The wet, bloody, metallic taste of anxious bile crept over the root of my tongue. I could feel my heart rate increasing at an utterly unnatural rate, each beat clenching my entire chest in an iron grip. The diner was silent. Blue Moon looked down at me with eyes that hardly ever seemed to contort or blink. They just stared right into me, no hint of emotion.

Blue Moon was a murderer.

Or, at the very least, something very close to a murderer. An apologist. An accomplice. Something, something awful.

I did my best to swallow. The taste did not leave my mouth, instead spreading down the back of my throat and sticking to every surface it felt along the way.

I knew that Blue Moon was guilty of something. I knew this in a manner very different than I knew other things. It was not a programmed fact, not a memory of the future or the thoughts of somepony else. I knew this because I knew ponies. I knew this because I knew that, yes, sometimes ponies spoke harshly out of grief. Mostly they spoke that way out of fear. I had thought it was fear for Moss. This was not so.

Blue was afraid for her own sake. Afraid of being found out. Afraid that the shadows of her transgressions were whispering secrets to me, like the beating of her victim’s heart thudding under the floorboards.

“Well? You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Blue spoke as she usually did, but I was seeing it in a new light, now. It was mechanical. It was false. It was the bare minimum of real contact she felt like she could get away with. A script she could follow. A caricature she could play the part of. It’s not like anypony else around here had an accent.

I tried to swallow again. The fear clung harder to the back of my throat. The moisture left my mouth.

Rainbow Dash cleared her throat, straightened up. “We’ll both get the pancakes.”

“Suit yourselves,” she said. She scooped the menus off the table, turned, and trotted away in one clean arc to the kitchen.

The metal door swung open, swung shut, swung open, swung shut. It made a soft shush shush shush as it settled, a sound which neither of us could have picked out individually had the diner been behaving normally.

Rainbow reached gingerly across the table. Her hoof brushed mine, just lightly enough to get my attention.

The door swung open, swung shut, swung open, swung shut. Each time it grew softer, moved less.

At the instant it had closed enough for Rainbow, she jerked her hoof away from mine and bolted out of the booth. I followed suit, unable to keep perfectly with her smooth motions, but thoughtful enough to silence the tinkling bell above the door with a magical muffler.

We burst out into the early morning heat and sun, and flew across the sand. I let out an enormous breath, drew one in, choked on the bloody taste in my throat.

Rainbow held a dead focus on a point in the distance which I couldn’t discern. Her hooves beat along the sand at a pace I simply couldn’t match. Every so often, she would kick off and blast forward a few extra paces on the wing, the land again with a sound much gentler than the action.

I found myself getting left behind.

I was usually so good at keeping it together. The old Rarity was brilliant under pressure, a real team asset who could push through the scariest of things without batting an eye. That wasn’t how most ponies thought of me, of course. I certainly knew how to milk the drama. But I know it’s how Dash thought of me. “Cool as a cucumber,” she would say.

But the whole world was collapsing in on me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Every heartbeat was like hot tendrils of dark magic cracking my ribs. Every breath brought with it the taste of fear and realization and betrayal, and I physically could not think of anything else.

There wasn’t a single pony in this town who was on my side.

And that fact scared me more than everything else put together. The fact that I was surrounded by enemies. That even Rainbow Dash seemed to be slipping away from me, putting me off as best she could in order to get to the heart of whatever else it was she was here to do.

Even Rainbow Dash was keeping secrets from me.

I stopped running. My breathing was loud and hot and ragged. Rainbow sped on, her mind disconnected in such a way that I wondered if I would ever be able to retrieve it.

Although, to be fair, I’m sure she felt the same way about me.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

The shiver went up my spine again.

Rainbow skidded to a halt, looked to the sky for some sort of answer.

She turned around and saw me, then broke into a run twice as fast as the one before it, barreling towards me at top speed.

“Rarity!” She shouted to me as she ran. “Rares, let’s go!”

The world was closing in. I knew this, knew it was my fault, and yet I couldn’t make it stop. My vision was contracting faster and faster. Everything swallowed up in black.

