Dust and wind scratched the awning over their heads as they turned in awkward circles, their eyes adjusting to the new light. The electric magic in the mines was a poor imitation to the brown light coming through heavy clouds. The desert was shrouded in soot and dust, through which brighter light penetrated in narrow slashes, like cracks in a dark shellac. Dead trees bent and buildings groaned as their faces were gradually etched off.

The warm blacktop stretched away on both sides, forming a wide oval parking lot that contained no cars and no carriages, but a listing airship, paint chipped off its sides to reveal wooden ribs beneath and a patchwork balloon draped over the poop like a wrapper that had been carried deep into the wilderness on the ceaseless, dry storm. The ship was chained down to a circle of metal pegs embedded in the lot, hammered straight through the blacktop and taking up seven spaces all told. In the dust swirling just behind, it was a formidable aspect, a marooned giant watching over the land that had moved on without it.

They approached it cautiously, eyes squinted to keep out the dust. Droplets of warm rain soothed their coats as they crossed the space, legs tired from walking and minds dulled from encountering the monster in the mines so shortly before.

Completing a circuit around the ship to ascertain that it was abandoned, Rarity was the first to descry the column of smoke that reached above the modest skyline of small buildings into the firmament’s cusp. A toxic, black rope of smoke and ash, it ascended unbroken into the dusty clouds, inosculating with strands of gray cirrus to form a dark wound on the atmosphere. She lowered her head and closed her mouth, which had fallen open, as the others noticed what had drawn her attention so.

For a time, they only watched. The column’s outer surface billowed and changed subtly, a living artery of untold width connecting the heavens and the earth. The occasional flashes of light from earlier, clear through the haze that rested on their level, were not visible inside the column.

“Ah think this is Moondrop,” Big Mac said. “That there’s the saloon we walked past to get yer Element, Pinkie.”

“We should do something,” Vinyl said. “I don’t hear sirens.”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Twilight said, putting her magic to the first chain and patiently working it away from its peg. “I bet that’s Princess Celestia’s prison that’s coming from.”

“How?” Rainbow asked.

“I’m not sure. Just a feeling.”

They released the ship, Rarity bracing it with a shield so the wind would not tip it, and waited while Applejack dissociated into it. When she was done, she gave her approval, and they boarded.

“We are stealing this, then?” Octavia asked, lying on her back near the splintering rail.

“I just assumed Vanilla left it for us,” Twilight said, Fluttershy nodding along. “He was pretty interested in helping us on our way.”

“We do not know that this is ours to take, though.”

Applejack paused at the cracked, plastic and rubber wheel. “Ladies? What’s the verdict?”

“I don’t wanna steal it if we don’t have to,” Vinyl said.

“No, here, look,” Pinkie said, holding a note in her teeth. “It says ‘all yours, V.’ V for Vanilla?”

“Where’d you find that?” Rainbow asked.

“It was tacked to door, back there.” She pointed to the doors to the captain’s quarters, partially covered by the deflated balloon.

“Let’s get this inflated,” Twilight said, grabbing the balloon and setting to work tying it to the rails. She was pleased to find that the patchwork appearance was in the pattern only, and no actual stitching had taken place. While she worked, Fluttershy righted the torch and bolted it to the deck.

“What do we have right now?” Vinyl asked. “Twilight? In that extra… space of yours?”

“One moment.” Twilight tied the last pair of ropes through a tarnished eye hole and slowly released their bags onto the deck.

“All of our personal supplies still,” Rarity said, picking through hers. “Where’s my brush?”

“Oh, I might have accidentally put it in mine,” Fluttershy said. “Sorry.”

“Enough food fer ‘bout… four, five days?” Big Mac said, looking at them all. “We’ll need to be careful.”

“We can ration fine,” Twilight said. “We’ve come this far. Water?”

“The same.”

“There are rivers and lakes as we go west,” Octavia said, still flat on her back. Her eyes were trained on the black column. “We can get water when we pass them, and even forage for food if we must. Though I would rather we not stop for that long.” Near, the torch hummed to life and then began breathing fire into the balloon.

“Here’s your books, Twilight,” Pinkie said.

“Where’s the treasury slip?” Rarity asked.

“I’ve got it,” Twilight said, flourishing a crumpled piece of paper. “And the map Princess Luna gave us.”

“Not much use now,” Rainbow said.

“Even so.”

“Octavia’s cello?” Applejack asked.

Octavia, hearing her name, rolled over to bring her good ear closer to Applejack.

“Yer cello?”

“Oh, that. That has been lost,” Octavia said. “I lost it on the angel.”

“Shoot, that’s right. Sorry.”

“It was damaged beyond repair before that.”

“Anything else?” Rarity asked. “Didn’t we get some pulse crystals?”

“We only talked about it, we didn’t actually do it,” Twilight said. “We should get some, though.”

“Ah don’t want one,” Big Mac said.

“You might need one,” Rainbow said.

“Ah’ll take my chances.”

“Do we have anything to use as face masks?” Vinyl asked.

“I’ve got some scarves,” Rarity said.

“We’ve all got our scarves,” Rainbow mumbled, earning a small smile from Rarity.

“Here, I’ve got one in my bag,” Fluttershy said, pulling it out. “I can tie it around your muzzle.”

Vinyl submitted to Fluttershy’s ministrations while Twilight pulled out a book.

As the balloon slowly inflated and the ship rocked against Rarity’s glassy shield, the column of smoke rose ever upwards, solid despite the wind that stirred everything else. The desert and town without were a morass of brown and brown-green. Waves of dust washed across flat plains of red earth where ragged patches of tobosa leaned, and beyond, just before the dust claimed the horizon, the outermost structures of Moondrop stood vigil. A lone road from town curved along an unseen contour in the landscape to join their parking lot, fenced on both sides with wire strung between tilting, wooden stakes. While they watched, a spiral of wire came loose and snapped into the wind, skidding and juddering away.

When they rose into the air, pendulous in the arid wind, Rarity released her shield with a quiet, contented sigh. Like the darkness in the back of the mines, the effusive dust seemed to hem them inside itself, and they could only see the entirety of Moondrop when they were right over it. Clapboard buildings and snakelike gutters appeared out of the sepia haze as they crossed the town. No one was outside to fight the wind or the dust, which mingled with smoke as they drew closer to the column.

Without consultation, Rarity raised a shield around their ship and stomped out a stray cinder that had landed at her hooves. The air was warm, but did not get warmer—sign of her prowess with the protective magic. A blackened gust broke across her shield, leaving golden traces of sparks in the air stream behind their propellers.

“Why are we going towards it?” Vinyl asked.

“Curiosity,” Applejack said. “Mostly. Ah don’t reckon we can do anythin’ to help it, but Ah wanna see.”

Octavia pushed herself up. “We should see it. We should see what we have done.”

“We didn’t do this,” Twilight said.

“Through our inaction—”

“He got us fair and square,” Rainbow said. “Laying the blame won’t help anypony.”

Through shimmering air, the airship dragged its own small trails of smoke closer to the crater that gave Moondrop its name. Through the dust, all that was clear was the wicked, black column, thick and seemingly alive, the smoke that appeared inert from a distance seen to boil and plume out of its earthen calyx with the warning sound of high-pressure sizzling, of stone turning to vapor. Closer they floated until they saw the crater’s edge, sloping into itself, red and smooth like exposed flesh. Smoke and steam rose in a gentler mist off its surface.

“Take us higher,” Rarity said. “But not closer.” Her ears were folded down, hers and the other unicorns’.

Applejack turned them parallel to the column and let them rise; she had to use the torch, for the other hot air was kept outside by Rarity’s shield. At a height to reduce Moondrop’s outer visible edges to the likeness of stones and snake tracks, they spotted deep in the column a light almost too dim to discern. A second sun cloaked inside the concentration of its power, reduced to ash and tossed up from the ruined ground to bisect the horizon and stain the sky.

