This is probably the worst-case scenario.

“But… you died.”

I swallow back my gorge and force a smile onto my face as a girl with mossy green hair turns to face me. Surprisingly, there’s more confusion on her face than anything else.

“I uh, yeah,” I say quietly. “Well, I got better.”

No matter how I wrack my brain, though, I can’t recall this girl’s face. She says we went to CHS together, and she knows my real name which definitely supports that statement, but if we did then…

“You don’t remember me, huh?” She says with a wan smile.

“I… no,” I reply, forcing a weak laugh. “Sorry… no, I don’t.”

“That’s okay, nobody does,” she says, still smiling. “I never really did anything, and I didn’t have any friends, no clubs or uhm, or anything like that.”

I wring my hands as I try to relax. This isn’t how I imagined I’d get caught having a heartbeat when I was supposed to be two years in the ground, although I can’t say it’s… necessarily bad.

Could be going worse.

“You don’t seem surprised,” I say after a moment. “That I’m not actually dead, I mean.”

She shrugs and turns away from me to lean against the rails and look down at the flow of the River Canter. It gives me time to appreciate that she’s pretty. Not beautiful, not precisely, but pretty in a very normal fashion that’s appealing specifically because it doesn’t stand out. She’s the kind of pretty that you can never grow numb to, I think.

“Sometimes you do what you have to,” she says softly. “Sometimes you just need to get away.”

I watch her as she stares down at the water. If I had to guess, I’d say we were the same age. Probably almost exactly, if we went to school together. She didn’t look young enough to still be in classes, and she definitely didn’t look older than me.

“Were we in the same year?” I ask.

“Mhm.”

“What’s your name?”

She looks up at me and away from the running river, and the moment her eyes settle on me a chill washes down my back. There’s something about her eyes that’s piercing. Despite the soft, oaky brown color, there’s something in the nature of her gaze that cuts right through me.

It only lasts a second though.

“Wallflower,” she says softly. “My name is Wallflower Blush.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl,” I say with a smile.

To my surprise, she really does blush, and her eyes widen in the first look of surprise she’s worn since I stepped out of the Fog next to her by accident.

My smile starts to fade a moment later as memories of last night slip back into my mind. Memories of shouts and arguments, and of a fight that got physical in the worst possible way.

What am I doing?

Flirting?

I’m a monster. Moreover, I’m a monster with a girlfriend. I mean, yeah, things aren’t exactly going swimmingly between Tempest and me but that’s on me not her! She’s been trying to talk to me, trying to connect, and I just keep pushing her away, and now here I am standing on a bridge next to a girl I’ve known for all of ten minutes, and I’m flirting?

Written's Quill, I am such an asshole.

“Sorry,” I say, taking a step back. “That was uh… kinda lame, sorry.”

Wallflower shakes her head, then gives me a faint smile back.

“No uhm, it’s okay, I’m just…” she trails off with a silent shrug.

“You’re what?”

Her expression fades to something almost forcefully neutral as she turns back to the railing and the river and wraps her arms around herself. Her grip tightens over her forearms as she swallows visibly, and she shakes her head again.

“I’m not.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Not what?”

“Pretty,” she replies quietly. “I’m ugly. Everything in this world is ugly.”

“Harsh,” I say with a chuckle. “I mean, I think I’m pretty good looking, but I’m kind of a vain bitch so take that for what it’s worth.”

A cute snort escapes Wallflower as she turns to look at me, a confused smile back on her face, and against my better judgment I find myself returning the smile.

“So uhm, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Why did you come back?”

A damn good question. I turn away and lean my back against the railing to look up at the cloudy sky as I consider my answer. Reasonably speaking, I could have gone anywhere after I freed Timber and myself from the Old Stain’s dimension. I didn’t have to stick around to try and solve this glorified murder mystery.

“I have friends,” I say after a moment. “People I care about, and who care about me, I guess, who are still here.”

“Must be nice.”

