I don’t like the sunlight. It’s hot, and harsh, and domineering, and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is cool, and gentle.
Here in the shade, the indoors, the darkness I feel comfortable. Happy. Safe.
Almost.
How long had this been in the works? Years? Decades? Centuries? It didn't matter. If it failed, simply try again.
This time it started in the summer. Or the spring? One never has a definitive date when it comes to plans like this. Whose plan was it anyway? Did it matter? The only thing that mattered was the mission. And the mission was underway.
It would have been comforting staying in the inside, in the shadows, but the mission called. On this day, the sunlight would have its cut.
Outside, down the street, not the cab, that would be too conspicuous. Around the corner, down the alleyway, up the hill, circle back to check for tails, past the market.
There. The destination. A spare key under a box. A door scratched by a hoof. A pathway with the light bulbs conveniently off. A locked door propped open by a fallen calendar.
Inside a circuit breaker box. The circuit breaker box. Just one push of the lever.
I. Me. I am me. I am Blue Blaze. And under The Silence Blue Blaze shall minimize talking.
Even with the summer heat beating down on me. With the hot sand and the sunlight reflecting off the beaches, I hold my tongue.
To my left, Purple Pyro is pantomiming her hunger for beach barbecue. Sure, I could go for a snack.
The grill is hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the stall over hot coals. That way multiple cooks can access and reach things quickly and from multiple directions. Clever. It also had the benefit of looking very impressive to the customers.
It also had the benefit of flaunting The Silence. The Silence officially discouraged the culinary arts, but if there was one thing that defined a kirin, it was their cooking. And that was something even the state dared not to challenge.
And so, rather than the sunny, sandy beach, the warm, welcoming waters or the company of other kirin, what brought everycreature together was food. Politically charged food.
And where there is politically charged food, there are politically charged activists.
Autumn Blaze was there, as usual. No matter how harmonist or supremacist one was, everycreature need to eat. And what better way to demonstrate your position than to eat what you believe.
As Purple Pyro made the order and paid the bits, I stared at Autumn. No words of course and certainly nothing written. Did she understand what I wanted to convey to her? Did I understand what I was trying to convey? I did not even understand my own instructions.
Was that a flash of light in her eyes? Could kirin even do that? Or was that a trick of the sun? I believe it was Autumn. I chose to believe that she got my message. It was one step forward in the plan.
Turning around I walked away with Purple Pyro and our food back to the beach and found a place to sit in hot summer sun.
The burger was delicious.
What a disgusting burger. Wet bread, burnt meat, no seasoning just what you'd expect from a bitch's cooking. The sun is hidden behind the clouds today, that is one consolation.
The other consolation is that the wrong dog is being pinned down and muzzled outside.
The window and the crowd's murmuring makes it impossible to determine what is being said, but I can guess.
'You mangy curs have the wrong hound!'
'Shut up pup! We saw you meeting and exchanging papers with that griff at the park!'
'Get your dirty paws off me! I was just delivering some business documents! I'll have you neutered for this!'
Something along those lines.
I am sympathetic to the old hound, he truly was an innocent bystander in all this. Diamond Dogs still rely on their sense of smell and that reliance is complicated yet vulnerable. Stealing one's scent is easier than you'd expect. A couple days of wearing and sleeping in their dirty laundry, while disgusting, is enough to cover up ones own scent especially in a densely populated city like Bronzekreuz.
The truly hard part is finding a dog whose routine fits your purpose. A fishmonger would be more suspicious than conspicuous in this mountain town. A paper pup would be fit the environment, but you might attract attention from an overly concerned dam. A street vendor wouldn't be expected to have a wide range of scents.
A courier would be ideal, but that is a trap. Everycreature knows that couriers travel around everywhere doing different tasks for different creatures on a daily basis, they wear the scent of everything. But that also means there is a scent record. Any courier worth their bits would know where and when they made a delivery in the past few days and that in turn can be crosschecked. A courier might be able to get away with claiming client confidentiality a couple times, but the more its used the more authorities will tighten the leash.
And so, a sun bleached office worker who does the occasional delivery for his bosses is the best cover. Travels enough that unusual scents stick to them but not enough that they would be expected to remember everything. Mixes their time indoors and outdoors and is dull enough to be ignored, most of the time.
Just as they force the unlucky sod into the cage, I gulp down the rest of the burger and slip out the back door.
They say you should never send a pony to kill something. Ponies are too kind to pull it off.
They are wrong.
It is not that ponies are too kind to kill, it is that ponies are too kind to kill without reason.
But fear can be the absence of reason.
And the citizens of Ayacachtli dealt with fear.
Thestrals never forgot their roots after Princess Luna's return, not before Nightmare Moon, not before Princess Luna's first appearance. As much as they distrusted Princess Celestia, they understood the lashing out would be counterproductive.
Perhaps that is why they took to the swampy, mountainous terrain of Ayacachtli so well. Here thestrals do not live with nature, nature lets thestrals live. Sometimes. Rather than providing comfort and security, the darkness breeds threats and paranoia. The sun does not provide illumination or clarity, but drains life and exposure. And when thestrals fail to keep that in mind, accidents happen.
And so, here I was watching a changeling slowly die. Not by bullet or blade, not by hoof or trap, but by a fallen tree branch. Mind you, the tree branch was larger than a Celestia class landship.
The changeling had been fleeing the authorities and attempted to escape by threading a dead standing tree, or a 'snag' as the locals called it, and disturbed it enough for the branch to fall on the poor bug.
Worst of all, the bug had fallen in a way that the sunlight lit it up but it could not look back. Onlookers watched as their enemy blindly cried out for aid. Eventually the cries for aid became cries for help. Then mercy. Then for their hive.
I couldn't blame the thestrals, in the shadows I saw at least two manticores ready to ambush anycreature foolish enough to aid the bug.
The cries stopped when a thestral put in a bullet through its head.
Leak, closed.
I silently stared at the circuit breaker box. Over the hum of electrical equipment I could hear Princess Luna's on the radio rally over the commotion. The call for peace and calm. The declaration of the Element of Generosity's safety.
So I lowered my hoof. There would be no blackout. The signal would not be sent. Readied soldiers across Equestria would stand down.
For now.
The fallen calendar was put back up on the wall and the locked door closed shut.
One by one the light bulbs conveniently turned back on when tightened into their sockets down the pathway.
A door had a scratch buffed off.
A spare key was disposed of.
And I stepped out into the summer sunlight. There would be no open war. Not between ponies. Not here. Not today.
Today the moon would win.
At the beaches, ponies would sunbathe, frolic in the water and make merry.
But tomorrow, the sunlight would show us. Show us what we've all been hiding from one another. That deep down inside the systems we have created for ourselves that greed and ambition has been bubbling and seething within. That the world was already at war.
And one way or another Nightmare Moon would save them all.