“That’s her,” Twilight said. “That’s her prison.”

“Where’s all this smoke coming from?” Fluttershy asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Vinyl said. “I can feel the magic in my head.”

“Me too,” Rarity said.

“We should watch for a while,” Octavia said. After a second, she added, “I feel it too.”

Applejack took her eyes from the column after a minute more and put their backs to the crater. Twilight went with Octavia to the back and watched the scene gradually shrink. She remembered the ring of smaller crystalline prisons that rimmed the crater, now absent; they had been consumed by Celestia’s divine heat, they and the ground that held them, turned to lava and left to slide through the Tartarus gateway. She imagined what the center of the smoke might be like. The heat, enough to indiscriminately melt stone and flesh alike; the darkness, so unfitting to the intense heat; the pressure and toxicity, cutting off light and life. The sound, something like every fire in the world concentrated and muted into a low, constant pound, itself mingled with the radiating half-sound of magic that could drill down a unicorn’s horn and into her skull, leaving its own burning canal from air to brain, to which, after enough time, she might grow accustomed, long after losing her magic and her capacity to feel. Even from a distance that the crater’s new border was not visible, the magic came at them in a perpetual wave, a subsonic pitch that made Twilight instinctively close her eyes and cover her ears.

“To think, Luna was down in the middle of that,” Octavia said. “Trying to free her sister.”

“For days,” Twilight said. “Like I’ve said, they’re goddesses for a reason.”

“It is easy to forget sometimes.”

“I’m dropping the shield,” Rarity said, and a hot breeze washed over them with the smoke and dust. Their lungs burned with each cough, and many of them retreated to the captain’s quarters.

The ship’s clock read eight in the evening and its speedometer read just under two hundred miles per hour, enough to put them back to the mines in roughly three days or more, depending on Rainbow’s indefatigability. Twilight had spent the last several hours copying and laying down her sigils and enchantments to allow them to speed along on a pillow of wind and twin pockets of enchanted air. The sigil hat that Rainbow had to wear, the charm that allowed her to imprint magic onto the enchanted bubble of air she occupied, was fashioned from a wok, its bottom cut out and smoothed to a comfortable fit around her head, and a tangle of fishing line. Twilight had spent so long enchanting it that she did not register what had the rest of the deck nervously talking as they reached the first stretches of great, empty plain that stood between them and the new Elements.

“Yer sure the clock’s right?” Big Mac asked. “Could be Vanilla’s way of messin’ with us.”

“Ah thought of that,” Applejack said. “Ah dunno. Could be. Ah wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Do we know what time it was when we got out of Moondrop?” Rarity asked.

“No idea,” Vinyl said. “Couldn’t see the sun for all that dust.”

“What’s the problem?” Twilight asked, sitting down beside the wheel and holding a hoof to her eyes. The yellowed ground rolled out underneath them like a sun-baked carpet, cracked at the edges with the suggestions of greater chasms still un-mended. They were too far from anything for ponies to be repairing the wounded earth.

“Clock reads eight,” Pinkie said. “At night. Like eight at night.”

“Well, it must be wrong.”

“My sleep rhythm says different,” Applejack said. “Ah’ve got ‘bout two or three more hours in me, then Ah’m bushed.”

“I can go for another six or twelve,” Pinkie said, nodding thoughtfully. “Maybe just six.”

“I thought I saw the sun through the clouds in Moondrop,” Rarity said. “But I’m really not sure.” She looked back in the direction of the desert village, clearly marked by the bold, graphite divider on the pale brown smear of sky.

“We could always land and check the flowers,” Fluttershy said. “There are some that only open at night.”

“I don’t think it’s that important, if I’m honest,” Twilight said. “Besides, landing right now would be kind of a pain.”

“On that note, we do know we’re going the right way, right?” Vinyl asked.

“Ah’ve got us pointed right at those mountains,” Applejack said. “We’ll get there.”

For Lacey Kisses, the news of Strawberry’s disappearance was a relief she could not relish. That she garnered no pleasure from the news registered in Reverend Green a flicker of hope, which manifested first on his face and then in his hooves as he crossed them over hers, the four clutched upon the newspaper upon the sticky table.

He nodded and rose, and she too. They were the sole occupants of a wide, gray concrete room, amassed with cheap plastic tables and chairs that scraped terribly whenever anyone moved them. To one side, the salad bar reflected overhead floodlights off its plastic tray covers beside its companion dessert bar, both on stout wheels and fitted with small, uncomfortable harnesses for the non-magical to pull them along. To the room’s other side, a middle aged, depressed looking unicorn rattled open the metal window to the counter. She gave Lacey and the reverend a nod and began lifting back covers on the various steaming things they would be serving that day.

They went behind the counter, and Reverend Green tied her apron for her as the first group of ponies entered. It was six in the morning, the day after the Elements had left Moondrop, and through the metal doors beamed a brilliant noontime sun. The ponies, however, were not speaking of it; it had shown all through the night, and Lacey suspected they, as she, were growing tired of the speculation and the worrying. Perhaps others elsewhere had not, but in the shelter, there were more immediate concerns.

“Mashed potatoes or corn, hon?” the middle-aged mare asked the first mare, who nodded sheepishly and said “corn—no! Potatoes. No, corn.”

Lacey’s job was to give them their rolls. With an extra long pair of tongs gasped in her mouth—the padding on the mouth end tasted of wax fruit—she maneuvered fat lumps of bread onto each passing tray with a smile and sometimes an attempt at a greeting. Many were regulars, but a couple of the ponies were new. She recognized the new ones when they recognized her; her previous profession had given her more repute than she had realized, especially in the Canterlot suburbs.

Cleaning up one evening prior, she had come face to face with her past self in a discarded magazine. She had stared at it for several minutes, trying to remember the particular shoot, the particular stallion she had acted with.

They served until their tins were empty and the scurrying pair of colts in the back had to fetch more, then took five minutes to get some water before going to tables.

“Will you wait until everyone else is finished again, sister?” Reverend Green asked, levitating his glasses into his shirt pocket.

“Probably,” Lacey said.

“If you’re hungry, go ahead and grab a plate now,” the other mare said. “The rev and I can hold it down for now.”

“Thanks, but I’m okay.” She scanned the room, more to not look at her two companions than to see the diners. Some were already nearly done with their breakfasts, and would be lining up at the salad and dessert carts. A pair of regular volunteers had materialized to work at them in the slow chaos.

“What are the cookies today?” Reverend Green asked.

“Chocolate chip raisin,” Lacey said. “Someone made them. Shoot, who was it? New guy.” She tapped her head with a hoof. “Why can’t I remember his name?”

“It will come,” he said, lowering her hoof. He glanced at his watch. “Time flies, hm?”

“Are you teaching today, Rev?” the other mare asked.

“That’s Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m just on residential today.”

“I’ll bet it’s nice to have a varied schedule. Something different every day.” She shook her head. “This is all I have every week.”

“We’re always happy to have more volunteers,” Reverend Green said. “If you have the time, we have the space for you.”

“I wish I could, hon, I wish I could.” She glanced at Lacey, sipping a plastic cup of watery fruit punch. “Maybe Saturday, if Daffodil gets out of practice early enough.”

“We’ll be here,” Lacey said.

“As will they,” Reverend Green said soberly.

They dispersed amongst the tables, taking trays, picking up dropped cups, pointing out restrooms. Back in the kitchen, all the dirty trays were passed off to the colts, who eagerly set to washing them, jokes and laughter flying between them in the steam of the industrial dishwasher. When the last of the diners had left, Lacey, the reverend, and the middle-aged mare wiped and folded tablecloths, swept the floor, took back table numbers, and disposed of what little food remained. Lacey fixed herself a plate of collard greens, bread, mashed potatoes, and a dish of unspecific-tasting yellow pudding.

