to baptize anyone else in that pool. Even if Brick is doing better - a one-out-of-three rate of improvement isn't worth abandoning all respect for ponies' mental integrity."

At another, Luna said, "Art thou ready to swear eternal personal fealty to either of us, yet?"

"I'm not even ready to swear eternal fealty to your government."

"And yet thou dost direct an increasing part of its functions."

I took a sip before answering. "I'm entirely willing to consider the possibility that, one day, the best interests of Equestria would be served by the two of you no longer being associated with its government. And if that day ever comes, I will work for that goal as diligently as I work for any other. But - unless there's one of those extremely implausible situations philosophers like to dream up, such as 'what would you do if a madman said they'd kill an innocent if you did that', if such a day even looks like it may come, then I have every intention of being clear and upfront with both of you about why I'm thinking what I'm thinking, well before I even make any preparations for taking such an action. If my reasoning is right, then I'd hope you see it too, and would voluntarily step down; and if my reasoning is wrong, then I'd hope you could point out the flaw."

"And if thou couldst not gain our agreement?"

"Then I would do everything I could to minimize the harm done to the innocent ponies - but would still work according to the dictates of my conscience, not to the dictates of a particular government."

Vocabulary

"Cheerilee - Blanche isn't in her right mind right now, and she's fixated on me, in a sort of romantic way. In the past, ponies with fixations much less extreme have done terrible things to the ponies they thought they loved, and to those ponies' own loved ones. Since there is a specific, identifiable threat to you, I've managed to arrange for some extra patrols in the area to keep an eye on you. But guards take time to notice and to respond, and after a while they'll have to go back to their normal routes. So I asked Princess Celestia to let me bring some of my work home to you - with certain conditions and limitations and so on.

"This is my boomstick." I opened the case, to show its contents to her. "More formally named a 'shotgun'. It works much like a crossbow, but is much easier to handle, and at the short ranges of inside a home, aiming is much less of a factor. If worst comes to worst, you can use it to defend yourself by-"

"No," Cheerilee said, gently, but firmly.

After a moment to see if she was continuing, I asked, "Pardon?"

"What kind of example would I be setting for my students, if I used this?"

"That sometimes, talking is not enough to protect yourself and the ponies you love from those who would hurt them."

She placed her hoof on the carrying case's lid and closed it. "I appreciate what you're trying to do, and I love you for it - but no."

"... Can I keep it under my side of the bed?"

"If that bed is in a house I don't own."

"Can I buy your house?"

"No."

"I'll pay well above market value..."

"No."

"Can I try to convince you to change your mind?"

"Of course."

"Can I take you to the firing range to show you how to use it?"

"No."

"... If Blanche tries to wear your skin to make me like her better, can I at least say 'I told you so'?"

"If you feel like it, then I'm certainly not going to stop you."

Making it to Canterlot the next morning, I put on something of a show for Alabaster Pillar, to make sure that she felt she got her money's worth. I started with having the outside well hosed down, and the interior swept and dusted; and, not admitting that the 'curse' had already been removed, went about setting some copper stakes along the property's boundary line, connected some of them with wires, and played with a gizmo I'd made to imitate the PKE meter from Ghostbusters. I hummed at my 'readings', made some adjustments to some of the stakes, made sure everypony was outside and not in contact with anything, and pushed a button. There was a bright flash from each stake (courtesy of some quickie flash-powder), and as everypony else was clearing their eyes, I discreetly dug up a small box on the edge of the garden (which I'd had buried there the previous night).

I calmly collected all the equipment and packed it away - Alabaster might have a very strong suspicion that at least some of what I'd just done was mere flim-flammery, but I was reasonably sure she couldn't know which part was. Ambiguity was my friend, where she was involved; that which she couldn't figure out about me, she couldn't use to try to predict my actions, and so, mysteriousness formed my shield against her future attacks.

That afternoon, the Dairy's comm-net forwarded me part of a letter Celestia had received from Twilight, reporting on her and the rest of the Mane Six's failure to do anything about the air pirate, Griffin the Griffin. One part of it immediately caught my attention - Twilight said she had seen proof that Griffin was actually an alien. Another part was more thought-provoking; it seemed that Griffin had found a way for anybeing, of any species, to use magic spells... and that all that was necessary were magically-charged crystals, intent, and the right words. She didn't mention what any of those words might be - but if she was right, then this was one of the perfect foundations for a set of quickie experiments - exactly the sort of thing the Dairy was set up to both allow and encourage.

I had Page schedule me a lab for a couple of hours, with a full set of experimental crystals.

Ordinary English words didn't do anything. Nor did what scraps of French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, Enochian, Esperanto, Lojban, Pig Latin, Quenya, American Sign Language, or Klingon I was able to dredge from my memory. (I was once a conlang geek - AllNoun was one of my favorites.) 'Shirak' didn't create any light, nor did 'dulak' darken it. Speaking backwards didn't have any noticeable effect. Rhyming words, doggerel, and songs didn't improve the results. 'In Lor', from Ultima, didn't make light. Neither 'Azarath, metrion, zinthos' nor 'mu' seemed to work as a mantra.

Finally, the next item on my checklist was 'Latin (and/or Harry Potter)'. The first one that came to mind was Biblical - so I picked up a nice, clear, magically-charged diamond with one hoof, held it firmly before me, visualized my intent of glowyness, and stated: "Fiat Lux."

Rather to my surprise, the gemstone brightened, and was soon shining just like a light-bulb.

I immediately noted this result down, and dropped it into the outbox on the door outside of the lab, to be sent straight to the Dairy's secure document storage - if I was about to blow myself up, I wanted to make sure that Safe Guard and Micro Scope would be able to carry on the investigation without me.

By the light of the glowing diamond, I tried to think of as much Latin as I could, jotting it down. 'A mari usque ad mare', from sea to shining sea, the motto of my home country; 'ad astra per aspera', to the stars through adversity, as any good Trekkie should know; 'cui bono?', who benefits?, the motto of an evil-universe version of the justice league; 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?', who watches the watchmen, recently made famous by Moore; 'quid pro quo'; 'quod erat demonstrandum', the Q.E.D. at the end of math proofs; 'magna cum laude', on diplomas; 'magnum opus'; 'semper fidelis', always loyal; 'memento mori', often on gravestones; 'mens rea', the legal term for knowing what you're doing is wrong; 'morituri te salutant', from the ancient Gladiatorial games, where 'we who are about to die salute you'; 'mutatis mutandis', which I actually forgot the meaning of, I just always liked the sound of it; 'ad hominem', 'in situ', 'in vitro', 'in vivo', 'in utero', 'de novo', 'deus ex machina', 'homo sapiens', 'ipso facto', 'post hoc', 'delerium tremens', 'rigor mortis', 'et tu, Brute?', 'modus operandi', 'coitus interruptus', 'in flagrante delicto', 'carpe diem', 'terra firma', 'caveat emptor', 'cogito ergo sum', 'non sequitur', 'camera obscura', 'Pax Americana', 'casus belli', 'Anno Domini', 'E Pluribus Unum', 'sic semper tyrannus', 'vox populi', 'tabula rasa', 'ante meridiem' and 'post meridium', 'de facto' and 'de jure', 'tempus fugit', 'mea culpa', 'non compos mentis', 'habeus corpus', 'post partum', 'status quo', 'veni, vidi, vici', 'alma mater'...

I remembered that SPQR was the motto of the Roman legions, and meant 'Senate and People of Rome', but couldn't quite remember the exact Latin phrase... and looking at the list so far, figured I had enough to fiddle with. I tapped my pen on the paper - I knew the Greek and Latin for 'water' were 'hydro' and 'aqua', but couldn't remember which was which. If I needed more, I could always try digging up my memory of the long-winded terms for body-parts, official latin biological names of species, astrophysics terms, and so on.

I looked over the list, and frowned. There were a lot of words, yes, but it was a bit hard to figure out what sort of spells most of them might be able to induce - and of the ones remaining, I didn't feel like testing out the possibly lethal 'mort'... and this was probably entirely the wrong setting to see what magic the word 'coitus' could cause. (But maybe when I went back to Cheerilee...) And there were still an entire host of questions surrounding the entire operation. How, exactly, was the causal chain from my exhaling while vibrating my larynx and positioning my tongue and lips in certain ways, to a diamond brightening up? How close did I need to be to the gem? How loud did I have to speak? How precisely did I have to enunciate? If I thought one thing but used the word for another, would anything happen, and if so, what? What if I concentrated on a spell, and had someone else say the word? Could I use a recording of the word? What happened if I stopped halfway through the word, or started partway through? Did the words have to be heard? How would things change if I held more than one crystal at a time?

Thinking about these questions - and a whole host of others - it seemed that 'fiat lux' alone would be sufficient to look for many of the answers. Thus, I took my notes on Latin words, folded the papers, and put them away in my own secure document area - a spot where nopony, not even Safe and Micro, had access to. And I sought those two noteworthies to try brainstorming possible tests to try - and possible uses that could be made of what I had learned so far. I decided to hold off on telling them even on what the words to make a diamond glow were, at least for the moment - there was plenty of time to let that secret spread to them, if it turned out to be useful to do so.

And when Twilight returned, maybe I could ferret out whatever magic words she'd learned from Griffin.

While I was checking the latest printed timetable for the Friendship Express, hoping to be able to improve my commuting between Ponyville and Canterlot without continually borrowing the Alicorn, I got a message from Marble Pillar - she wanted to talk with me, and suggested a certain bench by the reservoir feeding into Serenity Falls. I considered, then handed my scheduling to Page with a quick request and quick grin, collected Safe, and went to see what this was about.

With Safe carefully but discreetly keeping an eye from a couple of benches over, I watched Marble undulate across the water's surface toward me, until she rested against the tile-lined bank, her front half above the water.

"You seem to be adapting well," I suggested.

"Better than not adapting - and it is more productive than bemoaning my fate, as much as Mother's associates seem to be expecting me to."

"Not 'your' associates?"

"Not as long as I refuse to take your cure. And this curse doesn't wear off. Will it?"

"I would prefer not to disclose that information at this time," I hedged.

"Meaning that even you don't know?", she asked with a sly grin.

"Meaning that I choose not to tell you even whether or not I know, let alone what I know," I shrugged. "If you wish to be sure you remain in this form for the long term, you may wish to talk to Celestia about ensuring that."

"I intend to - there is only so much inspecting that this reservoir can possibly need."

"If it is simple employment you require," I thought as I talked, "I may be able to find a position for you..."

She was shaking her head. "I may be breaking away from Mother - but that does not mean I plan on becoming your thrall, instead."

"I would hardly call entering into a standard employment contract being a 'thrall'."

"It is all about perceptions - and I would be sending an entirely different message by formally aligning with you than I am by moving apart from Mother."

"As you wish. In that case, why am I here?"

"I want to make you feel indebted to me by giving you information you find valuable, even though telling you costs me little-to-nothing."

I couldn't stop the corner of my mouth from quirking into a half grin. "Taking my philosophy on honesty to heart, are you?"

"Since it benefits me while dealing with you - certainly."

"So."

"Ah, yes. Despite Princess Celestia's assurance that no magic is affecting my mind, Mother is certain that your curse upon me has changed more than my body - thus, she is calling in many of the markers and favors owed to her by her various allies. Some of whom are distant enough from her that they are still my allies, at least enough to talk with me. I do not know what Mother's exact plan is - but it's going to be big, and soon, and probably directly involve several highly-placed members of the nobility, and target both you and your... teacher friend."

"Thank you for the warning, but there is little there that I haven't already guessed at."

"What you will not have guessed is what her plan likely is. Given her past... conquest strategies, it is probably one, or both, of two things. First, she may try to get some measure passed in the Barn of Lords which would be detrimental to you - something that does not mention you by name, but causes you grief. Perhaps she hopes to pass some anti-miscegnation law, or a regulation requiring departmental heads to go through a background check you cannot pass, or a budget amendment de-funding your department."

"I see. And the second thing?"

"Simple - what I tried to do to you, but without any plausible deniability, and with the finest duelists who can be brought to Canterlot in short order."

"I will be sure to avoid doing anything which can cause offense to any pony at all, let alone sufficient offense to require a duel."

"If that is what she tries - I do not think you will have any choice about it. She may get the Barn to ennoble you, just to ensure that you will be obliged to accept the proper sort of duel challenge, so that one of her hired swords can legally kill you."

"That," my brow wrinkled, "is not a plan I would have thought of trying to defend against."

"There is one other thing I think I should tell you now. The support Mother has been getting... has been much greater than usual, including from quarters I would not have expected. Either she has blackmail secrets even I didn't expect, or..."

"... or?"

"... or even she is merely a pawn playing into somepony else's greater plans." She wiggled her fins in what I guessed was meant as a shrug. "In which case, anything is possible."

"I see," I repeated. "Or, really, I don't - but I may have a better idea of what it is I'm not seeing."

"If you survive, please remember who it was who told you of all this."

"I don't think I could possibly forget."

As Safe and I strolled back toward the palace, I said, "I've been keeping up with the exercises you prescribed, and the practice for defending against monsters and would-be rapists and such. Would you happen to know of any training I could do that would help against experienced duelists?"

I really, really didn't like the smile he gave me.

Gonna Fly Now

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

I was on fire!

Admittedly, I was enchanted to prevent any significant harm, and there was a safety officer nearby with a fire extinguisher, as well as a medic with a full burn kit... but I was still on fire! Or, to sum up:

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Your main strength," Safe Guard had told me earlier, "is in long-term strategic planning. Your main weakness is, well, you're a cow. No offense."

"None taken."

"Some of the nobles I am aware of have spent most of their lives practicing dueling and duel-related activities. Put simply, there is no way that I can train you to match their abilities. It would take a year or two of full-time training simply to bring you up to snuff as a competent fighter."

"I hope that's all the bad news."

"Not quite all of it - you still have your day-job, and I can't make you miss too many hours of that, without hampering the Dairy's own long-term performance."

"Anything else?"

"One more thing - whatever is brewing, it might be tomorrow, or the day after, or any given day you care to name. So whatever training I do offer you, can't be something that takes too long, or takes too long to recover from."

"Well - that's certainly... a lot of limitations."

"To put it mildly. I can't turn you into a standard fighter - but what I might be able to do, with a few days' worth of part-time, non-disabling training, is to help you... become more able to use your strength, even in extreme conditions."

"That... doesn't sound too bad, actually."

"Are you sure?"

"Will it help the Dairy's long-term goals?"

"It's the best idea I've got for that."

"Then I'm sure."

"Remember you said that. Come to think of it - I'd better get you to sign some waivers."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Oh, come back here, it's just a small dragon!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"You're doing great! Just a couple more hours, and we'll move you to the big waterfall!"

"HNNNNNNNNNGGG!"

"You'll be fine - just try not to roll around too much, they love your body heat. See you in the morning."

All of that was bad enough - and as I got used to each situation, I became more able to think while under stress - and even do tasks, like solving silly puzzles.

And then came the drops.

I'd never been phobic about heights... exactly. I was a bit uncomfortable walking across high bridges, and extremely reluctant to go on any rollercoasters - but I'd never had any issues about climbing ladders or fixing roofs or anything like that. So when Safe suggested that, with all the possible appropriate safeguards, Red would climb as high as she could while carrying me and let me go, I was about as reluctant as I was for any of his other proposals, but did, in fact, sign off on it.

While Red, and another pegasus who'd been drafted to help lift my bulk during the climb, lifted me into the air, I tried to pull some inspiration from the old Zen story about the fellow trapped halfway down a cliff, with a tiger above, a tiger below, and mice gnawing on the vine he was holding onto... who found a strawberry next to him, popped it into his mouth, and thought about how sweet it was. So I enjoyed the scenery, from the sight of Canterlot right below to the mountains in the distance. I even tried to pick out Ponyville itself.

We got as high as the two pegasi could lift me.

And they let go.

And my mind went as completely, utterly, mind-numblingly blank as if a whole herd had linked horns with mine and were running magical current through my brain.

The next thing I was aware of, I was dangling from my parachute, already halfway back to the ground - about where the automatic safety was supposed to kick in.

The low-altitude pegasus safety crew checked to make sure I was alive and conscious, and then let me finish drifting down.

After I landed, the medic checked me over, and nobody made a single comment about my bowels and bladder now being empty.

Safe asked, "Are you up to a second go?"

I looked up at the sky.

I'd always heard of knees knocking, and seen it in cartoons. I'd never actually felt anything it.

I could think of all sorts of reasons to end this right now - there were so many better things I could be doing with my time, the expense of hiring the safety crews, the risk if all of the safety precautions failed... and it was utterly obvious that all such reasoning was mere rationalizing the fact that I just didn't want to do it again.

I wasn't used to my emotions crowding out my brain like this. Being set on fire - sure, it hurt, and I ran around a bit, but it wasn't that bad. Even getting caught up with Cheerilee, as enthralling as she was, I could still consider whether any given thing would make her feel better than any other thing. But falling like that - I didn't have words for it.

My mouth was dry, so it took me a couple of times before I could answer him. "Gimme... gimme the next parachute."

The second time I reached the ground, my legs couldn't hold me up, and at least three of my four stomachs had emptied themselves.

I heard Safe talking, and the first I remember him saying was, "The point isn't to make you suffer, it's so you can get better - as fast as possible, given the potential time constraints. I don't think you're going to do any better at this today - and you might do worse, if you push it. Maybe tomorrow."

The next day's exercise had nothing to do with falling; it was simply to remain perfectly still.

For hours.

On my hindlegs.

In a 'mine field' which would 'blow up' if I shifted a hoof.

The day after that, the exercise actually covered most of my ordinary work-hours, as well: Safe set me to keeping a cup of water balanced on top of my head the whole day, as long as any failure wouldn't endanger any significant papers.

I spent most of the day with a wet head, but did increase my awareness of my body's movements.

The day after that, Safeguard wanted to try blind training - which didn't really require more than taking off my glasses - and I frowned at him. "When are we going to get back to the drop?"

He looked away from me, eyes hidden by the side of his Greek-style helm. "I'm not planning on using that exercise again. I shouldn't have tried it in the first place."

"What makes you say that?"

He managed to look me in the eyes. "I want to give you full credit for giving it a second shot - I know exactly how scared you were. I just don't think sending you up again will do you any good."

"I've been skimming some of the unicorn dueling manuals. At least some unicorn duelists have been reported as casting mental illusions, to plunge their opponent into seeing, experiencing, whatever they wish. Is that inaccurate?"

Reluctantly, he admitted, "Not to my knowledge."

"Then - all that an opponent would need to do to render me completely helpless and defeat me, is stick me into an illusion of falling. Yes?"

"I suppose."

"Then what can we do to... fix me?"

"That's what I've been trying to figure out for the past few days. Just dropping you again and again would probably make you worse, not better. Maybe some mental magic might work - but I'm loathe to try anything so radical. Maybe your psychologist might know."

"Hello, again, Doctor Brown."

"Hello, again, Forty-Two. How did your new training exercises go?"

"Some good, some bad. It's the latter I'm here about. Seems I have an excessive fear of falling from heights - and given the requirements of my job, it would be better if I could deal with that better. As in, at all. Would you happen to know what the best research is for treating such?"

"Naturally. The treatment for phobias with the best results, overall, seems to be exposure therapy. When it's of something simple, such as a particular sort of animal, I would start with mild and distant exposure, such as in a cage on the other side of the room, until the patient becomes accustomed to it; and then increasing the level of contact, step by step. However, I am not quite sure of how that could be applied to falling..."

"That's merely a technical problem."

"If you say so. While I have you here, why don't we talk about your marefriend. Have matters improved since our last talk?"

"Well - a bouquet may not solve all problems, but it certainly helps..."

"Alrighty, ponies," I looked around the round table at the Dairy's collection of geeks and lab-techs. "Today's team-building creativity exercise is to come up with an economical way to allow a pony, or cow, to experience freefall for an arbitrary length of time. Standard problem-solving suggestions apply: try to describe what the full parameters of the problem are, before suggesting and becoming attached to any given solution."

"Can I ask something, Doctor Missy, ma'am?"

"Of course."

"Why do you have a bunch of teacups on your back?"

"Because it beats trying to watch the grass grow. Alright, who's got some chalk?"

"So whose idea was this?" Safe looked dubiously at the resulting invention.

"It was a collaborative effort," I said. "Really, most of the credit should go to the Materials Science - I didn't know we had anything like this in our arsenal."

"And where did the name come from?"

"I believe it's a slang for a rubber eraser. I wonder if we can make a profit from it?"

"What? How?"

"Perhaps some ponies - not pegasi, obviously - would be willing to give this a go..."

"That seems incredibly unlikely - even if you do survive."

"One way to see if it works, I suppose. The triple checks are all done so - if you'll excuse me - I've got a bunjee rope to test, before the standby rescue pegasi start charging me overtime. ... GeronimooooaaaaAAAAAHHhhh... ah... ahaha... ha... okay, that wasn't so bad, just a second or so. ... so who's going to pull me up? ... Um, hello? Somepony still up there? Safe? Red?

"Anypony?"

Four of Two

While trying to figure out the various political attacks the Dairy would be suffering, and how to fend them off... the actual work of the Dairy continued apace. I was keeping most of the research on crystal-powered magic spells to myself, for security purposes; Judge Wicked's ideas on conspiracy were nudging me back toward operational paranoia.

That particular day, I was taking some basic measurements on how rapidly any given type of gemstone would discharge its magic through the standard light spell. That is, after giving each one an equal charge of magic power, seeing how long it kept glowing. I had a few theories which might demonstrate a relationship between strength of release, duration of release, and type of crystal, but I needed to gather hard evidence to narrow in on which theories made the right predictions.

That particular day, I'd also added a new item to the set of test crystals: a small, merely fist-sized piece of Ursa Major skeleton. I was quite curious to see how it would respond to being used in this sort of magic. I stuck the shard in one side of the charging apparatus, my horns in the other, and hit the switch. Two seconds later, the connection was broken, and a few seconds after that, I came back to myself enough to continue the procedure. I moved the crystal to the experimental workbench, arranged my timers and light-meters, placed my hoof on the see-through, sparkly bone, visualized illumination, and commanded, "Fiat Lux."

I immediately had to shut my eyes against the glare, then screw them shut, then turn away, then curl up on the floor and cover my eyes with my forehoof. I started smelling smoke. I got the impression that I was seeing my own leg-bone through my own flesh... I heard the fire-alarm start, and the sprinklers start raining down, but the light kept brightening...

... whereupon I got a feeling of odd lethargy, of slowness and stillness, my whole body going numb...

... I suddenly gasped, filling my lungs with a deep breath. There was no more smell of smoke, no blinding light shining through my eyelids. Cautiously, I opened my eyes.

I was lying down at the back of Cheerilee's sitting room. The sun was shining down through the windows at an angle indicating late afternoon. A few moments ago, by my perspective, it had been early morning.

There was at least one other oddity. In the middle of the floor, facing me, was a sandwich board, like the ones used by restaurants to advertise daily specials. Written on it in Cheerilee's neat penmanship, was "WELCOME BACK! Today's Date", followed by a date just over four weeks later than the last moment I remembered. Beneath that, several bullet points informed me, "Lab accident," "Lab was burned," "You were petrified," "Unknown duration," "Everypony else is fine," and "Hope to see you soon!" There was a swooping arrow leading to a notebook, attached by a string to the board. As I stood, I felt something shift underneath me; in the window, alight turned on, and I heard a bell ring upstairs. Some wires led from under the carpet I'd been lying on off through a doorway; it looked like somepony wanted to know as soon as I was mobile again.

While I waited to see what reaction the alarm might bring, I flipped inside the book on a string, where I discovered newspaper clippings from the past month, and various diary-like notes, from Red and Page having moved in together, to Safe and Just having started dating, to Micro having lost an eyebrow in a flash-fire while trying to figure out what had happened to me.

As I was reading a rather fascinating report about an evening out - and then in - which Cheerilee had had with Lily, a weight suddenly landed on my back. Fortunately, one of the few benefits of the bovine form is an extremely stable framework, so I was able to simply turn my head around - and spy Amethyst crouched on my haunches, baring a toothy grin at me.

I politely inquired, "How are the pups doing?"

"Good," she answered, in her usual succinct fashion.

"Anything I need to know?"

She tilted her head, then nodded.

I waited. She waited. I sighed. "What do I need to know?"

"Ponies. Mad. At. Dogs."

"Have they started fighting?"

A head-shake of negation.

"Then hopefully there's still time to calm things do-"

Amethyst casually leapt off of me, knocking me slightly off balance - which was enough so that when someone else ran straight into my side, I rolled all the way onto my back. A two-shaded pink mane covered my eyes, through which I caught glimpses of a darker purple coat. No words were exchanged. I heard Amethyst start chuckling, and then head out the door.

Some time later, I finally said, "Hi."

"Hi," she smiled back. "I missed you."

I gave her a hug as I said, "I still feel like I just took the train to Canterlot a few hours ago, and confused about what happened... but I'm glad to see you."

"Don't ever do anything like that again."

"... I'm not even sure what I did in the first place."

"That's not what I meant."

"Ah. Well, I'll try not to, then."

Safe grinned at me. "Still in one piece, then? I was worried somepony was going to drop you before you came back to us."

"And here I was expecting jokes about rocks in my head."

"I was saving those for the next time I was bored."

"I can live with that - boredom is good. Nopony's tried blowing up Equestria while I was..."

"Stoned?"

"Let's make that the absolute last time anypony ever uses that joke."

"Spoilsport. But no - no major catastrophes. We've been picking up hints about more of these transformed hyu-mins popping up here and there. Some of the possibles have independently mentioned this 'Chess Game' theory about their arrival, so we're using that as a primary filter to separate..." We talked shop for a few minutes. "... resulting in R&D doing more D than R."

"Nothing wrong with that. Say, did Micro figure out anything about what happened to me?"

"You'd have to ask her for the details. From what I've gathered, she couldn't make heads or tails about anything about it, until she tried working with the assumption there were two magical events, not one. One flash-fried the lab you were in; the other sto- er, turned you to stone. You probably only survived the first because of the second. So - you've still got a few tricks up your sleeve you haven't shared even with me, huh?"

My forehead wrinkled. "Not on purpose. The only time I've dealt with petrification directly was... hm. I'm going to have to ask a few questions of somepony, and then I might have an answer for you. In the meantime - if you haven't already, you should put all those Ursa Major skeletal fragments into secure storage, and I only want them let out with my authorization."

He looked away from me. "Um... well, there's a thing about that. A matter. I probably should have brought it up first, but we got to talking, and..." He shrugged. I raised an eyebrow. He coughed. "While you were - gone, and Micro and I were running things, we worked on improving the Dairy's security and counter-intelligence procedures, including regularizing them and removing exceptions, and, well..." He coughed again. "Youdidn'tpassthebackgroundcheck."

"Pardon?"

"You didn't pass the background check, and, well, without a sufficient security clearance for codeword-level projects, you're not going to be able to effectively run the place anymore, so, um... if you still want to stay with us, I'm kinda your boss now. And Micro is. Or, if that's weird, we can go our separate ways, no hard feelings - though Micro says she can't seem to find the paperwork where you actually swore to maintain secrecy. She thinks its in one of your personal document safes, the ones you designed to incinerate the contents of if they were fiddled with. We've actually found some rather important papers missing, like some one-time pads for some important communiques, and how that card-deck encryption scheme actually works, and your most recent research notes, and so on, and we'd appreciate if you could hand them over so we can run the whole thing at full efficiency..."

I ran my gaze up and down him, speculatively. Finally, I said, "I can answer part of that immediately. The reason you can't find the paperwork where I agreed to keep classified information secret is because I never wrote any. I founded the classification system, and at the start, assumed that I would be the single trustable node - and never bothered altering that assumption. I never did get around to writing down some of what you're mentioning - too many things to do, not enough time to do them all in. Page always had a better knack for getting things written down than I did."

"She's been kicking my tail about getting procedures written down for future reference, too. So - shall we go hit the vaults?"

"Not quite yet - now that I know you've been able to keep everything running without major issues, I've got a few other errands to run that take priority. Hrm... I think I'm going to need to borrow the Alicorn if I want to get it all done... today..." I sighed at the look Safe was giving. "Alright, out with it."

"Blueblood's annoyed the Princesses a bit much. Something about demanding Ponyville be burned to the ground for harboring some fugitives who humiliated him. So, among other things, they've taken the Alicorn away from him. I haven't actually seen it in a couple of weeks - I'm not sure where it might be."

"Well, isn't that inconvenient. In that case, since I've got to rely on my own hooves, I'd better gallop. I'll get back to you about those papers, okay?" I turned away from him and started at a brisk trot.

I was pretty sure that my petrifaction was an accident... but I also found it interestingly convenient that while I was out of touch, I had been shuffled out of authority of my main base of power - which, from my perspective, came quite soon after that unexplained incident with the subpoena. It was entirely possible that there was nothing connecting them with each other - and, as I thought about it, with my preferred mode of transportation - but it was also possible that there was something. That there was somepony, or some other being, whom I couldn't put a name or face to, but who was pulling at hidden strings even better than I did. If such a puppeteer didn't exist, and I acted as if it did... then, at worst, I'd act somewhat too paranoid, and waste some time and effort in trying to deal with an opponent who didn't exist. But if they did exist, and I acted as if they didn't - then my life, the Game, and Equestria itself could easily be forfeit. So the payoff matrix gave fairly easy results - a bit of excess paranoia was a small price to pay.

Thus, I had to act under the assumption that some sort of coordinated attack was being made in order to neutralize me - or, at least, my ability to do anything useful.

Thinking paranoiacally, Safe and Micro had gained a good deal by taking me out of the way: control of most of the Dairy, save for those parts which I had sealed personally. Perhaps they had been subverted by mere promises of wealth and power, though I had given them the trust I had specifically because they didn't seem susceptible to such blandishments. Perhaps they had loved ones who had been threatened, or they were under some sort of mind-control magic (such as the love-potion which Blanche had been dunked in), or perhaps they were entirely unwitting pawns. Whatever their motivation - I couldn't trust them with access to anything they didn't already possess.

My first instinct was to go straight to the Princesses. However - given my past behavior, that would obviously be my initial move. And thus, if a puppeteer was acting against me, they would likely have made preparations for that. Perhaps whispering in the ears of some top advisers that I was dangerously unstable, who would pass that advice to the Princesses, who might then take me up on my promise to go to an asylum should they ever say I should.

What I needed to do was something that would be implausible, given anyone's previous knowledge of my actions, behavior, and preferences.

Only one of the ex-stallions who'd once tried to rape me remained in Canterlot. Star Charmer had chosen to become a mare rather than a gelding, and looked extremely surprised when I knocked on her apartment door. She stood there, looking at me through the barely-opened door for a long few moments, before finally sighing. "You might as well come in, then," she said, and let me in.

It was decorated in University Student Poor - tables made of milk-crates, bookshelves made of milk-crates, a couch that had seen better days, a chair with a permanent pony-butt print in it... rather a far way for a unicorn who'd used to be the son of a baron to fall. She gestured me at the couch, and settled into the divot in the chair. "Are you here to ask for my apology, or to get closure, or something of the sort?"

"Actually," I said, as I carefully settled my bulk to avoid the jutting springs, "I'm here to offer you a second chance - if you want to take it."

"... I'm listening."

"For various reasons it would take too long to explain, I am extending an offer for you to enter my employ. If you do, you will have the opportunity to demonstrate the various virtues the Princesses are fond of. If you accept this offer, and you demonstrate your character, then I will report exactly that to one of the Princesses, along with my recommendation that Princess Luna's sentence upon you be ameliorated. However, I should also inform you that should you accept, and then demonstrate vices rather than virtues, then that would be what I report, and I expect that you would permanently lose any hope of ever improving your station again."

There was a... gleam in her eye. "I didn't have any hope of doing any better than this," she waved a hoof at her place. "What sort of 'job' are you talking about?"

"To start with - delivering messages to a certain two ponies..."

"Hello, Brick. Hello, Blanche - I wasn't sure you'd stay in contact with Brick, but I had hoped you would. Hello, Marble - I hope that your chair isn't too uncomfortable."

"Milady."

"Goddess!"

"I'll live. I'd lost track of you for a while - what have you been up to?"

"You know how the royal dairy is experimenting with petrification as a form of food preservation?" She nodded. "There was a lab accident, and I've been out of commission for a few weeks." I knew that I was giving her a deliberately distorted impression, by asking that question so closely to that statement; but if my paranoia was wrong, then there would be plenty of time to offer a correction - but if it was right, then I would need to dole out the truth more carefully than gold, to avoid disaster of a grand scale. I continued, looking from the two love-soaked ponies, to the seapony, to the ex-stallion mare, to Amethyst (who had brought the cubs to Canterlot when I went, but who had stayed in the dairy when I went to the Dairy).

"I find," I told the rather unusual group, "that due to certain circumstances that arose while I was unavailable, I now have a need to go outside of the usual official channels to accomplish certain tasks. I require a certain amount of assistance in completing those tasks in a reasonable timeframe. Everypony in this room has at least the potential of being interested in helping me - even if," I glanced at Marble and then at Star, "we have had certain differences in the past.

Looking back at Marble, I said, "Each of you has at least some reason for being willing to help me. However, if you feel that you would rather not get involved, despite what I can offer, then I would prefer that you leave now, before I go into much further detail." Marble looked at me, then looked away, looking thoughtful... and, finally, reached with the tip of her tail to set her wheelchair's brake.

Since she was the pony I was least sure would accept, I nodded. "Alright. Now here's what I have in mind..."

The Dairy Job

"If," I said to Safe, "the Dairy isn't going to be officially under my personal control anymore, then before I officially surrender the authority personally granted to me by the Princesses to set it up and run it - then we're going to need to figure out how to divvy up what's mine and happens to be here, and what's the Dairy's even if it's not here. For example," I picked up the most recent piece of paper in what I still considered my inbox, which read:

Dear Missy.
Please send chapstick.
My lips are bleeding a little.
Thank!
~Ivan.

"Is my arrangement with this zebra a personal bargain between me and him, or do I hand over contact with him to my successor here?"

Safe, uncomfortable, said, "I was hoping you would remain to lend us your expertise."

"Maybe I will - maybe I'll go do something else. But even if I stay, since my relationship with the whole organization is changing, it's probably well past time to separate Missy-the-cow from Missy-the-Dairy-chief, to keep the lines of responsibility clear. If you're going to be in charge, then you are going to be in charge, and aren't going to be able to depend on me bailing you out if you get in hot water with the Princesses."

He looked even more uncomfortable - and now a tad worried. I was fine with that. He said, "That's - quite civil of you. Have you got anything in mind?"

I tapped my chin, thoughtfully. "Tell you what. Since you and Micro seem to think you know enough about the Dairy that you have surpassed your teacher - then consider this your final exam. Whatever you think you need from me for the Dairy, as long as it isn't obviously mine: ask for it, and I will give you specifically what you request."

"What if we ask for the wrong thing, or don't think of something?"

"Well, if it's something that doesn't actually exist, then of course I won' t be able to get it for you. As for the rest - your failure will be punished with true justice: instead of getting what you truly need, or even what you want, you will get what you request."

"That hardly seems fair," he frowned.

"It is exactly and precisely fair. If you don't feel you're up to such a challenge - do you really think you're up to running the entire Dairy?" I looked at him sidelong. "Safe - do you even remember why the Dairy exists at all?"

"To protect the ponies of Equestria, from threats such as slavers."

I sighed, and shook my head. "There was already the Equestrian Guard for that. And a few of the bureaucratic departments could claim to have authority to deal with such matters. But the Dairy - officially - doesn't exist. It's funded directly by the Royal treasury, not through standard government expenditures. It's not, officially, part of the same bureaucracy as the Department of Defense. I honestly never covered this with you?" At his blank look, I sighed again. "Fine. Looks like I get to give you at least one more lesson before I go."

He winced, and I suppressed a chuckle. "I suppose not having to listen to my boring philosophizing might be one reason for bucking me out of here - but since I still seem to have a few things you want, you get to put up with me a little longer." I stood up straighter and cleared my throat. "A problem. You have to make a choice to save the lives of many ponies. On the one hoof, you can save four hundred lives with absolute certainty. On the other hoof, you can save five hundred lives - but there's only a ninety percent chance this plan will work, and a ten percent chance it will fail. Which plan would you pick?" I gave him a second, then pushed, "Hurry up, you don't have all day."

"What if that ten percent chance hits, and everypony dies? How can I gamble with that many lives? The first one."

I nodded agreeably. "Most ponies choose the same. Could you call Page in here for a second?" Safe gave me a look. I looked back calmly. He sighed, then went to the door, and called her in.

I said to her, "I want to make a point to Safe by presenting you with a problem. Ponies are in danger, and you have to choose between two plans. In one plan, one hundred ponies die with certainty. In the other plan, there's a ninety percent chance nopony dies - but a ten percent chance five hundred die. Which plan do you pick?"

She frowned. "I don't want any ponies to die - and there's a pretty good chance with the second one nopony does. That one seems right to me."

I nodded, said, "Thank you, Page, that's all for now." She gave me a look, then went back out.

I fixed Safe in my gaze again. "What do you think of her choice?"

He looked uncomfortable. "It seems to make sense. But - I know you wouldn't have asked if there wasn't some catch to it."

"Of course there was. The problems I gave the two of you? Didn't you notice they were the exact same problem, just phrased differently? And that, because of how they were framed, your intuition gave you one answer for the first, and another for the second?" I glared, and barreled on. "That's just one single example demonstrating that when it comes to significant ethics, intuition gives not just wrong answers, but inconsistent answers. There's a fairly simple way to solve such an issue - the best phrasing I've heard is 'shut up and multiply' - but this entire area is just one small part of the rather larger field of decision theory. You can't even give me a wrong answer to most of those problems, because you haven't internalized one of the most important ideas about behaving rationally."

I was stepping forward to push my muzzle close to his, and he was stepping back, until he hit the wall. I didn't give him the opportunity to ask a question, just kept pushing forward, physically and verbally. "The point of rationality is get important things done. Not to think in a certain way. Not to follow procedure. Not to have everypony filed into little boxes. But to get the best answer, whatever it is. To win."

His tail bumped against the wall, and I held him there for a few long moments, before turning away dismissively. "The Guard is quite good at following orders and doing things the way they have been told to get them done." I looked over my shoulder. "I created the Dairy to find the ways to do things that the Guard can't. If you're kicking me out because I don't fit neatly into your pattern..." I gave an unamused chuckle. "Then you might as well just slap everypony here into uniforms and march them out in formation. And I'll go find some other way to do what has to be done, outside of the rules."

I glanced at the clock - it looked like I'd kept Safe distracted long enough. And who knew - maybe what I'd told him would stick, and he'd manage to do something actually useful with the Dairy's resources. But I wasn't going to count on it. So I turned back to him. "So ask me for what you want from me. When you're done, I'll gather up my personal items. And then we can discuss what sort of relationship I will continue to have with the Dairy, if any."

I fell silent. After a long pause, Safe took a step forward from the wall, glanced out the door, then back at me. "Ah. Well. To start with, there's your office safe, the one that self-destructs the contents if somepony uses the wrong combination."

I nodded, and the two of us went to take a look.

Some time previously...

Brick was a known quantity to the guards. They wouldn't let her into anyplace that was really secure, but when she arrived with saddlebags full of reports for Missy, and requests for further information, as well as various miscellaneous papers destined for other departments, were quite willing to wave her into Missy's office. Where, knowing where the safe was hidden and its combination, she quietly and efficiently removed certain small objects and sets of papers, left others in place, and added a few from her saddlebags. Closing the safe, she placed her reports on Missy's desk, and gave Page a cheery wave on her way out.

I twirled the dial, yanked the handle, and opened the door. "There you go. Let's see what I left here... mine, yours, yours, mine, mine, mine, yours, yours, mine, yours..."

Safe argued about some of the papers I claimed as 'mine', and we spent more time going back and forth about that. Eventually, we came to an agreement, and I packed my collection into some saddlebags, which I threw across my back. "Anything else?", I asked him.

"Your lab locker."

Not too long ago...

"Hey there." The glasses-wearing nerd looked up, and blinked at the unicorn mare who batted her eyes at him. "Your lab coat is hiding your cutie mark. I'm kind of curious what it is... why don't we go somewhere more private where you can... show it to me?" Star Chaser knew that the only chance she had at getting her stallionhood back was to distract anypony from being able to see what was happening in this particular location at this particular time - so distract this pony she would, no matter what it took.

As the lab geek gulped, and allowed himself to be led off... just underneath that lab, Amethyst the diamond dog finished digging her tunnel. She checked the timepiece she'd been given, and saw that the sticks were pointed in the right directions. She tunneled upwards, carefully - and, in moments, lowered a certain locker into her tunnel. Just as carefully, she lifted the replacement, which she'd been dragging with her, up into its place. Her part of the job done, she started dragging the still-sealed locker back to where she'd come from, for her co-mother to crack open at her leisure.

After a little while, the lab-pony wandered back to his work bench, a little flushed and with a wider smile than he'd had in years."

The next thing Safe asked for was, "We also seem to be missing the full list of off-site backups."

"Would you believe that I never wrote it down?"

"I would. Did you write it down?"

"Of course I did. I keep it off-site."

"Why?"

"In case the Dairy wasn't just attacked, but subverted. Good thing that hasn't happened, eh?"

"Uh-huh. Where do you keep it, then?"

"Them."

"Pardon?"

"Why would I have only one copy of an important document meant to be used in the event of an attack?"

"Where do you keep them, then?"

"You only need one, don't you?"

"I suppose."

"Is Red still living in the same place?"

"Yep - Page moved in with her."

"Then let's go see if she's home, shall we?"

"Hey, you're back!" Red gave me a hug. "Looking pretty good for a statue, boss."

"Glad to see you, too. Didn't you hear I was walking around again?"

"Nobody tells me anything."

I frowned at Safe, then looked back at her. "Should I ask?"

"Pretty simple - I work for you, not them. And since I was in jail and am technically on probation, I didn't pass the new background checks, so they don't want me working for them, anyway."

"How've you been making out?"

"You paid me well enough that I could sit on my duff for a while longer, but I've been splitting my time between the library and keeping my wings stretched. So, what'd you bring the tin-head here for?"

Safe grimaced a little inside his Guard helm, but didn't rise to the bait. I answered, "Giving him his parting gifts. He said he wants the list of off-site backups - so I decided to show him what's in your safe."

She blinked a few times, then her eyes gleamed in amusement. "Yeah, I guess he'd want that. Hard to run a business when you don't know where half your stuff is." My hooves clopped across the floor as I went to the wall, took down a painting, and started twiddling with the dial. "What're you planning after that?", Red asked.

"I've got a mare back in Ponyville who wants to see me - after that, I've got a few ideas about places to go, ponies to see. Probably try to convince Safe to let me keep my Inspector badge. Want to come with?"

"Mm... lemme see what packing-"

She was interrupted when a pale pegasus swooped in through a window, flared her wings, and came to a four-point landing right in front of me. "Missy!" cried Blanche in obvious pleasure. "It's so good to see you again!" She grabbed my face with her hooves and planted a nice, big kiss on my mouth. "I've been doing so many naughty things, but you haven't tried spanking me once yet! Oh, say, are these yours? Souvenirs! Score! Can you sign them?"

Safe shouted something and started running towards us. Blanche held the armful of papers she'd grabbed and flapped her wings, rising into the air, hovering near the ceiling and out of his reach. Safe came to a halt and started charging up his horn to blast her - but Red spread her wings and rose into the air, too. The two pegasi started circling the room, keeping Safe from getting a clear shot. Blanche called out, "Getting too hot in here - but I'm sure I'll see you later!" She winged out through the window she'd come in in. Red started following, but glanced back at me, and I shook my head, so she came back down to land by me and Safe.

I said to him, "You know, you've really let your security go to put while I was away."

"She's getting away! We should go after her!"

"Calm down - there's no need. Those were actually a set of decoy papers. Here, look in the safe - see, I flip this open - and there's another lock. Inside there are the papers I meant to put in there."

Safe gave me a rather funny look. "So - you not only keep important papers far away from your office, just in case your office gets blown up or taken over... but you keep fake copies in the same safe, just in case somepony tries to steal them?"

"Pretty much," I agreed.

"By Celestia's tea- uh, tail, you're a paranoid heifer."

"Looks like I was just paranoid enough. I assume you want what's in this second safe I just showed you?"

"... yeah, I suppose I do."

Finally, Safe couldn't think of anything more to ask me for, at least that I was willing to give him. For example, I pointed out that I had been given a license to carry Chekov by the Princesses, and nopony else had been authorized to bring firearms out of the Dairy, so even if I did agree it was the Dairy's property, which I didn't, nopony else would be able to get any use out of it, while I would. He did let me keep my badge, too, as long as I agreed to remain at least associated with the Dairy as a self-directed agent, if not a full employee.

We parted ways - and I went to the place I hoped Marble was waiting for me. To my relief, she was swimming on the surface of the reservoir right where she'd said she would.

"Did you find out where the Alicorn is?" I asked.

She shook her head. "All I can say is that it's not within a hundred miles of Canterlot. I think the Guard is doing something with it, but what, I can't say."

I grunted. "How about another airship, then?"

"I checked - and there's not one that can be begged, borrowed, or stolen. I did get us train tickets."

"'Us'?"

"You are being... interesting. I can't wait to see what you felt was worth prying out of the hooves of the ponies who betrayed you, without their knowing anything was taken at all."

I grunted again. "You're assuming I'm going to let you see. As it is, I'm glad that everypony managed to do their tasks without getting caught. I suppose I could have tried for some more complicated plans, but if they'd gone wrong... Anyway, I hope that you at least got us a private compartment..."

"Thanks to the bits you had stashed away, we've got a whole car to ourselves - all we need is a train going our way, and we can link up with it."

"Good. I'd like you to go to Star Chaser's place, and tell everypony where to board that car. I've got a few more caches to empty out before we leave."

"Won't your ex-lieutenant have already taken them, after he got your list?"

I smiled a bit. "I suppose it doesn't hurt to break compartmentalization on that bit, and let you know - the safe I opened didn't have any complete list of sites. Basically, that whole safe was a decoy - containing just enough true information to satisfy somepony who knew the general sort of things that would be stored in such a safe."

Her eyes shone. "Like I said - interesting. You just robbed the organization you yourself created blind, of all its most precious treasures."

I sighed, depressed, and shook my head. "Not even close. All I've got now are a few fragments of what I used to have. They may be very special fragments, the best that it was possible for me to get - but still just a fraction of what I had before the lab accident. I don't know who's been threatened enough by me to take everything else away - and they really have taken away my base of power. And until I can at least identify who they are, or at least how to fight back... I'm going to have to go about my work in a rather different way than I have been so far."

"While I'm dealing with the train car - where should I arrange for us to get pulled to?"

I only needed to think for a moment. "Ponyville, at least for a day or so. After that - I'll need to read some of the papers we collected, plus check a few things while we're there." I actually knew exactly where I wanted to go - but I didn't want to tell Marble that, until she had much less time to think up ways to betray me for her own benefit.

I would have been happy to be a lot less 'interesting', but I didn't exactly have much say in the matter.

Yet.

Last Train to Ponyville

I pushed Marble's wheelchair through the railway works as she directed, until we ended up in front of what looked like a classic cartoon's caboose, the sort with a little tower-thing on the roof; only it was painted in blue and white instead of red. She could not see past the windows with their lowered, blue shades trimmed in heavy silver fringe, and the carved molding glinted softly with a hint of gilding, implying luxury and opulence. After cowhandling Marble's chair onto the little platform on one end, I could finally get a good look inside. Instead of just a few bunks, card table, and a cast-iron stove was opulence: polished fittings, gilded fixtures, blue velvet and satin; a bed-lounge, a fainting couch, overstuffed chairs, tables with damask tablecloths, thick carpet, mahogany book-cases, a sideboard full of food, a door leading discreetly to a small room, of which all I could see at the moment was tiles and a washbasin.

The ponies, and diamond dogs, I'd expected to see were all already there, along with their various pieces of booty, but I just looked at Marble. "This isn't... quite... what I was expecting."

"No?" She looked up at me, then wiggled her fins. "Ah - I see. You are aware that the current fashion for nobles to show off their wealth is acquiring private airships?" I nodded. "Perhaps two fads ago, the fashion was to have the most exquisite personal rail transport. This carriage belongs to Fancy Pants, and as he has not touched it in months, he was quite amenable to paying off a minor favor he owed me by allowing me to rent it from him."

"I suppose a bit of luxury beats the alternative. How much change did you bring back?"

She blinked. "I was supposed to bring some back?"

I facehoofed. So much for my planned budget.

As the carriage was pushed gently into line with the other cars of the Friendship Express to Ponyville, I was busy taking inventory. "Assorted Ursa Major bone shards, including one claw, check. Photo copy of mind-melting tome of forbidden arcane lore, sealed inside opaque envelope, check. Nobody read that one without my supervision - 'mind-melting' is a depressingly literal phrase, if you don't know the trick. Reloading kit for Chekov, check. Two pairs of CAT WHISKER boxes, check. Encryption-"

I was interrupted by a knock on the door toward the front of the train. As most of us glanced at each other and/or shrugged, Amethyst happened to be closest, so she shuffled over to open it, and peer down. A rarified voice said, "My mistress wishes to invite Fancy Pants to join her - are you a new employee?"

Marble called forward, "I'll handle it. Somebody roll me over?" Star Chaser pushed her chair through the carpet to the door, Amethyst going back to playing with the pups. She had a brief discussion with whoever was on our forward balcony, then closed the door with her tail. Turning her head, she said, "Slight problem. Baroness Kohl's private car is the one in front of us."

Red Pepper piped up, "A 'coal baroness'? Is that like a robber baron?"

Marble glared at her momentarily. "Kohl - as in the eye makeup. Leading scion of her family. Part of Blueblood's and my mother's clique. She just happens to be on her way to Ponyville. She thought Fancy Pants was in this car, and was going to invite him - but since it's me, now I'm invited, along with any of my guests, to join her in her carriage for an evening of politicking, backstabbing, and general nobility. Given my status as a near outcast from my family, I could refuse without doing any significant damage to what remains of my reputation..."

I sighed. "I sense a 'but' there. And I have a hunch what it might be."

Marble smiled ever-so-sweetly. "What are the odds that, on one of the first trains to leave Canterlot for Ponyville after news of your awakening arrives, that one of the most talented and powerful members of the anti-you faction just happens to be going to where you live, for an entirely innocent and unrelated purpose?"

I spocked an eyebrow. "Are you sure that you didn't just happen to mention this little trip to anypony?" She shook her head - and I didn't really have any way to get better evidence than that, at the moment. I turned my attention to Star Chaser. "Nor you?"

"I didn't know where I was going until I got here," she said. "But I'm glad to know where I fall on your trust scale."

"Remind me to tell you about LaPlace's sunrise formula, when we've got some time. In your case, trust still has to be earned, rather than being freely given." I turned my gaze to a window, as I thought. "I don't suppose we have a way of listening in on anything that goes on in Kohl's car?"

Marble answered, "Unlikely - there's far too much sensitive business that's discussed in such carriages, and far too many would-be eavesdroppers, to allow such a simple design flaw to go uncorrected on such an expensive vehicle. On the plus side, nopony is going to overhear us in here, as long as the doors are shut."

Red threw in, "So - we could simply hole up here until we get to Ponyville, and then... hope that their business has nothing to do with us? That doesn't sound like a very good plan."

Brick said, "So we want to learn things from this Baroness - and can only do so from inside her carriage. And Miss Marble Pillar has been invited to do just that. What's wrong with the obvious plan?"

I grimaced. "To put it simply - she's only on my side right now because, even in my reduced circumstances, she thinks I'm going to beat her mother's attempts to destroy me. If she ever thinks that she can arrange matters to ensure her mother's victory, without risk to herself, then, well, blood's thicker than water."

Blanche glared at Marble, flared her wings and growled. "I'll go with her - and if I hear them conspiring against you, I'll rip them both to shreds!"

Marble calmly said, "That might be a bit tricky with the hussar guards she brings with her everywhere she goes."

Before violence could break out, I cleared my throat. "If Marble goes - someone goes with her. Not Star - no offense, but you know my reasons. Not Amethyst - it would take forever to get a report out of her. Not you, Blanche - I know how much you love me," she preened at this, "the way you express that love is... can be over-enthusiastic, when subtlety is called for. If I went, that would likely upset the whole applecart right away. Red - you've been in my employ for some time now, and if this Kohl is after me, she's likely to recognize you, requiring all sorts of explanations. So, I guess, that leaves you, Brick. While I was away, were you proclaiming your association with me?"

"I don't think so," she said. "Mostly, I read a lot."

"Right. So Plan A is Marble and Brick go and find out whatever this Kohl mare knows about me. Let's see if we can quickly come up with a Plan B..."

"No, Brick, I'm not going to teach you how to make your own Chekov. You're free to try to figure it out on your own, by learning all the background knowledge required, in which case you'll perfectly understand why I won't just tell you. However." I tapped my chin. "I may have something here that will at least allow you a reasonable chance to defend yourself in a fight. From what I know of your magical talents - you're good at geology, and fundamental forces like ley lines, right?" She nodded. "Alright, let me just check my papers of forbidden knowledge here... right. It's actually a fairly simple spell, which is good, since that means you should be able to master it with just a little practice."

"What does it do?"

"Reverses the effects of gravity on the target, for a duration depending on how much power you pump into it."

She frowned. "So - what, I could escape by falling up to a ceiling?"

"Think more of casting it on something you really, really dislike... while you're outside."

"Oh. Oooh.. And - ew."

"I'm not sure if you'll be able to use this right away - but I don't think it'll hurt for you to look at it before you go with Marble."

Blanche piped up. "Ooh! Ooh! Can I get a new trick, too?"

I shook my head. "One, you're not a unicorn. Two, if I did teach you something, would you take advantage of whatever it was to force me to pay more attention to you?"

"...mmmmaaybe."

After Brick had pushed Marble's chair to the next car, Star Chaser came closer. "So. Forbidden magics, huh?"

I glanced up at her from the shell casings I was counting. "What about them?"

"Is there anything that would... you know... fix me?"

"In a sense. But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to let you use any of it."

"Why not?"

"Well - there's a good reason they're forbidden. The one spell which has the most detail written about it, which could change you back to male, does so by, well, merging some other living thing into your body, either melding them into an existing body-part or making them a new addition to it. It would allow you to regain your male parts - by turning somepony into them. Given our previous encounter, I don't think I'm ever going to give you that power over anypony else. Maybe, maybe, if somepony were mortally injured, and we had no other way to save their life, I might consider letting loose knowledge of such a spell - but I'd still have to think hard and weigh the pros and cons."

"Um - yeah, I suppose I can see that. I don't think I'd want it back if it really did have a mind of its own, anyway."

I was nursing the pups and reading a newspaper when Marble and Brick returned. As soon as the door closed behind them, Marble stated, "We have a problem. Or, at least," she stared at me, "you do."

I folded up the paper with a sigh. "Do tell."

"The Baroness is going to Ponyville to make your life as unpleasant as possible. She plans on starting by getting your marefriend fired."

My hooves somehow managed to crumple the paper, before I flattened it back out. "And other than... hurting me, and those around me, is there any purpose to that?"

"Quite. She wishes you to challenge her to a duel to get her to stop. She wasn't clear on what she expected out of that, just that you would no longer be a problem, even if the duel were a non-lethal one. Though she wouldn't mind if it went all the way to à outrance, either."

I frowned. If I let this Baroness get to Ponyville, then people I cared about would be harmed - and I'd have to try to come up with some way to get her to stop... possibly by doing exactly what she wanted. The first alternative I could think of was to keep her from getting started doing such harm, by giving her what she wanted right now. I racked my brain for a third option, but none of the plans that cropped up were any better - simply shooting her would lead to even more extreme problems; I wasn't sure if I still had access to BLUE WELL; I didn't know what she wanted me to stop doing so I would have great trouble trying to negotiate with her about it, even if it were something I was willing to negotiate over... and most of the more clever options I could think of had a fairly low chance of success.

"Alright," I said, "Go back, and tell her that I'll be willing to have sort of non-lethal sparring session with her, if she'll agree, before witnesses, to leave Ponyville alone - and its inhabitants, and whatever other clever ways to get around such a promise she might be thinking of. Maybe a pastry-level challenge." The corner of my mouth twitched. "And do feel free to imply that you have some sort of long-distance communications spell in here, and that I'm just teleporting in from afar to take care of this."

After a bit of back and forth, I stepped onto Fancy Pants' carriages' forward balcony, hopped over to the rear one on the Baroness's car, and entered. The interior was roughly the same, though the blues were replaced with purples, matching the two-toned mane of my new hostess.

"So you are the famous Doctor Missy," she said.

"I don't know about 'famous'. Baroness Kohl, I presume?" I glanced at some red-coated guards seated behind her, then at Marble and Brick seated in the corners on my end; all the furniture had been pushed to the sides, leaving as clear a space of thick carpeting in the middle as possible, given the size of the carriage.

"You presume much."

"It seems to be unavoidable in my line of work. I am also presuming that it is clear to you, and to all, why I am here."

"Yes, yes, you are rushing to the defense of the pony you claim to love. So very... noble of you." She spat out the word, her red, heavily-outlined eyes glaring at me, and I guessed it was a clue as to what this was all about - but I still didn't have enough evidence to push any one theory clearly ahead of the rest.

"Did you have a particular form of combat in mind?" If I was lucky, this could all be resolved by letting her beat up on me for a bit. After all, I didn't have to win to keep her from getting Cheerilee fired. Well, as long as she kept her word.

Her horn glowed, and a box hovered out from a side panel. The lid lifted, revealing a pair of iced cupcakes. "Given the limited space we have, one each seems to be sufficient. The icing is laced with a mild sedative, so that there can be no mistake about whether a strike connected or not."

I nodded. "And, to be clear - a single hit with a cupcake ends the fight?"

"This fight, yes. Standard rules for dueling with pastries."

Given that unicorns had telekinesis, and no other ponies - or cows - did, it was a little convenient that one of the standard modes of dueling involved tossing baked goods at each other, something much easier to do fancy tricks with when the tosser had a magical horn. But I could work with this. I stepped forward, carefully picked up one of the cupcakes with a hoof, and, three-legged, went back to my side of her carriage. The Baroness simply levitated hers over to her, and sent the box back.

We stared at each other for a long moment. Technically, we were supposed to start facing away, but there wasn't really room for that. So, to start us off, Brick said, "Begin."

Kohl's cupcake started orbiting her head, whirling around faster and faster.

I held up my own cupcake in my hoof, squinted a bit at her... and started swinging my hoof at my own face.

Kohl's eyes widened - but as I watched her, her dark-lined, red eyes glowed brighter... My breath froze in my lungs, and my vision tunneled out, until all I could see were her fiery red eyes glaring back at me...

... and then all was darkness.

(Author's Note: This chapter, and the next, are, with the author's permission, heavily inspired by Capn Chryssalid's story This Platinum Crown, a sequel to The Best Night Ever, both of which I highly recommend.)

Battle of Wits

Quiet.

I found myself standing in the empty Canterlot train station.

A few trains were present - but not a single pony was. Or cow. Or diamond dog. Or griffin. Or bird, squirrel, or any other animate object. Plenty of recent litter and detritus - a cup of tea was still steaming on the cafe's red-and-white checkered tablecloth.

Other than the inhabitants... wasn't I missing something?

Oh yes - just a moment ago, I was in the middle of a sort of informal duel, and I'd looked into those eyes, and...

Obviously, this wasn't real.

I tried visualizing the Baroness's carriage, and tried taking a step to the side, just in case my actions still had some effect on the real world. And moved my hoof to try tossing the cupcake that might be resting on it in the direction I recalled the Baroness to have been standing. And said aloud, "I seem to be undergoing an induced hallucination. If I didn't just win or lose the bout, I concede the match." I waited a few long moments. "Anypony who wants to try to snap me back to the real world, go right ahead." I waited a few more moments. "Right. If anypony can hear me, you have my permission to take care of my body until I'm back to normal."

There was still no response.

I wasn't sure whether anything I did had any effect in reality or not. So, in case it did, I sat down right where I was, and waited. I wasn't sure what sort of mental meddlings might be moving through my mind, so I tried not to think of anything I didn't want anypony else to know, such as that trick Cheerilee showed me with her hoof. I called on what I knew of meditation, counted my breaths, and tried focusing on the image of a candle flame.

The wind blew. The sun shone. Shadows shifted slowly.

My belly rumbled. I brought up some cud to chew.

My udder was starting to feel taut - as was my bladder.

Eventually, my body's needs - my apparent body's needs - overcame my reluctance to risk blundering about in the real world. I announced my intentions to relieve myself, gave anypony watching my body time to get a bucket or something, and took care of that. I wondered just how much of what I was experiencing had any connection at all to reality... sighed, and emptied my udder by drinking my own milk.

I still found that to be weird.

Eventually, my belly demanded more than just cud and milk. I thought about my options, sighed, and finally stood up. I kept on announcing what I was going to do before I did it, and, carefully, in case I might bump my head into a wall or something in reality, walked to the train station's cafe, went behind the counter, rooted around a bit, and came up with some muffins. They tasted just fine, went down well... and my stomach stopped complaining.

Hm.

Since it seemed that whatever I did, I wasn't getting any feedback from reality, it seemed reasonably safe to conclude that nothing I was doing was making my real body do anything, though I wasn't going to rule out the contrary. I kept on announcing my intended movements before I made them, collected a legful of stuff from the cafe's supplies, and sat down on one of the cafe's chairs. I laid some knives on the tablecloth, isolating an eight-by-eight set of squares; I scribbled down piece names on shreds of napkins, and used various utensils to weigh them down; and ended up with an improvised chess set.

I tried to recall some of the chess problems I'd seen over the years, put them onto the board, and spent some hours trying to solve them.

The sun continued lowering; I began to feel sleepy, and my body's other needs continued to make themselves known.

I yawned... shrugged, and gathered up the cafe's other tablecloths. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to sleep on them, but I didn't want to wander too far afield just yet. I laid a couple on the ground, lay down on top of them, covered myself with the rest, and closed my eyes.

The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes, the sun was rising, and I felt a bit stiff, but no longer tired.

Hm.

The next week was... quiet.

I was able to live off of the cafe's stores for a couple of days before they started going too stale, and I had to start wandering further afield for food and drink.

When I got bored of thinking about chess, I branched out to other problems. The game of Go was a nice change of pace - I'd never quite gotten the hang of even the basics, and I enjoyed having the time to try working my way through them without interruption or distraction. After that were more abstract logic puzzles, such as Nim, and working out what the exact odds of a given poker hand were from scratch, and Knights and Knaves puzzles, and coming up with my own puzzles to spring on others.

And on the seventh day, when I opened my eyes... there was Baroness Kohl, glaring at me. She looked just like she had during our duel - save her eyes, instead of glowing red, were a nice, deep violet.

"Alright, already," she practically growled. "I could keep you here for an eternity - but the way you've been comporting yourself, I don't know if even that length of time would do any good."

"Ah, there you are," I said, looking up at her from my nest of train cushions. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in offering a monologue about what all this," I waved a hoof at the empty city, "is all about? Perhaps I can suggest an easier way for you to accomplish whatever your goals are."

"Are you aware of the most common phobia amongst the Children of Alicorns?"

"Yes," I said, interrupting as she started answering her own question. I got another glare, so I waved a hoof. "Sorry. Please continue."

"A mild form of isolophobia is near universal. But ponies - and cows - need contact with others; we are all afraid of being alone, and desire to be part of a herd. Without at least being acknowledged by others - sanity begins to slip. A normal, healthy, sociable female of our age bracket should only be able to last a week in complete isolation before losing her mind. But you - you do not seem to have even noticed!"

"Ah, is that all? Well, far be it for me to assist someone who seems to have just said that they just tried to drive me mad - but didn't anypony tell you that by the standards of most ponies or cows, I'm already quite insane?"

Dryly, she said, "That particular fact seems not to have been conveyed to me."

I nodded placidly. "It was the first thing I told the Princesses when I first met them. I was able to convince them that however sane I might or might not be, I was still useful to them. And they have been making use of my insanity ever since. The current question seems to be, what use is it you are trying to make of me? I regret to say that I know absolutely nothing about you - I may have encountered your name while perusing lists of nobles, but I'm afraid that it didn't make any more of an impression on me than any of the others. And if you were so unaware of how I act that you thought a mere week by myself would break my mind - then, for all you know, I'll be quite willing to do whatever it is you want me to do."

"I doubt that."

"Have you got anything to lose by trying?"

"Possibly. I need to think."

I raised a brow - most ponies would just have said 'no', most of the remainder would have said 'yes'. It appeared I was dealing with one who actually knew when she didn't know something; in other words, someone who just might be smart enough to be dangerous - or be a useful ally, if I could find some way to persuade her that keeping Equestria from being destroyed, as those other continents had been, was more important than whatever petty concern she might be trying to eliminate me over. If I was lucky, I might even be able to get her on my side without revealing even that danger - perhaps I could offer the mathematics demonstrating why a slave trade tended to do more long-term harm than good to a society. But for the moment, I merely nodded, and said, "The world could do with more thinking, so I won't interrupt."

She was looking at me with a faintly puzzled expression. "I believe," she said, "that I would like to know more about what you want. What you wish to accomplish if all goes right for you."

I relaxed in my hammock with Cheerilee, the four pups, half-grown, splayed across us at various angles. I sipped at my glass of algae-broth, and looked out the window, at Equis, as we gently accelerated to the moon, where the starship was waiting for us. It was only a small Orion put-put, pushed forward by nukes capable of leveling cities, but would get us to the ringed gas giant faster than the ion drive pushing us out of orbit right now - and once we were there, we could start building the fuel scoops for the really powerful engine, the one that could take us all the way to the next star, while we spent the decades of the trip safely turned to stone and unaging...

I started blinking rapidly, as Kohl was back in front of me, Canterlot's empty train station back around us. "What was that?" both of us asked, at almost the same time. I spoke again first, "You're the one who fired up this mental... thing. So you tell me."

Distractedly, she said, "This world, in whatever appearance I give it, is entirely my domain. I granted you a moment to shape it according to my suggestion... and that... I don't know what that was... was what you most hope for?"

"If you say it is - then who am I to doubt it? I'm a little surprised that my... well, whatever part of my mind was responsible for that, seems to think that it's more worthwhile to try for a long voyage with preservation, than to try to come up with something that can go faster than light, which, due to certain things I have learned in the past few months, seems less impossible than I'd previously thought."

"That can't have been a sane aspiration - it must have been the product of your... derangement." She seemed almost to be talking to herself.

"I could lead you through the math and physics, if you'd like. Well - if you'd like, and if I didn't think you'd be likely to use such knowledge to kill me and mine."

"I need to find out more about where your insanity lies." She frowned, looking at me again.

I was a happy calf...

I blinked as the scene dissolved before it even had a chance to fully form. "What?" I started asking, when:

I was an unhappy calf...

That fell apart as quickly as the first. Kohl was frowning much harder than before.

I was an emotionless little annoyance of a calf...

"Hold on, I'm getting dizzy!" I complained, as that one broke up as well. "What are you trying to do? Make me relive my past? Rifle through my memories?"

She shook her head. "I'm not sure how you're blocking that - but now I have to know how your mind works."

I was angry. Enraged. Furious! The last time I'd felt even close to this was when my network carrier censored what they said was objectionable content, even though I'd picked them specifically to avoid other censorship! I couldn't quite remember what had made me mad this time, but if I was feeling something stronger than that, then it had to be an even worse violation of my civil rights - how hard could it be to understand that those were enshrined in law to protect everybody, on a fundamental level, so that society itself could function? If it was bad enough to make me this mad, it had to be something bad enough to cause real damage, so it was important that I remember what it was, so I had to think hard...

Sadness. Depression. Despair. There was no point in doing anything, not even trying. I'd felt like this before. I'd made a promise to myself about what to do if I ever did again. Would it be an effort to think of it? No, there it was - I'd made a pre-commitment to myself that if I ever came to a point in my life where I couldn't see the point of doing anything, then I would act as if I did have a purpose... and that purpose would be: doing whatever was necessary to allow myself to read comics. I remembered the reasoning - that letting myself starve to death meant I couldn't read, that comics provided plenty of ideas which might inspire other purposes - but none of that really seemed to me to matter right now. I'd be even unhappier with myself if I couldn't fulfill that promise to myself...

Aaaaaaahhh! Falling! Not again! Let me stop! Get my hooves on the ground!

I'm so jealous of... of... the people who are actually smart. I'm well aware that I'm not nearly as smart as I like to think I am. All my seeming cleverness - it's all just tricks, things that anyone can do if they knew. I can't do anything that requires real intelligence, like come up with a truly new theory - the best I've been able to do is come up with 'new' insights that others have come up with so many times before. What I wouldn't give to develop an actual new idea, think a thought that hasn't been thought before - to be the first one to understand something...

My goodness, I blush even at trying to imagine what I was doing before I woke up in Blueblood's bed, after having taken that love potion...

"What?!?"

My goodness, I feel disgust for... someone who feels that rooting around in another's mind is a worthwhile use of her time. Not just disgust - pity, that she's such an ignorant pony as to think anything she could gain is worth what such actions will cost her...

"How dare you. How dare you feel that way about me?"

My head was really spinning, after having had emotions force-fed into my brain like that. So I wasn't exactly thinking straight when I answered her, "Most people who ignore ethics do so because they don't understand them. All an ethical rule-of-thumb really is, is a guideline which tells you when you should sacrifice your short-term gains, such as learning intelligence through violating a mind, in order to achieve even greater long-term gains, such as not annoying a cow who might be the only one who can keep all Equestria from being utterly destroyed. But you - you not only have all this power, you seem to have at least a modicum of intelligence. And yet you never learned that most basic of lessons. I would bet that when you were young, if you were offered one candy immediately, or two candies if you could wait an hour, you'd have taken the single candy every time..."

My rambling was interrupted by a sudden pain - Kohl had slapped me in the face with a hoof. I blinked, then rubbed my jaw, and said, "In another situation, I might say, 'Thanks, I needed that,' but I'm not sure I want to encourage-"

"You worthless, meddling, interloping, dirty, cow!", she spat. "You think you're better than me? Don't you have any idea what I can do to you?" The sun, unremarkable until now, exploded outwards, turning red and seething with flares and prominences. All around us, as the sky darkened, the city roared into flames.

"Ah - so it is to be torture, for telling the truth... when you seem to have enough control of all this to know I'm not lying. Not the way I'd have chosen to go, but at least I'm in honorable company." As the train station around us started turning into so much kindling, I sighed. "Shame, though. I don't feel the way you are because I think I'm better than you. I pity you because you are so much less than you could be."

The circle of fire closing in on us... slowed. "Explain," Kohl ordered.

"Assuming a few things here - you want to bring Equestria back to its rightful glory, by going back to the strength of ancient Unicornia and all its lost and hidden secrets, right?"

"... Perhaps."

"That's really the best you think you can do? You can't even imagine that you can surpass the wonders your ancestors did, and create even greater wonders of your own? Are you so tied to the idea that Equestria's greatest age was in the past, that even the idea that its true Golden Age is yet to come has never occurred to you?"

The ring of flames stopped just outside the two of us, hiding the rest of this world from sight. But at least it stopped. She grated, "I think your insanity is infectious - that I am even listening to your nonsense."

I snorted. "It's not nonsense - and I'm quite capable of showing you why not. It might take a while, though. How's my body doing back in reality?"

"It remains right where it was - mere moments have passed."

I frowned at her. "Wait - you can have somepony live a full week, or more, in mere moments... and you've been using it just to drive ponies insane? Haven't you ever used it for studying, or teaching, or otherwise improving your mind, or somepony else's mind?"

She glared at me. "I may be listening to you - but do not test my patience. I can still light you on fire."

Perhaps as a demonstration, a spark jumped from the flames to land on the tuft of my tail. I quickly stuck it in my mouth to extinguish it. "No need to get snippy. Since we're not in a rush - is this really the environment most conducive to learning? I'm afraid there's a bit of math involved - simple enough, but it's still math. It's hard to prove option X is definitively better than option Y if you don't actually use numbers to compare them."

She stared at me for a long moment... and then the flames disappeared - replaced by the Ponyville schoolhouse. "Will this suffice?"

"I suppose. Now, I suppose one place I can start is that I'm actually as selfish as it's possible to be. I want to be at least as immortal as the Princesses, and I want to have as nice an eternal life as possible. The main question is what it actually takes to have as nice a life as possible, and to answer that, I have to know how to tell the difference between what is true, and what is false. There are all sorts of methods that have been proposed for finding the differences; and, over the centuries, the track records for each of those methods has been fairly well established. The methods which tend to do poorly are now usually called 'fallacies'. The remainder tend to be subsumed under the general principle of paying attention to what the evidence actually is, and adjusting your beliefs in accordance with the evidence rather than trying to make the evidence fit your beliefs. By knowing how the universe actually works, you gain the strength of being able to predict what it will do, and also what it will do if you nudge it one way or another, so that you can get the universe to line up more closely with your goals. The question we are faced with right now is - are you willing to discard any of your beliefs, in favor of truer ones?"

"I have no false beliefs," Kohl stated primly. "And even if I did - they are minor ones, and naturally I will change them."

"Are you sure about that?"

"You doubt my word?"

"I doubt everything. So how about a wager? If I can give you an idea you refuse to accept, even in the face of evidence, then we'll both know there's not much point in my trying to teach you all of this - so you send us both back to reality... and uphold your original agreement to leave me and mine alone. If I can't - then I'll do my best to teach you as much as I can."

"I do not wager with rabble."

"But you will torture us?"

She looked at me. I looked at her. After a while, I said, "If you're not interested, I could go back to meditating."

"I make no promise. But present your idea."

"Just one? I'd better make sure it's a doozy." I pursed my lips, then shrugged. "So I'll take a stab at this: Equestria would be better off with no noble class at all, you are doing more harm than good by being a Baroness, and thus your efforts are leading towards you being merely one of the largest fish in a terribly small pond, instead of a much larger fish, who happens to be one amongst many of the same size in an immense ocean."

"WHAT?"

"Are you willing to listen to the evidence in support of the idea?"

"Of course not! There can be no evidence supporting such an obviously ludicrous proposal! Nobility are the greatest of all ponies - and ponies the greatest of the Children of the Alicorn! We are smartest, we are strongest, we can use magic - nopony short of the Princesses themselves can stand against us!"

I cleared my throat. "I assume you will know I'm telling the truth when I say two - no, three things. One, I know how to build a mechanical contrivance, which anypony can use, unicorn or not, which can kill you stone dead from, oh, a mile away. Two, unicorns aren't the only Children of the Alicorn who can use magic. Did the ponies who sent you after me not tell you what happened just before I was petrified? I managed to incinerate my lab - with magic. And three - what was three again? Oh yes - if you're willing to sit still for the math, I can show you that there are inherent difficulties with centralized decision-making, due to the nature of networks, so that even if all the smartest and most powerful ponies are in full control of a group, that group will do more poorly than a nation with decentralized decision-making, even if those decisions aren't made by the smartest and most powerful."

"You are insane."

"If that's the case - then is there a point to keeping us here?"

"Of course. Somepony who poses as much a danger to everypony else as you do needs to be... prevented from doing actual harm."

"So - you know I believe I'm telling the truth, but you'd rather kill me than even look at why I think it?"

"I never said anything about killing you."

I was a cow. Just a cow. One of the herd. I didn't have to think. All I had to do was eat and make milk. That was what I was born for, and all I was good for, and I would spend the rest of my life doing just that. Years and years and years...

... until the grass before me was covered in soot and ash, which covered the whole land, choking off all life until nothing was left alive, not even me.

I coughed, clearing the remembered taste of burnt everything out of my still-imaginary mouth. "What-?"

I was just a cow - but I could at least aspire to be the herd matriarch, helping to protect all my little cows and make their lives better...

... until the sky was filled with black demons, who swept through unrelentingly, and killed and killed and killed-

Kohl grunted, "Just... accept it!"

I found some happiness with my marefriend, even though staying together meant all the other ponies disapproved of our relationship and she lost her job, but we only needed each other, and so we stayed with each other...

... until the earth quaked, and great chasms split the land, which sank under the waves to never be seen again.

I hurriedly said to Kohl, "Did I not mention I have compelling evidence Equestria itself is in mortal peril?"

Cheerilee and I were together, and she even had her job, and fine, we had our happy life together, I simply kept my nose out of politics to focus entirely on making her life in Ponyville better...

... and a great flaming rock fell from the sky, destroying the entire town, quickly followed by more which laid waste to the entire continent.

"And that even the Princesses agree with me about that?"

Kohl paused before dropping me into another scenario. "You actually believe that the Princesses believe you."

I nodded, cautiously. "And the more you and your faction try to obstruct what I do, the more danger you're putting your own lives in. If you don't believe my own mind - you can check with the Princesses themselves. There's a memory charm involved, so even they don't place this secret in danger, but, well, I couldn't have that memory erased from my own mind and still do anything about the problem - so I've always been a weak link, especially when mental magic is involved. Like what you're using on me."

"I do not believe you."

"You don't have to - as long as you're willing to change your mind, when you look at the actual evidence. Like I said to the Princesses - if I'm wrong, I'll be happy I'm wrong, and go to an asylum willingly. But if I'm right - do you really want to risk all of Equestria, or even all Equis, being destroyed?"

"You are still a... political problem."

"That's what I was talking about earlier. Your short-term interests are to oppose... something I'm doing, politically. Your long-term interests are to ensure Equestria survives, so that you can have short-term political interests, even frustrated ones."

She gazed off into the distance. "Even if I were to release you, no more insane than you are now, to investigate this... claim of yours - there are other ponies who will not believe such a thing regardless of the evidence, and will continue to seek your destruction."

"If it were an easy job, anypony could do it. I've got Hope that I've got a good chance of succeeding."

Kohl's head jerked up, her eyes widened, and she said, "Oh, you are not some mysterious hidden Element of Harmony."

I coughed. "You might want to bring this to an end if you don't want me thinking ridiculous impossibilities at you, such as, say, the relativistic twin paradox, or the unexpected hanging, or the Ship of Theseus, or Monty Hall, or how an infinite sum of integers can equal a fraction, or-"

My hoof finished shoving my dueling cupcake at my own head.

I looked around - everypony was where they were before I'd spent the week, or seemed to, in an unpopulated Canterlot.

"I guess I lose," I said cheerily, and started wiping the icing from my face.

(Author's Note: This chapter, and the previous, are, with the author's permission, heavily inspired by Capn Chryssalid's story This Platinum Crown, a sequel to The Best Night Ever, both of which I highly recommend.)

Charting a Course

"Huh? Whazzawhuh?" I jerked my head upright.

"Relax," said Red, calmly. "Everything's fine. You're back in Fancy Pants' carriage, and we're getting close to Ponyville."

"Um," I said, as cogently as I could. "The last thing I remember was... losing the bout?"

"By hitting yourself with a cupcake laced with sedative. I've got to tell you, you are not easy to move around when you're unconscious."

Marble interrupted, "After you fell, the Baroness expressed her desire to speak to you, upon your awakening. I believe it would be worth your while to accept her invitation."

"Please," Baroness Kohl said, holding up a hoof. "Do not say a word. The more you talk to me, the more likely I am to end up like her," shifting her hoof to indicate Marble Pillar. "No offense intended, my dear."

Marble countered with, "Your words are taken in precisely the spirit they were given."

Kohl turned her attention back to me, and while I grated my teeth a little at her attitude, I held my silence, for the moment. "Even if you have convinced me to... mitigate my actions against you, pending a better evaluation of your claims, I am merely the... first choice of weapons to be used against you. There are those ponies who will care to hear nothing about anything I may have to say - but will only see that I was sent against you, paid attention to your words, and failed to destroy you. They will take that into account - and whoever or whatever is sent against you next, will be something that either will not or can not be persuaded by any means they are aware of. If you manage to pull some trick to persuade them anyway - then something else will be sent, and then something else."

I held up a hoof for attention. She sighed, but said, "Yes?"

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to share who, exactly, it is who is doing all this 'sending'?"

"... How interesting. No, I do not believe I am willing to do so, at this point. What I will give you is some advice: if you wish to survive, and for your marefriend to survive, then you need to be able to absolutely destroy anything anypony can send against you. I am... currently uncertain whether or not you can accomplish that; or, if you can, if you can do so at a price you are willing to pay. If you are unable to do so... then you need to run. Both of you. Run so fast and so far that nopony in Equestria can catch up with you."

There was no singing, this time, as Cheerilee and I came together. She simply opened her door, and we hugged, and went inside.

I pushed Lady, Cheerilee's super-sized ladybug pet, off the couch, so the two of us could stretch out on it together, and I could stroke her fur.

"I've got some bad news," I told her. "I've got a choice to make - one that affects both our futures. And I've paid attention to enough stories to know that simply making it for you would be... bad, even if I thought I was doing the right thing." I took a breath. "The Dairy is... not under my control anymore - and it may be entirely subverted. A member of the nobility was coming here to get you fired - or worse - and tried to drive me mad. I... dealt with her, at least for the moment - but more like her are going to come. I don't know what all of our options are - but I can describe some of the more obvious choices.

"I know you want to stay here and teach, and I'm pretty sure you'd like the two of us to stay together." I got a smile for that. "I'd like that, too. I could try planting all four hooves here, lowering my horns, and do my best to defend against anypony and everypony who would try to do us harm or break us up. But... at the levels we're dealing with now... I don't know if I could even protect you against the next move, or how many more after that.

"The next option is the one most of those silly romance novels would say I should pick without telling you. We could... break up. If we did it right, you'd probably be safe. You could stay and teach, and I'd go off trying to save the world, including you.

"Another option is... for you to give up teaching, while this lasts, and come with me. You'd probably be fairly safe while we're on the move."

She rolled over to face me, still smiling. "You left one choice out."

"I did."

She gently kissed the tip of my muzzle. "We're not breaking up." She kissed my left cheek. "I'm not giving up teaching." She kissed my right cheek. "And you're going to go save the world."

I squeezed her tightly. "I want all that to happen. I just... don't know if we can. Not all together, anyway."

"And how will we ever know, if we don't at least try for the, what's that phrase you like, 'best of all possible worlds'?"

I grumbled something about that not being how probability worked, and got tickled for my effort.

After I finally caught my breath, "Well," I said, "if we're going to shoot for the moon - we're going to need to work hard to get off the ground. But - I'm pretty sure that the hostile nobles aren't going to find out I'm still sane - well, as sane as I've ever been," I said just to get a snort out of her, "until tomorrow. So... we have tonight to ourselves." I paused, pursed my lips, and looked into her eyes. "Or - we don't have to."

She tilted her head. "You mean...?"

I nodded. "If it'll make you happy - then let's invite Lily over to be our Very Special Guest Star for tonight. And let tomorrow take care of tomorrow."

The next morning, the whole crew were crowded into Cheerilee's living room. Me, Cheerilee, Red, Marble, Amethyst, the pups, Brick, Blanche, and Star. Lily was still there, too, drawing the occasional curious glance.

"My goals have been set. Some decisions have to be made about how to accomplish them. Goal one - Cheerilee is staying here, and I want her kept safe. Lily might or might not be staying here with her - but, Lily, you're a florist, and won't be able to help much if somepony tries to set the house on fire. So, if for no other reason than to keep my own mind at ease, I want somebody to stay here who I can trust to protect her. Amethyst - your diamond dog pack is still living nearby, and even if there are troubles between them and Ponyville, I don't want to cut you off from them - and John, Paul, George, and Ringo should learn about the people they are biologically related to. So - are you willing to stay?"

She looked at me, at Cheerilee, then back at me again. "You. Go?"

I nodded.

"I. Come."

I sighed. "One of these days I'm going to have to get you to tell me more about what's going on inside that head of yours." She just smiled. I continued, "Right. In that case -"

"Ooh! Ooh! Pick me, pick me!" Blanche called out, waving a hoof.

I winced. "What are the odds that, after you stay here a day or two, you'll decide you can't live without seeing me and come chasing after me again?"

"Um... middling?"

"Brick, Red - I trust you two the most, so-"

Cheerilee interrupted, "Aren't you forgetting something?"

"If you said that, then probably."

"Whatever it is you're doing - the more trustworthy ponies you have with you, the more likely you'll succeed, right?"

"I'm not liking where you're going with this."

"This is still my house - who ever said that I want anypony here just to protect me?"

"House them next door?"

"No."

"Rent an apartment?"

"No."

"A cloud-"

"No, dear. You're missing the point."

"I'm not missing it, I'm deliberately trying to dodge it. After having seen what a single Baroness was able to do to me - it's not just your job that's in danger, you are, and after having seen what that Baroness could do, you have absolutely no way to protect yourself."

"Do you still have that boomstick?"

"... you're kidding."

"Not at all. If it will help you keep your mind focused on keeping the world safe - then I can put up with having that... weapon. And before you interrupt - yes, that includes learning how to use it, and being willing to use it. After all, what kind of example will I be setting for my students if I let Equestria be destroyed because you're distracted by worrying about me?"

"... Red, would you mind-"

"Yeah, yeah, box twelve, back in a jiffy."

"Right. Well - with that settled... there's still deciding where to go next. Heading back to Canterlot seems insane - and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, I can't think of a good reason to. Since I can't depend on the Dairy as reliably as I once did - I need to collect some sort of power-base to replace it. And, if possible, something I can use to defend against the Baroness's mysterious sponsors - and, preferably, something that's also useful in finding out what the exact details are of the threat to Equestria, and defending against it. So - powerful ponies, and other species, who we can ally with; lost knowledge we can dig up; powerful artifacts; places where feats can be accomplished that can't be elsewhere; anything along those lines."

Lily commented, "It sounds like you want to play Daring Do."

"I suppose it does - but I'm not a storybook character."

"Maybe you should be. From what I've heard - you might be able to make some decent money from the royalties, like Daring Do herself does."

"Um... well, I'm not sure how interesting such books would be if I withheld all the information I still want to keep secret. So - I hope you don't mind, but I think I'll file that plan away for sometime in the future, when I don't have to do so much hiding. I do appreciate the suggestion, though."

Star Chaser now spoke up, turning back to face us after having been staring out the window. "Would you be interested in the Horologium?"

"Pardon?"

"The Star Clock. I thought the Star Beasts were just stories - but you're casually carrying around the claw from one, in your train car. So if they're real - maybe the Star Objects are, too."

"I vaguely recall the term, but please, refresh my memory, and everyone else's, too."

"Well, there's supposed to be Horologium, the Star Clock; Scutum, the Star Shield; Argo, the Star Ship; Telescopium, the Star Telescope... Sagitta, the Star Arrow... and I forget the rest, but there's at least half a dozen more, maybe a dozen. The Ursa Major is supposed to be magically a million times as powerful as a bear, or something like that - and every Star Object is supposed to be that much better than a regular object. Microscopium, that's another one - it's supposed to let you see anything, no matter how small."

"Well." I considered. "If we can get our hooves on any of those - and they live up to their reputation - they could certainly help the cause a good deal. Okay, let's assume we wanted to find one of these. Happen to know where any are?"

Star Chaser shook her head. "They're all long lost to legend, as far as I know. And I would," She gestured at her cutie mark, a typical Canterlotian unicorn's starburst.

"Alrighty. Since I don't have free access to the Royal Canterlot Archives anymore, and asking the Princesses would be problematic... there is one powerful being I can think of to ask about, though without an airship, she's kind of hard to get to..."

Brick said, "On our return trip - did you not meet with an archaeologist in Stalliongrad?"

"I thought you were locked up in the Alicorn during that?"

"I read the ship's logs, and talked to Micro Scope, afterwards."

I nodded. "Well - yes, we did. Micro Scope's uncle, Copper Scope. He didn't seem to like me much, so I left after just a short bit and let Micro deal with him."

"Whether he likes you or not - is Stalliongrad not on the way to that 'powerful being', and much easier to get to?"

"I suppose. Anypony have a better suggestion about somepony we can ask about that sort of thing?"

Nopony did.

"Alrighty, then - Stalliongrad ho! it is."

"Star, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Of course."

"Here," I thrust an envelope at her. "This is a letter of recommendation to the Princesses to ameliorate your sentence. Given the current situation, I can't promise that they'll do anything of the sort - but you've been more helpful than I expected you to be, and it's only fair I hold up my end of the deal now."