“Fuck, Rarity…” I felt a warm embrace gather me up. “It’s alright, I’ve gotcha.”

With what little strength I could muster, I reached up and wrapped my forelegs around Rainbow’s neck. I knew my eyes were wide open, but I couldn’t see anything at all. Just swirls and blotches, shadows of color, dark masses. I hung there, held by Rainbow as she flew me to safety, hovering on the line between conscious and unconscious.

I remember very little of the journey, but I do remember Rainbow Dash lowering me into her rented bed.

“Ah, shit…” Rainbow was puttering back and forth. “Hot or cold, hot or cold…”

Had I been able to respond, I would have.

She eventually broke her pacing pattern and dove into the mini fridge, grabbed the largest hoof-full of ice cubes she could, and brought them over to the mattress. She dumped them out beside me.

“Here ya go, Rares,” she said, more to herself than to me.

She held one cube to the base of my horn, and pressed one to my lips. I took it graciously and began to suck the cool moisture off of it. I could feel the taste of fear being washed away, however temporary the solution may be.

When I finally regained some semblance of sight, I looked up at Rainbow Dash.

She put a hoof to her chest and looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, thank Celestia you’re okay.”

“I’m sorry I worried you, dear.”

Rainbow let out a harsh breath. Her eyes rolled back in pure relief. “Just don’t do it again, ‘kay?”

I let a smile dance over my face. “I’ll try.”

For a moment, her gaze lingered on me. The shadow of a smile graced her lips as she watched me come back. Something in her eyes said mine, and I was okay with that. It was a soft claim, not possessive like Nightwhisper’s. More protective and trusting. Thankful, even. Loyal.

“Damn, Rares, you need to sleep. O-or eat.” Her eyes scanned my body quickly, taking in the drabness of my coat, the pallidness of my complexion, the exhaustion of my joints. “Shit, I dunno. You need to take care of yourself.”

I chipped a little flake of the ice cube off with my teeth and swallowed it. “You’ll notice that taking care of myself isn’t one of my strong suits.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Dude, no. You’re the queen of spa treatments and fancy foods and beauty sleep. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That’s a… crass way of putting it.” I was silent for a moment. “However accurate it may be.”

Rainbow smiled a weathered smile. She held a hoof out to me. “Generosity.” She drew her hoof in to her own chest. “Loyalty. We do the same dumb stuff. Getting all caught up in other ponies’ crap. We forget to look out for ourselves.”

“I suppose I never thought of it like that.” I murmured around the ice cube.

Rainbow shrugged. “You do a lot of thinking when you’re alone that long. I thought I did something wrong to lose touch with you guys. I was always trying to figure out what it was, y’know?”

I thought for a moment, then nodded.

Rainbow stared at the carpet for a minute. I couldn’t see it from where I was, but I doubt it was as interesting as she needed it to be.

After a long pause, she looked back up at me. “Feeling any better?”

Another nod.

Rainbow let out a sigh of relief. “Keep scaring me like that and I swear I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry.” I reached out weakly. “You’re right, I’m not taking care of myself and it’s making everything worse. I can’t remember the last time I ate…”

Rainbow perked up. “Want me to pick you up something at the Kwik-Grab? I can get there in--”

“Ten seconds flat?” I finished for her.

She smiled at this. “Sandwiches still cold, soups still hot!”

My hoof stroked her shoulder, grazing the tensed flight muscles and mussing her fur, unnoticeably so to all but me. She was so eager to help, and I suppose I was so haggard by now that it was all she could think about. Not a smudge of makeup on my face, my mane undone and unwashed for at least a few days. She had never seen me like this before.

Even as I imagined how delightful it would be to bite into a warm sandwich stuffed to the gills with roasted vegetables, how good it would feel to have anything at all in my stomach, I had a hard time sending her away. I convinced myself it was because I felt guilty for sending her on an errand in all the chaos. But that wasn’t it.