The reverend sat at her table, and she averted her eyes, knowing that she could not hide her feelings from him.

“This does not need to change your life,” he said. She wanted him to be talking about the nighttime’s curious absence, but knew he was speaking of something different.

“It won’t,” she said after a moment of thought. “I wasn’t planning on trying at him again. Not that I could have.”

“Do you regret that fact?”

“Maybe a little.”

He nodded.

“But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t, and I couldn’t.”

“And you’re all the better for it.”

She didn’t respond, and his elderly eyes returned to scanning the room. She had first come to the shelter for abuse victims nearly a month ago, mistaking it for a garden-variety soup kitchen and only finding out later how little she belonged with the other ponies, their stories and circumstances so much worse than her own.

Her second night, after a torturous interval of self doubt and indecision of whether to return at all, she had shared her very basic meal with a stallion and his two fillies. They would not look Lacey in the eyes, but he did as he outlined his story: years of belittling sexual routine and a hostage bank account until, one day, he had finally slipped away. His husband, he had added in a voice too low for the children to hear, was hard at work trying to convince the courts to give him the fillies back.

And the stories kept coming. Lacey didn’t have to ask, nor did she, but they came anyway. A friendly face was sometimes enough to get the basics from a new victim, and polite listening enough to get the details that always made Lacey never want to look in a mirror again for how insufficient she felt. The ponies she served were taking their lives back after the most horrendous abuses she could imagine, and she was hiding from a pony who might not even remember her—might not even be alive.

She stayed anyway, and eventually crossed paths with the reverend, her oldest and only friend and mentor. As he had in meetings passed, he had first looked at her and nodded to himself, as if she were the last piece of a puzzle he had kept to himself. He had been at the shelter long enough before she that he was in a position of unofficial management. It was because of him that she too had come to be a permanent fixture at the shelter, managing the dining room one day a week and serving and cleaning the remaining six.

“Will you wish to move on, now that this pony won’t be bothering you?” he asked her.

“I’ve got nowhere to go,” she said, spooning pudding into her mouth.

“You have this.”

“Besides this.”

He looked into her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s still… kind of weird, you know? Being here. Winding up here. What do you think I should do?”

“What do you think you should do?”

“I think…” She sighed. “I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.”

“Is this your path, Lacey?” Reverend Green asked.

Lacey rolled her eyes and put her chin down on the table. She hated the question; he had posed it multiple times, it seemed always before she was about to make a big mistake. Weeks before taking the job at the “modeling studio,” so she referred to it in those days, he had asked it in a letter to which she had not replied.

Older, she was able to parry his question with her own philosophy. “My path is my path. Whatever path I end up walking, that’s my path.”

“Is it the correct path?”

“It’s just the one I have.”

He adjusted his glasses.

“I imagine you’d like me to stay and help out while I figure out what to do with my life next, huh?”

He smiled at her. “What I like doesn’t matter, my sister. I might point out to you the effect you’ve had on many of our residents, however.”

“There’s no effect.”

“They like you very much. Many of our younger residents have come to see you as a sister figure of sorts, or a mother.”

Lacey shuddered involuntarily. She had played someone’s sister once, long ago.

“You’ve been good to these ponies, Lacey.”

“Just doing my job.”

“What’s wrong with this job?”

“I didn’t say there was anything wrong.”

He nodded, and she froze with a bite of greens poised precariously on her spoon.

“I’ve come to understand that my path is to intersect with yours in your times of greatest need,” he said.

“You got that right.”

He only looked at her, then got up from their table, leaving her to ponder what he had meant. She did so for a moment before turning her head to the opening doors and rising to greet the familiar face.

The red unicorn smiled with false cheer and shook Lacey’s hoof. “Just thought I’d come by and see if you all, uh, needed any more help.”

“We’re always happy for whatever you can give,” she said. “Shoot, I’m really sorry, I know we’ve met, but I can’t remember your name.”

“It’s no trouble,” he laughed. “Drift Dive.”

“Riiiight! Those cookies you made were delicious. We all had one—after the others got a chance at them, of course.”

“I’m glad you liked them.” He averted his eyes politely. “Anything at all that needs doing, you’ve got me. I don’t have anywhere to be today. Any day, really.”

The ship sped out of the eastern desert and ground to a slower pace over the plateaus and mesas just outside Roan, the flat, arid land giving way to straggling shreds of dry wood and scrub brush. They had not stopped; they had covered nearly half their distance in the space of thirty hours, and Rainbow lay exhausted on the shower floor, letting cool water cover her face and chest. She had been flying on and off for sixteen of those thirty hours, and even at the leisurely pace that her magic required to do its work, she was drained.

Rarity was the silhouette outside the shower’s misted glass door, practicing her magic while Rainbow just breathed. Taking two shields, and then three, Rarity folded them onto each other, forming a tangled, layered pyramid. She held it before her for a minute before dispelling it.

“So how are things with you, Rare?” Rainbow asked.

“Me? I suppose I can’t complain.”

“All right.” She arched her back, letting more of her skull touch the wet floor. “How about a less nothing answer?”

Rarity put a hoof to her chin. “Going is slow, as I sort of thought it might be. It’s quite easy to fall into negative thought patterns, I’ve discovered, and without even noticing you’re doing it. I have to stop myself a couple times a day and think of something else.”

“But it’s working?”

“It works most of the time.”

“That’s good.” She rolled to one side and stuck a wing up into the cold stream. “Twilight tell you anything about the sky?”

“No, why?”

“I just figured you unicorns talked about magic stuff more often. Maybe she has an idea.”

“Sometimes we do. Not so much in this group though. Everyone’s more or less conversant on magic, after all.”

“Just wondering.”

“I’d like her to.”

“Still in her room?”

“Researching away.”

The door opened and Colgate entered. She looked about. “Oh.”

“We’ll be out of here in a couple minutes,” Rarity said.

“I can hold on.”

“Colgate, what do you think of the sky?” Rainbow asked.

Colgate sat down on the floor, a fair distance from Rarity. “I have no idea. The sun’s starting to go down again.”

“Really?”

“About time,” Rarity said. “It could be that our days are just getting longer. Though I guess that’s not great either, is it?”

“It’s probably Vanilla,” Colgate said. “Isn’t he the one behind most of the weird things that happen?”

“Him or Discord,” Rainbow said. “That’s obvious, though. I figured it was one of those two jokers all along.”

“What else do you want to know?”

“Do you have any speculation on what exactly is happening?” Rarity asked. “I think that’s what she’s trying to ask.”

“I’ve got no idea, as I said,” Colgate said. She left, and Rainbow and Rarity exchanged a look through the glass door.

“Can you imagine what Canterlot must be like right now?” Rarity asked. “For once, I’m glad to be so far away from everything. I know that sounds selfish.”

“I hear ya,” Rainbow said.

Flitter had no car and not enough money to take a taxi, it being the end of her pay period, so the bus had been her ride of choice for the long commute to and from work. That week. Her time at The Equine Sun was growing stale quickly, her reports to Ink Pearl increasingly painful. Ink’s snappish, direct way of speaking grated on Flitter; her all business, all the time attitude making Flitter dread each call. There was too little to report, moreover. Most of the articles she found were benign pieces about city life, opinions on this or that new magical occurrence elsewhere in the world, or dry outlines of how the Equestrian corporations were weathering the new era of uncertainty. Whatever machinations Ink had put in place to find potential threats in the citizenry were either all yielding their fruit to someone else, or simply did not work.

The Pegasus Advocates and the Astras remained the one interesting narrative for Flitter, but she knew she could not tell Ink Pearl of her discoveries without risking another scolding. It was not technically her job to pay attention to those groups of ponies.

A sad-looking earth pony sat next to Flitter and did not make eye contact when she smiled at him. He had a book in his teeth, but he tucked it into his valise after a period of indecision. She turned her face out to the window, so he might not think she were paying attention to him.