I turn to look over at her. She’s still leaning against the rail and staring down at the water. She doesn’t look angry or sad or upset. Wallflower, if anything, looks resigned. The expression bothers me more than it probably should. She’s cute, but I’m still taken, and even with that aside—even if Tempest and I weren’t an item—she’s human. According to Redheart and Aria, I may look the part but it’s all superficial.

Still, it’s strangely comfortable being around her. The buzzing in the back of my head is quiet for once. Everything about Wallflower is so deeply unobtrusive and inoffensive that it’s hard to focus on her, which is probably why I missed her when I cut through the Wall to take a breath of fresh air. Maybe that same nature makes her easier to be around than others

“Still no friends, then?” I ask, and she shakes her head.

Straightening out, I link my fingers and stretch my arms over my head, sighing aloud as I pop my shoulders and elbows, then relax and hold out a hand.

“Want one?”

Wallflower stares at me like I’ve grown a second head, her gaze alternating between my face and my outstretched hand. I wonder how much of her life must have been pain for even this simple of a gesture to provoke suspicion. It’s a shame because she seems like a nice person. But then again, nobody really gets what they deserve in this world; good, bad, nice, mean, it never seems to matter.

She’s right.

It’s an ugly world.

Slowly, Wallflower reaches out and meets me. Her hand is small and warm in mine, and I grip it firmly.

“You’re nothing like I thought you’d be,” Wallflower says as she shakes my hand.

“I live to surprise,” I say, chuckling.

Before I say anything more, my phone rings. I frown as I let go of Wallflower’s hand a little reluctantly, and pluck my cell from my pocket.

Aria’s name is up on the Caller ID, and I grimace. I can’t avoid them forever I guess, and I’m sure she’s heard about the fiasco over at the apartment by now. Probably she’s going to chew me out and then make me go apologise to Tempest which, frankly, is what I should already be doing.

“Sorry,” I say as I tap the Accept button.

//Finally! There you are!// Aria sounds pissed, but that’s not new.

“Yeah, I know, I know, I’m coming back, I just needed some space,” I say quietly as I turn away from Wallflower.

//Not yet you’re not,// Aria says tersely. //You need to get to the morgue of Canterlot General ASAP, we’ve got another Narc kill.//

“Great.” I hang my head and cuss softly under my breath. Here I am feeling sorry for myself and there are still things out there murdering people. “We don’t know if they’re—” I cut myself off as I glance back over my shoulder at Wallflower “—...y’know, one of the real ones.”

//And we don't know that they're not, besides, this one is a much bigger deal.//

“Why?”

Aria’s sigh ripples static over the line.

//Because the vic is a cop, Red.//

Shit.

That’s bad on a variety of fronts. A bunch of dead pushers and dealers is one thing, but a dead cop is going to put every single precinct on high alert like nothing else. Not only that, but if the Narc is keeping to his MO, and right now there’s no reason to assume he’s not, then that means the dead cop was dealing, or at least dipping a toe into a pool he should’ve been staying well away from.

Things are going to get loud.

“I’m on my way.”

//Stay safe, Red. Love you.//

“Yeah, you too,” I say quietly before hanging up and turning back to Wallflower.

“Sorry, duty calls,” I say gesturing with my phone. “But… you wanna hang out sometime?”

Wallflower smiles faintly and nods.

“I’m here a lot,” she says. “I like it here.”

“Okay, well,” I look around at the bridge. I can’t say why but this place is surprisingly comfortable, “maybe tomorrow night?”

“Sure.”

I smile at her. In my vainer moments, when I’m Sunset Shimmer and not the Nightmare, I like to think that my smile is my best feature. It’s the smile of a con about to pull the biggest scam of all. It’s a smile that doesn’t give half a damn what anyone thinks.

Wallflower’s cheeks color as I reach out suddenly and give her button nose a small poke.

“Tomorrow night,” I repeat. “See you then, Pretty Girl.”

