I have to find Twilight. That was the first thing to come to my mind when the screeching wheels of the train woke me in the early morning. That was the best plan right now. We'd figure something out together. She's the smartest pony I know.

I sat up and rolled my neck from side to side, trying to get the stiffness out of it. My back was sore and the burn on my side stung when I touched it. I was so hungry.

My ride coasted to a stop, the engine hissing somewhere in the distance. Peering out through a gap in the boxcar, I could see the side of another train, shrouded in mist. I needed to figure out where I was if I wanted to get where I was going.

It seemed safe so I teleported into the knee-high grass outside and sniffed the morning air. I'd forgotten how much more penetrating the smell of morning was in the country. It was invigorating even with hunger and lack of sleep. I could hear a distant murmur and bustling as a few workers descended upon the cargo a ways down the track.

I walked slowly between the two trains, glancing through the space between each car before finally teleporting to the other side. The station platform materialized out of the mist and saw a dark silhouette with the unmistakable olive green cap of a guard leaning on two legs against a support beam. A sign hung from an ornate wrought iron bracket above him which read Pintoville Station. Pintoville… Never heard of it. Sort of almost Ponyville? I was going to need more to go on.

Not having noticed me yet, I walked askew to avoid the eyes of the sentry. There seemed to be no one else around the ticket office at this hour so I crept quietly up onto the platform and approached the information board. There was no map on display for the train lines. Instead it was recruiting propaganda and wanted posters which my face was thankfully absent from, at least for now. No map seemed like an intentional change. I recalled pretty much every train station having a public map posted. Hadn't been out of the city for years though. I was certain there were many more changes yet to be noted on my adventure.

The information I sought had to be in the ticket office. Peeking around the side of the board, I saw the guard hadn't moved so I teleported right in. My ears were met with a soft snoring. I flinched seeing an old orange stallion seated in a chair at the front desk, the station manager by the look of his cap. He was turned away from me and clearly asleep so I carried on quietly wary of him and the guard still standing outside the ticket window. What do I have to do to get a job like that in this country?

There on the wall was a nice big map of every line across the Crystal Empire. I carefully ripped it from its pins with my magic, folded it up and stuffed it in my bag. Under the counter was the old guy's lunch tin. With a little bit of remorse, I snatched it away along with copies of the arrivals and departures schedule. I looked through a few cabinets, hoping to find a first aid kit and some pain meds but came up empty. Giving up, I scurried back to the tracks.

Ponies were now unloading the train I'd ridden in on. I hid in the other train which was almost finished being loaded. I studied the map while I ate my stolen breakfast.

Having a map and a target made me feel a tiny bit better about the situation. It turned out that I was far off track from my destination but the path to get there was simple enough. If I took anything westbound, that would take me to Shail Junction, whatever that was, and then I could get to Ponyville from there on the right line. Probably almost a two day trip from where I stood. Unfortunately the train I was currently on was going the wrong direction and I had to have a thirty minute layover skulking in the woods.

I fell asleep again and just as before, I was awakened by the train coming to a stop. Slightly panicked, I checked my watch. It was a little past six in the early evening, which by my rough estimate put me in the right spot. My neck felt a little better than last time as I stretched.

Outside, the air was heavy with the scent of oil and grease. I quickly became flustered by the maze of parked trains and the mayhem of countless crisscrossing tracks. This place wasn't just a junction, it was a significant hub. But as large it was, there seemed to be no real town nearby. It was more a loose association of kiosks.

I was going to need a more detailed map in order to figure this shit out. I squinted, scanning my eyes for any helpful signage or just at something to confirm that I was at Shail Junction but there was nothing to be had.

"Hey, you," came a gravelly voice in front of me. "Let me see your papers."

I looked ahead to see two guards, a turquoise unicorn stallion and a gray mare earth pony with… I squinted. Wait, I knew her.

The two stopped in front of me expectantly.

"Papers, please," reiterated the mare impatiently, her yellow-green eyes narrowing. "Are you deaf?"