The sun’s recent activity had, naturally, given rise to hundreds of articles for her to skim, and in the first day, she had thought it would be just what she needed to reinvigorate her job. It was not. Instead of the droves of interesting research and insight she thought she would unearth, she found the same group of six or seven experts giving the same general quotes. Some believed that it was the ultimate result of the steady weather unbinding that had been taking place out in the wilderness, and others thought that it was a more direct effect of Discord’s strengthening grip on their country. No one opined that either princess had lost even a fraction of their power or poise, nor were the princesses quoted on anything.

It did not surprise her, but she wondered nonetheless. Celestia was off on another diplomatic mission, but she surely was aware of what her sun was doing in her absence. Perhaps. Flitter thought, she was on her way back to set things right. For a second, she wondered how much of the Canterlot media had been put under Datura control for the occasion, if any. For that matter, how much always had been?

As Flitter read on, day after day, she grew more disgusted. It seemed as though every reporter had agreed to spin their stories toward blind optimism, that everything would be okay. One particular line had made her almost cry out in anger in the office: “What magic has done, so too will magic undo. Persist, Equestrians!” She understood—better than many, she liked to believe—how little it would take to push the city into a panic, and that no reporter wanted to be that final straw, but at the same time, a panic might not be so bad. With the sun no longer behaving rationally; the Elements of Harmony adrift somewhere in the huge, empty south; and Tartarus gateways still peppering the floating landscape like worn holes; a panicked march on the palace might be just what the princesses needed to spur them to action.

Beyond the one benignly hopeful note all reports seemed to fall on, everyone seemed singularly concerned about the implications for the surface environments: the cities, forests, lakes, and rivers. No one she had seen was discussing the atmosphere or the historical implications, how Cloudsdale was managing on more than a purely industrial basis or how Celestia’s cloud convoy would adjust.

Flitter tried not to be angry, for she was doing nothing to help, when she knew she might be able to. With scraps of writings in her room already, and intelligence enough to form them into cohesive articles, and even a potential outlet for those articles, she had done no work to counterbalance the glut of uninteresting, repetitive reports on the latest disaster.

Trying and failing to soften her mood with such thoughts, she walked along the warped fence, ignored the barking dog, and turned down the walk to Wings and Jet’s house. “Am I part of the problem, or just not part of the solution?” she thought, thinking alongside how nice it would be to lie down in front of the TV and have a cold one with her roommates.

The door was unlocked for her, and the two were already in the kitchen, squabbling over something in the fridge. Flitter walked past them, lacking the energy to follow their banter, even from the couch, and went to her bed. She grabbed a random piece of paper and read her own thoughts about how better to ration clouds and the ponies needed to produce them, trying to compare them to the articles that she read at work. There was a certain qualitative difference, but she could not define it.

“Well a good howdy-doo to you too, cuz,” Wings said in the threshold. “Long day? You look like a grump.”

“Just tired,” Flitter said.

“Working at a desk job for eight hours? No way,” Jet said, rolling her smiling eyes. “Nothing wakes up the old bones like sitting on your ass all day and doing whatever you do.”

“It’s only six hours a day nowadays,” Flitter said. “I sort mail for my first two hours.”

“Oh, well, never mind,” Jet said.

“Perhaps we should leave her alone,” Wings said.

“I don’t mind,” Flitter said. “Bug me if you want.”

“D’awwww, we’ll leave you,” Jet said.

“Dinner opinions?” Wings asked.

“Huh?”

“I’m asking if she has any thoughts on dinner.”

“Meaning, of course, pizza opinions,” Jet said. “‘Cause it’s pizza night.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Wings said.

“It should be.”

“Well let’s get it from somewhere else, at least. I feel weird when the delivery lady calls me by name.”

“I think it’s fun.”

“I don’t care,” Flitter interjected. “I’m open to whatever.”

“How about Dippy’s Deep Dish?” Jet asked. “I think I got a coupon somewhere.”

“You like deep dish, Flitter?”

“I like it okay,” Flitter said.

“Just as long as there’s no mushrooms on mine, I’ll live,” Wings said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, mushroom this, mushroom that.” She bumped Wings’ flank. “You think I’d forget?”

“Just bein’ safe, little buddy.”

Jet stuck out her tongue.

“Can I get banana peppers with mine?” Flitter asked.

“I dunno if they even have them.”

“If not, regular bell peppers are okay.”

“I might want to get just a salad or something,” Wings said. “Those deep dishes sometimes give me heartburn.”

“Awww,” Jet said. As if obeying some signal only they could see, the pair left Flitter alone, and she soon heard the shower running through her wall.

She frowned at the noise. “Just friends,” she murmured. “Geez.”

The oven clock said seven-thirty, but the sky said midnight. Their curtains were drawn and Wings was bent over the sink, slurping at the tap, trying to recover from eating one of Flitter’s banana peppers. Her head jerked up and her mane sprayed water on the clean towel when the doorbell rang, and Jet got up to get it.

“Solicitor?” she asked innocently, and Flitter looked excitedly; she was told that the two had a routine to deal with unwanted callers. What she saw, instead, made her blood chill.

“I’m actually a friend of Flitter’s,” Ink Pearl said, servicing a limp smile. “May I?”

“Flitter? That right?” Jet asked.

Flitter didn’t answer at first, instead staring at Ink Pearl in a white blouse with dark gray slacks and bulky glasses, looking like she had stepped out of an advertisement for office supplies. “Yeah, I know her,” Flitter said, reaching for her glass of iced tea. “Celestia, what does she want?” Quickly, she scanned the last couple days, trying to think of any mistakes she may have made.

Ink sat at the table without invitation and gestured at Wings, who came over, her entire front soaked. As the two pegasi assembled themselves, Ink looked at Flitter with a grave expression that Flitter read as “let me do the talking.” In the light, Flitter could see her purple fur underneath, and she mentally recoiled; Ink was the last pony she thought of in a sexual context.

“I am sorry to barge in on you like this, but I was hoping to meet you both here. Jet, right?” She shook hooves. “And then you must be wings. Stormy Rays, pleasure. I’m one of Flitter’s contacts at The Equine Sun.”

“Like a reporter?” Wings asked.

“Actually, no,” Ink said, smiling again. “I work for the Equestrian Climate Association.” She produced a business card and let the pegasi look at it. “Simulation coordinator. We usually handle things like cloud formations, wind routing, and those sorts of things, but… well, you’re aware of what’s going on with the sky.”

“Mm, no, hadn’t noticed a thing,” Jet said, and Wings laughed.

“Yes, quite,” Ink said. “My department has been tasked with compensating for the unstable day and night cycle in Canterlot, and it’s actually Flitter here who told me to come find you. We’re currently looking for talented engineers, electricians, light technicians, and so on. She said you both had some credentials I might be interested in.”

Flitter was rooted to her chair, amazed at how smoothly Ink spoke. When Wings and Jet turned to her, she could only smile and shrug.

“Kinda weird you’d be showing up at our doorsteps, rather than having Flits here just call you,” Wings said.

“Yeah, a little notice would have been nice, Flitter,” Jet said.

“I’m afraid I’m to blame for that,” Ink said. “I was in the neighborhood speaking to some other candidates, and I had more time than I thought I would. Some of them weren’t exactly what I had been told to expect, so the interviews were rather short.”

“Sorry,” Flitter said. “It totally slipped my mind.” Her eyes went to Ink’s sheer blouse for just a second, and she felt a blush begin. “Does she not know?”

“Yes, yes, I too,” Ink said. “If you’d like, I can come back later. It’s just—”

“Heck, you may as well stick now,” Jet said. “You’re already here.”

“So you are interested in the project?”

“We’re gonna need some details,” Wings said. “We already have jobs, first off.”