I put my back to her and start walking, and as I do I breathe deep of the Dreamtime air and draw the Fog in closer. It’s dark, and half the lights don’t work, so I walk and walk til I’m out of sight, then I let the Fog swallow me whole as I unsheathe the blades in my fingers and cut my way out of the false skin of Sunset Shimmer, and a moment later Canterlot City has one more Nightmare.

The Dreamtime of Canterlot General is a buzzing hive of activity. No matter the hour, there are always minds sleeping to the toneless hum of anesthesia and filling the Fog with sludgy thoughts. Beyond that, there are the exhausted workers, which are almost as good. Those burnt-out nurses and doctors on their second or third twelve-hour shift, and orderlies who haven’t slept all day; their minds fill the Dreamtime with starbursts of slumber making it hard to focus.

All it would take is the smallest effort of will to put half the hospital to sleep.

That wouldn’t be particularly helpful, though, so I ignore them as best as I can and make my way invisibly into the lower levels.

On the second sublevel of Canterlot General Hospital is the morgue. It’s the largest one in the city but by no means the only one. It is, however, the one contracted for use by public services throughout the city, meaning that if a public servant comes down with a bad case of deceased, then they pretty much always end up here.

I descend the steps toward the morgue, weaving between the sparse night crew until I reach the t-section where the security station vets anyone going in or out. I pass the single rent-a-cop who, I note with a faint grin, is sleeping on duty.

Flicking my fingers against one another, I send a rasp of blades into his mind and he jerks awake from the throes of a sudden, sharp spike of adrenaline carried on the rasp of a euphoric chuckle.

I love being me.

Down the hall, I can feel the familiar mind of Aria and, surprisingly, my other sisters. That must have taken some serious doing to get her down here.

The closed door is no barrier to me, nothing not reinforced by the Fog can hedge me out and even that would take some work. I pass through it, drawn to the minds of my loved ones, and step into the room labeled Morgue Exam Room One.

Adagio stiffens slightly as I pass into the room, and turns her head toward the door. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her out of her Huntress aspect, but she looks good. She looks settled and calm, happy even. Timber treats her well, I know, and she gets along famously with his sister Gloria.

I know when she arrived at their little campground it was on the verge of going under, but a few discreet investments put paid to that, not only securing the site’s future but providing a conveniently distant homestead far away from the temptation of indulging her Killer instincts.

“Little sister," she murmurs.

Aria looks up at her sister with a raised eyebrow, then looks around.

“Is she finally here?”

“She’s here.”

The third voice is thin and reedy and issues from the frail figure occupying a wheelchair beside Aria's seat. I don’t visit my youngest ‘sister’ nearly as much as I ought to but, in my defense, Sonata Dusk is so rarely awake.

I reach out and plunge my finger blades into the skin of reality and wrench downward, cutting away at the Wall of Sleep and briefly joining the Dreamtime and the Real as I pass between the two.

Aria and Adagio both bristle the moment I fade into existence. My body, my real body, is unsettling to anyone rational and, against all odds all three of my sisters are pretty rational, even Sonata.

I’m the weird one.

“Evening, ladies,” I say with a grin that bares my full inhuman dentition.

The only one who doesn’t tense reflexively is Sonata, who smiles weakly at me.

“Hey Sunny,” she says, her voice a breathless whisper. “Long time no see.”

I can’t help but smile back at Sonata. Something about her takes the hate out of me, and although it takes a feat of will, I force the Nightmare back into the recesses of my soul. The long, ragged black coat recedes back to a studded leather jacket as my blades fold back into my fingers, and my skin softens from squamous red to a fair shade of amber.

“Hey, Red,” Aria says as she gets up from her seat and opens her arms. “C’mere.”

Sighing quietly, I move in and take the offered hug. Aria wraps her arms around me, and a moment later Adagio is there too, pulling me close and nestling against my hair.

“Are you alright, dear?” Adagio asks gently.

She’s taller now, a reflection of her Huntress aspect, but also because there’s more meat on her. She’s taken up woodworking out on the borders of the Everfree in her spare time.

