Sweetie Belle’s mouth opened, then closed again. Her emerald eyes locked on Pound Cake’s, like they were searching for a lie in his eye, a malice in his face. The ropes binding her hooves stretched as she tried to break the bonds and reach out to the pony she hadn’t seen in a lifetime.

The beating in Pound Cake’s chest started to pick up again, and he found himself reaching for her. He wrapped the older mare in a tight hug inside the tight confines of the sports car. They held together for a long moment, then pulled apart.

He had felt her shake under him.

“Sweetie Belle,” Pound Cake said, tasting the words on his lips once more.

She stared at him. “What are you . . . how are you . . .” She bent over and tears seeped out the sides of her eyes. “I don’t understand . . .”

Pound Cake wrapped a hoof around the mare’s shoulders and held her up. He reached around and fumbled with the ropes keeping Sweetie Belle tied, but was able to get her free of them. “There, that should be better,” he said.

She nodded, and leaned her head against the dashboard of the car. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m in Shangay, but you’re here! Pound Cake, you’ve been gone for over ten years . . . where have you been?”

“Here and there, mostly.” Pound Cake shrugged. “I’ve been in Shanghay for a while now. Why did you come here, Sweetie Belle? This isn’t a great place for foreigners.”

“I was here to sing,” Sweetie Belle mumbled. “I was at a big club, and then afterward some ponies dragged me, and they put a hood over my  head . . .” She sniffled.

Pound Cake squeezed her with his hoof on her shoulders. “Hey, you’re safe from them now,” he said.

“I am?”

“Of course. Those were some bad ponies, but they have fallen out of favor with the ponies I work for. Now that you’re with me, you’ll be safe.”

“Oh Pound Cake, I just . . .” She bit her lip. “I’m so sorry for dragging you into all this. The first time I’ve seen you in years, and I’ve gotten you into a mess with me again.”

“Just like old times, huh?” he said.

She flashed him a ghost of a smile. “Well now we’re even, so long as we’re only counting today.”

They fell silent for a couple moments, both drinking in the other’s presence. Pound Cake watched the flickering sign of an imported sushi restaurant cast a maroon glow over Sweetie Belle’s face. She stared at him, at his coat and bruises that dotted his jaw and face.

“So, uh, how’s Pumpkin?” Pound Cake asked.

“I left her with fresh flowers before I went to Shanghay,” Sweetie Belle said. “The tree she’s under has gotten so big since you left. You should see it. It gives fresh peaches every summer, and all the foals play around it.”

Pound Cake closed his eyes and swallowed. “I bet she would have been really happy to know that.”

Sweetie Belle reached out to him, but he shook his head. “We need to get you out of here,” he said. “The Bund is no place for a foreigner at night. I’ve got an apartment in the inner city, and you’ll be safe there until we can figure out what to do.”

The sports car started up again with a burst of magical energy from the engine, and the headlights colored the road in front of them a bright blue. Pound Cake steered it down a street and back onto the center highway in Shanghay, leaving the seaside strip behind.

Sagging tenement housing and neon signs with half the characters blacked out met the sports car as it glided into Pound Cake’s neighborhood. More than a few heads popped out of windows to look at the fancy car, though many quickly retreated. A car that fancy must belong to a powerful boss, they reasoned.

Pound Cake noticed them, and allowed himself a small smirk. He pulled into a parking garage near the back of a drab apartment building. It stood a little shorter than the rest of the row, and its roof was covered in radio antennas.

They both climbed out of the car, and Pound Cake clicked a button on the key to lock it. “Don’t know what good that’s going to do me,” he said. “The thing’s going to be stolen by morning.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Sweetie Belle said. Her horn began to glow, and a bright green glow enveloped the car. It shimmered, and the sleek exterior was suddenly replaced with a mirage of a beaten-down steam-powered carriage.

“What am I, back in Fillydelphia?” Pound Cake said.

Sweetie Belle laughed. “I’ll admit the overseas duchies are a bit more advanced when it comes to vehicles, but us Equestrians have a few tricks up our sleeves.”

Pound Cake laughed with her, and led her out of the parking garage and inside the building next door. They took a squeaking elevator ride to the top of the building.

The elevator car shuddered to a stop, then the doors creaked open to let them out into a narrow hallway that stank of mildew and moldy bread.

“How do you live here?” Sweetie Belle grumbled.