She looked at the paper, then at me. "Are you trying to get rid of me before you leave Ponyville?"

"Since you ask - yes."

"You really are heading off to try to save the world?"

"Something of the sort."

"And you say in here - something about me being a reasonably good pony, despite what I did?"

"Something about that."

"I'll be the first to admit that I made a mistake - about as big a mistake as one pony can make. I don't like to think of myself as a bad pony, but... well. I'm trying to do better - to be better. How good a pony would I really be, if I didn't at least try helping you more?"

"We're probably going to have to travel through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered; to fight our way to castles beyond cities of goblins - where anything is possible and nothing is what it seems."

"Eh - everypony needs a hobby."

Failing Safely

"Two whole days to get to Stalliongrad?"

Marble waved her fins in a shrug. "Possibly three, depending on the railroad routing."

"I'm almost missing Blueblood already. Welp - if it's going to take that long anyway, then I might as well take the time to run some errands in town before we leave."

"You can take all day, if you like - our reservation to get Fancy Pants' carriage taken along isn't until ten o'clock tonight."

"Hm... that's starting to push the time before somepony new can be sent from Canterlot after us - but if that's what we've got to work with, then we'll just have to work with it. The question is, what shall the work actually be? I suppose the most relevant rule-of-thumb - that's an expression from dragons, and other species with hands - is to try to plan as pessimistically as possible, and work from there. I suppose the worst-case scenario would be, say, we all get blown up in our train carriage at ten, or kidnapped to be tortured for information, or something of that sort. So the first priority is to make arrangements in case these are the last few hours we have to do anything good."

"Hello, Mayor Mare. I'm pleased you were able to see me on such short notice."

"I'm always happy to talk with anypony who helped protect so many of my constituents."

"I'm here for two main things. One, is somewhat personal. I'm updating my will, but I don't have the time to seek out a notary and all that; so I'm hoping that you can expedite getting it registered, filed, and so forth."

"I believe I can help with that. I hope it's not due to anything serious."

"Let's just say that I've found myself in the political deep end, and want to keep my bases covered. As you can see, I'm basically leaving everything to Cheerilee - so if you see any paperwork saying that somepony else is supposed to get anything, you'll know that something is up."

"Do you really think that's something that might happen?"

"If I didn't, why would I bring it up?"

"I... see. You said there was something else?"

"That's right. I understand there have been some issues with the diamond dog pack."

"You could say that. They've-"

"Please, hold that thought a moment. I've sent Amethyst to the pack Alpha with a similar message. If the two of you really want peace - not just to get the best possible outcome from every difference, but actual peace - then I'm strongly recommending that the two of you meet with me this afternoon. I will give each of you the opportunity to explain why I should not declare the other side to be in the right in every point. When the two of you are finished, then I will send a letter to the Princesses stating my decision... and, if you and the diamond dogs have any further disputes you cannot resolve yourselves, and I happen to be unavailable, I'll be appointing them to establish, and enforce, interim decisions until my return. I recommend that you find some way to find answers without involving me or them - if whatever problems you have turn out to be something the two of you should have been able to resolve yourselves, then I may become annoyed enough to rule against both of you."

"Wait - can you even do that?"

"There are plenty of orphans and disadvantaged ponies, cows, diamond dogs, griffons, and other folk whose lives would be improved with the moneys from whatever fines I can think of. What I'm actually hoping for is that the threat of both of you losing any benefit at all will be enough incentive for both of you to figure out solutions that don't need me to get involved at all. Since I've only got a few hours to try to fix this - the heavy-handed approach might not make you very happy with me, but it just might cut through whatever's been keeping the peace from going forward. If you really do need me to do something you can't by yourselves - then I'll be seeing you this afternoon."

"Hello, Big Mac."

"'Lo, Missy."

"Applejack and the others back yet?"

"Mmnope."

"I see the barn's back in one piece."

"Mmyep."

"Had any problems with the Dairy backup site under it?"

"Mmnope."

"Government subsidies for the shelter come in okay?"

"Mmyep."

"I've got to go away for a while. But I've got a message I'd like Applejack to get, one way or another. I've got it written down here, so you can give it to her. I can also just tell you, if you think you'll remember it until she's back."

"Mmokay."

"The message is: Remember when you told your friend to let go? Never lose hope.. Got it?"

"Mmyep."

"Hello, Mrs. Cake. Pinkie Pie's not back yet, is she?"

"No, dear."

"I didn't think so - so I've got a message here, I'm hoping you can give to her. You can read it, if you like, if you think you might lose track of the paper."

"Certainly, dear. Let's see. Remember when you giggled at the ghosties? Don't forget how many flavors of special balloons Davenport sells. Well - that's certainly, um, random."

"It seemed the most likely way to get her attention."

"Hi, Sweetie Belle!"

"Hiya, Missus Missy!"

"I've got an envelope I'd like to give to your sister - do you know where I can put it, to be sure she'd get it?"

"I can give it to her for you! What's in it?"

"Some color swatches - see? Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet."

"Neat - just like a rainbow! What're they for?"

"Ssh - it's a secret. Say, do you know where Scootaloo is?"

"I'll be honest, Scootaloo - that cast just isn't your color."

"Mrfl."

"I'm sure you'll be feeling better in no time. In the meantime - I've got this set of books, the first seven in the Daring Do series, that I thought Rainbow Dash might like - but I'm thinking that since she's not here, you might be able to get more good out of them than if I just mailed them to her. I can ask the nurses to read them to you - if I do, do you think you could give them to Rainbow for me, when you're done with them?"

"Mrfl!"

"Hello, Aloe, hello, Lotus. I'm here to pick up a new traveling kit - for myself, a diamond dog, a sea pony, and a couple each of pegasi and unicorns."

"A sea pony?"

"A unicorn permanently affected by poison joke. Also - I was wondering if you could, discreetly, slip this to Fluttershy the next time she comes to see you. It's a photograph - no, not that sort, but it is sensitive, in its own way..."

"Spike!"

"Missy!"

"Think fast!"

"Hey, a sapphire, neat!"

"Thought you'd enjoy it."

"Did you figure out how to get those Daring Do books to Rainbow Dash?"

"I think so - I lent them to Scootaloo while she's recovering."

"That was nice of you."

"Thanks. Say, I've got a letter here for Twilight - can I leave it with you?"

"Sure! What's it about?"

"Read it if you like - that way, if it gets lost, you can still tell her yourself."

"Okay, lemme see... You once lit a spark, and discovered carbon. I've just isolated nitrogen. Aw, man, chemistry? Sounds like homework."

"Could be worse - I could have given her a message full of math and equations."

I puffed as I sat down next to Red. "You know, I never really thought about how much work it actually takes to set up a decent quest riddle. I think I'm going to be a lot less willing to suspend my disbelief when some story character goes from person to person to collect fragments of clues, that nopony actually had enough time to put in place in the first place. So, how was your morning?"

"Sounds like a lot more boring than yours. Flew over to Zecora's, dropped off the parcel, came back. Not even a single timber wolf in sight."

"Cherish the boredom while it lasts."

We munched on some flower sandwiches. After a few bites, she asked me, "Do you think they'll solve that riddle-thing of yours?"

"Frankly, I'll be surprised if they even get any of the clues."

"You're losing me. Again."

"Ah. Well - we've got a mysterious enemy, who wants to hunt me, or us, down, and get rid of us, right?"

"Right."

"So they know, by now, that I know they exist, and that they're after me, right?"

"Losing a bit of altitude, but still with you."

"So they're probably guessing that I'm getting ready to defend myself against them - or making other preparations with them in mind."

"Holding steady."

"So I just spend the whole morning running around Ponyville, sending mysterious messages to some of the town's most famous residents - and which, if those messages happen to be intercepted, are clues that, put together, seem to be pointing toward something. Given how much of my limited time I spent on that, it's obviously got to be something important, right? Something that I think has some chance of helping me against them. Something that, if I think that, might actually be dangerous to them. And thus, something that they can't afford not to follow up on. Maybe they'll steal the messages - or if they can't figure them out, keep an eye on whoever reads them, to see if they can solve it."

"So what is it?"

"Hm? Oh, it doesn't really matter."

"What? It's all a fake?"

"On the contrary - it's very real. It's just not relevant, at least as far as I know. I sent the important messages by registered mail as soon as the post office opened."

What's Love Got To Do With It

Red asked, "So what was in those letters you sent, anyway? Coded messages to secret agents who might help you regain control of the Dairy?"

"Some, yes," I agreed. "Some - not so much."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"Well - remember that gold I got from the dragon? I didn't have a chance to grab it before we left Canterlot. It's not doing me any good just sitting there, so some of those letters were instructions to invest it in a certain way. If it all goes well - then, very soon, several publishing houses in Canterlot will be releasing some new board- and card-games: Settlers of Catan, Carcasonne, Civilization, Ticket to Ride, Fluxx, Chrononauts, a few more. If all goes well - then I'll have at least a small stream of income, completely independent of the Dairy. Even if it turns out to be a flop as a business, or I never manage to lay hold of the bits - then, at least, some ponies might get a better feel for how to plan ahead with scarce and unpredictable resources, how to both cooperate and compete at the same time, and so on. I thought about adding a game called 'Diplomacy' to the mix, but decided-"

Blanche swooped down from the sky, and I trailed off as she landed. "I just got word from Amethyst," she said. "It seems that the unresolved disputes between Ponyville and the Diamond Dog pack have suddenly been mysteriously resolved."

"Good to hear," I sighed in relief. "That knocks off one item in my checklist, and frees up my afternoon." I looked at Blanche, and pursed my lips. "And since you're here - I'm bumping you to the top of my list. We need to talk - and I'm not sure you're going to want to hear what I want to tell you."

"I want to hear everything you have to say!"

"Even if it's about your love potion?"

That brought her up short. She shuffled her feet nervously, then looked me straight in the eye. "Let me worship you for a time - even worship just your hooves - and I will listen to all that you wish to speak of."

"... This isn't going to become a regular thing, is it? It would be pretty awkward and impractical if I had to agree to anything of this sort anytime I wanted to discuss something with you."

"Just this once - just for this one thing. You were gone so long, when I didn't even manage to get the smallest glimpse of you..."

I sighed, and rubbed my forehead. "Red - looks like I'm going to have to cut this short, and go find somewhere private to... um, talk with her. Maybe the railcar."

Once the curtains were drawn and the doors locked - I stretched out on one of the couches, and Blanche happily settled down on the carpet before me. I wasn't exactly sure how this was supposed to work, so I simply stretched out my left foreleg down to the floor. Blanche's eyes half-lidded, she delicately placed her nose next to it and inhaled; started rubbing her cheek on its side, gave the tip a kiss - and, well, continued from there, in ways that I don't feel comfortable describing now, nevermind feeling comfortable when they were actually going on. Let's just say there was lots of saliva involved and move on.

Once she'd gotten started doing her... whatever, I started speaking. "I know that I can use every pony I can - but I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable making use of you. If the effects of the love spring were removed from your mind... then I'm reasonably confident you'd have no interest in putting your life at risk to help me. Given what happened the last time you were in front of the Princess, I can't think of what I can do to get you to go back to see her if you don't want to. So - what would it take to get you to go before her, willingly?"

She looked up at me, and stopped her activities long enough to say, "I've heard you talk about 'existential risks' - dangers that threaten all life in Equestria, and on Equis. And that you're working to fight these risks. Given those stakes, if my help helps you with that, then isn't it worth it?" She went back to her licking.

I grimaced a bit at having my own ideas used against me. "If Equis were the only world with sapience on it, then that might be able to persuade me in and of itself - but I have evidence that even if all life on this world ended, it would continue just fine elsewhere. But in addition - one of the most important things about sapience, is that sapient beings are able to exercise free will, to explore all the different options that life has to offer them. If I accept the removal of your free will like this - then the next time the option comes up, I'll be that much more willing to consider it as a viable strategy, and so on. In a large sense, even if I win the war to keep everypony alive, I'll have lost it, by becoming the most terrible form of tyrant imaginable."

"Do you really have free will about love? Did you choose to love Cheerilee?"

"Well - of course I did," I said, brow furrowing.

"Are you sure?" She gestured at my other forehoof, and with a sigh, I moved it down and within her reach. She continued, "No, really - how would you go about telling whether or not that was true?"

"Well," I said, trying to treat her question seriously, "If I suspected that my brain might be playing more tricks on me than usual, one of the best techniques I can think of is to try to 'take the outside view', and see if what I think about myself still seems true if somepony else were looking at the same evidence."

"Okay - so convince me."

"That's not exactly how it's supposed to work... but I guess it wouldn't hurt. I want Cheerilee to be happy, and to be safe, and to be able to do what she wants to do, and I try to help her with all that, and she does all that with me. I want to be with her; we spend as much time as we can together, given our jobs, and we share meals, and, um, enjoy adult recreational activities together..."

"That sounds pretty dry and dull - not like you really love her, the way I feel about you. I know since you told me, but I'll ask anyway: When did you first start thinking you loved her?"

"Well - we sang a song together. My psychiatrist says that's a perfectly ordinary way for romances to start in Equestria."

"I once heard you say most mind doctors are quacks. Do you believe him because you know he has good reasons to back that up, or just because you want it to be true?"

"... Are you going somewhere with this?"

"Missy - I know I love you, and you're a dear... but I think you've forgotten a teensy weensy little immensely important relevant detail."

"Which is?"

"Not all magic that affects mind has to be as blatant as love poison. It can also make teensy weensy little nudges that are just enough to do something. Like get ponies to start dancing in step together. Or, you know, get them to think they're in love with each other, and ignore any evidence to the contrary..."

"... I find myself not wanting to believe that what you're saying could possibly be true."

"That doesn't-"

I held up a damp hoof to interrupt her. "I know that - the point is, I don't want something to be true. That's... not the way I usually deal with truths or falsehoods, and it's the opposite of the way I try to deal with truth, it's the cardinal flaw that undercuts everything I know about how to identify what the truth actually is." I have no idea what my facial expression actually was, but it wasn't a happy one. "And now I'm discovering that while I know that it's something I should be doing - I can't remember what it is I'm supposed to do to deal with it once I identify it."

"That's what I was getting to. You can't change your own brain from the inside. You love Cheerilee, even though you only do because of a magic song."

"Songs."

"Hm?"

"We sang more songs about each other than the first one."

"Fine - so you've had your brains whammied more than once. And I got mine super-whammied. You don't want to not love Cheerilee, so why is it so important to change my mind?"

I was grimacing, at the least. "Except - I think it is important to un-whammy you. Which means... maybe I should try to stop being in love with her?" I was about to bring my hooves up to rub my temples, as I was getting a headache, but I reconsidered in time. "Dry me off, please - one way or another, I need to talk with her, at the very least."

"... and so," I finished saying to Cheerilee, "in at least a certain, abstract sense, which is compatible with the methods for truth-finding I try to subscribe to, she makes a valid case - even though I don't want her to."

"Are you sure she's not just trying to break us up, so she can have you all to yourself?"

"Not at all. But whatever her motivations, we still have to deal with what she raises. One way or another. To start with - on my way here, I was thinking, there are some things I've been keeping secret from you that I don't really have to, but which could have a significant impact on our relationship... and so not only have I been keeping them secret, I've been trying to avoid even thinking about them too much."

"Whatever they are, I'm sure they won't have any impact on how I feel about you."

"They're about who I am - or was, or whatever - before I woke up near Ponyville, three months ago. The only ones I've told are the Princesses - and even they don't remember most of the time, because of a memory charm, to keep them from behaving oddly. But since you're already a target by being so close to me... before Day Zero? I wasn't a cow - I wasn't even a quadruped. And while I was enough of a science-fiction fan to be able to at least abstractly entertain the idea of a cross-species relationship... I never really expected to. Also - I was male. I've been assuming that I've simply gotten used to being female, but if the love-songs we've been singing have been affecting my mind, then maybe, if those songs hadn't been sung, I'd have been trying a lot harder to get back to being male, or... I don't know. Which is the problem - how can I know?"

"What were you?"

"Pardon?"

"Before you were a cow - what species were you?"

"We usually called ourselves 'humans' - think of a diamond dog, without the claws, as hairless as a pig, and with faces like monkeys."

"I don't think I've seen anything like that in any of my zoology books. It sounds like you got the better end of the deal by being changed. Do you know what caused it? Was it poison joke?"

"No - not poison joke. You know the whole world-saving thing I'm working on? A powerful being, I think at least on the level of the Princesses if not moreso, thought I'd be able to help with that... so she took me from my home, turned me into this," I waved a hoof at myself, "and dropped me off nearby. Or something to that effect."

She thought about this for a few moments. "So when you said you grew up near Neighagra Falls, that wasn't true?"

"Well - I said 'Niagara' Falls, and I really did grow up near a really big waterfall called that. My home town is at one end of the canal that lets ships get around the waterfall. Good grape-growing there, even have an annual wine festival, though I've never touched a drop. My dad was once an alcoholic, stopped being one when I was a kid, and I guess all the support meetings he went to rubbed off on me. You know - it feels kind of nice, to be able to start telling you stuff like that about myself."

"And I'm glad to hear it. Are you going to try to get back to being one of those humans again, or a male?"

I awkwardly rubbed the back of my head. "I don't know if it's the music muddling my mind, or an actually logically-valid conclusion, but... it doesn't feel like that big of a priority to me. Being a cow in a pony's world is tricky enough - trying to get anything done while I'm some sort of freakish alien would be practically impossible - and I've still got a world to work on saving. Maybe after Equestria isn't in danger of becoming a sunken continent anymore, I can waste time with that sort of light stuff. Or maybe I'll have gotten even more used to being this me by then, and won't care about it anymore anyway. In the meantime - I think we should try to stop singing. Um... love songs, anyway. I don't know if our minds have been muddled - but if they have, then even if I don't know how to un-muddle them, it seems to make sense to avoid making the problem - if that's the right word for it - even worse."

"I did kind of feel like singing some sort of good-bye song when you left this morning, but couldn't think of one, so I didn't..."

"Welp - if you ever do get the urge, try thinking of a different song. Completely different. Maybe a science song, or one that tells a different story, or something that's quite completely nonsense. Here's one that comes to my mind...

I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea

The yellow Roosevelt Avenue leaf overturned
The ardor of arboreality is an adventure we have spurned, we've spurned
A new leaf overturned
It's a new leaf overturned

And so I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea

We yearn to swim for home, but our only home is bone
How sleepless is the egg knowing that which throws the stone
Foresees the bone, the bone
Our only home is bone
Our only home is bone

And so I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea

Yes I'm going down to Cowtown
The cow's a friend to me
Lives beneath the ocean and that's where I will be
Beneath the waves, the waves
And that's where I will be
I'm gonna see the cow beneath the sea

Yes I'm gonna see (I'm gonna see)
The cow (the cow)
Beneath the sea

"Well." Cheerilee blinked. "That was even less relevant than most of Pinkie Pie's songs. And that says something. So - what happens after that? Do we just fall out of love after a while?"

"I... don't actually know. I want us to be together, to stay together, to try building a life together - but I also want us to know we want to be together because we want to be together. And the only way we can do that - is risk finding out that we don't."

Recap: Showing Some Cards

If you ever have the opportunity to enjoy a truly authentic nineteenth-century railroad ride for three nights and two days - I suggest you skip it. Especially if it's while stuck in a single carriage. With half a dozen companions of at least four different species and five different subcultures. Plus four infants. With just one bathroom.

"Alrighty, folks," I adjusted my glasses and looked around, "Gather up - I have words. I've been keeping secrets - a lot of secrets. Maybe too many secrets. Playing things close to the vest has become a habit with me... but if each of you are to help me to the best degree possible, I need to start sharing some of them with you... even if I do have reasons not to trust some of you very much. Some of you know some of what I'm about to say - none of you know all of it. Brick has been digging up the public information on me - so I'll let her describe that, while I fill in the blanks."

Brick nodded amiably - we'd been huddled together most of the morning, working out all this. "About three months ago," she started, "a cow was found unconscious, between Ponyville and the Everfree Forest. She was lost, confused, didn't know where she was from, and generally deemed amnesiac. Most ponies who know of her think that she is the survivor of a herd stolen for slaves, or for food."

I added, "I sometimes call that day, Day One. When I woke up, I had memories of events that were impossible, thinking thoughts no cow had ever been thought, knowing things no cow had ever been taught. It took me a few days to figure out what was real and what wasn't."

Brick continued, "The cow made it to Canterlot to see the Princesses, and talked to them."

I added, "They have great magics, and between the three of us, we determined that some of the impossible things I knew... weren't quite so impossible after all. And that some of the mysterious knowledge I now had... warned that all of Equestria was in danger. One of the bigger secrets, which at least one of you has already guessed," I glanced at Marble, "is that we have access to at least one accurate oracle. Very little information can be gotten from it - but what can be gotten, is completely accurate, given every test we've made for it. I'm not going to say anything more about the nature of that information source, since having it fall into other ponies' hooves would be... an extremely bad thing. The point is - we learned that long ago, entire continents have been destroyed... and what happened to them, is about to happen to Equestria... unless it can be stopped."

Brick took up the narrative, "The cow, who took the name 'Missy', started doing all sorts of things. She pushed for initiatives to have shelters built, for amateur scouting organizations to be formed, for a conference organized on how best to revive the ancient House of Commons, for certain educational reforms, for the formation of the new Pegasus Express mail service, for the building of lines of optical telegraph towers, and more. She also formed an independent governmental group, under the Princesses' direct royal authority: The Dairy. On the surface, it researches new food preservation methods. A barely-concealed secret is that Missy hates the slavers who killed her herd, and is using The Dairy to find slavery groups, and find ways to deal with them."

"A deeper secret is that The Dairy was actually formed to find out more specifics about the threat, and come up with ways to deal with it."

Brick said, "At one point, Missy was nearly raped by a collection of scions of noble houses. She fought back. They were arrested - and, due to the, ah, excessive level of violence she used in her defense, so was she."

Star Chaser spoke up. "In case any of you didn't know - I was one of those stallions. Princess Luna turned me into a mare, and disinherited me from my title. I didn't think that... well, I just didn't think. I'm trying to be a better pony, now."

Red said, "And while she was in prison - she met me, and arranged for me to be let out early, on a work program with her."

"While I was in there - I used my knowledge of weird things, and my connection with Princess Luna, to design a few inventions, and get them made. One was a heart medicine - for which I got a doctorate. Another was a new sort of weapon: you've seen my carrying it, and I call it Chekov. It doesn't use magic in its operation - but it does require some very precise metallurgy, which required some very careful work at some of the best forges in Canterlot."

Brick moved on, "After getting out, Missy started traveling aboard the airship owned by Prince Blueblood, sometimes with him, sometimes without."

I nodded. "I was investigating various hints I'd gathered. And... I learned some important things. One of them is so secret that, by telling all of you, I'll probably be doubling the total number who know it. A bunch of extra-Equestrians are appearing, across Equis. Each one is in the form of a local species, such as griffins or zebras; but they all seem to have been the same species before arriving: 'humans'. They are definitely connected to the forthcoming disaster - what's still unclear is how."

Brick said, "She also came into conflict with some noble houses."

Marble said, "Including mine. I hired some professional duelists to kill her. She survived, and cursed my house - I got turned into a seapony. She offered to cure me - but for my own reasons, I've decided to stay like this."

I threw in, "As part of our... truce arrangement, I ended up collecting a number of texts of forbidden knowledge and magic. If I weren't already insane, in at least a certain sense, I'd have ended up entirely bonkers after reading them."

Brick said, "She entered into a relationship with a local teacher, and was then abducted by a pack of diamond dogs moving into the Ponyville area, who were quickly routed by the Guard."

I cleared my throat. "Care to comment, Amethyst?" The near-silent diamond dog simply smiled and shook her head. "Alright. Amethyst is from that pack. While I was in their tunnels, I was given the responsibility to care for her four pups - and I still consider myself responsible for them." I nodded at the infants I'd named John, Paul, George, and Ringo, who were happily trying to gnaw on each other."

Brick said, "Missy then started undertaking some archaeological expeditions, including one to the old Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters."

I pursed my lips, then sighed, and said, "Which brings us to another secret. I'm assuming you've at least heard of the six Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, who rehabilitated Nightmare Moon and defeated Discord?" At the general nods, I opened a small wooden box, lifted out the necklace within, and put it on. "Turns out there's a seventh Element they never knew about - and that I'm the Bearer of, er, Hope. I haven't even told the Princesses about this, yet - though I did leave some clues for the Bearers in Ponyville, to either let them know, or to serve as a diversion for whichever nobles are trying to kill us."

Brick said, "Another expedition went to the Great Southern Rainforest. Which is where she met me and Blanche here - and Navy, who isn't with us."

I commented, "The three of them fell into a whole pond of love potion, and imprinted on me. Princess Celestia cured Navy, Brick thinks she's a better person the way she is now, and Blanche... ran away before she could be treated."

"As if I'd ever give up my knowledge of what a wonderful being you are!"

I added, "That's also where I put together the CAT WHISKER boxes - use them right, and when you push a button on one, the others will make a buzzing sound. I've also worked out a code of pulses so that the buzzes can be used to spell out words."

Brick said, "After returning to Equestria - Missy was involved in a lab accident, which resulted in her petrification for five weeks."

I frowned. "And while I was out - I'm not exactly sure what happened, what pressures were applied or who was responsible, but somepony went to some effort and got The Dairy taken away from me. So when I woke up, I collected all of you, we grabbed the resources I could still get at, and on our way to Ponyville, the Baroness Kohl tried disposing of me in what was arguably a plausibly legal manner."

Brick shrugged. "Which brings us to - now."

I looked around at the group again. "And so - here we are. We've got aliens to keep from blowing up the whole continent, nobles trying to kill us for some reason, secrets to keep, mysteries to investigate, and if we can, lost knowledge to rediscover, powerful artifacts to collect, hidden places to visit - and all that jazz. If any of you have any ideas about how to accomplish any or all of that - I'm listening."

Ante Up

"It's my turn next!"

"It's mine!"

Red and Blanche were literally head-butting, pushing against each other with wings flared as they argued about who'd get to use the bathroom when Marble got out. The argument had been going on for a while - Marble did, after all, need to spend extra time keeping herself damp.

Star sighed, and looked at me. "Can't you do something about those two?"

I shrugged. "I suppose. Ladies?" I called over to them. "If you can't play nicely, I'll turn this train right around."

That at least got them to stop glaring at each other and give me confused looks. Red still looked annoyed, as well, but Blanche abruptly brightened. "I know! Let's let her decide!"

"Oooh, no," I shook my head. "I'm not going to get in the middle of that one." I tilted my head. "But - I am willing to set the rules to decide." I flipped open a handy piece of luggage, pulled out a deck of cards, and tossed it on the work-table. "One-card deal, high card wins, ties get a re-deal."

Brick piped up, "That's fine for right now - but how about we set a roster for next time, to settle the arguments in advance? Maybe set a priority list of who gets to go ahead of who."

Red, "What, and let her go ahead of me every time, or me her? That hardly seems fair - if we're not going to stick to a schedule, then we should rotate around, so everyone gets a chance to go first."

Marble's voice drifted through the door, "That hardly seems fair - what if I really, really need to come back in here?"

"Welp," I welped, "The usually-accepted method for best measuring how strongly somepony wants something compared to another pony... is finding out how much money each of them are willing to pay for it. But since we're a little short on cash, and what bits we do have, we need for other things... I now declare a new currency: points. Each of us gets an equal amount, and they can be spent only to bid for non-essential things, like bathroom slots, or what sort of takeout to get."

Star raised an eyebrow. "If we all get an equal amount, then won't we all just spend them all as fast as we get them, and have the bids tie, and be back where we started?"

I shook my head. "Maybe getting an early bathroom slot is more important to you than picking something for dinner, so you'll spend more on the one than the other. But to make it a real currency - you can also trade it with anyone else here. Maybe you feel like knocking off from being on watch early, so you can give someone some points to cover your shift."

Red, "What'll we use to count 'em? Going to make some kind of point-bits?"

I shrugged. "Nah, we don't need to. We can just keep track in our heads, or if we have to, just write down who's got how many."

"So if we can trade 'em... can we bet 'em?"

I pushed the card-deck so it slid across the table toward her. "Knock yourself out. But anyone who ever gets caught cheating - loses all their points. And all my trust in them."

"How many do we get?"

"Hm... well, to make sure there's enough to divvy up for different things and for betting, how about a thousand a day?"

Red picked up the deck, slid the cards out of their box, and started shuffling. "So, who wants in? What's your favorite game?"

The rest of the bunch drifted over to the table and took some seats. We murmured a bit, talking about who knew what, who hated what, and so on, and in a few minutes, found just one game we all knew and weren't averse to: poker. When that was decided, even Marble pulled herself out of the washroom to join us.

I carefully didn't mention that everyone seemed more interested in the game than in actually getting into the washroom - almost anything was better than the fighting that was going on a moment ago.

We tried a few rounds of dealer's choice, trying out different variations - from basic five-card draw, to ones with face cards, ones with community cards, lowball games, wild-cards, games with extra hands that counted, ones where you could bid for cards, and so on. For sheer practicality, we ended up with something like 'bits' after all - small scraps of paper with numbers written on them, to use for chips.

Marble and Star liked variants that let them keeping their cards hidden, Red and Blanche liked community cards, Brick liked seeing everyone's face-up cards, I discovered I had the most fun with the variants where there was more than one way to win, and Amethyst seemed willing to go along with whatever.

"You know," I said, "about fifty years ago, at a certain university, some of the ponies I admire had a variant they liked, called Oxford Stud. Two cards down, one card up, and bet, starting with the lowest hand showing; two common cards, and bet; one up card to everypony, and bet; one common card, and bet; and finally everypony declares high or low. The highest high hand and the lowest low hand split the pot."

We gave it a try.

It was completely insane.

It was also a blast.

For the next forty hours or so, probably thirty of them had at least four of us at the table. None of us were particularly good at Oxford - but we each had our advantages, which tended to balance out. I was horrible at poker psychology and reading plays, but the best at figuring the raw probabilites. Amethyst had a completely unreadable poker face. Marble was good at long-term money management. Star was good at reading bluffs and tells. And so on.

"Hey, boss."

"Yeah, Blanche?"

"I see you're running a bit low. I'll bankroll you an extra hundred - and all I want for it is a kiss."

"... No thanks."

"What do you mean, you don't believe in souls? Call." Star looked at me as if I were insane.

"Raise one. Well, for one, I use 'believe' and 'disbelieve' a bit differently from most ponies, and try not to use those words at all - but sometimes I have to, simply to try to be clear and not go down the road of using pedantic over-explanations. But since you ask - I've seen some evidence that supports the idea that souls exist. I've seen some evidence that supports the idea that they don't. At the moment, the latter outweighs the former."

"Call," Brick called.

As the betting continued around, I continued chatting with Star, "One of the troubles with this particular discussion, is one that happens in a lot of discussions - two ponies use the same word, but mean different things by it, and so get into an argument about what the word means, instead of about something useful, like what they predict will happen."

"Everypony knows what a soul is!", she objected.

"Alright - then let's try playing 'taboo word'. Neither of us uses the word 'soul' - or any of the obvious synonyms. We have to describe whatever it is we're talking about in other terms, instead."

She frowned. "Huh?"

"... yeah, it's late, and I'm not doing that great with descriptions. Okay - as an example. There's an old riddle: 'if a tree falls in a forest, does it make any sound?'. Some people say yes, some people say no. Which do you think is right?"

"Well... yeah, I guess so."

"Fine - I'll argue the other side. But we can't use the word 'sound' or 'noise' or 'crash' or that. So with that limit, why do you think what you think?"

"Because, um, I've seen a tree fall before, and heard-"

"Ahem."

"And... my mind registered the... audible?"

"Nope."

"How am I supposed to say anything about 'sound' if I can't say anything about it?"

"That depends - what is a sound?"

"It's been years since I saw my last tutor. It's, um, when the air... shakes?"

"I'd have used 'vibrates', but that's close enough."

"Okay! So when I see a tree fall, it makes the air shake - or vibrate, or whatever - and if a tree falls where I can't see it, it should do the same, right?"

I nodded pleasantly. "That's fine. My counter-argument is that when a tree falls and vibrates the air, if there is a pony nearby, that vibration will go into their ear, and do complicated things so that that pony has a subjective experience, which depends on the frequencies of that vibration. If nopony is there, then there is no subjective experience."

She looked at me for a few moments. "So... where's the argument?"

I smiled. "That's the beauty of it. There isn't one - when we know what it is we're talking about. So let's get back to souls."

"Fine. What was that word you used? Subjective? If nopony has a soul, then how can we have any subjective experiences at all?"

"So - if I was able to show you a way for something to have subjective experiences, without involving anything like what you might call a 'soul', then would you be willing to accept that maybe they don't exist."

"Um... I don't know. Maybe? Can you show that?"

"Not right now - we're kind of busy. But what I was thinking when you asked me about souls, was this: I have examined the reports of a large number of people who have claimed some ability to communicate with someone who died. Not a single such case provided any evidence that the claimer could learn any knowledge that the dead person knew and they didn't. Some reports were so vague that there simply wasn't enough information to say what really happened. Some involved self-deception, of people who thought they could do what they said, but when push came to shove, couldn't even say, for example, what the dead person's favorite color was. An unhappily large number involved outright fraud. Given all this data, then my conclusion is that any future reports I encounter will be of the same sort; and thus, that people who have died cannot communicate information to the living; the most likely reason being that when somepony dies, their mind simply ceases to exist, like a candle-flame blown out."

"But - that's awful! How can you live like that?"

"Well, for one, it's generally accepted that I'm quite insane. More seriously - just because something is awful, doesn't mean it's not true. And knowing about awful things in advance lets you prepare for them... and to try to improve them."

My jaw cracked as I yawned. "Time for me to turn in, I guess. Three hundred points for the six-am bathroom slot?"

"Three fifty!"

"Four hundred!"

"Two fifty for five-forty-five!"

"Hundred. For. Hot. Tea. When. Wake."

"A hundred to anyone who'll serve me breakfast in bed. Well, in couch."

"A hundred to Missy if she sleeps in the bathroom with the door closed - she snores."

"Hey, I need to sleep there, to stay wet! One-fifty for the bathroom overnight!"

"I'll chip in a hundred to stick Missy in there. No offense, boss, but - I could hear you from all the way across the Alicorn."

"I think I'd be kind of uncomfortable trying to sleep in there - if you can find a way to pad it, I won't care, otherwise I'll bid for Marble to get it."

"Everypony who wants to pool up our points to put Missy on the far side of that door, say 'Aye'."

"Aye!" "Nay!"

"Okay, so I can't out-bid all of you - so if I'm stuck in the dry room with the rest of you, and can't get my blanket re-soaked, how about I pay some points to get some water ladled over me every hour or so?"

And so it went...

Cunning Linguist

"Hello again, Mister Scope."

"Oh. You again. Here to take my maps again?"

"Well, maybe - and only if you agree. I know that you were unhappy with me the last time we met. I haven't been able to figure out why - but your reasons are your reasons, and you don't owe me any explanations. So, right now, I'm here to ask you if there's anything that I might be able to do for you."

Copper snorted. "I severely doubt it. You may have gotten a royal sinecure - but you're still just a cow. While I'm an archaeologist, plumbing the depths of the past using the latest technologies of the present, to help create a better future."

"Very poetic. But I'd still like to try to help, if I can."

"Waste of my time, and yours."

"I have all day, if need be. And I have... several unique sources of information, and influence. Even if I were to agree with your characterization of my job, royal sinecures do come with a few advantages - the very fact that I got one should imply that I'm not an average bovine. I would dearly like to ask for your help with something - but with the way things stand between us, it seems unlikely you'd be willing. So, I ask again - is there anything I can do for you? Would a letter of introduction to a noble house ease access to a potential dig site? Are you short of sheer funding? Is there some puzzle that could be solved if you just had the right data?"

"You think you can solve a puzzle I can't?"

"I don't know - I've solved a few nopony else could."

"Alright. Just to get you out of my mane, here." He rummaged through his desk, eventually pulling out a good-sized piece of paper. "Here's a rubbing of a tablet. I had to sell the original to a private collector - but I kept this to work on. It's in a dead language that nopony alive speaks. I've tried translating these ideographs using Horsapollo's Hieroglyphica, but only get pseudo-mystical garbage."

I stepped closer to take a look at it - it appeared to be classical Egyptian hieroglyphs, though, of course, it might be something else entirely. I had been a while since I'd even glanced at a list of Egyptian unilateral signs, let alone the bilaterals, trilaterals, logograms, or determinatives, or looked at an actual dictionary of the transliterated terms. I ran my gaze along the columns, for anything familiar... and there, there was something.

"How far have you gotten in transliterating it?" I politely inquired.

"What do you mean, transliterated? This isn't an alphabet!"

"Well, no," I agreed, "but assuming that this language is the same one I'm thinking of, most of these symbols are phonetic. The cartouches surround names, which can serve as a decent place to start, if you have any bilingual texts. But this here," I tapped a hoof at one spot, "is the one word that I definitely remember. 'Neter', meaning 'god'. The horizontal wavy line that looks like water is the 'n', the hemisphere that looks like a flatbread is the 't', and the lens similar to an open mouth is 'r'. Most words in the tongue I'm thinking of are based on a stem of three consonants, with the vowels changing to change the sort of word. Oh, yes - and instead of having two sorts of nouns, singular and plural, they had feminine and masculine, and singular, dual, and plural, indicated by suffices. 'Neter', god; 'neteret', goddess; 'netery', that last sound represented with a feather, 'two gods'; 'netertiy', 'two goddesses'; 'neteruw', with a bird... what was it... long-legs and small body... some sort of chick?... 'gods'; and 'neteruwt', 'goddesses'. A lot of words are followed by a logogram to indicate the meaning, or at least the general classification, so a 'neter' word is usually followed by a small representation of a god. Oh, yes - the text can flow in almost any direction, but in any given row or column, anything with a face generally looks toward the beginning."

"That goes against every single thing every single archaeologist and historian knows about these texts!"

"I thought you said that everything you knew about it resulted in gibberish."

"Who told you all that, anyway? You're just reciting something somepony told you, aren't you?"

"Even if I am - does it matter?"

"I don't believe a word of it."

"That's entirely your call. And if I'm wrong - it should be easy to prove me wrong, shouldn't it? A single bilingual text containing names should do. I've described, what, half a dozen letters?"

"Five."

"Fine - five letters. Find the names, compare the cartouches. If the letter-signs I describe match the sounds in the other text, that should be evidence I have at least some idea what I'm talking about. If they don't - then they don't, and as much as I want your help, I'll be willing to get out of your mane."

"I don't even know if I have a text like that handy. It's a waste of my valuable time, anyway."

"I'm kind of curious myself, now - and I have enough discretion in my budget to hire you for long enough to look into it, with an appropriate consulting fee for however many hours it takes."

"Keep your damned bits. I'll dig up something just for the pleasure of proving you wrong."

"It looks like that lion is in about the right spot for the 'l' sound in all three, and the square for a 'p', and that looped-rope for an 'o', in those two..."

"Shut up."

"There's no need to be hostile. You've learned something new - isn't that what you wanted?"

"What would you know? You're just a milker!"

"I know at least a couple more things about the language that I've just remembered - would you like to hear them?"

"Get out."

"Sure thing. Just remember, if you ever publish anything at all based on this, to give credit to the one who told you about it all. Even if I am a milker, I'm one who won a court case with Royal Justice, and one with the ear of both Princesses. If I leave, I think I'll write them a letter, with everything I know about this language, to be sure I'll be able to claim academic priority for the decipherment. But the thing is - I don't particularly care about being acknowledged as an ancient linguist. I've got much more important problems to deal with - problems that could save or kill thousands of ponies - problems which you can help me tilt toward the 'save' side."

"If you know so much, what do you need me for?"

"I know some things you don't know. You know some things I don't. Is it really so difficult to make a trade?"

"Of course it is! You're a cow!"

"... And?"

"And that should be enough! You should be... chewing cud and making ice cream, not," he waved a hoof vaguely, "all of this!"

"Whatever I 'should' be doing - this is what I am doing. If you don't want to work with me - that's fine. I wanted to try helping you, as a favor to your niece; but if you really and truly don't want to deal with me, I can go find myself another archaeologist."

"What do you want with an archaeologist, anyway?"

"Mm... Immortality, power, and travel to the stars. But those are more of a long-term thing. Right now - secrets. Lost things, found. The unexpected. More specifically - to know more about the Star Objects, what they can do, where they might be, and why nopony happens to be using any given one at the moment. Any other lost magical objects waiting to be found. Legendary sites of power. Inscriptions describing spells of untold power. The usual."

"Uh-huh. And why, exactly, do you want to know any of that?"

"Certain nobles have decided that they object to my presence at court so much, they're willing to put the lives of many thousands of ponies at risk just to remove me. Being an extraordinarily intelligent cow can only take me so far - when they're willing to use simple, raw force, regardless of the Princess's disapproval, then I need some way to be able to counter that - and, of course, all the obvious ways to counter are already well-known and will have been anticipated. So I'm looking for the unanticipatable."

"What, so you can blast back?"

"I'd prefer something more defensive. But if a unicorn is willing to shoot down a dozen innocent ponies standing next to me, just to get to me; and if the only way to stop them is to blast them first; then yes, I'm entirely willing to attack them."

"Sounds like what you want is the Scutum."

"The Star Shield?" I responded, recalling what Star Chaser had mentioned. "If possible - certainly."

"Good luck with that. It's supposed to be the perfect defense - but it can't protect a whole nation. Hasn't been seen in centuries... since the Griffins lost their government. Some of 'em who didn't like Celestia's announcement upped and left, sailing north. Never heard from 'em again, so it's probably at the bottom of the ocean somewhere."

"I have some... acquaintances with access to unusual spells, some of which might be useful in locating such an artifact. Would you be able to narrow down the general area some - where the griffons with it launched from, what sorts of vessels they had, whether the current and wind patterns were any different then than now, that sort of thing?"

"You're not serious."

"Has anything I've said to you given you any hint that I'm not serious?"

"... You'll never find it. You're not even the first to go looking for it. But if you want to waste your time searching - I can get you the references. You'll have to pay for copies, of course."

"Of course. So - that's one target. What else have you got?"

"Raw power, you say?"

"In a nutshell."

"I'm sure you know all about nuts. Still - the biggest collection of raw power I can think of, that nopony's using, is probably the Great Battlefield. All the leftovers from the Great War, a few dozen thousand years ago, depending on which chronology reference you accept, and supposed to still be active."

"If they're that old - why hasn't anypony already taken advantage of them, and used them?"

"Like I said - they're still active. They've blasted more than one would-be treasure hunter over the millennia."

"So - there'd be nopony alive, living nearby, then?"

"Not within fifty miles or so, as I recall. And even that's just the town of Oasis - I'd hardly call being stuck there 'living'."

"I haven't got a map handy - where is it?"

"Halfway across Equestria - the far side of the Everfree Forest."

"Hm... I just might have a trick up my sleeve that's worth trying. If I can get there in a reasonable time - I'm really starting to get annoyed with how slow the trains are."

"You think the trains are slow? Compared to what?"

"Airships, the pegasus express, the optical telegraph - what, you think the trains are fast?"

"I think... you'd better tell me the rest of what you know about that language before I buck you out of here."

"Ah - so I've been upgraded to actually knowing something? That's an improvement, I guess."

"Keep pushing it, and I just might buck you out of here anyway."

"Fine, fine. Word order is generally verb-subject-object. The older dialects didn't have articles corresponding to 'the', 'a', or 'an', but the later ones did - 'pe', 'te', and 'ne', masculine, feminine, and plural. Numerals were base ten, but simply stacked together for multiples..."

Once I left Copper's place, I did end up writing that letter to Luna. The term 'milker' seemed to be cognate to... a rather unpleasant Earthly insult, at least in connotation; and I never did tell Copper that I wouldn't write such a thing; and, after all, I didn't write down anything but the absolute truth in it. Besides - it seemed all too likely that some other members of the Court would get a hold of it, which would result in it being passed along to the ponies who were coming after me; and, like the clues I'd left about the Element, it was an entirely plausible but entirely irrelevant hint about what my planned activities might be. Any resources and effort they spent chasing down those leads were resources and effort that couldn't be applied against me, which I was entirely willing to count as a win.

Where Everypony Knows Your Name

Collecting all the references Copper recommended, both directly from him and from the other sellers he recommended, ate up a goodly amount of our bits. Once we went through it all, picked something to try for (preferably something which we had some unique advantage to try collecting, something no previous archaeologists would have gotten), and outfitted an expedition, we'd probably have used up the rest of our cash reserves - and then some. If for no other reason, then the time taken to go anywhere on the railroads would require so many provisions per day - and compared to going anywhere on the Alicorn, we'd be using up a lot of days to get anywhere. I was starting to wonder if we would have to go even slower than that... by spending time working for bits on the way.

Any little trick we could come up with to stretch our finances would be worth its weight in gold; but I was starting to run short on tricks. I knew one trick that was supposed to help with coming up with new tricks - something called 'caloric vestibular stimulation' - but I'd never actually tried it, and it was supposed to have certain practical downsides, such as inducing vomiting if it worked. So before I went to that extreme, I was going to try a different meta-trick: ask someone else for ideas.

“I’ll take anything dairy-friendly.” I was back at the Hall, the bar built into a former concert hall - whose owner and main bartender I had tugged into a loose relationship with the Dairy. I was hoping that he still felt positively enough towards the Dairy to be happy to see me, but hadn't gotten so close as to be under the thumb of the Dairy's new management.

“And the pretty cow returns!" Bright Red cheerfully called back, upon seeing me. "Hows everything going for you these days?” He slid over a glass of green stuff.

I hoofed over the two bits in return. “Could be better," I shrugged. "I got pushed out of the top spot of the Dairy - now I’m more of a stringer and agent, like you. Got a few things I need to do, and don’t quite have the resources I used to have to do ‘em, so I’m scrambling a bit.”

“Ah, now that’s sad.” He started wiping down the bar. “So what can I do for you this fine day?”

“If you know a better way than continuous poker games to keep a half-dozen people of different species from throttling each other, that would be a start.” I grinned and sipped - yep, still the same minty-ish smoothie-type thing.

“I’m afraid I don’t. Poker’s what I use to keep my own crew in line. Though sometimes we do play Blackjack.”

“Not nearly complicated enough to keep this group in line. I had to really dig through my memory for a game with hole cards, face cards, and community cards, and more than one way to win. Anypony who can make sense of all that - well, there probably isn’t a poker game in Equestria they couldn’t handle.”

“Then they’ve never played cards with Ren." He frowned. "I swear the old bastards cheating.” A quick shrug, and then back to his usual grin.

“Hm - I’ve got enough going on in my life that I don’t need to add that level of complication amongst my... well, ‘friends’ may be pushing it. What species is this ‘Ren’? Maybe he can just see something about the cards everyone else misses, or smell ‘em, or something like that.”

“Well he’s usually half drunk when we play, but maybe Bast have a higher tolerance than others. Though considering how poorly Jack holds his vodka, I’d doubt that highly.”

I sipped to stall for a moment, while I thought about that - 'Bastet' was, of course, the Egyptian cat-goddess, so if the word had any parallel here... “‘Bast’... would that be some sort of feline?”

Bright raised an eyebrow. “You’ve heard of them?”

I didn't want to give away my extra-Equestrian knowledge, so I hedged. “Let’s just say I’m in the middle of some multi-species archaeology, and have come across the term, if not any live members.”

He was silent for a few moments, then, in a barely audible whisper, said, “So you are one of them...”

His guess was getting a bit close for comfort - so I diverted him, by raising my brow, then huffing out a quick laugh. “I know who you mean. I’m just a cow - I investigate them.”

“Ah. Makes much more sense.”

He was still looking at me as if he wasn't quite sure about me, so I pushed the line a bit further. “So - have you come across any of ‘them’, and passed word along through the network, yet?”, referring to the Dairy.

“Yes on the first part, no on the second.” His smile faded. “I’m not going to incriminate someone unless I know exactly what I’m getting them into.”

“That’s kind of avoiding doing what I tried hiring you to do," I snarked, then reconsidered. "But, as it happens, actually works out for the best, what with me not in the middle of things anymore. At the moment, I’d suggest that you use the Dairy, if you need to - but don’t necessarily trust it.”

“So business as usual then. Alright.” I tipped my glass to him in agreement, with a smile. “So, if I were to introduce you to one of ‘them,’ what exactly would happen to the ‘them’ in question?”

I had a standard answer for that by now. “Right now - if they posed a danger to the ponies around them, I’d take care of the threat. Otherwise - I’d see if they were willing to help protect others from similar threats, or had any useful information, skills, or objects to offer, and see if I could offer them anything they needed in return.”

He slowly nodded. “Well, he’s more a danger to himself than those around him. If you were interested, I think I can arrange something.”

I pursed my lips. “I do seem to have some time on my hooves, while I try to work out some decent transportation - and the rest of my group’s looking into that. So I can’t think of any reason not to.”

His smile widened. “Oh, he’ll love this.” He reached under the bar and pulled out a key. When he pushed it across the bar, I saw it had a '3' on it. He hooked his hoof to point up. “Third balcony at the top of the stairs. I’ll send him up.”

I was leaning over the balcony’s edge, looking down at the floor and sipping my smoothie, or whatever it was. Were those hints of clover? I couldn't quite tell - for all I knew, someone had just dumped a bunch of grass into a blender, so fine - it was a 'green'.

“Nice view, isn’t it?” The cat-man stared curiously at me - or perhaps my dark suit.

“Makes me curious what it looked like when the stage was the main attraction,” I agreed.

“Well we do have concerts every Saturday, but it’s rarely classical these days.” He sat down at the table. “So...you wanted to talk to me?”

I shifted from railing to join him at the table. “Perhaps.” I looked up and down at him. “I understand your species is called ‘Bast’?”

“Yeah. Interesting story behind that. The name had been lost for an eternity, then out of the blue someone drops it in our lap about a month ago.” He smiled.

“There seem to be a lot of occurrences of that sort of thing lately - somepony strange shows up, knowing strange things, unfamiliar with Equestrian culture, using a particular odd dialect...”

His grin disappeared. “So that’s what you want to talk about.”

“To start with.” I pulled out my 'Royal Inspector' badge, and showed it to him. “Right now, I’d like to know more about you, if you’re willing to discuss such things.”

He didn't answer for a moment. Then, “Why not? Everyone who works here knows, I don’t see the problem if a cow in a suit finds out.”

After I pocketed the badge, “To start with - just to confirm your origin, there’s at least a few facts that seem to be commonly known amongst that group. How about... Mini Mouse is somepony’s marefriend - do you know her coltfriend’s name?”

“Mickey, but he’s not a colt. And honestly, I always liked the Looney Toons more.”

“Well - that definitely confirms you’ve at least had contact with some of them, and most likely are one.”

“Contact...yeah, you could say that.”

“Now that you are here in Equestria, the most important thing I would like to know about you is simple. What are your intentions? Are you working toward some particular goal, or is this waitering job what you’re happy with?”

He shrugged “It’s a good job. The pays steady, I get free food, and it’s always entertaining, despite them finding out about my...unfortunate nickname.”

“Should I ask?”

“Do you honestly think I’d tell you?”

The two of us continued talking about this and that.

He said, “Actually, I didn’t want to sing at all. But they have this tradition where everyone who works here has to be musically inclined. It was either get on stage or get out.”

I hmed. “I wouldn’t want a job, then - I’ve just started learning just how powerful music can be. I’ve sworn off love songs entirely.”

“No love songs? In Equestria? Doesn’t seem right for some reason.”

“Have you ever seen someone dosed on love potion? It’s not pretty, when free will gets thrown out the window. Music... isn’t the same sort of magic - but it can still be magical. If you loved somepony, wouldn’t you want to be sure you loved them?”

“Well if they got me to sing love songs out of nowhere, I’d think something was up.”

As if it were some sort of pass-phrase, he asked, “Do you like... bananas?”

I tried to think of some cultural referent for what that might be, but came up blank. The closest I could think of was... well, any one of a bunch of songs. Almost without realizing what I was doing, I took a breath, and started in on the chorus:

Do you want a banana?
Peel it down and go mm mm mm mm
Do you want a banana?
Dis banana for you

He looked surprised. “That...wasn’t half bad actually.” He spent a moment in thought. “Would you be willing to do that in front of a crowd?”

“Done it before, will probably do it again.”

As we went down the stairs, I tried to think of a decent song to pick... but was distracted, as I realized that back on Earth, while I quite enjoyed listening to a few genres - my voice was never particularly memorable. Was my ability to actually perform the tunes I remembered part of my having been stuck in a cow's body? Was it something to do with how music operated in this universe? Was I missing something that should be entirely obvious?

I suddenly noticed that I was standing on the stage in front of a whole barful of expectant-looking ponies, dogs, and other species. Remembering that mob in Manhattan, I took a deep breath, and started in on the most innocuous song that came to my mind in that split-second.

Oo-oh... I'm Peanut Butter and you are Jelly,
And we're so happy on our little piece of bread.
I remember the first time that I saw you
sitting 'cross the cupboard with your other jelly friends.

And you're so sweet, and I am chunky.
You're low fat -well I'm working on that.
'Cause I'm Peanut Butter and you are Jelly,
and we're so happy on our little piece of bread.

I met Grape, and Strawberry,
but you're Raspberry, and that's my favorite kind.
Please forgive me for my stint with Honey.
I looked on the label and not at what was inside.

But you're so sweet, and I am chunky.
You're low fat -well I'm working on that.
'Cause I'm Peanut Butter and you are Jelly,
and we're so happy on our little piece of bread.

I'm so glad that I discovered you in the cupboard.
I hope you're glad too.
From now on, we'll be stuck together.
But what could be better than being stuck with you?

'Cause you're so sweet, and I am chunky.
You're low fat -well I'm working on that.
'Cause I'm Peanut Butter and you are Jelly,
and we're so happy on our little piece of bread

We're so happy on our little piece of bread (stuck together)
We're so happy on our little piece of bread (squished together)
We're so happy on our little piece of bread:
Peanut Butter and Raspberry Jelly!

As I delicately stepped back down to floor-level, my new feline friend looked like his eyes were about to pop. “What the hell was that? How did everyone know the words? When did you choreography that dance? And how in all the plains of hell did you get a bunch of drunken people of varying species to sing in perfect harmony?”

I couldn't resist answering, with a completely straight face, “Magic.”

“Magic,” he repeated. He was silent for a few moments. “Well, I’ve heard worse explanations for weirder things.” Suddenly, his eyes widened again. “I thought you said no love songs?”

I facehoofed. “Didn’t even realize it was one, until now.” If I wanted to make sure my emotions were my own - was I going to have to go even further, come up with a list of 'safe' songs, and stick to just them, no matter what?

“Just out of curiosity, were you thinking of anyone before you started singing?”

“Well... we were talking about love songs, and I do have a certain marefriend who I’ve sang a few duets with...”

“Wouldn’t it make sense if thinking about your marefriend caused you to sing a love song? And that would mean that the first time you sang was probably just an expression of what you were feeling rather than causing the feeling itself.”

“I hope you’re right. The hard part is figuring out whether or not you are right.” Cheerilee was pretty close to raspberry-colored...

I sighed. “Politics are just plain annoying - office politics doubly so. A month ago I had access to a lovely airship - this week, I’ve been downgraded to using the railroad - right before I have to travel practically the whole way across Equestria. I don’t suppose you might happen to know of any available methods of rapid transport?”

“Well...no, I don’t. You might be able to hire a group of griffins to fly you or something, but other than that I got nothing. Bright might know.”

“Can’t hurt for me to ask him.”

I placed a deck of cards on the table. “Here, have these. Don’t shuffle ‘em until you’ve read the instructions - if you ever want to get in touch with us, to let us know something important or if you suddenly need help, the order these cards are in right now is a sort of signature.”

Bright raised an eyebrow. “I’ll keep that in mind. Wonderful song by the way. Usually these people are so smashed they can’t put two words together, let alone carry a tune. If the Dairy doesn’t work out, you’ll always have a place here.”

"Thanks, I think. But for the moment - I'm looking for creative solutions to my transportation problem. Jack said you might have an idea?"

He tapped his chin with a hoof. "Well - as it happens, there's something that comes to mind, though I'm not sure if you can actually get to it, let alone use it..."

(Author's Note: This chapter is a crossover with Fordregha's story, Through Feline Eyes.)

Method Acting

(Author's Note: This chapter contains content that may be considered 'dark', due to the nature of the violence within.)

As I left the Hall and passed the Hitching Post, I realized a new factoid about my new home - in a culture where most people didn't wear clothes, streetwalkers had to wear more than average to advertise their profession.

That's completely irrelevant to everything, it was just a minor realization I had at that point.

What was relevant was that Bright Red had told me two facts: Stalliongrad's mayor, one Ward Hoofer, didn't like word getting out about how bad the conditions of the inner city were; and he'd gotten stuck with ownership of an airship which he couldn't use and hadn't been able to get rid of. Put those together, and with a bit of cleverness, it should be reasonably simple to flash my badge, and let him pull a fast one on me by having him give me the airship in exchange for a promise to keep quiet. And then Red Pepper and the rest of the gang and I could fly off into the sunset and get on with saving the world. As plans went, it was a reasonably decent one. I was more of an engineer who'd picked up a knack for cutting through red tape with a explosives than a politician, so I might want to get Marble or Star to do the talking with Ward while I loomed menacingly in the background, but that was just implementation.

But whoever would be doing the talking, we'd need a bit more data to pull off a decent bluff - so a tour of some of the local sites seemed to be in order.

Marble Pillar insisted that I not go alone - and that we take a taxi. I was reluctant, given the state of our finances, but she was quite firm. "If you're not going to listen to my advice when I have some to give," she pointed out, "then what am I doing here at all?"

Thus, I found myself seated between Amethyst on my left, and Brick on my right, with Red and Blanche keeping an eye on us from above. I felt rather swaddled as the two ponies pulling our taxi-cart out of the train station.

By the time we were halfway through the center of the city, I found myself checking my wallet to make sure it was still in my suit pocket.

"I went to the circus the last time I was here," I growled. "The mayor funds that - but lets all this happen? This is worse than -" I hesitated, not wanting to mention a non-Equestrian place, like Calcutta or the Rio favela, so finished up with the rather lame, "I'd imagined could happen in Equestria. If Hoofer isn't spending every last bit he can get his hoofs on on improving this place - then I think I'm going to need to take a different approach with him than I'd been planning."

"It's always a pleasure to meet an official from Canterlot such as yourself," the Mayor greeted me with stiff politeness. His eyes flicked to Marble Pillar and Star Chaser, who I'd chosen to accompany me. "And your associates, of course."

"Don't mind them," I schmoozed. "I mostly keep them around as eye candy."

"Perhaps we should allow them to relax here, while you and I converse in my office."

"Oh, don't worry - their minds are as much under my control as their bodies."

"Pardon?"

"What, you don't recognize them? I really must improve the mail routes between here and there. The mare there is Star Chaser, former heir of the Barony of... you know, I don't particularly care. And former stallion - Princess Luna herself gelded him for me. Marble Pillar, there, was once a unicorn. She thought that just because I was a cow, I could be pushed around. So after the first time she tried to have me killed, I cursed her whole house. Her mother was quite desperate to have the curse removed - I rather enjoyed accepting the wealth she handed over to me."

"I... see."

"I don't think you do. Not entirely, anyway. But I believe I have made my point with them. Toodle-oo, you two - it's time for the grown-ups to talk." I strode confidently into Ward's office, and he followed. I looked around at the decorations - while they weren't on the level of the Canterlot nobility, there was still plenty of luxury to be had here. "Ah, good," I remarked. "After seeing your city, I suspected you knew the true purpose of power - but now I'm sure you do." I pushed open the window, took a deep breath, then plopped my ample rear end in the chair behind his desk. I put my hooves behind my head as I swiveled it around to watch him.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean."

I kept pushing, to try to keep him off balance. "Pffft. Don't try to kid a kidder. If you bought into the official line on 'friendship' and 'harmony', you'd have sold off almost everything in here - say, is that an original Ponynov plein air?" I knew it was, after cramming as much about Hoofer as I could. "Selling off that alone would buy - who knows, I don't spend my time buying things for ponies who can't do me any good."

The mayor was gritting his teeth. "If you like it, then perhaps-"

"Oh, no - you're not getting away with giving me something so small."

"Wait - I wasn't-"

"I came here because I think you're a pony who can do me some good."

"And what might I be able to do for you, Inspector?"

"Give me time."

"Er... yes? How much do you need?"

"Oh, not like that. I had a falling out with Prince Blueblood, and so he took away his airship. He's under the close eye of the Princesses, so I couldn't squish him." I frowned, forehead wrinkled. "I tell a lie. I could easily squish him, it would just take more effort than I care to expend cleaning up after him. It takes forever getting anywhere by train, and I have so many places to go - it would take months by train, and a fraction of that by airship. I noted that you seem to have a spare one. I intend to have it."

"That's very - direct of you. What were you thinking of offering me for it?"

I snorted again. "You overestimate your bargaining position. You think a mare or seapony is the worst thing I can turn you into? I can do things you can't even imagine - what you most want from me is for me to just leave and forget you ever existed, even if you don't realize that yet."

"You talk well - and fast - but I don't believe you. You're just a Royal Inspector of Dairies - you aren't even the head of that organization, anymore."

I let myself smile. "I prefer working from behind the scenes. Much more leeway to have fun than when I'm in the spotlight. But I can understand that you want to be able to tell yourself you didn't just break even, but profited - so go ahead, tell me what you most want from me. I might even deign to grant it, before I go back and tell the Princesses what a naughty pony you've been. I give myself bonus points when I can get them to do what I want by obliging them to follow their own propaganda."

I was surprised his teeth weren't cracking. "Then perhaps, to begin with, we could make an arrangement for your silence..."

I gave a mental sigh - that was the point I'd been trying to push him towards, but I'd been hoping he actually had some good reasoning for keeping himself in luxury while the slums festered. But if one of his top priorities was keeping news of the local conditions from spreading... well, however much it might be dressed up, or whatever it was called, censorship was the first building block of tyranny. I'd never actually sat down to talk with a full-fledged oligarch before - or, given the local culture, would the proper term be 'nomenklatura'? - but knowing that Ward Hoofer counted as one lowered all my inhibitions in dealing with him using methods I usually reserved for violent attackers. It didn't matter, morally, if a pony died from being stabbed through the heart, or because of a disease that was easily preventable if a real hospital had been built instead of the moneys for it being funneled to somepony's cronies. Dead was dead - and anything I did that reduced Ward Hoofer's ability to profit at others' expense was a net positive, in my book.

Though I was still going to have to spend some time double- and triple-checking myself on that, afterward, just to be sure. And being prepared to deal with the consequences if it turned out I was wrong.

In the meantime, I interrupted Ward. "Hmm.... nope. I may be quite insane, but even I know how troublesome it would be if I started making promises I end up breaking - and there's just so many ways you can twist that agreement to put me in a bad light. Come to think of it, you could do that even if I didn't promise you a thing. Maybe it really would be simpler for me to just turn you into another of my pets. I hadn't planned on taking over a whole city so soon - but perhaps I could rearrange my plans for that."

"You can't - I mean, I won't-"

"You think you're immune, for some reason? Ah - I apologize, I only brought along my ex-noble pets. Perhaps a different demonstration is in order." I cleared my throat. "I find that there is dirt on my hooves," I said distinctly, but no louder than my earlier conversation. "I feel like abusing my hoof-cleaner."

I counted down silently - five, four, three, two... and Blanche dove through the window. Outside, Red Pepper was hiding, with two pieces of equipment - the parabolic microphone she'd once used to listen in on Marble Pillar and me, and the CAT WHISKER tuned to match up with the one hidden in the bottom of Marble Pillar's wheelchair. The radio wasn't needed at the moment, since Blanche had been waiting for just such a summons.

Once she was on the office floor, she crawled towards me, groveling. "This one profusely apologizes, mistress. Your humble servant abases herself before your greatness, and requests any and all correction that you feel could improve this one's performance of her duties."

I offered Blanche a silent apology - I was about to cross a line in my treatment of her. But of all the options I'd been able to come up with, I simply hadn't been able to figure one out which didn't involve somepony getting hurt - and given Hoofer's attitudes, this was the smallest hurt I'd been able to devise. I reached inside my suit jacket, and tossed down a small flogger. "Don't scar your hide, I don't want you to stop being pretty yet - but I want to see blood."

"Yes, mistress! Of course, mistress!" She picked up the small whip in a hoof, and swung it over her left shoulder, hitting her back with a simple 'thwack'. On the backswing, she curved the tip around her other shoulder, with another 'thwack'. And kept on repeating the process. It was obvious she wasn't faking - she flinched with every strike. And stared up at me with wide, shining eyes, seeking my approval.

I turned away from her, looking back at Ward. His expression was... one of those complicated ones I was horrible at deciphering. Fear, definitely; surprise and incredulity, most likely; disgust, perhaps just a tad; and... something else. "Now then, where were we?"

"You - that is, I - that is... oh, for Celestia's sake, she'll stain the carpet if she keeps that up!"

I carefully ignored Blanche's self-flagellation. "And I should care about that because..?"

He winced at the latest thwacks. "I've got much better places for such activities, if you insist on them. Easy to clean up, no matter how much damage."

Now wasn't that disturbing. I sighed dramatically. "Fine, fine - for your carpet's sake. Slave, stop that. Attend to your duties." I stretched out my hindlegs, and Blanche crawled over to start kissing them. I tried not to look at her - even from the corners of my eyes, what I saw made me want to throw up. I converted that feeling into bringing up a wad of cud, which I tried to chew calmly.

"I really must insist that any arrangement we make includes privacy on all matters."

"I won't make a promise like that - but I will point out, how could I possibly profit by announcing something that I'd be shown to be complicit in?"

"I also want a million bits, hard cash."

My snort wasn't feigned. "Oh, please. I'm well aware you haven't even gotten that boat into the air once, since you got it - and just keeping it maintained is costing you money."

He raised a single brow. "If that's so, then why have I kept it?"

I shrugged. "How should I know? Maybe it's a tax write-off. Maybe you have some sort of sentimental attachment to it."

"I did receive it as a birthday gift - though from a rather crazy earth pony."

I wiggled my rear hoof, as if in irritation. "That's enough of that. Go away."

"Yes, mistress!" Blanche hopped to the window and jumped out.

"Anyway," I continued. "I'm going to leave in it. I'm just here to see what it would cost me to keep you from being an annoyance trying to get it back."

"Where do you need to go so soon?"

Time for an outright lie. "The sooner I can get to Fillydelphia, the sooner I'm going to stop hemorrhaging cash from an... undisciplined underling's mistakes."

He got a speculative look in his eyes. "Need to get there as fast as you possibly can, I suppose."

I nodded agreeably. "Ponies are like puppies - you have to catch them in the act and rub their nose in it to get them to understand. If I could be there tomorrow, I would be. Oh, and hey - I can be!"

For the first time - he smiled. "I understand perfectly. In that case - I offer you the Mikoyan... as a favor. Be in Fillydelphia tomorrow, and remember that I helped you be there so soon."

In the river, at the docks, floated a vessel which, at first glance, looked much like any other sailing ship. But a closer look revealed some significant differences - the low side balconies meant it would almost certainly capsize in any storm, and the engine pods had some rather large propellers. According to its official design specs, it was a 'light destroyer', with room for one captain and a crew of eight. Made of lightweight baobab wood, enchanted for durability and to cut its weight down, and without a large airbag, it was potentially much faster than the usual airships flaunted by the nobility.

And that was, in fact, the main problem with it. By law, nobles' recreational airships weren't allowed to by faster than military airships. With the slow balloon types, that generally wasn't an issue. But this design could break that speed limit all too easily, which would lead to it being impounded, if not simply shot out of the air. The way Ward had acted - it seemed he thought I was unaware of this little detail, and was going to fly at full speed to my destination, which would quickly lead to the Royal Equestrian Air Force taking me out of commission.

I had no intention of letting anything of the sort happen. Plus, a careful reading of the regulation in question revealed that, technically, it only applied within Equestrian airspace. Or, at least, it arguably did, and I would be sure to press that interpretation if it was ever required. But even keeping the speed down to the same as the Alicorn, having my own airship was going to be a lot faster, and more convenient, than a railroad, and could easily go places the rails didn't.

On the other hoof, perhaps Ward had decided to make other arrangements to get rid of both me and this white elephant - I was going to be checking the whole thing for bombs before it lifted a foot out of the water.

"Blanche."

"Mistress."

I winced. "You don't have to call me that."

"I know. I just like it."

I sighed. "And I know you enjoyed your... role today."

"Yep! I'd do it again in a heartbeat!"

"I know. And - even so... I'm still not sure that, by my own standards, I did the right thing by... letting you. Encouraging you. Whatever the right words are. By the terms of the compact I hold myself to - I think that it's very likely that I infringed on your rights... even if you don't necessarily recognize that the right exists. I may not be able to get you to accept the love-potion being un-done... but I can at least try to find some way to recompense you for," I gestured my hoof at her bandaged back, "this."

"A night."

"Pardon?"

"Give me a night - one night, of you all to myself - and you can call us even."

"Um. I'm not going to say 'no' - at least not right now - but before I say 'yes', I'd like to think about it. Do you mind if I hold off on answering?"

"Of course I don't mind!"

I sighed again. "Of course you don't."

"Besides, it would be better if we waited until I was healed up, anyway."

"... Ah. Hm. I'm not sure I can figure out the best answer - but I do plan to try. I may not always meet my own ethical standards - but when I don't, I can at least hold myself to the standards I've set for myself when I fail. In the meantime... try not to pick at it, okay? I wasn't lying when I said I didn't want you scarred."

"Does that mean you were also telling the truth, that you think I'm pretty?"

I did the only sane thing I could think of - without a word, I turned and walked out of the cabin. It wasn't quite screaming and running away, but Blanche wasn't in any shape to chase me.

And the Truth Shall Set You Back

"Okay, Brick - I've got something I want you to try."

"Another riddle?"

"If so, not of the usual sort." I reached into my pannier, and pulled out what was, for all intents and purposes, a magic wand. It was actually just a magically-charged, cubical black gem, stuck onto the end of a white-painted stick, but I wasn't going to tell Brick that. Well, not yet, anyway.

"It's around time I started trying to turn my researches into actual applications. If my theory is right - then with this, you should be able to cast a magic spell you never actually learned. You should be able to recharge it, sort of like a light-gem-torch. If I made it right, then to get it to work, you point it at your target, think very hard about them not being able to lie and having to tell the truth, and say the word..." I set the wand on the deck and took a step back from it, before saying, "'Veritas'." That was the Latin word for 'truth', which I'd remembered from the saying 'In Vino Veritas', which meant, roughly, 'drunks don't lie'.

Brick carefully picked it up, and examined it. "Have you tried it, yet?"

I shook my head. "Blanche's back is the last time I'm going to take advantage of somepony's limited free will, if I can possibly help it. So I want you to try zapping me with it. If I can find a way around it - then we'll know what sort of limits the magic actually has, and how to be careful with it. If I can't - then we know to be very careful with it. And we can try getting a rough idea of how long the effect lasts, and so on and so forth."

She nodded. "When do you want to test it?"

"Well - Star's scanning the ship magically, Marble's checking underwater, and everypony else is searching for any dirty tricks - so how about now?"

"Are you sure?"

"Of course not - but I don't think I'm ever going to be any surer."

"Alright." She aimed the wand at me, held it there for a few seconds - presumably visualizing - and finally declared, "Veritas."

There wasn't any particular sign that anything happened. No flashes of light or sound effects; and I didn't feel any different. "Why don't you try finding out what else is in my bag?"

"What's in your bag?"

"Lunch. Whoah - that just came right out. I didn't even have a chance to try thinking up a lie. I've just thought of a number - I'll try to keep it a secret from you."

"What number did you just think of?"

"Seven - but I thought of that number after I thought of the number I want to try to keep secret from you, which is six. ... Okay, that's downright freaky. I couldn't help answering not only what you asked - but what I thought you wanted to know. Um - okay, a new number. I'll just try not saying anything."

"What number was it?"

"Sixteen. Hunh. Maybe I can at least try being vague? Okay, got a number."

"Which number this time?"

"It's under ten. It's actually under zero - it's minus two. Hm... well, I was able to delay giving a full answer, at least a bit. But I couldn't just stop without getting to the answer. Okay, again."

"Which number?"

"It's an odd number - it's a prime number. It's the sum of two squares - and it's also the sum of three primes. All of which should be enough to tell you what it is, especially since I wasn't thinking of a particularly large number. It's definitely a number I'm trying not to tell you by babbling on about semi-related pieces of information, and I'm not sure how many more such things I can come up with to delay the big reveal, which is that it is none other than, that's right, forty-one. Well, so much for babbling. Hm... how about other languages? Go ahead."

"Which number?"

"javmaH Hut. ... which is a language you've almost certainly never heard before for the number sixty-nine. Hm... I was able to hold off on that last bit for, what was it, a second? Maybe we're onto something. Let's try... stomping. One stomp for yes, two for no - and to simplify the answers to that, I'll think of a whole number between one and two. Go."

"Was the number you thought of 'one'?"

I stomped my hoof on the deck once. After a few seconds, I hadn't blurted anything out, so I nodded. "Okay - so I don't have to actually talk, as long as I answer you. Can I just switch encoding schemes? Now it's two stomps for yes, and one for no. Ask me the same thing again."

"Was the number you thought of 'one'?"

My hoof stomped twice. "Good," I nodded. "I think. I still had to give you an answer - but I used the opposite physical motions. So here's a fun thought. I'm sure you've heard of 'pig latin', a way to encode speech by shuffling the syllables around. Well, I now define 'rat latin' as a similar word-game, a way to communicate non-obviously using certain rules - and these rules are that in rat-latin, the truth-values of all statements are reversed from normal. Let's see if a truth-enforcing spell can make sense of that. I plan on speaking rat latin from when I command you to ask me something until the next time I stomp my hoof. Now - ask me something."

"Do you really think this is worth all this trouble?"

"'No.' Nng." I had to explain what I meant better than that - but to do that I had to go back to speaking proper English again instead of this 'rat latin' I'd just invented, but I couldn't do that until I stomped my hoof again - but I was, for once, able to hold back the urge to do that. I guessed it was because stomping my hoof wasn't actually communicating a truth... but I still felt the need to say more, to say that I really meant 'Yes', until finally my leg jerked and banged on the deck. "By-which-I-meant-'yes'," I blurted out. "Hunh. I'm not really sure how to interpret that one - other than that it seems to imply the spell does have some limits, even if we've only brushed against them. Hm... maybe we can find them by working more on the question side. What happens if you ask me something I don't know?"

"Okay - what's the eleventh digit of pi?"

"Um... five. I actually remembered that? I did have to think hard to remember - and I tried to think, even though I was trying not to try. Maybe try something harder - maybe something more immediate. How about holding your hooves behind your back, and holding the wand in one of them?"

Brick played along, sticking her hooves behind her. "Which hoof am I holding the wand in?"

"Most likely the one you feel its weight in. ... A little vague, but still true."

"Which room is Amethyst in right now?"

I blinked, and looked at the deck, underneath which, somewhere, our resident Diamond Dog was doing her job. "I don't know," I found myself saying, "and your speculation is most likely as good as mine. I can go find out... I feel kind of like doing so, but it's not like the do-it-without-thinking pushes I've been going through so far. Interesting - so if I don't actually know something, I've got a small urge to find the answer and give it. So much for me being an oracle - might have been handy if we had a spell in which I gave answers for things we didn't know. How about a question containing false assumptions?"

"Have you stopped beating your marefriend yet?"

"Mu."

"... Did you just moo at me?"

"No - I answered your question. Haven't I taught you that word yet?"

"You have not."

"Ah - a regrettable failure on my part. It's quite handy for questions asked in a yes-or-no format, for which neither 'yes' nor 'no' are good answers. I believe the full definition of 'mu' is something along the lines of 'your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions'. I wonder how someone who'd never heard of 'mu' would try to answer such a question, while under the effect of this spell?"

"What do you think would happen?"

"Given the push to explain the truth I felt earlier - they'd probably find some way to get around not being able to use 'yes' or 'no', even if they had to spend a few minutes. Hm... the last thing I was able to think of is if I was asked about a paradox. I'm pretty sure I can guess what'll happen, so go ahead and try one - the liar paradox seems appropriate."

"If Eponydes the pegasus said 'All pegasi always lie', was she telling the truth or lying?"

"Neither," spilled out of my mouth. "In that version of the paradox, the statement cannot be classified as either true or false. ... Yep, pretty much what I expected. I suppose the main thing left to figure out is how long it lasts."

We hadn't been keeping track - but after just a couple of minutes more, I was able to start giving different answers to Brick's repeated asking of "What's your favorite flavor of ice cream?". I pulled out a pocket watch, Brick zapped me again - and at least within a couple of seconds, I was under the spell's effects for five minutes.

"Well," I mused, "that seems to cover all the basics. And it gives us two tools. One - the truth-wand's effects itself might be very handy. It seems to be a different sort of truth-magic than the Princesses use - and could have all sorts of use... if we ever come across someone whose free will I'm willing to take away for such questioning. The other is that I was able to predict that the wand was possible to create, and to create it... and it worked reasonably close to what I predicted it would do. That's... potentially even bigger than the truth-wand itself."

The whole gang of us were gathered in the sterncastle, where controls for all the engines were gathered - and, with all the windows, still a decent view. "As the new owner-aboard and captain of the Mikoyan," I said, "I now give the order: Liftoff!"

Red heaved on one ship's-wheel contraption, which rotated the two smaller side engine pods to vertical; and Amethyst pushed on another, which started them rotating. Faster and faster, the hum turning to a thrum, the deck vibrating beneath us. The water she was floating in sucked at her, holding her back, as the powerful force lifted us up an inch, a foot - and, suddenly, we were rising without hindrance.

"Brick, you have the course?"

"Aye, ma'am. Straight to Fillydelphia until Stalliongrad is out of sight - then turn north and west to the Everfree."

How could I possibly resist my next line? "Engage."

More wheels were pushed - and the really big engine pods, to either side of the stern, started spinning up. As we started moving forward, and the air skimmed along our hull, the side-engines were rotated to face forward, as they were no longer needed for lift; and the top engines, attached to the mainmast, were spun up, to keep us balanced and on an even keel.

None of us really knew what we were doing - but, fortunately, the ship's papers included several versions of flight manuals, including a 'for dummies' one, whose instructions we were following. We wouldn't be able to pull off anything like an actual maneuver, but we could go up and down, accelerate and slow down, and while we were hovering, rotate to a new course. If we were lucky, that would be all we'd need, until we'd had a chance to figure out how to do anything fancier.

In front of the side engines, were two holes in the sides of the ship, with a tunnel going straight through and skylights overhead. It was a combination observation deck, loading dock, and weapons platform. The two cannons, and two of the ship's nominal four ballistas, were tucked away here behind some large doors. (A third was positioned behind the bridge, and the fourth was currently in pieces in the cargo bay.) I was fiddling around with them, looking from the 'one step up from dummies' instructions to the actual mechanics and back, trying to get a feel for how to actually use the things to defend ourselves if we had do.

Amethyst padded down from the main deck, carrying Marble. The seapony's wheelchair wasn't the best suited for this ship - the only ways to get from one deck to another were stairs or ladders - so she'd started hitching rides with any of us who happened to be going our way. "Thank you, dear, you can put me down right here," she said. Amethyst didn't answer, as usual, and just set her on the top step heading further down, as she went down to the bilge.

"Brick tells me we have a new item in our arsenal," she commented brightly.

"Brick," I said, rolling the door to the cannons' nook shut, "still needs to learn a bit about confidentiality." I glanced at her - and paused. She had the wand in her tailtip, turning it back and forth in front of her to look at it from all directions.

"I have to admit, it certainly doesn't look impressive. And you were able to whip it together quite quickly. It hardly seems like it could do anything at all."

"Marble," I started saying.

She continued as if I hadn't tried to interrupt her at all. "And all you have to do is point it at someone, think about having to tell the truth, and say 'Veritas'?" As she spoke the last word, she'd aimed the thing straight at me. As before, there was no flashy effects, and I couldn't tell that the spell had gone off at all."

"You're standing right on a very narrow metaphorical line," I said. "I strongly recommend that you simply shut up, and wait for the spell to expire.

"Now what would be the use in that? Don't you have at least one embarrassing secret you don't want me to know?"

"Yes," my mouth said without my conscious intervention. "And if you keep this up, then as captain of a ship in flight, I will have consider what should be done with you - and I am quite sure you will not find it pleasant."

"Then perhaps, since I have already 'crossed the line', as you put it, I should just go straight to asking something more serious, like-"

I jammed my hooves over my ears, and started belting out the tune, "I am slowly going crazy, one two three four five six switch. Crazy going slowly am I, six five four three two one switch." I couldn't hear a word she said - looked like there was a way to beat the spell I hadn't thought of, when there wasn't something important on the line.

Marble wiggled her fins in annoyance, and started tapping the tip of the wand against the deck. I thought it was just an impatient gesture - then I realized it was pulse code, and before I could look away, she'd already tapped out 'W H Y ?', and I found myself obliged to stop singing and answer. "Because if you learn certain things, I have a fairly high confidence that you will do something that leads to my death, which I believe would significantly increase the chances of all of Equestria being destroyed."

"You're joking, aren't you? This wand doesn't actually do anything at all!"

"I'm not joking," I sighed, as I took my hooves from my ears. "There's an easy way to prove it - just zap yourself, and try to lie."

"Er - perhaps not."

"Marble - I'm being dead serious. You know the stakes. You can end this right now - just don't say anything at all for a few minutes, and I can treat this as a relatively minor abuse of trust, with a relatively minor consequence, like having to scrub the decks and not being able to pay points to pass off the chore."

She tilted her head, obviously considering the offer.

She made her choice.

"What's something important, that you don't want me to know?", she asked.

"Hoo boy," I said, delaying for a half second as I rubbed my eyes. "I suppose one of the biggest is that I actually remember quite a bit of my life before I was found outside of Ponyville." I managed to cut myself off there - her question was answered, accurately, and didn't require any further explanation to be understood. "Say, why am I just waiting here? Amethyst? Are you in earshot?"

Marble quickly interrupted, "What's so important about your past?", and so before I could raise my voice, I had to respond to her inquiry.

As I started talking, I tried walking to the stairs up, to simply get away from Marble - but found that I couldn't, until I'd finished telling her what she'd asked of me.

"It's what makes me different enough from most ponies in Equestria that not only do I do things nopony else would even think of doing, but I've got a decent shot at those things being able to accomplish useful things." I tried clamming up there again - but some part of me seemed to feel that that was insufficient, and my mouth opened to continue explaining my answer.

"There's a word that I've heard a lot in recent years," I said, "'neurotypical'. I've never been that. For as far back as anyone has ever described me, I've had a combination of being extremely good at some things, like reading and math; and extremely bad at others, like understanding certain delicate social niceties. I was never formally diagnosed with autism, but I probably could have convinced a doctor to classify me as having an autism-spectrum disorder, if I'd tried. So as I grew up - I was able to excel at some of my classes, while being pretty much completely ignorant of the whole 'socialization' point of going to school. At least one teacher forbade me from spending recess time in the library - maybe more, it's been long enough that some of my memories blur together. Eventually... I gradually started dropping out. Skipping a required class on literature I didn't like, to go hide under the stairwell and read. Skipping whole days, to spend at a library. Eventually, I stopped going to school altogether. And kept reading on my own - anything I could, really. Science. History. Linguistics. 'How Things Work'. Before I got my doctorate, I was one language credit of getting a diploma from school - and I could have gotten that one with evening courses, if I'd tried. I didn't try. I did have to do a bit to support myself - so I found jobs which mostly involved me not having to interact with people. Night watchman. Overnight trash pickup. And - I read. And read and read. About, mm, half a dozen years ago, was a reasonably important turning point; I started reading things about skepticism, and more important, paying attention to them. Which led me to various philosophical ideas on not just how to tell what was true from what was false, but why that was so important. You probably have no idea what it's like to know a truth that nobody else in your community has the faintest idea about. Being a rebel like that isn't like being the cool kid dressed in black - it's like wearing a clown suit. But some of the truths I learned were not just important in themselves, they were also about why it was important to act on them... which led to me trying to find things to read on how to act in ways that actually accomplished something useful, instead of just making me feel like I was doing something useful. And, if I'm not mistaken, the spell should be wearing off right... about... now."

I clamped my mouth around the wand, and pulled; Marble struggled, but her thin, seahorse-like tail was quite weak compared to my jaw and neck. I yanked it from her grasp, tossed it onto the stair - and punched it with more forehoof. The dowel shattered. "There - now you can't use that spell anymore," I lied. "And I'll never make another," I lied again. "And you're going into the brig until further notice." That was an entirely uncoerced truth.

"Brick - change course for Canterlot."

"Aye, ma'am. Um - it'll take me a few minutes to work that out."

"That's fine. Bring us to a hover - I need to talk with you, anyway."

"What about?" She started shoving control wheels.

"I need to make some changes. Marble zapped me with the truth wand - and started asking questions she knew she shouldn't. I can't leave her running around the ship freely anymore. I also can't stick her in the brig forever. This isn't the sort of trouble I want to have a legal trial deal with. And it seems to be a bad idea to let her roam freely around Canterlot, too."

"That doesn't seem to leave much."

"No, it doesn't. I also need to... treat you and Blanche better. I've been using the excuse that I need your help to fend off an existential risk, to avoid getting you cured. But - I'm getting less and less comfortable with that reasoning, the more I see of it... so I think it's time to bow to the way the winds of evidence are blowing... and admit that I made a mistake. Probably a big mistake. So - it's time to get Blanche cured. If I take her anywhere near either Princess, she's likely to hurt herself escaping. So it's time to explore other options."

"It sounds like you have something in mind."

"I just might - and it depends on you. If I drop you off in Canterlot... then you could try talking to one of the Princesses, find out what sort of spell they use to counter love-potion, and send that information to the Mikoyan's next stop, and I can try getting that case on Blanche myself. And while you're in Canterlot - you could also keep an eye on Marble, and maybe even work on finding out who's been trying to kill and-or stop me. And even more important than potentially risking your life doing that - you could have a Princess cast the cure spell on you."

"I don't want to be 'cured'."

"I know. But I think you should be, even if you don't want to be. I don't know how to convince you that it's in your own best interests - however perfect you may think I am, I have to cover up my lack of good social instincts by thinking everything through analytically... and that's not going to be good enough for this. So - I'm here, to try and talk, and see if we can come up with some workable solution to all of... this," I waved a hand vaguely at the whole ship.

"Let me get us on the new course - and then let me take at least five minutes, by the clock, to try to think of something."

"That's my girl," I said proud that she'd taken those lessons of mine to heart.

(Author's Note: AppleTank has drawn a group shot of many of the Chess Game characters, which can be seen at http://apple-tank.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d5aio8r.)

Yours Truly

Dear Princess Luna,

I shall start with the time-sensitive items. For the encrypted text, please refer to our one-time pad, starting on line sixteen.

1. Please transmit the details of the spell which cures love potion overdoses to XETCZ UURSO, so that I can try to get it applied to Blanche.

2. Please use that same spell on Brick at your earliest convenience.

The rest of this missive can wait until those are done.

***

When I talked Princess Celestia out of curing Brick, I believe that I made a terrible mistake. Not only that, but it was a mistake I should have recognized. One of the most basic aspects of rationality is to recognize one's own biases, and much of the practical application of it is in finding ways to compensate for them, in order to approach the truth ever more closely. Looking back, I now believe that I used my skills not to figure out what the truth actually was, in figuring out the ethical course of action, but instead to rationalize and find justifications for a conclusion I already wanted to be true. This is, essentially, the cardinal sin of rationality.

Now that I recognize what I now believe to be my prior error, I am trying to do two things - as I swore to do, whenever I discover I have caused somepony harm. One, to try to avoid making the same or similar errors in the future. And two, to try to un-do the damage that I did. If Brick is now cured, then the latter task is half complete; and I hope to restore Blanche's mind to where she can exercise her full free will again as soon as possible.

