Glimmer

On the somewhat dubious bright side, the perpetual 'fashion' parade had finally perished. The community no longer had any concerns regarding the concealment of their most unnatural physical aspects, and so Truedawn had taken the morning heat as its collective cue to freshly renude. There were a very few garments about -- protective items for specific tasks and the little alicorn, whose memories of the prior night were fully clear, was darkly wondering if the cloth was capable of maintaining a barrier against dust -- but for the most part, the community was going about with the bare fur of blank hips failing to sway in the breeze. The shield wasn't letting any breezes in, but the heat seemed to be having an easy time of it -- and with her most personal concealment already disrupted, Twilight hadn't bothered getting dressed.

It was hard to look at so many patches of dulled, plain fur. Nausea kept trying to rise -- although in fairness, that was at least partially aided by the scents produced by locals preparing lunch. But the removal of the outfits was somehow making matters at least slightly more bearable, and Twilight was distantly wondering if her newfound sense of relief represented a tiny display from Rarity's deep-buried aspect within her. It was either that or she'd finally managed to pick up some degree of taste.

It's probably taste.

She would still need to tell Rarity. If Twilight could just find her...

She had to find everypony. She was nowhere near ready to trust Starlight, or anypony else in Truedawn. As far as Twilight was concerned, she was personally one tiny patch of bloodstained scales and/or fur from entering Revenge Mode. Twilight wasn't exactly sure what she would do in Revenge Mode, but was taking the advance quasi-precaution of presuming it would be bad.

Some of the Truedawn ponies stared at her as she went by, slowly trotting down poorly-worked streets. She wasn't sure that was '...alicorn?' so much as it was 'Why is she by herself?' But she had what was likely to be strictly temporary privacy, and she was currently using it to try and locate the others. Any of the others -- but she really wanted to start by finding Spike. Because Starlight had effectively broken up the entire group on the prior night, and Twilight didn't know what was happening with -- or worse, to -- any of them. She'd personally made it to morning and a fair distance beyond, but she hadn't seen anypony. And she needed to verify that her little brother was okay.

Starlight probably just told everypony to put Spike to work.

She considered that. Feathers rustled with irritation, and a pinion absorbed a small drop of sweat.

That's just mean, the librarian concluded with no self-awareness whatsoever. And they'll find lots of things for him to do, I'm sure. Irritably, There may be ponies who were so bad at their International Studies classes as to forget what 'hands' are, but they sure find uses for the things once they turn up. Then again, it's not as if there's any other kids around for him to play with --

"Hey!" came from above, and hit her ears at the same moment when the little wind gust produced by the wing downbeat brushed against her back. "You don't know how happy I am just to see somepony!" Which was followed by a deep, shaky-sounding yawn.

Twilight adjusted her position, backed up a little before directing her gaze skyward. Weary, half-clouded magenta eyes looked down. Exposed cyan fur rippled as the muscles beneath kept up their effort.

"Same," the little mare told the weather coordinator. "You're the first one of us I've seen all day. And it's nearly noon."

"Tell me about it." The hover dipped, drifted right and was then visibly forced to recenter. "How did you manage to get any time to yourself? Because I know they tried putting me to work as soon as I got up -- the fifth time I got up -- and I figured they were doing the same with everypony else."

Twilight sighed. "There's still some things which are private, Rainbow."

"Something where somepony in the 'community' won't follow you?" the pegasus challenged. "Let's hear it."

"...bladder."

"...oh," Rainbow considered. "And you used that chance to sneak off?" The grin was more than a little vulpine. "You're learning!"

Another sigh, followed a glance around to see how many ponies seemed to be actively listening -- none visibly, but you never knew -- and a soft "Yeah. I asked the ponies on my -- on shift where the nearest public restroom was, because I figured there had to be some more around. I told them the one we'd been using was getting kind of... bad. And once they understood that I wasn't volunteering to clean it, I got some distance between us. After I -- took care of things, I made some more. I've been clear for about six minutes." A little bitterly, "And somepony's probably going to come looking for me after twenty. Or less. You?"

"What, you don't trust me to sideslip out of work?" Rainbow's grin announced.

Well, at least this time you're actually admitting it...

"So I put myself on search duty," the pegasus continued. "I'm mostly trying to find Spike, since it's sort of his first day. Especially when it comes to talking with anypony who isn't us. You?"

"Same," Twilight repeated. "But you've only found me, and you're the first one I've seen."

Rainbow nodded. The hover bobbed along with the motion, then drifted left.

Her eyes are starting to look bloodshot. She keeps stifling yawns, and I don't like the hang of her tail.

"You," Twilight directly stated, "look like you need sleep. A lot of it. You --" hesitated, because she was almost sure the next words weren't going to go over well "-- almost look too tired to fly..."

"I'm staying in the air," Rainbow immediately announced. "It's defiance."

