Chapter 17: A Convergence Of Minds

"Jeez, what were you thinking!?" Ruwa exclaimed as she looked angrily across the small table at him.

It was morning, they were having breakfast on the balcony that extended out from Ruwa's room and out over the deadly drop to the land below. Tiran took another gulp of orange juice as he contemplated his next bite of the fluffy waffles on his plate, as well as Ruwa's reaction. She had been going on about it since they retired from the dinner the night before.

"What can I say that I haven't already, I need to get to my aircraft," he said calmly. "If they really recovered it, I need to see it. Plus, it could be causing anybody that gets close to it harm if it's not contained properly."

"But staring down Princess Celestia like that, you sure there wasn't any other way you could have asked? Like maybe saying please?" she put to him crossly.

"Look, we've been arguing about this since last night, can you just drop it, please? What's done is done, nothing bad happened and we're both getting what we want, ok?"

"But to put Her Royal Highness Celestia to a frigging ultimatum!?"

Tiran was about to respond, about to say something he was sure he was going to regret later. Maybe about how he didn't care how lofty a title 'Her Higness' held, that he didn't answer to her. Fortunately, Tiran was saved by a weighty series of knocks on the chamber door. He released an inaudible sigh of relief as he got up to answer the door, thanking whatever strange gods watched over this land for his salvation.

As he opened it, a smartly dressed stallion appeared with a deep bow that brought his nose to within an inch of the floor, "Good morning, good sir. I have come to escort you to your... aircraft," he said as if he was unfamiliar with the word.

Tiran glanced left and right into the hall, finding it otherwise empty, "What, no armed guards this time?" he asked.

"Sir, I don't believe I know what you mean," the stallion replied in a stuffy tone.

"Sure..." Tiran replied un-easily. "Hold on a minute."

The stallion dipped his head again, "Of course."

Tiran returned to the balcony and told Ruwa about the escort, "Fine," she sighed with a wave of her hoof, "go ahead."

"You don't want to come?"

"Maybe later. I think I just want to sit with myself for now."

"Ok then..." Tiran shrugged and went back to the door.

The well dressed stallion led Tiran down the corridors, making many twists and turns. Tiran tried to remember the way, trying to memorize the route, but after a time he gave up. Without his guide with the stuffy attitude, Tiran decided he would soon get completely lost. He hadn't realized before, having only been to a few places within it, but the palace was absolutely massive. For almost ten minutes they had been walking and still no sight of an exit to the outside.

It was still another ten minutes before sunlight finally stuck Tiran's face without first having to pass through the droll tinted glass windows that the architects of the dour complex seemed to love so much. Tiran smiled as a warm breeze buffeted his lengthening crop of shaggy dirty-blond hair. They had emerged onto a wide flagstone path that wound across an open grassy field.

They continued on down the path, its direction angling off towards the cliffs the palace sat so precariously on. When the path seemed to terminate at the edge of the cliff, Tiran began to slow, wondering just where he was being taken. When his guide continued to the edge, Tiran began to lunge towards him, but stopped as the stallion turned and began to gradually disappear down a hidden ramp that Tiran had failed to see. Cautiously shuffling towards the cliff's edge, Tiran peered down the incline.

His guide was already halfway down to the end, where the slope switched back upon itself and continued on beneath the cliffs. Tiran leaned over the edge as far as he dared, wary of the long drop that awaited him should he fall, and attempted to discern their destination, but the path vanished beneath an overhang. Pulling himself back, Tiran quickly proceeded down the slope and caught up with his escort.

The vertigo inducing path took them under the overhang of cliffs, into a dark recess sequestered within the mountain side and extended as far north as he could see around the mointain's wide girth. Tiran nearly paused in awe at the proportion of it. He imagined one could fly a small airliner through its gap with room to spare, were it not for the inverted forest of stalactites along the roof and their twins forming beneath them like the fangs of some deep water fish.

