Author's Note

I realize that a complicated stretch where the story is told in non-chronological order is a particularly bad time to stop updating for several months. Without going back, it might be difficult to keep track of what’s happening. My sincere apologies for that. All I can say is that I didn’t foresee this when I published chapter 12; back then I was still in one of my most productive periods and expected to get this out quickly.

(Knowing about the planning fallacy is not enough. I still have much to learn about the art of proper pessimism.)

To make sure that releases don’t get more scattered, I made sure to (almost) finish both 9 and 11 before publishing one. #11 will follow in at most two days. Then all holes will be filled.

Prepare for a long, difficult, and chaotic sequence of chapters going forward.

Oh, and note that chapter 9 does not lead immediately into chapter 10; there’s a couple of days off screen between them.

Chapter IX

The train ride home had been one the most unpleasant events in Twilight’s memory. It had only been an hour since she had lost her brother, and all she had wanted to do was to rest, to shut out the world and perhaps cry herself to sleep. Instead, she’d been trapped along with the other girls, all of whom expecting to hear answers from her, answers which she wasn’t supposed to give.

The sheer absurdity of what Celestia had told them had only gradually dawned on her, along with the dreadful realization of how much it meant. Not only was she supposed to keep this to herself, but now, literally anything she could tell them had the potential of causing unforeseen damage. She was playing a game she had not volunteered for, where any wrong move might prevent the rescue of Shining Armor.

Twilight had already understood Vi well enough to know that even this turn of events wouldn’t be enough to break her spirits, no matter how much it flew in the face of her personal philosophy. But even she hadn’t expected the sheer ease with which the filly seemed to adapt to these new circumstances. Two minutes after Celestia had told them that the universe cared about the appearance of heroism, Vi had begun talking to her in a manner that most closely resembled the dialogue in one of Diamond Quill’s fantasy novels. When Rainbow had demanded to know what was going on, Vi, not Twilight, had managed to salvage the situation, revealing just enough of the truth to release Twilight of the obligation to say more, while still sounding sufficiently mysterious. Celestia had shared a great secret with Twilight and her, so Vi, and keeping this secret hidden was part of how they were hoping to retrieve Shining Armor... though it wasn’t lost on Twilight how she had avoided using the word ‘plan’ in any of her responses. Moreover, her reputation for being radically honest had kept the others from doubting this – though not from bothering Twilight for the remainder of the ride; after all, even with the main deal kept secret, that still left open the question of what had actually happened.

Of course, none of them knew. Surely the timing of Shining’s disappearance made it look like he had somehow been spying on them. But how he had done that... or how someone had controlled him... or how she had gotten him to appear so normal... those were all open questions, and thinking about them was the last thing Twilight had wanted to do during the ride.

When they had finally arrived, she’d practically fled the platform, retrieving to her home as fast as she could. But now, lying squarely on her bed, she still had no idea what to do with herself. She didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to study, didn’t want to practice magic, hadn’t the slightest urge to work on a project. The only pony whose presence didn’t feel like a nuisance to her was Vi, and the filly seemed to be downstairs, probably because she wanted to spare Twilight the interaction with anypony else (in this regard, the filly was a strange mix of socially awkward and yet extremely considerate towards other pony’s feelings, especially hers). Presumably, she was also the reason why Spike, who had been just as eager to get answers as the others, wasn’t bothering her now.

Twilight let a few minutes pass, trying but failing not to think. Eventually, she decided to pull herself together, getting halfway out of bed before her determination left her and she dropped back down, staring blankly onto the ceiling. A moment later she was pulling the blanket over her eyes, seeking to shut out the light... then after a while, she realized that she was crying. A sense of surreality and comfort washed over her as the tears kept coming, and she made no attempt to stop them. She just lay there, feeling more at peace than she had for years, perhaps forever.

Ten seconds flat!

That wasn’t ten seconds, miss...

Dash. Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash. That was over twelve.

Uh. You’re that good at math, huh?

I guess...

Hah! Egghead

Egghead? You haven’t called me that in a long time.

Suddenly, she felt a weight somewhere in her chest. Rainbow frowned, coming to a landing beside her.

Hey, what’s up, Twilight? Something wrong?

No, I’m fine.

Uh-huh. Hey, you should meet the others. The other girls. We’re not friends yet, but we’ll be real soon. If you don’t pull out on us, at least.

I don’t know, Rainbow. I’ve never met them before. And I’m not that good at making new friends...

Aww. Come on!

Okay, okay. Twilight giggled. I’ll come. And we can’t leave Fluttershy too long without knowing any of us. She’ll be so lonely.

Yeah, I know, right?

Rainbow was leading the way, even being polite enough to walk on the ground. They were almost there when everything turned dark.

Twilight opened her eyes.

She’d fallen asleep.

When was the last time she had slept during the day? A few months back at least. Probably before Vi had moved in. But this time, it had actually made her feel better. Or at least more normal.