“Ah.” Ink went through her saddlebag and produced a sheaf of paperwork. “Yes, you would need to submit these to your employer. Oops, not this one, that’s the A-sixty. Hold on.” She shuffled through. “Here, this. If you submit it to your boss within fifteen days of accepting the ECA’s offer, they’re obligated to let you work for us, provided we only hold onto girls you for thirty days or two hundred-forty hours, whichever comes first.”

“That’s under the Greater Contractual Act, isn’t it?” Flitter asked. It wasn’t, but she wanted to poke at Ink’s knowledge.

Ink looked at Flitter. “That’s a common mistake; it’s actually under the Ecological Employment Act. Basically, any industry that directly works with the Equestrian climate or environment has the right to select qualified contractors from other jobs for certain periods of time. That’s a good question, though.”

“Thanks,” Flitter mumbled.

“Contractors, huh?” Jet asked.

“You’ll find all the appropriate paperwork right there,” Ink said. “Bank information, recognition of the EEA, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Howzabout a job description?” Wings asked. “You never quite got to that bit.”

“Yeah, what use do the weather ponies have for us?” Jet asked.

“And especially for us and not Flitter here? She actually has weatherpony experience.”

“It’s not weather management we’re doing, exactly,” Ink said, producing another stack of papers. “Which is what makes this so weird for us all. We’re setting up… here.” She shuffled through her forms and pulled out a diagram, depicting Canterlot, mountain and all, underneath a wide dome. The sky and the margins around it were filled with tiny, precise measurements, and the city below was labeled by its neighborhoods, each one numbered. “We’re implementing a magical dome above the city, to simulate the natural day and night cycle.”

“You’re putting up a fake sky?” Wings asked, laughter in her voice.

“I would think efforts would be better spent trying to fix the real one,” Jet said. “Just a suggestion.”

“This is a temporary measure,” Ink said. “I’m not at liberty to go into the specifics of the funding—you understand—but this comes from the throne.” She shrugged and gave an apologetic smile, to which Jet and Wings replied with their own understanding nods. “Bureaucracy, you know? Just doing my job, ladies.”

“What do you need us for?” Wings asked after a second.

“We need teams of experienced technicians to get all our lights working. Not just the sun, but the moonlight and the stars too, among other things that wouldn’t concern you. I’ve only got eighteen days to get it up and running, so I’m trying to be proactive and follow-up on as many leads as I can. As I said, that’s why I’m coming in earlier than I planned.”

“Eighteen days?” Flitter said.

“I know.”

“You don’t say,” Jet said.

“Question,” Wings said.

“Make it two.”

“Can’t the princess just, you know, do this with her magic already? Why do you weatherponies need to break your backs on something Celestia can probably do before her morning coffee?”

“Also, how much?”

“Yeah, how much does it pay?”

“I can’t explain the rationale of our princesses,” Ink said, inflecting the word with just a shade of sarcasm, the correct addition. “But you could be looking at anywhere between fifteen and sixty bits an hour, depending on what you’re doing.”

“I guess this is the bit where we talk credentials and junk,” Wings said, putting a wing around Jet.

“Only if you’re interested,” Ink said.

“What did you tell this lady, cuz?” Wings asked.

“Uh!” Flitter froze for a moment. “Not a whole lot. I mean, I don’t actually know much about your jobs, to be honest. You never talk about them around me. I just said, you know, you’re pretty good.”

“Pretty good,” Jet said.

“Gee, such glowing praise,” Wings said. “I’m amazed there’s only one of you suits busting down our door.”

“During pizza night of all nights.”

“You can call me some other time, if you’d like,” Ink said, getting up.

“Nah, get back here,” Wings said. “I wanna get this over with.”

“I want my pizza,” Jet said.

“I doubt it’ll take long.”

“I can make this very brief,” Ink said. “As you can see—”

“Do you have all the schematics completed on these star positions?” Jet asked.

“Yeah, this map isn’t the most detailed,” Wings said. “If we’re simulating regular nighttime, the stars have to change positions. How are we gonna deal with that without, like, infinite cables?”

“Also, where’s all this electricity coming from?”

“We’re working on that,” Ink said. “Each star has its own separate set of wiring to it.”

“Are we gonna have to hang everything?” Jet asked.

“Hopefully not,” Ink said. “The dome is actually complete, except for any revisions we have to make, which there shouldn’t be any.”

“It doesn’t seem to be in place,” Wings said.

Ink looked at her coolly. “It’s not. That’s the final step.”

“Gonna need a pretty big crane,” Jet mumbled into Wings’ ear.

“So you already had one of these things lying around?” Wings asked.

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about that,” Ink said. “These are good questions. Keep them coming.”

“What’s this?” Jet asked, finding another point in the job description. “‘Maintain sun track’. So you just have a giant rail across this thing?”

“Oh, you won’t be worrying about that. I’m sorry, this description is supposed to encapsulate every job that’s related to yours. Unicorns are going to be taking care of our sun, primarily.”

“So you’ve got unicorns crawling around on top of the dome too?” Wings asked. She shook her head.

“Some heck of an overhead,” Jet said.

“You really must be backed by the throne. Insurance rates for your flightless workers are gonna be sky high.”

“Much like the insured themselves.”

“We have all of that covered,” Ink said. “Look, here,” she indicated a couple pages in the job description, “this is what you’ll need to worry about.”

“Let’s see here,” Wings said, grabbing the papers away from Jet. “Hang, maintain, repair, da da da… light programming? That’s pretty unspecific.”

“You also said they were pre-hung,” Jet said.

“That’s in case a star needs to be moved for any reason,” Ink said.

“Oh.”

“Now, some lights will be on random cycles, to simulate comets and so on. Others will just be moving in pre-mapped patterns. That’s what the light programming is.”

“Okay, we can do that easy enough,” Jet said.

“I’m most worried about how this is all gonna be suspended,” Wings said. “You know, usually, stuff like this goes up in a theater or a concert hall or whatever, not just out over a friggin’ city. What happens if we get a little wind? What happens if we get some lightning and the whole puppy shorts?”

“For that matter, how about weather inside the dome, huh?” Jet asked. “You weatherponies gonna horde however many clouds or something?”

“All of this is taken care of already,” Ink said testily. “All you two need to worry about is programming and setting up the stars. Maybe only setting them up, depending on how long it takes.”

“What’s the pay rate for setter-uppers like us, then?” Wings asked.

“Now hang on, I’d like to discuss your credentials too. That is, if you have no more questions?”

“Plenty,” Jet said.

“Yeah, this whole plan sounds bogus,” Wings said. “How can they expect just one suit to get all this nonsense done in eighteen days? You’re gonna need thousands of workers for this.”

“There’s more than just me,” Ink said, a little defensively, “And we do have thousands of workers on this project.”

“So you actually expect this to all work out?”

“She’s not being sarcastic,” Jet said.

“Yeah, I’m not. You do have a timetable for all this, then?”

“I don’t suppose we can see it.”

“I’d have to ask my superior,” Ink said. “Now.”

“Sure, sure,” Jet said, waving a hoof. “Fine. I’ve got thirteen years—”

“Twelve for me,” Wings said.

“Yeah, twelve for Wings here, thirteen me. That’s practical experience all the way down. We can do live performances, concerts, shows, special occasions, corporate functions, you name it.”

“Films, news, TV,” Wings said. “We were with the Manehattan Observer for a while, that was probably the best job we had.”

“We both know how to train ponies, if you’ve got anyone new on your team.”

“What sort of educations do you have?” Ink asked.

“College, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing related to what we do now,” Wings said with a laugh. “If you must know, I got a bachelor’s in kinesiology, and Jet here has an associate’s in art history.”

“I see,” Ink said. “I don’t suppose you have a résumé I can look over?”

“Why, sure,” Jet said. “Just lemme reach under this cold pizza and grab it. I always keep one near me in case someone decides to offer me a job out of the blue.”

“All right, point taken. Do you have references I can call?”