"It's what?"

"Before," the pegasus declared, "I was flying because I wanted to remind all the pegasi here what it was like. Now I'm doing it because none of them will."

Or can.
It might be 'can'.

"But when it comes to the lousy sleep? I'm blaming the food," Rainbow yawned. "Or the air. It's not the heat, because I set up a personal weave last night and made sure I stayed cool. It didn't do much for the dumb dreams. I swear, Twilight, I just want to kick somepony --"

"-- do you want a sleep aid?" the little alicorn checked. "It might help." Finding something which would let everypony deal with the concept of 'Rainbow Dash is having trouble sleeping' was going to take a little more work.

Rainbow looked at her.

"Twilight?"

"...what?"

"The way I figure it," the pegasus proposed, "either Starlight is the pharmacist -- or somepony here is 'trying it out'. Which of those do you trust less?"

The librarian winced.

"...good point," she sighed. "It's not like we've seen anything from home for sale. So we can't try to get something packaged off a shelf."

Rainbow nodded. "I was sort of hoping to find a whole lot of grapes. Or cherries. But I don't even know if they grow this far south."

"Fruit?"

"Yeah. Either of those two. You didn't know? If you eat a lot of them, it can make you sleepy." She executed a hovering shrug. "I always thought 'Shy was trying to get a break by knocking Angel out for a few hours. So you didn't find anypony?"

I already said that. She is tired.

"Not yet." Which was the most optimistic answer she was capable of giving -- but locating Rainbow had already helped. "And I know you didn't --"

"-- oh, I'm finding stuff," Rainbow yawned. "Just not us-stuff. Wanna see something weird?"

A little too dryly, "In this place? You'll have to narrow that down."

"Follow me," the pegasus instructed. "It's close."

She flew ahead, far too slowly. Took repeated glances backwards to make sure Twilight was keeping up.

"How's the first day with a horn been going?" Rainbow asked.

The actual challenge was in not passing her.

"In public?" Twilight accurately guessed. "It's on time delay."

A long pause. "I don't get it."

"I'm not sure anypony knows what to do with me," Twilight admitted. "Or whether they're even supposed to acknowledge it. With my hostess, I think I finally got '...you're an alicorn' about three hours too late. And then..." She paused, took a breath, and tried to reconcile that the question had even been voiced. "...she asked if I'd ever wanted to -- stop."

Rainbow blinked. "To stop being an alicorn?"

"That's what I thought at first." And in the presence of a stranger who seemed to truly be thinking about her, she'd felt the briefest flash of gratitude. "But she was actually talking about my mark. She said it didn't have to be like this."

"Oh."

"I was irritated enough to ask if she knew a way to get rid of the wings, too," Twilight reluctantly admitted. "It just confused her. And -- Rainbow, I managed to get one thing out of Livy. Mostly by accident. She told me that she'd thought there were two alicorns."

They kept moving, and Truedawn ponies passed. None of them had tried to interrupt just yet. Maybe they only broke up groups who were meeting in houses. Or they didn't know how to step in on what appeared to be a visible pairing.

"The Princess," Rainbow's tired mind offered, "and -- Cadance?"

"Yeah," Twilight verified. "And unless her old mark talent was missing out on every major news story, that means she's been here since before the Return. That's over three years, Rainbow. How old is Truedawn?"

"No idea," the weather coordinator admitted. "But at least we can ask more questions about that sort of stuff now." Paused. "I already asked a few. About --" looked around, checked to see who might be listening, and watched ears politely rotate away "-- Gez. Or Linchpin."

None of the locals reacted.

"You did?" Open shock. "But --"

"Twilight, she knows we were following him. There's no reason to hide it any more. So I went direct. I asked a few ponies."

Carefully, "And what did they say?"

Unsteady flaps. Some of the feathers didn't look to be in a proper alignment, and the remiges needed preening.

"...they haven't said anything," Rainbow slowly answered. "None of the ponies I spoke to recognized the name. Either name. The most I got was this one mare who said it sounded familiar, but there were a lot of ponies here and she couldn't possibly keep track of everypony."

Silence.

"But he must have had friends, right?" the pegasus continued. "We'll find one if we just keep talking."

The drift path of slow flight brought her a little too close to a streetlight. She flinched away.

If the herd is the true unit... the purest expression of pony life... then does it even notice when the smallest part of itself is gone?

She didn't know.
She didn't want to think this way...

"So where's this weird thing?" And what is it?

It was a freestanding, poorly-painted brownish single-level structure just off to the side for one of the main streets. The entire thing was roughly the size of an oversized shed.

There was a door. Each wall had two windows. There was no front yard, backyard, garden, or any signs of personal touches. In fact, once she tried rearing up --

"You should fly to do that," Rainbow yawned, and then checked the street again to make sure their surprising degree of privacy was still holding. "Practice."

