Dark left the others. Bubbles was arguing with the monster quite loudly, hysterically even. Part of her wanted to join that battle, but the threat was removed, for the moment and she felt... dizzy. She felt dizzy and lost in a way she never had since she'd devoted her life to the Warlocks.

She retreated to her own room. With new eyes, she noted her room was somewhat bare. Did it need furnishing? It was just a place to sleep and eat when not doing more productive things. No, it was her place. She should...

She shook her head violently. Why was she second-guessing herself?

Dark moved for the mirror that rested in the bathing room and stared at herself. She noticed more keenly than most days that her eyes were piercing and savage in a way, but also unfocused and distant. She didn't like that last part. Her life, and her purpose, relied on her being present and focused, not scatter-brained.

Her eyes, betraying and lost, wandered down. She found herself eyeing her belly, her legs, then between them. There was her sex. It was perfectly standard...ly amazing. She found her tongue darting out and her pulse quickened. She felt warm, sweaty even. She was growing excited looking at herself. Why?! Why would anypony get so distracted looking at what they'd seen hundreds of times in the last month, let alone their lifetime?

Her horn glowed softly as her magic reached with a dexterity her hooves lacked. She began to examine herself with spectral hands. The strangest part, even higher than the fact that she felt compelled to do it at all, was that it felt as powerful and... intimate as if someone else were touching her. She hated it.

She wanted to hate it. She began to squirm and rose to all fours as if to walk away from it, but she couldn't outrun her horn. It was folly to even consider. Her thoughts jumped a track as those gentle touches found their target and she was spread wide as if for a doctor to see into her. She neighed like a startled horse and spun around. There was no one there. There was no one in the room, but herself.

She was feeling herself up and being surprised about it. "Luna preserve," she whispered hoarsely to herself as her breathing grew heavier by the moment. The touches were not the most skilled, but they were eager and were becoming better by the moment.

At last! She was a pretty pony, not an ugly overweight human.

Dark blinked. What? That had not been her thought. She had never been a human.

S/he had never been a pony, but now they were, and it was fantastic!

Dark squinted her eyes as her mind swirled in confusion. She grasped the magic of her horn with a firm mental grip and wrenched it away from whatever part of her mind thought that invasive exploration was a good idea. She smiled with triumph before she felt a spike of delight erupt, unbidden.

She glanced down and saw her left forehoof was... Ugh. She was touching herself like a filly that just realized that part had a purpose besides going to the toilet. "Stop it!"

Amazingly, the hoof did stop.

Dark slowly righted herself. "Whoever or whatever you are, this is my body! my mind! You're not Luna, so you don't get to tell me what to do."

Dark spoke. The inflection was just a little off, but it was her voice, her throat. "You're gorgeous. I mean, we're gorgeous."

Dark blinked at that. She was pretty? She never really spent much time considering it, but-- "Stop distracting me. Get out of my head."

"I don't even think that's an option. We are me. I'm you."

"No you're not."

Dark clopped against the ground. She was having an animated argument with herself. "Stop this right now. We, I..." Pronouns were harder to keep right. "The Warlocks demand a certain image, and an agent constantly pawing at herself is not it."

She felt a sudden urge and grabbed a bowl from the counter with her magic, bringing it over and the one apple inside. Once it was close, her magic split, grabbed the apple, and brought it to her snout. She didn't eat it. She wasn't hungry. She was furious, confused, and maybe a little scared.

"Do... we... know that, oh, we do."

Dark blinked. Had whatever was in her mind just drawn information from her without asking? She was a walking security risk. She was compromised in the most visceral sense she could think of. Even captured and tortured, she would die with her secrets, but with her mind cut in two and turned against itself...

She turned for the door. "I must turn myself in." She tried to walk forward, but her legs refused.

"We don't want to do that. We have a job, remember?"

Dark let out a little growl. "Begone!"

"I am Dark Vision, servant of Princess Luna, proud member of the Warlocks."

The words were true, and yet... not? She hadn't spoken that. Or had she? Keeping track of what part of her did what thing was... trying. "As a member of the warlocks I will --" Her brain skipped as if a record were bumped. "-- see this mission through to its completion." She didn't give up. She never left a task incomplete. That wasn't her. The very idea of it... It must have come from the fragmented thoughts she was having.

With growing confidence, Dark sat down and rubbed at her snout with a hoof. She was so fluffy and warm. "I need to... question... Bubbles."

She trotted from her room.

The monster glared at Bubbles in a clear threat, but still the pony wouldn't move. If not for the contract he had signed, he would have tossed her aside. Yet, he had. Violence against another tenant was prohibited. He could growl, but he could not bite. He was trapped. "Very... well..."

Bubbles burst into a triumphant grin. "You'll tell?"

"I will answer two questions, if you swear you will let me leave after those answers."