As the path met the floor of this space, Tiran's guide began to lead him north, speaking along the way as Tiran gazed around in awe, "I have been authorized by the Princesses themselves to bring you to this place, though I can't imagine why. This space in the side of the mountain was discovered many years ago while the earth ponies were mining for crystal. It has proved quite useful in the past few years in keeping certain projects from unwanted eyes, as it is almost impossible to spot from below or above and is well defended besides.

"Currently, it houses the Research and Development Section for Their Majesties' Royal Special Tasks Group. It was here your machine was taken and it is here it shall remain."

The last line of explanation caused Tiran to pause for a moment, "Wait, what do you mean by that?" he demanded, but the stallion did not respond. "Hey, I asked you a question!" Tiran shouted as he jogged up to the pony's side.

The stallion in the stuffed shirt continued to ignore him and instead proceeded to a bare and generally unremarkable section of rock wall the color of oxidized iron. When the pony didn't answer him, Tiran crossed his arms in frustrated anger and turned around, studying the unnatural rock formations around him.

It occurred to Tiran that they were now actually quite a distance away from where the path left off at the floor they were now on. It seemed to him that they had traveled almost two hundred yards from the path that led them here. The size was almost daunting, but he could understand it if this was where they had stashed the Cloudburst.

Tiran stiffened as he felt the solid rock beneath his feet begin to ruble and shake. He turned around to see two large sections of what he thought was solid rock face recess a few inches and start to slide apart. In only a few seconds, the opening was as wide as any hangar door he had seen and just as tall, too.

Tiran stood wide eyed as the hidden doors opened up to a massive facility packed with maintenance equipment and gantries. It was large enough to hold four large aircraft. Two spots were currently taken up with what would have looked like fast-attack craft were it not for the bulbous balloons carefully secured to their tops. By the look of the huge fan blades sticking out from behind them, Tiran thought that movement was not much of a problem for them.

He gazed around as he walked forward into the gargantuan space, following his guide closely. Then Tiran spotted it. In a far back corner, in pieces and scattered about, were the scuffed and battered remains of the Cloudburst, but now resting on its landing gear instead of its belly.

Fear leapt to his throat when he saw it, seemingly irreparable, but something odd about it caught his attention and stifled it. The design was off. As in, not how it had been when he first saw it. Many of the pieces he saw scattered about were not the same either, and he noticed they weren't exactly scattered as they were carefully organized into some kind of pattern.

Tiran ran past his escort, forgetting the stuffy stallion for a moment, chomping at the bit for a closer look at his bird.

It was still horribly scratched and scuffed, the paint flaking off in places. Strangely, though, the Couldburst's surfaces looked to be repaired and intact. Even the crumples and gouges had been repaired, leaving the shiny metal beneath with only a slightly wrinkled look. Tiran couldn't say if it was the same for the insides and he didn't know if the reactor leak had been repaired, but its housing did seem once again whole.

Of course, this didn't mean that it was once again air worthy, certainly not with a number of its other parts laying around on the deck. Tiran still wanted to see and started for the cockpit. He halted when he came to it and put both his hands to his head in wild astonishment.

"What the hell have you done to my bird!?"

The cockpit was changed, drastically. It still had the same basic shape and dimensions, but it was elongated, narrower. Tiran hit the button on the fuselage to bring the ladder down and it folded out with a rattle. He climbed up it quickly and peered in through the now solid canopy and felt his shoulders fall.

There were two seats in there now. Two. In his bird that he got to fly alone. One right behind the other, inline.

Tiran fumbled with the canopy release button and it sighed open with a hiss, sliding up and forward like a clam shell. Tiran immediately pulled himself in and crouched over the seats. It seemed most of the main controls; like the stick, throttle and weapons, were still grouped around the seat in the front. But a good majority; like the radar, countermeasures and even the switches for the M-drive were shifted to the dashboard of the back seat.

A loud clang of metal striking rock echoed around the room and a voice of a young male called out from the other side of the Cloudburst, towards its aft section, "Hey, who's messing with the cockpit up there?"