“Now you see why I’m not home so much,” he said. “Better to be out in the street than back here.”

Pound Cake stopped at a maroon door near the end of the hallway, and fumbled in his jacket for the key. He found it, and pushed it into the doorknob to let them in. The door swung open and Sweetie Belle stepped inside ahead of Pound Cake.

“Well, it’s not as bad as I thought,” she said.

They stood at the rear of a large living room with rugs thrown all over the floor in lieu of a carpet. To their left was a small kitchen set in the wall without a table to be seen, and in the other direction was a short hallway with two doors.

Sweetie Belle trotted over to a brown leather couch in the middle of the living and sat down on it, across from a bulky radio set.

Pound Cake switched on the radio and sat on a chair next to it. Soft, lilting music wafted from the bulky set and swept through the room. The sound of hummed lyrics and sweet melodies seemed to dance through the room, sweeping over the two ponies who sat across from each other, staring into the other’s eyes. The ticking of the clock provided a steady metronome to the radio’s beat.

“Why are you here?” Pound Cake asked at last. “Why are you in Shanghay?”

“Well, why are you?” Sweetie Belle shot back.

“You know my reason. That’s different.”

“Is it?” Sweetie Belle sighed and lay her head back. “You came here to escape Equestria. I suppose, in some ways, I did too.”

Pound Cake bit his lip. “Well what brought you here, specifically? I need to know if I’m going to be able to help you out of this whole . . . thing.”

“I came here to sing,” Sweetie Belle said. “I got a note from my agent that there was a big party in Shanghay for some Equestrian official there, and that he liked my music. So I took the job.” She shrugged. “Maybe it was an escape or a chance to go somewhere else that I’d never been. I don’t know.”

“And how did you get captured?”

Sweetie Belle rubbed one hoof over the other. Her voice trembled, and she kept having to lick her lips because they felt so dry. “The ponies, they—they took me when I got out of the club. I didn’t know what was happening, but they talked about ransoming me and that they’d kill me if I talked . . .”

Pound Cake got up and put a hoof on the shoulder of the shivering mare. Sweetie Belle curled herself toward his hoof, though when she realized what she was doing, her face flushed and she scooted away.

“You’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ll find a way to get you out of the city, no problem. You can be on your way back to Equestria in no time.”

“What about you?”

Pound Cake looked out his living room window. It gave him a view of the train tracks that crossed above the city streets, and the apartments on the other side of them. “I can’t leave Shanghay. This is my city now.”

Sweetie Belle started to say something, but was interrupted by a deep yawn. Her eyes fluttered, and she smiled. “I think all this adventuring has got this old mare tired,” she said. “Should I sleep on the couch?”

“I’ll take it,” Pound Cake said.

“But are you sure?”

“I’ll be fine, Sweetie Belle. The bed’s in the room behind you. Bathroom’s down the hall.”

She nodded and pulled herself to her hooves. A smile made its way to her face and directed itself at Pound Cake. “I don’t know where I would be without you, Pound Cake. It seems like such random luck that you found me . . . but I like to think you were always my protector.

Pound Cake smiled back. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, dear. Get some sleep, okay?”

“I promise.”

Sweetie Belle nodded and disappeared through the door behind the couch. Pound Cake watched her go, and turned down the radio until it was only a soft murmur. Though he had promised her, he didn’t go to sleep—at first.

Snow began to fall once again outside, and fat flakes stuck against the window and spread frost across the glass pane. Pound Cake sat upright on his couch, rocking back and forth. Tears began to flow down his cheeks and drip onto the leather sofa.

He cried in silence, listening to a singer warble in Manedarin on the radio. The falling snow somehow fit the mood, the cold beauty of flakes that were half-gray from soot in the air. He figured ponies back in Equestria would be getting ready for Hearth’s Warming, everypony atwitter with excitement.

The ponies in Shanghay didn’t celebrate Hearth’s Warming, but rather the passing of the New Year. They took to the streets in parades and festivals, and dressed in all sorts of garish colors and costumes. The food was always great, though Pound Cake had never stayed around many ponies during the celebrations.

A bus drove past out his window, leaving wide tracks in the newfallen snow. Pound Cake wiped his eyes and sniffled a little. He grimaced at the snot running out his nose like he was a foal again. He looked behind his back to the door to the bedroom with Sweetie Belle inside. He could hear her snoring, softly and wistfully like he always imagined a singer would.

