Whether Twilight had slept was unclear to them, for she had been out when they went to bed and up when they awoke. In that time, she told them joylessly, she had ironed out the finer details of her magic heist, and one of her loggers had placed the Hearth’s Warming lights in the trees near the Tartarus gateway. She had had to draw tiny sigils on each light, echo sigils, so that if the lights themselves were removed from the area, their enchantments would remain. Brandishing the wreath of larger crystals, she explained that the foreign magic was already filtering into them at a rate that was slow, but fast enough for her purposes. She had done the math to verify, she said, not that anyone questioned her.

The shower was hissing and Applejack had the coffee machine humming, and snowfall tapped the windows. Vinyl was in the corner with a book while Octavia and Colgate shared the bed, combing each other’s manes. Pinkie was downstairs with Versus, who was not working that day, but had agreed to meet her in the lobby to talk about the next Contraction party. Rarity’s guess had been correct: Versus, on her way to the meeting, had spotted a known precog in Umbrella Park, looking at the snowy trees and paths with queer interest. Apparently, in merely intending for the party to take place, it had been set in stone for those who could see, and this thought comforted Pinkie; for if precogs saw the party, then surely she and Versus would not fail to pull it off.

“So what’s the plan today?” Applejack asked.

“We’re taking the roof off today,” Twilight said. “Aloe said I needed to be ready to meet the team at ten o’ clock.”

“That should be fun.”

“I’m not looking forward to it. The way she talked about it, it’s going to be slow, precise work, time better spent… on other things.”

“You like precision, though,” Rainbow said.

“But I’m not still not looking forward to this.”

“Loggin’ comin’ along okay? You gotta go down there again?” Applejack asked.

“No, I think they know the routine by now. I do need to take the rest of these bags to storage, though; we rented a couple units right on the edge of the danger zone. Oh, I need to remember to bring Pinkie’s litter too.”

“As for us, we are going to search for Partial Thoughts one more time,” Octavia said.

“And we need to get clothes for our dinner tonight,” Vinyl said.

“That’s tonight?” Applejack asked. She checked the calendar on the desk. “Ah’ll be.”

“Yeah, we’re still not sure if we’re actually gonna attend,” Colgate said. “I feel like a lot of that depends on if we can find Partial Thoughts.”

“What makes you so sure she skipped town?” Rarity asked.

“The fact that one of her friends told us she skipped town.”

“Seems like a pretty good clue,” Twilight said, accepting a mug of coffee. “But you’re going to try to find her again anyway?”

Colgate shrugged.

“If you like, I can pick out outfits for you while you’re searching,” Rarity said.

“We might not need ‘em,” Big Mac said.

“So you can use them later. I insist.”

The door slammed open on the other side of the hall, and they could hear Pinkie’s voice.

“Other room, Pinks,” Rainbow yelled.

Pinkie barged in with a grin. “We’re go for Operation Legitimate Party, Twilight! Versus said she’ll meet me there in thirty!”

“What’s this?” Applejack asked.

“Oh, you haven’t told her yet,” Rainbow said.

“Twi?”

Sparing Rainbow a withering look, Twilight said, “How about I explain it over breakfast, Applejack? My treat.”

Rainbow waved the treasury slip before laying it on the bed. “Equestria’s treat.”

“Breakfast either way,” Applejack said. “Lemme wake up a bit more first.”

The four non-Elements left first, while Twilight and Applejack were still talking in the hotel café. With three layers, they shivered in the morning sleet, softened from the perpetual noon. Those who were out mostly jogged, chins tucked into upturned collars, and many of these also under umbrellas that either floated in unicorn magic or juddered along as headpieces. In their section of town, the tall buildings offered lee against a tide of fog that could be seen over the fields to the south and the rooftops to the north, to which they turned.

“In addition to scoping out Partial Thoughts’ place, I want to see the site of our dinner party tonight,” Colgate said. “If it’s an ambush, then we should be prepared. Yes?”

“Here’s what Ah don’t understand,” Big Mac said.

“We have to go because—” Vinyl started.

“Nope, Ah got that. What Ah don’t get is, what are we gonna do when we get there? We ain’t gonna kill whoever it is who’s springin’ the trap.” For a few seconds, there was only the sound of their shuffling coats. “Right?”

“If we are left no other choice,” Octavia said, “then we will.”

“Meaning no offense,” Vinyl said, “but that’s a little easier for you to say than us. You know, ‘cause of the battle.”

“And my past too, right? Thank you.”

“Not what I meant, but okay.”

“I’ve never killed someone,” Colgate said. “Not on purpose, I mean.”

“Patients?” Big Mac asked after a moment.

“It happens.”

“This ain’t a patient,” Vinyl said, noticing but not commenting on the look Octavia gave Colgate when she said it.

“Twilight wiped someone’s memory in Trottingham,” Big Mac said, “an’ that worked fine as paint. Any of you ladies know magic like that?”

“I can barely lift a bowling ball,” Colgate said.

“I do not have much skill at magic more delicate than blowing things up,” Octavia said.

“I haven’t tried,” Vinyl said, quietly as though to herself.

“There are potions for memory-play,” Colgate said. “We can pick up some basic ones at a pharmacy.”

“Then we will use a potion,” Octavia said. “Wait, stop. Colgate, do you know where we are going?”

Colgate, at the front, turned and kicked a flurry of snow into the street. “This is a shortcut to Partial Thoughts’. Look, we’ll cut through that parking lot and go down the alley there, and we won’t have to cross those two busy streets.”

“Just checking.”

They crossed the street into the creeping fog, low and heavy and cold, and they could not see where the alley terminated when they entered. Spiny weeds poked out of the slush by cinder block walls, high enough to steal the city from them if the fog had not done so already. Clearly agitated, Colgate took the remaining half of the alley at a near-gallop, and nearly fell on her face when she skidded in an icy puddle where sidewalk met ground. Big Mac steadied her, and she shrugged away from him, looking dimly at the surrounding cloud.

“Do you remember the way?” Vinyl asked.

“Thinking,” Colgate mumbled. The same pony who had told them that Partial Thoughts had left had also told them what street she lived on, and Colgate tried to remember where they had met that pony, that she might compare the direction they went on that day to the direction they had gone today. In her mind, she had a loose and incomplete idea of the city’s layout.

“Where did you leave the pulse crystal?” Octavia asked.

“Hotel. I don’t need it this morning.”

“Will you bring it tonight?”

“I dunno.” She waved a hoof in front of her face. “This-a way. I think we had to go through a little copse of trees.”

“And the trees were this way?” Vinyl asked.

“I think.”

An hour later, they were at Partial Thoughts’ house, overshooting it the first time and then circling too far back, until finally the fog lifted enough that they could get a landmark. Big Mac hesitated at the gate with Vinyl, looking around in vain for anyone to notice them through the fog, and they meandered at the front door, which Octavia tried.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Vinyl said.

“I want inside,” Colgate said. “What’s she hiding from us?”

“Ponies lock their doors when they leave.”

Colgate walked around to the back, where the fog had not quite settled the same, leaving a thin plain of clear air just over the grass. She walked around the yard, and on the other side, her shape hefted something to carry back.

“We’re not breakin’ in,” Big Mac said.

“I’m not,” Colgate said, setting down a decorative stone and putting both forehooves on it, her eyes going to the back door.

“Let us just go,” Octavia said. “We are not going to learn anything inside her house.”

“Her current whereabouts.”

“So what?” Vinyl asked.

“We will go the other house, then work on our memory potion,” Octavia said. She wanted to put a comforting hoof on Colgate, but knew it would not be appreciated. The unicorn had told her of breaking into a house in Canterlot, leaving out details but mentioning that it had been messy, and had ended with her in rehab.

Colgate nodded at Octavia’s words, not paying attention, imagining the ill will Partial Thoughts could easily harbor toward them, and the evidence for it she would find in the house.

“Colgate,” Octavia said, a step closer. “We are going to leave now.”

She frowned at the door, then gradually shifted her expression to neutral compliance. “Yeah, great, let’s get out then.” She rolled the stone to a bare patch and joined her friends, and they walked back to the driveway sheepishly. Halfway down, Colgate raced ahead and searched the mailbox.

“Come on,” Vinyl murmured.

“Let her have her fun,” Octavia said. “She might come up with something useful.”

“Nearby towns, gals?” Colgate asked. “What’s close?”

“There’s Little Snowdrift,” Vinyl said.

“Can you get there by car?”

“There’s a road that goes straight down to it. Why? What’s wrong?”

Colgate leafed through the built-up mail, pausing for a moment on a swimsuit catalogue. “No one’s collecting her mail.”

“You are,” Big Mac said.

“Oh, funny,” she said, stuffing it back in its box. “She left suddenly.”

“Or she planned to be away for only a couple days,” Octavia said.

“Same deal, she’s somewhere close. And since the car’s gone… Yeah, I bet she’s in Little Snowdrift.”

“There is also a small village closer to the glacier,” Vinyl said.

“Is that still there?” Octavia asked. “Last I heard, they had evacuated, in case the glacier fell off the edge.”

“You know what, maybe, I remember hearing that too.”

“You wanna try Little Snowdrift?” Big Mac asked.

“If we can get a car, yeah, we need to get down there,” Colgate said. “Dinner house first.”

A half hour and a stop for brunch later, they looked across Conifer Road at the house, a sedate building a full six inches higher than its mates, built atop a knoll that afforded from the roof a clear view of two churches, one on a hill and looking down on the other. This house was visibly occupied, its stoop and front walk swept of snow, its flower beds protected with blue tarp, its windows alight, and fresh carriage tracks slowly filling in the driveway. They stood on the opposite sidewalk and looked, at a loss, Vinyl twitching her ears with the snowflakes that landed on her.

“Thoughts, Colgate?” Big Mac finally asked.

“I’m not gonna take their mail,” Colgate said.

He nodded, not sure how to respond.

“He means, what do you notice about their house?” Vinyl asked.

“Looks lived in.”

Vinyl rolled her eyes.

“What are we even lookin’ fer?” Big Mac asked. “Exits? There’s a nice, big window up front there.”

“I’m not jumping through a window,” Vinyl said. “That’s dangerous.”

“He said it was us four, but not that many in strangers,” Colgate said. “So that’s a maximum of seven guests. That driveway isn’t gonna hold seven carriages.”

“Well, we’re not all takin’ individual carriages,” Big Mac said. “We might just walk.”

“Right, duh. Three carriages, then, or two maybe. That’s the driveway. Uhh…”

“If we could just go inside, that would make things easier,” Octavia said. “I would like to know the house’s layout so we do not get caught off guard.”

“I’m working on that,” Colgate said. “The living room’s on the right side there, where the chimney is, so the front door’s gonna open up directly into that. No hallway at first, probably.”

