CHAPTER EIGHT: FATAL FLAW

“He did say ten o’clock in the morning, right? He didn’t mean ten at night, did he?”

“Of course he meant in the morning. At least, I think he did. Austenite wouldn’t call a meeting for ten at night, would he?”

“With the hours he keeps? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him leave. Or come in. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten a knock on my door at four in the morning asking if I can come in and help him with something real quick.”

“Ha ha. Yeah, won’t take more than five hours or so. Celestia! I’ve never seen a stallion more married to his job.”

“Is that all he’s married to?”

“Psh. As far as I can tell, he’s all yours, Snap,” Die Cast japed, and Snap Punch sputtered, looking down to hide a blush that showed even against her red coat. Die Cast gave her a playful elbow. “Maybe you’re looking forward to that call at four in the morning.”

Zircona and Applejack exchanged a glance, and Applejack snorted. As much as Die Cast and Snap Punch were talented engineers, sometimes she couldn’t help but see two fillies just escaped from school. In truth, they were only a few years younger than she was. They’d also graduated from Princess Luna’s College, and in the top fifth of their class, to boot. Those two unicorns had more smarts than Applejack figured she ever would.

“Maybe you’d like to sit on my horn and spin,” Snap Punch mumbled.

Then again, maybe there was a reason Applejack was still senior to them.

“No thanks.” She stuck her tongue out at the other unicorn. “I’ve got my eye on that new waiter at the Hay Cafe. You know, the cute black-coated one?”

Zircona rubbed her temple and glanced at the clock. “It’s been fifty minutes now. Should somepony go get him?”

“Hey, I’m fine with waiting,” Snap Punch said. “All I’ve got to look forward to today is a calibration on the linear detector.”

“We really do need to get started,” Zircona cautioned. “There are some problems with the gem resonance we still need to look at.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’? Aren’t gems more your area of expertise?” Die Cast grumbled. “Just let me look at steel and bolts...”

Zircona’s coat briefly went opaque as she struggled to contain her annoyance. “It’s still related to the spell architecture,” she said testily. “You’re a unicorn, right? What do you think that thing sticking out of your head is for? Nevermind—don’t answer that.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Anyway, I’ve checked out the individual gems twice now. There’s no problem with transmittance. So here we are, looking at everything together—or, we would be, if your boss would show up.” She rolled her eyes. “Twilight may be a real dirt-driver sometimes, but at least she’s always on time.”

“Hey, let’s not get our manes all in a tangle,” Applejack said uneasily. “Why don’t Ah go see if Ah can’t find our missin’ stallion.”

No sooner had Applejack made to get up than the door whisked open and deposited Austenite into the conference room, laden down by a massive pile of blueprints. The other ponies watched in silence as he walked around to his place at the table and started organizing his things.

“Sorry we’re late, boss,” Die Cast snarked.

Austenite glanced her way. “Oh, not a problem, Die.” He stopped and blinked owlishly as his ears finally registered what he had said. “Er—Cast. Sorry. I had some time-critical things I needed to wrap-up as well.”

When he had arranged his place to his satisfaction, Austenite looked up and flashed a breathless grin at his engineers. “Okay. Are we ready to get started?”

With a flick of the hoof, he sent a blueprint unrolling along the table. The drawing crinkled as its two meter length rolled along. The end came to rest hanging off Die Cast’s side of the table. It was a massive and intricate drawing, so densely layered with notes and annotations that it was like a set of old ruins obscured by a forest.

There was a moment of appreciative silence. Die Cast and Snap Punch looked over the drawing with practiced ease. Applejack and Zircona, with less training, had more of a struggle reading it. Still, Applejack was getting better, and the intuition she’d gained from years of working with her hooves was making it smoother by the day.

Applejack had to admit to herself that she hadn’t been quite on-board with this project when she started. She thought Austenite had been all hat and no cattle, with all his talk about the possibilities of their invention. Twilight she trusted, but Twilight could also be a little to... optimistic about her studies. Being an earth pony didn’t help, either—not having wings tended to color a pony’s views on being magically suspended kilometers in the air.

But as she watched the idea grow into a design—and even put in a few suggestions herself—the pair’s infectious excitement caught her, too. Applejack doubted she would set foot in the contraption anytime soon, but she could actually believe now that they really were building something that could change the future of Equestria.