Pound Cake smiled a little and sat back, watching the snowfall. He sat in that position for a long time—how long, he didn’t know. His eyes eventually grew heavy and, before he was aware of it, he had fallen asleep in the quiet apartment. Music still came from the radio, that played through the night.

Pound Cake awoke to the sound of somepony knocking on his front door. He sat up and blinked the sleep from his eyes. The glare coming off the new snow banks outside hurt his eyes, and he looked away as fast as he could.

The knocking came again, and Pound Cake stumbled to the door. He peeked out through the peephole, but didn’t see anypony. He had to look down before he saw a very frazzled Private Practice. The stallion hadn’t even bothered to slick back his hair, and it hung around his ears in a big mop.

“C’mon, Pound, I know you’re in there!” he called.

Pound Cake rolled his eyes and opened the door for him. Private Practice blinked, then looked him over for a moment. “I hope you feel better than you look,” he said.

“Yeah, nice to see you too,” Pound Cake said, shutting the door behind him.

Private Practice’s nose wrinkled. “Does this place always smell like this?”

“You ask that every time you’re here.”

“I guess it’s one of those traumas I try to forget.”

He walked to the window, and peered out for a moment. He let down the blinds, then, and the room fell into darkness. “Have you had anypony else visit today?”

Pound Cake’s eyes flicked to the bedroom door. “No.”

“Good.” He stood before Pound Cake, and stared at him. “They’re going to want your head after what you did.”

“What’d I do?” Pound Cake asked.

Private Practice laughed. “As if you don’t know. The bosses noticed how you took out low-level stallion last night. Ripped his guts out in the middle of the street. They just wanted you to show him a lesson, not butcher him!”

“What? No, no, what are you talking about?” Pound Cake stepped back, shaking his head. “I left that little boss on the ground with a black eye. I didn’t do anything even close to that to him.”

“Yeah?” Private asked. “Well whether that’s true or not, the big bosses are not happy. They think you got a little defiant at getting less pay for boxing, and now they want to give you a lesson.”

“What do you mean a lesson?”

“I mean unless you go grovel before them, those wings are going to get clipped. Off.”

“No, no, you gotta do something about them,” Pound Cake said. “I can’t go before them, not right now. They’d find something to get back at me with, and right now that ain’t a good thought.”

“Why?” Private asked.

Before he could answer, the door to Pound Cake’s bedroom clicked open. A very frazzled-looking Sweetie Belle stepped through and blinked in the low lighting. She wore a rumpled collared shirt of Pound Cake’s around her shoulders.

“Pound Cake, who’s this?” she asked.

Private Practice blinked, then whirled back around to Pound Cake. “Who the hell is she?” he demanded.

“An old friend,” he said, stepping toward her. “She needed a place to stay that was safe, so I let her stay here with me.”

“And the way you’re in with the Trifecta, you thought that would be a good idea?”

Sweetie Belle leaned in toward Pound Cake. “If you’re in trouble with this guy, I can help . . .”

“No, he’s fine.” Pound Cake held up a hoof. “Look, both of you, calm down for a second and let me think. Sweetie Belle, this is Private Practice, my manager. Say hi, Private.”

Private nodded to her. Sweetie Belle stared at him, but nodded back. She watched Pound Cake walk across the room to the kitchen and get a glass bottle down from one shelf. He took a swing from it, then sighed.

“Private, you need to find a way to appease the Trifecta without them having to snoop into my life,” he said. “They can’t find Sweetie Belle, no matter what. They’d hold her over my head and yours too. Do something.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Then find someone who can!”

Sweetie Belle bit her lip, and took a step forward. “Pound Cake, what’s wrong?” she asked. “You can tell me, I’m not new to these things. Is it money?”

“It’s more than money,” Pound Cake said. “It’s respect.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Respect?”

“Your friend here works for one of the largest crime gangs in Shanghay,” Private said. “They have more money than they could ever want, so what they want most is respect. They don’t think Pound Cake has enough.”

“Oh.” Her eyes flashed. “So you’re a criminal.”

“I’m not a criminal, I’m a boxer,” Pound Cake said. “To get anywhere, you have to sign up with the Trifecta, so I did. They’ve been biting me lately, though.”