“All right,” Vinyl said.

“It might open on the other side into an anteroom. If so, that big window’s out; if we want to bust through it, we’re crossing a lot of the house to get there. If we do the front door, we’ll be by the carriages, and if this is a trap, they’ll have a plan for an escape that direct.”

“They might just lock the front,” Vinyl said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“What do you think the trap’s gonna be?” Big Mac asked.

“Poisoned food makes sense to me.”

“What if we show up ‘fashionably’ early?” Vinyl asked.

“I like that idea,” Octavia said. “One of us can watch while the food is being prepared, and make sure that they do not taint it.”

A sudden gust howled down the street and kicked up their manes, what strands were not covered, and they all turned away as one.

“And unless there is anything else, I propose we leave,” Octavia said. “We have seen the house.”

Colgate grunted, and they set off down the path from where they came.

“What about your friends, Colgate?” Vinyl asked. “Can you get them to, I don’t know, watch over us or something?”

“Not likely,” Colgate said. “They’re not supposed to interfere in normal stuff like this. It’s only if it’s of a magical nature. More to the point, I don’t have friends here.”

“Aloe and Lotus,” Octavia said.

“Mm, they can’t really be friends, though, ‘cause they’re my bosses.”

“Those two outrank ya?” Big Mac asked.

“I guess. Hey, where to?”

“We should go back to the hotel and regroup,” Octavia said. “They can tell us where to find a rental car. Oh—but I do not know how to drive.”

“Really?” Vinyl asked.

“I have always been driven.”

Vinyl let out a blustery laugh. “I can drive us, it’s fine. I do need to be back here for the afternoon, though.”

The cold was getting to Twilight, despite her layers, and she felt awash in a sea of fatigue and bitterness. Self-aware enough to realize that she was not in the mood to be helpful or charitable that morning, she still could not overcome the feeling, petty though the cause had been to bring it on. On her walk to the danger zone around the warehouse, a passer-by had yelled her name, only that, but she had been deep in thought. Feeling singed, she scowled at the workers and the cranes, the fleet of pegasi moving about with cables and hooks, mere shadows in the fog. She was half tempted to conjure a mighty wind to clear the air, but knew she should save her magic in case something went wrong, and she was needed to grab the roof or some equally huge piece of structure or machinery.

The danger zone’s perimeter was defined with the hazard’s center still in the warehouse, and thus, was imperfect, for enough time had elapsed that it could move to a different center. It might have taken up residence on their downed airship, in which case, they and the southern sliver of occupied town were in the new danger zone. Aloe told Twilight not to think about it, but simply be aware, and Twilight did her best to comply.

“Let’s go, keep those cables close together!” she cried. The pegasi passively struggled to bring their cables, each one a metal rope of about four inches in diameter, closer and tighter inwards, like teeth of a loose comb dragging across the sky. On the other end, a separate team labored to keep them from scraping the parking lot below.

The warehouse itself had always appeared peaceful to Twilight, a slumbering box in a blanket of snow, smoothly wrought to the ground, divorced from its shadow by the sun that bled through the clouds; in the fog, it was but a weak shape, disclosed more from the red lights her workers affixed to each hook and each corner, and the blue lights to indicate places of separation. Pegasi attached cables and hooks to these joints in the roof, running them all the way out to the lifeless cranes at the perimeter, that they could eventually extend to raise the roof off its supports and scaffolding, which were being revealed and severed bit by bit by a second and third team of electric saws. Twilight expected to be there all day, overseeing—which meant, in practical terms, doing very little at all. Everyone there was more knowledgeable than she on the specifics of their jobs, be they the use of the cranes, the uncovering of weak spots in the warehouse, or the management of heavy cables, and that fact was not lost on her. She was there in case of an emergency, but what sort of emergency she couldn’t imagine. As long as no one landed on the ground, or dropped anything, the hazard would not detect them.

She thought of her friends and the looks of disgust or resignation at her plan to fake a Contraction, not sure which hurt more. Was it worse that she was capable of rousing such undisguised displeasure in her closest friends, or that some of them were not fully surprised at her anymore? In those terms, Twilight knew immediately which was worse, and she stood on her platform and brooded about it.

When had thoughts of home become mere abstractions, she wondered. In her head, Ponyville seemed like home no more than the airship deck, or one of their many hotels. She wondered whether that would change when they actually did get back home, or whether they had crossed some invisible line. Platitudes about growing up, about losing one’s innocence, and so on sprung to her mind in the voices of her parents and her friends.

“There are plenty of ponies who grow up and aren’t like this, though,” she thought. A team of pegasi landed on the neck of a crane, and she could hear their chatter borne on a northwesterly wind. “What makes me so special? Is it just my Element? It can’t be, right?”

She could talk to Applejack about it, she supposed, but did not like the idea. Applejack was beginning to remind her distastefully of Vinyl—rather, of who Vinyl liked to pretend she was. It was only a matter of time, Twilight thought in her mercilessly bad mood, before Applejack became another sanctimonious bore, full of well-meaning advice and bereft of perspective. She had given Twilight a lecture that morning about theft, and how she believed that theft of a natural resource was equally bad because of the precedent it set, among other reasons that had gone straight out of Twilight’s head. After everything, though, she agreed that it was probably better than taking the slow way around the country.

Twilight looked up at the shrouded sun, and with eyes watering, she tried to think of happier things.

Vinyl drove them to an overlook above one of the serpentine streams that fed Little Snowdrift, parked on the gravel wash, and everyone got out. It was only an hour drive, but for half of their number, the cramped quarters of the car were not easy to adjust to. Octavia and Big Mac stretched their legs and complained mildly about the car, how noisy it was, and how they could not find adequate room, and the like. Colgate stood on the edge with Vinyl, not afraid of being pushed, but aware that it might still happen.

“There’s the observatory,” Vinyl said, pointing to a nearby hill. “Where we stopped on our way to Snowdrift.”

“Twilight liked that,” Colgate said.

“You could say so.” She turned as the other two crunched up to them. “Octavia, you’ve been on a road trip before, you had to have.”

“I have commuted to venues,” Octavia said. “No, I am much more comfortable on an airship.” She looked at her hooves. “Though not by much.”

Downhill to Little Snowdrift, their coats and tails were dampened with dew and covered in grass by the time they reached the village. There was no town square that they could tell, no hotel, but a pair of restaurants, a few shops, and a communication station protruding out from the trees on the hillside. A damaged road curved around to the east, disappearing into the flat forest. They had missed it by a few miles on their journey from Creation Lake.

“This city is to Snowdrift what Ponyville is to Canterlot,” Vinyl said, “just to put it in perspective.”

“Easy to search,” Colgate said.

“Please no breakin’ in,” Big Mac said.

“I’m not cruel.” She looked at him and offered a smile. “But how do we find her? We should have checked the cars up top first, seen which one seemed to be there for a long time.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Octavia asked, approaching a stallion at work with the shutters on his window. They spoke in low tones while Colgate tried to think how she would find Partial Thoughts. The notion of being pushed from the ledge clung to her, and several times, she had to stop to tell herself that no one wished her harm, slowing progress.

“Ah could see livin’ in a place like this,” Big Mac said.

“Really?” Vinyl asked.

“This weather’d take some adjustin’, but Ah can see it. Ah’m a small-town pony through an’ through, Miss Vinyl. This journey’s taught me that.”

“Mm, give me the bright lights and the traffic any day of the week.”

“Don’t you find it charmingly rustic?” Colgate asked.

“Backwater, I’d say.” She looked around, smelling the air. “I’ve no interest in who can grow the biggest pumpkin, or who can catch the greased pig, or whatever. No offense, Mac.”

“An’ Ah’ve no interest in who can dress the fanciest or who can spend the most on a tiny meal.”

She laughed and waved at Octavia, returning. “You’ve got me there, I reckon.”

“A paper-white mare was staying at ‘the house with the big pumpkin patch,’ he says.”

“Speakin’ of,” Big Mac said with a small smile.

“Good on you, Octavia,” Colgate said, reaching up to pat her back but thinking better of it. “Let’s get some pumpkins.”

The house was not hard to find in the quiet town. Though the fog had not reached Little Snowdrift, the cloud cover cast everything in a morose, gray shadow, and from halfway across town, the vibrant, orange field was the only shock of color to be beheld. Their road was no more than the worn ruts of cartwheels, and it deviated from a small wire fence around the low house’s property. After a second of hesitation, they walked through the pumpkin patch, eyes trained for movement, not sure whether they were trespassing; the fence had seemed more to indicate property lines than to deter visitors.

“Imagine how many pies you could make out of these,” Colgate said.

“Imagine harvestin’ ‘em,” Big Mac said.

“Now imagine trotting over to the grocery store and grabbing a pre-made one,” Vinyl said.

“I do not like them,” Octavia said. “Their color bothers me.”

“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with orange,” Big Mac said.

“I also do not like jack o’ lanterns. I do not see the pleasure in them. First you clean them, then you carve them, then you throw them away two days later. What fun.”

“AJ an’ Ah useta throw the guts at each other when we were younger.”

Colgate laughed.

“You’d like pumpkin carving, I bet,” Vinyl said. “Being a surgeon and all.”

“That’s like saying I’d like lumberjacking. Night and day, Vinyl.”

“That’s her,” Big Mac said, and they halted. The sight of Partial Thoughts, standing out like a ghost against the dark wood of the house, reminded them all of Vanilla Cream, and felt fitting for the atmosphere.

“Stop that,” Octavia mumbled to Big Mac, who had sat on his haunches to put his hooves up. “She is no threat to us.”

“Just bein’ cautious.”

“I should have known you’d come looking for me,” Partial Thoughts called, closing the distance and smiling insincerely. “I locked the door and killed the phone the same day I sent that be-damned warning, but here you are anyway.” She met them, gave perfunctory hoofshakes, and sat on a pumpkin.

"Did you think we would not?” Octavia asked.

“I don’t know.” She sighed and leaned back, looking into the sky. “Go ahead then, I’m sure you have questions.”

“Are you being watched right now?” Colgate asked.

“Why did you—” Vinyl started.

“Let me.” She tugged Vinyl’s coat, and Vinyl sat. “Let me. Are you being watched right now?”

“I hope not,” Partial Thoughts said. “Are you?”

Colgate took the note, which Vinyl pulled out of her saddlebag, and gave it to Partial Thoughts. “This is yours, right?” Partial Thoughts nodded. “Let’s start with who you are first, and then move on to who our enemy might be.”

“In the park, you said you work for the bank,” Octavia said.

“Yes, yes,” Partial Thoughts said. “I’m not one of them, but I work for the Mansels.”

“They followed us here?” Vinyl asked.

“I am sure they have been here longer than we,” Octavia said. “Which one of them is after us?”