Bubbles frowned a little before she nodded. "Alright, but they better be good answers. One, what was that thing with the words, to the best of your knowledge."

The monster deflated with defeat. "You could call it a god, but that would be misleading. Yet, not far from the truth of it. It is... a beginning, and will be an end, but not the end. Several, in fact, in both directions. It is order and chaos. Can you be chaos if you weave order? Can you be order if you destroy the old order so easily? It can be called whatever you please, but The Text seems most common."

"Text... huh..." Bubbles raised a brow. "Bit of an ass for a god, but I guess gods can do that, whatever."

"You have one more question, then I leave."

Bubbles glanced off towards Jim, who was still picking through the debris of his door. "What happened to his friend?"

Jim pricked up at that. He approached in several long strides. "Hey, yeah, do you know? That'd be great!"

The monster glanced around. "Do you have some clay, preferably of differing colors?"

Jim raised a brow. Odd request. Amusingly, he did! He fled and turned with two containers of putty that he offered up.

The monster accepted the two and popped the containers open before scooping them out, getting some blood on and in both. Jim made an idle note to throw both out. The yeti fashioned two spheres quickly. "Dark Vision. Your Friend." He lifted each ball one at a time.

He brought the two together violently and mashed them into a new sphere. "Dark Vision."

Jim blinked at the demonstration. "Holy..."

Bubbles pointed at the mash. "He's dead?!"

"You received two questions... But that depends on your philosophy. Good bye." He moved around Bubbles and she didn't stop him that time.

She looked up at Jim, who looked quite upset. He had collapsed against one of the walls. Feeling guilty and a bit awkward, she reached with her magic and pat him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry, Jim. That sucks hard core there."

Jim put a hand over his face. "You don't even get just how deep this 'suck' goes. Fucking hell... Paul jumped off a cliff, and he had to do it when he was in my damn apartment, and he isn't even dead!" He threw up both hands. "May as well be, so far as the human world will know, and I'll go to jail forever probably, but he gets to be a pony princess, so who cares about Jim? Thanks a fucking lot, asshole."

Bubbles tried to parse through that. "You can go back to the human world?" That was the part that confused her the most. "How?"

Jim blinked at her. "Huh? Oh, yeah, guess nobody told you about that." He shrugged. "May as well explain it. I'm safer here in this hallway than anywhere else right now." He sank to the corner where the wall met the floor. "Whenever I leave this building, I'm back on Earth, human land. My apartment, I thought, was also home, but now I have doubts. I don't know for sure either way."

Bubbles moved to sit beside him. "Huh, wow. That's kind of intense. Sorry. So, uh, if your apartment is... here? That means you're safe here, right?"

Jim crossed his arms. "Sure, if I give up everything I had home. I have family, a job, obligations, friends, minus Paul. Fuck Paul, god..."

Comforting was not high on Bubble's list of talents. When the elevator opened and admitted the newest guard, how many did Tabitha need? Bubbles took the opportunity. "Hey, Sweetie!"

Sweetie approached them with a raised brow. "What happened in here?" She looked over the blood, clay, wood fragments. It was quite a mess. "Do you need my help, Bubbles?"

Bubbles hopped to her hooves. "Jim here's in a bad place. He needs a friendly face to talk to. You got it? Good!" She fled without a shred of remorse.

Sweetie Drops rolled her eyes at the retreat of her fellow guard before she settled beside Jim. "Hey."

Jim quirked a smile. "You don't have to."

Sweetie nodded. "I don't, but I will. Here." She pulled out one of her handmade candies in a bright red foil wrapper and offered it. He took it and soon had the hard candy in his mouth where he suckled on it almost angrily. "Tell me about it?"

Jim leaned back against the wall. "I lost a friend of mine. He didn't... exactly die, but he kind of exactly did? It's hard to explain." He wriggled his fingers. "Magic."

"Magic," Sweetie rolled her eyes at the trouble magic could cause, and that seemed to earn a little smile from Jim. There was one thing they could bond over. Magic was trouble. "So... I'm sorry. I lost a friend too recently. She's not... dead... just far away for a while. I guess yours rates higher, but it's not a competition. I just want to say I feel at least the start of what you feel, and I'm sorry."

Jim looked at Sweetie with some surprise. That seemed a heartfelt moment of compassion, and he appreciated it. He reached for her and she didn't stop him from drawing her in against his side as he let out a breath and looked down the littered rubble of the hallway. She could feel the pony, human, person... The person beside her was sad and lost.

She gave a little smile, trying to figure out a way to bolster the hurt she could feel. "You're not alone."

He glanced at her sharply.

"It's true, you're not." She dug out a bit of soft candy. They were just the thing for a down day. "We'll make it."

He accepted the candy from her hoof before he sat back, popping it in his mouth and chewing quietly a moment. "Yeah..."

Author's Note

Answers? We get some of those.

Questions? Will we ever run out?

Typos? Oh yeah.