Sweetie Belle fell silent, but Private Practice just surged ahead, poking Pound Cake in the chest. “You either make amends with the Trifecta or they’re going to make you pay,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”

Pound Cake sighed. “Come on, Private, there has to be somepony who can help. The Trifecta aren’t powerful enough to have stamped out absolutely everyone, right?”

Private Practice paused for a moment, and bit his lip. “There might be someone,” he said, “but I’m not so sure you can get his help. He’s not the most outgoing of ponies.”

“Who is he?”

“Tsingtao.”

“The pony with the mansion north of the city?”

“That’s the one.”

Pound Cake rested on his back hooves. “And he beat the Trifecta?”

“So I’ve heard,” Private Practice said. “Look, this is just what I’ve heard, but it’s said that he managed to get them off his back and runs his own little circle north of the city, and sometimes into Shanghay itself.”

“Then we’ll go to him,” Pound Cake said.

Private Practice shook his head. “It isn’t that easy. He keeps to himself, and isn’t known to accept that many visitors, let alone help them. How willing he’d be to help you against the Trifecta . . . I don’t know.”

He leaned closer to Pound Cake and whispered, “Kid . . . doing this could cost you your career. Do you really want that just for this girl? I don’t want to see all your talent thrown away over something like this.”

“This goes beyond just a little kickboxing,” Pound Cake said. “Besides, the Trifecta doesn’t necessarily have to know what I’m doing, right? I can take Sweetie Belle to Tsingtao and see if he can help her, and then I can get back here. Just stall for me if they come by, alright?”

“You’re lucky I’m a good guy, kid,” Private Practice said.

Pound Cake walked past him and over to Sweetie Belle, who had moved to look out the window. He stood beside her and saw foals playing in the snow-covered sidewalks.

“You alright?” he asked.

“I wish you had told me about the gangster thing,” she said. “If it’s what helped you find me, though . . . well I guess I shouldn’t complain too much.”

He smiled. “Well we’re going to find a way out of the gang problem anyway. I’m going to take you to somepony who me and Private Practice think can help.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

Sweetie Belle sighed. “Isn’t this going to get you into trouble somehow? I didn’t come here to be a charity case, Pound. I’m happy to see you, but I don’t want to be burden.”

“You’re not a burden.” Pound Cake smiled and laid a hoof on her shoulder. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. Old friends are important, and, well, Pumpkin would have wanted me too.”

“Pumpkin wouldn’t have wanted you to throw yourself away,” she said.

“Then I won’t.”

Private Practice stared at the two of them. He shook his head. “So are you two going to go or not? If you are, I should get out of here and start planning a vacation to Caballgong. I’ve been meaning to head to the inland territories anyway. Vacation.”

“Hey, before you go,” Pound Cake said, “if the bosses come looking for you, stall them, will you? Don’t get yourself hurt . . . but give me a little leeway, huh?”

“Only for you, Pound,” Private muttered, rolling his eyes and walking off. He gave one last look back, then let himself out of the apartment.

Pound Cake disappeared into his bedroom, and reappeared with a silver jacket slung over his shoulder. He pulled it on, and slid the keys to the sports car out. Sweetie Belle wrapped a silk scarf covered in Manedarin around her head, and gave him a grin.

“How does this old mare look?”

“Like a young mare,” Pound Cake said. “And not a bad looking one, either.”

“Oh, as long as I’m not ugly,” Sweetie Belle said, laughing.

She plucked a mango from from a basket in his kitchen with her magic, and chewed on it. Pound Cake himself slurped down leftover noodles in thoughtful silence, watching Sweetie Belle. She smiled at him when juice dribbled down her chin and she made a mess of herself trying to wipe it away.

“Are you nervous?” he asked while he washed out his noodles bowl.

“Why would I be?” she said. “I’m with you, remember? You’ve been crazy and fearless since you were a foal. Remember how crazy you drove Pinkie?”

Pound Cake laughed. “Yeah, I do. She used to tell us the stories when we were old enough. Sometimes I can’t believe how me and Pumpkin did together. How is Pinkie, anyway?”

“She passed away three years ago.”

“That’s a shame.”

Sweetie Belle ran a hoof on the countertop. “So are we going to get to that stallion, now? Or do you want to keep me around for another reason?”

“Now you’re just tempting me.” He walked past her and stuck his head out the door. He checked the hallway outside, then held the door open for Sweetie Belle. He locked it behind her, then kept close to her all the way out the building.