Tiran clambered backwards down the ladder and jumped the last few feet to the ground. At the same time, hoof steps came from round back of the aircraft to meet him. A set of gray hooves materialized under the nose, followed by the rest of the pony as it rounded it and came to face Tiran.

The first thing Tiran noticed was that it was a stallion and he had a horn on his head, which meant he was a unicorn. the stallion seemed pretty young, as much as Tiran could tell. He had a glistening coat of gray with patches of crimson red here and there. Plus a cloudy mane and tail with a long streak of electric blue. Most of all of these features were stained and corrupted with splotches of grease and patches of singed hair.

"Hey!" The young stallion started angrily as he came around the nose of the Cloudburst. "Just what in Celestia's—" he paused, one front hoof half raised in step as he caught sight of Tiran. "Oh. So you're the guy."

"Yeah, I'm the guy." Tiran said, hearing the timbre of his voice raise with anger of his own. "Who the hell are you? And what the hell are you doing to my bird?"

"Flicker. And I'm fixing it," the stallion snorted. "You're welcome." He strode past Tiran and made for a box of tools sitting under one of the Cloudburst's short wings.

"Fixing it?" Tiran said, exasperated. He gestured wildly with his arms, "Look what you did to the cockpit! There should be one seat, ONE seat! And don't get me started on the reactor!"

The strange stallion, Flicker, returned from the tool box, various items taken from it flowing into a bag on his side with the same magical energy all his kind possessed.

"If you want to know," he said, "the cockpit had too many controls grouped together for one operator. I remedied that by adding another seat, frees up the pilot."

Tiran was about to jump in and explain to this mechanic Li's function, but he didn't know about her yet and Flicker kept talking before he could get a word in.

"As for your 'reactor,' that was an easy patch. Sure, the energy levels were dangerous, but it wasn't much different than how we make our own engines, only ours are much more safe and efficient."

Tiran laughed, "Are you talking about those heaps of crap over there?" He pointed over to the other craft he had seen in the bay, "The ones that look like a steam punk fanboy's wet dream?"

Flicker looked taken aback, "Steam? Those don't run on anything as simple as steam," he put crossly. He eyed Tiran skeptically, "Do you even know what you're talking about?"

"I'm the friggin' pilot!"

Flicker stomped a hoof and leaned forward, "Who crashed his machine into the ground and busted it up for me to repair! They don't give this sort of job to just anypony you know!"

"Do you even-? Wha- dammit, whatever!" Tiran spat.

Tiran threw his hands up and walked away, frustrated at the changes made to his aircraft, his bird! Flicker continued to eye him as he walked away before disappearing back around the Cloudburst from whence he came. Not even a day had passed since Tiran had been reunited with his bird and they were already screwing with it. If Cherovic knew what was happening right now, this world away, she would have a fit. Probably wear herself out and collapse from the berating she'd give him. Not that he particularly cared what she thought.

Tiran marched back to his stuffy guide, who had been waiting patiently some yards away through the short heated exchange. He seemed to show no indication that any of it had interested him as Tiran marched grumpily up.

"Alright, where's all my other stuff?" Tiran demanded a bit unkindly.

"Right this way, sir," his escort replied, not even betraying a hint of concern.

Tiran's escort led him only deeper into the hangar, bypassing maintenance gantries and small rooms dedicated to individual parts. Tiran was about to ask how much longer it was going to take when the old stallion finally stopped and gestured to a door half cracked open. Tiran thanked him quietly and stepped inside.

The room was a bit bigger than those reserved for the aircraft parts. It was well lit with the same strange glowing orbs from the halls above, only they were recessed into the ceiling, casting bright pools of light along the floor. Towards the back was a large table, just about the height of his waist. Laid out on it was his suit.

Tiran rushed over as soon as he spotted it, taking the sight of its condition in with dismay.

