Three days.

It takes us three days to figure out one of the things we’d been missing. I’m not even one hundred percent certain I know the real meaning of what we found, beyond the fact that it bodes very badly for us.

Of the twenty-three reports out of Canterlot General, eight of them belong to the Legion counting the two in the Canal.

“Eight kills, no hook wounds, though,” I mutter as I pore over the files. “All of them are pretty much the same… deep, ragged wounds from a variety of cutting implements, some probably hand-fashioned, others not.”

Aria nods as she flips open one of the Ogre’s kills and grimaces.

It must be bad if even Aria flinches.

There’s a reason those particular killings gained traction in the media. Despite the fact that the victims of the Ogre have all been gangbanger garbage with rap sheets long enough to mummify them, the way they’ve been taken out isn’t something I’d necessarily wish on anyone.

Savagely beaten to death.

The sheer amount of blunt force trauma inflicted on them rendered most of them impossible to identify by anything but their teeth, and sometimes not even then.

“Mm, gross,” Redheart says, peeking over Aria’s shoulder. “That’s the Ogre’s work, right? I’ve seen the reports… not that I’m necessarily complaining.”

The Director had been kind enough to let us work in her apartment. It was roomier than the one I share with Tempest, Sour, and Starlight, and let us sprawl out our little web of conspiracy theories a little more evenly.

“Tempest was a banger too,” Aria says pointedly, and it’s my turn to grimace.

“She’s different,” I say quietly. “Even she knew it.”

Aria shakes her head and keeps flipping through the papers.

“So,” I continue. “Let’s assume that there are just three of the Legion for now, and each one has their own tool since Killers tend to stick to their favorites.”

“Fair,” Aria allows.

We divvy up the Legion’s reports and start sifting through them. It takes hours but we finally put together enough of a picture that we can confirm our suspicions within reason. There are probably only three, is what it comes out to. The morgue reports noted the various cutting tools and police investigation assumed that the use of those different weapons had some kind of ritual value to the Legion.

Probably that was out of a combination of the not wanting to think about having a small posse of murder-hobos, and because there was no evidence of there being more than one ‘Legion’ killer in spite of the name.

But there are only three notably different implements, after a fashion.

One of them uses blades, like hunting knives or skinning knives. One of them uses hand-made weapons that are as crude as they are deadly. One of them uses repurposed tools, things you might find in a high school shop class.

They don’t always use the same weapons but they still use the same categories, so it’s understandable that the investigators never caught on to the difference. It’s a habit that all Fogborn Killers have. The Wraith has a motley collection of scythes, and even Adagio had a few different axes.

“Well, it could be worse,” I say as I close up the last Legion file.

“Three is worse than one,” Aria counters.

“Better than five.”

Aria frowns as she leans back in her chair and moves a pile of reports from the Ogre killings back in front of her.

“We don’t know that the Ogre isn’t Fogborn.” She taps the reports pointedly. “We don’t even know if the ten deaths on file for the Ogre are all of them! It’s the East End! No one gives a shit about that place!”

“I used to live there, Ari’, I’m aware,” I reply flatly.

“Fair.”

“Besides, the ‘Ogre’ sounds more like some cop went off his nut and decided to go Punisher on some of the gangs,” I say, waving it off. “Seriously, they were beaten to death with crowbars and baseball bats.”

“And the Narc?” Aria asks quietly.

I blow out a quiet sigh. That was the bigger question. The Narc was a weird one, no doubt. Most serial killers have a preferred hunting ground and the Narc was no different. They hit the club scene hard. Pushers, dealers, anyone connected to the drug scene whether it was the hard stuff or just some molly, was a potential target.

Five kills total; three club pushers, one street dealer, and one higher-up supplier, and they were all found dead in places they probably shouldn’t have been. In locked rooms, back alleys that were nowhere near the last place they were seen… hell, the street dealer was killed on the crapper. All of them were beaten bloody which almost made the cops think it was the Ogre’s work at first, but the weird part was that they all had the same unique wound: a puncture from some kind of needle plunged into their heart. Redheart and Aria identified it as definitely a syringe of some kind, but no one can tell what was extracted.