He almost didn’t find the car, until Sweetie Belle poked him on the shoulder and removed her magic cloak on the sports car. He was almost standing right by the car when it re-materialized, and he grinned.

“Makes me wish I was a born a unicorn,” he said.

“Well we are the best ponies,” Sweetie Belle said. “Maybe someday if you wish hard enough on Hearth’s Warming . . .”

They climbed in the car together, and Pound Cake started up the engine. He was glad to see the meter still read the fuel as nearly full. He wasn’t exactly sure how to fill it up, or with what. He backed out of the garage, and was gone in a roar of the engine and a puff of magic.

The coastal plain Shanghay sat on gave way to sloping hills in the north, that were filled with trees that were flush and green in the summer, and covered in snow in the winter. Off the road, the snow lay undisturbed like a photograph in time. The moment was peaceful, the road absolutely still and quiet save for the sports car that drove down it. A few birds flitted in the cold air above, diving and wheeling about without a care in the world.

Pound Cake envied them.

Houses along stone streets sat in the places between the hills, awake in the winter morning and out doing chores or picking up food and gifts for the coming New Year. The roads were rough on the tires of the sports car, so Pound Cake slowed and drifted through them, smiling at ponies as he went by. Most seemed surprised to see a fancy car so far out of Shanghay.

The only mention of Tsingtao’s mansion was a hoof-made sign that pointed down a rough, dirt road covered in snow drifts. If Pound Cake hadn’t already known about the infamous House of Tsingtao, he would have missed it.

The sports car cut fresh tracks through the snow as it crawled along the path toward the reclusive stallion’s mansion. The trees around the mansion were bare, but snow covering them kept Pound Cake from spotting the house until they were almost to it.

A round front walk spread out front of a towering mansion with wooden buttresses of Equestrian design mixed with pagodas and rotundas in a classic, smooth Shanghay style. An old steam car sat on the front drive, silent.

“Are you sure he’s home?” Sweetie Belle asked.

“He’s home,” Pound Cake said. “Rumor is, he never leaves in the winter. Just holes up in the mansion and nopony sees him for months. Some say it’s because he celebrates Hearth’s Warming instead of the New Year. They don’t like that around here.”

Sweetie Belle sniffed. “Well that’s a little stuck up.”

“They’re just not into the Equestrians. Trust me.”

Pound Cake slowed the car to a stop next to the steam car, in the spreading shadow of the mansion. His heart beat a little faster as he looked up at the massive arched windows that looked at him like empty eye sockets.

The pair climbed out of the car, and Pound Cake led the way to the front door. The grass around the sweeping yard was brown and dormant in the winter, but the trees planted on the grounds were evergreens with their leaves still bright and vibrant.

The front door loomed in front of them, a rich mahogany inlaid with carvings of chrysanthemums and lions. No light came from windows to either side, and no sound from within. Pound Cake took a deep breath before rapping his hoof against the wood. He could hear the booms echo through the house, and sat back to wait.

 Silence met him. He knocked again, after a few minutes, but it returned the same silence as before. When he leaned in to knock a third time, he discovered that the door itself was unlocked. Pound Cake shook the doorknob, and gently turned it until the door creaked open to reveal a dark interior.

“Pound Cake!” Sweetie Belle hissed. “We can’t just barge in!”

“We can if we want to find him,” Pound Cake said. “A pony like him wouldn’t leave his door unlocked by accident.”

Sweetie Belle started to protest, but Pound Cake cantered in and she was forced to sigh and follow him in. The mansion was plainly decorated compared to how ornate the outside was, with furniture that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a suburban one-story house. The eerie silence of the front landing continued through the narrow hallways of the mansion, and no sign of the stallion of the house was to be seen.

Pound Cake was just about ready to give up when he heard grunting coming from outside the back door, on a large porch outside that he had glimpsed through a window. He motioned to Sweetie Belle, and together they trotted across a living room adorned with hardwood floors to a screen door leading outside. Pound Cake pushed through it and found himself on an outside patio with a concrete floor that circled a large pool. The pool had a cover on it for the winter months, and Pound Cake could feel why: The air on the back porch was bitterly cold, and seemed to dig deep into Pound Cake’s skin.

