“How long until curtain?” Zapp asked. She took a bottle of mineral water from the tray beside her and poured it into a glass.

A unicorn mare, her mane tied into a bunch with pencils stuck through it and wearing glasses that made her appear soooo important, looked up from her clipboard. “Five minutes,” Mistress Elocution said. She looked back down at the clipboard with a resting-bitch face and wrote something in pencil. “I suggest you take care of whatever you need to do now because curtain means be ready. Kapeesh?”

Zapp nearly rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to talk down to me as if I am some child. I am perfectly capable of following a few simple rules.”

Mistress Elocution rolled her eyes for her. “Listen, honey, you’re not a child, ya got that right, but last time we went through this shebang you nearly burned down the whole house trying to demonstrate how lightning strikes work. I recommend that you follow every direction to a T. InspoGen was already hesitant to have you back. Don’t screw this up.”

“I was nursing a head injury after my fight with Mane-iac that day. I’m fine now. This is nothing to me.”

“M’kay, well, save that confidence for the stage. In the meantime, do you need anything? More mineral water? A Smelly Oats bar? The whole program is sponsored by Smelly Oats. In fact, the first one thousand viewers can get fifteen percent off their first shipment when they visit your link. I can set you up with a crate to take home.”

“That’s not necessary. Leave me now, I need to prepare.”

“Okay, just let me know.”

Mistress Elocution walked away, eyes still on the clipboard.

Sitting backstage, Zapp could hear all the chatter within the auditorium. For the first time since the Power Ponies came together, she felt nervous. She’d seen many horrors and had accrued a plethora of traumas over the years. Yet, none haunted her more than the charred corpse that still perverted a space in her mind.

She wondered if anyone knew. She wondered if anyone suspected her. She wondered if when she got on stage, someone would blurt out the imposing question.

Was it you?

She took a breath.

Composure, Zapp thought. You just need to keep your composure.

She closed her eyes and focused on the breathing exercises she’d developed during times of stress. She rarely used it in the early days, but it had become routine the past couple of years.

Iiiiiiiin…. Ooooooout…. Iiiiiiiin…. Ooooooout.

She focused on everything she stood for. Hope. Loyalty to her city. To protect its citizens. To one day return home and take her place on the throne.

Her people.

Iiiiiiin…. Oooooout… Iiiiiin… Ooooout… Iiiiiin…

“Ten seconds until curtain!” a stallion called.

Oooout…

She was ready.

Blaring lights and a standing ovation greeted Zapp. The crowd didn’t cheer. They screamed. She could hear the various shouts, the admissions to love, and some catcalls. She chuckled and waved.

She walked to the middle of the stage, a little shaky, and wondered if anyone noticed her nearly trip.

The crowd died down, and she spoke into her headset. “Being a hero. What does it mean? What does it take? Can anyone be one? The answer is absolutely everything, very little, and yes.”

A subtle murmur of excitement. Zapp smiled and gestured toward the giant screen lingering over the stage. The words WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A HERO? appeared, with the InspoGen logo in the top left corner and Sponsored by Smelly Oats in the bottom right.

“What does it mean to be a hero? For this, I will ask why do you want to be a hero? Are you looking for praise? Self-fulfillment? Moral justice?

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with the reasons I just gave. A good act is a good act, no matter the intent behind it. But if the reason is, ‘I want to be like you!’ then I implore that you need a better understanding of what being a hero entails.”

She walked across the stage, addressing each side of the room back and forth. “I am a being of great power. I traveled land and sea. I’ve fought against the odds multiple times. I’ve had my moments of doubt.” She stopped. Clockwork’s face flashed in her mind. She gulped and continued. “I’ve often thought about quitting. Because I have a difficult job. My job is to ensure the safety of everyone.

“Do you know what stops me? Do you know what fills me with the courage to keep going?”

She paused to allow the question to linger for a moment. She scanned the crowd and all of its curious faces.

Zapp pointed at the audience.

“You. All of you. Knowing that I am helping people in some form or another is what keeps me going. It’s what keeps me sleeping at night—and believe me, many of those nights are restless—but in those moments in which I can lay my head against the pillow, I can rest easy knowing that I did my part.”

Except for last night. The nightmares still followed her.

“Being a hero means making the world a better place one step at a time. It doesn’t have to be stopping a robbery, putting yourself in imminent danger. It can be volunteering at the homeless shelter. It can be giving a generous tip to the tired waitress, who is a single mother with three kids. It can be holding the door open for someone.

“Kindness. It’s what brings us together. Loyalty to thy neighbor. The understanding that life is precious, and to live comfortably, we need to lean on each other!