The reason I have changed my mind on this matter is simple, and shameful. I used my power over Blanche in a way that caused her physical harm, for a short-term tactical end. It seemed like a good idea when I thought of it; but when the plan was actually executed, and when I later thought about the reasoning process I used, I had to admit to myself that the same reasoning could be used to undermine every single ethical rule I try to hold myself to. If those ethical rules have any value, even if being nothing more than showing how to achieve long-term profit by limiting one's short-term opportunities, then that reasoning process has to be false; and if it's false, then I caused Blanche harm without any justification.

I would like to submit myself to trial, or to Royal Justice, but certain practical problems prevent my presence in Canterlot at this time. Another difficulty is that, until Blanche is cured, she will not be able to even consider that what I had done to her could be abuse. Brick is aware of the details of what happened, and my next destination will be LYEHT VZKWD INQCJ. I do not trust my own judgment in this matter as much as I trust yours; if you wish to pass sentence on me, and send the details, I will do my best to abide by your ruling.

***

On another topic, I am sending along with this note a magical device I have recently developed. I have not officially named it, but have started calling it a 'truth wand' in conversation. Its operation is reasonably simple:

1. Ensure that the gem is charged, the way unicorns can recharge light torches;
2. Aim the wand at your chosen target;
3. Visualize them being unable to lie, and having to tell the truth;
4. Speak the activation word: PYADY UVPUU SNCAB.

Should any of those steps be left out, or done wrong, I cannot guarantee the results. If they are properly performed, however, then for a duration of FDPBR XCDHY CBXJM, the target will not only be unable to lie, but will be compelled to answer any questions, truthfully, to the best of their ability.

This, of course, raises a whole host of ethical and legal issues. Anypony who uses this wand on another can potentially gain a benefit thereby; but most ponies would object to having it used on them without their consent. Fortunately, society already has a way to classify such acts: it calls them crimes. Thus, until your government can write a bill covering the various nuances of this issue, I would recommend that you issue and spread a preliminary Royal Edict which firmly establishes that use of this magic is a crime equivalent to assault or rape. Like such crimes, there are certain situations where the action is justified anyway, the way in which police are allowed to use violence to prevent the immediate threat of harm to an innocent pony; and, in such cases, the proper defense can be raised at a trial.

However, I also wish to stress that there is a very good reason that ponies have the right to avoid self-incrimination during a trial; magically forced self-incrimination is at least as bad as any non-magical form. While I am entrusting you with this wand, I will also be paying attention to how you use it. As I have learned, some of the worst abuses of ponies can come from the highest intentions.

I have made a similar wand for myself, to experiment with. For example, I would like to see if I can use it on myself to help reduce self-deception. I am also seeing if I can extend the range - I am aiming for line-of-sight, and do not see any reason I cannot reach that goal.

I have also come up with an alternative method of applying this magic which I find myself quite tempted by. You might remember that a month ago, my experiments with KPKFY SAUHR WUWAR KJRXA caused a simple light-spell to become wildly overpowered and uncontrolled. If my calculations are right, if I applied that same technique to this new magic, and set it off, say, in the middle of the Barn of Lords, then each and every noble in attendance would find themselves forced to answer all questions with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, for the rest of their lives. Given that such nobles are supposed to be entrusted with the responsibility of taking care of their realms and the ponies within, there seems to be little downside to such an action. However, given the potential downsides of second-order effects, and the fact that the current government seems to be at least minimally competent at their entrusted task, I currently feel that taking such action would be unwise. (However, if the government turns out to be unable to fulfill its duties, such as by allowing a significant cabal of its members to abuse the rights of Equestrian citizens, I just might change my mind.)

***

Through no fault of your own, Your Highness, I expect at least a summary of the contents of this letter to fall into the hands of my political enemies. To them, I wish to say that should I discover you abuse any innocents while you pursue me, I now have an option for retaliation which I consider (and which I expect the Princesses would consider) to be much more humane than death, but which you might consider to be far worse.

I would also like to point out to them: this is merely the first practical result of my researches and experimentations - or, at least, the first that I am willing to share the results of. I have a number of other interesting and entertaining ideas in the works. Whatever your disagreement with me is, I strongly recommend that you at least try discussing the matter with me before making any further attempts on my life. I recommend even more strongly that you abandon any and all plans to try to get at me through harming anyone I consider to be under my protection; you have absolutely no idea what lengths I will be willing to go to if you make me truly mad. To put it in formal terms - I will consider any harm to such individuals to be casus belli, and am quite willing to declare war on the entire Equestrian state should you attempt to hide behind its protections. And by that, I don't just mean trying to push for a negotiated settlement; I have reasonably high confidence that I could force an unconditional surrender from the Princesses themselves, if need be. I'm quite willing to have my own truth wand used on me to verify that particular statement. Such a conflict is far from my first choice - but since I have yet to see a limit on what actions you are willing to take, it seems prudent for me to mention that I am willing to play the hardest of hardball, if need be.

***

Please accept my apologies for the tone of the above paragraphs, Your Highness. Most of your little ponies are quite willing to try to do the right thing, with only the most minor of corrections needed to show them the right path. But true evil does not respond to non-violence; as an author whose name escapes me once wrote, "now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan."

Yours truly,
Missy

Dear Missy,

I am disturbed by many of the things thou wrote in thy most recent letter, and which Brick told me.

Brick has had the curative spell cast on her. However, she was under the influence of the love potion for over a month; simply removing the magic may no longer be enough to completely get rid of the love potion's effects. She will most likely sleep for two or three days. Enclosed with this letter are the directions for the cure spell. To most Equestrians, I would say that they are quite difficult and require enormous power to follow, but I suspect thou may find a way around those problems.

I am not going to issue a sentence against thee right now. However, I urge thee to return to Canterlot as soon as possible so we can discuss the matter.

Thy truth wand was tested on a volunteer, and found to work as described. I then placed it in a secure vault. I am not sure what I can use it for, but I appreciate thy trusting me to use it responsibly.

Please do not threaten to go to war against me and my sister, or to use magical truth-explosions against the nobility. Even if thou art fully justified in doing so, and thou wins, it is the sort of thing that makes the Royal Guard nervous about letting thee talk to us.

I have discussed certain aspects of thy letter with my sister. She was also disturbed by them. She said she was reminded of a pony who once delved into researching magic, but who went mad, and hurt many ponies. We are both worried that thou might be following the same path. We have not broken doctor-patient confidentiality, but we know thou wert receiving psychiatric treatment, but have not gone to see thy doctor for days. We remind thee of thy first promise to us. Again, we urge thee to return to Canterlot.

Sincerely, I am,
Princess Luna

Dear Princess Luna,

If you receive this, I will point out in my previous letter that most of the encrypted text was not what was implied by the surrounding words, but instead contained an additional message, requesting that any response contain a certain attribute, to prove that it was from you. I recently received a letter, purportedly from you, which did not contain that attribute, and which urged me, more than once, to travel to Canterlot. Thus, I am concluding that your postal system has been both infiltrated and subverted, but that the one-time pad system remains intact.

One alternative possibility is that you have simply misplaced the one-time pad, and the letter really was from you. However, this seems much less likely.

I am afraid that I cannot base my actions on the advice given in that previous letter, and I must hold the curative spell enclosed with it as being highly suspect, both in general and in every particular.

In case you still retain the one-time pad: VMVXE NMKKI WTSRN DUZAZ GKYBW EMYMK WVKMC, but I hope it does not come to that.

Yours truly,
Missy

It appeared that, one way or another, I was cut off from royal support, at least unless I could make it past the various guards and into the direct presence of one of the Princesses.

Still - whoever was reading Luna's mail, that last bit of code should sow some confusion among the ranks. Without the one-time pad to decrypt it, it was a mysterious something; and with the one-time pad... it was still a mysterious something, since it was actual random gibberish, not an encrypted message at all. Even if the letter-readers had the one-time pad, they'd probably assume that there was some further encoding scheme they hadn't been told about - and, if I was lucky, they would waste many pony-hours of their decryption experts' time trying to figure it out. If I was unlucky... one or both of the Princesses might call me on my promise to go to a mental institution if they said I should. I still planned to do that - if I could confirm that such a request actually did come from Celestia or Luna.

I hoped Brick was doing okay - and really had been cured. But I couldn't think of a way to verify that without putting even more ponies at risk... and if she were in trouble, I didn't have enough resources on hoof to mount a decent rescue op. So the next step seemed to be the same either way - and, come to think of it, was the same step I should take if I really was going to have to face off against the whole Equestrian government all the way up to the diarchy: gather resources, gain knowledge, become more powerful.

I really hoped I wasn't actually going mad. It would be rather embarrassing to go to all this trouble needlessly.

Putting Right What Was Once Put Wrong

"Blanche."

"Milady."

"You might be happy to hear that I've been spending a lot of the last couple of days thinking about you." She shivered, which I took as agreement. "I've been thinking about a few other things, too - and I'd like to hear your opinion on something. I'm not saying that I'll do as you advise - but I'd at least like to know how you come to your thinking."

"Of course, milady!"

"It's about John, Paul, George, and Ringo," referring to the four diamond-dog pups who still nursed from me daily. "They were entrusted to my care - and I accepted that responsibility. The legal term is 'in loco parentis', acting in place of the parents. The fact that their birth mother is here... is irrelevant - she's the one who entrusted them to me, and I haven't surrendered that authority to her. So - I've tried to do what I see is in their best interests."

Blanche nodded, listening with eyes wide. "We're about to visit the Great Battlefield - one of the most dangerous sites in all Equiis, according to the books. And depending on what we find there - we might be taking the Mikoyan even further afield, into more dangers. The pups like me - not like the way you like me, but they get restless and cranky when I'm away from them very long. So what I'm trying to figure out is, should I let them stay with me and be happy, doing what they seem to want? Or do I do what I feel is in their long-term best interests, and send them off with Amethyst?"

Blanche raised an eyebrow. "This isn't really about the pups, is it?"

"Sure it is."

"Do you want me to zap you with your own truth magic, goddess?"

"Okay - it's at least partly about them."

"There's a big difference between me and some puppies - I'm an adult."

"That's true - but not necessarily relevant. The question is, are you a competent adult?"

"Of course I am! Look at me, I'm helping you fight against your enemies - how could I do that if I were incompetent?"

I winced. "That's... not the sort of 'competence' I meant. Are you able to act in your own long-term best interests?"

"As long as those interests are you, yep."

I winced again. "And there's the sticking point. Normally, I'd agree that it's the right of every pony to die for whatever, or whoever, they decide to. But it's at least arguable that that choice was taken from you."

She looked away from me, out and over the railing. "So you finally made up your mind to do it."

"Er - what? No - I'm still weighing the options; that's why I wanted to see how you felt about this sort of decision."

She turned back to me - smiling, but tears were running down her cheeks. "If I ask you for that one night with you before you do it, will you at least give me that?" I was caught flat-hooved, and could only stutter. She gave a single chuckle. "No, I see it - you're thinking of me as your daughter, and that just wouldn't... work."

I did the only thing I could think of - walked right up to her, and gave her the biggest hug I could. We rocked back and forth a bit, watching the sun setting ahead of us.

"When will you do it?"

"Dawn. Time of new beginnings - and I've got to take some hours setting everything up. But... there's no rush to get started."

We stayed there for quite some time, watching the stars come out.

"Are the ropes really necessary?"

"Given what happened last time anyone tried anything like this? Definitely. I hope your back's not bothering you."

"No worse than otherwise."

Blanche was hog-tied in the middle of a ritual circle I'd laid out in the middle of the Mikoyan's cargo bay. I was using at least a few parts of the ritual that had been sent with the false letter from Princess Luna - the parts where I couldn't figure out how they could hurt, and just might help. For example, the circle was a fairly standard one for powerful unicorn magics, used to create some small, artificial ley lines curving in a pattern that was, according to theory, supposed to help and support the caster. But most of what I was about to do was my own arrangements. I'd gotten Star Chaser to charge up just about every gem we had, and I planned to use as many as I could. I had those Ursa Major bone fragments nearby, in case I had to suddenly improvise with them; but given the wild and unpredictable nature of using them for Latin-gem magic, I didn't want to

My plan was, really, pretty simple. I'd been scrounging my memory for every scrap of Latin I could think of that could possibly related. I'd put together every variation of 'cancel magic' and 'heal mind' I could think of. And I was going to use the gems to case each and every one of them, hope that my intention, will, and visualization would make up for any grammatical lapses... and, if I was lucky, at least some would actually work. Red and Amethyst were watching, in case Blanche needed to be held down or pursued through the air, while Star Chaser was up in the bridge, keeping an eye on things while we we bobbed at anchor.

"Anyone have a reason not to start now?"

Blanche replied, "Lots - but none that'd persuade you."

"Alright. Let's begin." I picked up the first gem from the tray, looked at Blanche, thought careful thoughts, and carefully declared, "Abjure alchemia." (Who'd have ever thought that knowing the first edition Dungeons and Dragons schools of magic, such as 'abjuration', would ever have a practical application?) After a moment to make sure nothing visibly bad happened, I continued, "Abjure enchantation. Abjure fascination. Abjure incantation. Abjure magia. Abjure maleficium." The gem felt like it was out, so I set it aside, picked up the next, and continued with, "Abjure thaumaturgy," and continued through my alphabetical list, soon moving on to 'abrogate', 'anti', 'negate', 'nullify', 'rescind', and the rest of the latinate words I'd managed to come up with. One I ran out of those, I moved on to the healing ones - I wasn't sure how many of the words I was using were Latin or Greek, but I gave them all their shot, anyway, from 'cure' to 'medic' to 'physik' to 'sanitation'; from 'cerebrum' to 'cogitation' to 'consciousness' to 'intellect' to 'mentis' to 'rational' to 'sapience'.

Throughout all of this, Blanche just lay there quietly, breathing and blinking. Finally, I ran out of words, and fell silent.

"Are you done, then?" She asked.

"I guess. Do you feel any different?"

"I don't think so. The ropes are kind of making my back itch. Can I get them off yet?"

"I guess so. Amethyst? Your fingers are more nimble than my hooves - think you can untie them without cutting them up too much?"

In a few moments, Blanche was freed, and standing, looking around at us.

"So, um," I said, "Do you still want to spend that night with me?"

"Well - yeah, of course. But I know you're not going to, so I'd be better spending my time trying to do other things."

"I suppose... that's a start? I was hoping for something, well... a little more dramatic?"

"Sorry - you're still the most important person in the world to me. I am kind of sleepy, though - mind if I skip my shift?"

"Take all the time you need," I agreed.

She turned to the stairs heading to the barracks, spread her wings, and... hopped a step. She looked confused, frowned, and gave her wings a few more flaps. Then she started flapping as hard as she could, enough to send the bandages on her back flying, and for her wounds to start bleeding again.

"Hey! Hey, it's okay, calm down, settle down," I tried to placate her, hurrying over to her. "You're hurting yourself there."

"I can't fly. I can't fly!" Her eyes were wide, panicked.

I tried keeping my voice as calm and soothing as I could, stroking her back, gently pushing her wings back onto her sides. "Don't worry - it's just a side-effect. I guess I canceled out not just the love potion, but your natural magic, too. But I only canceled it - that's why I had to do the healing spells, to. You should be back to normal by the time you wake up. And if not - I've already thought of at least three ways to jump-start you. Just head to bed and get some rest, and come see me when you get up, okay?"

She grumbled a bit - and I cheered inside, she'd never grumbled at me before! - and tromped off.

As I stared after her, I said, "Well. That could have gone a lot worse. Red - thanks for your help, even if we didn't need it. If Blanche has any, um, pegasus problems, could you talk with her?"

"Of course," she agreed, and trotted after Blanche.

"Amethyst - before you go, we need to have a talk." I started gathering up the expended gems back into the tray. I really should have tried to make notes during the whole procedure - but one thing I'd learned from that journal of terrible transformation experiments, was that healing spells had better effect when cast right after each other, rather than waiting between them. Maybe later I'd have a chance to find out which out of all those spells I'd tried actually worked, which worked better, and so on - but that would be later. If there was a later.

As I continued cleaning up, Amethyst followed. "I'm not taking John, Paul, George, or Ringo anywhere near the Great Battlefield," I stated. "They need someone to take care of them. If it's not me - that means you. Given what I'm likely to be doing after that - even if I survive, I'm just going to head into further dangers... so, somewhere between here and Oasis, I'd like to drop you and them off, with whatever bits and equipment we can spare so you can get back to the warren by Ponyville."

As calmly as usual, she said, "No."

"I was afraid you were going to say something like that." I paused, as I was getting my hooves tangled up trying to re-coil the ropes. Amethyst, wordlessly, pulled them off of me and wound them up nice and professionally. "I am both owner and captain, you know - I could shove you over the side right here and now, and nopony would be able to say 'neigh'."

"Won't."

"Well - maybe not. But if I don't understand why you want to stick with me, and have the pups stay even if it's dangerous - then I just might up-ship in Oasis and leave you behind. I don't think one-word answers are going to cut it, today." She grimaced. "Come on, let's at least head to the side balcony to watch the fish jump while we talk.

"So," I said, leaning on the railing. "Up to saying some full sentences? Or are we going to have to spend a few hours as I try to pry each and every word out of you?"

"Alpha. Beats. Me."

"What? You mean - he hits you? Okay, so the warren's not the place for you to-"

She interrupted, shaking her head. "Alpha... More. Better. If... we... fight. I... lose." I nodded, encouraging her to continue. "Ponyville... guard. Beat Alpha. Royal guard. Beat Ponyville. Army. Beat Guard. Princess. Beat army."

She stopped there, coughed once, and spat into the river. I didn't blame her - this was probably more words than she'd said since I'd met her. "I think I see what you're saying so far," I said into her silence. "But I don't get-"

"You," she stated, "Beat Princess. Maybe... not... yet. But... later." Cough. Spit. "I go... pups... sons... of Alpha. I stay... sons... of Alpha. Of Alphas. Of Alphas."

She fell silent again. I didn't feel the need to add any words of my own just then. So we listened to the river, the wind, the birds, the bugs, the frogs, the creaking of the ship, while I thought about what she'd said, the mind that would think that way. And the various paths that could be taken from this point.

Finally, I asked, "Have you ever heard the word 'noncombatant'?" She shook her head. "Oh well. In that case - if I do let you stay anywhere near me - and I'm not saying I will - there are conditions. My job is to save the world. The pups' job is to grow up and live in that world - and, maybe, figure out how to save it themselves. If I'm to do my job - I can't spend all my time worrying about making sure the pups do theirs. So your job would be to do that - to keep them safe, to take them away from dangers even if I happen to be galloping straight for it. Even if it means they never see me again. If I do let you stay - then you have to agree that if I ever straight up tell you to leave, and take the pups with you, you will. No hesitation, no refusal - just pack and go. Do you understand?"

She not only nodded eagerly, but her grin was as wide as I'd ever seen it.

I nodded back. "Now - do you agree?"

"Yes!" I felt a thwacking on my flank - her tail was wagging hard enough to leave bruises, almost.

"Good. Then go swab some kippers or scuttle some hatches or something - I've got a take-off to manage."

Conversations Around the Card Table

Blanche called out, "Hey, Missy - want to be dealt in?"

"Sorry, girls - I'm under an extended-duration truth-zap. Poker's only a game when you can hide information, and I can't hide anything from any of you right now. I'm just grabbing a snack."

"What if we promised not to actually ask you what your cards were? You just have to tell the truth, right? That doesn't mean you can't over-bet a weak hand or under-bet a strong one, does it?"

"I... you know, I don't actually know."

"Isn't that something you should know? Purely for research purposes, of course."

"Mmmmaybe."

"Of course, it wouldn't be a real test if you didn't use actual stakes, like the points the rest of us are betting."

"I have a sneaking suspicion that you're just trying to get my points from me."

"Mmmmaybe."

"Tell you what - a quick, small-stakes game, no more than two hundred - and if anyone makes me say what my cards are, I get the whole pot for that hand."

Red piped up, "Okay, now I'm curious. Does magic think bluffing is the same as lying?"

I shrugged, as I pulled a chair up to the table. "They both involve deliberately distorting someone's understanding of the universe... but in poker, you know what you're getting into. Let's not dawdle - I've probably only got twenty minutes left on this spell."

The game was... interesting. The first hand, I had an eight in the hole, an eight face up, and an eight on the table, and none of the others had cards worth mentioning - but I knew that if I bet as strongly as my hand suggested, everyone else would just fold right away. But if I made an average or below-average set of bets, then they were much more likely to stay in the hand, pumping the pot full of points for me to snag. But, even knowing all that - it took me three tries to get my hoof to push my first 'call' chips. Naturally, everyone was watching me like a hawk, and folded anyway.

After a couple more hands, I began getting a feel for the pattern, here. I wasn't lying, at least not exactly; so I could still make my deceptive bets, to keep anypony from being able to guess what was in my hand. But it seemed that it was enough like lying for the spell to try to nudge me to be more honest. My first instinct in every hand was to play it completely straight - and my second instinct, too. I had to put the effort in to consciously work out what I should bet to maximize my overall winnings.

After a couple more, things got even trickier, as I realized that my tells were so obvious that everyone was picking up on them - and tried to fake having to struggle to make the right bet, when I was actually betting to my cards' strength. I had to struggle to struggle, instead of just shoving my chips right out.

By the time we came to the last hand, I'd gone through so many different layers of lying-by-telling-the-truth-by-lying, and vice versa, that I think I broke something; the spell snapped off whole minutes earlier than it should have, by my calculations. Which meant that I was entirely free to play however I wished, without mystical mental nudgings.

I managed to completely muck it - folded a hand that would have won if I'd kept it. Still, with the odds I saw, it was the best play I could make to avoid betting on what I thought was a losing hand. Which put my take for the whole game at... minus twenty points. Which I thought was doing rather well, given the handicap I'd been working under.

Red opined, "We need more crew."

I raised an eyebrow. "You think so?"

"This boat's built so it needs at least three ponies to do anything useful, like turn while we're moving forward. We've got cabin room for nine, including the captain - three shifts. Now that Marble and Brick are off, we've got five. If we keep three shifts, and we have at least one pony awake every shift just to make sure nopony steals the mainmast, that just leaves two - just enough to fill out a single shift. We can stretch things out a bit, by working longer hours and spending less time in the air... but that chips away at this boat's one advantage: its speed."

"We do have some weapons," I pointed out.

"Not hardly enough to annoy even a dragon, let alone a real enemy. And we haven't got the crew to use them, either. If we ever get in a fight, we've got one chance of surviving: we fly. We fly fast, we fly high, we fly all around, we fly any which way we can. As long as we get those engines turning at top speed, I don't care if they're powered with dryad farts and seapony songs."

"Actually, it seems to be a fairly standard gem-powered drive, running a variant of the come-to-life spell on the propellers..." I got a glare. "Fine, fine. I'm not disagreeing with you. What do the rest of you think?"

"Pack. Small."

"The more who come under your authority, the more opportunity you have to show your greatness."

"Not to throw a damper on the idea," Star Chaser said, thoughtfully, "but aren't we already running away from mysterious ponies who've already gotten control of the Dairy and post office? How can we find any ponies we can trust? Or pay them, for that matter?"

I glanced at Red again. "She raises a few good points. Got any answers?"

"For one - if we're fast enough, we can get somewhere and hire some crew before anypony can even think to spread the word to try to infiltrate us. For another... well, I'm not sure - but we do have a fast airship, we should be able to find some way to get some bits out of that."

I shoved my bid forward, then leaned back in my seat. "Here's a thought. You've been on airships as much as I have - more, not even counting when I got over-focused on CAT WHISKER - and you've got a head for the air. How'd you like to be captain? I'd be owner-aboard, setting general goals, like where to aim for, but would leave all the shiphandling decisions - like whether to hire crew, and if so, who, and how to pay them - up to you. To be honest - I'm not really good at captaining, especially when I spend so much of my time working on my experiments, too." I glanced around. "Anypony have any objections?"

After a few moments, Blanche asked, "If she's getting promoted, does that mean she'll be getting more points to bet with?"

"I've been thinking a bit," said Blanche. "And while I don't miss Gallopoli - I do miss the university. The academic part, anyway. I may not have any of my old research notes or anything - but maybe... since we're traveling all over the place anyway... I could start collecting some new data, and start re-writing my old thesis?"

"Won't get any objections from me," I said, using all my poker skills to keep from whooping in glee. "If you can think of any sites you'd like to visit, that aren't too far off our course, let me or Red know, and we'll see what we can do. Mm... you should probably talk straight to her about course changes - I don't want to get into that whole mess of undercutting the authority I gave her. But for general ideas, I'd be happy to chat."

Red asked, "So what's it like for you now, being a girl?"

I almost dropped the glass of water I was sipping from, but Star Chaser mused, "Actually, most of the time, I don't even notice it. There is one thing I'm kind of worried about these days... that somepony will do to me what I tried to do to Missy, and I'll end up with foal. I'm not in a particular rush to get back to being a stallion, what with all the other stuff to do that's more important - but even aside from the whole having a kid thing, I'm still kind of hoping to get back to being a guy soonish. I'm no expert on magic, but I'm pretty sure there isn't a spell in the world that could swap my gender back while I've got a foal growing inside me."

I said, "Hmmm..." without thinking, and was immediately the focus of four pairs of eyes.

Blanched ordered, "Spill."

"I was just thinking about one of the forbidden spells I've read about. The merging flesh-shaping one. It wasn't designed for anything of the sort - but it might be possible to apply it to transfer a fetus from one pony to another. I'm not sure, though - I don't think it works at all unless it's being used, at least partly, to take two live bodies and mash them together one way or another... but maybe if there was a third pony willing to be merged, and the spell was used twice... well - given the risks involved, it's almost certainly far riskier than it's worth - right now, I'd classify it as an 'only in case of life-threatening emergency' sort of spell. Um. Since the topic is raised... there is at least one item which my memory isn't clear on, and which I haven't really had a chance to talk to anypony about... but I'm pretty sure it's kind of a sensitive topic, so I'm not sure I should even bring it up."

Star snorted. "With an introduction like that, how can you not?"

"Fine, fine. I happen to have a memory - which might or might not be true - that if a mare finds out she's pregnant, and doesn't want to be, that she still has... options."

Red said, "Oh, you mean abortion?"

"Ah, so the word does exist."

Our new captain shrugged. "It's not something anypony really talks about - even the idea is kind of sad. But since most ponies don't have access to ancient tomes of forbidden magics... then according to the sex-ed class I got, at least sometimes, it's the only way to save the mare's life. But otherwise, there are lots of families who'd be happy to adopt a newborn, if a mother can't take care of it herself. So we're supposed to talk to our doctor if we need to, and not really talk about it in polite company. But I know you're at least half insane, so you really might not know that. I'd guess it's pretty much the same for cows as for ponies."

Blanche asked, "What about diamond dogs, Amethyst?"

"Lots. Dogs. Die. More. Pups. Always. Good."

"Hunh," I said, thoughtfully, checking my cards. "That doesn't... quite square with the way I thought it was supposed to work, but I guess it's good to know."

Star gave me a funny look. "What, did you have some sort of schoolyard type of misunderstanding?"

"No, nothing like that. I guess I just look at it from... a different perspective."

"Like what?"

"Um. It may take a bit of explaining."

Her mouth quirked. "Like we've got anything better to talk about?"

"Fine, fine. Let me see if I can keep the lecturing down to a minimum... okay. You know how I live with Cheerilee, but it's still her house? She owns it, pays the taxes, handles the insurance, and so on?"

"I only met her in passing, but sure."

"So she's allowed me into her home as a guest. When is she, or isn't she, allowed to decide I'm unwelcome, and kick me out?"

Red, "Her house, her rules. You mess up, out you go."

Blanche, "But what if it's a cold winter night, and she'd freeze?"

Star, "She still has the moral duty not to let anypony die, if she can help it, even if Missy does make her mad."

I frowned. "I guess that wasn't the greatest example. Let me try a different one. There is a certain wasp, which reproduces by paralyzing a caterpillar, and placing its young inside, who eventually eat their way out of their still-living host. I'm not trying to draw a direct parallel here - just setting up the fact that there are all sorts of weird and creepy critters out there. So let's imagine, oh, let's call it a brain-slug. They can think and talk - but they can only live as a parasite, the new ones glomping onto a new host. If you pull 'em off, they die. If you don't, they suck all their nutrients straight from your bloodstream, like a tick or a tapeworm. If one glomps onto you, have you got any moral obligation to not let it die, no matter how inconvenient it is for you?"

This hypothetical silenced the room for almost a full minute, other than the sounds of point-papers being pushed into the pot, and cards sliding across the table.

Star finally spoke, saying, "You really are bucked in the head, you know that?"

I shrugged. "I've found it very useful to try to figure out where my ethical system breaks down, by coming up with things like that; so that I can find what the paradoxes in it are, what the possible fixes are, and pick one. The pattern of ethics I've ended up with... doesn't always give the same answers to ethical problems that anypony else's does. But it comes pretty close on most everyday stuff, and with sounder reasoning. Which means that when I have to figure out what to do in a hurry, I've got a better chance of figuring out the right thing to do." I glanced at Blanche. "I don't always get the right answer..." I looked back at Star. "But I'm working on it."

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. "Is this super-duper set of ethics something only an insane person can use, or can anypony work with it?"

"Well... it does depend on one thing that almost nopony is willing to do.

"Should I ask?"

"Learn to admit you're wrong. Even things that are important to you, that are central to your idea of how the universe works, and how you work. You have to be able to admit you're wrong about something a hundred times, if that's what it takes to finally be right on the hundred-and-first." I eyed her cautiously. "You've done it at least once - so even if you started from further back, you've got a chance to build up a momentum that few could imagine."

"... Is that it?"

"Well - it's necessary, but not sufficient. Once you're willing to take that step... then you have to deal with the consequences of that. Like finding out how to actually tell the difference between when you're wrong and right - what methods tend to provide reliable evidence, and what don't. You have to stare into the possibility that at some point, the whole universe might end up in a state where there aren't any more sapient people in it anymore, and no chance of any more ever existing; and deciding how important it is to you to work to reduce the odds of that ever happening. You have to look at the differences between short-term benefit and long-term gains - or is it the other way around? - and, if you're lucky, notice that the tricks for working for your own long-term benefit just happen to closely match what most ponies call 'ethical behavior', and figure out why that is. You have to be willing to consider that every political stance you've had may actually lead to the opposite consequences you're aiming for, and be willing to change your position. You have to grab hold of every scrap of information you can get your hooves on, because any single one of them might turn out to have immense value - the way that some scraps I never thought would actually have any use turned out to let me introduce a new heart medicine that's already saving lives. And since you're not an alicorn, you have to hunt for every way you can to figure all of that out as fast as possible, so that you can spend more of your life already knowing it."

"Sounds like a lot of work."

"I suppose it would be, if you were to think of it as work."

"Then what do you think of it as?"

I grinned. "The only way there is to find out at least some of the marvelously fascinating ways the universe actually works, and then leveraging those ways for personal profit, amusement, and occasional world-saving."

"Say - if we're all in here, who's piloting this thing?

"The anchor."

"Oh. Raise you ten, then."

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

"Smoke dead astern!"

"Hard to port!"

The Mikoyan veered to the left.

A whole lot of work went into making those three sentences possible.

The Mikoyan might have been designed to be run by three ponies at a time - but, apparently, the designers assumed that those three ponies would already have years of sailing or windjamming experience, and would only need a bit of familiarization with this particular model. We didn't have anything of the sort - so all five of us had to work together, doing things we barely had any idea what to do, just to pull off a simple sight-and-turn without flipping upside-down and crashing.

First, up on top of the sterncastle was Blanche, who, with hawk-like Pegasus eyes and some binoculars, was looking around in all directions for any airships, dragons, pegasi, or other potential dangers. She had to learn a particular lingo - 'cloud' meant something fluffy in the air, while 'smoke' meant something from the ground, no matter whether one or the other happened to actually be smoke or clouds. Her announcement meant that she'd spotted some cloud or smoke or something on the ground directly behind us - which, since she hadn't seen anything of the sort ahead of us, meant that it had appeared roughly when we flew over it. Which was probably a bad sign.

Captain Red was on the bridge, in the sterncastle directly under Blanche's post. There were some speaking tubes to ease communications from one point in the ship to another. (They didn't work all that well, though, and one of my side-projects was rigging up a proper intercom system. Which was stalled by our complete lack of electrical wiring. We had CAT WHISKER as another option, but the buzzing codes didn't lend themselves well to rapid orders, and the Dairy had their own CAT WHISKER devices which could overhear ours if they got close enough.) She had to hear Blanche's shout over the noise of the wind, and move her attention from her usual job of long-range navigation to decide on what to do in the short-term - which, given our limited skills, at least kept her from being overwhelmed by a variety of choices. A simple, slow turn was about all we could manage - so that's what she called for.

Star Chaser was in the bridge with Red, serving as pilot. She had control of two big throttles, one for each of the main, stern-mounted engines. What each lever actually connected to was a valve, which could squeeze off the fluidized crush-gemstone running in pipes between the engine-core beneath the bridge, and each of the outboard engine nacelles. Less gemstone flow meant less magic, which meant the 'come to life' spell on the actual propellers starved, which slowed its turning, reducing its thrust... resulting in the whole ship yawing - that is, rotating to turn left or right. This didn't directly change our course, it simply meant that we kept traveling in the same direction while facing another.

That was where I came in. I was stationed amidships, between the two smaller propeller housings mounted there. My job, when we changed course, was to figure out the best way to rotate them up and down, and spin them faster and slower - as well as pick how fast the two propellers up on our mainmast needed to spin - to get us going in the right direction, and keep us from flipping upside-down. By rotating the port prop down a bit and the starboard prop up the same amount, I could roll the whole ship a few degrees leftish, so that the air flowing over the hull and along our keel would actually change our course to match our heading. As the main engines were throttled down, I had to throttle mine up and tilt them further up to make sure we maintained a steady lift. The top props helped with our pitch - spinning them harder pushed our nose down for a dive, slowing them down helped pushed the nose up to climb. It was all a bit of a mess, given that I was in the middle of the ship, couldn't really see outside, had only the most fundamentally basic of instruments to tell what our ship's tilt and acceleration were, had to keep a close ear on the speaking-tube, how hard every control was to shove, and the delays between when I moved something and when the ship responded; if I didn't have a slight leg up on the basic principles of flight from an old interest in World War One aircraft, and some MS-DOS era flight-simulator games, I wouldn't have had a chance of being able to manage all of that on my own. Fortunately, I did, and so was actually able to spend about half my time reading and prepping my experiments, while keeping an eye on my gauges and an ear for Red's voice.

At the time of the course change, Amethyst was napping, having tuckered herself out keeping an eye on the kids, running the galley, fiddling in the engine room, and doing a few of the other tasks necessary to keep the ship running that didn't involve directly flying it.

According to the ship's manual, the single pony on the bridge was supposed to watch through all the windows, plus navigate, plus control the main throttles. That wasn't going to be happening any time soon.

After we moved out of the potential direct line of fire, and Blanche confirmed nothing seemed to be rising up to meet us, Red ordered, "Full stop!". This didn't mean all the engines stopped - just the main ones, while I fiddled with the smaller ones to put us into a fairly steady hover, barring a change in the wind. "Owner to the bridge," Red added once we were steady. As I trotted to the back, I passed Star coming the other way to take my place, so that there'd be somepony ready to fiddle with the maneuvering props if we had to leave in a hurry.

When I climbed up to the bridge, Red was peering out one of the side windows near the back, looking down at the ground with some binoculars. I snagged another set, joined her, and pressed the things up against my glasses. "What am I looking at?"

"It's mostly gone now," she said. "Blanche says her wings feel back up to full strength, so I sent her down to take a look. I need you up on overwatch until she gets back."

"Aye, ma'am," I acknowledged, and went out on deck. I wasn't sure why she hadn't just sent Star up top, instead of shuffling us around, but at the moment, we needed a lookout - and it was her call to make me it. So up the stairs I went, and started slowly circling around and around. I was glad for the pseudo-sails above the sterncastle; they helped aim the airstream while in flight, but right now, they were handy to keep me shaded from the noonday sun. I still had to squint at the bright landscape, especially after being inside so long.

We were, oh, fifty miles or so north of Oasis. Red had decided that since Marble knew we were planning on going there, it was possible she'd spread the word to our enemies... so our plan was to drop me off as close to the Great Battlefield as the Mikoyan could get without risking getting shot down, and while I tried finding whatever I could there, the rest of the gang would head back to Oasis to try hiring some new crew. If the Battlefield got me, then Red and the Mikoyan could keep trying to do the job; if something happened to them in Oasis, I'd have a chance to go back to help them, and, failing that, to get on with the job myself without them. It wasn't the best plan - just the best one we could think of in case something went wrong.

In addition to poker, we'd started up a betting pool for what would go wrong first. My points were on 'engine trouble', Blanche had picked 'hostile locals', Red was 'enemy attack', Star thought 'loved ones taken hostage' was most likely, and Amethyst had plunked her money down on 'monsters'.

After a while, I saw Blanche circling back up, taking advantage of a handy thermal updraft to climb, and let Red know. Our scout landed on the rear balcony, panting from the effort, and went in. I went back to scanning the horizon. After about five minutes, Red came up the steps, said, "She wants to talk to you," and took over lookout as I went back down.

Red was poring over our navigation charts. "What's the word?", I inquired casually. She gave me a stink-eye, so I sighed, and stated, "Owner reporting as requested, ma'am." She nodded at that.

"We're here," she said, pointing to a spot on the map with a hoof. "And there's nothing here, according to the maps. What Red found was... a cave. A big cave. More of a ravine, with the top closed off, maybe a thousand feet deep and so long she didn't have time to fly from one end to another - over a dozen miles, at least. She grabbed a few rock samples. What we saw is a small opening, one that's not visible from above, or from anypony walking around down there. I think us flying right over it might have caused a small cave-in, or something of the sort, which sent out a bunch of dust. One of those freak random chance events. It's very possible nopony else knows it exists. We don't have time to explore it right now - but for now, we can use it as a rendezvous, which Marble doesn't know about - and even Brick doesn't."

I nodded. "Call it the 'Alpha Site'," stealing an idea from the Stargate TV series, "and when we get a chance, we can see if it's a good place to put a static HQ. For the Battlefield scouting - if you don't show up to pick me up, I'll look for you here, and if you aren't around, go check at Oasis. Let me make sure I can find the spot with the maps I'll be taking..." We revised our timetables with the new sub-plan, until Red sent me back amidships and called Star back to the bridge, and we were on our way again.

The closer we got to the Great Battlefield, the lower we'd flown. This was based on the recommended no-fly zones in our charts, which were derived from various reports of airships, balloons, pegasi, dragons, and other things in the air in the region suddenly blowing up. Such attacks were also why I was willing to risk investigating the place at all; anything that could shoot down an airship from miles away sounded like something quite useful, and my 'special knowledge' just might give me a shot at figuring out how to control something which no native Equestrian would have ever had a chance to.

Our final approach was skimming barely over the treetops, coming up to the backside of a hill. If the Mikoyan rose above that hilltop, then there was every chance that would be the last maneuver she ever made. This limitation of our possible escape routes made us all a bit nervous and twitchy, and Amethyst joined Blanche on lookout, so we'd have that much more of a chance to spot an attacker early, and have a slightly better chance of being able to fly away. Fortunately, we seemed to be entirely on our own.

I gave the pups a last nursing while at my station, stroking their fuzzy little heads between shoving the levers. Red directed us to come to a halt at the base of the hill, and to make a fairly quick one-eighty, so that all the Mikoyan needed to do if we were surprised was to kick the engines to full throttle.

I'd assembled everything I planned on taking with me a while ago, and now just needed to suit up. My tan walking outfit, Chekov, pepper spray, the Hope necklace, the Warden whistle, a CAT WHISKER box, charged gems, and assorted odds and ends for my pockets, to take with me wherever I went. In addition to all that, I'd packed a crate of supplies, to use for a base camp if I decided to stay longer, or if the Mikoyan didn't show up on time.

I watched as the rope was pulled back up, and the airship started sliding through the air back south, until it was out of sight. After a quick sigh, I shoved the crate into a handy hollow, and started zig-zagging up the slope.

When I was near the top, I slowed down, and pulled out one of my gizmos - a pair of small mirrors and some folded cardboard, which I assembled into a periscope. I inched my way up the bare rock face until the top of the periscope could see down the other side of the hill without exposing even the tips of my horns...

Off as far as I could see, it wasn't quite the mud-strewn mess of the 'No Man's Land', between trenches in pictures of World War One battlefields... but there were plenty of craters, some filled with water, and churned-up earth, and broken-off trees... and, scattered here and there, in various states of brokenness, were what I could only take to be machines of war. Some looked like tanks or field artillery; some like crashed flying things; there was something that looked like a pony AT-AT, missing one and a half legs; and a whole bunch of stuff that I couldn't make heads or tails of. Or, to put it another way: it was the freakin' motherlode.

For the next hour, I simply sat in place there, looking over the area for any sign of movement, and sketching out rough maps. Since the whole place seemed quiet, I then turned my attention to the far side of the hill, looking for anything like a path containing concealment. There wasn't a path - but with the churned-up earth, there were plenty of cow-sized bits of cover, so I worked out a way downhill with the shortest distances between those points.

I took a breath, stuck my hat on the end of my periscope, and held it up... and, after a minute, nothing happened to it. So I stuck my head up over the ridge - looking down with my own eyes... and I survived. After a few more stages of this, I was over the hump, and belly-down in a shallow crater. I checked my next spot, a turned-up bit of turf with a ridge I could crawl behind, pushed myself up to trot over to it...

... and the next thing I knew, I was rolling downhill, tail-over-teakettle, covered in dust and dirt, my chest aching, my ears ringing.

Antiques

I lay where I rolled to a stop for a good while, finding myself not particularly interested in the world - or thinking coherently.

The first thing I thought wasn't in words - it was a memory. A few years ago, I had an interesting little incident. I was walking down the stairs, feeling a bit odd; and the next item in my stream of memory, I was lying in a wheeled stretcher, in a hospital, being rolled to a room with one of the brain-scanning machines. My family was there, and told me that I'd asked "What time is it?" every few minutes for hours, and didn't remember anything but stuff from the last few minutes or from long before the whole thing started. 'Transient global amnesia' was what the doctors called it - which mostly meant that they didn't have any idea what had actually caused it, since it wasn't a stroke, seizure, or anything else they could pinpoint. Which implied that as I got older, the part of my brain most likely to fail first would be the hippocampi, preventing the formation of any further memories.

I wondered if my current brain had bum hippocampi, too.

I realized that I wasn't in the best situation to be wondering about brain damage.

I looked around - and squinted. My glasses had come off sometime during my rolling, and everything past my nose was blurry. I could make out that I was in the bottom of a crater, tilted, so it was probably still on the hill; with a raised lip hiding the ground-level battlefield from me - and, probably more important, me from the battlefield. I looked around the crater - and sighed in relief, upon sighting my glasses. I picked them up with a hoof, and as I got them close enough to my face to get a decent look, winced; the right lens had a big crack running through it, and the left lens was entirely missing its bottom half. I had my one spare pair back in the base-camp crate, but... well, that was back at base-camp. Still, three quarters of a pair of glasses was better than none, so I put them back on. Maybe I could come up with a repair spell, if I got out of here.

The getting out of here was the tricky part. I ran my memory over recent events, trying to recall any further details... and came up with one rather important one. I'd been trotting from one piece of cover to another - and then I'd seen a flash of light off in the distance, and felt my heart surge in panic as I tried to change direction, and then I... ran out of memory.

So, the good news was - I probably wasn't in the middle of an unmarked, unmapped minefield. The bad news - something out there was shooting at me.

I pushed myself against the front wall of the crater, to try looking uphill. I was down... quite a ways, really. Maybe halfway. And nowhere near the route I'd plotted out for myself. Just getting back to that line of smallest gaps between pieces of cover, I'd have to pass through... at least three gaps bigger than the one I'd trotted through. I pulled out my notebook, and checked my map of the hillside (instead of poking my head back up and risking getting it shot off)... going down, instead, would put me even more in the open.

So - I was pinned down by something that might be as mild as a sniper, and might be full field artillery. What options did I have?

I could stay here a while - until I ran out of water, at least. The Mikoyan would be along, and maybe some sort of method could be arranged to lower some food and water down to me from the crest of the hill - but that didn't solve the main problem.

My pockets had a bunch of magically-charged gems, which seemed to respond to Latinate words with useful magic. Assuming I could come up with the right words, what might be a useful spell? Hm... recalling some of the tactical discussions of super-hero role-playing games I'd used to join... super-speed could be useful, if I could climb the hill before a shot could be taken; or invisibility to whatever sensors were being used to target me; or making some decoys to send in various directions while I went in another; or mind-control or hacking of whatever was shooting; or tunneling my way out; or the old standby, blowing up whatever opposed me. So many options - if I only knew the right words. If I survived, I was really going to have to work a lot harder than I had been on coming up with a decent set of spells to cast.

One of the gems was an Ursa bone fragment. I knew how to turn it into a sort of grenade... if only I could throw it close enough to whatever was shooting. I'd never had a good pitching arm even as a human.

I had the Element necklace, which did... absolutely nothing that I knew of. I hadn't even been able to coax a Care Bear Stare out of it. But dangling under the necklace... was a certain golden whistle, on a golden chain. Oh, yeah. This was the reason I'd come alone, and sent the whole airship as far away as possible - the possibly-goddess who'd given it to me had said blowing it would some 'a group of Wardens', whatever they were, to my aid... who would kill everyone around me. And since there didn't seem to be anyone around save for me and whoever had shot at me... that was an option I could actually consider taking.

I ran through the rest of my inventory, but didn't find anything relevant. I looked up at the hillside for a bit, trying to persuade myself that whatever had shot at me had probably used up its last round... and slapped myself upside the head for committing that sin of trying to make the evidence fit my desires, instead of having my beliefs based on the evidence. And the evidence said that if I ran for it, I'd be turned into ground beef before you could say "Quarter Pounder With Cheese".

Welp, if I couldn't hit my main goal of investigating the Battlefield - I could at least learn something about the whistle, and the Wardens. I inhaled, held it up to my mouth... and blew.

I didn't actually hear anything - just the hiss of air blowing through a tube. But I tensed up anyway, looking around, up, down, behind me, looking for the first sign that the whistle was actually more than a Cracker Box toy...

The ground to my left shifted.

A sword poked out - followed by a thin arm, a circular shield... and in a scant second or two, an entire warrior had risen from the depths of the earth. Soon followed by another, and another...

They had swords, and spears, and shields, and that classical armor with the leather skirts and helmets with horsehair mohawks. Hoplites or legionnaires, more likely the former, given their shields.

And they didn't have a single scrap of flesh on their white bones.

Ray Harryhausen, eat your heart out.

Now, in general, morbid and creepifying, I got no problem with. But I'd already been warned these were some sort of killing machines, and, well... you try being entirely rational when a dozen animated skeletons pull themselves up out of the ground right next to you, and your life's already in mortal danger.

Once, as a kid, I'd been helping move some furniture, when I saw a TV slowly start tipping forward. I saw the disaster coming, but when I tried to move forward to grab it - nothing happened; I tried to shout a warning - no words came out.

This was like that - only moreso.

And that was even before they started making harsh chattering and clicking sounds.

My sticking point de-stuck as I saw a flash of light from the plain. My eyes widened; my throat loosed enough for me to shout, "Get down!", and I was actually able to push with my hindlegs to knock down the nearest of them.

It was only when I was already in motion that I remembered that, according to Dungeons and Dragons, a number of skeletal-form undead drained life-energy when they were touched...

Fortunately, I didn't turn into a withered husk as I crashed into them (or, depending on how you wanted to look at it, as they let me use my momentum to get them into cover more quickly). Even more fortunately, whatever was being shot fell short, and other than a crash and a shake and my tinnitus getting one notch worse, nothing worse happened than me stretched out in the centre of a stack of self-propelled skeletons.

I'd had better days.

"If you're trying to talk to me - I'm afraid I don't understand. Do any of you understand what I'm saying?" I decided to take the nods as agreement. "Well. Okay. I came here to do some special recon." The situation was drawing a more military lexicon from my tactical wargaming days. "I came to collect any useful technical intelligence I could - I hoped to find something I could reverse-engineer to help with my overall strategic goals, or at least just use as-is. If that's impossible, I just want to exfiltrate and evac with a minimum of injury. I don't know what's shooting - I sketched out some maps, and can hazard a guess, but that's about all. I don't suppose you can use your digging trick and take me with you, to, say, the other side of this hill?"

Most of the skulls turned to face the one with the tallest helmet-plume. There was more clicking, rattling, and other percussiony, bone-based sounds. Then he - or possibly she, who could tell? - went back to the hole they'd risen from, and started pushing themselves back down into it.

"Er, do I go with, or...?" Two of them stepped away from the others, crouching down beside me, and... waited. The other ten vanished as if they'd never arrived in the first place. When I made a motion to step toward where the hole had been, they lightly touched my shoulders, and shook their skulls from side to side.

Looked like I was supposed to stay put for... however long.

"I don't suppose either of you play cards?"

I was started by the appearance of a skeletal hoplite - who appeared by simply walking over the lip of the crater. He/she/it rattled and clicked a bit, and the other two stood. They gestured for me to stand up, as well, and to come along with them. I cautiously poked my head over the crater rim, looking downhill... and when there was no sign of a flash, or anything else about to blow me up, I did as the Wardens directed.

They led me downhill, and out about half a mile onto the plain - to the not-quite-an-AT-AT I'd noted before. Only now instead of missing one and a half legs, it was missing all of them - and, generally, was in smaller chunks than before. My twin guards led me to the honcho Warden, and, rejoining the ranks of the others, became indistinguishable from them.

What followed was an exercise in frustration, as the honcho tried to explain something to me. It involved pointing at the quadrupedal mecha's head, at the spot up on the hill where I'd been, and at my Element necklace, with various nods, head-shakes, and other gestures I had trouble interpreting. My best guess was... a Bearer wasn't supposed to be attacked, but this mecha was extra damaged and attacked anyway, and now it was dead. Or maybe the necklace made me a special target for this one. Or I was a complete idiot for coming here.

After I described my guesses, the honcho heaved his shoulders up, then let them down - if he had lungs, I'd say he just sighed. He turned his skull to the other Wardens, and clicked and rattled at them for a bit; whereupon the whole collection found themselves a bare patch of dirt to start digging down into. In moments, I was alone again.

And I was standing next to the remains of a technomagical mecha from thousands of years ago, which had been built well enough to still be able to shoot at me. Nopony was around to see me, so I let myself rub my hooves together in glee, before getting down to work...

Digging Up Dirt

As the sun started lowering to the horizon, I was climbing back up the hill and away from the various pieces of wreckage, feeling somewhat discouraged. I was coming to terms with the simple fact was that there was far too much stuff to make my initial plan feasible; even spending just five seconds with every mysterious doodad or interesting-looking fragment would take weeks. (And that didn't even count breaks for lunch, or for wondering why the Warden skeleton-creatures were shaped like the skeletons of humans instead of ponies.) And even more frustrating was that I knew just how much was tantalizingly out of my grasp; if I knew just about any subject in more depth, like materials science or antenna design, I was sure I could learn a lot more. But as things were, even a single detail the size of a microchip could render the most valuable artifact imaginable into just another piece of twisted hull metal, as far as I could tell.

The entire fruits of my first day was a total of three things - which I had stumbled across pretty much by accident. As I'd been wandering from one downed mecha to another, I detoured a bit to look at something around the size of a phonebox that wasn't quite between them. As an educated guess, it looked like some sort of ejectable cockpit - angled winlets, lots of see-through window-like panels, a smooth lump that could be some sort of countoured seat, and the like. No sign of a pilot, of any species; but after some poking and prodding, under the maybe-seat was a panel... and within, some object that I could almost recognize. The first thing I pulled out was a matte-black boot - I pulled it on, and it fit my left forehoof just nicely. I leaned back down to reach back in... and my hoof didn't lean with me - it was stuck where I was standing.

It took me half an hour to figure out the trick to get it to detach.

And another half hour to figure out how to get it off.

Once I had those two pieces of information - I was willing to experiment a bit more, especially when I found its three companions... and found that when I stuck one to the top of the cockpit, any one of them was perfectly capable of holding my entire weight. So - maybe I could play Spider-cow, now. As long as they kept working - I didn't know if they used a power-source I'd need to recharge, or were based on gecko setae and would need to be kept extremely clean, or used a magical enchantment that could be dispelled... still, finding them meant that I could tell myself the day wasn't a total loss.

The second thing I found in that cockpit was a pair of goggles. I tried the obvious, first - pocketed my glasses, and held them up to my eyes. There was a moment of blurriness... and then, as I blinked, my vision cleared; I could see through them at least as well as through my Equestrian-crafted lenses. Maybe even better. Given my eyes' rather extreme nearsightedness, that implied they'd just customized themselves to my particular lenses... which implied they, too, still had some sort of active capability.

I wasn't sure what the third thing was - it was the same smooth, matte-black as the boots and the goggles' strap. It was shaped like a rubbery torc, and had no obvious function; but given what I found it with, I decided not to break up the set, and pocketed it for further investigation when I had the time to focus on one particular object.

The rest of my day probably would have been more productive if I'd done that, instead. The best idea I'd been able to come up with for the rest of what I'd found was to slap some of the pieces of material I found into a makeshift suit of armor. So I was feeling a mite disgruntled as I left the field early enough to get my camp ready for the night. When I got to the top of the hill, I was planning on giving the field another look-see through my new goggles, to see if my distance-vision was any better than earlier... which plan was quite derailed as I saw the Mikoyan, hovering in almost exactly the spot where it had dropped me off. Which was odd for several reasons - one of which being that Red was supposed to buzz me when she came back.

Of course, I had gone for a tumble or two while being shot at. I unhooked my CAT WHISKER from its carrying strap, and flipped open the maintenance hatch. The sapphires were unbroken, all the connections were solid, the battery was still charged... so, most likely, the two gemstones had been shifted away from their 'sweet spot' point of connection. I nudged them a bit - and was gratified to hear a faint buzzing sound emanate from the earphone. I closed the box up, and stuck the earplug in.

The signal <> was being repeated. Translating from radio-speak, it meant, roughly, "Hey Missy, hey Missy, hey Missy! Call from Red Pepper, Red Pepper, Red Pepper. End-of-message. Reply please?"

In the next pause, I tapped out, <>, meaning, "Red, it's Missy. All copied. Can you acknowledge receipt? Over."

There was a good-sized pause. Then, <>. Or, not quite - the pulses of that last q-code had had kind of a stutter in them. 'QED' was the code for 'follow the pilot vehicle' - mostly for ships, but in this case, with only one vehicle around, it could be an off-hand way to invite me to head down to meet them. But, the pulse-code symbol for 'D' was dash-dot-dot, and that last dot had been late and faint, almost not there. Without that dot, that letter would be dash-dot, or 'N', and 'QEN' was the code for 'hold your position'.

Something mighty odd was going on.

I transmitted, <> - there were just the two of us, so I could skip the callsigns, and weren't any Q-codes for my question.

<>

Now that was an interesting answer - since Red's bet in the pool was for an enemy to attack us.

I did a little stutter of my own; <> was the easiest interpretation, and meant 'I am not equipped to provide what is requested', an obvious response to the claimed debt. But by stretching out the first dash of the 'N' closer to the length of two dashes, it could also be interpreted as <>, 'Landing is prohibited'. Which, I hoped, could be interpreted as 'stay put'. After a few moments, I added <>, meaning 'I accept responsibility. End-of-contact.', which would work with whatever meaning was heard.

Now I just had to figure out how to deal with the Mikoyan and its crew possibly being under somepony else's control.

I retreated back to the nearest bit of cover on the battlefield side of the hill, to take a few moments to think without risking my head and horns being silhouetted against the sky.

I considered my finds of the day - and decided to apply some best-guess conclusions, even though the evidence didn't warrant being nearly so confident in them. If that cockpit had been an escape pod... then it probably contained some survival gear in case of landing in a hostile environment... and such gear often included some absolutely idiot-proof components, which could be used even if the downed pilot had a concussion and wasn't thinking straight. Given how little of the rest of the machinery I'd been able to recognize, the fact that I'd been able to even tell what the goggles and such were, suggested that they might be just such idiot-targeted gear. They might have functions I couldn't recognize - but the boots would still be handy for climbing even if they could, oh, filter water out of thin air or something; the goggles were good as goggles; and the torc... well, there was one easy test I hadn't tried yet. I pulled it out of my pocket; and I wrapped it around my neck.

Nothing in particular happened.

I thought about that for a bit... then I tried squeezing the two ends together.

That started a reaction. Of some sort.

A sheen started spreading from the torc, along my neck - both up my head and down to my torso, sliding over my shirt collar. I squinted - and could see thousands of teensy little insect-like things spreading out, settling in a continuous layer over me and my clothes. As they spread further - the torc itself seemed to vanish, leaving me as a floating head and a partial, and rapidly-disappearing, body. I could still feel my clothes even where I couldn't see them...

In moments, as far as I could see, I wasn't there anymore - I wasn't even casting a shadow. But I could still see just fine - that was probably what the goggles' main purpose was - and breathe, and wasn't feeling particularly warm. Maybe... some sort of gear for evasion in hostile territory? Whatever its original purpose was, it was likely to be extremely handy right now...

The fershluggin' invisibility bug-cloak-thing quit working on me when I was halfway up the anchor chain.

As the black robo-bug-things collected themselves back into the torc, I mused that I'd seen nopony at all so far, so perhaps I was still unobserved. If the climbing boots were also going to shut down on me soon, it would be better if I made it aboard first...

I made it to the port observation deck without any further problems, other than having to catch my breath. As I was trying to breathe hard without breathing loudly, the speaking tubes made some noise of their own.

"I'm glad to see you've kept up with your exercise routine."

It was Safe Guard's voice.

"That's not an easy climb," he said. "I'm not sure why you dispelled your invisibility before you made it all the way up, though."

"New discoveries always have a few unexpected quirks."

"What was that?"

I sighed, and moved closer to the speaking tube, and repeated myself. I also added, "I'm surprised you're in the area."

"Micro shrunk me and herself, and we mailed ourselves express."

"I'm glad to see you're still coming up with creative solutions. ... How are Red and the crew?"

"Tied up and gagged, but unharmed. How's Brick?"

"... I sent her to get cured by one of the Princesses. How long ago did you leave Canterlot?"

"After this ship passed by it."

"... That's not good."

"Are you sure that - you know - you actually did what you think you did? And didn't just imagine it?"

"... Ah, so that's the line, is it? Let me make a guess - you didn't talk to either Princess in person, you just got a letter claiming to be from one of them?"

"It was stamped with her personal seal."

"I've got some correspondence in my document safe aboard, purportedly from Princess Luna, which demonstrates conclusively that her mail is being tampered with."

"Red opened that safe for me - those letters are no proof of anything."

"... Did you use a truth-wand on her for the combination?"

"I used the truth wand Princess Celestia provided - not the one you stole, along with this ship."

"... At least one of us is severely misinformed on a number of things."

"That's true."

"How about I let myself be truth-zapped, so you know I'm being honest?"

"I was told that you'd found a way to get around that spell - and, besides, an insane person can tell what they think is the truth, but still be entirely wrong."

"How convenient, that you've been given exactly the instructions needed to discredit anything I might say in my own defense."

"How about we all go back to Canterlot to find out who's right, and which mental institution will give you the best care?"

"How about you head to Canterlot yourself, and try to talk to a Princess directly. I've already had one serious attempt on my life - I doubt I'd survive another trip there, without precautions I doubt you'd be willing to take."

"I'm sorry, but I have my instructions."

"It seems we're at an impasse."

"Not quite."

"Before we stop talking - would you care to set any ground rules?"

"What do you mean?"

"I just came from a place full of machines of war, containing secrets that could, quite literally, destroy all of Canterlot in one fell swoop. Or, if I tried, I could just blow up this whole airship and everypony aboard. Or I could kill you. Or I could render you permanently insane, or transform you into a puddle of goo, or remove your limbs, or cause all sorts of other unusual and interesting fates. If I felt doing so served my interests. And I'm sure you've picked up a few tricks of your own, since the last time we had a good talk. So - how hard are you going to try to capture me and bring me to where I'm going to have an entirely accidental and explainable death?"

"..."

"Here's a suggestion - we both promise to stop fighting rather than let any innocent third-parties get caught in the crossfire, even if that means you have to let me go, or I have to let you catch me."

"There aren't any other ponies within fifty miles of here."

"Then you shouldn't have any problems agreeing. I mean, putting innocents at risk just to capture somepony? That's not the Safe Guard who trained me in the principles of self-defense."

"Fine. But before you bother talking any further - I win."

"Let me guess - while I've been distracted by talking to you, somepony has been sneaking up behind me?"

"..."

"Before anypony tries to jump out and surprise me - if Micro is listening, please tell her to have any shrunken ponies exit any small tunnels, such as these speaking tubes. One of the tricks I've learned is how to cancel magic - I used it while I was curing Blanche, in case nopony told you that's been done - and I imagine that it would be... messy, if I did that while anypony who she'd zapped was in a confined space."

I heard a teensy little squeak, and teensy little clip-clops, as if a mouse-sized pony were suddenly running away.

I notched a point to me in my mental scorecard, and, just before swinging the speaking-tube cover shut, said, "Then let the games begin."

Upsetting the Apple Cart

I hadn't needed to stretch out the conversation with Safe Guard so long just to trade ideas - I was also catching my breath.

I'd been operating on bluff and improvisation - but that wasn't going to take me very much further, if I didn't at least figure out exactly what I was trying to do here, let alone come up with an actual plan. So - goals. My usual overall goal system remained in place: reduce the odds of the future extinction of all sapience, by various skipped steps, by keeping myself alive for the next thousand years or so, by keeping myself alive for the next week, by avoiding capture by Safe Guard; including applying the various rules-of-thumb I'd figured out so far, such as avoiding excessive force. What plans might accomplish that? I thought back to my fourfold, Meade based model.

Convince him of my innocence? I'd tried to let him give me the opportunity to do so - but he hadn't been interested. Plan desirability: high, but requires further sub-steps.

Run away? I could drop right back to the ground - but Safe had the Mikoyan, and governmental backing, and unicorn magic; he'd probably pick me up again quite soon. Plan desirability: low. Alternately, I could try to drop him off, and take off in the Mikoyan. He'd be somewhat inconvenienced by having to walk fifty miles back to Oasis, while I could fly away. Plan desirability: medium.

Beat down on Safe until he was physically incapable of capturing me? Even ignoring the fact that he'd taught me everything I knew about hoof-to-hoof combat, but far from everything he knew, while it might solve the short-term problem, it introduced certain long-term ones, such as reducing the chance of getting him to ever think I was a good-guy. Plan desirability: low.

Confuse the heck out of Safe until he couldn't figure out how to capture me? Now there was an interesting option, which accomplished my goals, and stayed within my ethical rules-of-thumb. Plan desirability: high.

Operation Mindscrew it was, then. And the name itself actually gave me an idea.

I glanced at my boots, thoughtfully. If I could replicate their effect magically, then perhaps I could improve that idea even further. Now, what was a decent Latinate term for 'glue'... 'glutinous'? 'Viscous'? 'Adhesive'? 'Coefficient of friction maximus'? I grabbed a couple of random objects from my pockets, plus a charged gem, and muttered a quick set of experiments, until I found that 'adhere' seemed to be the magic word, and did even better when I fiddled with the suffix to get 'adherere'. Maybe I should do more of my experimenting while under life-threatening pressure - it certainly seemed to provide plenty of motivation... nah, that was just silly.

Armed with my newly-figured spell, plus all the surviving contents of my pockets, I slipped into the Mikoyan's interior...

There were only so many places where Safe and Micro could hold Captain Red and the crew, and have a chance of keeping me from rescuing them; even fewer if Red had managed to hire some new crewponies before being captured. My first guess seemed most likely, as an unfamiliar earth-pony in Guard uniform was seated in front of the crew-cabin's door. I concentrated, whispered my glue-spell once with a moderate push of will, and then again with a much stronger one... and then trotted boldly into the hall.

The guard immediately saw me, widened his eyes, and started to shout - but only got out, "Mm! M? M. Mmm m mm m mm!" He started wiggling - but his hooves and heinie were firmly attached to the wood floor. "You don't have any allergies, do you?" I inquired solicitously. "Or a cold? Anything that blocks your nasal passages?" He glared at me, then shook his head. "That's fine, then - I won't have to put you to sleep to make sure you can keep breathing. You'll be able to open your mouth soon enough, but you'll be staying put for some time longer. Trust me - it's for your own good. If you'll excuse me, I need to get into the room you're guarding." He rolled his eyes, and kept tensing his forelegs, trying to pull free.

I just slipped around him, cautiously opening the door - and, yep, there was Red, Blanche, Star, and Amethyst, all lying on the floor and trussed up like calves in a rodeo, and the pups in a basket. "Hi, everyone," I commented. "Sorry, but I'm not here to set you free just yet." I ignored their incredulous looks, and went about lifting each one of them into a hammock. "There you go, all nice and comfy. Feel free to let Safe know that you've got no idea why I came here or what I'm doing."

I exited back to the hall, and closed the door. I examined the guard. "If I free your mouth, will you promise, on your honor, not to shout until I make it around the corner? If you don't, I'm quite willing to let the spell run its course." He blinked a few times, then, hesitated, and nodded once. I reached inside a pocket to touch a gem, and muttered a quick "Nullus magicae", concentrating on his mouth and very much not on the larger gluing.

He opened his mouth with a gasp, and then opened and closed it a few times. In a normal conversational tone, he asked, "What in the name of Celestia do you think you're doing?

I grinned. "I'm on a bit of a timetable - but when we're all done, I'd love to hear what you guessed, and when." I turned and trotted away - and, when I reached the end of the hall and turned, I heard him start shouting behind me, letting everypony know where I'd just been.

I hurried to make sure I wasn't there anymore by the time anypony else arrived.

I didn't remember what this smallish, maintenance crawlway was officially called; as soon as I saw it, I instantly dubbed it a Jefferies tube. I was up against the side of the hull, with the port side-propeller just on the other side of the enchanted wooden wall, it and its mate slowly pushing air downward to keep the Mikoyan in a steady hover. A number of pipes came up from the stern and terminated here; some were speaking-tubes; some of them carried the fluidized crushed gems which powered it, while others connected to the mechanisms which rotated it. It was these latter ones I was fiddling with - I was disabling one set, and using the piping therefrom to run a bypass through another set. All it would take was opening one valve, and things would be irreversibly set in motion.

But there was a certain danger in that - so I knocked out a section of speaking-tube, and called out into the opening heading to the bridge, "Safe, you there?"

"... I am." There was a susurrus in the background - I guessed they were talking about which tube my voice was coming from. That was fine - I wasn't in the spot this tube ended at.

"I am about to do something a little drastic. In roughly two minutes, there won't be a single pony alive on any of the top decks. I strongly advise that if you have any ponies outside, you order them back in immediately."

"You just want the deck cleared for your own nefarious purposes."

"'Nefarious'? Really? Well, at least tell me how many you're leaving up there - if I hurry, I can probably save one. I doubt I can save two."

"... There'll be just one."

"Crap. I'd better hurry then." I hit the valve, and gem-fluid started running through it... and as I wriggled my way out of the Jefferies tube, and started galloping, the port propeller slowly started turning...

By the time I made it up onto the deck, the Mikoyan was listing ten degrees to port - and it wasn't going to stop. The port prop had rotated all the way to its stops, and was now pushing air upward instead of down, with only the ship's enchanted buoyancy, and the starboard propeller, keeping it in the sky.

I came up from the stairs amidships; in front of the bridge's main door, Safe Guard himself was standing on deck, his shining armor a little askew as he struggled to keep his hooves on the smooth deck's ever-increasing slope.

I yelled at him, "Get back inside, you idiot!"

"No!", he shouted back.

"You'll fall!", I returned.

"Put the ship back flat!"

"I can't! Not in time!"

"You're bluffing!"

"At least grab a rail!" I started galloping for an equipment locker. "I'll get some rope to tie you off!"

The ship's hull, not specifically designed for this absolutely crazy maneuver, creaked and groaned. Almost all of the cargo was secured against dangerous maneuvering - the key word being 'almost'. I heard a few crashes from belowdecks.

The tilt became too much for Safe's hooves, and he started scrabbling as he slid across the deck. I took a breath to shout another glue-spell - but he bumped into the railing, and grabbed hold of it. So I went back to my rope-collecting, trusting in my seemingly non-magical boots to keep me firmly anchored.

In a few minutes, I was wrapping rope around Safe and the rails, and trying not to invoke the Centipede's Dilemma as I used my hooves to tie some simple knots.

"You're completely insane," Safe stated, as the Mikoyan's deck made it all the way to vertical - and kept tipping.

"So they say," I commented, tying further knots, making sure to keep as many of my booted hoofs pressed firmly against the deck as possible.

"What are you possibly trying to accomplish with this... stunt?"

"For one - to keep you from just flying us off toward Canterlot." I leaned casually against the rail while it was still at least partly below me, and tried to ignore the blood rushing to my head - and the various cursing noises coming from inside the bridge.

"By keeping this ship from being able to fly anywhere ever again?"

"Hm? Oh - no, there's a fairly simple fix to temporarily stabilize things, which will let a more permanent fix be made."

"Do tell."

"Not just yet, I think. Would you be willing to agree that this is a relatively harmless form of resistance against your efforts? That I could easily have caused all sorts of casualties by arranging for you and whoever you brought with you to meet me on deck, without warning you?"

"What's your point?"

"I'd also like to point out that I've had access to the sources of a number of magics unfamiliar to you - the forbidden texts, my own researches, the Great Battlefield whose dangers no living soul but myself has likely seen in thousands of years. If I was really some sort of murderous danger to ponykind - I could have done a lot worse than just turn the ship topsy-turvy." We were now fully upside-down, emphasizing the point. "You and your guards are alive purely because I chose to exercise mercy."

"Again - what's your point?"

"This conversation will go a lot faster if I'm able to get you to accept one point: I had you beaten before you ever got here. Or, if you prefer - I have you in checkmate. Are you willing to accept that, or do I have to show off some more?"

"Fine - I'm in checkmate, and your prisoner. What do you plan on doing with me?"

I grinned at him. "Simple, really - I plan on surrendering to you."

"... What," he stated.

"Conditionally, of course. You seemed quite insistent in refusing to hear anything I had to say earlier," I commented, watching the ground overhead gradually give way to sky. "So I needed to arrange matters to where we'd be able to have an actual conversation, with you actually willing to consider my words."

"And you decided to do... this?!"

"Hey, nopony got hurt," there was some further cursing from the bridge, so I amended that to, "seriously, and it worked, didn't it?"

"And you can fix it, so we don't have to walk home?"

"Easily. The next time we're upside-down, just tell your pilot to rotate the starboard engine to match the port - that'll put us in a steady hover again, just upside-down." I considered the various crashy noises from the bridge. "On second thought, maybe I should go do that myself - I'm not sure anypony but a pegasus can get to the controls at the right time."

Peace Negotiations

After a short bit of work, the Mikoyan was set at a stable, upside-down hover, and everypony aboard was gathered in the bridge - specifically, around the main, circular skylight. To my right were Captain Red, Blanche, Amethyst, and Star; opposite me was Safe, and to his right were Micro (her right foreleg now in a sling), the earth-pony guard I'd glued to the floor, and an unfamiliar pegasus and unicorn in guard uniforms.

"Now that we're all here," I said, "I should probably explain a few things. I've offered Safe Guard my conditional surrender - and we're here to negotiate the conditions. Both he and I have agreed that if anyone starts fighting while we're having these talks, both of us will cooperate to kick them off the ship."

Safe nodded, and glanced at his ponies. "If both she and I don't agree to let you back on - you'll have to walk home."

"I feel," I said, "that I should also point out that if we fail to come to an agreement, one of the top options I'm considering is magically gluing you all to the floor - er, the ceiling - and," I glanced at the pegasus, "your wings to your sides... while the rest of us get on with our work."

Safe didn't seem exactly happy as he added, "But she seems to think that if she did that, I'd just come after her another day. So - here we are."

"Now then," I said, "before we get to the meat of the talks - as a purely practical matter, I think Red should check the Mikoyan over, to make sure there isn't anything leaking, or otherwise needs to be attended to immediately."

Red said, "I'd like to take somepony with me."

I said, "I'd like to keep Blanche here - would Amethyst be good?"

Safe said, "Not that I don't trust you - but how about I send a guard with each of them, to help out?"

Red, "I can live with that."

And so our round-table of ten was quickly shrunk to six.

To Safe, I said, "I'm going to hazard a guess that a lot of our disagreement is going to come down to trust - which of us trusts the other about what, and how much. For example, I believe that I have good reason not to trust unencrypted letters sent through the mail; you believe you have good reason to trust anything with one of the Princess's seals. Does that sound about right?"

"I suppose - except I don't just believe I have good reason, I do have good reason to believe the Princesses keep their official seals safe."

"How could you tell the difference from the inside?"

"Pardon?"

"Sorry - bad phrasing. When you believe anything that isn't true, how can you tell that that belief is false, compared to all of your true beliefs? Do false beliefs feel different from true ones?"

Micro finally piped up, "I think we're straying from the point."

I sighed. "Only if you don't want to give me a chance to offer the evidence in support of my beliefs."

Safe glared. "Evidence or no evidence doesn't matter. I have a lawful order to bring you to Canterlot, and that is what I intend to do."

"I see. Well then - in that case, can we at least agree that both of us want me to remain alive and no more insane than I am right now, as of, say, a week from now?"

Safe's brow furrowed. "That goes without saying."

"I think it needs to be said. Did anyone inform you that on the train I took out of Canterlot, an attempt was made on my life?"

"That's preposterous."

"Safe - Safe, Safe, Safe. Word's certainly gotten around by now, at least in certain circles, that the Dairy is working against the slave trade - don't you think that that could lead to powerful enemies?"

"I've seen nothing of the sort."

"Well - whether you wish to believe it or not, the fact remains that I believe that my life would be in danger were I to return to Canterlot at the moment. And I intend to act based on that belief. So - if you disagree, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? If I do just so happen to die while in your custody, would you be willing to promise to, say, resign, give all your wealth to the poor, and spend the rest of your life begging for alms?"

"That's never going to happen!"

"Then why not make such a promise?"

"That's... extremely unlikely to happen."

"Ah - then you think there's enough of a chance that you're uncomfortable just losing all your wealth? Then why should I be any more comfortable with the exact same odds of losing my whole life?" Safe glared at me, so I continued. "And I'm guessing you'd be even less likely to be willing, if you actually trusted me to be honest about, well, anything related. Since you seem to think my correspondence with Luna was faked or something - how about Blanche? It's got to be a lot harder to fake a cure than to write some fake letters, right?"

"She loves you - she'd be willing to fake being cured if you asked her to."

"Hey!", Blanche objected.

"She might be willing - but would she be able? Blanche - whatever orders I've given you about faking things are rescinded. Would you like to come and kiss my hoof?" I extended my foreleg invitingly.

"Pass," Blanche stated.

"See?" I looked at Safe hopefully.

"That's not proof of anything," he grumbled.

"I'm not saying it is. I'm not looking for 'proof'. I'm trying to offer evidence - lots of little pieces of evidence, none sufficient in themselves, but which, when added together, form a considerable sum."

"Whatever evidence you'd be willing to provide - I'm sure you've had an opportunity to fake."

"... I suppose that's one way a reputation for being able to do anything can come back to bite me on the - er, tail."

"And," Safe said, "since you've got a plan for everything, I'm sure you've got a plan in mind right now. So why don't we just cut to the chase?"

"Well - I'd really like you to agree because I was able to convince you that it was a good idea in and of itself, too..."

"Spill it."

"Alright, alright. Since we disagree about whether I'll live or die when I get to Canterlot - then we can try putting that to the test, without actually putting my life at risk."

"How?"

"You bring Missy the cow to Canterlot - just a different Missy the cow."

"What - some innocent member of a local herd painted up to look like you?"

"And put their life in danger instead of mine? That hardly seems fair, now does it?"

"So... you've got some sort of shape-changing magic to turn something else into a cow?"

"No. Well, sort of, but it's untested, and it's not what I have in mind. We're right on the border of Equestria - and outside it, the local cows aren't any more people than a dog is. We grab one of them, paint it up to look like me, and you try taking it to Canterlot, keep it in the sort of protective custody you have in mind for me - and we see which of the two of us is right. If I'm right, then the two of you, as heads of the Dairy... say, with both of you here, who's running the show?"

Micro shrugged, "Page Turner."

"Hm. Well, it's your call, I suppose. Anyway - if I'm right, then the two of you will know Equestria's got some internal problems as well as external slavers. And if that happens - then wouldn't you agree I have every right in refusing a royal summons?"

Micro, "I suppose."

Safe glared. "No. The Princesses are the source of all law - if they summon you to Canterlot, it's your obligation to go."

"Even if doing so puts my life at extreme risk?"

"If they write the summons - then I'm sure that they know more good will come from it than any danger to you."

"Ah." I looked down through the window, at the bottom of the horizontal sail, and around the edges of that at the ground. "Safe, do you remember when I asked, if you had to make a choice between the Princesses and innocent lives?"

"... I guess?"

"I think I just found out the answer. Micro, you've been pretty quiet - if we were to try this plan, and the cow ended up with a dozen knives in its back... do you think I should still go to Canterlot?"

"I think," she said, "that if that happened - the Princesses would be willing to make alternate arrangements."

"And if you got a letter, with a royal seal, saying otherwise?"

"Then I would understand if you chose to disobey a royal order."

"Micro!" Safe looked outraged.

Micro glared back. "I might or might not agree with it - but come on. Just because you promised to put your life on the line for the Princesses doesn't mean everypony has to."

"They should - it's an honor to."

I cleared my throat. "As an aside - the attempt on my life used some mental magic, including an attempt to drive me outright insane. And I've learned of the existence of more... subtle mind-affecting magics. When I cured Blanche, the first half of the procedure was to cancel any and all active spells that were still affecting her thinking. I'm not saying that because I think you'll let me do the same-" Safe harrumphed. "But because I would suggest, the next time you see a Princess personally, that you ask her to do something like that. Safe - in case you haven't been paying attention, I haven't said word one about doing something either of the Princesses wouldn't want me to do. I've been saying someone's been tampering with their mail and impersonating them. The evidence I have may not be conclusive - but maybe it's at least enough to spur an investigation, if for no other reason than to prove me wrong?"

Safe frowned. "That's not exactly within our jurisdiction..."

I tilted my head. "Did you revise the Dairy's charter while I was petrified?"

"We have a charter?"

"I'll take that as a 'no'. You may be entertained to find out that when I got the Dairy founded, no specific limits were placed on the its jurisdiction - it's a purely Royal project, with the full faith and confidence of the Princesses. So if you want investigating mail fraud to be within your purview, it is."

Micro, "That's all well and good for the future - but back to the present?"

Safe, "Even if I did take a test cow... what would you be doing in the meantime?"

I shrugged. "I've got a world to try to keep from being destroyed - a week's delay may make all the difference."

Safe frowned and glared at me. "It hardly seems like you'll have 'surrendered' at all, if nothing changes for you. I want to keep you under guard, at least. Micro, how about you keep an eye on her?"

I interrupted, "If you had captured me - wouldn't both you and she be taking me back to Canterlot?"

Safe said, "I suppose?"

I sighed. "Then if she didn't go back with you, wouldn't that be a rather significant clue that all was not as it appeared, thus rendering the whole experiment pointless?"

Star Chaser piped up, "If Micro has to be in two places at once - I could get a dye job and pretend to be her."

I grimaced a little. "It seems a bit over-complicated - but I don't have any objections to some more warm bodies around the place, if that's what Safe wants. Red's the captain, so you'd probably want to consult with her about details - who's under whose authority, and so on."

Micro, "That assumes I even want to stay here, instead of getting back to the labs in Canterlot."

I shrugged yet again. "I don't know the details of how the two of you share responsibility, so that's up to the two of you."

Safe and Micro stared at each other. Safe said, "If she tried to escape custody, the two of us are the only ones who've got a chance at stopping her."

Micro raised an eyebrow. "I don't even know the magic she used to attach Gallant to the deck - and that's just one of the new bits of spellcraft she's shown herself to be capable of. What do you expect me to do if she does do something, check her gut flora for unusual pathogens?"

Safe sighed. "No, I expect you to talk to her, and try to persuade her to come in peacefully."

Micro blinked. "Oh."

Star piped up again, "So - how long would I have to pretend to be her, before I could show one of the Princesses my letter?"

Safe, "What letter? Who are you, anyway?"

I said, "Ah - please forgive me for skipping introductions. Safe Guard, this is Star Chaser, who you might remember as one of the participants in the trial leading to my imprisonment. She was one of the stallions who assaulted me." I couldn't help but enjoy the expressions on both Safe's and Micro's faces. "She has expressed regret for her actions, has been trying to make amends, and has been trying to improve herself to avoid repeating her mistake. I have offered my forgiveness - and given her a letter, to give to one of the Princesses, saying so. She might not get her title back - but she may be able to get her original gender restored. If the Princess she sees is in a good mood at the time. And my good word hasn't been completely blackened by the time she does so."

Micro eyed Star curiously. "If you're going to be me - we need to have a talk." She turned to Safe. "And if I'm staying here - how about the Guards you borrowed from the Oasis detachment?"

Safe shook his head, but not in negation. "Why do I even try to pretend I'm actually in charge of anything? Sure, do what you want with 'em."

Micro nodded. "Star - I don't think we're needed here anymore, so let's go find somewhere private to talk." And the two of them headed out, leaving four.

"So," I said brightly to Safe, "if we're done here, want to go let Red know she can flip the ship back over?"

"If I say 'no', would you be doing that anyway?"

"Mmmmaybe."

Blanche piped up, "If you're doing that, I'll go with you, so she knows you're not just saying that."

And the two of them left, reducing the bridge's population to two.

I looked up and down at the earth-pony stallion curiously. "So - Gallant, was it?"

"Gallant Heart, ma'am."

"'Missy' will do fine; I'm not in your line of command."

"Yes, ma'am. May I ask a question?"

"Always."

"Is it just me, or is everypony on this boat crazy?"

It's Complicated

I fixed my jiggery-pokery with the maneuvering prop, and we got the Mikoyan righted just as the sun hit the horizon. Red declared that we now had enough ponies aboard to crew the ship for night flying, so as soon as we hauled up my unused basecamp crate, off we went - keeping the hill between us and the main portion of the Great Battlefield at first, and then keeping low to avoid getting shot down by some random war machine. Once we were far enough away, we turned west, paralleling Equestria's northern border; we didn't expect to find any nonsapient cattle at night, but we could at least get far enough away from the Battlefield to where we might find some, come morning.

I was fairly sure that Safe and Micro would stay within the general terms of our arrangement... but I felt it best not to give them too much temptation. So while Red was captaining, I took over the captain's quarters for the night, along with the pups and Amethyst; enough warm bodies to let me sleep, and enough claws and fangs to delay a would-be abductor long enough for me to wake up and start slinging spells.

I was still irritated, at least on a background level, by that whole concept. All a word really was, was a serious of pressure waves of various frequencies and amplitudes in the air - the only meaning that one series of waves had over another was a meaning given to it by a mind. Sure, I could make a prediction that a given Latinate word could cause a certain effect - but I still had no overarching theory as to why words had any effect at all, or why it had to be Latin. I'd tried mashing various other unexplained aspects of this universe up against that one, such as how songs could have magic or what the magical field storable in gems consisted of, but nothing had offered a Eureka moment. The closest I'd had to a valuable insight was that French was closer to Latin than English was, and so my memories of grade-school French classes should provide a wider inspirational vocabulary. For example - I remembered that 'dormir' was French for 'sleep' ("Frère Jacques, frère Jacques, Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?"), as paralleled by 'dormitory' and 'dormant', so something like 'dormire' was likely a good candidate for a sleep spell - if I ever got a chance to test it out. With my light spell, dispel magic spell, truth spell, and glue spell, I was turning into a passable imitation of a first-level magic user - or, as they'd been called in the first edition, when every class got a new title with every level, a 'prestidigitator'. I even had myself a cloak of invisibility - if I could figure out how to get it to work again - and a whistle of Monster Summoning. I certainly wouldn't mind a decent way to Detect Magic, and given we were on an airship, Featherfall could have some immediate applications - but I was still a little hesitant about coming up with direct combat magics. I supposed Chekov would serve as a 'wand of Magic Missiles', and the pepper spray as an 'amulet of Stinking Could'.

I'd really needed to get out more when I was growing up.

Come morning - there was a lot that had to be done, but actually doing it wasn't all that exciting. The night-shift crew had to get some sleep, the new crew had to fly the ship, lookouts had to look for any cattle we could acquire, disguises had to be made and parts practiced, food cooked, exercises exercised, adaptations made to the point system for the new crew, and pretty much all of us were keeping an eye out in case somepony from another faction decided to break the tentative truce. Which all lent a certain, shall we say, color, to the various interactions.

"So, Gallant," I inquired, ladling out a bowl of soup for lunch, "what were you doing before getting caught up in all this?"

"I was - technically, still am - part of the Guard contingent for the Oasis area, tasked with keeping an eye out for incursions from the Wasteland or Badlands." He was already slurping from a bowl of his own. "Ma'am - when you said I could 'always' ask you questions - did that include personal ones?"

"Yep. At worst, I won't answer them, though I'll probably at least try to explain why."

"That's fair. I'm trying to figure out... well, anything. I get that you are, or were, some kind of government official, and I heard that you met Captain Red Pepper in prison and gave her a job, and that you cured Miss Blanche of some strong love potion... but I still can't figure out why the diamond dogs are here, or the other unicorn."

I pulled my muzzle from the soup for a breath of air. "Well - I negotiated a peace treaty between the pack Amethyst, the adult diamond dog, is from, and the nearest pony town, and in the process, semi-adopted her pups. You should probably ask her about her motivations - I'm not entirely sure I understand them myself. As for Star Chaser... while complicated things were going on in Canterlot, I needed to make contact with some other ponies without being obvious about it, so I needed a go-between, a pony nopony would expect me to get in touch with - so I looked up the ponies who tried to rape me, found one left, and offered a deal she-"

"Wait," he interrupted, "wait wait wait. I'd just heard she'd assaulted you - she raped you?"

"Not exactly. One, she was a he at the time. Two, he didn't succeed."

"Well, that makes it all better then, doesn't it?" I suspected that he might not be expressing his genuine opinion. "What in Celestia's name is he - she - doing here, then?"

"Initially, I offered her a deal - a letter of recommendation to the Princesses to commute her sentence, in exchange for some help. I expected her to go straight to the castle when I left Canterlot - but she's continued offering her help, when she didn't have to. I suspect - I hope - that in our first encounter, she didn't realize how bad a pony she was being, and Princess Luna's punishment drove the point home rather firmly, and she's trying to be a better pony. I've been willing to offer her that chance - and have benefited significantly by doing so, such as by having a spare unicorn handy to imitate Micro while Micro's stuck guarding me."

"Ma'am - please don't take this the wrong way - but are you out of your bucking mind?"

"I'm not ruling out that possibility. That's why I'll be waiting to hear word from Canterlot about whether or not my double gets killed - if my prediction's wrong, then I'll be quite willing to admit that my paranoia may have reached irrational levels."

"I think you're trying to change the subject."

"It's not impossible that I am."

"Do you really think that she's not going to just start doing that again, once she's out of your sight?"

I frowned, examining my soup. "I suppose this isn't much of a secret at the moment, but I'd prefer you try to treat it at least as sensitive information. I can apply a piece of magic which compels the subject to tell the truth."

"I still don't know how you can do that - you're not even a pony, let alone a unicorn."

"That information is still a secret. Would you like me to glue you to something again to prove I can?"

"Er, no thank you, that won't be necessary. So - you trust her because... you know she told you the truth?"

"Let's just say that I've got sources of information you haven't dreamed of, which give me good reasons to do the various incomprehensible things I do."