There was a pony standing by the pool, facing away from them. He had a coat as white as the snow standing in drifts around the edge of the pool, but with a mane as coal-gray as the snow that fell in central Shanghay, stained with the residue of factories and processing plants.

He trotted around with a short sword in his mouth, swishing the curved blade through the air. As Pound Cake watched, he tossed the sword into the air and caught it in his two forehooves while standing up on his hind legs.

“If there is a reason you’re here, then speak it,” he said in a gruff voice, wagging his sword toward Sweetie Belle and Pound Cake.

Pound Cake gulped. “We just saw the door was unlocked and came in,” he said. “We needed to talk with you as soon as we could.”

“Then speak,” Tsingtao said, “or leave me to my peace. I don’t have time for small talk.”

Sweetie Belle stepped forward. “We’re here to see if you’ll help us,” she said. “My friend is here because I am, and he’s doing this to help me. We’re in trouble, and were told you were the only one who might know a way out.”

“Trouble with the Trifecta, yes?” Tsingtao threw the blade up and caught it for a vertical slice that stopped an inch above the concrete. “I cannot gather another reason you would need my help.”

“Yeah, it’s about the Trifecta,” Pound Cake said.

“Are you in debt to them?”

“Not exactly.”

“Ah, so you worked for them, and now you want out.”

Pound Cake’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

Tsingtao turned around to face them both. For the first time, Pound Cake could see the scars criss-crossing his face around his eyes and mouth. “Because that is how the Trifecta operates. Have you ever heard of the story of the scorpion and the frog?”

“Can’t say I have,” Pound Cake said.”

“No, no, you’re foreigners. Of course you haven’t.” Tsingtao sat by the pool with his sword balanced on his lap. “The story of the scorpion and the frog is thus: One day, a scorpion needs to cross a river to get to the fertile lands on the other side, but he cannot swim. He asks a friendly frog nearby to swim him across, but the frog refuses.

“‘You’ll sting me,’ the frog says, but the scorpion denies this. He promises the frog that he will not sting him, as he would drown in the river. So, the frog agrees and lets the scorpion climb on his back.He swims across the roaring river, but halfway to the other side the scorpion stings him anyway and the frog begins to die. Before he can, he asks why the scorpion would sting him if he would die too. The scrpion replies: ‘Because it’s in my nature.’”

“So you’re saying the scorpion is the Trifecta,” Pound Cake said.

Tsingtao nodded. “They cannot change their nature. Sooner or later, they will sting you, even if they drown with you.”

“So you’ll help us?”

“I didn’t say that.” Tsingtao huffed. “Advice is free, but my consultation is not. You are both strangers to me, and I have no real interest in helping two more bumbling fools escape a trouble they got themselves in.”

Sweetie Belle shook her head. “Pound Cake never got himself into this,” she said. “I got trapped here and wanted by this ‘Trifecta’ and I’ve dragged him into it.”

Tsingtao raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“No, it’s not,” Pound Cake said. “I dragged her into it, not the other way around. She’s a foreigner who got foalnapped and I saved her, but now she’s in it with me while I’m in hot with the Trifecta. Punish me, but not her.”

“So it seems you think you’re very noble,” Tsingtao said with a step toward Pound Cake. “You think you are solely responsible for saving her, that what you have done is so chivalristic, and yet you must come to me for help.”

“I—”

“Would you fight for her?”

Pound Cake nodded. “Of course I would. I’ll fight anyone.”

Tsingtao yanked his sword up and pressed the blade against Pound Cake’s neck. He grinned. “Would you still?”

“I would,” Sweetie Belle said, stepping between the two. “I would fight you because we only came here for help, and you’re pressing a sword to my friend’s neck. We were led to believe you were better than the gangs here, but you’re no more than a thug.”

“Now, that’s the answer I like to hear,” Tsingtao said. He took the sword away and pressed it into a sheath at his side. “Violence and aggression are in no short order in this city, but courage? That is a commodity very rare to Shanghay.”

Wind blew down between all of them, rustling manes and tails, and biting at the corners of eyes. Sweetie Belle held firm, and with her magic floated the sword into her own hooves.

“So will you help us?” she asked.

“It has been long since I was able to strike back at the Trifecta from my little fortress here,” he said. “I am eager to hurt them once again. I will help you, but to do so there is one thing we must do.”

“What is that?” Pound Cake asked.

Tsingtao smiled. “We must drown the scorpion before it can sting you.”