The under garments, the tightly woven mesh of kevlar and carbon tubes was stretched out on a rack nearby. On the table; all the armored plates, the servos, actuators and even his helmet lay completely disassembled into their many individual components and placed carefully in order of assembly like a dissected frog in a kid's science class.

Tiran gripped his hair with both hands, absently reminding himself he needed it cut, and felt his ire rise to new levels. How the hell was he supposed to get home with his gear in a state like this? What the hell did they think they were doing? He couldn't even begin to imagine the state of the M-drive, the only thing he could think of to get him back at this point. Would they even know what it was?

The shear attributes of this world was boggling him. So far, the tech he'd encountered in this world was far outdated and medieval compared to his own, even if a bit similar. And yet, here they were taking apart and playing with his own technology as if they were eccentric toys to be studied.

Soft hoof steps and what sounded like humming came from the corridor to Tiran's rear. He could hear them approach the very door that led to this room. He rounded on the sound, expecting that stallion, Flicker, to march in, to give him another speech about how his superior skills were improving Tiran's gear, and Tiran was ready to unleash a fusillade of bereavements meant to put the mechanic in his place.

What he got as he spun around, shoulders squared and expression menacing completely took him off balance.

"YOU!?. What the hell are you doing here!?"

Quick Fix nearly dropped the clipboard she was reading off of as she stumbled back at his unexpected outburst. Her bewildered expression at his presence quickly turned into a smile, "Oh, hey! Fancy seeing you here!" she said as she elevated the clipboard and slid it onto the table with his suit as she walked over to it. "Gotta say, I wasn't expecting you here." She looked at him as if in contemplation, "Or maybe I should have... Either way, welcome to my humble little workshop!"

"Workshop?" Tiran gazed all around the space, trying to look for some hidden clue, something he should have seen before. What was this mare, the oddball Ruwa had introduced him to, and who had fixed his arm before, doing here at a secret squirrel hidey hole?

"Yeah, workshop," Quick Fix repeated. "I finished up your arm, too. Looks better, huh? Sorry I couldn't do the skin for ya back at the junction, but we have way more materials to work with up here," she said casually as she went to a folder and wrote something down in it. "By the way, how are you, Li?" she asked, smiling at Tiran's left arm as if Li had eyes to watch her.

Li didn't respond, but Tiran thought he could feel her contempt for the engineer. It was weird to feel something like that, something he had never felt from her before. It gave him goose bumps.

"I think she's still mad at you," Tiran said.

"Ah, that's a bit troubling. Not good to be on bad terms with an artificial being with access to almost four hundred foot pounds of force, but i suppose it can't be helped," she said cheerfully.

What the hell is going on here, Tiran wondered. "Did Ruwa know about this place? About you?" he asked, feeling himself calm down some, if just to figure out what was happening here. Meeting her in town, getting ambushed a little over a day later, had this been some sort of trap to get him here?

"Ruwa?" The unicorn said, her face scrunching a little in thought. "No, she doesn't know about any of this, or the fact that I work here. This place is pretty hush-hush, if you know what I mean."

Tiran suddenly felt very tired, and searched for a place to sit down. He settled for a small shelf along one of the walls, the metal creaking as he sat. He was confused, wanted to get back to his own world and now a little more than a little suspicious given recent events.

"No, I'm afraid I don't," he said. "Care to explain, cause nobody else has really told me much of anything."

Quick Fix, now inspecting some piece of Tiran's armor looked up and tapped her chin with a hoof, "Well, there's not much I can tell you, not without getting in trouble. Basically, I'm on call for the Princesses for whenever they find any weird tech. I study it, report back to them, that sort of thing." She said it like it was routine. she then let out a chuckle, "Oh yeah, since Li is still mad at me, thank her for the show earlier. She had my techs scrambling all over the hangar!" she added with a more enthusiastic laugh.

"So you did set us up," Tiran said, mentally confirming his suspicions.

Quick Fix looked at him like he spouting nonsense, "Set you up?"