To keep herself busy, she says.

“Not really,” I reply. “But that’s not why we’re here.” I draw back and share a smile with the two Sirens. “But it is really good to see you—” I look down at Sonata who’s still smiling up at me—“all of you.”

I let go of Aria and Adagio and turn to Sonata to kneel down to her and pull her gently into my arms. She’s so thin and so frail. It feels like I’m hugging someone’s ninety-year-old grandmother, although in fairness Sonata is orders of magnitude older than that.

“Hey, ‘Nata,” I say into the wan strands of her arctic blue hair. “I’ve missed you a lot.”

“Missed you too, Sunny,” Sonata says softly. “Things have been getting rough, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, pulling away and brushing some hair from Sonata’s weary eyes as I do. “But that’s no excuse. I should be up there on MedSurg visiting a little more often.”

Aria and Adagio’s hands come to rest on either of my shoulders and, for a moment, I just close my eyes and let myself soak in the affection from the three of them. My one-time enemies, my once-more allies.

My beloved sisters.

“Oh, before I forget,” Aria mutters as she digs into her pockets and pulls out the few pieces of my disguise I can’t bring with me through the Dream.

A small travel makeup kit and a set of cosmetic lenses in their container are pressed into my hands and I step over to the mirror closest to me to start putting on my face.

“So uh, not that it’s not great to see you, ‘Nata,” I say as I poke myself in the eyeball, “but—ow—what are you doing out of bed?”

“Something broke through the Wall of Sleep from the dark place…” Sonata replies weakly.

I freeze in the process of applying my foundation.

“What?”

The word comes out an oath.

“I don’t know when it happened,” Sonata says, “time is funny in the high spaces, but I felt it when the Wall buckled. The Entity forced one of his children through, I think.”

Adagio shakes her head, sending her wild orange poof dancing.

“That’s next to impossible, sister… I doubt any of them could even survive the transition between there—” Adagio gestures broadly outward—“and here! There’s barely anything of the Real left in them!”

“Unless they’re newborn,” Aria says quietly.

I put on the last layer of foundation, changing my face enough to make myself passably unrecognisable as ‘Sunset Shimmer’, and Aria holds out a white coat with a name tag attached that I swap for my black leather.

Scarlet Dream, on duty.

“A newborn Killer could probably survive,” I confirm. “Us four are freaks of nature… you three are older than dirt and have enough native magic to give you a foothold in both worlds, and I cheated like fuck when the Old Stain made me in the first place, so we’re holding together, but one of my older siblings would fall into the Fog the moment they stepped into the Real.”

A fresh-from-the-grave Killer might be able to swing it though, like Aria said. One who was new enough… young enough… and strong enough.

They’d need a lot of hate in them for that though.

A lot of bad memories.

“Okay, that’s…” I start, then trail off as a new train of thought docks in my mental station. “That… may not be such a bad thing.”

All three of my sisters turn to look incredulously in my direction.

“Now hear me out!” I say, holding up a hand. “If the Old Stain sent someone here after this long, it’s probably not for us, okay? If he was that set on taking us out then he’d have gone after you three way before he took a metaphysical shiv to the kidneys.”

“Which means he’s after the Thief,” Aria fills in.

“Yahtzee.” I grin as I look between my sisters, all of whom look to be different levels of worried.

“This is getting bad, Sunnybuns,” Sonata says softly. “The Wall is getting all torn up by the Fog… the Killers… too much of what belongs over there is over here.”

I sigh quietly and nod.

“I know,” I say, kneeling again and putting a hand over Sonata’s slender fingers. “But maybe this time we can make it go wrong in our favor.”

“Only you would be that brazen, Shimmer,” Adagio says dryly.

“Regardless!” Aria says, stepping between us. “We’re here for a reason, and that reason is that this poor bastard—” she gestures at a closed mortuary cabinet— “got got by the Narc, and it’s the freshest thing we’ve had off that toolbag all year since most of his victims are found after several hours of decay spent pickling in a cocktail of street drugs.”