Blood, maybe.

Some kind of trophy?

That’s what the cops think, but I’m not so sanguine about that. I think they might be pulling something else out.

“Of the three, we know the Legion is Fogborn now,” I say. “And the Narc is the next highest possibility.

“Whoever they are has a grudge,” Redheart says softly.

“Every Killer does if you look close enough,” I reply dryly. “Even human ones.”

“The question,” Aria says, leaning forward, “is whether or not we’re dealing with a capital ‘K’ Killer, or some pissed off vigilante.”

“I know which one I’d rather it be,” I say, earning a chorus of agreement.

None of us wanted this. When I brought everyone out of the Trials I thought that would be the end of it. The Entity stays in its lane, my friends stay in theirs, and everything goes back to a semblance of normalcy.

Except that’s not what happened. Even assuming the Thief was making things worse, I’m pretty sure everything happening here is ultimately my fault. No one had ever, to my knowledge, escaped the Entity’s clutches before. Certainly, no Killer had ever gone rogue, much less roped multiple other Killers into their mutiny. For all I know, all rescuing my friends did was let the Fog into the real world for good.

“Hey, Red, look at this…” Aria says, her voice taking on a suspicious tone that I don’t like at all.

“What?” I lean over to look at a pair of pictures Aria is holding up, while Redheart looms in between us to examine them too. “What am I looking for?”

“This wound, here,” Aria says, pointing to deep ragged punctures in the backs of two different victims.

I squint at them, trying to get a feel for what kind of blade could make that wound, but nothing comes to mind.

“It’s too wide for a blade,” Redheart says my thoughts out loud. “Too deep, too.”

An unpleasant knot snarls up in my stomach.

“Hand me that file,” I say, pointing to one of the ones she’d taken one of the pictures from.

Aria passes it over to me and I start flipping through the pictures, ignoring the bodies that we’d been focusing on and looking at the scene itself. Two died here; one male, one female. Both in their mid-twenties. The guy died first, and badly… there was more of his blood on the ground than in his body when the investigators got there.

The woman died quicker, but…

“Look.” I point to a section of the scene I hadn’t paid any attention to. It was right at the heels of the dead woman’s boots. “Scrape marks.”

“She tried to run,” Aria says quietly. “But they caught her and dragged her back, right?”

“Why would they?!” I snap. “The one I saw just ran down that jogger like a jackal and bore her to the ground. Why drag her back? Why not chase her down, kill her there, and then go?”

All three of us stare at the unsettling drag marks for a long moment as we let the idea simmer. I like absolutely nothing about what those marks suggest, but I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to because if I do, then it gets a lot more real and we’re in a lot more trouble.

“You said the Thief can’t control them, and they’re like wild animals, right?” Redheart asks softly.

“Yeah, at least the one I saw was,” I reply cautiously. “Why?”

Redheart reaches between us and turns the picture of the crime scene so she can see it more clearly, and grimaces.

“So what if they have a handler?” Redheart continues, her mouth hardening to a flat, strained line. “Another, more stable Killer that can travel the Fog to keep an eye on them… to make sure they don’t get out of hand, and to keep any of their kills from escaping in case they get tunnel vision.”

Aria and I both lean back in our chairs and stare at the files for a long moment before Aria sums up what all three of us are thinking as succinctly as possible.

“Fuck.”

Things just got a lot more complicated.

Tempest is gone when I get home.

She’s probably working, but I can never remember her shifts anymore. She picks up extra ones on and off and lately she’s been spending more and more of her time out of the apartment. I can feel us drifting apart, which seems so absurd considering the lengths I went to save her and how strong that bond felt.

Now, though... things are different. They feel different. We aren't fighting for our lives every second of every day anymore. We aren't stuck in a constant cycle of sleep, survive, repeat, wondering if the next time we get put on a hook and sent up to the Old Stain will be our last.

A note on the table tells me that Sour Sweet and Starlight are on a date, so at least someone in this damn city is having a good time tonight. Briefly, I consider calling them and telling them what we learned but there’s no real rush. It’s not like Canterlot is going to get less murder-y if I let them have this one night to be happy before ruining their day tomorrow.