“So, what does it take? I already gave a few examples, but sometimes, we don’t have the time to volunteer at the homeless shelter. Instead, we can offer some money to the beggar on the street corner. But what if I don’t have money? Then I acknowledge their existence! I let them know that despite their current state of affairs, they are still a valid member of society who deserves nothing but the unconditional love and support of others! Everyone deserves to be loved!”

Including Clockwork.

“Absolutely anyone can be a hero! Anyone! It takes kindness, it takes loyalty, it takes everything that brings us together! Everything that makes us whole! Everything we hold dear to ourselves! Everything that is precious! Everything that is innocent! Everything that is vile and nasty! These are all things that deserve love to its highest degree because no one wants to be alone!

“All of you, right now, in this audience, watching this through your TV screens, through your phone screens, through your computers, you all have the capacity to be heroes. Every single one of you! All it takes is kindness. All it takes is us!”

She halted. Inhaled through her nostrils. Exhaled. She was prepared to finish off the speech with a loud, punctuating message, but her mind was clouded. She was frozen. Suspended in time. Hundreds of eyes from the crowd stared back at her, even more through screens.

She could harness lightning, yet her brain couldn’t even go that fast.

There was something else on her mind.

She sighed.

“I want to talk about someone. Somepony who died recently. Not someone I was close to, but someone I still knew, and had interacted with on more than one occasion. I am, of course, talking about Clockwork.”

More murmurs. Curious. A cautious sort of curiosity.

“Now, Clockwork was not a good pony. She did a lot of bad things. But I think there was good in her.” She cleared her throat. “Just as there’s good in all of us, even at our worst.

“I’ve fought her in many battles. She lost all of them. She certainly didn’t possess the power to face overwhelming opponents. But she did, and with dumbfounded determination. Something is inspiring about that. Yes, she was a bad person, but in her own heart, she believed she was good!

“She was wronged. She was cast aside. She lost her ability to love. She couldn’t keep up with the stress, so she retaliated. Not in a socially acceptable way, but in a way she felt appropriate. She tried to make the world a better place through her means, no matter how deplorable her ideas were.”

She nodded. Silence choked the air. She could see Mistress Elocution’s intense stare in the corner of her vision.

“Clockwork was a hero.”

Mistress Elocution gasped, and Zapp knew she messed something up. She just couldn’t think of what that was.

“Not a socially acceptable hero, but a hero by her own means.”

Someone coughed.

“And heroes, as we talked about, are—”

She was cut off by an orchestra, and the lights dimmed. Everyone in the auditorium clapped, some hesitantly.

Walking back to the side of the stage, she was confused by the shocked expression on Mistress Elocution’s face.

“D-do you know what you just did?”

Zapp blinked. “What?”

“You just endorsed a terrorist!”

Zapp scowled. “Clockwork wasn’t a terrorist.”

“It doesn’t matter! ‘Hero by her own means?’ Pardon my language, I’m not one to curse, but what the fuck were you thinking!? You are a public image. Ponies everywhere look up to you and cling to your every word!”

Zapp slouched. “I just…”

“This is a major PR disaster. Socials are probably blowing up as we speak. You’re going to need to retract your statement and label it as a poor choice of words.”

“But I don’t want to do that!”

Mistress Elocution pressed her hoof against Zapp’s lips. “Stop it! Just… stop. Don’t make things worse than they already are. Just… let me… guh!”

She stormed away, ponies moving out of the way for her in fear.

Zapp stared after her. Her lips tickled to say something, but there was nothing to say.

Aurora walked along the sidewalk, taking in the rare silent air. Normally, she’d just fly home to HQ, but thoughts weighed heavily on her mind.

Was her entire ideology misguided? No, no that was impossible. She just gave a speech on what it meant to be a hero. A speech InspoGen requested her to make.

A speech that Mistress Elocution wrote. Sure, Aurora proofread it, but it was over 2 PM coffee while nursing a migraine. Though she had to memorize it in time for the InspoTalk, she now wondered how much of it she believed in herself.

Clockwork died because she neglected her duties as a Power Pony. She was tired. She was stressed. She wanted to do nothing more than to get rid of the problem, and she did.

Killing Clockwork wasn’t what scared her most. Clockwork was a nuisance. If Aurora had let her live, she would have inevitably escaped prison again and caused more of a ruckus. She was that annoying villain-of-the-week type that showed up just to slow progress.

No, that wasn’t what scared her. It was the fact that she lost control. Somewhere, over the years, beyond the myriad of fights she’d been in, she lost mastery over herself. The very mastery over herself she’d developed back in her homeland.