"Say, Micro," I said, as I watched her try to teach Star Chaser how to walk more like her, "I've been wondering. You shrank down yourself and Safe, right?"

"Right. More sway in the hips, please."

"So - when you're shrunk, everything looks bigger to you, right?"

"Right. Not quite so much tail-swish."

"So if you look into a microscope while you're shrunk - is that like adding an extra amount of magnification, letting you see even smaller details than normal?"

"Only for the less powerful lenses. The most powerful ones are limited by optics, edge diffraction, and other physics things - being shrunk only makes what's already visible bigger. Try lying down - no, cross your front hooves. I've been wondering something myself."

"Mm-hm?"

"Since Safe and I got our promotions through the mail - which you think somepony is meddling with - does that mean that you still think you're really still in charge of the Dairy?"

"Depends. If I told you a way to improve how the Dairy works, how likely would you be to accept the suggestion?"

"If it worked? Probably seventy-five, ninety percent, depending on the details."

"Then I'd say I'm still around seventy-five to ninety percent in charge. Star - don't forget, Micro won't admit it, but she bites her hooves when she's thinking..."

"Missy," Safe growled, "We need to talk about who's in charge."

"... of?"

"I just went to get Bouncer-"

"Who?"

"The pegasus I pulled to detached duty. I just went to have her fly high to get a longer-distance view, but she said she couldn't - she was busy piloting the ship, and couldn't leave until she was relieved."

"We do kind of need somepony to keep us from crashing."

"I didn't order her to that post, Red did!"

"You mean Captain Red."

"That's not a real title!"

"She's in charge of running my ship - I'd say that makes her a real captain."

"It's not your ship - you stole it!"

"I've got the paperwork to prove it's mine - and you don't have any actual evidence it's not. I'd say that means that I've got a better claim to ownership than anyone else - which means that Red's the best claimant to the title of captain."

"Even if she is - she's not in the Guard chain of command!"

"No, she isn't. If you want to press the point - then we should find a river or pond to set down. You interrupted her trip to hire more crew - and if none of your Guard are going to fill in, then we're only going to be flying for about one shift out of three, and we've already been in the air for the night and half the day. One third the flight time, means the trip will take three times longer - hope you weren't planning on getting back to Canterlot this week."

"I can... live with that."

"That reminds me - the Guards you picked up in Oasis? Were you planning on taking them with you to Canterlot? Or sending them back to Oasis?"

"I was thinking of having them help Micro keep an eye on you."

"Ah - well, Micro isn't in the Guard chain-of-command, either. So who'd be giving them orders once you left?"

"She would."

"If she can, why can't Captain Red?"

"Because I haven't said she can!"

"So - after you leave - if Micro orders them to obey Red's orders and serve as crewponies here?"

"That would be up to her."

"Well - right now it's up to you. Give the order and we can stay in the air and you can be back in Canterlot soonest. Or you can worry more about how things get done than actually getting them done... and waste all our valuable time."

"I think I'm beginning to hate you as much as your imaginary enemies do."

"Say, Missy?"

"Yepperooni, Red?"

"... Anyway - I've been going over the ship's manuals - and there's nothing in any of them about that stunt you pulled."

"I can't imagine why not."

"Do you need to rebuild that bypass thing to let us do it again?"

"No, that was just to keep anypony on the bridge from being able to stop it from happening. Getting us to flip is fairly easy, really - getting us to flip and stay in the air, well, with the way the main engines are positioned relative to our center of mass... that's harder."

"Is there anything we can do to add that to the maneuvers we can try, when we need to try 'em?"

"Well, for one thing... Seatbelts."

"Pardon?"

"If you're thinking of trying to turn this ship into a barely-turnable arrow into a fluttering butterfly - every station a pony's likely to be at, including the mess and beds, are going to need harnesses to keep us from being flung all around the place. The pups are going to need a gyroscope-type basket, which keeps them pointed 'down' at all times; I once saw a bowl designed to do that. Think any of the new ponies aboard are any good at carpentry?"

We found ourselves a herd of non-intelligent, un-marked, un-owned cattle, and Red ran the operation to capture a cow roughly my size and bring it aboard. Even though I'd proposed this whole plan, I was now finding myself rather disturbed by the whole idea, so I hid out in my makeshift lab in the cargo bay, trying to come up with some decent words to use for a spell to breach open holes in walls or doors. And I tried to keep as far away from the animal as possible while it was aboard.

We turned around, and headed straight for Oasis. Red said that even with some Guards, we were still a few ponies short of a full crew. I didn't want word of my not really having been completely captured to spread too quickly, so I stayed aboard while Red went crew-hiring, Safe went to do some paperwork for the Guard's he'd appropriated, and Micro made arrangements for Safe and my double to get to Canterlot. When Red came back, she had three new faces - a unicorn mare, a female griffon, and an earth-pony stallion.

The next few days, we mostly spent shaking down, getting the new crew settled in and practicing more complicated maneuvers. I went back to the Battlefield site for a day, but didn't learn anything I hadn't already found out.

And then we got a message from Canterlot, partially relayed through the optical telegraph, then Pegasus Express: a newspaper article. The headline read "GOVERNMENT COW KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT". According to the reporter, one of the few bovines serving in the halls of power was killed when a pegasus-drawn moving van lost some of its cargo. According to witnesses, she was struck, in turn, by a flower pot, an anvil, a hay cart, and a piano - obviously, nopony could survive such a mishap.

When I read that, I couldn't help but twitch. Micro seemed sympathetic. "Didn't expect to be right after all, did you?"

"It's not that - I did. I was just reminded of an information source I've been completely neglecting to consider - RAINBOW WELL."

"Wait, what? I know we've got a few WELL sources, like BLUE WELL - but there's nothing in Dairy records about a 'RAINBOW' WELL."

"That's because I never gave that information to the Dairy - I couldn't think of a way to describe it that wouldn't make me sound, well, even crazier than usual. Only the Princesses and I are privy to the details, as far as I know. And even they've got memory charms so they don't remember most of the time."

"So why bring it up now?"

"Because I have to decide whether to continue the policy the Princesses and I agreed on, to avoid doing anything that would interfere with RAINBOW WELL's predictions - or if I should try to come up with some way to leverage that knowledge for immediate gain, at the risk of invalidating everything else."

"Is there anything you can say about it, besides the specific info?"

"Hm... I suppose I could describe the general nature. You know how I talk about how some of my memories are impossible? Well - some of those memories take the form of, let's call them carefully scripted plays..."

The Cow Who Wasn't There

"Micro, have you ever heard of the Fundamental Theorem of Poker?"

"It's not really my game. Is it something about which hands are less common?"

"Not even close. When you're playing poker, if your opponent knew everything there was to know about your hand, then they'd be able to figure out what the perfect way to play against you should be. The theorem is that the further you can get your opponent to play from that ideal, the better - it doesn't matter whether they bet too much or to little, as long as it's not the right amount."

"And you're bringing this up because...?"

"As far as I can tell, it applies to any game which includes hidden information - including real-life games."

"Let me guess - you're leading up to explaining why you're about to implement a plan that makes absolutely no sense."

"Now you're just taking the fun out of it."

"When your definition of fun includes an out-of-control windmill giving me an unexpected mane-cut - I can live without it. In fact, I might only be able to live without it."

"Thinking of resigning from the Dairy, now that you've seen what our opponents will do?"

"What's the point? If they're willing to kill a member, they'd certainly be willing to kidnap an ex-member. So - are you putting together some selection of lies to nudge them to do the wrong thing?"

"There's too much truth magic floating around for that to work well - if they've got the truth wand I tried to send to Princess Luna, a single truth-zap of Safe would unravel the whole thing. No, I'm going to have to put together a selection of truths..."

Dear Princess Luna,

and more to the point, Dear People Intercepting Luna's Mail,

To use some quotes from some literature you've never heard of:

"You missed."

"I Aten't Dead."

"Hope lives."

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." (Feel free to base the headline of my survival on this one.)

"You're going to have to try harder than that."

For proof, please find enclosed a photograph of me holding a newspaper showing the report of my demise. (Though I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed I only rated page eight - I would have thought I rated at least page three.)

Still, thank you so much for providing the physical evidence of your activities - you have given me the opportunity to move our interactions to an entirely new level.

Here, I'll give you a hint - use some truth magic and ask Safe if he saw me using invisibility magic. Go on - I dare you.

Yours truly,
Missy

Micro eyed the letter dubiously. "Are you sure this is what you want to write?"

"Put yourself in the horseshoes of somepony tasked with opposing me and the Dairy. If this pieces of intelligence was passed on to you - what would you do?"

"Well - I might have someone check into that invisibility thing. If it panned out..." She frowned. "You might be standing right next to me, and I'd never know it. Or you could be anywhere in Equestria, spying on whatever my nefarious plans were. I'd have to revamp my whole security system to try to keep you out. And if you were willing to just come right out and tell me you could do that - then you probably didn't consider it a really big secret, which means you've got some even bigger secrets you're still keeping hidden... I suppose it depends on how much I know about what sort of secrets you've had a chance to learn."

"Don't forget, Marble's mother is part of the obvious part of the opposing faction - and she knows I've had access to tomes of lost magic protected by spells making them impossible to be read by sane ponies. And you and Safe know I was at the Great Battlefield, so it's only a matter of time before they know that, too. And I've done archaeology elsewhere. And I've been doing original research. Any one of those could mean I've had a chance to learn... well, anything imaginable, and then some."

"So - what you're saying is that you want them to think you can be anywhere and do anything? Doesn't that mean they're going to over-estimate you?"

"Yep. Remember the Fundamental Theorem? They're going to be over-bidding - spending too much effort to protect against a threat that's not nearly as dangerous, in the way they're thinking, as they imagine. This also opens a window of opportunity for me. How do you tell when you've put together a system that can detect an invisible cow?"

"By... detecting one?"

"And if no matter how hard you try, you don't find it?"

"Then either it's not there..." I waved at the letter with my hoof, and smiled. "Or you haven't gotten the system working yet."

"If we play this right, if I'm not even in Equestria to be detected, but you and Safe pass along the occasional letter or make the occasional trip, or other activity, which implies you're still in touch with me... then they might spend months focused on rearranging their internal security rather than doing anything actually useful with that time and those resources."

"And when they figure out that we're actually not talking with you?"

"What would be the most likely explanation for you acting that way?"

"That... you really were killed, and we faked the photograph?"

"Which would mean they could...?"

"... Stop going to so much effort to hide from an invisible cow who's not actually dead?"

"Which would seem to be a good time for me to come back, out in the open. If it all works - that's three major internal reorganizations. If it doesn't all work - they're still going to be confused and unable to predict where I am or what I'm doing."

"What will you be doing?"

"What you don't know can't be truth-zapped out of you. But - before you get back to the Dairy and research and so on... there's something extremely important I need you to do for me."

"Collect a mysterious artifact? Pick up a hidden cache of materials? Return an overdue library book?"

"Even more important than any of that - go to Ponyville, and give Cheerilee the biggest 'Sorry I Let You Think I Was Dead For A Day' cake you can buy."

"Ah - now I know why you're really heading out of Equestria for a while. Sheer self-preservation."

"Well... I do have other reasons..."

(Author's Note: Missy makes a cameo, sort of, in the latest chapter of Nathan Traveler's story, Omnius' Travels: Beast Within.)

Fresh Meat

"Hello, everypony. In case we haven't met - I'm Doctor Missy, and I'm the owner of the Mikoyan. That means that I tell Captain Red Pepper what to do with the ship, and she tells you what to do. To keep the lines of command clear, in general, I don't directly tell you what to do - any commands I give you should be treated as suggestions and advice, not orders you are required to follow. This may be slightly complicated if Captain Red asks me to take a shift with the rest of you; but, if that happens, any orders I give should be treated as if I were a crewpony under her authority.

"I trust her implicitly. As she has trusted each of you enough to hire you, I extend you a similar level of trust. While we're resupplying, I'd like to take some time with each of you, to learn what your goals, experiences, and skills are, so that I have a better idea of what you're capable of; so that I can know what the whole ship is capable of with you aboard; so I can give Captain Red the best set of directives possible. If there's anything you'd like to ask me, I welcome any and all questions, and take offense at very little."

Before I left ship to go shopping, I tried to settle the pups down. They'd had a busy few days, and were fussy; so I ran my memory through some songs, and, finding one that didn't seem as if it might do any mind-altering, began to sing,

You would not believe your eyes
If ten million Fluttershys
Flew in the room as I fell asleep
'Cause they'd fill the open air
And their squeaking everywhere
Would be so cute
That I would just stand and smile

I'd like to make myself believe
Equestria's kind pony
Would come to me when I'm feeling tired
And snuggle me to sleep
'Cause ponies have invaded all my dreams

'Cause into my room they'd fly
Those ten thousand pegasi
As they sung me lullabies to sleep
"Time to lay your sleepy head
Hush now, time to go to bed"
I'd slumber then,
Snug under my warm bedspread

I'd like to make myself believe
Equestria's kind pony
Would come to me when I'm feeling tired
And snuggle me to sleep
'Cause ponies have invaded all my dreams
(When I fall asleep)

The only magic I could detect was in actually getting four younglings to sleep at the same time. I watched over them for a few moments to make sure all was right with their world, turned around - and startled, seeing one of the Guards watching from the doorway. I managed not to jump into the air, which would be a problem as my hundreds of pounds of beef landed on the deck and wake them all up again; instead, I held my hoof up to my lips for a moment in a silent 'sh', and tip-hooved out of the room, gently closing the door behind me.

I sighed in relief, and the unicorn stallion quietly commented, "You have a very nice voice, ma'am."

"Thank you," I led the way down the hall away, so we wouldn't have to keep our voices low. "I wish I could take credit for that - but it just seems to come naturally with this body - though I'm quite willing to take advantage of it. Berry... Burst?"

"Berry Blast, ma'am. Burst was my father."

"No need to 'ma'am' me."

"You are my assigned superior's superior - 'ma'am' seems most appropriate."

"That reminds me; with both Safe Guard and Micro Scope gone... what, exactly, are you three Guards still doing here?"

"My orders, and I presume those of the others, are that I am detached from my normal unit in Oasis to Safe Guard's orders. I was seconded to Micro Scope, who, while not a member of the Guard, is part of the civilian government; specifically, to both assist and watch over you under her direction. Now that she has also left the ship, I still have my orders to assist and observe you, and common sense dictates that I send reports whenever possible. Before Miss Scope left, she and I and Captain Pepper made arrangements so that my presence aboard the Mikoyan didn't hinder ship's operations, and that I wouldn't be a drain on ship's resources. In essence, unless my duties as a Guard require me to do otherwise, I am to treat Captain Pepper as a superior officer, and serve aboard ship as she directs."

"... And are you alright with that arrangement?"

"Ma'am - from what I have seen so far, you do need to be kept under further observation... if for no other reason than to serve as an unbiased witness when the inevitable court cases start piling up. As neither martial law nor a state of war have been declared, Captain Pepper has the right to toss us off her vessel should she wish, so I need to make arrangements that she finds acceptable, in order to stay aboard to do that."

"I'm probably going to find being the center of attention a bit odd, but given how much else I've gotten used to, I can probably deal with that. I do plan on doing various things which you don't have the security clearance to know about - am I going to have to worry about you trying to find out about those anyway?"

"Safe Guard picked me out of the Oasis contingent because I do have a security clearance - not as high as his, but I've passed the standard background checks, and I went through the training course on how to handle compartmentalized information."

"I doubt your training involved dealing with, say, books that drive you mad merely by looking at their cover."

"No, ma'am. If there's an actual safety issue, I will, of course, defer to you as the expert on handling such hazardous materials."

"I notice that you haven't said you're not going to try peeking."

"You're right, ma'am, I haven't said that, yet."

"... Am I going to have to glue your door shut whenever I want some privacy?"

"I can't rule that out, ma'am."

"If you're going to be my personal voyeur - then 'ma'am' hardly seems appropriate. How about you call me Missy while you try to observe me, and I call you Berry while I glue you to whatever's handy to stop you?"

"If that's what you wish, ma'am."

I sighed.

Down in town, I was peering into a closed general store's window, when the pegasus mare flew down and landed next to me. From the corner of my eye, I thought it was Blanche at first, before I turned and saw the Guard uniform. I nodded politely, and said, "Bouncer, right?"

"Cloud Bouncer, ma'am."

"Please - 'Missy'."

"Okay, Missy."

Oh, good - not all of the Guard contingent were as... stiffly formal as Berry. "I hear you got Safe mad when he tried to get you to stop piloting the ship."

"Orders are orders - but some orders aren't to be followed."

"You have no idea how happy I am to hear somepony say that."

"I might have some idea. I hear you Dairy ponies - and other species - are more into getting results than procedures. I can respect that... as long as it works."

"It doesn't, always. I once got chased by a blood-thirsty mob just for trying to sing the wrong song."

"Was it some tribe of barely-civilized savages?"

"... Now that's just too easy. It was a Manehattan crowd."

"I don't get it."

"Haven't you ever noticed what happens when ponies start singing songs in public?"

"... No?"

"Hm... it might be easier to show you then tell you. I think I've got one well enough memorized that's appropriate, and reasonably safe - I just hope I can carry through with it; patter songs have never really been my strong suit. Are you up for an aerial rescue if I stumble and another mob comes after me?"

She looked up and down at me, appraisingly. "I think I can lift you to a roof. I could be wrong."

"Then I'll try not to make you have to." I concentrated on the tune I had in mind, starting to feel the beat - and even before I opened my mouth, I heard the sound of tools nearby fit themselves into the timing. I decided to take that as a reasonably good omen, so I called on my inner Al Yankovic and sang,

Gonna get me a flashlight and a broom
Want a pair of pliers for every single room of my house
See those hacksaws? Very, very soon
One of them will be all mine

Guys with nametags walking down the aisles
Rows of garden hoses that go on for miles and miles
Brand new socket wrenches in a plethora of styles
All arranged alphabetically

I can't wait, (no I) I can't wait (oh when)
When are they gonna open up that door?
I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the
Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the
Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the
Hardware store

I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the
Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the
Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the
Hardware store

Would you look at all that stuff ...
They've got allen wrenches, gerbil feeders, toilet seats, electric heaters
Trash compactors, juice extractor, shower rods and water meters
Walkie-talkies, copper wires safety goggles, radial tires
BB pellets, rubber mallets, fans and dehumidifiers
Picture hangers, paper cutters, waffle irons, window shutters
Paint removers, window louvres, masking tape and plastic gutters
Kitchen faucets, folding tables, weather stripping, jumper cables
Hooks and tackle, grout and spackle, power foggers, spoons and ladles
Pesticides for fumigation, high-performance lubrication
Metal roofing, water proofing, multi-purpose insulation
Air compressors, brass connectors, wrecking chisels, smoke detectors
Tire guages, hamster cages, thermostats and bug deflectors
Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers
Tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers
Soffit panels, circuit breakers, vacuum cleaners, coffee makers
Calculators, generators, matching salt and pepper shakers

I can't wait, (no I) I can't wait (oh when)
When are they gonna open up that door?
I'm goin' (yes I'm) goin', I'm a-goin' to the
Goin' to the (hard) ware I'm goin', really goin' to the
Goin' (hard) I'm goin' to the (hard) oh yes, I'm goin' to the
Ha-ardware store

As I finished, and Bouncer and I pushed a line of loaded shopping carts out onto the sidewalk, she started blinking rapidly, and then started at me. "What," she flatly stated.

"You came in nicely with those backup vocals," I said cheerfully.

"But - I never heard that song before, so how could I - and they - and you...?"

"How serious an answer do you want?"

"How serious can you get?"

"Hm. Okay - if you haven't already seen it, I've started making some truth wands, which work when you say a certain word. There are other magics which respond to words. But the thing is, words are just patterns of air compression, and they don't have any meaning, except the meaning given to them by a mind. This suggests at least two theories of how such magics work. One, the mind involved is that of the pony speaking, and the words just serve as a focus of concentration, with all the real work of interpreting exactly what's meant being done by the speaker. If that's the case, then magic is primarily a product of mental activity, which can be focused or enhanced by words - and rhythmic words, set to melody and with harmony, might be able to cause such minds to create a sort of magic even without any conscious intent. Or, put another way, when one pony starts thinking about a rhythm, that in itself is enough to create a subtle magic that can draw other ponies into it."

"... You said there was at least another?"

"Oh, yes. The other possibility is that there's some external mind-like thing which is listening for the magic words, which is sufficiently wide-spread in reach to hear any words in Equestria, and possibly in Equis, and of sufficient mental capacity to deal with however many spells might be being cast at the same time. If such an entity exists... maybe it gets bored, and passes some of the time doing amateur choreography."

"... How could you tell the difference?"

"Ooh, I like the way you think. It's not all that hard to come up with an experiment - the trouble is, since those experiments would tend to involve meddling with ponies' minds, it's not nearly as easy to come up with an ethical experiment. If you can think of any, please, let me know - I'm only a single cow, and I'm really trying very hard to get as many other ponies as possible to work on such things. In the meantime - are you up to taking these loads up to the Mikoyan?"

"So - Ermina, is it?"

"Armina."

"Armina, sorry. I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with your species, or any cultural norms you have that differ from Equestrian."

"I'm not surprised."

"So... What brought you to sign up with us?"

"You know the Griffin Pirates?"

"I'm aware of them, yes."

"I figure I'll have a better chance of joining 'em if I've got some experience on an airship."

"Am I going to need to worry about you jumping ship?"

"A griffin who can't keep her word won't be hired by anybody."

"Fair enough. Is there anything I can do to help you to work better while you're with us? Alternate bedding arrangements, or-"

"Food."

"Amethyst seems to be taking over the kitchen-"

"Meat."

"Ah. Well - unlike many ponies, I have no particular objection to using, and I emphasize this one word, non-sapient animals for food. In fact, some of your pay comes from dragon treasure, which I traded animals I hunted and killed myself for. But this ship is mostly crewed by ponies, whose performance might be hindered if they had to think about such things. So how about this: I'll talk to the Captain to get some reasonably liberal policies on diet set, if you'll agree to be professional about the whole thing."

"'Professional'?"

"Consider your actions in terms of improving overall crew performance. There will be a certain increase if we make sure you have a supply of meat; there will be a decrease if you spread bunny giblets across the mess table in front of everyone."

"I just need to eat it - I'm not going to paint my feathers with it."

"Then I believe we have an understanding. In that case - while we're in town, we should make sure we have the equipment and spices to preserve some, for when it's infeasible for you to hunt for yourself directly. Since you've got wings, why don't you go check with Amethyst for what we've got, and get a list of what we still need?""

"Tranquil... Glen?"

"Tranquil Valley," the unicorn mare gently corrected.

"Sorry - it seems I'm even worse with names than I thought I was."

"Eh, I've been called worse."

"So - any particular reason you signed up as an airship crewpony?"

"The money, mainly."

"There are plenty of other ways to make bits."

"Yeah - but Captain Red offered more than I was making, and I want a bundle, as fast as I can get."

"Planning on a big purchase?"

"Something like that."

"Do you mind if I ask what it is?"

"Most ponies laugh."

"I promise I'll try not to, if you want to tell me. If you don't, I'll try not to pry."

"... I read in the papers, that in Canterlot, a unicorn got herself turned into a sea-pony."

I tried not to choke on my cud. With a bit of effort, I managed to say, "I'm... familiar... with the story."

"When I heard that was possible - a bunch of things in my head clicked together. I realized I'd always wanted to be a sea pony, I just hadn't actually thought I could, you know? But if the nobles are doing that themselves now, then with enough bits, I should be able to get one who'll do it for me, right?"

"I... don't know," I said cautiously. "I've heard of stranger desires, but if you really do think you're something like a seapony born in a unicorn's body-"

"That's it! Exactly!"

"- Well, there's worse things you can do than pursue that dream. I've got a few references in my shipboard library which might be relevant; come see me sometime when we're both off-shift, and we can see if you can focus your efforts more precisely."

"Let me see if I get this one right - 'Stoke Red'?"

"Mmyep."

"Part of the extended Apple Family, I'm guessing?"

"Mmyep."

"Can't think of much to do with apples on airships."

"Mmnope."

"So...?"

"Mm."

"I could try tickling you until you were ready to talk."

"Mm...mmalright, no need for that."

"So - what's an apple family member doing on an airship?"

"Carpentry."

"That... makes sense. At least in a way. Anything else?"

"Learnin'."

"Mm?"

"My great-aunt Early Victoria says airships are carrying more cargo. More cargo like more apples. If'n we want the family to keep up with the times, we've gotta keep up with the tech-no-lo-gee. Maybe even start buildin' our own."

"I look forward to the day you've got a whole fleet."

As we were about to pull up stakes and make tracks - I got a message from Micro, sent via the usual mix of methods.

Got message from Safe. Private code, never written down, almost certainly from him. Said to stay out of Canterlot. Will meet you at your next stop.

That stop was the town we were at now. So we spent the next day staying in the area, doing more maneuvering practice, weapons exercises, and general familiarization with the ship and each other. Blanche was on watch at the time to point out the stage coach approaching, and soon enough, Micro Scope was hauled aboard.

She said to me and Red, "I'm not entirely sure what's going on. The papers issued a correction, saying it wasn't you who died after all - and the stories included some quotes from me."

Red asked, "And?"

Micro glared. "And I hadn't gotten to Canterlot yet, and never made any such quotes."

I considered. "Star Chaser went to Canterlot disguised as you - maybe she's keeping up that disguise?"

Micro shrugged. "It's possible. She doesn't know any of the codes or procedures, so she can't fool the Dairy, but she might be able to fool anypony else."

Red said, "But Safe Guard knows the codes, right? So - if he helps her, then...?"

Micro frowned. "What reason could he have for doing that?"

I offered, "Well - he was pretty sure that nothing would happen to the decoy cow, and when it did, and when it was an accident that would have been so hard to arrange... maybe it shook him up?"

We went round and round for a while, but weren't able to come up with anything solid enough to act on.

As Micro stood up to get herself a bunk prepared, I cleared my throat a bit. "On a matter that, on an absolute scale, is of much less importance, I was wondering..."

She sighed. "I didn't deliver it in person - but yes, I got your apology cake sent to your marefriend. I'm sure you'll only be mildly killed when you see her again."

Author's Note: In case you're losing track, here's a quick Who's Who of who's aboard the Mikoyan:

Owner: Doctor Missy, cow, female
Captain: Red Hot Chili Pepper, pegasus, female, got her out of prison
Mate: Blanche, pegasus, female, cured her love potion
Cook: Amethyst, diamond dog, female, negotiated peace with her pack
Kids: John, Paul, George, Ringo, diamond dogs, male, adopted
Guard: Gallant Heart, earth pony, male, glued him to floor
Guard: Berry Blast, unicorn, male, observer
Guard: Cloud Bouncer, pegasus, female, piloted
Crew: Armina, griffon, female, bought gear to can spiced ham
Crew: Tranquil Valley, unicorn, female, would-be seapony
Crew: Stoke Red, earth-pony, male, would-be shipping magnate
Extra: Micro Scope, unicorn, female, scientist

Fever

I blame the cow.

Not me-the-cow; the other cow, the one we dressed up to look like me, who got squished by a piano. While it was aboard our ship, I kept as far away from it as I could; but when it was gone, I didn't bother avoiding the places it had been. And since I'm the one who got sick, and nopony else aboard did, it seems reasonable to conclude it's a bovine-specific disease; thus, the blame.

It was closer to a flu than a cold - in addition to the sneezing, sniffling, and coughing, along came GI trouble at both ends, aches, and fever. I was an unhappy cow, and, well, let's just say that if you think it's unpleasant being near a human that's sick, sick cows are even less fun to be near. I gave Captain Red our general directions - north, to the coast - and then kinda-sorta quarantined myself in my cargo-bay lab, well away from everypony else's sleeping area. Amethyst agreed that I should stop feeding the pups for a while; no need to risk a cross-species infection. Blanche was quite willing to bring me broth, and keep me company - from a safe distance.

On my third day of unhappiness, I came up with the grand idea of trying to adapt the cure-spells I'd used on Blanche to apply to a physical disease rather than a mental one. After a bit of checking with my notes on Latin, and some memory searching, I came up with a spell to strengthen my immune system, so that it could finish beating up whatever microbes were rampaging through my tissues. Given the results, I'd say that I actually managed to succeed at that.

Were you aware that most of the symptoms of ordinary diseases don't result from the infection itself, but rather from your immune system's fight against it? Sneezing, coughing, and GI expulsions help to simply physically remove particles of disease; joint aches are caused by inflammation, which is part of the immune response. Thus, the main effect of my little experiment was to take all those symptoms, and turn them up to 11.

Did you know that "cold-blooded" animals, such as reptiles, have genomes several times larger than those of "warm-blooded" animals, such as mammals? This is because proteins only fold into biologically-useful shapes at a very narrow range of conditions, such as temperature; and so, with body temperatures that can vary widely, a reptile may need half a dozen different proteins to all serve the same function, each one serving at a different temperature range. Mammals, on the other hoof, tend to have bodies that remain at a very constant temperature, and so have done away with most of that excess complexity. However, this comes at a price - we only have proteins that can function at, or near, our body temperature. Crank our internal thermostat up by even just five degrees, and several important pieces of biomolecular machinery start falling apart.

In case you're wondering about this digression - fever, too, is the result of the immune system's activities, as it changes the body's makeup to be less hospitable to any given set of microbes. And by cranking up my body's immune system the way I naively did - I came this close to getting myself killed, within mere hours. If the ship's pantry hadn't included a magical version of an ice chest, if my literally fevered imagination hadn't managed to pull up 'frigere' as the Latin command for 'be cold', and if we hadn't acquired three unicorns to keep charging the gems to cast that spell with - well, the whole Chess Game might have gone in a whole other direction.

I will say one thing about the super immune system spell - while it nearly killed me, it also really kicked the butt of the infection. After one full day of pushing my body's limits... it was all over, the infection gone, and with it, my symptoms went away - including my core body temperature finally going back to normal without external magical assistance.

When I woke up, I felt... kind of hollow, a bit light, a bit light-headed. I'd burned through a lot of my body's reserves, and hadn't really been able to hold down food long enough to get any calories from it. I had been, thankfully, cleaned up, and I made a mental note that whoever'd taken care of that deserved some bonus hazard pay. Looking around, I saw that I was being watched by Berry Blast, the unicorn guard. Wordlessly, he poured some ice-water from a jug into a cup, which I gratefully accepted.

After a few sips, I commented, "So... that happened."

"Uh-huh," he agreed.

"Remind me not to tell anyone which spell I used," I said, thoughtfully. "It would be all to easy to use as a method of nearly undetectable assassination... somepony gets sick, then they get very sick, then they die. Very unfortunate, but happens all the time, no need to look for murderers."

"I'd really prefer if you shared that information with the Royal Guard, so we can come up with better ways to defend against it."

"If you really want to know - then you can buy it from me. The cost will never be lower than the price of an insurance policy that could cover all the monetary damages that would result from knowledge of the spell escaping your custody. And would probably be rather higher, based on how secure I think your procedures actually are. Did anything exciting happen while I've been... you know?"

"Captain Pepper is ready to give you a full report, but mostly distant sightings of dragons, and two close-up encounters."

I reached with a hoof to grab my glasses from my mattress-side table - and blinked, as even before I put them on, I could see my limb shaking. "I think I need some food," I said.

The rule of thumb is that a cow needs to spend six hours a day eating (plus eight hours a day chewing cud) - and I'd missed at least a full day, plus had only had light food for a couple of days before that, plus my body had been burning up its fat reserves to crank up its temperature. So for the rest of that day, and much of the next, I was basically stuffing my face with grass and grass-based food products. About the only physical exertion I was up to was walking up to the deck to stretch out on a deck chair, and let my body absorb some sun to make some vitamin D; and to turn a book's pages. Red arranged so that at least one member of our merry band was within sight of me, just in case I had some sort of relapse. She had to put her hoof down to keep Micro from pestering me for samples and details on the spell. It turned out that Gallant Heart, while not a full-fledged doctor, was cross-trained as a field medic, and remembered most of the Guard's manuals on how to turn an invalid back into a functioning soldier; so I let him take Safe Guard's old place as my personal trainer, deciding which exercises I should try and when.

I wasn't sure how much info I'd spilled on Latin-gem magic to our new crew; and asking them what they knew about it would be rather counter-productive if I hadn't told them anything... but it was a safe bet that everypony aboard knew that I'd come up with some sort of cooling magic, so I didn't feel any need to work hard at hiding what I was doing while playing with 'frigere' to make ice cubes. But even thinking too much left me tired and sleepy, so I wasn't really up to trying to come up with creative applications for the latest piece of magic in our arsenal.

What I did end up spending some time on, between shoveling more greenery into my seemingly bottomless gullet, was jotting down some notes on what I remembered of some hex-map games from Earth - ones which simulated soldiers on a battlefield, or spaceships in orbit; plus a few World War One games, such as "Ace of Aces", about aerial combat and dogfighting; plus some notes on the stats we'd collected about the Mikoyan's performance, and the similar numbers for dragons, griffins, pegasi, other airships, and so on. I was hoping to put together something better than the classic 'model ships in a sandbox' approach to war games, so we could try figuring out how effective any given maneuver or tactic might be in any given situation, without having to put the whole ship at risk... but between eating, sudden naps, Gallant's exercises, and the distractions of simply watching the landscape roll by, it was slow going. I tried not to feel bad about that, since it would be at least as slow no matter what intellectual work I tried doing at the moment, and 'slow' was still better than 'nothing'... but I really wanted to push myself to work harder and faster; and I had to occasionally remind myself about all those cartoons with morals involving letting a convalescent take the time they actually needed to convalesce.

And then we hit the coastline, and I had to break out my drawings of my Element necklace's gem, to use as a rough map to work out our course with Red. From various historical reports I'd gathered, I had a strong suspicion that some of the ancient artifacts I was hoping to collect were in one of two places. One possibility was at the bottom of the ocean - which would require outfitting an entirely different sort of expedition to collect. But there were also reports along Equis's northern coast of strange ships arriving, raiding, and disappearing again; and since the gem on my necklace seemed to be an accurate globe, and since that globe included a landmass to Equis's northeast; I was willing to bet a significant amount of time and effort that that landmass was inhabited... and that the inhabitants would have enough information to let me pinpoint something I'd find worth our whiles. And if I was wrong, I could always see about giving Tranquil her heart's desire, and playing Jacques Cousteau for a bit; of course, the oceans which old Jacques swam in didn't have anyone living in them.

But for the moment - we simply turned east, generally following the coastline, so that we could replenish our supplies from the Griffin Dominion, before we started flying over the ocean.

Armina and Amethyst had gone inland a bit, to hunt for some critters to eat on the way; I didn't want to gamble their health on our untested oceanic fishing skills. I was feeling steady enough to head down to the ground myself, but I mostly just wanted to walk along the beach. Captain Pepper was letting everypony have a bit of shore leave, in shifts; down at the same time as me were Stoke Red, who was poking around at some drift wood, and Cloud Bouncer, who was stretching her wings by dive-bombing sea-gulls.

It was all very relaxed, even pastoral... and, as you might guess, the main reason I'm mentioning anything about it at all is that it was about to become much less so.

The first thing I noticed which gave any clue that something unusual was happening, was that Stoke wasn't noticeable anymore.

The next thing I noticed was the tangle of ropes, a net, dropping over my head.

The last thing I noticed was the smell of unwashed bodies - canine ones, given the odor's similarity to Amethyst's and the pups'.

"Here cow," said a voice. "Nice cow. Yummy cow."

There was the sound of a smack. "Don't be stupid. Cow not for eating. Cow for turning useless grass into cheese."

"But I don't like cheese..." There was another smack, and I sighed.

Lethal Force

I seemed to be in a minor pickle.

I had been, for lack of a better word, skinny-dipping; my clothes, gizmos, gems, wireless, and Chekov were all neatly folded up in a basket back by the Mikoyan. I still wasn't fully recovered from my medical experiment - I wasn't about to fall right over, but my body didn't really have any reserves yet. Stoke was MIA - presumably, pulled down into a hidden tunnel. Cloud Bouncer was distracted by being in the middle of a squawking flock of gulls, Armina and Amethyst were inland, and everypony else was on the Mikoyan. In addition to my usual goal-set, I wanted to avoid enslavement by the three-or-more diamond dogs who'd netted me, recover Stoke if possible, and generally get back on track.

The primary strategy that came to mind: stall, until Bouncer could see what was going on and call for reinforcements.

The net covering me wasn't really tight; I couldn't move from the spot I was on, but my legs weren't bound up. I guessed that none of the diamond dogs wanted to try to carry me, and were hoping to goad me to follow them back to their home. So I drew a page from some of the civil rights activists I admired most, and, carefully, folded my legs underneath me, lying down on the spot of sand I'd been netted on.

This provoked a squabble of annoyed but hushed whispers from behind me. I felt one of them shove me from behind, then prod my rear, then poke it with a claw... then give me a good, sharp kick. I grunted at that last one, but managed to avoid pulling away. After a few more whispers, I heard footsteps - and one walked in front of me. It looked like, of all things, a golden retriever - an extremely filthy one, wearing a moth-eaten vest and studded collar, but still with that retriever head shape and fur that looked like it could be blonde if given a bath or three. He gave the netting a tug, then a pull. He grabbed some of the seagrass, pulled it out of the sand, and waved it in front of my nose. I just kept staring at him.

He wandered back behind me, and there was more whispering. I managed to make out words that might have been 'potion' and 'drag it', so it seemed time to up the stakes slightly.

"If you're just about done trying to kidnap me," I said aloud, "just how big of a ransom are you going to be asking for?"

The whisperers were completely silent for a long few seconds, before breaking out into a confused, overlapping gabble.

Three tricks later, and I was finally able to turn around far enough to see that Bouncer wasn't anywhere in the sky - hopefully, she was reporting back to Captain Red. I only had to keep stalling for a few more minutes, and-

"Enough!" bellowed the tall skinny one, to both the short one and the wide one. "She is a cow! She is trying to confuse us! And it is working! Stop listening! Bind her mouth! Bring her home!"

So much for stalling. Even with the trio right next to me, I couldn't tell where the tunnel they'd popped out of was; if they pulled me in, Red and the gang might never find me. With the net, I couldn't run, I couldn't hide; I'd run out of tricks, I couldn't negotiate any further, I had no intention of surrendering...

I noticed that I had stood back up, without making any conscious decision to do so. I also noticed that I'd lowered my head, and was taking big deep breaths. And then I stopped noticing, stopped thinking, and simply acted.

I was inhaling in great gulps - and in the air was the scent of blood. My limbs were quivering, but I was still standing... unlike the two forms lying in the sand before me. The third was nowhere in sight.

There was a flutter of wings, and Bouncer landed in front of me. "Oh," she said. "Guess you didn't need us after all." She shoved at one body with a hoof - it was the tall one - and it whimpered, clutching at its belly, which was... ugly. I noticed my usually white horns were now both quite red.

"Get the medkit. And my gems," I said.

"What?"

"NOW!"

She disappeared as quickly as if my very voice had blown her away.

I shifted my hooves, so that I could look at the other one - the wide one - and winced. Something I'd done had made a ruin of his forehead. He wasn't breathing.

Blanche arrived, carrying my bundle of clothes and stuff. "Work on him," I said, pointing with a hoof at the one with the gut wound. "Keep him alive," I was rummaging for my first gem. "Staunch the bleeding, I'll get to him when I can."

I grabbed some purple shiny thing with a hoof, and put it on the other one's chest, holding it there with a hoof... and I tried to remember every Latin-based medical term I could think of. "Cardio, pulsere," I hazarded, thinking of his heart beating. Remembering 'cardiopulmonary system' and 'respiration', I tried for, "Pulmones, respire." I continued with that for a few more variations, before finally hitting the right ones - or at least some workable ones - his chest started rising and falling, and his head wound started leaking again... and I started trying to think of the medical jargon for clotting and healing.

Gallant called out, "He's seizing!" and I turned my attention to the other one.

"Switch," I said, "and don't dislodge that gem." I grabbed another one, and tried the only word that came to mind: "Pax," 'peace'. "Vivere," I added: 'live'.

He blinked his eyes open, and looked up at me. "Stopped hurting," he said. "Thank you. Why?"

"I'm trying to fix you," I said - the most obvious and true statement, but one that only covered a fraction of what was going through my mind.

"I can see my guts," he said. "I'm going to die. Just... don't let it start hurting again, please?"

I thought that he was acting like a kicked puppy, begging its owner not to do it again. That's all the three of them were, really - complaining about cheese while raiding? That was an absolutely cartoonish thing to do, something that, in a universe without narrative causality, would get them killed before they ever had a chance to grow up.

My head twitched to the left, as I abruptly had an insight. It might not be true - but it fit with everything I'd learned so far... and if I was wrong, the worst that would happen would be that everyone would think I was somewhat crazier than before.

I lifted my head and looked away from the diamond dogs; from the ponies who trusted me enough to work on saving them, at my word, without questioning why; to where some invisible watcher might have a good view of everything going on.

I whispered, low enough that nopony nearby could hear me, but I wasn't trying to speak to them. "I don't know what sort of narrative arc you're trying to establish here, with me killing these two - but if there's some way that you can make the point without them dying - without them being treated as just some wandering monsters to bash and forget - then, please. Or if you can make some different point, instead. Whatever we all are to you - to me, they're just as much people as anyone else I know... and yeah, they were stupid - but I don't want them to die just to make a story more poignant, or dramatic, or something. I'm not trying to bargain, or make an offer, or anything like that, I'm just... asking. Begging. Just... please."

I didn't actually know if anyone was listening - or watching, or reading, or running some ultra version of The Sims - but I knew that the hole in this guy's stomach had as much of an outline as everything else... among other details... so, I hoped that if anyone was... that knowing my words would make a difference.

I kept on working feverishly. Pushing out foreign matter and infection. Sealing torn flesh. Calling upon generic 'healing' magic. Everything I could think of, everything any of the other ponies could think of.

It got dark; gem-torches were lit.

The tall one watched what was going on, and after a while, he said where the opening to the tunnel was, and how far down that way the stallion had probably been taken. Captain Red ordered Bouncer, Blast, Amethyst, and Armina to go.

I kept working.

After a while, the four of them came back, with Stoke.

I kept working.

I'd done everything I could think of for the tall one - other than the blood staining his fur, there was no sign of his ever having been gored. He sat on the sand, watching us without a word.

I kept working on the wide one.

My legs had run out of stamina long ago - so I was just lying on the sand next to him, using one hoof to hold whatever gem I was drawing from against him.

I'd managed to close off the broken blood vessels, close up the outer wound, smooth out the cracked skull, replace the lost blood volume. But any time the 'heart, beat' and 'lungs, breathe' spells wore off, his body stopped doing them.

With the moon high overhead, I was running through every Latinate name for a part of the brain that I could think of, and inserting those into every healing, curing, and generally medically-improving sort of spell I could think of. I was running through so many spells that Blast, Valley, and Micro were spending all their time just recharging the gems whose power I was pouring into his body.

Red lay down next to me. "Missy," she said.

"No," I replied, and went on to "Anterior cingulate cortex - medicere."

After a while, she said, "Do you trust me?"

"More than anypony I can think of, other than the Princesses. Medulla oblongata - reparere."

"I think you should stop. You've gotten to where you're hurting yourself."

"Being hurt is less important than saving a life. Medulla oblongata - revivere."

"Have you ever heard the phrase 'dying with dignity'?"

"If you mean me - dignity is less important than saving a life. If you mean his - dignity means being able to choose the manner of your death. He didn't choose. Medulla oblongata - resuscitatere."

"You're driving at least three of my crew to exhaustion - I could order them to stop."

"It's my boat - I could fire you as captain. Medulla oblongata - revivere."

"So... what are you going to do if nothing you do works?"

"Keep trying 'til I can't. Medulla oblongata - rejuvinere."

"And then?"

"I expect I'll be too unconscious to decide much. Medulla oblongata - renovatere. I assume you'll carry me onto the boat and set sail. Medulla oblongata - recuperatere."

"Is there anything I can do that would convince you to stop?"

I paused, at least partly to catch my breath. "Look me in the eye and tell me that you honestly believe there's something more important for me to do than try to save a life."

"How about - save millions of lives."

I paused again. She did have a point - saving a whole continent could certainly take precedence over a single life. But - right now, my world-saving plans consisted of traveling from point A to point B. So I said, "I can keep doing this on the Mikoyan as easily as I can here."

Another voice interrupted - the skinny diamond dog. "What about me?"

Red and I glanced at him, at each other, then back at him. Red said, "Your choice. Stay here, or come with us."

He was looking down at his companion. "I still don't understand. We attacked you, you attacked us back, you won. Why work so hard on him?"

Red looked at me - I guessed she wanted to hear, too. "In terms I'm guessing will make sense to you... the world is a complicated place. So complicated, that it's impossible to tell whether any one piece of information will turn out to be valuable, allowing the creation of a new piece of valuable knowledge. Any one person might turn out to be the one who happens to have just the right piece which will lead to someone coming up with a new idea, which sparks another, which transforms the whole world. I can't save everyone." ('Yet', I added silently.) "But I can save this one. Or at least try my damnedest to. I've got other reasons - but they'd take a lot longer to explain. Well - maybe one more thing is worth mentioning."

I allowed myself a dramatic pause, and was rewarded by the diamond dog saying, "What?"

"The breathing spell should have run out by now. But he's still breathing." My cheeks were hurting, and I was getting some funny looks at my expression. "Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can't accomplish something. But sometimes - you can, and won't know until you try that hard. Somepony keep an eye on him, and get me if there's any sign he's getting any worse. In the meantime, please accept my apologies while I let myself fall unconscious." And I did just that.

Genre Near-Sightedness

I woke up in my now-familiar cargo-bay sickbed, and I was okay with that. Turning my head to the left, I saw Amethyst dozing next to a new, very round cradle - looked like somepony had finally finished working on my suggestion for a gyroscopic safety cradle, so the pups could be safe during violent maneuvers. My udder wasn't bursting at the seams, so I guessed they weren't going hungry, either. I turned my head to the right, and raised an eyebrow. Three golden-furred forms were lined up on pallets - without my glasses, I couldn't make out too many details, but given recent events, there was little doubt who they were. I was kind of curious where the smallest one had been hiding... but I had something that was rather more urgent to take care of than idle curiosity.

As I walked to the facilities, I discovered my legs weren't far from shaking, and I had to lean against the wall a few times to rest. I really needed to come up with some better way of applying medical magic than the spaghetti method (throwing it against the wall to see what stuck) - if I tried this very often, I really would end up killing myself.

On my way back, I came across Captain Red. She flashed me a quick smile, and said, "If we keep this up, and we're going to need another ship, just to have room for everypony."

"I suppose 'Admiral Missy' doesn't sound any worse than 'Doctor Missy'. When and where are we?"

"You've been out for about a full day - it's about two hours till sunrise. We've turned northeast, and are over the ocean. No sign of uncontrolled storms, but I'm a little nervous one will catch us in the open, so I'm taking us at full throttle."

"I think I can help with that - my Element necklace seems to show where the major cloud systems are, across the world."

"That would be a big help... I just don't trust wild weather."

"I suppose I'm a little wary of anypony with the power to send rain where they want it." We grinned a little at each other - we'd had enough casual conversations to have gone over this topic more than once. "Anyway, I'm just going to grab a quick bite and lie back down. Unless you need me for something?"

"Nah, nobody's about to die, and we can handle just about everything else. You just work on getting back to where you could beat a filly in a fair fight."

"Remind me never to wander around without all my tricks for keeping fights unfair, anymore."

I woke up again near noon. I went for the goggles instead of my glasses, since I planned on heading over to the side-tunnel observation deck for a while, which would likely have some good cross-breezes at full throttle. I also threw on the torc - maybe it was solar-powered and just needed a good recharge - but left the boots behind.

I went to the kitchen to grab a pair of saddlebags full of grub to refuel with, and Amethyst was there, doing her cook thing. Today, she had some help; seeing the trio running around at her direction, my mind instantly dubbed them 'Moe', 'Larry', and 'Curly'. Since that didn't seem very respectful after nearly killing them and then saving them, I asked her, "By the way, what are they called?"

"You. Alpha. You. Decide."

That was... a somewhat depressing look into Diamond Dog culture. Though from the state the trio had been in even before the fight, I could understand why they'd be willing to trade up to an Alpha who could, and would, take better care of them. I pointed at the tall one, who I'd gored, and proclaimed, "Athos." The wide one who'd had the head injury was dubbed, "Porthos", and the small one who'd hid, "Aramis." Red had mentioned dignity; and, hopefully, Musketeers would be a better inspiration for them to reach for than Stooges.

I spent some time watching the ocean horizon - the only really straight line found in nature - and thinking about what had gone on the other day... and what had been going on for the last three months, give or take a few weeks of petrification.

For example... I still hadn't managed to solve the riddle of magic. I was treating it as a sort of fluid, which could be stored, moved, and put to work in various ways. But that barely let me make any predictions at all about what it could or couldn't do. I was in much the same state as the physicists who, studying heat, hypothesized a 'caloric' fluid, which hot objects had a lot of. This let them make some basic predictions, such as rate of transfer of caloric from one object to another... but it wasn't until a century or two later that somebody finally realized that a completely unrelated branch of physics, that of kinetic motion, was what actually underlay all those fluidy properties. It was only then, when the true, fundamental nature of heat was understood, that scientists could solve problems that had previously not even been thought of - from the hottest depths of the stars to creating states below the temperature of absolute zero.

That wasn't the first time such a unification had occurred. Once, people didn't know why a living hand could move, but one sculpted out of clay couldn't; so they hypothesized an élan vital which living things had and unliving ones didn't - but that was even worse than the 'caloric' theory, as it didn't let them make any new predictions at all... and had been completely blown out of the water when somebody went and created an organic chemical out of inorganic ones. Phlogiston, the luminiferous ether, epicycles and crystal spheres - all were ways of looking at reality which had been tossed aside for better ones, more fundamental ones, ones that gave truer understanding.

I felt like a pre-Darwinian biologist, taking the time to collect samples of various fauna, but without knowing how they were truly related to each other.

Why should magic respond to words in Latin, but not Greek? How did this mysterious force manage to accomplish so many different things, from creating light to traveling through time to healing injuries? Was Latin-gem magic really the same as whatever caused spontaneous musicalism? What else could it do - and at least as important, what couldn't it do? Did it work on Earth as well as on Equis?

I knew so little about magic, that I didn't even have any good ideas about how to collect data that could, even in principle, answer all those questions. I wasn't even sure which overall field I should be looking in. Maybe I'd need to build a linear accelerator to smash together some subatomic particles. Maybe it was tied into the still-unsolved mystery of how consciousness actually worked. Maybe I needed to improve my math skills so I could notice an unusual statistical pattern. Maybe somebody already knew, and I just had to find them and know to ask the right questions.

That latter thought... niggled at me for a bit. Did I already know somebody who might know the answers? Luna? Terra? Athena? That floaty goth chick? One of the other chess pieces? None of them seemed to be interested in quite the right method of investigation; as far as I knew, the only person on Equis who even had a rough idea of Solomonoff's Lightsaber was myself - so if anyone was going to find the answer, it was probably going to be me.

And then I had a forehead-slap moment, which is always a pain when you've got hooves. "Oh, yeah," I thought to myself. "I've sent messages into the past. So if I ever do figure this out - then I might be able to save myself some time and send me the answer early. Of course, that depends on that time-travel spell, which is currently locked up in Canterlot. So if I want to take that as a short-cut, either I need to come up with some way to deal with my mysterious enemy so that I can set up a nice, long, uninterrupted relay so my future self can send me a message... or I need to find a different method of time travel, with different limitations. Either way - it comes back to playing Daring Do, looking for stones other ponies wouldn't have even thought to look underneath. And continuing my general research and poking around with the local version of physics, looking for tricks other ponies would have missed. And improving the local research community. So... I guess my existing plans really were good enough to help me work on this problem, too."

Of course, it wouldn't hurt if I was able to think up any other shortcuts, either.

"What's that?" Moe - I mean, Athos - pointed at the top of the ship's mast. I was trying to shoot the breeze a bit with him, both to try to understand him better and to help him get more used to me and my ways of doing things.

I held my hoof over my eyes to shade them. "The flag of Equestria. It shows whose laws are in effect aboard this ship - and whose military will be annoyed if we're attacked, and can get word back."

"What's that one?" He pointed at a lower flag; pink, with a curving black line that formed the bottom half of a semicircle, with four vertical strokes beneath it.

"It's the symbol I whipped up for the Dairy, a semi-secret organization I created to help me do things I couldn't do by myself."

"So... it's the symbol for you?"

I shook my head. "No - I created it, but it can keep on doing important things even without me running it."

"So... what is the symbol for you?"

"I never really got around to designing one. In Equestria, that would be either a business logo, or a coat of arms; and either of those would need me to be in the public eye. I prefer to do my work without being noticed."

He seemed agitated. "If your Dairy has a symbol, you should not be without yours! You made them, you should not be less than them!"

"Hm." I didn't really agree with his reasoning - but if it helped keep him calm and happy, would it hurt to come up with something? "Let's see - since I'm the Bearer of the Element of Hope, it would be nice if it had some connection to that. The anchor is an old symbol for that - and we just happen to have one handy - but it's also tied into a particular religion's precepts, and that could lead to awkward misunderstandings and complications. DC's Blue Lanterns have that bird-based thing, and I kind of like their general approach, but it would be a bit too revealing about my origins to anyone else who knew about them, and it's a bit complicated for an abstract bunch of lines. I'm a Doctor - and after the other night, I guess in fact as well as title - so the Rod of Asclepius might be a good start. That's a snake wrapped around a stick. But it's also pretty generic for any healer. I once mentioned that I'm the seventh element, like Nitrogen... if I remember right, Dalton's original symbol for that was a circle with a vertical line through it. ... Hm... maybe combine the two - keep the stick, but adjust the snake so instead of twining around it, it makes a simple circle - maybe grabbing its tail in its mouth, like Oroborus, which is sometimes used as a symbol for eternity - or immortality. Drawn like that, it would also look like the Greek letter Phi, which is the symbol for the Golden Ratio, one of my favorite numbers. And with the European pronunciation, 'fee', that letter matches up with one of my favorite spells, 'fiat lux'. It could also look like the numbers one and zero superimposed, and binary is another idea I think is important. I guess that's got enough appropriate symbolism to work - and it's simple enough that if I ever needed to spruce it up, I could throw on a pair of wings to each side, or the planet Equis behind it, or something."

Athos was bouncing on his hindlegs, almost jumping up and down in excitement. "You will be making a flag and placing it highest?"

"Er - no; I don't feel like claiming to be a sovereign individual just now. I'm not sure I even want to fly a personal flag - Equestrian nobles can be tetchy if they think someone is infringing on their privileges. I'd be pushing it even if I just made some tabards to throw over everypony's armor."

"What is 'tabard'?"

"It's a sleeveless coat, worn over everything else, with the wearer's symbol prominent on it, originally for easy identification in a battle, more recently mostly to show off. It's a bit awkward - I wouldn't recommend wearing one all the time. Superman had a better idea - skintight bodysuit with his logo on the chest, and another on his cape. Even better, at least for everyday wear, would be something based on Starfleet - instead of a splashy, big logo, a neat pin on the left side of the chest."

He asked a few more questions about clothes, and then pointed at one of the two big capstans, asked "What's that?", and I talked about manual controls for when part of the ship's magical power system failed, and on we went.

Later that evening, while I was reading in bed... I'd been hearing rumors passing through the ship's grapevine that Athos was being a busy little doggy, putting himself almost a week in debt for ship's points for some favors from other crewponies. But I still tried to act surprised when, nervously, he came up to me at my table, holding a bundle, accompanied by his two companions, carrying similar piles of cloth.

Athos's offering was a blue, skin-tight bodysuit, with a surprisingly well-executed snake-and-stick Phi symbol on the chest, and a cut-out for my udder. I carefully pulled it on, and suppressed a giggle as I thought about Power Girl's costume. After a moment of thought, I pulled out one of my belts with pouches of useful gimmicks, and strapped it on.

It was at that moment that the torc spontaneously decided to activate itself - at least partially. In moments, from my neck extended a blue-black cape, which ruffled and fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

I looked at myself in a hand-mirror, and stated, "This costume is gaudy, flashy, impractical, and shows off every curve of my body. I love it. But I think I'll save it for formal occasions, when I need to make a real fashion statement."

Porthos's offering was based more on my walking-around ranger-scout outfit - I guessed that whoever they'd gotten to do the tailoring, had been rummaging through my clothes trunk. But I didn't especially mind. It was mostly black, with blue shoulders and highlights, and a stick-and-snake broach. Once it was on, I rolled my shoulders a few times, and stretched my limbs. "I could get used to this," I admitted. "It's nice and warm - and we're heading to a land that's supposed to be rather cold."

Aramis's bundle wasn't a costume for me; it was a set of phi-shaped pins for the diamond dogs' own collars, and some blue shirts - one design for bipeds, another for quadrupeds - with the phi symbol on the left breast. "Uniforms," he almost squeaked. "For every... pony... else."

"I don't know how you put those together so fast - but I'm impressed. I'm not going to make wearing them mandatory for daily use - there are too many ways for that to go wrong - but I will allow anypony who wants to wear them, to do so. And if we ever come to a situation where we want to impress somepony with how our crew looks - well, now we can. Thank you, all of you."

Like children whose art made it onto the refrigerator, they beamed. They were obviously trying to fit in with their new group - a group that had to be far different than anything they'd lived with so far - and all I had to do to make them happy was to accept it.

Of course, I was going to double-check to see if the torc had a quick-release function, or some sort of equivalent, to make sure that I wouldn't be killed if it got caught in a jet engine or revolving door or the like. After all, narrative causality could work against me just as easily as it could work for me, and I had no intention of dying ironically just to prove a point about post-modernist deconstruction of classic comic-book superhero tropes.

On the other hoof, I could think of at least one other use for the super-suit - to completely confuse and befuddle anyone in Equis who knew about Earthly comic book superheroes. I hadn't come across any chess pieces who needed to be dealt with, but it was nice to have one more tactic to throw at them, if that ever came about. I supposed it would be even more impressive if I actually could fly... hm, what was the Latin for 'to fly'? There was that Italian song I'd once heard Sam sing in Quantum Leap - ah, yes, 'Volare'.

... if that actually worked, I was going to have to eat my hat.

Fortunately, to a cow, straw hats turned out to be reasonably tasty.

With the Greatest of Ease

I couldn't help humming...

I'll fly away, oh lordy,
I'll fly away; in the morning.
way up high, halleluah, by and by,
I'll fly away.

On the other hoof, with the spell I was now playing with, actually 'flying away' wasn't all that much of a possibility.

Naturally, this demanded some immediate experimentation.

The Latin word 'volare' just meant 'fly' - and in the context of the local magical system, seemed to trigger something like a unicorn's telekinetic effect. I could point to any random object, call upon a gem's power with the word, and it would rise into the air and move around as I willed it to. (Ever play the game where you tried to push something just beyond your reach? It felt a lot like that - only I actually managed to succeed.) If I focused on myself, then I could push myself into the air - or, perhaps, it was push against everything around me.

With me and an object just starting out standing still next to each other, I could get it to move about a meter per second - relative to me, and to everything in the cargo bay, which were all moving through the air at a good clip. I drafted Micro to help, and had her pull a small cargo-wagon to and fro through the cargo bay, sometimes with me aboard, sometimes an object for me to grab, sometimes both; and a few times, I drafted Stoke, as well, so I could be pulled one way, and the target object another.

The results were pretty consistent - 'volare' let me push an object up to one meter per second in any direction, relative to myself. If it was moving faster than that, relative to me, to start with, then I could slow it down until it was moving at that rate. The acceleration was fast - it took a smaller fraction of a second than I had a decent timepiece for an object to go from one meter per second in one direction to one meter per second the other way, but I wasn't really able to shake things very hard.

A second discovery - the heavier the object, the faster it drained power from my gems. Though it wasn't quite a linear relation. Using the standard I'd developed previously, where it took 1.0 'thaums' to use a gem to create a light as bright as a candle for one minute, then using 'volare' on a half-kilo object also used up one thaum a minute... while lifting Stoke, who was close to my own weight, somewhere around five hundred kilos, used up the power to create a light for two hours, in three and a third minutes; about 35 times as much.

That rate did turn out to be similar to how much power I drained when I volare'd myself into the air, so at least that much was consistent.

Trying to cast 'volare' twice on the same object didn't let me move things twice as fast.

Trying to volare myself from a moving cart didn't seem to affect my speed - if I started out moving faster than a meter per second relative to the cargo bay, I immediately slowed down to that rate. So, for self-flying, the effect seemed to be relative to my overall local environment, not just what I started out.

Which led to my next experiment. I asked Captain Red to slow the ship down for a few minutes, so the wind on the top deck wasn't too distracting. I climbed up the steps to the top of the sterncastle, looked down at the main deck in front of the bridge just below... took a breath... and jumped off, blurting out 'volare' as I started to fall. I slowed down to a nice, safe speed before I landed. Looked like as long as I had a gem with me, with enough power, I didn't need to worry about falls. (Though, given how much power moving myself with this spell took, and how slowly I moved with it, if I tried stopping myself from too high up, I could easily run out of power before I made it to safety.)

I tried some telekinesis-battles with Micro, with her trying to push our target one way while I pushed it another - and it was a real tug of war. She could put extra effort into it, and make headway; but when she relaxed, or tired, the spell's push was extremely even and consistent, and she'd lose ground.

The effect lasted as long as I concentrated on it - if I was distracted, the effect stopped, letting the target drop. I could 'volare' more than one object at once - but only as long as I could concentrate on all of them at once; I could manage two doing just about anything, three was a juggling act, and up to half a dozen if they were all moving similarly.

I could pick up a bunch of marbles in a clump as if they were a single thing, likewise a small heap of ballast sand. I couldn't pick up the water from inside a cup, or the smoke from a candle, or the flame from the same candle. When the sand was spread out thinly over an area, I could only grab it from a few centimeters in area; when it was at least a centimeter thick, I could grab larger amounts, up to a circle about two meters in diameter.

I had extremely limited control over bending and folding objects I was moving; the spell seemed to 'want' to move all of an object at once. It was a struggle just to open up a book at all, nevermind opening it to a particular page; likewise, I wasn't going to be tying or untying ropes anytime soon. I couldn't just grab Micro's hoof to pull her with it - either I grabbed hold of all of her, or the spell just fizzled out without effect. After a bit of playing around with some loose pieces of cloth, I made the tentative conclusion that I could move and rotate objects as a whole, easily; but when I was trying to move parts of them relative to each other, all I was doing was releasing my hold on part of the object, and it simply fell as gravity and the air-currents pushed it. I tried using two 'volare' spells at once, to push one piece of a rope one way and another, another; but whenever I stopped fully concentrating on holding the one volare spell from pushing part of an object, so that I could concentrate on using the other to push that part, the other spell just grabbed the whole thing again. That limit seemed like it might be more a limit of me than of the spell itself - and might be something I could improve with some practice.

Similarly, it took some effort to just push a single button or throw a lever without the spell trying to grab hold of a whole object - or of the whole ship and fizzling right out. I was only able to pull Chekov's trigger when the back of the gun was braced against something - and though I wasn't using my quite limited supply of ammunition, while that might be good for a trick, aiming it at anything in particular was going to be just about impossible.

Contrariwise, I was able to pick up a lodestone, and use it to pick up a piece of metal; but the rate of power used turned out to be for the total weight being moved, and not just for the lodestone itself. With a bit of focus, I was able to grab Micro's new uniform shirt, without grabbing her, and hold it still and stiff enough to impede her movements. I was also able to grab a string, and keep it taut enough to slice through some butter; but trying that with a delicate strand of spiderweb just broke the web, nor was I able to use the string as a needle to poke holes in anything solid.

It wasn't that hard to volare a nut, and unscrew it from a fixed bolt; or unscrew a screw. I couldn't pull out nails that were solidly hammered in, though.

If an object was falling, or in the middle of a throw, I had a bit of trouble 'catching' it; so I wasn't going to be able to snatch arrows out of mid-air. I was, however, able to volare a table and move it around as a shield.

I was able to cast the spell on a pair of heavy saddlebags, pushing them 'up' to effectively negate their weight - but when I walked forward, they simply slid back over my back, hovering in place. A bit of concentration let me fly them forward with me, as long as I didn't move faster than the spell's maximum local speed. Adding a strap over my chest kept them on my back even then - only I had to pull hard against the speed the spell was trying to move the object, which seemed about as hard as just trying to carry the bags naturally.

I was able to grab an object Micro was holding in her hoof... sometimes, and sometimes even when I did, she was able to grab it back.

The biggest weight I could pick up was about a ton - and doing that required draining the most capacious crystal I had, quite quickly. There didn't seem to be a limit on how small an object I could move - as long as I could see it to identify it. Sewing needles were a snap, a dust mote in a sunbeam danced to my will, and when I broke out the microscope, I was able to push a single microbe around. Oddly, though, no matter how small the object, pushing it used up the same amount of magical power as pushing a one-pound object.

When I had a small heap of salt and pepper mixed together, I could grab either the whole heap, or individual grains, but not 'just the salt'.

I was able to use 'volare' to hold one object against another, and then 'adherere' to get it to stick there (at least for as long as 'adhere' lasted, which was around ten minutes by default).

All of that was, of course, valuable to discover. And once I'd established such basic facts, I could start building more interesting techniques and tactics on them - such as sneaking my smallish bottle of pepper spray along the ceiling, to surprise somepony from behind. But even as I worked out the various details, limitations, and permutations, I still had the feeling that I was just playing with a computer's command-line interface... and doing poorly, at that, missing most of the commands, and without even a man page...

... Hm.

I then spent a good bit of time trying various versions of 'help', 'manual', 'guide', in whatever fancy Frenchified synonyms I could think of. Unfortunately, no handy tome of the underlying computational architecture appeared - not even a help-sheet of basic commands and standard switches. Still, if it had worked, that could have turned me from mildly clever cow to Sorceror Supreme in one go, so it'd been worth a shot.

Now that I was using French as my stepping stone to Latin, I had a few more ideas to try, many of which didn't work, but some of which added some decent entries for my spellbook. 'Fiat lux cerulus' created a nice blue light instead of 'Fiat lux''s standard white. 'Lumen' made for a nice overall glow, instead of a single point-source; and 'radius luminis' created a directional beam shining from whatever I cast it on - including my own horns. 'Lubricere' made for a good banana-peel effect. Armina was tossing and turning, and happy to let me try 'dormire' on her, and it knocked her out for a good eight hours.

Nopony was willing to let me try any version of 'vomitere' on them, no matter how many bonus points, or even bonus pay, I offered. Given my recent illnesses, I wasn't particularly willing to put my body under extra stress at the moment, either.

And that ended up being the pattern of things. Captain Red ran the ship, the crew settled into their jobs, I spent my time on various research projects, we all slept, ate, and played poker, and the ocean passed beneath us.

Then, one day, Blanche, on lookout duty, called out a sighting of a sail on the horizon...

Vikings are cool, right?

I was cheerfully puttering away in my lab, trying to set up an apparatus to try out a few variations of the double-slit experiment with my new light spells. Some of the gear had sub-millimeter tolerances, so I didn't want my heavy breathing to disturb it; so I'd pulled a piece of cloth over my muzzle, tied on behind my head like a surgeon's. However, since not only did it catch my hot breath, but also covered my nose - which, on a cow, is one of our main hot-spots for cooling off with, I'd used the spell 'frigere' on it, which was quite cool and pleasant. As I was trying to carve a nice, straight piece of cardboard 0.7 mm across, to divide a single slit into two, Captain Red's voice came through the speaking tube, "Owner to the bridge." Since she was using my title instead of my name, and curt ship-speak phrasing, I figured something important was going on; so I took a few seconds to make sure everything important and/or breakable was locked away, and listened to the engines' steady throbbing noises change in pitch.

When I trotted up the stairs into the bridge, Red was staring forwards through a pair of binoculars. Hearing me, she said, "Boat," and I hoofed up another pair of binocs against my goggles, aiming them in the direction she was looking. After a bit of searching, I finally found it - a simple, square-rigged sail, with a dozen vertical red-and-white stripes, dangling from a horizontal mast; a ship that looked like an oversized canoe, with a tall, Nessie-like figurehead; and as I focused in, I made out one further, rather interesting detail - a line of round shields.

"Hunh," I said.

"You recognize it?"

"Sort of. GREEN WELL has some info on ships like that - but I'm not sure how trustworthy it is." GREEN WELL was my codename for my general background information from Earth; in this case, anything from Hagar the Horrible comics to the movie 'How to Train Your Dragon' to what I'd read of history. "Keep your distance, for now - but try not to look like you're keeping your distance."

"Is that a serious order? How exactly are we supposed to?"

"I don't know - fly casual." Red whuffed her breath, then went to give Bouncer a few orders. While she was doing that, Micro came up, and snagged her binoculars.

"So what am I looking at?"

"That depends," I mused. "There's an old joke. How do you tell a Viking raider from a merchant?"

"Dare I spoil the humor by even trying to guess?"

"If you're better armed, he's a merchant." That got a snort out of her. Red came back, and took her binoculars back. "So - what info can you tell me to make some plans around?"

"Um. A whole lot, some more likely to be true than the rest. On an overall level... it comes down to food. Northern climes aren't great at the best of times, and even just due to random chance, there'll be some decades that are better than others. When there's more food, population increases. Then things get worse, and there's less food - and more people than can be fed. So there'll be bunches of people with literally nothing to lose, so they sail off to find someone to kill, other than their families, to take their stuff, including, if they can, the land. Most often, that's some nearby group who're in the same situation. Some of them spread out to other places, usually places they've traded with in the past, to raid and conquer and whatever. For complicated reasons, the outer edge of that group are... the least civilized. If we're lucky, that ship is trying to do some trading with the Griffin Dominion, or maybe the Zebracornian Isles. If we're less lucky, they're more interested in killing, pillaging, raping, and enslaving, but will pretend to be harmless traders if we're better armed. If we're quite unlucky, they're so uncivilized that they'll do anything in their power to kill us and steal our ship."

"Hm. Got any idea of what they'll fight with? Is it too much to hope for a nice, pleasant non-lethal pie-fight?"

"If they're using boats like that - then probably swords and axes, bows and maybe crossbows. No data on their magic - could be none, could be unicorns, could be something we're unfamiliar with. Might be a good idea to find out now, with a single ship, instead of arriving and having no clue what to expect."

"Right. In that case - I'd suggest we pull a Stalliongrad." Remembering what had happened to Blanche there, I shuddered. Red added, "With a few modifications."

I stretched out on a deck chair on the sterncastle, in my Star Trek outfit plus goggles and torc-cloak, sipping at a glass of ice juice and trying as hard as I could to look like I was so over-confident that I was completely relaxed. The rest of the crew were making themselves look busy, each one in one of the new blue uniform shirts. It was actually fairly pleasant, our relatively low speed still enough to give us a nice breeze, skimming close to the wave-tops. Blanche and Blast were up top with me, and just about everypony was watching the longboat closely for whatever hints about its crew we could gather... especially the increasing number of various pointy objects we could make out. If they were traders, they seemed to be some sort of door-to-door spear salesmen, so I reluctantly approved Plan Stalliongrad.

When we got close enough to be able to tell a diamond dog from a griffin - and that their crew included both - Red throttled down our main engines, so that we came to a stop... with their boat literally in our airship's shadow. Not to mention a ballista and cannon or two pointed at them from our observation deck.

Bouncer, waiting at the bow, spread her wings and glided down, to a four-point landing on their figurehead and perch there. Assuming she was following the script, she was then supposed to say, "My mistress, the great wizardess who deigns to allow you to call her 'Missy', is finally getting around to looking for a few things lost a few centuries ago. She desires to know if any of you have seen any of them, such as Scutum, which she has described as 'round and sort of glowy'. She offers great reward to any who assist her, but great wrath to those who even attempt to deceive her, for, as she says, 'you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup'."

(According to some of my forbidden texts, Children of the Alicorn, such as ponies and cows, actually could eat meat - it was merely the local cultural preference for vegetarianism that led to them throwing up whenever they tried it.)

At that point, I really wished I'd finished figuring out how to upgrade CAT WHISKER to full voice - I wanted to know exactly what was being said as one of the vikings - a griffin, it looked like - stepped up to their bow and talked with Bouncer. After a few exchanges, Bouncer looked back up at us, gave a pre-arranged hoof sign, and pointed at another member of the crew - a diamond dog with a horned helmet. I squinted, dropped one hoof under my seat to the bowl of glittery gems, and muttered, "Volare".

In less than a minute, I landed the wriggling diamond dog on the deck before me, followed in moments by Bouncer and the griffin she'd been talking to, whose head-feathers made a sort of crest. The dog looked at me, at Bouncer, back at me, then asked Bouncer, "Is that...?"

I gave a snort. "Don't be fooled by appearances. I'm spending the year as a cow for tax reasons."

He and the griffin looked at each other, then back at me, then the dog said, "Then who - what -"

I rolled my eyes dramatically. "If you think you know, do tell me - I'm curious which of the many and contradictory hints I'm dropping are the ones you pick up on. If my pegasus failed to inform you, you may address me as 'Missy', as I choose to keep my other names to myself for now." I took a sip of juice slushee from my straw, and idly stirred my bowl of sparklies with my hoof.

The griffin growled - an interesting switch - and said, "I think you're full of hot air - and that you're my lunch!"

He started striding toward me, so I murmured a quick "Adherere," my earlier experiments back at the Dairy having let me know exactly the minimum volume I needed to work this sort of magic were. As I expected, and he didn't, he found himself stuck in place - and unable to even spread his wings. I merely raised an eyebrow. "You come onto my ship, and threaten me? You certainly have balls. Perhaps I'll snack on them." I put down my drink, reached into the other bowl, pulled out a piece of Armina's smoked jerky, and popped it into my mouth.

As I started chewing, the griffin started spewing forth a rather impressive array of curses, imprecations, and invocations. I made a note of some of them for cultural purposes, then swallowed the jerky, and said, as if idly commenting, "I grow bored of your noise." I whispered a nigh-inaduible, "Vomitere," and the griffin's profanity was cut off as he choked, then started heaving out his previous meals onto the deck.

At this point, the diamond dog threw himself forward, kneeling, then bending over to press his forehead onto the wooden planks. "Mistress Missy," he said, "Please forgive my first mate. He is headstrong and good in a fight, but he doesn't know anything about how to show proper respect to a, uh, cow of your power." The griffin tried to say something, but was interrupted both by another heave and the diamond dog loudly whispering, "Shut up, Gord!" Back to a normal voice, he said to me, "I beg of you not to do anything permanent to him. I take full responsibility for him. I give you my word that I'll punish him severely once he's back on my ship."

I glared at him. "Do not make a trifling oath with me - I have ways of forcing you to fulfill every last detail of a promise, whether you desire to or not. I can even ensorcel you to tell the truth, whether you will or no - I occasionally find the results of that amusing to watch, though at the moment, I am more amused by allowing you to keep your free will about that, to see what you will do with it."

"I... he's my good friend, Missy, and important to me and to my crew, and I don't want him killed like this."

"Hm." I sipped at my drink. "He has made something of a mess here." Gord managed a pretty good glare at me. "So if he cleans it up and leaves, then I'll be willing to forget about him."

"Yes, Your Ladyship! I mean, Mistress Missy! I mean-"

"Just 'Missy' will do." I whispered a quick "Nullus magicae," and Gord the griffin fell to the deck as his claws and paws detached, and took a few deep breaths as his stomach returned to normal. I glanced at Blast. "Go get him a mop and such."

"I still want to kill you," said Gord.

"Many do," I said casually. "I still want to use you as an experimental subject. Perhaps see if I can reverse the direction of your guts permanently. Shall we see which of us is more able to get what they want from the other?" Blast came back with a mop and bucket. Gord looked at me, at his puke... then, with another growl, grabbed the mop with one foreclaw, and went to work swabbing the deck.

As that was being done, I examined the diamond dog captain. "Now then. Remind me of why I brought you aboard, again?"

"Your, um, pegasus - she said you were looking for some, uh, glowy things you lost a few centuries ago?"

"I doubt she said quite that, but it sounds close enough. Do you know where one is?"

"Yes. I mean, sort of. I mean - I've heard some stories about some things like that, and I can show you on a map which countries they were said to be in."

I yawned, just a touch dramatically. "I don't bother keeping up with such petty details - I have a navigator, below, you can talk to. ... What are you still waiting here for?"

As he scurried down the stairs to meet up with Red in the bridge, I watched Gord finish up mopping. His beak somehow curled into a grin. "You're a dragon, aren't you?"

"Saying either 'yes' or 'no' would kind of defeat the point of hinting, wouldn't it?"

"I think you're a green dragon pretending to be a blue one, stuck as a cow and pretending you did it on purpose."

"How do you know I'm not a blue dragon pretending to be all of that?"

"Mostly because I remember one of the stories Dug mentioned - you're Fraenir, aren't you?"

"Neither confirm nor deny, yadda yadda yadda."

"I always thought it was a bit convenient how you let yourself die, and just in time to pass on the cursed treasure."

"I can still sink your ship, you know."

"And turn me inside out, or use my skin as a disguise, and so on. But if you're coming back, after all this time... you know, it's probably a good thing we're heading the other way. Maybe I'll just look for a nice local griffiness and settle down for a few years - like, the rest of my life."

Instead of answering, I picked up another piece of jerky to chew on.

"Is that - that is, can I?" I shrugged, and he picked up a piece for himself. "Hunh. It really is rabbit meat, isn't it? And you're not even queasy."

Dug the dog insisted on letting Gord the griffin carry him, instead of letting me magic him back to his boat. I didn't argue.

When they were well out of earshot, Blast asked, "So - who's this 'Fraenir' he was talking about?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

(Author's Note: pwildani has put together a couple of illustrations for Missy's logo, which can be seen here and here.

Fourth Wall of Text

"Red."

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I have a doubt."

"I don't. ... What about?"

We looked over the railing at the longship, as the crew started breaking out the oars. "Does that look like a bunch of people planning on finding a spot to peacefully homestead?"

"Not at all - but if we stop to deal with every raider and tyrant who we come across, we'll spend all our time on that, and not on saving the whole planet."

"Just because we've got bigger fish to fry, doesn't mean we have to catch-and-release even piranhas."

"Ma'am?"

"Sorry - carnivore metaphor. Blanche? Come over here a sec."

"Yes'm?"

"I want you to go back down there before we head our separate ways. Apparently I'm not just a wizardess, I'm some sort of dragon, so I'm allowed to be capricious. Tell them... something along the lines that I was just looking at the sun glinting off their spears, and I just remembered that I forgot to ask them if they had any shinies and sparklies they wanted to give me. Completely of their own free will and without any coercion expressed or implied."

"'Sparklies'?"

"Gems, gold - whatever. It's mostly just an excuse to get you down there - but that's not for them to know. The actual reason is, I want you to try to give them directions to Manehattan, and, oh, let's say a level six Dairy contact protocol, with a job offer for security guards, or caravan guards, or the like - some way they can make money with the violence it looks like they enjoy, by doing good for others. This is a one-shot attempt to redirect them to a more socially acceptable path. Maybe suggest they surrender their glinty weapons if they have no other tribute to offer - be creative, just make sure you can fly back here, alright?"

"I think I get the picture. See you in a jiffy!"

"That was bizarre," Blanche said upon her return.

"Do I want to know?"

"Well - when I told them about getting jobs as guards or police officers... they started singing."

"I thought I heard some sort of chorus. What was it about?"

"Let me see if I can remember how it goes..."

We! Love! Violence!

With a badge and truncheon
Your right to silence ends, mare,

as soon as we go punch in.
But if you choose to join us -

the choice is clearly yours -
we'll swear that you'll be legal

when we batter down the doors!

I leaned my head against the railing. "Okay, now I'm starting to think that the spontaneous musicalism field is just messing with us."

"Hunh." I ran my hoof through the contents of the wooden box Blanche had carried up, picking up a few of the sparkly gems, and letting them dribble back down. "I didn't actually think they had anything like this to give - or, at least, that if they had, they'd come up with some way to offer a less expensive tribute."

Amethyst snorted a bit. "Cheap. Gems," she announced her evaluation.

"Well, I'll take your word for it. Since we've got them - I'll give 'em all a quick check to see if any are decent at holding magic, and you can add the rest to the pantry. Or maybe you can pick some to make the bowl of sparklies more impressive for the next time. S'alright?"

She shrugged, then nodded.

Micro helped me run the new pile of gems through a charging sequence; we were getting familiar enough with the process that she could sense a sort of 'resistance' as they got close to being filled with magical power, without over-filling and shattering them. (Amethyst had let me know that it didn't seem to affect their taste, but not breaking food unnecessarily was sort of a habit; back when I'd eaten eggs regularly, I'd always tried to crack them without breaking the yolks, even if I was about to stir them up anyway.)

"Hm," I said thoughtfully, holding up a nice purply one.

"Hm, what?" Micro said, absently, dumping power into a smooth, translucent white one.

"I'm just remembering an old physics game. 'Follow the energy'. Since, at least in general, energy can be neither created nor destroyed, merely moved around and changed into different patterns... whenever you see something that looks like energy coming from nowhere, or disappearing, it can be useful and fun to try finding it. Almost all of the time, it all ends up coming from the sun."

"Mm - doesn't seem that exciting. A cannonball's kinetic energy obviously comes from the energy stored in the chemical bonds of the propellant, mostly the potassium nitrate, which was fixated by organic processes, by organisms who ate food and breathed air, provided by plants, which collected sunshine."

"That's true - but I'm once again realizing that I'm missing some rather fundamental details, of the sort I'm used to already knowing - or, at least, knowing that I can find out just by grabbing a handy book. I'm looking at this - whatever this purple thing is - and I'm trying to figure out what makes it different, on a fundamental level, when it's fully charged, compared to when it's not. It doesn't seem to be a chemical change - Amethyst says charged gems taste the same as uncharged ones. It's not bigger or smaller, so it doesn't seem to be stretching out the crystal structure, at least not enough to cover the full amount of energy involved. It seems to be independent of having electrons poured into it, such as when it's part of a radio circuit. A fully-charged gem releases photons - but simple light can shine in and out of transparent gems without changing the magic stored. Similarly, other bosons don't seem to have anything like the required properties - which means even E8 Theory's predicted particles aren't any help - and neither do neutrinos. One option I am considering, is that what storing magic in gems actually does, is something along the lines of changing some of the electrons to muons or tau particles; or some of the up and down quarks in the nuclei into more exotic ones. But I'm also guessing that I'm only considering that option because I don't actually remember enough details about quantum field theory to rule out those ideas as being laughably impossible... for example, I can't remember just how short the average lifetimes of muons and taus are - whether they're measured in microseconds or hours. But, ruling it out would unfortunately leave me with the highly unsatisfying 'caloric' model, positing some sort of vaguely electromagnetic field permeating all of space, and which just so happens to be able to be manipulable by living beings and storable in inorganic crystals.

"You do realize that at least half a dozen of the words you were just using were complete nonsense, right?"

"Tell me that again when you've learned how to permanently transmute elements. In the meantime, none of that, of course, even comes close to a theory describing how any of that stored magic can be used to do, well, magical stuff, like the way you can shrink living ponies... including reducing their mass, without altering their biology sufficiently to prevent conscious thought, while still allowing them to breathe normal-sized molecules of oxygen. The energy required to do that should be enough to melt your horn right off your head - which seems to provide some indirect evidence that the overall magical field, for lack of a better word, has some sort of mind-like property outside of the minds of living ponies, a property which can listen for Latin-gem spells, and provide complicated lyrics and choreography to ponies who've never rehearsed. And I really don't have any good idea about what sort of substrate such a mind-like thing could exist on at all... which brings me, once again, back to the caloric field theory."

"So, what's wrong with that?"

"A good theory should be able to make new predictions, not just be fitted to the existing evidence and be changeable to fit whatever new evidence happens to come across. All 'caloric' does is replace the mysteriousness of 'magic' with another mysterious word. It sounds scientific, and it comes a step closer to being science than no theory at all - but it just doesn't quite do the job. In the meantime - if neither the muon or tau have sufficient lifespans... then maybe the 'magicon' is a fourth generation in the same sequence - or a zeroth." I sighed. "Or - I could be on the wrong track entirely from another perspective, and instead of using classical-type particle physics, I'd really need to wrap my mind around physics being about amplitude configurations... but I hope it doesn't come to that, since even when I have managed to hold that idea in my head, I've kept losing track of the details. About all I remember about this is a clever experiment involving a photon emitter, some half-silvered mirrors and full mirrors, and a couple of photon detectors, but even confirming it wouldn't seem to help with the problems I'm thinking about... though I might use it if I ever need to really impress someone with my mysterious scientific knowledge. For now... that seems to be the last gem. Any good ones?"

"All duds, as far as I can tell. A few thaums, each, at best."

"Oh well - they're still pretty little things. Hm... I wonder what chemicals in a pony's body actually carry the magical energy. For non-magical energy, the usual energy carrier is ATP - adenosine triphosphate - and using a lot of spells can tire a unicorn out... maybe there's some enzyme which takes the energy from ATP, and uses it to, if not create magical energy from scratch, help draw it in from the surrounding magical field and ley lines? Say - if I got Stoke to build me a centrifuge, would you be willing to let me have a few blood samples to try testing?"

"No."

"I wouldn't need much."

"Still no."

"It would be for science."

"Less of a no - but no."

"Just a few quick tests could potentially rule out any detectable changes to the blood as a carrier of magical energy. Then we could - hm. Well, if the blood was the same, how about some horn or hoof scrapings? I'm pretty sure both marrow and neural tissue are non-starters."

"Aaaand you've just turned my 'no' into an absolute and permanent one."

"I could say 'please' in a whiny voice for a few hours..."

"I could hide all your gems from you, and then levitate you into the ocean."

"Fair enough. If I do get a volunteer for any such samples, are you up to helping me test them?"

"... Maybe."

"I know it's your ship," Red said judiciously, "but is there any particular reason you're scribbling on the walls?"

"I needed a whiteboard for a concept map, and this is the closest I've got. The writing is in the GREEN WELL alphabet. I started with what we've found out so far from Dug and his ship-"

"He mentioned it was called the Bob."

"Good to know." I jotted that down near the words related to boats, then paused ."Nobody ever mentioned the name 'McKenzie', did they?"

"Not that I heard. Why? Who's that?"

"... Hopefully, completely unrelated. Anyway - by putting it all down, and in front of me, I was able to help myself remember a few things. One - GREEN WELL has two different sorts of vikings; the actual ones that lived and breathed, and the standardized fictional portrayal of them. You know how rich ponies are usually drawn wearing top-hats and monocles, whether they really wear them or not? For the past, oh, century or two, vikings were usually drawn wearing helmets with horns, or occasionally wings - but the real ones never actually wore such things. Which means that Bob and Dug down there could be closer to GREEN WELL's fictional vikings than the historical ones. Which brings narrative causality into the picture. Which is why I've been trying to jot down notes on all the viking-related stories I could think of. When I started reaching out from just Norse vikings to Germanic culture in general, I ran out of paper."

"These drawings are very... primitive."

"Give me a break - my penmanship's always been atrocious. And I'm drawing from memory of a comic strip. That bunch is supposed to be Hagar the Horrible and his family and neighbors. Here's where I remembered about berserkers, and their connections to werewolves and other shapeshifters. Here's a list of the ancient mythological figures I could think of - Wodan, Loki, Donarr. Who's sometimes known as Thor, who was portrayed more recently as a superhero."

"Figure out who 'Fraenir' is?"

"Nope. Closest I can think of is 'Fafnir', who, according to different versions of the story, was a giant or dwarf who stole a treasure, whose greed for it turned him into a dragon, and who got killed off by the hero - Sigurd or Siegfried or the like. Who then ate his heart and got some magical powers out of it. If Gord thinks I'm a dragon, I'm pretty sure Fraenir's story wouldn't have had his heart get eaten - so I'm not planning on relying too much on that source. ... of course, since this is about all I've been able to remember of that source, there's not much for me to rely on, anyway."

"Is there anything that's actually of any use?"