Yeah, fuck it, I’ll just tell them tomorrow.

I pass the kitchen. I’m not hungry. I rarely ever am, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s more of my Killer biology. I still eat, but… I wonder sometimes if I even have to anymore. I highly doubt the Trapper packs a sack lunch every day.

Instead, I head to mine and Tempest’s room, dress down to my skivvies, and slip into bed.

The ease of practice steadies my breathing. In and out. In and out… I count down through the Enumerations of Dusk, stepping deeper and deeper into the soft, gray depths of the Dreamtime. I let the Fog curl around me, drawing me slowly out of my body, as I count down and down and down to the tune of a lullaby.

“One, two, Sunny’s coming for you~”

I cut my way out of the false skin of my waking disguise, slicing through the cheap flesh and peeling myself out of the confines of Sunset Shimmer, and draw a long, deep breath of Fog into my real lungs.

The Nightmare is awake and restless.

Really, I just need a break. I need to clear my head and clearing my head means taking a walk in my ‘real’ skin, something that I can’t help but wonder if Tempest is starting to get suspicious about. Maybe that’s why she’s putting distance between us… she knows I’m hiding something from her, but doesn’t know how to get it out of me.

It’s been this way ever since I got back.

Partially it’s because I think she knows that I don’t really sleep. I can’t sleep. Not anymore… not since I got back from the Entity’s Trials. I still get tired, but I don’t ever sleep. I’ve spoken to Adagio and Sonata about it a few times and apparently they can sleep just fine. As near as any of us can figure, the no-sleep problem is a ‘me’ thing.

It probably has something to do with my power. Sleeping is tied to my Oneiromancy, obviously, so maybe it’s just my nature now. If only I didn’t still get tired, that would really be nice. Then the no sleeping would actually be a benefit but hey, we can’t have that.

That would be too convenient.

Now, when I sleep, it’s like the half-rest I used to get when I was at the campfire between Trials. A kind of drifting malaise that makes time go faster and leaves me feeling rested but not really… refreshed.

I only get that when I use my power.

So I reach out for the distant lights of downtown Canterlot, then up towards the roof of Canterlot General, and dig my claws into the folds of space.

A sensation of weightlessness always accompanies my movement through the dream, especially when I go longer distances. I let myself become insubstantial, and then, almost like a liquid, I bleed through the skin of the Dreamtime and out where I was aiming for.

The brisk night air of Canterlot is faint here in the city’s dreaming reflection, but it’s still cold. Canterlot is a cold city, after all. I walk to the edge of the roof and sit down, crossing one leg over the other, and stare out over the city. The cold barely touches my fever-hot skin

Canterlot really is a beautiful city at night. From a distance it’s like a cavern filled with natural rock formations that are studded with jewels. The dreams are the best part though. I can feel them all… every mind across the span of the city that’s wrapped in slumber is within my grasp. It would be so easy to slip in and out of those dreams, haunt them… hunt them.

To be what I was meant to be.

“Why are you such a bastard, you Old Stain?” I mutter as I flop onto my back and stare up at the twisting gray sky.

I raise both of my hands above my head and admire how the dim light reflects off of my claws. I love my claws. They’re probably my favorite part of me. I’ve always been vain, it’s a personal foible, but that vanity doesn’t seem to be displeased by my ‘Killer’ appearance. Despite not being in any way attractive, I still… I like it.

I like how I look.

Maybe I just like looking terrifying.

Terrifying things are a lot less likely to be hunted. Killers don’t get hunted, we are the hunters.

A sigh escapes me as I sit up, then get to my feet and stare out towards the west where the line of the city terminates into rolling hills.

Another thing that’s been on my mind a lot lately, which I’ve studiously not mentioned to the others, is the slender string of topaz light I keep seeing. It’s been there ever since Applejack left the sleep clinic. It's infinitely faint and incredibly weak, but it’s definitely there. I think it’s always been there, but I just can’t ignore it now and, even worse, it’s not the only one.

The others are there too if I look for them.