“Okay,” Austenite said with an air of resignation, “so we might have some issues to work out with the current design. Namely, if we turned it on now, resonance between the two matrices would eventually cause the gems to liberate their energy instantaneously. Which, I am led to believe—” he consulted his notes again “—would be a bad thing for everypony within a fifty-meter radius. So we need to go back to the drawing board.”

“We never left the drawing board,” Snap Punch mumbled, poking at the roll.

“Well,” Zircona said, “there are two options that seem obvious to me. We can either move the matrices further apart, or we can make the fields more streamlined.”

“How much further would we have to move them?” Applejack asked.

The crystal pony consulted her notes. “It would have to be at least forty-three centimeters more of separation. And we’ll probably have to test the levels again at that distance. Margin of error, and all that.”

“Well, we can easily get another fifteen centimeters’ distance. After that, we’d need to completely redesign the lower hull assembly,” Austenite said. He bit his lip as he looked over the plans. “How much more can we streamline the gravity spell architecture?” he asked.

“Not really sure, boss,” Die Cast mused. “It’d take a while. I mean, it took a while just to find a configuration that works.”

“Hmm.” Austenite tapped his chin. “Are we still using the gem layout that Twilight’s using for the magicannon?”

Die Cast quirked an eyebrow. “Um? Unless you changed it sometime last night, I think so.”

Applejack pointed a hoof at the drawing. “So we’re not using a matrix that’s been optimized for gravity spells?”

“Oh, no no no,” Snap Punch moaned. “You’re not seriously suggesting we go all the way back to gem placement, are you?”

“Hmm. That’s a good idea, Snap.”

The unicorn blinked in shock. “...What?”

Austenite glanced over at Zircona. “How much do you think we could get out of that?”

She shrugged, purposefully ignoring the frantic shaking of heads coming from the foot of the table. “It’d probably give us the best improvement.”

Alright then,” Austenite said, leaning back with a definitive nod. “Applejack? I’ll want you to help me move the spell matrix mountings. Snap Punch and Die Cast, you’ll be looking at optimizing gem placement for gravity spells.”

Both unicorns went slack-jawed. With the way their colors drained, Applejack reaffirmed her joy at being an earth pony.

* * *

Austenite was pretty sure he could count the number of productive meetings he’d ever been in on one hoof. It seemed like it was physically impossible for more than two ponies to agree on something without taking an hour to debate it. Of course, that was never his fault—sometimes it just took longer for other ponies to realize they were wrong. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that he could be ten times more productive alone.

Still, bureaucracy must be served, he thought as he gathered the drawings and rolled them up, pushing the ends in neatly with his wingtips. He supposed there might be some merit to the idea—after all, it wasn’t like engineers to stubbornly hold onto an idea that was outdated and useless just because it was what they were used to.

It’s nice to see Snap Punch and Die Cast starting to take the initiative, he thought, nodding to himself—he’d noticed that it had been their idea to—

His ears twitched at the sound of a creak, and he realized that he was not the only one left in the room. He looked up from the papers and saw a pony still leaning in the doorway.

“What’s up, Applejack?” he asked as he snapped shut his case. “Is this about the tolerance on the adjustment pins? Look, I know that it’s a little beyond our capabilities here, but I really think it’s necessary. Every millimeter of precision we get—”

“Ah know, Austen,” she waved him off politely, and walked around the table to stand next to him. “Actually, Ah was wonderin’ if you’d like to come to lunch. With us, Ah mean. Ah was plannin’ on meetin’ the girls at the Hay Café at around a quarter to noon.”

They both looked up at the clock. Twelve oh three.

“Well, it’s not too late. Anyway, it’s nothin’ fancy,” she assured him, “no need to dress. I know Twilight would wait for us.”

“Oh.” He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Oh. Uh, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to impose on you and your friends,” he said depreciatively.

Applejack’s smile slipped a notch. “Ah would hope you’d consider us among your friends, Austen. Ah certainly count you as one of mine. Ya sure you wouldn’t consider it, sugarcube?” she pressed further. “Ah’m sure that everypony would be pleased as punch to see you there.”