"So far? I've remembered a few song-type things which I might be able to use to create a distraction by deliberately inducing musicalism. Since I'm not sure how the whole process works, and at least one trope which narrative causality might use is that going into too much detail about a plan means that the plan's going to fail, but not revealing the details until the plan's in effect means it's still a surprise to the reader and thus can work, I'm not writing them down or even mentioning them aloud."

"... You know, I'm not even going to bother objecting about how insane that sounds, and just ask if there's anything you can say about what we can do to help out with that."

"Mm... let Armina have a fairly free claw in hunting for as much meat as we can store. And if you ever hear me give out a seemingly off-pitch but oddly harmonic scream - you should probably duck."

The Villagers Are Revolting

We tried sneaking up on the new continent, looking for a small, isolated settlement we could sail into to learn more about the local culture. Our first attempt ran into immediate problems. First, the Mikoyan wasn't all that great at moving in the water - it was an airship that landed in the water, not a ship that could fly. Second, the village we picked had some vessels of its own, which were quickly rowed out to meet us, with lots of wolf-like diamond dogs holding pointy sharp things aimed in our general direction. And third... it turned out that none of the locals seemed to speak English (or Equestrian), and nobody on our ship spoke whatever vaguely Germanic tongue it was they were speaking. Looked like Dug and Gord might have been the exceptions rather than the rule.

When we tried to talk to the local naval militia, and didn't attack right away, they seemed to relax a bit; not enough to invite us into their homes, but enough to sit down and try some of the ancient methods people have always used when introduced without a common language: drawings and exaggerated gestures. Red and Micro sat on our deck with whichever of their folk were interested, while the rest of the crew kept an eye out for any skullduggery, watching the locals who were watching us.

This was a rather slow way of communicating even the simplest idea, so I tried murmuring a few synonyms for 'translate' while running my hoof through my bowl of gems, trying different suffices... and hit a jackpot with 'interpretari'. Suddenly, when the wolfish villagers said something in their tongue, I also 'heard', without hearing the sounds, something in English, which seemed to be what they meant. At their surprised looks when Micro said something, I suspected they were now 'hearing' what she meant in their native language. One more point for the spaghetti method of spell discovery.

Since 'Plan Stalliongrad' still seemed to be one of our best options, I languidly announced from my deck chair, "I grow weary with this delay over mere trifles," as my excuse.

One of the wolves whispered to another something that I heard as, 'I thought she was the buffet.' Red and Micro filled their roles by hurriedly disabusing him of the notion with faked nervous glances in my direction.

Red said, "How long will this magic last, Missy?"

I internally grimaced - I didn't actually know the answer, and I thought Red should have known better than to risk the disguise by asking. But I gave a vague wave. "For as long as it amuses me, of course." I hoped she understood what I meant, and she seemed to, for she turned back to the wolves with some rapid-fire questions about reprovisioning, shore leave, what they'd expect as trade goods, who to get in touch with if there was a conflict between a crewpony and a villager, and so on.

By my count, after sixty seconds, I stopped 'hearing' the translations, so I guessed that that was the spell's default duration. I muttered "Interpretari" again, with a bit more mental oomph, which, if it followed the same system as the other spells I'd experimented with, should let it last for five minutes. There were a few confused looks during the second or so the spell's effect was down, then some shrugs as it came back.

Glancing around, I saw Tranquil Valley nearby, and gestured her over. "Grab a pen, ask questions, and put together as much of a phrasebook as you can before the spell runs out." She nodded, and joined the others at the table.

I called Amethyst out of the background. "I want you," I said to her, but mostly for the wolves with their keen ears pointed in my direction, "to find our newest crew to make sure they understand my rules. They are free to respond to words with words; to nonlethal fighting with nonlethal fighting, as in a friendly bar brawl; and to lethal attacks with lethal force. I have no intention of wasting my time and resources laying waste to this village due to them escalating without my authorization, so be sure they know that if they throw the first punch, or draw weapons in response to a slap, I will treat them as if they had so attacked me." Amethyst simply nodded, as I'd expected her to, and faded back into the background again.

"Captain," I said to Red.

"Yes, Missy?"

"You're always complaining to me about needing more money for your expenses. So ask these... people if any of them wish to be carried anywhere, faster than their own ships go; or to have messages or parcels sent. That sort of thing."

One of the wolves grated, 'Faster? Your ship has almost no sails, and needs clumsy pontoons just to keep from tipping over. Why should we pay you anything?"

I smiled at him. "I'm glad you asked. Red? Shall we give these kind gentlemen a quick trip around the harbor?"

Red glanced at them. "Interested? You might want to tell your own ships not to worry - and definitely not to shoot at us for moving unexpectedly."

There was a bit of shouting back and forth, and Red calling orders into a speaking tube, and some rather smug and unbelieving wolves merely humoring us, expecting our boast to fall apart at any moment.

And then our side propellers spun up, and the Mikoyan rose out of the water. The looks on the wolves' faces were... surprisingly gratifying.

After the promised once around the harbor, and a renewed translation spell as we landed (or should that be 'seaed'?), the wolves were more than happy to put their weapons away. Maybe it was the fact that they saw their longhouses from above, and thought about what we could do to them without them being able to do anything to us in return; maybe it was that we could do such things, but were making it clear that we wouldn't, unless they started things; maybe it was just the sheer joy as they leaned over the side of the railing, jaws open and tongues flapping in the wind from how fast we were going. Whatever their reasoning, I wasn't going to complain about it.

The village was fairly small, and simply designed; it was divided into four quarters, each of which consisted of four longhouses around a courtyard, a couple of which had a building or two in the middle. Around that was an earthen berm and ditch. Maybe seven, eight hundred wolves, all told.

I took a look at Valley's notes so far - and grimaced. Most of the words were familiar in sound - but just different enough to be completely incomprehensible, unless you already knew what they were. For example, in one column, she'd written, "Null, eyin, too, threya, feere, fem, seks, shu, otte, nee, tee, elleve, tolv, tretten, fyorten, femten, seisten, khitten, otten, neeten, tyue." I didn't even have to look at the corresponding Equestrian column to know what they meant; and now that I'd seen them, I just might be able to pick those particular words out of a conversation... but only if I'd refreshed my memory beforehand. I couldn't tell, from this sample, whether the local tongue descended from Equestrian (which, as far as I could tell, had been copied from Earthly English, given the well-documented cases where English words were known to have been coined, such as 'okay', which showed up here in Equestria), or the reverse, or if they'd both descended from some common ancestor... and, I supposed, it didn't really make much difference at this point.

I didn't want us to become too dependent on the translation spell, and I didn't want to give any hints to the villagers about what the limits of our magic might be, so I didn't renew the spell after we came back down, and we all had to use copies of Valley's notes as the basis for a simplified pidgin to try to make ourselves understood. It seemed to work well enough, at least to the degree that everybody was spending their time trying to explain themselves to each other instead of bashing each other over the head, and since the whole purpose of this visit was to get us more used to interacting with the local culture, I was quite willing to leave everybody to it.

"I've been cooped up on the ship for a while," I said to anypony in earshot. "I think I'll take a walk around the place. Fresh air, exercise. Anypony want to ask them if there are any cow-eating monsters I need to watch for?" This resulted in a flurry of hand-waving conversations, as the Mikoyan's crew tried to get across the question in various ways, listened in on what words other crew used that worked, and so on. In less than a minute the general impression came back that there were lots of things that could eat me, but they were all either eaten themselves or chased away.

I nodded, and packed my usual arsenal anyway, plus an extra few pocketfuls of gems, now that I'd found more uses for them. I made sure that Red saw me push a CAT WHISKER into a pannier bag, and saw her order Blanche to keep a watch from the top of the Mikoyan's mainmast.

The landscape reminded me a lot of pictures I'd seen of Scotland - seashore and rolling hills, boggy type areas in the lowest spots, an ever-present smell of peat - which was at least mildly more pleasant than most of the scents from the village. I could probably turn the whole expedition into a massively profitable one just by introducing proper sanitation - and even if there wasn't a bit to be made from it, it might still be worth it.

While I was halfway around the village from the harbor, experimentally munching on a bit of local grass, my CAT WHISKER started buzzing. I sighed, turned around, and started trotting, listening to the buzzes as I went, so that by the time I reached the spot of trouble, I had a good idea what I was about to see: Athos, sitting on the ground with a black eye, while Porthos and Aramis stood protectively over him, baring their teeth at one of the locals, while Gallant Heart and Berry Blast stood between them, trying, unsuccessfully, to calm things down.

"Right," I said. "Interpretari. One of you at a time talk - you'll all get a turn. Athos?"

"He hit me!"

"Did you hit him first?"

"No!"

"Right. Would you care to say anything?" I said to the wolf.

He crossed his arms over his chest. 'I don't gotta say nuthin' to you.'

"Maybe you haven't heard. These are my men. What they do, it is in my name, and as if I had done it. What is done to them, it is as if it were done to me."

'You sayin' you are their chief?'

"As far as I know - sure."

'Right. Then you owe me the weregild.'

"... What weregild?"

'For insultin' me!'

I sighed. "What insult!"

'He called me a mare!'

I closed me eyes for a moment to rub my forehead. "You do realize that they don't know your language, and are working from some very rough notes?"

'Doesn't matter. They said it, they owe - or you owe, if you're in charge of 'em.'

"I see. Well, no, I don't. I offer my apology - no insult was intended."

'Not good enough. Not when he called me a mare.'

"... What, exactly, is wrong with being called a mare?"

'Are you stupid?'

"Maybe, maybe not. Pretend I am if it helps. I ask again - what's the insult?"

'Calling anyone a female's fighting words!'

"... Anyone. Hm. Pretend I'm stupid for one more time - could you tell me what I am?"

'You're... a cow?'

"Are those fighting words?"

'Uh... no?'

"Then there's no reason for anything like them to be fighting words."

'Wait - yeah, yeah those are fighting words!"

"Then since he used fighting words to you, and you used fighting words to me - it all balances out, and nopony owes anypony anything."

'Who're you calling a pony, you pony!?'

I sighed again. "What will it take to make this all go away?"

'Like I said - you owe me a weregild. Gold on the barrelhead. Or,' he snorted a laugh, 'you can try backing up your words in a duel.'

"Tell me more about such duels."

I stared at the small fighting circle - if I stretched out, I could reach one side with my forehooves and the other with my hindhooves; it was quite close quarters. "No blows have been struck yet. This can all still just go away, peacefully - no harm, no insult, no foul. I'll even throw in a nice ride on my ship, or a delivery, free of charge, to show there are no hard feelings."

'Nuh-uh,' he grunted. I'd kind of expected that, since some other wolves, including some greyer looking older ones, had started drifting over and watching matters.

I shrugged. "In that case - just to be clear - one foot... or hoof, I guess - outside the lines is a 'flinch', and two is 'fleeing' and the loss, right?"

'Yeah. You gonna back out now?'

I thought through the various options I had available to me. It would be easy enough to just pay the... jock the fine he demanded; it would be a dent in our remaining dragon's gold, but quite doable. On the other hoof... if I did that, then with the limited language skills my crew had, it would probably be moments until other villages demanded weregild of their own from purely innocuous statements, until our coffers were empty. Which meant that paying him off merely delayed the issue, and didn't solve it. And since the local dueling system included a relatively bloodless, sumo-like variant - if I could win this, then we wouldn't have to worry about any such weregild claims. And even if I lost, I had a few ideas in mind to make the best of things.

"No," I answered him. I waited a few moments, timing the end of the translation spell, then stepped into the circle. I settled my hooves firmly into place... and whispered, "Adherere," and "Interpretari. In a more normal tone of voice, I said to him, "Begin."

Confidently, he strode into the ring; and when I made no move to defend myself, placed his hands under his belly to heave me up and over.

The results were somewhat comical. I encouraged him, "Try again."

He heaved. He lifted. He pulled. He pushed.

My hooves stayed as firmly on the ground as if they'd been glued there.

"Are you done yet?"

'No!'

"I just want you to feel that you've done your best."

'Shut up! Maybe I can't push you - but you still have to push me out, and I don't think you can!'

"Interesting. So - what you're saying is, right now, your greatest wish is to remain in this circle?"

'I can wait you out!'

"I want to be absolutely sure and clear about this."

'Yeah - I wanna stay right here, in the circle, longer than you!'

I nodded pleasantly. "Then I grant you your wish." As the translation spell ran out again, I whispered "Adherere" again, focusing on him, and "Nullus magicae" while thinking on my own hooves, and finally "Interpretari." Aloud, I said, "I shall now end the duel," and stepped back over the line.

He bared his teeth in a smile. 'You surrender, you owe me weregild," he stated.

"I have been told of the custom," I acknowledged. "Would the next step be going to my ship to count it out for you?"

'Yeah!' he agreed... and then blinked a few times... and then, as his legs tensed as he tried to move them, frowned. 'Huh?'

"I granted you your wish. You said you wanted to stay in the circle - so I made things happen so that you would stay in the circle."

'You... you cheated!'

"I did? How? Cheating is done to win - and I just lost."

'But... but... the duel's over! I can come out now!'

"You said you wanted to stay in their longer than me. You didn't say how much longer."

He was starting to look panicked. I tried to keep myself from feeling a gloat. I wasn't entirely successful. 'You... you gotta let me out! I can't stay here forever!'

I shrugged. "I don't see why. I have been more than generous. I have followed your customs. I offered, several times, to resolve our differences peacefully. I have granted your stated heartfelt wish. In return, you have been rude, insulting, combative, and generally unfriendly. I see no reason I owe you a single favor, or the benefit of any doubt. I think that I shall simply leave you alone, from now on." I turned my tail on him, and glanced at the greymuzzle. "By the way, I haven't been keeping track - is it the heat of summer or the cold of winter that's coming next?"

'Wait!'

I sighed, and looked over my shoulder at him. "What is it now? I've got to go to my ship to collect some weregild to dump next to you."

'I'm sorry?'

"... Is that it?"

'Maybe? I don't know! What do you want?'

"I offered you an apology - and you refused it, demanding weregild instead."

'You don't have to pay me! Or, you can pay me a weregild, and I can pay you one, and then we're even, right?'

I tilted my head, considering. "It's enough to gain my attention back, at least."

'What else is there?'

"Saying 'I'm sorry' is just words. Half of a real apology is making amends - which you have just offered. The other half is making some sort of change to keep it from happening again."

'I don't understand.'

I sighed. "Once I leave on my pretty flying ship, what's to keep you from pulling the exact same stunt on the next crew that comes by?"

'I won't! I promise I won't!'

"Promises are words, like 'I'm sorry', and can be as empty of meaning. What consequences will you face if that promise is broken?"

The greymuzzle I'd asked about the seasons stepped forward. 'I think you've made your point, Fair Lady. We'll take care of him if he steps out of line again.'

"The way you took care of him up to this point?"

'We have seen your ship. We know that if you ever hear any word about him, you can destroy us as thoroughly as any dragon. And so I swear to you - on my hearth and by the lives of my children - that if you undo your enchantment, we will not allow him to claim insult for words meant in innocence."

I looked around, at the crowd and at the wolf standing in the duel circle. "Does this seem fair and just to you?" There was a general chorus of nods and agreement. I walked back up to my erstwhile opponent, and looked at him up and down. "Five minutes," I finally said. "I give you five more minutes to stay there, and ponder what your life would be like, there, save for the promises and good faith of your neighbors. Then you will be free to choose where to go, as you were before." I turned around and walked away.

That night, while in the middle of a dream, I felt a sharp, stabbing pain in the middle of my back, and woke up, to discover that the formerly-glued wolf was now in the process of stabbing me in my back...

Law of the Land, Law of the Sea

Lots of people have said this in much more eloquent ways than I can - so I'll just say that having a knife in your back hurts.

I hadn't actually started swallowing gems to make sure I'd always have a few spare thaums nopony could take away from me, but I did keep a few of the things nearby - so moments after I woke up, my assailant had been volared up to the ceiling, adherere'd spread-eagled against it, dormired into unconsciousness, and if I'd known a spell that would have turned him into a pigeon, I probably would have used that, too.

Other than taking care of him - I was rather bewildered and confused. I didn't know where my glasses or goggles were so everything was blurry, I had a knife sticking out of my back, the pups were bawling, and ponies and diamond dogs were running around and shouting.

"Everypony... Shaddap!" Captain Red strode into the area. Most of the antics came to a halt. Red started barking orders to individuals, such as, "You - don't move!" to me, "Micro - doctor her up," to our resident scientist, and "Check for other infiltrators," "Lift us into the air," "Get one of the local head honchos here," and other captainy things.

I was still rather distracted by a knife sticking in my back, and sighed in relief - mental, if not necessarily physical - as Micro carefully removed the thing. "I don't know what sort of metal this thing is made of - bog iron just hammered out? - but it's flaking off... lots of flakes in the wound. I need to get 'em out fast, to minimize infection - so instead of trying to use tweezers, I'm just going to shrink myself down and pull 'em out with my own hooves. Try not to move."

I remembered another spell I knew of, and cast "Pax" on myself - and sighed in relief as the pain... well, it didn't go away, exactly, but it didn't demand my attention quite so insistently. I was also suddenly much less squicked out by the idea of a miniature pony pushing her way inside my flesh - maybe I should rename that particular enchantment the 'hippie spell'.

Red grabbed hold of my head with two hooves, and aimed my gaze at her - I realized she'd been trying to get my attention. "Missy," she said, "stay with me. I want to put him in the brig. I need you to let him down now."

"Right. Right. One second. Gem please?" She hoofed one into my hoof. "Thank you." I looked up at the bipedal wolf, and glared a bit. "Nullu - waitasec. Shouldn't somepony be holding him to keep him from falling? Or are we doing a 'bad cop, worse cop' thing?" Red sighed, and flapped up there herself. "Nullus magicae," I stated, and he caught his weight, handing him over to at least two of our Guard ponies as he woke up and started struggling.

From behind me, I heard a tiny voice, "I think that's all the contamination. Bad news is I think he nicked a kidney. Good news is I should be able to do some stitches, and then magic can do the rest." I relayed her request for surgical thread and such... and, once she was done, out, and back to her normal size, I started running through some of the Latinesque phrases I'd used on Athos after goring him. This time, Micro started writing down notes on her observations for which ones seemed to help best.

After a while, Micro said, "As long as you keep some bandages on, it should be safe enough for you to move around. What's left is pretty much just a flesh wound - and I'd rather let your body heal naturally, for the rest of the way. We've got no idea of the long-term effects of these spells - as just one potential problem, we don't want you to have to rely on them for every bit of healing you do."

"So," I said, as she went about taping some gauze into place, "I seem to remember somepony mentioning the brig, right?"

"No," came Red's voice, as she turned the corner.

"No?" I raised a brow at her.

"No, you're not going to the brig to do... anything."

I tilted my head. "I'm not disagreeing - but I am curious why I'm not."

"Because this ship is still flying the Equestrian flag - and Equestrian law still rules, here. Which means, as captain, I have a certain legal authority - and while we may not have enough ponies aboard for a full civilian trial, that wolf does still possess certain rights under the law."

I hmfed a little. Before coming to Equestria, I'd thought of myself as being on the libertarian end of the political scale; and had tried to retain as many of those principles as I could, even while working directly with a pair of Princesses and their government. I felt a minor urge to regain some of my political cred by declaring all ties between me and an imperfect government were severed - but my political leanings were subordinate to my rather larger desires to minimize existential risks... and on that scale, it was still worth my while to keep working with the two alicorns whose magic pushed the sun and moon around Equis; and, thus, to let Red keep running things her way.

"We also," I said, "have the right to self-defense. So how about a quick truth-zap, with the only questions being to see if he knows of anyone else getting ready to attack any or all of us? If we're in danger - it seems a good idea to know about it. And if we're not - the violation of his rights will have been the minimal required to establish that."

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow. "Are you sure? Aren't you the one who was writing those letters to the Princesses about how the truth spell should be considered assault?"

I shrugged. "Rights are the things you don't do to others, because you don't want them done to you. If I ever sneak aboard a ship to try to murder an innocent person in their sleep, and I get caught - I think I'm kind of okay with that ship's crew truth-zapping that insane version of me to find out if they've got more attackers to worry about."

"I can work with that. Still - stay here, I'll grab a truth wand and take care of it. I don't want the two of you anywhere near each other yet."

"Don't worry," I said to the greymuzzle, the same one I'd talked to just after the duel, "your children, whom you swore your oath by, are safe. He attacked me, he didn't insult me, and so your promise to restrain him from insult remains unbroken."

Red had pulled out the round-table format again, with everypony involved sitting around. This included her, me, my assailant (with ropes binding him to his chair, and more keeping his jaw shut), a couple of the local greymuzzles, and plenty of guards between us all to make sure nobody had any opportunity to attack anybody else.

'I do not understand,' said one of the wolves. 'If, as you say, he was caught in the act, why not just kill him and be done with it? What do you need us for?'

I answered, "For various complicated reasons that would take too long to get into right now, I'm currently trying to minimize the number of deaths I'm involved in."

Red gave me a momentary glare, then turned to the pair and added, "The laws aboard this ship are that while the use of lethal force in self-defense is... possible, if discouraged if non-lethal alternatives are available; I am not to kill a prisoner who is safely contained, and not posing a direct and immediate threat. This does leave me with a few options. One is to keep him in our brig until we return to the land I came from, and then hand him over to the judges and jails and so on there. This is... not necessarily the best option, as it's likely to be some time before that happens, if ever, and there are the purely practical annoyances of keeping him fed and so on. Another option I could choose is to hand him over to the local justice system, to be dealt with however the local system deems fit. You're here so I can find out what that system is, so I can make my choice."

'You're sure you don't just want to declare blood feud and kill him?' At my expression, he sighed. 'Fine, fine. If you want to complicate it - you can offer him the chance to avoid a feud by paying you weregild. For an ordinary freedman, that would be around,' and there the translation spell stuttered a bit, and I 'heard' several meanings at once, including 'two hundred coins', and 'nine hundred grams', and 'fifty thousand dollars'. The wolf continued, 'But for an individual of your obviously noble bearing... it's five times for a noble isn't it?'

'I thought it was three times.'

'I thought three times was for priests.'

'Wasn't that six times?'

After a bit of back and forth, they ended up going with five.

"So," I said, "if I make the demand, and he doesn't, or can't, pay it... what then?"

'Then he becomes your thrall,' a word which the translation spell also helpfully overlapped with the word 'slave', 'until he can pay off the price he owes. And if he tries to run from that - he becomes outlaw, and can be killed by any who meet him without them owing any weregild.'

"In that case," I said to Red, "shall we ungag him, and ask him if he can pay that off?"

"I'd really prefer that to getting involved in slavery," she said. "Okay, let's find that out."

She nodded to Berry Blast, whose horn glowed as she unthreaded the ropes around his muzzle. He opened and closed his jaw a few times, before saying, 'The two of you,' to the elders, 'are forgetting something. She's a cow.'

'So?'

'So the Edicts of Lord Firebough are clear. Wolves are people, and you have to pay weregild for them. You have to do the same for griffins, and ponies, and dragons, and there's a whole list. But he made another list of things you don't have to pay weregild for if you kill them: rabbits, and fish, and birds... and cows. I don't owe weregild for trying to kill her. At most, I owe a fine for attempted poaching.'

The two greymuzzles looked at each other. 'Um,' said one.

'Er,' said the other.

'Didn't think of that, now did you?'

He looked quite pleased with himself, so I cleared my throat to get his attention. "In case you've forgotten - we haven't handed you back to them yet."

'Oh.' his grin disappeared.

"Captain," I said, "a quick word?" We stepped out of the room, and once we were far enough away from sensitive lupine ears, I said, "I don't care about the cash, or what the local system does to him - but if we filed an appeal, or whatever the local equivalent is for getting the rules changed, that could help us have an excuse to make contact with the local lord high muckity-mucks."

Back at the table, Red asked, "Who would we have to talk to to get cows moved from the one list to the other?"

My attacker objected, 'That doesn't matter! The law is what it is, and you can't go around charging people for laws made after they did it!' Red gestured, and he was quickly re-gagged.

'Well,' mused a greymuzzle, 'the boy has a point - but not as much of one as he thinks. Lord Firebough can change his edicts in whatever way suits him. If he wants people to have to pay weregild for killing talking cows, he can do that. If he wants to make the boy your slave, he can do that. If he wants to eat all of you, he can do that, too.'

"I'm not sure I like the sound of this Lord," I muttered.

The other greymuzzle shrugged. 'If you can kill him, you can always take his place and start issuing Edicts of Lady Missy that are more to your liking.'

"... I'm both tempted and repelled by that idea. Aren't there any more peaceful ways of handing over power?"

'Well - some Lords do say they want one of their kids to inherit when they're killed.'

'Usually a pretty quick death sentence for the kid, though.'

'Especially if they've got siblings.'

"Leaning further to the 'repelled' side, now."

'Are you sure? With this ship and your magic, it should be pretty easy for you to take out Firebough, and we could do with a Lord - or a Lady - who doesn't snack on her freemen so often.'

'Well, if she needs the ship to kill old Flamebreath, then she wouldn't last long once her Captain decided to take over, now would she?'

'Shush, she's obviously smart enough to have something on her Captain to keep her in line, and besides, the Captain's only a pony, not a real carnivore...'

Mindful of pulling on my back, I leaned forward to rest my forehead on the table, instead of banging it against it.

Cleanliness is Next to Impossible

The jock had been sent back to the brig, and the greymuzzles back to their village. The bunch I currently considered my inner circle - me, Red, Micro, Amethyst, and Blanche - were gathered around the bridge's meeting table, with the guards either on duty at the front of the ship, or asleep with a secret dormire boost to keep them that way.

"So," I said, "we've got a few choices to make. To help pick between them, it might be worthwhile reiterating our goals. We're not here to make official diplomatic contact, or to reform the local mores on slavery, or to take over a local lordship - but we're also not here to avoid doing any of those, if those will help our goals, or at least won't hinder them. Equestria, and possibly Equis, is facing a doom of an unknown sort - and we're here to collect anything we can which has a chance of helping us head off that doom. I'm focusing especially on magic, including knowledge thereof and portable artifacts, with a minor on valuable locations such as ley line nexii. With those goals, and with what we've learned so far, do any of our options stand out?"

Micro said, "You've been coming up with new spells every few days or so. Maybe you should concentrate on that, instead of all this running around? And making your own artifacts, like the truth wands?"

"You're not wrong," I mused, "but I can still work on a lot of that in the cargo-bay lab while we're flying around hither and yon. I could use more gems to be charged up, and maybe something better than stuffing them in my pockets."

Amethyst, to our surprise, contributed, "Harness."

"Hm?" I tilted my head at her.

"She stepped over, and ran a clawtip in lines along my hide, and in circles around my limbs. "Straps. Hold gems. Under clothes."

I raised a brow. "That... could work. The Musketeers did a good job with the uniforms and my new outfits - think you'd be up to directing them in making what you have in mind?" She gave a firm nod. "Okay - that's one side-project to start. In the meantime - where can we go, that's got the best chance of letting us find out something new about magic, or find some new magical object?"

Blanche shrugged and spoke up, "We don't really know much about this continent or its people - just one ship's charts, and one village's perspective. Whatever passes for a university seems like a good place to hunt for - which means heading to a bigger city, at least. Even if they don't have colleges, urban areas are where scholarly folk tend to congregate, and where we can at least find out the names of any nobles with private libraries. That sort of thing."

Red added, "And we've got a handy reason for looking for a place like that - getting a ruling from this fire-breathing, wolf-eating Lord Fire-bough."

Blanche countered, "Or we could see if Missy can kill him off and take over."

"One," I said, "no killing if we can help it. Two, I've got much more important things than try to run a country. And three - I know you still tend to think the world of me, but I've recently been near-fatally sick, magically exhausted putting Athos's guts and Aramis's brains back together, and just today I was stabbed - so whatever this Firebough character is, if I faced off against him, he'd probably win. If we find actual evidence that me beating him would help our real goal, I'd look for some way to cheat... maybe have Micro shrink a boulder to the size of a pebble, get him to swallow it, and once we started fighting, cancel the magic."

"Ew," was the general reaction from everypony, though Amethyst just smiled wider.

"That's the thing about dealing with existential risk - saving millions of lives tends to trump everyday ethical rules-of-thumb. I go out of my way to be as honest as I can - but if it stops the continent Equestria is on from sinking, or blowing up, or whatever is going to happen, I'll lie, cheat, steal, and even murder. But before you start looking at me funny - that's a very big 'if' to fill. If we can keep all those ponies, and members of other species, alive without using such means, then I'm all for it - that's the ideal solution, the one to strive for if we can. I'm just saying that if that isn't an option, if the choice comes down to saving Equestria or keeping our actions within the limits described by standard ethical codes - I'd rather be an immoral person than let millions die. And feel free to ponder whether or not that's a paradox while you're trying to fall asleep."

We went round and round for a while, but our decision came down to the fact that we needed more information to start even coming close to getting the information we actually wanted - so heading for Lord Firebough it was.

Red pointed out that while speed was good, hiding how fast and high we actually could go was also good... so we came up with a new set of standard orders, where the Mikoyan acted as little better than a hovercraft, just a bit higher and faster than we'd let the local village see us move.

Amethyst and the Musketeers quickly came up with a contraption, mostly dark-blue leather straps and metal rings, which had room to hook onto dozens of gems of various sizes, and hold them against my hide. With a few small crystals, and a bit of alteration, I could even wear it with the skin-tight super-suit (though not under it), but it worked better when it was unseen, under my other outfits.

I considered what sort of situations we might all encounter in this continent, and how we could protect ourselves - in particular, how everyone else could protect themselves while I wasn't available. So I drew on my knowledge of the Golden Dawn pseudo-mystical society from Earth for symbolism, and started putting together some 'sleep wands', painted a deep purple-black, with similarly colored gems mounted in a lunar crescent, and some astrological, alchemical, and simply meaningless sigils along the shaft. They looked impressive enough that I started putting together similar wands for the other spells I knew, including an improved, much more spiffy looking truth wand. Doing so ate into our supply of gems - but I, at least, knew the secret that the gems were still good for any spell at all, as long as the right word was known. But if some opponent saw me using one wand for one spell and another wand for another, they might get a false impression of what my magical limitations were.

I was quite willing to bluff to prevent violence - such as to save a life - including when that life was my own.

I still hoped that nothing of the sort would be necessary. I just also hoped that if it were necessary, I'd be sufficiently prepared.

After trundling along the coast for a bit, we came across another port-village. This one was roughly the same configuration as the first - only, instead of wolves, the villagers were bears. As far as I could tell, they looked like perfectly ordinary bears when they walked on all fours, which they seemed happy enough to do; but they were also willing to wear belts, use tools, and talk. There seemed to be some sort of mirror image with cows - nonsentient in Equestria, sentient outside. I wasn't sure whether they were descended from diamond dogs, a simple cousin, or completely unrelated - and since there didn't seem to be an easy way to come up with an answer to that, we kept our main mission in mind, and didn't spend long there. Mostly just long enough to trade for some honey, which they seemed to specialize in; Micro and I also picked up some related products, such as royal jelly, beeswax, pollen, and such, as possible experimental reagents, Amethyst seemed to enjoy something called 'bee bread', and some of the crew picked up a few bottles of mead and something called 'honey jack'.

However, this honey wasn't quite as nice and clear as the honey I was used to on Earth, or even in Equestria; a bit of asking around revealed that the bears' methods of extracting it from the hives was, basically, to smash up the hives, and then filter out the eggs, larva, dead bees, and so on. Amongst all the reading I'd done on Earth, I'd picked up some of the basics of nineteenth-century beekeeping: artificial hives, with individual rods along the top the bees could build their combs from, and which could be removed individually without smashing up the whole hive. The most advanced details I could remember, I didn't just tell them, but sold to them, to start collecting some of the local currency. (The main detail of which was having a 'super' section on top of the main hive, with a screen that let ordinary-sized bees in but kept the queen out, to be filled with honeycomb but not eggs; and which could be harvested without removing the honey the bees needed to survive through the winter.)

Once again, my random accumulation of seemingly useless facts paid off. Literally, for once.

We passed a few more villages of similar scope, and similar species - no griffins or pegasi, but we did see a few earth ponies, and some individuals of species that were quite unfamiliar - I even caught a glimpse of what I thought might be a wolf-centaur, though it could have been one wolf riding another.

Finally, we started approaching the city whose name the translation spell rendered as 'First Settlement'. Given that we were on the part of the continent closest to Equestria and the Griffon Dominion, I guessed that this might be the first place the rogue griffin ships, fleeing from Celestia's dissolving of their government nearly a millennium ago, might have landed.

We smelled the place before we saw it.

If Equestria looked like something from the nineteenth century, this place looked like something from the ninth. Or maybe Monty Python's "Jabberwocky" - I actually saw a wagon being pulled, with a couple of bodies piled into it.

"New rule," I muttered to Red. "Upon coming onto this ship, everybody washes their hooves in boiled, sterilized water - and if possible, everything that might have come in touch with anything local."

"Hey, don't forget, I'm the captain, so I set the rules. ... Yeah, that seems like a good one. If this is really the city where their lord lives - we may be wasting our time here."

We finally saw some griffons winging through the air, and as they saw our ship coming in above the waves, we became the center of a certain amount of attention. Some of that attention disappeared when Captain Red ordered the ballistas be rolled out for polishing.

Given how our prisoner had managed to sneak aboard, despite our Guard crew, Red decided to keep us at a nice hover, though she did lower the anchor onto a pier when we stopped. A griffin wearing a sash came out of a nearby shack, circled around us, and landed near our mast. Red and I joined him, I used my new translation wand (orange and quicksilvery-silver, tipped with Mercury's symbol holding an opal), and we figured out that he was saying, 'You can't dock this here.'

"Why not?" asked Red

'Ain't got no permit. Haven't paid your docking fees.'

"And where do we get a permit?"

'From the dock-master.'

"Where would we find him?"

'Right here.'

"... Let's cut to the chase. How much?"

'Twenty gold,' he said, which the translation spell simultaneously told me was 'five thousand dollars', and presumably gave Red a similar equivalent in bits.

"You seem to be forgetting something," Red commented.

'Yeah? What?'

"You're the dock master. So that means you're in charge of the docks, right?"

'Right,' he beamed.

"So if I were to take my ship, and park it, oh, right above the middle of town, that wouldn't be anywhere near a dock, and so I wouldn't owe any docking fees at all, now would I?"

'... Five silver a day, plus services."

When he left, Red had Tranquil and Stoke scrub and mop the spot he'd been standing until it shone.

Going Postal

"Hey, Bouncer."

"Hey, Missy."

"Just coming on-shift?"

"Yep. Say... what's that smell? Spicy, almost kind of fruity?"

"Cardamom. My favorite spice. Usually, anyway."

"... and what're you doing out here?"

"Lab accident. Tried coming up with a spell to cover up the city's odor. Not entirely sure what went wrong - other than I overdid it, somehow."

"How bad was it?"

"We're still trying to air out the lab. It may be a failure as a perfume spell - but it just might work out as a crowd-control gas. Not sure I want everypony to start hating cardamom, though. Maybe I'll try cinnamon, next."

"... I think I'm glad you're sticking to pleasant scents."

"Could be worse - I could have joined in the betting pools for 'Missy's next lab accident'. Nopony wanted to take my action, though, for some reason."

"I can't imagine why not. ... You could still have picked who you wanted to win it, and offered a side-contract with them for a share of the points."

"That's why I pushed for any points-based agreement to have to be public to be enforceable. The whole system exists to try to improve all our lives - and with so many ways it can do the opposite, it's a bit tricky heading off any such troubles before they start. Still, looked at the right way, if I can't have fun making certain bets, there's a certain sort of fun to be had looking for ways the system itself can be gamed, and plugging the holes."

"... Nopony's going to believe a word of my memoirs, are they?"

"Okay, Bouncer," Red said. "We need a messenger, we'd prefer one who can avoid touching the ground, and I've got to keep things organized - so it's you or Blanche. The job's got more potential for danger than shipboard duty, and you've got Guard training, so you seem the best choice for the job. Unless you've got some better reasoning?"

"No, ma'am. What sort of message do you have in mind?"

"For now, we're playing it straight. I'd like you to try to head straight for this Lord Firebough, if you can, or at least as close to him as you can get. You're to tell him, or whoever the highest ranker you can find, that one of his wolves has attacked Missy, and Missy has come to discuss the matter with him. If you manage that, then you can try making arrangements for a meeting - we'd prefer one aboard the Mikoyan, but getting the meeting is more important than having it here."

"I've been observing how you and Missy tend to do things - how many backup plans are in place for something going wrong?"

"At least six that we've talked about, and at least two that she hasn't said a word of."

"Actually," I threw in, "at least four of those - we'll have to have a talk about what hints I accidentally left that let you pick up on the first two."

Red grinned at me. "No hints - I just know you wouldn't let Bouncer go in your place without at least that many." She turned back to the other pegasus, with a more serious expression. "We're going to be entrusting you with a CAT WHISKER to keep us updated on your progress, and every few minutes so we know you're doing fine - and to send us a distress call if you manage to see trouble coming."

Bouncer had been working her way through the local bureaucrats for a couple of hours. I was painting a few fake, truly powerless wands to serve as additional camouflage for the gem-holding ones when Red's voice called through the speaking tube, "Yellow alert. Second shift to stations. Third shift to wake up. Owner to the bridge." We hadn't managed to put bells in every room aboard ship, yet, mostly because of a lack of materials; but part of the procedures were for the crew to check on each other and pass the word if need be. If we had gotten more crew, we might have gone to the standard Equestrian system of four watches; but with three watches, I'd pulled a few ideas from a certain mass-media franchise involving pseudo-nautical crews. The points I suggested to Red were reasonably useful, and just different enough from local practice to potentially be confusing to infiltrators or if we were boarded.

When I got to the bridge, Red said, "Bouncer missed her five-minute check-in, and hasn't replied to my buzz. We're coming up on the next five-minute mark - if she misses it, I'm taking the Mikoyan in."

"How far did she get?"

"Her last report was that she was going into Firebough's mansion - it's the biggest one, on the hill, there."

"Any other info?"

"She's been getting the stink-eye from a lot of the locals. Her word, not mine."

"Come to think of it, have we seen any other pegasi since we got here?"

"I haven't - or unicorns, either, just earth ponies."

"... We can think about that later. In the meantime - should I give sleep wands to everypony?"

"It's a bit late to make everypony deal with an entirely new set of tactics. Maybe for next time. And the five-minute-glass is almost out of sand... and there we go." She put a hoof on the bridge's CAT WHISKER's keying switch, and tapped out the signal for a question mark. Not exactly standard, but obvious enough in meaning. She listened carefully for a reply - or any response at all, even a single quick tap.

Seconds passed. Nothing happened.

"Right," she said. "So much for Plan Bravo. Plan Echo One sound good?"

"It's the best option I can think of." Red and I had been improving our Greek-letter plans, off and on, ever since we'd been in the Great Southern Rainforest; and we'd spent more time refining them since we got the Mikoyan. Plan Bravo was still negotiating, what we'd sent Cloud Bouncer off to initiate. Plan Echo was the first of our plans involving force, specifically non-lethal force. A 'One' plan involved us being higher than our opponent - in this case, with a significant lack of non-lethal weapons on the Mikoyan, it basically meant 'loom menacingly over them'.

Red started giving orders. "Gem engine to full. Anchor up. Roll out the ballistas. Set course for that hilltop, Y plus thirty yards." The crew scrambled to get everything done, and I worked on my own part of proceedings - thinking hard, trying to come up with what the locals' response would be, and what our response to their response should be.

As we started rumbling over the town, there was an increase in noise from underneath, and Tranquil Valley, above us on watch duty, called down through the speaking tubes to report on what we couldn't see from the bridge - mostly, civilians running indoors. As we got nearer and nearer to the hilltop mansion, she finally shouted, "Griffin takeoff!" A squadron of them were flapping hard, climbing up to meet us - or, at least, circle around and around.

One of them started shouting at us - but I didn't understand a word. I fired up the translation spell. 'Get back to the docks, you-' was the start of what I managed to understand, and the rest didn't really add anything to that command, though it did add some local color.

I asked red, "Back to Bravo?"

"Works for me." She grabbed a paper megaphone to reply to the circling griffins. "Our messenger arrived here! We're not leaving without her!"

'Get back, you thrice-eaten slabs of horsemeat!' was the nicest of what we heard back.

"Echo-V?" Red asked.

I quickly ran through the spells we had available, and the other options - and that seemed to be the least lethal of them all. "Echo-V," I confirmed, and trotted up the steps to where I'd have a clearer view all around us, of the circling griffins. I took one of my wands from the set I'd holstered on my belt, and, carefully aiming it with my hoof, lined it up with the griffin who'd been doing most of the shouting. "Vomitere," I ordered him - and while the effective content of what was coming out of his mouth didn't change, it did alter from gas to liquid, much to the dismay of some rubberneckers below. He didn't crash, he just stuck his wings out for a semi-controlled glide as he kept up-chucking, which meant that I didn't have to Volare him to safety.

I heard Red's voice came from below again. "We're here for our messenger!"

The remaining griffins squawked a bit amongst themselves, before a new spokesgriffin called out, 'Go back!'

I gave him a "Vomitere," and in moments, he wasn't able to do anything besides gliding off, too.

This set the remaining half-dozen into a tizzy - or perhaps a frenzy. Either way, the one word I heard was 'Attack!'. I aimed the wand and started saying "Vomiterevomiterevomitere-". The wand's gem ran out about then, but that didn't matter, as I simply drew from the gems in the harness under my uniform. Most of them got stuck in unhappy glides, but one crashed into the side of the Mikoyan. I said "Volare" as I dropped the one wand, grabbed another, and waved it in his general direction. I landed him amidships, the closest safe landing spot - he'd be harmless enough for a little while, and a couple of the crew went to tie him up before he recovered, to make sure he stayed harmless.

That seemed to be it, at least for a few minutes - there was no sign of anyone else coming up, or any weapons being readied - or any response at all, really. I gave Trainquil a nod and rejoined Red in the bridge. "I think they're waiting to see what we'll do next," I said to her.

"Seems likely. Don't suppose you can Echo-V the whole place at once?"

"Even if I could, I don't think we've got enough gems. I think we're going to have to go in."

"I assume that you mean 'you' and not 'me'."

"True - we'll need you up here in case we need a hasty exit. I figure me for firepower, Blanche and Armina for wings, and one unicorn for backup - Berry Blast, since he's got Guard training. Plan A, Go in, find Bouncer, grab Bouncer, pull out. Plan B, have Blanche and Armina pull out Berry and Bouncer, while I deal with Firebough. Plans C and later - get creative. I'll grab a CAT WHISKER. Have them meet me on Observation - and how about bring the Mikoyan down a tad, and circle around to try looking in the windows?"

As I lowered myself through the air, Blanche and Armina were circling around me, Berry dangling underneath Blanche. "I'll go in front," I said to them. "Berry, watch for surprises from behind. Blanche, left, Armina, right. Blanche, you're second-in-command, if I'm busy or something happens to me. If someone attacks, try to block and shield until I can neutralize them. If we can, anyone we see, I'll glue to the floor, truth-zap them, and ask where Bouncer is. If that's not enough, I'll put 'em to sleep. If we need to use more force - we will, and we'll call for reinforcements."

We touched down together, in front of the big stone house's front doors, and lined up in a neat little diamond. The doors were unlocked, so we walked in, watching in every direction, each of us ready to respond to anything that jumped out at us.

In the entrance hall, nothing did. Chest-seats along the wall, some rather stained tapestries, a few doors - but no defensive guards, or even servants, dependents, supplicants, or random hangers-about. I wasn't hearing anything from Red over the CAT WHISKER yet, so told the trio, "Straight on through."

We passed through a few rooms, and, as far as we could tell, the whole place was deserted.

When we got to the back wall, looking over what might have been intended as a garden, I started getting some buzzes. Red sent, <>. I relayed the directions, and we turned left, looking for stairs.

We finally found a crowd; two lines of mixed wolves and bears blocking the hallway, maybe ten or twelve of them holding swords, axes, and shields, and wearing helmets with nose-guards, and some sort of chain armor with a few extra bits sewn on.

They didn't seem inclined to say a word, but I waved a wand in the air and refreshed the translation spell anyway. "We're here for my messenger," I told them. "I suggest you send her out to us."

A bear in the middle of the front row said, 'No messenger here.'

I sighed, and pulled out a different wand. "Veritas," I enspelled him. "I ask you again, where is she?"

'Tied up and getting prepared to be the Lord's next meal. Wait, why did I say that?'

I quickly asked, "How long does she have?"

'Oh, he likes 'em live, and is enjoying a good soak - she's probably got at least half an hour before he even starts on a limb. ... I don't know what's going on. Advance!"

I yanked at least four wands from my belt and aimed them as a bunch. "Adherere Lubrica Vomitere," I stated, and their incipient charge dissolved into a chaos of tripping over each other, collapsing, and making a general mess of things.

My heart was beating pretty hard - they really were about to attack me, which sent me adrenaline going, but months of training under Safe Guard and practice with the new magics were now paying off, all that planning turning what could have been a bunch of soldiers chopping my head off into... a mere exercise in low comedy. Extremely low.

"I suggest," I told them, "that you have done your duty to your Lord, and are obviously outmatched. The best thing you can do for him is go back and tell him I'm coming."

The spokesbear grunted as the Lubrica'd wolf, sliding around, bounced off of him. "We have our orders. None are to pass." He started struggling back to his feet.

"I commend your loyalty, if not your choice in who to give it to. Know that your failure is through no fault of your own. Dormire." As his eyes rolled up and he collapsed back onto the floor, I repeated the spell on each and every one of them.

I commented to Blanche, "Remind me to try and find an area-effect variation of that one."

We tip-hooved through the pile of snoring carnivores, keeping a careful eye on them in case any were faking, or they had a reserves hiding somewhere nearby, ready to pounce.

No pounce came.

The room they'd been guarding was lined with tiles, and full of tubs of various sizes, most empty. The biggest was large enough for the Mikoyan's full complement, and full of steaming water.

Bouncer was on the floor, tied up and gagged. Her CAT WHISKER, or rather its remains after being torn apart, was scattered next to her. I waved Armina toward her, and the griffin started slicing through her bindings.

As we started backing back out, there was a sloshing noise from the large tub... and I saw a red-scaled forehead rise, followed by a pair of yellow, slit-pupiled eyes. 'So,' grated a gravelly voice, 'You've defeated all my guards, and now you've come to kill me and take over. ... I always thought it would be another dragon that got me - or at least a giant.' He rose further from the water... and much sooner than I expected, finished pulling himself onto the edge of the tub. 'But you won't take me without a fight!'

"Hunh," I said back to him, a bit bemused.

The fearsome Lord Firebough, establisher of edicts, eater of his own subjects, in charge of the First Settlement, etc, etc... was barely bigger than Spike.

Leverage

I stared at the fierce little baby dragon, and he stared right back at me. I didn't know how he'd ended up in charge of this place - but he was right; all I had to do to take over a country of my own - if a small one - was boot him out. Probably wouldn't even have to knock him off (even if Machiavelli, in 'The Prince', did recommend eliminating all members of the previous ruler's family ). With my knowledge of everything from Adam Smith to Keynes, from Sun Tzu to Hofstadterian game theory, from Edison to Turing, I could pull a Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen and improve the place so much that I could likely take over the whole continent, in just a few years.

And while I was busy doing that, the whole planet might pull an Atlantis, making me the queen of the sunken rubble pile.

Even if I were the sort who liked politicking, which I wasn't, that wouldn't be the way to keep the politics going for the long term.

And there was still the minor mystery of how this diminutive 'Lord' before me was still alive - which, for all I knew, could throw enough of a monkey wrench into the whole operation to knock any such plans for a loop.

So I said, "Cool your jets, hotshot," to him. And as he started looking puzzled at my phrasing, I continued, "I have no interest in killing you - unless you force me to." I wasn't sure where I was going with this, either. "You might even come out of this better off than how you started."

His big eyes and forehead, and small jaw, made him look surprisingly cute - even if he looked mad enough to fry me on the spot. 'Oh, yeah? How?'

"I came here for..." I considered. "three things. The third thing was my messenger - who I've just collected. Did she manage to pass on my message before you muzzled her?"

'Yeah, right,' Firebough sneered. "As if anybody would trust a real message to a pegasus. They're almost as bad as unicorns."

"Oh reeeealy. You say these unicorns are 'bad'?"

'Haven't you heard? They can use magic. They can do anything - poison wells, make crops grow upside-down, make themselves look like anyone - it's tough work making sure they don't sneak into the city, let alone chase them out of the countryside.'

I discreetly lifted my hind leg and pushed it backwards, in the direction of Berry Blast, who was still directly behind me. He stepped halfway through the bathroom's doorway, moving his horn out of Firebough's line of sight. "I can't imagine why they'd want to be anywhere near here," I said, and not even I was sure whether I was using dry wit or simply being honest. "In the meantime - the pegasus really was my messenger. She was bringing word about my second reason in being here. One of the wolves who lives in your territory stabbed me - and said you made an edict, that cows weren't to be treated as people. Need I point out the troubles with keeping that edict in its current form?"

'I never made - oh, it must have been one from Uncle, the old Lord Firebough. You going to kill me to change it?"

"If I let you live, would you be willing to change it yourself?"

'... I guess. Gonna make it hard on us meat-eaters, if cows are off the menu, though.'

"From what I've seen, your city, and its people, have enough problems already. I don't care about the cows that can't talk, just the ones that can."

'Yeah, that makes more sense.'

That seemed easy enough. I was still having some trouble trying to figure out whether to treat him as a kid, a head of state, somebody caught in the middle of a mob turf war, or something else entirely. I decided to try a bit of fishing. "Speaking about your Uncle... I do have to admit, I was expecting to find a Lord Firebough who was... well, bigger, when I got here. Whatever happened to him?"

'Poisoned.'

"How do you know?"

'From the colors he turned. That, and all his kids ended up killing each other off, too. That's why I only eat live people. I don't even have to eat all of 'em - after they've been sentenced, they're usually happy to get off losing just a leg or a wing.'

I kept a very straight face. Given what he'd said so far, that might actually be a reasonable precaution - however horrible it seemed to me. Of course, if there were any way for him to adjust his circumstances to reduce that necessity, which he'd failed to take - well, then I just might be peeved at him.

'Say,' he said, interrupting before I could redirect the conversation to my own ends. 'I've never met a talking cow, before. Do you think you taste the same as regular ones?'

"Don't be rash. For one, I can still do anything I wish to you, from sticking you to the ceiling to slicing you in half. For another, don't be fooled by appearances - I'm just as capable of eating meat as any griffin."

'You sure don't look like it.'

"Want me to prove it? Pick a limb."

'Alright, alright, no need to get mean.'

"You haven't seen me mean, yet. You haven't seen me in a good mood, yet, either."

'Hm,' he hmed. 'You said you had three reasons to come here - and you've only talked about two.'

"I was distracted from my main purpose by getting stabbed, and distracted from dealing with that by your decision to turn my pegasus into your lunch."

'Yeah, well, you got her back, so no harm done, right?' I didn't answer, and simply glared at him. 'Nice try, but I've gotten nastier looks from my guards.' I kept on not saying anything. 'And now you're starting to creep me out. ... Look, you got her back, what else am I supposed to do? I can't pay you any weregild - just because I'm the Lord doesn't mean I've got any gold. It all went missing when Uncle died, and this whole country's the poorest in the land, so I can't even get taxes from anyone unless I go in person and start eating the people I've gotta tax to get the rest to pay up. The only thing this whole place has going for it, is we're closest to the unicorn lands, so everyone who goes there has to stock up here first for the trip, and there hasn't been much of that since Uncle died.'

"It's not cash I'm looking for."

'Then what?'

"If you're as poor off as you say - then I doubt you even have a clue about where I can find it."

'Oh, yeah?'

"Hm... before he died, did your Uncle ever talk to you? Tell you any secrets he kept just in the family?"

'Only met him once - and he was too busy dying, and I was too busy sticking my fingers down my throat, to talk much.'

"Pity. Then I guess you wouldn't know anything about..." I paused, possibly a bit too theatrically, as I looked up and down at him. "... well, for now, I'll just describe it as... round and kind of glowy."

It was his turn to look up and down at me. 'You said you can kill and eat me if you're in a bad mood?'

"Close enough."

'What can you do if you're in a good mood?'

"Quite a lot, really. Maybe you noticed that ship flying around your house? Destruction is easy - even mild forms of it, like taking out all your guards without even breathing hard. But building things, things that can do all sorts of wonderful things - there's where real power is. Arranging people so they can help you build lots of wonderful things - now there's the real trick." I was starting to babble a bit, but there didn't seem to be any particular hurry right now. "For example - I'm going to hazard a guess or two here - I've heard the word 'weregild' tossed around a lot since I got here. From what I remember about all sorts of things, that tends to go hand-in-hand along with a system where, when somebody does another harm, like killing them, it's up to the harmed person's family to make sure the harmer pays for what they did - literally pay, sometimes. Would that be a good guess?"

'Families are too small - they can get wiped out pretty easy. It's the whole clan that goes after revenge. What's your point?'

"There are other ways to handle such matters. And some of those ways work well enough, and have other advantages, that a country that uses those other ways, can't help but have everybody in it get richer and richer. One of the biggest problems with clan vengeance, is that when one clan takes revenge on another, the other usually thinks it deserves to be able to take revenge on the first - and they go back and forth, back and forth, until they're too small, poor, and weak to defend themselves against anyone else. Everyone's poorer off than if they'd stopped at the beginning - but they don't know how to stop, may even think it's a bad idea to stop. But if you read a lot about other cultures, learn other ways of doing things - you can find out ways to stop that cycle at its start. I used to think I knew the one best way to do that, but after learning of a culture I'd previously been unaware of, I'm not quite so sure that that's the only way; throwing even moderately benevolent immortals into the mix changes all sorts of assumptions. ... Where was I?"

'Ending blood-feuds?'

"Right. I know of at least one way to work on that, which could help turn this place from the poorest in the land to one of the richest. But I've got my own fish to fry." It had been just about forever since I'd been able to use that metaphor. "And even immortals only have so many days in a year to get important stuff done."

'You sound crazier than that one-eyed pony who told me I could fix things if I stopped eating people. You part of his clan?'

"Probably not - what was his name?"

The translation spell whispered in my mind that Firebough's answer meant 'Rager', but the sounds that my ears actually heard was, "Vredin." I hadn't heard of too many one-eyed ponies since getting turned into a cow; in fact, the only one that came to mind was from back when I'd gone to the Southern Rainforest, when the wood alicorn had offered me a well which was said to give the Wisdom of the Ages - said by the one-eyed pony who'd drunk from it. I also recalled that, in Germanic/Norse mythology, there happened to be a particular one-eyed figure who'd been said to have drunk from a similar well - and who'd been rumored to walk the world in disguise, sometimes passing judgment on those who displeased him, sometimes acting as a sort of proto-Santa.

"Oh, reeeealy," I commented again, mostly to buy time. "Him, is it? How very interesting." What I was saying had about as much meaning as announcing 'So, it has come to this' at any particular moment - while technically true, and seeming to imply all sorts of things, without actually meaning anything. "Well - it's possible we're related, but in the same sense that it's possible any two people are related, with the family connection lost in the mists of time. As far as I know, he make no claim to be part of my clan, and I've never claimed to be part of his. From what I've heard, we don't see eye to eye on many things... if you'll pardon the expression. I never was quite sure if the stories he told about sacrificing one eye for knowledge were supposed to be deep and meaningful, or just an excuse to cover an embarrassing accident. Come to think of it, I suppose that whatever the truth behind that story, even if he did sacrifice an eye, I could be said to have sacrificed half of each of my eyes' sight," at least if there was any truth to the idea that having spent all my time reading teeny text hadn't done my nearsightedness any favors, "and found a clever way to make up for that loss, to gain the benefit without losing my peripheral vision. But while I'm going on about myself, I've just thought of something I haven't asked you - do you have any surviving clan who will demand weregild or blood upon your death?"

'What, are you stupid? I'm a dragon.'

"Not all dragons live in the same ways."

'No, you strange cow, if someone kills me, then nobody will care. All that'll happen is some other dragon will hear about it and move in.'

"Why haven't they already? I may be able to do as I will to you - but there are dragons that would give me a run for my money."

He didn't answer, just crossed his arms over his chest.

I shrugged. "I could get the answer out of you if I tried - but for complicated reasons I don't feel like going into now, I don't feel like trying. I guess this means we're about done here - you've got your secret way of staying alive, and I've got my glowy things to go find. So unless you've got a reason for me to stay..."

'D'you want a town?'

"Pardon?"

'Not First Settlement, of course - but you seem smart, and are stronger than all my guards, and you've had all this time to kill me and haven't even tried. That's more than I can say about almost anybody. How'd you like to have a town, and everyone in it, to do anything you want with, and I'll eat anyone who tries to complain about whatever you do with it?'

"... I've had offers like that, before. There's certainly a temptation - but it's a small one."

'... Two towns?'

"To cut this short - even if you offered me the whole country and everything in it, I still plan on leaving."

'How about me?'

"Pardon?", I repeated.

'If I gave you me - would you go after anyone who tried killing me?'

This was rapidly heading into an awkward-and-weird area. "I have... adopted certain individuals - some not even of my own species. Whatever species that really is. But I will still be leaving at the end of the day."

'So take me with you.'

"Don't you have a country to be Lord of?"

'As long as that keeps me alive, yeah. But you're right - any other dragon can come by and take it from me. I really don't know why they haven't. If you're stronger than the whole country - then you'd be better at keeping me alive, right?'

I was starting to get a headache, and rubbed my forehead with a hoof. It didn't help. "I don't think you know what you're asking. However strong I am - I've got enemies who are at least as strong, and probably stronger, and you coming with me would put you in their sights. I can barely protect those I have already taken under my wing - it's entirely possible that you coming with me would just mean they kill you, instead of another dragon killing you."

'What've I got to lose, you stupid cow?'

Helping You Helping Me Helping You

"What you have to lose by coming with me," I said to Firebough, "is your freedom to do certain things you may have become accustomed to."

'Like what?'

"As just one example - no eating people, or even just parts of people. Anything that can ask you not to eat it, you won't. Not for sustenance, not to punish, not to make threats, and especially not for personal amusement. Break that rule, and if you're still alive by the time I'm done with you, the last thing you'll see of me will be my tail as I leave you to your own fate."

'Is that it?'

"That's just one example of a more general rule. If you stay within the bounds of this rule, or at least can show that you're making a true best-faith effort at trying - and trust me, I have ways to find out if you're only pretending to try - then whatever we may disagree on, I expect I'll be able to put up with you. Break it, and while you're with me, or on my ship, or under my general area of influence - and you will face the full consequences."

'So what's this big, important rule?'

"I'm using translation magic so we can understand each other, so don't try to nit-pick the exact words. The rule is: don't escalate. That means if someone uses bad words, you can use bad words back at them, but you can't hit them. If someone tries beating you up, you can beat them up back, but you can't kill them. If they try to kill them, you can kill them, but you can't kill their whole family. That's the line I draw - do more than that, and you'll be punished. At the absolute least, you'll have to fix whoever you hurt - and, most likely, you'll have to do more. If you manage to use less force than that to solve the problem, that's even better, and I'll praise and reward you - but for a clear limit, that's it. Pretty much every rule of behavior I would want you to follow while you're with me is just one part of that rule."

'What if I have to do more to someone else than they do to me, to get them to stop?'

"Then you've got a choice to make - will the punishment be worth less to you than the crime?"

'So if I do follow that rule and let you protect me, what else'll you be doing?'

"Oh, finding ancient treasures, inventing new magic, seeking the secrets of the universe, that sort of thing."

'Sounds kinda boring.'

"Are you kidding? I've working on solving mysteries that, quite possibly, noone else has ever had the tools to solve that I do, such as figuring out the true nature of magic - even if I haven't quite come up with a good lead yet that explains very many of its properties, like being able to cause almost anything to happen. I might be in a unique position - I've got more concrete proof for the multi-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics than anyone else I've ever heard of, not to mention proof of FTL signaling. I haven't quite figured out if it's possible to safely use that to solve NP-complete problems, or put together an Out... come... pump..."

...

"Hunh," I said.

...

I thought to myself - 'Could it really be that simple?'

...

"Um, boss?" Armina interrupted my train of thought. "I think I can smell those griffin guards coming this way. And I'm pretty sure they're not happy."

"Oh. Right. Listen, I've just had what may be an important insight, and don't want to be bothered with pointless fighting. Firebough, how long have you been Lord?"

'About a season.'

"Perfect. I'd like you to go let your guards know that after some initial misunderstanding, your guest has graciously allowed you the use of her flying ship so that you can tour your dominion, and go make diplomatic contact with your neighboring Lords."

'Is that what I'll really be doing?'

"Sure, why not? Armina - go with him, and give us a shout if anyone tries to kill anyone, and try not to let that happen until I can zap 'em all. Blanche, buzz the Mikoyan with an update. Blast, I'm probably going to get lost in my head for a couple of minutes while I chase this thought down - you're on bodyguard and wake-up duty. Firebough, try to let all your guards and staff know not to try to kill us, and so on." Everybody started hurrying back and forth to do something or other, making the best use of their time - and I did the same, by turning to stare at a blank wall.

Physicists tend not to like time travel - not leastly because if it can happen at all, then a clever person can come up with all sorts of tricks with it. If you can send messages back to your past self, who can then, based on those messages, decide to send different messages back; then it's possible to solve very complicated mathematical problems very quickly, by using a set of rules for those messages to test every possibility, until a successful one is found. That's one of the simplest variations of an 'outcome pump', a philosophical idea where a time-traveler pulls something similar to keep resetting the timeline unless a specific event happens. With a good outcome pump, you could make just about anything happen, no matter how improbable. There are good and logical reasons to believe that such a thingummy is impossible, and thus that time travel is impossible.

But I'd known that time travel was possible for a couple of months or so - I'd gotten a message from the future, and then sent that message to the past. Suggesting that there was a certain flaw in the logical reasoning making an outcome pump impossible.

While I was thinking that, I was also running my thoughts down a parallel track. When you start really getting into physics, one of the neat things you can learn is that whenever there's a symmetry, there's a law of conservation, and where there's a law of conservation, there's a symmetry. For example, the fact that the laws of physics are the same in every direction, a symmetry for all three axes of space, is tightly tied to the law of conservation of angular momentum. One of the most fundamental laws of conservation I knew of was conservation of probability - or, to be more precise, of the amplitude of the quantum wavefunctions; when you summed up all the possible outcomes, you always ended up with 100%. But I'd never thought what symmetry might be implied by that, other than that if one thing became less probable, something else had to become moreso, which, I was then thinking, suddenly seemed to be a bit too tautological to be a decent symmetry.

I was thinking about certain things I had read; about how when a photon had a 50% chance of passing through a half-silvered mirror, the probability, the amplitude, was conserved by having it both be transmitted through and be reflected, but in two separate blobs of amplitude that, as they ceased to resemble each other, quickly stopped interacting with each other - or, in pop-sci terms, splitting into two different universes. I was thinking that, somehow, some powerful beings had found a way to send information from a universe containing Earth, such as the information of my mind's patterns, into a universe containing Equestria; that that seemed to imply there was some way to get quite distinct blobs of amplitude sufficiently identical to start interacting with each other again.

And as I thought that, I was thinking along a third track, as well - that two of the properties of magic were that it could cause almost anything to happen, and that there seemed to be some sort of measurable quantity of something that allowed that near-anything to happen.

What if the true power behind magic... was amplitude?

Was magical power, the thing that was stored in gems, and measured in units of thaums, simply the propensity for any given universe to be self-consistent, harnessed?

Was outright time travel as closely related to magic as lightning was to electricity?

Were spells actually some sort of outcome pumps, pushing at the universe so that the only way it could remain self-consistent was for the spell-caster's desired event to take place in it?

If this was true - if it was anything like true - then there were all sorts of implications. Some useful. Some testable.

I'd never heard anybody even hinting at anything along these lines. I'd also never heard of anybody giving a decent explanation about how magic could do everything it did.

And if those tests proved the idea wrong - then, at the least, they still might be able to provide data, data nobody else would even have a clue to look for, data which might help get one step closer to whatever the actual truth really was.

However attractive this idea seemed to me at the moment - I'd been burned by the occasional false epiphany before. I'd have to be quite careful to make sure that my enthusiasm for it didn't blind me to any disconfirming evidence.

In the meantime - I needed to start testing those implications... which meant that I'd have to arrange for certain experiments... which meant I'd have to make sure that such arrangements were possible...

I turned away from the wall. "Okay," I said to Berry, "I can work on the rest later."

Firebough had returned, and he said something that sounded like, "Yor du day of-teh?", which didn't make much sense to me. (As an aside - 'Lord Firebough' was what his name sounded like with the translation spell. Without it, what he was called sounded more like 'Yarl Branbaugen'. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to know what the name 'Missy' sounded like to him.) With a sigh, I pulled out the wand I'd designated for the translation spell and invoked it. "What was that?"

'Do you do that sort of thing often?'

"As often as I can - which really isn't that much. If anything serious had happened, I'd have dealt with it - though I would have been truly annoyed if doing so led me to forget what I'd thought of. So - anything happen while I was thinking?"

'Most of my guards really want to get cleaned up, but I told 'em not to bother you.'

"I can live with that. Shall we move out of here and let them in, then?"

I got some... interesting looks from the griffins, wolves, and bears as I walked by them. Given what I'd done to them, I was surprised that, by the time we'd all filed past each other, none of them took a cheap shot at me.

"Okay," I said thoughtfully, "when other Lords go traveling, do they take guards with them?"

'I haven't heard anything about that,' said Firebough.

"Alright. In that case - I suggest you leave most-to-all of them here, guarding your house, belongings, and so on, and giving the impression that you've got every intention of returning and acting as Lord when you get back."

'Huh? You mean - I'm not?'

"I didn't mean it like that - but if you left with everything valuable from the mansion, that could give the impression that you were just running away; and, if you ever do want to come back and be Lord, then doing things that way could make that a lot harder, if some dragon thought you'd given up being Lord entirely and come in while you're gone." I shrugged. "Of course, that may happen anyway... but from what you've said, being a Lord hasn't done you much good. Doing this this say, then whatever happens, you've got the most options I can think of. If you want to keep being called Lord, you can, even if some dragon takes over here you can just say you'll kick out the usurper when you get back. If you want to give up being a Lord, you can, and should some dragon take over here while you're gone, you can just let them, and go do your own thing. And, of course, by maximizing your options, you are able to offer that much more use to me."

'Oh - so that's all I am to you? A use?'

"Firebough - there are many people in your city who are much worse off than you are. Some are sick, some are dying. I can go out and grab any of them and improve their lives. By many standards, I probably should. The main reason I'm focusing my attention on you, instead of one of them, is that I think that by doing so, I'm more likely to be able to accomplish my long-term goals. But now that I have focused my attention on you - it's on you, the whole thing, including what use you can be, but not just that."

'Sounds like a lot of double-talk and excuses.'

"If that's what you think, I doubt I can convince you otherwise in a few moments of conversation. I do notice that you're still walking next to me."

'Hey, if double-talk and excuses are what you use to keep me alive for another day, I'm all for 'em.'

"... You know, there's more to life than short-term survival."

'Yeah? Like what?'

"For one - long-term survival. Which is a lot easier if you've got some people you can trust to help you stay alive. Which is a lot easier if they trust you to tell them the truth. Which is a lot easier if you're in the habit of telling the truth generally. Such as, I'm telling you that there are certain advantages that can be made of having a vehicle which is the official transport for someone who is arguably a head-of-state - and since those advantages are now becoming available to me, I'm making plans to make as much use of them as I can while I can... and making further plans for such time as I can't. Right now, not only does helping you help me directly, but my being the general sort of person who would help a person like you in a situation like this helps me indirectly in a number of ways that I don't feel like describing right now - especially since you've got a few decisions of your own to make."

'Whether or not to stay Lord?'

"Whether or not to bring anything with you. And while I'm thinking about it, we should probably also grab any books, papers, or other documentation you've got about the place to bring with us..."

Dragon Heart

I found myself rather distracted by trying to think through the ramifications of my latest idea. Thus, when Firebough asked if he could bring along one guard to help him 'reach the top shelves', I punted, and told him I had no objection, but he'd have to get Captain Red's permission to keep him on the Mikoyan. When Firebough finally noticed that Berry Blast was a unicorn and started gibbering, I growled not to be such a ninny, that Berry was my unicorn and followed my rules, and wouldn't poison him unless he poisoned him first, and even then, would probably ask me to handle things. When we'd hauled all the papers we'd been able to find up to the airship, and were shuffling them around the big table on the bridge, looking for maps and pictures which we didn't need Firebough or his guard to read for us, I mostly let the conversation flow around me, and let Red take the lead of directing the efforts to figure out where to go next.

I don't say this to say what a deep thinker I was. I say this to point out both the limits of my own mind, such as having a hard time multi-tasking; and to point out that I still had a hard time prioritizing the everyday necessaries over abstract theorizing.

We did find a few maps - and in all of them, pretty much everywhere seemed like a better place to be than First Settlement. Bigger populations, more trading, cultural centers, hints of legendary events, could all be found just about anywhere but where we were. With a couple of translation notes from Firebough, we were able to figure out that the capital of the next country over had some sort of school, which seemed the sort of thing worth trying to plunder for relevant knowledge, and when Red asked about heading there, I smiled and nodded and agreed and left for my lab.

What I was spending my thinking time on, was trying to remember anything and everything I could about outcome pumps, and related ideas. Even among people interested in the odds and ends of physics, or fringe physics, or science fiction, they weren't a very commonly discussed idea; and it had been about a season since I'd had a chance to read up on anything on the internet, and I'd gone through all sorts of interesting and distracting events since then. I was trying to call upon every possible related thought, to trigger any and every possible associational memory, to get myself to recall every detail I'd ever come across about them.

It wasn't all that much, but at least some of my thinking on related matters seemed to have some potential in itself. For example, if 'magic' really was simply an application of a particular aspect of quantum mechanics - then I could take all my previous notions of 'magic' as being a separate field, following separate rules, and chuck them in a trash bin. Treating magic not just as a mysterious black box to poke and prod to see what happened, but as a mere part of nature... was something I probably should have been doing more of all along. It also had certain consequences that might be worth following up on. For example, unicorns were natural spellcasters - but the fact that they could do that, while pegasi couldn't, would thus be 'merely' a consequence of the physical differences between them. The relevant differences might be large or small, on the scale of gross anatomy or of biochemical machinery or something in between or some combination - but would be discoverable somewhere in the field of biology, and using the tools of biology, could be investigated.

For example, because of the way evolution builds on what already exists, a new variation which depends on a complicated piece of biological machinery is near-certainly not going to spread throughout the population unless that whole set of complicated machinery is already part of the species-wide toolkit. Which suggested that the various branches of the family of the Children of the Alicorn might have more biological machinery in common than was generally supposed. Both pegasi and unicorns could already collect the ambient magic to use in their different ways; maybe the differences between what they could do with that magic weren't quite as great as was generally believed. And, while I was thinking about it, I was able to think of something which I knew unicorns could do - but, as far as I recalled, I hadn't even tried getting a pegasus or earth pony to do... and trying it could be a nice, quick test of this line of thinking.

I pulled open the speaking tube to the bridge. "I could use a non-unicorn for a half-hour experiment. Preferably someone already in on most secrets. Is Blanche available?"

As the engines started spinning up to take us back to the shore, and then along it, Blanche fluttered down the stairs from the bridge to join me. "What's up, boss?"

"I've had a thought - and I want you to try doing a certain something that seems impossible, even though you know it seems impossible." I rummaged around in the gem inventory, and found a green tourmaline, flashing from being filled with magic. I used it to power a few quick 'adherere' spells on some crates, until that inner light disappeared. "Right," I said, bringing it back to Blanche. "Right now, this gem is almost full of enough magic to glimmer from it - so it shouldn't take long for a unicorn to be able to charge it up to that point. What I'd like you to do - is pour magic into it, to get it to where we can all see the magic."

She gave me a raised eyebrow, as she took it in one hoof. "Is this some psychological test about trying hard?"

I gave her a grin. "Not at all. I think that it's possible you might actually be able to do this. In fact, you may have an edge up on some other ponies - when I ran you through the love-potion cure, I accidentally drained your body of all its magic, so unlike most pegasi, you just might have an idea of what the difference feels like. I'm going to try the same thing myself, in a minute - and try it without using my horns. And if either of us can - I think I'll see if Amethyst can, too."

"... I think I'll skip all the useless talk about insanity, and just go lie down over there and get this over with."

I grabbed a piece of Amethyst's namesake, and stretched out on my pallet. From what I'd learned, the whole point of cows in the Equestrian ecosystem was to move magic around - so if anypony other than a unicorn could do this, I probably could. I looked at the purple crystal in my hooves, concentrated on it, tried to recall how it had felt when magic had flowed in or out of my horns...

... and was rudely interrupted by Firebough, the bear warrioress he'd picked to accompany him, and Captain Red all tromping down into the lab with raised voices - the three of them heading straight for me. I sighed, put the gem down, and grabbed and invoked a handy translation wand. "One at a time, please, or I'll just wave a wand to glue all your mouths shut until I want you to talk." I was staring mostly at Firebough as I said that, though I also gave the brown-furred guard a brief look. Her muzzle and ears reminded me of a dog I'd once owned, though much wider and bulkier. Not that I was in any position to say anything bad about anyone's bulk; she looked to be around the same overall weight as me.

Firebough coughed once, and when we all looked at him, he said, 'She's the captain, right?'

"Riiiight," I slowly agreed.

'And you said that we're using this vessel as a 'diplomatic transport' for me, right?'

"Right," I agreed.

'So that means she has to do what I say, right?'

"Afraid not, kiddo. You're just a passenger. I'm still the owner. And if you ever want to go on the top deck and look at the flag at the top of the mainmast, you'll see the flag showing whose laws and edicts apply aboard. To put it simply - what the captain says, goes. Not even I can countermand her orders - if we ever disagree completely on something, the most I can do is remove her as captain and take the position myself. And since she's doing a better job than I could, I'd rather not do that if I can help it."

'But she said she'd throw me off the boat!'

"Then I hope you know how to swim. Okay - someone else's turn to talk. Have you got anything to add?" I asked the bear-lady.

'He's a brat of a Lord.'

'Hey!'

'But he's my brat of a Lord. I'm gonna hafta try to stop anyone who tries to throw him overboard, even if I know I can't win.'

"Fair enough. I hope it doesn't come to that - you have a nice pelt, and it would be a shame to mess it up. Captain Red?"

"I'm good. You've explained everything I need to have explained."

"That's nice. Before I let you toss him into the ocean, mind if I ask what triggered all of this?"

"Not much," Red said. "He just wanted the crew cabin all to himself, all the unicorns chained up, the pegasi and griffin to cool him with their wings and generally cater to his every whim, to set our course, and, oh yes, lest I forget, that we should turn the engines off because they make too much noise."

I tapped my chin with my hoof thoughtfully. "Okay - how about this. Firebough-"

'Lord Firebough.'

"Different situations call for different levels of formatlity. In your language, your name is 'Branbaugen', right?"

'Uh, right.'

"Then in an emergency, when split-seconds matter, and I need to get your attention - what if I chopped all the extra syllables, and called you 'Bran'? Or maybe 'Branny'? 'Branby'?"

"How about 'Brandy'?" Red piped in.

"I can live with that."

'... 'Firebough' will be sufficiently respectful.'

"So glad you agree. Oh, by the way, I don't believe I caught your name yet," I said to the bear.

'Ursula.'

"Pleased to meet you, Ursula; I'll try to remember that, though I am bad with names. Now then - Firebough, I think that I'd like to assign one of the people aboard to be your liason - to answer your questions, to keep an eye on you, deal with translation, and generally be the one you go to first with any issues, so that you don't have to interrupted the good Captain while she's busy captaining. And for that task, I'm thinking of assigning Amethyst, the diamond dog who gave birth to my adopted sons. With that set - is there anything else that I need to explain or decide on before I get back to my own work?"

Firebough and Red looked at each other, there were some slight shrugs exchanged, and in a few moments, I was once again alone in my lab - or close to it.

"Say, boss?" said Blanche. "I think you'll want to see this." She held out her hoof, in which was the green gem - the heart of which was shimmering and glittering with a full magical charge.

"Red alert! Dragon off the port bow! Owner to the bridge!"

I took three seconds to lock down the loose stuff in the lab before galloping to the stairs, and up them, to the bridge. I grabbed a pair of binoculars and aimed them in the direction Red was aiming hers.

"Big one," she commented.

"And heading right for us."

"Does it look happy to you?"

"I can't really tell."

"Moshed?" piped up a new voice.

This language trouble was getting annoying - I was really going to have to buckle down and dedicate some time to learning the local tongue. In the meantime, I pulled a wand from my belt, muttered "Interpretari", and said aloud, "Dragon flying at us. Anyone you know?"

'Oh, that'll just be Big Red.' (Or, going by the sounds, 'Stortrut'.) 'She was Uncle's third half-step cousin, twice removed, I think.'

"So you know her?"

'Not really. She tries to kill any dragon who comes into her territory. I dunno how she does it, but she always seems to know, at least according to the reports that've come in from you mammals.'

"... And you didn't think that was an important detail to mention before?"

'What? You said we're a diplomatic vessel, now.'

"..."

'Besides, even if she does attack us, you've got powerful weapons and magic to take care of her, so what's the problem?'

I looked at Red. Red looked at me. We took the luxury of taking a full second to sigh in unison. Then she started bellowing orders about bracing for full climb, changing course, ballista this and cannons that... while I made my way to the back of the bridge, and the doors leading to the rear balcony, where I'd likely have the best view of Stortrut. I did have enough time to think that having a homicidal dragon for a neighbor might explain why no other dragons had come to take First Settlement away from Firebough. Then I concentrated on trying to figure out how I could maximize our odds of survival. I grabbed the megaphone and tried shouting at the dragon - she just kept flapping her wings and heading straight for us. I tried a few makeshift pseudo-Latin words to create an impromptu communication spell, but none of them seemed to have any effect, and Stortrut just kept coming closer, and closer... I decided that with a reputation like that, she was posing enough of a threat to start trying to head that threat off directly.

I picked the spell I'd used on Firebough's griffin guards, aimed the relevant wand at her, and announced, "Vomitere."

She belched a small fireball in our general direction.

I tried a different approach, and tried using "Adherere" to glue her mouth shut.

She belched a small fireball in our general direction.

I eventually ran through my whole list of spells - and not a single one seemed to affect her in any way. I considered the Warden whistle - and even if they could be summoned on an airship above a shoreline, I still had the rest of the crew's survival to think about. I considered Chekov or my pepper spray - and, looking at Stortrut, estimated that I could stretch out in her jaw and use her tongue as a mattress, so decided that neither was likely to be of much use.

My consideration of options was cut short as she opened her jaws again - and this time a wide sheet of fire erupted. I hurried back inside the bridge, and slammed the doors closed just in time to keep us all from immediately roasting in dragonflame... though that still might happen soon enough, as it appeared the balcony was now on fire, as were the rear sails.

"Red," I called out, "I think it's time for Plan Charlie!"

'Hunh?' Firebough hunhed, sticking a clawtip into his ear and wiggling it. 'That didn't make any sense. What's it mean?'

"To quote a famous bunch of knights you've never heard of: Run Away!"

Gesundheit

This is probably supposed to be the part where I jump to some mundane scene after we're all safe, and then go back to talking about how we escaped our impending doom. Or, perhaps, take a few moments to describe how I was focusing on accomplishing the task rather than feeling scared. Or lower the tension with some meta-fictional discussion about how these stories are put together before going back to the action scene, with danger and excitement and twists and turns and fantastic aerial maneuvers that would require either an immense special effects budget for modeling, or any recentish computer with a flight simulator.

Welp, I'm afraid that I'm going to disappoint you all.

I was pushing my side against the Mikoyan's bridges back doors to hold them shut against the flame, and was wondering if the warmth I was feeling was from the exertion or the burning hull. I was trying to figure out why none of the spells I'd tried on Stortrut had done anything. Then I smacked my brain upside the head as I realized that I was concluding too much from the data I had - the spells had only not had the effects I'd expected, which didn't necessarily mean they had no effect at all. The very fact that she was able to stay in the air with her massively undersized wings, compared to a non-magical aircraft, meant that at least some sorts of magic were affecting her. Which led to an idea for a new approach to keep ourselves from getting torn to shreds. Unfortunately, I'd only accomplished that trick once before, in calm and controlled conditions, and mostly by accident - and there was the minor matter of the balcony being on fire. I didn't have a decent fire-extinguishing charm worked out - though I made a mental note to work on one - so in order to get a good view of the dragon coming after us, I had to leave the door, gallop through the bridge and try not to bang into anyone doing the important work of keeping us in the air, call out to Red in passing to keep us at full speed, head out front, climb the stairs, stand underneath the rear airflow-sails which were rapidly being burnt away, and peer through the flames and smoke for the dragon.

And hope that this worked; I only had a half-dozen more backup plans if this one didn't work.

I didn't bother fiddling with the wands, just focused half my attention on the gems pressed into my hide by the harness; and the other half on the winged reptilian killer who could easily cut short any hope I had of making further improvements to Equestria... in particular, on whatever that fire-breather was doing to keep my magics from having their intended effect, and on enhancing and magnifying that whatever to apply to her own magic. I shouted out the words: "Nullus magicae!", followed by the various similar terms I'd tried out, in case any of them would help.

Nothing obvious seemed to happen - except that we started pulling ahead of the dragon. The deck also started tilting - the Mikoyan's nose was rising a few degrees, sending us into a climb, further away from Stortrut.

Red's voice came from the speaking tube. "Missy, we've got a problem!"

"Another one?"

"We're becoming rear-heavy. I'm sending crew to shift cargo forward - but even if we keep our balance, I'm not sure how long we can stay in the air."

I glanced up at the half-not-there horizontal sails over the stern, which normally acted like a bird's tail to keep us level; glanced down at the deck made of timbers enchanted to reduce their weight, which were now burning; and recalled my recent anti-magic spells. "I suggest you get us as far ahead of the dragon as you can, while you can... and when we're balanced, either get some firefighting crew up here, or skim the ocean so I can try some water magic."

Red didn't do quite as I suggested - which was fine, and why I'd made her captain. Our rear end was still dragging, even as crewponies shoved crates and boxes and barrels forward in the cargo hold; but Red started us descending anyway, to where our keel seemed to be occasionally slapping the wavetops.

I still didn't remember whether 'Hydro' was Latin and 'Aqua' was Greek, or the reverse. Aquarius was the 'water bearer', and while the constellations were from Greek myth, the names of a lot of them were in Latin - so I picked that one. I'd try 'hydro' if it didn't work. And 'extinguish' was a nice French type word, and I'd been using '-ere' to good success as the suffix for Latin commands; and 'igneous rocks' and 'ignition' suggested the Latin word for 'fire' was 'igni' something. So I tried putting together one of the more complicated Latin sentences I'd yet cobbled together from scratch: "Aqua: volare, et extinguere ignem!"

Blobs of water rose from the ocean, splattering against the Mikoyan's burning planks, sending up hisses of steam and smoke - and though it probably drained half of my gems, the ship ceased to be burning - smoldering and smoking, sure, but we weren't quite in danger of becoming pot-roasts.

And I'd done that myself, by using a magic spell.

I let myself take a moment to think, "Holy moly, that was freaking cool!" But, since I was still able to see Stortrut still gamely winging her way in our direction, I pulled on the speaking tube, letting Red know, "Fire's out - go for any altitude you want."

We started climbing again, and I walked toward the rear railing, careful about the hot wood under my hooves, to stare at the red-scaled dragon, and think. My normal magic spells hadn't affected her - or she was simply physically strong enough to overpower them. But the counter-magic spell had slowed her down some - so she wasn't simply immune to it. Maybe instead of trying to use magic directly on her, I could try magicing her environment, maybe create a distraction? Unfortunately, up here in the air, I didn't have much to work with but air... which, of course, offered the obvious possibility of fiddling with my recent scent-creation spell. Well, I did happen to remember the botanical names of a few interesting plants, so I tried one of the classics first:

"Fiat odore piper nigrum!"

I was guessing that since detecting scents involved detecting chemicals in the air, the 'let there be the scent of whatever' spell was creating (or rearranging local molecules, or teleporting; the details didn't happen to matter at the moment) those actual physical chemicals. And since visualization played a part in how these spells seemed to work, I was imagining the creation of a cloud of particles, instead of, say, an invisible cloud of individual molecules, or the appearance of full peppercorns.

To my delight, all those hours I'd spent watching black-and-white lowbrow comedy films now paid off in full... for Stortrut slowed further, as her regular wingbeats were interrupted as she sneezed, repeatedly.

Unfortunately, that only lasted a few dozen sneezes, before she cleared her sinuses and was back to her regular chase again. So it looked like that was only a proof of principle - I hadn't been able to cast spells on things I couldn't see, so it wouldn't be enough to let us pull out of her sight. What we really needed was a way to get her to stop wanting to come and kill us all. Unfortunately, there weren't too many ways to use scent to make a creature want to do something - and even fewer that I had any ideas of a Latin term for.

... except for one.

I wasn't sure I wanted to try it at all; there were all sorts of possible complications and side-effects. But given the choice between an untested spell and having my quest end by becoming a dragon's lunch... well, all's fair in love and war.

"Fiat odore oestrum!" And for good measure, I tried enchanting her directly with "Oestrus maximus!"

... and she shuddered, and turned away from us, toward the shore. She dove to the water, and rose from it carrying the wiggling shape of a panicked dolphin, which she carried with her off into the distance.

I hoped she planned to eat it.

I realized that I was going to have to come up with some rather creative spin on this, if I ever wanted to be able to tell the tale of how I defeated a dragon without slaying it - at least, without having a stroke from all the blood that would be rushing to my head from the embarrassment.

Since there was no guarantee about how long Stortrut would stay distracted, we decided to skip spending any time in her territory at all, and just kept flying along the coast toward her border. I told both Red and Blanche the details, but everyone else just got a mysterious silent smile when they asked how I'd done it. (A couple of the crew started up a betting pool, but when I explained that the actual reason involved classified information that we shouldn't let any potential opponents be aware of, they agreed to take it back down.)

The crew put up a replacement rear sail, which helped with our balance issues some, but didn't solve them entirely. Micro and I spent some time closely examining the ship, in particular its timbers. I was mildly relieved when she informed me that it was the fire that had eaten away at their lift-enchantment, not my spells; and quite unhappy when she pointed out that we didn't have the right trees, tools, magicians, or ship-wrights to build more magically lightened lumber. Given that we'd have to make the most of what we had, I pulled out my earlier notes for the spells I'd used to heal Blanche and the Musketeers, I tried applying some of them to the ship itself, pouring all the magic that our crew's unicorns could pump into the gems into the ship itself... and oddly enough, 'reparere' seemed to do some good. It didn't add any mass to burned timbers - but with the right visualizations, it did seem to help turn charred wood back into proper load-bearing beams again, after which some further fiddling let us pour gem-magic into the wood to revitalize the lift spells therein. There were some planks that were unrecoverable; we had to replace them with ordinary wood, and so the ship's center of mass was permanently moved back a few inches. But since the Mikoyan had been built so that the pilot and loadmaster could handle the masses of the crew wandering back and forth, the change was well within the ship's capacity to handle - though it did mean we'd permanently eaten up a bit of that capacity.

If we let this sort of thing happen too often, we'd lose more and more of the ship, which would make it that much easier to lose more the next time, until we were shipless and stuck here.

I was at the bow of the ship, leaning on the railing - I could have spread my arms and shouted "I'm queen of the world!", but then I'd have had to shoot myself in the name of good taste. I was rolling my latest wand from one hoof to another, and trying to think, when I heard the sound of clawed feet on the wooden deck. Turning just enough to see who it was, I said, "Hey, Ursula. Moe-shed?", meaning, 'Hey, Ursula. What's up?'.

"Guten sover," she said, and tried translating her own words, "Brat sleeps." Back in her native tongue, she commented, "Ya har endlig fi let teed fer mieg selv."