-- to plant her forehooves against the windows, peering inside...

"It's a gatehouse," Twilight decided. "I don't know what else they could use it for. Even a storage shed would have some shelving and bins. That's got nothing. It's completely hollow. And we already knew they had at least one pony coming and going, Rainbow. This just shows us where they left from. What's weird about that?"

"You didn't see it?" One eyebrow forced itself up against the weight of sleep. "Look closer, Twilight. And look for what isn't there."

And I just dropped back down...

She reared up again. Indulged in a few dark thoughts about the average window height placement --

"-- found her," had been, at a minimum, half-spat from the air. The liquid emphasis provided an instant verification of identity.

Trixie.

She'd been trying not to think about --

"What's she doing?" Twilight softly asked.

"Trotting down the cross-street," Rainbow said. "With company. Starlight's next to her, and nopony else. I think they're talking. Guess she gets the more personal tour." Darkly, "It's the little perks..."

"Don't try speaking with her," Twilight cautioned. "We need to wait until we can catch her alone."

"Yeah," Rainbow muttered. "Alone." Hind legs kicked at the air.

I can't fix this. She didn't even know what had broken --

-- focus on the gatehouse...

She looked through the left front window. Concentrated.

It's just a gatehouse. Hollow structure with a location which allows convenient access to the rest of an area. Teleporters use them as departure points and destinations, because they're supposed to remain empty at all times unless they're being used. Some of them have devices mounted over the door which glow if somepony's inside, and this one is using windows to let the flash shine through. It's not the most modern design, but it still works. What's so weird about a gatehouse?

...look for what isn't there...

...oh.

She dropped back down.

"You saw it, right?" Rainbow quickly checked.

"I couldn't miss where it wasn't," Twilight replied. "There's no padding."

Gatehouses were hollow because a teleporting pony never wanted to arrive in the same space as a relatively dense solid: the result was being tossed in a random non-down direction until you could safely enter -- accelerating all the way.

The walls (and when possible, floor) were supposed to be padded because if the pony was very unlucky, a gatehouse wouldn't be empty. Padding cushioned the impact. But in Truedawn...

"They didn't even fully sand the walls," the little mare breathed. "Hitting some of those spots is going to hurt. It's like somepony saw a picture of the exterior, and stopped there..."

"Do you think there's any kind of exception spells on the building?" Rainbow hastily asked. "The sort of stuff which means it's safe for us to leave from here, but nowhere else?"

Twilight immediately checked for magic.

"...no," she reluctantly reported.

"Figures," Rainbow muttered. "And that takes out the other reason I wanted you to see it, because I sure couldn't tell. Fine. Maybe we've got a couple of minutes left before anypony tries to clamp our tails and drag us apart. Let's see if we can find --"

-- light flashed within the gatehouse.

It was a relatively bright display: enough to dazzle, but not to blind. (Twilight, who barely wound up with five whole seconds in which to think, darkly noted that nopony had considered tinting the windows either.) Radiance shone through every window, leaked out around the poorly-built door frame. It was just barely possible to hear the first hint of curious hooves diverting towards the source.

Then the door swung open. Hard, because it had been knocked out of the way from the force of a pony who'd just about galloped into the wood.

A pegasus mare ran out. Froze at the instant she cleared the door, frantically glancing around.

Sweat had discolored patches of the peach fur. Saddlebags were uneven, threatening to fall off entirely. The blonde-and-white mane was in disarray, and a pegasus who was about sixty percent legs didn't seem to know what to do with any of them. Wings convulsively spread, refolded.

"Starlight!" the shaken, openly-frightened mare desperately called out into the summer day. "Has anypony seen Starlight? We need --"

She was still surveying the area, and doing so with an explorer's instincts. Looking for anything which could influence her situation, to help or harm.

She saw Twilight.

For a very rare once, the hips registered first. It was then possible to watch the mare's disbelieving gaze move to the wings, followed by the horn --

-- Twilight had just enough time to realize that Mane Allgood still had her mark.

And then the cyan missile hit.

Time, when perceived through the lens of sapience, could turn into a variable.

Applejack had spoken to Twilight about it once. That for the earth pony, there was a space which existed between seconds. The instant when she knew something was about to go horribly wrong, and the farmer would always receive just enough time to experience that realization -- but it was never enough to stop or change whatever was talking place.

Rainbow Dash both existed in and lived for the moments when there was no time left at all.

She was tired. She hadn't slept properly for days. Calories weren't exactly a guaranteed long-term resource, especially when you considered what the tongue had to go through in order to locally acquire them.

But she was also angry. The only thing which could rise faster than her body in full acceleration was her temper. Loyalty had spent the previous night in being forced to watch an act of betrayal, and the world had just given her somepony to take it out on.

Twilight barely saw her move.