“Oh…” I hooked my hoof back a little further, around the base of her neck, and pulled her the tiniest bit closer to me. This made Rainbow blush, almost imperceptibly. “I suppose it would do me good.”

Rainbow beamed. “Alright, I’ll be back in no time.”

She closed and locked the door behind her.

My heart ached in her absence.

I rolled onto my other side and curled myself up. The blankets were all pushed off the end of the bed, no doubt from a fitful night of sleep by its previous occupant. I couldn’t remember if that was Rainbow or me.

There were two pillows on the bed, one under my head and another which seemed to be floating listlessly towards the center of the mattress. I remembered our night of fervent research on this room, the stillness which could only be broken up by endlessly rotating positions which just barely staved off the bedsores. I remembered laying on my stomach, the pillow in front of me, a newspaper from two months in the future open on it.

I grabbed the pillow and drew it close. All four of my legs felt around it, searching for safe ways to snake to its far end. When all of my hooves poked out the other side, I clamped down on the pillow with all my strength, which was probably barely strong enough to restrain a gerbil. I buried my face in it. It smelled like motel shampoo and cheap perfume.

A shower would be heavenly, motel shampoo or not. But I was afraid that, if I stood, I might collapse in a heap of broken unicorn right there. Might fall through the floor and into my unconscious mind. Might have to face dreams I didn’t want to see.

So I waited for Rainbow to come back. Waited for nourishment and strength to drag myself to the bathroom and scrub myself clean.

It occured to me that I was trying to solve a murder. That I really didn’t have time for this kind of nonsense. But Rainbow’s words echoed. You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself. Generosity, loyalty… we do the same dumb stuff. I listened.

It was not the first time somepony had told me so. It was a lesson I had supposedly learned many times. It’s okay to take time for yourself. Sometimes ponies ask for things they don’t really want. Sometimes generosity can be smothering. Sometimes you need to give to yourself.

Somehow, though, this was the lesson that never stuck. After a letter to Celestia, I would spend a few days visiting the spa, treating myself, spending more time alone, or even just being a little more critical of how I gave my time to others. And those days were good. But, eventually, I would fall right back into my old patterns. Giving and giving and giving, refusing to receive. Refusing to admit how broken and empty I felt.

“You’re dogshit at prioritizing yourself.” I replayed the echo over and over. My mind was such a good tape recorder these days, I barely had to try. The more I played it, the more familiar it sounded. Not the words. The voice.

I hadn’t ever thought about the voice. Words were words, and there were so many foreign ones buzzing about in my head.

But the softest ones. The most comforting ones.

“I’m waiting for you!” called out through time and space and eternity.

My eyes fluttered open. I hadn’t realized they had closed. “Rainbow…”

It was just then that my old friend kicked down the door of the motel room. She was holding two plastic shopping bags on each foreleg.

“I’m back!” she announced. “Told you I’d be quick!”

I smiled weakly and sat up a little.

Rainbow’s triumphant face softened to a gentle smile. She came to my bedside and started to put her bags down. “I, uh… I forgot to ask what you wanted. So I bought, like, everything.” She chuckled nervously.

The bags fell open as they hit the carpet. Paper-wrapped sandwiches, cartons of soup, blister-packed salads, bags of snacks (both salty and sweet). Beverages in bottles and cans rolled out, too, in all directions.

I laughed lightly. “Well, you certainly know how to spoil a mare.”

Her ears flattened against her head and she looked down at the bounty she had gathered. “Anything look good? ‘Cause I can go back if--”

“Rainbow.” I held up a hoof to stop her. “Darling, please relax. You’ve done your duty.”

She breathed a light sigh of satisfaction.

“This is going to sound a bit gluttonous,” I said, rising a bit further from my repose, “but I don’t think I’d have any trouble just now eating everything in these bags.”

She grinned now. Such a contagiously genuine smile. “What first?”

I scratched my chin and looked over the wide array of foods below me. Most things were packaged in such a way that it was difficult to tell just what was inside. I was about to reach down to sift through the pile myself-- but a better idea came to mind.