Strings of light. Strands of energy in shades of sapphire, rose, opal, citrine, and topaz stretching out into the city. If I follow one of those strands, I know exactly what I’ll find at the end of it. Or rather, who.

I wrap my arms around myself as I stare out over the skyline.

Not even Harmony can let me go.

Why can’t everyone just move on? Why can’t they just accept that I’m gone and fuck off? I’m dead. End of story. Maybe I deserved to die and maybe I didn’t, but whatever the case, I’m a priest of the Entity now, no matter how I try to fool myself.

I will always be a Killer. I will always be this way.

A monster.

And speaking of monsters...

"Please don't let it be them," I whisper, closing my eyes.

The Legion is three. All of similar build and with a close bond. True, Canterlot is one of the populous cities in the nation. It could be any group of people who were caught out by the Thief and then modified, but my gut feeling was so much worse than that. If it is them, it's going to break Tempest's heart. She did so much to rescue them and to have things end like this is just too cruel.

Even if I hate them.

My dark musings are cut short as something ripples through the air of the Dreamtime, and I frown as I reach out for it. It’s gone now but something definitely disturbed the fabric of space for a split-second.

“What the—” I extend my arm, close my eyes, and focus.

I don’t know who the Thief is, but in the end that’s all they are… a Thief. They aren’t the rightful successor to the power of the Fog, they are not a son or daughter of the Entity, and they’ll never understand it quite like a true Fogborn.

All of that means that they probably have no idea that I can feel that Fog they just conjured fading away.

Written’s Quill that’s quick. Even considering my nature, if I hadn’t been out here and paying attention I would have missed it entirely. Whoever stole the Entity’s power might be a thief but they’re no slouch, that’s for sure.

That was… what? A five- or six-second window?

A handful of seconds between conjuring and fading. That’s a damn good level of efficiency for a practised magi, to say nothing of a novice human.

“Maybe I’m just getting lucky.” A grin stretches across my lips, exposing sharp, jagged teeth. “Let’s see who’s picking at the skin of my city.”

I stand and take a deep breath of the icy, Canterlot winds before spreading my arms, tipping forward, and dropping straight down from the top of the hospital.

The wind roars past me as I plummet ten stories, laughing all the way as I flicker through the phases of reality. Each flicker alters my angle of descent and velocity, bleeding my momentum into the nothingness of the void between realities here and there until I land with a dull thump on the concrete, none the worse for the wear and feeling significantly better about my night already.

“Whoever you are,” I snarl as I take one step and cross half a kilometer, “you’re not welcome in my world.”

The Dreamtime of Canterlot is mine. There’s nothing in the world that can touch me here.

Here I’m practically a goddess.

Here… here I’m safe.

Every step passes whole city blocks as I drag the Fog around me. I may not have the same control over it as the Old Stain, but the Dreamtime has always been saturated in the Fog. It’s part of who I am and part of where I belong, and so I can control to an extent.

Unlike my more visceral cousins, I can bleed in and out of existence with a little Fog and even less effort. Maybe that’s another reason my lungs are filled with the stuff. Maybe I’m as much ‘Fog’ as I am ‘person’ now.

Either way, it bodes very poorly for whoever’s been cutting up the citizens of my city.

A scream, pitched high with agony, cuts through the night, and I grit my teeth as I pick up speed towards the source. It’s an alley at the border of the Commons several blocks down from the East End. Here things are still run down and ratty but in an aesthetic way. This is a slightly nicer part of Old Town Canterlot, where the city still carries some of that charming nostalgia of days gone by.

Nostalgia which is marred somewhat by the stink of blood.

The smell is always so much stronger in the Dreamtime.

“Help!” A voice sobs and blubbers, and I grimace at the pitiful noise as I step around the corner of the alley.

The bottom drops out of my stomach as I find the source of the screams. A young man, maybe eighteen, not much younger than me or my friends, is hanging from a butcher’s hook that’s protruding out of the wall of the alley on a misshapen arm of melted stone and rusted iron that stretches out a half meter before terminating in a heavy chain.

“Someone! P-Please!” The man sobs. “SOMEBODY! ANYBODY!”