“Hold it,” Colgate said, eyes closed in frustration. She wanted to kick a pumpkin, but held back her impulse, not wanting to send the wrong signal to Partial Thoughts. “You work for the Mansels, but you send us a warning, but you also disappear right after. So…”

“She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s helping us,” Vinyl said. “Obviously.”

“Does the name Peaceful Meadows ring a bell?” Partial Thoughts asked. “That’s who it is.”

“Vaguely,” Octavia said.

“It may shock you to hear it,” she continued, “but our branch doesn’t have the same interests as the Roan branch. For the most part, we’re clean.”

“Sure,” Vinyl said.

“Peaceful Meadows turned up about a month ago, I guess she was exiled from Roan or something.”

“Why?” Big Mac asked.

Partial Thoughts studied them for a time, taking in their uncomprehending expressions. “Roan’s gone under.”

“No way,” Colgate said. “The whole city?”

“She means the Mansel branch, smarty,” Vinyl said.

“They reached too far, got the princesses’ eyes, and then down they went. That’s not important, what is important is that Peaceful Meadows came by, talking about setting up an operation down here. To be blunt, none of us were interested. I mean, can you imagine how stupid it sounded? The Roan Mansels just got the book thrown at them, and now she wants to get the Snowdrift branch into it too. Gee, what could go wrong?”

“Why us, though?” Big Mac asked.

“I don’t know. You’re friends of the Elements, it’s probably some kind of revenge thing.”

“That would make sense,” Octavia said.

“So what do you know?” Colgate asked.

“I guess she thought she could just pick up here where she left off in Roan. My boss dumped Peaceful Meadows into my department and told me to keep her busy while we work on some ‘more permanent’ solution to the problem, as if we all don’t know what that really means.”

“You were fine with that?”

“I hadn’t met her personally up to that point, but I wasn’t… uncomfortable with the idea. For a legit business—which we are, remember—Peaceful Meadows was like a disease. Imagine some thug trying to team up with your lot just to get their own ends, that’s what she was to us. I mean, we have no use for her, and we’re still not even sure if she doesn’t have someone watching her.” Partial Thoughts shifted her weight, and, dissatisfied, switched to a different pumpkin.

“But you’ve got nothin’ to hide, you said so yerself,” Big Mac said. “Why should you care if she makes a fool of herself near y’all?”

“They still knew about Roan,” Octavia said.

“Yeah, I said ‘mostly’ clean,” Partial Thoughts said. “We knew about Roan, and—anyway, so yes, I was fine with finding a ‘permanent’ solution for her. My job was pretty easy, I thought: I just had to slow-walk her with forms and red tape and write-ups and probationary periods and blah blah blah until my boss stepped in. I guess Peaceful Meadows saw through it pretty quick, but instead of just going ahead and trying to do something without me, she tells me one day that she knows what’s going on, and it won’t stop her.” She kicked her pumpkin, and Colgate, noticing, took it as a sign that she too could start kicking. “These hatchet ponies, they’re all the same. They’re the reason I moved out of Roan in the first place.”

“How did you know to warn us about the invitation specifically?” Colgate asked.

“Peaceful Meadows was pretty clear on what she wanted to do.”

“Is it poisoned food, then?”

“Huh? Oh, no, she wasn’t that detailed. She just said she’d invite you all over to a dinner party, and then ‘spring the trap.’ She thinks she’s so clever and so… intimidating, she just assumed I’d keep quiet about everything if she put on the tough-girl act. I know if her plan goes bad, though, she’ll suspect me of blowing it up—she’s at least not that dense.”

“You could not be more detailed in your warning? If you were leaving anyway, why give us such vague information?” Octavia asked.

“I scribbled that thing out while I was making emergency preparations, I didn’t have time to think of some long, winding explanation.”

“We wouldn’t have believed it anyway,” Vinyl said to Octavia, who shrugged in assent.

“Who else is going to be at the party?” Colgate asked.

“I don’t have any details concerning the party itself,” Partial Thoughts said. She mounded up some soil with her paper-white hoof.

“How long are you planning on staying away from home?” Colgate asked. “Not as long as you’d like, I’ll bet.”

“I realized that not long ago, yes.”

“We’re not killing Peaceful Meadows, which means she’ll still be there when we leave, on high alert. You can’t go back to that, she’ll have eyes on your house.”

“She doesn’t know where I live.”

“Not hard to figure out.” Big Mac gave Colgate a look.

Among the pumpkins and the damp soil, the five of them thought quietly. Looking at the faces, Colgate read mutual suspicion, and edged closer to Octavia.

“I can’t ask you to kill her,” Partial Thoughts said. “But it would make things easier. I don’t know my boss’ plan, but I’m sure it doesn’t involve Peaceful Meadows taking up arms later on. I guess she might leave for Applewood, that would work.”

“We were hoping to use a memory potion on her,” Vinyl said.

“It might incapacitate her long enough for you to step in,” Colgate said.

“I can’t do that!” Partial Thoughts said. “I hate pulse crystals, that weird way they cling to your hoof. Look, you found me all right, maybe you can find my boss and tell him to fast-track his plan.”

“The party is at seven tonight,” Vinyl said in Colgate’s ear. “Not much time.”

“All righty, here’s my idea,” Colgate said, finally kicking her pumpkin with a satisfying thump. “You Mansels are wealthy. Do you have an airship?”

“I have access to the company airship, but it’s limited,” Partial Thoughts said.

“You should consider using it.” She looked at her friends. “We can’t predict what happens tonight, so… you know, just think about it. Are we good here? Any other questions?”

“Peaceful Meadows is real, right?” Big Mac asked.

“As in flesh and blood? Yeah, ‘sfar as I know,” Partial Thoughts said.

“Real dangerous, Ah mean.”

“In Roan, she made a living silencing ponies, cleaning up messes, and, uh, making evidence disappear. Yes, Big Macaroon, she’s ‘real’.”

“Let us get back,” Octavia said.

“Let me know what happens, all right?” Partial Thoughts said, rising and shaking hooves again.

“If we have time. We are rather caught up in other things right now.”

Visibly discouraged, Partial Thoughts simply said, “sure.”

On the way back to the car, Colgate stopped them for the sound of hoofsteps in the woods. Vinyl walked on to wait at a sign, and out from behind the fence came Aloe and Lotus, the former covered in pine needles. The two parties looked at each other for a minute.

“We didn’t follow you,” Colgate said.

“We know,” Lotus said. “Well, it was good to catch up. I’m sure we’ll see each other in town.”

“Are you goin’ back now?” Big Mac asked.

Vinyl was waving from the sign, and Colgate interpreted her motions as an offer. “You can ride with us if you’re going back now.”

The twins looked at each other, and Aloe smiled and nodded. “Can you wait five minutes?”

“We’ll meet you at the car.” They watched the duo disappear into the woods on the other side of the road.

“They’re comin’ with,” Big Mac said to Vinyl, who smiled to mirror Colgate. “We got room?”

“Uhh, you were complaining about room when it was us four, I believe,” Vinyl said.

“You offered,” Colgate said.

“Oh, is that what you thought my waving was? I was waving ‘hi’.”

“I am sure we can fit them,” Octavia said. “We will just put up with a little discomfort. What are they doing here, though?”

“Private stuff, I bet,” Colgate said.

Vinyl looked at her, eyebrow raised.

“Lotus was out of breath and had one less layer; Aloe was fine and covered in forest.” She looked at them. “I dunno, quit looking at me like I know things.”

“Maybe they were fightin’ a forest monster,” Big Mac said.

“Coats not weighed down with potions or weapons, I doubt it.” Vinyl shoved her playfully, and Colgate shoved back, not quite as. They speculated on what the twins were up to until the pair showed up, and Aloe spent a minute shaking out her coat as best she could before squeezing into the car between Octavia and Lotus, with Colgate on the other end, pinned between the headrest and seatbelt housing.

“Will you be okay, Colgate?” Octavia asked.

Not meaning it, Colgate said, “Fine as a spring rain.”

The hour between Little Snowdrift and Snowdrift felt twice as long. Despite the freezing air outside, six bodies in a car had them all sweating and struggling to remove layers before long. Vinyl tried to keep things light with a running commentary on the music they picked up, but only Big Mac, up front, seemed interested. The twins were lost in their own thoughts, Octavia hers, and Colgate just focused on breathing. Lotus was practically lying on her, their back legs jostling for space behind Big Mac’s seat, their tails brushing each other in the stale air between leg and floor, their sides and heads pressed intimately together. Lotus had managed to get her coat off, and tried for several minutes to help Colgate with hers, but Colgate’s position simply did not allow it, nor her inability to hold still for long. There was a moment, nearing the top of a foggy hill, where the entire car held its breath as the struggle reached its climax.

“Can you not hold still for one second?” Lotus snapped, to which Colgate simply replied, “You got it, boss!”

Looking through the window was no help, nor was closing her eyes and just feeling their momentum. Colgate squirmed inside her clothes, terrified on top of everything else that she would provoke another shout from Lotus. Her muscles were tight, her skin hurt, and she was sweating through her first layer; her heartbeat rose incrementally as they drove, as more and more things seemed to go wrong with her body next to Lotus’. For some time, her only comfort was in silence, but when she began to long for Lotus to say something, to erase the awkward situation, comfort shriveled into expectation.

Finally, only a couple miles away from Snowdrift, Vinyl pulled over for Colgate to throw up on the side of the road. She only agreed to take the rest of the trip in the car when Octavia offered to switch places with Lotus.

Colgate immediately flopped out of the car when they reached the corkscrew hotel, lying first on the ground and then crawling over to rest her head against a frosty planter’s stone rim. Her friends went inside for a few minutes, and Aloe and Lotus separated after making sure Colgate would be okay. She sat there with her eyes on the hotel lights, distorted by the illusion, and let calm overtake her again. Some ponies entering would duck their heads for the appearance of the doors’ abrupt curve, others didn’t even pause. She followed the hotel’s not-so-gentle spiral with her eyes until she was at the top, and the balconies and windowsills all resembled stubby antennae, not quite even in their distribution, and the ponies she could see through the windows were equally strange smears.

“Let’s get,” Big Mac said. “We need that potion now, Octavia says.”

“Back in the car?” Colgate asked.

“Yeah, get in, we’ve got it all day,” Vinyl said. “Okay, Cole?”

Colgate climbed into the back with Octavia, and they pulled into the street that would take them past Umbrella Park.

“You said we could pick up basic memory potions at a pharmacy,” Octavia said. “What do we need?”

“Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s gonna be that easy,” Colgate said. “We’ll check. Unless things are different in Snowdrift, the only stuff you can get without a prescription are like memory softeners or memory enhancers, weak ones.”

“How many memory softeners would we need to incapacitate Peaceful Meadows?”