“Rainbow, darling, there is only one possible solution:” I straightened up as best I could, still feeling more than a little woozy. “We must picnic on this disgusting mattress.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Don’t gotta ask me twice!”

She bowed down, deftly gathered the most of the items in a single plastic bag, and scooped it up in her mouth. I levitated the rest in a cloud of magic and dumped them out in front of myself.

Rainbow leapt into the air and landed on the mattress across from me with enough force to send the lighter snack items flying. She plopped down in an awkward seated position, her wings relaxed at her sides, already pawing through her bounty for something equal parts delicious and nutritionally vacant.

To my surprise, she cracked open a container of hard-boiled eggs and popped one into her mouth. It filled the whole of her maw as she chewed, but she made an effort not to spray little yellow crumbs every which way.

I cocked my head. “Always full of surprises, aren’t you?”

Rainbow mirrored my motion of confusion. She muttered around her snack.

“Swallow, dear.”

She did. “Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean you’re sitting before a mountain of junk food, and I’ve never known you to be particularly fond of eggs.”

She scoffed. “Rares, I’m a Wonderbolt now. Spitfire really gets on my flank about my diet.”

“In what way?” I pressed.

Rainbow shrugged and took a bite of a second egg. “Too much sweets, not enough protein, too many calories, not enough calories. Y’know. Sports stuff.”

“Seems controlling.”

She shrugged again, took another bite. “I don’t really care. As long as I get to be a Wonderbolt, right?”

“I suppose.” My head was starting to hurt too much to pursue the topic any further.

Rainbow Dash, even in her incredibly rushed shopping trip, had managed to pick out some of my favorites. I quickly found a bottle of sweet iced tea and exactly the sandwich I had been yearning for: warm roasted veggies on a whole wheat roll.

I did my best to be ladylike, gently popping open my chosen beverage and taking a leisurely swig. The ice cubes may have helped in dulling the horrible tastes in my mouth, but the rush of tea and sugar swept it away almost completely in just one gulp. I couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

After that, all bets were off. It was the fastest, the most, the best I have ever eaten in my life, at least as far as I could recall.

“Damn, Rares.” Rainbow chuckled awkwardly. “I’ve never seen you eat so much.”

“That’s not polite in the least, Rainbow Dash,” I scolded around a hoof-full of potato chips. “A lady never eats too much or too little.”

“No! I’m, like… impressed!” She rubbed the back of her head. “I don’t think I could eat that much if I tried.”

“Well, I am a mare of many talents.” I smiled my best sweetest smile, knowing full-well there was an abundance of crumbs and smears on my snout. “If only one of my talents was not gaining a pound after a binge like this…”

I laughed. Rainbow laughed. For a moment, things were normal. I was upset after bad luck with a stallion, eating ice cream out of a tub, all the while draped delicately over a couch and still looking fabulous as can be. Rainbow was there to laugh and help me shrug it off. It was no big deal to her. She never cared for the interest of colts. Romance was a bit of a foreign concept to her, it seemed.

Then her laughter faded, replaced by a worn smile. She looked at me as one looks at an aging photo album, full of nostalgia and a strange sort of pain that I could almost understand.

“Damn, I miss you,” Rainbow murmured.

I grabbed a napkin and very quickly cleaned my muzzle. “I miss you, too.”

Rainbow’s cheeks burned for a moment, and she looked away.

“But I think we’ll have each other back soon.” Rainbow didn’t look up. “I mean I-- I hope we will. Don’t you think we will?”

Rainbow took a breath and looked back up at me. “I dunno, Rares. A lot of stuff’s changed. I don’t think things’ll be just like they were before we all left. I mean, I’ll still love you ‘n’ stuff…”

I blushed.

Rainbow’s stomach dropped visibly, her eyes widening and the color leaving her face. “I mean, like, ‘you’ as in-- like you and Twilight and… you know!” Her voice cracked and I suppressed a giggle.

“I know what you mean. I still love you, too.”