I sighed, pulled out the translation wand and invoked it. "I really need to find someone who speaks both languages to be a teacher - or even a full-time translator."

'You seem to be doing alright with what you have.'

"'Seem' being the operative word. We came a lot closer to destruction than we should have. If what finally worked, hadn't, I still had a few tricks up my sleeves - but they all come at higher and higher costs. And as I'm trying to think of what we can do to deal with similar situations in the future... well, there are costs to that, too, and I'm trying to figure out if they're worth paying."

She leaned back against the rail comfortably, and asked 'What sort of costs are you talking about?'

"Well... here's an example." I held up the wand I'd been looking at; it was pink, and the mildest sigil I'd painted onto it was a heart. "With a bit of instruction, you could use this wand as well as I. With further instruction, you could build your own wands, and sell them - or even give them away, so that anyone or everyone could cast this magic on another."

'It looks like it makes some sort of love spell.'

"Similar, but a lot cruder. I'll put it this way - if I was interested in cash, I could arrange to sell this to wealthy older gentlemen whose spirit is willing, but flesh is weak, and make myself a fortune. I'm imagining teenage boys getting hold of this - or outright criminals. This one wand alone could reshape entire, fundamental aspects of society... and not necessarily for the better."

'Then the answer is simple.' She reached for the wand, and I let her take it from my hoof... and with a slight twitch, she tossed it over the side.

I sighed, pulled out a different wand, and said "Volare." As the wand floated back up to us, I said, "No need for that - I can destroy the wand and use the gem for other purposes."

'Then do that.'

"If things were that simple - I would. But doing that has a cost, too. I have a task before me, which, if I succeed, will save countless lives - and if I do succeed, the benefits from doing that will far outweigh whatever disruption this wand can create. But that doesn't mean the disruption won't exist - and if there is some way to minimize it, or even prevent it from happening, that's worth trying for, too. If I was smarter - if I was really the genius I play to impress everyone, instead of just someone who's had the good fortune to have the opportunity to learn certain things - then I should be able to figure all this out in a moment. But part of playing the genius tomorrow means spending tonight coming up with as many answers as I can, so I've got them ready when I need them."

'You are a very silly talking cow. Or a very silly whatever it is you are.'

"I don't doubt it. Anything in particular you have in mind?"

'You have just defeated a dragon, even if it is just a temporary defeat. You should not be spending your time moping about and thinking sadly about the things you cannot think of. Tomorrow you will die. Or maybe I will. There are no bulls aboard, but you should go pick a stallion, of whatever species is available, and enjoy them. Or a mare, if you prefer. If they are uncertain, use your magic on them."

"No magic. I've been caught up in too many love spells already. ... and if that's such a good idea, why aren't you doing it yourself?"

'What makes you think I'm not?'

"Oh. ... Er..."

Instead of saying anything, she put one massive, clawed hand behind my head, and pulled my muzzle towards hers, giving me a fast kiss.

When she broke it, I blinked, and she sighed. 'So much for that idea.'

"Well - you're a very nice-looking bear and everything, but..."

'Stop overthinking. If you will not use magic, and if there is no spark, there is no spark. You were my first choice - but there are some nice-looking stallions. I will go find one now. And you - if not me, then find somebody who can keep your brain too distracted from turning in useless circles.'

"There is somepony - she's just back home."

'Then find some'pony' here.' She stood back up, and wandered back inside the ship. I wondered which of the crew she'd aim for - and whether they'd let her succeed. I saluted her with the wand, wishing her luck.

After some further thought, though on rather different tracks then before... including remembering a rather embarrassing incident with a certain princess.

"Say, Amethyst? I've had a busy day, with lots of soot and smoke and so on... and your hands are a lot more dextrous than my hooves... if I were to manage to put together a bubble bath, would you want to join me?"

Drill Baby Drill

While I was certainly willing to take Ursula's advice as inspiration, that didn't mean I had to take it the way she gave it; there are all sorts of aphorisms and adages that are actually so much applesauce. She might plan for dying any day, and so live for the moment; but while I was also planning for dying any day, I was at least aiming for the best possible outcome. (The tricky part of which was figuring out which outcomes were actually possible, to avoid wasting my efforts on the impossible ones.) Maybe it had something to do with my having been linked with the Element of Hope (though I was still rather uncomfortable with the idea that abstract principles could have such an independent existence), but I'd been trying to build the best possible future I could for some time now, and didn't see any reason to change.

So when Amethyst and I shared a bubble bath, there was absolutely nothing sexual about the event. What it was, instead, was intimate.

I probably haven't spent enough time talking about the sheer annoyances of having two immobile 'fingers', effectively single digits, on the end of every limb; pony society is built to accommodate that sort of anatomy. But simply being able to relax and let somebody I trusted with real hands, even claw-tipped ones, help scrub my hide and clean my fur - well, even the Spa Ponies would probably go out of business if the Diamond Dogs went into competition with them. And while I couldn't return the favor in exactly the same way, I was able to use the new water telekinesis spell I'd come up with for more than firefighting, and we had some fun playing with that.

By the time we were done, I, at least, was feeling much less stressed and worried. In fact, looking out at the stars, I felt relaxed enough to start humming a nice, slow song-

which I cut off after the first two notes. I'd already had enough trouble with love magic, including song-based love magic, and I had no intention of letting the local narrative causality use music to stick me into a love polyhedron, just because that was a standard sort of story that I could be slotted into. I still didn't know how much of my feelings for Cheerilee were actually mine, and how much were created by magic - and until I either figured that out, or was able to come to terms with not knowing, I could at least try and keep whatever was going on in my head from being pushed around willy-nilly. Music had its place, and could cause problems at least as easily as it could solve them; probably easier, since it was rather unlikely that I could use music to solve the problem I'd been thinking about when Ursula came by, as there weren't any real connections between singing scales and my... wands...

...

... okay, if it was narrative causality that led me to that inspiration, then I was willing to chart up a point for it. That didn't mean I owed it any favors.

"All crew, and passengers!" Red called out to everyone, who was gathered up on the deck in front of the bridge. "Before we finish changing shifts, the Mikoyan's owner, Doctor Missy, has an announcement she wishes to make to all of you at once. Please pay attention." She nodded at me.

I looked at everyone looking at me expectantly. I took a breath, took a moment to imagine them all wearing underwear, which was silly enough to make me crack a grin, relieving the 'public speaking' tension. "Okay, folks. We've had an interesting couple of days - and we've found a few difficulties, especially with how we interact with the locals. I've been looking into some solutions, and have finally come up with something that should be able to solve at least one set of problems, without introducing too many others.

"This is a sleep wand." I held up a short piece of wood with a gem on the end, painted deep purple with various symbols and sigils. "I am giving each and every one of you one of these, to keep for the duration of your service, or your stay aboard the Mikoyan. Our Three Musketeers," I nodded at the golden-furred diamond dogs, "will work with you to figure out a way you can keep it with you at all times, such as in a belt, and I suggest you keep it ready to use at a moment's notice at all times.

"It is as close to a non-lethal weapon as I've been able to come up with. The target becomes overwhelmingly tired, and falls asleep - for a full eight hours or so, if left undisturbed. This can be a problem if they're holding onto a ladder, but other than that sort of thing, it can take anything short of a dragon out of a fight without causing any permanent harm.

"As should be obvious, it will work for any species, not just ones that can naturally use magic. Using it is simple - but training is still a good idea, and Captain Red is adjusting schedules to make time for both individual training, and practice with group tactics. Yes, part of the training will involve using the wands on each other. To prove how safe it is, Captain Red will demonstrate on me, while I explain how to activate the wand.

"Step one - grab hold of the wand, with your hoof, paw, or hand - not your mouth. Step two - aim it at your target. Step three - visualize your target falling asleep. And step four, say the activating musical phrase," and I sang out the notes, "Do mi re". My earlier experiments in the Dairy, about how clearly a Latin word had to be pronounced, were now paying off - for singing those three notes, with the right visualization and a charged gem, had proven to be close enough to the actual Lain word 'Dormire', meaning 'sleep', for the spell to activate. And by implying that the activation key was a set of musical notes instead of a Latin phrase, that would probably be enough to keep anyone trying to steal the idea from being able to reverse-engineer any more dangerous spells, as they chased down the blind alley of using notes from a musical scale.

As I'd talked, Red had drawn her new wand from her new uniform belt, aimed it at me, furred her brow in concentration, and after I sang the notes, she repeated "Do mi re."

I was asleep before I hit the deck.

This was, however, not the end of my speech. After I'd snored for a few seconds (or so I was later told), Red grabbed the bucket she'd put nearby, and dumped the cold water it had been full of over my head. I yelped a bit as I woke up, and took a few seconds to blink my eyes and get my bearings back. "Right. Where was I? Oh, yeah." I pulled myself back to my feet, not bothering to suppress my yawns. "As you can - ahah - see, the target can be woken up early, with - haaaaahaaa - minimal ill effect. Though I am feeling a bit fuzzy, do plan on taking a nap when we're done here." I got a few chuckles out of that. "Hm - Red, maybe we can call them 'fuzzers'. Let me know if that seems a bad name when I'm fully awake again." I turned back to the group.

"Anyway - a few last notes, and then I'll let you all go. I've had to make do with the gems we have, so each wand can be used a different number of times before it needs to be recharged. We'll be adding more gems to our shopping lists. They can be recharged by any of our unicorns. If unicorns are unavailable, there is another recharging method, which I have entrusted to Captain Red. We don't want these things falling into the hands of those who would misuse them, so try not to lose them or let them get stolen - it's important enough to try chasing after a pickpocket, but not important enough to risk your life over. When you leave the crew, or if you're a passenger, when you leave the ship, you're to return the wand to the ship's armory - if you don't, we'll assume that you've stolen it, and I'll be annoyed with you. Believe you me, you don't want me to be annoyed with you.

"I think that covers the basics. Any questions?"

Berry Blast asked, "How do they work?"

"Through principles that anyone can discover, if they choose to take the time and effort to look for them... and maybe if they have a few years' education in the right fields, first. I won't try to stop you from figuring it out, on your own time, as long as you don't damage your issued equipment or hurt anyone. I just feel no need to help you figuring it out, at least not unless you're someone I trust to be able to handle the consequences of that knowledge."

Red piped up, "To give you an idea of that standard - a noble once offered Missy a million bits to do something that, while not causing any direct harm to anypony, she didn't think was the right thing to do. She refused that offer, and did what she thought was right, instead."

I hissed at her, "Come on - it was more complicated than that, and you know it."

She whispered back, "Not the point." Back to her command voice, she said, "So that's the standard she holds herself to. She doesn't expect as much from anypony else - but those of us who've been with her for a while try to live up to her expectations anyway. We may not always succeed - but we've been making the effort, and she knows it. Next question?"

Firebough took a step forward from the protection of Ursula's bulk. 'You're really giving one to me? And her?'

"Yep," I said. "You have as much right to be able to defend yourself as anyone else - so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, and giving you the chance to prove you can handle the responsibility. If you abuse it, then I will take it away from you - but I'm hoping you will demonstrate that my trust in you is not misplaced. Next?"

Gallant Heart inquired, "When should we use them, and when should we use our hooves, horns, claws, or whatever?"

"A very good question," I nodded, "and answering it will take some time - so I plan on doing so during the training sessions. Any other questions that can't wait until then?"

"Can we zap ourselves if we're having trouble getting to sleep?" I couldn't make out which pony called that out, and there was more chuckling.

"As long as you're able to wake up for your shift or any alarms," Red replied. "Anyone else? No? Alright - anyone who's on-shift, back to work, the rest of you, do what you will."

"Hello, everyone," I said to the small group, "And welcome to Fuzzer Tactics one-oh-one: Individual tactics. We'll be covering care and use of your fuzzer, go/no-go choices, and individual tactics - the latter adapted from the Equestrian Guard manual for unicorns. Later courses will cover group tactics, and, for anyone interested, further courses will go into the ethics, legality, history, psychology, and sociology of such things, potentially leading to individualized instruction. But for now, since all of you are both Equestrians and crew, I thought that we might start with this." I started passing out sheets of paper. "I've adapted it from a service you've never heard of, and I'm not fully satisfied with the translation yet, so I'm not insisting that you swear to live by it - but it offers a perspective that I think is worth thinking about. If any of you can think of improvements that can be made, let me know. In the meantime - here's my first draft of the Wandpony's Creed."

This is my wand. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My wand is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.

My wand, without me, is useless. Without my wand, I am useless. I must fire my wand true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...

My wand and myself know that what counts in this war is not the charges we expend, the noise of our blast, or the flash of magic we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit...

My wand is pony, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a sibling. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its symbols, its accessories, its shaft and its gem. I will keep my wand clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before Celestia and Luna, I swear this creed. My wand and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life.

So be it, until victory is Equestria's and there is no enemy, but peace!

Cloud muttered, "I dunno about 'sibling' - it seems kind of wishy-washy..."

"I can fiddle with that," I agreed.

Gallant thought aloud, "I'm not sure I like the idea of putting so much... emphasis on one particular tool, instead of on the pony himself."

Berry was outright dismissive, "I'm a unicorn - I can use magic myself, I don't need a wand."

I'd anticipated the latter view, and had made a plan. "That's an entirely reasonable belief," I said. "It also seems reasonable to believe that wands might be more useful than unicorn horns in at least some situations. So how about we try seeing which belief actually corresponds to reality? This cargo bay is reasonably big, and the crates and barrels and so on make it interesting terrain - so how about the four of us run some quick experiments? Say, you and Gallant, without wands, on one team, and me and Cloud on a team with wands, and we play some 'capture the flag'?"

Berry blinked at that. "... really? What if you lose?"

"Then it's better I find out how easily that happens now, rather than in the middle of a real combat situation, isn't it?"

"That's... astonishingly reasonable of you."

"'Reasonable' is what I aim for. I just happen to have some scarves and sticks here to make flags out of. Dibs on blue."

"Do mi re!"

"Do mi re! ... okay, they're both down."

"That was fast."

"Let's grab their flag and wake 'em up."

"Do mi hey!" Cloud exclaimed as Berry grabbed her wand from her with his telekinesis.

Unfortunately for him, there were two of us, and with a quick "Do mi re" from me, he was out of the fight. But while I'd been doing that, Gallant had started galloping toward me, and I didn't think I had time to zap him before he got to me - so I tossed my wand up into the air for Cloud to wing over and catch. Gallant tried leaping up into the air to grab it himself, but Cloud was faster, and with three quick notes, he was out of the fight.

Before the next round, Cloud and I made a change - we used some of the pony equivalent of duck tape to attach our wands to our forelegs, between knee and fetlock (the part I thought of as being equivalent to our 'forearms'). Gallant and Berry made some changes, too - instead of coming straight for us, they tried keeping hidden behind the crates. I whispered to Cloud the old squirrel-hunting technique, of one hunter walking noisily around a tree, so the squirrel stayed on the far side of it, while the other just kept quiet until it was in sight. She gave me a funny look, but gamely flapped up toward the ceiling, circling to the left, while I just held still. I saw a few movements on the far side of a crate, and wasted a couple of charges before I realized I was falling for the 'hat on a stick' routine. I heard Cloud sing out, and a thud as, from the weight, presumably Gallant fell to the floor. Berry sent a few blasts in Cloud's direction, but with two against one, he wasn't able to hide from us both, and quickly fell.

Cloud started down to their flag, before I called out to her to stop. "You know," I called out, "if I were a clever guard, I might try faking being hit right about now, so I could surprise my opponent from behind. And since I'm a clever cow, that means I should probably zap my seemingly fallen opponent again, just to make sure they really are out cold. Which means I'd get to toss a bucket of cold water on him to wake him up for the next round. Do we need to go through all that?"

Gallant called out, "Okay, okay, you've got me."

Cloud said, "Maybe I should dump a bucket on him anyway..."

The next round, Cloud and I finally lost - when Berry not only managed to sucker us out and take our wands from us, but used them against us to knock us out.

But when I woke up, even though it was with the now-traditional dousing in cold water, I was smiling. "Looks like you won that one," I said, cheerfully, as I shook my body dry. (Well, drier.) "But the way you did it heavily implies that my proposed belief wins the overall experiment - the side with the wands won."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I actually expected it to go a bit differently - I thought we'd run out of charges first, and you'd win the round that way, letting me point out how important it is to keep a wand fully charged. Well, maybe I can use that lesson on another group. For now - will I at least have your full cooperation in developing and training with a wand-based tactical doctrine?"

"That depends - will you be using these wands against the Guard, the Princesses, or Equestria?"

"I still consider myself employed by the Princesses, and unless they've turned into tyrants by the time we get back, I fully intend to share everything we figure out with them, for them to determine how best to integrate into the Guard - or not, if that's their choice. I've already come up with one weapon they've chosen not to put into general circulation, and while I'm not sure whether I agree with their decision, I'm abiding by it, because I'm not sure they're wrong, either. Of course, sharing this information with them will involve getting into contact with them directly - even if I didn't have concrete evidence their mail's being intercepted, all this info is sufficiently sensitive not to trust to unsecured communications."

"I can deliver it for you."

"What I'm going to say may sound insulting, Berry, but is not meant so, only as a statement of facts. One of the core lessons I've learned about how to think well enough to solve important problems is 'shut up and multiply'. This includes using math, as much as possible, to quantify beliefs, and the consequences thereof. There is a low-to-moderate chance that you are more closely associated with my mysterious opponent from Canterlot than you are with the Princesses. Even if that's a very low chance, I also have to consider the scale of the negative consequences if that's so, and multiply them together - and the result is that, even if you find it offensive, I simply must not trust you to do that task for me, if I can do it myself."

"But you trust the Captain."

"More than I do you, yes. But I do keep secrets even from her."

"Is there anyone you do trust entirely?"

"I don't trust myself entirely. That's another of those important lessons. But if you're asking who I trust the most, other than yours truly... probably Princess Luna, with Princess Celestia a close second."

"... I'm not even going to ask why they're in that order. But if I could get you to them - you'd tell them about all of this?"

"That's my intention. Of course, there's one more minor complication you haven't thought of yet - by the time we get back, will the Princesses, and the ponies around them, trust me enough to let me anywhere near them? After all, I'm a stranger, a wielder of odd and unusual magics, and my behavior is unpredictable - maybe it's all part of my secret plot to overthrow the Princesses and take their place."

"... My head is starting to hurt."

"Welcome to my world. I do have one piece of good news, though. Even if I did seize the thrones for myself - I'm still just a mortal cow; at worst, I'd be a tyrant usurper for a few decades, but then the immortal Princesses would be able to take up the reins of power after I died, and get to work on fixing things."

"That's... good?"

"Of course, I wouldn't object if I found an ethical way to extend my lifespan, or even achieve immortality."

"That's... bad? Wait, is it?"

"If I could, I'd even spread knowledge of that so everypony who wanted to live longer, could."

"... if I agree to help with the tactical classes, will you stop now?"

"I can live with that."

Clean-Up On Aisle One

I spent a bit of time looking for the limits of the translation spell. Turning one language into another was a complicated task, involving much that was close to the heart of information science; and if there was a clever hack that would let me use it in an unexpected way, such as, say, as an intelligence booster, then I'd kick myself if I didn't at least try to find it. I played with native languages, learned languages, made-up languages, sign language, languages even I only knew a few words or even just a few letters of, codes, sending codes through intermediaries, and so on. I was able to come up with one fairly consistent rule - if a given casting of the spell included at least one live person who understood the method of communication in question, then that understanding was shared amongst all the other people affected by the spell. So, since I knew a few letters of Egyptian, anyone else affected by the spell would be able to know them too, when they looked at an Egyptian text from my notes, while the spell was in effect.

While I was doing that, the crew were training with their new wands, learning how to work in team-pairs; Red was sliding us as unobtrusively as possible eastwards along the coast; Firebough and Ursula were being pumped for anything they'd heard about the lands on this side of Stortrut; and we were generally making progress on all our fronts.

According to our local guides, the local Lord was a blue dragon who was reputed to prefer sleeping to any other activity; his home was a giant set of traps designed not to kill or imprison an intruder, but simply wake up the Lord soon enough for him to be able to put up a decent fight against any challengers. Needless to say, the local population was much happier with a Lord who took such a claws-off approach to them most of the time. After some discussion, we decided to take advantage of his napping, at least long enough to duck into a nearby village to pick up some supplies - food, fresh water, gems, rope, sundries, and such.

I buddied up with Armina for the shopping trip, and we, and a few other pairs, found ourselves in a fairly normal-looking village market, populated by various canine and caninish breeds, so two pairs of us started circling from the left, and the other two pairs from the right. When we met up in the middle, we discovered a problem - none of the villagers on the right would sell anything to those of us who'd started on the left, and the villagers on the left wouldn't even talk to those of us who'd started on the right. I looked back and forth, and finally noticed a detail I should have sooner - all the stalls on the left had some sort of green decoration, such as a scarf, a cloth tied around an arm, or bunting on their stall; while all those on the right had purple ones.

I shrugged a bit - if that was the local custom, it was something we could accommodate ourselves to. I waved all of our group together so we could exchange lists for shopping on each others' sides... but as soon as we started talking, the other shoppers, and even some of the sellers, started walking toward our little octet, until they formed two muttering semicircles.

I sighed. "Alright," I called out. "Anybody care to start explaining, or do we just jump straight to the pointless brawling?"

'What, a greeny too scared to fight? Why am I not surprised?'

I sighed again. "Right. I'll make this offer once: we're from far away, we're neutrals, and we're uninterested. While we're here, anyone who wants to sit down and talk with us, is welcome to. Otherwise, we'll just do things our way."

'And what way's that? Donating some manure to the fields just before you run away?'

"Armina," I said lightly, "Please demonstrate to that good gentleman what our way is."

She pulled her wand from the harness she'd gotten made, and with a quick "Do mi re," the heckler was flat on his back. There was surprised muttering and mumbling, and two semi-circles took a step or two back.

"In case you're wondering," I said, looking around to both groups, "yes, we can knock out everyone in town, and just take everything that's not nailed down. But we've got this funny notion that there's no honor in winning a fight we can't lose - so we're here to trade and buy stuff. If we can do that, we will. If we can't, we'll leave. I don't know what your problems are, and frankly, I don't care - as long as you don't try to stick us in the middle of things. So like I said - anyone want to talk?"

From the green side, an older, greyhound-ish fellow took a step forward. "Who are you?"

I snorted. "The name I use these days would mean nothing to you. I'm a wizard with so much power, I've given parts of it to all the members of my crew - and I could still win against them combined, in a fight. I'm the arbitrator who convinced a pack of diamond dogs to give up slave-raiding and make peace with a pony village. I'm the scholar who knows the laws of a dozen countries. I'm the tactician who, just the other day, sent Stortrut flying away from my ship in a hurry. I can speak in tongues, put light in darkness, force lying tongues to speak truth, cause sickness, cure wounds, sing love into existence, call down lightning, fly through the air, and do just about anything else I darn well put my mind to.

"You can call me 'Missy'."

'That is a rather... boastful set of claims," said the Green greyound.

"I'm feeling my oats today."

'If you have all that power - then why aren't you using it against us?'

"The greater the power you have, the greater the challenges you find to use it on. Frankly, you're not worth the effort it would take to subdue you - unless you insist on it."

'We cannot just let you insult us and get away with it.'

"What insult?"

'You have started collaborating with those who have chosen to side with... them.'

"In case you haven't noticed - we're wearing blue, not green or purple. I don't know what the difference between your two groups is - I didn't even know there were two groups until we got here."

'How could you not?!'

"Easily. But since this is getting to be such a problem for you - it's probably best if we just left, and took our business to some other village, where the only color they care about is the color of our money."

'You are still collaborating with the friends of our enemies.'

A voice popped in from the Purple side, 'We could say the same thing!'

I whispered to all seven of the Mikoyan's crew, "Ready wands," as the shouting started spreading.

A rotten apple was thrown from the Green side, landing by Armina's claw. Then a stone flew threw the air at us from the Purples. I said "Volare," as I whipped one of my wands out (more for show than necessity), and the thrown rock hovered in mid-air. "Right. That's quite enough of-" I said "Volare" again as a second rock came, from the Greens. "Aim wands," I commanded. To the locals, I said, "Last chance."

The instant the third rock rose into the air, as I gave it a quick "Volare", the other seven started with the "Do re mi"s, and I joined them on the next round. It took less than half a second to say those words, and there were eight of us - so in five seconds, everyone in sight, save for ourselves, was collapsed to the ground.

"Hey. Wake up." I gave the dog a light kick.

"Huh? Whuh?"

"Welcome back. Aren't you glad that I decided not to just slit all of your throats?"

'Uh... yeah.'

"You should also know that, right now, you can't lie - and you can't resist answering questions, either. Just imagine what would happen if somebody asked you what your most embarrassing secrets were. I also happen to have woken up one of the guys from the other color, and put them under the same enchantment. I'm not going to let you kill each other - but I am going to start the two of you talking, just because I'm curious to see what'll happen."

Once I primed them to start saying what they didn't want the other one to hear, it was a tale of petty greed, corruption, a few murders, and general tit-for-tat escalations. With a bit of nudging, I was able to get each one to agree that, from the other side's point of view, their actions had been justified. The whole thing came down to an original incident, involving an overenthusiastic warrior dog and a complicated relationship with a farmer's daughter, and from that which of two sons inherited a farm, and from that cascaded two entirely separate sets of property claims throughout the whole village. But it wasn't about the land, no - it was all about 'honor'. Neither of them was willing to believe the other's version of events, even though they both knew the other one thought they were telling the truth.

"So how do you see this working out? One of you kills one of them, one of them kills one of you, and back and forth you go?"

'Something like that.'

'I guess.'

"And if it keeps going, until there's two of you left, then none - then will 'honor' be satisfied?"

'...' '...'

"If so - I can have that happen right now - without even using magic. Or, I could just let you sleep until someone else comes by, and who, seeing you all helpless, does whatever they want to you all - including seizing all that land both of your sides claim. And there'd be none of you left to seek revenge on them. Is that what you really want? Is there any honor in that?"

They were like schoolboys caught red-handed. 'No...' One even swing a leg back and forth to scuff the dirt.

"Then - if some other solution were available, who would need to agree to it to make it binding?" When they pointed out the figures, I put them back to sleep.

"Welcome back to the land of the living. You've got a choice to make. You can either lose some of your petty little feud with your neighbors - or you can lose all of it. I'm shoving you and your counterpart together. You have one single chance to pick who owns how much of what. Anything you can't come to an agreement on - I'll claim as my own, in compensation for you idiots dragging me and my people into your fight. Or, if you prefer to keep on living by the rule that whoever can bash the most heads wins, I can just claim the whole shebang for myself, now; including all your families as mine. Have I mentioned that, among my other scholastic knowledge, I've learned of sexual perversions you've never dreamed of, and among my accomplishments, I invented at least one sex act that had never been previously written about? It involves a piece of anatomy that I don't believe any species on this continent possesses... Oh, and yes, I am always quite short of experimental subjects for my research.

"That's what I thought."

"Now, with all that settled - is it possible that, without anybody trying to kill us or make us join their faction or whatever... that we can buy our freaking groceries?"

Now Just Sit Right Back

At least some of the local canines were enough like diamond dogs to consider gemstones to be snacks; and, like in Equestria, they were a lot more abundant than they were on Earth. So we were able to pick up a good bunch of them from the green-purple village; enough, at least, that I could put together enough 'translation wands' to outfit my inner circle of Red, Blanche, and Micro. (Amethyst was part of that circle, but tended not to speak much, and didn't want one.) This meant that I didn't have to be the main translator for all our dealings with the locals, outside of the small phrasebooks we'd put together so far. So, when we hit the next village (thankfully not split in half), we were able to split up and investigate four different things at the same time.

With our partners to watch their backs, Red went to talk to some of the local boaters and fishermen, Micro wandered in search of a herbalist or apothecary, Blanche flew around looking for anything resembling a school or teacher... and I went hunting for a tale-teller, with Stoke Red. Red put Amethyst in charge of the Mikoyan while she was off-ship, and we cracked a few jokes about, "If she actually had to give an order - how could anypony tell?".

This village had a bunch of longhouses; but it also had some smaller buildings for dedicated purposes - including, upon investigation, a bar. Or maybe I should call it a tavern, or restaurant. When Stoke and I entered, a good-sized bear male who seemed to be in charge of the place growled at him, 'Leave your livestock outside.'

"Don't worry," I piped up, "I'm no more likely to mess up your floors than any other customer. Maybe even be less likely, depending on how drunk they usually get."

The bear looked up and down at me, grunted, then went back to what seemed to be the inter-universal standardized activity for anyone in his profession, wiping tankards with a rag of unknowable cleanliness. I carefully did not look in the back corners to see if there were any dubious patrons lurking in the shadows, waiting with rumors of adventure waiting to be had - I had my own mission already underway, and didn't feel like letting the local narrativium invoke any sidequests on me.

I wandered over to him so we didn't have to speak so loudly. "I'm wondering," I said, "if you can recommend the best tale-teller in the area - stories, legends, eddas, sagas, histories, that sort of thing."

'Wanna listen to something while you drink?' he asked, a bit pointedly.

"Something like that. I've got around a dozen crew I can give shoreleave to in shifts, to come here and spend their pay however they want - or we can be on our way to the next town. The better the things I get to listen to, the longer we'll stay," I pointed out to him.

"Mm. Come back in a quarter of an hour, I'll have Old Gunnar here."

"So what do you want to hear about?" the grey-muzzled bear asked, then took a sip of the first of the drinks I was buying for him. In the background, the Musketeers and Armina were at a table, enjoying the local food and drink, while Stoke had a milk and I had a mug of tea.

"Treasures," I answered. "Magic objects, lost and found. Artifacts of power, their making and destruction."

'Aye,' he said, 'I know of a few such. The falcon-feathered cloak of The Lady, plus her Glowing-Ornament. The shoes of the Wide One. The Careful One's Gift and The Dripper, both rings which make new gold. The chain The Open One, the cauldron Fire-Sooty, the shield Coolness, the spear Swayer, Greed's-Want, Power-Belt and Iron-Gripper and Crusher, a dozen swords...'

"How many of those do you know the fates of?"

'Yer a strange beast, aren't you? Planning on going out for some treasure hunting?'

"Let's just say that I'm looking for a certain something which was lost, and am collecting every hint I can. Including from old tale-tellers from random villages I pass through."

'Hunh. Well, that only makes you the third-strangest one to pass through here in the last year.'

"Dare I ask about the top two?"

'There was a pony, one-eyed, with a broad-brimmed hat and a cloak, who put on the best impersonation of the Rager that I've seen in all my years - acting mysterious and knowledgeable, as if he really was the real one walking the earth. He did spin the old stories especially well, and made himself a decent collection of coins thereby; even I learned a few tricks and fillips to add to the stories from him.'

"How'd you know he wasn't the real one?"

'Are you daft? What'd the real Rager be doing in so small and unimportant place as this?'

"Who was the other one?"

'Ah, now that was a bad business all around. I'd call it a beast, except that it talked. Sort of - pony-talk, not real speech, save a few words. Big as a small giant, tan-furred, four paws, wings, a tail with a poison sting, and a great shaggy red mane. Wanted to know where all the monsters and evil folk around here were, so it could try killing 'em. Couple of the boys, Hrothgar and Sigur, set it on each other, and sure enough, it killed 'em both, rest their souls. We didn't want it anywhere near after that, so we talked up the Sleeper in the City, and he flew off to kill him. Either one of 'em kills the other, we're probably better off for it.'

"Did it give a name?"

'Not so I heard.'

"I'll keep a weather-eye out for it, then. But for the moment..."

'Ah, yes, yer treasure-hunt. Let's see - the Lady keeps loaning out her things to her family for their adventures, but in all the tales I know, she gets them back at the end, so unless you plan on dying in battle and joining her, your not likely to be using her cloak to turn yerself into a falcon. The Wide One's gonna need his shoes in the final battle, so he probably keeps a good eye on 'em. The Open One is keeping the Fen-Dweller tied up until the Wide One breaks his jaw, and nobody wants that monster loose. Fire-Sooty is up in Hall of the Slain, where Sooty cooks up Sooty-Boar every day. I doubt the Thunderer would let you have his things, even if you asked nicely - and the Rager's too smart to let you have his spear, since he'll be needing it against the Fen-Dweller, too. The Rager, explaining the worlds while in disguise, said that Coolness stands between us and the sun, shielding all from its glare, and the whole world would be aflame if it were moved. The Careful One's Gift, hm, that was Armor-Battle's wedding gift, but she was a princess of Thule, and none have found that land in many a generation. The Dripper was given to Fenced-In, which is the last I know of mention of it, though she had a son, Multiplier, who drowned in a vat of mead; his son, Waving One, was lured into a stone and never seen again; his son was hag-ridden to death, his son was burned to death by two of his sons; his son-'

I cleared my throat.

'Yes. Well - the Fair-Hair Dynasty never did have the best of luck, and if they had the wealth the Dripper made, there wasn't any sign of it. The Thunderer used Greed's-Want to kill some giants in a cave, and as far as I know, is never mentioned in any other tale - it could be anywhere. As for swords... Angurvadal is probably with the descendants of Frithjof in Ringerike... Dead's-Legacy is still part of the Battle of Heodenings, which will continue until the world ends... Man-Head is held by the Illuminator, who guards the Shimmering Bridge and unlikely to give it up... Damage-Twig is probably with The Dripper... Mistletoe is likely in Thule, assuming the land still exists at all... Quern-biter - ah, I know that is held by High-Son the Good, far in the east. Tyrfing, which must kill every time it is drawn, was used in the battle Hloethskvitha half a millennium ago, in Pannonia, and I know not of a tale of it since. Skrofnung was buried with Famous Wolf, dug up, and eventually buried with the fellow named Sword. Wrath and Ridill were used to kill Fraenir, and then they were discarded in favor of Hrotti...'

I had been trying to jot down notes as Old Gunnar tossed off reference after reference, but I'd been losing ground, and by the time he started on the swords, I'd simply given up on that. "A moment," I finally interrupted him. "The name 'Fraenir' interests me. A green dragon, was he not?"

'Aye, he was. The greediest who ever lived, so much so that he took all the gold he could, even that which bore the curse that led to his death.'

"I have heard someone suggest that Fraenir's death, just in time to pass on the treasure, was... what was the word... 'convenient'. And that he might not be dead."

'Hm. Haven't heard that version of the story. I suppose it's not impossible Fraenir let his killers think they killed him, and snuck off while they were plundering his horde - don't think I recall any word about new green dragons showing up around that time, so he'd probably have had to leave the whole continent, or find somewhere to nap for a few centuries. So - have you gotten word that he's back and sniffing around for gold again?'

"Nothing quite so concrete, just more hints. Pieces to a puzzle I'm still trying to assemble. Like, say, Coolness - was it possible the Rager was being metaphorical in its description? Over in the pony lands, there is a pony-type being who says she moves the sun - maybe Coolness was used to protect against her?" I was thinking of what I'd learned so far of Scutum, the Star Shield.

Gunnar took a deep gulp. 'Now you're getting philosophical, and at that, I'm no better than any other bear. The poem says,' and his words were,

"Svalinn heitir.
Hann stendr sólu fyrir,
skjöldr, skínanda goði.
Björg ok brim,
ek veit, at brenna skulu,
ef hann fellr í frá."

which the translation spell interpreted for me as,

'Coolness, it's named.
It stands before the sun,
shield, shining deity.
Rocks and surf,
I know, shall be burnt,
if it fell from its place.'

"Hm," I hmed. "Not much of a rhyme to it, is there?"

'You want rhymes, I've got rhymes. You want poems about artifacts, I've got those. You want both at once, you'll have to go find another tale-spinner.'

"I didn't mean it like that - I'm still interested in hearing about, say, Thule, which you've mentioned a few times."

'Not much that can be said about that place. A few centuries past, a few clever people found a way through the treacherous winds and currents to find an island of incredibly fertile soil, started farming it and raising cattle there - no offense-'

"None taken."

"-and after a while, we stopped getting any ships from there, and anyone who went looking, either didn't find it, or never came back. Since the ones who did come back usually were almost torn to shreds from the storms, most everyone thinks that the ones who didn't return, sank. But there's enough tales about how rich the land was that there's always a few raiders with a map of a guaranteed route there, instead of the surer profits that can be made by sailing west. You've been a good listener - I hope that you're not one of those who're going to lose their ship and crewmates looking for the place."

"I haven't decided - if the risk's as big as you say, then I've got important other things to do. By the way, have you had a chance to look at my ship?"

'Nah, I came straight here when I got the message you'd be buying drinks. Why do ye ask?'

"There's a certain minor little detail about it which, if I do decide to look for Thule, might give me a certain advantage over previous attempts..."

'What might that be? Some sort of special storm-worthy sail rig, maybe?'

"I'm not as good at telling tales as you - so I doubt you'd believe me if I just told you. How about we head to the door and you can just look over at the harbor to see for yourself?"

'Seems a bit of trouble, but sure. ... Okay, what am I supposed to be looking at? I don't see any ships but our own.'

"Look... higher."

'What are you talking aboh by the Thunderer you've got a flying ship. That has to beat out even Frithiof's Ellida. I don't suppose you can fold it up and put it into your pocket?'

"Never tried, but I've got no particular reason to think I could."

'Oh, good - if you could do that, then I wouldn't be able to die without getting myself aboard first. Now I only have to sell everything I own, if I need to, to get me and my grandson aboard.'

"Any reason you want to go up so badly?"

'I've been telling my stories for years, for drinks. If something like this is going on, this is my first real chance to be in one, and having every other tale-spinner talking about me for all the generations to come, that's worth more than anything I can think of.'

"You've been reasonably helpful and polite so far. If Captain Red agrees, I don't have an objection to letting you aboard for a stop or two, as long as you stay within the rules. It'll give me more time to pick your brain for your stories."

'I'll just go get Sigurthur and be back before you can sing! Don't leave without me!"

"I'm sorry, Gunnar, but I caught Sigurthur red-handed going through my luggage and pocketing things. Captain Red has every right to insist that he not be allowed to stay aboard. Does he have some other family he can stay with?"

'Och, no. He's mine, and I'm his, and we're each others, at least as long as I last. I suppose I can make a new tale about this, something about the conflict between duty to family and drive to adventure, and what happens when one wins o'er the other.'

"Cheer up - maybe the Mikoyan is about to crash, and by getting off now, your grandson is saving your lives."

'It's a nice thought, and I thank ye for it. I'll try putting that in the story too, at least until someone hears about what really does happen to you.'

Triage

Red, Blanche, and I were sitting and talking around the bridge's big round table, when a certain small, red-scaled Yarl climbed up the stairs, and plunked his tail onto one of the chairs.

"So," I was struggling to explain, "the point isn't just that mysteriousness isn't to be worshipped - that's just a very small part of it. The point is that when you truly understand something, the mystery doesn't just shrink - it dissolves away entirely. Truly understanding something on a deep level means the questions that used to baffle you, aren't even questions anymore, at least to you, any more than "What happens if I let go of an apple in mid-air?" is a question."

When I came to a pause in my attempts to pass on at least some of the structure of rationality that I'd learned, Firebough spoke up, "What speak you of?"

"Do you want the translation spell?"

"Please."

I ran my hoof along the row of sticks stuck into my harness, picked the one I'd established for the task, and invoked the spell. "There we go - is that better?"

'Yes. I am learning your language, but am not good enough in it yet to talk about anything. What were you talking about?'

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. "That would take some explanation in itself... so I'll try starting with some basics. I've got certain goals I want to have accomplished. There's a reasonable chance that I'm going to die before that happens. So I want others to be able to continue my work if that happens. To get them to be able to do that as well as possible, it helps if they know as many of the secrets and tricks to finding right answers as I can entrust them with. There's a lot of such knowledge that depends on other knowledge, which itself depends on other knowledge. So I'm trying to work through teaching as much of that as I can, even if it seems completely unrelated to my ultimate goals."

'Why worry about what happens after you're dead? You'll be dead.'

"Knowledge of all sorts of useful things is increasing all the time. Things that used to be impossible, are becoming routine. There is a... small chance, but a chance big enough to consider, that if I die, then at some point after that, the knowledge of how to bring me back to life will be discovered. But, even if that is discovered, that doesn't mean it will happen, unless there's somebody who wants to go to the effort of bringing me back to life. And, in order for that to happen, there has to be enough of a community still alive to do all that research. If everybody dies and there's nobody left, there won't be anyone left to bring me back to life. So it's still in my own long-term rational self-interest to work at keeping the world from being destroyed, even if it kills me. Of course, I'd much prefer to accomplish that without dying at all, but we can't always get what we want."

'That sounds like codswallop.' I blinked a bit at the word the translation spell picked. 'Something to keep you happy and doing stuff that helps others even if it hurts you.'

Red answered, "Just because it sounds like it doesn't mean it is. That's a big part of what she's been talking about today - how to tell the difference between what sounds like nonsense from what really is nonsense."

Blanche added, "A lot of it depends on knowing some math, so you can add up things, and find out whether they really do end up doing you more good than harm, or more harm than good. How much have you learned about numbers?"

Firebough puffed out his chest. 'I can count to a thousand!'

Blanche raised an eyebrow. "How are you at adding?"

'Er...'

"Can you do, say, up to ten plus ten?"

Whatever Firebough's answer would have been was cut short, as the lookout called down, "Smoke off the port bow!"

There wasn't just smoke - there was a lot of smoke. Red called for a yellow alert, Blanche took Firebough down to the safety of the ship's interior with the pups (and to keep him out of trouble by distracting him with some tutoring), and I headed up to join the lookout with binoculars.

As we rounded a prominence on the coast, what came into view was an entire village aflame, populated by ponies of all three breeds plus what appeared to be ponyish deer, some running around, some lying still... and some being chased by wolves in armor. I saw one catch a unicorn... and when I saw what it started to do to its prey, I lowered the binocs rather than watch the whole thing.

I clambered back down to join Red, and described what I saw. "With the new sleep wands," I said, "it should be fairly safe for us to intervene, save what lives we can, and probably won't delay us too long. But there's still a risk - and you're the captain."

"I want to be able to look myself in the mirror in the future - so we're going in." She barked out commands to Bouncer, who was piloting.

When she was done, I said, "Right - we've got wolves to knock out, burning buildings to search-and-rescue through, and injured to treat. Some of them look... bad. How about we do a sweep overhead and KO any wolves in sight, then drop me off somewhere central to have the injured brought for me to at least stabilize as much as I can, and have teams sweeping through the buildings for any wolves we missed and anyone who can be carried out?"

"What about anypony who's too injured to be moved?"

"It'll depend on whether they need immediate treatment to survive - and how many others there are. I know the idea behind focusing a medic's attention on those who'll have the best chance of improvement from it... but I'm hoping I don't have to make any choices like that." I knew what I'd seen - I knew that some of the hooved people below were beyond my help, even if they were still alive. My stomach was bottoming out on me, and I was trying to roll up my emotions and stuff them in the back of my head to deal with later - and I was pretty sure I wasn't succeeding.

Despite nominally being in charge of everything, I had very little idea about how things were progressing, for as soon as my hooves were on the ground, I was busy applying my medical magic. With it, I could save just about anyone - as I'd done with two of the three diamond dogs who were now part of the sweepers. What I couldn't do was save everyone. And if I spent too much time working on one pony's femoral artery, then I might end up letting two deer die who I could have saved if I'd worked on them, instead.

Almost immediately I realized that if more of my crew knew the healing spells I was using, more lives would be saved here. I also knew that spreading such knowledge would be one more way that the secrecy of the whole magical system could be breached, risking everyone and their uncle being able to set each other on fire, mind-control each other, and worse. Reducing the odds of that happening was very cold comfort when a buck died next to me while I was working on a doe.

So I did what I tried doing so often - tried to find an acceptable compromise. Of everyone who'd come with me on the Mikoyan, the two I thought least likely to break confidentiality were Red and Blanche; with Micro a close third, due to her and Safe having let themselves be manipulated. Red was staying aboard the Mikoyan to run things from there. So I had Blanche join me, shoved some of my unspecified, decorative wands at her, and talked her through applying the spells I was using, while I worked on my own patients.

I gave Micro a single wand, and told her one word to use with it: "Pax". While I and Blanche were basically acting as trauma surgeons, Micro worked as a nurse, organizing things, using standard treatments where they could help, and no matter whether or not any individual could be saved, helping give them some comfort and relief from pain.

Firebough might not have understood why we were doing all of this - but even he at least started carrying water to the thirsty.

I was pausing from working for long enough to stuck my muzzle in a bucket at guzzle its contents, when Red flew down to join me. "We've interrogated some locals and some wolves," she said without preamble. "The wolves are part of the blue dragon's army. They were ordered here to wipe out the village that sent the manticore after their master."

I came up for air, and to say, "That was the last village we were at, not here."

"Yeah - half their force is on its way there."

"Oh. ... Fuck."

"I know what I want to do. I also know that that's more time and effort and risk than we were planning."

"We've got a whole planet to save - if we get bogged down dealing with every single raid or injustice we come across, if we try to spend all the time and effort needed to upgrade the local politics to something reasonable, they'll die anyway when the world goes foomp." I wiped my hooves clean - well, cleaner - on a rag, and rubbed my head. "Right. If you do go to at least warn them - first priority, self-defense. Keep the crew alive and ship in one piece, even if that means abandoning the locals. Second priority, long-term assistance - gather what useful intelligence you can, and avoid spreading too much info about us. Third priority, short-term assistance - save what lives you can, however you can. Warn, evacuate, dive-bomb the wolves, whatever. I'll stay here with our non-combatants, and keep working. ... I should also grab some food - I won't be able to do anypony any good if I collapse, and I can't eat while I'm casting."

Fortunately, before I worked myself off my hooves, I ran out of patients who'd die without aid. I'd removed impaled weapons, amputated limbs, sewn together spurting arteries, and seen far too much of the insides of far too many people. Also fortunately, with unicorn telekinesis, everypony had been gathered up - and even the sleep-zapped wolves were nearby, in a closely-watched pile. By this point, the buildings, and whatever contents they'd had, were total losses - I could have tried extinguishing them, but if I had, more would have died. Too many already had - and yes, some while I was in the middle of working on them.

I didn't think I'd ever be able to watch an episode of MASH again, even if I did get back to Earth.

I found a deer who was conscious and seemed reasonably alert and non-panicked, and got directions to the local chieftain - a unicorn, now short a leg, but thanks to Pax, he was dealing with it better than I was. "I think," I said, "everypony here who's still alive, is going to stay that way, at least for a few days. After that - there's a problem. The local Lord ordered this attack. If you stay - and he finds out you're alive - he'll probably send a larger attack. And I can't stay here long enough to deal with that."

'You have done more than we can repay you for. We will find another home.'

"Where?"

'There are always raiders attacking along the shore, some years more than others. Somewhere along the coast will be a village where the inhabitants died, but the buildings and fields remained.'

"Okay, that sounds like a plan. When my ship gets back, we'll be continuing east, with some detours inland. If that's the direction you want to go, I'll talk to our captain and see if we have enough room to bring some of you along, if you like."

'What about them?' He jerked his head at the pile of wolves.

"I've got no sympathy for them - but I try not to kill unarmed prisoners if I can help it. Maybe leave them here when you go. Maybe take them to their Lord and drop them off."

We talked a bit about some of the practicalities, foodstores, and the like, as best we could without actually knowing the state of the Mikoyan; and after a few minutes of that, Micro walked up and interrupted. "Missy," she said, "I've got a patient who's exhausted, but uninjured and trying to help."

"Do we need the extra hooves?"

"Not at the moment."

"Then just 'Pax' 'em, sleep-zap 'em, and let 'em help again when they're in good enough condition to. And if you need me to tell you that, get some rest yourself."

"I will," she said, and then she drew her wand, looked at me, and said "Pax."

I was out so fast I didn't even hear whether or not she sleep-zapped me.

A Century of War

I didn't dream; presumably the Pax spell warded off any nightmares I would have had, which, given the previous day, wouldn't have left much for me to dream about.

When I woke up, I made a mental note to use Pax no more than was necessary to keep me functioning and no more insane than I usually was - I didn't want to get hooked on the magical version of tranquilizers any more than the pharmacological sort.

Five minutes after that resolution, I was back in what passed for our surgical theater. Just because I'd finished dealing with the injured who needed immediate surgery just to survive, still left those who needed surgery soon to live much longer, and those who needed surgery fast to prevent permanent crippling. While I'd been out, Blanche and Micro had put together a list of who I should work on, in what order. I felt somewhat guilty about letting them take the responsibility for deciding whether it was a higher priority to try to save one fawn's eyes or another's foreleg, but if I tried overruling them, then no matter who I decided to work on, I would have felt even more guilty about putting the other patients behind them. So, even if I might have been able to come up with a better sorting method, even if using their order wasn't the most rational thing for me to do - I used it anyway.

They'd also written mandatory rest breaks into the schedule. I knew the reason, approved of it, but it still felt weird to just lie down and chew some cud while there were people waiting for me to help them.

During one such break, fairly early in the morning, the local unicorn chieftan I'd talked to the other day sought me out. 'We will be burning the dead, soon,' he said. I nodded numbly - I'd never been good with funerals in the best of times, and this was close to the opposite of that. 'Your ponies are not letting us put the wolves on the pyre.'

"They're still alive, just unconscious," I pointed out.

'I know,' he said. Now wasn't that just a tad more bloodthirsty than any pony in the cartoon had been. Not that I could blame him.

"They're my prisoners - at least until I hand them over," I said aloud, thinking as I talked. "However evil they are - I'm not going to hand them over to be burned alive, or tortured in any other way, no matter how much they deserve it. If they're to be killed, it's to be done as painlessly and quickly as possible - that's part of how we prove we're better than they are. Another part is, when there's time, to take the time to consider all the available options - and to pick the one that does the most good."

'Killing them will keep them from doing this anywhere else.'

"That's true. But will it keep others from being hired to do what they would do? And is there some other way to accomplish that?" I looked at the sand-glass, and saw my time was almost up. As I pulled myself back up, I said, "I've got a punctured lung with a temporary drain to make permanent repairs to. Have a wolf brought to me for my next break. I'll not condemn anyone to death without giving them a chance to speak for themselves."

I did the best I could for the next three-quarters of an hour, using all the scraps of info on anatomy I'd ever skimmed over to try to have an idea of what needed doing, and in the end, mostly trusting in the magic itself to do what was necessary. Still, even just knowing about basic sanitation gave me an edge up on the local medieval methods - and even if somedeer ended up with a permanent limp, it was at least a better outcome than an amputation that would likely lead to death by gangrene.

Faced with all the things about live bodies I didn't know, I'd never felt less deserving of the 'Doctor' title Princess Luna had arranged for me.

During my next break, when I washed my hooves of the blood, I saw Amethyst standing next to the pallet I'd woken up in; and lying in it was one of the wolves, stripped of everything but her fur, hog-tied, muzzled, and very much awake.

"You are my prisoner," I said as I sat down next to her, once again stalling for time as I tried to think of what to say while I was saying it. "That means I decide what happens to you. Do you understand?" She nodded, eyes wide. "One option is that I give you to the locals, and allow them to do what they wish to you. They already suggested throwing you on the funeral pyre. I can probably talk them down to as merciful a death as can be arranged. So far, this has been the only suggestion made. If I can't think of a better idea, that's what I'll do. Do you understand that, too?" Another nod. I sighed. "There are ways you might be left alive - but they are limited to ones where you will not pose a problem for us. One option I've heard of being used in the past, is to send you back home, but for every ten of you, nineteen eyes of twenty are put out, the last one left to let that one lead the others. I... am not in favor of this option; but it would keep you from causing further harm, and allow you to remain alive at least for some time longer. I don't know enough about the local conditions to be able to say if you would prefer being sent to your Lord in such a state, or if you would prefer a quick, humane death here. Other options may be possible, but I haven't thought of any that would be any better. Amethyst, let her talk, please?"

A quick swipe of the claws, and the rope around her snout was gone. She worked her jaw for a moment. 'Why haven't you just done what you want to do already?'

"I will kill in the heat of battle if I need to. Outside of that, I try to keep as many alive as possible."

'If you send us back, after failing our task - that will be a death sentence for us. The least painful fate will be becoming lunch - if we are lucky, we will be chewed and killed instantly, rather than swallowed whole.'

"If you wish to live, then give me another option."

'We could become your wolves rather than his.'

"Interesting. I don't have any particular need for more soldiers - you'd basically be more mouths to feed. And I'd have to worry about you making the same offer to whoever beat you next. But you're showing creativity, that's good."

'I'll be as creative as a prize-winning skald when my hide's on the line. If you have no use for us - what about the villagers here? Now that we've failed, we're in as much danger from the Lord's other wolves as they are.'

"If you can convince the locals to accept you for that - I'll gladly hand you over and be done with you. If you can't..." I shrugged. "About the only use I can think to make of you would be as experimental subjects for my research, to test spells whose results I don't know and thus wouldn't want to cast on someone I liked. But doing that... well, to put it simply, let's just say I once made an oath to avoid being involved in slavery, which is what that would amount to, and I am loathe to break that oath for anything short of saving many, many lives."

''Twould be better than the flames, or the teeth.'

"Which is the only reason I mention it." The break-timing sand-glass was running out. "Amethyst - I'd like her to talk with the chieftain, to see if they can work something out I'll accept. Don't let either one attack the other, sleep-zap 'em if you have to to stop 'em."

I went back to work - and while I was at it, the Mikoyan buzzed Micro on the radio, reporting that they were bringing casualties for treatment, quickly adding that none of them were our own.

The surgery area got very busy again for a while, as Blanche and Micro and I went to work on bears from the other village. And, yes, some of the wolves who'd attacked it, who hadn't fared quite so well against the armed ursines there as they had against the unarmed equines and cervines here. There was a bit of a kerfluffle and objection to that when the locals found out what I was doing, until, elbow-deep in somewolf's intestines, I shouted out, "Either let me do things my way, or we'll stop doing any surgery for anypony and leave you all here for the next attackers!" Some of the local ponies said we should do just that, but the chieftain shouted them down till they were just grumbling.

Red came down from the ship and watched as I carefully straightened out a shattered rib, and started picking pieces of it away from a stomach, so I could de-perforate it. "I don't know how you can do that," she said.

"I've learned a lot in a hurry. I'll let myself get sick later. Maybe I'll even see if letting myself get drunk for my first time helps."

"That's not what I meant." I was muttering my spells while she talked.

"I know. I'm a bit busy to deal with what you meant."

"I'm flying a ship under Equestrian flag. I can't let you hand the wolves over to the locals if they're just going to kill them."

"Then you'd better find a way to keep them from wanting to kill them, unless you plan on either executing them yourself, or expanding our brig to half the ship and taking them all with us."

"And what if I did?"

"Hm?"

"Kept them with us."

"Red - you're the captain. You know what I'm aiming for, and I trust you. Whatever decisions you make, as long as it doesn't obviously increase the risk to Equestria as a whole, I'll back you up. If I think you're putting the mission at risk for a short-term goal, I'll tell you. If you think I'm putting the mission at risk, I trust you to tell me."

"If you stopped working on those wolves, we could be out of here that much sooner."

"... I thought you didn't want them dead?"

"I... look, I just want us out of here as fast as we can, without breaking the law, okay?"

"Hold that thought." Stomach patched, I sanitized what had leaked out of it. Wouldn't do me much good to fix the tissues if sepsis ended up killing this wolf, after all. "Right. Red - there aren't any easy answers here. I have to take a rest after every patient to keep my strength up - even if I have to do it next to people who'll die if I don't get to them in time. If it weren't for the Pax spell... things would be worse. We'll save the lives we can, arrange what we can to keep them alive, then go back to our search. Even if getting what we're looking for means cozying up to the dragon who ordered this. In the meantime - liase with the chieftains. Figure out which way they want to go, if we can help any of them in that direction, figure out who to keep us fed until the next place we can get supplies. I'm short of sleep and am pretty sure I'm halfway to crazy, and I started out with the advantage of being used to all of this at least from stories. I'm frankly astonished you're not puking your guts out."

"Did my throwing up on the flight here."

"Good. Well, not really, but you know. Or maybe not. Um - look, you've got plenty to keep you busy for at least a couple of hours, so how about we check in with each other when I've got through the critical cases? I'll be a lot more tired, but won't be quite as distracted."

"Here you go, Missy." Somepony handed me a mug of coffee. I'd never liked coffee - not even the smell of supposedly nice, freshly-brewed stuff; and whatever was in this cup didn't smell anywhere near as good as that. I downed the whole thing anyway, burning my tongue and not caring. I had a decent set of spells for burns, now, and with a quick word, the pain was gone.

Bunched together were me, Red, the unicorn chieftan, and the bear barkeep, who seemed to be the senior bear available from the other village. Also present was the wolf I'd talked to earlier, once again muzzled.

"So," I said, "I've saved just about all the lives I can. I've worked on most of the crippling injuries. I'm afraid, though, that I'm close enough to my limit that if I tried to work on fixing lesser injuries, scars and simple broken bones and light burns and the like, I'd end up a casualty myself - so that's where I'll draw the line."

'I, for one, am not going to begrudge you for stopping now," said the chieftain. 'You've done far more than anyone could have asked of you, and not asked for any reward.'

Red said, with some black humor, "Well, even if we did ask, it's not like you've got much left to reward us with." We were actually punch-drunk enough to get a few brief chuckles from that.

"Still - I don't want all my hard work to go to waste by letting you get killed by the next group of wolves who come calling. Any progress on figuring that out?"

'Aye,' said the (ex-?)barkeep. 'Your red-haired friend has pointed out that things are a lot more peaceful to the west, across the ocean where most ponies live. A lot of our fishing boats are still afloat. So we'll put together as much food as we can, get what fish we can on the way, and hope it's enough to get us over there.'

"Sounds as good as anything I could think up. Um - did anyone mention Equestrian bears to you?"

'That they're no more able to speak than any cow here, other than you, can? Aye - we'll be careful. Maybe build ourselves a home just outside Fair Ponyland-o'er-the-waves proper.'

"Good, good. We can probably spare the time to take you to your boats - I'll let Red decide that and you can work out the details with her."

Red said, "Shouldn't delay us much more than we've already been."

"One piece of info that might help," I looked at the chieftain, "ponies are actually able to digest fish and gain sustenance from it - as long as you can keep it down."

'We already knew that, but it's kind of you to say.'

"Oh. Well, um, good. That does leave one big thing to figure out."

'The wolves.'

"Aye. I mean, yes. If you're going overseas - then you can leave them here, and they'll be no danger to you."

'We could,' said the barkeep, 'and if that's what you wish to ask of us, we'll give our wolves to you gladly.'

I grimaced. "Well - I'm not asking it of you yet. I want to ask your advice on something, first. I know a piece of magic which, for a time, will prevent its target from being able to lie - even lying by omission. Because it is a mind-affecting magic, I consider it to be assault, an act equivalent to punching someone in the snoot. But - sometimes snoot-punching is the best available option. I am thinking of asking this wolf, or maybe more of them, if they will agree to let me use this magic on them... and then letting you and you," nodding at the two locals, "to ask them whatever you wish. But there would be no point unless you acknowledged beforehand that, whatever they said, was the truth as best as they understood it."

The chieftain looked at me thoughtfully. 'If you say your magic can do something, then I would be a fool to say it cannot. But what would be the purpose in our asking anything of them?'

"To see if any are the sort of being who you would be willing to take with you when you go."

I braced for an explosion of outrage - but everyone was still looking calm and thoughtful. The barkeep said, 'I thought it might be something like that. You keep saying you want as many alive as you can get, and since your trying for that's what kept Sigurther alive, I won't say it's wrong of you to try. Not getting proper revenge is a heavy price - but if you give me a wolf who cannot lie, and he promises to do me and mine no harm, I will ferry him to Ponyland for you.'

I looked at the pony chieftain. He looked uncomfortable, then sighed. 'What can I say? The bears have the boats, and you have your skyship to bring us to them, and we do not even have enough grass here to feed ourselves for a fortnight.'

I looked at the wolf, who'd been listening with ears perked high. I reached over, slipped the loop of rope from behind her head over it, then tugged the bridle-like loop from around her jaws. 'I don't know anything about the Sunset Lands,' she said. 'Can you really do more than healing with your magic sticks?'

The corner of my mouth twitched - I was quite willing to give a demonstration. I didn't want to use too powerful a spell; I'd already been showing off far too much of what I could do amongst the locals. And none of the remainder seemed to give a decent impression. But like I'd said, I was always short of experimental subjects - for example, there were all sorts of words from the Lovecraftian canon which just might be based closely enough on Latin roots to be useful, such as rugose, squamous, and tenebrous - or, I decided, glabrous. I drew a wand I hadn't assigned a function to yet, pointed it at her, and declared, "Glabrere."

With a soft fwoomp, every last bit of her fur fell to the ground.

There were a few soft chuckles, and she rolled her eyes. 'Alright, alright - so you've got lots of tricks. If it'll give me a chance to live out the week, go ahead and do your thing and I'll answer the questions... and I'm pretty sure all of us wolves will agree.'

It turned out she was wrong - there were six wolves who, after seeing their compatriots unable to resist spilling the answers to whatever they were asked, refused to give their permission for Veritas to be cast on them. Interestingly, all the other wolves were quite willing to promise not to lay a paw on anyone if it would get them a ticket to somewhere the Lord couldn't reach them.

"Welp," I said to Red, "after hoofing all the others to the local authorities, such as they are, at least we've shrunk our problem down. I'm going to guess that these ones that are left are the ones we shouldn't send along for the boat-rides. But we still get to decide what to do with them. Or... I suppose if we brought them aboard, then technically, as Captain, you would have the authority to mete out summary justice."

"Are you passing the buck to me?"

"Not yet - just thinking about the options. We actually probably could stuff them all in the brig until we got back to Equestria, and handed them over to the local justice system."

"And have to feed them the whole while - better just to leave them here when we continue with the mission."

"I can agree with that. There's another thing to think about, though... now that I've got the time and energy to start thinking again."

"Is this going to lead to a plan I'll hate?"

"Possibly. The bear village had a big manticore wander in, one who spoke 'pony' - that is, what we're speaking now - and acting oddly, looking for 'evil' to smite. It went to the capital to try to kill the Lord, and the Lord sent these wolves here. How many manticores have you heard of that can speak at all?"

"... are you thinking there are gold-star individuals here in the Northern Wastes?"

"I haven't got a reason to think they're only in Equestria. Another item - I overheard one of the wolves tell about a clever fellow who had a magic amulet, which let him survive without needing to breathe. He got swallowed whole by the Lord, and, well, after a few days, the acid got him - or, at least, he stopped talking and played dead long enough to make it out and escape. Anyway, where there's one magic item, there might be more. This country isn't as poor as Firebough's, and the Lord isn't coming straight for us to kill us like Stortrut did - so it might be time to start looking around for our actual goals hereabout. And like at Firebough's, returning the Lord's wolves to him might be worth keeping available as a plan."

"You do remember that the Lord here is an enormous blue dragon who eats people and sets bands of wolves to destroy whole villages?"

"That just means I won't feel guilty if I get to steal from him."

The Mikoyan's top speed was a function of thrust and drag, not of weight; as long as the levi-wood and our side-thrusters could get us into the air, crowding the cargo bay full of passengers didn't slow us down at all. So it was a relatively short couple of trips to ferry everyone from the destroyed pony village to the half-destroyed bear village, where we made our preparations to go our separate ways.

I was asked, more than once, if I could send a 'Pax' wand along with the fishing fleet. I knew that if I didn't, all the injured would have to rely on the local analgesics and anesthetics, whose effective parts amounted, as far as I could tell, to willow-bark tea and tinctures whose value was likely more in the alcohol than in the herbs. I also knew that it would be the camel's nose, the first part of the wedge that would completely break down security around that whole aspect of magic. So I could either risk my whole mission to save the lives of everyone in Equestria - or I could force dozens of people to endure agonizing pain which I could prevent.

Every instinct I had told me to keep relieving their suffering.

One of the lessons of rationality I'd been taught was that, where possible, I should try solving ethical problems by 'shutting up and multiplying'. In this case, on one hoof, there was the certainty of a certain amount of pain for a certain amount of people. On the other, there was an uncertain risk, possibly low but with a very high margin of uncertainty, multiplied by the deaths of millions. Using the best guesses I had for the numbers - there was far more than a one-in-a-million chance of things going wrong with giving a Pax wand to the villagers, probably at least one-in-a-hundred even if I was being generous... so the balance was in favor of trying to save the millions of lives.

So I told the villagers who asked that the wand wouldn't work for them, and they nodded, accepting my word at its face, and they went on to deal with their lives without that remedy.

"I wonder if I really should get drunk."

Blanche shrugged. "You've earned it, if you've a mind to."

"Not like that - not exactly, anyway. Even besides the pups, besides me trying to be a teetotaler... there's a custom I once heard of, among a group called the Belters. When one dies, his friends go on a ceremonial drunk, celebrating and reminiscing - and then, that's that; after that, they move on with their lives. I've got no idea if it actually helps - but after the last couple of days, after losing patients I could have saved if I knew better, was better, was actually as good as I pretend to be... I could use some moving on."

"If you're asking me to be your wingman, you've got it."

"Thanks. Not sure I'm going to go through with it - but knowing you'd help, helps, too."

"Hail and farewell, O Missy Gambanteinn!" called out the chieftain from the last boat, in Equestrian - well, mostly - instead of the common local tongue. "Spell-crafter and life-saver, wolf-redeemer and truth-seeker!"

I gave a tight smile at the over-effusive praise, but raised a hoof in a farewell wave, and watched as they went out to sea.

Once we were on our own way, and they were over the horizon, I discreetly checked with Ursula what that one word had been. "Magic stick," she explained.

I thought about that for a while - better than some of the other things I could be thinking about. The whole idea for the wands was to hide the true nature of the magic I used, just on the off chance that at some future moment, an opponent would under-estimate what I could do. A secret I was willing to let others suffer for. A dishonesty made purely on a coldly calculated basis of the probabilities, no matter what my feelings said about the decision. A deceit made by someone who professed using the maximum possible honesty.

Looked like I'd just picked up a perfectly-suited surname.

Disinhibition

"Ow." Hearing the word hurt, so I said "Ow" again, but quieter.

I remembered some of the preparations I'd been making for exactly this moment; at least some of them seemed to have worked, since I'd had migraines worse than how I was feeling, back when I'd been human. I braced myself a bit and opened my eyes; no stab of searing pain as the light pierced my retinas, so that was good. I blinked a bit, didn't see either glasses or goggles anywhere nearby, but I did see a couple of glasses of water (one of which should have some salt and sugar, the closest I could get to electrolytes), some headache pills, a hooffull of nuts for vitamin B6 and some oats for cysteine.

Looking on the other side of my pallet, I saw Amethyst crouched on her own, looking down at me with a rather wolfish grin.

As I sipped and munched, I did remember planning to drink a lot of water while I got drunk, to reduce the dehydration I'd be feeling now. I did remember at least trying to do that between shots of honeyjack... and that was about as far as I did remember, no matter how much I prodded or looked for associations. I remembered making at least a couple of toasts, in the tradition of Callahan's Place, and pouring some libations for the dead in the old Greek fashion, and Blanche staying with me with glasses of fruit juice.

I remembered having made the decision to go on a one-night bender. I'd tried to take a nap - and in my dreams, had been faced with the simple sight of a doe who'd died on the waiting table while I'd been working on a pegasus. That was all there was to the dream, in terms of senses and events - but what I'd felt had made me jerk awake with as much force as any nightmare. I'd seriously considered 'Pax'ing myself into a night of oblivion... and I tried extrapolating where that would lead me, and didn't like it. There were no grief counselors or PTSD support structures here, no serotonin reuptake inhibitors or telepathic psychiatrists anywhere in the vicinity. Maybe Larry Niven had a good idea for dealing with this sort of thing after all - and if he didn't, well, it wouldn't do me much more harm to try and fail than not try at all. So I'd locked up Chekov, the Warden whistle, my pepper spray, and every last one of our gems; given Captain Red the key; and told her not to give it back short of battlestations or me getting completely sober.

I wondered if I'd done myself any good. I had no particular urge to repeat the experience - but I didn't know if that doe would be waiting for me the next time I fell asleep. I did remember one detail from early last night - I'd made a resolution to learn whatever medical knowledge I could, whenever I could, so that the next time I had to deal with anything resembling the situation of the last few days, I'd have truly prepared the best I could to save all the lives that were saveable. Maybe, if I really did follow through, that would be enough to set the image of the doe to rest. I didn't have anything else to offer her.

I cleared my throat a bit, and finally spoke up. "I don't remember much. What all did I do?" Amethyst grinned wider, if such a thing were possible, handed me my goggles, and when they were on, curled her hand around one of my horns, and tugged me along. I pulled myself to all fours and followed her back to the main crew quarters.

When we got to the mess, the place was filled with ponies, diamond dogs, a dragon, a bear, and a griffin - and when Amethyst pulled me in, pretty much the whole lot of them broke out into applause, whistling, cheering, and cat-calls. I just blinked at the noise and tried not to flatten my ears. When there was enough room to speak, I tried piping up, "I blacked out, so whatever I did-"

I was cut off by Armina planting her beak on my muzzle for a kiss, immediately followed by Ursula. Without any better clues, I tried reciprocating to whatever they did, but after the busses, they rejoined the crowd.

"Is this the part," I tried asking, "where you get to tell embarrassing stories about whatever I did?"

"Hear that?" called out Gallant Heart. "She wants us to tell her embarrassing stories!" This got a roar of amusement.

"Gotta tell you, boss," said Red, lifting a mug in a salute, "I never knew you had it in you."

"Had what?"

Red was grinning. "You've got one of the filthiest, most perverted minds it's ever been my pleasure to get a glimpse into - and you've managed to keep it completely hidden away for all this time."

"Um."

"And the songs!" she leaned back in her seat with a happy sigh.

Without much else to do, I found myself a seat, rested my elbows on the table, and hid my head under my hooves. "Do I even want to know?"

"Got me. Let's see - you began your oratorio with 'A Wizard's Staff Has A Knob On The End', then 'Seven Drunken Nights', 'Bang Away Lulu', 'Barnacle Bill', 'The Woodpecker', 'The Good Ship Venus', 'Eskimo Nell'... and then you started something you called 'The Hedgehog Song', and just kept going with it."

"I liked 'First of May'," mentioned Tranquil Valley. Most of the others looked at her. "What? It's got a good tune."

I peeked out from between my hooves. "I actually remembered the lyrics to all of those?"

"Well," said Red, "those ones, yes - you started going 'la la la' in the middle of some of the ones after that."

I took a big breath. "Well - I guess that's not too bad... as long as I didn't accidentally sing up any magic with them. ... I didn't, did I?"

Armina shrugged. "Only enough so we could sing along and stay in key."

I opened the gap in my hooves wider. "Anything else I should know?"

Red's mouth twitched. "Well... Most of us now have a standing invitation to join your and Cheerilee's little herd, if we've a mind to. And I think you timed your puking over the rails to hit a village we passed over. Oh, and you probably want to pop over to your lab soon as you're up to it."

Just about every flat surface in, on, over, or just nearby where I usually did my experiments was covered in writing. And drawing. And squiggles that made absolutely no sense to me. Micro was carefully copying down the whole thing into a set of notebooks, piece by piece. "Um... hi?"

"There you are. Maybe now you can tell me what all this is about."

"... No?"

"Figures," she snorted. "Last night - well, early this morning - you pulled me out of bed to come down here, and said you'd 'figured it all out', that it was 'vitally important'.

I tilted my head and squinted at a spot on the middle of the floor, which all the lines and not-words seemed to be spiraling in toward, like a cross between the insane scribblings from 'Dark City' and, say, the seals in 'Naruto'. "All I can say is that after the first few drinks, I don't remember a thing. Did I say anything else?"

"Something about having solved the concentration of force problem. Amplitude. Multiple worlds. That you really could get something for nothing, as long as you paid it back with interest. Then you started dancing, sang something about hedgehogs, threw up, and passed out. Blanche and Amethyst dragged you to bed."

"... Maybe I was completely out of my head and all of this is utter nonsense?"

"That's entirely possible." She finished filling up one notebook, picked up another, and continued dryly, "But if it's not - do you want to miss out on all the wonderful benefits of this mysterious whatever-it-is?"

I sighed. "You might as well slide over, then - I'd better start looking to see if I left myself anything like actual directions anywhere. Or instructions. Or even just coherent explanations."

"Good luck with that - I haven't even found anything I can recognize as real letters."

"I might know a script or two you don't - the pigpen cipher, Tengwar, Shavian, Deseret, Unifon - one of my favorites... I know the forms of Solresol, but that's effectively a language all of its own, and the word-list was pretty arbitrary. The fun part of that one was it could be expressed as combinations of seven musical notes, seven colors, speaking, singing, writing, sign-language; but as an actual auxiliary language, it was pretty much a flop, because it went against too many of the deep linguistic structures that make what we're speaking now so efficient at getting across so much information in so little time. Esperanto's the biggie these days, though oddly enough, Klingon's got some pretty dedicated followers - hm, wonder if I can remember any of its pIqaD letters instead of the English-based transliterations..."

Author's Note: No, I'm not giving links to any of those songs - this fic is still Teen-rated, and they aren't.

Gathering Intel

After thinking some about the giant blue dragon who ruled this land, how narrowly we'd managed to avoid the red one from the last one (and temporarily ignoring the red one who slept cuddled up to a life-size teddy bear), and how few people we wanted to lose, from the pups on up... we tried to do things a little more subtly as we approached the capital. (Otherwise known as the place where all the hangers-on and bureaucrats gathered around their dozing master, accompanied by their families, servants, attendants, the traders who brought their necessities and all their families, and so on and so forth. Back home, a similar sort of process was the only reason Ottawa was any bigger than, say, Barrie.)

So we landed the Mikoyan to pretend that the propellers were just some new-fangled motors for a sailing ship - obviously with plenty of drawbacks, though still useful enough for us to try to keep the workings secret. I demoted myself to livestock and wetnurse, and eavesdropper of anyone who happened to be chatting while in earshot. Red stayed as captain, the crew kept up their jobs, and, for the moment, Lord Firebough kept out of sight - him secretly coming to say hi to the neighbors and see if diplomacy could be done with them being the most obvious secret explanation for what we were doing.

I was still trying to figure out what I'd written out while drunk. I had a few theories, none of which I had much evidence for. One was that the overall diagram was some sort of magical circle, like I'd used to try to help funnel my magic when I'd been curing Blanche. There were some parallels with some of the diagrams in my photocopies of the forbidden texts, but nothing that clearly stood out. Another idea was that the whole thing was itself a spell, an artificial version of the ley line convergences which Blanche had originally theorized. Then there were possibilities like it being a message transmitted through me by some interesting entity, or a complete load of nonsense made up by my drunken self as a joke, or plans for an interdimensional gateway, or a memory from some piece of fiction I'd once read, to even less likely possibilities.

With some discussion, we came up with three main ideas for figuring it out. One was to find some scholarly wizard who'd actually been trained in such things to give an opinion - but magic seemed rather thin on the ground up here in the Northern Wastes, so we'd probably have to wait at least until we got back to Equestria. Another was to start dumping magical power into it, to see what would happen. Given that 'what would happen' could range from summoning unlimited wealth to turning everyone within a few miles inside-out, we considered this to be a bad option, unless we came to a situation where an unknown risk of annihilation was actually a good choice. The other suggestion which seemed to have some merit to it was for me to get drunk again, to see if I either regained my memories, or if my drunken thought processes would be similar enough to be able to puzzle out what the earlier drunken version of myself had thought of.

I, at least, was generally against this third plan - I didn't like being drunk, even just the parts of it I could remember. I also knew that certain branches of my family tree had inclinations towards alcoholism, and the best way I'd been able to come up with to avoid falling victim to the same problem was, well, not to start drinking. I considered the one-night bender to be an exception due to extreme circumstances. I'd lowered the bar for myself that far - but if I lowered it again, then it would be all too easy for me to lower it again and again, to 'a drink a day is good for your health, right?', to being physically incapable of performing the mental feats necessary to keeping Equestria in one piece. I tried explaining this to Red, Blanche, and Amethyst, and listened to their counter-arguments - the only one of which had any actual merit being the odds that the mysterious spell-thing might be something that really could help us save Equestria.

I was still quite reluctant, and by the time we got to the capital, still hadn't agreed to give it a try.

Cud-chewing was really quite meditative, when I let it be so. The bridle was itchy for a while, but after the Musketeers made adjustments, I almost stopped noticing it.

I was going to find some way to get back at whoever suggested putting the bell around my neck. I tried to remember if the ship's medicine chest had any laxatives, and if so, how easily the taste could be disguised.

What I found astonishingly annoying was having to go without my glasses again. Couldn't read a thing, and everything farther away than the dock was an unrecognizable blur.

I did keep a few wands and gems in the bottom of my manger of hay, in case of emergencies. And in case of real emergencies, I swallowed my best pair of opals. Cow stomachs have a section, the reticulum, where the worst of the indigestible stuff gets put, and it can hang around there in years. And, even if they didn't, a quick 'volare' would allow them to be eventually recovered. But in the meantime - they let me use magic without a wand, or even any visible source, as long as I was able to spend the necessary time concentrating to recharge them between uses.

But for the most part, I stood in the middle of the deck, my bridle tied to the mainmast, slowly chewing hay or cud. For hours and hours, while one crewpony pair or another wandered ashore to find out how the locals did things. A lot of people would think that I might be bored out of my skull after a while. They might be right - if, by 'a while', they meant the months it would take just to start working through all the stuff that'd been jammed into my skull since turning into a cow, let alone all the stuff I'd picked up back on Earth.

Still, I appreciated it when Stoke finished knocking together a few more deck chairs, and the permanent floating poker game was moved outside and next to me, so I could at least listen in while everyone gabbed about the city, and the people within. Starting with the parts of the place sailors were most expected to go, and as they learned about the other places, getting their bearings, so did I.

It was all going quite swimmingly - right up until the moment I had the thought that it was all going quite swimmingly.

I was really starting to get annoyed with narrative causality.

Onto the gangplank strode... somebody. Human-sized and very roughly human-shaped, overall quite reptilian with purple scales, plus bat-wings, claws, pointed snout, a pair of horns - a lot like Spike imagined himself as a knight rescuing rarity, including some armor, and a big black cloak with a complicated clasp. Or at least his evil twin, with those big, angry black eyebrows.

He pushed right past Gallant Heart, who was supposed to be guarding the plank, as if the earth-pony wasn't there. Pretty much everypony on deck immediately drew their wands, but at a raised hoof from Captain Red, didn't sleep-zap him on the spot. He walked right up to Red, and sneered down at her.

"You," he said, in perfect Equestrian English. "Bring the young Lord Firebough here." Red jerked up from her chair, stumbled a bit, and started walking to the stairs. As she went, she turned and gave the drake fellow a glare, and growled, "Get him!"

Most of the crew immediately sang out their "Do re mi!"s... which seemed to bother the drake not one whit.

I was getting somewhat annoyed with magic-resistant dragons.

I got more annoyed when, as the crew rolled up their metaphorical sleeves to go back to their more usual methods of physical combat, he simply swept his gaze across them all, said "Lie down"... and everyone there, including me, simply did as he commanded. It was as involuntary as blurting out the truth while under a 'Veritas' spell - he gave the command, and my legs folded up underneath me without my brain seeming to get involved.

Mind control. Great.

Berry Blast and Tranquil Valley started charging up their horns, and some of the random objects around the area floated into the air as they lifted ropes, blunt objects, and anything else that seemed useful in their telekinetic grasp... until the drake glared at them and said, "Stop that," whereupon all the stuff fell to the deck.

Micro was off-shift, probably asleep - I hoped that Red could get word to her, or to anyone who the drake hadn't affected yet. Everything was happening fast, but we were getting pretty close to a state of affairs where if any of us managed to kill this fellow, I'd hesitate before even half-heartedly trying to revive him - even if I gored him myself. I still had my opals - I could probably get one word out before he ordered me to stop. I'd have to pick my moment, and my word, carefully.

Red climbed back up the stairs, carrying Firebough by the neck like a kitten, despite his vociferous (if untranslated) protests. She walked up to the intruder and spat him onto the planks, took in a breath to start saying something-

"Silence," he ordered, then looking around, added, "All of you, while I'm here."

Crappity crap crap.

He stared down at Firebough for a few seconds, then back up at Red. "No need to try to hide anything - I know all your secrets. Your flying ship. Your wands of sleep. Your alliances with assassins."

... hunh?

"Come with me to my master." He looked down at Firebough, and said, "Kom mid my til mine herre," which was easy enough to figure out.

Then he looked at me, and said, "Come, lunch." Or possibly "Kom, lunsj."

I found myself getting to my hooves, and, silently, following him, Red, and Firebough off the ship.

I couldn't talk, my body wasn't letting me do anything but walk along with the three of them between the buildings - all I could really do was think.

I wasn't thinking happy thoughts.

Finally, we walked into one end of a longhouse bigger than the rest - and came to a stop. We couldn't go any further, because a draconic head bigger than all four of us put together was resting on the ground right in front of us.

The drake walked right up to it, and kicked it in the chin. The eyes slowly creaked open.

"Wake up, dad," he grunted. "I brought him, just like you said."

He pointed a thumb at Firebough, then glanced at me. "I also brought you a snack. Open up."

My viscera decided to do an emergency purge, and as the top of that jaw slowly levered itself wide, my bowels evacuated themselves, and I found my mind focusing on trying to remember whether or not 'evacuate' was based on a Latin root.

"You," said the bipedal dragon, pointing at me, "into his stomach," pointing at the head - and behind it, the long neck, stretching back to, presumably, a torso containing where I'd been ordered to go.

I watched as my hooves almost delicately stepped over the fangs, onto the tongue - and then I stopped seeing much at all, as I pushed my head down into the dragon's throat, the rest of me quickly following into the hot, wet, slimy tunnel...

I'd had better days.

Ah, But I Digest

If you're ever about to be eaten by a dragon, let me give you a piece of advice: don't let it happen. Fight, run, beg for mercy, surrender, offer your favors, chop off a limb if you have to - do whatever it takes to keep from going past the uvula. Even if you've got a couple of magical gems lodged in your own gullet, even if you've been magically compelled to push yourself down the dragon's throat - try to find some way to avoid your fate.

Dragon stomach acid is enough to break down gems. Once you pass through the esophageal sphincter, you'll be standing in the stuff. If your dragon happens not to move around much, and you manage not to fall down and bathe in the stuff, even if you've got protective hooves on the end of each leg, you'll be able to feel them getting eaten away, millimeter by millimeter. If you're lucky, enough fresh air will have been swallowed with you that your lungs won't immediately be filled with acidic vapors that eat away at you from the inside; or, perhaps, it's if you're unlucky, as that simply prolongs how long you remain conscious.

If you're in a dragon who's amongst a group who seem to be mysteriously unaffected by direct magic, then even if you can cast a spell, don't bother trying to ensorcel them to throw you back up - you'll merely waste your extremely limited time, breath, and magical power you have. If you want to try to keep on living instead of ending things as rapidly as possible, then try buying yourself time by affecting yourself rather than your environment. For example, even if it's a spell that rapidly drains your magical reserves, "Volare" can at least lift you away from direct contact with the acid...

I shook my hooves, trying to get the acid off of what little keratin remained on them.

I had to admit, none of my vast reading of fantasy, science-fiction, rationality, and irrationality had quite covered hovering in the middle of an enormous dragon's stomach, mere inches away from any of the flesh surrounding me, with only minutes to go before my swallowed opals ran out of magic and I got digested. In fact, I wasn't sure it was a situation anyone had ever experienced. If I survived, I'd have to see about getting myself put in the record books.

In the meantime - if I didn't come up with some other solution, I'd never be involved in any other books again. I squinted down in the complete darkness, trying to see what was below me; I was somewhat relieved, to say the least, that when I'd finished following the command to enter the stomach, the annoying purple dragon's commands let me have control over myself again. By some standards, I was part of the dragon now - but I'd been able to cast magic on myself. Maybe some of the other contents of the stomach were also not covered by the anti-magic whatever-it-was. I couldn't remember the Latin for either 'acid', to nullify it, or 'alkaline', to summon some antacids...

"Frigere," I stated, focusing not on the stomach, but on the liquid within it.

There was a great heaving about, the space I was within changing shape and pressing against me - but as the stomach walls pressed against my hide, instead of feeling burning pain, I only felt the chill of a thin, crackly layer of ice.

I let my flight spell dissipate, and even without acid, winced as my weight came down on my nearly-completely-dissolved hooves. Still - a little pain was a step up from near-instant death.

I focused part of my attention on recharging the opals within me - I had no idea how much magic I was going to need to survive for much longer, but guessed at 'all of it, and then some'. I wasn't sure how long the acid would remain below its freezing point, so I was likely going to have to keep casting that spell, until I came up with other arrangements.

And speaking of other arrangements - the air was getting rather close and stuffy. It might have just been my imagination exaggerating things, but it wasn't like the dragon was going to be deliberately swallowing gulps of air, so letting myself keep breathing was probably a top priority. I was pretty sure the story about the water-breathing amulet letting its wearer stay alive for days was just some sort of rumor - even if someone wearing that had been able to keep breathing, that acid would have gotten him in a few minutes. 'Fiat odore' had been able to create complicated scent molecules out of, well, thin air; with a bit of luck, I'd be able to figure out something similar to create air out of thin air...

Unfortunately, before I could start working through my French roots, I was interrupted by a light heave - and, suddenly, my hooves were immersed in liquid.

Rapidly rising liquid.

The stupid dragon I was in had started guzzling down some water.

My frozen acid quickly melted, but, at least, was diluted by all the water so that as the space around me filled, it merely made my hide itch and my fur start falling out in patches. I tried finding the sphincter I'd come in through, with vague notions of pushing myself through it; but it was functioning perfectly well as a one-way valve, and even when I managed to push a hoof into it, it was pushed right back out again.

Until the dragon belched - I was able to get both of my front hooves in... as almost all the air remaining in the stomach whooshed out. I only had moments before I ran out of breath with which to utter any spell at all; so I took my best guess that 'malaria''s derivation from 'bad air' was from the Latin - after all, River Tam had said 'mal' was 'bad - in the Latin', so I shouted out, "Fiat bonum aria!".

Okay, so the effect of the acid was currently reduced to mild surface chemical burns, and I had a source of breathable air. There were a lot of people who didn't have it nearly so good. (Of course, they tended to have it not so good for extremely short periods of time.) If the dragon wasn't going to throw me up, and I couldn't push my way back to the mouth myself... could I kill the dragon from the inside? I tried poking at the stomach with my horns, without much hope - after all, diamonds tended to be sharper and pointier. I couldn't make out any damage.

That only left one way out that I could think of. I allowed myself a sigh.

I choose not to recount the events of the next few hours. Use your imagination. Or, better yet, don't.

I believe I startled the nightsoil attendant into making more work for himself. A quick "Dormire" put the unhappy wolf into what was almost certainly the happier worlds of his dreamlands.

I was, to put it mildly, extremely annoyed. I was piqued, peeved, provoked, put out, and in pain - and had been plotting and planning for some time now, as I'd had little else to distract me and a great desire to be distracted.

Sure, I could just collect any of my crew stuck in the city, get back to the Mikoyan and fly away. It was at least arguable that that was the most rational course, given the existence of that mind-controlling dragon.

Who wants to bet that my plan involved anything of the sort (at least as anything more than a fifth-level backup plan)?

(Author's Note: Barrel of fun's story, Wild Card, has crossed over with Missy's future in its latest chapter.

Spoiled Spoils

"Trinkets. Trifles. Trash!"

The only reason I didn't dramatically sweep the whole table clear was that doing so would make me hurt more, which would put me in an even worse mood.

"Is this," I at least waved my hoof dramatically, "really the best that can be found in the whole land? I could make better in my sleep - and, I'm pretty sure, I have, at least once."

The regent glared back at me. "You wanted magical objects. These are everything that I've been able to lay my hands on."

I shook my head in disgust. "I would have done better staying at home - it's not even worth the effort to pack up these lighters and heaters and coolers and sharpeners and softeners and... so on, to bring with me."

"Well, pardon me for not living in a continent full of unicorns."