“I dunno, I don’t know her. She’s a big tough lady, so assuming she’s like Big Mac’s size, that’s like… Three bottles of memory softener.” She looked at Octavia. “The bottles aren’t small.”

“So we’ll just get a prescription,” Vinyl said. “Any idea how we can do that, doctor Colgate?”

“She is not licensed in this city,” Octavia said.

“I’m not licensed anywhere. All my credentials got turned to dust in Canterlot,” Colgate said. “I could try to write you something, but it won’t work.”

“An’ we can’t learn any memory spells real quick?” Big Mac asked.

“Not in five hours,” Vinyl said. “Oh, Cole, Rarity dropped off our clothes in our room. You’re gonna like how you look, I think.”

“We can try to make our own,” Colgate said.

“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that at all.”

“Why not?”

“Dangerous,” Big Mac said.

“Not for us.”

The two up front just sat quietly for a while, and they passed the park. A small team had somewhat lazily joined Pinkie and Versus in setting up the next Contraction Party; the two mares in question were busy maneuvering a table when they glided past, in animated conversation.

“At some point, we need to be okay with takin’ a risk,” Big Mac said at last. “Maybe this is that point.”

“It could be her life or ours,” Octavia said.

“That’s why I’m bringing my crystal,” Colgate said.

“All right, tell us about making memory potions,” Vinyl said at last. “Safely, that won’t poison her, please.”

“Now I’ve never made one of these myself, I’m no pharmaceutical pony. But basically, we need something that’s gonna stun the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that does memory stuff. If that’s too hard, we can just zap the whole limbic system, but that could lead to trouble. We’ll start with a bottle of memory softener, and… Gimme a minute. Don’t talk.”

She was still thinking when they reached the pharmacy, and Vinyl turned around to look at her. “Any luck?”

“Thinking.”

“We’re here, is all,” Big Mac said.

Colgate blinked rapidly and looked around. “Oh, great.”

“Do you know what to do?” Octavia asked.

Hesitantly, Colgate said, “it’s dangerous to mix memory softeners and enhancers, so we can start there.”

“If you don’t know how to do it, just say so,” Vinyl said. “We don’t—I don’t—want be guessing with this.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she snapped, and, blushing, said, “no I don’t.” She frowned out the window, and Octavia patted her back.

“Well,” Vinyl said, opening the door, “we can see what they’ve got, at least. Maybe we can catch Twilight if this doesn’t work.”

Soft snow dusted their windshield on the way back, but the noontime sun did now allow it to accrete, and Vinyl had to drive slowly to keep them from skidding on the wet roads. In the southern section of town, the roads were narrower and less even, and full of jaywalkers. At the corner of Eighth and St. Padouk, they paused for a second to watch a street performer jumping and twirling on a clapboard stage, red and green tiger-striped smoke pouring out of a device on his back. They could hear the crowd and his music even from the hotel entrance, where Vinyl stopped Colgate from swerving into the bar.

It was still just Applejack in the room, and they chatted with her for a few minutes before heading out again. Aloe and Lotus were standing by the car, looking like they had just finished an argument.

“Sorry, no more rides,” Colgate said.

“We were gonna ask if you wanted to come with us,” Lotus said sullenly. “We need to head up to the glacier for an hour or two, and thought you might like it.”

Colgate looked in the glacier’s direction, seeing only their distorted reflections in the hotel doors. “I can’t drive.”

“We’ll drive,” Aloe said. “You’ll like it there, Minuette.”

“You’ll be back in time for your dinner,” Lotus said humorlessly.

Colgate looked at her friends.

“Go ahead,” Vinyl said. “We’re gonna find Twilight and figure this out. Just don’t forget, we have to meet up here first to get changed.”

“Right,” Colgate said, unsure. “You don’t need me?”

“We will be fine,” Octavia said. Hearing her say it made it a little easier for Colgate to take.

“Okay, I can do the glacier.”

The sextet split, and Colgate walked with the twins back into the swirling snow. She stood a distance away, but still felt the tingle of anticipation at being so close, and alone. In the car, it had overwhelmed her, but she felt that if she could just walk without interruption, she might find peace with Lotus. Lotus, for her part, swung her head side to side, always looking, always taking in information, not acknowledging that Colgate was with them—which, unpleasant as it was for her to see, also eased her paranoia.

“What’s at the glacier?” she asked. “I know there’s a tiny town.”

“It’s a little tourist junction,” Aloe said, perfectly happy to walk backwards and meet Colgate’s eyes. “We have to check some things up there, like we said.” She glanced pointedly at Lotus and rolled her eyes, and Colgate nodded, aware that something had been communicated to her, not sure what it was. Her first thought was that Lotus was in trouble, but that did not make sense to her.

It was a twenty-minute walk to their house, where they climbed into the twins’ small car, Aloe driving. Colgate stretched out in the back seat and watched Lotus watching her sister adjust the mirrors.

“You have a car,” Colgate said at last. “Good car.” She took a deep breath, feeling already that she had crossed a line, that her surface-level observation would be taken the wrong way, that Lotus would lay into her. She tried to shrink into the seats, closing her eyes.

“You okay back there?” Aloe asked.

“Let’s just go,” Lotus said. With the car rumbling under her, Colgate was able to calm down a little bit, and they left town by the same road that took them to Little Snowdrift, but heading the opposite way.

“It’s this teeny little resort at the glacier’s foot,” Aloe said, “that’s where we’re going. It’s routine Datura stuff, nothing to be worried about.”

“You girls don’t do routine stuff.”

“We do when all of our ponies are out in the field,” Lotus said.

“Yes, of course.”

They drove in uncomfortable silence through a barren patch of field before the trees overtook them again, and the day turned to pale dusk for a time.

“Are you feeling better?” Lotus asked.

“I don’t feel,” Colgate said automatically. “I mean ‘yes.’ I feel better.”

“What happened?” Aloe asked. “Something you ate?” She smiled. “Did you try griffon food?”

“I just…” She did not want to admit to a Datura superior that she had panicked. “I had too much to drink.”

The two looked at each other, and Lotus shook her head, making no effort to hide it.

Imagining them pulling over and booting her out for her obvious lie, Colgate tensed up; the familiar feeling of anxiety pulling at her insides came back, making her skin tingle and her tongue tie up.

“Honestly,” she started, “I… got scared. Scared.”

“It looked like a panic attack to me,” Lotus said, and glancing at her with the rear-view mirror, said, “similar to how you look now. There’s a lever for the window if you want to let some air in.”

Colgate groped for the crank and stuck her head out the window, taking the scent of pine forest and freezing air in the face, in her flared nostrils, onto her closed eyes. Her breathing was steadier when she pulled herself back into the car.

“Go ahead and keep it down if you like,” Lotus said.

Colgate nodded, confused. In her mind, Lotus had first passed cataclysmic judgment on her, but now she had saved her by telling her about the window. Distantly, the old phrase no harm played through her stream of thoughts.

“So you have a car, but we had to drive you back to town from Little Snowdrift,” Colgate said.

“Are you sure you’re gonna be okay first?” Aloe asked. “You’re pale as a sheet.”

“It’s better if I don’t think about it.” Octavia had told her that, one night, something she had observed.

“We weren’t expecting to see you there,” Lotus said, “as you probably figured. We move around differently when we’re not with common ponies.”

“Am I authorized to know how?”

“We put on magic shoes that let us take big steps,” Aloe said. “About a city block per step, and we’ve got little invisibility amulets too.”

Lotus turned in her seat and showed Colgate a small, silver pendant around her neck, a simple butterfly of beaten metal; it could have been a trinket from a corner stall. “Standard issue,” she said simply.

“We don’t mind driving, though,” Aloe said. “I don’t, at least.”

“Yep,” Colgate said, lost in thought. To show the pendant, Lotus had unzipped her jacket, and Colgate had seen a deep triangle of blue fur. She looked down at herself, so close in hue, and tried to process her emotions on the fact.

“Tell her,” Aloe said, and Colgate looked up again. They were out of the trees and driving up a gentle, wide road toward the glacier’s indomitable face. It loomed over them, a tremendous, glistening mirror to the sun. She could see the bald white of snow-capped peaks on either side, dwarfed by the sheet of ice, sectioned by the black wires of ski lifts. At their elevation, trees were thin and smaller, and Colgate could even see the tree line a quarter of the way up the glacier’s side. The top was inscrutable and blue-gray, glassy and without clouds, like a marker for the edge of the world—which, in a way, it was. She had been caught up with her own thoughts for much of the drive.

“I’ll tell her when we get out,” Lotus said, and glanced at the mirror. “Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Colgate asked.

“You can’t see it yet, but there’s a ski lodge at the base of one of these hills, and they have a big, heated pool. Aloe mentioned it earlier, and I thought of you.”

“That’s funny.”

Aloe nudged Lotus forcefully.

“I wanted to make it up to you for before.” She turned and, with some effort, looked Colgate in the eyes. “I felt bad. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“Oh, that. No problem,” Colgate said, at odds to keep her face straight for the warmth spreading and overtaking her suspicion. “I just—you caught me at a bad time, we’ll say.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lotus said, and her voice sounded genuine. “So anyway, I wanted to show this to you. I know you like the water.”

“I’ve been known to partake.”

Lotus smiled, and Colgate smiled back, and they drove quietly to the resort, the air in the car relaxed for the first time since Colgate had stepped in.

A light drizzle crackled on their coats when they walked across the parking lot, half empty, deep black with water and tiny under the glacier. Below, at the end of the twisted ribbon of road that had not felt so erratic to drive up, Snowdrift was a tiny crater of white and brown buildings. She could see their hotel, and Twilight’s operation at the warehouse, and a half-wreath of churches studding the northern section by a tangle of crouching houses. Umbrella park was a green peanut tinseled with snow and frost, and the forest behind it was a heavy, dark carpet, the desert beyond only visible as an indistinct sepia line, very far away.

“Beautiful, right?” Aloe asked.

Turning her eyes to the lodge instead, Colgate took a second to pass her eyes from one side of the glacier to the other, then rest them on the wee building set in a space in their hill. Compared to the wall of ice, they were nothing, and she had to take a couple seconds to let that sink in while the twins walked on. Twilight had mentioned concerns a few times, that the glacier, balanced on the floating border, would eventually slide off and down to the ocean below. Colgate did not know anything about ecology, but she envisioned for a moment a colossal tidal wave hitting the griffons, reaching up to yank them from their nests in the inland crags of their home country. That power sat before her, inert, impassable, permanently frozen; vaguely awed and a little worried, she nonetheless felt also that she had been right to join the twins for the trip.

“We’re gonna drop you off here for a little,” Aloe said. “Lo-lo and I have places to be.” She angled her head at the ice sheet, and Colgate nodded, envious. “But we’ll be back to take you home. You just get comfortable here.”