Aurora—no—Zapp was dangerous. A bomb waiting to go off. Snip the wrong wire, and all hell goes loose.

Sitting against a wall beneath a flickering streetlight, Aurora spotted a homeless stallion—who appeared to be in his late teens—wrapped in a tattered brown duvet that was pure white at one point. Upon seeing her, he picked up his coffee can, shook it, and said, “Miss, if you can… miss… can you spare me some—”

“Not now!” Aurora yelled.

The stallion looked taken aback. His ears lowered, and he snuggled into his duvet. Aurora continued down the sidewalk, but she stopped. She remembered the speech she had just given and sighed.

She spilled every coin she had in her wallet into the coffee can. The stallion looked up, bewildered. She gave him a sly smile.

“T-thanks ma’am!”

“There’s no need for thanks. Just get yourself back on your hooves, then remember this moment when you are integrated back into society and pay it forward.”

Perhaps she wasn’t misguided. Perhaps those feelings of doubt were merely a byproduct of stress.

A vacation. That’s it! She needed a vacation. Not a short one, but a long one. Not too long, of course! The Power Ponies still needed her, after all. But, perhaps some time in her homeland could remind her of what’s important.

“What do you think you’re doing, mister!?”

Zapp turned. Standing a few feet away was a middle-aged mare. Nostrils flared and fuming like a stern mother.

The homeless stallion sputtered. “M-mom, it’s not what it looks like—”

She stomped up toward them. “Oh really? It looks like you're panhandling! Sweet Celest—” She shifted her attention toward Aurora. “I’m really sorry, he’ll give everything back.”

Aurora shook her head. “No need. I am happy to help you make ends meet.”

“Oh, we’re well-to-do! He’s just retaliating because I took away his allowance after he snuck out to booze it up with his friends.”

“I—what?”

“Come on mister,” the mare said. “You are in biiiig trouble!”

She bit down on his ear and dragged him along the pavement, the tattered duvet falling to the ground. The teen, meanwhile, yelled in protest.

Zapp watched them until they disappeared around the corner. Even when they were out of sight, she still stared. She stared down at the can full of coins. She stared back at the street corner.

The streetlight flickered.

Clockwork’s charred face flashed in her mind.

She was so distracted by her thoughts that she hardly noticed the buzzing in her ear.

“Hey Zapp, ya there?”

Aurora forced herself to regain composure and cleared her throat. “Greetings, Humdrum. Yes, I’m here. I am off tonight. Why do you call?”

“It’s pretty serious. I tried calling the others, but you were the only one to answer. You know the hydra at the Maretropolis Aquarium? Old Stink?”

“Ah, yes, Old Stink. I remember when he got out. Mistress Mare-velous and Radiance never made for a better team-up. Why do you ask?”

“He got out again. Only this time, he hit a fuel truck. He didn’t make it.”

“Well, did the fire from the explosion spread?”

“No, it didn’t.”

“Well, shame about Old Stink, but why are you calling me about it?”

“Because he’s missing his heart.”

The streetlight hummed as a final electric charge surged through it, and then it went out.

“What?” Aurora exclaimed.

Zapp dipped under the police tape and made her way to the scene. She was mindful enough to step around shrapnel and neglected to touch anything to the best of her abilities out of respect for the forensics on-scene. She examined her surroundings closely, silently noting the blue feathers strewn across the road.

A forensics analyst, unicorn, dressed in a bunny suit—Zapp had to remind herself that it was another name for cleanroom suit—stood before the charred, decapitated head of Old Stink, writing on a clipboard.

Zapp approached the unicorn and asked, “Details?”

The unicorn turned to her, took her pencil, and jabbed it in the direction opposite of where Zapp came from, pointing toward the aquarium plaza.

“Ahy hasn’t had time to comb over the scene thoroughly yet.” It was a mare’s voice. “But it looks like someone spooked Old Stink enough to break him out of his habitat. The old coot rampaged down the street until he hit this ‘ere fuel truck.”

She pointed at the fuel truck, which was smashed up and unrecognizable. The smell of smoke still clung to the air. “He had regrown several heads, so by the looks of it, he’d gotten into a fight of sorts. Motive unclear. Footage still being procured. Though, his heart is missing, which is mighty peculiar.”

Zapp looked down at a blue feather on the ground. “What are all of these feathers?”

“Based on their length and density, methinks they belong to a hippogriff, though they have yet to be analyzed. Likely from the perpetrator, but also possible that they were a bystander. But likely the perpetrator.”

Zapp nodded. “Anything you can tell me about the heart?”