I leaned to one side, trying to peek at her flank. She had a half lime cutie mark. It was one of Pinkie Pie's sisters. She's a guard. What the hell do I do?

"I- I, here's my ID," I stammered, completely failing to find a handle on the situation. I floated the card to them from my pack and the unicorn intercepted it with his magic.

"And your work docs?" added the mare who I was sure was Limestone.

Here we go, I thought. "I don't have them," I shrugged. "They're at home."

"And where's home?"

"A long way from here, I guess."

The two exchanged agitated glances at my suspicious vagueness.

"You're under arrest," she growled . Then she cocked her head toward her partner, "Mute him."

Against my instincts, I submitted as the unicorn clamped an inhibitor around my head and then shackled my forelegs. The cold heavy caress of the metal was sobering proof of the gravity of my reckless actions. I'd missed my best chance to run. I didn't have a plan. I'd let myself get captured and was just going to wing it now. This was so stupid but for Pinkie's sake I couldn't squander this chance meeting. It was another one of those moments where I wanted to shun fate.

They walked me to a little building, the sign on the side said Shail Junction Depot. The holding cell inside was comparable to a hall closet with a squealing grate of bars, clearly a stopgap solution. I had the fortune to at least have my shackles removed after being ushered inside.

Limestone sat down in a chair beneath a small constellation of lewd stallion pinups just outside the bars of my cell. She swung my pack onto a table and then pawed at a nearby pack of cigs. She took one in her mouth and depressed a switch on a little tabletop lighter.

"Should go check the five fifty to Appleossa." she muttered, rifling through my satchel. She pulled out my book and I gritted my teeth in horror.

"Yeah," grunted the other guard in agreement, stuffing a loose paper in a folder. He pushed the filing cabinet closed and thankfully wandered outside.

"The fuck?" mumbled Limestone through her cigarette, flipping the pages of my journal.

"Limestone," I whispered.

Her eyes flicked over at me. "How do you know my name?" she glowered.

Well there is a lime with rocks on your flank, I thought. It was almost like a rebus. "I'm friends with your sister," I replied.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Which sister?"

"Pinkie."

Her face softened momentarily and she paused as if she almost believed me. "The hell you are," she spat.

"I really am," I argued, desperately pressing my face into the bars. "Her full name is Pinkamina Diane Pie. She lives in Crystal City with her pet alligator, Gummy. She used to live in Ponyville at a sweets shop. She told me about her whole family and her sisters Maud, Marble and Limestone. You lived on a rock farm before it was taken by the state. She went back home looking for her family but they were gone."

The cigarette fell from her lips, the cherry exploding with sparks on the floor. Her face was a mixture of surprise and horror. "Who are you?" she breathed.

I swallowed, scarcely believing I was about to do this. "My real name is Shining Armor."

Her eyes widened even more as she leaned forward. "No way. Everyone thinks you're… you're dead. How did you recognize me? We've never met, that I remember."

"Pinkie has a family photo on her wall," I replied, sitting down on my haunches.

Limestone looked down at the floor with a far away expression. "How is she doing?"

I cringed and looked away. "Uh… She's… she's hanging in there," I answered nervously.

She furrowed her brow. "What does that mean?"

I sighed in defeat. There was no way of getting around this. "Well… She works as a prostitute."

Limestone tilted her head back and buried her face in her hooves for an inordinately long moment.

"So then you're just one of her-"

"No," I blurted. "No, I mean… I… was but we're sort of a thing now." This was not going the way I'd envisioned it when I first had this hypothetical conversation with Pinkie, not at all.

Suddenly aware of the still burning cigarette on the floor, Limestone crushed it with one hoof. "So you're dating then?" she inquired dubiously.

The concept sounded weird to me. "If that's what we're still calling it these days, then yes."

"You're shitting me." She looked me up and down slowly.

I blinked, not quite catching her meaning. "You're shitting me… good or you're shitting me bad?"

She sighed and muttered angrily under her breath before changing the subject. "You could have fled. We'd probably have lost you. You let yourself get captured just to tell me this?"