In the lodge’s softly lit embrasure, Colgate let herself drip for a minute and looked for details that jumped out at her: a pair of heavy axes crossed over the dark hearth, the imitation gas lanterns on the walls, the tile mosaic of a bear and skunk apparently convening at a blue blob of lake, the glass walls of a tiny humidor bending overhead light, the quiet TV showing the news to a single mare on a couch. The twins greeted the stallion at the counter and asked about the heated pool, and Lotus paid for Colgate’s pass.

“Back in an hour,” Aloe said cheerily, giving her tail a playful swish as she left back through the front. Colgate turned to the stallion and he pointed her in the direction of the pool, gave her the code she would need to get inside, and told her to enjoy her day.

“Is that a cigar room back there?” she asked.

“Yep, just bring anything up here.” He indicated the ashtray on the counter, a plastic cigar cutter chained to it.

Colgate nodded and walked toward it, but veered to the pool room at the last second. Her one and only experience with cigars had led to fear and humiliation, the night she had burned one of Rouge’s friends—as a joke, she thought at the time. Thinking about her Canterlot days, she missed the code the first time, and had to key it in again before she was allowed entry.

“Whoa,” she said aloud, stunned. Self-consciously, she took a few steps into the humid air and let the door swing closed behind her. Frequently in her mind, the idea of the pool was one of fevered comfort, of long grass and sultry sunset, splashing bodies and empty flirting and too much wine. She sometimes felt like she could wake up one day back in the Canterlot suburbs, grab a bottle of alcohol with Rouge and jump into someone’s pool for the day. Low point though it had been in real life, in her fantasies it represented an ideal of happiness.

Through a combination of the elevation and the sanguine memories of cigars and alcohol and warm water, Colgate crossed the wet tile in a daze, looking around for something to feel right and familiar, and seeing nothing of the sort. A massive skylight let the gray sky in, but not the rain; the blue water’s surface steamed of its own accord, warm from an internal mechanism and not because they were in a warm part of the country; the pool stairs were wide and short, unexpectedly awkward to use for someone who had only ever hoisted herself in and out by foreleg and core strength. They were still inside the building, but the room was thirty feet long and fifteen wide, softly lit and reverberant enough to imitate the outdoors if she closed her eyes, which she did to step in a cold puddle. No grass at her fetlocks, no birdsong, no cars to pass by or neighbors to holler greetings to.

A mixed group of ponies and griffons occupied the pool’s far corner, griffon wings turning lazy circles in the water, talons dipping occasionally to grab a floating feather and toss it onto the tile. Colgate stared as if she had walked in on a crime scene, so unprepared she was for the vast difference between memory and reality. Such a difference had not hit her in the spa with her friends, and she thought she knew why, in small part.

The water was perfect on her sore skin, still tingling from the car ride, and she submerged herself for a moment, first in Canterlot and then in the river in Tartarus, finally in the pool at the Snowdrift spa. Eyes wide and stinging, she watched hooves and tails moving in the shallows.

Finally, she surfaced, went to the stairs, and let herself lie down, head and ears underwater but muzzle above. She closed her eyes, the muted sounds of the other swimmers little more than comforting white noise, the ebb of water around the corners of her mouth a gentle caress that she did not know she had needed.

“It’s a pool for friends,” she thought, “but not the same friends.” She realized in that instant that she would need to have a cigar afterwards; if she could complete that circle, and have a cigar safely when she belonged to a different friend group, that would prove something.

Water lapping and friends laughing, she was free to feel shame spread its wings in her heart, but it did not take flight as it would have if there were anyone there to see her. “Let’s see this professionally,” she thought of herself. “Patient thought she had a solution to the big problem, but she didn’t. That happens, that’s fine. Her friends are mad at her, but…” Distracted for a second as the water wiggled more violently; someone was moving in her direction. “But because they’re friends, and they mean her no harm, they’re not gonna hurt her for failing them like that. Question is, can they find a solution, or is it still the patient’s problem?” To this, she had no answer, and imagined them pestering Twilight for a memory potion. Twilight, caught up with taking the roof off the warehouse, would not have time for that, and her friends would leave disappointed and disciplined.

“Why did we trust Colgate again?” Vinyl asks, and Big Mac shakes his head.

“She does fail us an awful lot,” Octavia says reluctantly, as friends are supposed to be reluctant to admit flaws in each other.

She opened her eyes and looked back, where the group had shifted more toward the middle of the pool. Their conversation had grown quieter and more serious, and one of the griffons looked to Colgate like she was sad.

Moving her thoughts to Aloe and Lotus, she submerged again and let water run up her nose. The twins seemed to her a seesaw of emotions and reactions, sometimes stern and almost angry, sometimes friendly. Lotus had said she wanted to make up for snapping at Colgate earlier, but she had said it at Aloe’s prompting only. Colgate wanted to believe it, wanted to believe that it was from a font of kindness buried behind Lotus’ heart that had moved her to take Colgate to the lodge. The notion of someone like that, powerful yet kind, was at once enchanting and frightening to her. After a second, she drew the parallel between her idea of Lotus and her idea of Octavia, two mares who could destroy her if they wanted, one through intellect alone and one through main force. The significance of that connection, however, was immaterial to her; she pondered further.

She had not felt for anyone in Canterlot, whether due to the inadequacy of the company or the distraction of substances she was not sure. In Ponyville before, there had only been Dr. Whooves, long ago, and he was more to prove a point to her parents, at least toward the relationship’s end. She was glad that their paths with the Elements had not intersected, for she believed he still had feelings for her, and she did not know what her own feelings were.

It was hard to imagine Lotus as she had known her in Ponyville, even though she had seen that Lotus much more frequently. As a spa worker, she was open, friendly, and quick with a compliment or to soothe embarrassment, but in Snowdrift, that mare was buried under the macadam of professional duty. Colgate knew what it meant to be constantly at work, knew that it affected ponies’ personalities. Residency was the scariest barrier to becoming a doctor, and she had seen many associates break down in her time, crushed under the endless need to study and keep up with hospital life. Based on what she knew of it, she imagined that Datura life was similar, and imagined that it had happened to Lotus.

“Lotus doesn’t have time for my affection,” Colgate thought. “And she can’t see me that way anyway. I wonder if she sees anyone that way.” Then, putting doubt aside, she indulged in baseless fantasy: Lotus approaching her, bringing her around to some distant watchpoint, peeling off her coats and day clothes beneath, and taking Colgate there without any complicated words.

“Then she slipped poison into my mouth,” Colgate thought, and the fantasy ground to a halt. She rose and sat on the steps, watching the group still talking. She caught the words “she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she thinks she does.”

Colgate climbed out, dried off, and went to the humidor. She knew nothing of cigars, and picked one with a label that she liked. The stallion at the counter lit it for her, and she went to the couch by the TV, the first mare replaced by a younger lady in a thick coat and ski mask, breathing heavily with a mug of hot cocoa.

The TV showed a faint whisper of smoke against blue sky to the east of Snowdrift, and the reporters were talking about a distant prairie fire. Colgate watched without interest and tried to smoke, but coughed with each pull, and put her cigar out almost whole. The mare on the couch gave her a look, but Colgate did not notice. She reclined and let herself get lost in the TV for a while, quietly mulling over the dinner scheduled later that night, occasionally looping back to self-blame for not creating the saving memory potion as she had promised.

“The soda,” she said suddenly, sitting up, shocked and lightened. She looked at the mare, who looked back curiously, and, smiling, she said, “I’m thirsty for a soda.”

Back in the car, the first thing Colgate did was thank Lotus for bringing her up to the lodge. She ended her thanks with the phrase, “you’re a real pal.” Testing the waters.

“Happy to do it,” Lotus said. “We good? All right, let’s go.” Colgate turned in her seat to watch the lodge fade away behind the mist of steady rainfall.

“So, I have a question,” Colgate said. “When we were talking in Umbrella Park, about Fleur and the battle and all that—remember?”

“Yes, I remember it.”

“Right. You used…” She looked at Aloe for a second, worrying that she might be saying too much. “You used the present tense. You said Fleur needs to pay more attention to her laundry or something like that.”

Lotus was nodding, and Colgate could discern a smile from her angle in the back.

“Was that calculated?”

“I was wondering if you would notice it.”

“I thought it was weird.”

Aloe looked at Lotus, and Lotus only shrugged in response. “Take it for what you will, Minuette, but if you have any other questions, we’re not the mares. You don’t have authorization to talk about this openly.”

“Sure.”

“But if you are wondering about what happened to Fleur, and all that, I would say…” She smiled. “Think of your friend, Applejack.”

“Is it common? The thing you’re getting at, I mean,” Colgate asked, not sure exactly what “it” was, but thinking she had a good idea.

“Reasonably so.”

“Cool.” She looked out the back again, back at the glacier. She wanted to ask if Aloe and Lotus had ever been resurrected, but knew that it would be in poor taste. Instead, she made herself more comfortable and able to see Lotus’ reflection in the side mirror, her face in repose, serious but disarmed of sharp words and hard feelings.

Fifteen minutes before Colgate got back, Vinyl, Big Mac, and Octavia returned to the hotel to drop off a page of notes Twilight had scribbled for them, her best idea for a quick and dirty memory potion, loaded with warnings and qualifiers. Vinyl was in a hurry to make an appointment, and Octavia and Big Mac assured her that they could handle Twilight’s recipe, and the three of them split.

Since Vinyl was the only one who could drive, she took the car all the way to the other end of town, and, in view of the gateway and of Twilight’s innocent-looking Hearth’s Warming lights, she rang a stranger’s doorbell.

An inoffensive brick-and-mortar house with cheerful chimney smoke and a tiny dog barking in the window, Vinyl could not help but feel at home the second she stepped in. Her host hugged her in greeting and told the dog to stop jumping at Vinyl’s knees, and Vinyl said it was fine, and she spent some minutes lavishing it with attention.

The living room was already set up, and the stallion settled into a cozy beanbag chair and gestured for Vinyl to do the same. They sat by an open window, and she could see one of the town’s many churches letting out its congregation, hear their compliments to the preacher on the cold breeze.

Soulful Song was his name, and she had called him the day before, in private, to schedule a consultation.

“So, Miss Scratch, you said you were interested in memory therapy? What seems to be the trouble?”

For her lunch, Versus went back to the hotel and called Applejack’s room, and the two of them dined in the café. A live band was setting up, and they stayed long enough to hear the first song, played for a small crowd. Versus had nowhere to go for another half hour, and Applejack invited her up to her room, where they could hear each other better.

“I really hope you can see the next Contraction,” Versus said, throwing her sweater on the back of a chair.

“Ah’m not scheduled to,” Applejack said.

“Yeah you are. I mean, maybe.” Laughing, she said, “don’t be mad at me now if you do miss it! There’s a range of dates for this one.”