Good luck… the Fog is probably hedging anyone else out of this place.

I scan the area before slipping into the alley itself. No sign of the Legion or their handler, assuming such a being exists. Satisfied that the coast is clear, I look to the poor dumb sacrificial lamb himself.

He’s tall and narrow, with a pale grayish teal complexion, and ragged mane of gold-blonde hair. He’s wearing a thick sweater that’s stained with his blood, and my stomach does a flip as I realise what he’s about to do the moment he reaches up to grab onto part of the chain that’s holding him.

“DON’T!” I snarl.

The man lets out a startled cry that turns into a gasp of pain as he jerks, jostling the hook that’s punched through his skin.

“Don’t touch the chain!” I bark. “Don’t try to get out… you’ll just make it easier on them.”

“W-Where…?” He’s looking around frantically, and I realise after a moment that he can’t see me. I’m still between dreams and the Real.

The only reason he can hear me at all is probably because of the Fog that’s around us.

“I’m in front of you, hold on,” I say quietly.

His mind isn’t so much a fortress as it is a kitschy cafe. There’s no defense whatsoever, and with a brush of my claws I slip my power through his fear-soaked brain, sink my metaphorical teeth into that little cluster of nerves between his amygdala and pineal gland, and shove him hard into the realm of sleep.

Laughter bubbles out of me as his eyes glaze and cross, then focus again. The moment his eyes fall on me he recoils with a terrified shout.

“W-What the fu—!?”

“Shut up!” I snap. “Who did this to you?”

He stares at me in terror for a few short seconds, before dropping into blubbering sobs again. “I don’t know! I was walking home and… and I saw I was being followed by someone in a hoodie! I got scared and ran!”

I raise an eyebrow.

“You got scared and ran?” I repeat slowly. “From… what you thought… was a normal person in a hoodie?”

“It might’ve been a mugger or a thug!” He snaps, and lets out another cry of pain from the hook.

Ah, okay, so he’s a bigot. At the very least a classist shitheel. Not that he was wrong in this particular case, but the fact that his first assumption to someone existing near him in a less nice part of town was that they were a criminal didn’t exactly endear him to me.

“Okay, fuckwad, let’s just—” I reach out to grab him, intending to take him down off of the hook.

I don’t manage to get more than a few inches closer to him before something in my hindbrain starts shrieking warning klaxons and jamming red-hot pokers directly into the pain centers of my brain!

“AH FUCK!” I scramble back, gripping my skull and staggering as I drop to a knee.

The pain is gone in an instant. Not even a shadow of soreness remains, just the memory of agony and a cold fear in my chest as I stare up at the startled young man bleeding on the hook.

“What the…” I start to reach out again towards him, intent on trying again and- “AUGH! SHIT!”

White, blinding pain shoots through me again, and an awful notion occurs to me.

It’s the Hook. I can’t get him off of the Hook because of what I am. It’s literally hardwired into my biology to throw my prey onto these hooks but I’ve never once tried to get someone off of one. At least, I’ve never tried to do it after I got converted.

“What are you doing?!” He hisses. “Help me!”

“I… I can’t…” I mumble as I stare down at my clawed hands. “I can’t… I can’t get you off the hook.”

What little color is left in his face leaves it. I had never considered what it might mean for a Killer to try and save a Survivor. It hadn’t even occurred to me that it might be impossible even though, thinking rationally, of course I would be designed that way. Me and all of my murderous cousins. The master key of our genetics is held by an eldritch horror that feeds on hope, how could I have possibly thought it would be otherwise?

There’s no place for mercy in the soul of a Killer.

No… the Entity wouldn’t have allowed even the hint of a possibility that that might come into play. I only cheated him that one time because I balanced his dark magic with pure Equestrian magic siphoned through my journal. That ace had been played, though… now I was beholden to the full limits of my biology.

“What do you mean you can’t?!” He all but shrieks. “Get me off of this fucking thing!”

“I CAN’T!” I scream back at him. “I can’t touch you! I… w-wait… do you have a phone?!”

“What?”