A smile danced at the corner of Rainbow’s mouth. “Yeah?”

“Of course.”

“Even after--”

“Always, dear.”

Rainbow was silent, just looked into my eyes for a moment. There was an odd sort of concentration in her face; a little knit of the eyebrows, a tiny flicker of her gaze across my face. It was as if she were trying to memorize me. After about a minute, she nodded to herself, and slowly pried her eyes away from mine.

“What makes you think it’ll be soon?” she asked, her voice low.

“Hm?”

“That we’ll have each other back, I mean.” She looked back up at me. “You said soon.”

I sighed. “Well, I certainly hope we’re closing in on an answer.”

Rainbow hesitated.

“For Moss,” I said. “I can’t speak to your own, erm, goals.”

She nodded. “Right…”

“Do you think you’re close?” I asked.

She scoffed. “Celestia, I wish I knew…” So wistful.

I didn’t know what to say, so I simply waited for the moment to pass. I could almost see the gears turning in Rainbow’s mind as differing emotions passed her face; a little chuckle, a shake of the head, a nibble of the lip.

She snapped out of her musings and looked back up at me. “What’s the next step with Moss?”

I blinked. “Oh. Right, yes.”

Rainbow blinked back at me. “So… what are we doing, exactly?”

I sighed. “We have some citizen’s records in here somewhere. We should look for a record of Blue Moon, try to figure out where she might be living. If she has Moss, that’s where she’ll be.”

“You think?”

My eyes scanned the room, taking in the disparate piles of papers and trying desperately to think of any other useful information they may hold. “I’m honestly not sure. But we have to start somewhere.”

“We’d better get started, then.”

She was right. My hunger was waning, and my head was feeling a little more in order. Some of the newspapers and magazines we had collected still littered the room, but it looked like around a third of them had disappeared. Room service was my first thought. But nopony had made the bed. It must have been something else. Probably something mysterious that I would never quite understand.

Even with papers missing, the sheer amount of information this room contained made my stomach turn over.

Rainbow slid off the bed and trotted across the room. She grabbed a random chunk of paper from the middle of a pile and pulled. Some newspapers, some magazines. Other things, too. She brought me the stack and went to fetch herself one.

The papers included all manner of points of interest. Stories about vanishings, old and new. Records which seemed to show expansion attempts quickly foiled. Vague nods to unmentionable happenings being readily ignored by the townsfolk going years back and years forward. As interesting as it all was, however, very little of it offered any help in finding Moss.

Rainbow Dash worked on the floor, her tail sometimes swishing in concentration, accompanied by an occasional rustling of paper. Otherwise, she was nearly completely still and silent.

Our work was sometimes interrupted by a disconnected question.

“Could Blue be going by a different name?”

“Perhaps. But how could we possibly guess her real name?”

Or

“Is there any chance Moss left on her own? Are there any trains out of here?”

“Maybe. I found a list of train delays a while ago, let me see if I can find again…”

Or sometimes

“We could be wrong.”

“Of course we could.”

And so it went, plugging along with little progress. No mention of the Dusk Guardians. No mention of Moss going missing. No mention of Blue Moon anywhere.

After a few hours of this, I crawled out of bed for a stretch. I had gotten so caught up in a forward-thinking, forward-moving, clear and helpful mind that I had neglected the soreness in my legs and sides.

Rainbow snorted. “What are you doing?”

I struck a pose. “Stretches, darling.”

“That doesn’t look any stretched I’ve ever done,” she said with more than a bit of skepticism.

“It’s called yoga, Rainbow, and it’s--” A shiver jolted up my spine as my back hoof grazed a stack of papers. I froze completely, letting the feeling run up and down the length of me, pulsing and throbbing and electric. A familiar buzzing suddenly filled my ears.

Rainbow jumped to her hooves. “Rares? What’s going on?”

I drew my hoof away from the papers, and the jolting and buzzing sensations ebbed. “I’m not sure.”