“Ahh,” Applejack said, pretending to know what Versus meant.

“I guess no one’s sure when it’s gonna go off, but it might be after you all are finished with your egg white problem. I hope so, you’d love it.”

“It looked like a real hootenanny from here.”

Versus laughed, her voice particularly loud in the smaller room. “Hootenanny? What’s that?”

“It’s like a good time.” She smiled, but Versus saw through it.

“What’s wrong, AJ? Are you going stir crazy? Are you scared?”

“Not fer myself.” She looked at the pile of books on the desk, impressive but with waning material to offer her. She had begun re-reading on more difficult topics that morning, after everyone left her, but none of Twilight’s texts went into much detail about religion and philosophy. Deciding to abandon caution, Applejack asked Versus outright: “are you religious at all, Versus?”

“Whoa, steady, mate,” Versus said, laughing a little. “Where’s this coming from? I mean, yes, I am. Sorry, you kinda caught me off guard there.” Seeing the look in Applejack’s eyes, she continued. “Uhh, I think they’re both divine, if you want to know. It’s not the most popular view in this town, but… AJ, why are you asking me this?”

“Just curious. Ah, no, that’s not the full truth. Ah’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout it a lot, religion. Findin’ myself. It’s easy to catch yerself at it, cooped up in a hotel like this, or on an airship fer days at a time.” She sighed. “The glories of adventurin’, right? Downtime, travel time, waitin’ fer yer friends to do the heavy liftin’. Hoo boy, sign me up.”

Versus nodded slowly, a ghost of a smile fighting with her lips. “I’m detecting some bitterness.”

“Some, yeah.” She waved her hoof, as if to dispel smoke in front of her face. “Nothin’ special ‘bout my bitterness, Ah’m just tired. You’ll get it off of any of us, Ah imagine.”

“Mmm, not Pinkie, not that I’ve seen,” Versus said.

“Is she still the same old Pinkie? That’s good.”

“She’s a scream! You know how you meet somepony and you’re just like ‘yeah, you are exactly who you’re supposed to be’? Pinkie was made for the Element of Laughter, AJ. Psh, I’m saying it like you don’t already know.”

“Now hang on with that, ‘cause we haven’t seen a whole lot of the old Pinkie lately. She’s been more subdued with us. Since… gosh, Ah can’t remember.”

“Well, I’m sure she can’t be at a hundred all the time.”

Applejack thought about that. “Yer probably right. She frolics with Rainbow Dash plenty still. Ah guess some of us worry.”

“Are you one of the ones that worry?”

“Not ‘bout her.”

Versus inched closer. “But someone else?”

“Ehhh, Ah’m not exactly comfortable sayin’. Ah hope you understand.”

“No, I get it,” Versus said, raising her hooves, tone and expression light and unhurt. Applejack was relieved. “So you wanna find a religion, huh? Maybe you should come to church with me sometime.”

“You serious?”

“Huh?”

“If we’re still here when we get rid of that hazard, an’ Ah ain’t needed fer anythin’, Ah’ll gladly take you up on that.”

Versus smiled even wider and nodded her head many times before speaking. “Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it.”

“Now Rarity said Snowdrift is a pretty dressy town—do Ah need to have some fancy duds to go to church? Anythin’ Ah need to know beforehoof, like any special customs or things not to do? If there’s singin’, Ah’ll need to practice up. Oh, an’ Ah know—what? What’s wrong?”

Versus heaved a sigh, and her smile fell away. “Uhh, yeah, you’re gonna think I’m awful for this.”

“Ah don’t think yer awful.”

“You’re gonna. I… Well, maybe another time, we can go. I’m not exactly, how do you say? Practicing.”

“Oh.” Applejack just nodded, but didn’t try to erase the hurt from her face or the offense from her tone. “Lots of folks are lapsed, there’s no shame in it, not in my opinion.”

“I shouldn’t’ve asked you to go with me,” she mumbled. “I wanted to seem good, I didn’t think you’d agree like that.”

“At least you owned up to it,” Applejack said. The two of them endured each other’s silence for a time. Versus seemed to Applejack the sort who would beat herself up about a mistake like that later, and though Applejack did not want her to, she did not know how to broach the subject. At length, she asked, “you got a pastor?”

“I guess so.”

She took a long breath. “You mind doin’ a favor fer me? Ah can’t leave this place, as you know; do you think you can phone her an’ see if she’s busy?” She indicated the books, feeling suddenly self-conscious, though she knew not why. “These ain’t really doin’ it fer me anymore, so Ah figured a live pony to talk to would be the way forward.”

“Yeah, sure.” Clearly relieved that her friend’s scrutiny was off her, Versus got up and began fussing about the room, giving her hooves and body something to do. “Right up to the room?”

“Whenever she’s got time, Ah’d surely appreciate it.”

Smiling, she said, “You know, I’m surprised you and Twilight don’t talk more about this. She seems like she’s got a head for it.”

“Oh, she does.” When Versus looked at her to continue, she just smiled.

Vinyl, Big Mac, Colgate, and Octavia passed the Snowdrift reverend in the hall, thought nothing of it, and went to their rooms to get dressed for the dinner. They were due in forty minutes, and the time pressure showed in their hurried speech, their jerky movements, and their inattention to detail of dress that cost them minutes more. Applejack helped, not speaking much and clearly thinking about something else, but came to just in time to bid them good luck and to be cautious.

In the hall, Big Mac stopped them. “Show me. Show me now, please.”

She dug around in her saddlebag and produced the neon orange soda bottle that she had filched from the Datura watchpoint outside town. “It’s no memory wipe, but it’ll knock her out, and we can scramble after that. I assume it acts pretty quickly ‘cause she almost used it on me, and I think she was in a hurry too. Usually is.” Also inside her saddlebag, which she chose not to disclose, was close to a thousand bits and a horn-drawn copy of the Elements of Harmony designs, what she thought of as “just in case” items.

“Where did you get this?” Octavia asked. “Never mind, I do not care. As long as you know that this is correct, then let us not waste any more time.”

“What about yours?”

“Our potion is… iffy,” Vinyl said. “We put it together as best we could from what Twilight said.” She pulled out a jar of sludgy, moss-green liquid that smelled of peat and a touch of ammonia. Colgate held it to the light, pretending to know what she was looking at.

“Her directions weren’t the clearest,” Big Mac said, “but we figure if we absolutely have to, we can bean her in the head with the jar.”

“Fine by me,” Colgate said. “Car’s outside?”

“Ah’ve been worryin’ ‘bout this all day,” Big Mac said as they went to the elevators, and Vinyl patted his shoulder.

To the car, skinned in brilliant, tumbling snow, they walked, and Vinyl drove them north.

“We get in, we add this to whatever she’s eating or drinking, and then we go,” Colgate said. “Octavia, you’re no unicorn, she won’t expect you to do anything funny. You do it.”

“Me? Since when is it me?” Octavia asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I assumed that you would be doing it.”

“Hell no!” She unbuttoned her overcoat and shook inside it, suddenly feverish, as if a trap had closed around her.

“Let’s keep it together back there,” Vinyl said.

“I have never done something like this,” Octavia said. “You have.”

“No, not really I haven’t,” Colgate said. In her wiggling, the glint of the pulse crystal moved in a sunbeam, and Octavia caught it.

“You really did bring that horrible thing along.”

“What if they search us at the door?” Big Mac asked weakly.

“They won’t,” Colgate said.

“You don’t know that,” Vinyl said in tandem with Octavia’s “You cannot know that.”

“Well…” The first thought was to drink the soda herself, and force the night to a conclusion.

“Fine, give me the potion,” Octavia said, grabbing it with her magic. “I will figure something out. But listen to me. Do not—Colgate, do not—pull out that pulse crystal unless you need to.”

“I don’t know why you think I would otherwise.”

“I am just saying.”

They pulled up to the curb outside the house, its gate invitingly open and its windows spotless, magically rippling as snow was deflected away. There were no other cars there.

“Button your coat again,” Vinyl said to Colgate at the front door. “Unbutton when you sit, but button when you’re up and about.” She rang the doorbell a second time.

Someone inside called a merry “just a second!”

“Be ready,” Colgate said.

“They’re not gonna go at us immediately,” Vinyl said, looking at Colgate, trying to see if she could spot the pulse crystal.

“Ah. Hello,” the griffon said, the same griffon who had approached them in the restaurant. He looked at them, smiling cordially but apologetically. “I’m sorry? Is something the matter?”

“We’re here for the dinner party?” Vinyl asked, and re-asked when the griffon leaned closer.

“Ahhhhh, oooooh, uhhh, yes, the party,” he said. “Terribly sorry, I hoped she would catch you. Something came up, it had to be cancelled.”

“What happened?” Colgate asked.

The griffon looked her in the eyes. “Family emergency.”

“That’s a shame,” Big Mac said, shaking his head and looking at the ground. “A right shame, no two ways ‘bout it. Shame, shame, shame.”

“My friend went to let you know,” the griffon continued. “You must have crossed each other and not known it. She went down to the hotel, the twisted hotel, to tell you all about it.”

“Did she?” Octavia asked.

“Guess she won’t find you there.” He stepped back into the door. “But she will find your friend, I’d bet. Versus, the dark pink mare. She’s a very happy pony.” He swung the door closed, but stopped just before it hit the jamb, then reopened. “Actually, no. I was wrong. She would be at the park, setting up the next party. Ah, I’m sure our friend is already there.” He nodded politely. “Buh-bye.”

In their haste to get back to the car, Big Mac lost a button on his overcoat when he was pushed against a frozen bush. Vinyl fumbled with the steering wheel, and Octavia looked at the knock-out soda as if it were the cause of their woes.

“Now I think is an okay time to get out that crystal, Cole,” Vinyl said as they spun out onto the snowy road.

“What if she already got Versus?” Big Mac asked.

“Do not say that,” Octavia said quietly.

“It’s broad daylight, she won’t have done anything crazy,” Colgate said.

“She might have.”

“Well…” It seemed as eloquent a counterargument as any to Colgate, who did not really know. “Maybe.”

On icy roads and chained tires, with the constant pressure of pedestrians to slow traffic, driving in Snowdrift had never been fast, and least of all on the dying Thursday evening. Carriages and motorized cars chugged along with increasing leisure as they approached Umbrella Park, and magical or simply heavily layered ponies covered the sidewalks and intersections like ants, some flashy and some misshapen and dark. Music and laughter were everywhere, along with the trash of nightlife, piled into snowbanks or strewn in the gutters. The house they had quit was only two miles behind them, yet the city had transformed from snow-globe tranquility to raucous fun over those two miles. Walking in it, when they occasionally had, did not show the same as having to drive through it. When a piece of Umbrella Park came into sight, then disappeared behind another sports bar, they let out a simultaneous sigh.