He looked past her for a moment. “Oh, no. I do consider you a friend, Applejack. It’s just... no thanks. Not today.” he said finally, pulling a sheet from the stack and noisily unfolding it. “I really have to figure out how I’m going to move this mounting bracket.” He smiled at her. “Can’t let Twilight’s team get too far ahead of us, right?”

She watched the stallion hunker down into the drawing. “Alright then,” she said slowly. “If you’re sure.”

Austenite was already engrossed in the pages. Applejack turned and headed out of the drafting room.

* * *

Twilight, Pinkie, and Rainbow looked up at the sound of trotting.

“Sorry Ah’m late, y’all,” Applejack called, a little out of breath from the run down from the laboratory. “Austen’s meeting ran a bit late.”

“No problem, Applejack. We’re still waiting for Fluttershy and Rarity,” Twilight said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stop in at all this morning—I had to speak with those ponies from Canterlot. Did I miss anything important?”

The orange pony shook her head. “Just a few problems here an’ there. Ah’m pretty sure that Die Cast and Snap Punch are gonna need your help with somethin’.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll be sure to talk to them about it later today.” She cocked her head. “Did you, ah... did you ask Austen about coming?”

Applejack pursed her lips. “He said he had too much work to do on the project,” she said.

Twilight was about to speak when Rainbow Dash groaned and rolled her eyes. “C’mon, you guys are always talking in riddles about this stuff. Can’t you tell us what you’re doing over there?”

It was Twilight’s turn to shake her head. “Sorry, Rainbow. It’s classified.”

Rainbow took a little flying leap and did a front flip, coming to a crouch next to Twilight. “But the Princesses have you working on something to help fight the gryphons, right? That has to be it!”

Twilight gave a gloating little smile. “Sorry, Rainbow. Still classified.”

“Gryphons. Hmph. They’ve been sabotaging my work for years now,” Pinkie said, crossing her hooves.

“You’re talking about... Gilda, right?” Dash asked.

“Sometimes,” Pinkie muttered, looking around shiftily.

Rainbow looked back at Twilight, who shrugged.

“Well,” Rainbow continued, “I still know a few ponies at the Wonderbolt Academy, and one of them told me that she overheard two of the flight instructors saying that they’d overheard Spitfire telling Soarin that they’d received orders to expedite training. And now you’ve got more guards than I’ve seen travel with the Princesses. Something’s got to be up.”

Twilight looked around at Bastion and the three other guards standing lookout around her friends. Twilight Sparkle’s Three Ring Circus. At least, that was what it felt like to her, with four bodyguards escorting her now. She had thought it couldn’t get much worse than just having one ever-present protector. But now, eating out at a restaurant was like organizing the Hearth’s Warming pageant.

There were always two guards standing stoically in front of the library, too. And guards at the lab. And she saw the way that Ponyville looked at them. Ponies she’d spent months trying to convince that she was no different from them, no different than when she’d just been a unicorn. Now everypony that greeted her had to pass under the scrutiny of her guards.

Rarity’s arrival freed her from having to make a return comment.

“Hello, darlings!” She greeted them with a huge smile. “Sorry we’re late—for some reason, there was a tremendous line at the spa today.” She glanced behind her, and giggled. “Oh, Fluttershy, dear, it’s fine. They’re with Twilight.”

She stepped to the side to reveal the pegasus scrutinizing Twilight’s guards.

“Fluttershy, you’ve met Bastion, right?” Twilight smiled and pointed at the other guards in turn. “This is Ashlar, Corbel, and Onager.”

The last one shot an unsure glance at his superior, and Bastion leaned in towards Twilight and cleared his throat. “Oriel, Your Highness.”

“Oriel.” Her cheeks reddened, and she glanced down at her hooves. “I’m so sorry—”

The stallion dismissed it with a wave of his hoof. “It’s okay, Your Highness. There are sixteen of us, after all.”

“Well,” Rarity said eager to leave the awkward situation behind them, “now that we’re all present, shall we?” She turned to flag down a waiter. “Yoo-hoo!”

A charcoal-black unicorn in a tidy white shirt and bowtie appeared and bowed. “Hello, ladies and gentlecolts, and welcome to the hay café. May I have a name, please?”

“Ah, yes. You’ll find the reservation under Princess Sparkle,” Rarity said loudly. “Erm, party of six,” she said a bit more delicately as Twilight fixed her with a flat look.