I turned around to look at the papers I had touched. A lot of boring things, really, and had been sorted accordingly-- requisition forms for lot renovation, requests for loans from larger cities in the area, historical city-planning maps, even simple letters government officials complaining about “the state of things.”

“I mean, are you hurt? You look--”

“I’m fine, dear. But I think…” The sentence died in my mind. I didn’t know what I thought.

Tentatively, I reached out a hoof and touched the top of the stack. The buzzing roared again in my ears.

I ran my hoof, slowly, down the stack of papers. The buzzing grew, grew, grew-- then died down again. My hoof trailed back up, playing hot-or-cold with the strange sensation until I finally landed on an unassuming, folded-up map. Once my hoof stopped on it, firmly, the buzzing stopped, too.

“Hm.”

Rainbow didn’t say anything, just shuffled her hooves nervously.

I tugged the paper out of the stack and unfurled it before us with a bright surge of magic.

“What is this?” Rainbow asked.

I squinted at it. “Well… I’m not quite sure.”

The paper was a light green, with squiggling, nested lines printed onto it. Each section between the lines changed in shade very slightly, the darkest part being smack in the top center.

“I think it’s a topographical map,” I said, hesitatingly.

“Then what’s all the drawings on it?” Rainbow asked.

She was right. The paper itself had been a printed topographical map of the area (which, in itself, was not especially interesting-- it mostly served to notate the relative position and size of the butte), but there were some light pencil marks which formed much neater shapes on top of it.

“It must be a planning map,” I said. “You see? There’s the diner.”

I pointed to a rectangular shape in the leftmost part of the map, labeled “O.D.D.”

“Oh yeah!” Rainbow leaned over to point to another shape in the upper right. “That’s the gas station!”

“And the motel,” I added, gesturing to the bottom right.

I squinted again, however, as did Rainbow as we examined a fourth shape. This shape was tucked up quite close to the butte, on its leftmost side. As far as I could remember, there wasn’t a building there at all.

“Then what the hell is--”

“Oh, Celestia…” My focus on the paper weakened and the map rustled in my grip. “That must be--”

“The shopping center.”

The paper began to shiver like a leaf, and I had to drop it right where I stood.

“Rarity?”

“That’s where she is.”

“Moss?” Rainbow asked. She brushed my side with her wing. “At the shopping center? She can’t be, she--”

“It was supposed a shopping center.”

I don’t know where that came from.

“Huh?” Rainbow make a little nervous whimper. “I-I don’t understand.”

I shook my head. “Rainbow, there were never any stores in there. It was just an idea. An idea that wasn’t ever supposed to happen.”

Rainbow was silent for a moment. “I don’t get it.”

GODDESS

“I’m afraid I don’t understand it, either.” I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping the buzzing would clear away. “But that’s where she is, Rainbow. The shopping center. The almost shopping center.”

The timelines, the facts, swirled in my head. I thought back to the syrupy paths on Rainbow’s pancakes, how I stood at the source, at the threshold. I could see everything, and it was all getting muddled up. Which facts were true? I knew today was Sunday--was it really Sunday?--but Sunday when? Sunday now? Sunday two years ago? Sunday eight years from now?

I put a hoof to my head. Little sparks of magical energy were spraying out of my horn in a display of pain and loss of control.

“Shit, Rares, are you--” Rainbow put a hoof on my side, and everything stopped.

I opened my eyes. So many papers. Some newspapers, some magazines. Other things, too. Official things. Hard-to-get things. Things which we certainly shouldn’t have.

“Where did we get all of these papers, anyway?” I asked. Even I was a little frightened by the sudden and sickly calm in my voice.

“Huh?”

“The papers,” I repeated. “Some of them are things we could have bought at the Kwik-Grab, but some are… are government papers.”

Rainbow’s eyes darted towards the floor. “Uh… yeah, I guess.”

“So where did we get them?”

“You don’t remember?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Should I?”

She shrugged. Her forelock fell over her eyes. “I dunno, Rares. There’s all kindsa stuff you don’t remember, right?”