"Yeah, the ambush," Tiran replied, continuing his line of thought. "We meet you in town, the next day I get shot up with drugs and dragged here!"

Quick Fix looked at him quizzically for a moment, before a wide smirk finally settled around her mouth. "That wasn't me, not my style. Sure, I would have mentioned meeting you, but then I would have suggested we send somepony out to meet you, bring you up to Canterlot. Though..." she put thoughtfully, "I have a pretty good idea of who it was. Sneaky little guy."

"Really?" Tiran said, disbelievingly. "Who?"

"Tell me, did you meet a sketchy stallion with a thick drawl?" she smiled mischievously at him.

Tiran glared at her, but then looked up in thought as a memory came back to him, "Yeah...at a bar actually. Dude was asking me all sorts of weird questions."

"At a bar, of course." Quick Fix snorted with a chuckle. "I'm sorry, Tiran, but you got snatched by one of the best."

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter." She waved a hoof dismissively.

"Fine, whatever."Tiran silently fumed, wondering who it was that had gotten one over on him, who had arranged for him to be captured and carted off. He wanted to know so he could dish out a little payback. Though it didn't seem like he was going to get any answers there, so he asked something else, "So what is up with this place? Why is Lord Twisted Panties back there tinkering with my bird?"

Quick Fix looked back up from her work, "Flicker? Oh, don't mind him, he's actually a pretty sweet guy once you get to know him. Brilliant, too, just like his mom. He just doesn't appreciate his work being interrupted is all. That guy is all about getting the job done."

"Fine, but still, why? What's with this place?"

Quick Fix rummaged around in a box beneath the table, flank sticking up in the air, and pulled out some strange electronic instrument and plugged it into the suit's power pack, the one that converted his body heat into electricity, reading the small wavering dials on its face.

"It's a place where we can develop new technologies for defense," she said without looking up. "Equestria's got a lot of enemies most ponies don't know about. The Guard takes care of stuff on the surface, but the real fighting is done through the ponies stationed here. You might have seen some of them walking around, real tough guys with scars and bad attitudes. RSTG."

"Yeah, tough guys," Tiran huffed, remembering his time in the interrogation room. "What are these 'tough guys'—" Tiran threw up air quotes, "—fighting?"

"Well, they did put a stop to the first major war we've seen in over a millennia, then there was the attempted coup not too long after that, but it has been pretty quiet lately," Quick Fix, replied, taking more measurements and scribbling down notes with a pen in her magical grip. "These days, it's mostly small stuff; organized crime, interdiction, smuggling, you name it. But they're also on the look out for humans."

Tiran played with a bolt laying on the shelf next to him, "Humans? I though they helped with that stuff?"

"Oh, they did. But it was a human that first started that war. Not many ponies in the know about that. Terrible guy, I heard. But you shouldn't have anything to worry about, as long as you aren't planning to start another."

"Nope. Just wanna go home."

"I feel you," Quick Fix said tiredly. "I wouldn't even come out here if the pay wasn't so good."

"So, as long as I'm not causing trouble, they'll let me go, right?" Tiran asked hopefully.

Quick Fix put her instruments away and started piecing together some of Tiran's suit, "Maybe, maybe not."

"What? Why?"

Quick Fix sighed and put down the parts she was working on and looked at him, "Well... things have been a little restless lately. I'm sure you might've heard, or not, that a new Princess was crowned recently. Not too many ponies took a shine to that. There was a lot of talk of protest, some saying that they would leave, others getting a little violent. This is a small part of the country, mind you,the vast majority of Equestria celebrated it." She smiled, but it turned into a shallow frown, "But, ponies with more malicious intents tend to take advantage of these kinds of things.

"There was a small riot in Tall Tale not too long ago. Then a mass demonstration in Baltimare, things got a little violent there, too. It was thought that these were isolated, but Intel came up that it was all being organized behind the scenes. There was even talk of an armed organization building itself up through back channels. As you can imagine, it has everypony here on edge."