The waiter smiled serenely, and gave another short bow, this time to the alicorn. “Of course. Your table is ready, ladies and gentlecolts.” He lifted a hoof to show them inside.

“My name is Graphite, and I’ll be your waiter this afternoon. If you’ll follow me?”

* * *

“So, get this,” Rainbow said in between mouthfuls of bread. “Crafty Crate was telling me that he thinks the gryphons are secretly raising an army of changelings. So I told him to stick to shipping things and leave the thinking for smart ponies like Twilight here. Why would they need a secret army when they have a real one?”

“I don’t know, Rainbow,” Twilight said for what felt like the hundredth time, and took a sip of her water. She tried to ignore the ponies staring at them from around the restaurant, only looking away when the gaze of one of her guards passed over them.

Rarity leaned forward and touched Twilight’s foreleg with concern. “But surely you must have some kind of insight into this, Twilight,” she said. “I don’t mean your work—I know you can’t divulge that.” She dabbed at her mouth to stall for time. “But as your brother’s sister, you must have a good feel for his disposition?”

She shrugged. “My brother is very careful with what he writes. I know as much as you all do. Princess Celestia is doing the best she can to come to a peaceful solution to the current problem. But she will, of course, do everything within her power to protect Equestria,” the princess in Twilight said.

“Oh, oh! If there is a war, is Celestia going to make you a general?” Rainbow grabbed at the table, shaking glasses. “I pulled out my old weather team contract, and it turns out that the weather team is actually part of the reserves. Maybe I’ll get to serve under you!”

“Lieutenant Dash, of the napping brigade,” Applejack deadpanned.

Rainbow settled for blowing a raspberry at her.

* * *

Graphite tried to shut out the noises of the kitchen around him as he focused on the menus in his magical grip. Despite his efforts, the menus fluttered like leaves. Even after all the years of training, his body could still betray him. He could control his nerves, but the primitive part of his brain still flooded him with adrenaline.

It had surprised him. He knew about the lunches the princess had with her friends—he had reported them to the gryphons himself. But the order had come down, and when he saw the target standing right there, it was all he could do not to bolt like a foal. He had used every last ounce of calm to seat the group and retreat to the kitchen.

It wasn’t as if he had a choice anymore. When he’d first started taking jobs for them, he knew that working with the gryphons would be dangerous. But he was smart enough not to be pulled in, not to give them anything more than what they’d paid for. At least that had been his intention at first, but he’d grown complacent in their service.

He had no idea how they’d found his sister. He didn’t even know where she was anymore. The first thing he’d done when he went freelance seven years ago was destroy any records that connected him back to Bright Eyes, and he’d had no contact with her since. It would have taken him months to track her down. But they’d shown him a picture. It didn’t matter that it was recent, or even if it was entirely fake. They knew what she looked like, right down to her cutie mark. They would find her eventually. And Graphite had no doubt what the gryphons had planned if he disobeyed.

It didn’t matter to them that he’d spent the last month building his cover. He hadn’t relocated so much as he had fled from Canterlot. Celestia’s agents were on his tail. It didn’t matter how far behind, not to the gryphons. They would rather use him, and then cast him aside. And then they would make sure he could never be used again, by anypony.

He frowned at the menus, almost radiating his anger. He would succeed today. Then, he would kill his gryphon handler and go find his sister. They would go into hiding and leave the Gryphons and the Equestrians to their goddess-forsaken war.

Bit by bit, they stopped shaking and floated rock-steady in midair.

* * *

“It’s too bad that Austenite couldn’t join us,” Rarity said, innocently examining her hoof. “I would really have liked to meet him.” She looked up with a pointed glance at Twilight.

“Stop wheedling, Rarity,” Twilight said in-between sips of water. “You’ve already met, remember?”

“Oh,” the unicorn waved a hoof, “only for a moment. That’s hardly enough time to really meet somepony.”

“He’s very busy,” Twilight said.

“Hmph. Tell me about it,” Pinkie chimed in. “I almost never see him around Ponyville.” She whipped a chart and easel out from under the table, showing a chart with hundreds of bits of data. “His party attendance rate through yesterday is only ten point seven percent since he arrived.”

“Party attendance rate through yesterday?” Rainbow repeated.