“Hear, hear,” I say flatly as I step past her, grip the handle of the cabinet, and roll out of the slab.

“Everyone,” Aria says, turning to the corpse, “meet the late Detective Sterling Standard of the Canterlot Ninth Precinct, Homicide Division.”

I whistle softly at the damage.

He might’ve been a dirty cop, but whoever did this probably sent him to the Summerlands because they definitely beat the devil out of him. I pull on a pair of plastic gloves and start looking around the body.

“Fractured skull… shattered clavicle…” I say as I look over the damage. “Broken arms, broken jaw… wow, somebody had a serious grudge.”

“All standard Narc MO, though,” Aria says as she gloves up and digs in. “Including the pièce de résistance… this bad boy.”

She brushes away puts two fingers to the skin of the portly corpse’s chest and pulls, revealing a track mark right over the man’s heart.

“Right… Sonata?” I look pointedly at my younger sister.

Aria takes a grip on the handles of Sonata’s and wheels her close to the table where the body which once owned the name Sterling Standard lay. Even the smallest movement costs her, but Sonata weathers the strain as she raises an arm and lays a hand over the older man’s chest where the puncture mark pierced his flesh.

Sonata Dusk takes a deep breath in, and when she lets it out the air releases in a choked and rattling stridor. Her eyes open to reveal dead white cataracts as the shadow of a bruise forms in a ring around her neck. Her fingers curl into an arthritic claw as she moves her hand up Sterling’s body, over the ribs to the throat, and up until her palm is hovering just over his mouth.

“This part always squicks me out,” Aria mumbles.

“Didn’t you once get run through with a chainsaw?” I ask, earning a shrug from her.

Adagio swats us both gently over the head.

“Shut up you two.”

Sterling Standard twitches briefly, then jerks, then his lips part and…

…and nothing.

“Uh… seconds try’s the charm?” I ask, looking to Sonata.

She comes out of her trance slowly, and as she does the bruise on her neck fades, and her breathing takes on a stronger, healthier quality.

Well, healthy for Sonata, anyway.

“It’s gone,” she says quietly. “There’s not enough left.”

“Not enough what?” I ask, looking down at the body.

“Memory… soul… Fog…” Sonata replies as she stares at her hand in disbelief. “It’s already gone. Someone took it.”

“How is that possible?!” Adagio stands and storms between us to bend over the body. “Move!”

I scramble out of the way and Aria pulls Sonata back at the same time as Adagio puts a hand to her waist, tightens her grip, and where there had been nothing a moment ago, Adagio is now pulling a half-mask in the shape of a hare’s face free from a set of old leather straps that had been securing it to her belt, and fitting it over her face.

“Hey! Is that safe?!” I say sharply, looking around. “Where’s the coroner?!”

“Eighth row, third from the bottom,” Aria says, jerking a thumb towards the cabinets, “we’re gonna need you to squidge up his memories a bit, by the way, but I dosed him with Propofol so he’ll be out for a while.”

“Shut up,” Adagio hisses.

Her voice comes out taxed and raw, with an odd hiccup between the words, and a moment later she gives in and a soft, strange lullaby begins spilling from between her lips as she leans close to the body and takes a long, heavy breath.

“Stainless steel and old brick mortar,” she says as she breathes out between tones of her song, then takes another deep breath. “Something else… something… gold.”

“Like the metal?” I ask.

“A liquid,” Adagio clarifies as she straightens and rips the mask from her face, and the lullaby abruptly cuts off. “But the smell is… gold, and viscous, I can’t really describe it any better, dear, I’m sorry.”

“A suspension, maybe,” Aria says. “What if what you’re smelling is a way to suspend and capture the Fog in a physical form?”

“Is that possible?” I look over Adagio and Aria, then down to Sonata who looks thoughtful…

Then nods.