"I see," Tiran said with a puff of air. "Well I certainly don't want anything to do with that."

"I'm sure you don't."

An hour later, Tiran's escort dropped him off at his room, now conspicuously devoid of guards. He walked over and knocked on Ruwa's door, but got no answer. Either she was still a little mad at him, or she was off doing something else. Maybe trying to chase down one of the Princesses and bask in the royalty. Tiran doubted it though. This didn't seem like the place royalty would hang around in for long. Too military and Spartan.

Resigned, Tiran opened the door to his own room and climbed into bed, not even bothering to take off his shoes. As he lay on top of the soft linens, he glanced out the window and noted how far the sun had gone across the sky. Its light was taking on an amber hue, signaling its decent.

Tiran checked with Li and was told it was almost 1800. He realized with a pang of guilt that he'd spent nearly the whole day down in the hidden hangar, checking on the condition of his belongings and drilling Quick Fix with questions. No wonder Ruwa had gone off on her own some where. Tiran wondered how she would react to the news that one of her friends was secretly working in a hidden lab below.

Unable to fall asleep, Tiran got up again. Maybe he'd go for a walk, try to find Ruwa and sort things out. Surely she couldn't stay mad at him for long, especially if they talked. Maybe he could bring her down to the lab to see Quick Fix.

Tiran put a plan in mind and stepped back out the door. He knocked on Ruwa's again just to make sure, but when he got the same result, began to wander down the hallway.

He soon found the corridors to be much like those back in his own world's military installations. Clear cut, organized and lacking any and all imagination. Passing hall after hall, intersection after identical intersection, Tiran soon realized that it might be far too easy to become hopelessly lost. His mind flicked back to the route he had taken from his room. He'd only made a few turns and he was sure of his direction. Either way, if he got lost, he could just ask somebody.

The corridors continued on and the light that struggled through the filtered windows grew fainter. A clatter of hooves rose from further down the passageway, soon joined with the sight of several stallions with weapons strapped to them. Tiran had to flatten himself against one of the walls to avoid being trampled. He puzzled over the strange occurrence and wondered what that had been about. They hadn't even glanced at him.

Tiran shrugged. Whatever it was, it didn't involve him.

Continuing his wind through the corridors, Tiran passed w-hat he thought was a cafeteria, some sort of sparring room and even what looked like an indoor firing range. Curious, he poked his head in the last one.

There was a soft whir of fans, sucking out air. Tiran had seen the weapons they carried, old slug throwers, spitting out a large, slow bullet and lots of noxious gas. The fans were probably there to suck the fumes out of the air before anybody choked on them.

Tiran suddenly wished he had his own weapons. Both his service pistol and his heirloom. If not just to practice, then to at least try the old pistol. He really wanted to know how it felt in his hands, compared to his gauss pistol.

A door creaked open at the far end of the room, past the firing lanes and benches. Tiran looked over to see a male unicorn with an almost luminescent silver hide emerge from the back room while levitating several locked cases before him. Tiran also noticed he had a rather sleek looking pistol slung in a holster at his side.

The stallion locked the door and turned around, going stiff at the sight of Tiran standing there. He eyed Tiran with irises the same ghostly shade as his coat.

"Hey," Tiran waved sheepishly. "It's ok if I'm in here, right?"

The stallion stepped forward and held out a hoof. After some hesitation, Tiran shook it. "Name's Sylver," the stallion said.

Of course it is, Tiran thought.

"I'm Range Master and Armorer here," Sylver continued. "So you're our resident human, the one they brought in with all that crazy gear?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Oh, good," Sylver said, setting the cases on a bench nearby and opening one up. "I was gonna take this down to Q in the lab, but I think I'll get more insight from you." Tiran watched with surprise as Sylver levitated his sidearm out of the case and held it between them. "I've been trying to figure this thing out, but it's beyond me."