"Eh - it's not your fault, it's mine, at least partly. I let my hopes for what I'd find override my good judgment... and, more importantly, my good planning. It seems like your cloak really is the most valuable piece. Tell me about it."

"There is a secret to its magic, without which it is useless - a secret it took me years to figure out."

"Yes, you're very smart. The sooner you finish, the sooner we can all move along."

"Hrmph. You're taking it from me, but not letting me have my last fun with it?"

"This whole world runs on story symbolism, at least a little. One of the most powerful pieces of a story is making things dramatic by putting a time limit on things, so the hero can save everyone at the last second. It's hard to do that - and I've already managed to break some of those story bits halfway through, which means that even if the world tries to push me to finishing things at the last moment, I'm as likely as not to break that and have that moment pass by before I finish, thereby dooming us all. Are you willing to bet your life, and the lives of everyone else, that taking the time for your 'fun' won't be just more than the time I need?"

"... and you're living with that pressure on you all the time?"

"Eh; I can rest a bit while waiting for the things I can't speed up. But even then it's always scribble, scribble, scribble, writing down any ideas I've missed coming up with so far. Right now I want to scribble down whatever I can about your cloak."

"Fine. To get it to work, you just have to be willing to kill whoever you're ordering around if they don't do what you tell them."

"... Lovely." I thought about the situations in which that would work; and, even more important, what having that option available would do to someone. This one thing alone could spur the creation of a continent-spanning, honest-to-goodness, Evil Empire. I instantly mentally dubbed the thing the 'Cloak of the Lesser Evil', and resolved to lock it away as securely as possible, not to be taken out for anything short of any even greater evils it could be used against - such as a world-destroying threat. After thinking that through, I took a second thought, and took another look at my assumptions; whereupon I asked, "Is there any other way to make it work?"

"Why would I need another way?"

"... Right. In that case - I want you to be fully satisfied about making the best use of the cloak. So I suggest that you use its full power to order me to help you to the best of my ability."

"You want me to order you to help me?"

"Not especially - but I also don't want you chasing after me to try getting it back."

"Well - I can't see how doing that would make my life any worse. So." He glared at me - presumably getting ready to kill me if I didn't comply. "Help me, as best you can."

Upon hearing those words, I ran my mind through what was becoming a well-worn train of thought. Equis getting destroyed would be about the worst thing that could possibly happen to the dragon before me; so I should do whatever I could to prevent that fate; which I could best do by gaining the maximum possible understanding of local physics; including figuring out the mysteries of magic; and, at this precise moment, acquiring that cloak to figure out its triggering mechanism, power source, and details of how it forced its targets to obey was the best way I had to maximize my chances of helping the dragon as much as I possibly could.

So I held out my hoof, and said, "I can best do that if you give me the cloak."

He stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "Either that really is what will help me the most - or it's losing its power, and me relying on it will put me in danger." He unbuckled the clasp, swirled it from his shoulders, and draped it over my leg. I tried not to wince.

I examined the thing - black, of course, and as soft as the lightest down; if my skin weren't covered in chemical burns, it would be quite comfy; maybe even moreso than the cloak the torc I'd gotten from the Great Battlefield could make. Of course, I'd read all the classical fantasy literature, and I knew that I didn't want that Evil Empire forming around myself any more than I wanted it to form around this dragon; so I gently (more for my sake than the cloak's) folded it up on the pallet in front of me.

Resting on top of the pile of black cloth (or whatever it was) was that brooch. A fairly small blue gem in the middle of a pony-hoof-sized circle of gold, with eight spokes; a silver ring curled around what was effectively the top spoke, through which was threaded the chain attaching it to the cloak. "And what about this?"

"It's just another trinket. It always makes its way back to its owner - and punishes anyone who tries to stop it, with exactly the amount of effort they use turned against them."

"What - it flies through the air, and pushes thieves out of its way?"

"Nothing so dramatic. Before it was mine, it was a fisherwolf's - and after it was stolen from him, he found it again in a fish he caught, along with the thief's hand. He said his mother lost it when their home was flooded, and her father lost it inside a prostitute. Before that, the stories get less credible."

"Oh really." I eyed the thing with more interest; that wasn't quite like any magic I'd yet come across. The gem implied it was powered the usual way, the same as my wands and Equestrian gem-torches - but instead of just firing off a spell or maintaining a simple effect... the way it was being described, it sounded like it came much closer to fiddling with the laws of probability to ensure a certain outcome came to pass - or, in other words, it sounded a lot closer to an Outcome Pump than standard spells, which might mean I could use it to focus in on the details of my theory that that was the basis of all magic. But back to the present, "And how to I keep it from making its way back to you?"

"It knows its owner. I just gave it to you - so until you give it away, or sell it, or die, it'll keep going back to you, and bring the cloak with it."

"So if I accidentally leave it behind somewhere...?"

"One way or another, it'll catch up."

A thought occurred to me. "Can it tell the difference between being left behind, and being put in a drawer?"

He grinned, rather toothily. "Why do you think I've been wearing that ugly cloak for the last five years straight?"

"... Dæven." Me and the crew tended to hang around docks and sailors a lot - so the parts of the language I was picking up the fastest were, shall we say, the saltiest.

I let the regent arrange for a couple of his griffins to pull me in a cart back to the docks, and to the Mikoyan. It seemed they'd been ordered to stay put - but somebody was on watch duty, because by the time we got there, every single individual was turned out on deck and leaning over the rails to watch our approach, regardless of their usual shift.

Captain Red took the lead, and walked across the gangplank to the dock. She glanced at the regent, then carefully looked at me from horn to tail.

"Yeah, it's me," I said.

"So many questions," she said, and sighed. "What needs to be told right away?"

"We can start getting ready to leave. He," I nodded at the regent, "should talk to Firebough for a few minutes - he'll be leaving soon, too, and I suggested he head back to First Settlement to be Firebough's regent there. And I'd really appreciate it if someone could crack open the medicine chest and my spa kit for aloe and burn ointment. Oh, yes, and we're going to need to go over the ship's security protocols again, soon; I was able to steal my goggles from you without a hitch."

"... one of these days," she said, as the griffins took my pallet out of the cart and carried it, stretcher-like, onto the ship, "I'm going to stop under-estimating you. I just lost all the points I'd saved up so far - and so did half the crew. Amethyst and Blanche are going to be smug about betting on you surviving for weeks - even after I saw you get eaten by a dragon, not get thrown up, and without a single wand on you."

"I may have taught you everything you know about wands - but that doesn't mean I taught you everything I know. We can talk more when we're on our way and without the extra ears. I don't suppose you know of any magic or potion or something to grow hooves quickly?"

"Maybe your zebra friend knew something, but I don't."

"Then I'm probably going to be staying off my feet for a good while, while I heal up. Again."

I was more than happy to watch the ground and sea fall away from us, as we left that city behind. It might not have smelled quite as bad as First Settlement - but that didn't mean I was endeared to it.

The slathering of various lotions across my whole hide made me sticky, smelly - and almost made me turn into a puddle from relief from the sting of the burns. I'd had a long day, but managed to keep myself awake long enough to tell Red, Blanche, Amethyst, and Micro the outlines of what happened - leaving out the specific detail about the opals embedded in my reticulum, only saying that I had a last-ditch backup piece of magic I'd prepared ahead of time for just such an occasion.

I rather enjoyed the looks I got from them.

"So, in sum," I somewhat sleepily summarized, "The regent gets to play regent somewhere safer for him than that city; Firebough gets a somewhat better cover story for while he's away; we've handed off our prisoners to the local authorities, such as they are; I'm a little worse for wear; we've got two new facets of magic for me to try to figure out while we're on our way; and I might have acquired a minor curse for this brooch and cloak to keep sneaking up on me, which might be them trying to tempt me into becoming some sort of Evil Empress. Oh, and that manticore is still somewhere ahead of us, trying to play assassin - the regent kept it from killing his dad by ordering it to 'go away'. How was your day?"

Micro managed to keep a completely straight face as she said, "Oh - can't complain."

Red grumbled, "That's only because you didn't join the betting pool."

Micro didn't quite manage to keep a completely straight face as she said, "I've known her longer than you. I might not have been willing to bet on her having survived - but at least I knew better than to bet against it."

"Girls, girls," I complained, "I've got something like a massive sunburn in places where I didn't even know I had places, and I'm not looking forward to finding out how bad my nightmares tonight are going to be, but I don't want to add your squabbling into my dreams. I just want to lie down, let the pups nuzzle up for a while even if it hurts, and let tomorrow get here as fast as possible... and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. If I'm lucky, some, if not all, of my aches and pains will be gone by then. Think that's a plan that has any chance of succeeding?"

As it turned out, my dreams that night weren't nightmares at all. They were actually quite peaceful, mostly patchworks of your basic flying around the landscape scenarios.

When I finally woke up, I was somewhat surprised not to be in any pain at all. I just lay there, luxuriating in the absence of hurt, even if things did feel a bit odd.

And then I opened my eyes, and I looked all around, and I looked at myself.

And then I tried to say "Dæven" again, but all that came out was a sort of dry, grating 'kraa' sound.

(Author's Note: Barrel of fun's story, Wild Card, has had the second half of its crossover with Missy's future in its latest chapter.

Corviboviny

No, having already been turned from a two-hundred-pound human into an eight-hundred pound cow didn't adequately prepare me for getting turned into a two-pound raven.

No, the diamond dogs who slept next to me didn't try to eat me before I started squawking in pulse-code.

Yes, we actually did have a previously-established set of procedures for what to do if any of us suffered a transformation into a random species, with a sublist for being turned into something that couldn't talk. There was even an actual, physical checklist, amongst the papers I'd extracted from the Dairy. (After I'd noticed that the local laws of physics seemed to include narrativium, I'd tried to think of every hackneyed plot and overused cliche I could think of, and what the sanest things to do in any such situation would be. I had checklists for if everyone started singing and couldn't stop, if we found a genie's lamp or other supposed generic wish-granting device, if one of us claimed to be living the same day repeatedly, and if an evil duplicate from another dimension wandered by.)

I was standing in the middle of the big table in the bridge, with just about everyone who wasn't on their sleep shift looking at me, while I looked at myself, experimented with my range of wing and leg motion, tugged at my feathers with my beak, tried pulling on my skin, tried shaping my mouth and throat to make anything like sensible sounds, tried willing myself to change shape again, and went through the whole checklist of things any of us had come up with to do upon finding oneself unexpectedly transformed into a new shape.

After a while of that, I took a break to deal with some necessities. Perched on a side-table, I was teaching myself how to peck at some grains Amethyst fed me, when Blanche wandered up the stairs and joined the rest of us. She announced, "There's no sign of that cloak anywhere I've looked. Unless someone threw it overboard, or it's hiding inside a crate that's been nailed-shut... I think you may still be wearing it."

I had the oddest urge to swear at that - most likely just because I couldn't. Had the regent switched cloaks on me? Had he kept silent about what else it could do? Had he simply not known it could do anything else? While the others traded ideas and opinions, I found myself annoyed that contributing anything more than 'one squawk for yes, two for no' took up so much time and effort that it usually wasn't worth it. As I thought about that, I decided that what made me most unhappy was that, as a bird, I couldn't safely cuddle up with the pups - and I especially couldn't feed them-

In the blink of an eye, I stood in front of everyone, once again shaped as a cow, wearing both cloak and brooch. In about two seconds, I was a cow lying atop the shattered remains of a side-table, and I was struggling to pull off the adornments. After some general shouting and amusement, Amethyst helped me take them off. I tried picking up some of the larger pieces of wood, but was having trouble even with that, until I realized the problem - I wasn't able to hold anything with my hooves.

I thought for a few moments about the opals I'd swallowed, and tried drawing on their power as I murmured a quiet "Fiat lux", but there wasn't even a glimmer of light.

My body was completely drained of magic.

Getting unexpectedly turned into a raven was bad enough on its own; risking brain damage from long-term insufficiency of magic was an outright physical danger. Back in Equestria, I'd learned of two ways to deal with that - long-term standing around in the magical field Equestria was suffused in, or getting my brain zapped with a circle of bovines touching horns. But since then, I'd learned that unicorns weren't the only species who could charge up gems with magic - and there weren't that many who knew that gems could be charged with unfocused magic at all. I was reasonably sure that even the Princesses hadn't known that trick before they'd received the letter from that probably-human sky-pirate. So, I guessed that there might be tricks to moving magical power around that nobody else had figured out yet, and since it was dangerous to leave my body's magical reserves so low - not to mention annoying being clumsier with my hooves now than I'd been with my bird-claws - it would be worthwhile to see if one or another quick trick could re-power me.

So we carefully packed up the cloak and brooch, locking them away in the captain's document safe; and Micro and I went down to the lab to try a few things.

After a whole bunch of simpler things that didn't work, we did find one rather kludgy approach that seemed to have some promise. Micro filled up a whole bunch of gems just short of cracking, we pressed them against each other in a line; I pushed my horns against the ones on the ends, and concentrated on that odd mental effort I'd used to slowly fill gems with magical power myself. However that usually worked, doing things that way, it worked in reverse - some of that magical power leaked out of the gems and into me. Not much, but enough, it seemed, to keep my brain in good working order, and let me pick things up with my hooves again. For a while, anyway. I'd have to give up recharging gems myself, outside of emergencies; and even then, I might only have enough charge to last for a few days...

Well, on the bright side, I could say that I'd been in a worse situation. In fact, I could probably say that for pretty much anything I was likely to encounter that didn't simply kill me outright.

Once again back on the bridge, this time with me as a cow again, my burned skin slathered in soothing ointment, and the pups latched on and feeding away.

"To get the idea out of the way," I said, "does anyone think we should go back and find the regent, and ask him certain pointed questions?"

"You said you truth-zapped him?", asked Blanche.

"Yep."

"Then would we be able to get anything out of him you didn't, already?"

"We don't know if he even has anything to give," I said. "These dragons seem to be resistant to magic - maybe whatever affected me, just bounced off of him and he never knew about it. I kind of got the impression that the cloak and brooch's last owner didn't live long after he got a hold of them."

Red shook her head. "Low odds of anything useful, and spend at least a couple of days on it? I'd rather we kept going forward, looking for new magic."

We took a few minutes to make sure we weren't missing any important aspects, and when we were done, had a show of hooves - unanimous to leave the regent behind.

"Welp," I said, "while we're on our way to the next country - or land, or yarldom, or whatever we want to call it - I'm going to see if I can figure out any good tests to make on our new acquisitions. They're no Star Swords, but if we're lucky, will provide enough info to make the whole trip worthwhile. One piece of good news - I was going through my notes, and the storyteller from the bear village mentioned something that may be a clue - somebody called 'The Lady' is supposed to own a falcon-feathered cloak that can turn people into falcons, and something he called a Glowing-Ornament, no details given, either of both of which she's been said to loan to her family. A raven's not a falcon, but it's still a close enough parallel to ask about."

Micro asked, thoughtfully, "So what was it actually like, being a bird of whatever sort?"

I considered a moment, before answering, "I felt very, very small - and fragile. Any one of you could have squashed me flat and barely noticed. If I knew how to fly, well, I used to try to imagine what it would be like to fly around as a bat, and maybe that'd be worth it... but without that, it was mostly just an inconvenience."

Red asked, slyly, "By the way - were you a girl bird or a boy bird?"

"How should I know?"

The rest of the afternoon, Micro and I confabbed about what sorts of tests we could try making. Some based on what the regent had told us, some assuming he'd managed to lie through the truth-spell (dragons being resistant to magic and all). Some destructive, some not; some ethical, some not; some silly, some not; some which we actually had the resources aboard the Mikoyan to do, most not. We carefully took the cloak and brooch out of the safe, and did some initial poking and prodding at it - looking at them under Micro's microscope, that sort of thing. Then, when evening came, just as carefully, we rolled it back up and locked it in Red's safe again.

The next morning I woke up as a raven again. This raised a few eyebrows, but nobody seemed really surprised.

Recalling what had happened the other day, I focused my imagination on how the pups would be wanting their breakfast soon...

... and nothing happened.

With a bit of pulse-code cawing, I asked Amethyst to take me to Red, and asked Red to check the safe - it was locked up just as tight as when we sealed the cloak in, and, upon being opened, the cloak and brooch were as missing as if they'd never been put in there.

Since it seemed like this might be a regular occurrence, I spent the morning trying to take flying lessons from Blanche and Armina. By lunchtime, I'd progressed to the point where I could frantically wave my wings hard enough to push down enough air to let me jump from the floor to a tabletop - not exactly dignified, but enough that I could hop around the ship with a reasonable chance of being able to avoid getting stepped on.

On the other wing, Blanche seemed more than happy to let me ride around on her, and once I got the hang of staying balanced, I didn't really mind it, either.

When she saw me, Red raised an eyebrow, and with my new wings, I was able to shrug much more expressively than I'd been able to as a cow. She snorted and shook her head, and said, "We're going to stop at the next few villages, and see if we can find out more about that Lady. I don't really care if you're a cow, crow, or caterpillar - but if you can't control it, I'm going to sideline you from doing anything dangerous... or even getting off the ship. You look just like any other black bird, and even if nothing eats you, we could lose track of you."

That afternoon, while some of the crew chatted up the local villagers, I spent trying to figure out my voice. I knew crows were supposed to be smart, and some crow-like birds, like magpies, were supposed to be close to parrots in their vocal range. But I had to work out how to generate each and every phoneme I managed to express from scratch - and even getting out a simple 'hi' was a miracle when I had to consciously shape my vocal tract, and making any significant vocalizations involved exercises close to Tuvan throat-singing. At least as a cow I'd had lips and teeth.

By evening, I'd gotten to the point where I could say more than Amethyst, at least a syllable at a time; but was still less eloquent than, say, Stephen Hawking.

When Micro came by, I was, with much concentration, able to squawk out, in broken, inhuman syllables, "Hhha-aye. Mye. Ka. Ro." And after that effort, I had to dunk my beak in the bowl of water I'd asked for, to soothe my throat.

"Progress, I see," she said. "If you've started talking - can you use your wands yet?"

I tilted my head and blinked; I hadn't even thought of that. I opened a wing to point to her sleep-wand, holstered. "Guh. Ivvvv."

"Give it to you?" I nodded, and cawed a single time for 'yes'. She dropped it on the workbench in front of me, and I hopped over to it - then onto it, clutching the shaft with one claw and the gem with the other. I thought my way through the syllables' movements, but before I did, Micro said, "Er - let me just lie down comfortably, first, in case you can do it."

"Dddddoh. Meee. Rraaayy," is roughly what my first attempt sounded like. I repeated it again and again, getting practice with the syllables, until I could string the whole thing together in a reasonable time, and getting closer to the sounds a pony might make.

After a while, Micro said, "Hold on. That last one sounded pretty good to me. Let me see the wand?" I hopped off, she picked it up, and gave a quick sing-song, "Do-mi-re." I tilted my head a few times, still quite awake. "Well, there's the problem - it's out of power. I'll have to have Captain Red ding me - I could have sworn I recharged it after the last practice session. Let me get a different one for you."

She dug into the experimental stores, retrieving a fresh sleep-wand. "Here - the log says this one should be fully charged - and you can see the glimmer in the gem." She set that one down, and I hopped on, opened my beak - and Micro interrupted. "Hold on." She leaned closer to me and, as I got an excellent view of her nostrils, she squinted. "It just stopped glowing."

With a bit of squawking on my part and rather more legwork on hers, we quickly determined that any magically-charged gem I touched, immediately ceased to have a charge. Micro was able to refill them as easily as ever - but as soon as I grabbed one with a claw or beak, or pressed my feathers firmly against it, it became as magically empty as if she'd never made the effort.

"Well," mused Micro, "let's see. When you turned back into a cow, you didn't have any magic. Then you refilled, and when you woke up, you'd changed into a bird. And couldn't change back. Now, I'm going to guess that you're sucking in whatever magic you touch - or, possibly, not you, strictly speaking, but perhaps the cloak itself used up all its magic to change you, and didn't have enough to change you back. When's the last time you tried?"

I hadn't, since we'd started fiddling around with the gems. So I turned my thoughts to being a cow, and how I'd be much more useful and productive by being able to talk and feed the pups and pick up things with hooves again...

... and my suddenly massive body tumbled off the side of the workbench and into Micro.

Once we'd detangled ourselves from each other, I tried picking up the gem we'd just been fiddling with - with no success. I sighed, and commented, "Well - if I go without magic for too long, I'll get brain damage. If I keep myself magically healthy - I'm probably going to keep on waking up with feathers. Annoying and inconvenient - but now that we know what it takes to get me back, something we can deal with. But there's still room for improvement, if we can figure out how. Hm... say, since this started after the regent gave the cloak to me - what would happen if I tried giving it to somepony else?"

"Somepony other than me, please. I'm quite happy to stay as a unicorn - I don't even want to be a pegasus."

"Say, that brings up an interesting point; will the cloak transfer its effects to someone else if I try to give it to them but they don't accept it?"

Without another word, Micro simply turned tail and started galloping away. Grinning, I followed her, if for no other reason than to stretch my legs. "Aw, come on," I shouted after her, "it's For Science! Mwahahaha!"

A long story, tickle-fight, and improvised nerf battle later - I woke up a crow again. Five minutes later, I was back to a cow, had refilled my magical batteries a bit, and was giving the pups their morning feed.

"Well," I commented to Amethyst and the Musketeers, "Things could be worse. In fact... it's hard to imagine how things could be better. My fur is starting to grow out and my skin is more itchy than painful; I've got a job to do that's worth doing, and am working on trying to solve a fascinating mystery; I'm surrounded by friends and compatriots, and have a girl back home I'm looking forward to getting back to; I've learned a few cheat-codes to the universe which I may possibly be the very first one to have figured out; and I've got stories I'll be able to tell for the rest of my life. I've got plans for the day, to try measuring how many thaums the cloak needs, and to try figuring out if my cow-body keeps aging while I'm a bird, and how much food I need, and so on. Sure, I've got a few immediate annoyances, and a mysterious threat back in Canterlot who probably still wants to kill me, and I still haven't figured out how to keep Equestria from going the way of Atlantis, and the whole planet could do with being dragged closer to the twenty-first century if not into it, and - um, maybe I should just stop there. I think I'm going to risk a bit of narrative causality, by inverting a trope, and say that it's hard to imagine how things could get any better."

I stopped talking there, unconsciously holding my breath as I looked around, half expecting something interesting to result from that statement. The last time I'd done anything of the sort, I'd almost gotten Prince Blueblood and myself hit by lightning. But the morning sun kept shining, the pups kept feeding, the ship kept sailing, and nothing much happened. I let my breath out.

Which is, of course, the moment Amethyst chose to say, "I. Want. More. Pups."

Spring in the Air

"Well," I said to Amethyst, "When you say that, are you letting me know as your friend, or asking my permission as your kind-of Alpha, or...?"

"Maybe," was all she admitted.

I couldn't avoid a quick eye-roll. "Well - a big part of the whole Enlightenment schmear of ideas is that it's usually a good idea to let whoever's closest and got the most interest in an issue be the one who deals with it. So - if, after you've thought about it, you want more kids - sorry, I mean pups - I'll support you and help you as best I can. If you think this isn't the time for that, then I'll support you in that, too."

As I expected, she didn't say anything to that, but did look thoughtful. I gently stroked the heads of John and George as they nursed, and let my own imagination wander a bit... and, for just a moment, opened the mental door to let myself imagine having a belly bulging with life growing within myself. I expected that, as usual when I thought about anything of the sort, I'd be somewhere between squicked out and afraid as all get out, and would have to put away all such thoughts before my emotions soured the taste of my milk and made the pups cranky. But... now that I was thinking about it, it didn't seem all that scary after all. Having a calf of my own, instead of nursing these adopted pups? Sure, the mechanics would be tricky to arrange, especially if I wanted to keep Cheerilee from being hurt. Hm, maybe I could talk to the Princesses about that gender-swap spell they'd used, and ask Cheerilee if she'd want to be a father...

I started blinking a bit, and looked around the cargo bay, where the air popped with hope, fizzed with promise, crackled with springtime, and all that jazz. Something was nagging at me... ah, yes. The last time I'd seriously considered having babies was... when...

Ah, heck.

"Um, Amethyst? You know what I just said? Forget about all of it. Don't do anything about getting pups just yet."

I gently eased off the pups, who complained a bit, then settled in for a friendly tussle with each other. I made my way to the speaking-tube. "Red, you there?"

"The Captain's not in yet," came Blanche's voice. "I'm Officer On Deck right now. What's up?"

"I'm activating the Twitterpating Protocol."

"... Er, you are? Why?"

"Blanche - taking the time to ask why isn't part of the Protocol; just get it started, and I'll give explanations soon as I can."

"If you insist." There was a pause, as she flipped open the rest of the bridge's speaking tubes, and announced, "All hands, all hands, all hands. Pink alert, pink alert, pink alert. Mind-affecting magic may be in effect. All personnel are advised to minimize their contact with members of the opposite sex. In case the effects strength, prophylactics will be distributed shortly. I repeat - we have a code pink."

Red joined us on the bridge, sipping from a coffee mug as she sat down. "Okay, Missy - I've shuffled our schedules to segregate the stallions from the mares as best I can, and the rest of the Twitterpate Protocol is being done. So what's gotten you in a tizzy?"

"Well - let me ask you this. A week ago, if, say, Stoke Red had made a pass at you, what would you have done?"

"Slapped him silly and sent him to scrub the deck for a week."

"Okay - now, imagine if he came up to you right now, and whispered in your ear that the two of you would make wonderful babies together, your names proving you're destined to be together, making the next generation..."

"Mmm...." A slow smile had spread across her lips as she stared into the distance.

"Captain. Red. Pepper!"

She blinked and focused back on us. "Er, sorry - what?"

"Red - I want to have babies right now."

"And? What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing - but in case you've forgotten, I've got certain gender issues. And the last time I wanted a baby was when a magic book made me want to have it impregnate me. So even if it's a perfectly natural development in my psyche - we're still running the Twitterpate rules, if for no other reason than as a practice drill while we revamp the activation triggers."

"Hm. I just had the oddest urge to snark at you - something about you being jealous, since we've got stallions but no bulls. That's not like me - sure, I'll trade insults with idiotic jerks, but with you?"

"We'll add that to the idea chart."

"You're really taking this seriously, aren't you?"

"If I'm right, I need to. If I'm wrong - then I still need to, to get it out of the way, so that I can have a calf without worrying about magical influence."

She ran her hoof along the papers strewn across the table. "Well - not much has changed aboard ship recently that seems likely to do anything like this, other than, maybe, your new magical artifacts. But I don't see what forcing people to obey orders, returning to you, or turning you into a bird has to do with making any of us want foals."

"Maybe they don't. But I've been doing things with the cloak that the regent never thought of trying - and it's been doing other things, too, like sucking up the magic in every gem I touch when I'm a raven."

"So... what, when the regent was wearing it, he was using it when it was completely de-powered?"

"Or almost completely. Maybe forcing people to obey orders rather than let them get killed was the closest it could come to fulfilling its real function, with the limited amount of power it had... and I've started feeding the beast."

Micro commented, "It's going to be tricky not to keep giving it more power. I'd rather you ended up pregnant than with the brain damage you'd get if your magical meridians stayed empty. And if it can make its way out of a locked and watched safe, across half the ship, then I'm going to bet that even just throwing it overboard won't do us much good."

Red had now started frowning, which at least meant that she was starting to take this seriously. "Okay - so if it can force the whole crew to obey the wearer's orders when it's running on empty... just how much can it do when it's got all the power it needs?"

I shook my head. "Not a clue. Anything from brainwashing all of us, to transforming all of us, to, well, for all we know, affecting everyone who comes near us to affecting the whole planet. We don't know if it's actually connected to 'The Lady', and even if it is, we've only got rumors and myths about what sort of Lady she is. Maybe an equivalent to Aphrodite? No, that doesn't quite seem to fit - this isn't just lust, it's more... familial. Maybe Hera? Or something more to do with spring and fertility, like Demeter or Ostara? ... Please tell me that you've never heard anything about egg-laying rabbits." Red and Micro said 'no', and Amethyst shook her head. "Good," I said, "Or I might have started having to bang my head against the wall for a while. For now - can we at least agree that certain practical difficulties to our trying to save the world would arise if we went about it with enormous bellies, and if the world ends, any kids, foals, pups, calves, hatchlings, or other offspring would be in as much trouble as the rest of us - so it's better if, even if we all agree to start the next generation, to wait a bit on that? At least until we finish giving those potential offspring a world to grow up in?"

The corner of Red's mouth was twitching. "You can rationalize pretty much anything when you try, can't you? Mares have worked through their pregnancies for centuries, took a few days off for the birth, and gone right back to work. Still - let's say you're right. What can we do to keep that cloak from... doing whatever it is it's doing?"

"Well," commented Micro, "if it's range is still limited - we could try minimizing its effects to just Missy, by dropping her off somewhere, like an uninhabited island."

"It's a start," I said, "but a temporary solution at best. How long would it take me to figure out how to use my raven-shape's wings?"

Red said, "Maybe it just wants somepony to get pregnant, and will stop as soon as the first of us gets knocked up?"

"Are you volunteering?"

"Mmmaaaybe."

Micro countered, "Maybe it just wants its wearer to get pregnant."

I counter-countered, "It keeps turning me into a bird. Maybe it wants me to lay some eggs. Maybe it wants to turn all of us into egg-layers. Want to risk spending the rest of your life sitting on a nest?"

Red said, "Calm down a bit. Let's get back to what we do know, instead of maybes. Can we figure anything out from what the regent got it to do?"

My forehead wrinkled, "Well - he said he got that to work by planning on killing anyone who didn't do what he ordered. So - maybe what it's pushing for is as many live people as possible, and with whatever power it's got, it can work out that forcing people to do what the regent said would keep them from getting killed? The brooch attached to the cloak is supposed to be able to arrange events to get back to the owner, which suggests that it can be subtle when it wants to be - or when it doesn't have the power to be flashy and just teleport itself out of the safe. Note that I'm anthropomorphizing it as if it had intelligence and wants, which may be completely inaccurate."

Red nodded agreeably, and said, "And how does any of that tie into turning you into a bird?"

I shrugged. "I haven't figured out any significant connection. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the intended purpose of the cloak is just transformation, and everything else is just acceptable side-effects of however it was made."

"Alright, then. If that's what we can figure out about what it does - what can we do to stop it? Missy, you used a bunch of magic-canceling spells when you fixed Blanche - would any of them work on the cloak?"

"No idea - which is a lot better than a 'no'. I can give it a try, and see what happens. Before I do, though... if the brooch can arrange events to get itself dragged back to its owner... might it be possible that it's subtle and clever enough to get itself owned by a new master, when one comes along that better suits its purposes? Thinking back on it - was what I said to the regent really convincing enough to get an experienced, amoral politician to just hand over his most powerful magic item to a complete stranger? Or was I just the first person to come along who could give the cloak more magical power, so it nudged things so I could do that? If that's how this thing works... then trying the blunt-force tactic of countering its magic might cause it to nudge events to prevent that."

Red was frowning. "Like what sort of nudge?"

"Maybe something as blunt as a dragon attacking the ship while I get ready to try the counter-magic. Maybe something subtler, like a problem at the next village we stop at, which just so happens to most easily be solved be my re-powering the cloak and turning into a crow."

"If that's how powerful this thing is - then what do you suggest?"

"Well - for one, if I do just try going magic-to-magic with it, having the ship go to yellow or red alert before I start. But as another approach - maybe instead of fighting it, we could best achieve our own goals by going along with it, at least so far as finding some other poor schmuck to pass it on to?"

"Like who?"

I shrugged. "Haven't a clue. There is the minor matter that it can be used to force other people to do things, and I'd really rather not let that power wander around unsupervised and uncontrolled. At least the regent kept the medium-term future in mind - some random person might only think of the immediate short-term pleasures from forcing people to obey their every whim. If it came down to it - I'd rather everyone on board ended up pregnant, rather than let that happen. Of course, that might be the twitterpation nudging my values, so, well, I'd need to take the time to work that one through from basic principles again to see if full-on reasoning matches my current intuitions."

Micro had been scribbling for a few minutes, and now looked up. "Here's an assumption to question. You're a cow, so going without magic will eventually hurt your brain, right?"

"According to all the evidence I've got, yes," I cautiously agreed.

"So, does that matter while you're a bird?"

"What, you're suggesting I just... let the cloak use up its magic, and stay as a raven, for... how long?"

She shrugged. "Until we find some other poor schmuck to pass it on to, maybe?"

I looked at Red. She shrugged. I looked at Amethyst. She was staring with an uncharacteristically dreamy expression, through the bridge's windows at the bow of the ship, where the Musketeers were fiddling with a hatch. I looked back at Micro. "Well - I can think of a few tests we should run first... in fact, most of the ones I was planning to run today, to try and see what's going on with my cow biology while I'm a bird, and vice versa. But - if trying to dispel it doesn't do the job, then... it would keep the cloak from turning this into a maternity ship, and from falling into the hands of would-be evil overlords... so it might do the trick, if we can't think of anything better.

We stayed at the table for another hour; we didn't think of anything better.

That morning, we ran through some of my planned experiments, and got results consistent with one basic conclusion: the bird-body was completely independent of my cow-body, without any wounds or the like carrying over from one to the other; and with a bit of careful and creative timing, we determined that whichever body I didn't have at the moment, didn't seem to get any older - cuts didn't heal, it didn't get any hungrier, or my bladder any fuller, or anything of the sort. Essentially, while I was a bird, my cow-shape was sort of in suspended animation, and vice versa. Which implied that, while I was a bird, my cow-brain wouldn't suffer at all for any lack of magic.

So I spent that afternoon chanting counter-magic incantations over both brooch and cloak, draining them of as much magic as I could, countering whatever active enchantments they might be emitting, and so on. While everyone kept a nervous eye out, no dragons attacked, our engines didn't fail, and I didn't slip on any banana peels. We locked 'em back up, for all the good we expected that to do.

The next morning, I woke up in feathers again. I tried pushing myself back into my cow shape - no dice; I didn't have enough magic in me (or in the cloak, if there was a difference). I wandered around the ship, asking in extremely broken syllables what everyone thought about having babies - and when nobody seemed particularly interested, Captain Red canceled the Pink Alert.

"I don't mind if you ride around on my head or shoulders," she said, "but I'm not going to wear an eyepatch or say 'arr', and if you ever poop on me you can fly home under your own power."

"Gggot. Tcha."

Which is why when we flew over the giant, I didn't realize it at first - everyone already seemed to me to be a few hundred times bigger than they'd been before, and I still hadn't finished adapting to life at my new scale.

Fee, Fie, Foe, Fu-

That was the first night I hadn't just woken up wearing feathers, but had gone to sleep with them, too. I dreamed instead something about a dragon wanting to hide me from her husband, and insisting that she stuff me in an eggshell and hide me inside her so he could see her lay me with his own eyes... weird and full of dream-logic, but it was at least one notch better than the dreams I'd been having about being elbow-deep in somebody's guts and getting ever deeper while people died around me pleading for my help.

I wasn't able to sleep right next to the pups, as I'd been enjoying - they were all too likely to use me as a teething soother. But, being even smaller than they were, I could at least put my head under my wing in a blanket piled up on top of their crib's overhang, so they could see me - even if they couldn't know I was still me - and I could see them.

At least one entirely good thing about being a corvid: I wasn't near-sighted anymore. It actually felt a bit weird not to have glasses or goggles, shielding my eyes from whatever dangers the world might throw at them; but a weird I could get to like.

All of which meant that, even with the cloak de-powered and not trying to mushify everyone's brains, I was in a pretty good mood, perched on the castle's railing and chatting with Cloud Bouncer, who was on watch. Well, she was chatting and I threw in the occasional croaked syllable, but close enough. Which also meant that she and I saw the giant at the same time, as the Mikoyan's flight let us see around bits of passing landscape.

It - I guess I should say 'he' - was humanoid, roughly; but with less resemblance to a human than an elephant had to a mouse. Massively oversized legs, a green complexion that might have been natural and might have been moss, patches of long hair that seemed to serve it as well as clothes, most of a tree slung over a shoulder like a hobo's stick, and a proportionally tiny head; all added up to a figure that bore more than a passing resemblance to the hills he was walking by, in the same general direction we were going.

"Uh... do you see what I see?" Cloud asked.

"Yeh," I croaked - all vowely sounds, so that word was easy. "Hhhow... big... 's... 't?" Cloud herself was a giant to me, now; looking down from the sky, I couldn't figure out if what we were looking at was a bit bigger than a diamond dog, or bigger than the Mikoyan.

Instead of answering me, she said, "Gotta call it in," and flipped open the cover of the speaking-tube heading down to the bridge. I could probably have squirmed into the tube bodily, and slid down it; but, instead, I spread my wings, hopped down to the deck, then hopped down the stairs to join Captain Red.

She was drinking a morning coffee, and squinting into the morning sunlight ahead of us. "So - giants now?" She sighed. "I suppose better they're here than back home."

"Maybe they used to be," said Tranquil Valley, who was manning (ponying?) the main engine controls.

Red glanced at her, then back at me. "So - we going to go say 'hi'?"

"Ngah," I replied. "Lu... uk-k-ks p-p-pri, mmi, ti, iv. Big pi-ki-tu-ur."

"Suits me. Steady as she goes, Miss Valley. I'm going to add some notes to the orders of the day, to add coming up with plans for dealing with giants to our tactical training."

An hour later, we sighted another coastal village - this one full of the pony-like deer. The Mikoyan went down to land at their docks, and was the subject of much nervous curiosity. When Red, with me perched on her shoulders, mentioned the approaching giant, the reaction was much like that scene from the cartoon with the impending bunny stampede - lots of screaming, running around, and general excitement. Lots of the deer started gathering essentials and dumping them in their fishing boats - it looked like they wanted to make a getaway.

I whispered into Red's ear, "Hhow ah- bow -wet we dee-lay 'im ah bi-it?"

"The giant?"

"Yeh."

"Nothing dangerous to us?"

"Neh."

"I suppose we might learn something useful."

As the Mikoyan got closer to where the giant would have walked to, Cloud and I spotted a lone quadruped walking along a road, westerly, away from the village we'd just left and straight toward the giant. If he kept on that way, he was likely to get stepped on. So Cloud and I checked in with Red, I hopped into her mane and grabbed on tight with my claws, and rode as she glided down to land in front of him. As we got closer, we could make out more details - under his wide-brimmed, floppy hat, and cloak, he was revealed to be an aged-but-fit earth-pony stallion, wearing a patch over his left eye.

Cloud asked, "Do you understand me? I can try the local language if you don't - um, forstar du my?"

"I hear you good 'nuff."

Cloud said, "Just to let you know, there's a giant... thing walking this way. You might want to go off the path somewhere, take a break behind a tree or something, until it's gone by."

He snorted. "I'm not wasting time mit dat. Very busy."

Cloud pawed the ground. "Well - we could give you a lift; our ship's faster than walking, and we can drop you off on the other side of the giant." She turned her head to look at me. "We can, right?"

I was about to work out how to shape my throat for an answer, when the stallion tilted his head, and finally saw me hiding out in Cloud's mane.

"You!" he shouted, and my response turned into nothing more than a surprised squawk. "Do you have any idea - what are you doing wearing - argh!"

Cloud was nervously backing away, and if I could have hopped any faster than her, I would have. "Um - maybe we'll just leave you to your walking, then."

His lone eye gleamed. "Let me guess - you're stopping to save the poor defenseless village from the big nasty giant?"

Cloud and I looked at each other, then back at him. She answered for both of us, "Um... maybe?"

He snorted a laugh. "Make you a deal. If I keep the village safe for you, will you talk with me?"

Cloud and I looked at each other again, and when we looked back, he'd reached under his cloak, and pulled out a sort of glass globe. "Here, catch," he said, and lobbed the thing in an easy arc at her. Cloud reached out a hoof, and caught it perfectly - only it broke into shards anyway, releasing a nasty-looking greyish haze.

"Wha-" Cloud asked, and I was thinking much the same thing, only before either of us could do much, her eyes rolled up and she dropped to the ground - and I was conscious only long enough to hear her thud.

I woke up with a nasty headache, most of my belly feeling like one big bruise, which wasn't improved by the black-barred birdcage I was in being jostled around, hanging on the side of the stallion as he walked. From the angle of the sun, it was only an hour or so later - assuming it was the same day - and we were heading due north, away from the shore.

"Uh," I commented without thinking much.

The stallion didn't respond - unless the constant stream of muttering under his breath counted. I squinted up into the sky - no sign of the Mikoyan. I considered my resources - few enough; I didn't even have the opals I'd swallowed as a cow. Other than my untrained wings, the closest I had to a physical asset was my bladder. Well, maybe I could get him to open the cage, giving me a chance at escape. I turned away from him and lifted my tailfeathers...

"Try it and I'll pull your drumsticks off."

Well, it was a reaction, anyway. I turned around, and relieved myself thataway. "Way-are-" I started.

He interrupted, "Two more hills and we'll be there."

Two hills later, he'd climbed to the top, and into the middle of a circle of stones. He unhitched the cord holding up my cage, put it on the grass, then raised his head up to the sky. "Get your well-used tail down here, Lady, and pick up your trash!"

From behind the both of us came a feminine voice, with boardroom-executive iciness, "I hardly think my 'tail' is that well used."

Turning around revealed... the human-shaped lady, who I'd met once before in a circle of standing stones - the one who'd claimed to be Athena, once again wearing a toga and helmet, and leaning on a spear.

The stallion glared at her. "You're not the Lady I was calling."

"Then you should have been more specific, because I'm the Lady you're getting. And I would also thank you not to call my niece 'trash'."

"'Niece'?"

"Grand-niece."

He snorted. "You're mistaken. She's no more your blood-kin than any other mortal."

"By blood, there are a billion mortals who are as closely related as she is. But she's the one out of them who claimed kinship. Not understanding, not even believing I existed, she still made the claim."

"Is that why you dragged her here?"

"No - that merely drew my eye to her."

I tried to clear my throat with an, "Um," and both of them glared at me. I decided to shut up for the moment and pull my head as close into my body's feathers as I could. The two of them turned their attention back to each other.

He said, "You're awfully close to breaking the Rules, coming here like that."

"You're one to talk, wandering around in that outfit."

"It's an old tradition, well within the lines that have been set."

"And abducting a mortal piece, is that within the Rules, too?"

"She abducted herself! She's days behind schedule-"

"Your schedule."

"It should be her schedule! Of all the pieces, she, for one, seemed to understand Necessity. But she stopped for days, just to save a few useless farmers, who are going to die in an ocean storm anyhow-"

That brought me out of my nervous funk. "Hey! 'Ow do oo know-"

They glared at me, but this time I glared right back into his one eye. "Oh, so the little birdy has a backbone after all?" I felt my feathers ruffling, through no conscious intent of my own - and he laughed. "I was wondering where you were hiding your courage."

I started croaking out, "Suh-tor-um," but the words were coming so slowly my frustration boiled over, and my throat closed up tight, so that the rest of what I wanted to say was lost in meaningless cawing.

The goddess (for lack of a better word) sighed. "If you're not going to let her out - will you at least make it easier for her to talk? Either that, or you might as well put her to sleep while the grown-ups talk."

"Not going to use your own magic for it?"

"Even though I was summoned to a place of power - I choose not to intervene directly, just yet, only to talk."

He grimaced. "Fine, fine." He waved a hoof in my general direction. "There. Happy, now?"

"Um. What?" I wasn't sure how I was talking - my beak was closed. But since important things seemed to be happening, I just rolled with it for now. "The villagers - the storm. How do you know they'll die? Are you responsible?"

"And what if I am, little birdie?"

"Then once I've worked my way through my higher priorities, and get down to you - I'd do my best to hold you responsible."

"Do you have any idea who I am?"

"I'm guessing you're the one the locals call 'the Rager'. You bear... certain similarities with a figure I know by another name."

"And do you think you, milk-sop and oh so mortal, could do anything I would even notice?"

"Something I've done has caught your attention enough to drag me here. So if you're the sort to send a storm just to sink some ships - then I've got nothing to lose by trying and failing to hold you to account, and trying and succeeding would be entirely worth the effort."

His one good eye twisted in an immense scowl, but before he could burst out, the lady said, "Whether or not she has a chance to even make the attempt - it may not be necessary. You are here for your... recruitment, yes?"

He once again focused his attention on her. "The pickings in this world are slim; but a nudge here, a nudge there, and a decent battle might happen." He glanced at me. "If somebody kept to their schedule, of doing the important things they said they had to do, that is."

Athena said, "And even a good battle - here, would only net you so much. Have you considered something more... substantial?"

"What... with her? After she was willing to put the whole Game on hold for days, just for a few lives?"

"Have you not been paying attention? It's a bit jumbled - but she has the opportunity to pull a Percy, maybe even on her first try." I had extremely little idea what the two of them were talking about - was 'Percy' short for 'Perseus', the Greek monster-slayer?

Whatever she was referring to, was enough to make the Rager look what little there was to me up and down. "I don't believe it," he declared.

She smiled. "Perhaps a little... side-bet might catch your interest? How about - the use of the other's spear, for a day?"

"I don't make such foolish wagers."

"What about the time-"

"I said foolish wagers. I won that one. Besides - she can't pull it off. The consequences would pull her against her thread of fate."

"I know of at least three loopholes she could use to get around that."

"Hm... Your spear for a day, you say?"

"Or yours. But - as you say, she's already several days late; to even get her to where she would need to be, in time for that battle you were arranging..." She leaned over and whispered something in his ear.

His eyebrows raised. "She wouldn't. That would be - she wouldn't!"

Athena smiled calmly. "I can think of three loopholes. She might think of a fourth."

He harumphed. "Fine, fine. I'll even give a push to get her there on time."

"Er," I commented, "I don't suppose either of you would mind explaining to me what any of this is about?"

"No," they chorused. Then Athena added, "Sleep, now." And I once again fell unconscious.

I woke up, still in the cage, still on top of the hill - only the human-shaped goddess and the pony-shaped 'Rager' had been replaced by Red and Cloud Bouncer, and the Mikoyan was hovering above us.

"Is that you, Missy?" asked Red.

"As far as I know," I said.

"Hey, that's a neat trick," said Cloud. "Do that again?"

"Do what?"

"Talk without moving your beak."

Red interrupted, "So what happened? After that pony knocked out you and Cloud."

"Um," I said, trying to figure out how I was talking, without success, "I woke up in this cage, being carried by him, he brought it here, and... I guess he must have gassed me again - last thing I remember is threatening to poop on his flank, to try to get him to let me out. Any sign of him?"

Cloud commented, "Hoofprints leading up here, none leading away. Think he was hiding pegasus wings under that cloak?"

"No," I said, thinking back, "I'd have been against 'em. Um - any chance either of you could let me out of here, soon?"

"I dunno," Red said, tapping her chin with a hoof, "maybe I should just hang you up in my office like this - keep you out of trouble for a while."

"Only if you want to be my first experimental subject when I get back to work on that laxative spell..."

"Then I guess I'd better let you stay in there forever, hadn't I?"

And, keeping an eye out for any random pony bird-nappers, we traded friendly insults all the way back up to the airship...

(Author's Note: Missy, among other characters, makes a brief cameo in the latest chapter of Nathan Traveler's fic, Omnius' Travels: A Beast Within.)

A Little Push

"Why, exactly, am I proctoring you through an IQ test?" Micro seemed a little aggrieved.

"Because," I said, while drinking from a bowl of water, pretty much for no other reason than because I could, "I don't know what I'm using to think with, right now - my teeny bird brain, or my cow-brain, or some magical copy of one of those, or what. And whatever I'm thinking with, I want to see if it's any better at any particular mental tasks than my usual hardware. If there's any difference at all, either positive or negative, that's something I really want to know about - either to take advantage of or to avoid." I lifted my beak from the bowl to look at her. "Maybe, as a bird, I'm better with spatial relationships than usual - that might mean that if I deal with math as graphs instead of equations, I might be able to notice a pattern I usually wouldn't, and get an insight I otherwise wouldn't have... or at least would have taken longer to get."

"I don't see what the fuss is. I use a smaller brain to think with every time I use my magic on myself."

"Well... I've got a theory about that."

"And you're just getting around to telling me now?"

"I've had a lot on my mind - I only came up with it after I started thinking about how I think as a bird. Simply put - I'm not sure that your magic does what you think it does; I've got a suspicion that when you think you shrink something, that something isn't actually getting shrunk."

"Could have fooled me - especially those times I wandered through mouseholes."

"Bear with me on this for a second. Hm... actually, maybe we can try a quick test of something. Here, bring that light over here, while I spread my wing. Lovely feathers, aren't they?"

"Are you getting vain about your appearance, now?"

"... Maybe. But look at that iridescence - what color would you call that? Blue? Purple?"

"Indigo."

"Good, good. Now - it also occurs to me that we should know whether a magic spell cast on me gives any extra magical power to the cloak. So we shall - ahem - kill a couple of birds with a single stone. Let's give the Captain a quick warning, and then I'd like you to shrink me - oh, somewhere under half size, but still big enough to see my feathers."

"Is this one of those plans I'm going to start regretting within five minutes?"

"Mm... I don't think so. But if I'm wrong, wouldn't it be better to find out now, while we're in nice, calm, peaceful, controlled conditions, instead of making stuff up on the fly in the middle of an emergency?"

Messages went back and forth through the speaking tubes; preparations were made in case one thing or another did go wrong. And then:

"Okay, hit me."

Micro's horn glowed, and the cargo bay, which was already enormous to me, became much more so. Micro loomed over me like that giant we'd flown over. "Hiya!" I waved my wing up at her. "How's my voice? Higher pitched?"

"Nope," she rumbled in what now sounded to me like a bass. "Same as before. Must be because it's made by magic, instead of your vocal cords."

"Well, let's see if that gave the cloak any extra magic... nope, still stuck as a bird. Okay - now take a look at my wing. At the iridescence. What color is it?"

She leaned down, her breath almost knocking me over as she squinted. "Same as before. Purply-blue."

"Good. Perfect. Okay, you can let me back up."

"Mm... seems like you'd cause me much less trouble that way - but I suppose I couldn't keep you shrunk forever." In a moment, I was back to my normal - if that could possibly be said to apply - raveny size. "So what was the point of all that?"

"There's a fascinating thing about feathers - in a lot of 'em, the colors you see aren't the colors of the pigments. Feathers have micro-structure, teensy little bumps and ridges, and some of them are just the right size to interfere with visible light, and make a brown feather look green - or a black one look indigo. But that effect depends very precisely on the size of those features. Make 'em smaller, and they should affect light very differently - maybe the effect completely disappearing from the visible spectrum. So that's a strong piece of evidence that while I may have looked smaller, I was actually still exactly the same size as when I started."

"There's some stronger evidence that when I shrank you, you shrank - namely, that you shrank."

"I know, I know - but looks can be deceiving. Here, hoof that paper, pen, and scissors over here, and I'll try to show you what I think is going on. Okay, here's a stick-figure of you - don't judge me, you try drawing using your back hooves. And here's a stick-figure of a cow, around the same size. Now, I'm going to try to cut that out - ooh, poor cow. Um, would you mind?"

"What - you want a paper doll?"

"Something like that." I drew a fresh, un-beheaded bovine; she grabbed the scissors with a hoof, and quickly snipped it out. "Thank you. Now - when you cast what you think of as your shrinking magic, what I think happens is that your target stays the same size; but, in a sense, it pops out of the normal framework. From the target's perspective, everything about itself stays the same size. From the rest of the universe's perspective, everything outside the target stays the same size. What changes... is something along the boundary between the two. From the outside perspective, I think what your magic does is make the surface-area of that boundary smaller, without changing the volume of the contents. Like, say, taking a flat cloth, putting a stone on it, and pulling the cloth around it to make a bag - there's a narrow neck, but the bottom of the cloth is still the same size."

"Hunh."

"If - and, I say, if - this is anything at all like how your magic works... then it solves a bunch of problematic issues. Like how a shrunken person manages to breathe oxygen molecules that are ten times their normal size, from their point of view. The complexities that would be involved in removing bunches of atoms without disrupting cells, or bunches of cells without disrupting organ function; or the problems with quantum mechanics if you're simply reducing the mass of individual atoms and distance between them; and so on. Of course, this also means that when I deduced FTL signalling from your power, I was completely mistaken in that conclusion - or, at best, making a fortuitous guess not actually supported by the evidence I had available to me at the time."

"And I suppose that you've come up with some astonishingly useful plan to use based on my magic being based on this principle?"

"Well - actually, no, not yet. We'd need to find out more about the boundary-layer effects, such as why voices still sound like they shift in pitch, and how much air a shrunken person draws in as they breathe, and so on. Maybe your magical spell has a few secondary effects - safety features, and the-"

I stopped talking, to pay attention to a rather important interruption: the engines had stopped turning. Given that we were flying at altitude and at cruising speed, the constant subtle background vibration was a constant reminder that all was well with the ship and we weren't about to plunge into freefall followed by a fiery crash. Recalling how badly I'd handled freefall before, my eyes widened; while we'd had drills, we hadn't actually ever turned the engines off in mid-air before, due to the risk of not being able to get it back on in time. I started spreading my wings, a useless gesture since I had yet to manage a glide longer than four feet...

... when there was a pop, and a shudder, and that never-noticed background vibration came back again.

Red's voice came over the speaking tube, "We're landing, now, and doing a full engine inspection."

"Well, there's your problem."

Stoke Red was pointing to a rather obvious crack in the main pipes running between the core of the ship's engine, and the actual propeller nacelles. He continued, "Liquid gem mixture got out, and air got in. When a bubble got to the props, the come-to-life spell lost its power for a moment - but inertia would have kept it going until it got fluid again. But when a big bubble got to the pump itself, well, it's designed to work with fluid, not air, so probably raced, overheated, jammed, cooled, until the pressure from the fluid kicked it free again."

Red asked, "Any permanent harm?"

"Mm," he mused, "maybe a bit more pitting than usual - we may have used up a few extra days before we need a major overhaul. Give me a few hours, and I can make sure all the air is burped out, and replace it with some of our spare fluid matrix - but we lost some of the powdered gemstone it carries, so we can only use, oh, eighty or ninety percent of the usual power, until we get some replacements. Better than food-grade gems; that'd give us maybe a five percent improvement, but then start gumming up the works with the impurities. We could really use some finely-ground fire opals, to get us back to peak condition, but any good gems would do."

From my perch between Red's ears, I asked, "I have a collection of lab-sample gems - how many do you need?"

"More than you've got."

Red nodded, almost sending me tumbling. She said, "Do what you need to, to get us back in the air, and then make a list of what would work."

Some time later, after a shopping trip at the next port, I was in the engine room under the bridge with Stoke, watching as he primed the various pipes, pumps, and power-lines. When he finally seemed satisfied, he flipped open the speaking tube going up to the bridge, and reported, "Alright - I've injected some heavy-gem-dust fluid in one part of the piping, while drawing off some of our current light-dust fluid from another. Run the engines at idle for ten minutes, and it should be thoroughly mixed, and we should be good to go."

"Roger that," Red said, through the speaking tube. "Opening main valves to idle." Her voice faded as she spoke to Blanche, up there with her, piloting. Presumably the appropriate levers were pulled, for the pumps started pumping, fluid started flowing, gauges' needles rose, and to port and starboard, the main props started slowly turning.

"Sounds good," Stoke said, listening to the fluid-flow. Outside, the prop-noise got louder. "Getting some good thrust. You can throttle back down."

There was some conversation, then Red's voice came down, "Please repeat? We're at minimal throttle - idling only." The prop noise got louder as they continued speeding up.

"Cut power - I repeat, cut power!" Stoke shouted. The Mikoyan was starting to slide forward in the water.

Red's voice came down. "Valves are jammed open! Shut it down in ten seconds, or I'm going to have to take us airborne!" Stoke galloped to one knob after another, pressing his weight against them, without success. He started reaching for a fire-axe when Red said, "No good - water's choppy - gotta go up!"

The vibrations lessened as the side-props lifted us out of the waves... but the sounds from the nacelles kept rising, as the main props spun faster and faster. Stoke was muttering something about not knowing what was going on, but this seemed time for me to hop up the stairs to the bridge. Red saw me, and grimaced. "Any ideas?"

"Depending on how much magic was in those gems... I think I'm going to have to use magic to reinforce those props to keep 'em from flying apart from the stress. I'll need to be a cow for that - lemme drain your wands, so I can go get my main supplies." Red and Blanche tossed their wands at me, I was suddenly a cow wearing a cape and brooch again, and I galloped down to my lab. "Oh," I called over my shoulder, "and give a red and pink alert."

We were going so fast, the wind would have blown away anyone setting a foot on deck; so I had to work from the bridge, which had the best view of the nacelles. Much like the medical emergency, I had all three of our unicorns charging up gems, while I used 'em as fast as they charged 'em, using every Latin-esque term I could think of for "don't fall apart". Red had made a rather sensible choice to err on the side of higher altitudes rather than lower, and we approached the Mikoyan's official altitude ceiling - and kept going up. I made some further suggestions, and the whole crew gathered together in the bridge or engine room right below, and I spent some of my magical energies on that fresh-air spell I'd come up with inside the dragon.

Speculation was that our gems had been spiked with something like starbeast bones - and though our primitive instruments were wholly inadequate to the task, the consensus was that we were now traveling somewhere around half the speed of sound, with no way to slow down until the overcharge in the gem-fluid was used up. Which might take hours.

It took hours.

Even though I'd taken off the cloak and kept it as far away from the gems I was using as possible, it still sucked in enough magic to push 'spring' at everyone - so much so that I suggested everyone not involved in keeping us from crashing get sleep-zapped... so much so that the very wooden planks of the ship started sprouting flowers.

Early on, Red and I consulted a bit... and decided that, while we could could certainly nudge the Mikoyan to curve around in some giant circles, and stay in the same region; there didn't seem any reason not to continue our generally easterly course. At least as long as we remained in the vicinity of the northern continent - if we came up near the east coast, we'd probably want to reconsider. But we hadn't gotten anywhere near that far when the props finally started slowing down to their more usual spin rate, and then down to the idle they were supposedly set at. We landed in the first thing resembling a bay we saw, and were starting to back to our normal routine as Stoke started testing our gem-fluid materials, getting ready to do a full purge...

... when Armina, up on watch, called out a warning, barely in time for everyone to draw their wands as a bat-winged, scorpion-tailed giant lion-like thing landed on the very tip of our bow.

"Oh, hey," he rumbled. "Very steampunk. I like."

PvP

During the hours the Lady's cloak had been bathing in magic, and the Mikoyan had been high above and far away from anything else, the former had... adjusted the latter - at least somewhat. The bridge, where it had been, had been nudged the most - just about every visible piece of wood was now heavily engraved with pictures of sprouting plants and animals frolicking; or the wood itself was sprouting flowers. The effect faded with distance, so the prow of the ship looked the same as when we'd started.

As we'd come in for a landing, we'd carefully woken up the crew who'd let themselves get sleep-zapped rather than risk becoming part of a Bacchanalia. Most of them had just raised their eyebrows at the new decoration scheme, then gotten to work checking the ship for damage. Thus, moments after the manticore landed, half a dozen ponies were crouched behind pieces of cover, aiming wands at it. Fortunately, it didn't seem interested in immediate mayhem; but after landing and making its initial pronouncement, crouched in place, muttering to itself as its eyes flicked over the ship.

I walked side-by-side with Red toward the bow, trying to ignore the flowers that bloomed in each of my hoofsteps. As we passed the mast, I was able to start making out, "... multi-species crew, blue shirts with logos on the chest, holding, I don't know, maybe they're stunners, a flying ship with two engines out on pods - I guess somebody was feeling a bit derivative. At least they were smart enough to avoid making the shirts red. Oh, here come a couple more - maybe they're the speaking NPCs."

Red whispered to me, "He sounds like he's speaking Equestrian instead of the local tongue, but I'm still not sure I understand him."

I whispered back, "I think I do - and it makes me nervous. But - let's try introducing ourselves, maybe it'll work out."

Red nodded, then stepped ahead of Armina, who was the frontmost of the crew. "I'm Captain Red Hot Chili Pepper of the airship Mikoyan."

The manticore puffed out its - his - chest, and bellowed, "I am Dirk Steel, the Dark Phoenix! What are you doing in my bay?"

I coughed, and found myself stepping forward. "Our five-month mission is to explore strange, new continents; to seek out new species and new cultures; to harmoniously go where nopony has gone before." Red looked at me and raised an eyebrow; I shrugged.

"Well," Dirk grumbled, "So much for originality. I suppose this is the scripted encounter so players who munchkin on combat have a chance to take it over and get to the finale that way." I raised a hoof for attention. "What?"

"I'd really prefer if you didn't try to take over my ship. It really does need a full crew, and whether or not you beat the crew trying to take it, you might hurt so many of them that it wouldn't be of any use to either of us."

He lowered his head to peer down at me. He snorted a few times... and his breath, frankly, stank, of both rotten meat and unbrushed teeth. "Say... you're not a player, are you?"

I debated for a split-second about how much detail to go into, which layer of secrecy to focus on; and decided to go with the MIB (CIB?) approach. "Would the fact that I've learned the words 'human', 'internet', and 'Canada' answer your question?"

"Finally!" He flopped down onto his belly, curling his tail along his side. "I was beginning to think I was the only one in this beta test!"

"You think this is a.. beta test?"

"What, are you on a production server? Or an in-house one?"

"Um." I scratched my head with a hoof. "I'm not sure I can answer that, at least the way you meant it. Was there, by any chance, a mysterious stranger who offered to let you... be here?"

"What, you mean Harry? Yeah, he was so impressed by my tricked-out rig and my special sauce, he gave me an invite on the spot."

"'Special sauce'?" Even I was starting to get confused at that point.

"Oh, yeah - I've worked out a trick that gives me an edge in any game I play. Really brings my hindbrain into action."

"Is it secret?"

"Nah - it'd just take you years to manage it yourself. I use self-hypnosis, so that I see myself inside the game. Gives me just that fraction of a second improved reflexes - but when a camper's sniping, and the engine's good enough to throw in sound-delay for the shot, a fraction of a second's just enough to make the dodge. Harry saw me trying out my new upgrade to my rig - a biofeedback sensor helmet. Gave me a helluva shock the first time I plugged it in, but even without any improvements, it's let me reach a whole new level. I wouldn't attack me, if you're thinking of sneaking a surprise on me - my reflexes are so good I'd have your throat out before you could say 'gangam style', even if it did aggro your mooks."

I rubbed my head slowly. This was all sorts of not-good, in just about every way I could name - and in a few ways I couldn't, since I'd never heard the term he'd just used. "And... what about the real world?"

"Ah, this new game's a peach. Persistent continuous gameplay, so I've gotta be logged in most of the time to really get through the grinding. I don't know about your config, but I've got my logout tied in with having my avatar fall asleep."

"What happens if something knocks you...r avatar out?"

"Hasn't happened yet."

"I've got something that's supposed to create a pretty good sleep effect - mind if I try it on you?"

"Very funny. Still haven't decided not to take your ship - or at least kill everyone aboard. Don't want you hitting the final quest before I do."

I bluffed a bit, "What makes you think it's the final one?"

"Are you kidding? The graphics are great, but whoever they've got writing this is a hack - start on one corner of a linear continent, and at the far end is the mysterious island shrouded in storms that nobody's been able to get to? You're not exactly a shining beacon of creativity yourself, even if it is a nice-looking airship. What are those things your party's pointing at me, magical phasers?"

"The name 'fuzzer' was proposed for them," I admitted.

"See? I bet that once somebody picks up the plot coupon to get to that island, it'll be a straight-up fetch quest. Kill the local elite team, then the big boss, get a nice shiny reward, and maybe have your character become the big boss for the production release. Or my character, I should say - I'm not going to let you win just because you picked up some fancy toys. If I'd known there was steampunk stuff available, maybe I'd have worked more on crafting than collecting an NPC army?"

"... A whole army, you say?"

"Yeah - they've really made a good conversational engine here. Well, I think they have - I think the whole thing might be bankrolled by that phone company, since everyone around here speaks Finnish, or something like that. But I've picked up enough that I can show up, shout a few words, kill anyone who challenges me, and the rest of the fighters join right up. Hey, how'd you like to be on Team Phoenix? I don't know what you were thinking when you picked that species, but you've got a nice ship - and coming in second's better than getting tossed out of the game entirely, right?"

"Depends. Maybe I should be asking you to join Team, um, Dairy."

He bellowed a laugh. "You haven't even picked a name yet? Lemme guess - you're a role-player, not a munchkin, aren't you?"

"So you can defeat locals in duels - are you really enough of a combat monster to even help taking down an endgame boss?"

The tip of his tail apparently teleported, the stinger resting against my throat. "More of a monster than you. The local random quest system has its hits and misses, but I've killed enough evil lords and local monsters to up my stats pretty high."

I tried to pretend I was completely calm as I gently touched the end of his tail with my hoof, and pushed it away - and tried to ignore the drop of clear fluid that was beading at its tip. "Tell you what," I said, "I may not be a meat-shield, but I do have my uses. For example, I've crafted a magic item with the command word 'vomitere'," and here I paused a moment, for I was concentrating on the opals in my cow-stomach and getting this monster - in several senses of the word - to lose his lunch. Unfortunately, he seemed to be just as resistant to that sort of magic as the local dragons, so I continued, "which has the effects you might guess, and-"

"Wait," he said, grinning, "did you just try and whammy me? While we were talking?" He snapped the fingers on one of his forepaws together, and I briefly envied him the ability to do so. "I bet you started off on a different continent, and that's why you've got all this cool stuff but you've been pumping me for information. I bet you don't even know how the local anti-magic system works. Still - if you're up to trying that, then whatever secret weapon you're getting ready inside your ship is probably almost ready to go."

I tried to keep my expression blank, as if I was hiding my reaction to his statement about the secret weapon that I wished I'd thought of working on. Things seemed to be coming to a head - or, at least, the conversation seemed to be winding up - so I tried to think of something I could do to neutralize Dirk - as he didn't think any of what was around us was real, he didn't have any qualms about taking who-knew-how-many lives. Maybe I could use my glue spell on the planks he was standing on, and hope the effect was physical enough to affect him; or I could run back to the safe the Warden Whistle was in; or... there was the powered-up Lady's cloak, which I was still wearing. (The thought came across my mind that maybe Dirk was bluffing about having anti-magic, and maybe the cloak had just drained my opals' magic.)

Mind-control was a terrible thing - but mass-murder was at least arguably worse than using minor mind-control to prevent it. So I tried activating the cloak's powers of command by concentrating on what I'd have to do to him if the cloak's magic failed, and ordered him, "No killing."

He blinked a few times at me, then shrugged. "Nah, I'm not going to kill you. Too many games have those stupid cooperative puzzles near the end, and you're the only other player I've found. But I'm getting bored here. I think I'll get back to the ol' pillaging, looting, raping, and setting fire to stuff grind, and come back for ya if I need ya."

I tried to hurriedly shout out, "No rap-!" but before I did, his wings had spread and he was gone.

I closed my eyes and let my head thunk against the railing.

Red said, "We're going to have a nice little debrief about everything that just happened, aren't we?"

"Yep. Soon as you help me get my horns out. Again."

Leveling Up

"You can't reason somepony out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

"That's true, Micro," I said cautiously, "but from the story he gave... he might actually have reasoned his way to the best conclusion he can, with the evidence available to him. I'm not saying he's right - but that, at least, we shouldn't think he's any stupider than he actually is."

Micro Scope glared at me. "If the whole world in front of his eyes isn't enough evidence - what possibly could be?"

"The world behind his eyes. More practically - mind magic wouldn't match the theory he's got. Anything which forces him to do something he didn't decide to do, which involves not just his body, but his thoughts. Even just 'veritas' could be enough... emphasis on 'could'. In the meantime, though, we can't assume that we're going to have the chance to do anything of the sort... we're all going to have to step up our game."

"You're saying we haven't been doing our best?"

"I'm saying that whatever our best was - we can do better still. With the training and practice we've been doing, we've gotten to where we can manage a basic set of tactics... but we're brittle. Something too unexpected happens, or if we lose even just one of our key members - and the whole thing will fall apart. What I want... is to let us all rely on each other, but not depend on any of us. Even me."

"You're the one who's always been talking about your special knowledge and important secrets."

"Yep. And now I want you to be able to press on whether or not you've got me around. When I was petrified, you took over the Dairy, along with Safe Guard - but you weren't using it to maximize the odds of Equestria's survival, in the face of world-ending disasters. I want to figure out why that was - and to find a way so that, if I get petrified again, or turned into a bird, or captured, or eaten, or you-name-it, that you'll be able to do what I wouldn't - won't? - anymore. And if both you and I get knocked out of the running, I want Red to be able to take over. And Blanche, and Amethyst... and so on. That's going to mean I'm going to have to ease up on a few of the security arrangements I've been holding firm to so far, and there's a risk in that... but there's a risk if I don't, too. The longer we spend outside Equestria itself, the more time there is for disaster to happen there, so I want us to finish and get home as fast as we can."

"I was starting to feel like we'd be stuck up here forever."

"Mm. Dirk was right about one thing - there's a lot of narrative causality that seems to be tied up in all of this... so we should be working to make that work for us as much as we can - maximizing the good parts, and minimizing where it works against us. ... Mind you, I'm suddenly realizing that now that I've actually said that, then we can probably expect bad news in three, two, one... hm, maybe by counting down like that I managed to defuse the narrative tension by letting myself look silly-"

"Bad news, everypony!" came Blanche's voice, as she galloped into the bridge, her wings still spread wide.

I sighed, then said, "Let's hear it."

She panted a bit, catching her breath, before saying, "Huge fleet. Armada. Lots 'n lots of ships! West. Behind us. Coming this way."

"Dirk's?"

"Lots of flags. Of a black bird. On red."

"He did say he was a 'dark phoenix'. So... is the Mikoyan up for flying?"

Micro shrugged. "After getting rattled around in that super-speed leap, and now everything near you turning halfway into a forest glen - we might be faster than before, or the engine might blow up as soon as we spin it up. Don't you think it's time you took off that magic cloak?"

"Well - after Dirk left, I was thinking that its magic could come in handy, but for all I knew, that was the cloak influencing my mind, so I was going to let any of you be able to tell me to take it off. But, well, I tried taking it off anyway - and the clasp seems to be stuck. I thought maybe that was a magical effect, so I tried draining its magic again, by turning into a bird and back a few times, and that didn't work."

"Great," Micro said, "just great. You realize that I've started eyeing Berry Blast? I've never liked stallions with food-based cutie marks. Made it a rule for myself, after, uh, something that happened in college."

I rubbed my forehead. "We'll have to add prophylactics to the 'essential supplies' list. And I'll have to see if I can come up with an anti-conception spell. And if need be, hold classes on how to deal with the mental effects in ways that don't lead to foals."

"Now that's something I'd like to see you do - and maybe bet fifty points on you blushing so hard you have something go physically wrong with you."

"Thank you for your vote of confidence. In the meantime - we do have that armada coming up on us, and while Red's getting some well-deserved rest... how about we see if we can get a little more space between us and them, or if we're going to have to make our stand right here?

I'm going to summarize the next few weeks, since most days were pretty much the same as each other. We nursed the bruised engines and pipes and such to push us at least one day's sail ahead of the armada. We warned the local villages we passed about their coming. When they didn't listen, we watched, from a distance, to gather intel on the fleet's tactics and activities... and I lost all taste for the old joke, "Remember, pillage, then burn." Whenever some over-eager griffons and pegasi from the fleet flew ahead, and came after us, we zapped them with sleep-wands and puke-wands. The Mikoyan grew one notch flowerier. I tried teaching everyone from Micro and Red to Firebough and Ursula as quickly as I could. I ran through some super-fast experiments to try coming up with new magic. We tried thinking of some clever plan with a better chance of working than staying ahead of the fleet, without getting any implementable suggestions.

We tried pumping the locals for any new info on magic places, items, or creatures, but didn't pick up anything significant we hadn't already heard.

My hooves grew back in.

Without much new stuff to experiment on, I poked around with some of the stuff we'd picked up from Canterlot on. The most unexpected discovery was that some of the samples of obsidian-like rock, from the cave near the Great Battlefield, seemed to be at least as impervious to magic as the local dragons. I guessed that maybe the dragons had figured out some way to incorporate those rocks' effects, the way I'd taken some magic-storing opals into myself before the cloak started draining any gem-stored magic it came into contact with. I tried figuring out something of the sort for us, but nothing we had aboard the Mikoyan seemed able to even dent those rocks, let alone reshape them.

I consciously sublimated my cloak-induced urges for offspring by spending as much time as I could with the pups. I tried not to pry too closely into the details of how everyone else was handling such matters, but we did buy up every prophylactic for sale at every village we stopped at, I actually did hold a seminar on non-procreative sex, and I started casting the hurriedly-discovered 'sterilis' on anypony who asked, at any time, no questions asked.

No, I didn't jump into the fray myself - I had much too much to do. The closest I came to anything of the sort was letting Amethyst pet my fur whenever I tried to relax, and letting her and Blanche stay close enough during the nights to let me sleep. I tried not to think too much about Cheerilee; it just made me depressed.

And then we ran out of coast.

We'd been following the shoreline to the northeast; now, we'd gotten to a point where it turned due north. According to the globe of my Element necklace's gem, there was a large island - I thought of it as around the size of Iceland - due east of us, with nothing but ocean and cloud in between. According to the information we'd gotten, in that direction was the mysterious isle of Thule, which nopony had traveled from in centuries, and which was surrounded by a permanent storm. Depending on who you asked, the storm either sank every ship that came near it, or only ones that had hostile intent to Thule, or it just held all the ships that had ever entered with nopony aboard realizing that more than a single night had passed.

"Welp," I said to the members of the Round Table, "I'm stumped."

This set off some quick murmuring, as some points in a side-pool got traded.

I continued, "According to one of my secret bits of magic, which shows where the bigger swathes of clouds are... there's a circle of them around the island. Sometimes it's thick in some spots, sometimes it's thin - but it's always there. I've got a few ideas on spells to minimize its effects on us - but no guarantees any will work. We don't know how Dirk's fleet plans to get through, and trying to make any sort of raid on them to gather that particular piece of intel... seems to be at least as risky as just flying in ourselves."

Red commented, "We do have the Lady's Cloak - so if we wanted, we could just claim success by having gotten it, set course southeast, and arrive on Equestria's west coast."

Micro thought out loud, "If Dirk doesn't actually have a way through the storm - maybe we could just let him and his fleet sail into it and sink; that would take the whole lot of them out of business for us."

Blanche snorted at her. "That's a big 'if', which we don't have any info on. If we assume that and we're wrong..."

Amethyst herself spoke up, "Dirk. Mad at us. Shooing away prey. To safety. If we go one way. Fleet goes another. He'll chase us."

"Not to mention," I said, "that we don't even know if the Star Shield, or Svalinn, or both if they're not the same, are actually on Thule. Or, if they are, if they'll be worth the effort of trying to get them."

There was a brief pause as we considered all of this.

"So," Red said, "one last attempt to parley with Dirk, and when that fails, in we go?"

As it turned out, the only way any of Dirk's lead ships let any of us get anywhere near us was after we incapacitated every last crewman aboard. This didn't leave us much to try talking to, let alone arranging a parley with their admiral with; and with a few dozen other ships barreling toward the one we were on... the best we could do was re-capacitate the ones aboard who looked like they'd been enslaved, and let them decide what to do with their captors as we pulled away. It was a conscious and deliberate ploy to put them higher on the fleet's target list than us... but since the only other realistic plans were to leave them enslaved, to mercy-kill them, or to commit suicide trying to face down the whole armada with our single airship... we gave them their shot, and left them to it.

Before we got out of sight, looking back through binoculars, I saw the ship sink.

I added it to the list of nightmares I'd be facing that night.

We turned to face the storm.

Riders on the Storm

"Welp... there it is."

"Mmyep."

"Big, ain't it?"

"Mmyep."

"Think we'll survive?"

"Mmnope."

I cleared my throat, interrupting the two stallions. They just glanced at me, then turned back to look at the storm clouds covering half the horizon.

"Might as well enjoy the flowers while we can."

"Mmyep."

"Whole lot of 'em, now."

"Mmyep."

"Don't think I've seen an actual plank of wood in days."

"Mmnope."

"Pretty sure that cow's at least half-earth-pony, bringing up a crop like this."

"Mm."

"Does do good work, at whatever she puts her hoof to."

"Mmyep."

"Not quite sure she understands what it's like, us three stallions with five mares, a lady bear, a lady griffoness, and a lady diamond dog."

"Not sure the diamond dog counts. She's got three males of her own."

"I suppose not. Still - that's three of us to seven of them."

"At least she's kept from adding to our workload."

"Those daily baths she takes must be ice-cold."

I grumbled, "Don't either of you have actual work to do?"

Berry turned back to me with a raised eyebrow. "No, ma'am. Micro's put us on medical leave for a couple of hours, until the magic healing has a chance to set in fully."

Stoke nodded agreeably. "Then it's back to the same old grind."

"Day in, day out."

"Work work work - that's all we do."

"At least we can let the ladies in charge make all the decisions for us."

"If we tried making up our own minds, they'd probably keelhaul us."

"Or worse."

"Mmyep."

I rubbed my eyes with a hoof, not sure whether to groan, giggle, or tear my hear out, and finally just picked the better part of valor.

"So," I said, as I joined the round-table discussion at the bridge's big round table, "Any new brainstorms?"

Red shook her head. "We've tried putting together a list of every trick, piece of gear, magic spell, and new bit of physics any of us know that any of us know - and haven't come up with any way to use any of 'em, outside of the ideas we'd already had."

Micro ponykinesised a sheet of paper into the air. "Which leaves this as every method we could think of for getting through a permanent giant storm. Got any thoughts about which one we should try?"

I ran my eyes up and down the items... and smiled sweetly at her. "I do," I said.

"Yes?"

"Spaghetti."

"Er - that's not on the list, is it?"

In the middle of the cargo bay, Blanche carefully trimmed back the growth. She checked her notes frequently, as she painted a careful circle of what she hoped would direct some ley lines in just the right ways...

Micro checked her own notes, listing the words she was going to start reciting soon, as she, Tranquil, and Berry continued pumping the ship's stores of gems full of magical potential...

Most of the crew were busy doing actual crew-type things, double-checking pipes and rigging and safety ropes and wet-weather gear and signaling methods for when the rain and thunder blotted everything out, and thinking hard about how we meant the locals only good and no harm...

I was alone, and muttering, but not to myself. I wasn't sure how much actual awareness the Lady's Cloak had, but the floral state of the Mikoyan was proof of its sheer power, and its response to the regent's do-or-die commands gave some inkling of its range. So I was telling it how we needed to pass through the storm alive, and the negative consequences - to myself, to everyone else aboard, and to the cloak itself - if we sank to the bottom of the ocean...

The young dragon Firebough had picked up quite a lot of Equestrian in the past few weeks, though he was still far from fluent, and had a heavy accent. He'd wanted to know whether there was anything he could do to improve our chances. As it happened, we were in the middle of preparing a plan which he could contribute to - and once he'd gotten over his disbelief that, yes, we were actually serious about it, he took to it like a dragon to lava. Stoke, as our resident carpenter, put together most of the equipment, and I broke open one of the CAT'S WHISKER radios for some of the more delicate parts needed. I had to draw on some of the more obscure corners of my random knowledge to put together the details of what we'd need...

We hadn't been able to find out what trick Dirk had planned to get his fleet through the storm. (For all we knew, he was just sending them all in, and hoping at least one ship made it through.) So, basically, we were using every idea we had. Sheer piloting ability, narrative causality, magic of various sorts large and small - hoping at least one did the trick. We weren't holding back any of our resources, except maybe the Ursa bones, and that was because their magic was at least as wild and uncontainable as a storm themself.

The most visible of our ideas was being set up (well, tied into place, really) on our main deck, near the front, where they'd have the best view possible of the storm... and it would have the best view possible of them.

With Lord Firebough in the lead, those of us who were a part of that plan... would be singing to the storm.

Or, to be more specific: playing a rock concert for it. With Amethyst on drums, Armina on lead guitar, and Ursula on bass.

There's a Storm Front coming
White water running and the pressure is low
Storm front coming
Small craft warning on the radio

We've got a low pressure system and a northeast breeze
We've got a falling barometer and rising seas
We've got the cumulonimbus and a possible gale
We've got a force nine blowing on the Beaufort scale

I'm still restless for the open water
Though she gives me everything I need
She asked me to stay, but I'd done my navigation
I drove her away, but I should have known
To stay tied up at home

--

I hear hurricanes a-blowing.
I know the end is coming soon.
I fear rivers over flowing.
I hear the voice of rage and ruin.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, it's bound to take your life,
There's a Bad Moon On The Rise.
All right!

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like we're in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

--

Someone told me long ago
There's a calm before the storm,
I know
It's been comin for some time.

When it's over, so they say,
It'll rain a sunny day,
I know
Shinin down like water.

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain
I want to know, have you ever seen the rain
Comin down on a sunny day

--

Look Out, Cleveland, the storm is comin' through,
And it's runnin' right up on you.
Look out, Houston, There'll be thunder on the hill;
Bye-bye, baby, don't cha lie so still.

--

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

--

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

--

We can circle around like hurricanes
Dance and dream like lovers
Attack the day like birds of prey
Or scavengers under cover

Look in...to the eye of the storm
Look out...for the force without form
Look around...at the sight and the sound
Look in look out look around...

--

Long as I remember the rain been comin' down
Clouds of mystery pourin' confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages tryin' to find the sun.
And I wonder still I wonder who'll stop the rain.

I went down Virginia seekin' shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable I watched the tower grow
Five year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder still I wonder who'll stop the rain.

Heard the singers playin', how we cheered for more.
The crowd had rushed together tryin' to keep warm.
Still the rain kept pourin', fallin' on my ears
And I wonder, still I wonder who'll stop the rain.

Maybe it was the music. Maybe it was the magic spells. Maybe it was Red's piloting. Maybe our nice thoughts got us through a magic barrier. Maybe it was my nursing the pups and playing with them, and the Lady's Cloak not letting anything happen to them.

But our engines didn't fail us; the rain didn't swamp us; the wind didn't blow us out of the sky; the thunder and lightning shook us, but never destroyed us.

We passed to the inside of the storm - and with the sun getting low behind us, and still some intermittent rain before us, we all huddled together in the bridge with towels and hot drinks, and watched the rainbow forming before us... curving over the land-mass of the island we'd been aiming for all this time - the mountains and forests, fields and glaciers, volcanoes and villages of the mysterious Thule.

John stuck one of his chubby little paws into the air, as if he were grasping for the pretty colours... and said his first word:

"Coooool."

Accepting Responsibility

I stretched out on the deck chair, on the beach, my hooves behind my head; and just relaxed, listening to the waves on the beach, and watching the moon slowly setting into the distant storm-clouds. There was an old koan about a monk, a cliff, and some tigers - and I was doing my best to appreciate every aspect of the sweetness of the moment.

It had been a hectic couple of days. As soon as we'd gotten through the storm, we'd bee-lined for the first sign of civilization we saw, to start looking for who to warn about the coming invasion fleet. That had been a longhouse, a fairly standard one for the northern region, which seemed the only building attached to some rather large cattle-grazing fields. I'd volare'd myself down, with the pegasi Blanche and Cloud Bouncer as backup, to try to talk to the head of the houshold - an earth-pony - about how to get their emergency defensive procedures kick-started... but once the translation spell kicked in, all he'd seemed to care about was the fact that I'd landed in his vegetable patch, and had squashed some of his squashes. Even after getting through to him that I wasn't just a cow under a ventriloquism spell, he literally would not believe that our flying ship had come from anywhere other than the other side of the island, and kept repeating a threat to sue me.

I'd finally gotten something started by asking him "What would happen if I declined to be sued?" - he'd grumbled and started walking to talk to his chieftain. To speed things up, we gave him a lift. The chieftain directed us to a judge, who said that if the case was as serious as I said, then it would have to be handled at the quarter-court... which wouldn't meet again until next spring. And after that it would probably have to go to the all-court in the summer.

This was, needless to say, rather useless to deal with a fleet merely days behind us. One thing I did learn was that the island did have an immortal princess - of a sort. The judge called her the 'Singing Princess', because she'd been incapacitated for a number of years, and that was about all she was able to fill her days with. Naturally, that wasn't of any more help.

I finally asked what it would take to get the island's inhabitants to put together any sort of organized military response. The judge said, "Oh, someone defying the authority of the courts, instigating a full blood-feud without proper authority, and generally that sort of thing."

I'd looked at Red Pepper, and raised an eyebrow. She'd rolled her eyes, heaved a sigh, and nodded.

We'd spent most of our time during the next couple of days becoming the most-hated beings we could. The local population included some unicorns and pegasi, and after we'd started making enough of a pain of ourselves, they'd started spreading the word - and, finally, the island's inhabitants started mobilizing against us.

Unfortunately, even once we'd gotten them started, it was still going to be a slow process.

Red, I, and the other members of our round table discussed some of our strategy... and Amethyst, the Musketeers, the pups, Lord Firebough, and Ursula were dropped off inland, with all the notes I had on guerrilla warfare and organizing resistance movements. Basically, we were putting our non-combatants out of the way, the safest place we could. The rest of us took the Mikoyan back out through the storm, to find Dirk's fleet and where it was aiming for. Once we had that, I had her drop me off here on the beach, with some equipment, while she took the airship back out - to do whatever they could to slow the fleet, without getting themselves knocked out of the sky.

I hadn't said anything to Red, but I didn't actually expect them to accomplish anything significant. Odd as it may sound, I'd put them on that mission to raid hundreds of enemy ships to put them in the safest spot I could.

Over the last few weeks, as we skipped along barely ahead of the armada, I'd been doing some thinking. In particular, I'd been trying to think of what I considered the best possible outcome would be - and what it would take to bring that outcome about. I'd also been thinking about the implications of the Latin-based magic I'd been using, and the cloak I'd gotten stuck with.

And so... I'd made plans - not all of which I'd shared even with my inner circle. I'd come up with as many options as I could, and I'd laid the groundwork for as many as I had the time and resources for. As part of that... I'd spent less time on research, and more on teaching. For just one example, I'd started teaching Red, Blanche, and Micro some Earthly history, so they could learn the lessons therefrom. Economics, the civil rights movement, game theory, oligarchic takeovers, riddles, cultural referents - I'd tried pumping their brains as full as I could of everything that was most likely help them fulfill our overall mission to keep Equestria from going the way of Atlantis. "After all," I said, "I've already been petrified once - I don't want a continent to sink if that happens to me again."

And so here I sat. I picked up the Warden Whistle from around my neck, and looked at it once again, turning it from side to side; the official plan was that if the Mikoyan couldn't head off the fleet, and the local ships couldn't get here in time, then I would blow it, and summon the... undead things, to start reaving and killing and slaying the invaders.

I thought again about what the best possible outcome would be... what it would take to accomplish that... and I thought about some of the people from Earth I admired most - those who went against society to do what they felt right, and accepted the consequences of their actions.

I lifted my binoculars to my eyes, scanned the horizon again... and, this time, in the mist and the rain and the darkness - I saw a sail, a ship coming through the surprisingly-penetrable impenetrable weather. Then another - then two more.

There was no sign of the Mikoyan.

I lifted the whistle's chain from around my neck, looked at it one last time... and I dropped it in the sand next to me. And scooped some more over it, burying it.

The moon disappeared entirely behind the clouds, leaving nothing but the stars to shine down on us.

With a minor bit of vision-enhancing magic - alright, with the goggles from the Battlefield - I was able to watch ship after ship come through the rain. Each one full of ruthless warriors, who would gleefully slaughter every single individual on the island just for the joy in doing so.

Just in case they might miss me, I reached into the trunk to one side, touched a ruby, and whispered "Ignere"; the driftwood I'd piled to my left ignited into a cheery little campfire.

I waited.

After a while, over the rush of the waves, I heard the flapping of leathery wings; and Dirk Steel thudded into the sand before me. His eyes glittered red, reflecting the firelight as he thumped closer.

"Okay," he said, "I'll bite. Your crew mutinied on you, and marooned you here?"