“I’d like to refer you to the pizza comment,” Wings said.

“We work together, too. I like to get that on the table early.”

“Yeah, it’s both of us or neither of us.”

“We can accommodate that… need,” Ink said.

“Same team and everything?”

“Same team. How do you function under pressure?”

“Well as anyone, I’d say,” Wings said. “We know how to buckle down when the clock’s ticking.”

“If you’d like an example, we once had to tear down all the lights for an event and put up new ones when the director switched venues on us at the last second,” Jet said. “That was in the space of like four hours, something like that.”

“Essentials of Marketing Under New EWC Laws in Response to Ever-Changing Customer Needs, or something like that,” Wings said. “That presenter was a prick.”

“No flash, no zam.”

“We had to haul all our stuff halfway across town to get it to the new conference room, and he wouldn’t comp our gas money.”

“Okay, I get it,” Ink said, looking at them in much the same way Flitter sometimes would when they got on a roll, or were about to. “You clearly have a lot of knowledge and experience. Your questions show me that.”

“Now what are we actually applying for?” Jet asked. “What’s the job title? What duties?”

“In your packet—”

“You said that’s a list of the whole shebang, though,” Wings said. “What about us? Are we just star ponies? Are we doing the moon? Are we setting up dimmers on your night sky?”

“Yeah, what?” Jet echoed. She tapped the job description with a hoof.

“If you’ll just give me a moment, I’ll explain,” Ink Pearl said. Flitter could tell that the pegasi were getting to her. “Here, look these over.” She slid a pair of stapled packets to them. “These are all the essential forms to allow me to hire you.”

“Hire us as what?” Jet asked. “Again, you never said.”

“Maybe she’s evading the question,” Wings said.

“Yeah, maybe this is poorly run.”

“I need to figure out where to put you,” Ink said after a deep breath. “Okay? I have two hundred other new hires these last four days, so if you’ll just be patient, I can answer your questions. Is that okay?”

“Two hundred?” Wings asked.

Ink just shook her head.

“Whoever dumped this on you needs to get fired ASAP,” Jet said, looking through the forms. “Wings, what do you think? This all look okay to you?”

“That little blank space where it says ‘pay rate’ bugs me,” Wings said.

“I mean besides that.”

“Well gimme it and let me look through.”

Jet grabbed a slice of pizza and pointed it at Flitter. “What say you, Flits? This all seem right to you?”

Flitter just looked at her. She tried to recall Ink telling her of her plans, of the Datura’s plans, but nothing came through. The only word she had received when the sun started misbehaving was an impersonal call from Ink, essentially telling her to remain calm, keep doing her job, and that there were plans in place to deal with the problem. She was just as in the dark as her friends, her head filled with news articles, many useless. She wondered whether she had actually missed a comment from her superior, or if Ink were simply operating on her own. She blinked and nodded. “Yeah, seems above board to me.”

She could not rightly tell them the truth, after all.

“We could still use some programmers for our stars, specifically Constellation D13,” Ink said after a while. “I think I’ll start you there. How does forty bits an hour sound?”

“Forty-five,” Wings countered, not looking up from the forms spread out before her.

“I’m afraid I can’t authorize any flexibility on pay,” Ink said. “I would have to ask my superior about that.”

“Forty is fine,” Jet said, nudging Wings. “Fifteen days, you said?”

“Thirty.”

“Or a whole bunch of hours, if we’re pulling longer,” Wings said. “Yeah, forty is okay, I guess.”

“You guess,” Jet said, and Wings rolled her eyes.

After a few more questions, the two pegasi put their names and initials to their own stacks of papers, which Ink arranged, paper clipped together, and slid neatly into her saddlebag. They shook hooves, and Ink asked Flitter to join her outside, which she did with mute, disoriented surprise.

At her car, Ink leaned on the bumper and produced a water bottle. Flitter only watched her, still not sure if she were in trouble. With Ink, it was difficult to tell.

“That was cute in there,” Ink said.

“Huh?”

“Your question about the EEA.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She forced a chuckle.

“I’ve been keeping track of your work at The Equine Sun,” Ink said, and Flitter’s heart stopped for a second before she kept going. “You’ll be happy to know that I’ve found someone to take your place. She’s starting next week with the same job, same duties, all of that.”

“Uh. Oh.”

“You’ve been doing good, but I think I have somewhere better for you,” she continued. She looked straight at Flitter, and Flitter, meanwhile, kept her eyes orbiting Ink’s face, trying to avoid the blouse. “I know you like to be a little more hooves-on with your work, and this opportunity will be perfect for that.”

“Uh, yeah, that sounds good,” Flitter said. Her mind was spinning; she was still processing what had happened to Wings and Jet, the fact that Ink had simply invited herself in and swept her two roommates up into the Datura’s business, right in front of her and easy as anything. Realizing that Ink was waiting for more of an answer, she stumbled into another sentence. “I mean, any sort of opportunities for advancement, I’m open to ‘em. You know.”

“Get in,” Ink said. “We need to talk about this somewhere safer.”

“Uh.”

“Are you okay? I’ll have someone drop you back off.” She opened both doors with her horn. “Go on, say bye to your friends. You won’t be gone an hour.”

Flitter just looked at her for a second before complying. When she was seated in Ink’s car, smelling of stale gum and air freshener, she kept her eyes pinned to the streets in front of them, trying to ignore the stony silence between herself and her employer. “I’m being offered a job opportunity,” she told herself, but Ink’s countenance made it feel like she was being driven to her own execution.

Flitter paused on the walk up to Ink’s house to look at the rusty washing machine in the yard, wondering whether it served some obscure Datura purpose, or whether Ink was just messy.

“Let’s go,” Ink said from the door. “She’s waiting for us.”

“Who?” Flitter asked.

The inside of the house, like the inside of Ink’s car, was dusty and full of stale air. The furniture was sunken and sad looking, paint and varnish chipped away to give the coffee table and baseboards ugly, pocked looks. The TV was on and muted, the picture of a nature documentary moving under a fine layer of dust. The carpet was trodden flat and hard, and Flitter stepped over an ancient red wine stain that reminded her of a birthmark on a shaved patch of skin. She wrinkled her nose as they stepped into the kitchen, where a plastic tray sat, empty, by the sink. The smell of broccoli hung in the air, matching, she thought, the sickly green color of the room’s other tenant.

“This is Chilly Clouds,” Ink Pearl said. “Chilly, Flitter.”

“Good to meet you,” Chilly said, offering a weak hoofshake. Her eyes were pale and rheumy, and her lank mane hung in one thick stem off to one side like an oddly positioned handle. Her horn glowed a ghastly pastel pink as she slid a chair out for Flitter.

“So…” Flitter said.

“The PAs are making more noise than usual,” Ink said. “They’ve been documented using magic now some twenty times in the last weeks. That’s not good.”

Flitter’s mouth went dry. She wanted to blurt out that she knew, that she had been keeping track of exactly that, but she couldn’t.

“We need to figure out what’s going on, where they’re getting their magic, how they’re using it, and, if need be, how we can cut them off.”

“Well, some ponies think they’re getting it off the Astras,” Flitter managed.

“That’s just conjecture. We need to know, Flitter.”

“Yeah, I’m aware of that.” Instead, she said, “okay.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any plants in the PA group right now,” Chilly Clouds said.

“None?”

“Not since after the battle,” Ink said. “They had to disappear, just like everyone else. They’re part of the Datura too.”

“Yeah.”

“I want someone to go into the PA group and poke around a little, do some investigation, and report back to me. I thought you might like the opportunity before I opened it up to someone else.”

Flitter blinked and shook her head. “Huh? Oh, I mean, wow, that’s kind of a big jump from desk work, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure you can do it. Your work so far has been exceptional.”

“It has?”

“I know I probably don’t say it enough, but we all really appreciate what each and every one of you do for the team,” Ink said. “You’ve been a tremendous help, Flitter.”