"Oh, sure," Tiran said, reaching out and grabbing the pistol from the aura Sylver had enveloped it in. His hand tingled as it passed through the cloud, the sensation gone in a wink as Sylver dispelled it.

"Why don't you take it over to the range." Sylver suggested.

Thinking of nothing better, Tiran took his suggestion and went to the nearest booth. Sylver came up next to him closely examining Tiran's every movement with the weapon. Tiran had never had to teach any one about firearms before, but he gave it his best shot.

"Well, this is the mag release right here," he said pointing to a button near the trigger. He ejected it and showed Sylver the magazine, filled with tiny metal darts, "The basic design hasn't changed much from the old cartridge pistols, but it's designed to hold more rounds now. Going from the standard fifteen to about a hundred chambered for 2.7mm." He pushed the mag back in the well, the pistol rewarded him with a satisfied click.

Continuing his lesson, Tiran traced a finger from the mag to the chamber and along the barrel's length, "The internal slide picks up a dart, aligns it with the gauss strips in the barrel and runs a charge down it from a battery in the mag. No spent shells, no gas, no muss."

"Interesting," was all Sylver said. "Why don't you show me?"

Tiran paused, staring at the unicorn for a moment, then looked down the range where a few targets still hung on wire runners. He hadn't shot his sidearm on a range in a long time. The last time was for his re-qual before Cherovic put him back in the pilot's seat. Even then, he only managed marksman.

"Alright, here goes..."

Tiran thumbed the on switch for the battery and felt the slide shift inside and chamber a round. he lined up the sights with one of the distant targets and pulled the trigger. A minute cone of sparks erupted from the end of the barrel, followed by a whine and a plink as the dart sped down the range and hit catch behind the target. Tiran fired a few more shots off for good measure.

Sylver watched the whole time, carefully studying the pistol as it operated. After Tiran's last shot, he shifted his gaze down the lane and inspected the target. Almost every shot had landed within the rings except one, lonely on the blank paper.

"You're a terrible shot," was Sylver's only comment.

"Yeah, well I'm a pilot, not a soldier;" Tiran said in his own defense. "Put me in the sky and I'm the goddamn reaper."

"I might want to see that." Sylver said, taking the pistol out of Tiran's hands and placing it back in its protective case.

Tiran was about to ask about his other pistol when the door to the hall swung open. He wheeled around to see the rusty red stallion from the interrogation step into the room and look around.

"Giving late lessons, Sylver?" he said with a slight smile, settling to a slight frown as his eyes rested on Tiran.

"Nah, just checking out our guest's equipment."

"Might wanna do that myself."

"We have time now, if you want, Sparks. It's an interesting design, far more advanced than our own. Worth the experience."

"Later," Sparks said. "I need to talk to you, something came up," he put gravely, the Commander's choice in tone grabbing Tiran's attention.

Sylver turned back to Tiran, Know your way back?"

"Yeah, think so," Tiran replied, wondering if he actually did.

Without another word, Sylver trotted to Sparks and they left together, talking as they did. Tiran walked quietly and slowly out the door behind them, trying to catch snatches of their conversation.

"You sure it's solid?" Sylver asked.

"Source is one of our best." Sparks replied.

"Is Princess Luna secure?"

"Left the same day as Princess Celestia, safe in Canterlot."

"Good. I'll get some eyes on the perimeter and see if we can't nip it in the bud."

The two then disappeared around a sharp corner and trotted away down a hall that went in the opposite direction of where Tiran thought his room was. His interest was piqued at the few words he managed pick up and he briefly considered following them further. But a well reasoned voice in the back of his head reminded him that that course of action could well place him back in the interrogation room and he decided it was best not to pursue it. He was tired any way and figured that whatever it was didn't affect him any how.

Tiran wandered back down the halls and wondered if Ruwa had returned to her room yet. If so, maybe he could have a chat with her, settle whatever it was between them and have a nice little dinner. If not, then at least he could have a few beers and pass out in his rack.