Vinyl honked at a pair of overweight stallions in the road, and they scampered away, laughing, not even looking at her. Colgate, meanwhile, dug out her crystal and fastened it to her forehoof, letting it dangle to the floor.

“Is it too late to call the police?” Big Mac asked.

“No police,” Colgate said.

“You sound pretty sure of that,” Vinyl said, waiting to turn.

“We’ve got a pulse crystal and a powerful knock-out potion. What do you think they’ll think?”

“That we’re out of our depth?”

“We are not out of our depth, we just gotta get through this last bit.” She tapped the crystal’s point on the floor. “You do this in every city, and you’re just thinking of the cops now? How come you never used them before?”

“Because in every other city, it was your ponies that we needed,” Octavia said. “Sometimes, we got them.”

“Quiet, let’s focus,” Vinyl said, taking them finally astride the park. A skeleton of lights and wires had been set up in the distant trees, and a few tables were already heaped with snow. Some ponies still strolled the outer regions of the park, but it had visibly cleared for the day. They parked just before a ditch of dead grass beside a public bathroom and water station, and Colgate and Octavia took a second to conceal their respective items.

“Calmly,” Octavia said. “We will keep this just to talking if at all possible.”

They entered from the long side of the park, through a bare patch of grass and gentle rises, between a pair of tall, brick processes with bronze plaques. They could see a large part of the park from their entrance point, the tree-flanked entrances of the southwest and the copse of conifers directly opposite, the withered and covered flower gardens and the oddly-shaped statues, the beginning of a black oak bridge on the northernmost extremity. No sign of Versus or of Peaceful Meadows—until the wind changed, and then they heard her voice almost clearly. All four froze and tried to look around calmly, four sets of eyes too on edge to grasp more than the most apparent.

“By the bridge, sillies!”

“There,” Octavia said, indicating. Versus’ pink face seemed bright and obvious when she pointed it out, looking at them expectantly from behind a strut.

“I have to show you something awesome! Come on over here!”

“Get ready,” Vinyl said.

“I’ve got it,” Colgate said. The crystal was ready in her inside breast pocket, straps half hanging out against her underclothes, point digging a growing hole in the suit jacket’s interior. She had only to reach a hoof inside, withdraw, and fire off a couple pulses, a matter of seconds. It was simple, but it wasn’t. Without the benefit of alcohol or painkillers in her system, she did not feel right about the crystal, and quietly hoped that the adrenaline rush she imagined was inevitable would provide enough of a substitute.

“It’s in here,” Versus said, face pale, smile wavering, eyes darting. “C’mon.” She walked backward into the imperfect shadow under the bridge, and the four paused there. There was less than ten feet of space, and they could see the metal peg in the ground, the silver wire that ran from it to Versus’ back hoof. They could see the beige car parked on the other side by a track that went straight to the woods.

The four of them watched her, and she watched them, before falling to her knees with a sharp yelp. Octavia started forward, and Versus lay on one side, panting, face wet with sweat.

“It’s electric,” Peaceful Meadows said. She rocked back and forth with speech, wrapped in dark coats, and lowered a hood off her orange sherbet face and a close-cut mane. A white ribbon of snow reflected in her large sunglasses. “You know, like zap-zap. Come closer so we can chat.”

Big Mac and Vinyl looked at Octavia, who, without looking at them, approached.

Peaceful Meadows’ pulse crystal appeared out of the folds of her coats as she rose, trailing her own thin wire to the electric peg that had felled Versus. She yanked it, and Versus’ snare tightened cruelly, forcing the pink mare to struggle across the ground, rolling and tumbling to keep up. With the crystal on Versus, Peaceful Meadows simply said, “undress.”

“It’s cold out,” Colgate complained.

Peaceful Meadows shook her head, and the four reluctantly began peeling off jackets. As they did so, she produced a pair of tiny, metal rings, which Colgate recognized immediately and Vinyl did not.

“You first, shifty blue. Come up and put this on.” She waggled her pulse crystal against Versus temple. “And you, let’s lose the goggles.”

“She needs them,” Octavia said.

“I need them gone.” She watched Colgate put on the magic suppression collar, made sure she gave it the quarter turn required to lock it into place on her horn, and then gently pushed her back. “Snow-white, your turn. You can leave the goggles right here at my hooves.”

“She has sensitive eyes. The light will hurt her,” Octavia said.

“I have blindfolds. Let’s go!” She ground the crystal’s point into Versus’ temple, and their concierge squealed and tried to twist away, and Vinyl haltingly came forward, first putting on her collar, then lifting off her goggles; she had to get on her knees to use her hooves, a crying form that made Big Mac jerk forward and then freeze when the pulse crystal turned to him. Peaceful Meadows sighed and nodded understandingly when Vinyl, muttering a curse, laid her goggles in the grass.

“Back up, big hero.”

“Over here,” Octavia said, holding out a hoof for Vinyl to find them.

They went then, one by one, to Peaceful Meadows, who took her time in blindfolding them and in zip-tying their front legs together. Her voice and her pulse crystal were steady, but her eyes were constantly searching the distance, as if expecting someone to appear and break up their scene any second. Big Mac cried when he received his bindings, and Vinyl begged and offered money, and to them both, Peaceful Meadows said to be quiet, that any hysteria or funny moves would lead to one big mess under the bridge. It kept them quiet and compliant long enough to get them into the car, Versus in the driver’s seat, she the only one not bound or blinded. Their clothes and saddlebags were stuffed in the trunk, and Peaceful Meadows directed her to slowly drive them out of the park by the forest path.

“Our friends will come looking for us,” Octavia said.

“They’ll find you.”

“We have money,” Vinyl said. “We have connections.” She tried to grope for Big Mac, who was still sniffling, to comfort him.

“Not interested,” Peaceful Meadows said. “Versus, honey, let’s stay inside the trees for now. Skirt this new evacuation zone and take us out into the big foggy yonder.” She poked Vinyl, who flinched. “Hooves to yourself, pop star.”

“I do not think you realize how much money we have,” Octavia said in the front. To her friends, it was obvious she was straining to keep her voice even, but to Versus, she seemed hardly fazed by her condition, and it calmed her by degrees.

“Godly connections,” Peaceful Meadows said, and left it at that. They rounded the line of warning tape around the hazard’s area of effect. The warehouse roof lay in three pieces in the sere field between retracting cranes, and Twilight could be seen moving amongst workers and clouds of pegasi, directing them with hooves and arrowheads of magic. She did not notice the car hissing past on the opposite side.

“I’m gonna puke,” Colgate said.

After a moment, Peaceful Meadows told Versus to pull over, and Colgate was let out for a minute. She vomited with the pulse crystal pointed square at her backside the whole time, and after cleaning her mouth as best she could with a few bites of snow, Peaceful Meadows shoved her back into her seat. They drove off again.

“Please,” Big Mac said, trying to give Colgate room. “We won’t say anythin’ if you just let us go. We’ll walk back to town, you can drive off.”

“Can you be quiet?” Versus snapped. Her eyes were wide and manic, and Peaceful Meadows, noticing, trained the crystal on her instead. “You could have said something to me, something like ‘Hey, Versus, just to let you know, we’re being hunted by some lunatic.’ You know, like a warning? So I could keep my distance?” She laughed wildly. “I would have appreciated that.”

“Let’s keep calm, Versus,” Peaceful Meadows said.

“Nuts to that! How am I supposed to be calm when I’ve got a—”

“Because I said so!” She jabbed her in the side, and the car swerved as Versus cringed away. “Now shut up and drive. I don’t like your voice.”

“I hate yours too.”

“Versus, please don’t give her any reason to hurt you,” Vinyl said. “It’s us she wants, not you. You can make it out still.”

At this, Big Mac let out a louder wail, and they stopped again for Peaceful Meadows to put a gag on him.

“Why us?” Octavia asked when they were moving again. Her blindfolded face was turned to the window, and she shivered in her seat.

“That’s my business,” Peaceful Meadows said.

“Common Mansel scum.”

Peaceful Meadows laughed quietly. “You got me there.”

“Let’s not antagonize the pony with the crystal,” Colgate said. “Sound okay?”

“It’s all gonna end the same,” Versus said sullenly. “I say let’s antagonize her as much as we can.”

“No, you keep driving.” She looked around dumbly, not aware that Peaceful Meadows had pointed the crystal at her. With some effort, she asked where they were going.

“Far enough that the precogs won’t have seen us,” Peaceful Meadows said.

Inside the car, the engine’s hum the only constant amid Big Mac’s sniffles and snorts and the occasional mewl from Vinyl or insult from Versus, tension relaxed but a little. It became clear through some unspoken, mutual understanding that they were safe when they were moving. Peaceful Meadows did not want to dirty the car and did not want to upset Versus, who could—though most likely would not—send them skidding off the road and into a tree or ditch. Dreading the coming silence and the cessation of motion, senses duller in the cold that Peaceful Meadows refused to dispel, the four hostages had only to wait and let their situation sink in. They were driving to their deaths, wherever that was, far from Snowdrift and farther from home.

“This is fine,” Peaceful Meadows said, and Big Mac struggled afresh, shouting against his gag, flinging cold sweat onto the mares at his sides. The car came to a slow halt, sliding on black ice and crunching out onto the gravel shoulder. Versus did not know where they were, only that they had followed the road south for close to fifty miles; Snowdrift was long gone behind snow, fog, and trees. Car doors clicked open and bodies shuffled and stumbled out. Versus did not help them, was not allowed to, and they moved in a laborious line to the motionless trees, bound hoofsteps revealing flecks of orange and red under a coat of snow, and black branches indistinguishable from the lifeless telephone wires above.

Peaceful Meadows hummed a tuneless thing behind them, occasionally poking one just to show that she still had her weapon, or complaining under her breath when one of them fell.

“Thanks for killing me,” Versus said. “You girls are really good friends. Seriously, I can’t thank you enough for this. I really hoped to move to Snowdrift and get slaughtered by—”

“Will you shut up?” Colgate asked. “We’ll be fine.”

“How? How is this gonna end good for us?” She yelped when Peaceful Meadows jabbed her again, and fell quiet.

“Keep moving, Octavia,” Peaceful Meadows said. “Deeper into the trees. Don’t turn that miserable face to me again.”

“Name a price, seriously,” Vinyl said. “We’ll double it. Triple it.” Her tail swished from side to side, catching on low bushes, and she stumbled again, landing on her unprotected face and chest.

“You saw us scoping out the house this morning and decided to call off the party,” Colgate said. She was shivering with the cold, but not entirely; her heart was hammering, her mind racing. She felt like she had in Canterlot, on the verge of something great, but also ready to throw up on her own hooves.

“Mhm.”