The only person I know who’s able to capture the Fog in anything like physical form is Sonata Dusk. She can capture Fog in the form of breath. Death rattles, final breaths, call it what you will, but she can capture it with her powers and use them for different things.

But we also found out that she can also learn from them.

The Fog that she takes out of people is something fundamental to them and, I suspect, that she’s able to pull it out of the living too, not just the recently dead, but for obvious reasons, I’d never ask her to test that theory. We’d only managed to pull the breath from a handful of the Legion’s kills, mostly because they were usually loud and sloppy, the main challenge had only ever been finding ones whose lungs were still intact.

None of the memories had ended up being useful, they’d only ever been flashes of insensate violence that Sonata couldn’t parse anything out of, but that was secondary to a far more important purpose than information gathering.

The Fog kept Sonata alive.

“Well, this tells us one thing at least,” I say grimly.

Adagio swears viciously as she turns and leans against the table while Aria settles Sonata near a small table.

“Yeah,” Aria says. “The Narc is Fogborn too… so that’s three for Legion, then the Ogre of the East, and the Narc, plus whatever the fuck the Entity spat out, plus that handler—”

“—the gunslinger,” I say—

“—yeah, that guy,” Aria continues, “which means we are shit out of luck, ladies.”

“Except we aren’t.”

All three of them look up at me when I say that, and I smile at them. It’s my best feature after all.

“Other than the slinger and the Legion, I don’t think any of these goons are on the same side,” I say. “The Ogre—Oni—whatever it is, took the Legion treading on its turf personally. If they hadn’t cheesed it when they did, that thing would have beat them into paste.”

The Oni didn’t even hesitate. One moment the psychotic little chimp that had dropped on me from the roof above the alley had been getting ready to introduce my insides to my outsides, and the next they were getting a brief and violent in-flight chiropractic appointment.

“The gunslinger shot the Oni to protect the Legion,” I say, mentally listing off my options, “and if the Narc was a Killer too, they don’t seem to give two shits about whatever Legion and company are up to, meaning they’re unrelated to the Thief since we’re pretty sure the Legion is an experiment.”

“Are we really sure about that?” Aria asks blithely.

“Less than I was,” I admit, “but the logic is sound. The Legion really strikes me as a work in progress, like someone testing their limits, and that sounds like our Thief.”

“Fair.” Aria waves a hand for me to continue.

I nod and start to pace as I try and organise my thoughts.

The Legion and the gunslinger belong to the Thief, that has to be the case, which makes the Oni a rogue agent? An accident maybe? Maybe. Then there’s the Narc who’s apparently pulling the Fog out of people, plus a new unknown… a direct agent of the Old Stain himself.

“An operator,” I mutter.

“What was that?” Adagio looks over at me with narrowed eyes.

“An operator behind enemy lines,” I say, looking back up at my sisters. It’s a massive leap of logic, but it is logic, and the thought process is sound. “The Narc isn’t just a Killer, they’re a Harvester.”

Aria groans as she slumps into her chair and buries her face in her hands.

“They’re harvesting Fog for the Entity,” she says through her fingers. “The suspension keeps it stable without the ritual hooks, and I’d bet the Entity planted them here early on to start recovering Fog to replace what you stole.”

“And now the Old Stain is coming to collect,” I say. “And probably try to bump the Thief off at the same time to get back what they stole. Two birds with one shiv.”

Silence descends over the room as we all sit and soak in the enormity of the connections that we’d just spun together. A lot of it was conjecture, but the hard truth is that we didn’t have a lot of other possible conclusions. Unless everyone involved is actually just acting completely randomly and in an unrelated manner, then this was the most like option.

“Then it’s official,” Adagio says grimly. “We’re not just sussing out murderers anymore, sisters.”

“No,” Sonata says in her creaky, gentle voice. “We aren’t.”

She looks up at the three of us with pain in her eyes.

“We, and all of Canterlot, are caught in the middle of a war.”

Author's Note

Welcome home, such as it is.

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