“Oh, Dashie,” Pinkie said with an irritated sigh, “do I really have to spell it out for you? Anyway—” she flipped the chart over, revealing another graph. “—as you can see here, in the past two weeks alone, his party attendance rate through yesterday has fallen over two points to eight point two percent. The only other pony whose rating has fallen into the single digits is...” She bit her lip. “You, Twilight.”

Twilight set her glass down. Her friends were all looking at her, with expressions ranging from Rarity’s forced smile, to Fluttershy’s outright concern.

“We’ve all been really busy,” she said quietly.

“Pardon the intrusion, ladies,” the waiter interjected, providing a welcome relief from the conversation, “but your meal has arrived.”

Three unicorns approached with their meals floating steadily before them. Six covered platters swept down the table and landed soundlessly at each mare’s place. Twilight waited as the cover was whisked off her dandelions and candied pecans.

“Oh, Twilight,” Rarity said, eyeing her food, “you must tell me how those taste. That’s part of the new menu I haven’t had a chance to sample yet.”

Bastion gently lifted the plate to test its contents—a long way from the rough treatment he used to give her meals, and he’d become so much more—

—An angry chime. Bastion began to turn, and—

Pain filled Twilight’s world as the restaurant erupted into bedlam. She tried to scream, but she couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t open—she felt like she was wrapped in fiery chains. Silverware clattered as she flailed out of her chair. The floor came up to meet her, her spasming muscles forcing her cheek into the carpet. Her legs were kicking about uncontrollably. Panicked shouts from the tables around them turned into screams of agony as they caught the edge of the blast. She watched Bastion come to rest a few meters from her, waging his own frenzied struggle against the spell.

* * *

Graphite rode the electric wave of his spell, eddies and errant currents of magic burning against his skin. He didn’t have much practice controlling this spell, because it drew against more than his reserves of magic. He was damaging himself, but the tradeoff meant he could go hoof-to-hoof with the magical prowess of somepony like Twilight Sparkle.

And it was working. She was writhing on the floor. Her head guard was incapacitated, and the rest of them, rushing toward him like foals, would go down in his next blast.

He pooled his magic, and steeled himself again.

* * *

A second blow, and she lost herself again to the agony. She heard wood splinter as her hoof connected with one of the table legs. Ashlar, Corbel, and Oriel, who had only caught the edge of the first blast, were now flung aside as well, and again, there was nothing between Twilight and the assailant.

Then there was a weight pressing down on her, shielding her with their weight. There were hooves trying to hold down her legs. It was Rainbow, shouting something unintelligible into her ear. Twilight tried to scream, to yell at Rainbow to get out of the way, to run.

Even through the torture, she could feel the tug through the ether as her assailant readied another blow. Her guards became a blur, moving with lightning speed as the black unicorn reared up. But they were all out of position. They wouldn’t reach him before he released the disrupting spell. And this time, Rainbow would bear the brunt of it. There was no way the pegasus could survive a direct hit from that kind of magic.

* * *

He tasted blood. Graphite probed with his tongue and discovered he’d bitten entirely through his lip. He ignored it and searched for his target.

Ponies were running now, pushing madly for the exit, all except his target and her cohorts. She was still alive, somehow, lying next to one of her friends. Courtesy of her deep well of magic, he supposed. But he was still on his hooves, and while there was still breath in his body, he could still attack.

He let his magic charge, and tried to draw a bead on the alicorn. But one of the pegasi was in the way, and he couldn’t waste a shot. He stepped forward to angle down from above—

He heard an impact, and suddenly he was upside-down. It took his brain a moment to catch up to his body, thrown violently to the floor.

One of the bodyguards was back in the equation—the unicorn who had been standing behind the target. Graphite rolled, throwing his weight to the side as a bolt of magic flashed past, close enough to singe his fur. He got around behind an upturned table and tried to locate the other combatant.

Another bolt of magic came his way, shattering the table, but losing enough cohesion in the process that Graphite could block it with a hastily-erected shield.

He rolled out from the wreckage and hurled a chair at the guard. Promptly deflected. A vase, also deflected. His magical reserve was damaged, and he was straining what he had left. Graphite kept swatting away with his telekinesis, to keep the stallion off-guard. He couldn’t risk missing with a more advanced spell and creating an opening.