“You watched us, you knew we had a car, ‘cause if we were on hoof you wouldn’t have given us such a distance to travel to find Versus. You didn’t like that bridge either.”

“Colgate, you are seriously freaking me out right now!” Versus cried, laughing nervously again. For a second, she stopped, but then laughed louder and harder, until she was honking like a goose in the empty woods.

“Everypony on her knees,” Peaceful Meadows said, and there was the sound of one of their number being pushed to the ground. “I’ll make it fast for some of you.” She kicked Versus. “I find no joy in this, but it’s got to be done.”

In the distance, something crashed, a cannon shot that expanded through the trees like an angry fire, and the shivering stopped. Peaceful Meadows lowered her weapon, though they didn’t know.

“Discord’s coming,” Colgate said, voicing her first thought. Beside her, Big Mac wailed again and fell onto his side, his hooves kicking uselessly. “We’re out of the city and in his wilderness.”

The crash repeated, not closer, but from another direction, and his kicking grew in intensity.

“Or maybe it’s our friends! That Twilight, she’s no one to mess with, you Mansel scum!”

“That’s enough,” Peaceful Meadows said under a third crash, and the pulse crystal pressed on Colgate’s back, then jerked across harshly as Peaceful Meadows yelled in surprise. In that exact moment, something flew past her head and connected with the body to her side, and the surprise turned to pained anger. Big Mac was writhing in the dirt, and Colgate tipped over to join him, hearing only a faceless struggle as Octavia and Versus wrestled with their captor—a struggle that did not last long with Octavia’s magic in the mix. As soon as Colgate heard the tinkle of the pulse crystal landing against a tree, she knew it was over, and Peaceful Meadows seemed to as well, for soon after, the movement stopped, and there was only heavy breathing.

Blindfolds lifted, except Vinyl’s, for her eyes, and zip ties were cut when Octavia found the scissors in Peaceful Meadows’ coat pocket. Colgate went at once to the pulse crystal and clumsily hefted it on a sleeping hoof. The orange mare looked up at them, panting, smiling defiantly with cornered-animal eyes at her own crystal, leveled at her.

“Thanks,” Colgate said, swishing her tail against Octavia’s.

“You psycho!” Versus screamed, hobbling over and slamming a river rock onto Peaceful Meadows’ mouth. Her expression changed as her head snapped back into the snow with a grunt, blood leaking between loosened teeth, and she attempted to crawl closer to the tree she had been pinned against. Her visible breath came out in short, sharp gasps. Versus herself looked ready to explode, fur and mane puffed outwards with the cold, eyes racing, a red ring around her hoof where the snare had tightened.

“Keep her there,” Colgate said, using her own delicate but weak magic to remove Peaceful Meadows’ clothes. Behind her, Vinyl was trying ineffectually to comfort Big Mac, weeping openly and of help to no one. When she had been relieved of her clothes, Peaceful Meadows was left to shiver and twitch in the snow, blood pooling around her mouth, eyes clear and full of hate.

“Now what do we do with her?” Octavia asked. “I do not want to kill this mare.”

“Are you kidding?” Versus shouted. “She’d of done us in a second or two!”

“We are not like that, and neither are you.”

“Like Tartarus!”

Peaceful Meadows struggled to smile. “I can offer you money.”

“We just want to be left alone,” Vinyl said. “Is that so much to ask?”

“She’s not gonna leave us alone after this,” Colgate said, aiming the crystal at Peaceful Meadows’ midsection.

“Colgate, please do not,” Octavia said.

“Let me leave Snowdrift,” Peaceful Meadows said, and spat blood. “I have a go bag at the train station. I’ll leave for good, and you won’t see me again.”

“How likely,” Versus said. “We trust her, I assume? I mean, how could we not?”

“If you haven’t shot me yet, you’re not gonna. It’s not in you.”

“Try me,” Colgate said.

She coughed. “I am.”

“I’m gonna find another rock,” Versus said.

That gave her pause, during which it looked like she might try to make a run for the car. “I can help you take down the Mansels. I know where they live.”

“Their operation is finished,” Colgate said.

“Mmm.” Her eye swiveled around to see Versus approaching, and with no shell of clothing, her tightening muscles and curling tail showed gratifying fear. She spat blood again. “You must have talked to Partial Thoughts. That how you knew about dinner?”

“We’re psychic.”

Versus came to rest beside Colgate, teetering on three legs, a larger rock shaking on the one, ready to fall on Peaceful Meadows’ face. Everyone watched to see whether she would let it.

“Quit looking at me!” Versus shouted. She panted, and, after a pained second, let the rock fall into the snow behind her. Crying and snorting, she ran out to the road and, crouched by the wheel, wept bitterly.

“Kill me or let me go,” Peaceful Meadows said. “You can’t stay out here forever.”

“We sure we don’t know any memory magic?” Vinyl asked.

“I’ll get the soda. We’ll discuss what to do with her after that,” Colgate said. She went to the car, giving Octavia the pulse crystal, and ignored Versus’ breakdown as she rooted around the trunk. She grabbed the soda and her own pulse crystal, not bothering with their clothes, and returned.

“Welcome back,” Peaceful Meadows said.

“Shut up.” She tried to twist the cap off and cursed. “Anyone got a bottle opener?”

“You have to be kidding me,” Octavia said. She grabbed it and opened it on a branch.

“Sit her up and help her drink this down.” She traded soda for crystal and watched Peaceful Meadows slowly swallow the disguised potion. The orange drink with the blood in her mouth created a sunset stain the snow. “Do you like tangerine?”

Peaceful Meadows looked at her with unimpressed eyes when she was finished. “What are you gonna do? Knock me out? I’ll wake up. You’re not killers. It’ll be this same shitty situation, but in town instead of out of it.”

“We will let the police handle that,” Octavia said.

“Mmmmm, with knockout potion in my veins and…” She yawned, showing off her destroyed mouth for a second. “This nice, visible wound, you’re not gonna…” Her eyes drooped. “Gonna… police.” She fell asleep, mumbling at first, and then was silent.

At the car, they replaced Vinyl’s goggles and found the zip ties for Peaceful Meadows’ hooves, in case the potion was not as strong as they thought.

“Are you okay to drive?” Octavia asked Vinyl.

“Not really,” Vinyl said, holding up a hoof to show her shaking. “Not at all.”

“I can do it,” Versus said quietly. “Get in.”

There were no other cars on the road as they drove back toward Snowdrift, and they moved in silence. Big Mac had finally calmed down, and he and Vinyl simply snuggled in the back, Octavia sitting apart. Her eyes kept slipping closed, and she dozed intermittently.

“There wasn’t a shovel in the trunk,” Colgate said. “She wasn’t gonna kill us. I don’t know what she was gonna do. Maybe just scare us.”

“Let the snow bury us,” Versus said. “No one goes out into those woods anyway.”

“I can see why. Monsters.”

“That was me,” Octavia said. “I was trying to distract her with some distant explosions.”

“Ah. Smart.”

“Reckless, but it was all I could think of.”

“We can’t take her to the police,” Versus said. “She’s right.”

“I know that,” Colgate said. “We’ll probably go off into the woods somewhere else and dispose of her.”

“I do not want to kill her,” Octavia said.

“What other options? None of us are memory ponies.”

“We’ll get Twilight,” Vinyl said. “She did it to that Trottingham pony. Whip-something.”

Versus glanced back at Vinyl, and something she saw touched her, for in a second, they were on the side of the road again, and she was weeping. It took her several minutes to regain control and keep driving them back. It seemed to her both terrifying and unholy that, through it all, the sun had not budged from its spot. To Versus, who had lapsed in her religion years before, it felt obscurely like punishment.

Twilight was in the shower when Octavia went to their room. Despite her efforts to fix her face and tone, her friends knew instantly that something was wrong, and she found herself slowly—for she could not speak steadily otherwise—explaining what had happened, how close they had been, and what they needed Twilight for. When the unicorn in question came out, she received a condensed version and, similarly shaken, threw on a jacket and went out to their car.

“What took so long?” Versus asked.

“I was in the shower,” Twilight said. “Where is she?”

“We put her in the trunk,” Colgate said. “Buckle up.”

Twilight didn’t ask any questions as they drove back south, skirting the evacuation zone again, and took a tiny path deep into the trees. There, they pulled Peaceful Meadows out, still asleep, cut her bindings, dressed her so she would not freeze to death, and lay her at the base of a tree.

“It’s quick and dirty, but it’s the best I can do,” Twilight said. “Versus, if you’d like, I can wipe you too. You seem pretty freaked out still.”

“Thanks, but I’ll take a hard pass,” Versus said.

“I can only do it if it’s recent, so if you change your mind tomorrow, I can’t help you. At least, not without destroying tomorrow too.”

“Just her, thanks.”

“You got it.” Twilight looked down at Peaceful Meadows, cracked her neck, and cast the spell. Peaceful Meadows’ body glowed for a full minute, lifted slightly, magic sizzling like hot oil, then slumped against the snow and leaves. “I wiped the entire last week. She won’t remember that we’re here in Snowdrift, and she won’t remember tonight, but since she knew of us before this, we still need to be careful. If she finds out we’re here a second time, she might reach all the same conclusions as before and try something again.”

“Does this hurt her in any way?” Vinyl asked. “It has to, right?”

“Not physically, but ponies really shouldn’t lose as much as I just took from her, not in one piece anyway.” They got back into the car.

“So what’s gonna happen to her?” Versus asked.

“She’ll probably think she lost her mind, which, to be fair, she did. A good portion.” She sighed. “I’m glad you’re all okay. What happened to her face?”

“She fell when we were fighting,” Octavia said. “Caught a tree branch.”

“She deserves it.”

Vinyl agreed to drive them back to the hotel from Versus’ house, and when it was just the five of them, Twilight spoke again.

“The warehouse roof is taken care of. Tomorrow, we’re doing a test run, seeing if we can lure the hazard out of its hole.”

“Do you need any volunteers for that?” Octavia asked.

“No, thank you, enough of the locals signed up already. I guess working on a project for the famous Twilight Sparkle is more important than danger. What you can do, though, is deal with this car. I assume it’s hers?”

“It seems to be.”

“Yeah, we don’t want to be seen with this.”

At the hotel, they answered their friends’ numerous questions, assured them that they would be fine and that Peaceful Meadows had been taken care of. Big Mac and Vinyl took the bed and spoke little, and Octavia fell asleep in the space between bed and wall.

Rainbow had kept her distance, but, after hearing their story, trotted up and gave Twilight a quick hug. “You had a long day, sounds like. Do we wanna go down and have a drink? Or some dinner, or something? I haven’t really eaten yet either.”

“That… sounds fine, yes,” Twilight said.

Those that hadn’t fallen asleep went down to the hotel restaurant, quiet and unsure, moving more like a funeral procession than a group of friends.