She got up in a swift motion, sliding off the bed. A glance at the watch revealed it to be an hour past noon, but Twilight quickly realized that this didn’t tell her how long she had slept because she didn’t know when she had gotten home. She found Vi at her usual position on the dinner table, closing the book she’d been reading as she saw Twilight approach.

“Hey.” Twilight sat down opposite to her. “Where’s Spike?”

“Left. Celestia sent the summary of how this judgment thing works while you were asleep. I said he wasn’t allowed to know what it was. He didn’t like that.”

“Oh.”

“He said that I had to tell him since I’m his assistant,” Vi continued, though Twilight could already tell from her tone that she hadn’t. “But, well, I convinced him that you wouldn’t see it his way.”

“You know you don’t have to do this assistant thing anymore if you don’t want to, right?”

“I think I want to. I made him agree with me staying here on the pretext that I would, so... I feel obligated.”

“Your call-”

“-and I knew I probably didn’t have to keep doing it, but when I said it, it was an honest offer, so... err... I guess that’s not important right now, is it? Um, do you want to read the letter?”

“Yeah,” Twilight said, and, following the filly’s directions, summoned the scroll.

She read it twice, then put it aside with a slight frown. It was unusual, to say the least, for a letter of the princess to sound this vague.

“Summarize what you think of it,” she said after a bit of thought. “Then we can compare our two takeaways. They might not be the same... it was a bit confusing.”

“Sure,” Vi said, “Good idea. Well, essentially it’s just a really naive sense of good and evil, which we already knew. She said it doesn't matter what we think, only what we do. What was sort of new is that she said we can often salvage things by framing them correctly. That made me think about our trip to the lake yesterday. If we had just said some more things about how... I don’t know, how Fluttershy had been hurt and we had to counsel on how to deal with it, or something like that, maybe it would have changed everything. Or if we had just talked differently.”

Twilight nodded. She had thought about the exact same thing, both times she had read it. It seemed like they truly had done just about the worst possible thing in reaction to the news.

“It doesn’t seem to have a good memory, either,” Twilight murmured. “Seems like whatever bad effects you cause wear off fairly quickly.”

“What do you think about conversation?” Vi asked. “How careful should we be to discuss things in general? And how do we know whether to be careful?”

Twilight was about to answer when she was stopped by an already familiar feeling sense of caution. They were in a conversation now...

... but as she had just said, it didn’t seem to have a good memory.

“We’re talking freely right now, aren’t we?”

“Bad memory,” Vi said, too, “so, yeah. I think so.”

“Hm. Well...” Twilight took the letter once again, reading it for the third time. “I guess... it depends on what the ponies you talk to- no, it depends on what you expect the ponies you talk to- no, actually, it depends on what it looks from the outside that you expect the ponies you talk to will do, based on what you tell them.”

“Well put,” Vi said, “I think that’s right. Pretty complicated. But the takeaway is easy. We just have to up our dialogue when we talk strategy, and communicate shady stuff between the lines.”

Twilight groaned, rubbing her eyes with a front limb, but she nodded.

“And we have to keep stuff from Spike,” she said from behind her arm, “if it’s important. Since he’s a child. You’re too, kind of, but you don’t behave like one. He does. Protecting the innocent... and stuff.”

“I’m not innocent,” Vi commented, which produced an involuntary giggle from Twilight, running starkly in contrast to her brooding mood.

“Or at least pretend like we keep stuff from him,” Vi said more seriously. “If we tell him in advance...”

Twilight didn’t say anything in return, but she nodded again.

“What do you think happened?” she asked eventually.

“Don’t know. It looked like someone was listening in, because Shining disappeared right when we found him out.” Vi didn’t sound caught off guard by the sudden change of topic, from which Twilight inferred that she had been thinking about it a lot as well. “Which begs the question how things would have worked out had we just not been careful at all. But, from what I’ve heard about your past adventures, it wasn’t like things have gone super smoothly, more like you just got lucky in the end. So, I guess there would’ve been some confrontation, maybe, and in the end, everything would have worked out. Who knows who else would have shown up?”

“Do you think Shining was possessed?”

“Yeah,” Vi said. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“We went off in an odd direction, yesterday...” Once again, Twilight thought back to their visit to the lake. “We got stuck on the idea that something’s wrong with Cadence, even though he’s the one who’s showed signs.”

“It was dark,” Vi said cynically, “and we were all outside. Spooky things make more sense in that kind of environment. You’re right. We weren’t doing a good job.”

“But you were right that something was wrong, at least.”

“Me, and Fluttershy, too.”

“Yeah. You’ve... rubbed off on her, you know? She’s changed since you’re here.”

“I like Fluttershy a lot,” Vi said, sounding somewhat shy, as if it were an admission. “And I think she likes me, too. Unlike... your other friends.”

“Pinkie likes you,” Twilight pointed out after a stretch of uncomfortable silence.

“Pinkie likes everyone.”

At that, Twilight didn’t know what to reply; the filly was right.

“Do you want to practice?” She offered after a while. “Teleportation?”

Vi nodded thankfully.