I ignore him and approach the hook again, pointedly not looking at, or thinking about touching him in any way that might trigger the subtle geas that’s locking me out from saving him.

The outline of a phone is right there in his pocket. I can get it open, get his password, and call for help. The only problem is… I’m not tangible.

I’ve never gone ‘full Killer’ since I came back. I’ve never had to. I’ve always been content with wandering in astral form. Now, though, I need to be able to affect the physical world.

It’s a massive risk, but I can’t just watch him die. Even if he’s kind of a tool, no one deserves to be slaughtered like this. Even putting that aside, I can’t afford to let the Thief enhance their powers by feeding off of him. I can’t let the sacrifice ritual finish.

Taking a deep breath, I draw the Fog that suffuses the Dreamtime deep into my lungs. I let it saturate my body, filling my bone, muscle, and sinew with delicious sensation. My physical senses explode outward from me as the real world comes rushing in with the force of a sledgehammer, and my legs almost go weak with delirium.

It’s overwhelming. Everything is so real. The scent of blood is like olfactory gold, and it’s everywhere, but more than that… this city is impossibly bright.

Hope. Light. Desire. Hatred. Violence. Bloodshed.

I can taste it all. I can feel it all. It makes me want to dig my claws into the skin of this city and watch it bleed out all over my hands. I want to—

...I—

It takes a monumental effort of will, but I manage to scrounge back some semblance of control as I finally punch all the way through from the Dreamtime and into the Real. My physical, human body is still slumbering at home, but my true form, my fog-forged Killer body, is now wonderfully solid.

I never knew it could feel this good.

“Okay, focus… focus,” I say carefully as I reach into his pocket and draw out his phone. I have to do it with the most minute of touches. I can’t risk shattering it.

Cradling the device in my hand, I use my knuckles to tap the phone out of sleep mode, then hold it up to the young man. “Here, put in your password!”

He swallows and nods, reaches out, and taps out his password onto the screen. I ignore all of the notifications, open up the Call app, and dial Tempest’s number.

“C’mon… c’mon…” I mutter.

It goes to voicemail.

“SHIT!”

Damn it Tempest, what a time to fucking screen your calls. I tap back into the call app and dial Aria’s number; she’s probably still awake, but odds are good she’s in bed with Redheart. Hopefully I’m not disturbing anything intimate, but at this point it’s literally life or death.

//Who the fuck is this?// Aria’s voice comes through an instant after the line connects.

“It’s me, Ari’! We’ve got a problem!” I snap. “The Legion has someone on the hook and I can’t get him down! You’ve got to get over here and bring backup!”

//Wait… w—fuckit, gimme the address!// Bless you, Aria.

I rattle off the cross-street and a few landmarks, then hang up

All I can do is pray they have time to make it.

Back in the Trials a hooked Survivor wouldn’t last more than a couple of minutes, but that clearly wasn’t the case here. Most likely, these hooks aren’t at full power. They’re facsimiles, and moreover, they’re crude and half-formed. If I was lucky that meant it would take a lot longer for someone to be drained.

“Just hold on,” I say as I put his phone back in his pocket. “My team is on their way.”

He sniffles quietly and nods. He must be in a lot of pain but he’s keeping it together impressively, although I’m sure part of that is shock.

“What’s your name?” I ask. All I can think to do is to try and distract him while I keep watch.

“Z-Zephyr,” he says weakly. “Zephyr Breeze.”

“Nice to meet you Zephyr,” I reply. “I can’t tell you my name, but I’ll tell you I’ve been doing this a while, and I won’t let them take you, okay?”

“W-What are they?” He sobs.

“Killers is what we call them,” I explain. “I’ll bet, right before they took you down, you heard something, right? A loud, thundering heartbeat in your ears?”

He nods

“Good.” That actually helps. It means they’re basically running off the same biological programming. “That’s the sound of the Killer’s heartbeat in your ears. The louder it is, the closer they are, so if you hear it again, run.”

He nods again, a little more frantically this time.

“Do you have somewhere to go once we get you down?” I ask. “An apartment?”

“I… I live with my parents,” he says a little sheepishly.