"Not even close," I answered. "I'd like to ask you up to three things, and then - well, one way or another, I expect our conversation will be over."

"Three, hunh? What'll you do if I just kill you now?"

"Be rather annoyed for a few brief moments, I assume. My first question," I said without a pause, "is based on what you told me before, that you're using some combination of VR and self-hypnosis to 'really see' what's happening in here. If I were to cast a mind-affecting spell, not just on your character but on you, like a fall-in-love spell, then your equipment wouldn't let that really affect you, now would it?"

He snorted. "What, I should give you the satisfaction of knowing?"

"I can create such a magical effect without moving from this chair, to find out."

"Hm. It's a good question - self-hypnosis can do all sorts of things. Ever have a dream where you know things, in the dream, that you couldn't possibly know?"

"So - at least in terms of the game - you just might end up acting as if the spell really did affect you?"

He shrugged. "Maybe. Why, thinking of making me fall in love with you?"

I shook my head. "Nothing so crass." What I'd really hoped was that he'd be sure it wouldn't affect him - so that having some magic like that actually affect him would shake up his understanding of the universe. But since it seemed as if he could incorporate such an event into his current paradigm, I continued, "For my second question - I've learned that one possible end of this plotline includes the sinking of a continent, and millions of deaths. Would you be interested in helping me keep that from happening?"

"Are you asking me to help you snag the artifact that's at the end of this fetch-quest?"

"It seems very likely to be one of the more useful tools to prevent the sinking - so, yes."

"Not a chance. You want that thing, you'll have to beat me fair and square."

I sighed. "In that case - for my third question - is there a chance I could outright bribe you with the contents of this chest?"

I reached over, flipped the lid open, and picked up one of the items within... transparent, it glimmered faintly in the starlight.

Dirk leaned in and squinted. "Am I supposed to know what that is?"

"Think of it as concentrated magic."

He frowned - then his eyes widened, and he started spreading his wings.

Looked like the answer to my question was 'no'.

Before he made a single flap, I said the word, "Pax."

The piece of Ursa Major bone I held in my hoof, about the size of the shard that had set my whole lab ablaze, started glowing... along with every other Ursa bone-piece I'd brought with us all the way from Canterlot.

I managed to continue to speak, saying, "Amore," and felt the Lady's Cloak billowing around me of its own accord. I'd made my decision some time ago about mind-affecting magic being unethical and that it should be illegal. Where we were now, there was no law, none other than myself - so I was sentencing myself to suffer the full consequences of my own actions.

I hoped I'd taught the others enough to carry on the mission.

I finished the words I'd planned on saying. "Et harmonia."

The whole world turned to light.

Adding Perspective

Words don't do justice for my memories of the next bit; pretty much every language there is contains some inherent assumptions, such as that the person doing the speaking maintains a consistent level of sapients. So even trying to fit my memories into words is going to give an entirely false set of impressions. But I can't get away with not offering any description at all, so:

I remember the bright light. My memories around it are somewhat confused and contradictory. But after some point, those memories settle down into a reasonably coherent narrative: I ate. I pooped. I slept. I didn't think. I hung around some other cows. Time passed, without being noticed.

Even that much, I'm already wincing at how little the words reflect what my experience was like. So I'm going to do two things. One, I'll skip ahead to where my thoughtless, endless now changed; and then I'll describe my best reconstruction of the events I was zoned out of.

After some time, a period I was unable to conceive of, let alone measure, some not-quite-cows wandered through the cows I hung out with. I noticed a blanket or something on my shoulders. The not-cows nudged me away from the others, which I didn't like, and to a basket of oats, which I did enjoy eating. There were some strange noises and lights... I experienced some rather strange physical sensations, my entire body changing at least somewhat...

... and with a flash, both of light and of inspiration, I started thinking properly.

My reconstruction comes mainly from things the Mikoyan's crew told me, as well as some other reports, and my own estimations and interpolations.

The "Peace, Love and Harmony" spell wasn't quite the magical equivalent of a nuke - but powered by the Ursa Major bones, and possibly altered by the Lady's Cloak, it was at least a MOAB-level magic. That fleet full of viking warriors intent on raping, pillaging, and general mayhem got turned into... well, hippies, for lack of a better word. The ships I'd encouraged to come fight the invasion arrived to find a bunch of would-be settlers, instead, and after some confusion, eventually got them to spread around all of Thule, to establish homesteads and start farming undeveloped land.

There was no sign of Dirk Steel. Given that he had some sort of anti-magic effect, he might have gone into hiding after his fleet disappeared. Or, if his anti-magic was through the use of black rock of the same sort we'd found in the giant crevice, which has a finite capacity before exploding, there might not have been anything left of him other than a few feathers.

My conclusion about what happened to me... is that some combination of my will directing the spell, the overload of raw magical power, the cloak, and the magical-neurological properties of my species... gave me a super mind-numbing zap, like the ones I got from forming a circle with other Equestrian cows; and by the time that wore off, my body's magic had already run out for long enough for my brain to shrivel up like a raisin.

As for the Mikoyan and its crew... well, maybe it would be best to show what I learned, from the point of the second flash.

I wobbled on all four hooves, as I looked around. There was Red, and Micro, and the other two unicorns of the crew, Tranquil and Berry. I was standing on something like some plywood sheets, on which were carved a magical circle, lined with diamonds. The Lady's Cloak was back on my back. The Mikoyan was floating off in the distance - back to the bare planks, instead of covered in flowers, and now painted a matte black rather than merely varnished.

I started to say something, but my throat was raw, and my lips and tongue were clumsy. Not quite as clumsy as a beak, so after a couple of tries, I said, "I thought... I ordered you... to keep on... the mission."

Red and Micro looked at each other... and, rather to my surprise, both broke out into broad grins; Red even gave Micro a hug, thudding her on the back. Tranquil and Berry high-fived (high-hoofed?).

I raised an eyebrow, and asked, "How... long?"

Red pulled herself back from Micro, and looked up and down at me. "It's been... two months since we lost you. We've tried getting hold of Svalinn, but, well, hit a snag - one we think you might be able to get through. So we started looking for you... do you have any idea how many herds of cows there are here?"

I shook my head, then tried, "How... find?"

"Well, after a few false leads... Blanche remembered the cloak. It's supposed to find its way back to its owner, so after we found it again, we've been trying to give it a chance to find its way back to you. We got a few false positives at first, but... well, here you are, talking to us now."

I nodded, then frowned. "Where... Blanche?"

"Ah," Red said, and looked away. "That's... a bit complicated."

"No it's not," said my lips, without any volition from me. "Just tell her, already."

I blinked a bit at that.

Micro piped up, "You have to understand - for all intents and purposes, your mind was gone. So we've had to use... extreme measures to rebuild it. We needed to physically reconstruct your brain, and, well, we've only been able to find one piece of magic that can do that."

I glared at her. "Don't... tell me... forbidden... spell... forty-seven?" I was referring to one of the secret tomes I'd gotten from the Pillar family, specifically a spell which allowed the caster to reshape the target's body in almost any way imaginable - as long as another body was merged into it at the time.

My mouth moved again, "Don't be mad at them - I volunteered for this. We improved on the version of the spell from your notes - I, well, my brain, is attached to your spine, somewhere near your kidneys. Everything you experience, I do - and I can move our body, too, if you're not moving it. We can get me back out of you, by casting the spell again to merge me into another body, like into an ordinary cow's, and reshape it to be a pony and put me in charge of it. In the meantime - you can think of me as your backup... I'm sure you can think of a bunch of clever plans involving me being hidden away inside here, where nopony would expect me to be."

I closed my eyes for a few moments and rubbed between my horns. "I have a headache," I announced. "Maybe more than one. So... what's the problem... you need me for... that this is the easiest solution?"

"Ah," Red said. "That's also complicated. Are you sure you're up for all this?"

I looked behind me, at the herd of cows I'd been part of for... months. I kind of wanted to go back and join them - they were a nice bunch, comparatively speaking. But... "Vacation's over," I said, as much to myself as to the others.

"Right," Red nodded. "Well - we know where Svalinn is. Some of us have even managed to see it. But... it's kind of hard to describe - none of us have been able to get it. And all of us who've tried - none of us describe the same thing. The Round Table's consensus is that it involves some kind of customized vision - heart's desire sorts of things. When Stoke Red and I went in... we saw ourselves in charge of an airship fleet - and then we were back outside."

Tranquil piped up, "I saw myself as a seapony. Firebough saw himself as emperor of all the Northern Wastes. Half of us won't talk about what we saw."

Red said, "To be honest, we're kind of grasping at straws, with you. But since you had that mental duel with Lady Kohl, and were able to think your way through the mind-affecting spells on the Pillars' books... it seemed worth trying to find you again, to see if you could do something like that again."

"Not to mention," Blanche said with my mouth, "even if you can't, I didn't want to give up and head back to Equestria without you."

I tried to think through the implications of that - and my thoughts felt fuzzier than they used to. I decided that I probably wasn't all the way back to snuff, after so long without thinking at all; and that I should take the time to run through my checklists, to compare how well I thought now to when I did similar tests while stuck in the shape of a bird... and see if I could get myself thinking clearly again. In the meantime...

"Need to think," I said. "Sorry - I mean, think better. Feels like I need caffeine. Maybe we should... get back aboard... the Mikoyan? Continue there?"

The ponies looked at each other, gave each other shrugs and nods, and started packing up the gear.

I looked back along my flank, and said, "So, uh... Blanche?"

"Yes?"

"When you say... you experience everything I do..."

"We've figured out that a sleep-wand can zap one brain in a body without zapping the other."

"... Glad you've been thinking ahead. Er... how, exactly, did you figure...?"

"We've been practicing the spell on other cows, to figure out how to get it right, and how to improve it."

"How much... did that cost?"

"Er, not much at all."

I hung my head. "So... you've been using... a black flying ship... with technology beyond the locals' ken... to abduct cattle... and perform experiments on them?"

"Pretty much."

"... Remind me to give all of you a stern talking-to about that... and to wear my black suit when I do."

Swing of Things

"Ya-ha!" I hopped back on all fours, heart pounding and eyes wide.

"What?" Amethyst looked at me calmly... with her sharp white teeth and big gnashy claws.

"Um," I hesitated, then found a reasonable explanation. "I guess... I'm still used to... being a cow."

"Oh. Should I go inside?"

I found it a tad annoying that Amethyst now seemed to be at least slightly more articulate than I was. "No," I said, "My problem, not yours. ... How are the pups doing?"

"See for yourself," she said, and opened the cabin door wide. Four little balls of fur rocketed out into the hall I was in; and I found myself standing on tip-hoof, tensely trying to raise myself away from them as all four galloped around and under me.

Blanche whispered with my mouth, "You doing okay, there? You're acting like they're porcupines and you're a balloon."

Amethyst raised an eyebrow, and I glanced away from her for a moment, saying, "It's complicated."

She nodded, then, looking down at the much-more-puppy-like pups, said, "In." They galloped back into the cabin, and she closed the door on them. I found myself relaxing back to a more normal stance, and letting out a breath.

On the far end of the hall, I saw a large, unfamiliar male bear walk out of another room. "New crewman?" I asked Amethyst.

"No - Ursula."

I blinked. "Er - wasn't she a... she, before?"

"'It's complicated'," Amethyst repeated back, as the now-masculinized Ursula walked by us. She - he - nodded at us, and I nodded back, blinking a bit as I looked up and down at his body, looking for hints of her previous, muscled-but-feminine shape; and my nostrils flared as the smell of predator in the hall more than doubled. I kept watching as she went down the hall, until the last sight of her tail rounded a corner.

"Hunh," I commented, and Blanche didn't have anything to add to that.

Back in the familiar equipment of the lab, I glanced around, and reached for the nearest notebook... which my hoof completely failed to pick up. "Looks like," I said aloud for Blanche's benefit, "I'm out of magic, and need a recharge." I quickly found some sample crystals, some of which had the interior gleam of being full of magic. I picked some up, and started concentrating on drawing that power into my body, and-

"Ya-ha!" I said in startlement, dropping them to the deck - it felt like they'd burned me! I examined my hoof and leg closely - they looked fine, but...

"Okay," I found myself saying, "This is one of the possibilities we thought might happen. Let me grab one of those light-wands?"

"Are you sure it's safe?" I said back, not yet used to the sensations of speaking both sides of a conversation.

"Do you trust me?"

"Always," I agreed without hesitation, and tried letting one of my forelegs go limp. As if by its own accord, it reached out for a wand - and the hoof was able to pick it up without a problem.

"Lumen," my mouth said, and it lit up. Blanche nodded my head, and explained, "Okay - one of the things we were worried about is that when you had your... magical overload, your meridians... well, 'burned out' isn't the right word - maybe 'constricted' is. It's not a severe or permanent thing; all that you have to do to fix them is spend some time soaking in a steady magical field, like Equestria's. The trouble is, well, we're a good ways away from Equestria. So when we put together the spell that merged me into your body, we kept your meridians and mine as separate as possible, outside of what's needed to keep your brain working."

She paused a moment, so "So," I said, "to sum... for the foreseeable future... I can't use magic... but you can?"

I - she - we nodded. "That's the long and short of it. We might have been able to figure out how to tweak the spell to fix your meridians when we cast it... but, well, we've been taking a lot of shortcuts, and that's just one more. Better to get you thinking as soon as we got you, than to let you wait around as an animal while we fiddled trying to come up with the perfect spell."

"Is that why... you volunteered... to, um, be in me?"

"Well - partly. If this did happen, and it did, then we'd need someone to be part of you, for their meridians to keep magic flowing to your brain. We haven't just been sitting on our hooves while we've been looking for you - we've been doing all sorts of experiments. You're actually not the first cow I've been stuck inside - though you are the smartest."

"Thanks... I think. So... does that mean... you're stuck with me... until we're back... in Equestria?"

"Well... more technically, it means you're stuck with me; it's easy enough to get me out of you, now, but without the magic from my meridians... you'd be back to being an animal before we got near Equestria. If that's a problem... we've extended the maximum duration of the sleep wands - and we could just set things up to keep me unconscious until it's safe to get me back out again."

I blinked a few times. "It's... nice of you to make the offer... but... it seems... counterproductive. I'll try... to make more reasonable... accommodations... for us... to each have... private time." For some reason, the image of he-Ursula's hind end flashed into my mind, and I found myself blushing. "If that sounds... alright."

"Suits me," Blanche agreed.

"I think you're going to want to see this," said Captain Red.

We were flying to the center of Thule, and were currently over a surprisingly extensive stretch of black and barren rock, with a gleam of glaciers far to starboard. Red lifted a hoof to point the other way. "He shouldn't have gotten very far since we passed by him the other way... ah, and there he is."

It took a few moments for enough of what I was seeing to become visible for me to be able to figure out what I saw... and when I did, I raised an eyebrow.

Back near Canterlot, we'd found the nearly intact skeleton of an Ursa Major, one of the Star Beasts of legend; I was now getting my first glimpse of a live one: a Taurus, a semi-transparent bull bigger than the whole Mikoyan. He - and he was very definitely a 'he' - was casually grazing on a field, tearing up a whole mouthful of grass and soil, leaving nothing behind but the underlying, black rocks.

Red commented, "From what we've been able to measure of the wastelands it leaves behind... he's been here for a couple of centuries, and will finish stripping the place bare in another thousand years or so. It's a bit odd - the reference texts about Star Beasts do talk about their appetites... but not about the land staying barren after they eat."

I considered that. I was definitely thinking slower than I had when I'd tested myself as a bird - and less creatively, and with a smaller working memory, and, generally, less mental ability in every quantifiable quantity. I really, really hoped that this was a temporary thing, which would be solved as Blanche's magical life-support system to my brain helped it return to normal. I already knew just how unintelligent I really was, even when I was running on all cylinders, and the idea of losing that much of my self was... well, it wasn't a happy thought. But in the meantime... while I was thinking slower, I was still able to work through some puzzles. Wastelands that had been getting bigger for a couple of centuries - something about that length of time, connected to Thule, tickled my memory - and I managed to grab it. "The storm," I said.

"Hm?"

"The storm... cuts Thule off... from the world. Maybe it cuts off... something important... for replenishment. Magic. Or dust."

"Mm... makes as much sense as anything else."

"If that's so... then the Thule people... may need to... kill it off... the Taurus, I mean... to keep it from eating... every last plant. If so... then we... might try doing well, by doing good... and harvesting... its body, its bones, and so on... for ourselves."

"Mm," Red repeated. "Given you were able to take out a whole fleet of ships, by yourself, with just a small part of the Ursa skeleton... I can see how that might be even more useful than Svalinn, if we can carry enough of it."

"Still," I continued thinking aloud, "before we start... killing Star Beasts... willy-nilly... we might want to... figure out... the long-term... consequences. Maybe we could... find... a less... permanent... way."

"Are you sure you're not being influenced by it being closer to your species than the Ursa Major was?"

I snorted. "I could tap-dance... on one of its horns. ... If I could tap-dance. It's no more my species... than Godzilla is an iguana."

"Still - he is a rather impressive slab of beef."

"... Are you taking this conversation... somewhere in particular... or just trying to give my blush-muscles... a field-test?"

"Well..."

"If you want me to... even consider... going any further... you'll have to get me drunk. I'm brain-damaged, not boorish."

Red managed to get out a chuckle. "Same old Missy," she slapped me on the back.

"Hey, watch it, I'm right there," Blanche muttered in complaint.

When the sun went down, I stretched out on my pallet, freshly pulled out of storage. I had, with some shame, asked for a couple of ponies to spend the night in the room with me to let me sleep, instead of Amethyst and the pups. I wanted to be comfortable with them, but, well, I just wasn't. It didn't help that my udder was completely dry, and I couldn't nurse the pups even if I did want to.

I couldn't fall asleep - I had far, far too much rattling around in my emptier-than-usual skull. But I did need as much rest as I could get; so I went through some meditation-like routines, relaxing each muscle of my body in turn, focusing on my breath without controlling it, and so on.

After some hours of this... I heard the gentle sounds of hooves tip-toeing over. I heard Red's voice, in a near whisper, ask, "You awake?" I was feeling more interested in trying to sort out my own thoughts and feelings than having a conversation; and if it was important, Red would have just woke me up... so I didn't respond, and just kept laying there like a log.

And then my mouth whispered, "I'm pretty sure she's asleep."

If I hadn't been concentrating so hard on not reacting, I probably would have twitched at that.

"Okay," Red whispered. "So... how's she been doing?"

"Fair to middling," Blanche answered. At this point it would be embarrassing all around if I let them know I was listening in, so I kept trying to pretend to be asleep. "I don't hear what she thinks - I just feel what she feels. I'm pretty sure we got all of her memories intact, but... she's not thinking as well as she remembers thinking, and she knows it, and she's frustrated. The dogs scare her... and the bear scares her, but in a more complicated way - I think she may be interested in him."

"But is it her, deep down in her core?"

That was a question I had been worried about, off and on, for some months now, ever since arriving in Equestria; and with who-knows-what being done to my brain lately, it had gotten back near the top of my mental queue. Red asking Blanche something I was, for once, afraid of finding out the answer... was disturbing enough that I couldn't help but twitch. I tried covering it up by grunting and shifting position a bit; both Red and Blanche clammed up as I did. I took a deep breath, and went back to being limp again.

After a minute or so, Blanche said, "Whether or not she is - she's the closest we've got... and I think she's close enough."

The two of them fell silent again, and after a bit, I heard Red walk away.

Now I really had too much to think about to fall asleep.

First Impressions

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

I was glancing at a pony-themed page in the local cafe, when a mysterious stranger asked me if I wanted to go there. I described a few minimal conditions - to keep my mind and memories, have some way to move and communicate - and summed up that if reality was structured so that it was possible to go there, then that would be one of the most important things to learn about it. After all, I wanted to live forever or die trying, and if it was possible to travel to alternate universes like that, that increased the chances of both finding some method of life-extension and new dangers to face.

A very short time later, after going through a blackout, I was staring down my muzzle at my hooves... and then through them, at my underside, and a rather large, veined, pink bulge on my belly with several teats dangling from it.

When I looked up, a rather bovine face was looking at me from under a straw hat, with a concerned expression. "Mwhooo are myooo, dearie?"

A reasonably short time later, I said, "Let me see if I can put all this together.

"We live in a land of magical ponies. They own all the land. We need to graze. We don't have any magic, not even earth-pony magic. About the only thing we can do to pay for grazing rights is sell our milk. We can't even milk ourselves - and if we don't get milked daily, at least, our udders get very painfully full, and we could even get sick from infection, like black mastitis.

"Outside of the pony lands is dangerous. Any one of us would get eaten pretty quickly... and even if we don't, none of the cows out there are smart enough to be able to talk - so if any of us do go out there, there's a chance - fine, a significant chance that we'd turn into dumb animals. And we tend to stop thinking and go on instinct anyway if we're startled. And any of us that spends too much time alone tends to go insane - or maybe it's the insane ones who want to be alone.

"Even inside pony lands, there are still dangers, like dragons and hydras and diamond dogs - and the only way we can defend ourselves is as a herd. You don't even care much that I seem insane, as long as I'm part of some herd, and you'd be happy if I was part of yours.

"None of you has heard the terms 'existential risk' or 'cryonics' or 'humans' or 'alternate realities', or can tell me how far away the stars are, or what an atom is made of.

"Does all that sound about right?"

"Myeees, dearie," said the one who I'd woken up next to, who called herself Daisy Jo.

"Right," I wiggled my jaw back and forth, then stretched my neck, cracking some joints. "Well, at least I can look around - kind of, note to self, see if I've just got myopia that can be fixed with glasses - and I can think, and I can talk, and I can walk around some. As long as I don't get too far from a dairy. And I was beginning to worry that I was going to be stuck with a major handicap.

"No time like the present to get started. I suppose I should start talking to the Ponyvillians."

"Mwould you like some of us to come mwith you?"

"Er... I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I don't think I'm going to get any more insane by starting off on my own. If someone tells me that I'm acting even more loopy than I think I am now, I'll start coming right back, okay?"

"If myou're sure..."

"Pardon me, Miss Applejack?"

"That's just Applejack, Miss. Don't reckon that I've seen you around the herd before."

"It's a complicated story, and you're a busy mare."

"I try not to interfere with your folk's dealings with each other too much - you tend to your apples and I tend to mine. So what can I do for you?"

"Stripping things down to the essentials - I would like to travel to Canterlot, but I don't have two bits to my name. ... Come to think of it, I don't even have a name to my name."

"Come again?"

"Complicated. I'm not asking for a handout - I would like to earn enough money for a train ticket, or for enough supplies to walk there. Are there any tasks I might be able to assist with?"

"You mean, besides-"

"Yes, besides providing dairy products. I have promised my... output to help pay for the herd's expenses, like rent on the barn, while I am in Ponyville."

She scratched the back of her head with one hoof. "Now that's a plum pickle, now that I think of it. You kind of, well, jiggle too much to do much apple-bucking, and Big Mac takes care of the heavy lifting. And your hooves aren't really suited for any delicate work - no offense -"

"None taken."

"- and we've got more ponies than work for the rest of it. If you want to make some honest bits, I don't think I can rightly hire you. But maybe I know a pony or two who could use you..."

"Thank you again for the hat, Miss Rarity, but if there's nothing I can do for you, it wouldn't be right to accept cash."

"Are you sure, darling?"

"Well - if I really can't find any actual paying work in town, then I may accept a small loan - but I'd like to try things my way first."

"I've never seen you before!"

"Likewise, I'm sure."

"Thanks! I'm Pinkie Pie! What's your name?"

"I don't actually know. The name I think I remember having doesn't seem to match up with what I see, so it seems a bad idea to use it. If it helps, the name I remember translates as 'Judge Wicked', or something of the sort."

"Are you a judge? Ponyville already has a judge, I just passed by her and Mayor Mare and - say, should I call you 'Cow Cow'? Hm... Or how about 'Moo Moo'? Everypony should have a name, how else can you tell who's birthday is it? Is it your birthday? I could throw you a 'Welcome to Ponyville' party and a birthday party at the same time! How about-"

I stopped waiting for her to take a breath and just jumped on in. "You can call me anything you like as long as you let me know what it is, I don't have any job right now but wouldn't mind being a judge if there's an opening for one, my birthday's either a few weeks before Nightmare Night or this morning since everything I remember before today is completely different from what I've been living through-"

I had to pause to inhale, which gave her enough time to break into song.

"Happy first-memory day, to you!
Happy first-memory day, to you!
Happy first-memory day, dear what's-your-name,
Happy first-memory day, to you,
from your first best friend,
Pinkie Pie!"

Even having expected something of the sort, I nearly pulled something as I turned my head to follow her hopping around me. "Thank you, Pinkie. I don't suppose the Cakes are hiring anyb- anypony at Sugarcube Corner right now?"

"Wow, you already know about that?"

I blinked. "You mean, they do?"

"Of course not, silly! I do all the extra baking they need! And then some, 'cause I keep eating what I bake! But we just met and you already know I work there before I even told you! Are you a psychic cow? A psi-cow? Or-"

"Rarity said," I managed to interrupt before going down that tangent. "And that you know everypony in town, so if anypony could use my help, I should ask you."

"Well, we do use a lot of milk when we bake-"

"Sorry - milk's already spoken for." And I'd have to start heading back soon to get that taken care of - I was beginning to feel 'full', a disturbingly distracting sensation for someone who, just a day ago, had expected never to have any functioning mammary glands at all.

"In that case... HEY EVERYPONY! DOES ANYPONY HAVE A JOB FOR A COW?"

"Thank you for the tea, Miss Fluttershy."

"..."

"And sorry again about the carpet. If there's anything I can do-"

"..."

"I'll just... be on my way, then."

"..."

"Sorry, lady, if you can't fly, I can't hire you for the weather team."

I muttered something about greenhouse gases under my breath, and had to put off the rest of my search until I got my bodily needs taken care of.

And there was night, and there was day. And getting hooked up to the milking machine was a great relief, and even a physical pleasure, and that's all that I intend to say about that. Hay wasn't bad, but I was going to have to get used to chewing cud. I tried to pretend it was like bubble-gum, which was enough to keep me from throwing up, at least.

"By cow standards, I seem to be quite insane, Miss Sparkle. By pony standards... maybe not so much - but the memories I seem to have of anything more than a day ago are completely inconsistent with everything I remember experiencing since I met Daisy Jo. From what I do remember that seems to correspond with our presently-shared reality, I believe that if I can talk to one of the Princesses for approximately thirty seconds, I will be able to convince her to indulge me with sufficient royal patronage to explore certain ideas I have which could benefit all involved. And if I'm wrong, and I really am a crackpot - then thirty seconds of royal attention should be sufficient to determine that, and to direct me to any appropriate medical care. Unfortunately, the only economic output I am currently capable of is tied closely to my biological necessities, with no surplus to spare for train tickets, or some bags and food for the walk, and the latter option is complicated by needing to be within suitable walking distance of a dairy facility every day.

"Since it turns out I cannot read Equestrian, even if you were hiring, I would be ill-suited for library work... so what I am hoping you can help me with is a letter of introduction or recommendation, so that when I do make it to Canterlot, I can talk to one of the Princesses."

"That seems simple enough, but - well, you do keep mentioning how you're probably insane, and don't even know your name, so, er..."

"...so you don't want to help a mad-cow get too close to a Princess. I expected that. Would a brief demonstration that at least some of what's inside my head is useful suffice?"

"It wouldn't hurt."

"Fair enough. Let's see." I looked up and down at the implausibly-hued unicorn, who I remembered having seen a dozen or so hours of her life of, in a way that was completely implausible if she actually existed and was actually standing right in front of her; and made my final selection of the useful advice I kept cached away. "If you're interested in being on the right side of disputes, you will refute your opponents' arguments. But if you're interested in producing truth, you will fix your opponents' arguments for them. To win, you must fight not only the creature you encounter; you must fight the most horrible thing that can be constructed from its corpse."

"That's... a rather horrible way of putting something."

"It is. But that's what makes it memorable - so that, when you're dealing with arguments, you're more likely to think about whether you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, or if you're arguing to help try to find out how reality actually works. Even if I am insane - is the idea I just gave to you useful?"

She looked away at the walls, and then slowly, maybe grudgingly, gave me a nod. I raised my eyebrows and looked at her expectantly. She sighed, and nodded again. "Fine. I should be able to get you an audience. A brief audience. With lots of guards present."

"I wouldn't have expected it any other way."

"Hello, everypony. Miss Cheerilee has agreed to let me talk to you all today - but actually, I hope you'll do most of the talking. And I hope that by the time we're done, everypony here will be at least a little better at figuring out how to get important things done - even if you don't think you know how."

"Ooh! Ooh! You mean, like getting our Cutie Marks?"

"Certainly. I'd like to tell you a few things I've learned - like, before you even start thinking there's no solution to a problem, you should spend five minutes, by the clock, thinking about it, instead of just saying right out that it's impossible - and then I'd like us all to try a few games together."

I was walking through Ponyville, feeling rather proud of myself. I had a small bag of bits - not very many, but more than one - tucked away inside my hat. They were from Cheerilee, for letting her get caught up on some of her paperwork by keeping the fillies and colts entertained with stuff that was plausibly education-related. It wasn't much, not even enough for that train ticket - but I'd earned them entirely on my own, by doing something somebody else felt valuable... despite having no hands, no magic, no literacy, not even decent eyesight. Now that I had an 'in' as at least a sort of educator, I might be able to get some babysitting-level jobs as a tutor, and even if I did have to tailor my pitch to those most able to pay, such as Diamond Tiara's and Silver Spoon's parents, it would be worth-

My entrepreneurial musings were interrupted by a small purple reptile waving for my attention.

"Miss, uh, Cow?" Spike looked up at me.

"Can I help you?" I realized that Spike hadn't been at the school - and wondered what sort of tutoring he might find beneficial...

He held up a small scroll and some miscellaneous bits of paper. "Twilight wrote to the Princesses and they wrote back and want to see you and they even sent you some train tickets and said that the royal kitchens can keep you comfortable as long as you stay there. And she asked me to find you and give these to you while she finished talking with Cheerilee and the others."

"Thank you, Spike. Would you mind tucking those into my hat for me?" I lowered my head down to his level. "I don't seem to have any bags to carry anything in."

"Sure. Here you go." He did so, and then we kind of stood there, looking at each other, until I found myself chuckling.

"I guess neither of us has much to do - and since I don't need to save for the trip anymore, how would you like to show me where I can buy some snacks for both of us?"

He immediately brightened, and started leading the way to the market.

And as we went, I thought to myself that while I might not have a clue how I could be living on Earth for a bunch of years and then suddenly find myself here (or, depending on how you looked at it, how I could suddenly lose all my memories of Equestria and have them replaced by those of a fictional Earth - not that I'd mentioned Earth to anypony at all, yet), or how the physics of unicorn magic and pegasus weather manipulation actually worked, and while I might be stuck in one of the most useless bodies imaginable... I was back on track, on the path of figuring out answers to all those problems - and to the bigger ones that came afterwards. I might even figure out how to live forever - and if not, then while I was trying, I'd still be finding ways to improve the lives of everypony around me, so that somebody who came after me would have a better chance of figuring that out.

It was a challenge worth spending a lifetime figuring out.

I just hoped I could figure out how to get used to chewing cud sooner rather than later.

The Obligatory Courtroom Drama Scene

"May I approach the bench?" said my lawyer.

I'd made arrangements with Just Cause several days ago for just such an occasion. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that Equestria's nobility retained certain legal privileges to go with their titles - and the parents of the stallions who'd come after me were now coming after me with everything they had, for having dared to defend myself. It was still just a couple of hours since everything had happened - those 'nobles' in name only had pushed to try to get me snowballed in a kangaroo court. This was the first time I'd met Just in person, and I didn't actually know much about her, other than that she'd been recommended by Page Turner, and had managed to show up in time for this hearing. I'd told her what my priorities were, and was mostly trying to stay out of her way.

She and the judge - or was it a magistrate? I'd never even figured out British law, and that was a lot closer to what I was used to than Equestrian - confabbed a bit, before she came back to join me, and she nodded. I cleared my throat, and said what she had told me to say. "I plead guilty to the charge of littering," the one item which didn't actually involve my would-be rapists - well, only a few small pieces of them, anyway - and continued, "and for the other charges, as the plaintiffs are of the nobility, I request that these proceedings be moved to a higher court, more in line with their standing."

The judge banged her gavel. "For the crime of littering, I sentence you to one week imprisonment, fifty hours of community service, a fine of five hundred bits, and six months of probation. For the other charges, I am passing the buck to Night Court."

The parents burst into outraged exclamations, and the judge had to threaten to sic the bailiffs on them.

Night Court turned out to be the actual royal court run by Princess Luna - whatever she decided, there wasn't going to be any further appeal from. The staff had some rather suspicious similarities with a certain '80's sitcom, but I was rather more focused on dealing with Royal Justice than metafictional philosophizing. After a couple of other late-night miscreants were given their fates, my case was called, the prosecutor read the charges, and the public defender immediately started objecting. I tapped her on the shoulder. "Excuse me? Before you go any further - could you request a brief recess so we can talk with the Princess in her chambers?"

Before that could even be officially asked, Luna telekinetically banged her gavel, saying, "Court is in recess. Councillors, Defendant, please see me in the Royal Chambers."

Shortly thereafter, we were in a reasonably cozy room lined with thick law tomes. Seeing the moon through a window, I made sure to position myself square in the middle of the moonbeam shining through - I wanted the Princess to know I had no intention of lying to her.

"Your Majesty. You know that the work I am doing is important, for Equestria. What I want most is to get back to doing it. I'm willing to work out whatever legal compromise lets me do that, within certain limits - in particular, that those rapists-"

The prosecutor banged a hoof. "Objection! The plaintiffs haven't been charged with any crime, let alone convicted, let alone-"

"Mister Pasture," Luna said calmly, "We are not in court. Kindly allow Miss Missy to speak her piece."

He grumbled, but Luna waved a hoof at me, and I tried to pick up where I left off. "Your Majesty - the only reason I'm not getting tested for sexually-transmitted diseases right now is because, due to my job, I had access to certain resources not available to the average Equestrian. Given their behavior, I am virtually certain that this was not their first attempt - and if something isn't done to stop them, it's not going to be their last."

Luna said, "If all this is true - then why have they not been charged?"

I ground my teeth - I wasn't sure if that was a bad habit for my species or not. "Because, apparently, due to some legal technicality involving the privileges of nobility, because they are nobility and I am not - because they are ponies and I am not - it is infeasible for me to make any charges against them without going in front of the Barn of Lords, which not only do I lack standing to do, but isn't even in session until some unspecified future date."

Luna nodded in understanding. "And so - you seek Royal Justice."

I grimaced. "What I seek... is to find out whether Equestria has the rule of law in effect for all who live within it, regardless of whether anypony involved is of high station or low, rich or poor, pony or cow, lawmaker or citizen - or even if they happen to have talked with royalty previously or not."

Luna's forehead wrinkled. "I do not quite understand that last portion - I do not believe I have ever talked to the stallions in question."

"I was referring to myself. I have recently been convicted of a crime. It was part and parcel of all this other stuff, and would not have happened if I hadn't been attacked - but it's the only charge that I don't actually have a defense for. I am entirely willing to accept that conviction and the consequences thereof - if the legal system which imposed it is a fair and equitable one. If it is not - then perhaps I am working for the wrong government."

Luna raised an eyebrow. "So you are placing all of Equestria on trial?"

"Your Majesty - just a few hours ago, I escaped getting raped by the skin of my teeth. And the animals in the shape of ponies who did it assumed that they would face no consequences for their actions if they'd succeeded, because of their place in society. If your government isn't actually capable of protecting its weakest citizens from the ponies who are supposed to uphold its highest ideals, nevermind from any actual external threats... then, frankly, what good is it?"

Luna stared at me for a long moment, then said, "I see. Please return to your seat while I consider this matter."

I tried getting my emotions under control while the four stallions' wheelchairs were rolled, one by one, into Luna's chambers. I didn't come close to succeeding. Whatever happened in this court, I was probably going to have to find out if there were any real psychologists or trauma counselors in Canterlot - or, at least, any witch-doctors whose mumbo-jumbo worked better than a placebo.

Finally Luna re-entered, there was a shout of "Oyez, oyez!", and it looked like things were getting back into gear.

"I have examined the statements of all the parties involved, and am ready to render my decision.

"On the charges which Missy for Royal Justice for: I find her innocent on all counts."

"What?!" One of the fathers jumped to his hooves. Before he could dig himself any deeper, one of the bailiffs, a massive blue earth pony with a close-cropped mane leaned over him.

"Shhhhhhh," he said, his muscles rippling as he put one hoof to his lips. The interrupter, perhaps making the only wise decision in his life, fell silent.

Luna spoke up, "Continuing - I have determined that further action is required in this case. Will the plaintiffs please ri - er, be rolled forward?" The creatures who happened to be able to talk were pushed in front of Luna, in all their multiple-cast-wearing glory. "I have determined that each and every one of you is unfit to inherit your parents' titles - and so you are barred from receiving any such honor, and any special legal privileges you possess are hereby stripped." The heckler made a squeaking noise, and there was a disturbed shuffling among the other parents, but Luna's voice rolled on without pause, "In addition - I find your behavior so shocking and disgusting that I am going to intervene directly to prevent a recurrence before handing you over for charges. Each of you has exactly one choice to make: Either I finish the job of turning you into a gelding, or I cast a spell to turn you into a mare." There was an outburst from the parents' group, immediately and efficiently choked off by that bailiff.

Each one of the four ponies in front of her stumbled and stuttered, but Luna brooked no hesitation, and each made their choice; and her horn glowed four times, giving each of them their chosen fate.

As the fourth de-stallioned pony was rolled back from Luna, the interrupting parent broke free, and galloped in front of Luna, staring at her wild-eyed and with heaving flanks. "This is an outrage! That was my only son and heir, and, and... and you're going to do that to him and just pardon this cow?" He turned to glare at me, and the fury he directed at me... might have been even stronger than what I was feeling for his ex-son.

Luna stared down at him from her bench calmly - and, if I could read her expression, sadly. "We made no mention of a royal pardon. She has been convicted of another crime, but has not seen fit to appeal it to this Court." She turned to me. "Do you wish Us to re-consider that verdict?"

I probably could get it overturned, if I tried - after all, if self-defense was a reason to be found innocent of kicking someone, then it was at least a little absurd to be found guilty of littering the street with a few small body-parts knocked loose during such a kick. But looking at that stallion, who'd been stripped of something so important to him - if I got off completely scott-free, legally, then he looked to be the sort who might try to murder me in my sleep to avenge what he perceived to be a slight to his honor. And then there was what I had said to Luna in her chambers about fairness and the rule of law. "No, Your Highness."

Luna nodded. "Then, as it was settled by the civil courts, I have no cause to interfere with that judgement." She leaned in towards him, and said, "Baron, you have lost - please accept this gracefully, as I will be taking your reaction here into account as I begin an investigation into certain abuses of noble privilege that have been brought to my attention..." She spent several minutes talking him down before rapping her gavel, closing the case.

Turned out Equestrian prisons really did make you wear those silly striped uniforms.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank

The rest of that day, Cheerilee and I spent mostly talking... and occasionally holding hooves. I explained that my job required me to keep certain things confidential; and also that I was well aware that some of my memories were simply impossible to believe - but those were still the memories I had. But other than not being able to talk about some things, and some of the things I said making no sense to her... I talked, and she talked, and more importantly, we both tried to listen as best we could. And we found we had at least some important things in common - she wanted to help ponies grow to be the best they could be, while I wanted to help make sure they had a chance to grow up at all.

I said, "Ponyville itself has had the Ursa Minor, a sleeping dragon's smoke, parasprites, diamond dogs, Discord, and various close calls from the Everfree Forest, and more, just over the past year or so. And the Bearers of the Elements aren't anywhere nearby at the moment. And - while I'd rather you didn't spread this around, but strictly speaking it's not confidential - there are indications that there is worse to come. I want... well, to put into place as many backup plans as are physically possible, so that whatever emergency arises, every pony in Ponyville will have the best possible chance of coming through it in the best shape possible. I want the basement under the school to be not just the printing press, but a place where all your foals can hide, safely, if something happens in the middle of the schoolday, so they don't have to try to make it home, and so their parents know they're as safe as possible. I want them to know how to help each other if they're hurt, in case you're not there to help them. I want to have a second shelter somewhere nearby, in case the whole schoolhouse is in danger. I want a plan to evacuate the whole town, if need be. I want ponies who have learned how to keep from just running around and screaming and getting in the way. I want news of any emergency here to be sent as fast as possible to Ponyville's neighbours - and if anything happens in those places, for Ponyville to hear about it as soon as possible. I want to plan for so many worst-case scenarios, that I've actually over-planned, and whatever actually happens, there's a plan in place to handle it."

And I talked about how I wanted to understand how the universe really worked, and wanted researchers to find ways to cure everything possible so that nopony died who didn't want to, and for sapient beings to spread out to fill the vast expanses with life and complexity and interestingness, and Bayesian reasoning and Solomonoff induction and maximizing ponies' well-being, and how even without the magic of friendship that truly rational long-term self-interested behavior was nearly indistinguishable from simple 'good' actions, and more...

... and she, in turn, described her hopes and dreams and aspirations, which I tried to file away and remember as best I could in case I ever got a chance to fulfill them.

We talked about foods we liked, and music we appreciated - though I was hampered somewhat by not having had much time to test out my bovine body's taste buds - our opinions on smoking, drinking, profanity, tattoos, and the like; where we each grew up (I shrugged and described my actual hometown, leaving out as much human-specific bits as possible; when I said it was around a dozen miles from Niagara Falls, she gently corrected my pronunciation to 'Neighagra', and I went along with it); the fact that I was absolutely terrified at the idea of ever becoming a mother; personalities, politics, and preferred pets; and all that sort of stuff, each of us looking for any conflict which would definitively prove that an actual relationship between us would be doomed to failure.

Oddly enough, neither of us found one.

That night, we slept in the same bed again - and despite what you may be thinking, all we did was cuddle together some. I was a bit hesitant at first, but after having a chance to get used to the idea and settle in, it was... nice.

The next day, Cheerilee had to mostly spend getting ready to get back to teaching, leaving me to my own devices. When she trotted off, I looked off in the distance at Canterlot, perched on the mountainside. It occurred to me that a single MOAB, or magical or monstrous equivalent, could not only destroy the place, but would also turn the Dairy network I was forming into shreds. If I wanted to put together an organization that could truly deal with disasters, that would have to include disasters for any nexus points - so I'd have to draw some inspiration from the internet, and arrange matters so that no single location was indispensable to the whole. A good place to start might be to start arranging a simple backup site for the current main Dairy right here in Ponyville - and after that, see about setting up alternate Dairy sites, each of which could carry on the whole thing if they had to, in as many other places as possible.

I spent the morning walking around town, keeping an eye out for a place where the Canterlot operations could be transferred to, without interfering with Ponyville's own functioning. That latter requirement left Town Hall out, which would otherwise have been ideal. Twilight's library was rather cramped, using the hospital would put patients in danger, and everywhere else I looked had some reason or other why it shouldn't be used.

I took lunch at a cafe Cheerilee recommended, by a windmill on the south of town. The sandwiches were decent enough; they used a sort of salted cooked mushroom which made a decent bacon substitute. As I finished it off, I looked at the view, including the places I couldn't see directly but knew were there - the cow barn, Fluttershy's cottage, Rainbow Dash's floating house, Sweet Apple Acres...

... hm.

"Hello, Big Mac."

He shifted his ever-present straw to the other side of his mouth, then said, "Hello, Missy."

I watched him doing something I couldn't quite make out with the ironwork of a water pump - he seemed to be in no hurry to advance the conversation, and I tried to adapt myself to his preferred mode of communication.

One he pulled his hooves out of the works, he finally said, "Something I can help you with, Missy?"

"Might be at that, Big Mac. Might be at that." He started wiping grease from his hooves with a rag, so I continued, "I've been thinking some, on getting ready for disasters - so that if the worst ever happens, it won't be as bad as it could be." Okay, so even when I tried to be laconic, I still sounded like a dictionary on hooves. "There's a new government program in the works - subsidies for building and maintaining emergency shelters."

"Mm-yep," he commented.

"But I'm making some plans of my own, too. I'm thinking that if a disaster ever hit Canterlot - a lot of the good work I'm doing will be un-done. So I've started looking for a place where that work could keep getting done... and I thought of Sweet Apple Acres."

He switched his straw back to the first side of his mouth again.

"So until Applejack got back - I thought I'd see if you had any opinion. Whether you think it's possible to come to some arrangement, to find some spot in your land, to set things up to get ready to go quickly in case of emergency."

"Mm...maybe."

Well, it was a start.

The next few days were a blur of negotiating with Big Mac; running the Dairy at one-hand-removed by sending messages to Canterlot and getting news in return; and getting to know Cheerilee better. I pretty much let her take the lead in the whole possible-relationship-thing, and she quickly got a feel for what I was comfortable with: I was always a bit slow and hesitant with anything new, and liked to take a bit of time to get used to one thing before we tried the next thing. It was slow, but pleasant - we'd gotten to the point where we could cuddle up with each other in a public park, looking at our own paperwork or each others', and not think twice about it.

After one such session, where I'd been stretched out under a tree on my side and Cheerilee had been using my ample gut for a pillow, she had to go hit Quills & Sofas for some actual quills, and some nearby stores for some stationary; but I was content to stay in place for a bit, to finish going over the latest report, a possible final contender for the encoding system for the optical telegraphs.

And then the tree above me started rustling, and I heard some whispering - in a rather ominous trio of voices."

"... lots of time together..."

"... room-mates..."

"... Very Special ..."

"... impossible, she's a she, and not even a pony..."

"... but just look..."

I sighed, and called up, "You can come down now, girls."

There was a silence, and then the Crusaders made their way back down to the ground, and sat in front of me, looking at me - Sweetie Belle looked excited, Scootaloo looked grumpy, and Apple Bloom looked confused.

I folded away my papers to look at later, and said to them, "Is there anything you'd like to ask?"

Sweetie Belle burst out, "Are you and Miss Cheerilee together?"

I tapped my chin with a hoof. "That's an interesting question. Do you mind if I ask you three some questions before I answer?"

"Uh, I guess?"

"Did you know that it's possible for Cheerilee to get fired, if the school board doesn't like her?"

They looked at each other, and shrugged. "She does a great job teaching," said Scootaloo, "So that'll never happen."

"I see. Did you know that Silver Spoon's and Diamond Tiara's parents are on the school board?"

"Uh... no?"

"Do those two fillies ever tease you because you're different?"

"Of course!" "Yep!" "Uh-huh."

"Did they ever go so far that Miss Cheerilee had to stop them?"

"Uh... yeah." "I guess." "Sometimes."

"Second-last question. Do you think Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara might be a lot like their parents?"

"Maybe?"

"Alright. Imagine that Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara found out you started hanging out with some calves... and there was no Miss Cheerilee around to stop them. I'm pretty sure that none of you three would be very happy. Now imagine that Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara's parents found out that Miss Cheerilee was doing something they didn't like, and they had the power to fire her, and there was nobody to stop her... so my last question: do you think Miss Cheerilee might end up unhappy?"

"Um... maybe..." "They wouldn't, would they?" "I wouldn't want to be Miss Cheerilee if that happened..."

"Okay. Now I'll answer your question. Miss Cheerilee and I work together on some government teacher stuff, and have gotten to be friends. Since, if we were ever to become more than just friends, and certain ponies on the school board found out, she would become unhappy, and since I don't want her to be unhappy, then I can neither confirm nor deny any specially-close friendship that might be occurring, have occurred, or will occur, between the two of us. Do you understand?"

They gave me looks as blank as their flanks - until Sweetie Belle's eyes widened. "Oh, it's a secret relationship! Like Lady Austin and the stableboy in that novel we found under Twilight's pill- oh." She blushed at the inadvertent confession.

With a smile, I said, "And that's precisely the reason I'm not going to confirm anything of the sort. And since it would be awkward if I suddenly started denying such a relationship, that's why I'm starting my policy of deliberate ambiguity now."

The three of them put their heads together and started whispering amongst themselves again. Finally they broke, slapped their hooves together, and announced, "Cutie Mark Crusader Secret Matchmakers!"

I facehoofed.

Cheerilee suggested we try styling each other's manes - well, her mane and my tuft of human-hair-like stuff - and I told her about the CMC while trying to give her some pigtails. She laughed, and said, "I think they learned their lesson when they gave Big Mac and me love poison."

I winced a little. "I don't remember a thing I did when somepony slipped me that stuff."

She squeezed my hoof in hers. (How did that work, anyway?) "Both of us were lucky, we were surrounded by good friends who kept us out of trouble, and told us about what happened after."

"Speaking of which - I have to go back to see my people in Canterlot, soon. Maybe tomorrow. I can't run the whole Dairy from Ponyville through the mail - at least, not yet."

"When do you think you'll be back?"

"I think I can make it back in just a few days... but if something comes up, I may need to take an airship to somewhere else in Equestria. And then I don't know how long I'll be. But I can at least write letters if that happens... the one thing I've been working very hard at is making sure I can exchange messages with Canterlot as fast as possible, no matter where I am - and the Pegasus Express can carry 'em the rest of the way."

"They say it's hard to keep a long-distance relationship going, even with the best letters."

"I suppose this is where we find out if... whatever we have... really can keep us together, with our jobs pulling us apart."

That evening, we had our first actual kiss. And then went to sleep. And we had our second kiss in the morning, as we made our goodbyes.

Back in Canterlot, knowing that there was somepony in Ponyville waiting for me to come back gave me even more impetus to get everything done quickly than having advance warning that Equestria was in danger of being destroyed. I'd read about near/far distinctions, and the different ways human (or pony, or cow) minds operated when dealing with immediate things right in front of them as opposed to abstract, theoretical ideas. I wasn't used to having my cognitive biases being thrust to my attention so blatantly, at least not without knowing some way to compensate for them... but since this particular bias seemed to be helping me more than harming me, I was willing to let it slide. Which, of course, could easily be the bias thinking rather than an actual rational analysis, but it was still the best idea I had.

And then, on the day I was planning on going back to Ponyville - the informational spider-web I'd woven through Equestria twanged. I got a message from Hoofington, that there had been an attack by diamond dogs attempting to enslave ponies - an attack that had been foiled by a very un-pony-like creature. I was going to have to investigate it personally, if I wanted to find out if another game-piece was making themself known. It looked like I'd be limited to exchanging letters with Cheerilee for a while longer yet...

Doctor Missy and the World's Heart

The reason humans wore so little clothes in the hot jungle, as opposed to the all-covering robes of the desert, was supposedly so their sweat could evaporate better. As a cow, I didn't really sweat, so I had no such reason not to wear whatever clothing I chose. Which was why I had no objection to wearing my Rarity-designed walking outfit, if for no other reason than to help keep the bugs off.

I had no good excuse for why I chose to accessorize it with a fedora and leather jacket. Though for practicality I'd gone for a coil of rope instead of a bullwhip.

"What's that you're humming?", Red asked.

"Oh, nothing."

I mean, come on - I was following a map on an ancient legendary artifact to a mysterious location in an unknown jungle, in a universe where music had measurable physical effects. How could I not dress the part?

"So what do you think we're going to find here? Pirates? Treasure? Pirate treasure?"

"To be honest, before the Alicorn hit that wall, or whatever it is - I was pretty much expecting not to find anything at all. Maybe the place where there used to be a ley-line nexus, a thousand years ago."

"Well, that doesn't sound like fun. Why'd you bother coming at all, then?"

"In case I was wrong. Which it seems I was."

The tops of the trees formed a fairly thick canopy, and there was a second such canopy further down, which meant that not much sunlight trickled down to ground-level (just rain), which meant that there wasn't all that much brush blocking our path. It was still a lush, green paradise, but it was fairly easy to pick a direction and find a way to go there. We picked inward.

A flock of parrots flew overhead, chattering amongst themselves, being chased by a mini drake looking for an easy meal. I hopped over a trickle of a stream, causing a white, sharp-horned, deer-like creature downstream of me to lift its head and stare at us. A manticore cub was using a tree as a scratching post.

"Alpha One!" I whisper-shouted to Red behind me. We both froze in our hooves.

Outside of my recent bout of monomania, I'd been picking up every lesson I could from Safe Guard, which was more than just the physical exercises. One of his pieces of advice was to have a set of tactical plans that everypony in your group knew about, and a set of easily-remembered, easily-distinguished code words to implement them - and if too many people ever heard those code-words and saw what actions they described, to change the whole system every so often. For this expedition, I'd chosen the phonetic alphabet, and a reasonably simple set of plans. "Alpha" meant to hold still. Plan "Bravo" was to talk, "Charlie" to run, "Delta" to hide, and it wasn't until we got to "Echo" that we even got to using force, in the form of the hopefully non-lethal deterrent of our pepper spray. The next few letters were the scant few martial maneuvers that I'd learned from Safe Guard that I thought we actually had a chance of pulling off in the heat of a moment - mainly horns, hooves, and bullets. Most of the alphabet was unused - right up to "Zulu", which meant that I was going to try my mysterious (and costly) ability to occasionally accomplish six impossible things before breakfast. The numbers were for direction, using a modified version of the clock system - three, six, nine, and twelve were the standard right, behind, left, and forward; the numbers before were 'high' and the numbers after 'low'. So 'Alpha One' meant 'hold still, something's ahead of us down low'.

In this case, that 'something' was a predator quite capable of poisoning and eating both Red and myself, and to whom we had no real difference from that white deer-thing which was now bounding away further downstream. While Red could simply fly up and out of reach, I had to haul my side-of-beef carcass on the ground, and I was pretty sure that the feline-based manticores could run faster than I could.

I hissed to Red, "That's just a cub - the mother may be near. I'd like you to head up and look around - and stay out of reach. I'll Alpha here unless something moves."

The pegasus nodded, spread her wings, and fluttered up and around the trees, looking not too different from any other jungle bird. I watched the cub start playing with a loose piece of bark, tossing it into the air. Finally, Red came back - she didn't land or hover, quite, but a bit of both, pushing all four hooves against the side of a tree and keeping herself aloft by continuing to flap. "Momma-core's on your Three," she said."

"Then I'll circle around the other way. No reason to get involved with either."

I turned to my left, to leave the predator to its life. Unfortunately, it saw me moving, and let its inanimate prey fall to the ground, bounding in my direction instead.

From what I'd read, even in an immature specimen, that scorpion's tail was something to fear and respect. Not to mention the claws and teeth, of course. I could have simply unfolded Chekov and put a bullet in its skull - but I had no particular enmity for the thing. So, instead, I unfolded the pepper-spray, and squeezed off a stream a bit to the side rather than straight at the manticore.

The rain dripping from the treetops washed it out of the air almost as soon as I eased up on the squeeze-pump.

I sighed, and with a murmur of "Sorry, kiddo," aimed a stream right at the cub.

It came to a four-point halt - and sneezed. And sneezed again. It gave me what I could have sworn was a dirty look; and then, as if it were a housecat, turned away from me to start sharpening its claws on a nearby tree, as if that was what it had been planning on doing all along.

As Red and I cleared the area, I said to her, "I'd like you to keep doing top-cover for a while - there may be more. Lemme know if you see anything, or need a break, or anything, okay?"

"Roger-doger, watcher!"

We managed to remain blissfully predator-free after that. Red called out a few questionable shadows, which we avoided, and I decided to avoid some rather awful-smelling rodent-like creatures of my own accord.

Unfortunately, our system fell completely flat when a half dozen or so shrubberies in front of me stood up, revealing long muzzles, four legs, and bodies of wood: a pack of timber wolves. I was pretty sure that pepper spray wouldn't have any effect on them - I didn't even know if they had a sense of smell. And while I practiced with Chekov regularly, I had no illusions that my marksmanship skills would be good enough to stop all of them before the survivors turned me into mulch. I didn't even know whether they had any vital areas to target, let alone what they'd be.

I turned my head to see behind me, so I could start backing away from the group - when another half-dozen of the plants behind me also stood up. So much for plan Charlie.

In most situations, the most rational thing you can do is be as pessimistic as possible, to try to arrange your expectations so that the actual events that come to pass are better than you expect half the time, and worse half the time. This is really hard to do, for a number of psychological reasons.

At the moment, however, it was extraordinarily easy to predict several worst-case scenarios, which could be sorted between 'steak dinner' and 'ground beef'. So, for this one particular instance, I had to make the effort to try to come up with a set of predictions that were better than I was currently expecting.

I called out, "We come in peace!", just in case these timber wolves happened to be somebody's pets - or, like me, were a talking version of a sometimes non-talking species. Possibly not the best choice, as my mind immediately followed it up with the thought, 'It's life, Jim, but not as we know it / It's worse than that, he's dead, Jim / We come in peace, shoot to kill, Scotty beam me up!." Still, it took less than a half-second to say, and I was still looking for other options. I lifted my head to make sure Red was still well out of range of a good leap... and, that confirmed, when I lowered my head, all the timber wolves I could see were staring right at me. No, wait; I grabbed my glasses to clean them on my shirt, and when I put them back on - they were staring right at the same spot on me, my vulnerable throat.

... or, perhaps, at the necklace I was wearing there.

Hm.

"Take me to your leader?", I essayed.

The wolves actually looked at each other. And, wonder of wonders - all but the one directly in front of me turned away and wandered off. The last one bowed its head slightly, so I bowed mine in return. It stood, turned away from me - and looked back over its shoulder, then gave a jerk of its head. If these things weren't people, they were doing a good imitation, whether or not they could talk.

I looked behind me - it would be quite easy to head back to the Alicorn, and leave all this behind. But then - I'd never know.

I started following the timber wolf. I called up to Red, "Pulse the ship - let 'em know what's happened so far." She got busy with the radio-box hanging around her neck, almost flying into trees a few times as she did.

In short order, the canine-shaped plant brought us to a near-solid wall of vines and thorns, the top taller than I could reach even on my hindlegs. Then, in what would be called a cheesy special effect if it were filmed, those vines shifted, opening a nice, cow-sized tunnel. The timber wolf sat down just to the side of the entrance, looking back at me.

I heard a voice, though my ears didn't register any sounds.

Only the worthy may enter.

I stuck a hoof in my ear and scratched - if this was telepathy, it was an itchy sensation.

Give a wrong answer to my riddle and you will be proven unworthy. A charging boar is about to attack your loved one, or an infant. Which would you save?

I looked up at Red. "Did you hear any of that?"

"Any of what?" Naturally.

I turned my attention back to the waiting timber wolf, and took a step toward it. I thought about what I'd just been told and asked... and had a minor epiphany.

I kept walking to the timber wolf - and walked right past it, into the tunnel.

What? Hey, wait, get back here!

Without turning or stopping, I called back, "I can't have given a wrong answer, since I didn't give any answer at all!"

The rather unique sensation of someone else's mental sputtering led me to chuckle a bit.

In a few moments, I passed through the tunnel, and was able to see what was on the other side: a tree the size of a skyscraper. The roots alone stretched for a few miles. I allowed myself a few moments of wondering why I hadn't been able to see it until now, before reluctantly filing the unknown answer under the otherwise-useless label of 'magic'.

Red's voice came through the tunnel, "You okay in there?"

"So far so good!"

A somewhat different mental voice said, You may have... uh, solved the first test, but she has not, and must not enter.

"They're saying don't come after me."

"They who?"

"The wolves, I think." For a second timber wolf - or maybe it was one of the ones from the first group, I couldn't tell - was coming around a curve of one of the roots.

It dropped something onto in front of me - before I could squint to try to figure out what it was, I was told, This is a seed. Take it. Plant it in a pot. Tend it. In a year, come back and show the fruit, so that we know your true character.

I tilted my head a bit, before saying, "Maybe I can save a bit of time... if that's a dud seed that's not going to grow, I'd still bring back the pot without anything growing in it."

I got a disgusted look from the plant. Well, so much for that test. I got a mental sigh, and it waved a paw in the direction of the tree.

In short order, I was at a fork in the path, with a smug wolf sitting at the crossroads. One of these paths leads to the center - while the other leads to certain doom. You may ask-

"Really? Right in the middle of this spot, where there's so many of you wandering around, you have a path that leads to 'certain doom'?"

Well-

"Don't you lose a lot of timber wolves who make a wrong turn?"

That is-

"What is the point? What does all that achieve?"

I-

"Wouldn't it be simpler if I just gave you a mule-kick to send you down one path, and listen to see if you end up suffering some sort of doom?"

A new voice came from one side, "Please do not abuse my Forest Guardians too harshly, Bearer." I took note of that last word. The voice was female, the tone of gentle, amused laughter. In a few moments, coming from down one of the paths appeared an alicorn - or something like one. Her coat was the brown of bark, blending smoothly into armor made of actual wood, decorated with spheres of amber. Her mane flowed like Celestia's, but was the green of the canopy, with flashing specks of light as if the sun was being seen through breeze-blown leaves. She continued, "It has been some time since they have been able to play their traditional games with a mortal visitor." Her eyes were cat-slitted - I wasn't sure whether I was facing a being equivalent to Celestia or Luna, or to Nightmare Moon, or of some other order entirely.

"Perhaps," I said, cautiously, "I get a bit tetchy when threatened with certain doom."

"'Certain doom'? Hardy Laurel, is that really what you said?"

The timber wolf in question lowered its head all the way to the ground, and covered its muzzle with its paws. Yes, Goddess.

She sighed. "I apologize, Bearer - there was no doom, only a return to outside. I merely asked them to delay you a bit while I finished what I was doing."

"So if I had answered the first riddle incorrectly...?"

"Then Sheltering Rosebush would have tried to keep you out - but if your business were important, you would have found your way in, regardless."

My forehead wrinkled, and I frowned. "I can't say that I approve. There's a lot of opportunity for people to get hurt."

"I do not seek your approval, Bearer."

I reluctantly nodded. "I suppose you don't. I've gotten used to dealing with people who cause harm out of sheer lack of understanding, rather than knowing that it's a cost of whatever else they're trying to accomplish."

There was a short silence, as we looked at each other, and as at least I tried to figure out what to say next.

She spoke first. "Why have you come?"

"Curiosity, mainly - to learn whatever I can."

"You could have saved yourself much time and effort by inquiring of Celestia, rather than journeying to here."

"I didn't know that Celestia knew of this place?"

An arched brow. "She did not tell you where the World Tree grows?" At my shaken head, she asked, "Then how did you know to come here?"

I touched the globe-like gem on the front of my necklace with my hoof. "This," I said, and fumbled for a good explanation, "showed me that something was here - and hints I gathered elsewhere suggested that the something here might be... interesting."

She lowered her head to take a closer look at the necklace, and I lifted my chin to let her see it with the best light possible - and I tried to ignore how close her horn was to my throat. Softly, she said, "I have not seen any of the Elements of Harmony in a very long time... so long, that my memories of them are not as clear as they once were."

I tried to keep my voice calm as I tried to draw her forth, "Do you remember what the Elements were?"

"Of course - Truth and Love and Courage... and Hope and Laughter and Innocence... or was that Kindness?" She paused. "I suppose I do not remember them all, then. A pity."

"If it helps," I said, "The others are currently called Honesty and Laughter, Loyalty and Kindness, Generosity and Magic."

"And what is the modern term for your Element?"

"Er... I don't actually... know."

"Celestia did not tell you?"

"... It's complicated."

"I see. ... Walk with me, Bearer of the Unnamed Element of Harmony, and we shall talk."

Burden of Proof

The attack, when it came, was from an unexpected direction.

When I woke up, in the royal dairy along with the other cows currently stabled there, I found a scroll on the ground in front of me. Unrolling it, I discovered it to be a subpoena, which, translated from the legalese, demanded that I produce my birth certificate. This was rather absurd on the face of it, since the pony bureaucracy was not yet sufficiently entrenched to require them from ponies, let alone other sentient species. But, when I went to Page to look it over with her, it actually seemed to be in proper order, signed by one Judge Wicked. I gave a double-take at that, since those particular two words were what I had told Pinkie Pie my name translated as, before I adopted the nom-de-bovine of 'Missy'. But, Page assured me, that was a real, well-known judge, whose full name was Wicked Heights, whose parents were extreme rock-climbers, and who had earned a name for fairness as a referee before moving to law - where he had gained a further reputation as being entirely willing to smack down nobles who oppressed their underlings.

If he was part of a political attack on the Dairy and myself - then I was facing one of the worst kinds of people to have as an enemy: a good, honest stallion, who was willing to bend the letter of the law just enough to do what he felt was right.

I took advantage of one of the few pieces of advice from Earth that seemed relevant: I lawyered up. And I did what I would have done no matter who issued the subpoena: I requested a meeting with the judge, at his earliest convenience.

Wicked had a light-grey coat, black mane, mustache, beard, and tail, and an orange cutie mark of a crossed pickaxe and hammer - though the latter might have been a gavel. Just Cause looked the same as she had when she'd help me with my case involving my would-be rapists - a black-coated, blue-eyed unicorn.

The judge glared through his overhanging mane at the two of us. "Do you really feel that you need a lawyer present during this meeting, Miss Missy - assuming that is your real name?"

"Your honor; while I am an expert at many things, I simply have not had the time to study the finer points of law and precedent. In addition, I have seen far too many lives ruined which didn't need to be, simply because people thought that such details were irrelevant, and that they could defend themselves adequately simply because they happened to be right."

"Hmph. In that case - did you come to deliver the documents described in that subpoena?"

"As I hope you would be able to guess, if you are familiar with my circumstances: no. I'm here to provide you with all the evidence I could think of, and which Just Cause recommended, describing why that is impossible. I'm hoping that actually being able to prove that I'm unable to fulfill a subpoena's demands will be sufficient to prevent my being jailed for contempt of court."

"I'm listening."

Just finally moved forward, and set a folder of documents on the judge's big, hardwood desk, for him to look at. I described some of them, "The central point is that about two months ago, I found myself near Ponyville, with... memory issues. You have there reports from three independent psychologists who examined me. There's something from the Royal Guard who investigated where I may have come from. The general consensus seems to be that I am likely the last survivor of a herd captured by diamond dogs, the rest of whom were, um, eaten, thus leading to my mind protecting itself from the trauma by forgetting, well, a lot, and confabulating whatever my subconscious felt was necessary to fill in the new blanks."

"Yes, I was aware of the general circumstances - though I wasn't expecting you to be this thorough in your paper trail."

"Pardon?"

"This," he closed the folder, and tapped it with his hoof. "Is it true?"

I frowned. "Assuming it is - then how could I possible know it was?"

"Cute. Then I'll put it another way - do you believe it is true?"

"I believe there's something in there from Princess Luna attesting to my honesty, as demonstrated by royal truth-telling magic."

"I'm sure that's very nice. But you didn't answer my question."

I frowned further. "Before I answer that... in your opinion, how much jail time is one pony's life worth?"

"I'm not sure what you're asking."

"Let's say that Just, here, had a secret identity," Just jumped at this and stared at me, then relaxed as I continued, "perhaps she knew damaging information about a powerful noble. And you subpoenaed me for information about her - which, if I gave to you, would lead to that noble having her killed in short order. So I didn't tell you - and you slapped me in jail for contempt. How much time should I spend in jail rather than see her dead? Or, if you prefer the more general question: what is one life worth?"

"Are you trying to tell me that simply telling me whether or not this... story," he tapped the folder again, "is true, will lead to somepony's death?"

"No - at least, not yet. I'd like to know where you draw an ethical line - and then I can base my answer upon that. How about this: if my telling you Just's secret leads to her death, and I know that, then it could be argued that telling you would be legally equivalent to me murdering her with my own hooves. How much time in prison would I get for that?"

"Hrmph. You really aren't a lawyer - that's not quite how it works. But for the sake of argument - let's say twenty-five years."

"Okay, that's a start. So if I were to tell you, then I'd end up with twenty-five years behind bars. If I don't tell you, and you keep me jailed for any amount of time less than that, then I'm doing better than I would by telling you. What's the longest anyone's ever been held for contempt of court?"

Just piped up, "Fourteen years. But that was an extraordinary case. Even four years is extremely long."

I nodded. "Thank you. Now let's say a hundred innocent ponies' lives were at risk if I disclosed, not even a fact, but simply that it was possible I was aware of a fact. On the one hoof, I could be said to be at risk of a hundred consecutive twenty-five year sentences if I said anything - or a couple of years, up to a decade on the outside, if I don't. And that's completely avoiding the moral impetus of not wanting those ponies dead. The more ponies whose lives are at risk, the more the moral calculus says that it would be better for me to remain silent." I paused, then shrugged, and added, "Of course, it would be even better if I manage to avoid getting imprisoned for contempt of court at all."

"I suppose that explains the paper describing that you have a 'security clearance level'."

"That's right."

It was Wicked's turn to shrug. "In my court, I rule supreme. The appeals courts and the Princesses can overturn my judgments - but they can't stop me from making them, as long as I remain on the bench. I was told to expect that you would try to find some way to weasel your way out of answering the subpoena."

"Um..." I scratched my head, "told by who?"

"That's not important - only whether or not what they said was true. And, so far, it is."

I paused. There were several things I wanted to say at this point - but most of them would get the judge rather annoyed with me, which would defeat my whole purpose in meeting him. So I tried, "What else did this mysterious 'they' say?"

"Quite a bit. Mainly, that they think you're some sort of foreign infiltrator, who came up with a way to get around ordinary background checks - and who can defeat even truth-telling magic. So the fact that you passed a magical honesty test is actually a strike against you, not for you."

"Oh, come on," I declared, exasperated. "That goes against every useful standard of evidence there is. If passing a truth spell means I'm more likely to be guilty, then that means that failing a truth spell means I'm more likely to be innocent. That's just like saying if I live an evil and improper life, I'm guilty; but that if I live a good and proper life, this too means I'm guilty, because guilty people supposedly try to appear especially virtuous. That's wrong on a literally mathematical level - however messed up my mind might be, I've gotten confirmation from others that the math I know about evidence, belief, and confidence checks out. I can take you through the equations if I'm doing a bad job with the words I'm using."

"And what if guilty people do appear either improper or virtuous?"

"Then you run into the problem of actually separating out the guilty from the innocent. I'm assuming that you think it's at least a mildly bad thing for a court to find somepony guilty of a crime they didn't actually commit - and that the principle that ponies are considered innocent until they are proven guilty is useful in preventing that."

"And if I'm quite willing to lock up some innocent ponies to ensure the guilty ones get locked up, too?"

"Then I suppose it depends on what ratio you're willing to put up with. I seem to recall someone once having said, 'it is better a hundred guilty ponies should escape than that one innocent pony should suffer'."

"That is quite a foolish sentiment. Guilty ponies make innocent ponies suffer if they're let free."

"Then, if you applied that principle to its full, ponies would look at the results, and see that being innocent was no protection from being punished by the courts - and so the courts would lose all their influence in nudging ponies to do right rather than wrong, and the very court system itself would simply be an evil upon the land, lashing out and making ponies suffer - and all harmony in the land would be lost."

"I think you overestimate the effect one pony can have on Equestria as a whole."

"If one pony cannot significant affect the whole population - then why bother making a threat to imprison them if they fail to hand over a piece of paper that, most likely, doesn't exist, and if it did, is in an unknown location, and if its location were known, would be impossible to tell apart from all the similar papers?"

Just spoke up, "A potential contemnor's ability to comply is one of the four elements of proving contempt. We have provided ample evidence that my client does not have the ability to comply. If I wished, I could bring up the whole irregularity surrounding the fact that my client does not actually seem to have been charged with a crime, in which the documents described would be evidence for or against anything. If I didn't know better, I would say that this entire subpoena is nothing more than a fishing expedition - but I know that's not possible, since I can't think of a single reason why you would be willing to risk the sanctions you would receive for being a willing participant in such a thing."

Wicked silently fiddled with a pen for a few moments. "Consider," he finally said, "that, perhaps, there really is an infiltration being made into Equestria by outside elements, hostile to our way of life. Who would destroy us from within, if they were allowed to. Would not the disbarment of a single judge be a small price to pay for preventing such a catastrophe?"

It was my turn to be silent - as what Wicked seemed to be describing was awfully close to my own efforts to prevent Equestria from being destroyed by the Game. I glanced at Just, who was giving Wicked a rather wide-eyed look, so it seemed continuing the conversation was up to me. "If that were so," I said, "and the most significant member of this 'infiltration' was so bluntly obvious as to appear with no past, a claim of amnesia, some way to defeat the immortal alicorns' magic, and who made absolutely no secret about their ideas for adjusting Equestrian government... wouldn't that tend to suggest a level of competence low enough that that particular infiltration wasn't anything to worry about?"

"Or, perhaps, such an infiltrator would be the obvious decoy to draw attention away from the real infiltrators, who have already started replacing prominent members of society."

My forehead wrinkled. "That seems like it would require an... extraordinary level of conspiratorial maneuvering. In order to have significant effect, they would need to replace a good number of ponies, well enough not to have any significant leaks, and in such positions that the inevitable lesser leaks could be swept up and contained - all without notice by the Princesses, the Guard, or any noble house's defenders. And all such conspirators would need to be of the same mind, to prevent even a single defector from blowing the whole thing wide open. Which would require some sort of shared goal, a reward for each and every one of them that would motivate them to go to all this trouble and effort. To be honest, I've never seen any evidence for anything like that having ever happened, let alone being happening right now... and I've seen more than one case of ponies seeing conspiracies where none existed. How about you, Just?"

"Y-yes - I mean, you're right, it all seems unlikely to me... not to mention, uh, being an inadmissible justification should any of this matter come to light in an open court."

Wicked grunted, and glanced down at the folder again. "Let me take a good look through all of this - come back tomorrow."

The next day, Just and I went back to see the judge with the cutie mark of a hammer and pickaxe. He gave Just a friendly nod, then turned to me and brusquely stated, "I'm quashing the subpoena. Entirely no justification for it. You can go back to your life and act like none of this ever happened."

That... hadn't been anything near the sort of response I'd been expecting from him. But since he did have the authority to order me jailed for contempt if I pressed matters, it seemed best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. So Just and I rapidly bid farewell and made our retreat, and I went back to the Dairy, still puzzling over what anypony might have hoped to gain by any of this, and what the next stage in their plans against me might be.

But despite having read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, having seen just how much backstabbing could happen in a single game of Diplomacy, having learned as much as I could about Equestria from watching all of the first and most of the second season of cartoons and then spending two months embedded in it... I just couldn't quite make sense of what had just happened, or figure out who might have been behind it, or why.

And that in itself worried me.

Interlude: Vision of the Past

Missy, older, wider, and, she hoped, just a bit wiser than she used to be, stared across the chess board at her opponent. "How goes the surface?"

Jack pushed a pawn. "More pieces are showing up, more conflict, more ramping up."

Missy slid a bishop forward. "Good to hear - in a sense."

Jack hopped a knight to the side. "You enjoy people fighting, dying, suffering?"

Missy pushed her bishop back a single square. "Of course not. But the fact that they are happening, means that I don't have to worry about too much paradox."

Jack nudged another pawn. "Would that be so bad?"

Missy shoved a rook halfway across the board. "Yes. There are worse things that can happen than even all of Equis being destroyed in the Game. I'm willing to go to far lengths to keep all the ponies, and other people, in Equestria and Equis from being killed off. I'm willing to go to even further lengths to make sure they got born in the first place. So I'm willing to stay awake, even though you woke me up early - but I'm going to try to minimize my effect on the world, outside of the effects I specifically planned for."

Jack pushed her own bishop forward again. "And... playing chess with me is 'minimizing' things?"

Missy slid her rook to the side a single square. "You already found out I exist - so unless I want to try putting the effort in, and taking the risks, of making that have never happened... I'm going to try playing this out."

Jack hopped her knight back. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Missy pushed her rook the rest of the way across the board. “According to the main theory of temporal mechanics I’m working with; the worst worst thing is that a paradox causes the universe to be self-inconsistent, forcing it to not just disappear, but never have existed in the first place. The next-worst worst thing... A paradox could be put into effect that resonates back and forth across the timestream, forcing events to reconfigure further and further from what they originally had been, until a new steady-state timeline arises which bears only a passing resemblance to the original. If we’re somewhat lucky, at least some of the same people might still exist - but there’s no guarantee of even that.”

Jack nudged another pawn. “So - trying to get you to tell me too much about my future... bad idea. Noted.”

Missy rocketed her queen forward and sideways. “Precisely. Oh, and checkmate.”

An Armed Society Is A Polite Society

He woke up to the rather unusual sight of a rolled-up piece of paper floating in the air, and batting his snout. He looked like he was about to breathe fire on the odd apparition, until it unrolled part of itself, revealing the words:

YOU WILL DIE UNLESS YOU READ THIS

He reached out to grab hold of it from mid-air, at which time it stopped hovering. Sitting up in his backyard hammock, he unrolled it further, and read.

You have the taste of bacon in your mouth. This is because I put grease on something lethal and used magic to push it down your throat while you slept. It is only my continuing use of magic which keeps it from killing you.

I am watching you. If you wish me to confirm what I have said so far, raise your left hand.

He raised his left hand; then twitched as he felt something bumping back and forth inside his gullet. He lowered his hand and went back to reading.

I have a companion who knows the secrets of shrinking things. I had her shrink a boulder bigger than you to the size of a pea. If she releases her magic, you will die. If I release my magic, your body will try to digest it, and you will die more slowly.

You are still alive because you may be of use to me. I wish to talk to you. I do not wish you to try to control my actions while we talk. If you make the attempt, I will stop upholding my magic, and you will die. If my hidden companion thinks you are trying to control me, she will stop upholding her magic, and you will die.

If you understand and agree to talk, raise your right hand. If you do not agree, raise both hands, and then write what you wish to say on this paper..

After finishing reading the scroll, re-reading it, and then examining it for hints of invisible ink or hidden messages, the dragon sat still for a time, thinking. Then he raised his right arm.

With my hooves half-eaten away, every single step I'd taken had hurt. So I was in something of a bad mood as I approached him. To his credit, at the sight of the cow he'd fed to his dad approaching, if not entirely none the worse for wear, at least alive and on her own hooves; red and white skin gone bald, and the even the white rather red; wearing a pair of pitch-black goggles; he merely raised an eyebrow.

"Interesting," he said, and I tried to avoid flinching at his speech - for all I knew, he could have told me to 'die' and I would have, even if he did believe the note's warnings. He continued, "This explains some things. Well - since you have me in your power, what do you want from me?"

"To be honest - I hadn't expected to get this far, so I'm improvising from this point. Hm... Would you please close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears, and count to ten?"

"... Very well." He did so, and when he got to three, I focused on the opal in my stomach which wasn't supporting the 'volare' spell holding up the rock in his gut, and on him, and whispered "Veritas", pushing all the power I had in that stone into that spell. I didn't know if it would work at all on him, given how little luck I'd been having using magic on dragons lately; but if it was able to do any good, I might as well use it. When that was done, I went back to splitting my attention between keeping the stone hovering with one opal, recharging its now-drained companion, and trying to be a clever conversationalist. He got to ten, opened his eyes, and took out his fingers. "What was that about?"

"I'll tell you when you're older. Maybe. Right now - you're a problem, and I need to solve you. I've got things to do, and it would be awkward with you ordering my crew about, or ordering head-hunters to come after us. So let's try the simple way, first. The only contact I've ever had with assassins is fending them off."

"Yes, I know."

"... How?"

"I told your ponies to not lie to me. I'm sure they hid a lot - like your species, and where you were - but it was easy to find out you were simply following in that killer's wake, and had nothing to do with him. And I've been trying to stop telling you any of this, or to mislead you, but I don't seem to be able to. I am going to guess that you placed your own enchantment on me, and you didn't want me to see how it was done. You don't have my trick, or you wouldn't have needed to put a magic stone inside me, you could have just ordered me around - so it seems like it's some sort of truth-forcing spell. And if you have that, and have been practicing with it - that explains how your crew knew so many ways to slip around giving me straight answers. I'm going to have to work on that aspect of my magic, if I survive this."

"... I think I've been underestimating you. What would I have to do to stop you from using your magic?"

"Well, there's a lot you could do, some of which I'd really rather not tell you about, and some of which I don't want you to do at all. Killing me would be the obvious way, and I'm trying to think of a way to keep you from doing that. The trouble is, if you took my magic from me, I'd be as good as dead. So I suppose the thing I want you to do is persuade me not to use my magic, instead of taking away my cloak and broach. Rager-damn-it, I almost managed not to mention that."

This purple dragon was coming up with his own clever plans all too quickly for my tastes. "Would taking away your cloak and broach stop you from magically commanding others?"

"The cloak, yes. The broach is a magical trap against anyone who tries."

"I happen to be in the business of collecting magical artifacts - and since you used yours on us without sufficient provocation, I feel no guilt in invoking the local custom of 'weregild', and demanding your magic items as compensation."

"Go ahead and kill me with the stone, then; the cloak is all that keeps me from getting eaten, or worse, by dragons who want my position."

"Can you think of some other arrangement?"

"Nothing comes to mind."

"Well, if there can be no arrangement, then we are at an impasse."

"I'm afraid so. I can't stop your magic stone, and you're only clever enough to force me to answer questions, not force me to do what you want."

"Now that I know it's your cloak, I can let the stone do its work, and take it from your corpse."

"Why haven't you done so already?"

"I don't think the spells on the stone can be maintained for enough hours to properly answer that. Let's just say that it's not my first choice - but it's not my last, either."

"In that case... I challenge you to a battle of wits."

"For the cloak?" He nodded. "It's not going to involve some goblets of wine and some poison, is it?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of an exchange of riddles."

"... I'm quite fond of those, but they can depend on extremely local turns of phrases and cultural knowledge, like that a certain flower is called a 'bluebell'. But I've got a thought. How about I ask you three questions - and if you can answer them, we do the obvious thing from there."

"What, no formal rules?"

"Would either of us trust the other to give a set of rules that we didn't already know the loopholes to?"

"... Ask, then."

"Question one. If everybody dies, is it a bad thing?"

"... There wouldn't be anyone left to say it was good or bad. But I don't want to die - so I'll say 'yes'."

"Okay, question two. If someone could make the difference between whether or not everybody dies, even at the risk of their own life, should they?"

"Really? That's your question?"

"Yep. Got an answer?"

"Well, of course. If they do one thing and everyone dies, that's bad. If they do another thing and everyone else lives, and they might die, that's not as bad."

"Alrighty. Taking those two answers into account, my third question: how can you tell when someone you're dealing with, is someone trying to keep everyone from dying?"

"... You're joking.

"I'm honestly curious what your answer is."

"Well, if by 'you' you mean 'me', I'd just tell them to tell me the truth, and ask them."

"I see. Well, I've asked my three questions - what's the obvious thing to do?"

"You said you'd kill me if I commanded you - or your mysterious friend would."

"That was to get us to start talking. I can tell my mysterious friend to keep up the spell if you limit your ordering me to answer one question truthfully."

"How much of this did you really have planned out in advance?"

"Depends on how specific a 'plan' you mean. I had a pretty good idea that if we weren't going to kill each other, we'd need some way to establish a basis of trust - I've got my truth-magic, and it seems like you've got your own version, so assuming you actually trust it, we can stop holding the threat of death over each other and start doing actually useful stuff."

We went through a brief rigamarole - I shouted out 'plan xanatos three', he told me to answer a question honestly, he asked me if I was trying to save the world, and I honestly answered in the affirmative.

"You could be insane," he growled.

"If you really think that, then we're back where we started, aren't we?"

"Do you really need my cloak?"

"It's a bit complicated, but to the best of my understanding, every single magical object that I acquire measurably decreases the probability that everyone in the world dies. Holding onto it may help increase the odds of your survival in the short run - but actually hurts your odds of living for very long. Any other magic doodads you have wouldn't hurt, either."

"I'm still pretty sure that you're pulling some more complicated scheme on me. So I want some insurance."

"Like what?"

"Hostages. You seem to be the milksop type - leave somebody important to you here, and I'll hold onto them until you come back."

"Interesting thought. Unfortunately, those I care about the most are on another continent - and just about everyone on the ship is trained crew, and leaving them behind would hurt the odds of success."

"What about Yarl Branbaugen?" We'd been speaking English (or Equestrian) without a translation spell, so it took me a moment to recognize Lord Firebough's name.

"He's a whiny brat, but I gave a promise to protect him which I'd prefer to keep, if I can. Do you think you can keep him safer from those who'd see him dead than he would be on an ever-moving ship?"

"I'm still alive, aren't I?"

"Apparently thanks to your cloak, which I'll be taking with me."

"Then I'll just have to come with it."

"And how would bringing you along improve my odds of success?"

"Because if you don't, you're not getting the cloak."

"Sure I am - I can just let my attention on holding up the stone in your gut lapse."

"You said you didn't want to kill me."

"I said it wasn't my top option. Me leaving with the cloak with you alive is my current goal - me leaving with the cloak with you dead is my second choice, but it's well above me leaving without the cloak or me leaving with the cloak in a way that hampers my mission."

"You say that as if I wouldn't be useful."

"Any form of use for you I can imagine depends on me trusting you not to do all sorts of things as soon as you felt it was in your best interest to do so."

"Another impasse?"

"Mm - I don't think so. I think we're at the point where you're trying to come up with some clever way to recover the best possible situation as I take the cloak."

"In that case - there's a few things I haven't been telling you about the cloak. One is that unless I tell you a secret, you'll never figure out how to use it."

"There's using it, and then there's using it. Knowing what it can do - I'm somewhat tempted to plumb whatever secrets I can out of it, and then dump it in the nearest volcano."

"And that would increase the odds you'll keep whole countries from dying?"

"Actually, yes. Giving people irresistible orders is one way the cloak could help. Letting me figure out how to make cloaks that let the wearers give people irresistible orders would help even more."

"... maybe I've just been pretending it's the cloak all along, and I actually get my magic from something else."

"Possible - but I'm pretty sure you didn't know I was casting my truth-spell on you, so you wouldn't have known to fake its effects until after you felt them - and just about the first thing you mentioned was the cloak and booby-trapped brooch. What's so bad about staying here, anyway?"

"Everyone keeps trying to kill the Yarl, the enormous blue dragon sleeping behind masses of traps."

"There didn't seem to be too many traps when you took me to feed to him."

"That's part of it. He got force-grown - he's too stupid to do anything but be a big target. Which lets me 'interpret his orders' without anyone worrying that I'm coming up with them myself. ... this truth spell is getting annoying."

"You think that's bad? Try getting digested."

"I thought you were just a cow."

"I am a cow."

"You know what I mean."

"I do - and we're straying from the point. So you're the public mouthpiece and secretly the power behind the throne. You really need the cloak to stay alive with that setup?"

"Everyone knows I have the power to make everyone do what I tell them. I built up a whole mythology around it, about how that's proof I was the one my dad chose to run things for him while he napped. If I can't do that anymore - that all falls apart, and I'm dead by dawn."

"Here's a thought - instead of coming with us, just leave on your own."

"And exactly where could I go that would let me stay alive any longer?"

"How about First Settlement? I'm told its Yarl is busy on a diplomatic trip, and so the place is ripe for being taken over by a rising young dragon hungry for a realm of his own."

"... What would Branbaugen say to that?"

"I said I'd protect him, not his territory. You might want to talk with him to make some arrangements, so everyone can pretend they're getting the better of the deal."

"I'd have to get past Stortrut."

"Yeah, she's still got some tricks - she seems to be able to sense any dragon in her territory. So - maybe just try going far out to sea to get around her."

"... That could work."

"So we have an understanding?"

"Barring unexpected developments or objections - I believe so."

"Then isn't it time to get that rock out of me?"

"Seems about so."

"By the way - it's clever and all, but wouldn't have actually done me any harm. My cloak and brooch aren't the only magic I've got; I have a clever way to trigger my own force-growth. I'd be as dumb as my dad, until I fixed it, but it would make plenty of room in my stomach for a really big rock."

"Hold still - this may feel a bit like throwing up."

"... That's not a rock."

"No, it's a hollowed-out robin's egg, full of - well, I won't go into the details, but it's the most toxic stuff I could come up with on such short order. I figured that whatever I told you was inside you, you might come up with a clever way to protect yourself against. So I lied."

"What about your friend out there?"

"What friend?"

"... I hate you."

"I can live with that. And aren't you glad you get to live to do that, too?"