Annie, in her casual turtleneck outfit, sat at a furbished picnic bench amongst a plethora of other picnic benches at a large marble plaza outside a large, black skyscraper, each one filled with several ponies as they ate their dinners. Surrounding the tables in a colorful ring were tents and stands that were serving food from all corners of the world. Annie looked over at the unarmored Flash Sentry who was awaiting at the counter of a gold-colored stand that read “Saddle Arabia.”

A thin, but tall purple unicorn mare carried two trays of food to the counter with her magic. The contents of the trays were hidden by the massive group of ponies lined up to order their share. Flash Sentry nodded and extended his wings. The mare at the stand lifted the trays off and placed them on his wings, where they balanced without the slightest tremble.

Flash Sentry walked around the crowds and back to his and Annie’s table. Annie could finally see the food that Flash Sentry had gotten. Discernibly, there were two cans of lemon-lime soda on the front right corners of the tray and a small basket of freshly prepared potato chips on the lower left hand side. Sitting in the center, was a mound wrapped in aluminum foil, keeping whatever was inside of it warm. Surrounding the metal packages were several tiny tubs of a both a white, creamy sauce and what looked to be a dark-green relish with red pepper specks inside.

Flash Sentry finally approached Annie at their table, squatting down on all fours and tilting his right wing down, allowing the tray to slide off and in front of her, displacing none of the items upon it. As Flash Sentry walked to the other side of the table with his dinner, Annie tore the foil wrapping off the center package. Stuffed into the pita inside were falafel dumplings sitting inside a bed of a tomato-and-cucumber salad, dressed with a creamy sauce with chopped parsley. Annie raised her eyebrow inquisitively.

“What is this?” she asked Flash Sentry.

“It’s falafel,” Flash Sentry mumbled with his front teeth clamped onto the foil on his tray, tearing it open and taking out his own. “The best in the world. I mean, they bring them all the way from Saddle Arabia, so you know it’s gotta’ be good.”

Annie looked into the filling inside the pita. While nothing inside of it looked disgusting, she wasn’t sure how this would translate to pony cuisine.

“Relax,” cooed Flash Sentry and he held up his own falafel. “There’s nothing in there that you can’t eat. I checked.”

Flash Sentry gave Annie a wink as he lifted his sandwich to his face, taking a large bite out of the center. Flash Sentry swooned as he put his hooves back down, revealing large splotches of sauce on the front of his muzzle.

Annie picked up her own falafel, slowly raising it to her own mouth. With an experimental nibble, Annie took a piece of both the pita and the dumpling inside. Annie gasped, realizing how good it tasted. Flash Sentry smirked as he saw a pleasant smile appear on Annie’s face.

“See?” pressed Flash Sentry. “I told you it was good.”

Annie took another, larger bite of her food. As she chewed she looked at Flash Sentry with the flattest expression she possibly could, as if trying to make a point to him.

“Come on,” he jeered, “you can smile around me. I mean, we’re pals, right?”

Annie swallowed her entire bite, grunting as the massive ball of chewed food slid down her gullet.

“We work together,” Annie said. “I don’t quite see how that makes us friends.”

“What about Twilight and those other ponies we talked to at the station? How did they come to be your friends?”

Annie was about to protest, but seeing Flash Sentry’s expectant face, she knew she couldn’t hide the truth so easily.

“They saved me from death,” she answered. “I owe them my life and I couldn’t be more appreciative of their company.”

“They saved your life?” asked Flash Sentry. “That’s another thing. You said that you were guilty of murder when we interrogated Gilda. Is that true?”

“Every word,” Annie answered, popping the lid on her soda can and taking a sip.

“What happened?” he asked. “…If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Do you really want to know?” Annie responded.

“Of course, I do. Shouldn’t I be allowed to know things about my friends?”

Annie sighed and looked to her left to one of the city street, seriously considering running to the nearest taxi and spending her day alone from him. However, as her partner, now and more than likely in the indefinite future as long as Celestia was concerned, he had a right to know.

“The world where I come from,” Annie explained, “there was a war between mankind, and giant beasts known as titans. I had fought on the side of the titans, being granted the ability to turn into one myself. Through my actions, I had killed dozens of soldiers who tried to stop me. It was after Twilight and her friends stopped me and rendered my powers useless that they offered me salvation.”

Flash Sentry looked at Annie with complete incredulity, his falafel falling from his hooves as his mouth hung open.

“So…” wondered Flash Sentry hesitantly, “if you did these things, how could they have forgiven you?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself,” she answered. “It’s as if they all could sense the good in others, while all everyone else sees is the evil that they have done or still do.”

Annie sighed as she looked away from Flash Sentry again.

“I envy them,” she admitted.

Flash Sentry piqued up, finding Annie’s statement profound.

“What do you mean by that?” he responded.

“I mean,” she said, “that I wish I could return the favor. For the crimes I committed, I should have been sentenced to death back on my home world. I don’t want all that those ponies did for me to all be for nothing. I too want to try and make a positive impression on others.”

“Well, beating ponies in bars isn’t exactly going to help that, especially if they knew what you’ve done, you know?”