Flitter looked at her, taken aback. “I… guess I can do it. Isn’t it, like, dangerous, though? They don’t just welcome any old pegasus.”

“That’s where I come in, actually,” Chilly Clouds said.

“We would be able to send you in as is,” Ink said, “but your friends.”

“What about ‘em?” Flitter asked. “Er, actually… never mind, after this. I have a question.”

“Mm. Your friends accidentally met some PAs, right? So they could potentially track you back to them, if they wanted. That’s why we need Chilly here.”

“I’m confused. Why—”

“I’m getting there.”

“Okay.” She privately doubted Ink was getting there; she had been about to ask how Ink knew of the incident at the PA bar.

Ink paused to look at Flitter, who shrunk under her hard eyes.

“If you want to be a part of the PAs, you’ll need a disguise,” Chilly said, reaching below to a small bag and pulling out a vial of brown liquid. She set it deliberately beside her glass of water.

“A disguise, okay,” Flitter said. “Is that it? Do I drink it or something?”

“That’s something else, don’t worry about it,” Ink said.

Flitter frowned.

“For something like this, where you’d be among the subjects for an extended period of time, your disguise needs to be not just more sophisticated, but more permanent,” Chilly said. “For situations like these, we usually give our Daturas new bodies entirely.”

In the silence that followed, Flitter thought she could hear the muted TV in the other room.

“You look like you have a question,” Ink said.

“Yyyyyyeah, maybe. You said a new body? Like… what does that mean? Did I hear that right?”

“You’ll still retain your identity and your personality,” Chilly said. “Everything that makes Flitter, Flitter, will be there. Just wrapped in a new skin.”

“New skin?”

“New body,” Ink repeated. “She means new skin, new organs, new fur, new skeleton, the whole thing.”

Chilly was nodding along.

“Right,” Flitter said. She laughed nervously. “Ummm, sorry. I just wasn’t expecting that, you know? I thought ‘under cover’ was like, new name, funny clothes, maybe some slight face modification—like contacts or nostril dilators or whatever.”

“That’s natural,” Ink said. Her unflinching eyes and hard voice, however, suggested to Flitter that it was not. That by asking questions, Flitter was violating an unspoken requirement, or taking more time than Ink was willing to give to the meeting.

“It’s not a dangerous procedure,” Chilly said after a sip of water. “We’ll have the body prepared for you well in advance, you can even make requests on things like appearance and physical performance, if you’d like.”

“Chilly Clouds has been making bodies for years. She’s one of the most qualified body architects in Canterlot.”

“There’s more than one of you?” Flitter asked.

“Several,” Chilly Clouds said. “I learned from the best this side of the Everfree.”

“That’s… whoa.” Flitter looked back at the brown vial, suddenly realizing what it was for. “So is that a memory wipe? If I decline, am I not authorized to know about this, uh, body thing?”

“You would just go back to your position at The Equine Sun,” Ink said.

“Uh-huh.”

“Take some time to think about it.”

“Yeah. Uh…” She looked between the two unicorns, both intimidating in different ways. Ink looked forward as always, eyes like a statue’s eyes, intent and observant. Chilly leaned back in her chair, eyes on her water, on the memory wipe potion. She looked ill, reduced somehow, but Flitter was certain that it was only a look. Despite her depressed appearance, she managed to radiate her own sort of quiet confidence. Where Ink appeared ready for anything, Chilly appeared as though she had already seen all her options and deemed them satisfactory.

“We’ll leave you to think on your own, if you’d like,” Ink said. “If you have any questions, we’ll be in the other room.” Without a word, Chilly rose to join her in the living room. She left the potion out, and Flitter knew it was not from forgetfulness.

The choice was technically hers, but there was really no choice to make. A refusal would lead to a memory wipe, and likely the closing of other opportunities down the line. True, it might not be her only chance at something different, but she had no way to know that. Easily, and disguised as a benevolent job offer, Ink had boxed her in.

Her thoughts went back to Jet and Wings, taken just as easily and enfolded in Datura business with neither of them the wiser. For that, too, Flitter had been trapped; she could not have contradicted anything Ink offered them, any lie she might give, and so had unwittingly given them her consent, her vote of confidence in a plan that she had not heard of and had no reason to believe was even what Ink described.

“Celestia, what if one of them is gonna give their body to me?” she thought. “Can they do that? Would they?”

She eyed the potion. “She could have floated the idea past me first. ‘Hey, Flitter, how would you feel about doing some undercover work for me?’ That’s it, no other details, and then if I said ‘yeah’, then we get to this… this.” The bottle was small enough to hide in a vest pocket, made of unmarked glass with a metallic blue ribbon around its neck. Among other bottles, it could have been a small vessel of salad dressing.

No questions even came to mind. The job was too far away from anything she had done or heard of before; she had no idea where to start, what sort of question to ask to give herself a starting place. Where would they get the body? How would she infiltrate the PAs? What would she do once she got there? Why was a memory wipe potion even necessary, other than to dissuade her from declining the offer?

“For that matter, why do they need to coerce me into taking this?” She looked up at the sound of one of them moving about on the couch.

“I’ve gotta do it, right? The only other option is going back to the Sun. I guess…” Thoughts of desk work, of routing calls and sorting mail, filled her head. “I know I can’t do that forever. That, or things like it.” Wildly, it crossed her mind that the whole thing had been a setup, that her job at The Equine Sun was there to provide her sufficient reason to take any other option offered, but she dismissed it as paranoid.

“Question,” Flitter said. Both unicorns swept into the dining room and stayed standing by the table. “Uh… I’m interested, but where exactly are these bodies coming from?”

“We make them from templates, mostly,” Chilly said. “I’ve got a couple basic models for you.”

“What does that mean, make them?”

“She makes them from scratch,” Ink said.

“That must be hard.” She tried to imagine the process.

“You said you’re interested.”

“I—yeah, I think so. I’m just not really sure how to go about… well, anything, I guess. I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Chilly said. “I’ll have you over to my place a few times so we can work out the details on your body.”

“I’ll provide all the necessary information and instructions soon,” Ink said. “I need to finalize the sky dome and your replacement, plus there’s some difficulty with one of the watchpoints.” She sighed. “Lots to do, Flitter.”

“I don’t really sympathize with the PA cause,” Flitter said. “Isn’t that gonna be a problem?”

“I can arrange for acting lessons, if you need them.”

“Uh.” She looked back at the bottle. It had not occurred that she would need to act; in the shock, that detail had turned invisible. “What about my body? Where does it go?”

“Standard procedure is to incinerate it after a seven-day waiting period,” Chilly said.

“Incinerate!” She looked back at her wings, the thought of her lilac feathers curling up in a ball of flame.

“Some ponies like to keep pieces of themselves as mementos,” Ink said. “You can have a small bone or an imprint of a feather, if you’d like. No teeth, I’m afraid.”

“Right.”

“I’d like you to just sign this, please.” Ink pulled out a single page and floated it to Flitter. “It’s just proof of your acceptance of the new job.”

“I haven’t agreed!” She looked at Ink, who looked down at her from across the table. Everything, every detail, suddenly seemed pre-planned, even their positions in the room. Flitter felt insignificant, a minor detail that her boss wished were in someone else’s care. The compliment from earlier, even in her ringing ears, had been clearly false; Ink didn’t care.

“Well?”

“I can’t quit, right? Where would I go?”

Ink tapped the paper.

“I never had to sign one of these before,” Flitter finally said, studying its face. The phrase “until death or discharge” popped out at her.

“As jobs get more advanced, we start requiring these,” Ink said. “Liability reasons.”

“Liability?” “I guess I would be infiltrating a group of… nasty ponies.” “I guess that makes sense.” She looked at the bottle once more, its simplicity on the table so implacable, like a talisman in a sordid ritual, its authority and its power above question or reproach.