“Ahy’a can’t make heads nor tails of it, but it appears to have been cut out. Methinks that’s what they were after. Motive unknown. Possible trophy? Don’t know, I’m just the analyst. That’s all I gots so far.”

“Thank you. Let me know if you find anything noteworthy.”

“Gotchya.”

Zapp combed the scene. She procured one of the feathers and stuck it in a ziploc bag. She looked up and down the street and interviewed ponies, but they either had very little to offer or the same information to offer. However, one in three ponies agreed that the perpetrator had to be a hippogriff.

It was okay, though. Given how out in the open the crime was and that all of the evidence was scattered around, Zapp was confident that she had her guy or gal, especially once she saw that security footage. Still, she couldn’t help but feel bad for Old Stink. He was just an animal in captivity. Sure, he was a grouch, but he was very gentle with the aquarium staff and, for the most part, tame. She still remembered socking him in the face(s) when he got out. It sounded kind of sad when she thought about it, but she found the humor in it and chuckled.

Walking into the aquarium’s security room, she found Sergeant Reckless reviewing the footage. The earth pony’s ear flicked. She turned to Zapp and gave her that same eerie smile she always gave when Zapp met her. It tried to come across as Yeah, I’m the one in charge, while it really came off as Rawr, me scary, me bossy.

Zapp couldn’t lie, she found it cute. Sergeant Reckless had only been in the force for five years and climbed the ranks faster than any officer. She was so good that she replaced Sergeant Picklebread when he retired.

Seeing Sergeant Reckless always resurfaced memories of the old days, before the Power Ponies. Zapp had just discovered her powers and was just starting out. The collateral damage in the beginning was insurmountable. So much so that Sergeant Picklebread was gunning it out for her. Out of all the criminals he was after, she was at the top of his list. She was deemed a vigilante and had a high arrest priority.

Eventually, Zapp saved his life and the city, and the two came to a mutual agreement that the collateral damage was slightly excusable.

She missed him sometimes. Although, she was kind of glad he was dead because it meant he could never find out about what she did.

“Yo, Buzz, ya in there?” Sergeant Reckless said.

Zapp snapped out of it to address her. “Apologies. I was in another place.”

Sergeant Reckless’ tail swayed. “Yeah, well they ain’t no criminals in LaLa Land, bucko. Slap yo ass over here and gimme a hoof, will ya?”

Zapp sat down beside her in front of the terminals. “You’re chirpier than usual. Long night?”

Sergeant Reckless blew a raspberry. “Shitty one. My night escalated from interrogating a public masturbater for five hours to solving the case of the nutjob who decided to execute Old Stank. I tell ya, I’m at a dead end with this footage. It went out at one-thirty, right before the presumed time Old Stank escaped his habitat. “

“I assume you already know the reason that is.”

“Ya, somepony mettled with the footage. I’m combing through it now to see if I can spot something peculiar. Nothing is showing up.”

Zapp scooted up to the computer. “Let me have a look.”

“Be my guest, I'm gonna get a coffee. You still an oat milk freak?”

“I’m trying to broaden my horizons. I’ll take skim.”

“Seriously? My ma’s milk would taste better. Whatevers, I’ll be back in twenty. See if ya can spot anything in the meantime.”

Sergeant Reckless left Zapp alone in the room. She rewinded the footage to five minutes before the cameras were shut off. Nothing really happened between that time, and when five minutes passed, nothing happened at all.

Zapp racked her brain for possible answers. The perpetrator could have used an EMP, but then she wouldn’t be sitting here and reviewing footage. The perpetrator could have hacked into the security system, but the security system itself operated on older hardware that would take a lot of know-how about out-of-date technology to crack. Still a possibility.

She reviewed the footage a second time. She reviewed the footage a third time. When she reviewed the footage a fourth time, she finally noticed something.

A shadow.
It was easy to miss, for it moved quickly across the screen. Rewinding the footage, she slowed it down and watched it frame by frame. There wasn’t a body for it to trail, but she could faintly make out the shadow’s form.

A pony. A pony with wings. However, in certain frames, the wings didn’t look quite right. It looked more like they belonged to a bat than a pegasus. A thestral, perhaps? Hard to tell.

Zapp reviewed the footage a few more times for any more anomalies. She found none. That was okay. She could analyze the feather she picked up and start the investigation based on existing knowledge. She had everything she needed.

Author's Note

Sorry for the long wait! My original intention was to have Tyranny fight a hydra this chapter, but I quickly realized that that was no easy feet considering how early into the story it was. I finally decided to rewrite it completely and just do standard characterization stuff.

Might be a little rusty since I haven't written in a while, but it's something.