“That’s just it. No one knows me quite like you do, but the less they know of me, the better.”

“You make a pretty positive impression on the rest of us guards back in Ponyville. That must count for something.”

“We all work together; we’re supposed to make good impressions on each other. What I want is to help someone who seems beyond help, through their actions or words, it doesn’t matter. Someone like… me, who can equal the penance I’ve had to do.”

“Well, who do you have in mind?”

Flash Sentry took a second to study Annie until she could provide him with an answer. After a few seconds, his eyes widened and he nearly jumped out of his seat.

“You mean Gilda?” he exclaimed.

“Shh,” hissed Annie, waving her hands at Flash Sentry as discreetly as possible.

“But she was totally lying back there,” he whispered. “And you said it yourself. Her only motive was violence.”

“I said that as an possibility. Something didn’t feel right about her story.”

“Besides the fact that she was lying out her flank?”

“No, it’s about what she was lying about. Her story wasn’t one of someone trying to cover up her murder, it’s sounded like she was trying to cover up something even bigger.”

“Bigger? Like what?”

“I can’t be sure, but perhaps she was into something even more dangerous than just a simple loan shark. Perhaps she was scared that if she told the whole truth, she would still be held accountable for her association with whatever she was hiding… or maybe she was scared that if she spilled whomever was behind this, her life would be in even graver danger.”

Flash Sentry continued to look at Annie, calculating her logic and intuition. After compiling it all, he suddenly chuckled loudly, earning a stern reaction from Annie.

“Look,” Flash Sentry reasoned, “as valid as that may seem, there’s still not a lot that makes sense to this. Even if Gilda was part of some ‘association,’ don’t you think that her murder outweighs something like that? And for that matter, if this association was nervous that Gilda would reveal them, don’t you think that they’d kill her much sooner than that?”

Annie also took time to understand what Flash Sentry had said, finding his own assessment to be quite reasonable as well.

“I agree with you on the last part,” she said, earning a proud smile and raising of the head from Flash Sentry, “but there’s still the slight possibility that whatever she was entangled with was even worse than the murder that she committed.”

“Hmph,” Flash Sentry huffed. “Doubt it.”

“Like I said, a slight possibility.”

“I suppose…”

“And what about you?”

Flash Sentry, now the target of Annie’s scrutiny, raised his head up alertly and looked into her eyes respectfully.

“What about me?” he asked.

“You seem very intent on keeping her behind bars. I saw the way you looked at her and spoke to her at the end, and you had a face and voice that just wished for her to rot in that cell. After all this time, you never struck me as that kind of pony. After the way you talked to me last night after our shift and this morning before we left, and how you approached Twilight at Canterlot.”

“Yeah, I’m not the most socially… keen pony in Equestria, but I didn’t really have many friends either.”

Annie sat up straight, already hearing an intriguing parallel between Flash Sentry and herself.

“Yeah, I was born and raised here, but I grew up very poor. My parents barely had the money to feed me and themselves and keep a warm roof above our head, and while my parents went and worked, I was left to the mercy of the neighborhood I was unfortunate to live in.”

“For someone who loves their hometown,” interrupted Annie, “you seem to be shedding a negative light on it.”

“Yeah, well, I got a job as a papercolt to help make ends meet. It was great for a foal like me; I got to see the better parts of the city, I learned how to read and write by reading the papers I sold, I learned some basic math by counting the bits I earned each day, and I taught myself how to fly by watching the other pegasi in the city flapping their wings. Other than the fact that friends were few and my only form of company were the customers who would buy from me, it was probably the best way to grow up for somepony as poor as I.”

“But what about your neighborhood?”

“Right… that. The foals there were real jerks. I was much scrawnier than the stallion you see today, so I was beaten up by them a lot. Lots of times, they would steal the bits I earned selling papers. That was the worst. I had no problem giving up my blood and a couple of my baby teeth, but it was when my bits that were keeping me and my family alive got taken that was the toughest.”

Annie nodded, completely sympathetic with Flash’s story.

“Finally fed up with their treatment of me, I finally decided to train myself using the wooden light poles at night for posts to kick and punch, using my own covers as pads. I went at this for weeks before I knew I was ready, even letting my bullies continue beating the snot out of me, both to keep them from wanting to beat me harder if I fought back, and to keep them in the dark for what I would do to them.

“One day, a small filly happened to be walking home from school when my bullies began to surround her. I knew that I couldn’t let them do anything to her, and there was no need for any dramatic entrance. I flew in like, well, a flash and kicked one of them right in the jaw, just, pow!”

Flash Sentry punched his front hoof into his other hoof for dramatic effect, which Annie didn’t seem to react to.

“The other two tried surrounding me,” continued Flash Sentry, “but I took out the other one with just a couple of hits and the other one with a well-aimed punch, like, yah!”

Flash Sentry thrust his fist to Annie’s face, who continued watching nonchalantly, even as the bottom of his hoof was inches from her face. Flash Sentry pulled it away and went on like it was nothing, lost in his tale.”

“At that moment, the girl thanked me and ran away, and as I saw her leave safe and sound, this baby appeared.”

Flash Sentry stood up and turned the side of his flank to Annie, presenting his cutie mark for her.