She stuck the pen in her dry mouth and scribbled out her name on the bottom of the paper, feeling, even in the first seconds, like she had just signed away more than the flesh and blood she had been born with.

Whooves sat at the table’s head with his coltfriend, Porchlight, to one side and Violet Astra to the other. After numerous invitations, he had finally dropped pretense and begged her to come to one of his parties, to show the others that their friendship was no farce. Two days later, at Porchlight’s house, she shook hooves and smiled, accepted kisses on the cheek and playful flirtations from some of the bolder guests, and pretended with expertise beyond her age that she did not wish she could be anywhere else.

She had told herself that it would be good to get out and do something, to meet new ponies, to attend a party of which she or her family were not the focus, but there was simply too much on her mind for her to let go.

They had been close to finalizing their crow’s design and securing the necessary resources to build it; they had been poised to go back home inside a week’s time. When the Mansels had appeared, she had not thought that having them disappear would create ripples strong enough to bind them to the capital city and its growing power vacuum, despite advice to the contrary. With the Mansels injured in Canterlot and disastrously distracted at home, it had seemed the perfect opportunity to gain some ground in the long, icy conflict between them, but all they had done was wake up every news outlet in the city, and with them, the Pegasus Advocates, appearing out of the woodwork and inserting their name and reputation where they did not belong. She had originally hidden behind the question, “How could I have known?” but knew that it didn’t solve anything.

Violet and her family members now routinely wore disguises when going out, lest they encounter any wandering reporters. That the Astras were the source of the PAs’ newfound magic was untrue, but more and more ponies seemed to find credibility in the idea, and gathering the resources for their crow became more and more difficult as the task itself became more and more secondary to protecting the family name.

There were those who had rushed to defend the Astras, but they were the same ponies as always, known apologists, sycophants, and PR specialists, and only some on the Astra payroll. It was as though the citizens wanted so badly to find someone to blame for the recent PA trouble that they were prepared to blame the first target that came along, and any effort to defend her family’s name simply made them seem more suspicious.

Whooves had warned her before the party—just before, as she sat at the table—that one reporter friend of his was a strong anti-Astra writer, and there was “an outside chance” he might appear at the dinner party. She tried to hide her face with a hoof whenever she talked, unable to disguise herself should the pony in question appear.

As she toyed with the trio of spoons laid out on her napkin, waiting for the first course to be served and waiting for discussion to turn her way, she tried to contemplate her most immediate problem. They had recently taken in a refuge, a disheveled and very paranoid unicorn who claimed to be on the run from the same PAs that her family was said to be aiding in secret. They had put him in up in a hotel for the time, just long enough to figure out what to do with him, and it was Onyx Astra, a cousin of hers, who had pointed out the possible benefit he might be to their cause.

If they spoke to the right ponies, or if they could get him to speak—doubtful, all agreed—it could be just the piece of evidence needed to divorce themselves from the malignant PA association. They simply needed to find enough writers who were still willing to trust them, and this, too, had factored into Violet’s decision to attend Whooves’ dinner party.

Whippoorwill, meanwhile, felt no indecision from his cramped hotel room. The Astras had promised him a more comfortable living situation in a few days, and he had politely assured them that anything they could do would be better than what he could do for himself.

He was not particularly surprised to find his former enmity of the family had faded away as he spent time alone in the room. They had taken him in, helped him in his hour of direst need, and even bought him some more clothes—though few were to his liking. The Mansels, meanwhile, had sent him out to Canterlot with only a vague duty and an even vaguer notion of reward before abandoning him. Whether justified or not, he had been forgotten about.

He picked up the phone and dialed out to White Wine’s number, first her home and then her bar. He sat on the bed, comfortable in a bath robe, and twirled the phone cord with a hoof as the phone rang.

“Velocity,” a gruff voice said.

“Uh, yes, hi. Is White Wine available please?”

“Speaking?”

“My name’s Strawberry. I’m one of her friends. Er, business friends.”

A pause. “Hold on.”

Whippoorwill tried to angle his head to see through the space between the drawn curtains. It was still dark out, and had been all day.

The background noise through the phone cut off, and White Wine spoke with a tired drone. “What do you want?”

“Good evenin’ to you too.”

“What do you want?”

He smiled humorlessly. “How does a truce sound, old friend?”

“Let me think,” she said. “You get none.”

“None? Nothin’ at all? Now Ah’d’ve thought you siccin’ yer buddies on me would have maybe evened that playin’ field, Miss Wine.”

“I can see that it didn’t.”

“Mm, now that is sad to hear.”

“Goodbye, Whippoorwill.”

“Now hold on a sec! Now just you hold on, ‘cause Ah sure ain’t done speakin’ my piece.”

“Shame.”

“Strawberry!” He cried. For a second, he hoped his neighbors hadn’t heard.

She sighed. “What, then?”

“Now, since you didn’t see it in yer heart to cut me in on this little operation you two had cookin’, even after my generous offer, Ah felt it prudent to exercise a little pressure. A negotiatin’ tactic, one might say. Clean out those ears, ‘cause Ah do want you to hear this.”

On the other line, he could hear her breathing. For a second, he just listened, and in that second, he considered hanging up and never calling again.

“Get on with it, you slime ball,” White Wine said.

“Yes. Indeed. The body, Wine. Ah imagine you’ve still got it?”

“You know I don’t.”

“No? Ah did happen to get a good look at yer little trailer park before things went south, Miss Wine; it seemed awfully full. Lots of room fer pryin’ eyes an’ loose lips out there, but not quite so much room fer that Strawberry feller. Ah’m not so sure Ah believe he ain’t just sittin’ there still, turnin’ into soup on yer floor. Maybe under yer floor.”

She was quiet.

“Or maybe Ah’m wrong, an’ you did manage to give him the restin’ place he deserves. Now what, White Wine, what is stopping me from dialing up the police an’ puttin’ a bug in their ear? Ah reckon with some of them sniffin’ dogs they got, that great big trailer park wouldn’t do much good to hide yer buddy.”

“You’re reaching for nothing.”

“That right? Would you like to wager on it?”

Again, she was quiet.

“So this here’s my offer, an’ maybe you should think it over a little bit better this time before sendin’ goons my way. You cut me in, fifty fifty, like the good friends an’ teammates we are, an’ Ah’ll keep my mouth shut on this nasty affair. See, it’ll be very much in my interest to keep quiet about it then. You understand, don’t ya?”

“I understand.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“Yer gonna need to speak up, honey.”

“I said I understand.”

“Ah! Lovely, lovely. So how’s this? Ah assume you’ve already got the preliminaries in motion, takin’ over his old operation an’ whatnot. Yer a practical mare, after all.” He paused for effect. “Tell me what you’d have me do to make this run smoother, an’ Ah’ll do it. How sweet is that?” He paused again. “That’s all after yer first payout to me, of course.”

“You expect me to run all this myself?”

“You were gonna do it anyway, were you not?”

“For a hundred percent of the profit, I was.”

“Well now it’s fifty.”

She sighed. “We’ll talk. I have some things to work out.”

“Ah’ve got time. Let’s talk now.”

“I don’t.” She hung up, and he replaced the phone carefully, as if the traces of her hatred might rub off it if he moved too quickly. He smiled to himself, wanting to feel assured, wanting to feel confident that he finally had her, but he could not be certain.

At Velocity, its business improving with the day-long night, White Wine emerged from her basement office with a picture in her teeth. She walked to the back of the club without looking at anyone. Most ponies, patrons and employees alike, followed her, seeing the picture and seeing the purpose in her stride. Through a manipulation of wing and mouth, she pinned the picture on the cork board, covering the happy hour menu.

She waited for the talking to die down.

“His name is Whippoorwill, and he’s currently on the run somewhere in the city. Four-thousand bits to the pony or ponies who bring me his head.”