But there were three more guards, struggling to come to the aid of their compatriot. Graphite needed to take this one down fast.

He closed the distance, feinting a physical strike. The white stallion dropped his stance, at which point Graphite struck with a gout of fire of his own. The stallion roared in pain and rage at the dupe. It was good for Graphite—the stallion was losing focus. Now, to sideline him again. He stepped in close and reached for the double-edged spell once again. He readied a small burst—he only needed ten seconds to complete his task.

He wasn’t doing as well at sectioning himself off—this time the spell was more painful, and he was almost paralyzed for a moment. But his opponent staggered again, and Graphite smiled and turned to aim at the prostrate alicorn.

And the guard he had turned away from for the second time slammed him into a wall.

Dazed, Graphite slumped to the floor even as he screamed at himself to get back up. He tried moving his legs. One of them pointed away oddly and wouldn’t respond. He looked up, and saw the big, white, and not-at-all-nice-looking stallion with his horn to Graphite’s throat. Behind him, the target was beginning to assert control over herself, the random twitching of limbs becoming concerted attempts to rise.

He had failed. He had miscalculated and he had failed because of it. Graphite stared back into his eyes, trying to radiate the fury he felt into the very soul of his assailant. The guard had reasserted himself. Those grey eyes looked back with no emotion. Graphite opened his mouth.

Part of him longed to surrender. He could just... give up. He hadn’t considered it before, but looking at the end of the line had a tendency to force a pony to consider any alternative. He hadn’t killed her, at least not outright. They wouldn’t kill him for that. The Goddesses hadn’t even killed Discord for his transgressions.

But he knew that logic was weak. There was no way that Equestria would allow his silence, not after this. The gryphons would find him eventually. And there was no way in Tartarus that they would grant him or his sister a swift or in any way painless death.

“No choice,” he murmured. He thought he saw the tiniest flash of emotion in the white stallion’s eyes.

* * *

“He timed it perfectly, Your Highness,” Bastion reported emotionlessly. “While I was casting my spell, I couldn’t feel him channeling his own magic. The others were focused on their sectors—no doubt they thought the magic was mine, too.”

The Hay Cafe was deserted. Chairs were upturned, or smashed in the panic. The patrons had fled, leaving ten ponies and one corpse in the disheveled room. They had stamped out the fires from the magical barrage, but acrid smoke still hung in the air.

Twilight shakily flexed her wings, shrugging off Fluttershy’s attempts to wrap a blanket around her. “And you killed him.”

“He would have killed you, Your Highness. I had—” he coughed. “I had no choice.”

“He was incapacitated,” she droned. “You had him by the throat, he couldn’t have done anything.”

Bastion snorted angrily. “He was trying to kill you.” He wasn’t addressing his ruler anymore, he was addressing an uncooperative filly. “With his dying breath, he was trying to cast that spell again. So I killed him.” The stallion stood resolute. “I’m not about to take chances with your life.”

She was silent a moment. “I don’t even feel anything.” Then she stumbled, almost collapsing. Fluttershy darted back in, giving her friend support.

“You’re in shock, Twilight,” Fluttershy crooned, hooves on Twilight’s shoulders. The others just stood there. Glass crunched underhoof as Rarity and Applejack knelt next to Rainbow Dash, who was still groaning on the ground. Even Pinkie stood stock still, looking around everywhere but at the body.

“Right. Note to self,” she whispered. “Stomach grumble, eye twitch, hoof tingle? That’s an assassination attempt.”

“Twilight, Ah think Rainbow’s goin’ to need a Life Flight,” Applejack called.

Twilight pushed Fluttershy off with her wings again. “I’m fine. Go see to Rainbow.”

The pegasus recoiled, but rushed to see to their friend. Twilight ignored her and turned back towards Bastion.

“Are the rest of the guards okay?” she asked.

Bastion straightened, speaking to his Princess once again. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“We need to leave before the newsponies show up. Rainbow needs the hospital. And get that—” she nodded curtly toward the black form crumpled next to the wall “—out of here, too.”

Author's Note

Runner-up title for this chapter goes to Doom, with "Death Insert-Superfluous-Detail-Here"

EDIT: Graphite's section updated to make slightly more sense. Thank you to those who made suggestions.