“Well… good job,” she said.

“Thanks,” he responded, sitting back down on the bench. “As I got older, I moved up in the newspaper business, delivering stacks of papers all over the city and earning more bits, which allowed me to purchase more books so I could educate myself further. Finally, I had saved enough so that I could move to Canterlot, where I hoped to one day enlist in the Royal Guard and hold true honor and justice for Equestria.

“After leaving home and making a new one, I landed a job as a courier for a wealthy household in Canterlot based off of glowing recommendations that I received from my boss here. Once I was old enough, I was finally able to enlist. Then, once you came on board, I was only more excited to join. Now, to think, I’m actually getting to work and eat with you.”

Annie then looked down at her falafel, which only had her one large bite visible in her grasp. Picking it back up and taking a bite, she moaned, realizing that it had gone cold on her tray. Annie began wrapping her meal back in the foil.

“You’re not going to throw that out are you?” he asked, almost insulted.

“No, of course not. We have a fridge at the hotel. I was planning on going out for a drink or two later tonight. It might come in handy when I get back.”

“Well, with the way I’ve seen you drink, you’re probably right. Sorry, for spoiling your meal, though.”

“It’s fine. I wasn’t all too hungry anyway.”

Flash Sentry looked down at his falafel, knowing that it too would be too cold to eat enjoyably. With a disappointed sigh, he pulled out the wax paper out of his untouched chip basket and attempted to cover his own falafel with his teeth and hooves, but with no success.

“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked, reaching for his food.

“No,” he agreed as she grabbed it, “please.”

Annie began covering and wrapping his falafel with precision. Flash Sentry took another regretful sigh as his dinner was wrapped up after only one bite.

“Yeah,” he grunted, “again, I’m sorry about the rant. It’s just that I get very riled up about things like that.”

“Clearly,” Annie said. “You shouldn’t beat yourself too hard about it. I’m just as guilty; after all, I started it.”

“It’s just after my childhood, nothing pleases me more than criminals getting the punishment they deserve, especially if they continue doing it again and again.”

Annie didn’t say a word, only looking at Flash Sentry blankly as he looked up and saw her, realizing who he was saying these words to. He deflated into his seat, giggling nervously with his back hoof in his mouth.

“Uh… no offense,” Flash Sentry squeaked.

“None taken,” Annie responded coolly.

“What I meant to say is that whatever punishment Gilda gets from Celestia will probably be too good for her.”

Annie still looked at Flash Sentry without a hint of confirmation or disagreement, a look that irked Flash Sentry.

“And you still don’t think she did it?” asked Flash Sentry.

“I still don’t know. I’ve never been the best liar, so I couldn’t read people well to save my life.”

“You called her bluff at her cell, but you still don’t know whether she’s lying or not?”

“No, I know she was lying; even I could tell. It’s just my intuition; something feels off about the whole thing.”

“I hate to break it to you, Annie, but unless you find one or more of these guys from this ‘association’ tonight, Gilda’s probably never going to see sunlight ever again.”

“Yeah,” she responded, standing up with a napkin and wiping her chin before tossing it next to her chip basket. “Would be a shame if she was innocent.”

“But it would right if she isn’t,” added Flash Sentry, wiping his mouth with the side of his forearm.

Annie picked up her soda and chugged it dry, crushing the can upon the last drop leaving the can. Dropping it on the tray, she picked up Flash Sentry’s chip basket and dumped the potatoes into her own, filling it to the brim. Picking up both her and Flash Sentry’s falafels and placing them on her tray, she took her tray and carried to it to the garbage can behind her.

Annie picked up the two falafels and the chips and cradled them in her arm, dumping the rest of the tray into the bin before placing the tray atop a stack of them on top. Annie stepped aside as Flash Sentry brought his tray over and dumped all of his contents inside and placed the tray atop of Annie’s.

With their dinner postponed, they walked away from the plaza and towards a brightly lit, white hotel that shone like a beacon in the dark winter afternoon. Hiding amongst the middle of the set of picnic benches alone and far from their sight, there sat three stallions that eyed Annie as she and Flash Sentry crossed the street.

One pony was a long, slender, dark red unicorn. His blonde mane and tail were brushed and fluffed while his goatee was groomed perfectly. His eyes were light blue and he had a cutie mark of a medical syringe. The second was a burly earth pony that sat next to the red stallion, having a dark-blue coat that shared a similar darkness to the other’s. His only article of clothing was his ragged, black-leather vest, adorned with metal chains and zippers. His long mane and tail were pitch black, but looked greasy and unwashed. His cutie mark resembled two metal cuffs with spikes along the edge.

The third stallion, a unicorn, sat alone on the other side of the bench. His coat was white, and his black mane and tail were cut so sort that minus the thick black line running down his back and the tuft of fur on the end of his tail, he otherwise looked completely bald.

His eyes were dark brown and his cutie mark resembled a red, exploding firework. Watching Annie and Flash Sentry enter the hotel together, the white unicorn lifted his can of soda to his mouth with his magic and tilted it towards him, taking a quiet, relaxed sip as she and her partner disappeared behind the hotel’s doors.