There was a very tall pegasus mare standing just in front of an open doorway. And then there was a cyan blur moving around that mare, kicking out in and from all directions. Too many impacts to block, too many changes of approach vector to guess at where she might attack next. No time to spread wings and attempt an escape. No time...

Wind whipped through Twilight's mane, disrupted her tail and pushed feathers into each other. The scent of ozone flared within her snout. A furious Rainbow had a subconscious tendency to pull in extra resources.

The taller mare cried out. Rainbow didn't say anything. She just kept kicking, over and over, the impacts had now staggered her target away from the open door and there was nothing anypony could do --

-- perhaps Twilight could have done something. But she'd been caught by shock and uncertainty, didn't know if there was anything she should do and she found herself frantically glancing around, trying to see if anypony else --

-- Trixie.

Who had been caught completely off-guard -- but light blue forehooves were starting to plant themselves against the street on instinct alone, the head was coming up in a way which signaled that the horn could ignite at any second --

-- Starlight?

Who was just... there.

The lilac body was present. Her eyes were looking in the general direction of the violence. But she didn't seem to recognize what was going on. She didn't even look as if she knew where she was --

-- a decidedly large earth pony stallion staggered into sight within the doorway.

Twilight, viewing the event through the lens of retrospect, would ultimately decide to be impressed. For an earth pony to be up on his hooves that quickly after suffering the disruption from a long-distance teleport -- that was impressive. It was just that 'stagger' was very nearly at his current limit.

"...what?" the stallion forced out. "Get -- get away from my spouse! Don't touch her!"

And he tried to lunge -- but none of his strength was operating with any true direction, and he mostly wound up sagging into the door frame.

Not that it might have done much good. A unicorn with enough power could pull Rainbow out of a fight. Somepony with a clear line of sight on a fast-moving target had a chance to field-press on vital flight feathers, redirecting all momentum into the ground. And an earth pony with solid planting and a decent jump height would at least have some level of chance -- but Rainbow was going after a pegasus. One who wasn't currently able to get in the air.

For a ground-bound pegasus to take on a furious Rainbow was like watching somepony trying to battle a whirlwind with a grudge.

The mare screamed her pain. Rainbow just kept kicking, and sparks were building up on blurred wings --

-- turquoise projected into existence around the sleek body. Yanked her backwards and held.

"I feel this question is extremely necessary," Starlight coldly stated as she trotted closer. (Trixie, who had hung back, was still at the street corner.) "Did my recruiters do something to you?"

...recruiters?

"It's what they did to her!" Rainbow shouted. "Everything they didn't do for her! Let me go, she deserves it, she knows she does, let me do what somepony should have done years ago!"

She furiously pushed against the edges of the field bubble, and the borders held. More sparks jumped between feathers. Wind whipped around the interior, steadily accelerating. Twilight wasn't even sure how Rainbow was breathing in there.

Mane Allgood, whose flanks were freshly bruised, bleeding from the base of her right ear, forced herself to try and straighten to that unusual full height. Stared in all directions, trying to work out what was going on. And in the shaky tones of the recently concussed, offered up "What's the Princess doing here? She's supposed to be in..."

She stopped. Her jaw slammed shut.

"...Ponyville," her husband whispered. "They're all supposed to be in Ponyville..."

"Snap." The word was insistent and when it came from Starlight, that made it feel odd. "You're still recovering from the transport. I can give Mane treatment, but you need --"

"-- it was the voucher," the disoriented stallion forced out. "We were trying to purchase the voucher. The bank... we were nearly arrested -- had to gallop for it, we couldn't use the rod until we were out of sight -- something's happened --"

"-- stop."

He shut up. Starlight changed focus.

"Twilight Sparkle," the community leader said. "I am going to transfer custody to you. Take her. And then remove her from this area. Both immediately and quickly."

The field bubble, which was still readily containing a Rainbow who was quickly moving beyond mere fury, floated forward. Receded from the wildly-flapping left wing.

Transfer of custody between fields. Twilight had done it before, especially with Rainbow. This just happened to be one of the few times which didn't have bail involved.

"Do not let her attack another member of the community," Starlight instructed.

"...I won't."

Rainbow, recognizing what was happening, ceased her attempts to escape. But she glared at Starlight, and the Allgoods, and everypony else who caught her attention. (The last category included Twilight for holding her in the first place.)

Twilight, making sure to keep the bubble's borders strong as a just-in-case, carefully moved away, bringing Rainbow with her. But she glanced back once.

Trixie was slowly approaching the gatehouse. Snap Shutter was trying to tend to his spouse's injuries, and she had lowered herself to the ground to let him view everything from above. Her face contorted as she spread her wings, and a damaged feather threatened to drop away.

Starlight watched Twilight and Rainbow leave.

That was all. To look at her features, attempting judgment through the lack of true expression... it all produced the same verdict.

She was simply -- watching.