“Where did we get the papers, Rainbow Dash?” I demanded, my teeth pressed together.

Rainbow huffed a big breath out through her nose. She flipped her mane back and looked right into my eyes. “Rarity, there are things I can’t tell you yet, and this--”

“Why do you have government papers?” I asked again. “Where did you get these?”

Rainbow tried to stand up tall against my interrogation, but behind the ever-present film in her eyes I could see it. A flicker of guilt. A flash of regret.

“You were in the shopping center when I found you.”

Rainbow swallowed. “Was I?”

I took a deep breath, and mustered all the calm I could. “I am going to ask you a question, and I don’t want you to even think about lying to me, Rainbow Dash.”

She set her jaw, but did not respond.

“You know something important that you aren’t telling me.” I said. “What is it?”

She stared at me. Her eyes, a piercing magenta, were faltering slightly. There was something there that wanted to tell me. And yet she remained silent.

I didn’t know what to do. She was like a perfect, obedient soldier. A Wonderbolt running drills.

“What is it?” I repeated.

Her gaze was stone, but the movement of her chest accelerated.

I took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and did my best to release it softly. I did this a few more times, hoping it would steady my voice. It only made everything happen more intensely; the silence elongated, my body shook harder and faster.

At last, I swallowed my rising anger. It was something I was rather good at by now.

“Fine,” I said. “If you won’t tell me, I’ll simply have to investigate it myself.”

I moved to the door.

Rainbow’s eyes went wide, and she dove to block the path between myself and the door. “Don’t, Rares. Just leave it.”

“Why?”

No answer.

“Then you leave me no choice.”

I opened the door. It was not the desert on the other side-- it was the shopping center. All green light and no stores in the storefronts. An idea. A plan that had never happened, had been halted for an unknown reason by an unknown decision.

The light invited me further, and I marched into the building.

“Now, where is it you usually stand?” I asked, gazing about the room. “You know, when you pop in on me. It’s always the same place, isn’t it?”

My eyes landed on the upper level, a spot right above the fountain. The desert sun, filtered through the glass roof, fell on this place quite beautifully. It had made Rainbow Dash look as an angel many times.

Rainbow grabbed my side. “Rares, please don’t--”

“I’ve never been up there, have I?” I plowed right through her protest and began to trot towards the stairs. “I’ll bet that was convenient for you.”

“It’s not like that, I swear!”

I whirled about to face her right where I stood. “How can I believe you?!”

Rainbow shrunk away from me.

I snorted lightly. “I have no reason to trust your word, Rainbow Dash. You’re clearly hiding things from me. If I hadn’t told you not to lie, would you have?”

Her eyes slid to the floor. She let go of me.

“As I thought.”

I began to climb the stairs. Rainbow watched me from below, watched me climb all the way to the top. Just as I was about to pass into the patch of light, however, she had a change of heart.

“Rarity, no!” She rocketed up from the ground level.

The light hit my eye, brighter and more powerful than i ever could have guessed. I reflexively curled away from it and closed my eyes.

Rainbow collided into my back.

But it wasn’t Rainbow.

The light had changed, even though I couldn’t see it. No longer natural and green-- no, this was fluorescent. Indoors.

Other things had changed, too. What had once been a blissfully silent space was now filled with noise. Rushing water. Clattering-- no, slamming metal. A low chatter in the background of it all. It smelled strange, too. Unfamiliar at this strength, and yet I couldn’t help but think I may have caught a whiff of it before.

“Nice job out there, squirt.”

The voice, too. Not Rainbow’s, not familiar so close. But there was something about it which struck a chord with me.

I kept my hoof to my head and moaned a little, although this didn’t quite feel like my choice.

The voice chuckled. “Yeah, you took a pretty good beating out there. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us.”

I still couldn’t bring myself to remove my head from my hooves.

A hoof clapped me on the shoulder, and the voice chuckled again. “You’re tough, kid. We’ll make a Wonderbolt out of you, yet.”

Author's Note

Exciting news for those worried about the possibility of another long hiatus:

Worry not