I leaned my cheek against a cold metal bar. "Yes. I told Pinkie that I'd try to find her family if I ever left the city."

"Well if you find them, let me know."

My face fell. "You don't know where your family is either?"

She sighed once more and looked down at the table. "I guess not. When they came for the farm, they gave us a choice. We could have it back in four years if we peacefully joined the collective and someone in the family served for four years. That means four years away from home for me. I'm half done now. I'm not really good at keeping in touch so until you told me Pinkie couldn't find them, I thought they were still working at the farm and the unanswered letters were just the mail being the mail. Now I have no idea what's going on."

"This doesn't sound good at all," I grumbled.

Limestone propped her head up on one hoof over the table and exhaled her worry. "Well, now what are we gonna do?"

"About your family?" I asked.

She shook her head. "You voluntarily got captured and muted while skipping town in possession of a crazy book like this and then you told me your real identity. You must really think this shit is just gonna magically pan out for you."

I mashed my lips together in uncertainty. "I was kind of hoping that if and when this moment came, it would be under relatively normal circumstances," I argued, sliding a hoof down one bar. "This is anything but."

"You weren't expecting a guard. I wasn't expecting a hooker dating a dead prince but we all have to pick our poisons, don't we?"

"If the poisons don't pick us first," I countered.

Limestone suddenly slapped the book shut as a shadow grew over the doorway. The other guard returned, floating a clipboard onto the table. He sat down and flipped back and forth between the top two pages, apparently cross checking them.

"What's with the book?" he asked without looking up.

"Just some old photo album," she muttered absently, pushing it back into my pack. "I'm still processing this guy. If you do the six ten alone, you can go on break early and I'll just cover the post."

"Deal," he nodded energetically. He refreshed his clipboard with new papers, promptly stood up and left again.

Limestone waited, tapping a hoof slowly on the table while she thought. Finally she looked back at me.

"I could unlock your cell and sign off on papers for you… but I'm not going to do that because I'd be in deep shit if you got caught doing… whatever it is you're doing out here with my signature in your pocket. However…" she trailed off as she got up and wandered over to the door to close it. She yanked open the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and pulled out a stack of official papers.

"I'm not above… forging you something that would land on someone else's ass." She sifted through the stack of visa copies before singling one out. "Oh, this guy's a dick anyway," she growled. "Name?"

"Huh?" I blinked, struggling to keep up.

"What's your name?" she clarified, sitting back down with a pen in her mouth. 'Your fake name?"

My forehead creased. "Oh, I don't think I should use my current name anymore. How about… Night Mist? How is this gonna work though. I don't have a matching ID-"

"I can do that too," she mumbled. "I'm not a notary but there's enough here to work with."

Limestone filled out a relocation permit, signed it copying someone else's signature, stamped it and dated it a week ago. She unlocked my cell and removed the inhibitor from my head. Then she gave me a bandage for my wound with painkiller ointment.

"The passenger train platform is on the far east side of the yard, that way," she pointed. "You can buy a ticket to Ponyville with your permit and ID."

I can as long as I'm outside of the dragnet, I thought, which it appeared that I was. I got the sense she didn't want to know what I was doing in Ponyville so I left it a mystery

"You're not going to get in trouble for this?" I asked.

"I write the reports around here. I'll just explain that you're a lost idiot."

"Sounds plausible. I wish I could do more to thank you," I said, scribbling down Pinkie's address.

She rolled her eyes. "Ugh, it's fine. Just shut up about it. I don't do well with stuff like this."

I nodded absently as I set the pen down. "You know, an official looking letter from you wouldn't get screened," I mused. "If you write to Pinkie, can you tell her I'm okay?"

"Yeah," she replied, scratching her muzzle.

"I hope we meet again someday under better circumstances," I added thoughtlessly.

"What did I just tell you?" she snapped, jabbing a hoof into my chest.

She's exactly like she seems in the photo.

Author's Note

Going to have to brainstorm to see if I can make my idea work for the next chapter.