I roll my eyes. Of course he does. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with that, but with him I get the feeling that it’s more out of inertia and laziness than it is necessity.

“That’s good.” Is what I actually say. “Family is good… it’s harder for them to go to places where there’s real love. Is it just your mom and dad?”

“Yeah, my sister moved out with a friend after she graduated, s-so it’s just us,” Zephyr says. “I… I think she lives in the Commons close by, though.”

He’s a talker. That doesn’t surprise me, really. He strikes me as the type to babble, mostly about himself, but right now he’s scared and panicky. I need him to calm down, because if we get him free and he bolts, that's just begging for a double-hook.

“You on good terms with your sister?” I ask idly.

He shrugs, then winces, and I have to hold back a chuckle.

“Uhm, n-not really,” he admits quietly. “I… She’s amazing, and I… I always felt like she was better than me at everything.”

His fear starts falling into quiet sobs. I know what he’s feeling now. Regret… he’s feeling regret for his life. He’s being forced to stare his very real mortality in the face, or possibly a fate worse than death, and suddenly poor Zephyr is realising he might just be a useless sack of crap.

“I’m just a drain on everyone, a-and my sister and my parents are always trying to help me, and get me to make something of myself b-but I’m s-scared.” He starts to shake and cry, and I can feel him crumbling. “I w-want to make them proud! I want my sister to be proud of me! But I’m useless! I can’t do anything right and if I try I’ll j-just f-fail!”

I know that feeling all too well. The terror of failure. The fear of disappointing the people who mean the most to you. I reacted to it by becoming a ruthless, cutthroat bitch who did anything and everything necessary to succeed, and damn the cost. Zephyr reacted to it by shutting down, because if you never try you’ll never fail.

As galling as it is to admit, Zephyr and I are two sides of a coin.

“Then I guess you’ll have to live to change that,” I say firmly, and Zephyr stares back at me through bloodshot, teary eyes. “If you want your sister and your parents to be proud of you! Live! Live and go do something incredible! Who gives a shit if you fail once, or twice, or a million times! If you want to do it, then do it!” I jerk a hand out to gesture at the alleyway. “Or else I promise, one day, you’ll end up right back here! Dying useless and alone.”

Just like me.

He sniffles, then nods, and gives me a weak smile. “I… y-yeah.”

Despite myself, I smile, and I know it must look awful, but he doesn’t flinch away. There’s some steel in his backbone, I guess.

“You should talk to your sister after this,” I say softly. “Reconnect… take it from someone with no family, okay? Cherish what you have.”

“I will,” he says, and there’s more bite in his words now.

“What’s she like?” I ask. For better or worse, I actually feel a little invested in this loser. “Your sister I mean, what’s her name? What does she do?”

“Oh, she’s… she’s probably the sweetest person ever,” Zephyr says, still sniffling a little. “She’s going to college to be a therapist, and she’s looking after her best friend at the same time…” Something about that tickles something in the back of my mind. A premonition of familiarity. “Her name is Fluttershy.”

Ice floods my veins at the same time that my own heartbeat suddenly deafens me. Fluttershy…

You aren’t our friend! You never were!

Her voice rings in my ears, bright and accusatory, and for a brief moment I’m back in the halls of Canterlot High. I’m on my knees, surrounded by the girls who had, just days ago, called me family. They’re glaring down at me with betrayal in their eyes and curses on their lips.

Kind Fluttershy and her cruel words.

Loyal Rainbow Dash, abandoning me where I had collapsed.

Honest Applejack, who couldn’t see past the lies.

Generous Rarity, without a single word of comfort to give.

Joyful Pinkie Pie who couldn’t muster a smile to save a life.

First Applejack, now Fluttershy’s brother… something is happening. I can feel it. Something is tugging on the strings of Harmony and I’m getting caught up in it. I can’t let this go any further. I can’t let them find out that I’m—

My train of thought derails as Zephyr goes rigid and starts looking around like a startled rabbit.

I don’t need to ask, so I just say it.

“The heartbeat.”

They're coming back.

Author's Note

Brigands have the run of these lanes.

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